Halt sighed and pulled his cloak closer about him. It was a Ranger cloak for goodness sake. It was supposed to keep you warm and waterproof and – who was he kidding, he was cold, wet and miserable. As water slowly dripped into his eyes from the brim of his hood he began ticking off the list of his troubles.
1. Banished from the kingdom for a whole year.
2. He had been expelled from the Corps and had his Oakleaf confiscated.
3. Gilan and Crowley were gone.
4. He wouldn't be able to see Pauline for a year.
That last one hadn't originally been on the list but his conscience had decided to add it in. Now he sighed once again, louder this time. One year. Twelve months. Fifty-two weeks. Three hundred and sixty-five days.
God, when did a year become so long!
Last I looked time was flying by, he thought grimly, running a hand through his grey-streaked hair.
But the fact of the matter was that he was going to miss her very much. Her laugh. Her smile. Her arguing. The conversations they would have every other morning or so either in her office or on his front porch when Will and/or Alyss were not present. (Though he was sure that Will had tracked him a few times.) Yes, he was definitely going to miss her.
He remembered once how, several years ago, she had almost died on a mission to Skandia and he had raced up to the infirmary to find her sitting up, well enough and with her arm in a cast. She had laughed at his concerns, that beautiful, ringing laugh that she had, and patted him gently on the arm. "You're fickle, you Rangers," she said, still chuckling slightly. "You go parading around in your fancy cloaks and grim old masks being all mysterious and generally behaving like menaces to the more sociable side of society but as soon as you might lose your little pet you get all strung up about it."
He knew she'd been teasing him about the whole 'little pet' thing. It was hard to think of Pauline as being little, let alone anyone's pet. He sighed again. Great. At the rate he was going he was going to be a sighing expert by the time he got home.
"Women, eh," he murmured, giving Abelard a pat on the side of his neck. "They'll twist you round their little fingers."
Abelard pricked his ears and whinnied. But it wasn't because of Halt's remark. The rather obvious drumming of a horse's hoof beats punctured the general sound of water pattering onto leaves and into puddles and onto the muddy track that was 'the road'.
Halt instantly unslung his longbow and nocked an arrow to the string, not aiming yet, but ready for the enemy's appearance around the corner. But he wasn't supposed to be being pursued yet. He had twenty-four hours to get out of the kingdom. Still, he wasn't surprised. Rangers had enemies after all. Him maybe more than others.
To his surprise the hoof beats halted just short of the bend. There was a rather uncomfortable silence as Halt waited, expecting to hear the scrape of a sword being drawn from a sheath, or maybe the squelch of two feet landing in the mud.
"That's hardly fair, Ranger. Your arrows against my dagger." It was a woman's voice, with a hint of laughter in it. His mouth dropped open slightly. He knew that voice. It was the very voice he had been thinking about just moments before.
With a chuckle, Lady Pauline urged her black mare around the corner and pulled her hood back, to reveal silvery-red hair and a smile. But it was a sad sort of smile, he realised with a small tug of the heartstrings. And there was a glittering in her blue eyes that he was sure wasn't usually there.
"Pauline?" Halt asked, sliding from Abelard's back and moving towards her.
"I couldn't let you leave without saying goodbye," said Pauline with the same sad-amused smile as before, following his example and also sliding from her horse.
Halt couldn't help but smile slightly. But before he could speak Pauline had begun speaking. He couldn't help noticing that her tone was rather desperate and that she was no longer smiling. "Why did you do it, Halt? Why?"
"Because," he said solidly, "I have to find Will and get him back before it's too late. You don't believe I go to bars on a regular basis anyway. It was all planned."
"Well it's a good cover-up," said Pauline ruefully. "We all know you can't hold your liquor."
"Thank you for your faith in me," said Halt sarcastically, remembering that time some ten years or so ago. Arald and Crowely were still laughing about it years later.
Suddenly Pauline stepped forward and enveloped him in a hug. For a second he was sort of frozen, his arms still at his sides. Then he gave in to temptation and wrapped his arms around her. Her body was warm and dry, in stark contrast to his, which he suspected was soaking her to the bone through her white courier dress. He could smell her too, a mixture of fresh parchment, Gallican perfume and a warm, earthy sort of smell which belonged to her and her alone.
She was shaking slightly and he realised that she was crying, tears trickling into his already rain-dampened shoulder. He hadn't a clue what he was supposed to do in this situation. She wasn't Will, who could be so easily reassured. She needed more than a sarcastic joke and a mission to go prank Sir Rodney. He wondered what she'd say if he asked her to do that.
So he settled for the non-verbal approach, holding her close and gently rubbing small circles on her back.
"You can't die," he heard her whisper into his shoulder, "you just can't."
"Who said I'm going to die?" It had been meant to come out as a light little … something. But his tone suddenly deadened and the remark came out to hang in the air, heavy as lead.
"Don't flatter yourself, Halt," she snapped, giving him a light punch in the back with her one hand. He winced. She sure could pack a lot of strength into that slender form of hers. "You know Gallica is in an unstable position. Half of the people will try to kill you while the other half will stand by and wait for you to be killed so that they can rob your bloodied corpse."
She really was upset. In all his time with her, she had shown nothing but sympathy for the poor, Gallican peasants who lived in constant terror for their lives. When Pauline no longer felt sympathy for the downtrodden you knew it was a bad, bad day.
"Well –" he began, feeling that his fighting skills could do with some justification.
"And don't you dare go on about how you're a Ranger and can take on the whole Gallican army at once and all that baloney!" she snapped. "You're only human, Halt. And if you aren't careful you're going to die. And I – I mean the King – couldn't bear that. Think of Crowley and Gilan and Baron Arald and Lady Sandra. You have no idea how heartbroken I – we – will be if you don't get back."
And then she dissolved into another series of short sobs, her nails digging into his shoulder blades. He was really going to have to see whoever made these Ranger cloaks and tell them to get their act together. Either that or she'd started growing her nails long when he wasn't looking.
He suddenly realised that he was crying himself, salty tears running down his bearded cheeks. It occurred to him that he wouldn't mind standing like this for the rest of the day. Or the week. Or the year.
Year. He had to go.
"I have to go, Pauline," he said. Instantly he regretted it and winced. It sounded so harsh and rejecting.
But before he could take it back she was pulling away, taking her warmth and her smell with her and rubbing her reddened nose with the back of her hand. "Of course," she said, composing herself. "Sorry I …" – hugged me half to death and gave me a bruise on the shoulder – "held you up. Yes, you do need to go."
But he didn't. Not yet. He wanted to stand there just a little bit long. Imprint this moment and this image in his mind. She looked beautiful, he thought. The years had hardly had any effect on her. certainly, her long, wine red hair was streaked with bands of silver but other than that she had hardly changed. Her sapphire blue eyes which often danced brightly with intelligence and humour now shone with unshed tears. Smooth, creamy skin that he'd longed to touch since before he could remember was beaded with raindrops. He realised that she was twisting her hands in that adorable and rather unprofessional way that she had when she was uncomfortable. He wondered why. But then he supposed he wasn't in a state of mind to consider that. He was too busy staring at her pale pink lips and wanting to kiss her to wonder about that sort of thing. But then he'd wanted to kiss her for years. And when he saw her next it would be another year.
Maybe …
Are you kidding, old man? She'd probably stab you with that dagger of hers! And then she'll leave and have that impression of your for the next year!
With a sigh, he decided it was time for him to leave, before he did something he would regret. "Yes, you're right," he said, rather gruffly. And he turned and mounted Abelard and gave his horse a brief pat to the neck, gently tugging the reins in the right direction.
When he reached the next bend in the road he turned and saw her slender figure standing by her mare, waving. Blinking back his own tears he waved back at her.
And all the time one word was pounding through his head like the beats of a war drum.
Coward.
Coward.
Coward.
Coward.
Don't worry, you people who are reading my Harry Potter story. I will NOT abandon it. This is just something to scratch the itch in my brain with while I plot Lockhart's doom. Just kidding, I LOVE Ranger's Apprentice (and Harry Potter). :)