Chapter Eighteen

"Slayer, were you successful?” Thor asked after he had beamed them back from the surface.

“Bad guys are dust, literally. And I have a name,” she said, walking over to his console.

Thor blinked his large black eyes at her. “Very well, Buffy.”

“See, that wasn’t so hard,” she said with a grin. “There’s more going on down there than just the vamps. That temple is sitting on top of a hellmouth, or the start of one, or something nasty. Either way, you’ve got to get those villages away from there. Even if there aren’t any demons around to open it, it’ll affect the people in a not so nice way.”

“I cannot.”

“What do you mean you can’t?”

“In accordance with the treaty we cannot affect natural events,” Thor calmly replied.

“But if we arranged for the relocation?” Jack asked, coming over to stand next to her.

“That would not be a violation.”

“Give the coordinates to Carter and we’ll take care of it,” Jack said.

“Thanks,” Buffy said, giving him a grateful smile.

“Come on, let’s get some sleep,” Jack said, leading her off of the bridge. He kept a light touch on the small of her back as they made their way to the large room they were all staying in.

She could see Simon sitting off by himself. She looked up at Jack and he gave her a small nod and headed over to Daniel.

Buffy sat next to her teammate and leaned against him. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For helping. For saving me.”

Simon slid his arm around her shoulder and squeezed her tight. “I was so scared that I was going to miss. Or worse, hit you.”

“But you didn’t,” she said, resting her head on his shoulder.

“No, I didn’t, thank God.”

They sat in silence for several minutes before Jeff came over and sat on the other side of Buffy. He slid his arm behind her and leaned towards her. “Long day,” he said wearily.

Buffy snorted softly. “You could say that. How are you?”

“I’m good. I think I could sleep for a week,” he said with a grin.

She smiled back and patted him on the knee. “Think Hammond will give us that long off?”

“If you pout he might,” Simon said, making all three of them laugh.

“All right, ladies. Playtime is over. Time to hit the sack,” Dave said, smirking down at them. “That means you, too, Summers. Don’t think I haven’t noticed your lack of sleep these past two weeks.”

“I know, I know, you’re not an idiot,” Buffy said with a slight roll of her eyes. She smiled up at him. Her eyes, though they showed how tired she was, sparkled at him. “Help me up.”

He grinned down at her as he held out his hand. To his surprise, she jerked him down to the ground with the others. He moved to protest but saw the sheer joy that lit up Buffy’s face and it died before he even opened his mouth.

“And I thought my team was crazy,” Jack said.

“Ah, you’re just jealous,” Dave said with a grin.

“You only wish,” Jack said. After Buffy’s withdrawn behavior, it was so good to see her smiling and laughing again no matter the cause. “I thought we were going to sleep.”

“I am,” Buffy said, pretending to fall asleep against Dave.

“Summers, you might be a hot little thing, but I don’t think Sharon would approve,” Dave said, his glare not having any effect since he was trying hard not to smile.

“Well, fine,” Buffy said, shoving him away. She leaned against Simon instead.

“Oh no, you think I’m going to risk Marci’s wrath? Especially not with her hormones going crazy,” Simon said with a laugh.

Buffy pouted at him and looked over at Jeff who held up his hands in protest. “Dave may be a great big bear, but he’s a teddy bear compared to Jack.”

“Now what happened to being there for me?” Buffy asked, her eyes alight with the friendly teasing. 

“We are. We’re just not getting between you and Jack,” Simon said.

Letting out an exasperated sigh, Buffy held out her hands to Jack. “Help me up.”

“I don’t think so,” Jack said, taking a step back. “I saw what you did to Dave.”

“I wouldn’t do that to you,” she said, smiling sweetly up at him. “I promise.”

“Don’t fall for it,” Dave warned him. “If you do, she’ll have complete control from here on out.”

“Too late,” Jack admitted, helping Buffy to her feet. “See you clowns in the morning,” he said, as they walked away.

Buffy didn’t protest when Jack lay next to her. She just snuggled down and sighed happily.

“How bad are you hurt?” Jack softly asked. He was lying on his side, propped up on one elbow. His back was to the rest of the room, shielding them from the others.

“I’m fine.”

“I saw part of the fight,” he said, his fingertips lightly trailing the bruise on her jaw. “How badly are you hurt?”

“Just a few bruises, nothing that won’t be healed in a day or so.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” she said, her eyes fluttering shut at the soft touches. “Hammond is going to give us a few days off isn’t he?”

“I’ll make sure of it.”

“Good, ‘cause I’m a little tired,” she said sleepily. “You wanna know something?”

“What?” He asked, running his fingers gently through her hair.

“Even though he had me pinned and was about to bite me, I wasn’t scared.”

“I was,” he said, his voice laced with tension. 

She barely opened her eyes to look up at him. “But I wasn’t. I knew you guys would stop him,” she calmly stated with conviction. Her eyes slid shut again.

He watched the tension leave her body completely. Now that she and her friends were safe, she could rest. The lines of stress and worry eased from her face as she drifted asleep.

Jack shifted to lie flat and Buffy instinctively snuggled up to him. A smile touched his lips as he fell asleep. Things were good again with Buffy safe in his embrace.

XXXXXXXXXX

Buffy stood at a view port watching the stars zip by, or what she guessed were stars. She didn’t really understand the explanation of how hyperspace travel worked. It had been filled with a lot of technical terms and it nearly gave her a headache. All she needed to know was that it was really fast.

Her sleep the night before had been blissfully restful. Her body had moved past the constant watchfulness it had been in the past two weeks to a more relaxed state.

“Thor says we’ll reach Earth in about an hour,” Sam said, coming up to stand next to her.

“Really? That was fast,” Buffy said, turning to look at her.

“In all fairness, I think most of us slept for more than twelve hours.”

“True,” Buffy said, returning her gaze to the ‘stars’.

A long silence fell between them before Sam spoke up again. “Buffy, I want to say I’m sorry about how I’ve acted.”

“You don’t…”

“Yes, I do. I was rude and insensitive…”

“Sam,” Buffy interrupted. “I showed up out of nowhere, your CO trusted me implicitly and I was hiding things. I would have mistrusted me.”

“It was still no excuse.”

“You guys have dangerous lives. I could’ve been controlling him with some alien-y device for all you knew,” Buffy said with a shrug.

“I’m still sorry,” Sam said with a small smile.

“And you’re forgiven,” Buffy said. After a moment, she asked, “Just out of curiosity, what brought this on?”

“Lucas. You. The past two weeks. It’s easy to see why he and the others trusted you. To know that you’ve been doing this since fifteen. You don’t need me giving you a hard time.”

“Oh… thank you,” Buffy said with a slight blush.

“You’re a good person. You deserve better than how I was treating you.”

Buffy just nodded, as her cheeks got darker.

XXXXXXXXXX

Jack held Buffy’s hand as they stood outside of the building that housed the New Watchers’ Council. As a favor, Thor had agreed to beam the two of them there for a quick visit before sending them back to Colorado Springs.

“Are you ready?” He asked.

“As I’ll ever be,” she said. As one, they walked up the steps and entered the large building.

The secretary looked up and blinked in surprise. “Buffy?”

“Hi, Jenn. Are the Scoobs here?” Buffy asked.

“They’re meeting in the conference room. Should I let them know you’re here?”

“No, that’s okay. I want to surprise them,” Buffy said with a smile.

Jenn smiled back. “Go right on up. We’ve missed you.”

“Thanks,” Buffy said, her smile faltering slightly, but she held it together until the elevator doors closed. She hoped no one misunderstood her visit as an actual return. 

“You’ll be fine,” he assured her.

“I know,” she said, giving his hand a tight squeeze.

“They’ll understand,” he said, and she merely nodded.

The doors opened onto a new floor and Buffy guided him through the maze of hallways. From what he could tell, most of the doors were to offices, but others looked like some type of classroom.

“And people complain about the SGC being confusing,” Jack muttered.

Buffy just grinned at him and then stopped at a set of double doors. She seemed to brace herself before opening the doors and walking in with Jack right behind her.

The room fell silent as six faces looked up in shock. Buffy fidgeted nervously as they neither moved nor spoke. Finally a voice said, “Check out the senior hottie.”

“I’m guessing that’s Faith,” Jack said in a stage whisper to Buffy.

The dark haired slayer smoothly got out of her seat and went over to hug her sister slayer. “You look good, B.”

“Thanks,” Buffy said, tightly hugging her back.

“I’m sure your boy-toy has something to do with it,” Faith said with a wink.

“He’s part of it,” Buffy said, knowing it was useless to argue the ‘boy-toy’ point with Faith.

As if Faith had broken the ice, Buffy was suddenly surrounded by her friends. Jack stood back and carefully watched them. If one of them so much as looked at her wrong he was going to take them down. But it didn’t look as though that was going to be an issue.

Once the initial excitement had calmed down, Buffy made a quick round of introductions; although Jack had pretty much guessed who everyone was. Xander was easy to pick out because of the eye patch, Andrew looked just as youthful as Buffy described him, and Willow was obvious as the only other female. The only ones who were iffy were Wesley and Giles.

The younger of the two men was revealed to be Wesley, which just left Giles. He shook his hand and looked him squarely in the eye. He wanted to make sure Giles knew how much he cared for Buffy and how far he was willing to go to protect her. For his part, Giles smiled warmly back.

“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Col. O’Neill,” Giles said in his cultured British voice. “I want to thank you for all of the things you have done to help Buffy over the years, and what you’re continuing to do now.” 

Jack wanted to confront him about the lack of information he had received when Buffy had died, but he knew this was Buffy’s moment. There would be time enough in the future for them to talk about it. All he said was, “It was my pleasure.”

Giles smiled down at the young woman who was his daughter in all but blood. “If we had known that you were stopping by for a visit, we would have been more prepared.”

“I didn’t know it myself until five minutes ago,” she sheepishly confessed.

He frowned. “Then how did you get here so fast?”

“Umm, top secret,” Buffy said with an apologetic look. “I’d love to tell you guys, but I can’t.”

“You’re not going all Initiative on us, are you?” Xander asked, his one eye narrowing.

Jack snorted derisively. “Oh, please. This is under much better management. It’s more of our area of expertise than yours.”

“So, so you know about…” Willow hedged, waving her hands around.

“Vampires and demons? Yeah,” Jack said. “I’ve even killed a few.”

Buffy rolled her eyes. “That may be true now, but in the beginning…” But she was cut off as Jack hastily covered her mouth with his hand, preventing her from speaking.

He let out a nervous chuckle. “Sooo, I’m sure you guys would love to catch up.”

“Is the apocalypse over, B?” Faith asked as Buffy pried Jack’s hand off of her mouth.

“What apocalypse?” Buffy asked, looking over at the dark haired slayer.

“We figured it was something big going down that we didn’t know about and that you were handling it. That’s why you took the scythe.”

“Oh, that. All taken care of, and it’s been put back. Willow, you might want to redo your wards around it,” Buffy said.

“How did you get it out in the first place?” Willow asked. “And by the way, thanks for the ‘helpful’ note.”

“Sorry, I didn’t have a lot of time.”

“What did it say?” Jack asked, looking at Buffy.

“I just explained that it was me borrowing it and I’d bring it back when I was finished with it, but I wasn’t sure when that was going to be.”

“Oh, huh-uh,” Willow protested. “Her exact words were – Need this. Bring back soon. Buffy.”

“That was it?” Jack asked, covering his face with one hand.

“I was in a hurry,” Buffy repeated with a small pout. 

“So who did you slay?” Andrew asked. “We need to keep track for the records.”

“Just a couple of vamps, no biggie,” she said with a shrug. “Didn’t even register on the scale at the time, but could have gotten worse.”

“Where did this occur?” Wesley asked.

“Umm, can’t tell you that part.”

“Top secret,” Jack added.

“I thought you said what you were doing had nothing to do with us,” Xander said suspiciously.

“Okay, this time it did, but normally not,” Jack said in exasperation.

“Oh, do you fight aliens?” Andrew asked excitedly.

Buffy groaned and slapped her forehead with the palm of her hand. “I told you he’d say that.”

“Nah, kid. We don’t get to do anything as cool as that,” Jack said with a cocky grin. 

She was barely able to hide her grin, and then she blushed as her stomach growled. “Sorry, it’s been a while since I’ve had some real food.”

“There’s a diner just around the corner,” Willow said. “We could go and eat, and maybe hang out a little. If you have the time,” she hastily added.

“Yeah, I’ve got time,” she said, linking her arm through Willow’s.

Jack looked over at Giles who was smiling softly at the two women walking out the door. He knew this was only a small step towards mending the bridges, but at least it had been taken. As much as he hated what these people had done to Buffy, he also knew how important they were to her. He refused to stand in the way of the happy reunion. He already knew that Buffy had made her choice. She was staying with him.