Against You I Will Fling Myself

Buffy held up her hands – one still held the hicha bottle – as the red demon turned around, pupil-less eyes hard and slanted beneath a thick brow and curling horns. “Whoa there, buddy. I don’t know what Spike just said –”

“Mostly that he’s bloody ugly. Least, that’s what I think I said. My Voorslag’s a bit rusty. Could’ve implied that you’ve shagged his mother or killed his pony. Hard to tell.”

The demons closest to the Voorslag skittered out of its way, then stopped to watch, bloodlust shining in their eyes. The Voorslag gnashed its teeth.

Buffy whimpered. “Guess he really loved that pony.”

The surrounding demons – a trio of bat-faced Panzoozics, some aquiline Salamans, and various furred, scaled, horned, clawed and otherwise inhuman creatures – circled around Buffy and the Voorslag.

Buffy stepped back, only to feel slimy hands push her towards the red demon. She wasn’t going to reach for a weapon – not if she could still, somehow, talk her way out of this – but she shifted her weight to the balls of her feet and tensed her muscles. If the Voorslag threw a punch, she needed to be ready to dodge. Or flee.

She saw Spike bounce on his feet from the corner of her eye. What he was so excited about? Unless he was super eager to see her blue and bloody? Maybe he was trying to get her killed because his ghostly fangs couldn’t do the job?

The Voorslag growled, refocusing Buffy’s attention. “Look, um, Voorslag-guy. Me and the annoying ghost? We’re not together. In fact, I don’t even know him.”

“Are you trying to talk your way out of a fight? Starting to think I don’t know you, Slayer.”

“You don’t.” Buffy didn’t take her eyes off Big Red. “Wow. Do you work out? Because I can’t tell you how much I love a demon with truck-sized pectorals.” Buffy wasn’t sure if truck-sized covered it. The Voorslag was easily seven feet tall, and its overdeveloped muscles rippled as it moved. Bony protrusions edged its knuckles.

“Knew you’d had some brain damage, but you failed to mention the lobotomy. First, you wander around the tunnels in a daze, then you try to weasel your way out of a honest brawl? When did you become a bloody coward?”

“Don’t suppose you know any priests?” Buffy asked the Voorslag. “Because maybe we can work out a deal where we send Ghost Guy to Hell – one of the other Hells, I mean – and I buy you a cool, frothy fungus.”

Spike moved towards the crowd and glowered. “You’re bloody lucky I can’t bite you.”

The Voorslag stopped in front of Buffy, opened its mouth and roared. Spit sprayed over her face. She rubbed the wet, warm goop out of her eyes. The saliva stuck to her hand. And was that a chunk of rat? “Okay. Ruining the Slayer’s only shirt? Bad plan, Hellboy.”

Buffy set her bottle of hicha on the floor and grabbed her scythe off her back. She ducked a red fist and stabbed the wooden end of her weapon into the demon’s stomach. Black blood welled up in the puncture. The demon looked down, shrugged and took a slow, menacing step forward.

The demons in the crowd whooped. “Three rats says the human bites it!” said a white demon with bright pink eyes and a llama-nose.

“Three rats!” Buffy stepped back and readjusted her grip on the scythe. “You’re only betting three rats?”

The Voorslag snarled and rushed forward, its fist hitting Buffy’s jaw. Bony knuckles split her skin. She fell on her back, leaping to her feet just in time to avoid a stomping red foot. Hot blood ran down her chin. Fire screamed up her spine.

She spun out of the way as the Voorslag advanced again, but her brain was on delayed communication with her legs. A red fist impacted with her solar plexus and sent her sprawling. Buffy coughed against the ground, splattering blood across the concrete.

“What was that, Slayer?” Spike planted his boots an inch from Buffy’s nose. Still gasping, she lifted her gaze and saw him snarling down at her. “You’re leaving your sides open! Both of them!”

“You think?” Buffy clenched her bruising jaw and tried to control her breathing. She spent most of her time searching for power sources, not Slayering. Sure, she occasionally took down demonic animals like the hydra. But a skilled, think-y opponent? It had been a long while since she’d fought one of those.

The Voorslag wasn’t a genius, but it wasn’t some dumb animal either. It was playing with her – hitting her where it knew it would slow her down, drawing out the kill.

Buffy snatched her scythe from the floor and scrambled to her feet. She lunged at the Voorslag, but missed when the floor suddenly tilted. She hit a Salaman’s scaled shoulder – it hissed and tried to retaliate, but its snapping jaws sank into a gray, fuzzy bird-headed thing. The bird screeched and clawed a Panzoozic.

Buffy screamed as a huge hand grabbed her wrist and snapped the bones backwards . Her scythe clanged against the ground. She kicked against the Voorslag’s torso, and with a growly laugh, it threw her over the crowd, into a nearby larvae stand. The cold, dead insects padded most of her fall, but an empty skewer pierced the side of her thigh as she landed. She groaned, gray blobs spotting her vision.

“Buffy!” She squinted up to see Spike’s whiter-than-usual face. He looked terrified. Maybe he hadn’t meant to get her killed after all. She tried to pull herself up, but pain and blood loss left her too weak. She kicked her legs and crawled on her elbows, trying not to hit her broken wrist or the foot-long metal pin embedded in her thigh.

The ghost grabbed wildly at her hands, but he couldn’t touch her. “Get up, you stupid bitch. Fight!”

Buffy snorted. What did he think she was doing? Kicking back with a bottle of hicha? She rolled to her side, and the Voorslag’s fist cracked through the fallen stand and its larvae, landing where her injured hand had been.

A concussed Panzoozic stumbled into the Voorslag. The red demon snapped its neck off its body with a lazy gesture, its gaze still centered on Buffy.

Buffy choked on her own blood. If she died now, she failed. The world would never be more than this hard, violent place.

Who was she kidding? She’d failed already. Her search for the power source wasn’t a search at all, but a lie she’d fed herself so she didn’t have to feel how far she’d fallen. So she didn’t have to accept how weak she’d become.

Spike shifted into game-face and roared an angry, animal sound. He flung himself at the Voorslag –

The demon shook its head, confused, when Spike dove through its chest.

Something about the arc of Spike’s non-body in motion, the wafting flow of his duster flying out behind him, triggered Buffy’s memory.

Her fingers scratched at her skull, the pain in her body nothing compared to the screeching agony of the surfacing memories.

Spike tackling a vampire as it crawled from the grave, then stopping to lick blood from his nose.

Spike sprinting up a rickety tower.

Spike’s face swelling beneath her fists.

Confusion became confidence, and for a brief moment, Buffy knew who and what she was, and what she was born to do. Buffy limped to where she had dropped her scythe and picked it up. Muscle memory kicked in, and she threw it. The blade sliced off the Voorslag’s legs at the knee. Bladder-like structures ruptured outward, greasing the floor.

The Voorslag howled and fell forward, and Buffy jumped to her feet. She withdrew a curved knife from her belt and leaped onto the demon’s back, gripping its bucking back with her knees.

She whipped her knife across the Voorslag’s neck. Its snarls bubbled and rasped. Buffy frowned. Her knife wasn’t strong enough to cut through the demon’s windpipe.

The demon reached back, grabbed the skewer in her legs and twisted it. Buffy howled and grabbed its horn with her broken wrist.

Pain screeched up her arm, but she kept working her knife in a sawing motion, cutting through spurting arteries and fibrous tissue, until only a thin flap of skin connected the Voorslag’s head to its body. It stopped shuddering beneath her.

Buffy stood, her feet sliding in black blood. She felt dizzy and nauseated and ready to curl up in a corner and lick her wounds – or whatever – but that meant getting out of here. She wiped her blade against her pants, eyeing the brawling demons. Maybe they wouldn’t notice her.

A thing with wrinkled skin stopped punching the green demon it had in a headlock, looked at her and screamed a wordless battle cry. The demons rushed her at once.

Buffy dove to the floor, snatching up her scythe as she tucked and rolled back to her feet. She kicked and punched and slashed and landed a bite or two. She heard Spike’s laughter, and it seemed right. Familiar.

Her knuckles split and her wrist ached. Her muscles burned and she tasted her own blood in her mouth. And for the first time in a long time, Buffy felt like herself.

Whoever that was.

The llama-nosed thing cracked its skull painfully into her ribs, and Buffy fell to the ground. She heard Spike’s panicked growl, but there was nothing he could do. She was going to get trampled.

Llama-face thudded next to her, an arrow through one eye-socket.

Buffy panted and lifted her head. Splices were rushing the TDs, hacking into them with vindictive pleasure. She watched as a female splice enveloped a demon’s head with her writhing hair-tentacles, then ripped it off.

Spike’s fingers snapped in front of her face. “This isn’t nap-time. Get up.”

“Tired.”

Spike shifted into demon face. “You die, and I’ll bloody make sure you end up a ghost, stuck with me for eternity. I swear it, Slayer.”

“You can’t do that.” But Buffy reached for her scythe and forced her legs to move. Her skewered leg buckled, and she tried to grab Spike’s shoulder. She stumbled through him, barely catching her balance before she fell.

She veered dizzily through the crowd, tripping over the body of one of the blue-green children who had clicked at Spike earlier.

“You bloody stupid woman! Best Slayer in history, and you’re ready to kick it in a run-of-a-mill brawl? You’ve bested gods and worse, and you’re gonna let a sodding Voorslag be the end of you? I’m disgusted, Slayer. Never thought I’d see you this pathetic –”

“Don’t you ever shut up?” Buffy refocused. She grabbed a few bottles of hicha as they passed an unguarded stall, using her good hand to tuck them under the opposite arm. “I swear if you weren’t a ghost, I’d kill you.”

Spike’s eyes narrowed. “The way you fight, now? I’d drain you before you finished your first quip.”

Buffy ducked into a little-used tunnel that led to Jo’s place and collapsed against the wall, abused diaphragm working hard. She pulled out a hicha cork with her teeth and took a swallow.

She poured a generous amount of liquid over the skewer in her thigh and gritted her teeth against the white hot agony. “You’ve made it more than clear that you want me dead.”

Spike whirled around to face the opposite wall. He punched it, his fist going straight through the wall, then pulled back and kicked through it rapidly, yelling a series of “bloody buggering fucks.”

Buffy pulled on the skewer with blood-covered fingers. She moaned as a barbed tooth snagged and ripped muscle on its way out. Buffy poured more hicha over the wound, then pushed down on the puncture with the palm of her unbroken hand. Blood flowed out from between her fingers.

Spike turned on his heel, his expression tight. “Don’t want you dead. Want you to be yourself.”

She searched her mouth with quick fingers. At least her teeth were still firmly in place. Buffy spat out blood. “Funny – I’m not really feeling up for a Hallmark moment.”

Spike crouched by her side. “You wander around glaze-eyed, hunting some invisible power source and won’t hear a word about your past. The world’s gone pear-shaped, and you’re not fighting to put it right.”

Buffy’s swollen jaw slurred her words. “Is this what you call a pep talk?”

“Just thought maybe if I made you fight, you’d get some light back into your eyes.” He dropped his gaze.

Buffy lifted her palm to check the puncture. The blood had slowed, thanks to Slayer healing. “You almost got me killed because I didn’t seem alive enough?”

Spike’s mouth twisted. “How was I supposed to know how far you’ve let yourself go?”

Buffy removed a knife from her belt and sliced a piece of cloth from her spit-and-blood-covered shirt. She took a swallow of hicha. The alcohol stung the cuts in her mouth, but that wasn’t where she needed numbing. “I hate you.”

Spike turned his head to the side and blinked rapidly. “Nothing new there, Slayer.”

Buffy cried out as she pushed the bones in her wrist in the right position, then awkwardly wrapped it with one hand.

Spike pursed his lips and snatched at the wrapping. For a second, Buffy felt a charge against her skin, and she yelped, but then Spike’s fingers poked straight through her wrist. She jerked away. “Stop it!”

She awkwardly wrapped her wrist with one hand, using a small knife with a retractable blade as a splint. Jo would have to redo it later, but Buffy hoped she’d created enough support to make it back to Jo’s den without further damage.

Spike’s hands shook. What did he have to be so upset about? She was the one with broken bones. He didn’t even have bones to break!

He had, once. Buffy took a deep draught of hicha, remembering his skin splitting beneath her knuckles. She shook her head against an unwelcome twinge.

She wouldn’t have beaten Spike up for kicks because whatever she was now, she had been a good guy before the world went kaplooey. He must’ve done something to deserve it. And what with him being a vampire, and her being a Slayer, it didn’t take a genius to figure out the nature of his nautiness.

A splash of alcohol dribbled from the corner of her mouth. Buffy wiped it away with the back of her good hand. “This isn’t the first time you’ve tried to kill me, is it?”

“Didn’t mean to get you hurt.” Spike shot her a sidelong glance. “But, yeah. Vampire. Course I tried to kill you.”

Buffy drank some more hicha and grimaced.

“Came close a time or two. There was this one Halloween ... but going down memory lane will probably make your head explode. ‘Sides, that’s not who I am anymore. I changed.”

Buffy knew a thing or two about that. “So have I.”

“Yeah.” Spike glanced over her injuries. “You have.”

***