the_seafarer | [au] Narnia and the North

She nods, then falls quiet for a few moments, listening to the soft sound of his breathing and the rustle of the breeze through the trees.

Things are easier, here; clearer, more simple. It'll be harder again when they return to the bar, when they're surrounded by the dull grayness of the season, the chill in the air.

But it won't be for long. He hopes he's right that it won't be for long, that if they can make it past Reap-Tide, the things she's feeling will fade with the turn of the seasons.

So he holds her, and watches the skies of Aslan's country, and tries to plan what he can, to bring a little of this peace back with them.

After a little while, she stirs and looks up at him once more. A tiny smile curves her mouth.

"Penny for 'em, dimmy-da."

"You may have them for no cost, for they're worth little enough," he chuckles. "I was trying to imagine what Cuthbert and Alain will think of all this, when you tell them about it."

“They’ll be some amazed, I expect. But what’s at the heart of it all - aye, they’ll ken that.”

Susan sounds a little absent as she considers it, but with naught of the terrifying faded distance of before.

“Most of what’s known of the clearing, for us, is only that it’s a place of peace, do’ee ken? And not - we’ve not been there yet, any of us, but came straight to the waystation instead.”

She thinks about that a little more, then adds, “The Lady brought them, I think. Mayhap me too, but I never saw her, not as they have.”

"Aye."

He runs his hand up and down over her shoulder and arm, thoughtful. "I don't remember being brought, either. Not here. I saw Rilian – heard his voice – and then opened my eyes under a sheet of water, with Eustace and his friend nearby. And Aslan."

Always Aslan. Enormous and warm, like the sun slowly pacing the earth in lion form.

“The Lion.” Susan beams up at him. “I’m glad he were there for thee. I’m glad all of them were.”

"I, too."

It's good to see the sparkle in her eyes, to hear her speak of the clearing and the waystation without the dreamy longing that's occasionally filtered through her voice back at the bar. He thinks of the vision he'd had in the cabin of the Dawn Treader and continues. "I was thinking I'd speak to Cuthbert and Alain about what they've been planning," he murmurs. "If that's all right by you. I'd not intrude, but there are times when it's prudent to have all hands on deck."

“Thee wouldn’t be intruding.” She tips her head back again, then leans up on her elbow, searching his face.

“Thee are never an intrusion, Caspian. Thee aren’t.”

The soft line of his mouth goes slightly wry, even as he lifts his hand to brush her hair back and over her ear.

(Susan's stood ka-tet and an-tet with us, and that more than once... she's dearer to us than you can imagine.)

"I'm not a part of your tet," he says, gently. "I know it well."

Sometimes, he looks at the Pevensies, the cracked circle of them, and wishes there were a way for him to fit somewhere inside it, but even the cracks are too tight to allow anyone else in. They will always be part of the same, larger circle, but he wasn't there in the Hundred Year Winter, and there are some things he'll never truly understand. "It would be all right if you – all of you together – wished to keep some things for yourselves."

At this, she sits up entire, weight resting on one hip as she leans forward with the intensity of what she's feeling, and golden hair cascading down over her shoulders like rain.

(ka-shume)

"The Ka-Tet of Nine is broken." Softly said, but there's no room for doubt in her voice, and there's a strange certainty in the depths of the fog-gray gaze, for Susan Delgado has ever felt some things more clearly than the rest of them, say true.

(everything the way of Eld was not)

"It broke when Roland left. When he were pulled back, to seek the Tower." Susan shakes her head. "Those of us who are left - we'll always be close, closer far than others for what we were and are still and always to each other, aye, but ... ka's wind isn't part of it now. And I'd not see thee feel that thee have to stand apart, for that."

He runs his fingers through her hair and twines it gently around them as he listens, as he hears the firm determination in her voice and the intensity behind it. And the thing it brings back to him, in perfect clarity, is the scent of lilies on sweet water, and Aslan's terrible, gentle voice.

(He said – oh, I can't bear it. The worst thing he could have said.)

He thinks of a door opening in the air and closing again, and the awful loneliness that accompanied it when he was left with subjects and defeated enemies and courtiers and advisors, but no friends or peers his own age and no companions who truly understood how and what he felt, no one with whom he was Caspian and not King.

(You're to go on – Reep and Edmund, and Lucy, and Eustace, and I'm to go back. Alone. And at once. And – )

He thinks of a sea white with lilies, and Reepicheep and Drinian and Rynelf and Edmund reminding him sharply of his duty, of the faith he wasn't allowed to break and the worlds he wasn't allowed to leave or see. He remembers watching the star's daughter ride away, glowing and beautiful, on a brilliant May morning, and his son months later, and the empty, echoing halls of the palace for the long, long years after that.

And Caspian thinks –

(– and what is the good of anything?)

– this may be the first time someone has held their hand out to him, and told him, yes, you can come, and not left him behind.

His throat works. All the things he's feeling are too large for words, so he sits up and pulls her into his arms, instead, pressing his head against hers.

He pulls her into his embrace and she goes willingly, putting her arms around him to hold him tight, as close to her as she can manage.

How long must he have been feeling as though he'd had to stand apart, for him to react so? And to never have said a word, but only to let it be, thinking that's were how it had to be. Susan rubs one hand in a circle over his shoulders, trying as best she can to show him all the care she feels, and remembers the shadowed confusion of her first days and weeks and aye, even months, at the bar at the end of the worlds, and how it'd finally all started to change.

"Oh, Caspian," she whispers. "Thee very dear. I kennit."

He holds her a little tighter, and blinks away the wetness from his eyes, then laughs and kisses her forehead firmly before pressing his own against the spot his lips had just been.

"Well, I suppose I should make an effort to meet the rest of your friends."

"Aye, and thee will," she teases back, but gently. Susan keeps her arms around him, and breathes him in. "I'll see to it, say true."

"As you will, lady."

(I cannot promise you'll think me good enough... I can only swear to do the best I can by her, for as long as she wishes me near.)

He kisses her, gentle and sweet, and rests his forehead against her again. "Are you ready?" he asks, soft. "Or shall we stay a little while longer?"

"We'd best go back, I wot." Just as soft, but with an undertone of practicality. "Before 'Bert and Alain start pacing a path in the floor. I'd not have them get in a fuss with Reepicheep over it, either."

She's fairly certain the Mouse would see any hint of doubt over her well-being as an insult to his king.

"But only if thee are ready, too."

"I am," he promises.

"And if you ever wish to return, only ask, Su. This land is open to you. And yours," he adds, though the mental image of Cuthbert surrounded by fauns and Alain standing silently with a herd of centaurs makes him smile.

For an instant, she imagines what Susannah would think of it all, and can't wait to tell her.

(MERRY and CHRISTMAS)

Susan smiles at him, sun-bright and cheerful, and keeps hold of one of his hands as she gets to her feet. "Drinian promised we could go sailing," she tells him, impishly. "So we have to come back."

"Well, that settles it," he laughs, as he lets her help him to his feet. "I can't disappoint Drinian. And just you wait; sailing on a ship like the Treader is nothing like sailing on the Hope. And you really must see Lantern Waste, one day."

To one side of them, he can hear the laughter and music and revelry in the vale. To the other – looking East –

– well, perhaps that door standing in the meadows has always been there.

"One day," she agrees, cheerful. Susan follows his glance to the door that's appeared from nothing and shakes her head, amused but unsurprised.

"Seems clear that's where we're meant to go, aye?"

"It does."

He takes a final glance over the fields and meadows of this world, the real Narnia, the true Narnia, where snow-capped mountains lift from one horizon and an endless sea stretches across the other, then smiles at her, the breeze tugging at his hair. "So I suppose we ought to go there."

He walks forward with her, then reaches for the handle and opens the door to let her step through first.

She smiles back at him and allows herself to draw a final quick breath of the fresh air of this place before she walks through the door into the quiet buzz of the bar at the end of the universe.

Cuthbert's seated at one end of the couch she usually chooses, a burning cigarette loose in his fingers, and Alain's in the armchair beside. As Susan steps onto the room's floor, 'Bert's head snaps up, his keen gaze fixing on them in an instant.

"Brace yerself," she murmurs to Caspian, and gives them both a smile and a wave.

As Caspian steps in and closes the door behind them, there's a scuffle over by the bar before Reepicheep comes leaping lightly over the bartop, ignoring the complaints of patrons as he jumps over their drinks, plates, and, in one instance, heads. He soars to the floor and hurries up to them, then bows low. "Sire," he says. "Daughter of Eve."

"Hello, Reep," Caspian says, fondly. He can't help himself; it soothes something deep inside his chest to be welcomed by his old friend, who has chosen to stay here with him rather than to wander the wonders of Aslan's country. He squeezes Susan's hand and gives her a wink. "Braced, and ready."

It would almost be a curtsey, the way she sinks down, except for how Susan stays settled in an easy crouch so as to be on the same level with the Mouse. "Sir Reepicheep," she says, and oh, but her voice is soft and warm, and her smile is free of any strain. "It's good to see ye again."

As he sees this, some indefinable tension in the set of Alain's shoulders relaxes. He murmurs something under his breath to Cuthbert, who grimaces but sits back on the couch rather than spring to his feet. Alain nods to him, then catches Susan's eye as soon as he can and tips his head to invite them over.

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