Caspian/Edmund: A Riddle, Wrapped In A Mystery (2/2)

[clovenbuttercup]

Title: A Riddle, Wrapped In A Mystery (2/2)
Character(s)/POV: Caspian X, Edmund Pevensie
Pairing: Caspian X/Edmund Pevensie
Rating: M
Beta: glory_jean
Notes: I've raised the rating on this chapter because I think the general topic, Ed's reaction to his mistreatment by Pug & Co., warrants it.  Please note the new tags.  I'm in the middle of writing a missing scene-cum-sequel that has Caspian and Ed addressing the latter's reaction to his emotional trauma more directly, which will probably take the same rating.  I work on the premise that a rating that's too high is preferable to one that's too low.  Part One can be found here.
Timeline: Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Disclaimer: Characters you recognise belong to C. S. Lewis.
Summary: Perhaps, to you, the Just King is destined to stay a riddle, wrapped in a mystery.  for ever.

The situation is resolved, to your eventual satisfaction.  Although you would perhaps have preferred to throttle Pug, or see him sentenced to a decent spell in irons, you rather suppose Ed would disapprove of either, and he needs to be your focus now.  But letting Pug go does nothing to douse your fury.

You are reunited with Ed, and with the others; everybody you care about is free – and, as a cursory examination suggests, at least physically unhurt.  Lord Bern offers you the Governor’s Palace while you and the others are here – which will be for days, yet.  There is much to do in the Islands to reverse any remaining corruption, and you also have a ship that needs more provisions and minor repairs. But tomorrow is soon enough to begin all that.

Meanwhile Ed, always reserved, has become almost mute.  The quieter he gets the more worried you become; this is something, when you drag your attention away from him, you notice is also clear on Lucy’s face.  You want to get him alone, to get him to confide in you.  You crave the trust, the intimacy; you want him to need you (as you need him).  You tell yourself you’d rather Ed unburden himself to you than worry Lucy any more than she already is.  You refuse to acknowledge what this tells you about the unnamed thing between the two of you.

After cursing Pug’s existence again in your head, your attention shifts back to Ed and you realise that your itch to touch him, to make a more thorough examination of him and make sure he has no real damage from his experiences at Pug’s hands, has moved beyond a wish to become a need.  When someone (almost your whole attention is fixed on Ed by this stage so you neither notice nor care who) suggests an early night you seize on the idea with alacrity.

Again, no one seems to think it odd you and Ed peel off together – although that has much to do with how everybody is tired after their experiences today and “it so happens” that Ed’s quarters are a matter of feet away from yours.  You’d made sure of that.  To protect him, considering the bad reaction he’s having to what’s happened to him, you need to be as close to him as possible.

Upon closer examination, apart from various superficial bruises and scratches, Ed is all right – from a physical point of view at least.  His emotional state would seem to be a different matter, and when Ed shrugs off your first attempt at comfort your concern for him turns into worry.  He eventually lets you in past his defences; the ensuing conversation is one more of physicality and emotion than of words.  When it’s over, you’re both exhausted.  You’ve moved to the bed by this stage and so you pull him down to lie beside you, as you can’t countenance letting him move out of touching distance.  He lets you curl your body around his, each of you needing the other’s physical closeness; the two of you drift into sleep.

You wake before sunrise, to find that Ed has moved during the night and now lies with his head buried against your chest and with an arm and leg thrown over yours; it would seem that even in sleep he’s unwilling to be further away from you than necessary.  You move your hand into his hair, not wanting to wake him but unable to be this close to him and not be touching.  Either Ed’s a light sleeper or your movements jar something, as the next thing you know he is looking up at you with the dazed expression on his face of the just-woken as you grin down at him.  You kiss him without even thinking about it and what starts as a soft kiss doesn’t stay that way; before long your kisses are frantic and a repeat of last night is imminent.

And thus a pattern of sorts is established for the rest of the days you spend on the Lone Islands.  You become closer still, if that is possible, to where it’s rare for one of you to be found without the other nearby; nothing is said, but the way Lucy smiles at both of you makes you suspect she knows what’s happened.  Her perception is uncanny, so you’d be surprised if she hadn’t discovered the truth, but you think you know her well enough to know she’ll keep your secret.  That said, the two of you appear to have lost any sense of subtlety you ever possessed.  This has the power to hurt you, if you don’t rein it in before you set sail again.  What will fly on land, where there’s plenty of space to find privacy when necessary, won’t in the claustrophobic environment of a ship.

So invested are you in Ed, and what he is to you, you find it hard to care about how much more subtle you will need to be when you leave here.  Even now you can’t admit what this means for you and, through you, Narnia.  But he is yours, as you are his, and all is as it should be; everything and everybody else becomes just so much background noise.  Ed is what is important to you now.  If labels are necessary at all, there’s time enough to add them later.