(Narnia) Broken Pieces -Caspian X- A One Shot Collection

What Changes Still Remains

The cold stone floor echoed beneath Caspians boots as he wandered into his room. He sat blankly on the edge of his bed, thinking. So many feelings filled him surrounding the last few days. About his uncle, his life before he'd taken back Narnia, about how much had changed.

He had so much he wanted to talk about, to say, but no one to say it to. Many things he didn't even know how to say. Cornelius was already asleep, and Caspian didn't want to bother him. Laying onto his back, Caspian kept thinking, wandering into the past. The questions of what if, the memories.

After tossing around for a while, Caspian stood, pushing his hair from his face, unable to sleep. To keep his mind from circling the same thoughts over and over, he started to write them down, to put them anywhere that might help them to leave his mind.

He wrote it the way one might tell a friend; a way he would talk about his hurt if he was brave. If he had a friend to tell. He emptied his feelings into writing. Telling no one, but himself.

I know when Miraz looked at me, he saw my father. When I spoke, he heard him. My name was that of my father- and to him, that is all I was. The son of the man he hated.

Everything I am, everything I did, reminded him. He could never have loved me because he hated my father, and I was but a reminder he could not forget. I was not my father- but he hated me the same. He took out on me what he could not the man he killed. He punished me for how he felt wronged by his brother.

I should have given up hope long ago, but when he died, even though I hated him too, I cried.

Alone.

I didn't mourn his life. I didn't miss him. I didn't want him back, but I still wanted his love. The child inside my heart still wanted to be loved by him. So I mourned for what he never gave- and what I now knew I would never receive.

The hardest thing I had to realize was that Miraz wasn't incapable of love. He could love; he'd loved his wife, truly loved her. He'd loved his son. He could love- and he did. He wasn't a heartless man, completely cold and devoid of feeling. Hard, yes, but not to those he did love.

It seems odd to say it was difficult to learn that someone had the ability to love, but it was.

Once I'd learned that, I saw the truth. It hurt when I believed the lie, but it hurt even worse when I discovered the truth. The truth was reality. One that I didn't want to believe yet. The truth was pain that I'd been trying to avoid.

The truth was, he didn't love me. He chose not to love me. And I couldn't blame it on his inability. I couldn't accept the explanation that it wasn't me, that I'd done nothing, because it was me. He chose to hate me, chose not to love me, and I believed everything he said.

You can know a lie your whole life, and still, knowing it's a lie, believe it. You can hear people tell you, but you can't listen. Some hurt runs so deep that even you lose it in yourself. I can't find it to fix it.

I still wish to be loved, but now I'm scared. And I feel safe without love- without something to lose. His choices made mine. I choose to be alone, to hide, to help instead of getting help, all because he told me a lie. Told me who I was, and I believed him.

I know the truth. I know. But I've wanted something I couldn't get for so long that I ignore the truth, fear it, and try to earn something- love- that was never mine, and never will be.   

Caspian ended the letter there. No names, no true ending. Though it was finished and he had no intention of adding to it, it felt right to leave it abruptly.

With Mirazs death, Caspian couldn't fix the past. Even if he had lived, though, Miraz wasn't sorry. He didn't really seem to regret all he had done to Caspian. Never would have apologized. Never would have asked for forgiveness, though Caspian would have tried to give it.

And so the letter remained much the same as reality.

It was finished, but it was waiting for closure- closure that would never come.