#its such a joyous occassion | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

redrose-arrow · 2 years

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“Heroes get remembered, but legends never die.”

Maddie had long since learnt that that were the talks of bards, tales, and songs. How else could she explain that her heroes, the legends of Araluen themselves, had died?

It didn’t make sense. It didn’t make sense. It absolutely did not make sense that Crowley had been the first to go. The first to die. Years and years and years ago, he had been the one to bring them all together. Halt. Arald. Rodney. Duncan. David. Sandra and Pauline. All the Renegade Rangers. And sure - they were all good friends. But Crowley had been the glue holding them all together. So why did he have to be the first?

At least he passed with a smile on his face. At least he had been thinking of something funny, something that brought him joy. It brought little comfort to those he suddenly left behind, but comfort nonetheless.

The funeral was a bittersweet occassion. It was a time of celebrations and of goodbyes. At least it offered some closure.

Because closure was a privilege reserved for the lucky, apparently. Barely two years had gone by by the time that the news of Alyss’s death reached them. And with no body and no remains, there was no funeral. No closure.

Until years later. With Maddie’s graduation drawing closer and closer, she was not the only one having trouble with the upcoming changes. Will was, too. And Maddie knew. She knew that her apprenticeship was the only thing getting him out of bed in the morning. She had known, ever since she had overheard him talking to Sable in the middle of the night. She also knew that the end of her apprenticeship would throw him back into the dark pit he had only just pulled himself out of. And so Maddie talked to her parents and traded her graduation party for something else: a funeral for Alyss.

The funeral was short and simple. It took place at a small clearing in the woods, near a tree that had faint initials of several decades old engraved in its trunk. The minimalist decorations were elegant. The speeches genuine and heartfelt. It gave Will - and with him, also his friends - the thing that had seemed impossible to get when they had first heard the news: it gave them closure.

After the funeral, Maddie grew to be a Ranger in full glory. It took Cassandra some time to adjust, but she began to learn to trust her daughter and her abilities to keep herself safe. When finally, she had, it became time to trust herself and her own abilities, too: because Duncan had decided to descend.

‘You’ve practically been ruling this country for almost a decade,’ he told his daughter. ‘It’s time we make it official. It’s time you claim your birthright and become Queen of Araluen.’

The prospect of ascending scared Cassandra. It terrified her. But it also excited her. She found herself running up the stairs, ecstatic, a smile on her face, on the morning of her coronation, to get her dad and help him downstairs, where he could watch her promise to rule the kingdom of the people she was born to serve.

But when she threw the doors to his quarters open, Duncan had already gone.

Despite the shock and the grief, the coronation proceeded. It’s what her father would’ve wanted, Cassandra knew. The event was joyous, even if Duncan’s absence heavily weighed down on all of them. He never even got to see Halt bow for the only monarch he had ever, and would ever, bow for.

As for Cassandra herself, she was a little surprised that her people didn’t even hesitate to celebrate her. Duncan might have been loved, but so was she. The Long live the Queens were genuine and this time, Cassandra couldn’t stop the tears from streaming down.

She ruled the Kingdom for another decade, this time in full glory. One of her tasks as newly-crowned Queen was to appoint a new baron and baroness for Redmont.

Sandra had passed, and it had left Arald deciding to retire. He joined David and Rodney at David’s farm, somewhere in Caraway, where no one knew them. Despite promises and agreements, no one heard of them again. At least this way, some goodbyes had been joyful.

Only a few weeks later, Halt got sick. Sick. ‘Ferris would be turning in his grave if he knew that a cold is all it takes to kill me,’ he joked. Pauline and Will didn’t think it was funny. Gilan might’ve concealed a snicker when he heard. Horace was a little less successful.

There was one problem: Halt didn’t want to say goodbye. But throughout the years, he had made himself too loved not to be subjected to visits. So everyone made sure not to actually tell him goodbye, but they all came to visit him nonetheless, knowing full well that it would be the last time.

‘They’re too good at finding loopholes,’ Halt complained to Pauline. She smiled at him, from her chair next to his bed, the one she hadn’t left since the first cold symptoms had begun to show. ‘You taught them that,’ she countered. Halt knew she was right. And if he was truly, completely, utterly honest, he was thankful for each and every single one of them.

He passed away peacefully, one early morning. Will and Pauline were there. To them, the ghost of a smile on his lips was as radiant as the strays of sunlight that attempted to warm a body that was getting colder.

Sean had offered to send a delegation to retrieve Halt’s body and bring it back to Clonmel, but they declined. Instead, Halt was buried in a closed-off corner of the graveyard near Redmont castle. That had been, after all, his true home.

Pauline stayed at Redmont, to help the new Baron and Baroness settle in. When they had, she moved to a small and unimportant fief towards the north, where she helped to set up a school for the children of farmers. Alyss had always been toying with the idea of doing just that, and Pauline had been searching for a good way to spend her retirement anyways. She couldn’t think of a better way than to honour her mentee’s dream.

Cassandra was a good queen. A fair one. But the crown weighed on her heavily and the life accompanying it became harder and harder to bear. There was another full-scale war, this time against the Scoti. It was the fourth war that Cassandra found herself fighting in. It was the first one that depended on her leadership.

From her little school in the north, Pauline managed to send information about the Scoti’s plans. It’s how Cassandra first found out that they were coming. When the letters suddenly stopped, they knew that the Scoti had overrun another village. Pauline was dead.

But the war did more. Brought more destruction. It drew Arald, Rodney, and David out of retirement. Cassandra was incredibly, incredibly hesitant to allow them back into active duty, but she could use all the strategic help she could get. Together with Will and Horace, she came up with a risky plan. It depended on the expertise of old warriors, and the skill of larger-than-life fighters.

So Gilan had called half of his Corps to function again as a small elite force around the battle grounds. Included in the small group was Maddie. With her sling, she brought extra advantages. And she could support her parents.

Arald and Rodney died during one of the advances, fighting back to back. When Gilan came across their bodies, he knew that David could not be far away. He had been leading an neighbouring group of younger soldiers.

Gilan managed to find his dad in time to save him from a Scoti killing him, but David had lost too much blood. He died in Gilan’s arms, in the middle of the fighting.

Araluen emerged victorious from the war. Their national losses were small, but weighted heavily on Cassandra. Especially since amongst those losses were the people who had saved her from war twice before.

Cassandra persevered, but the restlessness kept growing.

It was Horace who suggested a trip, a vacation, but it was Maddie who suggested retirement.

After having played her own role in the war, her cover was blown. It had always been tricky, to work with barons and other high-ranking officials without them finding out that the Ranger was also the crown-princess, but she had always managed; especially with most of her work centralised around Araluen. Now, however, she could no longer do her job as well as she would want, because even Maddie recognised how much bigger the target on her back had grown and how much harder it would be to protect herself from it.

So, it was time to stop escaping from her duties as crown princess and to instead face them. Especially if that would help her mom.

Her mother had known her own share of adventures, of course. But she had never been allowed to escape her duties as much as Maddie had the past years. So Maddie decided help her mom in the best way she could come up with: to take over as Queen.

She ascended, and adjusted, and began gathering a close circle of advisors and experts. People who could help her run the Kingdom.

Cassandra stayed around to help her, until Horace re-embarked on his attempts to make her take a trip. He even wrote to their oldest friend to ask him for help one last time. Will could accompany Cassandra on this trip like he never could, Horace knew. Will was more unfettered, more unrestricted, and his hunger for adventures matched Cassandra’s. Only together, would they be able to travel for months, known by no one but each other, free in a way neither had ever been before.

Of course, Will accepted. How could he not? He retired, and soon after receiving his gold oakleaf from Gilan, he and the Queen-Mother set sail.

Cassandra wore leggings and a long tunic. She had cut her hair and Will had shaved off his beard. For just a few moments, they were sixteen again, with less worries and less responsibilities.

Horace eyed his daughter as Cassandra and Will departed. Maddie wore a soft pink dress and was surrounded by her closest friends and advisors. She had grown so much since they had sent her to Will to be trained as a Ranger’s apprentice. Horace was proud of her, as he knew was Cassandra. And Will.

Maddie’s back was straight, her lips a thin and strict line, her head raised. There had been many rumours about Will and Cassandra’s departure, but Maddie had suppressed them all. Her mother deserved a dignified and peaceful goodbye.

Because Horace and Maddie both knew that Cassandra wouldn’t come back. Not really, anyways.

They were proven right when, a few years later, a small Skandian wolfship moored. It had a heron at the bow and sailed under a only half-raised flag, bright red with a devious-looking fox on it.

Maddie watched as the Herons brought a simple casket onto the shore, Will walking only a few paces behind them. Her father had his hand on her shoulder. Her dress was black and tears were burning behind her eyes. But Queens didn’t have the luxury of crying in public. Not yet.

Cassandra’s funeral was grant and she would have hated every second of it - except, perhaps, the speeches by her husband, her daughter, her friend. They were, truth be told, a little unconvential - but more importantly, they were from the heart.

A few weeks after, when the national period of mourning was officially over, Will knocked on Maddie’s study. Coincidentally, Horace was there too. It made things easier, Will thought, because at least now he didn’t have to have the same conversation twice.

‘I have to go,’ he told them. ‘You know I do.’

They did, and so they let him go. Maddie and Horace watched from a balcony as Will rode away, towards the horizon, with only a sunrise before him.

Will didn’t look back. He never did.

He was found by some farmers a few weeks later, in the woods near Redmont Castle. His clothes and oakleaf were stained with dried blood and one of his knives was missing. His quiver was empty, its arrows in the chests of several bandits with badly-made fox masks barely a kilometre away. The old Ranger’s body was pressed against his faithful and loyal horse, his distinctive green-and-grey mottled cloak rustling softly in the wind.

Will’s cremation was small. Present were only his closest friends, and they formed a tight circle around his grave - one at a small clearing in the woods, near a tree that had faint initials of several decades old engraved in its trunk. There were no decorations. No music.

‘He deserved more,’ Maddie said bitterly. ‘He deserved better.’

‘Maybe he did,’ Horace admitted, ‘but he never wanted more. To be buried by two handful of close friends, people who cared about him, and loved him - it’s more than he ever thought he’d have. More than he ever thought he’d deserve.’

Only a few days later, Gilan was practically forced into retirement by Maddie. ‘It’d be nice if not everyone died on the job,’ she argued with him. ‘It makes it incredibly hard to find replacements. Plus, you’re getting old.’ Gilan grinned. Maddie had been the only one to ever call him old.

But she had a point. It was time for new, younger leadership, who could support Maddie in her ambitious quest to change Araluen’s systems to improve live for those lowest in the classes.

The young Queen had told him of her plans to divide the effective ruling of Araluen in two - half of the duties and responsibilities carried by the monarch, born into their duties, the other half carried by a representative elected by the people.

Gilan knew that he had no role to play in the restructuring. So he too exchanged his silver oakleaf for a gold one, appointed a replacement, and moved in with Jenny. They still didn’t marry. Gilan helped out at the restaurant, until Jenny decided to sell it. Life as a cook and restaurant owner was intensive, and came with little time off. Even Jenny realised that she wanted to spend her last years cooking and baking just for herself, and spend her last years just simply enjoying food.

They moved to David’s old farm. They were found there, some time later, both dead. It was impossible to tell who had passed first, and how. But no one really cared, because when they were found, Gilan and Jenny were holding hands and the smell of plum tart was somehow in the air. Plum tart was also at their funeral, but it just didn’t taste the same.

It was getting easier, Horace felt. Alyss, Cassandra, Will, Gilan, Jenny - with every single one of his friends who died, their funerals became a little easier to bear. Still, he was thankful that he wouldn’t have to sit through another one, when he got sick and the doctors told him that there was little they could do.

When even their antidotes against the pain began to fail, Horace knew that his death was drawing near. Maddie offered George a position as Araluen’s librarian, so he would be closer when it happened. And every few hours, she ran down to the kitchen and back up to her father’s quarters. One time - it turned out to be the last time - she even arranged a chicken and chicken legs to be placed on a plate in such a manner that it looked like a four-legged chicken. Horace got a good laugh out of that, before the laughing turned into coughing and the pain became too much. Maddie climbed into his bed. She was, after all, still his little girl.

They fell asleep together, Maddie’s head on Horace’s shoulder and his hands in hers. She was the only one to wake up in the morning.

Horace’s funeral was grant, as befitting the former king-consort of the kingdom. And yet Maddie had never felt smaller. She knew that it was selfish, but of all the people Horace had met, and worked with, and saved, and known, George was the only one she cared about.

‘Will you stay?’ she asked. George nodded. There was nothing keeping him at Redmont, after all.

They spent a considerable amount of time together, as George taught Maddie all he knew about the different leadership systems around the world and helped her construct a new one for Araluen.

It was inevitable that the adventure of himself and Horace in Nihon-Ja came up. Maddie could not ignore how in awe George was as he told of Horace’s conviction to support an Emperor he barely knew.

‘You really knew them, didn’t you?’ she asked softly. ‘All of them.’

George nodded. ‘Perhaps even better than they knew themselves,’ he said. ‘I might not have been there, during all of the adventures, but it gave me an advantage: I could see and understand and appreciate the true extend of their work. I could see what they were too close to see.’

‘Have you even thought of writing it down?’ Maddie asked.

Again, George nodded. ‘I have kept notes throughout the years. I’m sure I could construct it into a comprehensive story - if that’s what you would want...’

‘I would want nothing more,’ the Queen admitted. George smiled at her. ‘Then consider it done.’

Their time together grew less and less after that. Maddie was busy reforming the country, and George spent many hours in the library, assembling notes and scribbling new ones. After a few months, Maddie decided to seek him out again. She found him, in the depths of the archives, leaning against shelves that he seemed to have fallen against. She recognised the signs. Heart attack.

As the staff retrieved his body, Maddie cleaned up his stuff and his desk. On it, she found several large stacks of paper. They could easily fill twenty books, she estimated. On top of them, there was a smaller paper.

For Maddie, the note read. Here are the chronicles of Araluen.

There was barely anyone left to attend his funeral, but Maddie made sure it was a dignified one.

Afterwards, she crawled under her covers, completely alone, with the first stack of George’s writing in her hands.

When Ingrid knocked on her door, hours later, the sun had already risen. Maddie’s eyes were swollen and red, from the tears and the strain of hours of reading, but there was the hint of a smile around her lips.

She finished the rest of George’s stories and hired other scribes to make copies. One of the copies went to Skandia. One to Nihon-Ja. One to Hibernia, and even one to Gallica. One went to Macindaw. One to Seacliff. One to a castle made of red stone. And one to a secret spot used by Rangers to hide the most important and confidential of information.

Until, centuries and centuries later, an archeologist and his team find several bundles of paper in the remains of a little cabin in the woods.

Maddie never knew that she would be proven wrong. The legends of Araluen had never died. Not entirely.

#i cannot believe that i offered this and most of y'all literally JUMPED onto it #so here it is #i'm not crying it's allergies xoxo #also major shoutout to lyn for bearing with me ksdjfajs it sure was a rollercoaster this one #redrose's headcanons #redrose rants #ranger's apprentice #rangers apprentice #john flanagan #i'm not going to tag every character i'm too lazy

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