Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Peter the Magnificent

We don’t count the cost.
My father said it first. Mum left the room, crying, as he pulled his army boots on and put his arms through his jacket sleeves. He looked after her, and then at me, sitting at the table, and said, We don’t count the cost, son. The cost of going. ‘Cause the price of staying is too high to pay.
As king, I put my people first, and the cost--it’s denying myself every bit of selfishness I could ever feel as I just want some time to myself, every weariness I cannot give in to at night when the scrolls are stacked up on my desk, every temper I must keep in check at the simpering foreign visitors of state, every burden I want lifted from my shoulders. I must put that all away. Aslan first. Narnia and my family second. Myself in Aslan’s paws.
The cost is battle after battle spent in blood, with giants and Calormens and evil. The cost is refusing fear and choosing faith; the cost is always, always doing what is right, no matter how easy the other road.
The cost is high. The cost is almost inhuman. The cost was determined by a Lion and an Emperor.
The cost buys my land’s Golden Age. Stories that last a world’s lifetime.
The cost buys my siblings’ their home, their joy, and great health.
The cost buys more than I could dream of.

Susan the Gentle

Peter told me once, a night he found me crying from the cutting, smiling comments of the Telmarine women, Let it go, Su. Let the hurt go. We’re kings and queens. We don’t count the cost. He put his arm around me and held me while I cried. Because he was right. We don’t count the cost.
I have forgotten more mean remarks than most women hear, for being envied is the curse of queens. I have waited, night after night with little sleep, as mothers came to me for help with sick little ones. I have given, over and over and over again, to those no others had patience for. Late into the night I have listened through stuttering words and rambling sentences, hours of stories and tedium, so that a heart might be revealed and comforted.
I have watched my brothers ride away and kept my head high; I have welcomed them back in bloody litters, and spent nights by their side praying they would not die. I have wrapped their wounds with trembling hands, and stilled those hands to hold Lucy as she cried. I have not rebuked Peter when he was weary, when the weight of the crown pressed lines in his face, because I know he paying just as I am. I have watched him suffer and said nothing. I have held back words at Edmund’s troubled face as they come seeking answers to impossible situations from a man who was once a boy, because I have seen his eagerness to love what Aslan loves, so I have held my own love inside and given the freedom he needed instead.
I have taught my family of Narnia that to be Gentle is to be both strong and kind. To buy that, I have given up all right to weariness and anger, save in Aslan’s presence alone.
And I have seen Narnia flourish.
I have seen my older brother’s face grow rested instead of weary, just because I am there.
I have seen my younger siblings lean on my strength without fear, because they know it will always receive them gently.
I have seen myself become a queen.

Edmund the Just

There is always a cost.
It is what a judge or a king knows. For every sin there is a punishment. For every victory there is a battle. For every blessing, there is a cost.
And I have paid. There is a scar in my side from my first battle. There is a shiver that runs from my skin to my heart when a cold wind sounds like her. There is a weight on every word I speak, for the words of a judge take lives. There is a weight each time I draw my sword, for I too have been prepared for a knife. And there is a weight in hope itself, for when it’s in others’ eyes, it falls on me to sustain.
But I did not pay the full cost.
It was not me the witch’s knife pierced. It was not me whose blood stained the now-broken table. I am given cheers; His ears were filled with jeers.
He paid the highest cost. I need not count mine.
Traitors redeemed.
Mercy given.
Narnia and myself free.
Hope in my siblings’ eyes that He will never disappoint.
Peter’s prayers answered and his burdens eased; Susan’s strength sustained and her queenly grace; Lucy’s faith undimmed and her joy upheld.
The role of judge given to the traitor -- so I may give the compassion I have been given.

Lucy the Valiant

The way seems hard sometimes. The times when Aslan is gone (but not far), when Peter and Edmund ride off, and Susan presses her whitening hands on the walls as she keeps her head up, and I wave and pray Aslan will bring them back again.
The times when we get messages that say they will not make it back, and I ride, ride, ride, ride with my cordial, or sometimes even fly, praying I will get there in time, that I will not arrive to bury my brother.
Or when I got older, and I learned that Aslan’s love reaches the traitors, but those who will not receive his mercy recieve his justice, and I went to wars and fired my bow.
Or the times we lost Narnia. Those were the hardest. Three times we went back to England, with Narnia a memory, and Aslan silent.
That was when I went to Him at night and cried. That was when joy slipped from my fingers, and faith fought valiantly to remain. When Peter and Edmund were gone to school, and Susan so far away, and the nights were dark and long. All I could do was wait.
Wait.
Wait and believe.
Those nights were hard, and only Edmund and Peter could brighten away the shadows in my eyes completely; my kings of Narnia.
Those nights were the cost of being a queen of Narnia and then a child in England, with nothing but the promise, “Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen” to hold on to. That and Aslan’s voice.
But He made the way.
He visited me on it.
He breathed on me and made me a lioness.
He sang and made Narnia, and then made me its queen.
And He brought us back to live there forever.

Aslan

I’ve been asked before why the way is hard, why death tracks the footsteps of my own. Why the cost of following me is so high; why they must leave everything, even themselves, take up their pain, and follow me.
Dearest, I paid the highest cost. I paid more than a human could ever give. And I paid it so they could live, and live as queens and kings, children of my own.
So I gave them the road that would make them royalty, and asked them not to count the cost, for such counting makes even saints bitter. Counting the cost forgets the other side of accounting; the side that shows what has been given.
Narnia.
Royal character, royal strength, royal wisdom, royal joy.
Once a king or queen in Narnia, always a king or queen; eternity itself.
And myself. There is no more I could give.
What did you give up, compared to that?

Chapter Text

   The cost will be higher, I shouldn’t wonder. 

   It wasn’t that high. A burned foot, a few bruises. There’ll be food poisoning from the giants, I shouldn’t wonder. Shouldn’t have eaten the stag; shouldn’t have forgotten the signs. Should have stopped the children when I saw the ruined city. I didn’t, more’s the pity. But I must make the best of it.

   Now I’m back. I’m a hero, they say at the castle. But I won’t get a swelled head. The other wiggles, they help keep me sensible. “Puddleglum,” they say, “you mustn't think all of life will be as exciting as your one-time adventure. You’ve got to settle down again. Be a sober, respectable Marshwiggle again. We’re only saying it for your own good, Puddleglum.” 

   But I’ll end up wandering off again, I shouldn’t wonder. Looking for a door to Spare Oom in the Lantern Waste. What would I do when I get there, you ask? Find Jill and Eustace, of course. See a little of their world. See if it settles me down a bit, makes me happy to be in Narnia. Going away would make me happy to be home, I shouldn’t wonder. I’d miss my wigwam if I hadn’t got it with me. Maybe I’ll try a boat. It’d be swamped in the first storm it sailed in, I shouldn’t wonder. Crew dead, washed ashore, or never heard from again, and no one wiser. Ah, but we’d be in Aslan’s country then. That might feel like home. 

   No, the cost of that adventure wasn’t high when I went on it. Nor at the end. Till Eustace and Jill left. And it’s been five years, and Rilian hasn’t died, more’s the wonder. But there’s time yet. He comes down, now and then, and splashes through the channels to come sit on the bank. He’ll slip one day and break his neck, I shouldn’t wonder; and how could I be a hero then? Accused of the king’s murder, cast out of the only home I have left, I’d probably be eaten by dragons before the day was out. But that’s life. And winter’s coming.

   Cold mornings make cold channels, they say, and cold channels make me remember cold nights up north. Jill and Eustace rolled in blankets, poor cold things. They didn’t sleep well, I should think. Dark nights I sit and think, and remember Harfang, and the Underworld, and the hole we came out of. It’ll collapse one day, I’d venture, and take Narnia down with it. But we’ll make the best of it. There might be enough of us to dig back out and see the sun again. Not me, I shouldn’t wonder; eels don’t bite twice.

   I wonder if that’s the cost; knowing the dark things that are out there. Waiting for them to happen; waiting for home to vanish once again. I shouldn’t wonder if it did. Journeys are spent at the cost of home, but what does home cost? If we have a home, we must expect to lose it. 

   Ah, but there’s one home beyond that. Aslan’s country. Once I get there, I shouldn’t think I’d wonder about leaving. 

   I shouldn’t wonder if I’d see Eustace and Jill again. Be home again. 

Chapter Text

“‘Two sights have I seen,’ said Farsight. ‘One was Cair Paravel filled with dead Narnians and living Calormenes: the Tisrocs banner advanced upon your royal battlements [...] And the other sight, five leagues nearer than Cair Paravel, was Roonwit the Centaur lying dead with a Calormene arrow in his side. I was with him in his last hour and he gave me this message to your Majesty: to remember that all worlds draw to an end and that noble death is a treasure which no one is too poor to buy.” -- The Last Battle

    Fallen. Fallen. Fallen.

   Hoofbeats underneath me, trees all around me, the dryads in them dying now.

    Narnia is fallen .

   A prophet, I’d seen this coming; a councilor, I’d known its cost; a Narnian, it was death to me.

    Narnia is dying . 

   I’d told my king evil hung over Narnia, that Aslan wasn’t here. It cost me, to come to his lodge, to see joy die in his eyes.

    Your people bleed in your courtyard.

   I’d run to tell him, run flat out. To tell a good and kingly friend--that terrible things lie ahead, and Aslan had not come. 

   Aslan, where were you?

   The cost of a prophet is wounding the king.

    The king with his hand on his sword, a white unicorn beside him. Heading into battle alone.

   The cost of this truth is stripping away joy.

    Are there footsteps behind me?

   The cost of his rage might be his life.

    I can hear the shouts of men.

   And Narnia would fall without him.

    Ahh! An arrow in my side! Aslan, it burns, it’s deep!

   Aslan, why make me your prophet now ?

    I turn with sword in hand.

   I followed, Aslan, followed faithfully. I never lied to your own.

    My life would cost them their own, these three. Cowards of men, for now they hang back.

   Not even when it angered my king.

    I lower the sword, and wait for their courage. I am too weak to chase them now.

   Not even when he wouldn’t listen. His anger wasn’t at me; he sought the truth his own way.

    Bolder, they come forward now .

   That didn’t mean the anger didn’t hurt.

    Their heads fall on the forest floor. I turn to go back to the king--of nothing.

   But it wasn’t me he was angry with; a prophet must remember. 

    Ten steps and then I fall; the ground, it jars my wobbly knees.

   The Emperor’s message; that was all, all that mattered to a prophet. Set myself aside. 

    I bend forward, panting; hands pushing on the ground. But I can’t get up.

   Aslan knows what is good for the king. Aslan sets the dance of the stars. Aslan knows our ending.

    I fall on my side; this is my ending. I close my eyes and my memory pours out Narnian screams. I wish I wasn’t alone.

   Aslan, why did I have to be a prophet at the end? I did not mind the cost to me; the truth was always worth it. But how could Tisroc’s reign be Aslan’s truth? How could this slaughter be Aslan’s good?

    Breathe in. Breathe out. Slowly. Death comes in Aslan’s time.

   All worlds come to an end. Even Aslan’s. Even the stars. Only the truth endures. It does not change in darkness.

    Wingbeats. I open my eyes, eyes already towards the sky. Peace settles over me. Aslan isn’t letting me die alone.

   If I am Aslan’s prophet, my death also comes at His will. And it is a little cost, for a life spent fighting for truth.

    Farsight, great eagle of the winds. His head dips with grief for me. And for Narnia. Together, we grieve what’s lost.

   I am ready to surrender it.

   He stays with me till I breathe no more.

   Death comes for us all.

    I open my eyes and see a stable .

   But death could not hold The Lion.

    In it I see my king.

   Death cannot hold His prophet.

    In it I see The Lion.

   Death is only a temporary cost.

    When I enter it, I am home.

   Truth endures forever. 

    And now, so does Narnia.

Chapter Text

   I didn’t know Him by the name of Aslan, not till after I died. Not till I met Him as my four children knew Him. The Lion of Judah became a bit more real then. 

   I knew Him by a different name, but I knew Him. I knew Him as only desperate mothers know Him, when we had to raise families alone, during a war that never should have been necessary. When we wondered if we saw their husbands for the last time only to turn and wonder if we’d watch our children die. 

   And I knew the cost He required of me. The highest cost, that I would watch my children suffer and not be able to shield them. That a cost would be required of them, and I could not pay it for them.

   They left for the country, and I thought, this is the cost. They left without their parents, and I stayed to work, to save those who’d paid a cost for the war that would scar them the rest of their lives. And I prayed to Him every night for my children, and thanked Him that they were safe.

   And then they came back, and they weren’t. They’d fallen in love with the country mansion they’d lived in, even giving it its own name of “Narnia.” The professor treated them like kings and queens. They’d even--they’d grown up, there without me watching, and suddenly I wasn’t left to parent alone. I wasn’t left to be a parent at all. 

   And my four, ones I’d given birth to, they worked and lived and tried to smile, but their hearts weren’t in London at all. It was rare I could make it home for them. Rare that I could give them what they gave each other, when suddenly only the four of them existed in a world none of us knew anything about. Peter with the look of a king, calm and steady and blazing with light, Susan with the grace of a queen, gentle but piercing in her beauty, Edmund with the wisdom that made me shiver and feel small and yet welcome, and Lucy with the joy that had to be heavenly. Kings and queens, sitting in my living room, while I stood outside in the doorway and ached. In so many ways they were not my own.

   Only they weren’t mine to begin with. He gave them to me, each a baby in my arms, a blessing He sent to rest with my husband and I. And if we prayed for help with those blessings, when Edmund darkened, when Susan lost the heart-deep grace for grace in a pair of my heels--I shouldn’t find myself complaining when He answered.

   When He took my own and made them His. 

   When every prayer I’d made for my children’s hearts and souls was answered beyond what I had asked, beyond what I had imagined. 

   And He added a love for their father and I that only increased. If we could not offer our four a home for their hearts, we could offer them someone to love and lean on, and a place to come and rest. When Christ gave us the ability to give our children those beautiful things, He gave the two of us a family of kings and queens that were ours to love and be loved by.

   One that was His, not just my own. 

Chapter Text

Sword ever in hand. Feet always ready. Eyes always alert. Aslan may have made us small, but gave us dignity, honour, and courage; He added us to His own the day He broke death’s hold on the Table. We fight for His cause and for His honor since that day we first begun to speak.

Since Caspian became his king, my sword was for his side, eager for battle! Since the day Trufflehunter called me at the mouth of my hole in the bank I swore myself and my own to his service. Such glorious service! We fought his battles, shed our blood in the war, and feasted with him when we won. Then Aslan came, and by His word and work Narnia was freed.

Sword ever in hand, feet always ready, eyes always alert. ‘Tis not a cost, but a way of life. A life I cherish.

A life Aslan gave back to me. When my band bore my litter to Aslan’s feet, and the Valiant Queen herself healed me, I met Him face-to-face. And for the love my people bore me, He gave me my honour, and a lesson. And I loved Him more than before. This is the One I serve. 

Sword ever in hand, feet always ready, eyes always alert. ‘Tis a glorious thing to be His knight.

Narnia prospered, and I learned to be a knight in peace. Sword ever ready to defend the weak (not always the small, for the smallest can have the highest spirits), feet always ready to run where they are needed, eyes open to His will. It was good to see His Narnia prosper, and to serve it, serve it with every breath and word and thought. For it is His, and it is a glorious thing to serve. 

Sword ever in hand, feet always ready, eyes always alert. Ready for His call. 

He called, called my king to sea, and me with him. Called to find the one thing I had always longed for, one I had heard sung over me in my cradle. Aslan placed the call in my heart since my earliest days, and then called me away from Narnia to find what I had always been seeking. There is no cost in such a calling, only eager feet, willing hands, and eyes searching the furthest sea for the country we were heading towards--that or the edge of the world. 

Sword ever in hand, feet always ready, eyes always alert. Ready, alert for the adventures Aslan sends His knights.

For adventures came, sea serpents, slave markets, magic islands, and dragoned companions. The serpent, alas, we did not kill! though we pushed the foul thing from our ship. And in the adventures He sent His knights, the slaves were freed by use of trumpet and force, the Dufflepods freed and taught to swim, and a coward and dishonest villain became a true knight of Aslan as His knights were reminded of the sin of greed. The adventures He sends are quests indeed!

Sword still in hand, feet firmly planted, eyes looking for His face. Islands more, and then--

One last quest. Several goodbyes, “Till we meet again in Aslan’s country!,” and then at last, the end--and the beginning of the greatest adventure. For death is the gain of Aslan’s country, home, and Him. 

Chapter Text

   The gifts of Aslan--Aravis, my soon-to-be daughter, this is a truth I wish my good lady could have taught you. Alas! That is beyond us now. But ‘tis a truth every king or queen should know. 

   As of yet, Hast never had a child. I had but two, my two lively boys! Boys no longer, and one to be yours on the morn. Yet when they were born-- like myself, both were loud and fat and round. ‘Twas my nurse who said my cry could take the place of the hunting horns that call the hounds as I drooled all over my mother’s shoulder. The gifts we’re given are seldom always pleasant, but they’re gifts nonetheless. 

   Take kingship, if you would. Well did my second son declare with joy he should never be king! ‘Tis a gift, Aslan sent, for we’re Aslan appointed, and under his authority. Honor and power and wealth, indeed! And constraint and responsibility and the need to be the first to give. Kingship is a gift, and a heavy one at that. 

   But aye, his gifts. A gift, Aravis of Archenland, has this strange requirement, that it may be taken back. You were given Archenland as a home, a gift, and were given to us a gift as well. But some day, if He wills, Aslan could call you back, back to the land of your birth. Be not alarmed, for I do not see that happening. But it is the right of Aslan to ask it of us.

   I, I was given a gift beyond price. Hast heard before of my courtship of Cor’s mother, wise beyond her years, and in my eyes with a beauty to rival even Queen Susan’s. But we have not told you much of her death. 

   We tried often for children, for a king must have heirs. But Aslan knew us better, and did not grant us that gift for five years. Oh, what a gift those five years were! But for our lack of children, Archenland flourished. 

   Then, at last, we were given what we longed for. My sweet consort grew larger and larger, far beyond the normal size, and we learned we’d been given not one, but two. Oh, our happiness! For hard had we tried, and we wondered if our son or daughter would be solitary, bearing the burden of royalty alone. But no! For within her were two. Larger and larger she grew, till she could not dress or even slip her small feet into slippers without help, and to my eyes she radiated a purer, brighter beauty than before. 

   Yet this, my dear child, was the hardest lesson of all. For our sons were born, and the two of us laughed as they cried, loved them till they quieted, and listened with awe to their futures. 

   But my love never left her bed again. Giving birth had weakened her, and we were given but a few weeks. Oh heart-rending gift! For Aslan had given me my wife, and three weeks after the birth of our sons, He took her away. The first week we waited, waited for her color to grow pink again, her energy to return. She held our children only to feed them, or in the hours after we both learned Cor would save Archeland from it’s greatest peril, and our pride knew no bounds. But that day exhausted her, and the next morning I could not wake her.

   The second week we called the doctors, the healers, and they said something inside her had broken. It was something they could not fix. I gripped her wrist, that withering, thin wrist. Her face, whiter than Narnia’s winter, looked to mine, and oh, Aravis, may you never have to see fear like that in the faces you love. The doctors left, unable to help us, and we wept. 

   The third week I sent to Narnia, to our fellow sovereigns, begging for their help. We waited, my Queen often asleep, her wrist still in my grasp. We waited in vain, for we had left calling for help till too late. Queen Lucy and her cordial were far in the North, and though Hawks flew and Squirrels ran, she did not make it to our court in time. I buried my wife. 

   I had yet to learn this lesson, and my daughter, I did not deal well. My attention slid off of my court, my future, my responsibilities, as I cried out to Aslan and wondered why I was not able to keep my wife. Why He kept Queen Lucy till she was one day late, till after my wife’s last breath. And so when a case was brought before me, of a Lord Chancellor who had taken from us money, I settled it carelessly, and looked no further into his motives.* If I had--well, all things turn out well in Aslan’s plan, but it is a warning I need, now. If I had looked harder, been a better king, perhaps I might have learned of his evil and rooted it out sooner. Distracted by not only grief, but anger, I did not.

   And so Lord Bar took my son. I lost my wife, my confidence, and then my first-born son. 

   I chased, fury in my heart climbing with each rolling wave, and we caught up, we gained justice, our enemies perished--but I still lost my son. And I came back to an empty Archenland and a crying child, and wondered how the prophecy would be fulfilled when I had lost so much. 

   Yes, child, you understand that. You too have raged against the loss of loved ones, of freedom, for you have lost much and grieved much. You have been given much, too, and I bid you remember it.

   And remember that Aslan may give much, but also take it away. I had five years with my wife, for He refused us a child. He gave us two children, and took one away for far too many years, but saved my kingdom when I could not, and returned my son to me at the same time. 

   All He gives you, He may take away. Every joy may turn to sorrow; every sorrow may turn to joy. In all things, Aslan is good.