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: Well, as promised, here we are; "The Road Not Taken"- set about a week after the last chapter-, and some people are going to be very happy about what I've got planned...

AN 2: Aside from the obvious detail of Spike's presence, there's another difference from canon at this point that I feel the need to clarify; for various reasons, everything since Vala's amnesia has taken place during the six weeks when the Ancients controlled Atlantis, so Lorne being in the SGC won't be quite the surprise that it was for Sam originally

The Ghost in the Team

As he 'sat'- as much as he could sit, anyway; he constantly had to remind himself not to lean back or he'd just fall through things- on the edge of the table in the middle of the lab, Spike wondered how it could have come to this.

Just when he'd started to feel comfortable in the SGC- hell, just when they were showing signs that they really accepted him-, Drusilla had to come along and show them just how bad he'd been back in the day, and everything changed...

It wasn't like they they'd all turned against him or anything, but they were definitely a bit more uncomfortable around him than they'd been in the past; clearly, hearing some of his old vampire stories and seeing Spike knock Illyria into next week wasn't the same as coming face-to-face with a psychotic vampire who'd passed sanity long ago.

Even the fact that most of the SGC hadn't seen the fight hadn't stopped them from getting worried about it; while Spike's exact history wasn't public knowledge even inside the SGC, the fact that SG-1 had confronted a corporeal member of Spike's race and received a fairly brutal beating wasn't something that it had been easy to keep quiet even if they'd been able to try and pull that off.

They might be willing to let him stick around, but that was probably only because nobody could actually come up with a way of getting rid of him apart from shattering the amulet, and even if SG-1 weren't that comfy around him anymore nobody was actually going to kill him.

He was just grateful that Vala was being relatively understanding about all this; she might wince a bit when he put pressure around the area where Dru had hit her, but otherwise she seemed to be fairly willing to accept him as who he was (Then again, with her experience as host to a Goa'uld, she probably felt fairly comfortable dismissing what he'd done as a vampire like she tried to dismiss what she'd done when she'd been Qetesh; even if he hadn't been there when the demon did those things- and he still didn't think the 'division' between demon and soul was as clear-cut for him as it was between Angelus and the soulled version; he sometimes wondered if they'd just merged demon and soul rather than trapping the one under the other in his case-, the essential principle of something else controlling his body still applied)...

And now, as if things weren't frustrating enough, Sam was running another experiment with Merlin's device, and she hadn't even bothered to let Spike know about it despite his constant attempts to ask her to use the device to try and sort out his own tangibility-related issues; he was doing her the courtesy of assuming that the force field he could just hear around the room- it made a slight vibration that only his enhanced senses could have hoped to pick up-, but it did mean that he couldn't take the amulet through the force field even if he could walk in.

It wasn't the most interesting way to kill time, but with options limited now that Vala was off doing some shopping while Teal'c checked out a couple of leads with their Jaffa contacts- Spike's inability to disguise himself and the discomfort involved in remaining 'inside' people for too long meant that he couldn't go along on undercover missions where this kind of concealment was a necessity-, he didn't exactly have many other options other than sit around inside a wall and wait for something to happen, and the idea that he couldn't do something that might result in him getting past this mess...

God, he wished he had a body; maybe then he could see about making an impact on Colorado's night life- assuming it had much in the way of night-life; Dru aside, he'd always heard that this place was fairly quiet vamp-wise, even if he'd never heard why- and feel like he was actually accomplishing something...

The sight of Mitchell walking into the room brought a brief smile to Spike's face as he heard the colonel collide with the force field, leaving Spike to grab the amulet from the floor where he'd left it and hurry through the door as the blue energy of the force field dropped, smiling at his teammates as Mitchell indicated a piece of paper that had been apparently intended for the door outside.

"That was supposed to be out..." Sam said, chuckling awkwardly as she looked at the sign before she registered Spike's presence. "Spike?"

"Just wanted to see how the experiments with that thing were going," Spike said as Mitchel turned to look at him, indicating Merlin's device with a shrug as he placed the amulet deliberately on the table beside it. "Would have come in earlier, but with that force field in place, I couldn't get the amulet in so there wasn't much point in coming in myself."

"Hold on; you knew that was there?" Mitchell said, looking sharply at Spike as he indicated the area where the force field had previously covered the door.

"Heard something odd in the air, put two and two together; with everything else you've got here, force fields weren't that big a stretch," Spike said with a dismissive shrug before he looked back at Sam; maybe if he just acted casually, they'd be able to move past any Dru-related awkwardness. "Bit I don't get is why."

"I was actually wondering that myself," Mitchell said, looking back at Sam. "Any reason you turned this place into Fort Knox?"

"I'm attempting to rewrite the safety protocols on Merlin's device so we can take even larger areas out of phase," Sam explained, indicating the equipment on the table before her, which Spike now noted included Merlin's device, a laptop, and a naquadah generator, along with a large box covered with electronic stuff that Spike couldn't be bothered trying to identify. "I set up a two way force shield to restrict the range of the device and to ensure that nobody entered the field accidentally."

"Very effective," Mitchell commented, rubbing his forehead even as Sam couldn't stop a slight giggle passing her lips at her teammate's discomfort.

"Any news on Daniel?" she asked, looking more seriously at the colonel.

"No, the latest sighting by the Jaffa turned out to be a false alarm," Mitchell said, shaking his head as he reached out to take Sam's arm. "But Teal'c just got back, so we are going to grab some lunch and go over the report."

"OK," Sam said, holding up a finger at the end of the arm that Mitchell was holding. "Just let me run one more test."

"No-!" Mitchell began.

"It'll only take a minute, I promise," Sam said, indicating the observation room. "You can watch from up there."

"I'm going to be timing you," Mitchell said, looking firmly at her

"And I'll go with to make sure she doesn't stay too long," Spike added, smiling casually as though this request wasn't a big deal (In all fairness, it wasn't like he'd ever made a big thing about taking part in these tests before, but after the old theories about the possibility that they might help him become solid again he had a right to be a bit annoyed that they were 'freezing him out', in his opinion).

Nodding in acknowledgement of the vampire's decision, Mitchell grabbed the sign and left the room, Spike noting the glow of the force field activating as the door closed behind the colonel. For a moment, there was silence in the room as Sam resumed her work on the laptop connected up to the device, Spike staring silently at her to avoid breaking her concentration even as Mitchell tapped his watch in the observation room, before the familiar flash filled the room as everything shifted out of phase.

"So," Spike asked after a few moments, looking curiously at Sam, "if you're using that force field to contain things, how'll you know if what you're trying to do worked?"

"Well-" Sam began, only to pause as a strange whining sound suddenly seemed to fill the room, as though some unidentified speaker system had activated.

"Uh... is that normal?" Spike asked, looking uncertainly at Sam.

"No..." the lieutenant colonel replied, moving to adjust the leads attached to Merlin's device, only to stop as the air above the naquadah generator suddenly seemed to ripple as a strange, reddish-pink glow appeared above it.

"What the-?" Spike began, only to suddenly feel a strange pulling sensation that reminded him disturbingly of the feeling he got when something had teleported the amulet away from him and he was trying to catch up to it-

When Spike opened his eyes once again, it was to find himself and Sam lying on the floor of the suddenly-darkened lab, klaxons and buzzers sounding all around them.

"What the...?" he muttered, staggering to his feet as he took in his surroundings, relieved to note that Sam was moving as well; clearly whatever had just happened might have left a disturbing scorch mark on the floor, but it didn't seem to have done any damage to them personally. Glancing up at the observation window, Spike noted that the room seemed undamaged, but Mitchell was no longer present, although the fact that there were voices outside the door suggested that he might have just seen whatever had happened in here and gone for help-

As the thought crossed Spike's mind, the door opened and a slightly overweight guy that Spike thought was called Doctor Lee hurried into the room, followed by a guard, just as Sam dropped the force field.

"Major, uh, are you OK?" Lee asked, looking anxiously at Sam. "We heard an explosion... and who is that?" he added, his gaze fixing on Spike.

"Did you just call me 'Major'?" Sam asked.

"And what d'you mean, 'who is that'?" Spike indignantly, looking indignantly at Lee. "I'm Spike, remember; I've been hanging around here for the last couple of months?"

"Sam, thank God you're OK," another man said as he ran into the room; Spike vaguely recognised him as one of the soldiers who'd come back from Atlantis- he thought he'd heard the guy being referred to as 'Lorne' at one point-, but aside from the occasional chat with Sheppard he hadn't really bothered to spend much time with anyone from that city and couldn't say for sure. "Where's Doctor Bennett... and who's that?"

"OK, what is with the whole 'who's that' thing?" Spike asked, rolling his eyes as he looked at the other man. "I mean, I may not be sure what your name is, but I know I've seen you before, and I'm not exactly that hard to forget; after all, I'm the guy who-"

He cut off his own sentence when he tried to stick his hand through the table nearby and his fingers ended up making contact with it without him even trying to think about it.

Spike almost couldn't believe what had just happened, but a second attempt to stick his hand through the object before him confirmed it; he'd touched the table... without having to think about being solid?

"Spike?" Sam said, looking sharply over at him as he stared down at his hand. "What's-?"

"I touched the table," Spike said, raising his arm and indicating his fingers.

"Yes, I know- oh my God," Sam said, her eyes widening as she reached out one arm to clasp Spike's arm, her hand meeting solid flesh for the first time since she'd witnessed Spike in Daniel's office. "Holy Hannah..."

"I'm solid..." Spike said, staring incredulously at the room around him, his hands touching everything around him as he revelled in the lack of a need for concentration to make physical contact with something outside of his own body. "I'm solid... I'm solid... I'm back, baby!"

Before he knew what he was doing, Spike had grabbed Sam and pulled her into an enthusiastic hug, grinning broadly even as he felt his friend pat him awkwardly on the back, all thoughts of confusion over what had just happened forgotten in favour of the immediate personal victory he'd just achieved...

Then he turned around to register the obvious confusion on the faces of Doctor Lee and the other soldiers in the lab, and his earlier joy died down to be replaced by frustration.

Whatever had just taken place here might have restored Spike to corporeal form, but it had also left them and everyone around them with several other questions that would almost certainly need to be answered soon.

AN 3: So, at last, Spike's solid again; how do you like that?

As for how it happened... I'll answer that soon; don't forget, he and Sam still need to work out what just happened to them before they can worry about things like that...