Buffy Carter – Part 1

Chapter Summary: Buffy wouldn't do this without her other half.

Challenge: for the livejournal 2017 August Fic-a-Day Challenge

Timeline: gonna have to slide the dates of the shows to match since Buffy will only be 3 years younger than Sam (to match Mark's age)

Disclaimer: BtVS/AtS characters belong to Joss Whedon/Mutant Enemy, et al. Stargate SG-characters belong to Brad Wright, Jonathan Glassner, et al. I claim no rights to any copyrighted material. Please do not copy or take this story without my permission.

Carter household

Buffy had only been 9 years old when she had to become a peacemaker to save her family.

When her mom died, and her twin brother, Mark, blamed their dad, Buffy had to fight to keep that resentment from boiling over into words that couldn't be taken back. She was only partially successful.

It didn't help that their father didn't know how to be a dad without their mom around. He needed to run the family like they were his airmen, but they were just kids. Even though she sort of resented her father as well, Sam actually fed that personality quirk by striving to be the perfect pre-servicemember daughter. It was like Sam's goal in life was to prove she could be the son Jacob always wanted (especially since Mark refused to be).

Unfortunately for Buffy and Mark, Jacob used Sam as the yardstick for their success…and they could never measure up. They were both remarkably talented in their own ways, but since their talents weren't in areas that the Air Force got excited about, they weren't praised like Sam's accomplishments

Mark had a near-inhuman ability to learn different languages and musical instruments. What would take Sam years to learn, Mark could master in mere months. If Jacob had been more supportive of Mark's studies, Mark could have gone to a school like Juilliard.

Worse for Buffy was the fact that she was 'barely' above average in all her schoolwork. She didn't even excel in a 'useless' subject like music or language (she had overheard him complaining to a co-worker after getting her straight-B's report card one time). Her talent lay in her ability to read people. If she were older, the spy and/or law enforcement agencies would be drooling over her.

As it was, she used her abilities to keep the family as functional as possible, burying her hurt over her father's rejection every time he compared her to Sam unfavorably. And it mostly worked for a few years.

At the age of 14, when Mark found out that Jacob had torpedoed his chances to study at Juilliard, he decided to go into full rebellion mode. Goth look, piercings, tattoos, drinking, smoking…the whole clichéd bit. While Jacob was gone for one thing or another, Mark got his first piercing (ear) and bought a pack of cigarettes from an older kid at school.

That night he decided to try smoking for the first time after his sisters were asleep. He hacked his way through two and a half cigarettes when he heard Buffy whimpering in her sleep. It amazed him that his coughing hadn't woken her up already. He stubbed the cigarette out and went inside to check on her.

She explained about her recurring dream that she was a bunch of different girls in history, each meeting her death at the fangs of a vampire named Lothos.

After he calmed her down, she scolded him for trying to smoke. Her winning argument was that she didn't want to lose him to cancer or something else like she lost their mom to that car accident years earlier.

A week later, he saw a man follow Buffy into the girls' locker room and sprinted across the gym to catch up before anything could happen to her. He got in just as the man threw a knife at his twin sister. He missed seeing Buffy catch the knife because he was too busy tackling the guy who threw it.

Once Merrick had explained his actions and convinced them that vampires were real, Mark had second thoughts about rebelling…or at least the method of his rebellion. If his father embraced science, he would embrace the mystical. So much the better that it would help keep Buffy alive longer.

But they agreed that Jacob and Sam could never find out the real truth.

A/N: Not sure I've ever seen Buffy (and Mark) portrayed this way before.