Chapter 3
Sex. There was a lot of sex going on in this house. And Mal couldn’t figure out how all these girls spread out in a human herringbone pattern of the living room floor could sleep through it all. He pondered the situation as he lay awake on the couch listening to all the sex.
This was their army. A bunch of little girls. From what he could gather, they were the only ones left in town, maybe the planet, for all he knew. And they were scared. Perhaps that’s why all the sex and sleep. Young girls resting up for a battle that they couldn’t comprehend. The slightly older ones getting in one more quick bump and grind, perhaps because they did comprehend.
It had been a busy night. Faith and the older members of her crew had gone out and kidnapped a member of the opposing army. He got a quick glimpse of the man as they were dragging him into the basement, and Mal thought for a split second that they had a Reaver in the house. He wanted to ask someone, but most of the little girls had too much fear in their eyes. The only other person in the room at the time had been Xander.
Aside from Xander’s insane explanation for how Mal had arrived on their planet, the man hadn’t said much else. He certainly hadn’t looked anywhere in Mal’s direction. Xander was pretty much ignoring Mal’s existence, and that was perfectly fine with Mal.
Andrew had told him that there were no docking points on this planet, and that no one had ever been anywhere in outer space, expect for their moon. This Andrew fellow, however, had high hopes that contact with alien life forms was imminent. The kid was so sure and excited about this that Mal didn’t have the heart to tell him that there was no such thing as aliens. Their was just folk.
It was approaching dawn, and Mal had gotten no sleep whatsoever. He sat up when he heard footsteps descending the stairway. Faith reached the bottom and stood in the doorway and watched the sleeping troops. When their eyes met, Faith startled for just a moment, before her face became a shell.
She sat on the opposite end of the couch and lit a cigarette from a pack that was sitting on a side table, offering him one as well, which he refused politely.
“How’d this happen?” Mal gestured out toward the girls.
Faith shrugged. “Too long a story.”
“You’re not much older than them.”
“I’m a world older than them.”
“You’ve been in battle?”
Faith laughed a heartless laugh. “You could say that.” She turned to face him then. “Listen, I’m sorry I blew you off last night. And I’m hella sorry that I left you in Andrew’s care.” Faith put out her cigarette on an abandoned plate. “No one deserves that.”
Just then, Xander and Anya came in from the kitchen, both straightening clothes.
“Well, well,” Faith chuckled, “look who’s glowing.”
Xander looked only slightly embarrassed. He pointed at Faith, “You’re fault.”
Faith shrugged and headed toward the stairs again, “Yeah, well, you’re welcome,” she said over her shoulder as she disappeared onto the second floor.
Anya and Xander made their way into the dining area with a found sleeping bag, and Mal was left alone again. His thoughts drifted toward his crew and he hoped that Zoe was holding up without both him and Wash, and not getting too much resistance from Jayne. He thought of River and wondered for a brief moment how she would fit in the group of girls asleep in front of him.
Perhaps this was a mistake. Perhaps it was River who should have brought here. Maybe this is where Little River belonged. In a world where little girls where considered an acceptable army.
As the sun started to creep in through the window, exhaustion finally overtook Mal and he fell asleep, sitting up, and picturing River alone in the cockpit of his ship. His anchor. His albatross. His family. Alone.
~~~~
Xander wasn’t looking at him.
It was too quiet in the house. All the girls had gone off on some kind of mission. Xander, Willow, Dawn and Anya had recently returned from a fruitless hunt to search out the elusive Buffy. Most had disappeared to different corners of the house, and Mal sat in his own little corner of the couch, trying to blend into the upholstery and not bother anyone.
But Xander had been sitting on the opposite end of the couch for a good hour now, and it was starting to get on Mal’s nerves. The kid hardly moved. The bandage had been replaced with a black eye patch and Xander kept fiddling with it. Readjusting and scratching. The tension in the entire house seemed to be emanating directing from Xander.
Mal wished he had a gun in his hand. Something to clean. He had never been so bored in his entire life. Stuck in a house, town, planet, in which he had absolutely no authority. No job. No home and no family. In less than one day, he had managed to get the worst case of cabin fever he had ever experienced.
And Xander wasn’t looking at him. And he was scratching at the eye patch. Again.
“So,” Mal ventured, his voice sounding hollow in the large room, “how’d you lose the eye?”
Xander stood up, moved to stand in front of Mal, leaned down, grabbed his shirt and started punching. Mal was sure that if one more fist hit his face that his head was going to split in half. Xander, though, was not as strong as the other two.
Mal grabbed Xander’s fist as it was coming down at him the third time. He pushed the fist backwards and forced Xander to hit himself in the nose. Xander stumbled back and fell over the coffee table.
Mal was up and looming over Xander in an instant. He was really sick of being here. And really really sick of getting punched in the face. “What the hell is wrong with you gorram people!” That brought Anya and Dawn to Xander’s side and Andrew to the doorway from the kitchen.
“I don’t know how I got here, or who any of you people are, yet you insist on hitting me - repeatedly! Now, I’m all for throwing a punch here and there between friends or enemies, but you folks are neither.” Willow and Giles came into the room as well and helped get Xander back onto his seat on the couch. They were all looking at him, but not making a move to subdue him. Everyone looked so tired. Mal collapsed in a chair.
“I’m just here. And you folks don’t seem to be too concerned with who I am or how I got here. I’ve got folks who are without a captain right now. Folks who need a captain. Zoe is a strong woman, but she’s suffered a loss recently, and I need to be there. But I’m here. Just here.” He had been searching each person’s eyes for some kind of acknowledgement that there was a problem here. It was finally Willow that spoke up.
“We’ll get you back, Captain. We will. It’s just going to take some time. And we don’t have the right resources at the moment. We got this other thing, you see? It’s kinda apocalypty.”
Mal nodded. “Big important fight, huh?”
“The biggest and importantist,” Dawn confirmed.
He nodded again. “Well, did it ever occur to any of you that I could help?”
Giles answered him. “I recall you expressing a distinct disinterest in anything that didn’t concern your return home.”
“And you folks are ready to accept that? You just sent over a dozen fifteen year old girls off on a mission, and you didn’t think that a guy like me could be useful? I’ve been in a war. I’ve been up against, and brought down or at least crippled, the Alliance. I’ve battled Reavers and even my own crew.” Mal was getting frustrated with everyone’s blank looks. “What about that guy, Spike? He’s strong. Wouldn’t he be handy in a fight? And all of you are older than any of the girls out there. Why are you here and not there?”
Everyone glanced at each other, searching for an answer. “Well, it’s complicated,” Willow said, rubbing her neck in doubt.
Mal leaned forward in his chair and clasped his hands in front of him. “I don’t ever remember a time when it’s not.” He looked up at Willow. “Except space. Space isn’t complicated. I’ve lost myself in the black. You know what that’s like?”
Willow sat down on the end of the couch closest to Mal. “I’ve seen the black,” she whispered. “But I don’t think it’s the same blackness that you’re talking about. I never want to go back there again.”
“I would do anything to get back.”
They stared at each other for a few moments before Mal sighed.
“I just feel useless, you know?” He looked at the other people in room, eyes landing on Xander whose right eye suddenly sparkled with a bit of emotion. “Have you ever felt that way? Just utterly and completely useless.”
Xander smiled. It was quite shocking.
Just then the front door banged open and another young woman entered the house. She was striking. Blond and thin. With an air of authority that he didn’t remember seeing in Faith. Also, she was holding a big ass ax.
“Who’s here?” she called out, stepping into the living area. Her eyes ghosted over the others in the room than stopped on Mal.
She was in front of him in an instant. He didn’t even see her move. Then the ax was up and in mid-swing down toward his neck before he heard five people scream, “No!”
He felt the blade touch his neck, and he didn’t even get a chance for his life to flash in front of his eyes. But the ax stopped. The sharp edge resting on his skin. He felt a warm liquid run down the left side of his neck and pool at his collar.
The girl’s eyes were the coldest things he’d ever seen. They were black with anger, yet she managed to looked confused at the same time.
“Somebody better start explaining soon, or he’s headless!”
Giles was at the girl’s side, a hand gently on her arm. “Buffy, it’s not Caleb. I know it looks like him, but it’s not. Put down the…what it that?”
The girl looked at Giles. Then turned and looked at Willow, then Anya, then finally at Xander. She looked at Xander for a long time. Turning back to Mal, she slowly pulled the ax away from his neck and backed up.
Andrew came up to him suddenly with a med kit and pressed a cloth against his neck. Mal took it from him and held it in place.
Willow finally spoke. “Caleb’s gone, Buffy. We magiced him into another dimension. It worked and everything! Only thing is, we got this guy in his place. But it’s okay. He’s not evil. He just, you know, looks evil.”
“I do not look evil.”
“Sorry, buddy,” Anya said, “but by our standards, you look extremely evil.”
“His name is Malcolm Reynolds,” Giles explained. “He’s from an alternate future dimension in which he is the captain of a spaceship. We’re going to send him back, but it’s taking some time and ingredients, of which we have neither.”
Buffy glowered at Mal for a few moments. Her look softened a little, then she turned to Giles and nodded. “Okay.”
“Okay?” Mal was confused by these people. “Just, okay? You’re told that a guy is sitting in this house who looks like a mortal enemy but is really from your future, and that’s perfectly okay with you? If it wasn’t, then I’d be minus one head?”
Buffy looked at him with a blank expression and shrugged.
Mal fell back into the chair. “I really need to get home.”
Andrew scooted closer to him and started to doctor his neck wound as Mal was quickly forgotten by everyone else in the room.
Dawn stepped up to Buffy and they hugged. “I‘m so sorry, Buffy. Really glad you‘re home.” Dawn pulled away slightly. “You are home, right?”
“We‘ll see, Dawnie.”
“So what’s up with the ax-o-doom, Buff?” Xander asked.
“Pretty, huh? King Arthured it out of some stone at the vineyard. About half a dozen ubervamps tried to stop me, but it was slice and dice like Benihana. This is what crazy-preacher-man was protecting. I wondered where he was. He really gone, Wills?”
“The gonest!”
“Excellent. Where is everyone?”
Anya answered this one. “We captured a Bringer and got him to tell us about an arsenal underground. Faith and others went to get it.”
Buffy looked concerned again. “An arsenal? What kind of arsenal?”
“We were assuming lots and lots of weapons,” Giles said. “That’s what makes an arsenal, after all.”
“But, no. This is what they were protecting. This.” Buffy held up her ax-thing.
“That’s silly,” Anya scoffed. “That’s just one weapon. Granted a pretty cool weapon with lots of sharp pointy ends, but it’s just one.”
“You don’t get it. This is important. It’s powerful. And it’s mine. It belongs to me, the Slayer. This is what they were protecting. Whatever that Bringer sent you after…,” Buffy turned to Giles wide-eyed. “It’s a trap. Giles, where did they go?”
Giles stood up immediately and led Buffy into the dining area where a map was spread out. He pointed to a place on the map, and Buffy headed toward the front door. Xander stood up.
“Buff, you need back up.”
Buffy spun the ax in her hand, grinned and said, “Got it,” then ran out.
~~~~
It was a massacre. Three girls lost their lives. A dozen others were badly injured. One other died shortly after they returned to the house. Faith was sticking it out, but Mal saw the wounds, and didn’t understand why she wasn’t dead.
They put Mal to work, bandaging the wounded. Anya and Andrew raided an abandoned hospital, but still the medical supplies seemed primitive. Mal used the skills he learned on the battle field and before Simon came to his ship. Mal’s stitching wasn’t pretty, but it held true enough.
They were all so little. Such young girls. He had a feeling that he would fall apart if he ever saw River like this. For a brief moment he wished that she was here. She could have helped in their battle, he was sure of it.
It took several hours, but finally all the girls were fairly stable. The older of the crew were upstairs, trying to suss out the importance of the scythe (they decided to call it). With Faith down for the count, everyone seemed to turn toward Buffy automatically. From what he could figure out, Buffy was their actual leader. Faith had only taken over temporarily while Buffy was off finding herself or some such nonsense.
Spike showed back up briefly, but only exchanged a few words with Buffy before taking off again. Xander and Dawn disappeared for a while, then returned. There was a lot going on, and Mal was, again, left on the fringes of it. Buffy also went out, but came back shortly after Spike, then they both fled into the basement. Mal focused on the girls, who seemed to be healing faster than he thought they would. Some were up and moving around again. They all still looked extremely frightened.
Later, at perhaps three in the morning or so, after only a couple hours of sleep, Mal found himself out on the back porch, looking up into the sky and wishing he could see Serenity lost among the stars.
“You think the answer’s up there?”
Mal startled at the voice beside him. When he turned and saw who it was, he gasped and stumbled back into the railing.
Book smiled. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Holy crap.”
“Well, I wouldn’t put it that way, but I can see why you would,” Book laughed.
It was really Book. Standing right here beside him. Looking alive and confident and exactly like he did on the second to last trip to Haven. “Shepherd?”
“It’s me, Mal. Well, sort of, I suppose. It’s funny, really. I honestly thought I’d be done with it all when I reached my end. Had a whole belief system going on about Heaven and Hell. Where I was supposed to be after I died. Turns out,” Book looked to the sky, “I was wrong.”
“You were?”
“Yes. When you die,” he looked back at Mal, “you don’t go anywhere. You’re just…nowhere. Doesn’t matter the good you’ve done, or the bad. When you’re over, you’re just over.”
“I don’t understand. What are you? Why are you here? Why are telling me this?”
“You don’t belong here, Mal. You know that, right?”
“Yeah, I know. But I can’t get home, apparently. Not right now.”
“They’re failing without you, Mal. Zoe won’t make it. Jayne’s taken over, and Inara’s ready to leave again. Kaylee completely fell apart. She’s lost. Simon isn’t strong enough for both her and River. Little River’s regressed. She’s in pain most of the time. They’re all adrift without you, Mal. You don’t belong here.”
Mal was desperate. “But…I don’t know how to get home. This isn’t my world. Isn’t my time.”
“It’s not your fight, Mal. These folks don’t need you, can’t use you. You’re in their way. Find a way home.”
Light flooded onto the porch as the back door opened. Mal looked to Buffy as she stepped outside. When he turned back to Book, the Shepherd was gone.
Buffy looked around the backyard. “You talking to someone?”
“Uh…I - thought I was. Maybe not.”
Buffy closed the door behind her and crossed her arms. “You see someone? Someone you weren’t expecting?”
“I don’t think you’d believe me.”
“Oh, you’d be surprised. Someone dead? A loved one, perhaps?”
Mal was shocked and a little angry. “A friend. He…died. About a month ago.”
Buffy nodded. “You were close, I’m guessing.”
“He was…a very good friend. What’s going on here?”
“Well, it sounds like you’ve been recruited, pal.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That wasn’t your friend that you saw. It’s the big evil. The worst evil. We call it The First.”
“Worse than the guy with my face?”
“Well, that depends on who you ask. Maybe not according to Xander, but for the rest of us, yes. Worse than Caleb.”
“What do you mean I’ve been recruited?”
“If The First is taking time out of it’s evil schemes to appear to you in the guise of your friend, then you’re important. What did it say?”
“Told me that my people are making a mess of themselves. Are lost without me. Told me I wasn’t needed or wanted here, and that I had to get home.”
“I see.”
“Was it telling the truth?”
“Perhaps. That’s the thing with evil. Sometimes all it needs is the truth to make you do the wrong thing.”
“I’m confused.”
“Then it did it’s job.” Buffy sat down in chair and leaned her head back. “Listen, Malcolm, is it?”
“Mal.”
“Mal. I have no idea if you can help us or not. All I know is that this is my fight. I’m the only one who can defeat it. If you want to help, fine. But very few of us, if any, are getting out of this alive. It’s your call.”
Mal sat in a chair beside Buffy. “Tell me about it. Why is it your fight?”
“Because I’m the Slayer.”
“And that means what?”
“Too long a story.”
“That’s what Faith said. I’ve got time. You going back to bed anytime soon?”
“Hm. I’d like to. Spike’s downstairs. I shouldn’t let him wake up alone again.”
“But…?”
“I’m wired. The key to this whole thing is at the tip of brain, I just know it. Just need someone to crack my head open and let the whole thing spill out.”
“Maybe you just need to talk it out.”
Buffy blinked up at the stars. “Maybe.”
“Yeah. So what’s a Slayer?”
“Into every generation, a slayer is born. One girl in all the world. She alone will have the strength and skill to…”
Mal waited, but she didn’t continue. “’She alone will have the strength and skill to…’ yeah? What’s next?”
Buffy stood up.
“You alright?”
“No. Yeah. I just realized something. Something that really never occurred to me before.”
“What?”
“We’re gonna win.”
tbc....
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