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[gentlearcher]

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[It was a long walk to Caer Glaem. Fortunately, Susan was close enough that that the road to it was fairly safe. She would feel better about this whole thing if her brothers and sister were here, or if she had her bow, or even her horn. Instead she was wearing her school clothes, and they were none too clean at this point. Still, Susan was hoping for a better explanation, and from what the friendly fairies and townspeople had to say the castle was the place to get it.

She was hungry. Fruit trees and handouts didn't do much in the way of assuaging hunger when one was walking all day. She hoped there would at least be food in the castle; it was looming large in her vision now and she hoped to get there within the end of the day. It was a good thing, too. She'd bathed in a stream that morning, but--

"Lawkamercyme!" cried a high pitched voice, and Susan turned her head just in time to see a small, green-tinted fairy fall into a faint. A dark shadow globbed its way towards the fairy, Susan was sure it had foul intent. Dark shadows with gleam of teeth almost always did. She wished for her bow more than ever, but didn't hesitate to pick up a large stone at her feet. She was frightened - how did one fight a shadow? Oh, she hated to fight - but she wasn't about to just stand there and watch. She shouted, "You! There! Get away from that fairy!"

The shadow did not seem much impressed. And so Susan threw the stone with impressive aim, clipping the beast right in the mouth. It hissed and abandoned the fairy, heading towards her instead. She bent to pick up another rock.]

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[For a long moment, the locket shows a beautiful face with a furrowed brow, staring intently at its own reflection. Susan has never seen anything like this before. She is at the castle now, clean and clothed and fed, so her image doesn't look quite as dire as it had earlier that day, and her dark hair is swept back neatly in a braid.] Ah - so it does work! At least, I assume it does, and this is a message going out all over the lockets and not just some sort of fancy mirror.

[In either case, she's beginning to feel a little self-conscious. She reaches for easily remembered dignity.] I don't mean to intrude, but I have heard that this is something which happens often. And I wonder, is there anyone from England here? [She misses her family; two weeks of walking among strangers in a strange land was more than enough alone time for now, thanks.] Or even [marked hesitation] Narnia?

Comments

[gentlearcher]

Susan laughed a little - she couldn't help it. Married into royalty? "No, not hardly."

This was not the time to talk about her suitors from long ago, or the pang she still felt when she thought of Caspian. And very well, if he wasn't going to let her tell it from the beginning, she might as well at least get to the point of it.

"We were appointed kings and queens of Narnia, my brothers, my sister, and I. We were awarded our thrones by the highest of all high kings after winning a terrible battle."

[bullhorned]

"Ah," he said in an unusual understanding. "That's how it was the Seven Kingdoms were made. It was Aegon, his two sisters, and his bastard brother what united the different kingdoms together. With their dragons, none could resist them."

As it was, Gendry had blood from all four of them. The Kings and Queens of Westeros...

"So you married one of your brothers then," he continued, concluding the story easily for her. That was the Targaryen way and he showed no particular surprise or shame that he assumed the same for her.

[gentlearcher]

Wait, hold. Dragons and uniting and it wasn't exactly like that at all, but-- "I did not marry my brother!" Susan recoiled. "Either of them!"

She said it a little too loudly and just at the wrong moment. Several curious heads inclined in their direction and Susan lowered her voice.

"I understand that such things are not necessarily entirely uncommon in some royal lines, but certainly not such a close relation and - no."

[bullhorned]

Their drinks came first, even as the servant did the polite thing in not saying anything about sibling marriages. Gendry simply stared at her over his tankard of ale. He downed the liquid and at last shrugged.

"So who was in charge?"

[gentlearcher]

"We all were, to one extent or another," Susan said. "But Peter was - is - oh, however it is - high king. In the end, if we disagreed we would defer to him."

Oh, a proper cup of tea. It had been so long. Susan picked it up and cradled it in her hands, waiting for it to seep. "In the beginning we talked about what the best way to do things were a lot, tried to figure it out as best we could as we went along, but in the end we had divided up our responsibilities. We conferred on matters of law and when we held court together, but we would honor the other's word if it was ever given individually."

Peter would often be off fighting, securing the borders, while she held the court - at least as it was required. Towards the end, the armies of Narnia, the prowess of Peter and Edmund had been uncontested. Those had been golden days, when the four of them had been able to truly enjoy their lives and the prosperity they had helped bring to the country.

[bullhorned]

"Hm." He was skeptical of how they would be able to rule like that. Four siblings sharing power seemed a recipe for disaster. His two uncles had gone to war with each other when his own father died, all for control of the throne. The thought that she and her siblings could just share the throne seemed impossible. It was a recipe for war.

"So is that why you was exiled?"

[gentlearcher]

Susan gave Gendry a bit of a flat look. He would persist on using that word, even when Aslan had made it very clear that it was not a punishment. It was more of a... graduation.

"If you don't believe me about how we ruled, I don't see why you should believe me about that," Susan said. She was interrupted, then, by the arrival of the food. Susan thanked their servers graciously and proceeded to dig in to the soup.

[bullhorned]

He nodded his own appreciation for the arrival of his food. There was silverware set for him, but he paid them no mind. There was never any need for anything more than a knife for food and these sausages required none of that.

"People get run out of their homes all the time. I was run out of mine. But I ain't ever heard of brothers and sisters sharing power. My two uncles near went to war for the throne. Only reason they didn't was on account of one of them being murdered. It makes one easier to believe than another."

[gentlearcher]

Ah, that made a certain amount of sense. Although Susan was busy with her soup for a moment or two longer - it tasted so good, she had been so hungry - and it also gave her a moment or two longer to think.

Which was only a good thing, since she couldn't help but notice that even though Gendry disavowed calling himself a prince, he called these two princes 'uncles.' And she couldn't help but notice the casual way he said he was run out of his home, that it happened all the time. And if these two uncles of his were going at it for the throne that then that meant at the very least a civil war with no one to rule the people or see to their benefit, and that made for very poor administration indeed.

She took another hurried sip of her soup, and then another, and then set down her spoon to address Gendry.

"But don't you see, we didn't need the throne. There were four of them. We were children when we became kings and queens; we needed each other in order to do a good job."

He was speaking to her very practically and frankly, and she could meet him in that. "Even if for some reason we had wanted to rule on our own, the people would have never stood for it. We ruled because of a prophecy - four thrones needed to be filled. They were there, waiting for us, long before we got to Narnia. We had to work together, our reign was given to us so we could work together. And Aslan - the one who entrusted Narnia to us - I am certain that would have brought him again from over the Eastern Sea, and he would not have been pleased."

[bullhorned]

It was the inclusion of Aslan that seemed to settle the matter for him. If they were given their kingdom by someone else, it meant that in spite of their titles, they ruled the kingdom on behalf of another. Certainly his uncles had no cause for war when their oldest brother, Gendry's father, still sat the throne. And while it might not be the reasoning Susan would provide, it seemed enough for him. Anyone could be made to behave under threat of someone more powerful. It was simpler to digest than there being four thrones or prophecies. After all, he'd met a dwarf woman who spoke in prophecies and none of those made a single bit of sense. It was all riddles and useless prattle.

"So why leave? Seems you had a decent way of it."

[gentlearcher]

"We didn't exactly mean to," Susan said, glancing down. Her soup was suddenly much more interesting than continuing the conversation.

[bullhorned]

He picked apart a piece of sausage with his fingers. "It was an accident?" He stuffed the piece of meat in his mouth, but that did not stop him from looking skeptical. But then, he'd looked skeptical nearly the entire time.

[gentlearcher]

"The first time," Susan said. "Yes. We had been Narnia for so long, you see, that we had quite forgotten England and how we had arrived. It seemed as if we had always been there."

Soup finished, she stared at the empty bowl for a moment. How this hurt to tell.

[bullhorned]

"How long was that?" She'd mentioned something about a thousand years and becoming younger again, but he hadn't made any sense of that. She looked younger than him and so his guess was that she must have began her rule as so small a child that it was only natural she'd forget where she was born.

[gentlearcher]

"Fifteen years," Susan said. She shook her head slightly and gave a little wry smile. "But it wasn't just the time, it was the place. The air. It was so different... if we hadn't stumbled upon the lamppost again, we probably never would have gone back to England."

Susan could anticipate his next question. After all, she was fifteen now. She glanced back up at him.

"Time worked differently, you see, in Narnia. We were there for fifteen years, but hardly a minute had gone by in England. And when we stepped through the wardrobe again, we were no longer the kings and queens we had been, but children again. It was... rather disorienting."

[bullhorned]

He frowned, not because he strictly disbelieved her, but because he was trying to imagine her being older than the girl he saw now. He knew well enough that the elves he'd met were not quite so young as they looked. It was an unsettling notion not to be able to know a person by what could be seen.

"So you've grown up twice. Seems that would be trouble. This one time 'round has been hard enough for me."

[gentlearcher]

Susan laughed, surprised and appreciative. "Yes. That's exactly what is. Quite annoying, I will say."

She gave him a smile, because it was nice to feel that he at least understood that part of it, and rather troublesome to have explained all this, but she was coming to appreciate Gendry's practical nature. She wondered, if she'd bothered to tell anyone else, if they'd have cut to the heart of it so quickly.

And now the sandwich demanded some attention, and she took a bite. Food is so excellent when you are hungry.

[bullhorned]

He picked at his food a bit more. A piece of sausage rolled about in his mouth as he thought about her situation. It seemed a strange thing to live two lives, especially when it seemed most people barely got through living just one. It left one lingering question in his mind.

"So why not go back?"

[gentlearcher]

As if it was that simple.

"Magic doorways aren't so reliable," Susan said. "We couldn't go back."

She said it simply, and it felt strange that, for Susan... it was simple. It hurt, yes, especially knowing what had happened after they had left. There wasn't any point in mooning about over it, however. What happened happened, and there it was.

[bullhorned]

"I hope the same don't happen here. I ain't no king here, but I'd just as soon stay here than go back."

It didn't matter if he got to spend a hundred years here and then was offered a second life in Westeros. The fact remained that he much preferred his life in this place, even if it was a place of war. He'd been broken where he came from, but he'd been remade a man again here.

[gentlearcher]

Susan had talked more than enough about herself, she thought. Her sandwich was waiting for her. But first, "I don't think you have to fear that unless you walk right through." She lifted up her sandwich again. "You like this place that much better, then?"

[bullhorned]

He tapped the edge of his plate. "This here? I never ate so good as this before."

It was a poor point in a world of better points. But it was a simple one and he had no great desire to talk about the sins he had seem committed and of the wrongs he himself took part in.

[gentlearcher]

Muscles like Gendry's weren't built in a day, so he clearly wasn't starving before he'd come here. That didn't mean anything, not really, not in terms of kindness or liberty or... anything.

"I'm glad you're enjoying it," Susan said simply and changed the topic. "Thank you again for showing me where the dining hall is. How long have you been living at the castle?"

[bullhorned]

"Near five months now." The last of his meal finished, he casually licked at his fingers. He drowned the rest of it down with what remained of his ale. "But it weren't no trouble. Better I find someone than be wasting time on patrol."

[gentlearcher]

For all that Gendry was attempting to mind his manners, Susan noted that he didn't have many of them to mind. Oh well. She glanced back at her plate to spare herself the spectacle and also to collect some bits of food which had fallen to the side.

"I'd certainly say your time wasn't wasted today," she said. "What is it you do when you're not on patrol?"