I know that my descriptions of London and the surrounding areas are likely incorrect. I worked for over an hour trying to get the Internet to cough up maps I could understand. I eventually gave up and decided to use creative license and make things up. So if there are any London residents reading, please don't be offended that I didn't get the locations right.

Disclaimer: I am merely borrowing C. S. Lewis' charming characters and world, and will eventually return them. The only thing that is mine is the plot.

Disclaimer 2: If this story in any way resembles any other fanfiction it is by complete accident, as I go out of my way to avoid reading fanfictions that resemble mine until mine are completed. My apologies to any other great minds.

Author's note: This story is set pre-, during- and post- The Last Battle. I am a first time fanfiction writer and any reviews are appreciated.

Chapter nine: Home, sweet, home

Peter boarded the train on December 18, eager to get back home and see his family. Finchley was considered by most simply to be another suburb of London, but it was on the opposite side of London from Peter's college. It was conceivably close enough for him to take a train home every weekend or so, and that happened to be what he had done for the first semester of his college education. But the hours of riding the train, the expense of tickets, and the drain on Peter's time for studies added up, and he had decided to simply stay at the college on weekends. He would still come home for the holidays and the summer.

Peter's father was waiting at the station to pick him up. William Pevensie had served in the war as a medic until he had taken a bullet to the leg two months after Peter and the others had tumbled into and out of the wardrobe in Professor Kirke's mansion. The bullet had done quite a bit of damage, and nine years later he still walked with a limp. While not enough to destroy William's career as a doctor, the wound was serious enough to allow him to be sent home. The next year was spent healing and getting reacquainted with his family. The trip to America with his wife and Susan was partially to teach the lectures he had been hired to do, and partially to see some specialists in America who might be able to do more extensive repair to his leg.

Peter gave his father a warm embrace as soon as his hands were free. War and experience had taught him, and many others, the value of family and the wisdom of showing love while there still was a chance.

The ride home from the station was filled with the usual questions about the semester and exams. To Peter's surprise his dad made the first comment about Leona. Peter had quickly written home telling them that Leona had accepted his invitation to stay with them for the holidays, so her arriving on the 24th would not be a surprise.

"Just so you know, Peter," his dad said with a smile. "Your mum is almost beside herself with excitement about this lass. She's been cleaning the house for days now – why I don't know since with so many people in the place it doesn't stay clean for more than a few minutes! Be that as it may, she's taken the idea that you might be getting serious about a woman and has run with it. If you give her any sort of encouragement at all, she'll have a wedding planned by New Year's. I'll try and rein her in if you like, but I can't promise she won't interrogate your young lady the second she gets through the door."

Peter laughed along with his dad, but made a mental note to inform the family and various visitors not to push if Leona didn't want to talk about something. The last thing he needed was somebody getting offended with Leona's trademark "I can't tell you."

The large house came slowly into view around the corner. That house was full of memories for Peter. Luckily it had not sustained too much damage during the war; broken windows and a few holes in the roof and walls from flying debris.

As the car pulled to a stop in the driveway, Peter let himself fall back into so many childhood memories that had their home in this house. He only had vague memories of Susan's birth and early childhood, but he could still bring to mind Edmund as a baby, and Justin as well. Ah, Justin... His happy little brother. Born ten months after Edmund, Justin was a cheerful, healthy baby, and Peter and Susan delighted in playing with the two little boys. Peter felt a small smile touch his lips, but it was a smile tinged with grief as well. He would never be able to forget the sound of his mother's screams as the household woke one morning to find Justin dead in his cradle. There had been no signs of anything wrong with him; he had just died. His mother's next pregnancy a couple of months later had been watched with eagle's eyes, and after little Lucy had come squalling into the world, she had been treated like glass by the whole family. Even after a year or so had passed and nothing had happened to show that Lucy might be called upon to follow Justin, the doting hadn't truly stopped, much to Edmund's jealous disgust. Peter had secretly hoped for another sibling or two and was delighted when his mum had announced that she was once again pregnant. But in a dangerous miscarriage that little baby was lost as well, and the doctors told Helen that she could no longer have children.

After that the household changed. Not drastically, but in more subtle ways. The nursery next to his parents' bedroom was given back to Lucy as her own room, and Peter was offered his own room as well, but he had declined until Edmund was old enough to easily sleep on his own. Edmund was prone to terrifying nightmares as a child, and many the night was Peter woken from his sleep by the sound of his brother's cries. But when the ever more self-reliant Edmund no longer looked to Peter for comfort from his night terrors, Peter took advantage of the offer of his own room across the hall. Though after they had returned from Narnia it wasn't unusual for Edmund or Peter to end up in each other's room by morning, having been awakened by the other's vivid nightmares of war, loss and bloody battle. After Peter had left for college, his room had become a study and library for his dad.

Peter had no sooner managed to maneuver his suitcases through the door and put them down that he was hit with all the force of a train by Lucy, followed in a more discreet manner by Edmund and his mum.

"Peter, oh Peter, you're home!" Lucy squealed, hugging Peter tightly. Sometimes it was hard to tell that Lucy was seventeen, but then she would act so much older at times and everything would balance out. Helen Pevensie took her turn to embrace her oldest son as soon as Lucy released him.

"Welcome home, dear," was the soft whisper in his ear as Peter wrapped his arms around his mother.

"It's good to be home," Peter replied. "Hello, Ed." He turned to his brother with a query in his eye. To hug or not to hug, that was the question... Edmund had never been the most publicly demonstrative of boys even after Narnia. Edmund answered that question with a smirk and a "Come here, you." With an answering grin, Peter gave his brother a warm embrace, noting that his younger sibling had grown again and was easily looking him in the eye. "We'll talk later," Peter whispered into Edmund's ear before they let go. Lucy, seeing that Peter was again free, attached herself to his back like a barnacle.

"Oof! Lucy, I missed you too, but I still need air!" Peter laughed. "Where's Susan?"

Lucy let go and rolled her eyes at her brother as she answered. "Out at a party."

Mrs. Pevensie gave a more complete answer. "She wanted to be here to meet you, but a friend called and needed her help setting up for a party she was hosting and so Susan went to give her a hand."

Peter was a bit disappointed but not too surprised. Susan had been pulling away from her siblings for over a year now. She seemed to be more interested in getting away from the house and being out with her friends than she was with spending time at home with the family. He could easily understand, she always felt more at home in a social surrounding, but it still was a bit disappointing that she hadn't been home to greet him.

Lucy seemed to regain her excitement and started talking about all the plans for the holidays. "Eustace and Jill are here already, and they will be staying the entire holiday break. The Professor and Aunt Polly will be here on the 21st and we will be having Christmas dinner here with them as well." She chattered on as Peter picked up his suitcases and headed towards Edmund's room which he would be sharing with his brother and Eustace. He poked his head into the living room when he heard the sounds of a boy and girl talking. He recognized his cousin but didn't know the girl with him. He assumed it was Jill, but he had never managed to meet her. She had come with Eustace to visit once before, but Peter had been at school at the time and hadn't been able to come.

"Hello," Peter greeted as he again set his suitcases down and entered the room.

Eustace looked up from the puzzle that he and his friend were working on. "Peter! I heard Lucy squealing about something and I thought that it might be you. I figured I had better wait until she had calmed down before I tried to get anywhere near you."

Peter grinned at the younger boy. "Good idea, she hasn't let go of me for more than a minute at a stretch so far. How have you been?"

"Good so far. Oh, I completely forgot! You haven't met Pole here yet." Eustace rose to his feet and helped his companion up as well. "Peter, meet Jill Pole. Jill, this is my cousin Peter," his voice dropped into a conspirator's whisper, "known in Narnia as the High King Peter."

Jill looked rather flustered and a little overwhelmed as Peter bowed to her. "Hello," she said quietly.

Peter called on his experience putting people at ease in his presence. "It is truly a pleasure to finally meet you in person. You will have to give me all of the details of your time in Narnia. Letters can never truly give her justice."

Jill smiled, "No, they can't really. I'd be happy to tell you whatever you like."

"Excellent!" Peter straightened. "Well, I'll leave you two back to your puzzle as I need to go upstairs and unpack. I shall see you all at dinner."

Peter started unpacking his suitcases with Lucy sitting on the bed happily chattering away about all the things that he had missed during his time at school. Suddenly she stopped, and Peter looked up at her.

"Are you alright, Lu?" he asked. She was looking at him rather strangely.

"You seem different from the last time I saw you. More like you used to be in Narnia."

Peter gave a smile. "That is mostly Leona's fault. She tends to bring out the High King in me."

Lucy dimpled in return. "That's good though, isn't it?"

Peter's smile disappeared. "I'm not sure. I don't know if there is a place in this world for the High King."

"Maybe not for the High King, but for someone very much like him, I think there will be a place." The voice came from the doorway. Edmund stood there leaning against the door frame looking at his siblings.

Lucy stood up and said, "I think I'll go see if Mum needs help with dinner."

Edmund came in, closed the door behind him and sat down on the bed where Lucy had been sitting. He cut straight to the point. "You never used to have difficulty with hiding the High King. What happened?"

Peter gave a frustrated sigh. "I'm not sure if I want to hide the High King anymore. We all hid the aspects of our time in Narnia, like a candle under a basket. It was necessary of course, but now it wouldn't be odd for us to act more like we did in Narnia; noble and adult. But, sometimes it feels like that candle has gone out. Some days I feel so much like who I used to be that it's as though I can turn a street corner and be back in Cair Paravel. Other days I'm so involved in my life here as Peter that I have a hard time even understanding who I was. I don't know who the High King is anymore or who he should be." Peter buried his face in his hands. "I don't know what to do or who I am sometimes."

Peter felt a hand on his shoulder.

"First off, you seem to think of the High King as someone other than yourself. He is you, you are he. The High King is simply a position you filled. I will admit that you behaved differently as High King than you do now, but that is because everyone makes different decisions based on the circumstances."

Suddenly, the pieces began to fall into place within Peter's mind, and a great burden felt as if it were lifted from where it had weighted down upon his shoulders. "The High King is just another facet of myself that isn't put into play very often anymore. Just because it isn't always to the forefront of my life and behavior doesn't mean that it isn't always there or is somebody else."

Edmund smiled at him and nodded silently.

Peter shook his head in amazement at the simple answer that had been right in front of him all along. "None of you others ever seemed to have this sort of trouble getting your lives in Narnia and in England from getting mixed up."

"Well, frankly Susan, Lucy and my lives here that aren't that much different from how we lived in Narnia. Of course, eventually we had different responsibilities as we were kings and queens with areas of Narnia to reign over. But you were the one who ruled all of Narnia. You were the one who dealt with the day to day things that running a kingdom involved. You were the one that the foreign diplomats expected to have dealings with. You were required to change into someone that could do all of those things, and do them well. Maybe you feel lost because you are at the same age now that you were in Narnia, but there you had a purpose and a job to do. Here, you are just another person." Edmund made his case with a knowing air and a small smile.

Peter shook his head. "You were as much of a ruler as I, Edmund! You did just as much work as I did."

"Not at first, remember?" Edmund corrected his brother. "I didn't take over actually ruling Lantern Waste full time until I was nearly fifteen. You did everything up until then - you needed to. Neither Lucy nor I had the attention span or the knowledge to do more than attend a meeting or two and give a few good ideas at times. I remember Lucy almost crying over a situation that was brought to her that she didn't know how to solve. You stepped in and resolved the matter, and until she was old enough to truly be a co-ruler you did all the work. You did the same for my responsibilities as well, though I do like to think that I was more help at first than Lucy was. Susan was capable of helping you in many ways and she did, but she tended to be more involved in the running of the castle and in being the hostess for visitors. She did help rule Narnia from the start, but you still made most of the decisions for years."

Peter really couldn't think of anything to say to this, since it was true. Even though the others' were king and queens in their own right, he had been the only one with more than a basic idea of how to govern a country, and even Peter's knowledge had been scanty at first. Thankfully the library of Cair Paravel had many books on the various things that a king or queen needed to know. But Edmund and Lucy really had been too young to deal with running a kingdom as badly damaged as Narnia. The White Witch had left much to be desired in her rule, even by the standards of most dictators, and fixing many of the problems she had caused had taken more than three years. Peter remembered only to well the many, many sleepless nights he had spent desperately trying to make sense of records and papers that were at least a hundred years old!

Edmund gave Peter a curious look. "What I don't understand is how you managed to bury the Narnian aspect of yourself so deeply in the first place. I would have thought with as many 'reminders' you would have gotten it would have been impossible." By 'reminders' Edmund was referring to the phantom pains that all of the Pevensies would get from time to time.

The first link to their lives in Narnia happened to Edmund almost a week after they had tumbled out of the wardrobe and back into England. They had been playing a board game on yet another rainy day, when Edmund gave a sharp cry and clutched his stomach directly over the spot where, in Narnia, the scar from the White Witch's wand stabbing him would have been. Upon examination, no wound or scar was found, Edmund said that the pain had lasted only a minute and had not been nearly as bad as it had been to receive the original wound. Only upon counting out days had they realized that their time in England was mirroring the Battle of Beruna. Thereafter, when their ages in England matched the day and time of a serious wound or injury in Narnia each of the Pevensies would feel a phantom pain where the wound in Narnia would have been. The pains were never enough to disable or truly hurt them, but they still felt something. The girls had far fewer of these 'reminders', as they all started to call them, than the boys because of the propensity of Peter and Edmund to be injured in battle or tournament.

They had wondered what the phantom pains had meant, and eventually came to the conclusion that as their bodies aged again in England they would try and regain the shape and state of their bodies in Narnia. But as time was different there that was impossible and the pains were the closest to Narnian they would ever become again. They also wondered why some wounds would "get through" and others wouldn't, but decided after debating themselves into a tizzy that it didn't really matter.

Peter gave a small shrug. "I don't know; it happens so often I don't truly notice it sometimes. I would become more Narnian after one of them would remind me of something that had happened in Narnia, but after a while they ended up just reminding me to pull back into being 'normal' again."

Edmund gave a satisfied nod. "So that's where you got that habit from. I had wondered."

The two men stopped talking as a knock at the door came. Mrs. Pevensie opened the door and came inside. "Still not unpacked yet, Peter?"

Peter gave a guilty look at the still full suitcase at his feet. "Ed and I were talking. Don't worry, it shouldn't take me but a minute to finish, now that I'm paying attention again."

"Well, I can give you a few more minutes, but dinner is almost ready. Soon as you're done come downstairs and wash up. I'll want to hear all about your Leona over dinner, so you had better not be too hungry."

Peter was, in fact, very hungry and groaned at the thought of trying to eat while fielding questions about Leona, most of which he probably couldn't answer, all throughout the rest of the evening. Oh, well, he really hadn't anticipated anything else.

Edmund smirked as their mother left to go back to her cooking. "Take heart, Peter. Even counting Mum's Spanish Inquisition it's still easier to date a girl here than it was in Narnia."

Peter gave the point without protest. "That is very true. That is one thing I love about Leona. Since I've never told her about Narnia I know that she loves me because I'm Peter, not because I'm 'High King Peter the Magnificent.'" The last title was given complete with a flutter of hands and an exaggerated eye roll.

Edmund looked very serious. "You truly love her then?"

Peter met his brother's eyes. "Ever since I met her, I've felt more like myself than I have since we left Narnia. It's as though when I'm around her I can relax and set myself free to be the kind of man I know I am, without being afraid or ashamed. But, when she's not there, all I'm left with are the memories... and the loneliness." Peter trailed off. "I thought I was able to put Narnia aside, but I don't think I've felt this homesick since we came back through the wardrobe. All the things and places that I loved are floating in the forefront of my mind now and I can't stuff them back. It was the most wonderful thing I've ever experienced and I can't share it with her. I want to walk the beach at Cair Paravel again, and see the sun rise over the sea. Every night I dream of Narnia and the places I want to see again and show her."

"Are you going to tell her about Narnia?" Edmund asked frankly.

"I don't know. Something tells me that she would believe me if I did tell her, but what if I'm wrong? I don't like the idea of living the rest of my life with her and never telling her about the most important part of my past. But, I am terrified that she will think I'm insane." Peter gave a frustrated sigh. "I just don't know."

"Talk about it with Aunt Polly and the Professor when they get here. Aunt Polly married so she must have at least some idea of what to do. In the mean time, finish unpacking - I'm hungry and Mum's cooking chicken," Edmund said practically.

With a smile, Peter complied.

TBC...

Dedication: This chapter is dedicated in memory of my older cousin Justin, who died stillborn. (For those re-reading, I had originally believed that Justin died of SIDS, until I got more information from my mom. )

Author's note for the chapter: My plot bunnies are evil and vindictive. I was having a bit of trouble with a section so I decided to go to bed and work on the chapter in the morning. No sooner than my head hit the pillow, than this whole back story for the Pevensie family unrolled itself in my mind. Of course it was nearly 1:30 in the morning and I'd already shut my computer off... Dang plot bunnies!