Fic: "Full of Stars" (1/9) [Firefly/Angel crossover]
ladyemma, please don't hate me; a considerable chunk of my flist is having a bad night, and the only thing I can do for anybody is give them fic, and this is the only finished thing I have...::flails:: I still definitely want your comments on the rest of it, and may reshape this section before archiving it based on them.
So. The long-hinted-at "Fred on Serenity" fic. Cheers. ::hugs to those on flist that need it:: I hope this does something to brighten your nights.
The rest of it is in the memories here. Please note that I accidentally archived a few chapters out of order.
The world narrowed down to heat and agony, tearing her from the inside, dragging her into the dark.
“Wesley, why can’t I stay?”
Too much pain, too much dark. She flung herself away from hands that were hurting her with their gentleness and gathered her breath to scream.
Darkness. Silence.
She was breathing so fast that it hurt her throat, and on the heels of that thought she realized that the rest of the pain was gone. There was no raw ache of being melted alive- in fact, she was cold. She was shivering, and it was dark, and as the rasp of her panicked breathing eased, she realized that it wasn’t silent after all. She could hear muffled male voices.
“Mal, I thought you said there were five crates.”
“There should be.”
“There’s six. And this one ain’t marked like the others.”
The second voice let loose a burst of words that she didn’t understand, sharp-edged and lilting and foreign-familiar at once. “I’m developing a real dislike for unmarked boxes on my ship. Open it up.”
There was a squeal of metal on wood, and she tensed as a streak of light appeared over her head. She looked up as the dark peeled back, revealing a man’s face. He stared down at her in shock, then jumped back, shouting in that not-quite-alien language. “Ruttin’ hell, Mal, there’s a girl in there!”
“Another girl in a box?” A third voice, and if she wasn’t shaking so hard, she’d sit up and try to put faces with them. “What is it with girls in boxes around here?”
A new face appeared over her, tight-jawed and angry. She opened her mouth to apologize- although she still wasn’t quite sure what she’d done, or how, or why- but yet another man stepped up next to him. It must be kind of crowded out there. He was dark-skinned and white-haired, and he, at least, was smiling.
He reached down to take her hand and helped her to her feet. “Hello, Fred. Welcome to Serenity.”
*****
“This isn’t fair.” She sounded whiny and petty and childish, even to herself, but at the moment she didn’t care. She was sitting on the floor of a spaceship (spaceship), hundreds of light-years (and just plain old years) from herself, and the man who’d opened the box was aiming a large, ugly gun at her. If ever there was a situation where childishness was justified, this was it. She already had her knees drawn up to her chest and her face buried in her hands; if she thought she could get away with it, she would’ve held her breath till she turned blue.
The dark-skinned man, Book, rested a sympathetic hand on her arm. "Life isn't fair," he murmured. She peered at him through her fingers.
"Am I in a coma? Or a fugue state, maybe…are you a figment of my subconscious? Books were awfully important to me, after all."
He chuckled and pulled his hand away. "I assure you, Miss Burkle, you're quite awake."
"See, that’s the tricky thing." She closed her eyes and remembered the agony of an hour before. "I was dying of some demon-mummy-fever, and then I woke up here, in a box. We have some issues of temporal mechanics to deal with."
He smiled at her, all paternal and kindly. Professor Seidel used to look at her that way, so it really wasn’t surprising that it just made her suspicious. "The universe wasn't done with you yet, that's all. Your talents are needed here."
"What do you know about it?” She got to her feet- carefully, unsteadily; she was still a bit wobbly from her little jaunt across the space-time continuum. “I’m guessing you’re not a vampire, because those nice people over there with the guns are still alive. And probably not a demon, because they usually don’t care much about the universe’s grand plans. But I’m also guessing that you’re not human. We can play 20 Questions, or you can just tell me.”
"I am a Guide."
"A guide named Book? You’re a guidebook?” She blinked.
“An agent of the Powers That Be, an intermediary for contacting mortals.” He smiled and reached out to touch her again, and she took a step back. No making friends here on the crazy side of things, not till she knew what was going on. He folded his hands in his lap. “Angel had a Guide for a brief time, you know. Did he ever mention Whistler?”
“No.” She tucked her hands away in the sleeves of the sweater the girl with the nice smile had given her. Kaylee, that was her name; she was standing at the far end of the room now with the rest of the crew of this ship, studying Fred and Book with a varying mix of interest and fear. Oh, and anger, don’t forget anger- especially from the one named Mal. He’d even taken the sweater exchange personally. “It might’ve been nice if they’d let me read the guidebook before they brought me here, you know.”
"I understand it's confusing," Book murmured. She rolled her eyes and hugged her arms tightly around herself, making a firm promise not to start crying.
"What are you doing here, anyway, Mr. Guide? Just waiting for me?"
He smiled faintly and looked over at the crew. "You've never met a group more in need of guiding."
*****
Kaylee not only kept Fred from freezing, but also seemed to be the only one who didn’t want to see her starve. “Maybe we can save the whole execution question for after we eat,” she’d said, turning a sweet smile on Mal, whose grumpy, brooding air was starting to remind Fred of Angel. “Even convicts get a last meal, Captain, and we don’t know for sure that she did anything wrong.”
Now they were all sitting around a big wooden table, picking at bowls of what Kaylee just called protein. Well, Fred was picking. She was pretty sure the tree-bark enchiladas in Pylea had tasted better than this.
She’d finally figured out that the other language they kept muttering to each other in was Chinese. Since her grasp of that tongue was limited to ordering takeout- oh, she needed to stop thinking about starchy food if she was ever going to finish this protein stuff- she sat in anxious silence throughout the meal and tried to figure out everyone’s name.
Book finished his explanation of the actual history of the universe and the role of the Powers. The response was a resounding silence.
"So you ain't a Shepherd." That was the man with the guns, who'd almost smiled when she introduced herself as Fred. Jayne meeting Fred; any other day, that would be funny. "You ain't even human. You lied to us." Definite flash of hurt feelings, there...what was it about the tough guys that made them carry their emotions right up on the surface? Vicious hunter with an open face, just like Connor-
Connor.
She choked on her protein, scrambling to her feet and striking out blindly as she suddenly became aware of an entire portion of her mind that had gone from foggy to agonizingly clear without her even noticing. Suddenly she remembered, she remembered everything-
"Ruttin' hell, she's having a fit," someone shouted, and heavy hands tried to restrain her. She lashed out and scrambled away from them, grabbing her head and crying out in horror at what had happened, what they'd done, the way they'd all just forgotten...
Gentle hands settled on hers; not trying to hold her down, but just making contact. She trembled under them, but they didn't move, and after a moment she opened her eyes. The skinny, wild-haired girl, River, who didn't have a job on the ship that Fred could fathom, was kneeling in front of her, smiling softly.
"Oh, good," she heard Jayne mutter. "The crazies are makin' friends."
"Not crazy," River said, squeezing Fred's hands softly. "Not now, anyway. There's too much- all the walls coming down- but she walks between worlds. She can take it." She glanced back over her shoulder and glared fiercely at Book. "You owe her answers, Preacher-man. You ripped her from her home." Her eyes flicked back to Fred, puzzled and compassionate. "Oh- from love?"
Fred stared at her, too stunned to speak, and the girl just smiled and squeezed her hands again. "I like math too," River whispered, like she was sharing a secret. "And Kaylee loves to build things. We can all be friends."
"You could if she was staying," the captain said curtly from his place by the door, "which she ain't."
"Mal," protested the beautiful dark-haired woman, whose place on the ship Fred also didn't quite understand. She was going to need a flowchart and a map to figure things out around here. "You can't just throw her out, this isn't even her universe if what they say is true-"
"Nobody tells me what to do on my own ship, not even those Powers That Be of hers," he snarled, glaring at the woman, Book, and Fred in turn. "If they're so interested in her, they'll take care of her themselves."
"Don't worry, Inara," Book said with a small, cold smile. "Not even Captain Reynolds can deny the will of the Powers."
"That’s not exactly a comfort," Fred said, finally finding her voice and getting unsteadily to her feet. That probably short-circuited Mal punching Book in the mouth, which wasn’t necessarily a good thing as far as she was concerned. "I’ve never seen any proof that the Powers care about humanity at all beyond screwing us over."
"You too, huh?" That was the blond one, Wash, who gave her a kind smile. She returned it as best she could, considering that all she wanted to do was curl up and cry.
"The Powers have plans for you, Fred," Book said. "You have a vital role to play- perhaps the pivotal one in humanity's salvation."
"Well, I never asked for that," she told him, and thought she saw a flicker of sympathy in the captain's eyes.
The only armed woman among them- and what was it with the women of this time being ridiculously beautiful?- cleared her throat. Fred felt a smile tugging at her lips after all at the way everyone came to attention at the sound. Clearly, this Zoe only spoke when she had something to say.
"Can't do anything till we put into port on Talbot anyway, Captain," she said. "Might as well not make any big decisions until then."
Mal stared at her for a moment, then nodded, and the look between them gave Fred a fresh stab of pain as she thought of Angel and Cordy. She closed her eyes.
"Are you all right?" She didn't recognize the voice, so it had to belong to the pale, skinny boy who'd hung back giving off palpable "don't notice and/or blame this trouble on me" vibes since she'd woken up in the box. Kaylee had waved in his direction and mentioned that he was a doctor. "Captain, I should take her to the infirmary and look her over, make sure she's all right."
"Must be the nicest part of bein' a doctor," Jayne muttered, rolling his eyes, "gettin' to drag all the girls off for a good goin'-over."
"It's my job, and I certainly didn't mean-" Simon stuttered heatedly.
"I was dying," Fred said flatly, and all eyes were back on her. Jayne's laughter cut off in his throat. "Before I...left home. Maybe I did die- it hurt so bad, and everything went dark, and then I woke up here."
"Did you bring plague onto my ship?" Mal demanded, glaring again. Didn’t anyone ever tell him his face might freeze like that?
"No," Book said calmly. “Don’t worry, Fred. Your mind and soul are entirely intact.”
She was really starting to hate his air of unruffled calm. Everyone else around here was fully ruffled, bedecked in ruffles, why couldn't he do the same? "What about in my own time? What happened there? Did I just disappear?"
“Whatever happened then,” the doctor cut in, “can be discussed later. Right now, I’m going to invoke my authority as medic-” he hesitated as Mal raised an eyebrow “-such as it is, and insist on an examination.”
She opened her mouth to protest, then caught the meaningful look he was giving her. He was trying to give her a reprieve, a few minute to catch her breath.
“That’s probably a good idea,” she said, managing a weak smile to let him know she understood. “Thank you.”
He glanced at the captain, who gave a sulky nod of permission. “This way, Miss Burkle,” the doctor murmured, guiding her with a gentle hand on her shoulder.
Behind them, River smiled and rolled her eyes. “It’s all going to be fine, you know,” she said, looking pointedly at Mal. “You shouldn’t get so upset about things. She walks with heroes.”
So. The long-hinted-at "Fred on Serenity" fic. Cheers. ::hugs to those on flist that need it:: I hope this does something to brighten your nights.
The rest of it is in the memories here. Please note that I accidentally archived a few chapters out of order.
The world narrowed down to heat and agony, tearing her from the inside, dragging her into the dark.
“Wesley, why can’t I stay?”
Too much pain, too much dark. She flung herself away from hands that were hurting her with their gentleness and gathered her breath to scream.
Darkness. Silence.
She was breathing so fast that it hurt her throat, and on the heels of that thought she realized that the rest of the pain was gone. There was no raw ache of being melted alive- in fact, she was cold. She was shivering, and it was dark, and as the rasp of her panicked breathing eased, she realized that it wasn’t silent after all. She could hear muffled male voices.
“Mal, I thought you said there were five crates.”
“There should be.”
“There’s six. And this one ain’t marked like the others.”
The second voice let loose a burst of words that she didn’t understand, sharp-edged and lilting and foreign-familiar at once. “I’m developing a real dislike for unmarked boxes on my ship. Open it up.”
There was a squeal of metal on wood, and she tensed as a streak of light appeared over her head. She looked up as the dark peeled back, revealing a man’s face. He stared down at her in shock, then jumped back, shouting in that not-quite-alien language. “Ruttin’ hell, Mal, there’s a girl in there!”
“Another girl in a box?” A third voice, and if she wasn’t shaking so hard, she’d sit up and try to put faces with them. “What is it with girls in boxes around here?”
A new face appeared over her, tight-jawed and angry. She opened her mouth to apologize- although she still wasn’t quite sure what she’d done, or how, or why- but yet another man stepped up next to him. It must be kind of crowded out there. He was dark-skinned and white-haired, and he, at least, was smiling.
He reached down to take her hand and helped her to her feet. “Hello, Fred. Welcome to Serenity.”
*****
“This isn’t fair.” She sounded whiny and petty and childish, even to herself, but at the moment she didn’t care. She was sitting on the floor of a spaceship (spaceship), hundreds of light-years (and just plain old years) from herself, and the man who’d opened the box was aiming a large, ugly gun at her. If ever there was a situation where childishness was justified, this was it. She already had her knees drawn up to her chest and her face buried in her hands; if she thought she could get away with it, she would’ve held her breath till she turned blue.
The dark-skinned man, Book, rested a sympathetic hand on her arm. "Life isn't fair," he murmured. She peered at him through her fingers.
"Am I in a coma? Or a fugue state, maybe…are you a figment of my subconscious? Books were awfully important to me, after all."
He chuckled and pulled his hand away. "I assure you, Miss Burkle, you're quite awake."
"See, that’s the tricky thing." She closed her eyes and remembered the agony of an hour before. "I was dying of some demon-mummy-fever, and then I woke up here, in a box. We have some issues of temporal mechanics to deal with."
He smiled at her, all paternal and kindly. Professor Seidel used to look at her that way, so it really wasn’t surprising that it just made her suspicious. "The universe wasn't done with you yet, that's all. Your talents are needed here."
"What do you know about it?” She got to her feet- carefully, unsteadily; she was still a bit wobbly from her little jaunt across the space-time continuum. “I’m guessing you’re not a vampire, because those nice people over there with the guns are still alive. And probably not a demon, because they usually don’t care much about the universe’s grand plans. But I’m also guessing that you’re not human. We can play 20 Questions, or you can just tell me.”
"I am a Guide."
"A guide named Book? You’re a guidebook?” She blinked.
“An agent of the Powers That Be, an intermediary for contacting mortals.” He smiled and reached out to touch her again, and she took a step back. No making friends here on the crazy side of things, not till she knew what was going on. He folded his hands in his lap. “Angel had a Guide for a brief time, you know. Did he ever mention Whistler?”
“No.” She tucked her hands away in the sleeves of the sweater the girl with the nice smile had given her. Kaylee, that was her name; she was standing at the far end of the room now with the rest of the crew of this ship, studying Fred and Book with a varying mix of interest and fear. Oh, and anger, don’t forget anger- especially from the one named Mal. He’d even taken the sweater exchange personally. “It might’ve been nice if they’d let me read the guidebook before they brought me here, you know.”
"I understand it's confusing," Book murmured. She rolled her eyes and hugged her arms tightly around herself, making a firm promise not to start crying.
"What are you doing here, anyway, Mr. Guide? Just waiting for me?"
He smiled faintly and looked over at the crew. "You've never met a group more in need of guiding."
*****
Kaylee not only kept Fred from freezing, but also seemed to be the only one who didn’t want to see her starve. “Maybe we can save the whole execution question for after we eat,” she’d said, turning a sweet smile on Mal, whose grumpy, brooding air was starting to remind Fred of Angel. “Even convicts get a last meal, Captain, and we don’t know for sure that she did anything wrong.”
Now they were all sitting around a big wooden table, picking at bowls of what Kaylee just called protein. Well, Fred was picking. She was pretty sure the tree-bark enchiladas in Pylea had tasted better than this.
She’d finally figured out that the other language they kept muttering to each other in was Chinese. Since her grasp of that tongue was limited to ordering takeout- oh, she needed to stop thinking about starchy food if she was ever going to finish this protein stuff- she sat in anxious silence throughout the meal and tried to figure out everyone’s name.
Book finished his explanation of the actual history of the universe and the role of the Powers. The response was a resounding silence.
"So you ain't a Shepherd." That was the man with the guns, who'd almost smiled when she introduced herself as Fred. Jayne meeting Fred; any other day, that would be funny. "You ain't even human. You lied to us." Definite flash of hurt feelings, there...what was it about the tough guys that made them carry their emotions right up on the surface? Vicious hunter with an open face, just like Connor-
Connor.
She choked on her protein, scrambling to her feet and striking out blindly as she suddenly became aware of an entire portion of her mind that had gone from foggy to agonizingly clear without her even noticing. Suddenly she remembered, she remembered everything-
"Ruttin' hell, she's having a fit," someone shouted, and heavy hands tried to restrain her. She lashed out and scrambled away from them, grabbing her head and crying out in horror at what had happened, what they'd done, the way they'd all just forgotten...
Gentle hands settled on hers; not trying to hold her down, but just making contact. She trembled under them, but they didn't move, and after a moment she opened her eyes. The skinny, wild-haired girl, River, who didn't have a job on the ship that Fred could fathom, was kneeling in front of her, smiling softly.
"Oh, good," she heard Jayne mutter. "The crazies are makin' friends."
"Not crazy," River said, squeezing Fred's hands softly. "Not now, anyway. There's too much- all the walls coming down- but she walks between worlds. She can take it." She glanced back over her shoulder and glared fiercely at Book. "You owe her answers, Preacher-man. You ripped her from her home." Her eyes flicked back to Fred, puzzled and compassionate. "Oh- from love?"
Fred stared at her, too stunned to speak, and the girl just smiled and squeezed her hands again. "I like math too," River whispered, like she was sharing a secret. "And Kaylee loves to build things. We can all be friends."
"You could if she was staying," the captain said curtly from his place by the door, "which she ain't."
"Mal," protested the beautiful dark-haired woman, whose place on the ship Fred also didn't quite understand. She was going to need a flowchart and a map to figure things out around here. "You can't just throw her out, this isn't even her universe if what they say is true-"
"Nobody tells me what to do on my own ship, not even those Powers That Be of hers," he snarled, glaring at the woman, Book, and Fred in turn. "If they're so interested in her, they'll take care of her themselves."
"Don't worry, Inara," Book said with a small, cold smile. "Not even Captain Reynolds can deny the will of the Powers."
"That’s not exactly a comfort," Fred said, finally finding her voice and getting unsteadily to her feet. That probably short-circuited Mal punching Book in the mouth, which wasn’t necessarily a good thing as far as she was concerned. "I’ve never seen any proof that the Powers care about humanity at all beyond screwing us over."
"You too, huh?" That was the blond one, Wash, who gave her a kind smile. She returned it as best she could, considering that all she wanted to do was curl up and cry.
"The Powers have plans for you, Fred," Book said. "You have a vital role to play- perhaps the pivotal one in humanity's salvation."
"Well, I never asked for that," she told him, and thought she saw a flicker of sympathy in the captain's eyes.
The only armed woman among them- and what was it with the women of this time being ridiculously beautiful?- cleared her throat. Fred felt a smile tugging at her lips after all at the way everyone came to attention at the sound. Clearly, this Zoe only spoke when she had something to say.
"Can't do anything till we put into port on Talbot anyway, Captain," she said. "Might as well not make any big decisions until then."
Mal stared at her for a moment, then nodded, and the look between them gave Fred a fresh stab of pain as she thought of Angel and Cordy. She closed her eyes.
"Are you all right?" She didn't recognize the voice, so it had to belong to the pale, skinny boy who'd hung back giving off palpable "don't notice and/or blame this trouble on me" vibes since she'd woken up in the box. Kaylee had waved in his direction and mentioned that he was a doctor. "Captain, I should take her to the infirmary and look her over, make sure she's all right."
"Must be the nicest part of bein' a doctor," Jayne muttered, rolling his eyes, "gettin' to drag all the girls off for a good goin'-over."
"It's my job, and I certainly didn't mean-" Simon stuttered heatedly.
"I was dying," Fred said flatly, and all eyes were back on her. Jayne's laughter cut off in his throat. "Before I...left home. Maybe I did die- it hurt so bad, and everything went dark, and then I woke up here."
"Did you bring plague onto my ship?" Mal demanded, glaring again. Didn’t anyone ever tell him his face might freeze like that?
"No," Book said calmly. “Don’t worry, Fred. Your mind and soul are entirely intact.”
She was really starting to hate his air of unruffled calm. Everyone else around here was fully ruffled, bedecked in ruffles, why couldn't he do the same? "What about in my own time? What happened there? Did I just disappear?"
“Whatever happened then,” the doctor cut in, “can be discussed later. Right now, I’m going to invoke my authority as medic-” he hesitated as Mal raised an eyebrow “-such as it is, and insist on an examination.”
She opened her mouth to protest, then caught the meaningful look he was giving her. He was trying to give her a reprieve, a few minute to catch her breath.
“That’s probably a good idea,” she said, managing a weak smile to let him know she understood. “Thank you.”
He glanced at the captain, who gave a sulky nod of permission. “This way, Miss Burkle,” the doctor murmured, guiding her with a gentle hand on her shoulder.
Behind them, River smiled and rolled her eyes. “It’s all going to be fine, you know,” she said, looking pointedly at Mal. “You shouldn’t get so upset about things. She walks with heroes.”