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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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8. Speaks to the trees.
“Well your great lord and master did say he’d change his mind if us lot didn’t toe the line, didn’t he?” Shagrat  muttered ruefully. “Honestly Goldilocks, trying to keep on top of that rabble, it’s like carrying water in a sieve - ”
“So if there had been - let’s call it a - change of plan, you thought I’d have wanted you to find out in that manner, did you?”
Shagrat rolled his eye. “I wasn’t really thinking things through all that much, if you must know. You caught me off my guard –“
“And if I had actually been sent back here to finish you off,” Faramir exclaimed, shaking his head, “now, would I really have broken off in the middle of things to have you – do what you started doing to me?”
“I don’t know,” Shagrat replied morosely. “When it came to it, you might’ve just taken it into your head that you wanted to get a last ‘hurrah’ off of me. One for the road. That sort of thing.”
“I’ll admit I was very glad to see you, this morning. I’m not denying that. It’s just I suppose I thought,” Faramir began slowly, “that things between us had been going rather well of late; that you and I had perhaps – at last - come to some kind of understanding.”
“So did I!” replied Shagrat earnestly, “But come on, Goldilocks, that’s when it usually all goes pear-shaped, doesn’t it? About the time I start to think things might be going well!”
Faramir sighed. Undeniably there was precedent – a number of precedents, in fact – for the Orc having assumed something like this.   “Nothing more than a misunderstanding, then,” he said, catching hold of the pacing Uruk’s hand. “Let’s forget about it.”
The Orc’s shoulders sagged and he sat down again at Faramir’s side. “I’m sorry about you know, over-reacting. Maybe I’m still a bit – wound up. I - I suppose I had a funny sort of night.”
Faramir’s lips twitched. “So I’ve been hearing. Quite a kerfuffle, in that village up the valley, you’ve caused. Half of them still want to chase after you with pitch-forks -”
Shagrat groaned and closed his eye. “You see how it is whenever Orcs cross paths with these blasted yokel types? They’re always jumping to conclusions -”
“And the other half – who seemed to be gaining ground around the time I left – seem to think you’re in line for some kind of civic award. That lad you pulled out of the river -”
“Didn’t I just say? How folk always go assuming the worst? Because straight up, Faramir, I never harmed a single hair on - what?”
“I know you didn’t. As I would have even if the young man in question’s mother hadn’t insisted on pressing a hastily-assembled gift basket on me. Intended for your hands, of course.”
“You’re joking!”
“I’m not,” Faramir said seriously. “I’ve got it on my horse.”
“But how does she even know you’ve anything to do with me?”
“You do cut a fairly distinctive figure, even if you didn’t know it, Shagrat. And I understand that word about our – friendly association - may have spread.”
“Oh!” The Orc looked at him sidelong for a moment. “Well I’m sorry about that.”
Faramir shrugged. “It’s all right.”
Shagrat visibly relaxed, once again. “So then, did I - get any good stuff?”
“Some of it appeared to be in dark glass bottles, if that’s what you’re asking about. Beer or spirits. Something of that sort.”
“But still! How did you know where to find me?”
Faramir shook his head. “The Rangers of Ithilien – of whom I was chief for a good many years, in case you were forgetting - were rightly fabled for their skill in tracking. An Ithilien Ranger, living constantly in the open, at one – as you might say - amongst the elements and with his expertise in field craft thus honed to an exceptionally high level, could even track the path of the warm night breeze from the traces it had left, or so it was said.”
Shagrat snorted. “Found tracking the night breeze much use in general, did you?”
“I’m merely repeating what was said.”
“So you were able to follow me all the way down here,” Shagrat replied, sounding thoroughly unconvinced, “on account of all your high levels of expertise in field craft.”
Faramir shrugged nonchalantly.
“Some of it over bare rock? And in the dark?”
“Well to be honest, Shagrat,” Faramir began, “the way you and some of your cronies have been going, nipping off into the woods every other minute, gathering in reverent little groups under this tree or that, there’s getting to be quite a well-worn path –“
“Come off it Goldilocks! I didn’t fall down in the last shower!”
“I’m not saying I couldn’t have found you without extra assistance,” Faramir admitted, “but possibly in this instance field-craft may have had a little - less to do with it.”
“Go on!”
“Since I had an inkling you might be heading down this way.”
Sighing, Faramir got to his feet, and stepping over to the nearest of the poplar trees, patted its rough-barked trunk. “These are the ones you like best, aren’t they?” he asked Shagrat gently.
“I don’t know,” the Orc replied, guardedly. “They’re all right, I suppose.”
“I don’t suppose there can be another stand of them as fine as this for – oh, quite some distance, can there?”
“I don’t know!” Shagrat repeated.   “I mean they’re just trees, aren’t they? It’s not as if they’re anything – very special.”
“’Just trees? Nothing very special?’ That’s not exactly the version I’ve been hearing about.”
Immediately guessing the source of this privileged information, the Uruk snarled - “that Hobbit should learn when to keep his trap shut!”
“I know that he and I have had our differences -” Faramir persevered, colouring up slightly, “but wherever you’re concerned, I really do think we see eye to eye, because your – little Halfling friend – genuinely seems to have your best interests at heart.”
“Even so, though. Running off and blabbering to you, of all people!”
“But, Shagrat, I don’t think the poor fellow knows anyone else.”
Faramir thought, briefly, of his promise to the King. Stretching his legs out in front of him, he sighed and gazed up into the branches of the trees above. Then he asked, exactly in the manner of a person posing the most casual of questions: “So what’s going on, Shagrat? What’s behind all this sudden and intense interest in vegetation?   Is there anything going on that should be beginning to raise my concern?”
“I don’t think it’s anything for you to worry about,” Shagrat replied. “Maz just seems to want to witter on about hazelnuts the whole time and Rukush – well, you know I’ve never rated him for having all that much going on upstairs. As for that berk Azof, he -”
“No, Shagrat. What about you?”
“Oh. Well,” the Uruk replied, but then he stopped and sat, wearing a curiously absent, unfocussed expression for so long that it seemed he must have surely lost his thread ; not staring into space Faramir realized at last, but watching the fluttering poplar leaves, as they flickered green-and-white, green-and-white in the sun on the far side of the glade instead - “this isn’t exactly the kind of thing you want to have out in the open about yourself. Because this stuff cuts close to the bone doesn’t it? And the trouble is, it’s all a bit –“
“Personal?”
“No. No. Airy-fairy,” Shagrat said, shaking his head. “I won’t come out of it well. And you mightn’t think about me the same way afterwards, if you were to hear it.”
The Prince wondered what on earth, given what he already knew about Shagrat’s background and the colourful events of his past life, there could possibly be that would cause him further dismay.   “Shagrat?” he began at last, seizing upon the least unlikely of the limited number of options that presented themselves to him, “you know I’m not going to be – jealous, of you and the trees, if that’s what you’re worrying about.”
“You’re not?”
“That is – I,” Faramir said, his brow wrinkling with distaste as a succession of lively images, each as unwelcome as the next one, played themselves through his mind - “I rather suppose that depends on what, exactly, you’ve been doing with them.”
“It’s nothing like that!” Shagrat exclaimed indignantly. “Not on my part, at any rate.”
“What is it like, then?”
The Orc shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “It’s - I don’t know that I can even explain it,” he replied wretchedly.
Faramir urged him to try.
“You know like I said, last night, I had this – funny turn – in the woods.”
“A funny turn,” Faramir repeated, carefully keeping his face straight.
“Yes. After some of the stuff that went on when I was in prison – you know –“
They had never really spoken about the aftermath of Faramir’s departure from the Land of Shadow; ‘after you left me in the lurch!’ was something Shagrat had once shrieked at him during the course of one of their heated arguments - but other than that the Uruk refused point-blank to discuss any of the consequences those past events might have had for him, and Faramir, whose usual courage tended to falter where this particular issue was concerned, had never pressed for an answer as he wasn’t even certain that he really wanted to know. His tone sober now, he said - “this was back in Mordor.”
The Orc nodded. “First off, it started happening in the cells. In the beginning, only after they’d really been putting me through it, but since then, other times too. Not so often these days, but sometimes some things – I mean other sorts of things – bring it on and I find myself wondering if I might still be back there. When it happens I don’t know what’s what and it’s - frightening. When it happens I think I’m not right in the head.”
“Shagrat, Mordor as you knew it has gone,” Faramir said, thinking with a shudder of that empty, shadow-haunted realm. “There’s nothing left – only waste, and rocks and desert - I’ve seen it! Believe me, you’ve really nothing more to fear.”
“I’m not afraid of being back in Mordor!” cried Shagrat, inexplicably affronted by this notion, for Faramir, who had of course been there once before the fall, thought Mordor was an absolutely terrifying place.
“I’m not saying it wouldn’t be – you know, bad, to be back,” the Orc went on, “but still, I’ve done all that before and I reckon I could see it through again,” – and here his lips pulled back from his teeth in a truly horrible grin – “one way or the other. It’s not knowing – the times I’m not able to be sure. That’s what scares me. Do you – d’you see?”
Faramir, who didn’t really, shrugged non-committaly, wondering what all this had to do with his original question, which as far as he remembered related to poplar trees. Shagrat, realizing his failure to get his point across, waved his claw in frustration.
“Or - take those kids last night. They minute they saw me properly they ran away screaming, and that’s what it’s always been like. But - you! I know what you say and I know what you’ve told me, but deep down, I still don’t get it. You must have had me every which way by now, so I don’t see why you’re still hanging about – I just can’t understand why you’d want to be anywhere near me. And I suppose I’m scared that one day you’ll wake up to yourself and take a good look - just one proper look - and that’ll be that, because at last you’ll see what everybody else does – and you’ll see what I’m really like.”
“I don’t know how it is for the others,” Shagrat went on slowly, “but all it is, is that when I’m near these big trees, just sitting quietly, after a while all that - fear, as well as all the other sorry, miserable stuff I’ve always got going on and on at me in here,” – and he struck the side of his head, none too gently, with the base of his fist – “sort of - lifts away, and just for a bit, it’s like it never even mattered. Sometimes, I even forget how it is to be ground down by it the whole time, and when that happens, I feel like maybe I could be –“
“Calm? Serene? At peace?” Faramir interrupted eagerly.
“I was only going to say – ‘worthwhile,’” the Orc concluded, a little lamely. “Worth bothering about. You know.” He broke off for a moment, frowning. “But I suppose the way you said it does sounds better.”
“So you come all this way, all that distance and effort and – well, danger! Merely, in essence, to feel a bit better about yourself?” Faramir exclaimed, astonished. “And worthwhile?”
“I’d happily go a lot further than this!” Shagrat replied earnestly. “Because it’s – well, even the idea of it’s such a comfort to me, isn’t it, because I’ve never thought I could feel that way before. It’s like - when I’m with these trees, after a while all sorts of things begin to come to me that I didn’t know about - couldn’t even start to think about, before.   And I wonder, maybe if it hadn’t been for all that – that stuff and nonsense, back in Mordor, I might even’ve had a shot at being - better, like a different kind of -” he broke off again, sighing. “I told you it was wishy-washy, this. I bet it just sounds daft to you, doesn’t it.”
“Shagrat,” Faramir reassured him absently, for he was thinking more of the other things the Orc had told him, turning it all over and over in his mind, “you needn’t let these things worry you. You’re safe, and you seem reasonably sane enough to me.”
The Uruk gave Faramir a lopsided grin before hunching his back and staring moodily off into the distance once again. That hadn’t been what he really meant at all.
TBC
Author’s notes, now revised to comply with aff.net’s terms-of-service: “many thanks for the reviews.”
I've been advised by the powers-that-be at aff.net (who really do appear to be taking an active interest in quality control regarding the feelthy stories that get posted on this site, a policy which - to my intense personal chagrin - I find I've recently fallen foul of) to set up and link to here a shiny new aff.net forum all of my very own that will allow me to provide more comprehensive....feedback on the feedback on my stories. This forum / linkage palaver is turning to be a somewhat longer and more convoluted process than I'd anticipated, so as of yet there's nowt I can actually give you a link to so apologies about that. I'll do it, in the inimitable words of Jim Royle, when I've got a minute.
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Speaks to the Trees