Disclaimer: I do not own the Chronicles of Narnia.
Characters: Susan Pevensie, Caspian X, Lucy Pevensie, Eustace Scrubb
Warnings: Hints of assault
Pairings: Slight Susan/Caspian but not really since this is based on the book.

The wet chill of the sea is a slap, shocking her lungs into locking for several seconds. Breaking surface and the sun blinding her half-closed eyes as she gasps and coughs is being put together again after a long night in pieces.

Lucy had admonished her to practice swimming last summer term and it had been good luck that she had listened for once. Susan has the sense to kick off her shoes, missing their sturdy, sensible feel moments after they leave her feet. Her feet tread water, toes gone numb.

She sees through her stinging eyes a golden head and hands forming into the V of a ready-made dive before a sturdy body. There is a splash and she feels herself being pulled up a little, foreign hands under her armpits. Everything is blurry but she knows - she knew - this face. 'Ca-Ca-Caspian!'

Susan feels herself being tugged through the water, she has her own line to the surface, to the boat. The others are being pulled by other men from the boat but Caspian is her own.

She'd missed her first trip on an aeroplane for this, for the feeling of rough rope lifting her up, changing in a little bedroom into clothes that balloon around her figure. For meeting Caspian's eyes as he hands her spiced wine which she gratefully swallows, the wine burning a ribbon down her throat into her belly and curling lower between her hip bones.

She is not coy, only businesslike, when she thanks him. Forcing herself not to look up through eyelashes that have never been thick and full like her mother's. Or even Lucy's.

He nods and her breath catches for a moment when she follows the line of his throat as he swallows, his Adam's apple like a pale slice of fruit.

Later when she is given an apple she eats it down to the core.

Peter is not here and she feels his loss keenly. Studying with Professor Kirke, too eager to study to be stuck with modern - almost obscenely so - relatives. Her aunt sneering down at the skirts Susan had pulled out of her luggage like trick scarves.

Eustace is a little beast Susan thinks meanly. She pauses, her hand on the brush handle. Once she would have found kind words for Eustace as she had been able to find kind words for all who visited her when she had been golden haired and beautiful. Now even Caspian did not look twice at her. Her eye for cutting apples in half from a hundred yards away no use on a ship.

The brush is pulled steadily through her hair as she is lost daydreaming.

When Caspian pulls open the door to the room she and Lucy share she gasps, her fingers tightening on the wooden handle.

'I am sorry, your Majesty, but we have arrived at the Lone Islands and have decided to walk across Felimath. Will you be accompanying out party?' he asks. A frown momentarily creases his brow and her lips tug downward.

'Of course, Caspian,' she says. Susan's knuckles are white around the brush handle. Her hands cramp painfully.

Caspian is gone.

The ropes are painful around her hands. Susan has tried to speak comfortingly to Lucy twice and had received a quick blow between her shoulder blades the second time that made her breath come out in a bark. She has never been tied up before. Her mind flashes back to the image of a shorn, still body on a stone table.

She stands tall, her shoulders set back. Eustace is hunched and babbling about 'the British consul!' Susan is before a jeering crowd while other slaves try desperately to crowd behind one another. She is pushed forward, almost falling over her feet into the crowd.

Caspian had already been bought, her mouth tucking his name underneath her tongue rather than letting it escape her lips.

Men with yellowing teeth call out prices and she is dragged back and forth across the platform. She sells quickly and easily to a man with yellowing corneas and breath that smooths hotly across her throat.

When he lifts her onto a horse his hands are spread broadly against her chest and she turns white.

She limps past Caspian into Lucy's arms. Susan feels tender and exposed in the bloody dress her newly removed master had given her.

Her face is drawn when she lets go of Lucy and turns to Caspian and murmurs her thanks in a hoarse voice. Her looks concerned. He calls to Drinian that 'Her Majesty needs a doctor at once!' She puts her hand on his shoulder and says she will not see a doctor. Not now, not ever. He protests, stopping when she presses her fingers to his lips.

His Adam's apple bobs and he looks transfixed.

Susan has already turned away.

This doesn't happen, and Caspian does not press his fingers against hers the next day. She does not turn white and pink, then white. The delicate glass goblet - Caspian's mother's - she is holding in her other hand does not crack and tumble to her feet, her fingers becoming slick with blood.

Her eyes are not opaque as she murmurs, 'America'.