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

The Ghost in the Team

"OK," Spike said a short while later, the four full-time and one probationary members of SG-1 sitting inside a comfortable SUV- Mitchell and Teal'c were in the front seats while Sam, Daniel and Spike were in the back, Daniel and Mitchell in casual leather jackets and T-shirts while Teal'c wore a long-sleeved maroon T-shirt and Sam a more professional-looking jacket and blouse-, "just out of curiosity, anyone care to fill me in on why Vala might have not contacted us before now?"

"Well," Daniel said, looking over at Spike as Mitchell continued driving, "since the report we received states that Vala doesn't even remember her real name, it seems likely that the memory recall device's attempts to force Vala to remember what Qetesh knew about the Clava Thessara Infinitas resulted in the mental blocks Vala had placed on her memory to protect herself form the more traumatising parts of her time as a host breaking down completely-"

"Sorry, mental blocks?" Spike repeated, raising a surprised eyebrow.

"Putting aside the fact that the human mind simply isn't designed to cope with immortality- meaning that Vala's mind would be building up far more memories than it could ever have been intended to cope with while Qetesh was in control of her body-, you also need to take into account that, as a host, Vala would have been regularly exposed to the narcotic effects of a sarcophagus- a Goa'uld healing device they used to keep their bodies in good condition-, as well as being forced to commit multiple actions that she herself would never have done," Sam said, taking up the story from Daniel. "After Qetesh was extracted, she would have been forced to suppress at least some of her memories of that time in order to cope on a daily basis; Athena's attempts to break down those blocks to learn what she knew about the Clava Thessara Infinitas must have caused Vala to suffer from a total memory loss due to her own inability to cope with the restored memories."

"Right…" Spike said, nodding thoughtfully as he turned over what Sam had said in his head. "So… it's like her mind stuck a bunch of memories from when she had this 'Goa'uld' thing in her head behind a… a mental dam, right?… and when this 'Athena' bird broke it trying to find out about that dumb treasure, the old stuff got out and… basically washed everything away?"

"A crude but effective analogy, Spike," Teal'c confirmed from his position in the front of the SUV.

"Ah, so it's nothing more than amnesia, huh?" Spike said, shaking his head with a slightly wistful smile as he leant back in his chair as far as he dared; as always since he'd come out of the amulet, he couldn't lean too far back in case he passed the point here his body would automatically made him solid enough to use the chair (Plus, he really didn't want to have to force the SGC to have to come up with an explanation how a guy could fall out of a sealed car and have a bunch of other cars pass through him… and that was just because he didn't want them to get sick of him hanging around and try to call an exorcist). "Well, at least she gave herself a decent name; I still can't believe I ended up with Randy…"

"Pardon?" Mitchell asked, a slight smile on his face as he briefly glanced back at Spike before he returned his attention to the road before him. "What's that about you calling yourself 'Randy'?"

"Uh… it's… well, a memory spell went wrong once when I was back in Sunnydale- left everyone in my old group with no memory of who they or anyone else were-, and I… ended up thinking my name was… Randy Giles…" Spike said, trying to look anywhere but at his teammates as they looked at him in increased amusement; even Teal'c seemed to have a slight grin on his face.

In any other situation, Spike would have tried to avoid the subject he'd just unintentionally brought up; he still hadn't quite gotten out of the habit of dropping references to events in his past because the people he was with either already knew about them or wouldn't be interested in hearing more about the bits they didn't know

As it was, with those IOA berks probably looking for any excuse to try and get him off the team- despite him passing his interview, he got the definite impression around the SGC that those Oversight pricks didn't trust ANYONE who wasn't 'normal'; they didn't even seem to like Teal'c much, and from what he'd gathered the guy's race were pretty much human apart from some genetic tweaks some time in the past-, he felt that it was only appropriate for him to be honest with the team if he did happen to bring up something from his past.

All he had to do was make sure he didn't let slip anything too embarrassing and he was confident that he could cope with his new 'rule'…

Which, of course, made it all the more annoying when he slipped up like he had just now, particularly when it was about something as embarrassing as that whole 'Randy' incident…

"So you lost your memory and thought your name was Randy?" Sam said, one hand over her mouth as she chuckled around it. "How did you get a name like that?"

"Look, I'd been wearing another outfit to try and hide from these loony loan sharks that were after me after a big loss at poker and it had 'Randy' on a nametag; what else was I meant to think when I woke up… memory-less and with nobody else who knew who I was?" Spike countered, already wishing he'd watched his mouth; the situation had been embarrassing enough after they'd all remembered the truth, and he hadn't even had his soul back then (For all that he'd been more human than most vampires even before that shaman gave him his soul back, the demon still didn't… feel things as passionately as the soul did, which meant, among other things, that he felt more embarrassed about that incident now than he'd felt when it had actually happened)! "What is so sodding funny about that?"

"Just the thought of you standing around being referred to as Randy before you remembered who you were…" Mitchell replied, chuckling slightly before he turned back to the road before him and blinked. "Hold on; we're there."

Finally! Spike thought to himself as the SUV pulled up outside the police station- he had never thought that he'd be glad to be here, particularly given that the last time he'd been anywhere near even a single cop was when he was trying to stop Buffy turning herself in for something that she actually hadn't done-, parking outside the main entrance as the team quickly got out of the car. Initially, Spike's only main concern was to avoid going through anything as he followed Daniel- this was his first time out in public since he'd turned intangible and he didn't want to blow his friends' cover by walking through stuff- but no sooner were the SUV doors shut than he froze as a sudden thought occurred to him.

Without even realising it, he'd just thought of the rest of SG-1 as his friends…

He'd realised already that they were closer to him than he'd ever been to the gang back in Sunnydale- out of all of them, only Buffy and Dawn had really even come close to actually accepting him, and even then neither of them had ever actually been his 'friends'; Dawn was the little sister he'd never had and Buffy was… complicated to say the least-, but that was the first occasion where he really thought of the people he was currently with as being his friends.

Friends… Spike mused to himself, looking thoughtfully around at the group who'd taken him in as one of their own even with his unexpected arrival and the fact that he'd pretty much uprooted everything they thought they knew about the world just by being there (Accepting that magic was real after you'd spent the last decade or so confronting aliens had to be a bit of a leap, no matter how you looked at it, but they'd managed well enough).

As the rest of SG-1 began to walk towards the main entrance before them, Spike couldn't help but smile slightly.

He had friends…

He'd have denied it under torture- assuming he could be tortured in this state, of course; if he could touch stuff under the right conditions maybe it was possible that some stuff could also touch him?- but he really kind of liked the sound of that.

As they wandered into the police station- another thing Spike couldn't quite get used to about his new condition; he was walking in sunlight without feeling any ill effects-, Spike stuck his hands in his pockets and casually looked around himself, trying to take in the area around him as much as possible without making it obvious; given his currently intangible status he had to take care not to walk through anything, which obviously meant making sure he knew where everything was. Walking just a few inches behind Teal'c for increased safety- the big guy was so big that he practically guaranteed that nobody would get near enough to Spike to realise what he was; it was like standing behind a snowplough for people-, the rest of SG-1 soon entered what looked to Spike like the main room of the station. As they walked into the room, Sam took the lead, the rest of the team following her towards a dark-skinned man standing near a water-cooler, dressed in a light orange jacket over a greenish-grey shirt, a gold chain just visible under the shirt (The thought of whether or not it was a crucifix prompted another question from Spike; did religious artefacts still affect him even if he didn't have a body?)

"Detective Ryan?" Sam asked, walking up towards him, flashing her ID at him as he turned in acknowledgement of her query. "Hi; I'm Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Carter, United States Air Force. We're here for the Jane Doe you've been holding."

"Uh…" Ryan said, looking at her in confusion as he studied the small group before him- Spike wondered if he was part of the problem there; of all of them, he definitely didn't look like he was a member of the military-, "another Colonel Carter just picked her up."

"When?" Spike asked, stepping forward to glare incredulously at the detective, ignoring the warning looks Daniel and Mitchell were shooting in his direction; with Vala in danger, he wasn't in the mood for 'observing protocol' when the SG-1 members were the only people there who'd really know about his current status (And why was he so concerned about the ex-thief in particular?).

"Uh… about a minute ago," the detective replied, looking uncertainly back at the intangible vampire. "There were two of 'em; you must've passed them on your way in here. Black sedan, government plates."

A glance at the rest of SG-1 was all that Spike needed to confirm what he already thought; his new friends hadn't known about another car being sent to pick up Vala.

In other words…

Great, Spike groaned mentally, as he and the others turned to head back out towards the door (Spike once again 'falling into place' behind Teal'c to limit the chances of his true nature being discovered). Why can I never escape the renegade government loonies?

He vaguely registered the guy they'd spoken to yelling something about the freeway after them as they ran, but he couldn't spend the time being concerned about that right now; all he really cared about was finding the berks who'd taken Vala (And he would really need to think about why that was such a big deal for him later).

As SG-1 hurried out into the parking-lot, Spike was only slightly surprised to see a patrol car positioned in front of the area where SG-1 had parked their car only moments ago; given the resources that these 'Trust' buggers seemed to have available, setting up a little thing like a car being parked in an inconvenient place was hardly that challenging.

"We need you to move that car!" Sam yelled at one of the nearby officers, waving her ID in his face only to meet with

Before Spike could even suggest he try and 'vamp out' to encourage the officers to move- and God, he was changing from his time with these guys; time was he would have just vamped out regardless of what other people would have felt if he had this kind of crap to deal with-, Mitchell had pulled out an ID, hurried around the car, and ran up to stand in front of a guy who looked like he was just about to get onto a motorbike.

"I'm commandeering your bike," he told the man, grabbing the man's helmet from where it lay on the seat. "Get off."

Fortunately, the guy only needed a brief glance at Mitchell's ID before he agreed to the request (With Vala's captors taking her further and further away they really didn't have time to argue about stuff like this), stepping back and tossing the keys to Mitchell, who deftly caught them in one hand even as he pulled his helmet on with the other.

"Mitchell!" Daniel yelled as Mitchell leapt onto the bike, prompting the lieutenant colonel to briefly turn back to look at him, the archaeologist reaching into his inside jacket pocket to pull out the amulet. "Take this!"

As Mitchell automatically raised his hand to catch the amulet as it was tossed in his direction, Spike took a brief glance around before he hurried off around the nearest corner; there was only one reason why Sam would give Mitchell that amulet, but right now there were too many people around him to take the obvious next step (Getting yanked away to wherever that thing was whenever he moved too far away from it always hurt).

With no idea what might be waiting for them after they managed to catch up with whoever had just abducted Vala, the only way Mitchell could any help right now was if Spike 'hitched a ride'.

As Mitchell rounded the corner on his bike, Spike jumped into the bike's path, his body almost automatically shifting itself into a position where he had 'merged' with his friend's body, leaving him sitting on the bike 'inside' Cam's body as the two of them hurtled along the road after the car that had apparently taken Vala.

It wasn't exactly the most comfortable ride Spike had ever experienced, of course- this kind of stunt still gave him the creeps; the fact that he was going to hold this for a while if he was going to avoid attracting attention to the two of them only made it more annoying-, but as they slowly but gradually gained on the van holding Vala, Spike allowed himself a brief smirk at the thought of what was coming up.

He had a feeling that, after they caught up with those 'Trust' buggers, he was going to have a very enjoyable little encounter with the first bunch of humans he'd met since getting his soul back that he could beat up without feeling guilty about it…