WARNING: Potential for much messiness, so you may wish to have a tissue handy.

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

Author's Note: Well, as promised…::grins:: Here's the prequel to Between the Lines. It is not necessary to have read that one before this, and I hope you enjoy this as much as you have that story. My Keeping the Faith, Nighttime Demons, and Those Who Speak will hopefully be getting their updates sometime in the next couple of weeks, but don't quote me on that! I definitely want to get the next chapters out, but they're progressing slowly. Please enjoy!

Rating: T

Summary: Sometimes pictures are worth more than words can ever be, and that is something Edmund knows all too well…(Book and Moviebased) (NO slash) (Prequel to Between the Lines)

"Speech"

/Personal Thoughts/

A Picture's Worth

By Sentimental Star

"Ah, Mr. Pevensie. Just the young man I was looking for."

The warm call rang out behind him in the hall as he headed towards the rugby field for a pickup game with his mates, and Peter turned to face the speaker with a small smile. "Hello, sir," he greeted softly.

He'd not had this professor—Professor Carrigan, was it?—for his literature class, but Edmund seemed to like the man. And any teacher who came to Peter with concerns or information about his brother was a worthwhile professor in his mind. Not that their Mum didn't tell him, anyway, but it was the principle of the matter.

Professor Carrigan caught up with him and handed over a rolled up sheet of sketch paper. "I thought you might like to see what your brother drew in class today," the stocky man said by way of explanation.

"Drew?" Peter startled, blinking rapidly, but before he could pursue the matter further, the professor had already continued on his path. He left Peter standing in the middle of the corridor, staring after him in confusion.

When the man turned the corner out of sight, the seventeen-year-old shrugged helplessly to himself, carefully unrolling the drawing…

And forgot to breathe.

He knew, of course, about the artistic talent possessed by his brother—he'd known now for years. He also knew that Edmund was an intensely private person when he wanted to be, and not even his siblings had seen the bulk of his work.

He was always sketching—at picnics, at festivals, in the morning, in the evening, late at night when he couldn't sleep…If they were lucky, his brother and sisters could catch a glimpse of what he had drawn over his shoulder, but somehow, Edmund always managed to catch them and flip the cover shut. Peter could count the number of times Edmund had actually shown him a sketch on one hand.

But to draw this of all things—and for a class at that, where everyone would be able to see it…

Peter smiled faintly, eyes shining, and gently rubbed a thumb over the smaller of the two figures in the sketch, careful not to smudge or smear the pencil lines.

/Oh, Ed, when you want to make a statement you certainly know how,/ he thought, feeling in his chest an ache that had nothing to do with the fact that he'd been essentially holding his breath for the last few minutes. He blinked back tears.

One of his mates jogged past him a moment later on his way to the pitch, and said teenager called over his shoulder, "Oy! Pevensie! You coming?"

Peter shook his head, unable to take his eyes from the sketch, and called after him, "Not today, Rodge."

"I'll let 'em know!" came the response.

Peter smiled slightly, finally lifting his head to watch him jog away. "Thanks, mate," he murmured at the retreating back, and gingerly rolled up Edmund's drawing. Once it was safely stowed away he headed briskly in the opposite direction.

There had been a small change in plans.

IOIOIOIOIOI

Located on the grounds of St. Anthony's Boarding School for Boys was a single, large courtyard that sat at its center, surrounded on all sides by the papered and carpeted halls of the main school building. Edmund discovered it the first year back after Narnia…and fell in love with it. He'd shown it to Peter, too, and if anyone ever wanted to find either of the Pevensie brothers they merely had to come here. Even in the winter, this was where one or both of them could be found.

Edmund had just recently become friends with a fellow named Jack Briggs, and Peter spotted his brother's group near the courtyard's fountain when he stepped out into the late autumn sun. They were introducing their newest member to the finer points of chess, and Edmund was in the middle of telling a rather lively story about a chess game between a Talking Mouse and Centaur (edited, of course, to make it more believable), when an arm suddenly snaked warmly around his shoulders.

He tensed, and nearly whirled around to deck the person in the mouth…when a gentle kiss brushed against his forehead.

"Hey, do you have a minute?"

His older brother's voice came from behind him, and Edmund immediately relaxed into the arm around his shoulders, fondly rolling his eyes. Of course. Only Peter would have the audacity to actually kiss him in front of his friends.

"Hello to you, too," he murmured, so that only his brother could hear. "I thought we had a policy about being affectionate in public."

Peter gave a half-smirk, shrugging, and left Edmund to wonder what had him so cheerful. "I forgot." He did not sound at all apologetic.

Edmund rolled his eyes again, but leaned wordlessly into Peter's side, silently informing him of his intent. Straightening up, he grinned at his companions, "Catch you later, mates. Mother's calling."

It won a derisive snort and light cuff upside the head from said "mother."

Edmund's grin only widened, especially when he caught sight of the amused, knowing smirks adorning his mates' faces. Only Briggs looked remotely confused, and Edmund could remedy that easily. "Explain it to him, will you, Nate?" this to the tall redhead who lounged beside Briggs on the stone bench.

Nate—or Nathaniel—grinned and saluted him. "Will do, Captain."

As Edmund tossed his friends a wink over his shoulder and turned his back, he heard Nathaniel begin, "So…how much do you know about Pevensie?"

As he and Peter left the courtyard, he heard Briggs sigh, "Which one?"

"The blond one, of course," came Nathaniel's answer, even fainter. "Who else would Ed be talking about?"

IOIOIOIOIOI

Edmund was still smirking at the unseen conversation in the courtyard when they entered the school building. As they started walking down the corridor, Peter turned to him with a raised eyebrow and asked dryly, "Do I want to know?"

His younger brother snorted warmly, turning to grin wickedly at him. "Two words, brother dear: mother hen."

Peter rolled his eyes good-naturedly. "I'll assume that's directed at me since, despite all your protests to the contrary, you're just as bad."

Edmund stuck out his tongue. "That's entirely your fault, you know."

Peter raised another eyebrow. "Indeed?" he snorted. "And care to enlighten me as to how, exactly, it's my fault?"

The fourteen-year-old grinned. "It's a little something called Martyr Syndrome, perhaps you've heard of it?"

Peter gently elbowed him in the side. "Ah. And that wouldn't happen to be in the same category as, say, the Hero Complex, would it?"

"Never would have pegged you for a shrink, Pete," Edmund retorted with an affectionate smirk. "King, warrior, noble idiot, yes. But never a shrink."

His brother warmly rolled his eyes. "I've felt like one on occasion, especially with you. Everything you say has at least two meanings, and I have to suss out which meaning you're using this time. What you don't say is at least as important as what you do say, and, frankly, Ed, I'm nowhere near the diplomat you are."

Edmund's smirk widened. "Who said anything about being diplomatic?" He frowned in mock-thought, "Can you even be diplomatic when you're a schoolboy?"

Peter snorted out a laugh. "I don't know, but you've somehow managed it. Honestly, Ed, given half the chance I think the entire school would elect you to the Board of Governors as a liaison."

It was perhaps unfortunate for Edmund that Peter knew him so well, as his older brother delighted in embarrassing him (as all good older brothers should, at least according to Peter). In a battle of wits such as this, it almost always guaranteed victory—especially when, like Peter, the speaker meant every word of it.

"Liaison. Right," the younger of the two brothers snorted skeptically, the faintest color highlighting his cheeks. "Then I'd declare every weekend a feast and call for archery, swordsmanship, and weaponry to replace gym."

Peter tugged lightly on his brother's hair and danced out of the way with a grin when Edmund scowled and swatted at him. "You forgot battle tactics, orienteering, diplomacy, rhetoric, etiquette, singing--"

"—Also known as caterwauling, which will conveniently be left off the list for review at a later date," the younger teen inserted smoothly, garnering a warm chuckle from his brother.

"Oh, but, Eddy…" Peter pouted playfully, the grin twitching at the corners of his lips giving him away. "You have such a lovely singing voice."

Edmund eyed his brother with amused disbelief. "We did have the same singing instructor, yes? Have you forgotten what Sailienh sounded like? What she said I sounded like?"

Peter bit down viciously on his bottom lip, clearly fighting a losing battle against his mirth. "She's just shy. And she said yours was beautiful."

"Peter, Sailienh's a Cat!"

Unable to control it any longer, his older brother burst out laughing and caught up his hands, continuing to tug the fourteen-year-old down the hall and causing him to stare at the seventeen-year-old bemusedly. "Peter, what has gotten into you? You're absolutely loopy!"

Peter merely grinned, and dropped a kiss on Edmund's nose, which his little brother promptly scrunched up. "Not to mention bloody affectionate," the younger teen muttered, not unpleased.

"Your fault," Peter informed him cheerfully.

"Just so long as you don't start waltzing me down the corridors again."

A speculative gleam entered Peter's eyes, making Edmund speak up hastily and try to back away, "No."

"But--"

"No!"

"Come on, Eddy. Please?"

"No!"

If anyone chose that moment to poke their head out of a classroom and find out what the commotion was, they probably would have been a trifle confused and very amused to see an exuberant Peter Pevensie Box Stepping his highly embarrassed, highly befuddled younger brother down the hall.

IOIOIOIOIOI

"I think you've inherited Lucy's pout," Edmund grumbled when Peter finally released him in front of their shared dorm room a little later.

Peter raised an eyebrow, a warm, amused smile curving his lips. "Can you even inherit something from your siblings?"

"I don't know," Edmund snorted lightly. "But I do know there's no bloody way you could have gotten me to dance without it."

"'Course I could've," retorted cheekily, as Peter unlocked the door and held it open for his younger brother pass through. "You love me."

A warm smirk and Edmund slipped in ahead of him, clipping him gently on the shoulder as he passed. "Yes, and right now I'm tempted to strangle you."

Peter winced in remembrance, rubbing at his neck as he slipped in behind him and shut the door, heading towards one of the lamps as Edmund moved towards the beds. "You've already tried it once. Seems you thought I was an Ettins Giant while in the middle of a fever-induced delirium last year."

Edmund's ears colored and he glanced sheepishly over his shoulder at his brother while setting his rucksack on the mattress nearest the wall. "Er…oops?" he offered diffidently.

Peter's eyes softened and a startled Edmund straightened as his older brother continued to watch him silently for a few minutes, not saying a word.

"Pete?" he at last ventured hesitantly.

Peter shook his head, eyes softening even more, and turned his attention the nearby desk lamp, switching it on and settling the straps of his own rucksack over the back of his chair. "You didn't have to come with me, you know," murmured quietly, as he shifted to turn on the bedside lamp. "It wasn't necessary to leave your friends."

"I wanted to come, Peter," Edmund countered firmly, voice quiet as he sank down onto his older brother's bed and watched a third lamp light up.

He was graced with a gentle smile and hugged his knees to his chest, contently resting his chin on top of them. "I'm also a little tired."

A tender smirk flitted across Peter's lips and the seventeen-year-old leaned down to unlatch his satchel, beginning to switch out his books in preparation for Monday. "I daresay that you are," he murmured, frowning thoughtfully as he came across a slightly overdue library book.

Edmund merely watched him, unable to shake the sense that something had changed over the last half-hour. Shivering, he slipped off the bed to pad across the carpet to Peter, curling his hand into the crook of his brother's elbow when he reached him. "Pete?" he whispered.

"Hmm?" Peter looked up with a slightly distracted smile from the books he had been shuffling. "Yes? What is it, Ed?"

Swallowing, Edmund reached up and fingered the lengthening bangs that tumbled into his brother's face. "What's wrong? I mean, ever since you found me in the courtyard you've been acting…well, off." To say nothing of the past month and a half. /He easily shaved twenty years off my life on the train ride here at the beginning of September./

He was given another soft look when Peter read the worry in his dark eyes. "Oh, Ed…" his older brother murmured, reaching out and briefly touching the fourteen-year-old's hair as he set aside the book he had been flipping through. "Nothing's wrong. Absolutely nothing. And that's thanks to you." He bit his lip, stroking his fingertips against the soft skin of Edmund's forehead. "Do you remember what we talked about this summer, when the girls were off at Aunt Ruth's for a couple of days?"

Edmund winced. Oh, yes, he remembered. He'd never shouted so much at his brother in one sitting than he had on that day, and that included after one of Peter's more spectacularly foolish, self-sacrificing stunts in Narnia. "We were talking about the War," whispered, "and conscription, and how it was entirely possible you'd be forced into it if you didn't attend University."

They'd not come to agreement on it then, nor during any one of half-dozen similar conversations after it. Edmund was adamant Peter should attend University, and Peter, well…Peter, much to his younger brother's fright, seemed determined to join the army.

Their worst fight had been the night before they left for school, and it had ended with Edmund being plagued by nightmares. He'd woken up from a particularly vivid one just two hours before dawn to find a sleeping Peter curled uncomfortably close to the edge of his bed, arms locked around his waist.

Edmund had cried, then, far too aware of what he would be losing if Peter did indeed join their father overseas. It hadn't been a pleasant waking for Peter, and his younger brother had been nearly inconsolable. Then, and only then, were they able to come up with a compromise of sorts: Peter would apply to several local universities (Oxford, Kings College, Cambridge), but Edmund was to let him go if he were indeed conscripted by the military.

Neither was happy with the arrangement, but simply loved the other too much to continue being obstinate.

Then they had read Dover Beach in Edmund's literature class, and Professor Carrigan had asked them to reflect on how it still applied to their society today. Edmund had asked if he could draw a sketch, and all his jumbled up emotions—as they often had—came pouring out into the picture.

"Ed?" Peter's quiet voice broke into his thoughts.

"I remember," he whispered, blinking open his eyes (when had he closed them?) and blinking back tears.

Peter's jaw locked when he noticed the tears, blue eyes swirling with guilt, anxiety, trepidation, love, and gratitude. "I've made my decision."

Edmund shut his own. "Have you?" he asked, voice strangled.

"Mm-hmm," was murmured against his temple. Gently, he was pushed away from his brother's chest.

The sound of Peter rifling through his rucksack went unheeded as Edmund focused all his energy on willing himself not to cry. He only returned to the outside world when he sensed Peter kneel in front of him and press something firmly into his hands.

Edmund's eyes flew open. He would recognize his sketch paper anywhere.

Peter offered him a slight smile. "Professor Carrigan caught up with me today in the hall, just before I went to find you. If you'd be willing," his smile grew, and widened, "I'd very much like to take a copy of this drawing with me to Uni."

It took a full five seconds for Edmund to register what Peter had said. When he did, the fourteen-year-old did nothing to stifle his cry of pure joy as he literally tackled his older brother to the floor.

As Peter's rich laughter rang out in their bedroom, the paper floated, forgotten, to the ground.

The sketch was of two boys, one a little over seven and the other no more than four. Small though he was, the seven-year-old appeared to have no difficulty holding his younger brother in his arms. Proud (even in their two-dimensional, charcoaled state) eyes and a tender smile graced the figure's face as he watched the happy four-year-old put together a wooden block puzzle.

Above their heads floated a shield crossed with a sword; on the shield reared the Lion Rampant.

The sketch had no title. It didn't need one.

Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death.—Song of Solomon, 8:6

The End