can't remember to forget you [lipstick and lions]

[calledmegentle]

She doesn't let them have time alone together, usually. Always makes sure there's some sort of crowd nearby-- her family or the Friends or the people attending the party she's dragged him off to.

Because if she's with him, then the memories she tries to keep buried fight all the more harder to remember, and when she's alone with him, things get even worse.

But she can't stop it. There are simply moments when they can't help but end up alone together-- like this one here, with the two of them almost touching hands as he walks her home. The moonlight makes the park they're cutting through look almost like another world, and she can't be angry, at this moment. Can't not let the love she still feels-- towards the man at her side, towards the land they've both left behind, even towards the Lion that brought them here-- bubble forth.

Her hand lifts to touch his elbow softly,"Caspian. Can we stop a moment?"

Comments

[adexuate]

Parks have always felt just a bit easier to breathe in. Yes, he loved desperately the few times they'd taken him to the shore, to see the sea of the world he had come to live in with them. But it was parks he'd come to feel the most settled in, no matter who was with him.

And usually it was a cluster of people. Usually there was a handful of Friends or a pack of people he still didn't really know but watched with fascination as they fluttered around Susan. It was always just a bit better when, somehow, he could walk quietly past trees with Peter's voice in his ears, or Edmund's arm around his shoulders, or Lucy's hand tight in his.

Or Susan's simple, overwhelming presence beside him, although that came most rarely of all.

And it never lasts long. It's almost startling that she touches his arm; that she asks to stop. "--is-- everything all right?"

[calledmegentle]

"Everything's-- fine."

Or, well, as fine as this sort of thing could be. Maybe that wasn't quite the accurate response.

Still, she keeps her hand on his arm, entirely unable to pull away now that she's touching him.

"I just-- wanted to talk for a little while."

Here, away from everyone's prying eyes. Here, in a place that's the closest thing to Narnia England can have.

[adexuate]

There are so few things he'd ever deny her. This--a moment alone, a moment breathing together in air the smelled like grass and trees and only distantly of metal.

It takes a moment before he settles into the thought, shifts to get her arm properly through his.

"Of... of course, Susan."

[calledmegentle]

"Thank you."

Because it's so much better, being able to walk with her arm in his. So much easier to breathe, even when the words she's been struggling to say catch a bit in her throat before slipping out.

"...I... I do-- remember." Narnia. She still can't say the name, even if she can make the confession, "I'm... quite certain you know that, but-- I do."

[adexuate]

He had walked with her the night before his coronation. He had held her arm in his just like this, and felt the deepest comfort simply from the weight of her fingers over his. It's amazing, how much he feels it again now, even though her breath is catching softly around words he doesn't know if he wants to hear.

But then she does speak. His heart stops just for a moment. Because knowing it wasn't the same as hearing her say it, the way she had almost--almost--done when he first arrived.

"...you do."

[calledmegentle]

"Yes."

And it's hesitant. It's soft. It's entirely impossible for her to meet his eyes as she says it.

"Much-- much though it pains me to."

[adexuate]

There's a bench to direct them toward. There's a compulsive need to keep her arm tight and safe in his.

"I only-- wish it was not such a painful thing, Susan."

That Narnia could give her comfort. Strength.

[calledmegentle]

She settles onto the bench when he guides them there. Her arm will stay resting on his even as they sit.

"How can it not be?" she asks him softly, "I gave her everything, Caspian. My heart, my blood, my life-- fifteen years of work, and for what? To be sent back like a wayward child? To be forced back into the body of a girl and told I am too old for the land I grew up in? How can that not be painful?"

[adexuate]

It feels like a good sign that she's the one who brought it up. It feels like a good sign that she's still holding his arm; that she's talking about it at all.

"But you... you left something beautiful." And he knows, somehow, it isn't enough. That her anger is a more complicated beast than all that. "You saved Narnia. And... and Narnia grew. Took its own legs."

Wasn't it like a mother letting a child run on its own?

[calledmegentle]

It was, perhaps. But was losing Narnia not like a mother losing her own child too soon?

"We weren't-- finished." And that's the most difficult part of all this really. That there hadn't been enough time for her siblings to complete what they had wanted for Narnia. That there hadn't been enough time for her to let go.

That there hadn't been enough time for the two of them to understand better whatever it was between them.

"We were-- ready to lay down our lives for her. Had gotten so close to doing so, so many times. We were ready to leave a more lasting legacy-- we left behind people we loved Caspian, that first time around. And he said we were too old when we came to help you? He could have let us live and die there as we wished to, and then age would have been no trouble for us."

There wouldn't be this pull of being so many years older than they seemed. There wouldn't be this ache of loving one world while living in another.

[adexuate]

He doesn't have answers for her. He doesn't know why the Lion had decided to keep two of His best warriors so far from their true home. He doesn't know why He would have given Peter and Susan this terrible mandate without also giving them the serenity to not be this wracked with pain over it.

He hopes, desperately, that actually speaking about it helps. That maybe some piece of her finding her centre will come with the comparative safety of having him to speak with rather than only her siblings.

"It's... difficult to see His will, I suppose."

[calledmegentle]

"Damn His will," comes her harsh reply, "Either He should have let us stay there, or He should never have let us go there in the first place. His will has given my family nothing but grief, while we have given Him everything."

And there, really, is the core of her anger. It's hard not to be angry at a god you gave your all to and got nothing from in return.

[adexuate]

The flinch can't be helped. Even in this world, where it was so much harder to hear the fall of padded feet and the rustle of a mane in the wind, the blasphemous malediction stung deep. The fact she was so lost to this hurt perhaps stung even worse.

His hand can't let go of hers. His hope can't let him turn away.

"Your time there was only grief?"

[calledmegentle]

"It's been tainted with it, now that we're forbidden from returning."

Which isn't quite the same thing, she'll eventually admit. It doesn't change the fact that it still hurts.

[adexuate]

Exhaling comes slowly. It takes a moment to recover, to pull himself back up from the roughness of the moment previous.

"For now." His other hand finds the one of hers he's already holding. His entire being folds slightly in the need to press her fingers briefly to his forehead. "But I-- cannot believe that those who love you would want you only to remember them with anger and hurt."

[calledmegentle]

It's one of those things that she'd not thought about for the pain of things. It's one of those things she can't help but think about now, when he's offering her the soft reminder and his touch brings to mind the fact that there's at least one-- and really, four-- people here she had loved there and hadn't left behind.

Her breath comes out shaky as she squeezes his hand tentatively, her own shoulders slumping.

"...No. I suppose that's-- quite true."

[adexuate]

He's not certain what it is, but something in her words sets his heart calm again. There's something like acceptance in them. Something like understanding.

It doesn't matter, perhaps, if he understands or not. It only matters that she's not holding herself so tightly.

"I'm sorry if it isn't enough."

[calledmegentle]

"It isn't quite, yet."

But-- and she's surprised at the fact that there is a but. That the ache has eased just enough for her to allow there to be.

"But... Perhaps someday."

Perhaps someday it will be enough to get her speaking the name of the land she left behind. Will get her forgiving the Lion that had made her doing the leaving.

Will have her heart finally completely at peace.

[adexuate]

It's only a someday. It's only a perhaps. It still lightens his heart immeasurably, somehow, to know she's let even the spark of possibility into her heart.

He can't quite smile. He can only duck his head again, hands squeezing hers tight, and brush an entirely careful kiss against her knuckles.

"Then we'll wait."

He would wait. He suspected her siblings, for all their hurt and quiet, had already been waiting. He knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that those left behind in Narnia would wait.

[calledmegentle]

Her other hand lifts, touches his cheek briefly, carefully.

"...Thank you."

For waiting. For hoping. For believing in her as she had in him a lifetime and a world ago.

[adexuate]

The piece of him which can't help but be a young man in love would wait a thousand lifetimes to feel again her fingers brush against his cheek, just like that. The heart of him which can't help but be a king, no matter how far off from his kingdom, would hope until every world had been lost for the happiness of this lost queen.

"It is nothing but my fondest pleasure, Susan."

[calledmegentle]

"I can't imagine that's true," she says with a bemused shake of her head.

How can helping someone who had fought against it so be a pleasure, after all?

"But it's kind of you to say, and kinder still for you to do."

[adexuate]

"You can't imagine the comfort and joy hope gives me, then."

Because even when he didn't understand--even when she was laughing with that sharp twist on the laugh he loved so dearly, thousands of miles away in her eyes and scores of bodies between them--she gave him hope. She always had.

[calledmegentle]

"It is a good thing to have," she assures him, squeezing his hand again gently, "I wish I were so lucky as to possess it the way you do."

Because her hope is so, so very quiet now, if it exists still at all.

[adexuate]

His smile is entirely faint; the squeeze of her fingers in response is light. It's got to be a careful thing, still, no matter how much they've now stumbled forward.

"You may yet, Susan."

[calledmegentle]

"Perhaps," she says softly.

She almost, almost hopes so.

[adexuate]

It's enough. It's got to be enough for now.

So he'll simply lean back and let it breathe between them for a bit. Lift his gaze to the sky and enjoy the dim stars he can see.

"Let... me know when you want to go home."

[calledmegentle]

"Not just yet," she says, her own gaze lifting briefly to the stars, "It's... much nicer here."

[adexuate]

"...it is."

Mostly because it was more like Narnia, true. Partly because it was more time with her.

Certainly because there was little that trees and stars didn't make better.

[calledmegentle]

There was. All this time away from home hadn't changed that. All this time denying the truth of who she was couldn't make it any less so.

Sitting here, at his side and beneath the trees and stars, she almost feels Gentle again.