A/N: Here is my latest RA fanfiction! I'm very excited about this one, as I don't think the idea's been done before-which brings me to several things that I need to address before I begin.

From book 10, I gathered that Tosca is basically the equivalent of Italy in the world of Ranger's Apprentice. In a great whirl of inspiration while reading book 8, I decided to write about someone from Tosca, since I love Italy/the Italian language. The "Toscan" bits in here should be correct; I've been studying Italian for almost two years, but if you do catch any mistakes (aside from the intentional ones that I make with Halt and Ferris), please point them out.

Which brings me to something else. You'll note that the first time Halt speaks Toscan, there are no spelling mistakes, though his tutor comments on his poor pronunciation-yet when he goes for his next lesson, words are misspelled. I did this intentionally-since I didn't offer a translation the first time, I figured that it'd be best to keep everything spelled correctly for translation purposes. The second time, since everything is translated, I put the spelling mistakes (indicating poor pronunciation) in.

Also, Araluan=the common language (I believe it goes by that name in the books, but again, if I'm wrong, please correct me). And the title of this story (Cadere), means "to fall" in Italian. Eventually you'll see how that ties into the events of this fic. :)

Wow, that was a lot to say. Either way, I hope you enjoy the story! I cannot wait to hear your feedback!

Halt trudged through the halls of Dun Kilty, dreading his Toscan lesson more than normal. His parents had announced that he and Ferris would be given a new tutor, as the old one had retired in his old age. Of course, this meant that the O'Carrick twins would have to be reassessed-a tedious process that would probably involve speaking-Halt's least favorite part of Toscan. It really would never be of use to him-Araluan was the most common language and would probably be used for any legal matters.

As was expected, Ferris was already seated at a table in the library, tapping his foot impatiently. Unlike his brother, he was rather excited to meet their new tutor. Ferris looked up at Halt and was about to make some unnecessary remark, but before he could do so, a young woman, her arms full of parchment, ink, quills, and books, sat down at their table, her chestnut hair pulled back into a bun. "I apologize for my lateness," she said. "Mi chiamo Lia Bisharra e sono la nuova istitutore di toscano."

Halt and Ferris blinked rapidly-they'd been studying Toscan for a few years now, but their previous tutor had never spoken it so easily. It was clear that she was a native speaker. Excellent, thought Halt dryly. Now she's going to try and teach me her language when she can barely speak mine.

"Per favore, mi dica chi è Ferris e chi è Halt," the tutor requested.

"Sono Ferris," said Ferris, giving her his typical winning smile that made Halt feel ill.

"I'm Halt," the other twin provided.

Lia looked at them both, matching the faces to the names. "Ferris, Halt, Ferris, Halt, Ferris, Halt," she murmured, her eyes flicking between the twins.

She sat down, folding her hands on the table in front of her. "I thought that I would assess both of you today before I began teaching. Please tell me a bit about yourselves...in Toscan," she told them. A Toscan accent was noticeable when she spoke Araluan, but she spoke the language as clearly as anyone else.

At least I'll be able to understand her, Halt thought, relieved.

The boys began pulling out parchment, quills, and ink-Ferris with more zeal than Halt-when Lia stopped them. "I want you to tell me," she ordered. "It is not difficult to write in another language-you have much time to think. Speaking is different-it will immediately show me your skill with the language."

She waited patiently for either one of them to speak. Ferris, who was always the more personable one, began.

"Sono Ferris, il principe di Dun Kilty, Clonmel. Mi piace...essere con la gente, imparare...e...e...cose belle."

He paused for a few moments, biting his lip in thought, before continuing, "Anche, ho un fratello e un sorella. Ho capello scuro e occhi...occhi marrone. I miei genitori sono le monarchi di Clonmel...e...e...e...e mi incanta la lingua toscana."

Ferris grinned, very pleased with himself. Lia simply nodded at him, showing no sign of emotion. "Thank you, Ferris," she said curtly before turning her attention to Halt.

"Sono Halt ed abito in Dun Kilty, Clonmel con miei genitori-il re e la regina-mio fratello, e mia sorella. Ho capelli ed occhi scuri. Oddio essere dentro di il castello," said Halt quickly.

"Thank you, Halt," she said to him, her tone still professional. "From what I have heard, I think that it may be best to tutor you two separately," she began. "Both of you are well off with vocabulary and your basic grammar was mainly good. However, you each have different problems.

"Ferris, your mouth is often ready before your mind is. Sometimes, you forget to make sure that the gender and number of your noun and article agree-you said un sorella instead of una sorella, and occhi marrone instead of occhi marroni. Articles are not to be placed with possessives when the person of possession is an immediate family member; for example, miei genitori would have been correct, whereas i miei genitori was not."

She paused to think for a moment before continuing, "I was not aware of the dark hat-capello scuro-that you have."

The younger twin looked away, slightly embarrassed by his mistake-he'd meant to say capelli scuri-dark hair. "Lastly, I would not expect either of you to know this, but in Tosca, we do not say mi incanta-it is said m'incanta," Lia finished.

Ferris felt quite uncomfortable-he hadn't expected Lia to be so critical. No matter-he wouldn't mind it if he had to spend some extra time with his new tutor.

"Halt," she began, "when di and il are used together, it becomes del. Aside from that, I need only address your pronunciation, which is having a severely negative impact on your speech."

He nodded once in acknowledgement of what she'd said. Ferris, however, was not so willing to accept his fate as a mediocre Toscan student. "Lia," he said, scooting his chair oh-so-slightly towards her, "was there anything that I did correctly?"

She stood, drawing herself upward, making herself appear very much in control of the two boys. "Both of you did many things admirably. However, if one is told one's strengths, these strengths will occasionally be of more focus than the weaknesses," she informed them.

Halt was only half-listening to her as she spoke-partially because he cared very little about Toscan and partially because he noticed that Lia's attention was also diverted from her speech. She was cautiously sliding her chair away from Ferris with her foot. "That is why you will not often hear praise from me," she clarified.

She sat once again, her chair now a safe distance from both of the boys. "Do either one of you have additional questions?" she inquired.

"How would you say my name in Toscan?" Ferris wondered, smiling.

"Hmm," Lia mused. "Ferris." She paused, thinking hard. "I do not think that your name can be translated into Toscan, but if you were to travel to Tosca, your name would be modified, perhaps to Ferriso."

"Ferriso," Ferris repeated, rolling the word around on his tongue.

"Contrastingly," she continued, "it is very easy to translate 'Halt'-and it is necessary, as we do not say 'h' in Toscan. In Toscan, you-" she gestured to Halt, "would be Fermata or perhaps Fermare."

Halt didn't reply. "Anything else?" Lia wondered.

When she was greeted with silence from both Halt and Ferris, she informed them, "Very well. I will speak with your parents and we will set up times for your lessons. Thank you for your time; you are free to go now."

Ferris and Halt began to gather their things. Naturally, Halt was ready to leave before Ferris, who had been somewhat distracted by Lia's presence. "Halt, may I speak with you momentarily?" Lia asked the older twin softly.

He looked up, letting her know that she had his attention. Ferris also stopped and, listening. "Please proceed, Ferris-I have nothing more to tell you," she told him firmly.

Ferris finished gathering his things and left, while Halt sat, waiting impatiently for Lia to say something. "Halt, as I'm sure you noticed, your grammar is quite superior to Ferris's," she began. "However, your pronunciation is in need of a lot of work, so I believe that, until it improves, I will need to tutor you separately."

Halt wasn't embarrassed; he'd always known that his pronunciation was poor, but it frustrated him that he would be spending even more time on Toscan because of it. "That all?" he asked.

"Yes. You may leave," she told him crisply.

Halt left the library quickly, frustrated with the new Toscan tutor who was apparently intent on making him miserable. Of course, the fact that she was actually from Tosca wouldn't help the process-it'd just make her more critical, since she'd grown up around people whose Toscan was nearly flawless. Halt groaned inwardly, already weighed down by all the work he expected from his new tutor.

Lia was sitting in the library, looking over the short paper that Ferris had just written for her. In one lesson, she had managed to correct the majority of his minor grammatical problems. His desire to learn the language had made him an easy student to teach.

His brother, however, appeared to be a different story. Halt had an excellent memory and could speak with very little effort, but it was clear that he had no interest whatsoever in the Toscan language-or its correct pronunciation.

She continued to ponder the vast differences between the twins as she edited the paper, barely thinking as she circled, corrected, and commented on Ferris's mistakes. At one point, she glanced up and saw that Halt was sitting at the table, looking very impatient. "Oh!" she exclaimed-either he'd appeared very quietly or she'd been quite absorbed in Ferris's paper. "I apologize-for how long have you been waiting?"

"Long enough," he replied rather sharply.

Lia's eyes flashed briefly. "I know that I am of a lower rank than you and that I am not much older than you are, but I do not want to hear you speak like that without good reason- 'good reason' being if I say or do something that is completely...what do you say...something about a line..." she pondered, searching for the expression.

"Out of line?" he offered.

"Sì," she confirmed. "Do not speak to me like that again unless I say or do something completely out of line."

Halt, feeling sufficiently chastised, nodded his acknowledgement. "I understand," he replied.

"Very well. I thought we would begin with your pronunciation today. I will say a sentence and I would like you to repeat what I say in Toscan," she stated.

"My eyes see games," Lia began.

Halt looked at her, slightly confused. "I know exactly what I am saying," she clarified.

"I miei occi vede giochi," said Halt.

"Oh-KEE, not oh-CHEE," she corrected him. "The women dance gracefully."

"Le done balano con grazia."

"Balllllllano, not balano," she amended, emphasizing the extra "l." "The same is true for "women"-it is donnnnne, not done. Double letters can be very important."

She paused briefly before saying, "Blue is the color of the sky."

"Blu-"

"No," she cut him off. "Perhaps I should have said that in another way. Azure is the color of the sky."

"Azuro è il colore dil ci-elo."

"Del, not dil," she said. "And in cielo, the vowels run together-CHAY-loh, not chee-AY-loh. In Toscan, the letter 'z' is very soft, like 's.' And Halt, I cannot tell you enough about the importance of double letters in Toscan-hold them," she continued empathetically.

"Why on earth are double letters so important?" Halt muttered sullenly. "It's just the same thing twice in a row."

"I will explain. Imagine that you are in Tosca and are being served dinner-a very well-known pasta dish called penne rigate. If you enjoyed it, you might tell your host..." she trailed off, prompting Halt to practice his Toscan.

"Mi piace il tuo pene rigate," Halt said.

Lia discreetly hid the grin that was spreading across her face as she explained, "Well, I would be very curious to hear what your host would say, since you've now told him that you like his striped penis."

Halt did his best to hide any bit of emotion that would flash across his face, though the attempt was to little avail-he was blushing quite obviously. At least she told me now, he thought grimly. "Thanks, Signorina," he told her.

"Lia will work nicely," she told him. "And it is my job to make sure that you do not make such mistakes. Now let's try again."

"Mi piace il tuo pennnnne rigate," Halt repeated.

Lia nodded her approval. "Bellissimo. Now, I'd like to hear how you say my name-the whole thing, per favore," she requested.

"Lia Bishara," Halt said.

"Bisharrrrrrrra," Lia corrected him, trilling the "r" more than she normally did.

Halt tried to imitate the sound, but it just garbled in the back of his throat and made it sound as if he was choking. "Open your throat as if you were about to sing," suggested his tutor.

"I don't sing."

"Very well. Then open your throat as if you were about to yell in horror," she amended. Once Halt looked ready, she added, "Try it again now."

"Bisharrrra," he said, trilling the "r" perfectly.

Once again, Lia bobbed her head, acknowledging that she was satisfied. They did several more pronunciation exercises, all of which Halt hated, but participated in-after Lia had shown him how drastic a tiny mispronunciation could be, he wanted to be a bit more cautious. He wasn't very familiar with Toscan customs, but Halt figured that accidentally bringing up a man's private areas wouldn't do any good for foreign relations.

"You've shown a lot of improvement," Lia told Ferris as he sat down before her. She'd been tutoring the O'Carrick siblings for approximately a month and was very pleased with what the young princes were doing. Their previous tutor had been excellent, but Lia was still finding little quirks in Halt and Ferris's work that wouldn't be present in the writing and speech of a native Toscan-which was only to be expected; a native knowledge of any language couldn't be emulated, no matter how adept the teacher was.

Ferris, unlike his tutor, was highly dissatisfied with his progress. Lia was even more critical of his work than she had been before-and Halt was having extra lessons with her, supposedly to help his pronunciation. Secretly, Ferris envied the extra time that his brother got to spend with Lia-he would've gladly taken on a bit more classwork in order to spend more time around the beautiful young Toscan woman. Seven minutes and he gets the throne and our impossibly attractive tutor, Ferris thought bitterly.

But that doesn't mean that she wants to tutor him, Ferris thought.

He quickly turned his mind to the ink-filled parchment in front of him. His own writing had taken up quite a bit of space; Lia had filled any blank spaces with her corrections and comments. "You love doing this, don't you?" Ferris said lightly, gesturing to the parchment.

"I do," Lia responded seriously. "That is why I chose to become a linguistic tutor-I love my language as much as I love yours."

"Ah. That explains why you do such a wonderful job," Ferris complimented her.

"Ferris, if you truly thought I was doing wonderfully, you would be more eager to learn than to flatter me," she pointed out. "Now, I believe you need to learn about the future tense of verbs."

The lesson was quite uninteresting, but Ferris listened to Lia with the majority of his brain; the rest was busy trying to think of some way for her to look at him as something other than her pupil. Perhaps the way to Lia's heart was through her mind-her passion for language was evident; Ferris could recall a few lessons during which he'd tried to secretly stare at her as she prattled on and on about the connection between a Toscan word and an Araluan one. But he'd already been spending a rather ridiculous amount of time on his work ever since she arrived in Dun Kilty and Halt was still getting more of her time.

"Ferris!" she snapped. "Are you paying attention?"

He looked away from her. "Sorry, Lia, but I'm feeling rather...distracted," he apologized.

The pause in his statement was enough to make Lia slightly uncomfortable. "Well then, we ought to move somewhere where your focus is better," she suggested briskly, hiding her discomfort.

"I don't think we could do that," Ferris replied, "because you are what I find distracting."

"Then we shall be done for today," Lia stated. "For our next lesson, please write me a page and a half telling me what you will do tomorrow. Use at least twenty different verbs-and prepare to be assessed the next time we meet."

Ferris bit back a frown. Obviously, flattery hadn't worked-if anything, he'd sworn that his words had upset Lia, but nothing showed on her face or in her body language-she was poised and impassive as always. He gathered his things in silence, wondering how to win the heart-or at least the lips-of his seemingly emotionless teacher.

She was breathing heavily, as if she'd just ran across Dun Kilty. Lia did her best to relax, knowing that she was literally on the verge of a panic attack, and gradually, her breathing began to slow. She sunk into an armchair in her quarters, closing her eyes as she inhaled deeply.

How could she have taken this job-tutoring two fifteen-year-old boys? She knew how they were-half a glance from a woman and they'd fantasize about her for the next two weeks. It had been a while since she'd forced herself to remember things like this, but today's events with Ferris, though they were small, were slowly pulling her back towards reality.

Perhaps what happened today was just passing-the young prince would eventually accept her presence as a constant in his life. Or it could be the start of a horribly useless pursuit, Lia pondered. Men often started wooing women in small ways-a word here or there, a subtle wink when no one else was looking.

Either way, Lia didn't want to do anything to encourage Ferris-and for a boy of his age, silence could be counted as a form of encouragement.

Not for the first time, Lia wished that she was older-even a few years might help. She did everything she could to make herself appear older, but apparently Ferris could tell that she really was not much older than him. She wondered rather absently why the king and queen had hired someone who was only three years older than their sons. Of course, she hadn't told the monarchs that she was only eighteen, hoping that their assessment of her would be based solely on skill.

Apparently it had been, she realized bitterly.

She'd never expected to regret the opportunity to educate the royal family of Clonmel. Of course, she hadn't allowed herself to think about the fact that one of the job requirements was spending large amounts of time with teenage boys who were used to having whatever they wanted.

Suddenly, Lia realized that throughout her stream of thought, she'd been subconsciously lumping Halt and Ferris together as if they were one person. They certainly aren't, she reminded herself. Oftentimes, she had difficulty getting Ferris to stop talking, whereas she had the opposite problem with Halt-he spoke only when asked to, and when he did so, his sentences were brief and to the point. She could tell that Halt disliked his Toscan lessons, whereas Ferris reveled in them.

And yet, she still preferred Halt as a student. His silence was comfortable for her, even if he was not a very enthusiastic pupil. Lia couldn't imagine Halt flirting with her so obviously-or at all. He only spoke when she asked him a question or told him to pronounce something for her. His work was never as elaborate as Ferris's, but the clean simplicity of Halt's words was always less of a mess for her to correct.

Odd how that works-trying too hard to sound intelligent in a foreign language can often result in sounding foolish, she pondered, relaxing a bit as she put Ferris's flirtation out of her mind.

She recalled the three years she'd spent studying Araluan before coming to Hibernia in search of some sort of interpreting job. The Araluan language was what had sustained Lia through the most painful times in her life; because of that, she felt an unbreakable tie to it. Of course, she'd always loved the extreme precision that Araluan had to offer, but it became especially special to her after hearing half-drunk men slur things carelessly in Toscan, kicking it around as if it were a piece of dust on the road.

Araluan had only positive memories tied to it. That was why, at age fifteen, Lia had had some sort of direction to her life. Those last years were undoubtedly the best of her life-and, she thought, had made it easier for her to teach the O'Carrick children. She'd recently experienced the same struggles of learning a new language, which made it easier for her to help them when they struggled.

And now she was back to Ferris. Inevitable, really-I will keep thinking about it until I make myself stop, Lia thought.

With a light sigh, she arose and picked up one of the few books she'd brought from Tosca-a collection of famous children's tales. She'd read them hundreds of times, but they were still special to her. However, she wanted to make sure that her mind was completely engaged-and she wasn't sure that the book alone would be enough. Lia sat the book down on her desk, shifted a piece of parchment in front of her, dipped her quill in a nearby bottle of ink, and began translating.

It wasn't as if it hadn't been done before, but Lia had read the tales in both languages and had always wondered how her own translation would differ from a more popular one. Her quill scratched across the paper rapidly, her mind far away from Hibernia, Tosca, and any other concrete place in the world.