Murdered by a Traitor and a Coward

The mud surrounded Buffy. It was heavy and terrible and pressing. And cold. It was so, so cold. Cold all around her. Sparks exploded behind her eyes and sputtered through her arms and legs and fingers and toes. She was alone, now, and this was it, and her nerves were firing signals that she couldn’t control.

The mud pressed hard against her ribcage, and Buffy bucked and writhed without meaning to, and oh God, she needed to breath. She had to breath. She was going to breath. She couldn’t hold out. Her body wasn’t going to let her. She was going to breath, and breathing was going to kill her.

Her lungs hurt. Everything hurt.

Buffy’s mouth opened.

The mud poured in.

She swallowed it down and her body was screaming that this wasn’t right, that it hadn’t wanted this and Buffy’s lung’s pumped harder trying to find air, but there wasn’t any.

Buffy’s throat spasmed, and the mud packed into her esophagus. It rushed into her stomach and coiled through her intestines.

The mud was heavy. She was heavy. So heavy and so cold. And she was going to die. Her brain was going to shut down and her heart was going to stop and she’d be dead.

She was going to die.

Any minute now.

Wait.

Buffy wasn’t dead.

Why wasn’t she dead?

Her lungs were filled with mud. Little mud molecules were burrowed under her eyelids and fingernails and between her teeth and under her tongue and in other, less mentionable places.

This wasn’t something anyone could live through. Well, maybe a vampire or a ghost or a zombie could survive it. But Buffy wasn’t any of those things. She was just a super sucky Slayer, and she should be dead by now.

Buffy tried to wiggle. Nothing. There wasn’t any connection between her brain and her body. That was normal for dead people, duh. But being all conscious and thinky-y was not.

That worried her. There were certain things that all living bodies, even Slayer bodies, needed, and oxygen made the top of the list.

Okay, so maybe magical drowning was a reeeally slow death. But how could it be this slow? Maybe this was a spiderweb kinda deal, and the mud-monster would come back to bite off her head and suck out her juice? If she even had juice? Buffy kinda felt like she was pure, 100 percent, A-grade mud. Like that Gollum thing.

Oh, no.

What if she couldn’t die? She’d lived way longer than any Slayer was supposed to, and aged way slower than any normal human being, but she’d never felt immortal, exactly. Didn’t people who couldn’t die feel differently? Less afraid?

If she couldn’t die, would she just be stuck here? Forever? Like this? Paralyzed and cold and blind and full of mud?

No. Buffy couldn’t think like that.

Plus, Slayer’s weren’t immortal. Slayers were the opposite of immortal! Buffy would have remembered if something super freaky had happened to make her some immortal Buffy-shaped abomination. Well, okay, so she wouldn’t remember. But she’d know! She’d sense it!

Crap! What if she had already died, and she’d somehow missed it? Could that even happen? Becoming a ghost didn’t really appeal, especially if she was doomed to haunt an endless mud pit for all eternity. Or maybe this was Hell. She would’ve preferred one of the labor camp or shrimp-free hells, but whatever.

Buffy saw years and years of mud-dom stretching out in front of her. There wasn’t any bright light at the end of her tunnel. No wingéd loved ones dancing on clouds while unicorns pooped marshmallows and John Lennon strummed a harp.

Well, whoop-de-doo! So what if she didn’t see Heaven? It wasn’t like she’d been expecting a peaceful eternity of quality cream rinses and high-end bonbons. No light? Buffy hadn’t seen sunlight in decades. Paralyzed? She’d been in a rut for as long as she could remember. This whole mud-pit deal didn’t change a thing. It was the same exact life she’d been living, only ... more so.

She was already sick of her own thoughts. No way could she survive (or whatever) this for all eternity.

Buffy tried to clench her fists.

She felt the mud shift around her fingers. Holy crap! Could she move, now? Buffy gave her legs a good kick. Only it wasn’t so much a kick as a staying-totally-still. A non-kick?

But – whoa! – that was definitely movement. It just wasn’t her doing the moving. It was the mud, twitching around her fingers and making them wiggle. Great. Her mud-pit had a nervous tic.

Buffy really needed to get out of here.

Not that she had too many options, since she couldn’t move. Maybe she could try for another migraine or two? Enough of them might kill her, though with her luck, she’d probably go on not-dying as a drooling idiot. She just had to remember ... she didn’t know what she had to remember. Dammit.

The mud was kinda stroking her now, it’s particles burnishing her skin. Even the mud inside of her was moving. It didn’t hurt, exactly, but it was super uncomfortable. Especially in a few, um, extra sensitive areas.

Hey! She had dropped the scythe when she fell. Was her scythe in the mud pit, too? It sorta had to be, unless it had grown wings and fluttered off. Maybe the spazzing mud would drive it into her carotid artery?

Who was she kidding? She was stuck. And really, endless, boring torment by uncomfy mud pit was probably less than she deserved for being such a total waste of a Chosen One.

Buffy felt something electrical against her side. Spike? Yeah, it was totally Spike. Buffy would recognize that weird sensation anywhere, apparently. What was he doing, following her? Whatever afterlife he was meant for, it wasn’t this one. The whole lovers-throwing-themselves-on-funeral-pyres thing wasn’t romantic. Just stupid. Not that Spike was her lover.

Buffy’s head throbbed. Seriously? No way was she going to remember ... stuff. Spike stuff.

The tingle expanded in size. Buffy felt one band of electricity under her left arm, and another over her right shoulder, and then she felt herself pulled against a shaky force-field thing. Was Spike hugging her? Why would he do that?

The idiot! She was going to kill him! Or think about killing him a whole lot. Had he gotten himself trapped out of some bizarre need to snuggle her corpse?

Wait. Ghost Boy could walk through walls. Maybe he could still get out? Even so, following her into the Pit of Muddy Death was uber-dumb, and Spike deserved an ass-kicking.

The mud whirred inside her lungs and throat and stomach and intestines.Buffy frowned, or she would’ve, if she had any motor control whatsoever. Spike must have pissed off the mud, because it churned fast and rough.

Spike nudged his nose into the crook of her neck. At least, Buffy thought it was his nose. It was a little hard to tell, since he didn’t have a nose, really, just different contours of tingling density. Oh God, were those lips?

The mud ground against her skin, scraping her raw. She felt every little piece of it.

The tentacle slinked up her ankle and around her calf. Great. The return of the stupid, pervy mud monster. Just what Buffy needed. She tried to tell Spike to let go – that the mud insider her was starting to hurt – but her vocal chords were clogged with mud and, oh yeah, she was paralyzed!

The tentacle tugged at Buffy’s leg.

Spike’s grip tightened. He pulled Buffy in the opposite direction. What a moron! Was he still trying to save her? Why couldn’t he just leave? Her doom was not his doom; he needed to get his ghostly butt topside, pronto.

Spike clung to Buffy as the mud monster pulled her leg. Not in a funny way.

The mud became an angry, oceanic thing. Whirling. Pulling. Buffy was lost in the undertow, and the overtow and the middletow, too. Maybe the mud didn’t drown its victims. Maybe it eroded them, tore them apart cell by cell until people-parts and mud-parts were indistinguishable.

Buffy, still wrapped in Spike’s not-quite arms, spiraled downwards and wondered when she’d finally get ripped apart.

The mud tore out of her, expelling itself through both ends. It scratched her insides as it rushed out, taking cells and scraps of organs with it. The surrounding mud squeezed hard, then bore her body down. Buffy felt like she was being jammed through a funnel.

Agonizing shocks burst through Buffy. They started at her toes and pulsed up her legs into her stomach and chest and arms. It was terrible and terribly familiar. White electricity crackled and screamed around her. Buffy crackled and screamed with it.

Then, she was dry. And warm. And falling.

Buffy’s shoulder and hip slammed into cement. Her mouth opened. Air – cold, damp and welcome – rushed down her windpipe and inflated her lungs. Capillaries burned and blood sped oxygen to dying fingers and toes and glands and organs.

Jo’s voice slapped against Buffy’s aching eardrums.

“Was that really necessary?” Jo asked someone.

Buffy’s body felt odd, and not just from that first shock of life. She opened her eyes, then closed them when light knifed her retinas. She wanted to clamp her hands over her ears, too, but her brain and body weren’t yet in sync.

“Darling, she was crawling with bacteria, and she had intestinal worms. I would say it was entirely necessary,” said a second, female voice. It sounded smooth and girlish. Melodious, but in an affected sort of way.

“I was talking about the mud trap, Janet.”

The pain faded. It faded all over, even in places where Buffy was injured and should hurt. She didn’t feel anything where the mud-tentacle had grabbed her leg, nor in her slowly-healing thigh and wrist. Her stomach didn’t ache. The slow thud of her hangover – which she’d forgotten during the whole dying-in-quickmud debacle – failed to return with a vengeance.

“You know I have to maintain a sterile environment. She was disgusting and smelly. Very, very smelly.”

Hey! Buffy didn’t – okay, so she probably had stunk, what with the vomit on her boots and stuff. But who didn’t stink down here? By Underground standards, Buffy was new car-fresh.

“Haven’t you ever heard of air freshener?” Jo asked. “Shredded Eschar scent glands make the best potpourri. Very ... fruity.”

Buffy didn’t need to open her eyes to know that something was clocks-melting wrong with this picture. Her body felt strange. Lighter. Jo was here. Had Jo rescued her after all? Where was Spike?

Buffy squinted against the light, then opened grit-free eyes. She squinted at the source of the second voice – a petite woman wearing a short, woven robe with a turquoise obi and sandals sewn from red, stringy sinew. The laces criss-crossed up her ankles and ended in bows. She had jade eyes and close-cropped, black hair. No, not hair. Fur. It shone almost blue in the light, and Buffy could make out darker patterns in it, like a panther’s black-on-black spots.

The woman sat on what looked like a mocha, pulsing bean bag. Jo stood about five feet to the right of the-woman-presumed-Janet, looking huge and extra monstrous by comparison. Janet looked like a china doll, or what Buffy guessed china dolls must have looked like; Jo was tall and rough-cut, with callouses on her hands and long, ropy veins crawling up her arms. And that was before Buffy got to the burn marks and scales and the glaring red snake-eye.

Buffy had thought Jo that had gotten stuck somewhere or taken by something, but here she was, looking a-okay, if a little shinier than usual. How could Jo have gotten here, wherever here was? She had mentioned the mud – the mud was a trap? And related to her sudden cleanliness?

Oh, God. The mud. Buffy didn’t think she’d ever forget what it was like to drown, to feel mud flow down her windpipe and fill her lungs, the cold press of earth against and around her.

She had been buried alive. Half-alive. Whatever. And now, she felt all weird.

She lifted her hand to examine it. The room was bright, and her hand looked three shades paler than normal. Slight abrasions on her knuckles seeped translucent pink.

Buffy raised her head and looked down at herself. Her tunic shone a pale, pebbled green, and her pants were light brown instead of their usual camouflage of dirt, blood and slime. Her leather boots were vomit-free and shiny, with the soft gloss of oiled leather.

That’s why she looked pale – she was clean.

Buffy touched her face. The skin felt freakishly smooth. Not just clean, then, but really, really clean. No dirt, no dried sweat, no dead skin cells, no parasites. She swiped her tongue over her teeth. No plaque, either. She doubted she even had earwax.

Buffy tried to get up, but her legs just kinda flopped a little. She laid her head back down and stared at the ceiling. The whole room looked like something out of another world. It appeared neat and rectangular, with smooth, white walls that met the floor at right angles. Gentle, white light flooded out from swirling portal-like things on the ceiling, and the walls were decorated with intricate tapestries and some of the prettier demon skins. Dried herbs – and where had those come from? hydroponics? – hung from stone pegs embedded near the tops of the walls. Buffy smelled rosemary and thyme. She didn’t know how she recognized those smells after all this time, but she did.

But those weren’t herbs. Or not just herbs; dried body parts were strung up as well. Buffy made out shriveled fingers, toes, claws and tails. They were probably spell components or leftovers from splicing operations. That, or Buffy was about to meet a reincarnated Ed Gein.

“Jo, I believe your pet Slayer’s awake.”

“Jo?” Buffy asked. Her words slurred. “What happened? Where did you go? What was that mud? Where’s Spike?”

Jo’s human eye twitched, which was weird. Jo? Really not so much with the twitchy. “The mud’s a sterilization device. I thought I would have more time to warn you, but Janet seems to have moved the location of the trap.”

Janet lifted her shoulders in an exaggerated shrug.

Jo eyed Janet. “I can’t answer your second question. Where is Spike, Janet?”

“Oh dear, the mud caught another person? My apologies.” The Janet-woman hummed a few notes. A shadow crossed her face, and a red light flashed.

Buffy heard a wet, squishy noise followed by an angry bellow. Spike fell from one of the portals. He landed belly-down between Buffy and the splices, his head turned so that Buffy couldn’t see his face.

She rose to her feet and took a stumbling step forward, then stopped when a tingling pain ran up her legs. Great. So, her circulation wasn’t totally up to snuff. Buffy hoped that it wasn’t a permanent thing, but it would be on par with the rest of her luck if it was.

Spike snarled and attempted to stand. His knees gave out and he crumpled to the floor. “Bloody son of a bitch!”

Which, sooo didn’t make sense, because ghosts? Not really known for having things like circulation or nerves or muscles or any of that other stuff that could make legs unsteady. Maybe he was disoriented?

Spike hacked out a rasping sort of sob.

Oh, so he was just upset, then. Only not just upset, because, as far as he knew, he’d just watched her die. Spike really did care for her. No way would he chase after her drowned body and hug it and stuff out of simple affection or respect between colleagues. They had been something or had something or – something.

Buffy tried to say something, but her tongue felt thick and fuzzy and she didn’t manage more than a soft puff of air.

Janet drew back her legs, like Spike was a runny pile of splice-scat that threatened to dirty her shoes. She sniffed. “Well you could have said he was incorporeal. I’d only permitted the nanos to admit physical beings.”

“I said he was a ghost.” Jo’s scales looked coppery, like new pennies. “I thought the incorporeality was implied.”

“Who are you? Jo, who is she?” Spike propped himself on his arms. He scanned the room, his eyes passing straight through Buffy.

Um, what? Buffy looked at Janet. The splice gave her a Betty-Boop wink, her features adopting an innocent expression when Spike’s gaze moved back to Jo.

Why was Janet concealing Buffy from Spike? What was the point? Did she think this was fun? It wasn’t. It sucked.

“Where the bloody fuck were you!” Spike didn’t seem all that interested in Jo’s answer; he plowed on without giving Jo a chance to talk. “You could’ve saved her easy enough, if you hadn’t run off in a snit. But you left her with me, a bloody useless ghost. Buffy ... she’s dead, Jo. All she needed was someone to pull her out, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t!”

Buffy put her hand over her mouth, a strange keening reverberating silently in her throat. She felt horrified, and also a little fascinated, which was equally horrifying. Spike was in pain. Over her. She didn’t know what to do with that. She’d never imagined that anyone would grieve for her.

Spike shook his head and giggled. The sound was high-pitched. Hysterical. “Put everything I am into dragging her out of that thing, and it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough. But you – you could have saved her.”

“Your pain’s adorable and everything, but your girl didn’t need saving.” Janet wiggled her fingers toward Buffy. “In fact, you should be thanking me. The stench alone would have made daisies wilt, you know, if there were any down here.”

Spike looked over his shoulder.

Buffy’s throat cleared. Spike saw her, now, but Buffy didn’t know what to say to him.

Tear-tracks shone beneath Spike’s bloodshot, swollen eyes. He looked less substantial than usual, like he’d shrunk or been drained, and his skin and hair looked paper-white in the room’s bright lighting. Shadows clung to the pouches beneath his eyes and the hollows beneath his cheeks, and his duster pooled around him like blood.

“Spike, I’m okay.” They were the first words to pop into Buffy’s head. She should’ve said something better, something wittier, maybe, but her vocal chords were acting all on their own.

She’d gotten it right, because that’s when Spike glowed.

Not an ET’s finger sorta glow, but a softening that started in his eyes and suffused outward, until he looked warm and awed and so, so happy to see her. He scrambled to his feet, almost tripping in his eagerness, and stumbled forward a half step. Then, he froze, his head caught at an uncertain tilt.

Buffy’s insides clenched and squirmed. It was one thing to feel all mushy toward a guy when you were dying. You weren’t going to live on in anything but his memory, so what was a little vulnerability between ... well, Buffy didn’t know they were. But living? That complicated things.

Buffy dropped her gaze and noticed something red and shiny by Spike’s left boot. “Oh, hey! My scythe!”

The scary glowy look left Spike’s face, but Buffy couldn’t say that she preferred the hurt, furious expression that replaced it.

She walked toward Spike. He moved to her side as she leaned down and picked up her scythe. The weapon felt heavy in her hands. It caught the light and gleamed white and blinding until Buffy shifted the blade.

“Sure, it’s the bloody scythe you care about, not the bloke who got sucked down a mudhole trying to save your sorry arse. You know, you wouldn’t even have that sodding thing if it weren’t for me? You said it was from the strength I gave you.”

Yes, there he was – the familiar, jerk-wad Spike that Buffy could handle. Buffy didn’t know what it said about her that she preferred bickering to – hey! Since when did Spike give her strength? As far as she knew, he usually just pissed her off or got her pounded into Slayer-pulp. And what could Spike possibly have to do with the scythe? She’d always had it, and she had always known that it was made for her.

“Yeah, I’m sure all those moon-eyes come in real handy when you’re buying weapons,” Buffy said.

Her optic nerves throbbed. A male voice whispered. But she wasn’t in the mood for recovering memories, so she shook her head and focused extra hard on Spike’s face until the voice faded.

Spike raised both eyebrows. “You didn’t buy that thing. You tugged it out of a sodding rock.”

“Ooh, like Excaliber?” The Janet-woman’s voice had a lovely, chirping quality, like morning birdsong. Or whatever. Janet’s eyes did something strange, almost like a motion-blur, as she glanced at the scythe, and a shiver wormed down Buffy’s spine.

Shit. Saying too much around a techno-pagan was a good way to lose your advantage, if you had an advantage to start with, and Buffy didn’t know that they did. And the way Janet looked at the scythe? Not good. But why would she care about the weapon? Techno-pagans didn’t need weapons. They were weapons.

“Shut up, Spike,” Buffy said. She hoped he understood the seriousness of the sitch and didn’t just fly off the handle, though if he did, Buffy could only blame herself. And all because she couldn’t handle puppy eyes.

Spike pivoted to face Janet. “And once again, I find myself asking – who the bloody Hell are you?”

“I’m sorry. I should have introduced everyone earlier,” Jo said. “Spike, Buffy, meet Janet. She’s a techno-pagan.”

“It’s delightful to meet you both.” Janet criss-crossed her ankles and winked in Spike’s direction. She seemed to have gotten over her disgust, now that he was standing up and had stopped crying. “So, I hear you’re a man with a death wish? You’ve come to the right place, honey. I kill people all the time.”

“Thanks,” Buffy said. “That’s way comforting.”

“Of course it’s comforting! I have an excellent bedside manner, if I do say so myself.” Janet beamed. She sat forward on her bean bag, making her breasts push out from her chest.

Was this crazy lady for real? “Yeah, sure, I can believe that. The muddy pit that just tried to kill me? That was the height of hospitality, really.”

Janet waved one hand. Her fingers were painted a pale, peachy pink. “Your Jo already explained that. The mud contains particles that adhere to dirt and infection. They attract my nanos and tell them where to clean.”

“Nanos?” asked Spike.

“Nanobytes. Microscopic bio-robotics that run on magic? They’re also excellent housekeepers. I’m always finding new uses for them.”

Yuck. Jo hadn’t mentioned the part where tiny robots had gone up Buffy’s butt.

Spike crunched into game face. “Your bleeding housekeepers almost killed us! Well, not me. Ghost. But Buffy could have died! I thought she had!”

“Robots aren’t unusual,” Jo said. “Well, they are in the Underground, but they’ve been around forever. I hear there were even sex bots before the Dollhouse cornered the market on prostitutes forced to love their johns.”

Buffy sometimes forgot that the tech had started out as simple brain-programming; the remote wipe having made everything so much worse.

Spike’s mouth fell open, revealing fangs. The slack-jawed thing looked funny on a vamp in game face. What would you know about sex robots?”

“Oh, stop it, you two!” Janet tucked a tuff of fur behind one slightly pointed ear. “The nanos just cleaned your Buffy up a little. God knows, she needed it.”

“The inside of my lungs needed cleaning? Pretty sure they were squeaky clean!”

“They are now.” Janet scrunched her small, pinkish nose. “You were only a few decades away from black lung, believe me. Besides, I also had the nanos fix your wrist, ribs and that leg injury while they were making like scrubbing bubbles.”

Pain.

Buffy screamed and fell to the floor. She dropped the scythe and clawed at her skull, her scalp slivering under her nails. Her face felt wet. She tasted blood.