Disclaimer: Oh for Pete's sake people, I don't own the WWE, Stargate-SG1, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I also don't own Ready to Run. I don't even like the song, it just seemed to fit.
I do, however, own Celia's personality (Joss gave her a brief mention, I just like expanding), the Hunter Universe, and Alejandro. Probably other OCs as well, but I'm doing my best not to make these Mary-Sues or Larry-Joes.
Who came up with those terms anyway?
When the train rolls by
Lia Calloway was pissed off. Actually, her temper was about to give way to pure murderous intent. She'd missed her flight out of Heathrow at two in the morning which meant that she'd barely made the flight out of JFK. She'd originally had a full eight hour layover in New York, because she was supposed to get together with her roommate from boarding school for lunch. That had obviously fallen through.
Now she had to deal with the crowds in Denver. She didn't usually make stops when she flew, but she hadn't seen her friends and family in over eighteen months. Lia had left the U.S. the day after Fox Ridge's graduation ceremony and hadn't been back since.
She would see most of the family at Alejandro's wedding but her friends wouldn't be there. So despite her growing frustration, the blonde haired beauty ducked into the Colorado Springs bar that he'd had told her to go to. And there, near the end of the counter, was her mother's brother. She sat down next to him and gave a quirky grin. "Alex is getting married."
"I heard," Colonel Jack O'Neill replied. "Sorry I can't come."
"Don't apologize to me," she shook her head. "I don't even want to be there but I'm going anyway. Honestly, the plane may have been a step up from trains but I swear that they are just as slow. What problems could this job of yours have that's so pressing that you can't take the time to deal with fun things like planes?"
"Did I ever tell any of you what I ended up doing for a living?"
Lia sighed. "You keep that more guarded than Fort Knox."
Suddenly someone sat down next to her uncle. "Hey, Jack. General Hammond wants to know why you left base so quickly once we entered stand down."
"Danny," Jack nearly growled, "this isn't a good time."
Looking at the young woman next to Jack who looked like she was about to hurt something, Daniel Jackson jumped to conclusions. "You're a new girlfriend who wasn't informed that Jack's a workaholic?"
Lia echoed Jack's growl, except her version was more primitive. "I'm his niece. Now I understand why you never talk about your job, Uncle Jonathon."
Jack flinched. "Now sport—"
"Don't call me sport," she bit back. "You're a son of bitch who doesn't deserve to be invited to any of our family functions, much less to my brother's wedding!"
Daniel was curious. "Why?"
"Because everyone knows we don't do Army! The Army is evil and has no morals!"
"I'm not Army; I'm Air Force," her uncle piped up. The moment he was through, she gave him a killer glare.
"Is there a fucking difference?"
"You might call our team the experts in the paranormal, Lia," he tried again and he could see her weaken.
"Experts as in you dissect those who are different?" Okay, she hadn't weakened that much.
Daniel figured that an intervention might be in order. "Would it make any difference if you met the rest of our team?"
"Do you kill those you see as freaks?"
"No, we don't." Daniel left the part about killing evil aliens out of the conversation since that was classified.
"If someone told you that demons were real, what would you say?" Her eyes was still as cold as ice and her voice as unwavering as steel.
"Personally, I'd think that they might have seen aliens instead but to each their own." Daniel couldn't help but wonder over that question, not realizing how much he'd just enlightened the angry Hunter.
"I'll reserve judgment until I meet your team," Lia told her uncle. "But even if I like them, not everyone will be as understanding."
"I know."
I'm gonna be ready this time
General George Hammond stared in disbelief at Jack. "Colonel, you did not just suggest bringing in a civilian group to help fight the Goa'uld!"
"The Hunters are trained from birth to fight," Jack began. "As a rule, they steer clear of anything concerning the military, but I know at least one member who will gladly help after the Goa'uld are explained. Well, two Hunters."
"Who are these two Hunters?" Hammond leaned back in his chair.
"One is a female who just turned twenty."
"A twenty year old female can help in our fight?" Hammond laughed. "Are you taking something? And who's the other?"
"Lia is one of the strongest Hunters in years," Jack growled, intent on defending his niece. "And the other, Sir, is sitting right in front of you!"
"What?"
"I was born a Demon Hunter, Sir. From birth we're trained to fight and avoid the government at all costs. I ended up in the Air Force because I was drafted. I was supposed to run but I couldn't do that. Imagine my surprise when I realized that no matter how bad our people see Uncle Sam as, the military ain't really that awful."
"So you aren't from Chicago?" Hammond asked.
"I'm from Chicago," Jack told him, "I just haven't been back there since my little sister Noreen got married."
"What would this Lia person say if we asked for her help?"
"I honestly think that she'd be glad to help but it wouldn't be a long term commitment." He kept hoping that he was doing the right thing by telling the General his secret. Truth was though, SGC wasn't ready for a full scale attack and the Hunters could help on that front.
"So demons are real?" George Hammond kept praying that this was all one big nightmare or a psychotic episode that Jack was including him in.
"Yes, General, demons and other evil creatures are real. Hunters and the Slayer keep the problem under control."
"The Slayer?" his boss questioned.
"One girl in the entire world to fight the masses of evil but mostly just vampires," Jack shrugged.
"Lia can come in if she signs the proper forms," Hammond finally agreed.
When the boy gets that look in his eye
They found the blonde haired young woman on her cell phone. Suddenly, she looked like she was a warrior, the way Jack had said she was. "Look, Alex, I'll be there! There is still a full month before the actual ceremony! Bro, don't make me cast a curse on your marriage! So what if the tradition is that everyone meets up a month before the ceremony? I'll get there when I get there…I'm trying to pressure someone into coming, okay? Love you, too…Bye."
Major Sam Carter was the one who spoke up. The rest of the SG1 team had already been briefed on what was happening. "So you can actually cast curses on people?"
"Not all Hunters can," Lia shook her head, "but I'm an offensive caster as well as a defensive caster."
"I do not understand, LiaHunter," Teal'c stated gravely.
"To defend ourselves, we have wells of magic," Lia started, sitting down in the chair and starting to fill out the paperwork. "Depending on who teaches you, you may only learn defensive spells. Typically, you'll never move on from being a defensive caster that way. The good teachers, though, teach their students a variety of casting types."
"Her name is Lia Calloway," Jack corrected his teammate.
"Or Celia, if the relatives get really pissed off at me," she told them with a half-smile.
I'm gonna be ready this time
"Now why would we get mad?" Jack asked.
"Because I know who would be Charlie's Second Mother if he were still alive?"
"No way," Jack muttered. "No. I only did that out of duty and I prayed that it wouldn't result in a child."
"Praying isn't exactly a foolproof method, Uncle Jack. That may be why I can now go visit Naira and Michael at anytime."
"Twins?"
"Yes, twins," she answered smartly. "Michelle died four years ago so they're being raised by their grandparents."
"And you waited until now to tell me?" he uncle thundered. "Forget about the damn wedding, I'm going to find my kids!"
"Men are so the fucking same," she shook her head. "Will you relax? They'll be at the wedding."
Hammond finally spoke up. "You're related?"
At the same time, Daniel asked, "What is a second mother?"
Lia grinned. "He's my uncle, General. A second mother, Dr. Jackson, occurs when a husband has children with someone other than their wife. The children of the marriage call the second woman their Second Mother. The offspring of the dalliance refer to their father's wife as their Second Mother. When it's the woman who dallied outside the marriage, the second man is Second Father."
"Why would they call them anything?" Daniel was confused. "Wouldn't the married couple have gotten a divorce and the second person would be a step-parent?"
"No," she was still as shocked over that part of 'normal' society as she had been at seven. "I still don't get why anyone would divorce over an affair. That's so stupid."
"That's what I told Sara," Jack quirked a grin, "when we first got married. I never realized that not everyone sees marriage as a non-monogamous relationship."
"It's still odd." Lia blinked. "Very, very odd. What I don't get is how does the couple have more children if they haven't fulfilled the requirements?"
"You've lived among normals since you were seven years old and you don't understand them?" Jack asked.
"I never tried. After all, I'm typically either buried in books or fighting the good fight," she shrugged. "Tell me more?"
Daniel started the litany. "A marriage is formed when two people love each other. Sometimes the marriage will end badly; sometimes it just starts badly and never improves. When that happens, the couple may divorce. One reason for divorce is having affairs."
"That makes no sense," the young Hunter stammered. "Don't you marry for children? What about pureblooded children? How do you have those if you don't have the requirements?"
"We don't see anything as purebloods," Daniel told her. "The common reason for marriage is love although a child is sometimes the reason."
"That fact is decreasing though," Carter spoke up. "It used to be that the girl and the guy had to get married if the girl became pregnant. That has changed, and for the better."
When my momma says I look good in white
While the young academic was getting a crash course in 'normal' culture, her uncle was dealing with an irate bride-to-be. Glenn Calloway ducked the lamp that was thrown at his head while he tried to reason with her.
"You know that it's tradition, Faith."
The Boston native growled low in her throat. "I don't want to wear a white dress!"
"Joyce keeps stressing that you look good in white," he cajoled.
"For the last time, white is the color of virgins! I AM NOT IN ANY WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM A VIRGIN!" Faith glared at the last remaining Brother of Destruction. From anyone else, the glare would have been laughable. From her, it caused him to think about cowering.
"Then what color do you want the dress to be?" Buffy spoke up from her corner of the living room. Her hazel eyes were an eerie green color as she tried not to laugh.
"I want it to be the color of freshly spilled blood!"
"So a blood red wedding dress," her sister nodded. "O…k…a…y."
"Who's going to tell Joyce?" Glenn queried.
"You are," Joyce's daughters snickered maliciously. And Glenn just *knew* that Mark was somewhere up above, laughing his butt off.
I'm gonna be ready this time
Oh yeah
Ready, ready, ready, ready... ready to run
Linda McMahon was cooking in the kitchen with Joyce when Glenn came in. The two women looked at the poor man with pity. Anyone could tell that he was scared; they just weren't certain who he was running from.
"What's wrong, bro?" Joyce grinned. She'd just sent him in for a chat with her middle daughter. While Faith wasn't typically the most volatile of her daughters, the wedding was taking a toll on her temper. Joyce could guess that Glenn's problems stemmed from the bride-to-be.
"Your spawn has decided that she wants a blood red dress," he spat.
"So?" Linda asked. "Red's a good color for her."
"For her wedding dress," he clarified.
"She wants what?!" the two women sputtered.
"You heard me." That was about the time he took off running as fast as he could. He may have been older than Joyce but he harbored no illusions. His baby sister fought dirty and she fought nasty. He really didn't want to end up castrated.
All I'm ready to do is have some fun
Back at Cheyenne Mountain, Lia had already been shown to a bedroom. Even after years of boarding schools, she had to wonder if they could have stretched the definition of 'bedroom' any further. She stared at the blonde woman who'd shown her to the room. "So is this a bedroom because of the bed or because they thought calling it a bed-closet might be offensive?"
Sam chuckled. "You have Jack's sense of humor. I pity your mother."
"Which one?" she asked quietly.
At Sam's startled look, Lia plopped onto the bed and stared at the opposite wall. "Mom just had me to worry about, you know? She's infertile which, among Hunters, is almost a crime. Dad can have kids; he's fathered four of them. But I was always their only child and I knew that I was loved because of that. I even stopped asking, after that first year, if I could go back to Buffy." She paused. "I'm rambling, aren't I?"
Samantha Carter shrugged. The young woman was human, American even, but her subculture was so perplexing that it boggled Sam's mind. "Keep going."
"Buffy was my twin sister. Gods, I grew up as her cousin but we always knew that her mother was mine. Maybe not in those exact words, but the thought was similar." She sniffled once. "Joyce, my birth mother, is my adopted dad's younger sister. Her husband didn't like having two daughters to inherit everything. So he told her to give one of us up."
"She didn't love you enough to keep you?" Sam asked.
"She loved me," Lia half-smiled, "but Hunter women are raised to submit to the men in their life. As Hunter men are raised to be gentle and loving towards their women, it isn't a problem. But Hank Summers wasn't a Hunter. He was just an abusive, controlling normal who exploited his wife."
"Why didn't you see Buffy again?"
"I was really sick when I was seven. They put me in the hospital to figure out what was going on. While I was there, a powerful daemon—or rather, as powerful as they come in this dimension—decided to kill me. Mom and Dad packed me up and moved us away from L.A. and the Hunters the very next day."
A/N: I don't even remember when I started this one anymore. However, I do know that I will finish it. I figure that at least you know I'm still alive. I'm so sorry that this isn't an update on another story…any story…but I'm trying. Real Life just happens to be particularly nasty right now combined with writer's block.
Review, and maybe the block will go away!