Squeenie Drabble Challenge #19

[chaletian]

Ivanova and Oz
::as requested by bookwormsarah::

AU after season 4 of Buffy; set immediately post-Rising Star of B5.

Oz appears to be in an episode of Star Trek. Huh. It’s pretty cold in the future, and he wraps the blanket that covers around himself. He’s naked underneath. Good thing he’s used to waking up in strange places with no clothes on.

He looks around, taking in the room. Everything shiny, with colourful screens all over the place, not to mention… OK. Aliens. That’s new. Definitely the future then. Although, technically, he was always going to wake up in the future, compared to when he fell asleep. Or lost consciousness. How did he end up in the future with aliens, exactly?

Oz figures he’s in a medical centre or something. It’s a hospital blanket he’s covered with, that much he can tell. Some things don’t change. It’s busy, with people coming and going, and he can sense that this isn’t the common hustle and bustle of an ordinary day. Something unusual has happened. And given that nobody’s paying him any attention, he reckons it’s not him.

Finally, a doctor comes over to him, and checks him over, but brushes off his questions, and tells him to stay in bed. Oz is sleepy, and lets nature take its course. When he wakes up, there’s a woman sitting on the bed next to him. She has long red hair that needs a brush and pale skin, but for all that ranks low down on the resembling-Willow scale that is Oz’s basis for judging women. She has been crying. She notices that Oz is awake, and says merely, “We found you on an abandoned vessel three light years away. You were cryogenically frozen.”

“Oh,” says Oz. The woman laughs, harshly.

“You’ve been frozen for years. Centuries, maybe. Everyone you’ve ever known will be dead by now.”

“Bummer,” says Oz. Way, way in the future then. That’s sort of depressing. He thinks maybe he won’t think about it for a while.

“Don’t you care? The people who loved you… they’ll never know that you’re alive, here, now, still loving them.” Oz thinks about Willow, and Willow not loving him, and her girlfriend.

“All love is unrequited,” he says. The woman starts to cry again. Oz just feels sorta numb.

Comments

[katie__pillar.livejournal.com]

Aw, that's very Oz, all sort of resigned to everything. And I liked this bit Definitely the future then. Although, technically, he was always going to wake up in the future, compared to when he fell asleep. Typical Oz.

[chaletian.livejournal.com]

LOL - I thought so. What's Oz without a bit of zen-esque thinking?

[bookwormsarah.livejournal.com]

*splutters*
Wonderfully Oz - thank you!