Fic: Stjerneportalen (2/8)
Title: Stjerneportalen - Chapter 02 (Den Tapte Byen)
Author:
mirrored_illusions aka
3am_moonlight
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), Stargate Atlantis (TV)
Rating / Timeline: Teen & Up. / Post BtVS, ca. S05 of SGA.
Characters: Buffy Summers, John Sheppard, Teyla Emmagan, Ronon Dex, Rodney McKay, Elizabeth Weir, Evan Lorne, Laura Cadman.
WC: 9, 713 / Complete.
Disclaimer: BtVS belongs to Joss Whedon, the Stargate franchise is the property of whoever holds the copyright.
Other links: AO3 | FF | TtH
A/N 1: Not beta read. Sorry.
A/N 2: This was written for the 2016 Fic-A-Day Challenge over at TwistedShorts on LJ / TtHFanfic.org.
- I'm finally reposting this fic to DW and LJ; it only took two months! Oops?
A/N 3: ‘Stjerneportalen’ is simply a Norwegian translation of ‘the stargate’. ‘Den tapte byen’ means ‘the lost city’.
Summary: Buffy somehow managed to fall through another portal.
On the other side of the Gateway they were met by Marines pointing P90’s, thank you Collective Slayer Knowledge for the random piece of information, straight at them. It made Buffy tense immediately. She didn’t like being at the business end of any kind of weaponry, but projectile weapons least of all. It gave her flashbacks to several bad episodes back in Sunnydale.
They were quickly pointed towards the ground after being ordered to do so by Colonel Sheppard, and then a tall woman with shoulder length wavy brown hair came walking out of an office on the second floor. She walked over to a wide set of stairs, with some kind of norse writing on them. There she stopped and clasped her hands together in front of herself before greeting the returning team and asking about Buffy. Like everyone else she was staring at Buffy’s outfit, not that she blamed them. It had to be kinda surreal to all of them.
It didn’t take long for them to first be ordered to the infirmary, where she got a check-up before being pronounced the healthiest person the doctor had ever seen. No surprises there. Then it was off to a conference room where Dr. Weir was waiting to interrogate her.
All the while Buffy was admiring the building they had gated into. It was light and airy, with a blue-ish theme that seemed to go through everything, except for some more colorful stained glass windows. There was also some kind of water things in the hallways which bubbled. It was beautiful, but it lacked something, somehow.
The people here appeared to be for the most part either military, mainly Marines, or scientists. The military part made her feel uneasy. It had been years since the Initiative, but nearly every time she saw soldiers or someone in dress blues she flashed back to that particular point in her life.
Inside the conference room there were three tables placed in a horseshoe form with Dr. Weir at the helm. The two Pegasus natives, Teyla and Ronon, were on her left along with a blond, blue eyed, boy-next-door military man who gave her a guarded smile and a nod in welcome. He vaguely reminded her of Graham Miller, one of Riley’s best friends. Hopefully without a blind loyalty to a psychopath. On her right was Dr. Rodney ‘I’m the smartest man in two galaxies’ McKay, who was thankfully silent at the moment as he was tapping away on a hand-held computer of some kind and ignoring everyone.
Col. Sheppard, who had really turned out to be both the team leader and the military commander of the not-so-lost city of Atlantis, preceded her into the room. He went straight for the vacant chair on Dr. Weir’s immediate right while he told Buffy to pick a chair further down the same side. She chose the chair closest to the door, which just so happened to leave an empty seat between her and the overly talkative scientist.
The civilian commander didn’t waste any time and jumped straight into it as soon as Buffy had gotten comfortable.
“Welcome to Atlantis. As I said when you arrived along with Col. Sheppard’s team, I am Dr. Elizabeth Weir, the civilian commander of Atlantis. Col. Sheppard is the military commander, and my second in command. His second in command is Major Lorne.” She indicated the Graham look-a-like. “You have of course already met Ronon Dex, Teyla Emmagan, and Dr. Rodney McKay.” She gave a brief pause and a small upturn of her lips.
“Perhaps you could introduce yourself and explain how you ended up in our fair galaxy?”
Buffy mentally rubbed her hand over her face. This was the big moment. How much could she tell these people? How much of what she actually remembered, and how much of what she thought had happened to her? There was only one way to find out so she decided to give a heavily edited version of the events and then just take it from there.
“My name is Buffy Summers, and yes, my given name is really Buffy. It is not a nickname or short for anything.” The last part was directed at the annoying scientist who scoffed at the name again. But thankfully kept his mouth shut.
“As I told Col. Sheppard back on Lareva, I’m originally from California. Specifically Los Angeles, but I haven’t lived there in years. My most recent address was in Cleveland, Ohio but it was more of a base than an actual home. I’ve spent more than a decade working in security and travelling around both America and the world. The world, as in Earth that is” Unsurprisingly it was the second to last sentence which gained the most interest, or rather disbelief - especially from the two people who had not seen her in action.
“How can you have spent 10 years in security when you can’t be more than a teenager, or very early in your twenties at the most?” Dr. Weir gave Dr. McKay a sharp look when he began interrupting and amazingly he actually stopped talking.
“I look very young for my age, but you can add more than a decade to your last estimate.” Which was essentially true, but at the same time a rather big lie due to the deliberately wrong implication. She had turned 56 only a month before her unwilling trans-dimensional trip. But trying to convince these people of that would probably be an exercise in futility as it would not show up in her medical check-up, so she shaved more than two decades off her age in an attempt to not be treated as an errant teenager. Being the ‘Queen Slayer’ had both its advantages and its disadvantages.
“As for how I ended up here; I’m not entirely sure.” Again a half-truth. “I was minding my own business when everything around me suddenly began falling apart and I thought my vision was going blurry, but I quickly realized that was not the case.” At this point some random soldiers came in with several pots of coffee and seven mugs. Buffy, who had smelled the aroma even before the doors were opened, bent her head over the nectar of the gods as soon as she was given her own mug, and inhaled deeply.
There were several snorts in the peanut gallery, and she was pretty certain that the esteemed military commander asked her if she wanted some alone time with the coffee under his breath before getting an elbow in the ribs from McKay, but at the moment she could not bring herself to care in the slightest. There was honest to god coffee in front of her and she was going to enjoy it!
It took a while but eventually all the delicious coffee in her mug was gone and she looked up at her spectators and smiled a little sheepishly.
“Sorry, it’s been a while and I didn’t think I’d ever get coffee again. I don’t even care that it’s the cheap office kind because it’s coffee!” That got her some more laughter and another cup of the beverage. This time she sipped it a little more slowly.
“Anyways, as I was saying. Everything seemed to be breaking apart around me. Buildings, trees, cars, the road. In the distance it looked like huge pieces of the Earth were breaking off and disappearing up towards the sky somehow. The sky itself was also being torn asunder. It was bizarre. And frightening. And believe me, I don’t scare easily.” She grimaced a little, seeing it again in her mind's eye. “Next thing I know a portal opened up beneath my feet and I fell through it and then out of a Gateway. And I’ve been here ever since.”
Buffy finished up her tale. It was far from everything, but the rest was either not something these people needed to know about or it was too hazy for her to remember, even months later. Somehow the fact that she couldn’t recall everything that had happened bugged her more than the apparent destruction of her entire dimension. Either way, there was nothing she could do. And while she had lost friends, they were more acquaintances than actual friends. All her family was dead, and Dawn had long since been turned back into the Key. Ironically the Slayer, the girl destined to die young and violently, had outlived every single one of her friends, and she had even survived a dozen Watchers.
The people sitting around the conference room would judge her, weigh her words, the credibility of those words, and hold it up against her outward form. The four people who had seen her fight the Wraith on Lareva would also judge her ability to fight. The question was, would they see it, her looks, for the veneer it was or would they simply dump her into the crazy, blonde box and keep her there?
Author:
mirrored_illusions aka
3am_moonlight
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), Stargate Atlantis (TV)
Rating / Timeline: Teen & Up. / Post BtVS, ca. S05 of SGA.
Characters: Buffy Summers, John Sheppard, Teyla Emmagan, Ronon Dex, Rodney McKay, Elizabeth Weir, Evan Lorne, Laura Cadman.
WC: 9, 713 / Complete.
Disclaimer: BtVS belongs to Joss Whedon, the Stargate franchise is the property of whoever holds the copyright.
Other links: AO3 | FF | TtH
A/N 1: Not beta read. Sorry.
A/N 2: This was written for the 2016 Fic-A-Day Challenge over at TwistedShorts on LJ / TtHFanfic.org.
- I'm finally reposting this fic to DW and LJ; it only took two months! Oops?
A/N 3: ‘Stjerneportalen’ is simply a Norwegian translation of ‘the stargate’. ‘Den tapte byen’ means ‘the lost city’.
Summary: Buffy somehow managed to fall through another portal.
On the other side of the Gateway they were met by Marines pointing P90’s, thank you Collective Slayer Knowledge for the random piece of information, straight at them. It made Buffy tense immediately. She didn’t like being at the business end of any kind of weaponry, but projectile weapons least of all. It gave her flashbacks to several bad episodes back in Sunnydale.
They were quickly pointed towards the ground after being ordered to do so by Colonel Sheppard, and then a tall woman with shoulder length wavy brown hair came walking out of an office on the second floor. She walked over to a wide set of stairs, with some kind of norse writing on them. There she stopped and clasped her hands together in front of herself before greeting the returning team and asking about Buffy. Like everyone else she was staring at Buffy’s outfit, not that she blamed them. It had to be kinda surreal to all of them.
It didn’t take long for them to first be ordered to the infirmary, where she got a check-up before being pronounced the healthiest person the doctor had ever seen. No surprises there. Then it was off to a conference room where Dr. Weir was waiting to interrogate her.
All the while Buffy was admiring the building they had gated into. It was light and airy, with a blue-ish theme that seemed to go through everything, except for some more colorful stained glass windows. There was also some kind of water things in the hallways which bubbled. It was beautiful, but it lacked something, somehow.
The people here appeared to be for the most part either military, mainly Marines, or scientists. The military part made her feel uneasy. It had been years since the Initiative, but nearly every time she saw soldiers or someone in dress blues she flashed back to that particular point in her life.
Inside the conference room there were three tables placed in a horseshoe form with Dr. Weir at the helm. The two Pegasus natives, Teyla and Ronon, were on her left along with a blond, blue eyed, boy-next-door military man who gave her a guarded smile and a nod in welcome. He vaguely reminded her of Graham Miller, one of Riley’s best friends. Hopefully without a blind loyalty to a psychopath. On her right was Dr. Rodney ‘I’m the smartest man in two galaxies’ McKay, who was thankfully silent at the moment as he was tapping away on a hand-held computer of some kind and ignoring everyone.
Col. Sheppard, who had really turned out to be both the team leader and the military commander of the not-so-lost city of Atlantis, preceded her into the room. He went straight for the vacant chair on Dr. Weir’s immediate right while he told Buffy to pick a chair further down the same side. She chose the chair closest to the door, which just so happened to leave an empty seat between her and the overly talkative scientist.
The civilian commander didn’t waste any time and jumped straight into it as soon as Buffy had gotten comfortable.
“Welcome to Atlantis. As I said when you arrived along with Col. Sheppard’s team, I am Dr. Elizabeth Weir, the civilian commander of Atlantis. Col. Sheppard is the military commander, and my second in command. His second in command is Major Lorne.” She indicated the Graham look-a-like. “You have of course already met Ronon Dex, Teyla Emmagan, and Dr. Rodney McKay.” She gave a brief pause and a small upturn of her lips.
“Perhaps you could introduce yourself and explain how you ended up in our fair galaxy?”
Buffy mentally rubbed her hand over her face. This was the big moment. How much could she tell these people? How much of what she actually remembered, and how much of what she thought had happened to her? There was only one way to find out so she decided to give a heavily edited version of the events and then just take it from there.
“My name is Buffy Summers, and yes, my given name is really Buffy. It is not a nickname or short for anything.” The last part was directed at the annoying scientist who scoffed at the name again. But thankfully kept his mouth shut.
“As I told Col. Sheppard back on Lareva, I’m originally from California. Specifically Los Angeles, but I haven’t lived there in years. My most recent address was in Cleveland, Ohio but it was more of a base than an actual home. I’ve spent more than a decade working in security and travelling around both America and the world. The world, as in Earth that is” Unsurprisingly it was the second to last sentence which gained the most interest, or rather disbelief - especially from the two people who had not seen her in action.
“How can you have spent 10 years in security when you can’t be more than a teenager, or very early in your twenties at the most?” Dr. Weir gave Dr. McKay a sharp look when he began interrupting and amazingly he actually stopped talking.
“I look very young for my age, but you can add more than a decade to your last estimate.” Which was essentially true, but at the same time a rather big lie due to the deliberately wrong implication. She had turned 56 only a month before her unwilling trans-dimensional trip. But trying to convince these people of that would probably be an exercise in futility as it would not show up in her medical check-up, so she shaved more than two decades off her age in an attempt to not be treated as an errant teenager. Being the ‘Queen Slayer’ had both its advantages and its disadvantages.
“As for how I ended up here; I’m not entirely sure.” Again a half-truth. “I was minding my own business when everything around me suddenly began falling apart and I thought my vision was going blurry, but I quickly realized that was not the case.” At this point some random soldiers came in with several pots of coffee and seven mugs. Buffy, who had smelled the aroma even before the doors were opened, bent her head over the nectar of the gods as soon as she was given her own mug, and inhaled deeply.
There were several snorts in the peanut gallery, and she was pretty certain that the esteemed military commander asked her if she wanted some alone time with the coffee under his breath before getting an elbow in the ribs from McKay, but at the moment she could not bring herself to care in the slightest. There was honest to god coffee in front of her and she was going to enjoy it!
It took a while but eventually all the delicious coffee in her mug was gone and she looked up at her spectators and smiled a little sheepishly.
“Sorry, it’s been a while and I didn’t think I’d ever get coffee again. I don’t even care that it’s the cheap office kind because it’s coffee!” That got her some more laughter and another cup of the beverage. This time she sipped it a little more slowly.
“Anyways, as I was saying. Everything seemed to be breaking apart around me. Buildings, trees, cars, the road. In the distance it looked like huge pieces of the Earth were breaking off and disappearing up towards the sky somehow. The sky itself was also being torn asunder. It was bizarre. And frightening. And believe me, I don’t scare easily.” She grimaced a little, seeing it again in her mind's eye. “Next thing I know a portal opened up beneath my feet and I fell through it and then out of a Gateway. And I’ve been here ever since.”
Buffy finished up her tale. It was far from everything, but the rest was either not something these people needed to know about or it was too hazy for her to remember, even months later. Somehow the fact that she couldn’t recall everything that had happened bugged her more than the apparent destruction of her entire dimension. Either way, there was nothing she could do. And while she had lost friends, they were more acquaintances than actual friends. All her family was dead, and Dawn had long since been turned back into the Key. Ironically the Slayer, the girl destined to die young and violently, had outlived every single one of her friends, and she had even survived a dozen Watchers.
The people sitting around the conference room would judge her, weigh her words, the credibility of those words, and hold it up against her outward form. The four people who had seen her fight the Wraith on Lareva would also judge her ability to fight. The question was, would they see it, her looks, for the veneer it was or would they simply dump her into the crazy, blonde box and keep her there?