Title: A Sympathetic Ear
Author: Paradox761
Email: Paradox761@mail.com
Website: members.tripod.com/~Paradox761
(BtVS/Farscape, Chiana/Xander, John/Aeryn, slight B/X & B/R)
Disclaimer: Joss and Co. own Buffy; SFC, Jim Henson Productions, and Rockne S. O’Bannon own Farscape; and I own a steaming hot cup of jack squat. No copyright infringement is intended, blah blah blah, you know the rest.
Summary: Depressed about feeling useless and under appreciated, Chiana hides in Aeryn's Prowler when it suddenly launches. But when it passes through a wormhole that leads to Earth's past, John and Aeryn find themselves on a rescue mission, and John finds himself feeling a little nostalgic. But what happens when they run into the Hellmouth, and a certain blonde vampire slayer? Will John and Aeryn be able to find Chiana before the Initiative decides to dissect her? And what happens when Chiana finds something she never expected to find on such a strange, alien world. A kindred spirit.
Author’s note: Takes place in the Farscape universe between the season 2 episodes “A Clockwork Nebari” and “Liars, Guns, and Money”, and in the Buffy universe in early season 5.

When Chiana opened her eyes, she found herself in a strange room, lying on a couch. She sat up slowly, her memories of what happened floating back to the surface of her mind. The Prowler landed on some planet, and she ran into some Sebacean woman who threatened to kill her. She called her something, what was it. Demot? Demon? Something like that. Whatever it was, it was clear that these Sebaceans didn't like them. But then what happened? She must have passed out. Well then why hadn't that woman killed her? And where was she now?

"Oh, you're awake."

Chiana whirled around to see a Sebacean man entering from an adjacent room. He was tall, with dark hair and dark eyes, and he was carrying a small yellow object in his hand. Chiana jumped up from the couch and started backing away slowly.

"No, it's okay, I'm not going to hurt you," the man said, holding his hands up. "You're safe, nobody's going to hurt you now."

Chiana looked skeptically. She'd never seen a Sebacean act like this before. He was trying to calm her down, reassure her. Usually they just acted all superior, especially with prisoners. Was she a prisoner? She looked at the object in his hand, trying to discern what it was.

"This?" the man said, pointing to the object he held when he saw Chiana looking at it. "It's okay, it's just a Twinkie." She still looked puzzled. "Twin-kie" he over enunciated it. "Why do I feel like Tarzan all of a sudden?" he mumbled. "Look, it's okay. You passed out, and Buffy brought you here. We didn't really know what else to do with you. We're still not exactly sure what you are."

"Who's Buffy?" Chiana asked. "Is she the woman I met earlier? She didn't seem too concerned for my well-being at the time."

"Oh, that's right. Buffy said that you didn't speak English."

"Oh, that's right. No translator microbes. You can't understand me, but I can understand you."

Seeing that she was calm now, Xander put his hands down. "Um, I'm not sure what to say. You wouldn't understand me anyhow I guess. Buffy and Riley went looking where she found you, and Willow, Giles and Tara are researching. Giles still thinks you're a demon but I think you're an alien. Well, actually I had this whole baby-powder theory, but now that I've heard you speak, I know that there aren't any languages that sound like that on this planet, so I guess you must be an alien. Maybe I should call them. No, I can handle this, I don't need there help. I'm not completely useless after all." He looked up to Chiana and saw her staring at him. "Great, now I'm babbling. Willow must be rubbing off on me." He took a bite of his Twinkie, and again Chiana looked on with curiosity. "You want one? I could get you one."

He disappeared into the kitchen and Chiana sat back down on the couch she had woken up on. "Great, I was scared of a guy eating his dinner. That makes me feel so much better." She let out a sigh. "If John or Aeryn were here, they'd know what to do. Or D'Argo, or Zhaan, or even Rygel probably. But not me. I get stuck on some backward Sebacean colony that doesn't have translator microbes, and doesn't even know that they're not alone in the universe, and what happens? I get so scared, I faint. Once again, it looks like I sit here and wait to be rescued. Not from anything dangerous," she said, looking around. "But from my own stupidity. Typical Chiana, just typical."

Xander returned to the living room and sat down in the chair across form the couch. He handed her a Twinkie and she took it. She looked at it carefully, before looking back up to Xander who was taking another bite of his own. She shrugged, and moved to take a bite. "Ah, wait," Xander said, getting up from his chair. "You have to take the plastic off first," he said, taking the Twinkie and unwrapping it for her. "Sorry."

Chiana nodded. She took the Twinkie back and took a bite. It was delicious. "Well, any planet that makes these can't be all bad," she said with a smile. "Thank you." She took another bite as she remembered that he couldn't understand her. She pointed to the Twinkie and smiled, nodding her head.

"Oh, you're welcome," Xander said. He watched her as she ate the Twinkie. When she was finished she started licking the cream from her fingers. She must have been very hungry. Xander took the opportunity to just look at her again. She was so beautiful. "Why are all the really beautiful women always aliens, or demons, or giant bugs, or...well, Cordelia?" Chiana looked up at him, a smudge of cream on the side of her mouth. Xander resisted the temptation to wipe it off himself, instead he just made a motion to his own mouth. She looked at him a moment longer before reaching up and wiping her mouth. She smiled at him again. Her movements were very cat-like. She seemed cautious, but no longer frightened, like she was used to being in strange and unfamiliar surroundings. Xander wondered what would happen to her. If someone would coming looking for her. It seemed a reasonable assessment, considering that she didn't seem very distressed. “I’m Xander,” he said pointing to himself. “Xan-der. God, now I really do feel like Tarzan,” he muttered. “Do you have a name?”

“I do, but I don’t think you’d be able to understand me,” Chiana said.

“Huh, that’s kind of long. How about I just call you, ‘Hey you’.”

Chiana smiled a little again. They both sat in silence for a few moments before Xander spoke again.

"I wonder what it's like to travel through space," Xander mused aloud. She looked up at him. "To go to different planets, meet strange aliens. It must be incredible, one adventure after another."

"You can say that again," Chiana said. "More often than not it's just a pain in the ass, though. What I wouldn't give to be able to stay in one place. To have a home, a real family."

"Of course, I have my share of adventures staying right here, and it's not exactly that great," Xander said. He heard Chiana speak, but since he couldn't understand her, he just kept talking like he was talking to himself. "But if you don't like where you are, you can just leave. Fly away and find someplace new."

"I tried that, actually," Chiana said sadly. "I still haven't found what I'm looking for. I mean, I thought I did. But I'm not so sure anymore."

"Me, I'm stuck here. Don't get me wrong, it's not so bad here. I have friends, I have a purpose." Xander paused. "Well, I used to think so. I'm not so sure anymore. In fact it seems like everyone has a purpose except for me. Buffy is the slayer, Willow and Tara are the witches, Giles is the watcher, Riley is soldier boy." He paused again. "I used to be soldier boy you know," he mumbled. "Hell, even Anya was helpful. Being over 1100 years old, it's hard not to be helpful. I think she knew more about magic and demons than Willow and Giles put together. But she didn't care about any of that. She cared about me. At least I thought she did. But she left me too, on to bigger and better things. And I'm left trying to think of a way to tell my friends so that I can save a little face, and not become a total loser in their eyes." He paused again. "Then again, maybe it's already too late for that. I mean, nowadays it seems that they don't trust me to do anything more difficult than fetch donuts. And now I'm on guard duty. I mean, no offense, you're a very nice alien, you haven't tried to suck my brain out of my head or anything like that, which is always a plus." Chiana smiled at that. Xander didn't notice. "But even trusting me with watching you, they were hesitant about it. I mean, am I really that much of a screw-up? Have I become totally useless? Why do they even bother to keep me around at all? Do they just feel sorry for me?" Chiana just stared at Xander with a little bit of shock. Xander looked up and caught her gaze, misinterpreting it as puzzlement. "I'm sorry," said. "You don't even understand a word I'm saying."

"Oh, I understand," Chiana said. "Believe me, I understand."

*

John and Aeryn walked out of the woods at the South end of Sunnydale. "Thank god, civilization," John said. "I was beginning to think we'd never find it."

"You were the one who insisted on landing so far from the coordinates," Aeryn said. She looked around. "You call this civilization?"

"It's a road, that's close enough," John said. "And if we had landed any closer we would have been spotted." John climbed over the guardrail that separated the woods from the road, Aeryn followed. He looked up at the sign that he now stood in front of. "Welcome to Sunnydale," he read.

"So now what do we do?"

"We keep walking," John said. He wore his usual black outfit with a leather coat over it to cover Winona, the blaster he kept clipped to his belt. Aeryn wore a similar outfit and was also carrying a sidearm. "According to the sensor readings we took, we've got about another click.

Aeryn blew a frustrated breath between her lips. "Lead on," she said. John started walked, Aeryn followed. "When we find Chiana, I'm going to kill her," she said.

"Come on Aeryn, this wasn't her fault."

"Oh, of course not, nothing's ever her fault," Aeryn said sarcastically. "She gets herself in these situations, time and time again, and we end up having to save her scrawny Nebari butt."

"And how many times has she saved our butts," John rebutted. "You just don't understand, Aeryn. We're a group, we're supposed to be there for each other. That's where or strength comes from. Individually, we'd have all been dead a hundred times over by now."

"And *you* don't understand that a group is only as strong as it's weakest member," Aeryn said.

John stopped walking and turned to face her. "Boy, you can take the Sebacean out of the Peace Keepers but you can't take the Peace Keeper out of the Sebacean."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that Chiana is not weak. She has her strengths, just like we all do. Just because her strengths and yours aren't the same, doesn't make her weak. It means that you're still thinking like a Peace Keeper, and contrary to what they taught you, strength doesn't come from the barrel of a blaster. It comes from here," he said, pointing to his head. "And here," he said, putting his hand on his chest over his heart.

"So how should I be thinking then?"

"I don't know. How about like a person." And with that, John started walking again, leaving Aeryn standing there for a moment. She frowned and jogged to catch up.

*

"You guys can stop researching," Buffy said as she walked in the front door of her house. She walked in the living room and saw Giles, Willow, Tara and Dawn sitting around and reading from several old looking texts. "I don't think you're going to find anything in any of those books."

"What have you found?" Giles asked.

"It looks like Xander was right," Buffy said. "We found a space ship. It looks like it landed, not crashed."

"Where was it exactly?" Giles asked.

"Where the library used to be."

"Close to the Hellmouth?"

"Right on top of it, come to think of it."

"Well, I doubt that that's a coincidence," Giles said.

"Good thing they boarded that hole over, or it would have crashed," Willow said. "I guess demons aren't the only thing that the Hellmouth attracts. Where's Riley?"

"He stayed to check it out. You know guys and space ships," Buffy said.

"No," Giles said, taking his glasses off and looking concerned. "But I do know how the government feels about them."

"You don't think..." Buffy trailed off. "No, Riley wouldn't do that."

*

"That son of a bitch," Xander mumbled as he looked out the window. There was a convoy of military vehicles heading down Giles' street. They were heading south, toward the high school. "Damn it, Riley. I should have known."

"What is it?" Chiana asked. Xander turned from the window and looked at her, but didn't say anything. Chiana rushed to the window and looked out herself. "Oh, that doesn't look good."

"We have to get out of here, it won't be safe," Xander said, stepping away from the window. "I still remember enough about military procedure to know that they wouldn't come barging down the door looking for aliens on the word of a disgraced former agent."

"Military? You mean like Peace Keepers? I was afraid you were going to say that."

Xander headed for Giles' hall closet. Pushing through it he found a long coat and a man's hat. He tossed them out into the living room. "But, if they found something at the high school, then his credibility is going to go way up."

"Aeryn's Prowler, frell!"

Xander closed the closet door and went back into the living room. "Put..." He stopped in mid-sentence when he saw that Chiana had already put on the coat and hat. "Right, good."

"Yeah, well, I understand the concept of running and hiding very well," she said.

Xander couldn't understand her words, but he could hear her tone, and he could tell that she was scared. "Hey, it's going to be okay," he said, stepping forward and putting his hand on her arm. He was trying to reassure her with his tone and body language, since he didn't think she understood him. "I'm not going to let anyone hurt you." He reached up and cupped her cheek. He didn't know why he did it, but for some reason it just felt right. "I promise."

Chiana just nodded slowly.

"Okay, we'd better get moving," he said, motioning for her to follow him. "I'll take you to my place until I can think of someplace better where they won't find you."

"I just hope my friends can still find me," Chiana said. "At least I still have my communicator pin."




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