Note: This chapter contains spoilers for the penultimate chapter of "Too Good to be True," story ID: 2053412) so if you aren't reading that, now might be a good time to do so.

Chapter 4: An Awkward Lunch

Elliot guided Dawn back down to the conference room on level 27. She saw that General O'Neill, Colonel Carter, Dr. Jackson and Teal'c were all waiting there for her. There was a tray of sandwiches and a box of doughnuts on the table, and a selection of drinks. The General smiled at Dr. Hayes. "Thank you, Elliot. That will be all."

"Uh, yes Sir." Dr. Hayes looked rather disappointed that he was being excluded from this lunch, but he didn't argue the point. He smiled at Dawn. "See you later."

Dawn smiled back, and waved as he backed out the door, and closed it behind him. She turned nervously back to the group around the table. This was the first time that she had been alone with any of them, other than her brief elevator ride with Sam, and she could see that they were eager to talk with her, even though they were holding themselves in check. Even the unflappable Teal'c was looking at her expectantly.

They weren't going to start grilling her right away though. General O'Neill waved his hand at the plate of sandwiches. "So, help yourself."

Dawn looked over the selection. There were several different types of sandwich available, including vegetarian, peanut butter and jam, and ones with different varieties of meat. She selected a roast beef on whole wheat, and a bottle of grapefruit juice. "Thank you." She sat down and took a bite out of her sandwich. "Umm…good. I was getting hungry. My stomach is still on British time."

Jack and the others picked out their own sandwiches. "So, what do you think of our little facility?" he asked.

Dawn swallowed another mouthful before she answered. "Impressive…the colour scheme is a little monotonous though."

"Yeah," said Jack. "We hear that complaint a lot. Trouble is, anything else upsets the Marines. They complain about the Air Force wusses inflicting pansy-assed colours on them."

They talked about other inconsequential things through lunch. Dawn felt very much like they were all avoiding talking about a large, purple elephant that was sitting at the table with them. The talk finally swung around toward the elephant as she was licking the sugar from the jelly doughnut she'd had for dessert off her fingers.

"So, how's Buffy?" asked Sam. "She recovered from the bite okay?"

"Oh, yeah," said Dawn. "She heals fast."

"And how about Willow?" asked Daniel. "She was looking pretty done in, there at the end too."

"No problem. She just needed a good sleep. Uh…how about Jerry? He wasn't looking too good, last time I saw him."

"He made a full recovery," said Jack. "Well…almost."

"Almost?"

"He was left with a major case of arachnophobia. We finally had to put him on permanent assignment off-world, on P5J-975."

"P5J-what?"

"It's a world that doesn't have any spiders."

"Oh. I wonder if it's anywhere near the world without shrimp."

"What?" asked Jack.

"Never-mind," said Dawn. "Family joke. You couldn't give it a name people could remember?"

Sam leaned forward. "Gates on other worlds are given designations, based on the binary—"

"Carter! Give it up!" said Jack. "You've explained that to me a hundred times, and it still doesn't make any sense." He turned back to Dawn. "Worlds that we have a lot of dealings with have names, but most of them just have a number."

"What of Xander Harris and Rupert Giles?" asked Teal'c. "They are well?"

"Uh…yeah, everyone's fine," said Dawn. "Xander's living in Cleveland now." She could see that no one was the least bit surprised by that. She suspected that she hadn't told anyone anything that they didn't already know.

Daniel looked a little nervous about what he was about to say next. He used a finger to push his glasses up his nose. "So…about Buffy and Willow…"

"What about them?" asked Dawn.

"Well, they both did some pretty amazing things on that island."

"Yeah, they did."

"And we were kinda wondering how they did them," said Jack.

Dawn had known that the question was coming, and she'd spent a lot of the last couple of days thinking about how she was going to answer it when it came. She had also discussed it a bit with Colonel Davis. "General O'Neill—"

"Jack! I said to call me 'Jack!'"

"General O'Neill," repeated Dawn. "I have given my word not to discuss certain matters with anyone. If I can't be trusted to keep my word to my friends, and family, can you trust me to keep your secrets from them?"

"How can we trust you, if we know you're keeping secrets?"

"I won't lie to you, Sir. I will tell you what I can. If you ask me something I can't answer, I'll tell you I can't answer it. There are people in the government who do know about Buffy and Willow. If you aren't happy with what I can tell you, you might try asking Colonel Davis."

"The SGC is charged with protecting the Earth from a variety of threats," said Jack. "We need every tool at our disposal to accomplish that."

"Buffy and Willow are not tools, Sir." Dawn let a little anger creep into her voice. O'Neill was sounding a bit like the old Council.

"No, of course not," said Daniel quickly. "Jack didn't mean it that way."

"What did he mean?"

"I meant, that sometimes we need all the help we can get," said Jack, "and having the help of someone like Buffy or Willow, might make the difference between us winning or losing. And if we lose, the whole world loses."

"Buffy and Willow are already doing their parts, in that department," said Dawn. "There are other threats to the Earth. Not just the extra-terrestrial ones."

"The vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness," said Daniel.

Dawn gave him a sharp look. "You know about that?"

"I know about the legends," said Daniel. "In every generation, there is a Chosen One. One girl in all the world…"

"…in all the world," joined in Dawn. "She alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. Yeah, I've heard it."

"So, Buffy is the Slayer," said Jack.

Dawn paused for a moment before she answered. If they'd figured that much out, there wasn't much point in denying it. "Yeah, Buffy's a Slayer."

"A Slayer?" asked Daniel. "There's more than one? The legends all seem to be pretty specific on the 'only one' part."

"No comment," said Dawn.

"And what about Willow?" asked Sam. "Is she a Slayer too?"

"No," said Dawn. "Willow is…Willow."

"Those things she did," said Jack. "I've seen Goa'uld doing things like that, with their ribbon devices, but I couldn't see what Willow was using."

"She wasn't using anything," said Dawn. "What Willow does…she does herself."

"I'd love to be able to study—"

"No!" Dawn cut Sam off. "Military and magic are non-mixey things! Last time the military got involved in magic, they almost destroyed the world."

"Would that be that Initiative thing you guys were so interested in?" asked Daniel.

"Uh…yeah," said Dawn.

"But the military is still involved in that stuff," said Jack. "Major Finn, and his outfit."

"Riley knows his limits," said Dawn. "They hunt down and kill demons that are causing problems, and they've got some magic users who support them, but they know when to call for help, too. Other than habits, habitat, and how to kill it, they don't do much studying of demons."

"Are demons really that common?" asked Daniel.

"Oh, sure," said Dawn. "But most of them like to keep a low profile. I haven't had a chance to check out Colorado Springs, yet, but I know that there are a few in Denver. I doubt if there are many around here though. Demons like to avoid the military. A lot of them remember the Initiative too."

"So, about those spiders," said Jack. "Sam said you didn't think they were demons."

"Uh…not any sort of demon we've come across before," said Dawn. "We couldn't find any reference to anything much like them."

"But they couldn't have been natural insects," said Sam. "No insect could be that big. It just doesn't work."

"Maybe they were alien demon spiders," said Daniel.

"Or spider alien demons," said Dawn.

"Demon spider aliens," said Jack.

Dawn decided they'd milked that one for all it was worth. It was time to see if she could get a little information out of the SGC people. "What about Latvia?"

"Huh?" asked Jack.

"When Daniel first called us, he said that someone had found something in Latvia, like the site in the Shetlands. What was that really?"

"Uh…P3G-823," said Daniel. "There was a ruin there, with inscriptions in the same language."

"And the first survey team there was killed," said Jack.

"More spiders?" asked Dawn.

"No," said Daniel. "It was some sort of force field. Everyone exposed to it died."

"What about the 1992 expedition?" asked Jack. "Did the spiders get them?"

"Not as far as we could tell," said Dawn. "According to Giles, everyone was just dead. No marks at all on their bodies. They couldn't tell what killed them."

"Sounds like P3G-823," said Daniel. "But what stopped it? Carter estimates that the field there grew to nearly a thousand miles in diameter. No non-native life can survive inside it. Why didn't that happen here? Why isn't half of Europe dead?"

"The Slayer," said Dawn. "The Slayer went to that island, and stopped whatever was happening."

"How?" asked Jack.

"We don't know," said Dawn. "She died doing it."

"Damn!" said Jack. "Wish we knew what she did. 823 would be a nice world, if it wasn't for the fact that anyone who went through the gate to it would drop dead."

They sat quietly for a moment, no one knowing what to say next. Daniel broke the silence. "Your dissertation makes some references to more recent appearances of 'Gould' demons."

"Yeah," said Dawn. "The last confirmed one was in 1734, in Tibet."

"Really?" asked Daniel. "Do you know which one it was?"

"It was calling itself 'Kansa.'"

"The Hindu king of the demons," said Daniel. "Supposedly killed by Krishna."

"Well, Kansa got away from Krishna, and went into hiding for a few thousand years," said Dawn. "Apparently he decided that Krishna wasn't a threat anymore, started trying to raise a new army of demons to be king of."

"What happened to him?" asked Sam.

"The Slayer killed him," said Dawn.

"Any after that?" asked Jack.

"There's been some rumours," said Dawn. "One guy seems to be pretty good at hiding. Shows up about once a century as the head of a cult, and then vanishes again, before the Slayer can get close. The last time was just a few years ago in Washington, but he disappeared again before the old Council could get its thumb out of its ass."

"Really?" asked Jack. "Does he have a name?"

Dawn looked at the expressions on their faces. They seemed to be looking pretty smug. "He calls himself 'Seth.'"

Jack grinned. "You don't have to worry about him, anymore. We kicked his ass."

"You're sure?" asked Dawn.

"Oh yeah," said Daniel. "What was that you said about the 'old' Council? That implies that there's a 'new' Council…"

Dawn managed to escape from the lunch without spilling too many more secrets. She spent the afternoon getting introduced to the linguistics staff. She was very impressed. She had recognized the names of several of them, from having read their work in various journals. She was somewhat awed by the prospect of getting to work with so much talent.

It was nearly six when she got back to her hotel. That made it after midnight, British time, and she really wanted to go to bed, but she knew that if she went to sleep now, she'd be awake again at two in the morning. If she wanted to adjust to Colorado time, she had to stay awake for a few more hours. Seeing the two people waiting for her in the lobby of the hotel told her that staying awake wouldn't be a problem.

"Rona!" Dawn hugged the black Slayer who had risen to her feet on her entrance. "Good to see you again!" She hugged the second girl too. "You too, Gabbie!"

Rona was one of the Sunnydale survivors, and she and Gabbie, one of the Slayers called by Willow's spell, were responsible for covering the USA, between the Rocky Mountains, and the Mississippi river. They were based in Denver, to keep an eye on its small demon community, but they moved around a lot. In the winter months they could usually be found near a ski hill, if there weren't any demons that needed Slaying.

Dawn let go of Gabbie, and stepped back. "So, what are you guys doing here?"

"Buffy called," sad Rona. "Told us you'd be here. Asked us to check out the area."

Dawn had given up on being annoyed by Buffy's overprotective tendencies. She had come to accept that she would always have her sister, or some other Slayer, nearby to keep an eye on her, no matter where she went. She grinned as a new thought struck her: maybe she'd be able to escape through the Stargate. "You find anything?"

"Not much," said Rona. "There is a Jade Dragon in town, though."

"Oh good!" said Dawn. "I'm hungry!" The Jade Dragon was a chain of Chinese restaurants, run by a clan of demons that went back at least a couple of thousand years. Some of them had worked in the kitchens of the Ming Emperors, and their food was always excellent, especially if you knew to tell them to make sure that they left out the cat that they served to their demon customers.

Dawn let Rona drive to the restaurant. She was so tired that there was a real danger that she'd end up on the wrong side of the road. Even though she had a current Ohio driver's license that she had gotten during one of her many visits to Cleveland, she had learned to drive in England.