Lie Down in Darkness is a alternate-universe fanfiction that seeks to answer the question: what if Gollum had been killed before the events of Lord of the Rings ever happened? Starting with the council of Elrond, this fic retells the story of LOTR, with a very dark cast. It's worth reading for anyone curious about what could have been who also has a very high tolerance for depressing content. Some very beloved characters, whose names I will not reveal, meet unfortunate and untimely deaths.
Another warning: this story is extremely long: 280,00 words. To put things into perspective, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix only had 250,000 words. I won't divulge the circumstances under which I had that much time to spend reading fanfiction, but suffice it to say, it was well worth the investment :)
Incidentally, I discovered this fic through the Middle Earth Fanfiction Awards archive. These awards honored the "best" Middle Earth fanfiction writing every year from 2004 to 2011; they were discontinued this year after what seems to be a series of heated arguments about rating systems.
The story, which you can find at the link below, is posted at Henneth Annun, which is a great source for Lord of the Rings Fanfiction. However, I find that its format is unwieldy, so I tend to stick to the tried-and-true fanfiction.net if at all possible.
Lie Down in the Darkness, Rise up from the Ashes
For a shorter (3,000 words), equally dark AU fic from the MEFAs, check out Worth, which received first place in the Alternate Universe category. As the author puts it, "bad things happen to good hobbits"
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