Disclaimer: I don't own Narnia or its characters. Surprising, I know.

A/N: First Narnia fic, so be gentle. Don't you just hate it that the best ideas come and club you over the head when you're suppose to be doing something productive?

Pairings & Warnings: Susan/Caspian, but with a little Slash.

Forget Him

He found her curled in a window seat, pillows of every colour strewn around her, nose buried in a book.

Long dark hair fell about her shoulders and face, her expression as downcast as the stormy London weather beyond her window.

Peter made a small noise as he leant against the doorframe, and Susan looked up, her eyes distant and sparkling. It did not look as if she saw him at all.

"What are you reading, Susan?" Peter asked her quietly, as if he could not already see the cover of the book Susan held.

She made no move, but to turn her eyes to the insistent drizzle that traced cold droplets down the glass.

Peter made himself read the title, a strange sort of pang hitting him low in the gut.

Cinderella.

It was the same book that she had read many times since their return.

Peter gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head. He worried sometimes that he had lost her; if now she hurt too badly to ever truly live in the world of London; the world of war and of loss.

Narnia had been an escape for the siblings, somewhere they could leave smoggy, crowded London behind. He and Susan would have to face the rest of their lives without their magical world and all it held, no matter how much joy or pain they might encounter along the way.

More than anything now, Susan looked tired. She was pale and drawn, and beneath her eyes were purple smudges, where her uneasy and fitful nights were beginning to show. It had taken its toll on her, no matter how much Aslan thought her ready to give Narnia up.

Peter thought her a shadow of the strong and gentle sister who had ruled Narnia.

"Please, Su…" Peter began again, softly, though he paused when he saw her eyes close, and the shadow of a raindrop traced its way down his sister's pallid cheek.

"Happily Ever After, Peter. Princes and princesses have happily ever afters." She turned back to him with wide eyes so desolate he fought the urge to hug her. As she clutched the book to her chest, knees tucked away beneath her, and that look in her eyes, Peter could only see a disillusioned little girl.

He knew that when she read the fairytales, every prince had dark hair and soul-wrenchingly dark eyes. Every ball was full of dances with fauns and centaurs and courtiers.

"Why?" she breathed, her breath fogging the cold glass of the window for an instant before it faded into nothing.

The single word hung in the room, achingly heavy.

And Peter had no answer.

Susan did not cry, and this he recognised as a vestige of the brave Queen he had once known.

He could not tell her to let him go, to let it all go; for the boy with the raven locks was etched too deeply into her heart. Peter wished he could give her a fairytale ending, yet he could not.

Sometimes, he wished he could yell at her until she saw sense, his angry thoughts overriding his sympathy for his sibling. Forget him! For God's sake, just let him go!

Peter could not find it in is soul to be cruel enough to tell Susan to forget the Prince.

Leaving her there, to her books, her memories of a rich Telmarine accent, and a last, painful kiss, Peter could only feel a twinge of jealously.

At least she could express without ridicule her broken heart.