AN: Still don't own any of this -- or anything of enough value to sue me for. Sorry this is so short. I've been trying to make it longer, and it just refuses. (Yes, I am speaking of my story as if it were a living being, and, yes, you do have permission to doubt my sanity. :P)
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"Lucy?" Peter hadn't meant to come here, hadn't meant to end up on his sister's side of the castle, but he couldn't very well about face and turn back now. Lucy had always had an incredibly accurate sibling radar, and the last few days hadn't exactly dampened it.
What do you expect? She saw her best friend as a statue, watched you fight the witch, and had to save Ed's life – after watching Aslan die and before tending to war wounds. Not exactly calming.
"Yes, Peter?" Her tiny figure slid from behind the tapestry with a soft rustle, and he stiffened.
There, just off of her hip, the handle of a dagger glinted in the morning light, the same gleam that had reflected off of Edmund's helmet before the battle. Before he watched his brother be stabbed by the very creature that had renounced Her claim on his blood.
To have Lucy carry a blade, to have her walk around with such a thing around her waist, was almost more than he could stand.
Steel was cold. Steel was thirsty for blood, its keen edge seeking to steal the life from a being, leaving them lying, inanimate, on the field, bleeding out into the grass. Steel caught a thousand reflections and distorted them all.
Steel was everything that his sister ought not to be.
"Is everything alright?"
"Yeah." His eyes flicked from one side of the room to the other, trying to catch the flash of red that danced at the edge of his vision. It could have been anything. Half of the items in the castle seemed to be red.
Whoever had decorated this place had obviously put little thought into the fact that it would one day be ruled by a British schoolboy who hated the sight of blood – especially that of others.
Red was for Edmund; running water was Lucy; and the playful shrieks of his younger subjects always seemed to turn into Susan's cry.
"I'm—" He couldn't seem to force the word "fine" out of his lips, but nothing else wanted to come in its place. He'd never been good at diplomacy. Thoughts spilled from his lips sometimes with an inopportune frankness, undoing his best efforts to shield the younger ones from his own inner turmoil.
"Do you have to wear that dagger, Lu?"
A yearling faun who had been romping with the young dryad in the courtyard waterfall gave a sudden squeal, sending Peter's hand flying for his sword, heart pounding as his inexperienced body tried to prepare once more for battle.
"It's a tool, Peter." Her feather light touch rested on his sword hand, still the eager innocent girl who had thrown a snowball at his head just a number of days ago. "I don't exactly have pockets to put it in, do I?"
"No." He shook his head, muscles reverberating with the harsh jolt of metal upon metal, tasting the blood and the sweat and the tears that went along with such "tools."
"I suppose you don't."
Agreeing to keep his siblings in a country where they were expected to carry and use such things, expected to know the feel of cold steel biting into warm flesh, likely wasn't what Mum had intended when she asked him to look after the others; but there was little enough he could do about it now.
He would protect them though. They deserved to be protected.
"Peter," Lucy unfolded his grip from the pommel of his sword, weaving her tiny fingers through his.
"The battle is over. We're safe, brother mine." The Narnian endearment slipped as easily from her lips as if she had been born here, and, for just a moment, his breath caught in his throat.
"You're never safe." He finally choked out, gathering her into his arms and sinking down onto the couch.
"One or the other of you is always getting into a fix." Blue eyes flicked up to the mirror in front of them, checking to make sure he had closed the door to her room, even as he buried his face into her soft hair.
"But, I told Mum I'd protect you."
"No." He felt the softest scratch of her nails across his skin as she tipped his face up to meet hers.
"You told her you'd watch out for us. You're our brother." She rubbed at the dark circles under his eyes, face melting with sympathy. "You're not God."
For a long moment, she simply stared at him, and it was all he could do not to look away. A hundred different faces fought to dance their way across his vision, threatening to swallow his sister in the power of their memories.
Edmund in the last moments of the battle, eyes dull as he reached out to shatter the witch's wand.
Jadis as she swept into Aslan's camp, certain his brother's blood would be hers.
Dad when they'd farwelled him at the train station.
The boys at school, mocking and derisive as they recounted the latest of his brother's cruel tricks.
Susan as she tried to convince him that, perhaps, Edmund had been forced.
Mum.
Tumnus.
Fell beasts he'd killed.
Soldiers he'd seen die.
The fox.
Mr. Beaver.
Aslan.
"I can't, Lu." He traced her face hesitantly, trying to ignore the dull ache that spread through his bandaged arm at the odd angle.
"I can't relax until I know that you're safe."
"Then know it." She captured his hand and held it in front of her mouth, letting warm breath tickle over fading blisters.
"I'm breathing, Peter. I'm alive. I'm safe."
"Go back to your room." She released him seconds later, hopping off of his lap in a rustle of green skirts, so similar to the rustle of a gryphon as it landed or the passing of a harpy at it hurtled through the air.
He'd spent years reading princess stories to Susan and then Lucy. He knew as well as any of them that the monsters would just keep coming. The battles would continue to follow one another in bloody succession. This wasn't over.
"Ed's been pacing your wing." The eight year old shooed him out of her quarters with a frustrated sigh, certain that he hadn't internalized a word she had said. "Perhaps you two can help each other."