The Dust of Time
Summary: Will struggles with his conscience, while struggling with the Darkest threat he's come up against so far - his own family's memories. Will/Bran Slash.
Disclaimer: "The Dark is Rising Sequence" does not belong to me, it belongs to Susan Cooper, the amazing Goddess that she is. This is written by a fan, for the fans, and no money has exchanged hands what-so-ever.
"Much Ado About Nothing" is also not mine. Duh.
Neither is Clueless or Pride and Prejudice or Colin Firth. Sigh.
The Deer incident, however, is something I stole from... my own life. I'm so deeply ashamed...
Author's Notes: This chapter took so long because I had to finish my degree. Sorry. But in return, I've made it about 1000 words longer than the first chapter. Hope that makes up for it. One chapter left, peeps, and perhaps an epilogue. Thanks for the support so far! Without your lovely comments, I'd probably have stopped this at chapter one, so it's officially All Your Fault that it's gotten this far.
Author's Notes 2: As a flashback to one of the previous chapters, it's 4:25am that I've finished this, and yet again, it's GETTING LIGHT AGAIN. What I do for the pursuit of fanfiction, I don't know...
Author's Notes 3: Also, did I mention I finished my degree? BOOYAH! Which probably explains the amount of snogging and groping in this chapter. I'm celebrating vicariously!
Part Seven: One Sign of Fire
The difficult is what takes a little time; the impossible is what takes a little longer.
Fridtjof Nansen
After they'd got back to the house, no one seemed to know what to do. Will explained that they had to wait for his birthday; otherwise the Dust might not work. Bran didn't fully accept Will's explanation, especially as it contradicted something Will had said before that Bran couldn't quite remember, but without the memory of exactly what it contradicted, Bran knew from experience that arguing with Will was futile, unless one had specific dates and times. Really, it was ridiculous; Will ought to be a lawyer, not an anthropologist-in-training.
They lay around the living room, in alternating positions, and chatted about this and that as Jane, Barney, Will and Bran caught Paul, Robin and Stephen up to date with what had happened in the past, with the Signs and the Greenwitch and the Chalice and the Grey King and the last great fight at the tree…
As Barney finished the tale and of John Rowland's difficult decision, Bran sat by the fire, near enough Will to watch him. Will was sat with the box on across his crossed knees, the glove on top of the lid. It was a left glove, Bran knew because of the stitching, and he shuffled closer as Will pulled the glove down over his wrist, and the strange scar burnt below his hand.
As Will rolled the glove up, and flexed his fingers, Bran grabbed hold of Will's forearm, and pulled it closer, his fingers tracing the circle and cross slowly. When he looked up at Will, he knew his fingers were still on the sign, but he couldn't bring himself to pull them away. They were stark white against Will's skin, and Will's skin was warmer, and Bran found himself lazily tracing the sign, even as his gaze met Will's. Their faces were so close, but neither moved, just looking at each other.
"You called this a Sign?" Bran said, eventually, moving his mouth deliberately slowly, pronounced, all too aware that Will's mouth was only inches away from his own. From the way Will's gaze darted to Bran's lips, just for a moment, brought out the predator within Bran. With confidence brimming within him, he smiled, his lips curving upwards only slightly.
"Hmm-mmm." Will rather encouragingly seemed to have lost the power of speech. "From the candles, when I was looking for the Signs, and I was looking for the Sign of Fire-"
A giggle in the background distracted Will, and Will turned to look, but Bran knew it was Jenny, and didn't turn his head. "-and the lady," Will said, distracted. "The lady. She said-"
Will's eyes widened, a reaction Bran knew well enough was his "eureka!" expression. Bran let go of Will's wrist, and casually leant forward, and leant one of his hands on Will's knee instead. Will inhaled, barely audible, but Bran thrilled at the reaction he now finally knew was because of him. It gave him such a sense of power, over the boy he loved, who had such magic, who could protect the whole world, but over whom Bran could have total mastery if he wished.
"What did you just eureka yourself into?" Bran asked, his voice low.
Will grinned. "A way to get us out of here. All I've got to do is check on the other Old Ones."
Bran was so surprised by Will's word, that he rocked back on his heel, and loosened the slight pressure of his hand on Will's knee, and Will used the slight pause to escape from Bran's proximity. Something inside Bran ached slightly, and he wondered for a moment – he'd had that fleeting feeling before, when Will pulled away from him, that Will was planning to distance himself further than that small physical distance.
He wanted to confront Will, but instead found himself asking, "You can do that?"
Will nodded, and got to his knees, shuffling in front of the fireplace. Bran was slowly aware of the others quietening down and moving their attention to him, but his attention was fixated on the confidence of the young man in front of him. The young man who had helped them save the world and stood by while everyone forgot. The young man who Bran was in love with. The young man who wasn't young after all.
"That's what I'm checking," Will clarified. "If I can get in touch with them, something's wrong. They had Eirias with them, so you shouldn't have been able to get it back, but if you could retrieve that…" Will trailed off, and Bran was about to demand that he finish a sentence – a somewhat absent talent of Will's at the best of times – when Bran actually took in Will's whole stance as well as his slightly neutral expression.
Will's shoulders were hunched in, and he'd brought all his limbs quite close in to his body. He seemed small. Afraid.
Robin had been right before, that Will speechless was a terrifying thing. Will scared was even worse. But then, almost as if sensing Bran's thoughts, Will arched his back, stretching, and held out a hand, splaying out the fingers wide.
Bran opened his mouth to say something, but even he was unsure what he thought would be helpful in the circumstances, and when Will's mouth open, and a liquid language slid out, Bran's mouth slid shut, and he listened. He knew that language. Will had sung with it, out in the valley in Wales, and it was like the mountains themselves were singing with him. Pressure peaked behind Bran's eyes, and he didn't know why, but then he was crying, silently, the tears falling unbidden. For some reason, the whole thing was just so desperately sad. Bran felt like he was mourning, and didn't want to know what he was mourning.
Will spoke something else, something soft, and then the fire leapt up higher, shooting up into the chimney. Bran looked closer at the dancing flames, and then gasped.
Deep within the flames was an image, of starlight, and a waterfall in the background, and a rainbow, and then… People. Lots of people and faces. A dark face with a wide, white grin. An old woman with kind crinkled cheeks. A handsome, strong man with a chiselled jaw and calloused hands. A sallow face. Some faces he thought he almost knew, a few he'd dreamed about, and some he didn't know, but who had the same sad cast to their faces as Will had. Bran thought he remembered a fragment of a memory We Old Ones have a certain look about us and didn't know whether it was a memory, or someone else's thought.
Then the faces blurred by quickly, like Will was flicking through the pages of a photograph album, and then the flickering slowed, and stilled, on two faces.
Bran inhaled, hard, and his lungs suddenly burned. He knew those faces. He knew one of them with a sudden, aching clarity. The thick brows, the dark eyes, the strong beard. His father, King Arthur, the one who he'd rejected. And beside him, a man who looked slightly older, slightly craggier, with thick deep set lines on his face, and wickedly alive eyes, but his eyes were frozen, frozen in place, and Bran felt the heat that was behind his eyes swoop to his stomach, and he was almost physically sick.
The bile rising into Bran's throat seemed to break him from his reverie, and for a second Will looked to be completely hypnotised by the image, but when Bran made a small sound in the back of his throat, Will blinked, startled, and waved his hand.
The image disappeared, and the flames dwindled down to back where they were, after spurting out a little into the room – a brief symbol of a circle quartered by a cross – before that faded away too. "One Sign of Fire you have with you already," Will whispered, shaking his head hard as if in disbelief.
Bran frowned at the strange words, wondering if he'd heard them right. "What?"
Blinking, Will slowly turned to Bran. "I meant, they're stuck. Stuck out of time and out of space, but not beyond yet, either."
Bran frowned. It wasn't the truth, but Bran would bitch slap the truth out of Will later. "How is that…"
"…possible?" Will frowned. "I don't know."
"You mean, you think you might know, but you don't know for sure." Paul's voice rang out, accusing. Will turned to him, and looked guilty. "I may not know all of your secrets, but I know you, Will."
"I know," Will said, his voice suddenly small. "I think they can only move on when they have everything. All the objects of power." Will couldn't maintain eye contact with any of them, and was for some reason staring down at his left wrist.
Bran frowned. "The sword?"
Will looked up at that. "That would be my guess," he said, almost briskly. "Somehow, they must have dropped it. Tomorrow, when we use the Dust, I'll use it instead to open a pathway to where the Old Ones are. We'll send Eirias through the void, to the Old Ones, and it should… complete the connection, as it were… and they should be able to move on." Will smiled at Bran. "Good thing we had you. I doubt the lost sword would have come to any but you."
"That's fate for you," Bran said, and then frowned, troubled. "Or maybe the Old Ones knew this was coming, and so engineered us to be in this position. Jane, didn't you say you came to the same uni as us because of that Merriman chap?"
"Yes, I did," Jane said, her voice croaky, as if she hadn't used it for a while. Her pale eyes were shining with worry, and she bodily pulled Barney a little closer.
"So maybe he already had us all arranged like chess pieces," Bran said, a little bitterly.
Will scooted away from the fire, a distant look still on his face as he shook his head. "Merriman thought it was all over," Will said, "why would he feel the need to manipulate humanity when his job defeating the Dark was so that humanity would be free to make its own choices?"
"I don't know, maybe the fact that he's obviously manipulated you into sprouting his ideologies," Bran said, sniffing in annoyance. The whole situation was probably only just getting to him, and his head was throbbing, and Will's reluctance to give them answers even when they knew the truth was irritating. More than irritating.
Will looked at Bran, his mouth working silently for a second. "What?"
"Or maybe it's you," Bran said. "Maybe he's trained you to manipulate us, because you've obviously forgotten we're your friends, your family, and you could just ask us to do things rather than poke us in the right direction with your clever words and enigmatic actions."
"Bran-" Jane protested, uselessly.
"He's got a point," Stephen said, his voice soft.
"Gang up on me, then, why don't you?" Will said, wincing at the sulkiness of his tone.
"We'd need all of us to subdue you, and even then we'd fail," Bran said. It was like he couldn't help himself, but Bran knew, even if this was something like that lodestone, one that compelled him to say bad things, that his words had a source… Bran's own subconscious.
"But that's…" Will was flustered again. "Huh?"
"Clueless doesn't work, Will," Bran said, realising a little of his frustration was still because he was lingering on Will's words from the previous Loop. …for I will be horribly in love with him…
"You seem to be grappling well enough with being clueless on your own," Will said, his voice rising.
"All right, you two, outside to cool down!" Robin got to his feet, eyes blazing.
Bran felt a surge of jealousy in his chest, that Robin was ordering them around, and then realised he was only annoyed because Robin thought he could order Will around, and Will was much too special to be ordered around like a common dogsbody..
All right, Bran accepted, maybe my bad mood is entirely because Will thinks it's horrible to be in love with me.
"Maybe he's right," Will said, his voice subdued. He got to his feet, but didn't help Bran up like he normally would have. Seething, Bran got to his feet and stomped out of the house, without looking at Will.
He knew Will was following, but he tramped around the outside of the house until he found a wall without windows. Even though the landscape stretched out, grey and oblivion inviting him to roam into the hills and not return to the madness, Bran felt somewhat safe here. Despite the miles of emptiness, where anybody might hide, he somehow knew at the same time, they would not be spied upon out here.
Will stomped around to face Bran, his face slightly reddened. Bran didn't know whether it was from annoyance, or the temperature. Will opened his mouth, struggled to find the right words, and failed.
"Cat got your tongue?" Bran said, snappishly. He knew was acting irregularly, but his brain couldn't seem to stop.
"Look, why are you being such a bitch?" Will said. Well, wailed, really. Bran blinked, and his mouth worked uselessly for a moment. Will, wailing? It boggled the mind, it really did.
"A bitch?! Me?" Bran shook his head. "I'm not-"
"Ever since you got Eirias back, you've been in this really half-baked potty mood-"
"Like you're one to talk!"
"Well, I know, I've had a lot on my mind, end of the world and all that sort of-"
"So because I'm not an Old One, I just had royal parents, I don't have weighty thoughts too? I remember what happened to us, Will, and what we went through, and God damn it, I'm just as worried about the Dark as you-"
"That's not what I was saying-"
"In fact, more so, because at last check you were the only immortal in the building." Bran was breathing heavily as he stared down Will.
"God, don't you think I know that?" Will said, his voice loud, nearly a yell but much too controlled. "Don't you think I'd rather die so you wouldn't?"
Bran went quiet. "Don't."
Will frowned at him. "Don't what?"
"Die." Somehow, the mood became more solemn with Bran's quiet reply.
Will's frown deepened. "I didn't have any plan on it."
"Good," Bran said, fiercely. "Because you've got a Messiah Complex, you know you do, and sometimes that leads to martyrdom, and you'd better not be thinking about it."
"There you go again," Will said, stamping his foot a little, and then flushing from the shame of such a childish action.
"There I go again what?" Bran asked, perplexed.
"Leaping to odd conclusions and going from being quiet to loud and fast," Will said. "I'm worried. You never vacillate this much."
"Probably because normally the world's not bloody ending."
Will pulled a face. "There is that."
Bran flashed a smile that quickly died away. "It's my race that's on the line. Not yours. I'm allowed to get hormonal over it."
"Humanity is my race too," Will said, heavily.
Bran felt a small flush of shame. "I didn't mean to insinuate that-"
"-that I wasn't human?" Will smiled wryly. "I know."
Bran was still feeling the same flush of defiance. "Well, you're not though, are you? Otherwise-" Then he snapped his mouth shut as he realised what he was about to say.
Will's eyes narrowed, which Bran thought was in anger, until he recognised the expression. He'd more than once told Will in the past that his eyes displayed emotion too readily, and recently, Will had squinted when feeling vulnerable. "Otherwise what?" Will's voice was hollow.
Bran thought about it, and exhaled in indecision, and decided to come out with it. In a breathless whisper that made the words run together awkwardly, he looked down at his shoes, and said, "Well, in the previous loop… I overheard you and Jane…"
There was a pause so long that Bran looked up to see if Will was still there. It wouldn't have surprised him if Will had disappeared, but he was still stood there, a dull crimson tingeing his cheeks, his eyes wide and frozen. Bran was reminded of a deer at Magdalen College in Oxford. He'd gone there for a day trip with Will and Jane, and in surprise at the presence of deer at a uni, had snapped a shot of the deer with his flash camera – and the flash had stunned the deer for a good minute, its dark glossy eyes wide and vacant. Bran had felt tremendous guilt then, and felt a similar guilt now, tinged with anger.
"Oh," Will said eventually, putting a lot of meaning into the empty syllable. He swallowed once, hard, and then the stunned look was gone, replaced by one of defiance. "Well, if you think I should have told you, before voicing it to Jane, then you're probably right. But I needed to hear it spoken before I accepted it, okay?" Will shifted then, betraying the part of him that was still a teenager. "If you're worried about how I'm going to react around you, just because I'm in-" Will struggled with the word for a moment, "-in love with you," he valiantly continued, "then you've got another think coming, because I'd never hurt you or invade your personal space-"
"Oh, you stupid git." Bran was still breathing heavily, annoyed. "And I kind of want you to invade my personal space, that's sort of the point, really."
Will looked at him, frozen mid-rant.
"I love you," Bran said, softly, all trace of annoyance disappeared from his voice.
Will stared at him, unable to look away, the blues and greens in his eyes darkening.
"The personal space thing is not what's under consideration here," Bran continued, softly, getting the gradually increasing sensation that Will was genuinely confused.
"Then… what is under consideration? That I told Jane first rather than you?"
Bran shook his head. "I would have used her as a soundboard too, in your situation."
"Then…" Will floundered helplessly. "I have no idea what's going on. I've completely lost control of this whole situation, and it's… It's unfamiliar, I can tell you. I have the knowledge of a dead race, and knowledge of centuries of human history, and I know how to fly, or swim to the depths of the ocean, and summon creatures, and speak to the stars, but you-" Will closed his eyes and exhaled, if hurt, and then opened his eyes again, looking at Bran with a resigned expression. "If the book of Gramarye had you as its subject, it would have been a thousand times longer, and still come out as an incoherent jumble."
Bran didn't know what the book of Gramarye was. "I'm not annoyed that you're- Well, that you-" Bran swallowed, having trouble voicing the words. Will rolled his eyes, and Bran was frustrated, damn it, as if he didn't have trouble with the word too, and folded his arms. He forced the words out. "My problem is not that you're in love with me, which I think you know by now would be hypocritical of me, but that you think it's horrible to be in love with me!"
Will blinked, as if he couldn't have been more shocked if Bran had pulled a blue whale out of his pocket and socked him around the head with it. Will blinked, a strange expression crossing his face, before he burst out laughing.
Bran made a noise of dissatisfaction, and shook his head. "What's so funny!" Bran said. "Laughing at me because of your oddness-"
Will couldn't stop laughing.
"Oh, fine, suit yourself," Bran ground out, then twisted on his heel to storm away.
He'd only gotten half a pace when a hand, large and warm and strong on his elbow caused him to turn back. Bran knew he looked ridiculous when he pouted, but he couldn't help pouting as Will bodily turned Bran to him. It took Will's fingers on Bran's chin to get Bran to look at Will, but when Bran saw Will's expression, his annoyance melted away.
Will was still smiling, an aftermath of the laughter, but there were other expressions on his face, ones Bran knew well. Love and acceptance and pride and relief and joy and despair but most of all love, love that shone with true force. "You're such an idiot."
Bran's heart fell at the words, and he wrenched in Will's grasp to run away, but Will's hand remained firm. A cocky, assured expression slid onto Will's face as he used his other arm to pull Bran closer until their faces were inches apart. Bran spluttered, but quietened as Will just smiled more widely.
"I'm an idiot?" Bran spluttered, more out of habit than of a real desire to say it.
"Yeah." Will smiled mysteriously, and Bran was still annoyed, so he moved his foot to stamp on Will's. But Will was too fast for him, and stepped back.
"Will," Bran said, in what he hoped was a low and serious tone, but it came out cracked and frayed.
"It's from Much Ado About Nothing," Will said. "Shakespeare."
"Of course I know it's Shakespeare," Bran snapped, annoyed at the superiority of those who'd gone through the English education system, assuming the Welsh education system was lacking. "It's one of my favourite plays, in fact-"
Bran had meant to sound well-learned and pompous with that true statement, but then his voice faltered, and the colour rose in his cheeks. His gaze held Will's, and locked. His voice dropped to a whisper. "I am an idiot," he said, mortified. "Absolutely clueless. Oh god, I'm Alicia Silverstone." Jane had forced them to watch and re-watch Clueless during their second term, and Bran had always on a subconscious level identified with Josh, the one who loved Alicia Silverstone's oblivious character Cher from afar, and was disturbed to find out that he was more like the superficial and dippy blonde than the suave Josh.
"Absolutely," Will agreed, the hand gripping Bran's elbow falling away, and Bran was about to protest the lack of warmth, until the hand moved to Bran's cheek. "But with better hair." One long, dark finger traced his jaw bone from his ear down to his chin, and Bran lost all powers of speech.
After a long pause, where they hung suspended in the moment for what could have been seconds or what might have been a millennium, and Bran was slowly beginning to understand how Will could possibly bear living forever, as Will began to speak again.
"They say I will bear myself proudly," Will said, in a ragged whisper, as his finger began to stroke Bran's cheek, almost as if on its own volition. "They say too that she will die rather than give any sign of affection." Will moved nearer slowly until their mouths were so close, Bran could almost feel Will's words before he heard them. "I did never think to marry: I must not seem proud: happy are they that hear their detractions and can put them to mending."
"A marriage proposal so early in the relationship," Bran heard himself quipping. He was normally quick to be sarcastic, but this seemed to come from someone else, and not him, and Bran would not have believed he'd said, except it was his own mouth moving, his own voice speaking.
Will gave him a blinding smile. "They say the lady is fair-" He touched Bran on the cheek, below the eyelid, on his nose, on the temple. "Tis a truth, I can bear them witness; and virtuous; 'tis so, I cannot reprove it. And wise…" The blinding smile may have faded, but it was still in Will's voice. "But for loving me. By my troth, it is no addition to her wit, nor no great argument of her folly…"
"…for I will be horribly in love with her," Bran finished, his eyes wide as he realised exactly what it meant.
Will was in love with him. Will loved him back. Will didn't think it was horrible. And if the hand lazily stroking his back was any indication, and Will's eyes, hungrily trained on Bran's face, then Will maybe thought it might be a rather amazing thing to love Bran Davies.
Bran knew he could try and elucidate the myriad of sensations that flitted across his chest at the moment of realisation, he could try and find concrete words for the abstract sensations, but it was no use. Everything was out in the open. Words were pointless.
But Bran found himself speaking anyway. "If you're identifying with Benedict, does that make me Beatrice, because I'm not going to be the girl in this-"
"Bran," Will said, heavily, making Bran stop and focus on the blue-green eyes hovering near his own. "Shut up."
Bran opened his mouth to make some sort of protest at being ordered around, but then happily found said mouth being occupied in quite gleefully kissing Will back. And they continued, for a moment, until the need to breathe became an issue, and Bran pulled back gratefully, to gulp down oxygen.
Will obviously took it as a bad sign, because he flinched, as if he was going to move away. With a growl, Bran moved both of his hands into Will's hair, and for a moment, Will's eyes closed and he exhaled rapidly.
When Will spoke, his voice was ragged, "Bran-"
And it was enough. With a sound that broke from the back of his throat, Bran pulled Will's face closer, and touched his mouth to Will's. Will's mouth moved slightly under his, warm and with just the right amount of friction, and Bran realised someone was moaning- and it wasn't him.
After what may have been a second, or maybe an eternity, Bran pulled away slightly to get his breath, his lower lip still brushing Will's, and that's when he realised he hadn't closed his eyes – he and Will were still gaze-locked. And he couldn't look away. He just couldn't.
This time, it was Will's move again, and he grabbed Bran's shoulders and pushed him backwards. Bran knew his back was scraping against the wall of the house, and splinters were pushing through the material of his shirt and trousers, but at that moment, he didn't care. He might have even gladly volunteered for another war with the Dark at that moment. Will's mouth was on his, demanding and searching, and this time Bran closed his eyes and surrendered to the kiss, all thoughts of disturbing things gone from Bran's sky. Will was in love with him, and didn't think it was horrible, and that was enough, it was everything.
After what was probably a minute, with no sign of stopping, and with Will's hands roaming on their own, Bran let his own hands move from Will's hair to his shoulders, and then drifted to his sides, not wanting Will's hands to have all the fun. Will pressed his strong body into Bran's slight one, at almost just the wrong amount of pressure, which gave way to become just the right amount of pressure. When his right hand ghosted across Will's hip, Will's mouth broke away, he trembled against Bran, and he moaned, right in Bran's ear, and somehow that was enough, and Bran let out his own muffled gasp as he bucked against Will, trapped between the wall and him, and his vision burned, and then slowly returned.
He was gripping Will to him, leaning against the wall, and Will's hands were bunched in Bran's shirt, and Bran slowly looked up at him, at the same time as Will looked down at him. They were both breathing hard.
"I just-" Will said, looking shell-shocked. "Did you?"
"Yeah," Bran said softly, surprised his mouth even worked any more. He smiled, weakly. "Guess we'd both wanted to do that for a long time, love."
"You can say that again," Will said, joking in between low ragged breaths that still shook his body.
"Love," Bran whispered, and Will made another sound in his throat, and that led to another bout of kissing, and might have led to all sorts of shenanigans out in the open, but somehow led to them sinking to the floor, arms around each other, just kissing and kissing, and it was perfect.
After another length of time, Will pulled away slightly, and with a curious note in his voice said, "How long have you wanted to do this?"
Bran made a groan of disappointment, annoyed that the kissing had stopped. "Bloody ages," he said, and leaned in to start the kissing again, an action with which Will looked happy to oblige, except Will still looked curious. Bran sighed. "What are the chances of us getting back to the good stuff without you getting an answer?"
Will pulled a face and quoted Clueless, just to get Bran's goat. "Slim to none."
Bran rolled his eyes. "How did I know you were going to say that? Besides, this is a less Clueless moment, more Pride and Prejudice. I'm getting a serious Colin Firth flashback…"
"…how did I not figure out you were gay too?" Will said, a serious look on his face but a twinkle in his eyes. Bran poked him in the shoulder, not hard enough to leave a mark, and didn't answer Will directly.
"When the love declarations been and gone, and Elizabeth's in a playful mood, asking when Darcy first fell in lurve with her," Bran said. "So in this case, you're the girl."
"Maybe we can take it in turns," Will said, lazily tracing Bran's wrist with a finger. "So?"
"Oh… I was in the middle of lusting after you before I realised it had begun," Bran said, airily. Will sighed. "Baby, I've been waiting for you all my life?" Will shook his head. Bran mimicked the gesture, fondly. "Probably since that time at the Fresher's Fair," Bran admitted.
Will frowned, in confusion.
"When you were signing up for the Juggling Club, which, may I remind you, you never attended," Bran said.
"Was on at the same time as the film club," Will interrupted. "And no one gets between me and Tarantino. You should know that more than anyone."
Bran flickered an easy two-fingered gesture at Will, and then remembered what he was talking about. "And you bent over the table and waggled your lovely behind in my face." Bran flushed a little, but decided the time to be embarrassment had… ahem… come and gone. "I nearly quite cleanly forgot it was your behind I was ogling until you stood up."
Of course, Bran had also chalked down his reaction to Will bending over as being over-heated and stressed from all the people milling around and thrusting leaflets into his face. Anyone was bound to be overwhelmed. He'd always realised he was probably gay, because no woman other than the Leanne chick on Coronation Street had ever made him have the hot and sweaty kind of dreams that random guys in uni and on the streets had. Will was right – he was Alicia Silverstone in Clueless – because he hadn't realised he was in love with Will, and it was – in hindsight – so obvious. The way he hadn't dated anyone, although he'd had more than one offer since starting uni. He'd told himself at the time that it was because of his insecurity over his appearance, and that people asking him out because he was different, because of his looks, was much too shallow for him.
Also in hindsight, Bran was wondering in bafflement how he'd translated his jealousy over those small huddles that Will and Jane managed to find themselves in a lot, discussing Jane's problems or latest date gone wrong. And in a sudden embarrassing memory, Bran remembered breaking his heater in his room in a fit of pique when Will had gone on a study date with the fair blonde Tabitha Williamson. He vaguely recalled putting it down to exam stress, when Jane came in to find out what all the noise had been about, and he definitely recalled the embarrassed flush that inhabited his cheeks when he found out it really was just a study date, because Tabitha was married to one of the Media lecturers. Tabitha must have known Will was gay before Bran did, because Tabitha's husband was notoriously possessive over her, or so the rumours said, and Bran thought he would have heard if he'd beaten Will up.
"Ah," Will said, sounding a little strangled, and twisted his head a little to look at his rear. "Really?" He twisted back to Bran, and, quite deliberately, leered at him.
"How about you?" Bran said, leaning in closer, enjoying the way Will's face minutely changed the closer he got.
"Hm? Oh." Will coloured, and fidgeted.
"Will," Bran said, his voice low, in warning. He pulled back slightly, showing Will that he was clearly capable of denying Will contact if Will refused to answer, and Bran was moved by the whimper in Will's throat, as if Bran moving away was a bad thing, too horrid to contemplate.
"You know when I came to see you, before I… before the letters dwindled…" Will looked away for a moment, and then looked up to meet Bran's gaze.
"Since then?" Bran's voice ghosted over the words. "You were sixteen. And I- I was so hurt when the letters stopped coming so much… You used to write to me weekly, and then nothing…" Bran tried to keep the pain out of his voice, but he had been absolutely devastated for those two years. Every day, waking up at eight, and wishing for the thud of the post…
"One morning, at breakfast, we went for the same piece of fruit," Will said, his eyes distant, remembering. "And it was just your thumb that touched me, but it burned…" His eyes fluttered shut for a moment, and then opened, looking into the distance. "And somehow I just knew I loved you, and that it wasn't going to go away."
"That's when you stopped wearing colours," Bran said, his voice low. "Wasn't it?"
Will looked back at Bran. "Because it felt like I was betraying you enough already to be lying to you with every letter, every visit, and then to…" Will's voice hitched. "To be there, and to not tell you how I felt…" Will trailed off, and swallowed. "I'm sorry, I know it was selfish, but it hurt, and I was confused…" He smiled tightly, irony almost tangible on his face. "I wore black to mourn the loss of my innocence," Will said, looking directly at Bran. "I think I've been in love with you since the first day I saw you. Just was in denial for it a long time."
Will's voice was bitter, burning, and Bran shook his head with the intensity of it. Instead, he leant forwards and grabbed both of Will's hands with his own.
"You were mourning me…" Bran's voice ghosted into nothing.
"You have to understand," Will said, his voice light. "I'm going to live forever. Forever. I won't age for a good few centuries."
"So you'll be my boy toy in the future," Bran said, his voice low and urgent. "I've always wanted to seem like a sugar daddy."
Will still looked a little withdrawn.
"God, Will, I think I've been in love with you that long too," Bran said, trying to keep his voice at a steady pace so Will would take him seriously. Will looked at him, curious but still distant. "Those two years, when your regular letters stopped… Every day I waited for them. Every day, whenever I heard the post come, I would hurtle downstairs, and stare at the doormat, and when I'd see nothing but typed addresses, typed demands for money, my heart broke every single day. And then I'd declare I didn't need you, I didn't need your stupid letters, but then a few weeks later, or a couple of months on, then your familiar tiny writing would land on the doormat, and I'd read it and not breathe 'til I finished, and… Those two years passed in a blur, because I wasted them waiting for your letters. Waiting for you. And-"
"And?"
Bran struggled with the words, as he struggled to put that long period of constant disappointment into understandable phrases. He regretted not using some of his spare time inhaling the dictionary. "And that only had to be because I was in love with you. Don't you see? I've probably been waiting for you forever, I just needed someone to translate it for me… Why else do you think I even came to the same uni as you? The same course? I'm not naturally inclined to anthropology. The closest I come to human study is studying you."
"But I'm not human-"
"No buts!" Bran said, his voice fiercely. He tugged Will closer, and Will fell into him, having to grab the front of Bran's t-shirt to stop him crashing into Bran and making them horizontal. This was a good enough aim for Bran, but would distract him from dissuading Will from running away, so Bran forced himself to pay attention. "Do you love me?"
"I-"
"Do you love me?"
"Yes," Will said, his voice fierce. "Yes."
"Then love me," Bran said, simply.
Will searched Bran's face wordlessly for a moment, his eyes raking Bran's face, before tugging Bran closer and kissing him, brutally, possessively. Bran didn't take offence at the almost vicious kiss, and was kissing him back just as wildly, and they both knew this was less about lust and want and love, but more of a pact – Bran and Will against the universe. Against time. In that second, they could have destroyed the universe, or melted into it, and Bran made a guttural sound, deep in his throat, and things could have once again progressed much further, or at least Bran thought so from the sudden feral look deep in Will's eyes, except they were interrupted.
"Guys, have you stopped fighting yet?" Jane's voice rang out stridently from the front door, cutting through the rather nice haze that Bran was enjoying. "Paul and Robin have cooked something. I don't know what it is, but it doesn't smell too bad."
"Yeah, we're coming," Bran said, struggling to find his voice as he got to his feet, pulling Will up with him as Will semi-smiled at Bran's words. Bran brushed himself down as he heard Jane's footsteps get closer, and tried to push his hair down, so it wouldn't be so big a clue as to what he and Will had been doing.
Their mouths, bruised and chapped, might still give it away. Bran hoped the food might be able to disguise his own mouth before anyone looked at him too closely and jumped to a (probably right) conclusion.
"It's not got wasabi in, does it?" Will said as Jane turned the corner. Will had stuck in his hands in his pockets, and looked as innocent as a choir boy. Bran shuffled, feeling guilty, wishing he had Will's composure.
"It may do," Jane said, wrinkling her nose. She stopped, and looked at them, her eyes narrowing. Bran fought the flush to try and stop it rising up his neck to his cheeks again. She looked lingeringly at Bran's hair, and at his slightly askew t-shirt, and frowned. Uh, oh. "Have you two been-" Bran took a deep breath, waiting for the word. "-fighting?"
"In a manner of speaking," Will managed, with a still face. He looked back at Bran, and when his face was significantly turned far enough way from Jane, he flashed a smile and wink at Bran.
"We promise not to any more," Bran said. "It's all worked out."
"All right," Jane said. "As long as you promise."
"We promise," Will said.
"Hang on," Jane said, coming to a pause near the front of the door. "It's all worked out?" She looked at them shrewdly. Bran bit his lip and looked at Will, who was still looking innocent.
"I remember the previous Loop too, when you restored our memories," Jane said, frowning. "So…?"
Will blushed. "It's all worked out." He reached out for Bran's hand, and Bran took it, and squeezed it, and grinned at Jane, who was shaking her head.
"You two make quite a cute couple," Jane said.
"Only quite?" Bran said, feeling a little of his old comforting arrogance come back to his tone.
"Come on, you handsome couple you," Jane said, with a roll of her eyes. "Let's go and play Roulette with Paul and Robin's 'cooking'."
It was about the sixth dizzy smile over the dining table that Bran flung at Will that caused Paul to explode.
"Jesus Christ already, will you two do us all a favour and go upstairs and shag and spare us the soppy grins?"
Bran choked, while Will had the decency to flush a deep crimson.
Paul frowned, and then his expression fell away in surprise. "You haven't," he said, in a low voice, to a suddenly silent table.
Bran gulped down some water, while Will shrugged, still blushing, at Paul.
"You were only outside ten minutes!" Paul said, sounding stunned.
"I'm Welsh," Bran said, grinning that he'd found his voice quicker than Will. "Spending all our time in the hills makes us act silly over sex when it's not with sheep."
Barney burst out laughing. Jane shot him an exasperated look, but was grinning too widely to have the desired effect.
"Actually, though," Bran said, sounding aggrieved. "Us Welshmen like to take a long time over things, especially sex. So it must be a Stanton thing."
"We're impressed by speed," Stephen said, with a grin.
"You were as quick as me," Will said. And then flushed, and dropped his face to the table, hiding his face in the tablecloth as he groaned in mortification. "I'm never going to live this down, am I?"
"Nope," Jane said, surprisingly cheery.
They ate the rest of their dinner with raucous teasing and dirty comments directed at Will, especially when he finished his dinner first, so they mocked him again about speed.
"I think it's time for bed, now," Jane said, after they'd chatted late into the night, and Barney had yawned for the hundredth time. Bran felt his face flush again. "And you two-" She pointed at them accusingly. "Are going to have separate beds this time."
Bran opened his mouth to protest that he was tired, and they wouldn't be up to anything, but Stephen grimly said, "Seconded!" and Bran found he was too tired to disagree.
By morning, Bran wished he had disagreed. He hadn't been able to sleep well, and at one point had got up to creep up the stairs to Will's room, but somehow Stephen was up and about, as if knowing what Bran had in mind.
Bran had to shuffle down to the kitchen under the excuse of a glass of water, and had stayed downstairs all night, over heated and just somehow, even in the dire circumstances, overwhelmingly, blisteringly happy. Some things didn't add up, but Bran found that he didn't really care.
He was in love and by God, he had been for such a long time.
Explaining things to Will had helped Bran explain things to himself, and finally, things were starting to make sense, and it was a sensation that Bran was willing to fight tooth and nail for to keep hold of.
He was able to grab Will for a nice good morning grope, in Will's bedroom, where Bran had accidentally left his clothes, and they both emerged, still looking presentable, and both wearing bright colours, Bran immeasurably chuffed that he was the reason that Will was no longer in mourning.
In fact, Will had been in a chirpy mood all day. What a difference love makes…
It was only now, as the hour approached for the Dark to come rise again, that nerves were rising, and no one could stand in one place for long as they huddled in the barn, exchanging jumpy looks and nervous sighs.
Bran sat, and watched Will as he drew some sort of chalk circle on the ground, with some fancy symbols. Will had distractedly explained that it was to give the Vortex the right energy. If everyone stood at the points he dictated, then a nexus would form between them. And if worst came to worse, and he had to use the rest of the dust for them to reset time again, then the nexus would link them, meaning they didn't even have to be physically linked any more.
Bran had accepted that explanation at first, but now it was nearing the appropriate time, he was staring at the diagram. The squiggled symbols seemed to make no sense. Even if they were the visual representations of the almost Latin almost Welsh language that Will could speak, shouldn't some of the symbols be the same? And why were the places for them to stand quite close together, with one a distance away?
He opened his mouth to call Will over, and demand an explanation, but Will was somehow already there, at his elbow. He must have wandered over while I was staring at the circle…
Will handed him a canteen of water. "You looked thirsty," he said.
Bran took the water, and drank a mouthful, and then Will quickly took the bottle and a swig of it himself. "Indirect kiss," Bran said, with a grin. He leant in and grabbed a direct kiss, just mouth to mouth, lingering for a moment, enjoying the friction.
"Hand me Eirias," Will said, almost distracted when the kiss finished, his hand out. Bran automatically handed the sword over, despite the pang of something being missing when the weight was lifted from his hip. "I'll have to put it directly into the void to make sure it gets there."
Bran nodded. "Won't that be dangerous? What if you slipped into the void with it?" His voice fell as he realised the implication of what could go wrong with everything.
Will shrugged. "Hopefully, with the object of power with them, the Old Ones would move on." He paused, looking at the circle with narrowed eyes. "And hopefully, humanity won't suffer too much without a Watchman. My family, though…" He trailed off, and then grinned, ruefully. "I suppose with the full circle of Old Ones, even beyond time, we could conduct a spell to remove myself from everyone's memories."
"You promised not to make me forget again," Bran said, a teasing smile on his face that faltered at the look that flashed across Will's face. Something in Bran's stomach lurched. "And an Old One's promise is binding…"
"I promised never to make you forget," Will said, his voice suddenly disconnected, but still heavy with longing. He turned, and touched Bran on the cheek, and Bran got a sinking feeling that everything was starting to go wrong. "The removal of an Old One from the timeline causes ripples… Slowly, everyone begins to forget them, and a person rewrites the memories themselves, without help, to stop their brain from imploding. It's sort of a safety catch the human brain employs in the wake of magic, to stop insanity. I wouldn't make you forget, but if I disappeared in that way, your own mind would rewrite the memories of us together. I'd just be a faceless kid on a nameless hillside. Or… I could use the Dust and go on my own, before you ever remembered, and then I'd have nothing to make you forget."
Bran stared in mounting horror. Will's words were so cold…
"Relax," Will said, the tense moment gone as he grinned, and leaned in, and stole another kiss. Bran was too stunned to return it properly. "It's not going to be necessary. You think I'm going to fall in and leave you behind? I mean, it's the right thing to do, but…" He dragged a thumb over the back of Bran's hand. "…I'm tired of doing the right thing. I love you. I want you. I'm not going to screw that up in a moment of clumsiness."
Bran grinned. "You'd better not."
Will smiled at him in return. "All right, people, places!"
Subdued but pacified, Bran took his spot directly opposite Will on the circle. Stephen, Paul and Robin stood to Bran's left, and Jane and Barney to the right. Will took a deep breath, and flexed his shoulders, bringing out the pouch of the Dust of Time.
The air sang, faintly. "They're coming," Will said, softly, as if almost to himself.
He looked over to the others, and Bran smiled at him.
And then the smile faded.
Will was crying.
Suddenly, silently, through such a sad smile that Bran's heart leapt at the sight of it.
"I'm sorry," Will said.
Bran frowned, the meaning not quite sinking in.
With a roar almost like a thunder, but worst, the whole barn was plunged into sudden darkness.
When the lights flickered back on, Bran paid no attention to the men in black hooded robes lining the hall, or their booming words that were the same every time. His attention was on Will.
The confused teenager, with his soft declaration of love, and dizzying kisses, and sad smile, had gone. In his place, it was still Will, but this was Old Will. He was tall, taller than Bran remembered him being, and curiously, his height hadn't changed at all. Will's eyes were blazing, not literally, but with a deep furiousness that made the air crackle.
With a grim, determined look, Will took one long, last look at Bran, with his eyes shining, and reached into the pouch. He pulled out a handful of dust. A blast from the Dark made Will drop the rest of the pouch, but it didn't stop Will from putting his hand out, and spinning the dust out. A small vortex of the dust appeared before Will, and he leapt into it, Eirias on his hip.
Bran cried out, and ran forward, breaking the circle, and almost made it to the vortex, but it disappeared just as he got there.
"NO!" His fingers closed on empty air. Will was gone.
With a look of despair, Bran turned, to look at the others. They were in various states of shock.
"The Dust of Time?" Mitohin said, his loud voice grating into the silence Bran's yell of despair had left behind. He grit his teeth.
Bran turned to him, feeling brash and reckless. "We've used it before," he said. "You won't win."
"Not unless you give us another chance to try." Mitohin grinned. "Use the Dust, if you will, and let us follow him."
"That's possible?" Jane broke in, before Bran had a chance to tell Mitohin to go to hell.
"Inevitable," Mitohin said sadly, his dark eyes travelling between them all. "But too late for me. This reality won't last long, and you'll all fade away." His eyes then travelled to the circle on the ground. "In his haste to keep you far enough away from the vortex, he might have given you a chance."
Bran frowned, in confusion, but Mitohin merely saluted, and that's when Bran noticed the wind tugging at Mitohin's robes, fraying them, and pulling the fragments away. Bran's mouth opened, as Mitohin, and the rest of the Dark, span away into fragments.
And to his horror, the hall around them began to break up in the same way, like paper, the fragments fluttering away. Will's chalk circle seemed to be saving them, except… it was coming in, smaller and smaller, and Bran knew it wouldn't be long until they were swept away too. Bran was angry then, angry that Will had killed them this way, but in a curious way he also knew what had happened – Will had used the Dust to loop back slightly earlier, where they would exist without their returned memories, and he wouldn't have to make Bran remember… and then he could even erase himself from their lives without much trouble at all… A faked death… Or the removal of the fact he'd ever been part of their lives…
Bran knew with sudden clarity that this was Will's plan. He beckoned the others over, and they huddled in the centre as Bran retrieved the pouch of Dust that Will had dropped.
"If this works," Bran said to them roughly, "then we're going to have to pretend it's the first time. It's going to be tough, but we have to."
"What's going on," Jane said, her eyes searching Bran's face, her own face creased in worry. "What's he trying to do?"
Bran looked at the empty space where Will had stood, and then at the encroaching Dark. Perhaps this was what happened when the Dark won... "He said something about forgetting, about making us all forget. But he could have done it any time, instead he reset time…"
"He's going to have one last day." Stephen's voice was rough, like he'd been kicked in the guts. "He's going to have one last, perfect day and then erase himself from our minds."
There was silence for a moment.
"Then what are we waiting for?" Paul demanded, angrily. "Let's go to him, and tell him it's not going to work-"
"We can't." Bran's voice was soft, disappointed.
Paul stepped forward, bodily, into Bran's personal space, breathing hard as he looked down at him. "What do you mean we can't. We'll be obliterated if we stay. And it's Will. Don't you get how important he is?"
"Of course I bloody do!" Bran said, snapping the words out, an almost regal note to his tone that they all paid attention to. And then his voice softened, to one of affection and desperation intertwined, as he admitted the truth. "I'm in love with him."
"Oh." It seemed to flummox Paul, but only for a second. "I see. Well, we all have the same motivation, then. We all love him, and don't want to forget him. So we have to go back."
"Agreed," Bran said, simply.
Paul frowned. "But you said-"
"I said we couldn't go back and tell him," Bran said, slowly. "Because he'll just duck out on us and use the sand again and make sure there's none left, and then we'll never have a chance." He looked at them all, his expression grim. "We have to go back and pretend it's the very first time again. We have to say exactly what we said during the first time, act the same way, and react the same way, until he does whatever he needs to. And we'll stop him."
Bran left a moment pause before lifting himself even taller, raising his chin up. "Who's with me?"
No one even hesitated to nod. Bran nodded back, and lifted dust out of the pouch. Then he joined the others as they linked hands. Bran took a deep breath, looked at them all, and their determined faces, and then let the dust fly from his fingers.
There was a blaze of light, and Bran tried to shield his face, but Stephen was holding his hand in a tight grasp, and then they were falling, and then- and then – and then-
Bran blinked furiously, trying to get his sight back. The bright light was everywhere. But it was colder. And suddenly no one was holding his hand any more.
Bran blinked even more, and his vision slowly cleared in time to see Will's mother shuffling off to pretend to feed the chickens.
He turned back to the others, scattered amongst the Stantons who had not dealt with Will's secret well. Their faces were littered with smiles. The ones who had come through time were frowning, resolute, eyes shining with determination, sharing small, secret smiles and nods.
Bran shifted closer to Stephen, and touched his elbow quietly. "Now," he said, to Stephen. Stephen looked at Bran with a hint of worry, and then watched as Mary moved closer to the door.
The door opened. Will stood there, staring at them all, and then he stared at Mary for a long second, and then he threw his arms around his sister's neck abruptly. "Mary!" Pulling back, he regarded the sister closest to him in age with a fond, if goofy, smile, and his sister put one icy cold hand out; ruffling his hair good-naturedly. "I thought you weren't due home until the twenty-third!"
"Yeah, that's what we wanted you to think."
Bran watched as Will stared open-mouthed at Mary. Mary then stood aside to let Will see the crowd of people assembled in front of the house. Will's mouth dropped open, and he was speechless.
Stephen brushed past Bran, and for a second, Bran was worried, until Stephen said, in a deep voice. "Hey, kid." His formal accent was tinged with humour. Will smiled and stared happily at his older brother, but this time it was different. There was such open sadness on Will's face.
"What -- I mean how --" Will said, and gaped even more when James and Max stood aside to reveal Will's father holding onto a large bag of luggage, and four more familiar figures stood, shivering, behind his brothers and sisters.
From the back of the group, Bran looked up at Will, knowing Will spotted him last.
"Hi Will," Bran greeted, a grin on his face as he trembled from the cold. Beside him stood Jane, and her two brothers.
"Aren't you going to let us in?" Barbara whined, looking like she was turning blue. Bran was glad that not all of them knew the time was looping – they could take their cues from the Stantons who genuinely believed this was the first time around.
"Naw, he's forgotten all his manners," Max broke in, rolling his eyes at his youngest brother's speechlessness.
The familiar sound of an insult from his brother made Will's body kick in, and he stood aside to let them all pile in. Bran faintly noticed in the corner of his eye that Will's mother had stopped the pretence of feeding the chickens and had wandered over to come inside too.
Stephen was the last to pile into the small Stanton household, and grabbed Will by the elbow to grab him in a crushing hug of welcome. "Happy birthday, Will," said Stephen. Will stared at Stephen, thunderstruck, then at his parents, and at all the people crowded in the small kitchen and living room.
"This is --" Will grinned fiercely. "This is the best birthday present ever!"
"Is to make up for that poxy eighteenth birthday you had," James explained, his round face amiable. "Can't have been much fun with only you, mum, dad and a whole load of poxy chickens."
"Hey," Alice Stanton protested, shrugging off the overly-large overcoat and hanging it on a peg by the door. "Anyway, Will, this took quite a bit of organisation, but you'd better get on in and greet your friends properly, as your brothers and sisters will all be here till New Year, but Bran and the Drews can only stay till the twenty-third."
Will pushed past Max, Barbara and Paul, all looking almost as if they'd never left, and dived into the living room. Jane was standing with Simon and Barney, looking gently around their house with a tentative smile, and looking apologetic. She moved over to Will as he appeared in the doorway, and indicated Barney and Simon with a toss of her head.
"Sorry, this was the only way I could come, and I didn't want to miss your nineteenth," Jane said. Will grinned at her, then shot a grin at Barney and Simon. Bran was glad Jane had remembered what she originally said. It was imperative they all acted exactly as they had done, or Will would suspect they remembered. Until Will changed how he'd reacted, they couldn't change one word.
Bran snuck around to the window seat, as Will said, "No problem. Besides, this'll be just like old times, right?"
"I'm feeling a little neglected over here," Bran said, grinning as Will turned to him.
"Bran!" Will stepped forwards with a grin, and a curious glance at Jane, who was hiding her face behind her hand and giggling.
"What?" Bran pretended to look a little concerned. "What's wrong?"
"That's my seat," Will said flatly, trying to sound stern.
"Ah." Bran relaxed, folding his arms and dropping his rucksack to the floor. Bran caught Will's happy glance and suddenly reached forwards to pull Will's abandoned glass of orange juice off the mantelpiece, taking a defiant sip of the juice. "I guess this is your drink too."
Will nodded slowly, and Bran impudently grinned at him before placing the glass back on the mantelpiece. Getting to his feet, Bran crossed over to where Will stood and grabbed his friend in a hug. Will hugged Bran back, and grinned into the face of his friend, while Bran struggled to not remember too well that a day ago, this hug would have been a lot more than just a hug…
Will pulled away from Bran to look at Mary.
Looking around at Will and his brothers, sisters, and friends, Bran felt a warm shiver of the faint hope that this as going to work. That they could stop Will before he erased himself from their memories.
Bran found himself staring as Will looked at his parents happy gazes so fondly. Will looked so happy, and was looking at everyone so lingeringly that Bran knew he was right. Will wasn't intending to repeat the day again.
Will's father smiled at Will.
"Happy birthday, Will," his father said, indicating his sons and daughters with a spread of his arm. Will grinned.
Bran smiled, too, and in the corner of his eye, noticed the others were adopting his cheery disposition. Smile away, Old One, Bran thought, coolly. A feral grin crossed his face at the memory of Will's explanation of how he loved Bran, had loved Bran for forever. And ever. Love on, Will Stanton, I will requite thee. Will flickered a glance at Bran, and Bran almost thought Will had somehow heard his thoughts, but Bran just smiled, and got a smile in return. Will turned away again, to chat to one of his sisters, and Bran sighed in relief, and in determination. I will requite thee, Bran vowed, his eyes lingering on Will. And bloody well keep thee afterwards, too.
To be continued…