I realise that some of the themes I have explored in this story have a potential to be problematic for some readers. While no one has raised any concerns yet I do want to give everyone a chance to understand why I have written what I have the way that I have written it. This is a lengthy explanation so I chose to post it on my user profile, rather than in the author's notes, so please, if you have questions or concerns please visit my profile page before continuing to read.

That being said, I hope you can appreciate this chapter and if you have further questions please feel free to send me a private message :-)

Peter was amused at first when Susan directed him back to his tent and he found his younger brother fast asleep, leaning back in his chair with his ankle propped up on another chair. Goodness knows he needs sleep, Peter thought, watching him with concern. Beneath the grime that streaked it his face was terribly pale, except for the dark circles under his eyes that made it look like someone had punched him, and it was painfully obvious now how thin he had become. Peter sighed and sat down on the floor as both chairs were currently unavailable, and wondered if it was worth waking Edmund up to make sure he ate. Before he could decide, he heard a strangled cry and realised that his brother's sleep was no longer peaceful.

Lucy and Susan had both warned him about the nightmares, but somehow he hadn't expected it to be this bad. If he had thought Edmund's face pale before, it was ghostly now, his jaw was clenched as if in pain, and his eyes moved restlessly beneath his eyelids. He cried out again, a choked sound that ended abruptly as he suddenly seemed unable to breathe. Forgetting Lucy's cautionary words about attempting to wake Edmund, Peter shook his shoulder urgently. "Ed! Wake up! Eddie, it's alright, it's Peter, wake up."

He should have known better than to startle him, but his worry had overcome his sense and for a moment he forgot the innumerable reasons that existed for not trying to wake his brother. Edmund's eyes flew open in terror and he struck out blindly-Peter barely ducked in time to avoid a stunning blow to his head. "Edmund! It's alright; calm down!"

The wild eyes blinked once, staring up at Peter in horror, before Edmund threw himself off the chair with a strangled cry and darted under the table. Peter stared after him, torn between concern and guilt. That was nicely handled! Idiot!

He sat back down on the floor-careful not to make any sudden movements this time-and peered under the somewhat unsteady table. Edmund was huddled under the back corner of it, as far away from Peter as he could get within the confines of the tent, and his knees were drawn up in front of his chest with his forehead resting between them. His shoulders were shaking and for a moment Peter thought it was with terror, then he realised that Edmund was crying, silently but with so much force that it shook his whole body.

"What happened Ed? What made you like this?" The question was largely rhetorical and Edmund did not answer or even seem to hear, and Peter wondered desperately if he was managing to breathe.

Peter shifted closer. "Eddie?" There has to be something I can do! Edmund edged away, the movement barely perceptible, but it was enough to make Peter pause and reluctantly withdraw the arm he had been about to put around his shaking shoulders. Peter was used to dealing with Edmund's nightmares, or rather allowing Edmund to deal with them himself, but this was different. This time Edmund hadn't woken up to reluctantly listen as Peter reassured him and then shrugged the whole matter off with a crooked smile; this time it seemed more like he hadn't woken up at all.

"Ed?" He cautiously extended a hand towards him, much more slowly this time and was careful to keep his voice low and conversational. "It's me; do you think you can come out from under the table now?"

Edmund didn't lift his head or respond, and Peter silent berated himself for being so useless. I should know how to help him; somehow, I should be able to figure it out!

"Come on Ed, I promise it's safe. I'm sorry I startled you, I should have been more careful, please come out so we can talk?" No response. "Alright, if you won't come out do you mind if I join you?" Ordinarily he would have laughed at the seeming absurdity of the situation. The table really was rather tiny and it was a wonder Edmund had managed to wedge himself under it; Peter wasn't entirely sure he could manage it himself, but if that was the only way to get his brother to talk to him, it was worth trying. In the end, he got his head and shoulders under the somewhat rickety construction and wriggled backwards cautiously until he was more or less sitting next to his silently sobbing brother.

"So, what are you doing under here?" he asked lightly, leaning back on his elbows and staring up at the splintered, scarred wood less than an inch above his head. This time he got a muffled, indistinguishable response, though that was better than nothing. "I didn't quite catch that, sorry."

"Hiding." Edmund turned his head slightly to answer, though he still kept his face buried in the crook of his left arm.

"From anything in particular?"

"It doesn't matter." Before Narnia, Peter would have taken the words, and the hint of bitterness in his brother's voice, at face value and given up trying to get him to talk. Now, he understood Edmund's moods well enough to realise the bitterness was not directed at him.

"It matters to me." Peter risked putting a hand on one of Edmund's shaking shoulders and was relieved when he didn't immediately flinch away. "I want to help." He let the following silence stretch on for a long moment, listening to his brother's breathing slowly become steadier as the tears passed. "I don't know how," he admitted quietly into the near silence.

Edmund tensed, withdrawing ever so slightly. "Neither do I," his voice was hoarse and quiet, but steady, and Peter was grateful for that at least.

"Do you want to talk about it? If you don't I won't force you to." The silence returned, oppressive and tense, but Peter meant what he said and if Edmund didn't want to talk he would respect that choice.

"No," Edmund said at last, raising his head from where it rested against his knees. His eyes were bloodshot and his face was streaked with soot and tears, but his expression was calm. Almost too calm, Peter thought. Like a lull between two storms. Susan would have laughed if she knew he was thinking even remotely poetically, and he spared a moment to be glad she did not. Peter opened his mouth to respond, to assure Edmund that he would keep his word and not force him to talk, but Edmund shook his head, obviously not done speaking. "Unfortunately," he said after another moment's silence, voice shaking only slightly. "Susan is right; I do need to talk, even though I don't want to."

Peter nodded, forgetting how close bottom of the table was and hissing sharply in pain when the top of his head collided with the wood. "Is it alright if we talk sitting at the table, rather than under it?"

Edmund laughed, a strange, fragile sound that was closer to a stifled sob than anything else, but nodded all the same. "I'm really not sure what you're doing under here, you great lummox."

A few sharp cracks to the head and mumbled expletives later, Peter had managed to extricate himself from beneath the table, followed by Edmund who managed it with an annoying lack of difficulty. They faced each other across the table uncertainly, and Peter felt a strange sense of panic himself. He might as well be a stranger with my brother's face for how little I understand him right now. But he forced the thought away impatiently as he dropped onto the nearest chair and pushed the other in Edmund's direction. "Sit down and put your foot up before you fall over."

Edmund raised an eyebrow at him. "Are you actually suggesting I put my feet on the table? Susan would most definitely not approve."

"Susan is currently chasing Lucy with a hairbrush, trying to return some semblance of order to her appearance; I don't think she'll notice just this once."

Edmund's laugh was less fragile this time, a fact Peter was infinitely grateful for. The flimsy wooden folding chair creaked dubiously as Edmund leaned back in it and obediently propped his swollen ankle up on the edge of the equally unsteady table.

"So," Peter said uncertainly, risking imminent disaster by leaning back in his own chair.

"So?" His brother parroted back, changing the inflection only slightly. "I suppose Lucy must have told you something."

"Something," Peter agreed quietly, risking his safety even further by putting his own feet on the table. His chair shifted menacingly but did not collapse.

"I never thought I'd be grateful for snow," Edmund said quietly, surprising Peter with the seeming non-sequitur. "I still hate it," he added thoughtfully. "But it also saved us quite a few times in the mountains, as strange as that sounds, considering it also almost killed us."

Peter wasn't entirely sure where this train of thought was leading, but he knew better than to interrupt.

"The giant's hunting parties would have found us many times over if it hadn't snowed and hidden our tracks. I didn't expect them to be so persistent in their hatred; they never stopped hunting us, even when we got better at hiding." Edmund had leant his head back and was staring up at the canvas ceiling, expression distant. "Lucy was brilliant; she got us out of the city somehow, I was never sure how, and found Trebonius and the others on her own. I was rather useless; I slept for three days even after she used the cordial to heal me."

Peter nodded silently, not knowing what else to do and biting back the question he had been wanting to ask for weeks. Edmund seemed to understand what he wanted to know regardless of his silence and shrugged. "According to Lucy I'm lucky I didn't manage to stab myself in the heart or lungs with one of my own ribs."

"More like stubborn," Peter muttered darkly before he could stop himself. He couldn't help but remember how terribly pale Edmund's face had been as he knelt before him, waiting for his brother to kill him with his own sword.

"It wasn't your fault." Peter looked up guiltily, realising that his ever-perceptive brother was glaring at him across the table, daring him to argue. "You can't blame yourself for everything that goes wrong, especially when you couldn't have stopped any of it from happening."

"Weren't we talking about you, not me?"

"If you stop feeling guilty maybe. I know," he added with a sigh. "It's a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black. By the way, I never really understood that saying; isn't a kettle generally shiny?"

Peter shrugged, unwilling to be drawn into what would likely prove to be a rather rambling analysis of popular idioms. He's trying to distract me because, however much he needs to talk, he doesn't want to. Well, it isn't going to work, especially when I should be the one dealing with this instead. They were silent again for a long moment before Edmund's scowl returned. "Stop it," he said crossly.

"Stop what?" Genuinely confused, Peter frowned back at his brother.

"You're wondering what would have changed if you'd gotten in that giant's way instead of me." He'd been doing precisely that, and Peter felt his cheeks flush in embarrassment at being caught. "It wouldn't have changed what happened," Edmund went on, staring back up at the ceiling. "Except that you would be the one sitting here, not me, and it's far better that it is me."

"Why?"

"Because Narnia needs you," he said it like it was the most obvious answer in the world and Peter wanted desperately to interrupt, but Edmund did not give him the chance. "Don't look at me like that; you're the High King, Narnia needs you fully capable of facing enemies without panicking and forgetting to breathe."

"And Narnia needs the King in charge of justice to be able to judge clearly and reasonably." Peter found that he was rather shocked by his own statement and regretted the harshness of it immediately. You're supposed to be helping; not making things worse! He thought in exasperation, but Edmund only nodded, eyes still fixed on the ceiling.

"I know. That's why we're having this conversation. I was terribly wrong to give the orders I did, and I should have realised it sooner. I suppose I wanted revenge for what they had done to Lucy, for how they followed the Green Lady, and I suppose for what they did to me. It wasn't reasonable or just."

"If I'd known then what happened, I would have burned the city myself and likely everything between here and Ettinsmoor," Peter muttered darkly, glaring down at the scarred wood of the table. It might not have been a particularly helpful statement, but Edmund snorted in amusement and shifted his weight, making his chair groan in protest.

"There is a reason your temper is not in charge of the courts. Although, I'm not sure my knack for being petty should be either."

"Petty?!" Really, that was too much. That was his breaking point. He leapt to his feet, knocking his chair over in the process and kicking it away crossly. "They tried to kill you! They left you there to die, trapped under the bodies of your guards. Lion's Mane Edmund! I'm not saying it would have been right to burn their city, but it would hardly have been petty!"

"Alright," Edmund spread his hands on the tabletop in a placating gesture. "But please, sit back down and try not to shout. You'll have half the army in here in a minute." Peter might have stayed on his feet shouting, not caring who heard, if he had not seen the almost imperceptible way Edmund flinched away from him when he stood. He righted his chair, still fuming, and dropped back into it, rather surprised when it didn't immediately collapse.

"Not petty then," Edmund mused quietly. "But certainly not right. Have you ever wondered what it's like for a soldier who's died in battle to be left behind on the field?" A hint of panic came back into his voice, and Peter silently cursed his earlier loss of temper. The last thing his brother needed was to be yelled at. He shook his head silently, not daring to speak.

"I hadn't either, and I didn't expect to remember finding out."

"The only difference being you weren't actually dead." Peter stared at a deep crack in the table, tracing the pattern it made with his index finger and trying desperately not to cry. He vaguely remembered being some other place, sitting on his grandmother's lap, and listening as she talked with their mother.

"He never really came back, you know?" She had said shakily, thinking Peter was too interested in the picture book she held to be interested in their conversation. "He still dreams about it at night, even after all these years; the trenches and the terrible fear those poor men lived in, knowing every moment they could be buried in a mudslide when it rained or blown to bits by the bombs."

Peter shook his head, impatient with himself for remembering that now. But why should it be any different here? True, there aren't bombs or guns, but there's still war and death everywhere we turn.

"I'll be alright Pete. Talking helps, I think." Peter risked glancing over at him and saw that Edmund too was studying the table as if it held some previously hidden answer. "I suppose it's too much to ask that one conversation solves everything. Every time I fall asleep, really fall asleep, I'm back there. I didn't know at the time what they were doing, but I heard them talking, saying how they were going to kill everyone. They knew I was alive, conscious even, and they laughed and talked about how I would stop breathing soon enough. I-I couldn't move, or breathe-I knew I was dead, but my mind insisted I was still alive. I couldn't just give up-I wanted to, I must have, but I couldn't. Does that make any sense?"

Peter couldn't answer, but sensed he didn't need to. After all, what could he say? It didn't make sense to him, but he hadn't been there. They knew! The left him there, knowing he was alive and conscious, knowing it might take him hours to die, and they still left him there. He ground his teeth together. He would have burned the whole country, slaughtered everyone who could even remotely have been blamed for what they had done to his brother. Does that include yourself? he wondered darkly. It was my fault as much as if I threw him there myself.

"It will get better, won't it? With time?" That was a non-rhetorical question, and even though Peter had been expecting it he wasn't prepared for the feeling of helplessness that swept over him as he tried to find the right answer. There wasn't a right answer; there wasn't anything he could say to erase the past or to secure the future.

Aslan, give me wisdom. But it was Edmund, and not Aslan who was staring at him from across the table with pleading eyes as his hands shook. "Yes," Peter said at last, squaring his shoulders and meeting his brother's eyes stubbornly. "It will, and I'll be here for you the whole time. Talk to me or don't, but I'll be here and you will get through this."

A moment later both chairs crashed to the ground as Peter unexpectedly found himself with his arms full of a sobbing younger brother and his chair at last gave up the struggle and splintered beneath their combined weight. Neither one of them really noticed. Peter tucked the younger boy's head under his chin and wrapped both arms around his thin shoulders, finally letting his own tears fall.

"I've failed you so terribly! I'm sorry, Eddie, I'm so sorry!" He wasn't even sure Edmund heard him but it didn't matter. I won't let them hurt you again. I won't ever hurt you like that again. I swear it. "It's going to be alright, I'm here, you'll be okay." He repeated the words almost nonsensically, hoping that Edmund at least could find some comfort in hearing his voice. Oh Aslan! Can't you help him?

My child, whispered the voice of the Lion ever so gently. I have helped him; I have given him you.

So there's that! At least Peter and Edmund final got to talk, even if it didn't immediately solve everything. There are just a couple things left to wrap up, maybe two chapters and an epilogue or three chapters; it really depends. Thank you to PaintingMusic14 for her wonderful beta reading and thank you all for reading and reviewing. Please do let me know what you think of this chapter :-)

Cheers,

A