From the Ashes, Reborn

Title: From the Ashes, Reborn (teaser)
Author: Jinni (druscilla@cox.net)
Pairing: W/Aragorn
Rating: R
Genre: BtVS/LotR Crossover.
Disclaimer: All things BtVS belong to Joss Whedon, et al. All things LotR belong to whomever currently controls Tolkien's works.
Distribution: NHA, WLS, WLF, BMP, Aislin.
~*~*~

I unmade the world once.

Tore it into little bitty pieces just because I was having a bad day. Rained fire and brimstone down on the masses before blinking each and every soul on the earth out of existence. The last thing they each felt was pain unlike anything else; before death came to carry them to their eternal rest. I killed everyone I had ever known, destroyed billions of lives and reduced to nothingness what had taken many thousands, millions, of years to create.

Until all that was left was me, a black void, and the deities still sitting in their haven; watching me through clouded eyes.

Yep.

Little old me.

I was a very, very bad girl.

But I was given a chance, if you will, to make things right again.

"You have done awful things." That voice from the great empty voice had announced, kind and cruel all at the same time. "Reprehensible, vile things. Things that, by all rights, should damn you for all of eternity. But you are not without your use, even now. So choose wisely. . ."

Okay, it wasn't a chance that they gave me. Not even a choice. At least, I didn't see it that way at the time, when rage and sorrow was still coursing through my veins. I was high on the destruction I had caused, still in grief over the pain of my lover's loss. No, this was blackmail. You see, Hell still existed and I had a one-way ticket straight to those fiery depths if I didn't play along with the task that was to be set before me.

The pantheon took hold of my emotions, dulling them until such time as I had the luxury to grieve again, if that day were to ever come.

Only then did they tell me what they wanted from me.

I could give of myself to make the world again. Reshape it to my liking. . . and put a little piece of me into it.

It was a choice even an idiot could make - fire and damnation or remaking the world.

I chose to remake the world, of course. Doubts of my sanity aside, I still had a mind and it was in full working order.

And so I drew on tales and myths, legend and history, determined to make this land much more interesting than the one before had been. They would start from the beginning of all, and work their way up. Technology, I made sure, was far in their future; very, very far. Nuclear bombs the world could do without. Guns as well. I wrapped all of this up into the land, this place, where myths were reality; and magic ran wild.

And it wasn't just any magic that ran wild. It was *my* magic in the world, the stores of power I had kept within myself.

Both Dark and Light; when I said I gave of myself, I meant it very much in the literal sense. This magic came from my heart and soul. I was as much of this world as anything else was; maybe more so in some ways.

And when I was done, when this world was new and fresh, still smelling like dew in the morning, then I was told by that great pantheon in the sky that I should rest for a while. . . Take some time and think on what I had done. Learn to regret, to remorse, and then to move past it, if ever I could. I would never walk this new earth in the form I was now. And that was for the best of everyone.

But one day, they said, when the tides were turning for the worse; and the fates of everyone hung in the balance; then I would be called upon to truly right the wrongs I had inflicted on the world. Only then would by debt be paid, when I had saved the world instead of destroying it.

So I slept.

It was a sleep of dreams though my body was locked in stasis, neither aging nor dying; I would remain this way for the rest of time if no great evil came to this world, this Middle Earth.

I dreamt of my friends, of Buffy and Xander, Dawn and Giles. Even Anya. They were dead. Long gone. Their souls were basking in the peace of the havens. I relearned remorse and regret during those millennia I 'slept'. I learned anew what it meant to feel sorry and to be happy that the side of the Light chosen to keep me in their employ instead of casting me off entirely.

It was cold there, in my dreams. Cold and lonely. And, subconsciously, I began to look forward to the time I would be called to that world, to see for the first time what I had created from the destructive rampage I had wrought.

But I had forgotten what the pantheon had said.

I would never walk this earth in the form I was now.

And it was only when I felt the first tug of the call upon my soul that I knew what they had meant. I was still to be me, but the "me" that I had been when I was eighteen. Lighter, happier, though still infused with the knowledge that I had been given during my rest. She knew what it was like to loose the ones she loved, though that loss didn't hang as heavy with her as it did with me; she had not committed these sins. She was separate from me, though one and the same. In order for this to be a fair chance, she had to work without my grief, without my unending pain and torment.

In effect: she had to do this on her own.

So it was with a heavy heart that I watched Her be borne into this world, prophesied from the start. Soul of my soul, heart of my heart, blood of my blood. But not me. I was bound for the havens, my work done. Living in my shadow, I could only hope that she didn't make the mistakes that I had. The easy roads are often the Darkest, as I had learned all too well.

Goddess, help her make a better time of things than I ever did.

~*~End Teaser~*~