Disclaimer: Edmund and Peter Pevensie and all the characters and situations in the Chronicles of Narnia belong to C. S. Lewis and not to me.

THE SIGHT

"Peter."

Edmund's voice was hardly a whisper in the ruined chamber. He reached one trembling hand towards his brother's ashen face and then drew it back.

"Peter," he whispered again, and he couldn't seem to squeeze any other word from his throat.

Peter's eyes were black, so black Edmund couldn't distinguish iris from pupil, and there was nothing but crushing pain in their depths. Ever since Amice pressed her hand over his heart, Edmund had been swept into swirling darkness, a darkness he had fought until it finally, reluctantly, released him. Now he wondered if this was just a part of that darkness. A dream. A nightmare. Peter's eyes were blue, the blue of clear summer skies, not this endless, hopeless black.

"Peter," he began a third time. "What happened?"

Peter turned his face away with a whimper, and Edmund seized him by the shoulders.

"What happened to you, Peter? Where's Amice? Peter. Peter!"

Edmund forced him to look up, forced himself to look into the terrible blackness of his eyes.

Peter's lips trembled and he grasped Edmund's wrist, holding desperately to him. "Don't."

"Peter–"

"Don't leave me, Ed. Please."

"Peter, what–"

"Don't leave me. I'm sorry. Don't leave me. Don't leave me."

Ignoring the pain in his knee, Edmund knelt down and pulled him close, holding his head to his shoulder, feeling his body shake as he sobbed.

"Shh. Shh. It's all right, Peter. It's all right. I won't leave."

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Why didn't you keep it from happening? Why wouldn't you wake up?"

"Tell me, Peter. What? Where's Amice? What happened to you?"

The shaking grew worse. "She– She– I can't."

"Peter, tell me!"

"She wasn't a little girl at all. She was–"

Peter's voice dropped so low, Edmund had to lean closer to try to hear him.

"Tell me. Peter, please."

And Peter leaned up and pressed a kiss to Edmund's lips.

Edmund shoved him away. "What are you do–"

There was a wicked gleam in the black eyes, and Peter's mouth twisted into a taunting cold smile, a smile Edmund could never mistake. An icy chill ran through him.

"Jadis."

Her laugh was nothing like Peter's. Not warm and golden. Not human.

"Miss me?"

An old, cold pain pierced Edmund just under the ribs. "You're supposed to be dead."

"Yes," she said in a voice that was and wasn't Peter's. "And so are you. Remember that first battle? And you were so very naughty and broke my beautiful wand."

"What have you done to him?"

"It's lovely to have a real body again." She stretched Peter's arms sensuously over his head, stretching his lean frame, clearly relishing the play of each sleek muscle, smiling her evil smile. "And such a nice one as well, even if it is pitifully human."

Fury boiled through Edmund's veins. "Leave him alone!"

He drew his sword and again it was like ice in his hands. Still she only smiled.

"Let me make it easier for you." She bowed Peter's head, baring his neck for the blade.

Edmund froze. No, he couldn't. No.

She turned her black eyes up at him. Her eyes. Not Peter's.

"When you're ready." She twisted Peter's mouth into a smirk. "Son of Adam."

"Leave him alone!" Edmund demanded again, and again she merely laughed.

"Or what, Edmund dear? You have no ground to make demands. Your brother gave himself to me. Willingly."

Edmund shook his head. "No."

"Ah, but, yes. You remember before. At the How. Before you so rudely interrupted us. He would have done it then. He wanted to. He very much wanted to." She made an airy gesture with Peter's hand. "It was inevitable."

"You bewitched him."

"He gave himself to me. As you did once."

Edmund shivered at the memory and then realized something white and delicate was falling from above, swirling around him, banking against the walls and landing on his hair and eyelashes. But it wasn't cold.

It was sweet.

The taste of confectioners sugar was on his lips and, with a rush, his stomach knotted with the hunger he should have felt hours before. The memory of Turkish Delight both drew and repelled him.

"He gave himself to me," she said again, and her voice was beckoning and taunting all at once. "Of course, it wasn't for sweets this time, but pretty swords and pretty clothes. Pretty dreams. But there's no Lion to save him now. He's abandoned you both."

"Aslan would never abandon us."

"But obviously He has. He's left you both here with me, to do with as I please. It's not too late yet, Edmund. You can come back to me. You can still be a king."

"And rule over what?" Edmund gestured to the ruin around them. "This?"

Peter's mouth smiled. "This."

With another wave of Peter's hand, the sugar snow stopped and everything around Edmund shimmered. He was standing in Cair Paravel at the height of her glory, in the Great Hall with the ivory roof and the western door hung with peacock feathers and the eastern door that opened right onto the blessed sea. He could almost have wept at the beauty of it, stirring in him as it did all the aching memories of when he and his brother and sisters had been kings and queens in that most golden age. But it wasn't real. Aslan had showed him time and again.

"It's a lie," he spat. "What place is this? It's not Narnia."

The vision melted and he was again surrounded by blasted desolation.

"This? This is Charn, my home. It's where I came from before I went into your world."

"You were always a liar," Edmund said. "Charn is dead. The Professor told us what Aslan said to him. Charn is ended as if it had never been."

She merely drew Peter's mouth down in a pout and shrugged his shoulders. "What does it matter. This is what eventually comes of any place I'm given to rule. What better prison could He make for me but the destruction of my own making? And what better revenge could I have on you all than to bring His chosen ones to suffer it with me?"

Edmund thought of the folded glove in the pocket of his breeches. "I'll use the rings then. This is your hell, not mine."

"It was enough for your brother. You wouldn't want to be separated from him." She traced Peter's fingers along Peter's jaw line in a mockery of a caress. "You wouldn't want to abandon him to my tender mercies, would you?"

"I'm taking him with me."

"Yes, take him back. Take him back, and you take us both. Or go and leave him with me. Or stay forever. Which would you prefer?"

Again she laughed that terrible, inhuman laugh, and Edmund could think of nothing to say in response. What other choices were there?

"But, dear Edmund, we needn't be enemies forever. Come back to me. I can give you everything you want."

"That's what you promised before. You only used me and betrayed me and lied to me for your own ends."

"And what has your Lion done but that? He's used you, your brother, your whole family, letting them suffer and bleed to please Himself and, at the last, abandoning you all."

"You lie again! Aslan gave us everything out of love. Everything He asks of me, I'll gladly do. I can never repay what He's done for me even if He asks for my life."

"But your brother evidently didn't see it that way." Again she stroked Peter's fingers along Peter's cheek. "He's mine now, don't you see? He gave himself to me because I could give him everything your Lion wouldn't."

"If Aslan forbids us something, it's to protect us. Everything you offer is death."

Her black eyes sparkled. "And what glorious death. But now you must choose your own way. What will it be? Will you stay with me? Willingly? Or will you take me back to your world with your brother? Or will you abandon him altogether?"

Edmund's freezing hands shook as he held the blade between them. What could he do? Any of those courses was unthinkable. Oh, Aslan–

Strike.

He knew that Voice. It was a rich, golden Voice. A Voice like no other.

No. No, not that. Not Peter!

"Or perhaps, instead of the rings, you would rather use your sword." The Witch ripped open Peter's velvet tunic and the silken shirt beneath, baring his breast for the blade, still forcing Peter's lips into her evil smile. "Come. Strike. But remember, I am not made of flesh. He is."

Strike.

Tears streaming down his face, Edmund raised the sword, his fingers almost frozen against the hilt. The Witch looked steadily at him, a fearless, knowing gleam in her obsidian eyes.

Strike. Strike with My sword.

And, at the sound of the Voice, Edmund felt the sword change in his hands. The icy touch of it turned warm, almost living, and it fairly rang in the coldness of the chamber.

"I'm sorry, Peter," he murmured, only half coherently. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"You dare not," the Witch taunted.

Now, Just King. Strike!

Edmund squeezed his eyes shut, remembering Peter, his magnificent brother, his High King, leading his troops into battle, a fearless cry on his lips.

"For Narnia," Edmund sobbed. "And for Aslan."

He drove the blade with all his might into Peter's heart. The Witch's obsidian eyes widened in surprise and horror, and then there was a shriek and a flash of blue-white light. Afterwards was only silence.

Edmund was alone.

He dropped to all fours, exhausted, desolate tears coursing down his cheeks, and he heard the golden Voice calling his name aloud.

"Edmund. Edmund, Dear Son, why do you weep?"

He pushed himself to his knees, bowing his head. What more was to be required of him? What more had he to give?

"Peter."

It was all he could say. He could hardly say that. Even Peter's body was gone. There was only the dim redness of the light and the burned out ruins of the Witch's world.

"But why, Child, do you weep?"

Why? Could He who knew all possibly ask him why? Now?

"Peter," he said again, half choked on the word. "I– I had to– He's gone. With her."

"Edmund, Beloved, do you trust Me to know what's best?"

There was a howling, bleeding hole in his heart, a pain so fierce and deep, he knew he could not long bear it. Peter was gone, he had been the one to kill him, and the Witch had taken him away with her.

Again the Voice came to him. "Do you trust Me?"

Sudden sobs convulsed his chest, and he reached up his arms, needing to feel that golden mane, desperate to press himself to the Lion's side and hear the warm beating of His heart.

"I trust You. Help me trust You."

And then his face truly was pressed into warm fur, his arms were tight around the tawny velvet neck, and he knelt there weeping until he could weep no more.

Afterwards, the Lion nuzzled his cheek, drying his tears, looking as if He shared Edmund's grief and yet radiating peace and love. And Edmund realized he was in a different place now, a lush, cool meadow surrounded with trees and dotted with wild flowers. And, just as England paled and dimmed when compared with Narnia, so Narnia seemed flat and lifeless beside this richness.

Edmund couldn't help remembering Reepicheep, the noble Mouse, trembling with happiness as he crested that endless wave that had somehow carried him here from the world's end all those years ago, his heart's desire finally within reach, at last to be seen with his own eyes. And somehow Edmund realized that this was what he had himself longed for more and more, especially since the vision of Tirian had come to the Friends of Narnia that night at dinner, however long ago it was. This, not England, not even Narnia, was his true Home.

And Edmund's trembling stilled. Somehow grief didn't belong in this place. He merely fixed his gaze on the Lion, and Aslan looked on him with warm golden eyes.

"Dear Son, did you not think I could keep what was Mine?"

The Lion looked past him, and Edmund followed his gaze. Someone was kneeling down beside a crystal river, drinking from both hands cupped together. Edmund's heart seemed to stop entirely for a beat or two and then rush on faster than before.

"Peter!"

He leapt to his feet, for the first time realizing that his knee no longer pained him. Peter turned at the same moment, standing and smiling, whole and hale, and his eyes–

His eyes were blue.

Edmund covered the distance between them in an instant, flinging his arms around his brother, ducking his head against Peter's blessedly solid chest, against his blessedly whole heart. And Peter crushed him close in return, one hand pressed to his back, the other to the back of his head, and Edmund could feel that cool, sweet water in his hair and on his neck.

"Peter. Peter."

Peter pressed a warm kiss into his hair. "Edmund. Oh, Eddie, you're all right."

"I thought I– I thought you–"

"Amice was Jadis." Peter drew a shaky breath. "I knew I couldn't fight her. I just wasn't strong enough on my own. All I could do was keep saying His name, over and over again saying it, and she couldn't touch me. She couldn't really do anything to me at all. And then I was here. I told Him how wrong I'd been, and how you knew something was amiss all along and tried to warn me. And He forgave me." Here he gave Edmund a wry little grin. "Again."

"But you didn't go to her. You never– She said you'd–"

"No." Peter glanced at Aslan, eyes full of gratitude. "No. And Aslan has sent her to her own place now. She can never come back. But what happened to you?"

Edmund laughed. Peter had never been there. It was all the Witch's lie. "None of that matters now."

He pulled back a little, looking at Peter. He was, they both were, dressed again in chain mail, but this was finer than what they had seen in the Witch's illusion, a hundred times finer than the best the Narnian dwarves could forge, and this time their tunics bore the ramped Lion. With Peter's arm around his shoulders and his own arm around Peter's waist, they walked back to where the Lion awaited them and knelt at His feet. One on either side, they put their arms around His neck and thanked Him as well as their words and looks were able.

"Aslan," Edmund said then, "is this–"

"This is not your place, Dear One. Not yet."

And all the happiness Edmund had been feeling drained out of him.

Peter bowed his head, his face changed from joy into grief. "Please, Aslan. If you send me back again to that Other Place, I'll die."

The golden eyes merely looked on him with love. "Yes, Dear Son, you will. As must all of your race."

"But it's not–" Peter ducked his head even lower, and now there were dark splotches on the knees of his breeches. "It's not this. I mean, it is this. All this is more wonderful than anything in our world. But it's not just–"

Edmund swiped his sleeve over his own wet eyes and pressed his face deeper into the Lion's mane.

"It's not just this," Peter said. "Aslan, it's You."

"You know I'm with you there, too, Dear One."

"I know. I know You are. But we can't see You there. Can't hear You. Can't touch–" Peter hung on the Lion's neck, wracked with sobs. "Please. Please, please, please."

He didn't have to say what he wanted. Edmund knew already, for the plea was burning inside his own heart, screaming for him to add his own voice to Peter's and beg just to–

But he couldn't.

He could only hold on to that living gold as long as he was allowed and trust in the Lion.

"Dear Son," Aslan soothed, nuzzling Peter's cheek, "it is not wrong for you to long for the things I have put into your heart, but you must trust Me to know your right time and place. Give Me that trust, and I will always lead you where you are to go."

Peter had both hands in the Lion's mane now, his fingers balled into tight, angry fists. He didn't raise his head.

"Peter," Aslan said, this time with a touch of sternness.

Edmund could feel his brother tremble from the other side of the Lion, but still he did not move.

"High King!"

Peter jerked his chin up, mouth set in stubborn defiance, blue eyes blazing into infinite golden ones.

And then his face crumpled and he buried it again in the Lion's mane, newly awash with tears. Edmund felt for his brother's hand, weeping with him and for him and for himself. How long would be it be before He called them here? How long? Oh, Aslan–

"Dear Son," the Lion said again, endless love and patience in His golden eyes as He breathed against Peter's cheek. "Do you love Me?"

With a shaky breath, Peter lifted his head. Slipping his hand free of Edmund's, he touched his fingers to the Lion's whiskered face. "Yes, Aslan, You know I do."

"Do you know that I love you?"

Tears were running down Peter's neck now. He tried to speak, but he could only manage a shaky nod.

"And so, Beloved, will you trust Me?"

Peter squeezed his eyes shut, pressing his trembling lips together, fighting one last stubborn sob. Then he wiped his palm over his face and straightened his shoulders.

"Yes. I will."

Again Aslan nuzzled his cheek. "It is well, Dear Heart. You have fought long and hard. I've seen your courage. I've marked well your love– for those I've given into your charge, for your kingdom and for Me. You have pleased me more than you yet know. Do not turn back when there is but a little still to be done."

Peter opened his mouth and then closed it again, choosing instead to bow low enough to touch his forehead to one great velvet paw. From the other side of the Lion, knowing he had now no words, Edmund did the same. Then he felt a nudge and a tickle of whiskers in his hair.

"Well and faithfully done, Dear Son. You never turned your eyes from Me." The Lion nuzzled Edmund's neck. "And will you, too, keep faith with Me for this little while longer?"

Edmund reached instinctively for the sword at his hip, long used to sealing his oaths on it, but it was no longer there. Instead he lifted his eyes to the loving golden ones and covered his heart with his clenched hand.

"As You give me strength and as You give me life."

"Come, stand, My True Warriors and Well-Loved Kings." Aslan breathed sweet warmth on them both. "You have chosen the path that leads to Me. Know I will always guide you in it, walk with you on it and be waiting at its end."

Edmund stood, bringing Peter with him, knowing the renewed strength in his brother's face was mirrored in his own.

"Please, Aslan," Edmund dared, knowing there was likely only a moment left before He sent them back into that Other Place. "When will that be?"

"Soon, Dear Heart," the Great Lion said. "Soon."

And, with His roar, they were again on the blustery platform, again in their English clothes and heavy overcoats, waiting for the train to arrive, and the soreness in Edmund's knee was fierce as ever. Peter's face was again England-pale, though there was in it still and always the look of a king and of a warrior. There was a settled peace there, too, a peace that had been lacking for too long.

His blue eyes crinkling at the corners, he jostled Edmund with his shoulder. "What're you looking at?"

Edmund only laughed and shoved back. "Lummox."

Then he saw the train coming, maybe just a touch too fast for the bend in the track. Without really realizing it, he grabbed Peter's arm, something surprisingly eager and joyful surging into his heart at the sight. And he could think only one thing.

Soon.

"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world."

–C. S. Lewis

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