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[wandbreaker]

For when there's no entry up, or for random house adventures. Third-person, present tense preferred.

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Because now we say goodnight from our own separate sides;

[wandbreaker]

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.

Because now we say goodnight from our own separate sides;

[oshutup.livejournal.com]

"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.

Because now we say goodnight from our own separate sides;

[wandbreaker]

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.

Because now we say goodnight from our own separate sides;

[oshutup.livejournal.com]

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.

Because now we say goodnight from our own separate sides;

[wandbreaker]

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.

Because now we say goodnight from our own separate sides;

[oshutup.livejournal.com]

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.