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There was a Man in Imladris for the first time in many years. He’d appeared in strange clothes that barely covered him, and the Eldar watched him from their hiding places as he explored, lost but not showing fear. He had no weapons, was not dressed for the woodland; but what he was dressed for, no one could say. The heels of his shoes forced him to walk on his toes, and his clothing revealed his skin was pierced through in many places with bars and rings of shining white metal, and his skin itself was marked with colourful brands and whole images, as though his body were a canvas. It was grotesque, as much as his painted face.But though the twin sons of Elrond would have killed him as an obvious Orcish scout, Arwen was of a different mind. Men were of many and varied cultures and ways, and it was not wise to judge a situation so quickly, when it came to a lone Man with no armour nor weapons. There were no Orcs nearby, there was no one.And anyway, he was singing songs that were decidedly not Orcish.-Tristan had no idea where he was; he’d been at a Halloween party at the friend of a friend of a friend’s big house that faced the woods, and had gone off to get away from the weed smoke and have a bit of quiet, and maybe that hadn’t been a great idea, but he’d not had a great time after that one conversation he’d overheard Kyle and Jackie, and maybe hadn’t had the best judgement. Why they had any business talking about trans people was beyond him.He’d just walked for a while, and sat down when his feet started to ache. He’d only realised the time when it was suddenly morning, and the trees and bird-song was all different, as was the smell in the air. Then, he’d started walking more carefully, more slowly, glad for the warmth that burned off the morning fog, because he wasn’t wearing much.He started following a deer-path, making trail markers with sticks and stones, and eventually found evidence of water nearby, reminding him how thirsty he was. He followed the sound, which was a little difficult given the echoing nature of the woodland, but he found a river, and then had to deal with the rather new experience of getting to the water, which required a little more bravery about one of his main phobias.Still, he was too practical to allow his phobia to be in charge, as much as he felt sick with fear the closer he got to touching the water, the reeds, the grass or whatever it was growing in the water. He was glad he’d gotten better boots, it seemed these were going to see a lot of action in the wilderness, and he finally braced himself and drank. The water was sweet and tasted wonderful, but he only took a sip before straightening up. Now, he had to wait for what it would do to him. He was fairly sure he’d be sick until he got used to it, which meant he’d be even more dehydrated if he drank a lot of it.He wondered if he should follow the stream up or downriver. Downriver meant downhill, and toward the sea—but upriver might mean cleaner water, and fewer large predators. Bears were a very real danger, he realised, as were stags and even cougars. He resolved to pay attention and look for scat. So far, he hadn’t seen any. Following the river upstream seemed a better idea, however much colder and more rocky the terrain might be; and staying in one place so he could be found seemed a really bad and difficult idea. He’d keep moving. So far, it seemed like he was very far from any trails or campsites; and this was old-growth forest.He was really feeling a lot better, not having to worry about people or society, he realised. Money didn’t mean a goddamn out here.There was a voice in the back of his head that was observing that this didn’t look like California either, especially because he wasn’t passing any fire-blackened areas, and there was no smoke in the air.That was when he saw a large animal through the trees, in the stream ahead, and saw the colours and silhouette of something that was man-made, a bridge perhaps. He stopped, slowed his approach.-Arwen’s horse was an odd one, in that she liked very much to play in the water, having never known danger lurked there. She was also a little bit dim, even for a horse, and this was partially what made her so remarkably steady in temper. She stood in the water, drinking intermittently, and Arwen waited, on her back, for the Man to approach. He had slowed, which meant he’d seen her; eventually, he showed himself, lingering near a tree that happened to be the perch of Elladan, and therefore not the safe cover the Man thought it was.‘Hiee!’ he called out, over the sound of the water. She’d expected something more like ‘hulloa’ or ‘halloo’, not an Elvish sort of noise.‘Halloa!’ she called out, ‘are you lost?’He moved a little closer, picking his way along the trail by the river. As he got closer, she started to see that his face was painted, in a way that altered the very bones of it in some way, for he looked very little like a man, and a little elfish, though she could not discern wholly why, she knew it was paint. His eyes were made to look bigger and brighter, and his bones sharper, and his lips bigger, and his brow strange and too-perfect; beyond this, she couldn’t say.‘It that obvious?’ he called back, laughing. ‘I was at a party, I wandered off.’ He was just at the bank, close enough to see the bridge nearby, and threw up his hands. ‘Don’t bother telling me that was stupid, I’m aware.’ He looked up at her, shielding his eyes from the light. ‘I’m Tristan.’‘Arwen.’‘So… where am I, Arwen?’‘Near Imladris, called by men Rivendell. You look tired, Tristan. Will you accept our hospitality?’He suddenly spooked, backing up a few steps. He eyed her nervously. Arwen wasn’t sure what she’d said.‘…Mind getting off the horse and talking to me on dry land, Arwen?’ he asked, backtracking into the trees, away from the river. They were losing him. She urged her horse the rest of the way across the shallows, and onto the bank, then dismounted. She didn’t approach, but allowed him to come closer, wary as a fox.He studied her face for a long time, and her ears, and then her face again.‘If I accept,’ he said, carefully. ‘What do you think I owe you in return, and will I be permitted to leave, and under what circumstances will I be forbidden from leaving?’Arwen considered this, shocked though she was at the implication that hospitality must be paid for. ‘You owe us nothing, it is hospitality. You may leave as you wish it.’He narrowed his eyes, suspicious. ‘That’s not how the tales of the sidhe go, usually,’ he said, still wary. ‘I crossed a fairy ring at some point, didn’t I?’Ah. Fairies. Arwen knew those tales, somewhat, and his suspicions became clear. ‘We are not going to enslave you if you eat of our food, Tristan, nor put you to impossible tasks, nor steal your memories or your youth.’Tristan considered this. ‘You said this was Imladris,’ he said.‘It is.’‘Do you have the authority to offer me the hospitality of Imladris?’‘My father established Imladris in the Second Age,’ Arwen said, smiling. ‘I think that bestows authority enough, yes.’‘Just checking,’ Tristan said. ‘Alright, I accept your offer of hospitality, on the condition that I may also peacefully reject it, in whole or in part, whenever I wish, for a stated reason or for no stated reason; this includes turning down offers of tangible and intangible things, and leaving whenever and however I so wish. I offer nothing tangible or intangible in return for this hospitality, though at a later time I claim the freedom to offer something to show gratitude, without the expectation that I offer something in exchange. Any offer of this will be stated before the thing is given, otherwise assume I am acting of my own whimsy and there is no deeper meaning than that. Do you understand and is this agreeable to Imladris?’As careful as a Dwarf, Arwen was surprised at his erudition and shrewdness—as much as she was saddened by his lack of trust. ‘It is so understood, and accepted.’He held out his hand to shake, and she clasped it. ‘Then we have an agreement, Arwen of Imladris.’‘My horse can carry us both.’‘I’ll walk,’ he said, and so they walked to the bridge, and over it, and his boots made strange sounds on the stones.‘Is your outfit usual, where you are from?’He laughed. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I was at a masquerade.’‘But you have no mask.’‘Don’t I?’ he said, looking up at her with a mysterious smile.‘You have something on your face,’ Arwen puzzled. ‘Paint, I would think, but that it is like no paint I have ever seen before.’‘Arwen!’Tristan turned to see others catching up—and these with weapons and armour, two of them at the head of the pack with dark hair and features like Arwen’s, identical. Twin brothers?‘My brothers,’ Arwen said. ‘Elladan and Elrohir.’‘Boys,’ Tristan said, as they caught up.‘We are older than you, Man,’ Elladan said, with a not-too-nice laugh.‘Boys,’ Tristan repeated, a little harder this time, and with a sharper edge to his grin. He didn’t like when people condescended to him, especially when they were nobility of any kind.Ahead of them was a blond on a white horse, and Arwen pulled up her horse. Tristan looked between her and the blond.‘Arwen,’ said the blond. ‘Elladan, Elrohir...’Oh, they were kids and they were in trouble, Tristan thought—not understanding more than the names, but hearing the tone very clearly—which immediately endeared them but also worried him; if she was just a kid, then she didn’t have any authority, and that meant he wasn’t safe, and his agreement with her meant nothing. He should leave.He should.He contemplated what not leaving might mean. Stories told that you always wanted to leave Faerie eventually, and warned of terrible and nameless exhaustion and hardship. The problem was, Tristan thought about his life in the human world, and it was all exhaustion and hardship. If there would be no relief, he’d take the hardship he’d never experienced before. At least it would be interesting.They were speaking their own tongue, which allowed Tristan this time to think, and finally the blond warrior turned attention to him, speaking in English again.‘Tristan, Arwen says you have been offered Imladris’ hospitality, and that you are lost.’‘These are true things,’ Tristan said, cautiously. ‘She did so offer, and I am so lost.’He nodded, turning. ‘Come, then.’-Arwen saw the wariness come over the Man again, and huffed.‘Glorfindel, you have frightened him. It was tenuous that he accepted my hospitality at all.’‘Why should he be frightened?’ Glorfindel said.‘Because he fears our people.’‘Then he is foolish.’‘Glorfindel!’He sighed. Arwen was one of the youngest Eldar he had dealt with in centuries. Yet he was fond of her. ‘Men are foolish, they are all too young to be anything else,’ he said, making certain to gentle his tones further. ‘If he fears us, there is nothing we can do to change that. An we should be feared, should we not?’‘Not if we want him to be able to sleep, Glorfindel. He’s exhausted, look at him.’‘He has been walking for hours,’ Elrohir added, loyal to his sister. ‘He only drank a little from the stream, once.’They stopped at the end of the bridge, at the circular platform, where Elrond was coming down the steps.‘My children,’ he said, at once weary and irritated. ‘I know you mislike ceremonies and formality, but taking off when you know full well Prince Legolas and his company were to arrive this morn—’‘I did not intend to miss it, Ada,’ Arwen said, dismounting. ‘I had only intended to go for a short ride before they came, to think on what to say; but then I found a strange Man.’‘We thought he was an Orc,’ Elladan said. ‘A scout.’‘But he is not,’ Arwen said sharply, glaring at her brother. The Man was edging closer to her, rather hiding behind her. ‘He is only a Man with strange looks, and he says he was at a masquerade, so it is understandable he might look frightening a-purpose, for some Mannish celebration.’‘Look, um,’ said the Man, in Westron. He cleared his throat. ‘My lord,’ he said, to Elrond. ‘You have some good kids. I was probably going to die of exposure, and they saved my life, and I’m very grateful to them. As you can see, I’m not armed, and all I want out of this is just somewhere safe and warm to sleep, and maybe a bath and a little bread. That’s it, I swear I can be out of here in a few hours.’Elrond was not the only one stunned by such fearful humility. ‘We are not so mean as that,’ Elrond finally said, when he found his voice again. ‘Of course you will have more than these simple things. Come,’ he said, finding the gentleness he gave Men. Perhaps the strain of deflecting Legolas’ inquiries about his children had affected him more than he’d thought…. ‘Arwen, Elladan, Elrohir, go you and ready yourselves; Legolas has been asking to see you since he arrived at first light.’Glorfindel went with them, though not intending the same direction; he had been the rider to meet the Prince of the Greenwood.-Tristan followed Arwen’s father as bidden, trying not to fear him; but fathers had never been something he got on well with. Still, Elrond didn’t press him for conversation, and after the initial nervousness about that, Tristan appreciated it. Now that the morning was truly getting on, he was starting to feel that nauseated, trembling exhaustion that meant he was reaching the end of his ability to stay awake, even with food.Most of Imladris seemed to be outside, with no glazed windows he could really see. It was cold, and wet, sprawling over multiple waterfalls. Tristan was shivering, and felt something warm and soft put over his shoulders. He grabbed onto it immediately. There were more sidhe here, rushing here and there, singing to each other. Tristan wondered what they were doing, but Arwen’s father had said something about Legolas asking to see them ‘since he arrived’. Were they preparing for a party of their own? The bustle had that feel to it, and when Tristan was shown to what was clearly an open-air dining room, the table having not only sidhe but what were clearly other sorts, Tristan was confirmed for this being a party. Leaving one party and arriving at another, how cyclic, he thought as he sat down, having found the sleeves of his garment and fastening it as he walked along. His hair was still sprayed as high as God and he had his face on, but on the other hand, his makeup probably looked amazing, since he hadn’t slept.And after some careful sips of what turned out to be hot tisane, and very small bites of very fresh bread, Tristan was able to notice something about some of the guests.They were also humans. Tristan wasn’t the only human here! He was pleased with that. And he’d been seated near one of the humans, who was regarding him carefully but not too openly.‘Good morning,’ Tristan managed, smiling at him.‘Good morning, my lady.’Oh dear. He was passing as female. It was probably the dress. Tristan had more tea, and thought on how to respond.‘From whence did you come, my lady?’ asked the other human, this one a little less shy—and a lot less friendly, behind the politeness.‘Indeed,’ spoke up a red-bearded fey that might have been a Dwarf. ‘I have never seen a Man with rings in his face, such as a Dwarf.’The piercings. Tristan realised with a start only the Dwarves had piercings. His perforated eyebrow, nose, and lips must seem very odd, and he wondered if that was the source of the suspicion, especially if tattoos were also unknown as a Mannish thing.‘She is a Lady,’ said the first human—he was blond.‘No,’ Tristan said, ‘he’s right, I’m a man.’ He braced for impact, and the stares of the two humans, possibly violence, definite confusion. But he didn’t mind so much now, he was old enough not to mind. ‘I’m Tristan.’ He wasn’t willing to say where he was from, not just yet.‘And where are you from, Tristan?’‘Hush,’ said the blond, frowning. ‘Let him be. I am Boromir, son of Gondor, Tristan. That cantankerous old man is Strider.’‘Do not hush me, boy,’ Strider said, ‘we cannot be too careful in these times.’‘Oh, I know you aren’t implying I’m evil just because I have some piercings and a painted face,’ Tristan said, finally deciding on his persona.‘You have not said where you are from.’‘Neither have you.’‘Because I am home.’Tristan blinked at him, silent for a few moments. ‘Well I don’t have one, at the moment, forgive me for being reticent about saying so!’ he said, playing up his hurt and offence. He was satisfied when the brunet looked guilty, and looked down in shame for a moment.‘I apologise,’ he said, and sounded like he meant it. ‘I forget that Lord Elrond takes in the lost.’‘What’s wrong with your face?’ asked a very small, beardless person, curiously. He looked like a child, but he had the hands and fresh-broken voice of a teenager.‘It’s called drag, honey,’ Tristan said, ‘It’s a mask you paint on.’‘That’s a mask?’‘In a manner of speaking. I was at a party last night, and I got lost when I left it. Ended up here. Arwen offered me hospitality and so here I am, for a bit anyway. So,’ he said. ‘I’m Tristan. That’s Boromir, that’s Strider. What about you, honey? What’re you called?’‘Pippin.’‘I’m his cousin, Merry. We’ve just come from the Shire.’‘Gimli, son of Gloin,’ said the dwarf. The dwarf beside him was Gloin himself, son of someone-or-other and so on, until you got to the actual clan name. Tristan just remembered first names, trying to get his brain to save them properly.And then Arwen came back, with another, paler-haired sidhe with her. Strider lit up on seeing her, and she smiled at him, and at Tristan.‘Hi, Arwen,’ Tristan said. ‘Hi boys,’ he said, to the twins and the new sidhe—the new sidhe immediately looked incensed.‘I am Legolas Greenleaf, Prince of Mirkwood, and no painted harlot shall call me—’Tristan got to his feet, but not quickly, towering every six and a half feet of his height, which was taller than the sidhe by a little bit. Enough. ‘I am,’ he announced to the company, ‘way too fucking tired for this noise.’He left the table, fully gambling on someone catching up to him; he didn’t want to cause a diplomatic incident, but he refused to respect a prince who got so easily offended by a bit of ribbing.He’d gotten pretty far when he heard someone call out to him, and turned to see one of the twins catching up.‘You shouldn’t tease him,’ he said, but it was obvious he was trying to hide his own urge to laugh.‘I shouldn’t do a lot of things,’ Tristan said noncommittally. ‘Which one are you?’‘Elrohir,’ he said, in a tone that said he was used to that question.‘Right, the nice one,’ Tristan said.‘My brother is more eager to hunt Orc than I, this is true,’ he said, with something sad in his voice. ‘Orcs took our mother from us, and the bitterness settled in his heart deeper than the grief.’‘Doesn’t mean it’s right to go out killing folks because they might be the same people that killed your mother,’ Tristan said.‘That is wise,’ Elrohir said. ‘But let us not speak of such sad things. You are weary, have you eaten your fill?’‘Yes, but I need to wash all this makeup off before I go to bed,’ Tristan said. ‘For that, I need oil as well as water and soap.’‘Then we shall go to the baths,’ he said, and led the way. ‘The images on your skin,’ he said, after a small silence. ‘They are not paint, are they?’‘No, they’re permanent,’ Tristan said. ‘You dip a needle in ink and prick the skin to make them.’‘Why?’Tristan thought on that. Many people got tattoos just because they were pretty, but his had always been to remind him he owned his body, and that no one controlled him. Many of them were of animals meaningful to him, and some were symbols that were deeply significant. But altogether, the body of work on his skin was to display to others that he was proud of what he was, of who he was, and would not be shamed.‘How about I tell you after I sleep,’ he said, as they came to the baths, and he shrugged off the robe he’d been given, going over to where a mirror was, and finding a container of oil and a clean cloth. He gently pulled the lashes from his eyes first, setting them aside, before starting on the wig, and then actually taking the makeup off.He heard Elrohir sit down, rather quickly, and hid a smile as he kept wiping the makeup off his face. His real hair was rather long, but it was also bright pink. The wig had been a more natural black.-Elrohir watched the human change. It was like magic, even though it was only what must have been the finest paint. He even removed the thick eyelashes he’d been wearing, and the black and matted hair. The face it revealed was a much more human shape, though still delicate. He had brows prettier and thinner than Elrohir had ever seen on a Mannish face, and seemed very young. He washed the oil away and took down his hair, which was the same colour as pink blossoms, and much longer and more beautiful, brushing his hips, a proper length for hair to be.Elrohir felt his cheeks flush, and he looked away, not sure what to make of the feelings he had, that he shouldn’t have watched Tristan take down his hair. But he couldn’t stop thinking about it, even as he heard Tristan take off his boots, and bare feet walk to the baths nearby. It had shone bright and alluring in the light, in a way that silver hair was, but so much more colourful.Colourful was the best word to describe Tristan—from his skin to his hair, to the sparkling hue painting his nails with even more colour.‘Elrohir!’ Tristan called, and Elrohir looked over to see him wrapped in a blanket, coming back over to sit on the bench before the mirror. His hair was damp, and he started using the oil on it—which was what the oil was for, really; that it could also be used to remove whatever paint was on Tristan’s face was a mystery.‘Hey, um, could you help me braid my hair?’ Tristan asked, as he worked oil through the strands of his hair.He really hadn’t ever met any Eldar, then, or he would not have asked such a question. Elrohir wasn’t sure what to do; he knew men were not the same, but not how or why.And, wrong as it may have been, he wanted to say yes. No one was watching, to know, and know what Elrohir did.He took up the comb, and began, with hands that almost shook, to comb through that hair. It was not so thick as Elven hair, and not at all as silky, but it was so brilliant as to be enchanting, and Elrohir combed it lovingly, and wove it lovingly.-Tristan felt the pleasure of having his hair combed and braided wash over him, and relaxed enough that despite the cold, he dozed off, waking only when Elrohir was done; luckily, the sidhe hadn’t had to wake him up. ‘Thank you,’ he said, and started to gather his clothes and boots.‘Someone will clean them for you,’ Elrohir said, actually catching his hand gently, before letting go almost as though he realised he oughtn’t have done that—which only made Tristan more interested. He noted Elrohir’s pale cheeks were flushed, as they hadn’t been before, and his eyes were dilated. Oh my. Well, he was pretty….Still, Tristan was too tired to do anything about it but wonder, as he followed Elrohir to a room, and made an almost sexual noise when he saw the bed, flinging off the robe and collapsing into it, climbing with increasingly-heavy limbs into the cool sheets and wiggling under the thick down coverlet, warm at last and asleep as soon as he was so.He didn’t realise what the noise had done to his companion.-Elrohir leaned against the wall outside of Tristan’s room, trying to catch his breath as the sound echoed in his memory. He was glad he’d picked a room in a rather far corner of Imladris, one of the drier, darker ones, that his father had always said was more Mannish. No one came down here, it was too gloomy; it lent him privacy to lose composure without having to answer to concerned questions as to why.

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Tristan woke up, and it was dark, and he was momentarily disoriented from his dreams, before he realised he wasn’t home, and grounded himself. He got up, found some water on a table, and drank down two full cups of it, before he found the chamber pot under the bed, and then started investigating the room, finding clothes that fit his tall frame, drapey as they were. He was glad they were green, because anything else would have clashed horribly with his hair. He put on the soft shoes he found, and they weren’t an exact fit, but they didn’t have to be, with how they were designed to wrap around the feet. He unbraided his hair and combed it through again, pleased with the waves the braids had caused as his hair had dried, and backtracked the path he and Elrohir had taken, recalling landmarks from the floor. By the quality of light, it was sunset.Before he got very far, he ran into Pippin, who didn’t recognise him.‘Hiee,’ Tristan said, smiling. ‘It’s Tristan.’His eyes went very big. ‘Your hair.’‘Yep. Hey, did I miss dinner?’‘No! But they only serve one, come on.’‘Only one?’ Tristan asked, following Pippin.‘They don’t serve supper or afternoon tea,’ Pippin explained, scandalised. ‘Just breakfast—and only the one!—and then luncheon—and no elevenses!—and then dinner! Only three a day, can you imagine? I hear Men don’t eat more than twice, though—is that true, or is Strider just an old cuss who never eats?’‘I eat whenever I’m hungry,’ Tristan said. ‘But three meals a day is considered ideal for us.’ So, Pippin was from a race that ate many more meals a day, and walked about in bare feet normally, and were quite small.Pippin told him a great deal about his species—Hobbits, Tristan learned they were called—and Tristan rather liked them, on the whole. Merry caught up with them at one point, and Tristan had to go through introducing himself all over again.They made it to the dining hall without seeing anyone else Tristan had met before, and Tristan paused, the hobbits going ahead of him, as he saw Legolas. But Legolas looked up at him, and offered a smile, coming over to him.‘I want to apologise for my speech, earlier today. It was from vanity, and unkind of me. May we begin again?’‘I will if you will,’ Tristan said, and Legolas gave a little nod.‘I am Legolas Greenleaf, son of King Thranduil and Prince of the Greenwood.’‘I’m Tristan.’‘Will you come sit with us?’‘Sure,’ Tristan said, and followed him. ‘Hi boys,’ he said to the twins. Elrohir blushed again, which marked him out from his brother, who still frowned, which made him look more like his father. ‘Where’s Arwen?’‘With Estel,’ Elladan said, the way he said it made Tristan think Estel was her boyfriend.‘Mahal’s beard! What trickery is this?’Tristan looked up to see the dwarves, and laughed, getting up. ‘Gimli! Glóin! Hiee! This is what I really look like!’Legolas leaned over to Elrohir. ‘Hiee?’ he murmured.‘We think it’s some kind of version of “hulloa”,’ Elrohir explained, a little sour that Tristan had gone off to pay attention to other people.Tristan was like that, everyone soon learned—he could talk to anyone, was full of compliments, and had a lilting sort of speech that was completely different from the other Men, using words completely differently, and even sounds that Men did not use, that acted as wordless emphasis. He had a loud laugh and louder feelings, and Elrohir enjoyed him as much as Arwen did. Legolas and Elladan, not so much; and Erestor agreed, finding him vulgar in his speech.‘What kind of son knows nothing of combat?’ Boromir was asking, presently, as they all lingered over the wine and sweetmeats that ended Elvish meals.‘I don’t want to get into politics,’ Tristan said, dismissing the matter in what he felt was a very final tone. But Boromir persisted.‘It is not politics, it is sense. What happens when you are attacked on the road?’‘I do not. Want to talk about this subject.’ Tristan said, much more firmly.‘But—’‘Drop it.’ Tristan said. ‘I don’t know you, you are asking very personal questions, I am not going to talk about this.’‘Boromir is right, you should learn something of arms,’ Aragorn chimed in, in a more reasonable tone.‘I will teach him,’ Elrohir said immediately, happy to spend more time with him.‘You are barely a child, yourself,’ Glorfindel began, with gentle humour. ‘I will teach him.’‘Nobody will be teaching me how to murder other people,’ Tristan said. ‘I don’t think any of you understand me. I do not use violence.’‘But—’‘I said no and I meant no!’  Tristan finally, truly raised his voice, and it echoed. ‘Look,’ he said, into the silence. ‘I don’t really care what y’all think of my manhood or lack thereof, I really don’t. I don’t care if you think I’m a fool for deciding not to use violence. I don’t care and I don’t owe you an explanation. I also don’t come in here trying to tell any of you how to live your lives, so I think it’s reasonable to ask to be given that respect.’‘You speak as though it is a belief, and not a necessity of life. I have seen over a thousand years, there has never been a time when weapons were unnecessary.’ Glorfindel tried to be reasonable.‘Nope, we’re done talking about this. Pippin, pass the salad.’‘Tristan—’‘Glorfindel,’ Arwen said in Sindarin, putting a hand on his arm. ‘Leave him be.’Still, Tristan stopped conversing with anyone, finishing his food and then silently getting up and leaving. Arwen got up some moments later.-Tristan went to his room, the only place he knew he wouldn’t be accosted, the only place he could control who came in and out. Someone had cleaned the room, but that was all. He went on his bed and had a cry. Standing up to people was something he could do, but not without consequences.Someone tapped on his door, after a few minutes. Someone who must have followed him.‘It is Arwen,’ came the voice through the door. Tristan got up and opened the door, letting her in and climbing back on the bed. He didn’t expect her to know he’d been crying; he never looked like he’d been crying, really; his face didn’t wear sadness. He shut the door behind her, and went back sit on his bed, tucking his feet beneath him. He didn’t have anything to say.‘Men—not merely Men, but men of all races—do not understand certain things.’Tristan laughed. ‘Preach it, sis.’She laughed. ‘I do like this way that you speak, though I do not understand it. It seems to bring you such joy and vibrance to do it.’‘That’s because it’s part of my culture. The tongue-popping and the snaps, the lilt, the way I use words differently? That’s all part of the code that expresses, “I’m not a man like you, I’m the other sort of man”.’‘The sort of man who doesn’t use violence?’‘In part. I reject their definition of manhood, and so do all men like me. I reject it, but I also act in a way seen as womanly as a form of… expressing that rejection. Loudly. Men are raised to be violent, heartless conquerors—this is manhood, where I’m from, beginning and end. I reject it wholly, and yet assert I am still a man even though I am not behaving like one. Does that make sense?’Arwen reflected on this, sitting on the bed beside him. ‘I have never met a woman who behaves as you do.’Tristan laughed. ‘I act like an auntie who has had four husbands, and is too old to care what people think.’Arwen smiled, thinking of Galadriel. ‘I believe I have one of those in my grandmother, though she is not so…’ she trailed off.‘Loud?’ These sidhe did seem like quiet people, almost boringly so. He smiled to let her know it wasn’t an insult. ‘I’m loud on purpose. Where I come from, there’s a lot of people that would rather I be quiet and ashamed. I refuse.’‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Surely it is not all because you will not take up arms?’ There was something else about him, something that made the Men mistrust him, though he had done nothing suspicious—quite the opposite. He had no skill in weapons, and no desire to hide. ‘I have seen that the other Men mislike you, but I do not understand what I see.’Tristan sighed. ‘It all comes down to the fact that I am also not a proper man in another way.’ He thought on this. ‘I prefer to have men as lovers, not women. I prefer to be courted. So you see, I don’t fit the usual idea of a man at all, being that I fill the role of a woman, in their view.’‘Yet, you are not a woman,’ Arwen said, nodding. ‘…I had never thought that such things were… among the Eldar, these things are not so divided. Indeed, my grandfather is more the lady of Lothlorien, than is my grandmother, in his duties. It is he who enjoys most the running of things, and the entertainment of guests. It is he who stays home when she travels, and she is the warrior.’‘Well, there you go then. Men aren’t allowed to do that, is the thing.’‘Estel has never begrudged me taking up arms,’ Arwen said, frowning. ‘Yet he mislikes you for this?’‘Well,’ Tristan said, hugging his knees. ‘That’s all to do with the gender hierarchy. Women and womanly things are lesser than men and manly things. So a woman taking up manly things might seem more acceptable to him, because it makes you better than other women, because it makes you a little more like a man. But I go the other way, I seem to be choosing lesser things, and making myself weaker.’‘You think so?’‘I know so, honey. I’m a scholar of this subject. Granted, I can’t say how gender politics work among other races, but the way the Men here act isn’t different at all from the way they are where I’m from.’ Albeit with a touch more honour.‘But that is ill and unjust, to treat you so.’Tristan shrugged. ‘It is what it is, princess.’‘I am no princess,’ Arwen said, blushing and giggling.‘You sure, princess?’ he teased, making her giggle harder. There was a knocking on the door, hard, that startled them both—Tristan more than Arwen.‘Muinthel!’ came the voice of one of the twins—it was angry, so Tristan guessed it was Elladan, not Elrohir. Arwen sighed, putting a hand on Tristan’s shoulder.‘I have learned much wisdom from you, Tristan. You are truly wise beyond your years.’ She opened the door. ‘Elladan, you need not pound the door down and frighten our guest!’ she spoke in Westron on purpose, but Elladan spoke Sindarin back to her.‘You should not be in his room, Arwen!’‘Elladan, you need not guard my virtue from him, he is not interested.’‘He is a man, Arwen,’ Elladan began, with the kind of world-weariness that elder siblings affected around their younger.‘He prefers the suit of men, Elladan, as I do. I am safe with him as I would be e’en with one of my sisters. Leave him be, you have all used him terribly, this evening. I am ashamed of you. Does Ada need me for anything?’‘…No,’ Elladan said, scowling.‘Did Estel send you?’‘…You think I would not come on my own?’‘I think Elrohir would try to convince you otherwise, and that Estel would fan this outrage.’ Arwen said, raising a brow. ‘Tristan is like Grandfather, Elladan. Try to understand.’Elladan frowned, thoughtful. ‘Even Grandfather knows how to fight.’‘But Men like him do not,’ Arwen said, understanding now how Tristan could become so frustrated. ‘He chooses to lay down arms, as I choose to take them up.’Elladan sighed. ‘...And he prefers the suit of his own sex, truly?’ He thought of Elrohir, who could not hide anything from Elladan, yet was trying to hide how tenderly he felt for this Man. If Tristan yet preferred a male suitor, it was all the more dangerous--or less, depending on your point of view.It was not unheard of, among the Eldar, for such things to be so; it was not even rare. Yet Men were much more physical in their love, and bred much more frequently with their mates. Two Eldar did not need to procreate, though it pleased them as it pleased all life; but Men were different. The culture of Men was built all around family lineage, as was the culture of Dwarrows, and (Elladan was learning) even Hobbits. Two men could not procreate. ‘Is this what the Men know? Did he tell them by his strange ways?’‘He acts not so strange, if you are a Man. It is only strange to us, for we have not met many female Men, have we?’‘Well… no,’ Elladan conceded. ‘The Hobbits and the Dwarrows did not seem to find him strange,’ he added, as an afterthought.Tristan opened the door. ‘scuse me,’ he murmured, sliding past them and going down the hall without further speaking to them.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Gandalf had not yet met the stranger, though he had heard much about him from Merry and Pippin. Elrond had not yet seen much of him, and so Gandalf decided it was high time he did talk to this strange Man, and learn what could be learnt.It was not difficult to find the lad, his hair was like a beacon unto itself, shining as bright as the petals of a pink in the sunlight, as he sat dangling his feet in the river. He had found a blank book somewhere, and was drawing in it with coloured chalks.Tristan looked up at the wizard, and raised a brow that was painted (to match his hair, even), and very thin. He did not say anything.‘I often find,’ said Gandalf, ‘that the song of a river is very soothing, after an argument.’ He saw that Tristan was drawing a face. ‘Might I ask what you’re drawing?’‘Makeup design,’ Tristan said. ‘Not that I can do my face, here,’ he said, a little gloomily.‘Ah, well, perhaps I can help,’ Gandalf said. ‘I am a wizard, as it happens.’‘I’m not sure how you can help,’ Tristan said doubtfully. ‘I’m pretty sure nobody even knows what foundation is, other than something you build a house on.’‘And very few people know what salt peter is, yet I do make fireworks out of it.’‘I know what salt peter is,’ Tristan said, a spark of interest in his eyes. ‘My brother, Lance, makes fireworks.’‘Does he, now?’‘Yeah, he does a birthday show for me every year, it’s so sweet. He makes them all by hand in his workshop. For my birthday this year, he did a show that was all pink.’ He laughed, thinking of his brother Lance, who was named after a knight and tried to live up to it (and did); his brother Lance, who got so upset when he learned that other boys didn’t think girls were people that he actually cried about it; his brother, who… Tristan set aside the book and the chalk, and started to cry as it really hit him that he didn’t know if he’d ever see Lance again. The last anyone would have ever heard from him was a selfie of his Dr Frank costume, which had been a year’s worth of work.Gandalf dared to touch Tristan on the shoulder gently, just an offer of comfort from a stranger; but Tristan took it, grieving the loss of his family in the wizard’s embrace.‘I’m all alone,’ Tristan sobbed, as Gandalf offered him a handkerchief. He blew his nose, and tucked the handkerchief away, kneeling to splash his face with the cold water of the river. ‘I’ll just have to make a new family,’ he said to himself, as he watched some ducks go by. ‘You have to understand, I’m not even from this culture. I’m… I’m going through culture shock on top of everything else.’‘I understand,’ Gandalf said, and meant it. When he had first come to this place, he had also felt alone, and had not understood people, and they had not understood him either. ‘But I hear that you have become friends with some Hobbits, and the Dwarrows speak of you highly.’‘They do? The Dwarrows I mean—those are the dwarves, right?’‘Yes.’‘The sidhe don’t seem to like me very much.’‘Sidhe?’ Gandalf had never heard the word before. ‘What tongue is that?’‘Irish Gaelic. It means the noble fae. Or—wait,’ he murmured, trying to remember. ‘What did Arwen say they were… El… Eldar? Is that it?’‘Yes. Men usually call them Elves.’‘But that’s not what they call themselves, so I’ll call them Eldar. It matters,’ he said. ‘You call people what they call themselves.’Gandalf reflected that Tristan was, as Merry and Glóin had confided to him separately, very determined to understand that people were not all alike, and did not all have the same customs. But Tristan also had referred to ‘his people’, as though they were separate from Men, repeatedly. Gandalf wondered that that.‘And what do your people call themselves?’ he asked, genuinely curious.‘Queer. Boys who only like boys, girls who only like girls, people who like more than one sex, people who want to change sexes or have no sex. I suppose I should say “humans”, because we don’t have any other races where I’m from. I just explained all this to Arwen, I think she’s better equipped to translate it for you, and my limit on educating people about this is one lecture per week unless I get paid for it.’-Tristan found that, no matter where he was now, food found its way to him. Chaos at the dinner-table must have made Lord Elrond not want him there; but Tristan was grateful not to have the stress of it, himself. And the food was very good, plenty of fresh salad despite the weather, and there were little apple-berry turnovers that were mouth-wateringly good. Tristan made sure to stop someone and ask for more of them. If he was stuck in a place without central heating or synthetic fabric, he was going to need to gain some weight.He made the mistake of explaining the basics of calories to Elrohir, after the Elf asked after this sentiment, and food was piled on him from then on. It was really quite wonderful—salads of cress and butter lettuce and paper-thin sliced onions and shreds of carrot; chicken seasoned with plenty of rosemary, thyme, parsley, sage, lavender and something else; and venison with thick, rich sauce; beautiful fresh bread that was crusty outside and soft in the middle; lots of fresh, raw milk (Tristan had never had the luxury of milk that had not been processed, and knew he could never go back to it); and sweets. Mountains of turnovers, and scones with currants in them, and then—ah, then, Tristan got into the kitchen.He pulled aside Gimli and asked if there was anyone who had wire among them, strong enough to hold its shape, but springy. Someone did, and Tristan showed them drawings of tools he wanted. The Dwarrows were happy to have work to do, it was a trying time for a Dwarf to visit Rivendell even in the best of times, and these were not the best of times. Soon, Tristan had an array of whisks, a pastry blender, and even tips for icing bags, and he started in on an art he had learnt before his discovery of makeup: cake.He showed them how to whip things, and asked if they had any sugar. They had sugar, but knew little of how to really use it. It was, apparently, just something they used like salt.‘Oh honey,’ Tristan said, grinning as they showed him. ‘Oh honey, I am gonna show you what you do with sugar.’He started in on the cake. Flour, sugar, milk, butter, luckily they knew what bicarbonate of soda was, though it was a medicine, not a food; he cut and blended and whipped, making first an angel food, even though it was difficult. Cake they knew, but not this kind. Tristan thought it was sort of charming that these apparently very ancient people were still learning wholly knew things about food from someone so young.While it was cooking, he had to figure out how to make the frosting. ‘I don’t suppose you can make this as fine as flour?’ he asked, of the sugar. There was a lot of sugar, they didn’t use it but apparently there was someone who was very fond of making sugar.‘Gandalf can,’ said one of the cooks, who had taken up to separating eggs for him with enthusiasm. Tristan had learned his name was Bastion, which Tristan kept accidentally pronouncing Bastian. He’d been the most avid student of the new baking techniques, and could whip like a fiend.‘I shall fetch him!’ Alagnis was the one that seemed to do the most running about, and Tristan had started calling her Bunny for her habit of spiriting off almost before you were done talking.‘Why do you need it thus?’‘I need butter—lots of it—and a little salt, aaaand, we need to get those berries into a purée.’ They didn’t have vanilla, so flavoured frosting was a must. By the time Gandalf was suitably fetched, Tristan was showing Andrethiel, the one who had been minding the oven, how to carefully insert a straw into the cake to check it, while Bastion was straining the thoroughly mashed berries through a cloth.‘Hiee!’ Tristan called from across the kitchen. Gandalf felt almost honoured to finally hear the strange greeting, himself. ‘Can you make a pound of powdered sugar for me, Gandalf? Pleeeease? I promise it’s for a good cause.’So he had heard from the very excited Alagnis. Gandalf leaned on his staff. ‘How fine do you mean, when you say “powder”?’‘Fine enough that you have to be careful not to inhale it. As fine as white flour.’That was very fine, indeed, and not so difficult for a wizard. Gandalf was not the sort of wizard who thought this sort of thing was a waste of his power. He was just finishing when Tristan came out, and beamed.‘Good! Thank you!’He weighed a full pound of it into a bowl with a large quantity of butter, and started in on them with one of the tools he’d asked the Dwarrows to make him. He had promised that the food he made with the tools would be first offered to them, and had been so deeply excited to make it that their curiosity had been piqued.‘I see something resembling a large cake,’ Gandalf said, perching on one of the stools around the work table, watching Tristan work.‘Yes, we’re making cloud cake,’ Tristan said, because he didn’t want to explain angels or Christianity. ‘Bastian—Bastion deserves credit for the fluff levels. Such big strong arms,’ he flirted, winking at Bastion, who didn’t quite know how to respond, but smiled at the compliment.He put those arms to use whipping the frosting, and used a long knife to slice the cake in half, sticking it back together with the frosting, before coating the entire outside, and then going back and employing one of the waxed linen cones he’d asked the kitchen Eldar to make him, snipping off the tip of the cone, putting in one of the metal tips, and then mixing more sugar into the remainder of the frosting, putting this new stiff frosting into the cone, taking up one of the tools that looked like nothing so much as a nail with a large featureless coin on the head, and starting to make roses.This ellicited a lot of what sounded like Elvish swearing, and Tristan grinned as he used another bag, with a different tip, to start making a shell border. When the cake was done, it was all only one colour of frosting, but the roses and the border were impressive enough to everyone gathered around the worktable. He made a few more roses just to show them how.‘You would be,’ Gandalf said, eyes twinkling, ‘very popular in the Shire, with skills like that.’Tristan chuckled. ‘My grandfather taught me. He was a bread baker at first, and then when he retired he started on cake decorating. He taught me how to make roses out of strawberries too, all kinds of stuff like that. He loved learning new things and then showing me when I came to visit, I used to get so excited, wondering what magic he’d do for me next. And everyone loved the beautiful things he made us to eat, of course.’-Tristan was shocked and delighted at just how well Gandalf could restore a basic makeup kit, especially once told that it was similar to the chalks Tristan was using, except with less binder and more pigment. Getting fleshtones took most of the day, but by the end of it, Tristan was pleased enough; and the Eldar had lots of tiny brushes for him to choose from, in every shape and size. The only thing missing was an eyelash curler, but Tristan didn’t tend to use those except for special occasions.He was able to put a basic face on in time for dinner, and did. He was especially pleased with how the lip-colour had turned out, and drew a tiny heart with black at the bottom corner of one eye, just for flair. He wasn’t extremely happy with the clothes they had given him, but he’d also been given sewing supplies, and had spent a lot of the past few weeks just modifying bits and pieces he’d been given, until he had a more closely-fitted look. He’d made some bias-cut pants that flared at the knee, and hugged like a second skin, with gusseting to make them fit better around the crotch, taking inspiration from his favourite dance leggings; and he’d taken in a jerkin to be more of a waistcoat. He’d also managed to find brighter colours, mostly blue, which contrasted his hair nicely. Pulling his hair back in a high queue and curling it a bit (he was glad to know people here had curling irons), he felt more like himself as he went to dessert, that evening.The cake was a definite showpiece, someone had put it on a pedestal and covered it with a glass dome (likely because they’d figured out sugar attracted bugs) and everyone was surprised when Elrond removed the dome and took a knife to it.‘Is it a cake?’ Sam said, eyes wide. He was one of the new Hobbits around the table, along with a sweet-eyed boy named Frodo.‘Tristan has made it for us,’ Elrond said, putting the first piece on a small plate and setting it before Tristan.There was enough for everyone to get a piece, and Tristan smiled at the reactions to it.‘It’s so sweet!’ Frodo said in a soft little voice.‘Oh, it’s like eating a piece of the sky,’ Elrohir sighed, perhaps a little overly dreamily. Tristan was a little concerned about how smitten Elrohir was getting, how old was this kid anyway? Was Tristan his first crush or something? Surely not, with how many hot boys there were living here….‘I want to thank the Dwarrows for making the tools I needed to create this,’ Tristan said, raising his glass to them, wanting to give credit where it was due. ‘Couldn’t have done it without them. Also Bastion, Andrethiel, everyone in the kitchens, whoever makes the sugar; and, finally Gandalf, who helping with the frosting. Group effort, boys, cheers.’Glasses were raised in toast and the health drunk to those involved. The Dwarrows were especially excited about the cake once they understood it to be something that had been made with so many different tools.-‘Wait, what?’Arwen blushed. ‘Touching another’s hair is very… it is something only lovers and family do. I know it is not so, among Men, but among us, it is so.’Tristan clenched his fist, looking away. ‘Elrohir didn’t tell me that, when I asked him to do my hair. He just… did it.’ Dammit. Dammit he didn’t know! No wonder Elrohir had been acting so weird.‘What do you mean?’ Arwen looked alarmed.‘When I first got out of the bath, I asked him if he’d braid my hair for me. I only asked because I was so tired and stressed, and didn’t want to go to bed with wet hair that wasn’t contained. He didn’t say no, he seemed really happy to do it. He didn’t tell me I was asking him to… to do the Elf equivalent of suck my cock.’Arwen blushed. ‘To do what?’‘To suck—you’ve got a boyfriend, right? Have you never seen him naked or anything?’‘No! Of course not, it is not traditional for women to see men naked, among your race. Not before the wedding.’‘But you haven’t… you haven’t seen a human man naked before?’‘No,’ she said.‘Well you can put genitalia in your mouth, and it feels good, and where I’m from a lot of people do that before having actual procreative-type intercourse. It’s considered somewhere between a kiss and intercourse. Something you don’t do without consent from all parties, something intimate, but not something that speaks of too much commitment. There’s a lot of levels of intimacy, where I’m from. I’ve sucked people off without ever seeing them again, for example.’‘Does it not hurt your heart?’‘What? No. There’s no time for me to form a connection, I’m just doing it because it’s fun, like when you, uh,’ Tristan struggled to think of an example, gave up, and returned to the point at hand. ‘Look, the point is, Elrohir didn’t tell me doing my hair meant that, and now I feel…’ Tristan paused, and realised, ‘I feel violated. He didn’t get my consent, even if I didn’t know it was sexual, and took advantage of my cultural ignorance and my exhaustion. That’s not okay and I need to talk to him and his father about this.’Arwen’s eyes welled with tears. ‘I’m sure he didn’t—Tristan, I am so sorry.’ She put a hand on his arm. ‘I am sure he didn’t mean to—’‘You don’t know that, and even if he didn’t, it doesn’t matter what he meant, it matters what he did.’She was crying, but she nodded. ‘That is true. You are still hurt, and he… he should not have said yes, ai, he should not have!’ She hugged him. ‘Ai, mellon….’‘Look let’s just… just focus on addressing this, right now.’She nodded, drying her tears hurriedly on her sleeve. ‘I shall fetch Ada and Elrohir. Would… Estel grew up among us, yet he is a Man.’‘Estel doesn’t like me, and I am nervous enough. Please, just your father and Elrohir—and not Elladan; he has enough problems with me without this. Have them go somewhere neutral—I do not want you to just bring them back here, my bedroom is my safe place and needs to stay that way. It would be best to do this somewhere neutral.’She nodded, and left at once, almost running through the halls. She knew Ada had only the day before begun talks about what to do with the Ring, and all were still trying to decide who to send upon the journey other than the Bearer and Gandalf, but this…Her mother had been so hurt. Tristan was acting brave, but to know Arwen’s brother had committed such wanton violation, even if he hadn’t… but there was no possible way, Arwen kept realising over and over, that Elrohir hadn’t known. It wasn’t that Tristan had asked to do his hair, it was that Elrohir had been asked. He should have refused. He should have. Or he should have explained! Why hadn’t he explained?‘Ada!’Elrond turned from his conference with Gandalf, immediately hearing the distress, and seeing it once he saw Arwen’s face. She’d been weeping. She was afraid. The worst of his nightmares started to rear up in the back of his mind, and he caught her as she ran into his arms.‘Arwen! Arwen, what happened?’Slowly, and through tears, she told him.‘Are you—are you certain he was telling you the truth?’Arwen looked at him in horror. ‘Ada! Why would he lie?’‘Men lie.’‘Why would he lie about this, Ada!’ Arwen couldn’t believe what she was hearing. ‘You do not know him! You did not see his face! He was frightened, Ada! I thought you would understand!’ She sniffled, trying to not start crying again, scrubbing impatiently at her face. ‘In your house, Ada!’ she said, suddenly angry. ‘In your house, your son! My brother! And you accuse your guest!’‘Elrond,’ Gandalf said, evenly. ‘You know I could tell if he were the sort to sow such accusations wantonly.’Elrond rounded on him. ‘Am I to believe my own son would do this to another? That he would—that he would so take advantage of another? I did not raise him that way!’‘Yet it is not impossible,’ Gandalf said, and Elrond knew, with a terrible sort of sickening feeling, that Gandalf was right. He knew, but he did not want to know. He did not want it to be true. His own Elrohir, having done something that put him in the category with those who had—who had hurt his Celebrian.‘Where is Tristan?’ he asked his daughter.‘In his room. He wishes you not to come there, he wants to come to a neutral place, to speak to you and Elrohir. He asked Elladan not to come, he is afraid of him.’Elrond had not heard this, before. Tristan had never shown that he had feared any of them. ‘Who else does he fear, Arwen?’‘Estel, and the Men. And you, I think.’‘Have I been so forbidding?’ Elrond murmured, mostly to himself.‘Perhaps we should meet somewhere out of the way,’ Gandalf suggested, determining that, with the state Elrond was in about this, it would be best to come along. ‘The balcony that looks out over the vale has quite a soothing effect, I’ve found, and it is very quiet.’‘I shall fetch Elrohir,’ Elrond said, his face set.-Elrohir and his brother spent much of their time together, but of late, Elrohir had been apart, and Elrond had wondered who it was he was pining for. Elladan had complained it was Tristan, but now… Elrond wondered if Elrohir had acted out of misguided love. Had Elrond been so remiss? But courtship of Men was not something he encouraged, and so had never explained. He had turned away from that part of his heritage, and had wished the same for his children.Elrohir was playing his small harp, singing of love. Elrond waited for him to stop, his heart heavy with the news he had to speak.‘Ada!’ Elrohir blushed. ‘I… I didn’t notice you.’‘Elrohir, when you were alone with Tristan, did you touch his hair?’Elrohir froze, and his flush deepened. How had Ada found out? He was certain they’d been alone… ‘I… I…’‘Tristan says you did not think to tell him of the intimacy of that act, when he asked you to do it. You did not refuse. He has found out what it meant, and the truth has made him understand you violated his trust.’Elrohir’s embarrassment turned at once to shock. ‘What,’ he breathed, at the edge of a terrible feeling. ‘Violated…?’‘He did not know what he was asking, and you know very well that Men do not view such acts the same as we do. You knew this, Elrohir. He did not.’‘Ada—’‘You will come with me,’ Elrond said, sternly and not wishing argument.-Tristan was dressed in Elven robes again, not quite feeling like else, and wanting the slight psychological advantage of being seen as one of them, because he’d already picked up on the superiority complex they had, and had a weary sort of familiarity with how to be a minority. He half-expected to be accused of tempting, and blamed, and kicked out. He’d already packed his things, though he’d left the pack in his room, on his bed.Arwen came to the door, and Tristan saw Gandalf with her. Strangely, he was relieved.‘I thought I would be of use as a mediator,’ Gandalf said kindly.‘Yeah, they listen to you,’ Tristan said, his emotional mask of pleasantry dropped.‘They will listen to you,’ Gandalf assured him, with a kind of velvet-glove-over-steel-gauntlet tone that Tristan had heard in his grandmother’s voice, before.Arwen, Tristan noticed, did not leap to agree, but offered her hand to hold. Tristan took it, and didn’t say anything else. They climbed up to a lonely balcony, and Tristan was glad of the robes, for they were warmer than the clothes he’d made himself, or maybe he was just cold because he was nervous. At least it was quiet up here, and the view of spectacular, looking over the whole valley, and looking southwest over the river, so the sunset light was visible without being in anyone’s eyes.Elrohir looked like he’d been crying harder than Arwen. Tristan wasn’t sure if that was a good sign. Elrond just looked… really angry. But in a quiet way.‘I am sorry, Tristan!’ Elrohir burst out, upon seeing him, weeping anew. He actually fell to his knees and clasped his hands. ‘I am sorry, I am sorry, I swear by Elbereth I never wished to so hurt you!’Tristan… had not expected this. He had expected to have to argue, he had expected to be blamed, he had expected to be lectured on how he should have known, and could not blame them, and had pressured Elrohir with the asking.He had not expected anyone to take him seriously.It took everything in him to not comfort Elrohir; he shouldn’t be comforted, he had still done something terribly, terribly wrong, Tristan told himself.‘But you did,’ he said, trying to keep his voice even. ‘I don’t want your sorry, I want you to tell me how you’re going to be better.’A new idea will stop someone crying when nothing else will, and Elrohir was no exception to this. He quieted, sniffling, and thought. Tristan was glad the other three were not saying anything, and letting them work this out with the safety of mediation, but not trying to help.Elrond was surprised at the mortal’s wisdom, his measured response. He spoke like a parent…Gandalf knew Tristan spoke like someone who had been hurt many times before, and had been given false tears too many of those times. Gandalf knew sorrow, and all of its forms. Tristan was a Man of more sorrows than Gandalf had ever seen in one Man, yet his wisdom was tempered with Mannish passion, not quite so cool as the wisdom of an Elf. Tristan waited with a bitter lack of expectation.‘I should have explained to you, so I will be forthright, from now on, with you.’‘With anyone,’ Tristan said, and Gandalf realised he was about to do something hurtful right before he said it.‘Tristan,’ he said. ‘Tristan, you venture close to the same cultural border that began this. Eldar fall in love once.’Tristan felt rage shake his hands, and rise in his cheeks, tremble in his chest with fire that threatened to choke him. It had only been a miscommunication. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, you people do not get to do this. I am not monogamous, I am not responsible for Elrohir’s feelings.’‘I shall do anything to make it up to you, please—please don’t—’‘It wouldn’t have mattered either way,’ Tristan said, looking at Elrohir. ‘We barely know each other, Elrohir. We aren’t even close friends. We’re from different cultures, we’re from different species, you can’t just get a crush on someone and decide you’re going to marry them.’‘I was going to court you, I just… I needed—’‘No, you don’t get to speak!’ Tristan said, furious. ‘You didn’t ask my permission for any of this!’ You didn’t tell me! You didn’t treat me like an equal and communicate with me! You just started doing things! Do you understand how many assumptions you made? You assumed I’d agree, you assumed I’d stay here, you assumed I even wanted that for my life! I don’t even know if two men being together is legal here! Where I’m from it was only recently that it stopped being a crime! You took advantage of me being vulnerable and you call that love? You need to go back to school and learn what love actually means, because that’s not love, that’s rape!’Elrohir reeled back at the word like he’d been hit. Good. Tristan had only slowly been coming to the realisation in the past few minutes, and the four-letter word needed to be said. It was horrible, he realised he was starting to cry, and the shock was starting to set in. It was all the worse for the fact that he hadn’t even known he’d been raped.Seeing his tears, Elrohir reached out, his heart breaking. ‘Tristan.’‘Get away from me,’ Tristan said, and the horror in his eyes felt worse than a knife through Elrohir’s heart. Elrohir hung his head, feeling numb with pain.‘I need—to go. I can’t—can’t—can’t stay here, any more. I have to leave. I’m sorry. I can’t—I can’t…’ Tristan was rapidly losing the ability to use words, his tears less of sorrow and more of horror and shock. He ran, not wanting to be near any of them anymore, he ran, swallowing down his urge to scream, ignoring the way his legs ached at the impact of nearly-bare feet upon the stones, ignoring the stitch in his side and the burning in his lungs. He ripped off the robes he was wearing, disgusted with them, and shaking hands pulled on his more human clothes, and he didn’t remember how he had gotten to the bridge but he was crossing it, and had gotten pretty far down the road when he stopped and just started scream-crying, sitting on a rock and getting it out.He felt better, afterward, and found a little bend of the river to splash his face, sitting by it and finally able to think more practically.He heard someone taking care to make noise, and looked up to see Estel—Strider, the others called him. For once, he wasn’t frowning at Tristan, and sat nearby.‘Arwen sent me,’ he said quietly.Tristan didn’t say anything.‘She told me what happened.’‘He should have said no,’ Tristan said, in a cold, hard voice, looking at the water. ‘I knew he had a crush on me, but I didn’t realise he’d assaulted me like that. Even if it wasn’t a boundary I knew I should have with him, he knew.’‘But he didn’t say no.’‘No, he didn’t.’‘And you did not know to be hurt. If you had never known, until you had asked him, someday beyond, and he had coloured and confessed to you his crime, would you not have felt differently?’‘No,’ Tristan said. ‘Rape is rape. Besides,’ he said, softening. ‘There would be no beyond. I never saw him the way he apparently saw me. I’m not like that.’‘Like what?’‘He’s a cute boy and I enjoyed that he thought I was attractive. I thought maybe we’d have a tumble or two, be summer lovers, and part content with the summer’s memories.’‘And such a shallow, fleeting thing would… truly be pleasant, for you?’‘Yes,’ Tristan said. ‘I don’t settle down, Estel. That’s not me. The world’s too big and I’m too young to settle down.’ He sighed. ‘I sure hope everyone’s not being told.’‘No,’ Estel said. ‘No, Lord Elrond would not allow it. He knows the hurt of unchecked gossip.’Tristan sat for a while, arms folded on his knees, head on them as he watched the water. Lancing his heart had helped him calm down, but he still felt like staying here, after this, was impossible. ‘I can’t stay here anymore,’ he said. ‘I need time to… to heal from this.’ Maybe, after, he could… but he couldn’t assume that Elrohir would wait, that anything could go back to normal. Things changed and they didn’t change back. You didn’t burn the bridge, he did. Tristan told himself sternly. He lied to you, and went on perfectly happy to maintain the lie.‘I hope next time he learns to be upfront with his lover,’ Tristan said.Estel knew enough tact to know not to say there would not be a next time. Elves did not have a next time. Yet he could not deny that Elrohir had destroyed his love before giving it a chance to grow, with his impulsiveness.‘There is a journey beginning in a little while,’ he finally said. ‘I have spoken to Lord Elrond and Gandalf, and we have agreed that you should come, if only to offer you safety on your travels away from this place.’‘Who all’s going?’ Tristan asked.‘Thus far, we have agreed upon Frodo and Sam, Gimli, Legolas, Gandalf, and myself. The other two Hobbits wish to go, but one is yet a child, and none of us feel right, allowing a child to come on so perilous a quest.’‘Okay, but, hear me out,’ Tristan said, glad to have something else to focus on. ‘There’s going to be a lot of adults, and he’s not a super young child, he’s an almost-grown child.’‘That… has been pointed out, though not nearly so calmly.’ Estel found a smile somewhere, and put it on.‘Hobbits are really social, it would be better to have them all together, or they’ll feel kind of alone. They’re a well-balanced group, together. Without Merry and Pip, Frodo gets kind of maudlin and Sam gets kind of fussy. And, shit, so would the rest of that group. We’re gonna be at each other’s throats in three days, without a couple of jokers like Merry and Pippin.’‘There is something in what you say,’ Estel said, thoughtfully. ‘Though none of us had thought of such things as disposition.’‘My man,’ Tristan said, getting to his feet. ‘You always gotta think of that, on a camping trip. We’re gonna be in each other’s pockets for weeks.’‘Months.’‘Even more reason to consider dispositions carefully,’ Tristan said, with an expansive gesture. ‘I think you need all four Hobbits, if the rest of the party is going to be as you say. And—I don’t plan on talking about what happened to me. I’d rather just move on.’‘It is a terrible situation,’ Estel said, getting to his feet. ‘I wish it had not been so.’‘It is what it is,’ Tristan said. ‘And the consequences will happen whether we want them to or not. Actions have consequences. Lying especially,’ he added. He realised a lot of his anger was old, and about the lying more than anything. ‘You know,’ he said, as they started back. ‘If he’d just told me, I would have let him touch me and none of this would have happened. I’m more angry that he lied. He didn’t even give me the chance to say yes.’‘And that is his burden to bear,’ Estel said.‘Seems a waste, him giving up on everything just because he fucked up. Everyone fucks up their first relationship. You learn better, you grow, you move on. For people who live forever, Eldar sure seem quick to give up. If I could live eleventy-million years or whatever it is, I’d use that time to learn as much as I could through experience.’Estel didn’t reply, sensing this was not something that wanted a reply. They eventually got to Gandalf, and Tristan and Estel related their conversation by the stream, regarding the composition of the party. It was agreed then, but Gandalf had a strange reaction, as he agreed—he declined to go with them, himself, saying Tristan would take his place among the Nine. He, Gandalf, would go ahead of them, and ‘look into a few other things’.So, Tristan set out with them. Legolas knew something, because he was cold with Tristan, and sang sad songs.‘Can I take a turn?’ Tristan said, when Legolas had finished, and he sensed the gloom that nobody knew the source of; bad form, you didn’t bring the mood of the group down just because you were down. He took a breath, and started on a song from his childhood, that always brought him sunlight.Cock-a-doo what a day!
The sun is shining brightly
Cock-a-doo sunny day!
Out here on the creek!Cock-a-doo stay away
You big ol’ wet ol’ rain cloud
Or I’ll crow out loud
With this voice of mine!Sun do shine!
Sun do shi-ine!
Well the sun do shine!
Well my Mama taught me how to sing
And that’s why this voice means ev’ry thing!
Sun do shine—ya better shine!
Well the sun do shine—ya better shine!
He started in on another chorus, and everyone joined in this time, with harmonies. He skipped ahead of them, dancing along. Boromir gave them next a song, and then Gimli had a song in perfect marching rhythm, and Pippin started up a Hobbiton drinking song.And Tristan sang along with them, loud and carefree. Singing like this was what he loved best, and he had so many more songs. He hadn’t really sung while in Imladris, for some reason. But now he did, and when the others had run out of songs, he and Legolas had plenty to spare. They sparred with their singing, trying to outdo one another; but nobody seemed to know what to do with the next song, as Tristan leapt up on a rock, inspired by Legolas’ sad song of the sea and determined to show them his sea he knew, the one that sparkled in the sun and slammed the shore to powder-soft white sand, and palms.Aue aue
Nuku i mua
Te manulele e tataki eAue aue
Te fenua te malie
Nae ko hakilia mo kaiga eThis time, he leapt, and danced, and gestured, knowing the words, knowing the dance that went with them, knowing the soul of the song in his blood, salt as the sea. He wept too, but differently than Legolas, for the sea.Legolas looked at him, then, and differently. ‘Where are you from? I have never heard such a tongue of Men.’‘My people are from the Sea,’ Tristan said simply. He didn’t want to talk about it anymore, so he started a new song.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

‘Hang on, hang on… who has some rope…’ Tristan started furiously digging through all the packs as soon as warning came that there was a garrison of Orcs nearby, heading straight for them. Everyone else was hurriedly talking tactics and striking camp. Tristan was helping with that, but he was also trying to find where they’d stashed a long coil of rope he swore he’d seen in their stuff.‘What are you doing?’ Boromir had had just about enough of the strange human Elrond had sent with them. ‘Get a weapon, boy! There are Orcs!’‘I know—you’re all thinking like soldiers, not civilians! My way won’t get us all killed—or worse, exposed. Now gimmie your wrists!’ Tristan hissed. In a trice he had them tied up in a line, and hurriedly changed like he was backstage in the middle of a show, revealing his tattoos for the first time as he retrieved the clothes he’d arrived in from his pack, and his shoes. He knew taking these would be worth it….Legolas made a horrified noise in his throat, but the youth just slipped into black clothes that covered less than they showed off, and slipped on a pair of boots, pulling a slender switch of leather from them.‘What the fuck,’ Pippin said, having picked up the phrase from Tristan instantly.‘I’m a player, remember?’ he said, divesting them of their weapons and hiding them in the bushes, along with the packs. ‘Let me do my job.’ He pulled back his hair, twisting it into a knot, and took up the end of the rope just as the band of Orcs came within shouting distance, their horses slowing and stopping.‘Oh! Thank Dark you’re here! My word, aren’t you all butch!’ He snapped Legolas sharply on the hip. The shock made the elf flinch more than the pain. ‘I’ve been left all alone with these naughty slave boys, and His Lugubriousness wants me to take them all the way home! Can you imagine?’ He huffed. ‘In three inch heels, I said to His Wonderful Darkness, I said, in three inch heels? I am bringing you a whole elf, I said—and I love him, you know I do, but he’s so impossible sometimes, you know?’The chatter was fast and lilting, but not nervously—it was relieved, as a housewife who needs someone to gossip with.‘Anyway, I’m so glad you came—you don’t mind, do you?’‘Oh, no,’ said the leader of the Orcs, looking them over hungrily. ‘I don’t mind at all.’‘Only we can’t touch them, you know,’ Tristan went on, lightly touching the Uruk-Hai’s arm. ‘The Dark Lord—unhallowed be His name—was ever so specific to me.’ He leaned in, whispering confidentially. ‘He’s doing His old experiments again, you know.’The Uruk-Hai considered this for some time, and looked Tristan up and down, reaching out one claw to flick the curved barbell in Tristan’s navel. He grunted in satisfaction.‘He did this?’‘Could anyone else do this, my dear brother?’ Tristan said, with a very suggestive tone. The Uruk-Hai made a thoughtful frown that said very clearly that Tristan had a very good point.‘All right, then, come along with us.’‘Oh, thank you ever so, darling!’ Tristan sang, and managed to sweet-talk the Orcs into carrying all of ‘his’ things (‘mostly nasty human food, see?’ while holding up an apple caused a great deal of recoiling in horror)‘Pity,’ said the Uruk-Hai, whose name was Thag, after they’d been walking again for some time. ‘Halflings are good eating.’‘Oh, darling, believe me,’ Tristan said, tapping his boots thoughtfully with the crop, his voice going low and his eyes burning through Legolas’ clothes, before he glanced through his lashes up at the Uruk-Hai, smiling as wickedly as a devil. ‘The things I want to do to this elf…’The Orcs all laughed, at that, even as colour rose high in Legolas’ cheeks. Tristan just kept up the chatter, seeming right at home with the nasty things Orcs talked about.But… they were safe. The Orcs believed Tristan.‘I want to invite him to Gran’s,’ Pippin said quietly, and the other Hobbits all hid laughter. They, of course, knew exactly what was going on, Hobbits being very social people, and knowing the value of what would later be called by other people ‘schmoozing’.-The pace the Orcs set wasn’t too terrible; and, now, they needn’t fear Orcs attacking, since they were being protected as valuable cargo. When they stopped to eat, Tristan had to interact with his ‘charges’, and that was where the fun really started. He made show of digging through the packs to make it look like all of it was food, using sleight-of-hand to make it appear he was getting some apples from here, some dried meat from there, some bread from over here, and flitted back and forth, feeding the Hobbits first on apples and the last of the cheese.‘And don’t try to hunger strike again, you know what happened last time,’ he said, flashing his eyes, before turning on his heel and going back to the packs.Boromir made a fuss. ‘We are not dogs to be fed by a master!’ He’d play-acted before, he wanted to see what Tristan would do. How far would he go? So far, Tristan had not been able to really show his mettle, and Boromir wanted to see him do it. If he wouldn’t spar with a sword, then Boromir would spar with play-acting.Tristan backhanded him; it wasn’t nearly so hard as to hurt, the boy wasn’t that strong, but Boromir staggered back, selling it as having been painful.‘How dare you speak to me, you filthy little mongrel! Eat what you’re given and be grateful the Master needs you hale, or I’d starve you so long you’d beg to eat raw meat from my fingers like the scavenger your race has always been!’Oh, he was good. Boromir had to fight hard not to grin at the performance, hiding his mouth with clasped hands, playing the frightened coward while secretly holding back laughter. Aragorn did not find it nearly so funny, nor did Legolas.‘I will die rather than set foot in Mordor,’ Legolas spat.‘Oh, you’ll die all right, chickadee,’ Tristan was using a very different tone on Legolas now, having picked up during his short stay with them just exactly what made Eldar squirm. He slid the crop against Legolas’ face, sensual, then down under his chin, to tilt it up. Boromir knew Legolas was strong enough to resist, but the Elf… didn’t, his face tilting up as Tristan gave a chuckle that promised all kinds of terrible things. ‘You’ll die quite a few times, I shouldn’t wonder. And when Master’s done with you, and your thighs are dripping, then, well… maybe He’ll let me have a bit of that lily. White. Ass.’ The last three words he put his face closer and closer, until it looked very much like he was about to take Legolas in a kiss—he even glanced down at Legolas’ lips, then back up. ‘But Master wants you untouched.’ He straightened up, releasing Legolas with a flourish that made a thwipping noise as he cut through the air with the crop. See? He thought, toward no one in particular. I’m capable of resisting the urge to touch someone.Gimli was last, and had time to observe the play, and its players, and decide what to do. Any dwarf in this situation would, of course, fight. But the lad’s rope-tying skills were surprisingly good, and there were knots Gimli had not known existed, in them.‘My clan’ll have yer filthy head for this, Orc!’ he snarled, because even though Tristan wasn’t as rough and had no tusks, nor pointed ears, he had the marks on his skin and the piercings, and Gimli knew how important it was to mark who was what. ‘Mark my words—’‘Consider them marked,’ Tristan interrupted smoothly, handing over Gimli’s ration with a cool indifference. ‘His Eternal Majesty of Night would love some more dwarf test subjects.’Ooh, good play, lad, using that word. That word implied whole levels of horror.The Orcs could march all night, but had also been marching all day, and had horses besides, that needed rest. Aragorn noticed they cared very well for these horses, and were astounding gentle with them, even affectionate.The Orcs built a fire for themselves, and Tristan asked for only a little help gathering material for his own, but did not ask them to help him build it. After the performance at the meal, none of the Orcs protested Tristan’s ability to mind his own slaves, especially after he spun a tale full of half-truths about how far he’d struggled along alone with them. It bought them privacy, as the horses were tethered between them.‘Well,’ Tristan said, putting another log on the fire. ‘Sterling performances, everyone. Bravo.’ He kissed his fingers and flung them outwards. ‘Beautiful, all of you.’‘So you were lying, then?’ Legolas said, still wary of this boy. And Legolas didn’t trust the inked skin, and the horrible metal through his body, and the fact that he just carried clothing like that around with him.‘Honey, what part of player don’t you understand?’ Tristan answered.‘How did you know so well to be an Orc?’‘I’ve been listening to all of you for months, silly. It’s most of what you talk about, if you hadn’t noticed.’‘When do we break free?’ Aragorn asked, and Tristan raised a brow.‘Sorry?’‘We are going to get free tonight, and kill them as they sleep?’‘And ruin all my hard work getting us an armed, Orc-proof escort to Mordor? Are you bonkers, or just suicidal?’ Tristan was greatly taken aback.‘It’s only Orc-proof because they are Orcs!’ Aragorn snarled back.
‘And?’
The Hobbits snickering did nothing to help Aragorn’s mood.‘I am not killing them in their sleep, have a modicum of patience. Fresh hell, weren’t you raised by immortal beings of infinite patience?’Aragorn scowled, but couldn’t answer back to that.‘So what is the plan, eh?’ Pippin asked, curious.‘There’s no reason we can’t go all the way to Mordor like this,’ Tristan said. ‘They’re not walking at a harsh pace, and I’m perfectly capable of going into town looking normal and getting them supplies if they need a little sweetening up.’‘With what money?’ Sam asked, in disbelief.‘Oh honey, people will hand it out, believe me.’ Tristan wasn’t about to explain further. They’d either get it or they wouldn’t. ‘Now, you boys be good, and go to sleep,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘I’ve gotta go get a little sugar from our hosts….’‘Why would they have sugar?’ Sam murmured under his breath.-Tristan wasn’t about to tell them the real plan—get them seeing Orcs as people, not monsters, and the best way to do that had stumbled across them by accident. He went up to the Orcish fire, and waved at the guard.‘Hiee!’ he lilted softly. ‘My brats are asleep.’He chuckled. ‘You’re a funny little thing, Tris. You really wanna fuck the Elf? I’ve fucked Elf before, they’re not as good as Orc.’‘You offering, handsome?’‘Not me, I’m on duty,’ he said, laughing heartier as Tristan slid his hands appreciatively over the armour on his chest. ‘Try Rako, he’s the boss’ second.’‘Not the boss?’‘Half-breeds can barely piss, poor bastards,’ he said, ‘that wizard can’t do what the Master can do. But you know that, eh?’ he said, laying a finger to his pierced nose and winking.‘The nerve of said wizard is a thing of wonder.’‘Ha! I know, eh? Big brass ones on that guy.’ He gently patted Tristan on the ass. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Rako’ll treat you right. Likes little ones like you.’Tristan cat-walked into the circle, and instead of whistles, heard bone-deep rumbles that made him think of alligators or maybe sea lions. But nobody, and this was odd (and refreshing), reached out to touch him or grab him, though all of them were twice his size. He knew the leader, the Uruk-Hai, and beside him was an Orc much tattooed, with what were obviously breasts that had been used on at least one baby, and stretchmarks from same. Tristan recalled the guard had still called Rako a ‘he’, and so prepared to do the same, insinuating himself into Rako’s lap.‘Hiya,’ he said, smiling up at him. One of those hands steadied him on Rako’s lap. ‘What’s your name, gorgeous?’Rako chuckled, the silver ring through his lip glinting in the firelight. ‘Rako,’ he said.‘Oh, good,’ Tristan said, ‘because the guard told me if I wanted a good fucking I should ask you.’‘That’s true,’ Rako said, putting a hand up to toy with one of Tristan’s nipple rings. ‘This must mean you’re not the kind that can grow a whelp inside you, yes?’‘Ah-hn. Yes,’ Tristan said, as arousal shot through him at the caress.‘The Master must have sent something like you with a guard,’ Rako went on.‘H-he did, but… there were eight of them, and only three of us. And they had elf-blades.’There were hisses, at this, from his audience.‘Damn shame,’ said Rako. ‘Well, I have a wash bowl and oil in my tent, come on.’Tristan followed him, curious, and found that the wash bowl was meant for washing hands before sex, a pitcher of water for rinsing. Tristan acted like it was normal to do this, and in fact for him, personally, it was.‘Lay down, little one. Knees and face on the ground.’Ah, so they weren’t bothering with non-genital foreplay, then, just prep and fuck. Tristan was actually of a mind that with a stranger, being straightforward was much more fun. And he liked being ordered around so calmly and matter-of-factly, the way people who knew where they and the other person existed in the power structure ordered.He wasn’t wearing anything but crotchless tights and a pair of hotpants, so it was easy to pull down the latter to his knees, which offered some very tasty partial bondage. The bedroll was actually very comfortable, given the ground was fairly soft and it was made of the stacked furs of various beasts.He wondered what Rako would make of the crotchless tights, and wiggled his ass a little, playfully, when a few moments went by with silence.‘What fresh hell are these… nets, on your legs?’‘Do you liiike theeem…’ Tristan sang gleefully. ‘Aren’t they perfectly tempting?’ He giggled.‘Is that why you’re dressed like that.’‘Yes sir!’ Tristan said happily, wiggling. ‘Please stretch my ass and fuck me, sir!’Rako chuckled, warm and pleased, and Tristan felt the cold slide of oil being dropped onto his body, sliding down the cleft of his ass, and warm hands spreading his ass cheeks, squeezing them, before Rako circled the entrance to his ass, rubbed at it, slid his thumb firmly over it and down to press at the space between anus and sac, and Tristan groaned as Rako pressed right up against his prostate, Tristan’s hands fisting as he pushed into the touch.‘Oh yes sir!’ he said, giggling. ‘Yes please!’A chuckle was his response, and Rako moved on to caress his sac, explore it, pull slightly, squeeze slightly, seeming to know how gentle to be. Tristan loved gentle, it was so teasing, such torment, to have gentle caresses.His cock was small, even for a Mannish cock, and Rako… really liked that. Tristan was soft and giggly and yet also covered in the Master’s art, pierced and inked with it, with such beautiful detail. Men that lay with them were never the soft ones, and male Men were never soft and giggly… or so clean as Tristan. He smelled like he bathed, and didn’t have any parasites. Very rare, for a Man.Rako squeezed his softness, and rubbed his sensitive parts, and heard him moan and giggle and push back into Rako’s caresses, opening up beneath him and moaning. There was no surprise, he’d done this before.‘Mmmm… I wasn’t sure if anyone was into this, when I got here…’ Tristan purred, feeling Rako’s finger slide inside him.‘Your escort didn’t?’‘Oh, they were all over each other,’ Tristan said, risking the lie. ‘Not me—unnh, please, another finger?’Rako obliged him, adding more oil. Tristan moaned, burying his face in his arms. It had been so long… he glanced at his cock, seeing the precome just streaming from it. He never wanted it to end. The desperation was delicious. But he also wanted Rako to just fuck him, too, until he was gaping and covered in oil and come and sweat and wrecked….Rako started to spread his fingers, and was rewarded with a long wail from the little one, muffled in his folded arms. He kept doing it, and the first wail quieted to adorable little grunts and huffing whimpers shaped vaguely like the word ‘yes’.Tristan’s hips were warm and flush with arousal, just how he liked, and his ass was hungry for a cock to fill it. ‘Fuck me,’ he managed, when Rako added a third finger. ‘Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me…’The low chuckle this got was too low for a human to make, was almost that rumble he’d heard when he’d walked into the fire circle, and Tristan’s cock twitched, hard enough to thump against his belly, and the fingers pulled out, something else pushing in, one of Rako’s hands on his hip, spreading the cheek of his ass wide, the other surely on his cock to direct it in, in…‘Oh fuck,’ Tristan said, and his voice had scaled down to the purr he only got when being fucked. ‘You’re huge…’‘Too big?’‘Unnnno sir. Pleasedon’tstop.’ Tristan was almost choking on drool, and didn’t care, lost in sensation. ‘Fuckmedaddy.’Daddy? Rako wondered what that meant, but kept pushing in, rumbling low and constant with every breath. Tristan was so snug, and holding so still, and Rako paused halfway in to add more oil, and then again when he was sunk in to the hilt. He thrust a few times without pulling out, and Tristan made happy little noises, pushing back eagerly, wiggling again. Rako chuckled, at that.‘You’re a treasure, little one. I’m surprised the Master let you leave home. Ready?’‘Nnnnyes! Yes please! Fuck me, fuck me hard…’Rako raised a brow. Was he sure? But… he had asked, and so Rako started, slowly at first, but going faster and harder as he found his rhythm, adding more oil, dumping the entire bottle over onto the join between his cock and the little one’s ass, fucking Tristan hard. He expected to be asked to stop, or soften back up….Tristan was muffling growly screams into his folded arms, pushing back in rhythm to match, and Rako was coming, filling him, pulling out and seeing the white run down his thighs, his hole gaping. Beautiful.Tristan was panting, eyes closed as he savoured it; he’d gone straight to the edge when he’d felt that gush of come inside him, and was panting, feeling like he was about to burst, but not able… He pushed aside Rako’s hand. ‘No,’ he said, desperate to draw it out, edge as long as possible. ‘Nono… not yet… I like to suffer for a little bit….’ He gave a weak giggle.‘Funny little thing,’ Rako said affectionately, and sat back to watch, curious. Tristan whimpered, biting his hand, panting, for a long time, his cock still flushed hard.‘…Okay,’ he said, ‘now, please, just hold my cock in your hand.’Rako did so, curious, and the little Man whimpered at how Rako’s hand completely engulfed the smallness of his cock.‘Mmnnn, now squeeze.’Rako did, and that was enough—the Man’s hips didn’t buck at all, but he came with the most gorgeous, broken little sigh, and Rako didn’t change his grip, feeling the pulses and watching Tristan’s face as every little exhale brought a new sigh.-When Tristan came back in the morning, he was weaving a little, like his legs were shaky. He caught himself on a tree and giggled.‘Are… are you well, Tristan?’ Aragorn’s mood was much improved by waking up alive, and now he was starting to realise what a difficult task lay ahead for Tristan, who was no warrior, and was surely barely twenty summers.‘Mmm.’ Tristan said, with a smile that made Aragorn choke on his morning ale. He looked with much more concern at Tristan.‘Tristan…’ he said, soft as though the man were on his deathbed. ‘Tristan, did they… hurt you?’‘What?’ Tristan blinked, and shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, realising what Aragorn was thinking. ‘No. What I did, I did of my own choice.’Legolas gasped rather overdramatically, Tristan thought, and actually snapped the ropes he’d been careful not to snap until now, rushing over and picking Tristan up, and carrying him over to lay down, almost weeping with concern. Tristan fought to sit up.‘Whoa whoa whoa everybody calm down,’ he said, starting to get scared at how the panic was starting to spread. ‘Can we just calm down and talk for a second.’‘They hurt you,’ Legolas said, careful to keep his voice down.‘They didn’t,’ Tristan hissed back. ‘I asked them to fuck me, for political reasons. Fuck’s sake, I’m not a child, Legolas!’He reared back like a startled horse, horror all over his features. ‘For… for political reasons…’ he echoed faintly.‘Yes. Fucking hell, guys, none of you have ever fucked someone casually?’‘I have,’ Merry felt he should say.‘So have I,’ Pippin added.‘There are marks on you,’ Legolas insisted.‘I like being spanked,’ Tristan said irritably, ‘if you must know.’‘I-I…’Boromir laughed despite himself, despite the idea, relieved it was obvious that Tristan had consented. While he didn’t see the appeal, it was more than clear Tristan could handle it. There was no blood anywhere, as he’d originally thought from the red stripes on his arse.Aragorn glared at Boromir, and Boromir coughed, looking away and biting his knuckles, trying to stifle it. Gimli just looked sort of… awed.‘So you… what was it like?’ Gimli finally asked.Tristan looked at him for a long time, then got very serious, and said. ‘Do you really want to know?’ quietly.‘Wouldnae asked if I didn’t.’‘It was amaaaazing,’ Tristan said dreamily. ‘He stretched me beforehand and… mmm… and when I was too wobbly to clean myself up he carried me to the river and we took a bath together….’‘That’s freezing, this time of year,’ Boromir commented.‘He was quick,’ Tristan said, ‘and there wasn’t just us, everyone helped me stay warm…’ He giggled.‘I didn’t know Orcs bathed…’ Pippin said.‘They wash hands before sex too,’ Tristan said. ‘Like I do.’‘You wash hands before you do anything,’ Sam mentioned, with an air that said clearly he thought it was a waste of water.‘And I’ve only been sick a dozen times in thirty years.’‘Sorry?’ Aragorn said, suddenly invested in the conversation again.‘I said—’‘I heard you,’ he said, ‘Thirty years? Is that—is that your age? You are thirty?’‘Yeah,’ Tristan said. ‘What, did you think I was something else?’‘You look twenty, if that.’‘Look, just because I’m not Stubbly McFive-o'clock-Shadow doesn’t mean I’m a fucking—you grew up with elves, fuckface, are you serious?’‘You do not have to use such language among us, Tristan.’Tristan rolled his eyes. ‘I do though,’ he said, ‘On account of that’s how I talk.’ He got back to his feet, ‘If we’re done discussing my sex life, I would like to get Legolas re-tied, so nobody gets suspicious.’‘You are… you are sure you are well?’ Legolas asked, as Tristan found some extra rope and tied his wrists and neck again.‘Yes, gawd, let it go.’ So, nobody had told Legolas any details. Good.‘Orcs only violate and—’‘Yeah, yeah,’ Tristan interrupted, rolling his eyes. ‘We know, Prince of the Backwoods. And yet here I am, having had consensual sex with them all night and morning. Sit with that for a while, maybe.’-The whole garrison walked for a while, and eventually Rako came to the back, where Tristan was, leading a horse that wasn’t one of the feathered dray horses the Orcs were riding. This one was a smaller horse, more like a human-sized horse. Probably rescued during a raid, Tristan thought.‘One of the Master’s treasures shouldn’t walk,’ he said shortly, and the smile they shared was warm, the smile of lovers, and when Tristan struggled to mount, the way he always did, Rako simply dismounted and picked him up, setting him gently in the saddle. He handed the lead-rope for the others, which had dropped, to Tristan.‘They didn’t try to run.’‘Well,’ Tristan said, thinking quickly, ‘Where would they go? They’re all tied together. Won’t get far.’‘Fuck you,’ Gimli snarled.‘Love you too, ginger,’ Tristan said, winking and popping his tongue. Rako chuckled, and remounted his own horse.‘I have to get back to the front, but,’ he said, and leaned over, nuzzling Tristan for just a fleeting moment, before he was trotting along the side of the marching ranks, leaving Tristan sitting there, blinking.‘Oh. Kay bye,’ he said, faintly, his heart fluttering, and squeezed his horse’s sides, clicking. He was worried the horse would know he wasn’t a horseman, and take advantage; but the horse was uncommonly sweet-tempered, and just walked. Since Tristan wasn’t asking her to do much else, and she felt like walking at exactly this pace.-The days passed like this, walking along at the same pace they already had been, only this time escorted by Orcs. Tristan was right, it did mean they didn’t have to worry about Orcs attacking them. There was regular food, which the Hobbits found greatly improving to morale; and there was uninterrupted sleep, since prisoners weren’t ever called to be on watch. It was more luxurious than if they’d been travelling unmolested.Tristan continued disappearing off to the Orcs every time they made camp, and came back in the morning dreamy and sometimes even singing to himself. His hair started being braided with bones, and then he had a fur cloak, and fur boots. They passed near a human village, and Tristan came back with fresh bread and cheese and even eggs and bacon, untying Sam so he could cook a nice hot breakfast for everyone. But he didn’t stay to eat with them, because the same Orc from before came back.-‘Tris,’ Rako said, and Tristan lit up, turning and getting to his feet and going over to purposely hug him in front of the false prisoners, Rako leaning down to kiss Tristan, and Tristan nuzzling him back afterwards. Tristan wanted to show them that Orcs were people, people that smiled and fell in love and everything.‘The Weird wants to see you,’ Rako went on.‘What? I thought you were the Weird,’ Tris said, pausing to look back at his faux-slaves. ‘Behave, or this won’t happen again,’ he said sternly.‘Yes sir,’ Frodo said meekly.‘Good boy,’ Tristan said, with a small, dark little smile, before looking back at Rako. ‘Shall we, love?’Rako smiled warmly at that little word. ‘Yes, come.’-The Weird turned out to be not an Orc, but something with eight legs that was living deep inside an old bit of the wood, in a place covered in web-covered briars surrounding a stand of old aspens. It was very dark due to the webbing pulling branches close, and it smelled like web-covered places always did, which reminded Tristan of cellars and garages. When the Spider descended, Tristan couldn’t stop smiling.‘Oh,’ he breathed, beaming. ‘Oh, you’re a drider.’The drider blinked her main eyes. ‘A what?’‘A drider, that’s—’ too late, Tristan realised he was no longer able to make up whatever he wanted about his home. The fear flitted across his face and his stomach dropped.‘So,’ Rako said, but didn’t sound surprised. ‘You aren’t from the Master, then.’Tristan didn’t dig his grave deeper by saying anything.‘Why?’ asked the drider.‘I wanted to show them Orcs are people.’The answer seemed to surprise them both.‘You did all this to yourself, for that?’ Rako asked.Tristan wanted to trust them, but even though he was sceptical about the whole Ring thing, he didn’t want to risk it.‘No,’ he said, deciding honesty about everything but the Ring would be best. ‘I did this to myself because I like decorating myself how I please.’ He didn’t want to explain his tattoos further, right now, that would only sidetrack things. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘Um, I haven’t really got anything against Orcs or anything, and I’m highly suspicious of the Eldar. It just happened that they found me first when I got here, and then this little band was going out, and I saw the opportunity to finally leave Imladris and maybe find some Orcish perspectives.’Rako and the drider listened to this, and the drider thought it over.‘All you know of us, you know from the Elves?’‘Yes ma’am. And I don’t believe them, they speak hatefully and they say “war” but they mean “holy crusade” and I do not like that nobody on their side seems to want true peace. Victory is not peace. Refusing to use diplomacy is not peace. Deciding the enemy aren’t even people is not the sort of thinking I want to be around.’‘Yet you preserved their lives.’‘Because they’re alive, so they’re capable of learning. One of them fancies he’s going to be a king someday, two are princes. They need to learn.’The drider smiled, at that. ‘Though you have never met the Master, I believe He would like you, nonetheless. You do not sully His name, and we shall aid you in this… innovative act of diplomacy. What do you need?’Tristan thought for a while, then smiled. ‘Rope. Lots and lots of…’ he hesitated. ‘Gossamer rope. A book for writing in and things to write with. A flat tablet of slate and sticks of chalk. Some mithril chain if you have it, iron if you don’t.’‘Is that all?’ she asked, smiling with all eight of her eyes. ‘You don’t want some clothes?’‘I mean, if you’re offering,’ he said. ‘I can always buy those myself from the villages.’‘If you are playing the part of a Treasure, you must look it,’ she said, and a few Spiders and small red-haired Drow came out of the shadows with the items. The paper was silk, there was a beautiful carved wooden writing desk with pens and a penknife, a slate, chalks, paper and a blank book within. It locked with a very complex key on a length of braided silk for hanging around one’s neck. The coil of rope was thin and silk and exactly what Tristan had in mind, and the chain was small and smoothly-forged mithril. But there was also a packet of clothes, a pair of boots, and other things. Fine, rich clothes in fine, rich purple and red and gold, the colour of a desert sunset. The shirt was golden silk, the hose a dark black silk, the trews were silk-lined wool in rich Tyrian purple, and the jerkin was oxblood leather, very soft, lacing at the sides with golden tapes, and with golden embroidery in strange shapes upon it, that reminded Tristan of nothing less than fractals. The boots were the same colour as the jerkin, heeled and capped at the toes and heels with brass.‘And your hair,’ said the Weird. Tristan looked at her, and asked.‘What does it mean to driders, to touch someone’s hair? How intimate a gesture is that?’She paused, ‘It is only as intimate as when Orcs or Men do it to one another. Our ears may be pointed, but we are not Eldar.’Tristan nodded, and only then did he let her touch his hair with the comb she was holding. The Weird wove his hair into complex braids, wound through with ribbon and a few beads of volcanic glass, and Tristan put on his fur cloak and the belt for his knife, and felt much warmer—and grander.‘Isn’t this… a little fancy?’ Tristan asked, when he was done putting it all on.‘Not for your role,’ Rako said. ‘And you are not like us, the cold will fell you if you do not wear at least this much.’‘It has been so long since I’ve had a boy to pamper,’ said the drider, and Tristan shivered at her tone. He very much wanted to be pampered by her.-‘Okay, kids, let’s do this properly!’ Tristan said, when he came back.‘That is very fine rope,’ Aragorn said softly. ‘Is it not weaker?’‘You just keep thinking that, fella,’ Tristan said, ‘Glad to see you feel civil today,’ he said, as a warning, and felt Aragorn stiffen, looking past him, which meant Rako had come around the bend in the path. But Aragorn was no good at acting, he couldn’t pretend to struggle while secretly cooperating; he just took the cue, like Tristan had hoped he would. Boromir fought, and the hobbits were equally theatrical; even Gimli seemed to improve his acting skills. Legolas, however, Tristan wasn’t sure about. He was deeply unpredictable, seemed suspicious that Tristan was ‘going native’, and Tristan had never gotten along with him very well anyway, finding him pompous and melodramatic even when he was being what he thought of as friendly.‘Well, Chippy?’ Tristan said, a safe distance away, holding the rope. ‘You wanna do this the easy way or the hard way?’To Tristan’s surprise, Legolas actually cowered, flicking his gaze down. He didn’t speak, holding up his hands. Tristan was a little weirded out, didn’t let his guard down, but Legolas didn’t fight at all, or suddenly bolt, letting Tristan chain him, bolt the lock, screw the post the drider had given him into the ground (it looked like an ordinary spiral-style tie-out post to him, but he didn’t know it was actually quite strange to everyone else), and just look at Legolas. He glanced at Rako.‘Give me a minute with them alone, hon.’Rako nodded, and Tristan narrowed his eyes slightly at Legolas in concern. ‘Legolas,’ he said, ‘Are you… are you all right?’‘I have been thinking on what you have sacrificed for our safety, you are braver than I, and I treated you dishonourably.’ Legolas didn’t look up at Tristan, who realised he was literally hanging his head in shame. ‘I can at least change by trying to assist you in the way that you need, from now on.’Admitting responsibility and outlining a plan of how to change for the better; Tristan appreciated both more than begging forgiveness or expressing regret. He canted his head.‘Thank you, Legolas.’‘We should come up with a plan,’ Boromir said. ‘You are clearly a man who does not need to plan, but we are no band of players who have oft travelled together, and know all the common plays to put on.’‘That’s a good point.’‘That’s chain from Erebor,’ Gimli said, he’d been staring at it for some moments. ‘I know that link-shape. Where did you get this?’‘There’s a Weird in this forest. Very old. That’s where all of this came from. Moving on, I think we need to establish what everyone can do, what they’re willing to do, and what character they can play best. Boromir, I like your stage-combat. And Gimli, being mouthy is working really well for you. Aragorn, you’re doing the stoic prince well, can you raise the disdain a bit?’‘I’m sure you can, Strider,’ Sam muttered, remembering what he’d been like early in their journey, trying to tell them how to walk about in their own country! As though they didn’t know what hills were like!‘Sam, I like the sullen thing you have going on; Frodo, you’ve got big blue eyes and look like you’re about to cry all the time, and you know that and you’re using it, and I love it. Keep it up. Merry, Pips… keep doing your thing. I like that dynamic you have. It’s solid. Legolas…’ Tristan held back a sigh. ‘Legolas, we need to talk about your acting skills. I know y’all folk don’t have theatre, but… you’re seriously telling me you never lied about anything to your parents, ever?’‘Why would I lie to my father about anything?’‘Because sometimes children do naughty things and don’t want to get in trouble,’ Tristan felt like he was explaining sugar to a cat, sometimes. It’s not like Eldar can’t lie, he thought, you’re not sidhe.Legolas was quiet for a long time. ‘Ah,’ he said finally, and actually smiled—he never smiled at Tristan. ‘I was never very good at lying. My father was never fooled. You have met Elrond?’‘Yeah?’‘My father is worse.’‘Yiiiiikes.’They’d all grown used to that word and it’s meaning, but Legolas was surprised when Tristan patted his shoulder in comfort. ‘That’s rough, buddy. Everyone should be able to lie to their parents about some things.’‘Men… value dishonesty?’Tristan thought on how to answer this; a quip about how history wasn’t true wouldn’t go over well, this wasn’t a society that had lost faith in the printed word or authority, yet. ‘You know, we only call them lies when we haven’t consented to be lied to. When we give our consent, we call them stories, and they’re the foundation of our culture. Funny, that.’Legolas frowned, but softly, thoughtfully. Distressed, a bit. ‘Eldar never tell untrue stories. Only what happened.’‘Riiight,’ Tristan said, unable to help the bitter tone to his sarcasm, all things considered. ‘Okay, well, how about you stick with this broken spirit thing. Just be quiet. You can think about whatever you want. That’s easy enough, right?’‘I have learned much in the past day. I think I would do well to observe, more than speak.’

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

They moved on, and Tristan grew better at riding with advice from Aragorn and Boromir. As they journeyed along the south side of the mountains, they eventually came to the shore of a dark, vast lake, that glowed with strange blue lights.Watering the horses—and themselves—by the water, it glittered strangely with every touch to its surface.‘Oooh,’ Tristan said, beaming. ‘Freshwater bioluminescence! I’ve never seen this outside of the warmer seas!’ He tapped ripples in the water, giggling.‘Bio… bio what?’ Frodo asked, curious. It had seemed very frightening to him, but Tristan seemed delighted.‘Bi-o-lu-mi-ne-scence,’ Tristan said, a little slower and clearer. ‘It means when a living thing produces its own light.’‘It’s not an animal, though.’‘You can’t see the animal making it, but its there. There’s all kinds of critters too small for us to see without a lot of very powerful lenses.’‘Why do they make light?’‘Oh, lots of reasons,’ Tristan said. ‘Let’s see… well, fireflies make their own light to attract a mate. The lady fireflies sit in the bushes and flash, and the gentlemen dance in the air for her and flash, for example. So that’s a way of using light to court. And then there’s fish, who use it all sorts of ways.’‘I’ve never seen a glowing fish,’ Pippin remarked.‘They live in the ocean, deep down in the dark where sun never reaches, or in the warm waters of the tropics. They’re not river or lake fi—oh hang on.’ Tristan, like all the others, had seen the eerie glow deeper in the water. ‘Do we have a friend?’ He smiled, even as the hobbits scrambled back from the shore. ‘Hi, baby,’ he cooed, as a tentacle slid through the water, curious and questing and (to Tristan) very familiar. He reached out. ‘Hieee babyyyy oh aren’t you a pretty baby…’There was, from the depths, a noise that reminded Tristan of whales, but would remind others of wolves perhaps, or something more disturbing. It only made Tristan smile wider, his eyes a little watery. As he and the tentacle reached out for one another, and finally touched, he felt a mind brush against his own, and a voice.<You aren’t hostile!>‘No I’m not hostile, babyponkin,’ Tristan cooed, feeling the suckers and seeing the tip of the arm try to blend with his skin, even as cascades of light glittered down the arm in ripples of colour. ‘What a pretty baby you are!’Something heaved beneath the water, but it wasn’t visible except in little flashes of light.<I like you. Will you stay and talk to me? I’m so lonely by myself. There’s nobody left. Mama said she’d come and take me to the ocean when I was grown, but she didn’t come back.>Tristan thought on that, gently stroking the arm of the great octopus. ‘What’s your Mama’s name, sweetie?’<She was called Sauron.>Ah, so Sauron’s gender was fluid. Interesting. ‘Oh, we know your Mama, sweetie. We’re going to see her right now, she’s very sick and far away.’<She’s sick?>‘Yes, baby, she’s been sick, that’s why she didn’t come see you.’<What’s sick?>‘Oh, sick is… when you get hurt, on the inside, all over. It takes a long time to heal sometimes.’<Will she live?>‘I think so, sweetie, I think so.’-The Orcs and the fellowship found themselves on common ground, as both parties watched Tristan talk to the tentacled, invisible thing in the water as though it were a small child instead of a terrifyingly alien beast of unknown shape and monstrous size.And then, quite suddenly, it appeared. The horses backed up, making nervous sounds, but not frightened, not yet.‘Oh look at you. Aren’t you gorgeous,’ Tristan said throatily. This was an octopus, nothing strange or demonic about it, just a huge octopus rather the same shape of a mimic octopus, all arms and eyes, mantle not terribly prominent. It poked a pair of golden eyes from the water, and these slowly moved forward, even as the arms blended into the sand.<I like you.>Tristan felt the strange feeling that the octopus was somehow not just shapeshifting the normal way an octopus did—it was shrinking, if he was not very much mistaken, and crawling into his arms, wet and strange and wonderful.‘What are you doing, you wonderful baby?’ Tristan asked, alarmed but also delighted.<I’m the most like Mama! I can do Mama things better than anybody!>‘Hey, uh, Thag?’ Tristan called, ‘I think we have a new mission, my dude.’Thag didn’t say anything, waiting for Tristan to finish.‘So, this baby child,’ Tristan said, not moving until he felt like the octopus was secure, ‘needs to go home. To Mordor. He spawned in this pool, but he’s grown now, and he needs to go home.’‘To the Sea.’‘Yep.’‘…There is a lot of land between here and there.’‘Yep,’ Tristan said, in a slightly different tone. ‘Don’tcha wish we had a wizard right about now, eh?’ He waited patiently. Thag took a while, but he always got there.‘…We do have a wizard.’‘Do we?’ Tristan said, doing a very good job of acting surprised.‘Yes. Inside the mountain.’At this, Gimli perked up, narrowing his eyes. ‘In Khazad-dûm? What foul Orcish things have you been doing to the great kingdom of Khazad-dûm?’By now, Tristan understood the Orcs expected Gimli to be mouthy, and tolerated it, even seemed to enjoy bantering back and forth with him. Drwarrows and Orcs, Tristan was learning by observation, had been enemies so long that they had sort of become frenemies, at this point in their history.‘They lived in Moria while it was not anything,’ Rako said, ‘when it was empty.’‘It has always belonged to Dwarrowdom!’‘Empty spaces are filled,’ Rako said, with the air of a saying. ‘When we open the gate, the Great Queen shall know what to do. The child has eight limbs, the child is sacred to the Counting People.’The Counting People? Tristan thought on the embroidery on his jerkin, and realised… it didn’t just look like fractals, it was fractals. Drow? Drow! He couldn’t help the way he’d started beaming. ‘Oh—oh,’ he breathed, barely stopping himself from saying ‘oh my god’. ‘How do we open the gate?’Thag grinned, and pointed at Legolas. ‘We don’t normally use this gate. But we have an Elf slave to read the gate, now.’Tristan went over to his brats (as he’d started thinking of them), and hoped to stars that Legolas remembered he was playing a broken-spirited elf. ‘Well?’ he asked Legolas.Legolas strained the chain in his desire to get away from the thing in Tristan’s arms. Tristan could see it was genuine fear, and stepped back.‘Hey, hey, sweetie,’ he said, gentling, putting aside the role because Legolas was genuinely distressed and that was not okay. ‘Sweetie, please calm down. You’re gonna hurt yourself.’ He backed up another step. ‘Honeg,’ he said, finally, having picked it up and asked Arwen and discovered it meant, essentially, ‘bro’.Legolas startled, having never heard Tristan speak Elvish before, and Tristan was glad.‘Take a deep breath for me, now.’Legolas’ eyes were wide and terrified and fixed on the octopus, but he obeyed. A little shakily, but he obeyed.‘Listen to me,’ Tristan said, and paused. ‘This is an octopus. An octopus, okay? We have these in the ocean, these are normal fish. They hide in the rocks, they eat crabs and shellfish, they have special spots in their skin that they can squeeze to change their colour, so they can blend in. They don’t have any bones, that’s why they’re kind of squishy. This is an animal, Legolas. It breathes and eats food and gets tired and feels fear, just like you. Okay? Can you understand what I am saying? This is an animal, it’s probably more scared of you than you are of it.’Tristan knew he was walking a fine line, here; but he was never willing to push someone past their limits. This whole act was very much like doing any kind of scene—consent was key, and as the dominant partner, Tristan had to make sure all of his submissive partners were respected, even if that compromised the veracity of the scene.Legolas was breathing, but Tristan could tell nothing was getting through, not really. ‘Okay…’ he said, and looked down. ‘Baby, honey, I’m gonna put you down in the water again, just until we get the gates open, okay?’<What does okay mean?>‘Okay means a lot of things, but right now it means, do you understand?’<Yes.>Tristan went into the water until it lapped his ankles, and set the octopus down. It didn’t get bigger, sitting quietly in the water but not going any deeper, yellow eyes watching, moving slightly to follow Tristan as he walked over to Legolas.‘Honeg,’ he said, ‘Sweetie, I need you to breathe.’ He knew Legolas didn’t readily get along with anyone else, and so he wasn’t sure what to do. How to calm down a panicky elf?Legolas visibly tried to calm his breathing.‘That’s good, sweetheart, that’s a good boy, that’s it…’ Tristan murmured, going into autopilot domination mode for lack of knowing what else to do. ‘Just breathe for me, you’re doing great, nice slow, deep breaths… good, good… you’re safe, honey, nobody’s going to hurt you….’The Orcs watched, especially the ones that had fucked Tristan before; they’d never seen him behave as a Master, before.Frodo moved, carefully edging closer to Legolas. The other Hobbits were all obviously leaning in that direction; but Frodo had earned shibari, by now, instead of bonds that tied him to the others. He could move freely, which was unique, because none of the others had earned that right yet. It let him cross over to Legolas, and gently touch his arm. He just touched it, quietly holding his hand there. They had all agreed not to use names, to keep anyone from being recognised, so he said instead,‘Sir Elf, I am here.’And it was so gentle it sort of broke Tristan’s heart. Frodo was just like that, though; he was as sweet as pie. Frodo got Legolas to sit down, climbed into his lap and held him. Legolas finally got his breathing somewhere near normal.Tristan just stayed quiet, not knowing if his praise was helping or not. Legolas seemed very like he was having a full on panic attack, Tristan didn’t want to make that worse, he knew what that felt like. So, instead, he just switched to praising Frodo.‘Good boy, sugar,’ Tristan said gently. Even the moonlight, Frodo tilting his head so his dark curls hid his face said enough; he blushed whenever Tristan praised him, now. ‘Stay right there.’‘Yes, sir,’ Frodo said, softly. It was the first time he’d said it. Tristan put together all the blushing in combination with a lot of other little comments Frodo made, and realised… this whole situation was actually letting people explore things that maybe they didn’t have the bravery or knowledge to explore on their own. Things like kinks. Tristan noted that for later, when he could talk to Frodo alone. He glanced back at the Orcs, at Thag.‘Okay,’ he said, ‘Thag, kra, we can’t do this right now. Not until he’s calmed down.’‘He’s sitting.’‘He’s not calm,’ Tristan said, ‘believe me, I know these things. He’s just barely out of the panic, he needs time.’Thag scowled, and threw a whip at Tristan, who caught it on instinct.‘Now, Tris.’Tristan felt the tension—the Fellowship knew he didn’t use violence, no matter what threats he made; but if he refused now, he’d undo all that work.Tristan narrowed his eyes, and tossed the whip at Thag’s feet. ‘No,’ he growled. ‘You will not tell me how to do my job.’‘I grow tired of spoiling your pets!’‘Okay first of all, chief,’ the honourific dripped sarcasm enough to be insult, ‘you have never once had to lift a single fuckdamned finger to care for these boys! I have tied them up, I have made sure they behaved, I have taken care of them, I have paid for their food and keeping with my money that I earned my-fucking-self! I took responsibility for them and I. Have been responsible. For them. This whole time.’‘Thag,’ Rako said, putting an arm on his shoulder. ‘He has the right to do as he pleases with them. We know not what the Master told him, and no right to ask what it was.’Thag tensed, but Rako was the eldest Orc, and the Weird. Still, the Uruk-Hai was not as connected to Orcish culture as a full-blooded Orc, and had been unnaturally birthed, had had no childhood to ground him.He unfurled the whip, and Tristan did a very shocking thing, then—he screamed, and ran straight at Thag, climbing up him with long nails digging in and heels scratching, and clung, working his way until he was clamped on Thag’s back, hanging off his neck and squeezing the sides of his neck with muscular thighs. He held on, even as Thag tried to throw him, he held on with his thighs and squeezed, until he’d squeezed long enough that Thag, shockingly, suddenly staggered, and went down, fighting to the last but somehow weakening, and passing out. Tristan hissed as he untangled himself, scraping himself across the gravel, scratched from the armour, and panting, terrified.‘I said no and I meant no!’ he panted, even though Thag was unconscious and could not hear him.Rako and the other Orcs were staring in shock. The Fellowship were staring in shock.‘…Rako,’ asked a younger Orc, Barashal by name, leaning forward from his place in the crowd, craning his neck to try and see the Uruk-Hai better, ‘is he dead?’‘I sure hope not,’ Tristan said, still breathless, pushing his hair out of his face with a hand.‘Nevertheless,’ Rako said, still a little stunned, but becoming more pleased by the second, ‘you defeated him in combat. You win his place.’Tristan waited for a second, to let himself process that. ‘Well, first things first—no more of this travelling in daylight bullshit. We travel at night from now on.’There was a cheer that went up, for that. Tristan gave a smile, going over to the water and letting the baby explore him as he tried to rinse his wounds, hoping there wasn’t anything nasty in the water.<You’re hurt!>‘Yes baby, I’m hurt. Nothing’s changed, everything’s fine.’ He finished, and had a drink, finding the water sweet and smooth, and splashed his face to clean off the sweat. He surveyed his new garrison. ‘Right, okay. Change of plans, boys. You no longer report to Mr White, you report to me. We’re going to Mordor and we are doing that after a full day of rest, so we can all get our sleep schedules adjusted. Congrats, you have the night off. Do whatever you want that is not going to hurt any other persons or damage any property that doesn’t belong to you, I expect you all in bed by dawn, we open the gates promptly at sundown tomorrow. Are we clear?’‘Yes sir!’‘Good,’ Tristan said, with a lazy salute. ‘Dismissed!’Most of them left, backtracking to the river, since Orcs would not bathe in still water unless they were already clean, leaving Tristan alone with the Fellowship (they had taken Thag, you see, at Rako’s direction).In the silence, Tristan started laughing. He almost got hysterical, but came up just short, sitting down in a patch of dry grass and giggling, falling onto his back and catching his breath for a few moments, grounding himself and letting the adrenaline fade.‘Mark that, hobbits,’ Boromir finally said in his hoarse voice. ‘That is how a small man takes down a larger one.’‘What, running at him screaming and clamping onto him like a stoat—no offence meant, Mr Tristan—’‘None taken,’ Tristan said, chuckling.‘Don’t think I could get my legs around an Orc’s neck,’ Pippin said.‘Legs are stronger than arms, and I needed to pinch the sides of his neck, not cut off his air,’ Tristan said. ‘I was trying to knock him out, not kill him.’‘You said you had no warrior’s training,’ Gimli said, amused.‘I don’t. I do, however, know human anatomy. Thag is half-human. I could tell he had jugular veins, so I knew I could pinch them off and knock him down. What did you expect me to do, stand there and let him whip me?’Of course, Tristan knew, even before the silence fell, that they would assume ‘non-violent’ meant also ‘no sense of self-preservation’. He sat up. ‘Legolas,’ he said, ‘Honey, check in with me please. How are you feeling? Be honest.’‘I… did you just fight the leader of the Orcs and win?’‘Ladies do not start fights,’ Tristan said, in an affectedly airy and aristocratic tone, tossing his head, ‘but they can finish them.’They all laughed, at that, understanding Tristan enough to know he often referred to himself as ‘girl’ and ‘lady’ in a joking way—they were even starting to understand a little of why, though not entirely. Yet Tristan found they understood a lot better than most people where Tristan was from.‘Truly, you are a remarkable companion,’ Aragorn said, shaking his head in wonder. ‘Every time I think we are doomed…’‘I make shit into gold?’ Tristan said, grinning. ‘Honey, that’s what I’ve been doing my whole life.’‘That was brave,’ Frodo said.‘Practical,’ Tristan said. ‘When someone has a ranged weapon, you run toward them. Fastest way to get out of range, and get you closer to disarming them.’‘Who taught you these things?’ Boromir asked.‘My mother,’ Tristan said, and there was a grim tone to his voice. ‘When I came to her and told her what sort of boy I was, she wanted me to be able to defend myself against men trying to rape or kill me for it.’It was the first he’d spoken of what things were like back home, the first he’d let on that maybe he wasn’t unfamiliar with how Men saw him.‘Surely it is not so terrible as that?’ Gimli was aghast. Dwarrows never messed about with knowing each other’s sex too much. You knew based on their name, and in Westron they all used ‘he’ because that was the pronoun that made people listen to you slightly better.‘If it weren’t, why would I be so good at it?’ Tristan said. ‘I don’t take up violence because I’ve had it used on me, and on my brothers and sisters, and I can’t stomach even knowing how to hurt someone that badly. If someone comes at me, I just want them to stop and go away. Wolves are like that. Lions are like that. Badgers are like that. Snakes are like that. Most other animals are like that. People can be like that too, if they decide to.’Tristan hadn’t meant to make a speech, and sighed, getting to his feet and going over to the doors, folding his arms and looking at the shining carvings. ‘Oy, Legs,’ he said.‘Do not call me that,’ Legolas said, but it was good-natured now, habitual response to the call, as he got up and went over to stand with Ocean, perched a little above him on a boulder. He studied the carvings for a time, and sighed. ‘This dialect is older than I am, I cannot tell what it says. We need Gandalf.’Tristan tilted his head, thinking, and then realised something. ‘Oh shit,’ he said, softly, and laughed, picking up a stone and walking up to the door. He used it to knock twice, and waited.‘What are you—’‘It’s a door,’ Tristan said.One knock answered before Legolas could argue. Tristan tilted his head, thinking.‘What—’‘Tshtshtshtsht! I’m thinking!’ Tristan hissed, waving an arm behind himself, deep in thought. ‘Two… one… two… one…’ he muttered. ‘What’s the pattern, what’s the pattern…’ He traced the embroidery of his jerkin as he thought, the textures soothing… and then had an idea. He knocked three times.The answering knock was four.‘Two, one, three, four… oh my god it is the Lucas Sequence.’ He knocked seven times, and the doors opened, things with many legs in the shadows. Legolas immediately grabbed Tristan and dragged him back toward cover. Tristan fought.‘What are you doing? That is a spider, Tristan!’‘I know!’ Tristan said, standing up and leaning on the rock Legolas had pulled him behind. ‘Hieeeee!’ he called to the chasm of yawning dark.‘You know The Sequence,’ came a low, smooth, sweet voice, from the drider emerging into the moonlight, shielding his eyes as though from the sun. ‘Have two-legged people become civilised at last?’‘Civilised!’ Legolas sputtered; Tristan put a hand over his mouth, gave him a warning look, and stood up to lean on the rock, like they were neighbours talking over a fence. The drider had a sort of little poncho on, made of crocheted gossamer. It was cute. His hair was dyed bright colours, and he was wearing makeup.‘No, just me. Weird Rakothûrzum told us we might find safe passage across the mountains through here.’‘Oh, yes,’ said the drider. ‘You’ll want to take the subway train, then.’Tristan drew back like a startled horse, silent for a few moments. The drider smiled.‘Shall I explain what a subway train is?’‘No, I know what a subway train is,’ Tristan said. ‘You have a train? Like… a train train? Runs on iron rails, powered by steam, train?’‘Well, we use steel and trapped lightning, now.’‘Trapped lightning,’ Tristan said faintly. ‘Oh my god, you use trapped lightning. I… don’t suppose the subway has a station in Mordor?’‘Oh, no, the ground is much too unstable there. But there’s a terminal in Minas Tirith. That’s a few days. Is it only the eight of you?’‘Nine?’‘Oh no, I’m afraid the Elf cannot come in. We do not allow Elves to trespass, they are too dangerous and vicious. Our children live here.’‘Understood—Legs I swear to fuck if you don’t stop being a rude brat—can he come in if he’s bound, gagged, and blindfolded?’‘Oh yes, hooding elves makes them docile enough. Though, I cannot decide this, myself. I shall have to ask my superiors.’‘Of course. Take your time. Oh, and there’s an eight-limbed fish in this pool out here, and they need to get to Mordor. Rako said you could help.’‘A fish with eight-limbs!’‘Yep. In Westron we call it “octopus”.’‘Octopus! Octopus,’ the drider repeated to himself. ‘Octopus,’ he said again, softly. ‘I shall speak with my superiors, and give you an answer tomorrow night.’The doors shut, and Tristan sank back behind the rock Legolas had pulled him behind, sighing, before getting up again, and going back to the octopus. ‘Okay, babyponkin,’ he said, ‘we’re gonna get you home. I just talked to somebody and he’s going to get you a nice way of travelling over land without drying out.’<You are kind! I love you!>A few arms squidged around Tristan’s arms, and Tristan pulled the octopus into a hug, ‘Aww, babs,’ he murmured, deeply touched. ‘What a sweet baby. I’m sure your Mama misses you so much. But you need to go to bed, okay? We leave when the light goes away tomorrow.’<Okay? Am I using the word correctly?>‘If someone ends a statement with okay, you can agree by saying okay back, yes.’<Okay!>Tristan chuckled. ‘There you go, good job sweetie!’The octopus climbed off him and back into the water, growing bigger—likely to escape whatever pikes and catfish lived in the pond. Tristan sighed, going back over to sit down. A few of the Orcs were heading back, and one of them was Barashal, who had not, previously, been terribly friendly to Tristan.‘Oy, Tris,’ he said, and Tristan looked up.‘Yeah?’‘That was really impressive, kra.’‘Awww, kra, and I only had to almost kill a dude for you to notice how impressive I am. I’m flattered.’ Tristan shot back.‘You weren’t impressive, before, kra.’‘You’re so charming, kra, I don’t know how I keep my hands off you,’ Tristan replied, and Barashal’s companions made noises that appropriately conveyed how harsh a burn that was.Tristan loved that they understood sarcasm and insult culture, and didn’t seem to need things like tongue-popping or snaps explained to them. They’d even started correctly using them, themselves. Seeing an Orc do a tongue-pop, with accompanying sass, gave Tristan life. He loved that so much of the humour he knew translated. It made them so easy to talk to.Ugûrz trotted up next, laughing, and came over. ‘Tris, Tris,’ he said, crouching. ‘You need your hair done properly for a general. I’ll do it.’‘As long as you aren’t cutting it or locking it,’ Tristan said. ‘Go for it, hunty.’ The Orcs all found this nickname very affectionate, interpreting it much differently. Tristan didn’t mind—language changed, it was a breathing, growing thing. He was willing to change it to their meaning.‘So,’ Ugûrz said, sitting down behind him and pulling out a comb, ‘tell me more about Khal Drogo.’Tristan had been recounting what he could remember of Game of Thrones for most of the journey, since they’d asked him to tell them stories of great leaders and battles, and Tristan actually knew more about tv shows than history.‘Among the Dothraki, a silver bell is tied into the hair for every enemy defeated,’ Tristan began, ‘and as long as the warrior remains undefeated, his hair is never cut. The movement of Khal Drogo’s every breath glittered with the chime of bells, and his braid fell to his knees, so mighty a warrior was he….’The other Orcs filtered in, and Tristan knew they’d catch each other up later—he appreciated not being interrupted. Tristan had never, however, told his charges any part of the story, because nobody had never really acted like they wanted him around, so he’d just walked with everyone, done his camp chores like a good trip-mate, and asked people about themselves.The Orcs asked Tristan about himself, so he told them. They asked him to sing, so he sang. They asked him to tell stories, so he told stories.‘…and then he said, “Here is your crown of gold,” in his tongue, and poured the crucible over him.’Usually, Tristan leapt about when he told stories; but Ugûrz was doing his hair, and so he had to hold still. He also got very relaxed when people did his hair, so his eyes were closed and his voice was, he knew, a bit entranced. He did not know that Legolas was pointedly looking away, colour high in his cheeks. Aragorn was also looking anywhere but at Tristan, while the others were as happy to listen as the Orcs to the tale of Khal Drogo and Daenerys’ marriage.‘Drogo knew little of Daenerys’ tongue, and she even less of his. When the last toast was toasted, and the last dance done, and they had retreated into their tent for the night, Daenerys could not help but remember all she knew of a woman’s duty, and was afraid of her husband, twice her size and so fierce a warrior. She undressed and stood before him, terrified… and he touched her cheek, as gently as a flowerpetal kissing her skin, gently wiping away her tears. And he said, “No”.’This was Tristan’s favourite part of the story. His voice was soft, and lilting, as he told of the No Scene, retelling it with tenderness he never usually felt about straight romance. He’d aged up Daenerys, of course; there was no need to do otherwise, and it was his story, now. He could change it how he wanted.He felt Ugûrz finish his hair, and then rest his head on Tristan’s shoulder, arms around him loosely as they leaned on one another. It was comfortable; and Tristan couldn’t help smiling as he kept speaking, until he finished telling how Drogo was killed, and Daenerys walked out of the pyre with three baby dragons.‘And the Dothraki said, as one…’ Tristan left an opening, wondering if they’d take it.‘Khaleesi!’ the Orcs said, and Tristan laughed as they cheered in appreciation. But he also saw most of the Fellowship cheering too, and he’d heard Frodo’s voice saying ‘khaleesi’, too.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Tristan slept beside Rako that day, and the Orc woke him up with gentle nuzzling, and a low rumble he knew Tristan liked.‘Tris,’ he murmured. ‘Wake up, little one.’Tristan giggled as he woke up, and they spent some time just nuzzling and cooing to one another, Rako making sure to offer Tristan water, knowing his human lover got much thirstier in the night than did an Orc.After he was done, Tristan said, quietly. ‘Rako, I need to ask you something pretty serious.’‘Yes?’ Rako sat up too, ‘what is it?’‘The Master… Sauron…’‘Mairon,’ Rako corrected. ‘Mairon is His True Name, if you are to use it. Sauron is an insult the Eldar use.’‘Mairon,’ Tristan corrected, wondering why one of Mairon’s own children called him Sauron. ‘What were things like, when he was in power?’‘He could protect us,’ Rako said, ‘it was never good—the other peoples hated us so much they would never stop trying to destroy us—but when the Master was in power, He could protect us, He united us, gave us finer weapons and could call up mountains as our fortress walls. In my grandbearer’s time, when the Mistress was here, then we did have a short time of peace. Before the Elves came.’Tristan was beginning to understand. ‘And… she was a powerful mage, the Mistress was?’‘Oh yes, very powerful. More than a wizard. The Mistress is a god, you understand. She told us She came from the night sky, where all gods come from.’Aliens? Aliens who could terraform? Tristan set that aside to wonder at later. It would explain why there were so many humanoid races here, when it didn’t make evological sense. ‘Uh-huh,’ he said, encouragingly. ‘And who is this Mistress?’‘Ah,’ Rako said. ‘I should tell you the story properly.‘The Master is the Dark, and the Mistress, the Fire. The Mistress scorches the land, and the Master brings forth life inside of Himself, and births all things that live in the dark. He created dragons, He created us, and He created all manner of other things. But He did not create the Spidren. Their own goddess made them. She was respected by them, and in their tales, it is our Master and Mistress who taught her how to feel pleasure. But that is not a tale for me to tell,’ he said.‘I see,’ Tristan said, and liked Orcs more and more. He bit his lip, and said, ‘Rako, what I’m going to tell you, it can’t leave this tent. I need to know about the rings, do you know anything about rings?’‘We know,’ Rako said. ‘The little one, Sugar, carries it. The Master knows, for the ring has a little piece of Him inside it, and so it is part of Him.’Tristan was relieved. ‘So you know why they’re going to Mordor, then?’‘Yes. It is well. Better this way, than to have Mr White know. He has become his own side. Elders of us do not like that he has begun playing that he is equal to Master, or better than.’ Rako frowned. ‘I hate him, to be honest.’ ‘To be honest’ was a phrase he’d picked up from Tristan. It was very useful, especially the way Tristan used it. ‘He said he would help, but he did not bother to learn anything of our ways, he just started treating us like slaves.’Tristan was growling, Rako realised, a low, Mannish growl, but a growl nonetheless. ‘So,’ Tristan said, nodding outside the tent, where the Fellowship were sleeping in one of their own, ‘they think they’re hiding it. This is ridiculous, but they… think you’re evil. They won’t hear anything else.’‘Perhaps not the Elves.’‘Ah, you noticed the flat-ear.’Rako chuckled. ‘Good way of putting it. But yes, the black-haired Man acts more Elf than Man, he must have been fostered by them. The straw-haired one, now, that is a Gondor Man. And the Elf is a Mirkwood Elf, the Weird of the Wood told me that much. The halflings are halflings—they only ever come from one place.’‘And the dwarf?’ Tristan prompted. Rako snorted.‘He knows as well as I do what we’re about to see.’Tristan was surprised to hear that; but also excited. He’d always liked Gimli, and he’d started to get very excited about a mysterious city in the Underdark full of driders that had a subway train and electricity. He dressed, and was happy to have Rako help him with lacings and such.‘Does Moria have hot water?’‘They have it in pipes,’ said Rako, grinning. ‘They have soaking pools, it will be good for the men, to have a full bath.’Tristan moaned happily in anticipation, leaning against Rako. ‘Hot running water, oh my stars,’ he said weakly. Those who have been on long camping trips may know well how Tristan was feeling.‘Yes, and fresh food. It is never winter, in Moria.’-The doors opened at full dark, and not a minute later, and a larger, older drider, wearing much more elaborate clothes, and flanked by four two-legged guards with mixed Spidren and Elven features, came out. Tristan was there to meet them. Legolas was not blindfolded, or gagged, but he was chained. Even with all the convincing Tristan had tried, Legolas had refused.‘Evening, ma’am,’ Tristan said, hoping he was right. ‘I’m Tris, this is my garrison, these are my prisoners, this is an octopus. We all need to get to Mordor, please.’‘So we have heard,’ said she. ‘Tris. I see you have met my sister in the wood hence.’ She smiled. ‘That is her needlework on your jerkin.’‘Yes ma’am. She said it had been a long time since she’d had a boy to pamper, and gave me all these nice things.’‘How like Ilorek,’ said the drider, chuckling. ‘The two elves must be hooded.’‘We were told, ma’am. We actually don’t have any hoods, is the thing.’‘Ah, that is forgivable.’ She moved her legs, and passed a ribbon of gossamer up to her hands. ‘Come here, boy,’ she said to Aragorn sternly. Aragorn looked to Tristan.‘Go on, you heard her,’ Tristan said, ‘She’s not gonna hurt you.’‘We are so honoured to finally have Hobbit visitors,’ said the drider, as she gently wrapped layer after layer of stretchy, soft gossamer over Aragorn’s eyes.‘Zat so?’ Tristan said.‘Oh, yes, there was a time, not long ago, when we all of us lived beneath the Shire. Do you know,’ she said, finishing Aragorn’s blindfold. ‘That Hobbits build with circles?’‘Oooh,’ Tristan said, supportively. ‘Chippy, come on,’ he said, and Legolas had such hatred in his eyes, it made Tristan faintly ill to look at. He spat at the drider’s feet, and said something nasty in Elvish. She said something back, in the same tongue, which shocked him.‘Ah, you have quite a prize, Tris. Do you know this one is Prince Legolas?’‘Whaaat,’ Tristan said, doing a very good job of feigning surprise. Legolas was straining his chain, and Rako was having to help Tristan keep hold of it. Unexpectedly, Gimli gave Legolas a shove forward.‘Quit whinin’, ye damned elf. It’s bloody cold out here, at least it will be warm in there. Let her blind you.’‘Daddy is going to be so pleased,’ Tristan said, allowing himself a wide, wicked smile and a pleased shiver. He’d put his high heeled boots back on, for effect, and had done his makeup and hair with a more goth-ish aesthetic, even carefully painting a tiny spiderweb under one eye. He looked like he belonged here, with the Orcs; more than that, he truly felt worthy to be their leader, now.‘Why not me?’ Boromir asked, suddenly. ‘Surely I am an enemy.’‘No,’ said the drider. ‘You are not, Boromir Finduilasson. Now, come,’ she said, leading them into the dark. As soon as the doors were shut behind them, red lights sparked to life, tracing a path through the darkness—but it was alive, the darkness, alive with the sounds of a city. There was music, and the sound of trade, and yet it was all barely lit. Compared to the wintry cold outside, it was also much warmer.‘Please stay within the lights,’ their guide said, ‘this is the Spidren end of the city, I am taking you to the Dwarrowdelf, which shall be more agreeable to you who need sight.’Tristan heard someone stumble and fall, and stopped immediately. ‘Milady,’ he said, ‘I think we need some temporary light over here.’‘Of course. Having them tied together must make it difficult. Shall I bind them separately? Perhaps each one with an Orc in your garrison?’‘Good idea. Boys, you heard the lady, and I know y’all can see better than me. I want Sugar with me.’There was a few moments where Tristan saw only faint movements, barely lit up to inches from ground level by the red lights, which reminded Tristan of nothing more or less than widely-spaced LEDs. He wondered if they were. If so, drider tech was centuries ahead of surface tech. He wondered if they’d reached space travel yet, if they had wireless communication.They got everyone sorted out, and Tristan was frustrated that this could have been easier but also couldn’t be, because he wasn’t actually on the side of destroying the Ring or fighting his friends. As it turned out, however, the whole secret was about to be blown, for as soon as they got to the twilight part of the city, they saw Dwarrows, who recognised Gimli at once by his armour, and greeted him as friends. One, however, was dressed in rich clothing, and standing with a very small one-eyed Drow with a lot of scars down the same side as the missing eye, and the biggest Orc Tristan had ever seen, a leucistic Orc, if those blue eyes were indicative of anything.Rako put a hand on Tristan’s shoulder.‘Azog,’ he said, ‘Thorin, One-Eye, this is Tristan. He defeated Thag—not our Thag, Uruk-Hai Thag—in single combat. He’s our pack leader now. Tris, the leaders of the People’s Union of Middle-Earth.’‘Union, I like that word,’ Tristan said immediately, coming forward and bowing to them as best he could with only theatrical training. ‘I guess the jig is up, from how Gimli is mysteriously not tied up anymore.’Gimli grinned at him.‘The Dwarrows and Orcs are… allied?’ Boromir only sounded wary, but the casual show of peace had him intrigued.‘We have common enemies,’ spoke One-Eye.‘The Shadow?’ Boromir guessed, but his tone made clear he had no faith in this guess, it was simply all he knew as enemy.‘Tchah, what does a sun-seeker know of shadow,’ One-Eye said. ‘Yet you do not attack, you listen; this is more than most would do.’‘When you have known Tristan for as long as I have, you learn that things are never as they seem,’ Boromir said softly.‘Aye, this is well and good, but can we discuss this over dinner?’ Pippin spoke up from where he was on Ugûrz’s back.‘You’ve Hobbits with you,’ Thorin said, chuckling.‘Bilbo’s kinfolk, Sire,’ Gimli was quick to say. This had quite an effect on the trio, they all exchanged glances, and One-Eye looked anew at Frodo; she was only a head taller than him.‘…Frodo?’ she said, softly. He drew back a little, startled.‘How do you know my name?’She was beaming at him, and made a happy giggle, bouncing. ‘I remember when you were small! Oh, Mr Upstairs was always so happy when you came to see him! Come!’ she held out her hand. ‘Come come come! We have such wonderful mushrooms here, you shall love what we can do with them now…. Come along, whelps, give me the Hobbits, they’re my neighbours, I know what they need….’To Tristan’s surprise, his Orcs obeyed her without question. He didn’t mind, but he… sort of did. ‘Hang on, hang on,’ he said. ‘Their safety is my responsibility. I don’t know you, I don’t know enough about you to feel responsible just passing them off to you.’‘We’ll catch up to them, Tris,’ Rako said. ‘I’ll explain in the baths. Not here. Not in front of those two.’‘Thranduil’s boy, isn’t this?’ Thorin said to Azog.‘I’d know that stench anywhere,’ Azog said.‘Cells, then.’‘No,’ Tristan said, putting his foot down. ‘No, they won’t do anything but stew in their own hatred, if you just lock them up. Let them listen. Let them learn. That’s what I’ve been making them do this whole time. It’s why I brought them here. They’re princes. They need to learn if you expect them to not become their fathers.’‘Traitor!’ Aragorn snarled, straining at his bonds in earnest, along with Boromir. ‘Tristan, how can you ally with these people? How?’ There was true hurt in his voice, and Tristan hated hearing that more than the anger. ‘How could you lie to us, after what—’The drider had been busily gagging Legolas, who had gone oddly quiet, and quickly set upon Aragorn’s mouth, stopping him before he could spill that secret in fury.‘I heard the way your precious free peoples talked about their enemies,’ Tristan said to Aragorn, in reply. ‘I heard the way you spoke casually of killing off an entire race of people—people, Estel. People who have children, and lives, and culture. But none of that matters to you, does it? The People of the Night are just faceless things, to Eldar. Yet you call them evil.’ He let the hatred show, the bile he’d swallowed while listening to the way the Eldar in Imladris talked, listening to the way all of them had talked about Orcs. ‘I know exactly what kind of people the Eldar are, we have them where I come from. Conquerors. Imperialists. Empires. Ours took over the entire globe, slaughtered millions of people, extinguished thousands of cultures.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Like that. Including some of my ancestors, Estel.‘So you’re going to follow me around, and you’re all going to listen, while the monsters and the enemy sit around you and continue to live their lives, and laugh with their friends, and sing with their children, and you will witness their personhood. And if you decide to keep slaughtering them, at least I will know that I’ve made you a murderer, rather than a warrior. And you’ll go to your grave knowing that you took mothers from babies, took fathers from wives, took brothers from friends. You’ll know, because you’ll remember your time here. And nothing will erase that memory.’Aragorn’s jaw was tense, and he was shaking with fury, but there was truly nothing he could say to that, and everyone knew it. Already, he had begun knowing the Orcs’ names, their personalities. It had not set well with him, to hear them offer words of care and affection to one another, to show that they were more than bodies that wielded weapons.Boromir was of a different mind. He, too, had been overhearing the Orcs; and he, too, had seen Tristan falling in love with the old Orc that attended him so affectionately, and had given him gifts. He knew Orcish enough to eavesdrop, and had heard the sounds of sex and affection and conversation, across the camp, though Tristan sequestered them as much as he could.He also understood that something had happened in Rivendell, something that had changed Tristan enough that he could no longer stay. He had heard the screaming, he had seen the tears on Arwen’s face as she had come to get Aragorn from their company. Something had happened, and it had happened between Tristan and one of Elrond’s sons, and it had not been good. Boromir could put two and two together, he was from a city; and he had no lofty opinions of Eldar, they were too distant for that. Boromir only knew people, and he only knew what people were capable of, especially when they were stronger and smarter and older than you.Yet Tristan did not treat Legolas ill, did not speak hatefully, had been most kind and soft with Legolas, concerned not only to keep him from being hurt, but concerned about whether he was afraid. He had done it for all of them, careful to drop his play-acting every day, and spend time talking with them, asking how they were feeling, if anything that day had truly been upsetting, and to praise them all for continuing to ‘keep to the script’.Tristan kept their bonds loose, and after a time, Boromir started to suspect that the Orcs were playing along, that the only reason Boromir and the others were still tied up and hobbled was because they thought they should be so; that if Boromir so chose, he might simply ask to have his hands untied, and it would be done.But none of the Fellowship had asked. Only Frodo had, one day, earned the privilege of not being bound, rope wound around his chest, over his clothes, in a web-like pattern that was a symbol, and allowed without tether or fetters. Tristan had said it was because he was the most trustworthy of them, in front of the Orcs; he had not explained it otherwise, which made Boromir think that was the truth, though Tristan was loath to admit he did not trust the rest of them.Only Tristan had treated with the Orcs as people, and he had been treated like a person in return. Boromir wondered at that. Tristan’s guise, Boromir realised, had been paper-thin. Most of it had merely been a friendly disposition and a touch of flirtation, same as he might have given any travellers.
You’re thinking like warriors, not civilians! My way won’t get us killed!
‘You shame us,’ Boromir said. ‘Rightly so. You show us lessons again and again, and we do not heed them.’ He looked down, thinking of all the Orcish lives he had ended—realising he had not thought of them as lives, before. ‘I cannot bring back to life those I killed without thought to their lives, but I can stop killing without thought.’‘You can always stop,’ Tristan said. ‘You can always do better. As long as you’re alive, you can change.’Boromir shook his head, with a rueful smile. ‘You shame us,’ he said again, ‘I would dare to say you say wiser things than Eldar.’‘Why must you dare?’ asked the drider. ‘Any person can be wise, it has naught to do with age.’‘Come,’ Azog had been watching this Man, as had the others—by now, he and Thorin needed mere glances to communicate to one another. ‘We cannot stand here talking forever.’‘Oh yes,’ Tristan said, glad for a break in tension. ‘I was promised hot running water, and I definitely want hot running water. I will suck cock for hot running water.’‘You’ll suck cock anyway, boss!’ Ugûrz called, to mutual laughter.-The baths were, indeed, amazing; the shower room was a long corridor of stalls divided by carved stone screens in mathematical fractals, with doors of beautiful coloured glass, on silent brass hinges. Each one had a number worked into the glass, and the water pressure was magnificent, the floors grooved, and feeling heated. There were plainweave towels of worn-in blue linen that were wonderfully absorbent, and even lotion for his skin. Apparently, everyone here was very into having a skin care regimen. It made sense, with how the Orcs had viewed bathing and grooming so far.Tristan rather preferred the view that grooming oneself was a good thing to be proud of, and a fun activity to enjoy doing communally or alone. Orcs groomed and bathed one another without any sexual thought to it necessarily, though it could become an act of affection or flirtation as any other act could. But it seemed to Tristan that Orcs were very much more into consent about that sort of thing, than Eldar had been.They also, and this was wonderful, because his hair was faded, offered Tristan a refresher for his pink hair. Rako had even picked the exact hue he needed, which said much about Orcish colour vision.Tristan showered, indulged in a hot wash for his hair, and then thoroughly saturated it with the cream, which was nice and thick, thick enough to hold even Tristan’s coarse curls where he wound them. He contemplated putting lotion on, but realised he wanted to soak, and it should happen after soaking.He came out of the showers to find Rako waiting for him, looking amazing all cleaned up and with his black dreadlocks tightened. Tristan hummed low in his chest, and wasn’t sure when he’d started doing that, but it was definitely because he’d been hanging around people who did it to show a very specific kind of appreciation.‘You clean up nice,’ he said, kissing his lover and pushing his face into Rako’s neck. Tristan wasn’t short, exactly; he was rather tall for a Man, even having a couple of inches on many Eldar. Orcs were simply very big, and very heavily built, and Tristan rather liked that Rako and the others made him feel small and delicate. He’d not had that luxury, much.‘Time for soaking,’ Rako said, and seized him, picking him up and carrying him, Tristan shrieking with laughter about this the whole way down the corridors of stone, with their sandpaper-smooth and grooved floors, and the perfect acoustics. When they got out of the corridor and into the actual room of pools, there were beautiful carvings around and in each one, and the water was lit, the delightful patterns of light through water sparkling all over the stone walls, revealing they really did glitter—with minerals in the stone. Azog, Barashal, Ugûrz, and a very large Orc Tristan did not know were already in the pool Rako was carrying him to. Thorin was not in the water, but sitting on the edge, on a folded bit of towel, his feet in the water. One-Eye was not present, even though it felt like she should be; Tristan wondered if she was still with the Hobbits.Rako set him down. ‘Tris,’ he said, ‘this is our Thag.’‘Hieee,’ Tristan said, climbing into the pool. ‘Aren’t you just the entire army of Mordor, damn son.’ He was huge. He was perhaps the size of Constable Bluejohn, which was the only point of reference anywhere near Thag. He patted one of Thag’s biceps admiringly, knowing by now that was perfectly all right to do. ‘Fuck you’re so butch.’Thag flexed, with a shy smile, and Tristan made a noise. ‘Why couldn’t we have you with us?’‘Because I’m afraid of Sharky,’ Thag said—without shame for being afraid, Tristan noted.‘Sharky is what we call Mr White,’ Rako said, getting into the water.‘We were just being told of the fight,’ Thorin said. ‘And the queer thing you said after you won.’Tristan had had to get used to the way people used ‘queer’ to genuinely mean ‘strange’, here; but he never lost the urge to laugh at the unintentional joke. Ugûrz, master joker that he was, had caught onto this days ago.‘Tris is a queer one, yep,’ Ugûrz said, grinning. ‘Queer as they come!’ he went on, even as Tristan splashed him, trying in vain not to laugh.‘Gimli tells me you don’t take up arms,’ Thorin went on, after patiently waiting for them to stop, ‘and so there was great shock when you engaged the Uruk-Hai captain.’‘He was telling me to beat someone for being terrified,’ Tristan said simply.‘An Elf.’‘A person,’ Tristan said firmly, staring Thorin down. ‘Okay, so Legolas was scared silly for dumb reasons, but that doesn’t matter, he was still scared and hurting. His fear was real to him, and my responsibility to him was real to me. You don’t punish people for being frightened, period.’‘He talks like a Spider,’ Azog rumbled, chuckling—a low, rolling thing, that sent shivers down Tristan’s spine, and woke his arousal.‘Do I?’ Tristan said, flattered despite knowing very little of them.‘You also know the Sequence,’ Rako added. ‘You never mentioned.’‘You never asked,’ Tristan pointed out. The way Rako had said ‘Sequence’ made him think it was some sort of religious thing. ‘Sacred to the Counting People’, they’d said of the octopus (who was now enjoying that sacredness by having lots of people to talk to). Numbers were holy? Math was holy? That was refreshing; Tristan had always thought math was wonderful, and it had been hard to exist in a social sphere where you were expected to think math was terrible and difficult.‘You didn’t kill him,’ Azog picked up the thread.‘I don’t do violence,’ Tristan said. ‘He raised a hand to me though, and I don’t let people do that, either, especially when I’m responsible for the safety of other people. I’m not a warrior, I’m here to preserve lives. If knocking somebody out makes everyone safer, I will do that. If forcing everybody to live together for a bit so they understand the other side is people, I will do that too.’‘Are you certain you aren’t one of the Spidren?’ Thorin asked, blue eyes twinkling.‘Tell me about them, I don’t really know much. We have stories about them where I’m from, and we call them Drow, but so far, the only truth to those stories seems to be that they have grey skin and some connection with spiders, and live in the Underdark.’‘Bearers rule, among them,’ Rako said. ‘They came from bands of the Wild Elves that abandoned Eldar ways, and met Spiders, and joined with them. The first of the Union of Night Peoples. This was thousands of years ago, during the time when the Eldar had not conquered everything yet. Before Orcs,’ he said. ‘But after Dwarrows, who after all are the First People, though they were struck down by Eldar gods, who wished to claim that title for Eldar.’‘Sounds on-brand for Eldar,’ Tristan commented, raising his brows in an expression that showed clearly how impressed he was with their pettiness.Thorin burst out laughing, at this; Tristan was surprised, but a little thinking made him realise the word ‘brand’ actually did mean something, even in a pre-advertising society, especially for smiths. And Dwarrows were largely smiths.‘Drow,’ Azog said, ‘That is a word the One-Eye might like. And your people call hers this?’‘My people think hers are fictional, so take the name with that in mind.’‘Once, Men so thought this of us, and of the Hobbits too,’ Azog said with a shrug.A naked cat with a collar of gossamer and a fine gold tag had come from the shadows, and now commented in a low voice, reaching out a paw and patting the water in fascination. Thorin reached over and pet it, which caused a very loud purr to start up. Barashal reached over to pet the cat also, being on its other side.‘Hi baby,’ Tristan cooed, moving slowly over. This meant he had to either tread water or sit on someone’s lap. Barashal and him looked at one another for a few moments.‘Does he have to knock you down and stand on your chest, Barashal?’ Azog said, and the chuckles told Tristan this had happened before, with somebody. So, Barashal had always been like this. And the only person small enough to stand on his chest without killing him was one of the Drow.‘Oh, I wanna hear that story,’ Tristan said, grinning. ‘Who knocked you down and stood on you?’Barashal actually pouted, which really highlighted how young he was; Tristan had always pegged him as adolescent. ‘The queen,’ he muttered.‘The queen oh my god, what!’‘Do you have to fuck him first?’ Barashal shot back at Azog, though it was a clumsy riposte. Tristan turned to slant a gaze at Azog.‘Oh fuck yes; I’ll climb you like a mountain, Daddy,’ Tristan said, forgetting the cat for the moment and eyeing Azog instead; Azog laughed, pulling him through the water and onto his lap, Tristan shrieking with a delighted giggle, tracing one of Azog’s pectorals with wet fingers and an appreciative purr.Azog was tracing over the tattoos, curious and contemplative. Barashal wasn’t wrong; this little one had come upon Rako’s garrison the way One-Eye had all those years ago, and apparently from the same place. The tattoos he wore were unlike any Azog had seen before, black and clean-lined and inricate, spirals and triangles, they looked almost like they’d been done by a Spider’s hand, though of course their eyes were never good enough to do such things.‘These mean something,’ he said.‘Yes, but mostly they just mean something to me. I don’t like explaining them,’ Tristan said. He wrote his history on his skin for himself. That he wrote it at all was all anyone else needed to see. His mother had done them, as she always did, and so only she and he knew the entire tale. Tristan felt safe, in his skin, for knowing that no matter what happened, he would have a way of remembering himself.Azog had lost most of his left arm in some catastrophic way, and right now Tristan got the feeling his prosthetic was just off, because the bit of metal sticking out of the stump was grooved in a way that meant things locked onto it. He was also holding it out of the water, leaning back on the edge of the pool with it spread alongside. Deep scars furrowed in patterns that looked purposeful but made with less tech than was here in Moria. It said that Moria was recent, for him.‘My husband did that,’ Azog said, with a sharp-toothed grin. ‘Many years ago, when we hated each other. Now he has made me many more replacements.’‘That’s fucking adorable,’ Tristan said, despite not being able to even explain why to himself. Azog laughed.‘I like you, little treasure.’‘I like what I’ve seen of the Union, and Orcs, and everything,’ Tristan said, candid. ‘Now, what are we doing about Mr White?’‘Nothing,’ Thorin grumbled, discontent, ‘we have gone over it a thousand times; but wizards are too powerful to go against.’‘The Master cautions us against it, you mean,’ Azog said, with a more easy manner. ‘He knows more than any what a wizard can do. He is of that race.’So, wizards were a race, that was interesting, Tristan thought.‘I think Tristan could find a way,’ Rako said.‘Do you?’ Azog found this counsel valuable, Rako being as old as he was, and as wise. Azog stroked Tristan the way his mate was stroking the cat, careful of Tristan’s hair. He seemed to make a decision, for he slid his hand under the water and gently squeezed Tristan’s ass. ‘Get out, little one, I want to fuck you before we eat.’‘Mmm, or you could eat me out….’ Tristan said, pushing out of the water and climbing out. He’d just showered, he was up for that….‘I could do what?’Tristan wondered if it would be taboo. ‘I just bathed. Where I’m from that’s generally when it’s safe to indulge in penetrative oral sex.’Oh, yep, yep, that was a thing nobody did, here, from the expressions. ‘Or not,’ he said, trying not to allow his embarrassment to take over his judgement of the situation.‘No, no,’ Azog said, ‘I’m curious as to how Men do this without getting sick.’‘We bathe first,’ Tristan said, then added, ‘some people bathe pretty thoroughly.’‘Ah,’ Azog said, and Tristan saw a gleam in his eyes, as he climbed out of the water, prowling, ‘Yes, the Spidren do that to their boys….’Tristan had never been sure about enemas, personally; he’d known someone who was into them as a kink rather than just additional prep for anal sex, and it seemed to him a lot better to just… like them as part of sex. The attitude about having to do them had always smacked of fearful shame, to Tristan. And ignorance. All that said, he was surprised at how much he was willing to try it out; it just showed that what you were into really depended on how it was presented.‘Do they now? Why’s that?’ Tristan asked, curious.‘Practise for eggs,’ Azog said, and picked Tristan up.Eggs? Tristan wanted to shiver at the thought. Eggs? Eggs? ‘Tell me more about eggs,’ he said, aware of how husky his voice had gotten. There was a reason he liked driders….Azog chuckled, and it echoed on the stones as he carried the Man away to ravish. Curiosity was Azog’s defining characteristic, it always had been, and Rako knew he’d get along well with Tristan in the bedroom for it.‘He’ll steal him,’ Barashal said, lightly, not meeting eyes.‘People can’t be stolen, Barashal,’ Rako said mildly.‘This is why you don’t have any lovers,’ Ugûrz said smugly. Barashal growled at him.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Boromir was in a strange position. He would not leave Aragorn and Legolas, and to his relief, neither did Gimli wish to; yet Boromir was not trusted yet, and so he found himself, along with Aragorn and Legolas handed over to a pair of twins that looked half Orc and half Elf, the height of a Man and with skin the same colour as fine slate. Both were strikingly beautiful, Boromir thought, like some statues come to life. Their eyes sparkled with green fire, and their thick red hair was shorn on one side, twisted up out of their faces.As for Gimli, he gave his word to Tristan that they would be cared for. Boromir was left as the only one who could speak to them.‘I am Esek, this is Pel. We are of the Royal House.’‘Can you lead the Elf, Boromir Finduilasson?’ Pel asked, hopefully.‘I—yes,’ Boromir said, understanding that these shadowy not-Elves, these Spidren (were the ones with two legs still Spidren?), were much afraid of Elves. Afraid, and perhaps disgusted, for the same reasons that Tristan had outlined. Boromir had never thought of it as Tristan had said it, but he was now, and it made him quiet. ‘Come, Legolas, it is only me. Where are we going?’ he asked of Pel, who was leading the way.‘To bathe, of course,’ Pel said.‘You have been a long journey with no proper necessities,’ Esek added.‘But we are prisoners, are we not?’‘We do not torture people!’ Pel said, horrified.‘We are not Elves,’ Esek added, grimly. Aragorn gave muffled protest, struggling. Boromir wondered why Legolas had not protested, nor fought. He was still awake, still breathing, but had become as a sleepwalker. Boromir recalled the first of the guards at the gate saying something about ‘hooding Elves makes them docile enough’, yet hooding was something one did to falcons, it did not have the same effect on people… did it?‘Are you going to unbind us to bathe?’ he asked.‘You, not the Elf,’ Esek said. ‘Eldar are dangerous and aggressive.’‘How will you clean his face, or his hair?’‘We do not,’ Esek said.‘It is violation to touch the hair of an Elf,’ Pel continued. ‘We do not violate people.’‘Yet we cannot unbind him, that would put our people in danger.’Aragorn made a muffled sound, and Esek, who seemed to be in charge, regarded him carefully, humming. His brother hummed back, and came forward to gently, carefully unmake the gag around Aragorn’s mouth.‘What is it you wish to say?’‘I will do it,’ Aragorn said. ‘We are as brothers, I have done it before.’‘You are Elf-raised, yourself,’ Esek said, ‘we cannot trust you with unbound hands.’‘You do not trust my honour?’‘No,’ they chorused simply.‘Honour is for people to other people,’ said Esek. ‘Elves do not see us as people worthy of their honour.’‘You are so convinced?’The twins noised in clear disbelief.‘Do not dignify such rudeness with a reply,’ Esek told his brother, before rounding on Aragorn. ‘How dare you! We are half-Orc, and half-Spidren! You dare tell us not to trust facts just because it suits you?’‘Mirkwood’s Elves more than any have harmed our sisters and aunties—and for the crime of—of breathing!’ Pel snapped, and Aragorn was shocked to hear the brittle undertone of tears in his voice.‘Hush, Pel, did I not say you needn’t answer him?’ Esek said soothingly, before addressing the Elf-Man again. ‘Or are you beginning to see us as people? Is that why you are so indignant? Is the war in your mind beginning, between what you see and what you were told all your life?’Aragorn said, after an uncomfortable pause where he realised Esek was right. ‘Perhaps that is so,’ very quietly.‘Good,’ Esek said. ‘I cannot pretend I am not angry with you, that I do not see you as a living reminder of all the suffering I have seen, even now, in those we rescue from the surface. But it is good, that you are beginning to understand.’They came to a more lit area, and their guards paused at the threshold of a stone room with more of the spirals and strange organic-not-organic patterns Boromir had seen all over this place. They were too precise to be natural, yet they felt pleasing to the eye, in their proportion. The floor was grooved and warm, and there was a small grate in the middle, that was wrought like lace. Opposite the door were two brass fixtures like pipes, but with heads upon them.Esek turned a handle by the door, and water sprayed like rain from these pipes, and steam began to rise. Both Spidren gently pushed the three into the room, and then shut the great stone door behind themselves. It closed with no noise, and no indication there had been a door to close at all—it merely looked like the wall closed up behind them.Pel went to a stone cabinet, and opened the glass door to retrieve two cakes of soap, and three small cloths of worn-in linen. Boromir could guess the rest.Esek approached Boromir first. ‘You have been peaceable, Boromir Finduilasson; I will untie you, and you will undress yourself and your companions for bathing, please. I know it is custom of Men and Elves to not be watched, but you understand we must do this violation in interest of the safety of ourselves and those we are responsible for protecting. We do not watch for any reason than signs of danger.’ And he handed Boromir a pair of scissors, and Boromir was loath to destroy his friends’ clothes, but could see no other way to undress them without unbinding them, and the people of Moria seemed set in their conviction that Aragorn and Legolas would violently attack the minute they were given such a liberty (and, heartbreakingly, Boromir could not deny this was probably so).Boromir was interested in the strange way these folk talked, explaining things like emotions and passion with such detachment and such shrewdness. He nodded to them, and undressed, a bench near what had been the door convenient to do so.‘What do you call this marvellous thing?’ Boromir asked, eyeing the rain-pipes.‘A shower-bath,’ Pel said, smiling for the first time. He looked beautiful when he smiled. ‘The Orcs invented it. It is cleaner than submerging, for the water washes away the dirt entire! It is so very refreshing, you feel new and wonderful afterward.’Boromir felt more excited simply hearing him speak so happily. ‘Water is usually so cold, yet it is warm here. And the room too. I suppose it is impossible to become ill, then.’‘Bathing frequently prevents illness,’ Esek said, as he watched Boromir like a hawk; so, Boromir wasted no more time marvelling, and gently pushed Legolas down to sit on the bench, beginning to take off his boots. It was not the first time he had seen the Elf naked; but yet it was so strange, to have him not respond.‘Legolas,’ Boromir said, ‘are you well? Surely you can make some noise?’A muzzy hum, as though he were rousing the man from sleep. Could Elves sleep while walking?‘He will not, not until he is unblinded,’ Aragorn said, from where he was still standing, waiting to be guided by his friend’s hand. ‘When I was young, I thought it a fun game to put my hands over the eyes of Elladan, once, while he had me on his shoulders. They are so creatures of light that even a moment of darkness dims their will.’‘What nonsense. They are birds, that is all,’ Esek snorted. ‘If you hood a falcon, she will think it night, and sleep, which is what birds do at night. It is nothing mysterious. A rat will sleep when she sees dawn, because of the same reason.’‘And you so blind him, and this is not torture?’‘Is it torture to a hawk?’ Esek said.‘No,’ Pel answered, ‘it calms her, else she would thrash in terror and hurt herself.’‘Come, Aragorn,’ Boromir said, standing and gently pulling him to the bench. ‘Sit, it is your turn, and then perhaps we can partake of this hospitality together.’Aragorn allowed it—how could he do else?—but he did not like it.He did have to admit, the warm water was wonderful, as was Boromir washing his hair with a strange liquid soap. He only hoped Legolas did not mind his own hair merely being wet.Boromir bathed himself last, and only after he had dried the others and sat them near one another, so that they might lean against one another in comfort. Only then did he return, himself, to wash his hair with the liquid soap, which ran down his skin as he rinsed it away. He stood in wonder beneath the warm water, marvelling, and it was wonderful to have such luxuries. Esek only turned the shower-bath off when Boromir was through, and offered him a towel.‘And how are we to get dressed again, with bound hands?’ Aragorn asked, though less sullenly than he  might have, before being clean. It did feel better. But getting undressed had been impossible, and Aragorn had heard the shearing of fabric, knowing then that his clothes were being sacrificed for it.Boromir was given silken trews to put on, and to put on his companions. They were a bright, golden yellow, and very fine—and, Boromir thought, likely of Spider-gossamer. Then were soft slippers. Boromir got a shirt, the others, short cloaks that draped around their shoulders. The gold did not suit Aragorn or Legolas at all, and Boromir wondered that it did not suit him either. But there must be some reason to put them in yellow, perhaps it was the colour to mark prisoners.They were led back to their companions, the Hobbits and the small one-eyed queen playing together in a room where one wall was taken up by shelves and shelves of books, the other looking out over the city, where little could be seen, though there was moonlight slanting from somewhere high above, and Boromir’s eyes had adjusted such that he could make out the city as well as anyone could make it out under a full moon’s light. The tiny lights of red traced paths like strange rivers, and he saw small lights of green moving in strange patterns, fast and slow, up and down, and wondered at them. They were clumped in groups, but sometimes alone, and he had started to understand they must be attached to people, when he heard Frodo’s voice.‘Those are children. They attach lights to them so they can be found, should they become lost.’Boromir began to see anew why they moved as they did—the clumps that wiggled but stayed in one location were children playing, the lone ones that moved with more purpose were likely children holding the hand of an older family member.‘They use their starlight strangely,’ Boromir said. ‘Why not light the caves entire?’‘It would hurt,’ Frodo said. ‘Their eyes are sensitive. This is enough light, even for Dwarrows.’‘I notice,’ Boromir said, turning to him. ‘You are not in yellow.’ The Hobbits were not in their own clothes, but they were in clothes more complex, with embroidery, and beading that shone softly in the low light.‘We are guests,’ Frodo said, a little abashed. ‘Apparently the stories of the fairies we were told were true—there were people under the Shire. When Thorin and my uncle Bilbo journeyed from there to the Lonely Mountain… well,’ Frodo said, trailing off. ‘To understand, you have to understand every smial, every Hobbit household, had a fairy family underneath. They would never be seen, but you knew from how the dishes you had left til morning were clean and put up, or how the washing had been taken in before the storm that started in the middle of the night, or how the dust had been dusted, and you left a little food in the lowest cellar as thanks. My uncle got gifts outright—and letters. He and his fairy corresponded, and when he left, she followed him. Her daughter is the Great Queen One-Eye.’Boromir looked over at where she was with Sam, a small light poised over a book as they talked (Frodo knew it was about gardening). Merry and Pippin were chattering at the twins and Aragorn, which seemed to be putting all of them in a better mood. Boromir saw the Queen smiling, laughing. The twins too, were playing with Merry and Pippin quite happily, though they kept their guard up.‘Surely she has a name better than “One-Eye”?’‘That is not her name,’ Frodo said. ‘But fairies never give their names to anyone. A name has power.’‘Hieee!’Everyone turned, at that, and Boromir smiled at the familiar, strange greeting. Tristan was in bright pink that fairly glowed in the low light, and was hugging everyone, except Aragorn and Legolas. He did, however, lead both to the table in the centre of the room, and sit them down with the same kindness he had always shown them.The Queen went up to Pel and Esek, and Boromir recalled they were of the Royal House, meaning they were her personal guards? Her family? It was hard to know. She climbed on the bench to stand, and they leaned down to receive kisses to the corner of their mouths, which seemed intimate but not quite the same as lovers, and they each took up position behind Legolas and Aragorn. Gimli came in next.‘Did you like your bath?’ Gimli asked Tristan, beard curling in a smile. ‘You were complaining enough about the lack.’‘You have the look of someone fresh fucked,’ the Queen said to Tristan mischievously, as both her husbands (husbands? Boromir had gotten the impression the Royal Three were married) joined them as well. Thorin stopped to kiss the Queen’s temple, and Azog picked her up and pressed their foreheads together, in a way Boromir had seen Tristan and Rako do before.‘He is insatiable,’ Azog rumbled. ‘It makes me hungry.’‘He is, a bit,’ Pippin said cheerfully, as his cousins swatted him with mock-censure.More people like the Queen—they were not Spiders, but they were not Elves, though Boromir would have thought them Elves if he hadn’t been shown every detail that said they would have found such a mistake unforgiveable—came in with trays and dishes, and they smelled of the Haradish spices from the south-east. Boromir was seated next to Aragorn, and he knew they could eat with their hands bound as they were; yet he was worried at how quiet Legolas had gotten. Usually the Elf was full of something, be it sorrow or japes or anger; to see him so quiet was unnerving.Yet on Legolas’ side was Tristan, who immediately set to gently making sure he ate—and put things on his plate that he knew Legolas liked. Boromir felt more at ease. Tristan was here.Tristan seemed far more… himself, though Boromir had never seen him be himself, not truly. He had been aggressive with Boromir and the other Men, especially the more the others had derided him for womanliness; but Boromir had never been so mean as that, though Tristan had at first baffled him. Now, however, Boromir understood better. And Tristan was laughing with their hosts, with the Hobbits, and even so, the whole time, he was gently caring for Legolas.The food was wonderful and strange, and the most flavourful Boromir had since leaving home. The city of Minas Tirith had many people in it, and many were the families of traders and merchants that had settled there from Harad, along with even a small population of Dwarrows. Thus, the food of Minas Tirith was spiced and rich and complex, even the poorest ingredients made better with spices. There was saffron rice and there were Dwarvish roast crickets, and small pies of savoury mushrooms and cheese. The meat was plentiful and the best Boromir had ever tasted, perfectly cooked and seasoned. There were fresh fruits that were sweet and should not have been in season, and even mashed sweet gourds.‘Ants and Bees? Really?’ Tristan was saying, as he popped a sugar star into his mouth. ‘That’s amazing. Do you have any of their sugar here? I still have my cake tools…’‘Oooh yes, let him make a cake!’ Pippin enthused, remembering the one he’d made before fondly.‘Yes, please!’ Frodo agreed.‘You bake?’ One-Eye asked, interested. ‘Yet Gimli says you are a player, a storyteller unparalleled, who can change his face with paint.’‘I do a lot of things,’ Tristan said. ‘I’d love to make a cake for you, but I don’t know if we have the time. We do have to get the Mordor sharpish.’‘You’ll have expected weeks of travel on foot,’ One-Eye countered. ‘The M-train cuts that down to a few days at most, you have time.’ She smiled at him.‘How about I make one on the way back,’ Tristan said.‘Very well,’ she said, hearing the iron in his tone, gentle as it was.‘How is the octopus?’‘Wondrous!’ she said. ‘We are having a compartment of the train fitted with a tank for her.’‘When will it be ready to leave?’‘Thorin?’ she said, and he took a sip of wine, before answering. Dwarrows were in charge of making the thing, even if the Spidren were helping calculate its needed strength and size.‘By morning, Balin tells me.’‘Then we leave the evening after next. My men are on leave until then.’ Tristan assumed there were sex workers, and entertainments, and fun things to do. That would be good for morale, and they hadn’t had any leave since he’d joined them. They deserved a weekend—and so did Tristan. ‘Is there any place secure enough to untie Aragorn and Legolas?’‘Yes, but the law is the law,’ Thorin said firmly. ‘Elves are not allowed in Moria unless they are blinded and bound.’‘Why?’ Aragorn said. ‘Why? If you know who we are, why do you do this? We are princes, as you say, do we not deserve—’One-Eye slammed her fist on the table, and her voice was low and throbbing rage.‘You deserve execution is what you deserve, Aragorn Elrondsson! You deserve your arm trampled by a horse and you left for dead in the bracken, to hope passing travellers will find you before you die! You deserve to be slaughtered for sport! You deserve to be murdered in your home! You deserve a lot of things, Aragorn, for the cruelties your brothers and your father and your people have committed! But do we demand blood for blood, as you would? No,’ she said, quieter, tears on her face and shaking in her voice. ‘We do better than Elves have ever done to us, now.’‘Stopping the cycle of abuse is hard,’ Tristan said, softly, and reached out to touch her hand. ‘I really admire that you have moved forward, I know how hard that is.’‘Do you?’ she said, through tears she did not hide in shame. ‘You are a Man, what do you know of this?’Tristan bit his tongue, at that, and thought on all the things that had happened to him. The mean-spirited pranks and the outright violence, the invalidation and disbelief, the abusive relationships and the sheer history of not just himself but those who came before him.He took a deep breath, not wanting to get into that; but there was something he did know, and that he felt like now was the time to disclose it—it would help them understand that he understood, it would be a common point of reference. And he’d come to terms with it.‘When I first came to this place, I was taken into Imladris…’ he began, slowly, looking at his plate. ‘There was this cute boy, Elrohir? And he showed me where the baths were, and we hit it off, I thought, and I took off my makeup and went to scrub off. I hadn’t slept the night before, so I was going on my twenty-fourth hour of being awake, and by the time I got out, I was really tired, just dead on my feet. But I had wet hair, and I thought, oh, well, all these strange people (I had never seen an Elf, and at the time did not know they were called that) have such nice braids, I can trust them with a comb. And I sat down and I asked him to do my hair.‘He didn’t say no,’ Tristan said. ‘And he did my hair, and it was nice, and I sort of dozed off because it was so nice, and then I went to bed. I didn’t think anything about it.‘Then I found out, weeks later, when I was talking to his sister, oh, by the way, Eldar don’t cover their hair, but you’re not supposed to touch it, it’s intimate.‘He hadn’t told me. He hadn’t explained. When I confronted him, he was sorry—but he was sorry he got caught, he didn’t understand what he’d done, not really. He had done that to me, and then skipped along planning to court me, assuming it was forgiven, assuming oh, of course it’s okay, of course I wouldn’t mind, of course I want to marry him and be his One True Love. Assuming. Entitled. Treating other people like things.’ He looked up at the queen, and gave her a wan smile. ‘That’s why I had to leave with these guys. Because I couldn’t stay, not after that. And… I didn’t like how it was being handled. Everyone was appalled, but they were also trying to insist that of course I had to understand, Eldar fall in love one time forever. Like I’m going to let someone who, not an hour from meeting me—and let’s not mince words here—raped me, continue a relationship with me? No way. That’s—fuck,’ he said, burying his hands in his hair. ‘I just. How do you think that’s okay? You know?!’‘I do not know what you have suffered, not exactly,’ One-Eye said, taking her turn to squeeze his hand. ‘But I know the evil of those boys. You have met my twin?’‘I—yes,’ Tristan said, successfully biting back the smile at how much of an understatement that was. ‘You could say that.’ Kit had helped give Tristan the best, most unique orgasm he’d ever had, involving about a litre of warm water and several wonderful anal toys. And that was before getting eaten out. But that wasn’t the tone of the conversation, right now.‘When my mother set out with us to follow Mr Upstairs—Mr Bilbo Baggins, as he is known—we were attacked by the sons of Elrond, and their garrison. One of them trampled my brother’s arm with his horse, left him for dead. If not for the kindness Bilbo showed, when he heard the screaming and went out despite the Eldar telling him they heard nothing, if not for the company of Thorin, if not for Gimli’s uncle Óin and King Balin, Kit would have died there, outside Imladris. We were thirteen.’Tristan took a deep breath, let it out. ‘Amazing, isn’t it, how people can justify anything to themselves, if history lets them get away with it for too long?’She laughed, but it was mirthless. ‘I should not have doubted your sympathy,’ she said, ‘I apologise. You have shared a harrowing with those you may not have wished to share with.’Tristan paused. ‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s okay,’ because it was. ‘I needed time. Distance. And… It’s good to know I’m finally where people understand.’‘That’s what the screaming was, the day before we left, wasn’t it?’ Frodo asked sadly. ‘That was when you found out.’‘I—yes.’‘The more I find out about Elves, the less I like them,’ Boromir said, rather poisonously. ‘Attacking children!—I cannot imagine what justification an honourable man could have. Even the most hardened warrior I have known would hesitate to kill a child, no matter what race.’‘But would they recognise a child when they saw one?’ Tristan said, in challenge. ‘That’s the insidious part, Boromir. We like to think of people we call “enemy” as full-grown adults.’‘And what of Celebrían?’ Aragorn snapped, suddenly. ‘What of their mother, tortured by Orcs?’‘Ha! Tortured!’ Azog said, his smile more a baring of teeth.‘We do not torture!’ Esek said severely.‘Orcs do, sometimes,’ Azog said, ‘we did back then, we had no friends such as might tell us differently. But the Master did not like torture without reason. An Elf woman, travelling alone on the road, with no weapon, was no reason. I was there, I met her. She was afraid, but there was a storm, and only one shelter for miles. We took her in, and stayed the storm out together. And when her kin found her with us, they assumed things. When she told them not to, they assumed more things. She went home, but it was no more her home. No one would listen to her, she had been tainted by knowing us. So she left, and they said she had died—gone west, as Eldar say “died”. But she lives.’She was no longer called Celebrían, Azog knew; she was called Zûbardhnosh, Zû for short. She had gone to Harad for a time, and lived anonymously there, but had gone to Mordor in search of the Orcs she had met, knowing some of them had gotten away, and wanting to know them. She had found Azog, and had come to Moria, and had, in time, been healed in her heart, from the hurt and the betrayal. But she had been the one to volunteer, when the station in Neathriver had opened, to live there and maintain it, to act as translator and stationmistress, for she had lived among the Men of Harad, and spoke their tongue better than any in the Union. And so, when they arrived in Neathriver, below Minas Tirith, she would meet them.But that was not for them to know, beforehand.-Aragorn was silent the entire rest of their stay, sullen and prickly with anger and defiance. Yet he could not help hearing, and knowing. He could not help hearing the voices of children at play, he could not help hearing laughter, and the sounds of friends and family. He could not help hearing the conversations and the flirtations. Every time he tried to pose a question, bitter litanies of the crimes of the Eldar silenced him. And when they slept, it was warm and safe and on soft things, impossibly soft things. And soon, they were being led down, down far underground, and into somewhere small, and sitting, and the Hobbits were saying how nice it was, how comfortable and homey it was, and the traitor among them was cooing at the monster, yet there was no smell of water and no sound of it.And they were moving.They did not stop moving, not once. They slept, still moving. They ate, still moving. Tristan chatted with Gimli and the Hobbits and Boromir and the Orcs about train travel, told them stories of travels he had in the strange place he had come from, the distances he’d gone to see friends or performances. He sang to them, as he always had before, and taught them songs—and these were sad and heartfelt, songs like none Aragorn had ever heard, that echoed not in chorus but in strange complex refrains. Songs that sounded like someone was simply speaking, and did not notice they were singing.
Anyway, the thing is, what I really mean… yours are the sweetest eyes I’ve ever seen
Aragorn’s heart broke for Elrohir, who had never and would never hear this voice, would never hear this song, so aching and earnest. Tristan would have been perfect for him, Aragorn thought; how often did Men sing as well as Eldar? How often were they as beautiful? And Tristan was, under the ink and the metal, so achingly beautiful. He was fierce and kind and would have been a good lover to anyone. He was wasted on Orcs, who surely did not understand.Legolas could not countenance Azog’s lie, that he was even thinking of it, picking it apart, was… he shouldn’t. He remembered when he’d travelled to see his friends Elladan and Elrohir in Lórien, where they had taken their mother, where she was miserable and weeping. Where she would let no one touch a wound on her shoulder. She had fought with her husband, as Eldar never fought, and all wept for her madness. And she had gone, she had gone West to the Grey Havens, within a year.But he had not heard the stories of the child one of his foster-brothers had left for dead.And he had not been there when Thorin’s company had come, either. He had been in Mirkwood when they had come through, and it was still a mystery as to how they had done it without the Eldar—perhaps not so much, now, if Thorin had truly united with his enemies, and with the Spiders. Legolas shuddered. The horrors those spider-avari spoke of just by being alive. What horrible nightmarish… Legolas didn’t want to think of it.Bilbo had always wanted to see Rivendell, Frodo had said; but after he had seen it, he did not wish to again, and would not say why.‘He told me to take care, to remember Eldar were not like Hobbits,’ Frodo had said to Tristan, whom he had started to confide in. ‘I spoke to the Queen, and I understand part of his story now, the parts he never wrote down.’Presently, Merry and Pippin had just come back from the other compartment, and were telling a shocked Sam about their adventure. They had been told not to leave the compartment, so of course, as soon as they could, they had done so, taking the same door Tristan had used, the one at the very end of the compartment, that led to the joining between compartments, where you could really see how fast the train was going.‘Orcs seem so nice,’ Merry said. ‘They’re the nicest Big People I’ve ever met.’‘Know how to have a good time, too,’ Pippin added, laughing.‘The songs you sing are so varied,’ Frodo was saying to Tristan, a little way away, ‘will you sing another in the language of your people? Like the one about the sea.’Tristan contemplated whether he felt right, to someone who did not understand, but yet also to someone who had never met or heard anything about his culture, except from Tristan himself, and was another species entirely.He smiled. ‘I’ll sing you a lullaby my mother sang me when I was little.’
He nani lua ‘ole Ku‘u wehi o nā lani…
It was a simple song, one he knew by heart, and swayed in time to. When he sang it to his mother now, she wept. Like most of the songs she had taught him, it spoke of a love of home and all the beauty in it. Years later, he had learned there were English parts to it, but his mother had never sung it that way, so he didn’t either. Given how the Hobbits spoke of home, Tristan thought they would like it, once they inevitably asked what it was about.‘That was so peaceful,’ Sam said softly.‘It sings of my mother’s home,’ Tristan said.‘Will you tell us about your home?’ Frodo asked. ‘You never speak of what it is.’‘Home,’ Tristan said, and looked toward the octopus, who was listening too, and had been cradled from the noise of the train as much as was possible. ‘Home is…’ he smiled. ‘The way Legolas speaks of the sea is not the sea I know, I’m sure I’ve said. Yet we both look west.‘My sea is blue and green and bright. My sea is full of fish and foam and storms and volcanoes. My sea roils with life, warm and lapping at the white sand of the islands. Below the cold waters, hugging the mainland, are forests of kelp that stretch miles deep, with otters and seals weaving in between the fronds, hunting spiky shellfish and crabs. And in the warm waters, the ones around the islands? There are forests of colour, of thousands of different kinds of strange corals and anemones, and fish every colour of the rainbow darting between, with long eels in the rocks, and seals and dolphins dancing in the waves. And animals like the octopus, who is the same shape as Kanaloa, the mysterious god who lives deep in the waves, where the light does not reach, where the fish flash and float motionless, waiting for food to drop from above. The sea is full of wonderful, terrifying, marvellous life. My sea is no cold, dead thing, made only of water and foam, to travel atop.’‘Surely you don’t live in the sea,’ Merry said, and Tristan laughed.‘Tell us about the islands,’ Gimli urged. ‘I’ve never been on an island before.’So Tristan told them, told them the way his mother had told him when he was little, before she had been able to get up the money to take them there; and he told them from his memories of visits since. It made his heart ache for missing home, but it was enough to share the memories with them, of the perpetual summer, of the warm rain, the black fertility of the volcanic earth, the stories of the gods and heroes.He lapsed, Boromir noted, into a different kind of Westron, as he spoke on—a low, summery voice, that seemed to perfectly capture the words he was saying, the images of summer and a forest much denser and wetter, alive with the constant cries of birds, with the sound of waves and the scent of them no matter where you were, and the rain, almost daily rain, warm as the shower-baths they had enjoyed in Moria.‘And no frost!’ Sam was marvelling most at this, being a gardener. ‘None at all? When is harvest?’‘All the time!’ Tristan said, laughing, and began to tell them of the fruits, juicy and sweet, the rich and creamy nuts, everything.It was the first they really knew him, knew him as more than a mysterious stranger full of mysterious songs and mysterious acuity of wisdom. Now they knew where he came from, it made him at once more and less strange.He left them, when they slept, to sleep with the Orcs. Boromir and the Hobbits and Gimli described the tank and its occupant to Aragorn and Legolas, and it seemed it was a lot easier to see the octopus’ strange grace, while it was in the water.In the morning of the fourth day, they were awakened by a voice, strangely metallic, with a Spidren accent.‘This is the Neathriver Terminal. Disembark here for: Minas Tirith, Minas Morgul, and Osgiliath. This is the Neathriver Terminal, the last stop on this Southbound M Express train. This train is now a Northbound M making all regular stops.’There was a metallic sound, of metal doors sliding open, and a soft chime, and the smell of warmer air coming in.‘How can we have come so far so quickly…’ Boromir was aghast. Outside was a platform of stone underground, much like the one they’d left, full of people and largely full of Men of Harad, and more Spidren with eight legs, and Orcs, and no Dwarrows at all. It was also warmer. Tristan was nowhere to be seen, but a Spidren the size of a large cat, with eight legs, bright black eyes, and a mouth that shimmered like a bird wing, crawled into the car from the open door.‘Hello!’ he said, in a pleasant little voice. ‘My name is Keket, I am the conductor of the train! Please exit the train, the Stationmistress will be with you in a few moments! This way, please, thank you!’‘Where is Tristan?’ Gimli asked.‘In the next compartment,’ Keket said. But the doors need to close, and we need to load the train to resume regular service, please exit the train. Thank you!’They exited the train, and stood close together; but unlike in Bree, Frodo noticed that these humans looked below their own eye-line—perhaps because the littlest of the Spidren, the males with eight legs, were only the size of a large cat. Many of the Men had wonderful black beards as magnificent as a Dwarf’s, and most had brown skin like Hobbits did, darker than Tristan, who was darker than Aragorn and Boromir, though not as dark as a Hobbit.Tristan and the Orcs came out only a minute later, from their ‘compartment’, and met them.Among the crowd, Boromir could see someone tall and slender, with hair as bright as Tristan’s, in many more colours, all the colours of the rainbow. Many people stopped to greet this person, and as they came closer, Boromir saw she was an Elf, dressed in Spidren silks and boots, and with a brown tabby cat beside her, his tail in the air, sea-green eyes looking up at them in a businesslike manner.‘I am Zû,’ she said, and Legolas startled badly, almost falling down, at the sound of her voice. She paused, and looked sad, but did not say anything about it, going on. ‘Which one of you—ah, you must be Captain Tristan.’‘I am, yes,’ Tristan said, a little startled at the sight of her being an Elf—he had thought, from her name, that she was an Orc.‘I’m to secure your passage into Mordor,’ she said, ‘and your passes. Entrance is restricted to citizens, for safety.’‘Understandable.’‘And your citizenship coin, did you get one before you left?’ she asked, and he pulled something from beneath his shirt, showing her the golden coin. She smiled, looking it over.‘Congratulations.’Tristan beamed. ‘Thank you. Now,’ he said, serious once more. ‘What of my companions? I know the Hobbits are welcome in the Union as Neighbours, but what of Boromir and the other two?’ He did not need to ask about Gimli, of course.‘Celebrían?’ Legolas finally spoke for the first time in days, his voice soft with disbelief. But he was sure, an Elf never forgot a voice….‘I was once called that name,’ Zû said, ‘but no more. I am Zû, Stationmistress of Riverneath and wife of Ksil. Let the past be, Legolas.’‘It… can’t be true, what the Orc-King said…?’Zû sighed softly, and turned to Tristan. ‘Legolas and Estel can stay here, with me. They… knew me in a previous life.’Tristan nodded, glancing at Gimli, at the remainder. ‘Pippin,’ he said, softly, ‘sweetheart, I want you to stay here too. For morale.’‘Then I’m staying too,’ Merry said stoutly, following Pippin. ‘We’re a matched set, you know.’Tristan smiled, and leaned down to hug them both. ‘Okay, both of you then. And what about you, Boromir?’‘I think I wish to go. I have come this far.’‘Yet we have no choice,’ Legolas said. ‘You force us to break our vow we made in Imladris, to Frodo.’‘Peace, child,’ Zû said.‘We face a great evil, are you so taken by it that you do not see?’‘We do face a great evil, Legolas, and I see it in both of you, as I saw it in my once-husband: It is hatred.’And Tristan saw them, finally, listen.-‘By the powers!’ Boromir exclaimed, as soon as they got to the surface again, and he saw familiar terrain. ‘But we were in Moria!’‘Trains,’ Tristan said, with a knowing smile.‘But it was only a few days!’‘We were going thirty leagues an hour, lad,’ Gimli laughed, thumping Boromir on the back.‘Where is this meeting point?’ Tristan asked. ‘We have a guide,’ he explained to the others briefly. ‘Rako told me about her.’‘Osgiliath,’ Rako said, ‘just over the river, there.’They began to walk over the grass, the garrison falling to spread around them, protecting the two Hobbits.‘Why does it smell like rotten eggs?’ Sam asked, making a face as the wind changed.‘Sulphur,’ Tristan said, automatically knowing the difference. ‘It’s because of the volcanoes.’ He squinted at the sky in the distance, which had dark clouds, but they weren’t thunderheads. ‘There are volcanoes in Mordor, smells like. Active ones, by the look of the sky.’ He wondered what kind. Mainland volcanoes were so mysterious, to him. Somehow more dangerous.‘The earth bleeds,’ Rako said.Now that ‘the fires of Mount Doom’ had been explained (in much less scary terms) to Frodo, he was afraid. He had taken care to ask Tristan, who had been to one, how he was meant to throw the Ring into the volcano. Tristan had said it would be highly difficult to truly get to the peak of a volcano, but that there were smaller cracks where he might be able to pitch the Ring into the ‘lava’.The terrain they were walking through was wide and open, but the grass was rough, and the bushes were sparse and naked and thorny. It was hot, even though it was dark, and there was a cacophony of horrible chattering noises from the mountains.‘What are those sounds?’ he asked of the Orc beside him, who was the one that teased Tristan most often; Frodo recalled his name was something that had a z in it.‘The Laughing Birds,’ he said, and Tristan was laughing.‘Kookaburra!’ he said, ‘we have those where I’m from. There’s a children’s song from them, even.’‘I could use a song,’ Frodo said, ‘it’s eerie out here.’‘Too flat,’ Sam muttered in agreement, ‘and too mountainy. There’s no proper hills.’Tristan knew the Hobbits were also uncomfortable in the dark, though the dawn and dusk were always described as ‘peaceful’, and they often were most energetic and talkative at those times. So he taught them the kookaburra song, and Frodo made up verses, and the Orcs made up verses.Boromir was surprised at how much everyone was genuinely getting along, now that Aragorn and Legolas weren’t casting a gloom over everything. Had they been? …Well, certainly every time Aragorn had opened his mouth to speak, since their arrival in Moria, he’d caused upset to all present.Now, though, Tristan was even more relaxed than he had been in Moria, and singing, laughing and even opening up to them. Nobody was wearing bindings, which lent much more friendliness to the whole thing. It didn’t even feel strange that Boromir was walking along with Orcs all around, for the Orcs were not lockstep and stone-faced, but Boromir knew their names, and had heard them tease and bicker and laugh with one another. They were a garrison as any other, perhaps with strange ways, but not so strange as all that.Really, he was starting to like them.‘Osgiliath is empty, is it not?’ Boromir asked, as they neared the riverbank of the Anduin enough to hear the rushing of the river.‘It is empty of Men and Orcs,’ Ugûrz said with a grin. ‘Dark and full of shadowy corners, oh yes, can’t think of a damn thing that likes dark and shadowy corners, no I cannot….’‘Fairies do,’ Sam said. He had persisted in calling them fairies, not only because he was hard-headed and had firm beliefs about fairies, but because they seemed to genuinely find it so delightful to be called fairies.Up ahead, Tristan was singing again, that lilting refrain he hummed, and had sung in full only a day or so ago.
Look around, look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now….
It was a heartening refrain, and Frodo knew Tristan sang it for him. One of the nights on the train, Frodo had been up late, and Tristan had been sitting by the tank, murmuring softly to the octopus, and Frodo had confided his fears—that he couldn’t do this, that he moreover wasn’t sure he wanted to anymore, that he was mainly doing it because he didn’t want to disappoint everybody, and most of all, that he was afraid he wasn’t enough.And Tristan had taken him into the next compartment, the one with the Orcs in it, and had sung it for him, looking into his eyes as he did, sitting on the floor of the compartment as the world sped beneath them. Frodo had felt all over a blush at such attention, all too aware of the way Tristan’s hands held his, the way his face expressed as he sang—just to Frodo.‘Tristan,’ Frodo said, shyly. ‘Will you sing that song wholly?’Everyone quieted, and Tristan’s voice lifted up in song. So far, it was the one song people had asked him to repeat, but he didn’t blame them. It was a good song, and very appropriate to their situation, love song though it was. But people here understood—just because you sang a love song didn’t mean you were in love. Most songs were love songs, it was something to overlook in favour of what else the song was about, because art was never straightforward, especially art about emotions.He heard Frodo humming along, harmonising a little with the refrain, this time.
Just stay alive, that would be enough….

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

When they paused for a break, one of the birds immediately came over to land on a rock, and laughed at them, hopping boldly near.‘Careful,’ Ugûrz advised Frodo, whom the bird was eyeing—or rather, eyeing the smoked meat Frodo was holding. ‘They’re thieves, don’t feed them.’Tristan was sitting a little ways away, listening to the dusk chorus, wondering if those were bellbirds he was hearing in the distance, and wondering what the great booming noise was. It wasn’t an explosion sort of boom, it was an animal noise sort of boom, like a bird. A very large bird.‘What’s that?’ he asked Rako, after hearing it again. ‘That big one.’‘That is a dragon’s call,’ Rako said, smiling to himself.‘A dragon, really?’ Tristan looked toward the mountains beyond the river with a face lit with wonder.‘Yes. He’s just barely grown, now, and is doing better for being in Mordor, where he belongs. Some years ago, he lived in Erebor’s Lonely Mountain. Like the octopus, he had been left in a small place by the Master, where he would be safe to grow up.’‘And then Mairon couldn’t go back for him,’ Tristan finished, nodding in understanding. ‘That’s so sad,’ he said, looking at the mountains; the pass was obscured by heavy mist and the particular fug of volcanic lands, that comes and goes with the breaths of the volcano’s crater. ‘What kind of volcanoes are there in Mordor? I get the feeling you have what we call shield volcanoes, where the lava flow is quiet and almost constant.’‘That is much of the lava, yes.’ Rako and the other Orcs had begun to like Tristan ever more, as soon as he’d shown that his people had words for the earth’s blood, as Orcs did. They had never met any other people who had lived alongside such things as ‘volcanoes’ and ‘lava’, and it was a relief to hear someone speak of them without fear or loathing. Tristan spoke of it as one should—it was as a powerful storm, only from the earth. It was god-like and to be respected, but not feared as punishment. It was, that was all. ‘Mount Doom is more dangerous, the Master built it as His forge, and it does throw its lava and ash at times. It is important that it does often, for when it goes silent for long, the danger builds inside it. The last time that happened, there was no summer.’‘Krakatoa,’ Tristan murmured, thoughtfully.‘Hm?’‘There was a big volcanic eruption from a volcano called Krakatoa. So big it destroyed Krakatoa and the island she was on, and threw ash into the sky so much and so far that thousands of miles away, where people did not know anything about Krakatoa, there was no summer.’‘The Master has been able to contain Mount Doom from doing that,’ Rako said, after an impressed pause, patting Tristan comfortingly. ‘You will like the Master, He will like you too, I think.’‘Have you met him before?’‘Oh yes, He speaks with us when He can, in shadows. Sugar has spoken to Him certainly, for He can see when you put on the Ring, where you are.’It amused the Orcs, to continue referring to Frodo as ‘Sugar’.‘I’ve heard it is a mighty forge, still standing,’ Gimli said, admiringly. ‘Mairon was Mahal’s apprentice, once, and his journeyman. I should like to see it!’‘It is broken now, do not hope for much,’ Rako cautioned. ‘But the Master will build a new forge. He always wishes a forge.’-Osgiliath was full of Spiders, and their guide was a female Spider with bright forward-facing eyes, who introduced herself as Freckle. She was also very leggy, not very big in mass, but with her legs she was quite tall, nothing like the heavy-bodied driders of Moria.‘How do you hunt?’ Tristan asked, as she led them along the edge of Osgiliath’s ruined curtain wall.‘I’m a net-hunter,’ she said. ‘I can even catch fish.’‘Oooh,’ Tristan said.‘We have made a bridge for you tonight,’ she said, ‘my web-sisters mostly, my silk isn’t for walking on, and I gave them some of my starbrights to—Keli!’A Spider with an almost perfectly round abdomen was leading along a group of what looked like Hobbit-sized Ants. They’d been told about the Hive Nation in Moria, luckily, so Tristan and the Hobbits and Boromir didn’t panic (though it was a near thing, for Tristan). Keli looked like a garden Spider, to Tristan.‘We just finished,’ Keli said, ‘I set them to glow quietly, we don’t want the Men from the City seeing it.’‘Thank you, Keli.’‘Never seen one of the Hive before,’ Gimli said, as the Ants all filed past, each one following the rest precisely, each one’s armour and tools the same, each one looking exactly the same as the others. ‘Heard there was one down here, of course.’‘Why do they not speak?’ Boromir said, watching them.‘Ants do not speak with sound,’ Freckle said. ‘They use scent. And they do not like to speak, they are always working, there is always something to be done.’‘But they are marvellous,’ Keli added. ‘I’m excited for you to be seeing Great Auntie again, Freckle!’-Great Auntie turned out to be a Spider the size of a mansion, living in the pass itself, guarding the way through silently, from the darkness. Spiders did not guard things obviously, after all; they were masters of ambush.She served them actual tea, and fluffy sweets made of her gossamer wrapped around a filling of chopped dates. They were chewy and strangely satisfying. Her voice was low and very soothing, and they slept in her apartments in the walls of the pass, which were uncommonly clean, very quiet, and smelled of nothing but silk and glass. They were also very warm, which she happily explained was due to the volcanic activity in the earth nearby.-The Mouth of Sauron was a strange being, very unnerving—but when Tristan saw him, he said only, ‘oh, that kind of scary.’The Mouth paused, ‘What kind of scary is that?’‘You were built, weren’t you? I mean, you’re not…’ he gesticulated at the elaborate armour, ‘made of meat,’ he finished, rather helplessly.There was a pause, and then, ‘Are you Ainu?’‘No, Hawai‘ian,’ Tristan said, raising a brow. Had they encountered Ainu? That was oddly specific. Not far off the mark, the Ainu were still from the Pacific Rim; but, still, oddly specific. Or maybe it’s a homonym, and doesn’t mean Ainu as you know it, he realised, a beat later. ‘What do you mean by Ainu?’‘How could you tell I was built?’‘Touché,’ Tristan murmured under his breath. ‘So are you the Mouth of Mairon in the sense that you’re a separate entity, or are you… literally… a walking communicator? Am I ruining the mystique?’‘No,’ the Mouth said. ‘I am a separate entity, as he cannot communicate on the proper frequency to be understood by organic creatures at this time.’‘We have something for him,’ Frodo said, obviously having spent a great portion of time mustering up the courage to say it. ‘Something that he lost a long time ago.’-‘You, and you,’ the Mouth said, indicating Frodo and Tristan. ‘Follow me. The rest of you must stay here.’Tristan offered his hand to Frodo, and they followed the Mouth into the elevator—well, Tristan knew it was an elevator. The doors closed, and Tristan felt Frodo relax slightly. The Mouth did something on a touch-screen, and they began to ascend.Aliens. Aliens with terraforming tech, and master gene manipulators. Sufficiently advanced technology was indistinguishable from magic, and all, Tristan thought. He had a long time to think.The problem was that he had a lot of questions that were so specific that the language barrier, even speaking ‘Westron’, made it impossible to know how to ask. Was Mairon dead? Was he a multi-dimensional being that had been injured only on one dimension? What did the Ring do, that made it so harmful to everyone else? Was it giving off some kind of strange radiation? Was it like carbon monoxide poisoning? Did it induce paranoia? Did it contain genetic code or something? Were they carrying the last USB drive in Middle-Earth, that had the recovery information for something essential to rebuilding Mairon? Tristan was very curious.The doors opened, and the Mouth led them into what was clearly a control centre, or maybe a high-tech hospital bay.The lights from the many indicator screens flickered, and what were clearly words in a language that used the Elvish alphabet flickered across the screens, some of which were shattered. In fact, the longer Tristan looked around, the more he realised the place had been repaired, heavily, and with lesser parts. These aliens had been stuck here, with tech that could mind-boggling amounts of terraforming, why? How many of them were still alive?‘What’s your planet called, Mairon?’ he asked, of the room generally. ‘Why can’t you go home?’‘The others all went home, they left him here,’ the Mouth said, ‘He’s… never been asked that, before. He wants to know if you have a ship.’‘I don’t,’ Tristan said softly. ‘But we have your Ring, here. Frodo does. He wants to give it back to you.’Frodo pulled the ring from around his neck, and held it out to the Mouth, who paused a moment, before taking it.‘You had it next to your heart, with no barrier?’‘I—yes. Should I not have?’‘How long?’Frodo told him.‘Master says when he is well again, he wants to check and see that you are not ill from it. The Ring gives off dangerous… it is poisonous, but not in the way the Eldar speak of it. They do not understand. It is difficult to explain.’‘It’s psychoactive, isn’t it?’ Tristan said. ‘Like… our brains run on chemicals, right? And they’re delicate machines, and the Ring disrupts that chemistry somehow?’‘…Yes. Where are you from?’‘Somewhere we know those things. What is the Ring?’‘As you say, it is… psychoactive. A frequency that heals Master, for he was very hurt in his heart when Mistress was tortured and banished to the Void.’‘Can we get her back? She’s not dead, you didn’t say she was dead. And you said the others were gone, so I’m assuming that means Elbereth and them. The people that put her there. If they’re gone, if you have the Ring back, what’s stopping you from getting her back here?’The Mouth paused for a long time, as did the words scrolling across the screens. After a while, it was longer than the normal ‘pause for translation’ style of pause.Tristan did not believe in good and evil. Even if he did, The Mistress Fire wasn’t evil, she sounded more like Pele. And Pele was someone to respect and revere. Tristan didn’t much mind the concept of an alien with highly powerful tech being a deity. Tristan had never understood deities that weren’t around. Pele was around, you could see her at work, you could point to where she was on a map. She was the land. She was the lava. That made sense, to Tristan. So did people worshipping that which caused them to come into being as a species. That made sense too, even if that which caused them to come into being was an alien with a laboratory.Frodo kept holding Tristan’s hand, feeling better now that the Ring wasn’t near him, but feeling strangely distracted by all the twinkling lights and glowing tiles. He looked up at Tristan. ‘What is all this?’‘Ah,’ Tristan said, pausing. He wasn’t sure if he should explain, but then decided to, sitting down so he wasn’t straining his neck looking down. He also didn’t like how it felt, talking that far downward. ‘Well, you remember how magical Moria seemed, even though they explained it wasn’t magic? This is more of that.’‘It’s technology, you mean.’‘Yes.’‘What’s a planet?’‘It’s another world, another place. See the stars? Those are all a sun, like ours. And worlds are circling around each one, and sometimes there’s life on them, and sometimes there’s even people on them.’The Mouth put the ring into a reader, and started the restoration sequence. It would take some time, but the Master had not expected the Ring to simply come to them so peacefully, and be given over. The giving part was important, given how easily the ring stressed at the lack of a proper host to feed on. It had been a terrible idea to encase the symbiote in a ring, even though that did focus it quite well, it cut it from traditional and natural contact, and that had gone very badly.Handing out the seeds had still gone extremely well, however fragile Men had turned out to be. Dwarrows were intriguingly able to harbour the full symbiote, but it seemed not to work properly for them, turning parasite after a time. And the Eldar, of course, had made their Rings. But theirs had no seed, were simply powerful. Mairon was glad they still left room for a seed, that made it easy to neutralise their power.
If they’re gone… what’s stopping you from getting her back?
Somehow, in his despair and loneliness, Mairon had not put that together. His lover had been greatly injured, over and over, before her final exile, and he worried that she had died there, even as he knew, deep down, that such a thing was impossible. She was strong, she had her powers and could never truly be erased, not if her music were still alive, not if her name was still spoken.But right now, Mairon couldn’t spare energy to speak to the strange Man; he had the Ring, and his symbiote was bursting from it to find what was left of him, the final power that had been saved, the final resources of irreplaceable ingredients, used up as they built bone and flesh and he finally breathed air again, filtered and stripped of character though it was.He heard the Man explaining the basics of outer space to the Ring-Bearer as he emerged, as his Mouth helped rinse the stasis fluid from his new skin and clothe him, help him take his first steps. His systems all checked out as functional, but his skin was still new, had no layer of protective slough as yet. He’d sacrificed that. Yet it was good, to look like his own people, the ones that had never turned from him. He happily sat still as the Mouth carefully pierced him again, golden rings and chains and curved bars sparkling in every inch of him.When he was finally ready to walk on his own, to see them, they both turned and looked at him silently for a few minutes. He tried not to be nervous of their judgement, so used to the eyes that hated.The Man smiled at him, standing up and opening his arms, offering an embrace. ‘Bitch, you look amazing! Lemme hug you! Oh my gawd!’ he said, enveloping Mairon in a gentle but enthusiastic embrace, then holding him at arm-length. ‘Look at you! Welcome back to the realm of the living!’Mairon wept, surprised but yet… it had been so long since anyone was happy to see him.‘We found your baby, the one that can shapeshift? They’re waiting in Minas Tirith—well, under it. We were planning on getting them to the sea? There’s a sea in Mordor somewhere?’Mairon thought on this. ‘Tintalwe? My glittering sea-child, with many limbs?’‘The octopus,’ Frodo said, liking the word.‘Octopus!’‘It means “eight-arms”,’ Tristan explained.‘Octopus,’ Mairon said, smiling. ‘I like it. He is well?’‘They miss you,’ Tristan said.‘I want to see him,’ Mairon said immediately.-When the doors opened again, an Orc softer and rounder than Orcs ever were was with them, with long dreadlocked hair the colour of molten ore, and eyes as red as rubies.As one, the Orcs fell immediately to one knee, bowing their heads, leaving Gimli, Sam, and Boromir standing. Sam immediately looked to Frodo, who looked happier than he’d ever been, holding Tristan’s hand.‘Are you all right, Mr Frodo?’ Sam asked, warily.‘I’m fine, Sam,’ Frodo said, coming to him, and he looked more than fine. He looked as though a burden had been taken from him. ‘This is Mairon,’ he said.Sam had first taken the strange Orc for a lady Orc, but was not so sure now. It was very hard to tell, with Orcs.Boromir was in shock; here, in the presence of the greatest evil yet described, yet known, an evil that caused even Gandalf to speak grimly—and yet, Boromir was taller than he, and Mairon was rotund, and looked like nothing more threatening than a well-fed and prosperous Orc, with a dimpled smile and soft hands. Like Tristan, he had many rings and coils of metal piercing his face and ears—and unlike Tristan, these golden gleams also pierced his neck, and likely more places—Tristan had bars through both nipples and navel, Boromir had seen them a couple of times.‘Children, rise,’ he said, in the sweetest of voices. ‘Come, who leads you?’‘Tristan,’ said the eldest, as he rose to his feet. This seemed to surprise the Master, for he turned to look up at Tristan.‘You?’‘Ah, fuck, I didn’t mention, sorry. Yeah, I’m Captain of this garrison. That was an accident,’ he added, still a little embarrassed. The Master laughed gently.‘Never be modest,’ he said, patting Tristan’s arm. ‘Well, then who is the Weird among you?’‘I,’ Rako said. The Master came forward and embraced him, and Rako felt the same feeling that made Men and Eldar weep, but not Orcs. Orcs could not weep in emotion.‘Come, all of you, I want to embrace all of you. Thank you,’ he said, going around to them all. Some were shaking, but some did not. Mairon paused, at the Dwarf, and felt a tugging of sorrow at his heart, as he always felt, when faced with his old Master’s children.‘Don’t try it with me,’ Gimli warned, but good-naturedly, and was pleased when the old apprentice of Mahal laughed softly. He looked very like he could not lift a hammer, but looks were deceiving, and anyway his body may have been new-forged (Dwarrows understood that, being that they knew they themselves had been forged).‘It is good to see one of Aulë’s children here,’ he said.Boromir was not sure what to say, when those red-gold eyes turned to him. He realised the colours in them shifted and changed, all the sparkling colours of fire.‘You are Boromir, Steward of Gondor, Tristan tells me.’‘Yes,’ Boromir said, hesitating, not sure what honorific to use on a god.‘I am glad to meet you. I hope we can work together to better the south for our people.’So, it was as a king, then, not a god. ‘As do I, Your Grace.’‘I am not above you,’ Mairon said gently. ‘You need not put me above you. I am tired of that,’ he said, half to himself. ‘It does no good. I am Mairon.’‘Mairon,’ Boromir said, liking better this Mairon already.-Tristan was realising, now that the task was done, that he had no home. That he had no hope of ever going home. Yet to be in the south, where the winters were not so harsh, the sunlight better, was good. The scent and the sounds of Mordor proper were good, were homey.Could he stay here? Tristan wondered about that. Frodo came over to sit with him, as Mairon went among his people, and was loved and welcomed home. Sam came too, because Frodo came.‘I wish my uncle Bilbo could see this,’ Frodo said. Bilbo had disappeared, not to be seen again, after his 111th birth-day party, leaving Frodo Bag-end and the Ring, among other things. Frodo didn’t believe he was really dead, especially after seeing Moria, after hearing a little more of the real story, the parts that Bilbo had not written down. He wondered where his uncle was, whether he had gone to die somewhere alone, or whether he had gone some secret place, underground, to see his neighbours.‘I want you to come home with me,’ Frodo said, presently. He’d noticed, as had all the Hobbits, the truth of Tristan’s situation, in a way perhaps the other peoples wouldn’t. Of everyone, Hobbits most valued not ancestral holdings, not kingdoms, but home. And Tristan was missing his home. The Shire wasn’t anything like it, but it was a home, and Frodo wanted Tristan to have a home.‘You’ve been in love with me for a while, I’ve noticed,’ Tristan answered softly. Frodo blushed, but didn’t deny it. Tristan was uncommon forthright, and Frodo supposed it was only a matter of time to have it turned toward this matter.‘I like you too,’ Tristan said. ‘I’d like to see if something could work between us. But I have Rako too, you understand. I’m not the marrying type of lover.’‘Sam,’ Frodo said, ‘do you want Bag-End?’‘Do I what?’‘Whoa, hang on, Sugar,’ Tristan said. ‘Don’t be hasty, what are you thinking? Spell it out.’‘You like it here, it’s like your home. Hawai-i.’He made a good try at the glottal stop, Tristan thought appreciatively. ‘Yes.’‘And I don’t think, after all this, I can really go back to the Shire and… be happy there. I remember how people treated my uncle, after he came back. After you go Adventuring, you’re not Respectable anymore.’‘And you don’t think you want to deal with that bullshit,’ Tristan said, and Frodo covered his face to hide a laugh, despite his embarrassment at being so shallow and selfish. ‘Hey,’ Tristan said, gently touching Frodo’s shoulder. ‘Hey, none of that. There’s no shame in wanting to be happy and avoid people’s gossip and judgement. They don’t know you, they don’t have any right to judge you.’‘I can’t help but wonder if maybe…’ Frodo looked out. They were sitting on a cliff that overlooked, it seemed, all of Mordor. Tristan had pointed out the glowing cracks and said they were ‘fissure volcanoes’, and the lone mountain in the distance was Mount Doom itself, which was very large indeed, and smoke and lightning came from it; but that was a good thing, after all, for it meant the dangerous, explosive eruptions were not so catastrophic, when they did happen.There was green everywhere. Not trees, not a forest like Frodo had known before. It was volcanic, it was special, it was warm, and wet, and thick on the inner slopes of the mountains, on the slopes of the volcanoes, growing right up to the edges of the lava fields, sweeping over the plain in nodding leaves the size of a full-grown Hobbit. Tall trees that had bark like paper peeling off in colourful layers were everywhere—Tristan called them ‘eucalyptus’—and there were strange trees with thin, tall, curved trunks and a burst of huge, feathery leaves on the very top, that were ‘palms’, and apparently were the sort of tree that dates came from. Flowers were huge and lush and brightly-coloured, with hummingbirds and butterflies flitting between them, as well as the huge and heavy-bodied bumblebees that were the Hive Nation of Mordor.Tristan was quick to say that despite his knowledge, it wasn’t like Hawai‘ian islands, it was like Māori islands, which were far on the southern end of the great circle Tristan called the Pacific Rim.‘I like it here,’ Frodo said, all of this on his mind. ‘I want to stay here. With you, Tristan. In this beautiful place.’‘Then I’m staying too,’ Sam said stoutly.‘No, Sam,’ Frodo said gently.‘It’s a good idea for Sam to stay,’ Tristan argued quietly. ‘You’ll be the only Hobbit here, otherwise. That gets hard, being the only one of your people. It’s better with two.’Frodo heard how much Tristan missed his brother, his mother, in those words. ‘Then I’ll leave Bag-End to Otho. That will make them happy.’‘They’ll be intolerable!’ Sam said, with a rare laugh.‘It will be good revenge,’ Frodo said, chuckling as he leaned back on his hands, looking out over the mist, ‘as they will no longer have anything to complain about.’‘And you’re truly all right with the fact that I can’t give you any promises about whether there will be an us?’ Tristan pressed. He wanted to be very clear. ‘I’m… I’m not even sure what my future holds.’‘You need a home,’ Frodo said. ‘Everyone needs a home.’Tristan sighed. Frodo was right; when he eventually accepted the fact that he couldn’t go home, he had to move on to the next step, which was making a home here. And he had the ability to pick where he wanted to live, basically. Any lands controlled by the Union were open to him, and he was now a citizen of Mordor. And… Mordor felt most like home.And there was a war coming. Mairon was curious about Tristan’s way of dealing with conflict, however; and the Orcs of Tristan’s garrison were startlingly loyal to him (well, it startled Tristan, who felt as though that level of loyalty surely couldn’t be earned in less than a lifetime), and enthusiastic about his faith in diplomacy.…And, well, Tristan could see himself being happy to live with Frodo. Frodo was his favourite companion, he was quiet and thoughtful, and very kind. Tristan had never liked living alone, and the descriptions the Hobbits gave of their homes and of what they thought of as home were inviting, and matched up with Tristan’s.‘We couldn’t live underground,’ Tristan said, ‘not in a place like this.’‘I don’t mind.’‘I wish my friend Jaris were here,’ Tristan said, ‘they’d love to build me a house.’ Nevermind about Jaris still studying it at university; as far as Tristan was concerned, Jaris built houses. If they were here, Jaris would be building houses here, absolutely. They’d just roll up their sleeves and start planning out a whole eco-conscious, mid-century-modern, accessible city. They knew how, going to university for it was just a struggle to get everyone to believe they knew how.Tristan also lived with them, and had learned a lot simply by listening to Jaris rant about things that pissed them off. Jaris was, he realised, a bit like Sam, really—grumpy, good at their profession, and with no sufferance for foolishness. Well, perhaps Sam had a bit more appreciation for foolishness than did Jaris.Tristan would honour Jaris by building a wonderful house in this wonderful place, he thought; and he’d honour his family by continuing to tell stories about them.