Welcome to the Ranger Gathering, coming June 2026!
How it works:
The Ranger Gathering will run for the entire the month of June, 2026. Each day has a prompt that participants can use to inspire works about Ranger's Apprentice, The Early Years, The Royal Ranger, or Brotherband.
Check out last year’s stuff here!
If you want to participate, tag your post with #ranger gathering 2026 so we can all find it!
A few notes on the Gathering:
You do NOT have to do all the prompts, or even most of the prompts to participate in the Gathering! The most important thing is to have fun and avoid burnout. Pick whichever prompts inspire your creativity, and ignore the rest.
The Gathering is meant to show off all forms of creativity! This means art, music, writing, memes, textpost, moodboards, playlists, or whatever else you can come up with. Don't feel like you can't participate if you're not an artist or author.
This blog is going to showcase a few posts from the tag every day of the Gathering, so make sure you support the creators with reblogs and comments.
The trouble with packing, Will reflected, was that it always seemed a great deal simpler before one actually began doing it.
He had his satchel open on the bed, although “open” was perhaps too generous a description. It had been open half an hour ago. Now it bulged at the sides, the seams threatened to burst, and looked as though it might give up entirely if he tried to force one more shirt into it. Will, however, was not a man to be intimidated by a piece of leather, and he was currently attempting to wedge a spare cloak into a corner where, to any reasonable observer, there was no room for a spare cloak.
Maddie stood in the doorway and watched him for some time.
“You know,” she said at last, “there are people who pack as though they intend to find things again later.”
Will glanced over his shoulder. “And there are people who stand in doorways making unhelpful comments.”
“I’m being very helpful. I’m warning you that your bag is about to explode.”
“It’s not about to explode,” Will said, pushing down on the cloak with one hand while reaching for a pair of socks with the other. “It’s simply full.”
“It was full ten minutes ago.”
Will gave the satchel a final shove, then sat back and regarded his work with mild satisfaction. “There. Perfect.”
Maddie crossed the room, took one look inside, and made a small sound of disgust. Before Will could object, she began removing items and laying them in neat piles on the bed.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
“Saving you from yourself.”
“I don’t need saving from myself. I’ve packed for missions longer than you’ve been alive.”
“Yes,” Maddie said, folding one of his shirts, “and apparently nobody ever had the courage to tell you that you’re terrible at it.”
Will opened his mouth, then closed it again, because the shirt she had folded took up half the space it had before. She folded another, then another, fitting each piece of clothing neatly into the satchel until the bag, traitorously, began to look almost spacious.
Will watched in silence for a few moments.
Maddie didn’t look up. “You’re welcome.”
“I didn’t thank you.”
“You were about to.”
“I was not.”
“You were thinking it.”
Will considered denying this, but since he had in fact been thinking something uncomfortably close to gratitude, he decided to change the subject.
“Are you packed?”
Maddie gave him a look. “I’ve been packed since breakfast.”
“Overconfident,” Will said. “That’s dangerous.”
“Disorganized,” Maddie replied, pressing his spare socks into the side of the bag. “That’s embarrassing.”
Will took it from her, tested its weight, and found—annoyingly—that it sat more comfortably on his shoulder than it had before.
He nodded once. “Adequate.”
Maddie smiled. “That’s Ranger for thank you, isn’t it?”
“It’s Ranger for don’t push your luck.”
They left shortly after dawn.
The message from Gilan had arrived two days earlier, carried by a courier who had looked very relieved to be rid of it. That, Will had thought, was never a good sign. Gilan’s messages tended to be brief under ordinary circumstances, but this one had been especially irritating.
Strange lights reported at old border fortress. Locals refusing to approach after sunset. They suspect ghosts. Possible criminal activity. Investigate.
That was all.
There was no map beyond a rough marking of the fortress’s location, no description of the lights, no names of witnesses, and no indication of what “possible criminal activity” might mean. It was exactly the sort of message Gilan enjoyed sending: vague enough to be unhelpful, official enough to be unavoidable, and just interesting enough that Will couldn’t ignore it.
Maddie, naturally, had questions.
She began asking them before they had even cleared the trees surrounding the cabin.
“What kind of lights?”
“I don’t know.”
“How many locals saw them?”
“I don’t know.”
“How old is the fortress?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why was it abandoned?”
“Maddie.”
“What?”
Will turned in the saddle and looked at her. “I don’t know.”
She guided Bumper around a rut in the road, frowning. “You don’t have to say it like that.”
“You’ve asked me seven questions in five minutes, and the answer to all of them is the same. I thought I’d save us both some time.”
“Well, Gilan’s letter was useless.”
“Gilan’s letters often are.”
“Do you think he does that on purpose?”
“Almost certainly.”
Maddie considered this with the serious expression of someone adding another grievance to a growing list. “That seems irresponsible.”
“It’s educational.”
“That’s what people say when they’re being irresponsible.”
Will smiled faintly and let Tug choose his way along the forest path. The morning was cool and damp, with mist clinging to the lower ground and beads of moisture illuminating the grass. The road north wound through open woodland at first, then gradually narrowed as they approached the border country, where farms became fewer, and trees grew thicker.
By midday, Maddie had returned to the subject.
“So what do you think it is?”
“What do I think what is?”
“The lights.”
Will shifted in the saddle and shrugged. “Could be smugglers.”
“Could be bandits?”
“Possibly.”
“Could be soldiers from across the border?”
“Unlikely, but not impossible.”
“Could be ghosts?”
Will didn’t answer immediately, which was a mistake, because Maddie noticed.
“You hesitated.”
“I was deciding whether that question deserved a serious answer.”
“That means you considered it.”
“It means I considered ignoring it.”
“But you didn’t.”
“Maddie.”
She leaned slightly forward in her saddle, eyes bright with the sort of curiosity that was admirable in an apprentice and exhausting in a traveling companion. “The villagers think it’s ghosts, don’t they?”
“Villagers often think things are ghosts when they don’t want to walk somewhere after dark. And ghosts are almost easier to understand than criminals.”
“That isn’t the same as saying you don’t believe in them.”
Will glanced at her then, and something in her tone told him she wasn’t merely teasing anymore.
“Do you believe in ghosts, Will?”
The question settled between them more heavily than he expected.
For a while, the only sound was the steady rhythm of the horses’ hooves. Tug lowered his head as they passed under a canopy of oak, and patches of pale sunlight slid over Will’s cloak, then vanished as the branches moved in the breeze.
Before Alyss died, he would have laughed at it and answered without hesitation. No, of course not. Ghosts belonged to frightened children, lonely shepherds, and travelers who had spent too many nights sleeping badly in unfamiliar places. Rangers dealt in tracks, signs, patterns, evidence. A light in a ruined tower was a lantern. A whisper in the dark was wind through stone. A shadow at the edge of sight was only a shadow.
Afterward, things had become less simple.
He had never truly believed he saw her. He knew that. He was not a fool, and grief had not robbed him of sense, no matter how close it had come.
The blonde woman turning a corner in a crowded marketplace was never Alyss. The pale figure at the edge of the trees near the cabin vanished because it had never been there at all. The voice he thought he heard sometimes, soft and amused and heartbreakingly familiar, was only memory moving through silence.
He knew all of that.
But knowing a thing and feeling it were not always the same.
There had been mornings when he woke from dreams so vivid that for several seconds he expected to find her by the fire. There had been evenings when the cabin seemed to hold the shape of her absence so clearly that he almost turned to speak to her. And there had been one night, not long after her death, when he had stood outside beneath the stars because he could have sworn--could have sworn--he heard her laugh from the trees.
He had dismissed it afterward, of course.
He had dismissed all of it.
The trouble was that dismissal did not make memory any less powerful.
At length, he said, “I think if ghosts exist, they probably have better things to do than rattle around old fortresses frightening farmers.”
Maddie stared at him. “That is the most annoying answer you could possibly have given.”
Will shrugged and kept his eyes on the path ahead.
They reached the village late in the afternoon, and it took less than an hour to discover that the locals were perfectly willing to talk about the fortress, provided they were safely inside a warm room with the doors locked. The innkeeper described blue-white lights moving along the ruined walls. A farmer claimed to have seen a figure standing in the broken tower with no lantern in hand, glowing faintly against the night sky.
An elderly woman told them that the fortress had been cursed since the old border wars, which she described in great detail until Will gently pointed out that those wars had ended nearly two hundred years ago.
“Curses can be patient,” she informed him.
Will didn't know how to answer that.
By sunset they were approaching the ruins.
The fortress stood on a low ridge overlooking a narrow valley that once must have been an important crossing point. Time had not been kind to it. One wall had collapsed almost entirely, spilling stones down the slope like the bones of some long-dead animal. Ivy climbed the remaining tower, and young trees had rooted themselves in cracks along the battlements. The gatehouse had lost its doors, and the empty archway gaped black in the fading light.
It was an excellent place for ghosts, Will had to admit.
It was also an excellent place for smugglers.
They made camp well away from the ridge, hidden among pines with a clear view of the fortress. Will allowed no fire, which Maddie accepted with only mild grumbling, and they ate cold bread, cheese, and dried meat while the last light drained from the sky.
For the first few hours, nothing happened.
The ruins stood silent beneath the stars. An owl called from somewhere behind them, and once a fox barked sharply in the valley, making Maddie turn her head with sudden interest. Otherwise, the night was pretty calm.
Then, shortly after midnight, a light appeared in the broken tower.
It was small at first, no brighter than a candle cupped in someone’s hand. Then it moved sideways, vanished, and reappeared lower down near the collapsed wall.
Maddie’s hand went to her bow. “You saw that.”
“I did.”
“It’s moving.”
“Yes.”
“That’s unsettling.”
“Only if you were hoping for ghosts.”
She glanced at him. “You’re sure it isn’t?”
Will continued watching the light as it bobbed briefly, disappeared behind a broken stretch of stone, then emerged again near the base of the tower.
“Ghosts,” he said, “rarely carry lanterns.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I’m willing to make an educated guess.”
They waited another half hour, long enough to see two more lights appear and vanish within the ruins. Then Will rose, settling his cloak around him.
“Stay close. Step where I step. And if I signal you to stop, stop.”
Maddie gave him a look that said she had heard this particular instruction before, possibly several hundred times.
“I know.”
They moved toward the fortress through the long grass. The wind shifted along the ridge, carrying with it the smell of damp stone, wet leaves, and something else beneath it: smoke, very faint, and something that smelled of animal sweat.
Will paused, crouching beside a fallen section of wall. Maddie dropped beside him.
“Not ghosts?” she whispered.
“Not unless they’ve started keeping pack animals.”
Finding the entrance took longer. Whoever was using the fortress knew enough to avoid the obvious archways and broken gates. Will circled the outer wall twice before he found the scrape marks near a bramble-choked section of collapsed stone. The marks were faint, but fresh: boots, more than one pair, and the drag of something heavy.
He parted the brambles carefully.
Behind them, half-hidden under fallen masonry, was a narrow opening leading down into darkness.
Maddie leaned closer, her voice barely audible, and very visibly excited. “Secret tunnel.”
“Old drainage passage, probably.”
“That’s less fun.”
“Most true things are.”
They slipped inside.
The passage sloped downward beneath the fortress, and the air changed immediately. Aboveground, the night had been cool and clean. Here it was stale, damp, and carrying the mineral smell of old stone and earth. Will led the way with one hand brushing the wall, moving slowly enough that loose gravel would not betray them. Behind him, Maddie was silent, and despite himself, he felt a small flicker of pride. There had been a time when she would have bumped into something within the first dozen steps and then looked offended that the darkness had dared to exist to inconvenience her.
Voices reached them after several minutes.
Men’s voices.
Maddie leaned close to his shoulder. “Definitely ghosts.”
Will’s mouth twitched. “Very talkative ones.”
The tunnel widened ahead into a storage chamber beneath the fortress. Three men were there, seated around a small hooded lantern, with crates stacked behind them against the wall. One was sharpening a knife with theatrical concentration. Another was counting coins. The third had his boots off and appeared to be asleep.
Smugglers, then.
Will signaled Maddie left, then pointed to himself and the man with the knife. She nodded once.
It should have been simple.
And for the first ten seconds, it was.
Will moved first, striking the knife from the man’s hand and bringing his saxe knife hilt down hard against the side of his head. Maddie crossed the chamber in the same instant, catching the coin-counter off guard as she slammed a knee to his gut, then a punch under his chin as he folded forward with a startled grunt. The sleeping man woke just in time to see Will standing over him with an arrow nocked and pointed very steadily at his chest.
“Don’t,” Will advised.
The man didn’t.
Unfortunately, someone in the next chamber did.
A shout rang out, followed by the scrape of boots and the unmistakable sound of steel being drawn.
Will sighed. “I dislike it when people shout.”
The next few minutes were confused, loud, and deeply inconvenient.
More smugglers than Will had expected poured from the adjoining tunnel. Six at least, perhaps seven, armed with short swords, clubs, and the frantic confidence of men who had been surprised and were trying to turn fear into aggression.
The chamber was too narrow for proper archery, so Will fired once, dropped one man with a shaft through the shoulder, then slung his bow and drew his saxe knife and throwing knife in one smooth motion.
Maddie fought at his left; she had improved more than she realized in recent months. There was less wasted movement now, fewer dramatic flourishes, more practicality in her stance.
Will had time to think that Halt would have approved.
Then a smuggler came at him from the right, and approval became less important than not being stabbed.
He ducked under the first slash, caught the man’s wrist, and drove his knee upward. The smuggler doubled over with a strangled sound. Will shoved him backward into another attacker, but the movement took him half a step too far to the side.
His boot found nothing beneath it.
For one brief, deeply unpleasant moment, Will had just enough time to realize that the floor beneath the old fortress was not nearly as dependable as he had assumed. Then the darkness below him opened like a mouth, and he dropped.
He hit the side of the shaft first, shoulder glancing off rough stone with a burst of pain that stole the breath from his lungs. A heartbeat later he struck the bottom hard enough to make the world flash white behind his eyes.
For several seconds, he lay still, stunned by the abrupt silence after the chaos above. Somewhere overhead, men were shouting. He heard Maddie’s strikers crack against something with a sound that was almost musical, followed by a cry of pain that was not hers.
That, Will decided dimly, was encouraging.
He tried to draw breath and discovered that his ribs objected strongly to the idea. His shoulder objected as well, and his hip had apparently decided to join the discussion. He lay on his back and stared up at the square of dim light overhead, forcing himself to breathe.
In.
Out.
And again.
His vision steadied by degrees just as a head appeared over the edge of the opening.
“Maddie?” he called, though his voice came out weaker than he liked.
“No,” she said, breathless. “A ghost.”
Despite everything, he smiled. “That’s unfortunate. I was hoping for someone useful.”
“You fell into a hole,” she said.
“I noticed.”
“That was pretty dumb.”
“I thought it might be useful to inspect it.”
Maddie disappeared for a moment, and after a bit of shuffling, a rope dropped down beside him a moment later. Will took hold of it with his good hand, then paused as pain ran through his shoulder like fire.
Above him, Maddie’s voice softened. “Can you climb?”
He could hear what she was trying not to say. Can you climb, or do I need to come down and get you?
Pride suggested he should say yes immediately, sense and comfort suggested otherwise.
Unfortunately, sense had been speaking in Halt’s voice more often lately, which made it especially irritating.
“Not quickly,” Will said.
“Then don’t,” Maddie replied. “Tie it around yourself.”
It took longer than he liked, but eventually the rope was secure beneath his arms. Maddie braced herself above, and with a combination of her pulling, his pushing, and a considerable amount of muttered commentary from both of them, Will emerged from the shaft and rolled onto solid stone.
For a moment he lay there, breathing hard.
Maddie crouched beside him. “You look terrible.”
“Thank you.”
She looked him over quickly, hands efficient as she checked for bleeding, broken bones, and other consequences of falling through neglected architecture. Will allowed it because he didn't have the energy to protest.
The remaining smugglers had fled deeper into the tunnels.
Maddie helped Will to his feet, though he insisted on calling it “steadying” rather than helping. Together they moved after the smugglers, slower now but still silent enough to surprise two of them as they tried to force open a concealed exit beyond the storage chamber.
Maddie took the first down with an arrow to the man's calf. Will, whose body was aching in a way that promised a miserable morning and a probable infirmary visit, contented himself with placing the point of his saxe knife against the second man’s throat.
“I’m having a difficult night,” he said pleasantly. “Please don’t improve it by making me chase you.”
The man surrendered pretty quickly after that.
By dawn, the fortress no longer seemed haunted, merely damp, broken, and chock-full of illegal goods. The lights, as they suspected, had come from hooded lanterns carried through the old passageways. The strange wails that had frightened the villagers were nothing more supernatural than wind passing through cracks in the stone, helped along, Will suspected, by men who knew that frightened locals were less likely to investigate.
The smugglers were bound together in the lower chamber, their goods identified and counted as best as Will could manage with one arm working poorly.
There were bolts of stolen expensive cloth, casks of untaxed brandy, and several crates of expensive metal. The tunnels connected the ruined fortress to a concealed exit in a ravine beyond the ridge, allowing the men to move goods unseen while the villagers avoided the place out of fear of supernatural curses.
Will had to admit it was a very clever arrangement.
He would have admired it more if his shoulder and ribs had hurt less.
“Ghosts are better funded than I expected,” Maddie said, her eyebrows raised.
Will, sitting on a fallen block of stone while one of the captured smugglers glared at him, adjusted the sling Maddie had made for his arm.
“Smuggling is a lucrative afterlife, apparently.”
She smiled despite herself, then looked toward the shaft again, the humor faded as her smile dropped.
“You really could have died, ya know...”
Will followed her gaze. In daylight, the hole looked even more unpleasant than it had in the lantern glow the previous night. Deep enough to kill a man if he landed badly. Deep enough to make Maddie’s fear pretty damn rational.
He glanced at her and saw that she was waiting for him to make light of it.
So he did.
“I suppose I came rather close to becoming one of your ghosts.”
Maddie rolled her eyes, but some of the tension left her shoulders. “You would make an awful ghost.”
“I disagree. I think I’d be excellent at it.”
“You’d be unbearable.”
“Exactly. I’d haunt you specifically.”
“Why me?”
“Because it'd be fun.”
He continued, "You'd be doing the mission reports because I'd be too dead to do them myself, and I'd appear over your shoulder and point out spelling mistakes."
“You already do that alive.”
“Yes, but as a ghost I could do it at all hours.”
For a second, Maddie tried very hard not to laugh. Will could see the effort in her face, which made it worse. Then she gave in, and he found himself laughing too, though it hurt his ribs and he had to stop almost immediately.
It was a strange habit Rangers had, laughing after literal near-death experiences. Will had noticed it years ago in Halt and had thought, at the time, that it was merely one more sign of his mentor’s deeply questionable character.
Now he understood it better. There were only so many ways to tell the body that danger had passed. Sometimes laughter did the work better than words.
The village constable arrived shortly after sunrise with six men and a cart. The smugglers were handed over. The goods were counted. The tunnel entrances were marked for sealing.
The villagers, who only hours earlier had been speaking of curses and spirits, now spoke very confidently about how they had suspected smugglers all along.
Maddie listened to this with a raised eyebrow.
They remained long enough to make sure the prisoners were secure, then began the ride home late that morning. Will’s shoulder had stiffened by then, and every jolt of Tug’s gait sent a fresh ache through his ribs. Maddie watched him from the corner of her eye for the first hour.
Eventually, he said, “If you keep looking at me like that, I’ll assume you’re concerned.”
“I’m making sure you don’t fall off your horse.”
“That sounds like concern.”
“I'm looking out for myself, I don't want to find a new mentor if you fall off and crack your head open.”
“I see.”
“You’re welcome.”
Will looked ahead, smiling faintly. “Adequate.”
Maddie groaned. “That is not going to become a thing.”
“I think it already has.”
They reached Castle Araluen two days later; it was closer to where they were than Redmont was after all. Will figured he'd save them both the time of writing and sending off a report and just do it in person. Plus, it had been a long while since he had seen his old friends at Araluen, and he figured Maddie could use a day or so with her parents after that surprisingly difficult mission.
Will allowed them exactly one evening of rest before they reported to the Commandant.
Gilan received them in his office with the expression of a man who had expected trouble and was pleased to find that it had at least been interesting. He listened as Will gave the verbal account, interrupting occasionally with questions and once with a poorly concealed smile when Maddie described the shaft beneath the tunnel.
“You fell into it?” Gilan asked, his voice quivering slightly as he tried to suppress the laughter building in his chest.
Will regarded him coolly. “Temporarily.”
Gilan’s smile widened. “That’s a new term for falling.”
Maddie looked between them, clearly enjoying herself far more than was respectful.
When the account was finished, Gilan leaned back in his chair and nodded. “Good work. I’ll send word to the border fief. The baron there will want to inspect the goods himself.”
Maddie shifted slightly, clearly hoping that meant they were dismissed.
Gilan smiled.
It was not a reassuring smile.
“And I’ll need the written report, of course, by tomorrow before you head home.”
Maddie nodded, knowing his assignment didn't include her. She was switching her weight from one foot to the other, anxious for a hot meal and a good night's sleep.
And Will felt a warm and entirely unreasonable glow of satisfaction before he spoke his next words.
“Maddie will write it,” he said.
She turned to him. “What?”
“Excellent,” Gilan said, far too quickly. “Good practice.”
“What?!” Maddie repeated, this time including both of them in her disbelief.
Will adjusted his cloak around his injured shoulder with an exaggerated flinch. “I would do it myself, naturally, but my arm is wounded.”
“You injured your left shoulder, not your right hand.”
“The pain travels.”
“It does not.”
“It might.”
Gilan’s eyes gleamed. “Best not to risk it.”
Maddie stared at them both as the horrible truth dawned on her. “You planned this.”
“I fell into a hole,” Will said. “Show some respect.”
It was, he had to admit, deeply satisfying. Halt had made him write reports after missions, usually when Will was tired, hungry, injured, or some combination of the three. At the time, Will had considered it unnecessary cruelty disguised as discipline.
But later on, in their quarters at Araluen, watching Maddie scratch out half a line and mutter something uncomplimentary about old tunnels, Will now began to see the wisdom in his old mentor's unorthodox teaching methods.
Maddie looked up suddenly. “You’re enjoying this.”
“A little.”
“A lot.”
Will took a sip of coffee. “Possibly.”
She narrowed her eyes. “You’re making me write this because Halt used to make you write reports, didn't he?”
“Now that would just be petty.”
“It is petty.”
“It is educational.”
Maddie stared at him after hearing that world one too many times in the last two days.
Educational.
Will lowered his mug slowly.
He had heard that tone before. Worse, he had used that expression before: the calm, mildly infuriating certainty of a mentor who had already decided that mild discomfort was good for an apprentice. He thought of Halt sitting by a fire, offering dry comments while Will struggled through some unpleasant but supposedly character-building task. He thought of the raised eyebrow, the folded arms, the maddening ability to make silence feel like criticism.
Then he thought of himself, sitting by the fire, drinking coffee, making Maddie write the report.
The realization was sudden and deeply unsettling.
Maddie saw it happen. Her expression shifted from annoyance to triumph.
“Oh,” she said.
Will said nothing.
“Oh, that’s bad.”
“What is?”
“You’re turning into Halt.”
Will opened his mouth at once, because the accusation was outrageous and clearly required a firm denial.
Unfortunately, no denial came.
He sat there with his mouth slightly open, one hand around his coffee cup, and realized that he could not think of a single convincing argument against her.
Maddie leaned back in her chair, smiling now. “You even did the eyebrow thing.”
“I did not.”
“You absolutely did.”
“I have my own eyebrow thing.”
“That’s exactly what Halt would say.”
Will looked into the fire, where the flames shifted and cracked softly over the logs. For a moment, he imagined Halt’s voice, dry and amused, telling him that there were worse fates than becoming like one’s mentor. Will suspected that it was true.
He also knew he would never admit it aloud.
Across the table, Maddie dipped her pen again and returned to the report, though she was still smiling.
Will settled back in his chair.
“Make sure you include the part where I heroically survived falling into a pit,” he said.
Maddie did not look up. “I’m writing that you fell through rotten wood.”
“Same thing.”
“It is not.”
“History is only written by the victors.” He quoted.
“And victors so often lie.”
Will smiled into his coffee.
Outside, the trees whispered softly, and if there were ghosts in the world, they kept their distance that night.
alright i haven’t pre-written anything for this gathering so we’re rawdogging it, hope u enjoy! happy gathering!!!
—
The camp had finally gone quiet sometime after midnight.
Not fully silent -- desert camps never were. Somewhere beyond the ring of dying fires, Selethen’s guards traded shifts, horses stamped occasionally in the sand, and the canvas tents rustled softly in the warm night wind.
But the chaos had ended.
They were alive.
That alone still felt faintly improbable to the group.
Gilan sat near the edge of the firelight with a waterskin dangling loosely from one hand, watching the embers collapse inward on themselves. Across from him, Halt leaned back against a saddle, cloak pooled around his shoulders; his eyes were closed as though he were asleep, and he appeared outwardly relaxed in the way only Rangers ever managed after having been almost publicly beheaded.
Horace and Evanlyn had long since gone to sleep, and Selethen quickly followed suit, yawning as he headed to the larger tent set up for him near the edge of the camp.
And Will--
Will had vanished nearly an hour ago after ensuring every last detail of the camp had been settled.
Of course, he had.
Gilan shook his head faintly into his drink as he thought of the young boy.
“Your apprentice,” he muttered, knowing his former mentor wasn't actually sleeping.
Halt’s mouth twitched almost imperceptibly.
“My apprentice,” he agreed, his eyes still closed.
For a while, they simply sat there in companionable quiet.
Then Gilan finally asked the question that had been bothering him since the moment the cavalry had appeared over the dunes.
“What if he hadn’t made it?”
Halt opened his eyes now, looking up at him, appearing mildly puzzled at the inquiry. As if the question itself didn’t entirely make sense.
Gilan huffed a quiet laugh. “That’s exactly the look I expected.”
“Well, you do make a habit of asking odd questions,” Halt replied.
“We were prisoners in the middle of the desert,” Gilan said. “Outnumbered. Disarmed. You were quite literally at death's door,” He paused. “And you never panicked. Not once.”
Halt shrugged one shoulder.
“There wasn’t much point to that.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
Halt's lips pursed at that.
The fire cracked softly between them.
Gilan studied him for a moment before saying quietly, “You knew he’d come.”
This time, Halt did not answer immediately.
His gaze drifted toward the dark edge of camp, toward the endless desert beyond it.
“I knew,” he said at last, “that if Will was alive and free, he would come for us.”
The certainty in his voice settled heavily into the silence.
Gilan felt something strange twist in his chest at the detection of it.
Because Halt did not speak that way lightly. About anything. About any one, for that matter.
“You trusted him with all our lives,” Gilan said quietly.
Halt’s expression remained calm.
“Yes.”
Gilan let out a slow breath through his nose.
“That’s… a great deal of trust. Especially coming from you, and especially considering you were ready to knock me unconscious the other week for suggesting you trust him with his own life.”
Halt’s eyes flicked toward him again, faint amusement buried somewhere beneath the exhaustion.
“You think I don’t know that?”
“No, I think you know exactly what it means.”
That earned him a small nod.
For a moment neither spoke.
Then Halt said, quieter this time, “ I trusted him long before this.”
The firelight shifted across the hard lines of his face.
“But this was the first time I quite literally handed him my life.”
Something about hearing the words aloud struck Gilan harder than he expected. Because Rangers trusted carefully. Completely, once earned --but carefully.
And Halt trusted almost no one completely, not fate, kings, plans.
There are a few exceptions, of course; Crowley, Arald, and himself, perhaps.
Yet the ranger had sat in chains in the desert and remained calm because somewhere out there, he knew his 20-year-old apprentice was coming to rescue them.
Gilan suddenly understood something that had been slowly forming for years without him ever quite naming it.
This had stopped being a simple apprentice and master relationship long ago.
Somewhere between Redmont and Skandia and all the years since, something else had grown in its place. Family, perhaps. Not by blood, but something deeper for the lack of it.
And strangely, the realization brought no jealousy at all.
It could have, once. Years ago, perhaps, when he was younger and more uncertain and still craved Halt’s approval like a plant craves sunlight.
But sitting here now, watching the exhausted certainty in Halt’s face, Gilan found himself feeling only an immense, quiet gratitude.
For Will.
And for Halt.
For the fact that somehow the universe had seen fit to throw a malcontented orphan boy into an irritable ranger's path all those years ago. And in those years, something grew between them that perhaps the universe had planned for all along.
Halt broke the silence first.
“There’s a sense of destiny about that boy,” he said quietly.
Gilan smiled faintly.
“You really believe that.”
Halt’s gaze lingered on the fire.
“Well, I don’t believe in destiny, I never have,” he said.
Then, he swallowed, and after a pause:
“But I do believe in Will.”
The words settled deep. And suddenly Gilan understood why Will would follow Halt anywhere on earth.
Why a half-starved castle orphan had looked at this grim, impossible Ranger and decided, with all the terrifying certainty only children possessed, there. That's who will care for me.
The sound of shifting sand interrupted the silence.
Both Rangers looked up automatically.
Will stood several yards away at the edge of the firelight, very still.
Ah.
He’d heard.
Judging by the faint look of horror on his face, perhaps more than initially anticipated.
For one terrible moment, Will looked absurdly young again.
Not the confident young man who had manipulated desert tribes into an army and stormed across the dunes to rescue them.
Not the boy who had faced Temujai cavalry and Skandian warriors and Kalkara.
Just a startled child who had accidentally overheard something far too large for him to hold properly.
Gilan watched the realization hit him in real time.
Halt trusted him.
Not merely as a student or subordinate.
But no, he trusted him completely.
The expression on Will’s face turned dangerously bright around the eyes.
Well.
That simply would not do.
Before Gilan could say anything, Will cleared his throat abruptly and looked vaguely like a man preparing to flee the continent.
“I was--” he started, then stopped. “Selethen wanted--”
“No he didn’t,” Halt said calmly.
Will blinked.
“…No,” he admitted weakly.
Silence.
Gilan very carefully looked away before the poor idiot died of embarrassment.
Will shifted awkwardly in the sand.
“You really just said that?”
Halt raised an eyebrow.
“Which part?”
“That you--” Will visibly struggled through the sentence. “That you trusted me with your life.”
“You’re offended?”
“No!” Will said immediately, sounding appalled. “No, I just--”
He stopped again, words failing him entirely.
Gilan hid a smile behind his waterskin.
Because there it was again — that strange contradiction that was uniquely Will.
The boy could talk leaders into alliances and command armies without blinking.
But one sincere expression of affection and he unraveled instantly.
Halt, meanwhile, regarded him with the same steady look he had worn since Will was fifteen years old and covered in mud outside his cabin.
“You came back for us,” Halt said simply.
As though that explained everything.
To Halt, perhaps it did.
Will swallowed hard enough that Gilan noticed it even in the dim firelight.
Something raw flickered briefly across his face -- so quick most people would have missed it.
But Rangers noticed things.
And Gilan suddenly realized, with startling clarity, the ghost of the child Will had once been. Small, alone, unwanted for so long that love itself seemed to catch him off guard. Perhaps because he never learned what it felt like until now.
Halt saw it too.
His voice softened almost imperceptibly.
“I knew you would.”
That did it.
Will looked down immediately, scrubbing a hand across his face in the world’s least subtle attempt to recover himself.
“Right,” he muttered hoarsely. “Well. Good.”
Then, because he was Will:
“The army helped.”
Gilan barked out a laugh.
Halt’s mouth twitched.
“A small army,” Will added defensively.
“You assembled cavalry in a foreign desert nation in under three days,” Gilan informed him. “That stops qualifying as small.”
Will pointed vaguely at him. “See, that’s exactly the sort of unrealistic expectation that becomes a problem later.”
And there he was again. The tension broke like a snapped bowstring.
Gilan laughed harder, and even Halt finally let out the quiet huff of amusement he usually tried to disguise.
Will looked between them, still embarrassed, still suspiciously bright-eyed, but smiling now despite himself.
And Gilan thought, not for the first time, that meeting Will had truly changed all of their lives forever.
This is from Horace's perspective. I'm so sorry in advance.
---
Horace knew.
He knew even though no one had said anything. That was the strange thing.
No healer had leaned over his bed with solemn eyes, no trembling hand had settled on his shoulder, no one whispered some careful, practiced phrase about preparing himself. No one had to.
Because he knew even if no one else did.
He had known since the forest.
Not at first, perhaps. At first, there had only been pain, and cold, and the raw, desperate need to keep breathhing because Will kept ordering him to. That was one of the purest memories from the woods. Will's voice. His voice had cut through everything--the fever, the darkness, the distant snarls beyond the trees.
“Stay with me, brother.”
And Horace obeyed.
Not because he was brave or strong, but because, as a child, he liked to read fairytales. Fairytales of knights sacrificing everything for the greater good, heroes who endured impossible things with noble countenances, who fought to the death in the name of honor. He was very young when he decided he would be a hero.
And heroes would stay if their best friend sounded as terrified as Will had. Even half dead, Horace had not been able to bear that.
For six days, he drifted in and out of the conscious world. Sometimes he woke to rain on his face, sometimes to Will’s hands pressing hard against a wound he couldn't even feel anymore. Sometimes, he woke to the awful sound of his friend whispering to himself, counting breaths, heartbeats, anything that proved Horace was still there.
Once, he remembered opening his eyes and seeing Will staring into the trees, eyes shifting, with his knife raised, shaking so badly the blade trembled beneath his grip.
“Will,” he had tried to say.
But nothing seemed to leave his throat. He lacks the strength to speak, or perhaps even his ears lack the strength to pick up the sound of his own voice.
Will had looked down and smiled at him, obviously having heard him.
'So it was the latter,' Horace thought, a feeling of despair might have settled in his chest in that moment had he not felt so tired.
“There you are,” Will had whispered.
Horace had wanted to answer him.
I’m here.
I’m sorry.
Please sleep. Please.
But his body had betrayed him once more. His mouth would not move, his lungs would not fill properly. He only remembered Will pressing their foreheads together for one brief second before pulling away again, as if tenderness were a luxury they could not afford.
After that, time seemed to lose shape.
Next thing he knew, the canopy of trees that filled his vision day after day was replaced with white ceilings, lamplight, and bitter medicines being shoved down his throat.
A warm, trembling hand in his own. His fiancée's voice. Healers murmuring beside him when they thought he slept.
Infection.
Fever.
Complications.
"No, not yet."
Watch him through the night.
"He is young."
"He may recover."
May. Horace had always hated that word.
It sounded merciful until one truly analyzied it's proper meaning. May recover. May walk. May wake. May live.
It was a word healers used when they did not want to say there was no chance.
He learned quickly when to keep his eyes shut.
People felt safe to speak freely around the unconscious.
Cassandra said his name like a prayer. Alyss came in sometimes and sat beside him when Cassandra finally slept, her face pale and hollow from watching Will unravel across the corridor. Halt came once, silent and grim, and stood at the foot of his bed for a very, very long time.
Horace pretended to sleep through all of it.
He was too tired to comfort them and too ashamed to be comforted.
Too afraid that if he opened his eyes, someone would see the truth in them.
Because the truth was as clear as day in Horace's mind:
He was dying.
Not quickly or dramatically. There would be no battlefield like he'd always envisioned when he pictured his own demise, no sword in hand, no final desperate battle cry. There was only this bed, and blankets, and broth gone cold on the table. There would be healers whispering outside the door and Cassandra trying not to cry where he could see her.
It seemed unfair, somehow.
Horace had never expected to die beautifully. But he had hoped, in some foolish corner of his mind, that he might at least die usefully.
Then he thought of Will.
He had heard Cassandra and Alyss talking of his current state. He heard the mumbles of healers discussing in the hallway that they were running out of treatment plans for the ranger. He knew what had become of him. Horace knew.
Oh Will.
Will, who had dragged him through six days of hell by sheer force of will, as if death itself was another opponent he could outsmart.
Will, who believed saving Horace was the only thing keeping the very world from imploding.
Horace stared at the ceiling until it blurred.
No.
No, that would simply not do.
If he was going to die, then he would have to do it carefully.
For Will’s sake. For Cassandra’s. For all of them.
The decision, once made, settled over him with surprising calm.
From then on, he became very good at deception. He sat up, pretended to have an appetite he did not possess, drank the water offered to him, even went to see Will at some point.
When Cassandra asked if the pain was worse, he smiled and told her no.
When the healers asked if he felt dizzy, he said only a little.
When Alyss came in with red-rimmed eyes and asked if he needed anything, he asked whether she had managed to get Will to drink water, and she smiled at him once before she cried.
When Halt visited again, Horace forced himself to open his eyes.
The Ranger looked awful.
That was Horace’s first honest thought. His beard was tangled and long, his eyes had deep-set shadows beneath them, and his mouth was set in that grim line that meant either someone was about to die, or someone was about to regret ever being born.
Possibly both at once.
Horace managed a faint smile. “You look terrible.”
Halt’s eyebrow rose. “You look worse.”
“Good,” Horace murmueed, his head sinking deeper into his pillow as he fought the ache at his temples. “I’d hate to lose.”
For a moment, something softened in Halt’s face. “How are you?”
Horace knew a battlefield assessment when he heard one.
So that well-practiced lie slipped past his tongue once more.
“Better.”
Halt studied him for a long time, his eyes moving up and down the warrior's form, and Horace had to fight to keep his breathing even.
At last, Halt gave one short nod. “Good, you had us all worried for a bit.”
But he did not look convinced.
Of course, he didn’t. Halt was rarely fooled by anyone. But Horace thought perhaps he allowed himself to be fooled this time because he needed to be. Perhaps Halt simply did not have the emotional space to handle another member of his family slip through his fingers, perhaps he ignored Horace's lie because he simply didn't have the capacity to fight it.
That thought hurt the worst of all.
After Halt left, Horace lay awake for a long time.
Then he croaked out a call to a nearby nurse, asking only for a slip of parchment and a pen.
The nurse looked surprised. “You should rest, Sir Horace.”
“I know,” he said, pleasantly.
“You’re very weak.”
“I know," Horace repeated, still with a pleasant smile on his face.
She hesitated.
Horace smiled bigger at her. It cost him more than it should have.
“I only want to write a note.”
The nurse brought him parchment, ink, and a quill.
His hand shook when he took it.
That annoyed him. A knight’s hand should not shake. His own never did; a fact he was proud of. His nerves did not settle easily in his extremities, not when holding a sword, a pen, and certainly not when writing the words that might be the last thing anyone ever had of him.
He waited until the young nurse left before beginning.
Cassandra, Halt, Alyss, Will -- He began.
No.
His throat tightened.
He stared at the names until they swam in his vision.
He should have more time than this. More dinners, more arguments, more early morning training yards, and stupid jokes, and Will pretending not to be smug after winning at chess. More of Cassandra looking at him as if he were something finer than he was, more of Halt insulting him with the grave tone of a priest delivering a homily.
More.
He wanted more.
The unfairness of it rose in him suddenly, hot, angry, and childish.
I don't deserve to die yet. I don't want to die yet.
The thought came so sharply that he felt it might break him in two. He set the quill down and pressed the heel of his hand against his eyes.
He was not ready.
He was twenty-something years old, newly engaged, and still occasionally forgot which fork to use at formal dinners. He had not yet married the love of his life, he had not yet danced with her at their wedding, he had not yet held their children, he had not yet grown old enough for Will to mock him for going grey.
He was not ready.
But across the corridor, Will was trapped in a forest that no longer existed.
And Horace loved him too much to leave him alone with that blame.
So he picked up the quill again, and this time, he wrote.
Not much. He didn't have the strength to write the eloquent sonnets about how much his friends truly meant to him, how they were the family he never had; he couldn't write individual letters to each of them recounting his favorite memories with them. His thoughts drifted to Jenny, George, Arald, Rodney, Gilan. All the people who had made such a drastic impact on his life, who would never know of that impact. Simply because he didn't have the strength to relay it. Simply because he had run out of time.
He only had the strength and the time for the truth, or as much of it that mattered.
Don’t wake Will.
Don’t tell him until he’s ready.
Please don’t let him blame himself.
Tell him I’m proud of him.
Tell him he’s always been my brother.
By the end, his vision had gone strange around the edges.
I love you, Cass. Ugh, no, he didn't just love her; she was his air, his whole being, his whole life. Since he was 16, he couldn't envision any other woman he would spend his life with aside from her. It had always been her. Why was his body betraying him now, when this mattered most?
He let out a shaky breath, signing the note with an H because spelling out his own name altogether suddenly felt like too much.
Then he folded the parchment carefully. The effort left him breathless.
Later, Cassandra came in.
Horace tucked the note beneath his blanket before she could see it.
She looked stunning, exhausted, and furious at the world all at once. Horace thought she had never looked more beautiful. Her hair was loosely braided over one shoulder, and her eyes were swollen from crying, but she knelt beside him with a smile, clearly trying to disguise it. Then as she noticed his breathless state, her eyebrows furrowed.
“What's going on?” she asked suspiciously.
Horace blinked.
“What? Nothing.”
“You’re a terrible liar.”
“That is deeply unfair. I have lied very well several times.”
“Name one.”
“When Will tried to grow that beard, he asked me how he looked, and I panicked and told him it looked distinguished.”
Despite herself, Cassandra laughed.
The sound nearly brought tears to his eyes. He wanted to make her laugh like that forever, to hear it every day, he wanted to be old and ridiculous with her, he wanted to see her crowned Queen one day and stand beside her looking mildly uncomfortable in formal clothes while Will made faces at him from the crowd. He wanted to tell her everything that was going on. So much. She deserves to know, she does.
Instead, he reached for her hand, and she took it immediately, the smile frozen on her face.
“Cass,” he said softly.
Her smile faded. “No,” she said.
He hadn’t even said anything yet, but she knew him too well.
“No,” she repeated, sharper now. “Don’t speak like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re leaving.”
Horace swallowed.
The room went very quiet.
“I’m trying not to,” he said.
That was the most honest thing he'd said all week, and he hated himself for it when he saw her face crumble.
“Hey,” he whispered, though he barely had the breath. “Come here.”
She leaned over him, and he lifted one clumsy hand to her cheek. His fingers trembled against her skin.
“I love you,” he whispered.
A tear slipped down her face.
“I know.”
He smiled faintly. “You’re supposed to say it back.”
“I love you,” she whispered fiercely. “I love you, and you are not allowed to die.”
He opened his eyes again and looked at her properly. He wanted to remember her like this. Not grieving. Not broken. But bright, and furious in a way that was distinctly her. His Cassandra.
“I will,” he promised.
It was not the truth.
And they both knew it.
But she bent and kissed his forehead as if it were.
Sometime after dawn the next morning, the pain changed.
It had been a constant thing before, deep and gnawing, but now it sharpened. Became something colder and more final. Horace woke gasping, one hand gripping the sheet, the other pressed weakly to his side.
A healer came. Then another followed and quickly left, coming back with the senior healer, whose mouth was pressed thin. They gave him something bitter.
Too much of it, perhaps.
Horace knew that almost at once.
The room tilted, the ceiling seemed to warp into geometric shapes and colors.
His breathing slowed in a way that frightened him, and he tried to say so, but the words dissolved somewhere between his chest and his mouth.
The healer frowned down at him.
“Rest,” she said. “You need sleep.”
No, Horace thought.
No, that isn’t right. Where's Cass? Where is everyone? Why did they leave him alone with these people? They don't know him...
But his body was heavy now, far too heavy, his tongue felt thick, his thoughts felt like they were gliding through mud.
He heard one of them whisper something about the dosage.
Another answered too sharply, silencing him.
Then quiet.
That was when Horace understood with a cruel clarity.
This was it.
It wasn't the forest, or his wounds, or anything Will did wrong out there with desperation and prayers as medication.
Something had gone wrong here, in this clean little room with white sheets, polished instruments, and people who were meant to save him.
The realization should have made him angry, he supposed.
Perhaps it would have, if he’d had more strength. Instead, he thought of Will.
Will would notice. Will would bring him justice.
That thought came suddenly, absurdly.
Will would notice because Will noticed everything. The angle of a footprint, the tremble in a voice, the difference between sleep and unconsciousness, the faint scent of the wrong herb in a cup.
Will would know.
And Horace, with what little remained of himself, was terrified of that.
Because if Will knew, then Will would blame himself for not stopping it.
Even from across the corridor. Even half-mad. Even mentally broken.
Will would find a way to make it his fault.
Horace tried to move, a new desperation fueling him.
Only to find the only movement he could make was a twitch of his fingers against the blanket.
The note.
Someone had to find the note.
His hand slid, with impossible strength, beneath the edge of the blanket, clumsy and numb, until it touched parchment. He dragged it out inch by inch and let it fall near the bedside table.
Good.
Good enough.
The room darkened at the edges, he could barely make out the shape of Cassandra rushing to his side, could barely feel her cool touch on his heated face, could barely hear her screaming for help. He might have made out her shape racing out of the room, but just then the scene in front of him shifted, and for a moment he was in the forest again.
The stars were overhead, the ground was cold, and somewhere nearby, Will was whispering numbers again under his breath.
Horace wanted to tell him to stop counting. He wanted to tell him he had done enough. He wanted to tell him that being brothers did not mean debts had to be repaid.
Then his vision shifted again.
Not the forest this time, or the infirmary. But a training yard at Redmont.
Will was younger, all elbows and sass, grinning after knocking Horace flat with some infuriating Ranger trick. Halt stood nearby pretending not to be pleased. Alyss was laughing from the fence. Gilan was saying something unhelpful. Cassandra, somehow, was there too, though she had not been there then.
Dreams were generous that way. Letting you include those you wanted most in these memories.
Horace breathed in. It hurt less now.
That frightened him.
He was in the infirmary again. The lights were too bright, it was as if the sun was on maximum power. He tried to turn his head toward the voices he heard, the healers in the corner whispering to someone. Halt? Was Halt talking to them?
Alyss was here, Pauline he thinks, but where...?
Ah, there she is.
Peace settled in his heart for a brief moment.
Too brief. Will. Horace wanted to turn his head toward the door, the corridor leading to Will's room. He wanted to scream at him to wake up. He even tried to whisper it, but nothing came out, no one heard.
His eyes burned.
No, not yet. Not now. Please.
Let him live.
Then Horace let himself imagine it.
Will waking. Will grieving, yes, because there was no saving him from that. But living, standing, laughing again someday, even if the laugh came changed, wearing that stupid cloak that he claimed didn't come in tall sizes.
Riding Tug through the trees. Climbing trees. Marrying Alyss. Growing older. Letting himself be loved.
He let himself imagine the future, unknowingly a future without him.
Cassandra ruling the kingdom with fire in her eyes.
Halt pretending he was not a sap by every soft thing he felt.
Alyss as head of the diplomatic corps as he always imagined she one day would be.
A world continuing, cruel and beautiful and completely out of reach for him now.
Horace was sorry to leave it.
But if he had to, then let him leave like this:
Not in the forest, or afraid, or alone. Surrounded by people he loved. People who loved him. People who shaped everything he had become as a man.
His last clear thought was of Will.
Not as he looked now, or when he'd been to see him some days prior, hollow-eyed and lost in the depths of his own mind.
But as he had been in the woods, bloodied and shaking and refusing to surrender him to death.
"There you are," Will had whispered.
Horace felt he wanted to smile.
"There you are," he thought back.
Then the pain was gone.
The room fell quiet.
And Sir Horace Altman, the Oakleaf knight, beloved of a princess, brother of a Ranger, and friend to all who had ever been lucky enough to know him, slipped away before the clock struck noon.
Not because Will had failed to save him. But because, in the end, Horace had chosen the only thing he still could.
A very silly--borderline crack-- oneshot, please enjoy the result of my procrastinating finals.
---
Halt had had a difficult morning, to say the least.
He had slept poorly the night before-- not, he maintained stubbornly, because of his age. The ache in his back had everything to do with damp weather and absolutely nothing to do with the number of years he had spent on this Earth.
Unfortunately, his body seemed unconvinced.
By the time dawn crawled over the trees outside the cabin, Halt already felt irritable enough to declare war on sunlight itself. His eyes burned. His shoulders ached. His knee had made a noise upon standing that sounded disturbingly like dry branches snapping underfoot.
He limped toward the hearth with the grim outlook of a condemned man.
Coffee first. Civilization after.
The kettle hissed softly as he rested one hand on the table and stared into nothingness with all the enthusiasm of a man contemplating his own funeral. He drank the first cup too quickly, burnt his tongue, scowled at the mug as though it personally tried to kill him, then poured another cup.
That was when he remembered something unfortunate.
He had an apprentice.
Halt closed his eyes briefly.
“God help me,” he muttered.
The cabin itself was quiet, which should have warned him immediately. Will was never quiet unless he was either unconscious or hiding from responsibility.
Suspicious already, Halt began surveying the living room that Will was supposed to tidy the night before.
A boot lay beneath the table. Another sat confusingly on the windowsill.
And there was a knife embedded in a beam overhead.
Halt stared at it for several long seconds.
“…Wha--Why?”
And then he looked in the corner of the room.
The curtain to Will's room was violently shoved open, jolting the unsuspecting teenager awake.
Halt was holding one of Will’s shirts between two fingers like evidence in a murder inquiry.
“What is this?”
Will, sprawled half-awake in his blankets, blinked at him. His hair stood up in every direction imaginable.
“A shirt.”
“It was a shirt.”
Will squinted. “Looks fine,” he mumbled as he scrubbed a hand down his face, fighting a yawn.
“It can stand in the corner by itself.”
“It’s drying.”
“It’s rotting.”
Will rubbed sleep from his eyes. “Well, good morning to you, too. You’re in a bad mood.”
“I am in a bad mood because your laundry has become a sentient being.”
That earned the faintest grin.
Halt hated it when the boy did that--smiling just enough to make irritation difficult.
Will reached for it.
Halt lifted it out of range. “You are washing your clothes today.”
“I washed them last week.”
Halt stared at him.
Will hesitated
“I washed them...recently.”
“You’re impossible.”
“You trained me.”
“A fact I regret often.”
Will yawned as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed. “Pretty sure Rangers are supposed to smell bad.”
“No. Horses smell bad. Rangers are supposed to be unnoticed, and if you get shot because someone could smell you from a mile away, I'm sure they only got you confused with a horse.”
“Well, nobody notices the smell after a while.”
“That is because they die.”
Will snorted loudly.
Halt pointed toward the door. “Outside. Now.”
“You’re serious?”
His mentor crossed his arms, “I am considering burning the shirt.”
“That’s wasteful.”
“That thing would probably survive the fire anyway.”
Will dragged himself out of his bed, stretching with the theatrics of a dying man. “This feels like an attack.”
“It became an attack when I found another sock in the cooking pot.”
Will froze, his arms extended over his head, mid-stretch.
“…You weren’t supposed to find that.”
Halt shut his eyes.
There was a long, painful silence.
Then, very quietly:
“Why was there a sock in the pot?”
“I lost it.”
“That does not answer the question.”
“I found it again?”
In this moment, Halt genuinely considered walking into the woods and allowing nature to reclaim him.
Instead, he shoved a bar of soap into Will’s chest and marched him outside toward the wash basin behind the cabin.
The morning air was cold enough to make Will recoil the minute the door was opened.
“Oh, absolutely not.”
“You survived a winter in Skandia, but cold water defeats you?”
“Yes.”
“Pathetic.”
“You’re evil.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
Will crouched beside the basin miserably while Halt stood over him like an executioner. After several moments of dramatic sighing, Will finally dunked the shirt into the water.
The water immediately turned a concerning shade of brown.
Both of them stared at it.
“…Huh,” Will said.
“Hm.”
“I didn’t realize it was that bad.”
“Maybe I should contact a healer."
...
"...Or a priest."
Will laughed despite himself, shoulders shaking with sleepy amusement as he scrubbed at the fabric.
Halt watched him for a moment in silence.
The boy was still half-asleep, muttering complaints under his breath while soap slid up his arms. He looked younger like this sometimes-- less like the 18-year-old that he was, and more like the scrappy orphan Halt had taken in years ago.
And suddenly, without warning, something strange settled in Halt’s chest.
Because Will was scared, bracing, or apologizing for taking up space. Not acting grateful for scraps of attention like he once had.
Just… complaining. Like a normal kid being forced to wash clothes by an irritated parent.
Halt looked away before the thought could linger too long.
A few minutes later, Will muttered quietly, almost absentmindedly, “No one ever cared about this stuff before.”
Halt glanced back.
Will was still scrubbing at the shirt, eyes fixed on the water.
“No one cared if my clothes were clean, or... or whatever,” he mumbled with an awkward shrug.
The words were casual.
But Halt knew enough by now to recognize the things Will pretended not to mean.
Something uncomfortable twisted behind his ribs.
“Well,” he said gruffly, “someone clearly should have.”
Will looked up at him then, surprised by the firmness in his voice.
For a second, neither of them spoke.
Then Halt ruined the moment immediately by pointing at the basin.
“That shirt is beyond saving, by the way, we're tossing it.”
Will looked offended again. "Wha-- you just made me clean it, it is not beyond saving!”
“It may need to be buried.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“And you smell terrible.”
Will splashed the filthy water directly at his face.
Halt stepped back instantly. “You little barbarian--”
Will was already laughing now, loud and helpless, nearly dropping the shirt back into the basin as Halt threatened him with the soap.
And somewhere beneath the irritation, the exhaustion, and the horror of discovering socks in cookware--
This is a sequel to Landmarks. I suggest you read that first! :)
TW: Discussions of past SA of a minor, don't read if this triggers you, stay safe, please ❤️
---
The next morning dawned gray, humid, and cool over the Gathering grounds.
A damp mist clung low over the field, blurring the rows of tents and the distant tree line. Rangers moved quietly through camp, speaking in lowered voices, though no one said openly what had happened the day before.
No one needed to.
Even among men trained to notice everything and comment on nothing, wordless understanding had spread fast.
Will had barely slept.
He knew because Halt had been awake every time he surfaced, the shadow of him seated by the fire outside his tent was visible every time he opened his eyes.
By morning, Halt had bullied him into eating half a loaf of bread and a bowl of porridge, then informed him--without asking for permission--that Gilan wanted to speak with him.
Will had nearly refused.
Then he remembered Gilan’s face from yesterday.
The guilt.
The horror.
And he knew he owed him more than ignoring it and keeping silent.
He found Gilan near the practice ring, restringing his saxe knife belt for the third time. The taller Ranger looked up immediately when Will approached, and for once, looked like he had nothing ready to say.
Will stopped a few paces away, hands shoved into his pockets, so he wouldn't fidget or show the nervousness he felt throughout his body at that moment.
“You’re going to wear the leather through if you keep doing that.”
Gilan glanced down at the belt in his hands and let out a short breath that might have been a laugh.
“Occupational hazard, I guess.”
Silence stretched for a moment, then Gilan stood, his arms out in an apologetic gesture.
“Will--”
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Gil.” Will was quick to stop his apology
Gilan’s jaw tightened as he pursed his lips. “That’s generous of you, bud. But I'm not sure it’s true.”
“It is.”
“I pinned you to the ground in front of half the Corps.”
“We were sparring,” Will said with a laugh.
“I should have noticed.”
Will looked away, shaking his head, then he turned back to his friend with a weary look in his eyes, "You couldn't have. I... never gave you any reason to..."
Gilan’s expression shifted, softer now.
“Will.”
He said the name again carefully, the way Halt did when trying not to startle a horse.
“You don’t have to protect me from this, you know.”
Will let out that breathless laugh again, humorless.
“Funny. Halt said nearly the same thing.”
“Wise man.”
“Insufferable man.”
“Also true.”
That drew the smallest real smile from Will, and something eased in Gilan’s shoulders from the sight of it.
Will looked back at him, then his face set as he made a decision, and he gestured for him to sit.
They moved to the edge of the empty ring. And for a while, they watched the camp wake around them.
Then Will spoke. He told him about Skandia in pieces first, little bits he didn't think Gilan knew yet--chains, hunger, the warmweed haze, the slave hut, the way days blurred together.
Gilan continued staring at the dirt, eyebrows furrowed.
Then he paused for a long while, long enough that Gilan did look up at the young man. Will's mouth was moving in words that weren't being spoken, as though he were phrasing and rephrasing what was on his mind.
Then he said quietly, “In the yard... There was a hierarchical system among the slaves.”
Gilan didn't move. Didn't speak.
Will stared ahead as he continued, "The highest ranking of them was called the Committee; they were in charge of assignments, punishments... and everything in between."
"One of them, um..." Will cleared his throat now, then plunged forward before he knew he'd lose the courage to speak. "One of them singled me out. I was smaller, younger, newer to the yard, I didn't have any connections yet, so no one would care what happened to me."
He continued in a monotoned and disconnected voice, as he always had to whenever he recalled this story.
He told him of the man who had taken advantage of a young boy, too weak and eventually too drugged to stop him.
The threats. The violence. The shame afterward.
The certainty that no one could ever know. The promise he made to himself that he would never let anyone know. He had felt ruined. Broken. Violated.
Gilan’s hands curled slowly into fists on his knees.
Will noticed and nearly stopped.
But Gilan only said, very quietly, “Keep going. If you want to.”
So he did.
He told him about it after they were rescued. Will thought it was over, but it seemed to follow him home all the way from Hollasholm. Panic attacks, he hadn’t understood. About why being restrained or held down in any way sent him spiraling. About the nights after returning, when he scrubbed his skin raw until it bled because he could still feel hands on him.
And finally, he seemed to be at the end. Then, in a voice so thin it barely carried, “I thought if Halt knew, he’d look at me differently.”
Gilan turned to him sharply.
“Will.”
There was real anger in his voice now--but not at him.
“If Halt looked at you differently, I’d personally throw him in the lake.”
Will snorted despite himself.
“And if I look at you differently,” Gilan continued, “it’s only because I know now how much you survived without saying a word.”
Will swallowed hard.
“I’m not strong, Gilan, don't even go there.”
“Yes,” Gilan said immediately. “You are.”
“No, I--”
“You commanded an army in defense of a country that you owed nothing to, for God's sake. You came home, and you got up every morning. You trained. You laughed when you could. You kept going.”
He shook his head. “That’s strength, whether you like the cliche word or not.”
Will’s eyes stung.
“I hate that you know.”
“I hate that it happened.”
Gilan hesitated, then held out an arm sideways along the bench between them--not touching, only offering.
Will looked at it for a second.
Then leaned sideways until their shoulders met.
Gilan said nothing, his arm went around the other man's shoulders, and he threaded his fingers through his hair, burying his tears in it.
After a moment, Will muttered, “You tell anyone, and I’ll poison your coffee.”
“Bold of you to assume I don’t already drink poison for immunity purposes.”
That earned him a watery laugh.
And for one of the first times since Skandia, Will felt something unfamiliar. Not quite safety, not yet, but the possibility of it felt within reach, and that was close enough.
---
Across camp, Halt found Crowley exactly where he expected him to be.
Ordering people around while pretending not to enjoy himself.
The Ranger Commandant stood near the supply wagons, arms folded, directing tents to be packed in a more efficient order while several senior Rangers ignored him on principle.
“Halt,” Crowley said without turning. “Come to apologize for your apprentice kicking one of my senior rangers' ass yesterday?
“No.”
“Pity. I’d have enjoyed refusing it.”
Halt stopped beside him.
Crowley glanced sideways.
Then straightened.
“You look murderous.”
“I am.”
Crowley’s expression sharpened. “About Will.”
“Yes.”
Crowley pursed his lips, stopping what he was doing, then gestured to the Command tent a few meters away.
They walked toward it and went in without another word.
Then Crowley said quietly, “How bad?”
Halt’s jaw flexed as he sat in one of the canvas chairs.
“Worse than I had initially thought.”
Crowley went very still. “He told you?”
“A while ago.”
The older man’s gaze hardened toward the woods, toward nothing visible.
“Why didn't you tell me? We could've helped him. Ugh, I should've noticed to begin with, damnit.”
“We both should have.”
Crowley exhaled through his nose.
“I knew he was changed after Skandia. Anyone with eyes could see it. But I thought... the addiction and slavery were explanation enough for the behavioral changes.”
“They were explanation enough,” Halt said grimly. “Just not the whole of it, unfortunately.”
Crowley was silent for a long moment.
“If I knew who did it, I’d dig him up just to kill him again.”
Halt almost smiled.
“Get in line.”
Crowley looked at him then, and the old humor was gone entirely.
“What does the boy need?”
“Time.”
“Besides that.”
“Normalcy. Patience. People who don’t smother him but don’t pretend nothing happened.”
Crowley nodded once.
“And from the Corps?”
“Nothing,” Halt said sharply. “Until Will asks for something himself.”
Crowley accepted that immediately.
“No gossip,” he said. “No pity. No whispers.”
“I’ll break noses.”
“That'll help matters, I'm sure.” That, finally, brought the ghost of a smile to Halt’s face.
Crowley’s voice softened. “You’ve done well by him.”
“I nearly didn’t.”
“But you did, Halt. He seems okay now. For what he's been through, that's a big win.”
Halt looked through the flap in the tent where Will and Gilan were walking toward the mess hall tent in the distance.
The two boys were talking quietly, laughing, Gilan's arm hung lose over the apprentice's shoulders.
Crowley nodded again, a determined light in his eyes.
“Yes, he does. And that's good too."
Later that evening, when camp life had nearly returned to normal and the sun was just starting to dip below the horizon, Will found Halt waiting outside his tent.
“Well?” Halt asked.
“Well, what?”
“Did Gilan cry?” Halt asked, almost too enthusiastically.
“No,” Will said with a furrow of his brows, as he sat beside his mentor on the log.
“Pity.”
“He threatened to drown you if you looked at me differently.”
Halt sniffed.
“Reasonable stance.”
Will hesitated, then asked quietly, “Crowley knows now?”
Halt nodded in confirmation.
“What did he say?”
“That if he knew who was responsible, he’d dig him up and kill him again.”
Will stared. Then, despite everything, he laughed.
Halt glanced at him sidelong.
“There you are.”
Will’s smile faded softer this time.
He shrugged. And Halt ruffled his hair a bit, "C'mon, let's go get some dinner."
TW: A bit of self-harm, passive suicidal inclinations, depression
---
Will doesn't consider himself suicidal. As a matter of fact, he's never really been able to fully comprehend the idea of suicide. Such cases were common enough in a Ranger's line of work, and Will had always felt a deep sympathy for them, but it was never quite an empathetic understanding. How can one possibly abandon family and friends simply because they're too tired of living?
He didn't understand it, not consciously anyway. Not for a long while.
Will Treaty isn't suicidal, but he is reckless with his life. He rushes headlong into danger when every other sane person turns and runs in the opposite direction.
He's never truly called on this until a mission went horribly wrong.
Rogue Temujai.
That's what Halt had said they were.
"Of course, all Temujai are rogue in my book," he had said snarkily at the time.
But these were rogue as in they abandoned their group, left the army, and now work as deadly mercenaries for whoever has the money to spend on their own personal axes that need grinding.
That was where it all started.
Will and Halt were tracking them through a damp and dark everglade rainforest in the humid southern fief of Greenfield.
Will would've taken this assignment with his apprentice, Maddie, but she was on her yearly holiday with her parents in Araluen. He fought Halt on coming with him, but the older Ranger was insistent.
"It'll be like old times," he said, "You almost getting yourself killed in stupid ways and me saving your ass. Tell me you don't miss that?"
Will had laughed at that at the time.
Now they were trudging through a mucky swamp. This was something Will hadn't experienced before; even after being a ranger for over 20 years, he had never had to try to remain silent and unseen in a sticky environment such as an Everglade.
"Awfully difficult to stick to your training when your footsteps sound like that, huh?" Halt whispered jokingly, trying to make a little light of a dark and quite admittingly an annoying situation.
Will only snorted in amusement, fighting back a wince as the mud beneath his feet made a loud
"glop, pop" sound.
Eventually, they found real tracks to follow, but they led to the river, where the tracks then stopped.
"Must've gotten in a canoe and crossed the river," Will guessed, mostly to himself.
Halt gave him a look that gave Will flashbacks to his apprentice days, where Halt would give him the same look, meaning "ya think?"
Rangers didn't exactly have standard-issued canoes, so Will and Halt camped for the night as Halt stated in his famous gruff manner, "sit tight and assess then."
Will had heard that one before. Halt was known for using it when he really didn't know the logical move to make, but wanted to pretend he did.
The night passed in a thick, oppressive silence. The only sounds were the occasional chirps of unseen frogs and the steady trickle of water in the distance. Will sat cross-legged near his bedroll, sharpening one of his knives with methodical strokes. Halt had deemed it too risky to have a fire for cooking, so their dinner consisted of hard, dried bread and meat. Now Halt sat dozing, and Will lay awake, taking first watch.
His eyes weren’t really on the blade, though--his mind kept wandering.
It wasn’t fear keeping him awake. It hadn’t been fear in years. It was that quiet hum in his head that never seemed to go away anymore, that strange absence where his survival instinct should be.
The Temujai had a reputation for brutality. That should have made him cautious. Instead, he found himself wondering--idly, detached--as he gazed at the knife in his hands, what it would feel like to be on the receiving end of it.
Not wanting it. Not chasing it. Just… not minding for a moment. He didn't find that thought to be too harmful.
Will’s fingers faltered for a moment, the knife’s edge biting slightly into his palm. He blinked hard, forcing his mind back to the present, grounding himself in the pain of the knife on his palm, to the damp earth beneath him, and the soft, steady breathing of Halt beside him.
The pain on his palm.
Not minding.
The thought lodged itself there like a splinter beneath his skin.
Maybe it was a little harmful.
Morning brought no relief. The oppressive humidity clung to their clothes and skin like a second layer, and the air was thick with the scent of decaying leaves and mud. Halt rose silently, checked their gear, and motioned for Will to follow.
They resumed tracking the Temujai along the other side of the riverbank, where waterlogged footprints revealed their direction. Will felt a vague sense of detachment, as if watching a shadow move through the forest rather than himself.
Hours passed.
At a bend in the river, Halt motioned to stop. The footprints ended abruptly at a small dock where a rickety canoe bobbed lazily against the water’s edge. Across the river, a faint movement caught Will’s eye.
“There,” Halt whispered, "Get down."
A group of Temujai mercenaries, unmistakable even from a distance--scarred faces, harsh eyes, armed to the teeth, mostly with bows. But Will noticed they had unusual weapons compared to the usual Temujai. Spears, swords, battle axes.
The last one was strange, Will recalled axes had gone out of use years ago.
Will’s heart should have hammered with adrenaline, his senses sharp and alive, like they had always been in the past.
“We’ll wait for the others,” Halt said, voice low and careful.
Will didn’t answer.
Halt glanced sideways at him, catching the strange stillness in his posture. Usually, waiting chafed at Will. Usually, there was a restless energy in him before a fight, a little fidgeting, an impatience held in check by discipline. Now there was nothing.
“Will?”
Across the river, one of the Temujai turned his head, scanning the tree line. Another laughed at something, the sound carrying thinly over the water.
Will stared at them.
“We can probably take down four before they even know where the arrows came from,” he said quietly.
“We don’t know how many more there are.”
“We know enough.”
Halt’s tone sharpened as he looked at him again, something commanding in his eyes. “We wait, Will.”
Will moved before the last word had fully left his mouth.
He stepped from cover, boots splashing into the shallows as he lunged for the canoe rope. The sudden movement sent birds shrieking from the trees. Across the river, the Temujai shouted and reached for weapons.
“Will!” Halt hissed, already unstrapping his bow.
Will shoved the canoe into the water and leapt after it, half swimming, half dragging himself in. An arrow struck the water inches from his shoulder.
He laughed as it barely missed him.
Halt’s first arrow dropped a Temujai on the far bank. His second buried itself in another man’s throat. But more figures emerged from the trees.
Will rammed the canoe onto the opposite shore and charged before it fully grounded.
He fought like a storm and a man with no instinct for self-preservation is a terrifying thing to witness. He took cuts he should have avoided. Ignored blows that should have staggered him. Pressed closer whenever an enemy tried to gain distance.
Halt reached the bank moments later, cursing in three languages as he fired and moved, fired and moved, trying to keep his apprentice--his friend--in sight.
Then he saw the Temujai with the spear right behind Will, and he yelled with every bit of air in his lungs.
“DOWN, WILL!”
Will heard him. Halt knew he heard him.
But he didn't move.
The spear drove clean through Will’s side.
And everything stopped.
Will looked down almost curiously at the shaft protruding from his body, then sagged to one knee. Halt’s next arrow took the spearman through the eye. After that there was only violence--quick, efficient, merciless violence. When it ended, the swamp fell silent except for Halt’s ragged breathing.
He was on Will in seconds.
“Stay awake, son.”
Will blinked at him, pale already. “Bit dramatic.”
“You’re bleeding to death.”
“Then be quicker with the bandages.”
Halt’s hands shook as he snapped the shaft and packed the wound. He hated that Will noticed.
“You’re shaking,” Will murmured.
“I’m restraining myself from strangling you.”
That earned the ghost of a smile.
It took hours to get him back across the river. Longer still to reach shelter. By the time they did, Will was feverish and barely conscious.
He lived.
Halt was almost angry about it, at first--not that Will lived, but that he had come so close to dying through sheer carelessness and still greeted recovery with that same maddening calm.
The healer in Greenfield ordered bed rest.
Will obeyed with the obedience of a man who was simply too exhausted to argue.
Three days passed before Halt finally closed the door to their borrowed room, set a mug of tea on the table, and said, very evenly:
“You heard me warn you.”
Will kept looking out the window.
“Yes.”
“You knew the spear was there.”
A pause, Will looked at him, something in his eyes weighing heavily on his face.
“Yes.”
Halt waited for denial, excuse, temper. Anything.
Instead Will said, “I was tired.”
The words were so softly whispered that Halt nearly missed them.
“Tired,” Halt repeated.
“Yeah.”
Will’s hands were folded over the blanket. They were scarred, and Will looked at them now, knowing the origin of each one.
“I know how it sounds,” he said. “I know I should say, and I would usually say, I misjudged it, or I didn’t hear you, or I thought I could turn in time. But I heard you.”
Halt said nothing.
“I just…” Will swallowed. “I didn’t care...Halt.”
The room seemed to contract around them.
Halt had faced armies with less dread than he felt then.
He shifted his stance, his face going through a multitude of emotions as he tried to process his former apprentice's words. Then it hardened, and he crossed his arms.
“Since when?”
Will laughed once, bitterly. “Do you want the honest answer or the answer that hurts less?”
“The truth.”
“Since Alyss died.”
That name, barely spoken nowadays, hit Halt like a freshly sharpened blade.
Will’s face remained turned toward the window.
“I kept functioning. Everyone praised that. Look at Will--so resilient, so disciplined, so dependable.” He drew a shaky breath. “And I was. I did the work. I smiled when needed. I ate when told. I slept eventually.”
His voice frayed.
“But some part of me never came back, I don't think. A part of me that... that wishes I went with her.”
Halt crossed the room slowly and sat opposite him.
“Why didn't you say anything?”
“What was there to say?” Will snapped suddenly, years of restraint cracking open.
“That I wasn’t trying to die, I just wouldn’t have minded if I did? That every mission felt easier than sitting still with myself? That sometimes, when a blade came at me, the only thought I had was 'finally?'”
His breathing hitched.
“I’m a Ranger, Halt. We run toward danger. That's our literal job description. I had excuses for all of it. Why would I have mentioned anything when no one would've even thought to question it?!”
His shoulders began to shake.
“I didn’t even know what to call it.”
Halt had seen Will injured, poisoned, tortured, grieving, furious.
But he had never seen him quite this broken.
And the tears that sprang to his eyes now weren't resisted this time.
Will pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes like he could force himself back together.
“I don’t want to die, I swear,” he said, voice strangled. “I don’t think I do anyway. But I don’t know how to keep wanting to live like this.”
Then the sob tore out of him.
Raw, as though it came straight from his gut and not his throat. Will would've been humiliated in any other circumstance, but he couldn't find the wearisome energy to care.
He bent forward, trying to contain it, and Halt was there instantly--one arm around his shoulders, the other bracing the back of his head like he had when Will was a fevered apprentice half his size.
Will clutched at him with desperate strength.
“I’m sorry,” he choked out.
“No.”
“I’m sorry!”
“No.” Halt’s own voice broke on the word; he released Will's head, moving it so he could meet his eyes.
He looked at the boy he had raised, the man he had trusted beside him, and felt tears burn hot and useless down his face.
“I should have seen it,” Halt whispered.
Will shook his head against his shoulder.
“I should have known,” Halt said, harsher now, as if accusation could undo years. “I taught you to hide too well. I praised you for enduring too much. I watched you bleed and I called it strength, Will. It's not your fault for absorbing that into how you lived your life, how you.. you fought your battles.”
Will only cried harder.
Halt did too, silently at first, then not silently at all.
There was no wisdom to offer. No ranger proverb sharp enough to cut through this. No neat path through grief once it had rooted this deep into one's soul.
So they stayed there on the narrow bed in the dim room while the afternoon light faded from the window.
The long dining hall had been quickly and subtly rearranged for privacy. A single, polished dining table ran the length of the chamber, the seats filled only by those who had been permitted in the throne room earlier. The candles were lit low and warm, casting gold across the polished silverware and reflecting gently in the glass goblets.
Duncan stood at the head of the table, a goblet of wine in his hand. He raised it slightly.
“Before we begin, let me be absolutely clear,” he said. “No business. No time travel theories. No debriefing, interrogation, or discussion of anything remotely resembling a paradox. And you two, and you two,” gesturing to Will and Will and Horace and Horace, "Do not touch each other, don't even go near each other, not until we know how all this works."
Duncan had briefly spoken with the head scholar in the castle, explaining a hypothetical situation where he would need information such as that, and carefully leaving out any details. The man had simply stared at him in shock after being summoned for such a peculiar request, then smothered a laugh at the idea, and loyally relayed his own thoughts on such things that the King didn't quite understand. Quantum theory, paradoxes... it was all tomfoolery terms to him and far above his academic understanding.
But still, he had hypothetical instructions for a hypothetical scenario that was all too real, and wanted to guarantee that nothing too chaotic or dangerous happened in his own Castle. Much less his private dining space.
He leveled the table with a glance.
“This is a meal. Nothing else.”
A round of half-nods and mumbled agreements followed. Young Horace looked like he wanted to protest--he had so many questions he wanted to ask his older self--but a single sharp look from Gilan shut him down.
Will--the older one--sat quietly near the end of the table, flanked by Gilan and Crowley on either side. His fork spun idly between his fingers as he eyed the room, his expression unreadable but distinctly observant.
Across from him, young Will kept sneaking glances up at him. He hadn't said a word since the time travelers had shown up, a fact which Halt thought to be highly usual, and slightly alarming. He'd have thought that the boy would be simply bursting with questions for the older version of himself.
But, Halt thought to himself, the boy hadn't exactly been himself lately, anyway.
Not since Skandia. Even with himself, Gilan and Crowley's attempts to bring him out of his hollow shell. The boy was quiet, withdrawn, and the questions that he did ask always appeared to be forced. As though he, too, was attempting to revive his own nature.
But looking at him now, seated beside him, Halt could see that the boy was clearly unnerved by the presence of his older self. A feeling Halt felt he shared with him, as he swiveled his gaze to his older apprentice, or 'older former apprentice,' he thought with a start.
Will had graduated and grown into a successful and fully-fledged ranger, just as Halt always knew he would. He held a confidence in his posture, and, from Horace's accounts earlier, had led an army into a hopeless losing battle that simply had to be fought, fighting right alongside them in the process. Any coward of a commander would've fled the moment the fighting started, but Will hadn't.
But, Halt supposed, pride filling his heart as he regarded them both, he didn't the first time he led an army either. He had trained, and commanded, and fought right alongside his brothers in arms, right up until his own mortal injury took him down.
Halt fought a shudder at the thought of his apprentice, former or current, fighting to the death and bleeding out alone. And he once again looked up at older Will, meeting his eyes as he did so. And once again, there was that unwavering eye contact, that unwavering confidence and experience in those brown eyes that Halt had come to only associate with his apprentice. They looked nothing alike and exactly the same, all at once. It was truly an unnerving thing.
The meal began. Plates were served. Spoons clinked. The food was good--a light soup to start, then a warm roast chicken, fresh bread, roasted vegetables, and boiled potatoes--but no one really ate like they meant it. The conversation stalled before it even began.
It was Horace--the older one, naturally--who finally broke the silence.
“Well…” he said loudly, forking a roasted carrot into his mouth. “You know, this is a great opportunity. You always hear people say, ‘If I could go back and give my younger self advice, I’d say this or that…’”
He looked between the two Wills. “This is basically that, isn’t it? Isn’t that neat?”
There was a bit of an awkward pause. Then a couple of quiet chuckles. Gilan raised a brow, amused. Crowley actually smiled, mostly at how in character it was for Horace of all people to try to break the thick ice that everyone felt frozen in.
Older Will, still spinning his fork lazily, made a show of pretending to think about it. “Mm,” he said. “Truly.”
Horace grinned and clung to those vague words as an invitation to continue. “Exactly.” Then he turned to his younger self and said, pointing his fork at him, “Don’t spend too much time around Rangers. You pick up their mannerisms.”
“Not enough of them, evidently,” Older Will muttered into his goblet.
A ripple of laughter passed down the table. Even the younger Horace let out a chuckle, his eyes wide in a childlike admiration that was too apparent for him to even try to mask.
Horace nudged Will with his elbow. “Come on then. What would you say to him?”
Will turned his eyes to his younger self. For a second, there was something unreadable in his gaze--an intensity, quiet but sharp. It wasn’t judgment or mockery. It was recognition. Sympathy. The flicker of a wound not quite healed.
He took a slow bite of a roasted veggie. Chewed. Swallowed.
“Get a good lawyer,” he said, deadpan.
Gilan choked on his drink. Crowley barked out a surprised laugh. Even Duncan looked caught off guard.
Young Will, blinking, gave the barest, puzzled smile.
“What?” he asked.
Older Will nodded at him. “Trust me.”
“That… sounds ominous,” young Will said.
“I meant it to.”
"Good thing, you've both got George."
The laughter faded into a more comfortable silence this time. The mood had lightened just enough.
“You’re very different, ya know that?” Gilan said innocently, studying Will.
Will raised an eyebrow but didn’t deny it. "Yeah, well, ten years will do that to you."
Another long pause.
“Is it… different?” Duncan asked cautiously. "The world you come from?"
Will didn’t answer immediately. His eyes flicked around the table. Halt. Crowley. Gilan. Duncan. Arald. Cassandra—young, happy. Horace. His younger self. All previous "no-business-allowed" talk momentarily forgotten.
His gaze settled somewhere distant before he answered, voice low.
“Depends on the day.”
No one responded to that. The quiet returned quickly, deeper this time, more thoughtful. The meal continued as though it hadn't been stalled. Conversation shifted into a bit safer territory--training tales, castle gossip, a short but spirited debate between Crowley and Duncan about the state of castle plumbing.
Still, Older Will mostly listened. He offered the occasional dry quip or quiet observation, but his mind was elsewhere.
While his doppleganger had, by no one's notice, stopped eating entirely. His stomach was in knots as he watched the older man.
It wasn’t until the final course--an apple tart, soft and warm--that Horace leaned back in his chair, patting his stomach dramatically.
“Well,” he said, “we might be stranded in the past with no idea how to return to our own timeline, but I’ve had worse dinners.”
“You nearly died after your last dinner,” Will said without looking up.
“Exactly.”
Duncan exhaled, wearied and amused. “This is going to be a very long week.”
In which Crowley retires a little earlier than in canon, and he doesn't die because I said so. He names three candidates for the job, and Will is forced to confront the horrifying reality that he is one of them.
---
The cabin was quiet in the way it always was at this hour—the sun had begun to dip below the tree tops, casting a golden light across the floorboards.
A single unlit lantern sat on the table between them.
Papers were spread everywhere. Most of them were correspondence from fiefs that required attention but not necessarily urgency. The kind of work that never really ended.
Will and Halt were quite used to this routine.
They would do their own patrols and routing throughout the day, and around sunset, meet at Will and Alyss' cabin to go over reports and discuss their findings that day, however small or trivial they may seem.
Then once a week or so, they would head back to Halt and Pauline's apartment at the castle, where Alyss would usually be, and they would have a "no-business-discussion-allowed-dinner."
Halt sat back slightly in his chair, one boot propped up on the table in a way that would most definitely warrant a scolding from his wife. And Will's wife, now that he thinks about it.
Possibly both at once.
At that thought, he slowly removed his leg from the table, hoping Will wouldn't comment.
But Will was caught up completely in whatever report had caught his attention; the official paper sat in front of him, while he sat hunched forward, elbow braced on the table, scratching messy notes quickly over a sheet of parchment as he summarized a patrol incident.
For a while, there was nothing but the scratch of ink and the occasional shift of parchment.
Then, without looking up, Halt said, “Oh, Crowley’s retiring.”
Will didn’t seem to register what he said; he didn't even pause. “Mm.”
A beat.
The pen slowed.
Then completely stopped. Will suddenly seemed to understand what his mentor had just said, and his head jerked up, his mouth opened in shock.
“…What?”
Halt turned a page. “End of the year. He’s been considering it for some time.”
Will blinked at him, setting the pen down. “Since when?”
“Since he realized he’s getting old.”
Will snorted. “He’s been old since I met him.”
“That was his point as well.”
Will leaned back slightly, processing. It fit, in a way. Crowley had been Commandant for a long time. Long enough that it was almost difficult to imagine the Corps without him.
“…Huh,” Will said finally. “Well. That’s… big.”
“It is.”
Silence stretched again for a moment.
Will picked his pen back up, though his attention had clearly drifted.
“Any idea who—”
“You’re one of the candidates, actually,” Halt said casually, licking his thumb to turn the page of the report he still seemed invested in, whilst dropping the news of a lifetime to his shellshocked former apprentice.
The pen slipped clean out of Will's fingers and hit the table with a sharp clack.
Will stared at Halt, that open-mouthed, shocked look back on his face.
Halt still did not look up.
“…I’m sorry,” Will said slowly, “I must have misheard you.”
Halt did look up this time, and continued playing his little game as he shook his head with a slight smile on his lips.
“You didn’t.”
Then his attention returned to his report.
Will reached for his mug, clearly intending to take a sip. He had to focus on stilling his hands from the slight tremor they now had as he raised the coffee to his mouth. He missed slightly, corrected, and then promptly choked on the coffee anyway.
He coughed—hard—turning away, one hand braced on the table.
Halt looked up now, setting the report down, then, when Will could breathe again, he burst out laughing.
Prompting a death-glare from the younger ranger, which had zero effect. But Halt couldn't help it; the look on the younger ranger's face was too good.
Finally, Will managed to find his words again, and he sputtered out, “…I—” He gestured vaguely. “I’m— what?”
“You're one of three,” Halt said, returning to a stoic look. “You, Gilan, and Ben.”
Will just stared at him.
Then he laughed too.
A short, incredulous sound that hushed as soon as it started.
“That’s not funny," He deadpanned.
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
“No, I mean—” Will sat forward, both hands on the table now, as if grounding himself. “Halt, I would be a terrible Commandant.”
Halt looked up again, readying himself to defend Will from Will.
But the man had already set off.
“I mean, honestly—have they met me? Crowley spends half his time telling me I’m not by the book enough, and now suddenly I’m supposed to be the book?” He ran a hand through his hair, agitated. “I don’t even like rules.”
“You follow them when necessary.”
“I bend them when necessary,” Will corrected immediately. “Those are not the same thing.”
Halt said nothing.
Will pointed at him. “And don’t you say anything, you’re the worst influence I’ve ever known.”
“That’s demonstrably untrue,” Halt said calmly. “You were quite capable of poor decisions before you met me.”
Will ignored that entirely; his mind was still spinning in disbelief.
“I mean—Commandant? Really?” He let out another disbelieving laugh. “I can barely keep my own fief from descending into chaos some weeks. You want me running the entire Corps?”
“You wouldn’t be alone.”
“That’s not very comforting.”
Halt’s mouth twitched again, just slightly.
Will groaned, dragging a hand down his face. “No. Absolutely not. There’s no universe where this is a good idea.”
“Crowley seems to think otherwise.”
“Crowley,” Will said flatly, “has clearly lost his mind in his ever-increasing old age.”
Halt returned his attention to the report.
“That has been suspected.”
The conversation mostly ended there.
As did the productivity, apparently.
Will picked his pen back up, then set it down again almost immediately, his focus clearly gone. Halt didn’t comment. He had expected as much—that was precisely why he’d waited until the important work was finished before mentioning it.
Now, at least, there was no reason to stay. Which was entirely Halt's intention.
He rose, already reaching for his cloak.
“Come on,” he said. “Let's go have dinner.”
--
Pauline’s and Halt's apartment was always warm.
Will liked that. It offered a homey feeling to it, with little touches here and there that Halt had inputted over the years since their marriage to remind himself of the cabin.
Tonight, it seemed especially warm. With lamplight and the smell of something slow-cooked and delicious.
It was a familiar space. Comfortable.
Alyss was already there when Will and Halt arrived, seated at the table with Pauline, deep in conversation. She glanced up as the door opened—and her face lit up in a smile in that easy way that still, after eleven years of marriage, made something in Will settle.
“Finally,” she said, as she stood up to give her husband a kiss on the cheek. “I was beginning to think Halt had chained you to a desk again.”
“He tried,” Will said, shrugging off his cloak. “I escaped.”
Halt snorted softly behind him.
Dinner was peaceful, as it always was. Conversation flowed with no effort—bits of politics, minor gossip from the castle, Pauline’s latest frustrations with correspondence that had arrived poorly phrased.
Will relaxed into it.
It wasn’t until they were halfway through the meal that Alyss tilted her head slightly, studying him.
“You’re quieter than usual,” she said.
Will paused mid-bite.
Halt didn’t look up.
“…Crowley’s retiring,” Will said bluntly.
Pauline blinked, feigning surprise as if she hadn't known about this for a week. “Is he?”
“Apparently.”
“Well,” she said thoughtfully, “it’s about time. He's earned a little relaxation, I'd say.”
No one disagreed with that.
“And the replacement?” Alyss asked, already knowing that Will would confirm her suspicions.
Will exhaled slowly, setting his fork down, as he gave her a look.
“Oh, you’ll like this.”
Halt took an unassuming sip of his coffee.
“I’m apparently under consideration.”
Pauline’s brows lifted, once again struggling a bit to feign surprise.
Alyss froze for half a second, processing the confirmation—then her lips curved.
“Commandant Will Treaty,” she said lightly.
Will huffed a laugh, shaking his head, “Only sounds good coming out of you.”
Alyss’s smile widened, entirely unbothered.
“Well,” she said smoothly, “I’ll make sure to say it often, then.”
They all collectively ignored Halt choking on his coffee at that comment, though Will didn't miss the satisfying irony.
“Please don’t,” he muttered, rubbing both his hands down his face.
“I don’t know,” Pauline said, still amused. “It has a certain ring to it.”
“It absolutely does not,” Will said firmly.
“Who are the other considerations?” Alyss asked.
“Gilan,” Will said immediately. “And Ben. Honestly, preferably Gilan.”
Halt raised an eyebrow.
Will shrugged at him. “He’s the obvious choice. He’s organized, he’s respected, a damn good ranger, and he actually likes structure—”
“You don’t?”
“I tolerate it,” Will corrected. “That’s different.”
Alyss studied him for a moment.
“And if you’re chosen?”
Will didn’t hesitate.
“I'm passing it to Gilan.”
Halt’s gaze sharpened slightly as both his eyebrows rose.
“You can’t just—”
“I can try,” Will said. “And I will. Plus if I'm appointed commandant, I can simply say I'm retiring back to active duty and passing the baton again."
"You can't just be commandant for 6 hours and then decide you're handing it off to someone else, that's now how it works."
"Well, if I'm appointed, things wouldn't be going by the rules anyway. I’m not uprooting everything for a job I don’t want.”
Alyss tilted her head. “Everything?”
He met her eyes, softer now.
“Well, you can’t exactly pack up and move to Araluen with me,” he said. “Your work’s here, honey. Our lives are here.” A small shrug. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Something in her expression warmed a bit—subtle, but unmistakable.
“That’s very mature of you,” she said.
“Well, don't sound so surprised.”
“I’m not,” she said, smiling. “Just impressed.”
“Don’t be. It’s mostly self-preservation.”
Pauline laughed again.
Halt said nothing—but there was something quietly approving in the set of his shoulders.
--
A week later, the cabin door slammed open without warning.
Will didn’t look up.
“Unless you’ve brought something useful--”
“Will.”
Will froze mid sentence.
That was Gilan.
Will looked up.
Gilan stood in the doorway.
And something was… off.
His expression was blank in a way that didn’t suit him. Not calm or controlled like usual.
Just… utterly stunned.
Halt had already straightened slightly in his chair.
“What is it?” he asked.
Gilan stepped inside slowly, shut the door behind him, and looked at both of them.
“I’m the new Commandant.”
Silence.
“WHAT?”
Will was on his feet so fast his chair scraped loudly across the floor.
“You’re serious?!” he demanded, enveloping his older brother in a bear hug.
Gilan gave a short, almost disbelieving laugh into Will's shoulder. “Apparently.”
Halt stood as well, a rare and proud smile showing across his face as he crossed the room in two strides to place a firm hand on Gilan's shoulder.
“Congratulations,” he said.
Will was still bubbling over with excitement for his friend.
“That’s— of course you are,” he said, grinning now, holding Gilan by the shoulders. “That’s perfect. That’s exactly how it should be.”
Gilan blinked at him, a concerned look crossing his face. “You’re… not disappointed? Or bitter toward me?”
“Are you kidding, Gil? I couldn't be happier!” Will said, pulling him into a hug again. “I was planning on giving it to you anyway.”
“You can’t just—”
“I know,” Will said with a laugh. “But that wasn’t going to stop me from trying.”
Gilan huffed a laugh, shaking his head, as he stepped back from the hug, running his hand through his hair in pure shock.
Halt watched them both for a moment, a familiar pride settling into his chest once again. It was quite an honor having a former apprentice become commandant, but to have them both be considered for the prestigious role made Halt's heart almost swell.
He earned it, he thought. They both would've earned it.
But he couldn't ruin his reputation by getting sappy right now, so he broke the silence, dryly—
“Try not to ruin the Corps.”
Gilan glanced at him, as though he saw right through Halt's defenses. “High expectations.”
“I find they encourage improvement.”
Will clapped Gilan on the back. “You’ll be brilliant.”
Gilan exhaled slowly, some of the shock finally easing.
“…I hope so.”
“You will,” Will said simply.
Halt nodded once.
Gilan leaned back against the table, looking between them.
“…Crowley’s going to be unbearable about this, isn’t he?”
Will grinned.
“Oh, absolutely.”
Halt reached for his papers again.
“Get used to it, Commandant.”
Gilan groaned.
Will laughed.
And the cabin, once again, settled into something easy.
The fire has burned down to only embers by the time Halt notices the drawn-out silence.
It isn’t very sudden. Will had simply been growing quieter for hours, his comments stopping or becoming more clipped, his notes shorter and more careful, like a man rationing energy he doesn’t quite have. Halt assumes it's exhaustion. He always does. Will has earned that assumption a hundred times over and then some. He had this irritating tendency to work himself until he dropped, something which Halt hadn't quite figured out how to get him to stop doing.
The cabin is warm and dim, lit only by the low glow of the fireplace and the lantern on the table between them. Papers are spread messily across the rough wood--names, routes, half-finished theories, scribbled and hasty notes that didn't make any sense except to the two rangers who understood their cryptic meanings.
The case is ugly to say the very least.
The kind that neither of them wants to be working on for longer than necessary.
But unfortunately, the kind that requires a lot of time. The last two weeks had been a series of late nights and early mornings for them.
Halt has been circling the same piece of evidence for the better part of an hour when he looks up to mention something and finds Will unmoving.
Asleep.
Slumped slightly in his chair, head tipped forward, one hand fisted on his cheek while the other was still curled around his pencil as if he’d simply stopped. Taken a pause.
Halt’s first instinct is frustration. They agreed to push through the night no matter what. This was a time-sensitive case, and people were counting on them. People are always counting on them.
He opens his mouth to wake him--
And stops short.
People are always counting on them.
Will’s breathing is shallow but steady. His shoulders are drawn tight even in sleep, as though rest is something his body no longer trusts. The firelight flickers, shifting shadows across his frame, the frame that appeared thinner than usual, likely attributed to the same stress that put him to sleep in the middle of research.
Halt lets out a deep sigh as he analyzes his exhausted old apprentice. Then his gaze catches on something that can only be described as simply wrong.
Will’s shirt had ridden up.
Not much. But enough to catch a glimpse of the bare skin of his hip beneath it.
And...
Oh God.
Halt doesn't react to what he sees at first; he doesn't move closer or squint his eyes. He tells himself it is none of his business. That he has no right to look. If he does, he will see something he cannot unsee.
Then the embers of the fire pop softly, and the light shifts again.
And Halt sees clearly what his peripheral had suspected.
The scars.
They are pale against the skin on Will’s hip, some faint, some redder and obviously newer, sitting in patterns that have nothing to do with battle or training or any honest wound Halt has ever taught him how to medicate. They are not the clean lines of an accident, nor the jagged chaos of violence inflicted by another.
These are deliberate, horizontal lines.
They are Personal.
Deeply personal.
For a long moment, Halt feels he doesn't breathe.
His mind rejects the sight outright, scrambling for explanations it knows are lies. A trap, maybe, or an interrogation, even a healer’s mistake. Anything but what it actually must be. Anything but the quiet reality settling in his chest, heavy and cold and dark.
No, he thinks, fiercely. Not him.
He has seen Will bleed before. Has stitched him, and cleaned him up with his own hands, watched him endure pain with a clenched jaw and dry humor, watched him survive things that would have broken men twice his size. Halt has always known Will carries more than he shows — but this?
This is something else entirely.
This is suffering with no audience. Suffering under the weight of your own mind, and not anyone else's actions.
And Halt feels it then, sharp and sudden: guilt.
Not the abstract kind. The specific, choking kind that comes with regretful memories.
How many times had he praised Will for his composure? For his ability to endure? How often had he demanded restraint, silence, control--taught him, explicitly and implicitly, that pain was something to be mastered alone?
How many times had he thought Will had learned that lesson a little too well?
And how many times had Halt praised him for that quick learning...
Still, Halt remains where he is, hands braced on the table. Will shifts slightly in his sleep, brow furrowing, and Halt’s heart lurches painfully.
What have you been carrying, he thinks. And how long?
He notices, distantly, that Will looks younger asleep. Less guarded. The lines of exhaustion soften, leaving behind the boy Halt once left on the doorstep of a ward. The boy he chose. The boy he raised. Raised inadvertently into a weapon because the world demanded it.
And the man before him bears the cost of that choice literally etched into his very skin. By his own hands.
Halt does turn away now. His eyes shut tight.
He doesn't wake Will. He doesn't pull the shirt down, though the urge is strong. He does not cover him with a blanket or make some excuse to end the night early and leave.
Because if he does any of those things, he will have to speak.
And if he speaks, he will have to ask questions he may not survive the answers to.
Instead, Halt stands watch. The time-sensitive case was momentarily forgotten.
He sits back in his chair and stares into the embers of the dying fire, jaw locked, chest aching with a grief he does not yet have words for. He listens to Will’s breathing, counts each rise and fall like a vigil, as though his keen attention alone might be enough to undo what has already been done.
Outside, the night presses close, indifferent to what had happened within it.
When light from the dawn finally begins to stretch across the cabin floors, Will stirs, blinking awake with a soft curse, clearly embarrassed, and already reaching for an apology like armor.
“Sorry,” he murmurs. “Didn’t mean to uhh--”
“It’s fine,” Halt says, too quickly.
Will straightens, tugging his shirt back into place, and hiking his pants up a little from when they were riding down from his posture. Unknowingly sealing the evidence away again. He doesn't notice Halt’s clenched fists, doesn't see the way his former mentor cannot quite meet his eyes.
They return to the case.
They speak of routes and motives and what must be done next.
And the silence between them grows heavier than anything either of them says.
The doors shut behind the last advisor with a heavy thud, and the massive throne room grew still. The echo of the polished leather boots and the rustle of fine, silky cloaks faded into silence, leaving only the core group: Rangers, knights, the Baron, the Princess, and a very baffled king.
Duncan sat forward in his throne, elbows on his knees. “All right,” he said, his voice low now. “Let’s start from the beginning.”
Older Will and Horace exchanged a glance.
“There's been a war,” Horace said bluntly. “A rebel faction--ex-Morgarath loyalists--stirring up unrest, and far outgrowing anything we could've anticipated it coming. Will and I were sent to intercept them at Fissure Pass, but it was....” he paused, drawing a breath as he remembered the good men that were lost, "It was too late... we never saw it coming."
“We got outnumbered pretty fast,” Will continued, as he saw his friend couldn't continue anymore. He stepped forward, pulled his cowl up, and with an almost subconscious flick of his cloak, he spoke.
“We were surrounded. Got as many as we could, but our numbers were drastically depleted, we lost too many men to put up a fair fight. Horace was hit, I was hit--” He gestured to his side absently. “It punctured something, I'm not sure what, but I felt it, and I definitely should have been dead. In fact, I'm pretty sure I was."
“We both would've been. And then,” Horace said, pulling himself together, “we woke up. In a field. A few kilometers outside the gates, as I said.”
There was a beat of silence.
“That’s it?” Gilan asked, an unusual pitch in his tone. “No… strange light, no mystical spells, no relic?”
Will looked at him flatly and shook his head, a faint look of amusement on his face. “Sorry to disappoint.”
Crowley scratched the back of his head. “So it just… happened.”
“Not a single mystical spell as far as I can recall,” Will replied.
"And you rangers are a spell-casting lot," Horace muttered as a smile played at the corner of his mouth. Will simply elbowed him.
Duncan looked between them all. “But how do we know you are who you say you are?”
"Silver oakleaf not enough for you?" Will said. Then, as the King continued to stare him down, he paused.
He didn’t answer immediately. He thought for a minute, pursing his lips, then seemed to have an idea. He just raised his hand and tugged the sleeve down. And held up his right wrist.
His fingers curled slightly, but there, plain as daylight, was the scar — a jagged line down the length of his thumb, an old burn, from a certain burning arrow incident. Arald saw it and inhaled sharply. But Halt saw it first.
Then, assuming that wasn't enough. He pulled his collar back, revealing another thin scar under his collarbone.
The one from Skandia. The one no one else would know about yet. He looked to his younger self for an obvious act of confirmation.
And Will stood from the bench, moving forward slightly, but not enough to be in any near proximity. His hand pulled back his own collar to show an angry red scar, not yet fully healed, identical to the one that was.
Halt made a sound that could’ve been either confirmation or discomfort. “That’s him,” he said quietly.
Crowley let out a low whistle as the other members of the meeting shook their heads in plain shock.
Duncan nodded once, then looked to Horace now, who offered less dramatic evidence -- he fumbled in his jacket pockets and pulled out a ring engraved with an oakleaf insignia. The ring Cassandra had given him after his knighting a decade ago, the ring that younger Horace had received less than a day ago, which he now produced and placed on the table in front of the King, who compared the two carefully.
Horace, worrying that that wasn't sufficient evidence, also gestured to the insignia etched into the steel of his sword. Unique to the Oakleaf Knight. Duncan recognized it instantly.
Still, he looked overwhelmed and dazed. “It doesn’t make sense,” he murmured. “But you’re… older. Different. You even move differently.”
“You try hiking around the Fissure Mountains for two weeks and see if you don’t develop a limp,” Will said dryly.
Gilan snorted despite himself. Horace gave Will a sidelong look, pretending to be annoyed, but was altogether grateful for the first show of humor from his friend in hours.
No, weeks, Horace thought.
Crowley sat on the arm of a chair, arms crossed. “So what now? What do we do with you?”
Will exhaled through his nose and shrugged. He glanced sidelong at Horace, who was biting his lip in thought, then ran a hand through his hair and scratched at his scalp as if trying to rattle loose an answer.
“I don’t know,” the ranger finally admitted with a sigh. Then he paused, lifted his brows slightly, crossed his arms, and said, in a perfect deadpan impression of a certain grizzled Ranger:
“...Sit tight and assess?”
There was a beat of silence.
Then Gilan let out a full laugh, quick and bright. Crowley, who had heard those words far too many times from his old friend, snorted. Halt rolled his eyes, but the corner of his mouth twitched.
“God help us,” Crowley muttered. “You really are Halt's apprentice, aren't you? It's like there are two of them.”
Will smirked faintly in satisfaction that his joke landed well, but sobered a moment later.
“In all seriousness… I think we need a scholar. A scientist. Someone who deals with theories--quantum, temporal, magical, I don’t care what field they’re in. Just someone who might be able to tell us how we got here. And how to get home.
"Or if we’re… stuck,” Horace added, a scared edge in his tone.
"Thank you for that enlightening scenario, Horace," Will mumbled dryly.
Duncan nodded slowly, thoughtful. “I don’t know any names off the top of my head, but I’ll put someone on it. Quietly. Arald?”
"I'm on it, your Majesty."
The King nodded, and looked around the room. “In the meantime… yes. We’ll sit tight and assess,” he said with a smirk as he looked at Older a Will, who smirked right back, seemingly unaffected by the authority of the King in front of him.
Afterall, he's not my king.
There were a few weary nods as a temporary conclusion was drawn.
Crowley stood and stretched. “We’ll need to keep this quiet, away from the public. God knows the stir it'll cause if this gets out."
Duncan nodded in agreement. "Yes, we should house them in the East Wing,” he said. “Nobody goes in or out except approved guards. If anyone asks, they’re foreign dignitaries under my protection.”
“Cloaks off in public,” Halt added, glancing at Will. “You’re too recognizable.”
Will started a little at the demand from his mentor, who wasn't his mentor, but he nodded once in confirmation. “Understood.”
“We’ll make sure the castle staff and those damned advisors from earlier don't start asking questions,” Duncan said. “And no one outside this room hears about this. Not until we know more.”
“Agreed,” Crowley and Halt said at the same time.
Duncan let out a long breath and leaned back in the throne, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Lord help us. Time travel.”
The deep sighs, followed by a heavy silence, spoke volumes to everyone's shared exasperation over the very idea. Overwhelmed, yes--but shared.
Then, finally, older Horace clapped his hands once, loudly enough to break the tension. “Right. What if we talk more about this over dinner?”
He looked between the group and added with a dramatic groan, “Because last time I ate was… oh, about ten years from now.”
Will didn't quite laugh, but the flicker of a grin tugged at the edge of his mouth as he snorted. "Sounds about right," He said.
“Dinner,” Duncan muttered, eyes closed. “Yes. For the love of God, someone bring me wine.”
Crowley and the Baron flew from their chairs, drawing their weapons, while the Rangers across the room drew theirs.
And voices flew in all directions, the noise was temuluous as chairs scraped the stone floors.
“What—”
“Who are you—”
“Horace?!”
“What's going—?”
“Is this some kind of trick?”
“Why does he look like—”
“Who let them in here?!”
Young Will barely heard any of it.
He had sat down while the others stood --quietly, subtly -- on a bench along the far wall. He didn’t understand what was happening. Not really. He just knew he’d looked across the room and seen something only to be described as impossible. A man -- older, stronger, broader -- with the same jawline, the same eyes, the same posture he had only ever seen in his own reflection.
A version of himself that looked like he’d been sharpened down to the bone and rebuilt again. A man who was made to fit a mold that he no sooner outgrew.
In his heart, he understood who he was. He understood that the imposter before him wasn't simply an imposter. But his mind was still playing catch-up with his heart.
King Duncan stood slowly, unnoticed in the chaos, then he raised his hands.
“ENOUGH.”
The room fell quiet like someone had slammed a door on all the noise.
He looked at the two strangers before him, his eyes traveling over Horace’s familiar features -- older, yes, but unmistakable -- recognizing the oatleaf symbol on his coat of arms. The same one the young knight had just received not days earlier. Then his gaze rested on Will. The silver oakleaf caught the light again, and Duncan's jaw locked in place.
His voice was calm, but cautious and stern in his position of authority. “Identify yourselves, men.”
Horace looked at Will, assuming he'd be doing the talking.
But Will didn’t move, not so much as looking at him; he scanned the room with unsettling focus, eyes like flint under the hood of his cowl that he had pulled up to avert the gaze of the young boy on the bench in the corner.
So Horace cleared his throat and spoke.
“I’m the Oakleaf Knight,” he said, trying to draw as much confidence in his voice as possible, drawing himself up as he did so. “Sir Horace Altman of the King’s Guard. And this…” He hesitated.
Will looked up and shook his head. Just once. A silent not yet.
“…This is Ranger Will,” Horace finished, purposely avoiding using the last name his friend had so tenderly treasured these last few years. A name that was his own. “Of the Ranger Corps.”
“Ranger Fifty,” Will added quietly. The sharpness of his tone and depth of his voice cut through the air like a blade unsheathed.
A ripple of discomfort moved through the room. Crowley straightened, his saxe still at a ready in his right hand. Halt, standing beside him now, with his own saxe drawn, narrowed his eyes at the figures before him.
Duncan blinked. “That’s not possible.”
He turned toward the younger Will instinctively, like to confirm he was still there. The apprentice flinched slightly at the weight of all his stare, but didn’t move. His arms crossed tightly, as if trying to shrink away from something inevitable.
Duncan shook his head. “This is Ranger Will. And that is Sir Horace, the Oakleaf Knight. A title that I bestowed on him myself. Him and not you. So explain to me, sir, how can that be?”
Horace exhaled, almost at a loss for words.
“I can’t say we know, Your Majesty. For I was bestowed that title from you myself, about ten years ago, when I was knighted. Fifteen minutes ago, we were fighting for our lives, and to our deaths, to be quite frank. And then… we woke up in a field outside your gates...”
Every man in the room turned to Ranger Will, who had started to pace.
He wasn’t panicking. Simply walking around himself, his arms crossed over his chest, his fingers drumming thoughtfully on his saxe knife, but he didn't look to be threatened. His eyes were moving again -- cataloguing, comparing, analyzing every single human being in the room.
Then his eyes met Halt's. His mentor. Or his old mentor, as he now needed to remind himself.
And Halt had seen a deep grief there, a hardness from a life only a ranger would ever see.
And when Will’s eyes met his, he didn’t look away.
Younger Will would’ve. This one held eye contact like a promise.
Something in Halt’s chest pulled tight.
The silence stretched again, this time a bit too long.
Then Will’s voice broke through it, low and composed:
“Your Majesty,” he said. “If I may ask… what’s the year?”
There was a beat.
Duncan blinked, caught off guard by the question. He opened his mouth, then hesitated.
One of his advisors, who had been seated in the chairs unmoving for the entire confusing exchange, scoffed sharply, clearly irritated.
“Why, 662, boy. Of course.”
Horace inhaled sharply at the insult in his tone, unsure and a little worried for how his friend would react to such undermining, his head whipped toward Will, a warning all too obvious in them.
Will didn’t move from where he stood. Just looked slowly toward the advisor with a gaze so cold it could have frostbitten steel.
“Well,” he said, “less than half an hour ago, it was 672. So how do you explain that, smartass?”
Dead silence.
Even Halt looked stunned, either that, or his eyebrows were attempting to flee from his forehead.
Gilan shifted slightly. Crowley ran a hand down his face as his brain felt it might explode.
Finally, Evanlyn spoke up, gesturing vaguely between the pair as she stepped forward.
“So let me get this straight. You’re Horace and Will. From ten years in the future.”
Horace's eyes softened as he looked at the woman who was not yet his wife, and let out a half-defeated breath, then hesitated as though he were trying to come to terms with it himself.
“...that’s what it appears to look like.”
Crowley turned toward Will. “Is that true?”
Will’s eyes shifted -- past Duncan, past the advisors, past all his ranger superiors -- and landed squarely on his younger self still sitting in the corner, arms wrapped around himself.
There was something unreadable in his expression. A stiffness. An old, familiar ache.
“How old are you?” he asked, and his voice was flat. Distant. Like this version of himself was the last person he wanted to see.
The younger Will hesitated, his voice smaller than usual. “Sixteen.”
Will exhaled through his nose and nodded several times before he turned away from the youth and gave Crowley the faintest, bitterest smile. “Well, there we go.”
“So it’s real,” Gilan murmured. “Time travel.”
“Well, I know we're real,” Will said quietly. “And twenty-six years old, so that's certainly what it looks like.”
Duncan took a breath as he slowly sank into his seat again, hand resting thoughtfully on the edge of the throne.
“All right,” he said. “Then how is it you’re now here? What happened?”
Baron Arald stepped forward, his voice low. “Yes. How is it possible?”
Older Horace opened his mouth. Then closed it, then opened it again. He glanced helplessly again at Will, as if begging him to take this one.
Will shrugged, unbothered. “I've got no idea. I’m a Ranger, not a scientist.”
He met Halt's gaze evenly.
“This is all new to me, too.”
Halt exchanged a glance with Crowley. Then with Duncan. And finally, with his own apprentice, the boy who was watching all of this with widened eyes.
“Alright,” Duncan said at last, with a grim breath. “Clear the room. Everyone but the Rangers, the Baron, and the knights. Let’s figure out what in God’s name is going on here.”
Chapters: 1/?
Fandom: Ranger's Apprentice - John Flanagan
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Horace Altman & Will Treaty, Halt O'Carrick & Will Treaty, Gilan & Will Treaty, Crowley Meratyn & Halt O'Carrick, Crowley Meratyn & Will Treaty, Duncan & Halt O'Carrick, Horace Altman & Halt O'Carrick
Characters: Will Treaty, Horace Altman, Halt O'Carrick, Gilan (Ranger's Apprentice), Crowley Meratyn, Duncan (Ranger's Apprentice), Baron Arald (Ranger's Apprentice), Cassandra | Evanlyn
Additional Tags: Time Travel Fix-It, I'm trying something new don't hate me, slight depictions of violence, Will Treaty Has PTSD, Horace Altman needs a hug, Tired Duncan TM, utter tomfoolery, i started this as a joke and here we are, The Author Regrets Nothing, But I'm scared to post this lol, its slightly a crackfic with added trauma, Rated T for language and slight descriptions of violence, Alternate Universe - Magic
Summary:
After a devastating defeat, Will and Horace find themselves suddenly waking up ten years in the past?? utter chaos, bamboozlement, and bewilderment ensue.
(Sorry I have no idea how to describe this)
Baby's first time doing a time travel fic, and i really love it so far, and i've got big ideas for it, so i hope you read it and love it as much as i do.
Thank you, thank you, thank you as always. Sorry for the hiatus, school's been kicking my butt.
---
It had been raining.
Will was sure of that—rain so cold it sliced, mud so thick it sucked at his boots when he walked, as if it were threatening him to pull him under, the metallic taste of blood in his mouth, and the wet thud of bodies hitting the ground around him. He remembered Horace yelling orders through the chaos, arrows hissing past in a lightening storm so loud it was hard to differentiate Horace's shouts from the crashes of thunder. His own shouts at the soldiers were drowned out, he was positive of that.
His men fell like flies, he remembered hearing the cries for help from the fallen, the cries of agony from the dying. The sorrow in his chest knowing he couldn't help them. It was every man for himself at this point in their losing game of cat and mouse.
The dull smack of arrows hitting flesh, the splintering crack of a shield taking a direct hit.
The crack of thunder.
Always the crack of thunder. Will remembered thinking that he would be more capable of recollecting the storm than the battle.
And he remembered pain. A lot of it. More pain than he remembered feeling in all his life. The kind that spreads molten-hot and laser-quick through your side and tells you that if you lie down, you probably won’t ever get back up again.
Then Will remembered falling.
He remembered thinking that he wouldn't get back up again.
That was it.
This was it. How morbid it was, he thought, that the thought of his own death was more of a comfort than having to stay behind watching his men and his friends being killed.
He closed his eyes, accepting his fate, remembering the shouts and the screams, the thunder, and his own rush of blood in his ears as his soul began to depart from his body.
And then--
Silence.
No shouting. No steel. No thunder. No rain.
Just… birds?
Will’s eyes snapped open.
And sunlight...
What the--? his own thoughts were cut off as he sat up with a start, his hand flying to his side, expecting the sticky heat of blood and torn cloth. Instead, he found clean linen. His clean cloak. His knives right where they were before he lost them in battle.
What shook him most was the pain.
Or the lack of it, for a better word.
He felt again where he knew the wound should be, and felt nothing but the smooth skin beneath his jerkin.
He was Uncut. Unsoaked. Untouched.
And alive.
That was jarring, too.
He stared at it, then at his hand, cleansed from the endless blood that he knew it had shed.
Something caught in his chest. The familiar steady drum of panic.
No stop. Look first, then act. His old mentor's words drummed in his ears even now.
So he looked.
Looked down.
Looked at his side again. Then at his hand.
For once, Halt's words of wisdom seemed to be failing him.
“What,” he rasped, his voice hoarse and cutting. It was truly all he was able to say, it was all that made sense.
Then he looked up.
They were in a field. A wide, familiar one--if vaguely so--on the gentle rise just outside Castle Araluen’s western gate.
Which should’ve been under siege, by all accounts. Or at least, in a state of high alert.
Except the birds were chirping.
And there was no rain. No terrifying clashes of thunder, or subsequently the terrifying clash of swords.
Then, somewhere off to his left, someone groaned.
Will whirled around--and nearly sagged with relief and confusion all at once.
Horace, sitting up, squinting blearily. His armor was intact, his face was smeared with dirt from where he was face-first in the ground, but unbruised. No broken bones, no bleeding scalp. And very much not skewered by the arrow, Will vividly remembered sticking out of his thigh about six minutes ago.
“You okay?” Horace asked, blinking, his own voice carrying the same harsh rasp as Will's.
“Define okay,” Will muttered.
They stared at each other for a beat, Will watching Horace go through the same waves of confusion and horror as he, too, took in their surroundings.
He looked at his friend. His healthy, alive friend.
Then, in perfect unison, with flat disbelief in their voices:
“What the hell?”
---
They didn’t talk much as they made their way to the castle gates. They figured that was the next logical move, rather than sitting in the field they woke up in, with their thoughts running wild, and the truth running circles around them.
There was too much unknown silence between the questions--too much tension threading between their thoughts. Too many things they didn't understand. The last thing either remembered was the ambush. The arrow in Horace's thigh and the wound in Will’s ribs. The kind you don’t walk away from.
And yet.
Here was Castle Araluen, in all its fresh-faced beauty, seeming to smile at them as it welcomed them home.
Will murmured, mostly to himself, "I should be bleeding.”
Horace grunted. “You should be dead.”
“That's helpful.”
“Just being accurate.”
"Well, that's still not helpful."
But it wasn’t just them.
Everything was… just wrong.
The fields were too green, as though it were springtime now. Will estimated it looked like late March in November! The castle walls were far too intact than when they last saw them, the sentries too relaxed, and... unfamiliar to either of them.
No scorch marks from siege fire. No barricades. Not even smoke from the surrounding village.
When they approached the gate, the guards tensed, but not out of recognition--out of routine suspicion.
“State your business,” one barked, spear angled toward them. His voice cracked halfway through the word ‘state.’
Freshly trained, obviously, Horace thought to himself.
Will blinked. “What?”
“Your names,” the guard barked. “ You want entry to the castle?”
Horace stepped forward, brow furrowed, square-shouldered but cautious. “Horace Altman and Will Treaty. We have urgent business with the King.”
The guards exchanged glances, then the other one, obviously older and more experienced than the other, said sharply. "Rank and intention?"
"Rank and inten--" Will cut him off with a sharp exhale as he took a half-step forward, pulling back his cloak just enough to reveal the silver oakleaf clasp fastened around his neck.
“Tell King Duncan,” he said, “that Ranger Will is here, that it's urgent, and we need to see him.”
The guards stiffened, obviously recognizing the pendant around the man's neck. One hurried off quick after whispering something in the other's ear, too quiet for Horace or Will to make out.
The remaining guard just stared at Will like he was trying to memorize his face in case he needed to describe it later to someone very important later on.
Which was a good start, Will guessed. Unnerving, but good.
---
Inside the castle, the timing could not have been worse.
Afterall the Skandia debrief had been going on for hours, and it was finally, and blessedly, nearly over.
Will-- freshly sixteen years old, wild-haired, pale, frail, and slightly hollow-eyed-- stood stiffly at attention beside Evanlyn-- or the Crown Princess Cassandra, as he needed to get used to calling her-- as they recounted the final stretch of their harrowing escape from Hollasholm.
He could feel sweat clinging to his back beneath his collar. The heat of the room was stifling. He hadn't wanted to come today, he had practically begged on his knees for Halt to allow him to stay back in their temporary quarters. Evanlyn was perfectly capable of giving the debrief on her own, and his memory was patchy anyway.
"I don't want him to know of the drug, Halt please!"
He winced in embarrassment at the memory of his pleading words, winced even harder when he remembered the look of deep sadness in his mentor's eyes as he turned to look at him, knowing that this was something even he couldn't take from him this time. The King had to know. Their story would be far too inconsistent and erratic without that knowledge.
"It's unfortunately something he needs to know Will, he won't look at you any differently, trust me. But he needs to know, I'm sorry."
And know, he now does.
Will's eyes dropped to the floor, as if chasing the sinking feeling in his chest as his own heart seemed to fall from his chest. That had been his last card; that his memory wasn't reliable enough to give a reliable account for the King.
But then Halt simply shook his head.
"Plus, the King asked for you specifically, Will, patchy memory or no, you don't have much choice. If you don't show up, that would be a grave insult almost comparable with treason, trust me, I'd know."
He'd said it with a smirk, as though trying to make his young apprentice smile, but it was an attempt doomed to failure as Will dashed the stray tear from his face and simply walked to the door, almost shouldering his mentor as he did so.
Now his mentor stood a little off to the side, beside Gilan and Crowley, watching his apprentice like the world might snatch him away if he blinked too long.
Baron Arald sat in a chair off to the side of the room, and King Duncan sat at the head of the table in front of them, listening with furrowed brows, his fingers steepled.
Horace, newly knighted, stood directly behind Will, expression carefully schooled but clearly proud. He was awaiting his turn to speak of his account of the Battle. And it was a moment he had looked forward to with more excitement than anxiety.
Now, however, all he felt was shame for his own feelings as he heard the clear shake in Will's voice as he recounted to the King the horrors he and Evanlyn had been through in slavery and the mountains.
It was tense. Emotional. The air was thick with the weight of what they were saying.
Which only made the unexpected interruption that much sharper, a knife slicing through the thick air without any knowledge it was doing so.
The door opened with a loud crash as a castle guard stepped inside, helmet tucked beneath one arm.
He was panting lightly, as though he had run the whole way here. “Your Majesty-- excuse the interruption--" as he nodded greetings and apologies to the other high ranks in the room.
"But there’s a ranger and a knight at the western gates requesting an immediate, urgent audience. The ranger gave his name as Will.”
The room was silent for a brief moment.
Then Duncan turned in his chair, brows furrowing in thought and confusion. “Ranger Will...?” obviously not recognizing the name, and looking to Crowley for clarification.
Crowley frowned as well, and shaking his head, he murmured, “Jenkins? Or was it Carpenter?”
The guard shook his head. “No last name given, sir. Just said it was urgent.”
Duncan glanced around, slightly bemused, but an urgent audience request from a ranger was highly unusual and typically important.
And if it wasn't, well, who better to be present for that than the Ranger Commandant himself, and his often erratic and uncontrollable right-hand man, who had a reputation for dealing with time-wasting nonsense in an often unorthodox manner.
“Well. Send them in then.”
---
A few minutes passed in strained, confused silence.
Then the doors opened again--and a man stepped through.
Horace.
Older Horace.
Bigger. Broader. His armor bore the marks of years, not simply weeks. His face was older, seasoned--still open, still kind, but edged by a hardness honed by battles his younger self hadn’t lived yet. He looked like the kind of man enemies regretted crossing.
Young Horace made a sound like a dying mouse.
Because there he was. Himself. But older. Taller. Sharper. The lines of his jaw more defined, the scar above his brow more pronounced from a knife wound that younger Horace still had a bandage over.
His armor was scuffed, and there was a sureness and confidence in his posture that sixteen-year-old Horace couldn’t quite comprehend.
Will--the younger one--looked between this version of Horace and the one standing next to him in shock and utter confusion and felt like the ground was tilting beneath him.
The older version stared across the room at himself, eyes wide, jaw slack, and said the most Horace thing imaginable:
“…whoa.”
The room fell absolutely still, no one quite knowing what to say yet as they looked between the different yet identical figures in front of them.
And then Will walked in.
He was older too, by nearly a decade-- a stubble ran across his jaw. Bow slung casually across his back, hair windswept like he’d just stepped out of a storm. The silver oakleaf at his throat gleamed sharply against the dark greens and greys of his cloak.
There was dried blood at his temple, though from what wound, no one could say, and his eyes—God, his eyes—were calm and wild and sad and angry all at once.
He took two steps inside, moving to stand beside Horace.
Then he stopped dead. Looking straight at the other Horace on the other side of the room, his eyebrows raised, then furrowed quickly in confusion.
His gaze then swept the room.
Stopped on Will.
Stopped on himself.
And for a long, long beat... neither of them said a word.
They just stared.
Young Will looked haggard, trembling slightly, head slightly fogged from a withdrawal he knew only the man in front of him would understand, shoulders too narrow from weight loss, and too tense from everything he’d been through over the last several months. He stared at the ghost of a man in front of him-- breath caught somewhere between his ribs and throat, as he too examined his doppleganger.
Older Will looked carved from something tougher, heavier, but the ache in his eyes was unmistakable. They had lived. They had fought. They had loved and lost more than young Will was capable of thinking at such an age.
Two versions of the same life.
The boy he had been, and the man he became.
Neither of them spoke.
In fact, no one spoke. The room seemed to hold its breath, the palpable tension from earlier, back with an evil vengeance.
Until older Will finally breathed an exhale loud enough to slice it, and said, voice low and grim and bewildered all at once:
Crowley watches him across the map table in Castle Araluen, sleeves rolled, hair tied back, scars half-hidden and half-not. Will listens more than he speaks. When he does speak, the men lean in. Orders are given softly, and they are obeyed instantly.
He should be proud. And Crowley is proud.
He is also, quietly, purely terrified.
Because Will Treaty has built himself into something indispensable, and indispensable men are never allowed to stop.
Will had known for months now that his mentor’s engagement would disrupt the usual rhythm of their lives. Since the engagement itself had occurred (after Will had gotten over the shock of his mentor actually owning up to feelings), he knew that things would change. What he hadn’t realized however—until recently—was just how much it would disrupt things.
Halt used to wake him up with some variation of: “Up. You’re already late, which in the real world, means you're already dead.”
Now, Will woke to:
“Up. We’ve only got two hours before Pauline has me eating pastries again.”
It wasn’t the worst wake-up call he’d ever had; he shuddered to recall the first couple of months of his apprenticeship, where his mentor would sometimes, deviously, dump a bucket of ice water on his head. Still, Will didn’t think he’d ever imagined a world where Halt O’Carrick had to choose between training his apprentice and attending a cake-tasting appointment.
Two hours of drills, followed by Halt pausing mid-sentence during a lecture on wind direction to say, “Damn it, I’m late,” before galloping off toward Castle Redmont like a hunted man… leaving Will alone to train without supervision.
Which, to his credit, he did. Mostly.
All right—he did. Halt checked. Constantly.
It happened again today. Will had barely finished his final set of knife throws when Halt reappeared, dismounting Abelard with the weary resignation of a man who had been made to sample twenty-three varieties of frosting.
“I sincerely hope,” Halt said, “that you’ve at least pretended to train while I was gone.”
“I did,” Will answered, panting slightly. “All of it.”
Halt grunted. “Good. Cause I have to leave again.”
“Let me guess,” Will said. “Another cake?”
“Worse.” Halt’s expression somehow became even more grim. “Dancing.”
Will snorted. Halt glared.
Will stopped snorting immediately, and he assumed an innocent look.
It repeated throughout the months—sporadic, unfinished lessons cut short by the demands of an upcoming wedding.
But now…
Now the wedding was tomorrow.
And today: the rehearsal.
Will had certainly faced more absurd situations in his apprenticeship than most people saw in a lifetime--wild boars, Wargals, slavery, ambushes, months of sickness and withdrawal, and nightmares thick as fog.
But nothing, absolutely nothing, had prepared him for watching Halt try to rehearse his own wedding.
The entire affair was held in the castle’s small chapel, its stone walls echoing every awkward shuffle. Every murmured direction from the woman with the clipboard who told everyone where to go and what to do. Baron Arald stood at the front, puffed up with pride and unofficial authority as he practiced the words.
“Now,” Arald boomed, “you will pretend to exchange rings.”
Halt muttered something that sounded suspiciously like, “I’m exchanging my dignity, that’s what,” and Pauline elbowed him sharply in the ribs without even breaking her serene smile.
Will had to bite down on the inside of his cheek to stop from bursting out laughing. It wasn’t every day one got to witness Halt O’Carrick suffer through something civilized.
Honestly, that was half the reason Will hadn’t attempted to slip out of the chapel already.
The other half-- he glanced sideways--was Alyss.
She stood next to him in pale blue, the fabric brushing lightly against her arms whenever she shifted. Gold glinted faintly through her hair where it caught the afternoon light. She looked poised, composed, quietly radiant in a way that made Will’s breath catch unpleasantly in his throat if he thought about it too long.
And she was trying very hard not to laugh at Halt, too. Her shoulders trembled with restraint. And each time her eyes flicked to Will’s, mischief danced there--conspiratorial mischief.
A gentle, soothing warmth loosened something inside him. It always did around her.
He’d known Alyss for so long that there wasn’t a point in his memory where she wasn’t simply… there. Before they could even talk, before they understood what the words orphan or loneliness meant, before the ward had felt like a collection of lost children instead of the place where the two of them had found family. She had been his family before he even knew what family was.
She had always been home for him.
Even now, standing in the chapel, even with Halt grumbling about imaginary rings and Arald posing and puffing and the whole ceremony lifting them all out of their natural element, Alyss was the thing grounding Will. The thing that made him feel steady instead of ridiculous.
And she didn’t even realize she was doing it.
Or maybe she did. Will didn't know. Alyss always understood more than she said.
He’d been fifteen when she’d kissed him-- soft, sudden, and over before he’d even had the chance to second-guess its meaning. It had shifted something in him, something in their relationship, something he hadn’t had time to examine because everything in his life had collapsed into ruins almost immediately afterward. The war. Celtica. Slavery. Skandia. Cassandra.
Cassandra.
He drew a quiet breath as he thought of her.
He owed the princess everything. His life, his sanity, his happiness. She’d fought for him when he couldn’t fight for himself. Dragged his mindless body through ice and snow, listened to him, and held him through tremors, nausea, sobbing, and seizure fits he didn't remember. Cassandra had been the reason he survived the warmweed haze that had nearly and almost completely eaten him alive.
There had been a point where she’d thought it was love.
There had been a point where he wasn’t sure it wasn’t.
But Will was practical. Painfully so. Somewhere in the lonely weeks of recovery from the drug, before they found Halt and Horace, reality had settled over him like the bitter frost from outside of their little cabin: princesses simply didn’t end up with ranger apprentices, and certainly not broken ones. Certainly not formally drug addicted, orphaned nobodies. And that was the end of it for Will. That was the moment he knew that anything they had, or might have had, was over.
He’d come back to Redmont thinner, jittery, fragile in ways that made him feel overly exposed, and most of all heartbroken. Cassandra had attempted to lure him to Araluen, she had unobtrusively asked him to stay with her.
And he knew he had to turn her down.
He hadn't seen her since.
And he felt it was eating him alive.
Thank God for Halt kicking his butt back into training.
And Thank God for Alyss.
He had gone to see Alyss as soon as he could following their return.
And from what little glimpses he'd allowed her to see-- he knew that she knew. Alyss had seen all of it.
Their first conversations had been awkward, careful, short. He hadn’t known what rumors she’d heard at first. Which ones were true enough to hurt her, and which ones weren’t.
But Alyss never assumed.
She never really asked either.
Alyss understood without needing the full picture.
And she stayed.
And slowly, the distance dissolved as the years passed.
As he healed, so did whatever had bent between them. And by the last year of their apprenticeships, she was at the cabin nearly every other evening, books in hand, some excuse on her lips that fooled neither Halt nor Pauline--nor Will, really, if he was being painfully honest.
“I need quiet to study,” she would say, as if Redmont Castle didn’t offer that in abundance.
“The light on your porch is better,” she would claim, despite the fact that half the time they ended up in Will’s room instead, sitting shoulder to shoulder on the floor with scrolls spread between them.
“I was already riding this direction,” she’d insist, which fooled absolutely no one, considering the cabin was nowhere near the city routes she usually walked.
Halt saw through her instantly, but liked her enough to not care, or maybe he just truly liked her for her company, or the awkwardness she drew out of Will sometimes. And Will… well, Will attempted to pretend he wasn’t affected by her presence, though the way his face warmed whenever she smiled ruined that attempt completely.
Those nights were gentle and treasured in a way Will hadn’t realized he'd ever miss.
They’d study on the porch as the last streaks of sun sank down into the horizon. Sometimes they’d talk about their lessons; other times about entirely nothing--whether dogs were more trouble than they were worth, or which tower guard snored loudest, or how Gilan would absolutely lose a bet Will had planned.
And sometimes they didn’t talk at all.
Sometimes silence was enough.
Alyss would sit close, her knee brushing his. She’d tuck her hair behind her ear when she concentrated, unaware that Will’s eyes followed the movement every time. She’d lean her head against his shoulder when the stars began to appear, soft and warm and completely natural, as if she’d always belonged right there, folded into his side. Like two pieces of a puzzle.
And his arm… well, eventually it just found its way around her waist. Never rushed. Never awkward. Just easy, as if his body had known before he did.
Halt would step quietly to the doorway, leaning against the frame, watching the two of them under the porch lantern. He never interrupted immediately. He let them talk, let them drift toward each other with the shy gravity of two people who hadn’t yet admitted what they were slowly and quietly becoming.
Watching young love tread into real love was something Halt had thought he was too old, too cynical, and too scarred to find beautiful.
Turns out he was wrong.
Because some nights, it was beautiful in a way that tightened even his throat. His apprentice--his son in every way that mattered--had survived so much darkness.
And seeing Will softening again, seeing him choosing joy, choosing companionship, choosing Alyss…
Halt would have gladly stood there until the lantern burned out.
But, of course, he was still Halt.
So when the evening grew late, he stepped out onto the porch with all the gruff authority of a man who had been pretending not to eavesdrop for twenty minutes.
“Some of us actually have to be up early for work,” he’d announce dryly.
Alyss always lifted her head reluctantly, as if drearily waking from a dream.
“Oh--right. Yes. Responsibilities. Those.”
Halt raised an eyebrow at her and fought the smile playing on his lips. “Yes. Those.”
Alyss would rise, gather her books, then turn to Will with that soft, secret smile that unraveled something low in his stomach.
“Goodnight, Will,” she’d murmur—and before he could brace for it, she’d lean in and kiss him gently on the cheek.
It didn’t matter how many times she did it.
Will always blushed hot enough to warm the entire porch.
He’d walk her to her horse, trying desperately to seem composed while Alyss mounted with the same graceful ease that had always undone him. She’d squeeze his hand before she took off down the forest path--a brief, feather-light touch that left him standing in the dark long after she had disappeared toward the castle.
Then he’d turn around and see Halt on the porch.
Arms crossed. Smirk firmly in place. Head shaking slightly like he was watching a comedy he’d predicted every line of.
“What?” Will would demand, trying to hide his mortification.
“Oh nothing,” Halt would say in a tone that meant absolutely everything.
“Just… observing. As Rangers do so well.”
Will groaned. “You’re impossible.”
“Perhaps.” Halt shrugged. “But I’m not blind, unlike you."
Will would turn redder. “Halt—”
“Relax, Will, you’re an adult now,” Halt cut in, voice softening. “Even if you do still act like a startled rabbit whenever she kisses you.”
Will spluttered, but Halt only clapped a firm hand on his shoulder and hid a grin.
He had only recently realized with a jolt that those nights were coming to an end with his mentor's upcoming marriage. Or at least, Halt's presence during those nights was coming to an end. He supposed he would still have Alyss over, but only this time, Halt would likely not be around. He didn't know why exactly that put a sadness in his heart, but it did.
After the chapel practice, the small group gathered for the informal rehearsal dinner in the great hall.
Will sat beside Alyss, not intentionally; it just happened. As most things do with her.
And when the dinner had ended, and Halt and Pauline were shaking hands with the Baron for his generosity in hosting, Will automatically-- instinctively-- offered his arm to Alyss to walk her to her rooms.
They walked down the long corridors together, neither saying much to fill the silence since the silence itself wasn't awkward or uncomfortable, it just... didn't need to be filled.
"Do you have your speech prepared for tomorrow?" Alyss asked, giving his arm a comforting squeeze as she did so. Will had never been one for public speaking, and she recalled a conversation following their mentor's engagement where Will commented nervously on the idea that, as Halt's best man, he would need to make a speech. She remembered him being petrified at the idea of not only speaking to all his friends, but his superiors as well, especially Crowley. Alyss was surprised that Crowley was the one who struck the most nerve, but Will explained that Crowley and Halt had been best friends for years.
"What if Crowley resents me? What if he thinks I stole Halt's attention?? What if he's angry that I'm his best man instead of him, and my pitiful speech just proves it?"
Alyss had soothed him as much as she could, but she understood where he was coming from.
She always did.
“You didn’t steal him,” she reminded him again now, seeing the same blue thoughts racing around inside his head. She smiled faintly as they slowed near the familiar corridor that led to her rooms. “You earned him. Halt doesn’t "give" himself to people lightly.”
Will huffed a quiet laugh. “That might be the nicest way anyone’s ever described him.”
Alyss huffed, "Well it's true. He loves you because you're great, he chose you because he knew you would be great, and you'll be great tomorrow too, Will." Her voice got quieter as she finished her thought, and Will looked up to meet her shining grey eyes and found himself having to catch his breath. She was beautiful. She truly was.
He swallowed and dropped his eyes as she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
"Well," she said softly, "thank you for walking me back."
"Of course," his voice. So raspy and unnatural. It felt strange and foreign in his own throat.
He met her eyes again, and this time he thought he saw similar thoughts racing behind her own, and thought for a second that maybe... just maybe...
No. There's no way. She doesn't feel the same; she couldn't. Look at her.
He did. He really did, his eyes bore into hers for moments that felt like eternity, aching, tormenting eternity.
Her gaze drifted to his lips.
His breath hitched.
They stood there, locked in that suspended moment where both people know exactly what they want and exactly why they’re afraid to reach for it.
Her hand lifted, brushing his cheek.
Will exhaled shakily, leaning into her touch, "Alyss," he rasped. God, that voice again. It doesn't even sound like his own.
She smiled at him-- small, and certain, and so devastatingly warm.
And suddenly Will's brain shut off.
He didn't think. Didn't weigh consequences.
Didn't second-guess.
"Fuck it," he whispered in that unfamiliar voice of his as he cupped her face and kissed her.
She inhaled sharply against his mouth--and then melted into him with a soft, eager sound that shot straight through him.
The years between them collapsed into dust.
All the longing, the tense closeness, the accidental touches, the suppressed desires. They all ignited into a colossal bonfire.
Her hands slid into his hair, pulling him closer, and he pressed her back against the door, kissing her deeper as if everything he'd held back for years surged through him all at once.
He fumbled blindly for the handle--
She did too--
The door swung inward, neither knew exactly who had opened it.
And they stumbled into her quarters, breathless and laughing into each other's mouths as they continued their frantic kissing.
Alyss unclasped his cloak, pushing it off his shoulders as it collapsed to the ground in a soft thud.
Will slipped her shawl from her arms, his fingers brushing the warm skin beneath.
She gasped when his hands found her waist.
He kissed down her jawline, slow and reverent, and she shuddered, tightening her grip on his shoulders.
Her lips trailed along his neck, drawing a low groan from him that he hadn’t intended to make.
They moved blindly, exploring each other, heat rising between them like a tidal wave neither had the strength or desire to resist anymore.
And at some point, Alyss's back bumped the arm of the couch--
She lost her balance with a surprised yelp--
Will caught her waist, twisting her around as they toppled together-- Will hitting the cushions first, Alyss landing atop him with a breathless oof.
Her hands braced against his chest; his arms wrapped instinctively around her lower back, holding her securely against him.
They stared at each other, neither completely capable of reading the other's thoughts.
Their breaths mingled, quick, uneven, and warm.
And then--
Simultaneously, they burst into uncontrollable fits of laughter.
Alyss collapsed fully against him, giggling into his shoulder.
Will laughed helplessly beneath her, the sheer joy and adrenaline from the last ten minutes coursing through his veins with such force he felt he might just float right off the couch.
The laughter slowly softened, and Alyss lifted her head from his chest.
Will cupped her cheek gently, "I love you," he said. Surprising himself once again, as it slipped out of his mouth, honest and instinctive.
Alyss’s eyes widened just slightly, then warmed like a sunrise.
“I love you too,” she whispered. “I always have.”
They kissed again--slower this time. Deliberate. A promise rather than an explosion.
They eventually broke apart only to resume kissing… and then talking… and then kissing again, losing track of time completely until Will finally, reluctantly, forced himself to leave before dawn threatened.
He slipped out of her room…hair rumpled, lips swollen, jerkin crooked and unevenly buttoned, and his heart pounding.
No one would notice. Right?
Oh, was he wrong.
---
Halt was sitting on the porch when Will arrived, arms crossed, hood up, the picture of an unimpressed, disappointed dad whose son had majorly broken curfew.
Will froze halfway up the steps as he noticed him.
Halt raised one eyebrow slowly.
Will opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Opened it again-- and closed it just as fast. And cleared his throat.
Halt's eyebrow climbed higher.
Will tried again. “Evening.”
“It’s nearly early morning,” Halt said blandly. “But who’s counting.”
Will swallowed.
Halt gestured vaguely at him. “Your hair is a disaster. Your shirt is buttoned incorrectly. And you’re… glowing,” he finished with a frown as if he couldn't find a better substitute for the cliche word.
“I’m not glowing,” Will muttered.
“You are,” Halt said. “It’s disgusting.”
Will stared at the floorboards, ears burning with embarrassment as he realized he couldn't exactly hide this from his mentor. “Are you… mad?”
“Mad?” Halt scoffed as he stood from the chair. “Will, you’re in your final year. You’re an adult. And Alyss…” He paused, unexpectedly softening as he saw the visible reaction from his apprentice when he said her name.
“Alyss is good for you,” he finished simply.
Will looked up, surprised.
Halt sighed. “Besides, I’d be a hypocrite to scold anyone the night before my wedding.”
Will blinked, then smirked. “You're not nervous, are you, Halt?”
Halt glared. “I am the picture of composure.”
Halt’s glare held for precisely three seconds--then flickered.
And Will caught it. Of course he did.
The corner of his mouth twitched. “You are nervous.”
"Am not,"
"Are too,"
Halt sniffed. “I have faced Wargals, assassins, and the training of two insolent apprentices without so much as a raised pulse.”
“And yet,” Will said mildly, “you’ve been awake since before dawn.”
A pause.
“That is called vigilance, young man.”
Will’s smile softened, teasing giving way to something warmer, but still proper teasing. “She’s going to be beautiful.”
Halt didn’t respond at once. When he did, his voice was quieter, obviously ignoring the tease in his apprentice's voice. “She always is.”
Will hid the shock in his face incredibly well for having witnessed such an uncharacteristic flair of emotion from his grim, tough-love mentor.
Halt studied him again for a moment, taking in his disastrous state, and the unmistakable light in his eyes he wasn't even attempting to hide.
"You should fix your buttons; they look stupid."
Will glanced down, as if he noticed them for the first time, and hurriedly began adjusting them. "Yes, sir," he said quietly.
Halt paused, then added, more quietly, “And get some sleep. Tomorrow will be a long day.”
“Yes, sir,” Will repeated, a little louder this time.
He hesitated on the threshold, then looked back. “Halt?”
Halt grunted in acknowledgment.
“…I'm glad you're happy.”
Halt looked at the boy in the doorway, trying his very hardest to hide the proud shine in his eyes. He hesitated, then: "I'm glad you're happy too, son."
The word lingered between them.
Both pretending not to be touched. And both pretending not to notice.
Will swallowed, something tight and unfamiliar catching in his throat. He nodded once, sharply, as if trusting his voice might betray him. “Good night, Halt.”
“Good night,” Halt said.
Will slipped inside, the door closing softly behind him.
Halt remained where he was for a moment longer, listening to the quiet footsteps of the boy he'd raised settle into the house he raised him in. He drew a slow breath, steadying himself, then turned his gaze toward the paling sky.
