Chapter Text
The walk back to my tower does, in fact, prove to be a crime against humanity and a direct consequence of all the leg days I have been shamelessly skipping in lue of drinks with my girlfriends. By the time I finally reach the top, I am sweaty, out of breath, and muttering curses under my breath. I may never see my girlfriends again, but here there always seems to be more fucking stairs. I decide then and there that I am not leaving this room again unless Elrond himself comes to drag me out of it.
Someone has been in my room while I was gone. My old clothes have been neatly folded and placed on the dresser beside a silky nightgown. I eye it suspiciously, my fingers skating over the iridescent cloth.
“Oh,” I breathe.
It is unbearably soft. The pale fabric appears to be spun from moonlight. With a dramatic sigh I begin the long, frustrating process of struggling out of the dress, which appears to have been designed by someone with a personal vendetta against women and all reasonable methods of fastening clothing.
When I finally manage to peel myself free of the elven equivalent of a Chinese finger trap, I am halfway to declaring war on Rivendell fashion. Sucking my teeth in irritation, I realize it has been—what? Two days since I last brushed them?
Shuddering, I search the small room for any form of dental hygiene. There is a brush and a mirror in the desk drawer. I shove them aside and crane to see farther in. Empty. I check again, because surely there has to be something else in there. Still empty. I open the other drawers. Nothing.
I look under the bed. Nothing there either. I stare at the room in dawning horror as I come to the terrible realization that there is not a toothbrush anywhere in Rivendell.
“Incredible,” I mutter, dragging the brush through my hair. “I’m in a magical city, and somehow no one has invented toothpaste.”
I glare at my reflection in the mirror.
“Immortality, poetry, and indoor waterfalls, but oral hygiene was apparently a bridge too far.”
THere is no other option but to resign myself to using a washcloth and the basin of water to scrub my teeth before crawling into bed. The sheets are cool against the silk of the nightgown. I shiver for a few moments before the blankets trap my body heat and wrap around me.
Up this high, the river is only a distant murmur. Though the singing seems louder from here. It’s not unpleasant. Just strange. A hunting sort of rhythm that my mind drifts toward as the edges of the world begin to soften. I curl onto my side and bury my face in the pillow.
At last, I let myself cry. I miss my home. I want to be laying in my massive bed that I paid an extraordinary amount for. My hand searches aimlessly for the warm line of my dog that should be pressed to my side until I have to wiggle for room and finds nothing but blankets and sheets.
My chest heaves in uneven, ragged gasps. Tears pour in fat droplets from the corners of my stinging eyes no matter how hard I squeeze them shut.
I would kill for something as ordinary as a toothbrush and indoor plumbing. I’m desperate for the comforting, ordinary certainty of knowing what tomorrow will bring. There is none of that here. Tomorrow looms threateningly on the horizon, and though I know exactly what will occur—I am now uncertain of my own roll to play in it. Fear grips me by the back of the neck, dragging me toward a future yawning open before me, ready to swallow me whole and grind me between the teeth of my impossible predicament.
I don’t know what to do. Panic stirs itself into the pot of roiling emotions currently simmering over in my chest. I can’t escape this. There is nowhere to go. No one to outmaneuver. I should consider myself lucky that the elves were the ones that found me. But all I can feel is the horrifying clarity that I have been thrust into a situation where I must rely on the charity of non-human beings that, until recently, I thought were confined within the pages of a book and behind the glassy screen of my T.V.
Sobs rack my body until my throat feels like a shredded mass of raw flesh. My eyes surrender trying to see through the salty tears. When I manage to crack them open, the room is dark wash of undulating shadows that dance in the low firelight from the small hearth at the far end of the room.
Eventually, exhaustion drags me under and I dream.
I dream of the book. Of the story I know is gathering around me, impossible to stop now. I dream of a black mountain crowned in fire and a white city beneath the sun. Of a broken sword and a golden ring. Of a man with dark hair and a proud, stubborn mouth, standing beneath the trees with blood on his hand and doom at his back. The future comes toward me in dream-altered fragments. As unstoppable as the tide rolling in.
The morning is quiet. Brutal in it’s inevitability. I pace the room in my nightgown, too anxious to sit and too tired to do much else, until there is a soft knock at the door. Lindiriel enters carrying a tray of food, another younger elf trailing behind her with folded clothes draped over her arms.
I must look every bit as terrible as I feel, because Lindiriel hardly blinks when I stare at the silver dress and say, with all the dignity I can muster, “If I have to wear another gown, I may throw myself from the nearest balcony. Do you have anything with trousers?”
She tilts her head, those quick-silver eyes as thoughtful as an owl.
“You do not like the dress?”
“It is very beautiful,” I clarify. “But I would rather fight a bear than struggle back in and out of another one today.”
The younger elf makes a choking sound that might be a laugh. Lindiriel says something in quick, flowing Elvish without ever taking her eyes off me. The younger elf ducks her head and hurries away. A few minutes later she returns with a fresh set of dark trousers folded under soft boots and a simple silver tunic belted at the waist.
Being able to choose what goes onto my body re-enstills the smallest bit of control over me life. I could kiss her. Instead, I clutch the clothes to my chest like a woman who has just been rescued from war.
“You are the most beautiful creature in Rivendell,” I tell the younger elf solemnly.
Her laugh is bright and startled.
I dress quickly, and Lindiriel remains while I eat. Today I leave my hair loose, the short waves falling around my face instead of being twisted and pinned into something elegant and impractical.
The range of motion leaves me feeling much more like myself. After a cup of strong tea and some sort of fruit spread over bread and honey, I am almost calm. My heart is still trotting in my chest every time my mind unhelpfully whispers what day it is. There is still a faint shiver of anticipation beneath my skin.
I drift to the window and squint down into the valley below. Tiny figures move between the paths and bridges below. Like a moth to a flame, I can’t help but search for the somewhat familiar silhouettes of the soon-to-be fellowship. At first the hobbits are difficult to spot, but once I know what I am looking for, they become impossible to miss.
I pick out the members of the Company one by one. Aragorn’s tall, proud frame sulks through the elvish halls. In a flash of sunlight upon pale hair, I catch Legolas crossing a courtyard as he goes to greet the future kind of Gondor. His hair moves like he is in a shampoo commercial specifically designed to make women feel inadequate.
Gimli is still surrounded by a cluster of dwarves who seem to travel in a single, impenetrable mass. And Boromir—Boromir stands among a group of men and elves, laughing at something one of them has said.
I squint harder. The expression on his face is so easy. So warm.
“Huh,” I say.
“What do you see?” Lindiriel asks.
“Boromir—Lord Boromir,” I correct myself. “I did not expect him to be so... popular.”
Lindiriel comes to stand beside me at the window.
“Why would you not?”
I hesitate. In the book he is always half apart. Proud and tense and already beginning to fray at the edges under the pressure of saving an entire country. Also, I just happen to know what waits for him. I can almost see his doom clinging to him like a shadow at the back of his heels.
He throws back his head and laughs again, broad-shouldered and handsome in the morning light. One of the elves claps him on the back.
“He is the eldest son of the Steward of Gondor,” Lindiriel murmurs. “Beloved by his people for his bravery. I know him to be much admired.”
“Oh,” I say quietly, my heart giving a little squeeze of empathy for the fictional man.
No, not fictional. Real. He is flesh and blood, real as the pinches on my arm I keep giving myself to see if I will wake up. I never do.
As though he feels my gaze, Boromir glances up. I step back from the window immediately, as though I have been caught doing something embarrassing. Which, considering I have just spent the better part of ten minutes staring at him from a tower like an unhinged Victorian widow waiting for her husband to return from war, I absolutely have.
“Do you wish to mingle with the other visitors?” Lindiriel asks in a tone that suggests a schoolteacher trying very hard to encourage the shy child to join the other children at recess.
“Definitely not,” I say firmly. “I intend to remain locked in my tower and well away from the Fellow—” I catch myself. “—the fellows down there. I’m delicate.”
Lindiriel’s gaze travels slowly over the trousers, the boots, and the rather obvious press of muscle beneath the fabric. She gives me a look so dry it could have withered crops.
“You do not appear delicate.”
“Emotionally delicate,” I correct. “Very fragile.”
“Mm.”
She does not sound convinced. Fortunately, she also does not press the matter.
The day crawls by. Luckily for me, I have extensive experience in waiting around while deeply anxious. I take a nap. Lindiriel embroiders impossibly delicate tiny rabbits onto a handkerchief. They are irritatingly perfect and adorable.
I pace. I glare at the walls. I pointedly avoid the windows, because I refuse to spend the afternoon lurking behind the curtains like some kind of emotionally unstable gargoyle.
Lindiriel leaves at some point and returns later with lunch. We eat in near silence. I attempt to read one of the books stacked on the shelf and discover that, unfortunately, I cannot read Elvish any more than I can speak it.
At one point I become so bored that I seriously consider climbing out the window just for the drama of it. Then I remember how high up I am and decide against it. By late afternoon, I am stretched across the bed in a state of dramatic despair.
“It is time,” my companion announces quietly, crossing to the window.
I lift my head.
“Time for what?” I ask, though the clenching in my stomach already knows the answer.
“The Council of Elrond begins.”
My breath catches as Lindiriel motions me over. With a shaky exhale, I cross the room and join her at the window. She points toward a secluded garden below, hidden beneath trees and stone arches.
At first I can only make out the circle of seats. A pale stone dot re-shapes itself. My mind lends the details I cannot see from this far. I believe it is the stone pedestal at the center, crowned by a glint of gold.
The Ring.
Even from this distance, cold terror coils in my gut like a venomous serpent. My fingers white knuckle the stone ledged window we are looking out of as the council begins to gather one by one.
Elves in pale robes. Wary dwarves amble into their seats, well apart from the others. Two men sit opposite of each other. The hobbits stick together, so small and ordinary-looking that it seems impossible the fate of an entire world could rest upon one of them.
Boromir adjusts in his seat, broad and restless, one arm draped across his knee. Aragorn leans toward the elves, likely caught in some philosophical conversation I could only hope to keep up with.
And then Elrond appears, Gandalf at his side in his grey robes. The council settles into conversations written nearly a century agao in my own world. I have the abstract thought that perhaps it had been written into existence long before that by the hands that dragged me from my own world into this one.
The sight of them all together sends a strange ache through my chest. I know this story. I know every terrible thing that is coming. A fine trembling starts between the tensed blades of my shoulders.
Lindiriel’s long, cool fingers close gently around my hand. THough my eyes stay fused to the Council, I do not pull away. For a long while, the only sound I hear are voices drifting faintly through the trees. I’m too far away to make out every word. Close enough that I know where they are in the story.
I watch Elrond rise. Gandalf beside him. Frodo small and pale in his chair. One by one, people speak. A dwarf stands—Gimli, I think—and his gestures are sharp and angry. Legolas rises after him, graceful even from this distance. Then Boromir.
Even from here, I know the moment he begins to speak. He has a certain way of holding himself that draws the eye. Pride bleeds through his every motion as he gestures once toward the south, toward Gondor. Even from my tower, I can almost hear the conviction in him.
Why not use it? Why not wield the Ring against the enemy?
He does not know. Not yet. My stomach churns with nausea. I taste the sweet tang of fruit from lunch and have to sink my teeth into my cheek to keep the gag down. Momentum builds in the rhythm of conversation. Voices rise and fall. Aragorn stands. So does Gandalf.
Then, suddenly, Gandalf takes the Ring. Even from the tower I see it gleam in his hand.
I flinch back from the window. Lindiriel’s head snaps to me. The elf has been kind to me, but I would be a fool to assume she has not been instructed to observe my every reaction today. Still, I cannot look away or force myself to fiend anything but horror.
Gandalf speaks, his words cracking through the valley like thunder. Black Speech slithers over the ancient city as slick as an oil spill over white sands. The moment the first syllable reaches me, every hair on my body rises. Every word is hideous, every syllable seemingly crawling into my earcanal and wriggling through my brain like maggots through rotted flesh. It scrapes against the white barrier of the inside of my skull.
The air changes as the sky darkens. Even the trees shudder as if nature itself is recoiling from the spewed foulness. Birds explode upward from the branches in a frenzy.
I flinch so violently I nearly stumble backward. A small, humiliating sound escapes me. Then I am crouched on the floor beside the window before I even realize I have moved, hands over my ears, heart hammering against my ribs.
Lindiriel kneels beside me at once.
“Thalia—”
“What the fuck,” I gasp.
My voice is shaking nearly as bad as my knees. The words are still echoing through me. Burning under my skin, leaving an ugly brand in their wake. I have read that scene a hundred times. But I had never understood. Never grasped what it would feel like to hear it. Like glass shards scraping against my ear drums. Like a hand reaching into my chest and squeezing my heart until it pops.
No sounds of conversation drift up from below. Somehow, I find the courage to peak back out of the window. THis time I keep a few healthy steps back from the open air.
The Council has gone utterly still. Elrond’s voice rings out, sharp as a blade, and the spell of it breaks. The valley seems to breathe again. Light returns, clouds dispersing as if blown from the sky with a great breath.
Slowly, carefully, I lower my hands.
“I hate this story,” I whisper.
But that is not true. I hate that I know what comes next. Truth is, I had been in love with this story for my entire life. As far back as I could remember. Lindiriel all but pulls me from the room and leads me through Rivendell to a long hall where a great fire crackles in the hearth.
I cannot seem to get warm. My body quakes so hard that I have difficulty keeping up with her no matter how many times she slows down. I sink onto a bench near the flames, but the shaking will not stop. It feels as though the words have nested inside me somehow, their squirming larvae rattling around just beneath my skin.
Lindiriel watches me with growing concern. Without a word, she drapes a heavy blanket around my shoulders. I clutch it tightly.
It’s then I realize that she is not merely my escort. She is kind.
“Thank you,” I whisper, my voice rough.
As she adjusts the blanket, I place my hand over hers in a search for some sort of grounding sensation. Her expression softens with surprise. Heat rises to my face.
“Sorry.” I drop my hand.
To my relief, she laughs and pats my hand.
“You are most welcome, strange girl.”
“I’m not—” I begin, then sigh. “All right. I am a little strange.”
Lindiriel brings me a glass of water. I take slow sips, letting the crackling flames gradually burn the foul language of Mordor from my mind. As time passes, I sink farther into the cushioned bench, my shoulders inching down from where they seem stitched to my ears.
Outside, the sun begins to slip lower in the sky. With late afternoon comes the quiet, dreadful certainty that the Council is ending. Soon, Elrond will decide what is to be done with me.
I lean forward, elbows on my knees, staring listlessly into the fire. Shapes move there. Winged Nazgûl circling over legions of orcs. A great eye rimmed in flame. Straw hut villages and cities that burn and burn.
Probably hallucinations that are the result of my own notorious overactive imagination. Then again, I am currently sitting in an enchanted elven city after watching Gandalf speak the Black Speech, so my standards for what counts as unreasonable have shifted considerably.
My hands are clasped so tightly between my knees that my knuckles start to ache. Across from me, Lindiriel glances up from her embroidery. Her mouth turns down slightly.
“What troubles you?” she asks softly, resting one cool hand over mine.
I force my fingers to loosen, one by one.
Then I lower my head and whisper, “I’m frightened.”
“Of what?”
“What is going to happen,” I say simply.
To Middle-earth. To the Fellowship. To me.
“I want to go home,” I admit, my throat tightening. “And I have the sinking feeling that I never will.”
She has no response for that. The rest of the afternoon stretches endlessly. I wait. Lindiriel embroiders more rabbits along the cream fabric. Light fades from gold to blue beyond the windows. At some point, lamps are lit. Somewhere in the distance, music begins again. I am considering the possibility of faking my own death to avoid whatever conversation is coming when footsteps shuffle into earshot.
A willowy man with bronze hair enters the hall, solemn and terribly elegant in the way all of them seem to be. Lindiriel rises at once. He bows to us.
“Lord Elrond requests Thalia of Virginia attend him.”
My stomach drops. Being thrown off a cliff may have been the better option.
“Well,” I say faintly. “If I am never seen again, tell history I was very brave.”
“You were not,” says Lindiriel dryly. “You are a rabbit.”
“Tell history I was very funny, then.”
My saliva seems to have coagulated in the back of my throat. I clear it aggressively. It feels as if there is ash in my throat, dry and thick.
Lindirel squeezes my hand before I go. The walk back to Elrond’s chambers feels even longer this time. When the doors finally open, I find him waiting beside the fire arms clasped behind his back. And Gandalf. Of course Gandalf is there looking wise and mystical. Wonderful.
I stop just inside the doorway, suddenly very aware that I am wearing dark trousers and boots instead of one of Rivendell’s ethereal dresses. Elrond’s gaze drops briefly to my clothes. I brace myself.
He only says, “You appear more at ease.”
OK, already off to a better start than anticipated.
“I can breathe,” I say. “It has improved my attitude considerably.”
Gandalf snorts.
“Sit,” Elrond orders, motioning to a small chair near the edge of the room.
I perch on the edge of the chair like a condemned woman awaiting sentence. Elrond folds his hands in front of himself, comfortable in the silence that seems to be smothering me.
“I have decided what is to be done.”
I grip the arms of the chair. My heart kicks up a frantic rhythm.
“You will go with the Fellowship.”
My ears ring a bit. There’s no way I just heard that right. Even Gandalf looks mildly scandalized. The words disintegrate then range themselves in my ear a thousand times in a fraction of a second until I am not entirely sure what he said.
“What?”
“You will travel with them.”
“No,” I object quickly.
Wood creaks beneath my fingers. HEat rises in my cheeks as I try to force myself into box breathing.
“I can’t.,” I add. “That is a terrible idea.”
Gandalf watches me over the edge of his pipe with what looks like growing amusement.
“You know the road that lies before them,” Elrond says quietly.
“Yes. Which is exactly why I should not go! I will mess everything up.”
Elrond paces, hands held behind his back.
“You believe your presence will alter what is to come.”
“Yes!” I nearly shriek.
“It already has.”
The room goes still. I open my mouth. Then close it. He is right. The story is already different. I am here. Boromir knows my face. Lindiriel exists in the corners of a story where she never belonged before. My throat tightens.
“You do not understand,” I whisper. “It is dangerous.”
“Lindiriel tells me you are a warrior, are you not?” Elrond asks skeptically.
My teeth clench. That narc, I knew she was watching me.
“I—well—”
“You have fought,” he supplies not so helpfully.
“A little,” I all but growl.
Gandalf makes a noise in the back of his throat.
“You carry yourself like one who has seen battle,” he says.
I think of the years in uniform. Of bruises and rifles and the way fear can become something you tuck neatly into your pocket and carry anyway.
“This is different,” I say quietly, spine straightening.
“Yes,” Elrond agrees sagely. “It is.”
I look from one of them to the other. My heart ratchets up to a pounding rush in my ears. Sweat beads at my brow, on the top of my lip.
“You cannot seriously be sending me into Mordor,” I say breathlessly.
“We are not sending you into Mordor,” Gandalf says. “Not if all goes well.”
I glower at the wizard and his stupid pipe, smoke billowing around him like a storm cloud.
“That is not reassuring,” I hiss, anger finally rushing in to replace my fear.
“The hobbits are going,” Elrond says calmly.
I whip back toward him. Hobbits. Tiny, kind little creatures made for hearth and home. Elrond catches the brief hesitation flitting across my face.
“They are smaller than you.”
Guilt prickles along the pride still buried somewhere in the spine I am desperately trying to remember that I have. Damn it. The elf is playing my like a fucking violin.
Gandalf coughs pointedly into his beard. The two of them have to be reading my face like a book. At present, I am still too disorientated from waking up in an entirely different dimension to regain any sort of bearing over my expressions. I press the heels of my hands against my eyes.
If I were in my world it would be the equivalent of sending tiny, sheltered teenagers into the wild. And I would not have stood for it. Unease settles into the pit of my stomach. This is a fight I am actively losing. I have nothing to leverage with. No ammunition to fire back.
“This is emotional manipulation,” I grumble into my hands.
“Perhaps,” Elrond muses. “And yet, you will still go.”
My eyes creep from between my fingers, black spots dancing in my vision. The bastard almost looks amused. I consider it for a long moment.
Then, suddenly, a thought occurs to me. A tiny spark of hope flickers painfully to life.
“If I go,” I say slowly, “will you help me return home afterward?”
If there is an afterward, an ugly little voice whispers in my head. Blood drains from my face as the words leave my mouth at the things that wait in the dark between Rivendell and Mordor. It is entirely possible that I will never survive long enough to need a way home.
The immortals consider the request.
Then Elrond says quietly, “If there is a path to your world, we will seek it.”
Not we will find it. Seek it. My stomach sinks.
“But first,” Gandalf interjects, “you must survive this one.”
I scoff and mutter, “That seems unnecessarily ambitious.”
I don’t remember leaving Elrond’s chambers. Or staggering back up to my tower room. Only that later, long after dark, I sat on the edge of my bed staring at the boots on the floor.
Tomorrow, I would meet the Fellowship.
And then I would ruin everything.