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back inside the house / into the room / watching as the lights slowly fade from view
OMG. My Peter/Susan epic of angst and woe, I guess it's time to let you out into the world. All 3,076 words of you. I actually wrote this fic a couple of months ago very early on, sometime during or after Where No Carnation Fades but before Hereafter. (Notice how the title still has capitalization.) I just kept on fiddling with this thing in an anal retentive sort of way viz. EPIC WIBBLING. Posting this fic is kind of like an exorcism.
Past tense = Golden Age. Present tense = lost in the woods in the beginning of PC. Just thought I'd put it out there. I have, like, a party list of people to thank. Tip of the hat to:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bantha_fodder, boogalooed, collapsia, dreamingwriter, girlgroovy3, and miomeinmio. For saying 'yes', for saying 'no', for putting up with my flails and wibbles.
omg HOKAY HERE WE GO.
Crowning of a Heart
Chronicles of Narnia. Peter/Susan, so WARNING: incest. I'm... gonna say rated R.
Returning to Narnia dredges up the past.
After a year of being convinced that his memories have become more vivid than his life, Peter runs into an impossibly blue sea and is glad to be proven wrong.
He smells the sea salt and remembers Narnia’s unremarkable details and quiet moments, those ordinary memories overwhelmed by dreams of blood spilled in battle and the brightness of midsummer festivals. These were what he tended to remember, when he remembered being king, and these images would flash across his eyelids until he fell asleep or the sun rose. Yes, he thinks as his feet hit the water, this is what it is really like.
He knows this air, he loves this sea, and he remembers.
+
She catches Peter watching her as they head back towards the beach from Cair Paravel. He doesn’t look away, only tilts his head to the side a bit as if in question. Susan looks back to the sea and walks faster.
+
Peter has either remembered everything or he has remembered lies. This is not his Narnia. The mystery of these woods comes from silence and not from magic. He is embarrassed at how much noise they make as they hike through the undergrowth. Peter remembers that, once upon a time, they had all been able to creep noiselessly through the trees to catch the enemy unawares.
No Dryads dance in this forest, and no Maenads sing. None of the animals they come across bow to them; they acknowledge Peter and his retinue only by a dull stare or the sounds of scampering away. No matter, he thinks. He is the High King and this is his land, and he will believe and remember this if no one else will.
A hand rests on his shoulder, and Peter turns and looks into his sister’s eyes. “We should rest,” says Susan.
He covers Susan’s hand with his. She pulls away.
+
Edmund walked into the High King’s chambers early one morning when Peter and Susan were still asleep. He slipped in silently and unnoticed, as was his manner, and neither of them stirred until he said, “You are being very irresponsible.”
The next few seconds were still muted with the soft sounds of waking up, then several things happened at once. There was shouting and a flurry of movement. Peter had his hunting knife in hand before he realized who the intruder was.
“Edmund!” he raged. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Oh god,” Susan muttered. “Oh god…”
Edmund stood near the foot of the bed, his hand on the hilt of his sword. Susan reached over the side and grabbed at the pile of clothes on the floor with one hand, clutching the covers to her chest with the other. “Oh, Su,” Edmund said mildly. “Don’t be shy. I’m your brother – what do I care if I see you naked?”
They exploded at him then, yelling angry and vicious things. Susan had tears in her eyes, and Peter had launched himself out of bed, still naked, still clutching the hunting knife. Edmund drew his sword – “No!” Susan cried out – and smacked Peter’s hand with the flat of it. He winced and gasped but didn’t drop the knife. Edmund didn’t really expect him to, but it was enough to stay the High King where he stood.
“What were you going to do with that knife?” Edmund asked flatly. “Disembowel me?”
“How dare you draw your sword in my chambers!”
“Edmund, what is the meaning of this?”
“Look,” Edmund said, replacing his sword in its scabbard, “I think we’ve all been tolerant of each other’s indiscretions, but this ventures into foolhardiness.”
Peter pulled on his trousers. “I know what I’m doing,” he said grimly. His movements as he dressed were sharp and harsh. “We know what we’re doing. And how dare you show up in my private chambers without my leave-”
Edmund’s eyes flashed. “Your leave? I’m not your servant, Peter. I didn’t come in here to bring you fruit or take your laundry. Right now I don’t care that you’re High King because we’re not talking about Narnia now, we’re talking about family.”
“We can’t talk about our family and not talk about Narnia!”
And the two started yelling about arrogance and honor and perspective, and Susan tried to not listen without actually putting her hands over her ears. She pulled on her clothes as quickly as possible, keeping her back to her brothers and why oh why were there so many layers, so many difficult buttons? Her face felt warm and her heart was pounding, and although it didn’t feel at all fair to stay quiet while Peter did all the fighting, she didn’t have the heart to join in.
Susan buttoned the last button and rushed towards a tapestry behind which there was a door to the hidden passageways. Edmund caught her arm as she hurried past and she jerked away as if she had touched hot metal.
“Don’t touch me!” Susan cried out, and turned redder. She hadn’t meant for her voice to shriek.
“Don’t leave,” Edmund commanded, meeting her gaze, then looked back at Peter, who was now fully dressed and seething. From anger or hurt pride or the indignity of confrontation, Susan couldn’t tell.
“Do you love her?”
“Of course I love her,” Peter spat out.
Edmund looked back at Susan when he heard the ruffle of her skirts. “I said don’t leave. Peter, you know what I mean. Do you love her?”
Susan kept her eyes lowered, avoiding her brothers’ eyes; she saw Peter’s shadow shift on the floor. It said, “Yes.”
+
Susan lets her eyes wander to Peter when she thinks he’s too occupied to notice. He’s jumpy and irritable, and Susan finds herself wanting to soothe him and to kiss his brow.
Narnia the second time around is just familiar enough to be haunting. It reminds her of crawling out of the wreckage of her Finchley home and gazing at the smoky skyline with her mouth agape and her ears still ringing. She watches Peter leading them through extinct paths, grappling for familiarity as Lucy keeps an eye out for a flash of golden mane. Trumpkin rolls his eyes but Susan doesn’t expect him to understand.
The land has settled into Susan’s veins, but not as much as before. She won’t fall in love so quickly anymore, but she does remember. She remembers everything and all the time, and wonders if remembering’s enough.
+
Edmund found her in the gardens weaving an endless garland of flowers: marigolds, crocuses, orchids, lilies, roses. It was mid-afternoon. She sat under a tree as a Naiad picked the flowers, adding them to the growing pile at Susan’s side. A Nightingale perched on the branch above her, trilling some sweet melody.
“What are you going to do with all these flowers?” Edmund asked, following the chain to her.
“I don’t want to speak with you right now, Edmund.”
“Well, you’ve got to,” he said, “because when I tried to talk to Peter he threw a bottle at my head and cantered off somewhere on his horse.” Edmund knelt beside his sister, who didn’t look at him. “Su, this is-”
“Don’t Su me.”
“This is all very worrying to me.”
Susan selected a gardenia from the pile and wove it into her chain. Edmund sat beside her, resting his arms on his knees.
“And I’m not just talking about breaking taboos, because I know it’s no use lecturing someone on something she already knows and chooses to flout anyway.”
“You appear to be lecturing me nonetheless,” said Susan. “Pick me some flowers.”
“…What?” Edmund frowned. “You’ve got a stack of them already.”
“I don’t care. Pick me some flowers.” Susan looked up from her work to the Naiad and gave her a silent nod. The Naiad curtsied low and broke apart into a mist of water droplets, scattering rainbows. The Nightingale, following her cue, spread his wings and flew away.
Susan added, “Pretty ones.”
Edmund only slightly hesitated.
After traveling around the country and doing what could be done about the damage that one hundred years of winter had wrought upon the land, Susan returned to Cair Paravel and cultivated the gardens. She had collected seeds and bulbs from all parts of Narnia, labeled them meticulously and stored them in a lacquered box she had bid a Faun carve for her. When she returned, she went to the open field that Tumnus had believed to be tournament grounds in a previous life, and claimed it for her project.
Some of the flowers grew better than others. Some withered quickly, and some grew not at all. Susan implored the Dryads and the Naiads to work their magic so that the remaining flowers would not only live, but burst with life. Because she was their Queen, and because they loved her, they obeyed.
It was always springtime here.
Edmund wandered from bush to tree, picking flowers at random, but his attention was on his sister. “In Narnia,” he said, “you can do a lot of things and your subjects won’t tell you any different. If not out of love for you, then out of fear of Peter or myself. But it’s going to different once you leave.”
“I won’t leave Narnia.”
“What about getting married?”
“I don’t plan to marry for a good while.”
“I suppose. But once you do, once you’re off to Archenland or Terebinthia-”
“Edmund, I really don’t want to talk about this.”
“-or wherever – beyond the horizon somewhere – well, what then?”
“The prophecy said I am to be a queen of Narnia, not of some other country.”
“Quoting the prophecy, are we? You were the one who didn’t like its rhyme scheme,” Edmund muttered.
“We were destined to rule this land!” she protested. “It is our duty!”
Her brother sighed. “Narnia is an honor upon us, Susan, not the other way around. Our duty is to carry out the will of Aslan.”
Susan’s lips parted as if she would say something, but no words came. There was only indignation in her eyes, tempered with vulnerability, and it was the latter that compelled Edmund to hold his tongue. Susan suddenly looked younger than she was, and Edmund found himself grappling with a half-remembered memory, back from a time when Susan wasn’t Queen, when her limbs were awkward and her secrets innocent. He let the memory go, for the past was past, and he picked the rest of her flowers in silence.
When Edmund next spoke, it was to say, “You let go of something so better things can fall into place.” He approached her with bouquet in hand: narcissus and azalea, iris and hollyhock. He held them out to her. “I hope you remember that if you choose to forget everything else.”
Long after Edmund disappeared back into the castle, Susan was still sitting under the tree, Edmund’s flowers on her lap. Her hands were still and her eyes were distant, and when the Nightingale returned he did not sing, and soon fluttered away again, feeling intrusive.
+
“Come now,” says Susan. “It isn’t that bad.”
“Stop it,” he snaps. “Stop doing that. Stop pretending.”
“I’m not the one pretending.”
They have left the fireside behind. Peter had heard but not acknowledged Susan following behind him as he wanders through the trees looking for something familiar. Let her follow. He cannot sleep tonight. Some small part of him is relieved she can’t sleep either.
Peter turns to face her. The canopy splits the moonlight into slivers that illuminate only pieces of Susan: a pale cheek, an outline of clavicle, and curled fingers. Peter recognizes her caution and hates her calmness, how unmoved she seems in either direction. He thinks with half-hearted bitterness that maybe she is happy to see Narnia in ruins, that she is tallying up the reasons they ought never leave England again.
“Don’t talk to me like I’m Lucy,” he says.
Still, Susan’s hug is not unwelcome. “Don’t I know you anymore, Peter?”
“I wish you did.”
“You are still my brother,” she says softly, “and I know you better than most.”
+
Perhaps, Susan thinks, heart pounding, I could...
She tells herself she’s had enough of living through memories.
+
The sun had set and the High King still had not returned. When supper was done his chair was still empty, and Susan’s was as well. Edmund and Lucy had to deal with the evening petitions and appeals by themselves, which made the court murmur and cast sidelong glances. Edmund went to bed early and cross, leaving Lucy alone to wait for her brother.
Peter returned hours later in the middle of the night. His guards bowed to him. His knights bowed to him. The servants lowered their eyes deferentially, and he \ignored them all. He heard Lucy’s hurried footsteps echo in the second-floor corridor, informed by the maids that her brother had arrived at last. Peter rolled his eyes. And then he ran.
Cair Paravel was a fanciful a palace as the land over which it lorded. Made of polished granite and echoing marble, selectively gilded and inlaid with pearl, it served as a wondrous maze for those who were not familiar with its corridors, and it was all the more distracting for its beauty. But Peter and Lucy had grown up within its walls and they knew the castle like they knew they were Kings and Queens. At the next turn, Peter tugged on a lantern affixed to the wall and waited impatiently for the door to open. He slipped inside and pushed on the brick that closed it, and took the narrow stairs three at a time.
It used to annoy Edmund, the way they would pester him for free access to the passageways. “They’re not supposed to be just some shortcut,” Edmund had said sulkily.
“Oh, Edmund,” Lucy had giggled. “You are too fond of secrets.”
“It’s not secrets I’m fond of! Secrets are just a means to an end.”
Susan had sided with Edmund, Peter with Lucy, but Peter was High King and Lucy was the youngest child, and their joyful imperiousness soon triumphed over Edmund and Susan’s steely determination. They all found themselves running through dark and damp passageways, giggling like schoolchildren and playing hide-and-seek until it turned into tig until it turned into blind man’s bluff. He remembered catching Susan where the tunnels intersected, and quickly motioned for her to hide in the east tunnel while he hid on the west. Lucy’s footsteps had come closer and closer from the south, and when she came into view they had both pounced on her, holding her down and tickling her as she shrieked and cried out, “I knew it! I knew someone was hiding there, I knew it all along…”
“That’s the first and last time,” Edmund had muttered afterwards, but they also saw that he was trying hard to keep back a smile, and had known then it was not so.
Peter leapt out of Susan’s wardrobe and she immediately reached for her bow. Her eyes widened when she saw him. He held a finger up to his lips and slipped out onto her balcony.
He sat on the wide balustrade, leaning back against the palace wall, and waited for three things. First, for Lucy’s voice. He didn’t have to wait long for that. Second, for the argument that followed. Third, for Susan to appear on the balcony and say, “She’s gone.”
Susan’s balcony faced the sea. She left the doors open most days, letting in the salt breezes, the sunlight, the laughter of the Mermaids and the cries of gulls. When the sun went down, the quiet enabled the illusion that the night was theirs. There was only the rising and falling of the waves now, only the moon, who kept secrets better than the sun.
Peter took her hand and threaded his fingers through hers. Susan stepped closer and kissed his forehead. She tangled her fingers in his hair and kissed his eyelids, and he kissed her cheek. He kissed her mouth, and her neck, and Susan told him she loved him too.
+
The feel of his lips on hers remind her of things she didn’t even realize she had forgotten: kisses on the nape of her neck, and someone else’s hands unraveling her braid.
+
The first time they made love, Susan had kissed him first.
One night they walked along the beach by Cair Paravel, her arm looped through his. She whispered something in his ear, and she couldn’t tell you now what it was she had said, but Peter had laughed, and looked so radiant that she pulled him closer and kissed his lips. He didn’t flinch or move away.
Susan kissed him first but it was Peter who pulled her down to the sand.
+
She moans and touches his skin in a way he has never been able to forget.
“Don’t rip my dress,” Susan whispers, “it’ll look suspect.”
Her hips are narrow but not as narrow as the last time, and when she touches his face, when she gasps into his mouth, it feels like everything, everything.
+
Once, in London, she let him kiss her. It was almost Christmas, and everyone was being put to work downstairs doing holiday things, but Peter had seen Susan go upstairs so he waited a few minutes and then followed. She was at her vanity deciding between a red headband and a yellow one when she saw him in the mirror. She tasted of the morning’s coffee.
Once, also in London, she slipped into his room, but he didn’t hear her until the door clicked shut. Peter raised his head from his history book.
“There’s no one home,” she said softly, and Peter couldn’t tell if she looked sad.
The book laid forgotten for the rest of the afternoon.
There had been no third time.
+
The taste of her makes him ache with a longing that initially confuses him - she’s already here, after all. But, the time they have has always been limited, and the thought of it makes him dig his fingernails into her skin and she mewls, not necessarily in pain.
The taste of her reminds him of Cair Paravel, and of the sounds of the sea through his window. The feel of her has taught him to love the nighttime, and her sighs remind him of the waves.
Past tense = Golden Age. Present tense = lost in the woods in the beginning of PC. Just thought I'd put it out there. I have, like, a party list of people to thank. Tip of the hat to:
bantha_fodder, boogalooed, collapsia, dreamingwriter, girlgroovy3, and miomeinmio. For saying 'yes', for saying 'no', for putting up with my flails and wibbles.omg HOKAY HERE WE GO.
Crowning of a Heart
Chronicles of Narnia. Peter/Susan, so WARNING: incest. I'm... gonna say rated R.
Returning to Narnia dredges up the past.
After a year of being convinced that his memories have become more vivid than his life, Peter runs into an impossibly blue sea and is glad to be proven wrong.
He smells the sea salt and remembers Narnia’s unremarkable details and quiet moments, those ordinary memories overwhelmed by dreams of blood spilled in battle and the brightness of midsummer festivals. These were what he tended to remember, when he remembered being king, and these images would flash across his eyelids until he fell asleep or the sun rose. Yes, he thinks as his feet hit the water, this is what it is really like.
He knows this air, he loves this sea, and he remembers.
+
She catches Peter watching her as they head back towards the beach from Cair Paravel. He doesn’t look away, only tilts his head to the side a bit as if in question. Susan looks back to the sea and walks faster.
+
Peter has either remembered everything or he has remembered lies. This is not his Narnia. The mystery of these woods comes from silence and not from magic. He is embarrassed at how much noise they make as they hike through the undergrowth. Peter remembers that, once upon a time, they had all been able to creep noiselessly through the trees to catch the enemy unawares.
No Dryads dance in this forest, and no Maenads sing. None of the animals they come across bow to them; they acknowledge Peter and his retinue only by a dull stare or the sounds of scampering away. No matter, he thinks. He is the High King and this is his land, and he will believe and remember this if no one else will.
A hand rests on his shoulder, and Peter turns and looks into his sister’s eyes. “We should rest,” says Susan.
He covers Susan’s hand with his. She pulls away.
+
Edmund walked into the High King’s chambers early one morning when Peter and Susan were still asleep. He slipped in silently and unnoticed, as was his manner, and neither of them stirred until he said, “You are being very irresponsible.”
The next few seconds were still muted with the soft sounds of waking up, then several things happened at once. There was shouting and a flurry of movement. Peter had his hunting knife in hand before he realized who the intruder was.
“Edmund!” he raged. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Oh god,” Susan muttered. “Oh god…”
Edmund stood near the foot of the bed, his hand on the hilt of his sword. Susan reached over the side and grabbed at the pile of clothes on the floor with one hand, clutching the covers to her chest with the other. “Oh, Su,” Edmund said mildly. “Don’t be shy. I’m your brother – what do I care if I see you naked?”
They exploded at him then, yelling angry and vicious things. Susan had tears in her eyes, and Peter had launched himself out of bed, still naked, still clutching the hunting knife. Edmund drew his sword – “No!” Susan cried out – and smacked Peter’s hand with the flat of it. He winced and gasped but didn’t drop the knife. Edmund didn’t really expect him to, but it was enough to stay the High King where he stood.
“What were you going to do with that knife?” Edmund asked flatly. “Disembowel me?”
“How dare you draw your sword in my chambers!”
“Edmund, what is the meaning of this?”
“Look,” Edmund said, replacing his sword in its scabbard, “I think we’ve all been tolerant of each other’s indiscretions, but this ventures into foolhardiness.”
Peter pulled on his trousers. “I know what I’m doing,” he said grimly. His movements as he dressed were sharp and harsh. “We know what we’re doing. And how dare you show up in my private chambers without my leave-”
Edmund’s eyes flashed. “Your leave? I’m not your servant, Peter. I didn’t come in here to bring you fruit or take your laundry. Right now I don’t care that you’re High King because we’re not talking about Narnia now, we’re talking about family.”
“We can’t talk about our family and not talk about Narnia!”
And the two started yelling about arrogance and honor and perspective, and Susan tried to not listen without actually putting her hands over her ears. She pulled on her clothes as quickly as possible, keeping her back to her brothers and why oh why were there so many layers, so many difficult buttons? Her face felt warm and her heart was pounding, and although it didn’t feel at all fair to stay quiet while Peter did all the fighting, she didn’t have the heart to join in.
Susan buttoned the last button and rushed towards a tapestry behind which there was a door to the hidden passageways. Edmund caught her arm as she hurried past and she jerked away as if she had touched hot metal.
“Don’t touch me!” Susan cried out, and turned redder. She hadn’t meant for her voice to shriek.
“Don’t leave,” Edmund commanded, meeting her gaze, then looked back at Peter, who was now fully dressed and seething. From anger or hurt pride or the indignity of confrontation, Susan couldn’t tell.
“Do you love her?”
“Of course I love her,” Peter spat out.
Edmund looked back at Susan when he heard the ruffle of her skirts. “I said don’t leave. Peter, you know what I mean. Do you love her?”
Susan kept her eyes lowered, avoiding her brothers’ eyes; she saw Peter’s shadow shift on the floor. It said, “Yes.”
+
Susan lets her eyes wander to Peter when she thinks he’s too occupied to notice. He’s jumpy and irritable, and Susan finds herself wanting to soothe him and to kiss his brow.
Narnia the second time around is just familiar enough to be haunting. It reminds her of crawling out of the wreckage of her Finchley home and gazing at the smoky skyline with her mouth agape and her ears still ringing. She watches Peter leading them through extinct paths, grappling for familiarity as Lucy keeps an eye out for a flash of golden mane. Trumpkin rolls his eyes but Susan doesn’t expect him to understand.
The land has settled into Susan’s veins, but not as much as before. She won’t fall in love so quickly anymore, but she does remember. She remembers everything and all the time, and wonders if remembering’s enough.
+
Edmund found her in the gardens weaving an endless garland of flowers: marigolds, crocuses, orchids, lilies, roses. It was mid-afternoon. She sat under a tree as a Naiad picked the flowers, adding them to the growing pile at Susan’s side. A Nightingale perched on the branch above her, trilling some sweet melody.
“What are you going to do with all these flowers?” Edmund asked, following the chain to her.
“I don’t want to speak with you right now, Edmund.”
“Well, you’ve got to,” he said, “because when I tried to talk to Peter he threw a bottle at my head and cantered off somewhere on his horse.” Edmund knelt beside his sister, who didn’t look at him. “Su, this is-”
“Don’t Su me.”
“This is all very worrying to me.”
Susan selected a gardenia from the pile and wove it into her chain. Edmund sat beside her, resting his arms on his knees.
“And I’m not just talking about breaking taboos, because I know it’s no use lecturing someone on something she already knows and chooses to flout anyway.”
“You appear to be lecturing me nonetheless,” said Susan. “Pick me some flowers.”
“…What?” Edmund frowned. “You’ve got a stack of them already.”
“I don’t care. Pick me some flowers.” Susan looked up from her work to the Naiad and gave her a silent nod. The Naiad curtsied low and broke apart into a mist of water droplets, scattering rainbows. The Nightingale, following her cue, spread his wings and flew away.
Susan added, “Pretty ones.”
Edmund only slightly hesitated.
After traveling around the country and doing what could be done about the damage that one hundred years of winter had wrought upon the land, Susan returned to Cair Paravel and cultivated the gardens. She had collected seeds and bulbs from all parts of Narnia, labeled them meticulously and stored them in a lacquered box she had bid a Faun carve for her. When she returned, she went to the open field that Tumnus had believed to be tournament grounds in a previous life, and claimed it for her project.
Some of the flowers grew better than others. Some withered quickly, and some grew not at all. Susan implored the Dryads and the Naiads to work their magic so that the remaining flowers would not only live, but burst with life. Because she was their Queen, and because they loved her, they obeyed.
It was always springtime here.
Edmund wandered from bush to tree, picking flowers at random, but his attention was on his sister. “In Narnia,” he said, “you can do a lot of things and your subjects won’t tell you any different. If not out of love for you, then out of fear of Peter or myself. But it’s going to different once you leave.”
“I won’t leave Narnia.”
“What about getting married?”
“I don’t plan to marry for a good while.”
“I suppose. But once you do, once you’re off to Archenland or Terebinthia-”
“Edmund, I really don’t want to talk about this.”
“-or wherever – beyond the horizon somewhere – well, what then?”
“The prophecy said I am to be a queen of Narnia, not of some other country.”
“Quoting the prophecy, are we? You were the one who didn’t like its rhyme scheme,” Edmund muttered.
“We were destined to rule this land!” she protested. “It is our duty!”
Her brother sighed. “Narnia is an honor upon us, Susan, not the other way around. Our duty is to carry out the will of Aslan.”
Susan’s lips parted as if she would say something, but no words came. There was only indignation in her eyes, tempered with vulnerability, and it was the latter that compelled Edmund to hold his tongue. Susan suddenly looked younger than she was, and Edmund found himself grappling with a half-remembered memory, back from a time when Susan wasn’t Queen, when her limbs were awkward and her secrets innocent. He let the memory go, for the past was past, and he picked the rest of her flowers in silence.
When Edmund next spoke, it was to say, “You let go of something so better things can fall into place.” He approached her with bouquet in hand: narcissus and azalea, iris and hollyhock. He held them out to her. “I hope you remember that if you choose to forget everything else.”
Long after Edmund disappeared back into the castle, Susan was still sitting under the tree, Edmund’s flowers on her lap. Her hands were still and her eyes were distant, and when the Nightingale returned he did not sing, and soon fluttered away again, feeling intrusive.
+
“Come now,” says Susan. “It isn’t that bad.”
“Stop it,” he snaps. “Stop doing that. Stop pretending.”
“I’m not the one pretending.”
They have left the fireside behind. Peter had heard but not acknowledged Susan following behind him as he wanders through the trees looking for something familiar. Let her follow. He cannot sleep tonight. Some small part of him is relieved she can’t sleep either.
Peter turns to face her. The canopy splits the moonlight into slivers that illuminate only pieces of Susan: a pale cheek, an outline of clavicle, and curled fingers. Peter recognizes her caution and hates her calmness, how unmoved she seems in either direction. He thinks with half-hearted bitterness that maybe she is happy to see Narnia in ruins, that she is tallying up the reasons they ought never leave England again.
“Don’t talk to me like I’m Lucy,” he says.
Still, Susan’s hug is not unwelcome. “Don’t I know you anymore, Peter?”
“I wish you did.”
“You are still my brother,” she says softly, “and I know you better than most.”
+
Perhaps, Susan thinks, heart pounding, I could...
She tells herself she’s had enough of living through memories.
+
The sun had set and the High King still had not returned. When supper was done his chair was still empty, and Susan’s was as well. Edmund and Lucy had to deal with the evening petitions and appeals by themselves, which made the court murmur and cast sidelong glances. Edmund went to bed early and cross, leaving Lucy alone to wait for her brother.
Peter returned hours later in the middle of the night. His guards bowed to him. His knights bowed to him. The servants lowered their eyes deferentially, and he \ignored them all. He heard Lucy’s hurried footsteps echo in the second-floor corridor, informed by the maids that her brother had arrived at last. Peter rolled his eyes. And then he ran.
Cair Paravel was a fanciful a palace as the land over which it lorded. Made of polished granite and echoing marble, selectively gilded and inlaid with pearl, it served as a wondrous maze for those who were not familiar with its corridors, and it was all the more distracting for its beauty. But Peter and Lucy had grown up within its walls and they knew the castle like they knew they were Kings and Queens. At the next turn, Peter tugged on a lantern affixed to the wall and waited impatiently for the door to open. He slipped inside and pushed on the brick that closed it, and took the narrow stairs three at a time.
It used to annoy Edmund, the way they would pester him for free access to the passageways. “They’re not supposed to be just some shortcut,” Edmund had said sulkily.
“Oh, Edmund,” Lucy had giggled. “You are too fond of secrets.”
“It’s not secrets I’m fond of! Secrets are just a means to an end.”
Susan had sided with Edmund, Peter with Lucy, but Peter was High King and Lucy was the youngest child, and their joyful imperiousness soon triumphed over Edmund and Susan’s steely determination. They all found themselves running through dark and damp passageways, giggling like schoolchildren and playing hide-and-seek until it turned into tig until it turned into blind man’s bluff. He remembered catching Susan where the tunnels intersected, and quickly motioned for her to hide in the east tunnel while he hid on the west. Lucy’s footsteps had come closer and closer from the south, and when she came into view they had both pounced on her, holding her down and tickling her as she shrieked and cried out, “I knew it! I knew someone was hiding there, I knew it all along…”
“That’s the first and last time,” Edmund had muttered afterwards, but they also saw that he was trying hard to keep back a smile, and had known then it was not so.
Peter leapt out of Susan’s wardrobe and she immediately reached for her bow. Her eyes widened when she saw him. He held a finger up to his lips and slipped out onto her balcony.
He sat on the wide balustrade, leaning back against the palace wall, and waited for three things. First, for Lucy’s voice. He didn’t have to wait long for that. Second, for the argument that followed. Third, for Susan to appear on the balcony and say, “She’s gone.”
Susan’s balcony faced the sea. She left the doors open most days, letting in the salt breezes, the sunlight, the laughter of the Mermaids and the cries of gulls. When the sun went down, the quiet enabled the illusion that the night was theirs. There was only the rising and falling of the waves now, only the moon, who kept secrets better than the sun.
Peter took her hand and threaded his fingers through hers. Susan stepped closer and kissed his forehead. She tangled her fingers in his hair and kissed his eyelids, and he kissed her cheek. He kissed her mouth, and her neck, and Susan told him she loved him too.
+
The feel of his lips on hers remind her of things she didn’t even realize she had forgotten: kisses on the nape of her neck, and someone else’s hands unraveling her braid.
+
The first time they made love, Susan had kissed him first.
One night they walked along the beach by Cair Paravel, her arm looped through his. She whispered something in his ear, and she couldn’t tell you now what it was she had said, but Peter had laughed, and looked so radiant that she pulled him closer and kissed his lips. He didn’t flinch or move away.
Susan kissed him first but it was Peter who pulled her down to the sand.
+
She moans and touches his skin in a way he has never been able to forget.
“Don’t rip my dress,” Susan whispers, “it’ll look suspect.”
Her hips are narrow but not as narrow as the last time, and when she touches his face, when she gasps into his mouth, it feels like everything, everything.
+
Once, in London, she let him kiss her. It was almost Christmas, and everyone was being put to work downstairs doing holiday things, but Peter had seen Susan go upstairs so he waited a few minutes and then followed. She was at her vanity deciding between a red headband and a yellow one when she saw him in the mirror. She tasted of the morning’s coffee.
Once, also in London, she slipped into his room, but he didn’t hear her until the door clicked shut. Peter raised his head from his history book.
“There’s no one home,” she said softly, and Peter couldn’t tell if she looked sad.
The book laid forgotten for the rest of the afternoon.
There had been no third time.
+
The taste of her makes him ache with a longing that initially confuses him - she’s already here, after all. But, the time they have has always been limited, and the thought of it makes him dig his fingernails into her skin and she mewls, not necessarily in pain.
The taste of her reminds him of Cair Paravel, and of the sounds of the sea through his window. The feel of her has taught him to love the nighttime, and her sighs remind him of the waves.
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"The land has settled into Susan’s veins, but not as much as before. She won’t fall in love so quickly anymore, but she does remember. She remembers everything and all the time, and wonders if remembering’s enough."
Excellent work!
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Thank you very much! I'm glad you like the intercutting, 'cos I like the intercutting and I get quietly squeeful when a reader likes what I like too.
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Absolutely brilliant.
It deserves my Peter/Susan hug icon from PC!
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PETER/SUSAN PC HUG YAAAAAAAAAAAAY
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<33333333
I CAN FLAIL ABOUT THEM ALL DAY my god OH MY GOD
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I can usually tell which non-canon couples are going to be the most popular from any book, movie, or TV show (I'm not too much a fan of RPF). I pegged Harry/Draco right off as well as Harry/Hermione (because of the movies)... And the Mohinder/Sylar, Matt/Mohinder, and several others through out fandom... Sadly though because of the Christian thing the Peter/Susan pairing isn't very popular, which is sad because it's so, so hot.
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http://community.livejournal.com/1sentence/240415.html
http://loki013.livejournal.com/273589.html
And, 'cos I am enabler--
someone else's peter/susan fic rec list. i don't necessarily agree with her taste, but it is not a bad place to start: http://kimiren.livejournal.com/27297.html
Also:
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"The land has settled into Susan’s veins, but not as much as before. She won’t fall in love so quickly anymore, but she does remember. She remembers everything and all the time, and wonders if remembering’s enough."
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