PETER / petervel·:
where must you go , peter pevensie ? wherever he goes ; as far as you can follow . peter is no stranger to responsibility , to the art of setting his jaw into stone like cool water o’er molten metal & carrying on even ‘neath the glorious weight of duty in the crown you bear ; all the same , ocean eyes glance at the stone archway ‘neath which the great lion disappeared , and the high king dares to ask why . [ what haven’t you given already ? when will it be enough ? ]
❛ you’ll see lucy , ❜ peter murmurs , thumb tracing silent lines into the swell of caspian’s cheek as if he believes he can leave a mark that will linger long after these men & their myths have crumbled to naught but dust and bone , something to remind the other that their fateful dance ‘cross the upper skies was more than mere waking dream , ❛ and edmund . ❜
[ even this , you know , is a lie ; even this , you know , is a platitude twisted into tight braids that you wind ‘round his neck as if it is jewellery and not a length of rope . you can only hope that when he finally opens his eyes and finds the weapons sewn to the edges of your words , he will realise that the noose is strangling the both of you . perhaps both the just and the valiant will see him , you think . perhaps they will visit his bones next century . ]
❛ but su and i are done here . we’re going home . ❜ home . [ the word is a lie , if you’ve ever told one . ] he cannot bring himself to think about what this will do to them ; what it will do to susan , her tether to their past , to the three of them , already so tenuous in its fraying edges . instead , peter’s attention strays to what he cannot avoid [ to what you still hope to end gently ; another morning farewell kiss ‘pon somnolent lips , ] : tender fingers fall away from caspian’s face but make no movement to pry themselves away from the stubborn grip at his wrist , neither pulling nor pushing in their quiet endurance . i would stay if i could , my love . i would walk the path you will pave for your people , to the ends of the earth ⸺ but this is the last of all i can give .
❛ narnia doesn’t need me , ❜ comes the platitude , soft & sincere , ❛ you don’t need me , caspian . you have your victory ⸺ now i’m asking you to put this place right . ❜ give them what you gave me : respite beneath the shade , a moment of silence below the stars . give yourself over to narnia , and she will grant you all that you need in return . ❛ fight one last battle . give them peace . will you do that ? for me ? ❜ tell me that i needn’t worry ; that you will be alright . [ anything , you think , to nurse your bleeding heart . ]
it's hard to feel triumphant , he finds , when loss is a long shadow stretching miles and miles behind him ⸻ if time was a beast , it would have been well - fed from the scraps of hope that decompose at his sorry feet in a cycle as inescapable as the four seasons : his destiny has long been sown like seeds in narnia's trusting soil , and perhaps the time has come to reap it . [ stubbornly , you vow to keep yourself grounded past the harvest ⸻ your roots tangled up in his . to be forced apart is to painstakingly tear yourself off of him , hair by woeful hair . ]
since the beginning , it had been peter who held all the answers ⸻ yet today brings back an unruly inversion feeling more like a knife turned inwards than anything else . will you do that ? the high king pleads , as if they had been the one to sound the ivory horn that one fateful night , for me ? caspian , however , hears an echo of a question from several drowning suns ago ⸻ he remembers it by the challenger pinned 'neath his thighs , an unyielding gaze searing into his honey-brown eyes as if peter had been waiting to burn away the awning that had traitorously obscured his breadth of view . it burns him , still ; it peels his skin .
the answer , as it hangs off the tip of his tongue , has never truly changed . for you ? yes , anything for you . ❛ i will take care of your family . i will do everything you ask of me ⸻ that narnia asks of me . whatever it takes . i just ... ❜ it's at this point , caspian realizes belatedly , that hope is a rivulet cascading down his cheek where a tear ought to be ⸻ he is racing against time to seize it . [ perhaps he is your shallow grave , for there won't be any contest . this time , for the final time , peter yields and lays down their arms . this is victory , king caspian the tenth , and there is your casualty . ]
seeking the last dregs of his pickings tucked into the corner of peter's mouth , caspian cannot help his minute indulgence ⸻ he plants a kiss in their conjunction , a whisper ghosting their lips . ❛ i just wish we had more time , ❜ comes his shameful secret , allowing himself one gentle protest before inching away .
try as he might to keep them bound together by the inextricable tethers of their twin scars ⸻ in the end , he knows that no good can come out of questioning narnia’s will . [ for the freedom that you had fought so valiantly to win ⸻ nothing , still , can free you from the agony of parting . ] i do need you . i will always need you . that is not weakness , that is love . and yet , his battered heart folds . ❛ at least let me thank you . for the person you have molded me into . ❜ may it take your shape , wise ruler of narnia . [ you’ll take anything . any part of him that can stay behind with you . ]
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𝐁𝐑𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐃 𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒 𝐁𝐘 𝐀𝐃𝐀 𝐋𝐈𝐌Ó𝐍 / feel free to change pronouns as you see fit !
❛ i want to try and be terrific. even for an hour. ❜
❛ people have done this before, but not us. ❜
❛ we point at it; poke at it like a wound— ❜
❛ i don’t want to be only the landscape. ❜
❛ i want to give you something, or i want to take something from you. but i want to feel the exchange. ❜
❛ maybe we could meet at that table under the tree. ❜
❛ why must we practice this surrender? ❜
❛ i haven’t given up on trying to live a good life. ❜
❛ i wanted to tell you straight away so we could grieve together. ❜
❛ what is it they say, heartsick or downhearted? ❜
❛ i liked so much to talk to someone in the dark. ❜
❛ but i swear i will play on this blessed earth until i die. ❜
❛ tell them you didn’t come to disturb the night air and throw a fit, then get down in the dark and do it. ❜
❛ i’m afraid that I won’t do the right thing in the face of disaster. ❜
❛ i was suddenly some safer form of fire. ❜
❛ i thought everything was behind me: death, and dying, and sickness. ❜
❛ i didn’t know I was changing my life— that i would have done anything that what was left of me would become so ruthless to survive. ❜
❛ you’re the muscle i cut from the bone and still the bone remembers, still it wants. ❜
❛ but love is impossible and it goes on despite the impossible. ❜
❛ i’m cold in my heart. ❜
❛ i tell you i will love someone that you will never meet. ❜
❛ i think, how scared i would be if i were death. ❜
❛ is it weird to say that i could hear you dying like that? ❜
❛ after it was done, i couldn’t go back to my life. ❜
❛ it wasn’t the same. i couldn’t tell if i loved myself more or less. ❜
❛ i am beautiful. i am full of love. i am dying. ❜
❛ let me slip into a life less messy. ❜
❛ we’ll live forever. every moon will be a moon of surrender. ❜
❛ i want to be the rough clothes you can’t sleep in. ❜
❛ how good it is to love live things, even when what they’ve done
is terrible. ❜
❛ i never knew survival was like that. ❜
❛ the tempting, the taking, the apple, the fall, every one of us guilty, the story of us all. ❜
❛ i lowered my head until the thud was done. you killed it quiet. ❜
❛ i’ve always been a jealous girl. ❜
❛ before now, i don’t know if i have ever loved anyone. ❜
❛ oh my new obsession, his hands! i thought i could die. ❜
❛ all night i thought i’d die when the moon came in. ❜
❛ i used to pretend a lot. i’m very good at it. ❜
❛ i imagine the insides of myself sometimes—part female, part male, part terrible dragon. ❜
❛ no one’s going to tell me when to bow down, when not to bite. ❜
❛ what’s the real story? i had to hurt someone. ❜
❛ i had to hurt someone who had loved him. ❜
❛ i’m not afraid of hate anymore. ❜
❛ what do we do with grief? lug it; lug it. ❜
❛ i couldn’t cut it out of me. ❜
❛ see? the knife i carry? it cuts my smile even wider. ❜
❛ i will shush and remain the quiet flyer, the one warm beast still coming to you in the dark despite all those old, cold, claustrophobic stars. ❜
❛ this night might leave us hungry and reeling. ❜
❛ we were simply going forward, riotous and windswept. ❜
❛ what I mean is: none of this is chaos. ❜
❛ how masterful and mad is hope. ❜
❛ you wake up some days full of crow and shine. ❜
❛ sometimes, you just want something so hard you have to lie about it,
so you can hold it in your mouth for a minute. ❜
❛ real hunger has a real taste. ❜
❛ let me start here: i am as cold as i have ever been. ❜
❛ such was the wreck of the two of us. ❜
❛ isn’t it funny? how the cold numbs everything but grief. ❜
❛ if we could light up the room with pain, we’d be such a glorious fire. ❜
❛ i am gleaming. promise you’ll see me gleam. ❜
❛ wickedness has leaked into the home i made, and i want to burn it down. ❜
❛ i crave demolishing, to eat explosives. ❜
❛ mortal me, brutal disaster born out of so much greed. ❜
❛ the largeness in me, the hot gore of my want and want, wants to disarm
the fixedness of this. ❜
❛ i’ll be the strike anywhere, the reckless match you can count on to claim a life, or to save one. ❜
❛ i’d choose the moon, always the sister moon.❜
❛ how hard can you glow? what radiant part of you wishes to dynamite? ❜
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PETER / petervel·:
they’re safe . peter tucks this knowledge away like an old photograph into the empty frame of a golden locket & cradles it flush against his beating heart as he allows caspian to pull him back to his feet ; two spectres reaching ‘cross space & time to paint a hollow recreation of the last , dusty sunset they’d watched ‘neath the cover of caspian’s beat - up corolla like voyeurs in front of a silver screen as their world had caved in . [ but you are out of colours : you will dabble your fingertips ‘cross the trail of carnage scattered behind you like breadcrumbs & paint the sky red instead . in the end , all of this love amounted to putting down the brush for the last time . ]
if he were anyone else , peter would reject caspian’s assurances as platitudes & follow after his siblings all the same ⸺ but as blue eyes enfold themselves within the soft clutches of brown , peter realises that he wouldn’t lie . not about this .
they exit the ballroom without another word between them , and as peter watches the back of caspian’s head from where he paces two footfalls behind , he decides that if the stubborn grasp ‘round his wrist makes the very air of his home the palace feel like poison all over again , he will pretend not to notice . [ let it be carbon monoxide , you think ; let it send you to sleep in his arms & go gently into the night . you can’t face him again . let it be quick ; let it be peaceful . ]
they’re nearing his room ⸺ vaguely , he wonders if caspian knows exactly where he rests his head each night , waiting to be awoken from his hundred - year slumber by the sweet kiss of his beloved ; wonders how many times caspian has traced out a path into the carpet that caresses the edge of peter’s doorway , leaving a single set of footprints where it had once only been natural to find two ⸺ when caspian reaches for him again , the nearby cacophony of voices melting away into the distance as peter is directed into a supply closet . [ four years ago , you would have asked him if he was so eager to get you alone . four years ago , you would never have thought to call this a cage . you are relieved , then , when you are not the first to speak . ]
i will get you to your family soon , assures the guard , and half a dozen heartbeats pound in peter’s ears before he wrenches his wretched lips apart in the dark . ❛ your highness , ❜ he repeats quietly , chest tightening painfully . you know this isn’t fair , caspian maravilla . ❛ is that all ? what are you doing here , caspian ? ❜
i don’t know , caspian almost rattles out his first fatal response , even when numerous reasons have outlined themselves in narrow trenches ‘cross the sand blanketing their small deserted island ; long canyons from beach to shore tally the split second where everything goes wrong for a bird’s prey had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time . he realizes that , now : the oath he’d sworn will soon shatter ‘neath the weight of his childishness , his unending piety for what had & could have been , much swifter than a peregrine can kill . [ still , your fist curls ‘round the notion . neither is it something you’re quite ready to let go of , it seems . how much bloodshed will it take to loosen this vice - like grip ? ]
will he ever be ready to answer that question ? he is no guardian angel .
perhaps a part of him has disappeared in the ferry on the way here , vanished from dust - coated windows where certain initials are writ atop a cacophony of unflattering words ⸻ he feels like nothing more than a pile of ash at the behest of whatever wind shall take him . [ and this , this is why you try your best to defy destiny . you can’t stand the thought of forgetting what it’s like to hold onto something still breathing . have the sparks been flying since then ? or have you risen up from the ashes to beat a decaying horse ? ]
i was drowning , is what he failed to say in return . i was drowning before i met you . i was drowning until you . caspian takes another shaky breath , as shallow as the sand furrows ⸻ greedily inhaling the sight of them like it wouldn’t take long at all until he dives back down . ❛ your security detail was afflicted during what seems to be an attack . i am doing what i can to keep you safe . ❜
because an unarmored room with barely anything on his person but a handgun is the absolute model of safety for the prince of this nation ⸻ fuck , we really must get out of here .
❛ i ⸻ i had one job . it was just ... ❜ how does one explain a failed lesson in abstinence ? ❛ a lot has happened in the past years . i truly am sorry , i didn’t intend for this to happen the way it did . ❜ there is an ache in his chest right where three quaint names wrap around his ribcage , its corners like talons digging into a barely - healed wound as if it were fresh again . that’s when he knows that this longing will survive his body , stained with a countryside citrus smell that no one will ever be able to wash away . ❛ ... are you okay ? ❜ because i never will be . not when people will find out eventually ; not when they will be forced to part ways again , two old dancers ‘neath a falling curtain .
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caspian has always harbored a paralyzing fear of heights , and a thrilling late afternoon activity has failed to exempt him from this inconvenient evolutionary trait : where he sits now , his fluttering ribcage provides a safe haven for the panicked feeling squeezing his breath into uneven stammers as a fish - eyed gaze rolls o’er skyscraper stalagmites in his bird’s eye view of the city . still so much to see , he senses the last line of his biography . [ though in your heart you know that this is a book half - written : can he not show you everything , from the world at your fingertips to the sky at your heel ? ] by god , he already has .
further from a turtle dove than he is from a helpless fish out of water , caspian hushes the chaotic symphony in his mind for a blissful moment by imagining himself dangling above a shoreline , the cityscape before him turning into the deep blue sea ready to break his fall ⸻ it isn’t so hard to pretend when peter , his superhero , his ocean - eyed wonder , thoughtlessly sails through the air as if it were water . if this mindful exercise is what helps his heartbeat calm into a gentle thrum can be left up to debate : the truth is that he never finds atlantis in new york city ; he instead discovers the underwater metropolis hiding behind the misty shadows of a hasty kiss , diving ‘tween rapid currents as if they were in a hurry to run out of oxygen .
@petervel : [ 11 . a kiss on a rooftop . ]
❛ i’ve got so much adrenaline in me right now , ❜ he distractedly explains against pillowy lips when latex - clad arm braces ‘round his own before a palm presses against his pounding heart , all but pulling him from the sharp edge of a dusty rooftop . this is where caspian first sprouts his wings , wondering when he will be brave enough to dive into the glittering basin stretching miles and miles towards the horizon . [ something about him in your arms tells you that you’ve always been brave , all it had taken was a little shove to coax you along . ] ❛ i didn’t even realize we were already up here . you make a fine distraction . ❜
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