Fic: Delight In The Recognition
Jul. 15th, 2011 08:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amazingly_meTitle: Delight in the Recognition
Rating: PG
Pairings/Characters: Susan/Caspian
Warnings/Spoilers: Nothing really. Technically, there are spoilers through Prince Caspian, both the book and the movie. I'm using movie canon.
Summary: "He does not recognize them, when he first sees them. The Pevensies he knows so well from reading about them (over and over again, caught in his chambers at all hours with books his Uncle had expressly forbade, chided by Cornelius for his recklessness and for his insomnia) are noble. Somehow, he never thought of them as getting dirty like everyone else." Caspian considers how history has treated Susan.
Notes: A billion and a half years ago (no, seriously), I asked for prompts. And someone (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bredalot?) suggested that I give Susan/Caspian a go. I was intrigued by the pairing, so I've been trying to write something about them, on and off, ever since. This is what I've come up with. Title from an Alexander Smith quote ("Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition").
When Caspian sees the Kings and Queens of Narnia, sprung full-fledged from the pages of the history books he so adores, all manner of thoughts run through his head.
'They're so young,' he thinks, and shuffles his feet, wondering if they can possibly know more than him.
'Don't be so cocky,' he thinks, and shuffles his feet again, staring wide-eyed at the four children who have appeared before him, looking slightly dingy, and perhaps even a little wide-eyed to see him.
'I wouldn't have recognized them,' he thinks, and discards all attempts at royal courtesy, and stares.
The Pevensies he knows so well from his reading-- the same books over and over again, caught in his chambers at all hours with the stories his Uncle had expressly forbade, chided by Cornelius for his recklessness and for his insomnia-- are noble. Somehow, he never thought of them as getting grimy like everyone else. But Lucy has dirt under her fingernails and Edmund's hair is disheveled and may or may not have a twig in it (Edmund the Just, who was brave in battle and noble and fair at court would not, Caspian is sure, have a twig in his hair), and even Peter has dirt on his clothes. Scrambling through the woods has somehow left his idols tarnished, and Caspian finds himself reeling, confused, almost unmoored.
'It's only dirt,' he thinks, but.
Susan-- Susan has a smudge on her nose.
Caspian stares, transfixed and baffled at his intrigue. A smudge is a smudge, even on the nose of a Queen of Narnia.
But Susan is beautiful, he realizes.
Gentle implies a graceful queen, and a good one. A queen who will give all her subjects a fair hearing. Graceful implies courtly manners and a willingness to treat all comers with kind words and a measure of affection.
Gentle does not mean beautiful. To a young Caspian, reading about battles and Magnificence and Justice and Valiance, Gentle means boring.
Susan fades into the scenery, in the history books. Silently becomes part of sweeping tapestries before her time, a sweet, motherly figure who could never match Lucy as the people's queen.
Suddenly, Caspian wonders what he doesn't know about Susan. What no one ever bothered to write down.
It will be some time before Caspian realizes, while watching the siblings in conference, that Susan is not absent from the history books because of a historian's neglect. No, he thinks as, captured, he watches her rise fluidly from her chair, soothing Edmund and talking Peter down from a mountain of high oratory, there are some people who can only fade away if they do so on purpose. There are some people who are so beautiful, so capable, that everyone would sit up and take notice if-- if--
But Susan knows, he thinks. Susan know she is beautiful, and capable, and she knows that these things work to her greatest advantage if she comes as a surprise and, having done the surprising, fades away just as Gently as she appeared, to prepare for the next time her presence will be warranted.
Susan is shrewd, he thinks. Susan is calculating. Susan-- Susan can be cold, for all that she is Gentle. She is a calm, efficient check to a whimsy that runs rampant in her other siblings, even in Edmund. And she knows it, knows all of it.
He does not understand her. Does not understand her quiet, or her moments of almost absurd strength, the moments when she, unquestionably, rules, though her voice never rises above a civil, even tone.
He understands himself full well, though, understands the intrigue in things beyond his comprehension. Understands the draw of sweet, gentle words and the ability to disappear.
When she kisses him her lips are warm and capable and entirely kind, and he wonders if he was perhaps wrong. But she disappears (as, he reminds himself, trying desperately to be fair, as he knew she would have to) back through a door that is not a door, and he is left behind to wonder.
Peter is Magnificent, and Edmund is Just, and Lucy is Valiant, and Susan-- Susan is gentle (and careful, and sensible, and smart, and savvy, and devastating).
Rating: PG
Pairings/Characters: Susan/Caspian
Warnings/Spoilers: Nothing really. Technically, there are spoilers through Prince Caspian, both the book and the movie. I'm using movie canon.
Summary: "He does not recognize them, when he first sees them. The Pevensies he knows so well from reading about them (over and over again, caught in his chambers at all hours with books his Uncle had expressly forbade, chided by Cornelius for his recklessness and for his insomnia) are noble. Somehow, he never thought of them as getting dirty like everyone else." Caspian considers how history has treated Susan.
Notes: A billion and a half years ago (no, seriously), I asked for prompts. And someone (
bredalot?) suggested that I give Susan/Caspian a go. I was intrigued by the pairing, so I've been trying to write something about them, on and off, ever since. This is what I've come up with. Title from an Alexander Smith quote ("Love is but the discovery of ourselves in others, and the delight in the recognition").When Caspian sees the Kings and Queens of Narnia, sprung full-fledged from the pages of the history books he so adores, all manner of thoughts run through his head.
'They're so young,' he thinks, and shuffles his feet, wondering if they can possibly know more than him.
'Don't be so cocky,' he thinks, and shuffles his feet again, staring wide-eyed at the four children who have appeared before him, looking slightly dingy, and perhaps even a little wide-eyed to see him.
'I wouldn't have recognized them,' he thinks, and discards all attempts at royal courtesy, and stares.
The Pevensies he knows so well from his reading-- the same books over and over again, caught in his chambers at all hours with the stories his Uncle had expressly forbade, chided by Cornelius for his recklessness and for his insomnia-- are noble. Somehow, he never thought of them as getting grimy like everyone else. But Lucy has dirt under her fingernails and Edmund's hair is disheveled and may or may not have a twig in it (Edmund the Just, who was brave in battle and noble and fair at court would not, Caspian is sure, have a twig in his hair), and even Peter has dirt on his clothes. Scrambling through the woods has somehow left his idols tarnished, and Caspian finds himself reeling, confused, almost unmoored.
'It's only dirt,' he thinks, but.
Susan-- Susan has a smudge on her nose.
Caspian stares, transfixed and baffled at his intrigue. A smudge is a smudge, even on the nose of a Queen of Narnia.
But Susan is beautiful, he realizes.
Gentle implies a graceful queen, and a good one. A queen who will give all her subjects a fair hearing. Graceful implies courtly manners and a willingness to treat all comers with kind words and a measure of affection.
Gentle does not mean beautiful. To a young Caspian, reading about battles and Magnificence and Justice and Valiance, Gentle means boring.
Susan fades into the scenery, in the history books. Silently becomes part of sweeping tapestries before her time, a sweet, motherly figure who could never match Lucy as the people's queen.
Suddenly, Caspian wonders what he doesn't know about Susan. What no one ever bothered to write down.
It will be some time before Caspian realizes, while watching the siblings in conference, that Susan is not absent from the history books because of a historian's neglect. No, he thinks as, captured, he watches her rise fluidly from her chair, soothing Edmund and talking Peter down from a mountain of high oratory, there are some people who can only fade away if they do so on purpose. There are some people who are so beautiful, so capable, that everyone would sit up and take notice if-- if--
But Susan knows, he thinks. Susan know she is beautiful, and capable, and she knows that these things work to her greatest advantage if she comes as a surprise and, having done the surprising, fades away just as Gently as she appeared, to prepare for the next time her presence will be warranted.
Susan is shrewd, he thinks. Susan is calculating. Susan-- Susan can be cold, for all that she is Gentle. She is a calm, efficient check to a whimsy that runs rampant in her other siblings, even in Edmund. And she knows it, knows all of it.
He does not understand her. Does not understand her quiet, or her moments of almost absurd strength, the moments when she, unquestionably, rules, though her voice never rises above a civil, even tone.
He understands himself full well, though, understands the intrigue in things beyond his comprehension. Understands the draw of sweet, gentle words and the ability to disappear.
When she kisses him her lips are warm and capable and entirely kind, and he wonders if he was perhaps wrong. But she disappears (as, he reminds himself, trying desperately to be fair, as he knew she would have to) back through a door that is not a door, and he is left behind to wonder.
Peter is Magnificent, and Edmund is Just, and Lucy is Valiant, and Susan-- Susan is gentle (and careful, and sensible, and smart, and savvy, and devastating).