[au] an early snow

[the_seafarer]

It's only mid-autumn, as the Bar-year reckons, but one morning Caspian wakes early to find that the light coming through his window has that particular muted quality to it that only comes from sifting through clouds and a veil of snow.

And snow it is indeed, when he comes outside: it crunches pleasantly beneath his boots as his breath freezes in the air and his cheeks turn pink with the cold. Snow; and still it falls, silent and light.

He heads to the stables with the intention of finishing his chores quickly so he can let the horses out to frolic in it, whistling as he goes.

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[sai_delgado]

“Oh, if only thee could,” she murmurs, then sighs and turns to more practical matters.

“But there’s naught to be done, I wot. Just be patient with me? I’ll try not to let it - to let it interfere with things.”

[the_seafarer]

"Don't," he says, anguished, and pulls back to look at her clearly.

"Oh, please don't, Su. You've nothing – I couldn't care less about what it might interfere with. How could you be expected to act as though this were any other time of year? And not a year yet since? Dearest, please. Whatever you feel – whatever you need – it's all right, Su. I swear it. And I'll do all that I can, day or night."

[sai_delgado]

“I know thee will,” she tells him. Susan reaches up to touch his cheek, then rests her fingers at the hollow of his throat. “I kennit, say true. It’s just all so strange, right now.”

She sounds a little uncertain about that, but shakes her head and continues, “And I’d not - I weren’t trying to hide it from thee, Caspian, or not really. I only - I knew it’d hurt thee to hear it.”

[the_seafarer]

"I'd never dream you were, Su. Never."

He tugs her braid over her shoulder and runs his hand lightly along it. "But I am glad you felt you could tell me."

[sai_delgado]

She nods. “If there’s aught else - if thee has questions… I’d not mind answering. I just - I don’t, I’m not sure what thee’d want to hear, so I’m not sure what else to tell thee.”

[the_seafarer]

"Only if there's anything else you wish to speak of," he says, gently. He can't imagine asking questions, making her relive those terrible moments. Even if he were curious – and he's too sickened by it to feel any sort of curiosity – the thought of asking is to terrible to bear.

"If there is, I'll listen. Always."

[sai_delgado]

She bites her lip, thinking. “It were Rhea cast the spell on me,” she says, after a few seconds’ thought. “The one I told thee of before. She hated me; hated all of us, I wot, but Roland for certain, and me as well.”

[the_seafarer]

He shakes his head, unable to understand how anyone might hate the girl before him. "You said she'd get on with my uncle," he murmurs. "You were right, I expect. Why on earth did she hate you so? And Roland?"

[sai_delgado]

“I did?” she asks, surprised. “I were thinking more of my Aunt Cord, given what she did, but aye, mayhap so.”

Susan shrugs. “Roland she hated because he told her not to cross him, after he found what she’d done. And because she were Farson’s servant, against the Affiliation and the gunslingers, with the grapefruit. A magic glass,” she explains, and holds out both hands to show him the size of the globe. “One of the set that was made by the wizard Maerlyn, the Bends o’ the Rainbow. The pink one.”

“Me, because… oh, she hated me always, since I went to her to be proved honest. Called me names and cursed me, especially when I wouldn’t let - let her do to me what she wanted,” she decides on. “She always were a cruel, jealous thing.”

[the_seafarer]

"Your aunt, aye. I'm sorry, Su, my thoughts are all a-jumble just now."

They must still be, because he's not sure he's keeping track of the story. "I can well see why Roland would react as he did to a witch who cast a spell," he says. "But – honest? You're ever honest, Su, why would you have ever needed to prove yourself so?"

[sai_delgado]

“I - oh.” A deep, ashamed flush colors a face gone salt-pale in the instant before she drops her eyes from his.

“I - it were part of the contract. The one my aunt made, with the mayor,” she tells the grass somewhere beside them. “For me to - to be his gilly. It were - a demand to be sure I’d not been with anyone, so he could be - be sure of his heir.”

[the_seafarer]

"His... "

He frowns, unable for a moment to understand either Susan's shame or what she's saying. He's never heard the term she uses before, and so he puzzles through the rest of her words before something snaps into place and he, too, turns white and then red, though with shock and rage in place of shame. "She – sold you? For – oh, what a hateful thing she was, and Rhea of the Coos too, and the mayor besides," he nearly thunders, the level of his voice kept lower only because he has not quite forgotten where they are and who he sits with.

"Disgusting, pathetic old crones! To treat you so, as though you were naught but property?"

And oh but he's properly furious now, and perhaps the image in his mind of Susan, forced into this contract, is merging with one of Lucy on a slaver's auction block.

[sai_delgado]

Caspian’s furious, on her behalf, and a part of her is wide-eyed and startled while another part thinks he must not understand - and yet another part is fiercely glad.

“After my da’ died - after he were murdered,” she corrects. “I were but eleven then. And after - first they took the horses, and then more and more besides, until there were nothing left, and when I were old enough - all the time my aunt kept at me, telling me that it were an old tradition, that we’d have everything back as gifts and payment, that wouldn’t I love to have a baby, if only I’d… and so eventually I let her make the contract. I told thee I weren’t as good as thee thought I were.”

She can’t meet his eyes, doesn’t know how to tell him how Cord would sit in the kitchen counting the gold coins over and over again, her avarice and the hate in the way she looked at her.

(Miss Oh-So-Young and Pretty)

“But she knew, what they’d done to my father, her brother, and never said a word, only hounded me into something he’d have hated and I hated, too. I didn’t kennit, then. Not until near the end, when she slipped.”

[the_seafarer]

There is so much, so much he needs to respond to, but the first and fiercest overflows in him like a spring tide, and he takes both her hands in his, ducking his head to try and get her to look at him.

"Susan," he says, forcing his voice to something more like his normal tone – he'd never, not in the world or any other, raise his voice to her – "my darling, you are as good as gold and as sweet as sunlight. You are good all the way through, no matter what those horrible people did to you, made you believe. None of it was your fault, Su. Not a bit of it, contract or no. And had it all gone through, you'd still be just the same good person I know. Your heart is as pure as this snow that's falling all around us."

[sai_delgado]

She lets her gaze be drawn, unaware of the misery in her fog-gray eyes. He means it, she knows, every word. She can tell. Would that she could believe it so easily as he says it.

Propriety? she hears Roland say, when she'd known him only as Will Dearborn, echoes of the past from that awful night at the Mayor's House ringing in her ears. I'm surprised you know the meaning of the word. She remembers Olive Thorin, quiet and sad and overlooked at the foot of her husband's table, and so brave as well, so brave at the last when she'd died trying to save Susan and never mind all that'd come before.

Oh, she'd made her promise, no matter how she'd been driven to it, and then broken it as well - and paid for it, in the end, and others too. It's not fair, but when did that mean anything to ka's workings?

Tears shimmer in her eyes for an instant before she closes them, fighting back the sob that threatens to break free.

"Thee are kind," she whispers. "More than I deserve."

[the_seafarer]

"Oh, Su," he says, unhappily, and reaches to draw her into his arms. "Come here."

She believes it, he can see, the way he'd once believed that he must have deserved somehow his aunt and uncle's hatred, that if they disliked him as they did, it must have somehow been his own failing, his own fault, instead of theirs.

[sai_delgado]

She goes as he's asked, into his arms, slipping her own around him and holding on as she lays her head on his shoulder, her breath warm across the base of his throat.

[the_seafarer]

He sets his cheek on her hair and puts his arms around her, letting her rest against him. "I know how it feels," he murmurs, finally. "To think there must be some reason, some wrong in you, to have made other folks act so. When I was a child I didn't know why my aunt hated me, only that she did. I couldn't see that she'd really hated my father and was terrified of me."

Caspian strokes a hand over her hair, gentle. "It wasn't your fault, Su. It wasn't your choice. Your aunt should have protected you, not sold you off like livestock."

[sai_delgado]

She's so quiet, so still, as she whispers five words and five only in response.

"She threw the first torch."

[the_seafarer]

A chill spears through him and he finds there is still murder in his heart after all, after everything, because he would like nothing more than to ride to whatever is left of Hambry and put Susan's Aunt Cord and everyone else who followed the witch to the sword. His arms tighten around her before he consciously gentles them, unwilling for her to feel anything but his warmth and steadiness.

Surely she's had enough anger and hate, enough to last a lifetime and more. He'll not indulge in it while he holds her and tries to comfort her. "I'm sorry," he murmurs. "You deserved better. I don't know why she hated you so or why she must have hated her own brother, but that was her failing and not yours."

[sai_delgado]

"He never did anything to hurt her," she murmurs. "He took her in, when she'd nowhere else to go. But he stood for the Affiliation, and mayhap that were enough, in the end - for her, and Fran Lengyll, Kimba Rimer, Eldred Jonas and his harriers and Coral Thorin, and all the rest."

Susan draws a long, slow breath, and lets it out in a sigh, then tilts her head back to look up at him. "But what's done can't be undone, and we stood against them all and turned their plans to naught. I'd do it again, I would."

[the_seafarer]

"I believe you," he tells her, looking down into that fog-gray glance that has so captivated him. "Because you're good, and brave, and you stand for goodness and courage."

And so of course her cruel world wished to cut her down, to own her if it could and to kill her if it couldn't.

[sai_delgado]

This time her blush is more the shy pink of wild roses. "Thee flatterer," she teases, or tries, then before he can protest she adds, "Nay, I ken thee mean it, every word. And I've tried to be, to do what's right as best I can."

[the_seafarer]

After all this, everything she's bared to him, she's still trying to lighten his mood, to make sure he is all right, and the rush of affection and admiration that fills him feels as though it will crack his ribs from trying to contain it. "Of course you do," he says, loyal and absolutely certain.

"Your father raised you well. And then you grew up well. He'd be proud, I'm sure of it."

[sai_delgado]

"I hope so," she says, earnestly. "I think he would, though."

She shifts a little in his embrace and lays her head back on his shoulder, bringing one hand back around to rest over his heart, feeling its beat under her fingertips.

A part of her whispers that she should offer to let him think all this over, in case he'd wish to change his mind about her, but a deeper, wiser part tells her to trust in him and everything she knows. It's that voice she chooses to listen to now, and bites back her worrisome fears.