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strictly BYOB
I'm going to try something. It requires your participation! And perhaps some sparkly text:
~*ROUND-ROBIN COMMENTFIC PARTY!!*~
That's right! Right here on this post. Here's how it works, I think:
1. Anyone can reply to this post with commentfic. Anyone can start, and anyone can continue. That's right, even you!
2. Any genre, any ship, any fandom. Crossovers okay!
3. One commentfic thread is allowed to branch off into several commentfic threads. TITS, you can click 'Reply to This' at any point in an established thread.
4. You can comment with just one sentence, or you can go up to the character limit. If you exceed the character limit, post two comments. Whatever.
5. Threads will go for as long as they have to.
6. If this is your first night at Fight Club, you have to fight.
These guidelines will be added to/modified as the situation arises. Questions/concerns? Go!
That's right! Right here on this post. Here's how it works, I think:
1. Anyone can reply to this post with commentfic. Anyone can start, and anyone can continue. That's right, even you!
2. Any genre, any ship, any fandom. Crossovers okay!
3. One commentfic thread is allowed to branch off into several commentfic threads. TITS, you can click 'Reply to This' at any point in an established thread.
4. You can comment with just one sentence, or you can go up to the character limit. If you exceed the character limit, post two comments. Whatever.
5. Threads will go for as long as they have to.
6. If this is your first night at Fight Club, you have to fight.
These guidelines will be added to/modified as the situation arises. Questions/concerns? Go!
Re: eeeee Pevensies!
He waits for her to continue, but she turns away to look at Christ's divine face gazing down at them, glowing from the candles inside the church. His hair is golden.
Re: eeeee Pevensies!
+
The next day, they visit the Eiffel Tower. They don't pose in pictures like the other tourists, wrapped in layers of wool and family. Little children laugh together. Once again, they sit.
+
That night, the eat by the Seine, in a restaurant meant for romantic evenings. Their evening is decidedly unromantic.
+
"Why?" Susan asks. It's just the two of them and some coffee, the waiter has taken away the plates.
"Why what?" Edmund asks, though he knows what she's asking.
Susan gestures toward the river. "Why all this?"
Re: eeeee Pevensies!
"Perhaps we should," she says.
+
They chase the sun, heading south to escape the chill of winter.
+
Within a few days, Susan has stopped saying "When I get back to England," and has taken to writing her close friends letters instead. The further south the shorter the letters get, and the more often he finds himself remembering why she made such a good queen.
They are in the Congo before his careful guard slips and he says, "It reminds me of Galma a little," without thinking. There is a long silence from beside him as Susan stares over the side of the boat, breathing deeply.
"Yes," she says, and takes his hand. "Me too."
Re: eeeee Pevensies!
Through the bright drop that pity drew,
I saw beneath those tears of thine
A blue-ey'd violet bathed in dew."
The vendor with the turban and the flowing grey beard quotes some translated poetry at her, fine and flowery, and Susan replies, without thinking, in Calormene.
He looks at her curiously, no doubt wondering what language the sad, pale traveler could be speaking that is so like his own native tongue, and yet not like.
"Excuse me," Susan says hastily and bends over the jewelry displayed on the seller's carpet, concentrating on the tiny gems to cover the panic in her mind. She is absurdly grateful Edmund isn't here, because she's not ready for that.
Re: eeeee Pevensies!
"Edmund," she says softly. He looks at her intently, slipping one hand into hers. "These-."
"I know," he says, cutting her off.
They don't return to that marketplace.
+
It is only in the rainforests of the Congos that everything washes away. Here is not Narnia, is not England, is not even Calormen, it is simply here.
They relish in the humidity as other members of their guided walk constantly complain of it. Here, Susan does not wear her lipstick.
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It is at night, when Edmund has only his thoughts to keep him company, that he remembers what it was like to miss her. He remembers what it was like, before that, to love her without restraint, to love all his siblings, to have so much openness within arm's reach.
He can barely hear Susan's breathing over the rasping of the insects outside, but he can hear it, making him more aware of the distance between them, how she seems the furthest away at night. In their individual fashions, they have both spent years trying to simultaneously move on and stay the same. But they have, over the course of this trip, stumbled back into each other in a meandering fashion, rediscovering an intimacy they haven't felt in years.
It is a slow process. Everything is different now, and they will not be rushed.
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Edmund is not sure that they ever will.
+
Susan does not mention England anymore.
+
"Edmund, how are we paying for this?" she says suddenly one day, and he shrugs. "Do I want to know?"
"It's not illegal," he protests. "You went over the money with me. We inherited a fair bit, and I've been investing mine. Also, I know how to get deals out here."
"I should probably invest mine," Susan says.
+
They go into the nearby village to get food, and Susan examines native plants and vegetables with interest.
"If I cook this, will you eat it?" she asks, holding yams in her hands.
"Why not," he says. Susan buys figs and peppers and other things and experiments in the kitchen while Edmund carries in water. The bungalow has only the bare necessities out here.
The next day she heads into town by herself and comes home late and tired, but with a smile on her face.
"Where were you?" Edmund asks.
"With the women," she says. "It's quite fascinating how many uses the plants out here have."
IF I COOK THIS WILL YOU EAT IT <33
Susan's French is good, or at least much better than his. At the little variety store, at the marketplace, she takes Edmund's arm and goes, "Voici mon frere, Edmund," and Edmund mumbles, "Enchante, enchante," and smiles awkwardly. They smile at him and ask him questions, and many go back to smiling when they find out he doesn't speak French.
A girl who sells oranges at the market ("Edmund, this is Marie.") tells him, "Edmund, your sister said you like the yams."
"It's all right," says Edmund. "Susan's a good cook."
"Susan is a good woman," Marie says, and laughs merrily. Susan says something to her in rapid-fire French, and they laugh again.
Susan has always been good at this, worming her way into people's hearts and winning their confidence. In Narnia, she was effectively a diplomatic scout, sent into foreign courts ahead of her brothers and sister to lay groundwork and make sure the way was clear.
"Here," says Marie, taking Edmund's hand and placing an orange in it. "For your journey."
"Thank you," says Edmund. "Merci."
Marie smiles. "De rien."
susan has experimented before! it has not always gone this well!
"How about Italy?" Edmund suggests, but Susan shakes her head and points to India.
"Let's go to India," she says. "I don't know much about India." They go north cautiously, Susan watching the temperature and Edmund watching the sky. Spring is coming, and he remembers spring in Narnia, when everyone celebrated and Susan and Lucy braided flowers into their hair and they wore crowns of flowers to the festivals at night, where the drumbeat felt like the heartbeat of the earth.
At one of the African ports they put into on their journey, someone is drumming on the dock, thump thump thump, and Edmund watches Susan tap her foot to the beat and remembers her dancing hand in hand with dryads.
She is smiling and lovely in the sun, and he can be content with this.
+
They sail through the Mediterranean and one night the boat holds a dance. Susan digs out a dress Edmund has never seen from her suitcase and they go together. They waltz together easily, one-two-three one-two-three. When the music changes they move out onto the deck and Edmund says,
"It sounds like-"
"It does, doesn't it," Susan agrees gently, and they spin into a Narnian dance together, hands light on each other's bodies and mouths smiling.
no subject
"What?" he asks.
The next song is a Thelonius Monk song that Susan likes and Edmund can't remember the name of. He's never cared one way or the other about jazz, but Susan's face breaks into a smile bright enough to break the silence between them, and she begins to tug him back inside.
"The girls and I used to dance to this all the time," she tells Edmund, who is trying to refuse to be tugged.
"I don't know how to dance to this one," Edmund says dubiously.
"Pish posh," Susan declares. To his horror, she manages to pull him onto the dance floor, and she takes his hands, and she says, "It's easy: we start like this, and then we do whatever we want."
+
It's not just a matter of reclaiming the past and the way they used to be. The past binds them regardless; the trick is to not be suffocated. The trick is to know how to move forward with it. The past must be carried inside you; you must not be carried inside your past. Ask your questions if you must ("Why have I been left behind?"), but don't wait for answers.
"I wonder sometimes if we have some unfinished business here," Susan says, in the quiet of their cabin. This is how she reconciles: quiet non sequiturs that give the impression of having bubbled for a long time, with no choice in when they will spill over.
"You make us sound like ghosts," says Edmund.
"Maybe to ghosts, we are the ghosts. Maybe ghosts are just true selves in the shadow world."
Edmund lies in the top bunk, Susan in the bottom, the whiskey keeping them giddy, restless, awake. The jazz and waltz is still traipsing through his head, intertwined around the images of his sister laughing, dancing. She danced with three other men that night, and when they tried to lead her away from the dance floor, she would leave their company in a whirl of flirtation so deft that they didn't realize they were rejected until she was gone.
She returned to Edmund at the bar, and he raised his eyebrows, asking, "Do none of these dukes and princes please you, sister?"
"They please me well enough," she replied, "but they displease me just as well."
They smiled at the old joke, and Edmund ordered her another drink.
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"Who is this?" she asks, picking up a small statue. "She's very beautiful."
"Aurora," the woman says reverently. "Goddess of the dawn. She brings a fair wind and a fresh start."
"How much?" Susan says, and when they get back to the ship she places the small statue carefully on the bureau and stares at it for a long time.