I feel like I should warn that though this time it came quick, updates will be irregular.

It ended up being a longer than expected reflection on wars and society. I also surprised myself with how many intellectualists and rationalists I can quote without the need to look them up in Wikipedia. Perhaps I really am a dreadful cynic. I trust (and hope) you will manage to read until the end.

Chapter 2: Society's Circumstances.

"God knows; I won't be an Oxford don anyhow. I'll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or other I'll be famous, and if not famous, I'll be notorious. Or perhaps I'll lead the life of pleasure for a time and then—who knows?—rest and do nothing. What does Plato say is the highest end that man can attain here below? To sit down and contemplate the good. Perhaps that will be the end of me too."

"Erm, Shakespeare?"

"Plato? Shakespeare?" Peter arched an eyebrow.

"Oh, you're right. Ah, Balzac?"

"I don't think he was English."

"Oh, bother. I just don't have memory for literature."

"You used to remember a lot more when we were in Narnia." Peter replied, looking over the list of authors with mild interest.

"I had a better tutor." Ed said sighing, letting himself fall on the seat of the train across from his brother, with no little grace. "Also, my literature teacher then didn't think 'Remember, remember the Fifth of November, The Gunpowder Treason and Plot, I know of no reason, Why Gunpowder Treason, Should ever be forgot.' was a good, poetic thing."

"Oh, so he's a terrorist, is he?" Peter asked, amused. "Well remembered, by the way."

"I used to like him before, but that impression is rapidly declining."

"I'm not surprised, what if he thinks the Parliament should be blown to bits." He paused. "It was Oscar Wilde, by the way. The quote, I mean, not the Parliament."

"Oh him." Ed grinned.

Peter closed the booklet of book quotes and left it on the seat by his side. "Look, we're almost at the station." he said, smiling happily.

He did that quite a lot these days, smiling like that. Before they went to Narnia, in what he and Ed now came to recall as his darkest days, Peter had taken the habit of smiling only to alleviate Lucy's and Susan's worries. Now he was generally more open, honest about his emotions, including fears and concerns, and thus was an overall more approachable young fellow.



Still, there were some fragments, almost unnoticed bits of Peter Pevensie's character that slightly disturbed his younger brother. Edmund prided himself in knowing Peter the best, and being the only one capable of seeing through the slight fractures in his perfectly composed mask before they became cracks. He knew, for example, when he was thinking of dark things.

His eyes fell half lidded and the blue darkened. His brows got only an inch closer. His lips draw a straight, severe line. And there was a small tilt of his head to the right, when the thought were particularly unpleasant or he was particularly angered.

Like that one, just now.

That was a small, delicate gesture he shared with both Susan and Edmund. It was a way of masking his deepest layers of anger or sorrow. Peter was impatient by nature, but years of teaching himself to control his character had schooled his features to remain perfectly neutral when in the greatest aggravation. Edmund could see it clearly because he, unlike his brother, was slow to both anger and action, instead being a thoughtful, tolerant lad, who watched and learned before concluding. That was what made him such a masterful strategist, after all.

Peter's eyes shifted to him, and he sketched an easy, honest smile. "You're watching me, Ed." He said gently. "Is there something you feel you need to know?"

"What were you thinking about, just now?" Ed asked directly, because at this point in their relationship there was not beating around the bushes and coating with sugar, lest you wanted Peter to grow irritated, which was altogether counter producing, because when he was irritated Peter turned strangely sarcastic, clearly a feature learned from Edmund. Not exactly the one the King would wish his brother copied, but he settled for what he had, when it came to that.

True to their straight forwardness, Peter's smile faded. "You mind if I get back to you on that, Ed? I'm still on it myself." There was an absent expression on his eyes, and Edmund understood.

"You come back when you're ready, Pete." He said, stretching to grab the booklet and look over the list of names again, before flipping through the pages to the quotes and seeing if he somehow managed to guess at the correct authors.

Lucy and Susan were waiting at the station when they stumbled out of the train rather ungracefully, because Edmund tripped on an untied shoelace and dragged his brother down with him. Luckily, Peter had good reflexes and they didn't end up face down on the platform.

All effort out the window, though, when Lucy threw herself at the eldest Pevensie and finished up sprawled on the ground above him.

"Love hurts." Ed snickered as Susan placed a gentle kiss on his temple.



The beautiful eighteen years old pursed her full lips at his sister and brother as they sat up. Peter climbed to his feet and helped Lucy up, bringing her close to him as he slid his other arm around Susan's shoulders and kissed her forehead.

"You've grown again." The elder sister said, studying him attentively with her bright blue eyes.

"Have I?" Peter asked, blinking.

Of course he had. He grew by the minute, Peter. Trust Susan to notice every time he changed, every inch he grew. As time passed by in England he grew closer to becoming the High King of Narnia, different and yet the same. Was a star in the sky not the same, even if you traveled?

"And, how is my little writer?" Peter asked, stroking Lucy's brown hair.

"You heard?" she beamed up, delighted, grasping Peter's tweed coat.

"Of course I did! Ed told me. So what did you write about?" he asked, as he slid her bag off her shoulder and slung it over his, a custom both him and Edmund had acquired in Narnia. Susan's own bag was already over Edmund's shoulder, though it hardly had anything in it, it was so light.

As Lucy enthusiastically told Peter about her short story, the one that had earned her a literary prize in the inter-school tournament, Ed and Susan fell back a little.

There was equilibrium to it, really. Both Edmund and Susan had grown quiet over the years, both more given to thought and observation than action. Where Peter and Lucy would immediately jump to action, the other two analyzed and studied before deciding. Susan's gentle words had saved them from more than one perilous confrontation, and when Peter's usually reserved character somehow overflowed him it was always her that set his mind back on track.

Being a High King wasn't an easy thing, especially when you are barely sixteen, and a hot blooded boy. It wasn't that he was eager for war, but like any normal boy he did enjoy a good work out, and in Narnia it always proved to involve swords.

Susan , perhaps for being older, or simply for being a girl, had a different view on things that Edmund. While their assessments on character and worth generally matched, Edmund was always more open to shift his conclusions upon further observation, whilst Susan seemed to struggle with her first impressions. Admittedly Edmund had gone through a great deal more than her, of course, and he knew quite well about first impressions and second chances.

The difference between them was that Susan failed to change her first impressions, but always unfailingly accepted everyone as they were, while Edmund stubbornly persisted in accurately judging a character and acting accordingly.

He was different from Peter in the sense that while the High King treated everyone in the same open, well humored manner, Edmund kept mostly to himself, and adapted his openness and good will to his counterpart.



He had never once been able to enjoy with General Oreius the kind of easygoing relationship his brother had, because Oreius had always struck him as more cold and distant than Peter seemed to have picked up on. Of course, the Centaur's demeanor changed visibly around the blond King, as Susan had pointed out one morning.

"Maybe, Ed, he acts differently with you because you perceive him differently than Peter." She had answered gently when Edmund pointed out that the General stroked him as completely lacking sense of humor.

They sat in a café in front of a square and watched over the menu quickly. Peter knew well what each would ask, even as they read. Lucy would go for something sweet and most likely covered in sugar. Susan would get something light and simple, since she didn't eat much. Edmund would request something probably chocolate flavored.

He smiled to himself when he was proved right. He asked for tea with a cloud of milk, like his father always did.

"Whoa, wait." Edmund said, frowning. "This isn't the first time I hear about this Charles fellow."

"I agree." Peter joined in, arching a fair eyebrow. "Who is this man? And what are his intentions with you?"

"Oh, nonsense." Lucy said, sipping her tea with twinkling eyes. "He's just my friend."

"They sure start young these days, these 'friends'." Edmund evaluated.

"Oh, to be sure, I think you ought to wait a few more years, Lu."

"What next?" Susan asked, playfully rolling her eyes. "Will you challenge him to a sword match? An archery tournament? The one who wins gets the fair Queen's hand? Boys, do grow up."

"Well, not everyone enjoys the attention they get, most royal sister." Edmund replied, sly. "Even if they don't act upon it. Or is it that you preserve yourself for someone in particular, eh? Maybe dear ol' James, hmm?"

"Oh, nonsense." Susan said, blushing very slightly. "James is simply a friend."

"Wait, my James? James Randall?" Peter asked, bewildered.

"What, there was another James staying in our house at Finchley last summer?"

Peter shrugged. "There were an awful lot of people staying at our house last summer. When did James start courting you, eh? How come I didn't notice?"

"Courting is a very big word, really." Susan dismissed quickly.



"To be sure, it has eight letters and two syllables." Edmund smirked. "Well, Peter, with how engrossed you were studying I'm amazed you even registered it was your birthday."

"He didn't." Lucy supplied. "I told him."

"Hey, I remembered my—don't change the subject." He caught on, frowning. "Who's Charles anyway? What's his last name?"

"What, you'll have Scotland Yard look it up? The Interpol?" Susan questioned smiling.

"Why not?" Peter sat forward, grinning. "I've heard they do a terribly good job of it. Who knows? Perhaps they are on par with Edmund's Wolf Guard."

Susan sat back, laughing lightly, and watched as Peter and Edmund discussed better ways to ensure the efficiency of the Scotland Yard by applying the Wolf Guard rules, leaning close to each other.

She had seen them lean like this as they planned out the strategy for a battle, heads bent close, discussing their tactics and positions under Oreius' constant gaze.

Similarly she had watched as Peter struggled to grasp the concept of never returning to Narnia, and had been endlessly proud as he came out of the conflict understanding that Aslan's words marked not an ending to a beautiful story, but the beginning of another.

He had shed his sorrow as one does a cape, and moved on to another, new, different life with the same earnest enthusiasm he had matched Edmund's sword in practice in the mornings at the ground in Cair Paravel.

He had become a man again. A different man, yes, but the same in his core. He would fight to save a man's life with the fierceness he had fought to defend Narnia. One could not expect him to become the same Peter from his last years in Narnia, if he lived in a completely different world and lived through absolutely different situations. He already had a head start from boys his age, what with having lived to be a grown up before. Second time around always allowed for changes, and Susan delighted herself in observing the ones in her siblings.

Later, as he helped her put her coat on, Susan had one of those recurrent thoughts that simply assaulted her when she was around her older brother.

"Say, Peter, when you finished school, did you consider joining the Army and going to war?" she asked.

The question took Peter off guard, and he blinked at her. A slow smile stretched over his long mouth. "You would perceive it. I was thinking about that very same thing earlier today, on the train." He confessed. "But why do you ask?"

"I've wondered for a while, actually." She answered. "Simply because when we were in Narnia, you were such a superb warrior, and I thought perhaps you would find common ground in war."



"No, not at all." Peter answered thoughtfully. "I knew it was a possibility, but I dismissed it almost as quickly as I thought about it. I don't like this war at all, Su."

"Well, I reckon one never really likes war." She replied, tugging at his scarf to tighten it around his neck.

"I don't know." Peter said low, eyes sliding over the street uneasily. "This war… it's not right, Su."

Her sister blinked at him, confused. "You are going to have to elaborate, Peter, because I can't follow your unexpressed thoughts." She urged gently. In fact, she really could, but it was way more polite and helpful to have him lay them bare to her, so that she could help sooth his worries.

"Su, what do you think they're fighting for, over there?" he asked, blue eyes boring into hers. His sister was at a loss. Determining the exact causes of war was quite simple; Hitler needed to be put to a stop, as did Mussolini, and the Japanese needed to halt all hostilities. The answer was in fact so simple she automatically knew that was not what her brother was referring to. "I phrased it wrong." He said, shaking his head. "I'm not as eloquent as Ed. What I mean to ask is, what are the soldiers fighting against?"

That didn't clear anything up, but staring at him wouldn't help him, so Susan tentatively offered an answer, hoping to spur him on. "Other soldiers?"

"Are they?" he questioned. "I don't think so. I think they're fighting ideals, pre-concepts, things that were drilled unto them. Say, for example, if you found a German boy in the street here tomorrow, would you have him killed?"

"Of course not." Susan said frowning. "Provided he's not a spy, I would be perfectly civil. He's obviously not fighting, so why would I mark him as enemy?" Oh, I see, she thought, understanding.

Peter caught the understanding in her eyes and nodded. "Remember what Aslan said when the Wolves offered to form a Guard for Edmund?" he asked, opening the door for her as they stepped out. "that even though some of them had served the Witch, that didn't mean they were all bad, and that we needed to learn the difference implied in individuality. Being Wolves didn't make them enemies. Being Germans doesn't either."

Susan nodded thoughtfully, pulling at her gloves.

"Su, why did you ask me if I wanted to go to War?" he asked, curious.

"Back then, Mum asked Ed and me to, um," she smiled fondly. "steer you away from that decision." She said delicately.

"Mum? She never told me anything of the sort." Peter was surprised. Only he would be, Susan thought affectionately.

"She thought maybe we would reach you easier."



"I guess…" he said slowly, thinking. "That is probably a fear every mother has. That her children will be stolen by the war like their fathers and brothers and husbands were… but I truly never gave a thought to it."

They walked in silence for a little while. Susan turned to look over her shoulder. Edmund and Lucy were following a little ways behind, seemingly giving them privacy. Edmund gestured with his head, but Susan made a motion with her hand, telling him to give them more time.

"I don't think I would survive a war like this one." Peter said unexpectedly. Susan turned to him, eyes wide.

"Come again? Haven't you survived over twenty, if my count is not off?"

"It's off, there were thirty two." He supplied, grinning.

"Oh, witty, very witty, Peter." She chided.

He chuckled. "It always comes down to the same, does it not?" he asked, looking up at the sky and adjusting the strap of Susan's bag over his shoulder. "What you mentioned earlier, 'common grounds'. I'm always looking for them, with Narnia and England, and I find a lot more than I expect. I'm always surprised, in fact."

Susan wondered if she needed to point out how potentially dangerous it could be to circulate the world in a constant haze of amazement, and immediately recognized the thought as Edmund's influence on her, consequently repressing it. A family only needed one cynic.

"I think it might be a question of morals." He continued. He glanced over his shoulder to ascertain where his younger siblings were at the moment, noticing they had spent too much time out of his line of sight.

"Morals?" Susan questioned, glancing at him. "Referring to what, more precisely?" just then she changed her mind, and signaled to Ed and Lu to join them. Ed, ever observing, noticed her look and understood.

"War, I mean." Peter said after a moment. "Morals in War. There are morals in war, I presume you know." He arched an eyebrow.

"Don't try to be smart with me, Peter Pevensie." Susan warned. "If you need time to elaborate, take it, but don't go making comments."

Peter chuckled. "You can't be fooled, can you? I wasn't trying to be smart, I promise. I just got distracted. Back to morals." He reached out his hand to take Lucy's automatically. "I said before that there are common ground between England and Narnia, but not when it comes to war. Those differences were what make me shy away from the prospect of going to fight in Europe. Just to point one out, I would never attack civilians. You remember how it felt like to be bombed. I would never wish that upon anybody, not even my cruelest enemy. In the end, it's always the children that suffer." He added thoughtfully, drawing Lucy closer as if trying to protect her from the very memory of the air raids. 

He spoke calmly, evenly, evidence of how in control of his emotions he was. Susan and Edmund realized he had given this matter quite some thought. "It's not a matter of repaying hate with hate, is it? War is a circumstance. People should never lose sight of that. The German soldiers are also boys who like listening to music and playing cards and running in the grass in a sunny morning. If you lose sight of that, you steal that man of his individuality and turn him into a thing. Now you can find yourself aiming at him, when a few years back maybe you found yourself sharing your goblet of wine. A circumstance."

"If it comes down to circumstances" Lucy said thoughtfully, looking up at her brother. "one needs to understand that people react differently to different situations. Not all can be Kings and Queen of Old and live life twice, Peter. Your grasp of things is different from that of most people. It's easier to demonize the German soldier as a creature with no feelings and family. To a young soldier it may be less impressive to kill a thing than to kill a person. It means you don't need to make peace with what you've done. Imagining that soldier's family in mourning as that of the family of the man that was wearing the same uniform as you and lays dead at your side forces things into another perspective."

Whenever it started to seem to them as thought Lucy was a child of merely fourteen and had not aged a day, the girl smacked them with her maturity. Peter often forced himself to remember that she was not his baby anymore, but a grown, responsible Queen in a girl's body, just like he was a High King in a boy's disguise.

"I think it's also a matter of society." Edmund said softly. "Has any of you read Thomas Hobbes? He said that 'man is the wolf of man'. He states that it is society that makes the man evil, and as such a man extracted from society will be innocent as a child."

"I don't exactly think I agree." Peter replied. "You're stripping man of individuality again, Ed. And you're sixteen, why are you reading philosophy?"

"I know, I don't agree either." Ed countered. "But it set me going. And about being sixteen, I shrug at you." He smirked. "Anyway, my point is the society influences man, even as it a man's fate is still decided by his own choices and decisions. Society shapes men. It teaches precepts and concepts and moral linings that he is to follow. We, as in we four, don't share those anymore and were schooled in different morals. That's what alienates you, Pete. Your High King persona clashes with a morality that you don't share."

Susan noticed how easily Edmund fell back into the diplomat from old times. It was him that struggled less with England, accepting its flow with the ease of a sailor in the waves, taking the situations as study cases and developing appropriate answers for his own questions. His language never seemed to slip back into the schoolboy, making him feel as sporting the weight of years he didn't look anymore.

"Similarly, Germany has different moral linings. I think the seeds of this war were planted by the resolution of the First World War. Germany was crushed and was not allowed to recuperate in the manner the rest of Europe did. It fell behind, it was kept behind. An entire generation of youngsters grew up under the label of traitors and monsters, and of course that hate will generate more hate. What else can you expect? Have you read Thomas More? He said that when you starve and mistreat your 

people, and force them to become thieves in order to live, then what else can be thought of you as leader, but that you turn your people into criminals only to punish them? Yes, the Germans hate us. Can you blame them?"

"But then that brings us back to the question of whether they really hate us or are just fighting because they were swept into the mechanism of war." Susan replied. "No matter how you look at this, there is no simplification to be applied."

"And so we are back at square one, having drawn no conclusion." Peter sighed.

"But knowing a great deal more on philosophy and society, courtesy of Ed." Lucy grinned.

"Trust Ed to always come up with a teaching." Peter chuckled.

"Oh, nonsense." Edmund said, smiling, and copying his sisters previous statements perfectly.

They laughed lightly, and Peter passed his arm over Ed's shoulders and brought him close, ruffling his dark hair.

Like wolves in sheep's clothes, they navigated an England they barely understood, Kings and Queen in children's disguise, learning and observing a whole new life and adapting to it. New experiences brought about new reactions, new thoughts, unexpected feelings. Peter may be at a loss, but he wasn't lost, and as always he remained their own personal compass, their star over the blurred horizon. Edmund cleared the clouds for him, and Lucy was the wind on his sails.

And to Susan, they were a study on perfection.

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The Gunpowder Plot of 1605, or the Powder Treason, as it was known at the time, was a failed assassination attempt by a group of provincial English Catholics against King James I of England and VI of Scotland. The plot intended to kill the king, his family, and most of the Protestant aristocracy in a single attack by blowing up the Houses of Parliament during the State Opening on 5 November 1605.

That is what the quote Edmund does at the beginning refers to. Edmund also quotes and speaks of Thomas Hobbes and Thomas More, which I trust you will google or look up in Wikipedia? Long biographies, you see.

The first quote does indeed belong to Oscar Wilde, one of my personal favorites when it comes to quotes. Honore de Balzac was in fact French, Peter was right. Shakespeare would not quote Plato because he was not an extremely cultured fellow, as it goes, and that's what Peter questions.

The Interpol took such name in 1956, so that's an intended anachronism simply because the International Criminal Police Commission was waaaaaay too long.

I hope I didn't bore you.



Namariel, out!