loose fic, part 1

[bedlamsbard]

This is coming in multiple parts mostly because I have to type everything up, and I would like to get to Dust sometime tonight.

Late into the night Susan lies awake listening to the rasp of Peter's whetstone over the blade of his sword. She stares up at the forest canopy above them, the few stars that blink through.

"Go to sleep," Peter says softly. "One of us should get some rest, at least."

Both of us should, Susan thinks, but she rolls over onto her side so that she can watch the straight line of his back. Eventually her eyelids drift shut and she sleeps.

She wakes up in the morning to Peter's arm around her waist and his face tucked into the space between her neck and her shoulder. His breath is light but steady and he's warm against her back. His breathing shifts a moment later as he wakes up.

"Su?"

"It's morning," Susan says.

"Yes." He pulls away from her and gets up, and after a moment Susan does the same, pulling her quiver on over her shoulder.

She's sore and cold from a night spent on the hard ground; the earth leeches all the warmth from her bones. Around her, the trees seem no less imposing than they had the night before, stretching high for the sky. They press close around Susan and Peter, as claustrophobic as the Caves of Angrisla, and she shudders for a moment.

"I'll make tea," Peter says. "It'll be cold."

"Do you think we're still --" Susan begins, digging through their hastily diminishing supplies. She comes up with a waybar of crushed oats and dried fruit pressed together with honey, and two pieces of peppered beef jerky. She passes half the waybar and one piece of jerky to Peter and keeps the rest.

Peter passes back a cup of cold tea. "Yes," he says, and glances up at the trees.

Susan does too, but the trees are still, not a single leaf stirring in the still air. She sips at her tea and licks the remains of her waybar off her fingers. She finishes, packs the teacups away, and straightens to look at Peter.

He gives her a faint smile, and for a moment, Susan sees the shadow of the boy he'd been all those years ago, young and anxious with the weight of responsibility on his shoulders for the first time. She smiles back, nervously, and he kisses her on the forehead before taking the pack from her.

"Let's get moving," he says. "it's a long way to Cair Paravel."

I started this with the vague thought of doing a gen Peter and Susan adventure romp, early Golden Age, but I really had no idea where it was going or what was chasing them -- you know, the important stuff.

Susan wraps her legs around his waist, letting Peter hold her up as she kisses him. "Su," he breathes, with that faint edge of mingled surprise and desire she's heard from him before.

He walks her backward into his bedroom, pushing the door oen behind him, and turns around so that he can sit her down on his bed, standing between her legs and kissing her carefully and sweetly. He's so careful, like he thinks she's going to break, and Susan makes an indeterminate sound in the back of her throat and grabs the front of his shirt in both hands, dragging him closer, knocking him off-balance. She slides backwards and pulls Peter down on top of her.

He shifts automatically so that none of his weight is on her and cups her face in his hands. Theyr'e shaking.

"It's all right," she says. "Peter, it's all right." She kisses the corner of his mouth and starts flicking open the buttons on his tunic one by one.

He says, "Susan. Susan," and smears his fingers down her sides and lets them linger on her hips.

Susan's breath catches in her throat. She gets her hands beneath his shirt and slides them up his back, palming the broad mess of scars there. Peter shudders, and when Susan looks up, it's to find his eyes screwed tightly closed.

"Peter," she begs, and he opens his eyes. He kisses her softly.

Susan shifts her weight and rolls them over, straddling Peter and letting her skirts pool around her thighs. She reaches back to get the buttons of her dress and then pulls it off over her head.

Peter's hands brush lightly over her bare skin, then a little more firmly, familiar on her hips. She leands down and kisses him open-mouthed.

This was written before Truth No. 2, so while it takes place before that does, it contradicts it. Yes. I managed to contradict my canon in a fic that's basically Peter's panic and Peter and Susan making out.

"Peter!" Susan screams, her voice sharp with fear, but the world's already slowed down, settling into its component parts the way it always does during a fight or any other kind of crisis.

"Susan, no!" Riley shouts, but too late; she's already slipped free of his grip, racing across the field to the place where Peter's plane is nothing more than a smoking jumble of scrap metal. She's not the only one; the entire airfield is turning out. But she's closest.

She can smell blood. Overheated metal, burning gasoline and vegetation -- though at least nothing seems like it's on fire -- but rising over all that, the familiar scent of blood. Peter's blood; he's flying alone, without a copilot or a navigator -- may Aslan protect him --

He's managed to bring the plane down more or less flat, but it hit the ground with enough force that the metal's smashed and crumpled like a broken toy. It burns her hands as she clambers over it, ignoring the shouts of Riley and the air crew. Peter is visible through the cracks that spiderweb across the cockpit, stirring sluggishly as he fumbles at the straps of his harness.

Susan bangs on the glass and screams, "Peter!", watching his gaze flicker slowly upwards toward her. She watches as his lips form her name, then a string of syllables in Eschmoun, which he always lapses back into when he's tired or upset or just plain badly injured.

This is the time Peter was test-flying planes and the engine fell out. Clearly it ended badly. Riley is Susan's boyfriend, and part of Peter's squadron. This is the incident that leads to the Big Pevensie Breakup that's referred to in Dust 6.

Peter sees the irritation flare sharp in Susan's eyes as Garrity nearly falls over himself into the lap of one of the blonde twins by the pool table. She doesn't bother to hide her annoyance as she picks up Garrity's forgotten brandy and drains it.

"Oh, Susan," Phillips says, "don't worry about him. I'm still here."

There's a little of Queen Susan's old arrogance in the tilt of her head as she says, "Ha," the single syllable infused with scorn.

Peter pushes his half-drunk glass of whiskey toward her silently.

Susan drains it without hesitation and slams the glass down on the table. Over at the pool table, Garrity has his tongue halfway down the leftmost twin's throat.

"Philly, go get us another round," Peter orders, passing over the bills.

"Aw, come on, sir," Phillips whines, but takes the money and gets up anyway.

"Don't whine, Pilot Officer, it doesn't befit an officer of the Crown," Crewes says sternly, then grins around his mug. His girl Gwen leans companionably against his shoulder and syas, "Don't worry about Garrity; he's just always had the good judgment to look at other girls when you've been in the loo."

"Oh, he's gone," Susan assures her, and lets her gaze roam around the table, lingering on all the unattached officers for a few seconds. Peter has seen this a hundred times before; she's going to focus on one of them and he's going to fall into her lap. Probably Bradenton or Devereaux, if Peter knows her taste in men, or at least the ones she's picked up recently --

"Pevensie," Susan drawls, looking at him like he's a stranger. A stranger she wants in her bed.

He quirks an eyebrow at her, but she's right; he's been with this unit barely two week snow, Susan with Garrity for less that, and there's probably a good chance that no one realizes they're brother and sister yet.

There's some giggling for the girls and chortling from the men, and Susan grins around at them, easy and flirtatious. Then she gets up and drapes herself across Peter's lap. He puts an arm around her waist automatically to brace her and she leans back against his shoulder, warm and familiar.

Phillips, coming back with the drinks, sees this and says, "Oh, some people get all the luck."

"Philly, when you're a war hero with a brace of medals who's been shot down twice, you can get all the girls too," says Brewer.

"Shot down twice just means I got careless," Peter says, reaching around Susan to take his third whiskey.

"Give me a taste of that, Flight Lieutenant," Susan says, and some trick of perversity makes Peter take a mouthful of whiskey and turn his head towards hers.

Susan takes the alcohol from his mouth without spilling a drop, then runs her tongue lightly along his teeth before pulling away.

"Bugger me," Devereaux says, sounding impressed. "Where'd you learn to do that, Pevensie?"

Peter just grins and doesn't say anything, mostly beccause he's not sure he can actually translate Osumare Seaworth into anything or anyone that won't get him arrested or sent to the battalion shrink.

Susan kisses his neck, then the edge of his jaw, and Peter tilts his head back and kisses her on the mouth. It's a long, familiar kiss, Susan's fingers coming up to curl in the short hairs at the back of his neck. It's been a while.

"Damn, Pevensie," Crewes says. "I didn't know you had it in you."

"There are a lot of things you don't know about me, Crewes," Peter tells him. He glances up as Garrity comes back; apparently the twins aren't as impressed with a war hero flight officer as he'd hoped.

"Get away from my girl, Pevensie," he growls.

"I'm not your anything, Garrity," Susan says, then tosses her hair over her shoulder and leans in to kiss Peter.

"The lady's spoken, Garrity," Devereaux says. "She knows a real war hero when she sees one."

Garrity glowers at him, then shrugs and sits down. "So if I learn how to knife fight in the jungle, do I get all the girls too?"

"You already get half the girls," Brewer says, laughing.

This I probably could finish, except I think it ends in Peter and Susan screaming at each other outside the bar and storming off, never to speak again until Shine So Bright. I'm a little uncertain about the timeline here, but it's probably after Peter's stopped test-flying planes and before he gets deployed to Malaya. Several years after the Great Pevensie Schism and several years before LB, probably. In which we continue with Susan's parade of boyfriends in England (in rough order, so far: Riley, the one who hit her, Garrity, Travison. There are bunch of others, but we haven't seen them yet). Also, I'm fairly sure that "battalion shrink" wouldn't have been a concept at the time, but who knows, I could be wrong.

He wakes abruptly to King Edmund's hand on his shoulder and Peta's hastily muffled curse. "What --"

"There's a Telmarine down below," Edmund says as Peta reaches for her shirt, sliding out of bed seemingly unaware of the fact she's in nothing but her skin. "Our guards caught him trying to breach the perimeter. He's asking for you."

"A Telmarine?" Caspian says blankly. He can't think of any Telmarine who'd be willing to do so much as speak to him anymore. "Who?"

Edmund shrugs. "Hurry up," he says, and turns away.

Caspian dresses quickly, running a hand through his hair to order it, and stands to strap on sword and dagger. Peta turns her back to him, already dressed and armed, and says softly, "Braid my hair?"

"Oh, for the love of --" Edmund begins, then shrugs when Peta looks at him sharply. "Never mind. It's not like he's going anywhere."

The strands of Peta's blonde hair are smooth and fine as spidersilk beneath his hands, catching on his sword-calluses as he turns them over and over each other. He drops a kiss on her neck, just behind her ear, and Peta turns her head and kisses him softly on the mouth.

"Prisoner," Edmund says pointedly.

"Don't get your knickers in a knot, little brother," Peta says lazily, nipping at the corner of Caspian's mouth as he ties off her braid with a scrap of leather. "We're coming."

"He didn't say who he was?" Caspian asks agian as they go down the rough-hewn stairs.

"Just kept demanding to see you," Edmund says from behind him. "Didn't even ask," he adds a little suspiciously.

Peta laughs. "Not everyone's up to your general standards of civility, Ed," she says, sounding amused.

Caspian glances back over his shoulder to see her tuck her arm into Edmund's, beaming as if she hasn't just been woken from a sound sleep in the middle of the night. Maybe sieges agree with her, or maybe it's just the prospect of having a prisoner to interrogate.

"Reepicheep has him penned up in the red cave," Edmund says on the next level down.

"Reepicheep?" Peta says in tones of dark suspicion.

"He's on-duty tonight," Edmund points out. "It's been three months. Maybe you could --"

"That Seven-damned mouse destroyed any chance we had of ending this war quickly," Peta snarls. "He's lucky I trust him with blacking my boots, let alone a command."

"Well, it's not as if you exactly have a lot of replacements for his position lined up --"

"And who the hell's fault is that? It's certainly not mine."

"Majesties," Caspian says quietly as they reach the second level and turn down the hall towards the red cave.

Reepicheep sweeps a bow as they approach. "My most noble queen, I --"

"Yes, very good," Peta interrupts. "Pray return to whatever you were doing before this disturbance occurred; I'm sure it requires your immediate attendance."

The mouse's ears and tail droop, but he bows again, murmurs, "Of course, your majesty," and scurries off.

Edmund pulls the door open and gestures Caspian forward. Inside, the little cave, its walls tinted coppery by some paint or pigment, is lit only by one of the three wall sconces. Caspian squints through the gloom at the bound figure kneeling in the floor as Edmund drifts past him to light the other two torches.

"Professor Cornelius?" he says uncertaingly, recognizing the figure.

Cornelius looks up, relief washing over his face, and says, "My prince! I had feared for your safety; there are foul rumors afoot in Narnia, some speaking of your death, some of your enchantment at the hands of some witch-woman --"

"That would be me," Peta says from behind Caspian. "And 'witch' is the least of the things they're calling me, I'm sure. Go ahead and cut him free; I'm sure three of us can take one old man should the circumstances call for it."

Caspian kneels down as he draws his knife, Cornelius's attention distracted as he looks at Peta. "You are --" he begins, gaping.

"Peta the Magnificent, High Queen of Narnia, Lady of Cair Paravel, Empress of the Lone Islands, bane of Mriaz's existence and so on and so forth," Peta says, sounding bored. "I've heard it all before."

"I was going to say 'very young.'" Cornelius straightens as soon as the ropes fall away, regarding Peta with an odd expression on his face.

She shrugs. "I have good skin. And you," she adds, looking him up and down, "must be the Doctor Cornelius I've heard so much about."

"Only good things, I hope," he says.

"You saved Caspian's life," Peta says. "That makes a good start. But you'll have to come up with something a little more recent in order to win more than just points with me. You'll start with where you came from and what you're doing here." Her words are abrupt and impatient, a sharp order.

"Perhaps somewhere more comfortable --" Caspian begins, standing up.

"No, here is good," Peta says blandly. She flicks her fingers at him. "Come here, Caspian."

My betas will recognize what this scene is supposed to be. Others of you may remember that around the beginning of January I started bitching about reaching a scene that I'd left in a notebook back at Tulane -- this was it. I actually do like this version better than the one in the Water draft, so I may change it when I go back to Water. It brings back the Reepicheep thread, for one. (For another, there are parts that need to be cut -- any mention of the Seven or of any of the Warsverse gods mentioned in Water are going. It's the Petaverse, not the Warsverse, surely they've their own bloody gods.)

Comments

[gothwalk.livejournal.com]

Battalion shrink might be the chaplain? 'Shrink' seems like a fifties term to me, though, so presumably a progressive young fellow in the 40s might know it.

In the last section, Cornelius saved... Caspian's life?

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

OED puts the term "shrink" in the sixties, in the U.S. *waves hands* Oh, well.

When he helped Caspian escape Miraz's castle/assassination attempt, originally., Which doesn't mean anything now, of course.

[(Anonymous)]

It says that Cornelius saved Cornelius.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

*fixes* At least I didn't switch any of the pronouns around this time. That I can see.

[starsimpulse.livejournal.com]

I think she was talking about a typo. It says that Cornelius saved Cornelius's life. *shrug*

I loved these, btw. Exspecially the Water one. It feels like a while since we've read Water releated stuff and I have missed it. Oh Peta, I wish I knew how to quit you.

Also Edmund, is adorable.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

It has been a while, mostly because my 70K of Water is sitting on my hard drive waiting for me to go through and edit. OH GOD.

Possibly the reason that I'm not writing as much Peta now is that before, when I wanted to write het smut, I wrote Peta/Caspian. Now I just write Peter/Susan.

[alexseanchai]

Hey, stupid question, why's her name "Peta", not "Petra"? behindthename.com tells me "Peta" is only a name in Australia and New Zealand.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

Mostly because I just wanted her name to be recognizably close to Peter's and Petra didn't have the right sound. (I did consider it at one point, way back when, I believe. I think someone also told me that "Patricia" would be more likely for the era, but that's definitely not recognizably as a female version of Peter.)

[alexseanchai]

*nods*

[westingturtle.livejournal.com]

So I think that Peter and Susan in the bar is kind of the hottest thing ever; partly from them, and partly from the whole "sneaking around in plain sight" aspect.

[bedlamsbard.livejournal.com]

They kind of are, aren't they? On the other hand, it's a little uncomfortable to write, because Susan's being cruel to Peter -- maybe not deliberately so, but still...