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: http://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.

Kaylee had always loved it when Jayne played guitar. You could say whatever else you wanted about him (well, actually you couldn't because then Kaylee would be forced to put on her mean face…you wouldn't want to see that, no sir), but he could make some beautiful music with that instrument. He knew all the best songs, too. He must have secretly wanted to impress the new arrivals, because he brought out some of his classics. "The Brown Coat March" and "The Ballad of Old Marie", and a few others. The whole crew took turns singing, though it was a little more awkward than usual because the girls from Earth-That-Was didn't know the words. They seemed a little uncomfortable at the whole idea of singing in front of other people, actually, the redhead especially. What kind of place did they come from where people didn't sing together?

The two girls were something of a puzzle to Kaylee. They seemed about her age, Willow was even wearing her clothes, but there was something strange about them. Not the obvious, not the fact that they didn't speak a word of Mandy or them not knowing the words to "Come On Down, You Boys". It was something about their demeanor, their eyes, the way they talked. They didn't act like they were Kaylee's age.

Buffy was forceful, a leader. If she had walked up during a deal and Mal had said she was Captain of the such-and-such, Kaylee wouldn't have been the least bit surprised. There were moments where it seemed like Buffy had been forged instead of being born out of a woman like normal folk, but there were other times where she smiled and Kaylee could see through to the girl beneath all that. She wondered what that girl was like.

Willow was even more of a mystery. She let the other girl do most of the talking, seemed shy to the point of almost being rude. But there was something else underneath that…sorrow. Loss. And maybe power, of a sort so unusual that Kaylee hadn't really recognized it, at least not at first. Then Inara said that Willow had done something…"magic" was the word she'd used, and that was how the two girls said they had gotten onto Serenity. Kaylee only half-believed it (and she was still the member of the crew who believed it the most), but it latched things into place a little. Willow made more sense now.

Jayne had run through a good list of songs, and the others started to take turns making requests. Wash chose "Yarik the Clown" (he said it was his and Zoe's song, which got her to smack him), while Inara had her own favorite song from the Companion House that she had taught Jayne to play.

When it came time for Kaylee to choose, she thought a moment, then said, "What about our new friends? I'll bet you guys know all sorts of great songs from Earth-That-Was."

"I don't know any of that Beethoven gossa," Jayne said. He pronounced the first syllable of the name like it was a vegetable.

"I have a box with some of the old classics on it," Inara offered. "Bach, Tchaikovsky, the Beatles…"

"I don't sing," Willow said immediately, and Kaylee was a little disappointed. Earth-That-Was music sung by somebody who'd grown up with it? That would be something to tell them back on the farm.

Buffy sized up the table for a moment. "I don't know a lot of songs," she said, "and classical music doesn't usually have words, anyway. But…maybe I could give it a try?"

Willow's eyes lit up. She leaned over and pulled on Buffy's sleeve before whispering into her ear. Buffy whispered something back, and both girls giggled. It dawned on Kaylee that the two of them were old friends. She wasn't sure before, but it was obvious to anybody who cared to look that these two had been whispering to each other like this for a good chunk of years.

Buffy turned her attention back to Jayne. "Now, don't freak out or anything, okay, but she's going to tell you how to play a song for me."

For a moment, everyone waited for Willow to speak…but it didn't seem like she was going to.

"Thought you said she was go –" Jayne didn't finish what he was saying. His eyes looked in one direction, then the other, like he was following a fly. Then he sat still, and Kaylee still didn't hear anybody talking.

The mercenary was reaching for his guitar once again. "I conjure that would go a little something like…" and he played a few strange, but beautiful chords on his instrument.

"Hey, I was the one that did the playin'," Jayne protested, looking up from his instrument.

"You want to explain to me what exactly it was that just happened here?" Mal asked.

"I played a little of the song for him, the part I could remember, anyway," Willow said.

Wash held up a hand, "Wait a moment…you're a reader? You know what I'm thinking right now."

"It doesn't work like that," Willow told him. "I can't hear your thoughts unless you want me to, and you really know what you're doing. It's a lot easier to just broadcast my own."

"Hey, I believe I was about to dazzle everybody with the music of the ancients," Buffy said impatiently. "Can we save the technical lecture?"

Buffy turned to Jayne. "Okay, then." He turned his attention back to his guitar and began to play the tune again. The chords were more melancholy than what Kaylee was used to hearing, a little more intricate. It wasn't any song she knew.

The girl from the future began to sing. Her voice was a strong alto, far from perfect but with a force and a feeling behind it that made up for its flaws.

Today is gonna be the day
That they're gonna throw it back to you
By now you should've somehow
Realized what you gotta do
I don't believe that anybody
Feels the way I do about you now

Backbeat the word was on the street
That the fire in your heart is out
I'm sure you've heard it all before
But you never really had a doubt
I don't believe that anybody feels
The way I do about you now

A strange song, Kaylee thought…it wasn't meant to tell a story, or to get the listener to sing along or dance. The song's only goal was to get her to feel something.

And all the roads we have to walk along are winding
And all the lights that lead us there are blinding
There are many things that I would
Like to say to you
I don't know how

Because maybe
You're gonna be the one who saves me ?
And after all
You're my wonderwall

Suddenly, Kaylee got the feeling that this girl, the singer, Buffy, wasn't quite as invincible as she first appeared. The story she had recounted told of a life that was nothing but fighting. It wasn't the wild freedom of the frontier that Kaylee knew well, but a trapped feeling, that in every direction there was only more danger, and that there was no destination, only more pain.

Today was gonna be the day?
But they'll never throw it back to you
By now you should've somehow
Realized what you're not to do
I don't believe that anybody
Feels the way I do
About you now

The strange thing about the song was that, despite Jayne's sparse, melancholic guitar, and the regret-tinged lyrics, it didn't make Kaylee feel sad. It was about how good friends stay friends, even though the greatest of troubles.

And all the roads that lead to you were winding
And all the lights that light the way are blinding
There are many things that I would like to say to you
I don't know how

I said maybe
You're gonna be the one who saves me ?
And after all
You're my wonderwall

Both Buffy and her accompanist grew more confident as the song went on, and it was hard to tell whether he was following her voice or the other way around.

I said maybe
You're gonna be the one who saves me ?
And after an
You're my wonderwall

Said maybe
You're gonna be the one that saves me
You're gonna be the one that saves me
You're gonna be the one that saves me

When the tune drew to a close, Jayne adding one final flourish on his guitar, the crew broke into applause. A smile broke through on Buffy's face, not the forced, sarcastic one Kaylee had seen wear regularly, but a real, happy one. Her friend was applauding, too, even more enthusiastically than the rest of the occupants of the dining room.

"That was great, Buffy!" Willow exclaimed. "We're going to have to get you a karaoke machine."

"Please tell me you're joking," Buffy said, a little bit of her smile wearing off.

Sometimes, late at night, Mal liked to sit on the bridge, looking out at the black. He was never more alone than at those times, and he somewhat preferred that feeling. The vast nothingness was confirmation that he was free, that there was no one within hundreds of miles who would interfere, who would tell him what to do. He had all the people he needed right here on this ship.

Of course, he usually didn't have stowaways from centuries past appearing out of thin air in his cargo hold.

Mal turned to see the blonde girl, the one who had nearly strangled him only a few days before, leaning on the side of the doorway. It wasn't the thing he had most wanted to see at that moment.

"Nothing at all, my lady," he said, full of fake formality. "Does the mighty Slayer find herself unable to sleep?"

"Nobody treats me like that, you know," the girl said, walking further into the room. She sat down in the co-pilot's chair. "Actually, I wanted to talk to you."

"What's on your mind?" Mal asked. "Looking for other fine ships to stow away on?"

"Y'know, 'stowaway' implies that we got on at whatever your last stop was," Buffy said, "not to mention that we did it on purpose. Neither one of those is true."

"Right, you just appeared on my vessel by accident," Mal grated. Did this girl think he was a backbirth?

"Then tell me," Mal said, turning his chair to face her. "how exactly did you end up on Serenity?"

"Right, well, it was supposed to take us to somebody who was destined to help us."

It took Mal a second to realize what she was getting at. Then he laughed, sitting back in his chair with his hands behind his head.

"So you're saying that somebody on this boat is destined to help you do something hundreds of years ago? Do what?"

"Win a war," Buffy said, a little ruefully. "Or at least, that was the idea; but now, without the Orb…"

Mal turned his chair away from the girl and back to the controls. "You had a question 'bout something?"

"It looks like we'll be stuck in this time for a while," Buffy elaborated. "This ship has to be going somewhere. So where is it going?"

"Not too rightly sure," Mal said after a moment. "Somewhere out on the Rim, looking for work."

"Mostly planets without a bushel-full of amenities…or a thimble-full, for that matter," Mal told her. "They drop settlers there with the clothes on their backs, maybe some stock. Some of them manage to make a decent life for themselves."

"Some of them?" Buffy said skeptically. She sighed. "This wasn't exactly the future I was picturing, y'know? I was hoping for super-clean white hallways, maybe some flying cars. Hey, do you have those?"

"Suppose so," Mal told her. "Mostly on the Central Planets, takes a certain size of bank account to afford something like that."

"Well, that's something," Buffy said. "Still, this isn't how we planned it. I'm not sure I'm cut out to be a cowgirl."

Mal looked over at his passenger and was surprised by what he saw. She might be able to kill him by flicking her ring finger, but now all he saw was a scared little girl.

"Don't you worry none," he said. "Things can't have changed all that much. There's plenty of Earth-That-Was left in the galaxy. You can find a place."

"Maybe you're right," Buffy said absent-mindedly. A moment later, her eyes widened and she shot to a standing position.

"And I am so brain-dead sometimes. This is the future, right? That means that the Orb might still be here somewhere, just a few hundred years older than when we left it."

Mal noticed a flaw in this plan. "And do you have any idea of where in the verse it might be?"

"Well, no," Buffy said, her pep failing a little, "but you can find out, right? I'm sure something like that doesn't just disappear. Don't you have, I don't know, contacts or whatever?"

"And what, may I ask, is in it for me?" Mal asked. "You plan to start paying you and friend's fares with your non-existent money?"

"Look, the way I figure it, when you use the Orb to travel somewhere, it doesn't come with you," Buffy told him. "So it will still be here after we leave, and you can, I dunno, sell it or something. It has to be worth some money."

Buffy nodded. "This is a one-of-a-kind mystical artifact we're talking about here."

The trip to Haven took a couple of days; apparently, they had been headed in that direction anyway. Willow found socializing, talking…doing anything, really, much easier once Buffy told her the plan. They were going to find the Orb wherever it was here, now, in the future, and use it to get home. There was hope that she wouldn't have to stay in this weird, pseudo-John Wayne future forever.

The Captain told them that he knew a man on this planet, Haven, who had helped him in the past. He had connections, could find things out if you asked, and if you had enough money to pay him. Willow wondered how all this was supposed to play out, since she and Buffy didn't have any money, but she decided to keep her mouth shut.

In the meantime, Willow tried to talk to the crew, get on their good side. She and Buffy might need their help before everything was said and done. Not to mention the part where one of them was supposed to be destined to play a crucial role in defeating the First. Willow hadn't forgotten about that, and, much to her displeasure, she had come to the conclusion that the only way to figure out which one of the crew it was would be to actually talk to them.

She liked Zoe and Wash well enough. She had a couple of long talks with them in the kitchen (or was it a galley?). She tried (subtly, she hoped) to pump them for information about things, people, the universe, history. But soon Zoe was smiling and asking Willow about her own life, and she found herself answering the questions at some length. It seemed there was little Willow could say about her time and her Earth and wasn't interesting to these people, so they never stopped her soliloquys about McDonald's and American Idol. Willow didn't learn much, but it made her feel better.

She also spent time with Kaylee, who seemed to be a very nice girl. Willow got the impression that they might have been friends if they had not been separated by centuries of time and light-years of space, which was a strange thought to have. Kaylee taught her a game that involved cards and some dice and saying the word "cargo" at the right time. Willow could not quite get the hang of it.

Kaylee also complained about the engine; something was gumming up the works, and for the life of her she couldn't figure out what. Willow immediately offered her help. Normally, magic was not to be used lightly for things like that, but she wanted to get these people to like her, and what better way than by using her unique skills to fix their ship?

When the time came, Kaylee watched expectantly as Willow stared at the engine for about thirty seconds, announced she had no idea what the hell she was doing, and walked out of the room. It was at approximately that moment that it occurred to Willow that she needed to do a better job of thinking her ingratiating gestures through.

The easiest person for Willow to talk to was Inara. She was the sort of person who you felt like you could say anything to, and she would laugh a little and then do her best to help. It had also not escaped Willow's keen notice that the woman was, well, beautiful, to say the least. It actually made her think of Kennedy, a little…that girl was not especially hard on the eyes, either. It surprised Willow how many of her thoughts about returning to her own time and place revolved around Kennedy, seeing her again, kissing her again.

Once, Willow visited Inara in the shuttle where she lived. The eastern opulence of the place stood in great contrast to the rest of Serenity, right down to the Companion's red silk dress.

Willow smiled sheepishly and sat down on the bed. "You heard about that, did you?"

"Your friend told the captain," Inara said. "She should have known that keeping secrets isn't the way around here."

Inara gave her a coy look as she moved behind a decorative screen in the corner of the room. "You never answered my question."

"Who do I think it is?" Willow thought for a moment. "My best guess would be the Captain. I mean, he was a big hero in that war you guys had, right?"

"He fought in it, if that's what you mean," Inara said from behind the screen. "It makes sense, I suppose. But everyone here has their own talents that could be useful. Seems to me that destiny's a tricky thing."

"I guess so," Willow agreed. "I mean, the doctor's gotta know, like medicine from the future right? That could be useful. And Zoe and Jayne are both good fighters. It could be any of them."

"And what about me?" Inara asked, all indignity as she moved out from behind the screen. She was now dressed in a black dress trimmed with gold. "I have many exciting talents."

"Yeah, I mean, you could be…a morale booster," Willow said. "Too bad most of us are girls."

Inara slapped her playfully on the arm. "That's not what I meant. I'll have you know I'm spectacular with a bow and arrow. Besides which, I'm trained to service female clients."

"Gorgeous, as always," Willow told her. "Where exactly did you learn to shoot a bow?"

"Okay," Willow nodded, "that doesn't make any sense. Why did they teach you there?"

Inara put a hand to her chest in mock offense. "Why, to keep all the suitors away, of course." She grinned like a cheshire cat.

Serenity was one thing; it was solid, protective. It was like being in a house. It grounded you, kept you safe. But now the cargo bay ramp was lowering, and Buffy looked out and saw alien soil under an alien sun. All that she needed was actual aliens, and she might have completely lost her grip on reality.

Her first impression of Haven was that the place was white. It wasn't green, like Earth, and the few scraggly, brown plants that were to be seen were few and far between. It also seemed to be completely made of a sort of crumbling, brittle, cement-colored rock. Even the soil was simply ground up bits of white rock.

Given the general weirdness of the terrain, Buffy was surprised that she could breathe the air. It smelled nearly the same as the air out in the desert outside Sunnydale. Zoe had explained, something about terror-forming, but it still felt bizarre, that a strange planet should have exactly the atmosphere she needed.

Buffy looked out at Haven, and wasn't sure she really wanted to leave the ship. Willow, on the other hand, had no such compunctions. Buffy watched her friend rush down to the end of the ramp, pause, and announce, "That's one small step for a witch, one giant leap for witch-kind." Then she stepped onto the pebbles that passed for dirt and grinned back at Buffy.

"In a really messed up way, you ARE the first person to set foot on another planet," Buffy called down to her. "Congratulations."

"Lots of folk have set foot on Haven," the Captain said as he walked past the girls, carrying a crate down to the foot of the ramp. "Some of 'em live in the town over yonder."

"It's the mines," the Captain told her. "This rock's damn near made of Caldonite, which ain't worth nothing unless you process it, mix it with some nasty stuff. Then, you've got Caldonium."

"The ship runs on it," Kaylee said, appearing behind Buffy in the cargo bay. She turned to speak to Captain Reynolds. "Speaking of, we're running low."

"We don't have enough coin to fill 'er all the way to the top," the Captain said. "Get us half-capacity, just till we get the next job."

"Sure thing, Cap'n," Kaylee said with a huge smile. She turned and walked back into the ship.

Kaylee and Wash stayed with the ship, charged with gathering provisions and supplies. The rest of the group walked into town, where they received a warm reception to say the least. Most of the town turned out to greet them: visitors were few a far between, it seemed. They were obviously slightly disappointed when they found out that Buffy and Willow were broke. It also became apparent that this was not the first time Serenity and her crew had passed this way.

Buffy watched Shepherd Book receive warm greetings from the town's own Shepherd, an older man whose wrinkles made his smile seem even bigger than its already prodigious size.

"Shepherd Creary," Book said, "I'm glad to see you're still well. You've kept yourself busy, I hope?"

"Aye," the man nodded. "The usual work of a Shepherd: baptisms, weddings, funerals, and the like. More funerals of late, I'm sad to say."

"Been a string of deaths, last few weeks," Creary told him. "It's a bad business." He leaned close to his fellow Shepherd, speaking confidentially. "Folk say it's a monster what done it, that he's stalking this place 'til his hunger's slaked."

"Sorry, did you say monster?" Buffy asked, butting in, "because, actually, I happen to specialize in…" It took her a moment to realize that the townsfolk immediately grew quiet and stared. Maybe she had said that a little too loud.

Creary smiled condescendingly. "It's only superstition, child, don't pay it any mind."

The Captain tugged on Buffy's jacket (actually, it was River's) and got her out of there as quickly as possible.

"You have a talent for ruckus-making, you know that?" he asked once their group was out of sight.

"There was no ruckus," Buffy insisted. "The town continues to lead a ruckus-free existence."

"So do I!" Buffy replied. "And I'd like to deal with them soon. Can we talk to your guy?"

Shin's place appeared to be a small cement hut on the outskirts of town. The word "information" was painted on the side in a nearly indecipherable scrawl. Shin himself was one of the few townspeople who had declined to come out to meet them, as Buffy and Mal confirmed when the ducked into the building. The myriad decorations on the interior of the tent were not that different from what Buffy had seen in those big Mongolian tents on the Travel Channel. Except for the wide array of electronic equipment along one wall, that is.

Shin was a man of medium-build, possibly of Asian descent. He wore baggy clothes that made of a tan material that looked like it was somewhere between leather and a burlap bag. He was hunched over a computer screen with his back to the two of them.

"Mal!" Shin said, turning to face the pair. "My old friend. You look well! You have recovered from your little disagreement with Patience, I hope?"

"And who is your," Shin paused to look Buffy over, "beautiful friend? New crew member, perhaps?"

"You've come to the right place, then." Shin spread his arms wide. "It's right there on the sign. Anything in the verse."

"It's kind of a little ball, brass, kinda shiny," Buffy continued. "Am I ringing any bells here?"

"Well, good then," the Captain said, "shouldn't be too hard to track down, then."

"Mal, are you sure about this?" Shin asked. "The Orb of the…I mean, that's Black Market. You don't want to mess around with those people."

Reynolds looked a little confused. "I deal in Black Market all the time, Shin. You know that."

But Buffy hadn't. She had wondered what the ship usually did, what its purpose was. She and Willow had talked about it a few times. Neither of them could come up with a particularly plausible answer. So who exactly had she fallen in with here?

Reynolds looked Shin in the eye. "I'll choose my own business. You just tell us who has the gorram thing."

"I'll…I'll have to send a few interplanetary waves," Shin said. "It'll cost you."

The Captain turned to Buffy, one eyebrow raised expectantly. "What?" she asked. "You know I don't have…"

"You didn't think I'd foot the bill for your wild goose chase, did you?" he said. Buffy frowned. She looked at Shin, who was waiting expectantly.

Then Buffy turned and, with all of her strength behind it, ran her right fist straight into the nearest wall. With a great crash, a large chunk of concrete broke off and fell into the outdoors. Sunlight peeked through a two-foot square hole in the wall.

"That could have been your face," Buffy told him smugly. "So, you were going to send some whatchamacalit…waves?"

As Buffy and the Captain exited, he spoke quietly to her. "Well, that was impressive. Is that how you get through life, threatening people?"

"Hey, I'm just lucky that place had such crappy construction," Buffy told him. "That would never have worked most back home." As soon as she thought they were out of Shin's sight, she winced and cradled her right hand. "Not to mention the part where it really, really hurts."

That night the town held a bonfire to welcome the visitors. Mostly, they were just looking for an excuse to have a party. Such excuses were generally few and far-between on a rock like Haven, and the mining town would take whatever it could get. Even Wash and Kaylee came down from the ship for the celebration.

River loved parties. Anywhere where there was music and dancing and she could get swept up in the sensory experience of the world. During her bad spells, the sensations would come at her like jagged, needle-sharp rocks, pelting her into torn submission. Sometimes, though, she could let the world pass over her, through her, around her, and it was like she reach out and touch life and hold it up in the palm of her hand. Those were River's favorite moments.

Someone was playing a bone flute, someone else playing a skin drum, and River danced. That wasn't how she would have described it, though. She would have said that the music entered her feet and made them move. It didn't matter what one called it, however. She knew it made her happy.

At the edge of the circle sat the girl, the Slayer. She was coiled, quiet, River thought, like a snake. The firelight was in the girl's eyes, making them glint gold. She sat on a log alone; even her friend had dispersed into the crowd and was speaking politely with a few of the crew.

A man caught River's hand, a miner, stronger than he looked. She twirled around the fire in his arms, and the flames danced with them. The notes were like flowers, opening in unexpected colors, then fading and disappearing gracefully. All the while, River's attention kept turning back to the girl. In River's eyes, all the twirling trails of colors framed Buffy's head, changing her from a sullen girl to a great, brooding queen. Fire was her crown and her power was her scepter.

After a while, the music quieted; all musicians eventually need a break. River found herself drawn to the fiery queen, kneeling gracefully in front of her. The girl's eyes rose from the dusty ground to look at River.

"Not by choice," was Buffy's answer, after a beat of surprise mixed with consideration. "None of this was my idea."

"Choice never entered into things," River said. "You've always done what you had to."

"Death is my gift," Buffy said, and she laughed. It was a strange, rueful sound, and in River's ears it seemed sad. "And guess what? My friends returned it."

"You need others to lift you up when you can't lift yourself." It was as if River was inside her own body, listening to someone else speak, clearly and solemnly, through her own lips. She was used to the feeling by now. "Here as much as home."

"Can't count on my friends here," Buffy said. "Willow's the only one who made the trip, and she's a little wired right now. I think maybe it was a mistake, letting her try something this big."

"I'm sorry, is she bothering you?" Simon had come up behind River and now placed his hand on her shoulder.

"No," Buffy told him, forcing a smile, "It's fine. I'm just a little…" She sort of shrugged and shivered at the same time.

"I can imagine that what you're experiencing might be a little…disorienting," Simon said, sitting down on the other side of the girl.

"Little bit, yeah." Buffy looked between brother and sister, not sure who to talk to. She eventually settled on River, who smiled. Most people didn't even notice that she was there. "Thanks for the clothes."

Buffy's eyes widened before she turned her head back in Simon's direction. "Your sister's a little brat, didya know that?"

Willow and Inara hung on the edges of the gathering. They were two outsiders, Willow thought. They were from two different worlds, sure, but neither of them belonged in this one, so they had something in common.

"No," Inara replied. "To tell you the truth, I always think I stick out like a sore thumb in places like this."

"But a sore thumb in a very nice dress," Willow grinned. "So, you're more of a high-class Companion then?"

Inara smirked. "You sound like the Captain. I know what you're thinking. I'm a whore, right?"

"I didn't say that," Willow quickly backtracked. "I'm…okay, I'm not from around here, so maybe I'm missing something. Why do you do it?"

Inara didn't say anything for a moment. "I was contracted to my House when I was a little girl," she finally said. "My parents, I don't remember much about them, but they were not wealthy. They only wanted the best for me."

Inara held up a hand. "No, it wasn't…I've never been anything but a Companion. It defines who I am. And I'm fine with that. I like my work. Girls all around the system dream of becoming a licensed Companion."

"It's a glamorous lifestyle," Inara said, "and I feel like I really help a lot of people."

"Often, yes," Inara nodded, unapologetic, "but my goal is to awaken my clients spiritually as well as physically."

"Huh." Willow thought about this for a moment. Someone came over and handed the two of them drinks, then scampered off to find more thirsty revelers. "What's this?"

"Probably the usual swill, about 50 percent alcohol, maybe a little gin," Inara said with a shrug. "When on Londinium..." She took a big swig of the stuff.

Not to be outdone, Willow did the same. By the taste, she placed it somewhere between gasoline and cider. Inara had been right about the alcohol level. Willow made a choked gasping noise as the liquid burned her throat on the way down.

"Me?" Willow rasped, a hand on her chest. She pulled herself together before continuing. "I told you everything."

"Not everything," Inara said with a small (devious?) smile. "Got anybody a special? A girlfriend?"

Willow was taken completely off-guard. "Girlfriend? Huh, I, uh, hmm, well…how did you know?"

"It's not that hard to tell," Inara told her. "And I have been trained to recognize the signs since I –"

"Was a little girl, right," Willow finished. She sighed. "Yeah, I've got a girlfriend. Her name's Kennedy. She's great. I think she's really helped me."

Well, either the woman was psychic, or she had some sort of sex-based superpower that enabled her to read people's minds. One or the other, Willow decided. No point in fighting it. "It's not Kennedy's fault. I think…I didn't really realize it before this time apart, y'know, but I think maybe I'm in love with her."

"And that's great," Inara said, her voice reminding Willow of that psychiatrist her mom had taken her to when she was eight, "but it's the fault of something. I've seen you, trying to reach out to the crew, to reach out to me, even just talking to your friend…you've been distant ever since you arrived."

"I think…" Willow took another tiny sip of her drink while she thought about what to say, which turned out to be a bad move. After she recovered, she said, "It's the magic."

"Go on," Inara urged her. Willow inwardly marveled at how completely open this woman could make herself. Maybe it helped in her line of work.

"Last year, I totally lost control with it," Willow told her. "I wasn't me anymore, it was just the magic. Afterwards I thought I'd recovered, y'know, that I just had to stay in control…but now it's like I'm fighting with it all the time, like the magic's stuck, deep inside me, and I can't let it out. I can't let anything out. I just…I can't do anything anymore."

Boy, there must have been a lot of alcohol in that drink. Willow had no idea if she was crying or not. Apparently she was, because Inara put her arms around Willow's head and pulled her close. "It's okay, it's gonna be…is that your friend dancing with Simon?"

Willow looked up. Inara was right, that was Buffy dancing happily around the bonfire in the Doctor's arms. She pulled away from Inara and tried to pull herself together. "Guess she's fitting in better than I am, huh?"

"I'm just surprised Simon's dancing with anybody," Inara said. "He's not really a party person."

Buffy saw Serenity's mechanic on the edge of the ring of dancers, a truly crushed look on her face. It took her a moment to put it together.

Simon looked truly confused, though the pair continued stepping around the fire to the sound of the flute. "A what?"

"It's a movie. You never…no, of course you didn't," Buffy sighed. "You're only dancing with me to make Kaylee jealous."

The pair stumbled to a stop, the other dancers still twirling around them. Simon was having trouble responding. "I…what? No! That's ludicrous, that's –"

"They why are you dancing with me when you've got a cutie-pie like that swooning over you?" She pointed to where Kaylee was standing.

"You better believe you are," Buffy said, "whatever that means." Her expression softened a little. "But you're not a bad guy. And, trust me, I've been there. Though I like to think that in my case there were extenuating –"

The Captain was there before Buffy was, surrounded by a crowd of townspeople who were all talking at once. "Now, hold on just a moment, I think maybe we all need to calm down a bit here. Tell me what happened, from the start of it."

"I thought I heard something," the man said, "went to go check." Buffy could see now that he couldn't have been older than 25. She wondered how long he had been working in the mines. "He was just lying there. Weren't nothing to be done for him."

Willow cringed and covered her mouth. Buffy didn't outwardly show any reaction at all.

"He's right," Simon said, stepping forward. "If this man was shot or stabbed there would there should be a pool of blood." He turned to the man who had interrupted the bonfire. "What makes you think that this was a murder?"

"It's the monster!" a woman cried, and a murmur of assent ran through the crowd.

Buffy knelt next to Shin's body. "Yes, there is," she said. She rolled the body over to reveal a pair of small holes in the side of Shin's neck. Slowly, she rose to her feet.

"Yes, I do." The crowd parted for Buffy as she strode out the door and into the dark, dusty night.

"No matter how far I go," she could be heard to mutter, "they always catch up with me."

The next day there was a town meeting to discuss the recent deaths. There had been five of them; it was a violent life out here, and sometimes there were accidents in the mines, but that number was unheard in a smallish town like this one. If there were monsters about, as Buffy claimed, then it seemed to Zoe that the smartest course of action for the crew of Serenity would be to finish gathering the needed supplies, head back to the ship, and take off.

Be that as it may, the smart thing to do and the right thing to do often do not coincide, and neither Zoe nor the Captain had any intention of leaving the townspeople to their own devices. They were gunhands, and they were available. Payment could be discussed later.

It was no surprise that the meeting soon centered upon Buffy, the young, mysterious passenger. She was a professional monster hunter, she said, and though most would look at the girl and doubt it, Zoe believed her. She had the look of a veteran warrior about her, a mixture of world-weariness and resilience, though it was almost unrecognizable on such an unlikely candidate.

Zoe sat in a church pew (as with most towns this size on the Rim, the church doubled as the town hall when large gatherings were required), holding hands with her husband as they watched the girl stand in front of the altar and explain the situation to the populace. Buffy was used to speechifying, it seemed; either that or she had a natural talent for it.

"They can't survive in the daylight," Buffy explained, her voice raised to reach those in the back of the church. "The vampire must have a lair of some kind, somewhere it can go to during the day where it would be safe from the sun. Can anybody think of anywhere like that?"

Everyone in the church began talking at once, all telling the girl what she should already have known.

"The mines, right, duh," Buffy said, raising her hands to signal that she had gotten the message.

"You know," Wash whispered in Zoe's ear, "I always knew this was where the two of us would end up. Sweaty, clasped hands, church pew, vampire raiding parties. My dream of married bliss is finally fulfilled."

With a wide smile, Zoe pushed him away. "I don't even know where to start with you."

"All right then," Buffy was announcing from her spot in front, "I'll dust your bad guy for you…" Originally, that might have been it, but Zoe was watching the girl, and saw her have a small moment of decision before she continued. "…and then we can discuss payment options."

"Miss, you're planning to go into the mines after the creature?" said one of the miners. "That hardly seems…"

"But to go into the mines alone…" someone said. "We don't even do that when the mine's open regular. The underground's dangerous, like to collapse on ya as anything."

"She won't be going alone," Mal announced, standing up from where he had been leaning on the church wall. "We'll be heading in with the lady. All part of the service."

"We'll?" Wash whispered unhappily. He didn't look any happier when Zoe stood up in silent support of the Captain. She loved her husband very much, but if Mal was going to put himself in harm's way then she was going to be right there with him.

"Look," Buffy said, "I know you all want to help, but anybody who tags along on this is just going to be putting themselves in a lot of unnecessary danger."

"Oh, but that's the best kind," Mal replied. Buffy opened her mouth to say something in return, but thought better of it. She nodded and turned back to the waiting townsfolk.

Willow followed Buffy as she walked down the front steps of the church. Behind, the townspeople began to filter out of the meeting.

"So, what happened to 'you can't charge people for saving their lives'?" Willow asked.

"Second of all, we have to adapt to the situation," Buffy said. "We need money, badly. The Captain's right, I can't keep threatening people and expect it to work. And now our one contact went and got himself killed, so we're going to have to pay somebody else. Possible several someone elses. We have a service to provide to these people and I intend to get paid for it."

"Miss, may I talk to you a spell?" Buffy turned around to see Shepherd Creary standing behind her.

"Yeah, sure," she said. Buffy nodded to Willow, who spotted Mal standing nearby and went over to discuss things with him. Buffy turned back to the Shepherd. "I know what you're going to say, Father, but these things are real. I've been dealing with them for a long time."

"I'm nobody's father," the old man said. "And I didn't come to call you a liar."

"I had hoped it wouldn't come to this," Creary said softly. "This place is my responsibility, but I never thought the chu sheng za jiao de zang huo would come here."

"You kinda lost me at the end there," Buffy said, "but I think I got it. You've done this before?"

"It was my trade," he said, perhaps an edge of sadness creeping into his voice. "Until the toll simply rose too high."

"I hear you there." Buffy's eyes widened. "Oh God, you want to come with us, don't you?"

"I told you, these people are my responsibility, and I need to help protect them."

Buffy sighed. "Look Fa…Shepherd, I'm sure you were quite the guy in your day. But now it's kind of…your evening, if you know what I'm saying."

"I assure you, I am still quite capable," he said. "Shepherd is not as untaxing an occupation as the populace would have you believe. Also, they're not going to pay you unless I go along. Seems they have an unusual cautiousness when it comes to strangers with unexplained powers."

A small smile appeared on Shepherd Creary's face. "I intend to pitch in however I can."

"Listen, I have some experience with this kind of thing," Willow was saying to Mal and Zoe nearby. "You really won't need those."

"Let me see if I'm comprehending you correctly," Mal said. "I'm about to mosey into a dark hole after a gorram monster, and you're telling me I don't need a piece?" He gestured to the gun at his hip.

"I know it's hard to understand," Willow said slowly, maintaining a friendly tone, "but vampires are sorta…different."

"Immune you say?" Mal smiled, but not a real smile. It was a smile with a purpose behind it, and it didn't stay long. "I've yet to meet the yi dui rou who was better than the gun fired at 'im. I'll take my chances."

"Not exactly immune." The three turned to look at Buffy, who had appeared to Mal's left. "Bullets still hurt them, it's just that vampires don't die the way we do. You bring the guns, the most likely thing they're gonna do is shoot one of us."

"A wooden stake?" Mal asked. Buffy nodded, and he scoffed. "Good luck finding one of those in this little corner of the verse. If it's all the same to you, I'll stick to metal."

Buffy shrugged. "Up to you. Just don't go pointing that thing at me." Willow made a face. "Or at her," Buffy added, pointing to her friend.

In the shadow of the church, Shepherd Creary had pulled Shepherd Book aside. "I'm going in with them."

And so it was that five figures, silhouetted by the small amount of daylight that crept down the shaft into the depths, entered the mines in search of the murderer. Buffy walked in front, armed with a huge rusting pickaxe she had borrowed from a particularly burly miner. Willow, completely weaponless despite Inara's urging, walked behind with Shepherd Creary. He had produced a small wooden stake from the bottom of a trunk in his quarters and carried it now. Behind walked Mal and Zoe, guns drawn and held at the ready.

They did not have to walk far before what little light there was faded, and the group found themselves enveloped in total darkness.

"I hate to be the one to spoil the party," Mal said, "but if the present situation holds this little adventure might not end happily."

After a moment, one could hear the sound of a small bottle breaking on the rock floor. "Fiat Lux!" Willow cried. Immediately a strange illumination, soft and diffuse, filled the tunnel…it didn't seem to come from anywhere in particular, but the group could see again.

"It never hurts to come prepared," she said. "It won't last forever, though, and I only had room for one extra."

"You have no idea," Buffy told her, peeking around a corner. "We have to move fast. Maybe we should split up."

"Good idea," Mal said. "Anybody wants to head out into that dark raise your hand."

The place still seemed dim…this far down, the rock was black, and the floor hadn't been dug to be flat.

"God, I can't imagine working down here every day," Willow said, glancing around at the tunnel.

"And these folk don't have your nifty lighting trick to fall back on, neither," Creary said.

Willow felt like the darkness was surrounding her, closing in on her closer than the walls of the tunnel. She had never really thought of herself as claustrophobic; she was a shut-in, used to four small walls. She had almost been disappointed by the surprisingly large size of her college dorm room. But this darkness seemed alien, malevolent. Haven was no haven at all…this wasn't some frontier version of Earth, it was a different world, in a different galaxy. Even the darkness was different.

Mal looked furious. "Tsao gao, Zoe, you want to bring this whole gorram place down on our heads?"

"Maybe you did," Buffy said, though she kept her eyes glued forwards. "Vamps are great at blending in. It's kind of their thing."

"But there ain't nobody there now," Zoe said. "Nobody human could pull that sort of bian hua."

Buffy sighed. "Hey, Will, do you get the feeling I'm repeating myself? Because that's the feeling I'm getting."

Willow nodded, though it wasn't the self-assured nod she had meant it to be. She was trying to get her heart rate down, unsuccessfully. What was it that babysitter had taught her, when she was really little? Count backwards from ten…nine…eight…seven…six.

"One second," Willow said, reaching into her pocket. She found that the bottle wasn't quite where she had thought it was. She tried another pocket. Nothing.

"Kaylee's pants have lots of pockets!" Willow complained, panic showing through in her voice.

The light faded completely, and the gang found themselves once again immersed in total darkness. "Anybody bring a gorram flashlight?" Zoe asked. She did not sound happy.

Willow frantically searched for her other bottle. She heard the sound of a couple of rocks sent skidding across the tunnel floor.

Then she heard Buffy's voice. "I hate to hurry you, Will, but…" Willow's right hand closed around the glass bottle. She pulled it out of whatever pocket she had found it in and fired it to the ground.

"The vamp's gotta be around here somewhere," Buffy said. "These tunnels are only so big."

Buffy's eyes widened a little as she glanced around. Shepherd Creary was not to be seen anywhere.

The vampire was somewhere out there, laughing at her. Buffy could imagine the thing gorging on the Shepherd's blood, could hear that slurping noise a vamp makes when it's feeding. She was used to the feeling, and knew what to do about it. She took all the anger, all the destructive impulses she felt and channeled them into her reservoir. In her mind's eye, the reservoir was located deep in her chest, like an extra organ. She would store those things for later.

"I can make a little light for however long we need," Willow said, "but it won't be like this."

"We're not leaving," Buffy said, slipping into her 'commander' voice. "Vamp's still out there." She hesitated before continuing. "And we need the money."

"You can't get paid if you're dead!" Mal told her. "I'm all for giving folk a helping hand, but not at the price of my own pi gu! Getting killed would severely limit our potential for do-gooding in the future."

"Or in the past," Willow put in pointedly. "He has a point, Buffy. Maybe we should wait till nightfall. If we could somehow lure it out…"

Buffy held up a hand. "Willow, be quiet." She swiveled her head around as if searching for something. But she wasn't looking, or listening, for anything. It was something else she did. In the past, Willow had often complained when Buffy said something like 'It's a slayer thing' or 'You wouldn't understand.' Buffy wanted to tell her friends everything… but many times, like this one, she had no idea how to explain what she was feeling. How do you describe a painting to a blind person?

The other three members of the raiding party looked around, of course seeing nothing.

"This way." Buffy pointed further down the tunnel and without waiting for the others to acknowledge walked off in that direction.

The light was starting to fade. Or maybe the dark was getting darker, Buffy wasn't sure.

"Ai ya, huai le." Buffy completely failed to understand Mal, but it sounded like swearing, and swearing transcends all linguistic barriers. "You got a plan now, Miss?"

It was at about that moment that no one in the group could see anymore. Somewhere at the edge of her awareness Buffy heard Willow say that she could try another spell, and then a few pebbles shifting as Willow knelt in the lotus position on the floor of the tunnel. But she wasn't really paying attention.

An alarm bell went off in Buffy's brain. Mentally, she folded herself inwards, until all that was left was the reservoir at her center. It wasn't a nice place, and she didn't like to go there if she didn't have to. However, she knew that this was one of the situations where she had to rely on her primal, possible demonic instincts, or else she had nothing to rely on at all.

Buffy threw a punch with everything behind it, both body and mind. She felt the satisfying, familiar feeling of tendon and bone shifting and cracking beneath her fist. With an angry growl, Buffy heard the vampire stumble back. She ran three strides forward in pursuit, executing a flying kick on the end.

She made solid contact against the vampire's chest, sending it to the ground, but she landed awkwardly, twisting her right ankle and scraping her knees against the rocky floor. There was pain, especially in her ankle (damn, she really might have done something to it!) but she didn't have time for that right now. Vampires could see in the dark, and her luck would not hold much longer.

"My axe!" Buffy called desperately. She hoped that neither of her friends was stupid enough to fire their guns blindly into the dark.

"Coming towards you," Zoe's voice replied. Buffy heard something metal scraping along the floor in her general direction.

Then reality did a somersault when a punch from the vampire caught Buffy square in the temple. Strangely, she black spots amidst the darkness. Then a sharp pain in her side… the vampire's boot had connected with her ribs. If she wasn't a slayer, something might have broken. Something still might have broken. Buffy fell sideways, and felt something under her. She grabbed for it, nails scrabbling in the rock before her fingers closed around a wooden handle. The axe.

Buffy swung the blade upward in a wide arc, and near the zenith she felt that resistance one only feels when one slices through flesh. Then there was a sound somewhere between a soda can opening and the growl of a tiger. Then silence.

Buffy collapsed to the floor of the tunnel, the hard rock sharp against the back of her skull. The axe clattered out of her hand. She dimly heard Willow's voice somewhere nearby, completing an incantation is some other language (Latin?). Then there was a light somewhere off behind her and to the left. It was only a tiny speck, but after the close black of the fight it hurt Buffy's eyes and she had to squint.

"What in the sphincter of hell just happened?" Mal asked. He didn't sound panicked. It was more like he was angry about not being included.

"It's dead," Buffy said shortly, rolling over as part of an attempt to get to her feet.

Buffy groaned as she stood up. She gingerly tried to put her weight on her twisted ankle and grimaced at the sudden pain. Meanwhile, she tried to point to about where she guessed the vampire had been.

Everyone clustered around the spot. With an assured gesture, Willow made her little ball of light hover close to the ground. Mal leaned down and ran his fingers through a fine brown dust. He pulled a double take between Buffy's face and the little pile of ashes on the floor. She nodded. Mal composed himself. "Zoe, gather 'em up."

"Gotta have something to show the good folk of Haven as proof of a successful job."

Reluctantly Zoe nodded, and began the process of scooping the ashes into a spent ammunition casing.

Mal looked concerned when \he saw the way Buffy was limping around. "Are you all right there, Miss?"

"You can rub on grandma's butter and then dance a jig for all I care," he said, "as long as we can get you out of here. Here, put your arm over my shoulder." Buffy stubbornly tried to soldier on for a few more steps, then gave up in frustration and did as she was told. He was surprisingly sturdy. Normally, a moment like this for Buffy would have been cause for much sexual tension. But she was still a little blurry, and the tension totally escaped her.

"Shepherd Creary!" Zoe exclaimed happily. Buffy and Mal turned awkwardly to see the old man striding forward out of the dark, a wide smile on his face. Zoe stretched out her arms to embrace the man.

Zoe turned her head and said "What do –" before Creary landed a punch to the side of her jaw, a much harder punch than a senior citizen should have been able to manage. Zoe reeled, but gathered herself enough to get a look at Creary. He had sprouted fangs and his forehead had grown jagged. His eyes burned yellow in the dim light.

Buffy found herself on the floor again, but didn't really register what had happened. "The axe!" she instructed, but it wasn't clear if anyone had heard her. Willow had jumped on the Shepherd's back, and he was trying to throw her off. Zoe had gotten her legs tangled up with Creary's, and was having some difficulty extricating herself.

With an angry growl, the Shepherd purposely rammed his back into the wall of the tunnel. Willow cried out and loosed her hold, sliding roughly to the ground. Creary towered over the witch as he closed in for the kill.

Then for a split second the end of the rounded axe handle poked through Shepherd Creary's chest. Then his body exploded into ashes. The dust settled to the floor, revealing Captain Malcolm Reynolds holding the axe.

Buffy caught Mal's eyes as he helped his First Mate to her feet. She nodded, and then he looked away.

"Can we please get out of here now?" Willow asked from where she was sprawled on the floor. "Pretty please?"

Buffy had no concept of how dirty she was until she emerged into the blinding sunlight of the world above. The others were no better off. Anyone who had fallen to the floor (everyone except Mal) was completely covered in a strangely gooey black substance that showed no sign of ever coming off. Once Kaylee got over her initial joy at seeing her friends alive she could be heard to mutter something about what Willow had done to her pants.

The reception from the town was subdued, though no one explicitly put into words why. Shepherd Book gently pulled Mal aside into the church, and the pair didn't come out for several long minutes.

Meanwhile, Buffy watched from afar as Zoe solemnly presented the ashes of the two vampires to one of the oldest women of Haven. The two then participated in a hushed but fervent exchange before the elder woman unhappily handed over a burlap bag. Buffy later found that the bag contained several large silver coins, which surprised her. She had been expecting something much more nebulous and Star Trekky, like "credits" or little tiles of teakwood.

Willow found Buffy, still thoroughly smudged from the mines, sitting on a large rock away from the crowd.

"So," Willow said as she tiredly sat down next to her friend, "that's done. And we're right back where we started."

"Wow, I feel like a sell-out already," Willow said, turning her head towards Buffy. "Do you think this is how Britney Spears feels 24 hours a day?"

"Strangely, I don't," Buffy said. "Feel like a sell-out, that is. New galaxy, new rules."

"Well, I hope we find the orb soon," Willow said, "because, just my opinion, but the future is just not that awesome."

Buffy nodded solemnly at this, then to her surprise she found herself giggling. It was uncontrollable. The reality of her situation was starting to set in, and her system apparently was finding it impossible to deal with. It took Buffy a moment to notice that Willow had also broken down into an uncontrollable fit of laughter.

Buffy made a valiant attempt at composing herself. "Oh, God, Will, what have you gotten me into this time?" Then the laughter returned, stronger this time.

Inara was surprised at how much she was affected by what happened on Haven. She had practiced detachment enough that deep emotions, love, sadness, unsettled her. Not only was she unused to them, but they reminded her of something a long time ago.

Certainly the death of Shepherd Creary was a tragedy, both on a personal level and for the community at large. Inara knew well the proper etiquette for grief and practiced that to the letter. She had seen the strange way Buffy and Willow reacted, as if they had seen this a thousand times before. Even Mal didn't have that, and he had been through a war. It struck her that she might have underestimated just how much these girls had been through, and at how young an age, even when Willow was crying in her arms by the fire.

But Creary was not the Shepherd whose absence truly affected Inara. Derrian Book remained behind on Haven. He had made a promise, he said, and in a community on the edge of nothing like Haven it was the preacher that held the town together. It was not usual for a woman of Inara's profession and men of Book's faith to get along very well. But they had each sensed something in the other that was more than the occupation, the stereotype.

So when it came time to tell Book goodbye, Inara found herself nearly breaking down publicly, something she had never done since she was a small girl. Then later, in her quarters, she let it out. The last time she could remember doing that was when she found out Mal slept with Nandi. That had been personal, but this was more about the passing of a moment in time. They had been a family, the nine of them. Inara had flown with Serenity before the passengers came on board, but it was when the group had expanded that Inara really began to feel like she was a part of something. She hadn't felt that way since Sihnon.

Buried in pillows on her big red satin bed, Inara wondered how she could ever have conceived of leaving that family behind. And she then she realized that she still wanted to leave, maybe even more than ever.

It was Willow asking the question. Inara hadn't heard her come in, maybe because of the pillows over her ears. Inara sat up in her bed and turned her head to see a witch standing in her shuttle's doorway, arms crossed.

It suddenly occurred to Inara that evidence of her breakdown was apparent, and out of habit she hurriedly began to wipe the remains of her tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand. "I'm sorry, Willow, but I'm not really in an existential mood right now."

Willow's cheeks reddened slightly, and the sweetest little embarrassed smile appeared on her face. Inara wondered when she started noticing the girl's smile. Willow took a step forward into the shuttle. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean…I like philosophy as much as the next liberal arts college coed, but what I was trying to ask was how you ended up here, on Serenity."

"I don't doubt that the galaxy would be a much better place if every ship had its own Companion…but honestly it doesn't really seem likely."

Inara tried to look skeptical. "Why do you ask?" She flipped a few strands of hair over her shoulder with a practiced flick of her neck, hoping to feel her detached aura return.

"I can't just ask because we're friends?" Willow's breath caught and she quieted for a moment. "We are friends, right?"

"Yes." Inara's smile was genuine. "We're friends. But that's not why you're asking."

"No, it's not," Willow admitted. "I'm not really sure myself, actually. I was hoping you would tell me my reasons, so that I would be less confused."

"And here I was thinking you had some sort of mystical psychic sex powers," Willow sighed.

"I'm sure," Inara replied. Her smile had yet to fade, but she said nothing else. There was a moment of silence. It stretched just long enough to become awkward.

"No, I'm not," Inara said. She was a little surprised to her the note of apology in her own voice.

Willow sat down on the edge of Inara's bed with a sigh. "Can I at least ask you what's wrong?"

"What's wrong?" Inara's tone suggested that she had no idea what Willow was talking about.

"You were crying." Willow motioned to her own face to indicate that the signs were still there.

"Right," Inara rose to her feet and swiftly moved over to her dressing mirror. She found her makeup completely in disarray. "Go se." She pulled open a drawer in her dresser and rummaged through it until she found her eye shadow. She was just about ready to begin to apply some touch-ups when Willow grabbed the brush out of her hand. "Hey!"

"I asked about the crying because I thought you might want to talk about it, not to give you a heads-up about the makeup situation." Willow paused, glancing briefly at the tiny brush. "Who are you doing this for out here, anyway? It's just us. I don't put on makeup to go to the Scooby meetings."

"It wasn't," Willow sighed. "Inara, I need you to let me in. It looks like I might be here awhile, and I love Buffy, but, in case you haven't noticed, she's not exactly the easiest person to talk to."

"And I am?" Inara raised an eyebrow, and only got a surprisingly strong glare in return. Inara made a mental note not to get on the witch's bad side. "Fine, it was about Shepherd Book. Maybe. I'm not sure."

Inara had been trained in the art of conversation from a young age. Thus it was not often that she struggled to put her feelings into words. This was one of those times. Finally, she gave up and simply said, "We all are."

Willow nodded. Inara took a moment to really look at the girl, the way she carried an invisible weight on her shoulders, the tiny lines on her beautiful face that told of too many emotions too soon.

"I'll tell you why I'm on Serenity if you'll tell me what happened to you," Inara said.

"Not the magic," Inara told her. "The magic is a symptom. It's not the problem. You have that look that says there's something wrong. Something that will never quite be right, no matter what happens."

Wash almost turned around and left the dining room when he saw that the insane blonde girl was already there, pouring herself some tea. It wasn't the insanity that bothered him. River was insane, and he had gotten used to her. He had even begun to grow to like her. But River was usually a nice, quiet crazy, except when she was attacking Jayne, and Wash didn't mind that.

Buffy, however, was a different kind of crazy. Wash got the feeling that the wrong word around her might get heavy objects flung at one's head, or one's head flung at heavy objects, whichever was more convenient. The girl apparently made her living by going into dark places and fighting monsters. There was no way she was stable.

Not to mention that she could probably destroy his puny body using only her fingernail, something which scared the crap out of him…and which was also strangely attractive. There was a reason he had married Zoe, after all.

So there were a lot of reasons why this scenario seemed awkward, but Wash had skipped dinner and found himself feeling very, very hungry.

Buffy saw him when he came in. "Hi," she said politely, putting down the tea kettle.

"Hi," Wash replied. He was thankful when Buffy did nothing but sip her tea and an only slightly uncomfortable silence ensued. He opened a cupboard and began to rummage for a can of something that might be turned into food.

"So you're the pilot, right?" Buffy asked. She looked at her over the rim of her teacup as she took a sip.

Somehow, those words coming out of this particular girl were spectacularly intimidating. Wash could think of no other response than "Yes."

"So how does that work, exactly? I mean, did you, like, have to take a lot of classes, or did you just join the Air Force…"

"No, no, just classes," Wash assured her. "Zoe and the Captain, they're the military types around here, not me. Is that Inara's cup?"

"Yeah, she said I could use it," Buffy said. "When I was planning this little time trip, somehow I didn't anticipate needing to bring my own tableware. I like your shirt."

Wash was wearing one of his usual set of Hawaiian shirts, this one with yellow leaves on a light blue background. He had stopped looking through the cupboard and turned to face Buffy. For some reason, it did not seem possible to talk to her and do anything else at the same time.

Once again, the only response Wash could come up with consisted of a single syllable. "Thanks."

"Reminds of something a friend of mine might wear," Buffy told him. "Do you still call it a Hawaiian shirt?"

"Do you know why it's called that?" Buffy challenged, and Wash was forced to shake his head. He had never really even thought to wonder about that before. "I do," Buffy said shortly. After that she just looked at him, and Wash hoped that he wasn't visibly squirming the way he was on the inside.

When Wash opened his mouth slightly but didn't quite say anything, Buffy fixed him with a frightening glare. "Huai le," he mumbled.

"The Captain just wanted to get as far away from Haven as possible," Wash said. "I'm sure you understand. You do understand, don't you?"

"I guess so." Buffy sounded unhappy. "Don't kid yourself, though. Somehow I doubt Haven's the only place in your little galaxy with a vamp problem."

"So, what, we're at a dead end in our Orb search? Is Google still around, because then I bet Will could find the thing like that." She snapped her fingers. "That's what I don't get. What happened to TV? The movies? It's like it's 1883 with spaceships."

And then, despite not having any idea what Google was, or what it had offended to gain that particular name, Wash had an idea. In his surprise at this development, he forgot all about how afraid he was of Buffy and grabbed her by the arms. Buffy, much to Wash's later relief, refrained from kicking his ass. Instead she just looked startled.

Xian spun in place and, without looking to see where exactly where her opponent was, brought her sword down in a wide arc. It sliced the leg of one of her attackers, sending him to the floor, screaming in pain. Xian took no notice, instead sweeping her leg behind her to bring down another attacker. She turned and brought the sword down in his heart, twisting it just to be sure. The blade made a squishing noise when she removed it, absent-mindedly wiping the blood off on her pants.

She touched a button on the side of what had looked like her sunglasses. The men on the floor (there were seven in total) flickered and disappeared. In their place stood a single man in a gray uniform, smiling placidly at her.

"What do you want?" Xian asked, her voice absolutely serene, as she walked over to a nearby table at the edge of the training room and placed the glasses on it.

In a few minutes Xian was sitting at a table in the center of an otherwise bare room with windowless cement walls. The same man sat across from her. It was always the same man. He never had told her his name.

The man in the uniform slid a plain manila folder across the table to Xian. "We received some information from an informant on Haven. He claimed to have information concerning a pair of fugitives we've been pursuing."

Xian opened the folder and looked at the first two pages. One was a dossier on one River Tam, a picture of a small girl with black hair attached with a paper clip. The next dossier concerned her brother, a doctor. She looked back up at the man. "This isn't my usual turf. Why not send your boys with the blue gloves. I know you find them useful."

"You're not still sore about what happened to your watcher, are you?" the man in the uniform asked. "I thought we were past that."

Xian said nothing. Actually, she wasn't that upset. The man had been a jerk. At least here she got a decent bed, three squares, and enough pay to support her mother back on Shadow. She just wished it hadn't been so…graphic.

The man sighed and sat back in his chair. "We're sending you because the situation may have become…unexpectedly complicated. Our informant was cut off in the middle of his message, but he did have time to inform us about a traveling companion these two seem to have picked up."

Xian turned to the next dossier in the folder and found it to be almost blank. No picture was provided. However, the few sentences worth of information that was provided was enough to make Xian raise an eyebrow.

The man in the uniform leaned forward, hands clasped in front of him on the table.

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Taking the Sky

by Dan Joslyn

Copyright © 2006

ferociouswalrus@yahoo.com