Work Text:
Peter
Jim Kirk is clearly dangerous.
Starfleet obviously doesn’t know it, else they wouldn’t have moved the four Pevensies willy-nilly into the house next door to Jim’s in Riverside, Iowa. Choosing Iowa, he understands. Even in modern united-Earth society, the family’s deep English-countryside roots make them outsiders here in every meaningful way. Which means no one is likely to ask them about Narnia and the Powers that govern it, which Starfleet doesn’t even begin to understand. And that’s before the whole time-travel component of their experiences, which they didn’t even try to explain to Starfleet.
But setting them down next to Jim Kirk? Who has obviously never met a challenge (or a pretty girl) he can resist? Peter is certain Starfleet has no idea what it’s let them in for. Fortunately for Starfleet, Peter has spent a Narnian lifetime ignoring courtiers just as annoying as Jim Kirk, so ignoring Jim poses no challenge whatsoever.
Susan
Jim Kirk? He might be dangerous, Susan supposes, if one allowed him to be. Narnia has taught Susan a great deal about lions, however, and Jim is nothing if not a proud young alpha lion – strong, hungry, relatively fearless, ready to take whatever he wants. But he’s smart for an alpha lion...and, she learns very early on, he’s read Kipling. All it takes is a mildly phrased comment about “the female of the species” at an appropriate moment, and she has him exactly where she wants him: at a properly respectful distance.
Edmund
Jim Kirk is clearly dangerous – and that, Edmund decides at once, will be useful. Their parents’ money won’t last forever, and no matter what Starfleet may have promised, sooner or later the Pevensies will need to find places for themselves in the wider world of Earth and the Federation. That means learning to deal with their neighbors, and at least for the moment, Jim is the only neighbor who’s making overtures.
Which is a good thing twice over. First, Jim’s wickedly smart, emphasis on wicked. He’s not at all worried about running afoul of Starfleet’s rules, though, and would happily listen – should Edmund choose to enlighten him – to tales of the family’s Narnian adventures. For his part, Edmund figures he’ll eventually let out a few of their secrets, though certainly not the two or three biggest.
Lucy
Jim Kirk is clearly dangerous. Perhaps not to Lucy’s virtue, she observes wryly (such as it is, after everything that happened on Narnia), but certainly to the family’s hopes of a quiet life in middle America. Neither of her brothers, she thinks, realizes just how patient and persistent Jim is likely to be in the face of a genuine mystery, and the Pevensies’ history is nothing if not genuinely mysterious. Peter, she suspects, recognizes Jim’s force of will but hasn’t seen through to the intellect that drives it. Edmund, by contrast, is clearly counting on his own cleverness to match Jim’s – but her younger brother is too devious for his own good, and is ill-equipped to face as honorable an opponent as Jim will prove to be.
And for the Pevensies, Lucy knows, honor is the most dangerous and exciting threat of all – because in the end, it’s the one thing guaranteed to lead them, inevitably, back to Narnia.
# # #