WARNING: Rather intense chapter. You might also want to have a handkerchief at hand.

Disclaimer: I own nothing in this marvelous universe; it all belongs to C. S. Lewis and Walden Media.

Reviewers: Thank you so much for your patience. I know I said I probably wouldn't be updating this until I'm done with Keeping the Faith, but I've since come to realize that, no matter how hard I try, I will always be itching to get out one more chapter to my stories—particularly ones that I'm fond of, such as this. I'm going to try posting one chapter's story, and then posting the next story's chapter after it, for all of my major stories—and that includes Keeping the Faith, Nighttime Demons, All Things Have Their Time, and this one. Please enjoy and I hope this is well worth the wait!

Rating: T/M (for intensity)

Summary: While their younger siblings cross the gorge, Peter and Susan have their own journey to make, and their own lessons to learn…(AU, Book and Moviebased, Companion Piece to Keeping the Faith)

"Speech"

/Personal Thoughts/

Memories/Excerpts/Quotes (Italics)

(3) Prince Caspian pg. 262 in The Complete Chronicles of Narnia (Hardcover; Illustrated)

Learning to Walk Blindfolded

By Sentimental Star

Chapter Three: The Sorting of Memory

Treading delicately, like a cat, Aslan stepped from stone to stone across the stream. In the middle he stopped, bent down to drink, and as he raised his shaggy head, dripping from the water, he turned to face them again. This time Edmund saw him. "Oh, Aslan!" he cried, darting forward. But the Lion whisked round and began padding up the slope on the far side of the Rush.

"Peter, Peter," cried Edmund. "Did you see?"

"I saw something," said Peter. "But it's so tricky in this moonlight. On we go, though, and three cheers for Lucy. I don't feel half so tired now, either." (3)

"I saw Aslan last night."

Peter jerked his head up from where he had been splashing his face in the cold water of the brook to stare at Susan where she sat on a nearby boulder, combing her fingers through her hair and then braiding it into what both the girls liked to call a "warrior crown." It kept their abundant long hair (and it had been quite abundant when they were older) out of their eyes and away from their faces, allowing for a clear line of vision during battle.

"You heard me, Peter," she replied, just the faintest hint of steel in her soft voice, as she answered the unspoken question. "Aslan came into camp late last night. Surely you must have felt something…" She locked her blue eyes inquiringly on his. "Nothing in your dreams? Nothing while you slept?"

Peter stood, looking away from his sister, and gazed out over the gorge, eyes unfocused. He had felt something, of that he was certain. But whether or not it was Aslan…

"Why wouldn't I have seen him?"

"Maybe you just weren't looking for him."

Swallowing hard, he shook his head and blinked back the tears threatening to spill from his eyes. "I don't know, Su," he responded lowly. "I know I felt something, but in the middle of a nightmare, you really don't think about things like that."

"And after a nightmare?" she asked quietly, intently studying his profile as she finished braiding her hair.

Peter glanced at her, eyebrow raised. She merely stared back at him expectantly, crossing her arms over her chest.

He ran his hands through his hair with a sigh, mussing it more than he had already. "What do you want me to say, Susan? Yes, my nightmares stopped—rather suddenly, actually," this last part muttered thoughtfully. "I think it was Aslan. It certainly felt like him, but…" He shrugged helplessly, feeling more than a little frustrated. "I didn't see anything. He said nothing."

Susan frowned at him. "And since when has it mattered if you can see him, Peter? When did you need some sort of proof to know that he was there? You say you felt 'something.' Isn't that enough?"

"Not enough to reassure me that everything's all right," and his voice, when he spoke, glancing down at the ground, cracked the smallest fraction as he remembered all the times that feeling something had not been enough without actually seeing it, too, and that seeing something had never been enough without a physical touch to go with it.

Holding his newly-healed baby brother on a battlefield in the midst of a magical spring came to mind.

"I forgot, you know," he suddenly whispered, gazing down at his hands as if he could still see the blood that had stained them that day: Edmund's blood, their enemies' blood. Aslan's blood. "I forgot how grateful I was that Aslan had died for Edmund, and how much I loved him for dying in Edmund's place, for dying instead of Edmund…it's horrible, I know. But Aslan came back. Ed wouldn't have…and I almost lost him, too. I may have already, I don't know." He was no longer speaking of Aslan, and his voice trembled as he continued, "I hurt him so much. I hurt both of them so much." His voice broke, and steadily grew thicker as a few tears squeezed out of the corners of his eyes, "I promised myself—promised them—that I would never let anything hurt them again. Including me!" He didn't tell Susan that he had made the same promise to her, as well. "I forgot how much I needed them, Susan! Back in England…I could only remember that they needed me. I forgot that it also worked the other way around."

"Oh, Peter…" his oldest sister's voice came from behind and startled him, as did the arms that wrapped around his waist in a tight, trembling hug. She pressed her cheek to his shoulder, which swiftly grew damp with the tears that fell from her own eyes. "I think we both forgot that."

IOIOIOIOIOI

"Your Majesties! Your Majesties!" Trumpkin came running up to them several minutes later, Peter's rucksack as well as his own in hand, huffing and puffing the entire way. "Quick! Quick! You must come see!"

Peter and Susan spun to face him, the boy's hand gripping the hilt of his sword and the girl's hand flying to her bow.

"What is it?" Peter asked, very much startled, when he had established there was no immediate danger, accepting the pack the Dwarf thrust at him. The armor inside it gave a muffled jangle.

"No time! Come quick!" and he ran back in the direction he had come from.

Exchanging worried glances, Peter and Susan rushed after him.

With their longer legs they overtook him only seconds later, and together, the three toppled to a stop in the clearing at the lip of the gorge they had left only yesterday.

"Look!" the Red Dwarf practically demanded, pointing down at an area just in front of his feet.

Casting a confused glance at Susan, Peter stepped away from her and knelt on one knee next to the spot Trumpkin had pointed out with his finger, critically examining the ground where it had somehow been cleared of grass and detritus.

His breath caught in his throat.

"What is it, Peter?" Susan crouched next to him, watching curiously over his shoulder.

Peter lightly brushed his fingers over the neatly made arrow of sticks, finding and locating the small indentations on its sides. "Edmund," and his breathing hitched, "it's Edmund. He's left us a marker showing the way down into the gorge."

"And look where it points!" Trumpkin was almost dancing with glee, and as Peter looked up while Susan more closely studied the marker, he noticed what he hadn't before—the Dwarf's eyes were twinkling.

Following the small man's line of sight, his eyes came to rest on a decent sized hole in the edge of the cliff which almost certainly hadn't been there the day before.

His heart leapt into his throat.

Eliciting a small cry from Susan, he jumped to his feet and sprinted for the edge of the gorge.

To the part of him that was running hysterically in circles thinking what if, what if, it was a great relief to jerk to a halt at the very edge of the cliff and find nothing below that indicated either of his youngest siblings had fallen and not…survived the fall. In fact, it seemed as though neither had fallen (or had fallen very far) at all.

There was a narrow path not six feet below him.

"Aslan be praised," Susan murmured as she and Trumpkin joined him there. And Peter did not doubt she had been thinking along the very same lines as he.

Carefully lowering himself down onto the path, Peter reached up and helped Susan down, and then both of them helped Trumpkin down who, due to his much shorter stature, had a longer way to fall than either one of them.

Settled safely on the path, Peter nodded to Susan who, after startling a second, suddenly grinned and began leading the way down the path, nimbly dodging obstructions along the way as the Dwarf followed and Peter pulled up the end.

"Kettledrums and kingdoms," Trumpkin muttered to himself some time later as the eldest Queen gracefully crouched by the foot of the path, closely examining the ground, before looking up with a smile and waving them down, "Queen Susan would give some of our best trackers a challenge they haven't enjoyed in years."

Peter doubted he had been meant to hear it, but nonetheless gave a fond smile as he gazed at the older of his two sisters and nodded. "That she would, Master Dwarf," he murmured to the small man as they joined her.

At her exclamation of, "Here's another one, Peter!" he smiled again.

"That she would."

IOIOIOIOIOI

Some hours later, when they had crossed the River Rush at its calmest point in the gorge, they quite literally stumbled upon the next marker. Susan's foot collided with it as she lost her footing on the slippery bank and she gave a small cry as she nearly landed on the marker, at the last moment pulled tightly back against Peter's chest as his arms wrapped around her waist.

"Sorry," she whispered, turning shyly to face him. It had been a while since he'd last held her like this and she suddenly understood why Edmund had gone around for weeks at a time, looking like he'd lost something vitally important and was utterly unable to find it.

Peter hadn't been Peter—their Peter, this Peter—since leaving the Professor's home six months ago.

Now, her oldest brother gave her a faint half-smile and shook his head, lightly squeezing her and brushing a small kiss against her forehead, before setting her back on her feet.

There was a sudden, heavy call from the Dwarf who had scrambled up onto the bank ahead of them, desperate to get away from the water and onto relatively stable land, "High King Peter…"

The muscles in Peter's lower back tightened. Gently, his grip firm, he moved his oldest sister to the side in front of him just as she gave a hard shiver, though the day was warm. He attempted a would-be reassuring smile at her, before hesitantly releasing her shoulders and slowly, almost reluctantly, making his way towards the Dwarf.

Trumpkin was near a clutch of sharp, jagged boulders with his back turned to them. Above him, the path continued on its steep, upwards climb, far narrower and far rockier than the one they had left behind.

The small man turned solemnly to face Peter when Narnia's oldest king joined him. In his hands, held almost reverently, was a mahogany bow, shattered into at least three separate pieces.

Peter heard Susan come up behind him, heard her gasp and stifle her cry as she, too, caught sight of the bow, now cradled tenderly in her oldest brother's palms.

But Peter could only see their little brother's dark eyes, bright with excitement and relief, as Edmund held out the whole, mahogany bow for his inspection what now seemed like days ago in Cair Paravel's Treasure Room: "Pete, look! Can you believe it? I would have thought the string had perished ages ago!"

From Peter's throat ripped an agonized yell.

Crashing to his knees, he squeezed the fractured bow so tightly in his hands that it splintered into a half-dozen more pieces. He didn't even notice the splintered wood or taut string biting into his palms, skin and flesh grown soft in England breaking and bleeding.

In the background, Susan crashed to the hard, unforgiving ground with a whimper. Behind her, Trumpkin took off his hat and bowed his head.

"Oh, Aslan, no," Narnia's oldest queen whimpered. "Dear Aslan, please no."

Off to side, a thicket of trees suddenly erupted in an ear-splitting clamor.

There was a shriek from Susan. Peter leapt to his feet, his sister not far behind. Soundlessly, Trumpkin strung his bow and set an arrow on the string. Susan slipped into place just behind Peter. Still clutching Edmund's shattered bow in one hand, the older boy slowly slid Rhindon out of his sheath with the other, holding it out to side and in front of Susan.

"Stay back," he murmured lowly to his sister, "wait to see who it is and where they come from."

Unfortunately, the moment the perpetrator emerged, Peter forgot his own advice. Fury, grief, anger of the sort he hadn't felt since the White Witch, blinded him as soon as the older man burst out of the thicket.

With an inarticulate shout of rage and anguish, his grief-stricken mind somehow convincing him that this man, in some way, was to blame for what had befallen his younger brother, Peter leapt at the Telmarine, dropping Rhindon in the process.

As the sword clattered to the pebbled ground, the soldier cried out sharply as he found himself thrown against the sheer rock face of one of the gorge's cliffs.

Snarling, Peter slammed the hapless man into the cold, unforgiving stone. "Speak!" he all but thundered out.

What the Telmarine managed to gasp out next probably saved his life, "Hope springs eternal," he wheezed. "Please, my Lord. Hope springs eternal."

A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.—Proverbs 25:11

Tbc.