This time, it's Will's turn!

1. Homesick – MercyMe – Length: 3:41 – Repetitions: 5

Will slouched against his desk, his face smashed against his palm as he scanned over the report from Baron Ergell. The words didn't penetrate his mind, as he was deep in thought. After several attempts at reading the material again, and never once being able to remember what it was about, he sighed and rose from his desk, which was littered with documents that had suffered the same fate as the Baron's letter.

Will didn't know what was wrong with himself. He'd been at Seacliff for about four months straight now, after the events in Macindaw. Nothing much had happened since his return – there was enough local trouble to keep him occupied, but not enough to keep things overly busy. He wasn't bored. He wasn't overworked. He wasn't being unappreciated, and thus far, his advice had been heeded readily by the Baron and his Battlemaster, what after the events with the Skandian dinner party.

Still, despite the fulfillment in his job and his duty, Will felt a deep, painful ache deep in his gut that he couldn't seem to trace. He'd never felt it before, and he didn't know where to take reference. Was this some sort of sickness? Was he ill? Worse yet, was there something psychologically wrong with him? He wasn't sad, really… Well, maybe a little bit. But why? He couldn't put his finger on it.

Sighing, the young ranger left his cabin, breathing in the fresh spring air. He went over to Tug, who was grazing happily in a freshy-grown patch of wildflowers. The horse whinnied at his master's arrival, and greeted Will with a friendly snort. Will smiled weakly, taking Tug's velvet muzzle into his hands as the horse raised it to him, huffing into the horse's nostrils as a customary reply greeting. He smiled again as Tug tossed his head, before settling down to enjoy Will's stroking.

"You seem happy enough. So why aren't I?" The ranger inquired the animal, his smile fading. Tug rolled a dark eye over at his master, intelligent and perceiving, but for once with nothing to say. Will sighed, and scratched the little horse across the crown, messing his forelock.

"Well, I suppose it's no use spending all this time thinking over it uselessly." He looked balefully back over the cabin, knowing the work that awaited him within. "I have things to do, anyway."

With a sad sense of dread, Will trudged back into the cabin and sank in front of his desk. A few minutes later, he picked up his workload and hauled it outside to sit on the veranda. He was feeling quite lonely, and needed Tug's company.

Still, it didn't quite quell the tugging in his gut. He sighed, and picked up the first report. This was going to be a long day.

Two weeks later, he was mounted up with three days' supplies and headed to the Gathering. He was feeling an inexplicable rush to get there – he didn't know why. He had never rushed when he was under Halt's tutelage – in fact, he remembered wanting to sleep longer when Halt went to wake him. He smiled at the memory.

He continued on a normal pace, a pace that now seemed maddeningly slow, and resisted the urge to nudge Tug into a gallop. Soon, but not nearly soon enough, he found himself at that small fork in the road where he, Halt and Gilan usually met up. This year, it was a bit different, not riding in with Halt's company, and Will felt rather strange in finding that he was the first one there.

Then, Halt crested the hill.

It was in that moment that Will realized that he had not thought of playing a trick on his old master. But for some reason, that didn't matter in the slightest.

"Well, look what the wind blew in. You know, I thought you'd be skulking away in the trees, what with the way you are always climbing over everything. Losing your touch already, are you?" Halt's sarcastic voice floated over to him. To any normal person, it might have been hurtful. But to Will, the familiar, sardonic voice was the sweetest sound he'd heard in a long time.

Will suddenly realized what the tugging in his gut was: He was homesick. Sorely, sorely homesick.

As soon as Halt had dismounted Abelard, Will walked over to him wordlessly, not wanting to speak through the lump in his throat, and wrapped his teacher in a firm embrace.

Halt, momentarily startled, was keen enough to recognize the body language of his old apprentice. Gilan had gone through something similar to this, he remembered, when he had first been assigned to Meric. It was no surprise that Will was experiencing similar emotions. But for some reason, Halt felt a certain, strong affection for Will. Perhaps it was because Halt was going soft in his old age, perhaps it was because Will was as close as a son to him, but Halt chose to indulge in a rare hug, and held Will in a fatherly grip for some moments before letting him go. He didn't say anything as Will wiped furiously at his eyes, trying to downplay his emotions.

"It's good to see you, Halt." Will managed a surprisingly normal tone, considering that his throat was as tight as it was.

Halt nodded steadily. "It's good to see you too, Will." Halt looked the man in the eye, and put a hand on his shoulder. Will suddenly felt the burden of the past months melt away, and the tugging in his gut lessen. He was home.

2. Stumbling In – Great Big Sea – Length: 3:23 – Repetitions: 6

Looking back, he had been a right klutz when he was an apprentice. Well, at Ranger standards, anyway - much less at Halt's standards.

"Will, what in heaven's name are you doing?"

"I'm climbing"

"Well I can see that," Halt called back sarcastically, "I am just hoping that my apprentice didn't have such a stroke of idiocy as to not realize that he's climbing a dead tree."

"Dead?"

"Yes, dead. Lifeless. Leafless. Fruitless. Useless, with the annoying habit of being extremely-" The tree interrupted Halt's comment, and Will's ears filled with an ominous creaking noise. Before he knew what was happening, he was free-falling through the air to land squarely on his noggin.

"-brittle."

"Owww…"

Yes, it was safe to say that Will was a little less than graceful in his apprenticeship years. For however many heroic deeds he was hailed for in his teens, he was sure to have gone through two dozen acts of sheer clumsiness for each of them – most of which would hit at the most inopportune times.

"Stop." Halt's saxe was cold against his throat. Will huffed up at his unruly hair. Why? What was he doing wrong?

As if reading his mind, Halt removed his knife and sheathed it. "You tramped through that leaf pile as loudly as a drunken moose. Try it again – this time, to the northern side."

They were skirting the forests nearer to Castle Redmont. Not to close, but close enough to see some of the training fields of the Battleschool. Grumbling, Will returned to the starting point of the obstacle course that Halt had set for him as an exercise in stealth movement. He started the course again, and thought he was doing rather well. That is, until he reached the edge of the forest. He could hear a group of Battleschool students laughing nearby – they must be returning to the castle. He tried to ignore them. At one point, he had to face the edge of the woods, and rose to a rather precarious position to rise over a small log.

Then, he felt a solid shove to his rump, and he stumbled and fell in a rolling, cloaked heap of cloth and flesh out of the forest with a decidedly undignified yelp. The young warriors passing by, though rather startled, were thoroughly amused when they recognized him. Will could have sworn he saw Horace in the group, laughing at him. He'd have to get back at him later. Blushing furiously, Will glared back up at where he knew Halt's face would be. He could have sworn he saw a smirk.

Of course, Halt took a merited amusement in the results of Will's trial-and-error method of exploring the range of his Ranger-training, but in the end, Halt was always there to clear up any danger posed by his apprentice's inexperience.

The bandits that they'd been tracking were in sight. They were quite dangerous, as the ranger and his apprentice had learned over the past few days. Armed with crossbows and clubs, they weren't the run-of-the-mill bandits – these were experienced fighters. Will's gut was taught with nervousness. This was one of his first ambushes, and he was eager to do well in front of his teacher.

Crouched low, both rangers held their bows close, one longbow and one smaller recurve, and headed to the small cliff that overlooked the path the criminals were taking. As Halt had instructed earlier, they would wound the crossbowmen first, and then pick off the clubbers. They were aiming for injury only – the Baron wanted all of them alive to face jail sentences.

It was all going well until Will, wound up in his nervousness, attention to the traveling bandits, and willingness to please Halt, inched just a bit too close to the cliff's edge. The soft clay of the structure began to crumble beneath his boot toe, and he quickly found himself sliding downwards. He made a quiet noise of surprise, but before he could fall, Halt reached forward and grabbed his belt, yanking him backwards to safety. Will, surprised, thrown off balanced, and now a good deal embarrassed, took a moment to regain his footing while Halt was already shooting.

Will only got one shot off before it was all over. Halt hadn't looked at him in a disappointed manner – just a matter-of-face gaze that said: Lesson learned.

Lesson learned indeed.

Of course, it was only a matter of time before Will outgrew his clumsiness and inexperience, and became a ranger just as skilled as his old mentor.

However, Halt didn't fully realize this fact until he decided to track Tug to the Gathering one year, only to find a grey-shafted arrow pinning his cloak solidly to a tree.

Will's cheeky smile spoke volumes, and Halt got the vague impression that his apprentice viewed this as payback. Halt pursed his lips, and wondered what had ever happened to his clumsy, inexperienced young apprentice.

As they were riding back to the Gathering Grounds, though, his question was answered as Will dismounted and started into camp, only to trip on a small rock and quickly regain his footing before anyone could notice.

Of course, Halt did notice. Behind Will, the old ranger smiled. His clumsy apprentice wasn't gone, he realized. Merely hiding.

Because whether he'd like to admit it or not, Will would always be stumbling in behind Halt – if however gracefully, with that idiotically huge grin plastered to his face.

3. I Would Die for You – MercyMe – Length: 6:28 – Repetitions: 2

It was something of an unspoken oath in their relationship. Ever since Halt had dropped his oakleaf to go off and find Will in Skandia, ever since Will had gone riding through the night to find a cure for Halt's lethal poisoning, after all of the years of friendship and companionship and family, it was a silent certainty between the both of them.

Somehow, it had not come to fruition before; the oath had never been invoked for fulfillment. By some miracle, both men had been spared the agony of fulfilling that oath, or having to see the other fulfill it.

Unfortunately, some oaths turn out to be inevitable prophecies, and that particular day, though it started out so ordinarily, would be different. That day, on that snow-covered ground, the unspeakable promise would be held to the ultimate test.

But after all was said and done, as Halt cradled Will's head in his lap, as the scent of spilt blood wafted up from the icy ground, it was no longer a question of whether or not Will would die for him.

The question was instead the heart-felt plead of a broken man: Would Will live for him?

A/N: By the way, #3 is a reference to my story, 'Legacy'.

And I'm feeling super lazy, so you only get 3 blurbs this time. My creative juices kinda dried up after #3. I don't particularly like #2, but I like #1 and #3 alright, though they could be better.

Ugh. I'll probably look back on these later and cringe. That's what I get for writing at midnight whilst dosed up on benedryl.

Thanks for reading! R&R, please!