A/N: You would not believe how long it took me to write this. It's not Golden Age and it's /not/ the jolly Bastable fic I had in mind, but it took me 2500 words of horrible Bastable/Narnia crossover fics to get this, so I hope you're happy.
You won't be, of course, despite the little hints I've made about Kipling (if you've read the Wouldbegoods or the Story of the Treasure Seekers, you'll understand). I firmly intend to give the Bastables another go, sometime soon in the future. However, for now, this is all you're getting.
Gary is the fourth of six children belonging to Oswald Bastable. He has an oldest brother, Erroll, and twins brother and sister Ned and Nell, and two younger siblings. He has a cousin named Rudyard who goes to Experiment House with a certain Scrubb. (Most of this was decided in the first crossover fic I attempted, which was actually a very dull Christmas party in which I basically just explained the Bastable family tree. Ugh. Too much essay-writing is the cause of this, I'll be bound!)
I'm sorry it's not more exciting. I really do intend to write a better one. But for now, enjoy.
11.
"I hate Kipling," she says one day, and means it, too.
Her companion, bright-haired and utterly British, lets out a very attractive laugh and leans his head against the tree behind him. "Why on earth, Su? What's the poor fellow ever done to you?"
"He's—I don't know. So fanciful and foolish," she replies, flipping through the worn pages of the Jungle Book one more time before she casts it aside on the grass like the remains of a cigarette. "I know I must have liked him once upon a time, but I never really understood him."
"Poor fellow," her companion repeats. He himself never minds a taste or two of Kipling, after supper, when his older siblings have ceased going on about politics, and his younger siblings have stopped chattering his ear off.
"Don't see why you care, Gary," Susan says, sighing and inspecting her fingernails with the greatest interest. "He wasn't much of a writer—they're just children's stories."
He thinks, with a wince, that the name Gary sounds so modern on her lips. His real name is Gaheris, and although, being a rugby player, he should not really be much concerned with sentimentality, he somehow wishes she'd use that instead of "Gary".
"Children's stories often have a lot of truth in them. Kipling could say more with one sentence than another writer—especially some of these modern rotters—could manage to convey in an entire jabberwocky of a novel."
"Don't tell me you like Carroll too?"
"Just Jabberwocky."
"You would like Jabberwocky."
A moment of silence grows between the two, as the young man grins and rolls over into the grass, and the young woman smiles a little and twists a flower around her finger. The young man glances over at her, and something in her face makes his grin grow a little less merry.
"Are you holding up alright, Su? Really, I mean—and don't give me any of that jazz about moving on and starting afresh, because it doesn't happen that easily. My family knows that just as well as yours."
"What's left of mine," Susan mutters, snapping the stem of the flower in half and then wishing she hadn't.
"This hating Kipling—it's new, I think. I mean, I know you haven't cared for him in years, but Ed always said—"
"Please." Her voice is hard and trembling all at once. "Don't play therapist with me Gary. I know perfectly well what you're up to, slipping my brother's name into the conversation so casually, and I jolly well—"
"—are going to bite my head off about it because you think that'll make it better, I know," Gary snaps back. "It's not easy for me either, Su. He was my best friend. We played rugby together."
She feels a pang of compassion (well, that's something new for a change) but is confused because that's just one more thing to add to how she feels about Gaheris Bastable. He's fair like Peter, of an age of Edmund, and his temperament and catching grin reminds her of a young boy she has tried to forget (because he's deaddeaddead and she doesn't know how but it still hurts) with that same mischievous smile and a laugh that catches like fire. The words swell up in her throat and choke her but when they surface they sound like a sob.
Gary jerks his eyes up and sees that at last the wall around the tower has begun to crack. He takes her hand, and it is enough.
Because hate that exists for someone who is already dead, like Kipling, like her family, like a world in a wardrobe and all the people she used to love, is so hopelessly hard to keep up.