Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. I do not own any of the character, places, names, or anything associated with the works of J.R.R Tolkien or the Lord of the Rings (books or movie, whatever). My characters are Anita, Leila, and Arlandria and that is all.

Author's Note: It's a short one today guys, sorry. I'm working fast trying to get the next two chapters ready to be posted, so hopefully it won't be too terribly long before I get another chapter up.

Chapter 10: Back Home

It was petty, childish and even stupid, but all the same, Anita was avoiding Legolas. After their intimate moment yesterday at the spring, she didn't have the balls to face him today. So instead of meeting him after breakfast like they had been doing for the past few weeks, she just didn't. In a moment of being honest with herself, Ani would admit she hadn't done much to make friends here in Rivendell. Arwen had been welcoming and Aragorn was nice, most people were friendly enough, but Legolas was the only one she had a real connection with. And that in itself was too precious to throw away on a little school girl crush.

It wasn't even really a crush, she reasoned with herself. It was hormones acting up, and the rest of her body was playing right along with their game. So much so that Legolas had a starring role in her dreams last night, which was mainly the reason she hadn't wanted to see him today. Ani blushed to think about it, and she prayed that she hadn't done any talking in her sleep last night. Of course she found him attractive, she would have to be dead, buried, and cold not to find him attractive. But nothing more than that, it couldn't ever be more than that. Little did she know, what she had no way to know, was that across Rivendell a certain elf was fighting a very similar struggle.

So at the risk of looking completely and utterly immature, Anita decided to ignore him for the day, and instead went in search of her twin sister. Leila of course was found sitting crossed legged on her bed bent over a book, a sight that had been common even back in Tucson. She couldn't help but notice the way that Lei fit into her surroundings, not a cactus that had been removed from its world, but a flower in its natural habitat. Taking a running leap, Ani launched herself over the intricately carved footboard of Lei's bed and belly flopped the mattress, which threw the book to the floor.

"Anita!" Lei's shrill cry of protest just made Ani laugh.

"Gotcha!"

"You are just mean spirited," Leila reached for the book that had been tossed to the stone floor and re-opened it to try and find her page before addressing her sister again, " Why aren't you with Legolas?"

Anita tried to disguise her flinch as a shrug when Lei asked about him. "I didn't feel like it today."

"Really?" The way Lei cocked her eye brow at her darker twin meant she wasn't buying any of Ani's crap. "You two have been inseparable for weeks now."

"We were inseparable for eighteen years, shit changes." That statement had come out far harsher than Ani had wanted it to, and the look of sadness on her twin's face meant the nasty barb had hit home. Even though she hadn't wanted to upset her sister, she was glad that her snappy little statement had at least turned Lei's attention away from the conversation about a certain prince. It was bad enough she was having erotic dreams about him. Heaven forbid Leila find out Ani had a physical attraction to Legolas, she would never hear the end of it. Quickly, she tried to think of something to lighten the mood, " Happy Halfway to going home day."

Despite the positive impact that hanging out with Legolas had on her time in Rivendell, Anita had still been counting the days til she could go home. This would all make for a great joke between the three of them ; Lei, Ani and their mom, for years to come she was sure.

"Yeah I have been meaning to talk to you about that…" Oh that tone, Ani knew that tone of voice. It was that tone of voice that had landed them here in Middle Earth in the first place, it was a tone that Ani had come to associate with bad news. Rolling over and sitting up, Ani prepared herself for whatever was coming.

"I don't think I am ready to go back to Tucson." Lei's voice was timid, but sincere.

"What you mean like you don't want to go back to start the fall semester?"

"No Ani. I don't want to go back at all." They stared at each other for a moment of pregnant silence. Ani was waiting, waiting for her sister to start laughing or give some hint that this was just a joke. But none ever came. Leila was being serious.

"Why? Why stay here? You really want to give up everything in our world to stay here?!"

"Ani what would we be giving up?"

"You were going to be a doctor there!"

"I can be a healer here."

"This isn't home!"

"Our father…"

"Your father Lei, if you want him."

"Our father," Lei started again as if she hadn't been cut off, " is here and so is our family. This is more our home than Tucson ever was."

"Are you being serious right now?" Ani stood up off the bed and began to pace the floor on the room, while Leila remained quite calm on the bed.

Leila let her sister pace for a moment before she quietly offered up a question. "If you were to go back to Tucson right now, do you really think you could pick up life again like this never happened, like this place didn't exist, and the reality of what and who we are had never been revealed to you?"

Anita didn't have an answer for that. Lei had known that she wouldn't have an answer before the question had even been posed of course. The fact that Ani couldn't respond with anything intelligible to that question only infuriated her more.

"Anita," Leila spoke so gently trying not to further irritate her twin, " I am staying here in Rivendell. Forever."

Lei expected Anita to react exactly the way that she did. After all, Ani had been right when she said that the twins had been inseparable for almost eighteen years. So what happened was nothing short of normal, and Lei didn't flinch a muscle when Ani started screaming.

"C'est la vie, adios, good riddance, fuck you!" Anita didn't bother sparing a backward glance before she left her twin sitting there in silence. In her blind fury, Ani stormed around the house with no real goal in mind. She didn't know where she wanted to go, just somewhere else where she could sit and fume. In spite of how much she loved and cherished her sister, no one could piss her off quite like Leila could.

She wasn't quite sure how long she had walked, and somehow she had wandered into a part of the house that she wasn't all that familiar with. It was a large room with spiraling columns and two grand staircases leading up to a second floor that peaked in front of a statue of a woman holding a sword. The walls were decorated with what appeared to be major events in this world's history. Taking a quick glance around, she realized she had been in this room one time before, because she recognized the painting on the wall of the man in black armor and the funny helmet having his hand cut off by the dude on the ground.

Truthfully she wouldn't have stopped here any other day of the week, but today this room was empty and dark, and that was its selling point currently. Anita took a seat on a cold bench carved from white stone and looked around.

Leila was right, she always was right, and Anita knew it. The reality of who and what we are…. Leila's words echoed around inside her brain. Ani's instincts had been to stand strong and say of course she could go back to Tucson and live a normal life. But she knew better, because she had seen someone else attempt to do it. Her mother.

With a fuller picture of where her mother's life had been before Tucson, Ani now more deeply understood just how much their mother had really given up to give the twins a normal mainstream childhood. Everything about who and what they were, the life they had been living in Arizona was just lies compounded on top of more lies.

Arlandria, her mother, had changed everything about herself to simply fade into the background of life. Not only had she changed her name to Andrea Rodriguez, but she had learned to speak fluent Spanish, giving birth to the belief that their family was Hispanic, a dime a dozen in Tucson. Her mother had never denied or accepted it outright, but it was an easy assumption to make, one that even Ani and Lei had accepted. Her mother had given up her name, her identity, even her culture and moved to a world where she knew no one and nothing of the society. Arlandria... Andrea…mom had always been cordial and even social when it was required of her, but Ani couldn't recall her mother having any real friends.

So many things made sense now. Her mother's ears which had been covered up in a lie. And that lovely trip to the doctor's office, where they had been told since they had infrequent periods, both the twins would have extreme difficulty in conceiving should they ever chose to have children. In reality, it was nothing more than a condition of them being elves- or so Lei had told her- which they discovered coming here. But she remembered her mother standing there in the room looking blank eyed and innocent while the doctor had told them the bad news. Just more lies.

With how amazing her mother was at feeding other people lies and really truly getting them to believe it, Ani began to wonder why that woman had started a landscape architecture business and hadn't just become an actress.

In response to Leila's question, could she go back and pretend, go back and lie about all this? No. Anita wasn't a great liar in the first place, there wasn't a time at home she hadn't gotten caught, so how could she hide all this? Did she have it in her to change her name, move to a place where she knew no one and had no friends? Could she lie about her life, fabricate convincing details to cover up the fact that she wasn't even human? No, no she could not.

Leila had been right again. Tucson wasn't home, the life she had been living there…it had been a dream. Looking around the room she was in, with the carved stone and the painted walls, Ani was slowly letting the heavy truth of the situation take root in her mind. These were the halls of her fathers, the halls of her people. She had been wrong about herself all along; she wasn't a cactus that had been removed from its habitat, she was a leaf that had been ripped off its branch and tossed around lifelessly in the wind.

Anita's breathing became ragged as she fought back the hot tears pricking at her eyes. As much as she didn't want to admit it, didn't want to accept it, the reality of all that was around her was bearing down on the violet haired girl.

Anita Listelle Rodriguez didn't exist.

That person, that life, was just smoke and mirrors concocted by her mother to try and hide the truth. To hide the fact that she was an Elf, a child of the Eldar, and this place…this Middle Earth, was where she and her twin belonged.

Biting down hard on her bottom lip, she tried to calm the quiver and hold herself together even as one tear escaped, and unbidden rolled down her pale cheek. Leaning back, she rested her mess of two toned hair against the perfectly white stone walls and looked around the room. She only whispered one word into the darkness, one word was all she could manage before the burning at the back of her throat and in her eyes became too much and she broke down into sobs.

"Home."

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