The name’s Fairy, I’m not very active here, but whenever I make an original post it’s about Will and Halt which says a lot about me. Found family is my jam! I write fic and make art but I barely post it lol
I’ve liked ranger’s apprentice for a few years now, and still hold the characters close to my heart. I keep this blog to strictly ranger’s apprentice related content, but on my main I reblog stuff about cartoons, musicals, and batman
Please feel free to send me an ask about my thoughts on a character or scene or just how my day’s been! I’d like to interact with the community a bit more
There is no drug on earth that can replicate the absolute euphoria of hitting a writing flow state at 2:00 AM. You aren’t even typing anymore. You are a vessel. You are a channel for the gods. The characters are speaking directly into your brain and you’re just the stenographer trying to keep up. You feel like you could fight a bear. You feel like you invented the alphabet
the imbed function isn't working for some reason BUT I have posted another new fic!!
And When It Bites, It Bleeds
“Halt, why aren’t you wearing your oak leaf?”
The first time he lied it was easy, but there was no honor in that choice and he knew it.
—
AKA, Will learns about Halt’s year long banishment, and it doesn’t go over too well.
3,029 words
hurt/comfort, communication problems, Halt's POV
what if Halt is really bad at verbally saying "I'm sorry" because he was expected to apologize for so much of his behavior and lack of interest in things as a child that it became a very uncomfortable, constricting phrase for him. this could cause problems and create really interesting interpersonal conflict with anyone who hasn't learned this fact about him yet.
plus, it's just his personality to imply things with microexpressions or physical affection instead. but hey, isn't personality just a product of childhood experiences??? chicken or the egg, yknow.
Yall????? omfg???? If you're a historical artist you NEED to look at what I just found because A BUNCH OF ORIGINAL SOURCES ON CLOTHING RANGING FROM MEDIEVAL TIMES TO THE 20TH CENTURY??? WITH CLEAR PHOTOS AND VERBAL EXPLANATIONS??? AND THEY'RE SORTED IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER WITHIN THE CENTURIES TOO????????
https://bloshka.info/
there's also this which also seems good but has less original sources and I haven't looked through as much :)
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
I'm feeling terribly emo about ranger's apprentice right now so I had to write something about it. please enjoy my belated book 3 angst and yell at me about it :D
Also Jenny and Horace get some wonderful friendship time!
In a Ranger's Apprentice mood this week which means, per usual, I'm being tormented with thoughts of what Halt was going through between books 2 and 3. Also just how his mind works in general because he's really interesting!
I imagine he harbors a lot of unresolved guilt over not being around when Caitlyn died—his one family member he feels truly loyal to, the one who actually understood him. He probably promised her a lot of things when they were kids, and he's a man of his promises.
So when he fails to save Will in time from the Skandian ship, and his guilty conscious and promise-keeping ways start to bubble up inside him again, here comes some complicated family problems he never worked through. The situation with Will by itself is bad enough, but being left alone with his own thoughts for too long leads him to his past, which only exacerbates the regret that he always has waiting in his gut, ready to strike when the few people he's truly let into his life are in danger.
He of course has nightmares and moments of spiraling anxiety out of control. And sometimes, when he's really tired, Will and Caitlyn's faces start to look awfully similar to each other: both eternally young in his mind, both out of reach.
crawling out of the dirt to throw this out here! y'alls textposts have been hitting hard and tears have been shed.
if you're into timelines/my numerous aus this falls along the lines of "take rest and take hope" where Crowley DOES agree to let Halt go in search of Will. this is part one of at least two but perhaps a couple linked pieces. i wouldn't write this and then NOT give you a Halt and Will snippet, too. but I'm terribly out of practice.
retreating back into my dirt now, will see u soon.
featuring (of COURSE this is a mipmaps story) Uncle Crowley, Crowley and Halt bestfriendism, and Will, being himself <3
--
“Commandant Crowley?”
Crowley sighs, pressing his forehead to the warm crest of Cropper’s neck. The muscle jumps as if Cropper is laughing at him, short soft hairs brushing the tip of Crowley’s nose. “Yes, Will?”
“Are you busy?”
“Always,” Crowley replies, watching as Will grimaces, but still folds his arms on top of the stall door, resting his chin between the dips of his knuckles. Will is a polite sort of boy, willing to smile and nod away trivialities, agreeable to requests to come back at a better time, considerate enough to knock and wait for a response before barging through doors. Crowley can’t even get him to drop the ‘Commandant’ when the young apprentice addresses him. Will wears his good nature comfortably, so doe-eyed and relaxed next to Halt’s stiff shoulders and calculating gaze that he appears puppy-like, even now. Even after – everything.
But there is no soft underbelly to Will.
Halt’s dogged determination is like calloused, hardened skin, worn like armor and forged by time and no small amount of betrayal, oiled and shined by utter disregard for authority. Will’s resolve is just as silent and strong, but it rests deep in the marrow of his bones – not wielded, not dragged to the surface to fight off an opponent, but simply there, inherent and unshakeable, called upon when needed and encouraged to wait quietly in the wings when not.
These days, Crowley believes that Will was born with more grit than Halt. The thought would feel like a jab towards his oldest friend, if not for Crowley’s absolute certainty that Halt would agree. Somehow, in a way that Crowley would have previously claimed to only be possible for a parent, Halt has always been certain of Will’s potential – even in the darkest of days spent alone in a castle tower, pacing a groove in the stone floor, waiting for a decree that would never come, when Halt doubted himself, he didn’t doubt Will.
Right now, Will’s curls are all softness where they flop into his eyes, but his eyes are full of that familiar tenacity, and Crowley ducks behind Cropper’s neck to hide his smile. There will be no asking Will to save his questions for later. As a Ranger, Crowley has to look after his horse. As Commandant, he has to be a listening ear.
It’s a good thing he’s a great multitasker. The pile of papers on his desk might disagree, but, well – there’s a reason he’s squirreled himself away in the stables.
“What’s happened?” Crowley asks, finding Will’s gaze while his fingers continue their work untangling the burr from Cropper’s mane. Will hesitates, lifts his face from his hands, shifts his feet. Crowley shakes his head at him. “Out with it, please. If you’ve had the conviction to come all the way down here to find me you’ll have the conviction to say what you’ve come to say.”
Will smiles, a little thin, but warm enough. Crowley will take what he can get. “You sound like Halt.”
“Halt sounds like me,” Crowley reminds him. “I’m older.”
Will blinks. “I always forget,” he admits, with the unmistakable air of someone who really has been surprised, and is perhaps a little surprised that they’ve been surprised. It’s an uncommon feeling for any Ranger, even one in training such as Will. “Not to say that you’re immature,” Will says, so fast and unhindered that Crowley is glad his face is still half-hidden for how hard he has to bite his lip to keep from laughing. “Or that Halt looks old! He’s just…”
“Grouchy? So grouchy that he seems a good ten years older than he actually is?”
“…yes.”
“He also used to stare into the sun when we were younger to tell time of day,” Crowley discloses, purely to hear Will’s disbelieving laugh. “Nevermind that we all kept telling him to just look at the shadows. Now he’s got all these wrinkles.”
Will’s laughter peters out slow. Crowley pulls two more burrs from Cropper’s hair. He doesn’t have to look to know that Will is still there. The afternoon light is soft, the stables are quiet. Crowley is a worrier, and a planner, and a doer, but he has learned how to tell when it’s the final bell and when there is time. Right now, there is time.
“Commandant, would it be okay if I came in?”
Will is terribly attached to his own horse, Tug. It’s a funny name for a funny little horse, and when Crowley had blinked and asked Halt if the name had any significance, Halt had looked at him as if he’d spent too long in the sun said ‘no’ without any elaboration whatsoever. But irregardless of apparently random names, Will could often be found right at Tug’s shoulder, hand resting against his neck in comfort that Tug didn’t seem to need but perhaps Will did. Crowley understands, at least a little. The smell of horse, the bristle of hair and swish of tail, their deep, slow breaths – it was as much peace as a man like Crowley could ever hope for.
So – “Sure,” Crowley says, nodding towards where he’s cut up a bit of apple on a trunk across the aisle. “Take some of that and pay your taxes.”
Cropper takes the apple with appreciation and leans into the pat that follows, pressing a searching nose against Will’s cheek for only a moment, just long enough to blow the hair off the boy’s forehead and leave him smiling through the nervousness in his eyes. Will’s fingers find the tuft of short mane at Cropper’s withers and hold fast, as if the grip tethers him to the very earth.
Cropper is a very good boy, the very best, the most talented at reading a room (a stall, Crowley should say, Cropper has been in rooms before but the king threw a fit about ‘horses not belonging in the Great Hall, Crowley’ so now he doesn’t get the chance much anymore). He huffs and drops his head to munch at his hay, piled neatly in the corner, leaving the space between Crowley and Will unobstructed.
Will does not look at him.
“I’d like to help you,” Crowley says. “You know that.”
“I do,” Will replies. He stares at the wall, jaw working in silence. After a long moment, he asks, as serious as Crowley’s ever heard him: “You’d never make fun of Halt for something that wasn’t – funny, right?”
“No,” Crowley says immediately. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t feel a sharp ache of hurt at the fact that Will felt the need to ask at all, but at the same time, there’s some strange reassurance in the knowledge that Will is apparently just as protective of Halt as Halt is of him.
“I understand that the things we say to each other seem mean, but we’ve known each other a long time, and – damn, I don’t know if I’ve ever tried to explain it,” Crowley realizes. Will’s dark eyes watch him unflinchingly. Not unfeelingly, exactly, but not so gentle that he would describe them as sympathetic, either. Crowley scratches Cropper’s shoulder, thinking carefully.
“Yes,” he says, changing his original answer after a minute of thought. It’s a non-sequitur, but Will seems to follow without any effort, tilting his head with more curiosity than judgement. “Sometimes I do make jokes about things that are painful for Halt, or for myself, or about memories that weigh heavily on us both. He does the same to me. But we don’t prod at each other’s bruises to make each other hurt, we do it to… remind each other that we know that they’re there. Halt doesn’t talk to many people, and believe it or not, neither do I. Not meaningfully, not about myself, anyways.”
Crowley has a lonely job. It’s important, it’s an honor, if he does it right it’ll be the greatest thing he ever does. But it’s damn lonely.
“It’s good to know that someone knows you and what you’ve been through,” Crowley finally gets out. “I don’t always know how Halt would prefer that I tell him that – certainly not through actually sitting down and talking about it, he’d break out in hives – but I do have to try to convey it somehow.”
He’s my friend, Crowley doesn’t say. He’s not just my Ranger, but my friend, maybe the only real one I have. He clears his throat, pressing his thumb between his eyebrows to ward away the start of a headache. “I feel his hurt like it’s my own, and I wouldn’t betray your confidence by making fun of him for something you brought to me as a serious concern, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Will seems mollified, white-knuckled grip relaxing into a soothing, repetitive stroking down Cropper’s spine. He nods, too long after Crowley’s words to be agreeing to anything in particular, but perhaps just accepting the speech as a whole.
“What’s the best way to wake him when he’s having a nightmare?”
give all your ranger blokes swords to sufficiently enrich their rangering experience. or just give one to gilan & he’ll make sure the rest never have peace again
