Narnia (movieverse) fic: "In Constellated Wars: On a Summer Midnight" (1/5)

[bedlamsbard]

In that open field
If you do not come too close, if you do not come too close,
On a summer midnight, you can hear the music
Of the weak pipe and the little drum
And see them dancing around the bonfire
The association of man and woman
In daunsinge, signifying matrimonie—
A dignified and commodiois sacrament.
– T.S. Eliot, “Four Quartets: East Coker”

It’s not because she’s the youngest.

Of course it’s not; the concept’s ridiculous. She knows her brother well enough to know that when Peter looks at her, he doesn’t see little Lucy Pevensie who’s off to boarding school for the first time; he sees Queen Lucy the Valiant of Narnia, the Queen of Morning, called Strongheart by her friends and Stoneheart by her enemies, who was fighting in battles when other girls her age were still playing with dolls. When they’d arrived at the How, he’d borrowed a sword from one of the dwarves that had come at the sound of Susan’s horn – she knows now that it was heard across Narnia – and handed it to Lucy before drawing Rhindon as Prince Caspian gaped and Susan made an alarmed noise in the back of her throat. Peter had been going at half-speed, or at least what would have been half-speed for him once (he’d been slower than he should have been when Caspian had attacked him in the woods), and Lucy had barely been able to keep up with him. It’s not that she isn’t fast enough, but that England has stolen her muscle memory from her as well as her real memory, and while both are returning slowly, slowly just isn’t fast enough. Peter hadn’t said anything after he’d knocked the sword from her hands a dozen times – taking longer each time, as Lucy’s body slowly, slowly remembered what it was supposed to be doing – but the look he’d given her had been sympathetic. She’s been practicing as much as she can since and she’d gone to Peter before the attack on Miraz’s castle. They’d sparred together for a bit before she’d asked.

“You’re the only other person in the How who has experience holding a castle,” Peter said, and then made kind of an amused face and added, “or the equivalent. If something goes wrong, or if Miraz has something up his sleeve, I want you here to hold the How. I’m leaving you in command.” He parried her blow easily – she’d been hoping that he was distracted, but of course he wasn’t; it took a lot to distract Peter – and said, “You’re striking too high. You don’t have the reach for it now, try –”

She struck low before he could speak, padded sword skidding along his calves. “Like that?” she’d said sweetly.

“Good, Lu,” Peter said, pleased, and paused the bout to get down on his knees in response to what would have been a hamstringing, which put them nearly of a height.

“You know,” Lucy said, “you wouldn’t have the time to do it so slowly and painstakingly in an actual battle.”

“Then you shouldn’t give me the time,” Peter pointed out, grinning, and feinted right before attacking left. Lucy managed to parry that, but only barely. They hadn’t spoken about it until midday the next day, when Peter had spread out the maps of the How and the surrounding area on the Stone Table and asked Lucy what she’d do with the troops he was leaving behind.

He’d given her formal command of the How and Caspian had looked at him like he was insane and at Lucy like she was the child she looked like. The child she still looks like, only twenty-four hours later. The girl she feels like most of the time.

Peter took Edmund into battle with him when he was only a year older than she is now. Lucy killed her first creature when she was younger than this, and her first man eight months later when westerland bandits began to pour through the Waste into Narnia, confident that the White Witch was gone at last. Getting left behind this time isn’t because she’s the youngest, or because she’s a girl, or because she doesn’t have her favored weapons. It’s because there always has to be someone left behind just in case the worst comes to pass. She’s held this position before. So has Susan. So has Edmund. So has Peter, even, though usually not because the others are on campaign the way it is for the rest of them.

She’s used to being left behind. She hates it, but she’s used to it. Hold Cair Paravel. Hold Arn Abedin. Hold the camp. Hold the How. Wait.

Lucy can’t count the number of times she’s waited for a messenger to bring her news of one battle or another. Messages that say come quickly or be ready for our return or come now. She’s given Peter her cordial so often he’s started to develop an immunity to it, and Edmund nearly as often; centaurs and fauns and dwarves and all the creatures of the Narnian army. She’s treated prisoners of war as well, and men that Peter only needed to keep alive long enough to kill them in public. She would have done the same for any Telmarine Peter brought back from the castle, as she did for the Narnian grievously wounded. She knows the cost. It means she doesn’t hesitate when she has to pay it one way or another.

She could kill Prince Caspian for trying to bring back the White Witch. She would have done it, too, if Peter hadn’t said not to. Oh, not out loud, but she’d read the words in the set of his spine, the grip of his sword, the expression on his face. If Caspian dies, it won’t be at her knife; it will be on Rhindon’s blade.

Lucy has been in battle, and the reason for that is because for the first ten years of their reign Narnia needed every fighter it could get and Peter couldn’t ignore something like age or gender or royal standing. The only time he ever hesitated was the first time, and after that he hadn’t thought twice about putting any of his siblings in harm’s way. She had the best teachers in Narnia. This is why, at Susan’s shout, she draws her dagger and throws aside her bedsheets, leaping to her feet, because Cadarn had taught her so many years ago that she should always get whatever advantage of height she could.

Susan’s shooting, bow snapping twice in quick succession. The arrows take the centaur archer in the doorway in the chest. There’s a badger dashing forward between his hooves and Lucy draws her arm back before she lets fly, a smooth natural motion that she hasn’t practiced in more than a year. The longer she’s in Narnia, the more she remembers.

But it’s stupid, stupid, because now she doesn’t have a weapon and she doesn’t have the strength of arm –

There’s a sound like a melon hitting stone and Lucy spins on her heel to see Susan sprawled across her bedroll, the dwarf turning towards her now, stepping over her sister’s limp body.

No weapon, and Susan’s bow and quiver are on the other side of her. Lucy screams at the top of her lungs and leaps toward the dwarf, hands curled into claws. Attacking an armed enemy barehanded isn’t about strength, it’s about speed, and she’s always been fast. He’s still raising his bloody axe from Susan’s skull when Lucy strikes him, blunt nails of her left hand scratching down his face as her right hand draws the knife from his belt.

Someone shouts, and the dwarf throws her off and aside; Lucy manages to curl herself into a ball as she strikes the wall, already scrambling up to her feet. The centaurs – two centaurs, she hadn’t seen the second one – are fleeing, the dwarf with them. Peter is bellowing in the hallway. Lucy drops the dwarf’s knife and goes for her cordial.

Edmund bangs into the room a heartbeat later; Lucy glances up from the spreading pool of blood beneath Susan’s shattered skull long enough to see the gleam of light off his sword and then looks back down, forcing her hands still, because she can’t waste the cordial by spilling it, and five drops won’t do Susan more good than one. She doesn’t quite manage – Susan gets two drops instead of one – but more isn’t going to kill her any more than it’s going to help. She caps her cordial by muscle memory alone, because it’s drummed into her not to spill, that she can’t spill, because the next time she has to use it might be after a battle, might be on Edmund, might be on Peter.

Flesh and bone and muscle knit themselves back together before her eyes – it hurts to look at, like it always does, seeing the impossible come true – and Edmund shoves Susan’s bow and quiver into her hands while she’s still asking what happened.

“Go to Peter,” he says, like he always does, and Susan goes as she has a thousand times before.

“All right, Lu?” he adds, on his feet again and going towards the door, Caspian – where had he come from? – on his heels.

“Fine,” Lucy says, clutching her cordial tightly in her left hand. There will be a dagger under Susan’s pillow; she pulls it out and holds it before her in the first guard as she follows her brother into the hall.

There’s a wounded centaur collapsed on the floor – the one Susan shot, of course; her arrows are in his chest. His features are familiar, but Lucy doesn’t know his name or his clan. Looking at his wounds, she can tell that he won’t live out the night without medical care. Edmund stares down at him with a cool, calm expression and then turns to Caspian.

“Go find me someone big enough to hold down a centaur,” he says. “Preferably a griffin, although I suppose a minotaur would work too. Or another centaur.

“Why?” Caspian asks.

“Because the High King said to keep him alive,” and Lucy mouths the words along with him. Edmund will do anything Peter says, no matter how outrageous. And Peter will kill whoever attacks his family.

Caspian goes.

Lucy looks at the centaur, at the arrows in his chest, and feels the crystal of her cordial bite into her palm. “I think we should just kill him,” she says.

Edmund takes a few careful steps backwards and sideways, putting his back to the wall, and shrugs in the sort of way that means Peter’s orders, not my choice. He wipes blood casually off his face with the back of his hand.

It’s only a minute or so before Caspian comes back with a griffin, the same one who brought Edmund back yesterday morning. Lucy is almost positive her name is Cirocco. She nods to Edmund, looks at the centaur, and says, “Do you want me to rip him apart?”

“Not at the moment,” Edmund says blandly. “Hold him down, will you? I have to take the arrows out.”

Cirocco grumbles some more as she climbs onto the centaur’s back – Edmund’s reply is standard, because the High King said so – but when Edmund starts to approach, wiping blood off his face again – bloody nose, obviously not more than annoyance – Lucy stops him.

“Ed, no, you’re bleeding,” she says briskly, the words a faint, familiar memory. Not that merely bleeding is enough to stop him if it’s a friend, but this is an enemy. Peter will want him, if not whole, at least alive. “I do still remember how to do this, you know.”

She drops her cordial around her neck, the metal of the thin chain that’s usually no more than decoration warming against her skin, and tucks Susan’s dagger away neatly. Edmund steps back to let her at the wounded centaur, sword at the ready, although both of them know that barring any miracles, the centaur’s not going to be attacking anyone anytime soon.

Susan hadn’t been able to work up a good draw; the arrows are caught in the flesh and not through-and-throughs. One is a gut wound. The other one is at a vulnerable spot where man-body and horse-body meet. Lucy pulls them free, only gentle for the sake of the arrows – Susan’s arrows don’t break easily, but they’re hard to make, and it’s unlikely she’ll be getting more anytime soon, since it’s the height of summer and the dryad fletchers that used to make her arrows are asleep, if not long-dead – and holds them out behind her for Edmund to take. After he’s freed her hands, she pulls her cordial out from beneath her shift and uncorks it, eyeing the centaur thoughtfully.

“You’re going to die in five minutes if you don’t drink this,” she says, a little reluctantly. Let him die, for all she cares; he tried to kill her family. “Drink it.”

The centaur opens his mouth and Lucy gives him a drop of cordial, retreating to Edmund’s side as the wounds heal.

“Good,” Peter says from the stairwell and Lucy doesn’t quite jump, although her grip tightens briefly on the cordial – don’t drop it, don’t drop it, the mantra that’s been beaten into her head ever since Father Christmas put it into her hands. The crystal hasn’t broken yet, no matter how many times she has dropped it, but it could, and she doesn’t want to risk it.

Her brother strolls forward, bloody sword held in his right hand, and Lucy hears the tightness and anger in his voice as he gives orders.

“Yes, but why do you want them alive?” Cirocco demands, like no one would ever have dared to back when Cair Paravel had still stood. Narnians have never been the most formal of creatures, but this is – unheard of. They barely know us! Lucy thinks indignantly. Such liberties were restricted to the closest friends of the royal family, and that by the unspoken consent of all Narnia; Peter had never said anything on the subject. Such lightness, as if Peter is – is Caspian, is a comrade-in-arms and not a commander – is absurd.

“So I can kill them later,” Peter says. He turns his attention aside and glances around, gaze falling on her. “Lu, are you all right?”

Startled – she isn’t wounded at all, at least not that she’s noticed, and she is trained to notice these things – Lucy looks down at herself, only now noticing that her hands are covered in blood. Susan’s and the centaur’s, most likely. “Not my blood,” she says, holding her hands up so Peter can see her skin’s untouched. “You’re bleeding,” she adds sternly, only now seeing the wound in his left arm – from the tear in his sleeve, likely a dagger that went through the muscle, and Peter wouldn’t have noticed, because he never noticed things like that. “Come here.”

He comes over, protesting slightly for form’s sake – “It’s not that bad, Lu,” like he says every time – and Lucy rips apart the fabric on his sleeve to get a better look at the wound. Straight through, relatively clean, still bleeding sluggishly. She was wrong – not a dagger wound at all, the size is all wrong. Sword, then. Strictly speaking Peter doesn’t need the cordial, because it’s only life-threatening if it gets infected or if Peter’s left arm fails him in battle, but given the way the rest of their stay in Narnia has gone, she wouldn’t put either option aside as unlikely.

Of course, she remembers after Peter’s already swallowed the drop of cordial she gives him, there’s the little problem of Peter’s immunity, and she watches his arm worriedly. At the very least the wound won’t get septic, even if it doesn’t heal. The immunity seems to have gone with his scars, though, and Peter works his now-healed arm experimentally and gives her a smile. She can smell the alcohol on his breath, just like so many nights back in England. Oh, Peter, Lucy thinks, heartbroken. Has Narnia destroyed you too?

Because Edmund still has the remains of his shirt clamped to his face, she goes over to him too. “Ed, you too,” she begins, “you’re hurt –”

“Look, it’s already stopped bleeding,” he says, pulling his shirt away from his face. The fabric is now a brilliant red – blood would be prettier if it wasn’t, well, blood – but his nose has stopped bleeding.

Lucy purses her lips and lets it be, looking over Susan – unhurt now but faintly scarred – and Caspian, whose worst injury is a torn shirt and a few scratches, not worthy of attention at all. He’s too busy trying to fuss over a disinterested Susan to notice at all.

The work party led by Trufflehunter that’s come up the stairs to remove the bodies gets them out of Susan and Lucy’s room first, at Susan’s request. Lucy gets a torch down out of the hallway to light up the room before she follows her sister inside, shutting the door behind her even though the smell of blood is cloying. Peter and Edmund have seen all they have to offer, but it’s for form’s sake more than anything else. Lucy doesn’t particularly care, but Susan will point out it’s not proper for their subjects to see them in the flesh unless it’s entirely necessary.

“I don’t believe I said thank you, Lu,” Susan says from the other side of the room, dropping bow and quiver with a rattle of arrows.

“You’re welcome.” Lucy splashes her hands in the clay water basin, watching the blood flake away, and dries her hands before going to dress. She drops Susan’s dagger on her bedroll and says thoughtfully, “I hope Trufflehunter gives me my dagger back.”

“I’m sure he will.”

They’re silent for a bit, the only noise the rustle of fabric as they dress, and then Susan says, “Could you –”

“Of course,” Lucy says, stepping over to get the ties on the back of Susan’s dress. “There!”

“Thank you,” Susan says, turning around. She looks tired, but the cordial does that – there’s a balance; the energy has to come from somewhere.

Lucy frowns. “You should wash your hair,” she says, since Susan’s is thick and sticky with blood, caked together in odd patterns.

Susan raises a hand to touch it and scowls. “Yes,” she says wryly. “I suppose I should.”

She collects her weapons, adding the dagger Lucy hands her to her belt, and goes out into the hall, Lucy following and yawning behind her hand. Not much sleep, and getting attacked hadn’t helped at all. She’s tired, and this will be a long day.

Susan and Edmund chat while Caspian looks uncomfortable. Lucy listens, head against the tunnel wall, smiling a little at Edmund’s rebuke of Peter. She turns her head as Peepiceek comes up the stairs to tell Edmund where the prisoners are being held.

“We’ll be down as soon as Peter’s done primping,” Edmund drawls. “Su, Lu, did you want to come?”

Lucy shakes her head. She’s done interrogations before, but it’s not generally something she likes doing, and besides, she doesn’t particularly want to see Peter angry.

Susan says primly, “I’m going to wash my hair.”

Edmund seems to notice the blood in her hair for the first time. “Yeah, sis,” he says, grinning. “You may want to do that. You haven’t been such a mess since that time in the swamps, you know, with the giants. You fell in and –”

“I remember that,” Lucy says, giggling, and then grins broader when she realizes she does remember it. That had been one of the high points of that entire miserable year when Peter had been missing and they’d been dragging themselves around Narnia, trying to do the five hundred things they hadn’t realized he’d been doing until he wasn’t doing it any more.

“So do I,” Susan says, suddenly sounding tired. “And,” she adds, drawing herself up and forcing a smile, “I hardly need a reminder. Now, if you’ll excuse me –”

Edmund bows mockingly – Archenlander style, a courtly leg that Lucy remembers from her time in Anvard and Prince Corin’s fostering in Cair Paravel – and Susan snorts as she goes past. Lucy follows because the alternative is going with Peter and Edmund to the interrogation, and she’s not in the mood.

Down in the lowest level of the How, where the River Elif runs through solid stone to provide water for the Narnian army, Llamrei the unicorn is standing guard per Peter’s orders. She pivots neatly on her hind hooves as they come down the stairs.

“Your majesties,” she acknowledges, bowing her head. “Is all well? I thought I heard a commotion.”

“Oh, you know,” Lucy says, going to touch the soft, soft fur as Susan crosses to the stacked buckets. “Assassination attempts. Peter’s not very happy,” she adds primly as Llamrei nuzzles her shoulder.

Llamrei’s head comes up sharply and Lucy has to jump back to avoid her horn. “Assassination –” she begins, horrified.

“Well, they were only attempts,” Lucy says, a little confused. Attempts aren’t good, but they’re better than actual assassinations. Llamrei still looks upset, though, so Lucy tells her about the trap Peter arranged for the assassins on Galma.

“You see,” she explains, not thinking about it at all – there’s a trick to remembering things about Narnia, she’s found, and that’s to not try to remember, but let the memories come as they will, “they worshipped Aslan as the Sun, but over a hundred years they’d forgotten that he was the Sun, and so they thought they had to kill Peter, because after the White Witch, they didn’t want any more demon-worship in the islands – that’s what they thought Aslan was, of course, a demon like the White Witch. They’d been going around bribing the maskmakers to find out what Peter and Ed and I were wearing – they were going to kill us during Carnival, when no one would be able to see their faces – and the maskmakers got together and came to see Peter and tell him what was happening. So Peter and Edmund and I were all ready. There were more of them than we expected, and the guard got held up because there were just too many people in the way – during Carnival everyone’s in the streets – and I got hurt, but Jabari – he was part of the guard, he was a jaguar – killed him and Edmund gave me my cordial, so I was all right. Meanwhile, Peter and the head assassin were fighting, and then Peter cut off his sword-hand and used a torch to cauterize it right then and there – he was screaming, it was horrible, but Peter was going to try him for treason and he had to be alive for that, of course.” She pauses for breath. “Anyway, we found him guilty, and Peter was all set to execute him – and then Aslan showed up.”

“The Great Lion himself?” Llamrei asks with rapt attention.

“Yes!” Lucy says, and lets the familiar bitterness wash through her and be replaced with the even more familiar excitement. “Anyway, the assassin told Aslan that he still wanted to kill Peter, and Aslan told him that when Galma had been part of Narnia the first time ‘round, before the White Witch, the King of Narnia was called the Son of the Sun – because the Sun and Aslan are the same person, you see. And I thought the assassin understood that, but then he said that he still wanted to kill Peter, and Aslan sort of sighed and looked at Peter and said, ‘Do your duty, High King.’ And then he left,” she finishes.

“What happened then?” Llamrei asks after a pause.

Lucy blinks. “After what?”

“What did the Lion mean when he told the High King to do his duty?”

“Oh,” Lucy says, surprised. Isn’t it obvious? But she doesn’t say that, because times have changed, after all. “Then Peter killed him. He met a very brave end. He never once begged for mercy, and he did keep saying he wanted to kill Peter, so he never repented. But I suppose he went to Aslan’s country in the end, since he was doing what he thought was right for the Sun, and the Sun is Aslan, after all.” She looks at Llamrei expectantly, wondering why she doesn’t say anything.

Eventually, Llamrei says, “The High King killed him?”

“Well, yes,” Lucy says, but that isn’t the relevant part of the story at all. “Obviously. What else were we going to do with him? I suppose we could have taken him back to Cair Paravel and had the execution there, but Peter did want to make a point to Galma, and it’s rather hard to do that from the mainland – that’s why we were on Galma in the first place, of course.” Because they’d known that there were dissenters on Galma, and dissent usually led to assassination attempts – she’d lost track of how many times someone had tried to kill them outside of a battlefield long before they returned to England and she lost track of everything else – and Edmund believed in quelling problems before they became problems.

Llamrei doesn’t say anything else, and Lucy takes a minute to look back at the story she’s just told. It sounds right, and Susan hasn’t corrected her. That means – “Su, I remember! I haven’t thought about that in ages and I remember it like it was yesterday!”

“It’s always been yesterday for me,” Susan says, turning to smile at her, and Lucy frowns. Just because she and Peter remember Narnia in ways that Lucy and Edmund can’t…

“Did I get it all?” Susan continues, and Lucy squints at her hair. It’s hard to see red blood against black hair, but from the way the texture looks –

“Yes, you’re fine,” she says. “Su, I remember!” she repeats, trying to impress the importance of this on her sister.

“I’m glad,” Susan says absently.

Lucy scowls and reaches out to touch Llamrei’s neck again, glancing up at the sound of steps on the stairs. Prince Caspian freezes midway down, and Lucy turns in time to see Susan lower her bow and return the drawn arrow to her quiver, saying unrepentantly, “Sorry.”

“If this is going to be a habit, I don’t like it,” Caspian replies, offering a faint, uncertain smile. “The High King barely missed impaling me only a few minutes ago.”

And what did you do to deserve that? Lucy wonders, but all she says is, “He is rather rash and impulsive like that.”

Caspian arches his eyebrows, apparently unamused. He comes down the rest of the stairs, pulling Lucy’s dagger from his belt, and steps toward Susan. “Trufflehunter said to give this to you,” he says.

“That’s mine,” Lucy says, taking it from him. “Su always goes for her bow before she goes for her dagger,” she adds in explanation, which is stupid, even for an archer as good as Susan. Going for a distance weapon only works if you’re actually at a distance. On the other hand, Lucy threw away her only weapon, so she supposes she doesn’t really have all that much going for her either.

Caspian stares at her. “You…stabbed Prettyfur,” he says disbelievingly.

“No, don’t be ridiculous, I wouldn’t let him get close enough to stab him,” Lucy points out reasonably, testing the blade of her dagger on the ball of her thumb – dulled slightly, but still mostly sharp – and sheathing it. “I threw my dagger at him. What did you say to Peter?” she inquires curiously, because Peter may be rash, but he’s not – usually – rash without cause. Usually. Most of the time.

“I didn’t say anything,” Caspian says, and tries to explain what happened. He’s looking at Susan the entire time, like Lucy’s not even there. It’s like trying to deal with foreign diplomats all over again. Lucy sighs and goes back to Llamrei. The unicorn ducks her head so Lucy can put her arms around her neck, but all her attention is on Caspian and Susan too.

The relevant part of Caspian’s speech and Susan’s pointed interruptions is that Peter has given orders. Susan’s the one that says execution, not Caspian, which means that Peter didn’t say it either, but they all know that’s exactly what he means. It’s not like he’s exactly subtle or unpredictable outside of a battlefield.

Caspian leaves at Susan’s sharp rebuke a few minutes later – and she’s absolutely right, of course; Edmund’s orders are no less legitimate than Peter’s and must be obeyed.

“Peter,” Lucy says to Susan. She doesn’t say anything more; she doesn’t have to.

Susan sighs, quickly bundling her hair up at the back of her neck. “Yes,” she agrees, picking up her bow and quiver again.

Peter’s door is – predictably – closed, and Susan and Lucy lean against the wall, waiting in silence. It doesn’t take long for him to emerge carrying Rhindon sheathed in his sword-hand. He glances at them, but his eyes go straight through as if they’re not even there.

No, Lucy thinks abruptly. He’s not happy at all.

“Peter, you’re not –” Susan says suddenly, “– not on the Stone Table –”

He wouldn’t. She glances between Susan and Peter, feeling the gorge rise in the back of her throat, because – He wouldn’t. He’s not –

“I’m not the God damn White Witch,” Peter snaps.

Susan’s expression is distraught. “I wish we didn’t have to do this again,” she murmurs, and Lucy presses close to her but doesn’t say anything, trying to get across her comfort wordlessly. It’s a shame, but it’s necessary, and Susan’s always understood this before. They’d be worse off if they let the traitors live – to try again, or to bring news of the Narnians to Miraz, or to use up valuable resources.

Peter stops and presses the knuckles of his free hand to the curve of Susan’s shoulder, harsh expression gentling. “So do I,” he says quietly. “But it has to be done.”

“Yes,” Lucy says, but it’s so quiet she doesn’t think either Peter or Susan hears her.

Peter turns toward her, holding Rhindon out, and Lucy takes the sword in her hands, arms dipping under the weight. She’s forgotten.

They go out into the early morning sunlight, where Edmund is waiting, a brilliant figure with three others kneeling on the stone behind him, the dark shadow that is Caspian off to the side.

I am the Queen of Morning, Lucy thinks absurdly, and steps up to take her place by Susan’s side as Edmund formally hands over the accused assassins to Peter – to Narnia, really, since Peter isn’t Peter, just now: he’s the High King, and the High King is Narnia herself.

She doesn’t remember the words that Peter speaks from their days, but he doesn’t hesitate or stumble. His voice is clear and cold with anger. This is trial and execution together, Lucy knows, and she has to remember what she’s supposed to say. She has to.

But Narnian memories don’t come when forced, and Lucy hears herself hesitating when Peter’s questions come to her, even though she’s just heard Susan and Edmund say the words she should repeat. Aslan! she thinks, the thought fleeting, and opens her mind.

Afterwards, she doesn’t have the faintest idea of what she’s said, but it has to have been the right thing – why don’t I just remember? All the others remember, why not me? Why does it have to be so hard? – because Peter’s moved on. Caspian gives his testimony, and then Peter turns his attention to the accused. They spit curses at him.

“So be it,” Peter says, and Lucy thinks he sounds tired. They’ve done this so many times – she remembers that, even if she can’t remember more than a handful of specific incidences.

She draws Rhindon. The sword is gleaming, seemingly untouched by time – the only wear on the hilt is that which was there when they left, the leather soft and strong from Peter’s hands. Carefully, she reverses Rhindon and puts the hilt into Peter’s waiting hand. Her body knows this, at least, even if her mind has been wiped clean, all her memories blurred beyond recognition.

Peter ends it.

Their deaths are familiar, in a way that goes bone-deep. Peter, Rhindon, an arc of blood and a falling head. Abruptly, Lucy remembers something: she’s done this herself. But she’s not Peter and she never has been – she’s not even Edmund, and she doesn’t have the strength of arm to sever a neck in one stroke.

It had taken her three.

Not the memory she wants, but a memory nonetheless, and Lucy treasures it, savoring the taste of it, the ghost of shock running up her arm as the sword met bone, the blood that struck her face and her dress. She’d thrown up afterwards.

Peter calls on Aslan in the name of Narnia. Lucy steps back to hand him what he wants – Rhindon’s scabbard and a cleaning cloth. Peter cleans his sword with a care he’s never shown towards a living soul and sheathes it. He turns back to them, face bleak.

“Burn the bodies,” he says. “All of them.” He doesn’t wait for a response before striding away, back into the depths of the How.

Burned, Lucy thinks as the army starts to dissipate. No less than they deserve – fire destroys completely, leaving behind nothing but ashes. It’s the worst possible burial for a Narnian and even Peter hesitates at ordering it for any but the worst of all crimes. Usually he just sends the bodies back to their families and charges them for the cost, but of course, that’s not really practical at the moment.

“How could you let her see this?” Caspian demands suddenly of Susan, and it’s so absurd that it takes Lucy a minute to realize that by her he means Lucy.

“Whom do you mean?” Susan inquires, voice cool. Even her eyes don’t betray her anger. “I’ve seen worse things.”

It’s an opening for Lucy, and she takes it. Of the four of them here, she’s not the child. “I have killed men in battle,” she snaps. “I’ve done the work of a sovereign ruler; death is no less my duty than it is my brothers’.” And since Caspian is a child – although he may only be a few years younger than she is – was – she can’t help adding spitefully, “And what have you done?”

Caspian stares at her. After a moment, he says uncertainly, “My uncle keeps executioners.”

Edmund, who’s been relaying Peter’s orders, turns sharply at that. “A coward’s choice,” he spits. “The kings of Narnia kill our own criminals. Oh, I know,” he adds viciously. “Horrible, isn’t it? Almost barbaric. I suppose it’s much more civilized to turn your face away and let someone else spill the blood that’s rightfully yours. That way you can pretend your hands are clean.”

“I didn’t say –”

Lucy crosses her arms over her chest and glares at him.

“To be king,” Edmund says, voice still harsh and angry, “is to take on the sins of land and people alike. To be king is to keep and hold, shepherd and protect. To be king is to be sole expiator of those sins, for the land is in your keeping alone, and should one of your people fail, then you have failed as well. Mercy is the provenance of lesser men: it is the nature of the king to do that which is unnatural. When you spill the blood of your people: you spill your own blood. You must be willing and able. I need a drink,” he adds, shaking his head and turning away.

“It’s six in the morning,” Susan rebukes.

“Five o’clock back in England, then,” Edmund snaps back, and heads into the How.

Lucy follows. “I’m going to talk to Peter,” she says over her shoulder. It’s a snap decision, but she knows her brother; she knows where he’ll be.

She’s right, of course. Peter is sitting cross-legged on the Stone Table, Rhindon sheathed across his lap, staring at the carving of Aslan as torchlight glints off his hair. Lucy gets up on the table beside him and puts her head on his shoulder, sighing a little bit as Peter hugs her.

War. Rebellion. An enemy. They’ve been here before. “What will you do?” she asks, looking at Aslan.

Peter is silent for a minute, then he says, “End it,” voice quiet and infinitely sad. She wonders if it’s Aslan who has spoken to him, or if it’s Narnia herself.

He bows his head. “However I must.”



Introduction | On a Summer Midnight | Of Dead Secrets | Gone Under the Hill | In a Dark Wood | In Constellated Wars

Comments

[lassiterfics.livejournal.com]

BAHAHAHA @ Edmund's speech's ENDING. Also at how his speech is pretty much just PETER/NARNIA IN DISGUISE. You hussy.

men that Peter only needed to keep alive long enough to kill them in public.
Hell yes.

I LOVE LUCY:
Lucy being all confused like HUH? WHAT DO YOU-- OH I SEE, NOT MY BLOOD ACTUALLY.
He’s looking at Susan the entire time, like Lucy’s not even there. It’s like trying to deal with foreign diplomats all over again. HARHARHAR.

normally hands over the accused assassins to Peter – to Narnia, really, since Peter isn’t Peter, just now: he’s the High King, and the High King is Narnia herself.
Yessssssssss. And when they call him Your Highness, they really are talking to his highness, his majesty, and not to the boy Pevensie.

Congrats on finishing this. OH BEDLAM <333333

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

His speech is not Peter/Narnia! It is totally all Edmund.

(I am going to have to figure out how to answer feedback when it's scattered over five different parts. *bemused*)

[swift-tales.livejournal.com]

I love your Lucy, absolutely love her. She's so pragmatic and a little oblivious to the fact that the other Narnia's don't see it as being pragmatic, I think. She's very strong in this story and you can really feel that she isn't a child. The way you explained why she was the one left behind is sooooo much better then what the Narnians might have thought was the reason, you know, her looking so young.

And it's not just Lucy, you know, the way she talks and thinks about her siblings clearly make you realize that they're all adults, in their own right and that no one seems to understand that, even if they do follow Peter's orders.

I was quite fond of how you had her think about her cordial, how she handled it carefully, kept it close to her heart. How her responses and her actions with it are ingrained into her brain and her muscles and her entire body, because it's absolutely vital that she keeps it, that she doesn't spill, that she manages to use it on time.

And Oh Peter and Edmund, they've become immune to it, Peter completely and Edmund to a certain degree, and that says so fucking much!

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Lucy's hard to get a handle on because, well -- she doesn't remember as much, so in some ways she is more of a child than the others, but on the other hand, she's so very not: she can't possibly be.

I am so fond of the developed immunity to the cordial, you have no idea. *bounces*

[swift-tales.livejournal.com]

Well, it says so much about Peter and Edmund. I mean, to me, that more then anything else, tells me that Peter and Edmund were in fights constantly and that they got hurt all the time and that they fought and were in battle. The immunity really screams it out.

And yeah, there are some moments in the fic where Lucy does seem like a child... like the bit at the underground river when she cannot understand why the unicorn seems so suprised or why she asks the questions that she asks... that spells a little bit of a child to me. But the rest you know, she isn't a child anymore, not really she just looks like one.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

I don't know if that's necessarily Lucy being a child or Lucy just being Lucy, because in some ways she's even worse than Peter as far as shades of black and white go. And it's another point of cultural dislocation: the piece of history that says that the Narnian kings kill their own criminals isn't something that's survived down the years. So what Lucy thinks may be obvious, because it would be to anyone from her Narnia, isn't to anyone from this Narnia.

[swift-tales.livejournal.com]

That's a good point. I mean, it's obvious that it's not the same thing in Telmarine society. But so much of the true traditions of Narnia have been lost over the centuries and considering that there weren't any true kings in Narnia for over 1300 years there wouldn't actually be anyone who would need to know that, so it would be easily forgotten.
Besides, it's not something you like to tell your kids when you're telling them about their ancestry, you know? Imagine it, they're singing a song to tell of the nobility of the four kings and queens of olde and all of a sudden grandmother beever goes: oh and by the way, lads, Narnian kings kill their own criminals. They behead them!

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

*snort* Yes, exactly. And while it may be implied in some Narnian folklore, that's completely different from seeing it up close and personal.

[burntcopper.livejournal.com]

Understand that I am going FLAILYFLAILY over this entire thing, so just a couple of comments :

My love for how Lucy is thinking of the cordial and cross with herself for so much of it and not being up to her old standards, but the best? The way she just accepts all this as normal. No actual thinking, just doing and getting on with everything, because this has been the majority of her life's experiences, especially the 'they were only attempts, what's the big deal?' and 'well, yeah, what did you think we were going to do?' story of Galma. Plus of course, nothing like pissed off at Caspian because in her eyes, he's the child.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

*nods* Lucy -- all of them, really -- are so far from normal they're not even in the same zip code, because this is their normal.

[westingturtle.livejournal.com]

Oh Lucy! The only memory she comes up with is beheading a man, but she'll snuggle with it anyway as long as she gets to remember Narnia. Beautiful detail in the three strokes and blood and whatnot.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Thank you. It's not that she doesn't have happy memories of Narnia, it's just that, well, they're not necessarily what's called for at the minute.

[ineptshieldmaid.livejournal.com]

Oh, WOW.

Just wow. Lots of wow.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Heh. Thanks.

[cupiscent.livejournal.com]

God, Lucy. You're two steps away from being some manner of terrifying Japanese horror-child, I swear. Blood-thirsty in that cold, unthinking way only children can manage. This is such a wonderful melange of insights only the innocent can have, and stark capability, and the uneasy negotiation of the parts of herself. Why can't she remember is so very poignant, and underlines how the struggle to return is just as hard for her as for Peter, if not as visible.

Whee, onwards.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

She is, isn't she? I mean, they all are, but Lucy...

[dikela.livejournal.com]

Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU.
For the Narnian fandom I had electrum and Sentimental Star on FF.net and now I found you. I am reading all your Narnian posts -- metas and fics -- one after another and I am squweeeeeeing inside (I can't do it aloud as I am at work now).
I have just started reading this fic, and I wanted to tell you how much I appreciate you before I point out a possible error.

And since Caspian is a child – although he may only be a few years younger than she is

I think some words are missing here, since in years Caspian is older than Lucy. It is in his mind and experience that he is younger.

I hope you don't mind that I friended you and now you have a friend in Russia.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much!

That's not an error. In years, Lucy is older -- she would have been in her mid-twenties when the Pevensies left Narnia, and she's still thinking like that now. Her body is about a decade younger than Caspian, but in actual years she's older by a little bit, at least the way I look at it.