strong enough [crossover]

xi. buffy and mattie, forever and always

trigger warnings: discussion of mj's sexual assault

*

MJ's dreaming again.

She's sitting with her back against the trunk of Thalia's tree, her legs stretched out in front of her. Thalia has her head in MJ's lap, and they're making a daisy chain. Down the hill, Annabeth, Grover, Percy, and a few other kids are playing a high-stakes game of tag. A wind sweeps over the valley, rustling the leaves above and carrying with it strawberry-scented salt air. The sky is perfectly blue, with plenty of fluffy white clouds. It's idyllic. The kind of perfect day that can only exist in dreams.

"What do you think Gwyneth meant?" Thalia asks.

MJ furrows her brow, attention still mostly on the daisy chain. "What are you talking about?"

"Cardiff, 1869," Thalia says. "Gwyneth, the girl who could see the future. She said 'Lost things can be returned.' What do you think she meant by that?"

"I don't know." MJ sets aside the daisy chain to absentmindedly play with Thalia's hair. "I've been thinking about it for weeks now, and I have no idea what she meant. Because I haven't literally lost anything. Or anyone. Except, well...Darby."

Darby Banner, MJ's big sister. She was five years older than MJ, but for some reason, it always felt like they were the same age. She's been MIA since June 9th, 2004. It wasn't like her to vanish, but it happens sometimes to demigods. They get killed by some monster and their remains are never found, so to the rest of the world, they just disappear. MJ hates thinking about Darby's corpse rotting in some monster's lair somewhere.

Why is it that demigods always get so much less than they deserve?

"Maybe it's something your mother lost," Thalia theorizes. "Or something Camp Half-Blood lost. Or, maybe, she was talking about you reuniting with your mom because technically, you're lost too. Or Pan, maybe?"

MJ nods. "Could be, yeah. I don't know. The fact that she said specifically said 'Lost things can be returned' and not 'Lost people can return' makes me think she was talking about an object. But I can't think of anything, so maybe it is a person."

"Maybe you could IM Chiron," Thalia says. "He might have an idea."

"Good idea," MJ says, "but I have no idea if IMs work in space. Then again, only one way to find out, right?"

The two of them exchange mischievous smiles. There's nothing even remotely nefarious about Iris-Messaging Chiron, but something about doing it on the TARDIS makes it feel sneaky.

"What about that thing you took from Adam's workshop?" Thalia asks. "Have you figured out what it is yet?"

"I keep forgetting about it," MJ says. With almost anyone else, she'd leave it there, but this is Thalia (or, well, Dream-Thalia). She doesn't keep things from Thalia. So she adds, "Also, to be perfectly honest, I'm kind of scared of it. What if it's a bomb or something and I accidentally detonate it?"

"There's got to be some kind of lab on the TARDIS where you can scan it," Thalia says. "You know, see what's inside."

MJ groans. "That sounds science-y, and science-y stuff is not my thing. It's Luna's. Maybe I can get the box to her somehow."

"Or you can ask the Doctor for help," Thalia suggests. "Science-y stuff is his thing too."

"Yeah, but this box is made out of celestial bronze, which means it's from our world, not his," MJ says. "For all I know, whatever fancy doohickeys he has won't be able to detect the cube's existence or something."