I apologise for the delay.
Assignments ;)
"You are coming with me," Halt told Will sternly.
"No, I'm not," Will replied in a dead tone. It had taken a little while for Halt to find him, and when he had, it was in the cheapest and dingiest inn room there was in Redmont.
Halt has walked into the Smuggler's Inn at about eight in the morning and had nearly laughed at everyone suddenly jumping away from another person and just staring at him. He nodded at them then walked over to the innkeeper who was attempting to pretend that he didn't exist, unsuccessfully.
The people in this part of Redmont weren't used to a Ranger being around constantly. It was a little way out from the castle the people in this area were poorer. Baron Arald did make sure that they were comfortable, however there was a little under the table deals that occurred. The Rangers let a few of these go through, so long as they were harmless enough just to keep the economy afloat.
Halt reached the man who just shrunk away.
"I didn't do anything wrong!" he protested. "Am I not owed to run an honest business then?"
"You are. I am looking for someone."
"I don't know them."
"That was a rather quick reply for someone who doesn't even know who I'm looking for."
"Doesn't matter. The people who stay here don't want to be found." Halt nearly growled in frustration. Of all the places for Will to hide out, he had to pick here? At least he knew what this inn was like and knew the difficulty that he would run into getting here.
"And there is one person that needs to be found. A new person to the area, by about four days." It had taken Halt that long to get to Castle Araluen and work out what Will had done and where he had disappeared to after that.
"A younger man?"
"Yes. Brown hair and eyes. Had a horse with him and appeared to know his weapons."
"Must be a dangerous person to have a Ranger on his case then," the man commented thoughtfully. He was starting to think that he should be helping this person to escape rather than helping them get caught.
"He just needs to own up to what he has done. He is here, is he not?"
"Yes. Room number four, first floor up the stairs, off to the left." Sometimes, he theorised, it was better to allow the Ranger to get in, grab the person they wanted and leave, rather than having them investigate the whole establishment.
Halt nodded and walked off. It was still early enough in the day that, were he lucky at his endeavor, they would leave soon. He knocked on the door and heard a rather impolite response back.
"Will…" he muttered through the door. Two seconds later it was opened.
To phrase it bluntly, Will looked horrible. He had bags around his red-rimmed eyes and was slumped over. His clothes were disheveled, and it was odd to Halt's eye to see him in civilian clothes.
"You look horrible," he commented unkindly and invited himself in.
Will closed the door behind him before sitting on the bed. Halt had taken the only seat in the small, dark room, well he had right after pushing Will's bags off it. The older Ranger looked around for a bit before his face formed into one of distaste. He stood up and opened the moth eaten curtains. He then promptly sneezed.
"There was a reason why I hadn't done that," Will remarked.
"Doesn't matter anyway. We're leaving. Now." This of course led to the afore mentioned argument.
Two hours later Will and Halt were leaving the inn, Will having paid for his stay and carefully checked to see what had been stolen, which thanks to Tug, wasn't.
"Where are we going?" Will asked suddenly, not at all certain he should have given in to Halt that easily.
Halt gave him a flat look. "You haven't been out of the Corps for that long," he said tersely. Will quickly thought about what the corps would be doing at this time of the year.
"We are going to the gathering? I thought that I wouldn't be allowed considering the way I left the corps."
Halt muttered something in response and made Abelard move slightly faster. Will didn't mention that Halt had just pretty much ignored his last statement and decided that some things were best being the elephant in the room.
Will couldn't help but grin at the sight of the gathering. There had been a few Rangers on lookout duty who they had already passed, although they hadn't run into Gil yet. The familiar sea of greens and browns was comforting in the stressful times.
He suddenly noticed Halt sighing.
"It's a pity that some old apprentices are unable to resist the temptation of attempting to scare their ex-mentors. It's also sad that so far they have been unsuccessful in such a plight," Halt stated loudly. Will grinned at Gil perched in the trees.
"It's not my fault," Gil started as he swung down from in the tree. "I was meant to have help from Will. On that thought, did you get held up or something? Just gotten back from a mission and ran into Halt on your way back who told you that you needed to come here?"
"Something like that," Will responded, crestfallen once more. Halt noticed this and decided that today he was going to help him out. Tomorrow? Not so much.
"Gil. Tell me of all the adventures you have gotten into lately and why I really don't want to know about how you solved them."
Gil began to talk about the various types of bandits that he believed existed and how he had come across each and every one of them since his last letter, just his luck. Then he told about how he got rid of them and what he would have done differently had he another chance. This fairly one sided conversation took up the whole time to reach the camp, including them stopping to pick up Blaze. When they got there they all discovered that the other Rangers had taken the tents spots closest to the action, and so were left with the back left hand corner of the area. Behind them was the archery range and off to their right was the forest where a few of the silent and hidden movement games were held.
"Halt!" Crowley cried out in greeting, walking over. Halt rolled his eyes and stood up from where he had been preparing the fire. He stood up to greet him.
"Hello, Crowley," he said calmly.
"I'm glad that you can make it. I thought that you would have been caught up in Redmont with-" Crowley bit off his sentence upon seeing Will step out of his tent where he had been arranging everything. He didn't say anything to the younger man, instead just turned away and addressed Gilan was had also just appeared again.
"How's your fief holding up?" he asked. Gil grinned.
"Don't ask him that! You are now going to be stuck listening about all the bandits he believes exists and how he has gotten rid of them lately."
"Halt! And here I thought that you actually cared about me!" Gil cried. Halt gave him a scornful look before turning to Will.
"Come on, let's see how bad your archery has gotten lately. Have you been practising at all?"
"To the point of obsession," Gil heard Will reply as the two walked away. He faced Crowley about to ask the obvious question only to get an answer that he felt he didn't deserve.
"Don't ask me. It's their excuse to give, one they will hopefully provide soon," Crowley responded before walking away, the conversation being obviously over in his eyes.
#-
That night the Rangers were sitting around the long table like they normally did. As it was the first night that everyone had arrived, the best cooks in the corps, normally Will included, made dinner for everyone. Will always enjoyed performing the job as it was the best way for him to gather information about everyone and learn about the general going ons in the country. Now he was too ashamed and was sitting way down the table attempting to hide behind Halt, who was just unreceptive and was sitting to allow Will to be visible.
As per the normal introduction before the gathering was to officially start, Crowley quickly rattled off who was going to be performing each job and what activities were going to be offered. As per normal everyone got a job to do, except Will, and people noticed when Halt was given the opportunity to be the assessor for the apprentice's archery. Gilan frowned and said nothing. It wasn't his place and it certainly was going to cause some yelling, he could tell.
When everyone began eating a friendly soul called George turned around to face Will to ask him the ill-fated question.
"Two questions quickly. Why aren't you in uniform and why aren't you participating in everything?" he asked. Will gave him a death glare and looked away.
George frowned at this and turned away to talk to the people on the other side of him. He is going to push too many people away, Halt thought to himself nodding reassuringly to Gil who was giving a wide eyes look.
Two hours later when everyone had moved to around the main campfire another brave soul mentioned something, and he wasn't going to be put off, being one of the confidants of Crowley for the corps.
"So tell me what's all this going on? I was getting excited for this wedding! It is a little strange about the mission however, I normally hear about all those missions as they go past, especially the urgency that this one presented itself with, but not this one. I would ask if it was top secret, but I'm the person who assigns all of those." Will sighed.
"That's all I know," Gilan responded indignantly. "And you would have thought that if Will was going to mope this much I would know what's going on."
"I know," Halt replied, unable to resist the opportunity to gain a little barb in the side of the other confidant. Even though he was technically at the same position as Halt, he hated the little stuck up man all the same.
"Well of course you know. We all know that you are practically his adoptive father!" the man snorted then turned to Will again. "So?"
"What you said was right and it is just a little hard at the moment. Please just drop the subject."
"But-"
"I believe he said drop it," Halt growled and the confidant slunk away to another conversation between happier people.
Gil took a deep breath and begun to approach the topic himself, figuring that he at least would be able to gain a little more information. "Are you able to tell me anything?"
"No," Will responded.
"Nothing? After everything we have been through you can't even tell me what's going through your mind? You don't even have to tell me about what Alyss is doing or where she is!"
"She is at Redmont and I frankly couldn't care less what she is doing."
"This is not like you at all!" Gil stated firmly, beginning to get rather ticked.
"Well then perhaps you just never knew me!" Will snapped back drawing the attention of those around them. Halt shifted, uncomfortable.
"No. I guess I didn't," Gil responded, go up and walked away.
Will watched as one of his closest friends left. His chest was moving up and down fast due to the adrenaline from the verbal fight. From beside him he was able to feel Halt's disdain as his actions.
"Well I can't say I'm impressed at what you just did," Halt said plainly his face and tone neutral.
Will just shook his head in shock at his own actions, beginning to come down from the high.
"Why couldn't you tell him?"
Will shook his head again.
A few more days passed and as the Rangers began to see, and occasionally hear, Will's apparent new temper they avoided him more and more. Halt noticed this and didn't stop it. It wasn't his issue and if Will wasn't able to see the lesson right in front of him until it was too late, then sometimes that was the way he needed to learn.
By the end of the gathering Will was spending nearly all of his time by his tent, fletching. He had used the excuse that he needed more arrows but in truth was unwilling to enter in the conversations he knew were going to result in him yelling. As he was sighing he heard familiar footsteps and didn't bother looking up.
"You know once upon a time, if you heard me come, you would look up at me and smile a greeting," said Halt. He sat down next to the younger ex-Ranger and picked up one of the sticks to help him in fletching.
"Don't want to face the world," Will replied.
"And whose fault is that?"
"Alyss'," responded Will. Halt nodded. So he has moved onto the anger stage.
"I'm sure you will get over it. Hopefully that is before you have finished pushing everyone away hard enough that they wont return."
"And yet you still come back, no matter how hard I try. Why?"
"I will never leave you, Will. You're too much my son to do that."
I apologise for anything that's either spelt wrong or half the word is missing. I am getting used to a new laptop and going from google drive to actual Microsoft Office is an off experience. Especially considering I am using 2016 when I don't even think I used the one before it. That and I have to get used to a different keyboard dimension size. I think that's my main issue right now.
And I'm not used to being able to access my documents constantly up to the current version I have. Normally I have to wait for a few updates and Internet connection for everything to work. I keep forgetting that I now have no excuse for listening/actually doing stuff… except for the fact that I basically just live on a train and change between them regularly at a run.
As I give more excuses for not updating.
Since I wrote that I have written however many assignments on here and so generally hit where I aim. Which means the typos go from being the fault of my inability to work a new laptop, to my inability to start an assignment more than four hours before it is due.
(I started this in Feb. *sighs in shame then hides head*)
Aly
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