Exchange: Round One // Who's a Slayer? (Buffy/Doctor Who)
Title: Who's a Slayer?
Fandoms: Doctor Who / Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Pairing/Character: Ten, Buffy, Giles (hazzy glimpse of Ten/Rose)
Word Count: 4760
Rating: PG-13
Summary: When your old Watcher is friends with a Time Lord, things can get very interesting.
Mod Notes: This fic was written for uptheapples but, as always, feedback from everyone is appreciated. The author will be revealed after the poll, at which point they can respond to any comments on this post.
London, West End near Piccadilly Circus
Present
Buffy tossed her head back and laughed, breathing in fresh night air. "You're making this too easy," she said, throwing a swift upper cut to the pasty white chin.
The vampire grinned malevolently, baring his fangs and squeezing his already unpleasantly creased face into even more wrinkles.
"You work up the adrenaline and I get a high AND a meal." He reached for her throat with sharply clawed fingers.
"Seriously. I'm barely breaking a sweat."
She laughed again, feeling the satisfying snap as her kick broke his arm and sent him careening into a pile of black garbage bags beside a dumpster. She had just enough time to draw back into a defensive stance, fists raised, weight resting on the balls of her feet, before the vampire was back up.
Cradling his wounded arm against his chest, he threw a punch that went wild as Buffy side-stepped him. She spun to face him as he recovered, spinning back toward her. He hurled another punch and Buffy grabbed his wounded arm, holding him in place as she landed a kick to his stomach and then another to his left knee with a sickening crack of bone.
With a howl, the vampire pulled himself away. Buffy swung a stake up from her belt holster but he was quicker, knocking it away and twisting her arm behind her back. She winced as he pulled her arm tighter then sent her reeling forward toward the dumpster. She kept her balance though and whipped around to face him again with a guttural sound of triumph, a stake thrust exactly where his heart should have been.
But he was gone. Running down the dark alley opening onto Regent Street. Buffy was immediately after him, sprinting out into the street as the vampire rounded the corner near Lillywhites into Piccadilly Circus. Cussing under her breath at having to follow the idiot through a crowded square, she pushed herself to pick up speed. Dodging tourists taking photos of the neon signs in the dark and hopping the guard rail between the sidewalk and the street busy with cars, she began to gain on the vampire.
She'd almost reached him when he leapt into the air onto the top level of an open double-decker bus stopped at a traffic signal. The few passengers in the top level didn't seem to notice as he hopped across the row of seats and leapt down the other side to the ground, out of sight of Buffy. Horns blared as she continued through the busy interchange to the other side of the road and through the crowds, trying to catch a glimpse of the retreating vermin.
The TARDIS set down with an unceremonious thud on the pavement. The door popped open on impact and the Doctor stumbled out. He hiccupped and chuckled as he and Rupert Giles, arm in arm, sat down on the curb with a flop. Giles held the bottle of amber colored liquid out to the Doctor who shook his head. Shrugging, Giles took another drink and sighed.
"It's all so tedious these days. With the current crop of Slayers already mobile there's little to do but coordinate the yearly gathering."
"Ah, yes. So Buffy is indeed in town then?"
"Yes, yes. She and Xander are in from Scotland and she's very testy these days let me tell you." He took another sip from the bottle.
The Doctor watched, bleary-eyed and smiling. "Women are magnificent creatures, aren't they? They can break your heart without even trying. And then when you -"
He was cut off in mid-sentence by the slapping of running shoe soles and the hasty passing of someone behind them. The movement set them both off balance and they swayed sideways, still arm in arm, on the curb with a laugh.
"Bloody he-," Giles started and was also cut off as another body hurtled toward them, coming to a stop a few feet away.
"Where did it go? Giles?" Buffy demanded.
"What's that?" Giles asked.
"The Loch Ness Monster, Giles," she said sarcastically then muttered, "Of all the times to be drunk."
The Doctor turned slightly to see her as she looked away down the alley for the vampire. As she turned, her blonde hair caught the moonlight and suddenly he was looking at Rose. Rose laughing. Rose's face turned up in awe at the meteor shower over Primus 34. Rose… It sobered him some and he began to stand up.
The blue Police Box was stationed in almost the exact center of the alley. The other end of the alley was a blank wall. She'd seen the vampire run down here. It hadn't come running back out so it must have gone into the Police Box. He really was an idiot, she thought.
Buffy reached for the door to the TARDIS which stood slightly ajar. She had it partially open when the Doctor brushed her side, standing a bit unsteadily at her elbow. "Curiosity killed the cat, you know."
"But satisfaction brought it back," Giles said from the curb and burst into a wry laugh.
"Ok. We can be formally introduced after I kill that bloodsucker," Buffy mumbled, trying to gently move the Doctor who was now blocking her entrance into the TARDIS by casually leaning against the door.
"Well, I'm the Doctor," he said with a grin, offering his hand.
Buffy ignored his hand and pushed him a bit more forcefully, shouldering herself inside. And cussed loudly.
It was not a phone booth like she'd thought. It was larger inside than out, that was for certain. In the center of the room was a large glowing green core surrounded by a buttoned panel and at the far end, a archway that led presumably further into the structure. The vampire was not in this room so he must have gone through that door.
Giles got waveringly to his feet and pointed with the bottom of the bottle at Buffy. "See what I meant? Testy."
The light from the street end of the alley darkened suddenly and Giles glanced quickly in that direction as the Doctor slipped inside the TARDIS after Buffy. The sight of twenty or more vampires advancing down the alley toward him sobered him enough to trip toward the door of the blue box. He fell inside, kicking at the door behind him to close it as the first vampires reached it.
The Doctor whirled around, as did Buffy at the sound of heavy bodies thudding against the door. "What would that be now?" the Doctor asked.
"Trouble," Buffy answered grimly, eying the windows in the double entry doors where snarling fanged faces appeared and disappeared.
The Doctor raised his eyebrows and Giles mouthed "vampires" with a silly smile.
"A cadre of the holy undead? Outside the TARDIS? Well I'll be."
Buffy's eyes flicked toward the Doctor. "It was a set up. We're trapped."
"No worries!" the Doctor piped. He helped Giles to his feet and lightly propelled the man toward the center console. "You know what to do, Ripper."
"The console is really meant for 6 people but the most I've had is 3 at a time so far," the Doctor said some time later, explaining a bit about his own origins even though Buffy wasn't completely focused.
He and Giles had considerably sobered from their boozy jaunt to the Renaissance which, as it turned out, was a yearly trip for both the Watcher and the Time Lord. Buffy was slightly amused by their camaraderie as they sang ancient pub songs, sending the TARDIS in brash circles through time and space.
Which was something that was beginning to make her mind hurt. Time and space in a little blue box that was much larger inside than it was out. Still, if the Senior Partners of Wolfram and Hart could send the entirety of Los Angeles to a hell dimension because of the defiance of Angel and his team, she guessed a time-traveling, nameless alien with a spatially impossible blue box was par for the course. There were more critical matters to consider now.
Like the fact that there were a few nasty bloodsuckers still alive, clinging to the outside of the box as it sped along. That was the reason they hadn't stopped anywhere yet. None of them was willing to set the TARDIS down anywhere the leeches might be able to escape into a population before they could get out and neutralize them. The problem with meandering through space and time with no set destination had fast become that the vampires outside were beginning to get accustomed to the vacuum around the box as it flew. It had become apparent that because their bodies healed so quickly, they also evolved rather quickly to survive. They were getting more powerful and already they were forcing the Doctor and Giles to make non-stop corrections at the console to keep the TARDIS from pitching into a planet or something worse along the way.
Buffy had set about making stakes out of anything she could find in the Wardrobe, a massive, multi-level room featuring a metal spiral staircase between levels set down the corridor from the console room. It featured quite a few closets, dressers, bookshelves and a\ There were so many hallways and doors in this place that she knew she didn't have time to even think about looking for the vampire who had run inside earlier. Still she kept vigilant as she worked.
"That didn't sound good," Buffy sniped as the TARDIS groaned loudly around them. She held fast to the railing as the console room tipped and shimmied.
"They're disrupting the flight path too greatly now." The Doctor danced around the console in his Chuck's, which had also amused Buffy before they were all being thrown around the console room.
"We can't keep up the corrections!" Giles shouted, gripping the console with white knuckles as the TARDIS bucked and alarms sounded with flashing lights.
"Going to have to set it down," the Doctor called over the noise.
"You think?" Buffy retorted.
The console beneath the Doctor's fingers suddenly shot up sparks and he jumped, sucking his finger. "Ohhh yeah. Time to set down."
The alarms were silent now. No flashing lights. All was still. And completely dark.
Buffy moaned softly and rubbed her wrist which had twisted when the TARDIS had stopped (landed?) and slowly got to her feet.
"Giles? Doctor?" she called out. "Where are we?"
"Oh not good," came the reply.
She could see him then in the faint glow of an auxiliary light on the console. He had his sonic screwdriver out, the little metallic instrument buzzing, but his face was grim.
"What's not good?" she asked as she tried to force her eyes to become accustomed to the lack of light so she could find Giles.
"It's going to take days to repair."
"Giles?" Buffy called again.
It took her a long moment of feeling blindly to reach him. Giles' head bled as he lay motionless on the floor. She could smell the blood and instinctively covered the wound with her hand.
"He's hurt," she said to the Doctor.
The Doctor knelt beside her and shone a penlight across Giles' face. "Hm. He doesn't look too bad. Help me take him to the infirmary. We'll bandage him up good as new and I'll set to working on the TARDIS."
They'd locked Giles inside the infirmary after a thorough check that the vampire who'd gotten in earlier was not hiding inside. "When I get the TARDIS back online, I'll be able to figure out exactly where that bugger is hiding. Until then, sit tight."
"Wait, what about the vampires outside? Where exactly are we?"
"Sun Storm 12. First ever flying arcology, in the year 4236. Glad I remembered it when I did! Its mission was to find a new Earth to colonize. But there aren't any humans here anymore, not since the doomsday virus they brought wiped them out. Bad karma, that was. So those vampires shouldn't be a problem."
"You said they wouldn't be a problem."
"Ah right, that I did," the Doctor said with a sheepish smile.
Buffy gritted her teeth to keep from smiling back at him. In the day and a half they'd spent working together on the TARDIS she'd begun to realize that his perpetual sunny disposition, especially in the face of adversity, was catching. Just now it was both charming and frustrating. They still hadn't found the vampire inside the TARDIS and Buffy was loathe to leave Giles, who was recovering slowly in dizzy disorientation, alone and venture outside the blue box looking for spare parts around the space ship.
"Right. So if we have to go out there, we're going to have to fight. They've been at the door or at least near it for the past 36 hours."
"That's true," he said coming to stand beside her in front of the double doors leading out of the TARDIS. He sighed, breathing in briefly the light scent of her and suddenly he was seeing Rose again. Rose smiling at him. Rose kissing his face shield for good luck before he descended into the pit to fight the Beast. Rose's tears on the beach that day not so long ago…
"Hello?" Buffy snapped her fingers. "Where did you go?"
"Sorry," he said in a low, solemn voice. Then just as though it hadn't happened, he brightened and smiled infectiously at her. "Time for a fight then, I think. You ready?"
"Always," she answered, smiling back at him.
After they'd gotten the lights on inside again with the back up generator, they had been able to look outside and see that the TARDIS had materialized in a small alcove of gray metal machinery, alight with blinking buttons and display units. At the end of the long hall beyond the alcove was a set of tall double doors. The Doctor decided they must be somewhere near the docking apparatus of the ship and the doors at the end of the hall led to the arcology, a hybrid of ecology and architecture meant to allow man to live harmoniously with nature.
Just outside, in the alcove, six vampires waited. As they walked out the first one gave no warning before pouncing on Buffy with a hissing laugh. He was heavier and harder muscled than any vampire she'd fought before. Still she managed to throw him off with a chop to his wind pipe.
The Doctor shouted as the second and third sprung at him. He held out his sonic screwdriver and zapped one, sending it sprawling to the ground, twitching. The second was caught by a swift roundhouse kick from Buffy, taking out the first two and the fourth who had advanced more cautiously.
His face was pure exhilaration, Buffy noticed, as they fought. He zapped the fifth with his screwdriver and as it fell, he laughed and Buffy tossed him a stake from her belt. The sixth vampire ran as Buffy staked the first, watching it burst into ashes at her feet.
The Doctor knelt to stake the vampire at his feet as another tumbled back from a solid kick to his middle from Buffy, tripping backward over the Doctor's kneeling form. In one, quick move he staked both in succession. "Fancy that. No mess!" he said and stood up, right as one of the two remaining vampires threw a wild punch, missing Buffy but clipping the Doctor squarely in the jaw. "Rather rude," he gasped, reeling back as the demonic being rushed at him. He raised an arm in front of himself but the vampire burst to ashes as Buffy slammed a stake through its heart.
The last vampire lay motionless on the ground, still stunned from the initial blast of the Doctor's screwdriver. As he began to come to she raced toward him and pushed the toe of her boot into his throat. The vampire sputtered out a choked growl, trying to get out a threat.
Buffy cast a quick glance at the Doctor. "Are you ok?"
The Doctor rubbed his jaw and his eyes twinkled. "Of course. But one of them got away."
The vampire gave a strangled laugh and Buffy glared at it. "Who set me up?" she demanded, letting up a little so he could answer.
"That's the least of your worries now, sweetie. There's an army on this ship now," the vampire smirked.
"An army of what? There aren't any humans on this ship anymore," the Doctor said.
"Bunch of weird white squid-faced things. All docile and dead helpful. Even after you sink your teeth in. What'd you think we ate while you was playing fix it in there?"
"Oh no," breathed the Doctor. "How could I have not thought about that. Everyone's got an Ood in the 43rd century. They must've all brought theirs on board and when the virus wiped out the humans no one thought it necessary to rescue the Ood. Just left them here floating in quarantine."
"How many would there be?" Buffy asked, an edge of fear in her voice.
The Doctor muttered to himself as he calculated. "100,000 humans at the start. And I'm sure they would have bred the Ood over the years as their own population grew. 66 years before the virus and 142 after." He counted something on his fingers then looked at Buffy. "It's a good possibility there's close to a million. Or more."
"How many of you survived the trip?" Buffy demanded of the vampire, crushing her boot into his wind pipe with anger. If there had been only 6 there might be a chance they hadn't converted the entire Ood population yet.
The vampire held up 10 fingers.
The Doctor shouted and suddenly Buffy felt the weight of a body slamming into hers. Her head hit the floor with a hard crack. Everything went black.
She wasn't out long but he'd had to fend for himself when she'd hit her head and as a result, he'd ashed the vampire she'd choked with her boot immediately and the vampire who'd hidden inside the TARDIS and surprised them was now skewered through the shoulder on a bent metal rod near the ship's service panel. He writhed and spat curses.
He had pulled her inside the doors of the TARDIS and locked them. He was watching her quietly when she opened her eyes, his face a struggle between concern and grim determination. He touched her check gently with one cold hand and she groaned softly at the headache spreading out across the side of her head and face.
"I guess we won't be fixing the TARDIS then? Not with all the vampire Ood, was it?, out there."
She stood up, taking his hand even though she didn't need it. It felt safe and at the moment she wasn't feeling safety anywhere else. She was good. She could hold her own but not against a million vampires. There was no way it could be done.
"The main thing is getting the engine back on line. I need a burst of power which I was hoping to get from the nuclear reactors that used to run this place."
"What about the vampire Ood?"
"It won't take them long to figure out how to use the life pods to get out of here and find nearby planets to feed on. We have to destroy them somehow."
"But we can't fight them all. And we can't blow this place up until the TARDIS is on line again. So we're screwed."
The Doctor half-smiled at her. "Screwed? That a technical term?" he asked impishly, getting her to smile in spite of herself.
"Something like that," she answered, leaning against him slightly.
"Oh, we're not necessarily screwed," he said in a voice that was both weary and hopeful. "I've got a plan."
Giles stood uncertainly against the railing, watching the Doctor and Buffy work beneath the console with an array of alien technology and leafing through a large leather bound book of star charts. He was still dizzy so he hadn't asked for details or explanations. Instead he studied the specifications of the nearest white dwarf star and listened to the vampire snarling outside with a certain perverse satisfaction.
"All right. That's it for in here. Now we need the service panel out there," the Doctor said, sliding out from beneath the console, face covered in black oily smudges.
"Right," Buffy said, also sliding out from under the console, her face a matching mess of dark smears. "I'll cover you as best I can and Giles will be ready to open the doors for us when we get back."
She caught sight of the Doctor's dirty face and suddenly felt girlish. Away from everything that had forced her to be tough and cold, she was beginning to feel the old pangs of wishing she were just a normal girl again. His optimistic charm made her feel like being very feminine. So impulsively she leaned over and kissed the Doctor's cheek. "For good luck," she said and turned away to stand up as his eyebrows raised.
Giles chuckled then coughed as she gave him a withering look. "Right," he said. "Back to it."
As they'd worked, four Ood had taken residence outside the TARDIS between it and the service panel. They had just worked out how to free the angry vampire when Buffy and the Doctor burst out into the hall, stakes raised. The Ood did not attack. They only formed a physical barrier, keeping the Doctor and Buffy at bay as the vampire raced down the hall and out of sight.
Buffy shrugged. The vampire was toast in a few minutes anyway. She turned her attention to the Ood who stood passively side by side, parting only to allow the Doctor by. As he walked past them he studied their faces. Their eyes were clear and focused. No signs of anything wrong. He stopped and turned to Buffy.
"Yeah, I know," she said before he could speak. "They don't seem to be very … vampire-y."
"They don't have communicators, this lot," the Doctor said thoughtfully. "They're natural Ood. See the hind-brain here?" He indicated the outer brain attached to the tentacles of one of the Ood.
"What does that mean?" Buffy asked, eyes flittering down the hall in the direction the vampire had run.
"Nothing, I suppose," he said. "The Ood are psychic, the natural ones are connected through the hive mind back on their home planet. If any of them were infected with the same nasty bloodsucking disease as your human vampires I think they'd be showing signs of it."
"Right. So that means we can't really destroy this place because we'd be destroying them too."
"It also means my plan won't work to power the TARDIS," he scratched his head and made a face. "Looks like we're stu-"
The Ood shifted suddenly, violently. The Ood nearest the Doctor raised one hand and the color began to drain from the Doctor's face. The Ood's eyes were red now. Bright and malevolent. He clawed at his own throat, spluttering, as Buffy sprang to action.
With one kick she knocked the Ood with the raised hand to the floor. Immediately the Doctor was released and fell to his knees. The other three leered in at her, red eyes gleaming with hatred. She shoved them aside and grabbed the Doctor's hand, pulling him to his feet. "The panel, Doctor! Now!"
Then the air in her throat caught and her lungs constricted. She clawed at her neck but found no hand. There was only the glassy red eyes of an Ood as it closed in on her, his face inches from her own. She felt a searing burn in her mind and words were forced into her thoughts as she struggled for air.
We will not let you do this. He heard your plans. Your life is forfeit to us now. Die.
She felt her knees begin to give way. Reaching down with trembling fingers she tried to prize a stake from her belt but she couldn't close her fist tight enough and it fell to the floor.
The girp on her throat tightened and she sank to her knees. Blackness fringed the edges of her vision. Still she fought, fumbling for another stake as her brain burned hotter with forced thoughts. This time they were images of herself slowly dying as the psychic monsters joined together, two at a time to suffocate both her and the Doctor.
"No," she squeaked, closing her eyes but she couldn't block out the images. She couldn't block out the sounds of struggle as the Doctor attempted to work the service panel in spite of the renewed choke hold. Tears ran down her cheeks as she sank downward. Deeper and deeper into darkness now. Her body seemed to be light as a feather, floating.
Then with a startled gasp she felt the cold, hard floor beneath her and painfully she gulped air into her lungs. The vise grip was gone but it took a moment to reorient herself. There was shouting and a loud trilling sound coming from all around. Beside her, an Ood lay still, eyes wide and glassy. Dead.
Giles bent over her then. "Buffy? Are you alright?"
She nodded briefly, still pulling in long gasps of breath. Even before the black edges of her vision fully receded she was on her feet, ready to fight. But the Ood were all on the ground. Dead. Each with an arrow somewhere piercing its body.
Giles held an old, rustic crossbow from the Wardrobe in one hand. The Doctor was frenetically pushing buttons on the service panel. The shrill alarm wailing around them made Buffy nauseous but she swallowed back bile and stumbled toward the two men at the panel. The Doctor smiled at her over his shoulder and rubbed his throat with one hand as he turned to fully face her.
"That's it then. Back in the TARDIS. We don't have much time and I think we've got company coming."
Buffy glanced down the hall in time to see a large number of Ood spilling from the tall doors at the other end.
"Run!" the Doctor shouted.
Buffy held tightly to the railing beside Giles as all natural gases were expelled from the Sun Storm 12 into the nearby star, forcing it into overload, then supernova. The explosion was deafening. Suddenly they were moving, the bright orange fury of fire outside making her grateful the TARDIS had a very protective shielding.
A low whirring sound began to build and the green glow of the central console slowly returned in sickly shades as they hurtled through the fiery debris of the Sun Storm 12. Then everything was smooth and easy again.
The Doctor danced in around the console in victory. "We did it!" he cried, grabbing Buffy's hand and twirling her around and then to him. As though she were Rose. He suddenly stopped, his expression faltering as he saw Buffy's discomfort at the closeness. She seemed to shrug it off visibly and then smile widely at him.
"Yes, we did. Home now? Please?" she said, relaxing as Giles shook hands heartily with the Doctor in celebration.
The Doctor watched her wander away into the Wardrobe. She wasn't Rose. Not even similar really. Except for the golden hair and the soft, sweet way they both smelled. Oh they were both strong. But there was a sadness in Buffy that Rose'd never had. Rose had always been open and ready for anything new. Life had beaten down Buffy, hardened her. He'd taken his own beating. He knew what it looked like. But he wasn't hard. Not yet.
He suddenly wished she wasn't so ready to be home. He thought if they traveled together a while that maybe they could heal each other in some ways. Or at least try.
Giles put a hand on the Doctor's arm. "Do you think maybe Rose would want you to ask her?"
"Ask who what?" the Doctor asked, strolling to the console and pushing a few buttons with an air of light-heartedness about him again.
Giles chuckled at the dodge. "You may have been around a lot longer than I have but I think I may be the one with more experience in this arena, old friend."
"Ah well. Perhaps," the Doctor answered thoughtfully. "Still, the lady says home. Home it is!"
Fandoms: Doctor Who / Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Pairing/Character: Ten, Buffy, Giles (hazzy glimpse of Ten/Rose)
Word Count: 4760
Rating: PG-13
Summary: When your old Watcher is friends with a Time Lord, things can get very interesting.
Mod Notes: This fic was written for uptheapples but, as always, feedback from everyone is appreciated. The author will be revealed after the poll, at which point they can respond to any comments on this post.
London, West End near Piccadilly Circus
Present
Buffy tossed her head back and laughed, breathing in fresh night air. "You're making this too easy," she said, throwing a swift upper cut to the pasty white chin.
The vampire grinned malevolently, baring his fangs and squeezing his already unpleasantly creased face into even more wrinkles.
"You work up the adrenaline and I get a high AND a meal." He reached for her throat with sharply clawed fingers.
"Seriously. I'm barely breaking a sweat."
She laughed again, feeling the satisfying snap as her kick broke his arm and sent him careening into a pile of black garbage bags beside a dumpster. She had just enough time to draw back into a defensive stance, fists raised, weight resting on the balls of her feet, before the vampire was back up.
Cradling his wounded arm against his chest, he threw a punch that went wild as Buffy side-stepped him. She spun to face him as he recovered, spinning back toward her. He hurled another punch and Buffy grabbed his wounded arm, holding him in place as she landed a kick to his stomach and then another to his left knee with a sickening crack of bone.
With a howl, the vampire pulled himself away. Buffy swung a stake up from her belt holster but he was quicker, knocking it away and twisting her arm behind her back. She winced as he pulled her arm tighter then sent her reeling forward toward the dumpster. She kept her balance though and whipped around to face him again with a guttural sound of triumph, a stake thrust exactly where his heart should have been.
But he was gone. Running down the dark alley opening onto Regent Street. Buffy was immediately after him, sprinting out into the street as the vampire rounded the corner near Lillywhites into Piccadilly Circus. Cussing under her breath at having to follow the idiot through a crowded square, she pushed herself to pick up speed. Dodging tourists taking photos of the neon signs in the dark and hopping the guard rail between the sidewalk and the street busy with cars, she began to gain on the vampire.
She'd almost reached him when he leapt into the air onto the top level of an open double-decker bus stopped at a traffic signal. The few passengers in the top level didn't seem to notice as he hopped across the row of seats and leapt down the other side to the ground, out of sight of Buffy. Horns blared as she continued through the busy interchange to the other side of the road and through the crowds, trying to catch a glimpse of the retreating vermin.
The TARDIS set down with an unceremonious thud on the pavement. The door popped open on impact and the Doctor stumbled out. He hiccupped and chuckled as he and Rupert Giles, arm in arm, sat down on the curb with a flop. Giles held the bottle of amber colored liquid out to the Doctor who shook his head. Shrugging, Giles took another drink and sighed.
"It's all so tedious these days. With the current crop of Slayers already mobile there's little to do but coordinate the yearly gathering."
"Ah, yes. So Buffy is indeed in town then?"
"Yes, yes. She and Xander are in from Scotland and she's very testy these days let me tell you." He took another sip from the bottle.
The Doctor watched, bleary-eyed and smiling. "Women are magnificent creatures, aren't they? They can break your heart without even trying. And then when you -"
He was cut off in mid-sentence by the slapping of running shoe soles and the hasty passing of someone behind them. The movement set them both off balance and they swayed sideways, still arm in arm, on the curb with a laugh.
"Bloody he-," Giles started and was also cut off as another body hurtled toward them, coming to a stop a few feet away.
"Where did it go? Giles?" Buffy demanded.
"What's that?" Giles asked.
"The Loch Ness Monster, Giles," she said sarcastically then muttered, "Of all the times to be drunk."
The Doctor turned slightly to see her as she looked away down the alley for the vampire. As she turned, her blonde hair caught the moonlight and suddenly he was looking at Rose. Rose laughing. Rose's face turned up in awe at the meteor shower over Primus 34. Rose… It sobered him some and he began to stand up.
The blue Police Box was stationed in almost the exact center of the alley. The other end of the alley was a blank wall. She'd seen the vampire run down here. It hadn't come running back out so it must have gone into the Police Box. He really was an idiot, she thought.
Buffy reached for the door to the TARDIS which stood slightly ajar. She had it partially open when the Doctor brushed her side, standing a bit unsteadily at her elbow. "Curiosity killed the cat, you know."
"But satisfaction brought it back," Giles said from the curb and burst into a wry laugh.
"Ok. We can be formally introduced after I kill that bloodsucker," Buffy mumbled, trying to gently move the Doctor who was now blocking her entrance into the TARDIS by casually leaning against the door.
"Well, I'm the Doctor," he said with a grin, offering his hand.
Buffy ignored his hand and pushed him a bit more forcefully, shouldering herself inside. And cussed loudly.
It was not a phone booth like she'd thought. It was larger inside than out, that was for certain. In the center of the room was a large glowing green core surrounded by a buttoned panel and at the far end, a archway that led presumably further into the structure. The vampire was not in this room so he must have gone through that door.
Giles got waveringly to his feet and pointed with the bottom of the bottle at Buffy. "See what I meant? Testy."
The light from the street end of the alley darkened suddenly and Giles glanced quickly in that direction as the Doctor slipped inside the TARDIS after Buffy. The sight of twenty or more vampires advancing down the alley toward him sobered him enough to trip toward the door of the blue box. He fell inside, kicking at the door behind him to close it as the first vampires reached it.
The Doctor whirled around, as did Buffy at the sound of heavy bodies thudding against the door. "What would that be now?" the Doctor asked.
"Trouble," Buffy answered grimly, eying the windows in the double entry doors where snarling fanged faces appeared and disappeared.
The Doctor raised his eyebrows and Giles mouthed "vampires" with a silly smile.
"A cadre of the holy undead? Outside the TARDIS? Well I'll be."
Buffy's eyes flicked toward the Doctor. "It was a set up. We're trapped."
"No worries!" the Doctor piped. He helped Giles to his feet and lightly propelled the man toward the center console. "You know what to do, Ripper."
"The console is really meant for 6 people but the most I've had is 3 at a time so far," the Doctor said some time later, explaining a bit about his own origins even though Buffy wasn't completely focused.
He and Giles had considerably sobered from their boozy jaunt to the Renaissance which, as it turned out, was a yearly trip for both the Watcher and the Time Lord. Buffy was slightly amused by their camaraderie as they sang ancient pub songs, sending the TARDIS in brash circles through time and space.
Which was something that was beginning to make her mind hurt. Time and space in a little blue box that was much larger inside than it was out. Still, if the Senior Partners of Wolfram and Hart could send the entirety of Los Angeles to a hell dimension because of the defiance of Angel and his team, she guessed a time-traveling, nameless alien with a spatially impossible blue box was par for the course. There were more critical matters to consider now.
Like the fact that there were a few nasty bloodsuckers still alive, clinging to the outside of the box as it sped along. That was the reason they hadn't stopped anywhere yet. None of them was willing to set the TARDIS down anywhere the leeches might be able to escape into a population before they could get out and neutralize them. The problem with meandering through space and time with no set destination had fast become that the vampires outside were beginning to get accustomed to the vacuum around the box as it flew. It had become apparent that because their bodies healed so quickly, they also evolved rather quickly to survive. They were getting more powerful and already they were forcing the Doctor and Giles to make non-stop corrections at the console to keep the TARDIS from pitching into a planet or something worse along the way.
Buffy had set about making stakes out of anything she could find in the Wardrobe, a massive, multi-level room featuring a metal spiral staircase between levels set down the corridor from the console room. It featured quite a few closets, dressers, bookshelves and a\ There were so many hallways and doors in this place that she knew she didn't have time to even think about looking for the vampire who had run inside earlier. Still she kept vigilant as she worked.
"That didn't sound good," Buffy sniped as the TARDIS groaned loudly around them. She held fast to the railing as the console room tipped and shimmied.
"They're disrupting the flight path too greatly now." The Doctor danced around the console in his Chuck's, which had also amused Buffy before they were all being thrown around the console room.
"We can't keep up the corrections!" Giles shouted, gripping the console with white knuckles as the TARDIS bucked and alarms sounded with flashing lights.
"Going to have to set it down," the Doctor called over the noise.
"You think?" Buffy retorted.
The console beneath the Doctor's fingers suddenly shot up sparks and he jumped, sucking his finger. "Ohhh yeah. Time to set down."
The alarms were silent now. No flashing lights. All was still. And completely dark.
Buffy moaned softly and rubbed her wrist which had twisted when the TARDIS had stopped (landed?) and slowly got to her feet.
"Giles? Doctor?" she called out. "Where are we?"
"Oh not good," came the reply.
She could see him then in the faint glow of an auxiliary light on the console. He had his sonic screwdriver out, the little metallic instrument buzzing, but his face was grim.
"What's not good?" she asked as she tried to force her eyes to become accustomed to the lack of light so she could find Giles.
"It's going to take days to repair."
"Giles?" Buffy called again.
It took her a long moment of feeling blindly to reach him. Giles' head bled as he lay motionless on the floor. She could smell the blood and instinctively covered the wound with her hand.
"He's hurt," she said to the Doctor.
The Doctor knelt beside her and shone a penlight across Giles' face. "Hm. He doesn't look too bad. Help me take him to the infirmary. We'll bandage him up good as new and I'll set to working on the TARDIS."
They'd locked Giles inside the infirmary after a thorough check that the vampire who'd gotten in earlier was not hiding inside. "When I get the TARDIS back online, I'll be able to figure out exactly where that bugger is hiding. Until then, sit tight."
"Wait, what about the vampires outside? Where exactly are we?"
"Sun Storm 12. First ever flying arcology, in the year 4236. Glad I remembered it when I did! Its mission was to find a new Earth to colonize. But there aren't any humans here anymore, not since the doomsday virus they brought wiped them out. Bad karma, that was. So those vampires shouldn't be a problem."
"You said they wouldn't be a problem."
"Ah right, that I did," the Doctor said with a sheepish smile.
Buffy gritted her teeth to keep from smiling back at him. In the day and a half they'd spent working together on the TARDIS she'd begun to realize that his perpetual sunny disposition, especially in the face of adversity, was catching. Just now it was both charming and frustrating. They still hadn't found the vampire inside the TARDIS and Buffy was loathe to leave Giles, who was recovering slowly in dizzy disorientation, alone and venture outside the blue box looking for spare parts around the space ship.
"Right. So if we have to go out there, we're going to have to fight. They've been at the door or at least near it for the past 36 hours."
"That's true," he said coming to stand beside her in front of the double doors leading out of the TARDIS. He sighed, breathing in briefly the light scent of her and suddenly he was seeing Rose again. Rose smiling at him. Rose kissing his face shield for good luck before he descended into the pit to fight the Beast. Rose's tears on the beach that day not so long ago…
"Hello?" Buffy snapped her fingers. "Where did you go?"
"Sorry," he said in a low, solemn voice. Then just as though it hadn't happened, he brightened and smiled infectiously at her. "Time for a fight then, I think. You ready?"
"Always," she answered, smiling back at him.
After they'd gotten the lights on inside again with the back up generator, they had been able to look outside and see that the TARDIS had materialized in a small alcove of gray metal machinery, alight with blinking buttons and display units. At the end of the long hall beyond the alcove was a set of tall double doors. The Doctor decided they must be somewhere near the docking apparatus of the ship and the doors at the end of the hall led to the arcology, a hybrid of ecology and architecture meant to allow man to live harmoniously with nature.
Just outside, in the alcove, six vampires waited. As they walked out the first one gave no warning before pouncing on Buffy with a hissing laugh. He was heavier and harder muscled than any vampire she'd fought before. Still she managed to throw him off with a chop to his wind pipe.
The Doctor shouted as the second and third sprung at him. He held out his sonic screwdriver and zapped one, sending it sprawling to the ground, twitching. The second was caught by a swift roundhouse kick from Buffy, taking out the first two and the fourth who had advanced more cautiously.
His face was pure exhilaration, Buffy noticed, as they fought. He zapped the fifth with his screwdriver and as it fell, he laughed and Buffy tossed him a stake from her belt. The sixth vampire ran as Buffy staked the first, watching it burst into ashes at her feet.
The Doctor knelt to stake the vampire at his feet as another tumbled back from a solid kick to his middle from Buffy, tripping backward over the Doctor's kneeling form. In one, quick move he staked both in succession. "Fancy that. No mess!" he said and stood up, right as one of the two remaining vampires threw a wild punch, missing Buffy but clipping the Doctor squarely in the jaw. "Rather rude," he gasped, reeling back as the demonic being rushed at him. He raised an arm in front of himself but the vampire burst to ashes as Buffy slammed a stake through its heart.
The last vampire lay motionless on the ground, still stunned from the initial blast of the Doctor's screwdriver. As he began to come to she raced toward him and pushed the toe of her boot into his throat. The vampire sputtered out a choked growl, trying to get out a threat.
Buffy cast a quick glance at the Doctor. "Are you ok?"
The Doctor rubbed his jaw and his eyes twinkled. "Of course. But one of them got away."
The vampire gave a strangled laugh and Buffy glared at it. "Who set me up?" she demanded, letting up a little so he could answer.
"That's the least of your worries now, sweetie. There's an army on this ship now," the vampire smirked.
"An army of what? There aren't any humans on this ship anymore," the Doctor said.
"Bunch of weird white squid-faced things. All docile and dead helpful. Even after you sink your teeth in. What'd you think we ate while you was playing fix it in there?"
"Oh no," breathed the Doctor. "How could I have not thought about that. Everyone's got an Ood in the 43rd century. They must've all brought theirs on board and when the virus wiped out the humans no one thought it necessary to rescue the Ood. Just left them here floating in quarantine."
"How many would there be?" Buffy asked, an edge of fear in her voice.
The Doctor muttered to himself as he calculated. "100,000 humans at the start. And I'm sure they would have bred the Ood over the years as their own population grew. 66 years before the virus and 142 after." He counted something on his fingers then looked at Buffy. "It's a good possibility there's close to a million. Or more."
"How many of you survived the trip?" Buffy demanded of the vampire, crushing her boot into his wind pipe with anger. If there had been only 6 there might be a chance they hadn't converted the entire Ood population yet.
The vampire held up 10 fingers.
The Doctor shouted and suddenly Buffy felt the weight of a body slamming into hers. Her head hit the floor with a hard crack. Everything went black.
She wasn't out long but he'd had to fend for himself when she'd hit her head and as a result, he'd ashed the vampire she'd choked with her boot immediately and the vampire who'd hidden inside the TARDIS and surprised them was now skewered through the shoulder on a bent metal rod near the ship's service panel. He writhed and spat curses.
He had pulled her inside the doors of the TARDIS and locked them. He was watching her quietly when she opened her eyes, his face a struggle between concern and grim determination. He touched her check gently with one cold hand and she groaned softly at the headache spreading out across the side of her head and face.
"I guess we won't be fixing the TARDIS then? Not with all the vampire Ood, was it?, out there."
She stood up, taking his hand even though she didn't need it. It felt safe and at the moment she wasn't feeling safety anywhere else. She was good. She could hold her own but not against a million vampires. There was no way it could be done.
"The main thing is getting the engine back on line. I need a burst of power which I was hoping to get from the nuclear reactors that used to run this place."
"What about the vampire Ood?"
"It won't take them long to figure out how to use the life pods to get out of here and find nearby planets to feed on. We have to destroy them somehow."
"But we can't fight them all. And we can't blow this place up until the TARDIS is on line again. So we're screwed."
The Doctor half-smiled at her. "Screwed? That a technical term?" he asked impishly, getting her to smile in spite of herself.
"Something like that," she answered, leaning against him slightly.
"Oh, we're not necessarily screwed," he said in a voice that was both weary and hopeful. "I've got a plan."
Giles stood uncertainly against the railing, watching the Doctor and Buffy work beneath the console with an array of alien technology and leafing through a large leather bound book of star charts. He was still dizzy so he hadn't asked for details or explanations. Instead he studied the specifications of the nearest white dwarf star and listened to the vampire snarling outside with a certain perverse satisfaction.
"All right. That's it for in here. Now we need the service panel out there," the Doctor said, sliding out from beneath the console, face covered in black oily smudges.
"Right," Buffy said, also sliding out from under the console, her face a matching mess of dark smears. "I'll cover you as best I can and Giles will be ready to open the doors for us when we get back."
She caught sight of the Doctor's dirty face and suddenly felt girlish. Away from everything that had forced her to be tough and cold, she was beginning to feel the old pangs of wishing she were just a normal girl again. His optimistic charm made her feel like being very feminine. So impulsively she leaned over and kissed the Doctor's cheek. "For good luck," she said and turned away to stand up as his eyebrows raised.
Giles chuckled then coughed as she gave him a withering look. "Right," he said. "Back to it."
As they'd worked, four Ood had taken residence outside the TARDIS between it and the service panel. They had just worked out how to free the angry vampire when Buffy and the Doctor burst out into the hall, stakes raised. The Ood did not attack. They only formed a physical barrier, keeping the Doctor and Buffy at bay as the vampire raced down the hall and out of sight.
Buffy shrugged. The vampire was toast in a few minutes anyway. She turned her attention to the Ood who stood passively side by side, parting only to allow the Doctor by. As he walked past them he studied their faces. Their eyes were clear and focused. No signs of anything wrong. He stopped and turned to Buffy.
"Yeah, I know," she said before he could speak. "They don't seem to be very … vampire-y."
"They don't have communicators, this lot," the Doctor said thoughtfully. "They're natural Ood. See the hind-brain here?" He indicated the outer brain attached to the tentacles of one of the Ood.
"What does that mean?" Buffy asked, eyes flittering down the hall in the direction the vampire had run.
"Nothing, I suppose," he said. "The Ood are psychic, the natural ones are connected through the hive mind back on their home planet. If any of them were infected with the same nasty bloodsucking disease as your human vampires I think they'd be showing signs of it."
"Right. So that means we can't really destroy this place because we'd be destroying them too."
"It also means my plan won't work to power the TARDIS," he scratched his head and made a face. "Looks like we're stu-"
The Ood shifted suddenly, violently. The Ood nearest the Doctor raised one hand and the color began to drain from the Doctor's face. The Ood's eyes were red now. Bright and malevolent. He clawed at his own throat, spluttering, as Buffy sprang to action.
With one kick she knocked the Ood with the raised hand to the floor. Immediately the Doctor was released and fell to his knees. The other three leered in at her, red eyes gleaming with hatred. She shoved them aside and grabbed the Doctor's hand, pulling him to his feet. "The panel, Doctor! Now!"
Then the air in her throat caught and her lungs constricted. She clawed at her neck but found no hand. There was only the glassy red eyes of an Ood as it closed in on her, his face inches from her own. She felt a searing burn in her mind and words were forced into her thoughts as she struggled for air.
We will not let you do this. He heard your plans. Your life is forfeit to us now. Die.
She felt her knees begin to give way. Reaching down with trembling fingers she tried to prize a stake from her belt but she couldn't close her fist tight enough and it fell to the floor.
The girp on her throat tightened and she sank to her knees. Blackness fringed the edges of her vision. Still she fought, fumbling for another stake as her brain burned hotter with forced thoughts. This time they were images of herself slowly dying as the psychic monsters joined together, two at a time to suffocate both her and the Doctor.
"No," she squeaked, closing her eyes but she couldn't block out the images. She couldn't block out the sounds of struggle as the Doctor attempted to work the service panel in spite of the renewed choke hold. Tears ran down her cheeks as she sank downward. Deeper and deeper into darkness now. Her body seemed to be light as a feather, floating.
Then with a startled gasp she felt the cold, hard floor beneath her and painfully she gulped air into her lungs. The vise grip was gone but it took a moment to reorient herself. There was shouting and a loud trilling sound coming from all around. Beside her, an Ood lay still, eyes wide and glassy. Dead.
Giles bent over her then. "Buffy? Are you alright?"
She nodded briefly, still pulling in long gasps of breath. Even before the black edges of her vision fully receded she was on her feet, ready to fight. But the Ood were all on the ground. Dead. Each with an arrow somewhere piercing its body.
Giles held an old, rustic crossbow from the Wardrobe in one hand. The Doctor was frenetically pushing buttons on the service panel. The shrill alarm wailing around them made Buffy nauseous but she swallowed back bile and stumbled toward the two men at the panel. The Doctor smiled at her over his shoulder and rubbed his throat with one hand as he turned to fully face her.
"That's it then. Back in the TARDIS. We don't have much time and I think we've got company coming."
Buffy glanced down the hall in time to see a large number of Ood spilling from the tall doors at the other end.
"Run!" the Doctor shouted.
Buffy held tightly to the railing beside Giles as all natural gases were expelled from the Sun Storm 12 into the nearby star, forcing it into overload, then supernova. The explosion was deafening. Suddenly they were moving, the bright orange fury of fire outside making her grateful the TARDIS had a very protective shielding.
A low whirring sound began to build and the green glow of the central console slowly returned in sickly shades as they hurtled through the fiery debris of the Sun Storm 12. Then everything was smooth and easy again.
The Doctor danced in around the console in victory. "We did it!" he cried, grabbing Buffy's hand and twirling her around and then to him. As though she were Rose. He suddenly stopped, his expression faltering as he saw Buffy's discomfort at the closeness. She seemed to shrug it off visibly and then smile widely at him.
"Yes, we did. Home now? Please?" she said, relaxing as Giles shook hands heartily with the Doctor in celebration.
The Doctor watched her wander away into the Wardrobe. She wasn't Rose. Not even similar really. Except for the golden hair and the soft, sweet way they both smelled. Oh they were both strong. But there was a sadness in Buffy that Rose'd never had. Rose had always been open and ready for anything new. Life had beaten down Buffy, hardened her. He'd taken his own beating. He knew what it looked like. But he wasn't hard. Not yet.
He suddenly wished she wasn't so ready to be home. He thought if they traveled together a while that maybe they could heal each other in some ways. Or at least try.
Giles put a hand on the Doctor's arm. "Do you think maybe Rose would want you to ask her?"
"Ask who what?" the Doctor asked, strolling to the console and pushing a few buttons with an air of light-heartedness about him again.
Giles chuckled at the dodge. "You may have been around a lot longer than I have but I think I may be the one with more experience in this arena, old friend."
"Ah well. Perhaps," the Doctor answered thoughtfully. "Still, the lady says home. Home it is!"