Disclaimer–Me no Tolkien. Me no own. You no Sue. Er–sue.
A/N–Sorry, sorry, I haven't updated in ages . . . and this is the final chapter. Yes, I'm cruel. Pelt me with tomatoes, if it makes you feel any better–last chapter means last chapter. No sequel.
As Anna had predicted, the War of the Ring ended in a way very similar to that of the book. While Frodo did not lose a finger (or so she was told), Gollum was destroyed along with the ring, and Sauron was overthrown. Arwen left to wed Aragorn, and along with her several of the elves from Elrond's household, and on the day that Arwen left, so did Anna and Sîrwen, not for Gondor, but for the house of Tom Bombadil.
Their journey was not so much strange as uneventful. They stayed in no towns (Sîrwen had other ways of finding food and shelter, Anna soon discovered), and met no other travelers on the road, save for the birds and one furry animal that might have been a squirrel. They did not seem to move at a great pace, yet within a fortnight Anna found herself once again entering familiar territory. As they passed over the stones that marked the Barrow Downs, she remembered with sudden clarity the chapter from the books, Fog on the Barrow Downs, where Frodo had faced the Barrow Wight, and come out the winner, meeting again with Tom Bombadil.
Perhaps it was the strangeness of the place they were in (even by daylight, with no fog, the Barrow Downs were an odd place to be) or maybe simple irony at the place that they were in, but it was not half-way through the Downs that Anna heard the familiar cry, and found herself facing Tom Bombadil, yellow boots and all. He greeted her warmly, without asking why she had come to the edge of his lands, or why she was accompanied by Sîrwen. Indeed, he seemed to know why, for when she tried to tell him about it, he would hear none of it.
"There will be time enough for your story later," he told her, gently but firmly. "And I have stories of my own to tell, now. Ones that even mistress Sîrwen may not know." Turning away, he murmured something to Sîrwen in a tongue that Anna did not recognize, presumably some other language that she had not been taught. "Come now, we have much to discuss," said Bombadil, and without further ado, led them to the place he called home.
Anna found the house to her liking–almost exactly as she had imagined it to be. Goldberry was waiting for them, with a meal on the table and a pitcher of water ready to clean hands and faces. The meal itself was not precisely dinner, nor supper–rather Anna found it to be a cross between the two. There was no meat on the table. She did not venture a guess as to why; it did not seem proper.
The conversation surrounding their eating was mundane, to begin with, yet as the meal progressed and Anna became more relaxed, things crossed into the realm of the strange. Tom asked about her life before she had arrived in Middle-Earth; she answered as best she could, telling him about her daily routine and how things had changed with her coming to Arda. To her immense surprise, he asked next to nothing about Tolkien, or the books, keeping the subject always on her, until she wondered vaguely whether she should change it.
After their meal was finished, Tom led both her and Sîrwen into a side room that, had Anna been at home, in her own home, she would have called a "living room," or perhaps a den. As it was, it did not matter–Tom pointed to a spot on the floor and told her to sit, before procuring a chair for Sîrwen (apparently asking an elf to sit on the floor was a great offense, or elsewise he only had one chair). When they had all been seated, he began to speak again.
"Now, Anna," he addressed her. "You came home hoping that I could help you to find your way home again, yes?"
Surprised by the directness of his question, she answered, "Er–yes. I–er, had a dream–that I was to come to you for advice."
Tom smiled–a smile bordering on a grin. "Advice is perhaps the best word for it, for I cannot send you home. I can only tell you how you may return to your world."
"Then–could you please tell me now?" asked Anna. "I–really miss my family. I've liked being here, but I want to go home again. To–speak in my own language, and not in one that I feel as if I'm borrowing from someone else."
"I will tell you. First, though, I would bid you to wish your friend here farewell, lest you forget in your haste," replied Tom, sounding wiser than she remembered him being in the books.
"Oh–I wouldn't forget," said Anna abruptly. She turned to Sîrwen. "I am grateful for–everything that you have done for me–teaching me a way to communicate within Rivendell, being my companion, and watching out for me–and bringing me here. You're the one I'll miss the most, when I go back home."
Tom smiled. "Now, then, here is what you have to do . . ."
Unlike her initial landing, she did not end up hitting the earth with a thud. Instead, she found that coming-to was more like–waking up from being deeply asleep. One moment, she was sitting beside Sîrwen's chair, and the next, she was looking up into the concerned face of her father.
"Anna?" he asked, anxious. "Anna? Are you okay?"
She tried to speak but found she couldn't. The pain was unbearable. Had there been this much pain upon entering Arda, she wondered. She couldn't remember it.
"Anna," said her father, sound more desperate–almost as if there was something wrong. "Anna, everything's okay. You're going to be okay."
Okay? She wanted to shout. I'm in excruciating pain, and this is okay? Instead, she nodded.
Her father looked relieved. "So it's only your leg. After I'd seen you fall, I thought maybe–but no, you're all right."
She found her voice. "Fall?"
"You were running toward us, and you fell–you must have tripped over a tree-root, because there was nothing else for you to trip over. You landed–funny. On a rock, or something else hard–it must have been hard, because you lost consciousness–and you've broken your leg. At least, that's what it looks like–how it could have been broken is beyond me."
Anna merely nodded, squeezing her eyes shut in hopes of blocking out some of the pain. From the way her left leg felt at the moment, it was a good guess that it had indeed been broken.
"Just hang in there, pumpkin," said her father, using one of the pet names she thought he had put aside long ago. "We'll get you out of here."
Four weeks passed, and Anna found herself looking forward to when she would get her cast off. She had become speedy on her crutches (though still not able to go up stairs without assistance) and yet she still wanted the cast off. Her birthday was coming up, and school was starting soon–she wanted the cast off before she had to go back to school. She could just imagine trying to explain it: "Oh, I fell while I was camping," had turned out to be a rather flimsy excuse, as her parents found out–with the severity of the break, the doctors in the emergency room wanted to know just where she'd fallen from, because apparently normal people didn't break bones tripping over tree roots. The truth–that she'd fallen into Arda and had been trapped there during the War of the Ring–was nothing that her peers would accept, and she didn't especially like the other excuses–that she'd been hit by a car, that she'd fallen rock-climbing, or even that she'd gone cliff-diving and somehow injured her leg instead of her neck. So instead she said nothing, letting her parents do the talking.
There were things that were harder to explain, of course–how she had suddenly become fluent in Sindarin, for instance, when so little was known about it–and why she was so vehement about what the folk of Elrond's household looked like, but some things were not quite so difficult to explain. Her clothing, for instance–upon arriving back on Earth, she found herself clad not in the garment Sîrwen had provided for her, but in the jeans and t-shirt she had worn before "falling" into Arda, and her copy of Tolkien no longer altered, but the same as when she had left–before she had ruined canon. For the most part, things were okay. Life went on at the same steady pace. She reunited with her friends, had them sign her cast, and played online. Things were back to normal. She had readjusted quickly since her time spent in Middle-earth. She still missed Sîrwen sometimes, and Elrond, yet she had long since realized the fact that it was beyond her to reach them, and that it was better to cherish the time she had spent with them, rather than to spend her time moping about missing them. They wouldn't want that, she knew, and so for their sake she went about the business of living without sadness.
She was normal. She was happy. She was comfortable in her life. While Arda had changed her–while being injured, she would tell her friends–had changed her, it had been for the better. Adventures ended, she found herself, like Bilbo, looking forward to the happily-ever-after.
Replies to reviews: It's been over a year since I started this. In the beginning, I regretted it–"You mean I'm supposed to update this thing?!" However, now that it's ended, I find myself feeling not only relief–but a strange sense of pride. I did it!, or should I say, we did it, because without my loyal reviewers, I wouldn't haven't had the courage to finish this. Thank you all for your support and cooperation. group hugs
Ainu Laire: I wasn't supposed to take so long to update, was I? Oh, well–ten months isn't bad, is it? Thanks for reading.
AlmightyIshboo: Look! Bombadil is dreadfully out of character, but he doesn't act like a hippy. Thanks for reading.
Das Blume: Thanks for following this. : -)
Acharnae: Tom Bombadil is indeed a hard character to write, and I'm afraid that I don't do him justice in this story. If I return to it later, I will definitely rewrite the scenes involving him.
UnDeadGoat: You IM'ed me over it in February, so . . . there you have it.
yuhi-thedoerofevildeeds: It's finished! No more need to review prompting me to update! Be happy! In other words, thank you very much for sticking with it the entire way through.
Daisy, Dark, Dailight: hands over a trench coat Thanks for reading.
To quote Porky Pig: "Th-th-that's all, folks!"