::Recollections::

Disclaimer: You know it.

A/n: No, this fic won't be ending anytime soon. Rejoice!

*

A week had then passed since Rapieratce awoke, and things had thus proceeded smoothly from there. The colonel gradually recovered his health, much to the relief of all on the mountain, and slowly, things started to return to some form of rather strange normality. Of course, all the hares on the mountain were recovering from the grievous losses of the war that had come and passed, but it was over and done with, and now all were starting to readjust back to normal everyday life. Daleria, however, was still loath to forgive Consellariel. The captain had successfully evaded the badger lady the entire time, and Consellariel knew better than to try and get the insolent captain to listen. The badger lady knew it was best to let Daleria cool down, though the captain was not showing any intention of doing so anytime in the near future. However, the badger lady already had her paws full of the affairs concerning the battle, and thus had little, if no, time to linger on the personal relations between the two of them. She left it to the colonel to try and talk sense into Daleria. The captain in question was currently wandering aimlessly around the mountain on her day off, since all the vigorous daily trainings had been stopped and all had returned to the slower pace of once per week. She roamed the corridors silently, pondering over all that had happened, her feet taking her where they willed, as she passed by halls, rooms, the infirmary, the kitchen, moving for the sake of not staying still.

You cannot blame Consellariel forever, Dale. As much as you wish to hide from your reality, you know that you will never be able to evade this forever. Understanding and acceptance is the step you must take in order to find the peace in your heart that you now crave. You know it.

But still. Consellariel was evil to do so. Nay, I would not say- think, evil, rather cruel. The trauma the five must have endured must have been great. I know how they feel now. I have been where they are now. It is not a situation many would like to be in.

You use an excuse that is not feasible, Dale. You know that beyond anything that Consellariel could have done that it most likely would have ended up much worse than this if the badger lady had taken any other route. It is as good as it gets to get the five of them out of the impossible fray alive.

Still. I cannot let myself forgive her so easily. Not yet.

You still hide from the inevitable. Do not try to deny this so much, Daleria. As much as you wish it, Clandestine and the rest are never coming back. Face it now, and never will it plague you again.

Alas that I have not the courage to do so now.

Alas indeed.

Daleria returned to her dormitory, and reached out for her old journal. It had come from the seven seasons in Mossflower, and many memories, some good, some bad, some fond, and others she felt worth not remembering at all were stored in those pages. It was precious to her heart. The captain dropped down onto the bed and leafed through the pages, looking for nothing in general, simply reveling in old recollections, letting herself drift back to old friends and brief stays, the many that she had met over her travels. As she continued, she felt herself wander down the north path, down the shady areas of Mossflower, drifting endlessly on the road until Redwall Abbey came full into view. She smiled upon the memory, remembering herself, travel-worn, just about lost in unfamiliar territory, desperate to the point of near exhaustion, stumbling straight into the paws of the kind Redwallers and the abbess. Daleria wondered down the hallways, the Great Hall, Cavern Hole, the great kitchens with the massive ovens, the cheerful dibbuns that would hopefully live to grow up differently from her and have a more pleasant childhood than her own. She recalled the old library, the gatehouse, so full of various tales, myths, legends, stories and other material that had her cooped up there for hours, reading for the joy of being alive. Daleria brought herself back to one of the nights that she had stayed upon the battlements, to see the living stars emerge out of the dusk and spawn gently into the deepening night sky. Those were the happier days. Closing her journal and slipping it back into her shelf, the captain lay on her bed, staring up at the ceiling with nothing better to do. Slowly, sadder things returned to her. She remembered the fear, the hate, the disbelief that she had encountered on that fateful night, the pounding of the blood in her ears as she had run, desperate and scared, through the vast plains of the Western Plains, stumbling across the spanning horizon as she hurtled away from the carnage of what was her home, her very memory blurred with emotion and misted over from hate and fear. The sight of her family dying, of Vaxial's merciless actions and his piercing gaze, of Waleb, trailing along the paths of memory that had brambles and thorns littered around them. She remembered being a foolish young hare, completely unprepared for the world that lay around her, the spinning dizziness of familiar grief descending upon her night after night until she welcomed the emotion to her as a control, to keep the world in place. Indeed, she felt grief so often that she then took to it, clinging to it, absorbing it each night as it visited her, the tearing emotion that would never change. Daleria learnt to love it, and she had cried until her eyes could water no more during those dark days of which hope was like a fleeting shadow that ran away once you set eyes upon it.

All the screaming, shouting, blood, gore, disrupted images from past and present melded together into a nightmare that wreaked havoc upon her mind, and Daleria felt the same sense of hopelessness that she had felt so many times before descend upon her again. It would take many nights, seasons' maybe, to piece together her life all over again. The captain only hoped that this time, it would not fall apart all over again, like it had too many times for her to feel safe.