See Part 1 for disclaimers and story details

Author's Notes: Wow! You guys are the best! I never expected such an overwhelming reaction for Part 6. My beta and I went 'round and 'round with it and were never fully satisfied, even with the final result. Thank you for reminding me a piece can really be overanalyzed and first instincts should always be listened to. Everyone wave and send big thanks to Lynette for her awesome beta skills. She is the best! As always, any and all feedback is appreciated.

Part 7
The sharp jangle of the phone woke her from a blessedly dreamless sleep. Automatically reaching for the receiver on the nightstand, she blinked when her hand met air where the phone should have been.

"What?"

Jack's annoyed greeting jolted her back into her surroundings. The phone was on his side of the bed. Nestling back into her pillow, she watched with gritty eyes as Jack sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. She didn't mean to eavesdrop, but in the quiet of the bedroom both sides of the conversation carried clearly to her ears.

"I'm sorry, sir, I know it's early, but we have a problem."

"One that can't wait," he glanced at the clock next to the phone's base station, "four hours? It's three in the morning, Carter. And what are you doing there at this hour anyway? Never mind, I know the answer to that one."

A slightly strained laugh was emitted from the receiver. "Yes, sir. Unfortunately, that issue we've been having with the power fluxuations? It got worse last night. I thought we had it solved, but turned out I was wrong."

"Crap." He flicked on the lamp sitting on the night table and ran one hand roughly over his face. "How many teams?"

"Five."

"All right. I'm on my way." Without waiting for a reply, he hung up and sat perfectly still for a moment. He set the receiver back in its cradle and turned to face Faith. "I have to go in."

Sitting up, she pushed her hair back from her face. "I gathered that. Is it bad?"

"When is it not?"

While the words sounded more ironic than bitter, Faith had the feeling it wasn't something he ever took lightly. She followed him with her eyes as he made his way in the dim glow to the bathroom until the brighter lights over the sink spilled through the open doorway. Taking it as an invitation, she left the bed and walked over to lean against the doorjamb, tugging her shirt down into a more comfortable position. He was fingering the short stubble on his chin, a frown on his face as he stared into the mirror at the discoloration along the left side of his jawline. There was no mistaking the bruise for anything but what it was. How was he going to explain it? Or would he even bother trying? Shaking his head slightly, he grabbed the toothbrush and paste and bent over the sink.

She waited patiently until he finished, her brain coming up with and then discarding questions faster than she would have thought possible. As he tossed the brush back into the holder, she asked the one she thought he'd be able to answer. "Does this happen often?"

"What? Get my butt hauled out of the house at oh dark thirty in the morning?"

"Yeah," she replied even though it hadn't really been a question.

He returned to the bedroom, sparing her a smile as he passed. "More often than I'd like." Sleep clothes were quickly replaced with jeans and a yellow button down shirt he left untucked.

"I hope everything turns out okay." It was a useless platitude, but she felt compelled to say it anyway. If the situation was bad enough for Jack to get called in the middle of the night, she had a feeling things were already past an okay resolution. He sent her another smile that did little to mask the worry in his eyes, tugging on socks and a pair of hiking boots. "Is there anything I can do?" A helpless feeling enveloped her as she watched him getting ready to drive off to some unknown problem. As a Slayer she wasn't used to feeling helpless. She decided she didn't like it one bit.

"Keep your cell on you if you go anywhere today," he said, holding up a finger to stop her before she could tell him that wasn't what she'd meant. Dressed and ready to leave, he walked the few steps to stand in front of her. "I don't care if you are Superwoman."

Going along with his attempt at leaving her with a lighter mood, she rolled her eyes, pulled herself up to her full height and tossed off a snappy salute. "Yes, sir, General, sir."

"Brat," he muttered, tipping her chin up with one hand. He laid a soft kiss on her lips, his mouth warm and gentle. "I'll call you when I get a chance." One final smile and he was out the door.

Standing in the middle of their suddenly too large bedroom, Faith sighed quietly. Not knowing what was going on sucked. She wished she could go with him to help out Sam, Daniel and Teal'c, even if it was only to shout encouragement from the sidelines. A sudden thought sent her out into the hallway after him. "Jack?"

He'd grabbed his jacket and gotten the door open, but stepped back into the house at her call. "Yeah?"

"What are you going to tell the team?"

For a split second he looked like he didn't know what she was talking about. Then the confusion cleared. "It's not my secret to tell, Faith, but I'd think seriously about including them. You'd be surprised how open minded they can be." Only after she nodded did he move back out the door, closing it softly behind him.

Moving to the door, she watched through one of the small windows as he strode down the walk toward his truck. Without thinking, she flung the door open and was halfway across the porch before she felt the chill under her feet. "Hey!" If he was annoyed at her continued interruptions he didn't show it, merely turned from the truck expectantly. "Be careful out there."

He threw his jacket and keys into the cab and jogged back to her. This time his mouth was neither soft nor warm. It blazed through her with the rush of a lightning bolt, his lips demanding, his tongue seeking hers. Matching his heated kiss instinctively, she didn't care they were standing outside on their porch in the chilly night air. All that mattered was his body pressed along the length of hers, the heat of him sizzling its way into her bones. She slid her arms around his back, holding him even tighter to her. Fire snaked along her nerves, tightening her muscles and pooling low in her body. Minutes, hours later he gentled the kiss, easing away to look in her eyes. Smugly happy to see his breathing was as ragged as hers, she could only grin when he stepped away drawing a deep lungful of air. He returned the grin with a cocky one of his own. "I'm always careful."

"Extra careful then," she called after him. She watched from the porch as he pulled out of the driveway, waved and drove away. Only after she couldn't see the taillights any longer did she move to go back into the house. Locking the door behind her, she walked in a daze of sensation to the bedroom, hands absently rubbing the goosebumps covering her arms. Her blood was still on fire from his touch, tiny jolts of electricity tingling down her limbs. She was going to have to decide what to do about the almost overwhelming reaction she had every time Jack touched her. While in the past it hadn't been beyond her to indulge in a night of casual sex with a man she'd just met, Jack wasn't just some guy she'd picked up in a bar. He was her husband and she'd found herself caring about what he thought of her. He'd said it that first night – he was a virtual stranger to her. And even though they'd spent the last three days practically in each other's pockets, what would he think if she indicated she was more than ready to indulge with him? Was it too soon? He'd taken the news of the Slayer business with aplomb, but she figured the rest of his reaction would set in within the next couple days when he had time to really think about all of it and wasn't suffering an almost concussion from a vampire attack. Would he still be as understanding about her deceiving him? And her head was going to explode if she kept bombarding it with questions she had no way of answering at the moment.

With sleep the farthest thing from her mind, she searched the dresser for a pair of sweatpants to ward off the slight chill in the house against her still heated skin. Since she wasn't going to be getting any more rest that night she might as well work on getting what answers she could. Seven minutes and one cup of hot chocolate in hand later, she sat in front of the computer, fingers tapping impatiently as it booted up. She wasn't the hacker Willow was, but she'd learned enough from the witch over the years to find at least the basics of the information she was looking for.

The computer clicked and hummed away as the familiar logo flashed across the screen. Jack had almost twenty more minutes before he reached the Mountain. Would he find the situation better or worse than when Sam had called? Were the five teams he'd asked about injured? Trapped somewhere in the facility? Was Jack himself walking into danger of some kind? She absently sipped from the steaming mug, cursing when the hot liquid scorched over her tongue and down her throat. Damn it, she needed to pay attention and quit borrowing trouble. There was nothing she could do for Jack at the moment and burning her insides to a crisp was only going to make her mad at her own stupidity.

Grabbing the mouse, she clicked on the icon to connect her to the internet. There was more than one way to get information nowadays. Quickly navigating to a search engine, she typed in ' Colorado Springs' and 'newspaper'. If there had been an influx of vampires in the area she'd find something in the local paper. It couldn't just be the Law of Let's Screw with Faith's Life that she and Jack had been attacked last night. Since Buffy had said it was rare for vampires to show up but that it still happened occasionally, there might be something in the papers to let her pinpoint the reason.

She found the local newspaper with no trouble and opened it in its own window, leaving the search engine open. She'd learned a long time ago she didn't have the patience to wait for it to load a second time when she invariably discovered she needed it again. Scrolling over the headlines from the day before, she blew on the cocoa before taking a cautious sip. Logically whatever kept the vampires out of the area drew a large amount of power so if they were braving the city it had to have malfunctioned somehow. Nothing. A power outage of some kind would have been a front page mention. She set the browser to search through past issues and brought the first window back to the top. Replacing 'newspaper' with 'unexplained deaths', she hit enter after a short hesitation and went back to the paper.

No unscheduled losses of power going back almost a year with the exception of storm damages. Okay, that was a bust. Back to deaths. Glancing over far too many that didn't sound anything like a vampire attack, Faith found seven that had possibilities. She noted the dates and locations on a sticky pad and kept searching, a niggling at the back of her mind trying to distract her from the tedious task.

Focus, she ordered herself. Her memory loss and the vampire attack were too closely timed to be a coincidence. There was something she was missing. She needed a better idea of what to search for. She needed a lucky break. She needed Willow.

A glance at the clock at the bottom of the computer screen shocked her. She'd spent over two hours trolling for information only to find the smallest indications of seven potential vampire victims. And it was still too early to call Cleveland. Or was Willow in England this week? Shaking her head to clear it, Faith reached for her mug, surprised it was empty. When had she finished the chocolate? Definitely time for a break.

In the kitchen she rinsed the cup, staring out of the windows above the sink into a darkness that held the smallest hint of dawn. By now Jack was deep underground working to fix whatever had dared to disrupt his Mountain. A smile teased her lips when she realized she thought of Jack's workplace as she did her being the Slayer – starting with a capital letter.

That niggling feeling was back in the corner of her mind. What dot was she not connecting? She let her brain wander as the sky outside ever so slowly lightened to the murky grey of pre-dawn. As the first true ray of sunlight broke over the horizon the thought clicked into place. Sam had said on the phone they'd been experiencing power fluxuations lately. Could Jack's Mountain be the source of the bug zapper, the energy emissions that kept the demons out? No, it couldn't be that straightforward.

She tried to shake the idea out of her head, but the timing was too coincidental to simply dismiss. What did she know about Jack's job? It was deep inside the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, had something to do with deep space radio blah blah, was in the category of he couldn't talk about it, and apparently had been having power issues for a while. And the newspapers wouldn't know about any of it.

Unfortunately, all the pieces lined up too cleanly for it to be just a freak occurrence. Now the question was what did she do about it?

A shrill ring cut the quiet and Faith whipped around, dropping into a crouch before realizing it was merely the phone. Twice in one morning. That didn't bode well for the rest of the day. She considered ignoring it, but remembering Jack had said he would call had her answering by the end of the third ring. "Hello?"

"I woke you up, didn't I?"

Less than half an hour ago she'd been anxious to talk to the witch, but now, hearing her sheepish voice, Faith was sorry it wasn't that of her husbandEM1 . "Hi, Willow. And no, I was already awake."

"At six-thirty in the morning?" She didn't sound like she believed her, but continued on to the reason for her call without making an issue. "I have searched everywhere, Faith. There's nothing. Every single contact I have says it's impossible to send someone into the future."

Sighing quietly, Faith sank down on the couch, actually happy to hear it confirmed. "Then I really have just lost my memory. Or had it taken away."

"That's the only thing we can come up with over here that makes even the smallest amount of sense. There are spells that can remove a person's memory. They're very difficult and take a lot of power. And I mean crazy bad amounts of power. But we can't find any trace of who would have performed one on you. No one's put out any feelers for a hit on a slayer in the last six months. Before that, well, demons just aren't really known for their patience."

And if Willow couldn't find anything there was nothing to be found. Which meant Faith was very likely to never discover what did happen to her. "Thanks for looking, Willow. It was a long shot anyway, I guess."

"We'll keep looking and if anything comes out of Buffy's contacts we'll let you know first thing."

"I'll be here," she said, glad to have at least a few questions answered, even if it was merely to cross them off the list of possibilities. But maybe she could get a few unrelated bits of information to fill in a few holes. "B was telling me about that weird energy field around the town. What do we really know about it? You know how she can kind of skimp on details sometimes."

"Sometimes?" The witch snorted inelegantly, bringing a smile to Faith's face at the familiar sound. "Try all the time if it even remotely resembles research or science." Willow sounded put out, but Faith knew she really wasn't angry or even the slightest bit annoyed. Buffy had her own strengths just like all the other Scoobies, that's what made them such an unbeatable team. "Basically it's just an energy emission, kind of like static electricity. You don't mean to jolt yourself by touching a doorknob, but it happens anyway from built up electricity stored in your body. It has to go somewhere so it jumps from you to the metal."

Faith nearly dropped the phone. She'd actually understood that. "And you don't know what's causing it?"

"The only thing I could ever find was an exceptionally high power draw from NORAD, but since it's a huge complex that deals with satellites and high tech gadgets it really wasn't that unexpected." A small pause filled the receiver. "Did something happen? Are you guys okay?"

"We're fine, Willow. Nothing to worry about." She felt only a little guilty for the partial lie. The vampires last night had been taken care of and she didn't want Willow digging any deeper into that strange energy field before Faith talked to Jack. If she was right, Jack's Mountain had everything to do with it.

"Okay. Well, like I said, we'll call if anything turns up about a memory spell, no matter how unrelated." The witch's voice was quiet, as if she'd let Faith down by not being able to find something that couldn't be found.

"Thanks, but it's been four days. I don't think anything's going to come up."

Willow was kind enough not to agree with her. "Tell Jack I said hi."

"I will. Take care of yourself." After hanging up, Faith stood, staring at the pictures above the fireplace until her eyes burned. So, no spell to undo, no demon to blame and still no returned memory. It was time to start focusing on the future and not the past. Maybe one day she'd get the answers she needed, but until then she wasn't going to ruin the life she'd been handed on a silver platter.

Last night was proof that vampires didn't avoid the Springs completely. She needed to learn the town, take a look at the places the seven victims had been found and search for any possible vampire hideouts. Determination filling her, she headed for the bedroom for a shower and clothes. There wasn't ever going to be a repeat of the night before's sloppiness.

And when she was done with her drive around, she was going to figure out how to approach Jack with her theory.

TBC