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bedlamsbardHey, y'all remember when I did the things I will never write meme a few weeks back? And a bunch of you said Peter/Lucy?
Well, this still isn't Peter/Lucy (and I tried, guys), but it is Peter and Lucy, set during the Golden Age during the Telmarine scuffles (for reference, almost immediately following The White City, and about a year, year and a half, after Peter comes back from Natare. This is after "Old Timber to New Fires" and the Belgarine War), and there may be a few, uh, familiar elements, for those of you who read Dust 5. Most of this predates Dust 5.
Peter is old before his time, a grizzled veteran in a young man's body, and his sobriety makes Lucy restless and twitchy, climbing the walls of Arn Abedin and praying that Marroquin of Telmar hasn't lost his nerve just because Peter's arrived. Literally climbing the walls; she changes to breeches or kilts up her skirts and puts on a climbing harness before rapelling off the castle walls or starting at the bottom and working her way up, digging her fingers into the cracks between the stones.
"Your input would be appreciated, Lu," Peter says dryly, bent over the big map of the west in the council chamber.
"Sure, Peter," Lucy says, leaning down across the table. "What do you want me to say?"
"I'd like to know what you think of his lancers," Peter says, "and this open area here."
"I think you know exactly what you're going to do," Lucy says, drawing a finger lazily over an inked ridge a few miles to the south. She's been meaning to get out there and climb it for ages now, but hasn't been able to because of the war. But with Peter here --
She striaghtens abruptly and moves toward the door.
"Lucy," Peter says, looking up. "Lucy! What are you doing?"
"I'm going climbing," she says, turning back towards him. She tilts her chin up defiantly. "If you want me, I'll be at that spot on your map marked Giantkiller; send a messenger."
"Lucy --"
She closes the door on his protest and strides down the hallway, tying her hair back from her face.
Three hours later she's hanging in mid-air, clinging to the cliff-face with hands and bare feet, when a second rope falls past her. Lucy turns her head to stare at it, outraged, because everyone in Narnia knows not to bother her when she's climbing. A moment later Peter falls out of the sky, jerking to a stop a few feet below her.
"What the hell are you doing?" Lucy shouts down at him.
"I'm trying to have a conversation with my sister!" Peter yells back. "Somewhere where you can't run away!"
"I am not the one in this family who runs away from things!"
Peter swings forward to catch the cliff-face, slips off, and catches it on the second try. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"What do you think it means?" Lucy snarls.
"If I knew, I wouldn't be asking," Peter points out, clawing his way up the cliff a foot or so. "What do you want to talk about, Lu?"
"I don't want to talk about anything," Lucy snaps, starting to climb again. "That's why I'm hanging off a piece of rock four miles from Arn Abedin by myself. Jackass," she adds bitterly.
"And I'm hanging off a piece of rock ten miles from the border of the country we're at war with because I want to have a conversation with my sister," Peter insists, following her up. "Lu, you won't talk to me at Arn Abedin, you won't talk to me at Cair Paravel, so you're going to talk to me while we're hanging off this piece of rock."
"I don't think so," Lucy says, climbing faster.
"All right," Peter says, "how about this: if I beat you to the top, then we sit down and have a conversation. If you beat me, then I'll get back on my horse and go back to Arn Abedin and forget this ever happened."
Lucy peers down at him over her shoulder and Peter turns his face up towards her, blue eyes wide and hopeful. "I'm going to kick your arse," she says, and starts climbing again.
Peter tails her most of the way up, but somewhere near the top his swordsman's arms and greater endurance -- and the fact that he hasn't been on the cliffs for an hour already -- win out, and they haul themselves up over the edge of the cliff at the same time, laughing and collapsing a few respectable feet back from the edge.
"Seven," Peter curses; Lucy hears his wrists pop as he rotates them. "I haven't done that in far too long."
"I don't think it's the sort of thing common mercs tend to practice," Lucy says, rousing herself to reach for her waterskin.
"Everything all right there?" Sidonie inquires from the edge of the treeline, where she, their horses, and the other members of Lucy's and Peter's guards are doubtless commiserating over their monarchs' stubborn persistence in throwing themselves off the edges of cliffs.
"Everything's fine," Peter replies, sitting up and starting to shrug out of his harness. "So a draw, then," he says to Lucy.
"What does that mean?" she demands, wary. She doesn't start to strip her harness off just yet; depending on what Peter says, she might still want to throw herself off the cliff again.
Peter shrugs, wincing a little. Lucy hides her smirk; he's not used to climbing and the unfamiliar exertion wears on him visibly. "I did bring dinner," he says, tilting his head over to the horses. "We could try that."
"All right," Lucy allows, reaching for the buckles on her harness.
The food's good -- of course it is -- and they talk of inconsequential things. Not the war, not Natare, not the missing year and a half; Peter brings up Sanedro's latest play and they talk about that.
"You have to admit the writing's good, even if the plot's rubbish," Peter insists.
"You just like that he calls you 'gold-crowned Peter' about five times an act," Lucy teases.
"That just proves his imagination's starting to lack," Peter says. "Or maybe we're losing something in the translation."
"Excuses," Lucy says archly. "Anyway, I don't think the second half is as good as the first."
"Maybe you just don't like the acting," Peter suggests.
"The acting's fabulous. I just think Sanedro's losing his touch. His last play wasn't very good either."
Peter pauses briefly before he says, "I rather liked it."
"Of course you -- you weren't here," Lucy exclaims.
He gives her a thin smile with a faint, shy edge to it. "It gets translated into Eschmoun as well as Narnian. I saw it in Shoushan when the Red Company was working a job for a count up in the Maddog area."
"I didn't think theatre was really a merc thing," Lucy says after a moment, turning her winecup around and around in her hands.
"Everyone likes theatre," Peter says. He glances down, then up again.
"Does it botehr you that I was gone or that I came back?"
"You don't get to ask that," Lucy snaps, splashing the contents of the winecup aside on the grass and standing up. "How dare you ask that."
"Lucy!" Peter snaps, on his feet in a heartbeat, her elbows gripped between his fingrs a second heartbeat after that.
"Don't touch me!" she snarls, but she can't break his grip, and he dodges her blows easily.
"Lucy," Peter says, "I am your brother and I am your high king, and as the gods are good and Aslan is great, I deserve to know what's going on, especially if it has something to do with me."
"It's very arrogant," Lucy says through gritted teeth, "to think that everything always has to do with you."
"Don't like to me, little sister."
"Don't call me that!" Lucy snaps, and shoaves at his chest with her free hand. "Don't pretend you remember, because I know you don't, because everyone in Narnia knows you don't. All you remember is how to run a war, so why don't you just --"
"don't bring what I do and don't remember into this, Lu, because you and I both know that that has nothing to do with whatever this is. Sit down, and let's talk."
"Let go of me first," Lucy says, and wrenches her arm free when Peter's grip loosens. Then she slaps him across the face.
Out of he corner of her eye she sees Sidonie start up, tail lashing furiously, but Peter waves her back down. He touches his cheek gingerly. "I suppose I deserve that," he says, but he doesn't sound entirely convinced.
"Really?" Lucy says sarcastically. "I wonder why that might be." She takes a step back and crosses her arms over her chest.
Peter tucks his thumbs into his swordbelt, his expression patient. "Sit down," he invites. "There's more wine."
"I don't want any more wine," Lucy says, but she sits down anyway, picking at a roll.
Peter sits down too, crossing his legs in front of him and resting his elbows on his knees, his chin on his palms. He doesn't say anything, regarding her patiently in silence.
"You know," Lucy says, "you didn't actually win."
"You're still here," Peter points out.
"I didn't exactly have a choice," she snaps. "So, High King. What was it you wanted me to say?"
Peter doesn't say anything, just watches her in silence.
Lucy finishes ripping the roll into shreds, starts in on a second one. About halfway through that one becoming crumbs, the weight of Peter's quiet, calm gaze does its work and she breaks, snaps, "We were fine, you know, just fine. You left us with a huge mess and we fixed it and we were fine, we had everything under control despite everything, and you weren't supposed to leave. Not Narnia, not us, expecially us, and don't say anything," as Peter starts to shift his weight forward, lips forming her name.
"You want to know what's on my mind, Peter?" She rips the remaining half of the roll viciously in two. "What's on my mind is that you left us with a hell of a mess, but you know what? We took care of it. But I wasn't sitting up nights worrying about Narnia or the High King, I was worrying about my brother, what had happened to him, if he was all right, if he was scared. And then you came back, Edmund brought you back, and you weren't my brother any more. You were someone else, and Lion's mane, Peter, do you know what that feels like? You looked me straight in the eye and didn't know who I was." She has to stop to draw in a sharp breath, her eyes brimming with tears.
"Lucy --" Peter begins, reaching for her, but she jerks her hands away from him.
"You didn't know me," she says again. "You didn't know me, you didn't know Susan, you barely knew Edmund -- the only thing you know how to do was kill people. I wanted my brother back and he never came home from Natare."
"Oh, Lucy," Peter says softly. "I'm home now."
She meets his eyes. "Are you?"
He doesn't look away. "Yeah, I am."
"But you weren't before."
"Not...entirely," he allows. "And Lu, I'm sorry for that. I didn't leave of my own free will, I wasn't entirely certain I wanted to come back --"
Her jaw drops, the tears prick at her eyes again, and Lucy wishes nothing more in this moment than that Peter hadn't come home, that he'd just stayed missing forever and left Narnia in peace.
Peter's hands are suddenly war on hers, strong and callused. "Lu, look at me," he orders, and when she raises her head, wipes the tears from her eyes. He cups her cheek in one hand. "There is nowhere else I'd rather be, nothing I'd rather be doing, no one I'd rather be, than me, here and now with you in Narnia."
His expression is sober and worried. Lucy turns her face into his palm. "Oh, Peter," she says, and then, "Let's go climbing again. Ten suns says I beat you like a drum!"
"Save your money, little sister," Peter says, bemused, as he gets up. "Down or up?"
"Up," Lucy says, her grin nearly splitting her face. "We're going nowhere but up."
Well, this still isn't Peter/Lucy (and I tried, guys), but it is Peter and Lucy, set during the Golden Age during the Telmarine scuffles (for reference, almost immediately following The White City, and about a year, year and a half, after Peter comes back from Natare. This is after "Old Timber to New Fires" and the Belgarine War), and there may be a few, uh, familiar elements, for those of you who read Dust 5. Most of this predates Dust 5.
Peter is old before his time, a grizzled veteran in a young man's body, and his sobriety makes Lucy restless and twitchy, climbing the walls of Arn Abedin and praying that Marroquin of Telmar hasn't lost his nerve just because Peter's arrived. Literally climbing the walls; she changes to breeches or kilts up her skirts and puts on a climbing harness before rapelling off the castle walls or starting at the bottom and working her way up, digging her fingers into the cracks between the stones.
"Your input would be appreciated, Lu," Peter says dryly, bent over the big map of the west in the council chamber.
"Sure, Peter," Lucy says, leaning down across the table. "What do you want me to say?"
"I'd like to know what you think of his lancers," Peter says, "and this open area here."
"I think you know exactly what you're going to do," Lucy says, drawing a finger lazily over an inked ridge a few miles to the south. She's been meaning to get out there and climb it for ages now, but hasn't been able to because of the war. But with Peter here --
She striaghtens abruptly and moves toward the door.
"Lucy," Peter says, looking up. "Lucy! What are you doing?"
"I'm going climbing," she says, turning back towards him. She tilts her chin up defiantly. "If you want me, I'll be at that spot on your map marked Giantkiller; send a messenger."
"Lucy --"
She closes the door on his protest and strides down the hallway, tying her hair back from her face.
Three hours later she's hanging in mid-air, clinging to the cliff-face with hands and bare feet, when a second rope falls past her. Lucy turns her head to stare at it, outraged, because everyone in Narnia knows not to bother her when she's climbing. A moment later Peter falls out of the sky, jerking to a stop a few feet below her.
"What the hell are you doing?" Lucy shouts down at him.
"I'm trying to have a conversation with my sister!" Peter yells back. "Somewhere where you can't run away!"
"I am not the one in this family who runs away from things!"
Peter swings forward to catch the cliff-face, slips off, and catches it on the second try. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"What do you think it means?" Lucy snarls.
"If I knew, I wouldn't be asking," Peter points out, clawing his way up the cliff a foot or so. "What do you want to talk about, Lu?"
"I don't want to talk about anything," Lucy snaps, starting to climb again. "That's why I'm hanging off a piece of rock four miles from Arn Abedin by myself. Jackass," she adds bitterly.
"And I'm hanging off a piece of rock ten miles from the border of the country we're at war with because I want to have a conversation with my sister," Peter insists, following her up. "Lu, you won't talk to me at Arn Abedin, you won't talk to me at Cair Paravel, so you're going to talk to me while we're hanging off this piece of rock."
"I don't think so," Lucy says, climbing faster.
"All right," Peter says, "how about this: if I beat you to the top, then we sit down and have a conversation. If you beat me, then I'll get back on my horse and go back to Arn Abedin and forget this ever happened."
Lucy peers down at him over her shoulder and Peter turns his face up towards her, blue eyes wide and hopeful. "I'm going to kick your arse," she says, and starts climbing again.
Peter tails her most of the way up, but somewhere near the top his swordsman's arms and greater endurance -- and the fact that he hasn't been on the cliffs for an hour already -- win out, and they haul themselves up over the edge of the cliff at the same time, laughing and collapsing a few respectable feet back from the edge.
"Seven," Peter curses; Lucy hears his wrists pop as he rotates them. "I haven't done that in far too long."
"I don't think it's the sort of thing common mercs tend to practice," Lucy says, rousing herself to reach for her waterskin.
"Everything all right there?" Sidonie inquires from the edge of the treeline, where she, their horses, and the other members of Lucy's and Peter's guards are doubtless commiserating over their monarchs' stubborn persistence in throwing themselves off the edges of cliffs.
"Everything's fine," Peter replies, sitting up and starting to shrug out of his harness. "So a draw, then," he says to Lucy.
"What does that mean?" she demands, wary. She doesn't start to strip her harness off just yet; depending on what Peter says, she might still want to throw herself off the cliff again.
Peter shrugs, wincing a little. Lucy hides her smirk; he's not used to climbing and the unfamiliar exertion wears on him visibly. "I did bring dinner," he says, tilting his head over to the horses. "We could try that."
"All right," Lucy allows, reaching for the buckles on her harness.
The food's good -- of course it is -- and they talk of inconsequential things. Not the war, not Natare, not the missing year and a half; Peter brings up Sanedro's latest play and they talk about that.
"You have to admit the writing's good, even if the plot's rubbish," Peter insists.
"You just like that he calls you 'gold-crowned Peter' about five times an act," Lucy teases.
"That just proves his imagination's starting to lack," Peter says. "Or maybe we're losing something in the translation."
"Excuses," Lucy says archly. "Anyway, I don't think the second half is as good as the first."
"Maybe you just don't like the acting," Peter suggests.
"The acting's fabulous. I just think Sanedro's losing his touch. His last play wasn't very good either."
Peter pauses briefly before he says, "I rather liked it."
"Of course you -- you weren't here," Lucy exclaims.
He gives her a thin smile with a faint, shy edge to it. "It gets translated into Eschmoun as well as Narnian. I saw it in Shoushan when the Red Company was working a job for a count up in the Maddog area."
"I didn't think theatre was really a merc thing," Lucy says after a moment, turning her winecup around and around in her hands.
"Everyone likes theatre," Peter says. He glances down, then up again.
"Does it botehr you that I was gone or that I came back?"
"You don't get to ask that," Lucy snaps, splashing the contents of the winecup aside on the grass and standing up. "How dare you ask that."
"Lucy!" Peter snaps, on his feet in a heartbeat, her elbows gripped between his fingrs a second heartbeat after that.
"Don't touch me!" she snarls, but she can't break his grip, and he dodges her blows easily.
"Lucy," Peter says, "I am your brother and I am your high king, and as the gods are good and Aslan is great, I deserve to know what's going on, especially if it has something to do with me."
"It's very arrogant," Lucy says through gritted teeth, "to think that everything always has to do with you."
"Don't like to me, little sister."
"Don't call me that!" Lucy snaps, and shoaves at his chest with her free hand. "Don't pretend you remember, because I know you don't, because everyone in Narnia knows you don't. All you remember is how to run a war, so why don't you just --"
"don't bring what I do and don't remember into this, Lu, because you and I both know that that has nothing to do with whatever this is. Sit down, and let's talk."
"Let go of me first," Lucy says, and wrenches her arm free when Peter's grip loosens. Then she slaps him across the face.
Out of he corner of her eye she sees Sidonie start up, tail lashing furiously, but Peter waves her back down. He touches his cheek gingerly. "I suppose I deserve that," he says, but he doesn't sound entirely convinced.
"Really?" Lucy says sarcastically. "I wonder why that might be." She takes a step back and crosses her arms over her chest.
Peter tucks his thumbs into his swordbelt, his expression patient. "Sit down," he invites. "There's more wine."
"I don't want any more wine," Lucy says, but she sits down anyway, picking at a roll.
Peter sits down too, crossing his legs in front of him and resting his elbows on his knees, his chin on his palms. He doesn't say anything, regarding her patiently in silence.
"You know," Lucy says, "you didn't actually win."
"You're still here," Peter points out.
"I didn't exactly have a choice," she snaps. "So, High King. What was it you wanted me to say?"
Peter doesn't say anything, just watches her in silence.
Lucy finishes ripping the roll into shreds, starts in on a second one. About halfway through that one becoming crumbs, the weight of Peter's quiet, calm gaze does its work and she breaks, snaps, "We were fine, you know, just fine. You left us with a huge mess and we fixed it and we were fine, we had everything under control despite everything, and you weren't supposed to leave. Not Narnia, not us, expecially us, and don't say anything," as Peter starts to shift his weight forward, lips forming her name.
"You want to know what's on my mind, Peter?" She rips the remaining half of the roll viciously in two. "What's on my mind is that you left us with a hell of a mess, but you know what? We took care of it. But I wasn't sitting up nights worrying about Narnia or the High King, I was worrying about my brother, what had happened to him, if he was all right, if he was scared. And then you came back, Edmund brought you back, and you weren't my brother any more. You were someone else, and Lion's mane, Peter, do you know what that feels like? You looked me straight in the eye and didn't know who I was." She has to stop to draw in a sharp breath, her eyes brimming with tears.
"Lucy --" Peter begins, reaching for her, but she jerks her hands away from him.
"You didn't know me," she says again. "You didn't know me, you didn't know Susan, you barely knew Edmund -- the only thing you know how to do was kill people. I wanted my brother back and he never came home from Natare."
"Oh, Lucy," Peter says softly. "I'm home now."
She meets his eyes. "Are you?"
He doesn't look away. "Yeah, I am."
"But you weren't before."
"Not...entirely," he allows. "And Lu, I'm sorry for that. I didn't leave of my own free will, I wasn't entirely certain I wanted to come back --"
Her jaw drops, the tears prick at her eyes again, and Lucy wishes nothing more in this moment than that Peter hadn't come home, that he'd just stayed missing forever and left Narnia in peace.
Peter's hands are suddenly war on hers, strong and callused. "Lu, look at me," he orders, and when she raises her head, wipes the tears from her eyes. He cups her cheek in one hand. "There is nowhere else I'd rather be, nothing I'd rather be doing, no one I'd rather be, than me, here and now with you in Narnia."
His expression is sober and worried. Lucy turns her face into his palm. "Oh, Peter," she says, and then, "Let's go climbing again. Ten suns says I beat you like a drum!"
"Save your money, little sister," Peter says, bemused, as he gets up. "Down or up?"
"Up," Lucy says, her grin nearly splitting her face. "We're going nowhere but up."