Second Youth
Pairing: Susan/Caspian
Rating: K+
'Verse: AU, Futurefic, movie-verse.
Summary: Caspian and Susan get a second chance at a future together.
A/N: This was written quite some time ago. It was meant to be a multi-chapter fic, but... I never finished it. I know for sure now that I'm not ever going to, sadly, but I thought this could be enjoyed by some for what it is: an intriguing fragment. I also gave Ramandu's daughter a name: Estelle (latin for star).
Caspian remembered those nights of jasmine-scented darkness; a jasmine summer, he'd called it, and he remembered the dull forest greenery and the scarlet blood that had spurted out of tender veins like water from a sieve. The only thing that remained elusive was her–he remembered her less, with each passing year, so that eventually she'd become a shadow who lived on at the twilight edge of those dark evenings in his memory.
The young days, the early springs of youth, were, of course, the most poignant season in a man's life. Emotions ran wilder, freer and he could still feel (a little) what it had felt like then, to be young and alive, and have the blood running hot and fast, like a siren's song, in his veins. Everything came easily to the young: movement, grace, words and, above all, love. Love made everyone a fool, but, if you were lucky, it could deliver you to someone who loved you in return, enough to stay by you even as the first blush of youth had faded from your cheeks.
He hadn't known that then–that love was something that bloomed over time, and wasn't just blind lust or infatuation, but was something deeper and richer that took a quiet, plaintive hold over the heart. But, even so, he'd never forgotten that kiss; her face, her form might be a hollow vessel, but, even after, he had known that he had never felt as alive as in those moments when she had cradled his face in her hands, her tear-stained cheeks brushing his...
But illicit passion, even unconsummated, was the province of the foolish and the young. It was not practical, he thought, and it wasn't the first time in his life that his mind wandered along the familiar, cynical avenues: why must life be so difficult and disappointing? Perhaps he should be thinking happier thoughts this close to death, but he was old now and he had earned, he believed, the right to be bitter and long for the simple, heavenly days of yesteryear, when he had still been able to mount a horse and wield a sword heavier than a child's wooden play stick.
He shifted in his sick bed, then, and waved off the surgeons and holy men who had gathered close.
"Close the curtains," he said and was appalled at his soft, dull voice.
Two servants, and his heir, obeyed him. His heir, the Prince Rilian; how sickly his son looked now, in the candle-lit gloom, with pale, sweat-slicked skin and shadows underneath his eyes. He won't much outlive me, Caspian thought and, with a moaning cry, he stretched out his hand towards his son, but the black, velvet curtains had been already drawn around the bed, leaving Caspian alone, divorced from the world with only his dreamy, feverish thoughts to sustain him in his final moments.
His mind began to wander over the old terrain of his young days; by some sort of tacit agreement between mind and memory, his thoughts shied away from the dreadful topic of his son's illness. Instead, he thought of his murdered father (hardly an improvement) and, unbidden, his father's voice floated into his mind: the past is a foreign country, son, they do things differently there. And so it was with youth, Caspian knew at last, and with his childish infatuation for Susan ( yes, think of pretty, witty Susan!). He pressed on, riding the past like a wave as he thought about old passions turned to dust with the passage of time and, yet, they lived on; a strange yearning lived inside his bones, like a sun-warmed stone at midnight, and all he had to do was think of Susan and their summer of stolen glances to feel the ghostly echo of past heat. It hadn't been love, of course, but so often in life it was the missed opportunities that fueled desire and obsession; the road not taken, for Caspian, had always been seductive, infinitely alluring.
Susan represented such a fork in the path of his life; when she had left, she had left forever, and that future was indelibly closed to him. He'd constructed his life, then, out of different parts: from his short marriage to the Star Queen, and to their birth of their only child, Rilian. Caspian had ruled Narnia as an exemplary High King and he had loved his wife, fiercely, and it had destroyed him when she'd died: his darling Estelle had laid out in black on the Royal funeral pyre and Caspian had known then what it felt like to have one's soul cleaved into halves. But that was almost forty years ago; he knew that, in death, Estelle was where she had always wanted to be, with her father in the heavens, looking down on the imperfect human lives below. He had loved Rilian, too, and perhaps that had been the best thing of all to come from his and Estelle's love. Caspian had adored his son dearly, and had done everything for that beautiful boy...
"Close the curtains," he whispered and then realized that the curtains were already closed. Susan; Peter; Estelle; Aslan; your uncle, Miraz... What had he been thinking about? The old days, certainly–before everything had become marred with bitterness and stained with the sun-dried greys of sadness. Everything changed, Caspian knew, and somehow, he too had changed without realizing it; where was that courageous, handsome boy who'd fought so hard to obtain a crown?
Gone, gone, gone... He sighed, noisily, and his thoughts descended into a whirl of chaos; his body, feeble and useless, was wracked by shivers and spasms that made his teeth rattle so hard that he accidentally bit clean through his tongue, drawing a swell of blood into his mouth.