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bedlamsbardAnd it's DONE! No, seriously, the story is complete as is; I didn't leave anything hanging that wasn't done deliberately and it doesn't end in the middle of a sentence or a scene the way some of my other UFOs have. Further notes at the end about the AU, what would have happened next (Water was conceived as the first in an increasingly cracky trilogy), and what probably happened before.
Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six
*
“Take them out and run them through their paces,” Peta had ordered. “Same as any other day. I don’t want to give them time to sit around and worry about their fates.”
“But my uncle –” Caspian protested.
“Is going to underestimate us already,” Peta pointed out. “Run them through their paces. We’ll end earlier than usual; we may have to fight tomorrow.”
And that’s why Caspian finds himself outside with a crossbow and his crossbowmen, all standing two hundred yards from an eight-foot pole set in the ground with a white circle drawn around it and a three foot stripe painted on it. Susan’s cavalry archers are riding back and forth on their range, far out of bowshot.
“Next!” Caspian barks, and a faun steps up and raises his crossbow to his shoulder. “Fire at will!”
One hundred bolts, one after the other after the other, drawing his quarrels out of the case he’s wearing on his hips and spanning them mechanically without a moment’s pause. Caspian has turned over the hourglass on the ground behind him the moment the faun fired his first shot, and keeps turning it over until all hundred bolts have been fired.
“Call it!” Caspian yells, and a beaver scrambles up to pull the bolts out of the ground or the pole. She calls back, “Eighteen, fifty-seven, twenty-five!” and brings the bolts back to the faun.
“Four and a half minutes,” Caspian says, picking up the hourglass. “Next!”
Splitting the wand, Queen Susan calls it, and she nearly always scores a hundred out of a hundred. The bows she trains her archers on are faster draws than Telmarine crossbows and bow-archers tend to have more experience than the crossbowmen Caspian’s training – he’s training the ones that have never picked up a ranged weapon in their lives – so they score higher. But four months ago they couldn’t even have hit the pole, let alone the strip on it.
His crossbowmen go one after the other until they’ve all finished, then a faun called Brownfoot takes the hourglass as Caspian steps up.
“Fire at will!” he shouts, and Caspian fires, the crossbow thumping lightly back into his shoulder with each shot until he reaches for his case and finds it empty. He lowers his bow.
“Seventy-nine, fifteen, six!” calls the beaver, bringing his quarrels back. Caspian takes them back with soft-voiced thanks and slips them into his case, fastening it closed. He works incipient cramps out of his arms, one after the other.
“Three minutes,” Brownfoot says, bringing him the hourglass back.
“Make sure you haven’t broken any of your quarrels,” Caspian calls, tucking the hourglass away and checking his own crossbow bolts.
None of them have – he hadn’t expected it, not with this target – and they take a few minutes to drink from their waterskins and stretch out. Caspian motions them over to the next range as Susan’s centaurs gallop over to take over the wand target.
“They look good, Caspian,” she says, swinging down from her horse as Caspian lingers behind, still working out the cramps in his fingers.
He glances across the plain at the Telmarine camp, the towering figures of his uncle’s siege machines. “Good enough?”
She claps his shoulder. “We’ll see,” she says. “We’ll see.”
Her horse nudges at her hair, muttering, “Can I go now?”
“If you remember to come back,” Susan informs the mare, and she throws her head up and snickers a little before cantering off, head and tail held high.
Susan gives Caspian a warm smile before she turns back to her centaurs.
Caspian goes to join his crossbowmen. He drinks from his waterskin again, wetting his lips, then drops it to hang off his shoulder. He flips open his quarrel-case. “Form ranks!” he orders, stepping up into his own place in one of the front ranks.
“Draw bows!”
A hundred quarrels come out of their cases, clicking into place on their crossbows like a dozen mad woodpeckers.
“Aim! Fire!”
The quarrels arc up and down again, hitting around the farthest white line marked out on the field.
“Draw bows! Aim! Fire!”
Again and again, until Caspian calls the next line, and then the next.
“Fire at will!” he barks at last, and they spend their last quarrels on the closest mark. When they finally lower their crossbows, there are a thousand quarrels buried in the earth across a three hundred yard span.
“Good,” Caspian says, then coughs and says it again, louder.
Combat drill. Come tomorrow, or maybe the day after – or maybe never, if the gods are good – they won’t be shooting at lines painted on the grass, but at Telmarine horsemen thundering down on them, and mixed in with the twang of bowstrings are going to be the screams of the wounded and the dying. He shudders a little, and goes with the others to retrieve quarrels, counting until he has a hundred packed into his quiver.
He works his arm as the crossbowmen gather around him, blinking at them a little in surprise. “We’re done for the day,” he says.
“Prince Caspian,” says a satyr, “do we have a chance?”
“A chance?” Caspian says. “We’re going to win.” He smoothes his thumb over the stock of his crossbow. “Make sure you check your quarrels for damage,” he says again.
He turns away, back towards the How, and blinks a little to see Doctor Cornelius there. “Professor,” he says in surprise. “What are you doing here?”
Cornelius ignores the question. “I am surprised to see you training with them, my prince.”
“They are not warriors, professor,” Caspian says, pacing Cornelius as they walk back towards the How. “I have the training; they do not.”
“You do the work of a king, your highness.”
“Neither my father nor my uncle would ever train with common soldiers,” Caspian says, aware of the edge in his voice. “No Telmarine king would. Especially not on crossbow; it is not a nobleman’s weapon, not in war.”
“You don’t consider yourself diminished?”
“Queen Peta and her kin train with the folk here,” Caspian says. “I would not consider myself greater than the High Queen.”
Before Cornelius can say anything else, King Edmund calls, “Caspian!” and they turn to see the return of the three envoys from the Telmarine camp. Caspian goes to meet them.
“What did he say?” he asks anxiously.
Edmund grins. “His loving comrades in arms never gave him a chance to refuse,” he says. “They were falling over themselves to volunteer him for it. Miraz must not be very popular.”
“My uncle had a habit of killing the members of the council,” Caspian points out. “Doubtless they’re worried for their own lives when this war ends.”
“It also doesn’t help when it’s pointed out that the swordsman he’s hesitating to fight is actually a sixteen-year-old girl,” Edmund says brightly. “Peta!” he barks as they enter the shadows of the How. “Peta!”
“What?” Peta bellows back, her voice echoing through the How. She comes into the main cavern with her hands full of maps, her hair spilling out of its braid. She raises an eyebrow when she sees Edmund. “You’re in one piece. Good news or bad?”
“One of the two,” Edmund says. “The fight’s on.”
-
-
Peta’s mouth is warm and soft beneath his, familiar. They’re slow and a little languorous against each other, her callused hands pressing down on his back as he pushes into her. Afterwards, he kisses the curve of her collarbone as Peta’s palm cups the back of his skull.
“Peta,” he whispers against her skin.
“Caspian,” she says, voice a little strained in the darkness.
“Please don’t fight tomorrow,” he says. “Please.”
“You know I’m going to,” she says.
Caspian puts his head down on her shoulder. “Yes.”
She pulls him up and kisses him again. “This is what I was made for, Caspian. This is what I’m good at.”
For a long time the only sound in the cave is the wet sound of their kissing, then Caspian says abruptly, “Peta, will you marry me?”
She pulls away abruptly and smacks him lightly upside the head. “Do you want to suffer a horrible, messy death?”
“What?” Caspian says, startled. It’s hardly the reaction he expected.
“I’m just going to assume that history has forgotten how many of my fiancés died instead of assuming you have a death wish,” she retorts. “And how many of them I killed, rather than the ones my siblings killed or otherwise met certain untimely ends.”
Caspian reaches for her in the darkness; Peta tries to shrug away. “Maybe you just haven’t met the right one,” he suggests.
“Do you really want to bet your life on that?” she demands archly.
Caspian grins, even though he knows she can’t see it, and pulls her towards him for a kiss. “What?” Peta says, turning her face away. “What?”
“You care,” he says. “You really care.”
“I most certainly do not!” she exclaims indignantly.
“You don’t want me to die,” Caspian says, cupping her cheek in his hand.
“That hardly translates to –”
He cuts her off by kissing her, a long, slow luxurious kiss that makes Peta gasp into her mouth as she slides one foot up the back of his leg. She puts her arms around his neck and allows, “Maybe a little.”
Caspian moves his mouth down to her neck and cups her breasts in his hands as she shifts against him.
“Maybe a lot,” Peta says, with a little hitch in her voice.
-
-
Dressing for battle. He’s never done this before, not for a real battle, and it feels a little unreal to him, even though he’s worn this same gear for training for months now. But this is real. He does up the laces of his shirt and pulls on his mail hauberk, then his brigandine. Coif over that, then pauldrons and vambraces. He buckles on his baldric and sword belt, clipping on a quiver of crossbow quarrels behind his dagger, and slips his sheathed sword into the loops on his baldric. He picks up his crossbow and slings it across his back before he goes downstairs.
Peta is silent in the table room, arms held out to either side as Edmund puts her armor on her. Her hair is bound up tightly in a fighter’s braid, a leather strip with sharp spikes braided into it to make it impossible to grab hold of if her helmet comes off and the knot it’s in comes undone. She turns her head as he passes the entrance and calls, “Caspian.”
“High Queen,” he says as he approaches.
Edmund kneels down to buckle on her greaves. He doesn’t look up.
“I want you to go after Susan and Lucy,” Peta orders. “Not all the way, just until they make it to the river. I want to be sure they make it that far. Then get back here as quickly as you can. Take Sebird. He likes you.”
“Of course, your majesty,” Caspian says. He bows to her for the first time, a full Telmarine court bow.
“Do not underestimate King Miraz, your majesty,” Cornelius says from behind Caspian. “His own brother did, and now Caspian the Ninth warms only his grave. He is cunning.”
Caspian turns on him. “What are you talking about?” he demands.
Cornelius only looks at him. “I am sorry,” he says. “I had thought you knew.”
“My father died in his sleep!” Caspian exclaims. “Of a sudden illness –”
But his professor is shaking his head, his expression distraught, and all Caspian can think about is killing his uncle –
There’s a clink of armor as Peta grabs his shoulder and pulls him around to face her. “Get your head in the game, Caspian,” she says. “This war is for Narnia, not your personal vengeance. Do you understand me?”
He swallows. Breathes in hard and tries to force the anger away. With it gone there’s only a dim sort of realization, the kind of feeling that says only, but of course. You should have known beforehand; all the signs were there.
Should have known isn’t the same as “had known.”
“I understand,” he says slowly, and bites his lip. “Peta, he killed my father.”
“I know,” she says. “He will die for it.” The words are soft and simple, a promise, and before he can think about it Caspian cups her face between his palms and kisses her full on the mouth, sweet and lingering.
Peta is the one to pull away, catching his wrists in her bare hands and drawing his hands away. “One way or another,” she says, “this ends today. Go see to my sisters.”
Caspian goes, pushing past Cornelius when the man moves to catch his arm.
Queen Susan is already in boiled leather and mail when he finds her, mounted bareback on a mare named Werce. Queen Lucy, mounted behind her, wears no armor, just a long gray cloak with a quiver and strung recurve bow strapped over her back.
“Come to see us off, Caspian?” Susan asks lightly.
“Something like that,” he says, trying to force his voice to that same tone of bemusement, very nearly uncaring. He hesitates, then says, awkwardly, “Be careful.”
“Peta’s the one who likes to fight, not me,” Susan says. She raises her eyebrows. “Something else you wanted to say?”
Struck by a sudden thought, Caspian reaches into his belt pouch until he touches the cool ivory of Susan’s horn. He pulls it out and offers it to her. “Perhaps it is time you had this back,” he says.
Susan looks at it, suspended between them, for a long few heartbeats. Then she takes it from him. “If you hear it,” she says, “you come running.”
“I would not dream otherwise,” Caspian assures her and she grins at him, restless for a moment before Werce shakes her mane and says, “Can we get moving already?”
“Good luck,” Caspian says, and Susan says, “Thanks,” before she nudges Werce into a trot and then a gallop.
Caspian watches them vanish down the long tunnel that emerges out of the How and into the woods, and then he goes to find Sebird.
“We get to do something?” the horse says as Caspian pulls himself onto his bare back. “Good. I’m sick of this damned waiting around.”
“The hope is that we don’t have to do anything,” Caspian assures him. They hesitate at the entrance to the tunnel, Sebird snorting and shaking his mane as they listen to the distant sound of cheers rising. The duel is about to begin.
“Go,” Caspian says, and Sebird springs forward.
They emerge in the forest, Caspian leaning low over the horse’s neck to avoid a few low-hanging branches. “Horses,” Sebird says. “Humans. Telmarines.” He pushes his gallop faster, breath panting out, and Caspian doesn’t feel the slightest inclination to slow him.
He sees them up ahead and draws his sword, even though he can still feel the weight of his crossbow banging against his back. Four loose horses, and Susan on the ground, Lucy nowhere in sight – and Susan’s bow, out of her reach –
Sebird hits the Telmarine horse hard from the side and Caspian slashes across the man’s unprotected face and then up from hip to shoulder, steel punching through his baldric like a knife through butter. He falls, his horse briefly on top of him before the beast clambers to its feet and canters off, whinnying in alarm.
Susan snatches up her bow, ignoring his outstretched arm to catch the reins of one of the loose Telmarine horses and swing into the saddle.
“I thought the point was to use the horn, not just wear it as a decoration,” Caspian says.
“Ha,” Susan says, turning her horse back towards the How. “Come on!”
“A thank you would be nice!” Sebird snorts. “Humans.”
“Thanks!” Susan calls over her shoulder.
They can hear the sound of steel on steel even before they’re out of the woods. When they finally do reach the plain, coming out on the Narnian side rather than the Telmarine one, Caspian sees the bright gleam of sunlight off steel – Peta and Miraz. They both look around as Susan’s horse whinnies loudly, scenting its herdmates.
“Oh, shut up, you idiot,” Sebird mutters, coming to a dead stop by the Narnian lines so that Caspian can dismount, pulling off his gauntlets and tucking them into his belt. Susan dismounts as well, handing her horse’s reins off to a faun that rushes up to take them from her.
Peta and Miraz appear to come to some sort of conclusion, because they turn away from each other, Peta limping a little and holding her shield gingerly. Edmund’s already in the ring, moving to help her, and she doesn’t make any motion to shoulder him aside.
“Lucy?” she asks as they approach, looking from one to the other.
“She got through,” Susan assures her, and Peta relaxes. “With a little help,” she adds, turning her head to smile at Caspian.
Peta doesn’t say anything, just grins at him, looking a little dizzy with relief. “You’d better get up there,” she says to Susan. “Just in case. I don’t expect the Telmarines will keep their word.”
Susan nods, then reaches up to pull her sister into a brief hug. Peta flinches, and Susan mutters, “Sorry.”
“That’s okay,” Peta says.
“Be careful,” Susan tells her, then turns and runs for the How and the high ledge with the archers spread out across it.
“Keep smiling,” Edmund hisses to Peta, and she turns to the crowd of anxious Narnians, raising her sword and grinning like she doesn’t have a care in the world. After a moment she turns back to them both, pain arcing across her face again.
There are hundred things Caspian wants to say to Peta just now, but none of them are appropriate; he holds his tongue instead and takes her shield carefully off her arm, bending down to rip up old fabric for padding and to fix a strap that’s been cut as she tells Edmund, “I think it’s dislocated.”
“Mmm,” Edmund says. “You don’t say.” Her jerks her arm back into joint and Peta lets out a sharp gasp of pain; Caspian flinches along with her and straightens, bearing her shield in his arms.
“Be careful,” he says as he fixes it to her arm, helping her to her feet. Even through mail and plate, the quilted jacket she’s wearing beneath, her body’s familiar against his.
“Fuck careful,” Peta says, taking her sword from Edmund and waving aside her helmet when he offers it to her. “I am going to end this.”
She looks younger without her helmet. Caspian ignores the urge to twist his hands together anxiously and pulls his crossbow off his back instead, spanning a bolt.
If Miraz looks startled by being confronted with a teenage girl, he doesn’t show it. He and Peta throw themselves back into the duel without a moment’s hesitation – and Caspian’s been sparring with Peta for months now; he knows how she moves and how she fights, and she’s taken her own words to heart: fuck careful.
She’s faster than Miraz, but Caspian’s uncle is stronger, and another one of the straps on her shield gives way and she tosses it aside without a moment’s pause, taking her sword in both hands as she swings towards Miraz. The blade scrapes across his breastplate before he knocks it aside with his shield; she sidesteps his thrust and swings again.
Caspian winces for her as Miraz smashes her face into a slab of stone, Peta loses her balance and falls, just barely holding onto her sword. As Miraz moves for a killing strike, Peta’s armored legs slam into his, knocking him down as she parries his blow and staggers to her feet. Miraz is up a moment later and they’re at it again.
“Oh, Aslan,” Edmund whispers once, shortly, as Peta avoids one of Miraz’s downward blows and kicks out at a bandage on his thigh. Miraz howls in pain and goes down; Peta slams Rhindon down on his shield arm – tit for tat. He just barely parries her swing towards his neck; the move goes wild and slashes across his face instead, blood spurting across Peta’s bright gauntlets.
Caspian looks up in time to see Glozelle make a compulsive move with his crossbow and starts to lift his own, but Glozelle lowers his crossbow a moment later, watching the duel with narrowed eyes.
Peta kicks Miraz’s sword from his hand and raises Rhindon, sunlight running down the blade like fire, and Miraz gasps, “Respite!”
Peta hesitates.
“Now’s not the time for chivalry, Peta!” Edmund yells.
Caspian agrees with him. “End it,” he whispers. “He deserves death. Give it to him.”
But no – Peta lowers her blade and turns away.
And Miraz moves, snatching up his sword and diving for Peta’s back
Caspian and Edmund scream Peta’s name at the same time, their voices overlapping.
She seems to float on the air as she spins, as light in the armor as she is in leathers, knocking aside Miraz’s sword and socketing her own up beneath his breastplate, punching the steel through chain mail as she buries Rhindon in his heart. She puts her foot on his corpse as she jerks her sword free and lets the king of Telmar fall backwards to lie lifeless on the ground.
“Justice,” Caspian hears her say, very quietly. She looks up across the ring at the three Telmarine marshals standing there – no, two. Glozelle is already on horseback and riding back towards the army.
There’s a kind of curious lightness in Caspian’s chest. He stares at his uncle’s corpse, breathing in shallowly through his mouth. His fingers clench hard on the stock of his crossbow.
Edmund reaches over and touches his wrist lightly. “It’s over,” he says softly.
Peta raises her bloody sword and points it at Sopespian. “Will you surrender to me?” she demands. “Release your army and the sovereignty of Telmarine-controlled Narnia?”
Sopespian stares at her. “No Telmarine will ever surrender to a woman,” he exclaims. “Narnian whore!”
“You lose points for originality,” Peta spits.
He hears Glozelle’s voice echo back distantly across the plain as he shouts, “To arms, Telmar! The Narnian witch has murdered your king!”
Sopespian pulls himself into the saddle, turning his horse back towards the Telmarine army and spurring the beast into a gallop.
“Not over,” Edmund says, drawing his sword. “Peta!”
“Aslan!” Peta screams, swinging her sword two-handed as Donnan springs for her. She knocks his blade aside, but before her backstroke strikes a scarlet-fletched arrow sprouts in Donnan’s throat. He drops to his knees, choking on his own blood, and Peta strikes his head off. “Go! Go!”
Edmund turns and vaults into the saddle of the Telmarine horse Susan rode back, galloping down into the entrance of the How with Glenstorm and the Bulgy Bear on his heels. Caspian swallows down his horror – Sopespian and Glozelle have disregarded a Telmarine custom that dates back to Telmar itself – and shouts for his crossbowmen, motioning them up into a narrow line, three deep in front of the How.
“Draw bows!” he shouts, checking the bolt in his crossbow and raising it to his shoulder.
Boom.
The sound echoes across the plain, deep and dark. Caspian grits his teeth; his bones are humming.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Abruptly, the sound of piping, wild and uncouth: satyr drums, faun pipes. Narnian war music, unheard in this country for thirteen hundred years, said to work its warriors into a frenzy of blood thirst. Peta had laughed when Cornelius said that, bright with scholarly interest, and replied that it was just to unnerve the enemy, as far as her experience went.
It makes the Telmarine horses hesitate in their headlong rush, neighing wildly as their riders fight to keep control of them. The charge continues, the ranks out of order and ragged now, some of the horses still rearing and pawing at the air as the sound of pipes and drums echo across the plain. It’s almost enough to make him forget the fact that a thousand horses and men are thundering down on him, intent on taking his life, Peta’s life, the lives of all the Narnians in the How. He used to watch the Telmarine cavalry train back at the castle; this is nothing like it. This is a thousand times worse. This time they’re charging at him.
“Aim!” Caspian yells, licking his lips. “Fire!”
A hundred and fifty crossbows snap at once; the first rank of cavalry stumbles and goes down, horses and men screaming in pain.
“Draw bows! Aim! Fire!”
Again. And again. And again, until Caspian’s throat is raw from screaming orders and his fingers are cramping. “Fire at will!” he shouts at last as the ragged remains of the Telmarine cavalry barrel down on them.
Out of nowhere, three-quarters of the Narnian army, hidden beneath the How during the entirety of the duel, erupt out of the ground on three sides of the Telmarine cavalry. The earth falls away beneath the hooves of the cavalry, horses screaming, men shouting in panic, and Caspian’s crossbowmen and Susan’s archers empty their quivers down on them.
“Case bows, draw swords!” Caspian yells, slinging his crossbow back across his shoulders and drawing his sword and dagger.
“For Narnia!” Peta screams and breaks into a run, the crossbowmen parting to let her through before joining the headlong charge.
Caspian shouts too, wordless, and then the two armies clash. He slashes across the front of dismounted cavalryman’s chest and spins to catch another across the throat, ducks out of the way of an oncoming horse and stabs a man through the shoulder. He jerks his sword free and slams the hilt into a man’s face before he strikes out backhanded, ripping his dagger through the flesh of his throat.
Beside him, Hilzarie springs and brings down a horse, ripping through its throat as its rider goes flying. Peta buries her sword in the man’s chest and slams her armored forearm into a soldier’s face, knocking him flat. He gets trampled by a charging centaur that lifts a spear and throws it over, pinning a soldier to the ground. Edmund, galloping past with the reins draped over the saddle horn and controlling the horse with knees and thighs alone, takes a man’s head off and slams his horse sideways into a Telmarine one, clashing swords with its rider.
Caspian ducks a blow and buries his dagger in the soldier’s thigh, ripping it sideways to find the artery before he pulls it free and spins to parry a sword stroke. He takes a shallow cut across the ribs, turned by the plates of his brigandine and the mail beneath, and stabs the man in the chest.
“Peta!” he hears Susan shout from above, over the thunder of the satyr drum and the mad shriek of the faun pipes.
Caspian turns to see what it is that has Susan’s attention, and feels the bottom drop out of his stomach. The cavalry make up only a small portion of the Telmarine army; Glozelle has sent out the infantry, and they’re advancing steadily, a uniform beat of feet on the plain.
“Back to the How!” Peta screams. “Fall back to the How!”
Then the siege machines start. One stone lands not far from Caspian, shaking the weakened ground beneath his feet and smashing two Narnians beneath it. Another sends Edmund’s horse rearing in alarm, Edmund fighting to stay on before he vaults free.
Caspian doesn’t have to fight his way back; most of the cavalry are dead and the infantry haven’t quite reached them. A huge ballista bolt pierces a centaur through the chest; another hits Rumblebuffin the giant in the shoulder; he screams his rage and lumbers forward, ignoring Peta’s shouts for retreat.
“You idiot, get back here!” she bellows. “Do you want to die? Fall back! Narnians! Fall back to the How!” She catches the arm of a dwarf that’s furiously stabbing the body of a dead Telmarine officer over and over again, its arms and legs jerking gruesomely, and pulls him away.
Susan shouts, “Brace yourselves!” and Caspian looks up wildly as a rock shot by a trebuchet hits the How, sending stones tumbling wildly down and the archers scattering, groping for some kind of hold on the ledge. Then Susan slips and falls, Trumpkin catching her outstretched arm and holding her in midair.
“Su!” Peta yells, panic in her voice, just before Trumpkin drops her and Susan lands on an angled ledge of rock, moss so thick on it that she slides down and dashes forward, drawing another arrow from her quiver.
Then the infantry are on them, before they can get within thirty paces of the How. Caspian shouts and strikes out, meeting them blade to blade. He fights his way forward, trying to get to Peta’s side.
“Narnia!” she’s screaming over and over again. “Narnia! Aslan! For Narnia!”
“Peta!” Caspian shouts, slashing across a Telmarine’s chest and kicking the body aside. “Peta!”
A griffin wheels down to the sky and lifts up a Telmarine from the ground, wings beating furiously until he drops the man and sends him screaming into the pit the Narnians have opened up, half-filled with dead Telmarine cavalry.
Another rock hits beside him, sending Telmarines and Narnians alike diving for cover, and the weakened earth gives way beneath Caspian’s feet. He goes tumbling down, sword falling from his hand, and hits the bare dirt forty or fifty feet down on his left side, hearing bone crack as he lands on his wrist. Caspian can’t help the scream that rips itself out of his throat as he rolls up onto his knees and gropes for his sword. He staggers to his feet with the hilt grasped tightly in his right hand, clutching his left hand to his chest, and almost runs himself onto a Telmarine pike.
“Caspian!” General Glozelle says, wide-eyed, and lets the pike fall from his hands. “My prince –”
Caspian stares at him, trying to find the words he wants. “General,” he says at last. “Please –”
Then a tree root punches through the earth and snatches a Telmarine swordsman from behind Glozelle, smashing him down into the floor as he screams. Caspian stares in blank horror, a hundred stories about the black terror of the woods rushing up at once, then the root drops the swordsman and darts in towards Glozelle.
“No!” Caspian screams, coming to himself. He tackles Glozelle around the waist and throws the general down to the ground, the tree root passing over both their hands as Peta yells something.
“Caspian!” she exclaims, and he raises his head to see her slide down the edge of the cavity in the ground. She approaches him and offers him her gloved hand, blinking a little as she sees Glozelle beneath him.
Caspian doesn’t see the look on Glozelle’s face; he’s too busy staring up at the trees moving across the battlefield, smashing through the Telmarine army. “What have you unleashed on Narnia?” he whispers.
“Only what should be here,” Peta says, her eyes on Glozelle as he gets to his feet. She raises her sword, the blade running red with blood.
Glozelle draws his sword and throws it point down into the packed dirt before her feet.
-
-
The crowd at the coronation had been what Caspian never thought he’d see in his life – humans and Narnians alike, gathered in the courtyard and cheering as Peta, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy came out on the castle balcony, dressed in silks and velvets and crowned with gold and silver. Caspian’s own circlet had sat heavy on his brow as he stood inconspicuously off to the side, not bothering to hide his smile. Queens and king of Narnia indeed – and he would be the last Telmarine prince Narnia would see. He bent his knee with all the others, and Peta’s smile had been radiant, golden and beaming and triumphant.
After the coronation, Caspian had danced with her, brilliant and beautiful in red and gold silk on the ballroom floor, warm and familiar in his arms as they spun on the dance floor. Her hair had floated loose around her shoulders during one of the rowdier Narnian group dances, kicking up her feet as she laughed and the rubies in her crown reflected back the light from the chandeliers. Caspian had kissed his way up her bare thighs in one of the servants’ hallways, listening to Peta gasp out curses as she scrabbled at the wall with one hand, the other cupping the back of his skull.
She hasn’t let him touch her since.
There are any number of reasons for that – they’ve all been horribly busy ever since Glozelle surrendered the remnants of the Telmarine army to Peta that day in front of the How. Caspian finds himself talking through Telmarine law and custom with Edmund and Susan, mediating arguments between Telmarines and Narnians with Edmund and Peta, meeting the common folk of Telmar and Narnia with Lucy. He wakes up with the sun and goes to bed long after the sun has set, eyes aching from reading through Telmarine and Narnian history by candlelight. Edmund is trying to coordinate a search for the missing Telmarines, the ones who didn’t surrender and whose bodies haven’t been found, since he’s afraid that some of them might try and retake Narnia. One of them is Lord Sopespian; given what happened on the battlefield, Caspian is inclined to agree. They’re trying to send ambassadors to the neighboring nations, Archenland and Calormen and the islands to the east, in order to set up lines of communications, and Caspian has been going out of his mind trying to learn Calormene on top of everything else. And if all that isn’t enough, his aunt Prunaprisma and her infant son are still living in the castle. His aunt glares at him like he’s the one who killed Miraz every time she sees him and the flush of shame is automatic, even though Caspian knows that Miraz had been a murderer and a tyrant and deserved to die a thousand deaths for his crimes.
He sees Peta at meals, in meetings, in the bare minutes they manage to squeeze out of the day for sparring, but she doesn’t find him in his bedchamber, and he won’t press her by going to hers. Caspian misses her. It’s made worse by the fact that she stops talking to him about anything except Narnia, and soon after that, starts avoiding him, turning the opposite direction every time she sees him in the halls or finding some excuse to leave quickly when he tries to talk to her between meetings or after sword practice.
He finally manages to corner her two weeks after she stops talking to him – literally corner her, which he’s fairly certain isn’t particularly beneficial to his continuing good health, but which he’s also positive is the only way he’ll get her to stand still long enough to talk to him.
Peta’s reaction to being cornered is automatic; she puts her back against the wall and reaches for the dagger on her hip. Caspian takes a hasty step backwards, raising both his hands, and says, “I just want to talk to you.”
“I am extremely busy,” Peta informs him. “This had better be good.”
“It is,” Caspian assures her. “I mean – I just –”
She narrows her eyes, her hand falling away from her dagger. “If you’re going to ask me to marry you again,” she says, “the answer is the same as it was before. Much as I appreciate the offer –”
“I wasn’t!” Caspian exclaims, surprise making him stutter over the words. He hasn’t thought about that in weeks – he hasn’t had time to think about anything except tax law and trying to organize the Narnians to help the surviving Telmarines get the harvest in before winter. “Why would you think such a thing?”
Peta blinks, then sighs. “I’ve had a few things on my mind lately,” she says. “Sorry. What was it you wanted to say?”
Caspian takes a moment to think over what it was he’d planned to say, and she rolls her eyes towards the ceiling. “Caspian, I’m supposed to be with Ed and Su talking about whether or not the crown should compensate Narnians for any family murdered or land stolen during the Conquest,” she says.
“So am I,” Caspian says. “I just – I just wanted to know what I’d done to offend you and how I can rectify it.” He gives her a faint smile. “I don’t like it when you’re angry at me and I don’t know what I’ve done.”
“Caspian,” Peta says, “if I was to tell you everything, that would be a very long list. But for the specific issue, I don’t actually think there’s anything you can do.”
“Are you sure?” he asks anxiously, not bothering to keep the hurt and confusion out of his voice. He can’t think of anything that he’s done that would offend her, and she’s been perfectly civil to him in meetings – he can’t see Peta hesitating to call him out if he’d done something to affect Narnia. “Because anything you ask of me –”
“I am extremely certain,” Peta says. Her mouth twists. “Unfortunately.” She sighs and tips her head back against the wall, hands twisting in the fabric of her skirts. For a moment she sounds utterly miserable. “You’re going to ask me to marry you again,” she predicts.
“I swear I won’t,” Caspian promises. “Peta, please. I swear I won’t.”
“This is, I’m afraid,” she tells him, “the sort of situation where promises like that go out the window.”
“I don’t understand,” Caspian says, because almost half a year with Peta and her siblings have taught him that that’s always a good thing to say.
Peta takes a deep breath and raises her head, meeting his eyes. “Ed did say I had to tell you sometime,” she mutters to herself. “I’m pregnant.”
“What?” Caspian says blankly, then he sits down hard on the cold stone floor as all the strength goes out of him. “What – how –”
Peta eyes him warily. “If I really have to tell you that, then I’m going to start saying insulting things about the Telmarine education system again,” she says, then sighs and sits down across from him, drawing her knees up to her chest and smoothing her skirts out around her. It makes her look very young.
“Peta,” Caspian says helplessly.
“Caspian,” she returns quietly. “No proposal?”
“I think I’m working up to it,” he says, a little dazed. “You’re having a baby?” he blurts out.
“No, I’m hoping for puppies,” Peta informs him archly, a little of her usual fire back in her voice. “Barring some kind of horrible miscarriage, yes, I’m having a baby and yes, before you ask and I’m tragically forced to punch you in the face, it’s yours.”
She must read the shocked expression on his face, because her mouth twists again and she says defensively, “Well, Edmund asked, and a lot of men would, so you can’t blame me for thinking you would too.”
“Of course not!” Caspian exclaims, hurt, although now he is, worse luck. He's certain Peta hasn't been with anyone except him since she arrived in Narnia, but before that – she'd been so adamant that there hadn't been anyone before –
“I –“ he begins, searching for something else to say. “I'm surprised you're not...angrier,” he adds weakly.
“Oh, I was,” Peta assures him. “You missed that. You can ask Ed or Su, if you like.” She rests an elbow on her knee and runs her hand through her hair, tilting her head to watch him with steady blue eyes.
“What are you going to do?” Caspian asks at last; he can’t think of anything else to say.
“I have no idea,” she admits. “Although, you know, someone back in England just won the pool.”
“The pool?”
“On whether I’d get knocked up, arrested, or killed first.” She pauses and says thoughtfully, “It’s killing you not to propose again, isn’t it?”
“I said I wouldn’t,” Caspian says, though to be strictly truthful, he’s not actually sure if he said anything of the sort. “Peta,” he says, and reaches for her hands.
She lets him take them, her sword calluses smooth against his fingers. He kisses her knuckles one after the other and keeps her hands in his, his grip light enough that she could pull free if she wanted to. She doesn’t pull free.
“Peta,” he says again. “What do you want me to do?”
She shakes her head, then corrects herself after a minute and smiles at him, soft and a little sweet. “I don’t know,” she says, then pauses. “Well,” she says, and her smile deepens. “Right now, I’d really like you to take me to bed.”
“Really?” Caspian says, surprised, because he would have thought that the last thing she’d want would be –
“Yes,” Peta says firmly, pulling him towards her and placing his hands over the curve of her ribs, warm and familiar. She kisses him for a long time.
She tastes like coffee and blueberry pie, and it's as intoxicating as the wine she customarily prefers. He hasn't realized how much he's missed this, how much he's come to take her for granted, until he didn't have her. The thing is – the thing is that he wants her every day for the rest of his life. He wants her in his bed, and he wants to wake up next to her, and he wants to kiss her and not worry about her brother coming around the corner. He wants her smile and her hands and her sword-arm; he wants her laughter and her anger and her tears and the way she screams when she comes. He wants her. And he'll take her any way she'll let him – but as the gods witness, he wants this woman more than he's ever wanted anything in his entire life.
“Take me upstairs,” Peta orders, pulling back, but her hands are still on his wrists. “Please.”
“Anything,” Caspian promises.
Peta in his bed is a revelation. He helps her take off her dress, stealing kisses down the curve of her spine as he undoes the laces, then she steps out of it and away from her, taking the bottom of her slip in her hands and pulling it over her head in one smooth motion. She's not wearing anything underneath. Peta catches the front of his unlaced shirt in her hands and pulls him towards her, walking backwards until she can sit down on the side of his bed with Caspian standing between her thighs, cupping her face between his hands as he kisses her.
“Take your clothes off,” Peta says softly, lying back across his bed. Caspian obeys, letting them fall heedlessly to the floor, and crawls onto the bed to kiss Peta as she spreads her legs to accommodate him. Today she's carelessly languid, moving against him dreamily when he slides inside her. He catches her wrists in one hand and pins them over her head and Peta smiles at him, wrapping her legs around his hips as he rocks into her. She's unusually quiet, breathy moans and little gasps to her usual cursing, and Caspian takes the opportunity to whisper against her skin, “I love you.”
Peta doesn't say anything, but her legs tighten around him. A moment later she comes, crying out at last, and Caspian follows, entranced by the expression on her face. Afterwards, they kiss lazily, Peta's hands sliding up over Caspian's back as he fondles her breasts. He thinks she's finally fallen asleep when he murmurs against the curve of her neck, “Marry me.”
Peta's fingers tangle in his hair and for a long moment she doesn't say anything, then she turns her head and catches her mouth with his, a light, brief kiss that's barely more than their lips touching. Caspian looks at her with wide eyes, because she hasn't said anything yet – and he did promise not to ask again.
“Yes,” she says, and Caspian cups her face in his hands and kisses her over and over. Narnia’s troubles can wait one more day.
end
*
You know, it's funny, but the title of "Be Like Water" doesn't fit the story or Peta's character at all. It comes from this song by Sarah Fimm (lyrics here), and interestingly I can see it referring to the Peta who's in my head now, but not the Peta who appears in the story. It fits Caspian better, I guess, but I've always thought of this as a story where Peta's the main character but Caspian is the POV character. But anyway, that's where the title comes from. As far as icon choice goes throughout this posting, Scarlett Johansson is, as ever, my mental image of Peta (even if Peta is younger), although Lucy Lawless for an older Peta.
If I had conceived of this story about six months later than I actually did, it probably would have been completely different, which I suspect is one reason why it was never cleaned up and posted as a completed fic. Part of this is because at some point in time, I had a fundamental change in the way I looked at Narnia and at the Pevensies.
I also realized at, oh, maybe two-thirds of the way through writing Water, that what I should have done was go back to LWW and start the AU there, because there are hints of things that happened differently, but it never really comes out in Water because Caspian just doesn't care. (The biggest difference, for example, is that it's Edmund and Lucy who see the White Witch kill Aslan on the Stone Table, not Lucy and Susan, since Susan is sharing a tent with Peta. This also means that it was Peta and Susan who were present during the battle with the White Witch. I suspect Susan might have been briefly turned into stone during the Battle; I haven't given it enough thought to know for sure.)
You'll notice that there are also a number of differences in Water from the Warsverse, some of those because of the changes that might occur from having Peter be Peta and the effect that might have on the Pevensie family dynamics (for example, Susan is spymaster, not Edmund; this is actually an idea I played with back in my earliest Warsverse stories, but that notion was eventually discarded in favor of fanon consensus of Edmund as spymaster. I still wish from time to time I'd kept Susan as spymistress in the Warsverse, but it's a bit late now). I'm not sure how well this comes through, probably because I was a little patchy on it in the first place, but another thing I was trying to do was make the Petaverse distinctly different from the Warsverse -- not just in the genderflip, but in the way I conceived of that Narnia and the way it was constructed. This was not very successful, but there are hints at it.
*
"Be Like Water" was originally conceived as the first in a trilogy. A TRILOGY MADE OF SHEER CRACK. *cough* The second story would have had Miraz's followers (I think led by Prunaprismia) return and stage a successful takeover of Narnia. The other three Pevensies would be believed to have been killed, and Caspian and Peta fled to Lantern Waste, where Caspian forces Peta to flee the Narnian world. She ends up on the South Pacific island that the original Telmarines came from, but during World War II...and not in her own world, which she figures out when she runs into Peter Pevensie, who's serving in the RAF there. They figure out who each other are, then Peter marries her and brings her home to England. (And yes, there was Peter/Peta. This was when I actually wrote porn.)
At some indeterminate point in the future, the five Pevensies end up in Petaverse Narnia, where they run into Caspian and his band of rebels and there is a tearful reunion between Peta and Caspian. Susan and Edmund may or may not be dead, possibly held prisoner by either the Telmarines or the Calormenes, but Lucy is a crazy vengeful one-eyed vigilante who stalks through the woods killing Telmarines, burning houses, and generally being a terrifying nuisance. Eventually she ends up with the rebels too, and they manage to overthrow Prunaprismia and the Telmarines and re-install Caspian and Peta, as well as whatever surviving Petaverse Pevensies there are. (I believe that originally they were all dead, and then I got depressed and had them all alive, just scattered and informed the others were dead.) And then the Peterverse (Warsverse, maybe) Pevensies went home. (The only thing I really, really regret about not writing the rest of the trilogy is Lucy, because how awesome is that?)
At one point I also prodded at a Petaverse Dust, because this is the sort of thing I do for kicks, but it was too depressing even for me.
*
And on a final note, aside from taking out ninety percent of the italics, I made one major change to Water while I was posting it this past week. It wasn't actually that major; I rewrite the last scene in part five because the characterization was bothering me enough to change it. This is the original version:
*
And that's all! I hope you enjoyed reading "Be Like Water." Thanks again everyone who betaed it the first time around. If y'all have any questions, I am, as ever, happy to answer them in comments.
Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five | Part Six
*
“Take them out and run them through their paces,” Peta had ordered. “Same as any other day. I don’t want to give them time to sit around and worry about their fates.”
“But my uncle –” Caspian protested.
“Is going to underestimate us already,” Peta pointed out. “Run them through their paces. We’ll end earlier than usual; we may have to fight tomorrow.”
And that’s why Caspian finds himself outside with a crossbow and his crossbowmen, all standing two hundred yards from an eight-foot pole set in the ground with a white circle drawn around it and a three foot stripe painted on it. Susan’s cavalry archers are riding back and forth on their range, far out of bowshot.
“Next!” Caspian barks, and a faun steps up and raises his crossbow to his shoulder. “Fire at will!”
One hundred bolts, one after the other after the other, drawing his quarrels out of the case he’s wearing on his hips and spanning them mechanically without a moment’s pause. Caspian has turned over the hourglass on the ground behind him the moment the faun fired his first shot, and keeps turning it over until all hundred bolts have been fired.
“Call it!” Caspian yells, and a beaver scrambles up to pull the bolts out of the ground or the pole. She calls back, “Eighteen, fifty-seven, twenty-five!” and brings the bolts back to the faun.
“Four and a half minutes,” Caspian says, picking up the hourglass. “Next!”
Splitting the wand, Queen Susan calls it, and she nearly always scores a hundred out of a hundred. The bows she trains her archers on are faster draws than Telmarine crossbows and bow-archers tend to have more experience than the crossbowmen Caspian’s training – he’s training the ones that have never picked up a ranged weapon in their lives – so they score higher. But four months ago they couldn’t even have hit the pole, let alone the strip on it.
His crossbowmen go one after the other until they’ve all finished, then a faun called Brownfoot takes the hourglass as Caspian steps up.
“Fire at will!” he shouts, and Caspian fires, the crossbow thumping lightly back into his shoulder with each shot until he reaches for his case and finds it empty. He lowers his bow.
“Seventy-nine, fifteen, six!” calls the beaver, bringing his quarrels back. Caspian takes them back with soft-voiced thanks and slips them into his case, fastening it closed. He works incipient cramps out of his arms, one after the other.
“Three minutes,” Brownfoot says, bringing him the hourglass back.
“Make sure you haven’t broken any of your quarrels,” Caspian calls, tucking the hourglass away and checking his own crossbow bolts.
None of them have – he hadn’t expected it, not with this target – and they take a few minutes to drink from their waterskins and stretch out. Caspian motions them over to the next range as Susan’s centaurs gallop over to take over the wand target.
“They look good, Caspian,” she says, swinging down from her horse as Caspian lingers behind, still working out the cramps in his fingers.
He glances across the plain at the Telmarine camp, the towering figures of his uncle’s siege machines. “Good enough?”
She claps his shoulder. “We’ll see,” she says. “We’ll see.”
Her horse nudges at her hair, muttering, “Can I go now?”
“If you remember to come back,” Susan informs the mare, and she throws her head up and snickers a little before cantering off, head and tail held high.
Susan gives Caspian a warm smile before she turns back to her centaurs.
Caspian goes to join his crossbowmen. He drinks from his waterskin again, wetting his lips, then drops it to hang off his shoulder. He flips open his quarrel-case. “Form ranks!” he orders, stepping up into his own place in one of the front ranks.
“Draw bows!”
A hundred quarrels come out of their cases, clicking into place on their crossbows like a dozen mad woodpeckers.
“Aim! Fire!”
The quarrels arc up and down again, hitting around the farthest white line marked out on the field.
“Draw bows! Aim! Fire!”
Again and again, until Caspian calls the next line, and then the next.
“Fire at will!” he barks at last, and they spend their last quarrels on the closest mark. When they finally lower their crossbows, there are a thousand quarrels buried in the earth across a three hundred yard span.
“Good,” Caspian says, then coughs and says it again, louder.
Combat drill. Come tomorrow, or maybe the day after – or maybe never, if the gods are good – they won’t be shooting at lines painted on the grass, but at Telmarine horsemen thundering down on them, and mixed in with the twang of bowstrings are going to be the screams of the wounded and the dying. He shudders a little, and goes with the others to retrieve quarrels, counting until he has a hundred packed into his quiver.
He works his arm as the crossbowmen gather around him, blinking at them a little in surprise. “We’re done for the day,” he says.
“Prince Caspian,” says a satyr, “do we have a chance?”
“A chance?” Caspian says. “We’re going to win.” He smoothes his thumb over the stock of his crossbow. “Make sure you check your quarrels for damage,” he says again.
He turns away, back towards the How, and blinks a little to see Doctor Cornelius there. “Professor,” he says in surprise. “What are you doing here?”
Cornelius ignores the question. “I am surprised to see you training with them, my prince.”
“They are not warriors, professor,” Caspian says, pacing Cornelius as they walk back towards the How. “I have the training; they do not.”
“You do the work of a king, your highness.”
“Neither my father nor my uncle would ever train with common soldiers,” Caspian says, aware of the edge in his voice. “No Telmarine king would. Especially not on crossbow; it is not a nobleman’s weapon, not in war.”
“You don’t consider yourself diminished?”
“Queen Peta and her kin train with the folk here,” Caspian says. “I would not consider myself greater than the High Queen.”
Before Cornelius can say anything else, King Edmund calls, “Caspian!” and they turn to see the return of the three envoys from the Telmarine camp. Caspian goes to meet them.
“What did he say?” he asks anxiously.
Edmund grins. “His loving comrades in arms never gave him a chance to refuse,” he says. “They were falling over themselves to volunteer him for it. Miraz must not be very popular.”
“My uncle had a habit of killing the members of the council,” Caspian points out. “Doubtless they’re worried for their own lives when this war ends.”
“It also doesn’t help when it’s pointed out that the swordsman he’s hesitating to fight is actually a sixteen-year-old girl,” Edmund says brightly. “Peta!” he barks as they enter the shadows of the How. “Peta!”
“What?” Peta bellows back, her voice echoing through the How. She comes into the main cavern with her hands full of maps, her hair spilling out of its braid. She raises an eyebrow when she sees Edmund. “You’re in one piece. Good news or bad?”
“One of the two,” Edmund says. “The fight’s on.”
-
-
Peta’s mouth is warm and soft beneath his, familiar. They’re slow and a little languorous against each other, her callused hands pressing down on his back as he pushes into her. Afterwards, he kisses the curve of her collarbone as Peta’s palm cups the back of his skull.
“Peta,” he whispers against her skin.
“Caspian,” she says, voice a little strained in the darkness.
“Please don’t fight tomorrow,” he says. “Please.”
“You know I’m going to,” she says.
Caspian puts his head down on her shoulder. “Yes.”
She pulls him up and kisses him again. “This is what I was made for, Caspian. This is what I’m good at.”
For a long time the only sound in the cave is the wet sound of their kissing, then Caspian says abruptly, “Peta, will you marry me?”
She pulls away abruptly and smacks him lightly upside the head. “Do you want to suffer a horrible, messy death?”
“What?” Caspian says, startled. It’s hardly the reaction he expected.
“I’m just going to assume that history has forgotten how many of my fiancés died instead of assuming you have a death wish,” she retorts. “And how many of them I killed, rather than the ones my siblings killed or otherwise met certain untimely ends.”
Caspian reaches for her in the darkness; Peta tries to shrug away. “Maybe you just haven’t met the right one,” he suggests.
“Do you really want to bet your life on that?” she demands archly.
Caspian grins, even though he knows she can’t see it, and pulls her towards him for a kiss. “What?” Peta says, turning her face away. “What?”
“You care,” he says. “You really care.”
“I most certainly do not!” she exclaims indignantly.
“You don’t want me to die,” Caspian says, cupping her cheek in his hand.
“That hardly translates to –”
He cuts her off by kissing her, a long, slow luxurious kiss that makes Peta gasp into her mouth as she slides one foot up the back of his leg. She puts her arms around his neck and allows, “Maybe a little.”
Caspian moves his mouth down to her neck and cups her breasts in his hands as she shifts against him.
“Maybe a lot,” Peta says, with a little hitch in her voice.
-
-
Dressing for battle. He’s never done this before, not for a real battle, and it feels a little unreal to him, even though he’s worn this same gear for training for months now. But this is real. He does up the laces of his shirt and pulls on his mail hauberk, then his brigandine. Coif over that, then pauldrons and vambraces. He buckles on his baldric and sword belt, clipping on a quiver of crossbow quarrels behind his dagger, and slips his sheathed sword into the loops on his baldric. He picks up his crossbow and slings it across his back before he goes downstairs.
Peta is silent in the table room, arms held out to either side as Edmund puts her armor on her. Her hair is bound up tightly in a fighter’s braid, a leather strip with sharp spikes braided into it to make it impossible to grab hold of if her helmet comes off and the knot it’s in comes undone. She turns her head as he passes the entrance and calls, “Caspian.”
“High Queen,” he says as he approaches.
Edmund kneels down to buckle on her greaves. He doesn’t look up.
“I want you to go after Susan and Lucy,” Peta orders. “Not all the way, just until they make it to the river. I want to be sure they make it that far. Then get back here as quickly as you can. Take Sebird. He likes you.”
“Of course, your majesty,” Caspian says. He bows to her for the first time, a full Telmarine court bow.
“Do not underestimate King Miraz, your majesty,” Cornelius says from behind Caspian. “His own brother did, and now Caspian the Ninth warms only his grave. He is cunning.”
Caspian turns on him. “What are you talking about?” he demands.
Cornelius only looks at him. “I am sorry,” he says. “I had thought you knew.”
“My father died in his sleep!” Caspian exclaims. “Of a sudden illness –”
But his professor is shaking his head, his expression distraught, and all Caspian can think about is killing his uncle –
There’s a clink of armor as Peta grabs his shoulder and pulls him around to face her. “Get your head in the game, Caspian,” she says. “This war is for Narnia, not your personal vengeance. Do you understand me?”
He swallows. Breathes in hard and tries to force the anger away. With it gone there’s only a dim sort of realization, the kind of feeling that says only, but of course. You should have known beforehand; all the signs were there.
Should have known isn’t the same as “had known.”
“I understand,” he says slowly, and bites his lip. “Peta, he killed my father.”
“I know,” she says. “He will die for it.” The words are soft and simple, a promise, and before he can think about it Caspian cups her face between his palms and kisses her full on the mouth, sweet and lingering.
Peta is the one to pull away, catching his wrists in her bare hands and drawing his hands away. “One way or another,” she says, “this ends today. Go see to my sisters.”
Caspian goes, pushing past Cornelius when the man moves to catch his arm.
Queen Susan is already in boiled leather and mail when he finds her, mounted bareback on a mare named Werce. Queen Lucy, mounted behind her, wears no armor, just a long gray cloak with a quiver and strung recurve bow strapped over her back.
“Come to see us off, Caspian?” Susan asks lightly.
“Something like that,” he says, trying to force his voice to that same tone of bemusement, very nearly uncaring. He hesitates, then says, awkwardly, “Be careful.”
“Peta’s the one who likes to fight, not me,” Susan says. She raises her eyebrows. “Something else you wanted to say?”
Struck by a sudden thought, Caspian reaches into his belt pouch until he touches the cool ivory of Susan’s horn. He pulls it out and offers it to her. “Perhaps it is time you had this back,” he says.
Susan looks at it, suspended between them, for a long few heartbeats. Then she takes it from him. “If you hear it,” she says, “you come running.”
“I would not dream otherwise,” Caspian assures her and she grins at him, restless for a moment before Werce shakes her mane and says, “Can we get moving already?”
“Good luck,” Caspian says, and Susan says, “Thanks,” before she nudges Werce into a trot and then a gallop.
Caspian watches them vanish down the long tunnel that emerges out of the How and into the woods, and then he goes to find Sebird.
“We get to do something?” the horse says as Caspian pulls himself onto his bare back. “Good. I’m sick of this damned waiting around.”
“The hope is that we don’t have to do anything,” Caspian assures him. They hesitate at the entrance to the tunnel, Sebird snorting and shaking his mane as they listen to the distant sound of cheers rising. The duel is about to begin.
“Go,” Caspian says, and Sebird springs forward.
They emerge in the forest, Caspian leaning low over the horse’s neck to avoid a few low-hanging branches. “Horses,” Sebird says. “Humans. Telmarines.” He pushes his gallop faster, breath panting out, and Caspian doesn’t feel the slightest inclination to slow him.
He sees them up ahead and draws his sword, even though he can still feel the weight of his crossbow banging against his back. Four loose horses, and Susan on the ground, Lucy nowhere in sight – and Susan’s bow, out of her reach –
Sebird hits the Telmarine horse hard from the side and Caspian slashes across the man’s unprotected face and then up from hip to shoulder, steel punching through his baldric like a knife through butter. He falls, his horse briefly on top of him before the beast clambers to its feet and canters off, whinnying in alarm.
Susan snatches up her bow, ignoring his outstretched arm to catch the reins of one of the loose Telmarine horses and swing into the saddle.
“I thought the point was to use the horn, not just wear it as a decoration,” Caspian says.
“Ha,” Susan says, turning her horse back towards the How. “Come on!”
“A thank you would be nice!” Sebird snorts. “Humans.”
“Thanks!” Susan calls over her shoulder.
They can hear the sound of steel on steel even before they’re out of the woods. When they finally do reach the plain, coming out on the Narnian side rather than the Telmarine one, Caspian sees the bright gleam of sunlight off steel – Peta and Miraz. They both look around as Susan’s horse whinnies loudly, scenting its herdmates.
“Oh, shut up, you idiot,” Sebird mutters, coming to a dead stop by the Narnian lines so that Caspian can dismount, pulling off his gauntlets and tucking them into his belt. Susan dismounts as well, handing her horse’s reins off to a faun that rushes up to take them from her.
Peta and Miraz appear to come to some sort of conclusion, because they turn away from each other, Peta limping a little and holding her shield gingerly. Edmund’s already in the ring, moving to help her, and she doesn’t make any motion to shoulder him aside.
“Lucy?” she asks as they approach, looking from one to the other.
“She got through,” Susan assures her, and Peta relaxes. “With a little help,” she adds, turning her head to smile at Caspian.
Peta doesn’t say anything, just grins at him, looking a little dizzy with relief. “You’d better get up there,” she says to Susan. “Just in case. I don’t expect the Telmarines will keep their word.”
Susan nods, then reaches up to pull her sister into a brief hug. Peta flinches, and Susan mutters, “Sorry.”
“That’s okay,” Peta says.
“Be careful,” Susan tells her, then turns and runs for the How and the high ledge with the archers spread out across it.
“Keep smiling,” Edmund hisses to Peta, and she turns to the crowd of anxious Narnians, raising her sword and grinning like she doesn’t have a care in the world. After a moment she turns back to them both, pain arcing across her face again.
There are hundred things Caspian wants to say to Peta just now, but none of them are appropriate; he holds his tongue instead and takes her shield carefully off her arm, bending down to rip up old fabric for padding and to fix a strap that’s been cut as she tells Edmund, “I think it’s dislocated.”
“Mmm,” Edmund says. “You don’t say.” Her jerks her arm back into joint and Peta lets out a sharp gasp of pain; Caspian flinches along with her and straightens, bearing her shield in his arms.
“Be careful,” he says as he fixes it to her arm, helping her to her feet. Even through mail and plate, the quilted jacket she’s wearing beneath, her body’s familiar against his.
“Fuck careful,” Peta says, taking her sword from Edmund and waving aside her helmet when he offers it to her. “I am going to end this.”
She looks younger without her helmet. Caspian ignores the urge to twist his hands together anxiously and pulls his crossbow off his back instead, spanning a bolt.
If Miraz looks startled by being confronted with a teenage girl, he doesn’t show it. He and Peta throw themselves back into the duel without a moment’s hesitation – and Caspian’s been sparring with Peta for months now; he knows how she moves and how she fights, and she’s taken her own words to heart: fuck careful.
She’s faster than Miraz, but Caspian’s uncle is stronger, and another one of the straps on her shield gives way and she tosses it aside without a moment’s pause, taking her sword in both hands as she swings towards Miraz. The blade scrapes across his breastplate before he knocks it aside with his shield; she sidesteps his thrust and swings again.
Caspian winces for her as Miraz smashes her face into a slab of stone, Peta loses her balance and falls, just barely holding onto her sword. As Miraz moves for a killing strike, Peta’s armored legs slam into his, knocking him down as she parries his blow and staggers to her feet. Miraz is up a moment later and they’re at it again.
“Oh, Aslan,” Edmund whispers once, shortly, as Peta avoids one of Miraz’s downward blows and kicks out at a bandage on his thigh. Miraz howls in pain and goes down; Peta slams Rhindon down on his shield arm – tit for tat. He just barely parries her swing towards his neck; the move goes wild and slashes across his face instead, blood spurting across Peta’s bright gauntlets.
Caspian looks up in time to see Glozelle make a compulsive move with his crossbow and starts to lift his own, but Glozelle lowers his crossbow a moment later, watching the duel with narrowed eyes.
Peta kicks Miraz’s sword from his hand and raises Rhindon, sunlight running down the blade like fire, and Miraz gasps, “Respite!”
Peta hesitates.
“Now’s not the time for chivalry, Peta!” Edmund yells.
Caspian agrees with him. “End it,” he whispers. “He deserves death. Give it to him.”
But no – Peta lowers her blade and turns away.
And Miraz moves, snatching up his sword and diving for Peta’s back
Caspian and Edmund scream Peta’s name at the same time, their voices overlapping.
She seems to float on the air as she spins, as light in the armor as she is in leathers, knocking aside Miraz’s sword and socketing her own up beneath his breastplate, punching the steel through chain mail as she buries Rhindon in his heart. She puts her foot on his corpse as she jerks her sword free and lets the king of Telmar fall backwards to lie lifeless on the ground.
“Justice,” Caspian hears her say, very quietly. She looks up across the ring at the three Telmarine marshals standing there – no, two. Glozelle is already on horseback and riding back towards the army.
There’s a kind of curious lightness in Caspian’s chest. He stares at his uncle’s corpse, breathing in shallowly through his mouth. His fingers clench hard on the stock of his crossbow.
Edmund reaches over and touches his wrist lightly. “It’s over,” he says softly.
Peta raises her bloody sword and points it at Sopespian. “Will you surrender to me?” she demands. “Release your army and the sovereignty of Telmarine-controlled Narnia?”
Sopespian stares at her. “No Telmarine will ever surrender to a woman,” he exclaims. “Narnian whore!”
“You lose points for originality,” Peta spits.
He hears Glozelle’s voice echo back distantly across the plain as he shouts, “To arms, Telmar! The Narnian witch has murdered your king!”
Sopespian pulls himself into the saddle, turning his horse back towards the Telmarine army and spurring the beast into a gallop.
“Not over,” Edmund says, drawing his sword. “Peta!”
“Aslan!” Peta screams, swinging her sword two-handed as Donnan springs for her. She knocks his blade aside, but before her backstroke strikes a scarlet-fletched arrow sprouts in Donnan’s throat. He drops to his knees, choking on his own blood, and Peta strikes his head off. “Go! Go!”
Edmund turns and vaults into the saddle of the Telmarine horse Susan rode back, galloping down into the entrance of the How with Glenstorm and the Bulgy Bear on his heels. Caspian swallows down his horror – Sopespian and Glozelle have disregarded a Telmarine custom that dates back to Telmar itself – and shouts for his crossbowmen, motioning them up into a narrow line, three deep in front of the How.
“Draw bows!” he shouts, checking the bolt in his crossbow and raising it to his shoulder.
Boom.
The sound echoes across the plain, deep and dark. Caspian grits his teeth; his bones are humming.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Abruptly, the sound of piping, wild and uncouth: satyr drums, faun pipes. Narnian war music, unheard in this country for thirteen hundred years, said to work its warriors into a frenzy of blood thirst. Peta had laughed when Cornelius said that, bright with scholarly interest, and replied that it was just to unnerve the enemy, as far as her experience went.
It makes the Telmarine horses hesitate in their headlong rush, neighing wildly as their riders fight to keep control of them. The charge continues, the ranks out of order and ragged now, some of the horses still rearing and pawing at the air as the sound of pipes and drums echo across the plain. It’s almost enough to make him forget the fact that a thousand horses and men are thundering down on him, intent on taking his life, Peta’s life, the lives of all the Narnians in the How. He used to watch the Telmarine cavalry train back at the castle; this is nothing like it. This is a thousand times worse. This time they’re charging at him.
“Aim!” Caspian yells, licking his lips. “Fire!”
A hundred and fifty crossbows snap at once; the first rank of cavalry stumbles and goes down, horses and men screaming in pain.
“Draw bows! Aim! Fire!”
Again. And again. And again, until Caspian’s throat is raw from screaming orders and his fingers are cramping. “Fire at will!” he shouts at last as the ragged remains of the Telmarine cavalry barrel down on them.
Out of nowhere, three-quarters of the Narnian army, hidden beneath the How during the entirety of the duel, erupt out of the ground on three sides of the Telmarine cavalry. The earth falls away beneath the hooves of the cavalry, horses screaming, men shouting in panic, and Caspian’s crossbowmen and Susan’s archers empty their quivers down on them.
“Case bows, draw swords!” Caspian yells, slinging his crossbow back across his shoulders and drawing his sword and dagger.
“For Narnia!” Peta screams and breaks into a run, the crossbowmen parting to let her through before joining the headlong charge.
Caspian shouts too, wordless, and then the two armies clash. He slashes across the front of dismounted cavalryman’s chest and spins to catch another across the throat, ducks out of the way of an oncoming horse and stabs a man through the shoulder. He jerks his sword free and slams the hilt into a man’s face before he strikes out backhanded, ripping his dagger through the flesh of his throat.
Beside him, Hilzarie springs and brings down a horse, ripping through its throat as its rider goes flying. Peta buries her sword in the man’s chest and slams her armored forearm into a soldier’s face, knocking him flat. He gets trampled by a charging centaur that lifts a spear and throws it over, pinning a soldier to the ground. Edmund, galloping past with the reins draped over the saddle horn and controlling the horse with knees and thighs alone, takes a man’s head off and slams his horse sideways into a Telmarine one, clashing swords with its rider.
Caspian ducks a blow and buries his dagger in the soldier’s thigh, ripping it sideways to find the artery before he pulls it free and spins to parry a sword stroke. He takes a shallow cut across the ribs, turned by the plates of his brigandine and the mail beneath, and stabs the man in the chest.
“Peta!” he hears Susan shout from above, over the thunder of the satyr drum and the mad shriek of the faun pipes.
Caspian turns to see what it is that has Susan’s attention, and feels the bottom drop out of his stomach. The cavalry make up only a small portion of the Telmarine army; Glozelle has sent out the infantry, and they’re advancing steadily, a uniform beat of feet on the plain.
“Back to the How!” Peta screams. “Fall back to the How!”
Then the siege machines start. One stone lands not far from Caspian, shaking the weakened ground beneath his feet and smashing two Narnians beneath it. Another sends Edmund’s horse rearing in alarm, Edmund fighting to stay on before he vaults free.
Caspian doesn’t have to fight his way back; most of the cavalry are dead and the infantry haven’t quite reached them. A huge ballista bolt pierces a centaur through the chest; another hits Rumblebuffin the giant in the shoulder; he screams his rage and lumbers forward, ignoring Peta’s shouts for retreat.
“You idiot, get back here!” she bellows. “Do you want to die? Fall back! Narnians! Fall back to the How!” She catches the arm of a dwarf that’s furiously stabbing the body of a dead Telmarine officer over and over again, its arms and legs jerking gruesomely, and pulls him away.
Susan shouts, “Brace yourselves!” and Caspian looks up wildly as a rock shot by a trebuchet hits the How, sending stones tumbling wildly down and the archers scattering, groping for some kind of hold on the ledge. Then Susan slips and falls, Trumpkin catching her outstretched arm and holding her in midair.
“Su!” Peta yells, panic in her voice, just before Trumpkin drops her and Susan lands on an angled ledge of rock, moss so thick on it that she slides down and dashes forward, drawing another arrow from her quiver.
Then the infantry are on them, before they can get within thirty paces of the How. Caspian shouts and strikes out, meeting them blade to blade. He fights his way forward, trying to get to Peta’s side.
“Narnia!” she’s screaming over and over again. “Narnia! Aslan! For Narnia!”
“Peta!” Caspian shouts, slashing across a Telmarine’s chest and kicking the body aside. “Peta!”
A griffin wheels down to the sky and lifts up a Telmarine from the ground, wings beating furiously until he drops the man and sends him screaming into the pit the Narnians have opened up, half-filled with dead Telmarine cavalry.
Another rock hits beside him, sending Telmarines and Narnians alike diving for cover, and the weakened earth gives way beneath Caspian’s feet. He goes tumbling down, sword falling from his hand, and hits the bare dirt forty or fifty feet down on his left side, hearing bone crack as he lands on his wrist. Caspian can’t help the scream that rips itself out of his throat as he rolls up onto his knees and gropes for his sword. He staggers to his feet with the hilt grasped tightly in his right hand, clutching his left hand to his chest, and almost runs himself onto a Telmarine pike.
“Caspian!” General Glozelle says, wide-eyed, and lets the pike fall from his hands. “My prince –”
Caspian stares at him, trying to find the words he wants. “General,” he says at last. “Please –”
Then a tree root punches through the earth and snatches a Telmarine swordsman from behind Glozelle, smashing him down into the floor as he screams. Caspian stares in blank horror, a hundred stories about the black terror of the woods rushing up at once, then the root drops the swordsman and darts in towards Glozelle.
“No!” Caspian screams, coming to himself. He tackles Glozelle around the waist and throws the general down to the ground, the tree root passing over both their hands as Peta yells something.
“Caspian!” she exclaims, and he raises his head to see her slide down the edge of the cavity in the ground. She approaches him and offers him her gloved hand, blinking a little as she sees Glozelle beneath him.
Caspian doesn’t see the look on Glozelle’s face; he’s too busy staring up at the trees moving across the battlefield, smashing through the Telmarine army. “What have you unleashed on Narnia?” he whispers.
“Only what should be here,” Peta says, her eyes on Glozelle as he gets to his feet. She raises her sword, the blade running red with blood.
Glozelle draws his sword and throws it point down into the packed dirt before her feet.
-
-
The crowd at the coronation had been what Caspian never thought he’d see in his life – humans and Narnians alike, gathered in the courtyard and cheering as Peta, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy came out on the castle balcony, dressed in silks and velvets and crowned with gold and silver. Caspian’s own circlet had sat heavy on his brow as he stood inconspicuously off to the side, not bothering to hide his smile. Queens and king of Narnia indeed – and he would be the last Telmarine prince Narnia would see. He bent his knee with all the others, and Peta’s smile had been radiant, golden and beaming and triumphant.
After the coronation, Caspian had danced with her, brilliant and beautiful in red and gold silk on the ballroom floor, warm and familiar in his arms as they spun on the dance floor. Her hair had floated loose around her shoulders during one of the rowdier Narnian group dances, kicking up her feet as she laughed and the rubies in her crown reflected back the light from the chandeliers. Caspian had kissed his way up her bare thighs in one of the servants’ hallways, listening to Peta gasp out curses as she scrabbled at the wall with one hand, the other cupping the back of his skull.
She hasn’t let him touch her since.
There are any number of reasons for that – they’ve all been horribly busy ever since Glozelle surrendered the remnants of the Telmarine army to Peta that day in front of the How. Caspian finds himself talking through Telmarine law and custom with Edmund and Susan, mediating arguments between Telmarines and Narnians with Edmund and Peta, meeting the common folk of Telmar and Narnia with Lucy. He wakes up with the sun and goes to bed long after the sun has set, eyes aching from reading through Telmarine and Narnian history by candlelight. Edmund is trying to coordinate a search for the missing Telmarines, the ones who didn’t surrender and whose bodies haven’t been found, since he’s afraid that some of them might try and retake Narnia. One of them is Lord Sopespian; given what happened on the battlefield, Caspian is inclined to agree. They’re trying to send ambassadors to the neighboring nations, Archenland and Calormen and the islands to the east, in order to set up lines of communications, and Caspian has been going out of his mind trying to learn Calormene on top of everything else. And if all that isn’t enough, his aunt Prunaprisma and her infant son are still living in the castle. His aunt glares at him like he’s the one who killed Miraz every time she sees him and the flush of shame is automatic, even though Caspian knows that Miraz had been a murderer and a tyrant and deserved to die a thousand deaths for his crimes.
He sees Peta at meals, in meetings, in the bare minutes they manage to squeeze out of the day for sparring, but she doesn’t find him in his bedchamber, and he won’t press her by going to hers. Caspian misses her. It’s made worse by the fact that she stops talking to him about anything except Narnia, and soon after that, starts avoiding him, turning the opposite direction every time she sees him in the halls or finding some excuse to leave quickly when he tries to talk to her between meetings or after sword practice.
He finally manages to corner her two weeks after she stops talking to him – literally corner her, which he’s fairly certain isn’t particularly beneficial to his continuing good health, but which he’s also positive is the only way he’ll get her to stand still long enough to talk to him.
Peta’s reaction to being cornered is automatic; she puts her back against the wall and reaches for the dagger on her hip. Caspian takes a hasty step backwards, raising both his hands, and says, “I just want to talk to you.”
“I am extremely busy,” Peta informs him. “This had better be good.”
“It is,” Caspian assures her. “I mean – I just –”
She narrows her eyes, her hand falling away from her dagger. “If you’re going to ask me to marry you again,” she says, “the answer is the same as it was before. Much as I appreciate the offer –”
“I wasn’t!” Caspian exclaims, surprise making him stutter over the words. He hasn’t thought about that in weeks – he hasn’t had time to think about anything except tax law and trying to organize the Narnians to help the surviving Telmarines get the harvest in before winter. “Why would you think such a thing?”
Peta blinks, then sighs. “I’ve had a few things on my mind lately,” she says. “Sorry. What was it you wanted to say?”
Caspian takes a moment to think over what it was he’d planned to say, and she rolls her eyes towards the ceiling. “Caspian, I’m supposed to be with Ed and Su talking about whether or not the crown should compensate Narnians for any family murdered or land stolen during the Conquest,” she says.
“So am I,” Caspian says. “I just – I just wanted to know what I’d done to offend you and how I can rectify it.” He gives her a faint smile. “I don’t like it when you’re angry at me and I don’t know what I’ve done.”
“Caspian,” Peta says, “if I was to tell you everything, that would be a very long list. But for the specific issue, I don’t actually think there’s anything you can do.”
“Are you sure?” he asks anxiously, not bothering to keep the hurt and confusion out of his voice. He can’t think of anything that he’s done that would offend her, and she’s been perfectly civil to him in meetings – he can’t see Peta hesitating to call him out if he’d done something to affect Narnia. “Because anything you ask of me –”
“I am extremely certain,” Peta says. Her mouth twists. “Unfortunately.” She sighs and tips her head back against the wall, hands twisting in the fabric of her skirts. For a moment she sounds utterly miserable. “You’re going to ask me to marry you again,” she predicts.
“I swear I won’t,” Caspian promises. “Peta, please. I swear I won’t.”
“This is, I’m afraid,” she tells him, “the sort of situation where promises like that go out the window.”
“I don’t understand,” Caspian says, because almost half a year with Peta and her siblings have taught him that that’s always a good thing to say.
Peta takes a deep breath and raises her head, meeting his eyes. “Ed did say I had to tell you sometime,” she mutters to herself. “I’m pregnant.”
“What?” Caspian says blankly, then he sits down hard on the cold stone floor as all the strength goes out of him. “What – how –”
Peta eyes him warily. “If I really have to tell you that, then I’m going to start saying insulting things about the Telmarine education system again,” she says, then sighs and sits down across from him, drawing her knees up to her chest and smoothing her skirts out around her. It makes her look very young.
“Peta,” Caspian says helplessly.
“Caspian,” she returns quietly. “No proposal?”
“I think I’m working up to it,” he says, a little dazed. “You’re having a baby?” he blurts out.
“No, I’m hoping for puppies,” Peta informs him archly, a little of her usual fire back in her voice. “Barring some kind of horrible miscarriage, yes, I’m having a baby and yes, before you ask and I’m tragically forced to punch you in the face, it’s yours.”
She must read the shocked expression on his face, because her mouth twists again and she says defensively, “Well, Edmund asked, and a lot of men would, so you can’t blame me for thinking you would too.”
“Of course not!” Caspian exclaims, hurt, although now he is, worse luck. He's certain Peta hasn't been with anyone except him since she arrived in Narnia, but before that – she'd been so adamant that there hadn't been anyone before –
“I –“ he begins, searching for something else to say. “I'm surprised you're not...angrier,” he adds weakly.
“Oh, I was,” Peta assures him. “You missed that. You can ask Ed or Su, if you like.” She rests an elbow on her knee and runs her hand through her hair, tilting her head to watch him with steady blue eyes.
“What are you going to do?” Caspian asks at last; he can’t think of anything else to say.
“I have no idea,” she admits. “Although, you know, someone back in England just won the pool.”
“The pool?”
“On whether I’d get knocked up, arrested, or killed first.” She pauses and says thoughtfully, “It’s killing you not to propose again, isn’t it?”
“I said I wouldn’t,” Caspian says, though to be strictly truthful, he’s not actually sure if he said anything of the sort. “Peta,” he says, and reaches for her hands.
She lets him take them, her sword calluses smooth against his fingers. He kisses her knuckles one after the other and keeps her hands in his, his grip light enough that she could pull free if she wanted to. She doesn’t pull free.
“Peta,” he says again. “What do you want me to do?”
She shakes her head, then corrects herself after a minute and smiles at him, soft and a little sweet. “I don’t know,” she says, then pauses. “Well,” she says, and her smile deepens. “Right now, I’d really like you to take me to bed.”
“Really?” Caspian says, surprised, because he would have thought that the last thing she’d want would be –
“Yes,” Peta says firmly, pulling him towards her and placing his hands over the curve of her ribs, warm and familiar. She kisses him for a long time.
She tastes like coffee and blueberry pie, and it's as intoxicating as the wine she customarily prefers. He hasn't realized how much he's missed this, how much he's come to take her for granted, until he didn't have her. The thing is – the thing is that he wants her every day for the rest of his life. He wants her in his bed, and he wants to wake up next to her, and he wants to kiss her and not worry about her brother coming around the corner. He wants her smile and her hands and her sword-arm; he wants her laughter and her anger and her tears and the way she screams when she comes. He wants her. And he'll take her any way she'll let him – but as the gods witness, he wants this woman more than he's ever wanted anything in his entire life.
“Take me upstairs,” Peta orders, pulling back, but her hands are still on his wrists. “Please.”
“Anything,” Caspian promises.
Peta in his bed is a revelation. He helps her take off her dress, stealing kisses down the curve of her spine as he undoes the laces, then she steps out of it and away from her, taking the bottom of her slip in her hands and pulling it over her head in one smooth motion. She's not wearing anything underneath. Peta catches the front of his unlaced shirt in her hands and pulls him towards her, walking backwards until she can sit down on the side of his bed with Caspian standing between her thighs, cupping her face between his hands as he kisses her.
“Take your clothes off,” Peta says softly, lying back across his bed. Caspian obeys, letting them fall heedlessly to the floor, and crawls onto the bed to kiss Peta as she spreads her legs to accommodate him. Today she's carelessly languid, moving against him dreamily when he slides inside her. He catches her wrists in one hand and pins them over her head and Peta smiles at him, wrapping her legs around his hips as he rocks into her. She's unusually quiet, breathy moans and little gasps to her usual cursing, and Caspian takes the opportunity to whisper against her skin, “I love you.”
Peta doesn't say anything, but her legs tighten around him. A moment later she comes, crying out at last, and Caspian follows, entranced by the expression on her face. Afterwards, they kiss lazily, Peta's hands sliding up over Caspian's back as he fondles her breasts. He thinks she's finally fallen asleep when he murmurs against the curve of her neck, “Marry me.”
Peta's fingers tangle in his hair and for a long moment she doesn't say anything, then she turns her head and catches her mouth with his, a light, brief kiss that's barely more than their lips touching. Caspian looks at her with wide eyes, because she hasn't said anything yet – and he did promise not to ask again.
“Yes,” she says, and Caspian cups her face in his hands and kisses her over and over. Narnia’s troubles can wait one more day.
end
*
You know, it's funny, but the title of "Be Like Water" doesn't fit the story or Peta's character at all. It comes from this song by Sarah Fimm (lyrics here), and interestingly I can see it referring to the Peta who's in my head now, but not the Peta who appears in the story. It fits Caspian better, I guess, but I've always thought of this as a story where Peta's the main character but Caspian is the POV character. But anyway, that's where the title comes from. As far as icon choice goes throughout this posting, Scarlett Johansson is, as ever, my mental image of Peta (even if Peta is younger), although Lucy Lawless for an older Peta.
If I had conceived of this story about six months later than I actually did, it probably would have been completely different, which I suspect is one reason why it was never cleaned up and posted as a completed fic. Part of this is because at some point in time, I had a fundamental change in the way I looked at Narnia and at the Pevensies.
I also realized at, oh, maybe two-thirds of the way through writing Water, that what I should have done was go back to LWW and start the AU there, because there are hints of things that happened differently, but it never really comes out in Water because Caspian just doesn't care. (The biggest difference, for example, is that it's Edmund and Lucy who see the White Witch kill Aslan on the Stone Table, not Lucy and Susan, since Susan is sharing a tent with Peta. This also means that it was Peta and Susan who were present during the battle with the White Witch. I suspect Susan might have been briefly turned into stone during the Battle; I haven't given it enough thought to know for sure.)
You'll notice that there are also a number of differences in Water from the Warsverse, some of those because of the changes that might occur from having Peter be Peta and the effect that might have on the Pevensie family dynamics (for example, Susan is spymaster, not Edmund; this is actually an idea I played with back in my earliest Warsverse stories, but that notion was eventually discarded in favor of fanon consensus of Edmund as spymaster. I still wish from time to time I'd kept Susan as spymistress in the Warsverse, but it's a bit late now). I'm not sure how well this comes through, probably because I was a little patchy on it in the first place, but another thing I was trying to do was make the Petaverse distinctly different from the Warsverse -- not just in the genderflip, but in the way I conceived of that Narnia and the way it was constructed. This was not very successful, but there are hints at it.
"Mind if I cut in?" Peta says gracelessly, and doesn't wait for the hapless younger son of the Natarene king to move aside before taking Susan's hand.
Tonight she's in skirts, wide and full, crimson silk trimmed with gold embroidery to match the crown in her hair, and there are at least a dozen knives on her, some of them disguised as jewelry and some of them hidden. Her previous complaints aside (and Susan hasn't been counting them, but Edmund and Lucy have), she looks beautiful. She also looks like she'd rather cut her throat than be here.
"What's on your mind?" Susan asks, letting Peta lead. Around them, the other dancers move aside to give them space.
"They're like vultures," Peta hisses darkly. "Hanging around waiting for me to fall. I was hoping that having the news I killed my last fiance would give me at least a month of peace."
"Don't be ridiculous," Susan says. "They're just glad that another rival's gone. You're the High Queen of Narnia -- that's quite a catch."
"Maybe if I try telling people I killed and ate my last fiance," Peta mutters.
*
"Be Like Water" was originally conceived as the first in a trilogy. A TRILOGY MADE OF SHEER CRACK. *cough* The second story would have had Miraz's followers (I think led by Prunaprismia) return and stage a successful takeover of Narnia. The other three Pevensies would be believed to have been killed, and Caspian and Peta fled to Lantern Waste, where Caspian forces Peta to flee the Narnian world. She ends up on the South Pacific island that the original Telmarines came from, but during World War II...and not in her own world, which she figures out when she runs into Peter Pevensie, who's serving in the RAF there. They figure out who each other are, then Peter marries her and brings her home to England. (And yes, there was Peter/Peta. This was when I actually wrote porn.)
So, seedy sex in the back of a bar in some godawful corner of the world at war, Peter in his RAF uniform, Peta in trousers like a man with one gun and two knives that Peter can place without looking closer. Peter goes down on his knees for her like he hasn't for anyone in years -- he hasn't wanted a woman in years -- and her taste is familiar on his mouth. Narnia, he thinks absurdly, but that's utterly impossible. He thinks he'd remember meeting this girl before. She tugs on his hair and urges him on, words falling from her mouth in a slipstream of languages, and after she comes, arching off the dirty words and swearing under her breath, she pulls him to his feet and kisses him, seemingly undaunted by her own taste on his tongue.
"I've got a hotel room," she says, and then stops and says it again, shaking her head slightly. He doesn't understand why she says it twice -- he heard her the first time.
"Do you have a name?" he asks as she does up her trousers.
"Not tonight," she says.
"Then neither do I."
...
"Sorry," the girl says as Peter's kissing his way down between her breasts and almost cuts his tongue off on a knife hidden in her brassiere.
"Don't worry," he says, the words a butterfly flutter against her flat stomach. "I know what to do with small arms."
Her skin is like his -- tanned dark where it's exposed to sunlight, milk-pale elsewhere. He runs his hands over her ribs, fingers stopping briefly at each point where his own scars would be if they hadn't vanished. Her breath stops each time, and then she closes her own slim hands on his wrists and tugs him upright.
"The courtesy's appreciated," she says, hands making quick work of the buttons on his shirt, "but it's not just about me. Let me --"
...
Peta's in the bathroom and Peter sees her passport lying on the bedside table. He flips it open -- he still doesn't know her name -- and sees Pevensie, Peta and his own birthdate like a brand. He's still looking at it when Peta comes out and stands in the door, looking at him with her hair sopping wet around her shoulders.
"What's your name?" she asks.
"Peter," he says. "Peter Pevensie. Lieutenant Peter Pevensie."
"High King of Narnia," she whispers.
"Yes," he says, and doesn't ask how she knows. They're speaking Narnian.
"Neither of us has said more than a word in English since you walked into that bar," Peta says. "How is this possible?"
...
It goes from "Let me take you out to breakfast, I have forty-eight hours leave" to somehow ending up back in bed. They leave the windows open, the sound of bombing a distant echo, and Peta spreads him out on her bed and sinks down on him slowly, head thrown back so that Peter can see the tendons in her neck strain. Afterwards, she lets him put his arms around her and traces the starburst of scars over his ribs -- the new ones, the ones that he hasn't figured out if they're real or not, because he hasn't figured if anything in England is played for keeps, even getting shot down and nearly dying.
"Why would you do it?" she asks quietly in Old Narnian. "Why fight for England?"
"Because I don't know what else to do," Peter replies in the same language and luxuriating in it. He doesn't even speak Narnian -- Old or New -- with his siblings any more, but he writes his diary in it, and he knows he thinks in it and dreams in it. It's always a conscious effort to say anything in English, and he knows that Su and Ed notice it. Su goes thin-lipped with displeasure every time he hesitates before speaking, and that's most of the time. "I don't --" he continues carefully. "I'm not very good at anything else."
"Neither am I," Peta says. "But I wouldn't put my hand in for England if they paid me. Not that they're taking women for anything but nursing anyway," she adds, and snorts.
"England was my country too, once," Peter says. "And the Jerries are a threat to everyone. It's the right thing to do."
"Maybe it is, but that doesn't mean I have to have anything to do with it. I've done enough fighting that I won't spill my blood for anyone but Narnia or my family," Peta says. "England's going to have to earn me before she gets me. At least I have a choice," she adds. "I guess you don't."
"I chose my branch," Peter says, but the words are empty. He chose the air because it's the only thing he hasn't really done, and because flying is a little like magic, and because some things don't change; his de Havilland Mosquito isn't a griffin, but it's as close as he's going to get.
"I'm fighting for my family too," he adds, and Peta puts her cheek against the starburst scars.
"My family's dead," she says.
At some indeterminate point in the future, the five Pevensies end up in Petaverse Narnia, where they run into Caspian and his band of rebels and there is a tearful reunion between Peta and Caspian. Susan and Edmund may or may not be dead, possibly held prisoner by either the Telmarines or the Calormenes, but Lucy is a crazy vengeful one-eyed vigilante who stalks through the woods killing Telmarines, burning houses, and generally being a terrifying nuisance. Eventually she ends up with the rebels too, and they manage to overthrow Prunaprismia and the Telmarines and re-install Caspian and Peta, as well as whatever surviving Petaverse Pevensies there are. (I believe that originally they were all dead, and then I got depressed and had them all alive, just scattered and informed the others were dead.) And then the Peterverse (Warsverse, maybe) Pevensies went home. (The only thing I really, really regret about not writing the rest of the trilogy is Lucy, because how awesome is that?)
At one point I also prodded at a Petaverse Dust, because this is the sort of thing I do for kicks, but it was too depressing even for me.
*
And on a final note, aside from taking out ninety percent of the italics, I made one major change to Water while I was posting it this past week. It wasn't actually that major; I rewrite the last scene in part five because the characterization was bothering me enough to change it. This is the original version:
He hesitates before he actually says it, but says it anyway. “What were you like? Before Narnia.”
She winces, then raises a hand to her face, pinching the bridge of her nose between two fingers. After a moment she lets her hand fall back down to her lap and turns to look him in the eye. “I was a fuck-up,” she says.
“I’m sure you weren’t –” Caspian begins, automatically.
“No, I was a fuck-up,” Peta says. “I was a bad sister, I was a bad daughter, I wasn’t much fun to be around – I think there was a pool going on whether I’d get myself killed, arrested, or knocked up first. There probably still is, actually. The only thing that changed when I got back was that I actually had a clue how to fight, and that I could take on boys older than me and win. That doesn’t do much for a girl’s reputation back in England.” She grins a little, humorless. “Unless you happen to be one of the boys.”
“That doesn’t seem much like the Peta of Narnia I know,” Caspian says. “Except for that last part, of course.”
“Of course.” She takes that as her due, and well she should; Caspian has seen her fight, and even before that, her legend is something that every Telmarine and every Narnian knows. After a moment she goes on. “I just don’t function well outside of a certain context.”
*
And that's all! I hope you enjoyed reading "Be Like Water." Thanks again everyone who betaed it the first time around. If y'all have any questions, I am, as ever, happy to answer them in comments.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-12-16 04:58 am (UTC)For some reason.
Which was weird. About Peta and poison and a soldier who followed Peta and Caspian whose sister had died, and he oculdn't openly mourn her in an attact that 'didn't happen'. but he could finally mourn her later.
Something.
It got jumbled up , because it was dream.
Weird.
Anyway. This was awesome and susan as spymaster is WOAH and I loved it because Susan and Lu were AWESOME and...
And.
Peta. <3
(no subject)
Date: 2011-12-17 02:42 am (UTC)I'm glad you enjoyed it! The Pevensie sisters can be a hell of a lot of fun. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-12-17 02:46 am (UTC)I'm kinda glad you didn't finish the cracky triology though, cause I didn't want them ALL TO BE DEAD or CRAZY. >.>
I kinda liked the Perfect Daughter Peta, because she would probably have cracked somewhere in about twnety years or something, but then she went to Narnia.
And... Yeah. High Queen Peta. <3 <3 <3 I like to think that she would have STAYED. and become QUEEN.
.... I'm not sure if the ending had them being crowned again as Narnian King and Queens, or did they crown Caspian instead? I'm not sure.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-12-17 02:53 am (UTC)Yeah, I like perfect daughter Peta too; I think it's probably more in character that teenage delinquent Peta.
I think they're all crowned again, and Caspian's Prince Consort, but I'm not positive.
...oh! I've found an Edmund POV missing scene!
(no subject)
Date: 2011-12-17 02:58 am (UTC)ED.
I think their orientation would still be. uh. that way.
Ed would still like girls.
..... EDWINA . CRACK . PLEASE. :P:P:P:P
you know thanks to warverse, I kept expecting the whole of Narnia to wake up to Peta and be all SHE CAME BACK YAY
liek it sort of maybe did with Peter.
Kinda.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-12-17 03:11 am (UTC)Seriously. I went through a period where I wrote one hell of a lot of Narnia crack, including Peter/Sarah Connor, Peter/Bruce Wayne, Susan/Willy Wonka...
Stripping out sentient!Narnia was one of the changes I made between the Petaverse and the Warsverse.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-12-17 03:19 am (UTC)WHAT.
Also, Peter/Bruce Wayne breaks the brain. It's like Bruce/Jason except, you know, without the added incest.
.......... >.>
not that i have anything against Bruce/Jason in general.
huh. So yeah peta-verse and war-verse differences...
*pats Peta.* It's still awesome. :D
(no subject)
Date: 2011-12-17 03:34 am (UTC)...okay, I really need to go back and tag Edwina and immortal!Susan, because it'll be less of a hassle than searching every time I need to find them. the immortal!Susan/resurrected!Peter/Batman bunch.
In terms of WTF Narnia fic I have written, besides the above...girl!Caspian (+ cheating!Peter), two werewolf AUs, one epic Ocean's 11 AU with
(no subject)
Date: 2011-12-17 03:37 am (UTC)WHAT.
WHAT.
*stares* Werewolves, okay, cause it's NOT CRACK NOT REALLY since Narnia does have werewolves (sorta). Pirates, yeah, but.
I mean.
*FLAIL*
SO MUCH CRACK.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-12-17 03:55 am (UTC)One of the werewolf variations was modern day. *quails*
(no subject)
Date: 2011-12-17 03:58 am (UTC)I guess you could have interspecies but.
You know.
No one with their specific BACKGROUND of both England and Narnaia...
(no subject)
Date: 2011-12-17 06:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-12-17 06:22 am (UTC)I think they probably did expect the Kings and Queens of Narnia to have kids somehow, and wouldn't it be better if they had their own children?
:P
Now I'm remembering that thing you w rote with the Pevensie kids and offspring. O__O that was.
Kind of fucked up and sad and deseperately beautiful , all at once.