It takes another two weeks and five missions of Buffy leaving the team for half an hour at the start to take the edge off her slayerness before Sheppard finally corners her to have a talk about it. He steers her into a randomly appearing room in one of Atlantis' many hallways that have exactly nothing in it before he turns to face her. It doesn't even have one of the small colorful windows, which makes it more of a storage room. Probably.

"What are you doing at the start of each mission?" He asks without preamble. The normally easy-going veneer has mostly been replaced by a suspicious frown. "And don't say you were checking the forest for threats.

She had been expecting this conversation, either with him, Teyla, Ronon, or even Dr. Weir. It didn't mean she had a good answer for him. "I really was looking for threats, but I also went for a short run." There, it was even the truth. Partially. Sort of.

"Look," she continued before he could protest. "I'm not a spy, I'm not trying to sell anyone out, or cause trouble. What I told you is true; at the beginning of each of the missions I have accompanied AR-1 and AR-2 on I have gone on a short run to check for threats or anything that might be interesting. I'm aware it looks hinky, but it's not. You can try and push the issue or even report it back to Earth, but all they're going to give you is a standard 'Classified, Need To Know'. Followed by the very annoying, 'and you don't need to know.'"

The man gave her a disbelieving snort. "I have a very high security clearance, Summers, and you're on my base. Not even Elizabeth seems to know what's going on. Dr. Beckett insists you're completely human, other than the Ancient DNA that gives you the ATA gene, but that doesn't explain how you can easily kick everyone's asses without breaking a sweat. Or why you keep going off by yourself on missions."

"I've been wondering when someone would confront me about that, but most people just seem to take it in stride, and ignore anything that shouldn't be possible for someone my size." That earned her a glare, and she was certain that if he had been 20 or 30 years younger he would've crossed his arms over his chest to punctuate his point.

"Yes, there's an explanation to both, the same one, but, like I said; it's classified. Very few people in the Stargate Program have been read in on it, and no, neither General Landry nor General O'Neill is among them. You won't be getting any explanations through correspondence." Sheppard looked genuinely taken aback by that. "This isn't just about me, and letting the military and a bunch of scientists in on the Big Secret is a bad idea, based on previous experience."

An eyebrow went up at the last part, "What happened?"

"A lot of things, also classified, but when they realized they couldn't control me they decided it was better to kill me." At his slightly wide-eyed reaction, she added. "Obviously, they failed, and in the end, my people and I had to save their butts. There were 40% casualties among the military who was involved in it. If we hadn't intervened it would've been 100%, and who knows how many civilians."

At that point, a slew of emotions was running across his face, confusion, anger, disbelief, suspicion, and several others. She didn't blame him, without proper context her so-called explanation didn't make much sense.

Clearly giving up on getting military secrets out of her, he went back to his original line of questioning. "I remember reading reports from the SGC about advanced humans, Hoktai, or something."

Buffy nodded, "Hok'tar or Hok'tau'ri, or something like that. I'm not good with names. A few of the people there thought the same thing, but I don't have telekinesis or telepathy, or anything like that. It, I, am not an alien, and neither are my abilities."

Before he could reply the unexpected off-world activation alarm went off, and 30 seconds later Dr. Elizabeth Weir's voice came of the speaker system demanding medical support to come to the game room.

Buffy tensed, "Major Lorne's team are the only ones off-world right now."

Colonel Sheppard was already heading towards the door, which was obligingly opening without him having to run his hand over the control panel on the left side like everyone else. "We are not done with this conversation."

He left ahead of her and she let him, mumbling "Of course not", just low enough so he wouldn't hear her. Then she followed.