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jedibuttercupPG-13, B:tVS/Stargate SG-1; 4200 words. (Part 3 of See For Yourself).
The anthropological scholar in Nick wanted to rip the binoculars out of Jon's hands and see if he could get a closer look at exactly what they were talking about-- but the experienced observer and downsized disturber of several Goa'uld regimes felt his skin crawl.
Title: See For Yourself, Part 3 - Emergency Meetings
Author: Jedi Buttercup
Disclaimer: The words are mine; the worlds belong to Whedon and SyFy.
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: B:tVS mid-7.15 "Get it Done", Stargate SG-1 mid-season 8, slightly AU
Notes: Follows Part 1 & Part 2. Contains a twist I've been mulling over for awhile-- but I don't plan to go cliché with it.
Summary: The anthropological scholar in Nick wanted to rip the binoculars out of Jon's hands and see if he could get a closer look at exactly what they were talking about-- but the experienced observer and downsized disturber of several Goa'uld regimes felt his skin crawl. 4200 words.
Spike sauntered slowly out of the kitchen, mug of blood in hand, as the door closed behind Dawn's little friends.
"Something's up with those two," he mused, staring after the pair of them as he took a sip.
Buffy frowned over at him from her post at the door, worry drawing lines around her eyes. "I know," she said. "They're way too mature for their age; it's kind of creepy."
"Like you weren't too mature for your age when you were sixteen," Dawn objected, stormclouds building on her brow. "They don't have parents or guardians here, so of course they're used to taking care of themselves." It was obvious she had a sizeable crush on one of the boys; probably the earnest blond one she'd stood closest to. That seemed to be the way the Summers girls' luck ran these days.
"Not what I meant," he said, making eye contact with each of them to emphasize how serious he was. "Floppy-haired one knew me; he went on alert the second I came through the door, and his friend picked up his cue. Not fear, exactly, but not your clueless civilian reaction, either."
Buffy made a frustrated noise. "But that makes no sense!" she said. "I thought they might be hunters' kids at first or something, but they didn't recognize me at all, and they treated the Slayer story like just another myth. How could they know about you and not me?"
"Wait, wait!" Dawn said, irritation shading into genuine anger in her stance and tone. "You've been checking them out? Like, you thought they might be enemies, and you didn't tell me?"
"Not now, Niblet," Spike said absently, raising a hand to shush them as his vampiric hearing picked up voices from the front walk. Boys hadn't gone far, and what they were saying--
"They definitely recognized me," he said. "They're talking about calling someone named Jack, and that unspecified 'things' have just got a lot more complicated."
"They probably mean Jon's uncle," Buffy replied, lips thinned with frustration. "There's a General Jack O'Neill listed in both his and Nick's files as emergency contact."
"General?" That set the alarm-bells ringing. "Of the Initiative sort?" Spike well remembered Maggie Walsh's troupe of solider boys; if someone outside of Finn's hunting group had picked up their old files things could turn nasty right quick. Lord only knew what information they still had on him.
Buffy shook her head. "Pretty sure not; he's Air Force, not Army, and he lives in Colorado. Still, we can't rule out a connection. It would make total sense for the military fixate on you and not us if their files were sanitized for magic or something; they might think you're a human terrorist."
"The Railroad Spike Killer, no doubt." He wrinkled his nose at the thought. "Well, that's just perfect."
Dawn threw up her hands. "No, it's not! Maybe they're just calling his Uncle Jack for advice! Maybe it weirds Jon out that Spike looks like a rocker refugee from the eighties! Maybe Nick's rethinking the idea of being friends with me because you practically threw him out of the house when I invited him over for dinner! How would they even know if his uncle does think Spike is a terrorist? You don't tell me everything that's going on, and you're not military. Which, thank God. So why would this Air Force guy spill classified secrets to his nephew?"
"I don't know, Bit." Spike shook his head. "But they knew me when they saw me; I'd swear to it. Maybe the uncle brought the files home and they saw them on accident. Or maybe they're not what they seem. But whatever they know about me, one way or the other-- it isn't something your average teenager should know. I'd be the last person in the world to cry 'Evil', 'specially after that sickeningly cute little exchange there at the end, but I'll thank you to keep an eye out anyway-- and don't go anywhere alone with either one."
"But--" Dawn objected, lower lip wobbling a bit in distress.
"Dawn," Buffy replied, mild and sober as milk. And this time, the quiet, cautious tone got through where the earlier hand-wringing had not.
"Fine!" The younger Summers shook her head and stormed toward the stairs. "I'll just be in my room until this all important emergency meeting, counting on one hand the few friends I have left."
Buffy sighed and watched her go, face drawn with fatigue. "Why is this my life?" she whined.
Spike bit back a flip response; he tried not to insult the other kiddies-- at least not when it might remind Buffy of the hundred forty-seven days it hadn't been her life-- more than strictly necessary. "Really want me to answer that, pet?" He raised his eyebrows at her, and deliberately changed the subject. "'Specially after the speech you gave us all last night. Don't think I've forgot what you said, that I'm your go-to guy 'to get weepy and whaled on'. That really all I'm worth to you now?"
She threw him a dirty look, but he could do the exchange of glares all day; and after a minute, she softened around the edges. "I'm just so tired of all this. Things going wrong at every turn. Not being able to fully rely on my team, 'cause two of my best weapons now come with 'caution, guilt ahead' signs. And now this thing with Dawn's friends--"
"Buffy--" he objected, affronted. He'd brushed the insults off the night before as evidence of stress, but if she really felt that way about the soul, after everything….
She closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall, weariness in every line of her posture. "I know. I know I'm not being fair to you," Buffy said. "Or Willow. Or anyone, really. But we're so outmatched this time, I don't know what to do. We need every extra edge we can get without becoming what we're fighting, and the longer this goes on the more I wonder where that line really is. We can't even stop to grieve our losses, because the minute we let our guard down something else will get through, and I can't protect everyone."
Her voice sounded ravaged, and she looked closer to collapse than he'd seen her in a long while. Spike stepped forward, rubbing his palms against her upper arms, and was suddenly very glad he'd decided to return a bit before the meeting for a look at the 'cute boys' Dawn had babbled at him about. The Slayer didn't often let anyone see past the brittle shell anymore, and if things went on the way they were much longer either she'd break-- or her friends would.
"Hush, now," he said. "Try and look on the bright side; maybe those two will turn out to be a help."
"How?" she asked.
He snorted. "If nothing else, you could have them take Dawn out of the line of fire. Have Red check the uncles out first, of course; but I think she'd go with them a sight easier than she'd take you sending her out of town with Xander or Andrew. Don't think she hasn't already guessed that plan, and thought up a counter. And in that event, might be better if they think I'm a criminal influence-- it would give you a good excuse to beg them to take her to safety."
"I think you're getting a little ahead of yourself there," she said, but her expression had lightened a bit at that line of thought.
Spike wished he could comfort her proper-like; she sorely needed it. But their relationship wasn't about that any more-- if it ever had been. And wasn't like to be any time in the near future, if her outbursts the last few days were any sample of her current state of mind. He took a quiet, unnecessary breath to ward off the dissatisfaction simmering under his skin, then gently released her arms and stepped back, putting distance between them again.
"Perhaps," he said. "Got this meeting to get through first. Any idea what's in that emergency kit of Wood's? I missed the bit where Dawn and Scholar-Boy read you the translation."
Buffy flinched as though she'd been struck, then sighed and turned away, walking into the kitchen to fill a glass at the tap. "You always did know just where to push to make it hurt."
Spike blinked after her, caught entirely off guard by her reaction, then followed her across the tile to set his emptied mug down on the counter. "And what bloody button of yours did I put my finger on this time? I'm trying to be helpful, here."
She huffed an almost-laugh, then took a long drink of water. "I know. That just makes it worse. Because I already know what you're going to say about what Dawn told me-- it's not like you haven't said it before-- and it's the absolute last thing I want to hear right now. But hey!" She smiled at him, all hollow-eyed false cheer. "You won't mean to hurt me by saying it, so I'll just have to grin and bear that, too."
He stopped short at that, as repelled as though she'd just thrust a cross in his face. "Do I even get to know what you're accusing me of now?" he objected, jutting his chin out belligerently. "Or should I just leave you and whatever imaginary version of me has been keeping you company in peace?"
She winced, the smile slipping from her face, then set the glass down on the counter with a click. "I'm doing it again, aren't I?" she said mournfully, then crossed her arms, hugging herself close in her denim jacket. "It's just--" She laughed again, humorlessly. "The first Slayer. The text says, literally-- they chained her to the Earth, and then they infused her with 'the Darkness'."
Buffy's voice faltered at the end of that sentence, and Spike suddenly had a vivid sense-memory of his own voice echoing in his ears, the year before, 'You always end up in the dark', he'd told her, that surreal night up on the balcony in the Bronze. 'You belong in the shadows, with me.'
He swallowed, anger draining out of him as though a plug had suddenly been pulled. She was right, damn it; he had meant to help her, rather than hurt, when he'd first said it. But that had been before. Before the soul. Before he'd understood that she thought she was broken, rather than finding her feet in the element he knew she'd been born to; and that every supportive word he spoke only wounded her more. He liked to think he knew better now than to crow and rub Dawn's discovery in her face.
Which was not to say he could let it pass without comment. "You're saying, then, that the First Slayer...." he began, carefully.
"Was part demon," she said bluntly, biting off the words as though she was spitting bullets. "And from the rest of it-- it sounds like the emergency kit is supposed to deliver some kind of upgrade. Like...." She put on the false smile again and adopted an offensively cheery tone: "And that's not all! For the low, low price of all your illusions about your humanity, an extra added Slayer skills package will be included!"
"And are you going to take it?" he asked, keeping his tone neutral and even so as not to set off any other conversational landmines.
"I--" She sighed, then bit her lip and nodded. "If it had been sprung on me all of the sudden, I might have drawn the line and said 'hell, no'-- but the more I think about it, the more I'm sure that I can't afford to turn down any extra power, no matter how I feel about what they did to me." She winced again. "I mean, to her. She didn't even have a choice."
"But you do." Spike tilted his head in acknowledgement, both of her decision and the telling sentiment she'd inadvertently exposed. "You don't have to do this, luv. But...." He sucked at his teeth. "If you choose this-- I don't think you'll have to worry. The Watchers would never pass on a weapon that would make their Slayers harm humans, never mind Wood holding it hostage all this time. But if you want me to make sure you don't do anything to hurt your friends, after...."
And of all the things he'd said that evening, of course the offer of violence was the one that opened her expression up like a flower. "Do you mean that?" she said softly, all grateful-like.
"Wouldn't say it, otherwise," Spike shrugged.
She drew in a deep breath, closing her eyes as she visibly let go the stress that had been building up in her since before he'd arrived. Then she let it out again-- just in time for a knock to sound at the front door.
"Wood's here," he said, unnecessarily.
Buffy nodded, eyes clear and calmer than they'd been in days. "All right, then. Let's do this."
Jack had provisionally approved the mobilization of SG-1 as back-up, but just Nick and Jon's luck, their counterparts' team was off-world at the moment. And since the senior O'Neill had refused to have 'the kids' officially associated with the SGC and therefore on the NID's radar before they came of age again, he wasn't all that excited about sending any other team in to liaise with them.
"Reynolds won't take it seriously enough, and Dixon's the only other team leader I can shake loose for a vaguely defined mission like this until next week. You telling me you'd rather have Dixon?" Jack had taunted them over the phone. "Besides, if this snake's been involved long enough to casually wander in and out of opposition central, it's probably not an urgent situation any more. No point making waves. Keep an eye on them; but keep yourselves out of the line of fire, you hear me?"
'Out of the line of fire' left a lot of wiggle room as an order, though, and Jon had taken all the leeway Nick would let him. The new plan involved them out after dark, something they'd previously kept to a minimum after the warnings they'd received; but he had at least found a perch well off the ground, out of unassisted sight or hearing range of the house on Revello Drive. Jon propped himself up on his elbows on the roof with a pair of binoculars and what seemed like every black piece of clothing he owned, while Nick set his laptop to receive the signals from the bug Jon had stuck to the sofa when he'd done his 'woe, accidental vegetarian is me' act.
The visual signals didn't show much more than a floor-level view of several pairs of shoes, unfortunately, but the audio came through loud and clear, and that was more than they'd had before. They soon discovered that Buffy hadn't been lying about the meeting, at least; they'd missed whatever might have been said while they were still calling Colorado and setting up for reception, but about the time they got into position the high school principal arrived at Buffy's front door.
"Shh," Nick cautioned as Principal Wood set a heavy bag of some kind on the coffee table, and turned the volume up gradually on the software.
"We thought you'd want to be here," Buffy's voice carried to them over their earphones.
"Yeah, you thought right," the principal replied; and if they hadn't already known something odd was going on in that house, the tone and phrasing he used would have been enough to cue them in.
Dawn's voice chimed in, then, and Nick fiddled with the earphone cord as he listened. "That emergency bag's got some neat stuff in it. Weapons, charms, advanced reading assignments."
'Weapons?' Jon glanced over at Nick, mouthing the word at him.
'Emergency?' Nick mouthed back with a shrug.
"Yeah, cool stuff, but we've seen it all before," one of Dawn's repeat chauffeurs noted, followed by a woman they had tentatively identified as romantically connected to him: "Well, not this we haven't. What's inside it?"
"Mm, I don't know. It hasn't been opened since--" The sound of something breaking interrupted Principal Wood's answer. "Well, since now."
The conversation continued a few minutes more, full of cryptic references to what sounded like some kind of show-and-tell apparatus related to the origin myth Nick had helped Dawn translate; the rest of the meeting's attendees kept interrupting with strange and self-referential light-hearted remarks, but in general they all seemed to be taking the whole thing extremely seriously. The anthropological scholar in Nick wanted to rip the binoculars out of Jon's hands and see if he could get a closer look at exactly what they were talking about-- but the experienced observer and downsized disturber of several Goa'uld regimes felt his skin crawl at the level of belief the group seemed to have in the fantastical subjects they were discussing.
And then it got even weirder. They actually started setting up the shadow-caster thing they'd been talking about; the room got dark, a candle was lit, and spooky sound effects began to play in the background as Dawn read from the book. Nick could see shadows moving on the walls as the shadow-caster turned, and shivered a little; the effect was more ominous than he'd been expecting, considering he already knew the story being told. Then, without warning, a miniature blue sun incandesced in the Summers' living room-- and the bug died with a deafening squeal.
Jon jerked his eyes away from the binoculars with a curse, and Nick fished his earphones out, rubbing his index finger inside his ear canal in an effort to dissipate the ringing sensation. "What the hell was that?" he blurted.
"You're asking me?" Jon hissed back, blinking and then removing his own earphones.
"No, I'm asking the camera," Nick replied dryly, tapping out a quick series of commands to the surveillance software. The blank view was quickly replaced by another grainy, low-pixel video, but this one was dominated by a view of bushes and siding rather than a forest of feet.
"Sound's down, obviously; and so's the picture from the internal bug. I've switched over to the other bug you left on the mailbox--but there's nothing interesting yet; it's all gone dark in there again."
"Were they just doing magic, or am I going crazy?" Jon groused, in a disbelieving tone.
"Couldn't it be both?" Nick rolled his eyes. "You know what they say about sufficiently advanced technology; we've seen enough of that kind of thing over the years."
"I dunno. I'm starting to think we've stumbled into something a lot stranger than a bunch of Goa'uld," Jon said, then settled back down with the binoculars, training them on the Summers' front yard.
Now that, he could definitely agree with. "Ya think? Wait-- Jon!" His eyes widened as the tiny camera suddenly picked up a blur of motion. "Something's breaking out of the house."
"Breaking out?" Jon blinked again, refocusing the binoculars as the closed French doors burst outward. "What the hell is that? Does it look like an Unas to you?"
"Not really, no," Nick replied, frowning at a screen capture of the thing that had shattered its way out through the wood and glass as though the doors were made of paper. Its skin was dark and strangely textured, as far as he could tell in the dim lighting; it also seemed to have either some kind of tusks or bone ornaments protruding from its face, and several patches of decorative light-colored paint on the exposed portions of its body. He had no idea what it was; he'd never seen anything like it, either on Earth or off-world.
"Yeah, didn't think so. And even if it was-- what's it doing here?" Jon replied in tones of disbelief as the being ran out into the street.
"Perhaps a better question might be-- what are you doing here?" a third voice interrupted-- a woman's voice, unexpected and painfully out-of-place.
Slowly, Nick turned away from the laptop to look up into the face of a friend long-missed. Beside him, Jon swallowed and lowered the binoculars again, the line of his back stiffening in shock.
"Janet," Nick said in disbelief, eyes drinking in the sight of Dr. Frasier wearing an all too familiar expression of disapproval. None of the other doctors at the SGC had ever quite mastered the combination of personal caring and professional irritation she'd favored SG-1 with as they'd passed through the infirmary with injury after ailment after strange alien influence no one else on Earth had ever seen. He'd known her as Daniel for more than five years, and had expected to go on knowing her as Nick for many more-- at least as soon as Jack managed to get over his paranoia and let Nick and Jon start hanging out with Cassie again.
Those plans had crashed and burned a few months after their little vacation courtesy of Loki had begun, though. The day the team had shown up with the news-- and a disc with both Daniel's video from the fatal mission and her memorial service-- had been one of the worst of Nick's rebooted life. They still hadn't seen Cassie since; though they were planning a visit when the school year was over.
"Don't Janet me," the red-haired apparition said, eyebrows arched in echo of all too many past lectures. "You know it isn't safe out here, and you were asked specifically to keep out of trouble."
"Don't listen to her, Nick," Jon said, tersely, still not turning to look at her. "You know this isn't Janet. She didn't do the swirly light thing, and there's no sarcophagus left on Earth. This can't be her."
"You can't know that for sure," Nick argued automatically, though he didn't disagree.
There were stranger things in heaven, et cetera; but realistically, what would bring any version of Janet-- cloned or Ascended or hologrammatic or otherwise-- right to their side at exactly that moment? He knew what he'd suspect, if it really were a Goa'uld they were tracking. And even if it wasn't--
"Call it a ninety-eight percent probability, then," Jon said stiffly, then turned with a sudden jerk to toss his binoculars straight at their resurrected visitor.
She looked down at the projectile just in time for it to pass through her body, then gave them both a smug smile. "Well, it was worth a try," she said. Then her form began to waver and shift: first to the guise of a small boy that made Jon suck in his breath in a hiss, followed by a tall woman with dark eyes, curly hair, and native Abydonian dress whose smile hit Nick like a punch in the gut, and finally another person whose face they both knew well. Charlie Kawalsky, veteran of the very first Gate mission, who'd been lost to a Goa'uld within a year of Daniel's return to Earth.
"'Til next time, guys," he said with a chuckle, then vanished, leaving Nick and Jon alone on the roof.
"Fuck," Jon said, feelingly.
Nick swiped a hand over his face, and echoed the sentiment with a pungent phrase in Arabic.
Jon snorted, then stiffened again and shot to his feet, scrambling to retrieve the binoculars. "Damn it, that was a distraction!"
Distraction-- or capitalizing on an opportunity? Either way, Jon was right-- the ghost had drawn their attention away from their observations. Nick turned his attention back to the laptop and hastily rewound the last few minutes of footage. On screen, the intruder burst from the side of the house again and pelted toward the road-- but this time, he caught a glimpse of a bleached blond head of hair following closely after it.
"Are we supposed to be cheering for the ugly thing, or the Goa'uld wanna-be?" Jon asked disgustedly as he looked over Nick's shoulder.
"Your guess is as good as mine," Nick replied, fast-forwarding the video again to catch it up with the present after the chase passed off the edge of the screen. Nothing else had changed; the lights had come back on in the living room, but that was about it.
"I think we can do better than guess," Jon snorted, then bent to pull what looked like a zat'nik'atel from his backpack.
"Jack's going to kill us," Nick noted, resignedly, eyeing the alien weapon that was not supposed to have left the confines of the SGC.
"Jack can kiss my ass," Jon said. "He knows better." Then he stowed his binoculars and headed for the ladder down off the side of the building. "You coming, or what?"
"What do you think?" Nick huffed-- and pulled his own secretly purloined weapon from the laptop bag as he shut down the computer and started stowing his own gear.
Jon chuckled, waiting for him at the edge of the roof with an anticipatory grin.
-~-
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stargate_xing)
The anthropological scholar in Nick wanted to rip the binoculars out of Jon's hands and see if he could get a closer look at exactly what they were talking about-- but the experienced observer and downsized disturber of several Goa'uld regimes felt his skin crawl.
Title: See For Yourself, Part 3 - Emergency Meetings
Author: Jedi Buttercup
Disclaimer: The words are mine; the worlds belong to Whedon and SyFy.
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: B:tVS mid-7.15 "Get it Done", Stargate SG-1 mid-season 8, slightly AU
Notes: Follows Part 1 & Part 2. Contains a twist I've been mulling over for awhile-- but I don't plan to go cliché with it.
Summary: The anthropological scholar in Nick wanted to rip the binoculars out of Jon's hands and see if he could get a closer look at exactly what they were talking about-- but the experienced observer and downsized disturber of several Goa'uld regimes felt his skin crawl. 4200 words.
Spike sauntered slowly out of the kitchen, mug of blood in hand, as the door closed behind Dawn's little friends.
"Something's up with those two," he mused, staring after the pair of them as he took a sip.
Buffy frowned over at him from her post at the door, worry drawing lines around her eyes. "I know," she said. "They're way too mature for their age; it's kind of creepy."
"Like you weren't too mature for your age when you were sixteen," Dawn objected, stormclouds building on her brow. "They don't have parents or guardians here, so of course they're used to taking care of themselves." It was obvious she had a sizeable crush on one of the boys; probably the earnest blond one she'd stood closest to. That seemed to be the way the Summers girls' luck ran these days.
"Not what I meant," he said, making eye contact with each of them to emphasize how serious he was. "Floppy-haired one knew me; he went on alert the second I came through the door, and his friend picked up his cue. Not fear, exactly, but not your clueless civilian reaction, either."
Buffy made a frustrated noise. "But that makes no sense!" she said. "I thought they might be hunters' kids at first or something, but they didn't recognize me at all, and they treated the Slayer story like just another myth. How could they know about you and not me?"
"Wait, wait!" Dawn said, irritation shading into genuine anger in her stance and tone. "You've been checking them out? Like, you thought they might be enemies, and you didn't tell me?"
"Not now, Niblet," Spike said absently, raising a hand to shush them as his vampiric hearing picked up voices from the front walk. Boys hadn't gone far, and what they were saying--
"They definitely recognized me," he said. "They're talking about calling someone named Jack, and that unspecified 'things' have just got a lot more complicated."
"They probably mean Jon's uncle," Buffy replied, lips thinned with frustration. "There's a General Jack O'Neill listed in both his and Nick's files as emergency contact."
"General?" That set the alarm-bells ringing. "Of the Initiative sort?" Spike well remembered Maggie Walsh's troupe of solider boys; if someone outside of Finn's hunting group had picked up their old files things could turn nasty right quick. Lord only knew what information they still had on him.
Buffy shook her head. "Pretty sure not; he's Air Force, not Army, and he lives in Colorado. Still, we can't rule out a connection. It would make total sense for the military fixate on you and not us if their files were sanitized for magic or something; they might think you're a human terrorist."
"The Railroad Spike Killer, no doubt." He wrinkled his nose at the thought. "Well, that's just perfect."
Dawn threw up her hands. "No, it's not! Maybe they're just calling his Uncle Jack for advice! Maybe it weirds Jon out that Spike looks like a rocker refugee from the eighties! Maybe Nick's rethinking the idea of being friends with me because you practically threw him out of the house when I invited him over for dinner! How would they even know if his uncle does think Spike is a terrorist? You don't tell me everything that's going on, and you're not military. Which, thank God. So why would this Air Force guy spill classified secrets to his nephew?"
"I don't know, Bit." Spike shook his head. "But they knew me when they saw me; I'd swear to it. Maybe the uncle brought the files home and they saw them on accident. Or maybe they're not what they seem. But whatever they know about me, one way or the other-- it isn't something your average teenager should know. I'd be the last person in the world to cry 'Evil', 'specially after that sickeningly cute little exchange there at the end, but I'll thank you to keep an eye out anyway-- and don't go anywhere alone with either one."
"But--" Dawn objected, lower lip wobbling a bit in distress.
"Dawn," Buffy replied, mild and sober as milk. And this time, the quiet, cautious tone got through where the earlier hand-wringing had not.
"Fine!" The younger Summers shook her head and stormed toward the stairs. "I'll just be in my room until this all important emergency meeting, counting on one hand the few friends I have left."
Buffy sighed and watched her go, face drawn with fatigue. "Why is this my life?" she whined.
Spike bit back a flip response; he tried not to insult the other kiddies-- at least not when it might remind Buffy of the hundred forty-seven days it hadn't been her life-- more than strictly necessary. "Really want me to answer that, pet?" He raised his eyebrows at her, and deliberately changed the subject. "'Specially after the speech you gave us all last night. Don't think I've forgot what you said, that I'm your go-to guy 'to get weepy and whaled on'. That really all I'm worth to you now?"
She threw him a dirty look, but he could do the exchange of glares all day; and after a minute, she softened around the edges. "I'm just so tired of all this. Things going wrong at every turn. Not being able to fully rely on my team, 'cause two of my best weapons now come with 'caution, guilt ahead' signs. And now this thing with Dawn's friends--"
"Buffy--" he objected, affronted. He'd brushed the insults off the night before as evidence of stress, but if she really felt that way about the soul, after everything….
She closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall, weariness in every line of her posture. "I know. I know I'm not being fair to you," Buffy said. "Or Willow. Or anyone, really. But we're so outmatched this time, I don't know what to do. We need every extra edge we can get without becoming what we're fighting, and the longer this goes on the more I wonder where that line really is. We can't even stop to grieve our losses, because the minute we let our guard down something else will get through, and I can't protect everyone."
Her voice sounded ravaged, and she looked closer to collapse than he'd seen her in a long while. Spike stepped forward, rubbing his palms against her upper arms, and was suddenly very glad he'd decided to return a bit before the meeting for a look at the 'cute boys' Dawn had babbled at him about. The Slayer didn't often let anyone see past the brittle shell anymore, and if things went on the way they were much longer either she'd break-- or her friends would.
"Hush, now," he said. "Try and look on the bright side; maybe those two will turn out to be a help."
"How?" she asked.
He snorted. "If nothing else, you could have them take Dawn out of the line of fire. Have Red check the uncles out first, of course; but I think she'd go with them a sight easier than she'd take you sending her out of town with Xander or Andrew. Don't think she hasn't already guessed that plan, and thought up a counter. And in that event, might be better if they think I'm a criminal influence-- it would give you a good excuse to beg them to take her to safety."
"I think you're getting a little ahead of yourself there," she said, but her expression had lightened a bit at that line of thought.
Spike wished he could comfort her proper-like; she sorely needed it. But their relationship wasn't about that any more-- if it ever had been. And wasn't like to be any time in the near future, if her outbursts the last few days were any sample of her current state of mind. He took a quiet, unnecessary breath to ward off the dissatisfaction simmering under his skin, then gently released her arms and stepped back, putting distance between them again.
"Perhaps," he said. "Got this meeting to get through first. Any idea what's in that emergency kit of Wood's? I missed the bit where Dawn and Scholar-Boy read you the translation."
Buffy flinched as though she'd been struck, then sighed and turned away, walking into the kitchen to fill a glass at the tap. "You always did know just where to push to make it hurt."
Spike blinked after her, caught entirely off guard by her reaction, then followed her across the tile to set his emptied mug down on the counter. "And what bloody button of yours did I put my finger on this time? I'm trying to be helpful, here."
She huffed an almost-laugh, then took a long drink of water. "I know. That just makes it worse. Because I already know what you're going to say about what Dawn told me-- it's not like you haven't said it before-- and it's the absolute last thing I want to hear right now. But hey!" She smiled at him, all hollow-eyed false cheer. "You won't mean to hurt me by saying it, so I'll just have to grin and bear that, too."
He stopped short at that, as repelled as though she'd just thrust a cross in his face. "Do I even get to know what you're accusing me of now?" he objected, jutting his chin out belligerently. "Or should I just leave you and whatever imaginary version of me has been keeping you company in peace?"
She winced, the smile slipping from her face, then set the glass down on the counter with a click. "I'm doing it again, aren't I?" she said mournfully, then crossed her arms, hugging herself close in her denim jacket. "It's just--" She laughed again, humorlessly. "The first Slayer. The text says, literally-- they chained her to the Earth, and then they infused her with 'the Darkness'."
Buffy's voice faltered at the end of that sentence, and Spike suddenly had a vivid sense-memory of his own voice echoing in his ears, the year before, 'You always end up in the dark', he'd told her, that surreal night up on the balcony in the Bronze. 'You belong in the shadows, with me.'
He swallowed, anger draining out of him as though a plug had suddenly been pulled. She was right, damn it; he had meant to help her, rather than hurt, when he'd first said it. But that had been before. Before the soul. Before he'd understood that she thought she was broken, rather than finding her feet in the element he knew she'd been born to; and that every supportive word he spoke only wounded her more. He liked to think he knew better now than to crow and rub Dawn's discovery in her face.
Which was not to say he could let it pass without comment. "You're saying, then, that the First Slayer...." he began, carefully.
"Was part demon," she said bluntly, biting off the words as though she was spitting bullets. "And from the rest of it-- it sounds like the emergency kit is supposed to deliver some kind of upgrade. Like...." She put on the false smile again and adopted an offensively cheery tone: "And that's not all! For the low, low price of all your illusions about your humanity, an extra added Slayer skills package will be included!"
"And are you going to take it?" he asked, keeping his tone neutral and even so as not to set off any other conversational landmines.
"I--" She sighed, then bit her lip and nodded. "If it had been sprung on me all of the sudden, I might have drawn the line and said 'hell, no'-- but the more I think about it, the more I'm sure that I can't afford to turn down any extra power, no matter how I feel about what they did to me." She winced again. "I mean, to her. She didn't even have a choice."
"But you do." Spike tilted his head in acknowledgement, both of her decision and the telling sentiment she'd inadvertently exposed. "You don't have to do this, luv. But...." He sucked at his teeth. "If you choose this-- I don't think you'll have to worry. The Watchers would never pass on a weapon that would make their Slayers harm humans, never mind Wood holding it hostage all this time. But if you want me to make sure you don't do anything to hurt your friends, after...."
And of all the things he'd said that evening, of course the offer of violence was the one that opened her expression up like a flower. "Do you mean that?" she said softly, all grateful-like.
"Wouldn't say it, otherwise," Spike shrugged.
She drew in a deep breath, closing her eyes as she visibly let go the stress that had been building up in her since before he'd arrived. Then she let it out again-- just in time for a knock to sound at the front door.
"Wood's here," he said, unnecessarily.
Buffy nodded, eyes clear and calmer than they'd been in days. "All right, then. Let's do this."
Jack had provisionally approved the mobilization of SG-1 as back-up, but just Nick and Jon's luck, their counterparts' team was off-world at the moment. And since the senior O'Neill had refused to have 'the kids' officially associated with the SGC and therefore on the NID's radar before they came of age again, he wasn't all that excited about sending any other team in to liaise with them.
"Reynolds won't take it seriously enough, and Dixon's the only other team leader I can shake loose for a vaguely defined mission like this until next week. You telling me you'd rather have Dixon?" Jack had taunted them over the phone. "Besides, if this snake's been involved long enough to casually wander in and out of opposition central, it's probably not an urgent situation any more. No point making waves. Keep an eye on them; but keep yourselves out of the line of fire, you hear me?"
'Out of the line of fire' left a lot of wiggle room as an order, though, and Jon had taken all the leeway Nick would let him. The new plan involved them out after dark, something they'd previously kept to a minimum after the warnings they'd received; but he had at least found a perch well off the ground, out of unassisted sight or hearing range of the house on Revello Drive. Jon propped himself up on his elbows on the roof with a pair of binoculars and what seemed like every black piece of clothing he owned, while Nick set his laptop to receive the signals from the bug Jon had stuck to the sofa when he'd done his 'woe, accidental vegetarian is me' act.
The visual signals didn't show much more than a floor-level view of several pairs of shoes, unfortunately, but the audio came through loud and clear, and that was more than they'd had before. They soon discovered that Buffy hadn't been lying about the meeting, at least; they'd missed whatever might have been said while they were still calling Colorado and setting up for reception, but about the time they got into position the high school principal arrived at Buffy's front door.
"Shh," Nick cautioned as Principal Wood set a heavy bag of some kind on the coffee table, and turned the volume up gradually on the software.
"We thought you'd want to be here," Buffy's voice carried to them over their earphones.
"Yeah, you thought right," the principal replied; and if they hadn't already known something odd was going on in that house, the tone and phrasing he used would have been enough to cue them in.
Dawn's voice chimed in, then, and Nick fiddled with the earphone cord as he listened. "That emergency bag's got some neat stuff in it. Weapons, charms, advanced reading assignments."
'Weapons?' Jon glanced over at Nick, mouthing the word at him.
'Emergency?' Nick mouthed back with a shrug.
"Yeah, cool stuff, but we've seen it all before," one of Dawn's repeat chauffeurs noted, followed by a woman they had tentatively identified as romantically connected to him: "Well, not this we haven't. What's inside it?"
"Mm, I don't know. It hasn't been opened since--" The sound of something breaking interrupted Principal Wood's answer. "Well, since now."
The conversation continued a few minutes more, full of cryptic references to what sounded like some kind of show-and-tell apparatus related to the origin myth Nick had helped Dawn translate; the rest of the meeting's attendees kept interrupting with strange and self-referential light-hearted remarks, but in general they all seemed to be taking the whole thing extremely seriously. The anthropological scholar in Nick wanted to rip the binoculars out of Jon's hands and see if he could get a closer look at exactly what they were talking about-- but the experienced observer and downsized disturber of several Goa'uld regimes felt his skin crawl at the level of belief the group seemed to have in the fantastical subjects they were discussing.
And then it got even weirder. They actually started setting up the shadow-caster thing they'd been talking about; the room got dark, a candle was lit, and spooky sound effects began to play in the background as Dawn read from the book. Nick could see shadows moving on the walls as the shadow-caster turned, and shivered a little; the effect was more ominous than he'd been expecting, considering he already knew the story being told. Then, without warning, a miniature blue sun incandesced in the Summers' living room-- and the bug died with a deafening squeal.
Jon jerked his eyes away from the binoculars with a curse, and Nick fished his earphones out, rubbing his index finger inside his ear canal in an effort to dissipate the ringing sensation. "What the hell was that?" he blurted.
"You're asking me?" Jon hissed back, blinking and then removing his own earphones.
"No, I'm asking the camera," Nick replied dryly, tapping out a quick series of commands to the surveillance software. The blank view was quickly replaced by another grainy, low-pixel video, but this one was dominated by a view of bushes and siding rather than a forest of feet.
"Sound's down, obviously; and so's the picture from the internal bug. I've switched over to the other bug you left on the mailbox--but there's nothing interesting yet; it's all gone dark in there again."
"Were they just doing magic, or am I going crazy?" Jon groused, in a disbelieving tone.
"Couldn't it be both?" Nick rolled his eyes. "You know what they say about sufficiently advanced technology; we've seen enough of that kind of thing over the years."
"I dunno. I'm starting to think we've stumbled into something a lot stranger than a bunch of Goa'uld," Jon said, then settled back down with the binoculars, training them on the Summers' front yard.
Now that, he could definitely agree with. "Ya think? Wait-- Jon!" His eyes widened as the tiny camera suddenly picked up a blur of motion. "Something's breaking out of the house."
"Breaking out?" Jon blinked again, refocusing the binoculars as the closed French doors burst outward. "What the hell is that? Does it look like an Unas to you?"
"Not really, no," Nick replied, frowning at a screen capture of the thing that had shattered its way out through the wood and glass as though the doors were made of paper. Its skin was dark and strangely textured, as far as he could tell in the dim lighting; it also seemed to have either some kind of tusks or bone ornaments protruding from its face, and several patches of decorative light-colored paint on the exposed portions of its body. He had no idea what it was; he'd never seen anything like it, either on Earth or off-world.
"Yeah, didn't think so. And even if it was-- what's it doing here?" Jon replied in tones of disbelief as the being ran out into the street.
"Perhaps a better question might be-- what are you doing here?" a third voice interrupted-- a woman's voice, unexpected and painfully out-of-place.
Slowly, Nick turned away from the laptop to look up into the face of a friend long-missed. Beside him, Jon swallowed and lowered the binoculars again, the line of his back stiffening in shock.
"Janet," Nick said in disbelief, eyes drinking in the sight of Dr. Frasier wearing an all too familiar expression of disapproval. None of the other doctors at the SGC had ever quite mastered the combination of personal caring and professional irritation she'd favored SG-1 with as they'd passed through the infirmary with injury after ailment after strange alien influence no one else on Earth had ever seen. He'd known her as Daniel for more than five years, and had expected to go on knowing her as Nick for many more-- at least as soon as Jack managed to get over his paranoia and let Nick and Jon start hanging out with Cassie again.
Those plans had crashed and burned a few months after their little vacation courtesy of Loki had begun, though. The day the team had shown up with the news-- and a disc with both Daniel's video from the fatal mission and her memorial service-- had been one of the worst of Nick's rebooted life. They still hadn't seen Cassie since; though they were planning a visit when the school year was over.
"Don't Janet me," the red-haired apparition said, eyebrows arched in echo of all too many past lectures. "You know it isn't safe out here, and you were asked specifically to keep out of trouble."
"Don't listen to her, Nick," Jon said, tersely, still not turning to look at her. "You know this isn't Janet. She didn't do the swirly light thing, and there's no sarcophagus left on Earth. This can't be her."
"You can't know that for sure," Nick argued automatically, though he didn't disagree.
There were stranger things in heaven, et cetera; but realistically, what would bring any version of Janet-- cloned or Ascended or hologrammatic or otherwise-- right to their side at exactly that moment? He knew what he'd suspect, if it really were a Goa'uld they were tracking. And even if it wasn't--
"Call it a ninety-eight percent probability, then," Jon said stiffly, then turned with a sudden jerk to toss his binoculars straight at their resurrected visitor.
She looked down at the projectile just in time for it to pass through her body, then gave them both a smug smile. "Well, it was worth a try," she said. Then her form began to waver and shift: first to the guise of a small boy that made Jon suck in his breath in a hiss, followed by a tall woman with dark eyes, curly hair, and native Abydonian dress whose smile hit Nick like a punch in the gut, and finally another person whose face they both knew well. Charlie Kawalsky, veteran of the very first Gate mission, who'd been lost to a Goa'uld within a year of Daniel's return to Earth.
"'Til next time, guys," he said with a chuckle, then vanished, leaving Nick and Jon alone on the roof.
"Fuck," Jon said, feelingly.
Nick swiped a hand over his face, and echoed the sentiment with a pungent phrase in Arabic.
Jon snorted, then stiffened again and shot to his feet, scrambling to retrieve the binoculars. "Damn it, that was a distraction!"
Distraction-- or capitalizing on an opportunity? Either way, Jon was right-- the ghost had drawn their attention away from their observations. Nick turned his attention back to the laptop and hastily rewound the last few minutes of footage. On screen, the intruder burst from the side of the house again and pelted toward the road-- but this time, he caught a glimpse of a bleached blond head of hair following closely after it.
"Are we supposed to be cheering for the ugly thing, or the Goa'uld wanna-be?" Jon asked disgustedly as he looked over Nick's shoulder.
"Your guess is as good as mine," Nick replied, fast-forwarding the video again to catch it up with the present after the chase passed off the edge of the screen. Nothing else had changed; the lights had come back on in the living room, but that was about it.
"I think we can do better than guess," Jon snorted, then bent to pull what looked like a zat'nik'atel from his backpack.
"Jack's going to kill us," Nick noted, resignedly, eyeing the alien weapon that was not supposed to have left the confines of the SGC.
"Jack can kiss my ass," Jon said. "He knows better." Then he stowed his binoculars and headed for the ladder down off the side of the building. "You coming, or what?"
"What do you think?" Nick huffed-- and pulled his own secretly purloined weapon from the laptop bag as he shut down the computer and started stowing his own gear.
Jon chuckled, waiting for him at the edge of the roof with an anticipatory grin.
-~-
(x-posted to
stargate_xing)
