AN: heyyy lovely readers. Awhile back, I made the mistake of reading a poorly handled fellowship-ends-up-in-our-world fic and I was faced with the uncontrollable urge to write one myself so as to do it justice. So, this is my take on the classic trope.
The only thing I own here is my laptop and my OC. I do not own Lord of the Rings. If I did, I could afford a car.
Katie never asked for any of this. She was happy, well, as happy as a broke college student could be. She had a house that she shared with four fantastic friends, an education degree she was on track to finish, and a kitchen of her very own where she could stress-bake to her heart's desire.
But no.
Normal and simple weren't in the cards for Katherine Eileen Zimmer.
It all started on a really fucking cold January night.
"Bye, bye, miss American pie," Katie sang to herself as she finished up the rest of her dishes. "Drove my Chevy to the levy, but the levy was dry," she stacked as many clean plates as she could hold and shuffled over to the cabinet, putting them away. "Them good ol' boys were drinking whiskey and rye," Katie padded back over to the sink in her fuzzy sock-clad feet and turned the cold water on, just enough to keep the pipes from freezing overnight. "Singin' this'll be the day that I die," Katie rested her hands on the countertop and looked out the window at the snowstorm still going strong. "This'll be the day that I die." She'd shoveled that damn driveway right after dinner and already, it had been snowed over.
"Jesus, I need to get that song out of my head," she muttered under her breath. She let out an exasperated sigh and let her wavy, dirty blonde hair out of its ponytail. Normally, she would have asked Dani or Sara for a new earworm, but they, along with her other two roommates, Alexis and Rebecca, weren't back on campus yet. That was what she got for wanting to get away from her family early, she supposed. As Katie cast around for a new song, she went about closing all the blinds and making sure all the doors were locked for the night.
"Poor old Johnny Ray," she began, trusting Come On Eileen to get American Pie out of her head. "Sounded sad upon the radio with a million hearts in mono," she went to the living room in the back of the house, double checking the lock on the back door. "Our mothers cried - sang along, who'd blame them?" she closed the blinds on the windows in the living room and went to the dining room in the front of the house. "You're grown - so grown up - so grown - you've grown up - now I must say more than ever - come on, Eileen," she closed one, two blinds in the dining room. "Too rah, loo rah, too rah, loo rye ay," she closed three, and finally the fourth. "And we can sing just like our fathers," Katie checked the lock on the front door and whirled around to face the inside of the house.
"Come on Eileen!" she sang loudly, bobbing her head and dancing badly to the sound of her own voice. "Oh, I swear - what he means - at this moment, you mean everything! You in that dress - oh my thoughts, I confess, verge on dirty," she got a bit of a running start and slid across the tiled kitchen floor. "Oh, come on, Eileen!"
"I guess the change in my pocket wasn't enough, I'm like, 'fuck you,' and 'fuck her too,'" Katie had gotten to the laundry as well as Cee Lo Green, when she heard a pounding on the front door.
"What the fuck?" she wondered aloud, checking the time on her phone - "two thirty in the morning, Jesus Christ, really?" she asked herself under her breath. Being the cautious woman she had learned to be in her twenty one years of life, she grabbed a hammer from her toolbox in the laundry room before going to the front door. Whoever it was pounded on the door again, and she thought she might have heard someone shouting.
Katie shifted her grip on the eighteen ounce hammer and flipped on the porch light. She could hear the person - no, it was definitely more than one - yelling something when she turned on the light, but she couldn't tell what was being said. Katie went to look through the small window in the door and saw, illuminated by her porch light, an old guy with a beard and some kind of wizard hat, some pretty-boy blonde with, she had to admit, really great hair, two kind of scruffy looking guys, a short guy with a huge beard, and what looked like four kids. All of them, every single one, looked like they had some manner of frostbite and had gotten lost on the way to a Comic Con or a Renaissance Faire.
"My Lady," she thought she heard the old guy yelling over the wind - My lady? What century is this guy from? "We beg of you for shelter from the cold," at least, she was pretty sure that was what he'd said.
Ha. Yeah fucking right, like I'm about to let a bunch of strangers into my house.
"Get off my property or I'm calling the police," Katie threatened through the door. Scruffy Number One, the one with darker hair, exchanged a look with Old Guy and Pretty-Boy.
"Please, my lady, we mean you no harm," Scruffy Number One said.
"You expect me to believe that?" Katie asked, and Pretty-Boy had the nerve to smirk at her through the window. "No fucking way am I letting a bunch of strangers into my house to gang-rape me. I told you to get off my property, so go," she said firmly, using a voice that she thought Dani would say was somewhere between her teacher voice and her angry voice.
"My lady, please-" Old Guy began.
"Get lost!" Katie interrupted him with a yell, and still they didn't move.
"All we ask is shelter from the cold!" Scruffy Number Two said, well, more like shouted.
"Fuck off, all of you! What part of 'get off my property' don't you understand? I swear-" she was really getting on a roll and then Scruffy Number Two went and tried the doorknob.
"Alright, that's it, I'm calling the cops," Katie said angrily, projecting her voice for them to hear her loud and clear, and she went downstairs to grab her phone from the laundry room. As soon as she had grabbed it though, she heard a click from upstairs and then a creak, followed by a rush of wind and a lot of footsteps. Katie ran up the stairs, her eighteen ounce hammer in her right hand while she frantically and clumsily tried to dial 911 with her left. However, as soon as she got to the top of the stairs, Pretty-Boy grabbed her from behind, holding her arms behind her back.
"What the fuck is wrong with you guys?" Katie cried, struggling against her captor's grip and watching as the last of them stomped into her home, closing the door behind them.
"Pleas, the little ones would not have lasted another hour in the cold," Scruffy Number Two said.
"So you break into my house? That's your answer? Don't you have cars or something? Ever hear of a homeless shelter?" she asked, trying to hide her fear, because Jesus Fucking Christ, was she scared. A bunch of strangers - men, no less - just broke into her house and she was pretty sure they were crazy and were going to rape and kill her. If I could just get to my room I could lock the door and call the police.
Okay, Katie, we have a plan. Don't fuck it up.
"We only ask for shelter for the night and then you will be rid of us," Old Guy said to her.
"What kind of lantern is this?" Katie turned her head to see that one of the kids was inspecting the lamp on the bookcase.
"You're shitting me, right?" she said, momentarily distracted from her fear. The kid shook his head innocently. "What are you people, Amish? What the fuck kind of century are you living in that you don't know what a damn lightbulb is?"
"A lady should not speak as such," Scruffy Number Two said - Katie had noticed his eyebrows steadily rising every time she swore. She glanced towards the stairs that led to her room and saw that Old Guy was standing in front of them. Okay, distract them until they move, then pull out the self-defense moves on Pretty-Boy.
"Fuck that shit," she couldn't resist replying with, if only to see Scruffy Number Two's face contort a little more. She noticed Old Guy nod to Pretty-Boy who was still holding her arms behind her back and who had confiscated her hammer. The only things between Katie and her room were Pretty-Boy and Old Guy.
"If I let you go, will you be civil?" Pretty-Boy asked from behind her. She scoffed.
"Civil? You've got to be kidding me. You're going to talk to me about civility after you literally broke into my house?"
"I give you my word that none of us will harm you," Scruffy Number One said, placing a hand on his heart and everything. Katie raised an eyebrow and gave him what Sara called her bitch face. He didn't back down. She sighed.
"You let me keep my hammer and my phone on me and I'll hear you out," she lied.
"Of course," Old Guy said. "Release her and give her back her hammer."
As soon as Pretty-Boy's grip slackened, Katie stamped hard on his instep and threw her head back in a head-butt. He winced a little at it but all she did was make him change his grip on her so that he had one arm around her shoulders and the other hand on her tricep. Digging up memories from the self-defense class her friend's dad made the two girls take when they were thirteen, Katie dropped to a crouch, leaning forward a bit. To her complete and utter surprise, it actually worked and she managed to flip Pretty-Boy over and flat on his back.
As soon as she was free, Katie made a mad dash for the staircase going up, but she barely had a foot on the first step when there was a sharp tug on her elbow and suddenly she was being restrained by Scruffy Number One. Pretty-Boy got to his feet and Katie was satisfied to see that she had made his nose bleed with that head-butt of hers. The rest of the chuckleheads wore expressions that varied between shock, anger, respect, and even outright laughter from Short and Beardy.
"Let me go, I swear to god-" Katie said angrily, kicking at Scruffy Number One's shins and struggling against his grip.
"She means us harm!"
"She is only scared-"
"She is no warrior, we are safe here-"
"Excuse me," Katie said loudly, interrupting the chuckleheads and their arguing. "She is right here and all she wants is for the strange men to leave her house without hurting her."
"We mean you no harm-" Scruffy Number Two repeated, but Katie interrupted him.
"No! Stop that! You obviously do if you holding me captive!"
"She does have a point there, lads," Short and Beardy said.
"Can't we just talk this all over with some tea or something?" one of the kids suggested. The one next to him slapped him upside the head.
"Who the fuck are you people?" Katie couldn't stop herself from asking.
"We're the Fellowship of the-" one of the kids started to say before another cut him off with a hit to the shoulder.
"Pippin! You can't just go telling strangers what we're up to!"
Wait.
Did he say-
No. No fucking way.
"I'm sorry, what did you call him?" Katie asked the kid who had just spoken, hoping against hope that she had heard him wrong.
"Pippin," he repeated himself.
"Oh, you gotta be fucking kidding me," she said, and as she scanned the men again, she saw it. She fucking saw it. It was the fucking Fellowship of the Ring. "This can't be real, you guys are actors, right?" she said, it was the only thing that made sense.
"Actors, my lady?" Scruffy Number One asked from behind her.
"You guys are all acting students, aren't you? Did Jen put you up to this? I bet it was Jen-"
"Who?" Short and Beardy asked. All of them shared the same perplexed look.
"My friend Jennifer - did she get you guys to do this, like, to prank me or something?"
"We do not know of any Jennifer," Old Guy said calmly.
"No-" Katie said a bit softly. "No, no, no, there's no way you guys are real, that's impossible, you're just actors," she reasoned. The Lord of the Rings is fucking fiction and there is no way that these guys are the real deal.
"We are no actors and this is no play," Pretty-Boy insisted. The rest of them nodded in agreement.
"Yeah fucking right," she said, craning her neck to get a good look at Pretty-Boy. "That's a really good wig - and whoever did makeup for you guys did a really damn good job on those ears of yours," she remarked.
"It is no wig, it is my own hair!" he cried. He looked absolutely insulted. Short and Beardy started laughing again at Pretty-Boy's indignation.
What was when it hit her like a ton of bricks. They were real. The Fellowship of the Ring was actually fucking real and in her living room.
"Let me go," Katie demanded of Scruffy Number One, and Old Guy nodded that yes, it was okay to release the chick that had given Pretty-Boy a nosebleed. Scruffy Number One let her go. She didn't say a word, only went to the bookcase, pushing Scruffy Number Two and a few of the kids - hobbits - aside on her way.
"I can't fucking believe this," she muttered under her breath as she searched for the title she sought out. She pulled her old copy of The Hobbit from the shelf and handed it to Old Guy. She couldn't bring herself to call them by their names; holy shit this was weird.
"The Hobbit," Old Guy read aloud, "by J.R.R. Tolkien."
"If I'm right, and I think I am, then there is something really fucked up going on here, but I need to figure out what before I can do anything about it," Katie said as Old Guy skimmed the book.
"Riddles in the dark," he muttered under his breath.
"Thirty white horses on a red hill," Katie recited. She knew that damn book too well. It had been a bedtime story when she was a kid and the rest was history.
"First they champ, then they stamp," another voice continued the riddle and Katie looked to see it was one of the curly haired kids.
"Then they stand still," she finished it, a bit dazedly. This was becoming the weirdest day of her life. And that was including Rebecca's twenty-first birthday and last Halloween. There was a beat of silence before Scruffy Number Two spoke up.
"Now is not the time for riddles, what is the meaning of this book? he asked. Old Guy closed the book and looked up at Katie in question. She shrugged.
"It seems that we have traveled farther than we intended," he said. "Across worlds and perhaps through time as well," he continued. the men all looked very surprised and wary and Katie was still getting over the fact that the fucking Fellowship of the Ring was real and they were in her house. Suddenly, all eyes were on her.
"How do you know of us and our purpose?" Scruffy Number One asked dangerously. Katie gulped.
"Shit. I said that out loud, didn't I," she muttered. "Just lemme get another book, I'll explain," she said, holding her hands up in surrender when she noticed a lot of them going for their weapons.
They let her through and she snatched up her copy of Fellowship from the bookcase. She found the chapter where they climbed Caradhras - that's probably where they're at, given the snow - and looked around for a bookmark. She eventually just stuck a hair tie in the page and flipped back through to the council chapter. After a little deliberation, she handed it to Scruffy Number One. He took it from her hesitantly, but began reading aloud from the council of Elrond. When he got to a stopping point, she interrupted him.
"This book is your story," Katie said, "you guys are fictional characters, you can't be real, this is crazy." She turned from them and stalked into the kitchen, running a hand through her hair as she opened the fridge. "This is impossible," she muttered under her breath as she grabbed a beer and closed the fridge. She set the bottle on the counter while she dug through the silverware drawer for the bottle opener.
"How is it so cold?" Katie jumped about a mile when one of the hobbits spoke up from beside her.
"Jesus, warn a girl when you're walking up next to her," she said. "Tolkien wasn't kidding when he said that hobbits were light on their feet," she muttered as she returned to the silverware drawer and found the bottle opener. As soon as the cap was off, the bottle was at her lips. If Katie was going to deal with this, she was going to need to be at least a little buzzed.
"She swears and she drinks?" she heard Short and Beardy - Gimli, better start calling them by their actual names - say. Katie looked up and saw that they had all followed her into the kitchen. "If you weren't so tall and hairless, I might misquote you for a dwarrowdam!"
"I'll take that as a compliment, master dwarf," she said, nodding to him and taking another drink.
"So, er, my Lady-" Boromir started to say, but Katie cut him off.
"Okay, enough of the 'my lady' bullshit," she said firmly. "I'm no lady, just a broke college kid. Call me Katie," she said, resigning herself to the fact that these people would be in her house at least for the night.
"Then you should have our names as well!" piped up one of the hobbits.
"I think that perhaps she already knows them," Old Guy said with a little twinkle in his eye, as if he found all of this funny. Katie shrugged.
"Sure do, Gandalf," she said to the old wizard, and he smiled back at her. "This is fucking surreal," she couldn't stop herself from saying before taking a deep breath and beginning to name the rest of them.
"Well, we have Gimli over here," she said, nodding at the dwarf, "our pretty-boy princeling, Legolas," (she got another chuckle out of Gimli with that and a scowl from the elf), "scruffy number one and scruffy number two, our Lords of Gondor, Aragorn and Boromir," she said, and when she did, the ranger began to go for a dagger. "Yes, I know you're Aragorn, would you prefer I call you Strider instead? Or maybe Thorongil or Estel or Elfstone?" she countered his unspoken protest. He shook his head, though he looked a bit disconcerted by all the names she rattled off.
"Aragorn is fine," he said. "Go on."
"Alright then," Katie said, turning to the hobbits and taking another sip of her beer. "You're Frodo," she continued, pointing to the dark haired one. He nodded. "And you're Sam," she said, pointing to the slightly larger one, and he nodded as well. "But help me out here," she said to the remaining two, "who's Merry and who's Pippin?" Katie noticed them exchange a mischievous look before they opened their mouths to respond. "And don't you dare give me each other's names as your own." They deflated a little at her having caught her plan, but Katie was feeling rather proud of herself. Maybe all those teaching internships really were paying off.
"I'm Merry," the one on the left said, "and I'm Pippin," the one on the right continued. Katie nodded and turned back to the company as a whole.
"Well, I suppose that's that. But how the fuck did you end up here? Shouldn't you guys be on your way to Mordor right now?"
"You know of our quest?" Legolas asked sharply, reaching for one of his knives.
"Calm your tits, Pretty-Boy," Katie said, "I know about the quest and I know about the lump of gold that Frodo's carrying." There were a few beats of silence and she noticed that Sam was shivering.
"Hey, you guys wanna get out of your wet clothes to warm up? I can throw your cloaks in the dryer, I think, or we could just hang them to dry, that's probably safer, they might shrink in the dryer, but the offer still stands," she said, catching the words that had been running away from her a little bit. Through a series of nods, looks, and shrugs, they seemed to come to a decision and they started to unclasp their cloaks and offer them to her. Katie raised an eyebrow.
"Yeah, no, I'm not doing all the work for you," she said, moving through them to get to the basement stairs. When she reached the bottom, she was alone. She looked up the stairs and saw them staring down at her. "Well come on," she said, and they started down the stairs while she pulled out the drying rack. She set it up quickly and the hobbits draped their cloaks over it, but there wasn't much more room.
"Alright, uh," Katie said to herself, ignoring Aragorn who was saying that they would be fine and they didn't need dry cloaks. "Ah, yes, that'll work," she said, pushing through them again to dash back upstairs and grab a few chairs from the dining table.
"Can we give you a hand, my Lady?" Boromir asked from the top of the stairs.
"I told you, it's Katie, and yeah, if you wouldn't mind," she said. The Gondorian captain grabbed two of the chairs and passed them to Aragorn and Legolas who carried them down to the basement. Once they had enough, Katie instructed them to drape their cloaks over the chairs and let them be for awhile while she grabbed a few blankets to throw in the dryer. On her way, she stepped in a very cold puddle.
"Oh, really?" she muttered. "Are you guys all still wearing your shoes?"
Merry opened his mouth to say something.
"Except the hobbits," Katie added and he nodded with a grin. She took a quick glance around at the others' feet and sure enough, they were still wearing their boots.
"Alright, boots by the door," she said firmly, pointing towards the mat by the front door that was used for that very purpose. It was weird, watching them all obey like that. They followed her instruction and took off their boots by the door, like kids obeying their mother. So fucking weird, she thought to herself. She glanced at the clock - 3:12 AM. Eh, could be worse. She remembered the blankets in her arms and took them downstairs, stuffing them in the dryer to warm them up. She pressed the start button and headed back up to the kitchen.
"What's that noise?" Sam asked when Katie reached the top of the stairs.
"The dryer," she answered. "It's uh, well, it's a machine that dries your wet laundry," she explained. "I just put a few blankets in there, they should be warm in a few minutes-" she was cut off by the sound of a growling stomach.
"Y'all hungry?" she asked them collectively. Might as well feed them, she figured. The hobbits nodded emphatically and the other men nodded as well. With a long-suffering sigh, Katie went to the kitchen and opened up the fridge to see what leftovers she had. There was some tomato soup, a little leftover pizza, and when she checked the freezer, she found the frozen lasagna that her grandma had sent her off to school with.
"How do you guys feel about tomatoes?" she called over her shoulder as she pulled the lasagna tray from the freezer. There were a few yeses but no nos, so she set the lasagna on the counter and set about preheating the oven.
"What is this?" one of the hobbits asked.
"Lasagna," Katie answered. She turned to see puzzled faces all around. "It's, well it's like, uh," she paused to figure out how to explain it. "It's noodles and tomato sauce and lots of cheese," she explained as best as she could. "Plus, my grandma made it, so it's fucking delicious."
That sent the hobbits into a discussion over what foods their own grandmothers made and it descended into what Katie had the feeling was a long-standing argument over who made the better pie crust: Grandma Took or Grandma Brandybuck. The rest of the Fellowship was standing back kind of awkwardly, simply observing her house. They seemed fascinated by things Katie took for granted - the upholstery on the large plaid couch in the living room, her roommate's pottery that lined a lot of the shelves, even the fucking binding on her copy of the Fellowship of the Ring-
Aragorn still had her copy of Fellowship of the Ring.
Katie went over to him where he was seated at the kitchen table, reading.
"What part are you at?" she asked him.
"We are being attacked by wolves in Hollin," he said, looking up at her. Her eyebrows shot up.
"Okay, that's enough reading for you," Katie said, snatching the book out of his hands.
"What are you doing?"
"You can't just read ahead," Katie said, "you're living this shit, what happens if you read too far ahead and find out what's happening and then end up changing things?" she said, willing her eyes not to flick to Gandalf or Boromir.
"She does have a point," speak of the devil and he shall appear, Katie thought as Gandalf spoke up.
"Thank you," Katie said, and with that, she took Fellowship with her to the bookcase where she plucked the rest of the trilogy off of the shelves. She considered taking The Hobbit from Gandalf as well, but after some thought she figured that as it was in their past, it couldn't hurt. She dashed up the stairs to stuff the books in her closet and was quick to return downstairs.
"Are you guys thirsty?" she asked them, reciting the polite question that her mom had been drilling into her skull since she was six. There were a few nods from them and she went to the fridge, noticing that Merry and Pippin were following her. "Well," she began, scrutinizing the contents of the fridge. "I've got four - no, five - decent bottles of beer, a few cheap cans, milk, water, orange juice, and I think that's apple cider in the back?" she reached for the jug to check the label. "Yeah, apple cider. Pick your poison."
"Poison?" she heard Legolas ask from behind her.
"It's just a figure of speech, I just meant pick your drink," she explained while she continued to loot through the fridge.
"I'll take a beer if that's alright, lass," Gimli said, and she set the bottle on the counter.
"Anyone else for a beer?" Katie asked over her shoulder. Aragorn and Boromir shared a look before they both shrugged and took bottles for themselves. Soon enough, everyone was nursing some sort of drink and they had lapsed into silence. This is so fucking surreal. Katie couldn't get over this. The Fellowship of the Fucking Ring was in her kitchen. In her kitchen, for fuck's sake!
Anyway, they ate her lasagna, finished off the last of her beer, and polished off her leftover pizza and by the time they were done, it was 4:03 AM.
"Okay," Katie declared with a yawn, "I don't care if you're all older than me, it is bedtime and you cannot tell me otherwise." Thankfully, none of them spoke up to argue. "Hobbits, are you guys okay with sharing couches?" she called over her shoulder as she trooped up to the linen closet on the second floor. There was a chorus of "yeses" from downstairs. Katie reached the closet and grabbed a large stack of blankets, large enough to require two hands for carrying. She kicked the closet door shut and headed back downstairs to her more than unexpected guests.
"Okay then," she said from behind the blankets in her arms. "Hobbits, each of you take a blanket." The four of them obeyed and once four blankets were gone from her pile, Katie could actually see in front of herself again, which was a nice bonus. "You four go claim your couch spots," she said, then turning to the remaining five. "You guys are gonna be stuck on the floor, unless one of you wants the lumpy-ass armchair." They all opted for the floor.
Once the fucking Fellowship of the Ring was settled in her living room - no, nobody needed to keep watch at the doors, Jesus Christ - Katie made sure the doors were locked (habit), turned out the lights, and trooped up to bed herself. She closed her bedroom door behind her and leaned back against it with a heavy sigh.
Because holy fucking shit, what the actual hell was her life right now? No, Katie, chill. Worry about it in the morning. Sleep. Sleep is all that matters right now.
Katie was surprised she managed to change into her pajamas before she collapsed into bed. She was asleep the second her head hit the pillow.
Thoughts? Let me know in a comment!
Thanks for reading, Natalie out.
