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: Some references here to the Buffy/Angel crossover novel "Monster Island" (If you haven't read it, you should; not only do we have a mass team-up of both groups against a demon army, but the main villain is none other than Axtius, the demon father of the tragically-short-lived Francis Allan Doyle)
AN 2: Might be a bit overly emotional in this chapter, but I felt that Spike had some issues he needed to get off his chest and Daniel was the only person available to talk to when he had to come face-to-face with them
The Ghost in the Team
"So... nothing?" Spike asked, looking at Daniel in surprise at the story he'd just heard from his new friend. "All that panic, and the damn box didn't do anything?"
"Well, we're assuming that it might have been more obvious what it was meant to do if you'd been the one to open it, but given that there's no way to know what the result would have been, you're essentially right, yes," Daniel said, nodding apologetically at Spike. "We're looking into who might have sent it to you, but without a return address or anything like that on the box itself we're relatively limited in what we could find out; even tracking the package back to the post office that originally sent it might not do much good..."
"Actually, y'know what?" Spike interrupted, a suddenly resolved expression on his face as he looked at his new friend. "Forget it."
Daniel blinked.
"Excuse me?" he said.
"Forget it," Spike said dismissively. "I mean, it didn't do anything, anyone who'd try just sending me something that way probably can't figure out a way to get anything to me directly, and given everything else we've got going on here right now-"
"Spike, you're on our team; if this is about you not wanting to be a bother-" Daniel began.
"No, this is just about me not giving a crap about some prats who evidently don't know enough about this place to actually do anything to me while I'm here," Spike responded with a dismissive shrug. "They tried to get me, and they blew their best shot, so I'm not going to let myself be bothered about it; they can't try that again, and if they really wanted something to happen to me there are easier things they could've done, so since they haven't done them I'm assuming they can't."
Despite his slight curiosity over the still-existent mystery of the source of the package, Daniel couldn't help but acknowledge that Spike had a point; if whoever had sent it didn't know anything detailed about where Spike currently was, they probably weren't able to attempt a more direct but subtle method of attack after this one failed.
"Interesting assessment," he said at last, smiling slightly at his friend.
"Yeah, well, no point worrying about what you can't control, I say," Spike said with a shrug. "Besides, we've got enough to be going on with right now without worrying about people who don't even seem to know where I actually am at the moment; save that for when we're not at war, I say..."
His sentence finished, he looked curiously at the archaeologist. "Anyway, talking of the current mess, any chance you'll be checking out that idea you had about how to find where Merlin left that weapon thing?"
"Well... we won't be going to the address any time soon, unfortunately," Daniel said with a slightly uncertain shrug. "Given the extent of the damage the Odyssey took in the Lucian Alliance's attempted takeover, the repair teams insisted on getting Sam's help to fix it up to make sure that we didn't put too much strain on anything getting back, and Mitchell and Teal'c are going to see if they can find anything else about where that box came from or who might know about your presence here to send it to us in the first place, but until then..."
Daniel shrugged. "As far as I know, your time's yours to do what you like with; with the rest of us occupied like that, it's probably going to take a few days for us to get permission to look into our latest idea about the Sangraal's location."
"Ah," Spike said, raising his eyebrows slightly as he looked at Daniel. "And I should do... what with my spare time?"
"Well..." Daniel said, a slight smile on his face that Spike didn't recall the archaeologist giving him before as he looked at the vampire, "there is what happened between you and Vala on the Odyssey to consider-"
"That was nothing," Spike interjected, walking over to glare directly into the archaeologist's face (If he'd been sure he would have remained solid long enough to do so, he would have picked Daniel up by the BDUs to try and better emphasise his point, but as it was he couldn't be sure he could focus long enough to pull that off, so he didn't do it). "She was just... being friendly; it didn't mean anything-"
"Trust me on this; 'friendly' from Vala is flirting, but physical contact like that only happens when she actually wants it to happen," Daniel said, looking at Spike with a slight smile. "Look, I've known Vala probably longer than anyone else at Stargate Command- although I admit that we didn't exactly meet under the best circumstances; that's a whole... complicated story that you'd be better off talking to her about if she wants you to know it-, and there's still a line between flirting and physical contact that she doesn't cross on a whim. When you think about the fact that she knows you don't even have a body for her to make contact with in the first place, she'd only do something like that if she wanted to automatically do it-"
"I only just got over Buffy; the last thing I need is-!" Spike began, stopping himself mid-sentence as he realised what he'd just said.
Got over Buffy...
He'd 'gotten over' Buffy?
OK, it wasn't like he was totally uninterested in her any more- he was still as willing to die for her as he'd been in those last few moments back in Sunnydale, and he could still recall the same dedication he'd felt for her in the past-, but when he really stopped to think about his feelings, he'd really been moving past things from the moment he'd gotten his soul back- he might have wanted more, but he'd also been in a better position to accept that Buffy wasn't interested in giving him more than what he had already-, but he'd just been so focused on being her friend again that what was left of his love for her had become all tangled up in his respect and appreciation of her willingness to get past what he'd done to her... before...
"Spike?" Daniel asked, looking uncertainly at the vampire. "What is it?"
"I..." Spike said, whispering slightly from the shock as he looked up at Daniel. "I'm... I'm over her."
"Who?" Daniel asked.
"Buffy," Spike said simply, all thoughts of his past reluctance to talk about this part of his past with SG-1 pushed aside as he looked at his friend; after everything they'd been through together and all the times they'd trusted him to save them, it only seemed fair that he trust them with his own secrets. "She was... well, Captain Cornbread told you about the... group... who shut down the Initiative in Sunnydale, right?"
"He mentioned some... independent demon hunters... he'd encountered while he was stationed there; is that who you're talking about?" Daniel asked uncertainly.
"Bingo," Spike confirmed with a brief nod before he continued. "Anyway, Buffy was... well, in a nutshell, she was the group's leader when it came to fighting; they had this older guy- Rupert Giles, real brainbox; you reminded me of him a bit when I first got here, actually- to give them info on what they were fighting, but she was the one who generally took point..."
"And... you were in love with her?" Daniel asked.
"Obsessively in love with her, to put it bluntly," Spike replied with a slightly grim chuckle, before he sighed as he looked reflectively down at his hands. "I was even willing to kill Dru for her- Dru was the vamp who made me; we'd spent most of the last century together before she left me because she thought I'd gone soft after our first meeting with the Sl- with Buffy-, but..."
He sighed again, looking uncertainly at his hands as he sat down in a nearby chair, looking reflectively at his hands as he did so before he continued. "Well, I'd spent practically all of my unlife with Dru before I met Buffy- we were pretty much together for the whole of the twentieth century, 'part from a few occasions when we tried some independent stuff-, and then Peaches came back as his soulless self..."
"Uh... 'Peaches'?" Daniel asked uncertainly, confused at Spike's apparent change of topic but willing to wait and see what kind of explanation the vampire gave for his new line of self-reflection.
"That's just what I call him; real name's Angelus, Dru's sire, and he walked out on us after he got cursed with a soul about a century back, 'lough he spent a few months with us 'bout five years ago when he briefly lost it again," Spike explained. "Last I saw him, he called himself 'Angel' and ran a detective business in L.A., and..."
His voice trailed off.
"What?" Daniel asked, looking promptingly at Spike.
"Just... something he said to me last time we met," Spike said, looking back at Daniel thoughtfully. "He said that... well, he said that I'd kept on trying to be him ever since I became a vampire- I'd tried to fill his shoes for being ruthless after he got his soul back, Dru was originally involved with him but he suggested she'd turned me as a substitute, and even the damn chip was just my way of getting a soul without actually getting a soul-, and... in a nutshell, he spent three years involved with Buffy before he had to leave town and I showed up in time to get chipped..."
"Oh," Daniel said, nodding slowly as understanding sank in. "So... you're thinking that...?"
"That I just fell for her because I wanted to be him?" Spike finished for Daniel; that statement was never going to be easy to make, so it was best to get it out of the way before things became awkward. "I mean, I know I loved her- and I'm pretty sure she loved me-, but with that whole... 'being-the-new-Angelus' complex he suggested I had... did I actually love her-?"
"Spike," Daniel said, his voice cutting through Spike's train of thought and prompting the vampire to turn and look at him. "I'm not saying I know anything about whatever kind of relationship you had with... Buffy... but I do know that, when it comes to love, you can't make yourself feel something that isn't there. Back when I first went through the Stargate, I was married to a native of Abydos- the first planet we visited through the 'gate- in a local ceremony-"
"You were married?" Spike said, his own internal reflection pushed aside in favour of this latest news as he grinned broadly at Daniel. "How come you haven't mentioned it before?"
"My wife was taken as a host for a Goa'uld and was killed seven years ago when the Goa'uld controlling her tried to kill me," Daniel replied.
"Oh," Spike said, making a mental note to avoid bringing that particular topic up any time soon- if it was hard enough for people to kill the vamp version of someone they'd known, it must really suck to kill someone controlled by a Goa'uld; from what he'd read about the things, at least with a Goa'uld there was a chance you could get the original person back- before he returned his direct attention to Daniel. "And you mentioned that because...?"
"Because," Daniel said as he looked back at Spike, "if I learned anything from that experience, it's that you can't make yourself fall in love with someone. When Sha're initially tried to... well, give herself to me... I turned her down because I didn't want her to just offer herself to me because she thought I was a... messenger of the gods or anything like that... and even after I learned that we'd been married in an Abydonian ceremony, I only stayed because I thought we had the potential for something to develop rather than because I... well..."
"Expected any marital bonuses?" Spike finished for his friend, a slightly teasing smile on his face.
"If you want to put it that way," Daniel said, a brief scowl on his face at Spike's choice of words before he continued. "My point is, my marriage to Sha're contributed to why I decided to stay, but it wasn't the only reason I stayed; I spent some time with her after the rest of the original team had left, sharing dinner with her, learning about her as a person..."
"It was good, huh?" Spike said, the same teasing smile on his face.
"Until Apophis came, anyway," Daniel said, nodding briefly at Spike as the faint smile that had crossed his face as he remembered Sha're faded. "Then... well, after that Sha're spent three years under the control of a Goa'uld, and then I had to watch her die when Teal'c shot her to stop her body being used to kill me..."
He paused for a moment, looking ahead of himself at nothing in particular, before he spoke again. "It took a long time to get over what had happened... it took a few months for things between me and Teal'c to get even remotely back to normal... but, even after all that, the thing that hurt the most... was the day I realised that it didn't hurt any more. I looked at my photo of Sha're one day- I don't think there was any particular reason; I was just looking at it-, thinking about our life together, and I realised..."
He shrugged slightly as he looked at Spike. "Thinking about her didn't hurt. I still missed her, but the thought of her didn't make hurt like it had before... and... well, for a while, I thought that it meant I was... losing everything she'd meant to me... that I'd dismiss everything we'd ever shared because it wasn't here any more, or because I'd found someone else that I could love the same way I'd loved her..."
"And then?" Spike asked, looking curiously at his friend (Seriously, he'd never have expected an archaeologist to have this kind of romantic streak; he'd never been one for hard research when he was alive, and most of the real brainboxes he'd spent time with since consisted of Rupert or Dalton, who weren't exactly the best examples of emotional availability to start with).
"Then..." Daniel said, pausing for a moment to smile at the thought before he looked back at Spike. "I realised that, just because we move on from the people we love, doesn't mean we didn't love them. If you loved Drusilla and Buffy when you were with them, then you loved them then, but just because you feel... something for Vala doesn't mean you have to completely forget anything you felt for them in the past."
"I get that, it's just... well, I'm not used to this kind of-" Spike began, before a sudden knocking on the door drew their attention.
"Uh... come in?" Daniel said, looking at the door in confusion as it opened, Vala walking in with a slightly uncertain smile on her face, although the uncertainty faded as she looked at Spike.
"Oh, you are here," she said, smiling in relief as she looked at the vampire before she glanced at the archaeologist, a slightly uncertain smile on her face as though she wasn't entirely sure what to say to him. "Uh... Daniel, as much as I'd like the chance to talk with you about things, I have some more... immediate business to discuss with Spike...?"
"Fair enough," Daniel said, turning around to give Spike a slightly amused smile before he turned back to Vala, reaching into his pocket and pulling out the amulet as he did so. "You'd better have this; I... might be heading home soon, and there's point drawing Spike away if you have to talk to him."
"Thanks," Vala said, slipping the amulet into her pocket as Daniel walked out of the room, leaving her and Spike alone in the room.
"So..." Spike said after a moment's silence, smiling slightly at her. "How's things?"
"Oh, pretty quiet; yourself?" Vala responded, shrugging slightly as she leant against the door, not-so-subtly turning the lock to ensure their privacy.
"The same," Spike said with a similar shrug. "Not much else to do here, after all; just hang around and haunt a few places, maybe make a few spooky moans when I'm bored..."
"Really?" Vala asked, an amused smile on her face at the thought of the scenario Spike had suggested. "Who did you do that to?"
"Well... nobody at the moment, really; I've thought about it but the right person to do it to never came up..." Spike said, looking down at his feet in embarrassment. "I mean, I'm not exactly the kind of person who'd normally be employed here in the first place; I don't want to make-"
"Do you want to... do something later?" Vala asked suddenly, her eyes widening in surprise even as she said it, as though she hadn't realised she was asking it.
"What?" Spike asked, looking at Vala in surprise; even after everything he and Daniel had been discussing earlier, he hadn't expected his new friend to just come up with something like that this suddenly.
"Well..." Vala said, looking more uncomfortable than Spike had ever seen his new teammate since his arrival- with the obvious exception of that time when she'd lost her memory and had thought she recognised him without knowing how-, looking at him with a slightly shy smile. "I know it's not much, but... well, I've been picking up a few DVDs lately- sneaking a couple of orders in on that 'Internet' they have here; fascinating bit of work-, and I... wondered if you'd like to watch a couple with me?"
Spike wasn't sure what was the bigger surprise; that Vala had proposed something so normal for something that could only be called a 'date'- even if his options in his current state were limited due to his current condition-, or just the fact that she was asking him for a date in the first place.
"You... well, you sure about this?" he asked, raising a curious eyebrow as he looked back at her, trying to appear neutral. "I mean, I'm not exactly..."
"Solid?" Vala finished for him, that same slight smile back on her face that Spike was more used to seeing. "Well, maybe not, but what does that matter; you're still... you, after all..."
After a moment's awkward silence as the two stared at each other, Vala sighed.
"And... well, I like you, OK?" she said, looking slightly awkwardly at him. "I don't know what it is- no offence, but I never saw a man who technically doesn't even have his own body as being particularly high on my list-, but... well, you definitely have an interesting sense of humour, and you've really been helping out since you came here... and I still don't know myself what I'm... expecting... here..."
"Hey, I wasn't exactly expecting this either; I've spent the last three years in love with the same woman, and I was in my last relationship for over a century, I don't exactly do this kind of thing on a whim..." Spike began, only to trail off as he looked at her, her long dark hair and firm stance belied by the almost vulnerable look in her eyes as she stared back at him, her expression so suddenly fragile that Spike found himself trailing off as he tried to think about what he was going to say next.
"Look," he said at last, looking slightly awkwardly at Vala, his hands randomly gesturing between himself and his new teammate, "If it helps, I'm not saying I'm... expecting anything from this- I don't even have a sodding body right now; trying to do anything to or with me... in that sense... would probably be pointless-, but, if you're interested in... well, in a date at least..."
He shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant about it; he hadn't exactly been nervous even when he'd told Buffy that he loved her, but that had been because he'd actually been pretty sure back then that he'd get a big fat 'no' from her (He hadn't even been entirely comfortable with his original revelation about his feelings; he hadn't exactly expected her to be wild about them either). "Look, I'd like to stress from the beginning that I just got out of a really serious- well, sort of; I'm not sure if she was really as serious about it as I was- relationship, so I'm really not sure what I'll be like in... something like this... but... well, if you're asking, I wouldn't say no to... getting to know you better?"
After another brief silence as Vala turned over what Spike had just said in her mind, she smiled slightly at him.
"I can work with that," she said at last, her own eyes lowering slightly as she looked at him. "To be honest, I'm... in a bit of a tricky situation relationship-wise right now myself; I got married while I was in the Ori galaxy, and he is a good man himself, but... well, he's very devoted to the Book of Origin, and he's still on the other side of this war..."
"Ah," Spike said, a couple of sarcastic quips crossing his mind only to be automatically discarded as far too inappropriate under the circumstances, leaving him with nothing to do but look sympathetically at her. "Sorry 'bout that."
"It's all right," Vala said, shrugging slightly as she smiled back at him, an awkward silence once again settling on the room in the aftermath of Vala's latest revelation before Spike broke it.
"Eh, look at this way; we may be emotionally complicated messes, but at least this way we've got company in our wackiness," he said, smiling briefly at her. "So, regarding those DVDs you mentioned..."
"Yes?" Vala asked.
"Just don't make it anything with Dracula- actually, pretty much anything with vampires in it is off; they're all just stupid once you know what we're really like-, and we're good," he concluded, smiling reassuringly at her.
After so long going out drinking on his dates, it might be interesting to see the appeal of a 'quiet night in' while watching the box with someone, rather than always doing it yourself...
"Excellent," Vala said, smiling back at him as she indicated the door. "Well, I'm getting everything set up in one of the other offices; shall we get those films started?"
As Spike walked out of the office after Vala, he couldn't help but smile slightly at the thought of what was coming up.
It wasn't going to be a particularly conventional relationship- and they definitely had quite a few not-insignificant issues to get past, but it wasn't like either of his last two had been that normal either; it would have almost been stranger if he had had a normal relationship.
AN 3: Well, there you have it; Spike and Vala have taken the first steps towards an actual 'relationship', and we'll see a bit more of that in the next chapter before getting on to the search for the Sangraal once again...