![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
TV Tropes Challenge fic: "Hereafter" (Chronicles of Narnia)
Warning! Spoilers for C.S. Lewis's The Last Battle EVERYWHERE.
This is my trope. This fic was almost a Harry Potter crossover because I wanted to splice that trope with a permutation of the I Wish It Were Real trope. Thank god that didn't work out! And then I was going to have Edmund and Caspian wander around Aslan's Country's various afterlifes in a sort of crossover extravaganza, but then Mr. and Mrs. Pevensie -- who were only supposed to be there for a scene or two -- kind of stole the show.
Hereafter
Chronicles of Narnia. PG. Edmund, Caspian, and the Pevensie parents, and Susan, at the edges. Big heaping thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
alice_pike and a flower for bantha_fodder.
Edmund and Caspian set out to explore Aslan's Country, and get sidetracked.
Suddenly they shifted their eyes to another spot, and then Peter and Edmund and Lucy gasped with amazement and shouted and began waving: for there they saw their own father and mother, waving back at them across the great, deep valley.
“How can we get at them?” said Lucy.
“That is easy,” said Mr. Tumnus. “That country and this country - all the real countries – are only spurs jutting out from the great mountains of Aslan. We have only to walk along the ridge, upward and inward, till it joins on.”
- Lewis, ‘The Last Battle’
+
Mrs. Pevensie was beside herself with joy, pulling Edmund into her arms and kissing him on both cheeks. How had he been? How were his siblings?
“Fine,” replied Edmund with a laugh and a blush. “Fine.”
“Who is this fine young man?” Mrs. Pevensie cried out. “From the looks of you, you must be the King Caspian himself. Lucy’s told me quite a lot about you.”
Caspian stepped into the hallway and bowed, taking Mrs. Pevensie’s hand and kissing it ever so gently – a gesture that, from the expression on Mrs. Pevensie’s face, had clearly won him much merit in her eyes. “My lady,” he said, in what Lucy called his ‘king voice’, “I am Caspian the Tenth of Narnia. I am honored to meet the mother of those sovereigns of Narnia I hold in such high regard.”
Mrs. Pevensie said, somewhat breathlessly, “Oh my.”
Edmund rolled his eyes.
“Are you still glad you came along?” he asked Caspian. Mrs. Pevensie had bustled off to the kitchen for tarts and tea, and they were seated on a pair of armchairs in the parlor. The sight of these armchairs from his childhood struck Edmund with a feeling of unexpected fondness. The cushions were finally as comfortable as they looked, delightfully lacking in pokey springs and the tendency to deflate. He resisted the urge to bounce experimentally in his seat.
“Edmund, I have sailed with you to the end of the eastern seas,” Caspian said, smiling gently. “Do you think I wouldn’t accompany you to see your parents?”
“I suppose this time there’s no fear of losing our lives,” replied Edmund flatly. “And at least Lucy would stop chiding me for being a bad son.” He sighed. “But my mother and father are going to be content in this place, come what may, and we could just as easily have gone further up and-”
“That,” said Caspian, “is not the point.”
Edmund looked at his companion, who wasn’t smiling anymore.
Caspian had confessed that one of the first things he had done in Aslan’s Country was to seek out his father. It didn’t take him long, as was the way of things here, and, together, they searched for his wife, whom Caspian the Ninth then embraced and called ‘daughter’. They did not wait for Rilian, for it was wrong to begrudge the living their lives, but when he arrived they were as happy as anyone could be. Within the first few days of Edmund’s arrival, he had learned to recognize Caspian and his family as a unit: three generations whose relationship was cemented by the preciousness of a second chance. Edmund had lived lifetimes before returning to England to find that no time had passed, and that he had been expected to pick up where he left off. But Caspian had had to wait until death to finally do that.
“No,” said Edmund, lowering his eyes. “I suppose not.”
Mrs. Pevensie returned with a tray, beaming. “Who wants scones?”
Midway through Edmund’s second cup of tea and his mother’s recount of an afternoon out with her grandmother (“You lot must come to see her one day, she’s always wanted to meet royalty.”), they heard the front door open and Edmund recognized the heavy footsteps of his father.
“Robert!” called out his mother. “Robert, come to the parlor this instant! Look who’s come to visit!”
So Robert Pevensie came to the parlor to see who had come to visit, and Edmund realized just how long it had been since he last saw his father. There were so many adventures to be had in Narnia that visiting London and his parents had been quite pushed to the back of Edmund’s mind. How many years had it been? How could you even begin to calculate time here in Aslan’s Country? It was almost as difficult as trying to calculate Narnian time from England, back when he was still alive.
“Conquered any kingdoms lately?” Mr. Pevensie asked, twinkle in his eye, before soundly insisting that they stay for dinner.
Over potatoes and roast chicken, Mr. Pevensie and Caspian were quick to engage each other in conversation about the battle strategies of each other’s worlds (“Just ask him about the War,” Edmund told Caspian, en route, “he’ll talk your ear off.”) while Helen Pevensie alternated between plying her son for news of her other children and nattering about herself.
“D’you know Peter barely comes round?” prattled Mrs. Pevensie. “Lucy visited me first thing. I know Peter’s king of your Narmia and all-”
“High King,” said Edmund. “And it’s Narnia.”
“Be that as it may,” his mother continued, “that makes me the Queen Mother and that’s someone he ought to pay a visit to from time to time, wouldn’t you say?”
“The Queen Mother is the title given to the widowed mother of a king,” Edmund pointed out.
“My dear,” said Mrs. Pevensie, buttering her roll, “my husband is dead.”
Her next question, when she asked it, sounded like a secret. Her voice dropped, and her eyes lit up with hope. “And Susan?” she ventured. “Do you think Susan’s alright?”
At the mention of her name, Caspian glanced over, discreetly so that Mr. Pevensie wouldn’t notice his inattentiveness. But Mr. Pevensie was lost in his favorite war story, which had nothing to do at all with battle and in fact involved a broken-down lorry, a private named Dickinson, a bottle of gin, some baguettes, and an atrocious imitation of a French accent.
“Yes,” said Edmund, a bit stiffly. “I’m sure she’s fine.”
“Oh,” said his mother, nodding. “Oh, good.”
+
War had made a coarser man out of Robert Pevensie, now prone to tobacco, drink, and unrestrained emotion. Edmund hadn’t minded the change in his father, for Edmund had lived through many changes himself and it taught him to discern love and honesty in its many forms. Edmund saw a little of himself in his father’s tendency towards dark speculation, and when the elder Pevensie reached for the scotch, the shadows in his eyes would remind Edmund of Peter in the aftermath of a lost battle.
Helen Pevensie, having never had the opportunity to live more than one life, had absolutely minded. She had been brought up to be charming and girlish, taught to avoid the uncouth. Edmund noticed his mother’s anxiety at her husband’s newly acquired habits, but did little. In Narnia, he had never been the one to comfort Susan when beloveds fell in battle. In Finchley, he and his siblings had developed a system of knowing glances to express that Mother was having one of ‘those nights’ and that they were all to tread lightly around her.
Edmund knew his mother started smoking not long after his father’s return, though she never smoked in front of her children. He only realized that she smoked when it dawned on him that he had come to associate the image of her with the smell of cigarettes.
Here, of course, it was different. Here you could be happy with yourself, happy with everyone, and everyone would be just as happy with you. Not just content, but happy.
Edmund couldn’t remember a single instant of living when all three occurred at the same time.
+
Edmund and Caspian insisted that they must be off, and Mr. and Mrs. Pevensie insisted that they must spend the night.
“At least one night!” said Mrs. Pevensie.
“How about on the way back, Mother?” Edmund suggested. “Caspian and I are exploring this world, and we’ve a long way to go.”
Caspian and Mr. Pevensie held back smiles as King Edmund the Just, Duke of Lantern Waste, Count of the Western March, and Knight of the Noble Order of the Table argued with his mother, alternating between compromise and simpering, before finding himself enveloped in the kind of unrelenting hug only a mother could give.
“Splendid!” she exclaimed in delight. “I’ll have the spare rooms set up.”
That evening, Mrs. Pevensie baked pecan pie, warm and moist, and Mr. Pevensie decanted some wine. The conversation was lively, the laughter myriad, and the debates playful and full of gesticulation. But then, the subject turned to Fauns.
“I’m just concerned, is all!” clamored Mr. Pevensie, as he finished rolling a cigarette. “My daughter is running about with satyrs, who may I remind you are renowned for their, er, lust, you see. Am I to have grandchildren with cloven hoofs?”
“Can we even have children here?” Edmund wondered aloud.
“Bears thinking about,” said Mrs. Pevensie, concerned.
“You ask this Aslan of yours next time you see him,” said Mr. Pevensie, pointing at Caspian.
In the tone of solemn promise, Caspian replied, “I will.”
“Here, dear, this is for you,” said Mr. Pevensie, offering the finished cigarette to his wife with an impish grin, knowing she would refuse it.
Helen Pevensie blushed, but also laughed. “Robert, one gets to heaven because of one’s upkeep of good habits, and I fully intend to continue doing just that. Just because we’ve made it is no reason to let ourselves go, is it?”
Edmund’s smile faltered.
“We’ve already been let go!” crowed Robert Pevensie. “Off of the mortal coil, even! And frankly, I’m rather glad it didn’t happen in some god-forsaken French wood, though I’m not sure if the way we went was any more dignified.” He struck a match and lit his cigarette, puffing smoke into the air. Of course, the smoke didn’t smell at all. “But at least there was you to hold on to, dear.”
“Oh, Robert,” said Mrs. Pevensie, a shy smile on her face.
+
His house in Aslan’s Country was less of a house and really more like a home. It was as if their Finchley stead had been reconstructed here, not out of bricks and mortar, but out of their collective memories. The end result was a combination of intimacy and warmth. There was a bookshelf that recalled Peter and his fondness for adventure novels, and an oddly shaped lamp that recalled Lucy, who had once commented that the lamp looked like a sleeping Dwarf. They had all, after closer inspection, agreed.
There was also a ring-shaped stain on the table in the hall, the sort produced by condensation when one forgets to put a coaster under a cold drink. Susan had made that stain in a bout of absent-mindedness, forgetting all about her lemonade before stepping out for the day. She had come back later to her mother having one of ‘those nights’, which had the ability to transform – with enough time and increasingly impatient retorts from Susan – a mild rebuke into a tongue-lashing about tidiness, respect, and being a lady.
Edmund, Lucy, and Peter had congregated unseen in the shadows of the landing as if they could protect their sister through silent witness. Helen Pevensie’s anger, they knew, had little to do with the ring-shaped stain, and instead had drawn its momentum from the fog of claustrophobia that had settled over her family in recent months. They were still on the landing when Susan walked stiffly up the stairs in silence, lower lip trembling, face flushed, but not quite crying. She had ignored Lucy’s hand when it tried to slip into hers, but she had not been quite strong enough to resist Peter pulling her into a hug.
Her whole body had trembled then. Susan was reluctant to return the hug; she only allowed herself to rest her head on Peter’s shoulder and breathe in a shaky sort of way as tears trickled down her face. No one shushed her; they had all felt the tightness under their skins and, knowing each other’s true laughter too well, had recognized the cracks in each other’s smiles. The air was thick with memories of a more dignified time. Susan, being gentle, had just been the first to break.
Peter had held her, Lucy had murmured words of comfort, and Edmund, awkward but well-intentioned, had patted her shoulder. They were all together, and that had felt like the most important thing.
That had been the last time Susan’s tears had reached their sympathy.
Now, the stain caught Edmund’s eye and made him stop in his tracks. Ahead of him, Mr. and Mrs. Pevensie continued giving Caspian a tour of their house and took no notice. Edmund touched that stain, reliving the past as his heart was overcome. Whose memory was this? Who dared to bring it to this place where hearts never broke?
“Edmund,” Caspian called out from the stairs, and Edmund looked up. “I think we’re seeing your room. Are you coming?”
It could very well have been his mother, but it could also have been Lucy, and really, it could have been anyone. Edmund remembered with a sudden clarity Susan’s smile and soft hands, and her graceful way of moving through both marbled halls and London streets. He remembered every instance she denied Narnia, but instead of betrayal, memory now highlighted the mourning in her eyes when she told him that one couldn’t go back to a place that didn’t exist. He knew with a sudden instinct that, try as anyone might, no one would ever be able to wipe this stain away.
“I hope you’re alright, Su,” he whispered, tracing the stain with his fingers, before turning and following Caspian up the stairs.
This is my trope. This fic was almost a Harry Potter crossover because I wanted to splice that trope with a permutation of the I Wish It Were Real trope. Thank god that didn't work out! And then I was going to have Edmund and Caspian wander around Aslan's Country's various afterlifes in a sort of crossover extravaganza, but then Mr. and Mrs. Pevensie -- who were only supposed to be there for a scene or two -- kind of stole the show.
Hereafter
Chronicles of Narnia. PG. Edmund, Caspian, and the Pevensie parents, and Susan, at the edges. Big heaping thanks to
alice_pike and a flower for bantha_fodder.Edmund and Caspian set out to explore Aslan's Country, and get sidetracked.
Suddenly they shifted their eyes to another spot, and then Peter and Edmund and Lucy gasped with amazement and shouted and began waving: for there they saw their own father and mother, waving back at them across the great, deep valley.
“How can we get at them?” said Lucy.
“That is easy,” said Mr. Tumnus. “That country and this country - all the real countries – are only spurs jutting out from the great mountains of Aslan. We have only to walk along the ridge, upward and inward, till it joins on.”
- Lewis, ‘The Last Battle’
+
Mrs. Pevensie was beside herself with joy, pulling Edmund into her arms and kissing him on both cheeks. How had he been? How were his siblings?
“Fine,” replied Edmund with a laugh and a blush. “Fine.”
“Who is this fine young man?” Mrs. Pevensie cried out. “From the looks of you, you must be the King Caspian himself. Lucy’s told me quite a lot about you.”
Caspian stepped into the hallway and bowed, taking Mrs. Pevensie’s hand and kissing it ever so gently – a gesture that, from the expression on Mrs. Pevensie’s face, had clearly won him much merit in her eyes. “My lady,” he said, in what Lucy called his ‘king voice’, “I am Caspian the Tenth of Narnia. I am honored to meet the mother of those sovereigns of Narnia I hold in such high regard.”
Mrs. Pevensie said, somewhat breathlessly, “Oh my.”
Edmund rolled his eyes.
“Are you still glad you came along?” he asked Caspian. Mrs. Pevensie had bustled off to the kitchen for tarts and tea, and they were seated on a pair of armchairs in the parlor. The sight of these armchairs from his childhood struck Edmund with a feeling of unexpected fondness. The cushions were finally as comfortable as they looked, delightfully lacking in pokey springs and the tendency to deflate. He resisted the urge to bounce experimentally in his seat.
“Edmund, I have sailed with you to the end of the eastern seas,” Caspian said, smiling gently. “Do you think I wouldn’t accompany you to see your parents?”
“I suppose this time there’s no fear of losing our lives,” replied Edmund flatly. “And at least Lucy would stop chiding me for being a bad son.” He sighed. “But my mother and father are going to be content in this place, come what may, and we could just as easily have gone further up and-”
“That,” said Caspian, “is not the point.”
Edmund looked at his companion, who wasn’t smiling anymore.
Caspian had confessed that one of the first things he had done in Aslan’s Country was to seek out his father. It didn’t take him long, as was the way of things here, and, together, they searched for his wife, whom Caspian the Ninth then embraced and called ‘daughter’. They did not wait for Rilian, for it was wrong to begrudge the living their lives, but when he arrived they were as happy as anyone could be. Within the first few days of Edmund’s arrival, he had learned to recognize Caspian and his family as a unit: three generations whose relationship was cemented by the preciousness of a second chance. Edmund had lived lifetimes before returning to England to find that no time had passed, and that he had been expected to pick up where he left off. But Caspian had had to wait until death to finally do that.
“No,” said Edmund, lowering his eyes. “I suppose not.”
Mrs. Pevensie returned with a tray, beaming. “Who wants scones?”
Midway through Edmund’s second cup of tea and his mother’s recount of an afternoon out with her grandmother (“You lot must come to see her one day, she’s always wanted to meet royalty.”), they heard the front door open and Edmund recognized the heavy footsteps of his father.
“Robert!” called out his mother. “Robert, come to the parlor this instant! Look who’s come to visit!”
So Robert Pevensie came to the parlor to see who had come to visit, and Edmund realized just how long it had been since he last saw his father. There were so many adventures to be had in Narnia that visiting London and his parents had been quite pushed to the back of Edmund’s mind. How many years had it been? How could you even begin to calculate time here in Aslan’s Country? It was almost as difficult as trying to calculate Narnian time from England, back when he was still alive.
“Conquered any kingdoms lately?” Mr. Pevensie asked, twinkle in his eye, before soundly insisting that they stay for dinner.
Over potatoes and roast chicken, Mr. Pevensie and Caspian were quick to engage each other in conversation about the battle strategies of each other’s worlds (“Just ask him about the War,” Edmund told Caspian, en route, “he’ll talk your ear off.”) while Helen Pevensie alternated between plying her son for news of her other children and nattering about herself.
“D’you know Peter barely comes round?” prattled Mrs. Pevensie. “Lucy visited me first thing. I know Peter’s king of your Narmia and all-”
“High King,” said Edmund. “And it’s Narnia.”
“Be that as it may,” his mother continued, “that makes me the Queen Mother and that’s someone he ought to pay a visit to from time to time, wouldn’t you say?”
“The Queen Mother is the title given to the widowed mother of a king,” Edmund pointed out.
“My dear,” said Mrs. Pevensie, buttering her roll, “my husband is dead.”
Her next question, when she asked it, sounded like a secret. Her voice dropped, and her eyes lit up with hope. “And Susan?” she ventured. “Do you think Susan’s alright?”
At the mention of her name, Caspian glanced over, discreetly so that Mr. Pevensie wouldn’t notice his inattentiveness. But Mr. Pevensie was lost in his favorite war story, which had nothing to do at all with battle and in fact involved a broken-down lorry, a private named Dickinson, a bottle of gin, some baguettes, and an atrocious imitation of a French accent.
“Yes,” said Edmund, a bit stiffly. “I’m sure she’s fine.”
“Oh,” said his mother, nodding. “Oh, good.”
+
War had made a coarser man out of Robert Pevensie, now prone to tobacco, drink, and unrestrained emotion. Edmund hadn’t minded the change in his father, for Edmund had lived through many changes himself and it taught him to discern love and honesty in its many forms. Edmund saw a little of himself in his father’s tendency towards dark speculation, and when the elder Pevensie reached for the scotch, the shadows in his eyes would remind Edmund of Peter in the aftermath of a lost battle.
Helen Pevensie, having never had the opportunity to live more than one life, had absolutely minded. She had been brought up to be charming and girlish, taught to avoid the uncouth. Edmund noticed his mother’s anxiety at her husband’s newly acquired habits, but did little. In Narnia, he had never been the one to comfort Susan when beloveds fell in battle. In Finchley, he and his siblings had developed a system of knowing glances to express that Mother was having one of ‘those nights’ and that they were all to tread lightly around her.
Edmund knew his mother started smoking not long after his father’s return, though she never smoked in front of her children. He only realized that she smoked when it dawned on him that he had come to associate the image of her with the smell of cigarettes.
Here, of course, it was different. Here you could be happy with yourself, happy with everyone, and everyone would be just as happy with you. Not just content, but happy.
Edmund couldn’t remember a single instant of living when all three occurred at the same time.
+
Edmund and Caspian insisted that they must be off, and Mr. and Mrs. Pevensie insisted that they must spend the night.
“At least one night!” said Mrs. Pevensie.
“How about on the way back, Mother?” Edmund suggested. “Caspian and I are exploring this world, and we’ve a long way to go.”
Caspian and Mr. Pevensie held back smiles as King Edmund the Just, Duke of Lantern Waste, Count of the Western March, and Knight of the Noble Order of the Table argued with his mother, alternating between compromise and simpering, before finding himself enveloped in the kind of unrelenting hug only a mother could give.
“Splendid!” she exclaimed in delight. “I’ll have the spare rooms set up.”
That evening, Mrs. Pevensie baked pecan pie, warm and moist, and Mr. Pevensie decanted some wine. The conversation was lively, the laughter myriad, and the debates playful and full of gesticulation. But then, the subject turned to Fauns.
“I’m just concerned, is all!” clamored Mr. Pevensie, as he finished rolling a cigarette. “My daughter is running about with satyrs, who may I remind you are renowned for their, er, lust, you see. Am I to have grandchildren with cloven hoofs?”
“Can we even have children here?” Edmund wondered aloud.
“Bears thinking about,” said Mrs. Pevensie, concerned.
“You ask this Aslan of yours next time you see him,” said Mr. Pevensie, pointing at Caspian.
In the tone of solemn promise, Caspian replied, “I will.”
“Here, dear, this is for you,” said Mr. Pevensie, offering the finished cigarette to his wife with an impish grin, knowing she would refuse it.
Helen Pevensie blushed, but also laughed. “Robert, one gets to heaven because of one’s upkeep of good habits, and I fully intend to continue doing just that. Just because we’ve made it is no reason to let ourselves go, is it?”
Edmund’s smile faltered.
“We’ve already been let go!” crowed Robert Pevensie. “Off of the mortal coil, even! And frankly, I’m rather glad it didn’t happen in some god-forsaken French wood, though I’m not sure if the way we went was any more dignified.” He struck a match and lit his cigarette, puffing smoke into the air. Of course, the smoke didn’t smell at all. “But at least there was you to hold on to, dear.”
“Oh, Robert,” said Mrs. Pevensie, a shy smile on her face.
+
His house in Aslan’s Country was less of a house and really more like a home. It was as if their Finchley stead had been reconstructed here, not out of bricks and mortar, but out of their collective memories. The end result was a combination of intimacy and warmth. There was a bookshelf that recalled Peter and his fondness for adventure novels, and an oddly shaped lamp that recalled Lucy, who had once commented that the lamp looked like a sleeping Dwarf. They had all, after closer inspection, agreed.
There was also a ring-shaped stain on the table in the hall, the sort produced by condensation when one forgets to put a coaster under a cold drink. Susan had made that stain in a bout of absent-mindedness, forgetting all about her lemonade before stepping out for the day. She had come back later to her mother having one of ‘those nights’, which had the ability to transform – with enough time and increasingly impatient retorts from Susan – a mild rebuke into a tongue-lashing about tidiness, respect, and being a lady.
Edmund, Lucy, and Peter had congregated unseen in the shadows of the landing as if they could protect their sister through silent witness. Helen Pevensie’s anger, they knew, had little to do with the ring-shaped stain, and instead had drawn its momentum from the fog of claustrophobia that had settled over her family in recent months. They were still on the landing when Susan walked stiffly up the stairs in silence, lower lip trembling, face flushed, but not quite crying. She had ignored Lucy’s hand when it tried to slip into hers, but she had not been quite strong enough to resist Peter pulling her into a hug.
Her whole body had trembled then. Susan was reluctant to return the hug; she only allowed herself to rest her head on Peter’s shoulder and breathe in a shaky sort of way as tears trickled down her face. No one shushed her; they had all felt the tightness under their skins and, knowing each other’s true laughter too well, had recognized the cracks in each other’s smiles. The air was thick with memories of a more dignified time. Susan, being gentle, had just been the first to break.
Peter had held her, Lucy had murmured words of comfort, and Edmund, awkward but well-intentioned, had patted her shoulder. They were all together, and that had felt like the most important thing.
That had been the last time Susan’s tears had reached their sympathy.
Now, the stain caught Edmund’s eye and made him stop in his tracks. Ahead of him, Mr. and Mrs. Pevensie continued giving Caspian a tour of their house and took no notice. Edmund touched that stain, reliving the past as his heart was overcome. Whose memory was this? Who dared to bring it to this place where hearts never broke?
“Edmund,” Caspian called out from the stairs, and Edmund looked up. “I think we’re seeing your room. Are you coming?”
It could very well have been his mother, but it could also have been Lucy, and really, it could have been anyone. Edmund remembered with a sudden clarity Susan’s smile and soft hands, and her graceful way of moving through both marbled halls and London streets. He remembered every instance she denied Narnia, but instead of betrayal, memory now highlighted the mourning in her eyes when she told him that one couldn’t go back to a place that didn’t exist. He knew with a sudden instinct that, try as anyone might, no one would ever be able to wipe this stain away.
“I hope you’re alright, Su,” he whispered, tracing the stain with his fingers, before turning and following Caspian up the stairs.
no subject
I don't know why this made me LOL but it did. What a great little fic! An original idea, looking at what comes after death. The part with the stain was a stroke of brilliance.
no subject