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Peter, more often than not, feels more like a ghost than a human. He haunts the palace he now shares with his siblings and Caspian, but it is not Cair Paravel, and Peter thinks he must have died there, back in the Golden Age of Narnia.
He was brash in England. He was reckless—nothing like the tactician he used to be so long ago it felt like a dream. He was careless and cold—so unlike the Peter who had once been warm and open. England brought out something in him that Narnia had never allowed to fester. He knew deep down like he knows now that they were not and were never his people. He was meant to live and breathe and die in Narnia.
It's why he chose to stay. They defeated the Telmarines, and they were meant to return—but Peter couldn't bear to part with Narnia once more, and Susan could not bear to leave without Peter, and if the two of them stayed, then Edmund and Lucy would as well. Hence why the four of them have remained.
It's only been but two weeks, and Peter has felt himself fading like he had when he and his siblings first returned to England after the Golden Age. There's a hollow sort of feeling in his chest—an ache that he can never quite soothe. He feels ill most of the time, though mostly only in his head. He gathers himself up enough to speak with his council about rebuilding and strengthening Narnia, he spars with Edmund and their soldiers, he reads with Lucy, he cooks with Susan—he can become a fragmented version of himself when needed. He can be attentive and caring and cruel and strategic. He cannot be all at the same time, or it will surely stretch him too thin.
He has settled, this afternoon, in the library. He's been gone for thousands of years. If he is to be an effective King, then he must know the history he has missed, even if it makes him feel more ill than before.
He's too caught up in his book to hear when Caspian pads into the library.
Caspian hesitates in the doorway, the heavy wooden frame casting a long shadow across the library floor. Peter hasn’t noticed him, though that isn't surprising. He's folded deep into one of the older tomes—spines cracked with time, pages the soft yellow of age. His posture is as straight as ever, but there is a tension in his shoulders Caspian had come to recognize. It’s the sort of stiffness that says I am holding myself together, and only just.
He doesn't mean to intrude, but he can't stay away, either.
In the past two weeks, Caspian had caught Peter like this more than once—caught, not in the sense of doing something wrong, but in the sense of witnessing a private unravelling Peter didn’t know he showed. There was something unnatural in the air around him, something thinner. Caspian had known ghosts before—old keeps in the far north whispered with them—but never one that still breathed and bled and carried a sword at his side.
He steps forward quietly, boots muffled by the worn rug. The fire crackles softly in the hearth, casting golden light across Peter’s profile. He looks older than Caspian realized, not in face but in weight. As if time had pressed down too long and too hard on him, and the body had simply bent to accommodate the soul’s bruises.
“I don’t think Narnia remembers everything,” Caspian says at last, softly, careful not to startle. “But the stones do. And the trees, sometimes, when the wind moves through them just right. I think they knew you’d come back.”
He stands behind Peter’s chair, unsure if he should sit, or speak more, or leave the silence untouched. He looks at Peter’s hand, resting on the pages like it didn’t belong there. His fingers are pale, almost too still. Caspian want to reach out—touch his shoulder, his wrist, something—but he doesn't.
Instead, he steps around the chair, slowly, letting himself be seen now. His voice dropped, gentler.
“You’ve been reading the histories. Looking for yourself in them?”
A pause. Peter doesn't move.
Caspian studies him for a long moment. There is admiration in his gaze, yes, but also grief, and a growing unease he hadn’t dared name.
“You’re not in all of them. Not the way you should be. There’s a stretch of years where it’s as if you and your siblings were a legend within a legend. No dates. Just... impressions."
Another quiet moment. The only sound is the whisper of flames and the faint shift of parchment under Peter’s hand.
Caspian steps closer, not quite touching, his voice nearly a whisper now. “I think it scares Narnia. That you’re here. That you stayed.” He lets the words sit between them like a question, though he isn't sure what kind of answer he wants.
It makes Peter feel older and younger than he ever has.
He is thousands of years old here. He is a legend, a myth, a King. Something about Peter and his siblings is engraved so deeply in Narnia that not even Aslan himself could bury every trace of them. It's strange to Peter. There's a disconnect, intrinsically, between High King Peter the Magnificent and Peter Pevensie. High King Peter is one of the greatest rulers Narnia has ever seen, so much so he has practically reached some sort of sainthood. Narnia lives in him as he lives in it. They blur together in a manner dissimilar to his siblings.
Susan is born and grown from the fire of Narnian hearthes. She is passionate and fierce, but gentle enough to dance in the wind. But when the fires are out, Susan still remains Susan. In England, Susan may have been the only one of them to have fully recovered herself from the depths of her heated chest—at least she carried herself that way. Narnia was her fuel, but not her force, and she's always been pragmatic enough to know how to ignite herself once more. She doesn't need Narnia the same way Narnia needs her.
It's different, with Peter.
His blood runs deep in the dirt of the forests and stains even the furthest of oceans, and in turn, Narnia loves Peter like he's something it was born with. He is a branch, an extension of Narnia herself.
He hardly acknowledges Caspian's arrival. He's not unwelcome—never unwelcome in their shared palace. He does offer a reply.
"I think she's recovering," Peter challenges mildly. "She lost a limb some thousands of years ago. She's already learned to live with the phantom pain. What are you meant to do when a severed arm suddenly grows back after years of mourning?"
Caspian looks at Peter—not the legend, not the wolfsbane—but at the man curled into himself beneath the weight of history and grief. Peter had been so composed these past two weeks, all cold steel and structure, driving the council forward with measured resolve. But Caspian sees the fracture lines now, sees how thin the ice is beneath Peter’s every breath.
And still, there’s something terrifyingly eternal about him.
Caspian steps closer, drawn by the strange ache in the words. He doesn’t sit, doesn’t offer comfort—Peter is not someone who is easily comforted, and Caspian has learned, already, how swiftly Peter can retreat behind formality when anyone tries. But he stays, and he watches the way the firelight flickers against the carved gold spine of the book in Peter’s lap. He watches Peter’s hands, still steady despite the tremor of what he’s said.
“I don’t know,” Caspian admits softly, like a confession in a chapel. “But it sounds like she’s trying.”
He glances toward the tall windows where the Narnian afternoon light spills like honey over the marble floors. The air hums faintly with magic—old magic, deeper than even Aslan’s breath, the kind that has no name. The kind that remembers.
“She’s different now, but not worse,” Caspian continues, voice low. “Just… regrown. A little stranger, a little softer in places, harder in others. Like a forest that’s survived a wildfire.”
He’s not sure if he’s talking about Narnia anymore.
He looks back at Peter. There’s something in his expression—not pity, not reverence, not even love, though that, perhaps, lies beneath it all like a root system waiting to bloom.
“Maybe she doesn’t expect you to be the same either,” Caspian says. “Maybe she doesn’t want the High King Peter of legend.”
He swallows, the words catching in his throat before he lets them go.
“Maybe she wants you."
It's not a troubling thought, but it's also one that's never crossed Peter's mind before. He knows like he's always known that Narnia cherishes him, needs him, because it's a mutualistic relationship between the two. It's the wanting that surprises Peter, mostly. Peter has never seen himself as something worth longing for or desiring. He is a man stuck in a too young body, but his mind has started aging backwards because of his year spent in a world that doesn't belong to him. What is there to want from a King who cannot decide if he is boy or man?
He can only offer a small hum of acknowledgement at first as he closes the Calormene history book in his lap to turn his full attention to Caspian, hoping he can feel the weight of it.
Peter can tell that his gaze unnerves Caspian, even though he never says anything. Peter simply knows. He thinks it's a good thing, however. An exercise of sorts. Caspian must get better at masking his thoughts and emotions if he is to be a great King. Peter wants the best from Caspian, always.
Wants. That word again. Does Peter have the right to want something anymore in Narnia? It's not fair of him to ask anything from a beating heart he had once ripped out and tossed away. He is so very foolish, indeed.
"Is there something you need, Caspian?" he asks instead.
Caspian doesn't answer right away—not because he doesn't have words, but because they feel suddenly too small, too brittle for the shape of the moment.
Peter is properly looking at him now. There’s nothing cruel in his eyes, but there’s something ancient—something unreadable—as if centuries echo behind the blue. It makes Caspian feel bare in a way armor can’t fix.
Still, he holds the gaze.
Peter’s question is polite, clipped. Caspian feel as though they are nothing more than strangers, but it doesn't ache.
“No,” he says finally, his voice careful, measured like he’s testing for cracks in ice. “Not need.”
He shifts slightly, not away but toward, arms loose at his sides. He won’t give Peter the space to close the door too quickly. Not this time.
“I just—” Caspian falters, then straightens himself with a breath. “I thought maybe you shouldn’t be alone today. That’s all.”
It sounds smaller than he meant. Less precise. Less true, maybe.
Because the truth is, Caspian hadn’t come for council or camaraderie or duty. He’d come because Peter has been slipping, day by day, into something Caspian can’t name. Not darkness, not grief exactly—just a sort of hollowing. And Caspian had felt it like a change in the wind, like something sacred being swallowed.
“I don’t want anything from you,” he adds after a moment, quieter now, but firm. “You don’t have to worry about that.”
But he does want—Caspian knows it, even if Peter cannot bear to name it, even if he never asks. He wants Peter to stay tethered, to stop vanishing inside that look in his eyes, to stop believing he’s nothing more than a relic kept alive by Narnia’s nostalgia. He wants Peter to be someone, not just something.
But instead he says, again, softer:
“I just didn’t want you to be alone.”
Caspian's words are emotions blanketed by an air of nonchalance, and it reminds Peter that he's only human. They both are really, even if Peter feels archaic enough to blend into the walls entirely. Peter can tell Caspian cares a tremendous amount even if he doesn't say so outright—it's bleeding out of every pore. Peter expects it, too. He knows Caspian now. They have been comrades for three weeks, and Peter has already learned him. He'll have to teach Caspian how to do that, someday.
Peter will be gone again eventually. He knows this. He will either let himself fade away entirely or resign himself to a fate in battle.
(There is no option where he returns to England and leaves Narnia. If the choice is ever offered again, Peter will never take it, and if it is forced, Peter will not survive. English is not his home. England is his roots, but Narnia is his bones.)
"That's kind of you, Caspian," Peter murmurs. "Forgive me, however, if I don't believe you're being entirely truthful with me."
Caspian hums quietly. He figures he deserves it, or he at least should've expected as much. Peter trusts sparingly. His eyes flicker down to where Peter's fingers twitch against the cover of the book he's reading, tracing the cracks in the leather.
He shifts his weight from one leg to the other, then takes a step forward. The light from the fire licks the side of his face.
“I worry,” he admits, quieter than he means. “I don't want anything from you, Peter. I meant that. I only wish to…sit with you.”
His concern is hardly secret. Subtly, as Peter has learned, is not Caspian's specialty. It's endearing.
Peter straightens and relaxes at once, a small hum of acknowledgement escapes him. He finds he doesn't mind the idea of Caspian joining him. He opens his book again.
“Have a seat,” he says, and Caspian does. He sinks into the armchair across from Peter's wordlessly.
They sit there in silence, together, until the fire dies out. Even then, they remain. It's enough, for now.