Disclaimer: The story is mine. That which I based it on is not.

A/N: Ok, so I debated with myself about writing this. I'm not a hard core purist, but this movie went a little far from the book for me to think fanfiction. That, and there are books which I've never considered for fanfiction, and this is one of them. Then I remembered that I write fanfiction partly to resolve relationships that ended badly. So... I'm pretending that the there is nothing beyond Prince Caspian. I'm pretending there isn't a Voyage of the Dawn Treader or a Last Battle, and going completely off the movie. So yeah. This is my foray into Susan/Caspian fanfiction, because I thought their lives must just suck when she goes back to England.

I also want to quickly justify the way Susan and Caspian act when they see each other again. My theory is this: they connected so quickly in the movie, and so completely, that there had to have been something major going on. And if you take that, and you separate them, they're going to essentially start going nuts. And so when you put them back together, they're going to act like hormonal, melodramatic teenagers. Which they are, really. Oh, and Aslan has the ability to screw with the timing between worlds (as he obviously does between PC and VotDT).

Dreams and Nightmares

She could see the white witch raising a knife triumphantly over Aslan's bound form, the flash as the blade came down, and she could feel the helplessness and horror that accompanied the death of the lion. She could see Miraz and Peter locking swords, feel the sweat rolling down the back of her neck and hear the metallic sound of her brother's chain mail slamming into the ground.

She could see row upon row of men and Animals pierced by red-fletched arrows all looking at her accusingly, dead by her hand. Every one of those blank, lifeless stares fixed on her, silently asking, "Why me? Why did you have to kill me?" She couldn't closer her eyes, couldn't escape this parade of victims. She knew in her heart that she'd never killed anyone who didn't need to die for either her safety or that of Narnia, but it didn't matter. She could feel a little piece of her soul tear away and shrivel as the dead began slowly shuffling towards her, and suddenly there was a wall at her back and she couldn't get away...

Susan sat up with a start, disoriented and breaking out in a cold sweat. It took her a few moments to realize that she was sitting in an empty classroom at school, waiting for the lunch period to be over. The dream, which had kept her awake most nights in the last four months, was now apparently invading her naps as well, those brief periods in which she tried desperately to catch up on the sleep she couldn't get at night.

Susan sighed. She'd been having the dream since they returned from Narnia the second time, but she'd had a similar one (minus Miraz and a few corpses) the entire year preceding, since the first time she'd found herself back in England, in a younger body and a world that thought she'd never left.

That was the real reason she'd been so unhappy about their second foray into Narnia; the nightmare had just been beginning to fade when she was dragged through the tube station. She hadn't had the dream there, but she'd known then that it would return the moment she left.

And why wouldn't it? How could she sit through lessons that she'd already learned and history that no longer felt like hers? How could she be this person, Susan Pevensie, a student in a war torn country with a boring life, when she was once Queen Susan the Gentle, queen of Narnia, an adult who'd killed for her family and country?

And that, Susan decided, was most of the problem. Not only was she an adult in every way except the physical (though she had been that, once), she'd done things no one her age outside of her family had ever done. The closest she ever saw to what looked back at her from her mirror in the mornings were the faces of the soldiers, broken and a little dead inside. And unlike them, she had no one to talk to.

She couldn't exactly talk to the wounded, the battle-weary; she was a child here and they'd never believe her. She couldn't talk to Lucy, because Lucy was the healer, Queen Lucy the Valiant. She was brave in a way that Susan had never been. Peter and Edmund were boys, who might be uneasy about killing but would never admit it. Besides, they killed face to face, with swords and a certain honor. They wouldn't understand. None of them would. So Susan just withdrew farther and farther inside herself.

Her siblings had noticed the effect but not the cause. Lucy thought her sister was upset about never being allowed to go back to Narnia, Edmund thought it was just teenage girl stuff that he'd never understand, and Peter thought she was moping over leaving Caspian behind.

And to be fair, Peter was a little right. There was a gaping hole somewhere in the vicinity of her heart, which was ridiculous, because she'd barely known the Telmarine prince and it shouldn't hurt this much, but it did. Damn Aslan and damn the way he had made it impossible for her to live in her own world.

With a clang that had her reaching for arrows she hadn't carried in months, the bell for class rang and she was pulled out of her memories and forced to focus on the lecture.

She'd grown to hate that period of time between going to bed and actually falling asleep, mostly because she knew the nightmare would come back. That meant that she spent hours lying awake in fear of the dream, and then whenever her exhausted mind finally shut down, she had to live through it.

This night was different, though. When she finally managed to fall asleep, she found herself not at the stone table but in Caer Paravel, as it had been when she'd lived there. She was seated in her throne, staring at an empty hall... no, it wasn't empty. Aslan was seated in the center, watching her with a curious expression.

She stood. "Aslan?"

He lowered his head in acknowledgment. "Queen Susan. You are not happy with me."

"No, I'm not." She couldn't quite conjure up shame or humility. She'd been living with this pain for more than a year now, and he was the one responsible for it. "You think I need to live in my own world? My own world isn't mine anymore! You named me Queen Susan the Gentle, and yet you expected me to be able to live with myself, knowing how many lives I'd taken, in a world where people saw me as nothing more than a child? You expected me to accept that I was no longer an adult and that everything I had done, all of the decisions I had to make, were no longer relevant to me? And then you..." She trailed off, embarrassed.

"I what, Susan?" His voice was gentle, and she couldn't not answer. Sinking back into her seat, she numbly realized she was crying.

"I could have found some peace, maybe, if I could have found someone to love, someone that I could maybe one day confide in, who would listen and try to understand. But you took that away from me too! Because I found that person, but he's not in my world, and so I have to live without hope, too." The tears were flowing freely now, and she couldn't look at him.

"You think I ruined your life?"

"I know you did." She buried her face in her hands.

There was a few moments of silence, and then she could hear the lion padding across the marble floors towards her. When he spoke again, he was right in front of her.

"I did not foresee this, Susan, and I am truly sorry." When she peeked through her hands, she saw a sad expression in his eyes. "I made a mistake, and that is something I rarely do. You learned more in Narnia than I ever expected, and it made you unfit for your own world." He began pacing, back and forth across the deis. "I do not like to be responsible for the misery of one who gave so much to a country not her own at my request."

"Can you fix it?" She hadn't wanted to ask, but she couldn't help it.

"I can, Susan. I can return you to Narnia, but you would never be able to return to England."

For a moment, she was ecstatic, and then she remembered something. "But Aslan, it's been four months since I left. If a year in England is 1300 years in Narnia, how long will have passed this time? I would find no more peace in that Narnia than I would in England."

He smiled in that curious way that wasn't quite a smile (because he was, after all, a lion). "You accused me of stealing your last hope for peace. I would return you to the Narnia you knew. Not the first Narnia, for that is long gone, but the second, the one which you so recently left. Would that suit?"

She threw herself forward, practically tripping over the skirt of the dress she had acquired at some point, wrapping her arms around his neck and burying her face in his mane. "Thank you, Aslan, thank you so much. I thought I was losing my mind and nobody understood and I just..."

"I know, dear one." His kind voice rumbled through her whole body. "I can return you to Narnia, and I will let Lucy know where you will be. She will smooth over your departure."

"Thank you." Susan knew that she'd miss her family when she had time to think about it, but now all she could think was that she'd be going back to a world that understood her, that respected her, and that had... "How will I get there?" She didn't want to think of him; for all she knew he might have forgotten her by the time she "returned."

"Since this is your dream, I will move you into the dream of one in Narnia. When that person wakes, you shall follow them."

"Thank you, Aslan. Thank you. I can't... you don't know how much I... Thank you."

He laughed, a low purr of sound that vibrated through the floor and into the walls, until the whole earth seemed to be shaking with it. And then suddenly, she wasn't in Caer Paravel anymore, she was in a room in the castle she'd once tried to invade. This was Caspian's castle, Caspian's home. And judging by the man sitting on the bed near the window, this was Caspian's room as well.

"Caspian?"

"Hello, Susan." His smile was sad and resigned.

"Er... How long have I been gone?" She kicked herself for not coming up with anything better to say than that.

"Three weeks, four days, ten hours, and some odd minutes." He shrugged at her shocked expression. "At least, when I went to sleep, that was how long it was."

"This is a dream, then?" She'd forgotten for a moment what Aslan had told her. "You don't seem too surprised to see me."

He laughed, but there wasn't much humor in the sound. "I dream about you every night. Why should tonight be any different?"

"You..." Something in her heart healed a little bit. "You dream about me? Why?"

"Self preservation." He reached out a hand as though he would touch her, but pulled it back at the last second. "My heart hurts. I only knew you a short time, but you tore some part of me out when you left. If I can only have you near me in dreams, I suppose I should be happy to take what I can get."

"Caspian..." She sat down next to him. "You miss me that much?"

"Yes." Unable to resist, he leaned over to rest his head on her shoulder. "You even smell like I remember."

She had a vivid memory of the way he'd hugged her in the square that last day, the way he'd buried his face in her hair as though trying to imprint her in his memory. She knew, because she'd been doing the same. The memory of the way his mouth felt against hers had gotten her through many bad nights.

"Caspian, what would you do if I could be back in Narnia? With you, forever?"

He jumped up, paced across the room, and then spun on her, angry and hurting. "How can you ask me that? Why must you torture me in my sleep as well? Is it not enough that every moment I am awake I am plagued by thoughts of what I could have done to make you stay?"

Feeling tears well up, Susan rose and moved towards him. Even though he held himself rigid, as though afraid to let her close, she reached out her hands to touch his face. Pulling it down to the level of hers, she whispered, "Caspian, wake up."

And she shoved him. She wasn't sure what she was doing or whether it would work, but it felt right, and she couldn't take his pain a second longer.

And then suddenly, she was fighting to free herself from sleep. Blinking her eyes, she managed to push herself far enough into wakefulness to see the man sitting on the edge of the bed, radiating disbelief, wariness, and hope.

It was the hope that allowed her to struggle the rest of the way out of the dream. "Caspian?" She smiled sleepily up at him.

"Susan?" His wonderfully accented voice practically vibrated with repressed emotion. "I'm still dreaming."

"No, this is no dream." She reached up a hand to touch his beautiful, beautiful face, to trace her fingers over his cheek and his lips. He grabbed her wrist and pressed his mouth to her palm, trying to reassure himself she was really there.

"How is this? You said that Aslan..."

"Aslan sent me to live in my own world, but he got it wrong. This is my world now."

Susan suddenly found herself pinned between him and the mattress as he launched himself at her and wrapped her in his arms. She laughed, returning the gesture and pulling him close. The light shirt he slept in did nothing to disguise the heat that his body generated, and she felt something insider her warm and thaw, that part of her that had died with every nightmare slide back into place, whole again.

She slid one hand up his back, into his hair, and pulled him just a little closer. He rolled them suddenly, so that she was lying across his body, and she giggled.

"Happy to see me?"

"You have no idea." He inhaled the smell of her hair, ran a hand down her spine and then pulled her head up so that he could kiss her. "Absolutely no idea," he whispered against her mouth.

She smiled and slid to the side, so that she was lying next to him with her head on his chest and one arm across his body. His arms were still around her, unwilling to let her go even a few inches from him. "I think I have some small idea." She smiled and placed a gentle kiss on his chest, the only part of him she could reach without more movement than her tired body was capable of. "Can we go back to sleep now?"

"You'll still be here when I wake up, won't you?" He sounded so wistful. "This really isn't a dream?"

"This isn't a dream, Caspian," she murmured, lulled half to sleep already by the soothing motion of his hand sliding over her hair. "This is me coming home, to Narnia and to you."

A/N: Love it? Hate it? Want more? Want less? Leave a review! Please, please do! Because I have an idea for a "morning after," so to speak, and I want to know if you guys want it. Oh, and am I the only person who thought Caspian burying his nose in her skin in that hug was his attempt to remember how she smelled?