kitchen_maid | Room 203 -- 24 Hours Later

There's a quiet knock on the door, before it opens and Caspian lets himself in, carrying a tray.

Tea. Soup. Some rolls.

It is placed on Anne's neat desk, and he comes to sit next to her, on the floor and put an arm about her waist, pulling her into his side.

"Hi."

Amy lets herself be pulled, and her head comes to rest on his shoulder, but there's nothing much that could be called an reaction to his arrival other than that.

There's a pause before she thinks or remembers to say, "Hello."

He sighs.

"Amy," he says, gently, "you can't just stop, you know."

"Stop what?"

At least she's listening to what he's saying.

"Living. Reacting. Being here, Amy. You've gone away and I don't know where."

He takes her unresponsive hand in his and rubs it to get some warmth there.

"I haven't gone anywhere," she says. "I just . . . stay here."

The voice is still flat and emotionless, and she's still apparently staring at her foot, but her hand clutches his.

"Right," he says. "You stay here, alone, sitting in your room without even eating or seeing anyone. You aren't really here Amy. Is life more bearable this way, then? Will no one else ever leave if you stay up here alone?"

His voice is gentle but firm, and his hand tightens around hers.

"Sometimes. . . " she says, " . . . sometimes I really hate being Cheerful."

It's not quite the non sequitor it may seem.

"Anne will be back," he says, "and Susan is happy, able to rest. And you have friends here. And you're allowed to not be cheerful, sometimes."

He doesn't capitalize it on purpose.

She shakes her head a little, but she's too tired to try to explain that while she's frequently not cheerful she is never not Cheerful. Even at the best of times she'd have trouble making him understand the pull and twist and quirk those gifts put onto whatever she's thinking or feeling or doing. They may not have a huge influence, but they always have some. Most of the time, it doesn't bother her in the slightest, and she means it when she says she's happy that there were fairies at her christening.

It's just . . . sometimes the only way to deal with Cheerful, Wise, Witty, Charming, Courageous, Ordinary thoughts is to just stop thinking.

She's only done it twice, really, for more than a moment or two, in her life.

Caspian has seen it both times.

He has. So he gets up after a moment, and gets a bowl of stew, and breaks open a roll still warm from the oven, to spread it with butter, and pours her some tea, and adds cream and sugar. It is very strong.

The bowl and roll he places next to her and hands her the tea.

"Come fare away with me," he says, softly, remembering her laugh when he'd sang it before.

She doesn't laugh, not this time.

She manages to set the tea down before she drops it, somehow, Graceful even when she's not graceful, perhaps.

And then she's curled against the side of the bed again and she's sobbing.

He wraps his arms around her and pulls her into him so that she is sobbing against his chest instead of against the bed.

"Don't leave."

It's half breathed and half whispered and wholy frightened.

Because Amy is scared. Scared that whatever called to Susan is going to call to him, too. Afraid that there's going to be a knock on the door one day and he's going to have to go.

What does he tell her? Does he say that there will never be a day when he doesn't go through the door? That one day she'll look at him and realize that he will never age past this body?

But he isn't lying when he holds her tighter and tells her, "No. I won't leave."

There's a lot she'll realize one day. Like the fact that she's as likely to be the one doing the leaving than she is to be the one whose left, if not moreso.

But this is not that day.

And he'll feel some (if not all) of the tension in her shoulders leave, recognize the way she brushes her hair back from her face and the tears from her eyes and her cheeks as the first signs of a person pulling herself back together.

He does, and it makes him proud indeed to see them.

"Besides," he says, lightly, "who will make me eat, in Aslan's Country?"

That gets a not quite laugh, as she looks at the soup and the roll.

"I've kind of lost the high ground on that subject, haven't I?"

"I promise never to tell anyone," he says, generously.

"If you eat that and finish your tea."

Amy looks at him. "But you'll know," she says.

But she drinks some of the tea and eat some of the soup.

"That's right," he says, "but I shan't use it against you."

He tugs the quilt up around her shoulders and lets her lean against him while she eats and drinks.

"I suppose we'll just have to take care of each other, then."

She nods. "I think that's how it's supposed to work," she says.

"And on that subject, how have you been?"

"Decently well, all things considered," he tells her, with a small smile. "Working, mostly. Eustace came and helped the other day."

"Good," she says, setting down the mostly empty soup bowl. "I like Eustace."

A moment, and then, with her first genuine smile since she'd been laughing with Anne the night before, she adds, "And have you been remembering to eat?"

"Of course," he says, self-righteously.

Well. He had since yesterday, anyway.

Amy may look a little like she doesn't believe him, but there's an expression about a pot and a kettle, and she lets it go.

"Anne and I are going to have a Christmas party," she says, abruptly changing the subject.

She doesn't qualify it with any sort of ifs or whens.

"Really?"

He brightens.

"What a marvelous idea! I'll look forward to that, then. We'll have a jolly Christmas, won't we, with so many friends to celebrate with?"

"You're assuming you're invited," she says, in the manner that only a little sister can, and starting to laugh.

Because of course he is, and he knows it.

But still.

"I'll bring presents?" he says, hopefully.

"You don't have to bring a thing except yourself," she says, laughing. "And Lucy, if you think she'd like to come."

She grins at him. "Though you may have to take a turn distracting the squirrels from the decorations. We haven't decided yet."

"I think Lucy would love to come," he tells her, grinning, "and I'll happily distract the squirrels. Mr. Pemberthy and I get on quite well these days, you know. But, seriously, if there's anything you would particularly like for Christmas, would you tell me?"

"You've been slipping him walnuts while I haven't been looking, haven't you?" Amy asks, grinning back.

"If I think of anything I want for Christmas, you'll be the first to know," she says. "What about you? Is there anything you want?"

He shakes his head.

"I have everything I want," he tells her, smiling. "You, and Lucy, and my friends, and employment.

"And maybe a few walnuts. But he'd like me anyway."

"Of course," she says. "You're very likable."

Besides, it'd be very hard for Caspian to spoil Mr. Pemberty more than Amy already does.

She wrinkles her nose at him. "Those are things it is very hard to wrap and put under a tree."

Better watch out, Caspian. Left to her own devices, she has been known to give you kitchy 80's toys.

"I'm sure you'll think of something," he says with a laugh. "And we'll all have a marvelous time, presents or no. When my nurse first told me the stories of Old Narnia, after all, I thought the worst thing the Witch did was give Narnia eternal winter without Christmas."

"Peter mentioned that," she says. "She sounded like a rather horrid person all around, but that does seem rather especially cruel."

She looks at him. "How did you celebrate Christmas in Narnia?"

She may be looking for ideas for the party. Or she may just be enjoying listening to her brother talk.

"How did I? Or how did the court?"

He settles back against the bed, thinking.

"There was always a large party, and a ball. Cair Paravel glittered for all the twelve days with candles and wreathes and silver and gold dwarf-made decorations. The dwarves and the fauns would go out into the snow and start to dance, and drag everyone out with them and there was hot spiced cider and mulled wine and all kinds of marvelous foods, although Father Christmas never came directly to us the way he had to Lucy and the others."

His smile grows reminiscent.

"But my wife and Rilian and I--we liked to sit together on Christmas Eve by a fire, and tease each other about our presents, and just enjoy the happiness around us."

"That last part sounds lovely," Amy says. "It all does, really, though I must confess that I am very much looking forward to having a Christmas that does not involve any sort of official royal duties. Or a Court Ball."

She looks thoughtful for a moment. "But I think I'll miss the Christmas Eve service. In the cathedral."

"Oh, it was all good fun," Caspian assures her, "but I loved best spending time with my own small family, so that we might enjoy together the merriment of the season."

He smiles down at her.

"What was the service like?"

"Long," she says, smiling, "but very beautiful. Late, so the whole cathedral was ablaze with candles, and full of the smell of pine trees and incense. And the choir would sing hymns and carols and they'd fill the room and echo off the stones. And it'd be cold, because there's no efficient way to heat a cathedral in the winter, after all, and so you'd sit very close to the people next to you. And the archbishop would read the gospel, which was somehow new and marvelous and exciting every year. And then we'd greet everyone on the way out, from the archbishop all the way down to the smallest choirboy."

Amy, personally, had far perferred talking to the choirboys.

"And we'd then go home, and take off our crowns and our jewels and crawl into bed to wait for morning, which was the one time in the whole season we didn't have to be somewhere doing something royal."

Caspian nods.

"No one ever disturbed us on Christmas morning, unless they absolutely had to. Well, I'm afraid it'll be different, this year, but we'll enjoy it nonetheless."

After all, Caspian hasn't had a family to celebrate Christmas with in ten years.

"We're going to have a simply lovely Christmas," Amy says, firmly. "New place, new friends, new family, new traditions. And they're all going to be perfectly marvelous."

"Aye, they will," Caspian agrees, and stands to pour himself some tea.

Amy looks up at him from the spot in the floor that she still hasn't quite moved from. And she still looks tired and it's far to easy to tell she's been crying.

But her smile is real and bright, and she looks happy, or at least much happier than she did when he got here.

"I might even go so far as to say it will be merry," she says.

He only smiles at her, and sits back down to pull her close to him.

"I can hardly wait," he says, and drops a kiss onto her hair.

Room 203 -- 24 Hours Later

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