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: A bit ambiguous about this chapter, but things just worked out this way as I was writing it; what was meant to be a stepping-stone ended up becoming a means for Sam to vent her frustration about abandoning Daniel to the only available person who won't be 'obligated' to report her 'breakdown' while still having clearance to hear her story (She's paradoxically too close to Teal'c and not close enough to Vala to feel comfortable telling them this- particularly given Vala's old 'relationship' with Daniel-, while Spike's removed enough from the situation that she can feel a BIT more comfortable telling him about it)

The Ghost in the Team

"So," Spike said as the remaining SG-1 members stood around Daniel's office a few hours later, debriefings complete and General Landry clearly as frustrated by their recent failure as the rest of them, "now that we've got the briefing done and sorted, anyone got any ideas why I suddenly couldn't get to Adria back there?"

"I have a couple of ideas, but I just need to know what it felt like from your perspective," Sam said, looking curiously over at the vampire. "You seemed to be straining against something when you were trying to get to Adria; what did it... feel like to you?"

"Basically felt like I was trying to walk against a strong wind," Spike replied with a slightly dismissive shrug. "'Course, it was a 'wind' that was really focused on me, but... well, best analogy I can think of."

"Does that help?" Vala asked.

"Possibly," Sam confirmed with a nod as she looked at Spike. "The energy that Adria was using against Daniel must have been generated from some other dimension similar to the one that you exist in at the moment; when Daniel and Adria used their powers against each other, it must have created..."

"Turbulence?" Mitchell finished for her.

"For lack of a better term, yes," Sam replied with a nod. "The energy that Adria was generating as she fought Daniel must have been causing considerable distortions in the higher dimensions that the Ancients and the Ori inhabit; you might not exist in the same dimension, but you're probably somewhere... 'in the neighbourhood', if you like."

"The important thing right now is, when we find her and Daniel, will she know that she has a way of keeping Spike back?" Vala asked, looking urgently around the room at the rest of the group.

"That is unlikely," Teal'c noted. "I was observing Adria's conflict with Daniel Jackson closely before Colonel Carter and I departed the planet, and her gaze remained upon him as they fought; it is doubtful that she was aware of Spike's attempt to intervene or his subsequent disappearance."

"So, we've still got some kind of edge over her; at least that's something..." Mitchell muttered, before he focused his attention back on Sam. "I don't suppose there's any way that we could get back to the planet where we left Jackson?"

"Even if we could find the right addresses in the DHDs to take us back there, the odds of Adria staying on that planet are practically nonexistent," Sam said, shaking her head as she looked solemnly between her teammates. "I wish that we could help Daniel as much as anyone, but we have to face the facts; he's not going to be there even if we find the planet where we left him..."

"Any chance she'd keep him around to see what she could get out of him from the info-dump Merlin gave him?" Spike asked.

"It's certainly likely; I just..." Sam began, trailing off as she spoke, even if Spike could clearly see where she'd been going with that particular train of thought.

If Daniel was still alive at this point, it was doubtful that Adria's reasons for keeping him that way were good ones.

"Any chance you could do a... tracking spell or something to help us find him?" Mitchell asked, looking over at Spike as he waved a hand vaguely. "I mean, I know you said you don't use magic yourself, but-"

"Anyone I could get you in touch with who could do that kind of thing would either kill you just for being human or probably couldn't do anything even if they tried to help you," Spike said grimly. "Any tracking spells I know about tended to rely on the person being on the same planet as you; I get the feeling that anything anyone tried to find Daniel wherever he is now wouldn't be able to reach out far enough to track him."

"Right; why would anyone need to find something further away than something on Earth...?" Sam said, nodding slightly in understanding even as the obvious frustration on her face made it clear that she wished it was otherwise.

"Anyway," Mitchell said after a moment's frustrated silence, standing up and looking at the group around him, "I'll just go and see what I can do about asking the general to arrange some search parties to try and track Jackson down; think you can rally the Jaffa as well?"

"If it will result in us acquiring a weapon to defeat the Ori, I believe that there are still many that I could turn to for that information," Teal'c said, following Mitchell's example as he got back to his feet.

"And I'll just... go and see if anything else for me to do comes to mind, shall I?" Vala added, following the other two men out the door, leaving Spike to look grimly at Sam.

"It wasn't your fault," he said at last, after using his hearing to confirm that nobody was listening at the door (He... liked... Vala a lot, but she could be a bit nosy); so long as Vala didn't leave the SGC any time soon, he should be able to stay here without the amulet yanking him away again.

"What?" Sam said, looking up at Spike in surprise.

"Daniel getting captured," Spike clarified.

"I'm his superior officer-" Sam began.

"I thought that Mitchell was the team leader-" Spike interjected (He wasn't entirely sure why he was arguing with her about this, but something told him that she needed to get something off her chest, and he was probably the best candidate since he currently wasn't 'required' to tell anyone anything as he was more of a volunteer than a paid employee).

"I was closer to Daniel, and I've been on the team longer; he was my responsibility-" Sam countered.

"He knew the risks-" Spike began, wondering what he was doing here; he never really cared about the group dynamics of the Scoobies beyond Buffy and Dawn, and here he was actively trying to encourage someone to feel better about a sense of guilt that he didn't entirely understand himself-?

"I can't have been responsible for his death again!" Sam yelled, standing up and practically screaming at Spike.

The vampire blinked, his train of thought derailed by this sudden speech.

"'Again'?" he repeated, looking at her in confusion. "He's died before now?"

Sam stood in silence for a moment as she looked at Spike, until she finally sighed and sat down in her office.

"Has... anyone told you about the time that Daniel... Ascended?" she asked at last, her voice slow as she spoke, apparently trying to control herself after her earlier outburst.

"He mentioned that he'd done it when he was talking to Merlin, but that's about it; why?" Spike asked.

"Well," Sam replied, swallowing slightly as she prepared herself to talk before she continued her explanation, "when he Ascended the first time, it was because he was dying of radiation poisoning after he had to disarm a naquadria warhead that was about to overload.

"Naquadria?" Spike repeated in surprise. "Is that... anything to do with that 'naquadah' stuff you've mentioned?"

"Essentially, it's a highly advanced and unstable form of naquadah; it could theoretically release more energy than naquadah, but it's also a lot harder to control it safely, and its relative rarity means that we tend to focus research on naquadah anyway," Sam explained, before she shook her head as though reminding herself to focus (Not that Spike could blame her; she stuck him as the kind of person who sometimes tried to avoid tricky stuff by focusing on her work). "Anyway, Daniel and I were visiting a research base on the planet Langara- the only planet we've found so far where naquadria exists- where the bomb had been manufactured, just as it was approaching a state of overload, and while Daniel and I were separated..."

"He was in the wrong place at the wrong time when the bomb went nuts, huh?" Spike finished for her, wincing slightly at the thought of what Daniel must have gone through back then; he didn't need to be a scientist to know that exposure to radiation powerful enough to be used in a bomb would definitely hurt.

"He managed to disarm it, but after the resulting radiation exposure he suffered in the process..." Sam paused for a moment, taking a few deep breaths, clearly trying to regain control as the painful memories of this time threatened to overwhelm her, before she resumed her original story. "Oma Desala- an Ancient we'd encountered a couple of years ago- was able to help him Ascend, but he was... gone... for almost a year before he was returned to human form for interfering- he tried to help us fight Anubis and it didn't work out-, and..."

"Blamed yourself for it, huh?" Spike asked, noting her hesitancy to continue and taking a guess; from his experience with Captain Cardboard, failing to protect your team tended to bother most decent military types (He'd never admit it to the guy, but when he looked at how some of the Initiative had been more concerned with slicing and dicing rather than looking out for their fellow man, after getting his soul back he really had a hell of a lot more sympathy for the type of guy who cared about his people rather than taking the easier route of focusing on killing the other guy; he still wasn't sure if he could do that himself).

"Well, only as much as the Colonel and Teal'c did- the usual 'we should have been there' thing we all feel when we lose someone on a mission in our line of work-, but the second time..." Sam replied, briefly closing her eyes at the obvious pain this particular topic of discussion caused for her, before she continued. "The second time Daniel died, I practically killed him twice."

"Huh?" Spike asked, looking at her in confusion; he was starting to wonder if her inability to 'vent' about what was obviously some pretty serious guilt before this conversation had driven her slightly mad. "How could you kill him twice?"

"Have you heard about the Replicators yet?" Sam asked.

"Don't think- wait, weren't they those robot things you said you used the Dakara superweapon on?" Spike said, snapping his fingers as the memory came back to him (Once he got his body back, he was going to take down some damn notes; there might not be as many aliens out there as there were demons on Earth, but it still took a bit of effort to keep track of them).

"Yes, that's right," Sam replied, before she swallowed slightly. "What we didn't mention is that... well, during their final attack, the Replicators were lead by a Replicator-based duplicate of me."

Spike blinked.

"They copied you?" he said in surprise.

"One of the humanoid Replicators had a bit of an... obsession... with me and tried to create a duplicate based on scans he took of my body and mind so that he could have me in some form," Sam clarified (Spike tried to conceal the embarrassment he felt at this unintentional poke at his past; the fact that Sam couldn't know about his creation of the Buffybot was the only thing that stopped him reacting more strongly). "She took control of the other Replicators and managed to abduct Daniel in the hope of getting access to the Ancient knowledge he retained in his subconscious from his Ascension- he had it erased from his conscious mind when he returned to human form-, but Daniel was able to use her attempt to access his knowledge to delay the Replicators long enough for us to program the Dakara weapon..."

She paused for a moment, swallowing slightly as she looked down at her desk, evidently trying not to think too much about this particular period of her life beyond what was necessary, until she finished her sentence. "And, before the weapon destroyed the ship that Daniel had been on, my duplicate stabbed him through the heart because she hated the fact that he'd outsmarted her."

"Ah," Spike said, wincing at the thought of what his friend must have gone through before he registered the full implications of Sam's statement. "So... the way you see it, you killed him when you set off that thing and when the other you stabbed him?"

"She was created from me, Spike; how am I meant to feel?" Sam asked, looking back at him with an obviously guilty expression on her face. "If I'd just-"

"Just what?" Spike asked, shrugging slightly as he looked at Sam; he could kind of get why she was freaking out about this, but that didn't mean he thought it mattered that much. "She stopped being you the moment she became her; what she did-"

"I killed him!" Sam yelled (Spike thought that he saw a faint gleam of tears in her eyes as she glared at him, but if any were there they were pushed aside by her obvious anger at herself). "I killed him then, and I killed him now-!"

"He told us to leave-" Spike countered (He couldn't believe he was arguing in favour of taking orders, but if it would help him get his point across he'd do what he had to do).

"I should have... have..." Sam began to say, before she turned around, walked back to her desk, and collapsed down into her chair, her head bowed for a moment as Spike looked awkwardly around himself torn between his desire to leave his friend in an obviously emotionally intense time- he'd really changed since getting his soul if that was a reason he was using for sticking around here- and being here for her if she needed it.

Eventually, however, Sam gained control of herself and sat back up, looking at Spike with an awkward half-smile on her face, clearly trying to 'encourage' him to ignore what had just taken place.

"Uh... sorry about... well, that," she said, a slightly pleading tone to her voice as she looked at the vampire, evidently hoping that he wouldn't say anything about this to anyone outside the room. "It's... well, it's been a bit rough recently, and-"

"No explanations necessary; whole thing's totally understandable," Spike said, smiling slightly as he looked at Sam, his mind quickly going over the thought that had just occurred to him.

It was a bit of a stab in the dark, but it wasn't like he hadn't had his suspicions even before this whole mess; what he'd just seen had just given him more reasons to suspect that he was right...

"You like him, don't you?" he said.

"What?" Sam said, looking sharply back at Spike, her earlier breakdown apparently forgotten in the face of the vampire's sudden comment.

"You... like our missing doc, don't you?" Spike repeated with a slight smile, placing extra emphasis on the word to ensure that she understood what he meant. "Anyone else, you'd feel sorry that you'd 'contributed' to stuff like that, but when it's someone you really care about it's a hell of a lot more... intense-"

"He's been my best friend for years-!" Sam began.

"And why's that an issue?" Spike countered, shrugging dismissively even as he continued to smile at her. "I'm not saying you're not friends; just saying that you're not just friends."

"Well... it's... I mean..." Sam said, looking around herself for a moment before she stood up and headed for the door, an expression on her face that reminded Spike of Red's 'Resolve Face'. "I have to go; until we hear something about Daniel, I've got a few experiments that I need to be getting on with."

If there was a more obvious way of getting out of an awkward conversation than work-related excuses, Spike didn't know about it yet, but at the same time he figured that it wouldn't do anyone any good if he tried to push the issue.

The old Spike might have tried to keep pushing her buttons for the sake of it, but after everything he'd been through with Buffy, and given the precarious nature of his role here- he wasn't entirely sure if they had anything that could break that amulet, but if he was tied to the damn thing it was still possible for them to send it away if they got tired of him-, it probably wouldn't be his smartest move to try and provoke her any further than he already had.

Right now, until Sam had been given some time to cool down, he was just going to stay out of her way and find somewhere else to hang around until they had something else to do; if he couldn't contribute to the search right now, maybe he should just go and find Vala or something...

In a distant warehouse on the outskirts of Colorado, abandoned long ago after the company that owned it had been shut down, a figure wearing a long, tight red dress lay on the roof and stared wistfully up at the sky, a soft smile on her face at the thought.

"You've been among the stars, my knight," she said, grinning in anticipation at the thought of what was coming up. "But it's time to take you back to Earth..."

AN 2: The above won't come into play for a couple of chapters- I want to get through the events of "Line in the Sand" first-, but I take it that you can guess who they'll be dealing with when the time comes