7. Heaven

"Halt?"

Halt assumed that there was question after this, which is why he didn't actually say anything, opting instead to grunt.

"Halt," There was a pause. "What's heaven?"

The grizzled Ranger was actually rendered speechless. Will, of course didn't really notice, because he was talking again.

"I mean, there are a whole bunch of saying and songs about it, right? So that means that somebody went there, came back, and told people about it. But people can't come back from the dead, so...somebody's lying."

Halt conveniently covered his shock. "And how did you reach that conclusion, exactly?"

"If heaven's so great, why would you wanna come back here?"

Halt snorted. "Never underestimate how much people want to gloat, Will."

His apprentice shrugged. "Well, yeah, but if they get cocky, they can't go back to heaven, right? So the best solution is to stay in heaven and enjoy it."

Halt held in a frustrated sigh. Thinking really was a dangerous pastime. It was doing his head in.

"Halt?"

Will's mentor looked at him, wary. "Yes?"

"Am I going to heaven?"

Halt, once again, was speechless. Partly because Will was giving him this hopeful look, like he expected Halt to be his salvation. Mostly though, it was because...he actually didn't know. The things Rangers did weren't exactly ethical sometimes.

"I...I...um..."

Before he could think of anything to say, Will ran out of the cabin.

In the middle of the woods, Will burst into laughter.

"See? I told you that asking Halt about heaven would screw him up."

Will grinned at his mentor's former apprentice. "He was just so...confused. I though Halt couldn't even do confused. He was like..." Will scrunched up his nose and narrowed his eyes in confused disbelief, and this time Gil burst into laughter. Will grinned back, thinking of how great it was to have somebody who knew how to bug Halt without being in danger of death.


This...was supposed to be fluffy. But then I realized that Halt wasn't really a religious person, and if you add that to Will's naive...ette(?), and Gil's slightly cruel humour, you get a confused and speechless Halt and a laughing pair of his apprentices.