We Seven

A Narnia & Mirror, Mirror Fanfiction

Part 10

Nicholas expected to find Jo angry, arms folded and eyes hard. He'd expected a great deal of supplication must be required in convincing her he would never, ever do anything to hurt her, nonetheless he must plead forgiveness for not seeing what Susan meant to–

But, upon arriving a bit out of breath in the doorway of Lucy's room, it was not a furious, passionate, accusing, wronged and indignant Jo who was waiting there to meet him. The jealous wife he now realised he was very stupid indeed to have anticipated, knowing her better than that, surely, was simply not there.

She was curled in a fetal position atop her bed crying.

Jo faced away from the door, and it was the trembling of her thin, tanned shoulders, the goosepimples that had risen on her bare arms – apparent to his eyes even with the lamp off – which did him in.

"Jo..."

She didn't bat his hand away when it touched her, but she did shrink from it slightly in order to turn over to face him.

Her face was red and tearstained.

Even with her nose dripping and scarlet – he gave her his handkerchief, drawing it from his pocket almost as a reflex – Nicholas couldn't have imagined a comelier figure.

Her dressing-gown was left off, haphazardly draped over a chair whose seat was overcrowded by school satchels, soft toys, halved and damaged sketchbooks – a mixture of her things and Lucy's – and she was wearing an old slip of Helen's in lieu of a nightdress.

There wasn't much to the slip – a filmy and insubstantial thing – and if ever it had had any frills or unnecessary extra fabric, be it for the sake of decoration or modesty, Jo'd long since torn them off because they got in her way while she was trying to sleep. One strap had slipped from her shoulder to her arm, revealing even more of her barely concealed shape, and she was so preoccupied blowing her nose and dabbing hurriedly at her eyes with his handkerchief, she hadn't bothered to pull it back up again.

Nicholas found it difficult not to stare, and while normally his involuntarily gawking as he struggled to keep his concentration would have pleased her to no end, tonight she was so upset about Susan it took Jo several minutes to even notice.

When her – still shaking – hands dropped into her lap, clutching the handkerchief, when her sniffling had lessened, Nicholas managed, in rather a forced, distant voice, "She is confused, I think."

"Confused," snorted Jo, inhaling raspily. "Right." Then, "Sure seemed like she knew exactly what she was doing, though, didn't it?"

Why was it men always gave pretty girls the benefit of the doubt? They could be horrid, and still they got the gentle treatment, as though they were nought but frightened little baby deer – helpless newborn fawns – caught in the path of an oncoming train.

Sulkily, she let herself wonder whether Nicholas would be half so generous if he'd just been kissed by an ugly girl.

Well, to be fair, knowing him, probably.

He was one of the few boys she'd ever known who never acted as if he saw any difference between Susan and half a dozen other girls, as if he somehow never noticed she was exceptionally lovely. His generosity came from the heart, from a brotherly protectiveness.

"Leaving Narnia for the last time was not easy for her," he said next. "I know it wasn't."

"We aren't going back, either!" Jo exclaimed. One of her legs (bare, Nicholas couldn't help noting, nearly straight up to the thigh) dangled off the edge of the bed and she kicked at the mattress with her heel for emphasis. "It hasn't changed who we are."

When he didn't reply, and she took his obvious distraction – he was finding it impossible to keep thinking about Susan while Jo was within arm's reach and wearing hardly anything – for silent disagreement, she said if he'd come in here just to defend her, he might as well leave. "I'm not in the mood."

"I am not here to defend her." If anything, he'd thought he would be defending himself, struggling to explain, but Jo trusted him implicitly and so there was no need for that. He should have known, really. "We will get through this, Jo. Some way."

"Sure. But why are you looking at me like that?"

"Like what?"

She tilted her head. "Come on, Nick, you're blushing."

Easing down beside her on the mattress, he made a clearing, slightly gurgled, noise with his throat and gestured.

Jo followed his gaze and had to bite back a smile – almost a laugh – in spite of herself. "Oh! Right. I forgot I wasn't dressed." She'd been so distraught it was the last thing on her mind. "Sorry."

"Believe me" – he side-eyed her – "I don't mind."

"Yeah, I bet."

He slid her strap back up her arm and onto her shoulder. This was the age she'd been when he married her, in their other life, and the memories were vivid. How could she think he'd ever manage not to stare at her like this? His poor, beautiful young bride. He hated to see her upset.

Hated to see her dark eyes brimmed over with such misery...

Murmuring gentle reassurances in a grammatical nightmare mix-up of the languages he'd learned as a child in Archenland and a bit of the French and Latin he'd learned from school here, he raised a hand to stroke her cheek, to brush away what was left of her tears.

His first kiss landed on her brow; the second, her lips.

Jo loosened his tie and drew his suspenders from his shoulders, letting them dangle freely. Her hands found their way under his untucked shirt, sliding up his back. Their kiss deepened, becoming more insistent.

It was a moment of pure sweetness. She remembered their first proper long kiss in Narnia – right after King Lune left Cair Paravel, when he'd given her his mum's ring and proposed. The last time, perhaps, their relationship was untainted by Susan's feelings – she must have had those feelings for Nicholas all along, of course, but Jo hadn't known, nor even suspected, she did. Things were lighter between them then.

She wouldn't let herself think of Susan again tonight. She was tired of all her time with him being plagued with – and ultimately tainted by – Susan's endless problems. Anyway, Susan clearly didn't care how she felt.

Her thoughts – guided by kisses and caresses – went instead to right after her wedding. Nicholas had actually been shaking when they arrived in his wing of the castle, for all his composure leading her off from the banqueting hall. It had been so good, so relieving, to know he was nervous, too. He'd seemed so sure of himself through everything leading up to that moment between them and Jo'd been growing frightened.

The narrow bed creaked and – as Nicholas pulled away – Jo was dragged, rather unwillingly, back to the present.

"Wait – don't." She kept her eyes closed. "Don't stop."

"We must." His voice cracked. "Someone will see. Somone will discover us like this. They're bound to, you know." That was the trouble with living in a small house with nine people. All the same, he felt the frustration of it, too. "Bother," he breathed.

"Ugh – let them – I don't care," groaned Jo, chest heaving and eyes still clinched shut.

This was true enough: she did not, right then, particularly care if Lucy or Royce happened to walk in on them. Lucy was discreet enough she probably would just swallow a giggle – cover her eyes apologetically with a raised hand – and back out of the room again, never minding it was her own room. She was sweet like that. Royce would be more obnoxious – more teasing – but Jo could always hurl a pillow at him and bark, "Get out!" This wasn't his room anymore, after all.

Wrapping her arms around her husband's neck, she drew him to her again. "C'mon, it'll be fine – just a few more minutes."

Everything standing between them in this world – all of those annoying social conventions which prevented them from being as they'd been in Narnia – could surely spare them a few minutes.

Susan's mood, previously soaring, was plummeting like a stone dropped from a great height.

First, Nicholas had been sulky with her for kissing him. He'd said nothing at all to her as they came into the house, before racing off somewhere and leaving her to face her parents alone.

Mum was piqued because she was home a little later than they'd agreed upon. She'd tried appealing to her father, attempting to coax him into reminding Mum it was all right she was late; it wasn't as if she were alone. They'd said she could go if Nicholas took her, hadn't they? So what was the issue, really? She couldn't be expected to control the traffic in London, much less to magically drop home out of the clear night sky at exactly the promised hour. It was only a quarter of an hour's difference! Why must her mother be so unreasonable?

But Mr. Pevensie had taken out his favourite silver lighter and lit up a cigarette, heedless of his recent promise to smoke less often inside the house; then he'd picked up a newspaper and told Susan to listen to her mother.

"I suppose I ought to be more like Jo!" Tossing her purse aside with a leathery thunk, Susan threw up her hands. "She never goes out at all, and you both think she's perfect."

Helen folded her arms across her chest. "This is not about Jo, Susan. This is about–" Her eyes narrowed, noticing her daughter rolling hers. "Right, that does it – go to your room. Your father and I are both very tired from waiting up, and you're clearly in no fit state to speak to us with respect, so we'll talk about this more in the morning. I hope by then you'll have a better attitude. Go."

"With pleasure!" Susan retrieved her purse huffily, preparing to stomp into the hallway.

"Lord, I'm so fed up with this childishness." Hands over her face, Helen – unknowingly saying the worst possible thing – sighed, "Why can you not be a big girl?"

Susan gritted her teeth. She was bloody trying to be exactly that! Everyone in this blooming house would insist on infantilising her! Everyone from Nicholas to her parents. Everyone except maybe Edmund and the twins, who were practically babies themselves.

Her intention was to go straight to her room and slam the door, but then she thought she'd give Nicholas a piece of her mind first. Mum wouldn't have scolded her so harshly about coming in late if he'd stayed by her side; she was sure of it.

It had been rotten of him – after being the perfect gentleman all night, like a dream – to abandon her for no better reason than a harmless kiss.

She heard laughter coming from the boys' room, and therein she found Royce and Lucy and Edmund taking turns having a chess tournament on the floor while Peter – in his bunk in his sock feet – studied and occasionally dropped pencil shavings on their heads.

It was a cosy scene, one – in a better mood – Susan might have wanted to join in on, despite everything. But she was on a mission, and there was no Nicholas anywhere in sight.

"Well! Don't all of you look merry in here! But where's Nicholas?"

Peter propped himself up on his elbow and looked down at her. "I thought he was with you."

"I see; never mind, then."

She turned round and started for Lucy's room. She hadn't any notion why on earth he'd be in there, but she'd couldn't think where else. The house was not large. Perhaps he'd gone to retrieve something of Royce's, something Jo had forgotten when she moved in there.

She did dimly recall his eyes being fixed on Lucy's window when they were outside, but she told herself there was no connection.

Nudging the door open, in the low lamplight spilling in from the hall behind her, she could make out the shape of someone on Jo's bed. She almost took it for Jo – already asleep like their mother's perfect golden child – except it seemed somehow too tall for her.

It was about the right size to be Nicholas, but why would he be in Jo's bed?

Why was it so dark? She felt her way to the lamp between the two beds and turned it on.

Two figures were revealed, then. Jo and Nicholas. She'd only seen him in the dark because he was on top of Jo. His suspenders were pulled down and he had his tie off and shirt collar open. When they broke apart, she could see Jo wasn't wearing anything besides a slip. Short of threats to snap every drawing pencil she owned in two, you couldn't get her sister to put on a slip to achieve the right silhouette with her clothes, but that was – for some inexplicable reason – all she was wearing now!

Nicholas hastily climbed off her and was straightening his clothes. Jo just looked annoyed at being interrupted.

"Nicholas, for pity's sake!" Susan was aghast. "What did you think you were doing? She's only seventeen!" Well, he'd told her he didn't think seventeen was young, hadn't he? Outside, before she'd kissed him. "I..." Her voice trembled, then steadied. "I will thank you to leave this room immediately."

Jo was furious when Nicholas listened to her and shuffled out. "Nick! Nicholas, wait!" She tried calling after him, jumping off the bed and taking a few steps across the carpet, but he seemed not to hear, his footsteps retreating down the hallway. She whirled on Susan. "What the hell's the matter with you?"

"Jo!" cried Susan. "He was–" She couldn't even bring herself to say it. "You're practically naked."

"What's the big deal? We were only kissing." Realisation dawned in Jo's face as she watched Susan's change colour. "Wait... Hold up. You're not... You're not mad at me? Oh... Nah. No way. No bloody way. You don't get to be upset here."

"And why would that be?"

"Because you don't get to kiss him outside our house after some pathetic party – which was insanely creepy, by the way – and then charge in and give me a hard time, when we were just–"

"You did that" – Susan gestured at the bed, as if it retained an image of what she'd seen them doing – "because you saw me kiss him tonight? I don't understand – were you jealous or something?"

"Jealous?" rasped Jo. "Of you and Nick? Su, there's nothing to be jealous of. He loves me, not you. He's never wanted you. What about this are you not getting?"

Her brow sank. "He's told you he loves you?"

"Obviously. Only about a hundred, thousand times."

Susan faltered, rather pathetically, "He's been escorting me to all those parties... I thought he–"

"Don't be so stupid! D'you really think he'd care if you made it on time to a bunch of lame tea parties if you weren't my sister?" This was not entirely fair – he did care for Susan on her own merits, albeit almost as a replacement for the sister he lost whom she slightly resembled, and Jo knew it perfectly well. But the hurt from earlier was making her spiteful. "He did all that for me. Then you had to go and make it weird."

Susan's blue eyes darkened a shade. Jo was being downright nasty. So far as she was concerned, she herself was the innocent in this mess. She had gone to a party with a handsome boy they'd known for years, given him a single harmless kiss to say thank you, then walked in on him – within the same hour – in bed with her scantily-clad sister. Jo could say all she liked they were just kissing, though it had certainly looked like more, but that hardly made it appropriate behaviour.

For Jo to then rail at her so cruelly! As if she were the wrongdoer in all this!

"You're acting like you own him," though Susan couldn't think who'd want him, after his shocking behaviour tonight, a side of him she'd never seen nor imagined before. "But I'm the one who's creepy? Perhaps you're the one who needs to take a longer look in the mirror, Jo."

"It's not about owning anybody," Jo snarled. "It's about respect."

"What on earth are you on about?"

"He's my husband, for Aslan's sake!" Had Susan even once in all this time she'd been shamelessly flirting with him deigned to remember he was married? She'd had her chance! Jo would have given him up the moment she realised Susan loved him, too, but she'd prevented her. It was too late now. They belonged to each other, and Jo didn't plan on letting anything – especially not her sister's delusions of fairy-tale romance – come between them. "We slept in the same bed for twelve years! Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

Jo couldn't have known it, but the look on Susan's face the next moment was very like to how Lucy had seen it in a magic book during her last trip to Narnia. Unlike Jo, Lucy was not immune to wanting to be as beautiful as Susan – she was pretty herself, but in the opposite way, golden instead of raven dark, and she had not gotten the ego boast of having a prince look past Susan and go straight for her instead. So, Lucy had been tempted to use a spell which would make her the most beautiful mortal in the world; had she said the spell, she would have been more lovely even than Queen Swan-white whose veil Jo'd lost somewhere crossing the Atlantic.

The spellbook which so tempted her was lavishly illustrated and it'd showed Susan's reaction to the beautiful Lucy – she'd looked plainer and nastier.

Her expression now, if only for the length of a passing flash (lightning could have struck the street outside and been over and done with before her face was ordinary again), was rather like that. It was made less beautiful simply because it was so unpleasant, so jealous.

When it passed, she took on – in its place – a look not unlike Helen's when she was feeling pert or had just had enough nonsense for one day. Then – with a snappish flick of her black hair over her left shoulder – she said, "Marriage in a pretend game we played as children doesn't count, Jo."

The slap Susan had given her in America hurt less. Jo actually reeled back and blinked, as if dazed.

Susan couldn't really believe what she'd just said.

She couldn't.

Could she?

Jo thought later she might have run to the shelf and brought down the chessman, forced Susan to look at it. You brought this back from Narnia yourself!

She might have put her engagement ring under her sister's nose and demanded she explain where that came from. It wasn't a piece of costume jewellery two children would play 'wedding' with.

But her chest was tightening and her ears thrummed with rushing blood. She felt winded and weak. Love and fury and pity all swirled inside her stomach, leaving it aching so bad she wanted to clutch it and return to bed with a hot water-bottle.

Her voice was faint. When she finally got it out, all she managed to say was, "Alright, Su – if that's what you want to think."

"Oh... Oh, lord. Has he been telling you you're actually his wife all this time?" Susan's face softened. Had Nicholas been taking advantage of her? Had he fooled all of them? "For real? Ever since we were all at the professor's together?"

"Stop staring at me like that!" Jo barked, her voice growing stronger and downright savage. "I'm not the one who's crazy."

"You must know I've got to tell Mum," Susan said, before she remembered they weren't on the best terms.

"Tell her – I don't care." Jo reached for her dressing-gown on the chair, knocking several objects nosily off the seat, and threw it on, tying it round her middle. "I don't care about anything that's to do with you." And she elbowed past Susan and made her way into the hall.

Susan followed after her. "Where are you going?"

"To sit in any room you're not gonna be in!"

True to her word, she squeezed herself into the bunk under Peter's in the boys' room and turned her back to the doorway, where Susan waited at the threshold, still hissing her name.

"That's my bed!" protested Royce, looking up from the chess game. "Jo, why're you always taking my bed?" When he glanced back at the board again, he swore Edmund had swapped the position of his castle. Edmund insisted he hadn't.

Lucy – though not usually prone to hysterics – was soon crying loudly over something that was not helped in the least when her brothers got into a scuffle because of their quarrel over the board and so nearly rolled over her like they were playing bowls on the lawn.

Susan raised her voice, trying to get Jo to come back to her, but she was drowned out by the younger ones fighting and Peter then breaking it up and attempting to console Lucy, who was evidently not in the mood to be consoled.

Giving up in a huff, Susan went to the kitchen, where she found Nicholas sitting at the table.

"You!" she said.

"Susan?" It was wrong that she should be here. "Why aren't you making it up with Jo?" He'd only left them alone so they could talk – he'd thought they would sort themselves out, otherwise he wouldn't have left the room, despite Susan's ordering him to.

It seemed something had gone awry.

Instead of explaining why she wasn't with Jo, she launched into a hissed (she was trying to keep her voice low enough not to be overheard in the drawing room by her parents – Helen had gone to bed, but Mr. Pevensie was still awake, smoking and reading his paper) tirade about how – if all this while he had been using her sister's evident break with reality to his own advantage – it must be stopped this very night.

"Besides," she sniffed. "Even if you were married – properly, for real – you don't have the means of supporting her."

"Yes, I understand," said Nicholas, rising and pushing back his chair. "Thank you. I know what I must do."

"Where are you...?"

"To seek employment." He was already pulling his suit jacket back on. This looked rather comical, as his feet were – just then – sporting her father's felt slippers, the garish ones with the dark red tartan pattern. "You've made it quite clear I cannot support your sister as an honest man if I haven't got a job."

"Don't be ridiculous, Nick! What employment are you going to find in the middle of the night? Wearing house slippers?" Had everyone in this household gone absolutely mad overnight?

He shrugged one shoulder. "That, I shall discover presently."

The next – and for several hours, last – thing Susan heard to do with him, was her father's aggressive throat-clearing (always his go-to in the face of familial anarchy) when – stopping by the drawing room on his way out – Nicholas took his newspaper.

Mr. Pevensie's indignant head, accompanied by a wafting scent of cheap tobacco, popped into the kitchen as Susan brought a hand to her aching brow.

"I don't know what's got into that young man – he's only left this house again, against my express wishes, and, what's more, he's pilfered my paper!"