A/N: *hides behind a panel of missile-proof glass* I know, I'm terrible. I had the incredibly bright idea to build wearable Halo 3 armour from foam in a restricted time period, so that's been taking up all my spare time these past few months. All done now though, so I'm back to writing. Hope you enjoy! (Warning: I am seriously concerned with getting a complete writer's block with this story - I mean, come on, it's been almost a year since I posted for it - so from now on, the story will pretty much be snippets of life through the years for Liam and Kaileen, and little if any revisiting of the original RA cast. This also means there'll only be two, maybe three chapters to go. Sorry if that makes it seem disjointed).
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"Liam Newman, if you don't stop fidgeting, God help me I will beat you to death with this comb!" Ava scolded her son despairingly. "Do you really want Kaileen to be widowed on the day of her marriage?"
"Sorry mum," Liam replied meekly, straightening convulsively as two trickles of ice-cold water dribbled down his back. His mother had wet his hair as she combed it in an attempt to help it lie flat. It wasn't working.
Liam had proposed to Kaileen the previous spring. He had finished carving the rings about a month before he turned eighteen, and from then he had counted down the days until he was of marrying age and would be allowed to propose to her. The marital laws of Tanree fief were rather convoluted, in that even when the two parties intending to marry were of age, unless circumstance dictated otherwise - such as pregnancy - the wedding would take place a year and a day after a proposal had been set forth, which could only be made once both parties were of marrying age.
He smiled as he remembered the day. Kaileen's eyes had lit up with pure joy and happiness - then she had laughingly flung her arms around his neck, spinning them both in a circle and gleefully telling him that she accepted. The smile slipped from his face as he winced, his mother's comb pulling uncomfortably at his scalp as it hit yet another snag.
Ava continued to fuss over his hair, trying in vain to make it lie neatly on his head. Eventually, she gave up and took out her scissors. "We can't have you with those unruly locks at your wedding," she told him as she snipped away at his curls. "The way it must swing into your eyes! If you were a girl, of course, you could just tie it back." She shook her head. "I would never be able to deal with it at that length. Promise me you'll keep it short afterwards?"
"Of course, mum," he said meekly, despite having every intention of growing it out as soon as was possible. He didn't like the way that the scar over his right ear became more prominent when his hair was shorter. Besides, longer hair kept the sun off his neck when he was working in the fields. However, he considered his mother's threat to beat him with the comb to be at least half-serious, and figured complaining would fall in the same column as fidgeting. The danger seemed even greater now that she had a sharp pair of scissors at her disposal.
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"You're beautiful," Liam murmured.
Kaileen grinned at him. "That'd be the wedding dress." The service had ended several hours ago, and all the guests had left to allow the new couple to enjoy their first night as husband and wife in privacy.
"I mean it," he told her earnestly, cradling her in his arms.
She smiled seductively. "Well, if it's not doing anything, maybe I should take it off?"
Liam immediately blushed and stared stammering, ruining the moment. Kaileen rolled her eyes. "Liam, I love you. We're married now, it's our wedding night, we're going to see each other without clothes on whether you feel embarrassed about it or not!" She pursed her lips. "Unless you don't want to see what's under here." She gestured at her soft white dress, tied at the waist with a simple blue ribbon.
"No, I do," he protested. "I just-"
"Shouldn't have a problem with it!" she fumed, turning her back on him. "I'll make it easy," she tossed over her shoulder. "Untie the ribbon."
He fumbled with the knot, feeling his ears growing red. Eventually, he undid the knot, hands on Kaileen's waist, only the thin fabric of her dress and undergarments separating his skin from hers. Feeling a sudden surge of confidence, he pulled her in close. "Okay, what now?" he whispered in her ear, voice husky.
Her lips curled into a sensual smile. "Now, the dress." And off it came. Kaileen stood before him, only in her thin undergarments.
Liam hesitated. "Are you completely sure?"
"Are you?" She looked at him frankly, hands on hips. "Liam, I wouldn't have agreed to marry you if I wasn't sure. Isn't that what this means?" She waggled her left hand, which was adorned with the plain wooden wedding band he had made.
"I'm sorry, I just..." he ran a hand through his hair, subconsciously running his thumb along the ridged scar behind his ear."You're always so confident in this, and I have no clue what I'm doing, I feel like I'll... I don't know..."
"Make a fool of yourself?" she suggested softly, shaking her head. "Please don't worry about that. And don't change. I love how sensitive and caring you are in these things. A lot of men see their wives as objects of sex, and care little about them otherwise. You've no idea some of the horrors the village wives will warn the girls about - but you're different than that. You're amazing, Liam, and I love you. Will you give me my wedding night?"
A warm glow spread through him, flooding his senses. He kissed her in way of response, slowly lifting the last of her clothing from her body.
"You're beautiful," he murmured.
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Rain trickled down the furrows in Liam's forehead, mingling with his sweat. His shirt plastered unpleasantly to his back, but he ignored the discomfort.
He and Kaileen had taken over the land between their parents' farms, enlisting the help of both families to build their new home. They had been living there now a few months shy of a year. This was the house's first experience with the torrential spring rains, and the roof had sprung a number of leaks, a steady trickle of water wetting almost everything in the house. This was why Liam was perched precariously on the slanted roof, plugging the holes with strands of oily sheepskin and tar.
After he'd plugged the last leak, Liam turned and leapt nimbly from the roof, landing lightly on his feet with his fingertips bracing him on the ground. He groaned as he stood and stretched, spine cracking after such a long period bent over on the roof. Movement caught his eye at the end of the narrow lane leading to their farm. He squinted through the rain, making out the figure of a cloaked man and a badly limping horse some fifty metres away. Concerned about the obviously poor state of the horse - and the possible poor state of its rider - Liam set up a light jog, giving the rider a friendly wave. "Hello. What seems to be the problem?"
The rider, who had stopped his horse and was giving its leg a worried examination, jerked in surprise. Liam regarded him with interest. A short, stocky horse, longbow case, double scabbard, a mottled cloak...
Ranger.
A thrill ran through Liam. He was actually meeting a Ranger! "Your horse looks in a bad way. The village is another half-day's walk from here - won't you bring her into our stable? It won't be good for her to walk through this rain any longer than she has to."
"Lightning hit a mud pit hidden behind some fallen branches and twisted her ankle. I wanted to get her out of the rain so she didn't get sick, but there's nowhere for kilometres." The voice was surprisingly young, and the Ranger seemed a little disconcerted with Liam's forward offer of help. He had learnt - both from his master and from experience - that common folk regarded Rangers with a weary suspicion. But this strange farmer was offering shelter for Lightning, and he wasn't about to refuse. "If you're sure it's alright, I'd gladly accept stabling for Lightning."
Liam cast him a curious look. "What about you?"
The Ranger waved a hand diffidently. "I'll sleep in the stable with Lightning."
"Don't worry about imposing on my home," Liam assured him, reading between the lines. "We have an unoccupied room you can use; I promise you can stay there as long as it takes for Lightning to recover."
"I'd prefer the stable," the Ranger told him uncomfortably.
Liam grinned. "What I mean is, you don't have a choice. The stable's only meant for one horse, it'll be enough of a squeeze getting Lightning in with Morgan without worrying about getting you in there too!" The Ranger grudgingly conceded that Liam had a point.
By now, they had reached the small stable nestled into the side of the house. A small overhang gave them just enough space to brush down the sodden Lightning, whilst keeping her out of the rain. "I'm Liam, by the way," he informed the Ranger, shaking his wet hair from his eyes and sticking out a hand.
"Colin, Ranger's apprentice," he replied, gripping Liam's hand in a firm handshake. He flipped back his cowl, revealing a fine thatch of sandy hair and a pair of warm brown eyes not dissimilar to Liam's own. His youthful face marked him as Liam's junior by several years.
"Is this your first solo mission?" Liam inquired as they returned to their work.
Colin nodded. "If you can call it that. The Ranger stationed at Tanree is set to retire around the time I should graduate into a fully-fledged Ranger, and my mentor told me I should get familiar with the lay of the land well before I take over the post. That's what I was doing, at least until Lightning..." he trailed off, eyes clouding with worry.
"Lightning'll just need a few days rest," Liam reassured him, remembering his own similar experience with their shaggy roan workhorse, Morgan, in the previous autumn. A knot of wood buried just under the surface of the field had caused him to twist his ankle, putting him out of commission for almost a week. "Come on, she's brushed down now. Let's get her in the stall."
Liam had been right - it was quite a tight fit, made worse by the fact that Lightning had a limp, and that they had to back her into the stall so she could reach the food and water troughs. Morgan seemed disgruntled about having to share his space with this strange horse, but, being the placid beast he was, put up a token resistance. Both Colin and Liam stepped back out into the rain, as there was not enough space under the alcove with the two horses in the stall.
"Lucky you Rangers breed your horses are so small," Liam commented. "If she'd been the size of Morgan, there'd be no way she would have fit in!"
"Thank you for offering your hospitality," Colin told him seriously. "Lightning probably would've gotten sick if we'd had to walk all the way to the village, or worse. You probably saved her career as a Ranger horse, maybe even her life. You have no idea how much your help means to me."
A warm glow spread through Liam at this genuine appreciation. "Think nothing of it." He rubbed his hands together. "Now I don't know about you, but I'd really like to get out of this wet. Won't you let me show you inside?" He gestured at the door.
Colin nodded gratefully. He'd already flipped his hood back up again to shield himself from the constant dripping rain, and he'd just about lost sensation in his extremities. "I could think of nothing better."
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A/N: Sorry to fans of the "steamier" fics, but that bit with Liam and Kaileen is probably as close as you'll ever get from me. :P
Also, Colin is fun to write. If I ever need a random Ranger cameo, I'll probably use him.
-pixie.