What is it that you mean for me to do, Peter, when you jump into your fights like that? Do you honestly expect us to just stand there, to watch while they pummel you with theirs fists and their feet?

Susan hates it.

Our gentle queen can't stand the dull thud of bone meeting bone.

In Narnia, that might have been enough to make you stop.

Here though, you brush her aside, the same way she has started to brush aside the rest of us.

We're loosing our sister. She spends too much time looking for the attention, the beauty, she had at home.

But you're too busy getting your head smashed in to notice.

I don't know what to do with you. If all that you want are bruises, brother mine, you don't have to go looking for strangers' fists.

Lucy would be more than willing to have a go at knocking some sense into you.

Our valiant sister admitted to finding a bruise on your arm, back in the days when you still submitted to her healing touch, and wanting to push on it, hard, until you realized what you were doing to yourself, to all of us.

Even now, after all the times you have spurned her efforts, she still tries to comfort you, to calm you down, to protect you from the questions that linger in my gaze.

You used to be able to read me so well. There wasn't anything that I could hide from those piercing blue eyes of yours.

Now, I'm not sure what you see.

Lu could tell you that I was ill over hols, that I threw up for the last time just this morning. For some reason, things that healed in Narnia aren't quite healed here, and my stomach bothers me whenever I start to fret over you and your insatiable need to be right.

Ironic, isn't it, that the wound that caused you so many nights of worry, the wound that almost killed you, is bothering me again.

Only, this time, you haven't even noticed.

I used to think that you must know. I've seen the way you hold your ribs after a wayward boy gets his fist in too close, trying to dull the ache that came first from the end of a giant's club.

I heard you over hols, fighting for air in the dark watches of the night. I would have gone to you, but I was too busy trying to keep my guts from wrenching their way out of my mouth.

I sent Susan instead, but you just brushed her off like you always do.

How can I not jump in to help you, Pete?

The fights may be stupid, but I can't stand to see them hurt you any more than Susan or Lucy can.

I don't know where you got this idea that you can take on the world on your own. Even when you're being a bloody imbecile, you're still my brother.

We used to need each other.

Back to back and side to side.

Do you remember? You used to be magnificent.