The Secrets of Women

This is a Lord of the Rings fanfiction featuring the pretty over-used "friends fall into Middle Earth, join the quest to destroy the ring and fall in love with some Fellowship members on the way" plotline. I know it's about as far from original as it gets, but I just had to try it.

Also, a special note for those who know their way around the series: I've never read the books, so I have lots of problems with geography and things like how long it takes to get from Point A to Point B and so on. So it would be awesome if I could get a beta, or else you'll just have to correct me constantly in the form of reviews.

Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction featuring characters, storylines and places from Lord of the Rings, which belongs to Tolkien, not me. The rights to the movie go to their respective owners. This story exists for entertainment purposes only; I do not profit financially from it in any way.

"Live fast, die young, leave a good looking corpse," -Nick Romano, Knock on Any Door

Chapter 1

The Secrets of Modern Times

Alexis suddenly became aware that it was cold.

Her eyes were closed, and she had no real desire to open them. What day was it? Saturday, right? She really wasn't good with mornings. God, it was cold. Maybe it wasn't morning yet and she'd just kicked her nice, fluffy, warm blanket off during the night. If it weren't for the damned wind, it would probably be much cozier anyway.

Wait a second.

Wind.

At that point, her brain decided that the need to figure out what the hell was going on here overrode the need to fall back asleep again and her eyes opened.

Alexis closed them. Opened them again. When she still saw the same trees, she clamped them shut tightly, inhaled once and then ripped them wide open.

Still the trees.

Huh.

She drew herself up to a sitting position and examined her surroundings. Just more trees, if she was seeing this right, and that meant woods.

There were no woods surrounding her apartment. Actually, there were probably not any woods within a 50-mile radius of said apartment. Which really irked her, because why the crap wasn't she in her bed and instead out here in the wilderness?

Shit.

She'd been kidnapped.

Clearly, this was the only explanation that made any sense. She had hardly come out here on her own, especially since she had no memory of coming here in the first place.

In a matter of seconds, she was convinced this was what had happened to her.

Hell … she had no memory of being abducted – what kind of crap had they given her, those assholes? Drugs, obviously, anything from sleeping pills to the really freaky stuff. When she made it out of here, she was going to kill them. Destroy their lives. Drag their little asses before court and stick them in prison forever. Whoever they were, they had it coming, anyway.

But Step One in the whole process there was getting out of these damn woods. What were they always telling you about how to deal if you find yourself abducted? She watched enough crime shows, she had this down. First you were supposed to get your bearings, weren't you? Be all calm and shit.

Okay. Calmness, then. A few deep breaths later, Alexis decided she now had her bearings sufficiently collected and could move on. Next she should probably check herself over. Who knew what those asshole kidnappers had done to her? She didn't even want to think about it. But after a quick once-over she was surprised to find herself relatively intact. Sore, and pretty grimy, too, but okay.

That was nice. You were always supposed to stay positive during this kind of ordeal, weren't you? Find the silver lining and all that.

She thought she was doing pretty good so far. Stayed calm, even when confronted with the horrible possibilities of what her kidnappers could have done to her, that was positive.

Next she checked her supplies, if you could call them that. She was equipped with: one pair of jeans, currently adorning her legs, one dark green tanktop, currently occupying her torso, one pair of socks, on her feet, and one pair of black sneakers, also positioned on her feet. Nothing else, no bag, no nothing. Oh, wait, she had black dangly earrings in, and ten bucks in her pocket. Oh yeah, and the hair tie that was no longer really holding her messy bun together.

Fabulous. Like those would get her anywhere in this godforsaken place.

What was her next step? Probably to get up and take a look around. Surely the kidnappers had left something here.

Hold on. The kidnappers – where the hell were they? Her vast knowledge of crime shows was telling her that this was not standard procedure, this whole just-leave-the-abducted-person-all-alone thing.

What if she wasn't alone?

Panicked, she whipped around, looking in all directions.

Okay, she was alone. That much was clear now. But then something else occurred to her: somehow, the kidnappers had gotten her here. Kidnapper? Or plural, as in kidnappers? How many assholes were going to prison for this?

Later, she thought. Right now she had more important things to do. Trails to find. You couldn't drag a knocked-out 22 year old through woods without leaving at least as small trail. That's what the CSI guys were always talking about, right? Broken branches, trampled grass, blood droplets, that's what she was looking for. Okay, so maybe not blood, because as far as she could tell, she hadn't been bleeding recently, but still. It was time to pull a move worthy of its own NCIS episode. Or maybe Bones. Only there would be no bones to find, because she would fucking make it out of here. Cold Cases, then, perhaps, only this would not ever be a cold case because the people who did this would pay, and they would do so shortly after she found her way out of the woods and into a police station.

A closer inspection of the area she so unwillingly found herself in didn't tell her much. Woods, obviously, but Alexis couldn't identify the trees because her knowledge about plants in general was limited at best. She had been laying on a soft patch of dirt, between a large tree trunk and a sort of rocky terrain that had small plants with tiny leaves growing here and there. Feeling surreal, she reached over and touched them, not really expecting anything. They felt … normal, she guessed. Damn, she was bad at this.

Alexis stood and stretched her limbs before hunkering over to the first best tree she saw and giving it a solid examination. It told her nothing. But then again, it was probably unlikely that a tree trunk had some sort of marks on it that told her that yeah, somebody had come by here recently. And so she turned her attention to the bushes that surrounded her.

She had been examining bushes for at least an hour when she gave up. A nagging little voice had been telling her she wouldn't find anything for the past 40 minutes, but she had been so goddamned determined to ignore it and find something, anything that would help her out because that was all she wanted and why the hell her anyway? Finding a trail was supposed to be her way out of this stupid mass of trees because she had no other chance and what was she supposed to do now? This was hopeless, wasn't it?

A search for footprints yielded no results either. Not really surprising, though; she could hardly see her own footprints in the dirt. It really was fucking hopeless.

Someone was going to die when she made it out of here.

Alexis knew full well that sooner or later, somebody was going to come back for her, and she had no intention of still being here when that happened. There really was no reason why she should stay, anyway, and so she picked a direction that seemed promising and started walking.

After some time, Alexis was pleased to note that the exercise had helped warm her up. She was less thrilled at the fact that she needed to pee. She very much doubted she would suddenly run into a Dixie toilet here somewhere, and grinding her teeth together, went to find herself a nice little spot.

No toilet paper, either, she mused, worried about what she would do when she really had to go. Things to worry about later, she supposed, and after doing what needed to be done, resumed her nice little trek.

Where was she actually going, anyway? She had no real way of knowing where north was, because the sun seemed to be hanging around right in the middle of the sky. That trick with the moss she had read about online once wasn't much of a help either, seeing as the small amounts of moss here didn't really prefer any special side of the tree trunk it was growing on.

But it probably didn't matter. It wasn't like knowing if she was headed east or south or whatnot would help her make it out of here.

Where were you supposed to go when it was just you and the woods? The answer popped in her head immediately: water. A second later, she realized she was thirsty.

Fabulous, she thought, and paused for a moment to think. Now, where would she find water? Somewhere downhill, obviously, only the terrain here was annoyingly flat. She listened hard, hoping to hear the tell-all sound of water rushing down rocks, but the only thing she heard were birdcalls and the wind. Did the direction of the wind tell you where water was? It didn't, right?

Damn.

Deciding it was time to stop and rest, Alexis sat down on a big-ish rock and drew her legs up. With a frown, she reached up to touch her honey brown hair. The bun it was in was falling apart entirely, and she absentmindedly pulled the hair tie out and ran her fingers through the knots. It ran down past her shoulders and was relatively straight – normally. Now, even without a mirror, she could tell it looked like hell.

She looked like hell.

Dirt everywhere, no makeup, and a quick whiff proved her suspicions true: she smelled.

With a frown, she quickly French-braided her hair and tossed the end over one shoulder. Trying to motivate herself, she hopped up from her rock. Alexis headed off, being sure not to go the way that she had come from.

It felt like hours later when she grew tired and hungry. The thirst was getting extremely annoying now, but there was nothing she could do. Even the dirt she stepped on was dry! Somewhat unwillingly, Alexis propped herself up against the trunk of a large tree and tried to close her eyes. The light in the woods was diminishing, and it was getting creepier by the second. She didn't want to think about the animals that probably roamed here in the night.

By the time the moon came out, she was dead tired, but still had her eyes open, warily searching the shadows for anything that might jump out. Calm down, Lexi, she thought to herself. You'll make it through this one night, and by tomorrow the Search-and-Rescue teams will have started searching for you. It will all be okay. They'll have lots of water and food and warm blankets.

Shivering, she huddled up even more against the tree. This was easily the scariest thing that had ever happened to her. Often, just as she was telling herself it was okay to sleep now, she'd hear a noise and quietly freak out.

I hate the woods, she decided.

Sometime, her exhaustion must have caught up with her because when she blinked her eyes open, there was sunlight streaming down through the trees.

She felt like shit.

She was thirsty, hungry, cold and sore. Her feet hurt from yesterday's walking and her back was killing her because of her interesting sleeping position. Her throat was dry and felt parched. She was lonely and afraid.

Knowing full well that she had no other choice, she dragged her miserable self up and forced herself onwards. Judging by the sun, which probably had risen about two hours ago, she was currently southwards. Well, fine.

Her body fucking hurt. She kept getting thirstier, and as noon came and went, Alexis became afraid that she was going to die here, alone in the woods.

As soon as the thought came, she squashed it. She would make it out of here. She had to. She had people to kill – the people who had put her through this.

She had never been aware of the fact that somebody hated her so much that he (or she, Alexis reasoned) felt the need to kidnap her and dump her in the middle of fucking nowhere without any supplies.

How long had she been missing? Today, of course, and probably most of tomorrow. Sadly, she had no way of knowing what day it was. The last thing she could remember from before was going to bed on Tuesday. That meant, she hoped, that her friends had known something was wrong when she didn't show up at her college classes on Wednesday.

Okay. They would have tried to contact her, and when that didn't work, they would have called the police. The cops would be looking for her. It was all going to be okay.

Only she was fucking thirsty. She needed water, and she needed it now. Hell, she had needed it four hours ago! This was torture.

Torture she might die from.

Thank you for reading! Be sure to leave a review, and if you are interested, I am looking for a beta!