[au] Narnia and the North

[the_seafarer]

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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[the_seafarer]

He glances behind and ahead, but all he can see is the door leading to her own rooms.

The same rooms she'd fled in a blind panic, after waking from the Lion knows what visions and nightmares. Caspian tucks his arm about her more firmly, keeps his voice low and cheerful. "Well, Su, what do you say to staying in my rooms tonight? A little change of scenery might do you good."

[sai_delgado]

She stops walking and turns into him, wrapping her arms around his waist and burying her face in his shoulder.

Muffled --

"Thee very dear."

[the_seafarer]

He puts his arms around her and strokes his hand over her hair, gentle, before pressing a kiss to the crown of her head. "Stay with me," he murmurs, and hardly thinks about the way he might mean anything other than just for this night.

[sai_delgado]

She nods against his shoulder, then tips her head back to look up at him. Susan shifts just enough so that she can raise her hand to his cheek for a moment, brushing her fingertips lightly over his skin.

[the_seafarer]

He tips his head into her touch, then leans down to kiss her, very gently. "Come," he murmurs. "You can borrow something to wear, if you like."

She can wrap herself in one of his shirts, and curl into him, and if she wakes from a nightmare, he'll be there. He wishes he had been, this morning. "Are you tired, dear one?"

[sai_delgado]

"I shouldn't be, and well I kennit." Her admission is soft and sorrowful as she turns to walk with him. "Mayhap it'll pass."

[the_seafarer]

"It was a hard morning," he points out. "And a busy day after. And I know it's been harder and harder for you, these last weeks. I have to hope it will pass, and so I believe it will."

He can believe it easily enough for the both of them. She'll need all her energy and fortitude just to get through the next day.

[sai_delgado]

She nods, and stays silent for a few seconds, keeping pace by his side.

"I'm scared, Caspian." Barely a breath, barely a whisper, easy to miss or overlook. "I'd thought I were braver, but I'm scared."

[the_seafarer]

His arm tightens around her, and he can't keep from pressing his mouth to her hair. "My darling, you have been as brave as any knight, any king, any soldier I have ever known," he tells her, low but firm. "And braver than most. And they were all scared, too, I swear it. I know, you see, because I've so often been scared nearly witless, myself."

[sai_delgado]

He's right, and well she kens it, but still feels somehow that she should be able to do more.

"It's like the cold, I wot," she says, after a moment, thinking of Susannah.

(Empathica)

"It wears at ye."

[the_seafarer]

"Yes," he agrees, shepherding her gently toward the hall where his own rooms lie. "I suppose it does."

What comes to him is a memory of those long weeks in the doldrums, on the Treader when they'd had to ration the water and Eustace had at last snapped straight through.

[sai_delgado]

She sighs, soft and slow. "It'll be over soon enough."

One way or another, and oh, she's desperately afraid of what happens if she's not strong enough. She has to be, she has to.

"Thee are worried, I kennit."

[the_seafarer]

He doesn't try to dissuade her. "I am," he murmurs.

They draw level with his door; he doesn't let go of her, only searches out his key with a quick feel at his pocket and opens the door onto his own comfortably furnished quarters. "I'd begun to think – maybe it would be better simply to bring you and Alain and Cuthbert with me to Aslan's Country. Where it would be easier for you, at least."'

He ushers her inside, and closes and locks the door behind them, then sighs. "But I don't know that it wouldn't make things harder, in the end."

[sai_delgado]

Susan frowns a little in confusion. "How do'ee mean?" she coaxes, reaching up to brush her fingers through his hair.

[the_seafarer]

He shakes his head, but not hard enough to make her move her fingers. Caspian puts his arms around her waist, studying her sweet face.

"I have this dreadful suspicion," he says, very soft. "That this is one of those times when the only way to victory is to face the terrible thing head-on. Because if you make it through – when you make it through, you'll know it needn't have power over you. But I'd take this suffering from you in an instant, Susan, if I could."

[sai_delgado]

(you have to be able to stand)

She nods, and oh, but understanding is clear in the fog-gray eyes. "I know thee would." Soft and certain. "And thee are right, I wot. I don't kennit, why this is happening this way, but ka has its price and mayhap this is part."

Susan sighs. "They feel it too, do'ee ken? The shadow, and the pull."

[the_seafarer]

He presses a kiss to her forehead, then coaxes her to come further into his room, to sit on the edge of his bed. "Lucy and Edmund used to talk about something a little like that," he murmurs. "A pull, something telling them their time in Narnia was almost up. But that was to go home, not – "

He shakes his head and kneels before her, taking her hands carefully in his. Her scrapes and cuts have scabbed over, but he still kisses them gently, mindful of any soreness. "I'll help them, too," he swears. "And you'll all of you help each other, Su. And the morning will come, with a new day for us all."

[sai_delgado]

She doesn't resist as he draws her across the room, and sits where he guides her, listening. As he raises his head from her hands, she curls her fingers around his.

"Come whatever storms," she whispers. "Thee say true. And I'll not - I'll not give in, Caspian, as long as there's breath left to me, I'll not."

[the_seafarer]

"I know you will, dear one."

He thinks of the golden flashes he'd glimpsed on the other side of the door, and of the beloved face seen for a moment in the ship's cabin, and hopes; hopes. "What do you need, Susan? If it's in my power, I'll provide whatever it might be."

[sai_delgado]

A soft protest rises to her lips, the denial automatic, but Susan swallows it back and looks down at their hands.

“I’d not want to be more trouble to thee,” she murmurs, at last. “But if - I’d not wish to wake alone, or, or in the dark. Not this night.”

She worries at her lower lip with her teeth for a moment, then lets out a soft sigh and looks up at him. “It’s - I were asleep when they found me. Jonas and his harriers. It - it weren’t pleasant.“

(shine little sunbeam)

She shakes her head, just a little, and shifts tack.

“After, they dragged me back to Seafront and threw me in a storage room to wait. For the night and the Reap-Fire, although I didn’t kennit then. It were small, and dark. And - and when I woke this morn, it were - it were like—“

Words fail her, and she shakes her head again, leaving it at that.

[the_seafarer]

He nods and reaches up to cup her cheek with his hand. "You won't be alone, or in the dark," he promises. His thumb runs along the soft arch of her cheekbone as he considers.

"Lamplight?" he asks. "Candlelight? I've some of those – what's the word – electric lamps – "

Which he rarely uses, not being used to it, but had packed neatly away.

[sai_delgado]

“Silly, I wot. It’s not real now, and well I kennit. It just feels… strange. As if there’s something just out of sight, hidden in the glam.”

(pink everything were pink)

Susan shrugs, but then a small smile curves her mouth. “Thee has spark-lights? Trig of thee. Whatever’d let thee sleep, Caspian, I’d be fine with it.”

[the_seafarer]

"No fear, Su," he says, smiling for her. "I've slept in far worse conditions than a little friendly light."

He squeezes her knee, then rises and searches out a few hurricane lamps – oil, not electric – and lights them carefully. One he turns down to a warm glow, the flame hardly more than a line that looks more liquid than fire, and carries to the bedside table nearest the side where she'd slept before. Another, he sets on top of the sea-chest in which he keeps his books and more precious belongings; the last he leaves on the windowsill, letting the glass reflect the glow.

[sai_delgado]

She stays where she is and watches as he places the lamps—-

(spark-a-dark)

—-and when he turns back to her she’s smiling far warmer than before. “Thee very dear,” Susan tells him. “Do’ee even know it, how dear thee are to me?”

[the_seafarer]

His own smile crinkles the corners of his eyes, in an expression that – in this younger body – has not yet left the echoes of laughter and sunlight-squinting there. "I have my hopes," he tells her.

He's near enough to a chest of drawers; pulling out one, he searches a moment, then retrieves a neatly folded square of fabric in a soft off-white. Bringing it over to her, it's revealed as one of his own nightshirts, washed and worn and soft to the touch and smelling like his own clean self. "This will be too large for you, I know," he says, as he sits back beside her and offers her the clothing. "But comfortable."