His seagull-dæmon looked frail and he rested limply, like a bird with two broken wings, on his human's chest, which only just barely moved up and down consistently.

"Caspian, come back," said Farder Coram, noticing the blank, clouded look that was beginning to come into the Telmarine Gyptian Lord's half-closed eyes. "Try to focus on me. Come on, I know it en't easy, I know. Focus. Look at me. Try to stare into my face. You try to concentrate, alright? You got to."

Caspian's left arm and shoulder were covered in dark, partly caked-on but still streaming, blood that soaked through his torn, pale gray-and-white shift. The two others with him had tried, in an attempt to keep him warm if nothing else, to put a jerkin or a cloak over him, but the touch of the fabrics-most of which were stronger than they were soft-over the wound that was not properly bandaged only seemed to make his pain greater still.

"What happened?" Farder Coram's tabby tried talking to the borderline-listless seagull dæmon.

In spite of his weakened state, he still seemed a very little bit more alert than his master currently did. If they couldn't keep Caspian awake and concentrating by talking to him, his dæmon would be the one who would have to pull them through it.

"Sohonax?" murmured the seagull.

"Yes, yes," said the tabby-dæmon, responding to her name, "it's me. Can your human see us?"

"Blurry," the seagull explained softly.

"Not blinded? He wasn't hit in the head?"

"No," the seagull managed to assure them. "He can see; so can I. We are very tried, though."

"Make him stay awake, just for a little longer…tell him he can sleep later," the tabby ordered, pressing her paws lightly against one of the seagull's injured wings to keep his attention. "We are going to care for his wounds and give him medicine…he can sleep after that, we promise it. Just don't let him sleep now; we're not sure if we're losing him. We don't want him to die. Do you understand? Try to make him focus."

By then everyone else on deck, and many who'd come out from their cabins or the storage rooms below deck, were crowding round him as close as Farder Coram, John Faa, Lucy Pevensie, and the alethiometrist would let them.

"Farder Coram," Caspian finally muttered. His eyes shut all the way, but only for an instant, his lids crinkling tightly as he winced; then they were open again, a little more life seeming to peer out of them this time.

"Caspian, we're going to help you into a cabin," Farder Coram told him. "Edmund's going to lift you on one side, Rhince on the other. What I want you to be doing is lookin' at Lucy on my left, don't take your eyes off of her, try to talk to her and meet 'er eyes if you think you can manage it, alright? Just don't close your eyes again till we a say it's safe, got it?"

"Yes, Farder Coram." His eyelids must have felt very heavy because everyone could tell how dear it cost him to keep them open, ever wider, ever more painstakingly alert.

Edmund, as he helped Rhince lift him, wondered how he could stand it.

"Peter," said John Faa, looking over one broad shoulder at the dæmonless man, his own crow-dæmon perched as frozenly as a gargoyle on the opposite one, "do us a favor and speak to them two that brought him back."

"Yes, Your Grace." He tried not to stare at Caspian's bloody injury as he was carried passed.

Peter felt a little ashamed, though, that Edmund-a chap younger than he himself was-could swallow his frightened, even repulsed, feelings and just do what he needed to without making faces, and here he was cowardly trying to avoid seeing the pain of his Telmarine Gyptian friend. All the same, he found he couldn't help it; he could only keep his expression stony and do as Lord Faa ordered. Nothing else was going to get him, or anyone else, through this.

"What should I do?" Susan asked practically, never one to stand on the sidelines and gawk for long when the initial feelings of near-hysteria had passed over her and everyone else at last.

"Go with them," Peter told her sort of quietly as he started walking over to where the other two were to follow John Faa's orders. "You can talk to Caspian and help bind his wounds as well as Lucy can, and I don't want her staying up all night with him. Edmund told me she hasn't been sleeping well as of late. She needs her rest; this will have been quite a shock for her, besides."

"Very well," Susan agreed, lifting her skirts to walk faster and going after the small group taking Caspian to a cabin.

"So what happened?" Peter turned to the two grave-faced men.

"Someone in Narrowhaven learned-we aren't really being sure how, to tell the truth aright, but they learned it all the same-that he was a Gyptian spy. They aren't powerful fond of Gyptians, as you know."

Peter nodded in a, "Yes, I know, please go on," way.

"Well, perhaps Lord Faa would've done better if he'd a left us with more men…we were attacked…Caspian, more specifically, since he was clearly the one in charge and the one of nobler birth."

Peter's brow lowered itself in a moment of slight confusion. "I thought the inn was a safe place for Gyptians; harming them would be a death-blow to business there, wouldn't it?"

"Aye," chimed in the second man, who'd, up till this point, been letting his companion do most of the talking. "Aye, not good at all. But it weren't in the inn that he was harmed. Not even on the grounds."

"While out spying, then?"

"That's right."

Peter chewed pensively on the inside of his lower lip. "Bolvangar?"

They shrugged their shoulders simultaneously. "Dunno. Shouldn't think it likely…Normal thugs is most probable."

"They shot him in the arm, then?" Peter asked, feeling immediately stupid. Of all the obvious questions…of course he was shot in the arm (and in the shoulder)! He wasn't bleeding there for pleasure!

"That's right."

"Erm…was it a rifle or an arrow?"

"Both," they answered. "One had an arrow, one had him a pistol or a rifle…the sun was low-setting-we hadn't any rill way of being sure…"

"Hmm," said Peter.

"Sir," they said, speaking in strained tones, "could we rest now? We're dead-tried…had to carry 'im…to the ship…no sleep…"

"Oh, of course!" He felt horrible for not even offering them a seat while they talked; their eyes were so dark round the edges… "Go on. I'll tell John Faa what you told me. I won't keep you."

"Good man." One of them clapped his arm in a friendly, relieved manner.

In the meantime, Caspian had been helped into a large cot almost the shape and size of a regular bed, the sort any castle on land would have had in a fine chamber, only its sides were higher up and of a rougher-cut despite being made of fine, gleaming mahogany that had two or three unfixable dents in it.

This was a cabin belonging to one of John Faa's sons, but the Gyptian prince didn't mind giving it up to a fellow Gyptian noble in need.

All the while Ma Costa and Farder Coram were binding his wounds, Caspian had to talk to Lucy Pevensie while his seagull weakly attempted to chat-and even jokingly nudge-Reepicheep. He didn't want to talk, especially not about such frivolous things as weather, the look of the cabin, taxes, books, anything at all that Lucy could come up with. It was doubly hard because there were tears in her eyes and so any opinion she expressed on those light-hearted matters seemed horribly forced and stiff. But Farder Coram knew what he was doing; they had to trust him.

After a bit, Caspian thought he couldn't bear it any longer and was-not in his right mind-even thinking that death could not be worse than this forced talking, this pretend-ignorance of the pain in his shoulder, the shallowness of his breath…a few more inches and they would have killed him…he nearly wished they had…

Then, as the world was growing murky again, he found that his arm was bound, Ma Costa had her arms around Lucy (who was little more than a blur with a mouse-dæmon clinging to her shoulder) and was leading her out of the cabin, Edmund and John Faa were leaving, and Farder Coram was saying…oh, the most beautiful thing Caspian had ever thought to hear…that he could sleep now only he mustn't protest if they woke him up in a little while to see how he was doing, should they for any reason think the need had arisen.

Yes, yes, of course he agreed; anything they wanted-anything! He just needed so badly to close his eye-lids; he'd never had to lift something so heavy in all his life…

Everything was black.

For what might (or might not) have been hours his mind was blank. Then there was a touch of a dream floating around. There was a beautiful woman sitting beside the cot, taking care of him while he dozed on. The milky face and starry eyes paired with golden hair were unmistakable for anyone besides Ramandu's daughter. How he could see her with his eyes closed did not occur to him, as he was so tried, and that is the way it is with dreams sometimes anyway; even when a person thinks they're real at the time, they don't generally try to make sense of it all until they have woken up for real.

When Caspian began to wake, he felt at once that his head was pounding and his arm was absolutely killing him. The tight bandages were there to help, and he knew that, but it didn't make the sharp pains from it any easier to deal with.

Finally he managed to open his eyes; and they immediately started darting around, looking for Ramandu's daughter.

But it wasn't Ramandu's daughter who was sitting beside him, changing the cloth on his arm and shoulder when the gauze became too bloody or dirty or hung wrong because of the way he was squirming. No, instead, he saw, not without a sharp twinge of disappointment, that it was Susan Pevensie. Maugrim had his paws up on the side of the bed and was keeping a keen, watchful eye on the seagull-dæmon.

"Oh," Caspian said, noticing her before she realized he was awake. "It's you."

Susan could hear the disappointment in his voice clear as day. "You can go back to sleep," she told him sharply as she adjusted his arm. "I have things well in hand, thank you."

"I didn't mean to suggest otherwise," he amended, trying to smile at her but mostly grimacing unintentionally.

She forced a tiny smile. "You seem to be doing better."

"Yes," said Caspian, his voice still a tad wistful, "that is good."

"Are the bandages too tight?" Susan asked after a pause. "Maugrim told me that they were; he sensed your dæmon's discomfort. I've loosened them a bit since then."

"Well the lowest one feels like it's digging into the cut," he admitted.

"All right." Susan sucked in a deep breath, knowing it wasn't his fault. "Try to lift it when I say to. It'll make it easier to re-wrap."

"No problem."

"Good."

"Where is everybody else?"

"Sleeping," Susan told him. "Well, most of them, anyway. It's well after midnight. Peter, Edmund, and Lord Asriel are in a meeting with Lord Faa and a few others-Rhince as well, I think-but except for them everyone went to bed hours ago."

"Why aren't you asleep?"

"Someone had to take care of you," grunted Maugrim, nudging the seagull in a light reprimand. "And we weren't about to put Lucy and Ma Costa through the trouble."

"That was very kind of you."

Susan shrugged her shoulders and narrowed her eyes. "I suppose. Lift your arm now."

He did so, trying not to cringe. "I'm sorry if I sounded upset to see you."

"It's fine."

"I was having a dream about…" His cheeks went red. "About Ramandu's daughter. I thought you were her for a second."

"Ah." She and her wolf exchanged amused expressions; they understood now.

"Is it sick that I think I may be in love with someone who was my ancestor's lover?"

"I wouldn't know, it's too confusing," Susan said, her voice slightly apathetic, unwrapping the bandage. "In your case, perhaps it's not."

"Do you think she likes me?"

Susan sucked her teeth; he'd lowered his arm and she was too tried for this nonsense. "Yes, I think she likes you very much. Now will you please keep your arm up? I'm going to have to replace the bandage completely. It's soaked through again."

"More sweat than blood," Maugrim added, snarling, sniffing at the bandage.

"Sorry." He lifted his arm again. "I don't think she would ever…"

"She might." Susan started to roll the fresh bandage around his arm.

"No," he decided, "she wouldn't." The seagull made a sad, defeated-sounding noise.

"Yeah, that's a real shame," said Maugrim curtly, not as if he truly thought it was a shame in the least.

"Hush, Maugrim." Susan did feel a little bad. After all, Caspian had been more than understanding when the situation was reversed, on the way to Jordan College, when she wasn't sure if Peter still wanted her. She supposed, late as the hour was, much as she was longing for sleep herself, that she could be a touch more sympathetic.

"It's very hard," said Caspian, reaching across the bed to stroke his dæmon's feathers, "being in love with someone you can never have. Somebody you are not meant to have."

This time Susan made a little hum of sympathy come out of her throat; she could relate to that. A certain Coulter girl of about thirteen years old who had fallen madly in love with a dæmonless boy of no consequence came to her mind.

"You probably have no idea what I am talking about."

"No," she said softly, finishing binding his arm. "I think I understand better than most, actually."

"You would, I suppose," he had to admit.

"Yes."

"Hey, can I ask you something?"

"Sure, go ahead." She nodded encouragingly.

"Why did you decide to go after him?" he wanted to know. "Why did you change your name and go out of your way to find someone who you hadn't even seen for four years…It was a big leap down for you, wasn't it? From being a lady to being a charity scholar's wife. It would have been nearly the same result in society's eyes as if you'd married into a culture they looked down upon; say, the Gyptians, for example."

It was complicated. On the one hand, it had been because she was terrified of Lord Rabadash and she would have had to marry him if she had chosen to stay behind, to remain a Coulter. But it wasn't only that; it couldn't have been. To avoid becoming Rabadash's wife, she'd tried to kill herself. When that failed, and Edmund offered to help her get away to where ever she wanted to be, she could have gone anywhere.

It occurred to her now, thinking it over, that she might have easily chosen to go someplace else, to work her way up, to hide in a less obvious place than Jordan College. But that had not even remotely seemed an option at the time. No, all she knew then was that she simply had to find the boy-man, by then-who's heart she broke and apologize. She had, somewhat uncharacteristically, followed her own heart. Her sense for once in her life had sided with it, and had all but shut up otherwise. The clean-cut simple answer was that she loved him. And, yet, it ran deeper, she discovered, even than that in itself.

Her expression twisting into something distant and melancholy, Susan said, "It ruined me, marrying him. What I did, going off and finding him, it ruined whatever standing I had in good society." She smiled to herself as she spoke, and Caspian understood that she was not saying this regretfully but, rather, proudly with a devil-may-care-and-I'd-do-it-all-over-again-if-I-had-the-choice expression on her face.

Maugrim yawned a doggish yawn. His mistress had been married for all this time and she could still talk about her husband like a smitten teenager when she got romantic notions seeping in-between her sensible thoughts; he was pretty much passed waiting for the phase to be over and was more or less acceptant of it.

"My mother called me some very…unpleasant…names when she saw me again afterwards."

"And you didn't care, did you?"

"I was scared," Susan admited. "But I was only scared of her, not of what I had done. I was happy to be ruined; happy he ruined me, happy I ruined myself. You see, I've realized something; Peter isn't a man without a dæmon anymore."

"He's not?" This was interesting.

"Being husband and wife has made us as close as any human and dæmon ever were. We share pain as well as happiness, and if anything ever happened to him, I would feel like only half a person. I have friends I love, but none who would make me feel as if I could not go on if I lost them; none that I would feel cut apart from. Oh, Maugrim," she whispered, looking at the wolf with more sentimentality than she usually carried in a single expression, never one to wear her heart on her sleeve, "we are Peter's dæmon." She paused and seemed to be thinking about something. Then, to Caspian, "Did you know we have a son?"

"I had gathered as much." Caspian shrugged his one good shoulder, making the other one sting a bit. "Ouch."

"Careful," she told him.

"Don't let her get started about Christian." Maugrim actually spoke directly to Caspian instead of to his dæmon this time. "You'll never hear the end of it."

Susan made a face at her dæmon. "Oh, like you aren't proud of him!"

"I am," Maugrim admited. "Only I don't talk about it as much as you do. At least it's not streams, though."

"Streams?" Caspian raised an eyebrow.

"Long story." Susan went a little red in the face. "It's a sort of private joke between Maugrim, Peter, and me."

"Ah, I see."

"Well at least the little blighter is safe with his grandparents," Maugrim sighed.

"Susan?" said Caspian a few moments later when they'd been sitting quietly after Maugrim's comment, not much else to say.

"Yes?"

"Do you think that's what I should do?" he wanted to know. "Ruin myself, ruin her, and just hope it works out?"

"Whoa, whoa," Maugrim barked. "We're in no position to give advice to anyone! What we did was madness."

Susan snorted. "Well of course it was…but it kept us whole."

"You're right," Caspian said. "I could at least try…I could talk to her…if I make it…"

"I think," said Susan, her tone pretend-curt, "the odds of you living through this are well in your favor."

"That's nice." He sighed.

"The seagull wants to know how long we're staying in here," Maugrim told his mistress.

"Not long," said Susan. "You can go back to sleep if you want, Caspian. I'm only to stay here until John Faa comes, and I think I saw his shadow pass by the door a little while ago-he'll be here soon."

Maugrim suddenly looked discomfited. "Wait, John Faa wasn't at the door."

"Well somebody was, I think." Susan blinked and put her hand down on the wolf's head. "I saw a shadow in passing."

"If it was John Faa, I would have sensed his crow."

"And you didn't?"

"No," said the wolf. "I didn't sense any dæmon."

"Perhaps you just didn't notice," Susan said airily. "We are over-tired." Maugrim did not look convinced.

"Bad things happen when you're over-tired," Caspian teased. "I was over-tired the night I tried to kiss you on Lee Scoresby's airship."

"Oh, shut up." Susan laughed, glad he was feeling well enough to joke again.

The reason Maugrim had not sensed another dæmon's presence when Susan thought she saw a shadow out of the corner of her eye, passing by the door, was simply because the person who it really was-not John Faa, after all-didn't have one.

The man who had been in the doorway was Peter.

He had been meaning to knock lightly against the wood of the door before announcing his presence when he heard Caspian say something rather curious; some gibberish about being in love with someone he couldn't have. What was that all about? Perhaps he was confused? Anyone would be after such an injury as he suffered with. Then Susan said that about 'understanding', and that was followed by Caspian's odd question about why she had married a dæmonless nobody.

Unable to believe his ears, Peter stayed just long enough to hear Susan say that marrying him had ruined her. Unlike Caspian, he couldn't see her face, thus he had no way of knowing she was happy about being 'ruined'. After that, he turned and left.

Hearing only part of the conversation, he had been left with the wrong impression entirely. It seemed to him that his beloved wife no longer cared for him. Was it possible, he wondered, that she was now interested in Caspian of all people? It would explain that rubbish he was saying at the start of the conversation, loving someone he couldn't have. It made perfect sense, really, much as Peter wished it didn't. That had to be it. Caspian was interested in her, but she was a married woman and so he couldn't have her. And now Susan was returning his interest, or at least admitting she wanted to.

But that didn't make sense. This was Susan, after all. Susan loved him; she loved their family, her in-laws, their son…she truly did, and he knew it. Why, though, would she have said what he'd heard her say? The Susan he knew would never say their marriage had ruined her.

Besides, wasn't she already ruined, running away from her betrothed? Was that why she married him? For protection? Was it possible that she really had only meant to apologize for how she'd treated him back at Bolvangar, and he himself had blown the whole thing out of proportion by asking her to be his wife?

"That's stupid," he told himself, almost laughing at the absurdity of the notion. "She told you she loved you, you didn't pull a proposal out of thin air!"

She'd kissed him, too, he remembered. She had wanted to be his wife. If there was interest in another man, it had to have come recently.

He glanced across the deck to where he saw Lord Asriel and Edmund standing talking to a Gyptian sailor on a late-night look-out shift.

Edmund probably really did look a lot like his father, especially as he grew taller. And he looked pretty tall just then…standing beside Lord Asriel like that…almost his height but not quite…

Peter winced and felt a shudder rack his body. Edmund Coulter and Lord Asriel…two men who both loved a Coulter woman…

It was too late for rational thought, the world swam and the deck below his feet swayed more than usual; he had to get to sleep before he lost his mind.

He went to the cabin he was staying in. One side was his and Susan's and the other was currently Tony Costa's (a lot of the cabins got switched around to accommodate different circumstances), but he was already sleeping and he didn't snore so the space was dead-quiet.

Peter crawled into his own cot and closed his eyes, but he didn't sleep; he just stared at the back of his eye-lids for hours, lying flat on his back.

During those hours Susan came in and curled up next to him after John Faa had relieved her of her task and sent her away.

Peter did in fact notice that Susan rested her head on the side of his shoulder, but he pretended not to. He pretended that lightly pushing her away and twisting as far from her as the cot would allow him to was simply something he did in his sleep.

AN: Please review.