A/N: This one's a bit longer than the rest. Sorry if it seems like it's taking so long to actually get right into the action, but we'll get there soon enough, I promise!
For a second, Marion was merely transfixed by Frodo's blue eyes. While he was so close, the emotions stopped swirling in the back of her mind and focused on a singular feeling. At the moment, he was bent over in front of her, hands on her shoulders, after a little while of that, he helped her to her feet.
"While you're here, Frodo, you can help Sárelle. Follow me," Galadriel continued to smile. She then glided through the trees and out of sight. The two hobbits simply stared at the empty space, unsure of what to say to each other.
"Are you okay?" Frodo asked, not wanting to let Marion fall again. When she weakly nodded, he reluctantly removed his support. Though she wobbled, she kept on her feet. "Sárelle? Is that your name?" A pounding began far back in her head, making it nearly impossible for her to answer until it eased a bit.
Despite the pain, Marion shook her head. After another second, she managed to say without any hint of pain in her voice, "No, it's Marion. I don't know why she called me that." Frodo shifted his weight from one foot to the other in the silence that followed. "How long were you listening?"
Before answering, Frodo took another second to phrase his answer. "Where are you actually from?" At this question, the two stepped forward to follow Galadriel further into Lothlorien. Though shaky on her feet at first, Marion became surer at every step. The pain was a bit harder to ignore, but if she simply focused on the conversation – slim as it might be – it was easier to overlook the fact that her head felt like it was imploding.
"Cranbrook, England, though I'm sure that means nothing to you," Marion replied and Frodo shook his head to confirm her assumption.
"And you're not really a hobbit?"
"As strange as this is going to sound, no. I'm supposed to have rounded ears, straight hair, and be 5 foot 6. In other words, human." With an uncertain flicker of her eyes around their surroundings, she added, "This must be really weird for you."
With a shrug, Frodo followed Marion's gaze around the forest around them. "It must be just as queer, if not queerer for you."
Returning her gaze to Frodo, Marion nodded. "You have no idea. You're…you're supposed to just be a figment of my imagination. For chrissakes, there's a Lord of the Rings movie coming out in a few months." She stopped her small rant and smiled apologetically. "Sorry. You have no idea what I'm talking about. I just…don't know what I'm doing here. One moment I was walking through a forest at home and now, I'm here in the middle of a fantasy novel, feeling…" Pausing, she wondered how this ring of hers actually worked. Did Frodo feel any of her emotions? Or was it simply one sided? "Do you feel anything?"
"What do you mean?" Frodo lowered his eyebrows, quizzically.
"Well…I…to put this simply, I feel what you're feeling. Do you feel anything about me?"
"You feel what I'm feeling?" Frodo questioned, shaken. "What do you feel?"
"Grief, loss, mourning," Marion said softly. "I felt that even before I came here. I just didn't know that it was you." Any remark Frodo would have made was lost when Galadriel swept back into view. Quickly and decisively, she gripped Marion's shoulders and steered her away from Frodo. She simply waved Frodo off from following them, though gave no explanation of where she was to taking her.
"It would be best for you not to mention anything to your company, Frodo Baggins," Galadriel warned before moving Marion up a flight of stairs and away from him.
* * *
"What happened to me?" Marion asked, clutching a hand to her still throbbing skull. She had somehow managed to talk to Frodo without revealing the immense pain she was feeling, but she didn't need to do that anymore. An elvish woman bustled around the room, behind her. Whatever the woman was doing to make all the noise was lost to Marion, who decided to simply focus on Galadriel in front of her.
"The ring has been activated to its fullest potential," Galadriel answered. "Before, you could feel Frodo's very strong and raw emotions, but now you will be able to feel them all – strong and weak alike. I am sure this initial pain will fade slowly, but this change will also make it impossible for you to leave his side."
"And that was necessary because…" Marion frowned as the elf started taking measurements of Marion for different clothes.
"When you made up your mind to join the Fellowship, it was necessary for you to stick to that decision."
"Join the Fellowship??" Marion cried. "I never said I would join the Fellowship! In fact, I remember quite clearly telling you that I couldn't do just that!"
"No, you said that you would like to help but did not think that you could. I know that you can, so I sealed that fate for you. Frodo will need you in the upcoming journey."
"The Fellowship doesn't even work! It breaks up right before Frodo goes off to Mordor with Sam! So you just made it so that I have to go into Mordor with those two?" She stopped herself; all the yelling was making her vision swim. More calmly, she continued, "Well, maybe I just won't go with them. I can bear with feeling his emotions without him here."
"Impossible," Galadriel shook her head, the movement bringing a faint chime of jewelry to Marion's ears. "If you put enough distance between Frodo and yourself, you would feel extreme physical pain. The water from my mirror, when it touched your ring, tightened the already existing bond between you and Frodo. It substantiated what was already there on the emotional plane, into the physical one."
"Wait…so if I leave Frodo, I'm going to feel physical pain? And what about him?"
"Since he is not the one wearing the ring, he will probably only feel an ache."
"Oh great. So if we get separated, I feel extreme pain and he just feels a tiny ache," Marion scowled. It was not fair in any reckoning of the word.
"He has a much greater burden to carry than mere physical pain," Galadriel reprimanded, her eyes flashing with a strange sort of anger. The way Galadriel chastised her made Marion's cheeks flush in embarrassment. Galadriel was right. Frodo definitely ended up with the short end of the stick in the whole Fellowship. Did she really want to add to the pain that he was already feeling? Not in the least. She was here to actually take away from that pain, wasn't she? Now that she was a part of the Fellowship – by choice or not, she was part of it now – she had to start acting her role.
It seemed that Galadriel noticed the change in Marion, for she nodded to her with a small and secretive smile. "You say that you know all that happens to the Fellowship…"
"Not everything," Marion corrected. "All I know is that it breaks up and Frodo goes off with Sam. I don't know what happens to the rest of them, the first book doesn't cover that."
"No matter," Galadriel waved off Marion's correction. "For now the future has been changed. Your Tolkien came to a future when you were not born and therefore could not come to help the ringbearer. Now you are here. The repercussions of your arrival make everything you read about this journey simply a guess. This means that there are many things that you can still change."
"Change?" Marion blinked, unsure of what her mystery speech was about. "What would I want to change?" But Galadriel was not listening to her.
* * *
Frodo sat surrounded by his friends, who were simply giving him no rest about Marion. They now knew her name, and that he had sneaked down to Galadriel's Mirror to figure out what she was doing there, but he refused to give them any other information. Sam was giving him sulky looks about leaving him behind through the whole ordeal, while Merry and Pippin were congratulating him on such a good job of tricking an elf. He had his doubts about tricking Galadriel. She seemed to have expected him to follow and listen to what the two were talking about.
From farther away, Legolas was giving him strange looks that he could not decipher. The elf confused him. He was never sure what Legolas was thinking behind those observant eyes of his. So when his eyes flickered away from Frodo and stayed away, Frodo followed the elf's gaze to see the Lady Galadriel walking toward the scattered Fellowship with Marion right in front of her.
The two stopped almost right in front of Frodo and Marion gave him a weak smile in greeting. The three chattering hobbits beside him immediately fell quiet and the rest of his company quickly gathered around them. There were a few moments of complete silence before Galadriel spoke commandingly.
"This is Marion," Galadriel put her hands on the lady hobbit's shoulders, almost reassuringly. The frightened gaze that Marion fixed Frodo with rooted him to the spot. For a second, he felt as if he couldn't breathe. He was so frozen in the moment that he didn't realize the Fellowship nearly explode with questions for the Lady. It took Gimli's indignant roar to throw him back into the scene.
"Part of the Fellowship?!" Gimli roared. "Impossible! What use is she to us?"
"You can't expect us to take her with us into the heart of Mordor! She'll be killed before the gates!" Boromir cried.
"Does she know any weapon skills or hunting techniques?" Aragorn asked, more calmly, quieting his comrades. Galadriel smiled and simply bent her head and kept her eyes on Marion's curly head.
Nervously, Marion answered for herself. "I…I don't know how to use any weapons, beyond a bit of fencing." A pause. "But I learn quickly," she added as she tried to better her situation.
"This group will be overrun with little ones," Boromir threw his hands up.
"I am not a little one," Marion declared loudly. "I am supposed to be a human, in Cranbrook, England, only reading about this Fellowship. But I'm not and I can't change that until the One Ring is destroyed. That means I'm coming along. You allowed Merry, Sam, and Pippin to accompany with the group, even though they had no real weapon's skills since they were so close to Frodo. Why is it so different for me? Because I'm a girl? Because I wasn't at The Council at Rivendell?" Now quite aware that the entire Fellowship was staring at her, barely keeping their mouths from gaping open, Marion stopped. Frodo remembered her saying that she had read all about their adventure so far. Only now when she listed off knowledge that was supposedly known only to them did that fact hit him.
"How does she know all of these things?" Boromir was the first to recover.
"A long story, which she can tell you herself," Galadriel replied. "She's a part of your Fellowship now. Make her feel welcome."
* * *
"I don't like this," Sam muttered, eyes shifting to where Marion sat further away. "I don't trust her."
The Fellowship were tightly packed together on the far side of their camp, as they had been for the past hour, discussing the issue that was Marion. Once Galadriel had declared Marion part of the Fellowship, Frodo had revealed all that he had heard and seen while spying. The idea of her accompanying them into Mordor was not one that the entire Fellowship thought well of.
"Why not, Sam?" Frodo inquired. The hour discussing had given him enough time to figure out all his feelings on the matter. If what Galadriel had said was right, the two of them were bonded by Marion's ring (though he'd 'forgotten' to mention this to the group as of yet). That meant whatever hurt him, hurt her as well; which was enough of a reason to trust her, thought Frodo.
"She's not one of us," he replied, focusing past Frodo to where Marion was curled up away from them. "You were the one who heard what the Lady said: she's not even a real hobbit!"
"Lady Galadriel didn't say that," Frodo corrected. "Marion did."
"Straight from her own mouth," Sam nodded satisfactorily. "It ain't natural."
"No, it's not. It was done through magic. She doesn't want to be a hobbit."
"Suspicious in itself, if you ask me," Sam sniffed.
Now was the time to tell the group about Marion's own ring of magic, Frodo decided. It was no use keeping it from them forever. Maybe this way, they would finally accept that no, she was not going to betray them, nor was she going to leave them in the middle of a battle, nor was she a spy from Mordor.
"If anything's suspicious, it's why she's here. Neither Marion nor Galadriel said anything about how she got here, did she?" Merry observed. It was one of the few times the hobbit had spoken throughout the entire meeting.
"Actually…" Frodo began and launched into the story about Marion's ring. He finally finished and there was silence among his friends. No one was quite sure what to say. Frodo was no longer the only ringbearer. Finally, Merry commented,
"She just looks so lonely."
"Not so lonely any more," Pippin pointed behind Merry and Frodo to where Marion sat talking with Legolas. No one in the group had noticed him leave the group.
Without commenting further, Merry sped over to the two, sliding to a stop right at Marion's side. The quick motion startled Marion, but awakened a smile in Legolas. Pippin was quick to follow.
* * *
Marion leaned her head against the trunk of a tree at the far end of the Fellowship's encampment. Knees pulled up to her chest and arms wrapped around her legs, she watched the Fellowship huddle farther away and talk in not-so-low voices about her.
It had been a long day – night, actually. The throbbing in the back of her head had begun to ebb away, just as Galadriel told her it would. Replacing it was a fear lodged in her stomach. She was going into Mordor. Though she had been told by friends who had read the story entirely through that Frodo and Sam and the rest of the Fellowship made it out alive, there was no such surety for herself.
The words 'Suspicious' and 'Marion' drifted over to her, though she couldn't place who it had come from. Not the deep voice of Aragorn or Boromir, nor the booming voice of Gimli, nor was it silky like Legolas'. That meant it had to be one of the hobbits.
With a sigh, she opened eyes she had not known she closed and recognized that someone was standing over her. Turning her head a bit to the side, she saw Legolas towering above her. Realizing how unnerving it must be for Marion, he sat down next to her silently. Peering around him, she noticed that the meeting caused by the uproar of her joining the group still was underway, and still the elf was now in front of her.
"So, you're the little one to join us," Legolas started.
"Well, I'm the one who's supposed to go with you," Marion answered a bit shyly. She remembered watching the movie trailers of the new movie coming out and gossiping to her friends how hot she thought Legolas was. Now in front of her was an immortal being she could not, with any piece of mind, call hot. Instead, she could only describe him as beautiful and majestic.
"You understand what you will be going through by joining us?"
With a small smile, Marion nodded. "I read about it, so I know most of what I'm getting myself into." Shrugging, she sat forward. "Don't think that I'm an unwilling soldier, but I didn't have much of a choice to come or not." When Legolas simply gave her a questioning look, she continued. "Look, I don't want you to tell Frodo this, but if I left his side, I'd be in a lot of pain. I can feel any emotion that he feels."
"That is certainly an interesting trick," he commented without emotion.
"It's no trick, that would be the magic of your Elven Queen," Marion tried not sound as bitter as she felt. She raised her hand so that he could see the ring on her finger. "This ring bound me and Frodo together. The only thing that will separate us is the destruction of the One Ring. I can't go home until that's done. So, here I am."
"Ah, Sárelle, you have such a burden to bear."
At this, Marion frowned and answered softly, "Not as big as Frodo's."
"None of us have a burden such as that to carry," Legolas agreed with a slight nod of his head. "But yours is still far greater than simply following Frodo into Mordor."
At that, Marion shrugged. All she had to do was keep herself alive, try not to change the world too much, and keep Frodo happy throughout the entire ordeal. Yeah, that would be easy. Sighing, the current topic did nothing to lighten her mood.
"Why did you call me Sárelle?" Marion changed the subject.
"That is your name in our language. I find it more pleasing than Marion; it sounds too much like Mordor."
"My name does not sound like Mordor!" Marion cried, but smiled faintly.
Skidding to sudden stop right next to Marion, Merry sat down quickly. Right behind him, Pippin stopped just before running into Marion and Merry. Marion started in surprise, but Legolas merely smiled at the two hobbits. Pippin, now more balanced, sat down more casually between Merry and Legolas. The two hobbits were quite adorable, in Marion's eyes. Much less…mystical and much more refreshingly less serious. With a strange sort of formality, Merry caught Marion's eye and put his thumb against his chest.
"Meriadoc Brandybuck."
"Peregrin Took," Pippin smiled.
There was a short silence of the three hobbits examining each other up close. Tolkien had managed to capture those small, almost child-like features effectively in his writing. And what she'd seen of the movie had done a good job of portraying that, too. Except the real Pippin (God, that sounded strange to her) had the same blue eyes as Frodo. It was Sam and Merry who had the deep brown eyes. Realizing that she should probably finish off the rather formal introductions, Marion finally gave them both a small smile and continued.
"Marion Young."
"This here is Legolas," Merry waved a hand in the elf's direction. Then where the others were still clustered, he pointed to each one of them and stated their name. "Aragorn ("But sometimes we call him Strider," Pippin cheerfully added), Boromir, Gimli, Samwise Gamgee, and you should already know Frodo Baggins."
"I knew all this before…though I was a tad bit confused about you hobbits," Marion admitted. "You didn't have to tell me."
Shrugging, Merry simply stated, "Well, it's not proper for you to be part of the Fellowship and not be rightly introduced."
At this, Marion glowed, the sudden lump in her stomach slowly started to dissipate. "Thank you."
Unbeknownst to the four gathered under the tree, the rest of the group had slowly started to make their way back to the encampment. They gathered behind the three sitting in front of Marion. Sam was throwing her somewhat suspicious glances, but the others seemed less wary of her.
"If you truly are to come with us, we shall start your training tomorrow," Boromir said calmly. Aragorn nodded his head in approval.
"I…so…you guys…approve?" Marion was a bit flabbergasted at their acceptance of her into the group. She had expected weeks of distrust. Though Merry, Pippin, and Legolas had already shown her kindness, she wasn't sure if the others would follow in the same way.
"If the Lady Galadriel says that you are to be trusted, that is word enough for me," Gimli replied in his gruff voice.
Obviously pleased with his persuasion and story-telling skills, Frodo sat down beside Marion with a very lovely smile on his face. Narrowing in on him, all Marion could do was smile back.