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bedlamsbardGuys. I wrote canon characters. In actual canon time points. (Well, relatively speaking.) You have no idea how much this excites me after the way I spent most of my summer. Original entry here.
*
It doesn't rain like this in England, but in Narnia the rains are torrential, so much water coming down at once that it's more like someone's emptied a bucket out over the world rather than any kind of rain Susan's ever seen before. She curls up in a window seat, presses her cheek against the stained glass, watches it run down and spray from the lion's head water spouts scattered at seemingly random intervals around the castle walls.
Down below, in a courtyard bricked in a pale pink marble that goes red in the rain, Lucy dances, hands raised high above her head and her face creased in concentration, fauns and dryads and naiads leaping around her, overjoyed at the rain they haven't had in a hundred years, while water runs easily down the drainage channels at the sides of the courtyard, white with foam.
Susan doesn't know where Edmund has vanished to, but Peter catches her hands and pulls her through the halls of Cair Paravel until they emerge at last, laughing and stumbling, into the downpour, which soaks them to the skin in a heartbeat. Peter turns his head up to the sky, mouth open to catch the rain, and Susan does the same, tasting the warmth of it, the sweet clarity of it, in the moments before she and her brother both look at each other and grin. They spin each other around and around, Susan's skirts flaring out around her, until they're too dizzy to stand anymore and collapse laughing to the ground, the rain beating down around them.
*
There are moments in time when Peter can't breathe, when he can't move, when the only thing he can do is lock himself in his (as large as the Finchley house) closet and hug his knees, trying to force himself back to still calm so that he can leave his rooms, go out into the halls and courtyards of Cair Paravel and smile, wear his crown easily, and hold his sword like he's borne one since the cradle. But it's too much sometimes; it's just too much and it's too big, and Peter hears himself screaming in his own head that he can't do this, he can't, he's only fourteen, how is he supposed to rule a country and make Narnia great and do everything that a king -- a High King -- is supposed to do?
He knows at least that he can't take that outside his rooms; he knows that his doubts and his fears have to be kept behind locked doors, and so he shoves them away and chokes them down and hides them until he has the time to lock himself away from the rest of the world and just try and remember to breathe, one breath at a time, so that he can open the door and go out, be the High King that Narnia needs, that Aslan told him he could be.
*
He could say, "Don't do this," or, "You're making the wrong decision," but in the end Edmund says nothing at all, even as Lucy pleads for just one more journey to Narnia, because this isn't something he can argue, and he's been waiting for this moment since the waves on the picture in Lu's room began to move.
He's sick of holding his breath in two worlds, waiting for the other shoe to drop, so when Aslan opens a hole in the sky, Edmund leaves Narnia for the last time, quietly and without protest and without fanfare, like a hundred other exiled kings have done before.
*
His hands were shaking so badly that he couldn't get the armor off, and while there had been a faun who helped him get it on, he doesn't know where Inachus has got to, or even if he's still alive. There's just him, in the tent he'd been sharing with Peter, fumbling at his gauntleted hand with his gloved one. Lu might have offered to help, he's sure, but he doesn't know where Lucy's gone -- although at least Edmund's certain she's alive, which is more than he can say for almost anyone else.
He'd been afraid, earlier, of taking off his tabard and his mail and the padded undershirt he's wearing beneath that and seeing a gaping hole, or a scar, or unmarked flesh, or God only knows what else, and he'd hesitated, but he thinks he should have tried getting his armor off then, because now everything's caught up with him, the blood and the guts and the look in the White Witch's eyes as she'd stabbed him and the death and the dying and the screaming, and he couldn't do something that requires coordinated motion if his life depended on it. He even tugs at the end of one strap with his teeth, but that doesn't help.
"Ed?" There's a voice from the door, Peter, and Edmund scowls viciously at the gauntlet and turns his back to the door, because he doesn't want Peter to see that he can't get this done, because he can, just -- not right now. "Lu's asking about you, and -- Ed?"
"Tell her I'll be along in a minute," Edmund says, which isn't even a lie; he may well be. He stares fixedly at the pattern worked into the plate on his gauntlet, like wood grain. It shouldn't be attractive, but it is.
Peter's step is light around him until he finally comes to a stop, saying worriedly, "Are you all right?"
He, of course, is in trousers and a loose red shirt with gold embroidery on the sleeves and collar, with his hair damp, although the cut over his eye hasn't been treated. He was probably able to take his armor off on his own, or had grateful Narnians lining up to help. "I'm fine," Edmund snaps, and jerks furiously at a strap, which doesn't manage to do anything except tighten it.
"Ed," Peter says, but nothing else, and he takes Edmund's gauntleted hand in both of his, picking the straps free with still hands and painstaking care, and Edmund takes a deep breath and stares over his head, willing himself to calm. Perfect Peter, of course he's all right, he only managed to win a battle and save Narnia and defeat the White Witch.
"Ed," Peter says again, sliding the gauntlet off and moving on to the vambraces. "You saved us."
*
"What would I be without you?" Peter says to Edmund, managing not to fidget while Edmund picks the knots free.
"Consummating your drug-induced marriage to a Calormene warlord. Lady. One of the two." He manages to free one wrist, tossing the long silk scarf aside -- the way the colors catch the light as it floats gently down makes Peter nauseous, and he has to turn his head aside, working the numb fingers of his hand. "Depending on when you finally came out of the drug haze, possibly stopping Susan from murdering your new bride."
He starts in on the other wrist; Peter's only able to watch him for a minute before he hast to turn away. "I may be sick," he warns, colors spinning briefly before his eyes.
"That's why there's a basin next to you," Edmund tells him. He digs his fingers into the knot, scowling. "Say what you like about Zuhayr Tarkheena, she can definitely tie knots. I'm impressed. I don't think Admiral Seaworth could do these half so-tightly. I was wondering why she hadn't just cuffed you to the bed."
"I told her I could pick locks," Peter says, finally starting to regain some feeling in his left arm. "In retrospect, perhaps not the brightest idea."
Edmund shakes his head slowly. "Accepting a drink from someone you just told you could pick locks? Also not the brightest idea."
*
The blond and the brunet sitting at the table in the corner, doing shots of pale red liquor and playing mumblety-peg with their daggers, hardly look like the men Liobsynde was directed to. She pauses in the doorway of the bar, in the bare moments she's allowed before someone shoves up behind her and sends her stumbling forward.
"Sorry," says a light female voice from behind her, sounding genuine. "Drank too much."
The dark-haired man -- no, Libosynde realizes, he's no more than a boy, probably seventeen or eighteen -- swings his legs over the side of the bench he's sitting on, knocking his foot against the blade of the knife stuck in the floorboards in what seems accidental but actually flips it up several feet in the air, just high enough that he can snatch it and sheathe it in the same motion.
"Lu!" he carols. "Where've you been?"
"Wouldn't you like to know, brother-mine?" says the girl, slipping past Liobsynde and putting an arm around his neck, standing up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek.
The blond man, older by a few years, retrieves his own dagger, flipping it idly back and forth between his fingers, and leans back against the wall, watching his siblings with a small smile on his face. His gaze slides over to Liobsynde and he sits up, his smile changing slightly -- less indulgent, more curious.
"You look like you're looking for someone," he says, gesturing at the recently-vacated seat across from him.
Liobsynde takes a deep breath. "I'm looking for the High King of Narnia," she says.
His smile grows. "You've found him."
*
Caspian has no memory of his father.
His mother, a little, just the barest snatch of it, but he can't remember his father, even though he knows that he should. Everything he's ever heard about King Caspian IX comes second-hand -- his uncle seldom speaks of him, and there are few people remaining in the castle that remember when his father was king; he's never thought about why that is, never had to.
When he was younger, he used to spend his time constructing a picture of his father -- a tall man, face taken from the portrait in the gallery but less stern, with a crown on his head and a smile on his face. He had been kind and gentle to the righteous and stern and unbending to the lawbreakers, and he would have been the best swordsman in Narnia, and when he'd come back from a hunt, he'd kiss his wife and swing Caspian up in his arms, carrying him before him on his big black horse. When he was younger, Caspian used to promise himself that he'd grow up to be a king like his father.
But when Professor Cornelius wakes him in the middle of the night with a hand over his mouth, it's the first time Caspian's thought about his father in years.
*
Edmund has his hands over his face. "Please tell me I'm allowed to throw them out of Narnia for being idiots," he pleads.
"I don't think so," Susan says, smoothing her palms over her skirts. Her cheeks are still red and there's a mark on her neck, but otherwise she looks as if she's about to go to a formal dinner, perfect and spotless. "But I don't think they'll be staying long," she adds as Peter's voice rises from outside the door and at the other end of the hallway.
"Is Peter allowed to throw them out of Narnia for being idiots?" Edmund presses.
"If he doesn't kill them," Susan says. "And if he remembered to button his trousers back up."
It doesn't rain like this in England, but in Narnia the rains are torrential, so much water coming down at once that it's more like someone's emptied a bucket out over the world rather than any kind of rain Susan's ever seen before. She curls up in a window seat, presses her cheek against the stained glass, watches it run down and spray from the lion's head water spouts scattered at seemingly random intervals around the castle walls.
Down below, in a courtyard bricked in a pale pink marble that goes red in the rain, Lucy dances, hands raised high above her head and her face creased in concentration, fauns and dryads and naiads leaping around her, overjoyed at the rain they haven't had in a hundred years, while water runs easily down the drainage channels at the sides of the courtyard, white with foam.
Susan doesn't know where Edmund has vanished to, but Peter catches her hands and pulls her through the halls of Cair Paravel until they emerge at last, laughing and stumbling, into the downpour, which soaks them to the skin in a heartbeat. Peter turns his head up to the sky, mouth open to catch the rain, and Susan does the same, tasting the warmth of it, the sweet clarity of it, in the moments before she and her brother both look at each other and grin. They spin each other around and around, Susan's skirts flaring out around her, until they're too dizzy to stand anymore and collapse laughing to the ground, the rain beating down around them.
There are moments in time when Peter can't breathe, when he can't move, when the only thing he can do is lock himself in his (as large as the Finchley house) closet and hug his knees, trying to force himself back to still calm so that he can leave his rooms, go out into the halls and courtyards of Cair Paravel and smile, wear his crown easily, and hold his sword like he's borne one since the cradle. But it's too much sometimes; it's just too much and it's too big, and Peter hears himself screaming in his own head that he can't do this, he can't, he's only fourteen, how is he supposed to rule a country and make Narnia great and do everything that a king -- a High King -- is supposed to do?
He knows at least that he can't take that outside his rooms; he knows that his doubts and his fears have to be kept behind locked doors, and so he shoves them away and chokes them down and hides them until he has the time to lock himself away from the rest of the world and just try and remember to breathe, one breath at a time, so that he can open the door and go out, be the High King that Narnia needs, that Aslan told him he could be.
He could say, "Don't do this," or, "You're making the wrong decision," but in the end Edmund says nothing at all, even as Lucy pleads for just one more journey to Narnia, because this isn't something he can argue, and he's been waiting for this moment since the waves on the picture in Lu's room began to move.
He's sick of holding his breath in two worlds, waiting for the other shoe to drop, so when Aslan opens a hole in the sky, Edmund leaves Narnia for the last time, quietly and without protest and without fanfare, like a hundred other exiled kings have done before.
His hands were shaking so badly that he couldn't get the armor off, and while there had been a faun who helped him get it on, he doesn't know where Inachus has got to, or even if he's still alive. There's just him, in the tent he'd been sharing with Peter, fumbling at his gauntleted hand with his gloved one. Lu might have offered to help, he's sure, but he doesn't know where Lucy's gone -- although at least Edmund's certain she's alive, which is more than he can say for almost anyone else.
He'd been afraid, earlier, of taking off his tabard and his mail and the padded undershirt he's wearing beneath that and seeing a gaping hole, or a scar, or unmarked flesh, or God only knows what else, and he'd hesitated, but he thinks he should have tried getting his armor off then, because now everything's caught up with him, the blood and the guts and the look in the White Witch's eyes as she'd stabbed him and the death and the dying and the screaming, and he couldn't do something that requires coordinated motion if his life depended on it. He even tugs at the end of one strap with his teeth, but that doesn't help.
"Ed?" There's a voice from the door, Peter, and Edmund scowls viciously at the gauntlet and turns his back to the door, because he doesn't want Peter to see that he can't get this done, because he can, just -- not right now. "Lu's asking about you, and -- Ed?"
"Tell her I'll be along in a minute," Edmund says, which isn't even a lie; he may well be. He stares fixedly at the pattern worked into the plate on his gauntlet, like wood grain. It shouldn't be attractive, but it is.
Peter's step is light around him until he finally comes to a stop, saying worriedly, "Are you all right?"
He, of course, is in trousers and a loose red shirt with gold embroidery on the sleeves and collar, with his hair damp, although the cut over his eye hasn't been treated. He was probably able to take his armor off on his own, or had grateful Narnians lining up to help. "I'm fine," Edmund snaps, and jerks furiously at a strap, which doesn't manage to do anything except tighten it.
"Ed," Peter says, but nothing else, and he takes Edmund's gauntleted hand in both of his, picking the straps free with still hands and painstaking care, and Edmund takes a deep breath and stares over his head, willing himself to calm. Perfect Peter, of course he's all right, he only managed to win a battle and save Narnia and defeat the White Witch.
"Ed," Peter says again, sliding the gauntlet off and moving on to the vambraces. "You saved us."
"What would I be without you?" Peter says to Edmund, managing not to fidget while Edmund picks the knots free.
"Consummating your drug-induced marriage to a Calormene warlord. Lady. One of the two." He manages to free one wrist, tossing the long silk scarf aside -- the way the colors catch the light as it floats gently down makes Peter nauseous, and he has to turn his head aside, working the numb fingers of his hand. "Depending on when you finally came out of the drug haze, possibly stopping Susan from murdering your new bride."
He starts in on the other wrist; Peter's only able to watch him for a minute before he hast to turn away. "I may be sick," he warns, colors spinning briefly before his eyes.
"That's why there's a basin next to you," Edmund tells him. He digs his fingers into the knot, scowling. "Say what you like about Zuhayr Tarkheena, she can definitely tie knots. I'm impressed. I don't think Admiral Seaworth could do these half so-tightly. I was wondering why she hadn't just cuffed you to the bed."
"I told her I could pick locks," Peter says, finally starting to regain some feeling in his left arm. "In retrospect, perhaps not the brightest idea."
Edmund shakes his head slowly. "Accepting a drink from someone you just told you could pick locks? Also not the brightest idea."
The blond and the brunet sitting at the table in the corner, doing shots of pale red liquor and playing mumblety-peg with their daggers, hardly look like the men Liobsynde was directed to. She pauses in the doorway of the bar, in the bare moments she's allowed before someone shoves up behind her and sends her stumbling forward.
"Sorry," says a light female voice from behind her, sounding genuine. "Drank too much."
The dark-haired man -- no, Libosynde realizes, he's no more than a boy, probably seventeen or eighteen -- swings his legs over the side of the bench he's sitting on, knocking his foot against the blade of the knife stuck in the floorboards in what seems accidental but actually flips it up several feet in the air, just high enough that he can snatch it and sheathe it in the same motion.
"Lu!" he carols. "Where've you been?"
"Wouldn't you like to know, brother-mine?" says the girl, slipping past Liobsynde and putting an arm around his neck, standing up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek.
The blond man, older by a few years, retrieves his own dagger, flipping it idly back and forth between his fingers, and leans back against the wall, watching his siblings with a small smile on his face. His gaze slides over to Liobsynde and he sits up, his smile changing slightly -- less indulgent, more curious.
"You look like you're looking for someone," he says, gesturing at the recently-vacated seat across from him.
Liobsynde takes a deep breath. "I'm looking for the High King of Narnia," she says.
His smile grows. "You've found him."
Caspian has no memory of his father.
His mother, a little, just the barest snatch of it, but he can't remember his father, even though he knows that he should. Everything he's ever heard about King Caspian IX comes second-hand -- his uncle seldom speaks of him, and there are few people remaining in the castle that remember when his father was king; he's never thought about why that is, never had to.
When he was younger, he used to spend his time constructing a picture of his father -- a tall man, face taken from the portrait in the gallery but less stern, with a crown on his head and a smile on his face. He had been kind and gentle to the righteous and stern and unbending to the lawbreakers, and he would have been the best swordsman in Narnia, and when he'd come back from a hunt, he'd kiss his wife and swing Caspian up in his arms, carrying him before him on his big black horse. When he was younger, Caspian used to promise himself that he'd grow up to be a king like his father.
But when Professor Cornelius wakes him in the middle of the night with a hand over his mouth, it's the first time Caspian's thought about his father in years.
Edmund has his hands over his face. "Please tell me I'm allowed to throw them out of Narnia for being idiots," he pleads.
"I don't think so," Susan says, smoothing her palms over her skirts. Her cheeks are still red and there's a mark on her neck, but otherwise she looks as if she's about to go to a formal dinner, perfect and spotless. "But I don't think they'll be staying long," she adds as Peter's voice rises from outside the door and at the other end of the hallway.
"Is Peter allowed to throw them out of Narnia for being idiots?" Edmund presses.
"If he doesn't kill them," Susan says. "And if he remembered to button his trousers back up."