I'm back! This is only my second update since the glorious dawn of summer vacation - a fact of which I am very much ashamed - and I know that I deserve to be shot and thrown off a bridge and all those other painful ways to die. However, I did remember to update eventually, which is why I am asking all my wonderful reviewers out there to please spare my miserable life. And maybe drop me a review while they're at it. :)

Disclaimer: Nope, still don't own it.

This chapter: Dark, Smile, and Responsibility. Halt, bridges, and Skandia will make appearances - read on to find out where.

Dark

Halt had always known that Skandia would change Will. But he hadn't thought it would haunt him this badly.

The most obvious change in Will was physical—he was painfully thin. But this didn't worry Halt much. What saddened him the most was the lost innocence that Will seemed to possess. He had come back from Skandia with the newfound knowledge of just how cold cold can be, and how dark the darkness is. It happened to all Rangers at some point or another—their dangerous job guaranteed it—but Will was simply too young.

Halt remembered when they had been in Hallasholm, and they had been walking over to the Great Hall. They had cut through the yard. Will and Evanlyn were stoically ignoring the slaves that meandered meaninglessly past them, carrying out their respective tasks without fighting. Suddenly, the air had been shattered by a sharp crack, and a desperate cry of pain.

They had continued walking, until they saw it.

A boy about Will's age was tied with his arms above his head to the large wooden post in the middle of the yard. His back was bloody. A guard stood behind him, and as they watched, he raised a whip over his head and brought it down with a heavy crack over the boy's shoulders.

Halt had known, instinctively, by the way that Will had stiffened at the sight of the brutal whipping, that he had once been there. Will had, at one point, been the one bound cruelly to the post, unable to do anything but wait helplessly for the next lash of the whip to slash painfully into torn and broken skin. He placed a hand on Will's shoulder, letting him know that he was there. He saw that Evanlyn was holding Will's hand in her own.

That night, Halt had brought the incident up. Between him and Will only. After some gentle prodding, Will had finally divulged the information he had been holding back. Yes, whippings were common in Hallasholm. Yes, they were similar to the one they had witnessed earlier. And finally—yes, Will had been whipped multiple times.

Halt had been witness to several of Will's nightmares over the past month, and they had burdened him greatly. For a sixteen-year-old, Will had seen a great many things, both good and bad.

Halt, however, was confident that, whatever the future would bring, the good would far outweigh the bad. And just as the sun unfailingly triumphs over the darkened night, Will would put this behind him. The sun would rise. The dark would burst into a glorious flame of hope, dissipating like mist on a sunny day.

The sun would rise.

The dark is light.

Word count: 453

Smile

It was one thing to see Will smile.

He smiled all the time. His bright, cheery grin had slowly become an integral part of life at Castle Redmont. When Will smiled, it made you want to smile along with him. When Will smiled, the sun shone brighter.

It was one thing to see Will smile.

It was entirely another to see the same expression on Halt.

The grizzled old Ranger was actually a very dry, humorous, and overall pussycat-like person—as opposed to the cold-blooded assassin persona that he projected to the rest of the world. Still, his smile was about as rare as rain in the desert—and the aftermath left by it was something just as beautiful.

When Will smiled, it was because he was happy.

When Halt smiled, it was always something more.

When Halt smiled, the sun didn't come out. The rainclouds didn't dissipate. But it made the darkness seem less dark, because it gave you the reassurance you needed to see the light at the end of the tunnel. It gave you something to live for—because once you saw it, you just wanted to see it again.

Will's smile was infectious.

Halt's smile was rare—used only in the situations when and where it was necessary. Or, on occasion, when he simply couldn't stop it peeking out. And then he often saw Will grin at him, and the smile grew a little bit wider, until it could be considered a real, true smile.

Yes, Halt's smile was a rare, beautiful thing. And, Will reflected, he wouldn't have it any other way.

Word count: 267

Responsibility

If anyone asked Will, that was how it had started.

They had been captured together. He was an apprentice Ranger, and she had seemed to be a defenseless young girl. And so he had protected her, during their long, seemingly endless walking over the Plains of Uthal, surrounded by Skandians, and with danger around every corner. It was his responsibility—as the Ranger, the one with the knowledge of wars and battles. But that was all it was—responsibility.

And then, on Skorghjil, that windy, lonely day, he had discovered that she was not really Evanlyn but the Crown Princess of Araluen. And then, of course, protecting her had become much more important—a matter of life and death for both of them. It was now more than his responsibility, it was a duty—to Cassandra, to the kingdom, to his oakleaf.

And then, it started to become more than that. He protected her because she was his last link to home, to his friends. And then because she understood him. And then because it seemed sometimes as if they were the only two people alive on this earth, and he couldn't bear to be alone. It was because he needed her just as much as she needed him, and whether he could admit that to himself or not, the fact remained.

After that, it was because she had become his friend. It felt as if they had been through everything together—and indeed, perhaps they had. It was because they were alone, but together (and that was all that really mattered in the end). It was because they were now linked together by the horrors they had undergone side by side, and nothing alive on earth could sever that link. That, for Will, was the moment he realized that he didn't do it out of responsibility. He did it because he wanted to.

Several years later, it was because she was his sister, in everything but blood. They had cried together, laughed together, and been there for each other. Years had passed, but their relationship only strengthened over time.

And again, Will realized that he didn't protect her because it was his responsibility, or even because he wanted to. He did it because he would never do anything else. What had started out as a simple responsibility, a duty, had progressed to something beautiful, something nobody, least of all Will, could have ever predicted. After all, he had started as a peasant orphan boy who had no knowledge that the Crown Princess would someday become his surrogate sister.

And it had all started with a bridge.

Word count: 437

R&R! Reviews are much appreciated - they make me update faster. **wink, wink**

Coming up next chapter: Cat, Stories, and All the King's Horses.