Immortal!Susan and Resurrected!Peter, on the other hand... The words you are looking for are 'share men, drink wine while not quite reminiscing, and hound each other about the dishes'.
I'm in one of those moods where I just want to start writing it. You know, where it starts with Susan's alarm clock going off, she gets up, checks the mirror to see if she's developed any wrinkles or gray hairs (she hasn't of course; she hasn't aged a day since 1956), eats breakfast, grabs her purse, her badge, and her gun, goes to work, smiles at the receptionist, gets her mail, opens up a mysterious envelope with a badly smeared return address -- and sees a picture of Peter. Then she sits down. Hard. In the middle of the lobby of the FBI building. (Maybe it's the J. Edgar Hoover Building in DC.)
And then, later, her boss is going, "How do you know it's really him?" and Susan pulls out a picture of Peter...from WWII. In his RAF uniform. In black and white.
Then like she's boarding the plane, and she's thinking about how airplanes still don't make sense to her, so big and lumbering and yet stays in the air without magic... And she's like "PAH!" because she has no patience for so-called magic, she hasn't for a while. But maybe things are changing. She resists pulling out Peter's picture again (she knows what it looks like, she's pored over it with disbelief and confusion and the slight gnawings of hope), and she buckles her seat belt instead, flips through the duty free magazine selling silk ties and designer perfumes, tries to come up for non-magical explanations for this and doubts all of them.
And later, when she's breaking into a building with skills she learned in two different worlds and three different centuries, it really is Peter, and he stares at her and speaks in Narnian, and for a minute Susan hesitates, because she hasn't spoken the language in so long (but she keeps a journal in it, because there's no one else on Earth who can read it), and then it falls naturally to her lips and she gasps in relief and surprise and hugs Peter to her.
It's like talking a child, she thinks as she's showing Peter how modern appliances work. Except he's not a child. (Every time they come back to this world, they're never the right age.) He takes in her explanations with calm, and asks few questions, but then again, he might just still be drug-addled. For her part, she tries not to talk down to Peter, knowing how much he hates it, and she takes the tone of Ed relaying intelligence or explaining a battle strategy.
This is the thermostat, for when it gets too hot or cold. This is the telephone -- it's got buttons now. This is the television, and this is its remote control. Peter frowns at the remote, asks her if she has a radio. She doesn't.
In the kitchen she says, "This is the coffeemaker," and Peter says, "I could use some coffee," so she shows him how it's done. After they both have a warm mug in their hands, she goes to phone her boss, already running through her Perfectly Reasonable Explanation in her head. Peter settles himself on her sofa, and begins reading the newspaper.
New Orleans! Uh, I got nothin'. Okay, if he got resurrected by the Telmarines from the South Seas...that really doesn't narrow it down any farther. New York? Seattle? LA? Boston? Honolulu? London? London might work.
"What do you remember?" she asks out of the blue, and Peter looks up at her with surprise. She puts the lid of her laptop down so that there's nothing between them.
He shrugs, lower lip between his teeth, and says, "The train coming around the corner too fast. Ed throwing me down like all those times we got shot at. After that -- nothing until I woke up in a coffin." He shudders, eyes darkening, and looks down at his battered hands. He'd had to claw his way out of his own grave, and he'd already been claustrophobic for years before that. He sleeps with all the lights on now.
Susan hesitates, and Peter surprises her by reaching for her hand.
He stares at the world map on the laptop screen and thinks The sun never sets on the British Empire with grimness and an air of 'why am I not surprised'. Singapore won its independence in 1963, Hong Kong in 1997, and apparently India is shooting up to the top of the world. ("Well," Susan mused, "they're working on it.") The USSR is now Russia, Rhodesia Zimbabwe (how quaint!), and he doesn't recognize eastern Europe, or Africa for that matter, at all. It's a little bit like going back to Narnia and finding Cair Paravel in ruins, old paths leading to dead ends. He is betrayed by geography once more. He has been left behind in the dust of history. Again.
"Do you think Aslan meant for this to happen? My coming back, that is."
"Don't be stupid."
Peter doesn't seem to hear her and goes on, "Is England in a crisis?"
I'm actually rather fond of London, especially if they raised him from the grave, because, wow, more trauma.
(Dude, I totally wrote bits of this last night.)
"Susan," Peter whispers from the door, and Susan rolls over to see him wide awak, standing with his hand clenched tightly on the doorframe. Behind him, the sitting room is lit up as brightly as day.
Peter looks terrified, and deserpate, and more than a little bit mad. "Com ehere," Susan says, throwing back the sheets and reaching over to turn on the bedside lamp.
He doesn't say anything, but his expression is desperately, starkly grateful as he coves over, leaving the door open behind him, and crawls into bed with her.
"Come here," Susan says again, careful to speak in Narnian and not English -- she's not even certain that Peter remembers more than a few words of English, especially not in the state he's in, the last traces of the drugs still filtering their way out of his body.
Peter is shaking when she puts her arms around him, a faint but distinct tremor, but he hugs her back, holding on so tightly and yet so gently that Susan thinks she might crack from it. She kisses his forehead and leaves the lights on.
(Dude, I totally wrote bits of this last night.) XD so HARD. HEE. <3
and ZOMG peter&susaaaaan CUDDLING EACH OTHER TO SLEEP <333333. She hasn't had to deal with a brother in several lifetimes, or deal with a resurrected one in even longer than that. If they had had Lucy's cordial, she finds herself thinking, then Peter would be in a better state.
But even the cordial brought its own subtle poison: delusions of grandeur, pretensions of immortality, the excuse to always do what is Right instead of what must be done. It is dangerous for someone to think they can never die, and it was no surprise that Peter developed the strongest immunity to the cordial. When Susan found out, she felt understandably far from reassured. When she told him to be careful in the tone that meant she Meant It, he would just feel miffed and put upon.
You worry too much, he would reply.
Only because you don't worry enough.
Are you joking? I worry all the ti--
Never about the important things, however.
You would think that, of course.
What do you mean, 'I would think that'?
And they would fight some more, driven by the inevitability of duty and love, letting themselves be angry at one another. Sometimes it ended with kisses, sometimes with the sound of doors slamming, but most times it was a draw. Still, when Peter returned home from some battle, some siege or other, Susan had to resist the urge to run to her brother and throw herself into his arms. She knew he would have embraced her back, but she was a Queen of Narnia, not some clingy child, and someone had to keep a level head.
Everything about Peter is abrupt now, a half-beat out of step with the time and the world. "The police called me," Susan says quietly. "I had to identify the bodies."
Peter winces a little, but shakes his head. "That's not what I meant," he says. "Narnia. Do you remember her?"
It's a test, Susan realizes even as she says, "Of course," because sixty years ago she would have said no. But it's three lifetimes (at least) later now, and there's no point to denying the truth, especially to Peter. "I never forgot."
Peter flexes his hands -- scarred and callused in what seem like all the wrong places -- and looks down at them. "I can almost feel her," he says, "and I remember her. But I feel like I'm remembering something wrong, like she wasn't good enough, and -- God," he swears uncharacteristically, because he's always sworn by Aslan or the Seven, a holdover from his year with the westron mercenaries. "How do you stand it?"
Susan flinches and Peter immediately looks shamefaced. "I didn't mean it like that," he apologizes. "It's just that -- it's always been different for me."
"I know," Susan says gently, and Peter puts his head in his hands, fingers digging into his thick hair.
EDITED VERSION because I forgot he doesn't remember being dead. Oh, the hazards of playing with other people's toys.
"And I haven't figured out whether it's a blessing or a curse yet," she shrugs, "or whether it has a purpose."
Peter soaks in the bathtub, staring at the ceiling. Susan sits on the bathroom counter smoking a cigarette, ashing in the toilet bowl. He says, "Everything has a purpose."
"If there's a prophecy lying around somewhere explaining why I'm now doomed to walk the earth forever, I'd really like to see it."
"Am I immortal too, then?"
She hesitates. "I don't know. Actually I'm not sure if I'm immortal or just have a really, really long life-span."
But, the very thought of Peter growing old and dying, leaving her again, while she stayed young and looked on... She wasn't sure she was ready to think about that. She had just gotten him back.
"Come here with that," says Peter.
"What?"
He gestures at the cigarette.
Susan slides off the counter and kneels by the tub, putting the cigarette to Peter's lips. He inhales deeply and exhales the smoke through his nostrils. Susan is momentarily reminded of Hadassar.
"Do you want to live forever?" she asks.
"I don't fucking know," he mutters. "No one exactly asked my permission before bringing me back from the dead, either."
"You're acting the ingrate a bit, aren't you?" she says with a small smile.
He doesn't reply. She offers the cigarette to him again and he shakes his head, so she takes a last drag, tosses the butt in the toilet bowl, and stands up.
"I'm going to start dinner," she says. "Give us a shout if you need anything."
Oh, Susan and Peter. They are just so screwed up, aren't they?
Back inside the bedroom, PEter is still sleeping, the light from the overhead lamp limning the gold in his hair and deepening the shadows on his face. Susan stands in the doorway and watches him for a long time.
Her brother, back when she'd thought she'd never see him again, not even beyond the grave she hadn't yet -- and maybe never would -- come close to reaching. Sixty years late, but isn't that their curse? To remain beyond all hope of salvation, when even time has betrayed them? And a Raising is voilent, and unnatural, and no work of God's or Aslan's or anyone else's, but she's stubbornly, selfishly glad that Peter is here nonetheless, even though no one should have to share her curse.
He's sleeping face-down, one hand beneath his pillow, the other stretched out across her side of the bed, like he's reaching for someone. Susan hopes it's her.
Why Peter? she wonders, not for the first time. In England, he's nothing more than another RAF pilot damaged by the war, just the oldest son of another family destroyed by Hitler's mad quest. There are thousands of others just like him.
He wakes up the way he always does, or always did, all at once, a sudden trasition between sleeping and waking. For a moment his expression is blank and Susan stiffens and leans forward, praying to every god she's ever heard of that he recognizes her, then he says slowly, "Susan."
"I'm here," Susan says, crossing to the bed and perching on it next to him.
Peter rubs a hand over his face. "Evverything's...blurred," he says uncertainly in Old Narnian. "I don't --" He reaches out and touches her cheek and Susan turns her face into his palm. "Know," he finishes. "I don't know."
"You know me," Susan assures him. "Do you know where we are?"
Peter hesitates before answering, looking around the plain hotel room. "England," he says, a world of disappointment in his voice. "We're in England."
Susan nods, his hand still on her face like he's trying to divine the truth of her words by touch alone.
It would be a very interesting story, but I would miss Edmund. Somehow I love Peter&Edmund best. In fact, IMHO, Peter would need him. And they are connected to each other and Narnia.
So could you add Edmund into the mix?
Those somebodies who resurrected Peter find that he pulled another one with him; but since Edmund came by himself he would be late in coming and Susan has already got Peter. And maybe Edmund would be affected worse, amnesia or insanity.
And then Peter starts dreaming about Edmund... And he doesn't realize what it means... And then...!
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-15 07:32 am (UTC)So you've finally come out of hallucination and make it real! *dances*
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-15 08:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-15 09:37 am (UTC)Yay petaverse!
So, back from your tour of deNile? Did you enjoy the pyramids? We missed you!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-15 05:15 pm (UTC)*actually has appropriate icon*
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-15 06:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-15 09:42 am (UTC)It doesn't qualify as a hallucination any more, does it? :p
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-15 05:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-15 11:15 am (UTC)I remember not long ago a certain someone threatening me with a genderswitch fic to demonstrate that there *is too*...
And now you've got a VERSE.Right before you leave for college! *grins*
Good luck with the packing and if I don't talk to you before you leave, have a good trip. *hugs*
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-15 05:16 pm (UTC)Thank you.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-15 09:34 pm (UTC)The words you are looking for are 'share men, drink wine while not quite reminiscing, and hound each other about the dishes'.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-15 10:41 pm (UTC)And then, later, her boss is going, "How do you know it's really him?" and Susan pulls out a picture of Peter...from WWII. In his RAF uniform. In black and white.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-15 11:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-15 11:27 pm (UTC)And later, when she's breaking into a building with skills she learned in two different worlds and three different centuries, it really is Peter, and he stares at her and speaks in Narnian, and for a minute Susan hesitates, because she hasn't spoken the language in so long (but she keeps a journal in it, because there's no one else on Earth who can read it), and then it falls naturally to her lips and she gasps in relief and surprise and hugs Peter to her.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-16 12:47 am (UTC)<3 the Narnian journal!
It's like talking a child, she thinks as she's showing Peter how modern appliances work. Except he's not a child. (Every time they come back to this world, they're never the right age.) He takes in her explanations with calm, and asks few questions, but then again, he might just still be drug-addled. For her part, she tries not to talk down to Peter, knowing how much he hates it, and she takes the tone of Ed relaying intelligence or explaining a battle strategy.
This is the thermostat, for when it gets too hot or cold. This is the telephone -- it's got buttons now. This is the television, and this is its remote control. Peter frowns at the remote, asks her if she has a radio. She doesn't.
In the kitchen she says, "This is the coffeemaker," and Peter says, "I could use some coffee," so she shows him how it's done. After they both have a warm mug in their hands, she goes to phone her boss, already running through her Perfectly Reasonable Explanation in her head. Peter settles himself on her sofa, and begins reading the newspaper.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-16 02:37 am (UTC)"What do you remember?" she asks out of the blue, and Peter looks up at her with surprise. She puts the lid of her laptop down so that there's nothing between them.
He shrugs, lower lip between his teeth, and says, "The train coming around the corner too fast. Ed throwing me down like all those times we got shot at. After that -- nothing until I woke up in a coffin." He shudders, eyes darkening, and looks down at his battered hands. He'd had to claw his way out of his own grave, and he'd already been claustrophobic for years before that. He sleeps with all the lights on now.
Susan hesitates, and Peter surprises her by reaching for her hand.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-16 05:27 pm (UTC)He stares at the world map on the laptop screen and thinks The sun never sets on the British Empire with grimness and an air of 'why am I not surprised'. Singapore won its independence in 1963, Hong Kong in 1997, and apparently India is shooting up to the top of the world. ("Well," Susan mused, "they're working on it.") The USSR is now Russia, Rhodesia Zimbabwe (how quaint!), and he doesn't recognize eastern Europe, or Africa for that matter, at all. It's a little bit like going back to Narnia and finding Cair Paravel in ruins, old paths leading to dead ends. He is betrayed by geography once more. He has been left behind in the dust of history. Again.
"Do you think Aslan meant for this to happen? My coming back, that is."
"Don't be stupid."
Peter doesn't seem to hear her and goes on, "Is England in a crisis?"
"No. But you were."
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-16 06:59 pm (UTC)(Dude, I totally wrote bits of this last night.)
"Susan," Peter whispers from the door, and Susan rolls over to see him wide awak, standing with his hand clenched tightly on the doorframe. Behind him, the sitting room is lit up as brightly as day.
Peter looks terrified, and deserpate, and more than a little bit mad. "Com ehere," Susan says, throwing back the sheets and reaching over to turn on the bedside lamp.
He doesn't say anything, but his expression is desperately, starkly grateful as he coves over, leaving the door open behind him, and crawls into bed with her.
"Come here," Susan says again, careful to speak in Narnian and not English -- she's not even certain that Peter remembers more than a few words of English, especially not in the state he's in, the last traces of the drugs still filtering their way out of his body.
Peter is shaking when she puts her arms around him, a faint but distinct tremor, but he hugs her back, holding on so tightly and yet so gently that Susan thinks she might crack from it. She kisses his forehead and leaves the lights on.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-16 08:58 pm (UTC)(Dude, I totally wrote bits of this last night.)
XD so HARD. HEE. <3
and ZOMG peter&susaaaaan CUDDLING EACH OTHER TO SLEEP <333333. She hasn't had to deal with a brother in several lifetimes, or deal with a resurrected one in even longer than that. If they had had Lucy's cordial, she finds herself thinking, then Peter would be in a better state.
But even the cordial brought its own subtle poison: delusions of grandeur, pretensions of immortality, the excuse to always do what is Right instead of what must be done. It is dangerous for someone to think they can never die, and it was no surprise that Peter developed the strongest immunity to the cordial. When Susan found out, she felt understandably far from reassured. When she told him to be careful in the tone that meant she Meant It, he would just feel miffed and put upon.
You worry too much, he would reply.
Only because you don't worry enough.
Are you joking? I worry all the ti--
Never about the important things, however.
You would think that, of course.
What do you mean, 'I would think that'?
And they would fight some more, driven by the inevitability of duty and love, letting themselves be angry at one another. Sometimes it ended with kisses, sometimes with the sound of doors slamming, but most times it was a draw. Still, when Peter returned home from some battle, some siege or other, Susan had to resist the urge to run to her brother and throw herself into his arms. She knew he would have embraced her back, but she was a Queen of Narnia, not some clingy child, and someone had to keep a level head.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-16 11:26 pm (UTC)"Do you remember?" he asks abruptly.
Everything about Peter is abrupt now, a half-beat out of step with the time and the world. "The police called me," Susan says quietly. "I had to identify the bodies."
Peter winces a little, but shakes his head. "That's not what I meant," he says. "Narnia. Do you remember her?"
It's a test, Susan realizes even as she says, "Of course," because sixty years ago she would have said no. But it's three lifetimes (at least) later now, and there's no point to denying the truth, especially to Peter. "I never forgot."
Peter flexes his hands -- scarred and callused in what seem like all the wrong places -- and looks down at them. "I can almost feel her," he says, "and I remember her. But I feel like I'm remembering something wrong, like she wasn't good enough, and -- God," he swears uncharacteristically, because he's always sworn by Aslan or the Seven, a holdover from his year with the westron mercenaries. "How do you stand it?"
Susan flinches and Peter immediately looks shamefaced. "I didn't mean it like that," he apologizes. "It's just that -- it's always been different for me."
"I know," Susan says gently, and Peter puts his head in his hands, fingers digging into his thick hair.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-17 05:01 pm (UTC)"And I haven't figured out whether it's a blessing or a curse yet," she shrugs, "or whether it has a purpose."
Peter soaks in the bathtub, staring at the ceiling. Susan sits on the bathroom counter smoking a cigarette, ashing in the toilet bowl. He says, "Everything has a purpose."
"If there's a prophecy lying around somewhere explaining why I'm now doomed to walk the earth forever, I'd really like to see it."
"Am I immortal too, then?"
She hesitates. "I don't know. Actually I'm not sure if I'm immortal or just have a really, really long life-span."
But, the very thought of Peter growing old and dying, leaving her again, while she stayed young and looked on... She wasn't sure she was ready to think about that. She had just gotten him back.
"Come here with that," says Peter.
"What?"
He gestures at the cigarette.
Susan slides off the counter and kneels by the tub, putting the cigarette to Peter's lips. He inhales deeply and exhales the smoke through his nostrils. Susan is momentarily reminded of Hadassar.
"Do you want to live forever?" she asks.
"I don't fucking know," he mutters. "No one exactly asked my permission before bringing me back from the dead, either."
"You're acting the ingrate a bit, aren't you?" she says with a small smile.
He doesn't reply. She offers the cigarette to him again and he shakes his head, so she takes a last drag, tosses the butt in the toilet bowl, and stands up.
"I'm going to start dinner," she says. "Give us a shout if you need anything."
"'Right."
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-20 01:31 pm (UTC)Back inside the bedroom, PEter is still sleeping, the light from the overhead lamp limning the gold in his hair and deepening the shadows on his face. Susan stands in the doorway and watches him for a long time.
Her brother, back when she'd thought she'd never see him again, not even beyond the grave she hadn't yet -- and maybe never would -- come close to reaching. Sixty years late, but isn't that their curse? To remain beyond all hope of salvation, when even time has betrayed them? And a Raising is voilent, and unnatural, and no work of God's or Aslan's or anyone else's, but she's stubbornly, selfishly glad that Peter is here nonetheless, even though no one should have to share her curse.
He's sleeping face-down, one hand beneath his pillow, the other stretched out across her side of the bed, like he's reaching for someone. Susan hopes it's her.
Why Peter? she wonders, not for the first time. In England, he's nothing more than another RAF pilot damaged by the war, just the oldest son of another family destroyed by Hitler's mad quest. There are thousands of others just like him.
He wakes up the way he always does, or always did, all at once, a sudden trasition between sleeping and waking. For a moment his expression is blank and Susan stiffens and leans forward, praying to every god she's ever heard of that he recognizes her, then he says slowly, "Susan."
"I'm here," Susan says, crossing to the bed and perching on it next to him.
Peter rubs a hand over his face. "Evverything's...blurred," he says uncertainly in Old Narnian. "I don't --" He reaches out and touches her cheek and Susan turns her face into his palm. "Know," he finishes. "I don't know."
"You know me," Susan assures him. "Do you know where we are?"
Peter hesitates before answering, looking around the plain hotel room. "England," he says, a world of disappointment in his voice. "We're in England."
Susan nods, his hand still on her face like he's trying to divine the truth of her words by touch alone.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-18 09:14 am (UTC)It would be a very interesting story, but I would miss Edmund. Somehow I love Peter&Edmund best. In fact, IMHO, Peter would need him. And they are connected to each other and Narnia.
So could you add Edmund into the mix?
Those somebodies who resurrected Peter find that he pulled another one with him; but since Edmund came by himself he would be late in coming and Susan has already got Peter. And maybe Edmund would be affected worse, amnesia or insanity.
And then Peter starts dreaming about Edmund... And he doesn't realize what it means... And then...!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-20 10:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-21 09:56 am (UTC)Bu still, I just love Peter & Edmund...