A/N: Time for some catharsis, wouldn't you say? I promise I'm not trying to make these chapters so long, it just kinda happens in the rewrites...
Important note: Addie's critically low sense of self-worth/self-esteem comes out in this chapter and might be triggering if you struggle with feeling isolated or not good enough for the people you care about. So please mind these content warnings and take care of yourselves! ❤
Chapter 32 Content Warnings: occasional mention of physical injury and medical treatment, power imbalance (Cas using princely authority), low self-worth/self-esteem (Addie)
Chapter 32: boxing with no gloves
Caspian
The return journey passes slowly after a summer storm douses the land in rain and turns the earth into mud. Caspian nearly loses a boot to an ankle-deep patch near a forest stream.
Lord Arlian will have to wait for his decisive victory; no one will win anything until the ground is sturdy. However, the mud will be an excellent camouflage for raiding, and heavy rain will obscure the Narnians' tracks.
"Glenstorm," Caspian says quietly, "can we spare any fighters upriver?"
The centaur stoops under a dripping branch. "Perhaps a small party, my Liege. We can spare my son, Suncloud."
Caspian agrees at once; Glenstorm's sons are as noble and trustworthy as their father, and just as skilled in battle.
"Send him out when we return. We should strike while the ground is wet, just before the next storm."
Glenstorm bows shallowly, right fist over his heart. "As you say."
With the Narnians trickling in from the south, gathering extra supplies is prudent and the centaurs aren't needed to dig new tunnels through the How.
Better to be prepared.
By the time they reach the fields outside the How, the day's heat has firmed the ground beneath their feet and evaporated the dew. But overhead, a plume of pale grey clouds billows with the promise of another storm – a hallmark of Narnia's humid mid-to-late summers.
Despite miserably hot, wet weather, groups of Narnians – young, old, inexperienced, swordmasters, and everything in between – spread across the grassy field in front of the How. Even the greenest fighters have made progress these few weeks. They hold their training blades steadier, plant their feet firmer, dodge or deflect almost as many attacks as they take. The field rings with the dull clash of swords and arrows loosed into stuffed puppets in Telmarine armour.
That is ordinary.
The woman with her arm in a sling is not. She weaves to and fro, the soldier's blade missing her by inches –
Even in his absence, even when he told her the thought of her training with Marcos would worry him, she still –
Addie's clumsy dodges expose her back. Marcos' blade descends at once, striking a hard blow to Addie's ribs and knocking her to the ground.
It's unsharpened, Caspian reassures himself. It's only a training sword; it won't cut her, but a blow can break stitches and what is she thinking –
Despite his asking, despite her damned promise, Addie has endangered herself again.
Enough is enough.
Caspian strides toward them, his heavy footfalls shedding chunks of mud and forest detritus.
Meanwhile, Addie hasn't stood. She crawls with one arm as Marcos presses the attack, shouting and swinging for her neck. A last-minute roll sideways saves her, but doesn't give her distance to recover. By the time Caspian is within shouting distance, Marcos stands above her, dulled sword resting at her neck. He looks down his nose at Addie as he gives her space, spinning his blade in lazy circles at his side as he scolds her form.
"- eyes up, never expose your back!" Marcos calls. "Come on, get up."
Caspian slows his pace, his breath scraping in his chest as Addie struggles to her knees and braces her left hand on the grass. Even from this distance he can see she's panting, that her arm is shaking.
He needs to see this for himself. To gauge with his own eyes if Marcos' training is doing any good, if it pushes Addie too far.
"Up!" Marcos yells, circling her like a wolf round a rabbit. "I could've killed you thrice by now."
Addie crawls half a yard. Marcos shakes his head, sighing when Addie's arm gives out and she collapses face-first in the grass.
"Get up," Marcos repeats. "You've got an hour til midday."
When Addie doesn't answer, Marcos stalks across the distance she managed.
Caspian grips the sword hilt at his waist until the leather chafes his palm. Falmus assured him Addie took no serious damage on her first day of training, but it's different to see her lying prone and weaponless as Marcos towers above her.
Where did Addie's training sword go? He sees it nowhere in the grass.
No sooner has Caspian wondered than Addie has lifted her hips and landed a surprisingly powerful kick to Marcos' knees. The soldier stumbles, balance teetering on a knife's edge before he steadies himself in time to dodge Addie's sword.
Clever; she somehow hid her weapon underneath her body as she crawled. She played up her weakness, Caspian realises, as Addie scrabbles away from Marcos' advance and blocks his counter-swing on her knees.
"Good," Marcos calls above the sporadic clash of steel. "Straighten your back."
It's all for naught. Addie lasts mere seconds before Marcos disarms her, his sword hovering over her sling.
Caspian's nails bite into his palms, the momentary relief of Addie's craftiness overtaken by the sight of her at Marcos' mercy. If this were a battlefield, he would be staring at her corpse.
"Passable," Marcos is saying, his sword point poking Addie's jaw - not enough to draw blood, but enough Addie flinches and Caspian's jaw tightens until his teeth ache.
Falmus allowed this. Arrus allowed this. Both fauns stand on the sidelines as Marcos pulls Addie to her feet.
He allowed this, Caspian realises. For too long, he has let Addie sneak and spite and subvert his every effort to help her heal from the consequences of abandoning him in the escape.
No more.
"Still," Marcos continues, brushing grass and mud from Addie's pants - lingering over her hips, straying too low for comfort before Addie pushes his hands away. "That was -"
"Enough!" Caspian crosses the grassy knoll in a dozen long strides, his head afire as temperance wars with the need to make them both fall into line, to stop this madness.
Marcos does not move at his approach, but Addie startles and withdraws from Marcos instantly, her hand hovering near her ribs.
She has the same look as when he left - guilt shadowed behind frustration and something else.
Defiance, Caspian decides as he meets Addie's furtive gaze.
"Spoiling the fun already?" Marcos rests his blade point-down, hands resting atop the hilt. "We -"
Caspian ignores him; Marcos isn't the problem.
"Addie," Caspian interrupts without glancing at Marcos. "With me, now."
The time to dance around her has passed. They have much to discuss.
For a moment, Addie looks as though she'll obey. But then she meets his glower head-on and Lion, it isn't fair how her eyes spark with her insolence. How her cheeks are flushed red from exertion, her chest heaving as she stands tall and blatantly ignores his command.
Falmus and Arrus trot up to greet him, an ill-timed distraction from Addie's stubbornness.
Caspian speaks before they can.
"Arrus, is this soldier an asset on the field?" He gestures toward Marcos without looking. Marcos' - or Addie's - opinion is of no consequence.
Arrus hesitates, gaze firm as he straightens from a shallow bow.
"Yes," the faun answers, jaw tight as though it pains him. "Our soldiers benefit from his skill in offence, though the minotaurs have some of the same skills." Arrus glances at Addie. "He'll teach them how Telmarines fight, if nothing else."
Caspian pretends not to notice Marcos' smirk. As little as Caspian likes increasing Marcos' ego, the Narnians are more important than his pride. If Marcos is an asset, he will be used accordingly.
"Then carry on elsewhere," Caspian says. "I leave the specifics of his uses to you."
With a sharp nod, Arrus takes his leave and ushers Marcos to a nearby group of young centaurs and satyrs drilling without a swordmaster.
"For what it's worth," Marcos calls over his shoulder, unphased, "she did well yesterday."
Caspian forces a measured breath. He asked Addie not to train with Marcos yesterday, either. Is her word worth nothing?
Addie's silence is damning.
"Falmus!"
The younger faun steps forward and stands at attention. His eyes stray once to Addie before meeting Caspian's stare.
"Report."
"Lady Adelina trained with me for two hours yesterday morning. No training with Marcos. Following her morning check-up with Rainroot, she rested for three hours until the midday meal. She then assisted Rainroot for two hours and studied until the evening meal."
Caspian blinks. Addie didn't train with Marcos yesterday? Yet she did this morning, when he had not yet returned. Why obey for the first day only to rebel on the second?
"And this morning?"
Again, Falmus glances toward Addie.
Her silence breaks, gives way to quiet steel.
"I -"
"Falmus," Caspian interrupts without looking over his shoulder at Addie. "The morning report."
The faun snaps to attention, back straight and chin high. "One hour with me, half an hour with Marcos until your arrival."
Two hours yesterday, an hour and a half today… at least she obeyed that order. But Addie favoured her left leg as she stood and clutched her ribs when she stood straight, so she's still taking damage.
"And the morning meal?"
Falmus hesitates, shifts his weight. Then, slowly, shakes his head.
Caspian fights a sigh as a soft footstep whispers through the grass.
"I wasn't hungry," Addie says.
Caspian keeps his focus on Falmus. "See that she never skips a meal again."
Another footstep, then another. "The supplies -" Addie begins.
Caspian's forehead throbs. "We have supplies," he snaps. Between the raids and the arriving Narnians bringing more foodstuffs, there will be enough for weeks yet. "Falmus, please see to it."
"Now?" asks the faun.
Caspian shakes his head. "I have things to discuss with Addie first. Upon our return and thereafter, yes, you will see to it."
Falmus bows, shallow and quick. "Sire."
The faun hurries off the second Caspian dismisses him and heads straight for the archery range, leaving no other distractions.
Caspian clenches his jaw. It's just him and Addie now.
When he faces her, Addie is frowning, disappointment writ in her pinched mouth.
"You didn't have to be so harsh," Addie says quietly. "They both follow your orders."
Caspian steps closer only to look into the late morning sun as a pillowy cloud overtakes it. Already, his patience lies frayed in his chest, pulsing raw like a wound.
"But you do not," Caspian answers. "And your insubordination puts them in an impossible situation."
Addie's lips part before snapping shut again as she breaks their brief stare-down.
In times past, Caspian might have been sorry for this look on her face – mouth tense, cheeks red with guilt, eyes darting across the field and never settling directly on him. But now, Caspian pushes the pointless regret from his mind and takes Addie by the arm.
"Come," he says. "We have much to discuss."
Addie's jaw works to one side as she falls into step beside him.
"Discuss?"
Caspian keeps his eyes ahead on the treeline, a sanctuary from curious eyes who shouldn't see their discord so openly. Every time Addie disobeys a direct order, it dents his already fragile authority. The dwarfs and wolves chafe under his leadership, and some Narnians whisper that Aslan has abandoned them. With the first major battle coming as soon as Caspian rallies the Narnians for a direct attack, he needs them united under one banner, one leader.
Under him.
"Yes," Caspian says. "Discuss."
Asking Addie to take care of herself hasn't worked, ordering hasn't worked. The one thing left is to sit her down and find out why she can't do such a simple thing as rest. Why she continues to defy him, no matter if he meets her with concern or ire. And why in the name of the Lion she left in the first place.
The day's heat abates as Caspian leads her into the trees, the thick canopy overhead a much-needed shelter from the summer sun. After the recent storm and another brewing in the distance, it's the only reprieve from the stifling humidity.
Addie interrupts his single-minded musings on the weather - a desperate attempt to keep his rising temper in check.
"You can't control everything I do." Addie stumbles and rights herself, barely keeping up with his lengthening strides.
Caspian tightens his grip. Her arm is leaner than it was at the castle, her muscles likely weakened by so much bedrest – a necessity for her recovery, Caspian reminds himself.
He prefers her strong. He likes the toned muscles under her skin, a reminder that as much as he loves her soft curves, Addie has steel in her too.
If only her steel didn't come with such obstinance.
Caspian brusquely guides her over a mossy tree root.
"I am your prince. If you refuse to take care of yourself, then yes, I can and I will."
Addie tries to tug free to no avail; Caspian pulls her closer and carries on into the trees. He'll release her when they reach the stream. Already, the water trickles at the edge of hearing.
"And did you eat breakfast?" Addie asks, sharper.
Caspian elects not to answer directly. It's not her concern.
"I am in good health," Caspian says. "You are not."
Addie's pace quickens as they crest a slight hill and the stream gurgles within sight. The babble of water over stones and earth seems far too loud in the silence stretched tight between them.
"I'm fine," Addie says, tugging away again. This time, Caspian lets her go.
Addie marches past with her head held high - too high, like she has something to prove. With perfunctory precision, she descends to the stream and splashes her face, rubs off the bits of grass stuck to her neck.
He could help her; those should be his hands soothing the day's aches and dirt.
Caspian stays where he is.
Addie's used touch as a deflection before, and he can't give in now with so much to be said. Tenderness is… a distraction, a stalling measure, a paltry diversion that will do nothing but delay the inevitable. The comfort of touch is meaningless until they resolve this.
"You cannot keep doing this, Addie," Caspian says to her back.
Addie bends down and combs unhurried fingers through a muddy tangle by her ear.
"Doing what? I did as you asked."
The accusation whips past his lips before Caspian considers tempering it.
"You trained with Marcos in my absence after I explicitly asked you not to."
Addie sits onto her heels, her shoulders tense as she stares into the stream. As she kneels facing the forest and refuses to look at him.
"I didn't," she says, every word tight as a bowstring.
Caspian's jaw slackens. She did; why deny it when he saw the deed himself?
"You -"
"You asked me not to train with him for the day and I agreed," Addie snaps. "That was yesterday. You said nothing about today."
Caspian clasps stiff hands behind his back until a knuckle pops. Now of all times, Addie wants to debate semantics?
"That's a technicality, Addie. You knew my intent."
With a rough exhale, Addie whips around. The look on her face freezes him, if only for a moment, because…
She looks how he feels. Haggard, angry, at a loss, grasping at wisps of smoke instead of patience.
"I didn't! If that's what you wanted, you should have said so!"
Caspian swipes at a trickle of sweat down his neck. He shouldn't have had to!
"Falmus knew my intent," he retorts. "You mean to tell me he divined my meaning and you could not?"
Addie's cheeks flush red, darker than the pink he so loved in times past. In the time before she abandoned him, before she broke every promise, every order, every request he laid at her feet and for what –
"Apparently so," Addie says, water dripping from her fingertips.
Before Addie finishes speaking, Caspian is shaking his head.
"I don't believe you."
Addie crosses an arm over her chest, tucking wet fingers under her sling.
"I can't read your mind, Caspian," she answers. "Any more than you can read mine."
He's never asked her to! This, too, is a distraction, a petty squabble to draw his attention from the truth.
Caspian pushes wayward hair from his eyes – a stalling measure, so he won't yell.
"Explain it to me, then. Why do you do everything in your power to thwart Rainroot's skill and my concern? Why?"
The stream babbles louder as Addie climbs onto firmer ground, her eyes flashing.
"I rested for days like you both wanted. Then I felt better and you can't expect me to just –" Addie cuts herself off with a sharp sigh, runs her tongue over her teeth as she looks away. "I'm healing fine."
Caspian's jaw aches with too much tension. By Rainroot's latest report, Addie's healing has been slow, fitful, and precarious. She's lucky the fever hasn't returned.
"You heal by Rainroot's skills," Caspian says. "Despite your efforts."
Addie huffs. "The fever's gone, and I've never popped my stitches!"
Yet as she insists so, Addie shifts her injured shoulder and adjusts the sling with a half-hidden grimace.
Yes, Caspian thinks, despite her best efforts, not because of them. If Addie had her way, Rainroot would have stopped the poultice days ago and the infection would rage uncontained.
"The festering lingers because you exhaust yourself every day," Caspian says, gesturing to her arm. "By your doing! You have gone behind my back repeatedly to your detriment and mine!"
Caspian breathes raggedly, the summer humidity sticky in his chest – nearly as stifling as the embers burning his tongue. Does Addie understand nothing of what she's put him through?
Does she understand and not care?
Half-turned away, Addie swipes at her cheek. "I'm trying to help however I -"
Lion's Mane, if he hears this excuse once more –
"You aren't helping," Caspian answers, sharply enough she flinches. "Do you not realise your choices affect more than just you?"
Addie furtively meets his glare, and the paces between them feel as wide as a chasm.
"How is that, exactly?" she asks.
Caspian fists sweaty hands in his hair, pulls until the sting on his scalp matches the sting in his heart. Addie doesn't grasp, then, what she's done to him. What she's still doing to him as he tries to help her heal so she'll survive and she throws every attempt back in his face.
Addie refusing to understand how he feels about her – why it kills him to see a single scratch marring her skin, to say nothing of a wound this serious – it beggars belief. Must he appeal to politics or practicality to make her see sense?
Will that be enough to make her care?
Caspian clears his throat and tries politics first.
"Every time you defy me, every time you force Falmus or Arrus to do the same, you break the chain of command. You undermine my authority here. What claim do I have as leader if even you will not listen to me?"
Addie whirls to face him head-on, her neck an angry red where her sling rubs tender skin.
"So if I disagree, I'm supposed to fall in line like one of your soldiers?"
"Yes!" Caspian draws himself to his full height, because he's slouched while arguing and he can't seem exhausted, can't let her think he can be ground down into giving in. "If you disagree, you discuss it with me in private. But in front of my troops, you are to present a united front with me."
Addie scowls. "Discuss like we did at the castle?"
Something like that, Caspian almost says, but the look in Addie's eyes makes him pause. She's testing him.
He doesn't care.
"Yes," Caspian says. "I expect you to come to me when you disagree, not go behind my back or pretend you misunderstood."
Addie's eyes spark. "Because that's worked so well."
"It once did," Caspian says. "What changed?"
He already knows – the escape, Addie's betrayal, her defiance ever since he found her. But he needs to hear how she'll explain it.
Addie steps closer, using a nearby branch for balance. "What did my disagreement matter as you planned the escape? What does it matter now when your word overrules mine no matter my reasons?"
"Then what are your reasons? Why will you not take care of yourself? You've still not told me why!"
Caspian knows he's shouting, knows it won't help.
But if shouting is what will make Addie listen, he will shout until his throat is raw and his voice fails to make her understand.
Addie's lips part, but whatever paltry excuse she conjured dies as her face twists.
In the aching silence broken by birdsongs and the stream's insistent trickle, Caspian claws back some semblance of composure.
He's supposed to be a leader.
Caspian gathers what scraps of control he has left and appeals to Addie's profile; she's turned away as if she can't stomach the sight of him.
Politics failed to convince her. That leaves practicality.
"The longer you take to heal, the more medical supplies you use."
Addie breathes raggedly, shoulders heaving as she half-turns toward him.
"Then stop using them on me! I've tried to tell Rainroot -"
"If Rainroot stops treating you, you will die!" The temperance that kept his tone princely cracks into nothing, and Caspian can't be sorry for it. "Do you not understand how important it is to me that you live?"
Foolish, foolish – he knows Addie won't care that he cares. Already the bravado is overtaking the round cheeks and pink lips he cherished.
"I know," Addie insists, something close to pleading in her face, but she doesn't. She can't know, because how can he make sense of the escape and everything after if she knows what she means to him?
"I know I'm taking up supplies," Addie continues, every word stretched tight, a frayed rope ready to split. "I know I- I didn't want to, I'm trying not to, I was trying to make up for -"
"No," Caspian cuts in. "You're not trying to make anything up to anyone, least of all me." It's just another excuse, another deflection, perhaps even from herself. "You overwork yourself because you're too afraid to face what you've done."
It was a guess, but the moment Addie inhales like he struck her, Caspian knows he's unearthed something. Addie's attempt to stand straight and lift her chin in a show of confidence doesn't erase her wide eyes.
"You do it too," she says, in little more than a murmur. "That's how we met, remember?"
That first night in the kitchen, a chance encounter borne of his late nights and disdain for supping with his uncle –
Caspian ignores the recollection, the image of Addie's shadowy silhouette and the wispy curls framing her cheeks. He can't let fond memories distract him.
"Don't deflect," Caspian answers flatly. "Everything I do is for Narnia." For you, a deeper part of him whispers, though he has the sense not to say it. "Who do you do this for? Yourself?"
Addie frowns like she's readying a protest, but though Caspian braces for more excuses, none come. Instead, Addie's shoulders sag.
"I don't know," she whispers.
Caspian hesitates. Strangely, he believes her.
He should know better.
"Then stop this," he says through gritted teeth. "Why spite me if you don't know why?"
Addie's shoulders inch straighter as a tiny spark flickers to life in her hazel eyes.
"You used to ask; now you order. You expect me to just roll over for you?"
Caspian stifles a bitter scoff. "I asked, and you ignored me. So I tried orders, hoping you would understand how imperative it is that you…"
His voice cracks, caught on the knot winding tighter in his heart with every breath. Addie strays closer, her frown cracking into something else before she seals it behind a stiff-lipped stare.
What more must he do? Must he build Addie a gilded cage and throw away the key to keep her safe?
Caspian fights a shiver. He told himself he would stomach losing Addie's love if that's what it took to keep her alive. Now, looking down the grassy hill where the dappled sunlight highlights the copper in her hair and the distance in her eyes, he wonders if he already has.
"Don't you see you're all I have left?" Caspian croaks, shrugging helplessly as he tries and fails to calm his pounding heart. The taste of ash floods his mouth, the embers crumbling on his tongue. "Am I so intolerable, Adelina?"
Addie's stubbornness splits down the middle, peeling away to reveal glistening eyes and a forehead pinched like she's in pain. One, two, three steps she takes up the hill, but Caspian can't bring himself to go meet her and close the distance she first put between them.
"You're not," she murmurs. A breeze rustles through the canopy, nearly erasing a reassurance he's not sure he should believe.
"And you –" An unsteady breath. "You have the Narnians now," Addie continues, softly, like an overture. "You have your army, your generals, advisers you trust. They'll follow you anywhere."
"They aren't you!" Caspian's tongue falters, caught on too many explanations and such glaring proof that Addie doubts his feelings.
As he has doubted hers.
With a heavy sigh, Caspian shakes his head. "When I thought you dead, yes, I found the Narnians. And still I had never felt so alone."
Addie's not wrong that he has the Narnians, but it's different. He's admired the Narnians since boyhood, loved them the way a child loves their favourite stories. He's only known them as living, breathing creatures for three weeks.
Caspian loves them as a boy loves fairy tales, as a king loves his subjects, as a general loves his soldiers. But the Narnians are fractured, and as many nascent friends as he has among them, he also has tepid allies whose loyalty hangs by a thread.
As fraught as everything with Addie has been of late, as little sense as it makes, he still breathes easiest lying in bed with her, listening to her breath and counting the beats of her heart.
Addie is home.
Is it so wrong to want his home back?
When Caspian resurfaces from his thoughts, Addie is closer – within arm's reach if he stretches.
He can't bring himself to try. Not yet. Not until she understands.
"But you weren't," Addie is saying, a strained prayer. "You're not. If you win this war, you'll have an entire kingdom to your name – a court, subjects, councils, all of it. Anyone you could want. Lose me and you'll still have all that. But if I'd lost you –"
With a tremble, Addie's voice splinters into silence. Gone are the stubbornness and steel, the defiance and the distance. All that remains is her, beseeching for something he can't quite grasp.
"I don't want a kingdom, Addie," Caspian counters. "I lead because I must."
What a price he pays for it - the long, lonely road of life under Miraz's thumb, sneaking through the halls of his ancestors' castle like a common thief – hunted, cautious, alone. How lonely his path is still, even here.
Perhaps the fate of kings is to be alone, wrapped only in the arms of duty.
Addie lingers just out of reach, lower lip pulled between her teeth. "Whether you want a kingdom or not, you have one – or you will. You have a place here. But I…" Her brow knits together, her breathing harsh and erratic. "What is my world – any world – without you in it?"
"And mine without you?" Caspian's feet take him within reach of her before he thinks to stop himself. The weeks-old ache under his ribs sharpens to a knifepoint as he draws close and sees Addie's eyes swimming.
"You give a kingdom too much credit," he says.
To that, Addie says nothing. Caspian clenches his hands into fists to keep from pulling her into his arms.
"Is that why you left?" he asks. "Why you broke away that night?"
Addie looks at her feet. "I was your weakness," she says, in such a small voice. "Every night there were more patrols, and I knew there'd be so many -" Addie's gaze slides up to meet him, her lips pursed in a sad attempt at a smile. "They needed someone to chase."
Caspian's heart stutters. It was worse than he suspected; not only did Addie stay behind, but she used herself as bait?
"You -"
"I already got Anna killed," Addie interrupts. Her left hand darts forward only to be withdrawn, disappearing behind her sling. "I thought I'd get you killed too."
"You nearly got us both killed!" Caspian yells, and he can't regret it, can't be sorry that Addie startles and shrinks away, because what was she thinking? "Do you know how close I came to turning back and trying to take on an entire castle of soldiers for you?"
"But you didn't!" Addie's answering shout warps around a sob. "I knew you wouldn't," she says, quieter but still sharp as a knife.
Caspian's throat burns. She's right; he didn't, and he should have. If he was anyone else in the world, he would have.
"How?" Caspian rasps. "How could you have known that?"
How could she have known what he did not until Doctor Cornelius pressed Queen Susan's horn into his hands?
Addie shifts from one foot to the other, eyes cast to the side and looking everywhere but him.
"Because you had to survive," she whispers, more to the trees than to him. "For Narnia."
Caspian's breath comes in shallow, stinging puffs as the wound of Addie's betrayal reopens like a sore, like blood spilling from a broken scab.
"So you forced me to choose my duty over you?"
Caspian retreats up the hill, gripping a slender tree trunk for balance. After all Addie's talk of choices and independence, she denied him such a critical choice as that? Threw herself between him and a company of soldiers, made it impossible to do right by his kingdom and still do right by her?
Addie does not close the distance. She only watches him go, her posture hunched and eyes dull.
"I chose so you wouldn't have to," Addie says. "So if something went wrong, you could focus on you without me in the way."
Blinking, Caspian stares down at her.
"You were afraid," he realises. "Afraid that if you left the choice to me, I would choose Narnia over you."
Addie says nothing, but there is something guilty about how quickly she looks aside.
Caspian advances a slow, careful step. "Do you not trust me to protect you?"
Before he finishes, Addie is shaking her head.
"I was trying to protect you from me! I…" She looks away, then back, then away again. "I'm no soldier. I couldn't risk you getting hurt trying to look after me."
"You did get hurt!"
Too quickly to change his mind, Caspian rushes to meet her, skidding to a halt an instant before their bodies collide. Addie shies back as he reaches out, gasps as he steadies her and clutches the sling's knot behind her neck.
"You nearly died and left me with nothing but duty!" Caspian shouts, gripping the fraying knot so he won't shake her. What else can he say to make her care?
Is his agony not enough?
"Not just me," Caspian tries as Addie's pulse hammers under his palm. "Did you think of your friends? Of Lola, Perla, the maids? Would you abandon them too?"
Addie winces and pushes him, palm flat on his chest, barely perceptible through his armour. She only succeeds in pushing herself away, buying herself inches that aren't enough to break his grip.
Should he let her go, let her retreat from the ugliness of her choice? From him?
Caspian loosens his hands. His knuckles brush chafed skin as Addie slips from his grasp. When Addie's space is her own and Caspian would have to step to reach her, she stops.
"I already have," Addie mumbles, staring at the trampled grass and torn ferns beneath her feet. "It's better that I… after Anna…" Her voice breaks on the name, never regains its calm. "They're better off."
Caspian keeps himself from closing the distance to take Addie's face in his hands and make her look at him.
"Better how?" he asks instead.
Better off in Miraz's castle with a second disappearance to weigh on their minds?
He thought Addie's voice was spent, her defensiveness and anger burnt out.
He's wrong.
"Better off without me!" Addie cries, her good arm flung wide and posture stooped, bent almost half as she falters and catches herself against a tree.
Understanding dawns cold and cruel in Caspian's stomach, a barbed arrowhead twisting through muscle.
"And you think I am too," he says with a calm he doesn't feel, like his heart isn't writhing in a thorned cage from saying such a thing.
Addie's tears spill over, writing the truth in twin trails down her cheeks. She chokes on something – a sob? A denial? – and turns away.
"I shouldn't have come here," she whispers hoarsely. "I'm sorry."
"You shouldn't have left," Caspian corrects. His arms ache for want of holding her – for the language of touch to soothe the sting of so much honesty.
Addie folds into herself, shoulders rounded as she wraps her arm around her torso and shudders. She looks so… small, standing there on the hillside as a stiff wind scatters splotched sunlight over her wet cheeks.
"I know," Addie chokes out. "I was afraid, and I was wrong and I'm sorry!"
Caspian's breath rushes out. She understands, then. Finally, finally, she understands.
He closes the distance in an instant, skidding in a muddy patch in his hurry, and throws his arms around her, crushes her to his chest and relearns how to breathe with her damp hair tickling his nose.
He half-expects Addie to reestablish the distance that has defined them these past weeks. Caspian buries his face in her neck and braces for the inevitable, for Addie to insist he's better off without her and leave him speechless, at a loss for how to change her mind other than insisting she's wrong, she made his life better, she still does somehow –
Addie throws her arm around his back and pulls, squeezing so hard his breath falters as she cries into his neck, murmurs an endless string of apologies that bleed nonsensically together.
"Never again, Addie," Caspian urges her, cradling her head and kissing any skin his lips reach. "Never."
Addie's nodding before he finishes, a whimper interrupting her litany of "I'm sorry, so sorry."
Tash, her shoulder. Caspian remembers her arm, realises it's mashed between their chests, and eases his hold.
Addie grabs him back at once, begs him not to go, please don't go, please please please –
Caspian grips her good shoulder and pushes her back.
"Your shoulder."
"It's fine, really, I -"
Caspian kisses Addie's forehead, lips lingering as he wraps his arms around her more gently.
He can't say how long they stand there, clinging to each other with no care for the sun's heat or the sweat or the distant sound of metal clashing with metal floating from the training field.
With so much yet to come, he can be forgiven for savouring the calm after the storm.
Just for a little while. Just long enough.
A/N: Whew. This was a very raw chapter for me to write (and rewrite, and re-rewrite), but I think Caspian and Addie needed to get all this out in the open before we dive properly into the war-heavy section of Monachopsis. Chapter 33 is also a long one (to the tune of 7k, I'm genuinely sorry lol), just a heads up. Until next week!
Chapter 33 Preview:
"Promise me you're coming back," Addie whispers. "Please."
Caspian's arms tighten.
"You have my word," he answers with a kiss to her forehead.