WARNINGS: DEATH. LANGUAGE. PANIC ATTACK SYMPTOMS.
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Chapter Fourteen: The Pirate Queen
Part Three
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"Ouch!" Charlie cried, grasping his arm, already starting to tear up.
He was five years younger and half a head shorter than me, but he could already out-arm wrestle me and could beat me in a dash between the orchard and the creek by a solid three seconds.
So why was he crying?
"What happened?" Mom demanded, striding over purposefully as the tears began streaming down.
"She hit me!"
Yes? We were using sticks as swords.
"You know you're not supposed to hit!" Her voice went up an octave in accusation.
"He hit me first!"
Because he got mad that I didn't want to be a princess for him to rescue. The other little girls at school would do it, so why wouldn't I?
"You're older than he is! So you should know better!"
I wanted to be the dragon. Or a Jedi.
But instead I got grounded.
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I'd always liked the ocean. My family used to go to Florida every summer - in theory they still did, just without me - but I'd always loved it. The salty, fishy smell and the unpredictable freedom of the waves. The freedom of being out on a boat or watching a storm rage off at sea.
I was reminded about that love now as the strong ocean winds smacked me in the face as I was brought onto the deck. I took a deep breath of sea spray and blinked against the harsh sunlight. Even the fishy smell was refreshing after days and days below deck in the dark. For a second, I was back on one of those sunset-dolphin tours my dad always insisted we went on every summer vacation.
That second went by far too soon.
One of the pirates gave me a rough shove in the back, causing me to stagger slightly. The deck was packed with the ship's crew, all stinking in a festering meat sort of way in the scorching sun. Rotten teeth and union-y B.O. ruined the otherwise pleasant ocean day.
The pirates parted like the Red Sea for me and the and the guy that was herding me, muttering amongst themselves as they gawked at my frightened and cowering form.
Once at the edge of the vessel, after a split second of panic as the thought of having to walk the plank flashed through my head, I understood where we were going. Instead of gazing down at deceptively calm waters, I was looking across onto the deck of another ship. The new ship that flanked the one I'd spent however many days on board was bigger and more impressive in every way, from the sleek, broad deck to the glorious red sails that spiked and furled menacingly in the breeze like a great dragon perched on a small island.
I wish Pei-Pei was here. I'm shit on my own.
Or the Doctor.
Especially the Doctor.
If the Doctor were here, I probably wouldn't be in this situation to begin with.
Or maybe I would, and he'd be in it right beside me. At least I wouldn't be alone.
What situation was I in, anyway? Pei-Pei had gone on about something or another about pirates and regulations and restrictions and whatever, but I had been too frazzled to really listen.
The ghost sensations of the men clawing at my clothes, pinning me to the floor, and cutting off my air crawled all over me, making me shiver despite the hot air.
Was that what this was about? Was I in trouble? Or were they?
There were a bunch of jumbled puzzle pieces in my head; more than enough to complete the picture or to at least draw my own conclusions as to what the image was supposed to be. But my head was swimming with bright light and the gnawing hunger that had been slowly setting in over the past few days, leaving me grasping at the tidbits of information like wisps of smoke.
"Go on," the man behind me grunted, giving me a none too gentle prod in the center of my back.
I swallowed and edged closer to the railing. Several boards had been lain side by side, either end of each balancing on the corresponding rails of the two ships, forming a makeshift bridge.
"You wa—"
"Go!" He snapped again.
I was reminded of how short I was in this body as I climbed up onto the makeshift bridge. I could barely get my leg high enough to hoist myself up, and then when I did manage to crawl up onto the planks I felt very small indeed, gazing down into the watery depths below.
"Are you going or not?"
I took a deep, albeit shaky, breath and forced myself to stand. The sea was relatively calm, but the ships were still rolling gently as the sea heaved underneath them.
I had terrible balance.
I repeated that as a sort of morbid mantra in my head as I wobbled across the plank bridge. Terrible balance. Horrible. Bad bad balance.
I didn't look down and I didn't fall. Suddenly a set of hands reached up to offer assistance.
I took them. They belonged to the man in blue silk, the high ranking guy that had (sort of) saved me two nights before. As stingy as he seemed, he was the closest I had to a friend right now. At least he wasn't against me.
No, definitely not against me. When I dared a glance up into his face, I saw that he was smiling. It wasn't a smile that made me feel better in any way, but it was a smile nevertheless. At least his teeth were in decent condition.
"Come now," he half ordered, half suggested, like I had a choice, gesturing towards the upper section of the deck. I took a step in the direction he indicated but was slowed when he grabbed me by the arm and, under the pretense of escorting me, pulled me close so as to whisper on my ear. "Do you know what's expected of you?"
I stumbled a step when all the blood seemingly left my legs. I was supposed to do something? Expectations? Fuck.
"No," I whined back, keeping my voice low but unable to stop the babble. "I have no fucking clue what's happening and—"
He silenced me with a soft hiss. "No matter. Bow when I bow and do everything she says."
"Who's she?"
"Shh! And when she asks you to confirm the crime, agree." That slimy smile of his was back, and it added to the nervousness churning in my stomach.
"What?"
"All you have to say is 'yes'. Confirm and you will be rewarded."
"Conf— What?"
Bluesilk-Guy's eyes flickered up to the set of wooden stairs that we were fast approaching. "I need her favor and she likes demonstrations. I figured you would be agreeable. No sense in waiting. Agree?"
I was still overwhelmed to the point that everything was sailing over my head, but I nodded anyway.
"Good. Just do that… nod when she asks. That's all you have to do… nod."
I opened my mouth to protest, but we were up the stairs and onto the upper section of the deck. Several very important looking people were lined up before me, though none looked more important or intimidating than the woman at their center.
She sat on her velvet chair like a goddess, dark silken hair pinned up elegantly behind her moonlike face, a few stray strands glittering in the sunlight as they were stirred by the salty breeze.
I shivered in the warm air as she turned her gaze, scouring me with dark, quick, and clever eyes that lacked any form of warmth or compassion.
Yeah, Head Bitch in Charge if I ever saw one.
Bluesilk-Guy thought the same. He bowed low and it took me a second to remember that I was supposed to bow too.
"Ching Shih," Blue-Silk greeted, talking into his knees.
"Zhong Shun Chow," Ching Shih returned formally. "Are we ready to proceed?"
"Yes, we are."
"Is this the girl?" Ching Shih asked, scanning me one more with those all-seeing eyes of hers. She wasn't all that much older than me, probably in her early to mid thirties, but I felt like I was at the feet of an old reverend queen all the same.
"Yes," Zhong Shun Chow confirmed, much to Ching Shih's displeasure.
"I assume she can speak for herself," she warned before turning her attention back to me. "Come, child, sit with me."
I did as she indicated, sliding down to my knees just to the left of her chair.
"What is your name?" She inquired, watching me in a manner that may have been interpreted as friendly if her eyes weren't so cold.
"Buffy," I managed to say. I had no idea where to look. In the US and England, I knew that it was generally considered polite to make eye contact with the person speaking to you. I also knew that that wasn't always the case in every culture, and I couldn't remember any of the tidbits of information that I'd googled over the years about etiquette across cultures. The last thing I wanted to do was piss her off.
"Where are you from, Buffy?"
"Uhh, England." I settled for staring at her shoulder. Better to be a little submissive than challenging.
"You are a long way from home, then."
"Yes, very." I chanced a quick glance up at her face and was surprised to see a glimmer of amusement flickering across it.
"What are you doing all the way out here, then? You speak our language very beautifully for someone that did not grow up speaking it."
"I was travelling with a friend. But I got separated from him." I carefully avoided the language thing. I certainly couldn't tell her the truth and really didn't believe that I could lie to her at any rate.
Several people were being walked, or dragged, up the same stairs I had been guided up moments before. They were struggling and begging, but I didn't dare give them more than a glance.
"I look forward to hearing more about your travels," Ching Shih said passively before turning her attention to the three people that had been brought before her. She began speaking, but I was too bewildered to listen.
Instead of being useful, my brain decided to recall the "Hoist the Colors" song from Pirates of the Caribbean.
~The King and his men~
~Stole the Queen from her bed~
I chanced a glance up, and what I saw didn't immediately click in my brain. There were the three eerily familiar looking people on their knees. A few feet to the right of them was a tall and rather imposing man with a wicked looking blade. Beyond that, down the stairs, I could see an assortment of ragged pirates that were packed on the deck like a bunch of sardines, and beyond that, the wind ruffled up deep blue waves that almost matched the shade of the TARDIS.
~And bound her in her bones~
I focused on that color, finding some comfort in it. It reminded me that the Doctor did still exist and that he was hopefully nearby looking for me. I wanted nothing more than to see that wonderful color on wood again.
~The Seas be ours~
Ching Shih turned to address me again. I saw her mouth move and heard the tell-tale tone of a question, but my mind didn't register what she was saying.
~And by the powers~
I hadn't really put two and two together yet, why I was in this situation and why the men in front of me were familiar. But I did what Zhong Shun Chow told me.
TARDIS blue on wood.
I nodded.
There was a color on wood, but it wasn't TARDIS blue. It was red.
~Where we will, we'll roam~
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Pei-Pei was going to keep her promise.
She was going to find the man called 'the Doctor'.
Her family said that there was no point in it. One man… that might not even exist… in a sea of thousands. But she was going to do it anyway.
The only problem was that she had no idea where to start.
Buffy had said that he was a man wearing a leather coat; that he talked strangely and had ears and eyes to match. But most importantly, he had a large blue box.
But what kind of box? Pei-Pei wondered as she wandered the streets of Macau aimlessly. She figured that the city was the best place to start, seeing as both she and Buffy had been captured at the same time. There are many blue boxes. This is a trading port.
Because how big is 'big', exactly? A large box could mean a few feet tall or one of the large shipping containers that could fit any quantity of goods.
She sighed and decided not to overthink it. Surely if Buffy thought it was important enough of a detail to mention, she would know it when she saw it.
Just as she was finishing that thought, She caught a flash of blue out of the corner of her eye. She turned towards it skeptically, not having seen it a few moments before.
But now that she had seen it, it was there. A big, unmistakeable, bizarre box that was definitely wooden and even more definitely blue.
That's weird, Pei-Pei thought. Weird enough to be what she was looking for. So she marched straight over to the bizarre structure and knocked.
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The fuzzy patchwork screen flashed a movie that I wouldn't remember.
But I would recall the bugs that danced about in the projector's light.
And the way the cool contrast of bright and dark melted together. How you could see the silhouettes of the cars and people.
A car radio that was always way too loud.
The Stars always shone so brightly at the drive in.
Not many people lived in this area of the mountains.
You could see the Milky Way in a way I never thought possible.
So many and so far away.
So many places I would never touch.
The lightning bugs in the trees winked in agreement.
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"Keep your arm up! It wastes time, bringing your arm back into the center after a block."
I sidestepped Ching Shih's swing and managed to parry another. I knew she was being deliberately slow, but I was still pleased at my own ability. I'd never used any form of weapon before, even if it was just a wooden practice sword.
Believe it or not, after the trauma that occurred when I first stepped foot on Ching Shih's ship (I was actively refusing to acknowledge that it happened at all) my life was actually starting to look up again.
How did it get to the point where I wasn't absolutely terrified of and cursing my very existence?
Fangirling.
I'm fucking serious.
Turns out, I actually had read a good bit on my new friend/mentor Ching Shih, because she was a motherfucking ex-prostitute pirate warlord who was actually real and existed in my universe too.
The only reason I had looked her up a few years ago was because there was a Pirates of the Caribbean character based on her, which also kind-of-sort-of explained why my subconscious had decided to resort to a song related to the franchise when I first met her.
Naturally, once I realized that I knew about her and how freaking awesome she was, I got excited. Then add on all the nasty adrenalin and emotional rollercoaster I'd been on the last few weeks, and I was super duper excited.
Ching Shih, like everyone else in this universe and the next, really likes it when people know and adore her. Not to mention that she was impressed by my botched telling of the run in the Doctor and I had with the Natives of whatever planet that was (Simplified as some Island a storm pushed our 'ship' up on) and included all the violent deaths (Ching Shih especially liked the beheadings), she decided to take me under her wing.
Halle-fucking-lullah.
I'd been living with her on her ship for nearly a week now, mostly just being her personal assistant, fetching, carrying, delivering messages, and whatnot. It wasn't half bad, either. Ching Shih was actually much nicer once she was away from all the people she needed to maintain an image in front of. She was still terrifying, of course, but nice. Sort of like the Doctor.
But anyway, somewhere around day three she decided that I needed to learn how to protect myself. I'd told her about traveling (not the space-time version of it, obviously), and she'd agreed that I needed some form of self defense training.
It was going pretty well. I mean, I got whacked pretty good with an oversized stick a few times, but after that I started getting the hang of it quite nicely.
'Enough to be dangerous if one's not expecting it,' Ching Shih said.
I soon discovered that I had great reflexes in this body. Small and quick as I was, I was extremely proficient at getting around an opponent's arm for a few quick jabs before dodging away to a safe distance.
A natural with a short blade, as my new mentor soon discovered, stepping away, rubbing her ribs ruefully with a pleased smile.
Not gonna lie, I was a little disturbed at just how fast I was able to pick all this stuff up. Two one hour sessions, and I was already comfortable with holding a real blade in my hand. It did feel natural… like I'd been doing it my whole life. I hadn't, though. In my old universe I could barely hold a kitchen knife without the fear of accidentally cutting myself. It seemed a bit strange to me, but I decided to let it slide.
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The house was small and the walls were thin.
And my parents were really, really loud.
I tried to shut the door to block out their constant shouting, but a seven year old Charlie and a five year old Geordie got in the way.
They were both crying. The room they shared was right next to the living room, so it was so much harder to ignore.
I couldn't just leave them, crying in the hallway as they were.
I let them in and shut the door before turning on the tv and turning up the volume as loud as it would go.
"See him?" I said to Geordie, pointing to the guy dressed in yellow with a visor. "You're named after him. It was my idea."
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"Ship to port!"
"Hoist the colors!"
I strode out to the ship's railing, enjoying the feel of the wind buffeting against my face. There was a general clamor of the crew rushing about, doing whatever it was they did when preparing for an unidentified ship.
I could see the object in question, no more than a dark splotch bobbing halfway between me and the horizon.
The first mate, who I recognized as Lo Fung, materialized beside me with a spyglass, which he held up to one eye.
"Is it coming this way?" I asked, tugging at my new set of clothes somewhat uncomfortably.
At first, the change of clothes had been welcome after days and days of being stuck in the same old ones. They were a tad bit uncomfortable though, making me miss my T-shirts and jeans. Not that I was going to complain. Seventeenth century Chinese pirate garb was awesome; so I was happy to endure feeling a little smothered as long as I could keep wearing the dark, layered fabric covered with a series of intricate gold designs. I even had a pirate hat. A LEGIT pirate hat.
Lo Fung nodded. He was one of the few crew mates that I was on speaking terms with. "It's on an intercept course, but…"
He went silent for a moment, causing a feeling of foreboding to wash over me. "What?"
"It's strange," he began thoughtfully, still peering through the spyglass. "It's one of ours."
"Well, that's good, isn't it?"
"The colors are raised." He lowered the spyglass. "But I don't see anyone on board."
"What, no one?" I asked disbelievingly.
"Nope. No movement at all." He passed me the spyglass. "Here, you look."
I took up the object and held it up so I could look through it as he had. It took me a second to locate the far off object, but when I did, I was surprised.
The ship was still and silent, like a ghost ship. Usually you had crew roaming about on deck, messing around on the rigging or just loitering because being below deck wasn't always pleasant.
More than that, a wave of nausea washed over me.
I lowered the spyglass momentarily, blinking to clear my vision before raising it again.
No, my first observation had been correct. The ship was still and empty, but it was vibrating. Wavering in a manner that was more than just the typical illusion you could expect from looking at something from a distance. It was thrumming with energy. And I knew what kind of energy it was.
"Do you remember the ship that brought me here?" I asked my companion, the sense of wrongness increasing its hold the closer the vessel creeped.
"Yes," Lo Fung provided. "Why?"
"Is that it?" I passed Lo Fung back the spyglass.
After a moment's more observation, he nodded. "Yeah that's it. Though I don't see why that's important."
"Because… it is empty." And I think I know why.
Something in my tone must've made Lo Fung nervous, because he shivered before saying, "I'd better report this to the Captain."
"No," I cut in. "She's resting. I'll tell her."
My feet carried me back to the cabin of their own accord. My heart pounded in my throat, downing out the sound of the crew and the sea.
"Captain?" I called into the darkness of the cabin, which Ching Shih and I shared. She had a bunk, and I slept on a thick mat on the floor.
"Hmm?" Came the sleepy reply. She usually dozed this time of day, preferring to be up and about in the earliest parts of the morning and then sunset to midnight. Noon to mid afternoon was naptime.
"A ship's been spotted, and it's on an intercept."
"Which is it?" She asked, sounding a little more awake.
"One of ours, except there's no sign of a crew."
"Oh?" Movement in the back of the room suggested that she was getting up. "You're certain?"
"Pretty sure. If they're on board, they're not on deck."
"Tell whoever's on the helm to make for it. Full sails."
I bowed slightly before haring off to do what she said.
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I was home alone. And I was fine with that.
I had a day off of school, but mom and dad had to work. Charlie and Geordie went to stay with grandma. They were too little to stay on their own and I wasn't old enough to watch them both all day.
I was old enough to stay home alone.
And I was fine with that.
My dad's footsteps cluttered around the house. I recognized his walking pattern.
Quick right step. Slow left step.
The stepping stopped for more than thirty seconds.
I checked out the window and saw his truck was gone. Then I checked the time.
Dad left over two hours ago.
I was home alone.
And I wasn't fine with that.
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About an hour and a half later, some of the crew had been sent over in the life boats (they weren't actually called that, but my pirate vocabulary was somewhat lacking) to board the abandoned vessel.
They soon had it under control and it was brought alongside. By then, Ching Shih had dressed and was leaning against the railing, quick eyes surveying the flanking ship and the surrounding sea.
"How could it just be empty?" She asked, mostly to herself after receiving the scouts' report. "No signs of struggle or boarding. Just gone."
"Could they not just have… abandoned ship?" Lo Fung offered.
"Unlikely," Ching Shih snapped. She wasn't going to explain why it was unlikely, and we didn't need her to.
No sign of struggle. Not a thing out of place. Just gone.
I tried telling myself that it couldn't have been the monster that had been harassing the prisoners when I was on board. Yes, the creature could come and go without a trace… but it took people violently. If it was the cause of the disappearance of the crew, there would've been a fight.
Right?
The deep unsettled feeling in my gut was not helping to convince me.
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Twelfth round of Train Dominos, and grandpa hadn't won once.
We both had one left, and it was my turn before him.
"Can't go," I lied. "I'll have to draw."
I plucked a domino from the pile and shrugged. A little blue train was placed on my line of dominos.
Grandpa placed his last domino at the end of my train, matching one set of three pink dots with another.
He was so happy about it.
I buried my last domino in the pile before anyone saw the three pink dots on it.
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With the ghost ship assigned a skeleton crew, the two vessels made way side by side across suspiciously calm waters, bound for some kind of secret cove or whatever, Ching Shih didn't explain and I wasn't about to ask since she didn't seem to be in a sharing mood. By and large, we were going to a sort of meeting place for her fleet. With several hundred ships at her command, it made sense to have some sort of headquarters.
Throughout my entire week on Ching Shih's ship, I hadn't gotten sea sick once.
But guess what?
Now I was.
"You're even more jumpy than usual," Ching Shih commented, making me flinch for the second time in thirty seconds, the first being after she'd set her bottle of rum down a little harder than usual.
I looked up from the silk vest I was darning, nearly pricking myself with the needle in the process. Fixing the little holes and worn spots in her clothes was one of my duties. And yes, I know how to sew (thanks, grandma).
Ching Shih was peering at me from over the rim of her bottle, dark eyes glittering in the candle light. Her long, straight hair shifted around her face, flowing freely like a living thing now that she'd let it down from the tight knot she usually kept it in. In the low light, she radiated power and a sly energy that I would associate with the most cunning of the Slytherin.
I shrugged and went back to my needle and thread, but Ching Shih wasn't finished with me yet.
"Does the abandoned vessel have you spooked?" She inquired. I wasn't sure if the concern on her face was feigned or not.
"Kind of, I guess," I responded, not looking up from the cloth.
She snorted in amusement. "Strange things happen on the water, child. Best get used to it."
"Yeah, I know." Not just on the ocean. Everywhere is weird. But I knew better than to challenge her statement. "I'm working on it."
Ching Shih stood and stretched, abandoning the scrolls she had been pouring over in favor of ambling over to check on my progress.
She had just leaned down to snatch up the cloth when a scream sliced through the air. Brief, sharp, and plainly terrified.
Then silence.
Ching Shih and I stared at each other for a brief second, and then she sprung into action, bounding out the cabin door and snatching up her scabbard on the way.
I stayed where I was, only getting to my feet and backing up against the wall.
Please. Please. Please.
Don't be what I think it is.
More shouts of confusion reached my ears, adding to the general clatter of footsteps and the blood pounding in my ears.
My stomach tossed and turned. My skin tingled and the fine hairs on my arms stood on end.
Darkness was creeping in; shadows stretching and eating at the small comfort the single flickering candle provided as it swayed in response to a otherwise undetectable gust of air.
I screwed my eyes shut and tried to make myself small.
For a moment, there was nothing. Just the creaking of the woodwork and the distorted voices of the crew.
A gust of hot, sickeningly sweet air assaulted my nostrils, and I could feel every individual hair on my head flutter in response.
It was here for me.
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"No! You don't have to kill it!"
My dad paused, broom in hand, poised to bring it down on the tiny brown mouse he had cornered between the dog bed and the fireplace.
"What else am I supposed to do with it?" He complained, before turning back to the small creature.
But, oops.
The lapse in attention was all it needed.
The mouse slipped away under the cupboards, never to be seen again.
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I opened my eyes and stared into the creature's face. It was eyeless and earless, covered with a black leathery skin that stretched across its basketball sized skull.
Smaller than I imagined. So how did —
It's mouth opened, jaws unhinging to reveal long, dripping teeth.
— it swallow the people.
I wasn't afraid. I was too afraid to be afraid. My mind had stopped working, stopped processing what it was seeing. I might as well have been watching it on Netflix. Man, Stranger Things had really upped its quality.
The door to the cabin banged back open. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Ching Shih freeze in the doorway.
She was much braver than me. Her second reflex was to draw her sword and lunge across the room to bury the polished steel into the creature's back.
It roared more out of anger than in pain. It swiped at the Pirate Queen with one of its middle legs, sending her crashing against the far wall.
And like that, the spell was broken.
My muscles unfreezed, allowing me to lunge under the monster's jaws and make it out into the center of the room.
Out of either luck or instinct, I ended up beside Ching Shih's table. There was a large knife there, sticking into the wood.
My hand found the leather wrapped handle and I freed it from the wood with two tugs.
Which was one tug too many.
It was on me again, one of the front two legs on either side of me, pinning me to the desk. It's jaws opened wide above my head.
The cold metal around my neck burned hot, causing the room to chill and become virtually nonexistent.
The echo of the floor solidified before I could sink too far into it but I didn't give it much thought. The creature was still on top of me.
Then it wasn't.
I heard its scream of agony, but couldn't find a reason as to why. I rolled over onto my side to watch it try to stagger clumsily away. It only made it about five feet before it collapsed, revealing the large knife handle jutting from its throat.
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Why was I crying?
I wasn't hurt, sad, or particularly upset. I mean, I was a little upset, but certainly not enough to cry. Honestly, I was more irritated than anything.
I hadn't seen the other car pulling around the corner. It was just a dent. We had insurance, my parents weren't angry. No big deal.
But the tears kept coming, and the lady in the other car was giving me sappy looks of pity.
Pity that I didn't want. Pity I didn't need. Pity that offended me more than anything. I'd made a mistake. It was a human thing to do and I wasn't all that upset about it.
But, for whatever reason, the tears wouldn't stop.
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Sobs wracked my body, but I couldn't really place why. I was numb, not upset. I guess maybe it was because my heart was beating so frantically that the rest of my body figured that I couldn't not be upset about something.
Too bad my brain was out of that loop. The brain would've told the tear ducts that we weren't upset. In fact, it would've said that we were watching a creature from hell take its last shuddering breaths with a kind of horrified fascination.
The creature twitched once, twice, and went still forever. I watched it's dark blood seeping out into the surrounding yellow-tinged fog.
I hid my face in my hands, trying to block everything out, trying to either feel something or feel nothing at all. I would be able to deal with one extreme of another, but the emotional limbo I was currently residing in was eating me alive.
Did I feel guilty? Or sad? Or happy?
Well, I was alive. Alive was good. Alive was happy.
I peeked out between my fingers at the dead creature.
No, I wasn't happy. I'd never killed anything before. It wasn't something to be happy about.
Curious. I was curious. That I could focus on. It was an alien creature that I had never seen before. Even more than that, it was dead enough to be safe.
I swallowed my trailing sobs and scrubbed the moisture from my eyes before standing up shakily to go over and kneel by the dead thing.
It wasn't as big I as thought it had been, just the size of a small bear. It had six legs, two in the front and back like any four legged animal plus two more that came jutting out of each side like some sort of insect.
Braver than I might normally be, I cautiously reached out and rested a hand on its flank. It was soft and smooth, like a cheap leather handbag.
I shuddered and drew my hand back like it had been burnt. Gross.
Now determined to keep my hands to myself, I scooted around to take another look at the head. There wasn't really anything new to note about it except the bloody knife handle that was sticking out from its neck.
Without thinking, I reached out and took hold of the knife. The blood was cold and sticky, making my hand slip a little as I slowly pulled the knife out with a squelch that at one point would've made me gag.
The knife in total was about as long as my forearm; half blade, half handle, it made for a medium length knife. The blade itself was almost black with blood, but I could see it's basic shape; slightly thinner at the hilt than it was at the tip. It had the barest hint of a curve and instead of being tipped with the usual point, the tip was angled and slightly squarish, giving the impression that someone had cut the end off using a straight edge.
With a trembling hand, I wiped the knife off on my shirt. The fabric was dark, so as soon as the blood was off the knife it was easy to forget that there was blood on the shirt. It wouldn't stain.
I flinched when the creature moved again. Thankfully, the movement wasn't the result of it suddenly coming back to life. But the creature was deteriorating before my eyes. It crumpled and shrunk in on itself before finally melting away into the fog as some kind of inter dimensional dust.
I tucked the knife into my belt and settled back into a sitting position, wiping my hands off on my shirt as well before scrubbing at my eyes with the heel of my hands.
Tired. I was tired. Tired from crying. Tired from fighting. Tired from being on a pirate ship for three weeks of my life.
I leaned back, fully intending to just lay down and take a nap, but ended up bumping my head against something solid.
Solid.
Solid.
Coldness seeped into my shoulders like I was leaned up against a giant block of ice. It was big, frozen, and solid.
I barely dared to turn my head around; barely dared to breathe, let alone hope.
But I did. I leapt to my feet and turned to see the TARDIS in all her greyish foggy glory. Parked neatly in front of the ghost of Ching Shih's desk.
I didn't consciously request to go back to the world of the living, but suddenly the air was warm and I was greeted by a faceful of leather.
"Buffy!" A painfully familiar voice laughed loudly into my ear. "Where the 'ell 'ave you been?"
A laugh forced its way up my throat in response. "Me? Where the hell have you been?"
The arms around me tightened until the embrace was almost painful. I curled my own arms around the Doctor and squeezed him back as hard as I could.
Finally.
"Sorry," the Doctor muttered into my shoulder. "You're not exactly easy to track." He pulled back just enough to look down at me without completely relinquishing his hold. I couldn't see the blue of his eyes in the dim light, but I could tell that they were smiling. "I only found you now because of the dimensional fluctuations you cause by going back and forth and even that was lucky. The TARDIS can only pick up fluctuations within a certain distance."
"You took your time," I responded dryly, rolling my eyes in a pathetic attempt to be humorous.
The Doctor rolled his own eyes in response. "Well, I did try to do a technology sweep for your phone…"
"Yeah, that got dropped in the ocean."
"...but when that didn't work there wasn't much else to do but wait. The problem was that I had no idea where to even start. Might've taken even longer if it weren't for your little friend."
"Friend?" I echoed. "What friend?"
"Girl... what was her name? Pei-Pei. Knocked on the TARDIS door. Took me completely by surprise."
I chuckled as a wave of fondness for the girl washed over me. "Bet that was a shock for both of you."
The Doctor gave one of his huge grins. "Just a bit, yeah. I didn't let her in but she must've seen the TARDIS dematerialize. I took off as soon I as knew you were on a ship." He frowned. "That can't have been fun. How're you holdin' up?"
I shrugged. "Been better. I would kill for a shower." It was an easy lie.
The Doctor stared at me disbelievingly for a moment, but eventually nodded before releasing me and redirecting his attention to the other person in the room.
"Is she okay?" I nodded to the pirate.
"Yeah, just unconscious," he answered, going back over to peer at Ching Shih's unconscious form. "Who is she?"
"Ching Shih."
The Doctor blinked at the name, a slow smile spreading across his face. "Should've known that's where you'd end up. That should be a way of locatin' each other. Just camp out with the most famous person you can find."
I rested my hand against the warm blue wood of the spaceship. I was ready to go. I wanted to put all this behind me. I was done with this place and time zone. Time to move on.
Thankfully, the Doctor seemed to pick up on my cue. "Right then. We should probably be off. Things to do. Anything you need before we go?"
I shook my head and mentally leaded with him to hurry the fuck up and open the door.
"Do you want to wait an' say goodbye?" He jerked his head to Ching Shih's prone form.
I took one last look at the Queen of the Pirates and shook my head. "Nah, let's go."
~0~0~0~
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