Disclaimer: I own nothing of Tolkien's works, however all original characters and story concepts solely belong to me. The Grigori and all documented characters associated with them belong in the public domain. Any references to the original book, The Serpent and the Peacock are copyrighted to A Selby. Any references to the world created by Joss Whedon belong to him.
Author Note: I will probably now run the last few chapters of Dark Power Arising concurrently with this new story in the series. Sorry for the delay but real life stuff is interfering and I have my grandson staying with me for a couple of weeks of the summer holidays. Enjoy.
ooOoo
"Sauron: You cannot hide. I see you. There is no life in the void. Only death. "
- The Fellowship of the Ring
The Hellmouth
Chapter 1 – Demons and Angels 101
Somewhere in the North West of Scotland...
"Buffy is so going to kick your arse."
The girl glowered at them from where Osse had restrained her. She was currently seated on top of one of the stone sarcophagi resembling nothing so much as a drowned rat. A very unattractive and cranky drowned rat in fact. Her brown hair hung in dripping tendrils around a small face which was screwed up with more rage than anyone could have thought possible in such a small body. She positively thrummed with it.
"Feisty little thing isn't she?" Osse murmured in Sindarin. "What...or who is a Buffy do you think?"
He was leaning against the wall with his arms folded. Amusement leaked from every pore of him. The girl had put up a valiant fight, rapidly thudding her small booted feet off the shins of any of her captors she could reach, while raining down on them a string of blows and what could only have been expletives even though neither Earendil, Celeborn or Osse could make head nor tail of them. Her blows with her hands had not been as wild as her feet as Earendil had found out to his cost since one of them had impacted firmly with his left eye which was currently closing over. Those blows had been landed with precise, almost mathematical precision and power, as if this child knew exactly where to hit and how much power to use to cause maximum disablement.
Osse had finally morphed back into his usual Maia form and restrained her with ease. Unfortunately being faced with a seven foot tall, silvery-blue skinned Maia with flowing pale blueish-green hair and stormy eyes had only made her increase her efforts to escape. Earendil and Celeborn, knowing full well what a Maia was capable of, released her and stood back whereupon she flew like the wind to the door intent on wrenching it open and running away. Osse didn't move from the back of the crypt. All he did was reach his hand out and it was as if someone had hooked their fingers in the back of her hooded jacket and stopped her dead in her tracks. She frantically ran on the spot for a few seconds and then slumped bonelessly to the cold, dusty stone floor. Osse sauntered over, threw her over his shoulder and dumped her unceremoniously onto the top of the sarcophagi she was now sitting on.
That was when the glaring and glowering began.
"What kind of demon are you?" The girl demanded. Celeborn detected a streak of self-righteousness in the child and was puzzled by it.
Osse raised one perfect silver eyebrow. "Did that child just call me a demon?"
Celeborn let out a grim chuckle. "I rather believe she did."
"Perhaps we should just let her go." Earendil suggested. He ran his hands through his hair in exasperation and winced as he inadvertently touched his rapidly swelling eye.
The three men could all feel the billowing darkness still flowing around the cemetery. There was no chance of the girl surviving if they let her go, but she was proving rather unwilling to recognise that it had been Osse's light that had saved her life earlier and stopped her from being swallowed up.
Osse shook his head. "She wouldn't survive and I cannot in all conscience send her out into that, even if all she does is rage at us. She is both frightened and angry. And she thinks I am a demon." He sounded rather put out by that.
"I can think of a fair few of the Noldor who might agree with her." Celeborn murmured.
Jocelyn listened to the mellifluous, musical language being spoken by these three demons and wondered at it. Most of the Potentials and Slayers were given a grounding in demon languages, but in her quite limited experience demon-speak usually sounded more harsh than this. She frowned in concentration as she tried to dredge up anything she might have read or been taught to no avail. She sucked her cheeks in and the frown grew deeper. If only she had actually listened during the lectures on types of demon from Dr Giles and Dawn instead of blowing them off as worthless in favour of the much more exciting 'Killing Demons 101" taught by the legendary Senior Slayers Buffy Summers and Faith Lehane.
Seeing that the three rather beautiful demons were talking among themselves and distracted, she surreptitiously tried to free her arms which were held fast by...well...by nothing at all. It was obviously a spell, and spell equalled magic equalled demon in Jocelyn's rather small world view. What else could they be? You didn't have conversations or reason with demons. Demons equalled slicing and dicing. She increased the struggling, thereby attracting the attention of the demons again. They all turned to look at her and her struggles subsided. Perhaps another tack was needed.
She virtuously ignored the tiny voice of reason inside her which was telling her that if they had been demons why hadn't they already killed and eaten her...or whatever their kind of demon did? Instead she widened her blue eyes and allowed them to fill with tears. The bottom lip was thrust out and trembled and she tried for pouty and cute instead of 'let's kill everything that moves' mode.
It might well have worked had it not been for Celeborn who had endured a few centuries of the wide, tear-filled eyes and pouting mouth from his daughter Celebrian. He gestured to the other two to stay back and approached her, taking care to not get too close. He leaned towards her and Jocelyn's Slayer instinct immediately switched to whether she could get enough impetus and her head back far enough to headbut him. He saw the brief change of expression in her eyes and moved back slightly.
"What is your name child?" He asked quietly.
It was on the tip of her tongue to flare up and scream that she wasn't a child at him, but that would have spoiled the 'I am just an innocent lost and frightened little girl' act she had launched into. The tiny voice of reason politely pointed out that if she was really an innocent, lost and frightened little girl what the hell was she doing wandering around a cemetery in the dead of night? She blithely pushed such rationality to the back of her mind, confident that she could carry the act off. She could feel the hard comfort of her stake inside the jacket and wished, not for the first time it had to be said, that potentials were allowed to at least carry an axe, or the neat sword that the older Slayers often opted to use as a weapon of choice in addition to the stake.
She tried for a winsome smile and fluttered her eyelashes at the tall beautiful demon with long silver hair and pointed ears mentally consigning everything about him to her mind so that the Watchers could look him up in their demon books or whatever it was they did. Few of the Potential Slayers were interested in the Watcher stuff. It was all about reading through mouldy old books and being boring. They much preferred the weapons and combat training, that was so cool.
"Jocelyn." She lisped prettily at him and batted the eyelashes a few more times. The supreme irony that she was trying to pull the little girl lost look on three, supposedly and possible child-eating demons seemed to have escaped her. "My name is Jocelyn."
"Do you live nearby?"
She nodded reluctantly. Why would a demon want to know where she lived? Unless...she was suddenly filled with horror. Oh my god, they want to know where we all are so that they can kill us all. That must be their master plan. She tried to back peddle a little.
"Um..." She gulped as she desperately tried to think of something to say that wouldn't give the location of the manor away. "It's lots and lots of miles away...over the lake...behind the big hill. It takes ages to get there." She finished off. "And there are lots of people there, with guns and stuff."
Celeborn's amusement showed. "Riiight." He said with a chuckle. "Far, far away, too far for us to get to do you think?"
She nodded vigorously.
"And this Buffy." The blue skinned demon had changed back to the form he had worn at the beginning. "Is this Buffy person, or whatever a Buffy is, also in this place that is so far away and from which you travelled to run around a cemetery in the middle of the night when you should be fast asleep in bed?"
She gritted her teeth. There, in all it's glory, was the flaw in the 'Little Girl Lost' plan. At this time of night most girls of her age were either tucked up in bed or at the very least, safe in their rooms.
"BUFFY IS SOOOO GOING TO KICK YOUR ARSE!"
Gone was the pout and the tear filled eyes. She screamed at them like a fishwife and renewed her struggles to free herself. Panic was beginning to set in and after a moment of blind rage the tears began to flow again...in earnest this time.
She could have staked herself for crying like a baby in front of these demons, but the little patient voice of reason was beginning to get through to her. They hadn't killed her... they had actually talked to her quite kindly and, more importantly, they had absolutely zero idea who Buffy was. If they were demons then why didn't they know? Everyone in the supernatural business knew who Buffy Summers, Slayer Extraordinaire and defeater of the First Evil was.
How come did these guys not know who she was?
"Why won't you let me go." All the fight went out of her and she deflated like a balloon. Now she really was a Little Girl Lost. Her sobbing was real now and they could hear that.
"Oh for Eru's sake." The former 'blue skin' demon snapped impatiently and went to the door. He thrust it open and the darkness outside billowed in as far as the door jamb and then it stopped dead. To her fascinated eyes it was as though the light that leaked from the demon repelled the darkness. "Do you really want to go back out in that?" He raised an imperious and interrogative eyebrow at her.
She drew back and shivered, then she shook her head. "No." She whispered so quietly they wouldn't have heard her had they not had much sharper hearing than a human being.
"Then let's have an end to this nonsense please." Osse drew his brows together in a frown. "I am not a demon and neither are they. What we are, are the people who saved your tiny, frail little human body and soul from destruction and all you've done is hurl insults at us and given poor Earendil over there a black eye."
"I...if you're not a demon." She ventured. "Then what are you? You're not human."
"No little one, we aren't from the race of Men." Celeborn answered her. "Our kind has not lived here in the place you call earth for many thousands of years. We lived here long ago, before the Ice covered the earth. I am Celeborn, formerly Prince of Doriath, an ancient Elven city long since crumbled, formerly Lord of Lothlorien, also now gone and now a Prince in the house of the Noldoran and I am of the Eldar, what men called Elves." He gestured to Earendil. "This is Lord Earendil who is of mixed race, man and elf. He is Lord of Aewellond and our exasperated friend over there by the door is Lord Osse, who is of what we call the Ainur. He is a Maia. I believe that Men refer to them as angels."
She slowly turned her head to look at Osse who nodded at her, Earendil managed a smile and a little wave.
Jocelyn was both awestruck and speechless for a moment, then she groaned and mentally kicked herself. She had just tried to whale on a bunch of otherworldly beings. Good beings, not demons and one was even a Prince. She had never met royalty before. No wonder the angel had managed to restrain her. She was lucky he hadn't zapped her dead on the spot.
"Are...are you the Powers That Be?" She asked in a tiny little voice.
Osse's expression became a little less stern and there was a slight twinkle in his eye. "No. We are not, if the Powers That Be are who I think you are referring to."
"What are you going to do with me?" She sniffed miserably.
The three men looked at each other. Finally the one called Celeborn spoke.
"Well normally we would have delivered you back home, safe to this Buffy, whoever she is or your mother."
"She's dead." Jocelyn announced bleakly. "She got killed by some demon guy who was after me because I was a potential Slayer. Willow rescued me. Buffy is the Slayer, the head Slayer, she's kind of in charge of us."
Celeborn exchanged another speaking glance with the others. "All right, well normally we would deliver you back to where you live, safely and unhurt. However, the creature that is outside is obviously after you, so we must come up with another plan." He turned to the others. "Sewers?" He asked in Sindarin.
"It has to be." Osse nodded.
Earendil gingerly touched his eye and grimaced. "And if it came from below? What then? Are we not just taking her into danger down there?"
Osse dropped his chin to his chest and thought for a moment. "If it's up here and still thinks she is in here, then it won't be down there will it? I believe I can produce a glamour which will keep it here until daylight. That will give us enough time to travel through the sewers and emerge into daylight. We will rethink it from there. Once we are on the surface again we must contact Eönwë. No doubt he will be able to send some form of transport for us and we can deliver her on the way."
"I suppose it's possible we could stay here until daylight. The sun should have risen in a few hours." Celeborn suggested.
A sound...in fact a number of sounds had begun to manifest themselves in the distance. A strange sort of strident wailing noise which pierced the drumming of the rain. They all heard it, including Jocelyn who had gone even paler than she was already if that were possible.
"No." They turned to look at her. Her expression had turned mildly fearful. "We need to go. Now. That noise you're hearing? It's the police. The caretaker...his wife...she must have come out to see where he was. He was the man who got swallowed up..." Her voice fell away.
Osse looked queryingly at Celeborn whose face had turned grim. "The police are the law keepers of modern Middle-earth. We might have a problem trying to explain who and what we are." He looked at Jocelyn. "Which does not explain why you are fearful child, do you have something to be afraid of?"
Jocelyn shifted uncomfortably on her perch. "Well...they don't really approve of us...Buffy and us and the others. The police don't understand what we are and what we do, but we're protected by the IWSC which is recognised by the government. The local cops give us a wide berth usually, but with the caretaker... they may think we had something to do with it. I think we'd be better taking our chances in the sewers, even if the thing... whatever it is...follows us down there. I can sort of guide us through the sewers. The vamps usually use the sewer system to move about in daylight hours."
"Vamps?" Earendil mouthed at the other two. Celeborn shook his head in confusion and Osse looked amused.
"Well I for once agree with the young lady, I think discretion is the better part of valour here." He switched to Sindarin. "We need to be careful. The Valar are not in a position to pull us out if things go wrong. We are as unsafe as she is with regard to the authorities here in Arda Marred until we reach Eönwë and his people. They are still unaware that anything is wrong. Lord Ulmo's instructions to me were most clear. Once here, we were on our own until we reach the Herald."
Jocelyn glanced sharply at the three men, angels...whatever. "Is there something wrong?"
Celeborn shook his head. "Nothing that you need to worry about." He said reassuringly. There was a sharp sound, like a door slamming and footsteps rapidly approached the crypt. "And I think that's our signal to leave."
Osse casually waved a hand at Jocelyn and she found she could move again much to her relief. She'd had visions of the one called Osse throwing her over his shoulder again still trussed up. She flexed her fingers and arms to get the feeling back in them as she followed them through the iron grille door without hesitation.
Just as the four of them dropped back into the sewers, they heard the door to the crypt open and then loud male voices and lights. Whatever the darkness was had obviously either allowed them through or it had dispersed. Celeborn hoped against hope that it hadn't dispersed itself back down into the sewer system. A few seconds later Jocelyn was leading them through the maze of passages that made up the sewer system under the streets of the small Scottish town of Loch Mairie.
ooOoo
Down in the sewers below the Cemetery...
Earendil grasped Celeborn's hand and drew him back as they hurried through the sewers. They could all sense that whatever that billowing blackness was, it was sentient and it was searching for them. So far they had kept ahead of it, but they all knew that they needed to get up to the surface.
"Do we know where she is taking us?" He asked quietly. "Something tells me that we are following her to perhaps a worse fate with these Slayers or whatever they call themselves than we would have had facing those policemen. Her group sound as though they follow no rules but their own. They might not allow us to contact Eönwë."
Celeborn frowned. "I think the same thought has occurred to all of us." He looked over his shoulder to where Osse was ambling behind them as though he was on a walk down a pleasant country lane rather than a smelly sewer. "I agree that she is obviously taking us to her people, but on the other hand there is safety in numbers. I think Osse will reassess the situation when we reach wherever we are going and then de-materialise to find Eönwë if it seems as though they may take us captive."
Earendil huffed a sigh. "Trust us to end up in the company of distrustful people. We couldn't have just popped up out of the sewer at Eönwë's feet or in front of his house could we? Oh no...we had to end up in some godforsaken place in the north in the company of the child from Hell."
They both distinctly heard Osse snicker at this comment. Jocelyn had moved ahead quite quickly. She turned a corner into a shorter passage at the end of which was a tall metal ladder which led to a circular metal covering.
"Up here." She said tersely. It was not lost on any of the others that her tense behaviour had returned. She stood aside when they caught up with her and pointed to the ladder. "We need to go up."
She was obviously waiting for them to precede her.
Celeborn climbed up and placed his hands on the metal cover, but before he could put any pressure into pushing it open, it was suddenly lifted from the other side and effortlessly thrown aside with a loud metal clang. Celeborn had no chance to react when a slim but immensely strong hand grabbed one of his and roughly pulled him up through the opening. Seconds later he was face down with his hands being tied tightly behind his back.
All Earendil saw was Celeborn's body and legs rapidly disappearing through the opening. He flashed a quick look over his shoulder at Osse who nodded that he was to stay with Celeborn. Jocelyn was too busy grinning with satisfaction at the turn of events to notice the swift interchange, nor did she immediately notice that a second later the angel called Osse had disappeared. Only when Earendil had been subjected to the same treatment as Celeborn and a blonde head had popped through the opening did she realise he was gone.
"Hi Buffy!" She grinned in delight and waved.
"Hi yourself." The blonde girl grinned back at her and looked around. "Will told me you said there was three of them."
Jocelyn's head snapped around and sure enough there was nobody else there but her. The face she turned to her boss now held an expression of complete confusion and mortification.
"There was...the one who called himself Osse. He was here a second ago." Her face fell. "I'm sorry Buffy, I didn't see him go. He must have backtracked."
Buffy held her hand out. "Never mind. Let's get you out of there and in some dry clothes. Faith and a few of the older Slayers are going to come down and track him. He won't get away."
Second later Jocelyn was standing beside the open manhole which was on the grounds of the manor house which served as the headquarters for the International Watcher's and Slayer's Council.
ooOoo
A large manor house some five miles from the cemetery...
Celeborn's head rocked to one side with the force of a powerful backhanded blow and Earendil winced.
"The sooner you tell me what you know and what you are, the faster the pain will end." The blonde girl's voice was harsh and it belied her pretty, squeaky clean California girl face. Her strength also belied her tiny appearance.
Earendil marvelled at the calm with which Celeborn dealt with this. "We have told you who and what we are." He repeated quietly. "Beating us to bloody pulp will not make our origins change."
She backhanded him on the other side of his face by way of an answer.
"Yeah right." Her finger stabbed at him. "You're one of Santa's Elves and the other guy sails across the sky in a star. Do you think we're stupid? Now tell me what you are and who sent you. Are you some government lackey? Are they employing demons now? Not that it would surprise me."
Celeborn barely managed to keep upright, only by gritting his teeth did he remain conscious. "We are not demons."
"DON'T LIE TO ME." She yelled in his face. "I am sick and tired of the lies... What were you going to do with our Slayers? Why are you taking the Slayers and where are they?" She pulled her hand back to hit him again.
A curvaceous dark haired girl, skimpily clad in a pair of tight leather trousers which revealed much more than they concealed and a waistcoat grabbed the blonde girl's arm as she brought it around in a punishing blow which definitely would have rendered Celeborn unconscious if not dead. Earendil had closed his eyes, rather than watch helplessly. They had hoped that Jocelyn's people would be reasonable, rational and grateful for her safe return. Instead they had ended up in a far worse situation. Or so it seemed. Their only hope was that Osse would reach Eönwë who would hopefully be able to rescue them.
"Buff...if he dies he won't be able to tell us anything. Ya need to chill out a bit. Give him a chance to talk. He can't talk if you keep whalin' on him like that every time he opens his mouth." It wasn't often that Faith Lehane was the voice of reason when it came to things like beatings and torture, but she'd had the advantage of watching the two creatures, demons or whatever they were. and more and more she had the uncomfortable feeling that they were telling the truth.
The blonde dropped her arm but she glared at Faith. "I've given them enough chances Faith. Our girls are disappearing, we don't know who is doing it and now these guys just 'drop in' and happen to be in a place where we know the evil energy is focussed? It's too convenient."
"Buffy, I got a bad feeling about these guys. They don't smell like demon to me. Sure they don't smell human either, but I'm not getting the bad vibe from them at all."
Faith wanted to tell Buffy that she was tired and needed to rest and they could question the pretty guys some more the next day when she wasn't so het up, but she knew that Buffy wouldn't react well to it. She would go on the defensive as she often did these days. Unfortunately Buffy's temper was always on a short rein. Not that Faith blamed her, the senior Slayer had a lot on her plate and the recent rumours that were coming in that another Big Bad was on its way and might need the Key had not helped.
After the Sunnydale Hellmouth had imploded things had got a lot better for them. The had started to rebuild the Council of Watchers and had set up the Slayer academies to train the potentials which had poured out of the woodwork after the spell on the ultimate Slayer weapon, the Scythe, had activated them all. Until that point, each Slayer was called, one at a time and another was only activated when the existing Slayer was killed, usually in the line of duty.
The IWSC had grown rapidly, aided by the release of the original Watcher's Council funds which had been frozen in the bank. Dr Rupert Giles, Buffy's original Watcher, ran the British division of the council, Buffy and one of the original Scooby gang, Xander Harris ran the branch that resided in Scotland. Willow Rosenberg split her time between them and the Cleveland Hellmouth which was looked after by Sunnydale High's former principal Robin Wood and the Slayers Kennedy and Cho Ahn, both of whom survived the battle with the First Evil. Andrew, the nerdy little former villain and arch nemesis of Buffy worked as a Watcher under the tutelage of Giles. Faith taught and worked wherever she was needed which was currently here in Scotland.
They had four or five years of smooth running. The apocalypse in Los Angeles came and went and Faith had noticed that after finding out that both of Buffy's former loves, both vampires, both ensouled, had been rumoured to be lost in that battle, that Buffy had grown a lot harder. The soft side of Buffy was now only evident when it came to her sister Dawn, originally a form of mystical green energy called the Key, which was made human using some of Buffy's blood by some monks to protect it from a Hellgod called Glorificus who needed her to open the portals to all the dimensions so it could go home. She was fiercely protective when it came to Dawn and mostly everyone understood the situation. All in all Buffy had lost many of the things she loved by being the pawn of the Powers That Be who seemed to play games with her on a regular basis, Dawn was the only thing she had left.
She was also protective of the Slayers, so when they started to go missing a few weeks earlier her stress levels started to shoot up and her temper was on a shorter and shorter leash. Jocelyn's disappearance and the level of fear the kid was feeling when Willow searched for her telepathically had pushed Buffy over the edge and wound her up tighter than a stripper's G string.
They'd all had some weird Slayer dreams about a powerful warrior, but the dreams had been so fragmented that nobody could decide whether this warrior was a friend or an enemy and the books and research told them nothing at all. Buffy, whose dreams tended to be stronger than the other Slayers, had also dreamed of a seal, very like the one that had been over the Sunnydale Hellmouth and that had set her off on her current mood of no retreat, no surrender.
To Faith's, and Earendil's, intense relief Buffy dropped her arm and Faith took the opportunity of whispering to one of the older Slayers, a redhead called Vi, to go and fetch Mr Giles.
Buffy stared at Faith. "Okay so you got a better idea? We need to know what's happening Faith."
"I know we do, but beatin' the shit out of those guys is not gonna do it." She grasped the other girl by her shoulder and turned her to face the two rather battered and bloody prisoners. "Look at them Buff... They sure as hell don't look or feel like any demons I've ever come across. Maybe they're innocents."
Buffy stared at the two men. "But they're not human, at least he isn't. And they wouldn't let Joss go when she pleaded with them. You heard Will, they stopped her, forcibly."
She pointed at Celeborn whose head was down in an attitude of weariness and defeat. The long silver hair fell about his face and clearly revealed his delicately pointed ears.
"Buff, I get it that you're worried, I get it that you feel responsible for each and every Slayer, but you need to open your eyes girlfriend. These guys might have stopped Joss from leaving, but she also said that black thing was waiting outside. It already killed the caretaker guy. Did it occur to you that they might have stopped her to save her life?"
A new voice, male this time, interrupted them and Earendil looked up in hope. Standing in the doorway was a tall man wearing tweed trousers, an unbuttoned waistcoat and roughly rolled up shirt sleeves. He was possibly in his late forties early fifties but it was difficult to tell since he had one of those faces in which age was indeterminate. His hair was brown streaked with grey and short and he wore wire contraptions over his eyes.
"Buffy? What on earth is going on?" The man stepped through the doorway and the watching Slayers spread apart like the Red Sea and let him through. His gaze, which was quite stern but also kindly, rested on the small blonde girl. There was a mixture of love, concern and resignation in his faded blue eyes.
Buffy turned on Faith. "You sent for Giles?" There was a stinging accusation in her tone. "This isn't his concern. The Slayers are our business."
"Since when is it not my business to be concerned about Slayers?" Earendil heard a note of steel in the man's voice.
Buffy huffed a sigh. "I didn't mean that like it sounded Giles, really I didn't. It's just...I thought you were researching and I didn't want to disturb you...these guys...they were the ones who took Joss. I'm trying to find out what they are and who sent them."
Dr Rupert Giles, Head Watcher of the IWSC stepped around Buffy and stood in front of the sorry looking Earendil and even sorrier looking Celeborn. He stared at them for a moment.
"Good lord." He looked at Buffy. "Was it really necessary to beat them to a pulp just to find out their names?"
Buffy immediately looked bewildered. "Names? I never asked for their names. I don't care from their names. I care from what they are and who sent them."
Giles looked at her for a long time and although she frowned at his regard at first, eventually she began to squirm a little.
"What? Why are you staring at me like that?"
What Giles saw was the exhaustion and bitterness behind those once youthfully joyous eyes and it cut him through to his soul. The once cheery and flippant Buffy, whose punning when she staked the vampires in Sunnydale graveyard had been inappropriate but often very amusing, had gone. A series of life altering events culminating in her actual death and then her resurrection by well meaning friends had changed her completely. She was not the same pretty girl who had enthusiastically tried to take on cheerleading at the same time as she staked vampires, killed demons and averted apocalypses. This Buffy was hard-eyed and quick to lose her temper. She took her role very seriously and her sense of humour was virtually absent. He didn't blame her for how she felt, but she was a very difficult person to either help or advise these days.
He didn't answer her, instead he approached the two men and squinted through his glasses cursing his short sightedness. He blinked in shock when he looked at the handsome Earendil with his long dark hair and massive black eye and even more so when he saw the delicately pointed ears peeping through the lustrous silver curtains of Celeborn's hair.
"Oh dear lord." He said and took his glasses off to clean them as if he wasn't sure he had seen clearly in the first place.
Buffy stared at her former Watcher and a feeling of unease passed through her. "Giles?"
Giles still didn't answer her. Instead he squatted down in front of Celeborn and gently raised the bruised and bloody face. "Oh dear... oh dear... oh lord." He whispered half to himself.
"God Giles...would you stop 'dear lording' already? Tell me what's wrong." He turned to face her and she took a step back. "Oh god, what did I do? Did I do something?" She clapped her hands to her cheeks when she saw the expression on his face.
Giles stood up. "Faith, would you be good enough to escort the girls back to their living room? And ask Willow if she would join us please."
"Sure thing Boss...do you want me to come back after?" Faith had already begun to herd the curious, gaping young girls out of the room.
"Yes please." He turned back to Celeborn and started to undo the ropes that bound him.
Buffy started forward. "What are you doing? They might be dangerous."
He ignored her and instead gently lifted the Elf Lord onto his shoulder and across to a comfortable chair. Once he had settled the half conscious Elf down he went over and loosened Earendil's bonds. Earendil thanked him and immediately went over to see to Celeborn.
"I am sorry." Giles said in Sindarin. Earendil looked up in surprise.
"You know what we are?"
"Yes, I know both who and what you are." Giles replaced his glasses and sat down on the other side of Celeborn. "Buffy...she is not usually like this and I apologise for her actions, but a lot has happened to her. Enough bad things to make her very suspicious of everyone and everything."
Earendil brushed a lock of Celeborn's hair behind his ear. "Is there a healer here?"
Giles nodded. "Someone is on their way."
The sound of the door opening made him look up. Faith was back with a red haired girl in tow. She immediately came over and began to tend Celeborn.
"Buffy?" Giles looked at Buffy who was standing sullenly watching everything with a look of dark suspicion in her eyes. This wasn't the first time Giles had kept stuff from her and she was wondering whether she was being betrayed yet again. Everywhere she looked there was betrayal, or so it seemed.
She looked up at him with that dark bitter look in her eyes and once again he grieved for the bright laughing girl she had been.
"I would like to introduce you to Lord Celeborn of Doriath. He is of the race called the Eldar and most definitely not a demon. Likewise Lord Earendil who guides the starship Vingilot for the Valar...the Valar are a bit like the Powers That Be, but they don't reside in the Timeless Halls. They live in a dimension removed from earth in a place called Valinor."
"Powers That Be?" Buffy immediately reared up and spat out. "What? They're not satisfied with ruining my life and the lives of those I love from afar and now they've decided to visit?" She jumped forward and stood in front of the two prisoners with her hands on her hips. "Let's be best friends." There was a falsely cheerful note in her voice.
"Buffy!" This time Giles allowed a stern note into voice. "I believe I just explained that these people aren't the Powers That Be, nor are they even from them. I just said they were like them. Lord Celeborn isn't a demon, he's an Elf, a real Elf, not some imaginary fairy tale character from the North Pole and Lord Earendil is called a Peredhel because he is part Elven and part human."
Buffy glared at him, only slightly mollified by the explanation and not at all concerned with the reprimand which had gone in one ear and out of the other. "And just when were you going to tell me about them? And...and how the hell do you know who they are anyway?"
"I would certainly have told you if I had known they were coming here, but I didn't." Giles replied calmly. "And I know who they are because I have met both of them before, a very long time ago."
Now he had Earendil's full attention and he was as confused as Buffy was. "I...I don't believe we have met. Do I know you?"
"You probably wouldn't recognise me as I am now, but yes we have met very briefly. However I actually knew Lord Celeborn a lot better. We met in Ost in Edhil a very long time ago. At the time I was going by the name of Annatar."
The girl called Willow, Buffy and Faith exchanged a glance which clearly said they thought that he had gone quite mad, but it was Celeborn who raised his head and said one word with very great effort through bruised lips... and he put a whole world of meaning into that word. His eyes glittered in their sockets.
"Sauron."
ooOoo