A/N: Well, this chapter super got away from me - it's long, and it's a lot, and I'm a little sorry (mostly because I also had to edit this beast and jiminy christmas, 6k is a lot). Also, the first scene here is, um, icky, so please mind the content warnings. As always, if you don't want to/can't read a squick scene and you need a summary of events, just message me and I'll happily provide.
Chapter 42 Content Warnings: vomiting, flashbacks to sexual assault, mention of alcohol, swearing, battle gore and medical triage, death
Chapter 42: your faithless love
Addie
I want you to stay here where I can make sure you're safe.
Pounding in her head, ache in her limbs. Heaviness in her chest, her skin, her bones. Weighed down, helpless.
Never for one second think I am better off without you.
Hand at her hip, arm around her waist. The pressure is all wrong, too tight, the fingers too short.
Not Caspian.
Awareness seeps in like a rolling fog, heavy in her lungs. Rhythmic jostling jolts the air from her chest, cutting off her breaths. Her head spins, the slow glug of her heart dominating her hearing.
Pudding mint tea lies bitter on her tongue, floral musk coating the roof of her mouth. The cotton-feel of an herb Rainroot never taught her, her tongue like sandpaper. Groaning, her head lolling as she tries to speak.
Do you not understand how important it is to me that you live?
The wrong voice in her ear.
"Easy, you're still weak. Best not move."
Addie blinks her eyes open to a blur of green, the stink of horse sweat in her nose.
You were afraid I would choose Narnia over you.
"Marcos," she croaks. "Where's Caspian?"
Thundering hooves drown out Marcos' answer, the horse snorting its displeasure. Addie's eyelids drift down. Would it be so bad to let oblivion take her? Surrender to the dark, let it erase the confusion and the leaden weight in her chest?
Addie inhales, sharp and quick to clear the tea's temptation of sleep, neck straining to keep her head straight.
Sometimes, let me take care of you too.
Her tongue sounds out clumsy words, sticking in her mouth like pine sap.
"Where is he?"
Marcos' arm tightens around her diaphragm, his fingers digging bruises above her hip.
"Stop struggling, you'll fall."
Addie looks down and finds her elbows dug into Marcos' armoured sides, feels her heels aching from kicking.
I'll find you after, Addie. I promise.
Her breaths shorten, tremble between her ribs. Somewhere inside her, a tower threatening to collapse.
"Where is he?" Addie chokes on nothing, on summer wind and sunlight. Because he wouldn't, he wouldn't –
Don't you see you're all I have left?
"With his army," Marcos says, too loud, words that ricochet inside her skull, truth hammering bone. "That's it, lean back."
She doesn't mean to obey, but her back meets metal-studded leather and chainmail scrapes her neck.
It's all wrong. She's not supposed to be with Marcos.
Never think I am better off without you.
Addie bites her trembling lip and pretends she knows how to breathe, that counts of four will ease the wound opening in her chest. Because Caspian said never, never, and she knows he meant it.
You said we'd do this together.
You once chose differently. You were right.
He changed his mind.
She should have known he would. Shouldn't have believed him, should have known better.
"Let go."
Addie pushes at Marcos' hand, digs short nails into thick fingers and lets the air scrape her throat raw.
A huff against her ear, deafening.
"Don't start this again."
She pushes harder, uses Marcos' back as leverage, fighting as he pulls her back, bodies pressed tight in ways she hasn't allowed since -
"Let go of me!"
Addie's limbs betray her, her arms too loose and her legs too weak to put up a proper fight. Caspian's fault, because he drugged her and sent her away and she's helpless all over again thanks to some stupid flower.
Marcos swears as the horse tosses its head and weaves.
"Alvar would appreciate if you controlled yourself," he says, steering the animal one-handed, the reins bunched in his right hand.
Addie claws at the hand fisted at her waist, his grip twisting fabric and skin. To hells with the horse - let it spook. If she upsets it enough, it'll throw them both and she can run.
"Tash's sake, calm down!"
Marcos pulls the reins and slows the horse, trees and branches taking shape from the blur.
"You want to get trampled?"
Addie leans forward, peels her shoulders away from him even though Marcos' grip keeps her hips in the saddle, his arm pressing into her stomach. The forest floor speeds past, a mottled brown and green. Falling off would hurt, but if the horse slows a bit more, the fall shouldn't break anything.
Marcos grips higher, his fist settling in the curve of her waist. Her shirt rides up to expose a sliver of skin, and the wind bites colder than it should in summer.
Shivering, Addie lets Marcos pull her back into him, her stomach churning.
"You should damn well thank me," he says. "I'm saving your life. Didn't I tell you a prince is a stupid thing to die for? Especially a prince who let you go."
"King," Addie snaps. The word slurs, consonants blurred together.
"Makes no difference; he's not your concern anymore." Marcos' arm tightens into a cage over her ribs, shortening her breath.
Addie breathes quicker, harsher, rasping past the pressure of Marcos' grip and scraping off the cotton-mouth taste of sedative herb in her throat.
"Caspian's always my concern."
"Not anymore." Again, that breath in her ear, an unwelcome heat. "I am."
Addie's blood chills, winds into a knot in her chest. He can't mean -
"How so?" Addie shifts in the saddle, leather chafing through her pants.
Lips brush her ear, and the heat of the wrong body presses to her back, sun-warmed leather rough through her shirt.
"You have no idea what I've done for you, do you?"
Addie shivers, sweat cooled by the breeze. "So now I owe you, is that it?"
"You could at least be grateful," Marcos snaps, his hand tightening around her hip. "This is the third time I've saved your life."
Scowling, Addie squirms. Fine, so she owes him, even if she never asked him to save anything. Maybe she can strike a bargain, give him what he wants if he lets her go.
Marcos huffs, the sound amplified by her persistent headache.
"Never mind, we'll find a well in a village. It wasn't easy finding seeds, you know."
"Seeds?" Addie echoes.
Yeasty ale cut with harsher spirits flashes across Addie's tongue. A dark well, a moonlight courtyard. That night, a lapse in judgement, soaked in too much drink and regret. Protests trapped stillborn inside her mouth, throat aching, raw. A fist in her hair, holding her in place when she tried to squirm away.
Bitterness, sick curling up her throat. Crying, too much hurt, a wound in her heart she knew instinctively wouldn't heal.
"- somewhere private," Marcos is saying, hand splayed over her hip. "Intimate, like you wanted, right?"
It's the sedative, or the weight of their mixed past, or the stupid, stinking horse and its jolting gait. Three knives cutting through any tact she might've mustered.
"What the fuck are you talking about?" Addie spits. Cursing feels good, rolls easily off her tongue. A voice for the bitterness winding tighter with her every breath, this desperation to be wrong, to have misinterpreted that night after all. To not know, somehow, what Marcos wants from her.
Marcos shakes his head, his chin bumping her temple.
"Tash, what did he give you? Seeds, a well, just the two of us, remember? Like it was always supposed to be."
Is that damned tea playing tricks, or does Marcos actually think -
"Why would I want to do that?" Addie squirms, sweat trickling down her spine.
Marcos pulls her tighter, shrugging.
"Why not? My family'll welcome you as their own if you play the blushing bride."
"You know why not," Addie says. No seeds, no tying herself to anyone but Caspian. Not for anything.
Caspian changed his mind, but she hasn't changed hers. She'll choose him every day for the rest of her life until he has the decency to order her away without the pretence of 'for her safety.'
"He gave you to me," Marcos says, centreing her in the saddle when she tries to scoot away. "You might as well make the best of it."
Addie's stomach lurches. Marcos doesn't mean that - he can't, he must know better by now. He must mean sparring and relearning the contours of old camaraderie, but the taste of bile and soured ale creeps up her throat and it's too much, this press of memories.
"Stop, stop!" she pleads. She makes her voice hoarse, contracts her diaphragm as if she's holding back a gag and heaves a cough as Marcos' arm digs into her stomach.
"I'm not kidding," she manages. "Gonna puke."
Marcos releases the tangle of shirt and flesh and slides his hand up to grip her shoulder. He wrenches her to face aside, his thumb chafing where her neck meets her shoulder.
"Aim for the trees."
It's a short, staccato stream, an insult to the tumult churning her innards. A paltry reminder of a bitter, salty fluid she once hurled and blamed on spiked ale. Like the first, this one burns like fire on her tongue, leaves a film over her teeth.
A thumb strokes the bare skin by her shirt collar.
"You finished?"
Addie coughs and spits up remnants of panic.
"Stop the horse," she mumbles.
Marcos kicks it faster and pulls her flat against his chest, his hand still on her neck, crude fingers digging into muscle.
Bile roils in her stomach. She likes when Caspian touches her, when his fingertips press to her pulse in passion or in care, gentle yet firm. Caspian touches her like a question, a prayer, like all he wants is to feel how alive she is. Like he's grateful she's there, and he has to make sure he's not imagining it.
Marcos isn't touching her that way. Under Marcos' touch, she feels like a… a raw thing, made of bruises and weakness she thought she'd purged. Like regret, like pain, like trust broken and betrayed.
You can't match Telmarine soldiers' brutality. You can only outsmart them.
"'M not done," Addie says. "Tash-cursed tea."
Marcos' fingers sink into muscle and flesh, his arm pressing into her gut as she curls at the waist and spews.
Her hand shakes as she wipes her mouth, coughs once more for good measure.
"You gonna throw up the entire ride?"
Addie's vision focuses, purpose cutting through the blur of horse and herbal tea and running, has to run back to Caspian.
"No," she says. "Almost done."
She coughs once, a distraction, bends forward, and pretends to retch.
And then throws her head back.
Pain cracks across the back of her skull as Marcos shouts a curse so loud her ears ring. But his arm loosens, and it's enough.
Addie jerks to the right and falls, eyes squeezed shut because Tash, her shoulder -
No, that's right - her shoulder is fine and she has both her arms now. The ground meets her as mercilessly as she thought, but the ache is less than she braced for, tempered by adrenaline.
Past her ringing ears, the horse snorts and skids to a stop as Marcos' curses rain out, incessant and stinging. Addie shoves off from the ground, ferns and grass stuck to her palms, and stumbles to her feet. She weaves between trees, clumsy and graceless, but Marcos sounds farther away. She can't outrun the horse, but she can hide or climb out of reach.
She has to get her legs to bear her weight and run back to the How or back to war, either is fine. It's better than -
"Do you have a death wish? You want to get yourself killed? Fucking idiot!" Marcos shouts. Ferns and twins snap under his boots. He's dismounted and gaining ground, a shadow giving chase through the trees.
Stupid, stupid, if Marcos is giving chase, then the horse is free and she'll reach the How in half the time on horseback.
Addie blinks away the lingering fog of herbs and the fall to pinpoint the horse's restless hooves. There, a few dozen strides behind her.
It doesn't matter what Marcos intends; Caspian is at the How facing Miraz's army and this is it, isn't it, a pivotal battle in the war, and Caspian looked at her like he thought he'd never see her again.
He will. He will because she's going back, because if this is Caspian's last stand, then this is hers too, because he can't expect her to flee without knowing he's alright.
Never again, Addie.
Yes, never. This time, she will be there to share his fate. Whatever it is.
Addie changes course, swinging around a tree and sprinting for the horse. Take the beast, ride for the How, pray to all the gods she's not too late, that he's still alive because it's battle and he's already injured and -
Weight crashes into her back and the forest floor races up to her face, an unforgiving landing ground. Addie yelps, doesn't mean to, as a body tackles her prone and a mouth that was busy swearing pants into her ear. Something warm and wet - blood, perhaps, if she broke his nose - trickles onto her cheek as Marcos's weight stifles her breathing.
"You go back, you die. Understand?"
"Get off me!"
It's useless, yelling she doesn't care and trying to squirm free. Addie yells anyway, so loud her voice cracks, just to have an outlet. To give voice to this sick panic roiling up her chest, a tangle of old hurts and new betrayal.
Her ill-timed kick hits his thigh, barely an annoyance. Marcos pushes her face into the leaves, his handprint a brand on her skin, smearing his blood on her cheek.
"What, leaving's only acceptable when it's your idea?"
Addie turns so her tear seeps into the ground. She was wrong before and she's sorry, but Marcos doesn't need to know. Would it change his mind, make him let her go?
Would he let her run back to Caspian?
Why in the name of the gods should she care what Marcos will allow? She's going back. Somehow, some way, she's getting back to Caspian. She just has to calm down, push aside this fear distorting her vision, clear her mind, and think.
"- stubborn. Where has that gotten you?" Marcos is saying, his fingers tangled in her hair. "Here, that's where. So shut up before you bring a scout party on us."
Think, think. Addie clings to the word and lets it drown out Marcos' voice. She forces her arms to sag, slows her struggle in careful, sporadic increments. Next her legs, eases them flat to the dirt where a pebble digs into her shin.
Marcos bears down on her back, his weight cutting off her breathing.
"Don't try it," he hisses, shifting to pin her right wrist. "It's just you and me now. Stop fighting it."
Addie softens her shoulders as tears prick her eyes, a useless weakness because what can tears do?
Weakness. Defeat.
She has to pretend to give up. Marcos needs to think he's won.
Addie stifles the sobs trying to rattle free, but not too much. Only enough to be sincere, to seem frustrated with herself.
"I can't leave him," she chokes, and cries a little more, warm tears watering the ferns by her cheek. "Please."
The best lies are wrapped in truths.
Marcos' weight lifts and he wrenches her onto her back.
"That horse's left the stable," Marcos says, nose-to-nose and almost too close to stomach. "But if it helps, he sent you away. He used you and now he doesn't want you."
Addie bites her tongue so she won't say no, he is the one who used her, not Caspian. Never Caspian.
Three more tears, a useful, convincing humiliation.
"That's not true," Addie whispers. The words stain her tongue with pain, a vulnerability she'd never let him hear otherwise.
She lets hopelessness dim her eyes, pinch her brow. Then she blinks, turns her face away.
Marcos takes her chin between two fingers and forces her to look at him.
"Maybe," he says, trailing a finger through a tear trail and smearing it down her cheek. "Doesn't matter now. It never would've worked, Addie. Deep down, you know that. He's a royal, and you're not. Not by blood and not to him."
Addie's heart jerks in her chest, thundering a protest she tries to lock behind the stiff upper lip Marcos expects.
He's wrong.
"It could have," she counters. It's a stupid mistake, as good as putting a knife in Marcos' hand and inviting him to slip it between her ribs. She's supposed to be pretending defeat, but these tears sting like truth.
No, no, to Tash with what Marcos thinks! It only matters how Caspian feels about her and how she feels about him and… and…
Marcos is wrong. She knows he's wrong.
Everything with Caspian can still work; she just has to get back, make sure he's still alive and that he knows she's with him for whatever this new Narnia will bring.
"Shh." Marcos presses his wet fingertip to her lips. The taste of salt and denial seeps into Addie's mouth, as bitter a tonic as any Rainroot gave her.
"You're smarter than that, and it's no use lying to me. I've seen you at each other's throats for weeks." With a chuckle, Marcos traces her mouth. "Tash knows you brought him plenty of trouble in the camp. Kings don't like defiant mistresses."
More of her fragile control cracks, slipping through her fingers like sand.
Addie lets it.
She can use this.
"Caspian did." Addie grimaces at her trembling voice and plants one foot on the ground. "I know he did."
Marcos' eyes glint and his frown - put-on sympathy, a mockery of care - deepens.
"Did he? Then why would he barter you off to me like it was nothing?"
Barter? Addie's limbs loosen, muscles softening as she blinks up at Marcos.
Vegetables are bartered, and meat and fruit and home-spun clothes in the city square. Jewellry, swords from blacksmiths.
Not people.
"What are you talking about?" Addie asks, breath shallow. He's trying to rattle her, to startle her into compliance.
Marcos strokes across her lips, his touch searing the tender skin.
"He promised me a general's salary to take you off his hands. You should've seen him; first time I ever saw a royal beg."
Addie forces a swallow, her head shaking. That's not bartering, that's… that's…
Caspian wouldn't sell her off like a slab of meat. He wouldn't, she knows him.
Above her, Marcos nods. He hums a pity-ridden sigh, and she smells stale bread on his breath.
"I'd have done it without the money, but he doesn't need to know that."
Addie's head spins. Caspian can't have meant that. He's protective, always so worried if she's safe. That must have been his intent.
"Even if he said that," Addie manages, "he wouldn't have meant forever."
He said he'd find her after the battle. She didn't imagine it; she knows he did.
Marcos purses his mouth. "How do you think the next battle ends? Go on, you were a healer's apprentice. How many good fighters does he have?"
"Doesn't matter," Addie says. "The Kings and Queens -"
"I saw them," Marcos says, stroking her cheek in a farce of tenderness. "They're children. You think four kids will change anything?"
Addie grits her teeth. Yes, the Kings and Queens are young, but Queen Lucy saved her life with magic flower juice and they're legends. That has to count for something, doesn't it?
She stiffens as Marcos leans in, his breath hot on her mouth.
"They're all going to die," he whispers. "But not you. And not me."
Another tear leaks from her eye. Marcos' other hand is a shackle around her wrist, and he's staring down at her like he knows he's right.
If they all die, Caspian will die with them. He's too noble, too wrapped up in duty and responsibility and the weight of his ancestor's sins to do anything else.
Addie looks into Marcos' face and memorises the self-assured arrogance tainting the face of her once-close friend. Remembers how his hands grip too tight and the filth he said to her the night he ruined everything between them.
She bids him goodbye in her heart, and she smiles as she rests her free hand on his shoulder.
"You're wrong."
Addie drives her knee up and meets flesh that gives.
It says something about her that she relishes his shout, that pride curls in her chest as Marcos wheezes and she rakes her nails down his face, scratching as he tries to protect his eyes. His grip chafes her skin, but she yanks free, her reddened skin proof she's not as helpless as he thought.
I'll find you after, Addie.
No, Addie decides as she scrambles out of reach and sprints for the horse. Because this time, she's going to find him first.
If Caspian is dying, then he'll have to do it with her by his side.
The beast snorts and skitters sideways, tossing its head as she grabs for the reins. Stupid animal, there's no time for this!
Addie glances over her shoulder. Marcos is coughing on his knees, brow in the dirt. When he straightens and their eyes lock, he tries to stand, hand braced on a nearby tree.
Addie forces calm she doesn't feel and approaches the horse. On her second reach, the reins are hers. By the time Marcos is upright, her foot is in a stirrup.
"It's too late," he shouts, jogging stiffly. "You want to fucking die?"
Addie jumps into the saddle, legs burning with effort. The horse prances but eases when she pulls the reins.
"I'd rather die with Caspian than spend a lifetime hiding with you," Addie calls.
She kicks the horse into a gallop, and she doesn't look back.
The sun beats down mercilessly as Addie thunders through the trees. Sweat trickles down her brow and back, worsened by the horse between her legs.
Addie's teeth have worried her lips raw. The oak tree they passed moments ago looks familiar, and a path of trampled ferns continues ahead down the slope.
She's riding in circles.
The horse snorts and mouths the bit. Apparently, it doesn't know the way either.
"I hoped one of us knew where we were going," Addie mumbles. She pats the animal's neck and finds its fur sticky with sweat.
Hopefully the summer's heat has been good for something. Perla must be swimming in all the parsnips and basil she could ever want, if the harvest was on schedule.
"I'll sneak you something when all this is over," Addie tells the horse, even though it hasn't moved faster than a jog since high noon. "You like parsnips, right? Or carrots?"
The horse flicks its ears, but that's it. Addie huffs; if it can understand her, it's doing an excellent job convincing her otherwise.
Addie glances up and finds the sun creeping down from its zenith, its heat falling heaviest on her right. West is to the right, so she's been travelling almost due south. She should've passed through Dancing Lawn by now. There's no river in sight or hearing, and even if she found one, it'd be the River Rush leading to Beruna - and the Telmarine camp.
If she hasn't run into the river yet - she doesn't remember hearing any river on the ride with Marcos, but she wasn't awake the whole time - she must be somewhere in the woods west of the How. In theory, to get back to the How, she needs to ride with the sun at her back. South isn't working.
Addie swings the horse to her left and clicks her tongue. Her hips ache from the unnatural angle and hours of riding, but she can't stop now.
Can't be too late. Can't let Caspian go somewhere she can't follow.
Eventually, Addie recognises the trees, and not because she's passed them before. She and Caspian argued here, on this wooded hill with the stream babbling along. That boulder is where Caspian held her in his lap and kissed her with tender promises.
This is where he insisted he wasn't better off without her. This is where she believed him.
You once chose differently. You were right.
Addie urges the horse onward. The field is beyond these trees.
She hears no sounds of battle - no clanging swords, no war cries, no marching or shield-bashing. There's only a low, wavering sound building at the edge of hearing, overtaking the trickle of the woodland stream. She smells death on the wind, a cloying reek of blood and freshly churned soil. As Addie breaks through the treeline, she sees why.
The field is strewn with bodies - fewer than she feared, but her stomach still jerks. The sound is a chorus of wounded cries, diluted by the death hastened by the day's heat.
She's too late.
No. No, it can't be. She can't be, she can't lose him like this. Caspian always promised to come back after battle. He never broke that promise and he wouldn't have broken it now, he -
Just for a little while. I'll find you after, Addie.
Addie chokes on the field's stench.
He didn't promise. Caspian sent her away, and he didn't promise.
No. He doesn't get to leave her behind like this.
There are figures - Narnians - picking their way across the field, bending low to tend the wounded and dying. They must know something.
Addie swipes the grief from her cheeks and nudges the horse into a jog - trot, that's the term, Caspian would laugh if she said jog.
Not laugh, Addie remembers as she carefully rides into the field, weaving between bodies, searching, searching, he's here somewhere. Caspian - he's alive, just find him, forget the gore, scan the bodies for a familiar face - would start to chuckle, catch himself, and politely correct her. He'd kiss her brow, his lips tight with a smile, and tuck her under his arm.
He's going to do that again. She's going to spend the rest of her life saying silly things to make Caspian laugh, because he's alive, here, somewhere.
By the pillar ruins, a swath of ground has collapsed. Jagged cracks and gouges criss-cross the field itself, the earth churned and piled as if something exploded from beneath. Not a cave-in; the How's tunnels don't stretch that far. Piles of broken timber and round boulders dot the grass at the field's far end.
Catapults? The How's entrance is caved in, its facade marred by shattered stone. But if those are catapults, something splintered them like matchsticks.
Did the Narnians flee inside the How, get trapped in the cave-in? That would explain why there aren't enough bodies; there were more Narnians left than she sees on the field. A group of them are working to clear stones and rubble from the How's entrance.
Addie clenches the reins until the leather bites into her palms. It'll take them hours to clear the doorway. If Caspian's trapped inside the How, she won't know before sundown. But if he's on the field somewhere, he could be hurt. Addie nudges the horse to a walk.
Not him, not him, not him. A cluster of Telmarine soldiers lying still and silent, their throats cut open. A faun looking up, a hole in his stomach. A minotaur wheezing, gurgling, who falls still at her approach. Two dwarfs missing limbs, pale with shock or death. A Telmarine archer, crossbow still in hand, crushed under his horse and staring blankly at the sky.
Addie sets her teeth and rides on, breathing shallowly. There are no poultices here to cover the smell of death, no orders from Rainroot to stop her head from swimming.
Don't think about it. Ride, a little to the right, don't let the horse step on anyone. Get to the Narnians, ask if they've seen Caspian.
Ahead are four or five of them, alive and rushing from body to body.
Addie kicks the horse, reckless and heedless but maybe they've seen him, maybe he retreated inside the How, maybe there's a way inside?
Caspian could be inside. He could be fine.
Then why is her heart trembling? Why can't she take a breath that doesn't hurt?
A badger looks up as she approaches.
"You, do you have bandages?"
Addie halts the horse close by and turns in the saddle. Stupid, stupid hands, stop shaking, be useful!
Addie fumbles through the saddlebag, finds food, two sets of spare clothes, and a small bundle of medical supplies holding a roll of bandages, three doses of a healing poultice, and a pouch of mixed herbs - willow bark and a floral musk that tastes like the scratchiness in her throat.
"Yes," Addie mumbles, tossing the bandages. "Do you need -"
"A strong stick, slender," says the badger, already turning to the bloody faun at his feet. "Go!"
Sticks are back near the treeline. Addie turns the horse before purpose clears her head.
"Have you seen -"
"Go!"
Fine, a stick first - probably for a tourniquet - and then maybe the badger will tell her something.
The sun crawls across the sky, but the only true marker of time is the endless sea of injured bodies.
Too many to count. Dozens, surely, but she lost track after the first twenty.
Caspian isn't among them.
That's good, Addie tells herself as she tears another strip off a shirt from her saddlebag - the last scrap of clean cloth they have. The poultices are long gone; all of Rainroot's stockpiles are trapped behind rubble.
Rainroot herself is also nowhere to be found.
Not found could be good. Not found could be in hiding, or escaped, or anywhere not dead.
Not found could be dead.
He isn't.
Addie ties the cloth over a roughly stitched gash - chest wound, might be survivable - and moves to the next patient - a satyr, more conscious than others she's helped.
Red stains his white fur, darkest on his right leg and shoulder. Shock of white through the red - bone. Stabilise, wrap, move on. He'll survive, and she can't set splintered bone.
As she immobilises his leg and wraps a bandage above and below the wound, Addie asks the satyr if he's seen Caspian. Rude, she knows, but she asks everyone who can speak.
"With the army," said a dwarf. "Fought well," said a gryphon - past tense, past tense, sending bile up Addie's throat. "Not sure," "don't know," "haven't seen him," said others.
The satyr grunts as Addie ties off the bandage and calls another healer - the faun, with a needle, thread, and quick, precise hands - to stitch the cut across his shoulder.
"At the front," says the satyr. "Telmarine army retreated. Chased toward the ford."
Hope hurdles up her throat like a poison, gurgling past every barrier, every 'what if' she piled up to anticipate the heartbreak. The ford - that's the Ford at Beruna, Telmarines retreated, he could be ali-
No, no, don't think the word. Don't hope too much, focus on the blood. The itch on her hands, rust-red flakes falling from her wrists like autumn leaves.
Rainroot would be appalled. No water, no washing between patients.
Addie lurches to her feet when she finishes with the satyr. Bile tempts her tongue, sour sick pushing up, up, up. She swallows, tries not to choke.
"Broadleaf," she blurts, witless as only someone who's spent hours watching death stalk over a field can be. None of her fellow makeshift healers look up.
"For pain," Addie continues. She stares into the treeline, directs her eyes above the bodies, reciting as if she's back at Rainroot's grotto. "It's good for inflammation, helps fever. Slows bleeding."
The faun - Addie doesn't even know her name - closes the satyr's shoulder with an interlocking whip stitch, knots the thick thread, and cuts the excess with her teeth.
"Yes, it grows by the river; hurry!" says the faun before rushing to the next patient.
Addie jogs to the horse she left behind. It's a well-trained beast - hasn't moved since she dropped the reins. It stands there grazing, tearing mouthfuls of grass no creature should eat, its spit dripping green as Addie takes the reins and hauls herself into the saddle.
Don't hope. Don't hope.
Don't hope.
Gods damn it, what else can she do but hope?
She listens for Telmarine soldiers, watches for scouts as she rides. None appear.
Army retreated.
Did they truly?
Again, that bubble of hope, filling her lungs with air but fragile, so fragile. So easy to pop.
Addie breathes through it and presses on.
Then, she hears it. A low murmur up ahead, voices mixed with the sounds of a flowing river.
Addie urges the horse faster and charges through the trees, wayward branches stinging her cheeks and the wind like a knife under her collarbone.
The horse crests a shallow hill, and all at once there are people, actual standing, living people. Tall people covered in fur - minotaurs, satyrs, a cluster of centaurs. Scattered among them are human men in armour she knows well.
Telmarines.
Addie yanks the reins too quickly; the horse skids to a stop and rears, neighing in protest.
"Tash, shit, sorry!" Addie throws herself forward on instinct, gripping the saddle with both hands as her ass slides back, back, almost over the saddle's edge.
With a snort, the horse drops to all fours and tosses its head, whipping the reins out of her hands.
Addie flops into its neck, hits her chin, tastes copper in her mouth.
Stupid horse.
Addie clings to its neck as it prances, blinking against the horse hair stinging her eyes, bracing for an attack because she was stupid and didn't check the saddlebag for a weapon -
It never comes. The voices hit a crescendo only to quiet again.
"- company at Beruna –"
"- no, not with that lion -"
"- no disrespect, of course -"
"- surrender arms -"
Clarity bleeds through the fog of fear.
They seem to be ignoring her. And they're not trying to kill each other.
Broadleaf. She's here for broadleaf. Caspian would want her to help, would want -
Addie clambers off the horse, narrowly sparing her toes from a trampling, and grabs the first Narnian she sees - a faun with sunburned ears.
"Please," she says, kneading a sudden stitch in her side. "Where is he? Caspian, is he - where - the How, he wasn't -"
Stupid, stupid, stumbling over the wrong words, trying to see through a film of water, trying to keep her chest from collapsing.
"- by the shore," the faun is saying, his hand weighing on her shoulder. "Are you alright?"
Addie shakes her head and tries to swallow the panic, but it sticks in her throat. Wrong hand, wrong pressure, wrong fingers. All wrong, when it's supposed to be Caspian touching her. No one else, she doesn't want anyone else's hands, can't stand it –
"Which shore?" she manages, shying out of reach. "Where?"
The faun points across the throng of people covering the pebbled ground.
"The far shore," says the faun. "I'll show you, here -"
Addie steps back before he can touch her again. Tash, it's rude, but she can't stomach anyone else's hands right now. Not until she sees him, until she knows Caspian is alive.
"Thank you," she says, and then repeats premature gratitude like a plea as she runs into the crowd. "Thank you, really, I'll - thank you."
At the last moment, she remembers the broadleaf.
"Wait!" Addie doubles back to the faun. "Broadleaf, it grows here. They need it on the field. Look near -"
"I know the plant," says the faun, already turning into the forest. "I'll see to it."
Addie blurts thanks and dashes away, shoving past Narnians and Telmarines muttering "Excuse me, excuse me," like she has manners and ignores how strange it is to see both at once. Almost as strange as seeing bodies that aren't bleeding or broken.
Her boots crunch over pebbles and sand, the smell of sweat and sun-baked leather and metal thick with every breath. Still, that fraying knot of wrongness winds in her chest, tangling with the rasp of breathing too fast, head spinning -
Addie breaks through the sea of people and the river stretches before her, a frothing expanse of white and blue. Rough, but she can manage; Telmarines and Narnians alike are fording the river. If they can, she can too.
The current drags against her legs, pushing aching muscles until they burn with the effort of keeping her upright. Nothing, nothing, where is he -
When the river reaches her thighs, Addie stumbles, then freezes.
Because on the shore ahead, there is a lion taller than a horse standing with five figures. Four, she doesn't know - they're vaguely familiar, but she doesn't know them. But the fifth, oh the fifth -
Tall with dark hair falling in waves, strong shoulders made broader by armour, a back with princely posture she used to tease him about.
He's here. He's alive.
Caspian is alive!
His name spills from her lips like a prayer and builds into a hoarse shout, roughened by dry sobs she can't stop and the aftertaste of too-bitter mint tea.
Caspian whirls, and by then she's already running - or trying to, almost loses her footing, this impossible river.
Her name has never sounded as wonderful as it does now, shouted over the churning current as Caspian charges into the water.
In the breathless moments before she touches him, before he's quite real, Addie tastes this morning's tea, feels the memory of betrayal like a scream in her chest, her head throbbing with sedative.
She shoves it aside and leaps into his arms.
Caspian stinks of blood and battle, of death and dirt and terrible prices. But his hands fit over her body like they're a part of her, and later, later she will be upset with him.
For now, for this precious minute before the reality of what he did comes crashing in, Addie buries her face in his neck, clutches him, and says nothing but his name.
This, his name, the only prayer she will ever need.
A/N: Yay, reunited at last! I'm taking bets on how long that happiness/relief will last 😇
Reply to LokdOutFF: Exactly, right? Caspian MAJORLY f'd up this time. Worse than Addie did in the escape, tbh. This boy has some serious penance to do. Thank you so much for your reviews!
Chapter 43 Preview:
"What are you doing here?" Caspian says, his breath hot on her neck. "You're supposed to be with -"
"Don't," Addie croaks. "Don't you fucking dare."