Fic - Bagenders U.S. - Chapter 1: House of the Rising Sun

So this is the big secret fic I've been stealthily working on *eye roll*.  Um, I wrote an episode of the Bagenders.  And since I know very little about GB, this installment has them moving to the US of A.  I hope fans of the original series enjoy this spin off.  My writing style isn't really the same at all as Random Dent/Flatmate and Lady Alyssa, but I hope it's slightly funny anyway.  If you never read the Original I highly recommend it.  The original site is more or less in the toilet but I managed to scrape them together and archive them here. 

I apologise for any continuity errors between my fic and the old series, but no, I will not fix them.  I apologize for glaring errors in...idiomatic...cultural...whatever.  I can't fix those either.  I also apologize for any Legalocentricity.  I just lurve him.

If you don't feel like prerequisite reading or you have read the original but have lost all memory of it due to binge drinking, binge binging, or binge bowling (pins to the head good for amnesia I hear), here's a brief, and possibly inaccurate synopsis:  The Fellowship were granted eternal life as a reward for saving Middle Earth (except for Boromir since he died before they did most of the really heroic stuff, but he comes to visit now and then).  So it's just them and the elves (who already live forever so it wasn't much of a reward for Legolas, bloody Valar) and the rest of us oblivious humans.  They've gone their separate ways at times but they always end up back together, and for the better part of the last decade they were sharing a cramped flat in the North of England working blue collar jobs, getting arrested, committed, hit by buses, avoiding ex's and in-laws, and getting drunk at Elrond's karaoke parties.  Aragorn and Arwen split up ages ago but she keeps in touch just enough to keep Aragorn bitchy.  Legolas has been pushing a refreshment trolly on the train and swatting away fawning girls while maintaining a fragile grip on his elfish dignity.  Merry and Pippin have employed themselves as people who get fired from jobs, Frodo is mentally unstable, and Sam takes care of Frodo and the garden.  Gandalf is a drunken old codger, and Gimli works nights to avoid the rest of them.  Not too long ago, while digging through Pippin's extensive collection of pornography, Legolas discovered some rather old and bawdy doodles penned by none other than Leonardo "Arse Grabber" DaVinci which he sold for a tidy profit.  He used this windfall to buy the fellowship a new, spacious home with a relaxing room all to himself with a little motorized waterfall on the desk and some of those nice bamboo drawings on the walls.  Aside from the odd existential crisis and the occasional fireball in the kitchen, their lives seemed destined to settle down a bit after that....

Legolas eats his breakfast at a polite pace, sitting neatly at the kitchen table and admiring the texture of the air in this new place; the subtle crispness, the gentle sting of lemon furniture polish, the way it does not yet smell like the flatulence of seven ten-thousand-year-old garlic and bacon free-basing alcoholics.  

Aragorn is reading the newspaper in the seat next to Legolas.  Aragorn glances at Legolas stealthily and then reaches for the corner of the page, plucks it between two fingers and carefully, oh so carefully, turns it.  It is soundless as it swings from Aragorn's left to his right (he started reading from the back this morning because it was easier and less time consuming than attempting to flip the paper over in Legolas' presence).  The long slow work of turning the page is done, and, watching Legolas for signs of disturbance, settles back into his seat and turns his eyes to the paper.  He grumbles internally.  Ads, all ads.  Aragorn steels himself again and turns the next page with the delicacy normally reserved for sweaty dynamite and priceless, antique, fragile, sun-bleached and weakened eggshells.  The paper crinkles once from the asymmetrical crease in the middle.

"SHHH!"

Aragorn cringes and grits his teeth.  "'Sake, Legolas if you want perfect quiet why don't you eat your breakfast in your "room"?"

"Breakfast, is meant to be eaten in the breakfast nook.  Reading is meant to be done in the library."

"We don't have a library."

"Well then I guess you know what you should do."

Aragorn scowls a minute and then very slowly, loudly and with exaggeration of the loudness, begins shredding his newspaper into paper mache-sized strips.  Legolas watches him with a sour face, but as elves are not in the habit of participating in messy art projects, he is not familiar with the paper-mache-sized strips of newspaper nor the threat they bestow upon his bowl of wheaty cereal. He thinks that it is simply the noise that is mean to irritate him, and so frowns but then retreats into his disciplined elven mind, closes his eyes, and lets the world disappear until Aragorn is finished trying to annoy him and, hopefully, leaves the table.

Pippin and Merry come careening through the kitchen and fly out the door screeching, "OW!OW!OW!HOT!HOT!HOT!"  and "Me pants!  They're on fire!" respectively.  Legolas grits his teeth, but as he does not smell smoke, tries to return to his mediation.  All goes well and in a moment or two, the air around him is still and he does not detect the presence of annoyances about his corporeal aura and so opens his eyes once again.  Before him is a gloppy swan that reads "Gun Control Lax in America" and his breakfast has disappeared.

Aragorn has indeed left the table.  Legolas can see out the windows of the nook that Pippin and Merry are rolling on the grass fighting over the garden hose.  When one gets it, he sprays it full stream down the front of his own shorts, writhing about on the lawn, then shortly has it wrestled away from him by the other one who performs the same act.  It doesn't seem to matter to them that it's four outside this morning.

Legolas does retreat to his room then and shuts the door behind him, shutting out the noise and the atmosphere of mental infirmity inhabiting the rest of the house.  It's Saturday morning.  There is much he could do with his day; a walk in the park, shopping along the boardwalk, a museum.  Places the rest of the fellowship wouldn't be caught dead usually.  Unless the crazy bag lady is stripping for change in the park again.  Pippin has a way with her, and an extra large pickle jar full of change.  Legolas winces remembering the day he emptied the jar of it's pickles but eventually finds himself relaxing on his bed and into a meditative trance.

Legolas is broken from it once again after too few minutes in by a distinctly Gimlish knock to his door, only four feet up the door but more polite than the lesser two hobbits and more commanding than the greater two.  Legolas gets up and answers his door though something in the back of his mind tells him not to.  (The back of Legolas' mind is actually inhabited by a rare but clever elvish brain parasite which was enchanted by the old poet Celcindere to have the power to not only see the future but influence the mind of its host in order to protect the sanctity of it's home, vis, the brain, whenever it sees harm being done to said brain in the host's immediate future.)

Legolas opens the door and looks down upon the scuffed helmet.

"'Tis a fellowship meeting," is all Gimli says.

"What?  Now?  It's Saturday.  And what could there possibly be a meeting about?  Oh no, has Pippin brought someone home from the bar and stashed them in the cellar again?  That bus driver was litigious by nature I agree, but it's still not a good idea!"

"No, there's no bus driver.  Aragorn says it's moving time," Gimli huffs then moves off down the hall again.

Legolas pauses, then pauses within his pause.  "Moving time," he whispers, and a chill like a freezey pop being melted down his collar sends him to a distant place in his mind, a long forgotten corner where dark memories linger...  Legolas shuts the mental door on that place and locks it.  As he understands it, there is a fellowship meeting called, he must go.

Legolas summons his courage and emerges from his pristine, elfly retreat into the living room, the most hated of rooms.

"Pah!  Great sissy gayarse," Legolas hears from down the hall.

Legolas stops there before even reaching the living room, the most hated of all rooms.  "What do you want Gandalf," he calls.

"Get me the bottle of brandy from under the sink," Galdalf replies in a grumble too unintelligible for the average human to understand while sober.

"What bottle of brandy from under the sink?"  Legolas asks automatically.

"The one you poured off into the drain opener bottle."

"If you knew it was there why haven't you drunk it already?"

"Was saving it for a special occasion."

"What's so special about today?" Legolas asks with a stutter as he passes the living room, not looking in, and heads to the kitchen.  In his peripheral they are all there perched quietly in various seats around the room with Gandalf in the middle.

"Don't tease him, Gandalf," Aragorn sighs.

Legolas returns and enters the living room and faces them all.  He knows something is wrong because even the hobbits are quiet.  Even Merry and Pippin, sitting on the couch in dripping wet shirts and shorts, shivering a little, have their mouths shut at the moment and not because they have cream puffs stuffed in them.  He hands Gandalf the drain cleaner bottle and the reeking wizard begins pouring the now foul smelling brandy into one of Frodo's nice brandy snifters.  The rest goes down his own gullet.  Merry and pippin grimace but drink the stuff in the snifter, offering it to the others though no one accepts.

"It's moving day, Legolas," Aragorn says finally, and the others visibly hold their breath.

Legolas stands there like a four year old on a stage trying to remember how to sing twinkle twinkle little star and not wet his trousers.  He stammers a few seconds with his eyes fluttering, trying to blink out the rest of the fellowship to see if that improves the situation at all and then mumbles, "What's that then?"

"It's alright Legolas.  We called the North Eastern Railway yesterday and told them you died."

"W-w-w-w-w...." says Legolas.

"I died last week," Gimli offers.

"And merry and Pip...well, it didn't matter really...All the loose ends are tied up.  It's just a matter of off we go now."

"But.. but...I don't want to move again.  Please."

"The sea..it calls to you Legolas...." Aragorn mutters softly and in his voice the elder trees whisper to Legolas of stars and deep black waters.  The world fades around him in a way that reminds him disturbingly of Celeborn's broom closet but he doesn't know why.

"Yes....yes, I ...No!  Stop that!  No no!"

"Yes! It calls to you, it says you must leave this place and find a new home, with a nice patio for having parties."

"No!  I don't want to leave!  I've finally got a place of my own.  It's quiet here and peaceful, and I spent all that time on that mural of Lothlorien on the walls..."

The mural looks like it was painted by a dropout from the St. Biggles Mail-Order School of Art, but no one had the guts to tell him.

"We have to move every nine years, Legolas.  We risk detection if we stay longer.  And the Valar I liable to boil us alive if we don't."

"Nine, it it it it it it's such an arbitrary number,  who decided it should be nine??"  Legolas says with panic rising.  He begins backing away and Aragorn and Gimli advance with matching pace, trying cut off his exit.

"The Valar decided it should be nine years and that there would be a punishment if we should fail to move.  You remember the Valar right, Legolas?

"Y-yes."

"Remember that giant tea kettle they have?"

"Th-the one that hangs over the three mile lake of lava at the foot of Mount Gonorrhea in the land of Brókkenbirboetlz, Earth of the Evenrude?"

"That's the one.  They said they'd boil us in that if we didn't move."

"I don't think they meant it."

"Why take the chance when it's so easy to just pick up and move once in a while?"

"Where are we going?"

"America."

"Oh God.  No.. nononono... no please, not back there!  Please!"

"It's already been settled.  We don't include you in the decision making process because it upsets you so, so you'll have to just accept our judgment."

Legolas begins screaming at regular intervals and trying to climb the curtains presumably for the purpose of throwing himself off the top of the curtain rod in a last ditch effort to try to kill himself before they go.

Frodo folds his hands in his lap, smiling pleasantly and dangling his feet over the sofa seat.  Sam and the other hobbits eye him for signs of violence.  The last time he tried to kill them he was smiling too.

"I love moving day," Frodo blurts then, startling Sam briefly.

"Why?" Pip asks with a springy snarl of incredulity.

"It's the one day I feel like I'm normal."

Pip scoffs.  "As if yood ever be noormal, Frodo."  Sam kicks Pip wide-eyed and nervously watches Frodo in case the remark should upset him.  Moving day, whether Frodo is enjoying it or not is a riotous upheaval and it compromises the delicate grip Frodo has on his sanity, putting them all in harm's way, much like chimney sweeping day, Gandalf's birthday, and most other days of the year.

"Oh no," Frodo says, "I mean compared to him."  Frodo points at the blubbering pile of blond hair and tights that Legolas has become, now shivering in the corner batting away Gimli and babbling about hopeless education systems.

"Alright Gandalf, I think we're all ready to go.  Any last minute jobs to be done, do them now, people, go to the toilet if you must!"  Aragorn says as he takes a heroic pose standing on the couch cushion with one foot on the arm.

Gandalf makes a show of finishing the brandy-toilet duck cocktail and tosses the jug aside.  Then, picking up his staff from it's holder attached to his recliner, he swirls it in the air with a grumbling belch.  The air in the house begins to swirl and blow, gently at first, then growing like a hurricane.  Small objects are knocked form their posts on the mantle and the bric-a-brac shelves and Frodo covers his eyes.  Gandalf is reciting some ancient spell with such drunken alacrity, Aragorn is momentarily afraid of the end result of this move - after all, the Quenya word that means 'to move from one place to another' sounds an awful lot like the Sindarin word for 'to break a cricket bat off in (someone's) arse'.  The grammar therein is also tricky, so anything could happen.  Thunder claps in the kitchen and hall, a great rumble rises from all around them and Gimli wrestles Legolas onto the couch with the rest of the fellowship just as the house begins to crumble around them and everything turns to swirling sand.  Purple and yellow lightning arcs around the couch and Gandalf's recliner and they are all flying catastrophically through an endless cloudy void screaming and clutching the couch cushions.  In a matter of seconds though, it is all over, and the ground meets them sharply.  The couch cracks on the bottom and Aragorn falls through.  His legs stick up and as he flounders there a moment looking like a flipped beetle, everyone looks around them in shock.

"Gandalf this doesn't look like Central Park," Aragorn gripes.

"Too many bums."

"What?"

"Couldn't land.  Too many bums in tents."

"Well where are we?"

"Dunno.  Southern New England Somewhere.  Maybe Maine."

"Oh Fabulous."

"Maine isn't in Southern New England.  Maine is up North.  There'd be seven feet of snow on the ground if this were Maine," Sam says.

The Fellowship look around themselves and find that here in the dark, and the cold, it doesn't much matter where they are, what matters is where they are not, and they are not anywhere near a hotel nor any form of civilization as far as they can tell.  Its the middle of the night wherever they are, and it's winter, so they have that to go on, but the trees and the frozen ground are not giving them any further clues nor hope for a shower or brunch.  Frodo still has his hands over his eyes, and the rest are quite happy to let him stay that way.  Legolas, too, sits gibbering with his head under a pillow, avoiding.

Aragorn flails and gets up out of the couch to survey their surroundings.  "Gandalf, where are all our things?"

"Dunno."

"What do you mean you 'dunno'?!?!"

"They got lost.  Oh hang a second..." Gandalf reaches into the pocket of his jelly-stained dressing gown.  "Here they are."  He tosses a handful of glitter into the air and a great pile of boxes and furniture appear in the empty space next to them.      

"Do yoo hear traffic?" Pip asks, and all listen for a moment.

"Yes!  I think I do!"

There is a faint whisper of tires on pavement from a ways off, but not much.

"I think I see lights!" Merry exclaims in excitement and joy.

Aragorn tests the air around them for the smells and sounds of danger and is not pleased.  Merry gets off the couch and runs for the trees before Aragorn can stop him.  He stops himself though, at the base of a tree, and bends down to pick something from the ground.  It is a shiny metallic wrapper - so at least they know Gandalf didn't take them through time accidentally again - and it is stuck with a wad of used gum to a tiny American flag.  "Look everyone!  We made it!"  Aragorn looks at the ground and sees another flag at his feet, and another, trampled beneath the foot of the couch, and another near Gandalf's chair...Merry cautiously waves the little flag just as the three dozen men with enormous guns come bustling out of the bushes and surround them.  Everyone is screaming again then and huddled up on the couch with limbs tucked in as if the ground were lava.

"Alright hands where we can see 'em!" shouts one of a bushel of men in black suits with headsets and dark glasses which must be the reason they're so calm, they cant actually see what is happening.  The fellowship obey instinctively.  They are summarily separated, cuffed and dragged through the woods to black unmarked cars in paralyzing silence and fear.  It is only as Legolas is dropped on the ground in salted mud near the road that he catches a glimpse of the reason they have all been detained thusly - The White House looms in the distance, lighted beautifully by the moon herself in quiet detachment plus about three million watts of floodlights, and Legolas shuts his eyes and mutters "Son of a Bi-"

Legolas and Aragorn are thrown into the back of a car together, one in one door, one in the other, face down with all their respective limbs tied together like the corners of a napkin holding doggie doo-doo, and they meet squashed face against face in the middle.

"Intruders neutralized, cargo is being inspected by the bomb squad now," one of the agents says to his earpiece and then gets in the front passenger seat - on the right which is just plain boggling - and then they are rolling slowly away from the scene.

"Hmehmmn!"  Legolas says, trying to get the rangers attention which he incorrectly assumes is not on the elf bruising his face.  Then he tosses his face away from Aragorn's and says it again in a harsh whisper.  "I think I've worked out where we are - we're in a lot of trouble."

"Gandolf can get us out of this, don't worry."

Legolas bends his body in a way that isn't humanly possible, but is rather elfly easy (Aragorn can only do it halfway but it still impresses the ladies)  and looks out the rear window.  "Gandolf is passed out!" he tells Aragorn in a hiss.  He sees four men try, first, to pry Gandalf's limp body from his chair.  When that doesn't work they grab two more large men and lift Gandalf and his chair onto the back of a box truck and surround him with a battalion of armoured police.  Legolas shakes his head and lays back down.  "That'll never be enough," he says to himself.

...

"Mr. Preisdent," a voice says from the darkness waking the couple.

"What is it?"  We've caught a group trespassing on the White House grounds."

Barack turns the bedside light on and Michelle sits up as well.  She looks concerned but calm, and they get up and get dressed.

...
They are hooded as they are pulled from the cars.  This is presumably to keep them ignorant of their own whereabouts, though it was kind of obvious what with the Washington Monument looking like Saruman's tower in the distance (before they turned it into a Four Seasons, of course).  They are brought in out of the cold and walked down many long corridors and placed in separate little concrete cells containing only a door and a table and a piece of horrific art on one wall.  The tables are bolted to the floor, the door is bolted shut as they are shoved into the rooms, and the paintings are bolted to the wall though the reason for that remains a mystery.
...

A plain-looking man in a suit, middle-aged, average in every way, sits across the table from a most un-average hobbit and finds himself in the position of trying to operate on this very small man's level and failing completely.  It may be because he is so small, and that his feet are so large, or because he seems so happy to be here and yet was frightened of the painting of Barbara Bush behind him so much he asked if he wouldn't mind moving his chair a little to the left so his head obscured his view of it more completely.  Ed, that is his name, this hapless, didn't-want-nothing-fancy Secret Service agent, sits across from Frodo but thinks more than once about getting up and going home.  Mostly because of the way Frodo grimaces every time he moves and forgets that he is supposed to be obscuring Mrs. Bush.  The expression is that of someone who had seen something unspeakably horrible.  Ed always thought Barbara was a handsome woman.    

"So you came to America," Ed says for not the first time.

"Right," Frodo says.

"For the theme parks."

"Oh don't get me wrong.  There are lots of reasons to want to live here.  I hear there are lots of really wonderful museums now, plus spectacular natural wonders, real guns, it sounds like heaven to us, but I honestly wanted to go to Budapest this time, but Merry won the draw, and America it was.  The rest of us were really put off by it but then he told us his reason for picking it, then we all had to admit he had a point.  The theme parks.  You just don't find that kind of thing in England, Budapest, anywhere really but America.  Well, I here there's lots of fun things like that in Japan, but I'm not going there.  I don't care who wins the draw next time, if they pick Japan I'll go back to the hospital for another nine years."

"...Why do you not want to go to Japan?" the agent asks with the sort of hesitation of someone who knows they shouldn't ask because they don't want to know the answer badly enough but can't help it.

"Bees.  The size of my head."  Frodo holds out his hands to show him what size that is exactly forgetting that the exemplar is also there in the room.  "Not kidding.  They shoot poison acid at your face, then sting you, then cut you up into pieces and bring your flesh back to the queen bee to feed her and her larvae.  Then they track down your family, harvest their organs and sell them on the black market.  And sometimes they sign you up for the local senior citizen's activity group newsletter.  But that's very rare."

....

"Oh no I rather like working for mister Frodo.  He's always in a good mood, 'ceptin' for when he's a bit under the weather.  And it's what I've been doing for, gosh, a long time now."

"And, uh, exactly what kind of work do you do for this... Mister Freaudeaux"

"I'm the gardener, mostly."

"The gardener.  I see."  The long-faced American man in front of Sam has thinning red hair and a curly cord going to his ear that Sam badly wants to snatch away because it looks like a big pasty white worm is trying to get into his brain.  He writes things down as Sam speaks, which is rather unnerving; nobody ever takes that much note of what Sam says, but that's all this fellow seems to know is taking notes.

"And which of you does deliveries?"

"Well, I guess that'd be Leg-uh, Mr. Green, Sir.  He's the one always complaining about his customers.  He gives them goodies on the train, see.   ... I guess, to be truthful, I don't work just for mister Frodo exactly,  I work mostly for myself, I take care of mister Frodo and I get some spending money from the bigger folks for it."

The man puts his pencil down and looks at Sam again, and and Sam knows to expect another question.

So you take care of mister Freaudeaux and his business partners in turn take care of you?"

Sam sits back and thinks.  This gent certainly has a funny way of putting things.  "I guess so."

"So you're an independent contractor, then?"

Sam thinks about it, and decides he's not keen on people putting so many words in his mouth when he doesn't quite know the meaning of them all..  "No sir.  I'm not really independent.  The gaffer always taught me we was all dependant on each other.  I do the gardening, Mr. Green does deliveries, as you say.  Mr. King does most of the driving seeing how most of the rest of us aren't allowed."

The man blinks, frowns very deeply, then writes that down as well.

"The older gentleman, tell me about him."

"Well, what do you want to know?"

"He seems ill.  Like perhaps he should be in a convalescent home, or a hospice."

Sam blinks.  "Well...He went to a home once, but the ladies there didn't care for his dress sense, so he came back.  But I don't think he'd want to shack up with a bunch of mountain climbing college students so much - then again maybe he would, but only so he could try to see the girls in the shower."

The red haired man frowns again but Sam is starting to think maybe he isn't that sad, and that's just the way his face is.

"And...the shorter man with the beard.  What is his job?"

"Oh...well. he's had a few.  His last one was at a bank."

"So, funding."

"Aye."

"And his other jobs?"

"Oh a corner store, an offy, a restaurant - that one didn't go so well - and a rubber factory."

"A rubber factory?"

"Yes."

"Why a rubber factory?"

"Well they come in useful don't they."

"Ah yes I see.  A calculated choice."

"Oh yes.  That's Gimli, calculated.    With all the mistakes we make on the crosswords every week, we need them."

There he goes looking sad again. 

...

"I will tell you nothing!" yells the dwarf.

"I didn't ask you anything."

Gimli sits at the empty table in the empty room under the harsh lights, deprived of his pointy helmet and scowls fiercely at the two enormous black-suited men as if he were twice their size put together in full battle dress and a wizard and a host of elvish archers at his side.  Never mind it's just him.

"I will tell you nothing!" he reiterates, and that's pretty much how it goes.

...

"And then I had to go to the loo, so Gandalf, he's the one with the hat - though he hasn't woorn it in a while - he says, why doon't you goo down the chemist's an' see if they'll let you use theirs!  But he didnae knoo, tha' we we're the ones broke into the chemists to get 'im the ratialin, right?  So me and Merry, we just fell about laughin' while the-"

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING ON THE WHITE HOUSE GROUNDS!?!?!"

"Wha?

"What.  Are you doing.  On the White House.  Grrrrrrrounds," the man in the black suit spits in Pippin's face.

"Oy, See it, doon't spree it."

....

"Yer friend tells me you like gettin' haa.  That so?"  The American man asks with his incomprehensible and boorish sounding accent.

"Don't know what you mean, sir."  Merry says.

"I mean you like crushing up pills and shoving up yer nose, bowa."

"No sir."

"No, sir...." he repeats with venom.  He's a tall man with a lot of teeth.  "Where are you from, bowa?"

"Why do you keep calling me boy?" Merry quirks a look.  "'M older 'n you."

"That so.  You look like a bowa to me."

"Oh I see.  Is that why you fancy me."

Black suit toothy man gets rather red in the face and spluttery after that.

...

"You can take the bag off of your head you know."

"Oh," the bag says off-handedly, carefully.  "I hadn't noticed it was still on, actually."

"Mr. Green is it?"  She snatches the bag from his head and he is compelled to open his eyes as well.

"Yes." Legolas says but no sounds come out so he coughs and tries again.  "Yes," he squeaks.

"Well Mr. Green, what brings you to the U.S?"

Legolas blinks over an over and tries to say something but doesn't manage it."

Legolas' own personal interrogator is a lethal looking woman in a dress suit and heels.  She bends down next to Legolas and speaks softly near his right ear.  "You and your friends aren't' from around here.  I know that much.  But what I'm not sure of, is where you came from.  See, immigration has never heard of any of you, you all have different accents though we can certainly pin a few of you down with just that unless they're fake - but the drugs will take care of that if they are."  Legolas flinches and then glances at her a few times through madly batting eyelashes.  "The other ones....I understand them.  They're no different than any of the other creeps we see come through here.  But you, Mr. Green....you I haven't figured out yet."  She stands up straight again to Legolas' relief and paces around the room a little more, showing off how hard her calves have to work in those heels.  You could kill an uruk-hai with them.  One to the throat.  That's all it would take.  Legolas swallows and watches her.  Yes, he could defend himself if she attacked him, but what good would it do?  They're still in more trouble than they have ever been in before, even counting the Crusades, and there is no way out as far as Legolas can even imagine.  All they can do is what they're told.  Cooperate, no matter what happens to them. Deny every allegation, because they're not true, really, mostly, and cooperate and stay quiet.

"The only thing I can figure, Mr. Green, is that you're an innocent bystander in all this.  It's the only thing that makes sense."  Legolas looks up at her then, hopeful for the first time since he heard the word "America" this morning.  "You poor thing," she says, and advances on him again.  Legolas swallows hard as the woman drapes herself in his lap and puts her tongue in his ear.  "I can make this all go away, Pumpkin."

"I did it!" Legolas yelps and stands up sending the woman to the floor.  He gets up and pounds on the bolted door.  "I did it!  I'm a smuggler! An embezzler!  I kidnapped..somebody!  And I stole some things!  Help!!!!"

....

"What do we do with him?"

"I dunno."

"What did O'rourke say?"

"To get him out of the chair and to get the cane out of his hand."  Gandalf is still apparently passed out in the chair with his head back on the top if the backrest, mouth open, snoring loudly.  He has magically fixed himself to the chair and fixed the staff to his palm.  The gents in the sharp suits don't know it but the only solvent for magical glue is yellow chalk dust blown over the glued subjects by Richard Dawkins.  He happens to be in Washington D.C. right at this moment in a hotel down the road, but what they don't know wont separate Gandalf from his chair and, vis, his stash of mini shooters.

"Ok....but we can't.  He wont budge."

"Mm."

"So now what?"

"...Wake him up?"

....

For hours it seems they are left alone in their cells, each fellow alone with his thoughts.  Some of them pace in their empty cells.  Some of them pull muffin crumbs from their shirt pockets and nibble on them, some of them try to fashion a weapon from broken bits of the used-to-be-table and the stretched face of J. Edgar Hoover.  One of them puts the bag back on his head.  In the end they all come to the same conclusion.  They're screwed.

....

Barack scratches his head and reads the notes given to him by the interrogators in each cell.  He paces as he reads them, stops, looks at Ed who swallows and looks away, then keeps pacing and reading.  "They're terrorists, they're drug runners, they're communist Russian spies...does Russia even have spies anymore?  They're oceanographers bent on dominating Atlantis as soon as we come up with the money to bail them out....Who are they and why are they here?  Can't anybody give me a good answer?"

"They're not very cooperative, sir."

Barack nods.  Well I guess I'll have to go down there and find out myself."

...

Aragorn's agent spends twenty minutes or so staring at Aragorn from the other side of the table.  He's a big man, very big in the American sense, very wide.  Aragorn can hear the air whistle in and out of his bulging alveoli, and the hydraulic pressure in his arteries rings in Aragorn's ears like a creaky floorboard someone keeps stepping on over and over.  The big man's sweat percolates through his clothes, his hair grows with the sound of corks twisting in their bottle necks.  All in all he sounds to a rangers ears like a train wreck sitting perfectly still and quiet.

"So what's you're story?" he blurts from his turkey-neck with his lips hardly having the initiative to move.

"It's...a bit long."

"We have all the time in the world."

Aragorn opens his mouth to suggest that that was certainly true for himself but not for people with uncontrolled blood pressure, hard arteries, and a taste for pork fat saturated with salt.  He changes his mind.  "Actually, I don't understand it myself, so I don't really feel qualified to explain it."

The American taps his pen on the table a couple of times.

"Are you Al-Qeada?"

"No, I'm a park ranger."

"Suicidal?"

"Usually, but not today.  Not yet."

"Drugs?"

"Please."

"Park ranger eh?  I suppose that's what you were doing in the bushes out there.  Rangering."

"Not specifically no."

"What.  Specifically.  We're you doing."

"Nothing.  Specifically.  When you arrived, we were doing exactly what we had been doing the entire time we were there.  Nothing."

"Is that what your friends are going to tell me?  Nothing?  Somehow I doubt it.  If they give it up you know what's going to happen to you don't you?  Git-mo.  Automatic.  No questions, no lawyers no trial.  You'll go to Git-mo and you'll never be heard from again.  Unless that sounds like a day in the park to you, Ranger, you had better come up with something a little more substantial.

"Reggie, what have I told you about that?"

A tall and lanky man walks in the door past the guard's elbow.  Aragorn looks at him.  Blinks, looks again.  This new face seems to be doing much the same such that the room becomes quiet (except for Mr. Train-wreck's bodily screeching) and the face in the door and the face at the table both stare at each other in disbelief of the face staring back but for slightly different reasons.

The face in the door becomes decisive and the man rolls up his sleeve.  "I got this."

"What?"

"Go on.  Get out of here I want to talk to this man.  Alone."

"Sir!"

"No, go on."

"Sir, it is not your job to interrogate these intruders.  Its not safe, it's-"

"It's not you're job either, Reggie!  You're an undersecretary in the Federal Inter-agency Committee on the Management of Noxious and Exotic Weeds.  I'm sorry the FBI rejected your application, I'm sorry your wife kicked you out.  I said you could sleep on the futon in the Lincoln bedroom until you found a place, but that does not make you a part of the Secret Service!"

Barack looks at the greasy-haired ranger and blinks.  The ranger looks back and blinks also.  Reggie huffs and leaves the room but keeps the door quite purposefully open.

Barack palms it shut.

"What are you doing here?" he asks with whispery calm, and Aragorn looks all around his person for the source of the voice which was not at all Presidential in nature, and yet seems to have actually come from Barack Obama because there is no one else in the room.

"I..." Aragorn senses a presence still, can't escape the feeling that not all is as it seems.  "I have come to live here, for a while."

"I see," says Barack sharply, and begins to pace the small room.  "And your friends?"

"The same."

Barack nods.  "You do not intend to harm this country or its people then?"

Aragorn senses a trap, but gives the only answer he may.  "No."

"No, of course not.  What about me?"

"I didn't even intend to track the mud in."

...

Barrack returns to the door then and knocks.  The real SS man outside opens the door and peers in.  "Will you bring the others in here?"

The door closes, and nothing is said for some time.  Barack looks at Aragorn thoughtfully and Aragorn back at Barack but without as much thought, but with much more nausea as the weight of this comes down.  This is as good as being discovered.  Their pictures will be on the news, they'll be investigated, then the Valar will boil them.  Great.

The rest of the fellowship is ushered in a moment later until the room gets rather uncomfortably crowded.  Most of them look ok, not too much worse for wear, except Legolas who looks comatose.  He was never fond of moving day.  If they ever see another one, he'll likely need a rubber room next time.  

"Oy, where's Gandalf?" Pip blurts.  The wizard is conspicuously missing.

"He's being taken care of."

The fellowship look all around at each other, their faces beginning to glow with hope, sparkle with tears of joy.  "You mean?..." Sam asks.  

"Dare we believe?" Frodo responds and all look to Barack for some confirmation, because really, if it can be done, if an atrocity exists that could accomplish the job, the United States Government can do it.

Barack, momentarily confused, but only momentarily, says, "No, I mean they'll open the bar...."

They slump, hearts broken once again, but at least the bar is open.

This sets Aragorn's whip quick mind into action finally, for who else knows what horror Gandalf's vitality means to them?  No one but them, and yet this man, this President seems to know all.

"I must apologise," Mr. Obama begins loudly, and they all stop and listen.  "You would not have received such a chilly reception, if I had known you were coming, or if I had known who you were when you arrived."  They all stop and swallow hard.  This cannot be good.  "No, we have never met before to my knowledge, but, I know who you are, all of you.  It was you, Sire, that I recognised."  Obama stands before Aragorn, and as the others watch, slack-jawed, he bends to one-knee.

"Oh my, God," Merry says.  "The President is a poofter."

Barack reaches behind his head with both hands and removes one, then another prosthetic ear, revealing brown pointed ears beneath the comically huge rubbery molds.

No, he's a Vulcan!" Pip spits, aghast.

Legolas thwaps him on the back of the head.

"He's an elf, grrrrrass for brrrrains!" Gimli finishes.

"An elf."

"An elf."

"An elf?"

Barrack looks up at Aragorn with his exposed ears and a distinctly elfish look of calm curiosity.

"Uh," Aragorn says intelligently.  "If you don't mind me saying so...I've never seen an elf with your....particular....eughhhrmmm..."

"We're from the south.  The deep south."

"I see."

"My kind didn't make it up to Gondor much."

"Oh."

"I can't believe it.  The President of the United States is an Elf," Legolas says with wonderment in his voice.  "Wait.  What about all that staying out of the limelight?  The Valar are going to boil you..."

"I know I know, in the giant teapot. I've heard it all before."

"It's a tea kettle actually."

"But what about taking what we have, this enormous gift of ours and using it?  We have a perfect understanding of history because we were there to see it.  Why not using our long lives and our wisdom for the good of everyone?"

"What aboot using our gifts to find breakfast?" Pip asks.

"No, really.  How have they not boiled you already?  I mean.  Becoming President of the United States of America...You might have gotten away with a smaller country, or maybe governor of Delaware or something, but this..."  Aragorn shakes his head sadly.  It really is too bad he'll be boiled.  He seems like a nice guy.

"I'm willing to take the risk.  So are Gwaedhiel and the girls."

"Mrs. President is...?"

"Yes Michelle is an elf, too.  This whole thing was her idea actually..."  Barack scratches his head in a way Aragorn can appreciate.  He has made that same confused face many times thinking about his marriage to Arwen, scratched his head and wondered what the hell happened.

"And we do move every nine years just like everybody else.  February would have been nine years for us, so moving in in January was right on time.  And now I have time for two terms here, luck prevailing, then we'll be off again."

"But how will you slip into anonymity after spending eight years, four years, or any time at all as the President of the United Friggin' States, Man?"

"I was thinking about going back to Kenya."

"Oh.  Yeah that'll probably work..."  Aragorn scratches his head too.

"So tell me, Mr. President, where do you stand on the issue of the no third breakfast policy instituted after the cereal fiasco of nineteen eighty-eight?  Will it be repealed during your term in office?"  Merry holds his imaginary microphone to Barack's face.  Barack blinks and Pippin shakes his head.

"Poor Merry. He's delirious from hunger."

"What do you know about hunger?" Sam gripes.  "Remember that little thing a few ages ago, mount Doom, no food, no water for days and days..."

"-Blah blah blah.  I'm Sam, I'm a wee poofter and I'm sooo traumatized by soomething that happened so long ago, the dinosaurs doon't even remember it."

Aragorn takes Barack aside, away from the hobbit's prattling.  Barack begins putting his ears back on and Legolas watches closely, taking mental notes.

"Your heart is in the right place, Mellon, even if we think you're crazy risking exposure like this. You could hardly do worse than the guy you replaced!"  Aragorn says with a grin, apparently intending to be funny.  Legolas rolls his eyes.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence."

"Well, that's about all I can give you, friend."

"Not a voter huh?"

"I'm not even legal!"

Legolas elbows him.

"I'm glad I have your blessing, Sire."  Aragorn goes a bit liquidy.  Not many people call him that anymore.  He blushes and turns his head.

The door opens behind them.  "Mr. President.  The old man, we're having quite a time with him."  They hear a scream and the nervous SS man fidgets in the doorway.  "Did you take the staff away from him like I told you?"

"N-no sir, he wouldn't let it go."

Barack sighs.  "Let him out.  And show him the liquor cabinet.  But! -" he says as the SS man was about to run off.  "Take the good stuff out first and hide it."

"Hide it sir?"

"Yeah... uh....put it in the fridge in the vegetable crisper."

Legolas perks.  "Wow!  That is a good idea!  I never thought to put it there.  Aragorn, he really is smart."

"Indeed he is."  In the middle of all this ego-petting comes the distinct sound of a man screaming as he falls about ten feet and then flumps to the floor, moaning in pain and shock.  This being his first time being magically pinned to the ceiling of the White House, he probably did not have time to assume the correct posture for minimizing internal damage upon making it back to the floor.  Shortly thereafter the squabbling hobbits stop their bickering and begin trying to claw their way out of the room over tables and chairs and people because the smell of bacon has wafted into the interrogation room.

Barack ushers the group out into the hall and gives them the short tour of the White House, only the points along the way to the state dining room.

The White House staff do their best to keep the eggs and sausages coming fast enough for the hobbits but they are clearly inexperienced with their sort of appetites, having only fed groups of two hundred people or so at a time, they simply couldn't have been adequately prepared for four hobbits on such short notice.  Legolas is in heaven, eating muesli in quiet dignity next to the Obamas and the two young elf girls, who are quite obviously Elvish, and not American, in person.  They aren't screaming at the top of their lungs and sucking down sugared cereal and lumps of congealed bacon grease like American kids, for one thing.

Gimli and Aragorn enjoy conversation over breakfast with the first family, revisiting the topic of the nine year move rule again when Gimli can't let it die.

"But you're just moving, you're not actually starting a new life," Aragorn injects.  Legolas tries to avoid thinking about moving by engaging Michele in a low conversation concerning an Elvish potion for curing consciousness.

"The Valar never said we had to start a new life."

"Well I think it was implied, otherwise what would be the point?"  Aragorn asks.

"Probably to annoy us."

"Either way you're putting us all in danger if you're discovered - oh my god do you always put that much salt on your food?"

"Nobody notices anything around here, Aragorn, and as soon as I'm out of the office again, I'll slink back into anonymity.  It worked for Ike."

"Eisenhower was an elf?"

"Sure.  Can't you tell?"  He motions to a painting on the wall.  

"What happened to his hair?"

Barack shrugs.  Old war wound.  Had a scrape with the Balrog.  Burn most of it off.  Never grew back.  That's what he gets for being a Republican, I say."

"Oh Barry, stop it," Michelle cuts in.  "You and I both know Ike lost his hair because of that spell you put on his lucky comb."

"That had nothing to do with it and don't call me Barry.  Makes me sound like a carpet installer or a disc jockey or something."

Michelle rolls her eyes.  Legolas makes a mental note to look into protective spells against baldness, and to replace all his combs and brushes and hair beads as soon as they're settled.

They finish breakfast after the hobbits have cleared the White House Kitchen and pantry of any remaining morsels of edibles.  Gandalf has fallen asleep again in his chair and Sam watches nervously as Frodo plays with the elf children.

"So where do you intend to take the fellowship now that you're here, Aragorn?"

"We hadn't really decided.  We were planning on New York City, figured we'd blend in pretty well there, but we somehow took a wrong turn..."  Barack tosses his head side to side.

"It's true you'd be very normal for New Yorkers, even Gandalf, but I don't see the lifestyle agreeing with most of you."  He eyes Legolas surreptitiously.  "But it's a big country.  We aught to be able to find some place where you coudl be out of the, uh, out of harm's way."

"Do we really have to do this Aragorn?" Legolas asks with a sigh.  "Cant we go to Greece instead?"

"Greece?" Barack says. "I have just the place for you, Legolas. Just as good as Greece, in fact, it was named after the Island of Rhodes."  Legolas awaits the revelation with a sliver of hope in his brow.  

"Rhodes?" he says like a meek little child.

"Rhode Island,"  Barack says and puts and arm over Legolas' shoulders as they all make their way toward the cars waiting out front for the fellowship.  "We'll get you set up in my favorite part of Rhode Island.  It's right in the middle.  A town called Cranston.  You'll love it!  Great people, ideal location, the job market, well, you know how that is, but a talented bunch like you shouldn't have any problem."

Aragorn thanks him in Elvish for his kindness, hospitality, and generosity as the others pile into the black cars.  "Mr. President, how can we get in touch with you again?"

"I'll have my people call your people," he says with a smile as he backs away into the White House and Reggie escorts Aragorn into the passenger seat of the box truck carrying their belongings.

In the car with Gimli and Gandalf, Legolas sits and wonders what Rhode Island will be like.  He imagines Rhodes as it was in it's heyday; bronze statues, marble alters, the palace of the Grand Master, the acropolis.  Though, a shadow and a threat begin to grow in his mind as the car pulls away leaving the White House far behind.  Legolas turns on the radio and Skid Row is playing Problem Child.  He switches the station and gets Poison instead.  The next station is playing Rat, then White Snake, then Winger.  Legolas switches the radio off then and curls up into the fetal position on the car seat thinking about all the things that could happen to his hair given the right kind of hairbrush and enough Aquanet.  He is too horrified by his own imaginings to speak of them and warn the others what he fears.

Dun dun dunnnnnn....

Yeah so there it is.  That was my giant contribution to fandom this year.  Man I am a bad bad fic writer.  I haven't published anything in forever and the first piece I come out with is this monstrosity.  Oh well.  Hope you had a giggle at my expense.