Ok, there is a good reason for me not updating for ages just after gleefully (and stupidly) announcing that this fic is in the final stretches. Let's just say the Chinese are right, may you live in interesting times is the worst imaginable curse.

Let's also just say dating sometimes plays havoc with the muse.

Thank you all for being patient and apparently still sticking around if you are reading this.

And special thanks to flatkasi for delivering a very special kind of kick in the butt.

Loosing It

Daniel sat in his office, making notes in cuneiform.

One thing among many others that sucked when one was prone to disappearing/being kidnapped/get seriously injured/dying was the fact that there was no way one was able to keep a private journal private since one always had to fear that wellmeaning colleagues and friends had to go through one's stuff. The whole working at a top secret military base with a top secret project was just an added complication.

It had always been easiest for Daniel to order his thoughts on paper, so he had adopted writing his journals in cuneiform, a language so dead that only about nine people on this planet could claim any kind of passing knowledge. Add to that his own shorthand and hideous handwriting and all anyone would see was random slashes all over the pages. Daniel still took no chances and never took his journals off base and had instructed Sam what to do just in case, same as she had admitted to keeping her own version of a modified LiveJournal heavily encrypted on an old Amiga in the back of her office.

He reread his entry from just after the leftover party at Jack's. Mostly he had been writing about his utter amazement, that there actually were such things as vampires and how come nobody knew about it or at least suspected. He had also hypothesized about some kind of halluzinogenic properties, maybe sort of pheromones being given off by the creatures, so that people tended to forget or discount what they had seen.

When he reached the point where he started writing about Dawn's startling revelation that she knew about the Stargate, he slowed down to think.

Telling Jack about Buffy being the Slayer hadn't seemed his place as long as it didn't harm Jack or compromised the Stargate, the possibility of which had seemed remote. The Stargate was alien after all, not supernatural.

Dawn's knowing of the word Chaapa'ai and that it translated to Stargate turned the whole thing on its head though.

Daniel had never subscribed to the military approach to label things top secret just because someone in the Pentagon arbitrarily decided for it to be so. He was onboard with the fact that they had to conceal the existence of the Stargate from the general population for the time being for fear of starting mass hysteria. He had arrived at that opinion because it was the logical thing to do, not because he had been ordered.

Gradually he had come to trust, not the military but the people he worked with.

Still, he had to account for the fact that some things were too big to keep in the immediate circle of people he trusted, people who, unlike him, were bound by the chain of command.

So if he told Jack about Dawn's knowledge, Jack would have to report it since it compromised security of the SGC, which would start a witchhunt, he didn't like to imagine. And considering the way Buffy had reacted to Daniel knowing about her, she seemed to have had her own experiences with the military and thinking of the NID, he wasn't surprised.

Daniel had rationalized the danger of outsiders knowing of the Stargate. Correction, he had rationalized Dawn and thus by default Buffy as the Slayer knowing. He had figured since the Stargate had been around for millenia and looked pretty arcane even without being activated, that at some point during the times the Stargate and the Slayer and her associates must have come into contact, which would neatly explain Dawn's knowledge. It also rationalized the need for immediate action since then the knowledge wouldn't be a new thing and thus presented no danger to the SGC.

Daniel had then decided not to tell Jack anything officially but go ahead and investigate a little on his own.

He would get in touch with Dawn, ask for her discretion and try to find out what she knew about the Stargate and if maybe she had access to ressources that would be pertinent to the SGC. Maybe by the time he had anything, Buffy would have told Jack on her own, had been his reasoning then.

Daniel closed his journal again and leaned back in his chair, swiveling a bit to help him focus his thoughts.

Obviously Buffy hadn't told him and Daniel felt guilty because he had tried to ignore something that important rather than get into an emotional quagmire. He had let himself become sidetracked and now it was too late.

But Daniel would remedy that, if he could.

Sometimes fate seems ponderously slow, inevitable as it is and sometimes it strikes so fast, it leaves confused people flailing to get their life back on track in its wake.

This wasn't either of those times.

This was just bad timing. Or the best, depending on whoever you asked after everything settled down again.

When Sergeant Harriman saw the Stargate flicker and be there and gone and there again like some special effect hadn't worked properly, he didn't take his eyes off the fluctuating gate even to blink but instead hit the alarm blindly. He wasn't about to make the same mistake twice, although it wasn't as if he had had any kind of forewarning the last time this had happened either. But he wasn't taking any chances, one scary interrogation by Dr Jackson was enough. Whoever had described the Doc as mildmannered and slightly loopy, didn't know half of it.

"Security to the gateroom." The klaxons sounded and Harriman counted down the seconds it would take for the General to get here.

The Stargate continued to flicker, never vanishing completely without coming back a half second later.

"Report."

Harriman breathed a sigh of relief at the barked command by General O'Neill.

"Sir, about one minute ago the Stargate started vanishing and appearing again, just like now. There is no sign of regular gate activity and no unusual energy readings." He added after gratefully taking his eyes off the big circle of naquadah.

"Asgard?" Came the curt question.

"Negative, sir. No transporter energy signature at all."

"Would have been too easy otherwise. Get Carter and Siler."

"Yes, sir."

Just as Harriman had put down the phone again after paging Colonel Carter and Sergeant Siler over the PA, it rang.

"Sir? It's security. Apparently there has been an unauthorized entry. At one of the auxiliary entrances, cameras have been knocked out and the guards at that point aren't responding on the comm."

"Of all the ... Get me..."

"Sir, security says they have footage just before the camera blacked out. They are relaying it here right now."

The General leaned over Harriman in order to see the video feed better and so Harriman heard when General O'Neill's breath hitched and he groaned: "Oh hell, no. Buffy!"

And Sergeant Harriman was suddenly very glad to just be 'Chevron Guy' since it meant keeping your eyes front and center and didn't involve having to figure out how to handle a situation like this. Whatever this was.

Jack's molars were taking a lot of undue pressure while he reluctantly tore his eyes away from the video screen showing him his girlfriend - ex-girlfriend, don't you forget it - calmly exiting a Ford Taurus and then walking up to the chainlink entrance gate. One of the sentries stepped up to her, obviously trying to turn her away, while Dawn inched closer to the solid steel outer door of the guard booth with the back-up guard inside as per procedure.

Buffy smiled an airheaded smile, one could see that clearly even though the video screen was tiny and the angle was a bit wrong. Then, just as Dawn was about to put her hands up to the barred door of the booth, Buffy made a quick chopping move, hitting the sentry in front of her on the side of the neck which felled him instantly, looked up at the camera catching everything on tape and Jack actually felt her gaze going clear through and through and aimed of all things an antiquated crossbow at it. Then the camera stopped transmitting.

Jack took only a moment, more than he had ever taken before and then issued a stream of orders.

Carter and Siler were sent to figure out what was happening with the Gate. Gate room security kept the still flickering Stargate in their sights, just in case but in Jack's mind Buffy's timely entrance was too much of a conincidence not to be the root of the problem.

He hurried through the corridors of the SGC, meeting up with a contingent of marines at the elevator. Deliberately shutting off any feeling except grim determination he didn't even notice that Daniel had fallen in beside him during the rush through the corridors. More marines were already gathering topside to start combing the terrain.

Jack got handed his gear and proceeded with the briefing: "Auxiliary entrance B7 has been compromised by what seems like two female assailants. At least one of them is armed with a crossbow."

Because Jack was shrugging into his light kevlar vest just now and buckling it, he didn't see the slightly baffled looks some of the marines shared and Daniel's suddenly thoughtful expression.

"There might be others. Their target is unknown but the gate is showing unusual activity which is most likely connected to the security breach topside." Something beyond even the irontight control Jack was maintaining over his emotions made him add: "Our objective is capture. Use necessary force only in extremis."

Then his radio came to live with a squawk and Jack started organizing all his soldiers into a search pattern spreading out over the base ground in the darkness of night.

Daniel's thoughts were racing each other frantically inside his head while his feet were busy dodging roots and stones and keeping up with Jack. A line of soldiers had formed, joining the ones already engaged in looking for Buffy and Dawn in a search grid pattern. If anyone was surprised at the base commander roaming alongside the marines, nobody made a comment. All the better, since Jack was wearing a frightening scowl and kept muttering to himself. Daniel could well imagine what, but topmost in his mind right now was that the Slayer must have a reason to come here. And that reason couldn't include exposing military secrets or making a surprise visit to her boyfriend that would be too trivial.

It all fitted into place, Daniel surmised if Dawn's knowledge of the Stargate had to do with some supernatural force interfering with the Gate and the Slayer being ordered by her Watcher to prevent that.

It still didn't explain why she had deemed it necessary to play with Jack's feelings that way, trying to get at the Gate.

And then suddenly there was no time to think anymore because they had found them and trouble too.

Jack took it all in: about twenty marines starting on his immediate right were positioned halfway around a clearing, a shimmering, blue wall of what very much looked like the surface of an active Stargate reaching straight up about 15 feet, lighting up the clearing as if it was day.

A low level thrumming filled the air, it felt like standing next to a giant generator making the hairs on Jack's arms rise. Intermittently he could hear something like voices swelling up and down, never quite clear enough to understand the words. Behind the shimmering blue wall one could see indistinct darker shapes of about manheight. Sometimes something huge and circular would lighten up this inner circle and disappear again.

Three guesses as to what that is.

Jack felt ill at ease and couldn't quite pinpoint why. It felt primal and he found himself checking the immediate surroundings almost obsessively.

Neither Buffy nor Dawn were in sight for which Jack was inappropiately grateful since it meant staying in hopeless denial about his ex-girlfriend staging a coup on a top secret military project for a little while longer. Inadvertently he tightened the hold on his P-90, suddenly realizing that in light of the situation, denial was pretty much a thing of the past. With practiced ease he shoved any deeper thoughts into the back of his mind and instead focused on threat assessing the situation before him, for the moment ignoring his unexplainable unease.

Jack pressed his radio and ordered two of the marines to carefully advance on the blue wall to scope it out. They crept forward, their weapons at the ready until they were directly in front of the phenomenon.

Talk to me, give me something to work with.

The night seemed oppressive around them, maybe hiding all sorts of things. It seemed incongruous with the season. It should be cold and the air should feel crisp. It really didn't.

Jack crouched behind a tree, barely keeping himself from shifting on his feet every few seconds. Something was on the night wind that cut deeper than the winter chill.

Jack nearly jumped out of his skin when his radio crackled: "Sir, it seems to be some kind of energy barrier. Visibility is indistinct although there seem to be 10 people inside."

Jack grit his teeth at being so distracted and focused on his two marines again. He keyed his radio: "Proceed."

Jack could barely see what happened next, it was that fast, but one of the marines seemed to reach out to touch the barrier, which reacted instantly. A bolt of lighting lashed out, lifting both men clear of the ground, throwing them a good two metres with sparks flying. They didn't get up.

Jack gave the order to open fire.

One look at the set up in the clearing and Daniel had been sure that this was exactly what it looked like, some kind of ritual.

Reasonably sure at least, considering all the available data of which, Daniel admitted it, there wasn't much. But there had been the Watcher's journal all those years ago and Daniel trusted books.

Despite being for all intents and purposes part of a military unit for the past seven years, Daniel would never get over his first instinct to just curl up with his hands over his ears when the noise of gunfire started.

This was the wrong approach, he was sure of it. Quite apart from the fact that firing at what Daniel figured was a shield, didn't seem to do anything at all.

He had to get Jack to listen to him, to trust his instincts. Admittedly not an easy feat right now with Jack hunched behind a tree, intermittedly squeezing off bullets at the blue wall.

He had to act right now, before their efforts clashed with whatever the Slayer and her Watcher planned on doing here.

"Jack!"

"Damnit, Daniel! Not now!"

"Jack, this is important." Daniel could scarcely believe himself but he laid a hand on Jack's shoulder in the middle of a fire fight. Admittedly the shield still didn't seem particularly fazed, since it remained stubbornly unaffected by the bullets, which seemed to just dissappear when they hit the barrier.

Jack shot an exasperated, shorttempered look at his team member at the interruption.

Daniel doggedly hung on: "Don't interfere with what is happening. This is over our heads."

Jack spun around so fast that Daniel was almost thankful for Jack's fist at his collar, yanking him close, keeping both of them balanced. Frustration made him snarl at Daniel: "What do you know? Make it quick, Daniel, or I will."

This wasn't a side of Jack Daniel had seen often. In fact he could remember seeing it only once, during that whole NID sting operation years ago.

"This isn't what it looks like. Well, in a way it is but…" Daniel knew he was screwing up what little credibility he had and simply blurted out: "This isn't our problem." Daniel managed to wave weakly at the clearing.

"Not our problem?" Jack spat out fiercely with neither patience nor understanding.

But suddenly the underbrush to their side rustled unnaturally and both their eyes snapped sideways.

Daniel barely managed to turn his head enough to see for himself.

Someone was breaking through the low branches sprinting towards the clearing, someone blonde.

Both men just looked on incredulously as Buffy took a running leap onto a boulder at the edge of the treeline.

With an oath Jack let Daniel go and slapped his radio: "Cease fire! Cease fire immediately!"

tbc