Story: i know we can make it if we take it slow

Summary: "Oh," she laughs, and she flings her arms around him and presses a kiss to the top of his head—sometimes Ed can be so wise and sure that she forgets she is two years his senior—"oh, Ed, it's called growing up."

Notes: A return to book!Caspian—you know, blond, slight, not sexily accented—and lots of the Pevensie sibs running around being snarky with one another. I originally wrote this for my Caspian/Susan drabble table (041 – reality), but seeing as how it's been a year since I touched any of that, I think it's going to have to stand on its own feet.

The letter comes on a Monday.

Dear Miss Pevensie, it begins, in the sort of neatly blocked print that Susan hasn't seen since primary school,

Please understand that I have no intention of being untoward, but as you and your siblings were good friends with my Uncle Digory, I thought you would appreciate being informed that he has recently vanished from his home in the country. Although the police found no evidence that there had been a struggle, he has been missing for four months now, and we suspect that it will be some time before he returns. While my son and I were preparing the house for a long absence, we stumbled across a series of journals that appear to have belonged to you and your siblings. Should you wish to come and collect them, we will gladly leave them with Mrs. McKinnon, our housekeeper, at the attached address.

Yours, etc.

Gemma Telman

When she shows the letter to Peter the next morning, he rubs the bottom of his chin for a few moments, and then cuts a look at her from under his brows. "What do you think?" he finally says, which is his way of asking if she thinks the Parents will let them go.

"I don't see why not," she says, resting both her hands against her left hip, her right arm caught across her waist. "We're certainly not children anymore, Peter."

"I suppose not," he agrees quietly, and reads the letter again. There is ink smudged in soft lines from the crease of his littlest finger to midway down his forearm, exposed by the rolled cuffs of his work shirt. "I had been planning on writing to Kirke and seeing if he'd lend me some of his books for my classes. Don't s'pose this cousin will be helpful, do you?"

"Perhaps," Susan says mildly. "Shall we find Edmund and Lucy? It's a bit early for them to be up."

"I will," says Peter. "Mum'll want you to finish making up something for her and Pa for tea before we leave."

"All right," she says, unhooking her hands and smoothing the soft, bleached linen of the apron across her hips. "I'll finish the scones, then we'll go down to the station."

Even though it irks Peter and Edmund to no end, Susan flirts mildly with the pimply-faced clerk at the station and gets them tickets for a ten o'clock train to Wiltshire. She and Lucy, wrapped in worn gloves and coats that had been relatively new and fashionable two years before, share giggles and looks of feminine compatriotism.

There are days when Susan enjoys slicking on a new color of lipstick and going out into London with some of her wilder friends from St. Finbar's, but as she's been out of school for two months, she's started to settle into the rhythm of being at home—work at the telegraph office in the morning, home for luncheon and helping Mum with a few chores, back out to volunteer at the hospital until mid-afternoon, home for supper.

She likes the order. She remembers their days at Professor Kirke's castle, organized into playing hide-and-seek in the old wardrobe and chasing each other like cats and dogs across the muddy fields. (She can still see Lucy, the hem of her summer frock splattered with dust and clay, holding a heart-shaped glass bottle she found buried under an oak tree not far from the house.) The Parents wouldn't have let them run wild like hellions, but under the somewhat wandering gaze of the Macready and the Professor, they managed quite a lot of damage—target practice in the apple groves, swimming at Mermaid's Pond (Lucy's appellation), Peter and Edmund's fantastical sword fights in the inner courtyard during rainy days.

The memory, the mental imprint of the two of them hacking at each other with sticks, still makes her snicker in a decidedly unladylike way. Edmund and Peter give her odd looks on the platform as she stuffs the sleeve of her overcoat between her teeth and smothers more giggles.

Childhood. What an odd phrase, she thinks, as they step onto the train and feel the metal slats leap and jerk beneath them. She still is a child, in many ways, but in others she's become an old woman.

"Su?" whispers Lucy, lagging behind the boys to gently grasp Susan's hand, their littlest fingers looped together as if they are small again, on the train to the countryside to stay with the estimable, unknown Professor. "Is everything all right?"

"Oh, yes, of course," says Susan, and she smiles brightly at Lucy, then at a passing pair of university boys for good measure. They flick her a pair of politely interested stares, before noticing Lucy and carrying on. "Let's go make sure Ed and Pete get good seats, right?"

They pull into the station mid-afternoon, sweaty and tired and dusty, but Lucy and Peter rally as she and Edmund shake off the strain of the trip. They head off towards the address of the housekeeper in Wiltshire proper, but halfway there Lucy gets it in her head to visit the Professor's house, and little will persuade her otherwise.

"Oh, just a peek," she says, and beneath the brim of her school hat, she looks so beguilingly innocent that Peter and Edmund immediately crumble like the little boys that they are.

"I did want to borrow some of the Professor's books from his library..." leads Peter, and by the time he's finished his thought, he and Ed are careening down the street, attempting to find a buggy willing to take them out to the house. Susan sighs to herself about feminine wiles and the innocence of kittens as she follows.

It is a farmer, of all things, who gives them a lift, and he is chatty and all but unintelligible as he guides his cart over the roads that Susan has not seen or thought of in years. Lucy, being Lucy, has little trouble keeping up with his stream of noise, and Peter is always charming, but Ed is busy watching the skyline and pointing out familiar spots—the fairy circle with the square-shaped rock they'd dubbed The Table, the small clustering of trees that Lucy had named and given personalities.

"Do you think much else has changed?" Ed muses after a moment's silence brings no more sights to the horizon.

"Yes," says Susan, shielding her eyes against the sun and watching him. "You always talk about how things are changing. What's brought this on?"

"It feels odd," he finally manages. "Like a coat that's shrunk in the wash."

"Oh," she laughs, and she flings her arms around him and presses a kiss to the top of his head—sometimes Ed can be so wise and sure that she forgets she is two years his senior—"oh, Ed, it's called growing up."

"Yes, I'm not an imbecile," he grumbles, but he waits until Peter looks back to see what the commotion is before he pushes her away.

The farmer deposits them at the bottom of the drive with a sunburnt smile and a jaunty wave for Lucy, and they unbutton their coats and pull at their scarves at they begin the trek up towards the house itself. "What d'you suppose the Macready is doing without the Professor around to guard?" wonders Lucy.

"Probably turned back into stone," says Ed mildly, and their hoots echo off the trees that shade the walk.

"Oh, she was a little too skinny to fit with the rest of the gargoyles," says Peter. What then erupts in a brief but passionate discussion over the best physical proportions for gargoyles (they are something of experts in the subject, considering how much research they had conducted before building their fort over Mermaid Pond), interrupted only by the end of the drive depositing them into the lap of the house.

Susan gives a little sigh at the sight of it—stone and ivy and the fountain in the middle of the circle of the drive, marble, the figures indistinct under tufts of snow—and presses her fingers against her chest. "It's still quite lovely," she says.

"Were you expecting it to be hideous?" asks Ed, and she punches him in the shoulder.

Peter knocks on the door, and they wait for a few breathless moments in a row, until the door creaks open with a slight murmur and it is the Macready, scowl at the ready. "Oh," she says. "It's you."

"Hullo, Mrs. Macready," says Lucy with a toothy smile, and the old woman grimaces.

"We were wondering if Mrs. Telman was in residence," interrupts Susan, because she would like to leave the countryside some time this century. "She sent us a letter about some journals—"

"Yes, yes, come in," sighs the Macready. "Since you're already here, it's not like I can send you away."

"What a wonderful welcome," mutters Ed under his breath, and Susan pinches him at the wrist as they pass through the Macready's stone gaze into the house proper. It looks much like it had when they were children, only understandably smaller, and the ceiling vaults into dusty oblivion, captured at the corners by fanciful wooden molding. Not for the first time, Susan finds herself incredibly grateful for their luck at having the Professor host them.

"Mrs. Telman is at the market," says the Macready, "but her son is in the library." This announcement is accompanied by a sniff that indicates what exactly the Macready thinks of young men utilizing the Professor's books.

They stand in the foyer for a few more moments, waiting for her to guide them towards the library, before realizing that they have been dismissed.

"Oh," says Susan. "Well, thank you very much, Mrs. Macready. We'll go—find him, then."

The Macready waits until they've begun down the proper corridor before vanishing.

"Do any of you lot remember where the library is?" whispers Peter.

"Not a sodding clue," says Ed. "Probably upstairs."

"How wonderfully observant of you," says Peter, and Susan just knows that they are about to descend into snipping at one another, so she intervenes.

"Why don't we take the staircase up a level and see if we can't figure it out?" she suggests.

It is Susan who ends up remembering where the library is—surprising, as Ed spent the most time there, but she's always had a better head for spaces than him—and so she is heading the small group as they burst through the doors. Mrs. Telman's erstwhile son does not appear to be in residence, so they sprawl out in all directions, Lucy towards the maps, Ed the first editions, and Peter the history texts. Susan makes her way to a window and peers out through the rippled glass.

"I wonder what happened to the Professor," she muses aloud at some point, and Lucy makes a soft hum of agreement. "It seems odd that the Macready and Mrs. Telman aren't more worried about him."

"Oh, it's that British matron stiff upper lip," says Ed from where he is surrounded by hosts of books. "Did you know that the Professor has a first edition Scott? I don't remember this being here."

"He probably hid it from children with sticky fingers," replies Peter, a bit hypocritically as he is debating which history texts to nick. "Su, I want your advice on something."

She peels herself away from the windows, leaving her gloves behind on the sill. "What is it, Peter?" He wants her advice on some encyclopedias, and she's giving him probably more than he really wanted when there is the sound of someone clearing their throat pointedly.

They all look up to see a boy, maybe Pete's age, blond and slight, hefting a tea tray. "Can I help you?" he asks with a raised eyebrow that is vintage Ed.

"Bit snottish, isn't he?" murmurs Pete. "I'm Peter Pevensie," he says a bit louder, leading with his right hand outstretched, and the boy deposits the tea tray on a side table before shaking it.

"Caspian Telman," he says. "You're the Pevensie siblings, then. Mum mentioned you might be dropping in, but I thought her letter told you the things were at the village proper."

"Did they?" replies Susan, intervening before Peter has a chance to bluster. "I suppose it did. I'm afraid we got a bit sidetracked by the thought of visiting the house again. We aren't imposing, are we?" She doesn't flutter her eyelashes at him, but she gets right close. Pete makes an odd noise and Lucy giggles.

"Of course not," says Caspian. "Goodness, I think we've met before."

So does Susan, actually, but she isn't in the habit of declaring as much to (presumed) complete strangers. "Oh," she says, for lack of anything else. "Do you?" It comes out archly, which isn't quite what she wished to imply, but it works well enough.

Ed stumbles from his fort of books to her rescue. "You know, I think we might've. Do you and your mum live in that house across the way—little place, thatched and picturesque and all? By the forest?"

"Yes, actually," says Caspian, moving his eyes with obvious effort from Susan to her brother.

"We played together," Lucy declares, abruptly adding herself to the conversation in a very Lucy-like manner, which naturally involves darting around and laughing to herself. "You were very good at twig-fencing."

"Er, thank you," says Caspian, a bit of a blush rising in his cheeks.

Now that Lucy has given her context, Susan can see the resemblance. He's grown a truly appalling degree since last they met—five years from fourteen, and he's gained about a foot and a half and his hair has darkened. He also looks a lot less like their cousin Eustace than he used to, which can only be an improvement.

"Oh, I remember," she says, smiling. "It's good to see you again, Caspian. I'm sorry about your uncle—do you have any idea what happened?"

"Not a clue," he says, not sounding terribly torn up about it. "He just up and vanished one morning. Left a note on the kitchen table for Mrs. Macready and Mum; said he was going off for a bit and not to worry, he'd be back 'if He meant it to be.'"

Ed's putting on his investigative face, which worries Susan. She promptly elbows Peter in the ribs and gestures a bit with her head. "I didn't realize the Professor was religious," she says in the meantime, as Peter blinks at her like a cretin.

"He wasn't," says Caspian, shrugging. "But what's done is done, and he's a man grown. Uncle Digory is capable of taking care of himself."

Thinking of the Macready, Susan lets out a brief, "Oh really?" but quickly moves on before Caspian can grow offended on the behalf of his uncle. He seems more amused than anything else, and thank the stars Ed becomes distracted by the tea tray.

"So," begins Ed, waggling his eyebrows towards the tray. "Are those the Macready's scones?"

Caspian is a moderately tolerable host, and he keeps them well fed until Mrs. Telman, frail-looking and tremulous, returns from town. Her wispy gaze and lagging dress hem don't mesh with the surety of her blocky handwriting, and Susan is a bit confused, at least until she begins to politely interrogate them on what they were doing in her uncle's house before her son stumbled across them.

They are invited to stay for supper, but Susan strong-arms Ed and Peter into refusing, as she isn't sure the Parents will be able to eat if she doesn't pick something up from the market on her way home. "It was lovely to see the house again," she tacks onto the end of her regretful refusal. "I am so sorry it has to be shut up."

"It is terrible," agrees Mrs. Telman, blinking a bit milkily at Susan. "But I suppose Digory would have thought of such things before he left."

"Naturally," agrees Susan politely. "We really must get back to town if we are to pick up the journals before our train."

"Of course, of course," says Mrs. Telman. "It was nice seeing you children again."

"Thank you so much for having us," says Susan, clasping Mrs. Telman's hand and then ushering Lucy out the door. She looks for Caspian to wave good-bye, but both he and the Macready appear to have been eaten up by the house; she gives a sort of half-shrug and turns down the lane after Peter and Ed, who are busy calculating how long it will take them to walk back to town.

She has turned to give the house a final, somewhat romantic last look when she sees Caspian leap from behind a pair of hedges and run after them. "Susan!" he calls, and she stops, watching him dash up the drive. "You—forgot your gloves," he says, and she flexes the digits in question stupidly for a moment before nodding in thanks and taking them.

"Er, thank you," she says, and he ducks his head so his expression—a sort of bashful, half-hopeful look that Susan hasn't seen since she stopped stepping out with Peter's classmates—is hidden by the swing of his hair. On impulse, she gives him a quick kiss on the cheek; she has to stand on her toes to do it, how odd. "It was good to see you again, Caspian."

"Oh, yes, er, you—you too." He looks petrified, which Susan takes to mean Pete and Ed are glowering at him from behind her, so she gives him another smile and a half-wave and then turns, taking Lucy's hand in hers.

"Come on," she says, "we have an hour and a half until the next train."

There is an indignant "Hmph!" from Peter at that, and then silence. Susan slides the fabric of the gloves between her thumb and forefinger and smiles a bit.