Archive of Our Own ^beta

It starts suddenly. 

It’s twilight when it happens, endless sky filled with clouds that the brightest stars start to shine through as day bleeds into night. It’s winter now—a vicious Narnian winter, as they all tend to be. A light blanket of snow covers the ground. It will likely get worse over the course of the night, but Peter admires it from his quarters for now.

His room isn’t all that big. With renovations being done on Cair Paravel, he and his siblings are still set to remain in the Telmarine castle for at least another winter after this one. The quarters he’s been provided with are smaller than the ones he used to occupy long ago. It’s not as much a bad change as it is just unfamiliar. Everything feels different now. His chest aches with it.

He’s getting ready to settle in for the night. He’s changed out of his day clothes into softer, looser night clothes that hang just slightly off his frame. Caspian had lent them to him when he and his siblings stayed their first night here; Peter hasn’t yet bothered to return them.

Peter dedicates only a few more moments to observing the snowfall before blowing out the candle by the window and approaching his bed. It’s vast, fit for a king, and Peter doesn’t much like it, though he doesn’t dare voice his complaints. He’s grateful for the hospitality.

The burning starts not five minutes after he sits down and opens his book.

The blood follows afterwards, staining the pages a cherry red.

It’s his hands. Peter watches, eyes slightly widened, as two matching holes open in each of his palms. They’re maybe three millimeters in diameter, if Peter had to guess, and bleeding steadily, though lacking a distinct metallic scent that Peter finds more unsettling than the sudden appearance of the wounds themselves. Peter watches, strangely detached. Some part of him already knows this is no accident.

There’s no discernible pain at first—just heat, sharp and crawling, bubbling under the skin and around the edges of the holes. 

Calmly, he sets his book back onto his bedside table, then rises.

He crosses the room on unsteady feet, blood dripping in a slow, rhythmic pattern onto the stone floor. It doesn’t soak in; it beads there, dark and glossy against the pale gray. Peter isn’t sure how he feels about it—about how easily he could wash it away, like there was never any blood in the first place.

He pauses at the basin in the attached washroom.

For a moment, he simply stares at his reflection through the mirror hung on the wall above it. He doesn’t quite recognize himself. He’s too thin, perhaps, shadows beneath his eyes from sleepless nights and too many thoughts, or maybe his eyes are too dull—but even still, there is nothing outwardly monstrous about him. Nothing that explains this.

He lifts his hands slowly, palms up. The wounds stare back.

This isn’t poison. It isn’t a curse from some Telmarine relic he brushed against earlier that week, it isn’t a spell placed on him by a malevolent wizard. There’s no dizziness, no weakness beyond the shaking in his hands.

What worries him most is the fact that he isn’t afraid. Not the wild, panicked sort he knows well.

Peter swallows. His grip tightens on the basin until the porcelain bites into his palms, and the pain finally comes in earnest; sharp enough to make his vision blur at the edges. He welcomes it—relishes it, really. It’s an ache different from the burning. This, he knows how to bear.

He lets go long enough to sink his hands into the water. It goes pink, then finally a true red. Peter hisses at the feeling of it. He exhales through his nose, trying to ground himself. 

He allows himself to soak his hands for what feels like hours but what must be under two minutes—he doesn't like the way his skin starts to shrivel up after too long in the water—before pulling them back out and reaching for the rag on the countertop beside it.

The rag feels coarse against his palms, but at least the bleeding has somewhat slowed. Slowed enough that Peter feels like he can justify wrapping his hands now. So that’s what he does.

White bandages are spun carefully around his palms. He goes around once, twice, four times, then settles. He does the same to his other hand. He imagines they’ll be soaked through by morning, but he doesn’t have enough energy to care about that. In fact, he feels rather tired.

He tucks himself into bed without even the thought of cleaning the blood drops waiting still on the stone floors.

—

“Do you still pray?” Susan asks the next day, attempting for something casual, but Peter can hear the significance of it.

They’re the only two left in the dining hall this late in the morning. Caspian left early—before dawn, even—though Peter isn’t exactly sure where. He knew at one point, certainly, but it seems to have escaped him since then. Lucy and Edmund have abandoned the castle to go out. They left immediately after grabbing something quick for breakfast, mischief painting their every feature.

So, it is simply him and Susan sitting across from each other at the absurdly long dining table. Susan is mostly finished with what Peter assumes must have been a biscuit at some point and avoiding direct eye contact with him.

“Do you still pray?”

Peter isn’t sure Susan wants an answer to that, or if she truly meant to ask at all. He supposes, though, he must give her an answer if she had the courage to ask.

“Not well,” Peter answers her. “Not hopefully.”

(He remembers spending mornings in the chapel of Cair Paravel with Lucy every so often a year or a millennium ago. Lucy would pray for ten or so minutes before approaching the dining hall for breakfast. Peter would join her, if only just for peace and quiet before the start of the day.

He’d asked her once, why she felt the need to pray.

“I want to speak with him,” she had replied, so soft in her earnestness. “It’s a conversation.”

Peter had told her that there wasn’t much conversation if he never said anything back. Afterward, Lucy had given him a funny look. One that Peter couldn’t entirely decipher. It wasn’t judgement, and it wasn’t fully confusion—Peter could say it was almost fond. 

It wasn’t as though Peter had any real belief in Aslan then, because belief implied the existence of disbelief. Aslan was—is—real. Tangible, when he wants to be. Present, when he has to be. Peter sometimes thinks him more like the weather or the different seasons. He comes and he goes, and his existence is undeniable—or perhaps inevitable. Regardless, Peter couldn’t fully grasp the point of it; not then, anyway.

Morning after morning, though, he would sit with Lucy in the chapel, drowned in dawn’s light. Eventually, he found himself talking as well, and slowly started to understand.

It wasn’t about belief, really. It was about comfort. Familiarity. Understanding. Forgiveness.

The Telmarine castle has a chapel deep within its halls, but it hasn’t been used in ages by anyone. It isn’t a Narnian chapel. Peter doubts he could reach Aslan in there if he tried.

He prays in quiet moments now, though it still isn’t honestly prayer.)

Presently, Susan asks, “Does it help?” after a moment of consideration. Her brows are pinched together, creasing the skin between them.

Peter hums, turning the question over in his mind for a moment.

He thinks of his hands, still bandaged and hidden halfway under the cuffs of his sleeves and a pair of white gloves.

(He thinks of Susan, a millennium or a year ago, kneeling in front of the altar in the chapel. The only light in the room had come from the candles she must have lit before entering. It had been late into the night—late enough that Peter thought she might have been asleep.

He had meant to walk past. It was private, he knew. She wouldn’t have come so late in the night if it wasn’t. But he lingered despite himself, peering in at her through the door left ajar. Watching carefully as her posture remained sharp and straight like it always would during meetings. Holding his breath when she shifted only slightly.

Peter, at the time, had never seen Susan in the chapel before—let alone praying in the chapel. Neither her nor Edmund had really seemed keen on it. Peter always thought their faith more implicit.

She spoke only once, soft enough that Peter hadn’t been able to make out the words, but then she was moving, and Peter stepped away from the chapel.)

“Not always,” he tells her honestly, “but enough.”

—

He doesn’t bleed again for another few days.

The bandages around his hands are fresh and clean. He changes them every few hours, whenever he gets the chance, mostly out of discomfort at looking at the wounds. They hadn’t scabbed over when he first changed his bandages, and they still haven’t scabbed over now. The wounds still look fresh, though they aren’t bleeding, and Peter feels almost ill when he looks at them for too long. Something about being able to see straight through his hands makes his stomach turn.

Even then, he finds himself more fascinated by them than concerned at their sudden appearance. He’s curious, not frightened, and that in itself makes Peter wonder if he’s gone mad.

He still hasn’t told anyone about them. Edmund offhandedly mentioned the gloves he hardly takes off now, but it was more of a jab than anything serious. Peter thinks he would’ve told him if he’d asked—Edmund has that sort of way about him.

—

It isn’t his hands the next time. Rather, it is his feet.

At first, he thinks it’s the rocks, because he’s in the river when it happens.

His boots and socks are in the sand at the water’s edge next to Caspian’s and Lucy’s. His trousers are rolled up as far as he could manage. Lucy wants seashells—that’s why they’re here. Something about a faun teaching her how to string them together without breaking them. She’d been so excited about it when she told Peter that afternoon, so he promised they’d go the next day when the sun was finally expected to peek out from behind the clouds.

Caspian hadn’t been looped in on the plan initially, but Lucy ended up dragging him along with a minimal amount of convincing, not that she really needed to plead with him at all.

Peter has noticed, like he often does, that Caspian has been strung tighter than usual. He needs to decompress. This is a perfect opportunity for it. No council, no treaties, no deals—just Peter, Lucy, and the river.

The river, which should be frozen over. The water is freezing. They will get sick, most likely, but that doesn’t seem to matter to any of them.

It happens an hour in. Lucy has collected a good amount of seashells now, holding them protectively against her chest instead of setting them down by her boots like Peter had suggested. She refused, even laughing at the idea, and continued her search.

He’s deep enough in the water now that he is almost entirely convinced that he’s stepped forward onto twin rocks, sharp and jagged, and that the skin has been pierced. He winces and steps back to the sand where Caspian lounges.

His hair is more purposefully styled today than normal, the top half pulled into a little braid. Lucy’s doing, most likely. She likes braiding hair—finds it soothing, she says. And Caspian isn’t one to refuse her often, if ever.

Peter sits down a few feet away and pulls one foot up over his knee. He can tell instantly that it isn’t from the rocks. The burning registers to him not a moment later. He gently palpates the skin around it, ignoring the flow of blood at the same time, and hisses as he does so. He doesn’t need to look at his other foot to know that the wound is mirrored there as well.

“Peter!”

Lucy’s voice. Just as well.

Caspian turns toward him then, takes notice of his feet, and wordlessly crawls over to him. Lucy wades back toward the sand as well, a few of her seashells falling out of her hands.

“What happened?” Caspian asks in that concerned tone of his, brown eyes flickering up from the hole in his foot to look at Peter’s face. Peter doesn’t much like it when Caspian does that—stares at him like he’s studying him. Committing every feature to memory like Peter will disappear if he doesn’t look hard or long enough. He lingers, and it burns worse than the wounds in his feet.

Peter shakes his head, turning to Lucy as she finally reaches them. “I don’t know,” he answers. It isn’t fully a lie.

Lucy deposits her seashells in the sand, finally, and leans in closer. Gingerly, she grabs his foot, watching as the blood drips down his heel. Then, her hand is moving toward the satchel on her hip, but Peter catches her wrist.

“I’m alright,” he tells her, even though he can see she doesn’t believe him with the look on her face. “They don’t hurt that bad. Just a little burn, I promise.”

“‘They’?” Caspian repeats.

He reaches out finally and grabs Peter’s other ankle. He pulls his foot out from under the water to reveal exactly what Peter expected.

“This is not natural,” Caspian says, like that part isn’t obvious.

Caspian runs his thumb over the bottom of Peter’s foot. The wounds aren’t bleeding profusely—just a pair of steady streams—and don’t sting much. Not as much as his hands had, anyway. 

“Don’t touch them!” Lucy exclaims.

Caspian’s brows shoot up, but he pulls his hands back anyway. “I was being careful,” he mutters defensively. Lucy shakes her head at him.

“At least let me bandage them, if you won’t let me use my cordial,” she continues, turning back to Peter now. He hates the concern in her face, hates that it’s because of him.

She doesn’t fret over him like she normally would when any of them are injured. Like Peter, she doesn’t seem to care much about where they’ve come from, nor does she seem all that afraid. Peter doesn’t know what to do with that. It unsettles him. She knows less than he does, and yet she’s not panicking, either.

Caspian, however, can’t hide his worry to save his life. His expression betrays too much. Even when he keeps his face set in something like neutrality, Peter can still see the tight set of his jaw and the way his eyes narrow ever so slightly when he thinks too much.

Lucy pulls away to open her satchel. She produces a roll of bandages from it, looks to Peter's feet, makes eye contact with Caspian, then back to his feet.

And then Caspian is standing, moving behind Peter. He hooks his arms under Peter's and drags him further away from the water. 

Peter's feet are still wet, though, so Caspian kneels back down next to him to dry them off with the sleeve of his sweater. If Peter were younger, he might have been embarrassed, but presently, he finds he doesn't mind it all that much—though he does flinch and wince every so often.

“Really, it's alright,” Peter says again to Lucy, even if he's not sure why he speaks. “They’ll stop bleeding. I'll hardly feel them.”

“You cannot be sure of that,” Caspian butts in.

“I very well can.” Peter makes the decision to slide one glove off, then the other. The bandages on his hands are still stark white. He holds them out.

Caspian takes it as an invitation. He grabs one of Peter's hands and slowly unravels the bandage covering his palm. He frowns at the sight of the hole in his hand. Peter isn't sure what to say to him.

“Maybe they'll stop bleeding later, but they're still bleeding now,” Lucy points out.

She's begun wrapping one foot now. Peter hardly noticed until he peered over at her. Part of him feels nauseous when he fully realizes that his blood is staining Lucy's pants and the cuffs of her sleeves.

—

They have to carry him back to his horse.

—

Peter doesn’t move much anymore. Not that he doesn’t want to, of course—he’s restless. He’s always restless. There’s something persistently crawling beneath his skin, itching, and Peter can’t stand bed rest. But what he can’t stand even more so is upsetting his siblings further.

Susan dotes. She always dotes, really, but it feels worse now. Not unbearable, but more noticeable. Whenever she enters his chambers for one reason or another, her eyes like to linger. She traces the circles in his hands with her gaze. Analyzes each of his expressions. Aborts motions to reach out when she sees a leg twitch beneath the blanket. Peter worries she’ll drive herself mad. Susan worries they’ve all already gone mad.

She’s the most adamant that he stays off his feet. Peter can’t help but notice that her assertiveness brings up the detail that Lucy and Edmund are not.

It’s not as if they don’t care—Peter would never imply anything of the sort—but each of their approaches are more lackadaisical when compared to Susan’s.

Lucy is quieter around him than usual, though. Her face seems stuck with a pensive expression. She thinks, deeply, but she doesn’t speak her mind as is her tendency. Overall, her spirit feels heavier, and it slowly starts to weigh on Peter. She’s considering something he doesn’t understand. Or maybe he does, and he hasn’t quite realized it yet. 

But she doesn’t fret. She doesn’t worry. She just thinks. Helps. Heals. Listens, most of all.

Edmund, unlike Lucy’s careful thoughtfulness, is dreadfully unbothered. Peter doesn’t even think it to be a farce; not with the way his emotional absence has grown louder and louder. He drops by to talk with Peter, but not to inquire anything about the wounds.

The wounds, which burn night and day.

They don’t bleed unless he strains the skin around them. He found that out last night when he attempted to move for the washroom only for one of the holes on his feet to stretch open again. It felt like being bitten into—chewed and pulled apart like he's nothing more than meat. 

Edmund had heard Peter’s pained hiss from the hall and guided him easily back to the bed, bearing most of his weight. He hadn't complained. Honestly, he didn't say anything at all.

Caspian is different.

“And you are sure you don't know where they came from?” he asks in that painfully soft voice he reserves mostly for Lucy. Strangely, Peter doesn’t find it patronizing. “Or why they won’t close?”

“I’m sure,” Peter answers him.

It’s dusk. Caspian is perched on the chair beside Peter’s bed, hair tucked behind his ears. He’s not in night clothes, but he’s dressed more casually than he normally is during days when he meets with his council formally. He looks vulnerable—or maybe that’s just wishful thinking on Peter’s part. He makes Peter feel vulnerable. It’s only fair if Caspian feels the same.

Caspian’s gaze falls to Peter’s hands. They should be re-wrapped soon. They’re not bleeding anymore, and they don’t burn, but dried blood from an earlier spell has seeped through the bandages. A look flashes across Caspian’s face; something deeply pained, like he’s the one hurting. It vanishes almost as quickly as it disappeared, expression melting back into something softer.

Peter pulls his hands back as he sits further up, leaning against the headboard. He aches for movement. Even just a walk would be fine by Peter, but then he’s reminded of his feet, and he’s disappointed all over again. 

“How can I help?”

Not “Can I help?”

Not “Let me help.”

Not a demand, not much of a question. An offer. Peter feels lost.

“Just…be here,” Peter responds quietly. A small, hesitant request. Not one Peter feels entirely confident in. This, moments like these, feel much too intimate for Peter. 

But Caspian doesn’t falter even once. He nods, like it comes naturally, like he would’ve stayed even if Peter hadn’t asked him to. “Alright. I’m here.”

—

Peter knows this is Aslan’s doing. Perhaps he knew it back when it started, even if he hadn’t fully registered it yet.

Aslan speaks in strange ways. He communicates through signs—both subtle and obvious ones—when he has the time, or when he feels the need. He does, however, prefer to keep these signs vague. Aslan limits himself to dreams, to reflections, to the dust highlighted when the light hits it just right, to the storms and the droughts. What Peter means to think is that Aslan isn’t in the habit of explicit signs, which is why the wounds came as such a shock.

It feels like a punishment. It feels like a blessing.

Still, Peter isn't quite sure what to do with it. He's not sure what it means, nor how it can be fixed—if it's even meant to be fixed at all.

—

They let him out of bed eventually, but only when he promises to always wear shoes. He swears to them that his feet don't hurt anymore. They, of course, don't believe him.

Susan insists on watching from the doorway.

Peter puts weight on his feet carefully. The shoes are sturdy but soft leather, fur-lined, and far kinder than bare stone. The wounds protest anyway—not sharply, not like before, but with a dull, warning thrum, as if reminding him they are still there whether he chooses to acknowledge them or not.

He walks around his room slowly. Sunlight pours in through tall windows, catching dust in the air, turning it briefly into something tangible. Peter resists the urge to draw the blinds closed. He only makes it as far as the doors to his balcony before he turns back to sit down in his bed once more.

Lucy returns that evening, hair braided carefully, a seashell necklace half-hidden under the neckline of her dress. She smiles at the sight of him.

“You walked today,” she says, sitting down in the armchair where Caspian usually rests.

Peter offers a ghost of a smile. It fades quickly. “So I’ve been told.”

Lucy hums, both hesitation and acknowledgment. She looks him over. “Do they still hurt?”

Peter considers lying, then he considers deflecting.

Instead, he says, “Yes.”

“I thought so.”

Peter studies her. Lucy and her calm expression. Lucy, deep in thought. Lucy, considering.

“You didn’t ask how far I went.”

“I don’t think distance is the point,” Lucy replies, like it’s the easiest thing in the world.

That lands somewhere deep. Peter looks away, out the window, where Narnia stretches wide and patient and dark and impossibly in need of him.

“I don’t know what I’m meant to do,” he admits to her. The words feel dangerous once spoken, like setting something loose.

Lucy doesn’t rush to answer—she never does. “Maybe,” she starts carefully, “you aren’t meant to do anything yet.”

Peter could laugh at the thought. He loves having something to do far too much to rest for long. She knows this about him. She may have inherited it from him.

(Peter remembers his first major injury during his reign. It had only been a few weeks after the coronation at the time. He, Edmund, and Lucy had sneaked out of Cair Paravel deep into the night out of curiosity. Peter had ended up tripping over the root of a particularly thick tree and landed wrong—wrong enough that his ankle had made a horrible snap.

He refused Lucy’s cordial. By that time, they had already agreed to reserve the concoction for fatal injuries, much to Lucy’s dismay. The healers in the castle hadn’t been at all thrilled when Peter returned, limping and leaning heavily on Edmund and Lucy.

It was bed rest for a week after that. Peter felt like he was going to explode with energy he wasn’t allowed to get out at the time. Afterwards, he made a promise to himself to avoid injuries like that.)

“That’s never been true before.”

Lucy leans forward, forearms resting on her knees. “That doesn’t mean it can’t be now.”

Silence settles between them—not empty, not full. Peter feels the ache in his hands, the weight in his chest, the restless pull under his skin. He thinks of crowns and swords and promises made too young and kept too long.

“If this is Aslan’s will,” Peter starts, voice low, “it feels cruel.”

“Aslan’s will often does.”

“And yet.”

“And yet,” Lucy echoes, softer.

—

It gets easier, in some ways.

He doesn't bleed, not anymore. His hands and his feet have scabbed over now, as has the new slash on his side, although that last one never really bled in the first place, though. It simply appeared one morning with a burning sensation that nearly made Peter pass out again.

Caspian accompanies him outside this morning.

It's still snowing—always seems to be lately—when they step outside of the castle and into the courtyard. It's blinding, white. Slick. The water in the fountain in the center has long since frozen over.

A welcome silence has fallen over the castle. There isn't much room for quiet, idle chatter over the breeze and the snow. Even the trees have gone quiet, stripped of their leaves and dancing in the wind. It's unnatural. Peter accepts it anyway.

Caspian guides Peter with a hand on the small of his back toward one of the stone benches a couple meters away from the frozen fountain.

Peter sits without complaint—maybe because it's rational. Maybe because it's Caspian.

 He's wearing a cloak today. Susan had insisted on it while draping it over his shoulders, heavy fabric making his shoulders slump under the sudden weight. He's thankful for it now that he's outside.

Caspian lowers himself down next to him on the bench, pushing his own cloak behind him.

“Hand,” is what Caspian leads with once they've both settled. His own hand is outstretched, expectant. His gaze pins Peter in place for a moment before he complies.

Slowly, he reaches out. Caspian grabs it gently with one of his hands, letting it rest rather than truly grasping, while his other hand hovers over Peter's palm. His fingers just barely graze over the loose end of the bandage.

It's a question, Peter realizes when he looks back up to Caspian's face, curious and waiting. A single strand of hair has fallen loose from his small bun, brushing over his forehead, just barely ending past his eyebrow.

Peter nods. Caspian holds the end of the bandage with his thumb and index finger when he starts to unwrap it.

Caspian is careful in his unwinding. He takes his time, assuring that he doesn't accidentally reopen the scab. His brows are pinched together in focus. Peter appreciates it, vaguely, but he doesn't think it would hurt too terribly, if it was Caspian.

“It's healing nicely,” Caspian says once he has finally finished peeling back the bandage. “It does not bother you?”

“Oh, no. Well, it itches every so often, but that's not much out of the ordinary. So no more than usual,” Peter answers.

He's grateful that it doesn't bleed anymore. He hopes they might scar over soon. They're more tedious now than anything. He hasn't been allowed to handle a sword in weeks.

Caspian nods along, satisfied enough by Peter's reply. “And your feet?”

“About the same.”

“Your side?”

“Still burns.”

Peter finds himself surprised at his own honesty, or maybe he surprises himself with how easily it slips out of his mouth.

The point is that it isn't a lie. While his side doesn't bleed and hasn't ever, there's still a strange sort of sensation under the skin—prickling, maybe. Like something trying to crawl its way out. 

Caspian hums. He's not so satisfied with this answer, evidently, because his follow up is:

“Are you sure you don’t want any of—”

Peter shakes his head, cutting him off. “This isn't what the cordial is meant for.”

Caspian doesn't like that response, either. No one seems to. It's not a matter of ‘liking’ it, though. It's a fact. Largely unspoken and under-negotiated, but indisputable. They all know it.

There's a brief pause. Caspian's brows are furrowed again, but not in concentration. He seems more contemplative instead of focused now, turning thoughts over like stones in his mind before speaking. It's all so deliberate with Caspian like this—when he follows a train of thought rather than speaking first.

“I wish only to help, Peter,” Caspian starts, and it's a choice. His voice never does waver. “Why will you not let me?”

“You already have.” It's noncommittal, and Caspian knows it.

“Peter.”

Peter exhales through his nose, watching the little puff of air appear and dissipate. “You can't help. That isn't your fault. I don't think it's mine, either.”

A gust of wind makes Peter shiver. Caspian starts to reach out for Peter's shoulder, but the motion is aborted, and his hand falls back down towards Peter's. He runs the tips of his fingers around the edges of the scab in his palm.

“There must be something more I can do,” Caspian insists. He doesn't sound entirely convinced by his words.

“This isn't the sort of thing that can be helped, not by anyone but myself.”

“A fool’s ideology.”

“No. It's just…the way it is.”

Caspian shakes his head. “It isn't right.”

“It doesn't matter if it's ‘right’ or ‘fair’. It doesn't change anything.”

Another lull in the conversation. Peter feels needlessly cruel, even if Caspian can't help. Peter isn't sure if he'd let Caspian help even if he could. Maybe that is the worst of it. 

Caspian is bothered. Peter can see that much from the way Caspian refuses to look up from Peter's hand. He's unsure about this, about most things. Peter relents.

“You have already helped. More than you’ll let yourself believe.”

That seems to change something in Caspian. He lets out a small huff that might be a scoff or a laugh. Either way, he seems unamused. Or disbelieving.

“All I have done is sit by your bed and watch.”

“That's all I've really needed, anyway.”

Caspian shifts. He finally lets go of Peter's hand, straightening his back and his tunic.

“You needed someone to watch, helplessly?”

“I meant what I said, Caspian,” Peter says, softer than he intends. “I needed someone to stay. That's all.”

—

(“Please, Aslan. I wish to stay,” Peter had said in a sudden bout of courage.

It was wrong, Peter knew, but the words slipped out before he could swallow them. 

Susan had stepped away only moments ago. She claimed she needed to freshen up, but Peter caught her red-rimmed eyes and knew she instead needed to compose herself. Peter's throat felt tight at the sight.

The lion turned to him after that. Peter couldn't bear to meet his eyes. Aslan regarded him for a long moment, the sort of moment that seemed to stretch wider than time itself. The air felt heavier under that gaze. Not quite with judgment, but with the weight of his consideration.

“You wish it,” Aslan said at last, his voice low and steady, “but wishing is not always the same as being called.”

Peter swallowed. His fingers curled into the fabric of his sleeve, knuckles white. “I know,” he said quickly, afraid the chance to speak would vanish. “I know I’ve been given more than I ever deserved. But this place—” His voice wavered despite himself. “It made sense of me.”

Aslan’s tail brushed slowly the ground once. “Narnia has done what it was meant to do,” he replied. “It taught you who you are. Is that not what you deserved?”

Peter lifted his eyes then. Part of him expected sorrow, or sternness, or perhaps disappointment. Instead, he saw something warmer—and somehow more painful for it. Understanding.

“I want more,” Peter admitted, shamefully. It felt terribly wrong.

“Greed, Peter, is perhaps more dangerous than anything else you have already faced,” the lion told him.

From somewhere behind him, Peter heard footsteps—Lucy’s, light but hesitant. He didn’t turn. He stood where he was, straightening his shoulders the way a king once had. The way a brother must now.

“I have never once asked you for anything.”

Please.

Aslan let out a soft rumble. Quiet, but unmistakable. “Is this truly what you want?”

“I have so much more to offer.”

Please.

“Is this truly what you want?” Aslan repeated.

“More than anything,” Peter said, the words small but solid.

Please.

“And what of your brother and sisters? Will you make this decision for them?”  Can you bear the weight of it? Of keeping them here? Of withholding their choice? Could you stand it, if this is not what they wanted at all?

“Yes,” Peter answered, more selfish and pathetic than he had ever felt in his life.

“You may not change your mind, Peter.” This is your cross to bear. Your fate is sealed.

“Yes.”

Aslan inclined his great head.)

—

Readjusting to Narnia had been difficult both times Peter had done it. First, when they returned. Second, when Caspian welcomed them into his castle as Lords and Ladies.

This feels like another readjustment.

He can't feel his hands. He can't feel his feet. His side feels like it's being bitten open by starved rats. It's everything, and it's nothing. Agony and apathy. Peter thinks he might die like this.

It began in the early hours of the morning. He'd been in the library. He and Susan come most often, but Edmund and Lucy follow whenever they're in the mood for it. They read books, scrolls, letters—anything that will give them a clue about what they missed in their absence. If they wish to be useful, they must learn.

It had been a rare night where Peter came alone. He pulled a book from his shelves—a biography of Caspian the sixth—and settled onto the cushioned bench closest to the unlit fireplace.

Time got blurry after that. He only managed a couple chapters of the biography before discomfort settled in. It only got worse after that.

Thankfully, he'd been able to retreat to his room before it got too difficult to walk.

Susan is at his bedside. It's mid morning now, but there's not much sunlight peeking through the veil of clouds in the sky. Just dark enough that they have a few candles lit around his room.

Not like Peter can appreciate it in his current state, but he's at least glad he isn't alone. Susan's presence puts him more at ease, even if she can't look at him again.

(After Caspian's coronation, Susan wouldn't look Peter in the eye for weeks—or perhaps she couldn't. Perhaps it hurt too much to look at him. Perhaps that sight of him reminded her of something stolen. Or perhaps she had just been angry.

Peter had been too delighted in everything else to pay any mind. Selfish indeed.)

When Peter turns to her finally, he notices her clasped hands in her lap and closed eyes. Peter thinks she might be praying.

—

Edmund is with him when the burn finally eases into a dull ache. He clenches his fists, curls his toes, breathes deeply like he isn't sold on the notion that he's alright now.

Edmund sets a tray on top of Peter's lap. A bowl of what looks like potato soup and a silver spoon lay atop it. Peter sighs through his nose at the sight of it.

“You have to eat,” Edmund says as if Peter isn't already aware.

Peter rolls his eyes and reaches for the spoon, fingers curling loosely around it. “Are you sure it isn't poisoned?”

It's meant as a joke. It doesn't land. It wasn't particularly funny, anyway.

“Eat,” Edmund repeats, firmer this time.

So Peter scoops up a spoonful and guides it slowly to his mouth. It's hot still—just how Peter likes it. It burns his throat going down. There's not much of a discernible taste over the heat. Maybe that's for the best.

Edmund, for his part, seems completely unamused. He's tired. The bags under his eyes are heavier than ever, and his fingers twitch where his hands are folded in his lap. 

Guilt is something Peter has grown increasingly accustomed to over the course of the past month. It has always been in the back of his mind, always guiding his decisions, but he feels more of it now than he thinks he used to. It feels more prominent—harder to ignore—particularly in the face of his siblings. 

Susan, who Peter can't get a good read on like he used to. Susan, who doesn't look him in the eye. Susan, who steps away when she feels as though she's been pushed on the defense. 

Little Lucy, who Peter believes knows more than she lets herself appear. Lucy, who knows something is fundamentally different but won't point it out. Lucy, who plays naïve.

Edmund, who sits next to his bed now. 

“I'm sorry,” Peter says between sips from his spoon.

Edmund purses his lips and leans back in the chair, settling himself. “This isn't your fault.”

“It is. I'm sorry.”

“Stop, Peter.”

“I'm sorry.”

“I know.”

“I'm sorry.”

“I forgive you.”

“You shouldn't.”

Edmund shakes his head. It's that—that last statement—that makes Edmund tick. His jaw clenches. He doesn't, however, look away. 

“It's my choice. I choose to forgive you.”

Peter wishes, in a moment between spoonfuls, that he could be as foolish as Edmund. 

—

Lucy and Edmund attempt to pull Peter away from his light duties one afternoon, insistent that he must accompany them to the market. It had been Lucy's idea, as most ambitious ideas like this are, but Edmund must have seen merit in it and chosen to go along with it.

It took a whole three minutes for Peter to redirect the task onto Caspian. A new record, probably, though Peter isn't exactly keeping track. And anyways, Caspian seemed more than happy with the proposal—not because of any overwhelming tasks or meetings, but seemingly out of pure boredom.

And Peter does wish to join them, honestly, but a pull in his chest prevents him. He retreats to the library again.

It’s strange. Vast, but cozy. The windows are tall and narrow, letting in pale winter light that pools on the rugs and warms the spines of the books without ever quite reaching the corners. Dust drifts like lazy stars in the sunlight. The shelves themselves seem to breathe—old wood, old patience. Peter sinks into it gratefully, as though the room has been waiting for him.

He chooses a table near the hearth, though the fire is only embers today. He tells himself he’s here to read—to review maps, treaties, anything useful—but the book he plucks from the shelves remains untouched for a long while. His hand presses briefly, unconsciously, to his sternum. The ache there isn’t sharp. It never is. It’s a dragging thing, a quiet insistence, like something hooked behind his ribs and tugging him backward whenever he tries to move forward.

The market would be loud, he thinks. Full of life. Patterned fabrics, laughing fauns, the smell of apples and fresh bread. Lucy will dart from stall to stall and Edmund will pretend he isn’t enjoying himself while still keeping pace. Caspian will watch him, if he goes, in a way Edmund and Lucy don't. He'll notice. Caspian always seems to notice.

So he stays.

His hand trails from his chest down to his side, tracing the line of the scab beneath his thin shirt.

The library doesn’t ask anything of him. It doesn’t look at him with expectation or concern—it doesn’t soften its voice or try to lighten his load. It simply exists, solid and untroubled, and lets him exist alongside it. Peter traces the gold embossing on the spine, grounding himself in the texture, the certainty of it.

When the ache eases enough to be bearable, he finally opens the book.

Susan pads into the library not ten minutes later.

She’s dressed up more than she usually is on days where she isn’t expected for anything. She’s wearing a strapless floor length gown made with a floral patterned silk fabric. Her hair is pulled back into a braid which ends at her shoulderblades.

“Why didn’t you go?” she inquires, and Peter knows instantly that this is not the reason Susan has sought him out.

Peter closes his book and lets it rest in his lap when he finally looks up at her. “I wasn’t all that interested,” he responds, and Susan must know he doesn’t really mean that, either. “Why didn’t you?”

“I was tired.” It might be the first honest thing Peter has heard from Susan in days.

She walks further into the library. Peter isn’t sure how he feels about her approach—it’s cautious, like he’s a wild animal. Like she doesn’t trust him. She brushes carefully past the candles and makes her way toward Peter. She sits next to him, but doesn’t look at him.

“Have they been bothering you anymore?”

Peter doesn’t know what she means, at first, but it falls into place after a moment. He glances at his hands, then his feet, then shakes his head. “Not like they were,” he tells her.

She gives him a firm little nod of acknowledgment. Her head stays down after that.

Peter regards her for a moment. “Are you alright?”

That, at least, earns him a halfhearted single shoulder shrug.

“Like I said earlier—I’m tired.”

“Have you not been sleeping well?”

“Not that sort of tired, Peter.”

Peter frowns at that, at the implications of it. He turns his full body toward Susan.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

They used to talk, once upon a time. Susan was insistent enough that Peter eventually caved and began confiding in her, and she has always been vocal enough about most of her problems that Peter never really had to coax her into sharing. It was easy back then. It's all complicated now, tangled up like loose strings.

Susan sighs through her nose. “Not really, but not talking about it won't solve anything.”

“No, I suppose it wouldn't,” Peter agrees quietly. “I'm all ears.”

Susan takes another moment, like she's collecting her thoughts. Peter wonders, then, if Caspian picked up his little nose scrunch from her.

“I'm…angry with you,” is what she eventually settles on. Peter can’t sincerely say it surprises him, but he hadn’t expected her to admit it outright. She doesn’t look him in the eyes when she says it.

“I know.”

Susan nods to herself. “I don't know if I'll ever stop being angry with you. With him.”

Peter knows that, too. He knew it the second he turned to look at her during Caspian's coronation.

“It's okay.”

“But it's not,” Susan presses. She sounds almost devastated with it. “It's not okay, Peter. I don't like being angry with you. I'm tired of it. I'm tired of being angry.”

Peter swallows thickly. “I'm sorry.”

“I know you are,” Susan replies softly. It’s almost like an apology in itself.

“I wish that were enough.”

“So do I.”

Silence stretches between them. Peter traces the cover of the book in his lap, fingers ghosting over the indentations of the letters and the details pressed into the leather. It gives him something else to focus on instead of his own failures.

“I miss you,” she admits in a whisper.

Peter exhales. “I never went anywhere.”

“That’s not true.”

“Then where did I go?”

Susan hesitates. Her fingers grip her skirt, flexing and unflexing as she reigns herself in. “Far away. Not here. I don’t know. You just left.”

Another moment of silence follows.

Peter feels, not for the first time, immeasurably selfish. It aches in the depths of his chest, in his side, in his feet, in his hands, in his head. He hadn’t been fair. 

“I don’t want to lose you,” Peter says.

Susan’s voice wavers. “Then don’t ask me to stop feeling this.”

“I won’t.”

She lets out a slow breath. “Promise me.”

“I promise.”

Susan folds like a puppet with its strings cut. She leans over just far enough to rest her head on his shoulder. Peter thinks she might be crying, but he doesn’t dare check. It is her grief. Peter feels rather out of place in his inability to fix it, but that isn’t what she needs nor is it what she wants. And maybe, Peter has come to realize, he doesn’t need her to forgive him. He just needs her.

—

There’s a chapel in the forest near Cair Paravel. It’s ruins, mostly, reclaimed by the earth now, but the altar has remained relatively unscathed.

It was Lucy who found it. Someone at the market spoke of it, she said, and she happened to overhear. She had been curious about it, but waited until she returned home to act. Peter is grateful for it—not for Lucy withholding, but for the remains of the chapel itself. There is more life in ancient Narnian ruins than in the Telmarine chapel buried deep within the halls of the castle.

They leave at dusk the next week. Even Caspian joins them with an eagerness (albeit subdued) to learn more about the old Narnia.

They ride throughout the night and arrive at dawn. The only creatures left to greet them are mice. Dumb Beasts though they are, they are not stupid, and none of them are frightened by the arrival.

The mice come first in twos and threes, whiskers twitching, bright eyes catching the new light. They skitter along fallen stones and through moss-soft gaps where walls once stood, pause to look up at the riders, and then, satisfied, return to their business.

Lucy slides down from her horse without being told. Peter dismounts more slowly, boots crunching against frost-thin grass. He takes in the chapel ruins in a long, quiet sweep: the broken arch that once framed a doorway, the roof collapsed into a nest of ivy and white flowers gone to seed, the altar stone pale and clean despite centuries of weather. Trees still stand, bracketing what remains.

Susan and Edmund dismount next. Neither of them speak, though Peter supposed there isn't much to say. Not about this.

The air here feels different—not louder, exactly, but fuller. It eases Peter into a calm he hasn't felt for a year or a millennium.

Beyond them, the sea glimmers faintly through the trees, not far from Cair Paravel. The forest cups the ruin gently, roots threading through fallen stone. Peter thinks this is after their time, though not much long after. He thinks he would've remembered this.

Caspian removes his gloves and rests a bare hand against a standing pillar. His face is full of both wonder and a gentler sort of appreciation.

Peter approaches the altar last. The stone is cold beneath his fingers, but not dead-cold—there’s a memory of warmth there. He can almost see it as it must have been: candles guttering in the half-light, banners faded but proud, voices raised—hope, despair, longing, pleading.

The scars on Peter's hands sing when in contact with the altar, and Peter feels love.

When the sun finally clears the treetops, Lucy kneels before the altar without ceremony. There are prayers that ask, and prayers that remember, and this place seems to want the latter. Peter sinks down beside her, knees aching, breath steadying despite himself.

Susan falls in line next to him. They've never shared this before, not in this way, but it feels welcome, or inevitable.

Caspian lingers behind them, unsure whether this belongs to him. Peter catches his hesitation and turns, lifting his chin in a silent invitation. After a moment, Caspian comes closer, setting his sword aside and bowing his head.

Edmund doesn't approach. Peter hadn't expected any different from him.

Peter's eyes slide shut. His breathing comes easier here when he can faintly hear the waves lapping at the coastline down by the beach. He can almost feel the trees sway around them.

Something stirs.

It isn’t loud, and it's not a show. It’s a quiet answer—a held breath being released at last. The forest seems to lean closer. The mice go still, every one of them, and for a heartbeat the ruin feels whole again.

When Peter eventually opens his eyes again, he as though he's been pieced back together.

“Can we come back again soon?” Lucy asks, breaking the careful silence as Caspian helps her stand.

“I'm sure that can be arranged,” Susan promises her, voice no louder than the waves.

They mount their horses later that morning and ride back to the Telmarine palace. When Peter turns to give the chapel one final glance, Aslan stares back at him through the sunlight bleeding through the gaps in the leaves of the trees.