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bedlamsbardTitle: Landslide
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bedlamsbard
Fandom: Chronicles of Narnia movieverse
Rating: PG-13
Summary: You think it’s new, majesty, but it’s not. You think they don’t know what they’re doing, but they do. You think they haven’t thought about it, but they have. Lucy, after Truth No. 2. Peter/Susan.
Warnings: Incest.
Disclaimer: The Chronicles of Narnia and its characters, settings, situations, etc., belong to C.S. Lewis. Certain characters, settings, situations, etc., belong to Walden Media. Title from the Dixie Chicks' "Landslide".
“Su?” Lucy calls, rapping on her sister’s door. “Susan? It’s Lucy.”
No answer, either from Susan or her bodyguards, and after a moment Lucy curls her fingers around the fancily graven doorknob, the metal cool against her palm, and goes in.
Susan’s study is dark, the fireplace empty and the lanterns snuffed out. The curtains behind her desk are open, the ocean gleaming dark beyond the windows, and Lucy goes over to draw them closed, fumbling the thick fabric a little. They’re patterned with daffodils, faint but distinct enough to catch against the calluses on her fingers.
“Susan?” she says again, turning away from the window. In front of her, Susan’s desk is neatly ordered, each pen in its place, the ink bottles in five different colors ordered away in a rosewood box with designs picked out in inlaid mother-of-pearl – the lion of Narnia on the lid, depictions of the war against the White Witch and their coronation on the sides. Lucy has one similarly patterned, although it gets considerably less use. There are only three files on top of Susan’s desk; the rest are carefully filed away in a nearby cabinet. Lucy, whose own desk looks like a baby dragon’s gone tramping through, complete with scorch marks on the edges of a few papers, winces.
She goes ‘round the side of Susan’s desk and past the cold fireplace and the full weapons and armor racks beside it, and tries the door to Su’s bedroom. Open, and when Lucy goes in, Susan’s bed is neatly made, untouched. Lucy stares at it with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She really doesn’t want to think about where else Susan might be (with Peter), even though she’s hoping it’s somewhere as innocent as the library or the sale. Or the baths. Again.
Her hands are shaking a little as she shuts the door, then retreats from Susan’s chambers and shuts that door too. Lucy stands in the hallway, shivering despite the warmth of the night.
Narnia, with a population largely made up of talking animals and other nonhumans, doesn’t have much of an incest taboo. But most of the surrounding countries do, and those countries are Narnia’s allies. She needs them. She can’t afford to alienate them, and Lucy’s terribly afraid that’s going to happen if Peter and Susan’s…affair…becomes widely known. Even Peter can’t fight off a dozen enemies at once.
Lucy’s Narnian, but she’s human too; she has human prejudices. And maybe she might not be opposed to someone else’s brother and sister shagging, but Peter is her brother and Susan is her sister and she doesn’t even want to think about –
She sits down hard on the marble floor and puts her head in her hands. Aslan’s Mane, she doesn’t want this! She doesn’t want Peter and Susan to do this, to be in a place where they want to do this. Peter doesn’t even like women normally! Why, why, why, and how –
Why would they want to? Why would they do so? There are a thousand men and women in Narnia who would be more than happy to share the beds of the High King Peter and Queen Susan the Gentle; they hardly need to turn to each other for comfort. Lucy makes a faint sobbing sound in the back of her throat and curls tighter into herself.
“Majesty.” A cool nose pushes into her palm and Lucy raises her head. Sidonie, the head of Peter’s personal guard, a sturdy jaguar who’s no longer as slim as she was when they were all younger, but she’s still just as fast. She’s outlived three other heads of the Royal Guard.
Lucy swallows another sob. “Hullo, Sidonie,” she says, holding out her hand, and Sidonie butts her head into it. “Are you on duty or am I just that pathetic?”
“You think it’s new, majesty, but it’s not. You think they don’t know what they’re doing, but they do. You think they haven’t thought about it, but they have.” Sidonie sits back on her haunches and looks at her. “Their majesties aren’t children.”
“How do you know? Not that last bit.”
“We’re Royal Guard, your majesty. We watch. We know. Since the beginning, before they did. They’re in love.”
Lucy puts her head against the wall, staring up at the lights near the ceiling. “There’s no such thing.”
“Of course there is. Don’t be cynical.” She stands up and brushes a whiskery kiss over Lucy’s cheek before padding away. “Their majesties are in the High King’s chambers if you want Queen Susan, majesty.”
“Thanks, Si,” Lucy murmurs, even though the last thing she wants to do in the world is walk in on Susan and Peter doing – whatever it is they’re doing. She scrubs a hand over her eyes, then makes herself get up. If this is going on, she has to face it.
The only thing that keeps her from shaking like a leaf as she goes down the hallways towards Peter’s room and the knot of Royal Guard – Peter’s guards and Susan’s guards – on either side of the door is her military and diplomatic training. The four guards are laughing and talking amongst themselves, playing some kind of dice game. They quiet as Lucy approaches.
“Sure you want to go in there, majesty?” a lioness named Sherrod, one of Susan’s guards, asks brightly.
“Absolutely positive I don’t,” Lucy says, but she opens the door and goes in anyway.
Peter and Susan are kissing on the couch, her hands tight in his hair as she moans into his mouth. Lucy makes a rough sound in the back of her throat and closes the door behind her; neither of her siblings looks up. She supposes they’re pretty together, in an aesthetic sort of way, but she can’t make herself look at them without seeing her brother and her sister.
She clears her throat. “Susan,” she says shakily. “Peter.”
Peter jerks away from Susan, his eyes wide, and Susan pushes herself up, twisting around to frown at Lucy. “Lu,” she says. Her mouth is swollen from kissing, her lips very red and her lipstick smeared, and Lucy stares before she wrenches her gaze away.
Peter’s flushing, his cheeks scarlet beneath his tan, but he says gamely, “What is it, Lu?”
It takes a moment for Lucy to break out of her reverie; she’s seen her siblings in various states of undress for years now, but Peter and Susan are fully dressed now, looking at each other with so much hunger that they might as well be naked. She can feel the heat rising in her cheeks as she stares at them. “I –”
“Lucy,” Susan snaps. Her hair is half out of its braid and she’s holding hands with Peter, staring at Lucy defiantly. “What is it?”
She licks her lips, wiping her shaking hands on her skirts before she says, “I don’t like what you’re doing.”
Peter’s eyes go wide and hurt as his hand tightens on Susan’s. But he doesn’t say anything, just keeps looking steadily at Lucy.
“But it’s not my choice,” she continues, and Aslan, her hands and her voice are both shaking. “And you – you both know that –”
Lovely. Now she’s crying.
That makes Peter start up and come to her, cupping her hands in his. Lucy starts to draw away, then gives up and lets him. He’s her brother, she’s due this, at least.
“Lu, we’re not hurting anyone,” he says, sounding stricken. She can almost believe him. She’d have a better job of it if Susan’s lipstick wasn’t smeared across his mouth.
She makes herself concentrate on his eyes, which are big and blue and the same as hers, a little hurt and a little concerned. They’re the same as they’ve always been; he doesn’t go cold and distant for her. She doesn’t dare look over his shoulder at Susan, who’s leaning on the arm of the couch and looking annoyed.
“I know that,” she says, her voice sounding high and scratchy to her ears. “I know that, but – but –”
Her brother and her sister. Why don’t they just understand?
Aslan, she can smell Susan’s perfume on Peter’s skin.
“I can’t do this,” she whispers. “I thought I could come in here and say I understood and that I was all right with it, but I don’t, I can’t, I don’t understand. Why do you have to – why are you –” Oh, gods, she can’t even say it, not past the tears streaming down her face.
“Lu –” Peter begins, reaching for her, but she can already tell he doesn’t have any kind of explanation for her.
She avoids his grasp. “I can’t do this,” she says again. “I can’t, I’m sorry, I can’t.”
They’re not going to stop. She can read that on his face.
“I’m sorry,” Lucy says through her tears and flees the room. She nearly trips over the Royal Guard as they scramble away from the door.
She can’t stand staying inside another minute, not when she keeps looking around Cair Paravel and wondering where Peter and Susan have fucked. Outside isn’t much better, but at least it’s not the royal wing, at least it’s not –
This wasn’t the first time, nowhere close. They’d been too familiar with each other, too intimate – God, Peter’s broad hands across Susan’s back, already reaching for the line of buttons there.
She kicks out at a little stone fox. Statues in Narnia are carved with differences from the real thing deliberately designed in – unnatural patterns, stars or leaves in the fur, a shield on the paw or the haunches, something to show that they’re not some remnant of the White Witch’s. This one has flowers carved into the ruff around its neck.
“Keep doing that and the garden staff will have a fit,” Edmund says lightly, approaching from behind her.
Lucy turns to glare at him. In the long shadows of a Narnian spring dusk, he seems to come out of nowhere, dark clothes and hair blending into the shadows, pale skin a sharp contrast. “Cair Paravel has larger problems than the state of her gardens,” she says sharply.
Edmund sits down on a bench and rests his chin on his hands. “You didn’t go after them, did you?”
She kicks the fox again. “Of course I did.”
“Why?”
Lucy glares at him. “Why? You can’t seriously be asking me that!”
“Peter’s High King, Lu. However much he hates upsetting you – or me – he’s not going to stop just because you ask him to. And Su’s too stubborn for that.” He watches her with shadowed eyes. “Neither of us were there when they started. We don’t know what they were thinking.”
“I don’t think I want to know what they were thinking,” Lucy mutters. “I’m not even sure they were thinking.”
Edmund shrugs. “Come here,” he says, and Lucy folds herself onto the bench by his side, putting her head on his shoulder as he wraps an arm around her. He kisses her hair. “Let them be,” he murmurs. “It’s not our place to question what they do behind closed doors.”
Lucy pulls away and punches him in the arm. “You do that for fun!”
“Shut up, I’m trying to make a point!” Edmund exclaims. “Look on the bright side, at least Su probably won’t try to kill Peter after she’s tired of him.”
“Heartsbane,” Lucy says pointedly, but she lets Edmund pull her to her feet.
“Come on,” he says, “let’s go raid the kitchens.”
Author:
bedlamsbardFandom: Chronicles of Narnia movieverse
Rating: PG-13
Summary: You think it’s new, majesty, but it’s not. You think they don’t know what they’re doing, but they do. You think they haven’t thought about it, but they have. Lucy, after Truth No. 2. Peter/Susan.
Warnings: Incest.
Disclaimer: The Chronicles of Narnia and its characters, settings, situations, etc., belong to C.S. Lewis. Certain characters, settings, situations, etc., belong to Walden Media. Title from the Dixie Chicks' "Landslide".
“Su?” Lucy calls, rapping on her sister’s door. “Susan? It’s Lucy.”
No answer, either from Susan or her bodyguards, and after a moment Lucy curls her fingers around the fancily graven doorknob, the metal cool against her palm, and goes in.
Susan’s study is dark, the fireplace empty and the lanterns snuffed out. The curtains behind her desk are open, the ocean gleaming dark beyond the windows, and Lucy goes over to draw them closed, fumbling the thick fabric a little. They’re patterned with daffodils, faint but distinct enough to catch against the calluses on her fingers.
“Susan?” she says again, turning away from the window. In front of her, Susan’s desk is neatly ordered, each pen in its place, the ink bottles in five different colors ordered away in a rosewood box with designs picked out in inlaid mother-of-pearl – the lion of Narnia on the lid, depictions of the war against the White Witch and their coronation on the sides. Lucy has one similarly patterned, although it gets considerably less use. There are only three files on top of Susan’s desk; the rest are carefully filed away in a nearby cabinet. Lucy, whose own desk looks like a baby dragon’s gone tramping through, complete with scorch marks on the edges of a few papers, winces.
She goes ‘round the side of Susan’s desk and past the cold fireplace and the full weapons and armor racks beside it, and tries the door to Su’s bedroom. Open, and when Lucy goes in, Susan’s bed is neatly made, untouched. Lucy stares at it with a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. She really doesn’t want to think about where else Susan might be (with Peter), even though she’s hoping it’s somewhere as innocent as the library or the sale. Or the baths. Again.
Her hands are shaking a little as she shuts the door, then retreats from Susan’s chambers and shuts that door too. Lucy stands in the hallway, shivering despite the warmth of the night.
Narnia, with a population largely made up of talking animals and other nonhumans, doesn’t have much of an incest taboo. But most of the surrounding countries do, and those countries are Narnia’s allies. She needs them. She can’t afford to alienate them, and Lucy’s terribly afraid that’s going to happen if Peter and Susan’s…affair…becomes widely known. Even Peter can’t fight off a dozen enemies at once.
Lucy’s Narnian, but she’s human too; she has human prejudices. And maybe she might not be opposed to someone else’s brother and sister shagging, but Peter is her brother and Susan is her sister and she doesn’t even want to think about –
She sits down hard on the marble floor and puts her head in her hands. Aslan’s Mane, she doesn’t want this! She doesn’t want Peter and Susan to do this, to be in a place where they want to do this. Peter doesn’t even like women normally! Why, why, why, and how –
Why would they want to? Why would they do so? There are a thousand men and women in Narnia who would be more than happy to share the beds of the High King Peter and Queen Susan the Gentle; they hardly need to turn to each other for comfort. Lucy makes a faint sobbing sound in the back of her throat and curls tighter into herself.
“Majesty.” A cool nose pushes into her palm and Lucy raises her head. Sidonie, the head of Peter’s personal guard, a sturdy jaguar who’s no longer as slim as she was when they were all younger, but she’s still just as fast. She’s outlived three other heads of the Royal Guard.
Lucy swallows another sob. “Hullo, Sidonie,” she says, holding out her hand, and Sidonie butts her head into it. “Are you on duty or am I just that pathetic?”
“You think it’s new, majesty, but it’s not. You think they don’t know what they’re doing, but they do. You think they haven’t thought about it, but they have.” Sidonie sits back on her haunches and looks at her. “Their majesties aren’t children.”
“How do you know? Not that last bit.”
“We’re Royal Guard, your majesty. We watch. We know. Since the beginning, before they did. They’re in love.”
Lucy puts her head against the wall, staring up at the lights near the ceiling. “There’s no such thing.”
“Of course there is. Don’t be cynical.” She stands up and brushes a whiskery kiss over Lucy’s cheek before padding away. “Their majesties are in the High King’s chambers if you want Queen Susan, majesty.”
“Thanks, Si,” Lucy murmurs, even though the last thing she wants to do in the world is walk in on Susan and Peter doing – whatever it is they’re doing. She scrubs a hand over her eyes, then makes herself get up. If this is going on, she has to face it.
The only thing that keeps her from shaking like a leaf as she goes down the hallways towards Peter’s room and the knot of Royal Guard – Peter’s guards and Susan’s guards – on either side of the door is her military and diplomatic training. The four guards are laughing and talking amongst themselves, playing some kind of dice game. They quiet as Lucy approaches.
“Sure you want to go in there, majesty?” a lioness named Sherrod, one of Susan’s guards, asks brightly.
“Absolutely positive I don’t,” Lucy says, but she opens the door and goes in anyway.
Peter and Susan are kissing on the couch, her hands tight in his hair as she moans into his mouth. Lucy makes a rough sound in the back of her throat and closes the door behind her; neither of her siblings looks up. She supposes they’re pretty together, in an aesthetic sort of way, but she can’t make herself look at them without seeing her brother and her sister.
She clears her throat. “Susan,” she says shakily. “Peter.”
Peter jerks away from Susan, his eyes wide, and Susan pushes herself up, twisting around to frown at Lucy. “Lu,” she says. Her mouth is swollen from kissing, her lips very red and her lipstick smeared, and Lucy stares before she wrenches her gaze away.
Peter’s flushing, his cheeks scarlet beneath his tan, but he says gamely, “What is it, Lu?”
It takes a moment for Lucy to break out of her reverie; she’s seen her siblings in various states of undress for years now, but Peter and Susan are fully dressed now, looking at each other with so much hunger that they might as well be naked. She can feel the heat rising in her cheeks as she stares at them. “I –”
“Lucy,” Susan snaps. Her hair is half out of its braid and she’s holding hands with Peter, staring at Lucy defiantly. “What is it?”
She licks her lips, wiping her shaking hands on her skirts before she says, “I don’t like what you’re doing.”
Peter’s eyes go wide and hurt as his hand tightens on Susan’s. But he doesn’t say anything, just keeps looking steadily at Lucy.
“But it’s not my choice,” she continues, and Aslan, her hands and her voice are both shaking. “And you – you both know that –”
Lovely. Now she’s crying.
That makes Peter start up and come to her, cupping her hands in his. Lucy starts to draw away, then gives up and lets him. He’s her brother, she’s due this, at least.
“Lu, we’re not hurting anyone,” he says, sounding stricken. She can almost believe him. She’d have a better job of it if Susan’s lipstick wasn’t smeared across his mouth.
She makes herself concentrate on his eyes, which are big and blue and the same as hers, a little hurt and a little concerned. They’re the same as they’ve always been; he doesn’t go cold and distant for her. She doesn’t dare look over his shoulder at Susan, who’s leaning on the arm of the couch and looking annoyed.
“I know that,” she says, her voice sounding high and scratchy to her ears. “I know that, but – but –”
Her brother and her sister. Why don’t they just understand?
Aslan, she can smell Susan’s perfume on Peter’s skin.
“I can’t do this,” she whispers. “I thought I could come in here and say I understood and that I was all right with it, but I don’t, I can’t, I don’t understand. Why do you have to – why are you –” Oh, gods, she can’t even say it, not past the tears streaming down her face.
“Lu –” Peter begins, reaching for her, but she can already tell he doesn’t have any kind of explanation for her.
She avoids his grasp. “I can’t do this,” she says again. “I can’t, I’m sorry, I can’t.”
They’re not going to stop. She can read that on his face.
“I’m sorry,” Lucy says through her tears and flees the room. She nearly trips over the Royal Guard as they scramble away from the door.
She can’t stand staying inside another minute, not when she keeps looking around Cair Paravel and wondering where Peter and Susan have fucked. Outside isn’t much better, but at least it’s not the royal wing, at least it’s not –
This wasn’t the first time, nowhere close. They’d been too familiar with each other, too intimate – God, Peter’s broad hands across Susan’s back, already reaching for the line of buttons there.
She kicks out at a little stone fox. Statues in Narnia are carved with differences from the real thing deliberately designed in – unnatural patterns, stars or leaves in the fur, a shield on the paw or the haunches, something to show that they’re not some remnant of the White Witch’s. This one has flowers carved into the ruff around its neck.
“Keep doing that and the garden staff will have a fit,” Edmund says lightly, approaching from behind her.
Lucy turns to glare at him. In the long shadows of a Narnian spring dusk, he seems to come out of nowhere, dark clothes and hair blending into the shadows, pale skin a sharp contrast. “Cair Paravel has larger problems than the state of her gardens,” she says sharply.
Edmund sits down on a bench and rests his chin on his hands. “You didn’t go after them, did you?”
She kicks the fox again. “Of course I did.”
“Why?”
Lucy glares at him. “Why? You can’t seriously be asking me that!”
“Peter’s High King, Lu. However much he hates upsetting you – or me – he’s not going to stop just because you ask him to. And Su’s too stubborn for that.” He watches her with shadowed eyes. “Neither of us were there when they started. We don’t know what they were thinking.”
“I don’t think I want to know what they were thinking,” Lucy mutters. “I’m not even sure they were thinking.”
Edmund shrugs. “Come here,” he says, and Lucy folds herself onto the bench by his side, putting her head on his shoulder as he wraps an arm around her. He kisses her hair. “Let them be,” he murmurs. “It’s not our place to question what they do behind closed doors.”
Lucy pulls away and punches him in the arm. “You do that for fun!”
“Shut up, I’m trying to make a point!” Edmund exclaims. “Look on the bright side, at least Su probably won’t try to kill Peter after she’s tired of him.”
“Heartsbane,” Lucy says pointedly, but she lets Edmund pull her to her feet.
“Come on,” he says, “let’s go raid the kitchens.”