Disclaimer: Stargate: SG-1 and all related concepts are the property of MGM, while the character of Spike belongs to Joss Whedon and James Marsters, among other people (Also, the original idea for this story came from Jedi Buttercup's 'An Unexpected Gift', so I don't own it either, although I have put my own spin on things, and have been given his full permission to use his idea)

Feedback: I'd appreciate it, of course

The Ghost in the Team

As he stood at the door of the medical bay, looking at the bed where Sam was still recovering from her recent staffshot wound, Spike supposed that it could have been worse. Sam might have been injured and the village attacked by the Ori, but Mitchell had apparently been able to use the power crystal from an Ori staff weapon to activate Merlin's device and extend the field far enough to envelop the whole village long enough to survive the Ori's attack.

Spike had definitely been relieved when he'd arrived back on the planet's surface and found himself walking among the rest of the villagers, even if he'd had to take care not to let anyone touch him even after the field had been shut down.

After the stress of the last few hours, getting back to Earth had almost been a relief; they might still be no further along in figuring out how to find where the Hell Danny was, or working out how to take out the Ori without that 'Sangraal' thing Merlin had meant to give them as an option, but at least they were safe.

"She OK?" Spike asked as a doctor walked past him- fortunately most of them were used enough to his presence in the SGC by now that they'd learned to quickly walk around him to avoid being rude-, indicating Sam's bed.

"Colonel Carter?" the doctor said, glancing at a clipboard before looking at Spike with a reassuring smile. "She'll need a week or so of bed-rest before she does anything physically strenuous, and I'd recommend keeping her off active duty for a bit after that just to make sure she doesn't re-open the wound or something like that, but she should be OK fairly soon; a good thing about these wounds is that the blast tends to cauterise the flash fairly quickly and limit the amount of long-term damage-"

"In other words, she'll be fine," Spike said, nodding in understanding before he turned around and walked off to another part of the base; after so long getting yanked around by that sodding amulet, he'd developed a pretty good feel for when it was in the immediate vicinity, and right now he didn't want to be anywhere near that thing-

"Spike?" the voice of the person Spike was trying to avoid said from behind him. Mentally cursing his foolishness in overlooking the possibility that Vala had put the amulet down since he'd last seen her, Spike turned to look at the dark-haired ex-thief, who was looking earnestly at him.

"What?" he asked, deciding to cut to the chase; if he couldn't avoid this conversation, he might as well just get it over with.

"Look," Vala said, looking resolutely at him as she indicated a nearby empty office, "I know that things were said on that ship that were... complicated... but you storming around like that isn't going to solve anything; could we just...?"

She trailed off awkwardly as Spike continued to glare at her, the thief's usual confidence wilting slightly in the face of the vampire's more practised 'poker face', but eventually Spike turned around and walked through the nearest wall into the office, Vala quickly slipping through the door and closing it behind her before she turned to face the vampire.

"You want to talk?" Spike said, staring at her with his arms folded and a firm glare on his face. "What the hell is there to talk about?"

"You know we have something to talk about or you wouldn't even be here," Vala retorted, glaring resolutely at him. "I know that you're angry about what I said there-"

"Yeah, you told him you loved him," Spike interjected, his eyes narrowing as he glared at Vala. "I mean, forgive me if I'm feeling a bit annoyed about that right now-!"

"Who are you actually annoyed with, anyway?" Vala countered, glaring at him in exasperation; she had enough relationship troubles without Spike seeming trying to create more because he had some self-esteem-related-issues. "Me? Tomin? Yourself?"

"God, I dunno; everyone from you to Captain Cardboard seems to be on my hit list right now if I had the resources to actually do anything about it!" Spike retorted, rolling his eyes in frustration. "Bastard goes and digs me out of what's basically my grave, ruins my big moment of self-sacrifice for the world, Danny-boy goes and 'wakes me up' when the damn thing gets here, I'm stuck hanging around with you sods because I've got nowhere else to go, you've still got feelings for your goddamn ex-"

"And I suppose you're completely over all of your past lovers, are you?" Vala countered, forcing Spike to shut his mouth from the intensity of her glare as he processed what she'd just said to him.

The most frustrating part was that she made a valid point that he couldn't even try and deny without being a lying hypocrite.

He might be happy with Vala, and he was definitely past the worst of his old feelings for Buffy- he wouldn't just dump Vala for Buffy if she came back into his life; he'd moved on from that point in his existence, as he'd said to Daniel after they'd brought the Odyssey back to Earth-, but that didn't mean he didn't still have some feelings for her, even after everything he'd been through since he 'woke up' in Daniel's office.

You could move on from someone, but you could never completely stop caring about them; no matter how far you travelled, a part of you would always remember those people who'd meant something particularly dear to you.

"Uh... point," he admitted at last, trying not to look directly at Vala as he looked awkwardly around the office, trying to find something else to focus his attention on rather than admit just how much he'd screwed up.

God... just for once, couldn't he have an easy relationship?

Then again, that was the point of love, when you got down to it; it wasn't easy.

Uh..." he said at last, realising that he couldn't keep avoiding Vala's glare forever as he turned back to face her, "any chance we could... forget I was being a prat?"

"Just so long as you forget about any jealousy you might or might not be feeling right now," Vala said, looking resolutely at the intangible vampire before her expression softened as she walked over to him, reaching up with one hand to place it near his cheek. "I'll always care about Tomin, and I won't deny that... but I'm here because I want to be with you, OK?"

There was something more to it than that, of course, but Vala wasn't ready to voice it yet; whatever she felt for Spike was so... strange in its intensity that she didn't even know how to explain it to herself yet, never mind explaining it to him.

Apparently just as unsure of what to say next as she was, Spike leaned over and pecked Vala lightly on the lips, smiling as he stepped back to look at her in a more relaxed manner.

"Don't know where we're going with this either, but I do know that I want to see how it goes," he said, smiling reassuringly at her before his expression became slightly sheepish. "Sorry 'bout earlier... got this whole tendency to get a bit possessive when exes show up; I'm working on it, but-"

"Hey, we all make mistakes," Vala said with a smile, relieved to be past the previously awkwardness that had settled over their relationship. "As Daniel said to me once, nobody can be perfect all the time; we're only human."

"Or vampire... and Jaffa, in T.'s case," Spike pointed out, a smirk on his face that made it obvious he just added that comment to make a slight joke, before he shrugged and indicated the door, the warm grin on his face all that Vala needed to see to know that all was now forgiven and forgotten. "Anyway, 'nough of that; shall we see how the others are doing?"

Glancing up as the commissary door opened, Mitchell smiled slightly as he saw Spike and Vala walking into the room, their attitude far more relaxed than it had been when they'd walked through the Stargate. He might try and stay out of his teammates' personal lives unless he felt the situation really called for it- if he didn't ask too many questions about their relationship, he wouldn't have to lie if anyone asked him about it later-, but that didn't mean he hadn't noticed the earlier tension between them after they'd met back up, and it was a relief to see that they'd gotten past it.

"All well?" Vala asked, smiling casually at the other two men as she pulled up a chair at their table and sat down beside them, reaching over to pull out another chair for Spike to do the same.

"About what you'd expect," Mitchell said, smiling slightly as he looked around at his teammates, deciding to focus on what would affect all of them rather than ask about whatever Spike and Vala had resolved between them. "The doctors estimate that Sam should be back on her feet in a few days- you've gotta love alien medical tech, really-, and after that we'll be trying a few more experiments with Merlin's device; see how far we can boost the field, that kind of thing..."

"Still nothing about Danny, then?" Spike asked, looking inquiringly at the lieutenant colonel.

"Not that I've heard, no," Mitchell replied, his good mood lowering at this reminder that their team was still short one archaeologist even once Sam was back on her feet. "We've got a few possible locations that we've picked up thanks to our intelligence contacts, but they're still being checked out; given that we've still got two Ori ships to choose from-"

"And we cannot rule out the possibility that Adria has taken Daniel Jackson to one of their already-converted planets to ensure that his opportunities to contact us are even more limited," Teal'c pointed out, his own expression solemn as he looked at the others; Mitchell wondered briefly how the Jaffa felt about being the only 'original' member of SG-1 left on the current team until Sam was back on her feet. "There are too many possible locations where she could be keeping him for us to be certain of examining them all before she relocated him to a different planet, and that is considering..."

"The possibility that he's even alive, huh?" Spike finished for his new friend, nodding in grim understanding at Teal'c.

As much as he might like to tell himself that Adria was the kind of arrogant 'Big Bad' who'd keep her prisoners alive so that she could use them against her enemies, there was also the possibility that she was still rational enough to recognise when that strategy wasn't going to get her anywhere and would just kill him.

"Dammit..." Mitchell muttered, reaching over to pick up a local newspaper that someone had discarded earlier out of a lack of anything else to distract him from that particularly bleak train of thought, opening it up to examine the latest sports results. "Just once-"

"What the HELL?" Spike said, nearly tearing the paper out of Mitchell's hands in his haste to study it.

"Hey, what the-?" Mitchell began, before he realised that Spike was staring at the headline on the front cover, and he was suddenly ashamed that he'd missed it earlier; COLORADO CROSS STRIKES AGAIN.

He'd heard a rumour or two about that story over the past week, but he hadn't given it much thought; there'd been something about a serial killer who slit his victims' throats and carved a cross on their cheeks in the area, but he'd been so busy working on the Sangraal affair that he hadn't had the time to read much more about it.

Judging by the grim-yet-horrified expression on Spike's face as he read the article in question, Mitchell had a feeling that he was about to need to take a greater interest in the case than what he'd done so far; anything that could concern a member of his team that much was definitely something to find out more about, even without Spike's 'unique' background taken into account.

"Sod it all..." the intangible vampire muttered, shaking his head in an obviously half-hearted attempt at self-denial of the facts in front of him. "Not that loony bastard... anyone but him..."

"Is there something about this news article that concerns you, Spike?" Teal'c asked, looking inquiringly at the vampire.

"Could say that, given that I'm fairly sure I know who did that," Spike said, tapping the headline in a very pointed manner as he looked grimly at the three people sitting around him. "It's Penn."

"Penn?" Vala repeated in confusion, after a quick exchange of glances with the other two men at the table confirmed that they didn't know who Spike was talking about either. "Who's that?"

"In vamp family terms, you could probably call him my uncle; got turned by Angelus before Angelus turned Dru, who went on to turn me," Spike clarified, his gaze returning to the paper as he continued to speak. "Haven't really seen the guy for years, but method's unmistakable; he learned the whole cross-carving thing from Angelus- his way of 'mocking' God-, and these two victims match his usual M.O.; man and woman in their late forties to mid-fifties, killed a day or so apart, with the cross."

"What does that mean, exactly?" Mitchell asked.

"His way of 're-living' the murder of his family," Spike clarified, shaking his head grimly as he turned his attention back to the paper. "Guy was always a screw-up with a fixation on who he'd been when he was human; it was one reason I never really got on with him when we did meet."

"Ah," Mitchell said, his mind briefly torn between asking for more information and the possibility that he'd learned enough, before he decided to push it aside; like Teal'c's old history as Apophis's First Prime, there was nothing to gain by bringing up Spike's past right now, and he felt that the guy had earned enough trust after everything he'd done for them for them to be sure that he wouldn't keep something important from them. "So... we've got a psychotic vampire serial killer active in Colorado Springs?"

"That or it's just a freaky coincidence and it's a mortal guy with his M.O. out there, but I kind of doubt it," Spike said, his expression still grim as he looked at the other members of SG-1. "I get that it's a bit outside of our 'remit', and I know you guys aren't the Initiative, but-"

"Hey," Mitchell said, placing one hand on a table in a quiet but firm manner- slamming his hand down might attract more attention than they really wanted at this time, but that didn't mean that he shouldn't do anything to make sure he got his point across- as he glared resolutely at Spike. "This might not be a 'gate-related thing, but it's important to you, and it's definitely something that the average cop can't handle on their own; put those things together, and I think it's safe to say we're involved."

It would probably be a minor diversion in the grand scheme of things- simple little hunting and catching job, even if there probably wouldn't be anything more than ashes to bring back afterwards-, but if it gave them something to think about that wasn't Jackson's continued absence, Mitchell was all for that.

Plus, of course, there was the added 'cool' factor of the opportunity to stake a vampire; it might not be as cool as travelling to other planets, but there was still something kind of thrilling about the possibility of taking out something like that...

AN: To anyone who thinks that Spike should know that Penn's dead, given that Penn was turned before Drusilla according to available information, it struck me that Penn was probably the vampire equivalent of the uncle you only really see on family reunions and never socialise with otherwise because he's too far away; Spike would know of his existence, but it's unlikely he was really 'up-to-date' with what's happened to Penn lately.

As for who's really behind the murders... well, it's probably obvious, but you'll just have to wait and see if you're right or not; hope you enjoy the next chapter when it comes.