Title: It's Raining Men...And One Woman. (1/1)
Author: Karen
Rating: PG13
Spoilers: Xover with Stargate and set after Season 7 in both BtVS and the SG1 'verses, but nothing actually specific. Disclaimer: Not mine, not a one. Synopsis: I think the title is pretty self-explanatory. A/N: This was going to be a Dawn/Daniel pairing but I just couldn't do it to my beloved Connor. ::shudders:: It was just wrong. Also, I am aware I should be working on Freak but...I have no excuse. Sorry. I'll go get back to that now.
Dawn Summers was having a fairly slow night. She'd done a mini-patrol, gone on a date with an exceptionally good-looking but utterly boring graduate student, dropped him back at his digs, gone on another patrol and found a couple of vamps snacking on a screaming jock that she vaguely recognised from her college football team. Some pithy comments, two puffs of dust and a gibbering full-back later it had been all over and she had been prepared to head home to her own dorms to bed.
Whistling under her breath she sauntered through the well-maintained cemetery in downtown Cleveland, absently twirling a stake as she went, and mused idly about calling her best demon slayin' buddy Connor Angel that weekend to scare up a little action on the slaying front in LA for a change of pace over mid-term break.
Then a honkin' great blue vortex had appeared overhead out of nowhere and four figures had been spit out of it to land at her feet. Dawn paused in mid-step with one foot held off the ground and blinked as one of the figures raised its head and stared blearily at her. "Uh-oh." Even in the weak light afforded by the moon filtering through the heavy clouds in the sky she could see the symbol etched in gold on its forehead. "Demon!"
Never one to waste an opportunity, Dawn kicked out with the foot that was already raised and planted her boot firmly in the middle of the gold thingy with a muted clang. The figure grunted with the force of the blow and the overly large head snapped back before thumping forward onto the damp grass. "Hey!" Another figure rolled woozily onto all fours and then reared up clutching what looked like a machine gun. "Hold it right there!"
Dawn was already in motion when she saw the weapon rising in the dim light of the cemetery and hurled herself behind a handy, and very overblown and tasteless, mausoleum. "That's not fair!" Thoroughly freaked by the sudden increase in the excitement levels of the night, Dawn was also understandably baffled by demons that now came falling out of the sky clutching automatic weapons. "What happened to ritual swords and satanically blessed daggers?" She crouched low and took advantage of the clouds drifting across the face of the moon to create a sudden dip in visibility to run towards another large memorial twenty feet away. "Giles is right, no one has any standards anymore!"
"Stop or I'll shoot!" Colonel Jack O'Neill sighted his weapon as he caught a glimpse of a neon stripe on a fast moving trainer and made out the slight figure running away from him. "Stop...Dammit, Daniel!"
Daniel Jackson glared at Jack as he knocked the older man's weapon up so the barrel pointed towards the sky. "It's a kid, Jack." He stood on shaky legs and absently brushed off his BDU's. "It's ok, we won't hurt you. You can come out."
"It kicked Teal'c!" Jack scowled at his favourite pain in the ass as he got to his own feet and then helped his alien teammate up from the floor. "You ok, buddy?"
"I am uninjured, O'Neill." The Jaffa inclined his head and stooped to pick up his staff weapon before looking around him with keen eyes. "It would appear we are not at our intended destination."
"Aww, crap." Jack looked around himself properly for the first time and took in the fact that once again the Stargate had decided their lives weren't exciting enough already and needed a little juicing up. "Not again. Carter!"
Major Samantha Carter sat up with a jerk and gingerly probed her throbbing head to find her fingers encountered an all too familiar stickiness. "Here, sir. Ow." She pulled a contrite face as her three friends all looked at her with concern and shrugged. "Wouldn't be a mission without one of us getting injured, right?"
Daniel and Teal'c both took a step towards her and then shouted with surprise as a fairly large rock flew between them and smacked Sam square between the eyes. The woman's eyes glazed with shock before her torso went limp and she slumped unconscious to the ground. "Yes!" The faint yelp of triumph had all three men whirling and levelling their weapons instinctively in the direction the rock had come from and then cursing as another one came from a totally different direction and glanced off Jack's shoulder.
"Cut it out!" Jack dropped to one knee and swept his gun from side to side. "We don't want a fight."
"That's what they all say, demon guy." Dawn waited for the barrel of the gun to move away from her again and then let fly with another of her impromptu weapons before rolling and scrambling to safety behind a low gravestone as a low grunt told her she'd hit a target. "And too bad for you, 'cos you're gonna get one!"
Teal'c raised a hand to his cheek and stared at the blood that stained his fingertips thanks to the gash Dawn's rock had opened. "O'Neill, I do not believe that diplomatic discussion will aid us here." The alien ducked as another well-placed rock whistled overhead. "I believe we would be well served in neutralising our enemy."
"No!" Daniel looked up from where he was anxiously checking the unconscious Sam over. "It's just a kid. A little girl." He yelped as another rock hurtled out of nowhere and clipped him hard on the butt. "She's probably terrified."
"Oh yeah, she's a screamer, alright." Jack shook his head in disgust and scrambled to Daniel's side. "She ok?" He glanced anxiously down at Sam and winced as the moon came out from behind the clouds once more and showed the huge knot forming on her normally smooth head. "That doesn't look good." He frowned as something that was niggling at the back of his mind suddenly crystallised. "Did that kid call us demons?"
"Yeah." Daniel absently brushed a lock of hair back from Sam's bloody brow and peered into the gloom of the cemetery they'd somehow found themselves in, instead of the jungle-like terrain they had been expecting thanks to the MALP they had sent through the Stargate before them. "I thought that was kinda weird too."
Both men jumped as the familiar sound of a staff blast ripped through the night and turned to see Teal'c lowering his weapon from where he had just blasted another rock out of the sky. A plaintive voice cut through the silence of the graveyard and echoed Jack's earlier observations with heartfelt sincerity. "Oh crap."
Dawn was rapidly coming to the conclusion it was just not her night. She was now entering the second hour of playing 'hide-the-mystical-key-from-the- gun-toting-demons' and to top everything off, the cemetery she was currently sneaking round came enclosed in an eight-foot smooth stone wall and with one way in and one way out. Which was great when you were with a Slayer and other bad-ass warriors of the Light and you were on the winning end of a smack down on some evil badness, but totally sucked when you were on your own with no hope of back-up and the exit was being guarded by a big, shiny demon with an equally big fire shooting stick.
"Look, kid, we're not demons! Just come out and stop throwing things at us and we can explain everything." Dawn rolled her eyes as the annoyed voice reached her and she crouched down in a tight ball as O'Neill edged cautiously past her current hiding place behind slim tree and headed away from her once more. "We won't hurt you."
Dawn muffled her snort of disbelief and crawled stealthily away from the demon and towards the rear wall of the cemetery. "Yeah, that's what they always say. Right before they cut out your heart and strangle you with your own entrails." She ducked as the other large figure that had been stalking her for the past hour suddenly jumped around the side of a stone monument and waved the thing it held in it's hands slowly around the immediate vicinity before moving silently towards her with a measured tread.
"I know you're here." Daniel deliberately kept his voice low and soft as he stepped forwards. "There's no need to be scared, we won't hurt you. We're human, Tau'ri; just talk to us for a few minutes and we'll....Aaargh!" Daniel's leg went from under him as another sizeable rock bounced off his kneecap with a loud crack. He swore foully in Abydonian as a slender figure rocketed up off the ground not three feet from where he had fallen and tried to leap his prone body and make for the relative safety of the other side of the graveyard. Instincts honed by seven years in close proximity to Jack O'Neill and his appalling penchant for saying exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time had Daniel grabbing wildly for an airborne ankle and yanking hard to bring it's owner crashing gracelessly to the ground with a pained grunt.
Not giving his captive time to draw breath, Daniel ignored his throbbing leg and rolled on top of the stunned body to grab Dawn's wrists in his hands and press them to the cool grass as he scrambled to his knees and knelt over her. He tightened his grip on the slender arms as Dawn sucked in a huge lungful of air, beginning to buck furiously beneath him and yell incoherently with rage. "Calm down, I'm not going to hurt you. Calm down!" Dawn remained understandably unconvinced and writhed desperately to try and free herself from her vulnerable position. Daniel leaned forward to try and speak directly into her ear as Dawn continued to scream with fury and then he saw stars as her head came up and smacked hard against the bridge of his nose.
Dawn nearly sobbed with relief as she heard the pained expulsion of air as her skull cracked into her captor's face, she wasted no time in taking advantage of the slackening of the hands pinning her to the floor and tugged her wrists free to push upwards with all her strength and push the body covering hers up and over to the ground beside her. She got her legs under her and shot forwards to sprint for cover as her opponent made another wild grab and then a bolt of blue energy came out of nowhere and took her to the ground once more.
Dawn lay stunned for the second time in under a minute and was helpless to do anything but stare at the ground as her hands were tugged behind her back and restrained with brisk competence. Jack stood up as he finished tying off the plastic restraints and glared at Daniel as he staggered to his feet, clutching his face. "Next time, just zat 'em and worry about playing nice later Daniel."
Teal'c, Jack and Daniel stood in a bemused row and watched the young girl they had captured struggle against the restraints on her wrists and swear most impressively in several different languages as she tried to free herself. Daniel's eyebrows shot up as he caught a particularly vicious curse in Sumerian and then his mouth dropped open as the low, angry voice switched to Ancient Hebrew and cast some distinctly colourful aspersions on his team's collective lineage. "I don't think that's physically possible."
Dawn paused in her struggles and tried to blow a lock of hair out of her angry eyes. "Bite me." She scowled as she remembered where she was and that in all likelihood the biting part of the evening would be rolling around shortly. "Asswipe."
"You know, that's just isn't nice." Jack rocked back on his heels and cocked his head to one side as the kid went back to straining against her bonds. "And pretty dumb seeing as you're the one tied up and all."
"The female does not appear to be worried by her circumstances, O'Neill." Teal'c raised an eyebrow. "Merely extremely annoyed."
"Yeah." Jack looked curiously down at the slender girl now muttering to herself in a language, which seemed to be nothing more than guttural grunts and growls. "Don't you guys think that's kinda strange?"
"Please, stop that, you're going to hurt yourself." Daniel crouched down and reached out a hand towards Dawn, gaining nothing more than a wild kick and yet another fierce curse as she overbalanced with the motion and fell on her side. "We really aren't going to hurt you."
Dawn lay panting on the floor. "So you always go around shooting people and tying them up in graveyards before buying them a coffee and a hot dinner, huh?" She scowled. "Cut to the chase already and get it over with, ok?"
"Um, get what over with?" Daniel cocked his head and smiled reassuringly. "I don't know what you're expecting us to do."
"Just kill me already!" Dawn glowered and hoped that the nerves that were twisting her stomach weren't showing in her face and voice. "But you'd better be prepared for a major ass-kicking when my sister comes looking for you."
Daniel glanced over his shoulder at Jack and Teal'c and then looked earnestly back at Dawn. "We're not going to kill you."
"And we wouldn't have shot you if you hadn't thrown all those rocks at us and beat up Daniel!" Completely outraged, Jack shook a finger at Dawn. "And the name calling was completely uncalled for."
"Oh, I'm sorry." Dawn blew fruitlessly at the hair that was falling into her eyes and then tried to bite Daniel as he took his life into his own hands and reached out to do it for her. "Back off, pal." She watched as Daniel paused and then obeyed her and then looked back at Jack. "I just find it a little unnerving when demons fall from the sky with no warnings whatsoever and then try and shoot me!" She wriggled furiously until she managed to get upright again and shook her hair out of her face. "You guys are so dead when my sister gets here."
"For cryin' out loud!" Jack threw up his hands in exasperation. "We're not demons, we're human. And we didn't fall outta the sky, we came out of the Stargate." He put his hands on his hips and glared accusingly at Dawn. "Which, by the way, has vanished. Know anything about that?"
"He's not human." Stargate, Stargate; where had she heard that term before? Maybe to do with the prophecy they'd stopped last month? Dawn shook her head and then jerked it towards Teal'c. "And you can't tell me that he is."
Jack and Daniel looked guiltily at Teal'c, then at each other and then back at Dawn. Jack glared again. "Don't change the subject!"
"I am Jaffa." Teal'c planted his staff weapon on the floor and stared imperiously down his nose at Dawn. She glowered up at him in confusion and then her face cleared, now that word she knew.
"I thought they were a kind of cake?" Blue eyes skipped from face to face as the three men all looked at each other in confusion. "Y'know, those little English things. They're kinda soft and have the orange jelly inside and the chocolate on top." Dawn sniffed disparagingly. "You could have come up with a better cover story than pretending to be some kind of pastry, big guy."
Daniel opened his mouth and then closed it again as he realised he had no idea what the strange young girl was talking about. He placed a warning hand on Jack's arm as the older man took a deep breath to start yelling his annoyance at the top of his voice and smiled down at the slender brunette on the floor. "This is going to sound a little strange, but would you mind telling us where we are?"
Dawn looked at him steadily for a few moments and then hissed out a long breath of irritation. "You're in a cemetery, genius. Dead people, ritual sacrifices..." Her eyes narrowed accusingly. "Not that I need to tell you guys anything about that of course."
Daniel ignored the jibe and tried the gentle smile again. "I meant which cemetery in particular, where is it located?"
Dawn eyed him silently and shifted slightly on the cold, damp floor. "You don't know?" She stared from face to impassive face and then chewed on her bottom lip for a moment before reaching a decision. "Cleveland. You're in America."
Jack jerked as though he'd been zatted in the ass. "What?"
"America? Y'know, land of the free, home of the brave?" Dawn scowled and twisted against her restraints. "Well, I say free, what I mean is land of the tied-up-and-held-prisoner-in-deserted-graveyards-at-past-two-in-the- morning, but you get my drift."
"Hey, who was smacking who over the head with big freakin' rocks, kid?" Jack was dividing his time between glaring at Dawn and then at the stars over head. "Well I'll be damned. It's Earth."
Teal'c and Daniel both joined him in staring up at the sky and Dawn rolled her eyes and started rubbing her restrained wrists against the rough stone base of the mausoleum she was leaning against. "Duh." She stifled a yelp as the stone bit into her soft skin and then resolutely kept trying to scrape the plastic away. "Goddamn sacred duties and genetic dispositions to playing hero." She scraped harder as she got herself more worked up. "I coulda left the whole save the world gig to Buffy, but oh no, I have to go out at stupid times of the morning and kept captured by freakin' demons that haven't even got the brains to know where their friggin' mystical portals are gonna spit them out." She yelped again as she felt her skin graze. "And what the hell happened to good old fashioned ropes or manacles? At least I can pick the locks on some chains."
Daniel felt his lips twitch in mirth at the disgruntled monologue coming from the direction of his feet and crouched down again, a prudent distance from Dawn. "Look, there's been a terrible misunderstanding."
"Ri-ight." Dawn stopped trying to free herself and glared at the demon. She glared harder as the clouds parted overhead and the guy was highlighted in a very flattering shaft of white light. It didn't matter how hot the demon was, the important thing to remember was still DEMON. No way was she going down the same road as her sister in that respect. "So you aren't going to suck me dry of blood and leave my lifeless husk of a body here to be found by an unsuspecting groundskeeper in the morning?"
Daniel blinked. "Um, no?" He looked up and over his shoulder at Jack and Teal'c. "That wasn't on the mission statement was it?"
Jack shook his head. "That I would have remembered. T?"
"Indeed." The big Jaffa inclined his head and glared at the young woman who had referred to him as some kind of cake. "You are perfectly safe with us."
For the first time a flicker of doubt showed on Dawn's face. "Not demons?" The three men all soberly shook their heads and Dawn chewed thoughtfully on her lip. "Huh." She looked like she was going to add something else but Sam Carter chose that moment to moan and begin to come out of her unconscious state. Dawn turned her head and looked down at the woman. The very pale woman with the protruding bump over her eyes and uneven ridges of skin dominating it. "SHIT!" Dawn threw herself backwards and flip flopped most determinedly away from the recovering Sam. "I knew it! Goddamn vampires."
"Wait!" Daniel tried to grab a flailing foot and narrowly missed getting a heel in his eye. "It's ok..."
"It is NOT ok." Dawn kicked out again. "You're vampires! You lying, scum- sucking..."
"For cryin' out loud!" Jack threw his hands up in the air and stomped across to Dawn's side. "Look, I don't know what the hell you've been sniffing kid but..." He stopped as a low growl came out of the darkness behind him. "What the hell was that?"
Dawn stopped flailing and twisted her head around, desperately trying to see in all directions at once. "Oh God, not funny, not funny at all." She looked up at the man standing over her and kicked him smartly on the shin. "I hope my sister kicks your skanky ass for this. You AND your evil brethren's, asshole."
"O'Neill." Teal'c backed up as another growl came from a completely different direction. "We are surrounded."
"You're surrounded?" Dawn gaped up at the huge black demon and then spat with painful accuracy at his gleaming boot. "Hah! Try being me for a minute, Evil Shaft."
Jack swept the gloom surrounding them with his gun and tried to stay calm. "What's out there? Unas?"
"A who-as?" Dawn rolled over onto her belly and peered gloomily into the darkness. "I can't believe I'm gonna die in Cleveland of all places."
"Nobody's going to die." Daniel stood with zat poised and ready in his hand and hoped he sounded a lot more convincing to everyone else than he did to himself. "Just tell us what we're dealing with and we'll protect you."
"Colonel?" Sam finally managed to open her eyes and stared first at the young girl tied up on the floor with her hands behind her back and then at her three team-mates sweeping the surrounding area with weapons at the ready. "What's going on?" She probed her forehead with unsteady fingers. "What hit me?"
Dawn flopped ungracefully onto her back and sneered. "That would be me, Queen of the Damned."
Sam eyed the young girl warily. "You're a Queen?" She looked suspiciously around herself and then back to Dawn and tried to sense the presence of Naquada in her blood. "Is this some kind of hell planet? You don't feel like a Goa'uld."
Dawn eyed her right back. "Damn, I hit you but good. Me human, you demon." Her face creased in puzzlement. "And what's a Gold? Is that some kind of new vampire?"
"For the last goddamned time, NOT a vampire." Jack's nerves were being strained to breaking point by the female Abbott and Costello routine going on at his feet and he was sorely tempted to kick both said females in their shapely asses, but other concerns were more pressing. "And we're SURROUNDED!"
"We are?" Sam managed to climb to her very wobbly feet and snagged her weapon to point it unsteadily into the darkness around them. "By what?" She jumped as a loud snarl from her CO had her head pounding harder than ever. "What? What did I say?"
"Oh my God." Daniel stumbled back as one of the things snarling and growling in the shadows finally stepped into a patch of moonlight and he got his first good look at the ridged forehead, glowing eyes and elongated fangs. "What the hell is that thing?"
"VAMPIRE!" Dawn started to flip-flop anxiously again and finally realised that the four strangers were not demons. "Get with the programme, doofus!" She yipped as another demon appeared not three feet from her and a blue bolt of light struck it. "No, no, no! STAKE them, not shoot them!"
"What?" Jack felt the beginning of a truly spectacular headache begin as he watched the man he had just hit with a zat blast stagger slightly, shake his head and then keep on coming. "Shit."
"UNTIE ME!" Dawn managed to get up on her knees and thrust her arms awkwardly back in Sam's direction. "NOW!" She flinched as she felt a hasty knife cut through her restraints and slice into her flesh, but ignored the pain and the tickle of blood to jump to her feet and pull a stake from her inside pocket. "Like this, you idiots." She pushed past Jack, pivoted and slammed her stake home and then choked on the burst of dust that signalled the end of the vampire. "'Cept without the gagging and spluttering part."
Jack snorted and fired his zat three times in quick succession to send another snarling vampire winking out of existence with the minimum of fuss and no nasty clouds of dust. "I prefer my way." He glanced at Teal'c as the alien fired his staff weapon point blank into a vampire's face and took the disgusting thing's head off it's shoulders. The resulting poof of dust and swirling air signalled the start of one of the weirder battles SG1 had been involved in, but in an unusually short space of time they found themselves standing victorious in the graveyard and watching Dawn chase after the last demon to tackle it to the floor.
Dawn clenched her fist and clipped the demon hard across the jaw and then pressed her stake hard against the writhing demon's chest. "Okay, fangster, let's have it. Where are you from and where do I find the rest of your nest buddies?"
The demon with the face of a forty something man stilled as he felt the wooden point break his skin and snarled defiantly into Dawn's face. "I will tell you nothing! My master will avenge the destruction of his children and the Earth will run red with the blood of the innocent when he is done."
Dawn snorted and blew a strand of hair from her eyes as she pressed harder, peripherally aware of Jack and the others sauntering casually up behind her. "Right. Is this just a generic running of the blood, or are we talking specific time and place here? There's a rising next Tuesday and some kind of sacrifice on the full moon, but we haven't heard anything else."
"The Slayer and her companions will scream with loss and rage as my master wrecks destruction and devastation on the land." The vampire began to struggle once more. "You will know the meaning of true torture and pain when his..." The rest of the diatribe was cut off when Dawn rolled her eyes and slammed the stake home.
"Just your run of the mill vampy doings then? You guys are all gas and wind, I swear." She jumped to her feet and tucked her stake away. "Thank God, I really don't have time to get busy with the averting of apocalypses with the exams coming up." With a wide, charming smile Dawn tossed off a casual salute to the silent foursome watching her and took a step backwards. "Well, it's been real. Thanks for your help and sorry for the whole demon-name-calling thing. Later!" She froze as a by now familiar bolt of blue lightening grounded on the grass at her feet and looked up into Jack's unamused face. "Was there something else?"
"You take one more step, kid, and I'll have you trussed up and on your way to Leavenworth before you can say Dracula." Jack kept his zat pointed at Dawn's chest and ignored the expected protest from Daniel with his usual aplomb. "What the hell was that all about? Who are you?"
Dawn, implanted memories of The Initiative dancing in her head, contrived to look innocent and shake itchy vamp dust out of her hair at the same time. "Just a girl. Innocent college student that..." She shifted guiltily as four pairs of eyes eyed her implacably and coughed uncomfortably. "Um, undercover CIA agent?" The eyes hardened. "Okay. Fine. I'm a ball of mystical energy that used to have to power to open doors between the dimensions but I timed out when I was about fifteen and now I'm studying arcane languages and history because I help run a worldwide network of fated heroes that save the world from the mystical and arcane and I need to get back to school because I have a test in the morning and I'm kinda tired."
Jack pointed his zat. "I'm warning you, kid, spill the beans or the next time you see daylight you'll be thinking the twenty-first century is arcane history."
Daniel frowned slightly as he remembered Dawn's rant in several languages when she had been zatted and subdued and then took a good look at her carefully bland face in the moonlight. "Jack. I think she's serious." He pretended not to see Dawn's twitch and folded his arms across his chest. "You are, aren't you? You're serious?"
"About the test?" Dawn subtly shifted her weight and prepared to make a break for it. "Absolutely." Dammit, usually telling the truth had people so freaked out or hysterical with laughter that they normally forgot the whole vampires-just-tried-to-eat-me thing. She glared at the pretty boy smiling at her comfortingly and restrained herself from calling down one of the more unpleasant curses that Willow had taught her down on his head. Stupid humans falling out of the sky and yelling about Stargates and...and...Whoa, wait a minute.
Dawn frowned and took a step forward, bells going off all over the damn place in her head as she remembered something Willow had sent her in one of the regular information files that the new Watcher's Council sent out. The Stargate wasn't part of a prophecy, it was something else entirely and now she wasn't in fear of her life she could think clearly and put the pieces together. Ever since their run-in with the government back in Sunnydale, they had tried to keep abreast of any government interest in their 'area' and then when they had taken over the Watcher's Council and all their resources Willow had somewhat gleefully hacked her way through top secret databases all over the globe and gathered any and all information that looked interesting. There was one file in particular that had been deemed interesting enough to warrant further investigation and several names had kept cropping up over several years worth of files...Dawn's mouth dropped open. "Holy shit, you're SG1!"
The effect on Jack and his team was electrifying, they all flinched and drew together sharply until it was hard to see where one left off and the other began. "What? No, we're not!" Jack's voice was tinged with shock and panic and he couldn't for the life of him find his usual casual dismissive ness that came in so handy when some crazy inadvertently stumbled across the truth about aliens.
Dawn laughed and pointed a finger at his horrified face. "Yes, you are! You're Colonel Jack O'Neill and that's Samantha Carter and that's Teal."
Daniel choked on a laugh and glanced at his alien friend. "Um, actually it's Teal'c. Teal is a colour that mixes blue and green and..."
"And you would be Daniel Jackson. Doctor Daniel Jackson." Dawn looked wildly impressed and stuck out her hand. "God, Giles and Willow are just gonna freak when I tell them I ran into you. This is so cool."
Sam swayed woozily and clutched at her swollen, throbbing head. "Sir!"
Jack braced his 2IC, glared at Dawn and then at his archaeologist. "Daniel, stop telling her stuff. Kid, stop talking and Teal'c look after Carter, she's kinda heavy." Ignoring the outraged yelp from Sam, he handed off the woman to the alien and then glared at Dawn. Who looked infuriatingly unimpressed and giggled behind her hand. "You want to tell me how the hell you came by that information?" "We've got a witch." Dawn rolled her eyes and all the tension left her body as she smiled in genuine warmth at the four older people. "I gotta tell ya, this is one hell of a relief. It was bad enough when I thought you were demons, but when I realised that you were human and we were moving into scary military territory..." She shuddered. "Been there, blown up that; do NOT want to go there again." Looking like a little girl rather than a young woman in college, Dawn bounced on her toes and clapped her hands. "But you guys are Air Force, and you save the world just like us and this is so cool, 'cos there's no way you're gonna make a demon super-soldier and chip the vampires 'cos you got all those funny little wriggly guys to blow up and you don't care about down here when you're flying about up there." For one wistful moment she stared up at the stars and sighed deeply. "It must be wonderful."
Teal'c inclined his head. "Indeed." He scowled at O'Neill as the other man whapped his shoulder. "It does not seem sensible to continue to deny our identities when the young woman knows who we are, O'Neill."
Dawn sniggered at the furious look on Jack's face and patted his shoulder. "S'ok, if it makes you feel any better, I've been keeping one of the biggest secrets in the world all my life, I'm not gonna tell anyone." She glanced up at the lightening sky and then slightly guiltily at Sam. "Look, it's been a long night and I'm beat. I'm real sorry I clocked Major Carter and if you'll come with me I'll take a look at her head and you can call your CO and arrange to get picked up."
"Ri-ight." Jack rolled his eyes and snorted. "And we should trust you why? For all we know you could be a CIA agent and this is all just some kind of freaky-assed set up." He sniffed the air pointedly. "This has got Kinsey's stink all over it."
Dawn snorted back at him. "That NID guy? Hardly. He got some clever ideas about using some of my friends for some kind of rogue operation and tried to snatch a couple of 'em a few weeks back." She hooked her thumbs into her waistband and looked unbearably smug. "Once he'd been pulled off the wall Faith stapled him to and his weasly little buddies had stopped crying because we let Spike play with them he kinda went underground." She shrugged. "Last we heard he was somewhere near Sydney, Australia and still accelerating."
Jack blinked. "Someone stapled Kinsey to a wall? With real staples?" He stared with pleading eyes as Dawn grinned and nodded. "Just tell me you have pictures."
"Nope." Dawn's grin widened at the groans of disappointment. "Better. We taped it, down to every last scream. I got a copy back in my room, wanna come see?"
Jack holstered his zat, rubbed his hands together and promptly forgot all his concerns about the strange young girl, cemeteries and exploding snarling things that wanted to bite him. "Kid, throw in popcorn and you got yourself a deal."
Dawn laughed. "Cool. I'm Dawn Summers, pleased to meet you." She turned and began to lead the way out of the graveyard. "So, I guess since I know all about you guys, I should really fill you in on me and the operation I work for." She took a deep breath as Jack and the others mumbled their agreement and began the familiar speech. "In every generation, there is a chosen one..."
The End.
Rating: PG13
Spoilers: Xover with Stargate and set after Season 7 in both BtVS and the SG1 'verses, but nothing actually specific. Disclaimer: Not mine, not a one. Synopsis: I think the title is pretty self-explanatory. A/N: This was going to be a Dawn/Daniel pairing but I just couldn't do it to my beloved Connor. ::shudders:: It was just wrong. Also, I am aware I should be working on Freak but...I have no excuse. Sorry. I'll go get back to that now.
Dawn Summers was having a fairly slow night. She'd done a mini-patrol, gone on a date with an exceptionally good-looking but utterly boring graduate student, dropped him back at his digs, gone on another patrol and found a couple of vamps snacking on a screaming jock that she vaguely recognised from her college football team. Some pithy comments, two puffs of dust and a gibbering full-back later it had been all over and she had been prepared to head home to her own dorms to bed.
Whistling under her breath she sauntered through the well-maintained cemetery in downtown Cleveland, absently twirling a stake as she went, and mused idly about calling her best demon slayin' buddy Connor Angel that weekend to scare up a little action on the slaying front in LA for a change of pace over mid-term break.
Then a honkin' great blue vortex had appeared overhead out of nowhere and four figures had been spit out of it to land at her feet. Dawn paused in mid-step with one foot held off the ground and blinked as one of the figures raised its head and stared blearily at her. "Uh-oh." Even in the weak light afforded by the moon filtering through the heavy clouds in the sky she could see the symbol etched in gold on its forehead. "Demon!"
Never one to waste an opportunity, Dawn kicked out with the foot that was already raised and planted her boot firmly in the middle of the gold thingy with a muted clang. The figure grunted with the force of the blow and the overly large head snapped back before thumping forward onto the damp grass. "Hey!" Another figure rolled woozily onto all fours and then reared up clutching what looked like a machine gun. "Hold it right there!"
Dawn was already in motion when she saw the weapon rising in the dim light of the cemetery and hurled herself behind a handy, and very overblown and tasteless, mausoleum. "That's not fair!" Thoroughly freaked by the sudden increase in the excitement levels of the night, Dawn was also understandably baffled by demons that now came falling out of the sky clutching automatic weapons. "What happened to ritual swords and satanically blessed daggers?" She crouched low and took advantage of the clouds drifting across the face of the moon to create a sudden dip in visibility to run towards another large memorial twenty feet away. "Giles is right, no one has any standards anymore!"
"Stop or I'll shoot!" Colonel Jack O'Neill sighted his weapon as he caught a glimpse of a neon stripe on a fast moving trainer and made out the slight figure running away from him. "Stop...Dammit, Daniel!"
Daniel Jackson glared at Jack as he knocked the older man's weapon up so the barrel pointed towards the sky. "It's a kid, Jack." He stood on shaky legs and absently brushed off his BDU's. "It's ok, we won't hurt you. You can come out."
"It kicked Teal'c!" Jack scowled at his favourite pain in the ass as he got to his own feet and then helped his alien teammate up from the floor. "You ok, buddy?"
"I am uninjured, O'Neill." The Jaffa inclined his head and stooped to pick up his staff weapon before looking around him with keen eyes. "It would appear we are not at our intended destination."
"Aww, crap." Jack looked around himself properly for the first time and took in the fact that once again the Stargate had decided their lives weren't exciting enough already and needed a little juicing up. "Not again. Carter!"
Major Samantha Carter sat up with a jerk and gingerly probed her throbbing head to find her fingers encountered an all too familiar stickiness. "Here, sir. Ow." She pulled a contrite face as her three friends all looked at her with concern and shrugged. "Wouldn't be a mission without one of us getting injured, right?"
Daniel and Teal'c both took a step towards her and then shouted with surprise as a fairly large rock flew between them and smacked Sam square between the eyes. The woman's eyes glazed with shock before her torso went limp and she slumped unconscious to the ground. "Yes!" The faint yelp of triumph had all three men whirling and levelling their weapons instinctively in the direction the rock had come from and then cursing as another one came from a totally different direction and glanced off Jack's shoulder.
"Cut it out!" Jack dropped to one knee and swept his gun from side to side. "We don't want a fight."
"That's what they all say, demon guy." Dawn waited for the barrel of the gun to move away from her again and then let fly with another of her impromptu weapons before rolling and scrambling to safety behind a low gravestone as a low grunt told her she'd hit a target. "And too bad for you, 'cos you're gonna get one!"
Teal'c raised a hand to his cheek and stared at the blood that stained his fingertips thanks to the gash Dawn's rock had opened. "O'Neill, I do not believe that diplomatic discussion will aid us here." The alien ducked as another well-placed rock whistled overhead. "I believe we would be well served in neutralising our enemy."
"No!" Daniel looked up from where he was anxiously checking the unconscious Sam over. "It's just a kid. A little girl." He yelped as another rock hurtled out of nowhere and clipped him hard on the butt. "She's probably terrified."
"Oh yeah, she's a screamer, alright." Jack shook his head in disgust and scrambled to Daniel's side. "She ok?" He glanced anxiously down at Sam and winced as the moon came out from behind the clouds once more and showed the huge knot forming on her normally smooth head. "That doesn't look good." He frowned as something that was niggling at the back of his mind suddenly crystallised. "Did that kid call us demons?"
"Yeah." Daniel absently brushed a lock of hair back from Sam's bloody brow and peered into the gloom of the cemetery they'd somehow found themselves in, instead of the jungle-like terrain they had been expecting thanks to the MALP they had sent through the Stargate before them. "I thought that was kinda weird too."
Both men jumped as the familiar sound of a staff blast ripped through the night and turned to see Teal'c lowering his weapon from where he had just blasted another rock out of the sky. A plaintive voice cut through the silence of the graveyard and echoed Jack's earlier observations with heartfelt sincerity. "Oh crap."
Dawn was rapidly coming to the conclusion it was just not her night. She was now entering the second hour of playing 'hide-the-mystical-key-from-the- gun-toting-demons' and to top everything off, the cemetery she was currently sneaking round came enclosed in an eight-foot smooth stone wall and with one way in and one way out. Which was great when you were with a Slayer and other bad-ass warriors of the Light and you were on the winning end of a smack down on some evil badness, but totally sucked when you were on your own with no hope of back-up and the exit was being guarded by a big, shiny demon with an equally big fire shooting stick.
"Look, kid, we're not demons! Just come out and stop throwing things at us and we can explain everything." Dawn rolled her eyes as the annoyed voice reached her and she crouched down in a tight ball as O'Neill edged cautiously past her current hiding place behind slim tree and headed away from her once more. "We won't hurt you."
Dawn muffled her snort of disbelief and crawled stealthily away from the demon and towards the rear wall of the cemetery. "Yeah, that's what they always say. Right before they cut out your heart and strangle you with your own entrails." She ducked as the other large figure that had been stalking her for the past hour suddenly jumped around the side of a stone monument and waved the thing it held in it's hands slowly around the immediate vicinity before moving silently towards her with a measured tread.
"I know you're here." Daniel deliberately kept his voice low and soft as he stepped forwards. "There's no need to be scared, we won't hurt you. We're human, Tau'ri; just talk to us for a few minutes and we'll....Aaargh!" Daniel's leg went from under him as another sizeable rock bounced off his kneecap with a loud crack. He swore foully in Abydonian as a slender figure rocketed up off the ground not three feet from where he had fallen and tried to leap his prone body and make for the relative safety of the other side of the graveyard. Instincts honed by seven years in close proximity to Jack O'Neill and his appalling penchant for saying exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time had Daniel grabbing wildly for an airborne ankle and yanking hard to bring it's owner crashing gracelessly to the ground with a pained grunt.
Not giving his captive time to draw breath, Daniel ignored his throbbing leg and rolled on top of the stunned body to grab Dawn's wrists in his hands and press them to the cool grass as he scrambled to his knees and knelt over her. He tightened his grip on the slender arms as Dawn sucked in a huge lungful of air, beginning to buck furiously beneath him and yell incoherently with rage. "Calm down, I'm not going to hurt you. Calm down!" Dawn remained understandably unconvinced and writhed desperately to try and free herself from her vulnerable position. Daniel leaned forward to try and speak directly into her ear as Dawn continued to scream with fury and then he saw stars as her head came up and smacked hard against the bridge of his nose.
Dawn nearly sobbed with relief as she heard the pained expulsion of air as her skull cracked into her captor's face, she wasted no time in taking advantage of the slackening of the hands pinning her to the floor and tugged her wrists free to push upwards with all her strength and push the body covering hers up and over to the ground beside her. She got her legs under her and shot forwards to sprint for cover as her opponent made another wild grab and then a bolt of blue energy came out of nowhere and took her to the ground once more.
Dawn lay stunned for the second time in under a minute and was helpless to do anything but stare at the ground as her hands were tugged behind her back and restrained with brisk competence. Jack stood up as he finished tying off the plastic restraints and glared at Daniel as he staggered to his feet, clutching his face. "Next time, just zat 'em and worry about playing nice later Daniel."
Teal'c, Jack and Daniel stood in a bemused row and watched the young girl they had captured struggle against the restraints on her wrists and swear most impressively in several different languages as she tried to free herself. Daniel's eyebrows shot up as he caught a particularly vicious curse in Sumerian and then his mouth dropped open as the low, angry voice switched to Ancient Hebrew and cast some distinctly colourful aspersions on his team's collective lineage. "I don't think that's physically possible."
Dawn paused in her struggles and tried to blow a lock of hair out of her angry eyes. "Bite me." She scowled as she remembered where she was and that in all likelihood the biting part of the evening would be rolling around shortly. "Asswipe."
"You know, that's just isn't nice." Jack rocked back on his heels and cocked his head to one side as the kid went back to straining against her bonds. "And pretty dumb seeing as you're the one tied up and all."
"The female does not appear to be worried by her circumstances, O'Neill." Teal'c raised an eyebrow. "Merely extremely annoyed."
"Yeah." Jack looked curiously down at the slender girl now muttering to herself in a language, which seemed to be nothing more than guttural grunts and growls. "Don't you guys think that's kinda strange?"
"Please, stop that, you're going to hurt yourself." Daniel crouched down and reached out a hand towards Dawn, gaining nothing more than a wild kick and yet another fierce curse as she overbalanced with the motion and fell on her side. "We really aren't going to hurt you."
Dawn lay panting on the floor. "So you always go around shooting people and tying them up in graveyards before buying them a coffee and a hot dinner, huh?" She scowled. "Cut to the chase already and get it over with, ok?"
"Um, get what over with?" Daniel cocked his head and smiled reassuringly. "I don't know what you're expecting us to do."
"Just kill me already!" Dawn glowered and hoped that the nerves that were twisting her stomach weren't showing in her face and voice. "But you'd better be prepared for a major ass-kicking when my sister comes looking for you."
Daniel glanced over his shoulder at Jack and Teal'c and then looked earnestly back at Dawn. "We're not going to kill you."
"And we wouldn't have shot you if you hadn't thrown all those rocks at us and beat up Daniel!" Completely outraged, Jack shook a finger at Dawn. "And the name calling was completely uncalled for."
"Oh, I'm sorry." Dawn blew fruitlessly at the hair that was falling into her eyes and then tried to bite Daniel as he took his life into his own hands and reached out to do it for her. "Back off, pal." She watched as Daniel paused and then obeyed her and then looked back at Jack. "I just find it a little unnerving when demons fall from the sky with no warnings whatsoever and then try and shoot me!" She wriggled furiously until she managed to get upright again and shook her hair out of her face. "You guys are so dead when my sister gets here."
"For cryin' out loud!" Jack threw up his hands in exasperation. "We're not demons, we're human. And we didn't fall outta the sky, we came out of the Stargate." He put his hands on his hips and glared accusingly at Dawn. "Which, by the way, has vanished. Know anything about that?"
"He's not human." Stargate, Stargate; where had she heard that term before? Maybe to do with the prophecy they'd stopped last month? Dawn shook her head and then jerked it towards Teal'c. "And you can't tell me that he is."
Jack and Daniel looked guiltily at Teal'c, then at each other and then back at Dawn. Jack glared again. "Don't change the subject!"
"I am Jaffa." Teal'c planted his staff weapon on the floor and stared imperiously down his nose at Dawn. She glowered up at him in confusion and then her face cleared, now that word she knew.
"I thought they were a kind of cake?" Blue eyes skipped from face to face as the three men all looked at each other in confusion. "Y'know, those little English things. They're kinda soft and have the orange jelly inside and the chocolate on top." Dawn sniffed disparagingly. "You could have come up with a better cover story than pretending to be some kind of pastry, big guy."
Daniel opened his mouth and then closed it again as he realised he had no idea what the strange young girl was talking about. He placed a warning hand on Jack's arm as the older man took a deep breath to start yelling his annoyance at the top of his voice and smiled down at the slender brunette on the floor. "This is going to sound a little strange, but would you mind telling us where we are?"
Dawn looked at him steadily for a few moments and then hissed out a long breath of irritation. "You're in a cemetery, genius. Dead people, ritual sacrifices..." Her eyes narrowed accusingly. "Not that I need to tell you guys anything about that of course."
Daniel ignored the jibe and tried the gentle smile again. "I meant which cemetery in particular, where is it located?"
Dawn eyed him silently and shifted slightly on the cold, damp floor. "You don't know?" She stared from face to impassive face and then chewed on her bottom lip for a moment before reaching a decision. "Cleveland. You're in America."
Jack jerked as though he'd been zatted in the ass. "What?"
"America? Y'know, land of the free, home of the brave?" Dawn scowled and twisted against her restraints. "Well, I say free, what I mean is land of the tied-up-and-held-prisoner-in-deserted-graveyards-at-past-two-in-the- morning, but you get my drift."
"Hey, who was smacking who over the head with big freakin' rocks, kid?" Jack was dividing his time between glaring at Dawn and then at the stars over head. "Well I'll be damned. It's Earth."
Teal'c and Daniel both joined him in staring up at the sky and Dawn rolled her eyes and started rubbing her restrained wrists against the rough stone base of the mausoleum she was leaning against. "Duh." She stifled a yelp as the stone bit into her soft skin and then resolutely kept trying to scrape the plastic away. "Goddamn sacred duties and genetic dispositions to playing hero." She scraped harder as she got herself more worked up. "I coulda left the whole save the world gig to Buffy, but oh no, I have to go out at stupid times of the morning and kept captured by freakin' demons that haven't even got the brains to know where their friggin' mystical portals are gonna spit them out." She yelped again as she felt her skin graze. "And what the hell happened to good old fashioned ropes or manacles? At least I can pick the locks on some chains."
Daniel felt his lips twitch in mirth at the disgruntled monologue coming from the direction of his feet and crouched down again, a prudent distance from Dawn. "Look, there's been a terrible misunderstanding."
"Ri-ight." Dawn stopped trying to free herself and glared at the demon. She glared harder as the clouds parted overhead and the guy was highlighted in a very flattering shaft of white light. It didn't matter how hot the demon was, the important thing to remember was still DEMON. No way was she going down the same road as her sister in that respect. "So you aren't going to suck me dry of blood and leave my lifeless husk of a body here to be found by an unsuspecting groundskeeper in the morning?"
Daniel blinked. "Um, no?" He looked up and over his shoulder at Jack and Teal'c. "That wasn't on the mission statement was it?"
Jack shook his head. "That I would have remembered. T?"
"Indeed." The big Jaffa inclined his head and glared at the young woman who had referred to him as some kind of cake. "You are perfectly safe with us."
For the first time a flicker of doubt showed on Dawn's face. "Not demons?" The three men all soberly shook their heads and Dawn chewed thoughtfully on her lip. "Huh." She looked like she was going to add something else but Sam Carter chose that moment to moan and begin to come out of her unconscious state. Dawn turned her head and looked down at the woman. The very pale woman with the protruding bump over her eyes and uneven ridges of skin dominating it. "SHIT!" Dawn threw herself backwards and flip flopped most determinedly away from the recovering Sam. "I knew it! Goddamn vampires."
"Wait!" Daniel tried to grab a flailing foot and narrowly missed getting a heel in his eye. "It's ok..."
"It is NOT ok." Dawn kicked out again. "You're vampires! You lying, scum- sucking..."
"For cryin' out loud!" Jack threw his hands up in the air and stomped across to Dawn's side. "Look, I don't know what the hell you've been sniffing kid but..." He stopped as a low growl came out of the darkness behind him. "What the hell was that?"
Dawn stopped flailing and twisted her head around, desperately trying to see in all directions at once. "Oh God, not funny, not funny at all." She looked up at the man standing over her and kicked him smartly on the shin. "I hope my sister kicks your skanky ass for this. You AND your evil brethren's, asshole."
"O'Neill." Teal'c backed up as another growl came from a completely different direction. "We are surrounded."
"You're surrounded?" Dawn gaped up at the huge black demon and then spat with painful accuracy at his gleaming boot. "Hah! Try being me for a minute, Evil Shaft."
Jack swept the gloom surrounding them with his gun and tried to stay calm. "What's out there? Unas?"
"A who-as?" Dawn rolled over onto her belly and peered gloomily into the darkness. "I can't believe I'm gonna die in Cleveland of all places."
"Nobody's going to die." Daniel stood with zat poised and ready in his hand and hoped he sounded a lot more convincing to everyone else than he did to himself. "Just tell us what we're dealing with and we'll protect you."
"Colonel?" Sam finally managed to open her eyes and stared first at the young girl tied up on the floor with her hands behind her back and then at her three team-mates sweeping the surrounding area with weapons at the ready. "What's going on?" She probed her forehead with unsteady fingers. "What hit me?"
Dawn flopped ungracefully onto her back and sneered. "That would be me, Queen of the Damned."
Sam eyed the young girl warily. "You're a Queen?" She looked suspiciously around herself and then back to Dawn and tried to sense the presence of Naquada in her blood. "Is this some kind of hell planet? You don't feel like a Goa'uld."
Dawn eyed her right back. "Damn, I hit you but good. Me human, you demon." Her face creased in puzzlement. "And what's a Gold? Is that some kind of new vampire?"
"For the last goddamned time, NOT a vampire." Jack's nerves were being strained to breaking point by the female Abbott and Costello routine going on at his feet and he was sorely tempted to kick both said females in their shapely asses, but other concerns were more pressing. "And we're SURROUNDED!"
"We are?" Sam managed to climb to her very wobbly feet and snagged her weapon to point it unsteadily into the darkness around them. "By what?" She jumped as a loud snarl from her CO had her head pounding harder than ever. "What? What did I say?"
"Oh my God." Daniel stumbled back as one of the things snarling and growling in the shadows finally stepped into a patch of moonlight and he got his first good look at the ridged forehead, glowing eyes and elongated fangs. "What the hell is that thing?"
"VAMPIRE!" Dawn started to flip-flop anxiously again and finally realised that the four strangers were not demons. "Get with the programme, doofus!" She yipped as another demon appeared not three feet from her and a blue bolt of light struck it. "No, no, no! STAKE them, not shoot them!"
"What?" Jack felt the beginning of a truly spectacular headache begin as he watched the man he had just hit with a zat blast stagger slightly, shake his head and then keep on coming. "Shit."
"UNTIE ME!" Dawn managed to get up on her knees and thrust her arms awkwardly back in Sam's direction. "NOW!" She flinched as she felt a hasty knife cut through her restraints and slice into her flesh, but ignored the pain and the tickle of blood to jump to her feet and pull a stake from her inside pocket. "Like this, you idiots." She pushed past Jack, pivoted and slammed her stake home and then choked on the burst of dust that signalled the end of the vampire. "'Cept without the gagging and spluttering part."
Jack snorted and fired his zat three times in quick succession to send another snarling vampire winking out of existence with the minimum of fuss and no nasty clouds of dust. "I prefer my way." He glanced at Teal'c as the alien fired his staff weapon point blank into a vampire's face and took the disgusting thing's head off it's shoulders. The resulting poof of dust and swirling air signalled the start of one of the weirder battles SG1 had been involved in, but in an unusually short space of time they found themselves standing victorious in the graveyard and watching Dawn chase after the last demon to tackle it to the floor.
Dawn clenched her fist and clipped the demon hard across the jaw and then pressed her stake hard against the writhing demon's chest. "Okay, fangster, let's have it. Where are you from and where do I find the rest of your nest buddies?"
The demon with the face of a forty something man stilled as he felt the wooden point break his skin and snarled defiantly into Dawn's face. "I will tell you nothing! My master will avenge the destruction of his children and the Earth will run red with the blood of the innocent when he is done."
Dawn snorted and blew a strand of hair from her eyes as she pressed harder, peripherally aware of Jack and the others sauntering casually up behind her. "Right. Is this just a generic running of the blood, or are we talking specific time and place here? There's a rising next Tuesday and some kind of sacrifice on the full moon, but we haven't heard anything else."
"The Slayer and her companions will scream with loss and rage as my master wrecks destruction and devastation on the land." The vampire began to struggle once more. "You will know the meaning of true torture and pain when his..." The rest of the diatribe was cut off when Dawn rolled her eyes and slammed the stake home.
"Just your run of the mill vampy doings then? You guys are all gas and wind, I swear." She jumped to her feet and tucked her stake away. "Thank God, I really don't have time to get busy with the averting of apocalypses with the exams coming up." With a wide, charming smile Dawn tossed off a casual salute to the silent foursome watching her and took a step backwards. "Well, it's been real. Thanks for your help and sorry for the whole demon-name-calling thing. Later!" She froze as a by now familiar bolt of blue lightening grounded on the grass at her feet and looked up into Jack's unamused face. "Was there something else?"
"You take one more step, kid, and I'll have you trussed up and on your way to Leavenworth before you can say Dracula." Jack kept his zat pointed at Dawn's chest and ignored the expected protest from Daniel with his usual aplomb. "What the hell was that all about? Who are you?"
Dawn, implanted memories of The Initiative dancing in her head, contrived to look innocent and shake itchy vamp dust out of her hair at the same time. "Just a girl. Innocent college student that..." She shifted guiltily as four pairs of eyes eyed her implacably and coughed uncomfortably. "Um, undercover CIA agent?" The eyes hardened. "Okay. Fine. I'm a ball of mystical energy that used to have to power to open doors between the dimensions but I timed out when I was about fifteen and now I'm studying arcane languages and history because I help run a worldwide network of fated heroes that save the world from the mystical and arcane and I need to get back to school because I have a test in the morning and I'm kinda tired."
Jack pointed his zat. "I'm warning you, kid, spill the beans or the next time you see daylight you'll be thinking the twenty-first century is arcane history."
Daniel frowned slightly as he remembered Dawn's rant in several languages when she had been zatted and subdued and then took a good look at her carefully bland face in the moonlight. "Jack. I think she's serious." He pretended not to see Dawn's twitch and folded his arms across his chest. "You are, aren't you? You're serious?"
"About the test?" Dawn subtly shifted her weight and prepared to make a break for it. "Absolutely." Dammit, usually telling the truth had people so freaked out or hysterical with laughter that they normally forgot the whole vampires-just-tried-to-eat-me thing. She glared at the pretty boy smiling at her comfortingly and restrained herself from calling down one of the more unpleasant curses that Willow had taught her down on his head. Stupid humans falling out of the sky and yelling about Stargates and...and...Whoa, wait a minute.
Dawn frowned and took a step forward, bells going off all over the damn place in her head as she remembered something Willow had sent her in one of the regular information files that the new Watcher's Council sent out. The Stargate wasn't part of a prophecy, it was something else entirely and now she wasn't in fear of her life she could think clearly and put the pieces together. Ever since their run-in with the government back in Sunnydale, they had tried to keep abreast of any government interest in their 'area' and then when they had taken over the Watcher's Council and all their resources Willow had somewhat gleefully hacked her way through top secret databases all over the globe and gathered any and all information that looked interesting. There was one file in particular that had been deemed interesting enough to warrant further investigation and several names had kept cropping up over several years worth of files...Dawn's mouth dropped open. "Holy shit, you're SG1!"
The effect on Jack and his team was electrifying, they all flinched and drew together sharply until it was hard to see where one left off and the other began. "What? No, we're not!" Jack's voice was tinged with shock and panic and he couldn't for the life of him find his usual casual dismissive ness that came in so handy when some crazy inadvertently stumbled across the truth about aliens.
Dawn laughed and pointed a finger at his horrified face. "Yes, you are! You're Colonel Jack O'Neill and that's Samantha Carter and that's Teal."
Daniel choked on a laugh and glanced at his alien friend. "Um, actually it's Teal'c. Teal is a colour that mixes blue and green and..."
"And you would be Daniel Jackson. Doctor Daniel Jackson." Dawn looked wildly impressed and stuck out her hand. "God, Giles and Willow are just gonna freak when I tell them I ran into you. This is so cool."
Sam swayed woozily and clutched at her swollen, throbbing head. "Sir!"
Jack braced his 2IC, glared at Dawn and then at his archaeologist. "Daniel, stop telling her stuff. Kid, stop talking and Teal'c look after Carter, she's kinda heavy." Ignoring the outraged yelp from Sam, he handed off the woman to the alien and then glared at Dawn. Who looked infuriatingly unimpressed and giggled behind her hand. "You want to tell me how the hell you came by that information?" "We've got a witch." Dawn rolled her eyes and all the tension left her body as she smiled in genuine warmth at the four older people. "I gotta tell ya, this is one hell of a relief. It was bad enough when I thought you were demons, but when I realised that you were human and we were moving into scary military territory..." She shuddered. "Been there, blown up that; do NOT want to go there again." Looking like a little girl rather than a young woman in college, Dawn bounced on her toes and clapped her hands. "But you guys are Air Force, and you save the world just like us and this is so cool, 'cos there's no way you're gonna make a demon super-soldier and chip the vampires 'cos you got all those funny little wriggly guys to blow up and you don't care about down here when you're flying about up there." For one wistful moment she stared up at the stars and sighed deeply. "It must be wonderful."
Teal'c inclined his head. "Indeed." He scowled at O'Neill as the other man whapped his shoulder. "It does not seem sensible to continue to deny our identities when the young woman knows who we are, O'Neill."
Dawn sniggered at the furious look on Jack's face and patted his shoulder. "S'ok, if it makes you feel any better, I've been keeping one of the biggest secrets in the world all my life, I'm not gonna tell anyone." She glanced up at the lightening sky and then slightly guiltily at Sam. "Look, it's been a long night and I'm beat. I'm real sorry I clocked Major Carter and if you'll come with me I'll take a look at her head and you can call your CO and arrange to get picked up."
"Ri-ight." Jack rolled his eyes and snorted. "And we should trust you why? For all we know you could be a CIA agent and this is all just some kind of freaky-assed set up." He sniffed the air pointedly. "This has got Kinsey's stink all over it."
Dawn snorted back at him. "That NID guy? Hardly. He got some clever ideas about using some of my friends for some kind of rogue operation and tried to snatch a couple of 'em a few weeks back." She hooked her thumbs into her waistband and looked unbearably smug. "Once he'd been pulled off the wall Faith stapled him to and his weasly little buddies had stopped crying because we let Spike play with them he kinda went underground." She shrugged. "Last we heard he was somewhere near Sydney, Australia and still accelerating."
Jack blinked. "Someone stapled Kinsey to a wall? With real staples?" He stared with pleading eyes as Dawn grinned and nodded. "Just tell me you have pictures."
"Nope." Dawn's grin widened at the groans of disappointment. "Better. We taped it, down to every last scream. I got a copy back in my room, wanna come see?"
Jack holstered his zat, rubbed his hands together and promptly forgot all his concerns about the strange young girl, cemeteries and exploding snarling things that wanted to bite him. "Kid, throw in popcorn and you got yourself a deal."
Dawn laughed. "Cool. I'm Dawn Summers, pleased to meet you." She turned and began to lead the way out of the graveyard. "So, I guess since I know all about you guys, I should really fill you in on me and the operation I work for." She took a deep breath as Jack and the others mumbled their agreement and began the familiar speech. "In every generation, there is a chosen one..."
The End.