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rainintheevening · 5 months ago

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Part I – Part II ... Part XV – Part XVI

February blows in with a gale, and far more snow than Peter can ever remember seeing, piling up in great drifts everywhere as every blizzard rages for a day or more, drowning them all in white.

On his way up to the Sixth Form common room from supper, a glance out a landing window shows Peter the lull of that afternoon has ended and snow is once more heaping up on the windowsill. He sighs, follows Robertson and Lambert up the next flight.

Horses and boys alike are chafing at a solid week of being cooped up inside, and the relative scarcity of schoolmasters has begun to tell, with petty squabbles in the hall morphing into covertly organised boxing tournaments, and the gymnasium swarms from dressing bell to lights out.

Tonight though Peter has reading to do; he's halfway through Chesterton’s Thomas Aquinas, and determined to finish it that night.

From above, comes a burst of noise, shouts, a yelp, and Peter stiffens.

A fight.

He can't pick out Ed’s voice, and he can always hear Ed, no matter how loud or distant the crowd, but he's starting forward, taking the steps two at a time when a call rings out behind him: “Pevensie!”

He turns quick, retort bitten back as he sights the speaker, Head Boy Wollers, who comes panting up, all quick worried eyes and frown.

“Pev. Have you seen your brother? Edmund?”

Peter can't help himself. “I wasn't aware I had any other brothers.”

Wollers doesn't laugh. “But when did you last see him?” And something in Peter's stomach stirs uneasily, something tenses in his shoulders.

“Well, it was… lunch, I suppose.” He can't remember seeing Ed since, but– “Why?”

Wollers face does something Peter doesn't like, and he straightens, chin coming up before the older boy speaks, reluctant.

“He's… missing. Bother it all, no one's seen him since lunch, he missed all his classes on one pretext or another, and now he's just gone. Can't find him anywhere.”

Peter's gaze strays to the window, the blowing snow, and his heart stutters a beat, something catches in his throat.

Ed.

“Where have you looked?” and it comes out sharp, but Peter knows how to get the answers he needs, how to get them quick.

It's all confusion for a bit then, Wollers talking, the Second Form master talking, other masters being questioned.

“Not the San, not the stables–”

“Wouldn't go for a walk in this bally snowstorm–”

“Should we telephone down to the enlistment office in the village?” someone asks, and Peter turns sharply.

“He wouldn't, he promised.” He tries not to hear how his voice shakes just a little. “Mum made me promise, and I made him promise. He wouldn’t go without me.”

He wouldn't go without me.

Because he wouldn't, Ed would never lay a plan like this, with all its elaborate excuses, and then not tell Peter why at the very least. He simply wouldn't; that isn't how they work, not as kings, not as brothers.

Which means someone else must have crafted this scheme, someone who wanted to separate them, and he remembers with startling clarity honeyed words, betrayals, an assassin’s knife between his ribs, and he shudders.

But this is school, he thinks. No one wants to kill us here.

They're standing in the North Tower's Second Form dormitory, and he glances desperately round, sees only Ed’s bed as neatly made as any other’s, sees the snow battering the glass panes, sees over the heads of the younger boys to the door, and a small pale face, Colin MacIntyre’s face, and in a flash Peter remembers. Remembers shouts, fists, plunging into the crowd of half a dozen boys that ringed Ed, standing beside his brother against the wall with the terrified Colin behind them, and the taste of blood, and the hissed curses as the bullies slunk away, remembers the triumph of beating out those wretched boys who had stolen Ed away from him for all those months back at Foreman House.

He blinks, meets Colin’s tortured gaze across the dorm before the first former spins away as if stung, and he is suddenly quite sure, he knows.

“Finley.”

And then he's in the Third Form common room, snatching at a red-haired boy's shirt with both hands, wrenching him up from his seat, glaring into blue eyes that get steadily wider.

“Where is he?” Peter demands, and his heart burns, his voice rings, fear and anger filling him till he feels ten feet tall. “What have you done to my brother?”

Finley, little beast, gapes at him, dangling from Peter's fists, and Peter frees one hand, draws it back for a blow.

“Speak, varlet,” he growls. “What have you done to Edmund?”

“No, please!” Finley squeals. “He-he’s in the well. Down the old well! I swear!”

“Down the what?”

“The old well.” Truth comes in a rush. “We told him you'd been hurt at the stables, led him off the path, pushed him down the old well.”

Down a well? Peter reels.

“Oh, damn.”

The horrified whisper catches him up, and Wollers flinches when he turns, but Peter is more interested in how the colour has drained from the Head Boy’s usually placid face.

“What does he mean? What old well?”

“It's ancient, dried out, covered over with a stone that takes at least two to lift. It's off the first turn in the track by those brambles.” Wollers’s words stumble over each other. “It's been partly filled in, with stones and whatnot from the fields, but–”

“How far down?” and Peter chokes up, mind spinning through images, each worse than the last.

“Probaby ten or twenty feet?” Wollers's voice dries up on the question mark.

Peter drops Finley as though his hands have been burned. A wave of panic sweeps over him, he has no idea where this well is, where Ed is, his little brother could be dead, he has no friends here to help him, no sisters, no Oreius, no Erah. Shaking fingers brush past his left hip where Rhindon hangs no longer, and he is suddenly small, a child again, helpless in the storm.

Oh, Ed, oh no, oh my brother, oh please, oh, oh Aslan…

Aslan.

Aslan, oh, yes, Aslan, and Peter catches his breath, jerks his head up, snaps his shoulders back.

“Right then.” He gulps once before he turns back to Wollers. “You come with me, show us the way. Someone fetch a rope, perhaps several ropes; Master Johnson, if you please. Finley, you little beast.” And Peter stares coldly down at the crumpled figure on the rug, pulls him up quickly by one arm. “You'll come with us. If he's dead, you should see the results of your handiwork. You two as well,” to the other boys he remembers from Foreman House. “Now. Move!”

They jump at his bark, scuttling to join their leader, as Peter shoves him toward the door.

It blurs for Peter then, all snow and wind and terrible thoughts of cold, of injuries, of blood spattered on stone in the dark.

He hears it said in whispers after, how Peter Pevensie walked out into the storm to rescue his brother like a king going out to battle, how he chivvied even the masters around, told everyone what to do and none questioned his authority. How a single Sixth Form boy lifted a stone that took three men to carry it. How Peter screamed his brother's name into the snow filled dark.

Peter doesn't remember those parts, he just remembers the torch beams converging on a huddled figure in blue and red and gold, remembers rough stone tearing at his fingers as he scaled the wall down, not bothering to wait for a rope. Remembers gathering the warm weight of his little brother into his arms, and hearing a dazed mumble: “Pete. Peter? What are you doing here? It isn't morning yet.”

Remembers tears and wild relief.

Gringham comes, and his raspy voice carries over the wind, his strong arms are the only ones Peter considers surrendering Ed to.

So they return in a flurry of triumph and concern, and everyone talking except Finley and his friends, who Peter only remembers after they've been rushed off to the San, and suddenly there are hot water bottles everywhere.

It doesn't end there, of course.

The only injuries are cuts and bruises to Ed’s hands and knees, and a twisted ankle, but those hours out in the cold tell, and by the next afternoon Ed lies in the San with a rising fever, and Peter refuses to leave his side.

It hurts, it frightens Peter, how powerless he feels here without any of Lucy's cordial, without the healers who had always seemed to work such marvels, without the hope of Aslan coming to do what no one else can.

Ed tosses and turns, coughing and moaning, shivering, murmuring of Narnia and England and asking Dad where he's going, asking Mum to turn the light on, and Peter wipes the sweaty forehead with a cold cloth over and over, strokes his brother's dark hair, tells him over and over, “It's alright, Ed. I promise, you'll be alright.”

Peter prays in a jumble of thoughts, sometimes to God, sometimes to Aslan, and whenever Ed stirs awake and knows him, he can catch his breath.

It reminds Peter of when Ed was little, how often he'd been sick as a baby, and how pale Mother had been, how tired and worried Dad had looked. He thinks often of Dad the following night, as he fights back the exhaustion, as he waves away Matron and the nurse from Ed’s bedside. Thinks of Dad out on the battlefield in North Africa, stitching up wounds, making amputations, watching fevers rise and fall, and he feels a kinship across the hundreds of miles like he has never felt with his father before. This is a war too, a war of cloth and bottle, water and blood, brain and hope, against the spectre of death itself, and Peter, well, nothing makes Peter fight harder than danger to his family.

He stares into Ed’s unfocused eyes, hears the cry for, “Peter!” and grips his brother's hand.

“I'm here, Ed, I'm here,” he says, steady and true, over and over till Ed’s gaze clears, and he smiles up at Peter.

“Oh good.”

He usually drinks something then, before falling back into the uneasy doze that passes for fevered sleep.

Peter doesn't remember Ed ever getting sick in Narnia. Hurt and wounded, yes, sometimes almost mortally, and for a moment Peter can see the Witch, see Ed falling into the grass, but as quickly as the vivid memory comes it fades, and he recalls only how it ended, the warm solidity of Edmund in his arms.

The sheets are white, Ed’s cheeks are bright red, his hair so black, and Peter's sight is blurred when he loses track of time.

Edmund falls quiet in the dimmed night lights, only mumbling sometimes, slurred so that all Peter can catch are Aslan's and Peter's names, some kind of plea in the hoarse voice that tugs at Peter's heart, drags him close and low, and in the exhausted shadows of the wee hours Peter lets his tears fall, whispers his own prayer against the burning of his brother's forehead through a gentle kiss.

He falls asleep there, slumped over on the bed, beside Edmund, twisted round so that he wakes with an awful crick in his neck, and an ache in his back.

But more, far more—he wakes slowly, softly, to grey light and a hand petting his hair; starts up to see, so close by his own, a shockingly pale face and deep, dark eyes; hears a weak raspy voice saying, “Peter? Is there anything to eat? I'm starving.” Closely followed by, “Oh, no, Pete, please. Bother, don't cry.”

It does feel a bit silly to cry, seeing as how Matron hadn't even called in the village doctor, the fever truthfully hadn't been so bad, but mixed up with everything else, the horrible march into the storm, walking straight into the face of his fears, images of Ed’s dead body swarming him as thick as the snowflakes, he is pathetically grateful for the rare occurrence of Ed hugging him close, and the chance to hide his face in his brother's pyjama shirt for a few minutes.

Matron comes beaming in with a hearty porridge for both of them, and her hand on Peter's shoulder is proud. “You might want to be thinking of being a physician yourself, lad. You have the heart for it, sure. The patience.”

Ed smiles weakly. “Actually, he makes a terrible patient.”

“Hush,” Peter mumbles through a full mouth. “Save your breath,” as a cough seizes Edmund's chest for too long to be healthy.

They both sleep for much of the afternoon, curled around each other on the bed, and Peter sleeps deep and hard, Ed's hoarse breathing steady, soothing under his arm.

Alright. Alright. Alright, he hears, and Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, is the answer from his own lungs.

News from the rest of St. Maurice’s comes through first former Colin MacIntyre, bursting with happiness at seeing Ed safe and mostly sound, and the immense honour of being the first visitor allowed in, just after supper that evening.

“They're going to be expelled!” he bursts out quickly, barely having sat down. “Finley and the other two. Zeb says they'll probably never be able to get into another school, since everyone here will make sure every other school knows what they did.”

“Have they already gone?” Ed asks.

“Oh yes, went last night. Very quick and quiet, Zeb said. I tell you, nobody’s sorry to see their backs.”

“No, I imagine not,” Peter mutters, turning Thomas Aquinas over in his hands.

A sideways glance shows Ed staring into the last of his pudding that he's been nursing for the last twenty minutes, and Peter feels a hot surge of anger in his chest. “Don't you dare feel sorry for them, Ed. They nearly killed you!”

Ed looks up, and Peter stills under the deep, sorrowful eyes of the Just King, calming, cooling.

“And I almost got you killed. No.” A twitch of his head cuts off Peter's retort. “I was one of them, Pete. You saw me, you know what I was like.”

“Never that bad,” Peter says firmly, emotions tangling into a painful ball at the back of his throat.

“Could have been.” Edmund's gaze doesn't waver as he rides out a coughing spell. “To him,” and his smile is painful, “I'm a traitor. So you could almost say I deserved–”

“Shut up.” Peter stands with a jerk, to pace away with short, savage strides. The worst part of it all, the whisper he wants to drown out, is how Edmund's right.

“He forgave me,” comes the soft murmur behind him, and once more Peter stills, finds the space to breathe, as he stares blindly out the window. “I can do that much to them. And I'll write a letter. It was a brilliant scheme, after all. Imagine all that genius turned to something good.”

Peter grips his hands together tight behind his back, and the silence lasts long, long enough for him to blink, for him to finally see beyond the frosted glass, to the golden light spilled over soft-heaped snow, and the black woods running up from the edge of the field, and… oh. The rim of a great golden moon just peering over the eastern hills, all huge and heavy, and Peter's heart swells in response, a great longing ache of if only. If only boys weren't cruel, and men didn't kill, and oh, if only you were here, Aslan. I–

“I miss you.” It's quiet as a mist, exhale upon glass, and he closes his eyes, rests his head against the cool hardness, balm to his own fevered soul.

There is no answer, not from the star-scattered sky, nor from his memories. He hears only Edmund saying something quiet, a quick reply from Colin, a burst of cough-riddled laughter, and he turns quick, brushing hand over eyes to clear his sight.

Messy black hair, dark smudges under his eyes, quick bright smile...

Measured steps of stocking feet on worn-soft wood floor, and Peter eases back to his brother's side on the bed, into the conversation, the story of Peter's thrilling leadership into the storm, and he shakes his head, smiling lopsided at the exaggeration.

I have him, Peter thinks. Even here, I still have him. The gift bought with Aslan’s own life.

Matron comes to drag Colin away in the middle of a joke, telling him only half-crossly that he'd ‘much overstayed his welcome, and not been at all quiet, like he promised’.

Peter pours Ed a glass of water, waits for the coughing to subside.

“Here,” Ed finally whispers, wracked weary, slumping back on the pillows. But instead of the glass, he presses a handful of string? into Peter's palm, a touch of metal, and Peter stares, speechless.

“Keep it for a little while. You need it more than I. Right now. I think.”

Peter doesn't trust himself to speak, just lays the bootlace over his head, a momentary crowning, before he pulls the little silver lion down, tucks it under shirt to nestle cool against skin and breastbone.

Ed shifts, half asleep already, slips sideways to fetch up against Peter's shoulder, and he is all heavy with life and heartbeat and faint snore.

No snow falls that night, and Matron smiles down soft at sleeping boys washed in moonlight, adjusts blanket over bared back of the elder, before she slips away, thinking how much better and kinder a world it might be, ‘if more brothers loved as these two do’.

#yes. mush. let me enjoy it.#i am blighted once again by a vicious head cold i don't know what else to say #also this took forever i know #so glad it's done. time to pick up the pace.#peter pevensie #edmund pevensie #pevensie brothers #narnia fanfiction #my writing #narnia

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