Will the Watchman

A/N: This story picks up from the very end of Silver on the Tree and is concerned with the psychological effects on Will of being the last of the Old Ones. I've always wondered about the implications of holding a very heavy responsibility, and yet being completely unable to seek help or consolation. Will, despite being an Old One, is also a teenage boy after all…

I don't own any of the characters, and I don't want to 'cos I couldn't cope with the responsibility. They all belong to the superlative Susan Cooper

CHAPTER ONE

Alone with your friends

Will was never entirely sure when it had started, only that it was very soon after. That lightness and happiness that had enveloped him when the Dark had finally been driven from the world was present with him for too short a time.

If he had been asked a couple of hours after what he was feeling, his immediate response would have been a grin, perhaps even a laugh. Observers would have seen the bubble of joy and relief behind his eyes, the upward tilt of his chin that bespoke an intermingling of pride and uncomplicated contentment. If anyone had asked how he felt a couple of hours after that, he wouldn't have been able to answer.

But no one asked him.

Why would they have reason?

He was never quite sure what the others remembered – what rationalities had been constructed in their minds to account for the past few days. The world had been forced into the commonplace logic of three-dimensions for them. Even Bran's unmistakable 'otherness' (unmistakable to an Old One at least), was strangely muted, confined merely to his outward appearance. The awareness of things unspoken, things known, that Will had glimpsed in those strange light eyes so long ago had gone now.

This self-induced unknowing unsettled Will.

He had followed them back across the rain-damp fields, lingering with an almost unconscious reluctance to leave the place where Merriman had departed on his long journey. It was pride again that he felt, tingling through his blood and he smiled ruefully, a little guiltily that he should feel so much pleasure at the weight of responsibility placed upon him.

'My Will the Watchman', he whispered quietly to himself, smiling again.

Not quietly enough apparently. Simon, who was just ahead of him, lagging a little behind the striding figures of Bran and Jane and the bouncing figure of Barney, turned his head sharply to stare at Will through narrowed eyes. Will was somewhat disconcerted, even puzzled at the thinly veiled suspicion in Simon's angular face, but he quickly maintained his customary blandness and Simon turned away without a word, shrugging his shoulders in a gesture that spoke eloquently of exasperation and indifference.

It was the first faint shadow to appear in Will's mind that bright afternoon.

Will stopped abruptly and stared at the figures of his friends ahead of him – and realised, suddenly, with something like fear, that perhaps he no longer had the right to call them friends any more.

'What do they think of me now?'

The plaintive whisper insinuated itself into his mind and unavoidable thoughts followed hard on its heels.

Simon's instinctive proprietorial suspicion and jealously of Will had been overlaid with a grudging respect and desire to achieve a common goal but he no longer had any reason to suppress his distaste for the Buckinghamshire boy. They had nothing in common any more, after all.

Barney, more sensitive, but slavishly attached to his older brother, and besides he was younger and constantly misread Will's blandness as indifference. He was supposed to of course, but Will knew himself rather well after all and could not help but remember how he had felt an almost pleasurable thrill of shock when he realised that Jane had seen into him with barely an effort. Perhaps he had wanted her to know. Perhaps he had wanted them all to know.

Jane…

Was Jane still his friend? Like her brothers, she barely knew him without the dangers and the strange psychic enhancement of Merriman's presence in their lives. Yet he felt that she, of all the Drews, didn't not know him. It was a strangely convoluted thought, but he felt the truth of it. Perhaps when they spoke next, he would see the truth of it also. Perhaps she was one he would meet again. Yet, the feather touch of fear came again and he knew he could not approach her with that question. If she wanted friendship, she would have to come to him.

And the last. Never could he be the least. He was something, even in this muted state, he was something. Something more… the once and future…

Bran Davies.

A swell of emotion hitched Will lungs for a breathless moment. He knew so much of Bran. He knew things and felt things that no other creature knew or felt. But what did Bran know of him? Was there something still remaining in the quiescent depths of him that would recognise Will for what he was? Would he at least be able to acknowledge what they had shared?

With that thought, it was as if Will's quiet happiness had never been, was but a dream experienced fleetingly towards waking and only half-remembered. He slammed his eyes shut with pain, the tightness in his chest catching him entirely by surprise.

It's no good me wishing for them to remember something. He thought bitterly, Is that what I want? If I am to be the Watcher, I must be alone… How can I justify putting others in danger? Not only their lives, but their sanity…

You are not a child to be wishing for things you can't have, he told himself sternly, You are an Old One. The last of the Old Ones.

The Last

Alone…

And then, a last fleeting thought, quiet, plaintive, half-afraid to be heard, even in the privacy of his own mind,

Merriman, what have you done to me…?