called_lioness | (no subject)

"Would you not have wanted to be there?"

He watches her, leaning back on one hand while the other strokes lightly over the hair tucked behind her ear.

She's quiet for several moments before saying, "I don't know. I'm...I'm very happy for them, and I wouldn't wish it otherwise, but I don't know that if it had been different that I would have felt comfortable, or...I did love him, you know," she says finally, looking at the ceiling. "Still do, really, though not in the same way. And it's good, the way it is. Sometimes I think about--about why it ended, though, and it hurts, a bit. Not like it did, but a bit. And I think it might have hurt, if it had been something I'd thought about for a very long time before it happened."

"I see," says Caspian, and he does, and maybe thinks for a moment of a girl with the beauty of a star, and maybe he thinks for a moment of a girl who knew him by his colour, and never told him what it was.

And then the moments pass, and he is only watching Lucy again.

"It would be hard."

Her eyes are bright for a moment, and then she blinks them and they're not as she smiles at him.

"Right, mind you. She's good for him. He's good for her. I was happy for them, and I am. Sometimes I just--I wish anyway, I suppose."

"Wish it hadn't ended?"

There is, of course, that old tang of jealousy that arises whenever Lucy talks about Adam to Caspian, but it is very old, and not terribly strong, and he asks merely because he wants to understand.

And because, when all is said and done, Adam has married Alanna.

And Lucy has come home to him.

"Oh..." Lucy blows the hair out of her face as she thinks it over. "I don't know that I really wish it hadn't ended. I might never have been with you, after all. I just...wish I hadn't known what he was thinking when he ended it, wish I'd never gotten on a train," waving her hand, "to chase an apparition, wish I'd known I was dead and saved us both the grief. All sorts of things."

"I think," he replies, mock-seriously, "that it would rather certain that if you were still with Adam, you would not, in fact, be with me."

And then his smile fades a little, and he moves his hand to take one of hers.

"I wished that I'd arrived here sooner. Though it may not have made any difference, I suppose."

"And that," she laughs (but means it) "would be horrid. He snores more than you, for one."

She squeezes his hand and props herself up to look at him, smiling a little. "Oh, I don't know. Would you have told me you felt anything but friendship for me, anyway?"

His fingers lace through hers securely, and he looks thoughtful.

"I don't know. It seemed as though you didn't feel the same way, after all, and I certainly wouldn't have wanted to intrude on your relationship with anyone else."

And he smiles, a little.

"And I wouldn't have met Ivy, then, either. And I'm not certain I would have wanted that, despite what happened after."

She squeezes his hand at that. "So perhaps it's good that you came when you did. Though I do wish," dryly, "you'd told me about her before I met her. And being married rather made you out of bounds, you know."

"Being married? Lucy," he says, reproachfully.

"My wife had been dead for ten years, and anyway, I was dead as well. And I'm sorry I hadn't told you."

He lies back now, himself, thinking back and speaking quietly.

"I hadn't ever though she would return, you know. And it was much harder to talk about her than I perhaps anticipated."

"I can imagine," Lucy says after a moment, smiling a bit. "It's all right, either way."

She leans over him and shrugs, a little. "I wasn't entirely certain that you both being dead wouldn't be like you both being alive. I'd never had to think out the way marriages work that often, and I didn't know if the vows you made included the 'til death do us part' bit or not." She may have thought this out a few times, admittedly.

It's a moment where she blinks and then starts giggling. "Oh Aslan. I'm so glad I'll not have to explain this relationship to my father. I just thought of his face if he'd found out I'd ever gone out with a man who'd been married when I was in London."

"He would not have approved of me?"

Caspian tilts his head back to smile at her.

"Or of the situation, only? And--"

He hesitates, though only briefly.

"I have only seen my wife once since she was killed, when Susan and I went to Aslan's Country. There was no question, then...that is, she understands," he finishes, somewhat lamely.

"She knew, anyway."

She drops a kiss to his forehead, simply because she can.

"Well, of the situation I'm rather certain he wouldn't have, and I'm not certain he would have seen past that. Of you? I don't know. Do fathers ever like anyone their daughters are involved with?" she grins and pushes his hair back. "I think you would have liked him, though. I rather think the two of you would have found things to talk about."

Lucy continues to stroke his hair for a moment before answering, "I'm very glad of that. It would be rather difficult otherwise."

"It would," he agrees, and closes his eyes as her lips touch his forehead. His hand smoothes up her back.

"And I'm sure I would." He opens his eyes to look back up at her. "Tell me about him?"

"Oh..." She frowns, a little.

"I look like him, a bit. So does Peter. We took more after him than Mum. His name was John, and he taught, until the war started, and after it. He told me when I was little that I finished off the family rather nicely, which is why I didn't have a younger sibling. He was an officer in the Royal Navy, and he wrote letters to Mother every night. She kept his picture by her bed. He laughed a great deal, and he sang us to sleep, and when he came home...when he came home, we all cried, and I heard him tell Mother he barely recognized us all, and I realized I hadn't seen him for years, and then I realized that for me it had been nearly twenty years since I'd seen him. It was strange," she finishes, slowly.

"Was he different than you remembered?"

He's curious. After all, his father never came home at all.

"Perhaps he didn't recognize you all. I imagine none of you were quite the same as you had been, then."

"No. I don't think he did," she says quietly. "Peter, perhaps. Maybe Susan. They were at least a bit grown up before he left. Ed and I'd been far younger, and I think the years had changed us more. But all of us--I don't know. I barely thought about him in Narnia. I don't know that I could have told you his name, or not without thinking, after a bit, but I don't think anyone ever asked, for that matter." She laughs, and tucks her hair behind her ear. "I sound horrid, don't I? But--when we came back--I missed him when I thought about it. But I'd spent most of my life without him. I think if we'd never left it would have felt different. I was glad for him to be home, but--I didn't really know him at all at that point. I don't suppose he was much different. I think he looked far more tired and older than his picture did."

"Wars change us all."

"You're right, though, I think," he continues, after a moment. "That I would have liked him. I believe I would. And you don't sound horrid at all. I never thought much about my own parents until I was much older, you know. And even then it wasn't until I met Lord Bern that I really started to wonder about them, what they must have been like."

"So I've learned." She smooths his shirt for a moment, absently. "I think he might even have liked you. Eventually, anyway. As long as he never knew that you'd been married or had a son or quite how old you are. I'm certain Mum would've. Lord, if you'd been in London, she would have fussed over you." The shirt's smoothed again before she reaches up and traces his features with his fingertips. "They must have been lovely, your parents."

"Doctor Cornelius liked them."

His free hand comes up to cover hers, and he turns his head to kiss her fingertips, as she had his a moment ago.

"He said that my mother was the only Telmarine to be kind to him. I wonder why my uncle let him come back to teach me, if the Doctor had been so close to my parents--or to my mother, at least."

"Well, if he liked them they must have been lovely," she says reasonably, with a faint smile, brushing his cheek with the back of her fingers. "Perhaps your uncle wasn't utterly horrible."

"Do you know, I'm not certain still that he was."

He smiles a little, and leans up to kiss her lightly.

"Perhaps I only want to think that. After all, it was a very long time ago, and I was still very young, then--but it eases my mind to think that there might have been some less horrid part of him. I don't quite believe that there was, but I suppose it doesn't really matter now, does it?"

"It might. A little," she murmurs. "After all, he didn't kill you when you were an infant, and it might not be much, but it is something." And it's a rather morbid train of thought, so she leans down and cups his face in her hands and kisses him again, a bit more firmly than the last kiss. "All this talk and I've not give you your presents," she says with a smile when she pulls away.

Caspian doesn't say he needed an heir and he doesn't mention how Miraz planned to kill him later, and instead only smiles, and kisses her back.

"I like talking with you," he says, firmly, resting on hand at the small of her back. "It is a continual surprise." But he smiles back and moves to sit up with her.