Crossover Fic: Interference Well Met (12/17) BtVS/Stargate SG-1
** See Part 1 for full disclaimers and story details
PART 12 NOTES: Thank you to my many readers! You guys are awesome! (vbg) Your comments continue to amaze and inspire me. Special thanks go to Lynette, Awesome Beta Woman. Her work is never done. Any remaining mistakes are purely mine as I tend to fiddle up until the last possible moment. (g) As always, any and all feedback is appreciated.
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Part Twelve
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“Colonel, your request is approved.”
Gen. Hammond's voice echoed in Jack's head as he sat in his truck in his driveway. He didn't even want to know all the tap dancing Hammond had had to do to get around Faith's prison record. Top secret clearances weren't handed out to many convicted felons. As Jack had come to understand it in the past two months, it took something along the lines of a Presidential directive to make it happen. He didn't ask if that's what it had taken. The only thing he cared about was that it was finally done. He could finally stop lying to Faith. And yet now that the time had come, he couldn't move. What would she say? Would she freak out? Get angry? Or would she simply be happy to know the real reason he was injured so often while on "exercises" in a “research facility?” Adrenaline pumped through his system, his every sense becoming sharper. Not unlike the start of a mission, he thought wryly. And it was time to get out of the truck and into the house before Faith started to wonder what was wrong.
“Hey, grumpy,” Faith said, meeting him at the doorway with a smile. “I was starting to wonder if you'd decided to stay out there all night.” Her tone was teasing, but he saw the wariness in her eyes. Her body wasn't stiff, not precisely, more like braced for a blow.
Her conditioned response almost had him spilling everything right then and there. But his entryway was not the place to have this particular conversation. Instead, he smiled, one hand slipping behind her slender neck to draw her closer. Her lips were soft against his, soft and warm and just the tiniest bit hesitant. That hesitancy knifed through his gut and he curled his fingers deeper into her hair. What he wouldn't give to be able to just take her up to the roof and let it all out up there, where so many of their most intimate conversations had taken place. But he simply couldn't predict her reaction to the story he had to tell, not with so many unknown variables. She could take it all in stride, the slayer merely absorbing the Goa'uld into the fabric of her reality and moving on. Or she might need to shout and question and yell at him for putting himself in such insanely dangerous situations. The roof, or anywhere in the neighborhood for that matter, couldn't afford her the privacy he needed to give her. “Come out with me for a drive.”
Damned if she didn't flinch. She recovered lightning quick, but he saw it anyway. “You're breaking up with me.”
“No.” It left his lips before she'd finished speaking. Pulling her completely into his arms, he molded her small frame against him, cuddling her tight. “No, baby. That is not even a blip on the radar.” He tugged her head back just enough to look her dead in the eyes. “I love you. Never doubt that. Just come with me.” The uncertainty faded from her eyes, her body softening into his. She nodded, her hair sliding over his fingers tangled in the heavy mass. “Grab a jacket. It'll probably be pretty chilly before we come back home.”
Gamely, she stepped over to the closet for the battered leather jacket she'd appropriated about the same time she'd unofficially moved into the house. “Just where are you taking me?”
“It's a surprise.”
Faith didn't reply, just followed him down the walk and into the truck. He reached for her hand as soon as they were moving, the familiar gesture calming him slightly. She seemed to understand his need to wait to speak and simply held his hand. When he killed the engine in the parking area of the Garden of the Gods, she raised her eyebrows but didn't comment. Jack's gut tightened once again as he led her toward one of the trailheads they'd hiked before. He'd checked on the drive and no one appeared to have followed them, but he wasn't going to take any chances until they were far down the trail.
Yet even with the tension clawing its way up his back to the base of his neck, he couldn't help being content that Faith was beside him, her hand comfortably warming his. Roughly a mile up the trail, he stopped, giving the woods and rocks around them a careful scan. Knowing her ears were even better than his, Jack gestured to the trees with a quick jerk of his head. “Any one around?”
Faith's eyes narrowed briefly as they focused on his serious expression, then went slightly blank as she opened her senses. Even though he'd seen it before, he still felt a jolt inside at being allowed to witness her use her slayer senses. “Nothing that doesn't belong,” she said after almost a full minute. “Jack, what's this about?”
He felt his lips twitch up at the corners at her impatient question. Honestly, he was surprised she'd held off this long. “You know how I could never talk about my job, what I do in the Mountain.”
“Yeah and I've never pressed.” She gave him a sharp look that didn't quite hide the worry deep within her eyes. “Even when you've disappeared without warning for days on end or came home with some unexplainable injury.”
“And, baby, you have no idea how much that's bothered me.” He couldn't help it. Taking the three steps to her, he kissed her forehead, her cheeks, then finally her lips. “Your clearance was approved. You're now officially a hand-to-hand combat instructor attached to the project. No more training only on the upper levels for you. No more restricted access.”
It wasn't everyday Jack got to see Faith knocked into incoherence. “What? Clearance? But I thought... What?”
He kissed her once again, briefly, stupidly pleased by her reaction. “You already had the trainer position, but not access to the necessity for it. I wanted you to have that. I didn't want to have to lie to you anymore." Watching her expression carefully, he saw nothing to indicate anger, just a stunned curiosity. "You've already figured out my real job is a lot more dangerous than sitting behind a desk running simulations. If something happens to me I want you to know the truth, not the official line.”
"So the job was your in to get me a clearance." Not two seconds after the words left her mouth, a shiver worked through her into Jack's hands on her shoulders until her face hardened and her muscles tightened into stone. “They investigated me.” It wasn't a question. “My friends, Sunnydale, L.A. How far did they dig?”
“They're safe,” he said quickly, not letting her back away from him. Rather, he acknowledged silently, she let him keep her in place. She could be gone faster than he could blink and they both knew it. “I didn't tell Hammond anything about them, Buffy, the slayers or any of that.” Jack smiled, a bitter twist of his lips. “Let's just say the President owes me a few.”
Faith relaxed, not fully, but enough to feel like flesh under his hands instead of stone. Her eyes softened as she looked up into his. “You called in a favor from the President of the United States for me?”
“Well, I didn't actually call him. I'm pretty sure Gen. Hammond did, but I guess it's all the same." He let the joke lighten her eyes and soften a bit more of her tension, then let his smile fade into seriousness. "You trusted me with something that has the potential to hurt you, something very personal. How could I not do the same?” When she didn't answer, simply stared up at him, trusting him once again, Jack lifted one hand and ran it through the heavy mass of her hair. “Now pay attention, it's a long story. It started back in 1928 at an archeological dig in Giza, Egypt, ...
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Almost an hour later, Faith found herself sitting on the forest floor, her back against a slightly damp tree. "Holy crap." It was the only thing her incredulous brain could manage to get through the shock caused by Jack's revelations. Parasitic aliens? A gateway to other worlds inhabited by humans plus? And Jack had been a part of it all as far back as their first meeting? She knew it was going to take her a while to process it all. Vampires were one thing. Aliens? Nope, completely in their own category.
Or were they?
Is any of this really more fantastic than vampires who explode in a cloud of dust or teenage girls with superpowers, the loudly obnoxious voice of her inner self commented dryly. A split second's reflection had her staring up at Jack, head shaking back and forth slightly. “And here I thought I'd led the more interesting life.”
“I think we're about tied on the unusual factor.”
Patting the leaf-littered ground next to her, she smiled, head tilted to one side as she studied him. “Come here.” When he'd settled beside her, she trailed one finger over a rather spectacular patch of scarring on his thigh hidden by his khakis. “So what happened here?” Faith kept her eyes on her hand as she traced the scar pattern she'd long ago memorized.
“Staff blast. A moon named Netu. Nasty little vacation spot created to resemble Hell.”
“Sounds charming. And this?” This was a long, thin trail that ran the width of his arm.
“Nine mil. That was one of our guys.” One eyebrow quirked up in an expression she'd always thought was disturbingly adorable on him. “Internal political squabbling.”
A snort escaped as the image of two useless politicians in suits girl-slapping each other filled her mind. The mild amusement faded however, when her eyes scanned upward to rest on the barely visible line of scarring along the back of his neck. Gently, she shifted until she could touch the warm skin next to it. Recalling his carefully blank tone when he told her of the Goa'uld and how they burrowed into the backs of their hosts' necks to attach themselves to their spines, she held back a flinch. She was as afraid of the question as she was the answer, but she asked anyway. “What about this?”
His jaw tightened briefly, the tendons standing out against his skin. He paled slightly in the late afternoon sun, the shifting shadows of limbs and leaves a ghostly specter over his face. “Hathor happened. She thought I'd make a good underling. It didn't take.”
All she could do was trace her fingers over the lightly raised skin and hope he understood what she couldn't say. Both of them had scars, inside and out. Strangely, it was one of the reasons she believed they fit so well together. Because of their pasts, they didn't need to explain every nuance, didn't have to dig into locked away pains for the other person to understand. And that was why she was stunned when Jack continued.
“It hurt. God, it hurt so much. She captured my team, used some cryogenics chamber to make us think eighty years had passed, that everyone we knew was dead. We figured it out, but Hathor was a sadistic bitch and a half. She stuffed me back in that cryo-tube, took that damn snake out of its Jaffa and just laid it on my chest. I swear it was laughing. I know she was.”
After the torrent of words, the abrupt silence burned her ears. Jack hadn't moved since he'd started, eyes staring straight ahead. Personal experience told her his brain was back in the chamber, scared, helpless, wishing desperately to be anywhere else, but she didn't interrupt. Faith knew the damage holding everything in could do to the brain and the heart. She also knew Jack well enough to know he'd probably never told anyone what he was revealing to her. Humbled, and just a little frightened by such open vulnerability from him, she kept her hand on his neck, letting the flesh to flesh contact speak for her.
“And then it hurt. First a knife to the base of the skull, like a quick killing blow that never fails, except it did. Now know the physics involved, the whys and whats. Then I didn't know anything could hurt that bad and not kill you. Before it was even all the way in I could feel it pushing on me, shoving me aside. It was so strong. Too strong. God.” With a jerk, his knees came up to support his arms as he ground the heels of his hands into his eyes.
Faith wrapped herself around him, aching inside. “I'm right here, Jack. It didn't win. We're here, together.” A shuddering breath escaped him, his face buried in her shoulder. “You're here and it's not.” She was only sorry she couldn't promise him it would never happen again. From what he'd told her, the Goa'uld were out there, a distant yet ever-present threat. Until either Jack retired or the Goa'uld managed to get one of their nasty kind into him, the possibility was always going to be hovering over him. It wasn't a feeling, or a thought, she liked, but she had no intention of asking him to leave the program. The Stargate Program had given Jack a new lease on life, had given him something to believe in again. She wouldn't make him choose between her and it. She had enough of her own potentially world ending conflicts and he hadn't once asked her to stop despite knowing the true dangers involved.
She felt his shaking ease, kept her hands running up and down his spine. His hands loosened on her leg and arm where he'd gripped her so tightly she thought she might bruise for a couple of hours. She made a mental note to keep her right thigh out of his sight for the evening. In this instance, what Jack didn't know was better for them both.
“So,” he said, voice rough, leaning back just enough to meet her eyes. “You still sure you want this broken, grumpy old man?”
“You just try running away.” Kissing him lightly, she pushed down the far too numerous memories of close calls that tried to surface. “I'm younger and faster. You wouldn't get ten feet.”
The shadows lightened but didn't disappear. Faith wondered briefly if they ever would. “Then I guess you're stuck with me.”
“Why don't we agree to keep each other?
"Now that's something I can do."
She dropped another kiss on his lips then pushed to her feet. "Then why don't we go home? My butt's frozen and I think we could both stand to eat something.”
He slipped a hand into her outstretched one and let her tug him to his feet. “Sounds like a plan to me. Will you have time to go in with me tomorrow morning? We have to get you a permanent I.D. and there are about a hundred more pieces of paper for you to sign. And you'll need to look over the full files of the teams you've been training. See who needs additional work.”
“Without looking at the files, I'll tell you they all need additional work. Especially if those Jaffa are as nasty as you said.” When Jack halted abruptly, her hand nearly tugged out of his hand. “Jack?”
“Teal'c is one of those Jaffa, remember? He's not just a really good fighter.” A frown creased his forehead as she stepped back to him. “That's not going to be a problem, is it?”
She'd actually forgotten Teal'c was more than just a slightly strange man with a crazy emblem on his forehead. She waited for anything to change inside her with this new knowledge, waited for the slayer to rise up and demand his blood. After a couple of seconds of nothing, she smiled and shook her head. “Teal'c is a friend. I don't care if he's purple with orange spots. You save his butt, he saves yours. Enough said.” She turned to continue down the trail only to be yanked to a stop once again when Jack didn't move. Meeting his steady gaze, her lips tilted up in an expression she'd been told looked like a smile but wasn't. “You know that friend I told you about months ago? The one who kicked my ass when I needed it the most?” When Jack nodded, she felt the smile really form. “He's a vampire. And still one of my closest friends. Think about that one for a second. A slayer and a vampire. Not a pair usually destined for a lasting friendship.”
Tugging her closer, he touched his lips to hers, chaste, soft. “I love you, Faith.”
“I love you, Jack.” She wasn't exactly sure what had prompted the words, but she wasn't about to object to hearing them. And then that part of her she usually kept under tight rein stepped out. “Even if you are a grumpy old man.” Before the words had died out in the air she was down the trail, running, her feet light and quick. She heard Jack laugh behind her and ran even faster.
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continued in Part 13
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Thanks for reading!
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