can't friggin' *believe* i don't have an emotional plot, and Dust cut scenes

[bedlamsbard]

...I have been walking around in a daze all day because of my shocking revelation that Be Like Water doesn't have an emotional or thematic plot. Oh, it has two action plots (the main PC plot, slightly altered, and the Peta/Caspian plot), but it doesn't have an emotional or thematic plot.

This is not doing much for my wordcount, by the way. I'm at 36K! I only need another 14K before I can throw my hands up and have done with!

Let me make something clear: I do not have an emotional or thematic arc for the entire three-part story, not just the first PC!AU part. And I think I have a better chance of getting one once I put Peter and Co. in, but that's not until part two, and besides, this is supposed to be Peta's story, not Peter's. But -- I don't see where they're going. I don't see anywhere they can go. I need emotional conflict here, people! And there is none, especially not at this juncture. I mean, I don't think we even have the same problems we have in PC -- we've got overconfidence, but Peta's Pevensies go at it on a completely different level than Peter's Pevensies. And Water isn't a story about letting go and handing over the reigns, it's a story about --

Well, that's just the thing. It doesn't have an "about." It just has a "where." It's the story where Peter is a girl, it's not -- oh, let's use Dust as an example. Dust is the story where the Pevensies come back to Narnia after LB goes very, very wrong, where Narnia regains her independence. It's also the story about coming together as a family, about making your own destiny. Well, Water doesn't have an about.

This revelation could have sometime after I hit 50K, you know.

*grumbles* Man, I should have written "In This Hollow Valley." That has an action plot and an emotional plot. Water just doesn't have anywhere for the characters to go. Seriously now. I mean, of course, if I added in everything else I've written this month I'd be over 50K (not quite with the addition of Dust alone, even counting the original draft of Dust 5 -- which, trust me, was considerably more boring -- but with everything else, like the narniaexchange fic and various ficlet and commentfic type things), but where's the point in that?

At the very least I need an emotional arc for Caspian, since he's the POV character. It's just...*frowns* Maybe I should have started with the Peter POV in part two and skipped part one, let that be told in hints, not straight-out like this. Because Warsverse Pevensies I can handle, you know, and by that point Peta has somewhere to go. Right now she doesn't; right now she's back in High Queen mode and with her, with all the Pevensies, they're in stasis. Nothing's happening with them emotionally. (And if even one of you tells me that the romance is an emotional plot, I will cut you. Action plot. Not even much of an action plot.)

Now, if you just sat through all that, I feel the need to dump some of the cut scenes from Dust on y'all. Chances are bits of this will make it in later, since I want to keep most of it, but still.



1. Ch. 3, Susan POV, musings on Tirian, Jill, and Eustace

It’s easy enough to fall back into their old roles, or easier than Susan would have thought it, at least. It can’t be as hard for Peter and Edmund as it is for her and Lucy; this is more or less what they’ve been doing these past few years, with a few key differences, but she and Lucy haven’t seen a battlefield for almost a decade now.

She stays quiet now, watching Arnau, Peter, and Edmund discuss the dispensation of Calormene troops in the Western Waste. It’s mostly Arnau and Peter; Edmund listens and adds acerbic comments occasionally, pointing out flaws in the Calormene defense. Lucy, who has no patience for tactics, sits on a fallen stone with one leg drawn up to her chest, uncharacteristically quiet. If she had gum, she’d be popping it, but as it is, she seems…disquieted. Susan can’t blame her; she’s disquieted herself. Gods… What in the seven Natarene hells has happened to Narnia?

Edmund’s attention is on Arnau and the other Narnian leaders, the ones that have stepped forward here. Susan lets her gaze play lazily over the rest of the Narnians present, never stopping for more than a few seconds on any one person; it gives her a very good general overview of who - and what -- is present. These Narnians are familiar enough, centaurs and dwarves and fauns, all their old friends - and old enemies as well; that’s a familiar sight from their time in Aslan’s How with Caspian’s Narnians. The minotaurs and their ilk are Narnians too, even if they aren’t the Narnians that graced Cair Paravel’s halls all those years ago. King Tirian, now - she can see the resemblance to Caspian, if she squints, something about the shape of the face. He’s a slighter man than Caspian was, red-haired with a spray of freckles across the bridge of his nose, his green eyes mild and his expression wary. He’s watching Peter and Peter alone; none of his attention is on Edmund or the other Narnians, let alone Eustace and Jill Pole.

Peter turns his head to ask Tirian a sharp question, expression cool and unblinking. Tirian answers, eyes flickering downward as he speaks, and Susan stops looking at him. She looks at the surrounding Narnians instead: the look of disdain on Arnau’s face, the glare the centauress - Baldesca, her name is Baldesca, and whatever happened to good Narnian names like Sweetblossom and Wederhorn? - gives him, the way the Narnians have drawn away from him, leaving him beside Peter, who doesn’t appear to have noticed. He won’t have, of course.

Tirian may have been a good king once; she doesn’t know. It doesn’t matter what a man was once upon a time; it matters what a man - or a woman - is now, when it’s needed. She has learned things; this she learned long before she left Narnia the first time. He’d taken a sword at Peter’s order and carries one now - the Calormene scimitar switched out for a Narnian longsword - but he hadn’t thought to fight or offer to help. It doesn’t make him any less of a man; it makes him a royal. She’s seen plenty of those who wouldn’t think to do half of what they’d done on a daily basis back in Narnia.

Five years, though…

She turns her attention to Eustace and Jill Pole. She knows neither particularly well - Eustace better than Pole, of course; she’s only met Pole once, and that in passing. Eustace has filled out since last she saw him; his face isn’t nearly so unfortunate anymore and there are sword-calluses on his hands. Pole is still rather plain and small for her age, a mousy sort of girl - woman, Susan supposes; she and Pole are the same age now. But her arms are muscled, and she doesn’t seem ill at ease in the rough conditions they’re living in. She hasn’t heard Eustace complain once either. Narnia has a way of doing that to people, changing them, making them more than what they could be in England. It did so for her; it’s seeing clear to do so again.

2. Ch. 3, Susan POV, Tirian clashes with the Arn Abedin Narnians

She knows Edmund has seen her smile when his expression changes from a sharp grin to a sharp frown, and Peter turns his head to look at her. He nudges her shoulder with his encouragingly, then says, “Go on, King Tirian.”

For a moment Tirian looks lost, then he regains the thread of his thoughts and bends back over the map, marking out the camps he’s mentioned. “Most of the camps are mixed humans and non-humans,” he says. “Some families, but mostly not; it’s too risky to live out here, like this, for parents to risk their children.”

“Our children are here,” a female faun scowls. “Better to live like outlaws than to be indoctrinated into the vile filth the Calormenes are preaching, them and those traitor Narnians who value their own skins more than they do their faith.”

Tirian looks up sharply from the map. “It’s only words,” he says. “And do you blame them for keeping their own children safe? Starvation, disease, deaths by cold and by heat and wild beasts - that’s what awaits those who try and raise their children here. You’ve seen it, I’m sure. Just because they’d rather see their children safe than watch them die from something that could be easily prevented doesn’t make them traitors.”

“Martyr’s deaths,” the faun snaps. “Two of my children dead, one to the Calormenes and one to the plague, and I’d give the rest of my children up rather than see them bow to the Calormenes.”

“What?” Lucy demands, sounding horrified, and Susan glances over her shoulder as her sister rises from her seat. “What kind of mother are you? Are you people out of your bloody minds?”

3. Ch. 3, Tirian POV, excerpt from Caspian's memoirs

When I was only a boy, before my father died, one of the lords of the council, Lord Puiggros, who was one of many who held lands in the far north but one of only few who dared to travel so far away from the safety of Telmarine lands, brought my father a most noble gift. He brought him a lion in a cage, its claws clipped and its teeth filed. Lions were more common in those days than they are now, though they are hardly common now, but were seldom seen outside of the wild lands of the north and the west. It was a precious gift, or at least it was then. My father let it roam free in the gardens of Castle Telmar, laughing off all complaints of servants being mauled and lapdogs eaten. It was only when it attacked and killed my aunt Filomena, the jewel of my father and my uncle’s eye and pregnant with her first child, that my father ordered the lion put to death.

I don’t think I was more than three or four at the time, and I hadn’t thought of it in years. But there was something about the expression on the High King’s face that reminded me of the lion when Puiggros’ men carried it in. I couldn’t remember why it was so familiar until I thought of that lion, trapped and caged, stripped of home and defenses alike. Even then I didn’t put it together for some weeks afterward, the High King and his siblings long-gone. But when I think of it now, it springs clearly to my mind: the lion and the High King, each one as golden as the other, desperate and trapped and knowing it.

That was nearly twenty years ago, and I can still summon up that image clearly. Peter of Narnia isn’t a man easily forgotten, nor is the look in the eye of a trapped man-killer, one who knows there’s nothing left to lose and that the only answer is to strike at the first opportunity.

4. Ch. 3, Tirian POV, Tirian muses on his childhood

When he’d been a boy, Tirian had spent most of his time in the library at Cair Paravel, reading through history and fantasy alike, fascinated by what had been and what might have been. Like everyone else in Narnia, he’d read Caspian the Seafarer’s memoirs, both the typesetter’s version and the one that never left the archives of the library, the one written in Caspian’s own hand with King Rilian’s notes in the margins. Most of them consisted of, Father, you were an idiot. Tirian doesn’t know what brought on Rilian’s commentary, but he finds himself echoing the sentiment more times than he’d prefer. Erlian was a good king, after all, but Erlian had depleted Narnia’s treasury with lavish parties; confident that their human allies would never hurt Narnia. After all, he’d always said, if any danger ever came to Narnia it would come from their traditional enemies in the eastern sea (the humans are friendly enough, but it’s the nonhumans that can’t be trusted), the wild lands of the west (who knows what dangers lurk there? Rumor claims dragons, wild griffins, bands of brigands), or the giants in the north (who had killed him). Narnia hadn’t been attacked by humans for centuries; Tirian had taken him at his word. If danger came, it wouldn’t be human-borne, but nonhuman, and he’d prepared accordingly. He hadn’t expected traitors from within, and he hadn’t expected to have to face men across the blade of his sword.

You were an idiot, Father, Tirian thinks, looking at the map the High King takes from the centauress and spreads out on the waist-high slab of stone before him. Narnia has grown since Caspian’s time, but it will never again cover the area that the High King’s empire did. If they don’t win it back now, it will never again be Narnia. Damn Erlian for assuming that Narnia’s remote location was protection enough against the Calormenes; damn Tirian for believing his father. Narnia had grown complacent over a thousand years of peace broken only by internal and nonhuman conflict; that complacency had destroyed the country.

5. Ch. 5, Tirian POV, in which we meet Tirian's cousin Vespasian

“Will you attack soon, then?” Vespasian asks, his eyes narrowing as he looks at Peter. The High King is a decade younger than him, at least, and looks it. Worse maybe is the fact that Peter looks like the boys that Vespasian takes into his bed - golden-haired, blue-eyed, full-lipped. Not just a handsome man, but a pretty one, and Vespasian has always liked his men and his boys pretty.

Tirian turns his glare on his cousin, but if Vespasian notices, he makes no sign of it, and while Edmund’s gaze flickers toward Tirian, Peter’s doesn’t waver. He answers with solemnity, “No, I won’t. We don’t have enough men, and I don’t know enough about the situation here to risk what soldiers we have in an open attack. You were saying something about a fleet when we arrived?”