Wartime Memories
Title: Wartime Memories
Pairing: Peter/Caspian
Rating: T
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: Peter's memories flash before his eyes like dreams. Sometimes when he thinks about them he can't stop his body from trembling, the mind of a man shaking against the bonds of a boy.
Peter Pevensie has a skewed sense of rationality. He knows that he doesn't have the imagination or unwavering belief of Lucy, the steely determination of Susan, nor the thoughtful planning of Edmund. He is quick, sometimes to the point of being impulsive, and a little too expressive, sometimes even for his own good.
Peter Pevensie isn't sure of too many things. He isn't sure that today is Wednesday. He isn't sure that the girl with the almost auburn-black hair standing in front of him is Susan. He isn't even sure when, or whether, the train is coming. But, he is sure that Narnia exists.
And all that doesn't matter because he can check a calendar and see that it is, in fact, Wednesday and the girl will turn around and he will know, in fact, that it is not Susan, and experience has told him, with a certain degree of predictability, that the train will inevitably come.
He doesn't have to check -- can't check, really -- that Narnia was and is because he knows. Peter Pevensie knows how it feels to grow into older and stronger bones; he knows that at age nineteen he will top off at an even 5' 11''; he knows that handling blades is warrior reflex, not natural instinct. Peter knows many things - just knows - and sometimes though he doubts his memory or his eyes or the train schedule, he doesn't doubt this because Narnia is his bones and it fills him up inside; and he can't explain it when Susan asks or when Edmund looks at him strangely because of the looks - those far away wistful looks - he has painted on his face that are there because he thinks back to Narnia.
When the train finally comes and the crowd of people pushes past his too-small boy body and the door closes with the faint hiss and snap, his gaze doesn't travel to the rushing lights or the rapidly disappearing tunnel, but to his hands, all bruised and cut up. He rolls his shoulder experimentally, glad to feel the still painful crack of joint and torn muscle. It's there; he feels it - and even though that wound will go away - he knows it'll always remain.
____
Peter's memories flash before his eyes like dreams. He knows they are memories because they are vivid, painted, and he can feel them, physically and down to his bones. Sometimes when he thinks about them he can't stop his body from trembling, the mind of a man shaking against the bonds of a boy.
____
"How long has this been going on?"
"Weeks. Months, maybe. We thought it was harmless. We thought he was," - pause -, "recovering and then we tried to encourage him, make him think it was real because he just seemed so happy." She breaks a little and there is another pause before Susan continues, her voice, water on gravel. "We never, never thought that it would escalate into this type of," even thinking the word pains her but she says it, "mania. Nothing seems to work with him anymore. He duels with the suits of armour and hides himself in closets all day. And a few times we've caught him boarding trains to God knows where. Peter doesn't even know where himself."
She says it like it should be funny, but it isn't and Edmund rubs her shoulder in comfort. Lucy looks at her brother, golden hair splayed on the hospital white pillow and regal chin pointed away from long fingers clutching defensively at sheets and thinks that yes, Peter could definitely look like a King, could maybe even be a King. She turns from him knowing that once he wakes up, she'll have to tell him that he isn't.
"No matter how many times we try to talk him out of it, all he can say is 'I'm going home. I'm going to Narnia. Aslan's calling me.' "
"Aslan?"
"Aslan," Edmund says sadly, like he should be remembering the name from somewhere, but he can't place where. "We think he's some sort of creature. Or maybe some God that Peter has thought up."
"To deal with the stress," he adds in hushed tones.
"Even in trenches, dead men pray," Lucy mutters to herself and absently strokes Peter's hand which uncurls itself to press into the familiar touch.
"Maybe it's not so good for us to talk in front of him. Can't he hear us?"
"No, I suppose not, but at this point we hardly think it makes a difference. His mind is so far gone." The nurse trails off and leaves the sentence hovering in the cold sterilized air of the 8 by 12 hospital room. She clucks her tongue sadly, contemplatively, and readjusts the clipboard under her arm. "Well, if there's anything I can do for you. Water or blankets or anything. Don't hesitate to -." She pauses. "Oh, you seem like such a nice family." She smiles at them fondly in the way that they have learned nurses do.
Susan smiles back up at her from behind tight, worried lips and eyes already too creased and too old for her age. They mumble their 'thank you's' as she leaves, placing one hand on the door before looking back at Peter's sleeping form and directing a final, silent 'anything' before closing it shut behind her.
"So, what do we do now?" Susan asks more to herself than to the others, voice no longer under the strain of speaking in clinical terms. She shudders when she looks over to Peter, with his red-coated head bandage against lion gold. Clinical terms. Peter was always the one to whom regular terms never applied.
Edmund slides his palms down his thighs, looks straight ahead, and sighs before tipping his head back. Lucy knows this is a tell-tale sign that he is trying not to cry. His eyes blink rapidly before he speaks.
"You heard them. There's nothing we can do. They all expect him to die. And soon. And even if he lives, look at him. He's not going to get better. The hallucinations only get worse by the day. It's not going to get better."
"Don't say that, Ed. Not in front of Peter," Susan admonishes, but she leans forward closer to Edmund, swinging her hair to the side of her face in an attempt to shield Peter from the conversation.
"Why not? He can't hear us, can he. You heard the nurse. It wouldn't matter even if he did. And I'm just trying to be realistic given the situation, Sue." He runs a hand through ear-length hair and lets his voice go soft and quiet, sneaking a glance over to the bed. "He's as much my brother as he is yours and you know I want the best for him, but there doesn't seem to be anything-"
"There's always something we can do," Lucy says resolutely, sending Edmund a challenging stare.
"Lu, I don't know that-"
"There's always something we can do." And she grips Peter's hand more firmly so that he twitches and shifts on the bed, a boyish smile on his face as he turns on his side towards Lucy, still deep in sleep. "He's my brother, too," she whispers quietly, eyes trained on Peter's face. And when she turns back to look at her siblings, they can see her resolution. The two older siblings look at her in resignation. If there's anything that experience has taught them it's that when dealing with the youngest Pevensie, it is always best to listen.
Peter merely sighs, quiet and content, in reply to their conversation and snuggles deeper into the starchy fabric, still holding Lucy's hand and pulling it closer towards his body so that some of the warmth radiates off of him and into her.
Edmund paces over to the window and stares with narrowed eyes onto the street while Susan busies herself with arranging some of Peter's things. The activity almost makes the room seem like home.
____
"Aslan Aslan Aslan Aslan," Peter murmurs into the dark of the night and Susan thinks her heart breaks just a little from hearing every rolling, roaring syllable. She reaches over to pat some of the sweat that has accumulated in thick beads on his forehead. Whether it's from Peter's own internal turmoil or the fever, she doesn't know; but it soaks through some of the bandage, making the blood spider out even more into the fabric. She prays to God - she even prays to Aslan - that the wound hasn't been reopened in his tossing. She pries it open just enough to see that it hasn't.
"Aslan Aslan Aslan Aslan Aslan," Peter begins again as if in a prayer of thanks. Susan offers up her own quiet "Aslan" - in reverence or thanks, she is not sure - before she returns to staring blankly at the shadows of dying moonlight on the floor.
When the light has shifted past her feet and onto the white linen covering Peter's legs, Edmund comes and offers to sit beside him while she goes to sleep. As she stands and moves to the door, she can feel Peter's half-lidded, swollen eyes following her movements. When she turns back, there is a secret smile on his face; and she isn't sure if it's from the fever either.
____
Peter spends most of his time outside after he gets better. He doesn't tell his siblings (because they look as if they've moved on) that it's because when he squints just far enough into the distance, he thinks he can almost see the tops of the banners flying at Cair Paravel.
____
Edmund rests his head against the window pane. From the second story of the Professor's home, he can clearly see the grounds that extend all the way from the front lawn and surrounding trees to the two great hills beyond them and the moving dot that is his older brother meandering his way through the foliage. Every once in a while Peter bends his knees and springs himself up as if trying to see beyond his vision, each time from a different vantage point and each time straight ahead in the same direction. Edmund counts the number of times he does this until he gets tired. Twenty-five.
"We need to get a fence," he says into the silent room. "Then, he'd really look like a caged animal instead of just pacing like one." Peter walks down the length of walkway and his figure unexpectedly bobs up and down again. Twenty-six.
Susan nods sympathetically, but doesn't take her eyes or hands off of her knitting. At least this is one newly acquired nervous habit that can be put to good use. Six caps sit lined up on the table ready to be sent off as a small homey contribution to the war effort.
"I should have gone after him," Edmund begins again. His head makes a dull thud as he hits it bluntly against the wood frame. "I should have made him come on the train with us. Then, he'd still be here in the end and not wandering around like he is now, chasing something that doesn't exist."
"I shouldn't have let him join," he says even more quietly and bows his head from behind the large window to Peter, now crouching low and extending his hand out to a squirrel.
The thought - and sight - of his brother, his once strong, undeterred, powerful older brother, looking so lost deep within himself almost makes him wretch.
"They needed him, Ed," Susan reasons as she puts down her knitting only to pick it back up again. And Edmund hates her for being calm and accepting when he wants -- needs -- raw emotion.
"We needed him more." He doesn't mean to yell, but the words erupt from his mouth as he spins around to face her, eyes rimmed in the same shade of red as Peter's bandage.
"And look what it's done to him. I feel like I've," he goes quiet and turns his head to the side, not meeting Susan's eyes, "betrayed him," and his voice cracks a little under the implications.
He clenches his fists at his sides, half-crescents drawing deep white moons into his palms. "And you know what he told me? He told me it was okay because he probably would have done the same thing. But I know he wouldn't have. Peter would never have let me fight a war I wasn't meant to fight just because he wanted to have this," he flings his hand back dismissively, "all to himself or because he thought it would be fun to have a brother in the army."
Susan doesn't know what to say partly (though she hates to admit it) because she knows that Edmund is at least somewhat right. Peter was always the one nobler than any of them, the one who cared the most, was concerned the most. He still is, still does. Even in his present condition.
Susan pretends to ignore Edmund when he turns back around to stare transfixed at Peter now lying in the grass. She pretends to ignore the way his shirt rides up a bit when he shudders and the way she cringes when it does. She pretends to not notice the way his fingertips come up to splay on the glass or the way he coughs once, twice, into his hand and holds it at his face for a little too long.
But Edmund notices the way Susan's used-to-be rhythmic clink of knitting needles skips beats and sometimes misses them all together. He tries to imagine the soldier who will wear that hat, the one with the still noticeable small holes amongst the chain of even loops, and sends his daily thanks to God that it won't ever be Peter.
____
When Susan watches over Peter this night, it is different. This night Peter doesn't moan about Narnia or Aslan, but strings together entirely new, more sensual syllables in the form of Caspian that make Peter's breath come shallow and quick as it turns from sigh to exaltation to caress.
She sees the way Peter arches off the bed and tangles fingers into his hair as if they weren't his own. There is a defined peak in the thin summer sheets and Susan averts her eyes to the floor and leaves just before Peter reaches a hand between them.
From behind the heavy cherry wood door, she can still hear her brother's pleas for dreams and desires that she knows will never be realized. He calls out the name a few more times and she wonders whether he is still asleep or conscious. She doesn't know which is worse: dealing with the pain or not having any recollection of the pleasure.
Susan supposes that he is part of the reason Peter has chosen to live in the fantasy world of his. There, boys become Kings, not just-turned-legal soldiers for the slaughter; there he has magic and love never dies, he'll just never see love or feel magic again because he isn't allowed back in. There, love is Caspian. Here, love is Admiral Caspian of the Royal Navy: deceased.
Caspian. She doesn't even dare say the name out loud, positively sure it would come out mangled and indistinguishable from the way Peter pronounces it, running together the pian in a just-barely-there Italian accent that she doesn't think he could manage for any other word.
"Caspian," Peter keens again and that time Susan is sure there is something magical about the word itself because it seems to be all that her brother needs before his cries subside along with the obscene sound of slick palm on flesh. Susan knows she should have left instead of leaned back against the door and waited for it to pass. She tells herself that she only stayed because either Edmund or Lucy were bound to check up on their brother and she wouldn't allow them to find him the way he was, for his and their sakes.
Susan stays still until she can no longer hear the uneven breath, but rather no breath at all, and is just about to deem it safe to peek in (surely he is decent) and wish him a silent good night.
She just barely turns when she sees the tips of a small shadow coming from around the corner: Lucy who's rubbing her eyes in the bright light of the hallway and just now stumbling sleepily to her room.
"Lucy, it's late. What are you doing up out of bed? Susan asks once her little sister is in full view and has stopped just in front of her. Susan takes her hand off the door and stands in front of it as if trying to block any sort of image that might have imprinted itself onto it from her sister.
"I wanted some milk," she shrugs and peers curiously around Susan's back. "Susan? Why are you so red?"
____
Susan has heard the name, Caspian, before. Still it remains in the periphery of her memory, brought back to the surface of her thoughts only when she catches Peter staring off into the distance in the way that he does. She knows that he can only be thinking of two things: Narnia or Caspian.
If he's thinking of the former, he brings his nails to his palms and scratches them as if the inactivity was making them itch. When he stumbles around as if adjusting to a boy body smaller than the one he is used, he gets these looks, angry and melancholy at the same time. He stares at his shoes and runs hands down his arms, the fingers grasping through air as if they were trying to catch limb that should be there but isn't.
Moments like these remind Susan that her brother is older than he really is. She searches the eyes of the boy-turned-soldier and finds within them the somber knowledge of war and death, loss and regret and she knows that then he isn't so much thinking about Narnia but battle.
She knows he used to hold and still remembers the feel of a gun, and has killed, has definitely killed hundreds of men; more, at least, than she has time to make knitted caps for. She thinks wryly that they wouldn't be needing them now anyway.
Sometimes he looks at his Victoria Cross as if he knows exactly why it's locked in a glass cabinet next to an identical one. He outlines the dark metal with his fingers in the air above it and sometimes asks for it to be taken out, because he's curious to whom it belonged. He wants to hold it, inspect it, because he thinks that history might be what he'll study in school.
Lucy almost lets him, gets so far as taking the keys out of the ornate box and jamming the key into the lock before Susan pushes the glass top back down and shakes her head sadly at Lucy, looks back at Peter's expectant, eager face, and says, "Not today."
In truth, it's not because Susan - or Edmund - don't want Peter to see his medal with the engraved "Peter Pevensie, 6th Cavalry Brigade" on the other side, but because of its identical brother, "Caspian X, Dawn Treader", that sits next to it and will inevitably draw Peter's curiosity.
Susan remembers the last time Peter was allowed to pick up the medal. His narrowed, questioning gaze and angry yells, the sharp sound of breaking china still echo in her mind. More, she thinks, than they do in his as it seemed that on the next day he had already forgotten. But Susan doesn't think that's how it works - that Peter would just forget. He must have just rationalized it away in the way that he compartmentalizes every fact or inconsistency between this world and his: it becomes part of Narnia.
"Narnia," Susan thinks with a slight hum. The place, it seems, is Peter's dumping ground for what the war has made too hard to deal with. The bullets that nipped at the sides of his legs while he ran were red-tipped arrows after they had entered and left his skin. The tanks were minotaurs that barreled towards him with iron rage and steel swords. The catapults, giant hurlers of metallic shells that whizzed through the air to tear out the ground and his men. And Caspian. King Caspian was just a war buddy, a casualty to one red-tipped arrow and cleverly aimed catapulted rock, but Peter has made him into something Narnian too.
She takes the key gently from Lucy and answers in a voice concealing the tremors, "Not today, Peter," as if she's speaking to a sick person and not her brother. But he isn't sick, she reasons with herself, just concussed, confused, traumatized, reacting, and after that she doesn't want to think of any more adjectives.
"Why not, Susan? I don't remember what they say. I need to know what they say," he pleads and the way his hair falls into his eyes makes him look like the boy he was instead of the nineteen year old man he is; but Susan knows that remembering that particular reality won't do him any good.
She lets him keep his Caspian, still alive and still a king, and with an empty promise of "Maybe tomorrow," she makes a show of putting the key back in the box, but palms it, and as an afterthought, shoves it into her pocket instead.
____
Peter is awake before the dreams even start. He can see Caspian sitting at the foot of his bed, clothed in a simple light brown shirt and pants, dark hair and eyes contrasting against it in the same way he has always remembered them to.
He thinks he is dreaming because Caspian slides a knowing hand up Peter's leg over the bed sheets and Peter shivers with the seldom found familiarity. He knows he is dreaming when the same warm Caspian settles down beside him, puts his head on Peter's chest, and leaves Peter only with the option of burying his nose in his hair and smelling the oddly spicy scent that he could never forget as Caspian's.
"Caspian?" Peter asks the vision, hoping that this is not Aslan's way of taunting him with what he has been forced to leave behind.
"Five more minutes," he responds playfully and jabs Peter's stomach with a teasing finger before curling himself more completely around the boy. Peter doesn't shift, but stares pale-faced at the ceiling, lips stretched to a thin line, and hands absently drawing light patterns across Caspian's - he hopes - back.
"Why so grim, Peter," his Caspian says and Peter swears that he can feel the light vibrations from his throat. The thought distracts him, but he has learned to push it aside, and thanks to the crisp breeze from the open window, tonight it is easier than most.
"I thought you were dead," he whispers into the air.
Caspian doesn't say anything, just closes his eyes and tightens his hold on Peter with the arm draped across his waist.
"You'll be coming home soon, Peter. Soon, you'll be with me. Home."
"And with Aslan?" he asks before placing a light kiss to where Caspian's hair has parted on his forehead, thinking that that was more real than anything he has ever felt in the past three years.
"And with Aslan," Caspian says resolutely. And Peter suddenly understands the gravity of the words.
____
He hears the piercing screech of halting metal on metal and is pitched forward. The solace of the dream evaporates -- along with the heavy form of Caspian, but not the warmth -- and Peter finds himself back on the train. Edmund and Lucy are looking at him and each other with horrified eyes, but Peter smiles at them. Aslan is calling him home.