I do promise to update more regularly than this. It just took forever for my beta to let  these go. Her excuse? "How do you do it?"

It's not easy living with people who actually like to read things.

Anyway, two quick questions, adopted from my last fic, and then I'm jumping in.

Are there any cannon characters in this?

Yes, they're all here. Well, in one form or another. I do promise Buffy, Willow, Xander and  Spike. It will be a sort of crossover because Angel, Wesley and Cordy will be making  appearances too. Along with Anya's old demon buddies. But remember, this isn't an alternate  reality, persay. It's a demonic underworld. Expect nothing.

Will Anya come back to life?

Read on... she's bargaining for her soul, because she's done so many bad things, she needs  to tip the scale to good. But, being Anya, things sometimes have a strange twist on them.

Once again, 1st POV. Expect about two chapters per week. I'm planning on about 20 now,  believe it or not. It may change, depending on how busy my last semester gets.

Disclaimer - See Chapter 1

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Chapter 2

Bargaining

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It took forever for that little elevator to shoot into the clouds. I heard death was  supposed to be a peaceful journey.

That elevator was anything but. That thing was so rickety I felt like vomiting on the  perfect golden floor panels.

Except dead people don't vomit.

It's just my fate.

Once I'd left that abonimable cage, I looked around. It wasn't exactly Heaven. It wasn't  exactly Hell either. The only difference was, I wasn't alone. Not anymore.

Seeing someone at a table, I rushed over. "Hi!" I said, giving my perkiest wave. "I'm Anya  --"

"Aud," the man said behind the desk, folding his hands and glancing at me with unblinking  eyes. "I believe your name, before you became a - a demon... was Aud."

I closed my mouth. "Yes," I grumbled.

"Why were you taken from the gateway, you ask?" he continued, rising and lifting the sole  object on the table, the clipboard. "Because we still have no idea what to do with you. You  go away and get yourself really, really dead. For over a thousand years, we had no idea  where to put you. Hell seems like the perfect choice..."

"What? Hell?" I gasped. He had to be kidding me. "But I did good things. I'm a woman now.  Women don't go to scary firey hellholes. They deserve better."

"What makes you think you deserve any less than what you had given during your millenia as  a demon?" he demanded, crossing his arms.

I tried to look away, since he wouldn't stop looking at me. Why was he looking at me? "I've  changed. I'm sure that if you read up on my life's history on that little board of yours,  you'd see that."

"Do you not know who I am?" he asked, his voice taking on a different tone. It was almost  mocking.

"No," I said, crossing my own arms.

"I was the man you decided had wronged his wife by taking another," he said, his eyes now  sparkling with bemusement. "You had me cannibalize myself."

"Oh," I said with a wince, remembering. "Right."

He chuckled, tossing the clipboard away. Instead of landing at the foggy ground near our  feet, I saw it falling thousands below us.

Gulping, I turned back to him. "What is to become of me now?"

"I figured I would have you cannibalize yourself, but then I decided that it wouldn't be  nearly painful enough," he said, narrowing his eyes slightly in thought. "So then I  figured, why not stick you inside ancient Greece and have you spend a miserable fifty years  as a little slave girl. But that wasn't cruel enough. I needed something more. Something at  your... heart..."

Oh no. This wasn't going to be anything like I'd expected. I was expecting harps and  trumpets and fanfares and parades in my honor.

What else could he come up with?

"Surely I can help you decide something," I said suggestively. "I have been known for...  random thoughts."

He started laughing, further giving me the distinct feeling that he really was going to  make me suffer.

"Please," I begged. "I'm begging. You see me? I never beg!"

His laughter stopped and his eyes suddenly turned cold. "I begged too, or don't you  remember? I begged and pleaded for your mercy and yet all you did was laugh and toast to  your own successes as I was gnawing myself to death. Did you stop at all to think that what  you were doing was so wrong? Did you even consider my children? My wife? Or was all of your  thoughts on your daily quota of male suffrages? You are nothing but a conniving, heartless,  worthless wretch... that ogre of a husband of yours should have killed you when he had the  chance."

Enough was enough. I drew up to my full height and felt my courage returning in drones. "If  you hadn't noticed, my only motivation was to right the wrongs of man. You cheated on your  wife with a bloody servant! How do you think you would have decided your fate in my shoes?  You were a butcher. You butchered your own life pretty well, don't you think? God!"

His eyes had suddenly lit up as though he'd realized something. "Right then... right..."

A sense of dread dropped like an anvil to the pit that had once been my stomach. "Uh..."

"Your fate has been decided!" he said, sounding thrilled. "My makers will be most pleased  when they hear of this decision."

"What decision?" I asked, insulted.

"You said that you righted the wrongs of mankind," he said, smirking now, his eyes glowing  with malice. "It's time you rectify the situation. There's the demon underground portal of  Dementhos."

"Yeah," I said, recalling something I had heard of years and years before. "That world is  chaotic, violent, murderous and always appears to be an alternate reality of--" My voice  cut off as I turned pleadingly to the man now standing there before me, a cold testament of  my old decisions. "You can't be serious."

"I am," he said, drumming his fingers against his arm as he seemed to be in thought again.  "You will go to Dementhos. You will 'rectify the wrongs of demons'."

I was frozen to my spot. "What happens when I do?"

"The world is a warzone from another dimension, Anya. It might take you thousands of years  to do that task."

"Will I be... demon? Or human?"

"You lost your humanity a long time ago, and don't even tell me that you regained a sense  of humanity. They may fight for a cause, but now you are the bloody cause. You will be  demon again, and the only way to regain your soul, your humanity, is to do what I say and  listen to my guides. You'll never be good, wholesome, pure... but you will be human again."

I nodded. "When?" I asked in a trembling voice.

"Your powers must be uncovered," he continued, as though he hadn't heard her. "And because  Dementhos does have the ability to recreate people from a previous lifetime, you might see  some familiar faces. They will not know you, but you will only know them from your past  life. Your life, your... future depends on what you do today. Do not stop until you have  proven to me that you are worthy to be in Heaven, to be made whole. Only then will you see  that you have truly come to your epiphany."

I looked up just in time to see him snap his fingers.

And then all fell to darkness.

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To be continued...

Chapter 3 -- Anya wakes up in a new world and discovers friends from her past are not what  they seem.