Title: And Anya Makes Three, part 1

Author: CinnamonGrrl

Disclaimer: I own nothing but an ’89 Cadillac Eldorado with a broken tape deck, and you’re welcome to it.

Rating: Hard R, perhaps even NC17 if you’re squeamish.

Pairing: Elladan/Anya/Elrohir. No slash.

Placement: Jossverse: Takes place not long after that episode where Spike and Anya boff each other for comfort from their misery. Ringverse: twenty years before the events of the Ring.

Summary: Broken-hearted by Xander’s leaving her at the altar, Anya is summoned to Imladris to wreak vengeance but can’t seem to focus—she’s too distracted by her own troubles to get the job done. Can her friends, the sons of Elrond, help get her back on track?

And Anya Makes Three, part 1

Imladris, Arda: 2998 S.E. by Middle-Earth’s reckoning; 2002 AD by Earth’s reckoning.

“Oh, good,” thought Anyanka, Vengeance Demon, in relief upon appearing to her latest job and surveying her surroundings. It had been a few decades since she’d last been in Imladris, and she was pleased to see it as lovely as ever. The elegant series of buildings, nestled as they were into the side of the valley, seemed to glimmer in the twilight as spray from the nearby waterfalls misted around it.

One by one, lanterns were lit in the windows of Elrond’s home, giving it a cozy glow that drew the onlooker like a magnet. Anya was no stronger than any other vengeance demon—especially after her disastrous breakup with Xander-- and found herself approaching it with longing. She felt weary to the bone, and thought with a pang that she just wasn’t enjoying the vengeance like she used to. The fire had gone out of her belly, as it were, and she now approached her work more as… work, rather than a fun hobby for which she happened to be well compensated.

To her knowledge, there was no great demand in her usual dimensions for her services by females with regrettable taste in men. Perhaps she could stay here in Imladris a few days, even a week, and relax a bit. Maybe she could even get the twins to cheer her up with their usual antics… Elladan and Elrohir were always good for some amusing tales and practical jokes, usually at the other’s expense. Since Xander had dumped her so cruelly, there hadn’t been much laughter in her life, and Anya realized with surprise that she greatly missed it.

Anya did not often work in the elven areas of Middle-Earth, as elves for the most part were decent to their females and thus elvendom was not really needful of the unique services she could provide. Consequently, she hardly ever got to Imladris, Mirkwood, the Havens, or Lothlórien too often. A pity, really—she’d had various fun encounters with Men, Dwarves, even Hobbits (who’d ever think those tiny creatures would be such fierce lovers… rowr!) but for sheer talent, beauty, and sensuality, she’d take an elf every time.

With a happy smile, she started forward, only to skid to a halt a moment later. “Oh!” she muttered to herself. “Almost forgot.” With a brief flicker of her visage to demon-face, she began to transform. Not radically—she was quite pleased with her honey-gold hair and deep brown eyes, and found that her body suited her perfectly, but there was the little matter of the ears… it simply wouldn’t do to appear as a mere mortal in an elven house that rarely saw the likes of Men.

Her ears elongated slightly, acquiring points, and she became a few inches taller. Hair that had fallen to her shoulders was now waist-length and braided elaborately at her temples. Those deep brown eyes became just a touch more tilted, her skin a tad clearer, her movements a little more graceful as, clad now in a long gown of supple amber silk, she picked her way across the narrow stone bridge toward the Last Homely Home and the aggrieved elleth who required her assistance.

It didn’t take long to find her; misery rolled off her slim figure in waves as she minced down the pathway along the river, head drooping on her neck like a flower on its broken stem. As she walked, she sang one of those tragic dirges that elves were so good at. Didn’t the Firstborn know anything peppy, Anya wondered crossly, with a beat you could dance to? It was all so terribly, terribly dramatic and serious…

A memory of dancing in the Bronze with Xander, with Buffy and Willow and Tara and even Spike, flashed into her mind, complete with pounding beat of music and salty tang of sweat and displacement of air as bodies moved around her, as hair whipped and arms flailed and hips swayed. They were all gone now, gone as permanently as Tara… Anya had seen the cold farewell in Xander’s eyes, in Buffy’s eyes, and knew it was forever.

But she had a job to do now. Work now, stew in abject misery later, she told herself, her thoughts sounding brisk and businesslike in her head. Willing her scowl away, Anya forced her brow to smooth as she approached the elleth. “Greetings,” she said companionably. “You have the look of sadness upon your face, and it pains me to see it. May I help to ease your sorrow?”

Predictably, the elleth began to cry, big perfectly-shaped crystalline tears that fell from lovely green eyes and ran down porcelain cheeks, to be dashed away by long, slender fingers. “I am Ailonwë,” she whispered, petal-pink lips trembling adorably, “and I have been wronged by not one elf, but two.”

This was new, Anya thought. To the best of her knowledge, the Eldar didn’t encourage ménage á trois. Unless… a horrible suspicion began to creep into her mind. “Two?” she asked, skeptical. “How did that happen?”

“They are brothers!” Ailonwë cried. “Twins! They have toyed with my affections, pretending to be each other, making me think I loved first one, then the other. Now I have found that neither were honest, that I loved only parts of each.” She lifted her anguished emerald gaze to Anya’s infinitely more derisive one. “They have wronged me cruelly, playing with my emotions and…” Her voice dropped. “And my desires.”

Anya, who’d realized after the elleth’s mention of twins exactly who she was dealing with, and begun idly picking at her fingernails in the boredom that always ensued when her ‘clients’ spilled their tales of woe, perked up. “Desires?” she inquired, beginning to walk again down the path and motioning for the elleth to join her. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that they are very close brothers, and will do nothing without the other. Not even…” Ailonwë’s words trailed off delicately, and she blushed rosily.

Anya smiled, but it wasn’t a particularly kind smile. In her opinion, two hot twins both wanting to give you orgasms equaled raucous exclamations of delight, not upset weeping. Silly twat, she thought privately, even as she spoke again. “So, what would you like to happen to them?” she asked casually, trailing her fingertips along the low wall guarding the steep cliff down to the river.

“I want them to pine away for me forever!” Ailonwë declared. “I want them to rue how they have teased and misled me, and then presented me with such a perversion! I want them to ache forever with the knowledge that they abused me!”

“Ah, you want the Eternal Sorrow Package,” Anya replied sagely. “That’s a good one.” She held out her hand, and a small leather-bound book that looked remarkably like a Zagat’s guide appeared in it. “Let me see if what’s been done to you meets all the requirements.”

As Ailonwë stood and gaped, Anya opened the book and, licking her thumb, paged through it until she found the part she wanted. "Here it is. ‘Eternal Sorrow is to be applied when a heart has been truly broken, or irreparable damage has been done. Note: For immortal beings, mere bruising of ego and/or piquing of ire not sufficient.” Anya peered closely at Ailonwë; most people didn’t know of her demonic ability to see into one’s heart for the true extent of their misery. “Hm. You don’t seem too irreparably heartbroken; looks like a definite case of bruised ego and piqued ire to me.”

“I am heartbroken!” Ailonwë wailed, amazement at suddenly-appearing books evaporating in the wake of her distress. “I am totally destroyed! I shall never trust again!” As she spoke, she gesticulated theatrically and lifted her gaze skyward, as if in entreaty to the gods themselves in her plight.

Anya frowned. “Bit of a drama queen, aren’t you? It’s not like one of them promised to love you forever, and said he’d marry you, and then left you standing in your beautiful and painfully expensive white dress in front of many guests who’d traveled from distant dimensions for your wedding and then heartlessly demanded their presents back.” She snapped the book shut, and it disappeared. “It’s not like they caught you having compensatory sex with another broken-hearted demon and then looked at you like a disgusting piece of filth to scrape off his cheaply bought and sadly unfashionable shoe.”

She had begun to advance on Ailonwë, face flickering in her distress to her demonic guise and back again to her pseudo-elven one. The elleth stared, fear plain in her eyes as she held out her hands in supplication, but Anya was not aware of anything of the hurt that coursed through her at the memory of the humiliation, the rage, the loneliness since Xander had left her at the altar.

“Seems to me you’re just a silly elleth,” Anya hissed, “that you didn’t understand you were dealing with a pair of jokers, got your widdle feelings hurt, and now want to have a good pout.”

Anya leaned forward, face contorting one last time before settling into its veiny visage, and stared hard into Ailonwë’s eyes. “I don’t do pouts. You’re wasting my time, time which could be better spent providing and receiving oral sex with some handsome elf, and that makes me grouchy.” The elleth began to back away, gaze wide and startled as a doe’s, as Anyanka continued. “I suggest you hie yourself hither, or however you people here say ‘get lost’.”

Ailonwë snatched up the hem of her skirts and began to run like the wind. Anya watched her flee, smirking. Being mean to others always lifted her spirits for a little while, but all too soon the euphoria faded and she was back to dealing with the big honking buttloads of pain once more.

She stood by the river a long time, until night had fallen entirely and the path was lit only by the light of the stars above, and wished on each and every one for her love to come back to her. Then Anya realized how pathetic and needy that was, and retracted those wishes. “I wish instead,” she declared to the dark velvet sky, “that I never have to waste another moment of my eternal life thinking about stupid Xander Harris.”

Then she waited. Almost immediately, a vision of Xander’s face as he slept—cheek smooshed over by the pillow, and a silvery stream of drool wending its way out of his mouth—drifted before her mind’s eye. “Well, booger,” she exclaimed, and kicked at a rock. “It didn’t work, I’m still thinking about him with inappropriate fondness in spite of his shoddy treatment of me.”

Her toe smarted from kicking the rock, and she limped over to a stone bench to remove her thin slipper and rub her foot. “Stupid toe,” Anya declared, and to her horror felt tears start in her eyes. “Stupid foot.” Her vision blurred, and she blinked rapidly to prevent the tears from falling. “Stupid rock.” They fell anyway, coursing down over her cheeks and dripping off her chin. “Stupid Xander.” Anya scrubbed the moisture from her face with her hands. “Stupid me,” she finished in a whisper, and gave herself up to the crying.

Soon, an arm found its way around her shoulders as a warm body sat close beside her on the bench. “I know not why you weep, milady, but I would do much to make it cease,” said a deep, melodic voice.

Sniffling, Anya looked up and found herself in the loose embrace of six-feet-plus of absolutely gorgeous elf. Long dark hair spilled over broad shoulders encased in a snug-fitting dark blue velvet doublet, and leanly muscled legs were enhanced and displayed by soft buff-coloured suede breeches. Eyes the colour of silver moonlight met her rapt gaze, making her stomach twist with the first beginnings of desire, and she felt a corresponding throb in her abdomen in spite of her sorrow.

“As would I,” added another, very similar voice as the second twin emerged from his location behind a tree. He was identical in looks to the first elf, but wore a tunic of palest green with trousers of deep red. Anya’s ovaries began to do the Macarena in sheer joy, as they always did at the sight of Elrohir and Elladan Elrondion. She wondered if it were some sort of cosmic joke that she could still be turned on in the midst of being all sad and weepy.

And it wasn’t as if she’d get anywhere with them, anyway. She’d known these two for centuries, and had never gotten further with either of them than the odd cuddle or peck on the cheek—and not for lack of trying, either. But even vengeance demons get the blues after a millennia of rejection, and after all those rebuffs she’d finally stopped trying. To her great surprise, once she’d left off making passes at them, they’d become pretty good friends to her, in spite of her being demonic and all.

Anya turned into Elrohir’s embrace and wept unashamedly against her friend’s shoulder. “What troubles you so?” he asked quietly, smoothing her hair with one hand. “Tell us, and we shall make it right.”

“You can’t,” she wailed, clutching great fistfuls of his tunic in her hands. “Because even if you could go beat up Xander, I wouldn’t want you to hurt him, because even though he was horrible to me and cost me a lot of money and I had to give all those wedding gifts back, I don’t want him hurt… he was good to me for a few years, and even though he scolded me when I didn’t understand things, he gave me lots of orgasms.”

Anya looked up then, eyes huge and wet. “Orgasms go a long way toward easing my pain, Elrohir,” she told him, “and they balance out a lot in my ledger-book of life.” She gazed up at Elladan, standing over them and watching. “Take Spike, for example. He was a world-class pain in the caboose, but he was there for me when I was anguished and suffering over Xander’s defection, and he gave me three exceptionally good orgasms. He’ll always be in my ‘good guy’ column for that.”

Elladan didn’t seem to comprehend but every other word Anya said, merely watching her with an expression of concerned bafflement, and it made her unaccountably sad. The people back in Sunnydale, while not exactly thrilled with the words that came out of her mouth, nevertheless understood what she was saying, and a startling sense of homesickness filled her.

“I’m tired,” Anya whispered against Elrohir’s shoulder. “I’m tired, and lonely. I took a chance to love someone, and he hurt me badly. I don’t want to hurt like this anymore, but it doesn’t seem to ever go away.”

That, they seemed to understand; in short order Anya found herself lifted into strong arms and carried into Elrond’s house, then placed on a bed. Tender hands removed her gown, and she was slipped between sheets of indescribable smoothness. Fatigue washed over her, dragging her eyelids down and pushing her gently toward the dark oblivion of sleep. Exhausted, she succumbed willingly.