the_seafarer | [au] Narnia and the North

[au] Narnia and the North

There's a chill bite to the air, these days. The horses have been growing out their winter coats, and they look shaggy and plump as Caspian turns them out into the paddocks. Behind the stables, in the makeshift woodshop he'd cobbled together, the sleigh from his drawings is starting to come together.

He hopes he'll have it finished by Christmas. With a little luck, and maybe some assistance, he thinks it should be possible. The tack, he's largely left up to Susan's devices, though he'd commission Gimli the dwarf for the various buckles and other metal pieces they'll need.

Once the horses are turned out, he gets to his other morning chores with a will, whistling cheerfully as he does. The stable stays strangely quiet around him. It takes him the better part of an hour to realize the strangeness is because he's become accustomed to Susan's cheerful presence working alongside him, talking or humming or simply working in companionable silence.

Caspian pauses in his task – refilling the grain chest – and looks around. Susan's nowhere to be seen, and when he later wanders through the stables, checking each stall and outside, he can't find her there, either.

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His arm tightens around her in reflex, and he casts a quick glance down at her, at the way her hand tightens in his shirt. But then she sits up, holding herself straight, and Caspian's heart aches at her bravery, her determined cheerfulness.

"A little tea wouldn't go amiss," he tells her. Little as he wants her to be away from him, he knows now he must speak with the gunslingers. "Reep, won't you go and help her?"

"Of course, Sire." The Mouse bounds from the armchair and stands nearby, politely waiting for Susan.

"Ye might as well bring a pot's worth," Alain tells her, and she almost wants to cry at the kindness in his eyes. Susan's smile trembles for an instant, but she firms it and gives him a nod. "Aye, then I will," she says. "'Bert, will'ee have the same, or would'ee rather coffee?"

"Tea's fine, Sue," he promises. "We'll wait right here for you."

She takes a deep breath and quickly gathers the glasses onto the tray before she stands up with it and looks down at the Mouse. "Lead on, an'ye would," she says. "That'll keep the way clear."

Caspian smiles back at her, but it fades as she picks up the tray and follows Reepicheep back across the room toward the bar, where Eddie is wiping down another glass.

"Well, fellows," he says, on a quiet breath out, and looks to Alain and Cuthbert. For the first time, though he doesn't think of it that way, as though they're on equal standing. "Things are easier in Aslan's country, and clearer, too, but I think we can all see that hasn't lasted as long as I might have hoped."

"Not your fault, I wot," Alain murmurs. "We'd all hoped with ye it'd be enough." His speech patterns shift back and forth between the speech of Gilead and the Mejis dialect with thoughtless ease.

"But it's not." Cuthbert picks up the thread from Alain seamlessly. "So that brings us to the matter of what we're going to do about it."

"I know you've had some thought on that," Caspian says. His anger with Roland hadn't abated, but some part of it has been replaced by a deep, oceanic grief for Alain and Cuthbert.

Roland had been their – their High King. Even if they'd wished it, they couldn't have returned for her. And now he's gone, but all the scars of his presence are still here. "Eddie spoke of it, a little, when I asked. But I'd hear of if it on your own words, if you will."

"Did he." Cuthbert throws a swift glance Eddie's way, then sighs and turns back to them. "Well, since we're not like to have much time, I'll make it quick. Alain and I are going to take her into the forest tomorrow."

There's a hint of challenge in his tone and in the set of his jaw. "It's said if you go far enough in, you'll reach the Dream-lord's realm. Either way, we'll go as far as we can, and keep watch with her until dawn."

"I asked him," Caspian says, as easily as he can. "For it needn't be a secret from me, I hope."

Cuthbert will, he thinks, always push at him. He supposes that has to do with Roland's loss, as well – someone must step in as commander. "It'll be a cold night in the woods, this time of year, don't you think?"

"Don't see how it could be," Alain puts in, easily. "Considering."

Cuthbert nods to him, but doesn't let his gaze waver from Caspian. "Aye, it will, but we're prepared for it."

"Are you?"

Cuthbert and Alain are desperate to keep her safe, to keep her here with them, and so is Caspian, but he's not haunted by the mistakes of the past, by having failed her once before.

But he's been a commander, himself, and it won't hurt Cuthbert to push him back, just a little. "What will you do, if a frost comes? Build a fire?"

Cuthbert's eyes narrow sharply. Seeing this, Alain cuts in. "Pretty sure ye ken why that wouldn't be the best idea."

His tone is mild.

"I do," Caspian tells him. Tells them both. He considers them: Cuthbert with his tight jaw, Alain with his lazy voice and keen glance. Both of them trying their best.

He'd have deferred to them, before. But no longer. Though they may not stand ka-tet, still they're in this together. "I'm also not certain a night spent out in the forest, dwelling on the past, will help as much as you hope."

"Better than the alternative." His jaw's so tight it's aching, but Cuthbert Allgood keeps a grip on his temper as well as he can. This man means something to Susan, and he's done for her today what she desperately needed. They owe him for that. "Either of them."

Caspian nods. "Yes," he says, because he can give the man that much, and more. He suspects Cuthbert would prefer to spit in the face of his sympathy, but he feels it all the same. "But there's another alternative."

He looks back and forth between them. "The tree-sisters' garden."

Alain sits back in his chair and gives a finger-twirl as he studies Caspian. "Say on."

"It's a place she knows, where she feels safe."

His glance flicks up to find Susan, where she's chatting with Eddie, Reepicheep up on the bar beside her. "That's where I found her this morning. Nothing can get into that garden that the tree-sisters don't wish to be there. And the seasons are slower there. It's still warm as early summer."

He looks from Cuthbert to Alain and back again. "The tree-sisters understand grief, and loss. They know what's required for healing. They'd take you in. All of you."

Caspian takes a quick breath. "All of us."

Cuthbert stares at him incredulously. "You think you're coming with us?"

Caspian meets that incredulous glance head-on, his own chin lifted and his eyes clear and steady, and there's some echo in him of the way he'd cowed Reepicheep once before; of the man who'd walked among his subjects earlier this same night as they bowed.

"Yes," he says, simply. "And if what you want is to help her, you'll not refuse another person to support her."

Unless it isn't about her, at all.

If Cuthbert decides to push, really push, Caspian thinks this is the moment where he'll do it. He also thinks Alain will wait to see how the wind's blowing, as it were, before he weighs in, but he's been wrong about the gunslinger before.

Cuthbert stares at him a few seconds longer, considering. Beside him, Alain's studying Caspian with that way of his that gives a person the sense of being weighed and measured.

He deliberately breaks his regard for a necessary second in order to turn and look at Eddie, and is unsurprised to find Eddie looking back at him.

(Cuthbert and Eddie are twins)

Keep her there, he conveys, with a pointed glance at Susan, and Eddie tips his head back in a nod of acknowledgement before he grins at something she says. Cuthbert turns back to face Caspian.

"I'll not argue that this garden of yours sounds like a much better option than chancing the whims of the woods," he allows. "So say thankya for that. But it's not only support in numbers we're dealing with here. No offense--"

Not that that's likely, but it's worth trying.

"-- but whatever she's told you about what happened, it's not the same as having gone through it. You really think it's a good idea to make her have to pretend everything's fine tomorrow? She doesn't need that, and she won't have to do it with us."

Edited 2023-02-23 05:48 (UTC)

"She needn't do it with me, either," Caspian points out. "I said nothing about pretending everything is fine."

Some of this is his own fault, he supposes. Every story he's told them has been one that ended happily, and he'd glossed over the worst parts. Even the rebellion, his uncle, the murder of his parents... he can see how these boys believe he'd have no understanding of what tomorrow means, of what it will bring. "Eddie told me this is something you did with Roland, to help him. I never met the man, but from everything I've heard – "

– and he's heard more than enough to form an opinion, and not a flattering one, at that –

" – Susan isn't much like him."

A sharp, bitter bark of laughter escapes him before he can stop it, and he feels Alain's quick worried glance cut to him. "You're right about that."

Roland's absence aches like something's been torn out of him. It always will, he suspects. Even as he makes himself master the pain, biting down on it the way they'd been taught to bite on leather when dealing with a wound, he remembers a day months back and Susan's unhappy words--

(he told me I were everything the Way of the Eld was not)

--remembers how she'd been miserable enough to think she needed to learn the gun, that she couldn't be part of their tet without it, and remembers how he had finally been able to convince her otherwise... and how relieved she'd been.

What followed hadn't been the first time or the last that he'd clashed with Roland over Susan for her sake. Cuthbert knows he'll always, always

(Roland's love is my love)

do what's needful to protect and care for her, and if that means shaking some sense into this man who, whatever he thinks he knows, can't possibly understand the depths of everything that happened that day, then he'll do it.

"I'd speak plain, sai," he says. Cuthbert's careful to work to keep his tone pleasant, but it's very level now. "You're right that Susan and Roland aren't the same. That's not the point. Don't think we're not grateful for everything you've done for her today, either. But Reap-Tide's bearing down on us, and what she's going to need tomorrow are those who understand what she's going through, and not to have to worry about those she cares about who don't."

"Speak as plain as you like, sir."

He keeps his voice down – the very last thing he needs is for Reepicheep to catch wind of some insult to him and take matters into his own paws – but the words are sharp. "If you think me some soft and sheltered fool who has never known pain and loss and grief – and, aye, guilt – "

– And at this he flashes a cutting, knowing glance at them both, for even if they'd only been taking orders from their High King, their dinh, still they'd done so, and let her burn –

" – you know little enough of me I expect I can hardly take insult, for it's my own fault and no one else's, but I have loved – and lost – and grieved more than you can even imagine."

There's a hard look in the sea-gray eyes now, one that promises he'll rise to whatever argument Cuthbert wishes, and willingly.

(he’d speak sharp when he thought it were needed, and more)

"Do not deign to explain the lady to me. Have you even thought to ask her what it is she needs? Or only decided you know best?"

Edited 2023-02-23 15:10 (UTC)

Color drains from Cuthbert's face, and he takes a harsh breath, but Alain sits forward before he can speak. "We'd meant to talk with her about it today," he points out, his easy tone a deliberate contrast to the other two.

Mayhap they've underestimated this man, Alain thinks, for there's nothing of the merry fellow he's known all this time about Caspian now, and quite a lot more hinted at beside.

"You'd know as well as we do why that didn't happen, obviously. We've all her best interest at heart, aye?"

There's still tension in his jaw, strung painfully hard along his neck to his shoulder, but he glances at Alain and deliberately leans back against the couch, ceding the point. "That," he agrees, "we all have in common, yes."

"Aye," Cuthbert grits out, and Alain allows himself a flicker of relief. They're not free and clear yet, but there's a chance this'll not come to blows or worse here and now.

He keeps more of his attention on Caspian, being attuned enough to 'Bert that he'll sense his movement in the second before it's happening. Sometimes that's not enough, as the both of them ken all too well, but here it should be.

"We've kept this quiet for a reason." He hadn't intended to explain before, neither of them had, but it's come to it and all that's left is to ride through. Alain flicks a cautious glance in Susan's direction and is relieved to see that Eddie's still managing to keep her distracted. "There's many here who'd be wanting to help, if word got out. Who'd want to surround her with familiar faces, for comfort. And Sue's gentle; she'd not want to make them feel bad by turning them away. But if this - if tomorrow takes her the way it might, she'll not know them save as those who turned against her before."

His brows draw together in a flicker of a frown. "And you?" he asks.

"Will she see you for who you truly are, or as the crowd that murdered her?"

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