sixty four
audio;
[Footsteps crunch with turf, there are two sets. One of them stops at tile.]
I don't want to go in.
[More in than she is already she means.]
...do you?
[She swallows, not audibly but with some imagination, it is there. A moment of truth is just beyond where they stand. What will they see? What will they leave here knowing? Already the option of ( Read more... )
[Footsteps crunch with turf, there are two sets. One of them stops at tile.]
I don't want to go in.
[More in than she is already she means.]
...do you?
[She swallows, not audibly but with some imagination, it is there. A moment of truth is just beyond where they stand. What will they see? What will they leave here knowing? Already the option of ( Read more... )
His footsteps echo and it doesn't take long to find what he came for, hoping not to see. Their faces seem strange to him, and it is the unsettling shock of this strangeness that has him taking two stilted steps backward, like he's trying to find his feet and having only the mildest of successes. Perhaps strange isn't the word. How could one truly make Lucy strange to him? Or Edmund? Or Caspian? No. It's wrong. All wrong.
Distant.
That may be the word.
Applicable. Literal.
Peter can't help but think: we've had our time. It's what he is supposed to think, after all, and some propensity for believing that it's true is impossible to override, even with the temper that follows. It is made more of bitterness than anger though, and what comes after that is a quiet because again: they've had their time. Years.
And what's to say that they won't return?
That question nearly escapes him aloud but Susan is waiting, and there is no one truly to inquire with here.
Just faces.
"Be safe then," he says anyway, feels foolish, feels like he had to.
Then he exits the hall, and his hands are deep in his pockets, his chin level because he won't be less than he should be right now of all times. It's just them, just Susan and himself. They are the eldest. This is, in lesser terms, how it should be when the inevitable comes to pass, as they knew it would. Words, however, don't come easy at the moment so he waits until he is close enough to take her hand in his, folds his fingers around hers as one builds promises.
"Just us now," he says at last, quiet but calm. Simple. At its core, the situation is, in truth, exactly that. Whittled down, and made clear like the shape of their hands.
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To fight back panic as she stands waiting, she counts his footsteps. The Hall of the Missing is a lonely place. There is a man there now and then. Hopefully he's not around. Oh. Peter's footsteps have stopped. What now?
Once upon a time, Susan tried to imagine how well their mother received the news that they disappeared, before they knew no time passed. No doubt she'd stare out the window, that's what she did when their father was away. Her eyes would be fixed at the sky as if to see something to give her news. There is no sign in the sky to say when someone has left the world forever, is there? Would she held onto hope? People disappeared in times of war. There had been other children that went missing for one reason or another, though few with happy endings. Why, why, why does she have to keep thinking like that?
Susan tucks her hair behind her ear again even though it hasn't moved an inch since Peter had put it into place.
More footsteps already? That must be good news, right? She leans forward, her hands are in the pockets of her navy blue pea-coat now ready to brave the wind walking back home. Peter's habit of looking down as he walks makes it difficult to tell what the news is at first. He's not smiling. Susan's hands come from her pockets ready to cover her mouth, that is before Peter takes a hold of them.
"No," as though it can be argued. Susan swallows and shakes her head. Now, now, Su. You're grown. No need to act like that, no need to-- "That's not fair."
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What can he?
His hand holds fast to hers, like maybe that's enough when he's all too sure it isn't in the least.
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When did Peter get hands like this? They're not a boys hands. And hers, well, they're no more of a girls either. Like she had so many times before, she gives his hands a squeeze. "And so that's the way it will be."
She swallows and looks to the floor. It looks like there could be flooding if she doesn't blink frequently enough.
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"Come on then," he nods his head back the long way they came, the long way they'll walk back - together. They must take a few steps, make their way a fair distance before he speaks again, and everything else around them sounds so quiet, so still that his voice seems to catch on those corners of silence. "I have to say I'm actually...glad, as it happens. That it's us, I mean," he admits and it sounds a bit like he isn't sure whether or not that's good or bad. Maybe it's neither.
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"Really? How do you mean?" That they're grown enough and don't have to be concerned with how well Lu and Ed carry on on their own? Lu and Caspian would get along swimmingly. Ed and Caspian....it's hard to say sometimes, but they are friends too. Thinking on things like this are mildly distracting. There are still clouds looming over her mood. They've replaced her siblings.
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When they reach the edge of the main streets and buildings, forest in view across the expanse of mostly untouched snow (not nearly so many people venture out this way this hour as one might suppose based on sheer numbers) he pauses, turning his gaze more directly toward her.
"Seems like it should be us, in a way," he adds, a little unsure but very much wanting to be sure in spite of it. Eldest siblings. They know to where they return and what kind of world they will make their long-lasting home in for the second time, and they know that someday -- perhaps this very moment, knowing how backward-forward City time can be -- Edmund and Lucy will return to Narnia, while Caspian most certainly already has. All this they know.
Somehow, at the moment, it's still a bit much to take in again, like a breath that snags on the way in, but he smiles a little around it, and it helps that he wants badly to not let this get to them. Their time here has been so replete with good things and none of them could deny that. Get a grip and hold onto what you have. That's the line to go with, he supposes and with a gentle nudge of arms has them walking again.
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"Yes, I suppose so. This could be how Aslan planned it." Did he leave as well? Oh if only he were with them now. The walk to the house wouldn't feel so long, the air wouldn't be so cold.
Lucy liked to play in the snow. And last Christmas Caspian took them for a sleigh ride. Edmund arrived just in time for the holiday. Memories are all around, like snowflakes in a snow globe. Susan tightens her hold, trying to think of something to say, something reasonable, rational. Something that wouldn't make her feel so young and lost.
"I forgot my mittens."
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"As a plan or simply as it is," he murmurs half to himself and half to her, "We'll be just fine," and it's insistence at work now, refusal for anything less, but even as he says this he leads her to loop her arm through his, covering her already covered hands with a bare one of his own. "But maybe tonight we don't have to be." As close as one comes to saying, sometimes, it's fine to not be fine. Be sad; be sad so you know for certain when you are happy or in between these things.
And maybe it's more wishful thinking, but by the time they've walked far enough to be enshrouded by the forest things don't seem quite as cold. Mind over matter they say.
A heart's to be had somewhere in there too of course.
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They must take care of one another. Plain and simple. Susan mentally shakes herself. The truth has been out for all of a few moments and what has she done to comfort her brother? She matches stride with him, step by step. The streets are more like labyrinth pathways at this hour, hardly a soul wandering and leading to another road, around and around. Lonely, but not as lonely as their house will be.
"We'll be fine." If she keep saying it, it won't be so strange to say when other people ask. While blinking away snowflakes, Susan feels warm tears slipping through her grown up reasoning.
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Cry. Don't cry. Either way.
He's here with her.
And he's glad of that much.
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"Peter." What does she want to tell him? Keep on being this close? Stop feeling like he has to be the stronger one. Her efforts to hold back tears have doubled. "Aren't you...?" Upset? Disappointed? He said that he was glad it was them, her thoughts are trying to find reason through it.
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"I would have liked it to be all at once, ideally," he continues and their walk is not slow but not fast, steady enough to keep from tripping on roots or slipping on surprisingly icy patches in unexpected places. "But," and his voice wavers finally, goes a bit lower, rougher, strange to himself. "I have to trust that it's for the best...don't I?" His biggest slip, undoubtedly, to say 'I' instead of 'we' but his thoughts are getting the better of him after all, his questions.
Always, he would like some kind of proof of things, that they are as they should be, not only that he has faith that they are.
Lucy bears that torch true to her name with all due valiance.
Peter tries.
He does not always succeed.
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The material of Peter's sweater provides something else for Susan to hold to, above the sound of the forest--night birds and something small in the bush--she listens for what he says and doesn't say. "I'm old enough to keep watch of myself," a gentle reminder from a gentle source however she misses Ed or Lu chiming in. Maybe Caspian would reason. Oh she shouldn't have started to cry so soon. Even in the dark he could read her like a book so she decides to talk still. "Do you suppose Aslan is still here? Maybe we could find him."
That would be who Peter means to trust in, it must be.
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Mention of Aslan does not quite cause the High King to pause, though there may be a sliver of time too long in the way he answers, muffled by his own quietness.
"Maybe," he says and it's hesitant the way he never wants to be hesitant where the great lion is concerned and yet even his deepest, most distinct of loyalties cannot go completely without scratch or second-thoughts. It's not the same as second-guessing, not anymore though once it is accurate to say that it was. Once. Twice even. Not a third though. His heart won't afford that much and it's for the better. They do not live in the parameters of just an Earth or just a Narnia, or even just a City. Theirs is a world that begins with four children and expands to a few more and the specific location has intermittently everything and very little indeed to do with what is at hand.
Growing up? That's the stuff of anywhere. Letting go? That's rather different.
"Not tonight though," he clarifies for both of them; he needs it maybe more than Susan does, but where or how she holds her belief in Aslan has always been one of the things consistently elusive to him. He can't place it the way he can with Lucy's or even Edmund's at this point. What does it say of them, that it is the two eldest that work in slight obscurity where sharpness ought to be?
Maybe he's thinking of it in all the wrong ways though, maybe the dark is too dark and the way the light catches across the snow is no help. Maybe he just needs to narrow his field of vision, for the night, for now. Maybe.
"There, that didn't take as long as I could swear it took us to get through before," he muses softly to Susan, to Queen Susan the Gentle, but foremost to his sister and he holds their arms already looped tighter together as they exit this side of the forest. Ahead of them there are lights yet on in the house.
Edmund's room. Lucy's room. Caspian's room. Theirs.
As if that might have been enough to make sure they came back, that they had a place to return to at all.
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