As promised, here I offer a Buffy/Firefly crossover.
1.“Caleb?” The sound curled through the air like sweet, sweet cotton candy. It was the most beautiful thing Caleb had heard in a very long time. And it wasn’t that this voice was the only voice he’d heard in centuries. It wasn’t that this was the voice of a little harlot he’d put on the end of a knife back when he was alive. It was that the First and most Purest form of Evil had not abandoned him like he had feared. The First had come for him. It’s power pulled his consciousness together like mercury and soon he was with form. He could see his hands and he could feel the first filling him with its strength. He attempted to fill his lungs with air, but none would come.
“Yeah. You’ll have to wait a spell for that. We’re a little ways away from any air. Don’t you worry yourself, though. No harm will come to you while I got you.” The first said.
“That is a comfort.” Caleb attempted to say, but with no air, there was no way for him to make noise.
“Yeah. That too.” The first made a girlish giggle that was an abomination to all laughter.
“So how is this supposed to work?” Caleb thought to himself.
“I thought that would be obvious, Caleb.”
“Of course.” Caleb thought. “What would you have of me?”
“I want you to see something. Close your eyes for me.” The first said with a seductive drawl.
“Open or close. It might be the same difference out here.” The former preacher peered deep into a vast black nothingness.
“Believe me, it’s better if your eyes are closed.” Caleb did as he was bid. Like he suspected, there was no difference between the black he saw with his eyes open than the black he saw with his eyes closed.
“You can open them now.” Caleb, again, did as he was bid. Now he was standing in a room filled with screaming and fighting. Bloodied men with axes and swords were being chopped down like wheat at harvest time. More over, the one doing the chopping was a little girl. She might have been about eighteen, if that. Her wavy, dark hair fanned out in arcs as she spun around the men’s attempts to end her. One by one, she fell them all and made it look like art. She was horribly still as the last of the men dropped to the ground. Blood spattered up either of her arms and marred her sundress.
“Slayer.” Caleb thought.
“I don’t blame you for thinking that, Caleb. No, she is something else. The slayers died out when the world died, but that’s all old news.”
“Not for me. When did the world die?”
“A long time from now. The humans didn’t need my help for an apocalypse after all.”
“I’m sure you could have done a better job at it than they ever did.”
“I’m sure I could.”
“Another question. You’re sure she ain’t a Slayer. She’s looking a hell of a lot like one.”
“I’m sure, Caleb.” The first said, sounding vaguely annoyed.
“I’m not afraid mind you. It’s just that the last Slayer I came up against sliced me from my balls to my neck. That will give any man pause.”
“Caleb, don’t be crude.”
“Fair enough.”
“Caleb, I want her. I want her in the worst way and I send you forth to gather her for me.”
“I haven’t been doing much lately, anyway.”
2.
Jayne was doing in his bunk, what everyone assumed he did in his bunk when he was alone when the first appeared as an old friend.
“Christ, Jayne!” The first cried, turning his incorporeal head away from the large man. Jayne snatched up his pants and threw his blanket and pillow over his lap for good measure. A long string of Mandarin curses poured from Jayne’s mouth before he recognized the man standing before him.
“Wash?” Jayne said softly. His mouth fell open.
“You think they make bleach for eyes. If not, I’d have to settle for taking them out with a fork.” The first said.
“Wash, you’re dead.” Jayne said.
“Yes. That would be a way of thinking of it.”
“No. There ain’t no two ways about it. You got a big hunk of metal through your chest a while back.”
“Jayne, I’m aware. It hurt like hell, but here I stand, traumatized by your …that.”
“Your wife, Zoe. She don’t realize it, but I can hear her crying at night sometimes, alone in her bunk.”
“She’s hurting. I’ve seen. She has a hole in her that I need you to help me fill.”
“You asking me to sleep with your wife?” The first let out a string of Mandarin curses himself.
“No, Jayne. This hole isn’t literal. I need you to help bring me back to life. Next time the cockpit is empty, I need you to redirect the ship.”
“Why you ain’t talking to Mal about this. Why not your wife? Why me?”
“Because Mal, Zoe, River, Simon, Kaylee, they’re all going to sleep peacefully when they die. As much as we didn’t get along in life, I still wouldn’t wish what’s coming for you when you catch a bullet one of these days.”
“What do you mean?”
“The dead are eager to have you, Jayne. You’ve wronged a lot of men. Bad men, most of them, but men with grudges they all remain.” The first transformed into a dirty looking man with one eye gone.
“You shot me, Jayne. You shot me in the back over ten credits.”
The first transformed again, his face growing an eye where there was none. The face grew cleaner, more handsome.
“You shot me over five.” The first transformed again, a massive beard sprouting from his chin and stretching down his chest.
“You didn’t waste a bullet on me. You just left me drifting in a dead ship with only half an hour of air left. I didn’t die well.”
“It’ just like in those Christmas stories.” The first said, turning back into Wash. “You’re a bad man, Jayne and hell is waiting for you. I want to save you from that. One good deed. One great deed can make up for the sins of the past.”
“You sound like Shepherd Book.”
“The Shepherd was a wise man. You know what I’m saying to be true. Jayne, save yourself. Save me. Help me hold my wife again.”
“Where am I redirecting the ship to?” Jayne asked, his gaze directed at the ground.
“Straight into the edge of space, where the Reavers are.”
“Reavers!” Jayne shouted. He repented and repeated it as a whisper. “Reavers.”
“I don’t like it either. I don’t want my friends, my wife anywhere near there, but we don’t have a choice.”
“If I’m sending us into Revere Territory, I got to let the others know. It ain’t right to lead them into a fight, blind.”
“I have found my way across death. I’m the best pilot this ship has ever seen. Don’t worry about fighting with Reavers. I can get you where you need to be without ever having them notice.”
“You’re sure of that.”
“I am.” The first said, offering Jayne a smile.
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