Warning: This chapter contains altered spoilers for the scenes from "Grave" containing Spike's completing the demon trials and having his request fulfilled. Contains more references/scenes of violence. Also, strong language as I forgot to warn for in the last chapter.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dyin' to Live

//Why am I fighting to live, if I'm just living to fight//

//Why am I trying to see, when there ain't nothing in sight//

//Why am I trying to give, when no one gives me a try//

//Why am I dying to live, if I'm just living to die//

Tupac featuring The Notorious B.I.G, "Runnin' (Dyin' to Live)"

~*~

Shuddering from the workout the tag team duo of pointy eared Gollum-look-alike demons had given him, Spike tosses aside the head he'd finally managed to rip off one of the nasty buggers and turns menacingly toward the other one. The remaining bitch, he was guessing at the gender but felt confident he had it right with the way the thing screamed like a bloody banshee at his decapitating her partner, lunged at him with claws slashing wildly and gouging cruelly into his flesh as only a female could use such instruments of torture.

"Bloody buggering everlasting hell," he snarls as he fights to control the writhing imp tearing at his flesh while making so much noise he wondered if his eardrums would ever recover.

Somehow he manages to grab onto the thing's wrists and crushes the fragile bones there while yanking out the fingers that had been buried in his chest. He throws the shrieking mass away from him with a hand going to his bleeding flesh then leaps back as the demon comes at him with kicks and bites so fast he barely manages to avoid them.

"I'll have your head," he growls furiously after knocking the thing to the ground only to have the bitch latch onto his ankle and sinks it's razor sharp teeth in clear to the bone, "mounted on my bloody wall for that."

Kicking her viciously away from him his watchful eyes sees her scramble to her feet as she prepares to attack again. He goes on the offensive, lashing out with rock hard fists slamming into her thick aged skin until he had her leaning weakly against a wall of the cave and clearly beaten. Trapped she begins that God awful racket that his ears are already too damaged to really appreciate and he reaches out to rip her head off it's slender neck and stop the racket.

Carrying the dripping head like a trophy he stumbles toward the larger chamber where the bastard in charge likes to lurk and tosses it in the direction of his belongings with every intention of keeping the bloody thing as a souvenir.

"That was a bloody doddle and piece o'piss," he remarks sarcastically for the audience he senses in the shadows. "Got any more ready tests for me, you ponce?" he snarks even as he's collapsing to his knees with such a need for blood and rest that he doesn't know how much longer he can go without either. "I'll take anything you can throw at me," not looking forward to much more, he adds silently, but he'll bloody well take it. "Keep having your fun as long as it'll get me what I need to take care of the Slayer. Give her what's coming to her," he sniffs angrily at the thoughts of Buffy stirring in his mind and shifts to a sitting position on the hard ground. "You just bring it on. I'll beat your bloody games and get what I want so you just bring on the whole …," he stops as a skittering sound reaches his recovering ears, the kind of sound lots and lots of insects make when rushing toward a common goal. "Bloody hell," he grunts as scarab beetles begin pouring into the chamber and running over every inch of his skin.

Many of the nasty buggers bite into his tough skin and begin burrowing beneath the flesh, making him sharpen his fingernails to the claws of his vampire façade to begin tearing at his body to dig the bugs out as he scrambles to his feet. He feels then inside and out, moving and crawling and worming their ways into places he's never even felt before. Tearing at his neck he manages to keep two from making their way up into his skull where they would have wreaked havoc on his brain. His bare feet stomp over what seems to be hundreds of their hard shelled little bodies as he makes his way toward another chamber where a single torch burnt. Not knowing or caring if it was allowed he stumbles toward that light, tears it off the wall and shoves the flame down at the flesh eating bugs still skittering after him. They dart away from the heat and he uses the break to finish removing the insects still clinging to the outside of his body then digs beneath his skin to cut out the ones that had burrowed.

That done he proceeds to search out every last one of the possibly thousands of scarabs that had been unleashed upon him. He crushes each one with his hands and feet, uncaring of the sharp little pinchers at their mouths that continue to tear at and bloody his skin.

Torch in hand and miraculously still lit he listens carefully for a single skittering screech of more bugs and looks around to make sure there are no more to deal with before slouching against a wall and slowly sliding down the rough rock to sit on the ground.

"Why are you doing this to yourself?" his eyes nearly pop from his head as he turns to locate the source of that question.

"Buffy?"

"Please, don't expect me to believe all … this," he watches her step into the light cast by the torch and wave a contemptuous hand toward his bleeding and abused body, "is for me."

"Oh, it's for you all right," he swallows convulsively and tells himself it's not really her. "'S for your bloody death."

"You really think you can kill me? You really want that?" she takes a seat across from him wearing the jeans and coat she'd had on last he'd seen her.

"I get this bleeding chip out and I'll rip you to pieces for what you've done to me."

She throws back her blonde head and laughs like he's made the cleverest joke.

"Oh, that's rich," she gives him a coldly condescending glare. "We both know the chip doesn't stop you from doing that. The thing doesn't work on me now. If you really wanted to," she snickers again in amusement, "'rip me to pieces' you'd already have done it."

"Couldn't," he looks down at himself with shame. "Love you too much."

"But this is gonna change all that?" she asks skeptically with scornful eyes taking in every inch of the cave then returning to rest dismissively on him.

"Damned right it will. That's the deal," he looks into eyes so like hers, but he knows them to not really be Buffy's. "I finish these bloody obstacles and I get my demon back. No more chip, no more love, no more you inside me. I finish this then I come and finish you."

"Oh, shaking," she rubs her arms sarcastically as if chilled by fear. "Let's rewind a few babbles here. I believe there was something said about 'what I've done to you.' Fascinating statement, that," she rests her elbows on her knees and props her chin up on her hands. "Tell me about all these things I've done to you."

"You've got her bitchy 'tude down to an art, whatever the hell you are," he says with a hint of admiration, ignoring her request.

"You want to finish this you have to go through me," she says in just the way his Slayer would. "Tell me what I've done to you."

"This to be one of those oral exams?" he leers at her then runs his tongue suggestively over his top teeth and lip. "I can think of a better way to pass it than chit chat."

She moves so quickly he doesn't even see it happen. In the blink of an eye she's moved from sitting pretty to straddling his legs and knocking his head back into the stone he's leaning against.

"This is my show now and I will not tolerate that swaggering bullshit of yours," she orders with her green eyes glowing a bit like the demon's.

"You've definitely been doing your homework, pet," he smirks at her dominance. "Heard this song before."

"I could so easily," her fingers trail seductively down his neck then curl tightly around the column of flesh, "snap this right in two and be sitting in your dust, vampire, so do not push me. We both know how you like to shoot off at the mouth. This is the easy part so long as you just give me the answers I'm looking for and only the answers I'm looking for," her fingers tighten cruelly on his throat. "We clear?"

"Clear," he gasps when she removes the strangling grip.

"Good, boy," she taps his lips and sinks back on her heels, still straddling his legs and ready to leap forward and rip his head off if he gets snarky again. "Now, I repeat for the last time. What have I done to you?"

He looks into those green eyes set in her face and answers as if telling Buffy what's brought him here.

"You broke me," he begins slowly, thoughts slowly coming together to form words and sentences. "Something happened to me a long time ago, first bloody time I saw you and you were so different from the other Slayers, and no matter how I thought I wanted to or tried I couldn't kill you. Bloody hated you for that. Bleeding weakness for you ruined what I had for a hundred years with Dru," he accuses. "Ruined a hundred years of enjoying carnage and mayhem. Ruined me," he gazes bitterly into those eyes and tangles his hands in her upswept hair. "I fell in love with you, full force. Gave you every bloody thing I have in me and it was never enough to make me more than dirt beneath your pristine feet. Woulda given my life for you any time you asked and all you did was give me a few crumbs to gobble up and build stupid hopes and dreams on then you bloody shattered it all. Broke my heart into a million bleeding pieces, walked right over it out the door of my crypt and didn't even care," he looks into her face with near hatred on his. "But I'm the heartless, soulless, evil, undead thing," he scoffs and can't stand to be near her double any longer. "I'm a vampire and I've got more humanity in me than you've ever shown me, you bloody bitch," he pushes her away and climbs to his feet. "Least I show my victims some mercy and fucking kill them when the torture's done. You just kept stringin' me along and pilin' it on until all that's left is this," he looks at his body scornfully. "This pathetic, broken, ponce reduced to begging a demon for the strength to get over you."

"Yes, the pathetic is so accurate a term," she scoffs behind him and he hears her shift to her feet. "So, I'm a little heartbreaker," she appears in front of him with a sugary sweet smile on her pink lips. "Cool."

A growl builds up inside him at her expression and tone and he strikes out only to have his fist stopped in midair by an unseen force.

"None of that, sweetie," she tsks. "We're still talking here. Now, feel better getting all that off your chest?"

"No," he snarls and lowers his hand. "Won't feel better till I drain the last bloody drop of blood from your veins."

"Oh, stop, you're turning me on," she flutters her eyelashes coyly. "Back to the matter at hand. You call this love … what you feel for me - "

"Her. I feel nothing for whatever the hell you are, but I look forward to getting to the fight to the death part of this little game so I can shut your blathering gob," he interrupts.

Her fist flies out and snaps his head to the side before he even thinks to expect a blow.

"I was talking. Not you," he spits out blood from a cut his teeth made on the inside of his cheek. "I have the floor and you will not speak again until I've asked you a question," she smiles brightly in response to his murderous glare. "We clear?"

"Crystal," he snaps.

"That's more like it. Sit," she waves a hand and sends him stumbling to his knees then sitting on his ass against the rock wall. "Now, I believe we were discussing this so-called 'love,'" she laughs at the word and begins to pace casually before him, "you feel for me. Frankly, love, it sounds an awful lot like hate to me, what with all that bitterness you speak with and of course the 'request' you're here to have us fulfill. Do tell me, William, how can you call it love?"

"It just is," he sighs sensing he was about to rehash a few arguments he'd had with the real Buffy.

"But you're a vampire," she seems to be mocking things the Slayer has said and he looks at his inquisitor curiously. "You've no soul to love me with all your soul," she points out flippantly. "Your heart's a shriveled dead and useless thing in that hollow chest of yours, so I doubt you can love me with all your heart," she reasons. "There is, of course, the body with which two people can love each other, but without the heart or soul that's just lust. So," she looks him in the eye, "how can you love me? What have you got to love me with?"

"Oh, you're good," he glares at her. "That's very Buffy of you. Got an answer for that one, though. Love – real love, great love, the love I feel for you – it's the kinda thing you know in your bloody bones. The very fiber of your being. It's so deep in my mind, just like this bleeding chip, inside my entire being, that I can't get it out. The soul may be gone, heart may not beat, but there is still a kind of life inside me. I can still feel and think and do just about any bloody thing you do – good or bad," he states. "You think a whimsical little vapor like a soul or a bloody useless organ like the heart are all there is to loving someone? Something? Wake up, Sleeping Beauty. That's where you've always gotten it wrong. Hearts and souls are romantic notions wasted on people like us. What we have is bodies, minds, essences, raw emotions, primal urges and all the bloody good, bad and ugly that makes for real everlasting love. For better or worse. Sickness and in health. What I feel for you is eternal and unending and deeper then a heart or soul can go. I have everything that matters to love you with and I love you with everything I have."

"Aww," she raises a hand and wipes at his face and he shuts his eyes tightly at the realization that she's brushing at tears he didn't even know he'd shed. "That's beautiful. Pity she'll never fall for that line. She requires more than your everything, vampire," he cringes away from that truth and the thing's caress. "You come here and ask for … What is it exactly that you want? Vengeance against her?"

"I want to be what I was. I want this bloody chip out and the bleeding leash off so I can be what I'm supposed to be. I have to kill her. I tried to make things different. Tried to live in her world, be one of the good guys with her bloody friends, but it didn't work," he sighs at that failure. "It's not vengeance, it's just the only way it can be," he forces his blue eyes to look into those hauntingly familiar green ones. "I can't love you. You've made it bloody clear you don't want it and you won't take it and you'll never return it. That leaves us enemies again, pet," he forgets she's not really Buffy and gently strokes that golden face. "We've gotta end this dance once and for all. It's gone on too long. I'm so tired of the circles we go in. So tired of the games. It hurts me and it has to end."

"There's another way," she reaches up and cups his face in both hands. "We can give you," her fingers gently stroke over his lips, "what you need for her to love you," he raises his hands to still her fingers and looks at her questioningly. "It all comes down to what you want more. Do you want this Slayer dead or for her to love you back?" her eyes glow curiously as they look deeply into his as she awaits his answer.

A response is instantly on the tip of his tongue, but for once he holds back his words to actually think this through.

He'd thought, especially since she came back, that Buffy could and in fact did love him, but that had all proved to be more of the pathetic delusions that had plagued him his entire existence. She was yet another dream and the most vividly illusive one he'd ever dared to have. And all his dreams soon became nightmares. Cecily, Dru and Buffy all brought nothing but pain and misery that he could only enjoy for so long before it began to break him. And a spirit could only stand to be broken so many times before it shattered irreparably.

He was done giving that much power to bitches who never cared to acknowledge even a fraction of his efforts. He was done falling apart.

"I want," he sighs and gives the vague answer that is all he can muster, "it to be done with."

"We can do that," her eyes gleam eerily at his words, almost as if satisfied by them, and she steps away. "Now for your final phase. Just do this one more teeny little thing and you get what you want."

"Right," he looks at her suspiciously, "what's it to be then?"

She stands before him with a loving expression on her perfect replica of Buffy's face and answers softly, "Kill me, Spike."

~*~*~

He told himself if he didn't move he wouldn't feel and he could forget. He laid flat on his back on the cave's floor with his hands and eyes clenched shut and told himself for the hundredth time that it hadn't been real. Hadn't been her. Wasn't really Buffy's body lying dead and still just a few feet from his. He told himself all that, but it didn't matter.

Reality had blurred during the battle and it had all been so bloody similar to all the times he and his Slayer had fought and he had begun to fight Buffy – the real Buffy – in his mind. In the end he had vamped out and sunk his fangs into Buffy's neck before viciously tearing her throat open and leaving her to fall to the ground and bleed out until the heart inside her ceased beating.

Spike lay there knowing that he'd done what he'd claimed for so long to have wanted.

Killed the Slayer. Watched Buffy die at his own hands.

He felt … too much to cope with yet numb at the same time.

"You have endured the required trials," he hears the demon's deep gravelly voice above him and pushes aside his swirling thoughts and emotions to get this over with.

"Bloody right I have," he maneuvers his body to a kneeling position as opens eyes swollen almost completely shut from blows they'd received to stare at the creature. "Completed your bleeding test like I said I would so now you'll give me what I want like you said you would. Make me what I was," his eyes drift uncontrollably to the lifeless body that still resembled his Slayer so. "Gotta give Buffy what she deserves," he whispers hoarsely, having no idea what exactly it was she deserved but knowing it was not the same fate he had dealt her double in that final phase.

"Very well, vampire," his attention is drawn back to the demon with it's glowing green eyes. "You shall have that which you seek. We will take away your chip," one demonic hand reaches toward Spike's bleached blonde head, "and give back your soul."

The beast's other hand presses to his chest and the most extreme pain he's ever felt tears through Spike's entire being. He feels torn in two by the chip being yanked from his skull and the soul being jammed into his chest. His head flies back and he screams until his throat is raw and he doesn't know if he'll ever be able to speak again.

Then the painful hands are removed and it all stops. His body collapses once again to the ground and he can't move or think or feel as the world fades in and out painfully.

"You have gotten what you came here for," he vaguely hears the demon say. "It would seem you are indeed a warrior still. Now you must take what you have been given and learned here to find out if you are still the dark warrior of such notoriety, William the Bloody, or will you be going another way."

Those words weasel their way into his fading consciousness and follow Spike into the utter oblivion he slips into the recover from his battles.