I thought about putting this in the crossover section, and I was going to, but I figured this takes place in the plotline of LOTR (save this first chapter), with only Tauriel as a character from The Hobbit in this story... it'll be all War of the Ring time frame after this.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but my writing, but if you happen to know a way I could get rights to LOTR and The Hobbit, I would love to hear about it :)
Thranduil's eye was twitching like a flattened insect, and despite her predicament, Tauriel could not help but smirk at his dumbfounded expression.
"This," he hissed, "is what Jackson has brought us?" His well-manicured fingers curled around the glowing screen and slammed it shut, drumming against the top. With his antlered crown, he looked rather like the elk Peter Jackson had given him in the first Hobbit film (the only thing about that film Thranduil had found appealing).
Clasping her hands behind her back and adopting a more business-like tone, Tauriel dipped her head. "Yes, my lord. It is my belief that we must act upon this immediately."
Thranduil pursed his lips. "This 'love triangle,' as you put it, will have the fangirls stark raving mad at our borders. When the last trailer came out, they nearly broke through the outer walls."
Legolas, from his stiff posture beside the king's throne, visibly cringed at the mention of the hordes of fangirls lurking in the Greenwood. Sometimes they piled up at the borders so thickly Legolas was not permitted (nor inclined) to leave the inner realm for fear that he would be overcome by the mob.
"And what of the local congregation of Tolkien purists?" asked Thranduil, his eyes fixating upon his son and Tauriel. "Have you yet ridded the forest of them?"
It was Tauriel's turn to flinch as traumatic memories re-surfaced in her head. "My lord, we found them at the fringes of Dol Guldur, burning me in effigy. My very existence set their teeth on edge, for to them I am nought but a Mary-Sue, the only difference being Jackson's budget and his rights to the story. But now this? The very thought of an Elf and a Dwarf together will cause an assassination attempt at the least, and though I don't particularly like the idea myself, I would rather not suffer at the hands of a purist. They are almost fascist in the way they deal with such things." She shuddered again. "Let us be rid of them forever."
"Well how do you think I feel?" sniffed Thranduil dramatically, tilting his kingly chin in the air. "I do not want my son to fall in love with you, only for you to break his heart with Dwarf scum." Tauriel shot a glance at Legolas, whose head was tilted between her and his father. His feet shuffled awkwardly as he listened to both sides of the discussion with no input of his own.
"I do not want to fall in love with him either, nor the young Dwarf prince. You could always…"
"Yes?" asked Thranduil, his eyebrow cocked like a taut bowstring, as Tauriel's eyes searched the room skittishly, as if trying to find each of the exits before offering her idea.
The suggestion itself tumbled unevenly from her lips as her eyes rested on the floor and she scuffed away dust with the toe of her boot. "You could always… send me into fanfiction," she said to the ground. "I have done the research."
At this, Legolas startled and eyed his father with a desperate plea to refuse the captain of his guard. "But the Sues," he begged, as Thranduil turned to acknowledge him. "They wreak havoc on my life even after they have been slain, when the crazed hormones of their authors linger in the air and give us all chronic sinus congestion. If Tauriel goes into fanfiction, they will be more outraged than the fangirls and purists combined."
"Exactly," Thranduil concluded, throwing Tauriel a twisted smile. "They shall be outraged, and they will hunt her down. They will abandon us and leave us in peace, at least until Jackson releases the film. And even if Tauriel passes away in fanfiction, then our problems shall be solved nonetheless, for there will be no one around for Jackson to ensnare in his - what do you call it? - love triangle. Yes. His love triangle shall fail." His near menacing tone struck Tauriel with a rather odd image of her king tilting his chin back in maniacal laughter, his arms raised to the treetops in satisfaction at the utter brilliance of his plan. This image she promptly removed from her immediate thoughts and stored away in the files of her mind for future entertainment.
Legolas glanced between his father and acquaintance. In truth, he did not know Tauriel very well. They had taken little notice of each other before Peter Jackson had released his trailer for the Desolation of Smaug, and she was hardly ever around. Rumor had it that when she was not fighting, she was in her quarters with the folded silver screen she had confiscated from one of the purists after taking out a raid party. Said purist had been in the process of flaming a smutty Legolas/Tauriel story that he was fairly sure they'd both regretted reading once the purist had been dealt with.
"So you will allow me to enter the world of fanfic? To find a suitable maiden for Prince Legolas - I swear to the Valar no Sues will be involved - and bring them together before Jackson's film comes out in theatres?"
Thranduil nodded. "Very well." He knew not what Tauriel had in mind, but she was rational when orcs weren't involved and naive in the ways of relationships. Which in the end would be an asset, as anyone who had been romantically involved as many times as King Thranduil (including one ill-fated slash-fic affair with none other than Figwit of Rivendell - may we never speak of it again) knew what broken relationships could do to the quality of fanfiction.
Take Mary Crawley from Downton Abbey - Matthew died, and she took to writing tragic angst-filled one-shots where the OC committed suicide in her bathtub, and the last line was always 'they could have lived happily ever after, had the world not rejected their timeless love.' The Elvenking had beta-read some of her tales - thank the Valar season four of Downton Abbey had finally come out and occupied Mary for the time being.
No, Tauriel could not make the the situation any worse than it already was, for she had never fallen into a hopeless love story as of yet. She'd said it herself: she had done the research. So there was really nothing to lose by sending her into fanfiction.
"Tauriel, be safe," he requested, making clear his intention to back her idea. "Go now from my sight, and return when you have settled our business with Peter Jackson in the world of fanfic." He sat back in the throne, satisfied that Tauriel would see his issues resolved.
A mischievous grin spread across her face that she hid with the back of her hand, and with a gracious bow and nothing more to say, she left the room.
What Thranduil didn't know wouldn't hurt him, and contrary to his belief, she had no intention of shipping Legolas with another fair maiden. She'd read enough fanfiction in her time with the silver screen to know all the trends and cliches. Her mind had thought first of a Legolas/OC pairing, but the majority of those were so terrible she dared not imagine how the plot would twist and turn into some dark tunnel of misery. Even Legolas did not deserve to be shipped with yet another Mary Sue.
So, with her extensive knowledge of the common Legomance and how irritating those stories could be -more irritating even then Legolas himself- she had promptly turned to slash-fic. Gimli? It would be a shame to for her twist their intricate friendship into romance. Tolkien had been out on a limb with the two of them anyways. Boromir? Well it would certainly bring about an interesting scene surrounding his death, but knowing Legolas he would undoubtedly fall for the next character - canon or OC - to cross his path afterwards in order to stifle the grief he was feeling. That had left Aragorn… now they would be quite the pair. They already had one of fanfiction's most well-known slash communities, right up there with Drarry, Wolfstar, and Thilbo in terms of popularity (though she had expressed caution in the Thilbo archives, as those tended to be nearly as angsty as your typical Mary-Sue Legomance).
She knew all the tricks of the trade for being dumped into the Fellowship simply from Sue-fics. It shouldn't matter that she was already in Middle Earth, so long as she wound up in the War of the Ring with enough time to get Legolas and Aragorn together by the end.
"Tauriel!" called a familiar voice behind her, and she spun around at the doors. Legolas raced to catch up to her, his admittedly attractive blue eyes glinting with fear. The Elven prince very rarely felt the emotion of fear -and rarely admitted it if he did- but Mary-Sues were a familiar exception to his impassiveness.
"Yes, your Highness?"
"I must see you off, lest you die by the hand of infiltrators, orders of the king. He seems concerned for your safety what with the recent release of the trailer. The Sues could be gathering just outside our borders for an ambush as far as we know."
Tauriel considered this for a moment. Surely Thranduil would not send his own son into fanfiction with her. "Did he ask you to accompany me into the fanfic universe?" she inquired, her voice carefully neutral. No need to reveal any hint of her intentions for the Mirkwood prince.
"Nay, Tauriel. Only to see you to the edge of the forest. And," he reached into a rucksack hanging over his shoulder, "to return this to you, if you find yourself in great peril."
From the rucksack, Legolas revealed the silver laptop with which she had revealed the cursed trailer to her king. She took this from him with caution, lest it be under some dark spell to assassinate her, courtesy of the purists she'd taken it from. She had not used it for anything save the trailer, but to open a fanfiction site could very well prove deadly.
"It is not cursed," assured Legolas, running a hand through his hair (just to be sure there wasn't a lock out of place) as he stared at the sleek metallic object. "My father has made sure of it."
Tauriel raised an eyebrow, but said no more, instead sliding the laptop into her own rucksack and stalking toward the doors of the Woodland Palace, Legolas in tow.
Tauriel was fairly sure that creating a 10th Walker fic would pitch her into the War of the Ring, but she had yet to find the perfect place for that fanfic to come into being. It had to be clear, quiet, and relatively unknown to passerby, which, as the Greenwood grew sicker, became harder to find. Legolas, who hadn't uttered a word the whole time - probably due to his naievity towards fanfiction and concern for the state of his hair (which was now growing a bit unruly in the humidity) - offered up his own suggestion.
"Why don't you just write-in a place? You know, create one in your fanfic?"
"I can't do that," muttered Tauriel, not even bothering to turn around and face him. "Then there would be far too much time spent creating said area of forest; time that would pass closer to the events of The Hobbit than of Lord of the Rings. If enough chapters passed by simply creating a patch of forest in such vast detail, it would force me to move my fic into the LOTR/Hobbit crossover section, and no one ever reads or reviews those crossovers anymore, because both stories take place in the same world. They're far more interested in the individual archives these days, like the Fourth Age and 10th Walker fics."
"What do you care who reviews your fanfiction, Tauriel?" asked Legolas, unaware of how precious reviews were to a fanfiction writer. Almost as valuable as coffee and Saturdays, though Tauriel could not vouch for such assets herself, having been exposed to neither in her lifetime.
So as Legolas's thoughtless comment reached her ears, Tauriel whipped her head around so fast she could have sworn she got whiplash. "Reviews are near as precious as the starlight!" she hissed indignantly, shooting him a glare that could make Smaug himself cower. "They breath life into a fanfiction, encouraging future chapters and bringing the author delight in her work once again." Then her nostrils twitched, and she pursed her lips at the ground. "Except for the flamers, of course," she muttered bitterly. "But they are rarely my concern, as they usually target Suethors. Usually."
"Right," mumbled Legolas, catching her resentful expression. "Rarely your concern. Now where are we going again?" He didn't bother to mention that referring to fanfiction writers as 'she' seemed a bit stereotypical coming from a character who was created to be a 'strong female presence' in the upcoming film.
She called back to him, "To find a suitable patch of Greenwood from which I can insert myself into the Fellowship of the Ring."
They walked for what Legolas took to be hours, in no particular direction as far as he could tell, when at last they came upon a small, moss-laden clearing where the sunlight had washed away a bit of the forest's grave illness. A small creek bubbled through it as if it were reciting a poem, no doubt on its way to join with the river and, eventually, the lake. They could hear songbirds chirping from every direction, a form of music many years lost in the majority of Mirkwood, and it was here that the she-Elf deemed suitable for her story to begin.
She also insisted that Legolas depart at that point, as the Mary Sues and fangirls preferred better known parts of the forest, and the purists' congregation was no doubt hunkering down in the shadows by Dol Guldur, recovering from their earlier defeat. Even as a widely recognized target, Tauriel would need no back up here, and it was not worth the risk of accidentally transporting Legolas to the War of the Ring just in time to watch his future self fall in love with Aragorn. Plus Tauriel, despite her Elven wisdom, did not have a math brain, and all the puzzling mathematical implications and laws of quantum physics surrounding two different Legolases from different eras made her head hurt.
Legolas (in the singular form) was nearing the river by now, quietly humming a common ode to trees when he saw the flash of blue light emanating from Tauriel's clearing. He raced back, bow in hand, ready to sever another Sue's head from its slender, busty form, or fight a purist who tried to die his hair chocolate-brown to match Tolkien's apparent decisions regarding his Elves' hair genes. However, when he came into the clearing, he found naught but a glimmer of AU-dust* and the faint odor of smoke in the air. Tauriel herself was nowhere to be seen.
*AU-dust: sub-type of fairy dust surrounding the creation of an AU fanfic; is most commonly known for spouting from the fairy-godmother's wand in Disney's Cinderella movie to make sure that, unlike the original Grimm version, no one cuts off their toes in the end.
Drarry: Draco/Harry
Wolfstar: Sirius/Remus
Thilbo: Thorin/Bilbo (from what I read, this pairing does often come out to be quite angsty but the good ones are out there)
Read and review, folks! Hope you liked the first chapter.