Archive of Our Own ^beta

it’s edmund’s father who teaches him how to be a man.

he teaches him how to ride a bike (and not to cry when he wobbles and bruises his knees on the cobbles); he teaches him how to fasten a tie (not to slouch when he sits, to say please and thank you, to be polite and quiet and convenient); he teaches him his multiplication tables (heads bent together over the scrubbed kitchen table, edmund’s pen tapping against his two loose front teeth), his words (sounding out the harder ones, black spiky characters on a white page that jumble themselves in front of his eyes), how to play cricket (“not bad, ed,” dad says, and edmund is overcome with boyish pride), how to fish (though, not often, because they’re in london and london isn’t exactly overflowing with lakes) –

of course, he teaches peter all this first.

edmund isn’t jealous of peter in the beginning, or in the middle (or in the end, when it comes to it.) peter is his best friend, after all. and he’s not stupid – he knows that the first born are the first to grow up. it’s just that, as he sees it, one day they’re throwing clumps of freshly cut grass at each other, and the next peter is too old to play what he arrogantly refers to as kid’s games. sneaking sticky fingers into mum’s cooking while her back is turned is no more; terrorising susan comes to an abrupt end; and playing at football in the back yard becomes a rare occurrence. instead, peter is content to trail around the house after their father, mangling the big words he finds in the leather-bound books on the shelf in the living room (the remnants of their father’s university education) and lording over edmund with his self-righteous nose stuck in the air. edmund doesn’t understand it. no one tells him whether he’s done something to make peter turn on him – in fact, his parents seem impossibly proud of peter and his stiff new ways. their mother ruffles his hair and their father calls him “my boy” with a smile, and edmund’s not jealous, never jealous – but it is the first time that he understands what second-best feels like. his whole world is upended overnight because pete decided to grow up too suddenly, too fast, and he is left alone and angry.

he spends a long time resenting peter and his fancy science books and the three years that separate them. it’s hard to reconcile the place in his heart where joking, sneaking, fun peter was with this new bitterness that has moved in, but he manages it, invites it to make itself at home. no matter that it makes even cordial greetings in the hallways a struggle, no matter that it makes his mother shout and his father scold and peter meet his eye across the dinner table with cold indifference. edmund finds solace in being defiant and glares back.

it is the impetus for edmund’s fear of growing up.

it’s different with susan, because susan is a woman before she is even done being a girl. (no, edmund, she doesn’t want to climb trees and race around the lawn, she wants to sit with mother and sip tea and rock her china doll children to sleep). edmund does not care when susan grows up, does not care for her logic and her smart skirts and does not care when she decides she wants to be a mother (at age eight, nonetheless.) edmund strongly doubts that susan ever was a child in the first place – if he hadn’t actually grown up with her, he might have assumed she’d sprung from the earth fully formed and that was it.

lucy, however – lucy is another story.

when lucy is born, the sun peeks out from behind its miserable wrap of winter clouds and the world warms for a while. peter and susan moon over her, tiny and pink in that drab hospital room, allowing her chubby new baby hands to wrap around their fingers like tiny blessings and laughing at her soft sniffles. susan smiles down on the child and runs a small hand over her downy, dark hair, heart pounding as she imagines holding her own child, being a mother in her own right. peter gets this sanctimonious look on his face like suddenly the world makes sense, like this is what he’s been waiting for, a chance to prove himself. (in many ways, this is peter’s first knighthood, but that is another story altogether.) edmund stands around the doorway and shrugs when they ask if he wants to hold her, hands in his pockets like he could care less. susan huffs at him and peter proclaims him a brat, but they pay him no mind – in their minds, he is just being edmund, and edmund famously does not care.

as the (now) second-youngest, edmund is forced to share lucy’s nursery, a fact that he loudly bemoans. he watches from the side-lines as susan coddles lucy and peter follows her around like a watchdog, and he never has a kind word to say, so it confuses everyone that lucy only ever seems to want edmund. he is the only one who can stop her crying fits and the only one she will sit still for when she needs changing and no one can fathom it. (the reality is that, behind closed doors, edmund lets himself love lucy out loud. he appreciates the curls of her wispy dark hair – just as dark as his, almost black, not the vague chocolate that susan’s has turned out, burnished by the sun – and her tiny doll-sized version of his own nose. he plays with her through the bars of her cot at night when they should both be sleeping, hushes her tinkling laugh with smiles. on early mornings, he reads her faery-tales – complete with silly voices and dramatic hand gestures – and sits patiently through games he has no concept of. he never wants her to grow up.)

when their mother declares that edmund is too old to share a room with lucy anymore, he just shrugs. susan moves into the nursery that very same day and, for the first time, edmund gets his own room. that night, lucy cries without pausing for breath. susan emerges the next morning, haggard and red-eyed, and shoots edmund dirty looks, but he gives her nothing. when lucy reaches for his hand at breakfast, he pushes her away. (he decides it is time to let lucy go, though she does not seem to agree – he decides it is best to push her away before she pushes him, and ignores the way her face falls the first time he shuts the door in her face.)

lucy doesn’t grow up as suddenly as peter did, or as quietly as susan. she enjoys her childhood as one enjoys a long summer’s day – fully and till the end – and edmund is proud behind closed doors. she speaks with the trees in the garden and spurns dolls, draws crude maps of funny little island homes and reads about dragons and faeries and imps. she doesn’t like dresses or rice pudding, but enjoys sensible shoes, drying flowers, and watching the grandfather clock ticking in their hallway. edmund notes all these little joys and keeps them tucked away and ready for the day he will inevitably come to despise her, when she eventually decides she wants to grow up, and he becomes second-third-fourth best.

as edmund’s own childhood begins to fade, the fear grips him harder – by the throat, this time, like a mail-clad fist, locking his airways so that he cannot even explain away his fears. his skin pinches between the nicks of a thousand chain-link loops. he spends nights staring at the ceiling and counting from ten to one hundred. (ninety is a small number when he really thinks about it.) life is short, he realises, and that’s if he even makes his way through all of it. his fear of growing up becomes something darker, deeper, becomes a fear of death, of sleep, of the dark. sometimes blinking feels too close to leaving, and edmund sits staring at walls until his eyes are dry and sore from the stiff air. sometimes he thinks about making it all stop, just to get it over with. as if going out on his own terms is better, somehow.

it gets worse when whispers of war begin to permeate the smoky finchley air, when the murmurs of men being sent off to fight prompt peter to become more responsible, preparing to take up the mantle their father is set to leave behind. he walks around in his neat shirts and combed hair, the golden boy, with his perfect penmanship and quick mind. (edmund’s own penmanship is shoddy at best, no matter how he practices. it is his worst lesson.) peter leaves primary education with a tacky medal for his good grades and enters his first year at high school with high hopes. by his second year, he has been elected prefect and wears the white braid on his blazer with pride. when their parents introduce him to people, they always find a way to tack on the suffix, “yes, we are very proud.” edmund loathes him.

as if in automatic response to peter’s picture perfection, edmund stops trying. he doesn’t like being told what to do or when to do it; he doesn’t like starched collars or the scrape of chalk on blackboards. one afternoon he cracks another boy’s head against a desk for teasing him, and his teachers tell his mother that he has “problems respecting authority figures.” she looks a little lost at the thought, regards edmund tentatively, as if wondering where his resentment came from, which family tree is to blame, when this changeling snuck in and took control, as if she doesn’t understand what they have done to him. when his father scolds him for it, he is appropriately ashamed and angry; when he gets the same talk from peter (“how could you be so childish?”) he spits at his feet and stalks off (“because i’m a child!”)

it gets worse because peter is golden and magnificent, and susan is bronzed and taciturn, and lucy has her dimples and a silver tongue, while edmund – edmund doesn’t have anything that he’s good at. (fourth best. an anecdote, if he’s lucky.) he struggles with reading most of the time (not because he doesn’t want to, but because he can’t, because the words skitter around the page and rearrange themselves into some incoherent mess that leaves him frustrated and teary), and his maths is good but not exemplary (because, although numbers seem to obey the laws of other inanimate objects, it’s still an upward battle) and he rarely loses at chess (it’s the one thing he has over peter, his one achievement) but he’s not good enough. he has a few boys at school who he regards as friends, but only because they sit together in lessons and eat lunch at the same table. he’s still small and skinny for his age and stays that way even when the other boys start to fill out, all muscle and sinew to his skin and bones. girls don’t pay him much attention and he thinks that’s just fine, despite what they say. (once, and only once, another boy calls him a pansy as a joke, and edmund feels his heart break and something inside him click into place all at once. he punches the other boy in the throat and doesn’t think about what it means for a long time.) he’s nothing special and he knows that, so he sits in his room and tries to find a way to be better. he reads about insects and logic and arithmetic (but he doesn’t want to be susan) and geology and wars and castles (but he doesn’t want to be peter) and he certainly doesn’t have the imagination to be anything like lucy. he tries harder at sports, at football and hockey and lacrosse and tennis. nothing sticks. but he finds that sometimes, when he puts pen to paper, he can sketch out faces with some accuracy, even small scenes – and it’s a start, maybe, but it’s nothing good in his eyes.

when the war finally breaks, cracks like an egg and sends the whole world whisking into chaos, edmund stops being afraid of dying. he sees it every day, wanders past the decimated houses and the decapitated corpses, the burned bodies and blistered carcasses of homes-that-once-were on his way to school. death becomes common-place, like taking the bus or reciting his multiplication tables. destruction moves in next door. his dad is called away to the front and the letters he sends home smell like blood, and edmund can’t help but be glad, glad that it is not him who is out there doing the killing and the dying, and he cannot even bring himself to feel bad about it. the bombs drop and somewhere over the sea the guns fire, and peter keeps pretending to be a man and their mother keeps pretending that everything is okay and susan keeps rocking her dolls to sleep through the blackouts. every day makes another century on their shoulders, another weight. edmund stops being afraid of growing up (because it doesn’t seem like a possibility), already feels the press of eternities in every single one of his gregorian years. he doesn’t fear dying (because it seems like a gift), considers it all merely a countdown to an end. (he doesn’t consider that this thought is infinitely more of a problem.)

through it all, lucy keeps talking to the trees, and when there are no trees she talks to the sky, and when the sky is dark she talks to the stars, and when the stars are not out she talks to herself, and edmund listens through their thin walls in the dark and says nothing over breakfast the next day. he is so, so proud of her, and he makes scathing jokes about her scabby knees to prove it.

the war turns edmund cold; they have coal and logs and newspapers to burn, and his mother darns his thick woollen sweaters and he layers his socks but still his toes are numb and his fingers do not acknowledge the soft fur of their cat, do not find any comfort in the quilting of his duvet, do not warm when he pushes them against his stomach in the quiet morning and counts his ribs. he feels the cold start in his stomach, knotting his organs; he feels it in his head, growing out and out and out – he does not know how long he has before this cold reaches his heart. it feels like a death sentence, which feels like an escape. edmund sits in the suffocating dark of his room, spine pressed against the wooden headboard, and waits.

the last night they spend in london, the air raid siren screams to life, and edmund watches from the living room window as the mcgregor family five doors down bolt out of their house in their night things, gas masks swinging from crooked elbows, the youngest with the family dog tucked under one arm. seconds later, a bomb smashes directly through their roof and ruins the paintwork of the gables that mr mcgregor spent most of the previous summer re-painting. edmund feels the heat of the blast on his face but does not blink. the mcgregors disappear – their eldest daughter hits the ground and her leg turns out awkwardly. she does not get back up.

his mother pulls him from the window, then, and yanks the drapes shut, like that will keep the jerries out. she yells at him, and he can hear lucy crying in another room, but his only thought is, this is finally it. this is it.

peter drags him to the shelter and edmund follows wordlessly. he keeps waiting for the bomb to hit them, for the choir of death to sing for them. he hopes, before he goes, he feels at least a little warmth.

it’s as peter is pushing him to the door of the anderson shelter that something flares in his chest – some tiny, dying warmth inside him remembers his father, and he bolts back inside, evading peter’s clawing hands, slamming into walls and falling in his hurry. even as he hears the whirring getting closer, he doesn’t feel fear, or the cold, just the all-encompassing knowledge that he has to get his father out of this house, has to cling on to that last shred of warmth. (it’s the last picture they have of him, all done up in his uniform the day before he left, and it sits on the little round table by his mum’s armchair.) when the bomb hits the house next to them, he feels it like the first blast, tripled, but not in the broken glass that hits him, or peter’s arm around him – in the warmth, in the chaos. the destruction is the thing that warms edmund more than anything else.

(“how can you be so selfish, you’re so selfish!” peter yells later. “you could have gotten us all killed!”

edmund says nothing.)

he doesn’t hold much hope that being sent away from london will change things for them. on the platform, he turns his head away from his mother; when she presses a kiss to his hair, he feels the roughness of her jacket against his cheek and the fast beating of her heart, but he does not feel the warmth of her mouth or her body. he thinks, vaguely, that he has never been so cold, right to the bone, maybe deeper. (he’s not sure what’s deeper than bone. he thinks, maybe if he has a soul, it is cold too.) the countryside is likely to be draughty, and wet, from what he knows, and edmund wonders if he will ever be warm again. (the picture of their father is tucked amongst his warmest sweaters, broken glass and all.)

if the train ride is long, their first night in the country is never-ending. the old house creaks with the wind and edmund counts the cracks in the ceiling and the breaths that peter takes per minute in the bed across from him. he thinks lucy may still be crying in the second (third? fourth?) guest room (there seems to be no end to guest rooms here, a place made for leaving) so that by the time morning arrives, dark and dashed with rain, edmund has slept all of two hours and is running on unkempt anger and guilt.

he picks at his breakfast (“it’s all very lovely, thank you, mrs macready,” susan tells the housekeeper, ever the suck-up, and edmund sticks his tongue out behind their warden’s back) and fiddles with the antique stool in the second floor lounge for several hours before the game of hide and seek is attempted. lucy upsets the whole thing after not even two minutes, bursting out from an attic room (“weren’t you wondering where i was?”) and talking nonsense about fauns and snowy kingdoms. he hopes she’s not losing her marbles already, cooped up in a place like this, and jokes something similar aloud. of course, susan and peter turn on him immediately (“when are you going to grow up?”) so he flees the room, holing himself up in another wardrobe, seeking out the dark and the lonely.

there are dead moths in this wardrobe, a heavy old thing in yet another guest room, and he pokes at them moodily, watching the silver flash of their wings when they catch the light coming through the crack in the doors. part of him desperately wants to seek out a world of his own, like lucy, somewhere beyond the mortal touch, somewhere cold and white where the frozen chasm in his brain won’t feel like a brand, a scar, a wound, but his own words echo in his head (“some little kids don’t know when to stop pretending.”) he wonders when he stopped associating himself with the word child, when he stopped being a kid himself; he wants to go back to reading lucy bedtime stories and feeling like learning his letters was the hardest thing he’d ever have to do. he doesn’t want this anger, this blanketing emptiness.

he looks down at his hands and finds he does not know them anymore.

he follows her that night, to the wardrobe, though he can’t say why. the squirming in his heart pushes him to tease, to taunt, and does not expect anything more than tears and another row with peter – only when he’s stood in the silent snow, flakes drifting around him and settling in his hair, his lashes, the hood of his dressing gown, only then does he realise himself. the cold is familiar to him. the icicles that cling to the bare arms of the trees reflect a face he remembers. although he rubs his hands over his own arms, friction for warmth, he does not need it – he feels this cold only superficially. for the first time (but not the last), edmund thinks of this place, this narnia, as somewhere he can stay forever.

and, just when it’s all starting to seem slightly too perfect, he’s assaulted by a dwarf. he feels the cold press of the knife against his throat and knows he should feel fear. his pulse hammers in his head, body responding to the imminent danger, but he knows that he will not be harmed. this is his place. the cold and the dying and the lonely are all he knows – it is his domain. it is, nevertheless, a good feeling to be saved.

the queen is taller than anyone edmund has ever met, but that could just be his view from the ground. a tower of ice-blue and snow-white, she looks like the beginning of a faery-tale, a saviour, every winter month personified. her lips are blue, pale hair hung with snowflakes, and even as edmund searches for points of red on her cheeks he knows he will not find them. the queen of narnia is beyond blood and bone, beyond time, beyond the dark and death itself. edmund thinks he falls in love.

she gives him hot chocolate that soothes his soul and bites of turkish delight that warm his heart (he does not understand this is temptation, an illusion – his school bible is tucked away in his desk at home still. he does not listen to the readings, only scribbles in the margins. he does not know the stories) and spins him tales of a future as the one and only king, peter and susan and lucy scraping the ground beneath his feet, and he finds himself liking that possibility, ensnared by her loveliness. bring them to me, she breathes without words, bring them to me and i will give you everything.

when lucy finds him again, he is not himself. or, he is more himself than he used to be – cold all the way through.

\\

by the time all four of them are finally treading through the wardrobe, his body is screaming for her. there’s a tugging in his stomach, something inside that begs him to go to her (a feeling his tired body registers as a gnawing hunger for turkish delight). the moment they realise lucy’s tumnus is missing, that same sensation turns his stomach to jelly, the sloppy, not-quite-set kind that they used to serve for school dinners with single scoops of vanilla ice-cream, the kind that the other boys would flick at each other and would inevitably end up smeared all down his blazer. something settles between his lungs, (not quite his heart but further to the right, some chasm that ends in oblivion) says you did this, you told her about him, you’re the reason, but it is quickly buried. the churning in his stomach becomes urgent; he thinks it might even growl with the hunger.

he does not trust the talking beaver – because, as susan so helpfully points out, beavers shouldn’t be saying anything – and he thinks the feeling might be mutual. the creature’s black little eyes narrow at him suspiciously, and he feels them on his back as they walk, though the beaver is always ahead. stupidly, as he is ushered into the dam, he glances up at the mountains, where the steeple of the queen’s castle tears the sky. the beaver notices. the look it gives him is one of warning, and it makes edmund blush like a child with a crush, caught out.

he’s not a child anymore, he tells himself. but he’s not a man either. so what is he? (a sacrifice, a death waiting to happen. fourth best, and barely that.)

he doesn’t take his coat off once he’s in the dam. it’s quaint, homier than he expected. the beavers have a doll-sized kitchen, like something out of a kid’s book, and his siblings sit cross-legged at the tiny chequer-clothed table like they dine with woodland creatures every day. (he’d expect this of lucy, sure, but the fact peter and susan are just going along with it curdles his insides, presses like needles against his skin.) he realises, then, watching the scene before him, something he thinks he should have realised a long time ago: he is not part of their family anymore. perhaps he never has been. they sit one-two-three, side by side, his brother and sisters, and he can no longer see the space where he should fit. it’s a realisation, he thinks, that has been a long time coming, that he can only see clearly now that it has been set out for him.

as he makes his way up the mountain, he thinks of every metaphor he can conjure that could possibly encompass their abandonment; he is the man left thrashing in the water as the red sea closes; he is the german spy captured behind british lines, held in contempt by those who had called him a friend; he has been frozen out, left behind.

he stands in front of the icy castle, breath turning white in the air, and the gates open for him. he steps through without looking back. he thinks how sorry they’ll be when he’s king. he thinks he hears someone call his name.

\\

the queen is not happy with him. he understands why, but the hot anger in her eyes and the poisonous edge to her voice makes him think of bombs and broken glass and his heart feels like it’s being slowly roasted on a spit, searing. tears well up in his frustration. he’s tried his best, he’d been close enough.

“i brought them halfway!” he spits out, as if it makes a difference. “they’re at the little dam, with the beavers.”

the titbit earns him some small amount of mercy – a bone thrown to a dog, appeasement, maybe – but not much. she’s different this time, he thinks, not his cold, graceful queen from before; he sees that her eyes are black as coals and wonders how he missed that the first time around. he thinks of his growling stomach, then, and asks about his sweets.

it seems to amuse her, that he’d give her anything just for these sugary bites; edmund supposes she doesn’t know about rationing, or the war. it is not until he feels the weight of the dagger at his back that he accepts he has fallen from her graces, his purpose served. as they slip their way down the dungeon steps (him in his rubber soles without any grip, ruined and wet from the snow, his guard puttering along in spiked, fur-lined boots), he hopes the dwarf doesn’t notice the way his tears bore perfect, hot circles into the ice.

he is left food (stale, black bread and a cup of snow) but he feels no hunger, now. he finds himself wondering why he has come here – he hardly remembers. he thinks of peter’s warm eyes and susan’s soft hands and lucy’s kindly little face tucked into his shoulder and misses his family. he cannot think where he left them, where they left him. he supposes he must have gotten lost along the way.

the cold he thought he felt back home does not compare to that of the ice dungeon, could never compare to it. this is an internal ice age. he notices his breath doesn’t cloud in the air, though it is certainly cold enough too. he buries his head in his arms and takes in gulps of oxygen, tries to push it out in clouds, like the steam of an engine, like the smoke of a dragon. no use, he realises. his limbs are stuffed with snow. the chasm in his mind is so vast it is just a blank wasteland.

the cold is in his heart, his soul. for the first time, the thought is not one that brings him comfort.

“if you’re not going to eat that.” it’s a question, barely. edmund catches the eye of the man in the other cell through the ragged hole in the wall and pushes the plate over. he doesn’t want to stare, can’t help but do so as the man rips into the bread, chewing ravenously. he feels his own cheeks colour strangely, not quite a blush (his blood moves far too sluggishly, clogged with thaw and snowflakes) though he couldn’t say why. the other prisoner has a peculiar nose and ears like a deer, high on his head and folded, peeking out of curly locks alongside tiny horns. edmund follows the line of the red scarf the man wears, takes in the fur that covers his legs, the clasps around his hooves.

“mr tumnus?” it’s not a question, but he is too tired to pose it any other way. and there’s that sick guilt again, half-set and gelatinous and sliding down his throat.

lucy’s brother, tumnus calls him. edmund finds it hard to believe that lucy talked about him at all. he tries to remember her laugh, the way she would push the meat around her plate at dinner and would only eat her vegetables. he finds he cannot remember very well at all.

you have the same nose, tumnus tells him. they do, he remembers. he rubs at the offending feature warily. are they a family? he barely knows who he is.

is she alive? edmund doesn’t know. is she safe? he just keeps rubbing at his nose.

the queen shatters tumnus’ illusion that edmund is anything like lucy, and they stare at each other helplessly as the faun is pulled from the dungeon, hooves skidding over the ice feebly. when tumnus is only stone – when edmund realises the nightmare is far from over – he feels the terror start to slip in, the kind he hasn’t felt since he was a child, frightened of death and double digits. he knows she is going to kill him, and he knows it will be slow and painful and he will feel every second of it. he sits at her feet in the same sleigh she once convinced him was built for kings like him, and wishes, wishes he were with his family.

the wind whips at his face and he pushes his fingers into the bend of his knees. wrapped in her furs, the queen doesn’t give him so much as a passing glance, and he finds himself closing his eyes. he tries to remember, to re-write his life in the frosted caverns of his mind and remember, but he can’t seem to figure out what came first, can’t seem to pin faces and names. the only thing he knows with any certainty is that he is a traitor. it makes his heart burn, but it is true and right, and he holds on to that dying ember and keeps it close, keeps it alive.

he forgets what it feels like to sit before the warmth of a fire, pulled every which way over the snowy plains. they give him frozen water and keep him nourished with half-thawed food until he forgets what a hot meal tastes like, how anything other than ice and vomit feels on his tongue. the back of her hand across his face (his blood under her nails) makes him forget the way his mother used to hug him. the point of her staff nicking his cheek, his neck, his hands, knocks memories of the way peter used to ruffle his hair, how susan used to brush it back under control, right out of his head.

the queen brings death and destruction in her wake. edmund brings hot tears and tries to remember that he has a family.

\\

finally – finally – they come for him. edmund feels like a ragdoll abandoned in the aisles of a store, plucked from the cold floor by familiar fingers. he’s not sure how long he’s been under the witch’s watchful eye, let alone how many hours (days?) he’s been bound to this tree for. in the darkening evening as the camp quietens, edmund’s vacant eyes catch on a centaur, mid-swing, decapitating one large, bat-like creature and silencing its shriek with a sickening thwack. its head hits the ground by edmund’s bound feet, spattering gore and blood, and it is the only way edmund knows this is real. part of him wants to ask exactly what the creature is (was.) part of him wants to expel his stomach from his body via his mouth. part of him wants to cry until he turns into a desert, drained dry, dissolving. mostly, he knows better than to look a gift horse centaur in the mouth, though.

he can only stare as the centaur approaches him. out of the darkness, a pair of leopards slope towards him from either side, whiskers quivering as they mutter to each other in soft, aborted growls. both big cats’ muzzles are stained with blood, as is the centaur’s sword, which he doesn’t bother to clean before cutting through edmund’s bonds like butter.

“you are the son of adam?” the centaur asks. “the missing one?”

edmund pulls the rag out of his mouth and gags at the dryness of his own tongue. “i’m edmund,” he replies dumbly.

the centaur nods, apparently unphased by edmund’s inability to function, and holds out a hand to him, pushing his sword back into its sheath with the other. edmund pushes himself up off the ground with both hands, shaky on his own two legs. one of the leopards nudges its head against edmund’s calf and he wobbles. it is not a hard push, affectionate even, but he is so weak on his feet that the slightest wind could certainly knock him over. the other leopard curls its tail around his knees for a brief second and makes a low noise in its throat that edmund thinks might be encouragement. either way, he manages to make the final step to take the centaur’s hand, who clasps it solidly in his own and bows his front two legs gracefully so the two of them are of a height.

“aslan is expecting you,” the centaur says. “we must leave.”

edmund blinks. “you want me to –”

“i make an exception for you,” the centaur tells him with a slight warning edge to his voice. then, he says, “my king.”

edmund slips on to the centaur’s back without another word, and the centaur stands again, bringing a hand to his mouth and whistling around his fingers. the leopards, now a good few feet beneath edmund, let out matching growls and leap off into the darkness once more. edmund can see glints of other people in the trees, the whites of eyes and silver of swords. he wonders how many were sent to find him. the witch’s camp is deadly silent.

the centaur pauses for a moment, adjusting to the weight of edmund on his back. “i suggest you hold on tight, son of adam,” he warns.

edmund curls his fingers into the leather straps that sheath the swords on the centaur’s back and tries to ignore the way his stomach lurches as the centaur bolts through the trees after the leopards. he has never ridden a horse before, half-human or not, but the thrill he feels in that moment is overwhelming. he looks back over his shoulder as they sweep through the trees – he does not see the witch, but he knows that she feels his loss as clearly as he feels hers. the wave of relief that rushes over him is so intense he nearly throws up.

he thinks in fragments of his family, and his heart warms just a little.

\\

by the time the pale dawn paints the sky all candy-floss pink and ice-blue, he is in aslan’s camp. all around them, since they left the dark wooded encampment of the witch, edmund has witnessed narnia falling into the kind of summer disarray that reminds him distinctly of the english countryside and the professor’s gardens, all lush grass and towering, whispering trees and gleeful streams. (the sight of budding flowers and clouds no longer heavy with snow had choked him. boreas – as the centaur had introduced himself once they were out of harm’s way – had respectfully averted his eyes when edmund began to cry.)

boreas slows only when they reach the edge of what must be aslan’s camp, a swathe of red and gold across a green meadow, and edmund takes a moment to notice the force who had rescued him. there aren’t many – a few fauns, another centaur, what edmund thinks might be a satyr, and the leopard duo. they all seem unharmed, if out of breath from their escape, and edmund wonders if they encountered any resistance from the witch’s army. he has the fleeting thought that maybe the witch wanted him gone, made it easy for them to take him, but a glint of silver makes him turn his head. one of the fauns is cleaning his axe on a patch of grass – the head of it is slick with blood.

boreas takes him uphill to meet aslan under the trembling white sun. the centaur bows his head in respect and says, “the final son of adam,” by way of greeting. edmund tumbles off of his back in a way he suspects a man of prophecy such as himself should probably be embarrassed by, but he is so exhausted he can hardly find it in himself to care.

“edmund,” the lion says. his voice is deep enough that it resonates in edmund’s bones, chases away the cold gathered there like sunshine on icy steps. he would have taken a step back if not for boreas standing beside him, a silent anchor. “we’ve been expecting you.”

articulate as ever, and no stranger to wit even in broken times, edmund replies, “sorry i’m late.”

the lion chuckles. his mane is a myriad of gold and copper lights, coins glistening at the bottom of a wishing well. edmund wonders what secrets they would whisper to him if he put his ear close enough. “how do you feel?”

his lip is split and bloody. he worries at it with his tongue, but it is mostly congealed and not too painful. nothing a few days won’t heal. the skin around his eye is puffy and bruised from the witch’s own hand, but when he raises his hand to poke at the tender skin it does not sting. his wrists are sore from the ropes, the skin chafed and red, and his jaw still aches from the gag. he’s covered in dirt and sweat and blood. he knows, physically, that he could be doing worse, just as he knows that physically is not the answer aslan really wants. so he lifts his chin and, truthfully, tells him about the winter enchantment that still holds his heart, and had long before the queen.

aslan’s breath blows over him like a simple summer breeze, and the difference between the white witch’s ferocity and aslan’s gentleness that had previously baffled him finally makes sense; aslan is the summer to her infinite winter, the reprise to her onslaught, the healing hand to her hard fist. in his breath, edmund feels a month of sundays and his mother’s hot soup and the feeling you got as a kid when you reached the uppermost branches of a tree and stretched for the sky to let the clouds skim through your fingers. in his breath, edmund feels young again – and remembers.

“the witch’s enchantment is done,” aslan says, “but the rest is up to you.”

“my family?” he asks. he is not afraid to admit that his voice trembles.

“they are here. they have missed you.”

“how can they forgive me?”

aslan tilts his head. “how could they not?”

outside a tent of burnished gold and red not far from aslan’s rocky perch, two girls are standing. he has to squint a little to see them, but he would recognise lucy’s dark hair anywhere. she’s beaming as she runs to him, and he follows aslan tentatively when the lion steps down from the rocky outlet and makes his way towards the girls. with reckless abandon, lucy flings herself at edmund, gathering as much of him in her tiny arms as she can, and he chokes for a moment – chokes on the fact he is here, that she can not only stand the sight of him but is excited to see him, that this is the first time in so long anyone has touched him with something other than anger. susan’s fingers brush under his eye when she reaches them, but she says nothing, only puts her arms around the two of them. over her shoulder, he sees peter watching with an impassive face.

“hello,” edmund manages awkwardly.

peter only looks for a moment, arms folded. “get some rest,” he says, but he smiles after, and his eyes are as warm as edmund remembers them being, even if he is older here, centuries older, a warrior, a knight of narnia, almost a king. edmund has never been more grateful for peter’s stupid fatherly instincts.

edmund finds himself an empty hammock amongst the rich drapes and folds of the tent and drops out of consciousness the moment his body is safely ensconced in blankets, hoping for blissful silence. dreams find him anyway. the witch slips back into his head (not his heart, thank god, it is no longer hers) and whispers pretty nothings. when he does not answer, she strikes him, again and again, yells of his betrayal, and he cries. you betrayed your family, she hisses, biting winter’s wind.

you are not my family, he replies.

no. you are part of me. i have claimed you, edmund pevensie.

and he knows that she has.

he wakes, throat hoarse from screaming. peter bursts in in an instant, sword lifted to fight off intruders, but he only has to take one look at edmund before he crumples. his sword hits the ground with the softest thump as he gathers edmund in his arms the way their father used to after nightmares, holds him close and smooths his hair while edmund sobs into his shoulder, great heaving breaths racking his lungs.

“she has me,” edmund gasps. “she has me.”

“no, she doesn’t. we’ve got you, ed, don’t worry. we’ve got you.”

“i’m so sorry.”

“i know.”

“i’m so sorry, pete.”

“i know.”

\\

edmund has been an expert at keeping those he loves at arm’s length since he was a young boy. that night, under the full moon and in the light of a million torches, he manages to say to susan, “i wish i’d listened to you, before.”

she smiles at him, understands the apology concertinaed between the words, and places a hand on his shoulder. “we were very different children,” she agrees softly, “we may yet be very similar adults.”

he says to lucy, “i wish i’d kept you closer, before.”

she beams and tucks her head under his chin the way she used to when she was a baby, curled around him by the campfire. “i won’t lie, it hurt. but i knew you were going through some things – i understand that, now. and we have forever, we have years to make up for it.” she pulls away then to kiss his cheek and looks him in the eye sincerely when she tells him, “she’ll never get you again, you hear me, ed? you’re safe with us.” she sighs when she lies on the grass beside him, and continues. “we can live out a thousand summers by this light.” he’s not really sure what she means by that, so he just pulls her closer and hopes she understands.

it is simple with peter, after all that time of it being so hard. he just says, “can you trust me?” and peter says, “i can,” and that’s it.

\\

the witch arrives at aslan’s camp on an iron throne carried by cyclopes. he watches her sail towards him through the crowd, white froth atop a crashing wave, deaf to the jeers of aslan’s army as her dwarf shouts her titles. queen, empress, enchantress – witch, edmund thinks, and he knows, without a doubt, that she can hear him.

she dismounts in front of aslan, unfolding from her chair like a bird of prey. she is still tall, almost as large as the centaur who stands by aslan’s side, and slim as a corpse, draped in a dress the colour of frostbite. her eyes are dark as fresh bruises and, when they meet his through the crowd, they slit his throat like a knife. her smile is sharp as a blizzard. she looks like death herself, queen of all things immortal and undying. he feels her phantom hand upon his neck, squeezing, but when he lifts his own hand to wrench it away, there is nothing but his own warm skin.

“you have something that belongs to me,” she says. edmund thinks, i was never yours, you tricked me, it wasn’t my choice. she ignores him.

“according to the deep magic, all traitors belong to me,” she says. edmund thinks, not a traitor, not a traitor, forgiven, reborn.

lucy wraps his hand in both of her small, warm ones, and susan’s shoulder presses against his, a steadying motion. peter steps forward and spits, “try and take him then.”

part of him expects her to get away with it, for aslan to turn to him and tell him he needs to leave. he supposes the others might agree, because as much as they say he is forgiven, he will never know, truly, what they think of him. something deep inside him, that same dark space that once told him mr tumnus’ fate was in his hands, blinks awake, yawns and whispers, you will spend the rest of your life fighting this, trying, seeking to be someone else. you will always be the traitor, but at least you can attempt amends.

but they do not turn him away. instead, aslan strikes a deal of vague detail to any party other than himself and the queen, and edmund watches her leave with a pounding heart. even as lucy hugs him, his broken lip stings; even as pete claps his shoulder, his cheek smarts; even as susan laughs in his ear, his fingers numb; even as they celebrate, he catches the look on aslan’s face and wonders what good will come of this.

when he tries to ask the lion about it later, aslan tells him he should not worry.

“if you’re going to fight her, i should be the one to do it,” he tells the great lion. “thanks and all, but it’s my sentence.”

“i am not going to fight her, edmund.”

“is she going to hurt you?”

“not in any way that will last.”

he doesn’t hesitate. “if she’s going to hurt you, i’d rather you let me go.”

aslan turns his large eyes on edmund and shakes his head. “what kind of lion would i be to let a cub such as yourself suffer when you have already seen so much?”

“i’m not a cub,” edmund argues, anger flaring in his ribcage. “i know i have to prove myself to these people. you can’t protect me from that.”

“no,” aslan acquiesces, “but you are young, and have much to learn of the world. i have been around for a long time.” he does not elaborate on that, merely smiles and begins to walk away.

edmund does not follow, though he wants to. “don’t let her win,” he calls after the lion.

aslan, it seems, either does not hear or does not heed his warning, because he is dead by next morning and the witch is on her way to wage a war against peter. lucy and susan are missing from camp, and there’s nothing edmund can do to help except practice his fighting and try to ignore the fact the he’s about to be sent into an actual, honest-to-god battle.

his sword work is sloppy, he knows, but he’s only been learning for a short time. at the very least, he can hit his target and hold his own in one-on-one combat. orieus had taken to teaching him alongside peter and had mentioned during their first lesson that he had a natural defence stance (which edmund is inclined to think is a compliment.) aslan’s right-hand man had been patient with him, and kind, pushing him to do his best. it had reminded edmund of his father’s gentle teaching methods. of course, orieus has been teaching peter longer, but that just makes peter a better opponent. now, with peter and orieus busy planning a battle (and they’re still kids, god damn it, how did they end up here?) edmund practices his stances alone, hacking at straw figures until he is red in the face and sweating. then, he goes to the stables to ask philip if he wants to go for a run.

philip had deigned to let edmund practice with him when orieus first introduced them to fighting on horseback, and edmund had grown to like the horse and his sardonic comments. he’s not sure if philip feels the same about him, but he doesn’t say no when edmund appears at his stable, and the pair of them go sprinting off over hills and valleys until they’re both panting for breath. then, philip lets edmund up on his back and trots them a few meadows over to a little lake to drink.

edmund peers at the creatures below the surface while philip sucks up water. tiny, green-scaled creatures bare their teeth at him and multi-coloured fish flit past his fingertips; he thinks he catches a glimpse of a thick, sucker-covered tentacle curling around a rock a little further in. he feels that little flicker in his heart, the one that he gets when he sees his family or fresh flowers or the sunrise in the morning – little moments of beauty that remind him that the witch has not taken everything.

“do you have a family, philip?” he asks the horse.

in reply, the horse huffs and shakes his head. he is preoccupied with a trio of little blue crabs trying to crawl into his mane and has no time for edmund’s light attempts at conversation.

“this war is my fault.” these are the words he has been holding in all day. “i brought my family into this, and i can’t save them from it.”

“how is this whole war your fault?” philip asks.

“i was going to turn my family over to the witch. i got aslan killed.”

philip tosses his head with a harrumph, sending the crabs scuttling back into the water. “the prophecy is centuries old. this war was always going to happen. it’s not your fault.”

“but how can i save everyone? my sisters are missing. peter is about to lead an army. we’re just kids! i’m just a kid.”

“one is never just anything,” philip huffs, “and you four are no longer children. you are kings and queens of narnia.”

“if we win.”

“we will win.”

“and if we don’t?”

philip eyes him with thinly disguised amusement. “as long as the witch has oats, i’m fine.”

edmund snorts and pushes at philip, who promptly squirts water at him from between his teeth in return. the blue freshwater crabs begin tying plaits in his mane.

he leans back against philip and relishes the feeling of the sun warming his bones. “can we just stay here?” he sighs.

philip flicks his tail lazily and closes his large eyes. “for a while.”

a while is never long enough.

\\

lucy’s potion tastes like warm honey. it’s made from fire-flowers, she’d mentioned at some point (before everything was lost) turning the bottle over in her hands. one drop can heal any wound.

he supposes that’s why she’s using it on him, though he couldn’t guess which wound it is she’s trying to heal. the stab wound, likely, the one he got from the splintered end of the witch’s staff, the puncture from which he feels like he is deflating. it’s missed any vital organs, he’s pretty sure of that, but the strange transaction of his warm blood oozing between chainmail and the cold frosting over his insides sets him dizzy. he wonders how long the fire-flower potion will take to work. he wonders if it could keep him safe from the cold for a second time. he wonders if another drop would cure the fear inside him, the guilt, the darkness. he’s still scared of his own betrayal – knows that he will always be a traitor now, that it is something he will always have to live with, the same way he will likely always have to live with this sadness, with this uncertainty that he has felt since he was a child.

he realises, then, if aslan had let him, he would have willingly let the queen take his life if it meant his family would be safe, that narnia would be safe. he wonders if that makes him a martyr or a collaborator, a statistic, a sinner. (he thinks he already knows the answer to that question.) he would have abandoned everything, yet they still have faith in him.

lucy is crying somewhere. he thinks susan is saying his name. he doesn’t hear a thing from peter – he thinks about all the time they have spent hiding their feelings, learning not to say a word, not to cry, only to shout. he thinks about all the things their father taught the two of them about being men – practical, manual things – but how it was his siblings who taught him to smile, to laugh, to dream, to take in small fractions of themselves and set them in the mosaic of their collective consciousness. edmund is a collage of his siblings and his parents and his grandparents and their grandparents and this world and their world and the next, every layer diffused and ripped and glued together and, most importantly, he is his own mistakes and tears and trials. he is a traitor, the one who is always fourth-best no matter how he tries, the terror of the family. he will always be these things –

and he can always choose to mend.

when he opens his eyes, peter asks him once more, “when are you going to start doing what you’re told?”

\\

the just king: one who acts according to what is morally right.

sometimes it feels more like a snide attack. just king, only just. he knows there are still narnians, in and out of the court, who think he should not sit on the throne. he tries not to let it faze him, but there are times when he wonders if this is aslan’s way of keeping him humble, of keeping him on edge.

it’s not something he often has a chance to think about, especially in the first few months of their rule. there’s a lot to handle in narnia after the fall of the witch and aslan’s departure – there are still enemies hiding underground, still families who have lost their homes, children who have lost their parents, still people who are unhappy and unnoticed. edmund fights to make sure all of them get their say, pressures their advisors to make sure everyone is heard – but he is still young and tires easily, especially these days. he doesn’t want to be seen as the weakest link, the sickly king, but he finds himself struggling to keep his eyes open during the day, head spinning more often than not. even on days where he tries to fight through it, he’s got peter to contend with (“i don’t care if you’re a king or not,” peter tells him without looking up from the papers he’s reading over, “you’ll go to bed when i tell you to.”) he stays as often and as long as he can, overseeing every decision, but mostly susan and peter take on the hard work. as the eldest, the two form a sort of alliance, staying up every night with advisors and treasurers and captains to take stock of narnia’s wants and needs. it’s what the country needs, and edmund knows that, but he can’t help feeling like he’s slipping back into old habits.

the two of them are seen as the royals with the most pull – the high king and the gentle queen (honestly, edmund’s not sure where they pulled that title from, because who could look at susan in all her strength and think gentle?) – but lucy is the most adored by far. even with her new duties, she manages to spend most of her time in the rolling summer-clad hills and down by the sea, speaking with nymphs and dwarves and mermaids. she brings all kinds of trinkets back to the castle with her – and edmund’s not sure how she manages to escape the castle in the first place, closely-followed by their council as they often are – from pearls plucked from the deep by scaled hands to the tiny shells of sea creatures, woven crowns of grass and golden flowers to lumps of diamonds and fist-sized rubies. he can see how she flourishes from the moment tumnus places the crown on her head, and thinks how she was made for this, how a childhood of sitting amongst the trees and talking to the stars made her just right for leading a faery-tale world.

beside the three of them, edmund feels out of place. no matter how the others insist he is just as much a king as the rest of them, has just as much right to rule, he feels as if he’s constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the day they turn round and tell him to leave again. he’s still trying to excavate the place beside his siblings where he used to be, still trying to fit back into that mould, but he’s afraid he doesn’t belong there anymore. he’s afraid they don’t need him.

when the winter returns during the latter part of the year, not as cold or complete as before but just as terrifying, edmund loses his grip. the narnians are scrambling, afraid that the witch will return somehow, that this white wasteland will never end; edmund is among them in their fear, cloistered in his tower room and unable to move. while the others spend the months ensuring the safety of their people, edmund grows quiet and sleepless, and eventually it becomes known throughout the castle that the king of the western woods no longer eats or sleeps or so much as moves. he stares blankly at walls and smiles only weakly at his siblings. no amount of hot food or blazing fires appear to crack him and, though the news is carefully confined to the castle, there are widespread fears that the winter will haunt their youngest king forever.

lucy spends many a day by edmund’s side throughout the winter. she reads him books of narnian poetry and pours over volumes of ancient art with him. she keeps rapid conversation throughout every day, no matter whether edmund responds or not. she even goes as far as to move her blankets and pillows to his room so he is not alone at night, and she is there when he wakes one december morning to see the falling snow and hears him when he whispers, “i need to go outside.”

she takes his hand and helps him down the cold steps to the gardens where, for the first time since they arrived in narnia, edmund braves the snow. he catches his reflection in icicles and allows snowflakes to settle on his eyelashes; his skin turns cold enough that his lips go blue, and his fingers numb to the point that the shaking of panic attacks looks only like frostbite. it is a start, though – and, as he stands amid the falling flakes with lucy at his side, he feels free.

“she can’t get you anymore, ed,” lucy tells him, face turned up to the clouds. “she never will again.”

and, although it doesn’t feel entirely like the truth yet, edmund can believe her. the next day, he bathes and dresses and leaves his room and eats a proper meal, and the castle breathes a sigh of relief that their king is back. (it’s hard, of course, but there isn’t that same fear anymore. by their second winter, edmund is as warm in december as he is in june.)

as the next year unfolds, so does edmund. he’s not really sure when he stopped believing he was lesser than everyone else, only knows that he is fuelled by the need to be seen as anything other than unworthy. he is the one to reign in peter’s impulsiveness, the heart to susan’s logical head, the one who soothes lucy’s temper in the face of cruelty. he is, after all, a brother above everything else – a brother to his family and to his people. (he feels like a cautionary tale.) amid lessons in attack strategies and arithmetic and art, he begins writing the outline for what will become their court system, their laws and disciplinarily systems. he learns to evolve his defensive stance into an attacking one, masters the art of single sword combat and picks up dual wielding, sticks with it until he can fight just as well with his left hand as he can his right. he does the same with his art, fingers wrapped around a pencil, scratching at blank paper until his fingers bleed and the whole scroll is covered in identical neat sketches. he trains himself in the art of balance until he feels like he’s worthy of his title, worthy to rule these people, and even then, it doesn’t feel like enough.

“people talk,” lucy says one night. the two of them are lying beneath the summer stars on the outskirts of a gathering with the centaurs, peace talks that had long since devolved into celebration. “the dwarves are calling you the anvil.” she smiles at him through the long blades of grass and edmund notices how old she is now – how old they both are. he thinks they both must be in their teens by now, maybe older, but he’s never sure. time in narnia doesn’t work in such a linear way as it does in other places.

“is that a good thing?” he asks in return.

lucy laughs, loud and warm in the night. he can hear the calls of the council on the breeze, the words of susan’s song and the music from the trees. “‘the steel face upon which the sword of narnia will be forever forged,’” lucy tells him, “they see you as our strength. they see that the future depends on you.”

edmund thinks on this for a moment. the sky is fuzzy with stars and fire-flies (and maybe a little with the narnian moonshine he’s been drinking.) “and what do they call you?”

her smile is brighter than any constellation. “little jewel.”

“i think that’s a perfectly good name, lu.”

“yes. i rather agree.”

(he comes to be known by many names over their rule – the just, the anvil, truth-teller, he-who-seeks, more that he will not know until long, long after. but he recognises the place that he has been given in narnia as the one who must fight the battles no one else wants to fight, the one who must forever be looking where others are not, the one who must always take the brunt of the blow. and he is not afraid.)

\\

and so they grow.

forever amongst the big cats of his war council, peter picks up an air of steely grace and a silent step that reminds edmund of aslan. (sometimes, peter purrs when he is happy, a soft rumble in the back of his throat, and edmund might have teased him for it some in the beginning, but it only makes him smile more.) susan develops a bird-like tilt of her head and a trilling voice, speaking with the doves amongst the trees and the owls of the archives. (she becomes known for her beauty, for her sparrow-bones and raven-hair and hawk-eye, and on good days edmund knows he will find her flitting around the castle in any amount of rainbow colours.) lucy spends such time with her merfolk and fish that she appears permanently dripping, eyes as blue as the sea and damp hair coiling around her ears. (sometimes she will use nymphish turns of phrase, or gift each of them bright corals as the kelpies do for those they love, and edmund feels he is always waiting for the day where she disappears to sea and does not come back.)

edmund sticks with his horses. he likes the smell of fresh hay and the great outdoors, and when he runs among them to listen to their cantering hooves, he feels at peace. the fastest way to travel is by horseback here, and edmund is forever gathering reins and the plaits of manes in his hands and speeding off. philip is by his side every day with his wry comments, and edmund will often turn to the centaurs first when it comes to matters of the court. (susan notes one day that, when he is angry, he tosses his head and stamps his feet as they do. peter laughs at this – edmund huffs.)

they grow up and they grow wild, and edmund is not afraid.

\\

as the eldest of their royals, the council advises peter to marry. (“it is a sure way to maintain peace,” one of the cheetahs of the council rumbles knowingly, “especially with the treaty with calormen on the horizon.”)

susan starts an argument about it over dinner. (she stars yelling about it over her bowl of soup – edmund sort of wishes she’d at least waited until the main course.) “if you don’t want to get married, you don’t have to peter,” she clucks impatiently. “there are four of us. we rule together. we need no others.”

“and what if something happens to one of us?” peter snarls immediately. “there must always be four to rule, that is the way of it.”

“then we would all leave,” susan says, like it’s obvious. “if something were to happen to one of us, we would all go back.”

“back where?” lucy pipes up, frowning and flushed from frustration. her soup spoon hovers half-way to her mouth, thick onion broth slowly dripping off the shallow bowl.

susan opens her mouth and nothing comes out. “oh,” she says finally, distractedly. “i thought that – never mind.” then she shakes her head. “you need not marry until you wish to, peter. narnia is strong and so are we.”

lucy sighs wistfully. “i could get married.”

“hush, lu,” edmund tells her. “you’re too young to get married.”

“susan could get married.”

susan scoffs.

“no one is getting married and that’s it,” peter states, and his tone is so final that they barely speak for the rest of the meal.

(peter doesn’t get married, for peace reasons or otherwise. peter is, behind the backs of his royal advisors, courting a golden-haired girl from the beachside village. her name is diana and she has rough, worn hands from working in her father’s smithy. they stay together for a long, long time, and no one ever says a word in the castle, though they all surely know.)

(susan has many suitors over the years, but she does not settle on one and rarely shows affection for anyone outside of her family. of course, she is wise, and beautiful, and everyone hopes she will take a lover – there is a brief moment with a prince from a passing kingdom, where the court rattles with rumours that this may finally be it, the gentle queen may actually fall in love, but he leaves the next morning and nothing more is ever mentioned – but susan never marries, no matter how many engagements are proposed or fine gifts are sent.)

(lucy follows her own path in love, as she has with everything else. she falls in love with every day and mourns her broken heart every night. she plays the dramatic heartbreaker and the dashing knight and the flirtatious masked visitor well, but, at the end of the day, it is known that lucy’s heart belongs to the dryad who dwells in the beech tree outside the valiant queen’s window, and the sleek moonbeam spirit who tangles in its branches each night. edmund thinks it is almost poetic that his younger sister has captured the heart of both the moon and the earth, the sun and the sea. lucy doesn’t marry, though it is a close thing, edmund thinks, after.)

(edmund never mentions marriage himself, and no one asks him about it. something deep inside him, some obscure side, feels that if anyone were ever to know, they would cast him out. it takes him a long time to be comfortable with it himself, though he finds peace in the hands of a boy with skin much darker than his own and braided hair that smells like peaches and almond oil. he meets him at the market, though his people live high in the mountains west of where the witch once stayed and live mostly off the land. he introduces edmund to his favourite food – a creamy mix of goats cheese, honey and almonds – and clambers barefoot over the rocks with unnatural grace. he is the first boy that edmund ever falls in love with, but he won’t be the last. when he asks edmund to marry him, edmund is not afraid, but he asks that they wait.)

\\

(it is not long after that) they come tumbling out of the wardrobe again, and edmund remembers. he remembers his mother, and the war, and the cricket ball, and the cold, cold feeling in his chest as long as time. when he looks down at himself, he is a child again, in the same stuffy clothes he arrived in narnia wearing. his head feels oddly light without the burden of a crown.

they don’t tell the professor everything, just enough to explain their confusion. he seems to understand, surveying them with sad eyes over his round spectacles, eyebrow hitching at the way edmund pulls lucy close, her confused hands reaching for people who aren’t there. it makes edmund want to point out that he’s a different person now, that he’s tried for so damn long, that it’s been years and years since he was that person, but he knows that to the professor it’s hardly been a minute since he last saw them, and that maybe hurts most of all.

falling asleep in the house that night is hard. edmund is used to sea air, now, and open windows and nights full of song, but it has been raining hard and fast from the moment they set foot back in england and the wind is blowing too loudly through the gaps in the house to hear the words of susan’s narnian lullaby.

“it’s all awfully strange,” peter murmurs the next day as they all sit in the living room where it all started. edmund turns to him – seeing his elder brother, high king, battle-worn and regal, looking like a boy again is almost hysterical. (for the past decade, peter had supported a rather nice golden beard, and now edmund can’t help but find peter’s clean-shaven cheeks a rather funny sight.)

“do you think we can get back?” edmund asks, forever the strategist.

“maybe this is a dream,” lucy cries, eyes wet with tears as they have been all morning, “maybe we should go back through the wardrobe.”

“there is no going back,” susan says, silencing them all. “we’re home now. we have to live here now.”

“narnia was home!” lucy wails, “and i want to go back!”

“listen to you, crying like a child,” susan scorns. “what would mother think –”

“would you even have remembered her if we never came back?” peter snarls. it’s the same growling warning he would use during war councils – edmund would recognise it anywhere – but hearing it now, seeing the look on peter’s young face, edmund can only recognise the shadow of the man he once was.

“it’s not like you told me any different!”

“stop it!” edmund orders. he uses his court voice without even thinking about it, the one he uses (used?) for important decisions. it sounds different pushed through his pre-teen vocal cords (and, aslan’s mane, he’s going to have to go through puberty again.) “quarrelling about this isn’t going to help.”

lucy curses them in nympish.

“none of that,” susan squawks.

peter sits back in his chair slowly, shoulders raised, fingers curled around the armrests until his knuckles go white. in the silence, edmund can hear him growling, just slightly, a warning towards impudent cubs to follow their leader –

but peter is not a leader anymore.

“i think,” edmund continues, looking at each of them in turn, “we all need some time apart. to come to terms with this.” (he doesn’t want to think about it, though, that’s the last thing he wants to do. if he thinks about it for too long he might start crying. the thought of his darling, alone and unanswered, enters his head, and he chokes.)

nobody moves for a long time. eventually, lucy comes to sit at edmund’s feet and presses her cheek to his knee so the fabric of his trousers slowly becomes wet with tears. peter leans over to take his hand and does not let go – edmund can feel him trembling ever so slightly. susan nods, but her face seems set.

they sit in silence.

\\

afterwards, they mostly talk about narnia in hushed voices in the dead of night. only lucy dares to bring it before the court (though they’re not a court now, not really) asking again and again when they think they’ll get back. they brush it away, like if they think about it too much, are too loud about it, they’ll break each other.

it’s things like this that are different, now – edmund still finds himself reaching for his crown in the mornings, missing the fire already being lit in the great hall. he finds himself dressing in his loosest clothing and, eventually, stealing peter’s, so that his shirts and shorts are two sizes too big for him at least. he walks the perimeter of the professor’s house five, six, seven times a day, wishing for a glimpse of a glossy chestnut mane or swishing tail.

lucy jumps in the lake. mrs macready watches her from the kitchen window and lets out a piercing scream that shakes the whole house. when she drags lucy out again, she gives her a lashing. “what were you thinking, insolent girl?” she thunders. “are you trying to kill yourself? may the devil take your soul.”

after, forcibly scrubbed and red in the cheek for her troubles, lucy marches up and down edmund’s room like a soldier. she fumes, looking for all the world like her old (older?) self. “never in my life have i been so insulted – that old sneak – may aslan send her soul to the witch’s halls –”

“what you were doing?” edmund asks, because he has to. he has to know.

lucy stares at him like this is the strangest question he has ever asked. “speaking to the fish,” she replies, as if it’s obvious.

he lets out a long, long breath. “lu, i thought you’d tried to –”

“oh, ed.” lucy shakes her head, eyes full of pain. “no, ed. never. i’m sorry.”

he nods. “it’s fine. you’re fine, right?”

“yes, ed.” she moves to sit by him then, wraps her arms around his shoulders. “i’m alright. i promise.”

he doesn’t say anything else.

\\

he misses narnia so much it makes his whole body ache.

he misses stupid dances in summer-green fields. he misses riding through the forests at stupid times with philip. he misses tumnus and his stupid scarves. he misses the centaurs reading the stupid stars every autumn equinox. he misses their stupid honey and almonds and goats cheese dessert. he misses his stupid silver crown and his stupid throne in his stupid court. he misses the stupid mountains and the stupid beach and the way the air tasted of warm, stupid honey. he misses his stupid chess set and his stupid books. he misses his stupid, stupid boyfriend.

there is too much grief to hold in his ill-fitting body, so he curls up in his bed and presses the covers to his face. he wants to cry, and yell, and curse everything from the ground upwards, but he knows it’s not bringing his lover back. it’s not bringing narnia back.

still, he can hear lucy sniffling in the room next door, susan murmuring useless platitudes. peter hasn’t said a word in days – he almost wishes peter would start a fight, just to give himself a chance to let it out. edmund would welcome a punch to the jaw. it might hurt less.

\\

while they remain hanging, suspended like insects in amber, the world moves on. they are sent back home, and the professor waves them goodbye solemnly from his doorstep. (“i’ll keep an eye on the wardrobe,” he promises as they stand in his office for the last time, “though i’m not sure anything will come of it.” he meets lucy’s eye as he says this, and she nods her understanding morosely.)

everything has changed, and yet nothing is different. finchley is still listless and wandering and edmund stares out at its unfamiliarity with wide eyes. it has been decades and no time at all since he saw these roads, and days seem to pass between blinks.

helen pevensie knows something is different about her children, though she can’t say what, would never even guess. susan floats through the halls of their house with a kind of otherworldly grace, humming songs helen can only assume are from the country, their melodies are so foreign to her; sometimes, when she glimpses lucy out of the corner of her eye, she thinks her feet don’t quite touch the ground, that the branches of the trees she passes bend to touch her; peter, her eldest boy, seems to her now like an adult stuck in a young boy’s body and, though she supposes that is a side-effect of having to grow up too fast, it frightens her to speak to him sometimes, with his self-assurance and crown of golden hair; and edmund, darling and troubled as he was before, is quiet now – whatever cold feeling fuelled him has burned away, leaving him contemplative and soft-spoken. she thinks he smiles more now than he ever did before – his siblings gravitate to him like a centre point, a quiet moment in all the loud. they’re closer, she thinks, catching the way peter rests a hand on edmund’s shoulder, the way lucy and susan bend their heads together to murmur secrets, the way susan always seats herself at peter’s right hand side, the way edmund and lucy trudge their way into town for eggs and return with flushed cheeks and grass in their hair. some unknowable secret has bound them all together and, though she is proud of them, they no longer feel like her children. they have gone from her, four little ones steaming away from her in a winding metal escape train, and returned a united front, distant and strange. she misses them even when they are right in front of her.

henry pevensie, full of fear that makes his remaining hand shake at night, does not notice these changes as quickly. in fact, he doesn’t notice until he looks up from his book one night in december, his wife’s knitting needles clacking beside him (safe) and finds his four children sat together in front of the fire (safe safe safe safe) without a single complaint, legs and arms tangled intricately as peter accompanies lucy with her puzzle and susan watches edmund sketch over his shoulder. he looks to helen then, who looks back and shrugs with a small, sad smile, so he leaves it be and returns to his book. he’s just glad they are safe (safe safe safe safe safe). they’ve spent too long not being safe.

it’s only after that he begins to notice the strange occurrences his wife (safe) mentions – like lucy’s hair (safe), swimming around her in a dark pool even when there is no breeze, or the cat-like way peter (safe) stretches when he pads into the kitchen each morning. he finds that, more often than not, susan (safe) can be found in the tree in their back garden, though he can never recall her learning to climb, let alone wanting to. when he enters edmund’s room (safe) with clean laundry one evening, he notices that the walls are covered in drawings – sketches of strange creatures with horns and flat noses, lions and birds that seem to leap off the page the longer he looks, and the same dark-skinned man with flowers in his hair, over and over again. he asks no questions, just that they stay safe.

\\

simple things become easier, but they still slip up every now and then.

over dinner, lucy asks, “mother, would you be so kind as to pass the salt?” in a voice that edmund recognises as the one she would use at banquets, designed particularly to charm courts and other royals. their parents don’t notice, but edmund notices how susan looks over at her sharply, how peter freezes for just a moment.

while finishing a letter to a friend, peter laughs and slides it over to show edmund. high king peter, it is signed in peter’s careful sloping script, followed by only half his titles. “i forgot,” peter says simply, before scratching them out. it burns edmund a little, a cigarette butt smouldering in his empty pit of a stomach, that these are parts of themselves that they have to learn to forget.

it takes time.

\\

they move house, somewhere closer to the city centre. it feels like a loss.

subsequently, they are enrolled at new schools. edmund wants to argue that he finished school lifetimes ago, but he has no real evidence to prove that (at least, no earthly evidence, besides an apparently new-found aptitude for fencing. helen pevensie wonders vaguely what they taught her children out in the country.) he vies for an apprenticeship somewhere instead, the chance to learn some kind of trade, but he is shot down.

(“just do what mother says,” susan advises him as they hold court (not a court) in her bedroom on a sunday morning. “it’ll be easier that way.”)

edmund thinks it is the beginning of the end.

the girls are enrolled at an all-female college down the street from edmund and peter’s partnering all-boys school. they have to take a train in every morning and another back home every evening, and lucy finds ways to innocuously slip narnia into conversation as they trudge their way from the platform on that first day, wasting time until their respective bells ring. “i’m sure ruling a whole country was less work than school,” she sighs.

in return, peter whispers, “i’m sure holding court was less terrifying than this.”

edmund agrees. “or heading into battle.”

peter grins, but it is rough, the shadow of his magnificent smile set in a teenager’s sharp face. finally, they hear the dull metallic call to arms, and the girls rush down the street together with hurried waves over their shoulders. edmund watches susan fuss with her hair and lucy readjust her hat and braids and then they are gone, swallowed up by the crowds.

peter presses his hand to edmund’s shoulder for a second and removes it just as quickly. he doesn’t say anything, but edmund understands anyway, and they join the fray.

it takes less than five seconds after peter departs for edmund to be pushed into a wall unceremoniously by two boys whose stench reminds him of the water trolls that famously dwelled on narnia’s western coast. “watch it,” one spits. his counterpart sniggers.

edmund arches an eyebrow in what he hopes conveys his kingly condescension.

“faggot,” the other boy says, and the pair walk away.

he feels his heart drop to the ground. he can almost hear the ghostly splatter as it hits the linoleum. (this is the first time anyone has ever said the word aloud, to his face. it will not be the last.) and the awful, horrible truth of it all is that edmund is a king. he’s a king and he doesn’t start arguments, he doesn’t start fights, he holds trials and looks his enemy dead in the eyes and serves them their sentence. he is a king and he will not stand for insults – but here, in the city, in this world, he’s just another teenager, another lost cause, and he doesn’t know what to make of that. does he start the fights, now? he knows he can win them. does he talk people down? his mind won’t filter much more than curses.

but it doesn’t matter what he does, because the two trolls are gone, and the second bell is ringing overhead, a funeral toll.

edmund walks to his own death sentence with his head held high.

\\

it doesn’t take long for the other boys in his class to latch on to how different he is. he has an air of indifference, of royalty. some of the boys nudge each other when edmund pevensie walks by, eye his solidly set shoulders and even steps. he walks with the gait of one of the much older boys, the ones who came back from war with haunted eyes and hollow faces. if he deigns to nod at them, the other boys will nod back, but they don’t talk to him – somehow, edmund pevensie is above them, though none could say why.

they notice his cool demeanour when chalking answers on the blackboard, the ease with which he handles his fencing blade, the way his mouth crooks just a little when his opponent across the chess board realises he has backed them right into a corner. they offer him a spot on the fencing team, the chess team, the maths team – he politely declines each and every one. they wonder why, but they don’t meditate on it. what would be the point in asking, anyway?

some of the boys befriend him in a distant sort of way, content to sit quietly with him in the library, to partner with him in science classes, to call greetings to him every morning and bid him a good day when the final bell rings. he is kind, if quiet, in their eyes, prone to disappearing. most days, someone will report seeing him walking over to the girl’s school during their lunch hour, or walking the edge of the grounds with a pretty girl in plaits. they don’t ask him about it, ever.

mostly, edmund gets by without any trouble, much to the joy of his parents. (they remark on the changes he’s made since primary school while they sit together in bed at night, and breathe a sigh of relief that their son appears to have righted himself.) he does, however, find himself in his fair share of fights. much to his parent’s confusion, the fights are often peter’s fault.

(peter gets angrier by the day, trapped in a nine-to-five routine and working at lessons he already largely knows. he’s still very much the school’s golden boy, but the other boys take issue with his mannerisms. they think him uppity, arrogant even. he’s not arrogant, edmund thinks, he is just a man who has forgotten how to be a boy.)

so getting into a fist fight with some of the older boys before the home bell rings is hardly a new thing. neither is peter getting his ass soundly beaten. by the time the warden comes to break it up, he is sporting a quickly blackening eye and a bleeding nose. (edmund thinks he likes to lose on purpose.) edmund himself has always been one to fight dirty, and he grins through the blood dripping down his mouth at the older boy he’d tangled with, who bares his teeth at him with a wince. there’s a set of bloody scratches down his left cheek and his lip is split from where edmund jumped on his back and cracked his head against the stone wall. edmund licks the blood from his own lip with some vigour – he’s not even sure if it is his own.

on the steps of the station, susan scowls at peter while lucy looks on. suitably pissy, susan berates them for fighting once again as they trudge down the steps to their platform. edmund could care less for her ranting, nursing his bleeding nose with the sleeve of his blazer. lucy passes him her handkerchief without a word.

“don’t you ever get tired of being treated like a kid?” peter hisses under cover of the rumble of the train station. his eyes flash, cat-like under the dull lights.

“we are kids,” edmund reminds him, like they haven’t all had the exact same thought every day since they returned.

“well, i wasn’t always.” sometimes, edmund forgets that peter can be such an ass – it’s not like they weren’t all adults once, a hundred years ago and in the far future. but they don’t start in on him for it, because suddenly susan’s turning to ignore the waving hand of some strange boy, and then lucy’s leaping up, yelling in pain, and then the whole train station is tearing itself away without more than a warning pinch.

walking out of that cave and back onto that beach – so distinctly narnian, with its white sands and seas clear as ice, rocky cliff-faces hung with moss and sparkling with flecks of gold – edmund feels the air expanding in his lungs like a kiss to the cheek. he can feel the smile breaking on his face before he’s even aware of the exhilaration building in him; he’s turning to lucy before he can tell the muscles in his neck to contract, laughing at her matching expression of joy; he’s dropping his bag from his shoulder and toeing off his shoes before he can even think of a reason not to (it’s been a long time since he’s worried about his school uniform, though his mother does not share the same indifference.) racing across that infinite sandscape feels like a prison break, like taking that first bite into a crisp apple after you’ve been starving, like taking that first sip of water after going thirsty for so long. his eyes can’t get wide enough to take in everything at once, and he’s just running for the joy of it, remembering how it felt to do this every morning, to bounce down the hillside with philip and trudge through the waves under the endless sun. he’s missed this, he thinks as he spreads his arms wide, splashing through the water. he’s missed this.

there’s a moment, then, where they are kids again. like it’s their first time in narnia, discovering magic all over again. peter splashes sea-water at susan’s face, every bit the child he was so scornful of minutes ago. lucy goes down under the waves and re-emerges with shells in the pockets of her pinafore and brilliant emerald seaweed tangled in her hair. edmund laughs and laughs and laughs and falls in love with everything all over again.

his eyes trip over the skyline, the high cliffs and the dancing trees that top them like candles on a birthday cake, but for the life of him he can’t make out a single landmark, only a vague pile of pearly ruins cresting the furthest cliff, though he’s sure this is the same beach cair paravel used to look down on. despite the breeze flinging foam in their faces and rustling the leaves of the trees, the place is eerily silent in a way edmund doesn’t remember narnia ever being.

standing in the shallows, saltwater pooling around his ankles, he asks the question everyone else is thinking. “where do you suppose we are?”

peter looks at him incredulously. “well, where do you think?”

“i know that,” he half-laughs, “but i don’t remember any ruins in narnia.”

the others turn their eyes to the cliffs, frowning up at them.

“you have a point,” susan agrees, “neither do i.”

“you don’t suppose we could have come out somewhere new, do you?” peter asks. “the islands, maybe?”

lucy shakes her head adamantly. “i’d know this beach anywhere.”

“then where’s the castle?”

three pairs of eyes turn back to edmund like he has the answer. he shrugs, just as helpless as the rest of them. “i suppose we go check it out?”

peter starts out of the water without hesitation. lucy dances alongside him, shining with the joy of being back in her favourite place and returning the silver shells in her pockets to the waves. only susan hesitates, looking back towards the cave with some trepidation.

“c’mon, susie,” peter yells back at her, already at the steps up the cliff. “this was your idea, ed!”

edmund ignores him and narrows his eyes at susan. “you alright?” he asks.

susan nods slowly, chewing her lip. “do you think we should pick up our things? put them somewhere safe in case we come back this way?” it reminds him of their first time in narnia once more, when they fell through the wardrobe and susan’s biggest fear was catching a cold if she didn’t put on a coat.

he can’t help but laugh. “i’m sure we’ll find them again,” he says, looping the strap of his bag back over his shoulder. “let’s go.”

susan looks back at the cave one more time before nodding and splashing her way back to shore. edmund tries not to think of how he looked at the witch’s castle the first time – the same hunger he is sure was present in his eyes then lies behind susan’s now. he tries not to think about what it means.

\\

he’s not sure what he expected from being back in narnia. he’s thought about it, of course – thought about seeing the beavers again, dashing through the hills on philip’s back, spending cold evenings by the fire with books on narnian art, marrying the man he loved – but he doesn’t think anything like this has ever featured in his daydreams. their palace attacked, demolished; their things dragged to the safety of the winding secret rooms hidden deep in the castle’s innards. he has fleeting fears of the witch’s supporters, but that doesn’t seem to add up – he’s been in enough wars to know what catapult damage looks like. but who else would want to attack narnia? when they left, things were cordial with the surrounding islands and, unless someone had horrifically fucked up while they were gone, he doesn’t think they would have had any reason to start a war. but that begs the question: where is everybody, if they are at war? why is cair paravel not under reconstruction? and why have their things been hidden away like ancient treasures?

lucy finds her dagger and fire-flower potion, still more than half-full even after thirty years of use. it is wrapped in a familiar scarf – red and woollen but smelling of dust and salt. “mr tumnus,” lucy murmurs, “i wonder where he is.”

“perhaps we’ll meet him again,” peter says, blowing dust off his old shield.

“has anyone got my horn?” susan calls from her recess. “it’s not with the rest of my things.”

edmund shifts a few things in his own chest – he finds his crown wrapped securely in the blue velvet cloak he was wearing the day they left, and when he holds it in both hands, he finds the weight of it is much more than he remembers. there are a few of his old tunics and his ceremonial cloaks in here too, but largely books and papers from his court, old sketches and the rest of his gold chess set. finally, fallen between a pair of official-looking scrolls, he finds what he was looking for – the feathered comb his darling wore the first time they met. it looks old, the feathers bent but not broken, and he frowns at it as he smooths out the barbs. it is fragile between his fingers, bone and memory. it isn’t right. who could have put it there? his beloved would not have parted with it except for if –

“everyone we knew – they’re all gone,” lucy whispers.

he doesn’t cry. he doesn’t cry. when his eyes start to sting, he presses the comb back amongst the folds of his cloak, alongside his crown, and returns them to his chest. it is a funeral in its own right – a final parting, a hundred years too late.

\\

it is chance that leads them to trumpkin. fortunately, he knows where this caspian guy could be, and is thus their only source of information in this new version of narnia. unfortunately, he’s dirty, bloodied, and pricklier than edmund remembers dwarves being, but he supposes that’s what happens when you’ve been living underground for the past thousand years.

(“good. i want to find this bastard who’s stolen my horn,” susan grumbles once trumpkin has promised to take them to caspian.

“he did bring us back, though,” lucy pipes up thoughtfully.

“he’s about to wish he didn’t,” susan huffs. she continues glowering darkly all the way through the shuddering woods. it’s all edmund can do to keep from bursting out laughing.)

\\

their first meeting could go better. they find caspian in the woods, only a day’s travel from the beach. or, caspian finds them, and tries to decapitate peter. (edmund’s not blaming him. they’ve all thought about it.)

he wakes up to screaming. sitting bolt upright, he can make out susan rushing towards the woods with an arrow already notched. he grabs one of his swords without question and runs after her, trumpkin on his heels, complaining. edmund knows how he feels – he hasn’t even got his boots on right.

“what the hell is happening?” he whispers when he catches up with susan, and the three of them push past the silent treeline.

“lucy,” she gasps in response. “i woke up and she and peter were gone –”

they burst into the clearing to the sounds of clashing swords. susan shouts, and lucy retreats to edmund’s side immediately. she hasn’t got her dagger out, so edmund assumes she’s not in danger, but he lifts his own sword defensively anyway, though there’s not much he can do. it looks as if peter has sufficiently handled the situation, or at least tried to.

the situation is apparently the epitome of tall, dark and handsome that edmund has only ever seen in his dreams. he’s also, apparently, prince caspian (the tenth – and it appears to please peter to no end that he has more titles than this guy) and the one who called them back in the first place.

“you aren’t exactly what i expected,” caspian says, and his strange accent makes the hair on the back of edmund’s neck stand up.

“neither are you,” he replies, expertly averting his eyes. caspian’s back-up appears to consist of a mouse with a sword, a badger, another dwarf, several centaurs and a black minotaur. edmund surveys them with what he hopes looks like kingly appraisal, mostly so he doesn’t have to meet caspian’s eye.

it doesn’t work. the moment he chances another look at caspian, he finds the other boy is already gazing at him, mouth slightly parted and eyes wide. edmund frowns and stares at the ground, fighting the blush that works its way up his neck. he doesn’t look back up even when their two parties begin winding their way back to the caspian’s camp in uneasy silence.

“so, you need us,” peter begins without any more preamble. “why?”

caspian clears his throat. “my uncle – he wants to wipe out the remaining narnians. i cannot let him do that.”

“why not?” peter challenges. “what’s it to you?”

“my uncle wants me dead, too,” caspian says with a shrug. “the enemy of my enemy is my ally, no?”

peter just narrows his eyes.

“if narnia’s under attack then of course we have to help,” edmund finds himself interrupting. three pairs of eyes turn to him immediately, which he ignores in favour of seeking out lucy by his side. “of course we’ll help.”

lucy nods and beams in that winning way that broke many hearts not so long ago. “of course. you can count on us, caspian.”

edmund can’t help it – his eyes flick to caspian’s just for a second. again, the other boy is already looking at him, smiling soft and genuine, a hundred times more life-threatening than any battle. and then he turns away again, almost instantly. “king peter? queen susan?” caspian asks.

peter takes a moment to fix edmund with a glare that distinctly reads you’re going to regret this later before nodding once, curtly. “we’re with you,” he decides, and that appears to be the situation settled.

which is how edmund finds himself having a crisis in the middle of the woods.

it’s not cheating, he tells himself as their strange cohort shuffles through the silent paths of the wood. it’s not cheating. yet, on the other hand, he just buried the memory of his long-dead boyfriend literally this morning, and now he’s promised to follow some stupid boy into battle against his barbarous family members just because he smiled at him nicely.

(it was a nice smile.)

it’s not cheating if your boyfriend is dead, he keeps telling himself. and it’s not like he’s doing anything about it – and he’s not going to. he hasn’t spoken a word to caspian himself, hasn’t done anything more than look. but it feels like enough.

edmund’s never been one to wax poetic – he’s certainly not very good at it – but that’s how it was the first time he met his lover on those high mountains. eyes like earth and skin warm as sun-baked sand. hair like a silken river. he can remember in vivid, vivid detail every bump and ridge of that boy’s face. how kissing him felt like wild-fire; he blushes thinking about it. stop it, stop it, he tells his head, but the images are already there. he’s not about to make it even weirder by introducing caspian to those thoughts. he shakes his head as if he can dislodge the images and meets a pair of eyes as he looks up. caspian is walking ahead of him, side by side in uneasy truce with peter, but he manages to catch edmund’s eye at just that moment, and smiles again.

he smiles. it’s not even timid or thankful like before – it’s full-blown, like they share some kind of secret, and cuts a dimple in caspian’s cheek. edmund thinks he might melt. instead, he winces and ducks his head, trying to swallow down the rising feeling in his stomach, only for it to get caught in his throat and make him cough.

“are you alright?” the badger waddling along beside him asks.

“i’ll live,” he gasps, but it certainly doesn’t feel like it. his cheeks are burning.

he’s not going to start thinking of caspian in poetry, in art forms – he isn’t – but he can already feel that burning, tightening sensation forming in his gut, one he’s managed to keep at bay for years now, and it’s threatening to swallow him whole. he thinks he might throw up.

his darling was self-assured and easy and never pushed – he knew where to keep his hands to avoid edmund’s panic attacks, and he knew how to talk him out of shutting down. it was to be expected, he would say, that edmund would be so uncertain, coming from a place where his love could have killed him. and it’s something he understands now, something he never forces down, but he still finds it easier to ignore crushes than to do anything about them – and this isn’t a crush, because he literally met caspian less than an hour ago, he’s just. caspian is just. he’s pretty. edmund doesn’t want to think it, and the idea makes him blush again, but it’s true – caspian’s all angles and tanned skin and dark hair and he’s tall, taller than edmund anyway, and if that doesn’t just make him weak at the knees . . . he wants to draw him in charcoal and ink, chalk on black paper, chiaroscuro like a black-and-white film. ink and sharp points like the final letters of the alphabet.

but he’s not going to do anything about it. he’s resolute on that point; he’s already seen the look on susan’s face. and he’s used to this, to keeping these thoughts inside. it’ll be fine. he’ll only talk to him if he really needs to, won’t go near him or do anything stupid that’ll make him fall harder. he’ll just hope it goes away. hopefully.

he sneaks one more look in caspian’s direction. the other boy (how old is he anyway? he looks about peter’s age, maybe older – or, maybe younger, if you take into account the thousand-year age gap) laughs at something peter has just said, and the sound carries back over the marching crowd like siren-song. it sounds to edmund like summer days and warm drinks. he hates it.

he is absolutely not going to say a word to caspian, ever.

\\

edmund breaks his own promise not three hours later.

he runs into caspian in one of the winding halls of the strange, warren-like grave that has been constructed around the stone table. he’s stood staring at the cave paintings that cover the dusty walls, fingers hovering over the space between edmund and susan’s painted thrones, and he doesn’t seem to have noticed edmund approaching. edmund would totally leave him to it, except that it’s a small corridor and there’s no way for him to get past if caspian doesn’t budge over a bit, and it doesn’t look like he’s planning on going anywhere soon. before he can even think to stop them, the words come tumbling out of his mouth.

“they got that bit wrong.”

caspian jumps and his free hand flies to the handle of his sword. edmund’s own hand twitches towards his own like a reflex, but he stops it in time – he’s not so lucky with the smile that spreads over his face, however.

“king edmund,” caspian says. his name sounds so different in caspian’s mouth, edmund thinks. he does not think about the other ways he could get caspian to say his name. “forgive me, i did not hear you approach.”

edmund shrugs like he could care less, though his heart is thrumming. “you can call me ed,” he tells him. “peter’s the only one who’s really a stickler for titles.” that’s a lie. he just wants to hear caspian say his name again.

caspian nods and smiles slightly but says nothing else. he looks awkward now, as if he’s been caught looking at something he shouldn’t have, a kid with his hand in the biscuit tin. edmund steps forward and taps the rocky surface of his own painted face with measured carelessness, tells him, “my throne was on peter’s right. susan was on the left, and lucy’s was next to hers.”

he feels it when caspian exhales behind him. goosebumps explode on the back of his neck. “i wonder why they painted it like this,” caspian says, tracing the space beneath edmund’s painted throne with one finger. his touch leaves a line in the red dust.

“they built this place after we were gone,” edmund murmurs. “aslan’s how certainly wasn’t here when we were – i suppose they painted these based on stories their ancestors told them. that’s probably why they’re missing so many pieces.”

“they are?” caspian asks, and edmund sees him half-turn towards him out of the corner of his eye.

edmund nods and doesn’t look away from his own painted face. it’s not a very good likeness, if he’s honest. “do you know them? the stories?”

“a little,” caspian admits, and edmund thinks he might smile a little bashfully. “my nurse used to tell me stories of narnia and its golden age. about your being kidnapped by the witch.”

edmund turns to brush away the fine layer of dirt that covers the painted lamppost of the wastelands. where it all began. “i wasn’t kidnapped,” he says simply, marked with the kind of resignation you get when you’ve had to explain your mistakes many times over. “i betrayed my family.”

caspian is quiet for a moment. then, he says, “but you were at aslan’s camp – they rescued you. and you are here, at the beaver’s dam, and at the battle of beruna.” he points out each corresponding illustration.

“yes,” edmund murmurs. “they rescued me. but i betrayed them first – the witch offered to let me be king. i was a stupid kid, and i almost turned my family over to her for sweets.” it’s not a story that ever gets easier to tell.

“but you came back,” caspian says. “you realised your mistake.”

he smiles ruefully. “not for a good while.” he traces a finger across the illustrated hem of lucy’s dress and adds, “though i suppose no one wants to hear a tale about a cruel young boy who got to be a king.”

when caspian remains silent, edmund turns to him and smiles sadly, pressing his back against the wall. “i won’t be surprised if you think less of me.”

caspian shakes his head. “i don’t. i don’t.”

“oh.” edmund ducks his head, a little undone. “well, that’s alright then.”

“besides,” caspian continues, “you always were my favourite pevensie.” and, when edmund meets his eye, he is smiling again.

in the flickering light of the lantern between them, edmund’s heart races. everything around them is painted in earthen tones and the light turns caspian’s skin almost golden. his smile is sweet and genuine and hurts to look at. they are a lot closer than edmund thought they were – or maybe the tunnel is just smaller than he thought it was.

“oh,” he chokes out. caspian’s smile doesn’t falter. he wants to smile back so badly, but he doesn’t. “i should go find peter.”

“your majesty.” caspian bows his head and steps away, pressing himself close enough to the opposite wall that edmund can pass by without touching him, though he can still smell the sweat and dust that sticks to caspian’s skin. he hopes it is too dark for the other boy to notice his shiver.

\\

he backs peter’s plan to raid the castle because it’s the right thing to do, from a strategist’s point of view. if they stay in the how, the telmarines will most definitely wait to starve them out, and then they’ll be in for the worst of it. if they attack now, at least they have the element of surprise.

still, the look on caspian’s face makes him want to change his answer. he looks torn, pained in a way edmund can’t explain. he knows caspian must have mixed feelings about it – after all, the castle is his home, these are the people who raised him, but they’re also the people who want to kill him. it’s the right thing to do, even if it’s the hardest.

(it’s the right thing to do out of the two choices they are faced with. as much as he wants to believe, it doesn’t look like aslan is coming to save them any time soon.)

so the plan is set. they leave lucy in charge of the vulnerable, patron saint of comfort, and head out in the dead of night, hoping to cut the head off the snake without alerting anyone – in and out, quick as that.

it does not go as planned.

it isn’t until much later that edmund hears about what happened between caspian and his uncle, not until after the fight is over and they have returned with a bare skeleton of a force. he spends most of the raid trying to work his damn torch and getting shot at by the telmarine soldiers he keeps accidentally running in to – and then he’s too focused then on getting trumpkin back and checking in on the troops they do have left to spend time throwing blame around. peter and caspian don’t seem to share his reserve. they have their swords at each other’s necks almost as soon as they touchdown.

“stop it!” he finds himself yelling. there’s more to this fight than two angry boys – this is a struggle of power, of authority, of blame and hormones, and edmund is sick of it. as soon as caspian stalks off and lucy has accompanied trumpkin back inside, he pushes peter with all the strength he can muster.

peter stumbles back, weary and tired, but rounds on edmund immediately. “what the fuck was that for?” he spits.

“you, being a stupid prat!” edmund shouts back.

“it wasn’t my fault!”

“and it wasn’t his either!”

“we could have won that if he’d just stuck to the plan –”

“this is about more than that. this is about you trying to prove you can still be king –”

peter is red in the face when he screams, “i am king!”

edmund stops in his tracks, breathing hard. they’ve had this argument too many times to count. they’ve always fought, and they’ve always hit hard and fast and gone straight for the jugular. they are wildcats stuck in each other’s territory, hoping for the best, and one must always secede, and it is never peter. that’s why edmund’s the just one, the strategist, the judge, the truthteller, the anvil. peter needs edmund just as much as edmund needs him, but peter doesn’t understand that in the same way edmund does. they’ve lived more than fifty years by each other’s sides, and edmund still can’t figure out how to make the words stick.

he shakes his head wearily. “you don’t need to prove yourself to me, pete. you don’t need to prove yourself to narnia, or to caspian, or to yourself –”

“it’s not about that,” peter hisses.

“then what?”

peter sucks in his cheeks and shakes his head. he doesn’t meet edmund’s eye. “you don’t get it either,” he accuses, and stalks off.

“you better talk to caspian before things get worse!” edmund yells after him. and then he goes to lay down on top of the how for a while, because things are hard and he’s tired. if he’s lucky, peter and caspian can keep themselves out of trouble long enough for him to have a minor break-down.

he is so very, very wrong. obviously, peter does not heed his warning, because next thing he knows they’re back at the stone table with the white witch staring out at them from a sheet of ice. the upper half of her wand is planted in the front steps (its end still jagged and sharp from the swing of his own blade), and, stood with his hand held out to her in supplication, is caspian. before edmund can so much as open his mouth to start cussing him out, there’s a werewolf bounding towards him. peripherally, he can see peter, stabbing at a hag in the dim light, and lucy being pinned by nikabrik while trumpkin tries to fend him off, and all the while caspian is just staring at her. edmund recognises that look – he’s been there, fought it off, but no one is doing anything to stop it for caspian. he can’t hear what she’s saying, but he knows it’s some kind of enchantment; her words make the back of his brain itch, curl down his spine like petroleum. he stabs into the werewolf as it leaps at him, ignoring the way it’s dark body presses down heavily on his, and pushes it off of him. when he gets back on his feet, it’s peter in the circle, sword held up to the witch, but he’s just staring as well, and caspian is on the floor, out of the enchantment but dazed and confused and it’s all wrong.

it’s anger that propels him up the nearest set of steps of the stone circle, pushes him towards the central arch where the ice sheet is growing thick and fast, frost clawing at the columns on either side despite the fire burning in the oil pit. from behind, he can’t see the witch and her charming smile, but he can feel that old familiar chill and the way it tries to crack open the chasm of his chest. he drives his sword through the ice, jab-twist-release, right through where he supposes her stomach must be, a matching scar for his own. when he yanks the blade back out, the ice comes crumbling down around him, and then it’s just peter and caspian looking up at him from the floor.

he’s breathing fast when he reaches down and pulls the wand from the steps, cracks it over his knee and tosses it to the flames. “i know,” he says, and he’s so angry-cold-calm-scared that it just sounds like nothing, “you had it sorted.” it’s a retort borne from resentment, yes, but it doesn’t make it any less necessary. peter has always needed him, whether he likes it or not.

susan’s stood in the entranceway, one arrow notched, when he makes his way out of the chamber. the old, frightened part of edmund wants to shout, “well done, you missed the whole thing!” but he doesn’t. he keeps his mouth shut and walks out without looking back because his heart might physically beat out of his chest otherwise and his breathing is faster than he can possibly stomach. he hasn’t felt like this since his first winter in narnia after the witch, but it all sticks to him now, like wet cobwebs in the fog, and he can’t scrape off the fear.

he collapses in an unfamiliar cavern deeper in the how than he’s ever been, and cries.

\\

things don’t get a chance to go back to normal after that, because suddenly the telmarines are making camp on the other side of the river and they’re preparing to fight a war. in a bid to buy themselves some time, peter offers to duel miraz one-on-one. (edmund’s not got the time to tell peter he’s being an idiot, but he hopes the look he gives him is answer enough.)

edmund is gearing up to cross the river to give miraz their proposition when caspian grabs his arm and pulls him to one side. “i never got a chance to apologise,” he says, eyes sad and dark. edmund thinks, if he dies today, the worst part of it will be that he never got the chance to draw caspian.

edmund blinks, caught off-guard. “i – you don’t need to.”

“i do. i – for the thing with the witch. and everything else. i just . . . needed you to know.”

the look on caspian’s face is so genuine it makes edmund laugh. he doesn’t mean to (he’s never been good with shows of emotion) and it’s obviously not the reaction caspian was going for, because he frowns.

“you’re acting like i’m heading into the mouth of hell,” edmund laughs. “i’m just going across the river.”

“you might as well be heading to such a mouth,” caspian replies darkly, “my uncle is a cruel man. you must be careful.”

if he was a braver man, edmund might take caspian’s hand. as it is, he just nods. “of course i will be. you forget i was a master strategist long before you were even born.”

it is meant to be a joke, but it just makes caspian’s frown pull tighter. “i understand,” he says in return.

edmund does grab his hand then, holds it firm for a moment. he doesn’t link their fingers, no matter how he wants to, keeps it to just a simple press of palm against palm. “i’ll come back,” he says, and it’s a promise.

“i know you will.”

caspian’s hand is warm in his. he’s got long fingers and short, jagged nails, bitten to all hell and crusted with dirt. they’re nice hands, edmund thinks – artists hands. hands that make him think of piano players and cartographers and ink pens, not swords and plate armour. but they’re rough with callouses from holding his sword too, littered with tiny cuts, and as much as they are hands for creating, for making, they are hands for defending, ending, killing. the hands of a king, as edmund recognises them.

edmund tries not to think of all the things he’s letting go off when he lets caspian go, nodding one last time. “i’ll come back,” he says again, like it makes a difference, makes it special. it doesn’t, but it’s all he has to give.

\\

of course, it is one thing to be a master strategist in wars that took place over a century ago, but it is entirely another to be a literal teenager attempting to lead an army after so long without battle training. he doesn’t really think about that until he finds himself in the throes of battle, and by then it’s far too late to worry about it. all he can focus on are the swords in his hands and the enemy in front of him.

he sees susan shooting her arrows at close range, and peter locked in single combat with some balding telmarine whose lost his helmet. he ducks between the whipping roots of a nearby tree and whispers soft prayers to aslan as he slices into another soldier’s neck. he hasn’t seen caspian since the battle started. he prays extra hard that the stupid boy isn’t dead.

and, as quickly as it began, it’s over. they’re pushing the telmarines to the river and aslan is there with lucy, and it’s over.

he doesn’t notice until he’s faced with it how much he’s missed aslan. he wants to bury his face in the lion’s mane and cry for days, but there is no time. now, there is only caspian knelt by his side in front of the great cat, receiving his own title as king of narnia. it makes edmund’s heart beat a little faster, the idea of caspian being king – if anyone deserves it, he thinks caspian does. he wonders, vaguely, what titles the narnians will make him, now. (caspian of the woods, king of the shadows. maybe just caspian the extremely good-looking, if they’re as side-tracked as edmund is right now.) for the first time, when caspian looks down at him with a grin, edmund is already looking back.

they don’t reach the telmarine castle until late that afternoon, just as the golden sun is setting, but they make it. edmund thinks he must sleep-walk through the welcome procession, because he can’t remember anything other than the plodding footsteps of his horse when he tries to think back. the minute the castle doors close behind them, caspian offers to have rooms prepared, which they each graciously accept. he leads them up winding staircase after winding staircase until edmund thinks his legs might give out, and then, finally, he points lucy and susan towards one and peter and edmund towards another. edmund watches the way peter walks away solemnly, head down, and does not follow.

“there’s another room down the hall, if you want me to show you to it,” caspian prompts him when he doesn’t move for a few minutes.

“where will you go?” edmund asks. his tongue feels thick in his mouth, unworthy, but it is the only question he can think to ask.

caspian smiles sort of sadly. “probably to my old room, your majesty.”

“enough of that,” edmund huffs, “you’re king too.”

his candidness makes caspian laugh. “who can say why.”

“i can,” edmund finds himself mumbling. “you deserve it.”

caspian stares at him, seemingly caught off-guard. he lifts a hand and brushes edmund’s fringe back from his face slightly, his smile a gentle fluttering thing as he says, “i think you’re battle-drunk, edmund.”

and edmund just grins, because caspian has said his name and it sounds like a vow. “take me up to your room, then,” he replies, and he doesn’t even care that the words sound like a proposition that he really doesn’t (only slightly) mean. caspian doesn’t appear to notice, just laughs softly again and takes his hand for the nth time that day, (and, really, the fact that it’s becoming such a regular occurrence that edmund is losing track sets him slightly dizzy) leading him up one more staircase into the final turreted room at the top of the castle.

“like cinderella,” edmund mumbles as caspian opens the door for them.

“who?”

he waves the question away with one hand and says, “you wouldn’t know her,” ignoring the curiously fond look caspian shoots him in response. instead, he sits down heavily in a chair in the corner and, for the first time in forever, lets his muscles relax. he sighs, then, and watches as caspian rights a few books on the shelf at the opposite side of the room. most of the leather-bound works are lying on their sides like fallen dominos, almost as if someone bumped the case in a hurried retreat. a few of the books are splayed on the floor, cover-up and pages torn. its only then that edmund notices the general turmoil of the room at all. “why are all your curtains ripped?” he asks with a frown.

caspian pauses, like he’s been trying to avoid the question and is taking a second to mourn the time it took edmund to latch on. “my uncle,” he says by way of explanation, and gestures to the headboard of the bed. buried in the mattress and dark wood are enough black arrows to take down a giant.

once again, the thought that caspian’s uncle would try to murder him in cold blood makes edmund tremble with rage. “why would you want to come back here?” edmund asks through gritted teeth, sitting forward in the chair.

“where else would i go?” caspian replies.

“anywhere!” edmund almost laughs. “you have a whole castle. you can go anywhere. why here?”

“it’s my room,” caspian says with a shrug. he walks soundlessly to the other side of the room and starts picking up the stray feathers there. his footsteps barely make a sound on the stone floor. when edmund half-closes his eyes, caspian looks like some fallen angel, wings shredded across the stone. it makes him want to cry, or maybe kiss him.

“and now it’s your castle,” he says instead. “caspian, i’ll go anywhere you take me. you don’t have to be somewhere that makes you –” but he stops there, because even he is unsure how that sentence should end.

caspian is very still. the feathers he has gathered float in the cage of his fingers on some mystical breeze, and he frees them gently as he says, “you should sleep, edmund.”

“yes,” edmund agrees. “i should sleep.” he reaches down to unbuckle his shoes so he can at least curl up in the chair, but before he can even reach them, caspian is kneeling beside him, carefully undoing the buckles and pulling the leather boots off his feet for him, like it’s the only thing he’s ever wanted to do.

he’s not sure what it is about the situation that makes his throat stick like it does. “caspian,” edmund whispers, less a question than just a reason to say his name. it is the only thing he can get out.

caspian meets his eye. “yes, edmund?” his fingers linger on edmund’s ankle, slightly ticklish and just enough to make him squirm.

he doesn’t know what to say with caspian staring at him like that, so he just shakes his head. caspian smiles at him anyway.

“do you need anything, my king?” caspian asks finally. his fingers are wrapped almost too casually around edmund’s calf, and it’s not making anything particularly easy.

“no,” edmund says. then, “not your king, remember.”

“indeed.”

“you can just call me ed,” he says, echoing something he’s sure he’s said before. “i like it when you say my name.”

caspian smiles again at his words. once again, he looks strangely fond when he murmurs, “really?”

“yes,” edmund says though a yawn. “you have a nice voice. and a nice face. but more than anything i think you’re just nice.” and, with that, he closes his eyes.

“i think you’re rather nice too, ed,” says caspian, and edmund falls asleep with those words in his head.

\\

that night, there is a festival. it’s not narnian, per se – certainly nothing like they had in the golden age – but there’s food and there’s drink, and there’s peace. they serve dishes from telmar that edmund’s never heard of, and he spends most of the meal listening to caspian explain to lucy how each meal is made and which region of telmar it is native to. they studiously ignore each other’s eyes, each astutely aware of the other. edmund doesn’t remember exactly what he said earlier, but he’s pretty sure it’s nothing he wants to ever repeat out loud. caspian hasn’t mentioned it (not that he’s given edmund the chance), but he also hasn’t tried to have edmund’s head chopped off for merely suggesting . . . whatever he suggested. he’s not even sure caspian can cut off his head. can royals do that to each other? surely there would be a lot more of it in history if they could. edmund knows for a fact he would have beheaded peter several times over in the past.

so they sit with lucy as a joyous buffer between them and pretend to be engrossed in their meals. if edmund’s being honest, telmish cooking has nothing on what the staff at cair paravel used to prepare, but it isn’t the worst he’s eaten. he’s survived years of rationing; he’ll eat anything that’s put in front of him (even if it is wild boar and roasted peppers rubbed in too much garlic to taste of anything else.)

dessert brings issues in the form of edmund’s favourite dish. he’s talking to trumpkin, seated to his left – something about english trains, he thinks, or how a combustion engine works – when a bowl of goats cheese, honey and toasted almonds is placed before him. he stops mid-sentence, words clinging to the roof of his mouth, as if someone has glued muscle and skin together, sewn his lips shut tight. trumpkin frowns at his suddenly silence but doesn’t push him besides a quiet “um, your majesty?” lucy places a hand on his wrist and opens her mouth to ask if he is okay.

he has to excuse himself.

it’s too much to go back to the table, even after his initial break-down, so instead he cops a decanter of telmish wine from a passing servant and escapes up the first tower he sees. he can still hear the feast from this high up, hear the laughter and music, and see the tiny forms below mingling – he’s pretty sure he can make out lucy dancing a reel with some fauns, and hopes peter forewarned her not to drink too much. (when you’ve been thirty and basically drunk your weight in narnian moonshine, you develop a much stronger taste for alcohol than your technically still pre-teen body can probably handle. not that he’s following his own advice on that count – he’s never been good at that.)

from the other side of the tower, he can see the forest that stretches on and on for miles. the trees, landlocked but alive once more, dance to the far-off sounds of pipes and drums, and edmund catches glimpses of dryads darting between the trunks and sprinting across clearings merrily, celebrating their own survival. he takes a swig of the wine, gags at how dry it is on his tongue, and then washes the taste down with some more. his own party, he thinks, stepping up on to the battlements. his own celebration at making it through another fucking day.

he’s not more than half-way through the bottle when caspian appears. the sound of the door creaking open makes edmund wobble where he is balancing on the battlements, and he shouts, “for the love of aslan, you gave me a fright,” before he even notices who it is.

caspian jumps at the sound of his voice, though it takes him a minute to notice edmund stood on the battlements. his eyes go wide at the sight. “edmund. i didn’t know you were up here.”

edmund wobbles again as he steps across the gap from one battlement to another. he ignores his own name, held snuggly in that sentence. i like it when you say my name. a small, cringing part of him considers hurling himself off the tower just to avoid this conversation. “sorry to disappoint.”

“i’m – would you get down?” caspian asks, staring at him still from the doorway. he’s always fucking staring, and it drives edmund mad.

“why?” edmund sticks his chin out angrily and swings one leg out over the edge of the battlement, teasing death. it’s wrong, it’s stupid, and he knows that, but the night is beginning to scratch at his skin just that little bit too much and he only wants it to go away. “do i have to do what you say now because you’re king too?”

“no,” caspian says quietly, “but you might fall.”

he wobbles a third time and curses. he’d been doing so well before caspian arrived, almost twenty whole rounds of the tower. “you know,” he starts, loud and angry over the merry pipes below, “peter and i ruled for years together. i did what he said because he was high king, and because he was my brother. doesn’t mean i liked it, but i did what he said, more often than not.” he jumps down from the battlement and stumbles when his feet hit the hard stone. caspian steps forward to catch him, one hand outstretched, but edmund dances away before they make contact. he can’t have caspian that close right now, or he’ll go mad. he’s too close as it is – he can feel caspian’s breath on his cheek, taste the wine on it. “i don’t have to do what you tell me.”

“what’s gotten into you?” caspian whispers. “i’m not asking you to do anything –”

“and you can’t get rid of me, because i’m king, too,” he continues, stepping back. he spreads his arms wide, spinning and singing out, “you can’t get rid of me.”

“why would i –?” caspian cuts himself off, instead attempting to grab the bottle out of edmund’s hand. “how much of that have you had to drink?”

“how much have you had to drink?” edmund bites back. and, because he’s feeling extra spiteful, he takes another swig. caspian watches him swallow and glares.

“our wine is strong, edmund –”

“and?” he spreads his arms again, as if posing his question to the whole world. “i’m older than you. i’ve done things you’ve never even thought of, i’ve lived lives you’ll never even know.” he pushes himself back into caspian’s space, sneering. “you’re not my brother, and you’re not better than me. so you don’t get to tell me shit.”

“i’m not trying to tell you what to do, ed,” caspian says, and his voice seems hoarse. edmund almost wants to offer him a drink. “i’m not your brother, i know, but –”

“but what?” he interjects. “hm?”

caspian just looks at him. if edmund didn’t know any better, he’d think caspian looked hurt, but his voice is merely astonishingly tender when he says, “i just want to make sure you’re okay.”

edmund freezes, caught off guard. the bottle hangs limply at his side, and caspian takes the chance to pull it from his grasp. he barely even notices.

“ed?”

“don’t call me that.”

“i’m sorry –”

“no.” he clears his throat, because somehow, it’s become thick with tears and he can barely force the words out. “no, i’m sorry. i didn’t – i didn’t mean any of that.”

caspian shrugs. “i get it. you don’t really know me, and suddenly i’m king too –”

“no, i – i don’t care about that,” edmund says. “you’ll be a great king, i know that, and i don’t care if you tell me what to do. you could tell me – tell me to sail the seas for eternity if you wanted to, and i’d do it. i don’t care about that. it’s just – it was the dessert.”

caspian’s face crumples with confusion. “the dessert?”

edmund really, really doesn’t want to think about this right now, but he can feel the words clawing their way out already, so he leans back against the battlements and tilts his head up towards the skies. he doesn’t want to process these words while caspian watches him. “the first time we were in narnia – the first time, we stayed for three decades. so we – we had people, you know? like friends, obviously, but also – we had – like, lovers.” he swallows. “peter had a few, and susan had some but they never stuck, and lucy had hers, and i . . .”

“you?” caspian prompts. edmund hadn’t even noticed him come to stand beside him.

“i had someone. and he was beautiful.”

“oh,” caspian breathes.

edmund chokes out a laugh. “yeah. we spent so many years together. and then, tonight, the dessert – the almonds, and the cheese, you know – he used to make that. he would make it when he knew i was sad.”

“i’m sorry.”

he shakes his head, feels it scrape against the stone. “i can’t blame you. i never told anyone. i’m sure they know, but i – i never felt comfortable being loud about it.”

caspian leans back against the battlement beside him then, tilting his head back to look up at the stars too. “this is not . . . common where you are from?” he asks slowly.

“technically illegal.”

“that is – forgive me – stupid.”

edmund can’t help but laugh again. “believe me, i know.”

“in telmar, this is common,” caspian explains. “maybe not so much while miraz was king, but my father, and his father – they did not care. in telmarine culture, love is just love, you see?”

“you don’t need to convince me,” edmund sighs. “i just wish it was like that everywhere.”

“i understand.” caspian clears his throat. “you get to be who you are, here.”

“yes,” and he nods a little. fuck it. “i didn’t mean what i said before, by the way.”

“which part?” caspian murmurs.

“any of it.” edmund lifts his head and turns to look at the other boy. caspian’s hair spills like black velvet over the stone, framing his face like a dark halo. he looks like some kind of fallen angel, and it’s making edmund’s heart burn. (that could just be the alcohol, though.) “about not being able to tell me what to do. or not calling me ed.”

“you apologised already,” caspian says softly, “i understand.” but he’s smiling, smiling, and all edmund can see is stars.

“but i mean it,” he insists. “you can call me ed. i don’t mind it.”

“it’s alright.”

“i mean it.” he presses his palms hard against the squared edge of the battlement, hard enough to engrave lines in his skin. “i like the way it sounds when you say it.”

“so you have said.” caspian turns his face to raise an eyebrow at edmund. “does it not sound the same as everyone else?”

edmund scoffs. “of course it doesn’t.”

“how so?”

“how – your accent!” edmund laughs because this is so, so stupid of him, and he can’t back out of it now. “you’ve got this – you know.” he gestures uselessly at his own vocal cords, uncertain of the words.

caspian props himself up on his elbows, laughing. “i do not know! for me, it is all of you who sound funny!”

“it’s not funny, it’s just . . . different.” he shakes his head.

“well,” caspian begins, stretching and sitting up so he can face out towards the fields side-by-side with edmund, “i like the way you say my name, too.”

“now that’s funny,” edmund replies, “i say it just the same as peter, or susan.”

“no,” caspian says. “it’s nicer when you say it. it sounds like a name your mouth was made to say.”

“caspian,” edmund laughs, because he has to, but caspian’s eyes are far from joking when he looks over.

“i like it far better when you say it, than any of them.”

edmund swallows, but his voice is still thick when he speaks. “really?”

caspian nods but declines to elaborate. instead, he looks back out over the fields and takes a drink from the stolen bottle. edmund watches the line of his throat move as he swallows and tries not to think too hard on it. “okay,” he says. “okay.”

“okay?” caspian questions.

“yes.”

the bottle is wordlessly held out to him. edmund takes it, drinks, and tries again.

“i meant the part about you telling me what to do. i’ll do it. whatever it is.”

caspian raises an eyebrow, though his gaze does not waver from the dark fields. “i think that’s an abuse of power, telling you to do something you do not wish to do.”

“what if i do wish to?” edmund says. he can feel his cheeks flushing. “what if i want to do what you tell me to?”

the other boy turns at that, blinking slowly. he has such long eyelashes, edmund thinks, like a doe’s. edmund doesn’t think it should be possible to like someone’s eyelashes this much. “you can do things without me telling you to do them, edmund,” caspian murmurs.

he’s really not getting it. edmund falters a little, takes another drink, and pushes through. “what if i’m asking permission?”

“and what would you need my permission to do?”

they’re stood so close. edmund doesn’t know when they closed the distance between them, or why, only that if he breathes deep enough his chest brushes caspian’s just slightly, just enough to make his skin tingle.

“you know,” edmund whispers. “you must know by now.”

caspian’s smile is dark. he knows, alright, edmund can see it in his eyes. he’s just not doing anything about it. “enlighten me.”

“caspian.”

“yes, ed?”

he feels like a petulant child. he wants to stamp his feet and cry. he wants to – but he can’t. he can’t do it if caspian won’t ask it of him. even after all these years living with these feelings, he can’t act on them. “caspian, please.” even after all these years, he’s not over the shame of it. he thinks of all the people who would kill him for even trying this. he thinks of the look on his mother’s face if she ever saw him like this.

“edmund.”

he blinks back into the moment. “yes?”

caspian touches his cheek gently, palm pressed along the line of his cheekbone. “where did you go?”

edmund swallows. their lips are almost touching. when he speaks, he can feel the air between them move, “we shouldn’t do this.”

“okay,” caspian says, but he does not move away.

“because.” he closes his eyes. “because, eventually, i’ll have to leave again, and then you’ll be alone.”

“you said before,” caspian murmurs, brushing his thumb over the thin skin beneath edmund’s eye, “that you didn’t go home for decades.”

“things never happen the same way twice, don’t you know,” edmund jokes, because otherwise he’ll cry.

“open your eyes, ed.”

“i can’t.”

“please?”

“if i do, i have to stop looking eventually.”

“it might not be for a long time yet,” caspian says, but even he doesn’t sound convinced by his words.

edmund sighs. “can’t i just keep you like this?” he says, but he opens his eyes anyway. because a moment like this never lasts, he knows.

caspian’s smile is sad, eyes shining. “i have never met anyone quite like you, edmund pevensie.”

“there are plenty of people like me.”

“no,” caspian muses. “no, i don’t think there are.”

edmund takes the risk and presses their foreheads together. caspian’s skin is warm still, even in the cool night, and it makes edmund wonder whether he’s just the kind of person who runs warm constantly – and then he realises he will never know, after this moment is gone, so he laces his fingers through caspian’s hair and holds him as close as humanly possible, pressed together from knee to chest.

“would you still do it now,” caspian asks, “if i told you that you could?”

“we shouldn’t.”

“i know.”

“but i would.”

caspian nods slightly. his skin sticks to edmund’s slightly as he pulls away, and edmund’s hands slip from his hair slowly until once again there is space between them. caspian’s cheeks are noticeably flushed, even in the dark – edmund doesn’t even want to think how he must look.

“i will leave you now,” caspian says finally, “but you should think about coming back to the feast.”

he nods. “i’ll think about it.”

then caspian smiles one final time, and leaves.

edmund stands in silence and closes his eyes again, replaying that moment over and over.

\\

they don’t get a chance to talk about it – partly because edmund spends the morning avoiding caspian and partly because the whole castle is too busy to find a moment to spare. this, however, turns out to be the worst possible course of action, because, by late afternoon, they are gathered by the cliff’s edge and peter is explaining that they need to leave.

“but we only just got here!” lucy exclaims. at least this appears to be news to her, too. susan’s head is held high, every bit a queen, and she keeps looking over at the tree’s twisted trunk with that hunger. edmund would bet everything he owns that this was her idea, at the end of things.

“i know, lu,” peter says, “but we have a life back in england. it’s about time we got round to living it.”

they can’t argue in front of a crowd like this, so edmund takes lucy’s hand and nods. “we’ll go.”

“but what if we never get back?” lucy sobs under her breath, and it makes edmund’s heart hurt. he forces himself not to look in caspian’s direction.

“we’ll make it back, lu. don’t worry.” he chances a look at aslan, who nods.

peter and susan won’t be back, though. edmund supposes that explains peter’s mood this morning, strange and slightly left of normal – he’s about to give up his rule over a country he never really stopped being in just to live a normal life, and it doesn’t sit right with him, even though it’s the choice that makes the most sense. edmund can understand susan wanting to leave, but ruling narnia is like breathing for pete. it doesn’t seem quite right that he’ll never be back.

they say their goodbyes, and it seems like it’s all going to be okay. edmund can’t find it in himself to look over at caspian until they’re lining up by the hollow of the tree, but when he does caspian is already looking right back. edmund smiles in a way that he hopes conveys everything – every i’m sorry, every i thought it would end like this, every how do i tell you how i feel without saying the actual words. he thinks caspian might understand it.

and then susan turns back. and she kisses caspian.

caspian closes his eyes.

edmund has to look away, because if he keeps staring, he thinks he might throw up. and although his eyes water and his throat turns bitter, he looks back at the end of it all, because he is king of justice, king of taking the hard hits, king of ignoring his own broken heart. he meets caspian’s eye when susan pulls away from him, and only nods. tries to make it say i understand if you want her and not me, but caspian just looks confused, hurt.

“come on,” susan says then, and she’s all but pulling them through the portal, the gentle queen for the final time. edmund hardly gets a chance to look back.

the real world – or, at least, london – is grey and blocky by narnian standards. the white tiling of the train station is grimy and cold to the touch, and edmund would trade it for over-elaborate telmarine architecture in a heartbeat. part of him wants to yell at susan, to scream just because you were ready to go, didn’t mean we all were.

he doesn’t think about it. he can’t think about it.

his satchel is strangely light, he finds. when he rifles through it with one hand, he finds only papers and books. he’s left his torch in caspian’s that damn castle.

the entire train journey home he cannot meet susan’s eye. and he’s fine, because she doesn’t know what she’s done. he can’t look at lucy right, or answer pete’s questions, but it’s fine because they don’t know what has happened. he nods along, stares blankly at the scratched metal interior of their carriage, grips the overhead rail until he can’t feel his fingertips anymore.

he doesn’t think about caspian, or the way his face pulled with pain when they stepped through that tree. or the way he closed his eyes when susan pulled him in. or the way he looked the night before, heaven-born and blessed. he doesn’t think about it for as long as he can.

\\

by the time he lets himself think about it, they’ve been home for weeks. he’s been doing just fine not thinking about it, honestly, and the only reason it even comes up is because lucy mentions it.

“i still don’t understand why susan kissed him,” she says. she’s laying on his bed staring up at the ceiling while he works away at his arithmetic homework. she hasn’t even changed out of her school uniform yet, hat balanced on her stomach and wiggling her white-socked toes. she gives no reason for her change in topic, no warning. edmund nearly drops his pencil in shock.

“what?”

“prince caspian – king,” she corrects herself. she rolls over onto her stomach and puts her head in her hands, then, kicking her heels up against the wall. “i never understood why she kissed him.”

edmund sighs and keeps his eyes locked on the textbook in front of him. “me either, lu.”

her feet keep thud-thud-thudding against the wall. “i mean, did they even have a proper conversation the whole time we were there?”

there’s no point in even trying to ignore her, so edmund sets down his pencil and leans back in his chair. “why aren’t you asking susan about this?”

lucy pulls a face at this suggestion. “why would i? she’s been weird since we got back.”

“i’m not surprised,” he mutters. he takes a moment to set his pencil completely straight in the centre of his paper, then asks, “well, how would you feel if aslan told you that you could never come back?”

“she’s not upset about that.”

finally, he turns to look at her and frowns. “how do you know?”

“she told me. she said she was ready to move on.” lucy shrugs again. “like i said, i don’t understand her these days. why kiss him if she knows she’s never going back?”

“maybe because she knew it would be her last chance,” he murmurs.

“would you have?”

edmund chokes a little. “what do you mean?”

“if you knew you weren’t going back again, would you have kissed him?”

he blinks at her, mouth working soundlessly. “i – you –”

lucy rolls her eyes. “we know you like boys, ed.”

“but –”

“and, come on, caspian was totally into you.”

“lucy!” he hisses, and chucks his pencil at her.

“what?” she laughs and deflects the incoming missile easily. “i don’t mind it. peter was too busy being magnificent to notice, and susan –” she stops, realisation dawning on her face like a bad dream. “oh.”

if susan knows – if susan knows and she still did, then – then –

“ed, don’t –” lucy warns, but he’s out of chair and halfway across the landing before she gets the words out.

he slams open the door to susan’s room without knocking, and it crashes open so loudly that their mother yells from downstairs. susan freezes, half-way through applying another line of brilliant red lipstick that she definitely stole from their mother’s makeup drawer, and wipes the back of her hand across her face quickly. it smears like blood.

“hey!” she yelps, “do you mind?”

“do you?” he yells back. “how could you?”

susan arches an eyebrow and flicks the ends of her hair, turning back to her reflection in the mirror. “i don’t know what you mean.” her voice is airy, but her eyes skitter tellingly across the order of her vanity.

“caspian!” he seethes. “you knew that i – and you still –”

she whips round to glare at him. “don’t be angry just because i did something about it –”

“what do you want me to do about it?” he yells. “get beat up? harassed? you want to read about my murder in the newspapers?”

“that’s here,” susan snaps. “it’s different in narnia.”

“we don’t know that!”

“and i never will!” she shouts. “i wanted to kiss him, so i did! what’s wrong with that? you didn’t call dibs, and you certainly weren’t going to do anything about it.”

for the second time in less than five minutes, edmund is left at a loss for words. “but you knew.”

her eyes are like fire. “sometimes, edmund, you’ve got to take the things you want, not just wait for them to come to you.” then, she fixes her sights solidly on her reflection, lifting the lipstick once more, evidently done with him. “close the door behind you.”

he wants to chuck something. he wants to break things. he can feel his fingertips trembling, adrenaline overload, and lucy at his back tugging him away while susan just stares at herself in the mirror and paints herself in colours, true blue-red like their prophesied blood. she doesn’t even look like herself. she looks like a child playing at dress-up, a perfect parroted mimicry. she looks like she’s forgotten narnia already.

“some traitors can be forgiven,” he spits, “but you, sister, have betrayed yourself.”

the air around susan seems to shimmer as she stands, warp with heat as she walks to the door. when it slams shut in his face (and their mother shouts again) he’s surprised it doesn’t burn down to kindling.

“ed,” lucy says empathetically.

“just leave me alone.” he stalks back into his bedroom and slams his own door behind him.

(“what on earth are you doing?” their mother yells from the bottom of the stairs. “if this house falls down –”)

\\

helen pevensie knows something is different about her children, though she can’t say what, would never even guess. peter, her golden child, burnished to a sunshine glow, seems dulled these days, a blade without a whetstone – he’s still a good student, still the smiling force of the family, but it is like he’s lost his will. there is no fire when she looks in his eyes anymore, no drive to fight. he curls up in chairs like a lost kitten and it makes her want to pet his hair, though he is not a boy anymore, racing steadily towards adulthood.

when he mentions over dinner that he has written to their old professor and asked to go study under him for the summer, she places her hand over his and smiles her assent. the mood around the table is stony silent. peter is a sacrifice they all appear to have made, though who can say to what god.

susan, on the other hand, seems to blossom. ever the darling of the family, she grows into nylons and red lipstick, flounced skirts and heels. she sparkles like exotic tumbled gemstones on london’s choking grey streets and revels in the eyes that follow her. but while susan seems content in herself, her siblings push her away – once peter has gone, edmund won’t so much as hold her gaze. lucy’s lip trembles with tears whenever susan speaks. helen can’t make heads nor tails of it.

when she tells them that their father has a job offer in america, susan jumps at the chance to go with them. edmund and lucy stare at their plates, and when the decision is made to send them to their aunt’s, the mood around the table is not exactly joyous, but relieved. susan becomes a parting gift to an old friend you will never see again, old memories wrapped in silk ribbon to be forgotten, japanese white chrysanthemums.

edmund – her biggest trouble and the child closest to her herself – is graver still these days. he isn’t cruel like he was as a young boy, isn’t a quiet moment in a storm as he was when he returned. he’s determined, mouth permanently twisted down in a not-quite-frown. it is hard for her to watch, and harder for her to leave him to her sister (much more like susan than herself.) he grinds away at his schoolwork and never says a word. lucy, too, talks less than before, and as much as helen wants to call that growing up, something in her heart knows that it isn’t. lucy pours over bible stories like a sinner damned to hell, whispers prayers like a drowning soldier, hums hymnals over bubbling pots of soup without a hint of magic. her hair hangs limp now, the product of an adolescent without the skill or time to focus on looks. her poor, divine children wave her goodbye on her boat across the ocean and look positively normal.

she cannot say for sure what she has missed this time. (it is a question that will haunt her for a long time.)

\\

edmund and lucy arrive at their aunt’s in the early days of february. by late april, their mother has written to extend their stay three more times, and edmund is beginning to think they may never leave.

it’s all well and good for lucy, who gets her own room and an allowance from aunt alberta for helping with the cooking and the cleaning, but edmund has to share with their cousin. eustace is short, has to be forced to wash, and is thrice as annoying as edmund (reticently) thinks he must have been as a kid. he keeps bugs in jars in his room, constantly takes notes in repurposed school jotters, and more than once edmund has woken up to the devil shovelling dirt into his shoes. by the time the end of august rolls around, edmund must daydream about strangling eustace with his own bedsheets at least six times a day, if he’s restraining himself.

narnia becomes a strained topic. not just because of the susan debacle, but because eustace has a tendency to listen in doorways. (as it is, susan has been writing like nothing has happened, which infuriates him more every time he reads a letter.) if eustace starts taking the piss out of them for narnia, edmund thinks he might actually crack.

which, of course, means it happens sooner rather than later.

“are you two talking about faery-tales?” eustace asks nasally. he’s leant casually against the door jamb, eyebrows raised at the two of them .

“please let me hit him,” edmund grits out. (he’s not been king, really, for several hundred years. he thinks he’s allowed to be this childish about some things.)

“mother!” eustace screams. “cousin edmund is threatening to kill me!”

edmund doesn’t catch aunt alberta’s reply, if she gives one. likelihood is she isn’t even in the house. so he says, “keep talking and i might just.” lucy puts a hand on his shoulder to hold him at bay. he’s sort of grateful for that.

“mother, i think he might actually kill me!”

“we’re not talking about faery-tales, eustace,” lucy tells him, ever the peacemaker. “it doesn’t concern you.”

eustace waddles into the room, side-eyeing edmund like he might pull a knife on him at any second. if only, he thinks through gritted teeth. “it is my business,” he sniffs, “if it’s happening under my roof, it’s my business.”

lucy just shrugs. “then feel free to join in, but i’m sure you won’t know what we mean.”

boldly, eustace kicks at edmund’s knee with the toe of his perfect plimsolls. “aren’t you a little old for playing pretend?” he teases.

edmund keeps his eyes fixed on lucy’s wide, pleading ones. he thinks about giving in, about the look on his mother’s face when she left, about peter trapped in the house that first gave them that escape, trapped with no way of getting back, about caspian sat alone in a hall of thrones –

“piss off, eustace,” he says instead.

“mother, edmund’s swearing!”

“if you don’t leave, i’ll tell aunt alberta you’re the one stealing her sweets.”

“liar!”

“try me.”

eustace hisses through his teeth, steaming like a dragon. “you’re both babies. i can’t believe i’m related to you.”

“believe me, the feeling’s mutual,” edmund calls after his retreating figure.

(“thank you for not hitting him, ed.”

“yeah, well. i don’t think pete would think it very kingly of me.”

lucy raises an eyebrow. “at your age, peter would have hit him first.”)

\\

birthdays come and go without much fanfare in the scrubb household. aunt alberta saves ration tickets to make mealy, tasteless birthday cakes that they eat around the silent dinner table, and if the mail is on time, they might actually get a greetings card from their parents on the day, or a small parcel from peter.

edmund’s birthday that year is one of the luckier ones. alberta manages to scrounge up enough rationing tickets for grainy icing to top the even grainer cake with, and they listen to peggy lee records on the radio all evening. peter sends him a tin of hard shortbread (“to be eaten with caution,” the note says, “the macready made them”) alongside a small, carved figure of a faun (“courtesy of the professor”) and a book on politics (“for when you need something to fall back on here.”) the latter puts a bit of a damper on the evening, but he splits a shortbread finger with lucy in front of the fire and silently tortures eustace with it when his aunt isn’t looking, so it’s not all bad.

and at night, he dreams of caspian.

at first, he’s only in cair paravel, which isn’t unusual. often he dreams of the times they spent in narnia, but this time the castle is in the same ruination as it was the second time they were sucked in. the sky above is bright with sun, bluer than the sea, and ivy is starting to reclaim the white stone walls. he stands in the middle of what was once the grand hall and closes his eyes, revelling in the feeling of the sun on his skin.

“edmund?”

the voice shocks his eyes open, and the sight almost knocks the wind out of him. caspian is stood in one of the crumbling archways. his hair is scraped back in a messy, loose bun at the base of his neck, and there’s a hint of stubble on his jaw, like he’s not had the chance to shave these last few days. he looks older than he did last time, but not by much, just a year or two. it could just be the stress, or it could be the narnian passage of time, but it barely matters when all edmund can understand is that caspian is here and he is alive.

“caspian,” he whispers.

the words are barely past his lips before caspian is striding forward and gathering him up in his arms. edmund gasps, unprepared for his grip. the other boy (man? is that what they are now?) is taller, now, (whenever this is) and stronger. edmund can feel the hard lines of his arms around him and he wants to die, he wants so much for this to be real.

“how are you here?” caspian is asking, “how did you get back?”

edmund doesn’t want to think about the semantics of dreams right now – all he wants is caspian, to rejoice in this short moment. he shakes his head and presses one hand to the back of caspian’s neck, keeping him close. “i’m not,” he says. “i’m just dreaming.”

“but i –”

edmund pulls back to look caspian in the eye. “it’s my birthday.”

caspian’s confusion melts into that same brilliant smile that made edmund’s heart stutter not so long ago. (he’s beginning to think that, when he dies, the images that flash through his mind will just be the greatest hits of caspian’s smile.) “happy birthday,” caspian says, “my king.”

he laughs at that, bringing up both hands to cup caspian’s face. “don’t my king me, my king,” he teases. he can feel caspian’s pulse going beneath his fingers, hard and fast and so, so real.

“and what can i do for you, my king?” caspian asks, dark eyes drinking in every aspect of edmund’s face, like he can’t get enough, like they’re both drowning in each other.

edmund presses his thumb to caspian’s bottom lip, bold in his dream-state. the pink skin drags beneath his touch, and caspian turns his head a little to press a kiss to his fingertip. there are so many things he wants from caspian, each too much to ask, so he just shakes his head. “stay with me till i’m gone.”

caspian nods slightly in acquiescence. “of course.”

he lets his hands fall, caressing the slope of caspian’s shoulder and the line of his neck. nothing is enough. “how are you?” he asks, though his voice cracks a little. “have you been alright?”

caspian smiles again. “only you would ask such a question,” he laughs softly, fondly, like edmund is the one who is being silly.

“it’s polite!”

“i’m quite alright, my king.” his smile widens when edmund raises one hand to his cheek again. “tired, is all.”

sure enough, there are dark bags under his eyes, bruised violet with lack of sleep. edmund sweeps a gentle finger across the skin, a kiss without lips. “have you no one to help you rule?”

“i have my council,” is the murmured reply. “and trufflehunter’s company, of course. that badger is quite the politician.”

edmund smiles sadly. “i meant a queen, silly.”

“i know what you meant. why would i?”

“for company,” edmund says, and finds his fingers slipping down caspian’s cheek to his jaw, just to feel the tiny movements it makes when he speaks. “for joy. when we ruled, there were four of us. you are just one.”

“and why,” caspian whispers, “would i want anyone else?”

edmund closes his eyes. “you don’t even have me.”

caspian’s breath is hot on his cheek.  their noses brush. “i could call. i could have you back the second i asked it.”

“but you don’t need us.”

“who says i don’t?”

edmund smiles wryly. “i feel like aslan wouldn’t appreciate you using the horn just so you can jump my bones.”

caspian laughs at that. “maybe. but the option is still there.”

“you know i’d come back if i could.” he opens his eyes then, leaning back a little so he can look caspian in the eye. “if i could find a way.”

caspian looks very, very tired for a moment. then, he shakes the look away and smiles once more, a not-quite answer. instead, he takes edmund’s hand so they can walk together to the steps of the thrones and sit upon the crumbling stone. “tell me about your birthday. do the people of london exchange gifts as the narnians do?”

“of course,” edmund says. “peter sent me some things. and my parents sent me a card.”

“peter is not with you?”

“no. he’s in the country. lucy and i are staying with our cousin.”

“i wish i’d known that it was your birthday before you arrived,” caspian says. “i would have brought you something.”

“you didn’t know.”

“but it feels wrong!” caspian throws out an arm in exasperation. “and i have your torch back at the castle!”

edmund laughs. “you found it?”

“of course!” caspian beams at him. “i scoured the castle for it! i keep it alongside your sibling’s things.”

“it’s just a torch, cas, it’s hardly special,” edmund huffs, but he can feel his cheeks colouring with joy at the thought of caspian searching the whole castle just for one silly torch, just because it is edmund’s.

“maybe to you,” caspian says, “but it’s the only thing of yours that i have.”

a thought strikes him, and edmund reaches into the pocket of the trousers he’s miraculously wearing. (apparently, narnia will provide for those who enter in bedroom attire these days.) deep in the lining, he finds the professor’s carved faun, and he holds it out to caspian. “here,” he says. “now you have something else to remember me by.”

“are you certain?”

“yes.”

caspian takes it slowly, fingers brushing edmund’s palm so softly it sends shivers down his spine. “i shall keep it with me always.”

“cas, i –”

“yes?”

he’s not sure what he was going to say. he’s not sure of anything now, only that caspian is here and he won’t be for long. he searches for words and comes up empty.

“i have something else i could give you, my king,” caspian breathes. “if you’ll let me.”

“anything.”

caspian leans in, just barely.

“who’s caspian?”

edmund blinks awake, confused and half-hard. eustace is stood by his bedside, one shoe’s worth of dirt in a bucket by his side. this one might have worms in it – it looks suspiciously wet.

“what?” he croaks.

“you kept saying a name,” eustace says, “caspian. who is he? what kind of name is that?”

edmund lies back down in his bed, flushed and angry. “leave me alone, eustace.”

eustace huffs. “fine. you’re weird.”

“go back to bed or i’ll stuff that dirt down your throat.”

at that, eustace squeaks, drops the bucket, and dives back into his sheets. edmund stares at the ceiling until it goes blurry with tears.

\\

eustace doesn’t let up about the caspian thing for a minute after that night. edmund stops sleeping, just to make sure he doesn’t let the name slip out unguarded again; he spends one night on lucy’s floor, but eustace snitches to alberta and she near throws a riot. by the time susan’s latest letter arrives containing their mother’s hopes for another elongation to their stay, edmund has slept all of five hours the whole week. when lucy reads the letter aloud for him, he puts his head in his hands and stares blankly at the floor.

“it won’t be that bad, ed. don’t worry,” lucy attempts, tone soothing.

“easy for you to say,” he mutters, “you don’t have to share a room with that cretin.”

“mother!” eustace yells from the doorway, making both of them jump. “edmund is calling me names again!”

“must you do that?” lucy sighs. she sounds almost unperturbed, but edmund can tell by the red of her cheeks that she is sufficiently annoyed.

edmund doesn’t even ask if he’s allowed to hit him. he stands with balled fists and eustace gets the message, jumping to put lucy between them.

“if you hit me, i’ll tell mother,” he threatens.

“go ahead,” edmund hisses.

“you’ll have nowhere to go!” eustace tries again. “we’ll call the police! they’ll take you away!” the warning is dimmed a little by the tremble of his weak voice.

in his head, edmund can hear peter’s infamous line from his childhood: when are you going to grow up? grow up, ed, you’re so childish. now that he’s older, he doesn’t understand how peter refrained from kicking his shins in most the time. sure, there were some deeper issues there, but edmund was a brat growing up and he’ll own to that – eustace, however, seems to think he’s god’s greatest gift to man, and edmund sure as hell wants to prove him wrong.

“they’ll put that caspian fellow away too!”

edmund stamps his foot and exhales angrily. “don’t you dare talk about caspian like that!”

“why?” eustace sticks his head around lucy’s side daringly, sticking his tongue out. “is he your boyfriend?”

edmund leaps at him. even lucy can’t hold him back. eustace darts away from him, racing around the tiny room and shrieking. “a fag! a fag!” he yells, “cousin edmund’s a pansy!”

“i’ll wring your fucking neck, scrubb.”

“edmund pevensie,” lucy yells, “remember your place.”

and edmund knows, knows she means handle this rationally, stay calm and be a king but all he hears is eustace yelling faggot-faggot-faggot. “sorry, lu,” he hisses, and he decks eustace in the face.

the boy starts screaming hysterically, though these isn’t even that much blood. lucy shoots edmund an exasperated look as he shakes out his fist, but he could care less, he really could.

that night, edmund is sent to sleep in the attic, which is barely long enough to fit him while lying horizontal, never mind actually standing. he does not get dinner. it is, however, the best he sleeps in weeks.

\\

when eustace’s black eye finally fades, edmund is allowed to sleep in a bed again. aunt alberta says nothing about them sharing a room so, at the very least, eustace appears to have kept his mouth shut about the gay thing. edmund adds that to his list of reasons not to hit eustace again (on that day, anyway.)

it doesn’t stop him from being the most annoying person to ever grace edmund with his presence. instead of avoiding him, now, eustace spends most of his time silently sat in the same room as edmund, staring, and every now and then taking notes in his stupid little journal like edmund is some funny little science experiment. with nowhere else to go, edmund can barely find excuses to escape him, so he ends up spending most of his time hiding out in lucy’s room, where eustace seldom treads.

lucy reads him another of susan’s letters, full of the usual drivel, to pass the time. she mentions something about an american officer that makes edmund scowl, and another note about them staying till christmas that he purposefully ignores. lucy stretches out on her bed while he runs his fingers over the painted waves of the seascape hung above her fireplace and asks him, “do you want me to write anything back from you?”

“no.”

“you’ll have to talk to her again one day, ed,” lucy tells him. “sure, it was selfish on her part, but you need to forgive her.”

“i can’t, lu.”

“we forgave you,” she says, a guilt-trip obvious to both of their ears.

“that was different,” he mutters. “i was a child, and i learnt my lesson. i was traumatised, lucy, and you want me to forgive her for, what, kissing –” he lowers his voice “– some guy when she couldn’t even apologise to me? she’s meant to be the adult here. she has to apologise first.”

lucy stares pensively at the ceiling. “sometimes it doesn’t seem like we grew up as much as we did.” she sits up then, propped up on her elbows to look at him. “think about it – we were adults. yet sometimes we still fight like children.”

he scowls at her. he knows it’s childish of him to hold a grudge. susan forgave him for what happened in narnia the first time – which was, arguably, much worse than kissing a boy – but this is different. this is caspian. that was an enchantment, while he was sick and sad and so, so young. she knew what she was doing, knew how he felt. and she’s so different now, fickle and fierce. it makes his heart hurt for the susan who loved logic and singing with birds.

“she’s different, now,” he argues.

“it’s called growing up, ed.”

“and i’ve always hated it.”

“hey,” lucy says, coming to stand beside him. “you’re an adult, now – in this world, too.” she raises a knowing eyebrow.

he rolls his eyes. “fine. fine, i’ll write her.”

lucy wraps her arms around him and gives a little sigh. “thanks, ed.” then she lets go, moving to her desk for paper and pens.

he drags his fingers over the painting, feeling the grooves and dents left by the brush in the paint, and wishes he was back on that narnian beach.

\\

dear susan,

i’m writing to you because lucy told me to

                              because i forgive you

                             because i’m sorry

                            because i understand now.

\\

dear sue,

lucy says

how are things? hope america is treating you right. you mentioned an officer in your last letter, did you steal a kiss from him too?

\\

susan,

this letter took a while to get down, and i’m sorry for that. just bear with me.

i don’t claim to understand why you did what you did – and i don’t think i ever will – but i understand the thought behind it. some people get by in this world by taking things, and some of us step back and let those other people continue taking and taking until there is nothing left. i don’t think i’ll ever be one of those people who takes, but i’m learning to ask, and i think that is a good starting point.

i hope all is well in america. give my love to mum and dad, will you?

love,

ed.

he folds the letter in half three times and tucks it in lucy’s pinafore while he’s drying the dishes. she beams at him, up to her elbows in soapsuds, but doesn’t say a word about it, and he smiles while she natters on about a dress she’d seen while she was in town the other day, about the pretty girl in the bakery who waved at her through the window, about the tree she passed in a field that looked so astonishingly narnian she almost thought she was back.

“do you ever dream about it?” she asks.

“narnia?”

“of course, silly! where else?”

he sticks his tongue out at her. “yes, i dream about it.”

“the other night, i had a dream about trumpkin. he was in a council session, and, oh, did he kick up a fuss when he saw me!” she laughs delightedly. “trufflehunter nearly cried, i swear. and caspian –”

edmund almost drops the plate he’s drying off. scrambling, he blurts out, “you saw cas?”

lucy turns to him slowly, cocking an eyebrow. “yes, i saw cas. why do you ask?”

“did they – could they see you? did you talk to them?”

she frowns a little. “well, yes. it was very odd. one minute i was awake, and the next i was in the war council, and they were all staring at me. i could very well have been there in person.” she stops scrubbing at the burn-crusted pan she’s been tackling for the past five minutes. “do you think we can actually get there? in our dreams, i mean.”

“i –” he pauses. “i spoke to caspian, a few months ago. in a dream.”

lucy punches him swiftly in the arm.

“ouch!” he yells, offended.

“you saw caspian and you didn’t tell me?”

“there were other things going on!”

she throws her hands up in defeat, raining water over both of them and the spotless counters. “next you’ll tell me you saw aslan having tea with tumnus. honestly, ed, do you not trust me at all?”

“i do,” he hisses, “i just didn’t want to go broadcasting it, did i? besides, i don’t know if it was more than a dream.”

“did you try bringing anything back?” she asks. “when i came back, there were leaves in my bed. it very well could have been eustace, but they were perfectly pressed.”

he frowns, thinking of his encounter. i would have brought you something. “no, i didn’t bring anything back.”

lucy sighs wistfully and returns her focus to the pan in her hands. “it would be so nice to go back.”

“wouldn’t it just,” he murmurs.

it isn’t until later that he remembers the tiny wood carving of the faun, and the way caspian scooped it out of his palm ever so carefully. (eustace finds him tearing the room apart in his haste to find it, and quickly backs out again.) his search is fruitless. but it leaves him sure of one thing – they can get to narnia in their dreams.

\\

after he tells lucy, she comes to him more and more to tell him of her night-time drifts in narnia. often, she arrives in council meetings, or in places where trumpkin is. she’s been to tea in their new quarters on at least five separate occasions. sometimes she catches glimpses of caspian in the castle, or cheers on the side-lines while reepicheep trains on the grounds. sometimes, she says, she’s alone, in the valleys or the mountains they used to traverse in their reign. once, she’s floating on a boat in the middle of a sea of lilies. another time, she spends a night on their beach.

edmund is not so lucky.

christmas comes and goes. they eat greasy roasted carrots and lumpy mash with a side of dry, overcooked chicken. their aunt insists on playing board games that their uncle does not partake in, and they listen to the king’s address at night. edmund gifts lucy a sketch of aslan and leaves eustace a dead spider on his bed; lucy gives edmund a new tie and eustace a new journal. as their cousin accepts his gift bashfully, edmund raises an eyebrow.

“what is this for, lucy?” he whispers pointedly.

“can’t i give you a present for christmas and not have you question it?” she hisses back, but she is blushing the whole time. “aunt alberta, this one is for you.”

his question is answered on boxing day, when lucy invites him down to the church hall with her so she can meet the pretty girl from the bakery and some of her friends –

(“it’s not a date,” she tells him, checking her hair in her vanity.

he laughs. “it is so a date.”)

– and it’s nice. lucy and the bakery girl – ellen – disappear for the better part of the evening, so he ends up spending most of the night nursing a cup of coffee and steering clear of the girls who approach him to dance with their glittering teeth and pearl hairclips.

(when lucy finds him again, ten minutes before their curfew and twenty minutes away from the scrubb’s house, her hair is messy and there’s a red lipstick print on her cheek.

he laughs at her, wipes it away, and they run all the way home, lucy in her bare feet.)

the new year is rung in a few days later with much more cheer. slightly tipsy, aunt alberta allows lucy and edmund a glass of the port she’s been keeping in her pantry, and they sit locked in the bathroom to finish the bottle while their uncle snoozes in the living room and alberta sings to herself in the kitchen.

“it’s been six years since this all started,” lucy murmurs, spreadeagle on the cold tiles. “when do you think it will end?”

edmund doesn’t know, so he says so.

“when do you think we’ll get back?”

edmund doesn’t know, so he says so.

“when we do,” lucy starts carefully, “i might not bother coming back.”

“alright,” he says. “bedtime.”

“no – no, but i mean it,” she yawns, pushing herself up off the floor. “i mean it. nowhere feels like home like narnia does. and –” she points at him, finger dragging through the air awkwardly “– i know you feel the same.”

“we’ll talk about this tomorrow,” he says, stealing the bottle from where she’s tucked it under her arm. “sit up and drink some water.”

he leaves lucy for a moment with her head ducked under the bathroom tap just to slip the near-empty bottle onto the counter next to the now sleeping alberta. by the time he returns, lucy has brushed her teeth and she pats him sweetly on the cheek as he helps her back up to her room. he only leaves once she’s slid beneath the covers, and, as he makes his way back downstairs, he can hear her humming in nymphish.

he dreams of caspian’s castle, alight with carefully crafted paper lanterns and music, except he’s not in whatever hall they’re holding the celebrations in, he’s in a hallway that looks only vaguely familiar and he’s alone. it doesn’t feel like the last dream, either – this one is strangely lit, more vividly coloured, like photographs layered over each other, a life in double. he trails his fingers across the stone wall, and it is cold; he touches a paper lantern and it burns his finger. it’s real, or at least the pain is.

he drifts along the corridor until he reaches a set of stairs, which he climbs soundlessly, like a ghost haunting some strange castle. when he reaches the top, he finds a door, so he knocks. inside, someone answers; he pushes it open.

the room is familiar – lit by a roaring fire in one corner, it feels like home, all done in red and gold, the colours of aslan, of narnia. ivy climbs up one wall and he thinks he hears it whispering to him, calling out. there’s a bed in the middle of the room, solid and four-postered, and a table by the window that is strewn with books and papers and broken quills. drawn up to the fire is a chair, and in that chair is caspian.

he’s staring into the flames blankly, lost in thought, and painted in aching light and shadows, angles and blurs and contrasts edmund can’t even comprehend right now. he thinks fleetingly of the sketches of caspian that he keeps hidden in the book peter gave him, realises they do not compare to the real thing at all. seeing him now, all edmund can do is smile.

“shouldn’t you be at the festival?” he asks simply.

at the sound of his voice, caspian blinks and turns from the flames, face breaking into a smile when he sees that it’s edmund. “i knew you’d be back,” he says, standing up, “lucy said you’d been trying.”

edmund reaches for him as he approaches, pulling him in by the wrist. caspian is dressed simply in a worn white shirt, dark trousers and no shoes, but it might just be the best thing he’s ever seen. when he presses his nose to the fire-warmed crook of caspian’s neck, all he can think is home.

“i’m sorry it took me so long,” he whispers in reply.

caspian just curls his fingers into the space beneath edmund’s shoulder blades, burying his nose in edmund’s hair.

“do you have the thing i gave you last time?” edmund asks.

“of course. i –”

“good,” edmund cuts him off. “i just needed to know if it was real.” daringly, softly, he presses a kiss to caspian’s neck, and he doesn’t move away after. he feels the other man swallow, the drag of his throat against his lips.

“have you been celebrating?” caspian asks.

“a little,” he concedes, and presses another kiss to the skin beneath caspian’s ear. “have you?”

caspian shakes his head. “i’ve had – more pressing matters to attend to.”

edmund pulls back. “are you okay?”

“yes. i –” caspian sighs. “it doesn’t matter right now. how are you?”

edmund frowns. gently, he takes caspian’s face in his hands, rubs his thumbs slowly over his temples. “cas. talk to me.”

caspian lets out a long, slow breath. “i’m just tired, ed. i’m tired.”

his heart cracks open for caspian, the dark circles under his eyes. blood pools in his lungs. the whole scene feels like a strange sort of déjà vu. “don’t you have anyone?” he asks, fingers slipping down caspian’s cheek to his jaw.

caspian says simply, “there’s no one else i want.”

“don’t say that,” edmund whispers, because it’ll only hurt to talk about it. he pushes their foreheads together instead, closes his eyes and pretends they’re somewhere else, something else.

“i hate this,” caspian mutters, voice breaking. “i hate only having you like this, in – in dreams, and moments.”

“but they are all we have.”

caspian pulls away. when edmund looks to him, he asks, “are you ever coming back?”

edmund swallows. he can’t promise anything – he doesn’t know when they’ll get back, if they’ll get back – and, when they do, where they will turn up, or even if – even if caspian will still be around. as soon as the thought processes, he feels his eyes begin to water. he doesn’t want to do this now, he wants to enjoy the time they have, and yet – and yet –

it’s cruel to keep him waiting like this.

“caspian,” he whispers. the second he speaks, the other man moves back in and they are nose-to-nose again, cheek-to-cheek. edmund cards his fingers through caspian’s loose hair and begs himself not to cry. “caspian, maybe i – we need to – if i don’t come back –”

“no,” caspian interrupts.

“listen to me,” edmund chokes. “listen, if i can’t come back, you need to find someone else –”

“i don’t want anyone else.”

“and i don’t want you to be alone forever!” fuck it. the tears are already spilling down his cheeks. he’s already too far gone. “caspian, i –” he wants to say i love you, wants to say i’m willing to let you go if it’s what makes you happy. he doesn’t say any of it.

“don’t say these things,” caspian says, and now he’s the one taking edmund’s face in his hands, long, delicate fingers framing his jaw. edmund circles his own fingers around caspian’s wrists and holds on. “you’ll come back. i know you will.”

“we have to face the possibility –”

“are you so willing to throw this away,” caspian breathes, ragged and hoarse, “before anything has really begun?”

“if it means you’ll be happy.”

“i’m happy with you.”

his heart is going far too fast in his chest, he thinks it might sputter and die. “you don’t have me,” he argues, “i can’t stay. i can’t ever stay.”

“and?”

“stop acting like this can work, caspian!” he yells, tearing himself away. “we don’t get to have this! we don’t get happy endings like this!”

caspian yells back. “why not?” he says, “why shouldn’t we?”

“because we don’t! because it’s wrong –”

“what’s wrong about it?” caspian cries. “give me one good reason.”

“this isn’t the point!”

“isn’t it?” caspian laughs, almost hysterically. “no, here’s the point – you can’t let yourself be happy. so you deny everything that would bring you joy. you leave narnia, you leave me –”

“stop it!” he feels cold, cold all the way to his bones again. again, like it never left. “you don’t get to tell me how i feel!”

“then maybe you should own up to it!”

he can’t listen to any more of it, so he leaves. he turns on his heel and walks straight out of the dream, even as caspian is still calling his name. he wakes up bolt upright in bed, cold sweat pouring down his spine. outside, far away and all too close, the church bell rings out five times, and the world goes silent once more.

\\

two weeks later, edmund goes to sign up for the front.

he’s heard the horror stories, of course – men who come back shell-shocked, men who come back disfigured. men who don’t come back at all. he’s not worried. he’s seen his fair share of war, of pain and horror. he thinks his family will finally – finally – have something to be proud of him for, will take pride in being able to say, “yes, that’s our edmund – he’s fighting in the war.” and, hell, if he dies, they might even get a medal out of it (his own treasured gift from a country he fought for.)

caspian’s words echo in his head, over and over, whenever there is silence for more than a second. you can’t let yourself be happy, can you? and maybe he had a point, there – certainly, all things considered, (the small, susan-like part of his brain, he thinks) edmund can see how his decisions could be seen as self-destructive at best, sacrificial at worst. but it doesn’t matter – it doesn’t. he can’t be with caspian, and he can’t get back to narnia just by wishing for it. and here? he sure as hell has nothing going on for him here. but he can fight. he knows war. he’s content with death, at the end of all things.

when he reaches the front of the queue, the soldier takes his papers with a suspicious look. edmund lies through his teeth. it’s only lucy, crashing through the doors with her arms laden with bags, who saves him.

“edmund!” she yells. “you’re supposed to be helping me!”

he tries to feel angry at her, but all there really is the warm wash of guilt sloughing down his throat and a strange, disarming relief. the other boys in the line jeer at him on his way out, though he barely hears. walking out of the hall, he can hear only the push of blood through his veins. lucy is asking him what the hell he was doing. he can’t think.

“i think it’s getting bad again,” he says. he might cut her off in the middle of a sentence, but he’s not sure. everything is swirling, words on a page, blood in water.

a worried frown darkens her face, chasing away the clouds of anger. she swims before him like some sort of mirage. “what do you mean?” she asks, barely a whisper.

“the cold,” he says. “i feel so cold.” he looks her in the eye. “i want to go home.” and she knows he doesn’t mean the scrubb house.

she takes his hand gently. hers are so small in his, he thinks, skin smoothed with cream. even her fingernails are small, perfectly rounded at the tips. beside hers, his hands look too big, too easy to break with. he curls his fingers up as tightly as he can around hers and remembers how they would reach for each other through the bars of her crib when they were young, two children too big for this small world.

“tell me everything,” she says soothingly.

so he does.

of course, she tells him he was stupid about the caspian thing. (“boys,” she mutters crossly.) more importantly, she tells him to be patient about their return.

“it’ll happen,” she assures him. she shifts her paper bag of groceries from the crook of one arm to the other, and edmund is reminded of the way she used to gather flowers for the vases in the great hall, how she used to cradle little creatures and blessed babies. he misses seeing lucy in all her stateliness.

“it’s been so long,” edmund murmurs. “i don’t know if i –” and he stops.

she nods. “me, too.” he knows she understands.

they walk in silence for a bit, edmund wheeling their uncle’s bike alongside them, until lucy asks, “what would you do, if you could stay?”

the question makes him want to smile and cry simultaneously. “just being there would be enough,” he says, honestly. “i wouldn’t care about being king or living in a castle anymore. i just want to see our friends again. to live. to see the beach. to draw.”

lucy tucks her hair behind her ear with her free hand and smiles softly. “would you want to be with caspian?”

he thinks. shrugs. you can’t let yourself be happy. “if he wanted to be with me.”

she sighs wistfully. “what’s it like to be in love, ed? it’s been so long since i was.”

“we’re not in love, lu.” he pushes the heel of his hand into his eye, rubbing at it. “we’re just . . . we just like each other. it’s not like that.” i don’t want anyone else. i’m happy with you.

“yet,” she teases.

“lucy.”

“yet,” she sing-songs.

the rest of the way back, he lets her talk about what she would do in narnia – revisit the islands, talk with the trees on the mainland, return to the lantern waste and tumnus’ empty home in the caves – and thinks. he’s not in love with caspian. he barely knows him, really. he likes his company. and his laugh. and the way he looks. and he likes that caspian likes him back. they’re not in love, though, he doesn’t think. he remembers, i don’t want you to be alone forever, and thinks, fuck.

\\

the painting in lucy’s room explodes. or, at least, starts gushing water like a geyser. it sort of catches him off-guard because one minute he’s arguing with eustace (the damned kid, he thinks, he should really punch him more often) and the next the three of them are struggling for breath and kicking through the flotsam of lucy’s living area, looking for a way out. lucy points to the ceiling, bright white as the sun, and they make their way up – only it is the sun, and the boat from the painting is cutting its way through the water towards them, dragon-crested and buzzing with life and terrifically narnian, all while eustace lets out a never-ending garbled scream right in edmund’s left ear.

three figures jump the railings of the ship and go splashing into the water, headed towards them. trustingly, lucy swims to meet them and edmund follows, at least to escape eustace’s screaming if not to protect her should things go south. honestly, he’s not sure if eustace has ever seen the sea before, let alone learnt to swim – from the way he’s splashing around, edmund’s going to bet that he hasn’t.

luckily, one of the figures reaches them not a moment too soon, pulling up beside them smoothly just as eustace slips under the water and starts gargling on the salty spray. “good day!” he yells to edmund, red-haired and bright-eyed and altogether unfamiliar, hooking an arm around eustace’s middle and hoisting him up like he does this every day.

“are we in narnia?” edmund asks. he doesn’t bother with a greeting or a thanks, he just needs to know. his heart is thudding in his chest.

“yes, sir!” the man shouts back hoarsely. “this is the king’s ship, the dawn treader!”

edmund blinks salt-water out of his eyes as the three of them start back towards the ship. “the king?” he yells, “king caspian?”

“aye, sir!” the man replies, heaving eustace closer as the boy attempts to grab at the waves for purchase. “most call him the sea-farer!”

“couldn’t say why,” edmund says, eyeing the ship. the man laughs. eustace screams louder.

the crew onboard use a terrifically complicated pulley system to yank the lot of them back up on deck. lucy goes first, drenched to the bone and leaning into the arms of a tall, dark-haired man. then, edmund is allowed up alongside a third man, with his saviour promising to return eustace as soon as he’s stopped screaming.

he touches down on the deck steadily enough. he’s been on his fair share of narnian boats and, though he was never quite as home on the sea as lucy was, he certainly knows his way around. this one is made the old way – dryad wood given willingly (he can hear the whispers beneath the waves), and spider-silk ropes woven by the cave-dwellers of the east. even the dragon’s head has been carved with that old narnian care, so life-like that he might think it had been frozen that way by the witch if he didn’t know better.

it’s a beautiful ship, no doubt, but perhaps the most beautiful sight is caspian, only steps away and hugging lucy close as he sets a towel round her shoulders, dripping wet as well. she’s beaming at him, mouth moving a mile a minute. edmund feels like his heart might explode.

“caspian!” he shouts. for a moment, every harsh word between them is forgotten. all edmund can remember is caspian’s smile, and catching eyes at the worst moments.

their eyes meet across the deck even as he thinks it. he sees caspian blink, momentarily at a loss, and then they’re closing the space between them. every step seems to take years, like they are purposefully slowing down, trying not to make a scene. he can’t think about how things were last time they saw each other – hell, he’s not even thinking about the other people who can currently see them. as soon as caspian is within arm’s reach, he’s pulling him in without any preamble. they’re both soaking wet and shivering and there’s no way they’re finding any warmth in each other, but they hold on in spite. edmund doesn’t ever want to let go.

“you’re here,” caspian whispers, teeth not quite chattering. “for real?”

“for real.”

caspian pulls away, looping his arm around edmund’s shoulders in a way that feels far too brotherly and far too close all at once. “high king edmund and queen lucy have returned to us!” he announces to the ship at large. the sailors cheer, and edmund can’t help but grin at the narnian-ness of it all – minotaurs and satyrs and telmarines together and content. like a sign.

edmund opens his mouth to correct caspian over the wrongness of the term high king, but then eustace is slipping onto the deck alongside the red-haired man, still screaming and now flailing like a fish out of water, and things get a little distracted.

after introductions have been made and eustace has fainted dead away, caspian steers edmund and lucy towards the ship’s cabins. “we’ll find you some warm clothes,” he says, “and somewhere to sleep. of course, we have no dresses aboard.” this last part is aimed at lucy, who just shrugs.

“i’ll wear whatever you’ve got,” she says, rubbing her arms for warmth. “as long as they’re not wet.”

caspian smiles at her. “i’ll set you up in my cabin and you can get dressed there.”

“oh, no!” lucy argues. “i couldn’t possibly –”

“it’s quite alright, lucy,” caspian tells her, “i’ve got the captain’s quarters, and i rarely stay in the cabin. besides, the hammocks aren’t so bad.” then, without acknowledging him, he continues, “ed can share with me.”

edmund chokes.

lucy raises an eyebrow and grins at the same time, a confusion of expressions, but caspian is too busy breezing past the two of them and leading them down through the ship’s twisting innards to the aforementioned captain’s quarters. the whole place seems to be bustling with life – they pass a steam-filled kitchen and a room that appears to be plastered entirely in maps – and caspian chatters non-stop through the tour, filled with nervous energy. by the time they reach the captain’s quarters, he’s practically filled them in on the entire past narnian year (without glancing in edmund’s direction even once.)

the cabin is done up all in polished wood and red, intricately detailed, down to the handles of the desk drawers. the walls are covered in glass-fronted cabinets that hold trinkets and foreign-looking objects –

“oh!” lucy cries, peering into one of the cabinets, “my dagger!”

sure enough, lucy’s dagger and seemingly never-ending bottle of juice are tucked away on a shelf. caspian unlocks the doors and retrieves it for her, still babbling. “felt like i should bring it,” he’s saying, “didn’t feel right to leave without it –”

susan’s horn is visible in another case. edmund thinks he recognises a few books in yet another, and a gold watch and chain, but he doesn’t see the little wooden figurine. it twinges a little, like caspian didn’t think his gift was enough to keep displayed. or maybe that he took it down.

“i have this, too,” caspian says and, when edmund looks over, he is holding out a silver torch.

edmund feels his cheeks burn a little, thinking back to their first dream meeting, of caspian saying, it’s the only thing of yours i have, and takes it with a mumbled thanks.

“you have peter’s sword, too!” lucy cries, apparently unaware of the tension breeding in the room.

caspian tenses but nods. “of course.” then, awkwardly, he turns back to edmund. “peter would want you to have it.”

“oh, no,” edmund says, clearing his throat. “i’m alright –”

“i insist.”

“i’m fine,” he cuts in. “peter’s sword – i – it wasn’t meant for me,” he settles on eventually, stilted and unsure.

caspian nods hollowly.

the tension feels deafening, and he supposes lucy must catch on to it then, because she smiles winningly and says, “could i get those clothes now, caspian? i’d love to change.”

caspian shakes himself back into the moment imperceptibly. “of course – there should be some in the chests in the next room down. you can make yourself at home in there.”

“thanks, caspian,” she accepts graciously. “i’ll, um, leave you two to it.” she shoots edmund a grin (which he answers with a very clear glare of don’t you dare, lu) before floating out of the room. edmund curses her under his breath in what little old centaurian he remembers.

they both listen to her footsteps recede without saying a word.

“i’m not high king,” edmund says, finally, because they might as well get to it.

“neither am i,” caspian acknowledges, moving over to his desk. edmund watches him shuffle papers agitatedly and feels a spark of anger.

“then why bother?” he snaps. “neither one of us needs to be high anything. we’re just – whatever we are.”

“whatever we are,” caspian whispers bitterly.

“so you are mad at me.”

caspian’s head snaps up, and he glares at edmund warningly. “i don’t know what you want me to say,” he hisses, “if i start explaining you might walk away.”

“and this is why!” edmund argues. “is it not easier for you if i’m just not part of the equation?”

“why would it be?”

“so you can be king alone! so you don’t have to wait around for me and bother with stupid titles!”

“edmund,” caspian sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose, “how many times do i have to tell you that i don’t want anyone –”

“and how many times do i have to tell you that i can’t stay?”

“that doesn’t matter to me!” caspian shouts. “you’re here now! we don’t even know for how long, and you insist on fighting –”

he laughs hysterically. “oh, i insist on fighting?”

“yes!”

“you started it!” the phrase is so well-fit to the shape of edmund’s mouth now, after all those years fighting with peter. he almost laughs at the sound of it.

caspian rounds the desk, coming to stand in front of him. “no, you did. and what you need to understand is that you are the only one standing in the way of things, here – i’m all in, okay? i’ve been in this since the moment i met you, and whenever you stop being a self-defeating bastard maybe you’ll realise that, ed, but until then i’m not listening to another word of your bullshit, alright? we might have a limited amount of time here, and i’ll be damned if i don’t want to spend every minute of it with you, but i will if it means you’ll get your head out of your ass and let yourself be happy.”

edmund’s back hits something solid. it’s a support beam, he realises, and he didn’t realise he’d taken a step back until it was there. caspian is stood in front of him, still glaring, still towering over him, and edmund swallows. his heart is beating too fast in his chest. he thinks he might be sweating, but he’s still soaked from head to toe from his dip in the sea, so he can’t tell. he’s almost certain he’s blushing.

“anything else you want to say?” he jokes awkwardly.

“yes,” caspian mutters, “stop acting like you’re worth less than everyone else.”

edmund nods. “alright. thanks for that.”

“you’re welcome.”

“next time, just say you want to make out with me and leave it at that.”

“this is about more than that,” caspian says, but he’s staring at edmund’s mouth even when he says it.

“you want me to be happy, huh?” edmund whispers. “you want me to take control of things?” their lips are inches apart.

“i just want you to live.”

it’s a simple statement – i just want you to live – but it hits somewhere in edmund’s heart that he’s kept largely quiet. the anger in him softens, the cruel part of him that had considered walking out or turning this on caspian collapses. he blinks, trying to make out caspian’s eyes this close up, and they are sincere, warm and dark as always. he thinks it might be the first time anyone has told him that out loud, and it almost makes him want to cry. so he pushes up on his tiptoes a little, closing the last of the space between them, and kisses caspian on the mouth. for a minute all he can understand is warm lips and salt. when he presses a hand to caspian’s cheek, he revels in the small noise the other man makes.

“what?” edmund breathes, pulling away just for a second.

“you’re cold,” caspian whispers.

the epitome of throwing caution to the wind, edmund nudges his nose against caspian’s and teases, “warm me up, then.”

of course, caspian takes him seriously, as he does most things, bringing their lips back together, more daring now, pressing harder. edmund moves one hand to the back of caspian’s neck, relishing in the sharp inhale his cold skin elicits again, and threads the fingers of the other through caspian’s hair, so they are as close as humanly possible, caspian’s hands on his waist and the beam a steady weight holding them up.

“okay,” edmund gasps, pulling away again, “i admit it, i’m an idiot, you were right.”

“i’m aware.”

he has to laugh at that. he tips his head back, unable to stop the giggling, and caspian grins at him, repeating, “what? what, ed?”

“so romantic, aren’t you,” he teases breathlessly. “no, i – i’m happy.” he cups caspian’s face in his hands, thumbs stroking over his cheeks, and he doesn’t even need to force the words out; they come simply and softly, without the panic he usually associates with vulnerability. “you make me happy.”

caspian’s smile turns a little bashful, a little sad. “i’m sorry for being cruel, before.”

“i get it,” edmund admits. “peter always said i was a little shit growing up.”

caspian hugs him, then, rests his chin on edmund’s head. “do you think we argue too much?” he asks.

“i think we have some things to work on,” edmund says, “but we can get to that. like you said, we don’t know how long we have. so we should make the most of it.” he smiles to himself then. “right now, i would very much like you to kiss me again.”

caspian pulls back with a grin. “i thought you’d never ask.” just as quickly, his face falls. “what about lucy?”

“what about her?”

“she’s in the next room! what if she –”

“and?” edmund waves the fact away with a flick of his wrist. “she doesn’t care.” to prove his point further, he rolls his hips against caspian’s, smiling at the way his breath hitches.

“i think this is coercion,” caspian says faintly. still, he pushes his fingers under edmund’s shirt, wet and sticking like a second skin.

“oh, i love it when you talk politics.”

“hey,” caspian huffs, “shut up and kiss me.”

edmund doesn’t need to be told twice.

\\

he’s not sure when the comment about sword-fighting is made, or even why. all he knows is that one minute they’re arriving back on deck (as purposefully un-ruffled as they can hope to look after a solid twenty minutes of making out), and the next a sailor is pressing a sword into his hands.

“come on,” caspian teases, stepping fluidly into position, sword raised. “for old time’s sake.”

edmund can’t help grinning. “oh, you’re on, old man.” he sets his feet – and there’s a moment where he flashes back to peter helping him with his stance for the first time, reciting the oft-muttered line, when are you going to start doing what you’re told? – and raises his sword.

“old man?” caspian gasps in mock-horror. he spins his sword in an experimental figure eight, getting accustomed to the feel of it, and takes a step to the right. edmund mirrors him, taking one to the left, so they are circling each other, tension rising. “the audacity.”

he smiles, and caspian lunges, sword raised. edmund barely has time to swing his own sword up to meet his hit, and the resulting clash is enough to send those old vibrations through his arm, but he doesn’t lose his balance. caspian smiles at him.

“technically, aren’t you older than me?” caspian asks, drawing back his sword and stepping away. he feints, steps, lunges again.

edmund blocks him. “technically,” he admits.

“so if i’m old, what does that make you?”

“more experienced.”

caspian laughs, and the sound carries.

he knows the rest of the crew are watching, cheering and yelling, but he barely hears them. the world has narrowed to just him, caspian, and the clash of their swords. he parries, jabs, purposefully misses several hits that get a little too close to arteries (he has, after all, been trained to kill). it’s like a dance, and their different techniques make for some entertainment – they’ve never practiced together before, edmund realises, and he’s only ever seen caspian fight alongside narnians, but he recognises the telmarine flare in every twitch of his sword, the fluidity of his steps. its slightly dulled, edmund thinks, covered by that careful narnian defensiveness, unusual in its uniqueness. it suits caspian, that he should fight as he rules, as he kisses, as he lives – this strange, beautiful amalgamation of cultures.

the two of them stop with their swords pressed to each other’s necks, breathing hard and grinning.

“i don’t think you’ve lost your touch,” caspian murmurs under the crew’s raucous cheers. he leans forward just a little, not enough for any onlooker to notice, presses their foreheads together for a second.

edmund smiles at that fleeting touch of skin-on-skin. he thinks this is the most alive he’s felt in far too long. “if i had two swords, i would have beaten you fair and square,” he teases.

“oh, really?”

“really.”

the captain – a sour-looking, bald-headed man – sounds the call for dry land, then, and caspian turns immediately, sheathing his sword as he rushes up the steps to the wheel. edmund follows more sedately, handing his borrowed sword back to the sailor who had given it to him before returning to caspian’s side. 

through the spyglass handed to him, the land in question – a small, sand-and-stone island – certainly looks uninhabited, but, as caspian explains, it is the first of the lone islands and their best chance at finding a lead.

“i think we should send out a landing party,” edmund suggests, retracting the spy glass. when he holds it back out to the captain, the bald man’s lip twists downward with contempt.

“forgive me, your majesty,” he hisses, “but the chain of command comes from king caspian on this ship.”

it’s not something edmund’s expecting. in truth, he’d forgotten about the contention of power from the moment he’d kissed caspian and, sudden and swift as the issue is in its return, it feels a little like a punch to the stomach. when he tries to catch caspian’s eye, the other man doesn’t look at him, but keeps his eyes firmly fixed on the island – and that hurts a little more, the fact that caspian won’t even acknowledge the situation.

“right,” he says. he tries not to let the word sound as bitter as it feels coming up. “of course.”

the captain nods.

“ready the boats, drinian,” caspian tells the captain. “we’re going ashore.”

\\

of course, things don’t go as planned.

edmund’s expecting an empty town, maybe a long-abandoned market and desolate church, stray dogs if they’re lucky – and in some ways, he’s spot on. he just didn’t expect sword-wielding slavers.

he watches them drag lucy and eustace away and thinks, stupid boy can’t even be trusted as a lookout while he and caspian are frog-marched to a dungeon, following which they are (rather unceremoniously) knocked out.

by the time he’s woken up from his iron-bar induced nap, caspian’s up and kicking at the door, wide awake and righteously angry. laying on the dusty floor of their new home, edmund looks at him and tries not to draw parallels with avenging angels. still – it’s a little hard not to when caspian’s practically glowing with rage, so he takes a moment to admire the view and ignore the stinging pain that still lingers by his left ear before he sits up and inevitably breaks the spell.

caspian’s eyes are on him the moment he moves, eyebrows pulling together in instantaneous concern. he moves to crouch by edmund’s head and cups his cheek gently. his thumb lingers for a second over edmund’s lips. “how are you feeling?”

“been better,” edmund replies, not untruthfully, placing his own hand over caspian’s for just a second. “d’you know how long we’ve been down here?”

caspian shakes his head bitterly. “i’ve only been awake for a few minutes. god knows what they’ve done to lucy and eustace by now –”

the reality of the situation kicks down the hazy backdrop of the moment, and edmund pushes himself up quickly. his heart is racing, mixing with the sour, angry feeling curdling in his stomach until he thinks he might throw up. how did he forget about lucy? the acidic sloshing feeling crawls up his throat at the thought of his little sister lost, in pain, dead. crossing the dungeon, he pulls himself up on to the ledge beneath the barred window, straining to look through. how did he let her get taken so easily?

“ed,” caspian calls, only just standing up. he’s still a step behind, but apparently, he’s caught on to edmund’s shift in mood. “it’ll be alright, we’ll find her –”

edmund can hardly hear him. his heart is racing, a dying horse on a track. on the street outside, the sounds of hooves trotting and carriage wheels rolling and people shouting are deafening. it’s like the whole world came to life while edmund was sleeping. on the furthest side of the street, he can make out a crooked stage, upon which stands the smug slaver from the church, and a small crowd in front of it. a line of people in chains tremble beside it – and there’s lucy, head held high while eustace cowers beside her, hunched over. their hands are interlocked, manacles clacking against each other. edmund grits his teeth.

pulling himself up on the ledge, caspian appears at his side once more. “what do you see?” he asks, a warm, reassuring weight that only just keeps him sane.

“lucy.” he nods his head towards the stage and hopes caspian gets the message. if he unlocks his jaw, he thinks he might start crying.

“shit,” caspian whispers. “how are we going to get out of this?”

“you can’t,” the voice from the dark recess of the dungeon calls. “there’s no real escape.”

the voice, it turns out, belongs to a cock-eyed, crazy man chained to the back wall of the dungeon. he smells like a rotting corpse, which makes edmund’s stomach turn, but caspian crouches by his side as if he’s known the man his whole life – and, funnily enough, he actually does. he is their first lost lord, and they stumbled across him almost by accident. it makes edmund frown, slightly suspicious, but then the lord is telling them about the mist and the seven swords they need to defeat it, and edmund doesn’t have the time to be sceptical anymore.

the crew breaking them out is, also, suspiciously well-timed. edmund’s beginning to think there’s something else going on here, but he can’t quite put his finger on it. nothing is this easy in narnia – not as he knows it, anyway. there’s always some kind of hidden power at play, some kind of deep magic that no one remembers exists until the moment calls for it. edmund’s always wondered if fate in narnia is written in some great black book somewhere, if there’s someone keeping score, if his decisions are already drying in ink or if he has the chance to change things. the first time round, he thought he had a choice – he wouldn’t always be the traitor king if he made better choices, wouldn’t always be fighting to be in charge if he chose passivity – but he’s beginning to think it doesn’t work like that anymore. is finding the first lord here fate, or is there a logical explanation to this? he thinks lucy would say the former, susan the latter. (peter would ask why he’s bothering with such questions.) he slips the tip of a borrowed blade through the neck of a slaver like a block of butter and tells himself he’ll bring it up with lucy later.

of course, ideas of fate always bring up the questions edmund doesn’t want to answer. was his betrayal of the white witch fate? the thought knocks the air out of him like the next slaver’s blow to his stomach. was leaving narnia that first time fate, just as arriving was? thinking about it makes his hands shake, so he grips the sword tighter. he watches lucy wrap her manacles around a man’s throat and pull. was it fate that made them this way? (did fate make them killers?) he watches eustace duck around a corner as a slaver swings at him. is eustace’s fate changed because they dragged him into narnia, or was he always meant to find his way here? (is his fate in edmund’s hands?) he watches caspian kick a man through a fence, splintering wood and flying nails. is edmund’s presence in narnia disrupting caspian’s fate? (are they fated to be like this always, never together and always apart?)

his mind is reeling by the time they make it back to the boats. he barely hears the lord’s tale of the swords, knocked off-course by the uncertainty of it all. caspian notices his strange reticence, takes it to mean something else, and hands him the first of the seven swords. “keep it safe for me,” he says, and edmund knows it’s a pity thing, an attempt to make him feel wanted once more. it’s the same as before, when peter was king, when everyone always looked to the magnificent, not the just, and it grates at him, just a little, that it’s going to be like this again. he resigns himself to the fact that his fate is always to be second-best. the old thought drags against his skin and, by the time they’re back on the dawn treader, all he wants is to take a nap.

caspian notices him sagging and places a hand on his shoulder, friendly and innocuous enough in front of everyone else. “you can rest in my quarters, if you want? the men will surely want to celebrate tonight.”

he nods slowly. “if you don’t mind.”

“are you alright?” caspian asks under his breath. “you seem . . .” he searches for the word and comes up empty.

“i’ll be alright,” edmund says, with some truth. then, because he’s feeling reckless and irrelevant, he asks, “will you come with me?”

caspian smiles, a brilliant flash of joy that quickly falls to an apologetic grimace. “i should probably check in with drinian.”

edmund feels a pang in his stomach, but nods in understanding. “of course. you go be king.”

“you know i would –” caspian starts, brow furrowing.

“i know, cas,” edmund tells him. he tries a smile, and it is frail at best, but does it’s job, because caspian smiles back at him and squeezes his shoulder. “off with you, now,” he says teasingly.

“a question, first,” caspian says, and his hand drops from edmund’s shoulder to his hand, taking it under cover of the ship’s bustle. edmund shoots him a look but caspian only raises an eyebrow, cheerfully challenging. “you call me cas.”

edmund feels his cheeks colour a little. “i – yes, i suppose i do.”

“why?”

he finds himself opening and closing his mouth wordlessly. he can’t say, i don’t know, can’t say it feels like a secret or it feels like something just for us. he certainly can’t say try saying your full name when you’re touching yourself in the middle of the night because he think that might be blasphemy or something. so he just shrugs. “i don’t know. do you not like it?”

caspian shakes his head, and his fingers curl around edmund’s wrist devilishly. “i like it,” he murmurs, pressing forward for just a second. edmund can feel all the blood in his cheeks rushing downwards. “i know it’s yours,” caspian says, and then he’s leaving, crossing the deck and taking the stairs up to the wheel two steps at a time, where the captain is stood in deep discussion with a minotaur.

edmund touches his hand to the wrist caspian just held and shivers. moments like these certainly feel fated.

\\

lucy wakes him when twilight has fallen, grinning at the way he’s curled up in caspian’s desk chair. “sleep well?” she teases.

“piss off,” edmund huffs. when he sits up, his spine cracks its disagreement.

lucy laughs delightedly and slips from her seat on the desk amidst caspian’s papers. “they’ve started a bit of a feast on deck, if you’re hungry. though i would suggest going slowly with the drink – lord knows what mix sailors drink these days.”

he snorts at that, lounging in the chair contentedly. “do you remember the honey drink the dryads used to make for the summer solstice? god, i miss that.”

lucy hums in agreement. “what i wouldn’t give for a jar of it now!”

“when we get back to the mainland, we’ll have to find some.”

“do you think we will?” lucy asks.

“find some? i’m sure we can find a few narnians who still know the recipe.”

“no,” lucy says, which makes edmund look up. “i mean do you think we’ll make it back to the mainland?” her brows are pulled together, creating a furrow on her forehead and, for the first time in a long time, edmund can’t read the emotion those lines are trying to convey. “are we really going to stay, ed? like we said we would?”

he stares at her, mouth parted, but he can’t say anything. staying means being home for good – never having to wait to return again, always being where he feels he should be, always being with caspian. but it also means no peter. no seeing their mother ever again, or their father, or even susan. (never fixing things with susan.) no gramophones or peggy lee. no war. staying means something he’s not sure he’s ready for.

instead, he asks, “do you believe in fate?”

this time, they are both saved the humiliation of answering by a knock at the door. standing up, edmund calls for them to enter, and reepicheep swings in, scampering onto the desk and laughing, “i say, your highness, your cousin is a piece of work.”

edmund smiles distractedly. “you don’t need to tell me twice. where is he, anyway?”

“in the hammocks, sulking,” reep tells him, still chuckling. “i told him he should join the festivities, but he seems a little out of sorts. can’t think why.” he punctuates that last sentence with a wink. “are you coming to join the festivities, majesties?”

“we are,” edmund says, “i just need a few more moments in here.”

reep bows at him and turns to lucy. “my queen?”

“of course i am, reep.”

“then would you allow me the pleasure of escorting you?”

lucy shoots edmund a look. she’s still frowning, lower lip caught between her top teeth. he nods in a way he hopes reads, don’t worry, we’ll talk later, and he thinks she must get it because she says, “it would be an honour,” and allows reepicheep to walk her out of the cabin. she only glances back for a second.

he sinks back into caspian’s seat as the door clicks shut and sighs. his head feels sort of like it’s full of stuffing, has since that moment on the island, and he allows himself to set the weight in his hands briefly, elbows on the desk and fingers threaded through his own hair. it feels like trying to hold the weight of the world. he closes his eyes.

if they’re talking fate, it’s not really their decision whether or not they get to stay in narnia. the very second of their departure is probably being inscribed right now. it could be closer than they think – and he’s wasting it here, alone. he opens his eyes, trying to shake some of the heaviness out of his head, and finds his eyes caught on a piece of scrap paper. buried underneath old telmarine scrolls and archived sketches of the lords, there is a torn edge of paper, forgotten. it doesn’t look important, and edmund doesn’t think he would have noticed it if he hadn’t recognised the paper – creamy white and rough, the kind he and peter used to make notes on in courts and councils, made from fallen leaves and pressed flowers. this particular corner bears the imprint of an oak leaf and is littered with caspian’s careful scrawl, all loops and long lines. it doesn’t look like council notes, either, the words strangely spaced and clustered together like verses. edmund catches words, phrases – i think i feel love in the way your sword drips blood and eyes so soft i could have drowned, could have died and there is nothing cold about you and forever is not a thing that belongs to boys like us, playing at knowing – and it makes his heart stop because this is poetry, pure, sweet poetry and it’s written in caspian’s words. he doesn’t feel like he’s breathing anymore, wiping his fingers across the underlined title, a song of western woods, crossed out and re-written, an uncertainty.

he waits a long moment, and then he gets up and makes his way back on deck. the whole time, his veins are pushing blood on double-speed and his heart is whispering caspian’s name with every beat.

there’s certainly a party in full swing on deck. most of the sailors are milling around, laughter and music abounding. a few of the men who joined from the first island today have started a game of chess with the captain and the foreman. perched on the steps, caspian is watching over their shoulders, drink in one hand. he’s dressed all in black and, as edmund looks over, he laughs at something the captain says, head tipped back and hair hanging loose. edmund thinks, if he weren’t already in love with this man, he would be now. it doesn’t make his heartbeat any steadier.

even as he thinks the words to himself, caspian catches his eye and beckons him over. “ed!” he calls, “come show these men how chess is really played.”

and edmund goes. because he’s in love.

\\

“i need to talk to you about something.”

he’s not sure how long they’ve been celebrating for, but most of the people around him are undoubtedly drunk. only the captain and edmund appear stone-cold sober – even lucy, who warned edmund not to drink too much, is at least tipsy, dancing around the main mast with a sailor or two.

caspian jumps, taken by surprise by edmund’s quiet approach. even now, however many drinks in he is, he is remarkably steady on his feet, framed by the soft light of the moon. edmund thinks one could easily mistake him for some kind of fallen star, dark and bright all at once, a whole explosion, and – well.

“aslan’s mane,” caspian laughs. “you gave me a fright.”

“sorry.”

“no, no, i was just – yes.” caspian smiles through his jumbled words. “hello.”

edmund can’t help but smile back. “how are you feeling, my king?”

“brilliant,” caspian says, “but what’s with the titles, my king? is this serious business we’re talking? should i be serious?” he straightens his face almost comically, nodding. “proceed.”

edmund snorts a laugh and steals caspian’s drink from his hand. “it’s not serious.”

“you’re being very withholding,” caspian mutters, narrowing his eyes. “i’m suspicious. do you see this? very suspicious. and you’ve taken my drink! even more suspicious.”

edmund downs the rest of the drink and sets the glass down. “i think we need to get you some water, my king.”

“again with the my king-ing,” caspian says, “you’re king too, ed.”

“and my royal decree is that you drink some water.”

“you can’t royally decree me anything,” caspian tells him, waving a finger, but he stands up and allows edmund to walk him to the barrel of freshwater that’s tucked between the stairways. “but i’ll do it, for you.”

“could we talk in your cabin?” edmund asks as he pours caspian a drink of water.

“this is beginning to sound very serious,” caspian says and, when edmund hands him back his mug, he’s frowning at him. “are you alright?”

“yes,” edmund laughs, “i just feel like this is the kind of conversation we should have alone.”

caspian’s eyes widen immediately. “oh. a private conversation.” he leans in to edmund’s ear, whispering, “is this some kind of london euphemism?”

edmund laughs again. “no, caspian. this is an actual conversation.”

sighing, caspian gestures a hand towards the doors down to the inner workings of the ship. “a man can dream.”

“i’m surprised you even noticed it could be a euphemism,” edmund teases, “usually these things go right over your head.”

caspian takes a sip of his water in a very dignified manner. “lucy’s been teaching me. she says i’m getting better at it.” he pulls a face at his cup, obviously disappointed with the low alcohol content. “i’ll have you know i understand euphemisms very well in telmish.”

“i didn’t know the telmarines had their own dialect.”

caspian, in turn, rattles off a few sentences that sound vaguely musical to edmund’s ears. then he beams, and they start towards the doors.

“well, what did you say?”

“i think, my king, it is a sentence you would rather hear in private.”

edmund shakes his head. his grin already feels like it’s going to split his cheeks, and having caspian pressed up against his side like this is doing nothing to slow his heart rate. “i remember when we met,” he says, “you had such a strong accent.”

“you always say this!” caspian laughs, “i remember no such thing.”

“liar,” edmund teases as they head down the stairs into the darkness, turning down the hallway towards caspian’s cabin.

“okay, so i remember you saying you liked it, but that is all.” caspian pauses for a moment, seemingly thinking hard, and then says, “do you still like my accent?”

“it’s different, now,” edmund says, because it is. “you sound more narnian. but yes, i like it.”

“good,” caspian tells him, “because i like you.”

“i like you, too, cas.”

“and i like that you call me cas.”

“how much have you had to drink?” edmund turns to raise an eyebrow at him.

caspian just smiles conspiratorially. “just enough to be back in your arms, evidently.”

edmund feels his good humour dampen a little. “you don’t have to be drunk to – you don’t have to be drunk.”

caspian shrugs, which is an awkward movement with edmund’s arm around him. “i know you get nervous about these things. i never want to push you, or make you uncomfortable.”

“you never could,” edmund murmurs. he opens the door to caspian’s cabin and they walk in. the fire is almost out, so edmund stokes it and adds another log, and, when he turns back, caspian is lighting candles and fiddling with matches. “careful with those.”

caspian turns and pulls a face. “i’m perfectly capable of lighting candles while drunk, edmund. and i’m not even drunk! tipsy, maybe.”

“whatever you might be, i don’t think it’s a good idea to have you around anything flammable. especially with all these papers around.”

caspian shrugs, falling into his chair almost at the same time. “it’s all rubbish, anyway. all the important stuff is in the map room.”

edmund takes a breath. “is it?” he asks. “is it all just rubbish?”

caspian lifts his head to frown in edmund’s direction. “why do you ask?”

“well.” he swallows, walks over to the desk and taps the scrap of paper he’d seen earlier. “there’s this.”

caspian leans forward to peer at the paper, and his eyes widen. “oh. oh, ed, i –”

“it’s good,” edmund tells him earnestly. “you write beautifully – it’s beautiful.”

“it’s about you.” caspian doesn’t meet his eye. “they’re all about you. is that awful?”

he moves round the table, kneeling in front of caspian. “no – in fact, i’m flattered.”

“this is the worst way you could have found these,” caspian says, covering his face, and edmund has a brief internal battle with himself over the fact that caspian is embarrassed and it’s definitely not cute.

“i suppose this is a bad time to tell you i draw, then,” edmund tells him. “and most of the time i draw you.”

caspian peeks out from between his fingers. “you do?”

“it was the only way i could see you, there,” edmund whispers. “before the dreams, of course.”

“so you don’t think they’re silly?” caspian asks, lowering his hands a little.

“i think they’re amazing,” edmund tells him. “i think you’re amazing.”

caspian squirms in his chair. “you better not just be saying this, ed. i mean it.”

“i’m not!”

“because if i die from embarrassment right here, right now –”

“cas –”

“i’ll never live it down –”

edmund slips into caspian’s lap in lieu of a distraction. “i actually thought it might be the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for me.” he watches caspian swallow, looks up from underneath his eyelashes. “my king.”

“you’re king too,” caspian whispers, useless factoid that it is.

“technicalities,” edmund whispers.

“such small things.”

“yet,” he continues, “if we’re considering technicalities, i suppose i should ask –”

“ed,” caspian interrupts him.

“would you let me court you?” he asks, voice hoarse. “is that something we can do? something you would let me do?”

he’s been thinking about it since earlier, since the thing about fate popped into his head, because he doesn’t care if they’re fated or not. he’s wasting time not asking caspian to be with him. and, the more he thinks about it, the more he’s sure that the only thing he wants to do is stay in narnia. caspian is just the tipping of the scale, because how can edmund knowingly give up this man, seafaring, poetry-writing, self-doubt and all? more than that, how can he knowingly give up someone who loves him? he wouldn’t even mind not being king anymore, for caspian (and he thinks vaguely of a queen he knows who once tried to name her husband king consort; he wouldn’t mind, if it were caspian, wouldn’t mind being his king.)

caspian is staring at him. his eyes are dark, too dark for edmund to read, though his brow is a little furrowed, a gentle persistent worry. edmund wants to brush it away, wants to run out of the room and throw up. he stays, hands shaking a little.

“caspian,” he whispers into the silence, “cas. you can say no –”

and they’re kissing again. sure, it’s only been a handful of hours since they first did this, but it feels so much longer – like years, even – since they last touched, and edmund makes a soft sound at the contact. caspian tastes like wine and warmth, and the tip of his tongue flicking over edmund’s lower lip makes him shiver, a full-body sensation.

it must carry, because caspian pulls back. “are you okay?”

edmund nods. “yes. yes, i –” but words aren’t coming easily right now, so he just kisses caspian again, and again, and again, like it’s easier than breathing. he moves closer, fingers dipping under the neck of caspian’s shirt to brush at his collar bones, his shoulders, as close as they can get without taking clothes off.

caspian moves his lips to edmund’s cheek, to his jaw, littering tiny kisses all over his skin. when he nips lightly at the sensitive skin under edmund’s ear, edmund gasps. he feels more than sees caspian’s answering smile, and shudders again when the other man’s tongue flicks over the shell of his ear.

“fuck,” edmund breathes. his heart is racing again, but it’s different this time – not like he might be sick, like he might die, but like it’s telling him he’s alive and trying to prove its point.

“you want me to stop?” caspian murmurs. his voice sounds lower than normal, quiet in edmund’s ear, eliciting another shiver. the bastard laughs.

“no,” edmund hisses. “no, i don’t want you to stop.”

caspian presses another kiss to the spot, and ducks his head to worry instead at the skin of edmund’s throat, right over the artery. edmund’s beginning to think he might have died and gone to aslan’s country. (he doesn’t think this would be allowed in aslan’s country. it shouldn’t even be allowed in this one, wherever they are.) he feels his eyelids flutter closed of their own accord.

“cas.” edmund swears, and caspian bites down, just a little, and drags his tongue over the spot, sucking a bruise into the skin. “shit.” when he feels caspian laugh again, he squirms away. “that’s going to be so obvious,” he chastises without any real venom.

“and?” caspian meets his eye. “means you’re mine.”

edmund swallows all the words that bubble up in his throat. “is that what you want?” he murmurs, pushing back strands of caspian’s dark hair. he leaves time for caspian to say the inevitable no, this isn’t what i want. “do you want them to know?”

caspian presses a kiss to his temple, softer now. “of course. unless you don’t?”

“no, i do. believe me, i do, i just –” he can’t find the words he’s looking for – or, they are there, but he doesn’t want to speak them into existence. he shakes his head. “if we could.”

“if we could,” caspian echoes.

this time, when edmund kisses him, it’s gentle, more a holding together than anything. edmund kisses caspian’s cheek, the tip of his nose, the curve of his brow, every piece of skin he can reach. it’s not enough. it might never be. he slips his fingers under the fabric of caspian’s shirt again, presses his freezing hands to the hard lines of caspian’s stomach and relishes in the gasp this elicits. he wants to say, you don’t have to do this. wants to say, i know you don’t really need me. wants to say so many things. sticks with tugging at the hem of the shirt and whispering, “off.”

caspian obliges with a smile, because he always does. underneath, he is all olive skin and muscle, practically flawless. edmund drags his fingers up, presses his palm against caspian’s beating heart, kisses his collarbone delicately. caspian lets him, patient as ever. he wonders, off-hand, if it’s considered blasphemy to call this worship. he thinks it probably is, and doesn’t care.

“have you ever done anything like this before?” edmund asks. ignores the part of him that says, you’re not special to him.

caspian shakes his head. “not with a man. not with anyone like you.”

“okay.” edmund lets out a breath and kisses caspian again, partly to silence the thoughts in his head, partly because he just wants to. he ends up getting lost there for a moment, tongue tracing the seam of the other man’s lips, brushing over wet skin repetitively, like praying on rosary beads, until caspian pulls away.

“have you?” caspian asks. “done this before, i mean?” his cheeks are flushed, like he’s embarrassed.

edmund shrugs. taps a finger against caspian’s stomach. “i know the ins and outs of it.”

“that’s not an answer.”

for some reason, that makes them both laugh. finally, edmund nods. “yes, i’ve done this before.” he watches caspian nod, takes in the nervous flush of his cheeks. “but never with anyone like you.” never with anyone i loved like this. never with anyone who could destroy me like you. never with an angel, a fallen star.

caspian rakes his hair back with one hand, though it falls just as messily back into place. “well. i trust you.”

edmund cocks an eyebrow. “good to know.”

“how do we do this, then?”

edmund chuckles at the determination in caspian’s expression. “you can’t treat it like it’s a political issue,” edmund teases. “look at you – if i didn’t know any better, i’d say you’re nervous.”

“because it’s you,” caspian huffs. “you’ve done this before and i –”

“that doesn’t matter,” he says. “it’s about feeling. about what you want.” he kisses caspian’s collar bone again, the skin over his heart. “can you tell me what you want?”

if it’s possible, caspian’s face gets even more red.

“we don’t have to do anything –”

“i want to,” caspian says. “i do, fuck, it’s just – it’s you.”

“exactly,” edmund says kindly. “i’m just me.”

caspian frowns. “i don’t mean it like that.”

“i know, cas.”

“i wish you wouldn’t say such things, though,” caspian tells him. “edmund, fuck, if – if you could see yourself how i see you – edmund, you’re like –” he shakes his head. “they never sound right when they’re not on paper.”

edmund smiles a little, shifts so he’s more comfortable. caspian’s hands are on his waist. “i can’t believe you write poetry. as if you couldn’t get any more awe-inspiring.”

caspian just huffs a laugh. “me? when you’re drawing portraits from memory?”

“they’re not very good.”

“i bet they are.”

“not as good as the real thing,” he says, kissing caspian again. just to punctuate his point, he rolls his hips down.

caspian leans back to stare up at the ceiling. “you are a devil and a tease,” he sighs. “take off your shirt, then.”

“now we’re getting somewhere.” edmund laughs, but complies, tugging the shirt up and over his head. all morning it had smelt like caspian and soap and dust (but mostly caspian) and it still does, if he holds it close enough to his nose – but now he has the real thing in front of him. he drops the shirt on to the floor and looks back to caspian. he knows he’s not much to look at – still mostly skin and bones, and certainly not as muscular as caspian after a year away from any kind of sword practice – but caspian doesn’t seem to mind, eyes everywhere all at once. it makes a change; edmund is used to a methodical, careful caspian, and seeing him uncertain is kind of endearing. he holds out his hand, simply, and caspian takes it, leaning in to press kisses across his shoulders, like every freckle deserves his attention.

there are voices in his head shouting that he does not deserve to be loved, does not deserve these hands on him; shouts that say these hands should hurt him, are hurting him, are hands that he wants to push away and escape and never let near again. these are parts of edmund that belong in the cold, parts that he’s tried to kill off for years now, starve and suffocate and snow in, yet they never seem to die. he tries not to listen to them – tries not to think how that resulted in harsh words and even harder hands with his other lover sometimes, and the few in between. edmund’s always wanted things he shouldn’t be allowed, and the voices tell him so.

“tell me something,” he whispers. he wants to hear anything else in moments like this.

caspian kisses him briefly on the lips and asks, “what do you want to hear?”

“who was the first person you ever kissed?”

caspian wrinkles his nose, and it makes edmund laugh a little. “that’s what you want to know?” caspian asks.

“yes, i would.” he wiggles his eyebrows. “i’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”

caspian bites his lip, as if digging up the memory. “for a while, when i was younger, one of the lords had a daughter who stayed at court with him. she was about my age, and she was my first kiss – i think people hoped we would get married, but she disappeared just before my father died.” he frowns for a moment. “i think miraz probably wanted to make sure i wouldn’t be producing heirs of my own anytime soon.” he is silent for a few seconds, then shakes it off. (sometimes, edmund forgets that caspian knows just as much about trauma as he does. he wonders if caspian would understand if he explained about the voices.) “how about you?”

edmund smiles, a touch sadly. “the first boy i ever loved – my partner when i was in narnia, the first time.”

“what was his name?” caspian asks, intertwining their fingers easily.

“amatus,” edmund tells him. the name still makes him smile, but it doesn’t make him sad like it did. instead, it feels like a greeting to his past. there is nostalgia in it, and dust. “what was hers?”

“calliope.” he pronounces it cal-eye-oh-pe. “when did you first know that you liked boys?”

edmund considers, and answers truthfully. “i think i always knew. i was never interested in girls the way peter was – i just never spoke about it until after narnia. i’ve never been very open about it, though.” he shrugs. “i don’t think it’s their business. what about you?”

“i think i always suspected it,” caspian murmurs, “but i don’t think i knew until i met you.”

truthfully, edmund says, “i didn’t think you noticed me.”

caspian huffs a laugh. “i told you you were my favourite pevensie, didn’t i?”

“true,” edmund acquiesces, and pushes back caspian’s hair again. “susan and i argued about you, you know.”

caspian’s grin falls a little, but it doesn’t seem like news to him. “i’m sorry.”

“it’s hardly your fault. she knew how i felt, and she decided it was her right as the older of us to take what she wanted. we’ve only spoken about it a little since.”

“i don’t like to think i’ve ruined your relationship.”

“it was her choice,” edmund shrugs. “besides, she doesn’t have you like this, does she?” he makes his point by running a finger across caspian’s stomach, watching him shiver.

caspian kisses him, harder this time, swiping his tongue along edmund’s bottom lip. “tell me you’re not jealous of her, now,” he whispers.

“not now.” and it’s the truth – susan could have a hundred other guys this way for all he cares, but he has caspian here and now, and caspian has him, and that’s what matters. he kisses back. the voices go silent. when he pulls away, caspian is looking at him with those dark eyes, asking questions without words, and that won’t do. “tell me,” edmund says. “tell me what you want from me.”

“ed, please,” caspian whispers.

edmund kisses him again – his lips, his jaw, his neck. “tell me.”

“i just want you.”

“i feel like you’re avoiding the question.”

“edmund,” caspian says, voice only shaking a little.

“yes?” he only rolls his hips a little. it’s barely teasing, but caspian’s head drops back with a muttered curse, and edmund bites at his neck, all tongue and teeth.

“come on, darling,” edmund hums.

caspian leans in for a kiss again, attempting a distraction. it is only semi-successful. when edmund bites at his lip, caspian growls low in his throat. edmund tangles his fingers in the other man’s hair and pulls away so that caspian has to look him in the eye when he says it. “tell me.”

pupils blown and mouth reddened, caspian pushes his thumb against edmund’s lips. in a moment of spectacular déjà vu, edmund kisses his fingertip and smiles winningly.

“please,” caspian whispers. “i need you to fuck me.”

finally – finally – edmund gets on his knees.

\\

the next island they reach looks about as unassuming as the last, which obviously means something is going to go wrong (and, really, edmund should start remembering that.) stupidly, he forgets, laying on the sand next to caspian, caught between being just far enough apart that it doesn’t look like anything and just close enough that they can brush hands in their sleep. trying to pretend like his whole life hasn’t changed.

but, because he’s so stupidly selfish, because he forgets, lucy goes missing. because he’s all wrapped up in a daydream for more than a few hours, she slips right through his fingers.

the moment he notices she’s gone, he shakes caspian awake. he doesn’t even sneak a kiss first, just blurts, “lucy’s gone,” fingers curling into the leather of caspian’s jacket. “she’s gone, i don’t –”

“what?” caspian says. he sits up so fast he almost knocks edmund’s teeth out.

“lucy!” edmund yells, turning towards the mountains. “lucy?” his heart is thundering in his chest. if something happens to lucy – if he has to go back and tell peter that he let something happen to lucy – if he has to face aslan –

“everyone up!” caspian calls, shaking the other men awake. “queen lucy is missing.”

edmund’s halfway up the beach, following the huge footprints in the sand, but even as he looks at them the wind is brushing them into oblivion, covering their definition. he thinks he might throw up. when caspian reaches his side, he’s crouched over the final sandy heel-print, right where the toes of the imprint disappear into grass, considering how one knows they’re going mad.

“ed,” caspian murmurs, like he can read edmund’s thoughts. “ed, she’s going to be okay.”

“what if something’s happened to her?” what am i supposed to do? “she’s the only person i have.”

“ed.”

caspian’s voice cuts through his fear enough that he turns around. backlit by the rising sun, face pulled with determination, caspian looks like some avenging angel; it makes edmund want to get on his knees all over again, even if it is just to pray this time. he shakes the thought out of his head. “we have to find her,” he croaks.

“we will,” is caspian’s promise.

lucy – forever capable of taking care of herself – emerges from a house that isn’t there with a magician in tow and a smile on her face exactly twenty-two minutes after edmund begins losing his mind with worry. there’s something different about her; he can’t put his finger on it exactly, but there’s something in the way she shifts nervously from foot to foot, the way her eyes dart back and forth without ever really looking. like she’s hiding something.

he doesn’t get a chance to ask about it, too busy calming his too-fast heartbeat, and then listening to the magician’s ceaseless ramblings. once again, he gets the feeling that this is all a little too convenient – this time, it is harder to shake off.

(“i’m sorry, but why would you turn yourself invisible?” he hears caspian ask as they wander through the twisting hallways of the house that isn’t there.

the magician waves a careless hand. “i like to be left alone,” is his pointedly un-pointed reply.

“i think he just forgets,” lucy whispers.)

“the mist,” the magician is saying when edmund tunes back in, “preys on your fears – on the darkness inside you. until you place all seven swords on aslan’s table, evil has the upper-hand.”

“doesn’t it always,” edmund finds himself muttering under his breath.

“what was that, m’boy?” the magician asks.

“nothing.” he ignores caspian’s cautious look over the magician’s map.

none of them really meet each other’s eyes as they make their way back down to the beach. lucy can’t settle, fingers fidgeting with the leather loops of her belt; eustace seems sickened by the fact he just complimented a make-believe map, muttering to himself and kicking at the dirt; and caspian just seems oddly quiet. there’s a worried furrow in his brow that hasn’t left since the magician mentioned the mist. edmund wishes he knew what to say to make that mark disappear, but he can’t seem to find the words. all he can hear is peter on repeat like a scratched record – what do you mean, something happened to lucy? you were meant to look after her! i can’t trust you with anything, can i?

you can, edmund thinks, but the voice doesn’t stop. you can trust me.

\\

the next morning, edmund wakes up to the ship rocking violently. rain thunders from above while the sea churns below, sending the whole hollow of the ship cascading with noise. it feels sort of like how he thinks ships in bottles must feel, if those bottles also had tiny stormy atmospheres inside.

tipping noisily out of his hammock, he makes his way (very, very slowly) to caspian’s quarters. he’d left him there last night, pondering the empty stretch of their map – now marked with the magician’s island and not much else – and, sure enough, when he cracks open the door, that’s where caspian has remained. leant back in his chair, arms folded, still frowning even in sleep, he looks just as stressed as he did last night, maybe even more so. edmund finds that he still cannot quite find the words to dispel caspian’s fears.

edmund slips into the room as quietly as he can (not that it makes much difference with all of nature currently echoing through the bowels of the ship) and finds that it seems quieter in caspian’s cabin, somehow, like the walls of the ship themselves are straining to keep the place as serene as possible. when he shuts the door, it’s like the entire room is sound-proof and, when he kneels to place another log on the dwindling fire, he can hear the planks of the ship whispering to each other, creating a soft static sound with their overlapping voices. it reminds him of finished records spinning to a stop and libraries in the evenings.

he’s never really been one to talk to the trees – that’s more lucy’s department – but now he pushes his hand to the wall to show his thanks. the boards whisper back, almost a lullaby.

our king, they murmur, kept safe.

“thank you,” he says back, aloud this time.

it is what we do, the boards say, a thousand voices piled together. we protect our kings.

there is the sound of paper rustling behind him, and edmund turns to it. at his desk, caspian stretches, working out the crick in his neck. even from here, he can hear the crack of bones snapping back into place. caspian winces.

“you need to sleep somewhere more comfortable than your chair,” edmund tells him.

caspian blinks at the sound of his voice, and edmund can see the moment it clicks in his head who’s speaking, even before their eyes meet. the smile that melts over his face makes edmund’s heart flutter.

“good morning to you, too,” caspian says, stifling a yawn. “what are you doing over there?”

edmund shrugs, and the boat tips happily over another wave. “just making sure the boat is alright.”

caspian grabs at the pot of ink that shoots across his desk joyfully. “are we in a storm?” he asks.

“a tempest, i think. i heard the captain yelling overhead.”

the same tired frown is back on caspian’s face in seconds. “i wonder why he didn’t come to wake me.”

“i think,” edmund says, picking his way over to the desk carefully, “your cabin wanted you to get some rest.”

caspian’s shoulders drop a little. “i’m not that tired,” he murmurs through another yawn.

“oh, of course not,” edmund teases, settling on the edge of the desk. “you’re allowed to rest, caspian.”

“i have things to take care of.”

“you have to take care of yourself first.”

“i don’t have the time.”

“so make time.” at this point, edmund is entirely willing to strap caspian to this chair to make sure he doesn’t move. “what can you do in weather like this?”

“i could be on deck, helping –”

“i’m sure the captain has it under control.”

caspian tries to stand, then. beneath them, the ship bucks like an angry horse and, naturally, edmund takes the opportunity to sit in caspian’s lap again (because it worked so well before.)

“edmund,” caspian complains good-naturedly.

“oh, no, i’m sorry, you’ll have to stay here today,” edmund muses. he picks up a discarded quill and twirls it between his fingers nonchalantly. “orders from your king.”

he hears caspian huff a laugh. “can we at least stay somewhere more comfortable?” he asks.

“nice try,” edmund says, “but, as a master of strategy, i know that the minute i stand up, you will try to leave.” he prods the tip of caspian’s nose with the soft, feathered end of the quill, and smiles at the wrinkle this elicits.

“you know i could just pick you up, right?”

“i’d like to see you try.” he crosses his arms indignantly. when caspian moves as if to actually pick him up, though, he grabs for the desk hastily. “oh, in aslan’s name, don’t you dare.”

caspian laughs properly then, tired but real. “you can’t really expect me to stay here all day.”

“no,” edmund acquiesces, “but another few hours will suffice.”

“and you are just going to sit here until then?”

“why?” edmund asks, arching an eyebrow presumptuously. “would you rather i was doing something else?”

“you are the worst.”

“and you love it.”

instead of answering, caspian presses a kiss to his cheek and leans back in the chair once more, closing his eyes. “well, if you’re going to sit there, i might as well get comfortable.”

“did your nurse ever sing you lullabies to help you fall asleep?” edmund asks.

caspian hums in the back of his throat. “sometimes. she would read me stories, usually.”

“about narnia?” edmund traces a finger over caspian’s jaw, his cheekbone, the bridge of his nose, and waits for the inevitable batting away. it doesn’t come.

“yes. i always wanted to hear about the battles, but she would tell me about the summer festivals, and the castle – funny little things like that.”

“those funny little things were the best parts, i’ll have you know.”

caspian half-smiles sleepily. “isn’t it strange,” he says, “that i grew up hearing stories about you, and now you’re younger than me?”

edmund scoffs. “only in body, asshole. and you’re the one who’s bones creak like rusty machinery.”

“i can’t believe i live in a world where golden-era legend king edmund the just calls me an asshole for fun,” caspian muses. “this is what they call living the dream, yes?”

“in that case,” edmund whispers, dropping a kiss onto caspian’s nose, “you have some very strange dreams.”

“no doubt,” he agrees. “but they could be worse.”

(caspian has no idea how right he is.)

\\

two weeks of never-ending wind and rain later, it’s safe to say edmund has never been sicker of a place. the captain keeps warning of mutiny and – weirdly – sea serpents, and, if he thought it was hard work trying to get caspian to leave his cabin before, now he practically has to manhandle him into a hammock every night (and even then, he is only semi-successful.)

not to mention the nightmares.

everyone on board is grouchy, tired, and permanently soaked through to the skin. arguably worse, though, are the night terrors that seem to plague them all. most nights, edmund resigns himself to lying awake and waiting for the dreams to permeate real life while the people around him groan and mutter through their own gory visions.

the first time it happens, edmund wakes up in a cold sweat, gasping for air. after, he’s not quite sure what made it so terrifying, can barely remember the details – the only thing that stands out to him are the witch’s cold, cold eyes, staring back at him in the dark. the next time, she’s just out of reach, shrouded in the shadows, calling his name; he wakes up in tears.

it gets worse and worse, and he can’t even complain because everyone is going through the same thing. caspian’s eyes are constantly ringed with dark circles. eustace snaps more than usual, and reepicheep is liable to stab anyone who gets too close. only lucy seems to be faring well enough, and even that is debatable.

the night lucy tells him about the page she stole from the magic book is the first night it occurs to edmund that something must be wrong.

“it was awful,” she whispers in the darkness. edmund can see only her eyes, and only then because they are full of tears. “you didn’t know who i was.”

“why,” edmund says, setting down his sword (because if there’s one thing he’s learnt from peter, it is that you can fight off anything, dream or reality), “oh, why would you want to be anything like susan?”

“because she’s beautiful.”

“but she is not you.”

“everyone likes her –”

“you are the valiant queen,” edmund reminds her. “you are the reason we found all of this in the first place – without you.” he stops. takes her hand. he doesn’t want to say without you i would be dead because he would have died far more than once (on battlefields on hardwood floors in feathered beds in bombing raids) but it doesn’t mean it isn’t true. “without you we would fall apart,” he says.

in the hammock beside him, caspian gasps awake. “no,” he says. “no, please.”

lucy ducks between the tangled ropes to reach him before edmund can even turn his head. “you are safe,” she tells him, clammy hand clutched between hers. “you are alright.”

moonlit, caspian’s eyes stray to edmund and he swallows. “just a nightmare,” he says, voice thick.

“so,” edmund sighs, rubbing another sleepless night from his eyes. “there’s something going on.”

\\

the third island very quickly becomes edmund’s least favourite. he can’t explain why, merely whispers to lucy, a quick “i have a bad feeling about this place,” to which she nods in agreement.

“it feels off,” she agrees under her breath. “un-narnian.”

the two of them and caspian go to scout out the inner part of the island, a royal trio, which is a silly idea, in retrospect. no matter how good they are with weapons, heading into the unknown unprepared isn’t very often an agreeable idea. but, of course, rappelling down into an uncharted surface crack is their brilliant plan.

inside, there is a pool. it shines turquoise, like a gem in the sunlight, and you can see right to the bottom. curious and crater-like, the jagged floor of the pool is encrusted with diamonds bigger than edmund’s fist, lengths of pearls swimming like sea-snakes, and an odd collection of coins, like someone thought this should be a wishing-well and then ultimately forgot about it. everything inside is burnished a strange golden colour. most striking of all, there is a life-sized statue of a man that has been apparently pushed face-first into the pool and lies there soundlessly, mouth pulled in agony. it is a strange thing to decorate such a place with, edmund thinks. he wants to reach in and pull the statue out, set it back on its feet. it seems to breathe melancholy.

by its side is a sword, identical to the one edmund holds in his hand.

“i don’t trust this place,” lucy warns. “be careful when you touch the water.”

crouched by the edge of the pool, edmund frowns. “i don’t think he’s a statue.”

“what do you mean?” caspian says, coming to stand beside him.

“look – doesn’t he seem like he breathes? and doesn’t his sword look familiar?” he taps his own sword pointedly.

“the lords,” caspian whispers.

“he must have fallen in,” lucy says.

as soon as edmund dips his sword in the water to pluck its sister out, he feels that old chasm in his chest – the one that was made for all things dark and cold. he feels it, like ice-crystals forming in water glasses, like winter over his heart again. it feels sticky and dark and familiar, and he almost drops both swords in shock. yet, as quick as its uncomfortable slather arrived, it shifts, makes room for itself once more – it feels like slipping into an old jacket you used to love, and finding that it still fits. a thrill runs through him.

“maybe he was on to something,” edmund murmurs.

“what do you mean?” caspian asks.

edmund experiments – first a shell in the water, simple and flat, then another, more rounded this time, spiralling. both turn to solid gold at the touch of the water. “lucy, we could be so rich,” he finds himself saying. he doesn’t even want to be rich, he just wants to be in charge of his life again – to not to have to go back to the scrubb’s, not to have to rely on his parents, not to rely on anyone but lucy. he wants back the freedom they had as kings and queens. he wants to rub it in susan’s face.

“you can’t take anything out of narnia,” says caspian.

there’s only one thing standing in his way. so he does what peter’s taught him to do best, and raises his sword.

“you are a child,” caspian spits. they’re at each other’s throats, now, and edmund can’t even remember how they got there. it’s not like other times – they’re not pulling back from kisses with lips or steel – they’re ready to rip each other apart like wolves. and it doesn’t feel wrong.

“and you’re a spineless sap!”

they only exchange a few blows before lucy intervenes, but it’s enough to make edmund grit his teeth. “can’t you two see what’s going on?” lucy yells. “edmund, think about it – you remember midas, the king of greece? the one who could turn anything to gold if he touched it?”

“what use are your london faerytales?” caspian sneers.

“he turned his own daughter to gold!” lucy exclaims. “he couldn’t eat, couldn’t drink – this isn’t a treasure trove, it’s an early grave!”

“everything you love, turned to gold,” edmund mutters. he imagines his family, like life-sized chess pieces. imagines caspian, forever angelic. he thinks such a life wouldn’t be the worst – and then he thinks of the witch, her courtyards of stone traitors, and feels sick.

“i’ll be sure to keep you as a trophy on my shelf,” lucy cries before stalking off.

for a moment, edmund can only stare at caspian, unsteady. the sick feeling is dying now, sloughing off of him like a thaw in spring. it feels like those first few winters again – unbearably terrifying. he wants to hide his face and never come out again. he thought he’d pushed all these things away before, completely, and yet here they are again, those same feelings that he needs to prove himself, needs to have power. he thinks about throwing himself in the pool, just to make sure no one else is subject to his shame.

caspian is the first to look away. he follows lucy out of the cave and doesn’t look back.

edmund only just remembers to pick up the sword before he goes.

\\

it’s not until they’re back on the beach that anyone notices eustace has disappeared. anxious to get away and cursing his stupid selfishness once more, edmund volunteers to go look.

“i’ll come with you,” caspian murmurs. he sounds like a king as he says it, looks like one, all dark and mysterious and brooding. the rest of the crew nod and make their escapes, and edmund pushes his fingernails into his palms until he thinks the skin might break.

caspian nods to him. he doesn’t acknowledge the gesture, just turns and starts back up the hill while the last person in narnia he wants to be stuck with follows on in silence. stupid, the voice in edmund’s head is saying, and it sounds an awful lot like susan. stupid and selfish and full of cold.

“edmund,” caspian calls softly the moment they’re out of earshot of the beach.

“eustace?” edmund shouts, like he didn’t quite hear.

“ed, please.”

“eustace?”

“would you stop for just a minute?”

“eustace!”

“ed, please!”

he whips round so fast caspian nearly knocks right into him. “don’t,” he seethes, “i don’t want to talk about it. it is the very last thing i want to talk about – i want to find my cousin, and i want to get off this wretched island, so can you just. not. please.” on the very last word, his voice breaks.

caspian reaches for him. even as edmund tries to move away, he knows it’s a failed notion. caspian cradles his face in both hands, eyes shining, and he is still painted all in obsidian and topaz and pearl and damned gold and edmund wants none of it. he tries to move away again.

“ed,” caspian whispers hoarsely, “please.” he brushes his thumbs over edmund’s cheekbones, clutching at him desperately. “ed, i didn’t mean it. you know i didn’t.”

“but you must,” he cries. he doesn’t know when the tears started, just that there’s too many to hide and he can do nothing to stop them. “because i meant it – i have always played second fiddle, even on this ship. they don’t need me! no one’s ever needed me, caspian. do you know what that’s like?”

“i need you.”

“but you don’t!” edmund yells. “i’m still just the boy who betrayed his family! still the one who fell for stupid magic tricks and sweets, still just king, barely – still a traitor. and all i’ve ever done is fight it, and it’s no use.” he sinks to his knees, then, and caspian follows, still holding him far, far too close. “i’m not a good person, cas. and i’m not strong enough to help you.”

“no,” caspian says, “don’t you dare. don’t say things like that.” his eyes are red, opals veined with ruby dust, and the tears roll down his cheeks like perfect diamonds, too much enchantment still. “you are the strongest person i know, edmund. and you are so, so good – do you know how many people come back from bad deeds? you are an exceptional person, ed, a good person. and i won’t stand to hear anyone slander your character, least of all you.”

“i’m sorry,” edmund whispers.

caspian just pulls him closer, lets edmund tuck his nose against the crook of his neck. “i’m sorry,” edmund says, over and over, “i’m sorry. i need you” until it just becomes i’m sorry i need you i’m sorry i need you –

caspian holds him until he can only think in warmth and wet, and there is no more talk of precious metals.

\\

of course, edmund knows a thing or two about enchantments. and, much like the curious, bitter little boy he once was, eustace sticks his fingers in places they aren’t meant to be.

“so,” drinian drawls. “we’ve got a dragon now, have we.”

“he’s still eustace,” lucy says, smoothing a hand over dragon-eustace’s scaled head. “just larger.”

“a bigger mouth to feed, you mean.”

edmund briefly considers (not for the first time) punching the captain. he refrains, mostly for caspian’s sake.

“we’ll camp on the beach tonight,” caspian decides. “take the food back to the boat, drinian.”

it is amongst one of the strangest nights edmund spends in narnia, and that’s saying something. a dragon and a mouse curled up on one side of the fire, with lucy and gail on the other, gail’s father keeping watch, and he and caspian.

caspian sits staring up at the stars. edmund lies beside him silently, uncertain where they stand even now.

“are we going to be okay?” edmund asks quietly.

“why wouldn’t we be?”

“i don’t know. it all seems so strange. like i don’t know who i am anymore.”

caspian looks down at him and slips his hand into edmund’s. “i know you. and you don’t have to be afraid.”

edmund lets out a long breath. it steams in the cold air. “what are you most afraid of?” he asks.

caspian turns his head to look at the sky once more. “disappointing my father,” he says, simple as that.

“oh.”

“i don’t like to think that he’s watching over me and isn’t – isn’t proud of me? doesn’t agree with what i’m doing? i don’t know. i just want him to be – to be okay with it all.”

edmund thinks. he imagines peter being disappointed in him (which isn’t very hard), or lucy (slightly more difficult.) he imagines caspian being disappointed in him. “i can understand that.”

“when i was younger, he taught me how to read the constellations. nothing fancy – just so i’d know where i was if i was ever lost.”

“i’ve never seen stars quite like these anywhere else.”

“are they different?” caspian asks. “in london, i mean?”

edmund thinks of the centaurs who taught him the names of the stars. how they revelled in the divinity they brought. he thinks of london skies, choked with smog. “i don’t know if they’re different, but they’re not as bright there. things in narnia just look more alive, you know?”

“do you ever miss it?” caspian breathes. “do you ever miss london when you are here?”

he doesn’t need to think to answer that. “no. never.”

“have you ever thought about staying here?”

“always.”

they don’t elaborate on that thought, only twine their fingers closer together. edmund lifts their joined hands to his mouth and kisses caspian’s knuckles, tries to press the words into his skin, i never want to leave you, i wish to be with you always with just the warmth of his mouth.

staring up at the stars still, caspian asks, “what do you think is at the edge of the world, ed?”

“aslan’s country, i suppose.”

“and beyond that?”

“peace.”

\\

the blue star shines before them like a beacon, and eustace tows the ship along dutifully, out of the doldrums and across the blue seas. edmund watches the third island disappear to the horizon and thinks it is good riddance.

caspian finds him stood on the small balcony off the captain’s quarters, eyes still stuck to the sea. “you have to let it go,” he whispers.

edmund barely hears him.

“edmund.” carefully, caspian takes his hand, turns him round so they are looking each other in the eye. “my darling, please.”

“how can you bear to look at me?” edmund whispers.

“don’t. don’t say that.”

“i’ve only been terrible to you since i got here,” he says. he can already feel his lip trembling, and he doesn’t want to cry again, when there’s barely enough water onboard to keep them adequately hydrated as it is. his thoughts hurricane, an endless onslaught. “how could you let me stay?”

“listen,” caspian tells him. “whatever you’re thinking, it’s not true. it’s this mist messing with your head.”

“i can’t always be the traitor. surely there’s some good in me, right?” he huffs a laugh, only slightly hysterical. “there’s good in everyone, right?”

caspian looks pained in a way edmund can only vaguely understand. he’s sure if peter stood in front of him and called every part of himself monstrous, he’d look some similar way. but edmund doesn’t deserve it – he deserves a cave of his own to crawl into, to turn to rock and be forgotten forever, an altar to every sinner. every traitor belongs to me.

“do you think i’m a bad person?” caspian asks.

edmund’s eyes flick to his instantly, the cold forgotten once more. “no,” he says, “of course not.”

“even though my people invaded narnia? even though i took your throne?”

“caspian, no –”

“even though, in that cave, i thought i could kill you?”

“no,” he says, shaking his head. “you could never be a bad person, caspian.”

“and if i’m not a bad person for my past, how are you a bad person for yours?”

“it’s different –”

“it isn’t.” caspian’s eyes seem lit by fire, and everything inside edmund longs to burn. he supposes loving someone like himself must be akin to starting a blaze in a damp cabin – only steam, and too little kindling to catch. “bad people are like my uncle. like your witch.” when edmund flinches at his phrasing, he takes his hand. “bad people don’t get to have what we have.”

edmund smiles a little. “a ship?” he says lightly.

that makes caspian laugh. “no, ed.”

“not even a really, really cool ship?”

“ed, i’m trying to be serious!”

“it is!” edmund says. “it’s a seriously cool ship!”

“silly thing,” caspian sighs, “i’m trying to tell you i love you.”

edmund feels his chest tighten. “oh.”

caspian smiles, almost apologetic. “yes.”

“oh,” he says again, “i love you too.”

caspian looks shocked. “like – like in love love me?”

he can’t help the grin that starts across his face. “yes, caspian. like in love love you.”

“oh. okay. i love you too.”

“i know, cas.” he kisses the other man softly between breaths. “i know.” he tangles his fingers in caspian’s hair then, keeping him as close as possible, so he can feel him smile against his lips. maybe caspian is right, he thinks. maybe they deserve some good things.

\\

they find three of the lords on ramandu’s island. wrapped in roots and rapidly greying, they are sat at a stone table laden with ripe fruits and spiced meats – all the kind of foods you crave most on a sea voyage. the men shift hungrily. edmund’s suspicions return instantly.

he doesn’t trust the star – liliandil – and it’s not just because caspian’s looking at her like that. so far, every island they’ve docked at has held some dark secret (pirates and dragon hoards and magicians and cursed pools be damned, he thinks), and he’s not about to lose caspian the men to a silly smile on a perfect face damn feast just because they all got too comfy. but she doesn’t say anything obviously incriminating (though her barb about him being the traitor king does sting smartly) so all he can do is follow grudgingly behind and listen as she warns the others (stupidly friendly in the face of her beautiful . . . well, face) of the horrors that await them on the dark island. the moment she’s returned to the sky, far enough away for him not to feel worthless in his own skin, edmund pulls caspian back to his side and kisses him deeply. (if the throwaway hope that she sees even crosses his mind, he won’t admit to it.)

caspian laughs at him, but he kisses back, teeth clacking, noses mashing against cheeks. in the background, edmund thinks he hears lucy say, “oh, for aslan’s sake” as she makes her way back to the table to eat. (so maybe he was wrong about the food being cursed, so, sue him.)

“jealous, are we?” caspian murmurs.

edmund bites caspian’s lip maybe a little harshly. “i think i’m allowed to be,” he mutters back under his breath.

caspian hums questioningly and slips an arm around edmund’s waist.

“she was pretty.”

“i suppose.”

edmund rolls his eyes. “come off it, you know she was. how am i meant to compete with a star?”

“what?” when caspian leans back to look him in the eye, they are twinkling with mirth and starlight. “you don’t need to compete with anyone.”

edmund shrugs.

“didn’t i tell you on the ship that i’m literally in love with you?” caspian continues, mouth quickly slipping into a crooked smile. “like, in a completely stupid, stay-with-me-forever kind of way?”

it hurts his heart a little when caspian says that. he pushes away thoughts of london that suddenly crowd his mind, of the silly room he shares with eustace and the way peter loops his ‘h’s in his letters still like he learned to when he was king. he knows it’s silly to be jealous, because he can’t stay here forever, and he can’t be upset if caspian acknowledges someone else is pretty. he can’t be jealous because – at the end of the day – he knows it’s more than likely that, if he goes back to london, when he goes back, caspian will marry someone else and likely love them the way he loves edmund right now, the way edmund loves him. the thought is like stepping out onto ice with the belief that it is much thicker than it really is – he goes under in seconds.

caspian touches his cheek. he’s back almost before he realises he was gone. “ed?”

“yes – sorry, yes, i – i love you, too.” he smiles, though it’s makeshift and a little transparent. in a stay-with-you-forever kind of way is what he doesn’t say, though he wants to (can’t make promises he can’t keep.) he takes caspian’s hand instead. says, “come on – i suppose we have some evil forces to defeat. per usual.” doesn’t say i’m so sorry i’m going to lose you.

caspian follows. their fingers stay threaded together.

\\

they get ready for whatever comes next (a fight? a battle? a death?) in their cabin. it feels like it should be their cabin – that’s what edmund calls it in his head. in some ways, he thinks it is just caspian’s and always will just be caspian’s, but they’ve spent almost every waking moment here together. every nook and cranny is stained with them, their presence, their words. it hurts to think this could be the last time they stand here together. lost in thought, he brushes a hand across the hard edge of the desk, as if to commit it to memory. it’s a lost cause – the moment his fingers lose contact with the wood, he knows it will be gone. it will all be gone, some day.

caspian appears at his side to help with his buckles wordlessly. it means more than edmund knows how to put into words, so he just says, “are you scared?”

“yes,” caspian says, “but i have you.”

“and lucy. and the crew. and eustace,” edmund adds. “we have your back.”

caspian presses a kiss to the sliver of skin left uncovered over edmund’s neck. “i meant i have you. you make me stronger.” he moves away, turning to rummage in one of the many cupboards. edmund makes himself watch, imagines this is him leaving. “give yourself some credit.”

“don’t say things like that,” he blurts. “what are you going to do when i leave? how am i meant to leave?” the words have life before he can even fully comprehend what they mean.

“oh.” caspian turns to him slowly. swallows. “i wondered when we were going to talk about this.”

“i’m sorry –”

“it’s fine,” caspian interrupts. he’s nodding, but it looks like resignation. “i understand. i understand why you have to go. you have family there and i – i can’t keep you here forever.”

“i’m sorry,” edmund whispers.

“don’t be.”

“i love you.”

“i know.” then, caspian clears his throat, and hands edmund peter’s sword. “he’d want you to have it.”

this is a goodbye, edmund thinks, for certain, this time. he doesn’t even want peter’s sword – it’s useless for dual wielding. but he just says, “thank you.”

they stand in silence then, undefined. overhead, edmund can hear the crew preparing, distributing swords and yelling orders. the stamp of their feet drowns out his own heartbeat. caspian won’t look at him.

“do you still have the statue i gave you?” edmund asks.

caspian smiles then, just a little, though his gaze is still far off. “the one from your birthday?” he nods. “of course.”

“i’ve always wondered where you keep it.” edmund turns to a shelf – the one with susan’s bow and arrow – and taps a finger against the glass front. “i haven’t seen it amongst the rest of your collection.”

“that’s because i keep it with me,” caspian says, like it should be obvious. he dips one hand into the pocket of his trousers, fishing around before holding out the tiny faunish figure edmund had given him so long ago. it’s smaller than he remembers, but still in good condition. the wood glows with a soft polish. the sight of it makes him smile.

“were you wanting it back?” caspian murmurs now, throat raw beneath the words.

“no,” edmund tells him, and he wraps his hand around caspian’s outstretched one, closing their entwined fingers around the little wooden creature. “keep it. to remember me by.”

“to remember.” caspian nods.

his eyes look so tired then, centuries older than he they should. edmund finds himself thinking about stars again, about liliandil, and how much she must have seen – stars are thousands of years old, after all. (kind of like edmund is.) he thinks, if he has to leave caspian to anyone, liliandil is amongst the best options. he wonders if the moment he steps out of narnia that big black book of fate will rewrite itself with caspian and the star’s names intertwined this time, his own presence smudged out. he wonders if that will make caspian happy, in the end.

edmund steps forward to press their foreheads together, as if that will help him to say all the words he can’t quite get out, past this is what’s right and maybe, in another life. they stand like that, unmoving, until the captain knocks to tell them they are at the island’s entrance.

through the window, edmund thinks the cave’s opening looks like a gaping mouth.

“it could be a wound,” caspian breathes. “the sea’s own scar.”

edmund doesn’t point out how many parallels he could make from that. his fingertips itch for graphite, even paint, instead of steel, but he tightens his grip on the hilt of peter’s sword and makes his silent farewells to whatever they have left.

“you’ve got this,” he whispers to caspian before they part.

caspian nods. they say nothing else.

\\

stupid, stupid edmund. of course the witch is his worst nightmare. he doesn’t know why he didn’t think of it before (with everything about caspian clouding his mind, everything about leaving) but now he’s here, sword drawn, face to face with that same smoke illusion from his dreams.

“why do you keep fighting?” she croons. she sounds too much like the voice in his head, the cold in his chest. “you know you’re already mine. you always have been.”

“no.”

“ed?” lucy calls from the other side of the deck. there are no misty shapes around her, and she’s looking at him with wide eyes. her fear is palpable.

he closes his eyes, steadies himself. opens them again. when he looks over, he sees caspian surrounded by the green smoke, face cut with pain. he can’t hear what it is whispering to him, but he’s sure it’s not much better than edmund’s own nightmare.

“ignore it!” edmund shouts, as much to caspian as to the rest of the crew. “whatever it tells you, don’t listen!”

the witch laughs at him. “you’re too late, little prince. you’ve always been running late, always just a little out of time – always just a step behind. isn’t that right, edmund?” she curls a smoky arm around him. when he waves it away, tendrils of her intangible form cling to his armour like vapour, like steam.

“stop it,” he hisses through gritted teeth.

“always fighting a losing war,” she sings-songs. “don’t they say that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again?”

“i’m not crazy.”

“no, darling,” the witch agrees, “you’re just a silly little boy. but i – i could make you a king.”

“i am a king. and i did it without your help.”

she laughs again, high-pitched and rankling, a thousand icicles smashing on a marble floor. “everything you are is because of me, little prince. you fight with two swords, as i once did; you love the people you cannot have, as i used to; constantly outshined, unloved, as i was in my day. everything you are is everything i have made you.”

“you’re a liar,” he tells her, and his voice doesn’t even tremble. “maybe you did fight with two swords – but i am the one who is still alive. maybe you couldn’t have the one you loved – but i do, and he loves me back. and maybe i’m not the legendary king peter was, or as beloved as lucy is, but i have fought for this land, and i will die for it if that is what it comes to.”

the witch curls her lip back, revealing a row of pointed teeth. he doesn’t remember her ever having teeth like that before, but it hardly surprises him now. sharklike, she bites, “stupid boy! you are nothing without me.”

“no,” he whispers, “i think you will find it is you who is nothing without me.”

she snarls at him, then, reaching for him with her razor-sharp nails, but she turns to nothing even as she moves. what was her thin hand is now just more mist, moving over his skin and dissipating as harmlessly as any cold weather. (if he was going to be poetic about it, he thinks this might be the moment the chasm in his chest finally blooms forever. in future, he’ll leave poetry to caspian.)

for once, edmund is ready to face the fact that things in narnia never come easy. as the crazed last lord yells about their worst fears destroying them – even as edmund thinks them – he’s ready for it, for whatever the world holds. hell, he could probably face off a sea serpent right about now and be –

oh, no.

“what did you think of?” caspian’s shout is equal parts exasperated and worried.

“i’m sorry!” edmund yells back, but the damage is done. when he looks in the water, the rocks are already moving, slimy green algae turned to shimmering scales, tapering into thin, purplish fins. “shit.”

“sometimes i wish you didn’t have such an imagination,” caspian sighs.

\\

at the end of everything there is silence. when the mist rises and the sea is clear again, they find it filled with rowing boats; top to tail in the middle of the ocean, as if left there by mistake, a few hundred narnians eye each other with confusion and relief.

“hello!” caspian calls to them. “we’ve come to take you home.”

it takes a while to load the people on to the boat. some of them have been missing longer than others, are tired and weak and starving. many are taken to the hammocks to rest while others huddle on deck with mugs of water and stew. a few have injuries, and lucy takes the time to administer a few drops of her old potion to each of them, to ask their names and where they are from and who they will be returning to. edmund smiles at her as he secures the row-boats alongside the rest of the crew, and she smiles back, carefree as a summer breeze. this is lucy in her element, he understands, drifting through the lives of others and brushing kisses on their cheeks. maybe, back in london, she could be a nurse. or a teacher. here, he thinks, she will forever be their benevolent queen. wherever they go, he knows without a doubt that she will blossom.

on the other hand, he’s not exactly sure how being a king translates into the real world. he thinks of peter and his university books, thinks of the volume on politics tucked in amongst his things back in his aunt and uncle’s house. he thinks of the pictures of caspian hidden inside it.

the man himself appears by edmund’s side as he finishes up the knot he’s working on. “you know,” caspian says, eyes on the horizon, “we’re not that far.”

true enough, when edmund raises his head, he can see something on the horizon. he’s not sure if it’s the end of the world, per se, but it’s certainly something, soft and white and present.

“i would certainly like to see the end of the world,” lucy says from his other side. when he glances at her, he can see the way her hair shifts in patterns outside of the wind, curls dancing on their own zephyr, like they used to eons before.

“we’ve made it this far,” edmund agrees. “might as well see what’s on the other side.”

so they sail to the end of the world.

they pick up (a very much human) eustace and reepicheep, untack one of the rowboats, and cast off. caspian asks the captain to wait exactly thirty minutes after they disappear from view and, if they are not back after that, to leave without them. the order sets edmund’s fingertips tingling with anticipation – not quite fear, but with the expectation of the fact that they will not be coming back this way.

they row away from the dawn treader through sweet waters. literally sugar water, reepicheep tells them. (they all take a moment to childishly gulp handfuls from the waves, giggling amongst themselves.) he and caspian sit with their backs to the ship, pulling the oars in sync, and lucy watches the dragon’s-head of the helm disappear behind them with wistful eyes.

“i shall miss that boat terribly,” she sighs, somewhat vaguely, as it finally leaves their line of sight.

“i’m sure we can find you one just like it,” eustace pipes up from the other end of their little vessel. “maybe edmund could draw it for you.”

“maybe i could,” edmund murmurs. no one mentions staying.

eventually, the empty water makes way to thousands of miles of undisturbed white lilies, bobbing gently on the surface. lucy scoops a hand through the water, brushing the petals of the snowy flowers. “for peace,” she murmurs without a hint of surprise, and edmund remembers the dream she mentioned so many moons ago now, of a sea of flowers. he wonders how close she got to the end that time.

eustace says, “have you all never been this far before?”

“no one has,” caspian replies. “i suppose we are the first.”

“the first to arrive this way, at least,” edmund puts in.

“you’re certainly the first visitor to narnia who has also reached its end, eustace,” lucy points out.

“the first dragon-boy, too,” reepicheep adds.

eustace flushes almost proudly, and they press on.

they come to a stop on a beach of white sand. it strikes edmund as exceedingly normal for the end of the world, except perhaps for the curl of waves that cuts the sandy expanse, hiding whatever is beyond, shifting and white-tipped. it stretches on for as far as edmund can see in both directions – blissful nothingness, he thinks. vaguely, he wonders if staying here for eternity is an option.

“i suppose this is where we get off,” caspian says as the boat bumps against the strange shoreline. there is not a hint of hesitation in his words. so they pull the boat up out of the reach of the waves, edmund takes caspian’s hand in his own, and the five of them make their way towards the watery region.

it feels kind of like a mourning procession, making their way up the beach like this. not a death, per se, but an ending, for sure. edmund can feel it rising in his bones, and he doesn’t like the way it chases and nips at his heels. he squeezes caspian’s hand, and caspian squeezes back. they don’t look at each other – edmund knows if he were to look over, he would never be able to look away. he thinks of the first time, on the tower, closing his eyes and saying, can’t i just keep you like this?

“greetings, kings and queen,” a voice rumbles behind them, “and loyal knights of narnia.”

they all turn at once. aslan smiles on at them, larger than life and golden as the sun. edmund has to squint to look at him at first. his eyes water.

“aslan!” lucy gasps with joy. “is this your country?”

“no, dear one. my country lies beyond. this is just a resting place for you before you continue your journey.”

“our journey?” eustace asks. “but we’ve already made it here.”

aslan chuckles. “this is not a place of endings, my child.”

“is it not?” edmund says, and it’s only then he realises he’s crying. “isn’t this the part where you send us home?”

aslan’s furry brows draw together. he looks troubled by edmund’s words – insomuch as a lion can look troubled – but only says, “i cannot force you to go anywhere, my king. your choices are to continue on, or to go back.”

“continue on,” caspian echoes, as if in a dream. “to your country, you mean?”

aslan nods his great head. “if that is where you wish to go.”

caspian swallows. “is my father there?”

“you can only know that if you choose to go beyond.”

edmund’s heart seizes. he feels more than he sees caspian’s reaction, only half present in his own body – he notices the moment caspian’s fingers untangle from his own, understands the space growing between them as caspian walks towards the churning waves, but he can’t make himself react. he can’t figure out how to make words work. swallowing feels like chugging liquid adhesive. his heart thunders in his chest as loudly as the waves crash in on themselves. surely – surely, after everything, he’s not about to leave without a goodbye.

as soon as the thought enters edmund’s head, caspian halts. one hand reaches blindly for the waves, skimming the surface. even from here, edmund can see the fine spray that leaps out at him. “i can’t,” caspian murmurs, barely loud enough to hear. “i have a duty to narnia. to my people. to my family.”

aslan nods his agreement. “you are a great king, caspian,” he rumbles, “when you do reach my country, your time there will be blessed.”

caspian nods his thanks slowly. with deliberate steps, he walks back to edmund, who doesn’t think twice about wrapping his arms around caspian, tangling the two of them together. “i thought you were about to leave me,” edmund whispers, voice thick with tears. “i thought you were about to leave me forever.”

before caspian can answer, reepicheep steps forward to ask the pleasure of entering aslan’s country, and is accepted. with tearful goodbyes (a hug from lucy, a handshake from eustace), they watch the knight paddle his tiny ship over the waves and disappear from view. as easy as that, their friend is gone. simultaneously, it makes edmund wants to cry with joy and throw up in terror.

“it is time,” aslan says then, and the waves crack open. right down the middle, a parting of the sweet sea. like the twisted tree trunk, like the yawning doors of the wardrobe, narnia aching to spit them back out one final time.

“this is the last time, isn’t it,” lucy says. it’s not even a question, just an echoing of what she already knows.

“you must return home,” is all aslan says.

edmund can’t stop the tears streaming down his cheeks. “i thought you said this wasn’t a place for endings.”

aslan’s holds his gaze. “it is not,” he explains calmly. “it is a place of beginnings.”

it’s bullshit is what it is, edmund thinks. he can’t picture any beginning that isn’t with caspian, isn’t in narnia. all edmund’s fears feel like they are coming true – like everything they’ve faced was all too easy, all too convenient, just so their leaving would be gentler; like exposure therapy, a slow introduction to life without. it’s bullshit. he’s still reeling from it when caspian stands in front of him and lucy and whispers, “you know, i think of you as my family,” so he can barely find it in himself to answer.

“you’re our family, too,” lucy tells caspian and, though she is also crying, she looks beautiful and strong.

caspian looks him in the eye and says, “ed.” simple – nothing more.

edmund shakes his head, because it’s all bullshit. fate or not, he’s not letting this go without a fight. “no. no, i can’t go.”

“edmund.” lucy’s voice breaks over the syllables.

“no.” he shakes his head again, harder. caspian’s words echo in his head - you have a family there and i can’t keep you here forever. “my family is here. my home is here. i can’t leave again. i –” and he raises his head to look the lion king in the eye. “i belong here, in narnia. with caspian.”

aslan says nothing. his gaze is neutral, honeyed and liquifying. he’s only seen aslan angry one time, and he’s hoping against hope he’s not about to witness it a second.

lucy takes edmund’s hand, then. “if you’re staying, i’m staying too.”

“lucy –”

“we discussed this,” she tells him. “aslan, if we wish to stay, may we?”

for a moment, aslan is as silent as before. then, “is this what you truly want, my children?” he asks.

“yes,” edmund says, without a second’s thought. “yes, i –” he turns and looks at caspian. “if you’ll have us.”

“i would like nothing more,” caspian whispers. “if you’ll allow it, aslan.”

eustace, watching the exchange with a slightly mollified expression, says, “and what do i tell my parents? your parents?”

“you need not worry about that, eustace,” aslan tells him softly. “the only remaining question is, do you wish to return home?”

for a moment, eustace looks towards the waves reepicheep had disappeared over, and then nods his head. “i can come back though, right?” he asks hesitantly. “i can visit them?”

“of course.” aslan nods his giant head.

“all right, then.” eustace turns to the three of them and clears his throat in an oddly business-like manner. “i’ll tell peter and susan of your decision.”

edmund can’t stop the bubble of laughter that rises in his throat. he snorts, and thinks how inexplicably hilarious it is that he’s already looking forward to the day that the boy who hid dirt in his shoes falls back into their lives.

“thank you, eustace,” lucy murmurs, stepping forward to hug a very confused looking eustace. edmund joins them after a second, wrapping his arms around the odd duo. then, the final jigsaw piece, caspian pulls them all together.

they stay like that for a long moment, a strange tangle of limbs and sticky faces pushed together, mutters of love and best wishes. when eustace finally manages to extricate himself, his cheeks are red with heat and embarrassment and his nose is running. he rubs it on the sleeve of his shirt, nods, and turns to aslan for the last time. “alright,” he says. “i’m ready.”

the last they see of their cousin (for a long while) is the back of his truly hideous sweater vest and golden head, disappearing between the waves. and then he’s gone.

lucy squeezes edmund’s hand tightly. we made the right choice, the squeeze says. we’re doing what’s best for us.

“where do you wish to go from here?” aslan asks, dark eyes surveying the three of them intently.

when edmund looks to caspian, he is already looking back. “i suppose we go back to the ship?” edmund ventures, curling their fingers together once more.

“oh,” lucy sighs mournfully, “and i already said such a nice goodbye to it.”

“home,” caspian supplies easily. “we’ll go home.”

aslan nods once more. “i know the three of you will rule well,” he says, “and i wish you luck. i will see you again, in time.”

“thank you,” edmund says, and it means a thousand things at once. thank you for letting us stay. thank you for letting us in. thank you for being here, at last.

and then lucy is yanking him into another hug, squealing with laughter and yelling. “we’re staying!” she squawks. “ed, we’re staying!”

he hugs her back, tucking his face into her hair to hide his tears. when she lets him go, (“ed, you’ve made me all soggy!”) he throws himself into caspian’s arms with reckless abandon and kisses him, right there and then. it tastes like sweet sugar and happiness. it might be the best thing he’s ever tasted.

“i love you in a stay-with-you-forever kind of way,” he breathes, because it is the truth.

“you didn’t have to,” caspian says, though his face is wet with tears too.

“no,” edmund says right back, “but i wanted to.”

“oh no,” lucy moans, “i’m stuck with the sappiest couple of both worlds.”

when they’ve finally pulled themselves apart and settled back in the boat, tangled together one-two-three-in-a-row, edmund looks back for just a second, just to see what is left –

there is nothing. no aslan, no waves. not even the end of the world.

\\

it takes barely a fortnight for them to pull back into narnia’s mainland harbour, (a place edmund hasn’t seen in centuries) even after checking back in with the lords on ramandu’s island and dropping the enslaved narnians back on their respective doorsteps. drinian notes that the wind is peculiarly swift, and lucy makes a dry comment about miracles that sends edmund cackling. caspian grins and asks a sea-bird to convey a message back to his council as they cast off from the final island (now spectacularly pirate-free), telling them to expect guests.

(“guests, are we?” edmund teases, raising an eyebrow.

caspian rolls his eyes fondly. “i didn’t feel like telling him the whole story. seagulls are forgetful enough as it is.”

“will we ever tell eustace that we lied about that poor seagull not being able to speak?” lucy asks with a giggle. “i feel so awfully terrible about it.”)

they are met at the harbour by trumpkin and four very talkative horses. it takes them a solid ten minutes for caspian to bid the crew goodbye and for lucy to hug trumpkin an appropriate number of times (according to her), talking at a mile a minute all the while, and another five to track down enough sugar cubes to appease the horses at this time of morning (“it’s early,” the piebald whinnies, “we haven’t even had second breakfast!”) which is entirely edmund’s fault, and he’ll readily admit to that. then, it is another hour by horse still before they reach the castle, so, by the time the towers of the old telmarine castle are seen scraping the sky, as blocky and dark as before, the sun has risen quite high in the sky, and all the world is coming awake. as they trot into the main courtyard, edmund takes in the smell of freshly baked bread wafting from the market, the sounds of people calling to each other. every window is open to let in the birdsong, every other rooftop of the village hung with clean laundry. there are children playing hopscotch in the streets and barrels of flowers by every door.

“it’s lovely, caspian!” lucy exclaims.

“we’ve been trying to restore a bit of life to the place,” caspian explains, “some narnians are still a little fearful, but it’s better than it was. isn’t that right, trumpkin?”

they are met by a small crowd at the entranceway to the castle. trufflehunter is among them, bedecked in a shimmering purple jacket and round spectacles, as well as several centaurs edmund recognises, and a number of telmarine servants, recognisable by their dark hair and dark eyes. they let loose a collective round of giddy applause at the sight of the four of them on horseback, followed by a smattering of whispers behind cupped hands.

“queen lucy!” trufflehunter calls, “king edmund! and king caspian, sir – it is great to have you back.”

“good to see you too, sir,” caspian replies, swinging down from his horse comfortably. “thanks for holding down the fort while i was away.”

trufflehunter waves a paw. “it was an honour, my king. celebrations for your return are already underway – a feast!”

“there’s no need,” caspian says, “we’re just happy to be back.” he holds a hand out to edmund to help him down, smiling winningly at edmund’s scowl. behind him, lucy snorts, and leaps down off her own horse to greet trufflehunter properly with a kiss on each cheek.

(“heavens,” trufflehunter stutters. “my queen, it’s been too long.” edmund thinks the badger would blush, if he could.)

“my king,” one of the centaurs pipes up, bowing his head, “if you don’t mind me saying so, you did just save narnia once again – such bravery certainly warrants at least a small ball, one should think. and, of course, with the return of the king and queen of old, there is even more cause for celebration.”

caspian shoots edmund a look.

“don’t look at me,” edmund huffs, finally taking the proffered hand and jumping down with some degree of grace. “susan was always in charge of parties.”

“edmund doesn’t have the patience for policing hors d’oeuvres,” lucy snickers.

“neither do you, if i remember correctly.”

“no,” lucy reminisces happily, “because i’d much rather eat them.”

caspian grins at lucy’s carefree response. “if you feel a ball is necessary, zaphyn, then we shall throw one.”

zaphyn nods his acceptance, and a few of the telmarine maids in the crowd clap excitedly.

“in the meantime,” caspian says, “i should show our guests to their rooms.”

“of course, my king!” a tiny, wrinkled telmarine lady pipes up. “we have set up two suites on the fourth floor.” she bows so low her nose nearly touches her knees.

“oh. thank you, celeste. i’ll show them the way,” caspian tells her. perhaps, more pointedly, he raises his hand to the crowd, still intertwined with edmund’s, before leading the two of them up the steps and into the castle. behind them, edmund hears the crowd disperse with a rumble of conversation, while one of the horses begs more sugar cubes from the kitchen maids.

“please,” it whines, voice growing fainter as caspian leads them into the entrance hall, “we haven’t even had second breakfast, moll!”

“i kind of forgot they didn’t already know about us,” caspian muses as the three of them wander the length of the hall.

“well, i’m sure they’ll find out soon enough,” lucy declares, “if the two of you keep getting all gooey-eyed over each other.”

edmund snorts. the sound echoes off the dark stone walls, a cacophony of ungodly laughter that makes all of them giggle more. already, edmund can’t help but think, the castle is much nicer than he ever remembers it being.

caspian leads them up numerous flights of stairs, politely dodging conversation with passing servants while keeping up a steady stream of words. “i asked daisy if she could look out some dresses for you, lucy, in case you wanted some – though of course you are welcome to continue wearing your shirts and such . . . oh, this is the portrait gallery, where the sketches of the lords were taken from – we’ve been working on a botanical garden in the east gardens, too, if you’re interested, lu . . . and, of course, there’s the library, though i never get the chance to – oh, aster! edmund, lucy, this is aster, they’re on my council – yes, yes, i’m just fine, just helping the king and queen settle in – we’ll speak soon, aster, i promise – do come along to the feast tonight! oh, i have the highest respect for them, but once they start talking you can never make them quiet . . . and this is my old professor’s office. i’m sure you’ll remember him – he’s not in so much these days, but i keep his study ready for him at all times . . .”

they come to a halt on a familiar floor, lit largely with lanterns and two slivers of windows at either end of its length. lucy appears to recognise the place too, and she clasps her hands together excitedly. “oh, the room with the beautiful willow tree is up here, yes?”

caspian nods. “i know you befriended her well enough last time,” he says. edmund tries to ignore the conspiratorial note in his voice.

lucy gives him a hug, flushing, and squeezes edmund’s hand one last time. “i’m so glad we decided to stay,” she says, opening the door and disappearing into the room. edmund can hear her calling out for the willow tree before the door even closes behind her. it makes him smile.

in the silence of the hallway, caspian asks, peculiarly shy, “do you want to see your room?”

edmund takes his hand and says, “i think i’d rather see yours,” which makes caspian laugh. it is easy enough, though, to follow caspian down the hall and up the twisting stairs of the tower to the seafarer’s own room. caspian unlocks the door and the two of them tumble inside. edmund barely gives him the chance to shut it again before he’s kissing him. (to be fair, he’s been remarkedly good at keeping himself in check thus far.)

it is not soft by any stretch of the imagination. caspian groans when edmund crowds him up against the door, tangling his fingers in edmund’s hair and pulling. when edmund leans back, a string of saliva connects their mouths still, thin and delicate. edmund breaks it with his tongue.

eyes wide and dark, caspian murmurs, “i can’t believe you stayed.”

edmund touches his cheek, incongruously sweet in comparison to the line of hot kisses he’s begun pressing down caspian’s throat. “why wouldn’t i?”

“your family,” caspian gasps. “your life.”

“half my family is here,” edmund interrupts him, “and i had no life back there. here, i can live. here, i have you,” and he punctuates that thought with another kiss.

caspian kisses back, hard and fast, with a little bit of teeth and a lot of tongue. when he bites down on edmund’s lip, edmund shivers. “i love you.”

“i love you too,” edmund breathes. he kisses the tip of caspian’s nose, just to make him laugh, which he does. once again, edmund takes caspian’s hand, and they walk together to the bed. he watches caspian flop down on the covers in a practiced sort of way and follows suit, aligning them side-by-side so that their knees and fingertips are touching.

“what does this mean for us?” caspian asks, then. “i don’t – if you’re staying, i don’t want you to feel like you can’t have – others –”

edmund hushes him with another kiss. “why would i want anyone else?” then, echoing caspian’s own words back to him cheekily, he adds, “didn’t i tell you at the end of the world that i’m literally in love with you?”

caspian half-smiles, worrying at his bottom lip. “i know, i just – you’re also king. i don’t know how the people will react.”

curling their fingers together, edmund says, “you said this is accepted in telmar, right?”

“in old telmar, yes.”

“well, now this is your country. our country – yours and mine. and i think our people will be happy for us. in the meantime –” he shifts, then, moving to sit in caspian’s lap, “caspian the tenth, king of narnia and well-known seafarer, considering your lack of reply last time i asked: would you do me the honour of letting me court you properly? as in, publicly –” here, he pauses to kiss caspian again, just lightly, “– exclusively –” another kiss, “– take-you-for-a-picnic, sleep-in-your-bed-with-you, bring-you-flowers kind of court you?” another kiss.

beneath him, caspian snickers. “of course, edmund the just, king of narnia and well-known battle strategist.”

“ugh, politics.” he wrinkles his nose in distaste.

“come now,” caspian chides him. “you enjoy a little bit of politics, don’t you, darling?”

edmund closes his eyes. “you’re going to be the death of me.”

\\

planning a ball, it turns out, is just as tedious as edmund remembers it being. thus, he spends most of his time reading, or in the castle’s gallery sketching, or walking the treeline of the forest while caspian and lucy discuss colour schemes and entrees in depth. caspian thinks it’s funny that edmund is so indifferent about it all – edmund does not appreciate that his boyfriend (and, aslan’s mane, if that doesn’t make his heart skip a beat every single time) hasn’t been able to spend more than ten minutes with him every day since they got back just because edmund never learnt the difference between cream and ecru.

so – as promised, because edmund is a man of his word – he corners caspian and tells him he’s taking him on a date.

(and maybe it goes a little more like caspian on his knees and edmund gasping, “stay with me tomorrow?” and caspian saying, “of course, my love,” but edmund’s not keeping score or anything.)

they go to the ruins of cair paravel together, even though it takes a few hours to get there on horseback and it means they have to wake a little earlier than the rest of the castle. sneaking out across the barely lit courtyard together reminds edmund of his first years as king, escaping the confines of the castle to roll down hills with lucy, and it sets him feeling vaguely nostalgic. the air smells clean and fresh and magic, and he finds he doesn’t miss london air for the life of him.

by the time they reach the ruins, they sun is well and truly in the sky, painting the crumbling white walls golden with its light. caspian stares up at it all and remarks, “this is beautiful.”

“you should have seen it when it was whole,” edmund sighs. “i loved this place.”

caspian brushes a hand over the space where edmund’s throne once stood. “last on the left, right?”

he nods and props himself up against the remains of a pillar. “do you remember when we met here, the first time?” he asks.

“of course,” caspian murmurs. “it was your birthday.”

“would you have kissed me?” edmund asks. “that time? if i’d stayed longer?”

caspian shoots him a crooked smile. “what did you think i was trying to do?”

edmund laughs at that, rolling his eyes. “and the time on the rooftop?”

“i think you’ll find that, from the moment we met, all i was trying to do was kiss you.” caspian saunters back down the steps, then, and tucks an arm around edmund’s waist. “except that, on the rooftop, you were spectacularly drunk, and i don’t think it would have been right of me.”

edmund smiles at him. “looking out for my virtue, i see.”

“i try,” caspian sighs playfully, “though i suppose not laying hands on a drunk person is more a question of common decency than of virtue.”

“well, then, you have more common decency that most men in london.”

“besides, have you not always looked out for me?”

“certainly not for your virtue, no,” he laughs, feinting at caspian’s waist.

caspian darts out of arms’ reach, cackling. “blasphemy! for the well-being of my body and soul, then.”

edmund thinks for a moment. “you mean like when the witch came to aslan’s how?”

caspian nods. “i think i fell right in love with you at that moment.”

edmund snorts and leaps at caspian, pushing him and retreating swiftly. “oh, hush.”

“i’m not joking!” caspian laughs, stumbling from the attack.

“nevertheless,” edmund says through laughter, “we have each other now, and these honey tarts are certainly going to go cold if we don’t eat them soon.”

“ed,” caspian gasps, “you didn’t.”

edmund pulls the desserts out of his bag with a grin.

“i take it all back – this is the moment i fell in love with you.”

they spend the day basking in the sunlight and, when the sun has moved off, laying under the shade of a large, scraggly tree that has made its home in the old throne room. (edmund thinks it looks right at home. he makes a note to tell lucy about it.) they trade tales of their childhoods, funny anecdotes from travels, favourite memories. edmund braids dandelions into caspian’s hair while caspian reads old narnian verse from the book he’s been ignoring since his voyage began, and edmund cajoles him into reading some of his own stuff (but only in exchange for edmund showing him his sketchbook when they return to the castle – edmund has to hope cas’ll forget that part.) everything feels peaceful – everything feels like home.

\\

lucy is pacing in front of the floor-length mirror in her room while edmund lounges on her flower-bedecked four-poster, eating the grapes that are growing around her headboard. (he’s not about to ask how they got there.) “oh, this is silly,” she huffs, racking the silk skirt she’s wearing up around her knees before letting it fall again in a cascading swish. “this really is silly. do help me, ed.”

he raises his head from the pillow to fix her with a look. “it’s a dress, lu. why are you so worried about this?”

she glares. “because, it’s our first dance since we’ve been back. this is about making a good impression!”

“we’ve already been royalty before, i doubt they’ll have forgotten that.”

lucy’s gaze is positively withering. susan would be proud. “just – help me.”

he pushes himself up to lean against the headboard with a sigh. “alright. what are your options, then?” not that he thinks he can be of much help – he sketches, he’s not a fashion designer.

“well, is this one too much?” lucy asks, gesturing to the dress she’s currently wearing. it’s all varying shades of blue, rippling like seawater under the lamplight of the room so it looks like she’s wrapped purely in waves. the skirt is lined with bubbling lace, and tiny pearls catch the light among the folds. it’s pretty, sure, maybe a little flashy – it reminds him of something susan might wear, and lucy is decidedly not susan.

“what are your other options?” he says, popping another grape into his mouth.

lucy points to the row of dresses hung by her vanity, provided for her by daisy, one of caspian’s aunt’s old ladies in waiting. “take your pick.”

there is a garish golden one that shimmers like new pennies and makes edmund think of cursed pools, and another all in white like the winter. several are tones of pink that would not look out of place on the streets of london. none of them seem quite right.

“what’s the green one look like?” he asks, nodding towards the last dress on the rack. lucy pads over in her bare feet to pick it out and obligingly holds it up to her neck. it is simple and dark as moss, with long white sleeves that bell out around the wrist and a criss-crossing pattern of ribbons across the bodice. sewn into the skirt are the golden outlines of ivy leaves, shifting oil-like across the silk.

he catches her eye. “i like that one.”

“you think?”

“definitely.”

“it’s not too –” as she searches for the word, her eyes dart over to the open window, where edmund can only just make out the uppermost branches of the willow tree “– obvious?”

he has to smile at that. lucy’s fascination with the trees has always been just another fact of life for him, and her insistent ability to fall in love with the dryads that dwell in them has never bothered anyone, so the willow tree isn’t news exactly, but the way lucy’s eyes light up whenever they mention her might be. there is a moment where he thinks that lucy falling in love with a tree-spirit can’t be more acceptable to the world than him and caspian, but he pushes it away quickly. “i think it’s perfect.”

as if reading his mind, lucy raises an eyebrow. “have you asked caspian to go with you yet?”

“have you?” he asks reflexively. then, “he’s going to be there anyway. i hardly need to ask him.”

she sighs and breezes back behind the privacy screen with the green dress in hand. “i think he would appreciate you asking,” she calls back.

he lies back down on the pillow and stares up at the grape vines stretched between the posts of her bed. really, how are they getting there? lucy’s dating a willow, not a vine-spirit. “would he just not assume? i mean, we are actually seeing each other now. why, did he say something?”

he hears her sigh under her breath. “you might be the most unromantic person i’ve ever met, ed.”

“i’m not unromantic! i’m just – nervous,” he admits. “what if narnia is like england? what if they take one look at the pair of us and just –”

“they won’t,” lucy says. “and if they do, we pay them no mind. you are my brother, and their king, and i will fight anyone who speaks ill of you, alright?”

one vine curls further down the post nearest his head, hugging closer to the wood. even as he watches, it puts forth a round, ripe grape, blooming in seconds. “i know, lu.”

“we’re allowed to be people. we’re allowed to be happy.”

“i know.”

she steps out from behind the screen then, finishing tightening the ribbons of her bodice. “good enough?” she asks, punctuating the question with a little twirl.

“perfect.” he smiles weakly.

lucy fixes him with a knowing look. “ask caspian to the dance – properly.”

“will you ask her?” he retorts, tilting his chin towards the window.

the light of the oil-lamps illuminates lucy’s blush. “i will.” then, raking her fingers back through her messy curls, and says, “i still need to do my hair, and you need to get dressed. there’s hardly a half-hour before people start turning up.”

“do you want me to braid it for you?” he asks. he’s itching to do something with his hands, to settle his nerves.

lucy waves him away. “no, no, i can do it myself. you go get ready – and remember what i said.”

he rolls his eyes at her fondly and tumbles off the bed, heading towards the door.

“edmund?”

“yes, lu?”

“i love you.”

“love you too,” he calls back, shutting the door behind him. (somewhere in the back of his mind, he jots down a reminder to tell lucy he loves her more often. she certainly deserves it.)

in the dark hallway, celeste is lighting more oil-lamps. “your majesty,” she squeaks, nearly dropping her matches, “you are not ready! people are here already!”

“i promise i’m on my way now, ma’am.”

“king caspian has been looking for you, my lord,” she squeaks after him as he makes his way to the tower staircase.

“where is he?”

she points up. “last i saw him.”

edmund nods and starts up the tower two steps at a time, shouting a “thank you!” back at her in his hurry. as it is, he nearly collides with caspian half-way up.

“someone’s in a hurry,” caspian says with a laugh, reaching out to steady him.

“celeste says people are arriving,” he puffs, strangely breathless, but he can’t help the smile that falls over his face anyway.

caspian quirks an eyebrow. “and you’re not even ready.”

“i was helping lucy!”

caspian laughs at him, and edmund takes a moment to appreciate how calm the other man looks. party-planning and prior engagements aside, caspian looks well-rested – the bruises under his eyes that edmund had come to accept upon the dawn treader are gone, and there is colour in his cheeks beneath the shadow of his beard. tonight, his hair is pulled back in a smooth bun, accentuating his cheekbones. its times like these that make edmund itch for oil paints, the control of brush strokes and dark tones, the ability to take down every angle of caspian’s face. instead, he presses a hand to caspian’s cheek and simply says, “you look beautiful.”

caspian’s answering smile is somewhat bashful, and he presses a kiss to edmund’s palm to hide his face. “i should get downstairs – to greet the arrivals.”

“of course.” edmund lowers his hand and steps aside to let caspian past. “i’ll meet you down there.” he only has the resolve to wait for caspian to take two steps past him before he says, “wait.”

caspian turns to look at him, smiling again. (the part of edmund that used to house the cold and blank and hollow is thrumming with that feeling he gets now, the one that says this is all i will ever need, this is everything.) “yes?”

“go to the ball with me,” edmund says, less of a question than he meant it to be. “lucy’s taking her dryad, and i – i want people to know.”

caspian’s eyes flick over edmund’s face. “about us?”

“yes.”

“okay.”

edmund nods, huffs a laugh, and then nods again. “okay.”

caspian nods back. “okay.”

this time when he turns to leave, it is caspian who calls him back.

“ed,” he says, “wait a minute.”

“yes?”

caspian closes the distance between them, kissing edmund quickly on the mouth. “forgot something,” he whispers, like it’s a joke, eyelashes tickling edmund’s cheek – and then he’s gone, disappearing down the steps.

edmund wastes a solid five minutes after that just stood on the steps with his hand pressed to his mouth, heart feeling like it’s about to burst, because he gets this now. he gets this life, the kind he’s always wanted, and there is nothing stopping him, and the thought of that alone makes him want to explode. he gets the happy ending he never thought he’d be allowed. he gets to live it out entirely.

and he is happy.

\\

walking into the ballroom arm in arm with caspian is perhaps the most nerve-wracking thing edmund has ever done. to his left, lucy and her willow stand hand in hand with eyes only for each other. when those doors open tonight (any second now), it will be first time narnia has ever seen two kings together, the first time any of their royalty have ever courted within their quartet. edmund thinks his heart might beat right out of his chest.

“you’re nervous,” caspian murmurs. he’s watching the doors unblinkingly, waiting for the moment the handle clicks down and everybody sees.

“and you’re not?” edmund bites back under his breath.

“yes,” caspian admits, “but i have you. and i love you.”

slowly, edmund inhales. caspian is right – they have each other. if narnia doesn’t want them, so be it. they don’t have to rule. they could run off to the country together, maybe. start over somewhere in one of the smaller towns, where no one will have ever seen their faces. caspian could write, he could draw. hell, he could get a job. he’d do it, for caspian.

“would you run away to the country with me?” edmund asks, off-handedly.

“of course,” caspian says, “but perhaps another night?”

he has to laugh at that. “alright. perhaps another night.”

“ready, your majesties?” the centaur by the door asks.

“ready.”

edmund tightens his arm around caspian’s. the handle clicks down –

the room bursts with applause. everything appears to be dipped in jewel tones – greens and blues, dark spots of red – and hung with fruit. vines drip down every wall, full to bursting with grapes, and every waiter seems to carry bowls of fresh fruits. edmund thinks there might be one lady in the back wearing a headpiece comprised entirely of pears. it’s positively bacchic.

“give me strength,” edmund exhales, “you two talked for so long about off-white hues that i was expecting something much more . . . muted.”

caspian just laughs.

the band strikes up a cheery tune, and they start their procession into the hall. in spite of it all, edmund can’t help but smile. he feels like his mouth might split with the strength of it.

“think of it this way,” caspian says, “would you rather they were all looking at us, or at the choice décor?”

“no amount of fruit in the world can distract from you, my love,” edmund responds drily as they reach the centre of the hall.

caspian’s smile almost gives way to overwhelming giggles. “you jest, but i know you adore my face.”

“of course i do, darling,” edmund whispers back. to his left once more, lucy and her willow are settling into position for their first dance. “but who said i was talking about your face?”

“scandal!” caspian teases, but he takes edmund’s hand in his nevertheless, and places his other on edmund’s waist. “feel free to lead.”

and they’re off, spinning across the room without a care in the world. the crowds don’t clap – it’s too austere an event for that kind of casual ruckus – but no one is throwing fruit at them or anything, so edmund counts that as a win. sure, the two of them are more awkward in the spotlight than lucy and her dryad, but they mostly manage to keep a steady rhythm, and edmund even manages to spin caspian when the tune calls for it, even though caspian is taller and much more hesitant. they smile at each other over their conjoined hands, and caspian laughs breathlessly. he’s sure they mess up a few of the steps, and he’s almost certain there are people in the crowds whispering, but he can’t find it in himself to be afraid anymore. he’s free, here, and he never has to pretend again.

the music ends, and the crowd applauds. no one reaches to tear them apart – no one so much as heckles them. instead, the mass begins moving, breaking up into groups of conversation and couples joining the dance floor. the band strike up another tune, slightly faster than the first and with a much more complicated rhythm. edmund thinks to himself, as caspian pulls him off of the dance floor to better watch lucy and the willow spin each other ecstatically around the room, that this is what happiness must feel like, real and true.

“when i was young,” he tells caspian later that night, “i never thought i’d make it this far.”

“how do you mean?” caspian asks.

they’re stood up on the same tower they met on the first time, when edmund balanced on the battlements like a stupid drunk teen. (he is still kind of a teenager. and certainly drunk.) it’s warm out, and still light despite the time. edmund can hear the music from inside, can see the trees dancing and the people milling about in the streets of the town. beside him, caspian is stood looking out over the battlements – there’s a cup of narnian wine in his hand, and he’s removed his waistcoat so he’s only in his shirt and trousers. the braided crown of grasses a small dwarven boy had gifted him is still set atop his head, though his hair has fallen loose from its tight bun, strands framing his face and brushing the back of his neck. edmund looks at him and feels only that warm, beating sensation of home-home-home.

“i never liked the thought of growing up. i don’t know why, it just – it bothered me. and then things got hard with pete, and my family, and then the war started, and then we came here. it all just seemed like it was never-ending.”

“what was? the sadness?”

“life,” edmund admits. “i wanted it to stop for so long that i sort of stopped living it, anyhow.”

caspian sucks in his bottom lip, thinking. “i can understand that,” he says. “i think, when things are bad for a long time, you get tired of them. being bad, that is. and wanting them to stop – i can understand that.”

“even when things were good, i wanted them to stop, though. it’s something i’ve always struggled with. i think i always will.” edmund tells the sky this last part, tilting his head back and leaning against the nearest battlement. above them, the stars dance like the people in the ballroom below – as above, so below, edmund thinks easily. it’s a nice sort of feeling, to know that the world around you is happy because you are happy.

“do you still want life to stop?” caspian asks sincerely. when edmund lifts his head to catch his eye, caspian is frowning, like he’s figuring out some political attack on edmund’s emotions. it makes him want to laugh, so he does.

“no,” he says truthfully. “not today. not for a while, in fact.”

caspian nods. “that’s good. let me know if you do, though, yes?”

“i will.”

“you promise?”

“i promise,” he agrees. “to the best of my ability.”

“because we’re meant to be here for each other,” caspian says. “in sickness and in health and all that stuff.”

edmund grins. “i think that’s marriage stuff, cas.”

caspian blinks, and then chuckles. “oh, yes. but it is still applicable, no?”

“i suppose.”

“and someday, if we did get married, it would still apply.”

“are we?” edmund asks. “getting married?”

“i haven’t asked you yet,” caspian tells him without a hint of a joke. “i’ll get round to it.” it makes edmund burst out into laughter anyway.

“oh, cas,” he says. “i am so very happy to be alive with you.”

\\

and so it goes.

mostly, it is good. the first days are balmy and sweet with summer, and edmund smiles at caspian as they scribble in their respective notebooks out in the meadow. caspian smiles back and drops a kiss on the nearest available section of edmund’s skin, and they are happy. in the autumn, lucy heads to sea – finally – on the dawn treader once more, (commandeered, as her favourite boat) seeking out places further than anyone has ever been; she always comes back, to add to the maps and to gossip with caspian and to kiss her willow tree hello, goodbye, i love you always. there is music, and council meetings, and laughter. edmund doesn’t think he will ever tire of seeing caspian’s face in every morning light.

when the winter rolls around, eustace arrives again, more and more often popping up in the most unexpected places – sometimes he brings friends, sometimes he is alone, and edmund only vaguely wonders why eustace’s visits seem so numerous. mostly, he is just happy to hear news of london. his aunt and uncle, it seems, are convinced edmund and lucy left for america finally (and they have aslan to thank for that), though his parents think he and lucy are living in london still, in a two-bedroom flat not far from their childhood home. eustace brings their letters when he can, carefully intercepted from the mailman, so that they can write back. (edmund writes to his mother about caspian, though he carefully skips around the word lover – he thinks helen pevensie is smart enough to read between the lines nonetheless.) peter knows where they truly are, of course, and the day eustace comes bearing his first letter is bittersweet. i’m not at all jealous, peter writes, but if you ever feel like opening that old wardrobe again, don’t hesitate. edmund smiles at the irony. susan must know, too, but she doesn’t write – according to peter, she is busy flirting her way through every and all returning soldiers. edmund thinks she can keep them.

(when eustace does hand him her letter, one day in the future, edmund cries. the paper is damp already with susan’s own tears, and her not-quite apology, (because she’s always been stubborn, and she was right, they are very similar adults), and her love. it is more than he could have asked for. he wishes to see her one more time, more than anything, but susan couldn’t get back in to narnia even if she tried. i’m not meant for such a world anymore, she will write, just as you are made for there, i am made for here.)

of course, there are bad days, too, amongst these. there are days when keeping narnia safe drags in his bones like a current, days where the smallest actions asked of him are enough to sprout migraines and rough patches. but they go on, and they try their best. the three regents of narnia (and one day, lucy’s willow will join them on their thrones, and they will be four once again): the valiant, narnia’s little jewel, with her maps and her eternally wet curls and her resilient ability to be kind, always kind; the just, narnia’s anvil, silver-fingered with graphite and always, always mending; the sea-farer, narnia’s wordsmith, renowned now for his constant presence on land, his steadfastness, and his love, always. the three of them make a good team, different in many ways to the golden era, but no less necessary, no less loved. an era of salt and stone, perhaps, a court of truths. people will try to name them for eons after they are gone, and no one will ever quite decide what to write in the history books.

“i think this was the way it was always supposed to happen,” edmund remarks one day, sat on the cliffs over their beach. the sun is setting, the sky and the sea orange with fire, and the sand glints like a thousand tiny eyes below. beside him, aslan is basking in the final rays, head on his paws like a large kitten. “i think it was always meant to turn out like this.”

“is that so,” aslan murmurs. when he lifts his great head, rays of sunlight fall loose from his mane, and he meets edmund’s eye with a smile. “what makes you say that, my child?”

edmund’s not really a child anymore. he hasn’t been for a long time, but he supposes they all must look young to aslan, who time never seems to change. the same cannot be said for edmund – more often now, he looks in the mirror and sees new lines around his eyes, greying hairs at his forehead. he does not mind. growing old is not so scary these days. “is everything in narnia fated?” he asks, instead of answering aslan’s question. “are we destined to make every choice that we do?”

“do you believe that is how it works?”

“i’m not sure,” he says, sincerely, “i just know that this was meant to be.”

“then maybe it was,” aslan replies. his eyes glint and, where before edmund might have been annoyed by his vague replies, now he only smiles. “some things are set in stone, certainly, but not all.”

he pauses for a moment, uncertain if he wants to know, then asks, “was my betrayal set in stone?”

“yes,” aslan tells him, “but your return was not. everything you have done was your choice, and yours alone.”

edmund lets out a long breath. “i’m glad for that,” he says.

“you should be proud.” aslan bows his head. “it is not often i find a child of earth  quite like you, edmund pevensie.”

“i suppose that depends on how many of us you have met.”

aslan’s laugh echoes like distant thunder in his golden chest. “i am there more often than you know, young one.”

“do you ever check in on those who have left narnia?” edmund asks. he means peter, he means eustace, of course, but he also means those who will never make it back – the professor, who long since went to aslan’s country, and susan, who has children of her own now and never looks back, from what edmund can gather.

“often,” aslan says, “i visit them as discreetly as i can. some of them do not require me as much as others, but i send signs.” he fixes edmund with a knowing look. “they are still loved. they are still children of narnia, no matter what.”

edmund looks out at the horizon, and the setting sun, and imagines he can see lucy’s ship out on the sea, pulling back into the harbour. he hasn’t seen her in a few months, now, and he knows salix, her willow, misses her – their child, fenn, is almost a year old, and he knows lucy will want to be there for their birthday. caspian has been planning the day almost single-handedly, partially because he knows how edmund feels about party planning and partially because he is the world’s most besotted uncle. (the last time she was home, lucy had playfully ribbed them about having their own child so caspian would spend more time doting on it than on hers. edmund had taken one look at caspian’s wide eyes and said, “don’t give him ideas, lu.” sometimes edmund thinks he’s barely old enough to look after himself, let alone a literal baby.)

“could they ever come back?” edmund asks, then. “could – would you let them back, if they found a way?” he’s thinking of peter, living out in the professor’s cold country house with the aging macready (who’s grown softer in later days, if peter’s letters are anything to go by) and his own wife. he would love to meet her, one day, of course, but more than anything he would love to see peter’s face when he saw narnia again. he wants to restore that piece of peter’s heart. he wants peter to see his family. (to a lesser degree, he wants to see the look on pete’s face when he tells him he’s married to caspian.)

“the doorways find the people,” is aslan’s sage reply, “i do not control them,” but he also doesn’t meet edmund’s eye when he says it, so he’s willing to bet there’s something aslan could do about it.

“i suppose,” edmund starts, “that things never happen the same way twice?”

aslan laughs, and rolls onto his back, wriggling against the cracked stones for a moment. “you young children,” he rumbles, “never fail to keep me guessing.”

edmund just smiles.

\\

no matter what aslan might have to say about it, edmund knows it’s the lion’s fault that peter is currently stood in the middle of his and caspian’s bedroom, awkwardly perched on the chest at the foot of their bed. edmund sends a quick prayer of thanks that caspian is out entertaining trufflehunter (so he doesn’t immediately have to jump in the deep end with that) but then he’s jumping up from his seat and catching peter in a bear hug, pulling him onto solid ground.

“christ on a cracker,” peter breathes, the phrase ever so slightly tinged with an american accent, “ed?”

“you’re here!”

“how –” peter starts, gaping like a fish. “i thought –”

“i hope you weren’t in the middle of anything important,” edmund says, pulling away to smile some more at peter’s shock.

“bills, actually,” pete replies, but his tone is teasing. he yanks edmund back in with one arm, squeezes him tightly. “god, it’s good to see you.”

“you, too.”

“you look old.” peter holds him out at arm’s length, peering at the lines on his forehead like they are the small print on a contract.

“you’re one to talk,” edmund scoffs, “you’re wearing glasses.”

peter adjusts the wire frames self-consciously. “anaïs says they make me look official.”

“i’ll say,” edmund laughs. “did she not come with you?”

peter shakes his head. “she’s visiting amy – she’s at university, now.”

“get you! you’ve the audacity to say i’m old, while you’re the one with the grown-up daughter!”

“she’s only eighteen!” peter laughs.

“that’s older than you were, last you were here.”

“you’re right,” peter says, and they pause. in the grate, the fire crackles over the silence, and edmund can hear the market somewhere to the west. he takes the time to look at peter, then, to notice the new lines, textures and colours that weren’t there before. he’s brought back the beard, thank god, and his hair’s a little shorter, but he looks almost the same as edmund remembers. yes, older, but the same. like his soul hasn’t changed. he thinks maybe it’s just narnia, or his memory, but peter is still just peter, and the revelation makes him smile.

“so,” peter begins slowly, “how’s it been, being king this time round?”

edmund laughs. “sit with me,” he says, “let’s play a game of chess.”

\\

maybe edmund’s father taught him how to be a man, and maybe his siblings taught him how to smile, and maybe caspian taught him how to love, and aslan taught him to be a king, but, at the end of it all, edmund thinks there are some lessons only you can only teach yourself.

he stands in the courtyard and lets the snow fall around him. the winter has been light this year, and this is the first day of december where snow has fallen. usually, he would be inside on a day like this, huddled in front of a warm fire, or in caspian’s arms, perhaps, but today seems different, somehow. the snow is falling, and it covers every inch of land without prejudice, paints the whole world in fresh light. somewhere, children are throwing snowballs and rolling down hills with reckless joy, because no one is left from the world where winter was a place of fear, no one except him and lucy. somewhere, he can hear someone singing, and the sound is warm as spiced rum. somewhere, someone is boiling milk and melting chocolate, and pouring the mix into a cup for their sibling. somewhere, new parents are singing their new babies to sleep, and old parents are writing their grown children letters, and couples who have never been parents are strolling through the snow arm in arm and turning their faces up towards the flurry. and here, now, he is stood in the courtyard of their home, and he is thinking about how everything can be rewritten and made new in time. winter tales can be rewritten, fate can be rewritten – everything is at the mercy of change, and edmund no longer finds fear in any of that. and that is amazing.

“edmund?” a voice calls, and he looks up. caspian is leaning out of one of the windows, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders like a cape and his hair messy. he wrinkles his nose at the snowflakes catching in each strand, peppering it with even more white. the sight warms edmund’s heart. “what are you doing out there?”

“enjoying life,” edmund yells back, voice almost hoarse. “what are you doing up there?”

“not freezing my ass off,” caspian shouts with a grin. edmund has to laugh. “come back up and give me a hug, would you?”

“of course, my king!” he chuckles. “just a moment – these old bones take time to move.”

caspian snorts so loudly he can hear it from here. “your old bones? imagine how my bones feel.”

“i wouldn’t go shouting such lewd things where people can hear you, dear heart,” edmund teases.

“if you’re not up here in five minutes, i’m locking you out!” caspian’s final words are punctuated by the click of the window shutting.

edmund smiles to himself and turns his face towards the blank sky for the final time. yes, there are some things only you can teach yourself, and maybe you need other people to help you along the way, but, at the end of the day, it is always you. and, in spite of everything written against him, edmund has taught himself how to be happy, how to live.

slowly, he turns towards the castle and heads back inside. when he shuts the door behind him, the cold does not follow. outside, the snow keeps falling.

\\

i think i feel love in the way your sword drips blood,

the twist of your blade in every stomach –

you bring defeat to the things that killed you

and the cycle repeats, repairs, retreats,

but a compass has four points,

and i have only two hands.

this leaves anchors unaccounted for,

and eyes so soft i could have drowned, could have died.

i think i feel love in the way your sword drips ice water,

the insanity of beating back your own past –

time and time again.

even in the winter of your soul, there is nothing cold about you.

there are lines in you that do not translate,

though you spell them out for me:

forever is not a thing that belongs to boys like us,

playing at knowing.

i’ve never traded in forevers, though.

– selected verses from “a song of western woods,” by king caspian the sea-farer. these fragments were taken from the notebooks of the king and published posthumously. this poem in particular was likely written for his husband, king edmund the just, around the time their journey began.