Title: Ephemeral
Fandom: Chronicles of Narnia
Pairing/Character: Susan, Doctor Cornelius
Rating: PG
Prompt: Orange



She was not sure how he found her.

Lucy wouldn't have told him, and Peter didn't know where she was. Edmund was observant enough to have noticed, but he understood the value of privacy.

No, she suspected Doctor Cornelius had figured it out all on his own.

When she had first mounted the long steps to the castle wall, greeting the icy gray predawn light, she would have said company would not be welcome. But by now, Queen Susan--fingers resting on the stone and long gone numb, nose undoubtedly unnattractively red and eyes stinging from the wind--couldn't bring herself to protest his company.

She'd been brought up better, in both worlds.

He approached her slowly, the heavy fabric of his robes looking comfortably insulating, cleaning his glasses with a piece of fine white cloth. "Your Majesty," he said, very gently, bowing. "It is early."

Susan curtseyed deeply, instilling in it all the respect one gesture could communicate--and if you had grown up a Queen, you learned the art of making one movement say very much indeed--and smiled to see him very nearly blush, eyes twinkling. "For you as well, Doctor."

He came to her side and they looked out over Narnia together. "I like the early hours," he replied only. Dwarfs, she recalled, were often comfortably nocturnal as they pleased, not living along sunlight's rhythms early on as they were usually born underground.

"It's so beautiful," she said, gazing out over the spiny tops of evergreen-dark trees, the liquid jewellike gleam of water, the sharp line of the proudly jutting mountains and the clean-washed sky; stained with soft watercolor smears of pink and orange and even faintest lavender. "And so quiet." She sometimes thought she hadn't known the meaning of peace until she came to Narnia.

"Aye, your majesty," he said gently. "It is."

"I don't want to miss a moment of it," she whispered, like it was a shameful secret, the words knotting and trembling in her throat. "I'm afraid that--"

And there the words stuck.

He covered her hand with his own, very gently, and replaced his glasses. "Yes, my lady," he reassured her, in the same warm, gentle tone he must have used to comfort Caspian as he grew. "I know."

The sun was rising, spreading blazing streamers of color through the wispy streaks of clouds, bright orange and red, backed by the sweetheart blush of pink. Susan sank to her knees from the beauty of it all, chill stone biting her skin through her skirts, throat too tight to speak, and he held her as she wept like a child for the loss she knew would come too soon, even if took forever and a day to arrive.

Tags: doctor cornelius, narnia, susan pevensie
Current Mood: restless