Taking the Sky by Dan Joslyn

Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: All non-original characters herein belong to persons such as Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, UPN, WB, FOX, and so forth, and not me. No compensation is received either by me or by the wonderful proprietors of this site for this story.
Distribution: The Mystic Muse: /mysticmuse.net
Feedback: Greatly appreciated.
Spoilers: Through mid-S7 for Buffy; through "Objects in Space" for Firefly.
Author's Notes: This fic is the result of me thinking of a couple of impossible scenes that, once I thought of them, I just had to write. I'm sure this crossover already exists somewhere in the vast fandom universe, but I have yet to read it, and wanted to write my own version, anyway. This is the first time I have tried writing for the Firefly characters, so let me know if I'm getting it wrong. This is also in some ways my attempt to bring the two halves of Whedon fandom together… I know some people who are just Firefly fans, and some people who are just Buffy fans, and I'm hoping that someone will read this and give the other one a try. Updates may be a little slow because of my obligations with "Watchers", but I'm really looking forward to this fic and am going to try my hardest to get it done.
Pairing: Willow/Other

Summary: Desperate for a break in the dark days of the battle with the First, Buffy and Willow set out across time in a search for allies and find some in a rather unexpected place.

Buffy stared suspiciously at the dull metal ball in Willow's outstretched hand. "What," she asked, "is that? Or do I want to know?"

"You want to know," Willow told her proudly, sitting across from the slayer in her living room. Xander, Giles, and several of the other Scoobies and new recruits were huddled around, as well. It was hard to do anything in private these days at Buffy's house. "This is the Orb of the Fates."

Giles adjusted his glasses to get a better look. "I-I thought that the Orb had been lost for centuries," he stammered. "Where did you get it?"

"I know a guy, black market, all very stealthy," Willow said. "He doesn't really have a face, but he's helped me out before, so…" She didn't say what she had needed to go to him for in the past. Those were memories not worth dredging up, not right now. It hadn't made Willow happy to go back to that card in the rolodex. But if this helped defeat the First…

Buffy was trying to puzzle something out. "So…if it's an Orb of the Fates…it can tell us what's going to happen?'

"Wait, you mean, like, in the future?" Xander asked. "The giant brass testicle knows when I'm gonna die? What I'm gonna have for dinner next week?"

"That would be a great help," Giles said thoughtfully. "We could anticipate the First's next move, be prepared, maybe even catch it off-guard."

"Even better," Willow grinned. Everyone looked at her then, and something deep inside of the red-haired witch remembered that she didn't like to be the center of attention. But that was a vestige, from years ago, she told herself. Now, she had to be an authority figure. And everyone looking at her was part of that.

"So it's an Orb that lets you time travel?" Andrew piped up from the back of the room. "That is such a DS9 rip-off."

"There's time travel?" Xander exclaimed. "Since when is there time travel? I've put up with a lot over the years, monsters, magic, giant praying mantises, but I ask you…how much can one man suspend disbelief?"

"I've heard about time travel," Anya announced authoritatively. "It's just like when I used to teleport, only it's through time instead of space. There was a girl once who wished that her boyfriend stayed stuck in the dark ages, and it just seemed easier…"

Later, after the excitement had died down, Buffy pulled Willow aside under the stairs. Most of the Potentials were upstairs, talking excitedly instead of sleeping.

"So what's the plan, Will? You go to next week and report back? I'm trying to think of a word for that, and I'm not sure dangerous really covers it." Buffy gave her friend a pointed look and waited for a response. Sometimes, she knew, Willow had a tendency to be a little bit overeager when it came to magic.

"I've thought about that," Willow replied. "There's always the possibility that I go to next week and find out that we're all dead, as unlikely as that may sound."

There was a grim look on Buffy's face, and it matched how she felt. "Unfortunately, that doesn't sound all that unlikely. So if that's not…"

"I think, with a little research, I might be able to ask the Orb to take me to someone fated to help us."

"It is the Orb of the Fates," Willow pointed out. "I bring whoever it is back with me, they help us pummel the First, and then they go back to wherever they came from."

"Both, either, I don't know," Willow admitted. "I'd have to dress for the ambiguity. The point is, this could be what we've been waiting for."

Willow's brow furrowed. "It'll make it harder to do the spell if I – " Buffy didn't even have to say anything to interrupt Willow. Her look was the one she gave people when she was not in the mood to tolerate disagreements. She had been giving people that look a lot lately.

"You don't know where or when you're gonna end up," Buffy said. "You need someone to back you up, and the girls aren't ready." Willow started to open her mouth to speak, but Buffy hushed her with a gesture. "No, not even Kennedy. Do you want to put her up against a two-ton hellbeast from the future?" Reluctantly, Willow shook her head. "I'm. Going. With. You."

And not even the most magically powerful human being in recorded history could argue with that.

Andrew had begged to come with all his little geek heart, but Buffy had brushed it off the way she did most things that came out of the twerp's mouth. Giles and Dawn had both pointed out that their expertise with languages could come in handy, and Buffy and Willow had discussed it (while Buffy secretly wondered when her little sister had become fluent in Latin) before deciding that they just weren't sure the spell would work with three, and Buffy got the second berth over Giles since it would be pretty useless to speak the language if they ended up dead. Kennedy had insisted that she could indeed take on two-two hellbeasts from the future, slayer powers or no, but Buffy took her aside and explained that someone was needed to train the girls while she was gone (Willow had said that they would be back the instant they left or they wouldn't be back at all, but Buffy saw no need to explain that fact to Kennedy).

So now the slayer and witch sat across from each other on the wide bed in what had once been Buffy's mother's room. It was now home to double digits' worth of potentials on a nightly basis, but the room had been cleared so the ritual could take place. Both women were dressed all in white, the clothes gathered from their own closets as well as potentials of similar sizes. Willow had come to the conclusion that if they landed in an ancient period where modern clothes would seem an anachronism, they could at least try to pass themselves off as angels or goddesses. Buffy was not sure about that plan, but she kept silent. After all, white never goes out of style.

Willow's hands were on the Orb and she was chanting something in a language Buffy did not understand. After a moment, the witch opened her eyes. "Okay," she said, breathing out sharply.

Buffy reached out and grasped her hands with the friendly assurance of two girls who have been best friends for years. Willow could almost feel the slayer power coursing through her from Buffy. Just touching the slayer these days could make the hairs on the back of Willow's neck stand on end. Willow liked the feeling, and she smiled.

"Is this gonna hurt?" Buffy asked, settling herself deeper into her cross-legged position.

"So," Willow said brightly, trying a little too hard to brighten the mood, "are you ready to walk with the dinosaurs?"

"Personally," Buffy replied, "I'm hoping for the future. With flying cars. Always gotta have the flying cars. Either way, I'm ready for launch."

"Alrighty, then." Willow closed her eyes and began to speak in the more authoritative voice that she reserved for casting spells. "Those who stand at the loom of Fate, hear me. We are in our darkest hour. Somewhere in the creations lives one destined to bring us aid. We have your Orb, transcendant of time and space. Use it, and answer our prayer."

What Willow was actually doing as she said this would have been difficult for even her to describe. She re-directed her strength, as well, as Buffy's, out of her body and into the Orb in the center of the bed. She was using a part of her brain that most people didn't even realize they had, much less put to work. To Willow, the feeling was a strange mixture of the strain lifting of a great weight and the feeling of pure, euphoric life coursing through her veins.

Buffy saw the Orb, once dull brass, begin to glow with a golden light. Then she experienced a sort of stretched feeling, like her body was trying to flatten out. Oh God, she thought, It really does hu –

"Gorram it, Mal, we haven't had a decent job in near a month. I ain't lookin' to get rich, but I expect to paid a decent wage." All nine of those aboard the Serenity, crew and erstwhile passengers, had gathered in the dining room to discuss the current financial situation. The room was warmly lit and about as homey as one could possibly make a room on a spaceship. Jayne Cobb, the large, well-muscled man who had spoken, crossed his arms in defiance.

"Getting rich wouldn't hurt," Wash suggested. The ship's pilot was a small, nebbishy man with a smile that managed to be friendly and nervous at the same time.

"As much as it pains me to admit it," said Zoe, the tall, beautiful first mate, "Jayne's right. Maybe we should head towards someplace with a little more coin, like Greenleaf or…"

"Go hwang-tong!" Captain Malcolm Reynolds spat in Chinese. He got the silence he wanted. The Captain, a handsome-enough man after his fashion, was dressed in his usual brown coat, his pants held up by rough leather suspenders. Also as usual, his gun was holstered at his hip, its weight now so much a part of him that he missed it when it wasn't there. Mal surveyed his crew with a practiced eye. Zoe was loyal to him, always had been, and genuinely trying to help. He might have listened to her later, in private, but not here. Wash would do what she asked; he was her husband, after all. Jayne was just being a pain-in-the-ass, as usual. He could probably be placated with a few quiet advance payments. Kaylee, the small, peppy ship's mechanic looked truly upset, a heart-breaking look on her face, as she usually did when "the grown-ups" were fighting. Simon was Book were both happy enough to stay out of civilization's way, and the former at least knew well enough to stay out of arguments like this, except where they involved him and his sister. Said sister, River, was off in her own little world, as she was much of the time, both feet slid under her chair, eyes chasing some invisible insect around the room. And then there was Inara…

"Boats still flying," Mal said after a moment. "Will be for a few more weeks. I trust everyone remembers how well we got paid for that hospital job. We got paid well enough for I'm all for finding work, honest or no. But we can't risk a trip to the central planets, not now. We're carrying fugees, and those rocks are crawling with alliance, not to mention that they're boring and too clean and…and they smell funny."

"If my well-oiled brain is working right, we was carrying fugees when we knocked over the hospital, and that was on a central planet," Jayne snarled. "Didn't stop us none then." He slurped some vile liquid from a small metal flask and frowned. Mal made a dark face. Yes, they had been carrying Simon and River when they put down on Ariel. And Jayne had tried to turn them in for the reward.

Inara sat directly to Mal's right, her face strangely serene. She was very beautiful, with long, flowing dark hair. Even her ornate, silky clothes seemed of a different class than everyone else's. She knew that the real reason the Captain had been avoiding anywhere civilized had nothing to do with the fugitives. Mal knew that if he put down on a decent world Inara would get off.

But she was tired of arguing with him about it, and said nothing. The conversation continued in front of her, running in circles. Shepherd Book weighed with an enigmatic bible quotation that made Inara smile, but it didn't seem like anything was getting resolved. They were thousands, maybe millions of miles from the nearest colonized world. What else was there to do but argue?

The discussion did not conclude until River spoke for the first time. She looked up at her brother, who was standing next to her chair, and announced "Someone's here."

Simon was used to this sort of thing by now. He knelt next to River's chair. "Who's here, River?" he asked patiently.

"What's she jabbering about?" Jayne asked, his voice far less patient than Simon's.

"That's impossible," Wash assured her. "There isn't another ship for a day's ride."

"It was impossible last week, too," Mal pointed out. "Didn't make it any less true. I'm not too keen on getting hijacked by any more bounty hunters. We should break into pairs, search the ship."

"Are you sure, sir?" Zoe asked. "I mean – no offense River – but the girl is crazy."

"This little parley's getting yawn-worthy at this point anyhow," Mal said. "And the impression I get is that we've all sat on our behinds a little too much. Time to make ya'll earn those wages you value so dearly." He looked directly at Jayne. "Okay?"

Split up into pairs. Of course, Mal and Inara had to be one of the pairs. Fortunately, Inara thought, nine doesn't divide equally, so Kaylee had tagged along with them. After the incident with the bounty hunter, she said that she didn't want to be left alone again. And Mal showed that sudden kindness that confused Inara so much, tousled Kaylee's hair, and said that she should stick with him.

The threesome was poking around in the cargo hold, since the Captain was the only person on the ship who knew all the nooks, crannies, and secret compartments it hid. Great for smuggling contraband, and possibly in this case also a handy hiding place. Inara smirked and thought again about how strange it was for her to fall in with the sort of crowd where phrases like "smuggling contraband" were common-place. But then again she wasn't quite a typical Companion, either.

"Maybe it's a cute, strong prairie boy," Kaylee said cheerily. "Snuck off his farm to see the world, his muscles honed from working with the sheep."

"What about Simon?" Mal asked. "Doc hasn't worked with the sheep a day in his life."

"Unfortunate for the sheep," Kaylee grinned. "Anyway, I can have a crush and a fantasy at the same time. I don't have a one-track mind like you." She looked significantly at Inara, and the Companion rolled her eyes.

"Any prairie boy would have to recover from the bullet I'm gonna put to him before he – " Mal stopped in the middle of his threat.

"I didn't hear…" Kaylee began, but the Captain was already moving slowly towards one of the panels at the bottom of the cargo bay wall. His gun was now out of the holster and held at the ready. When he reached the wall, he abruptly pulled the grating off, revealing an open space behind it. Quickly he reached in and grabbed onto something. There was a distinctly female yelp.

"Gotcha!" Mal proclaimed, dragging a skinny blonde girl, dressed all in white, out of the secret compartment by her hair. His triumph was short-lived, however. With amazing agility, the girl swung her body around and swept Mal's legs out from under him. The Captain landed hard on his bottom with an "Oof!"

"Mal!" Inara shouted, forgetting her practiced detachment for a moment when she saw the man in pain. Both Mal and the girl scrambled quickly to their feet. She assumed an taut martial arts stance. He simply pointed his gun at her forehead. The girl's eyes widened.

"We're not real fond of stowaways on this boat," Mal said, "and I'm not real fond of falling over. So you're gonna spin your tale in an immediate sort of fashion, or I'm gonna riddle you with holes. Dong ma?"

"Buffy, what's going – oh, fudge." Another woman of about the same age, early twenties with red hair, had stuck her head out of the compartment, apparently concerned for the blonde's safety. Mal, a little flustered, swung the gun towards her for a moment, and that was all the first girl needed.

The girl in white closed the gap between them and grabbed Mal by the wrist, locking his arms straight out. She thrust her knee upward and knocked the gun out of his hands. The firearm skittered away across the metal floor. The girl then used her leverage to swing the Captain around and slam him against the wall.

Inara was in total shock as she watched this girl. She'd had some training, obviously, but not companion training. There was more to it than training…while it might be possible for a human being to do the things she'd done, it didn't seem very likely coming from a wisp of a girl like this one. Possibilities flickered at the edge's of Inara's mind. An Alliance assassin sent after River? A hit put out on Mal by one of the many outlaws he had crossed? In a display of strength that was definitely not possible, the girl nonchalantly held a struggling Mal against the wall with one hand, helping her friend out of the secret compartment with the other. "Looks like trouble just follows us around, doesn't it?"

"You said it," the red-head agreed. Inara could see now that she too was dressed in all white. It occurred to her that both of them were entirely too pristine for somebody who had been hiding in a cramped little corner for days. "But Buffy…where are we? My first thought from the clothes was the Old West, but – "

"Don't move." Both girls turned (and Mal turned his head, too, as far as he could manage) to see Kaylee training Mal's gun at them. The mechanic's hands were shaking, as was her voice. "Put down the Cap'n, and put your hands in the sky."

Buffy, as Inara had gathered she was named, did not move to do as she was asked.

"Did you hear me?" Kaylee asked, hysteria rising in her voice. "I don't know who you are, or how you got on Serenity, but you just need to listen to me, okay?"

"Maybe we should do what she wants," the red-head whispered. "We're not here to make enemies."

Then the sound of a safety being turned off echoed through the cargo bay. Everyone looked up to see Zoe standing on the stairs above them, her weapon trained on the mysterious girls. Another noise pointed to Jayne's presence on one of the balconies, his big gun "Vera" pointed at the new arrivals.

Buffy's head was on a swivel, and all she saw were guns pointed at her and Willow. She had never liked guns. Especially now that they brought back all those memories, of pain and loss and, oh yeah, getting shot in the chest. "Willow?" she whispered hopefully.

"Thank you kindly, Miss," he croaked, grabbing his throat. My God, Buffy thought, he really is straight out of the Old West. But this isn't… More time to think about that later.

"Hands where I can see 'em," the African-American woman on the stairs said. A moment later, Buffy realized that her mind used the term by reflex… they had no way of knowing whether they were in America or not, though the accents seemed to fit. Buffy and Willow's hands slowly rose into the air.

"Please," Willow pleaded, raising her voice a little, "we didn't come here to fight."

"You attacked me!" the Captain said incredulously, rising to his full height as he recovered.

"You grabbed me by my hair!" Buffy answered, equally incredulous, though she carefully kept her hands in the air. "I mean, who does that?"

"Kaylee, give me the gun," the woman in the beautiful oriental-looking dress softly repeated. Kaylee, still shaking, let the woman pry her fingers from around the weapon. Thoughts appeared unbidden in the slayer part of Buffy's brain. She could probably take the girl hostage, get out of wherever they were. But the Captain had used the term "boat", which didn't bode well for there being anywhere to go… and weren't they supposed to go directly to the person they were supposed to find? And then all those thoughts dissipated as Buffy examined the girl's face more closely. She was not taking that girl hostage.

"I've got some questions," the Captain announced, "which hopefully will not prove to be stumpers. Who the hell are you people?"

"I'm Buffy," Buffy replied with a sarcastic smile, "and this is Willow." The witch gave a little wave with one of her raised hands.

"It's a nickname for Elizabeth," the girl in the dress supplied. She seemed to be the calmest person in the room. "At least it was in the ancient world."

"Poodles are tasty," the man on the balcony grinned, and Buffy's nose wrinkled involuntarily.

"Since those names don't mean gossa to me," the Captain said, "why don't you folks tell me where you're from and who hired you?"

"We're not working for anybody," Willow told him quickly. "We're from California."

The place name didn't seem to ring a bell with anybody. "He means what planet are you from," the girl in the dress said helpfully.

Buffy and Willow glanced at each other. The way she said it implied there might be more than one answer to the question. Buffy shrugged her shoulders. "Um… Earth?"

Based on the dumbfounded looks on everyone in the room, Buffy was afraid that might have been the wrong answer.

"So, let me get this straight," Buffy said, leaning back in her chair in a strangely normal-looking dining room. "I'm hundreds of years in the future, sitting on a spaceship in a different solar system. That's… new." Willow sat next to Buffy. The pair now found themselves surrounded by the eclectic crew of this vessel. Serenity.

"If you're telling the truth, yes," agreed the hottie who seemed to be the ship's doctor. What was his name, Buffy thought. Silas? No…

"It might seem hard to believe," Willow said, "but we are telling the truth. We need your help."

"They can't be telling the truth," the mercenary Jayne interjected. "It's like something in a storybook. Beautiful girls from Earth-That-Was appearing in a flash of light? C'mon, Mal, let's put 'em out the airlock and be done with it."

Captain Reynolds, the man who Buffy had still not forgiven from grabbing her by her hair, cut the other man off. "No, Jayne, not yet. If there's one thing I've learned from my time in the black it's that you have to keep an open mind. Don't be disbelieving things just because it seems like they can't be true." He leaned across the table towards the two girls, and Willow felt strangely intimidated by this man. He seemed a larger-than-life figure, a hero from a movie. It was like being interrogated by John Wayne.

"There's something I'm not comprehending here," he continued. "Say you gals really are from Earth-That-Was, that you've somehow figured out how to… travel through time. Say you're not lying to my face." He paused meaningfully and looked right at Buffy. "How in the verse does a little girl like you hold me off the ground like a rag doll?"

"Am I the only one who noticed that she didn't answer the question?" the ship's pilot asked nervously from across the room.

Buffy swallowed. Any explanation she gave was going to get her in deeper trouble with these people. She was beginning to see where maybe this whole random time trip thing was not that great of an idea.

Both the minister (Why was there a minister on board, Willow wondered) and the beautiful girl in the oriental dress (Willow was not yet clear what her job was supposed to be on the ship) stood up, seemingly to protest. Willow took some comfort in the fact that, were she to be pushed out into space to die horribly several ways at once, it would at least not be a unanimous decision.

"Wait!" Buffy cried, pulling something out of her pocket. She didn't notice both Zoe and Mal reaching for their guns. But they relaxed when Buffy put her Cell Phone on the table. "I never leave the house without it anymore," she whispered to Willow, who smiled.

"It looks like some kind of… communications device," said the young Kaylee, the one who Buffy had already somehow forgiven for pointing a gun at her. She sounded very interested. Kaylee pointed at the phone. "May I?"

"By my guest," Buffy said. Kaylee picked up the phone, a small silvery flip-top model Buffy had recently upgraded to. She turned the object over in her hands before cautiously flipping it open.

"I've seen portable wave receivers on the central planets," she said, "but nothing this small."

"Doesn't havin' high-class tech gear make them more likely to be purple-bellies?" Jayne asked.

"I don't think so," Kaylee said. "I'd need to open it up and poke around to be sure, but I don't think this would pick up any normal wave. And it's not a radio transceiver, either. Whatever it is, it runs on a different system entirely."

"So… you think they're telling the truth?" Simon asked. (That was his name! Buffy silently crowed in triumph)

"Maybe," Kaylee admitted, sounding as though she was having trouble admitting it to herself.

"Wait," Willow said, "you guys can make huge spaceships, but you've never seen a cell phone before?"

"It doesn't matter what that is," the Captain said, "or whether we've seen it before, you are still not in a position to do anything but be straight with us, dong ma?"

"There's that donkey thing again," Buffy muttered. "I'm sorry, what did you say?"

"Everybody does," said the previously silent First Mate, Zoe. "You have to, to get by. Captain, how could they grow up without learning Mandy?"

"She's right," Simon said. "Any 4-year-old in the System could have understood you."

"Unless they're just pretending not to understand, so's to fool us," Jayne said.

Swiftly and suddenly, the Captain pulled out his gun and pointed it straight at Willow's head. She jumped a foot out of her chair before trying to cover it up. Couldn't have the people she was trying to impress thinking she was a scaredy-cat.

"Mal, what are you doing?" Inara asked. Willow decided that she liked her better than the others.

Willow had gathered that by "Mandy", they meant Chinese. That didn't mean she could speak a word of it. For a witch who had to use Latin or Sumerian on a regular basis, Willow was really not that good with languages. She stalled for time. "Wh-What?"

"You heard me," the Captain said, not moving his gun. "Give us your ABCs, right here, right now."

Out of the corner of her eye, Willow noticed Buffy's muscles tensing under the table, and gave up all hope of this situation ending anything but badly. She shifted all her concentration, mystical or otherwise, to the gun pointed between her eyes. She had to try to stop the bullet, even though she knew that it would be almost impossible at this range. "I can't."

Everyone started talking at once. Buffy sat and waited for the shock to wear off. She glanced up at the small windows set into the ceiling. The sky was black, and the stars were much too bright. Space. Buffy suddenly felt like the metal walls of whatever ship she was in were not nearly thick enough.

"Do you know how far we are from the nearest civilization?" Wash asked. "Time's not really a factor."

"I'm sure our guests are weary from their long journey," the minister suggested. "Perhaps we should allow them to rest a spell before interrogating them." He was offering them a way out, Willow realized. Perhaps he kept his own secret he didn't want people asking about, and sympathized. If so, Willow wondered what it was.

The Captain thought about it before answering. "You may be right, Shepherd" he said. "Don't want to be discourteous. We have all the time in the verse. Zoe?"

"I'll show you to the spare quarters," Zoe told them, standing up from her chair. Buffy and Willow stood as well to follow her. Everyone's eyes followed them as they exited.

Willow stopped for a moment in the doorway (or was it the "port" or some other weird word?) and glanced back at the crew of Serenity.

"Someone on this ship brought us here," Willow said. "They're destined to help us defeat the First."

Simon pulled back the screen and entered the quarters that he and River shared. She had been curled up on her bed in the corner, knees brought up to her shoulders, her arms around her legs. Simon had noticed her in that position a lot since he'd rescued her from… wherever she had been. Sometimes he wondered what she thought about when she was small and motionless like that, how she occupied her spectacular mind.

River brought her eyes up to Simon's face without moving the rest of her head. "You were absent."

"I know, mei mei," Simon said. He placed his medical bag down on his own bed and opened the catches. "I had to get your medicine." He pulled a long needle out of the bag, examining the dosage level one final time.

"Ineffective," River insisted. "A series of event horizons building to an infinitesimal conclusion. Fragments adjusting themselves until there's no discernible pattern. Grasshoppers turning into owls melting into jellyfish."

Simon always marveled at how strangely understandable his little sister's ravings were. She was small, alone, and it felt like the ordered, coherent world was melting into an incomprehensible soup. Maybe today the entire crew of Serenity felt a little like that. Visitors from Earth-That-Was… Simon could not wrap his scientific brain around that concept, and decided to let it be.

"It will be all right, River," he said. "The treatments are working. Please, give me your arm."

River stuck out her tongue at Simon, but she did as he asked. After he was finished, she said solemnly, "They're a long way from home."

"The stowaways?" Simon asked, putting his supplies away. He sighed. "If they're telling the truth, I suppose they are."

Simon looked over at his sister, startled a little by her sudden coherence. His heart sang that it had been the treatment he had given her. See, she's getting better! But he knew that no medicine worked that quickly. It was simply one of those lucid periods River had always had. And she was right.

Shepherd Book knelt on his prayer mat, his back to the door. His eyes were closed, but in deep concentration rather than sleep.

The ship's mechanic straightened up from where she had peeked her head through the doorway. "Didn't mean to disturb you, Shepherd."

"You looked so peaceful." Kaylee tentatively entered the Shepherd's rather Spartan quarters. She absent-mindedly fiddled with a small lantern she found on his desk.

Kaylee looked up. "Shepherd, when that girl said she was a…" Kaylee had trouble with the phrase. "Vampire Slayer, you were the only one in that room who didn't bat an eyelid. Then you suggested we let them rest a while before finding out what's what."

Book sighed and walked over to Kaylee, gently taking the lantern from her hands and placing it back on the desk. "My abbey had an extensive collection of Apocrypha," he said. Kaylee looked a little confused. "Books of religious significance, but not considered part of the Bible," Book explained. "A few of these spoke of a girl with great strength, destined to fight…" he trailed off.

"Fight what?" Kaylee asked. "Vampires? One of the kids in my old town used to tell the scariest stories, had vampires in 'em, but it was all make-believe. Wasn't it?"

"All the old legends probably have some truth in them," Book told her. "Otherwise they would not endure."

Kaylee bit her lip for a moment. "Well, she's sure got the great strength part. Shepherd, whatever she is, how can a girl do those things?"

"I don't know, child," Book said, "but there are more things in the verse than are dreamt of in our philosophy."

Inara didn't know why she was standing outside the visitors' quarters. She had thought she was walking back to her shuttle, to get some sleep before the next development in the latest adventure, but then her steps had bent in a different direction entirely. And now she was here, wondering what to do next.

The walls were thin, as walls should be, and silhouetted shapes could be seen in the room within.

"A spaceship, huh?" said the voice of the one named Buffy, the one with the impossible strength and speed. "Maybe you should have brought Andrew after all."

"If I'd brought Andrew," said her friend Willow, "we'd both have been shot by now. Besides, I haven't seen any bumpy foreheads."

"Violence does seem to be the rule around here," Buffy agreed. "I didn't expect there to be an action sequence quite that early on."

Inara smirked. She was strangely glad she wasn't the only person who had noticed that. This Buffy was still talking.

"…and what's with the Unforgiven theme?" she was asking. "We're on a spaceship, not a stagecoach."

"Well, not to get too nerdy here," Willow said, "but remember the opening from Star Trek? Space, the Final Frontier."

"Like the Old West," Buffy realized. "Still, it's a little too weird for my taste. Creepy."

Then neither girl said anything for a long moment. Inara had enough time to wonder what was going on before someone tried to open the door. Tried being the operative word.

Inara had tried to use the interval to sneak away down the hall, but then she heard Buffy calling after her.

"Hey, you!" Inara froze. "Yeah, you!" Inara turned around to see both girls standing in the hallway.

The first thing that struck Inara about the Visitors' Quarters was how bare they were. They weren't lived in like the rooms where the crew lived. It was a rare reminder of the coldness of Serenity, that the ship was inherently only a space vessel and was only made a home by those who lived in her. The visitors, Inara realized, had not even brought a bag.

"You probably have a lot of questions," said Buffy, sitting on the edge of one of the beds.

Willow smiled. "Well, that's new." Inara realized that all her attention up to this point had been pointed at the blonde. Her friend did not command a room the same way, could melt into the background when she wanted to. But there was a light there, as evidenced by her beaming smile. There was a power, small and quiet at first glance but incredibly strong.

"You know what else is impolite?" Buffy asked sarcastically. "Pointing guns at people. I might even call that rude."

"I must apologize for the way you've been treated," Inara said. "The Captain… he's a good man. If he's overly protective of his crew, it's because he loves them."

"What do you do here on this ship?" Willow continued. "Whats-its-name… Serenity?"

"Yes, Serenity," Inara agreed, glad that it was a question she could answer. "I don't work for the Captain. We have a… business arrangement."

This drew blank looks from the two younger girls. More evidence, Inara thought, that their impossible assertions were true. Earth-That-Was had no companions… strange for Inara to think about, considering how much of her identity was tied up with her work.

"Clients make appointments with me, and I perform the ceremonies," she tried to explain. "I try to give them what they… desire."

"So what do you do?" Inara asked, sensing that it might be a good time to change the subject. "Your trade, I mean."

The, Inara noticed. Not "a vampire slayer." "The vampire slayer." As in, the only one.

"But slaying doesn't pay the bills," Buffy continues. "I'm a High School Guidance Counselor."

The term was unfamiliar to Inara, so she took a guess. "You're a teacher?" It seemed unlikely.

"Sort of," Buffy said. "Kids come to me with their problems and I try to help them out. Sometimes it even works out."

Inara thought of the young girls at the Training House on Sihnon, and the way they'd told her she was the only one they could talk to. She turned to Willow.

Inara thought that they were probably joking with her, but she decided to just go with it. "A witch?" It came out unintentionally skeptical. "Like with magic?"

Willow nodded. "Uh-huh. Here, I'll show you." Inara waited while the redhead looked around for something. Then the communications device Kaylee hadn't recognized floated off the desk behind Willow.

Inara panicked a little. She looked around for tricks, for wires, for hover strips, for the tell-tale sound that would be made by any device capable of self-propulsion. It occurred to her that Kaylee would probably have mentioned something like that, but any planet in a solar flare, as they say.

But the thing was FLOATING. Inara had seen a lot of things in her travels around the verse. She'd seen children living in dirt poverty amongst dusty rocks and fly-ridden cattly and made love in high glass towers on silk beds. But nothing had quite made her mind explode into little tiny pieces like the tiny piece of plastic currently drifting around the guest quarters.

"Spoil my fun," Willow pouted, and the device dropped to the floor… thus proving that she was the one keeping it aloft.

"Well," Willow said, reaching into her pocket, "it wasn't all me. Part of it was…" Her expression darkened as she rummaged around, switching to her other pocket. "Part of it…" Still nothing.

"I knew it was too easy," Willow said, "I knew that, somehow, I would manage to…"

"Will, just give it a rest," Buffy collapsed backwards onto the bed in defeat. "It's done."

Buffy worried about Willow. It had been a day and a night since the witch had realized their situation, and she had taken it pretty hard. (Buffy had absolutely no idea where to begin when it came to telling time on a spaceship, but based on when everybody slept that seemed about right) Not that Buffy herself was ready to dance around barefoot in the flowerbed, but she was coping, in her own way. It was a silent, sullen coping, but it was coping. She spent enough time in the kitchen to get food and drink for the two of them. She spoke to the Captain long enough to ensure that he was not about to throw her and Willow out of the airlock, despite their total lack of currency…she might have threatened him, she honestly couldn't remember.

She also spoke to the Doctor long enough to get him to lend her his…well, as far as she could tell, it was a souped-up Palm Pilot, but it seemed like it had absolutely everything she needed to know. Reading wasn't exactly Buffy's most favorite activity ever, but none of these people seemed to have heard of television and, well, it seemed to Buffy that they would probably be here a while. It was probably a good idea to learn how to blend in. So she curled up in a surprisingly comfy chair in a corner outside the sick bay and occupied her time poking around the Doctor's database.

The others left her alone. Buffy assumed the Companion had told everyone about the situation, and about what they had told her. ("Companion" was one of the first things Buffy looked up on the souped-up Palm Pilot. She felt like she understood things a little better now. But it still made her a little uncomfortable.)

Willow, on the other hand, hadn't come out of the little room she and Buffy were sharing since the revelation. Buffy brought her meals and Willow ate them, but Buffy couldn't get her to give anything more than monosyllabic, noncommittal answers when she was spoken to.

"So, maybe we should talk to the Captain," Buffy would say. "Turns out they don't use dollar bills in the future, so we're broke."

"Also, we only brought one set of clothes each, so we might have to ask the crew for hand-me-downs if we don't want to smell like wet dog."

And so on. The reason for this, Buffy knew, was that Willow blamed herself for the current problem. This was the single biggest piece of magic Willow had attempted since her freak out last year. She had just been starting to get back on track and then for her to blow something this big…yeah, it sucked big time to be stuck in the future, Buffy was on board with that, but that wasn't the problem for Willow. The problem was that they were stuck in the future and it was her fault.

The walls were made of paper. Willow hadn't realized that before. She had just thought they were made of Future Wall Substance Number Five. It seemed impractical, to make walls out of paper.

Sort of like blindly stepping through time and space without a means of getting home.

The paper door opened, and the prostitute was standing there. She had called herself "Companion", but "prostitute" was closer to the truth, as far as Willow understood it. She was the nicest, smartest, most beautiful prostitute Willow had ever met, it was true, but then again, Willow hadn't really met a lot of prostitutes. (Though she wasn't really sure about the professions of some of the girls at Rack's place.)

"I know," Inara replied, "I saw her reading Simon's Encyclopedia. Your friend's quite the student."

Had Willow not been quite so depressed, she might have laughed. As it was, she made a kind of snorting noise in the back of her throat.

"Actually, I'm not looking for Buffy," Inara continued. "I wanted to check on you."

Inara smiled, a friendly smile (the one she used on her "clients", Willow realized) and sat down on the bed opposite Willow. "You haven't been out of this room since we last spoke. Something wrong."

"Not like I do," Willow said, louder this time. "I'm a witch. When I mess up, people die, or their hearts get broken, or they get engaged."

"Long story." Willow sprang to her feet, pacing around the tiny room and getting more agitated as she spoke. "Look, no offense, I'm sure this is a really great spaceship or whatever, but Buffy and I…we don't belong here. We'll never belong here. You know what's happening, back where we came from? The end of the world, that's what's happening. And not that I don't have faith in the rest of the gang, but it's going to keep happening unless Buffy and I get back there, and bring help, and – "

"It's a big, teeming verse out there," Inara said. "So it would seem that, whatever happens back in your time on Earth-That-Was, the world doesn't end."

Willow thought about this for a moment. It made sense. For some reason, she didn't really want it to make sense. She wanted to have been instrumental in the final battle, in saving the world. But in her heart, it made her much happier to know that everything had, in the end, somehow, worked out. The depressed, guilt-ridden shell she had been wearing relaxed just a little.

"It's Sunday night," Inara said. "Usually on Sunday nights the crew gets together in the dining room for dinner. It's not much, but – "

It turned out that Willow was about the same size as the mechanic, Kaylee, and that if she didn't mind a few stray grease stains that hadn't quite come out in the wash she could get clothes not too different than what she would have worn normally. The suspenders threw her a little, but the bright pink shirt and jeans were par for the course. Buffy had a similar experience with the Doctor's sister. Willow wasn't sure if the girl was mentally ill, and it seemed impolite to ask.

So that night anyone observing the conversation of the crew of Serenity at their Sunday dinner would probably have been hard pressed to pick out which of the two extra faces was new. After all, the Doctor was awfully clean.

"That's 'cause it ain't," Jayne told her, but he failed to elaborate, instead lifting his bowl to his mouth and taking a long, loud slurp from his stew.

"It's protein, mostly," Kaylee said helpfully. "What, you don't like it?" She looked a little hurt. It occurred to Willow that she was probably the one who had done the cooking.

Buffy backtracked. "No, I mean, it's not that it tastes bad. It's great, actually…it just doesn't taste like beef stew." She took another tiny sip from her spoon and hoped that her nose hadn't wrinkled too much. Actually, the stew tasted like they broiled it in the boot of a construction worker after a long day.

The Captain sat at the end of the table. He hadn't spoken through the whole meal, choosing instead to spend most of his time glaring over at the two Sunnydale girls. But now he said: "I'm sorry that we don't have the fine cuisine a Vampire Slayer such as yourself is accustomed to."

"You see, meat spoils fast out here in the black, and we don't have the luxury of refrigeration on a humble boat like this," he continued.

There were some furrowed brows around the table because of the word "wigging", but that happened to Buffy all the time anyway. Sensing that someone needed to do something to break the tension, Kaylee got to her feet and started clearing the dishes from the table. She paused a little at Jayne's place, waiting for him to finish pouring the last of his stew down his throat.

When she got around to Buffy and Willow, Kaylee told them, "Sometimes after dinner we tell stories. I bet you two would have lots of real exciting ones."

The suggestion made Willow uncomfortable. One of the advantages of keeping vampires and slaying and things a secret was that people didn't ask you about them. "I don't know – "

"The way I hear it," Zoe said, "You're gonna be here awhile. Might as well entertain us with stories from Earth-That-Was."

"I've always been interested in Ancient Earth history," Simon said. "So much of the culture is lost. You two are like…living museums."

"I still say they're crazy persons," Jayne put in, "and crazy persons ain't museums. Two little girls fight monsters for a living? My big bumpy behind they do."

"Fine," said Buffy, a little anger in her voice, "you think I'm lying? You want to hear a story?"

Kaylee returned from wherever she had taken the dishes and slid eagerly back into her seat.

"On Earth-That-Was there was a girl," Buffy began. "She was beautiful, and she was young, fifteen-years-old. She lived in a place called California, where the sun shined so bright during the day that nobody noticed how dark it got at night. She was the most popular girl at her school, and she had her pick of boys to go to the dance with. But then one day she was minding her own business when a man came to her."

Willow realized that everyone was suddenly quiet, listening. Usually Buffy's speeches made people nod off, but that didn't seem to be what was happening.

"The man said that the girl was Chosen, that she had a Destiny, that she was the Slayer, that only she could fight the scary things in the dark. At first, of course, she didn't want to believe him. Sure, she was good at things, but Destiny? Other people had destinies, not her. She had hair appointments and cheerleading practice, not a Destiny. But the man was telling the truth, and soon the girl couldn't ignore him anymore. People were dying, and she was the only one who could save them.

"From that day forward, the girl's life never stopped being dangerous. Fortunately for her, she had friends. She met a not-as-stuffy-as-he-seemed-at-first British guy who knew almost everything there was to know about the monsters she was fighting, and what he didn't know he could look up in one of the books his gargantuan library. She met a guy with a huge heart who never left her side, even in the worst of times. But not a boyfriendly guy…he was more like her brother, her…not that there weren't boyfriendly guys along the way, and much badness…Anyway, she also met a little nerd girl who couldn't make anything but vowel sounds when she tried to talk to boys."

"That is an exaggeration!" Willow exclaimed. A few of the faces around the table smiled.

"Little did she know that one day the nerd girl would grow into the most powerful woman she had ever known," Buffy continued. Willow smiled. "And so the girl and her friends kept fighting, until things kinda got out of control, and she died. But her friends brought her back to life, and then things got out of control again. Eventually the girl ended up on a spaceship hundreds of years in the future with a very strong urge to kick the crap out of the scruffy guy who kept calling her a liar. The End."

"Wanna bet?" Buffy asked, smiling as wide as she could and making her voice as sweet as possible.

No one said anything for a moment. "Jayne, maybe you should go get your guitar," said Shepherd Book. "I'm sure we could all use some music."

Jayne considered this. "Maybe you're right," he said finally, getting up from his seat. Awkward silence reigned once again at the dinner table. It was the Doctor's sister, River, who spoke up at last.

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Taking the Sky

by Dan Joslyn

Copyright © 2006

ferociouswalrus@yahoo.com