Disclaimer: Stargate: SG-1 and all related concepts are the property of MGM, while the character of Spike belongs to Joss Whedon and James Marsters, among other people (Also, the original idea for this story came from Jedi Buttercup's 'An Unexpected Gift', so I don't own it either, although I have put my own spin on things, and have been given his full permission to use his idea)

Feedback: I'd appreciate it, of course

AN: Just to mention in advance, this chapter, while not actually anti-Buffy/Spike, is also not in favour of it; I don't deny that they had some chemistry, but in the end I think any actual relationship between them would have been doomed if they'd ever tried to have one that was built on more than Buffy's need to feel alive after a traumatic experience. As a result, I felt that it was important to have Spike realise and acknowledge that before he can really settle in to his new life in SG-1. For those who feel Spike is moving on too fast compared to how long he held on to his feelings in Angel, it should be noted that, when he was in Angel, he and Angel were so used to competing with each other that it would almost be natural for him to fall into 'old habits' and start 'competing' with Angel about which of them had the most serious relationship with Buffy, thus preventing him from really moving on as he's trying to convince himself that he 'outdid' his grandsire in having a better relationship with Buffy even if he couldn't have the better relationship with Drusilla. At the SGC, by contrast, he has encountered little to remind him of Buffy and more to remind him of himself as a person and his assets to this new organisation, thus allowing him to acknowledge his relationship with Buffy as what it was and move on accordingly to become a new individual unfettered by the standards and beliefs that had previously been formed about him

The Ghost in the Team

"So," Spike said an hour later, as he stood in one corner of the briefing room while the remaining two Earthbound members of SG-1- Sam and Daniel had remained at Dakara to continue studying the Ori battlecruiser- sat around the table, "you're telling me that 'the Trust' is basically a group of berks who thought that the only way to beat these Goa'uld bastards was to nick every bit of advanced tech out there regardless of whether the owners wanted to part with it and then use weapons of mass destruction against them even if it took out people whose only crime was being forced to worship some loony aliens with delusions of godhood?"

"Basically, yeah," Mitchell confirmed, nodding slightly at Spike, still dressed in more casual clothes; from what he'd told them after they'd arrived, Vala had been abducted from a restaurant where the two of them had gone for dinner during their temporary time off (And why did that notion bother Spike as much as it was?).

"And, after you sods kicked those snake-like berks out of their empires, this 'Trust'- and that is a really dumb name, by the way; doesn't sound like they deserve it in my book- was taken over by them and ended up becoming the largest Goa'uld based organisation currently active?" Spike continued, looking incredulously at them. "How the hell does that happen?"

"It was the doing of the Trust themselves," Teal'c responded, glancing back at Spike with a shrug. "Having acquired a ship that possessed a hyperdrive, permitting them to travel to other worlds, they departed Earth with the intention of bombing Goa'uld-inhabited worlds with symbiote poison and destroying the Jaffa and Goa'uld on them, with the intention of eliminating the Goa'uld's armies and thus weakening them considerably. However, early on in this 'quest' of theirs, based on what information we have managed to acquire, the crew of the ship were captured, implanted with symbiotes, and were subsequently sent back to Earth to infiltrate the organisation with even more symbiotes."

"Ah," Spike said, nodding slightly in understanding; he had to admit, even if the story wasn't exactly encouraging- who liked to think about the possibility to being taken over by alien parasites who used your body like it was theirs?-, there was something about the idea of these guys getting used by the creatures they'd tried to kill that was at least somewhat amusing. "So, now that I've been filled in on the cast list… you think Vala got abducted by these guys because she's got something they want?"

"That's precisely what you're all here to find out," Landry said as he walked into the briefing room, looking around at the team as he spoke. "We've got Agent Barrett and his people already working on it- they work for the NID; it's the organisation that -, but I thought it would be best to get some extra assistance back here as soon as possible; if nothing else, if we want to try stealth tactics to get her back, right now Spike would appear to be the most logical choice."

"Uh… love to help, your Generalness, but have you forgotten that I'm a vampire?" Spike retorted, indicating his face as he assumed his vampiric visage for a moment. "Me and sunlight? Not exactly an award-winning combo, and last time I checked it's still pretty bright out there!"

"Uh… correct me if I've missed something here, but aren't you still intangible?" Mitchell pointed out, raising a hand slightly as he looked at Spike with a slightly amused smile despite the severity of their current plight. "I mean, how can the sun turn you to dust when you don't even have a body that can be damaged by it any more?"

For a moment Spike was prepared to respond to that comment with another cutting remark, but after a moment's pause, he sighed and shook his head in frustration.

"Point," he said simply.

"Thanks for admitting it," Mitchell replied with a brief smile before he turned back to look at Landry. "So, we got any targets yet?"

"Barrett's sent us a list of suspected Trust safehouses; I'm sending the three of you on a mission to one of the most likely," Landry responded as he looked around at the group before him. "You'll be joined by five other teams to cover all available entrances and exits to the building; Spike will be sent in first on a scouting mission to determine if it's worth sending in the rest, with Teal'c retaining possession of the amulet, and will alert us as soon as he has confirmed the presence of Trust agents at the scene."

"Uh, you do remember that I'll have to come back out to do that last bit, right?" Spike asked, looking uncertainly over at the general. "I mean, I can't exactly carry a radio around; even if I could be sure I could make my pockets solid enough to carrying it, it'd kind of make the stealth thing a bit tricky if I'd need to plan everything around having a radio in my pocket …"

"Spike," Landry interjected, gritting his teeth briefly before he regained control as he continued to stare at the intangible vampire, "you can either sneak into a warehouse that might hold your missing teamamte, scope out the opposition we'd be facing, get out and let us know, or you can wait in the base for them all to get back and tell you how things turned out. Your preference?"

"I'll sneak into the warehouse," Spike said simply.

"Good," Landry replied with a slight smile, before he turned to look at the other two members of SG-1 currently available to him. "You two are to lead one of the teams mounting the assault; I'll dispatch all available SG teams to make up the rest of the attack force, but you'll be leading the assault."

"Gotcha," Mitchell said, as he stood up, glancing over at Teal'c as he did so. "OK then, T.; grab that amulet and let's roll."

A couple of hours later, Spike, standing in the open sunlight without being in danger of imminent death for the first time in over a century- so what if the only reason it wasn't affecting him was that he didn't have a body any more; it was still pretty cool-, was standing outside the abandoned warehouse that the NID- he'd have to remember to ask what that actually stood for- believed Vala might have been taken to, Mitchell, Teal'c, and an armoured SUV-ful of SWAT-like soldiers accompanying them as they waited.

"So, you've got the situation, right?" Mitchell said, looking critically at Spike as he spoke. "You go in there, find Vala, let us know where she is, and then get us in. Don't- I repeat- don't try anything; you said yourself that you're still working on the whole 'maintaining-a-solid-form' aspect of your current intangibility status, and if you can't guarantee you'll stay solid long enough to take out the people in there fast enough they might just decide to cut their losses and kill Vala before we can get her out."

"Gotcha," Spike said, nodding in resignation at Mitchell. "Can't be sure I'll put them out fast enough, I shouldn't bother doing it."

"Exactly," Mitchell said, nodding in confirmation at the vampire before he jerked his head towards the door. "Go do your thing, buddy."

"Check," Spike said, giving Mitchell a brief mock salute before he turned back towards the wall in front of him and walked right through it, allowing himself only a slight smile as he entered the warehouse before him (Only to be slightly let down by the interior; after all he'd heard about these Trust buggers, he'd have expected to see at least something interesting inside their base the second he entered it, but the fanciest thing in the main warehouse was a silver car parked near some large metal and wooden boxes).

He'd never have admitted to it, of course- the thought made him sound a bit pathetic, in his opinion-, but he'd actually rather liked it when Mitchell had called him 'buddy' just then.

He may have spent almost four years fighting alongside Buffy's team back in Sunnydale against every kind of demon-related threat that town had to offer, but he'd never really felt like he fitted in with them; if he wasn't helping them tackle the latest demon or whatever other crisis was stalking Sunnydale at the time, he'd generally stayed away from the group and they generally hadn't gone looking for his company (The fact that nobody had asked him about his opinion regarding the attempt to resurrect Buffy was proof enough of that, as far as he was concerned). Even when he'd briefly spent some time living with the future one-eyed carpenter after he'd come back from that demonic shaman, the only time the two of them had actually spent together apart from when they'd just happened to end up in the apartment at the same time was when they'd been trying to figure out what was up with that R.J. berk, and even that was only because everyone else in the group was too busy fawning over the quarterback inquestion to be any help; if Rupert had still been around, Spike had little doubt that Harris would have asked him for help and left Spike as out of the loop as he could manage to leave his roommate.

He'd never really complained about it at the time, of course- even if he'd had Drusilla for company for most of his time as a vampire, there'd still been a few occasions over the century or so they'd been together when they'd spent some time apart to stop themselves getting bored with each other and he'd always been fine on his own; being a bit outside of the group wasn't the worst position he'd ever been in-, but the fact of the matter was that, back in Sunnydale, after the chip got stuck in his head, his only real 'friends' in the group were Buffy and Dawn, and Dawn was more of a little sister than anything while Buffy…

To say their relationship had been complicated would be like saying Captain Forehead brooded a lot; it just didn't do the situation justice. Spike had loved her with or without a soul, naturally, but he'd just never been sure where Buffy had stood as far as those kind of feelings went. Even during their 'affair' (For lack of a better term) last year, a part of him had always acknowledged that it hadn't quite been what he'd wanted from her, but at the same time he'd been so desperate for any kind of connection with her by that point that he'd at least partly deluded himself (Something he would only ever admit to himself; he hated looking like an idiot) into thinking that it was based on something more than Buffy's need to just feel like she was still part of the world after all that mess around her resurrection.

In the end, he had to face facts; getting his soul may have brought them closer together, but he still hadn't been the person she loved, he'd just been the person she confided in. He'd spent so long waiting for her to 'realise' that she cared for him as more than a friend and ally that, towards, the end, he'd begun to read more in her actions than had actually been there, such as when she'd allowed him to comfort her after the rest of the team kicked her out of the house and put Faith in charge (Nothing sexual had happened, of course, but there'd been the potential nevertheless).

It had only been at the very end, when he'd looked her in the eyes as she said 'I love you' while he was burning up with that damn amulet around his neck sending the sunlight out to all the other Turok-Han bastards in the area, that he'd finally realised it.

She loved him as a friend; yes.

She loved him as an ally; absolutely.

She loved him as a lover…

Not so much…

And Spike had gotten so far off topic he couldn't believe it; he could not keep thinking about Buffy in this situation!

The point behind what he'd been thinking earlier was a simple one; in the end, no matter what he'd done for them since he got that chip stuck in his head, even after getting his soul back, Buffy and Dawn were the only members of the Scoobies who'd ever really accepted him, and in Buffy's case she still hadn't quite accepted him the way he wanted her to.

Here at the SGC, however?

Everyone he'd talked with on a long-term basis so far at least knew the basics of what he'd done before joining them, and nobody was letting it affect their judgement of him. Daniel had spent some of their rare free moments on the Odyssey asking Spike about some of the historical locations he'd visited during the previous century or his knowledge about demon history- just because he didn't pay much attention to the occult aspects of his vampirism didn't mean he didn't acknowledge they were there-, Sam had occasionally joined Daniel in asking him about some of the higher and lower dimensions that he'd encountered in his life- still at least partly trying to 'science-ify' his existence, as Spike thought of her attempts to find more rational explanations for the existence of demons than just 'magic'-, he'd shared a few personal stories about his past fights with Mitchell, Teal'c and Vala on other occasions, and the Jaffa had already offered to teach him how to 'Kel-no-reem', or something like that, to help him improve his ability to touch stuff.

None of them had to do any of that, but they'd done it anyway… just because they wanted to.

Spike would have denied it under torture, of course- after that whole mess with Dru ditching him for the sodding chaos demon, he'd promised himself he'd never become that focused on anybody again-, but he had to admit, he actually rather liked it.

Feeling like he actually belonged somewhere… somewhere where his past didn't leave everybody looking at him as though he was about to go psycho and start attacking them if he felt like it… somewhere he was accepted as part of the group rather than just being taken in because some people thought it wouldn't be right to stake somebody who couldn't fight back…

Well, it was a nice feeling, really.

Plus, of course, Spike reflected to himself as he walked through another of the boxes in the warehouse, it's nice to be able to provide something to the team that nobody else can do.

It might not be a natural ability of his, but at least the intangibility thing meant that he wasn't being used as just the extra muscle any more; he may have had the experience edge over her, but the fact remained that the group back in Sunnydale had always primarily relied on Buffy on the supernatural strength front when the time came for a fight, and only looked to him for help when she was otherwise occupied with something else.

Here, he was his own man bringing his own skills to the party- odd ones, to be sure but pretty cool nevertheless; how many people had he encountered who could just walk through walls like this?- and he was loving every last minute of it.

Then he stuck his head through another wall, only to find nothing once again, and his initially optimistic mood began to fade.

Right now he'd gone through almost half the warehouse, and he still hadn't managed to find Vala; he was starting to think that nobody was here right now.

He wasn't sure what was more frustrating; that Vala was still in trouble after he'd had to walk through all this crap for nothing- it was really weird, seeing all that wood and metal from the inside-, or that he'd come out into the sunlight for the first time in over a hundred and twenty years without getting burned- not counting his brief time with the Gem of Amara, of course- only to accomplish nothing significant as a result of it.

Well, maybe not nothing… Spike admitted to himself, as he turned to head down one last corridor before he officially gave up the current search effort as a waste of time and returned to the rest of his new team. After all, I did have the chance to think about stuff a bit…

It was still early days, of course, but so far, if things kept up the way they'd been keeping up so far, he had a feeling he was actually going to like this new job a lot better than he'd liked his old one…

A couple of hours later, as he once again stood in the SGC, however, Spike re-evaluated his earlier assessment; that whole situation had been pointless.

"You're telling me that she was in one of the other ones, and she actually sodding ran off while I was busy haunting an empty warehouse?" he yelled, staring in frustration at Landry as he sat at the top of the table, unconcerned about protocol at a time like this (Besides, he wasn't an official member of the military, even if he was currently working in a military base; what were they going to do, apart from confine him to the facility?).

"Spike, in all fairness, we are only human; there was no way for us to predict which of the safehouses she would be taken to," Landry countered, looking at the vampire in slight frustration before he turned back to address Mitchell and Teal'c as well; Sam and Daniel were still busy analysing the Ori battlecruiser, and nobody felt like interrupting them to ask for help in something where none of their skills would be of any immediate benefit. "Anyway, SG-15 and three of the local team were lost during the assault, and we've only managed to interrogate one Trust operative with minor injuries. He confirmed that the facility was designed to explode in the event that it was ever stormed, and also that Vala Mal Doran was held there."

"Did they move her before the raid?" Mitchell asked.

"Unlikely; they wouldn't have had the time," Landry replied, shaking his head. "Besides, our new guest claims that he saw Miss Mal Doran making a run for it before he lost consciousness, which at least suggests that she managed to get out prior to the destruction of the holding facility."

"If that were the case, why has she not yet attempted to contact us?" Teal'c asked, looking inquiringly at the general.

"That's one of the things we're hoping the interrogation will reveal; at the moment, we're practically running into a brick wall on that front," Landry replied, before he turned to look at Spike with a slight smile. "Actually, I was wondering if you'd be willing to help in the… questioning, shall we say?"

Spike blinked.

"Hold on; you're giving me the chance to interrogate this berk?" he said, looking at Landry in confusion. "Isn't there some whole 'Geneva Convention' thing that stops you sods condoning deliberate harm to prisoners?"

"I'm not actually suggesting you hurt him for real, Spike; I'm just suggesting that you… make him think that you will," Landry clarified, smiling slightly as he looked at the vampire. "After all, he might know about aliens, but I'm betting that he won't know about vampires; so long as you don't give away the fact that you can't actually touch him, it might be enough."

For a moment Spike simply stood in silence as he looked thoughtfully at the man before him, before he smiled and nodded.

"So, in other words, I have carte blanche- or whatever the term is- to freak this guy out, so long as I don't actually do any long-term damage?" he asked.

"Precisely," Landry replied, nodding in confirmation at the vampire.

"You know something, your generalness?" Spike said, grinning as he looked back at Landry. "You're my kind of boss."

"Thanks… I think," Landry replied, before he stood up and indicated the door. "Anyway, let's get moving; we've got one lead and we need to get answers out of him before the trail gets cold."

A few minutes later, Spike, Mitchell and Teal'c were standing in the interrogation room, glaring at the sole surviving member of the Trust who had been present at the warehouse holding Vala. The man in question- whose name, Spike had gathered, was 'Weaver'- was relatively young, maybe between mid-twenties and mid-thirties- after spending so long among vampires Spike had stopped judging people's ages by their physical appearances due to how rarely that information could help with the people he regularly spent his time with-, dressed in a pale blue shirt with the top couple of buttons undone, giving him an unusually relaxed attitude. Given the kind of professionalism Spike assumed an agency like what he'd heard about these 'Trust' buggers would demand, he was prepared to bet that this guy served as the interrogator or something like that; the tie thing was probably meant to give the impression that he was a relaxed guy who people might feel a bit more comfortable talking to…

(Or something like that, anyway; Spike wasn't any kind of psychology expert, and right now all he really wanted to do was get this bastard to start singing like the proverbial canary.)

"So, any chance you'll make this easy on us and tell us what you actually wanted with her?" Mitchell asked, his arms folded as he stared resolutely at Weaver.

"Look," Weaver replied in an exasperated tone, "I already told you… I can't say! Even if I wanted to help you, right now I'm more concerned for my well-being…"

"We can protect you," Mitchell said.

"No you can't!" Weaver protested.

Exchanging a brief glance with Teal'c, Mitchell smiled slightly and stood up.

"OK," he said brightly, before looking over at Spike. "He's all yours."

With that, he and Teal'c turned around and walked towards the door, leaving Spike standing alone in front of the interrogation table as he glared at the man before him.

"Uh… where are you going?" Weaver asked, looking in confusion at the two departing men.

"Oh, we'll be in the hall; just yell really loudly if you need us," Mitchell replied casually, shortly before the door slid shut behind him and Teal'c, leaving Spike alone as he faced Weaver, who gazed at him with a mixture of curiosity and contempt.

"Who are you, anyway?" he asked.

"Who am I?" Spike replied, smirking slightly as he leaned forward, taking care not to unfold his arms; if he tried leaning against the table and fell through it, it wouldn't really help the image he was trying to create. "I'm the guy who has ways of making you talk?"

"Such as?" Weaver countered, looking scathingly at Spike. "I'm sorry, but did they think I'd be more intimidated by a man in a leather coat than by the hundred-year-old Jaffa warrior? I'm prepared for all of their little interrogation tricks-"

"I'm a hundred and twenty at least," Spike interjected.

Weaver blinked.

"What?" he repeated, staring back at Spike in confusion.

"I'm a hundred and twenty years old," Spike repeated, leaning forward so that he was practically eye-to-eye with Weaver. "I've lived through both World Wars, seen some of the minor ones, and been to some very interesting places. Trust me; you think what Teal'c could do to you is bad? I can do things that would make him wince."

For a moment, Weaver almost looked panicked, but then he stopped and shook his head with a slight smile.

"You really expect me to believe that?" he asked Spike, the smile growing all the more as he looked at the man before him. "Just because you say you're-"

Spike assumed his vamp face.

"OH MY GOD!"

A few minutes later, Spike casually strolled out of the interrogation room, mockingly dusting his hands off as he looked over at Mitchell and Teal'c.

"Well, that was amusing," he said, before his expression became more quizzical. "Do you two have any idea when some Goa'uld called Athena would want something called the Clava Thessara Infinitas?"