Title: The Little Things
Author:
laney_1974 Crossover: BTVS/Stargate
August Fic-a-day Challenge Contribution Date: 12 August 2015
Characters: Joyce Summers, Jack O'Neill
Sequel:Sequel to Real Man, Familiar and Nightmare
Word Count: 471
Rating: 15
Timeline: BTVS: AU from mid-season 3, takes place just before The Wish: Stargate: Midseason 3 - no specific spoilers for Stargate though.
Author's note: I honestly didn't think anyone would like this idea besides me, so I never really planned on writing more. Thanks to everyone who is enjoying my obsession with writing Joyce. While I don't have anything overall planned for this (like I do with Art of Praying 'verse), I won't be going in depth about what happened to particular vampire etc etc. This is about Joyce and her struggles born out of her wish.
Please note: I am completely disregarding the BTVS writer's retcon in Normal Again. It didn't happen in this story/verse. It's an obvious retcon because I hardly imagine that Joyce would have failed to mention it, or at least apologise to Buffy, when she found out Buffy was the Slayer in season 3. So it didn't happen here.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Buffy and Angel people belong to Joss and Mutant Enemy. The Stargate people belong to Gekko Productions, Double Secret Productions, MGM/UA, Showtime/Viacom.
Summary: Joyce waited until Jack was called into work before she set her plan into action.
Jack sighed as he watched his wife eat her dinner. He had been watching her for days now and he could safely say that she hadn't been the same since her kidnapping. She was jumpy, fearful and... she didn't remember more than just what happened off-world. She didn't remember the little things, like where the new tube of toothpaste was, which draw the kids socks were in, or where they kept the napkins.
She didn't act like herself either. They hadn't made love since she returned. She didn't paint, and she didn't seem as close to the boys as she once was.
Jack had initially put the differences down to the trauma of the kidnapping, but now he was beginning to think it was something else.
Either the Goa’uld had done something to his wife, which was causing her memory to get progressively worse, or this was not the Joyce he married.
“Dad, I was thinking that me and butt-pain should go and visit Cassie tonight. She wanted me to look over her new car.”
All three of the O’Neill males looked to Joyce, waiting for the yelling that would inevitably follow whenever Tyler called his younger brother names.
The yelling never came.
“Good idea, sport,” Jack agreed, his heart now lodged in his throat. Jack didn't need see his sons faces to know that they were worried, terrified for their mother. “You guys should probably stay over.”
He hated it when the kids were hurting and he needed them to be away from this.
Jack put down his knife and fork. He still had half his dinner left, but he wasn't hungry anymore - neither were the boys by the look of it.
“Why don't you guys get ready and I’ll drive you over there.” He looked to Joyce. “Unless you want to take them, sweetheart?”
Joyce blinked and shook her head, as though clearing it. “I'm sorry?”
Jack forced himself to smile in spite of the stab of pain. “I just said I was going to drop the kids at Janet’s. They're going to crash there tonight.”
Once again all the of them looked to Joyce, waiting on her to protest. Jack had every intention of letting the kids stay at Janet’s, but Joyce was now hesitant to let Tyler stay over because he and Cassie were dating.
Joyce smiled at them. “Of course.”
Well, that was that.
It took the three of them less than half an hour to get cleaned up and in the car.
The boys were unsurprisingly quiet on the drive to Janet’s. It was only when they were almost there when Tyler spoke.
“You're going to help her right? “
Jack blinked the tears from his eyes.
“With everything I am.”
Aside from his sons, there was no one he loved more than his wife.
End