Disclaimer – I own nothing, it's all Terry Brooks'.

Warnings – Umm, none really. Spoiler-ish I guess. Walker Boh POV.

A/N – Umm, only my second fanfic ever so be kind? I love the Shannara series, and Walker Boh is my most favourite character. His thoughts before settling in for a Druid sleep after The Talismans of Shannara. R/R?

A Cold Place.

I'm so tired.

All I want to do is sleep, have some rest from these voices that plague my mind and memory.

Why can't I just be left alone?

But no, I'll never be alone will I? Never get the peace and solitude I crave so desperately. I'll never get to rest. And now, never is going to be for a very long time.

I wonder how long I'll sleep for? How long will this artificial rest preserve my body, my soul?

What's going to happen when I wake up?

Will I still be me?

Will I be someone else? It happened to Cogline, it could happen to me as well. Will I still remember who I am, my purpose, my task? Will it all come back to me like lightening the moment I awake, or will I have forgotten everything that I gave so much to receive?

I don't like not knowing. I'm supposed to know. I need to know. I have to be certain. I can't go to sleep without knowing.

But there's no way to know.

Just like everything else, all I can do is leave it up to chance. Destiny. Luck.

How utterly ridiculous to have to hand over my entire being to the unforgiving fates. To have no say in what happens in my own life.

Then again, it's always been this way, hasn't it? Since when was I ever able to choose my own destiny, as it were?

Never.

So why should I expect it now? Now that so much is completely and painfully dependent on me, so much more rests in my hands, whatever choice I may have had has been stripped away from me. Torn from my desperately gripping hands.

Or did I give it up?

I did choose, in the end, to do what I had to do. But what if it was never really my choice to make? What if the fates had already decided long ago that I would make that decision, that I would give up a part of myself? I would take them into me.

What if I never really had a choice to begin with?

What if every decision I've made up until this point, that I thought was my own, was already pre-determined. That at every turn, every challenge, every heart-breaking decision,it had already been decided by some unknown, untouchable source that will continue to haunt me for as long as it sees use in me.

Would I ever be able to escape?

Could I ever smash the shackles that have been firmly set around my ankles far before I was even born? Would the fates ever set me free?

No. No, I'm theirs forever. They have me so completely, so perfectly captured that they'd have me spinning in circles and fainting in nausea before I could even begin to see my way out.

Shades, I'm so tired.

This sleep, I can't help but wonder what it will cost me. What will I have to sacrifice to keep to the fate's will? How much more of me is there left to give? I don't feel like there's anything of me that that is just... me. Every fiber of my soul has been tainted by another's touch. I don't even know what feelings are my own anymore.

I'm forgetting what it's like to be me.

It's not meant to be like this. People shouldn't be able to invade another's being, spirit or no.

Bloody Druids.

Take, take, take. All they ever thought of was themselves, and apparently their own preservation. They never thought of what they were doing to the people they were using.

All we ever were to them were pawns.

All I ever was, was a pawn.

Something cheap and disposable to use to their liking until my use has well and truly dried up.

What happens when I've long since become redundant? When there's nothing more I could do to fulfill whatever deceiving plan the fates have in store?

What happened to Allanon, that's what.

With no further use, I'll be cast aside after suffering whatever they can throw at me, with no grandeur or thanks what so ever. No reward of peace and rest. No chance to make my own choices, make my own life. No, nothing that wonderful will ever be bestowed upon my graceless life.

It seems, all I'm here to do, is suffer.

Suffer and sleep, deep in the coldness.

All that's left of me is the bitter cold, and it's the only thing that is my own.