Chapter 1
Summary:
The grandfather clock down the stairs was just striking elven when the knock sounded on Peter’s bedroom door.
There was only one person it could be. There was only one person Peter wanted it to be.
(In every doorway, he wanted it to be her.
It rarely ever was anymore.)
Chapter Text
The grandfather clock down the stairs was just striking elven when the knock sounded on Peter’s bedroom door.
It was a simple rhythm: three quick strikes of the knuckles on the wood, followed by the soft slap of a palm hitting the door.
It was a simple rhythm, one Peter had carried with him in both his lives, born from the rules of some childhood game he could no longer remember the rules to.
The sound rapped against his bones as it came again, echoing in the relative silence of his room.
It was a sound he would know in death. It was a sound he had known in death, the taste of Lucy’s cordial branded on his tongue.
Three knocks and a slap. A childhood game. Chasing each other in circles around their mother’s skirted-legs until they inevitable collapsed, as they always did, in a pile of limbs and laughter on the sun-warmed kitchen floor.
There was only one person it could be. There was only one person Peter wanted it to be.
(In every doorway, he wanted it to be her.
It rarely ever was anymore.)
“Susan,” he breathed as his sister brushed past him with a grace unbefitting of an English schoolgirl, “what are you doing here? I thought you were going out with that Smythe boy?” The one with red hair and freckles, the one Peter didn’t like, the one with the wolffish grin and a weak grip.
(It hadn’t been Peter’s place to meet him on the the stoop, to take his hand in his, to make threats if so much as a hair on his sister’s head was slid out of her carefully done updo at the end of the night.
It hadn’t been Peter’s place.
He’d done it anyway.)
“I was.” Susan said, settling herself on the edge of his bed, smoothing non-existing wrinkles out of her skirt with bone-white hands they both pretended didn’t shake. “He got handsy.”
“I’ll kill him.” The gun hidden his drawer, the fencing sword hanging at his hip, a kitchen knife, a loosened brick, even, there were many options, and Peter knew how to use all of them.
Her lips — so, so red, so much like blood, so much like the wounds they gathered on battlefields a world away, the lipstick too bright to have ever been made by Narnian manufacturing — tilted up at the corners as a ghost of a smile flashed across Susan’s face. “There’s no need, I’ve already taken care of it.”
“Is he dead?” They’d have to craft an alibi — a chess game, maybe? He’s been itching to play her a round or two or twelve.
“Pete, do you take me for a fool? He’s not dead, he wouldn’t be useful if he was.”
“A threat, than? For the others?” As much as he detested it, he knew there would be others. There had to be. A desperately needed illusion of normalcy, as Susan had said when she’s brought the idea of going out dancing with Randall Smythe up to Peter and the rest of their siblings.
“Naturally.” It was a flippant, wry response, nothing he hadn’t heard from her lips before, but something about it was too much, too thick, as if she were a player trying to remind herself of her role now that she stepped out on stage in front of a brutal, unforgiving audience.
She wore his jumper. An old, worn thing, that she practically swam in, the sleeves kissing the back of her hands no matter how many times she’d rolled the faded, grey wool up her arms.
She wore his jumper, as she always did when she needed him close but he wasn’t allowed to be — because this was England, and here they were children, children who should turn to their parents when they have strife, not turn to each other, crumbling into their other until there was “we” and “us” but not that dreadful, useless word “I” — and Peter’s knees ached, a phantom reminder of when he’d knelt on a long-ago battlefield that had never happened to this young boy’s body that he now inhabited and swore undying fealty to Susan and their siblings, covered in the blood of their enemies, his crown and sword impossible weights to bare.
He wondered what would happen if he killed this boy. This boy who had done nothing wrong but desire something he shouldn’t too fiercely.
He wondered what he would do with his life — now that the sword at his side wasn’t Rhindon and the crown and the burden of High King that went along with it were nothing but memories.
He wondered what Susan would do with hers — now that the life they had built for themselves was nothing but ashes in the wind.
He wondered, and he wondered, and he wondered, but Peter knew: Susan wore his jumper, which meant that he had to go to her, as he always would.
He guided the door shut behind him without looking.
(They both pretended they didn’t see the other flinch when the lock clicked shut.)
“Susan, Sue, Susie—“she shuttered as if she were cold, as if the Witch had once again wrapped her fingers around her throat”—what’s wrong? Tell me.” He moved to sit beside her on his bed, too close to be proper, too far away to give into what they needed.
(Some days, the only thing he wanted to do was peel her skin off and sleep amongst her bones.
She would let him, if he asked.
He would not ask.
Not this.
Not of her.)
“Peter.”
“Susan.”
They had the same eyes, Narnian water fringed by lashes the color of soot.
“Lucy bled today,” Susan began, shoulders taught as piano wire, “and she went to her instead of me.”
Chapter 2
Summary:
Her. They called her many things, but they never called her mother.
After all, mother was what you called the woman who raised you, and the Pevensie siblings had raised each other, with Narnia and her people behind them as a guiding hand.
If anyone was worthy of the title of mother it was Narnia herself.
(Not Susan, never Susan, no matter what she had done.)
Chapter Text
Her. They never called her mother, not when they were alone together, Peter and Susan, not when they with each other. Helen Pevensie, Mrs. Pevensie, Lady of the House, Lady Helen, Helen Beauchamp, Helen of Finchly, they called her many things, but they never called her mother.
After all, mother was what you called the woman who raised you, and the Pevensie siblings had raised each other, with Narnia and her people behind them as a guiding hand.
If anyone was worthy of the title of mother it was Narnia herself.
(Not Susan, never Susan, no matter what she had done.)
“Lucy bled,” Susan said again, “and she went to her instead of me.”
The first time they’d bled woman’s blood, they’d done it how Narniana and Archenlander women always did, their cycles synced together like wolves.
Far away from everything and everyone they’d ever known, blood on their bedding, blood on their nightdresses, blood on their skin, Lucy had come to her sister with a tear-stained face and questions Susan didn’t know how to answer.
She did not have a mother to teach her, she did not a court who understand the intricacies of human biology, she only had herself.
So Susan had snapped to attention, a marionette whose strings had been pulled by an invisible hand, and managed it as she always did — a pair of soft hands and a strong spine and a smile sharper than the knives that hung in Cair Paravel’s armory.
So Susan had mothered herself, mothered her sister, and tried not to show how much the burden of it all weighed on her bones, aching underneath the pressure until it felt like they might snap into splinters.
Here, now, in England, in Peter’s bedroom, she clasped his hands in hers over the plaid blanket folded in a square over the end of his bed, grip too tight for England, grip too loose for Narnia.
His hands were feverishly warm, as if he had swallowed a piece of the sun, as if he were the sun. He certainly looked it — tousled, golden hair, gilded complexion, blindingly white smile rarely seen by anyone who wasn’t a member of their family.
(Susan wondered if that made her Icarus, if her brother was the sun.
Susan wondered if she was supposed to be bothered by that.)
“Lucy didn’t choose me, Peter.”
“Susan,” Peter murmured, squeezing her hands, “Sue, Susie, my Susie.”
“She didn’t choose me.” Susan said for the fourth time, voice cracking like icicles falling off a roof.
The piano wire snapped, her shoulders caving inwards, his jumper so soft on her skin that she couldn’t possibly deserve it.
(Susan wasn’t sure if she was crying.
Susan was only sure that her tears were glistening on Peter’s lips and tongue.
Susan wasn’t sure.
Susan wasn’t sure of anything anymore.)
“She didn’t mean it, Susie, I’m sure she didn’t. ‘An illusion of normalcy’, remember?”
Susan wanted to hate him then, wanted to claw off his face with her jagged, quick-bitten nails for throwing her own words back at her in her moment of distress, but she couldn’t, she never could, so she sculpted her face into a smile—
(Just as tired and broken as the one she got in return.)
—and laid her head on his shoulder, eyes fluttering shut.
She had not meant to come to Peter’s room, had not meant to come to him at all, but she’d met Edmund on the stairs, blood drying under her nails from where she scratched at Randall Smythe’s neck until he’d been forced to let her go, Peter’s jumper pulled over her navy-blue dress like a suit of armor, and her legs had moved of their own accord once she had heard the news.
(Lucy had bled.
Lucy had bled, and had done it before her.
Lucy had bled, and had not gone to her.)
Susan had been surprised to find herself standing in front of Peter’s door, fist raised, knuckles red from the sound she rapped against it, heart aching.
Surprised, even though being with him felt like a key clicking home in a lock.
“I feel all the things that I told myself I wouldn’t,” Susan confessed to her brother’s shoulder, “l feel so ashamed, Peter”—she felt him shutter when she said his name, the slightest tensing of his muscles that she probably wouldn’t have noticed if she hadn’t been touching him—“so ashamed, and so”—she groped for the word”—empty. I know perfectly well that unrequited love could kill, could maim, but this, I never thought . . .”
His scent was one of soap and ink — he’d been writing something when she’d come in, either for the school or the professor, Susan didn’t know which — sweet summer grass and the leather polish he used on the grips of the foils of his fencing swords.
“Susan, Sue, Susie, my darling Susie, darling sister.” A frantic exhale, the warmth of his breath rushing against her skin, her hair, her neck, the fragile shell of her ear.
She did not answer him.
(Susan Pevensie sat on a church pew, lipstick red as blood, face pale as a Hundred Years of Snow, dress and nylons black as death, and knocked three times, before lightly slapping the wooden side with her palm.
There was no answer.)
Elytra404 on Chapter 1 Fri 20 Jun 2025 03:14AM UTC
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Beatty_About_Books on Chapter 1 Sun 22 Jun 2025 02:48AM UTC
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Francienyc on Chapter 2 Wed 25 Jun 2025 08:33PM UTC
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Beatty_About_Books on Chapter 2 Wed 25 Jun 2025 11:24PM UTC
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