Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters, etc. Even the ideas are
probably things I've read and half forgotten. Joss owns Buffy, Xander,
and crew.

Spoilers: Late season 4. If you know who Adam is, that's about all
there's going to be. It's kinna nonspecific.

Summary: Making a deal with the devil, of sorts. The final battle
against Adam, maybe?

Author's Notes: This is my very first attempt at writing Buffy fiction,
and I'm sure it shows. Also, three points goes to the one to get the
origin of the title ;) I hope that's all that needs to be said.

***

Riley was dead.

At least, I've never seen someone with their neck twisted at that angle
and still be alive. Not anyone human, at least.

Though I couldn't say I was doing much better. At least two of my ribs
were broken, I'd heard the sickening snap when I was thrown against the
ground earlier. Of course, that probably wasn't the least of my
problems. The battle still raged on a few dozen feet away from my
little patch of bloody ground.

Buffy was almost holding her own against Adam, but I knew that it
couldn't last. So many times, I've watched her fight, and I know when
she is tiring. She had done well to avoid his skewer for this long,
but, I realized with a cold dread, it was only a matter of time before
she slipped up.

This was the way it always went, I thought. We'd all get our butts
kicked and then the calvary would arrive to save us.

Only, this time, the calvary wasn't coming. They were all
incapacitated and one of us had died. Actually died.

Willow was... she was in the hospital. Yesterday, Adam's vampires had
attacked us en mass. Anya, Giles, and Willow were taken out of action
leaving just myself, Riley, and Buffy to face the Frankenstein demon
from hell. Hell being synonymous with Sunnydale.

Now, I was going to get to watch the bastard kill Buffy before he
finished me off and then started on humanity in general.

I stopped to cough up blood with a sickening rattle and a wheeze.

Finally, it happened. Weary, Buffy didn't dodge as quickly as she
should have and he... he stabbed her. Not fatally, at least, not
immediately so, but his spike passed through her side and she staggered
back and slipped on her own blood.

He stepped forward coolly and raised the spike for a killing blow.
Blood dripped from the vicious tip, some of it Buffy's, some of it
mine.

The bastard hadn't even had to use any of his other abilities. Just
his strength, speed, and that damn blade were more than a match for us.
And now it was over.

Somehow, I was on my feet and lurching forward in a shambling run. I
cried out wordlessly, and Adam looked up just in time to see me run
headlong into his side, making him take a full step back.

Quite possibly, it was the most damage we'd done to him this entire
time.

Then there was curiosity in his eyes as his free hand wrapped around my
throat and lifted me into the air.

"Curious. You know that you cannot harm me, and yet you throw yourself
in front of me." His eyes are piercing into me, their malevolence
making me cringe as much as the pain and fear. "The girl you think to
save her by sacrificing yourself." He looked down at Buffy, then, whose
wound still had her on the ground. "Humans are foolish and weak."

With that, he raised that evil blade and brought it down in a killing
stroke, skewering me straight threw the heart. His other hand released
my neck and I could feel myself, wrapped in agony, sliding down and back
on the blade, falling down.

I was dead, my brain just wasn't ready to admit it yet.

Somehow, I knew it was going to be my last thought. I wanted to die
thinking that I'd saved her, but it wasn't true. I'd failed. Red
tinged my vision. "I love you Buffy... I'd give anything.. If only... "
And then everything went white.

***

The white cleared and I was still staring into Adam's face.

"I'm in hell... I'm dead, and I'm in hell."

The pain was gone, somehow, and I watched in wonder as I continued to
drift backwards. Well, part of me fell backwards, anyway. I could see
the rest of me still impaled on that wicked barb, frozen at an
impossible angle.

I settled to the ground, almost as though I was floating instead of
falling. After a few blissful seconds in which I savored the lack of
pain, something that had become rather much the rule for the last hour
or so, I sat up and looked around.

The room was the same as before, just... frozen. I realized suddenly
that the red bit in the air in front of me was a droplet of my own
blood, stopped in mid plummet.

"What's going on?" I asked, more to myself than anyone else.

"You called me." I felt it more than heard it. A voice as deep as the
roar of an earthquake and as old as time itself.

"What?"

"You wish to save the girl. I offer you the power."

"What can I do? I'm dead..." I might have tried to deny that fact
before, but sitting here, looking at several inches of bony spike
protruding from my spine, dispelled any illusions I might have had.

"What has been made can be unmade, and what has been unmade can be
remade."

"You want to remake me?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"You need me. I need you."

"I don't need you, pal. Whoever you are." There's nothing more
annoying than talking to a disembodied voice. Believe me.

"You would let the woman you love die?"

"Woman I..." I looked down at Buffy. Yes, I did love her. Which was
probably why my body was on it's way to becoming worm food. "No."

"You will accept my offer?"

"Who are you?"

"A god."

"A what?"

"A god."

"The God?"

"Perhaps. There are others of my kind still, though I am perhaps the
only one who still has the strength to form a voice."

"So, you will help me if I help you? What do you want from me?"

"Worship."

"So... you want me to hang around airports giving out flowers and
pamphlets and stuff?"

Something like thunder sounded from all around me. Divine laughter?

"No."

"What if I refuse?"

"Then you die."

He had me there. Well, I think it was a he, but who can tell with
gods? I spared one last look at Buffy in her frozen posture on the
bloody ground. For her, I'd give anything, even my soul.

"I'll do it."

"You must be remade."

"How?"

"You will see."

And I did see, though I wish I hadn't. There isn't much I remember
about what happened after that, except that I went through what is
probably the most agonizing experience that anyone, anywhere has ever
had.

Imagine being a raw piece of steel plunged into white hot flame and
then pounded into a sword. Now, imagine if that sword had a human's
sensitivity to pain and heat. That's what I went through in that
timeless place between the moments where the god had grabbed my spirit.

Sometime during the ruthless reforming, the world went white again.

***

The white cleared for a second time, and I was staring into Adam's face
again. Those cold eyes filled with an intellect both familiar and alien
at the same time.

The pain was gone. Though the pain of my body was as nothing to the
pain my spirit had just gone through.

There was a sudden sizzle and flash and I was on the ground. Adam
stared, dumbfounded, at the scorched end of his weapon which had been
melted clean through.

I raised one hand gingerly to my chest and felt the hole in my shirt,
but underneath was only hot, tender skin. No gaping hole, think God. Or
god, rather.

Conscious suddenly that I was again in a fight for my life, I lurched
to my feet. Or, at least, I'd intended to lurch. My body translated
this into a graceful rise, somehow.

Adam looked at me, shocked. "You are not human," he said,
matter-of-factly.

"Maybe not," I admitted. Hell, I still don't know what I am now.

Then the fight was on. He dove at me, claws and broken blade
stabbing. My body dove back agilely and avoided his attack easily.

When I say "my body", I mean, I intended to get out of the way. It's
just that, when I do it, it tends to be a "scramble" instead of a
"dodge". Somehow, I was a lot more agile and faster than I had been
before.

I looked down to notice my right hand had closed about a golden disk on
my left wrist. The disk was definitely new.

Almost instinctively, I pulled the disk out, away from my wrist but in
the same direction as my arm was pointing.

Searing pain lanced through my arm as I felt... something... being
pulled out. After I'd removed the thing, it became obvious that it was
a weapon.

The golden disk was at the end of a short hilt, barely large enough for
my hand, and without a guard. The blade of the thing was only about
eight inches long, and glistening with my own blood.

This was what I was supposed to fight Adam with, I guessed.

He came at me again, this time slower. I fell into a defensive posture
with the blade at the ready. Somehow, my body had learned how to fight
while I wasn't watching.

A feint and riposte resulted in a single injury. To Adam.

Not much, a single scratch to his arm, but a start.

Of course, that's when things really started to get weird. The dark
ichor Adam left on the blade seemed to glow for a second before
disappearing. Well, maybe disappearing is the wrong way to put it... it
looked, for all the world, like the blade drank the vile stuff, along
with my blood.

That's when the singing started. As we circled and fought, the blade
sang a dark song of low notes, growing louder with each bit of blood it
drew.

Some five scratches and cuts later, I realized that the blade had grown
in size, as well. It was almost a foot long, and the vestiges of a
guard seemed to be forming at the top of the hilt. This startled me
enough to realize that I'd been singing along with the blade, crooning
out the dark battle hymn.

We fought on for a while, Adam becoming more and more cautious, finding
me to be a surprising opponent, though his surprise at that could have
been no more than my own.

Finally, a riposte missed and Adam leaned back, spraying a viscous
mucous from an opening in his abdomen. The gunk splattered over my
sword arm and began to harden almost immediately.

I cursed loudly as he took the opportunity to grab me by the arm and
slam me into the ground, resnapping a rib or two.

Somehow, I twisted as I fell and threw the blade in one fluid motion,
before his snotty attack could immobilize me. The blade passed straight
through he diskette slot in his chest and hummed with satisfaction as
ichor flowed from the wound.

One demony hand grabbed the hilt of my blade and tried to dislodge it,
but it wouldn't move. The weapon had declared his life for it's meal,
and wasn't about to let him go.

Finally, he fell down and the hymn grew softer and finally ceased. I
pulled myself over to his corpse and yanked the blade free.

It was perfectly clean and back to its original size. I pressed it
against my left arm and it seemed to melt back into my flesh until only
the large coin-like disk remained visible.

I stood up shakily, my ribs causing me no small amount of pain. The
body of the demon thing occupied my attention for a few moments. It was
already decomposing, though I still don't know if that was due to the
way he had died or just a demony thing.

As I turned away from the mess, I found a pale Buffy staring up at me
from a soggy bit of earth.

"I didn't know you could do that," she said softly.

"Neither did I."