Curiosity Did Not Kill This Cat

“So I guess you really took the ‘two heads are better than one’ thing to heart, huh?” Buffy swung her scythe, neatly decapitating three of the hydra’s nine heads.

The demon reared back on its hind legs, turquoise tail thrashing. A sickening splurt–scrunch-pop, and the heads were back. With friends.

“Yeah,” said Spike. “Just keep chopping off its heads. It worked so well all those other times.”

Idiot. Getting extra heads was the whole point. Buffy kicked a descending snake-face. Its neck whipped back, tangling into those of its neighbors. She jumped forward to slash its chest, but was deflected by a clawed forepaw.

Buffy ‘oofed’ as she slammed into the wall. “Do me a favor,” she grunted, as she jumped to her feet. “Go find some light at the end of a very long tunnel.”

Spike had been dogging her steps for a week now, ranting and glowering alternatively. She hadn’t caught him yet, but Buffy was sure that he also watched her sleep. Maybe this was her punishment for failing to save the world – a ghostly, annoying, vampire perve to haunt her for all eternity.

“Now, now, Slayer. Keep a civil tongue in your head, and I might just tell you how to best your beastie.”

The detangled hydra heads snaked forward as one, elongated teeth dripping saliva. Buffy leapt into the air, angling her scythe through the the demon’s lower neck and into its back.

“Or that works,” said Spike, as she severed the hydra’s spine.

The demon’s throats gurgled as it toppled forward. A lone head worked its jaws in an ineffectual snap. Buffy removed a long knife from her belt and stabbed it through the heart.

She stood, panting, as the animal died.

“Right. So where we off to next? Getting bloody sick of wandering ‘round tunnels, mind. Can’t tell me that all entertainment died with the human race. Gotta be something to do besides not drink and not fight.”

Buffy wiped her scythe against the hydra’s hide, then stepped around its body to enter the tunnel it had been guarding. Electricity hummed through the air. The tunnel couldn’t be far from the feed’s power source, and if Buffy could find and destroy it –

The fit came without warning, and she collapsed, her knees banging hard against cracked cement as pain knifed her temples.

Blue eyes and brown hair.

White shocks.

Buffy opened her eyes and blinked back blurries. She met Spike’s worried gaze. He had moved during the attack. Had he been solid, she would have felt his hand cupping her cheek.

“Spike?” Her voice rasped.

He withdrew his fingers with a soft curse. “Bloody hell, Buffy. A hundred years, but that’s not so long. Unlived it myself. A hundred years couldn’t have hurt you like this.”

Buffy winced. “It was keep part of my mind or lose all of it.”

“You chose to lose me.”

Buffy ground her teeth. Yes, her decision to wipe away her entire personal history had hinged on him – a ghost her former self couldn’t have known existed. “I have no idea what I chose. I just know the memories come sometimes. When they do, they hurt.” She braced a hand against the floor and pushed herself to her feet. “Stop following me.”

Spike sighed. “Spook, pet. Pretty sure I’m supposed to haunt someone. Might as well be the Slayer collapsing about in tunnels, trying to get herself killed.”

“Please. Underground, the wave lengths can’t hit you, and the butchers don’t come down here. Anything else is just cake.”

“Please.” Spike mocked her in a high falsetto, then returned to his normal voice. “If you’d had that attack a minute ago, you’d be hydra chow.”

“Forgive me if I find a ghost’s survival tips kinda suspect.”

Spike ran a hand through his hair, not really listening. “It’s a bit much to take in. Dusting. Undusting. Finding a century-old Buffy with Swiss cheese for memories. And seeing as I can’t so much as touch, well, anything –” He seemed to lose his train of thought. “Don’t suppose you know what happened to the others? In the Hellmouth?”

Buffy started to snap the obvious reply – that she obviously didn’t remember a damn thing – but hesitated at the bleakness in his eyes. Spike had lost, too, she realized, and unlike her, he had memory enough to mourn.

“I think most of them survived. For a little while, at least.”

“So you don’t know?”

“Swiss cheese Buffy, remember?” She moved deeper into the tunnel.

“Think maybe that’s why I’m here?” asked Spike, following at her heels. “I do remember your past, Buffy. Bits of it, anyway. Could tell you things.”

Buffy shook her head, shaking off a looming attack. “What good would that do me, exactly? Whatever I made myself forget, I’m sure I had my reasons.”

The tunnel hooked to the right, and Buffy turned the corner only to meet a dead-end – a collapsed ceiling blocked further passage.

She started to head back, only to find Spike’s chest a few inches from her nose. She glared up at him. “What?”

He smirked and walked right through her. She turned around, ready to tell him what she thought of that maneuver ––

The vampire had vanished.

“Spike?”

His head popped back out of the rubble. “Hold your horses, Slayer.” He disappeared again.

Buffy gaped at the blocked passageway. What was he doing ?

She paced a few strides, then stopped. She tapped her foot against the floor, feeling foolish. Spike was taking his sweet time. Buffy frowned, wondering if he’d found that bright white light after all.

Figured.

Just as she had made up her mind to leave, Spike reemerged from the stones. “It’s completely collapsed through there. A cockroach couldn’t make it. Felt too dense even for my ghostly self.”

Buffy hesitated. “So, what? You’re helping now?”

Spike let out a low, frustrated breath. “Can’t fight, can’t feed. Might as well get my jollies being useful at something.” He squinted upwards, at the dim glow coming from the ceiling. “Hadn’t thought about it before, but where’s the light coming from? There’s too much damage for electrons to be looping around anywhere. No wires, either. It’s too light. I’ve done sewers, basements, all matters of deep and dark. But I don’t even need vampiric peepers ‘round here.”

“The world went off the grid a long time ago,” Buffy explained. “It’s techno-magic. Or residue from whatever’s powering the feed.”

“Feed?”

“Rossum set up a magical power source for the signals.”

“There’s something familiar, too. Can’t explain it, really. Just feels like something I know,” Spike said. “Hard to tell, only having two of the five senses and what all, but I feel it, Slayer.”

She felt it too – she always felt it – a nagging familiarity that compelled her to seek and not find. “Thanks for trying, Spike.”

His useless hands fisted at his sides. “Don’t mention it.”

Buffy felt, suddenly, that he didn’t hear thanks too often.

She shrugged and headed back towards the hydra’s corpse. With any luck, Sal would take the heads in trade for food. She preferred hardtack, inedible as it was, to Jo’s rodents.

“Where we headed?” asked Spike, as Buffy hacked through neck-gristle.

“We can’t all live on mice.”

“Guess not. Went for rats, myself.”

“Not the blood of young virgins?” Buffy pulled a piece of twine from her pocket and used it to tie the still-dripping heads together. She threaded and pulled the string tightly through each set of nostrils.

His answer was long in coming. “Not anymore. Surprised you didn’t question it earlier.”

“Just because I don’t remember things, doesn’t mean I don’t know them.” That seemed to shut him up, thank God. Buffy slipped the scythe into its strap on her back and picked up the hydra heads.

She made her way through familiar twists and turns until the tunnel started getting wider, dryer. Buffy started to hear bustling noises – voices, cart wheels, sundry thumps and thuds – getting clearer. After she walked through a slight curve in the tunnel, she found herself at Eastern Market.

Demons and splices milled about, peddling and buying things grown in tunnels or salvaged from the upper world – hydroponic food, weapons. Homier things, like clothing, were more exclusive, and sold in New Georgetown. Buffy made a beeline to Sal’s, ignoring the suspicious looks thrown her way. Or Spike’s way – the vampire was sauntering through the crowd. Literally. He popped right through a roasted-cockroach cart.

Sal was a splice, a half-man with a round, baby face and long droopy ears that fell to his shoulders. He worked from a cart, selling hicha, a sort-of grain alcohol, and hardtack, a tooth-busting cracker made from hydroponic hemp flour and water. Hardtack provided a complete protein and omega-3s.

“So what can I do for you, babe? Maybe you’d be interested in my new product – fermented rat urine.” Sal grinned, displaying twin rows of rather purplish serrated teeth. “Has all your B-vitamins.”

“I’m gonna have to pass.” Buffy watched as Spike entertained himself by trying and failing to pick up the marrow-filled bones Sal’s neighbor displayed on the front of his cart, complete with stuck-on sinew and flies. “I want hardtack. And a bottle of hicha.”

Sal started wrapping hand-sized sheets of hard tack in rough-fibered cloth. “What do you have there? Ten? I can give you five hardtack.”

“Or, how about fifteen and my bottle of hicha?”

Sal shook his head, ears flapping. “Hydra heads are as common as thieves.”

“Oh, they’re a bit rarer than that,” Buffy placed her hands on the edge of his cart and leaned slightly forward, making the structure tilt. “I made it grow a few extra before I killed it. Doesn’t get fresher than that, Sal.”

“Best make her bargain,” Spike said, turning away from bone-cart. “I’ve seen the girl with low blood sugar. She’ll have your noggin for head cheese.”

Buffy startled, noticing the larger-than-usual crown collecting around them. She wasn’t buds with the TDs, or True Demons, by any means, and only barely cordial with the splices, but they didn’t usually give her trouble.

Spike winked, and she got it – his hair and clothes would have made him conspicuous, even if he wasn’t walking through market stalls and patrons.

Sal must not have liked the look of the gathering demons, either. “In that case, I’ll throw in a bit extra.” He wrapped up the hardtack and passed it over the counter.

“The booze, too.”

A little cluster of blue-green children clicked and nudged at each other a few feet away. Buffy didn’t have to know their language to know they were issuing single, double and triple-dog dares to run through a certain ghost’s legs. Spike shifted into game face and they darted away, squealing.

A much larger blue-green demon gave an indignant series of clicks as the children clustered around it.

“Ixnay on the Amp-vay.” Buffy grabbed the hicha bottle and the hardtack from Sal. Her peaceful relationship with the Underground demons was always tenuous at best, and vampires weren’t much more popular than Slayers, considering their role in the war games above ground.

“Don’t much like the looks of me, do they pet?” asked Spike, as a bear-like demon snarled, dripping saliva down its front.

“Why would they? You’re all skinny. And that hair was out of date over a century ago.”

“I’ll have you know most consider me a fine catch, for a dead man.” Spike smiled, wistful. “Always did love a brawl. Back against the wall. Fists and fangs. The crunch, the rush.”

“Your back would go straight through the wall.” Buffy started weaving her way towards Jo’s hole. “Don’t start a fight you can’t finish, Sparky.”

“What? Like this one?” Spike shouted something in a language Buffy didn’t recognize. A large red demon – it had a sort of Ron Perlman thing going on – bristled.

She glared at Spike. He grinned back, unrepentant. “Go on then, Slayer. Fight my battles for me.”

***