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Speaks to the Trees	By : kspence Category: Lord of the Rings Movies > Slash - Male/Male Views: 4967 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own the Lord of the Rings book series and movie series, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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The Prince of Ithilien and his Orcish lover dozed on through the morning. Shagrat’s sleep, this time, was mercifully untroubled, without any strange kinds of visions, prophecies, or dreams.
He roused himself in the early afternoon, stretched, and crossed the glade to check on his drying things. The clothes were warm from the sun and felt about as dry as they were likely to get, so he set about dressing himself only to realize, once he’d almost finished, that his companion had woken too and was lying propped on one elbow, intently watching him.   Shagrat looked away, struck with an immediate sensation of extreme self-consciousness.
“Now we’ve had our nap and you’ve finished putting yourself back to rights,” Faramir said, “I suggest we take that walk I was proposing.   I think we’ll start with a stroll down to the river. No doubt it’s for the best, since you seem to have developed quite the sudden affinity for fresh-water swimming.”
Shagrat, still discomfited by his companion’s recent scrutiny, was immediately on the defensive. “What makes you think I was in a river?”
Faramir tutted. “Apart from the state your clothes are in? Really, Shagrat, I haven’t yet abandoned all use of my faculties to the extent that I could possibly to fail to notice when my dearest companion fetches up in front of me, completely drenched to the skin.”
“’Dearest companion’?” Shagrat repeated uncertainly. “D’you mean - is that supposed to be me?”
“You heard perfectly well what I said. Don’t bother trying to change the subject.”
Shagrat sighed. “Last night when those yokels from the village were chasing after me, well, I only went and fell in. Then I couldn’t get out ‘cause – between you and me - I can’t really swim. So I ended up having to go with it. It wasn’t so bad after the first bit.”
“I wondered if it must have been something like that. Because I spoke to the water bailiff on my way here this morning, and he told me he’d seen you floating downstream from the weir.”
Shagrat jumped to his feet. “The water bailiff? I thought at least I’d managed to give that bloke the slip! Quick! We’ll have to try and leg it before he catches up with us!”
“There’s no need, Shagrat,” Faramir assured him, “everything’s all right.”
“It’s not all right! That fellow’s got a crossbow! And a bloody big dog too! Come on – on your feet! Get up! What are you still hanging about for? We shouldn’t even be here! Especially not me!”
“I had some business with your friend the water bailiff. And given your reaction perhaps it’s just as well I arranged to speak to him when I did, and even better that the man is now at least partly under my employ.”
“You arranged to speak to the water bailiff? Why’s that?”
“Because it took him quite a while to register that I didn’t want you shot on sight, as opposed to the exact opposite. And even then I don’t think he’d have believed it, if he hadn’t been given his new instructions straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.”
The Orc looked thoroughly bemused. “What do you want to employ a water bailiff for?”
“Come on, Shagrat. You might have guessed I had other business to attend to in these parts, or else I wouldn’t have needed to stay away for all of last night. It certainly wouldn’t have taken me all evening to pay the local yeomanry for a brace of half-eaten dairy cattle!”
“It wouldn’t?”
“It wouldn’t, no. But that’s beside the point, which is that I set out to get something for you. A token of my esteem and also – my gratitude, if you like.”
“Gratitude?” the Orc exclaimed, still perplexed. “Sorry. I still don’t get it. Who’s this you’re being grateful to again?”
Faramir regarded him steadily, and didn’t reply.
“And, in any case,” the Prince resumed after a long moment, “the thing I got you would be – this.” He made a quick, sweeping gesture that took in expanse of riverbank, for quite a way up and downstream. “D’you like it?”
Shagrat stared at him, clearly nonplussed, and Faramir watched him as comprehension slowly dawned. “You’ve never bought a river have you?” the Orc said. “Can you even buy a river? But what for?”
“I’ve only purchased a relatively short stretch of it. Both sides of the riverbank downstream from the weavers’ village and this point.   And a few of the fields on the floodplain, mostly encompassing the main path and, of course, these trees of yours. I’m not quite sure of the boundaries as yet – I’ll have to check with the tenant farmers. There may be some more further down on either side. I was chiefly after the rights of access, you know.”
“You were? And what do you want with all that?”
“I was mainly after the access rights,” Faramir told him very seriously, “because I wanted to be as sure as I could be that from here on in you’ll be able come and go freely, and in safety, to see your beloved trees, whensoever you should please.”
Shagrat shook his head, embarrassed. “Nah!” he said, “you shouldn’t’ve. Not on my account! I’d have been all right carrying on and winging it –“
“No. There will be no further talk of ‘winging it’ or anything else,” Faramir cut in emphatically. “It just won’t do, Shagrat, because I will not stand to have you – chased, hunted, or conflicted, or placed in any unnecessary danger for any longer. After your Hobbit spoke to me I was beside myself with worry – and after the events of last night! What if something had happened to you?”
"It turned out fine,” the Orc grumbled.
“Look at you! Bruised and battered, dunked in a river and almost drowned. That hardly seems like the usual definition of ‘fine’ to me!”
Shagrat was waving his companion’s concerns away when the Prince made a sudden grab for him, and hugged hold of him tightly.
“When I think of losing you,” he whispered, holding the Orc in a fierce embrace, “I’m beside myself. Do you understand that? I simply won’t stand for it, Shagrat. Not again. Gondor’s King – my so-called duty – all bedamned. If it comes to a choice between you – and the rest of it. Everything else - I simply won’t do it. You must know, that from now on, I’ll always stand with you.”
The Uruk crooked an eyebrow at him. “You’re the King’s Steward. Even thinking about what you just said. That’s treason, isn’t it?”
“I suppose it must be. But I find I don’t much care. You’ll say it’s all just words but I won’t change my mind, Shagrat. I mean it.”
“Yeah? Well – maybe best if you keep that under your hat for now, all right?”
“Yes, Shagrat. I intend to. Because when I think about losing you - ” and he broke off then, unable to continue.
By now Faramir’s eyes were leaking with emotion. The Orc reached up his thumb – tentative, wonderingly, and smoothed the drops of water away.
“There’s no need to take on like that Faramir,” he muttered. “You don’t need to worry on that score ’cause that’s settled it. I won’t be going anywhere. I promise.”
They clung together, wordlessly pledging promises to one another for a time. At last the Prince of Ithilien cleared his throat.
“Now that your safe right of passage on the floodplain has been achieved,” he told Shagrat, “there remains only one possible point of contention – and it seems against the odds that you’ve already managed to sort that out by yourself, in point of fact.”
“Eh?”
“I mean the weaving village by the gorge.” Faramir reached into his jacket pocket.   “Up until first thing this morning everyone I spoke to was quite resolutely ‘anti’-“
“Anti what?” Shagrat asked, and then he hunched his shoulders. “I – oh. Right.”
The Prince waved his concerns away. “Never mind all that - this was before. But now, see? I have a letter of thanks from that boy’s parents here. Head-man and matriarch of the village, as I understand it. The mother especially so – and a real force to be reckoned with. Within two minutes of meeting her, I could see she rules with an iron fist.”
“That kid did say they were kind of high-up- “
“And both of them now falling over themselves for a chance to repay their debt to you. In the light of what’s happened, I think we can be reasonably certain that the people up there will be more than happy to accommodate you. I don’t think it’ll be a problem for us to be able to negotiate your coming and going through their village, as and when you please.””
“You’ll be the one to go and talk to them for me though, Goldilocks, won’t you?” Shagrat put in quickly. “Definitely going to be better if you sort all that stuff out, isn’t it.”
Faramir feigned surprise. “Really? You don’t want to go and accept their thanks in person?”
“Of course I don’t! You know if I go there I’ll only put my foot in it and muck it up and say the wrong thing.”
“Well. That is a pity. Because I provisionally accepted the invitation to dinner they gave me on your behalf. We’re going to drop in on them on your way home, tonight.”
“You did what?” The Orc was outraged. “I can’t just go ‘dropping in’ to some village headman’s house!”
“It’ll be all right, Shagrat,” Faramir said soothingly. “I’m sure it’ll do you no end of good to meet your nearest neighbours. Chin up!” - and he all-but dug the increasingly irate Uruk in the ribs - “because I’ll be with you. You know you can always count on me.”
Shagrat glowered at Faramir, growling, then knocked him down and straddled him. The Prince sighed happily, pinned on his back in the grass.
They were more than two hours late for dinner, after that.
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Speaks to the Trees