Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: This thing just transformed itself into a sequel. Rest assured that my mentality had nothing to do with it: call it intuition.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Here, I take two seasons to equate one year.
*
Rewind. Rewind. Back in time, back in time, back to when I thought that life was perfect.
Clambrithe, admittedly, was one of my idols: only so many seasons older than me, yet so tremendously respected by his age group and every age group under his. Everybeast knew that the colonel favoured him with his attentions more than any other leveret, and they watched with envious eyes as Clambrithe cut through each trial and test with an ease that few others have ever known. He was old enough for me to consider an older brother of sorts, old enough for me to warrant him at least a level degree of respect. But definitely not old enough for me to ignore or pass off as base and outdated, definitely not old enough to be considered a true officer, in all senses of the word.
Tren A'varn. That is who I am. I was one of those bland leverets removed from dramatic influence: never disruptive, devoid of all arrogance, completely plain. Nothing out of the norm, merely able to perform better than the slackers and deviants, had nothing notable under my name, never got pulled out by any of the mentors. Good disciplinary record, yes, definitely a domesticated fighter. Not made for the crazy suicide missions that they sent others on, no, this one was made for the patrols. An efficient, quiet, obedient killing machine of no extravagant mechanics at their disposal.
I was not overly filled with that foolish ebullience, nor did I sink myself into the ideology of being an iconoclast. No, I was not one of those few dangerous candidates of edification, I was not one of duplicity.
That was Clambrithe. Oh, nobeast knew, of course. If they knew, Clambrithe would have been exiled to an administrative position, doomed to spend his life pushing paper around a desk. No. Clambrithe fooled everybeast, himself included. Clambrithe was the catalyst of change. Clambrithe, one way or another, in the greatest of ironies, saw through that constant obfuscation of the truth surrounding Salamandastron, surrounding us. And I was there, for a while, to see how, to see why, to attempt to understand. I was the obdurate fool to him, to the system.
I suppose that, in a manner of speaking, I was the closest Clambrithe ever came to calling a friend. Throw me his polemic conceptions of the last of his days, and I will answer you nothing, for I know nothing. But throw me his odd habits - the way he turns his head at such an angle, the way he smirks when he ought to frown, the way in which his eyes have the uncanniest way of changing colour at the oddest of moments - those I will interpret for you, to you, for that is all that I ever managed to gather off him, all that I ever managed to come even close to understanding.
Well, retract your claws, Time, and let me speak. Remove the statements that seek to vilify him, remove the madness that recent days have brought.
I suppose I was perhaps thirty-six seasons when I first joined Clambrithe's patrol. That was not so unusual an age to be thrust out into the world; leverets needed, sooner or later, to grow into their positions. It was widely seen as a good way to shove caustic reality into new recruits faces. Patrolling, something that everybeast on the mountain was used to, was the best place to start the slow deconstruction of perfection and innocence. So common a task was never seen as a "perilous" thing, yet there a young Green went, humming some tune to himself, and bloodshed changed everything. Every patrol killed. In fact, other than war, patrols are the most active means in which to remove obstructions, to exterminate, to murder, to destroy. Destroy what, you ask? I will never know. Perhaps vermin. Perhaps ourselves. It could be either, could be both. I just know that I tagged along, reverently worshipping those in seniority and attempting to appear as if I was calm about everything.
To be truthful, I was scared out of my wits. I, a young hare, was being sent on Captain Jonathan Clambrithe's patrol into Mossflower. Jonathan Clambrithe, of all hares.
Even then he had a reputation. Jonathan was about sixty seasons when he died. Not too old, but old enough to prove that he knew how to survive. Nobeast who was a Long Patroller beyond the age of forty-six seasons was naive. No officer was naive. Clambrithe was definitely not naive. He was forty-eight seasons then. A considerably young officer, and most assuredly a very young captain.
Yet he was already so jaded, so terribly dead to the world.
I remember it quite, quite well. He held himself with that strange arrogance which is never haughty, yet always aloof. He held himself with that same untouchable quality that the colonels, the brigadiers and majors carried themselves, yes, he walked with confidence and yet never with presumptuousness, and when he spoke his voice was always soft and never genteel. He was danger personified, a dormant, silent threat, watching from behind frozen eyes. He had all the decorum of an officer far beyond his rank, yet all the odd traits that denoted his youth. Or whatever was left of it. Clambrithe looked, to my eyes, like somebeast who never had a childhood.
On that first day, I remember making no conversation, attempting instead to divulge myself with memories of younger days. How did Clambrithe act when he was my age? I was twelve years then, old enough to remember. Always the quiet one, yes, the introverted yet unusually gifted new recruit. The colonel behind him at all times, watching, inspecting, evaluating at all times. He never showed outward signs of pressure, never showed stress. There was burden in his eyes, yes, but he bore it like someone who either was too used to it or thought nothing of it.
I shook myself from my reverie, and seeing my new commanding officer, decided that nothing had changed.
Cold, always so cold. That was his charisma: his offsetting yet alluring chill. He never strictly kept people out, no, Clambrithe could interact and mingle and converse as well as the next garrulous hare. But neither did he invite, and his ice warded off the weak willed and the overawed. Never imposing, rather brooding, always present. Clambrithe was like a shadow, a shadow of thought and observance and muted magnificence waiting for its time.
He would have made colonel. He should have made colonel. Clambrithe would have done it. Jonathan would have changed everything.
Jonathan was never obvious. It took me a few seasons to pry my way in enough to actually see evidence that Jonathan ever existed. He was almost a separate entity, completely different from Clambrithe. Jonathan was intuitively brilliant while Clambrithe was the peak of academic excellence. The same person, the same hare, certainly, but the approaches of the two sides of Jonathan Clambrithe were utterly different, utterly contrasted. You might call him, or me, insane, but this is truly the only way I can ever hope to explain his odd mannerisms and his odd faith in his two selves. While these two personalities were so starkly dissimilar, they were still most definitely the two essential parts of the same person. And that was what made him so special, so strange, so utterly unsettling.
Yes. That was Clambrithe.
Finely tuned brilliance. Carefully nurtured, a careful painting of beautiful emotions on a static face. Well bred. Well defined.
Always contradictory.
One would have needed to know Clambrithe in order to see how truly off balanced he was. As I speak, it may seem obvious that he was a hare of dilemma, but this comes only as a result of long years spent out in the wild, long years of interaction and long years of companionship. Truly, Clambrithe had that elaborate mask of his so seamlessly integrated into his manner of living and his manner of survival that few, few, so few people truly could see past it. Even Vande may not have understood, but the colonel I have never encountered closely enough to speak for. But I will quote him, and speak for him.
Get over it.
Clambrithe was as Clambrithe was, there was no denying that.
Clambrithe was an Officer, Lieutenant, Captain, Major, of the Long Patrol. Clambrithe was a Hare of Outstanding Conduct. Clambrithe was the personification of the typical Patroller.
No.
Not the typical. Rather the atypical. But nobeast knew that.
Nobeast knew that, just as nobeast truly comprehended what the Long Patrol was, what we hares had become.
Morbid mannequins of a chessboard of war and bloodshed.
Morbid mannequins of our own making.
This is the Long Patrol.
That was Jonathan Clambrithe.
This is what I am.