FIC: "The Elf Princess Diaries, Vol 1" (36/39)
Title: The Elf Princess Diaries, Vol 1
Author: DantanaSkywalker (aka Haldiriell if you're joining us from a LOTR site)
Rating: PG-13
Genre: action, romance, mystery, humour
Author Notes: LOTR characters and Princess Diaries characters not used with permission. Everything else is out of my imagination. Sindarin translations included at the end of the entry.
Previous chapters
--Chapter Thirty-Six--
"I want you to come straight home after the concert. No movie nights at Scottie's." Melinda's tone was firm.
"But, Mom-"
"It's a school night, Brianna. I shouldn't even be letting you go in the first place, but I'm trying to be nice. I know you've been looking forward to this for months."
Bree huffed. "What if I just crashed at Scottie's? I like that idea."
"No. Have her bring you home. I'll worry less."
"That's so incredibly over-protective!"
Melinda gave her only child a wry look. "Your opinion matters less to me right now than John Lennon's."
Her daughter responded, "Who's John Lennon?"
At Melinda's bafflement, Brianna grinned. "Just kidding. I know who he is."
A pause, and then, "He was the lead singer of Nirvana, right?"
"Whu-"
Bree laughed. "Mom, I know who John Lennon is. Beatles, Yoko Ono, killed by some crazy guy outside the Dakota. I'm not as dumb as you think I am." Then she sighed. "Fine. We'll come straight back."
As the girls, with Legolas in tow, hurried out the door, Haldir turned to Melinda. "I have no idea what just happened."
"Diplomacy," the human woman responded.
----------
As her mother requested, Brianna and Legolas came back right after the concert.
"How was the concert?" Haldir asked Legolas, as Bree went off to her room.
"What?"
"How was the concert?" he repeated.
Legolas looked at him a little blankly, then said, "I am having difficulty hearing. The music was much too loud."
Haldir snorted and retrieved a pen and paper. He wrote in Sindarin, "Did you and Aewgliriel enjoy yourselves?"
"Oh. Yes. She did. I am still deciding." Truthfully, Legolas had enjoyed himself, but it wasn't something he wanted to do on a regular basis.
The younger elf dug a pinky in his ear, but it didn't help. He swore in Elvish and said, "I am going to shower, I smell like drunk humans."
Haldir rolled his eyes and went to bed.
----------
May 14, 2003
(or is it the 15th? 15th, it's after midnight)
We just got back from the concert. Omigosh, it was soooo awesome! Shell thought they were just going to play stuff from the new album, but they played tons of stuff from the first two. I thought they weren't gonna play "Long Day" or "Push", but they came back out for an encore and did.
Legolas seemed to get into it, but I could tell the girls ahead of us, who were only there for Sugar Ray, kinda annoyed him. One of the them tried to flirt with him, and he told her he was with me. I hope I'm still as thrilled about that in five thousand years as I am right now, because I am over the moon!
Nothing new on the Dinosaur front. Part of me is glad, 'cause it means Ada and Legolas have to stick around longer. It makes it easier to avoid thinking about life after high school. I know Grandma Galadriel said to bring me back to Lorien and I want to go, but . . . what if I get stuck there? I don't know if I could give up running water or electricity.
Just had a thought. Tolkien wrote that Legolas and Gimli sailed West after Aragorn died. He didn't mention me . . .
----------
Over two weeks went by with no further news of the gang, and Bree began to feel very restless. Graduation was a week and a half away, and she was beginning to fear that they were going to attack the graduation ceremony or something.
Michael and one of his online geek buddies had figured out that the things stolen from the pharmaceutical company had two functions, when combined in varying quantities: they either produced a lot of heat without smoke, or they went kablooey. Bree's suspicion was on the kablooey part.
But she wasn't quite sure what Daneithionar wanted with her. It was her father's pet theory that the wizard wanted to make his own orcs, or something. It was certainly plausible; the first orcs, it was said, were made from captured Nandorin elves, elves who had not gone even so far West as Mirkwood. She, on the other hand, had the blood of several elven races flowing in her veins.
In her and Legolas's mutual opinion, though, they didn't really want to know what he intended; he wasn't going to do it, and that was that.
Exactly a week before graduation, the pair walked into the school building, trailing behind their friends. Bree could't help but touch him somehow when they were together, so they did a lot of hand-holding. It was kind of funny, in her opinion, to be holding hands with a three-thousand-year-old guy who'd literally stepped out of "The Lord Of The Rings".
"I was thinking," Bree said, "about maybe going to Lórien after I graduate. After we take care of this Dinosaur guy."
Legolas grinned at her mispronunciation, which was the whole reason she'd done it. "I think that is a wonderful idea," he said.
"I think we should bring Mom along, though."
"Dude," Scottie said, ahead of them, coming to a sudden halt.
"What?" Brianna asked, frowning. "I think it'd be fun-"
"No, Blondie," the petite brunette said. "Look."
They all looked where Scottie was pointing: Brianna's locker. There were school administrators and a police officer standing by the open door.
"There she is," Bree heard Ariel's voice say, over the sudden buzzing in the hallway. "That's Bree MacArthur, Officer."
Everyone turned to stare at Brianna. She took an instinctive step back.
"Miss MacArthur?" the officer asked, as he approached. "Is this your locker?"
"Y-yes," she stammered. "What's going on?"
Instead of answering, he put his hand where his handcuffs hung from his belt. She turned wide eyes from him to the Vice Principal, Ms. Gupta.
"If you'll follow me," Gupta said. She glared at "Luke", Scottie, and Shell. "You three get to class."
Bree looked at the others; Legolas looked as if he was about to protest, and the other two just looked baffled. She shook her head, and followed the principal and the officer, wondering if everything was about to get a lot worse.
----------
"This is ridiculous!" Melinda exclaimed. "My daughter didn't do anything!"
"Of course you have faith in your daughter, Mrs. MacArthur, but the fact remains that we found materials in your daughter's locker that put her at the scene of a crime." The police officer had stepped aside for some detective, who'd come in while Bree waited in the office for her mother to arrive. She couldn't remember the man's name, but she definitely didn't like him.
"You have no proof that my daughter put it there."
"We have video of her at one of the crime scenes on the Saturday afternoon after the robbery," the detective said. "And now we have this."
He put a necklace, in an evidence bag, on the desk. It was gold, with little rubies and what might have been diamonds, in a heart shape. "This is one of the items stolen from that store."
"What?! I didn't take that!" Bree rose from her seat, but her mother pushed her back down.
Melinda may not have been a lawyer, but she'd been married to one for nearly twenty years. "Brianna mentioned she and her friends had walked by the store, but they certainly would not have crossed police tape," she said icily. "My daughter was at the Prom the night of the robberies. And, if you'll remember, that gang killed my husband and her father. How dare you suggest she had anything to do with this?"
He just gestured to the necklace.
The redhead's eyes narrowed dangerously. "If I recall correctly, the store that you are referring to was robbed during the Prom. Where my daughter was in attendance with Princess Mia, the grand-daughter of the Dowager Princess of Genovia, Clarice Renaldo. After the dance, they went to Pansy Tucker's home. She's the daughter of Samuel and Giselle Tucker. I'm sure you know Giselle, she used to be a supermodel. And Sam is, of course, CEO of Delving Industries. If you're going to accuse my daughter, you'll have to accuse her friends, and I really don't think you want to do that."
Principal Gupta suddenly seemed to realise that she could lose several very influential patrons to the school. "Uh, Detective? Could I have a word with you for a moment?"
She pulled the detective into the inner office. Bree turned to her mother.
"I didn't do this!" she said.
Melinda held up a hand. "I know you didn't, sweetheart. Rubies aren't your style."
Brianna blinked at her mother, mouth hanging open.
"I'm kidding, honey. But it's obvious someone has framed you. They're probably going to want to suspend you, and if they do, we're going to take it, because we don't want you arrested. But suspension will get you away from the school, and we can figure out what's going on. Okay?"
Her daughter sighed. "Okay."
----------
Brianna stomped into the apartment and tossed her book bag on the kitchen table. "This is so unfair!"
"What happened?" Gimli asked. He was seated at the table, eating a sandwich.
Haldir entered, features drawn into a frown. "Where is Legolas?"
"He's at school," Bree said. "Where I'm not. Because I'm suspended."
Melinda rubbed her daughter's shoulder lightly. "Someone planted a necklace stolen from one of the pawn shops in Bree's locker. According to the vice principal, they got a tip that someone had seen Bree put it there on Friday, after school. Since they have the necklace, but Bree has an alibi, they've suspended her for possessing a stolen item."
Haldir's face went stony. "That is beyond comprehension. I should-"
"-do nothing," Melinda said, cutting him off. "Bree's out of school for a week. They're letting her graduate next week, but we're going to spend this week figuring out just what the hell is going on."
Bree's blue eyes widened. "Mom! You swore!"
Melinda ignored her. "And I think we need to start by figuring out why they killed my husband."
She went and retrieved something from her bedroom, out of the locked trunk at the foot of her bed. It was Jared's briefcase, the one that he'd had with him the night he'd died. The police had been unable to determine if anything had been stolen from it, even though there had been signs that it had been broken into.
Melinda hadn't been able to face going through it that soon after her husband's death. But now, she needed to know if there was something more to Jared's death than just wanton destruction.
The combination was easy: the day they'd met. It had always touched her that he'd remembered so well. She lifted the lid and looked through the papers; he hadn't had any important briefs with him that night, just . . . Brianna's Christmas present.
She picked up the wrapped gift, with its tag that read "Bree-Bree". Her determination wavered, because unless they'd killed Jared for what was beneath this wrapping paper, his briefcase held no clues that she could discern.
Melinda set the present aside and closed the case. It had yielded nothing revealing. With a sigh, she stood and went back out to where the others waited.
"Nothing," she said. "Except . . ."
She debated for a moment whether to give Brianna the present; she didn't want to see fresh grief on her child's face. But this was a trying time for her daughter, more than the rest of them, and perhaps . . .
"I found this," she said, and pressed the wrapped gift into her daughter's hands. "It's from Jared, it was in his briefcase."
Brianna's hands shook as she accepted the offering. "This is from Daddy?" she repeated, looking stunned.
When her mother nodded mutely, Bree hugged the oblong package to her chest. The desire to see what was inside visibly warred on her young features with the urge to keep it pristine forever. Melinda knew how that felt; she'd felt the same way Christmas morning, looking at the gifts that Jared had placed there not long before his death.
"You don't have to open it right now," she said gently. "Or at all. But it's yours, you should have it."
Her daughter nodded and quietly excused herself. Melinda found herself alone with Haldir, as Gimli had returned to his sandwich.
There was an awkward moment of silence. Then the elf ventured, "Now what recourse do we have?"
"I have no idea."
Author: DantanaSkywalker (aka Haldiriell if you're joining us from a LOTR site)
Rating: PG-13
Genre: action, romance, mystery, humour
Author Notes: LOTR characters and Princess Diaries characters not used with permission. Everything else is out of my imagination. Sindarin translations included at the end of the entry.
Previous chapters
--Chapter Thirty-Six--
"I want you to come straight home after the concert. No movie nights at Scottie's." Melinda's tone was firm.
"But, Mom-"
"It's a school night, Brianna. I shouldn't even be letting you go in the first place, but I'm trying to be nice. I know you've been looking forward to this for months."
Bree huffed. "What if I just crashed at Scottie's? I like that idea."
"No. Have her bring you home. I'll worry less."
"That's so incredibly over-protective!"
Melinda gave her only child a wry look. "Your opinion matters less to me right now than John Lennon's."
Her daughter responded, "Who's John Lennon?"
At Melinda's bafflement, Brianna grinned. "Just kidding. I know who he is."
A pause, and then, "He was the lead singer of Nirvana, right?"
"Whu-"
Bree laughed. "Mom, I know who John Lennon is. Beatles, Yoko Ono, killed by some crazy guy outside the Dakota. I'm not as dumb as you think I am." Then she sighed. "Fine. We'll come straight back."
As the girls, with Legolas in tow, hurried out the door, Haldir turned to Melinda. "I have no idea what just happened."
"Diplomacy," the human woman responded.
----------
As her mother requested, Brianna and Legolas came back right after the concert.
"How was the concert?" Haldir asked Legolas, as Bree went off to her room.
"What?"
"How was the concert?" he repeated.
Legolas looked at him a little blankly, then said, "I am having difficulty hearing. The music was much too loud."
Haldir snorted and retrieved a pen and paper. He wrote in Sindarin, "Did you and Aewgliriel enjoy yourselves?"
"Oh. Yes. She did. I am still deciding." Truthfully, Legolas had enjoyed himself, but it wasn't something he wanted to do on a regular basis.
The younger elf dug a pinky in his ear, but it didn't help. He swore in Elvish and said, "I am going to shower, I smell like drunk humans."
Haldir rolled his eyes and went to bed.
----------
May 14, 2003
(or is it the 15th? 15th, it's after midnight)
We just got back from the concert. Omigosh, it was soooo awesome! Shell thought they were just going to play stuff from the new album, but they played tons of stuff from the first two. I thought they weren't gonna play "Long Day" or "Push", but they came back out for an encore and did.
Legolas seemed to get into it, but I could tell the girls ahead of us, who were only there for Sugar Ray, kinda annoyed him. One of the them tried to flirt with him, and he told her he was with me. I hope I'm still as thrilled about that in five thousand years as I am right now, because I am over the moon!
Nothing new on the Dinosaur front. Part of me is glad, 'cause it means Ada and Legolas have to stick around longer. It makes it easier to avoid thinking about life after high school. I know Grandma Galadriel said to bring me back to Lorien and I want to go, but . . . what if I get stuck there? I don't know if I could give up running water or electricity.
Just had a thought. Tolkien wrote that Legolas and Gimli sailed West after Aragorn died. He didn't mention me . . .
----------
Over two weeks went by with no further news of the gang, and Bree began to feel very restless. Graduation was a week and a half away, and she was beginning to fear that they were going to attack the graduation ceremony or something.
Michael and one of his online geek buddies had figured out that the things stolen from the pharmaceutical company had two functions, when combined in varying quantities: they either produced a lot of heat without smoke, or they went kablooey. Bree's suspicion was on the kablooey part.
But she wasn't quite sure what Daneithionar wanted with her. It was her father's pet theory that the wizard wanted to make his own orcs, or something. It was certainly plausible; the first orcs, it was said, were made from captured Nandorin elves, elves who had not gone even so far West as Mirkwood. She, on the other hand, had the blood of several elven races flowing in her veins.
In her and Legolas's mutual opinion, though, they didn't really want to know what he intended; he wasn't going to do it, and that was that.
Exactly a week before graduation, the pair walked into the school building, trailing behind their friends. Bree could't help but touch him somehow when they were together, so they did a lot of hand-holding. It was kind of funny, in her opinion, to be holding hands with a three-thousand-year-old guy who'd literally stepped out of "The Lord Of The Rings".
"I was thinking," Bree said, "about maybe going to Lórien after I graduate. After we take care of this Dinosaur guy."
Legolas grinned at her mispronunciation, which was the whole reason she'd done it. "I think that is a wonderful idea," he said.
"I think we should bring Mom along, though."
"Dude," Scottie said, ahead of them, coming to a sudden halt.
"What?" Brianna asked, frowning. "I think it'd be fun-"
"No, Blondie," the petite brunette said. "Look."
They all looked where Scottie was pointing: Brianna's locker. There were school administrators and a police officer standing by the open door.
"There she is," Bree heard Ariel's voice say, over the sudden buzzing in the hallway. "That's Bree MacArthur, Officer."
Everyone turned to stare at Brianna. She took an instinctive step back.
"Miss MacArthur?" the officer asked, as he approached. "Is this your locker?"
"Y-yes," she stammered. "What's going on?"
Instead of answering, he put his hand where his handcuffs hung from his belt. She turned wide eyes from him to the Vice Principal, Ms. Gupta.
"If you'll follow me," Gupta said. She glared at "Luke", Scottie, and Shell. "You three get to class."
Bree looked at the others; Legolas looked as if he was about to protest, and the other two just looked baffled. She shook her head, and followed the principal and the officer, wondering if everything was about to get a lot worse.
----------
"This is ridiculous!" Melinda exclaimed. "My daughter didn't do anything!"
"Of course you have faith in your daughter, Mrs. MacArthur, but the fact remains that we found materials in your daughter's locker that put her at the scene of a crime." The police officer had stepped aside for some detective, who'd come in while Bree waited in the office for her mother to arrive. She couldn't remember the man's name, but she definitely didn't like him.
"You have no proof that my daughter put it there."
"We have video of her at one of the crime scenes on the Saturday afternoon after the robbery," the detective said. "And now we have this."
He put a necklace, in an evidence bag, on the desk. It was gold, with little rubies and what might have been diamonds, in a heart shape. "This is one of the items stolen from that store."
"What?! I didn't take that!" Bree rose from her seat, but her mother pushed her back down.
Melinda may not have been a lawyer, but she'd been married to one for nearly twenty years. "Brianna mentioned she and her friends had walked by the store, but they certainly would not have crossed police tape," she said icily. "My daughter was at the Prom the night of the robberies. And, if you'll remember, that gang killed my husband and her father. How dare you suggest she had anything to do with this?"
He just gestured to the necklace.
The redhead's eyes narrowed dangerously. "If I recall correctly, the store that you are referring to was robbed during the Prom. Where my daughter was in attendance with Princess Mia, the grand-daughter of the Dowager Princess of Genovia, Clarice Renaldo. After the dance, they went to Pansy Tucker's home. She's the daughter of Samuel and Giselle Tucker. I'm sure you know Giselle, she used to be a supermodel. And Sam is, of course, CEO of Delving Industries. If you're going to accuse my daughter, you'll have to accuse her friends, and I really don't think you want to do that."
Principal Gupta suddenly seemed to realise that she could lose several very influential patrons to the school. "Uh, Detective? Could I have a word with you for a moment?"
She pulled the detective into the inner office. Bree turned to her mother.
"I didn't do this!" she said.
Melinda held up a hand. "I know you didn't, sweetheart. Rubies aren't your style."
Brianna blinked at her mother, mouth hanging open.
"I'm kidding, honey. But it's obvious someone has framed you. They're probably going to want to suspend you, and if they do, we're going to take it, because we don't want you arrested. But suspension will get you away from the school, and we can figure out what's going on. Okay?"
Her daughter sighed. "Okay."
----------
Brianna stomped into the apartment and tossed her book bag on the kitchen table. "This is so unfair!"
"What happened?" Gimli asked. He was seated at the table, eating a sandwich.
Haldir entered, features drawn into a frown. "Where is Legolas?"
"He's at school," Bree said. "Where I'm not. Because I'm suspended."
Melinda rubbed her daughter's shoulder lightly. "Someone planted a necklace stolen from one of the pawn shops in Bree's locker. According to the vice principal, they got a tip that someone had seen Bree put it there on Friday, after school. Since they have the necklace, but Bree has an alibi, they've suspended her for possessing a stolen item."
Haldir's face went stony. "That is beyond comprehension. I should-"
"-do nothing," Melinda said, cutting him off. "Bree's out of school for a week. They're letting her graduate next week, but we're going to spend this week figuring out just what the hell is going on."
Bree's blue eyes widened. "Mom! You swore!"
Melinda ignored her. "And I think we need to start by figuring out why they killed my husband."
She went and retrieved something from her bedroom, out of the locked trunk at the foot of her bed. It was Jared's briefcase, the one that he'd had with him the night he'd died. The police had been unable to determine if anything had been stolen from it, even though there had been signs that it had been broken into.
Melinda hadn't been able to face going through it that soon after her husband's death. But now, she needed to know if there was something more to Jared's death than just wanton destruction.
The combination was easy: the day they'd met. It had always touched her that he'd remembered so well. She lifted the lid and looked through the papers; he hadn't had any important briefs with him that night, just . . . Brianna's Christmas present.
She picked up the wrapped gift, with its tag that read "Bree-Bree". Her determination wavered, because unless they'd killed Jared for what was beneath this wrapping paper, his briefcase held no clues that she could discern.
Melinda set the present aside and closed the case. It had yielded nothing revealing. With a sigh, she stood and went back out to where the others waited.
"Nothing," she said. "Except . . ."
She debated for a moment whether to give Brianna the present; she didn't want to see fresh grief on her child's face. But this was a trying time for her daughter, more than the rest of them, and perhaps . . .
"I found this," she said, and pressed the wrapped gift into her daughter's hands. "It's from Jared, it was in his briefcase."
Brianna's hands shook as she accepted the offering. "This is from Daddy?" she repeated, looking stunned.
When her mother nodded mutely, Bree hugged the oblong package to her chest. The desire to see what was inside visibly warred on her young features with the urge to keep it pristine forever. Melinda knew how that felt; she'd felt the same way Christmas morning, looking at the gifts that Jared had placed there not long before his death.
"You don't have to open it right now," she said gently. "Or at all. But it's yours, you should have it."
Her daughter nodded and quietly excused herself. Melinda found herself alone with Haldir, as Gimli had returned to his sandwich.
There was an awkward moment of silence. Then the elf ventured, "Now what recourse do we have?"
"I have no idea."