by Shauna (wind3213@hotmail.com)
Summary: With the removal of the PPC, there's been a certain lack of nice, mean snarking. My attempt to make up for it.
Disclaimers: All characters, unless indicated otherwise, are the property of the Tolkien estate. The Mary-Sues are mine, and that means I can torture them as much as I want.
***
When Rae didn't come back from fetching the cloaks, Mary began to get worried. But Rae had ordered Mary, in her most menacing voice, not to move from her spot. So instead of going after her, Mary sat down and began to brush her hair. This occupied her for a while, as it seemed her hair was both longer and more lustrous than before. Even that eventually got boring.
So Mary tucked her comb back into her pocket and decided to look around. She followed Rae's path to the small and homely house, and peeked through the window.
Rae stood in the middle of the room, looking like she was about to faint, throw up or run away, or possibly all of those things at once. An elf walked around her, eyes narrowed, lips stretched downwards into a frown. As she spoke, a third person walked into the room, Luthien, the girl from before. The other elf bowed, and after a moment Rae did, too.
"What creature are you to invade my father's realm?" Luthien said, her brows deepening in suspicion. "Are you an emissary of the dark lord? I sense some evil about you."
"No, not evil," Rae offered.
"How did you get through the girdle?" Luthien demanded.
"Well, uh, I - "
"Hey, everyone!" Mary said brightly, stepping into the room. All three of them turned to look at her, stunned. Then the elf woman dropped to one knee.
"Surely this is an elven princess!" the woman gasped. At that ridiculous statement, Rae gasped as well.
"That's right!" Mary said proudly, walking to stand by Rae. "So would you stop yelling at my friend?"
"I'm so sorry," Luthien said, humbled.
"I don't get it," Rae whispered to Mary. "She thinks I'm some sort of wild beast or crazy elf, but you walk in here smelling just as bad as I do, and with the same ears no less, and it's like you're the fourth Silmaril. I just don't get it."
Luthien offered her arm to Mary. "Would you like to come meet my father and my mother?"
"Oooo, goody!" Mary exclaimed. "You're a princess, right? So he's a king!"
Still a bit shocked, and a lot more annoyed, Rae followed the two of them out the door.
***
Rae walked along the grass, with Beleg beside her. It had been several days since they'd come to Beleriand, and little seemed to be happening. She had gathered some information about what time it was - Galadriel graced the king's court, as Daeron did - but that did little to help besides remind her how far away she was from where she wanted to be.
Except... she wasn't sure she wanted to be anywhere else besides roaming at Beleg Cuthalion's side.
Beleg had taken pity on the strange, ugly girl. Few would speak to her in private, let alone in public, but Beleg did not worry for his reputation. Neither did Luthien, who was kind to Rae when their paths crossed, but she did not find the girl interesting and so did not seek her out.
To Rae's delight, Beleg had taken her as a confidante, seeming to sense that she knew him intimately even if she took pains not to say so. He talked to her of the contradictions of battle, of fighting to death for life. He talked to her of the loneliness of the ages, of feeling as though he waited for something that he did not understand. He talked to her of these strange whisperings coming out of the mountains, from the exiled ones, of a new race... a race of men. What did she think they would be like?
When he told her of the rumors she knew that her time was running short. Even though it would be long before men came into Doriath, soon the elves would know what they were like, and thus that she and Mary were of them.
Mary, for her part, was the belle of Beleriand, ever visited by entranced suitors although always kept beneath Melian's wary gaze. Rae didn't quite understand it all - weren't elves supposed to appreciate, well, intelligence? Wisdom? Wit? How come Mary was treated like she was all that and a pack of lembas, and Rae was tossed aside?
It was the hair. It had to be the hair. Rae grimaced - she liked her own hair, it was comfortable and sort of neo-punk, but long, shiny hair was the elven standard of beauty and hers did sort of stick out. Or stick up. Well, it was starting to grow, and wasn't nearly as sharp and pointy as it used to be.
And maybe it was also that even if Rae had hit the 'save' button, Mary was the one that wrote enough to bring them here. Rae, however unintentionally, was just a tag-along.
Rae glanced up at Beleg, already several strides ahead of her and not looking back, not waiting for her, the tag-along, the little girl he had taken pity on. She knew who he was really waiting for. Turin.
The stab of fear reached her heart.
"Rae?" said a voice from behind her, with but a hesitation over the abrupt name, a short beat in a calm melody. "Your thoughts trouble me."
Rae, startled, spun around, and a few yards ahead of her Beleg also turned back. Facing Galadriel she said, gaurded, "What do you know of my thoughts?"
"More than you would have me speak of, especially in front of he that you fear for so." This last she said so quietly that even Beleg could not catch it, so quietly it seemed that she spoke directly in Rae's mind.
"Did Melian speak to you?" Rae demanded when they were alone. The farsighted Maia had known right away that they were neither dark creatures or true elves, but she had kept the knowledge from others, probably on Mary's account.
A frown passed over Galadriel's face at being spoken to in such a manner, although Rae knew for a fact that wheneve Mary ordered the Noldorin princess around it was taken as her due.
"No, but sometimes my mind passes to you and I sense that you fear for his future even as I do."
"Wait a sec," Rae spluttered, forgetting not to use modern American slang. "You know about his future and you're not doing anything?"
"Neither are you," Galadriel pointed out.
"Yeah, but I'm - " Rae cut herself off. "You still haven't answered why."
"If I tried to avert every fell prophecy I've had, there would not be a life left untouched by me. Besides, sometimes sadness is the propper way of things."
Rae shook her head, tears beginning to sting in her eyes. She glared in the general direction of the display where Glaurang was kept. "I could take that sword. I could throw it into the ocean before it can do its harm."
Galadriel, trying to hide her distaste, reached out and stroked Rae's spiky hair. "Your heart is good, child, but it will lead you wrong. It will lead far worser things to this land ere it stops beating, if you do not chose to leave."
"You think I should leave?" Rae asked Galadriel.
"No," the wise elf replied, "I do not think it. I know it."
***
Rae found Mary singing N'Sync songs to an entranced Daeron. Surveying the sickening scene, Rae thought that if Mary moved on to Brittney Spears she would have to kill herself, and maybe that would solve the problem nicely.
She pulled Mary away, trying to ignore Daeron's lovestruck protestations.
"What do you think you're doing to him?"
Mary giggled. "I think he has a crush on me."
"Are you insane?"
"No, just pretty!" Mary replied. "Oh, it's nothing serious! He'll get over it when I break his heart."
"Elves love once," Rae said through gritted teeth. "Twice, if they're a high king. If you break Daeron's heart you'll quite literally kill him. And if you break Daeron's heart, I'll quite literally kill you."
"Geez, what's the big deal?"
"If Daeron dies, he won't be able to betray Beren and Luthien to Thingol. And if that doesn't happen, Beren won't be forced to get a Silmaril and Finrod won't die helping him and Beren won't die fighting that wolf and Luthien won't die out of grief for him - "
"Wait, so all this not happening is a *bad* thing?"
" - hang on a second, I'm not done yet. And they won't come back and have Dior and he won't have Elwing and Elwing won't marry Earendil and they won't get the Valar to come back and destroy Morgoth and then Morgoth will kill everybody. There we go. Now do you see why that's a bad thing?" Rae seemed quite impressed with herself.
"Who's Morgoth?" Mary asked.
"The point is, we've got to go."
"But I want to stay!"
"Mary! We aren't staying here. We need to leave. Galadriel said so. Melian said so. I'm sure there are thousands of readers out there who agree! Okay, maybe only three or four readers, but doubtless they're keeping their fist clenched above the keyboard, trying to supress their rage at what we're doing here. And for that matter, what the hell *are* you doing here?"
"I'm just trying to set Luthien up with Beleg. They're perfect for eachother."
"No, they're not," Rae growled, beginning - just beginning - to get impatient.
"You're just saying that because you want Beleg all to yourself, you dumb freak."
"I'm saying it because I know her future and it isn't with him! Her story was in the poem that started this whole thing! For crying out loud - " and Rae sounded as though she might start, "you'd think you would have read at least that! And I might be a freak but you'd better watch who you call dumb."
"Well," Mary wheedled, "didn't you say we had to be careful not to change the future?"
"Yes," Rae ground out.
"So we can change it. Its just a bad idea!" Mary smiled at this seemingly impenetrable logic. "So Luthien and Beleg can get together - you know she said at our slumber party a few nights ago - "
"A slumber party?" Rae asked, aghast. "You forced Luthien Tinuviel, fairest of all elves, daughter of an Ainu and an Elven king, to go to a slumber party? I bet you ordered pizza."
"Pineapple pizza," Mary replied. "Anyway, she said she's had a crush on him for such a long time, and that when we grow up and Legolas is, you know, born, we can have a double wedding!" Mary paused. "Rae? Rae?"
There was no answer besides the *thump, thump* of a head being thrown forcefully and repeatedly into a tree. When the banging stopped, she asked again, "Rae?"
Rae had decided to ignore her for the moment, rubbing a hand on her forehead to slow the bleeding. She needed to find a way out of this.
'Come on, Rae, think. Think! What would Jay and Acacia do?' Rae flinched as images flashed into her mind of being used as target practice by Eol, his poisoned spears and arrows lodging painfully in her chest. She needed to remember that anything that she used on Mary, she'd have to use on herself. Taking a deep breath, she turned back to the girl.
"Where were we?" Rae asked.
Mary smiled, and an even stupider look than usual crossed her face. "Legolas."
"Legolas," Rae shouted. "Oh, for Iluvatar's sake, you're not done with that yet?"
"I," Mary replied proudly, "am loyal. I am waiting for him. Even if it takes all the time in the world."
"Of course!" Rae gasped aloud. Why hadn't she thought of this before? They weren't in a different place, just a different time. After all, didn't the riders of Rohan eventually become the Anglo-saxons? And everything else became myth. So they didn't really need to die to leave, just to - "Mary, I need you to close your eyes and will time forward."
"Why?"
"To get back to the future, of course."
"Back to the Future? I don't want to leave this fandom. Besides, Michael J. Fox isn't as cute as Orli Bloom is."
Rae's eyes lit up. "Legolas is in the future!"
"Really?" Mary cried. She grabbed Rae's hand and hopped up and down excitedly. "Let's go!"
"Wait a second," Rae said, pulling her hand away, "I have to say goodbye to - "
"Beleg?" Mary supplied, actually pulling off a smirk. Rae hadn't thought it was possible, but she'd actually been outsnarked. By Mary, no less. It was this more than anything else that made her decision for her.
"No," Rae replied, shoving down the lump in her throat and ignoring the painful beating of her heart. She also resisted the temptation to compare herself to Arwen, though only because the elf hadn't been born yet and was actually the object of her separated beloved's affection, and not for the more obvious reason that it was in bad taste. "No. Let's go."
***
[A/N Thank you AnyAmy. I am infinitely relieved to hear that the PPC is not lost - unfortunately Rae does not know this. So she shall continue mourning them and doing her best not to screw things up too badly.]