Title: once a queen
Day/Theme: 16. Laugh
Series: The Chronicles of Narnia
Character/Pairing:
Rating: PG13



Minotaurs had been their enemies, once.

She remembered her first battle, still fresh from England, filled with breathless urgency and Aslan's power at her back. In the years after that the folk of Narnia mostly gathered around their leaders, and she was familiar with fighting at their side, and having their sheer power at her back.

Rarely under her command, though. Archers were her domain, and the minotaurs were heavy-hitting infantry.

So she remembered that bright battlefield, dimly, as she watched them speak in the hollow of the earth, with Narnians in a frenzy of motion around her, but mostly she remembered past wars, and watching Peter or Edmund--or even Lucy--talking with them as they were now, and the shapes almost blurred into taller ones, prouder ones.

Ones a little less desperate.

The boy--man, really--that came to her side now, sliding her a quiet dark glance, was an entirely new face, and yet welcome, despite how jarring the reminder was.

"Your Majesty," he said, accent lilting his impeccably courteous words. "You are not with them?"

"I am not experienced in the tactics they are now discussing," she replied, slipping into more formal rhythms with ease. How many suitors had she bantered with in her years as Queen? Immeasurably many; but none of them, as she recalled, over anything like this. Her conversations with courtiers were frivolous things, quickly boring.

There was nothing boring about his steady eyes. And Caspian the tenth was as far from frivolous or unimportant as you could get.

"And I was--restless, I suppose," she confessed suddenly, startling herself. The air in the cave could be chill in a mostly unlit pathway like this, and she controlled a shiver.

"I see." He returned his gaze to the people milling about below him. The silence was still and filled with the mounting tension. Below, one of the minotaurs grunted, nodding to whatever Peter was saying to him, watching the movements of the High King's hands.

"I never imagined..." He shook his head slowly. "When they told us--"

"Someone older?" She murmured, feeling a smile tug at the corners of her mouth.

"Someone not human," he answered directly.

Susan blinked. "Oh. That's..." she began to laugh, helplessly, a curious feeling of release washing through her at the sensation. "A centaur, then? Or a faun?"

His mouthed curved up at the corners and he flicked her a glance from beneath a heavy veil of dark lashes. "A minotaur, perhaps," he said.

Susan put a hand over her mouth, shoulders shaking. "I don't think horns would suit me," she finally managed to gasp.

And then a grin finally broke out over his face, eyes dancing, and she turned towards him, studying the planes of his face.

Peter shouted her name.

She twisted around, looking down, and he beckoned with his whole arm, and the weight of war resettled over her, a soft dark shroud of foreboding.

But Caspian followed her, pacing by her side over her stone, and she felt the weight of her quiver as keenly as she was aware of the sword at his hip, and it truly was a Narnia-thought--a warrior-thought--that was glad to have him at her back.