(no subject)

[called_lioness]

It's not an overly large house, in Finchley, but it's large enough to hold a family.

It doesn't, now, but it looks like it still could. There's enough rooms and enough furniture, and in one of those rooms there's a wardrobe, and when the door opens and she steps out, Lucy blinks, and starts to laugh.

Comments

[the_seafarer]

"It would never work," he half-laughs. "I haven't any idea what that might be, or where."

But he smiles at her, and shakes his head.

"No, thank you for taking me here. I always wanted to see your world--this London of yours, and I'm gladdened to have seen it with you."

[called_lioness]

"Well, I'm not sure the graveyard's all that exciting, but..." Lucy shrugs, and sticks her hands behind her back, making her way back to the gate.

"I'll miss it, admittedly. London, not the graveyard."

[the_seafarer]

"Ther was more to see than the graveyard," he reminds her, following. "Your house, and the streets, all the people here...it's marvelous. Those pictures of yours don't do it justice at all."

He pauses, just slightly, before catching up with her.

"You have already missed it. Lu..."

But there's nothing he wants to continue with, nothing he wants to tell her. There are of course, things he should tell her, that she doesn't have to miss it any longer, that she can stay now--

But Caspian is selfish, mayhap, and so says nothing, though what is left unsaid is left hanging in the air.

[called_lioness]

"Caspian..." and it's entirely possible she's rolling her eyes at him, for all she's smiling when she looks back.

"And yes, I've missed it. And I'll miss it when I can't come back. But--come on, I want to sit," she says finlly, deciding to do that before saying anything else, "and there's a bench up ahead."

[the_seafarer]

He makes a slight amused frown back at her, and directs his steps to the bench to take a seat with her.

He has also adopted a somewhat reluctant 'all-right-so-I'm-listening' expression.

"But what?"

[called_lioness]

"But I'm asking Adam to take it back, anyway," she answers, watching people walk past.

[the_seafarer]

"You still have time to decide," he reminds her, but his arm goes around her waist and a great deal of the stubborness has gone out of his voice. A middle-aged woman, walking by, sees them and smiles.

[called_lioness]

He's flicked, idly, for that, as she puts her head on his shoulder.

"Do you want me to stay, Caspian?"

[the_seafarer]

"...of course," he answers, a little surprised by the question.

"Aye. With all my heart I want you to stay. It'd be terribly lonely without you." A smile. "And Aslan only knows what the twins might do to me."

[called_lioness]

"Then if you think it would be lonely for you if I left," she asks, raising an eyebrow and resting chin on her fist, elbow on her knee, as she looks at him, "why on earth did you think that I'd want to leave, or that it might not be lonely for me to do so, when you were saying how it wouldn't be fair to ask me to stay?"

[the_seafarer]

He opens his mouth to answer, and closes it again, turning the question over in his mind.

"I wanted you to make your own choice," he says, finally. "Not because of what I wanted, or what you might have thought it would do to me. That if you stayed, it would not be because I asked, but because you wanted to. Because you decided to."

[called_lioness]

She smiles, a little, and closes her eyes at that.

"I want to stay with you. I don't want--I don't want to have to do everything that comes with that. But I want you most, and to stay with you. And that is what I'm going to do. Because it's what I decided. But you could ask me to stay anyway."

[the_seafarer]

A slight smile, at that, and he nods, once, twice.

"Then stay with me?"

He reaches out to run his hand over her shoulder, the back of her neck, down the curve of her back.

"For I don't know what I might do without you. Come back. Stay forever."

[called_lioness]

"I can manage that, I think," she promises, and smiles a bit more widely than she was. "Possibly even longer."

[the_seafarer]

He leans over to kiss her cheek, and when he sits back again, his smile is very bright.

"Then I am glad," simply, and then he laughs, less from mirth than from joy.

"Though we might be hard-pressed to find something longer than forever, even in Milliways."

[called_lioness]

"I'll just have to stay long enough to find out if there is or not, then, won't I?" she says cheerfully. "It's an important question that needs answering and all."

[the_seafarer]

"I'll be around when you find the answer," he promises, grinning. "The the twins will be long grown up, with children of their own to torment me."

Raising her hand, he kisses the back of it lightly, and looks down the street.

"Shall we stay here for a while, or be on our way?"

[called_lioness]

"And they shall learn to love you, I'm certain, as much as their grandmothers did," she laughs, and then it fades, for all she's still smiling, as her eyes close again.

"Just stay here a little while longer. And--and then I think I need a few moments alone before I go home. But for now, just a little bit longer?" Because it does smell different, and not very good, really, and there's noise and crowds and it's London--and that's really it. It's London, and it was home, and right now, she thinks a few more minutes in it with his shoulder under her head are all she wants.

[the_seafarer]

He nods, and wraps his arms around her waist, and watches the world that he knows so little of move by--people walking, cars rushing, horns and laughter and talk and wind.

But Lucy feels the same in his arms, and he'll be waiting for her when she makes her own way back, so for now, they can sit, and talk a little, and mostly be silent until it is time to make their way back to the house.