Timeline: SG1: post-01x17 "Solitudes", and after BtVS: 05x22 "The Gift".
Disclaimer: Nothing copyrighted belongs to yours truly.
Author's Note: Written for Day 2 of the 2024 August Fic-A-Day.
Author's note 2: Apologies for this being disconnected. I've had writer's block more or less this entire year, and I keep working late shifts. *sigh*

"I need to call my sister. Right now. She has to be frantic by now."

Buffy, Captain Carter, and the still unconscious Colonel O'Neill had been collected by a General Hammond, and the other half of what she had been told was an off-world team called SG-1. They had been flown home in helicopters, and that had been sort of cool. It was her first time in one. It was just too bad her companions for the trip had been a bunch of overly suspicious military people instead of Willow and Xander, or even Dawn.

Once they were back in the States, and they had taken two elevators quite far below ground level, she had been poked and prodded by a red-headed doctor about her own height before being declared healthy and unharmed by her unwilling stay in an ice cave in the Antarctic. She could've told them that, but she was supposed to be secret identity girl, and it was already kinda blown just by exiting the big circle thingy. And she should probably try and come up with something better than a vague 'classified', because these people obviously had really, really high clearances.

"I'm sure that can be arranged after the meeting, Miss Summers. We need some information first. Your sister can wait a couple of hours." Daniel Jackson sounded so sincere and convincing, that it was a little difficult to stand her ground.

"No, Dr. Jackson. You don't understand. My sister is 15 and I am her sole guardian. She's also in California and I am currently in Colorado. I need to talk to her and I need to contact people to make arrangements for her while I'm here." Then after considering it a little more, she added, "I vanished out of nowhere. How would you react if that happened to you?"

Buffy was getting agitated. Yes, Dawn had Giles and Willow and Xander and Tara, but her little sister was her responsibility, and then with everything that had happened with Glory and her own apparent death... She needed to talk to Dawn. And Giles. How was she supposed to get home?

"Oh." Dr. Jackson's mouth turned into a comical circle while he spoke that single word, and he bent his head forward a little, causing his hair to fall back into his eyes again. "That does warrant a couple of phone calls." He gave the door a look, "Wait here, I'll make sure you get to a phone."

Buffy gave a genuine smile, "Thank you." She wanted to say more but wasn't entirely sure what it should be. Her mind was racing. Dawn, Glory, the portal, the Stargate. Somehow ending up in one of the coldest places on the planet rather than a hell dimension, and then getting rescued by military people who just so happened to have lost a couple of their people in the same place? Someone, who better not be the Powers That Be, was trying to give her a hint with a sledgehammer, but she did not want to work with the military again.

While trying to get that unpleasant thought out of her head, she waited not so patiently for the archeologist to get back with either a phone or directions to one. It took a good twenty minutes, and unfortunately, he went too far away from her so she was unable to eavesdrop on the conversation.

Finally though, she was led into an office that might've started out as a tiny storage room. It had a single desk with an office chair, a wastebasket, and a phone. Otherwise, the room was completely bare. There wasn't even an obligatory bookshelf with important-looking books and binders.

Jackson and the Airman who had directed them left her alone, but the latter one was waiting outside. Jackson left with a warning she was not allowed to tell anyone about the Stargate, aliens, or travels to other planets.

This was going to be the kind of fun that wasn't, she couldn't tell her sister about aliens being real, and she couldn't tell the military people about vampires being real. Couldn't there be someone to play referee who wasn't her?