Title: Our Own Private Miracle
Series: Frozen in Time
Author: Jinni (jinni. FR15
Disclaimer: All things BtVS belong to Joss Whedon, et al. Oddly enough, he also owns Firefly. Go, Joss, Go!

Prompt - Resurrection - at joss100

Claim: Kaylee/Xander

x x x

Kaylee watched the stranger sleep. Alexander Harris is what the artifact had been labeled as. She supposed it was his name. He didn't much look like an Alexander though. That kind of name made her think of men like Simon. Men that wore their very proper britches too tight. Not that Simon was a bad sort. He just won't very relaxed or easy-going.

Alexander, with his too-long hair didn't seem like he was uptight. He'd been a touch weirded out when she'd told him that he was on a spaceship, though.

And that he was a good five hundred years past the last time he had opened his eyes.

She felt bad about that. About being the one to break the news to him.

Kaylee sighed, turning to Simon. "You sure he should be sleepin'? He just got through being asleep for hundreds of years, Simon."

Over his shoulder, Simon met her eyes for a brief moment, giving her a tiny smile. "Stasis isn't the same thing as sleeping. Right now, sleep is what his body needs. He's fine."

She hoped so. It was her fault that he was awake at all, seeing as how she was the one that accidentally pressed the button that freed him from stasis. The Cap'n won't happy 'bout that, neither. Fact was, he glared at her so hard after he got done with their contact that she'd felt like she'd done had a hole bored straight through her. Sorries weren't going to work in this situation.

Alexander couldn't go back into stasis because, for one thing, it just wouldn't be human to do that to him again. Bad enough it had been done in the first place, perpetuated over the years until he was just a thing and not a person, but to do it again? Not even the Cap'n and his business-mindedness thought that was a good idea. Oddly enougn, it was Jayne that had spoken out the most loudly 'bout it. Somethin' about it not being right to shut a man up like that and he wouldn't have no parts of it.

Jayne was ever the surprise.

All that aside, they just didn't have the right equipment to do it, neither. The stasis pod he'd been in was only good for keepin' life going, not actually putting someone into stasis. That had to be done at a facility that was set up for that sort of thing.

Moving to stand next to the small bed that sat right smack in the middle of the medlab, Kaylee looked down at their newest passenger. Cute enough, she supposed, if you went for that almost goofy-lookin' sort. She brushed a piece of hair off of his forehead, just watching him. This had to be frightenin' for him. Waking up five hundred years in the future to find out his world didn't even exist anymore.

But, oh the stories he'd be able to tell when he was feelin' up to it! All about Earth-That-Was and why he'd been put in stasis to begin with. Things like that.

Things like... how he'd lost his eye?

She looked at the smooth leather patch that sat over the empty eye socket. Simon had said there were things that could be done for him now. Life-like prosthetics with actual functionality.

Would he want that?

Poor guy. Jerked out of his time and into theirs. It was almost like he'd come back from the dead. A real resurrection type of thing. That stasis pod had been his grave and he'd gotten right out of it like he'd just come back from the other side.

She took his hand in hers, studying it. Callouses on the fingers. Whatever he'd done back in his previous life, it hadn't been no book job. Maybe he'd lost his eye workin' on something? He could even be an engineer, like her, for all she knew. The kind that worked on whatever had counted for transportation back on Earth-That-Was.

Still, though, she doubted it. Fingernails were too clean. A real mechanic, no matter how hard they tried, never could get all of the dirt out from 'round their nails. And she'd tried real hard sometimes, too. But there was always a spot or two, hardly noticeable at all, that labeled her for what she was. Just a grease monkey.

"He's just like us," she murmured, mostly to herself.

Which is why she jumped a bit when Simon answered. She'd forgotten all about him being there!

"The people of Earth-That-Was were no different from us, Kaylee. Just less advanced."

A smile flitted across Kaylee's lips.

He was different from them, though.

A resurrected piece of the past.

Alexander Harris was a downright miracle.

x x x End Part x x x

Next Up:

"Now I know you're confused and all, bein' just woken up after sleepin' for so long, but don't you go insultin' me again like that, boy. I ain't no preacher."