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bloodybigwardrobe · 2 days

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before, in the shadows of a life that has long ceased to be your own, war was suits and uniforms, severe men and overworked mothers. war was looming large, approaching fast. war was terror lurking in the skies, a constant fear of the open air. war was everywhere; your brother and sister forever slighted by all things turned into luxury inside your home. and sure, you only remember the before once it turns into the after, but war—no matter the where of it all, you remember war.

war: standing tall, standing straight, standing with the weight of worlds borne on youthful shoulders; war: a shadow, a streak of vivid red and vicious gold; war: a man-turned-boy-turned-man.

war: steady arms that cling with welcome desperation, a rallying cry that makes your heart burn bright; war: a stumbling boy bearing skies that turn red before they ever find their blue. war: familiar like no other, from cradle to your shaking adult hands.

before-turned-after, you hear your mother—unsweetened tea, old perfumes, and factory oils scrubbed out with rationed soap—whisper to her friends about war. you sit on wooden steps—not stone, never stone in the after—and dig your nails into your shins. war, forever burning bright, sits at your back with the skies and the sword's edge. you lean to feel the shift in his breath, to remember that with everything lost, war remains.

she let the war in, your mother says in words tinted with war-weak drink. she lets war sleep on the same floor as her children, she confesses, like a wolf amongst sheep. you dig your nails deeper. war, his forehead against your back, sighs.

you know war best, cradle to the here and now. he wipes your tears with too-soft hands until you miss the swords and bows like the air inside your lungs. he brushes your sister's hair, listens to your brother with intent. war holds it together in the cracked marble that you've all become. war, warm and familiar, holds on tight.

when you start to wear your mother's old dresses, outgrowing your own, when you start to paint your lips a new shade of red, war's reflection almost cracks the fragile glass of your composure. he watches, looming, bearing the crimson skies like a gift rather than the curse it grew to be. his eyes—blue still, too blue for england clouds and england air—carry even more, a looking glass for worlds long closed to you and him. the curve of his smile makes you ache for string and wood, makes your fingers crave the weight of pulling it all taut. his shoulders are broad, his hands calloused again.

over your shoulder, your mirror shows a sword stained beyond repair. you ache with the wish for the battlefield. you fear it as you always did, even when you called it home. war, a rag in hand and shoulders straight, hums in tune with the memory of arrows loosened from your gentle hands.

you leave before the blood can reach your polished shoes.

——susan pevensie learns of ares, of atlas, of war on a horse. she weeps for the brother she finds in them.

#sr

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bloodybigwardrobe · 6 days

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something something you're susan pevensie and you've decided that you will live again no matter the fact that you've done this all before. you decide that if you are to be in exile, there can be use and joy in making it work.

you're susan pevensie, and when you look at your siblings you see broken tools shoved into jobs they are not made for. your older brother is nothing more than a sword forcibly blunted, rust-red and sacrificial, a means to an end brought to ruin between gunfire and shrapnel pieces. your younger brother forgets to crave sugar like they want him to, forgets that he cannot speak sense to adults lest he be branded ill-mannered and dangerous. your sister seems like a tear in the landscape, so utterly alien, so unfitting, to the world that birthed her that you can't bear to look at her anymore.

something something your siblings yearn for the forge that broke them beyond repair, and all you can find within them are the ways they were molded to never belong to themselves again, the swords and salvation of a place that shaped them into things never meant for eternal use.

#sr

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bloodybigwardrobe · 9 days

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the how is quiet, a deserted place full of dust and low-burning fires, the cheer of hard-won battle left lingering on the threshold of this ancient place.

in front of a long-cracked stone, caspian falls to his knees before the high king of old. he breathes narnian wine out into the dim light, and stares up into amber-blue eyes that hold every shade of the narnian sky.

freshly calloused hands reach out to hold up his chin, to push back at his hair. the very life of narnia hums where kingly skin meets his, where fingertips brush over bruised jaw and cheek, over cut and bleeding lip. a soft smile with the very world in the corners of a cracking mouth lets the fires around them burn anew.

"you must learn to stand rather than kneel," peter says, amusement a melody that burns caspian's skin. "a king cannot stand on buckling legs at every turn."

"i will learn," caspian whispers, too afraid to break whatever spell has come to rest on them. "i swear."

sword-weary hands tug at his head, then brush down to his shoulders to pull him up. "then you ought to start tonight. the throne does not wait."

peter's voice is gentle, yet feels like teeth atop his ribcage. caspian wishes nothing more than to be pried open by the king-turned-boy and back again. he wants nothing more than for narnia to consume him, heart and all. but he is afraid.

"can't i start with the rising sun?"

peter laughs, turns them ever so slightly, and pushes caspian to sit where the legends saw aslan sacrifice his body to the creeping ice. caspian's body turns tense, awe a potent paralysis, when his tired, wine-drunk eyes watch a myth come true slowly get on his knees before him.

"what are you doing?"

peter's night-and-morning eyes crinkle at their edges. his teeth seem bloodied and sharp. "you must learn to be kneeled to."

caspian wonders if his heart will break through his chest like the fleeing bird it seems to be. "i have been kneeled to my whole youth."

peter shakes his head, reaches out a hand to settle on caspian's shaking knee. "it is not the same."

and caspian knows it can't be, because there is a weight pressing down on his shoulders that he's never felt before. suddenly, it feels as though an enormous beast is bearing down on every inch of him, snapping teeth at his neck and talons digging into his thighs. caspian gasps. in front of him, peter looks on with a smile.

"learn to stand," peter repeats, his voice a blade beneath caspian's chin, "weather the strain." his mouth is stretched wide with teeth that do not belong to the image of a boy, his presence a wall before caspian's trembling body. there is blood where his eyes ought to be. his stare remains unrelenting.

a beast in front, and a beast behind. caspian shakes. "it is too much."

peter laughs, then, still kneeling but looming above like an ancient tree, a cavern stretching far beyond what caspian can see. "stand," he commands again, his voice coming from all around. "stand, caspian, or fall."

there are fangs scraping down caspian's spine, something hard prying its way beneath armour and skin. he takes a breath. something growls.

when he stands, his legs tremble. he doesn't dare to take a step for fear of losing his balance on what suddenly seems like a sword's edge beneath his feet.

but he stands. he doesn't fall.

when peter laughs this time, it is a soft, comforting thing, like the setting sun over the laughing crowds outside. his eyes are once again blue-amber in the firelight, his teeth sharp but human where his lips pull back.

"there you are," he hums, pride and satisfaction louder than the words themselves. caspian laughs full of relief, his eyes wet with unshed tears.

he stands where he was kneeling, and he doesn't fall. he holds out shaking hands and twines them in golden hair. "thank you," he says, even as his shoulders burn under the weight.

peter—the very weave of old narnia, a king of times long past and yet breathing the same air as those that only know him from washed-out carvings and whispered songs—only smiles.

#sr

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bloodybigwardrobe · 18 days

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helen, do you remember still the smoking ruins of troy? do you recognise, in the cavern of your husband's mouth, the hunger that once drove paris to your chambers?

in the middle of the rabble stood athena, eyes of steel and hands of marble. unblemished armour, unmarred peplos, polished speartip, she opened her mouth, all at once the softness of a woman whose skin has not once cracked and the sharpness of an owl's beak.

and screamed.

helen, your daughter is beautiful. cupid has spanned his bow perfectly over the coral of her lips. her hair curls as yours does, and catches within its depths the gleam of the sun. her eyes are large and dark, an echo of the sleep-shrouded silent movie star.

her pupils swallow her iris whole. she does not wobble in her heeled shoes. when she turns, her petticoats fan open, a perfect rustle.

when she laughs, can't you see the many-rowed marks of Aphrodite's teeth buried in the meat of her tongue?

"she's gorgeous", said once a veteran who had bled and died with your husband. "the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. she must fight the boys off with both hands." when he laughs, it is the same cadence as menelaus'.

susan was not yet seventeen, then. helen, doesn't troy still burn?

at night, theseus-melenaus-paris creeps into your bed. soft-voiced and harsh-handed, he rucks up the thin fabric of your skirt. presses his mouth to the curve of your throat, leaving smears of still-warm blood in the dip between your clavicles. helen.

greatest of beauties. most valued of treasures. can you blame him for wanting, just for a spell or a dream, the fairness of your skin draped across his sheets and hanging off his arm?

how could you possibly tell him no?

would not athena, unmarred by the blood and the flesh, look at you as she once did medusa? do you not look down upon the spectacle from the top of your ivory tower? the windows are barred, and there is a latch nailed to the door that you cannot lift.

he does not give you sandals. he does not give you hairpins. come, grind the stone to pigment and dye with it the tips of your breasts and the flush of your cheeks. he likes you that way.

it makes him laugh and his gaze grow heavy. come, now, helen. the boy outside of your window is choking on his blood.

spread your legs.

when susan paints her pouting mouth, and pinches the high points of her cheeks until they flush, dark with blood, do you remember, for a moment, the feeling of a beautiful boy with shining eyes looking upon you as though you might one day be dragged down far enough to touch? the soft words, the whispered promises, and the feather-downed touches; the parties. the dresses.

the invitations.

"susan", you say. "darling." the english weighs heavy on your tongue, as hammered jewelery once did, when you wore your hair open and your voice like a gem in your mouth.

susan squares her jaw. "it's just a party, mum", she says. her eyebrows lie in a perfect curve. her lashes are dark, and her nails are shaped just so. "i simply don't understand why you are still so gloomy. the war is over. cheer up a little!"

"susan", you say.

"mum", she replies, eyes of steel and hands of marble. "let me go."

when she comes home, shoes in one hand, nylons in the other, her neck is bruised and the colour on her lips is smeared. her skirt is creased, and half hidden underneath the clasps of her dress lies a many-rowed mark of teeth. the mascara on her lashes is clumped, and when you turn on the kitchen light, she flinches.

for a moment, the light reflects in her pupils. her mouth sharpens.

she sways.

"mum", she says, voice like cold molasses. "leave it be. i'm tired."

helen, won't you open your mouth? won't you scream?

#hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh #oh man oh fuck oh boy oh wow #just the...........yea. i dont even know its just So Much and Good #susan #helen

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bloodybigwardrobe · 2 months

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peter pevensie take a nap challenge.

#art #peter #ur a teen u gotta nap pete

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bloodybigwardrobe · 2 months

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I just finished going through your whole blog (sorry if I spammed your notifications too hard lol) and I just want to say that I love your writing, it's all so good, and your whole wild Narnia vibe is just impeccable. I saw in your blog description where you say your Pevensies are written as fae beings and I immediately knew that I'd come to the right place lol

don't worry, you being in my notifs absolutely made my whole day every time. i always pulled it up first thing in the morning to scroll through your tags 🥰 thank you so, so much!!! narnia and the pevensies are so dear to me so I always love when others enjoy how I write them 😊

#answering with atlas

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bloodybigwardrobe · 2 months

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THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE (2005) dir. Andrew Adamson

#gifs

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bloodybigwardrobe · 2 months

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jukkapaa

#wider narnian world

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bloodybigwardrobe · 2 months

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being back in their childhood bodies feels like wearing a quickly rotting corpse, lucy thinks not for the first time.

everything feels stiff, their adult death locking every joint with keys forever lost to them. peter's shoulders knock into every doorframe and corner no matter how much he presses his thumbs into the resulting bruises whispering curses. susan's hands violently shake around any object she dares to hold as though all muscles have long atrophied in this grave that calls itself england. for weeks, edmund falls down the stairs each morning, his feet uncoordinated and legs never long enough for the proud strides he tries to take.

lucy can't spin without getting dizzy. her body moves nothing like the years of grace she'd grown into. it tastes like decay, every time she lands on the floor, robbed of a living, worn-in self and caged in something that should have died decades ago; decomposing around their souls as though to mark their loss with the biggest insult this world could give.

she has half a mind to bury her siblings and herself beneath the sprawling green of the professor's lands—so that they might cease to drag their undead feet beneath their mourning minds and perhaps even finally find rest. she's tired of the sleepless nights, truly. tired of seeing edmund writing missives to politicians that would never be read, tired of watching susan bite her lip when yet another cup of tea spills down her dress, tired of watching peter sob over his bruises when he thinks they cannot hear.

lucy is tired of it all. she'd rather be dead, she thinks not once or twice but many times, even as she knows that burying themselves in english soil won't make their long-dead bodies bloom with narnian flowers.

she can hope, anyhow.

#sr

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bloodybigwardrobe · 2 months

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“You cannot live your life to please others. the choice must be yours.” Susan

Uh. So this prompt possessed me a little bit, I sure hope smoking isn't a trigger for you, anon.

____

Sometimes, in the summers, when the air is thick and heavy, dripping with unshed rain and pressing into the hollow of her clavicles, Susan Pevensie stands in her mother's garden, and bathes in the sun. She drapes her blouse, soaked with sweat, and her skirt, soaked with perfume, over the old rocking chair that has long since splintered under the weight of its age, and then:

A breath.

With closed eyes and soft mouth, rouge-dotted and lipstick-smeared, Susan Pevensie tilts her face towards the light. Her brassiere is damp with English rain that won't fall, her petticoats are stiff with English breeze that won't blow and her wrists are strung up by English strings that won't pull.

Blue skies are rare, here. England is grey, and England is cloudy, and England rains and rains and rains until it has made itself sick and its ground unsteady. Some weeks, the clouds hang low for so long that the sun cannot reach what it wishes to nourish. Some weeks, Susan sits by her window, her head pressed against the glass, and watches the clouds drip into fog, the fog drip into the earth, and the earth drown and cry. Until her skin matches the grey of the skies, until her mind drips from her every breath onto the paneled glass, until she can't see through the fog, anymore.

"Su", says her brother, then, his hands on her forehead, his mouth in her hair. "Susie." His hands, shaking and unsteady, are warm and getting warmer with every passed winter. His voice, soft and careful and stripped of teeth, drops steadily deeper. When he turns his head, the beginnings of a stubble scrape against her cheek.

"Light of my life, sun of my skies."

The skies are grey. The grass is grey. The fence is grey. The world is grey.

Peter's eyes are blue. The clouds don't gather around his pupils, and his irises are clear as they've been for days. The English sky has never echoed the yellow freckles.

The Narnian skies were ever centered around the pupil of her sun, in the soft yellow streaks of Peter's eyes.

Susan wets her lips. She doesn't wet her cheeks.

Peter climbs onto the bench. "My sister", he says softly. "Where have you gone?"

Susan buries her face in his chest and leaves behind great streaks of make-up on his bleached dress shirt: a mouth of lipstick, a blur of rouge, a dust of powder. Splotches of mascara, lines of kohl. Marks of eyeshadow.

Peter rubs her back, and Susan doesn't cry.

In the summers, she drinks the sun with greedy mouth and empty stomach and hungry, hungry skin. In the dripping air and the burning grass, Susan Pevensie strips to her undergarments - and breathes.

In, and out.

A breath, and then another.

Beyond her closed eyes, the world drips reds and oranges, and bright, stark yellows. Beyond her hollow mouth, the air coats her windpipe; a slow dripping of heat.

She is alone, here. She drops her ball-jointed limbs and her painted porcelain face, turns her opal glass palms right side up, and breathes.

Until her lungs settle, and the fog has run dry. Until the colours are a bit sharper, a bit brighter. A smear more familiar.

-

The party is slow. Nicotine gathers heavy on the ceiling, and the music is a little too loud to be ambient. The drinks are spiked, the hems are lifted, and Susan is standing by the door, watching her friend lose the last of her lipstick to a stranger's mouth.

The boy is. Well, he's fine. Polite and gentle, soft-spoken. He ducks his head and worries the tips of his fingers and the spread of his lips until they bleed. His hair would curl, if it was long enough, and when she blows smoke in his direction, he coughs.

Smiles.

Susan takes another drag of her cigarette. Flicks the ash to the floor. Smiles.

"You'll have to forgive the cigarette", she says around the smoke seeping from her mouth. "It calms me down."

The boy blinks at her, and wets his bottom lip. It is dark with blood, dotted purple where he has almost broken skin, swollen with the almost-injury. "I can't imagine anyone ever denies you much of anything", he says. "You're too pretty for that."

"Too pretty to be annoyed with?"

He shrugs. His shoulders are slumped forwards, and it makes his suit jacket sit oddly on the rounded curve of his back. "People love pretty things. Better to keep them around."

Her cigarette is stained with her lipstick, and the tips of her fingers drip with it. The smoke in her lungs is warm, and the alcohol in her blood is warmer, still, so Susan tilts her head. "When I was a little girl, my mother bought me a little lace collar. I wore it until it broke, and begged her to fix it when it had long become too threadbare to even be touched."

The boy nods, and takes a breath.

Susan clicks her tongue. "I'd gotten beet juice on it, and it wouldn't come out in the wash. No matter the soap, no matter the scrub. There was a small pink stain near the lapel, and it simply bled in all directions. So my mother soaked it in bleach."

The boy cannot pull his shoulders forwards any further. He cannot bend his back more. He digs his teeth into the purple marks on his lips.

"The bleach dissolved most of it. The lace was too delicate." Susan throws the cigarette stub on the floor and savours the last breath of it, the hot coating of her tongue. "If she hadn't tried to get the stain out, it wouldn't have broken."

The boy's teeth break his skin. The blood pools, dark and shy, around the enamel and into the corners of his mouth. "You couldn't have worn the stained collar", he says, with his soft voice and his soft eyes, his soft, soft hair.

"Why not?"

"Well", says the boy. His shirt is starched and bleached. There is a wrinkle ironed firmly into the placket. He coughs again. "It was already ruined before your mother bleached it. It was stained."

Susan crushes the stub underneath her shoe. The music covers the sound of the grinding and the soft hiss of the dying embers. "It was mine, and I loved it", she says. "Was it my mother's call to make what I could bear?"

The boy shrugs. "It's a lace collar. There are others."

Susan hums. "Perhaps. But I wanted this one." Across the room, someone spills red wine over someone else's lap. Someone else holds their cigarette too close to their lover's sleeve. "You shouldn't live your life to please others. You mind the smoke, and you mind the talking. And yet-"

The boy laughs. The corners of his eyes wrinkle, the apples of his cheeks flush dark, and the blood on his lips spreads slow across his teeth.

"And yet", he says, "here I am."

#EVERYONE REJOICE MORE LARISSA FIC!!!#hgnghgngh eats this eats this eats this #susan #i just think...she <3

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bloodybigwardrobe · 3 months

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first art of 2024 -- a quick lucy pevensie !

#LUCY!! MY LOVE!!#i love this sm #art #lucy

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