Title: Rebuilding
Disclaimer: I don't own Buffy or Stargate. I wish I did. All characters will be returned the their proper owners when I finish playing with them.
Spoilers: All of Buffy through Chosen; Stargate through end of season 7; I've reassigned Gen. Hammond back at SGC
Rating: PG-13 thanks to someone's potty mouth
Could his life get any worse? School sucked, his friends had blown him off, and his summer job prospects were less than satisfactory. Sure he loved pizza but he so did not want to spend the next three months making them. Life at sixteen was depressing. And where the hell was he anyway? He had been walking around aimlessly for the last couple of hours and now found himself in an unfamiliar part of town . "We help the hopeless" read the sign next to the entrance to the building. What the hell, JT thought, and he opened the door and entered the "Family Home."
---
Buffy checked the clock beside her bed for the second time in as many minutes. Xander wasn't due back for a couple of hours and she was bored. She had hoped to spend some time with Dr. Jackson. She certainly had not expected him to be so hostile. Okay, the Travers Foundation, one of the public faces of the Watchers' Council, had royally screwed up his hopes for a brilliant career but he had at least found steady employment with Air Force. (Although she did wonder why NORAD would have a linguist/anthropologist on the payroll. Now if had been the Initiative he was working for, she wouldn't have come within a hundred miles of him.) Anyway, she was offering him a chance to resume his research, couldn't he have at least listened? She checked the clock again.
Deciding a nice long run was called for, she changed her clothes, swapping the morning's tweedy suit for a tank top and sweat pants. Leaving a note for Xander, she left their hotel room.
About twenty minutes into her run, she wasn't bored anymore. She stood in front of the storefront in disbelief. It was another "Family Home" shelter and it looked like "Ken" was inside. She was fairly certain that it was that it wasn't the same Ken since she was sure he hadn't survived her foray into his hell dimension back in 1998. On the other hand, she was certain that this was a front for a portal to a hell dimension. There had been too many slaves there for the other "Family Home" in California to be the only entrance.
She moved further down the street and into a nearby alley. She pulled out her cell phone and placed a call to Xander. "Come on Xander, pick up."
"Hi, this is Xander. Please leave a message and I'll get back to you."
"Xander, something has come up. Remember the summer before senior year? Seems Colorado Springs has a "Family Home" doorway to hell. I'm going to check it out. Do not come after me, time runs at a different speed in most hell dimensions so by the time you get this message I will probably be back already. If I'm not back by this evening, you'll have to visit Dr. Langford alone. If I'm not back by tomorrow, well, I probably won't be coming back at all."
She replaced the cell phone in her pocket and headed back to the shelter.
----
Less than hour later, a man and a woman exited the shelter. Looking around the woman said, "I'm pretty sure the hotel was this way."
They stopped at a newspaper vending machine. "Damn, you were right. How the hell am I supposed to explain how I suddenly aged fifteen years since this morning?"
"Look on the bright side, no more high school. And don't worry, I've told you that the Council can provide you with a new identity."
An hour later they arrived at the hotel. At Room 145, Buffy knocked on the door.
"Buffy? What the..."
"Just let us in Xander," she said tiredly.
Xander moved aside to allow the scruffy pair to enter. "Whose your new friend?"
"Jonathan Thorsonn. JT meet Xander Harris."