Spoilers: For BTVS - a few for Chosen. None for Stargate.

A/N: This was written for Sita’s birthday. Happy birthday!



A Normal Life

Buffy frowned as she walked into her dark house. It was late, but her boyfriend Daniel was usually still up reading some old dusty book. There were times when he spent several days away from home because of work, but he usually gave warnings. As far as she knew, he should have been home.

She had no clue what her archaeologist boyfriend did for the Air Force. When they started dating over a year ago, she had set Willow and her hacking skills on the problem. The redhead said his file was so wrapped up in red tape that she couldn’t break it. All she could discern was that it wasn’t dangerous like the Initiative had been.

His job wasn’t entirely safe, though. He occasionally came home with cuts and scrapes and she had seen scars that marred his body. But his demeanor and Willow’s few findings were assurance enough for her, so she respected his orders to keep his job hush-hush, and she stopped trying to pry.

After Sunnydale had collapse, the Scoobies spent the next year gathering and training slayers and watchers. Once the new council was firmly in place and things were running smoothly, she had felt the need to break out on her own. She felt claustrophobic with so many slayers and watchers about. As the oldest slayer, she felt it was her right to step back and let the younger slayers carry the brunt of the burden, but she didn’t want to be completely out of the fight.

Buffy voiced her desire to the others and they came up with a solution. Dawn was ready for college and the others had settled into their own niches in the new Council therefore they weren’t surprised that she was ready to move on. They transferred her to a smaller hellmouth in Colorado Springs and set her up as a counselor in the local high school. She was able to help the slayers who were already attending school there and not raise suspicions. She was not in charge, but worked closely with the watchers and slayers. This way she could help, but still have a life of her own.

She had been living there for a month when she met Daniel at the local coffee shop. After several clandestine meetings, he sheepishly admitted his caffeine addiction to her. Over a month, they exchanged snippets of their lives while they waited in line every morning until he finally asked her out.

Their ensuing relationship felt so right and easy that the exchanging of I love yous happened before they knew it. Six months later, they moved in together. They figured it would be cheaper since they rarely spent nights alone. Granted, his job would take him away for several days a couple of times a month, and she would occasionally get called to Cleveland for a major apocalypse or Council meetings, or her research sessions with the local watchers would stretch far into the night. With these minor occurrences aside, they lived a blissfully normal life.

Which meant something was going to go wrong. Her life was going too well, she was too happy. She had become too used to the shambles that her life normally was, and her current lifestyle was making her paranoid.

She checked both the answering machine and the fridge door, but there was no message detailing Daniel’s whereabouts. Fear clawed at her chest as she imagined what could have possibly happened. He could have been in a car wreck. Or worse, a demon with a grudge or looking to make a name for himself kidnapped the boyfriend of the original slayer and was currently torturing him.

Just as she reached for the phone to call one of the watchers, she heard keys jingling at the front door. She ran through the house and flung the door open. Her jaw dropped as she took in the sight before her. “What the hell?”

“Good evening, Buffy Summers. I hope this evening finds you well.”

“It does. Hi Teal’c,” she replied, barely glancing at the large black man who stood behind Daniel.

“Hey honey. Sorry I’m late,” Daniel said with an uneasy smile.

“It’s not so much of you being late upset, but more of the how can a civilian consultant at an Air Force Base get a broken leg upset.”

Jack, who stood beside Daniel, spoke up. “He tripped.”

Her eyes narrowed. “He tripped?”

“Honest, that’s what happened,” Jack said with a shrug.

She looked at Sam, who stood behind Daniel with Teal’c.

“He did trip,” Sam said, with a wry twist of her lips.

“I don’t think I believe you,” Buffy said, crossing her arms, not allowing them entrance into the house. “You’re gonna tell me what the hell is going on. This isn’t the first time you’ve come home injured, Daniel. There have been cuts, scrapes, bruises, burns, and other things that look suspiciously like gunshot wounds. Not to mention the scars. You don’t get that from being an archaeologist. You’re not Indiana Jones! What. Is. Going. On?”

“Can I come in and sit down first?” He asked.

Buffy stepped back and allowed him entrance. She didn’t offer to help as he hobbled past on crutches. She was a little too upset to be nice.

“Come on in, guys,” Daniel said.

“No. They are not needed for this discussion,” she argued.

“Umm, I’m afraid they are,” he said as he slowly made his way to the couch in the living room.

“You sure you want to do this, Daniel?” Jack asked, eyeing his friend.

“Before things go further, she has a right to know.”

“Damn skippy,” Buffy said as she shut the door and sat in one of the two armchairs in the room.

Jack sat in the other one, while Sam and Teal’c joined Daniel on the couch. He looked apologetically over at Buffy. “Believe me, I was planning on telling you tonight before this even occurred. This just kind of got out of hand.”

“Whatever, just spill the beans,” she said impatiently.

He took a deep breath and stared down at his clasped hands. “About ten years ago I was approached by a Dr. Catherine Langford to do some translating.”

“Is this before or after you dropped out of sight from the archaeology world?” Buffy asked.

Daniel looked up at her in surprise. “You know about that?”

“I have connections. Apparently not strong enough to know exactly what you do in that mountain, but they’re pretty thorough.”

Jack moved to speak, but Daniel held up a hand to stop him. “One things at a time, Jack.” The older man nodded and settled back to allow his friend to tell his story.

“I came to Cheyenne Mountain to translate some Egyptian hieroglyphs. It was fairly easy, but there was one thing that had me stumped. It was seven symbols that I had never seen before. It took me a while to figure out that they represented points in space and they formed an address to be used on something called the Chaapa’ai.”

Buffy’s brain clicked on. She recognized the word from one of the watcher’s meetings several months back. Willow said it was some sort of mystical artifact. It was very old and very dangerous. There was also some other weird word attached to it - ghoul... goal... gold... something. She turned her attention back to Daniel.

“The Chaapa’ai, or was we call it, the stargate, is a large ring that the Ancients built for interstellular travel. They placed stargates on hundreds of different planets. The gates act as focal ends of a wormhole to allow people to travel almost instantaneously across the galaxy.”

She stared at him, knowing that there was more.

“Turns out that we aren’t alone in the universe. There are several good and bad aliens. One of the bad ones is an alien parasitic race called the goa’uld.”

That’s the word, Buffy thought. She wasn’t surprised that the two words were being used in the same discussion. What she was surprised about, was the fact that her boyfriend was the one speaking about them - as if from experience.

“Jack and I were part of the first mission through the stargate to a planet called Abydos. That’s where I met Sha’re.”

“Sha’re was from another planet?” Buffy asked in surprise. She of course knew of Daniel’s late wife, but knew little about who the woman really was.

“A year later she was taken by a goa’uld named Apophis. He placed a goa’uld in her and we eventually were forced to kill her.”

Tears welled up unexpectedly in Buffy’s eyes as she thought of her own experience of killing Angel. “I’m so sorry, Daniel. I know how hard that had to be.”

Forcing himself to concentrate on the story and not his dead wife, he continued. “Right after she had been kidnapped, the Air Force formed Stargate Command - or SGC. That’s where I actually work. I’m a member of the team SG-1, along with Jack, Teal’c, and Sam. I joined at first to find Sha’re and save her, but later I stayed to help prevent the goa’uld from enslaving our race.” He paused for her to respond, but there was nothing. “And... And Teal’c is not from Mozambique, he’s from another planet. He’s a Jaffa, which is a lot like humans, but different.”

The four stared at Buffy expectantly, waiting for her to rail against the impossibility. What they didn’t expect was her actual response. She laughed. She laughed a deep throaty laugh that started in her belly and worked its way out.

“Buffy, I don’t think you understand. This is no laughing matter,” Jack said.

She waved her hands helplessly in the air as she tried to catch her breath.

“I know this is a lot to take in at once, but it is the truth,” Daniel said, a little unnerved by her reaction.

Once her laughter died down to hiccups, she smiled broadly at them. “I believe you. I know that may surprise you, but I believe you.”

SG-1 looked at each other uncertainly. “You believe us, just like that? That everything Daniel said - we use wormholes to travel across the galaxy, we’ve been in space, aliens...” Sam trailed off.

“Yup, every word. Things suddenly make a lot more sense. But why tell me this now?”

Daniel blushed and dropped his gaze back to his hands. “Well I... asked the general to get the clearance so I could tell you...”

“Which brings up another point,” Jack said, cutting him off. “How is it that you, a civilian, have higher clearance levels than we do? We work at a top secret military base, you’re a high school guidance counselor for cryin’ out loud.”

Buffy blinked at them in surprise. “I have top security clearance?”

“Aliens she believes, but not her clearance level,” Jack said in disbelief, rubbing his face with his hand.

“You didn’t know?” Sam asked.

The tiny blonde scrunched up her nose in thought. Realization dawned in her eyes and she giggled. “Oh yeah, that. I almost forgot, it was so long ago.”

“You wanna share with the rest of the class?” Jack asked, sitting forward.

“Well, my freshman year of college there was sort of a ... military problem in Sunnydale and I took care of it. And the president at the time gave me clearance to any top secret project so if something went wrong, I could easily step in and fix it.”

Once again the members of SG-1 found themselves staring at the petite woman in amazement.

“You fixed a military problem?” Jack slowly asked. “And how would you have accomplished this, may I ask?”

“Since we’re in a sharing mood and telling deep dark secrets, why not? I’m the slayer.” They stared uncomprehendingly at her. “Yup, that’s me. One girl in all the world with the gifts to fight the vampires and the demons.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Jack sputtered. “Vampires and demons? They don’t exist.”

“But it’s okay to believe in aliens and space travel,” she said blandly, giving him a sly wink.

Jack opened his mouth to respond but found he had no ready comeback.

“Uh-huh. Except I’m not so much the only one any more. There are hundreds of us all over the world. But I’m the first, well not the first first, but the oldest, longest lasting slayer alive at the moment.”

“Ok, a slayer. You fight vampires and demons,” Jack said slowly. He looked over at Daniel. “Did you have any clue about this?”

Daniel shrugged and thought it over. She had occasionally come home with strange wounds and healed rather quickly. He had come home that evening planning on shocking her with his life story and instead she was shocking him. “Nothing that would have drawn this conclusion,” Daniel answered softly, staring at Buffy.

“And what was this military problem?” Jack asked, turning back to Buffy.

“These Army guys set up a program called the Initiative. They were capturing demons and experimenting on them. My psycho psychology professor pieced demon and human bodies together to make a super soldier. Needless to say, Frankenstein monster got loose and only I could stop him. Pretty much saving the world kind of stuff.”

“So you saved the world once, big deal,” Jack said glibly. “We do it all the time.”

Buffy quirked an eyebrow. “How many times?”

“Uhhh, I don’t know. How many times would you say, Danny?” Jack said with a grin.

“At least six, probably more like eight,” he answered, still trying to take everything in.

She sent Jack a cheeky grin. “Two weeks ago I stopped apocalypse number eleven.”

“I thought you went to a convention in Cleveland,” Daniel said in shock.

“I did, sort of. I was in Cleveland and it was a type of convention. But more of a senior slayers getting together to stop the opening of the largest hellmouth than high school guidance kind. My trips to Cleveland are usually just meetings of the Council board.”

“Council?” Daniel asked.

“Hellmouth?” Jack and Sam asked.

“Senior slayers?” Teal’c asked.

Buffy sighed. “I’m not really explainy girl, I’m usually the tell me how to kill it girl. But I’ll do my best.” She roughed out what the council was, how there were two senior slayers, and what a hellmouth was.

As she talked, a soft smile graced Daniel’s lips. He had been so worried that she’d dismiss him as a crackpot and leave him. Instead she shared her own secret that would have been hard for others to believe. The feeling that everything was falling into the place filled his heart and lightened his spirit. He knew that he was about to do the right thing. He looked over at Jack as she wrapped up her explanation and subtly gestured his head to the door. Jack grinned and nodded.

Jack yawned and stretched. “Well I’m beat. What do you guys say about heading home?”

“But sir, this is remarkable. To think...”

“Carter,” Jack said, holding a hand up in protest. “She can answer all of your questions later, I don’t think she’s going anywhere. I’m sure if you’re really nice she’ll give you her friends’ numbers and you can discuss your egghead stuff then. But I’m sure the two lovebirds have a lot to talk about.”

Sam’s eyes widened. “Of course.” She stood and grabbed her coat.

Teal’c stood as well. “I would be honored if we could spar one day, Buffy Summers.”

“Sure thing. Just answer this for me ‘cause I trust you to tell me the truth. How did Daniel break his leg?”

“It occurred while we were visiting a friend on another planet. We were walking down a corridor and Daniel Jackson turned to say something to our companion. He lost his footing and fell down a flight of stairs.”

“I told you he tripped,” Jack said at her giggle.

“Will you guys get out of here before you embarrass me to death,” Daniel said, his face slightly red.

Buffy stood and walked the three out. When she came back, she sat next to Daniel on the couch and cuddled up to him. He wrapped one of his arms around her and pulled her so close that she was nearly in his lap.

“I can’t believe you fell down the stairs,” she said.

“Neither can I,” he said softly, enjoying the feel of her in his arms.

“So why the need to tell me tonight?” She asked after a few minutes.

“You’re the one who insisted,” he said with a grin.

She lightly slapped him on the knee. “You said that you had planned to tell me tonight anyways. So why tonight?”

Daniel shifted so he could look her straight in the eye. His boyish face was serious. “I wanted you to know everything about me so that there were no secrets between us. You mean a great deal to me and I didn’t want to give you a reason to leave me. I knew that it bothered you that you didn’t know exactly what I did so I asked for permission to tell you.”

Sensing that another serious conversation was about to begin, Buffy sat up. He unwrapped his arm from her waist and ran his hand through his short brown hair.

“I had this planned out a lot better,” he said with a soft chuckle. “But I don’t want to wait a moment longer.”

“For what?”

He squirmed and reached his right hand into his pants pocket. “I can honestly say that I’ve never met anyone like you. You’re beautiful, kind, sexy, more intelligent than you let on and I would normally say that you’d be out of my league. However, you don’t make me feel like I need to be a better man because I’m already the right man for you. You have accepted everything about me - where I work, what I do, that I can lose myself in my studies, what Jack calls my geekness, and my unhealthy addiction to coffee.”

Daniel removed his hand from his pocket and smiled at her. “I love you, Buffy, more than I ever thought was possible. I thought there was no one for me after Sha’re, but you proved me wrong.” He held out his hand that contained a small black box. With a shaking hand, he opened it to reveal a simple diamond solitaire set in a delicate gold band. “Buffy, will you marry me?”

Tears glistened on Buffy’s cheeks as she smiled at him. “When I was called at fifteen I never thought that I’d live to see this day. I had given up hope that I would ever live a ‘normal’ life. And now a wonderful man who fights aliens is offering the opportunity to do just that. How can I say no?”

“That... that is a yes, right?” He asked.

She squealed and threw her arms around him. “Yes! Yes, yes, yes. I can’t believe you’d think for a second that I’d say no!”

His lips found hers and kissed her deeply. As always, she caused a heated passion to rise in him that he never tired of. She pulled back too soon for his taste and he softly growled his displeasure.

“Ring, now,” she said, holding out her left hand. She fairly glowed as he slipped the ring on her finger. As she admired the way it looked on her hand she said, “Oh, sparkly.”

Daniel laughed and pulled her back to him.

~finis~