Coming Home

~insanity and co~

Chapter One: "Rum in water bottles to start off our night."

Warning: Two OC's are present in this story. Rated T+ for some violence and swearing. Chapters are being revised as I go...anything with a chapter title has been beta-ed and revised.

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the canon (character's, events, places)...all of that belongs to the wonderful creator of Middle Earth and it's inhabitants.

Looking back to the very beginning, I'm not too sure where to begin telling my story. I could go on all about the wonderful life of Holly Morgan and the events leading up to...well...I've been calling it "when we got lost". You can hear all about me and the events that lead up to this, or I can just give you the shorter version. I'm not uncommonly interesting, so perhaps we can skip me for a moment and move on to the interesting stuff, i.e. everything that happened since my friend, Cody, and I came to Middle Earth.

I guess that's a little too far ahead at the moment, though. All you need to know is that I wanted to go over to an old friend's house for an innocent hang out session.

And that's all that happened. I went over to Cody's house, we hung out, watched TV, and talked about how stupid and silly we were as kids. He missed those times and while I would agree and mumble a response into my soda, I didn't really miss those times. We talked about how much I hated my job and how his boyfriend was getting a little pudgy. I couldn't stay long, though, I had work the next morning-

God, this version is boring. And I feel a little bad writing a lie.

Okay, so...the real story began when I went to an old friend's house (that part was true!) but there was massive amounts of booze involved, and I had decided to say 'fuck you, work, I'll come in hung over as all hell if I please'. Yeah, so that's how it started.

To be honest, I'm not really sure how it ended. To this day I don't know what happened after the third or fourth drink, made entirely too strong by Cody's uncoordinated pouring. Things got hazy, we looked at old pictures, we started crying, and we laughed some more because he was making this ugly-ass crying face. At some point we decided to go for a walk and put rum in water bottles in all of our drunken sneakiness...because yeah, you can totally hide rum in a clear bottle. I guess that's something that only makes sense when you're wasted.

From then on, after we left for the walk, I have no idea what happened. Blank. Nada. Nothing there. No bits and pieces for me to put a puzzle together so I could finally spell out what had happened. Things became a blur and suddenly there was zilch. Pretty anticlimactic...actually.

All I knew for sure was that I wasn't inside the moment the bile hit the back of my throat and I sat up faster than ever before. Blades of cold grass stuck to my hands, my fingers digging into the dirt beside my legs as I knelt over, my stomach turning over the glorious meal I had eaten the day before (a piece of fruit, which, now that I think about it could be why I got so wasted in the first place). The grass was cold and brushing the bits of dirt off my hands was a wonderful distraction from the vomit in front of me because look at that grass! Just sticking all by itself. Fascinated, I wondered if we both passed out on his lawn. That would be a first...I had yet to be a public drunken spectacle. (This wouldn't be a first for him, by the way.)

I know this all makes me sound like a horrible drunken idiot, in such a stupor that I didn't even know we weren't on Earth anymore. I assure you, I am normally one of utmost intelligence. It just so happens that my childhood friend, Cody, tends to turn me into a bumbling idiot who says too much and, more often than not, drinks too much. I really don't know how we started, but it was our glorious relationship to this day. Get bored one afternoon, texting him with something eloquent like, 'Dude! Let's totally get wasted!' and then voila. We wake up with a hangover, I'm pissed at him and he's tired of me by the time I'm putting my shoes on and gathering my things to leave in the wee hours of the morning. I think we just realize why we aren't friends past the drinking-buddies-stages anymore. We go our separate ways, and the cycle continues again when his boyfriend is mean to him, one of us sees an old picture or, I dunno...we just feel like coming together and talking about old friends.

Anyway, it usually ends in me waking up on his couch and going to work the next day.

This time was a little different.

This time, after I looked up and shuddered at the disgusting feeling (I hate throwing up), I looked around for him. He wasn't far away, sprawled out on the grass like he had just been walking along and bam, on the ground he went. His face was turned to me and I could see he was asleep. His mouth hung open and ewww, I could see that dreaded tongue piercing. I hated the way he sticks his tongue out extra far at me just so I'll see it. Yeah, he's a jerk like that. Now do you see why we don't talk to each other for months at a time? Shit like that is being pulled constantly.

I sat back on my legs for a moment, just blinking and breathing and - oh god - trying not to throw up again.

"Wake up," I groaned, crawling over to him and punching his shoulder, my head pounding and the ground was definitely jerking around under my knees. He didn't move but then again, I didn't expect him to. He slept like a stone, and add immense amounts of alcohol? He wouldn't be up for hours. The ground stopped moving and I finally felt like I could balance on my knees without toppling into the sky, so I slowly let go of my death-grip on the grass and brushed them on my jeans. "Come on, time to wakey-wakey."

This time I poked his face; his cheek, his chin, finally his eye just to try and get a reaction out of him to make sure he was alive.

Nothing.

Okay, so I had to admit that was a little weird. Normally people - even people sleeping off a massive hangover - would at least flinch when you jab them in the eye. Cody did nothing and his mouth still hung open and that disgusting piece of jewelery was visible and I was sure I'd be sick all over again.

Something cold ran through me and it only seemed to push the bile back up to my chest. It took forever for it to go back down and when I was confident I could lean over without throwing up on him, I turned back to his limp body.

I shook his shoulder, hard this time.

"Wake up you fat, lazy bastard. Now!" Still nothing. "Get up, we're gonna be murdered!" Nada. "Damn it!"

I punched his arm again for good measure, not entirely to wake him up, and sat back on the ground beside him. The ground hadn't only been cold, it was wet too and the dew soaked into my jeans and great...now my butt and the back of my legs were wet on top of everything else. My work pants were over the arm on Cody's couch, so I could just go home and change really quick. I looked around and noticed trees and bushes but there was no apartment complex. Okay, that was a little odd. It wasn't too unusual for us to wander off sometimes, though, and it was hard to keep the panicky voice in my head screaming "lost" at bay. Maybe we had gone over to another friend's house; I did remember texting Rebecca at some point in the night. But these trees and bushes that surrounded the grassy area we had claimed for the night didn't look familiar at all. I knew the trees at home, large evergreens and pines with ferns surrounding the roots and sometimes some holly and thickets. Moss should have covered everything in sight and be attached to the bark, growing high up to the top of the trees. Our home was known for these large forests and I could spot them a mile away, but nothing here looked like home. These were massive trees that towered far too high into the sky, with large knotted roots that seemed to jump out of the ground, just begging you to trip over them.

"Okay, lazy, up." I don't know what did it - his lack of response or that cold feeling in my stomach of not knowing where I was - just, something snapped. My nose began to run and my eyes watered and I punched Cody's side, pushing and pulling at his shoulders. His arm flapped around uselessly before I finally let him go and sat back again, and that was when I noticed something particularly weird.

He was huge. Cody had always been just an inch taller than me, but we were around the same size (perhaps he was a bit slimmer). I firmly told myself it was just because he was lying down and I was sitting up. But it didn't help that extra little jolt of panic that ran through me and - oh god - now I was crying, all thoughts of height gone and now that panicked voice screaming 'you're lost' loud and clear.

"Get up, fat-ass, I want to go home. I'm not carrying your bitch-butt back, you'll crush me." I laughed a little at my own insult, but he didn't so much as twitch and I didn't feel any better. His mouth hung open and his breaths came out in short, small bursts. He was out cold.

So by now I wasn't feeling so great, myself. My head was throbbing, my throat was burning from revisiting my yesterday-food and my stomach was hurting. I knew it was just the anxiety knotting in my stomach that made me want to curl up, but it just made things ten times worse.

"Ugh!" I groaned and threw myself back on the ground, my head hitting the grass a little harder than I had meant to and my hand flew to my mouth because I would physically stop myself from throwing up if I had to. Okay, so not such a good idea. I laid on the ground for a little bit, aware of the fact that I was a blubbering mess, crying, snot-nosed, hiccuping and just in my own little world of self-pity that felt so right and justified in that moment. Somewhere in my mind, I knew it wasn't but I couldn't bring myself to care.

"Oh god, just wake up!" I threw my foot out at him and that's when I noticed something...my shoes were gone but my feet weren't cold because the foot I was looking at, currently snug against Cody's own leg, was a hairy-ass foot that was sure as hell not mine. There was hair, and the foot was huge. I let out a scream and tried to back away, realizing too late that the hairy, gross, large foot was following me.

"Hello?" A deep voice called back and in a moment of insanity, I wondered if that voice had come out of my throat. Was I a man? Was this some horrible prank? I looked around frantically, absolutely sure that Ashton was about to jump out of the bushes and dub me 'pranked'. I shook my head, feeling even worse than before and scrambled to kneel beside Cody's head when nobody jumped out of the shadows.

"Wake up, someone's here. We can get home, I'm going to be late for work." Honestly, work was the last thing on my mind but the voice called out again and I really couldn't let this help just wander off. The last thing we needed was to get even more lost wandering around whenever Cody decided to join us. "Ugh, fine."

I slowly stood, learning my lesson from throwing myself on the ground earlier and walked - okay, staggered - over in the direction I had heard the voice. I thought about what I would say when the person saw a complete wild-woman in the forest and a fresh wave of tears came down when I went over everything in my head. I hurt. A lot. Everything was hurting and my nose wouldn't stop running and my feet were hairy and Cody wouldn't wake up and I didn't know where we were and I just wanted a shower or at least my bed.

I saw just a glimpse of something over a hedge of bushes and my blood ran cold. I fell to the ground in my attempt to get away and now I began shaking, feeling absolutely frozen in place with my back against an unusually tall root. From my chest to the tips of my fingers and my bare-toes, I felt icy cold and all of a sudden I was panicking.

An axe. I had seen an axe.

People walking around a forest for fun do not carry an axe.

People looking for a lost dog in the woods do not carry an axe.

The only thing running through my mind at the moment was 'axe-murderer' and suddenly there was a huge weight crushing my chest because that quip I had used to try and get Cody to wake up was true. Oh god, we were going to be murdered by a man wielding an axe.

"Who's out there?" The voice was deep and rough, and there were more voices that followed. I didn't even try to make out what they said, I just wanted to get away from the group of axe-murderers because now there was more of them.

They were coming closer and I stumbled back, my legs hitting the root and I flipped over it, swearing and struggling to right myself again and digging into the pocket of my jeans for what I knew was there. It was the only thing I could use to protect us, I thought with a rushed justification in my head as I drew out my pocket-knife. My nose was running, my eyes were still watery and I knew I was on the verge of crying again by the lump in my throat because this was not how I wanted to die. I'm sure I looked like a mess...hung over and hair wild and bare feet. All of that little stuff disappeared when those noises grew louder; they were coming towards me. I fumbled with the knife and flipped the cold and dirty blade out, holding it in my hand uneasily as the axe-murderers came closer. The heavy footfalls were just feet away and several twigs cracked under something heavy and this bush I was hiding behind was suddenly far too short and thin. I held my breath and could see the knife shaking in my hand, but I was holding it as steadily as I could.

God, could I even use this if I had to? It had always been for sharpening pencils and holding in my hand to feel safe when I'm walking alone at night. I never kept it with the intention of using it against somebody. The thought had my free hand flying up to my mouth again to suppress the bile.

A voice quietly muttered, "Over there," and I don't think I even had a full second to react to exactly how close that voice was. The bushes before me shifted and a long, silver sword that was - Jesus Christ! - well over the length of my arm flashed in the light on it's way to my throat. It was absolutely massive, and once I got over the shock of having it pointed directly at me - the cold edge hovering so close to my skin I could feel it - I noticed that yes, there was a hand holding that sword.

The knife immediately fell from my hand in my jerking flinch as if I had been burned and I let out the weirdest squeal I had ever heard before. Like, seriously. Moose getting eaten by a squirrel, weird.

It wasn't until the man actually spoke that I looked away from the sword to see who it was walking through the woods. I did start crying a little bit because they could easily be the last people I ever saw. My murderers would be the last faces I looked at.

"What is a she-hobbit doing so far from the Shire?"

Okay...so I didn't exactly know how to respond to that. Hobbits, she-hobbits, the Shire...he might as well have just grunted in that deep voice and I would have gathered the same amount of information. I suppose I didn't look all that intelligent, just crying, staring at this massive man with a braided beard and sword and - was that armor? I probably still should have come up with something better...more sophisticated to blurt out.

"Hobb- Wha?"

"I asked you, what a hobbit is doing so far from the Shire?" He was growing impatient. Now that I had calmed down and was able to breathe normally, I looked to the others behind Killer #1. Behind the large man stood three more, all with even more hair and braids than this one. I caught another glimpse of the axe in the hands of an absolutely massive man and gulped.

Okay, so maybe we were near a reenactment of some ancient war, or perhaps Pirates of the Caribbean. My mind frantically went over options because now was not the time to die and there had to be a reason for that sword and the weird clothes. Johnny had a braided beard in those movies, right? Well, they didn't exactly look like they were dressed as pirates. The sword fit the bill pretty well, though, I thought with a gulp.

"What the fuck's a 'Shire'? Who are you?" I was a little disappointed when they didn't just say something like, "Oh, my name's Brad and we're reenacting a film." Because everything that was coming out of his mouth right now made zero sense to me.

"My name is Fili," - where does someone go around getting a name like that? - "son of Dis, nephew of Thorin Oakenshield." There was a pause where we just stared at each other. Perhaps he was waiting for a reaction? Was any of that supposed to mean something? Was I supposed to respond? Or was this simply the part where I begged for my life to be spared now that I knew the name of my murderer. I was probably a little too close to succumbing to that last option.

"Who?"

His sword lowered a fraction of an inch before someone stepped up beside him, a darker haired man with no braids - sanity was stronger in Killer #2! - but a whole lot of stubble. I suppose his wild-ass hair sort of made him look just as crazy as the others, though, and the idea that one of these men were sane in any way was gone. The man before me, Fili, looked confused, sword still positioned a little too close to my throat for comfort. The darker one, on the other hand, looked down at me with suspicion and uneasiness.

"Don't answer. We still don't know what she is doing sneaking around the bushes." That last bit, he aimed at me and stepped closer with a bow in his hand. So war reenactment was looking like more of a possibility, I couldn't quite remember seeing bows and arrows in the lasted Depp movie.

"I wasn't sneaking," I defended, and right at that moment, Cody - you idiot! - decided to let out a cry. A loud, pained cry. I immediately jumped and the men in front of me turned in his direction. Killers number #3 and #4 spoke but couldn't hear; I was frantically thinking of a way out of this and now I remembered that I had to get us out of this...not just myself. Thankfully, this distraction meant the sword left my neck and my little knife that was looking more and more useless against a fucking sword by the seconds, was at my feet and begging me to pick it up. I tried not to puke as I knelt down, and it still felt awkward in my grasp and I was crying all over again.

"Who was that?" Killer #2, the dark haired man turned to me, eyebrow raised and already stepping in that direction. His dark eyes flickered to my knife but he didn't seem alarmed, which pissed me off a little more than it should have.

I panicked right then, and while I had been questioning the sanity of these men my own seemed to slip right out from under me. All of them were turning to check out who had made that noise and I immediately jumped in front of their path, the sudden motion making my stomach turn and I was so glad I didn't puke right then and there on their feet. I don't know what possessed me to do it, but I raised the little weapon I had in front of me, making sure to point it directly at Fili. See how he likes having something sharp pointed at him.

"Leave him alone." God, it was pathetic how easily Killer #2 pushed me aside, his large size easily towering over mine. I stumbled and scrambled for something to hold on to - a tree - and the men moved past me to the small clearing where Cody was.

Oh god, men with swords and axes were going to be coming at him. I still had no idea where we were but waking up to that would be a little too much of a shock for him. He might actually die before they get a chance to kill him. They drew closer to the clearing, me racing after them and damn it- Why were they so fucking tall and fast? I managed to slide in front of them again, feeling more like a mad woman as I raised my weapon in front of me.

It was no use now, though. They had already seen the lump of spiky hair and too-tight clothes that was Cody, laying in the grass.

"Stay away from him." This time, when Killer #3 tried to push past me, a short white-haired one a little closer to my own height, I took a swing at him. They didn't like that very much. Fili, large sword still in hand, immediately grabbed my wrist way too tight and twisted my arm. The knife went falling from my hand embarrassingly fast and I was left to yelp and turn, trying hard to keep my arm from being twisted too far because god dammit that hurt. "Let me go!"

He didn't, but that didn't stop me from frantically pulling and kicking to get away. His huge hand completely engulfed my wrist and all the thrashing and jerking I was doing didn't seem to phase him one bit. He loosened his grip just when my hand was starting to go numb. Any worry I had for my aching wrist was gone when I heard the men around Cody chatting lightly. One even laughed and I wondered if we would get mugged. Or kidnapped. Murdered still rang in my head and I kicked a little harder at Fili's legs.

The other men stepped forward to inspect Cody closer. I tugged uselessly at my arm, trying to wrench it from his grasp. I even tried that little thing my mom taught me, pushing my hand forward and twisting sharply to throw his hand off - it didn't work. I threw myself down at the ground, reaching out of the knife that was mere inches away from my feet but was raised back up by my arm.

I turned back to Killer #1, glaring angrily and still struggling to get away. At that point, my feet were barely touching the ground and how the hell was he lifting me up? I was closer to six foot than not and Cody would even have a hard time giving me a piggy-back ride. Yes, I had a little bit of "insulation" and it felt so weird being lifted off the ground by one arm.

"Do you reckon he's alright?" At this, I turned back to the men who had now circled around Cody's unconscious form, each holding a various weapon that made my stomach turn. There was an axe, a bow, a shorter sword and oh my god, was that a mace? Why did they need a mace?

"I think the lass's just trying to protect her friend, Fili. Let her go." One of them laughed, and the hand finally let me go.

"'The lass'?" I echoed, immediately holding my aching wrist to my chest and reaching down for my knife, scrambling to get away when Fili moved. "Where are you from, Ireland? Stop!" I yelled out when Killer #3 knelt down beside Cody. He looked up and despite my irritation and fear and anger, I did see his small smile as he looked my friend's unconscious body over.

"What's your name?" I was racing over to the group of huge men when the dark haired man turned away from where the others had gathered and was now facing me, stopping me in my tracks. I immediately tightened my grip on my trusty little knife.

"I'm not telling you a thing until you tell me where we are." I'm normally not so short with people, I swear! It was just the whole 'lost' thing and 'swords' thing and 'I'm going to be fucking murdered' thing that had me in full-on bitchy mode.

"You do not know?" I could feel my face burn red at the humor in Killer #2's voice and I could almost feel myself swelling up with all the frustration and damn anger flowing through me as he dodged my question. I was the one dodging questions, here. "Bree, just east of the Shire."

Again with the Shire.

"Yeah, that's great, but that doesn't really help us." I gripped my pocket-knife in my other hand, twisting my wrist around and trying to work out the ache that had settled in since Fili had twisted it. It was no use. "We should be near Seattle." He gave me a blank stare, which made no sense at all. Even people on the other side of this world knew where Seattle was. "Everett?" Still nothing. "Marysville? Maybe we went and saw Rebecca or something, but we should be within a bus-ride of Seattle."

"I have no idea what she's talking about," the man said, turning to the others with a shake of his head.

The only things that crossed my mind were 'They really stick to their characters' and 'Oh god, we're really lost' before I sort of, well...passed out. Yeah, not the best way to enter Middle Earth and not the best first impression either. It was just not a good day in general, if you caught onto that yet: lots of puking, lots of me attempting to fight and lots of me embarrassing myself beyond my normal spectrum of embarrassing myself.

I would like to say that the following days got better, but they didn't.

Author's Note: So, here we go! We begin the adventures of Holly and Cody...not so great friends as they try and get home again. Criticism is greatly appreciated, I'm trying very very hard to create a good self-insert (and Cody-insert, though our names have been changed) and would like to know what's working and what's not so I can go through and fix things up all nice and well. :)

01/14/14 Edit: Thanks to Rae01 for pointing out some minor problems. :)

02/20/14 Edit: A special thank you to Lasgalendil for going over this first chapter with some honest CC. None of the big events have been changed, but I did go over this with a fine-toothed comb and think it's sooo much better than before. So if you're just skimming this chapter to get to the next update, I'd encourage you to give this another go.