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bedlamsbardMore early fic! This is a Peter POV of Once More for the Ages, which was written in June 2008. If I remember correctly, I started writing Legend the first couple weeks of my freshman year of university, in my fits and starts of homesickness and despair and general teenage angst. There's a lot of my Narnia angst in this one. It's heavy on the Golden Age Narnia/Telmarine Narnia differences, and on what was lost after the White Stag. (Also, bonus excerpt from Tumnus's diary, I'd forgotten that was in there.)
Ah. "Once More for the Ages" is Peter/Caspian, but I stopped working on Legend before it got there. As there's an alternate POV, I guess I don't have to say how it ends! Once again, damn, but I was heavy on the italics back in the day.
Narnia’s changed.
Of course it has, and of course it would; he’s known this since the moment he sat down on his throne in Cair Paravel. It’s just that he never thought he wouldn’t be there to see it happen.
Away from the raucous celebration that will probably haunt the court for days to come – until the inevitable brutal bloodshed begins, of course; that’s a given, though Peter doubts anyone else has realized it – Narnia is quiet and peaceful. He’s alone for the first time since leaving England; he’d sent the guard on this tower away.
Despite the still muggy heat, there’s a faint chill lingering in the air, promise of the end of summer and the autumn yet to come. It’s oddly appropriate. Summer had been ending when they left Narnia the last time too. Maybe their summer will always be ending.
This is the tallest tower in the castle, and it’s a clear night. Peter stands at the ramparts with a wineskin in one hand, looking down at his country. Below he can see the Great River winding like a silver ribbon through dark fields and darker forests, occasionally punctuated by little flickers of light from the few Telmarine villages, most of them close to the capital and all of them walled and gated for protection. Beyond that, he can just barely see the rise of mountains to the north and the south. He can’t see the sea. Can’t see the broken white walls of Cair Paravel. What’s below him is only a piece of Narnia, but it’s Narnia nonetheless, the country that loved and nurtured him and saw him grow from a boy to a man. He’s lived one lifetime in this land.
He won’t, he thinks, be given the chance to live a second.
He hears the footsteps on the stairs below and smiles a little to himself as the door opens and doesn’t close again. The guards have their orders, none of the Narnians or Telmarines will think to look for him here, and his siblings wouldn’t hesitate. “There’s wine if you want it,” he says, holding out the skin without looking back.
“I didn’t want to disturb you,” Caspian says, and he grins again, briefly elated in triumph. It’s not the sort of thing that would have amused him once, but that was long ago and in another country and besides, that man is dead.
“You didn’t,” he says. “Come here.” He won’t be given a second chance; there are things Caspian should know. There was no one to tell him this after his own coronation; the White Witch had killed every clan chief, every village councilman, every pack and herd leader, when she took her throne. They had learned to rule by guess and by God, half their early successes by the grace of Aslan alone. Whatever help he can give Caspian, he’ll give it.
Caspian comes on slow, uncertain feet, but he comes nonetheless, finally settling into a position next to and slightly behind Peter. He doesn’t take the proffered wine skin. “What are you looking at?” he asks.
His tone is infinitely polite, more courtesy than he would have offered even two days ago, and Peter has to hide his smile. Caspian’s sudden realization of his status in the grand scheme of Narnian royalty shouldn’t be as amusing as it is.
“Narnia,” Peter replies, grave with respect. He shouldn’t bait Caspian, not now. Honesty is one of the few gifts he has left to give. He lets one hand rest on the crenellated wall in front of him, the stone rough against his callused fingers. The blisters had passed quicker this time than they had the last.
From below, there’s a faint shimmer of sound, a door somewhere opening and letting music and voices spill out, still jubilant from a victory only days past. It won’t last. Such things never do. As the door closes, leaving them alone with the breath of the wind and the distant call of an owl, Peter leans forward, all his weight on the wall before him, and looks out at his country.
“The view,” he admits, though it’s not entirely fair to do so, call up old ghosts from a past long dead and finally, finally, laid to rest, “isn’t quite as good as from Cair Paravel – on a clear day,” he interjects, smiling at the memory; it doesn’t hurt now as much as it had once, “you could see from one end of the country to the other. But this will have to do.”
Caspian looks at him uncertainly, blinking. “This is from one end of the country to the other,” he says. “Mostly.”
Mostly had been true for them too, and grown more so as Narnia’s borders expanded, her new lands bought by blood and gold and back-breaking labor. It was only when they began that they could see the whole of Narnia from Cair Paravel’s tallest tower; by the time they ended they could only see her heart. Kings and emperors build their palaces where they can see their prizes; Caspian’s long ago ancestor was no exception. The view isn’t bad at all.
“Not in our day,” he says, tipping the wineskin back for a single mouthful of the sweet red, a relic from the days of Caspian’s less-than-lamented father. A good year, by the taste. He savors it for a moment before he continues. “In our day, Narnia stretched from Harfang in the north to Archenland in the south, from the Great Eastern Ocean and most of its islands to the Western Wild.” He has to stop as the memory hits him, a dagger to the heart. Despite everything, it still hurts. All that blood spent, and for this, for only the fading echo of a memory of a memory to remain, the hardwon borders of Narnia washed away by war and time and that cruel bitch fortune. He hadn’t thought about it all, too caught up in the crisis of the moment to look at the big picture, the grand scheme of broken history and ruined dreams. Hadn’t thought about it at all. For a moment, he doesn’t see Narnia alive and clawing her way back to normalcy inch by painstaking inch; he sees the corpse of his country, bones laid bare and exposed to the carrion who come picking at the remains of her flesh.
Breathe, Pevensie. The past is past. You couldn’t help her then, but maybe you can help her now. Help Narnia. Help Caspian. His Narnia is dead and rotting, but maybe he can have some hand in building a new one out of the ashes. Maybe it will be Caspian’s Narnia that becomes the real Narnia. Let his Narnia stay a legend, fade into the mists of time and become myth, his own private Camelot and Avalon all rolled up in one. Arthur was betrayed, you know, he hears Ed say, and has to smile a little, sadly. Weren’t we all, brother-mine?
“We had heard of Telmar, you know,” he says suddenly to Caspian. These memories, this history – maybe this will help Caspian. His battles fought and his war won, Peter has nothing left to offer but the truth. As Aslan is great, let us not be forgotten! “A little backwater country crowded onto our western border along with Belgarion, Shoushan, Natare, and Lasci, which wasn’t a civilized country so much as it was a country filled entirely with brigands,” he continues, conjuring up maps in his head and overlying them one upon the other until he has the whole world spread out before his mind’s eye. It had seemed – still seems – impossibly vast, but like his own world, can only have shrank given the passage of time. “Telmar tested our borders a few times, mostly after the White Witch fell, but they were easily repelled.” He runs his fingers over the rough stone before him. “I don’t suppose any of those countries are here now.”
Tumnus’ diary had been clear. The black serpent of Natare and the fox of Belgarion have overtaken Narnia, burning and murdering as they go. Oh, what darkness has taken Narnia! What great wrong have we done the Lion that he should treat us so ill scarce two decades since the White Witch fell, ripping our kings and queens, our freedom and our lives from us all at once?
Even if Natare and Belgarion still live, there’s nothing Peter can do Those responsible for Narnia’s rape have been dead as long as she, and no magic can bring the dead back to die anew. But he knows the men who would have given the orders, knows them as only one king can know another, and he knows that if he could, he’d bring them back from the abyss and kill them both himself.
Caspian is watching him with steady eyes. When Peter looks at him, he replies, “Not in living memory. Shoushan I have heard of, and Telmar, of course, but these others…no. And I had the best tutors in Narnia,” he adds.
Peter smiles a little at that, then the impact of the boy’s words bear down on him and he sighs. “Likely collapsed into chaos, then, or conquered for some greater power.” The lucky bastards, he adds silently; he wants them dead. But they’re already gone, dead and gone for a thousand years, and not even their memories remain in Narnia anymore. Maybe that’s the best curse – to be forgotten forever. May not even your own flesh and bone remember your names. It’s over. Let the past lie dead and silent.
“I’ve been so caught up in Narnia,” he admits, “I hadn’t even thought about anyone else till now. Who is on Narnia’s western border, then?”
“No one,” Caspian says, and then, “The Western Wild.”
Peter raises his eyebrows. He’s seen Telmarine maps, and Telmarine Narnia is small, but not nearly that small, and he can’t think that Miraz would be so stupid as to assume that Narnia is alone in the world.
“I’ll find out,” Caspian adds hastily. He ducks his head, a flush rising to his cheeks, and Peter watches him for a moment before he jerks his gaze away. Seven, but it’s been a long time since he –
“Find someone who likes finding things out and set them to it,” he says, concentrating on the matter at hand. “You won’t be able to do it yourself; you won’t have time. Ruling a country takes far too much of that, I’m afraid,” he adds ruefully, “and I wasn’t even Narnia’s sole ruler.”
Caspian’s head goes up, his eyes widening in surprise. “I won’t be either, though,” he says, and then he hesitates a little over the words as he says, “Will I?”
The notion looks like it scares him, and if there’s anything Peter understands it’s that, the choking terror that comes from having the weight of a country, the weight of thousands of lives, the weight of the future dropped on his shoulders all at once. He offers Caspian a sad, familiar smile. “And which throne exactly do you suggest I take?” he asks to belay the seriousness of the question. “No one is seated above the High King, and I’ve seen your throne room. It would make the dais a little crowded, don’t you think?”
“Aren’t you staying?” Caspian asks, an edge of desperation in his voice. “Are you leaving Narnia this time too?”
*
Yeah, I'm pretty glad I eventually got away from ANGST ALL OVER THE PLACE.
Ah. "Once More for the Ages" is Peter/Caspian, but I stopped working on Legend before it got there. As there's an alternate POV, I guess I don't have to say how it ends! Once again, damn, but I was heavy on the italics back in the day.
Narnia’s changed.
Of course it has, and of course it would; he’s known this since the moment he sat down on his throne in Cair Paravel. It’s just that he never thought he wouldn’t be there to see it happen.
Away from the raucous celebration that will probably haunt the court for days to come – until the inevitable brutal bloodshed begins, of course; that’s a given, though Peter doubts anyone else has realized it – Narnia is quiet and peaceful. He’s alone for the first time since leaving England; he’d sent the guard on this tower away.
Despite the still muggy heat, there’s a faint chill lingering in the air, promise of the end of summer and the autumn yet to come. It’s oddly appropriate. Summer had been ending when they left Narnia the last time too. Maybe their summer will always be ending.
This is the tallest tower in the castle, and it’s a clear night. Peter stands at the ramparts with a wineskin in one hand, looking down at his country. Below he can see the Great River winding like a silver ribbon through dark fields and darker forests, occasionally punctuated by little flickers of light from the few Telmarine villages, most of them close to the capital and all of them walled and gated for protection. Beyond that, he can just barely see the rise of mountains to the north and the south. He can’t see the sea. Can’t see the broken white walls of Cair Paravel. What’s below him is only a piece of Narnia, but it’s Narnia nonetheless, the country that loved and nurtured him and saw him grow from a boy to a man. He’s lived one lifetime in this land.
He won’t, he thinks, be given the chance to live a second.
He hears the footsteps on the stairs below and smiles a little to himself as the door opens and doesn’t close again. The guards have their orders, none of the Narnians or Telmarines will think to look for him here, and his siblings wouldn’t hesitate. “There’s wine if you want it,” he says, holding out the skin without looking back.
“I didn’t want to disturb you,” Caspian says, and he grins again, briefly elated in triumph. It’s not the sort of thing that would have amused him once, but that was long ago and in another country and besides, that man is dead.
“You didn’t,” he says. “Come here.” He won’t be given a second chance; there are things Caspian should know. There was no one to tell him this after his own coronation; the White Witch had killed every clan chief, every village councilman, every pack and herd leader, when she took her throne. They had learned to rule by guess and by God, half their early successes by the grace of Aslan alone. Whatever help he can give Caspian, he’ll give it.
Caspian comes on slow, uncertain feet, but he comes nonetheless, finally settling into a position next to and slightly behind Peter. He doesn’t take the proffered wine skin. “What are you looking at?” he asks.
His tone is infinitely polite, more courtesy than he would have offered even two days ago, and Peter has to hide his smile. Caspian’s sudden realization of his status in the grand scheme of Narnian royalty shouldn’t be as amusing as it is.
“Narnia,” Peter replies, grave with respect. He shouldn’t bait Caspian, not now. Honesty is one of the few gifts he has left to give. He lets one hand rest on the crenellated wall in front of him, the stone rough against his callused fingers. The blisters had passed quicker this time than they had the last.
From below, there’s a faint shimmer of sound, a door somewhere opening and letting music and voices spill out, still jubilant from a victory only days past. It won’t last. Such things never do. As the door closes, leaving them alone with the breath of the wind and the distant call of an owl, Peter leans forward, all his weight on the wall before him, and looks out at his country.
“The view,” he admits, though it’s not entirely fair to do so, call up old ghosts from a past long dead and finally, finally, laid to rest, “isn’t quite as good as from Cair Paravel – on a clear day,” he interjects, smiling at the memory; it doesn’t hurt now as much as it had once, “you could see from one end of the country to the other. But this will have to do.”
Caspian looks at him uncertainly, blinking. “This is from one end of the country to the other,” he says. “Mostly.”
Mostly had been true for them too, and grown more so as Narnia’s borders expanded, her new lands bought by blood and gold and back-breaking labor. It was only when they began that they could see the whole of Narnia from Cair Paravel’s tallest tower; by the time they ended they could only see her heart. Kings and emperors build their palaces where they can see their prizes; Caspian’s long ago ancestor was no exception. The view isn’t bad at all.
“Not in our day,” he says, tipping the wineskin back for a single mouthful of the sweet red, a relic from the days of Caspian’s less-than-lamented father. A good year, by the taste. He savors it for a moment before he continues. “In our day, Narnia stretched from Harfang in the north to Archenland in the south, from the Great Eastern Ocean and most of its islands to the Western Wild.” He has to stop as the memory hits him, a dagger to the heart. Despite everything, it still hurts. All that blood spent, and for this, for only the fading echo of a memory of a memory to remain, the hardwon borders of Narnia washed away by war and time and that cruel bitch fortune. He hadn’t thought about it all, too caught up in the crisis of the moment to look at the big picture, the grand scheme of broken history and ruined dreams. Hadn’t thought about it at all. For a moment, he doesn’t see Narnia alive and clawing her way back to normalcy inch by painstaking inch; he sees the corpse of his country, bones laid bare and exposed to the carrion who come picking at the remains of her flesh.
Breathe, Pevensie. The past is past. You couldn’t help her then, but maybe you can help her now. Help Narnia. Help Caspian. His Narnia is dead and rotting, but maybe he can have some hand in building a new one out of the ashes. Maybe it will be Caspian’s Narnia that becomes the real Narnia. Let his Narnia stay a legend, fade into the mists of time and become myth, his own private Camelot and Avalon all rolled up in one. Arthur was betrayed, you know, he hears Ed say, and has to smile a little, sadly. Weren’t we all, brother-mine?
“We had heard of Telmar, you know,” he says suddenly to Caspian. These memories, this history – maybe this will help Caspian. His battles fought and his war won, Peter has nothing left to offer but the truth. As Aslan is great, let us not be forgotten! “A little backwater country crowded onto our western border along with Belgarion, Shoushan, Natare, and Lasci, which wasn’t a civilized country so much as it was a country filled entirely with brigands,” he continues, conjuring up maps in his head and overlying them one upon the other until he has the whole world spread out before his mind’s eye. It had seemed – still seems – impossibly vast, but like his own world, can only have shrank given the passage of time. “Telmar tested our borders a few times, mostly after the White Witch fell, but they were easily repelled.” He runs his fingers over the rough stone before him. “I don’t suppose any of those countries are here now.”
Tumnus’ diary had been clear. The black serpent of Natare and the fox of Belgarion have overtaken Narnia, burning and murdering as they go. Oh, what darkness has taken Narnia! What great wrong have we done the Lion that he should treat us so ill scarce two decades since the White Witch fell, ripping our kings and queens, our freedom and our lives from us all at once?
Even if Natare and Belgarion still live, there’s nothing Peter can do Those responsible for Narnia’s rape have been dead as long as she, and no magic can bring the dead back to die anew. But he knows the men who would have given the orders, knows them as only one king can know another, and he knows that if he could, he’d bring them back from the abyss and kill them both himself.
Caspian is watching him with steady eyes. When Peter looks at him, he replies, “Not in living memory. Shoushan I have heard of, and Telmar, of course, but these others…no. And I had the best tutors in Narnia,” he adds.
Peter smiles a little at that, then the impact of the boy’s words bear down on him and he sighs. “Likely collapsed into chaos, then, or conquered for some greater power.” The lucky bastards, he adds silently; he wants them dead. But they’re already gone, dead and gone for a thousand years, and not even their memories remain in Narnia anymore. Maybe that’s the best curse – to be forgotten forever. May not even your own flesh and bone remember your names. It’s over. Let the past lie dead and silent.
“I’ve been so caught up in Narnia,” he admits, “I hadn’t even thought about anyone else till now. Who is on Narnia’s western border, then?”
“No one,” Caspian says, and then, “The Western Wild.”
Peter raises his eyebrows. He’s seen Telmarine maps, and Telmarine Narnia is small, but not nearly that small, and he can’t think that Miraz would be so stupid as to assume that Narnia is alone in the world.
“I’ll find out,” Caspian adds hastily. He ducks his head, a flush rising to his cheeks, and Peter watches him for a moment before he jerks his gaze away. Seven, but it’s been a long time since he –
“Find someone who likes finding things out and set them to it,” he says, concentrating on the matter at hand. “You won’t be able to do it yourself; you won’t have time. Ruling a country takes far too much of that, I’m afraid,” he adds ruefully, “and I wasn’t even Narnia’s sole ruler.”
Caspian’s head goes up, his eyes widening in surprise. “I won’t be either, though,” he says, and then he hesitates a little over the words as he says, “Will I?”
The notion looks like it scares him, and if there’s anything Peter understands it’s that, the choking terror that comes from having the weight of a country, the weight of thousands of lives, the weight of the future dropped on his shoulders all at once. He offers Caspian a sad, familiar smile. “And which throne exactly do you suggest I take?” he asks to belay the seriousness of the question. “No one is seated above the High King, and I’ve seen your throne room. It would make the dais a little crowded, don’t you think?”
“Aren’t you staying?” Caspian asks, an edge of desperation in his voice. “Are you leaving Narnia this time too?”
*
Yeah, I'm pretty glad I eventually got away from ANGST ALL OVER THE PLACE.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-29 12:59 am (UTC)It seems like Edmund has told him of the spirits at Cair Paravel then? Or am I just reading too much about his comment about calling up old ghosts? I do like his thought about wishing he could have killed his rival kings that would have likely invaded Narnia after the Pevensies left.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-29 04:19 pm (UTC)I have the feeling that Peter, and maybe Susan and Edmund and possibly Lucy, had the nagging feeling that they weren't going to be staying in Narnia this time throughout most of PC, but they never articulated it or never let themselves think about it in so many words until after they'd done the job they'd been brought there to do. (And I definitely think this is true in VotDT for Edmund and Lucy.)
(no subject)
Date: 2013-03-12 07:08 pm (UTC)It's interesting, I came out of the PC movie with this feeling of heartbreak for the Pevensies, because their lives had changed so drastically and completely. And in the beginning they have all adjusted to that change to various degrees, and then, they're tugged back into that life, and you know, you just know, that they're aware the entire time that they're not staying, that they're not there to live in Narnia again, they're just there to put some things right (or die trying) - and it hurts, everything is both right and wrong at the same time, they're home and they're cast even further from it, and they know it's not going to end they way they wish it could, and maybe they don't even wish that any more.
Anyway, I think you've captured that sense so very well in this piece - in all the stories you were writing at the time - the feeling of a life lost, but you still being around to live, even when everything you were living for and about and because of, is gone. And you get a taste of that life again, but it's not your life anymore, no matter how tempting it is, and you know it, and you have to face that moving on, that change, and wonder what else can possibly come after this.
Heh, so I'm rambling, and as I said on twitter I was feeling nostalgic for those days of this fandom, and even though it's not a shippy Peter/Caspian fic, I still really loved it, and it hit me in a place I almost forgot about.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-03-13 12:15 am (UTC)I started this fic in the late hours of an evening when I couldn't sleep the first week I was at Tulane; I remember writing it by hand, via lamplight, while my new roommate was either asleep or out of the room. Strange place, strange time; I do think it shows in my fic from the period, which was either really angry or really sad or sometimes both.
I remember those days of fandom. Good times, weird times; interesting what came out of it.
Apparently I see your ramble and raise you a ramble of my own!