Narnia (movieverse) fic: "All Fall Down"

[bedlamsbard]

Title: All Fall Down
Author: bedlamsbard
Fandom: Chronicles of Narnia movieverse
Rating: PG (underage drinking)
Summary: In England, everything is dulled and muted, almost painfully so. Peter and Susan after their first return.
Disclaimer: The Chronicles of Narnia and its characters, settings, situations, etc., belong to C.S. Lewis. Some characters, settings, situations, etc., belong to Walden Media. Title and LJ-cut from Joan Baez's "Crack in the Mirror."
Author's Notes: For lassiterfics, who requested "Peter and Susan drinking in England."



In England, everything is dulled and muted, almost painfully so. Susan feels plain and dowdy, but it’s worse for the others. Lucy simply doesn’t remember, and the loss terrifies her. She stays awake nights crying into her pillow, and all Susan can do is comfort her when she wants it. Edmund remembers, but he confesses to Susan that it has the blurry quality of a dream to him. He doesn’t know what’s real and what’s not. She catches him staring at his hands, clenching and unclenching them like he’s trying to remember the feel of a sword.

Peter doesn’t speak of Narnia. He doesn’t speak at all except when he has to. Quietly, Edmund tells Susan that Peter’s not sleeping, so one night, a few weeks after their return, when Susan has accustomed herself to England once more – it’s hard, and she has to force herself to go on, because otherwise it’s like moving through water, everything blurred and dreamlike – she pulls a nightgown around herself and slips her feet into house-slippers and follows Peter through the hallways.

He has to be aware of her being there – he has to be; he’s never unaware of what’s going on around him; it’s the quality of the greatest warrior Narnia has ever seen – but he makes no sign of it. He’s quiet, too, and that’s something familiar: Peter has to deliberately try to make noise when he moves, because he’s done too much close-quarters work. He can walk through a dry forest in full armor and not make a sound. Stocking feet on hardwood is child’s play to him.

The manor is asleep around them. There’s no one to see them as Peter pads down the stairs and Susan follows him. The door to the library is locked, but Peter’s lockpicks – where has he found lockpicks in what’s practically the middle of nowhere in England? – make quick work of that.

Susan understands now.

She goes in after him, not bothering to hide her approach. Peter doesn’t look up as he disposes of the lock on Professor Kirke’s liquor cabinet, but he does hand her a bottle of brandy before collecting whiskey for himself.

Susan hands the brandy back and Peter glances up, raising his eyebrows. “Rum,” she requests, and Peter grins and switches the brandy for the rum.

For a few minutes, they sit quietly and drink straight from the bottle. Susan takes hers in small sips, although like everything else, the alcohol in England isn’t as strong as in Narnia and she always has been able to hold her liquor. It tastes washed out. Nearly tasteless. She could be drinking flavored water for all the kick the rum has. Peter, on the other hand, has already finished half the bottle by the time Susan begins delicately, “Are you –”

“No,” Peter says, and knocks the whiskey back again. It’s Scotch, she notices. In Narnia, he favored Glasswater, but that was always too strong for Susan.

“Lucy doesn’t remember,” Susan says. “And Edmund – doesn’t quite. I…do. Mostly. Some of it seems…like a dream.”

Peter is quiet for long enough that he finishes the rest of the bottle and picks up the brandy he’d originally handed to Susan. “It’s not remembering,” he says abruptly. “Memories are for the past, and it’s not the past. It’s who I am. This –” he gestures around him, and the movement doesn’t just take in the library, but all of England, “– is the dream. I’m just waiting to wake up.”

“What if that was all there was?” Susan asks. “What if we don’t go back?” She doesn’t want to think about it, but there’s a chance – probably a good one. Aslan wouldn’t let them leave if he wasn’t done with them.

Peter’s voice is flat. “With all of us gone, there are no heirs. The islands will go back to independence, as will the north. Lasci doesn’t have enough of a government left to survive on its own, and Chemaine won’t do anything without word from Cair Paravel. Whoever’s left in Cair Paravel won’t be able to hold onto them. Archenland will take back the borderlands and Corin. I doubt they have an army large enough to invade. The west will try, though, if they can stop fighting each other long enough to turn their attention eastward.” He gulps at the brandy. His voice isn’t even slurring. Peter has always had a high tolerance for alcohol, even Narnian alcohol, and this is nothing.

“I meant you,” Susan says. “Will you be – all right?”

He gives her a blank look. “I’m not important,” he says, and drinks again. “I’ve got to find a way to get back,” he murmurs; Susan’s certain she’s not meant to hear that.

“You’re important to us,” she says. “Edmund and Lucy are worried about you. I’m worried about you.”

“Why?” Peter says. “I’m nothing here. Nothing.” He puts the bottle down on the floor next to him and holds out his hands to Susan. “Look at this.”

Once upon a time, Peter’s hands were strong and scarred, calloused from holding a sword and shield every day for fifteen years. It’s still a shock to look at his left hand and see all five fingers; fourteen years ago he lost most of his smallest finger in a battle rooting out the remnants of the White Witch’s followers. He never wore his signet ring in the field, so it’s not a surprise not to see that, but the rest of it…

Susan sets the bottle of rum carefully down and takes his hands carefully in hers, bringing first one, then the other to her mouth. “You’re still our brother,” she says, curling her fingers around his. “That’s something.”

There’s something wild in Peter’s eyes, something Narnian. “Is it?” he asks.

“Yes,” Susan says. “It has to be.” She stares at Peter, and her voice only shakes a little as she says, “I remember too.”

Comments

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Considering the amount and speed Peter's drinking? It may not take that long for Peter to get completely tanked. For that matter, there's a possibility that although Earth alcohol doesn't taste like much, it's still going to have the same effect on their bodies, in which case Peter's probably off getting his stomach pumped right about now.

Peter really doesn't think that he himself is all that important. Clearly this changed in the intervening year. *ponders*

[cupiscent.livejournal.com]

Yes! See, this is what I like best about it, that during the year it morphed slowly (and inexorably and understandably) from "Narnia's loss" to "my loss". Because here it's still close enough that he's still thinking like a grown-up and a king, but form moulds function and he perhaps doesn't even notice that he's turning back into a child andandand... *flaps*

Yes. *G*

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Yes yes exactly! And then the process reverses itself when he returns to Narnia (as it should; he starts off in England as a child, but by the time the movie ends he is the High King of Narnia, with all that implies). Curiously, though, I don't think he...reverts, for lack of a better word, again when he returns after PC.