Trust the Cloak

"What's that shrimp doing here? Did he lose his nanny?"

The four senior cadets in front of him guffawed, and Gilan felt his stomach sink like a stone in water. He had been attending private training sessions with MacNeil for weeks now, and the swordsmaster had just barely decided to allow Gilan to join into the group sessions. Given the fact that he was only eleven, MacNeil had been hesitant to pit him with the older boys; a viewpoint that had changed as the man realized Gilan's obvious natural knack for the weapon. Group work was an important part of learning, MacNeil said, so here Gilan was.

"He's the Battlemaster's kid, remember? I'm sure so many strings were pulled to get him here."

"It's not fair; we all worked hard to get to train with MacNeil, and he just gets to waltz in because of who is father is?"

"Must be nice."

Well. Here Gilan was, but he suddenly was wishing he was anywhere but. Tears threatened to prick the corners of his eyes, which he hurriedly blinked away as MacNeil called the cadets to attention.

"Cadets!" MacNeil boomed, making them all flinch slightly. "We have a new student joining us - Gilan. I expect you all to help him learn how things work in our group classes."

MacNeil continued, but Gilan only had ears for the smirk intoned, hushed remark from the cadet in front of him.

"I'll show him how we do things... with my drill sword."

The cadet's friend snickered.

Gilan's mind stalled. He could already envision himself getting thrashed by these bigger, older boys, their laughter filling the air as they loomed over his humiliated form. His father asking, "How was class?", and Gilan answering with an unenthusiastic "It was fine."

Gilan could practically hear his father's voice ringing in his head: "You have to apply yourself, Gilan! You'll get as much out as you put forth."

"-lan!"

The boy came back to himself with a jolt, finding MacNeil's unamused eyes bearing on him. "Sir?" he asked in a shrill voice, wanting nothing more than to shrivel up and die. If he were dead, at least he wouldn't be able to hear the quiet snuffles of laughter around him.

"Quiet, cadets!" MacNeil barked roughly, before addressing Gilan directly. "I said, Cadet Gilan, that you will be paired with Cadet Conrad today. Pay attention next time, understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. Break apart!"

Gilan gave a nervous swallow as he found himself face to face with none other than the smirk-happy cadet from earlier. "Hello," he said punily, feeling himself shrink as the other boy glared at him.

"Alright, twig. Let's start from the top. This," Conrad said mockingly, as if he were talking to a very small child, "is a drill sword. You hold this end, the handle, see? You don't hold the pointy end." Taking the drill sword that Gilan held loosely in his hand, Conrad tested the balance, his eyebrows raising in surpise.

"Huh. The balance on this thing is incredible. I bet Daddy got it for you, huh? Of course, good balance is only useful if you can actually use a sword in the first place. A bit of a waste of a nice sword."

The last bit was said under Conrad's breath, and Gilan felt his cheeks heat up, possibly because his father had gotten him the sword after his instructors mentioned how he was struggling slightly with the poorly balanced school swords due to his willowy frame. The better balanced sword had made a world of a difference, taking Gilan's already skilled sword work to a new level... to put it in short, not a waste of a good sword. Even still, Gilan clenched his teeth and kept quiet, knowing better than to pick a fight.

At Gilan's lack of response, Conrad gave a disappointed sigh before gesturing to the leather-padded practice post they had been assigned to. "Okay, shrimp. Show me what you've got. You do know the basics, right?"

Taking a deep breath, Gilan faced the pole and began the first sequence that came to his mind. After two strokes, Gilan knew his timing was off, the next stroke hitting the post awkwardly. In his effort to correct his hold, Gilan's grip fumbled, and the sword clattered to the ground.

The boy dove after it, cursing his nervousness and feeling his face redden with shame.

Conrad was right. Gilan clearly had no right being here.

Rolling his eyes as Gilan rose to his feet, Conrad shook his head. "Well. Someone didn't pay attention during basics. Seems to be a bit of a running theme, hm?"

Enough.

Without warning, fierce resolve flooded Gilan's person. Whirling around to face the post again, Gilan delivered a brutal sidecut.

He was good enough to be here.

Backhand side.

His sword wasn't a waste.

Thrust.

He didn't just waltz in.

A long whirlwind of lightning fast strokes later, Gilan finally dropped into parade rest position. Breathing heavily, the boy suddenly became acutely aware of how utterly quiet it was. Lifting his head and glancing around revealed the entire group of cadets frozen in place, watching him with something like awe on their faces. Conrad swallowed thickly as Gilan made eye contact with him.

He had several options here, Gilan knew. He could act smug. He could belittle Conrad and get angry. He could act haughty and standoffish.

None of those were his style. Gilan was, essentially, an easygoing and amiable person.

"You smell like a privy."

Crowley made the comment casually from where he sat tied to a tree. His captor was alone, the man's comrades having left to go "hunt some grub," while the remaining man had been given the task of lighting a cookfire. The man didn't acknowledge Crowley's insult, the only evidence of his having heard it being the slight tightening in his jaw. Undeterred, Crowley tried again.

"You're not very good at this, are you?" the Ranger stated as the attempt at a fire fizzled out yet again. "Were you never taught how to build a half-decent fire? I guess your father didn't love you. That's okay, though - neither did mine. I still reckon I could get that fire running in five minutes."

At this, the man turned to him and snarled, "Don't you ever shut up?!"

"Of course I do," Crowley answered with some indignation. "My ma always told me to help others, though, and you seem to need an awful lot of help in areas like fire starting and personal hygiene. Probably in your shooting, too, huh? Otherwise the rest of your crew wouldn't have left you while they hunted-"

"Enough talking!" The man growled, stalking over to backhand Crowley in the face. The young Ranger's lip split, blood beginning to seep out. In spite of the circumstances, Crowley gave a knowing smirk.

"I can see why they left you - you hit like a nine-year old girl."

"You insolent brat!"

"Ooh, insolent is a big word. Are you sure you know what it means?"

Furiously withdrawing a dirty, stained, grimy bandana from his pocket, the man made for Crowley's face again.

The Ranger winced. "Clearly, your mother never taught you how to do laundry - I guess she didn't love you eith-"

The rest of his sentence was cut off by the sudden taste of dirst and sweat that filled his mouth. He admitted that he'd been asking for it, had practically egged the man on, but that didn't make the situation any more pleasant, Crowley thought sourly.

The next moment, his captor's eyes rolled into his head, falling like a cut tree as Pritchard's strikers slammed into his head.

"You all right?" His mentor questioned as he reached out to pull the gag down, his brow creasing with concern as his gaze leveled on the blood trickling down the boy's chin.

Making a face, Crowley attempted to spit the taste from his mouth. "You couldn't have done that before he put the gag in?"

Pritchard rolled his eyes and knelt to cut his student's bonds. "You're fine, I see. Next time, maybe don't be such a smart aleck. There's nothing wrong with sitting dignified. Control that red-headed temper, hm?"

Crowley stood and stretched out the ache from his arms. "I didn't lose my temper, honest! I just thought he ought to know his shortcomings, you know?"

Pritchard just shook his head in despair as he watched his apprentice leave to get the horses.

Halt had never been one to have a fear of heights, but the feeling of dangling over open space was beginning to bother him. That, along with the fact that the sweat-slicked grip of his apprentice's hand was the only thing keeping him from falling into said open space.

The Ranger flinched as a drop of moisture hit his face. A glance up revealed Gilan's ashen face, his eyes screwed tightly shut. The boy's lashes were shiny with tears, and even as Halt looked up, another tear dripped to leave a spot on the older man's face. Halt felt his hand slip slightly, but in the second it took him to give an unconscious exhale of fear, the grip on his hand adjusted with a desperate fervor.

Throughout the entire moment, Gilan's eyes never opened, the only sign of the slip being the harsh, shuddering inhale that the boy drew through clenched teeth.

"Gil?" Halt tried. There was no acknowledgement from his apprentice, so the Ranger tried again, more forcefully this time. "Gilan!"

Gilan's eyes flew open. "Let me think," he ground out, his voice as rough as wagon wheels on cobblestones. "Just let me think."

The words would have been almost comical had their situation been different. You're an apprentice, you're not ready to think, came unbidden to Halt's mind.

However, as it was, Halt's life was hanging -literally- in Gilan's ability to think, so he let it be.

They were quiet for a moment, the only sound being Gilan's labored breathing, before Halt felt himself slip again, that uncomfortable swooping feeling in his stomach making itself known. This time, it wasn't the grip on his hand - rather, Gilan's entire body skid forward into the steepness of the overhang that Halt was hanging off of. The boy gave a guttural groan, his soft soled boots scrabbling for purchase before finding some form of anchor.

Halt could see it clearly in his mind's eye - Gilan's toes pushed into the dirt, with maybe a rock to hold against if they were lucky. Basically, holding the two of them up out of sheer stubborness. Gilan was nothing if not persistent; Halt knew this. Unasked for, another scene crossed Halt's mind.

Gilan slipping again, this time sending them both off the overhang because Gilan was too stubborn to let go of his teacher's hand. Both of them flailing through open air before the abrupt stop. Gilan's shattered body, the tears from the strain of his final efforts still cutting trails in his cheeks.

"You have to let go."

Halt's voice is calm, because it makes perfect sense, and Halt is a logical person. Gilan must let go, lest they both go over. By some miracle, the boy has been able to keep him up for this long, but Halt knows that he cannot last. The older Ranger can feel the way that Gilan is trembling with exhaustion, muscles pushed to the brink. He can feel the way that Gilan's shoulder joint strains against its socket, threatening to dislocate. Halt took an oath to protect this child, and he knows what must be done. Gilan must let go.

Though Halt is calm, Gilan is anything but. "What?!" The apprentice sputters, and Halt feels the grip on his hand tighten with newfound desperation.

"If you don't let go, we're both going to go over. This is the only way-"

"Shut up!" Gilan's voice is thick with fear, anger, horror, and everything in between. "I am not letting you go! I can do this! Just shut up and let me think!"

Halt is spared from answering by the panicked cry of one of Arald's knights - one of several that they had been accompanying, before they had all been separated when things went hairy. Gilan gave a groan of relief as Halt's weight was transferred away from him, and a moment later, the older Ranger was a boneless heap on the ground, utterly weak as the adrenaline coursing his body began to crash.

Gilan's angry voice cut into Halt's distant state of mind, and it was enough to make him focus. Anger was an unusual state for his typically cheerful, mild-mannered apprentice.

"If you ever say something that dumb again, I'll... I'll..." Gilan is shaking like a leaf in a windstorm as he cradles his strained arm against his body, tears pooling in his eyes even as he roughly smears them away. "Just, don't do that again!"

Halt recognized his apprentice's anger for what it was - fear.

He didn't blame him; he understood it, even.

Halt was extrordinarily capable in many ways, but right now, he was out of his element.

The Ranger had realized this the moment that he had returned to the room and had taken his trembling apprentice into his arms - the boy was burning with fever. Halt was out of his element, because he should have realized it when Gilan had been picking at his dinner before tiredly murmuring that he was going to go lie down.

Shivers were quaking down Gilan's thin frame... far thinner than a boy his age ought to be, Halt acknowledged with something akin to failure. There were a lot of things wrong about about a lot of situations, besides the one that involved his boy was burning with fever in his arms, with Halt helpless to do anything more than he had already done. There shouldn't be a war at their doorstep. Pritchard should be alive. Children shouldn't be training and fighting for their lives on a daily basis. This child should be in warm bed being fussed over by his mother, not shivering in a ratty old inn with not enough blankets and Halt as his only meager source of comfort.

Gilan's eyes were dim and glassy as he fitfully shifted, thoughtlessly clinging tighter to Halt, craving warmth even as heat radiated off every inch of him. Sweat was beading on Halt's forehead, but he didn't hesitate to more firmly close his arms around his apprentice, running a hand through Gilan's damp locks as the boy painfully pulled in shallow gasps through chattering teeth.

A thin, distressed sob made Halt's stomach clench. Gilan was so cold, so tired, so miserable, and Halt knew it would be hours yet before either of them found any sleep.

And when Crosshair wakes up and is surrounded by his favorite bros he just murmurs real softly, “You miss me? How touching...”