A/N: So, I've been into this series for a good couple of years, but somehow, it never occurred to me to write fanfic. (Probably because I just finished The Royal Ranger, and then started into the Brotherband Chronicles, lmao.) I have always been enamored with Gilan more than anyone else in the series, I wish Flanagan had more of him around. This fic, which will hopefully comprise of more than just this one snippet, and become a series of short stories, is centered around him, following the canon timeline (more or less). We can never have enough Gilan.

Brown Eyes

One – Catching Up

(Spoilers for The Ruins of Gorlan.)

The discordant, eerie sound of the Stone Flutes that set his teeth on edge still haunted Gilan – it was harder to hear them now, with the wind carrying the sound away, rather than towards him, but it seemed to have stuck itself in his ear as a constant, which now he couldn't get rid of; if he wasn't actually hearing it, then he was imagining it, which, in the end, didn't make all that much of a difference.

He wished he could run, but he knew he had to conserve his energy. Much like a Ranger horse, Rangers themselves, while strong, agile and persistent, couldn't outrun everyone, and Gilan still had a ways to go. He grinded his teeth together at the thought of it – there was a part of him, he found with some mild surprise, that was actually angry, though, the more he thought about it, the more he realized he was simply frustrated at the situation, at his own helplessness, the fact that he was left behind on foot, while Halt and Will were putting themselves into danger (mostly Halt, of course).

He broke into a jog as the farmhouse came into view, then slowed back to a strained walking pace. He was already dangerously exhausted. He'd spent the previous night on his foot – he hadn't quite dared to stop to rest, what with having neither his companions nor Blaze to keep a lookout for him. And he had to catch up to his old mentor anyway – Halt had told him to get a horse, if he could, and so that was what Gilan was determined to do. He'd already lost precious time; he hadn't rested overnight, but he couldn't track as well in the dark, and even if Halt had seemed rather sure that the Kalkara were headed towards the Gorlan Ruins, Gilan was scared to lose the track left by the monsters, and then Abelard.

There was a woman outside the house, hanging laundry to dry on a rope fastened between two trees. Her first reaction was to recoil when she caught sight of the tall Ranger, and were they anywhere else, Gilan would have thought it odd. With the fact that her family lived on the Solitary Plain, not to mention with the Kalkara out and about, it was no wonder she was on edge. Still, he approached without pause, though holding his hands up in a universal sign of meaning no harm. At this point, with the day slowly turning into afternoon, and him not having slept in over thirty hours, maybe he wouldn't even have been able to cause any, he thought wryly.

"Ranger," she greeted him, her fingers curling into her skirts. It was a testimony of Gilan's exhaustion that he immediately searched for a weapon hidden in the folds, as if she was aiming to stab him when he wasn't looking. Well, better that than being caught unaware. "We don't see a lot of you around here." You of course being the Rangers as a whole, he knew she'd meant. "What can I do for you?"

"I need a horse," Gilan told her, squaring his shoulders a little. There was a pause, in which the farmer's wife gave him a long, hard look.

"Truth be told, Ranger, you look like you actually need some rest and a good meal instead," she finally said, letting go of her skirt to put her hands to her hips Gilan smiled ruefully.

"You're not entirely wrong about that, but right now, that's not important."

Another pause – it wasn't particularly long, but, to Gilan's overtired mind, it was just enough to contemplate whether she was thinking of a way to double-cross him. Hadn't Halt said the Plainspeople could be in league with the Kalkara? The older Ranger had said he didn't blame them if they were – common folk did whatever they could to just stay alive, especially when it came to those beasts – but that didn't mean Gilan trusted this woman in the slightest. Finally, she said, "We have a horse – but we need him, too." A small weight seemed to be lifted from Gilan's chest – so that was why she'd hesitated. "My husband is plowing the field with him right now."

Gilan shifted his weight. Like he had stated to Halt just a couple of hours prior, he really would have happily killed for a cup of coffee. "I would only borrow him for a few days, and I'd pay you for it," he offered. There was yet another moment in which she was just looking into his eager, honest face, then she nodded.

"Must be important business," was all she said. "But you'll still have to wait until my husband is back from the field. He'll be back at sundown. You could get some rest until then."

Gilan wanted to argue, then he realized there was no point. There was less than an hour left until sundown anyway, and on horseback, he could make up for the time he was losing now, waiting here. Besides, he really needed a bit of a rest. Halt was not going to make use of him if he rode into the battle scene and fell from the saddle in front of the Kalkara.

He followed the woman into the house, where he was sat at the kitchen table, with a simple but wonderful smelling spice soup set in front of him in five minutes. It seemed to revitalize him. The woman was called Lara, and she was warming up towards him moment by moment, sitting on the other end of the table and watching him eat. Gilan had always had that effect on people.

"I never saw a Ranger carry a sword," she said at one point, glancing to his side, where his weapon hung. Gilan simply flashed her a disarming smile, finding it now came a little more easily.

"I'm special that way."

As the sun was beginning to paint the land into a deep orange colour, the door opened, and as Gilan turned to see the new arrival, he froze up for a moment. Then, he was at his feet before the man had time to react, pushing him against the wall, his saxe knife at his throat. Lara gasped. "You," Gilan said, his voice ice cold, "are the man we saw. You ran from us. Where did you go? Who did you tell about us?"

It was all too easy to ignore the frightened woman behind his back. Gilan was galvanized into action by the sheer opportunity to finally do something worthwhile, other than run after his friends fruitlessly. There was a part of him that was smarting in silence; he knew Halt had been right, that he had devised the best plan of action, that Gilan would have been of little help to him compared to Baron Arald and Sir Rodney. Still, that small part of him that he neatly tucked away, not to be examined until this whole mess was over, was seething with it – not quite injustice, because for all the years he'd known Halt, the older Ranger had never made the wrong decision, even if things didn't always turn out splendid – but the feeling of inadequacy. Perhaps he could squeeze some information from this man, considering he had done him the favour of not shooting him in the back earlier as he disappeared in the tall grass. Perhaps he could find out where the real lair of the Kalkara was; perhaps he could catch up with Halt and bring him something useful. Perhaps, perhaps.

The man gasped for air, his eyes widening in fear. He tried to say something; Gilan loosened the knife. There was still a possibility that the simple farmer wasn't in league with any monster, and if it was so, he didn't want to harm him. The farmer swallowed and started, "I'm not–…"

Then Gilan felt an enormous hit to the side of his head, and everything went dark.

When he woke, he was laying on a wooden bench, half propped up on one of its arms, a leg hanging off the side. His head was pounding, and when he opened his eyes, at first, he saw stars and nothing else. Something wet was pressing against his temple; a droplet was rolling down into his ear.

"Oh, he's up," he heard someone say. "Thought it'd take longer, but he's a young lad." Gilan recognized it as the Plainsman.

"Shouldn't we have tied him, Rob?" Lara's voice came from much closer, which made Gilan realize she was the one applying the cold, wet bandage to his head. He wasn't sure what to make of that – or any of her reactions altogether. It was quite plain that it had been her who'd hit him across the head with something heavy, and she was now suggesting to tie him up, but at the same time, he could feel the gentle press of her applied cooling on his bruise.

"Don't be ridiculous. He wasn't going to kill me, an' he certainly isn't going to now."

Gilan sat up so quickly that the wet bandage dropped into his lap, and he felt so dizzy he thought his stomach might turn upside down. The room came into sharp focus in a couple of moments, and he took in the sight of Lara crouching on the floor next to the bench, and her husband Rob sitting at the other end of the dining table. It took another moment for the tall Ranger to realize he didn't have any of his weapons on him. Rob took in the gesture of him scrambling at his side for his sword, and gave a small shrug.

"Sorry, Ranger. I didn't want to tie you, but I wanted a chance to actually speak, before you wanna stick something sharp in me again."

It was only now that Gilan took a really close look at him – and the more he did so, the more his shame grew. He usually wasn't one to jump to conclusions so hastily; it was probably another sign of his exhaustion, and it was utterly unbecoming. Rob could have killed him. If he were in league with the Kalkara, he probably would have. Even now, as Gilan had shot up into a sitting position, he didn't even flinch; he just sat there and looked at him, waiting for him to make the next move. There was a faint red mark at his throat where Gilan's knife had pressed against his skin.

"I'm sorry," Gilan said sincerely. There was no humiliation in an honest apology. "I shouldn't have jumped to conclusions. Please explain."

Rob rubbed his cheek. "Well," he said thoughtfully, "I suppose the easiest is if I just answer your question. That is, I warned no one about you lot – I honestly just didn't want to get into your Ranger business, especially considering all the rumours." Gilan wasn't completely sure whether he meant the Kalkara, or the general secrecy and mystery revolving around Rangers, but either way, what the Plainsman was saying made sense.

"You know we could've shot you, right?" he asked, raising a hand to press against his forehead. His whole skull seemed to be throbbing with pain, and his stomach didn't want to settle. Did he have a concussion? But Rob was grinning and shaking his head.

"Didn't think you would. Hadn't done nothing wrong. That's what I just told the wife; that you don't kill without cause."

Now Gilan was found marveling at the odd trust this man seemed to have in Rangers, whom most common farmfolk didn't trust. But instead of voicing that, he asked, "What did she hit me with?"

"A frying pan," Lara answered, and when Gilan looked at her, she pointed to the stove, where she had apparently replaced the incriminating object. It was a heavy iron pan with a massive wooden grip. No wonder his head was throbbing so badly.

"Where are my weapons?" he wanted to know next, and the pair of them exchanged another glance.

"Asks a lot of questions, this Ranger does," Rob said, smiling.

"My name is Gilan," Gilan replied without thinking. The two of them smiled at him. Oddly, it was this gesture, which should have put him at ease, that made him tense up even further. Suddenly, he was aware of everything he'd forgotten for a minute or two; the fact that Halt was out there hunting the Kalkara, and he, Gilan, needed to catch up to him as quickly as he could. He felt panic flood him as he looked out the window and realized it was now dark outside – for all he knew, he could have been out for hours; Halt could have already found the Kalkara, he could have been dead. "I really need my weapons. Where are they? And that horse. How long was I out?"

This time, there was no joking about the onslaught of questions; the pair seemed to sense Gilan's mounting anxiety. "Just a bit over ten minutes," Lara said gently, laying a hand on the tall Ranger's forearm. "And there's everything," she added, pointing to a chair next to the door, where everything of his was laid; the sword, the double scabbard with the knives, his bow and his quiver. For a moment, Gilan allowed himself to breathe. "Rob will saddle the horse for you. You don't need to pay anything, just bring him back soon." He opened his mouth to protest, but she shook her head. "No, I owe you for hurting you. Even if you did threaten my husband," she added, tilting her head slightly. Gilan allowed himself a smile as he armed himself again, then walked out to meet Rob and the now saddled plowhorse.

"Well, he ain't no Ranger horse," Rob said, turning to the pair of them, and Gilan felt a sudden, stabbing ache at the thought of Blaze. "But he'll get you wherever you need to be." The question was only, Gilan thought, whether he would do it fast enough. "His name's Duck." Gilan felt the corners of his mouth twitch, but he simply walked up to Duck, and swung himself up into the saddle. Duck was a little taller than Tug and Abelard, almost taller than Blaze as well. He definitely wasn't fast, but he was strong – as a plowhorse ought to be. He looked back down to the farmer and his wife – and didn't quite know what to say.

He nudged the horse in the sides with his heels, and he broke into a slow canter, leaving the farmhouse behind in a matter of minutes, his throat tight with mounting anxiety and a mixture of other feelings he did not want to examine too closely.

The farmhouse had been a slight detour, but Gilan felt a bit more rested now, not quite as worried about losing his trail as he had been. It was a little ridiculous to think about that he'd gotten his rest from being knocked in the head, but he was going to take what he could get. It wasn't going to last long anyway, the tall Ranger knew that from experience. He knew that once this was over, and he was down from the seemingly constant adrenaline high, he would crash, and he would crash hard. But he wasn't going to let that happen before it was, in fact, over and done with. Before he knew Halt was all right.

Once he found the previous track he had been following, he allowed Duck to pick his own course, so long as he didn't deviate too much from their general direction, and allowed himself a few minutes' dozing in the saddle here and there. Still, he never slowed the horse to a walk, and they maintained a steady pace that Duck could keep even with Gilan on his back.

As time stretched, however, this meant that Gilan's thoughts were able to roam free, the part of his mind that wasn't preoccupied with constantly scanning his surroundings. He couldn't let go of the ball of fear in the pit of his stomach, that he would be arriving too late. Of course, when he thought about it realistically, he knew he was probably going to. The real question wasn't whether he would catch up in time – it was whether Will would. That was why Gilan had lent him Blaze – something he had never done before for anyone. Not even Halt had ever ridden her, albeit he knew her code word (no surprise, considering he was the one who had got Gilan his Ranger horse in the first place). Whether he saw the logic in it or not, it wasn't something he had done with ease.

Gilan liked Will. That much had been established for a while now. Halt's new apprentice was resourceful, quick-witted, funny, but also polite and kind. There was just that one small detail that Gilan was still wrapping his head around – that he was Halt's new apprentice. It hadn't been that long ago that Gilan had graduated and got his own fief to look after. The last year's annual Gathering had been the first one he'd arrived by himself. He'd barely been wearing the silver oakleaf for two years now. It wasn't that he didn't feel up to the job (although he did remember the mounting panic of the couple of weeks before his graduation; the time when he had believed he would never, ever be ready) – but there were certain things to miss about being Halt's apprentice, the most prominent of which was Halt himself.

Of course, it was a bit different, Gilan reasoned. He had come from a steady background; he still had a loving father even now, even if his duty called him to an entirely different part of Araluen. He hadn't needed Halt's guidance back then as much as he needed his skill – but that didn't mean they hadn't developed a close bond throughout Gilan's apprenticeship. Will, on the other hand, was an orphan, and although Halt certainly wasn't going to admit it, Gilan could already see that the bond between them was becoming something of a surrogate father-son relationship.

And now they were going to fight the Kalkara together (or, worse, Halt was going to do it on his own), and Gilan wouldn't be there.

It was around midnight that he first heard the screaming – that blood-curdling, ululating shriek that he instinctively knew meant the Kalkara were hunting. It made him freeze in terror – it was a good thing Duck carried on on his way, or else they would have stood there for minutes. Suddenly, he knew with debilitating certainty that they were hunting Halt. He could only hope Halt realized it too – but surely, he did. Halt was everything but stupid.

He simply couldn't bear it any longer. He had to get there. The scream had come from a distance away, barely there; he still had miles to go, but he was too impatient, too terrified to keep conserving his horse's strength. Had he been riding Blaze, he would have already been there. But, then again, had he been riding Blaze, he wouldn't have left Halt's side in the first place. He urged Duck into a gallop, and then full-out run, even though they still had hours to go. In his mind, he saw various worst case scenarios playing out; the ways he would find Halt's lifeless body, or maybe Will's, or both, or even Arald's and Rodney's – no, he couldn't keep thinking like this, he had the utmost faith in Halt, and – and, really, he had faith in Will, too, when he thought about it, he could imagine the two of them side by side, and he had to realize that Halt couldn't have chosen a better apprentice for himself. Perhaps Gilan wasn't completely above the feeling of slight jealousy, but he had never been a spiteful person by nature, and what was there not to like about Will?

Some time after the moon had set, the screaming stopped. Gilan realized he had to stop; Duck wasn't going to last much longer if he carried on like this, and it was so dark he could barely make out his surroundings. The Kalkara really couldn't have chosen a better time for this. Then Gilan realized, with a jolt of pain in his chest, that it was in fact them who had chosen this time to go after those monsters. He grit his teeth as he dropped to the ground from the saddle, loosening the straps on the saddle a little bit, then leaning against the horse's neck, and just breathing for a few moments, exhausted and scared, listening to his surroundings until they both calmed. Of course, they couldn't have afforded to give Morgarath more time to get rid of the army's high officials this way, but Gilan still wished they could have waited. He hated this darkness; the way it closed up on him, suffocating, taking the last vestiges of his hope away that he would find his mentor alive, as the total silence finally settled.

This last thought was what made him snap out of his daze. It was merely an illusion. Who knew, maybe the sounds had stopped because Halt had killed both the Kalkara. Gilan had nothing but his hope, so he would hold onto that. He promised himself this as he tightened the straps again, climbing back onto Duck's back, and urging him to one last effort. Standing around and wondering would do nobody any good.

It was just a few minutes before daybreak when the Gorlan Ruins came into sight. Gilan wanted to spur Duck into one last run, but he knew the faithful little horse was at his strength's end. He dropped down from the saddle to the ground, and ran as fast as he could, with Duck staggering in behind him, slipping a little on the broken stones and debris of what once used to be the outer wall of Castle Gorlan. Gilan's heart was in his throat as he waited for the Kalkara to spring out from a corner at any moment, his sword drawn at the ready – but no such thing happened. Instead, he soon became aware of a burning bonfire (though it was mostly a low glow of embers now), with a charred corpse of what he realized, after the first lurch of fright, to actually be one of the Kalkara rather than a human; and then, not soon afterward he spotted the other carcass, burnt to a crisp, with an arrow sticking out of its back. For a moment, Gilan had to stop to marvel at this – had Halt killed it with a single arrow?

He didn't have a lot of time to wonder, however. Someone yelled his name, and as he turned, he saw Will waving at him from a makeshift camp a few hundred metres away. The relief was mounting by the second, but Gilan needed one last reassurance. "Where's Halt?" he asked, breathless, as soon as he arrived next to Will. He didn't need an answer, however. Halt was lying on the ground on a bedroll, his leg covered in bandages – but his chest rising and falling steadily.

"He'll be fine," Will said next to him in a quiet voice – and the next moment, Gilan was dropping to his knees on the ground next to his teacher, gripping his hand tightly, and trying to turn in an angle so that the young apprentice wouldn't see the tears rapidly falling from his eyes. He wanted to ask what had happened, he wanted to ask so many things – but he didn't trust he could do so without his voice breaking, and so he just knelt there, weeping from the sheer relief that they were all alive.

Will didn't need to see his face to know, though. He also didn't need to be asked. He started telling everything that had happened at the ruins, and by the time he was finished, Gilan had his composure back. If there was still a sheen in his eyes still when he turned around to face Will, they could both pretend otherwise. "You did that?" he asked, and he saw the other fidget a little bit, obviously uncomfortable. Still, he pressed on – and there was a certain awe in his voice as he did so. "You killed the second one on your own?"

"It wasn't that hard – I mean, with the fire arrow, anyway – I mean," Will stammered, his cheeks reddening. "Their attention wasn't on me, and I was far away, and – "

Gilan, without stopping to think, pressed his palm against the boy's mouth. There was a soft smile on his face that Will had never seen before – he looked proud, relieved, happy, and grateful all at once. "Will," he said, with all the seriousness he could muster. He could have voiced all those previous feelings that were currently welling up in his chest; but he found there was one thing he really needed to say. "Thank you."

And with that, he rose to his feet, and pulled Will into a strong, brotherly hug. If the boy started shaking like a leaf in his arms after a few seconds, they could both pretend otherwise. Gilan really couldn't fault him – shooting from a distance or not, he had been through a terrible ordeal, and Halt was out cold, unable to provide the mental support, the feeling of safety, that things would now be all right, that he was otherwise so good at giving. For now, Gilan was all too content to step into that role for a couple of minutes, his grip strong and secure around Will's shoulders until the trembling stopped. Then Will mumbled something unintelligible, and Gilan let go of him, peering down at him curiously.

"What was that?"

The boy looked up, smiling up at him. This smile seemed a little different from the previous; a little less guarded, more genuine. It occurred to Gilan that he may not have been the only one who kept his true feelings close to his heart about the other. "Thank you for letting me ride Blaze," Will said. And as if hearing she was being talked about, the mare trotted up to them, and nudged her rider in the shoulder – to which Gilan completely unabashedly turned around and threw his arms around his horse's neck.

"Well, I'm not going to say it was my pleasure," he said to Will, a hint of laughter in his voice.

Will grinned at him a little sheepishly. "I wouldn't have expected you to."

A/N: Reviews and constructive criticism are very welcome! As I said, this is my first time writing Gilan (or any of the RA characters, for that matter), and hearing what you thought about it, if you've read this far, would absolutely make my day.