Chapter 3 – The Bacon Incident
Disclaimer: I happen to own the sunglasses I am wearing! It's bright in here, after all, and I just got my eyes dilated! It is very hard to see the computer screen with sunglasses on, by the way. Stupid optometrist! Well, anyway, I sadly do not own anything you recognize here. And even if you didn't recognize it, I wouldn't own it.
Author's Note: It hasn't been very long until the last update, and I know quite a few people probably haven't gotten the chance to read Chapter 2 yet… But I am going to go ahead and post this, because I'm going out of town pretty soon and so I want to get as many chapters up as possible!
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Narnia – October, Year 1003
-During the time in which Peter was 16, Susan was 15, Edmund was 13, and Lucy was 11.
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"Susan, you're such a bother!"
"A bother?"
"Yes, a bother! The only person you care about is yourself and lately you're so annoying!"
"Oh, so I'm the one who only cares about myself? Lucy, you're always so cheerful and happy and innocent; everyone just loves Queen Lucy! Well, you know what? You prance around here getting into everybody else's business, never doing any work of your own, and I think that–"
"What! That's not my fault at all! Peter said–"
"Of course, you would blame someone else! Poor, dear, sweet little Lucy never does anything wrong, after all…"
Peter sat next to his brother at the top of the staircase, watching their sisters argue in the dining hall. Peter looked over at Edmund, who was baring a fierce scowl.
"Seems like they're fighting more and more every day, huh?"
Edmund merely nodded.
"I'm getting pretty tired of this. I doubt that they even remember what this fight was originally about, by now!"
"And they'll still be mad at each other tomorrow."
"Until they finally decide to make up–"
"…and then soon afterwards, they'll be at it again," Edmund finished Peter's thought.
"Anymore, Susan and Lucy are always at each others' throats," Peter said, and Edmund agreed. "It might just be their ages. Don't girls around their ages tend to fight a lot?"
"I think. Maybe. Well… I don't know! How would I know?" Edmund replied.
Meanwhile, Lucy and Susan's fight was still raging down below them. The topic of the argument had already changed drastically.
"Yes, you do, Lucy! You always sneer at me like that! You're such a little brat. I can tell that you think you're better than me. It's about time you learned a bit of respect, little sister! After all, I am older and prettier than you–"
"Well, I didn't know you were this pig-headed, Su! They could stuff you and stick an apple in your mouth and we could eat you for dinner!"
"Whatever is that supposed to mean!"
"It means that you're such a pig that they could serve you for dinner or make a Christmas ham out of you! Actually, we could even fry you up for bacon, you're such a pig!"
"That must be the stupidest thing I have ever heard in my life!"
"Well, you're the stupidest thing I've ever had the displeasure to talk to in my life!"
Edmund rolled his eyes. "They never used to act like this. If someone had told me a year ago that Susan would be calling herself prettier than Lu and saying that Lu was a brat, and that Lucy was calling Susan pig-headed and stupid, I would have told that person that they were the stupid one."
"It's a shame. They used to be so close! This is unbearable to watch," Peter said, retreating to his bedroom. He was about to close the door, when he saw that Ed had followed him.
"I can't stand to them yelling at each other like that, either, Peter. Not when they used to be best friends. I'm going to fix it."
"You're going to fix it?" Peter repeated, puzzled.
"Yes. I'm going to make Su and Lu remember how much they love each other. I'm going to make them stop fighting."
"Good luck with that, Ed," Peter said quietly, shaking his head sadly. Edmund left the doorway to his brother's bedroom, and Peter closed the door behind him, so that he couldn't hear the mean comments his once-loving sisters were throwing back and forth at each other.
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Peter heard a bell ringing faintly from somewhere downstairs. The dinner bell. Usually, Peter loved dinner – it was when everyone got together, and they could talk about the day and enjoy each other's company. Today Peter wanted very much not to go to dinner.
He knew that no one would be 'enjoying each other's company.' There would be no lighthearted talk and laughter, not when the most lighthearted Pevensie (Lucy) and the most giggly (Susan) were still too angry at each other to speak civilly.
Peter trudged down the stairs to the dining hall.
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Dinner turned out just as he had expected.
Lucy and Susan were not in their usual seats when Peter arrived at the table. They had moved seats so that they didn't have to sit next to each other. While the order was usually Susan, Lucy, Peter, Edmund, tonight, it was Lucy, an empty seat for Peter, Susan, and then Edmund.
"Peter, would you please tell the conceited pig that we have for a sister to pass the butter? She is absolutely hogging it. Then again, that could be expected, seeing how greedy she is," Lucy said to Peter angrily.
With a sigh, Peter turned to Susan. "Su, could you–"
"Not if you're going to give it to that spoiled, selfish brat. She doesn't deserve buttered bread." The girl turned in her seat so her back was facing Peter.
"Now, Susan, that's absolutely ridiculous…"
Dinner continued that way for the rest of the night, until Susan demanded that Edmund ask Lucy to pass the potatoes.
"Ask her yourself," Edmund replied calmly.
"What? Ed, it's really not that hard! Would you please just ask our know-it-all sister to pass the potatoes?"
"Like you said, Su, it's really not that hard. Ask Lucy yourself."
"Edmund, you know I'm not speaking to her!"
"Well, you are now, if you want those potatoes."
"Fine, fine," Peter interrupted, sensing a fight emerging between Susan and Edmund. "Lucy, just pass the –"
"No, Peter, Susan needs to do this herself," Edmund cut Peter off, still maintaining his calm.
"Come on, Ed, it's just a bowl of potatoes! Let's not have another fight, please?"
"I'm not going to be Susan's messenger, and neither will you. Passing their silly messages back and forth is only going to fuel this ridiculous fight. There's no need for us to feed into that, Peter."
"Stop talking as if we're not in the room!" Susan said indignantly.
Edmund stood up from the table with composure, and headed up to his bedroom, without finishing his dinner.
Now Peter was left sitting at the dinner table between his two hostile sisters, both of whom looked ready to poke each other's eyes out with their forks.
Peter sighed and followed Ed upstairs without another word. His brother was right. Susan and Lucy would have to battle this one out alone. It wouldn't help peace come any sooner if he stuck around to be their middleman.
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Peter had hoped that Edmund's tactic of leaving Su and Lu to themselves to figure things out would work, but the next morning at breakfast, it appeared that it had not.
Susan and Lucy were glaring at each other. They still weren't sitting side by side. Peter also noticed that Susan was not partaking in the bacon set out on the table.
There was only a slight change in their reactions to each other since dinner – now, while they were still as inimical towards each other as ever, they were at least talking to each other. However, Peter wasn't sure if that was an improvement or not.
"Oh, Susan, won't you have some bacon?" Lucy cooed. Her voice dripped of sarcastic, mocked niceness. "Then again, it might be rather cannibalistic of you, eating one of your fellow pigs…"
Susan said nothing for a moment and only glared at her younger sister. Finally, she replied, "Well, dear sister Lucy, I would be able to have some, if you weren't hogging it the way you are. Maybe you should push the plate closer to the middle of the table, rather than having it right next to you. That way, maybe no one would even be able to tell how selfish you are, just by looking at you! However, once they really got to know you, they would realize–"
"If you say so, Susan," Lucy said, and violently pushed the plate of bacon away from her. It slid down to the end of the table, where it slipped right off the edge.
There was a crash as the plate hit the marble floor and shattered.
"Hey! I wanted some of that bacon!" Edmund protested.
"Well, you see, Ed, our dear little sister doesn't think much of what other people want. She's just too self—"
"All right, that's enough!" Edmund shouted, finally loosing his calm attitude.
Peter hadn't taken his seat yet, he was still standing, mouth agape, at the foot of the stairs, watching the scene unfold.
Edmund continued to shout at his sisters. This was attracting the attention of several of the cooks, who were peeking out from the kitchen to watch. "I am so tired of this! What happened? The two of you used to be so close! Just like best friends. Just a year ago, you were riding into battle together! Two years ago, you were teaming up against Peter and I in a snowball fight!" Now, Edmund's voice softened. "Three years ago, the two of you cried together and comforted each other over Aslan's dead body, when he sacrificed his life for me."
Both Peter and Lucy looked shocked. Peter was as well. None of them knew that Edmund had learned of Aslan's sacrifice for him yet.
"Back in London, when the Nazis were bombing our neighborhood, Su, you patted Lucy on the back and told her everything would be all right." Edmund paused. Even from his distance at the foot of the staircase, Peter could tell that Lucy's eyes were getting a very shiny, wet look to them.
"Remember when Susan used to get teased in grade school? No doubt the other girls were jealous of her. Lucy, you used to always be able to cheer her up. You could cheer any of us up!" Susan burst into tears, remembering her little sister's sweet smiles and kind gestures, even when Lu was too young to really know what was going on.
Edmund kept speaking, despite his sister's reactions. "Susan, you used to walk in to kiss Lucy goodnight every night in Narnia before she went to bed. Just to make sure she was alright, that she wasn't homesick or frightened of the dark. I've noticed you don't do that anymore." Lucy began to cry now.
"So, I think the two of you had better fix this. Right now. Before you fall apart so much that you can't put yourselves back together. All I want to see is the two of you as friends again. Like real sisters, not enemies! I hate seeing you at odds with one another, always shouting at each other and saying hurtful things. Seeing the both of you that way hurts Peter and I, too, you know."
Edmund quietly left the room, his footsteps ringing through the silent hall. He passed Peter on the stairs without a word, and receded to his bedroom.
"Oh, Lucy, I'm so sorry!" Peter heard Susan sob.
"I'm sorry too, Su!" and the sisters embraced, crying into each other's shoulders.
Peter knew that the girls would be fine. Surely their brother's speech would have a lasting effect on them. Peter left the girls to themselves. It was Edmund he needed to speak to now.
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Peter rapped three times on his brother's door, and heard a muffled call of "come in" from within the room. He opened the door and let himself inside.
"Oh, Peter," Edmund said, as if he had been expecting someone else.
"The girls are making up."
"That's good," Ed said with a hint of a smile.
"What you did down there, Ed… That was truly fantastic. Only you could have done that, make Susan and Lucy see how much they really love each other and care about each other."
Edmund's only response for a moment was the grin on his face, and there was a silence. Finally, Ed spoke.
"You go and eat some breakfast, Peter. Surely you're getting hungry. I think that meals will be much more pleasurable from now on."
Peter nodded and smiled, walking out the door and closing it behind him. He descended the stairs and went to breakfast.
Indeed, Edmund was right. The halls of Cair were filled with Lucy and Susan's playful laughs and jokes from that day forward. The only remaining evidence that his sisters had ever been in such a fight was that there was no bacon at breakfast for the next few mornings. (Edmund had specially requested to the chefs that it wasn't served, seeing as bacon was still a slightly touchy subject around Susan.)
Eating his scrambled eggs at breakfast that morning, something struck Peter. No wonder Edmund had had such a way with his arguing sisters.
King Edmund the Just. That was what they called his brother. And Peter realized, they were very right to call him that. No title could have fit Edmund better.
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Author's Note: Everyone wanted to hear about Edmund, and so here he is! Suggestions for who you'd like to see in Chapter 4 are still appreciated!
I know a lot of you probably won't like this chapter… The thing I am most worried about though is that everyone will view this as OOC in Susan and Lucy's parts. However, the reason I didn't hit the backspace button on this right away was because most all sisters fight, especially at the ages that Susan and Lucy are in this chapter.
sighs-hopes-prays Well, tell me what you think.
Also, I can't believe I forgot last chapter I was in such a hurry to get things posted, that I completely forgot!
I would like to thank all the reviewers of both Chapters 1 and 2. If you left a signed review, I should have replied to you… And as for the anonymous reviewers (I was one, for quite a long time, and so I just have to do this): diamond and Samantha: Thanks so much for your reviews! You don't know how much they mean to me!