Without

By CinnamonGrrl

Part 21

“No matter how you try,” Legolas told his father with a sigh, “the trees here will not speak to you, Ada. ‘Tis clear they are long dead.”

They had been marching down the mountain for a few hours, and the landscape had grown progressively grimmer until there was nothing but the odd withered shell of a tree here and there. Thranduil had been trying without success to elicit information from each as they came to them, without success, and Legolas had become more than a little irate with his father for slowing down their progress in order to commune with nature.

Thranduil turned away from a particularly sad-looking specimen and patted the charred bark of its stunted trunk with affection. “Be that as it may,” he replied with great serenity, and began ambling over to another tree in the distance. Ever since Gimli, of all people, had noticed tracks (perhaps because he was closer to the ground?) Thranduil had been striving hard to come up with his own important discovery. A competitive elf, was Mirkwood’s king.

The tracks had been shallow, hardly noticeable if you weren’t an elf or Slayer, with the word “Reebok” visibly imprinted in the glassy black soil if you looked at it from the right angle. This news had duly been reported to the other group via telepathy, making Buffy long for a cell phone or even just carrier pigeon-- anything less wiggy than people speaking in each other’s heads.

“Your dad’s a kook,” Buffy whispered to Legolas, eyes never leaving her father-in-law’s antics. “I know elves like trees, but isn’t that a bit over-the-top even for someone from Mirkwood? Oooh… what’s he doing now?”

For the king of that land had abandoned all pretense at aloofness and had wrapped his arms around the tree, pressing his elegantly pointed ear to it. The others stopped and stared shamelessly until he opened his eyes once again, his expression triumphant. “It says,” he informed them with more than a touch of gloating, “that there are many fell beings this side of the mountain, which is named Mertseger. The lord of storms often shows his face in this harsh land, and we must beware of a being named Satet.” Pulling away from the tree, he reaffixed the tiny, beautifully-wrought golden cuff to the outer curve of his ear and surveyed them with an expression of deep satisfaction.

“Satet?” Radagast frowned in concentration. “Is she not the goddess of war of this realm?” He paused to think, not noticing the looks of near-panic exchanged by the others (except for Thranduil, who never looked anything akin to panicky). “Nay, that is not it, though I am sure Satet has a lioness’ head as well… ai, Yavanna, how strange these other dimensions be. How I rejoice Iluvatar felt not the need to vary the races so, in our beloved Arda.” He seemed to believe She could hear him, and Buffy watched curiously to see if the wizard received a response, but he merely he wandered off, staff stumping along at his side.

She grinned at Gimli. “Seen any more of those tracks?”

The dwarf answered in the negative, but just then Legolas shouted from where he’d gone to scout ahead. Jogging toward her husband, she saw he was holding something between his fingers and staring down at it in confusion.

“It smells not unlike the Hobbits’ pipeweed,” he said as they approached, “but is wrapped in parchment. Is it placed in a pipe?”

Buffy stopped dead, staring with wide eyes at the cigarette butt her husband held. It could only mean that someone from her world—or one similar to it, like Corinne’s—was here as well. “Look for more footsteps,” she urged, and it was Thranduil whose sharp eyes found the second pair—boots, they appeared to be, larger, with thick soles.

“A Man,” the elf-king concluded, head tilted consideringly to the side. “Medium height.”

“Ten, perhaps eleven stone in weight,” Legolas added from beside his father, his head also tilted. They were so similar in build and colouring already; having their mannerisms match also caused Buffy to wonder if it were adorable or just plain scary.

“Frightening,” Gimli murmured, having decided for her. She agreed rather fervently when both elves straightened and glanced over their right shoulders, shooting identically alluring glances from beneath half-lowered lashes.

“Terrifying,” she agreed, but couldn’t prevent a smile from curving her lips— each had just noticed what the other was doing and both now exchanged glares before turning away and kicking their left feet at some of the angular black rocks that littered the ground.

“Nauseating,” Radagast declared, sweeping by them in a swirl of rusty brown robes. “If you recognize this thing Legolas has found, Dagnir, it would be helpful to actually mention that fact to us.”

Legolas and Thranduil turned to look at her, and Gimli peered up into her face; Buffy felt much like she was back in high school; Radagast was almost as disagreeable as old Schneider had been. “Um, yeah,” she said. “That’s a cigarette. It’s like smoking a pipe, but the tobacco’s in a tube of paper, instead of a pipe.”

Something was tugging at her memory, this cigarette combined with the bootprint, but try though she might, nothing came to the forefront. She sighed in frustration. “Well,” she began, pushing a straggle of hair back from her face, “at least Corinne’s not alone any more.”

“Her new companion might not be friendly,” Legolas countered. “What if he is one of Aker’s beings?”

“Then she has even greater need of her rescuers than before,” Gimli stated, and turned to stare at the horizon. His expression changed from grim determination to concern. “Look you yonder,” he directed, a sense of urgency in his voice that wasn’t there before, and he pointed.

The clouds that roiled overhead, varying in shade from charcoal to pitch to gunmetal, had begun to coalesce into a teeming dark mass of supreme menace which emitting a blinding flash of scarlet as what appeared to be a flaming meteor zipped by overhead, lighting up the sky for a moment before “There’s the hellfire,” Buffy said, and anything further she might have added was obscured when it crashed with a deafening noise to the ground, making it shake beneath their feet. “Ah, that must be the brimstone.”

“Dagnir,” Legolas addressed her, a new urgency in his voice, “if I am not mistaken, there are ruined buildings in the distance, and two figures… they were… dancing.” He frowned and turned to her.

“Dancing?” An odd action for such a depressing place, she felt.

***

A few miles ahead of them, Corinne couldn’t agree more. “Spike,” she yelled, thumping him hard on the shoulder, “they’re all squished. You can stop now.”

He dropped his arms and stepped back. “So they are,” he agreed, surveying their killing spree with satisfaction.

“Why are you all happy?” she asked, wishing she had a stick or something to wipe off the worm spooge, but settling for dragging her feet on the ground, scraping the worst of it off. “Our situation isn’t what you might call ‘promising’.”

“Could be worse,” Spike told her, beginning to walk “We could be in a jungle.” He turned around to face her, walking backward whilst giving her a jaunty grin. “It’s not the heat, pet, it’s the humidity.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Corinne grumbled. “That’s what they all say, and they’re completely full of—“ Whatever she would have said was cut off when Spike stumbled, then froze, a look of great alarm coming over his face.

“Bloody hell,” he said, and then he was gone.

Eyes wide, Corinne ran over to where he’d been a moment ago, and found that where he’d been walking had a symbol etched into a flat rock set into the ground. Bending low and squinting, she could just make out his footsteps, and how they led directly to there. “Oh, you stupid bastard,” she murmured, then, “What the hell.”

Standing, she purposefully stepped onto the symbol. The world seemed to wink out of existence, and then there was a hoot like a car horn. Corinne felt a rushing sensation around her, and then she was dropped into a shallow pool of what she soon learned, when she snorted it out her nostrils, was stale water. Wiping her eyes, she blinked at the bright sunlight, then coughed up a piece of slimy something, seaweed or similar.

She appeared to be sitting in the middle of a large, waist-deep puddle ringed with reeds and long, waving grasses. Bubbles blooped rhythmically not far from her, and she shifted away from them as she looked around. Tall trees with vines trailing like skeletal fingers to the ground surrounded her on every side, and the underbrush was thick as well. Even drenched, she could tell that the air was thick with moisture, and the faint steam that rose from the surface of her puddle assured her that it was pretty freaking hot.

“Spike!” she croaked as loudly as she could, and stood. Coughing, she brought up another bit of greenery. “Spi-“

“No need to shout, pet,” he said from behind her, and she spun around to find him standing on the shore of the puddle, water lapping gently at his boots as he grinned wildly at her.

“You’re still happy?” she demanded accusingly. “We—“ she gestured around them, then let her arms drop tiredly to her sides. “It’s a jungle. You said a jungle would be worse, and now we’re in one. You suck.”

“Don’t worry ‘bout none of that, Schoolgirl. Look.” He pointed up.

She obediently looked up. All she could see through the shimmering heat waves surrounding them were the distant treetops and, above them, the blue and cloudless sky. “Yeah, and?”

Spike’s shoulders slumped. “Silly bint.” Flinging his arms wide, he spun in a circle. “It’s daytime. There’s sunlight all over the place.” He pointed to himself. “Vampire, remember?” Comprehension dawned on her face as he continued. “And yet, I’m neither shrieking and flaming, nor a little pile of dust on the ground.”

He tilted his head back and basked in the ray of light that fell over his face; it threw the sharp angles of his face into stark relief and made him, quite ironically Corinne thought, look positively angelic. “I don’t wanna hear it if it turns out you sunburn easily,” she warned sourly, plucking the wet fabric of her shirt away from her chest and frowning. Wet jeans were damned uncomfortable.

She ducked behind a massive tree and shimmied out of her clothes, squeezing as much water from them as she could. “Now what do we do?” Oh, that was a mistake, she thought crossly as she tried to pull her jeans back on. Finally buttoned back into the resisting garment, she emerged and found him staring at the ground.

“There’s a path,” Spike replied, pointing to the right. “I say we follow it.”

“Which way?” Corinne wanted to know, but just then a garbled roar sounded in the distance. There was a thud, and the ground shivered.

“Away from that,” Spike recommended when another thud sounded and they realized that the thuds were actually massive footfalls. He began to run, pausing only long enough to catch her hand and force her to keep up with him.

As they pelted through the jungle, Corinne wondered what Haldir was doing at the moment, and if he’d had the sense to steer clear of reckless vampires with a talent for getting himself (and, by connection, his companion) into trouble. It was strange to be able to think of the elf without the compulsive lust and longing; she felt lonely without his comforting presence in her mind, and oddly light and unburdened without that aching nausea and fear for him when they were parted for so long.

Long years of multi-tasking both note-writing and daydreaming in class allowed her to run wherever Spike led as she allowed her thoughts to wonder back to that morning. Had it only been a few hours ago that she’d been writhing under Haldir as his beautiful body pierced hers, only hours ago that he’d promised to love her with his last breath? Had it only been a few hours since he’d attacked her?

She knew him better than anyone else on Arda, and was sure he was beating himself up horribly about it. The thought of him despising himself made tears sting her eyes, and she stumbled and fell as she struggled to keep from just collapsing into a heap and sobbing for him, for her, for them.

Spike opened his mouth to say something no doubt unspeakably rude but took one look at her face and said nothing but, “Hurry,” as he yanked her to her feet and began to run again. Corinne chanced a look back and caught a glimpse of a huge, hairy leg; she hurried.

***

Haldir was fervently relieved to be one of Elessar’s group, instead of Dagnir’s, as there was no way he could have borne her well-intended fumblings about the disastrous events of that morning. His refusals to talk with her would have been ignored; she was nothing if not persistent.

Once it had become clear she would get nothing from him, she would have badgered her husband to approach him, and Haldir would have felt bad about maiming poor Legolas, but his mood was savage enough that maiming was probably the best of all possible results, the worst being ‘brutal dismemberment’.

It was very possible that his bond with Corinne was severed; it was even possible he might be sad about it. There was no way for him to know, however, because a sense of bewildered, frightened, enraged fury for nearly raping her not two hours ago had encompassed him until he felt as if he could easily do harm to himself, so filled with self-loathing was he.

Nearly four thousand years old, and a warrior trained in the art of complete, utter, unfailing control of himself, and he had failed. Failed his teachers and their long lessons all those centuries ago; failed Corinne and her trust in him. Every other second brought a new flash of her face, of her eyes, as desire and love melted away to be replaced with fear and betrayal. He had only been stopped by Dagnir’s timely arrival from taking Corinne with a violence he’d never before suspected he’d harboured.

Most of all, he’d betrayed himself. Haldir had spoken true when he’d said it had always been him—all along, buried deep, had been that fragment of him that relished the cruelty. ‘Twas not hard to understand, for had he not risen to the top ranks of elven warriors because of his prowess in battle? And did he not fling himself, wholeheartedly, into the melées with his knives, when other elves stood back and plied their bows? Was he not renowned for his cool dispatch of dozens, even hundreds, without remorse?

Foolish for him to have thought he could be a killer in matters of war, and yet a serene elf in matters of peace. And in matters of love… as he trod along at the rear of the group, eyes fixed on the lush ground beneath his feet, he felt his throat close in sorrow and blinked hard to prevent the tears from falling.

Whatever love he might have had with Corinne was over now; even had the cartouche not been broken, his actions earlier had surely ruptured whatever kind feelings for him she might have been disposed to. Her eyes, ai, her eyes… so wide, overflowing with adoration for him, and then so empty but for the terror. Terror of him, who should have died before causing her pain. Filled with shame, he did not believe he would ever be able to look at her face again. That is not my right, he thought bitterly. I do not have the privilege of gazing at her.

So resolved was he to spend the rest of his existence atoning for his trespass that he failed to notice the others had stopped, and so continued walking.

“Haldir,” Arwen said softly, placing her hand on his arm.

Surprised, he jerked away from her, eyes blazing. “Do not touch me,” he gasped, hand halfway to his dagger-hilt before relaxing. The others stared at him, shocked. “My apologies,” he said after a moment.. “But please do not touch me, I cannot bear it.”

Arwen nodded slowly. “Radagast has told me they have found tracks, and believe them to belong to Corinne,” she told him carefully.

“Should we turn around and join the others, then?” Boromir asked, and Arwen’s exquisite visage frowned slightly as she relayed the message.

“It is not as easy for me as for Grandmother,” she said with a deprecating smile that caused two tiny, perfect dimples to emerge in her smooth cheeks. “Radagast tells me that Dagnir wishes for us to continue as we are, that we should concentrate on locating Aker, and they will focus on finding Corinne.”

She paused again, and her smile widened. “She also wishes me to tell you that you must ‘lighten up’ as she puts it, or she will ‘kick your hiney all the way back to Arda’.” The half-elleth turned to her husband. “Elessar, what is a ‘hiney’?” she asked, but he shook his head, grinning.

“Tell Dagnir all is under control, and for her to concentrate on her own moody elf,” he directed flatly, and Arwen laughed when she reported Dagnir’s question: “Which one?”

“It is done,” Arwen said at last, and they resumed course, walking for another few hours until Dawn complained of hunger, thirst, and really sore feet. The terrain wasn’t at all difficult, all gentle slopes and cool streams and shady trees for their brief rests, even plenty of fluffy bushes for when a bit of privacy was in order. Altogether, a rather decent place, if you happened to be in a surreal dimension tracking down an evil god who was threatening your world.

Dawn plopped down on a hassock of grass, nodding absently when Boromir said he’d bring her a bite, and pulled off her boots to massage her toes, stopping only when a hand held a piece of lembas in front of her face.

“Here you go, Dawn,” said a warm, loving, female voice. A familiar voice, a voice that made her think of the earliest moments of her life: a soft song lulling her to sleep, the scent of milk, the warmth of a soft and comforting embrace. A voice she hadn’t heard in nineteen years.

Dawn whipped up her head to find Joyce Summers standing before her, beaming happily at her younger daughter. “Mom?”

*Ada = Father

Part 22

“Mommy?” Dawn said, her words almost a whimper as her gaze roamed hungrily, disbelievingly over her mother, taking in the brown curls of hair and bright eyes. There was even the faint scent of the Coco perfume that Joyce had always favoured. She wore the flowered black halter-dress she’d worn on her last date, the night before she’d died… Dawn blinked.

“Dawnie,” Joyce replied, smiling. “I’ve been watching, you know… I was so proud of you for coming to be with Buffy.” She took Dawn’s limp hand and placed the lembas in it, then began strolling in a slow circle around her daughter, face turned up to the sunlight. “It’s so good to see you happy. You are happy with Boromir, right?”

Dawn nodded numbly, slipping the lembas into her pocket, and her mother continued. “I’m glad. Wouldn’t want to have to hit him with an axe.” In spite of the gravity of the situation—and bizarrity of the conversation-- Dawn felt her lips tugging upward at the memory of how Joyce had clocked Spike in the head the first time he’d tried to kill Buffy. “And Mercas… oh, Dawn, I’m so proud. You’ve given me a beautiful grandson.” Her smile turned wistful. “I only wish I’d been there with you for your pregnancy, and the birth…”

At that, the floodgates opened, and Dawn burst into tears. “Why are you here?” she sobbed. “Is it really you? Not a zombie you?”

“I’m as real as anything gets here, Dawn,” Joyce said with one of her rakish grins, brushing away the wetness that spilled onto her daughter’s cheeks. “And don’t I look great?” She craned her head to examine her backside. “In real life, I’d be almost sixty-five… I’m fairly sure my tush would be nowhere near this firm.”

Dawn managed to smile through her tears. “But why are you here, Mom? What’s going on?”

“I’m worried about you, Dawn,” Joyce replied in her quiet way, sobering. “This place… it’s dangerous. I don’t want you to get hurt. What would happen to Mercas? I don’t want him to end up an orphan, like you did. I think you should call it quits and go home, right away.”

Dawn stiffened. “Nothing’s going to happen to Boromir or I,” she protested. “And even if it did, Eowyn and Faramir love him, and would take care of him like their own. So would Buffy and Legolas. Hell, so would Gimli, if it came to that—“

“But it doesn’t have to come to that,” Joyce interrupted, stooping a little so she could take Dawn’s hands. The feel of her mother’s warm skin against her own almost made her cry again as the memories rushed back: Joyce kissing away childhood boo-boos, pouring her juice, tucking her into bed, smoothing her hair back from her forehead. Joyce saying she loved Dawn, was proud of her, would miss her…

Ok, so what if they were only falsely implanted memories. They were still there in her head, and they felt real enough, Dawn thought crossly, squeezing back.

“Are you listening to me, Dawnie?” Joyce asked, voice a little sharp. “I need you to pay attention to me.”

“I’m listening, Mom,” she replied, even as her mind flew over what she should do. She had to introduce Boromir to her mother! “Mom, you have to meet Boromir, he’s right… here…” Her words trailed off as she turned to where she’d last seen him, only to find that there was no one around, save her and Joyce.

“I needed to talk to you alone,” her mother explained. “But you have to listen… this place is dangerous. You have to go back. Go back to Arda, and go home right away.”

“You mean, to Minas Ithil?” Dawn asked, starting to get confused. “But I can’t, we have to find Corinne, and there’s this god, and he…” She stopped speaking abruptly, for Joyce’s face had taken on an avid cast, an eagerness to hear what Dawn would say that didn’t exactly suit the circumstances, and the clot of hope that had been choking her plummeted to her stomach, to be replaced by a hard knot of anger.

“Who are you?” Dawn demanded, voice low and dangerous, hands clenching at her sides.

“Dawnie, it’s me. It’s Mom,” Joyce replied, her pretty face clouding with concern. “What’s wrong?” She came forward to stroke her daughter’s head, but Dawn pulled away.

“You’re not my mother,” she said dully, turning away.

“Dawnie…” Joyce tried again, hand outstretched, but Dawn batted her hand away. “Punkin’ belly…”

The pet name sent a lance of pain through her. “I don’t know who you are, but you’re not her.” Head bent low, she studied her hands and hoped desperately that the Joyce-imposter would go away soon. “You should go now, because I won’t do anything you say.” She couldn’t take much more of the looking at her, now that she knew it wasn’t really her mother. Oh, Mommy.

There was a whisper on the wind, and then a firm hand was grasping Dawn’s chin, lifting it. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut but there appeared an image in her mind, that of a woman with close-cropped hair and skin the colour of coal. Wings of snowy-white curved forward around her shoulders, and she wore a circlet with a disc of gold on her brow. Her gaze, when it fell on Dawn, was both stern and loving—in a word, maternal.

“Who are you?” Dawn whispered, clasping her hands together to keep them from shaking.

“Some call me Mut, some call me Eve,” the winged woman replied calmly. “I am Shakti, I am Kerridwen, I am Hera and I am Grandmother.”

Dawn only stared blankly in confusion. “You’re not my mother.”

“I am your mother, child,” she stated, eyes soft and sooty-black as they rested on Dawn’s face. “I am everyone’s Mother. I am the first and the last, both honored and scorned. I am the whore and the saint, the wife and the virgin. I am the mother and the daughter; I am the barren one, and many are my sons.” Then she smiled, her teeth blinding in contrast to her dark-satin complexion. “Forgive me for the deception; it was necessary to at least try.” Then she released Dawn’s chin and stepped back. “Return soon to your son, child. He misses you.”

The wings expanded, grew; they wrapped around the woman like a shroud, then faded way to nothingness, and Dawn opened her eyes to find the others ranged around her, all similarly shell-shocked. Arwen wept softly, calling, “Naneth, Naneth,” while Elessar, his face grave, held her and surveyed the others. Boromir’s jaw was clenched, but Dawn was well familiar with her husband’s expressions and knew he was battling tears.

“It’s not really her,” she told him softly, slipping her arms around his waist and resting her head on his chest. His own arms enfolded her tightly, and he buried his face against her hair, breathing deeply of its scent as he always did when upset, just like Mercas did. “It wasn’t really her, honey.”

“I know that, sweet,” he replied, his voice muffled. “She was just as I remember her, Faramir looks just like her…”

“She too had a beard?” Elessar queried, smiling faintly when Boromir lifted his head and stared, startled, at his king before realizing he was being teased.

“Haldir, you are well?” Boromir asked the elf. Haldir nodded immediately, to no one’s surprise; if he’d been a skeptic before, then dealing with Aker and the cartouche had made a hardened cynic of him.

“We must be on our guard,” Elessar declared. “For it is clear they do not scruple to avoid that which we hold dearest; naught is sacred here, and we will be attacked where we are most vulnerable.” He looked down at his wife, who had ceased her crying and now sniffled quietly against his shoulder. Haldir looked pointedly into the distance; if any of them knew how Aker struck a vulnerable point, it was he. “A reprehensible way to fight a battle, is it not, Boromir?”

Boromir studied the tear-stained visage of his own wife, and nodded grimly. “Aye, and one they will regret, Elessar.” The look on his face boded ill for Aker. “When Arwen is well enough, she should relay a message to the others of… this experience, so they are warned.”

Dawn was fervently relieved that Buffy wasn’t with them. She didn’t know how well her sister would handle seeing Joyce again, as her last sight of their mother had been the discovery of her dead body on the living room sofa. Splashing cool, clear water from a nearby spring over her face, she could only hope the other group was having a better time of it.

***

“You are mad,” Spike declared as he hacked his way through the jungle. The rhythmic, almost hypnotic, motion of his arm was in direct counterpoint to the jangling disharmony of his senses, which were on full alert. “Howling mad,” he clarified. “No way in hell Bette Midler’s version of ‘Beast of Burden’ was better than the Stones’.”

“It was so better,” Corinne contradicted, panting as she strove to keep with him. The heat and heavy dampness of the air had her soaked with perspiration, and she swiped matted curls off her forehead for what seemed like the fourteenth time in as many minutes, feeling like she’d sell her soul for a hair scrunchie. “Mick Jagger is totally overrated… lousy singer, and damned ugly too. What Jerry Hall ever saw in him…”

Spike rolled his eyes. “The man’s a genius,” he informed her. “You obviously have no appreciation of the true classics of modern music. Next you’ll be telling me the slow version of Layla is better than the original.”

“It is!” Corinne exclaimed, earning her another eye roll. “It’s so sensual and dark.”

“That’s it,” Spike said flatly, wondering how much longer his machete could carry on without needing a sharpening. Already its edge had blunted to where he was more bludgeoning the vegetation rather than slicing it.. “I have to kill you now.”

“Well, let me catch my breath first,” she said with a laugh, bending over and bracing her hands on her knees. “Then you can kill me all you like.”

Spike took the opportunity to rest his arms a little. They’d been following the river on the premise that it would eventually lead to civilization, but unless you counted weird pygmy tribes armed to their pointy little teeth with what turned out to be very painful blow-darts, none was to be found. “How’s that doing?” he asked, motioning to her arm where she’d experienced one of the darts first-hand.

“Sore,” she replied, twisting to try to see the wound on the back of her upper arm. “More upset the shirt’s ruined, though. It was a DKNY original.”

He gave a bark of laughter, the sound echoing over the shoulder-high reeds surrounding them and startling some nearby birds to flight, their wingbeats the only sound in the ensuing silence. “Shades of Cordelia,” he said at last, smirking down at her. “Maybe I should rechristen you Cordy Junior.”

“Only if you want a Reebok up your undead butt,” Corinne informed him, giving up on inspecting her arm to look at him. “How are you holding up? How long’s it been since you’ve eaten?” She paused. “Um. Since you’ve drunk.” Pause. “Um. What do you call it?”

“I call it feeding, pet.” He leaned closer and gave her a credible leer. “And a Reebok up the butt? Schoolgirl, for me that’s just foreplay.”

To his disappointment, she only frowned at him. “Behave yourself,” she told him severely, placing her hands in the small of her back to rub the sore muscles. “Or else no supper for you.”

Now it was his turn to frown. “What, you’re gonna keep me from catching a bird or pygmy? Like to see you try.”

“I was referring,” Corinne said, rotating her head to ease her aching neck, “to the all-night-but-definitely-not-all-you-can-eat Corinne Williams buffet.” She gave him a sideways glance. “But if you’d rather eat a bird or a pygmy…”

“No, no,” he said hurriedly, taking up the machete once more and getting back to his weedwacker impression. “I’m just… surprised, is all. Never met someone who’d let me feed from them.”

She shrugged. “Well, it just makes sense. I like to think of myself as a logical person. Now that my libido is my own again, that is,” she added with a hint of asperity. “I’ve been eating all the fruit I can hold since we landed here, and there’s plenty of fresh water; I’m doing fine, and if you only take a cup a day I figure I’ll be able to refill myself while I sleep.” She peered at him. “Can you survive on only a cup a day?”

“Not really,” Spike admitted. “But human blood will definitely keep me going better and longer than animal blood… a few birds just to top me up after a mouthful or two from you, I should be grand.” He looked over his shoulder to study her with bright eyes. “Do you really trust me that much?”

“Well,” she began thoughtfully, “I figure, if you were going to drain me dry, you’d have done so already. You don’t seem the type to be able to stick with long-winded nefarious plots, you know? I doubt you’re going to save me for later.”

Thinking back to how he’d jumped the gun on attacking Buffy that first time because he’d gotten bored whilst waiting, Spike chuckled. “Got me pegged there, pet.” Then he spun around and brought the machete toward her neck, stopping only a scant inch from her throat. Her eyes huge behind the lenses of her spectacles, she stopped in her tracks and stood there, barely breathing as she waited for his next action. “But you’d best not forget what I am, and what I can do. Complacency is dangerous, and you’re just a child.”

Corinne blinked at him, and then lifted a hand to delicately push aside the machete with a fingertip. “Are you done with the heap-big scary guy thing now? I’m not afraid anymore. After all the crap that’s happened to me in the last month, you’d think I’d be afraid of every damned thing, but I’m not. The fear has been just… bleached out of me, or something. I don’t know. All I know is that Haldir’s not with me anymore. Apart from that, I’m lost.” She motioned to the machete. “Can we get a move on now?”

Spike saw a hardness in her eyes, not-quite-set, as if it were freshly painted and not dry yet, as if she weren’t used to being so wary and tough, and the poet in him felt a pang of sadness on her behalf. The death of hope was always a tragic thing for him, no matter that he’d been the cause of it hundreds of times his own self. “Yeah,” he replied at last. “Let’s get going.”

They hadn’t gone far when they met up with another band of the sodding pygmies, and it took all of Spike’s speed and agility to dodge their tiny feathered missiles whilst at the same time getting close enough to snap their stubby necks. Gibbering wildly, waving their gruesome fetishes, they delighted in causing great confusion and preventing him and Corinne from working as a team. She devoted her attentions to beating the nearest pygmy with her brass knuckles, filling the air with resounding meaty thuds whenever she connected, and Spike was confident enough to leave her to her own resources while he dispatched the others.

That was his mistake. When he turned back to take care of the one she was fending off, he noted that she’d gone a funny colour under her normal hue of bookworm-pale: sort of greenish, like she was nauseous, but also tinged bluish, as if she were cold. “Teal,” he muttered, sending her opponent to that big pygmy hut in the sky. “You’ve gone teal.” He frowned, and caught her as she collapsed, seeing as he did the dart embedded in her backside. “That can’t be good.”

He pulled it free and swung her limp form into his arms, the machete still clutched in his hand and sticking out rather dangerously. He looked skyward and saw that it was beginning to grow dark. “Bloody hell.” They had to get to shelter and quickly, or they’d not survive for him to enjoy another sunny day.

An hour later, he’d stumbled into a deserted camp, probably inhabited by the same pygmies they’d killed earlier and who’d injured Corinne. After selecting the least-decrepit of the huts and starting a fire in its central hearth, he placed the tip of the machete in the embers and removed Corinne’s jeans. She was still unconscious and, more disturbingly, still teal. It was actually not a bad look for her, Spike thought to himself. Not every day you saw a teal woman, after all. Gave her a bit of intrigue to make up for her lack of looks.

Rolling her onto her front on one of the grass mats lining the floor of the hut, he inspected the site where the dart had lodged. It was on that swell pf muscle where butt cheek met thigh, and a welt the size of a pancake radiated out from a central pinpoint of dark, vicious purple.

Unconscious, she did not respond, and he didn’t feel quite so bad when he switched to game face and sank his fangs carefully on either side of the wound. Jerking back, he managed to avoid the jet of black, infected blood that shot out of her. When it slowed to a trickle, he lowered his mouth to pull fresh blood of bright, clean red through to cleanse the injury. It was the first time in decades he’d fed on a live human, and he found himself grasping her hips tightly as he fed, relishing the hot sweetness of her life’s essence before forcing himself to stop.

Wiping his mouth carelessly on the back of his hand, he turned to the fire. “This is going to hurt, pet. A lot,” he told her. Even in the dim light it was clear the dart-wound had caused a mess, and he took up the now-glowing machete after placing a twig between her teeth. “Sorry ‘bout this,” he said, and touched the cherry-red metal to her leg, instantly sealing the gaping and ragged flesh as the smell of cooking meat filled the air.

Corinne jerked, whimpering pitifully, and he had to press hard on her back to keep her still. Finally it was done and he tossed the machete aside. Covering her with his duster, he lit a cigarette from the fire and slumped back against the wall, resting his arm on his raised knee and lazily bringing the fag to his lips.

She’d been a right trooper, this one. They’d shared a few of their particulars whilst trekking through the jungle, and he’d learned she’d been under some major mojo compelling her to lust for some elf bloke. God that’d caused it—Aker—sounded like a nasty piece of goods, too, but then hadn’t Spike learned the hard way what it was like to deal with gods?

An image of Buffy’s form, silhouetted dark against the brilliant flare of the portal, shimmering and deadly as she passed through it, came to him then and he felt his reserve crumble. After three decades he was pretty much over her, but he’d always had an excellent memory, Spike had, and the recollection of what he’d felt at that moment could still shatter him. At least he now knew she was safe in that other world thanks to the Powers—

Hang on. Facts he’d believed unrelated and merely floating around in the murky void of his brain were coming together, coalescing… he thought back, concentrating hard, on the last time he’d seen Dawn. It had been the lobby of the Hyperion, twelve years previous, and Buffy had stood on the other side of the portal with… an elf.

And his name, Spike realized with an almost audible click as the pieces fell into place, had been Haldir.

Part 23

“There are,” Thranduil said after a while, “entirely too many hawks for a terrain such as this.” He turned to his son, a long finger brushing from his eyes the golden hair blown about by the increasingly strong wind. “Have you noticed, Greenleaf?”

Radagast continued walking, but there was an alertness about him that belied the casual nature of his strolling gait.

“Yes,” Legolas replied, gazing upward at the silhouette of the circling birds, scarcely darker than the clouds that were their background, so intent he forgot to take offense at his father’s use of his nickname. A sudden gust heaved a gout of black sand round him, and he coughed.

“Should you take one down, do you think?” asked Buffy, eyes scanning the sky as she patted her husband’s back. “To investigate?

“Never you mind about the hawks,” Gimli said, gazed fixed downward. “Whilst you lot have been looking up, I’ve been looking down, and the tracks stop here.” He pointed a stubby finger; following the line of it, they saw that the two sets of tracks (one curiously backward) had indeed vanished for apparently no reason.

“Think you it has aught to do with the creatures they slew?” Legolas asked, referring to the myriad worm corpses they’d encountered a half-mile back. Gimli squatted down to inspect the last footsteps more closely.

“No,” the dwarf replied, brushing sand away. Gimli pressed hard on the stone surface to test its texture. “There is a symbol here in the dust. Igneous rock, quite old, and—“ His words were cut off when there was a flash of light and an odd hooting sound, and he disappeared.

Buffy, Legolas, and Thranduil jerked in shock, hands automatically going to weapons. “Where did he go?” Legolas demanded, his fair brow creased with concern for his friend.

“Do not tell me that fool of a dwarf touched a mysterious symbol that appeared out of nowhere?” Radagast asked from behind them, his face tired rather than angry, as if he’d long ago resigned himself to the fact that his companions were hopelessly inept and, quite possibly, deeply retarded as well.

“Ok, I won’t tell you that,” Buffy snapped, the thread of her ever-decreasing patience coming perilously close to breaking. “What I will tell you is that you’ve got thirty seconds to figure out where he went, and how we get him back.”

Radagast studied her a moment, then allowed a faint smile to curl one side of his moustache. “I love a forceful woman,” he murmured, causing the others to blink in alarm, and touched the tip of his staff to the symbol around which they all stood. Closing his eyes, he seemed to be concentrating.

“It is another portal,” he explained at last. “Gimli is there, as are those we seek.”

“Corinne?” Buffy asked.

The wizard nodded. “’Tis a dangerous place they have gone. We must hurry.” He directed each to step on the symbol, and one by one they disappeared (Thranduil shooting Radagast a cool and haughty glance before the portal flashed and hooted, whisking him away).

Radagast sighed. How easy it would be to return to the mountain, to locate the other far-less-volatile members of their company and concentrate on the very dire issue of Aker’s penetration into the world of Arda and Aman. Legolas and his human wife were bearable, the dwarf only slightly less so; but the temptation to strand Mirkwood’s king in an unknown dimension for the rest of his already-overlong life… ai, ‘twas cruel to tease a Maia so with something so dearly desired and yet so impossible.

He sent one last longing look toward the mountain in the distance, then turned resolutely back to the symbol and stepped onto it.

***

Beside Spike, Corinne moaned and squirmed in discomfort. Hand trembling, Spike reached out to grasp her shoulder and shake her awake. She came back to consciousness with a jerk, eyes wide as she tried to make sense of her surroundings and the pain she felt. “What?” she demanded. “What happened? Why does my ass hurt? And…” she stared in amazement down at her hands. “Why am I teal?”

“Buffy,” Spike stated flatly.

“I’m teal because of Buffy?” That didn’t seem right to her.

He huffed out his unneeded breath impatiently. “No, you stupid bint.. Do you know where Buffy is?”

She tried to hoist herself on her uninjured hip so she could look him in the eye. “Kinda indisposed here, Spike,” she snapped, lifting the duster he’d draped over her to inspect herself. “I’ve got a sore spot the size of Delaware on my ass—what did you do to me?—and I’m fucking teal. Buffy can wait.”

“One of those little buggers got you in the arse with a dart,” Spike replied shortly, his eyes glaring daggers at her. “Must have been poisoned or something. I, um, lanced and closed the wound. You’ve no fever, so I think you’ll be fine.” He paused. “Now tell me about Buffy.”

“Why do you think I know Buffy?” Corinne hedged, replacing the aged leather over herself and leaning heavily on her hand to keep herself upright.

“Because you mentioned elves, and that the bloke you were chained to was named Haldir.”

Her butt hurt like the devil, throbbing so hard the pain radiated with each heartbeat down past her knee and up past her waist. “So?”

“So, when Dawn went through the portal to join her big sis, Buffy was standing there with an elf. Called him Haldir… big blond chap, snooty-looking, acted like he owned the Slayer and everyone else.”

At that reminder of Haldir, Corinne felt a pang that was completely unrelated to her injury and wondered what he was doing. Forcing away her muddled emotions on that issue, she concentrated on Spike. His description was certainly Haldir to a T, she had to admit. Corinne knew she should have admitted that she’d recognized him from what Buffy and Dawn (mostly Dawn) had told her, but quite frankly hadn’t known what to do. What purpose would it serve, stirring up Spike’s memories and feelings, if they were doomed to an eternity of living in the equivalent of a Dali painting?

Spike’s gaze, keen as an eagle’s, easily picked out her guilty expression in the firelight and pointed accusingly. “Now. Tell me about them. Tell me now.”

“I… I don’t know much,” she stammered, trying valiantly to ignore the dull throbbing ache in her butt and thigh and shifting her weight again. “Buffy’s good friends with Haldir, who was my—“ She stopped. What had he been to her? “My—well, you know,” Corinne continued lamely. “She’s married to Legolas, another elf—“ Something flickered in Spike’s eyes, a flash of disappointment perhaps, but she forged on. “and they live in Ithilien, some sort of elf commune, she calls it.”

“Do they have any children?” he asked softly.

“No, but Dawn does,” Corinne replied absently, deciding to give up on the sitting and instead rolling to her belly. Ah, much better… the throbbing receded to a dull ache and she sighed in relief.

“The Nibblet’s had a baby?” He seemed incredulous that such a thing was possible.

“His name’s Mercas,” she said, dropping her head wearily onto her arms and dredging her memory for things to tell Spike. “It’s the Sindarin equivalent of William, she said she named him after her best friend back on earth…” She stopped then, for a most extraordinary thing had happened:

Spike, aka William the Bloody, one of the original Scourge of Europe and Slayer of Slayers, was crying.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Corinne sighed, and reached out to pat his knee comfortingly. “You’re William, aren’t you?”

He scrubbed at his eyes, then stared out the door of the hut to the wild jungle beyond its threshold, and nodded. “Are they happy?”

“I think so,” she said haltingly. “Dawn and Boromir and Mercas live in Minas Ithil, that’s the main city of Ithilien… they’re the prince and princess of it, I think she told me… she’s organizing the library from Orthanc, which was deserted after that war a year ago. And Buffy and Legolas have their elf commune, and they run that. When they’re not on wild adventures, that is.”

Spike smiled faintly. “Some things never change,” he said, his voice a bit wistful. Then his nostrils flared and his entire demeanor, heretofore relaxed, tensed. He went from lazy, if emotional, cat to alert predator in the blink of an eye, and shot to his feet. “Get up,” he directed quietly, kicking dirt over the fire until it was just embers and smoke.

Corinne crawled on one knee over to the wall and heaved herself up, pulling on her jeans and taking a few steps to test her ability to walk. Her right leg was all but useless, and she was gasping from the pain within moments. Gritting her teeth, she pushed away from the wall and made herself walk, forcing her knee to bend, compelling her leg to carry her weight until she had found a place where she could bear the agony while moving. Lameness equaled death here.

Spike stood by the door, body aligned with the jamb as he peeked his head around to survey what was going on outside. ”They’ll be here any minute,” he whispered. Snatching up the machete, he cut a hole in the back of the hut and ushered her outside into the jungle once more. There was no way he could defend the both of them against another pygmy attack, not with her injured like that.

Thank God for vampiric hearing, she thought fervently as she limped after him as swiftly as she could. Not wanting the pygmies, who she still hadn’t seen, to hear which way they’d gone Spike had foregone the use of his machete and now merely shoved the vegetation aside so they could stumble through it.

“The river’s this way,” he muttered, and made a sharp right turn. What he hadn’t counted on, however, was that the shores here were no mere gentle slopes down to the water but instead steep embankments, and so was very surprised when his foot met, on its next step, not the spongy jungle floor but rather empty air.

Corinne, clutching at his duster so she didn’t lose him in the pitch-darkness, accordingly tumbled directly after him, her cry of fear choked off when he snarled, “Shut it, schoolgirl.” Having never heard that tone of menace from him before, she was shocked into duly shutting it.

Good thing, too, because then she hit the water. It felt blessedly cool and comforting against her overheated skin, soothing on her injury, and when she felt Spike grab her arm and knew she was safe, quite happily relinquished her grasp on consciousness, slipping away into the velvet darkness that beckoned.

***

After their unpleasant experience with Mut earlier that day, all five of Elessar’s group were subdued and there had not been much talk or cheer amongst them. When the king declared it time to make camp for the night, Haldir had been all too happy to go hunting, returning quickly with an entire rabbit for each of them. Elessar’s only reaction was a single blink, and then he merely thanked the elf and began skinning them while Boromir undertook the task of setting up sticks to roast their dinners on.

The males thus occupied, Dawn went to Arwen, who still seemed shaken up by seeing her mother, even if it hadn’t really been Celebrían. In low tones, the elleth explained what had happened to her mother, how she’d been captured and tortured by orcs until her twin sons had rescued her. Gentle spirit broken, Celebrían had had to leave for Valinor and the healing of the gods themselves, leaving behind her husband and children in Middle-Earth.

“I shall never see her again,” Arwen said, her voice trembling. “Not her, not Ada. Grandmother shall go, as will Grandfather. And if Elrohir and Elladan choose to follow Ada to the West, I shall be alone of all my kin.” Most people, Dawn mused, looked horrible when they cried. Their faces got blotchy, eyes red and swollen, noses dripping. Not Arwen—her normally-luminescent skin gained a pallor that was very becoming, making her look fragile and vulnerable, and her eyes, cerulean as the sky, glimmered with newly fallen moonlight.

“But you will have Elessar,” replied Dawn, trying hard to comfort Arwen. Not very familiar with elven ways, she really didn’t know what she could say—it was all completely foreign to her, this idea of immortality and living on a island with deities. “You have Elessar, and any children you’ll have together… you’ll create another family.”

She needs something to distract her, Dawn thought. “Why not try to contact Radagast?” she suggested. “See what the others are up to?” Arwen’s look told her that her attempt was transparent, but agreed anyway, and closed her eyes to make the connection to the wizard. Her concerned frown was immediate.

“What’s wrong?” Dawn demanded, the urgency of her tone drawing the attention of the males. Elessar stepped over and put a hand on his wife’s narrow shoulder, squeezing gently.

“What is it?” he asked Dawn softly.

She only shrugged. “I thought she could try contacting Radagast. She isn’t happy about what she’s learned.” Boromir came up behind her, and Dawn leaned back against his solid form.

“It seems that all seven of them have fallen through another portal,” Arwen said at last.

“Seven?” Boromir commented. “Counting Corinne, there should be at most six.”

“Corinne has been joined by another,” Arwen replied, oblivious to how Haldir stiffened in displeasure. “They have already engaged some creatures in battle, for Radagast reports finding many bodies. The man with her must be a formidable combatant, for Corinne is no warrior.”

“Where are they now?” Dawn wanted to know. “Are they safe?”

Arwen’s sooty eyelashes fluttered open to find them all ringing her, watching intently. “They are safe,” she affirmed. “Radagast knows not where they are, but all are safe.”

The smell of burning meat alerted them to be more careful with their dinner, and they drifted apart, Dawn and Boromir taking over the culinary duties while Elessar and Arwen spoke quietly and Haldir stood at the edge of the fire’s circle of light, ever the watchful sentry. When the rabbits were cooked, each ate heartily. Supplemented with a few judicious bites of lembas, it was very satisfying, and when all but Haldir, on the first watch of the night, lay back to sleep they believed themselves well satisfied.

Dawn came awake slowly, her consciousness floating up from the misty layers of sleep, and became aware of lips roaming over her cheek and throat while a hand caressed her hip and waist. A wave of instantaneous lust broke over her and she brought her hand up to tangle in the hair of her lover, bringing those lips to her own and kissing deeply.

A different experience, this… the mouth was softer, gentler than Boromir’s, and tasted exotic instead of familiar. Opening her eyes, she found Arwen’s exquisite face a mere inch from her own, mouth reddened by their shared kiss and hair mussed from Dawn’s fingers combing through it.

She was pretty sure this was a bad thing, but then Arwen’s hand closed over Dawn’s breast and squeezed, rubbing her palm on the nipple, and she pulled the elleth in for another kiss. When their lips parted again, both were breathing heavier and Arwen’s body was rubbing rhythmically against Dawn’s, for Elessar was doing a slow grind against his wife’s back, lavishing open-mouthed kisses on the slender column of her neck as he pulled her jetty hair away.

“Mmm,” Dawn moaned as nimble female fingers plucked at her nipple through the fabric of her tunic, and she arched into Arwen’s ministrations even as she wondered what Boromir was doing. Looking over her shoulder to where her husband had been sleeping beside her, she found him pressing Haldir against a tree, firmly ravishing the elf’s mouth with his own. The sight sent a bolt of longing and a need for satisfaction through her, and she turned once more to Arwen.

Only too glad to help, Arwen’s hand insinuated itself down Dawn’s trousers to pet the triangle of curls between the woman’s long thighs. Dawn cupped the elleth’s breast in return, feeling the bud at its centre furl tightly, and pushed aside the fabric with great impatience to latch her mouth around it. She suckled tenderly at first, then more fiercely at Arwen’s soft cries of, “Ai, yes! Oh, Dawn…”

Dawn felt a great need to know all the secrets of Arwen’s body, to know how she tasted elsewhere beside her breasts, and whispered as much in Arwen’s delicately pointed ear even as slim fingers found her most hidden place and she arched her pelvis up to meet them.

“Yes, taste her,” Elessar directed hoarsely. “For she is sweet like honey.” He removed his hand, which had itself been down Arwen’s leggings, and held it to Dawn’s mouth. Obediently, kitten-like, she lapped the slick moisture from his fingers, the action itself becoming more sensual as she locked eyes with the king. When she was done, they leaned over Arwen’s shoulder and met him in a fierce kiss, relishing his power as he explored her mouth.

Behind them, Haldir’s hiss of indrawn breath indicated something deeply pleasing had just occurred to him…looking back again, she saw the elf’s leggings around his ankles and Boromir kneeling at his feet, the elf’s shaft buried to the root in her husband’s mouth. Smiling, she turned back to Arwen, only to find the other female regarding her with an expression of horror.

“Daro,” Arwen whispered, her face ashen. “Ai, daro, daro, Elessar!” She pulled away from him, tugging frantically at her clothing. Confused only for a moment, he reached for Dawn, covering her body with his own and kissing her deeply as he wound her long legs around his waist.

Tears streaming down her face, Arwen’s mind raced for a way to stop them. Her own entrancement had been broken by Radagast’s attempt to contact her; perhaps he would know what to do. “Radagast,” she thought with all her might. “Something has happened to us… we are enspelled. I am free now, but the others are not.” Elessar groaned as he tried to pull down Dawn’s leggings; she giggled and lifted her hips to assist him. “Help me, Istari! Guide me!”

His answering sigh, though only mental, was deep and heartfelt. “Find a large rock,” he recommended at last. “Strike them in the head, that they become insensible. With any luck, they shall be free of enchantment when they awake.” His attention to her was drawn away for a moment. “We must fight, I must leave you now.”

“No!” Arwen cried aloud as his presence left her mind, but he was gone. Elessar was now kneeling, nude, between Dawn’s legs, just moments from penetrating her, and Haldir was thrusting purposefully into Boromir’s eager mouth, his head thrown back in ecstasy as he neared his peak. Sobbing as she rummaged around, dashing tears from her cheeks, Arwen located a stout fallen branch and hefted it up.

Swinging it downward, she got both her husband and Dawn with the same blow. He fell with a groan onto her, and they both lay very still. Arwen stumbled to Boromir and Haldir.

“Care to join us?” the elf asked with a slow, sensual grin, his silvery eyes glazed with desire. “'Twould be an honour to spend myself in the Evenstar.”

In response, Arwen clocked him over the head with the branch and when he fell over, repeated the gesture with Boromir. Dropping the branch, she fell to her knees and allowed herself a few moments to weep before beginning the task of straightening them up, for she would not allow them to lay in such compromising positions.

She rolled Boromir and Haldir far, far away from each other, refastening their clothing, and then set to the unpleasant task of pushing Elessar off of Dawn. The woman had only had her trousers pushed down, so it was a small matter to draw them back up and drag her over to her own husband, but Elessar had gotten himself completely nude—even in these dire circumstances, Arwen couldn’t keep a faint smile from lifting her lips. Ever was he quick to unrobe, was her Elessar…

When all were arranged and accoutered properly once more, and nowhere near each other except for Dawn and Boromir, Arwen dropped beside the fire. Staring at the flames, she felt something alight within her, a flame in its own right—fury. Elves were not easily angered, but once raised, their ire was deadly and inescapable. When the others awoke, what before had been a simple quest of duty would become a mission of vengeance.

Aker had made enemies this night.

*Aman = another name for Valinor.
daro = stop

Part 24

“I don’t trust you either,” rumbled Gimli from the far side of the fire pit.

Thranduil turned from his perusal of the river in the distance to face the dwarf. It was a lovely night, if one discounted the staggering heat, equally unpleasant humidity, and less-than-ideal companionship. A longing for the cool and shady forests of Mirkwood flashed through him, quickly and ruthlessly suppressed. Had he not lived enough of his life longing for what could not be had?

The elf surveyed Gimli a long moment. He was son to one of the party who had so kindly paid him a visit last century, but he could not be sure which. It mattered little; a dwarf was a dwarf, short and disagreeable and unpleasantly resistant to his machinations. That they claimed the ugliest language this side of the Ered Lithui did not help matters any, either.

“Your pardon, Master Dwarf,” he said calmly, the barest hint of overexaggeration in his tone. “But I was not aware that I had spoken, especially about your trustworthiness, or lack thereof.”

The dwarf smiled, a tight smile that held an unsurprising amount of warning. “You do not sleep now, because you do not trust a dwarf to keep watch.”

Thranduil’s gaze was cool, assessing. “Ah, you have found me out,” he replied smoothly. “How canny you are.”

Gimli’s eyes narrowed. “Now you mock me.”

“Not at all.” Thranduil clasped his hands behind his back and turned once more to face the river.

Gimli waited for him to say more, but the elf was silent. Shooting a glance to the others, he saw that Buffy and Legolas slept peacefully in each other’s arms to his right, and Radagast lay in deep repose to his left. Standing, muscles protesting after a long day of walking, he made his way to Thranduil’s side.

“What’s so blasted interesting about the river?” he demanded, striving to keep his voice low so as to not wake them. He followed the line of the elf’s gaze; try though he might, there was naught unusual or particularly fascinating about it; just some water, some rocks, and a damned lot of weeds if you asked him.

“There are many things about a river to intrigue a person,” Thranduil answered easily. “See how the moon reflects off the water? The ripples are like purest mithril. And the water itself—so black in the night, like a torrent of ink.” He took a deep breath, chest rising and falling with the evenly. “The smell is fresh, damp, primal—one can easily imagine the first days of Arda after Iluvatar created it, with that scent in one’s nose, do you not agree, Master Dwarf?”

Completely disconcerted, Gimli barely had time to stammer, “Er…” before Thranduil continued.

“The river teems with life. Fish, frogs, snakes.” He watched Gimli slap at a mosquito buzzing around his beard, and smirked. “Insects.” He turned his gaze, green where Legolas’ was blue, upstream and it sharpened, as if he expected to see something. Shadows cast by the moon carved a more severe cast to his profile; in this light, he closely resembled the hawks he’d been observing that day. “And, if one is patient, people.”

Up to this point, Gimli had been goggling at the idea of having such a… normal conversation with the haughty king, and Thranduil’s last statement redoubled his confusion. He already knew Legolas’ father was annoying; perhaps he was mad as well?

“People? In the river?” he asked, snorting disdainfully. “I think you might be mistaken, your fine majesty.”

Thranduil sliced a glance at Gimli, and a slow smile spread across his handsome visage. “But of course,” he agreed silkily. “I forget how inferior elven senses are to dwarven. But will you humour me, and tell me what you see by the water’s edge?”

Gimli was now positive that Mirkwood had a lunatic for a monarch, but felt compelled to look by the sheer force of Thranduil’s scorn alone. “Lot of mad elves,” he muttered, stomping down the embankment and through the reeds that loomed higher than his head. “There is no one here,” he called quietly up to where Thranduil’s dark form stood starkly against the moonlit sky.

“There will be,” the enigmatic answer drifted down to him as Thranduil turned and walked away, presumably back to the fire.

Great pity filled Gimli for his friend for the sad state of said friend’s father, and he made to return to where he was supposed to be keeping watch when he heard a voice.

It was coming from the river.

And it was familiar.

“I cannot believe you made us fall in the river,” it was saying. “So much for super-duper senses… aren’t you supposed to send out sound waves so you can tell where you are?”

“I’m a vampire, not a bat, you ignorant cow,” retorted another, male voice. It had an unusual accent, but the meaning of his words was clear enough. “And if you mention Dracula, I swear I’ll drain you dry and dump your body for the pygmies to make a fetish from.”

“I’ve already been their pincushion, what’s a fetish between friends?” the female voice replied sourly. “Can we get out now? This is twice in one day I’ve been waterlogged. It’s getting old.”

“Well, at least you’re clean,” the man said nastily, and rhythmic splashes told Gimli he was swimming toward the shore. “Your pong was starting to make my nose bleed after a day tramping through the jungle. You sweat like a horse.”

More splashes; the woman was heading for shore as well. “Women glow. I was glowing,” she said at last, a little out of breath from her exertions.

“Well, you glow like a horse, then.” The man hoisted his body from the water and shook himself like a dog. Then he stopped suddenly and sniffed the air, turning unerringly to where Gimli stood half-hidden in the tall grasses not ten feet away. “Oi, there’s someone here. Someone short.”

She extricated herself from the river. “Not another pygmy,” she sighed tiredly. “I hate those little fuckers,” she added, limping up to him. “If I ever— Gimli!” she exclaimed when she caught sight of him.

“Corinne,” he gasped in reply, because she’d thrown her arms around him to hug him tightly enough to suffocate. She was also getting him all wet. “Stop. Stop now.”

“Sorry,” she replied, stepping back and stumbling when her leg gave way beneath her. Gimli’s hands came out to grasp her round the waist and hold her up.

“Let’s get you to the fire,” he said, his voice gruff to hide his gladness at finding her, even if she were accompanied by a very strange man who now seemed to be petting the long leather garment he’d shrugged off moments before.

“Gladly,” Corinne agreed, allowing him to assist her up the steep incline. At the top appeared a sleepy Legolas and his father, the former looking greatly surprised to see her and the latter, extremely satisfied.

“I bow to your skills of perception, Master Dwarf,” he told Gimli, smiling angelically, teeth and earcuff winking in the moonlight. Gimli only scowled; accursed elves, were there but two that didn’t make him long to murder them? He spared a glance for his friend, and thought of Galadriel, and slowly felt recede the urge to twist Thranduil’s head off his body.

Legolas frowned and elbowed his way past his father to scoop Corinne into his arms. “You are injured?” he asked, beginning to carry her to the camp, but before she could reply, Buffy interrupted, her voice muzzy from sleep.

“You found her? Where is she? Is she—“ Then she was interrupted.

“Sodding hell,” Spike grumbled, holding his duster up at arm’s length and watching it drip onto the ground as he came over the rise of the bank. “This will never be the same,” he declared mournfully. “Fifty years I’ve had it, and—“

He looked up then, and for the first time in nearly three decades laid eyes on the sight of one Buffy Summers. She stood before him, messy bed-head hair backlit by the fire behind her, and stared at him in complete, utter, poleaxed shock.

“Spike?” she whispered, too softly for mortal ears to hear, and then to his utter shock, she was in his arms, hugging him fiercely. “Is it really you? You’re not just some weird Powers-induced vision again, are you? Because with all the wiggy mind-games going on in this place, I wouldn’t be surprised…”

Head whirling, he was intoxicated by the knowledge that the vice-grip around his ribcage was, indeed, that of Buffy. She was the only mortal he’d ever loved as a vampire, the Slayer he’d never been able to bring himself to kill, the person whose death he’d grieved for decades, and she wasn’t making a lick of sense.

Dimly, a memory came to him of what he’d thought was a dream just a few months after Dawn had left to join Buffy. Something about a cave, about convincing her to let go of the Poof and be happy … “Buffy,” he murmured. Pulling back in his embrace, she gazed up at him and their eyes locked, held… a second seemed to stretch and lengthen, crystallizing and tightening.

“Ow,” complained Corinne, shattering the moment as Legolas placed her on the ground with rather more force than was strictly required.

Ignoring her, Legolas turned to his wife. “Will you not introduce us?” he asked, his voice taking on Thranduil’s silken tones of menace. She pulled free of the vampire’s embrace to cross her arms over her chest and glower at him.

Spike cocked his hip, managing to appear impossibly cool even whilst soaking wet. “This must be the old man,” he commented, ostensibly to Corinne. “He’s got that humorless married look about ‘im, don’t you think, pet?”

“I’m sore; come look at my butt and see if the wound is doing alright,” she directed, completely ignoring his question. “And stop teasing him; if he doesn’t gut you like a fish, his father will.”

“Father?” Spike looked around; beside Buffy the group seemed to consist only of two similar-looking, handsome young men and the squat hairy chap they’d first seen down by the river. He cast the hairy one a glance of great doubt before meeting the eyes of the other young man. Tall and fit, he walked languidly around the fire, and met Spike’s gaze with one of his own that managed to be both bored and challenging at the same time. In him, Spike recognized the kindred spirit of the overprotective parent, for hadn’t he always felt the same way about the Nibblet?

He nodded briefly at that bloke, and turned his attention to the one he supposed was Buffy’s husband. He was almost a carbon copy of the first, but with blue eyes instead of green, and an air of defiance that made his entire body quiver with tension. Possessive, this one, and Spike wondered how Buffy liked being hovered over, as she’d always been quite the independent chippie before she’d died.

A catlike smirk curled the corners of his mouth, and he lifted his hands in mock surrender. “I cry peace, mate,” he said, eyes shining with humour. “I’ve not come to steal your bride; she’d have nothing to do with me before her death, and I doubt she’s any more inclined now.” Then he looked at her and quirked his scarred brow suggestively; just as he expected, Buffy rolled her eyes and her husband seemed to swell with rage.

“Legolas, relax,” she told him, her demeanor shifting instantly to loving and concerned spouse; fascinating, thought Spike. “He’s just an old friend.”

“I’m more than that, Slayer,” Spike purred. “I’m the only vamp you were never able to best in a fight.”

“That’s crap,” she replied flatly, a glint coming into her eye. “There were dozens of times I could have taken you out, and you know it.”

“Do I?” His words were soft, rebellious. “Then why didn’t you?” When she didn’t answer, he continued. “I think you just like to dance.” Stepping back, ignoring how his wet boots squelched on the ground, he spread his arms wide. “Care to dance with me, Slayer?”

Buffy smiled at him, the slow feral smile she always wore when she was looking forward to a challenge, the smile he’d fallen in love with all those years ago, and her stance shifted marginally, becoming looser, more ready to spring. “I’ve learned a few new steps, Spike. Think you can keep up?”

Spike’s borrowed blood sang through his veins, filling him with exhilaration. “Oh, I can keep up, Slayer.”

He barely had time to deflect the tiny fist that flew at him with the force of a troll hammer, but he managed it and used her momentum to fling her past him, meaning to have Buffy land flat on her back so he could pounce. Instead, she twisted mid-air and landed on her hands and knees. He barely had time for a smirk before she launched herself at him, knocking him backwards over the sputtering fire—he felt the flames flick at his backside-- to pin him to the ground. Her hands came at him in a flurry of punches, some of which he blocked and some of which he allowed to hit just because he, in moments of perversity such as this, rather enjoyed the sudden shock and sting of pain such blows would bring.

There was triumph in her eyes, those glowing green-gold eyes that used to haunt his sleep and make him smoke endless numbers of cigarettes under that bloody tree outside her bedroom window. After her death, he’d smoked countless more in that very spot, trying to drown his grief in tobacco smoke and cheap whiskey as he stared up at her window and waited for the silhouette that would never come again, but it hadn’t worked. Only time had solved it, that and the acceptance that she was gone, gone forever.

Except that she wasn’t. She wasn’t gone, she wasn’t dead, and a mass of anguish twisted with relief roiled up from the depths of what he’d have called his soul, had he possessed one. Dropping his arms, he took a good solid punch in the face, then another, before she realized that not only was he not fighting back, he was shaking.

“Spike?” she asked uncertainly as she stopped hitting him, frowning in puzzling when he shoved her off him and buried his face in his hands. “Spike?”

“He missed you,” Corinne said softly from where she stood leaning on Gimli.

Buffy hesitantly put one arm around him, then the other, and drew his head to her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Spike,” she whispered to him, at the same time seeking out Legolas with her eyes and begging him to understand, to not be angry or jealous as the vampire’s arms came around to grip her tightly.

“Reluctant as I am to interrupt this reunion,” Thranduil said, his voice like velvet in the firelit night, “I feel compelled to tell you that there is evil in the air; we are not alone, nor safe.”

“That’s just me,” Spike said with a hint of his usual balls-and-swagger comportment and grinned at Buffy, who sat back on her heels and grinned back, vastly relieved he was recovering. Cocky!Spike she could handle without a problem, but Needy!Weeping!Grief-stricken!Spike made her distinctly uncomfortable.

The elven king’s mouth curled in a one-side smirk. “I think not,” he answered, and in a single motion drew both daggers from their back-sheath, spun in a circle, and decapitated the discolored zombie that had been about to attack him from behind. Radagast frowned and muttered something about being in the middle of talking to Arwen, but swiftly raised his staff to counter the assault.

Buffy and Spike were on their feet before the zombie’s head hit the ground, and when she saw the pitiable state of the vampire’s weapon she tossed one of her swords to him. “Ta, luv,” he said, and cleft in twain another zombie as it staggered into the clearing. “Ring around the schoolgirl!” he called happily, mood improving drastically now there were things to kill. Or, in the case of the already-dead zombies, dismember.

The inhabitants of Arda exchanged puzzled glances as they defended themselves, but Buffy and Corinne seemed to know what he meant as Corinne limped hurriedly to the centre of the clearing and Buffy joined ranks with Spike to stand with their backs to her, keeping any of the zombies from reaching Corinne. Twigging, Gimli, Legolas, Radagast and Thranduil took position around her as well, and it was with almost embarrassing ease that they defeated all comers. To the surprise of all but Radagast himself, he fought not with magic, but with his staff itself, bashing quite effectively with its stout oaken heft.

The battle was somewhat slow, and more than a bit boring as zombies have little going for them besides their undead status, but what they lacked in excitement they made up for in sheer numbers. Hack and slash, hack and slash, for over an hour until the flow of adversaries slowed to a trickle and finally there were no more.

When it was over and they all turned to grin in triumph at each other, Corinne’s plaintive voice could be heard: “They were teal, too. Is that what’s going to happen to me? Really not wanting to be a zombie. I have enough problems.”

“Let’s jump off that bridge when we come to it,” Buffy said, pushing a stray wisp of hair off her sweat-sticky forehead. “For now, let’s just say you’re available in fashion colours, and let’s leave it at that, ‘kay?”

*Ered Lithui = Ash Mountains, forming the northern border of Mordor.

Part 25

The sun shone brightly the next morning. The birds sang, their gentle tunes wafting lightly on the air; the squirrels chirruped as they stocked their larders with nuts and the stream burbled merrily as it flowed by. A sweet breeze undulated through the blossoming trees, and fruit bowed their branches low. It was idyllic; it was perfection.

It might have been the bowels of hell and raining a plague of locusts for all the cheer in Elessar’s group that day.

One by one, as each awoke, they evidenced great distress over the perfectly clear memories they had of their actions the previous night. Haldir rose first; without a word, he strode off into the trees without looking back. Elessar stumbled over to Arwen and dropped to his knees before her, burying his face in her lap like a penitent and entreating her forgiveness. Boromir said little, just a muttered litany of “I’m sorry,” to Dawn, but his eyes were haunted. Dawn herself only clutched at him, when she wasn’t shooting anxious glances at Arwen, that is.

And Arwen… she was calm. Perfectly, flawlessly, beautifully calm. It’s easy to be calm, you see, when one has spent the better part of the night planning the utter decimation of one’s foes. It was she who directed the others to pack up their meagre camp; it was she who declared they would now search for the missing Haldir; it was she who came between his knives and the fallen log he was systematically hewing into matchsticks and informed him it was time to continue their march.

“They have found Corinne,” she told them then. “She and one other. She has been wounded—“ Haldir’s eyes gained another layer of misery at this news— “but not badly, and will survive.”

“Who is this other?” Boromir asked, ever distrustful of newcomers.

“He is known to Dagnir, a vampire from her home world,” Arwen replied. “He has protected Corinne, and treated her injury.”

Dawn gasped sharply as wild hope flared within her, pushing aside the horror and embarrassment that had threatened to choke her since waking up. “Spike?” she asked, voice quavering. “Is it Spike?”

“I do not know his name, just that Dagnir trusts him, even if the others do not,” Arwen said. “And Legolas is jealous; Dagnir and the vampire had a… warm reunion, Radagast tells me.”

“She’d only be happy to see two vampires,” Dawn reasoned to herself. “Angel or Spike, and Angel’s dead, so it must be Spike!” Her voice rose in volume until by the end of the sentence she was practically shrieking. Joy and excitement filled her-- whatever was happening, Spike would fix it. He always had, sense of failure about Buffy’s death aside.

“It must be Spike,” she repeated, smiling up into Boromir’s face as they once more began to follow the path they’d been on since descending the mountain. He tried bravely to summon an answering smile, but it was rather shaky around the edges and she gave him a one-armed hug, knowing him to still be upset about… last night.

As the hours passed, it became clear that there was an unspoken agreement to never mention it, ever again, but a fire was burning in their eyes, and a new determination tautened their nerves.

Violated by Aker not once, but twice now, Haldir was nearly incandescent with a blind and barbaric fury. Almost thoroughly incapable of civil speech, Arwen had exiled him to the rear of the group and he now stomped along behind them, and woe betide any hapless flora or fauna that came near him: already he’d killed enough rabbits for both luncheon and dinner, and it was only mid-morning.

Radagast had contacted Arwen, demanding to know more about what had happened when she’d so distressedly begged for help, but she had refused to part with any information other than the bare minimum. “He says we must return to the mountain,” she informed her group.

“Will we encounter once more the forces that have… manipulated us?” Elessar asked, his voice husky with apprehension.

“I hope not,” Dawn said fervently. Boromir only gripped her hand more tightly.

They walked. Once past the clearing where they’d nearly ravished each other the previous night and nothing seemed to possess or overwhelm them, they allowed themselves to relax marginally. Boromir actually ventured a tiny smile at his wife, and the rigid set to Arwen’s shoulders shifted to a slightly less tense set.

Only Haldir remained edgy, and so when the first arrow narrowly missed Elessar’s head, was perfectly primed to turn and nock his own arrow in one smooth movement. “Sniper,” he growled, crouching slightly as his grey eyes flew over the surrounding area. The meadow through which they travelled was ringed by trees over a half-mile away; only an elf would have been able to achieve such accuracy at such distance. Unless…

Faint laughter caught his attention; he saw by the way Arwen came alert that she’d heard it as well. A breeze sighed past him, causing the sleeve of his tunic to flutter, and the air around him shimmered for the barest moment. Was that the sound of…?

“Hooves,” Boromir whispered, looked round at the others, his gaze sliding quickly off Haldir to rest on Elessar. “Did you hear hooves?”

Gondor’s king nodded shortly, eyes scanning the grasses around them for some hint of what was happening. There was a flash of white and black and brown behind Dawn, and they all whirled to face it, but it was gone. The sound of hoofbeats came from the right of Haldir, and they turned to it, but after the merest impression of something curving gracefully, there was nothing but the whispering wind before another arrow came at them, this time sinking into the dead-centre of Boromir’s shield.

“They but toy with us,” he said, his voice tapering to a higher octave when something rushed by him and he shuffled quickly away from it.

Haldir turned to face Elessar, eyes narrowed and lethal. “I am well and truly finished being the toy of Aker,” he stated, and the next time the air blurred in his vicinity he loosed his own arrow at it.

In a flash, there appeared a figure before them, facing away so all they could see was the extremely tall build and slender hips wrapped in some pale gauzy material. The head seemed bent low, as if bowed in sorrow. A thin, strappy jeweled armband tinkled merrily when the figure’s hand came up and snatched Haldir’s arrow from the air just before it would strike.

It turned to face them, lifting its head proudly, and they saw that before them stood a female. The strap of her quiver lay between small bare breasts with chocolate-brown nipples, and she loosely held at her side a bow banded with many bright colours. The head of a gazelle rose gracefully from slim and muscular shoulders, crowned by a magnificent set of black antlers, their arc fluid as they curled back from her brow. The narrow face and elongated ears managed to convey a sense of alert malice as the mouth drew back in a surprisingly human smirk.

“Satet,” Dawn whispered in awe and fear from behind Boromir, clutching fistfuls of his overtunic as she peeped over his shoulder. “Patroness of archers. Oh, shit.”

“You are gifted among elves,” Satet addressed Haldir, her voice nowhere near human-sounding, seeming to consist more of scratchy raspings, “but how will you fare against a goddess?” She raised her bow, effortlessly nocking and sighting down an arrow at him.

“Haldir, do not,” Elessar warned him, but the elf was beyond counsel at that point.

“I think the question, madam, is how you will fare against a march-warden,” Haldir replied coolly, arms a blur of motion as he aimed his own bow at her. For a long, endless moment they stood there, arrow-points trained between the other’s eyes, until some minute action of Haldir’s, some infinitesimal movement, alerted her of his intention to shoot, and she loosed her arrow a thousandth of a second before he did his.

Two things happened then; first, Satet’s arrow seemed not so much to fly as much as simply materialize in the centre of Haldir’s chest, and a crimson stain bloomed on his tunic. Second, Haldir’s arrow embedded itself firmly into her throat, to her immense surprise.

Dawn screamed and tried to run to him, but Boromir grabbed her and pressed her head against his shoulder. Arwen merely stood, tears coursing down her cheeks, and Elessar’s hand flexed convulsively on the pommel of Andúril.

The goddess gasped the shaft of it in one hand and wrenched it free; immediately, the wound closed up and healed, flesh and fur knitting flawlessly. “Excellent,” she told Haldir, who had fallen to his knees and was gasping for breath. “Truly formidable. Were you on the other side of this conflict, I would take you as my student.”

“Were you on the other side of this conflict, I would not have to do this,” Elessar gritted out, and charged her, Boromir but a second behind him while Arwen sniffled and readied her bow for a shot.

Satet’s legs seemed to morph, her knees to bend the other way and her feet to shorten into cloven hooves, and she sprang easily out of the way of her attackers, landing lightly a dozen yards away. Her eyes, dark and liquid, gazed upon them almost pityingly. “It is to my great displeasure that I must do this,” Satet said, “for it is clear you are all beings of great courage.”

Then she drew back her bowstring once more, and in lightning-quick succession shot each of them through the heart. Elessar yanked the missile from his chest, pulling it free with a sickening slurping sound, and continued to stride toward her but before he’d gone half the distance his injury conquered him, and he dropped heavily, Andúril glinting at his side in the bright sunlight.

Boromir was next; the arrow meant for him pierced his shield as if it were paper, and in great surprise he stared down at the wound blossoming over him. He slumped over almost immediately, hand outstretched toward Dawn. The arrow meant for Arwen struck her slender body with such force that she was flung backwards a good ways, landing hard on her back. She did not move again.

Dawn was last, and tried desperately to avoid her death but Satet’s speed was nothing short of miraculous, and as she tumbled to the ground her last thoughts were a jumble of images: Mercas, Boromir, Buffy, Joyce, Spike… she hoped they all knew how much she loved them. Forcing her eyes open, she turned her head and found Boromir looking in her direction, his eyes already beginning to glaze over. As she watched, the light went out of them. Then her own vision failed her, and an overwhelming sense of failure and anguish assailed her. I’m sorry, Buffy, she thought. I’m sorry.

She never saw the green light that appeared and grew, stretching and spreading, as her life’s blood flowed out of her onto the fragrant meadow grasses.

***

Buffy trudged along wearily at Legolas’ side. Once the zombies had attacked the previous night, they’d had no rest at all: slew after slew of all manner of oogly-boogly had assaulted them, from huge ent-like things to possessed cultists with huge scythes to frogs the size of hippos that spat great wads of slime for twenty feet with surprising accuracy, as Gimli’s goo-caked beard would attest.

Corinne had insisted they head west. “Ta-tenen lies below Mertseger, the mountain, at the center of the land of the dead,” she told them. “To the north is heaven, to the south is hell. In the west lies tundra, and east is where you find the jungle.” She waved her arm encompass their surroundings. “We’re in the east, and have to head west until we reach the middle. And we need to tell the others to head back to Mertseger, as well.”

Radagast had been vastly unsettled since his last contact with Arwen. She had contacted him, panicked, for advice when the others of her party had been, as she put it, ‘enspelled’ but he hadn’t heard from her since. Closing his eyes, both hands gripping the staff he planted firmly on the ground, he forced a connection to her. Long moments he spent communicating with her until at last he nodded grimly.

“Arwen will not tell me what has happened,” he told them, his pace quicker than before as he was now eager to meet up with Elessar’s group. “But I gather it has caused… great unease and discomfort between them; Aker has tried to foment trouble between them, to break friendships and rupture alliances. He has nearly succeeded.” His brown eyes flicked over Corinne as if pondering what he should say next. “The elf has suffered in particular, she said, but I know not how.”

Before, she would have collapsed, would have wept and wailed and freaked out in general. Now, she only tightened her lips and suggested that they hurry. And so they hurried. To pass the time, Legolas would occasionally sing as was his wont, and sometimes Thranduil would join his voice to his son’s. After Spike’s initial disbelief (“They’re singing? What’s next, the Rockettes? I don’t think I’ll survive seeing them do the high kicks”) was overcome by the undeniable fact that the monarchy of Mirkwood as a group had exceptionally fine musical talents, they settled into a brisk march, halted only when confronted with more things to kill.

Corinne had to push herself hard to keep up with their pace and tried to ignore what was at first discomfort and eventually became outright pain and then agony in her leg and backside, but finally could go on no longer. “Spike, could you take a look at it for me? In private?” She forced a grin onto her tired face for the others. “He’s already withstood the horror that is my butt; no need to mentally scar the rest of you.”

Going behind a tree, she peeled off her jeans and nearly collapsed to the ground, uncaring if it were Spike or more of those scythe-weilding cultists who found her. He circled the tree and dropped to his knees, placing one cool hand on the swollen area of the wound.

She hissed in relief. “That feels awesome,” she mumbled. “Can you just do that forever?”

“’Fraid not, pet,” he replied, fingertips digging deeper into her flesh as he sought to located the area of infection. Where he’d fed last time seemed to be clear, but the rest of the perimeter of the wound was not. “Why so adamant about it being just the two of us?”

“Do you really think the rest of them would be pleased to hear exactly how you’ve been tending me?” she asked quietly. “Buffy trusts you, but the others have spent their lives killing things like you. They’re not convinced you’re safe. And Legolas is just waiting for a reason to stake you, I’m sure.”

He smirked. “Yeah, he’s fun to tease, that one.”

“I don’t suggest you tease him for long; I wasn’t joking when I said he’d gut you like a fish. And Buffy’s devoted to him; she won’t like it if you upset him.”

Something flickered in his eyes then, as if a spark guttered and died. “Right,” he murmured, then craned his head this way and that, surveying her injury. “Best to get on with this, right? Brace yourself,” and switched to game face. Once the punctures were made, just like before, black and poisoned blood streamed out.

“Ew,” Corinne commented, looking over her shoulder at the process. Spike kneaded her buttock to coax as much of the foul stuff out as possible, then with a jaunty grin lowered his mouth to her. This time she was awake for it, and switched immediately to scholar mode to document what was happening.

Point #1: Spike’s hands, gripping her thigh, were icy-cold, as were his lips. They felt heavenly against her abused body.

Point #2: Something about what he was doing—immortal vampiric properties inherent in his saliva, perhaps?—was very cleansing, because she could actually feel the injured area healing as he worked.

Point #3: The pull of his mouth on her was soothing in its rhythmic pulsing, lulling her gently to sleep.

It was the last thing she thought before drifting off. Spike took no special care to keep from waking her, but she continued to sleep after he’d redressed her and hauled her into his arms. “She passed out,” he told the others in response to their concerned faces as he rounded the tree and carried her toward them. Buffy squinted suspiciously at him, but he hadn’t survived being Angelus’ grandchilde for so long by being an inferior liar; his performance was flawless and soon they were on their way once more, Corinne draped piggy-back over him.

Spike originally thought it would be a healing sleep; he didn’t count on her body being damaged enough to be unconscious for almost an entire day. When he tired of hauling Corinne, Legolas and Buffy took turns. When the time came to fight (and it came often) they plunked her onto the ground and encircled her, fighting back-to-back in a surprisingly effective manner.

Spike knew his fighting methods were unusual, even alarming, to the men (or whatever these fellows were… elves, a dwarf, and some surly bloke who called himself a Maia, whatever that was): more often than not, he’d discard his weapon and fling himself joyfully into the fray using only fists and fangs. Patrols in LA had been getting stale lately, and in retrospect it wasn’t at all surprising that, near perishing from boredom, he’d allowed that Polgara to have its one lucky day.

“This place is bloody weird,” he commented to no one in particular, exhilarated from the latest bloodshed, “but you can’t say it’s dull.” It seemed to be high praise coming from him.

The jungle thinned the further west they went, until they were tromping through a rather barren and flat marshy area. Thranduil bid the last of the trees a fond farewell and joined the rest of them splooshing through the swamp. After an hour, Gimli commented that it was the longest they’d gone without an attack since meeting up with Corinne and Spike.

“This is not to your relief, Master Dwarf?” Thranduil asked. “Perhaps you would prefer a situation somewhat more dire?”

Spike groaned, and Buffy put her hand to her forehead; Thranduil arched a brow in the closest gesture he would give to registering confusion. “You just had to say it,” Buffy complained. “Don’t you know that whenever you say something like that, like ‘Could be worse, this could happen’ it’s going to happen?”

Spike nodded firmly. “That’s how the schoolgirl and I ended up in the bloody jungle,” he chimed in, “stupid sod that I am.”

Buffy sighed heavily. “I shudder to think what disaster we’ll have to deal with now,” she muttered, shooting her father-in-law a rather disgruntled glance. He shot Legolas a look that clearly said, ‘Your wife is a fruitcake’ but Legolas wasn’t paying attention to them; his focus was, instead, upon a pinpoint of light in the distance.

A green, glowing pinpoint, to be exact. “Dawn’s blood has been spilt,” he said quietly, eyes flying to his wife. In a heartbeat, she was racing through the swamp toward it, the others pelting after her.

“Oh fuck, oh fuck,” she gasped and dove through it without hesitation as soon as she was close enough. Legolas and Gimli followed her not a moment later, their faces grave, and Spike jumped in as well, Corinne awake after their panicked run and clutching hard at his shoulders.

“It does not seem entirely wise to me, jumping through the portal when we know not where it leads,” Thranduil commented, but Radagast kicked him hard in the backside, sending him flying into the portal before stepping through himself.

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