One Gorram Weird Blue Box
"That ain't a ship," Jayne grunted. "It's a box. Ain't even got engines." The man standing next to him stuck his hands in the pockets of his suit, and Jayne snorted. Pansy little Core Worlder, just like Simon. Didn't even know what a ship looked like.
"Trust me," the pretty boy said. "It's the best ship in the universe."
Jayne eyed the rickety blue wood. "That's what Mal always says about his piece of gŏu shi. Don't make it any prettier."
The skinny guy with the suit – the Doctor, he called himself, which didn't endear him any to Jayne, as he'd had his fill of doctors and their crazy-ass siblings lately – pushed open the box's door and gestured inside.
"See for yourself."
Jayne took a cautious step forward, hand on the gun at his hip, and stuck his head into the box.
"What the gorramhell is that?" he spluttered, stumbling backward.
The Doctor smiled and bounced a little. "Like I said: it's the TARDIS. Time And Relative Dimension In Space."
"It's bigger. How'd it get bigger?"
"That's the 'relative dimension' part. Well, sort of. Technically, 'relative dimension' refers to its traveling capabilities, but the ship itself is dimensionally transcendental. A nice little double entendre, I always thought."
Jayne blinked. "Huh?"
The Doctor frowned. "Right. You lot haven't figured out dimensions yet."
"What are you talkin' about? Is it inside-out or something?"
"Nonsense. If it were, it wouldn't blend in very well, would it?"
Jayne looked at the empty expanse of scrub brush that made up this miserable rock of a planet, and then at the bright blue box sitting smack in the middle of it. "Oh, yeah. Blends in real good."
The Doctor nodded, pleased. "Also, if it were inside-out, it'd be a bugger to park. It's quite big, you know."
Jayne glanced through the box's door and backed up another step. This day just kept getting weirder and weirder. First, he'd been lying under a bush with Vera, keeping an eye on Mal's drop point and minding his own business, when a bunch of light had blinded him. Something had whooshed, making him dizzy, and he'd opened his eyes to find himself in the middle of a desert with no water, no food, and no Vera. Just the two handguns, three knives, and six grenades he'd stashed on his person that morning.
He'd barely finished counting his grenades when this guy had shown up, hollering about how Jayne was supposed to be a half mile to the east and three hours earlier. Jayne would've shot him on principle, but the guy said something about a ship, and Jayne needed a ride.
Except it turned out this Doctor guy was almost as crazy as River. There weren't any ship. Just this gorram box. Jayne glared at it and lit a cigar.
He reckoned he'd been gone about an hour. By now, Mal and the rest of the crew had probably realized he was missing. He wondered how long they'd look for him. Probably not long. Not as long as they'd look for Zoe or Wash or Kaylee or even that prissy doctor and his sister. They'd just figure he'd up and run out on them, and they'd shrug and take off without a backward glance.
Jayne frowned. No, most likely, without him around to watch their backs, Mal had screwed up the deal – like always – and gotten everyone dead. Jayne felt a small twinge of sadness – he'd never got Kaylee into his bunk yet.
The Doctor was talking about history, something about how it had gone wrong. Jayne didn't pay any attention, focused as he was on finding a way off this planet and back to Serenity, until the man said his name.
"And you, Jayne Cobb!" the Doctor cried. At some point he'd started moving all crazy-like, pacing circles around Jayne and waving his arms. Jayne blew smoke in his face. The Doctor didn't even blink, just kept talking. "Tiny-brained, violent, lust-ridden creature that you are, you are a part of history."
Jayne opened his mouth to insult the Doctor right back, but got caught on something else. "A part of history?"
The Doctor nodded, grinning. "Yes! You're involved, integral. Key. A small part perhaps, but without that small part, the whole thing is broken. History says you are not supposed to be here right now. You're supposed to be somewhere else entirely."
"Well, that's the first bit of sense you've made since you showed up." Jayne dropped his cigar on the ground and put it out with the heel of his boot. "So how exactly are we gonna go about gettin' me back to that somewhere else?"
The Doctor sighed. "In the TARDIS, of course."
"That packing crate can't take us three feet, much less back to Paquin."
For the first time, the Doctor seemed to get annoyed. "Look, we've been over this. Just because you're too thick to appreciate her doesn't mean the TARDIS doesn't fly. She'll get us there. Faster than anything you've ever ridden before." He stepped into the doorway. "Coming?"
Jayne crossed his arms. He wasn't that stupid.
The Doctor leapt out of the box's doorway and stormed toward Jayne, who dropped a hand to his gun.
"History says you're supposed to be four planets away. If you don't come with me, a certain girl will die, and if she dies, then a certain galactic government will never go through its necessary reforms, and humans will get massacred in three centuries by some Gravornian Regs. Now—you can prevent this, or you can stand here like a stupid ape and let your species die."
Jayne thought about that. "What girl?"
The Doctor blinked. "I can't tell you. I've probably said too much already, but I'm counting on your primitive intellect to fail at processing it."
But he looked a mite guilty, and Jayne knew he was on to something. "I ain't as dumb as you think. If you want me to get in your box, you're gonna tell me about this girl. Rescuin' tends to make girls hot. I wanna know if I got any play comin' to me."
The Doctor shuddered. "I sincerely hope you never get any 'play.' The idea of you procreating is going to give me nightmares."
Jayne growled and took a step forward, but before he could get his hands around the Doctor's throat, a blonde appeared in the doorway of the box-ship. Jayne stopped. She looked him over – like she liked what she saw, he noted, and he gave her a grin – and then turned to the Doctor.
"This him, then?"
The Doctor made a face. "Yes."
She turned back to Jayne. "Right. Well, stop stalling. You've got to help save humanity today."
She disappeared back into the box, and Jayne turned to the Doctor. "That her? The girl?"
"No! Absolutely not. That's Rose, my companion."
Jayne grinned. "Shiny. I reckon it costs a pretty penny to keep your own personal Companion, but a man's got needs, right?"
The Doctor spluttered for a moment, then hmmed into his hand. "Oh, yes. The Companion Guild. I must remember that particular connotation in the future. Sorry for the confusion. Rose isn't a companion in your sense of the word."
Jayne craned his neck, trying to spot the girl inside the box. "She looks mighty tasty."
"I wouldn't know. She's a friend. We travel together. We're completely platonic. Very platonic. Everything is extremely platonic and not Companiony in any way!"
Jayne didn't know what the Doctor was going on about – though the way his voice kept getting higher and his arms were getting waved about was highly entertaining – but he knew that a man and a woman traveling around alone together only led to one thing.
"Right," he said. "Whatever you say."
The Doctor glared, then turned and stomped inside the box-ship. Jayne stood in its doorway, peering cautiously inside. Something that looked like it might be an engine sat in the middle of large room. It glowed, at any rate. And there were buttons and levers and catwalks and support struts and other somewhat-familiar things. The inside looked like a ship, for all the weirdness of the outside. A strange ship, but still a ship.
Jayne knocked on the door. Definitely wood. "Explain to me again how this box is space-worthy?" he called.
"It's not a box. It's a TARDIS," the Doctor shouted back. He stood near the central console, throwing his weight against a lever.
"That sounds like something you'd flush," Jayne grumbled. Louder, he said, "That don't reassure me none. It's still a rutting box of wood, and wood don't hold up so well in the black. I ain't gonna be rescued off some deserted planet just to die as soon as we break atmo."
The girl – Rose - reappeared. "Tough. You'll just have to trust us." She grabbed his arm, hauled him inside, and slammed the doors shut behind him.
Two minutes later, Jayne opened the box's door, grumbling to himself. "On Paquin, my ass. We didn't go nowhere. Just mashin' buttons and pullin' levers and makin' it shake a bit—"
He stopped and stared at the forest that began fifty yards from the box-ship's door. Forest, not desert.
"See?" the Doctor said, stepping out behind him. "Paquin. Exactly forty-five seconds after you disappeared. Well, thirty-nine now."
"So you got it right, this time?" Rose asked, slipping through the doors.
"Of course!" the Doctor replied, sounding put out. "He's got about a half-mile jog ahead of him, but I couldn't very well land in the middle of their criminal activities, now could I?"
Jayne scratched his head, then pointed at the forest. "Where the hell—?"
The Doctor grinned. "Paquin."
"But…we were...what just happened?"
Rose smiled at him. "You traveled through time and space at the same time. We're four planets away and an hour earlier."
"But that was only – an hour earlier?"
"Yes," Rose said. "That's what I said – time machine."
Jayne's head hurt, but a feeling of childish wonder – a feeling that left him the first time he hefted a gun at age ten – rose in his gut. It was almost enough to distract him from the Doctor's annoying, squeaky voice.
"He's not very smart," the Doctor said.
Almost.
"I already told him it was forty-five seconds after he got transmatted, but he didn't pay any attention to me. Probably because I'm not—" The Doctor gestured at Rose, waving his hand up and down her body.
She raised her eyebrows and cocked a hip. "Not what, Doctor?"
"Blonde."
She rolled her eyes and laughed.
"You know," the Doctor gushed, ignoring Jayne completely, "we still need to figure out who zapped our crude friend across the system, because there definitely shouldn't be transmat beams for several centuries yet. Something's out of sorts." He held out a hand. "You ready for an adventure, Rose Tyler?"
"Always." She took his hand, and the two of them giggled like schoolgirls, swinging their arms and skipping about in place. Jayne tried not to throw up.
"Hey!" he barked. "Wanna stop eye-beddin' each other for a moment and tell me what the rutting hell's goin' on?"
The Doctor looked at him, surprise and annoyance turning his pointy face into a cartoon. "Oh, are you still here? Look, your shipmates are a half-mile that way—" He pointed southeast. "—preparing for whatever it is you came here to do today. If you hurry, it'll be like you never left." He paused, then repeated himself slower and louder, like Jayne was some sort of retard. "Liiiike yoooou neeeveerr leeeft."
Jayne wrapped his hand around his knife hilt.
"Stop it," the girl said, slapping the hùndàn on the arm. Still laughing, she bounced over to Jayne and raised herself up on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. "Go on, then. Go save humanity." She winked. "People got songs to write about you, Jayne Cobb. Don't let them down."
Jayne cleared his throat. "Had a song once. Didn't do no one much good."
"These'll be better."
The Doctor stepped forward and held out a hand. Jayne squinted at it and kept his own hand on his knife.
"Take care, Jayne Cobb. Thanks for not trying to shoot me and forcing me to melt your brain with my sonic screwdriver. It would have taken me several hours to put history right again. I'd urge you to remain loyal and true, but I'd probably just laugh." Seeing Jayne wasn't going to shake his hand, the Doctor lunged forward and hugged him instead. "So I'll just leave you with this: go shoot things, Jayne. Your friends need you."
Jayne looked down at himself and then back up at the Doctor. "D'you just hug me?"
"Yep."
"You sly or somethin'?"
"You really are a neanderthal, aren't you?"
"Hòuzi de pígu!"
The Doctor blinked. "Look, Cro-Magnon man, I was just trying to be nice, but if this all the thanks I get for saving your species yet again, then—then—you realize that in all of human history, both before and after your lifespan, Jane has always been a—"
"Doctor!" Rose shouted. She stood in the box-ship's doorway, hands on her hips. Jayne scuffed his feet and tried not to look guilty, but he suspected he wasn't doing a very good job of it. Fortunately, the Doctor was doing worse.
"But he's being rude!" he whined.
"So are you. Now get inside." She jerked her head toward the interior of the box-ship.
With one last glare, the Doctor turned and shuffled inside the ship.
Jayne snorted. "Whipped."
"Behave yourself," Rose said, shaking a finger at him. She glanced over her shoulder, then turned back to Jayne and winked. "But not too much."
She shut the door, and with a strange, hoarse whine, the blue box disappeared.
Jayne stared at the empty space for several minutes before turning and starting his half-mile walk to Serenity. Mal was in trouble again, as usual, and Jayne had a job to do.
end
Disclaimer: Not mine.