Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me.

Crossing Time

Words: 400-500

Prompt: A memory

Extra: It must be written in the third person from Caspian's point.

He sometimes wondered if he was insane.

It wouldn't be unlikely; after all, he did live through a war, and he had always been told that wars could sometimes mess people up in the head.

But this…this was hell. War had been a different kind of hell. This was a new hell, designed with Caspian X's specific unending torture in mind. He knew that she had been there, along with her siblings; the people still spoke of their bravery as if they were gods rather than children younger than he was.

He knew she had left. A heart-wrenching farewell that had the entire kingdom in tears over the loss of their Kings and Queens of old. Late at night, he'd stay up remembering that moment, when she threw caution to the winds and swept him up in a beautiful but horrifically brief kiss that burned him from his lips to his toes.

But it seemed as if no one else remembered this happening. Whenever he'd mention it to Trumpkin, the red dwarf would glance down at perpetually muddy boots and abruptly change the subject. This would happen with Reepicheep, Trufflehunter, and even Doctor Cornelius, his mentor. They would look to the ground in shame, and change the subject, embarrassed that they had a king who would create such wild fantasies of the High Queen.

Did it happen?

Did he want to know?

It was entirely possible that he had made it up in his brain, out of a desire to hold onto something of hers that no one could take away. Something that was his, entirely his, since he had created it. Did that make him insane? To want someone so badly that he softened her departure by imagining her granting him the privilege of pressing his unworthy lips to her exquisitely lovely ones?

No, that didn't make him insane. It made him a mad, crazy, deluded, irrational lunatic, but it didn't make him insane. Insane was simply a word that wasn't appropriate when applied to a situation involving her.

But then he'd remember the glances. The pitying glances that one gives a monarch grieving over his lost love that never was. Poor Caspian, he'd hear them whisper, still mourning over the High Queen. It's a shame, another would whisper, that the King would squander his life over the memory of someone that will never return.

He was in a constant state of having his heart ripped out over and over again, and he didn't know how to escape it. Remembering her kiss abated the pain, but it would inevitably return. Thinking about how he might have made it up brought a different pain, a more depressing pain that cut just as deeply, because he'd realize that he'd created something out of nothing for his own personal needs, pervading her memory.

But then he would realize that it was worth it.

Because sometimes he thought that insanity was a small price to pay for a memory of Susan.

A/N: Okay, so somewhere along the way the moderator of the livejournal community just up and probably died (which is morbid to think about, really), but the community collapsed before even the first round was completed. I've been sitting on this since March because it still had to go through the voting process, but since the community is all gone now I figured I might as well post this and then mark this story as completed since I'm certainly not going to be continuing writing these without the incentive I had before.

I hope this drabble makes sense. It's a little bit (okay, a lot) different than the first one, but I really liked the way it turned out. Thoughts?

Thank you for all who have read these two short drabbles! I'm sorry there weren't more.

Roma