READ THIS AUTHOR'S NOTE, PLEASE!

This update will be the last update I make until NaNoWriMo is over! So, don't freak out if I disappear off the face of the planet for a while. I'm just typing and chugging caffeine like a madwoman. I'm already behind on my word count, so… yeah. Though it's not like my readers aren't used to my lack of updates. Sorry, guys. Life happens. School happens. Life happens some more. Writing gets the back burner.

But, until December (gosh, is it the end of the year already?) here is the last update:

1. Should've When You Could've – Skillet – Length: 3:31 – Repetitions: 3

Crowley watched them with a mustered smile, dancing happily across the ballroom. Halt may have been slightly uncomfortable, but he fulfilled his duty with grace and his own equivalent of a smile, if only for her. Pauline looked as beautiful and poised as ever, glowing with happiness.

Crowley sighed as he realized that he would miss that about her. Not that she would be gone, but Crowley was just realizing that he had thought of her differently up until the day that she and Halt were married.

The commandant remembered when they were all so young – young, naive, faced with every possibility in the world. Back then, they had been the closest of friends, and, for a while, it had been Crowley and Pauline who had been something of a couple. Then Halt had come onto the scene, not unwelcome, and things had changed. Halt and Crowley had become friends very quickly, a strange dynamic rising between two otherwise opposite personalities. Pauline, a long-time acquaintance of Crowley's, became something of a caregiver and confidant for Halt. An estranged foreigner learning to live in a new land, Halt had taken a while to learn his way about Araluen, let alone the higher-up circles of Araluan leadership. Pauline, ever adept in that area, had taken Halt under her wing and befriended the young Hibernian. But, as rather unplanned result, an unlikely romance formed between the two.

That was when things had changed.

Before then, Crowley and Pauline had shared a close friendship, and though Crowley had never found out how she felt, he knew he fancied her as a romantic interest. Then Halt had come along, and friendships shifted in different directions. However, because he was so wrapped up in other things, because he was such good friends with both Halt and Pauline, so utterly oblivious to the slow progression of their romance, and so completely against the notion that independent, headstrong Halt would ever get married, Crowley had failed to realize that his feelings went unsaid until it was too late.

You should've when you could've, a little voice inside his head told him. He frowned at it, glancing at Pauline across the room. He may have fancied her at one time – in fact, a part of him probably always would. But he wouldn't ever give up two of his closest friends for something like that. He had had his chance, and now it was gone. They were both his best friends – and they were both happy with each other. He should be happy for them.

And, as he thought about it, he found that he was. He really, truly was.

He smiled.

2. Wounded – John Powell - Length:1:25 – Repetitions:5

The battle had been short. Of course, it was hardly a battle at all – just a few angry farmers clashing with the most skilled knights of Araluen. It was short and succinct. There were a few injuries, but overall it had been relatively small. However, someone had neglected to tell the princess that everything had gone so well.

"Where is he? Is he hurt?" She demanded. A baffled infantry soldier blumbered for a second before pointing towards one of the healers' tents. "I think they put him in there." He said.

Blanching at the notion, Cassandra hiked up her skirts, which were thoroughly speckled with mud, and rushed to the tent fearing the worst. Upon arriving, she found Horace, alive and well, with his back turned to her and a healer standing close by.

"Horace!" She called in relief, and he turned around to see her.

"Cassie," he said, confused, "What are you doing out here?"

"I thought you were hurt!" She went to his side.

"Who told you that?"

"Well, I… I mean, oh, it doesn't matter. Here I was, thinking you were horribly wounded…"

"What? Wounded? I am wounded."

"What?" Her eyes widened, "Where?" She looked him over, searching for signs of blood.

He held out his hand. "Look at it. It's horrible. Bloody painful, too."

Cassandra took his hand to peer at it. On the ball of his thumb, surrounded by irritated skin, there was a splinter, smaller than the eye of a needle.

She looked up at him, rather unamused.

Ignoring her look, he pointed up to a spot on his forehead, where a shallow scratch shown red.

"And here, too. One of those stupid farmers took a hunk out of me with his pitchfork."

At that, Cassandra had to laugh, half at Horace's adamantly straight face, half in relief that he really was alright. Playing along, she pouted out her bottom lip and put a hand to his cheek. "Oh, poor baby." She cooed teasingly, "Do you need mommy to kiss it better?"

Catching on, Horace pouted out his lip also and nodded pitifully.

Cassandra's façade broke, and she let out a hearty laugh, but dutifully reached up and kissed Horace's injured brow.

"I am glad you're okay." She told him genuinely.

He frowned at her. "Okay? Look at it!" He raised his hand to her again and pointed at his battle-earned splinter. "A blasted spade handle did that!"

She shook her head at him, rolling her green eyes. "Oh you cheeky idiot, would you shut up?" And she made sure he did by planting a kiss squarely on his mouth. Horace gladly played along once more.

However painful, there were definite perks to being wounded.

3. Tomorrow – Alicia Morton – Length:2:29 – Repetitions: 8

Evanlyn hissed as she cut herself on the knife while trying to skin the emaciated hare that would be their dinner. Wrapping a makeshift bandage around it, she finished the chore and put the measly carcass on a small spit to hang over the fire. She wiped her hands on her already dirtied skirts, and turned away. Looking at her from across the small hut was Will, eyes dark and sullen beneath a matted mess of overgrown hair. His stare was hollow, with a deep-seated urgency beneath. He looked at her as he did every day around dinner. She sighed, wishing desperately that she didn't have to do what she was about to.

"Will, when will this ever stop?" She asked him quietly, her voice hoarse from exhaustion and emotion.

He didn't give any answer.

"Please, Will – don't do this. You have to wake up." She told him.

He blinked blindly at her, and held out an upturned palm pleadingly.

She sighed and let her eyes close, trying not to let the tears fall.

As one being marched to the gallows, she trudged out of the small cabin to the lean-to, where the secret stash was hidden. Carefully measuring an amount slightly less than the day before, she carried it in her hand back to where Will was waiting. He seemed to catch its scent as she entered, and he sat up straighter, his eyes focused unwaveringly on the substance she carried with her.

"Now, you haven't got much left you know," she told him. "Sooner or later, you'll have to give it up. And when that happens, Will, you can't go on like this."

He didn't say anything. He didn't move. He didn't even blink. He just stared at the small dose of warmweed that lay in her hand. She sighed out the helpless sob that gripped her lungs, and stepped forward to hand the comatose boy his prize. He gobbled it up greedily, paying her no heed. It was painful to watch. Then his eyes glazed over, his hands grew limp, and his head tipped back in a way that reminded Evanlyn eerily of a man half-dead.

That's when the tears started to fall.

She fell to the ground in an exhausted, tearful heap. It was too much. Day after day, week after week, they had been stranded in that small hut. Alone in a foreign, hostile land with the fear of capture and danger constantly creeping up her spine, the entire burden of survival had landed squarely on Evanlyn's inexperienced shoulders. The finding of food, the provision of water and shelter, and caring for the pony, herself, and Will. Will was the hardest, she thought. Once a bright, optimistic and resourceful companion, he was now dead and absent, bound by the narcotic addiction that had been forced upon him during slavery. She looked at him though teary vision, barely recognizing the young ranger's apprentice that she had grown to know.

"When will it end?" She asked the air around her. "When will we ever get out of here?" She shivered against a cold draft, her dirty hair plastering itself to her face. "And what will I ever tell Halt if Will doesn't make it?" She slowly dissolved into sobs again, rocking gently back and forth. She huddled herself in the corner near the fireplace for warmth. Soon, she had cried to the point where there were no tears left to cry. Dry, silent sobs wracked her body, and she fought to control them. Somewhere amongst the tears and the pain, a memory stirred in her.

The sun'll come out tomorrow,

So you gotta hang on til tomorrow,

Come what may,

It was an old song that she remembered her father singing to her as a very young child. Whenever she told him that she was missing her mother, he would take her in his arms, and start to softly sing the words that came to her now.

Tomorrow,tomorrow,

I love ya, tomorrow,

You're always a day away.

She pulled the memory close, and recalled that her father was often crying while he sang to her. She mustered heart, and began to quietly murmur, despite her sobs,

"The sun'll come out tomorrow... So you've got to hang on til tomorrow, come what may." She collapsed into a roug sob, but continued still. "Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love you, tomorrow, you're only a day away." She sat there for a moment, calming from her tears and wiping her cheeks. With her weakened resolve mended somewhat, she rose and sniffed away the last of her tears, before turning to check on Will. He was sound asleep.

She shuffled over to him, and draped a moth-eaten blanket over his shoulders.

"Tomorrow, Will," She told him, "Tomorrow you'll come back. Tomorrow it'll be spring. Tomorrow, we'll be going back home."

Naturally, he didn't respond.

She went to sit by the fire, and poked at the embers beneath the roasting hare.

Tomorrow, she told herself, come what may.

A/N: Sorry you only get three drabbles. I feel kinda bad for not giving you at least five, but my creative inspiration is being drained by other things. Terribly sorry. See y'all again in December! R&R!