Spoilers: Seasons 1-4 of Angel; All of BtVS (including 'Chosen'); Seasons 1-8 of Stargate SG-1

Pairings: Wes/Fred; Sam/Jack; Daniel/Buffy (Eventually...plus others to come)

Disclaimers: I don't own any of the characters, situations or dialogue found in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel the Series, or Stargate SG-1. This is purely a work of fiction and no intent to defame or gain profit from this enterprise is intended.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Buffy was sitting sideways in an armchair leafing through a magazine when Dawn walked into the townhouse, removing her coat and scarf and hanging them on the peg board beside the front door. There were some noises as Dawn walked into the kitchen and rummaged in the refrigerator for a couple of minutes. She looked up as her sister walked into the living room polishing an apple on her shirt.

"Hey. Message for you on the table."

"Who's it from?"

"Dr. Daniel Jackson. Will took the message, told him you'd call him back when you got home."

Dawn walked over to the sideboard, read the brief message, and checked her watch. It was one a.m. in London. Her last address for Dr. Jackson was somewhere in Colorado. She did some math, never one of her strong points. Assuming she remembered her time zones correctly, it was five p.m. where he was–right on the edge of business hours, but maybe she'd be lucky and catch him still at his desk. Putting the apple down, she dialed the phone, waiting for the inevitable clicks that came with making an overseas call.

"Hello?"

"Um, yes, hello? May I please speak to Dr. Jackson?" Dawn thanked a few minor deities for the ocean and most of a continent between her and her prospective advisor so that he wouldn't see her twirling her hair in nervousness. Plus, this way she didn't have to change into proper interview clothes and could be comfy in jeans while she spoke to him.

"This is Daniel Jackson." Very professional and intimidating. Probably extra tweedy to make up for the lack of accent.

"Um...hi, Dr. Jackson. This is Dawn Summers. I'm returning your call?" Dawn cursed inwardly at the questioning tremor in her voice. She was an assertive, intelligent, articulate woman who was fluent in twelve languages, damn it. Why did she suddenly sound fourteen?

"Oh, hi!" Okay, the enthusiasm took away some of Dr. Jackson's apparent tweediness. Dawn began to relax. "I've been looking forward to hearing from you, Ms. Summers..."

"Call me Dawn, Dr. Jackson. Ms. Summers makes me feel like my much older sister."

Daniel next heard a loud "Hey," from someone, presumably her sister, followed by a thump and a ear-piercing squeal from Dawn. He grinned. Sounded like she was on the younger edge of the scale. He took this as a good sign that she'd be seduced by the excitement and danger of the SGC and be able to be with the program for a long time. "Dawn, then. Call me Daniel. Anyway, I wanted to get in touch with you."

"About my project?" Dawn was excited. After a year of researching, it looked like she might finally have found an advisor. There weren't many people on the planet who could read cuneiform. Giles and Wesley could, of course, but they were generally busy with other things. Giles was organizing and running the research branch of the Watchers' Council in London while Wes was with his wife and organizing and training all the slayers on the Cleveland hellmouth.

"More or less." There was a pause and it became obvious that Dr. Jackson started hedging. "Uh, actually, Dawn, that's what I wanted to speak to you about."

"Okay..."

"Before I agree or refuse to be your advisor, I'd like to meet you in person, get to know you, talk to you about some things. You're in London, right? I could send you a ticket and I'll meet you next week."

That sounded reasonable to Dawn. After all, with her living in England and him in Colorado, it wasn't like they'd have opportunities for frequent personal contact–she wouldn't be able to drop by during his office hours and ask him questions and trade pithy linguistic barbs. They'd have to do that over e-mail, but it wasn't the same as knowing who you were talking to. Plus, since he and Riley worked together, she'd be able to see Riley and check out how he was really doing. He was, understandably, taking Sam's death pretty hard. Then she had an unsettling thought.

"Sure. But, ah, I have to bring my sister with me. There's this thing, and the rules are that I'm not allowed to travel someplace new by myself."

"Is anything wrong?" Exactly how young was this woman? Vaguely disturbed, Daniel was sidetracked from that concern imagining a mob/informant/witness relocation scenario in his head.

Dawn continued twisting her hair and sighed. Great, now he thought she was a total basket case. Stupid Buffy. Stupid unoriginal demon kidnappers. "No, it's totally fine. I'm used to it by now. Buffy's just obsessively overprotective and feels the compulsive need to act as my bodyguard whenever I go anywhere I haven't been before."

She didn't feel the need to mention the tracking device Willow had implanted under her skin after she'd been taken for the fifth time in seven months as bait for trap to capture the "real" slayer. Buffy and Willow were just overreacting. Besides, it had been almost a year since the last time she'd been kidnapped.

Daniel grimaced. Sounded like the sister was a candidate for the psychiatric ward. And what kind of parents named their kid Buffy, anyway?

Dawn interrupted his musings. "Hang on while I check when she can come, okay?" Before he could answer, there was a clunk as Dawn put the phone down followed by some quiet murmuring.

He began tapping his fingers on the desk and began to feel even more positive about his chances of getting Dawn to work for the SGC. It would give her the perfect opportunity to be away from her sister. After all, whatever happened to her couldn't be that bad–even if it was mafia related, it's not like they could send hit men to Chulak to find her. Though he did smile at the scenario–some wiseguy in a black pin-striped suit surrounded by Jaffa and staff weapons looking hopelessly confused.

"Okay, I'm back."

"I could tell. When would be convenient?"

"Buffy said that anytime is fine for her, and I'm completely open, so that's easy. I'm really looking forward to seeing Riley again, so this is like a two for one sale, but on trips. There's some cliche about holding hands and birds in bushes that's supposed to fit here, but it never really made sense to me."

Daniel grinned. Holding hands and birds in bushes? Wait'll Jack got hold of her. But...rewind a second..."You know Riley Finn?"

Wasn't she supposed to? Oops. She had such problems remembering whose secret lives she knew, whose she didn't and whom she could talk to about them. She swallowed. "Yes."

"How?"

"Buffy dated him. How do you know Riley?" From her conversation with Riley, Dawn already knew that they worked together, but she didn't know what they did there. Buffy, Willow and Xander wondered all the time about what could be going on in Colorado that required Riley's special skills. Here might be her chance to find out. It had to be something really interesting if they needed a linguist/anthropologist often enough to keep Dr. Jackson around on a regular basis.

"He's on my team for a special classified project. Obviously I didn't realize that you knew each other. I said something yesterday about the slayer myth, he made an impressively quick retreat from the commissary, and I haven't seen or heard from him since."

"Oh, for crying out loud..."

Daniel let out an involuntary chuckle at hearing Jack O'Neill's customary phrase from the young woman while Dawn muttered something incomprehensible on the other end of the phone. Once she slowed down enough for him to understand what she was saying, he recognized the Latin. The translation made him laugh again–she called Riley a closed-mouth son of a bitch and threatened to knock him unconscious with a cricket bat.

"Why a cricket bat?"

At Daniel's query, Dawn stopped her tirade and abruptly remembered that her potential advisor was on the other end of the line and that he'd understood every word she'd said. "Because it's way heavier with more hitting surface area than a baseball bat, but generally non-lethal."

Daniel rolled his eyes. Ah. Of course. She'd fit in at the SGC just fine. He'd be lucky if Jack and Teal'c didn't adopt her.

"Dr. Jackson?" Dawn twisted her hair again and sighed. Nice interview technique, Summers. Very catchy. Maybe she'd write a book.

"Yes?"

"Can we pretend my little rant never happened?"

Daniel grinned. He could practically hear her blushing. Whether Dawn agreed to join the SGC or not, he'd agree to supervise her project. He hadn't had this entertaining a conversation in months–Jack was busy being a General and Sam didn't speak Latin, inadvertently or otherwise. "Sure. Um...I'd like to talk to you about Riley for a minute or two, if I may?"

"Shoot." Here was a subject she could talk knowledgeably about, even if she was probably supposed to be discussing her project and qualifications. Obviously Dr. Jackson didn't do much interviewing.

"Okay...your sister dated him?"

"Yup. For a little more than a year when they were in college. They were totally flirty for a few months before that, except for when she almost married Spike that time. They dated until they imploded and he moved to South America."

Spike? Flirty? Imploded? With Riley Finn, a man who practically made Teal'c look talkative? It was now official. His curiosity about Dawn's sister would drive him insane until he met the woman. "South America, huh? Must have been some break-up."

Dawn rolled her eyes. "Oh, you have no idea. Swelling dramatic music, a cross-town run, black military helicopters flying off into the night..."

Military helicopters? She must have been speaking figuratively. "But she's looking forward to seeing him?"

"Yeah, they're better now." Dawn grimaced. She hadn't actually lied to Dr. Jackson. Saying Buffy's and Riley's relationship was better was definitely the truth, but the truth was still pretty relative.

Daniel cleared his throat, at a conversational impasse. He wanted to know more about his teammate but didn't really want to stoop to gossiping to get the information. So he did a Jack and went for non-committal instead. "Mmm hmmm."

Dawn continued, "Anyway, if you want to know more about that, you should probably ask Riley. Or Buffy when she gets there, but that's so definitely not her best ex-boyfriend story. But that's so not the point. Where were we? Oh, yeah, we were talking plane tickets. So, when are we talking about?"

She heard some rustling while Dr. Jackson checked a calendar. "How's next week for you?"

"We're completely open. Not having jobs definitely helps with availability."

Daniel grinned. "I've had that kind of availability myself, unfortunately. I'll e-mail you the flight information in the next day or two, okay?"

"That's fine."

"It's been...intriguing...talking to you, Dawn."

"Um, thanks, I think. I'm looking forward to meeting you in person."

Dawn hung up the phone and wandered into the living room, picked up her abandoned apple and sat on the couch. Buffy lowered her magazine and looked at her sister.

"So, how'd it go? When are we going? Where are we going?"

Dawn rolled her eyes at Buffy and crunched into her apple. "It went okay. We'll be going sometime next week, I think, and the address I have for him is in Colorado Springs, Colorado, so I assume that's where we'll be going. Ugh...many, many hours of plane travel...wish Will could just teleport us...Oh, yeah, and he thinks you're insane and that I'm completely unable to take care of myself because there's a rule about not being able to go off on my own."

"Three words, Dawn. Constant demonic kidnapping." Before Dawn could launch into the newest version of this familiar argument, Buffy continued, "So, other than me being a candidate for the psycho ward and you being dependent..."

Dawn sighed. Being the youngest sucked. "He didn't know we knew Riley, so that was a little strange. It actually sounds like Ri hasn't said much about anything about us, even though I told him he could."

"Damn it. He's been there, what, a year? Yeah, he's fine and dealing with Sam's death well my ass!"

Buffy stood up and began to pace back and forth, muttering to herself. Xander and Dawn had kept in semi-regular contact with Riley and Sam since the utter humiliation of the "Doc" incident, but they'd been checking on him more often in the year since Sam's death. Xander had told her just the other day that Riley seemed to be coming out of his funk, that something he was working on was making him more "himself" than he'd been since Sam had died at the hands of Iraqi insurgents.

Buffy had been relieved–she couldn't bring herself to completely forgive her ex-boyfriend for past offenses, but that didn't mean she wanted him to wallow in misery for the rest of his life, either. She cursed again as she paced–apparently Riley's e-mails to Xander had all been a big, honking act. Stupid macho Riley.

Privately, Dawn felt that her sister wasn't the best person to be muttering about someone else's inability to get over a significant other's death. Sure, Spike was back now and they weren't dating anymore and hadn't technically been dating at the time of his jewelry-wearing existentialist exit, but it wasn't like she'd been all sanity-having until she got his phone call telling her that. Then there was her complete and total irrationality after Angel's death, definitely deserving of its own day on Buffy's non-existent therapist's couch.

Muttering to herself now and knowing from experience that it would take her sister a few minutes to calm back down, Dawn stalked into the kitchen and returned with peanut butter and a knife. She returned to her seat on the couch and waited impatiently for Buffy to return to her armchair, tapping her foot and spreading the peanut butter on the outside of the apple. Finished, she took a bite, grimaced, and returned to the kitchen.

Buffy stopped pacing in mid-stride, distracted by her sister's apparent retreat in the face of rant. "Now what?"

"My apple is seriously lacking in raisiny goodness. Be right back."

Buffy shook her head, still utterly confounded by her sister's food preferences. Seriously, what on earth had the monks been smoking when they made her? Dawn returned with a small box of raisins and began to smoosh them into the peanut butter. When she was apparently satisfied with the apple/peanut butter/raisin ratio, she took another bite of the apple, munching contentedly.

"So...you were talking to Daniel Jackson..."

"Oh, yeah, right. He'll send us the tickets."

"Cool." They lived on money from the Council accounts these days, but Buffy still wasn't completely comfortable spending it. She snagged a raisin from her sister and munched idly. "How'd he sound? Old? Young? Cute?"

Dawn sighed and took another bite. Buffy had called a three year moratorium on dating herself, but she dated vicariously by interrogating Dawn about every man with whom she came into contact. It got kind of aggravating. "Kinda medium aged, actually. Totally watcher tweed at first but he loosened up. Tagged my rant in Latin and translated it enough to ask a question about why I wanted to bean Riley with a cricket bat. I'm sure I could have been less professional, but I don't know exactly how."

Buffy thought for a minute. "Well, you could have dumped a huge, old, and very stinky book entitled 'Vampyre' on the circulation desk in the Sunnydale High library in front of a complete stranger."

Grinning, Dawn looked at her sister. "Thanks. I feel much better."

Buffy grinned in return. "No problem."