Reassurance

Summary: While studying at the Professor's, Peter tries to tackle difficult questions such as "Is there any order to life?." While he may not learn the answers, he finds out where to look.

Disclaimer: I do not own Narnia or Peter Pevensie, or any other character that appears. I do not own "Auguries of Innocence" by William Blake. The verse that Peter reads is Matthew 28:20.

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It only seems like there is no plan because it is all planned.

-C.S. Lewis-

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Every night and every morn
Some to misery are born.
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight.
Some are born to sweet delight,
Some are born to endless night.
-Auguries of Innocence, William Blake

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Peter Pevensie had never been one for dwelling on things that weren't here and now. He was a very action-oriented person, and was not prone to long trains of thought while doing nothing else. He would study for hours and days here at the professor's, but only because he had a goal in mind. However, thinking about things rather aimlessly was not who Peter was.

And yet, he couldn't help but to lay on the bare bed, staring at the chipping paint on the white ceiling, and think about the newspaper he had read early the same day.

It was a habit he had gotten into since staying with the Professor, to stay connected with the outside world. For neither of them left the cottage much- they never really needed to. The cabin was not completely isolated from civilization, but it was rather out of the way from even the nearest town.

Like usual, he had scanned the weather, world news, and the local. That was where it all began- the crime section, to be more specific. The story he read was about a young girl, maybe a few years older than Lucy, who had been found, her broken body cold and hollow, in the alleys of London. The diagnosis came back that she had starved to death.

It wasn't like Peter hadn't heard stories like this before. They were becoming all the more evident in this state of war, where fathers were torn away and families were shattered, and even the best had meager rations. It wasn't like he hadn't read these stories before, so why did this particular one haunt him so?

Maybe it was because the girl was so close in age to Lucy. That could have been Lucy, Peter thought, had they stayed in London the first time they were sent off to the Professor's.

That could have been any of them. Any of his family could have been born a soul in that predicament. But instead, they had been born to lives with fulfillment. They had hard times, yes, but they had everything that was important. Two parents that loved them and each other. And Narnia.

Or rather, they had Narnia before. Peter wasn't sure if he had Narnia anymore. He believed he could find a bit of Narnia, somewhere in this world, just maybe...but he hadn't found it yet. And everything around him was such a bleak contrast to the place he called home.

What determined where one was born? Who one was born to? What determined the random distribution of pain and joy?

Why had he, out of all the souls in the world, been one to go to Narnia? Why had he, out of everyone, fit to be the High King of Narnia? Peter knew there would have been many more qualified choices out there.

And yet...while it all seemed chaotic and insane, somehow it all seemed plan. There had been four thrones, and they were made for descendants of Adam and Eve. Almost ever since the birth of Narnia, those thrones had been there. Had they been waiting for the Pevensies?

Where do people find the answers to questions like this? Or do they always have to search, their entire lives, to come up with nothingness in the end?

These questions had haunted Peter from dawn until now, when the dusk was settling in, like a thin dust cloud of golden sparkles over the earth, and the answers were still missing.

The golden piercing of the sun's rays made Peter's mind wander to the golden fur of the lion, the one he called King. When Peter thought of Aslan, he felt encouraged that there were things worth living and dying for, and that at the end of the earth, all wrongs would be right. It was just the aura the great lion gave.

Yet there was an unease in his heart that the even the memories of Aslan's eyes and Aslan's voice couldn't placate. For when he kept his eyes opened he saw the velvet paws and piercing, loving eyes of the lion, but when he closed them he saw only pain, suffering, and loneliness. The two images were as different as Narnia and England.

Peter's mind wandered back to the days in which he had ruled Narnia with his sisters and brother. The Golden Age, they called it. But what had made it the Golden Age? It certainly wasn't him. It wasn't his siblings either. It had been Aslan.

Peter thought that maybe Aslan was why Narnia had less pain and suffering than England(though Narnia was not void of its own problems), but Aslan had told Peter he could be found in England as well. So if Aslan was the same, why would the two worlds be so strikingly....different?

It wasn't like bad things hadn't happened in Narnia either. But those things, the deaths, the wars, everything...it all had some sort of purpose. England's pain was just random and chaotic.

There was always confusion. But in Narnia, there had been peace in the midst of it all. In England, it was cold and bleak, just like the atmosphere outside.

In Narnia, Aslan's voice and Aslan's eyes had always came through as clearly as a bright Spring day. Here, sometimes Peter thought he heard a murmur that sounded like the great lion's roar, but it was soon lost in all the chaos that invaded the streets of London and spread outward like a spider web across the entire country. In Narnia, even when Aslan wasn't physically around, Peter knew he was with him. In England, no such reassurance ever came.

Before Peter had left for the country, Edmund had given him a bible. Peter had been rather confused at how excited his brother was, but accepted the gift willingly. Through correspondence, Peter had learned that Edmund believed he had found Aslan in this world by reading the bible. Peter had been reading it off and on, but had found nothing that pointed him anywhere. In the last letter Peter had sent, he had begged Edmund to just tell him where to look, but Edmund protested that Peter had to find it himself.

Peter also learned that Lucy had found the same thing Edmund had. At this, Peter was not surprised in the least bit. In fact, he was rather shocked that Lucy had not been the first to find Aslan. As he mused, however, he began to think maybe it wasn't so odd. Edmund was always vigilant about his actions, and as such would be actively looking for Aslan in this world to remind him of the change that had been wrought in Narnia.

Peter figured that if there was ever an answer to the questions that had plagued him all day, and he couldn't talk to Aslan directly, the bible would be the most likely place to find the answer.

Peter had been trying to read cover to cover and interpret every sentence to find the answer as Edmund had, but this evening he decided to give that up. He closed his eyes, trailed a finger along the spine, and randomly opened up the pages.

He had turned to the last page of the gospel of Matthew. His eyes skimmed, but didn't spot anything. He was ready to give up, when he read the last verse. The beginning read, "teach them to obey you in everything that I have commanded you." Peter frowned, unsure of the meaning. As he continued reading, however, his heart grew lighter.

"And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age."

Peter didn't know the answer to his questions, and he hadn't found them. But he had found something much better- the reassurance he had been seeking, partially without even knowing it.

He shut the bible once again, but for the first time the sound of the pages coming together did not sound empty. It sounded like a lion's roar.