wandbreaker | Action post;

He finds his brother sorting through a room one level below ground floor. It is one of the few remaining rooms left unsorted, or it was until now. What Edmund looks for, Peter doesn't know, but he hovers like someone who is there in full form instead of someone invisible and breathless. Peter has found the Just before, but never with an opportunity to speak such as the one that the younger Pevensie uncovers now. Not a record player, but the device is familiar, and as all of Peter's efforts toward communication through the device have gone absolutely nowhere, he has for some time now surmised that he has to understand the mechanics of the thing he speaks through, at least loosely. Before this he never thought he would have reason to need to further understand the workings of the network speakers, but then, he didn't think he would need to know how to move air without being there to move, or to say something to anyone long after death itself.

Why this place holds him in this stagnating unknown is beyond him, but the pressure seems to build by the day. Peter is tired of reaching for the people he loves and not being able to do more than that. He is tired of being a nothingness whose own existence is contradictory, a non-living paradox that only serves to frustrate him more as time goes on, seemingly with and without him all at once. Hardly forgotten, but that too bothers him. If he had been let go, he could at least be with them, albeit with the fearful difference of summer warmth and winter's cold, but a presence is a presence. Even if he had been taken from this place, there would be some closure for them.

As it is, there is neither the first nor the second and he doesn't know what to think anymore, directing all of his attentions into the gramophone, eliciting at first only a crackle of air, but it's clear that Edmund hasn't caused it himself and he knows that his brother has worked on even less indication than that and come to accurate conclusions before. He'll understand.

The crackling break in the silence would only mean one thing, after all.

Pay attention.

He seems to be asking people that a lot lately, but it simplifies things when he's certain they are attentive and not in a state when they think they might have imagined it or dreamed it. For Peter is not an imagined being, not a dream, not a dream of a dream; he's real, for all that life has left him, and the divide between here and not here is as wide as ever.

Maybe more so now.

The Just is going through this room precisely because it was unsorted: it holds the kind of things that Edmund imagines an old house should, things that he would expect to find in a house belonging to their grandmother. Old appliances, pieces of furniture lying about waiting to be reclaimed, trinkets and baubles, moldering lace. Nothing that Edmund would want to keep, except maybe a lamp that's relatively handsome and looks like with some tinkering might look nice on his bedstand, which he is holding now and examining closely.

The question of why the second youngest ruler of Narnia (in a way, at least) is going through an old room of junk instead of being above and looking for Peter is a far less simple question to answer. The truth, he supposes, is that he's tired. He's tired of looking and finding nothing, of questioning people and discovering nothing, of examining places and finding nothing. He doesn't want to imagine that his older brother is dead - once, maybe, but he was younger and far more stupid back then - but now he's trying to avoid coming face to face with that possibility.

So this is his distraction.

Sadly the lamp does not survive the drop when the crackling interrupts Edmund's look. He swears mildly and looks around, quickly saying, "Who's there? Shadow?" It might be the cat, the cat follows Edmund around everywhere, probably conscious of the fact that Edmund doesn't like too many cats...of the non-leonine variety, anyway. His eyes peer out into the dimness.

There is the memory of a wince as the lamp shatters, but it is short, an impulse thought of a reaction, taking second seat with all immediacy to what he came here to do. The first word that leaves him is a word he has probably uttered more of late than he has in his entire life...or had, which would be funny he supposes, under different circumstances, but given different circumstances, he knows even more likely it would be a moot point.

"Sorry," his voice sounds like an old recording, threaded with the popping noise of waves that crackle against consonants that require the listener to really attend in order to discern. "Ed, it's me."

There is no subtlety here save for the automatic, that being his lack of a form, but that is in its own way all the more startling, abrupt and unkind but Edmund for all that he is younger is also a King of Old, is Peter's second and not just for duels or kingship (once, once) but in everything. This, it will never change. For that, he both entrusts and requires a certain strength from him even as he wishes to be a bit kinder and finds it--as often it can be--a little less obvious in handling as opposed to how he spoke to Susan. Susan and he share a different connection, that of the eldest, that of those never going home.

Well, not to one home, at least.

Sadness is a thin foundation, and there is something stronger before it, under it, but it was easier to slip into the role of someone who comforted rather than what he tries to sort out now; how to transfer into the set of someone ready to instruct. It isn't that he has never given orders before, obviously, but this isn't an order. It's a lot more than that and Peter's beginning to think there isn't a word to do it justice, so he forgoes trying to think of it any further.

"Ed?"

Listen. I'm not good at this. There's something that keeps me leaving.

I'm sorry.

Edmund is not superstitious - something about meeting actual witches and minotaurs sort of makes one abandon superstition - but the first thought that comes to mind is ghost. He doesn't know why, and he pushes the thought away, his eyes quickly narrowing in on the gramophone. He's pretty sure that his mother still has one in their home in London.

"Peter, where are you?" the Just isn't going to waste time ascertaining that it is in fact the High King. There's no one else, and Edmund is too logical to let the shock make him ask stupid questions or scold. Whatever is going on might be temporary.

There is a great deal that the Just hears in his brother's voice, but he's not going to waste time asking questions about that right now, even though he's angry and wants to punch his older brother in the face for making Lucy cry and Susan worry and Caspian have his mysterious emotional reaction.

"I'm here," he knows how thin that sounds, weak, and he hurries so quickly to follow it that there is only, briefly, a series of crackles, like the air popping and the gramophone itself threatening to stop working. He closes the sound, tries to cut off what he was initially trying to feed into it, and when there is only the almost listless, background snap of the machine, he tries again, his voice soft in a way it would have been during a duel's respite if he hadn't been approaching desperate. He had been though, and that's more water under the bridge even if he tries to ignore its origins. Fear is not a look or feeling Peter will ever be comfortable with or allow himself to be resigned to, but he feels it sharply now, more, heavier even though there is nothing left of him for anything to weigh upon.

"I haven't a lot of time," he warns, his voice much stronger now, stronger than the gramophone can take credit for. This, this is all Peter, all the brother who finds himself both relieved and appreciative that Edmund believes it is him from the start, that he doesn't waste time, that in a sense, he just knows. For a moment, his brother looks his true age too, and Peter wonders if it's only death that lets him see flashes of years they haven't had reason to think of in ages--metaphorical for them, and devastatingly literal for others they never meant to leave behind.

Here. Edmund doesn't swear, even though he wants to. That means that Peter is incorporeal (Edmund hesitates to use the word dead) and Edmund doesn't know how to fix that, if there's even a way to fix it. "What do you need me to do?" Edmund is nothing if not a competent lieutenant, even if he judges for himself the validity of any order given him. "Do you expect me to tell Lucy?"

Despite the fact that the youngest Pevensie is more equipped to deal with this than any of the other siblings, Edmund thinks, just after the fact. But he knows Peter will try and protect the Valiant over anything else he does.

He vows, in his own way, to kick Peter hard in the head for all of this, when he gets back, because even if Edmund has to go to the deities to get him back, he will.

There is no point in explaining how he didn't mean to die but did mean very much to save Rosella, so he doesn't, but maybe Edmund feels the room suddenly threaded with a breeze that by all rights cannot be there at all. They are below ground level and there are no windows.

"No," he leaves it at that as far as Lucy is concerned. He has not been able to come up with a single way to approach the Valiant, or to have someone else do it, and he's near to concluding that there is no way to do so, but it leaves him hollow, a bone bare idea of how to right a wrong and the failure at the end of the line. "...just, stop looking, don't spend more time on," me, "this." He pauses, but there is no breath here, not even through the grain of the machine's hum and echo. "...if there's a way to fix this, I will. Until then you're none of you to do anything for the situation...no deals." He flat out says it because he knows Edmund, knows the practicality of the Just and the unconquerable fight in him to make things as he believes--as he knows--they should be. His title is there for a reason, but it's more about the heart under the crown than the crown alone.

"...understand?" It's not that he thinks Edmund doesn't, but he has to make it entirely clear, has to be a little harder with him, not because the Just wouldn't get his meaning otherwise, but because the truth isn't soft. It's sharp. Sometimes it leaves marks. They all know this.

Don't make me turn it into an order.

Not like this.

Edmund scowls, now: he doesn't like the sound of any of this. He doesn't like the sound of this becoming a fight, because he knows that's exactly what it will be if he argues, and they might not have time for a fight, not one with a resolution. He doesn't like leaving Lucy in the dark about it, not when she's been so miserable about the whole affair. He doesn't like the fact that he can't do anything, and he doesn't like the idea of giving up. The order fights every bit of bone-deep practicality in the Just.

"You owe her," Edmund says, and they both know that he means Lucy. "You have until the end of the month to sort this, or I'm going to do it myself." That's as much of an agreement as Edmund can come up with for the moment. It's as much of a compromise as he can agree on. This is harsh, but it's what Edmund has. "After that, I can't even promise I can stop Caspian anyway." The Telmarine King has certainly taken this much harder than Edmund would have anticipated.

Edmund's words are not untrue and they aren't unfair, but the fact that Peter already knows he owes Lucy at least the truth makes it hurt no less. Ghosts can experience every emotion a living man can, apparently, but all he's had of late are the shadows to contend with. This does not help but it does not hinder what he came here to do either, and at this point he will take what he can get. A deal, a compromise, but it isn't so simple.

Still, he doesn't have time to tell his brother how that's so.

"I know," he agrees and acknowledges, silence slipping in and they're wasting time. He can feel it. In response to the matter of Caspian, however, his response is stark with difference. "You can. Pull rank if you have to. I don't care." It's not entirely the truth; Peter cares, Peter cares too much, but again they don't have time, not here where he can all but feel the approaching presence of the other ghost who still will not reveal itself to him even as it ousts him from this place, time and again. But if Peter knows one thing, it's that Caspian understands his responsibility, his crown, his kingdom earned not given.

When that is brought into sharpest focus, he knows; Caspian won't risk it, and it won't be the command itself if the Just must issue it that holds the Telmarine back. It will simply be knowing what is implied is right.

'Right' isn't often easy, but no one said that it would be, and that is true for all of them.

"I can't tell her now though," he goes back to Lucy, and it's thinking on this more that etches a break in his voice, the first he's shown to anyone, and maybe his brother can pick up on that without needing to be told. If anyone could, it would be him. "Ed, how do I tell her I'm--"

But it's the same push from before, the same wholly surrounding force that interrupts not only his concentration but the translation of his channeling into the gramophone which rocks on the table, but it doesn't fall like the record player did weeks ago. What the remaining Pevensie brother feels is not a breeze this time likely but a gust, as if a trail of storm has funneled its way in, sending papers and other loose knicknacks flying, then clattering to the ground. It's a more violent refusal of his presence and not for the first time, when Peter has his sense about him again, he wonders what it is about him that the other ghost hates so much.

It doesn't occur to him that they have all been long uninvited, but if he was to know what became of said other ghost he would understand only too well; how painful to see someone like you talk to those he loves when you've waited all this time for that self-same thing.

Outside, beneath the tree in the courtyard, he doesn't move. Maybe for hours. Rather, it must be, because the next thing he knows, the sun is rising, but that is the only change here. Scenery.

Peter remains a ghost, here but not here, as he leaves at last to seek out one last being.

He does owe Lucy, but it's not to Lucy that he needs to speak about it with.

Let me find you, he thinks.

And if the being that knows him better than he knows himself is still here, Peter wills himself to believe--because he needs to, because if he doesn't then he has nothing left to try--that his request has been heard.

Action post;

Because now we say goodnight from our own separate sides;

Because now we say goodnight from our own separate sides;

Because now we say goodnight from our own separate sides;

Because now we say goodnight from our own separate sides;

Because now we say goodnight from our own separate sides;

Because now we say goodnight from our own separate sides;

Because now we say goodnight from our own separate sides;

Because now we say goodnight from our own separate sides;

Because now we say goodnight from our own separate sides;