i. Maybe I ate some bad cheese?
She'd been hit on the head, Buffy tried to convince herself. She'd been hit on the head by some demon or other and now she was in a coma dreaming. Or maybe it was like that time, where that demon wanted her to believe that she was in a mental hospital.
God, Buffy missed that hallucination. Where her mom was there and she was in the twentieth century, or was it the twenty-first? She never could keep that straight.
Maybe she really was insane, maybe she really had been in a psychiatric institute all these years? Perhaps she was getting worse and that was why she had advanced beyond believing she was a vampire slayer in Sunnydale to believing she was a vampire slayer on a huge spaceship in the back end of space.
But if that was true, why didn't she remember being in a hospital, why did she remember being in Sunnydale and why didn't she know how she'd come to be here, on this spaceship type thing?
Buffy struggled against the restraint strapped across her chest that kept her strapped to this bed in a room that looked to her like a cross between the wackiest dentists surgery she'd ever seen and the Death Star. To her surprise she found that she couldn't even stretch it.
"Look," She addressed the soldier type who'd been circling her, "I don't know if this is some sort of fraternity stunt, or some test of the councils but I don't think it's funny. And I wish someone would tell me what's really going on, because you're not fooling me here. We're not in space, I'm from California."
To Buffy's annoyance, the soldier guy (who now that she thought about it looked a lot like one of those evil empire guys from Star Wars) laughed out loud and turned to the Doctor, "California?"
"She believes that she's from Earth-that-was, she gets aggressive when we contradict her delusion. The Psyche boys on Ariel are going to love this one."
"If it was up to me I'd have all the kuangzhe de Browncoats thrown out an airlock. Lose the war, go crazy and leave us to clear up your mess."
The soldier leaned so close over Buffy that she thought that if she could get that restraint loose the first thing she would do would be to headbutt him into next week. "Lucky for you, command have chosen now to start caring about public relations with the rim worlds. Gorram Browncoats."
Buffy wondered if this would be a good time to tell him that her coat was a stylish pink.
ii. Like an explosion in your mouth
Buffy bit into the peach and savoured the flavour as the juices dripped down her chin. She had never really noticed how delicious fresh fruit was before, living in southern California a summer fruits smoothie was never far from reach. But after months of eating reconstituted protein in that hospital biting into the peach was like a little taste of heaven. Still, she'd fight her way past a sewer demon for a Starbucks Frescato.
Although if what the Doctors told her was true she'd never see another Starbucks again. They said she wasn't who she though was, they'd told her she was a soldier, a terrorist, a browncoat they'd called her. They said that she'd been in a war and that she had post traumatic stress disorder. When she insisted that she was Buffy Summers of Sunnydale CA they told her that Earth-that-was myths were very common and that she must have internalised them as part of her delusions.
They only way she'd gotten them to release her from the hospital and stop taking endless images of her brain was to admit that she was sick. Even then, they'd only released her to this place, they called it a temple, even though it was nothing like any temple Buffy had ever heard of. It was pleasant enough, Buffy supposed, but although she was free to roam the grounds a security barrier prevented her from leaving.
"So you're the one," Buffy looked up from her seat on the sunlit grass to see a girl looking down at her, she had wavy red hair that wafted around her pale face in the slight breeze. She wasn't wearing a dress that looked like it belonged at an Oscar ceremony like all the other girls here, instead a pale sundress did very little to cover her skinny frame.
"Yep, Buffy Summers, Chosen One at your service," Buffy stuck out her hand, still covered in peach juice.
The girl didn't take it. However she did sit down on the grass next to Buffy, "I meant you're the girl who believes she's from Earth-that-was, I've heard about you."
"Well I haven't heard anything about you, who are you?"
"I'm," the girl cocked her head, looking as if was trying to decide something, "Saffron."
"So Saffron, are you training to be a Hooker too?" Buffy had found that one of the benefits of everyone thinking you were insane was that they didn't expect you to be polite.
Saffron smiled, "is that what they called companions on Earth-that-was?" Without waiting for a response Saffron continued, "no, I'm not in training. You could say I'm a captive like you."
"Captive?"
"I was married once. He was an unkind man, cruel to me, I fought back but I didn't mean to hurt him, not rightly," Saffron glimpsed at Buffy then looked down at the grass, tears welling up in her eyes.
"I'm young and pretty and the Alliance, being concerned with the looks of things, sent me here instead of prison. I wouldn't submit to being anybody's doxy so now they just keep me here"
"What!" Buffy exclaimed, "that's awful. That's it, when I get out of here, people are so getting slayed."
"Slayed?" Saffron asked.
"You'll think I'm crazy," Buffy shrugged off the question.
"You don't seem touched, and I've known a lot of people who were, my husband for one."
"Okay-," without knowing why she trusted Saffron, Buffy told the redhead her whole story.
iii. The sweetest thing
Buffy heard Saffron giggle in front of her as the redhead took her hand and pulled her through the night around the side of a building, "Where are we going?"
Saffron tugged her through an open doorway, she stopped just inside the doorway causing Buffy to brush against her as she tried to find her way into the room. Saffron hit the light panel and Buffy looked around to see what appeared to be a training room, with swords and other weapons displayed on the walls and targets and training mats arranged around the room.
"Wow, I've clearly been wasting my time in the library trying to read up about earth."
"I thought you might like it here, after what you told me about slaying. One of the trainees told me about this place, she said they all have to learn to use these things," Saffron smiled shyly at Buffy, "It's okay that I brought you here, isn't it?"
"Okay," Buffy hefted up an elaborate crossbow and whirled around, firing darts into the center of targets in all four corners of the room, "It's brilliant. I haven't felt this alive since all this started." It was true, firing the crossbow was the first thing Buffy had done since waking up in Bizzaro World that felt real.
"That was incredible," Saffron whispered, "nobody can shoot like that. You were telling the truth."
Buffy grinned, at last someone believed her. She flipped backwards and snatched a sword off the wall, twisting, she performed a series of defensive strokes before letting go of the sword and watching it fly into the center of one of the targets.
Buffy turned around to reply, only to find Saffron standing millimeters away from her, looking at her oddly. "I'm sorry I didn't believe you before," Saffron's fingers hooked Buffy's hair behind her ear. Her thumb stroked Buffy's bottom lip.
"I should have believed you."
Buffy wondered if she should step back, bat Saffron's hands away, something to stop the kiss. But Saffron believed her, Saffron was impressed with her slaying skills, Saffron was the only one who didn't treat her like a psychopath. Saffron's lips were soft and smooth, her fingers cupped Buffy's face. Buffy parted her lips slightly and Saffron sucked gently on Buffy's bottom lip.
So this was what kissing a girl was like, Buffy thought, it was nice, the warmth of Saffron's mouth the soft pressure of her fingers. It was very nice, Buffy's knees began to shake, she'd never kissed a girl, she grasped Saffron's waist tighter. Buffy's knees buckled and she tumbled onto a mat, to her surprise Saffron didn't come with her.
iv. With a bitter aftertaste
She couldn't move her arms or legs, she couldn't open her eyes. Buffy tried to groan but she couldn't make her throat work. She lay still, hoping that when she finally regained the ability to open her eyes she'd be back home and everything would be normal, her, Dawn, Willow, Xander, Giles, vampires and demons, perfectly ordinary.
"You cheating wan ba dan, I deserve twice that for bringing her to you," the female voice sounded familiar, but Buffy couldn't place it.
"She doesn't look worth much of anything at the moment," the male voice wasn't familair at all.
"She's paralyzed you idiot."
"So you say, what if she comes round and she turns out to be as useless as she looks." Buffy managed to crack her eye's open, she blinked against the harsh light and tried to twist her head to get a better view, but she still couldn't move. She blinked again, she saw a man, she couldn't make out and of his features other than the very large gun strapped to his hip. He was talking to a woman with wispy red hair wearing a sundress. Saffron.
"Suit yourself, maybe I'll hand her over to the alliance they're always looking for assassins. Of course they'll probably use her against you, and it isn't as if you don't have enough trouble with those reavers."
"Fine, but she better be all you say she is Bridget."
Rough hands grabbed Buffy under her arms and still paralyzed she was pulled from the room.
v. Tastes like chicken
Buffy backed away, she'd never been to this part of the moon before and wasn't familiar with the terrain so she was hindered as she had to go slowly to avoid tripping over rocks. She let another crossbow bolt fly, it hit the advancing reaver in the chest, he stumbled but didn't fall. These things were harder to kill than vampires and even grosser. Drinking human blood was bad enough, but eating human flesh...That was the way the inhabitants of this godforsaken moon had gotten her to fight, either fight the reavers that were attacking their settlement with their assistance or or they would leave her to tackle hundreds of the things in the mountains with no backup and no escape.
Buffy attempted to fire the crossbow again and heard a dull click, it was empty. This would've been a good time to curse effusively in Chinese, if Buffy had ever bothered to learn any Chinese. She tossed the crossbow aside and pulled a gun from the holster at her hip, she didn't like using the thing, she much preferred the more familiar crossbow, but the shuttle was still a hundred meters away and she wouldn't make it without something to hold the reavers back. She emptied the clip, then turned her back on the monsters and bolted as fast as she could for the shuttle, just as it was lifting off she launched herself onboard.
Buffy looked up and found herself facing the familiar sight of the barrel of a shotgun.
"You were certainly a good buy, weren't you little girl. Now take a seat before I end you."
Buffy still wanted to get back to her own universe, but now not before she'd had a chance to punch Saffron until she bled.