So, since so many people seemed to like my little experiment yesterday, I'll instead try a bit more on that one. This time however, it shall be written in my much more normal chaotic fashion, instead of this silly front to back method I'm using in Knight Errant, or the even sillier back to front method I used yesterday.
I don't own San Francisco. Neither do I own Xander, or any of the other people or characters or concepts created for Buffy The Vampire Slayer. I may very well be able to claim ownership to everything else, if I really wanted to. But I hear the paperwork is a headache.
---Cut here to detach actual story from stupid disclaimer.---
Birth, a Spirit Story.
I am. At least, I think I am, and from one of my many seemingly unconnected memories I seem to recall that thinking means one is, so if I think I am then I must be. I think.
But the greater question is who, or even what I am. At least I know where I am. I am in a room, one which I remember coming to to die, but since I don't think I existed before now, that can't be quite right.
I see below me a sobbing woman, her hair fading from red to grey, sobbing over the body of a man. They are both familiar to me. I remember the woman, her name is Willow, and she's a Wiccan Witch, from the West. I would giggle at my joke, if I had anything to giggle with.
The man, who is dead, I also remember. I think I was him, and his name was Xander. And he is dead. So, if I was him, and I came here to die, and he is dead, then I am dead. But I don't feel dead at all. I feel very, alive. Energetic. Curious. Bored. Only the last one seems to be fitting for being dead, so I'm pretty sure I'm not. Dead that is. So I'm not him. Besides, I distinctly remember everything about what its like to be him, and I don't feel, or think, the way he did. I am me, and that is not who he was.
I am bored. This place was where Xander came to die, and I feel like I am just starting out, not dying, so I don't want to be here anymore. I want to be somewhere else.
I am somewhere else. Now I don't know where I am. But it isn't anywhere any of the memories I have recall. And I have a lot of them. Memories I mean. An awful lot considering that I don't think I ever existed before being in the room I just left to come here. Wherever this is.
I take a moment to try and sort my memories. They seem to come in several types, from many sources.
Most familiar to me are the memories of Xander. I'll leave those for the moment, and look at the others.
One, or perhaps two seem to reflect being as I am now. They are from spirits. One, a Slayer Spirit, seems to have the most memories, but they seem awful repetitive. Fighting, killing, and dying over and over again. I ignore them for now as well, they look boring, all in all.
The other spirit I can seem to recall not being was a Primal Hyena spirit. Her name was Alpha. And she thought of herself as a female. A female spirit. A part of me considers that an unusual concept, as a spirit doesn't really have a body, so a gender seems, superfluous. But that said, perhaps I should have one anyhow. The other spirit, she considered herself female as well, but she seemed to have begun with a body in the very beginning, so that makes sense, for her in a way. Anyhow, back to Alpha, she was a Primal, a template so to speak for the creation of the Alpha Hyena. And every Alpha Hyena in the world since the dawn of the species was a part of her, and she of them. But there were flashes of others as well, times when she was summoned to possess other forms. And interestingly the last memory of hers I have is of her possessing the body I just saw, that of Alexander, "Xander" Harris.
I look back at the Slayer Spirit's memories. They also intersect with those of what I am coming to consider "my" former body, but they continue on after that, sort of.
The Slayer Spirit's memories seem to branch for a moment, one set remembering her host's dying in a cave, and leaving the shell, only to find there was no way out of the mystical prison it was trapped in, so it temporarily connected with the remnants of the Hyena spirit within the body of Xander. But the memories end shortly after that, as he left the cave following a revived Buffy out of the caves.
Looking at the other, well, copy, perhaps of the memories, show that the Slayer Spirit woke up when Buffy revived, but was very weak. Needing sustenance, it drew on the dark energy of the hell mouth to strengthen its self. The attempt succeeded, although in retrospect seemed to further taint the darkness within itself as well, causing both it and its host to become slightly more callous, more, well, evil. Also stronger. The memories from that incarnation of the Slayer Spirit continue for several more years, until they end with the termination of a Joining spell, where four people pooled their essences to allow one of their number to overcome a powerful adversary.
That may explain three of the other sets of memories, those not belonging to Alexander Harris. But it didn't explain the second set of Alexander Harris memories.
Setting that aside for the moment, I look at the other three sets of memories. One is from the Slayer, not the spirit, but the girl, Buffy. I remember her life, starting as a small child, through her youth, her being chosen, and her displeasure at the imposition of her new status. I remember her first years of slaying, and can see how being the Slayer eventually came to represent her self-identity, making the unwanted slayer part of her life the center of her life nonetheless. Then came the Joining spell, and again, that was the end of the memories from her.
The next set of memories, far larger than any of the other human's, other than Xander's, came from a Rupert "Ripper" Giles. I can recall his growing up in England, the son of a Watcher, his teenaged rebellion and the trouble he got into with his magic as a youth. I can recall how he was eventually, "scared straight" and returned to the bosom of the Watcher's Council, working to make amends for his misspent youth. I recall his time as a curator of the British Museum, and later as a librarian and companion of the Slayer and her friends. His memories also end with the Joining spell.
Last, there is Willow. The same Willow I saw in the room before. I remember her growing up with her best friends Xander, my Xander, and another boy named Jessie. I remember her meeting Buffy, Jessie's disappearance, being told by a shattered Xander of his death, and later fighting alongside Buffy to try and protect her new friend, and prevent any more deaths like Jessie's. I remember her first tentative steps with using magic, and how her power slowly grew. I remember her casting the Joining spell, and then that is it for her as well.
Turning to the alternate Alexander Harris memories, I sift through them. He remembered growing up on several army bases, moving every few years as his father's postings shifted almost at random. He never had any real friends, finding most of the other kids uninteresting and unworthy of his time, instead spending his time working out and practicing martial arts, and learning and practicing how to use literally every weapon he could get his hands on from the US military's arsenal. His attitude seemed to impress his father's co-workers, and they would clandestinely help him out from time to time, gaining him range time and letting fire ordinance ranging from a tank's main gun to a shoulder fired anti-aircraft rocket launcher. Watching the drone blow up was one of his life's top thrills.
It was no surprise when he enlisted on his eighteenth birthday, and to say he sailed through boot camp would be an understatement - it was the drill instructor who was to be pitied for having to deal with the unbreakable gung-ho attitude of the new recruit. He came close to being washed out for just that reason, however a preemptive interview he scheduled himself with the camp commandant prevented such an untimely end to his life's goals.
After graduation, he turned down a shot at OCS, and instead found himself in Special Forces training.
Then, one night, he awoke to find himself on the streets of a small town named Sunnydale, and everything had gone to hell, literally. There were monsters running around everywhere, small ones mostly. There was the ghost of a red-headed hooker telling him he wasn't real, and there was some stupid brunette chick who lacked a brain, and another hotter brunette who had attitude and brains to spare.
Those memories abruptly ended in a warehouse, and carefully looking into the Xander memories showed that the Alexander person was not real at all, just a fictional personality created by a spell and the costume he had been wearing that evening.
So all the memories were from Xander in one way or another.
So, am I Xander?
No. Xander is dead. I am not Xander. I am a spirit. That much I am sure of now. And Xander wasn't. He was a man. And now he is a dead man.
Thinking back to the memories of both the Slayer Spirit and Alpha, the two I think I should consider my best role models, I recall that they had considered themselves female.
What should I consider myself? Or should I even bother? I don't have a body, after all.
The parts which make me up, the memories upon which I can draw spring from two "female" spirits, two actual females, and three males. Going by numbers alone, I would have to say female. But that doesn't feel right. I try male instead, and find it an even less comfortable fit. Which is surprising to me, especially since so many of my memories are from a male perspective.
I am contemplating this when suddenly I feel a, well, a tug.
I am pulled out of the comfortable limbo I had been in, and find myself somewhere else.
I am now outside, at night. There is a cemetery below me, and there are two vampires chasing a young woman through it. I watch as one of them reaches out and disrupts the girl's escape causing her to stumble and fall against a tree, knocking a branch off it as she falls to the ground.
The two vampires then start to argue about something as the girl sits terrified on the ground awaiting her fate.
All of the parts of me agree that I have to do something. I move to the girl, and using a trick from my Willow memories, I extend a tendril of myself into the girl's mind. " I can help, if you want. But I must warn you, it'll be a life-long commitment." I say to her.
The girl started, looking around to see who had spoken to her. It is unfair to make her chose something this important like this, but a part of me is insistent that she be given a choice. I remember clearly Buffy's resentment at being forced into the life of the Slayer. I remember Xander's concern about the mass calling Willow later executed, where she activated all the potentials in the world, an action which later turned out to be not as good an idea as it had appeared at the time, as it essentially ended the Slayer line, condemning the world to a future without hope, once the dwindling number of surviving and aging slayers were killed off.
Suddenly I realized that was why I was. I remembered clearly the last think Willow had said to Xander as he laid dying on the bed, she said there was a spirit thing in him, which could do the same as they Slayer Spirit they had destroyed had done, if it survived. All he had to do was die. And he was dying anyhow. But Willow meant his soul would have to die as well. Or rather, his soul would have to become a part of the spirit. The new Slayer Spirit. And he had readily agreed. And the next thing he remembered was Willow doing some spell, and then I was born. I now knew who, and what I was. I was that new Slayer Spirit.
The girl finally answers me, verbally replying in a surprisingly calm voice considering the circumstances, "Fine Help me out of this, and I'll do whatever you want, as long as it doesn't involve hurting my friends or something bad like that."
And I feel something shift, As I start to move towards the girl's body, I pull her name from her mind and reply to her as formally as I can, "Very well, Sally. I Choose you."
And I sink inside her. I fill her form. She and I become almost like one. Linked, but distinct. But for all purposes, she is I and I am her. And that answers my gender question, I suppose, as she reached out with the new knowledge I give her to grasp the branch laying beneath her scraped and bruised hand, minor damage I am even now working to remove and heal, and leaped to her feet with our combined grace and strength to attack the Vampires.
And then I was too busy giving her advise to think of anything else for a while.
---Snip here to detach actual story from after-notes.---
Ok. No more actual story, I know.
But at least you now have some other perspectives on the Spirit, from her own POV.
Again, I don't know if I will rejoin this story later. It might be interesting to see how Sally interacts with the new voice in her head, or to see if Willow seeks her out to see if there is anything left of her friend Xander.
I don't plan on continuing this however, so don't wait for another Spirit Story.
But if I do, I suppose that's the name of the universe.
Dana...