whynot | (no subject)

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.recs,
.remix

(no subject)

I bring you a list of awesome.

1.

capslock_merlin. When I talk about this show it's mostly in capslock anyway, so, perfect. If you don't care about being spoiled for Episode 11, please click here omg.

2.

reel_merlin. A list of suggested movies for claiming. Back to the Future AU? Hitchhiker's Guide AU? JURASSIC PARK AU? OCEAN'S 11 AU?!? OMFG. I DON'T KNOW WHICH TO FLAIL ABOUT MORE AND THEY HAVEN'T BEEN WRITTEN YETfalskdf';slgk;dfk'g';dal;sfdlk

2a. Ages ago I fiddled with the idea of a Boondock Saints AU where Peter and Edmund destroy shit and kill people in the name of god ~~andthentheyhavesex~~. It's not like they'd be completely out of their element. Aslan is totally Il Duce, but damned if I know who Smecker would be. Caspian is Greenly.

3. Speaking of Boondock Saints, In God's Country is greenapple's drabble-remix of my Boondock Saints fic Big Sky Country and it (the remix) is AMAZING. AMAZING. Connor/Murphy (warning: incest etc), rated R. Big ups to her for condensing 5000 words down to 400. Oh my gosh you guys, BOONDOCK SAINTS. GOOD TIMES. (Also, what is it about a canon with religious themes that makes it so prone to incest?)

4.

amory_vain remixed my Y Tu Mama Tambien fic here, and it is HOT. I, um... didn't do my drabble remix because I never got my assignment, and then I forgot about it. I FAIL REMIXTHEDRABBLE. But I talked to the mods and they say I can get in on it anyway, late as I am. If I do, I'll apparently be drabbling Heroes!

5. I like to go on TV Tropes' Merlin page and see new stuff get added to it after every episode. Is it just me or are the examples for HoYay/FoeYay extremely skimpy. It is not just me. Camelot is totally crawling with STDs. ETA: Was it one of you guys that added that last bit to Hoyay??

BACK TO THESIS.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

wait, but didn't susan meet arthur for the first time when peter was in jail? the first time.

but then again, trust peter to pick up a cop -- pick up a federal agent -- blow his cover, and still stay in touch with the guy. on good terms, at that.

"it's cool, su," he says. "all good, s'long as we don't pull any jobs in los angeles."

"we are in la right now," susan points out dangerously.

"don't pull any jobs that can be easily pinned on us," he clarifies. "otherwise, you know, colby might feel inclined to hunt us down. although we're kind of small fry for him, apparently his team does a lot of high-profile stuff, very hush-hush."

susan may or may not whimper a little bit.

-
-

still, five years later or so, it says something about peter that he can pick up the phone and dial something with an la area code. she picks up the other line just because she has got to hear how this particular conversation goes.

the phone rings once, twice, three times, and then there's a click and a vaguely distracted voice saying, "granger."

"hey, colby," peter says in a low, silky voice. "this is peter pevensie. how've you been?"

"i'd say better than you, but i've had an interesting couple of years," colby granger says, his voice perking up a little. "how was stir?"

"food sucked. listen, you still down in la?"

"yeah. but i'm guessing you're not, what with the manhattan area code and all that."

"well," peter says, "after i finish up my business here, i have it in mind to go see the sights in california, take my kid sister to disneyland and all that --"

"lucy is twenty-eight," susan says dryly, covering the mouthpiece of her phone with hand.

peter waves his free hand at her.

"-- and i'd love to meet up for a drink. on me, of course. at least the first few rounds."

"strictly legal business?"

"of course."

she can hear the humor in colby's voice, and for a surprising moment, susan thinks that she might actually like him very much, if she'd met him for more than the two minutes she'd been in the same room with him and peter. "let me guess: you want a favor."

"you know me so well, granger."

"so what is it?" there's a muffled shout in the background, and colby says, "hey, personal call here! it happens, you know."

"sorry," he says, back into the phone. "workplace. you know how it is."

peter glances at the clock, and susan calculates the time difference between new york and la. should be around ten o'clock. at night. "sorry, i thought you'd be out of the office by now."

"i work for the fbi, pete. i'm not really sure they have a concept of the nine-to-five job. anyway, we're in the middle of a case, but i can take a couple of minutes, my boss is double-dating with his brother and his girlfriend in the av room."

"what?"

"never mind, it's complicated. what do you need?"

"a couple of new york mobsters, marco abruzzi and frederico patriso. what do you have on them?"

there's the sound of keystrokes in the background. "a lot," colby says after a couple of minutes. "although i'd rather not reel it off in the workplace. you want to talk later, or should i send you a copy?"

peter glances over at susan. "send it," he says. "you still have my e-mail?"

"yeah. listen, you're not planning to rip off the mob, are you? because they're some kind of serious."

"trust me," peter says, "i am extremely aware of that fact."

oh shit, you're right. well, it happens sometime.

anyway,

lazaefair, this next one is for you, for your awesome:

reep has always been tiny. as a kid, he was the one who was dunked in the toilets, wedgied to within an inch of his life, and held upside down by the ankles while the bigger kids when through his pockets for lunch money.

reep was also the one who got detentions for beating up the bigger kids trying to get his money back, and the one who concocted elaborate schemes of revenge with the braver of his fellow bully-victims. many of these schemes backfired and yet somehow managed to still inflict a world of pain, mainly because reep's contingency plan was to rush in screaming and kick them until they're down.

only until they're down, though. never after. reep believes in doing the right thing, after all. it's just that doing the right thing seems to involve a lot of vanquishing villains who try to take other people's lunch money. the teachers try to tell him no, that's bad, beating up other people is bad, but reep rather thinks that whether you're a bad person or a good person, doing the right thing is always on. he will start with that as first principles.

tumnus meets lucy pevensie on one snowy winter day in the central park zoo. she's clutching a venti hot chocolate between mittened hands, watching the penguins splash around with her head cocked to her side. she's pretty and easy to chat up, and tumnus finds himself liking her very much.

the main problem of the moment is the fact that he happens to be working for jadis at the moment. jadis, not a friend of the pevensies.

to be fair, jadis is in manhattan strictly for the purpose of fucking the pevensies over.

really, it's nothing personal on tumnus's part. just a job, after all. except then lucy tucks her hand into the crook of his elbow and drags him off to the nearest starbucks. and he keeps coming back to see her, even after he's already decided he's not going to give jadis the dirt she wants on the pevensies.

then one day he meets lucy at this french restaurant for dinner and there's another man already with her, golden-haired and handsome, talking familiarly with her. peter pevensie, her oldest brother. tumnus freezes.

tumnus is trying to, not so very subtly, look for an escape when peter looks up and sees him. the older pevensie's smile is ridiculously sweet and precisely calculated to charm; tumnus had seen its twin on jadis's face all those years ago when he'd gambled and lost more than he could pay.

"tumnus, right?" he says, standing up. "i'm lucy's brother peter. let's take a walk."

"i dunno, lu," edmund says skeptically. "the quizbowl team doesn't really need cheerleaders."

"wait, check it out, check it out," lucy burbles, then she stands straight in the ready position. "ready? okay! tangent, sequent, cosine, sine! three point one four one five nine! gooooo finchley!"

she looks at edmund expectantly, who looks at her like this: :-/

"like," says edmund, "maybe you should stick to football."

+

MEANWHILE, IN FRONT STORY

on one side of the hotel bed, susan has already dropped off to sleep, gathering most of the blankets around herself as she snores softly. lucy and peter are at the desk, faces lit up by the glow of the computer monitor, on which edmund's pixellated face is currently displayed.

"what were they like?" edmund asks. "how are they?"

peter shrugs and lucy says, "they're happy. but i guess a little sad. they kind of didn't know how to act around us."

"they were okay," adds peter, shrugging. "mom was happy to see us."

"was dad?"

"i think so," says peter.

"of course he was," says lucy.

peter adds, "i dunno, they miss us. says we should call them sometime, or email. dad says they're sick of hearing about us only when we get caught."

+

the macmanus brothers seem to like corin well enough, but he knows how they roll so he's always wary, even as the three of them now are paying for each other's beers and liberally bumming each other cigarettes. corin is always aware that maybe one day connor and murphy will be coming after HIM, and that will be no fun.

"what do you want with aslan?" connor demands. "has he done something?"

"no no," says corin. "we just have a favor to ask of him. i've called his office and thrown my weight around, but so far nada."

"have you tried worcester?" asks murphy.

corin makes a face. "worcester? what the hell is in worcester?"

murphy replies, "what isn't in worcester?"

i have some thoughts about caspian's role in the hope diamond thing. and also about lucy, 'cos i dunno, now that i've written more from her POV, i kind of wish i had kept the lucycest even more implicit. the other three have pevencestuous mindfuckery covered, but lucy is just kind of sweet and happy-go-lucky. i think her relationships with her siblings are the least complicated of the four.

hmm, more backstory. from the first time peter got arrested. (don't bother googling the detectives; i don't read or watch anything that takes place in chicago, so i'm kind of snatching names out of thin air. nyc, boston, new orleans, la, dc, i got detectives and/or feds there, but chicago, no.)

he runs pevensie through the system without really expecting to find anything. maybe some sealed juvenile stuff, but even that's pushing it. peter pevensie has a reputation, but that reputation has said he's never got caught, at least till now.

he's a little surprised when he gets a hit off a missing persons case a couple states over in finchley. it's ten years old, says pevensie went missing along with his brother and two sisters, and none of them have been seen since. of course, the cops weren't looking for a quartet of runaways; they've been looking for a quartet of con artists.

still, one out of four missing chidlren found is something, even when the news is that your missing child has been arrested for grand larceny and is suspected for ohsomuch more -- also, the going straight to jail for a solid five year sentence, three years with parole for good behavior -- so detective butler glances at the clock and picks up the phone.

-
-

finchley isn't really a town where they get a lot of serious crime -- a handful of minor crime, of course, but not a lot of missing persons and they haven't had a murder in twenty years before grant street, even despite the mob presence in the town; the falcones keep a pretty low profile, relatively speaking. so when four kids go missing the same night two people die, mclaughlin remembers that, even if it has been a decade since then.

still, ten years and there hasn't been hide nor hair of the pevensie kids since. he's tired of having to tell helen pevensie, no, there hasn't been any news, even though the one time he'd done so he'd been staring at a wanted poster, john and jane doe wanted in connection with an attempted robbery in atlantic city, new jersey, sketches that might be peter and susan pevensie a couple years down the line looking back at him.

he picks his desk phone up on the first ring. "detective mclaughlin, finchley pd," he says.

"this is detective brian butler, chicago robbery-homicide. are you the dick who worked the pevensie case about ten years ago?"

"yeah," mclaughlin says, sitting up. "why?"

"i've got one of them in custody. peter pevensie. he's about to do a nickel for grand larceny."

-
-

the pevensie parents take it about well as can be expected -- there's not much you can say to finding out your missing-for-a-decade, wanted-in-connection-to-two-deaths eldest child has taken his juvenile delinquency to a new level and dragged his younger siblings into it too.

"i knew it," mr. pevensie grumbles, and mclaughlin makes an apologetic motion with his hands. he remembers driving home an eight-year-old peter pevensie who'd ripped off a drug store when he'd still been a uniform.

mrs. pevensie's reaction is a little more expected. "can we see him?" she asks. "is there any news of the others?"

according to butler, peter had pled guilty rather than plea-bargained for a lighter sentence and given up his accomplices -- probably his siblings, if their pattern held true.

explaining to the pevensie parents that their son had outright refused to let his parents visit him in jail is one of the hardest things mclaughlin's ever done, and that includes coming to the door the day the pevensies had gone missing and asking for peter, saying that a gangbanger named niccolo carlotti and a security guard named james hanson were dead and that peter was a known associate of carlotti's. and then: peter's not here. none of them are here.

well, they don't take that particularly well.

okay, i dunno how to prose this, so i'm just gonna dump it out. frontstory, miraz pulls caspian aside to talk privately over scotch in miraz's private study. okay this is weird, caspian is thinking. what the hell does my uncle want? but the scotch is always good (when caspian was a kid and wanted to feel badass, he'd make himself drinks with his uncle's scotch and replace what he took with apple juice, so the water line wouldn't drop, but he got found out anyway somehow) and besides, they're at a truce now, sort of.

basically miraz says if you sell out the pevensies, life will be awesome for you. THING IS, i'm not sure what miraz wants exactly and what he's offering and why. maybe he wants the hope diamond for himself, that's the only thing i can think of. especially since the patrisos don't bookkeep so good.

OH SO MAYBE. what if the diamond is used as leverage against the patrisos, and caspian and miraz actually COME TOGETHER and be all like, "if you don't leave the pevensies alone, patrisos, miraz will keep the diamond and he'll wipe you all out because you owe him money." or maybe he'll call the authorities. and aslan can come in, maybe with some dirt, and testify against the patrisos.

maybe miraz is like, "sell out the pevensies, and i'll get you out of this life of crime because isn't that what you've always wanted? i'll pull some strings, put some papers through a shredder." caspian never chose to be a criminal, he was forced into it in the name of survival and pride when miraz got him kicked out of harvard. he still wants to be a lawyer/businessman, he still wants to do good, but he's a criminal and he's long given up on that dream. but now it's a possibility again. miraz can see him considering it and he smiles satisfied, because it runs in the family.

I DUNNO, i want to grab someone by the balls and make it hurt, but i dunno how to do it to caspian, i dunno how to do it to the patrisos.

oooooh. although, you know, i don't really want caspian to sell out the pevensies, i want him to double-cross miraz like whoa so he and the pevensies and the rest of the gang end up sitting pretty. maybe caspian can fall in with lune and corin, i don't know.

i want miraz to completely underestimate caspian -- because, you know, he still sees the innocent kid he used to be, not the master thief and con man caspian's growing into. it's a brave new world. something like that.

(of course, thanks to water i'm in a "caspian is actually fairly awesome, thanks" kind of mood.)

...suddenly i want to write caspian backstory, and how betrayal feels. maybe he's not better than his uncle after all, but at least he's going to direct his vengeance at the person responsible for it. throw miraz to the patrisos, maybe -- trick it out so that the patrisos think that miraz was going to double-cross him, and so the pevensies get away free.

for some reason i want throat-slitting, but i think is somewhat more likely to come up in dust than in this.

completely unrelated: lass, i know that you do not watch vids, but this one (http://obsessive24.livejournal.com/241101.html) is absolutely fab. you're a tragedy starting to happen.

yes yes! that's why i want caspian by the balls! 'cos he redeems himself by grabbing miraz's balls at the last second and ripping them off, so to speak. miraz underestimate him, the pevensies underestimate him, but caspian knows how to make plans. maybe he can tap his old harvard friends for favors (DS:"ALASDJ MAYBE ONE OF THEM IS ARTHUR). the pevensies underestimate him because he's not edmund who's still stuck in the philippines, and after caspian gets them out of some muddle, peter and susan are cautiously like, "not bad," and maybe lucy is like, "don't sweat them, they're hard to please," and caspian is like, "oh, i know," 'cos he does, he knows about people who are hard to please. lucy says, "you did great."

miraz underestimate him because he's not his father (who may have died because of miraz, but even had more cojones than his son), but maybe then caspian uses this to his advantage, somehow.

so like, what, maybe the pendragon foundation is holding a charity function at the museum. a week (or less, or more, depending) before the function, arthur comes home to his penthouse suite, turns on the light, and has a heart attack when he sees caspian sitting in his favorite armchair.

"i thought you'd be happier to see me," caspian smiles.

and arthur is all flabbergasted like, "cas? i haven't... you... CAS?! where have you--" arthur frowns suspiciously. "how did you get in here?"

"no one's called me cas in such a long time," caspian muses.

AND MUCH LATER IT'S LIKE--

miraz laughs. "there is no honor among thieves, boy."

"there is honor among men," caspian counters, "and thieves are men."

lucy says, "except, you know, when they're women."

"it's a figure of speech," caspian mutters.

"i know," lucy says crossly, "but--"

"guys!" peter cuts in. "come on."

miraz smirks.

BUT AT THE END MAYBE MIRAZ IS LIKE "MAYBE YOU WILL MAKE A GOOD ~~TELMARINE KING~~ BUSINESSMAN AFTER ALL" AND CASPIAN IS LIKE "NOT ONE LIKE YOU."

!!! that is indeed a pretty good video! i'll have to drop off a comment on that post saying so. and i love that song, god, i haven't heard it in ages! so appropriate and pretty. IT IS ALL about CAMELOT'S TRAGIC FATE and the part where it's like "you know you have nothing to prove" made my heart go jakdlfkjsdfl;. MAKES ME WANT TO WRITE TRAGIC MERLIN FIC OF SEXINGS AND DESTINY. ARTHUR/KINGLY WIBBLES OTP.

the lights don't come on when arthur waves his hand over the sensor, and he frowns a little before he shrugs and presses the button. they turn on then.

he drops his keys on the hallway table, shrugging off his jacket and undoing his tie and leaving them in a trail behind him as he goes to his study. he goes straight to the wet bar and pours himself a glass of whiskey, holding it up to the light to admire the play of it through the amber liquid. he takes a sip of it before he turns around.

and drops the glass.

it shatters on the hardwood floor, staining some of his extremely expensive imported oriental carpets. arthur doesn't even notice; the glass shatters even further under his heel as he steps forward and says disbelievingly, "caspian?"

caspian smiles a little, putting down the book he'd been leafing through when arthur came in. "i thought you'd be happier to see me," he says. "it's been, what, five years? six?"

"what," arthur says, "how -- cas, what are you -- where have you -- how did you get in here?" he has a top of the line security system. he has a top of the line security system and a personal bodyguard ever since the incidents in the sudan and also ohio.

"no one's called me cas in such a long time," caspian muses.

arthur hasn't seen caspian since harvard, not since he walked into the apartment they'd shared and found all of caspian's things gone. all the rumors that had flown around campus -- they'd both been interning at the same place in boston, and everybody at the company had been viciously, horribly glad that harvard had found out what caspian was doing and sent him packing.

first things first. arthur takes a couple of steps backwards, pours himself a second glass of brandy, and throws it back in one gulp. "how did you get in here?"

"i broke in," caspian says calmly. "which, incidentally, answers your second question, the one about where i've been." his smile is a little grim. "there aren't really all that many options available for employment when the one thing you know how to do gets ripped away from you at once."

arthur stares at him. "you're a thief," he says.

caspian grins. "precisely."

ISN'T IT JUST? and it's such a golden age narnia song, too. (look, my brain is kind of one-track.)

and chit chat chit chat, caspian is like, "i need a favor," but arthur is like, "are you kidding, i'm not helping a thief."

caspian says, "look, i'll cut you a deal."

"no," arthur snaps. "i'll cut YOU a deal. get the hell out of here right now and i won't call security. i don't associate with criminals."

he bristles. "i only became a thief because i had to be!"

"oh, that's rich! heir to the telmarine fortune, dean's list at harvard business school, and you found yourself backed into a corner where your only option was to cheat and recede into the underworld!"

"well," says caspian. "yes. exactly."

"get the fuck out of here."

"it was miraz," caspian blurts out. "it was my uncle."

"i don't want your excuses."

and caspian realizes he's taking the wrong strategy. arthur pendragon is not going to succumb to wheeling and dealing. arthur fancies himself an honest man, and there are few people business students who fancy themselves as such. it's always about cutting your losses and improving the profit line, but arthur was always that one kid in class who was like, "but what about the employees' rights?" caspian doesn't know whether to envy him or pity him sometimes. arthur and his clearly delineated world of right and wrong, and his clear sense of which side of the line to stand on.

caspian had this spiel in his head he had planned to give to arthur about how the pendragon foundation wouldn't be implicated at all, about how in the end it could help with publicity, and how to twist the story around to the media so that arthur can finagle some fundraising out of it. none of that's going to work on arthur though, so instead he says, "miraz killed my father."

arthur pauses in his tirade and stares at him. "your father died when you were, like, three."

"and miraz killed him," caspian insists. "you've known me for years, arthur. do you really think i'd need to cheat to get through harvard business? we lived together, don't you think you would have known?"

"what does your getting caught have to do with your uncle killing your father?" arthur demands suspiciously. not that caspian is wrong, mind. arthur's known him since they were both pledges in the same frat at yale, and there's not a cheating bone in caspian's body. of course, he hadn't actually realized there was a thieving one either, so there's that.

"i didn't cheat," caspian insists. "my uncle set me up, my uncle killed my father and got me kicked out of harvard. look, you know i was supposed to take over the telmarine corporation when i turned twenty-five, my dad wrote it into his will. that was all i was ever going to do. but my uncle was running everything, holding everything in trust, you know? and i guess he decided he didn't want to hand it all over to me."

"huh," arthur says, but he considers it the thought. caspian certainly looks sincere, and it makes sense. arthur's met miraz a couple times, both before and after caspian pulled his disappearing act.

he snaps his fingers. "but you know what you do then, cas? you don't just run off into the underworld and start picking pockets, you hire a lawyer, you hire a lot of lawyers, hell, you come to me -- if you'd just come to me --"

he already knows that caspian's too proud for that, though.

"didn't you trust me?" he adds, a little bitterly.

"my uncle sent assassins after me!" caspian exclaims. "i almost got run over as soon as i stepped out of the dean's office; the truck backed up and tried to run me over again. miraz is ruthless, he would have come after my friends, he would have come after everyone who was close to me, no matter how powerful or whose son they were. i didn't want you to get hurt!"

okay, that sounds like caspian, who hadn't been so much for the employees but definitely gave a damn about the people on the same level as him, or who used to be on the same level.

"so the stealing," arthur says after a minute. "you only did it because, what, you had to?"

"well," caspian compromises, and grins, "and i'm very good at it."

for minor things. still <3ing caspian and arthur. why have we not written more caspian earlier?! oh right, because we get easily distracted by the shiny of peter/susan.

"i'm not getting involved in a mafia vendetta," arthur bursts out after caspian explains the situation.

why does everyone keep saying that? oh wait, caspian knows perfect well why everyone says that. "that's what i said," he mutters.

"don't touch my booze," arthur snaps when caspian goes to refill his glass.

caspian raises his eyebrows. "i'll get you back. you want me to get YOU a drink?"

"are you really offering me my own alcohol?"

and for a few seconds, the argument is so familiar and comfortable that caspian cracks a grin, flashes back to the old days when the worst thing they had to worry about was getting the right internship and buying the right suit, and where the party was that weekend.

arthur chuckles to himself. "god, you haven't changed at all."

caspian hands arthur a glass of scotch. "that's what i've been trying to say, asshole."

"hey hey hey," arthur cuts in, holding up his hand, "you don't get to break into MY apartment and drink MY alcohol and call ME an asshole."

"dude," says caspian, "i just did."

arthur rolls his eyes. "caspian--"

"so the deal--"

"the deal is that there is no deal!" arthur exclaims. "tough luck for edward pevensie--"

"edmund."

"whatever, tough luck for that guy, but the foundation is not going to go down because their VP was caught red-handed making bad decisions."

caspian looks at him with what he hopes are dead-serious eyes. "you won't get caught."

"you can't guarantee that!"

"i thought you wanted to help people!"

"i AM," arthur snaps. "what the hell do you think i'm doing being the VP of a philanthropic organization? i don't just sit on my ass. a lot of people depend on us. we stock food banks and run shelters. we are mouthpieces for urban environmentalism and organic--"

"save it," caspian cuts in irritably. "just, save it. okay first of all, you wouldn't be the VP if your father weren't the president, and second of all, as a fucking vice president, you're not stacking cans at the pantry downtown. you're not the one with an apron on in the soup kitchen. what the fuck do you do? you shmooze at black-tie fundraisers while nibbling on caviar and finagling the guilt-ridden nouveau riche out of their money, hoping to god that this time uther will notice."

arthur glares at him. "look--"

"i may have daddy issues," caspian continues, "but i'm not the only one with daddy issues, is all i'm saying."

this is not going the way caspian had imagined at all. arthur looks like maybe he wants to take caspian's head off, or at least give it a good kick. caspian is grateful for whatever is holding him back, because he has seen arthur hold his own in a fight. after the fight, caspian had commented, rather intelligently, "dude," and arthur just said in an irritated voice, "what? he was tooling up on my sister." (in the end, morgana called arthur an interfering dickcase, arthur called her something worse, and everyone went home angry. arthur took it out on caspian for two days. arthur and morgana, they have a whole 'nother set of issues going on.)

"for all your claiming that you were too smart to cheat in school," arthur says icily, "you're making some horrendously stupid decisions. it's all going to end in hell."

caspian shrugs. "it's the right thing to do." arthur looks away. caspian adds, "they're my friends. i owe it to them." when arthur still doesn't say anything, caspian adds, "and you still owe me from the time you puked on my playstation."

arthur says, "dude," and, "that was ten years ago, genius," and, "like you couldn't afford to replace it," but eventually also says, "so, theoretically, what would you want me to do? THEORETICALLY."

caspian grins, gracious in victory. "well," he says, "you know the charity function you're holding at the smithsonian next week? i need four tickets for that, and they actually have to be on the guest list, you know?"

-
-

"how did caspian finagle this?" peter hisses at susan, even though on the surface he's smiling his thousand-watt smile and projecting charm in all direction. men and women are flocking to him like bees to honey and peter charms them with some story about the only narnia plantation in africa, the one that still technically belongs to the pevensie family (well, the king family, to use their cover names) but that no one's seen since WWII.

susan just smiles and drinks champagne, watching caspian and lucy work their way through the crowd. her biggest fear is that someone is going to recognize peter -- he's memorable, and has never gone to particular lengths to hide it -- or caspian, though it's been years since caspian was in any kind of society and peter is a professional.

then a familiar voice says, "and how are we enjoying -- jesus god, susan and peter," as arthur pendragon gapes at them.

peter slides gracefully away from his knot of new fans and says smoothly, "arthur! how have you been? this is just a magnificent show; i haven't been here in an age."

if by an age you mean, "since yesterday," of course, susan thinks ungraciously.

"you," arthur sputters, then his gaze darts around the room to settle on caspian's dark head, "i didn't invite you."

peter's hand clamps down on his wrist, serpent-swift, and he drags arthur sideways into an alcove, susan following and deflecting attention.

"hey," arthur protests, trying to fight free," but peter bends his head close to his ear and murmurs, as sweetly as if he's offering up some kind of filthy, filthy suggestion, "do you really want to make a scene, pendragon? because i can arrange that, and it won't look good for you, at all. all i need is three minutes in public with you and i can destroy everything the pendragon foundation has ever built."

that makes arthur shut up.

susan draws a curtain shut across the entrance to the alcove and peter shoves arthur back against the wall and stands back, watching him through lowered lashes.

"here's what you're going to do," peter says, "in a couple minutes, you're going to go back out there and pretend you've never seen me or susan before and that we've just met for the first time. my name is peter king, this is my wife susan king. we're from narnia enterprises, and you invited us here. we are on the guest list."

"you're thieves," arthur splutters. "i'm going to kill caspian."

susan blinks. "you know caspian?" she says, surprised. she hadn't thought that the telmarine corporation and the pendragon foundation exactly ran in the same circles.

"dude," arthur says, a little less than intelligently, "we were roommates at yale for four years and we shared an apartment in allston when we were both at harvard business. up until he got himself kicked out of b-school, we were best friends."

"he's been holding out on us," peter says brightly.

"so have you!" arthur exclaims. "you said you were a reporter," he says accusingly to susan.

she shrugs. "i lied."

"and he's not your husband, is he?"

"no," peter says.

"and your name isn't king!" arthur exclaims. then he pauses and squints at them. in tones of resigned horror, he says, "it's pevensie, isn't it."

peter just raises his eyebrows.

which is when caspian and lucy duck into the alcove. it makes it a little crowded.

"are we having a party i didn't know about?" lucy asks brightly.

"my uncle is here," caspian says accusingly.

"cas, you are so struck from my christmas card list," arthur announces.

"you don't even know where i live," caspian points out.

"miraz would be here because he's invited," arthur says primly. "not that he ever gives half as much money as he should or as he could. aside from breaking into my apartment and drinking my booze, now you want to dictate my guest list?"

"you used to try and dictate my girlfriends," caspian shoots back.

"hey, gwen was hung up on lancelot, sophie and i were together, and you and morgana would have made a cute couple. and a good business match, too."

"morgana once set my bed on fire!"

"she thought it was mine!"

peter snaps his fingers. "let's save the reminiscing for later, shall we? right now let's concentrate on saving my brother's life."

arthur squints at him suspiciously. "what does my function have to do with your brother's life? and the mafia?"

"how much did you tell him?" susan demands of caspian.

he waves his hands. "not everything."

"really? because it's starting to sound like it!"

"are you planning to rip me off?" arthur demands.

"don't be ridiculous," peter says. "we don't steal from charitable foundations. that's just tacky."

"what are you planning to steal from the museum?"

"listen," caspian says, "you've already done all you have to do. we'll handle the rest. don't worry!"

arthur stares at him. "dude," he says, "the last time i let you handle anything you got kicked out of business school for cheating and we had a group project. what kind of fast talking do you think i had to do in order to get out that mess?"

"that wasn't my fault!" caspian protests, and peter snaps his fingers again.

"the trust fund club can hold its reunion later," he says. "we'll handle this. don't worry about anything," he says to arthur. "okay, you three leave, i just want a few more words with arthur here."

"peter," susan begins, but he waves her away, so she starts to bite her lip, stops because it might smear her lipstick.

great. now she and caspian both have to avoid miraz.

"arthur!" merlin hisses when he and peter king emerge from the alcove. arthur looks a bit disgruntled, but king looks quite pleased with himself. king takes two champagne flutes from a passing waiter, hands one to arthur, pats his shoulder, and disappears into the crowd.

"arthur!" merlin says again. he pushes past a knot of people conversing about the prices of things these days. "arthur--"

"not now, merlin."

"peter king isn't who you think he is," merlin blurts out.

arthur downs the champagne in one pull. "tell me about it."

"well, gwen and i thought he looked familiar, so we googled--"

"i was being sarcastic," arthur cuts in. "merlin. sarcasm, have you heard of it? did they not have that where you grew up?"

"you can't trust him," merlin continues, undeterred. "peter pevensie is wanted in several states, he's been in jail TWICE, and you remember when caspian's uncle's casino got ripped off?"

arthur raises his eyebrow. "that was him?"

"that was him."

he sighs. "of course it was."

"i'll call security," says merlin, and begins to rush off but arthur catches his arm.

"merlin, no." arthur looks him in the eyes, all serious and shit. "don't call security. don't talk to the pevensies. don't--"

"the pevensies?" says merlin. "there's more than one here?"

arthur lowers his voice and discreetly points his glass in susan's direction, eyes averted. "his sister's here. she may look familiar to you."

merlin swivels his head around in a not very subtle manner, and gapes. "arthur, is that--"

"yes. and don't stare."

"weren't you--"

"yes."

"and she's--"

"yes!" arthur cries out, and nearby guests pause their chatter to look at him curiously. he smiles brightly at them as he recedes into a quieter corner, dragging merlin behind him. then he glares at merlin and says, "look, i just need you to stay out of their way. and stay out of mine. it's been a crazy week and it's only going to get crazier, so let's just... you know, go about our business," arthur finishes lamely.

"arthur, what's going on?"

"and don't run off trying to be the hero," warns arthur. "it doesn't suit you."

"arthur--"

"this is not what i had in mind when i went into philanthropy," the young pendragon declares, and turns around and dives back into the party, leaving merlin staring after him with his usual expression of confused alarm.

i have to find gaius, merlin thinks with determination, and speeds off to the service entrance.

you know what would add a level of awesome? well, lune is a businessman, and cor and corin are probably groomed to take over, so MAYBE they also went to b-school with caspian and arthur. because, you know, there's only one business school in the world.

also, identical twins are always fun for kicks.

arthur has forgotten about merlin. he's not exactly sure how he managed to forget about merlin, since merlin is about as subtle as a freight train.

"all right!" he chortles, kicking open the penthouse door -- arthur winces automatically -- and bumbling goodnaturedly into the hall, "gaius says you need to start eating better, so there's chai instead of coffee and then there's some -- who the hell are you?"

"get me coffee," arthur growls, then, "you remember caspian, right?"

"caspian? that caspian? the caspian who --"

"yes, that one," caspian says, except when arthur looks back at him caspian's not sitting down anymore, he's standing by the window with his hands loose and open by his sides.

hmm, back to the event...

lucy comes up at arthur's side out of nowhere, and he stares at her with a certain amount of trepidation. "lucy pevensie, right?" he asks after a few moments.

"schiffers, right nnow," she says brightly. "i just wanted to tell you that if you hear any explosions, don't forget to call the police! and the fbi. and homeland security. and anyone else. oh, and don't go out to your car or send anyone you like." she pauses. "or back to your penthouse. go home with someone, i'm sure there are lots of people here who'd volunteer."

"what are you --" arthur begins frantically, because she just wiggles her fingers in a wave and disappears into the crowd.

meeeeeh i dunno about the same school. maybe the same consortium. like, cor once debated against arthur in the consortium debate tournament, or something.

wait, and why do they have to avoid miraz? i thought he was in on it??

the doors to the break room bangs open and merlin flails in in a whirlwind of skinny limbs and self-determined urgency. "where's gaius?" he demands.

the waiters and caterers just look askance at him, all of them except for gwen, who approaches him as she reties her ponytail, a look of concern on her face. "he's with uther. what's going on?"

"perfect," merlin moans. "gwen, you have to come with me--"

she shakes off his grip. "merlin, what's going on?" merlin may have a good instinct for taking care of problems, but gwen suspects this is only because he tends to cause a lot of those problems himself. she's not going anywhere until he explains himself.

"it's the pevensies," he hisses. "they're here, and we have to stop them."

her eyes widen. "what are they doing?"

merlin opens his mouth. "i don't know," he admits.

+

when the alarms go off and the lights go down, susan is the only one who's made it outside. she whirls around and stares at lucy and caspian in horror, and they yell at her go, go, go. susan freezes for only half a second, enough to be aware of all the questions she will soon need to ask -- where is peter? how will they get out? what do i do? what about edmund? -- but she is a professional, after all.

she runs, the goddamned diamond clicking against her make-up and her penknife in her purse.

+

when the alarms go off and the lights go down, people may have started screaming but arthur isn't sure because the alarms are so fucking loud. he runs around with his hands over his ears trying to find security, but it's not like the noise is any quieter that way. not like he can find anyone in this chaos. he whips his head around and yells for his father, for merlin, morgana, but it's useless of course. the darkness of the hall begins to be lit up by a wave of cellphone screens, like natural phosphorescence in the sea.

are they deviating from the plan? no one ever said anything about alarms and blackouts. arthur takes out his own blackberry and is about to go find somewhere to make a phone call when someone grabs his arm.

peter.

"what the fuck is going on?" he demands, speaking directly into arthur's ear.

"i'm trying to figure that out!" arthur snaps.

"the exits have locked down," says peter angrily. "we're trapped! if you've got anything to do with this--"

"i don't!"

arthur tries to shake peter off again, but peter is unshakeable, and arthur finds himself being dragged into the gift shop, where the alarm is only slightly less deafening. that's when arthur twists in peter's grip and lunges forward with all his weight, catching peter in his arms and throwing them both against the postcard stand. peter manages to give arthur a black eye and arthur responds with a knee to the stomach, and arthur is in the middle of twisting peter's arm behind his back when there is a shrill "GET AWAY FROM HIM" that cuts through the din of the alarms. (have the alarms become softer or are they just used to it? they're just used to it, arthur decides. they're all going to go deaf, he also decides.)

"morgana!" he cries out, and he thinks he hears peter gasp, "susan!"

a dark-haired woman with a gun leveled at them. she yells, "get away from him." she steps forward and the light falls on her -- morgana, after all. "step back!"

+

when the alarms go off and the lights go down, merlin grins brightly at how well things are going. morgana has gone off to collect arthur. gwen made it outside before the lockdown and is on her way back to arthur's penthouse to get the thing. and as for himself, well.

he starts running towards the exhibition hall where he last saw the two thieves -- one blonde woman, one dark-haired man -- on the security camera. he's got some bad guys to catch.

he looses lucy somewhere in the crowd. caspian turns to look for her, but he can't see her, so the only thing he can do is keep moving onwards. then he sees the gift shop, a thin glow of light from within, and three figures. he knows them all, and finds himself reaching for the gun in the back of his slacks.

"drop the gun," he says, and morgana feels the cold metal of the gun at the back of her neck and snarls a curse before obeying. she turns in a whirl of dark hair, her mouth dropping open in surprise as she recognizes him.

"caspian?" she bursts out, stark with surprise.

peter's moving to caspian's side. "do you know everyone?" he demands.

"who was in this level of society six years ago?" caspian says. "yes."

"my sisters," peter continues. "where are they? did they get out? do you know?"

"susan got out," caspian says. "she's got the --" he glances at arthur and morgana and amends, "the thing. lucy and i were together, but we got separated."

"caspian!" morgana exclaims. "what the hell do you think you're doing? where have you been, anyway?" she glares at him suspiciously, and caspian sighs.

-
-

lucy shoves her way through the crowd, looking around a little frantically for peter. then someone grabs her arm.

"lucy!" corin says -- no, not corin, cor; cor has that scar by his eye.

she doesn't even stop to ask what he's doing here. "we have to find peter!" she shouts in his ear.

"corin and aravis," cor says vaguely, waving one hand, and no, no she really doesn't want to know, but peter will.

caspian still has the keys to the car, so susan hails a cab and tells the driver to head for their hotel. if only they had more people, she thinks grimly, they could have the on-call getaway driver. if only they had more time to organize more people. if only peter never got involved with the mafia, et cetera. there was 46 carats of bad juju in her purse and she hated each of them.

"did you just come from that?" asks the driver, looking at the nest of bedlam that is the museum, squad cars beginning to pull up.

"god no," says susan. "i can't stand those high society bitches."

gwen's cellphone rings as the cab drops her off in front of camelot suites, and the caller ID says arthur, so she answers it and runs to the elevator at the same time.

at first she thinks the museum alarms must still be going on, but then she realizes it's just morgana, screaming and screaming, and gwen divides her willpower in two. one half is dedicated to talking morgana down, and the other half is staring down the elevator numbers and willing it to come down faster.

"morgana," says gwen desperately, "slow down, i can't understand you--"

"don't go up into his penthouse," morgana pleads. "gwen, get as far away as you can from camelot--"

"what--"

and then there is a loud rumble, and the building shakes.

the last thing lucy wants when the alarms finally die and the lights come back on is arthur's personal assistant jumping out from behind a pillar yelling I GOT YOU YOU THIEVING BITCH and tackling her to the floor. but it's what she gets anyway. life is tough that way.

"she's not picking up," morgana sobbed, after the third try calling back after her call with gwen was dropped. "oh god, she's not picking up. if she's dead i'm going to take your fucking balls off," she threatens.

caspian raises his hands. "hey, we didn't want any of this to happen, okay?"

"you shut up!" morgana snaps. "i can't believe you! who the fuck do you think you are, just strutting in here like this after years of i don't even know!?"

"maybe she didn't hear the ring," says peter, shrugging. "you gotta figure, with a bomb going off, it's probably chaos over ther--"

"quiet, you," says arthur.

"morgana," says caspian pleadingly, and "morgana," says arthur firmly, and peter stays the hell out of it. if they can just talk morgana down and convince her to go along with the whole thing, they can talk their way out of here easy as pie.

"pete!" someone hisses behind him, and he whirls around. to his relief it's lucy, her makeup smudged and her skirt a little torn, but she looks well enough. "you all right?"

"i am so wonderful right now, thanks for asking."

she ignores him, and goes to tap arthur on the shoulder. "arthur."

"not now," arthur snaps.

"arthur, we've got your personal assistant tied up and unconscious in the janitor's closet," says lucy. "you should see him before he wakes up and tries to fight us again. explain to him the situation."

morgana raises her eyebrows. "the situation, is it?"

"who's 'us'?" caspian asks suspiciously.

"cor," shrugs lucy.

"cor?" peter echoes in disbelief.

"merlin," arthur groans, covering his face with his hands.

"you're not going to be able to see your friend," someone says, and peter turns around to see abruzzi and three of his thugs. abruzzi has a gun in his hand, pointed straight at peter's head. one of his thugs has cor -- no, corin; if edmund is responsible for this somehow peter doesn't know if he wants to punch his brother or kiss him -- in a headlock, a gun in his free hand. the other one has a distinctly bedraggled looking merlin.

"i thought you said he was unconscious," caspian mutters to lucy.

"he was," she protests.

"you!" merlin spits at peter. "this is all your fault!"

peter ignores him, raising his empty hands. "come on, marco," he says. "they got nothing to do with it. let them go."

"why would we do that?"

"because if you hurt him," peter says, tilting his head at corin, "his dad will have your balls cut off and roasted, and make you eat them before he cuts your head off with a butter knife. and i'm sure arthur here could think of something given proper provocation."

"oh, something all right," arthur mutters, then louder, "who are you and what are you doing here?"

marco doesn't answer, just wiggles his gun at the space between peter's eyes. "patriso or no patriso," he says, "you're going to be dead, pevensie. your brother already is."

-
-

"m-morgana?" gwen coughs as she opens his eyes, seeing a blur of dark hair above her.

"not remotely," a male voice says. "hold still, you've got some shrapnel -- this is going to hurt," he warns, and gwen closes her eyes again and hisses out through her teeth as he pulls a chunk of rock or a shard of metal or something out of her arm.

she opens her eyes as he presses a bandage over the spot, keeping his fingers there. dark hair, blue eyes, sharp face -- she doesn't know him. he's not wearing emt gear either.

"who are you?" she asks, then looks around. the lobby of camelot is covered in rock dust; part of the ceiling has caved in and there's an alarm going off belatedly, shrieking over and over.

the stranger grins at her. "i'm edmund pevensie," he says.

lucy screams and curses, but the thugs still have a gun to corin's head and merlin's position isn't that much better. peter reaches out and tugs lucy to him, she struggles nominally but then is slack in his arms, her back against his chest, body slumped forward as she sounds like she's trying not to cry.

"then," peter hears himself saying, "i guess you won't be getting your end of the deal."

"oh, i think we will," says marco.

"we?" peter repeats slowly. everything seems vaguely unreal. he's aware of things in the corners of his vision -- morgana's gun on the floor by a barrel of posters, arthur moving incremental centimeter by centimeter in front of her, caspian with his gun hidden under his jacket. "don patriso and i had a deal!"

"the don's not going to be able to deliver," marco says. "actually, the don's not going to be able to do much of anything." he looks at caspian. "so long as i deliver my end of the bargain."

"miraz," caspian says in a low snarl. "that double-crossing bastard."

"a bullet in your brains and i get the patrisos," marco says. "and then i'll kill you slow, pevensie. real slow. they won't be able to recognize you after i'm done with you. they'll have to identify your what's left of your body from dna."

lucy makes a sharp sobbing sound as peter moves to push her behind him. "oh, yeah?" he says. "are you so sure miraz isn't just going to leave you out to hang? this place is swarming with cops, marco. what are you going to do, kill all of us? kill him and you've got lune on your tail -- and trust me, you don't want to piss him off. kill them and i'm sure uther pendragon will make the rest of your very short life extremely miserable. kill him and it's still murder in the first. kill us -- well, i have contingency plans for that."

"i'll deal with that after i've got the patrisos," marco says, and switches his aim to caspian. as soon as he does, peter throws himself at him, tackling marco to the ground. he doesn't bother going for the gun in his hand, but he and the abruzzis had been -- if not friends -- acquaintances in prison once, and there are certain things he knows.

he'll apologize to lucy later -- she's screaming, over and over again, the sound lost amidst the alarms, peter no no no peter -- but marco drops him onto the floor a minute later, blood streaming down his face from a broken nose. marco doesn't have a hell of a lot of style, but damn if he doesn't know how to put someone down and fast.

"death sentence, pevensie," marco says. "which of them dies first?"

"you," peter says, and shoots him with the spare gun he lifted from marco's ankle-holster while they were fighting. the alarms go off just before the gunshot does.

peter gets to his feet and shoots him twice more for good measure, marco staring at him blankly as the bullets rip through his chest. "bongo," he says, lifting a hand to his chest, and peter shoots him between the eyes.

"let them go," morgana says, her gun back in her hands, and caspian has his piece trained on the other one of marco's thugs. one of them drops merlin on the floor. the other one lets go of corin, slowly, and corin turns around and punches him in the face. "that's for having really bad fucking taste in cologne," he says, then punches him again. "that's for putting a gun to my head. peter, jesus, i'm so sorry," he says in the same breath.

lucy is breathing raggedly, unmoving as morgana and caspian and, belatedly, merlin, go to tie up the three thugs. peter looks down at marco's body and raises the gun again, then lowers it. there's no point.

"edmund," he says. "edmund."

absurdly, morgana's phone rings. she stops what she's doing and stares at it, then gets up and picks it up. "gwen?" she says. "oh, thank god. thank god, thank -- what?" she pulls the phone away from her ear, stares at it like she's never seen anything quite like it before, and holds it out towards peter. "it's for you."

he takes it from her. "hello?" he says.

"don't be mad, pete," is the first thing edmund says.

"i'm going to kill you," peter says. "you fucking bastard, i'm going to kill you."

"that...seems a little counter-productive," edmund says, sounding surprised.

"you fucking bastard --"

lucy comes out of her stupor to snatch the phone from him. "listen here, you asshole," she begins, then pauses. then she bursts into tears and drops the phone. edmund's voice comes from the floor, tinny, "what? what?"

OH MAN YEAH. probably somewhere expensive, and they talk in VEILED THREATS delivered in a polite and casual tone. it's all "the courvoisier here is excellent, i quite recommend it," and lune is like, "i heard about that debacle at your charity function, what a shame."

and uther is like, "yes, it was unfortunate but nothing we couldn't handle." he smiles an unctuous smile and continues, "we can handle quite a lot, as you know."

and then lune lets his voice go ice cold and adds, "oh, yes, my sons did say the police did get there very quickly to dispose of those mobsters that somehow found their way in. why, if cor and corin hadn't been there, i don't know what would have happened."

"good lads, your boys," says uther. "it's the straight and narrow for them, is it? i did hear rumors that they fell were involved in a sordid business involving the patrisos and some conmen from out of state, but i thought heavens no, not lune's boys."

"i raised my boys right, uther, you know me."

"yes," says uther. "i rather do."

everyone knows about lune archenland. mining fortune in south america, wife dead in childbirth, attempted kidnapping of both his infant sons by political opponents.

attempted kidnapping of both. actual kidnapping of one.

there are a lot of things lune's involved in, but he gave up mining and picked up charity, and that's probably the reason. but everyone says that even he never expected to see cor again. his son corin was a coddled child, spoiled rotten -- and who wouldn't be, given the circumstances? -- but trained within an inch of his life in self-defense.

lune, instead of retiring quietly as a lot of people expected, put himself in the spotlight. for a while there, you couldn't open a newspaper or turn on a tv without hearing something about lune or his company or one of its subsidiaries. he went head to head with some of the greats in business: uther pendragon, lionel luthor, warren worthington, caspian and then miraz telmar, and walked away every time. not always successfully, but he never gave in, never lost his company, and his money grew and grew and grew. corin's going to inherit a hell of a lot, people said, if lune doesn't lose it all somewhere.

and then the calormen consortium started sniffing around.

do you want to get in on this (http://bedlamsbard.livejournal.com/417948.html?thread=3536284#t3536284)? because i'm nervous about touching the archenland lot.

They're scouting.

This is the part of the job that they usually don't do; Peter and Susan are better at looking elegant and at home in this sort of thing, but they're fighting again, and so Peter and Susan are scouting in the club Edmund and Lucy would usually be at. It's punishment for Susan: they're at a strip club. (Given Peter's tastes, it's probably not all that much fun for him, either, except to watch Susan's reactions. Unless he's actually got her dolled up like a stripper, and wow, that's somewhere Edmund's not going right now.)

"That's the fifth drink he's had tonight," Lucy murmurs to Edmund, taking small, carefully-spaced out sips of her own martini. "Do you think -- maybe we're making this too complicated, if we just do a little pickpocketing in the elevator --"

Edmund chews on his lip. Plan says just to do recon tonight and get the keycard later, but if he is drinking like this right now, it'll speed things up to get the keycard now, and the mark will be drunk enough not to realize he's been robbed of his keycard rather than just losing it somewhere.

"Let's try that," he says.

Three drinks later, the mark is on his way into the elevator; Edmund and Lucy leave a minute or so after he does and play the part of a mostly-drunk couple, laughing and a little too handsy, crowding into the elevator at the last moment and forcing the mark into the corner. Lucy's fingers slip into his pocket and out again before he knows it and she goes back to kissing Edmund's neck and playing with the buttons on his shirt.

They get out on the third floor, stumbling and nearly tripping, and the mark grins and says, "Y'all have a good night now," and Lucy says, "Oh, we will," and pulls Edmund down into a kiss.

They step away from each other as soon as the doors close and take the stairs down to the ground floor and out, back to their own hotel.

"That went well!" Lucy says brightly. "Now let's get sushi, I'm starving."

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EDITED VERSION

PART 1/2

PART 2/2

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just trascribing comments

so. backstory.

consolidating fic

Re: consolidating fic

Re: consolidating fic

more consolidation: CorAravisCorin backstory