A/N: I know this has been long, long overdue, but please bear with me! I love you all. Here's another chapter from yours truly.

They made it to a hollow right above the fir wood which had obstructed them before. Here they were more or less protected from the outpost below and were more or less able to rest for the night. Peter, pale with pain, propped himself up against a tree while Susan busied herself trying to dress the wound as much as she can. Which meant that there was a decent amount of dress tearing. Lucy's vial had been lost somewhere on the way.

"It's lucky that Susan thought of wearing a dress," Lucy said. "At least we have something to bind Peter's wound with."

Susan worked in silence, only the small whispers of reassurance and care slipping past her lips.

"Susan, I—"

"Shush." She pulled the cloth tighter. "Let me do this."

The thought that Peter was planning to take medicine in college struck Susan, and she pressed her lips together. Ironic. The future medic, now the present invalid.

It was wondrous, how, when the attacks came to them in London, when their city was bombed, when everything fell apart, none of them were hurt. Except for Edmund, with a few cuts from shattered glass, all of them had escaped almost certain death. And even when they were thrown into a different war here in Narnia, they'd survived. And that was a war with magic and malice, with Aslan dying and rising again to conquer the White Witch.

It reminded her again of wounded soldiers and creatures, Edmund and Peter only two of the injured people. Though their two boys escaped the stony fate the White Witch had intended to subject them to, they'd broken bones, scratched skin, and yet pushed through to victory. With Lucy's elixir of life, they'd been spared death and injury.

Peter groaned—Susan had tugged at an awkward angle that aggravated the abrasion. Muttering her apologies, she resumed mechanically cleaning the wound.

"Don't worry, Lu, I'll be fine," Peter said. Lucy had approached them, braving her aversion to wounds and blood.

"I'm sorry. If I had my vial here, you would've been cured by now."

"It's not your fault," Peter said. "I'm just glad you're all right."

"I'm sure we'll find Caspian soon. Aslan will help us."

Susan stole a glance at her younger sister. Lucy always seemed to see the brighter things in life, and she was always bright and sprightly, whatever the weather. It irked her but in the next year when they were coping without Narnia, Lucy had helped her dance away from the thin line of her loneliness and longing to depression. Even with the war going on, Lucy stayed the same. A lighthouse that beamed hope.

"Did you really think you saw Him back there, Lu?" Susan asked.

"Of course I did!" Lucy pouted. "That's unfair. I saw Him, I didn't just think so."

"Then where is He now?"

It hurt Susan, seeing Lucy bite her lip and avert her eyes. She had the most faith in Aslan and challenging her here, where she had no defense at all, was truly a cruel thing to do. But Susan wanted to open her eyes to the fact that maybe now Aslan would not come. Maybe He'd forgotten, after all. That they had to rely on themselves for survival.

Still, by and by, Lucy stayed silent, soothing Peter with her presence, trying not to look perturbed.

But Susan knew she was. And she almost regretted upsetting her.

Armix was already at his post by the Doctor's cell—and listened once again to the old magician, as he spun tales for him. He never begged for release, but bore his imprisonment with a quiet resolve. If it was him, he'd surely have grown mad from the stillness.

"Hope you're not getting too bored, sir," Armix said, sharpening his sword.

"I believe I must ask you that?" The Doctor's voice had a tinge of amusement in it. "Are there any news of Caspian yet?" He said in a lower voice.

Focusing on his weapon, Armix stared into the distance and his lips barely moved. "I believe he is forming a resistance of sorts, one of which we suppressed a few days before."

"Hm."

Sometimes the Doctor could be hardly stopped from talking, but now Armix couldn't pull even two words from his lips. This was going to be a boring shift, it seems.

"Armix! There you are." Merry went over, Pippin right behind him.

"Why, who are these?" the Doctor asked, interest apparently piqued. "I have seen none of their kind before. What do you call yourselves?"

"I'm Pippin, and this is my friend, Merry. We're Hobbits."

The Doctor rubbed his beard and peered at them through his thin-rimmed spectacles, in deep thought. "Hm."

"We're his squires," Merry said. The mere fact that Pippin had told the Doctor what they really were unnerved him, and he felt a need to compensate. "We help with him, ehrm, squir-ing."

While Merry entertained the Doctor, Pippin pulled Armix to the side and asked, quite plainly, if there was really a ghost-infested sea beyond the woods, and if per chance they could get there. In response, Armix shuddered and shook his head.

"Not anytime soon," he said. "Though I'm not so sure about the ghosts, I'm sure the stories about the dryads and birch-gods are true. Only, I don't have evidence to prove it yet. On any hand, I'm not going to the woods, much less the sea, anytime soon." Armix licked his lips. "And even if I was, I wouldn't bring you. Sopespian is going to... you know." He waved his hand vaguely.

"But what if you just show us the way there?" Pippin asked.

"And get caught? No thanks."

Armix is one hard person to convince, but during the past few days Pippin and Merry had—ahh, mapped out some of his intricacies. A vital skill to have, even when they were still riding on horses and fighting back in Middle Earth. He tried appealing to some of Armix's better natures. "We're looking for our other friends, and who knows where they are now? We need to look for them, before Miraz catches them."

"If they are here, they'd be caught by now."

"But didn't Caspian escape?"

"He knows the landscape better than you do—at least, better than your friends." Armix said this in a concluding tone of voice. Clearly the conversation was done.

Well, it was best they tried.

When Armix sent them off, Pippin shared the unfortunate news, but no sooner had he finished than Merry interrupted with his own form of news.

"I've discovered a way we can find the others," Merry said. "The Doctor told me all about it while you were trying to convince Armix and everything."

TBC...