10_sues: Chapter 1
Title: New Beginnings
Fandom: Lord of the Rings
Prompt: 07 Remember
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1326
Summary: PARODY of all the awful Mary Sues in the LOTR fandom. Sickening girl with dark past comes to Middle-Earth.
Teh Table: http://airelement.livejournal.com/76967.html
Continuation: 1 of 10
Ar’wen O’Reilly was depressed. She really didn’t want to move from her beloved hometown of Dublin to London, where apparently the streets were paved with gold. Ar’wen wasn’t all that fond of gold; she thought it was a second-rate metal and she much preferred the clean purity of silver and diamond and opal.
Moving to London would mean returning to the place where she had suffered so long ago and facing her fears. At the age of twelve she’d run away, hidden in a cargo box and sailed across the Irish Sea to Dublin. Being a naturally resourceful young woman she had managed to conserve what little money she had and when all else failed she was always able to use her beauty as a way to get what she wanted.
Not that she would ever work as a prostitute, of course. Ar’wen was too proud to do that; she would rather die than allow herself to be degraded in such a fashion. But promises and hints never failed to produce satisfactory results and although Ar’wen modestly denied her wondrous beauty there was no mistaking that she glowed almost as one would imagine an immortal faerie to do.
Ar’wen loved to imagine that she was an immortal faerie. Since birth her ears had been oddly shaped; instead of curving off as ordinary peoples’ ears did Ar’wen had points at the end of her lily-white ears. Some people at school called her a freak, but the teasing wasn’t too intense because they were astounded by how her beauty shone straight past the odd appendages. She even had an unusual, exotic name; her mother, who had died when Ar’wen was five, had apparently argued with Ar’wen’s father for weeks over the name - Ar’wen’s father would have preferred her to be named Mary or Frances or something more usual - and always pronounced it with a beautiful and gentle lilt that never crept into her voice at any other time.
But it was never going to come true, of course. Ar’wen would always just be that weird girl with the pointy ears, the one who had been caught on the streets and forced into foster care. She couldn’t even be normal in that: contrary to the actions of most street kids who ended up fostered, Ar’wen didn’t commit crimes, swear or do anything considered socially unacceptable. She’d never had a cigarette or a drink of anything stronger than Pepsi, and she didn’t sleep around either. Once she caught up with the school work she had missed, she even got consistent A*s in school (except for Irish, but that was understandable seeing as she’d never spoken a word of the language before coming to the Emerald Isle).
And now she was going back to London. Her foster father had acquired a promotion and this was the best opportunity to improve the family’s finances he had had in years. The normal process of a foster family relocating would involve Ar’wen being shunted off to another family, but the O’Reilly had become so entranced by the girl’s loving, intelligent personality that they had asked her for the honour of adopting her. And so it was that Ar’wen Hummel became Ar’wen O’Reilly and sat calmly on her bed with her packed-up belongings as her family rushed around the house finishing their own packing. In a few minutes Ar’wen would kindly offer to help her new mother with the last-minute preparations, but for now she would sit and meditate.
Ar’wen was woken from her trance by her mother when it was time to leave; she slipped into her delicate green shoes and descended down the stairs. Although she didn’t know it she looked every bit the princess, the long mass of raven hair cascading down her back to her waist and the serene expression on her face making her appear noble and dignified.
“Sometimes I wonder if you were a faerie child swapped with a human baby,” Maggie (Ar’wen’s mother) joked. Arwen smiled, her white teeth perfectly complementing her cerulean eyes.
“Well, you never know,” she said in her lilting accent that was a mixture of London and Dublin and something else that no one could decide on. “Shouldn’t we be going, mother?” Maggie agreed and soon the family was waiting to board a ferry.
The ferry was huge but cramped; Ar’wen decided to take a walk up on the deck and it was lucky for many that she did, because all those who were being sick over the edge of the boat saw her beauty and it instantly settled their stomachs, although not their hearts.
“Hey - what’s that?” a young child said, pointing in the direction the ferry was sailing in. Ar’wen looked where he was pointing and gasped. The ferry was heading right for a huge rock.
“Why is there a rock in the middle of the sea?” she wondered aloud.
The ferry wasn’t turning. It was as if the person steering couldn’t see the gigantic obstruction at all, because within a few seconds the landmass was looming. There was a crash and the ferry shuddered and people were screaming, and Ar’wen knew no more.
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Two identical men sat on the forest floor beside a stunningly beautiful female who bore some resemblance to them. The grass they rested on was lush and green and the entire forest seemed alive with birds and all types of creatures, but the natural beauty paled in comparison to that of the girl.
The girl’s eyelids fluttered slightly, enough to tell the identical pair beside her that she would soon return to consciousness. Sure enough, a few minutes later her eyelids parted company to reveal an entrancing azure gaze.
“The ferry…” she murmured. “Where did we end up? Have the rescuers come yet?”
“Here. Drink this,” one of the males said, passing her a leather flask. The girl eyed it curiously.
What happened to plain old plastic water bottles? she wondered, but not wanting to seem ungrateful she sipped at the cool liquid.
“May I ask your names?” she asked politely. Her companions exchanged surprised looks.
“You do not remember us, penneth?” one asked in surprise.
“I’m very sorry, but I don’t remember ever meeting you,” the girl said. “I’m Ar’wen O’Reilly, nice to meet you.” She saw the confused looks the two exchanged when she said her name. “I know Ar’wen is an unusual name, my birth mother had to argue my father out of calling me something more normal. I love it though, I like being unique.” Ar’wen wasn’t usually so frank with strangers, but her strong empathic abilities enabled her to distinguish them as people she could trust.
“I find it hard to believe our little Arwen has forgotten us,” one said. “Well, let me introduce us. My name is Elrohir, and my twin brother here is Elladan. It is lucky we were nearby, else you would have made a nice meal for an orc.” Ar’wen considered the way he pronounced her name, as if there were no apostrophe separating the two syllables. It sounded familiar, like the name of a long-lost friend, and she decided she liked it.
“May I ask how you know me?” Arwen asked politely. Elrohir sighed.
“I think it would be best for father to explain that to you,” he said. “He is much better at bringing forth suppressed memories than we are. Come, let us make haste to Rivendell.”
Arwen considered him carefully. It seemed a silly idea to go off with two unknown men, but for as long as she could remember she had had such a strong empathic ability that being around emotional people had given her a bad headache, and now her empathy was telling her that these two men were safe.
Her empathy was also telling her that they loved her so strongly that they would protect her with their very lives, but Arwen decided not to think about that confusing state of affairs.