Disclaimer: We own nothing.

AN: Dear Eru, it's been a long time. Our sincere apologies for the hiatus! I (K) was traveling, and then came home to no internet for a week, and by then I had a lot of things to catch up with on my primary account, so this one fell by the way. I'm sorry, and if any of you are still reading, thank you. I know you had a lot of questions after the end of the last chapter, so we tried to answer all of them here. Monster chapter warning right now—we kept cutting, but the chapter refused to be any shorter than this.

The reasons behind the writing of this story are complex and go deeper than merely messing with your minds for the fun of it. We'll explain our thought processes at the end, and hopefully by then all your questions will be answered. Thanks for reading.

"Mommy! Daddy!" A scamper of running feet and a thump-thump on the end of the bed announces the Princesses' presence. I hear Peter's groan as I crack one eyelid open. We've already been rousted once so Oreius could chase us all around the castle and up and down tower stairs for our routine early morning exercise—which we knew better than to try to get out of merely because we'd gotten ourselves into a scrape the day before. (The most unnerving part of it is the way he maintains the folded-arm glare even when galloping).

After that ordeal (both Peter and Oreius insisted I take a drop of the Queen Lucy's Cordial before we began, refusing to let me run on my injured ankle) we dragged ourselves up the stairs, let the Faun valet unbuckle our vambraces and pull off our mailshirts, and stumbled back into bed.

"Tell the guards we're indisposed, Celerus," Peter mumbled as the Faun closed the door to our bedroom. "Not occupied, just indisposed."

"Very well, Sire." Occupied is code for engaged in potentially embarrassing activities during which Our children should especially not be permitted to disturb Us. Indisposed just means we want to sleep. Indisposed does not mean the guards will stop the girls from charging in with their morning news, even if we've only been asleep for an hour.

"Mommy! Mommy!" I open my other eye and get a faceful of cat thrust at me. "Twinkie had kittens!"

"Twinkie?" I echo uncomprehendingly, sitting up. He and Bruin are the girls' pet cats: Lucy's huge, lazy Bruin and Susan's tiny, sleek Twinkie lie together in the sun by the hour, washing each other and sleeping with their paws around each other.

"Twinkie had kittens?" I repeat.

"Mmhm!" say two voices, and Lucy shows me an armful of wriggling black and orange kits, while Susan bounces on her father's legs. Peter has pulled the quilt over his head and is grumbling to himself.

"Wake up! Wake up, Daddy, and look at the kittens!"

"Indisposed," he mutters, and I poke him in the side.

"Rise and shine, lazybones," I say in my most cheerful voice, and then he has to come out, if only to glare at me.

"I thought Twinkie was a boy," he says, his hair sticking in every direction.

"Seems my mother was wrong," I say. "It wouldn't be the first time." She was the one who gave the girls the cats—for Susan a tiny black kitten, for Lucy a larger tabby. "Both male," she explained at the time, "so you won't be overrun with kittens!"

Peter and I exchange a glance—but the girls refuse to be ignored.

"Mommy," says Susan, crawling into my lap and taking my face in her five-year-old hands. "Where were you? You said we'd have tea with me and Violetta and Gambetta and you di'n't. The General said you was being naughty."

"Susan!" says Lucy, ever the proper older sister, from her perch on Peter's lap.

"Susie—Lu-lu—your mommy did some stupid things yesterday and your daddy had to come find me—" Peter makes a protesting noise but I ignore him. "The General was right, we were being naughty, and Mommy and Daddy were in big trouble when they got home."

"Like a spanking?" Susan asks, giggling.

"No," interjects Peter, perhaps a little too quickly. There wasn't any spanking last night. (It has been known to happen, but Oreius has not been involved.)

"No, but we had to get up extra early for training this morning. But—girls—we shouldn't have run off like that, and your daddy and I won't be doing it again. Now, Susie, we're having a ball for the Telmarine ambassador in three days' time. Perhaps you and Lucy would like to have a party for Violetta and Gambetta then?"

"So, our footloose days are over," says Peter late that night when at last we are alone again. The domestic crises of the last two days have been resolved, the ambassador mollified with several hours of official meetings, the girls' lessons seen to—and I've dined for both luncheon and tea with my daughters and their friends the twin Archen princesses, on loan for the week from Cor and Aravis.

"Hmm?"

Peter stares moodily out the window. "You told the girls we wouldn't run off again."

"Oh." I hang up my dress and pull the long nightshirt over my head. "Well, there's always the lovely dungeon downstairs, isn't there? We've had fun there before."

"It's not a very big dungeon." His tone is petulant. "And the guards are such a hassle."

I splash water from the washstand on my face and run a comb through my hair. "Remember the time my mother arrived early for her yearly visit?" By some lookout mix-up, we only had a quarter-hour's notice—enough time to get me out of the shackles and wash off the worst of the mud, but not enough to change out of the torn jerkin and breeches.

"Do I ever. She gave me a chewing out that made Oreius seem friendly."

I wince, unclipping the wide gold bracelets I affected today and removing my earbobs. "My mother was always good at finding things to say. That was the only time I've ever seen her speechless." She came sweeping in with a cry of "Diamonda Estyl, my dear!" (as if I had always been her favorite daughter, no matter that we both knew it was never true before I married the King of Narnia) but with one horrified look at my uncovered head and the angry red mark rising on my cheek, she shut her ample mouth and let the hovering Dryad maids lead her off to her guest chambers.

Peter turns from the window. There is an odd look on his face and I fear we're in for another of those once-a-year conversations that dances in circles around it and never resolves anything. "Estyl, why—" He takes my hand, touches the still-red abrasions I hid today with bracelets. "Why do you . . .?

"Because I love you."

Tonight, though, that answer isn't enough. "But why?"

I sigh and go to sit on the bed. He follows me. "Is this about your nightmares, Peter?"

"It isn't about me! Estyl, I want to hear about your—"

But it's easier to analyze him than to talk about myself. "What do you dream about that scares you so much?"

"I don't—"

"Don't say you don't know," I say, fixing him with a look halfway between my mother's and Oreius's. "I hear the names you say in your sleep."

He looks up sharply. "I—?"

"Peter. I am Queen of Narnia. I have been for ten years. I know the stories, even if you leave the hall whenever a visiting bard begins to sing."

"What . . . do they say, the bards?" The casual way he says this is belied by the way his knuckles whiten on his twisting fingers.

Should I? For ten years he has barely spoken of his family, channeling all his pain and grief instead into our games. A stray word, a half-smile when something reminds him of his sisters—beautiful black-haired Susan and laughing blue-eyed Lucy, for whom our daughters are named—but always the shutters close again and he says nothing of his brother, the slim, dark-haired man he loved. And so I, too, avoid the subject, for when it arises of its own accord he spirals into a black depression almost as enveloping as the despair that cloaked him when we first met.

Dare I? And then softly, gently, the answer comes. Yes. Ten years—longer—is long enough. I take a deep breath and wrap my fingers around his. "They say many things, my King, of that first fifteen years of your reign. They say . . . that it was a raw and wild time when Narnia's Sword and Shield stood back-to-back and none came between them. Dark and light, silver and gold, day and night, they rode through the land, befriending Dwarfs, slaying Giants, righting wrongs, and avenging evil. They were the Brother Kings of Narnia. They were—they are—legend."

(I also know—but it is not the time to speak of this—who ran the castle and oversaw trade and entertained visitors whenever the Kings were away on campaign, or deathly ill from poison, or held prisoner in any of the many dungeons, fell caves, and enchanted islands that in those days dotted the land. The bards hardly mention Peter's sisters, preferring the more thrilling tales of the Kings' exploits, but I, too, am a Queen, and though I never met them I have read the household records and pieced together scraps of songs until I feel great kinship for the women who loved and cared for the man I love and care for.)

Peter gnaws his lip and I try to think what to say next. "What do you dream of?" I ask again.

"We were riding through Narnia," he whispers. "The four of us."

Oh. I make an encouraging sound, willing him to share this deepest pain with me, yet afraid to prod too hard lest he flee.

"The four of us," he says again, his voice barely audible. "The people cried our names, and the others were laughing. But then I noticed that they—it seemed they couldn't see me, and when I looked down at myself, I wasn't there." His fingers tighten on mine. "I was a ghost, Estyl. Only the Animals could see me, and they hissed at me and said I was selfish for—that I should have gone with the others. But I tried, Estyl, I tried."

He draws a shaky breath and the last entry of the Queen Susan's diary flashes into my mind. T. visited today. Said White Stag has been seen in Lantern Waste and will give wishes if caught. L excited, P still too weak to seat a horse. Says he has everything he cd. wish for & we must go ourselves. Lady R's daughter born today. Met with Terebinthian ambassador—king complaining of pirates under the Lion flag. Must remember to send L to investigate. Lune arrives tomorrow w. sons & L thinks we shd. invite them on hunt. (E now w. Peter—v. agitated & insisting he will not go w/o P, but P determined not to be a burden.)

"No matter how hard I rode, I couldn't catch up," Peter says now, talking still of his dream. "And then—then they vanished, and no matter how I looked for them they didn't . . ." He looks away, and a tear runs down his cheek. "I betrayed him," he whispers. "I promised to take care of him and I didn't. He trusted me, just like you trusted me when you let me tie you to that tree yesterday, and I failed you, and I—I betrayed Edmund."

With that word, the dam breaks. I reach up and draw him down beside me, cradling his head in my arms as he sobs out his grief. I murmur soothings and I hold him, and when his shuddering eases a little I begin to speak, falling back on words familiar to any educated Narnian of this day.

"And then the High King mustered the army and searched long through the Lantern Waste and the Western March, and when none could find trace of his brother or sisters he dismissed them all and sent them home. With only the loyal Horse Phillip for companion, he climbed the mountains by the Great Waterfall and set out into the wild lands to the northwest, though his injuries were not yet healed."

I brush my fingers across his eyes. "How had you hurt yourself? Was that the time you were poisoned by the false knight or when the Giant club crushed your chest or was it the Hag who kept you for months in her cave?"

"Giant," he mumbles, tears still trickling down his nose.

"Ah. More than once have I heard the poets sing that tale, of the hidden island and the sorceress with the enchanted mirror, and giants different from the ones in the far northwest reaches. As he wandered, the King saw the wild and solitary giants who dwell in the caves of the hills, and strange things not seen in Narnia since the dawn of time. For a year the King roamed, wearing black armor so that none might recognize him in his grief, until at last he came to a small duchy beyond the giant-country."

"The bards do not tell this part of the story, for they do not know it. To you, my King, I shall tell it. The Duke and Duchess had five daughters, but no son, and by the laws of their country the ducal title would be inherited by the husband of the eldest daughter. The two older daughters, Twila and Giselle, were married, both to local lords, and the next two daughters each had her eye on a man, though of course they knew their father, the Duke, would choose their husbands.

"But the youngest daughter, Diamonda, refused to sit at her embroidery or exchange pretty compliments with the young men of the household. After all, she was merely the fifth daughter, with no great dowry and no great worth in marriage negotiations—"

"And so you taught yourself to ride and shoot and wield a sword," Peter murmurs. "You've told me that before." (It rather came out in our first week of marriage, when I was kidnapped by a Giant as we traveled back to Narnia, and surprised my new husband with my unexpected knife skills.) "But why? Why didn't you care what your family thought?"

"I did!" I forget to fit my words into the smooth phrases of the storytellers as I defend myself. "I did. I wanted so badly to marry, though I was always more of a tomboy than a young girl, and when I reached the age of young ladyship I tried desperately to make myself into the perfect daughter and future wife. I gave up my horses and my weapons training and even my books to spend my time stitching samplers and quilts and playing sweetly on the virginal. I hated it."

He frowns up at me, genuinely puzzled. "Isn't it more important for a wife to be able to manage the household records than to play music on the virginal?"

"Well, now I know that, but then I was at the mercy of my mother and governess and there were many things a proper woman needed to be skilled at. My older sisters learned to cipher and keep books, but then, they mimicked our mother in everything. If she corrected me once for something, they repeated it a dozen times, and when I complained she said, 'They must learn motherhood somehow, my daughter, and you cannot begrudge it them. Listen to them, for they are your elders, and do as they say with a smile.' I would vow never to speak again, but there was always something bursting in me, demanding to be said, and—it didn't go very well. Anyway, no one wanted the ugly fifth daughter."

"But were there no suitors? None at all?" Whenever this comes up he has a hard time fathoming how I reached the age of twenty-six without any suitors.

"None. It wasn't Narnia, Peter, just a backwater country beyond the land of the giants. My mother tried, but of course the girl's family cannot initiate a suit. Between my ugly face and my stubborn spirit, no one offered. One day I gave up and decided I didn't care anymore and went back to my horses and archery."

Peter sits up. "Don't say that, Estyl." His fingers, rough like my own with sword and bow calluses, trace down my face where tears have betrayed me. "You're the most beautiful woman I've ever known, though I admit I was terrified at first that under your beautiful body I'd married a rabbit—so quiet and meek."

Your beautiful body. "My mother—" I begin, and then all the memories of that week rise up from where I've hidden them. My mother never thought she'd get rid of me, and swore if I disgraced her again— "My mother—" but the tears overwhelm me and I hate myself for always crying so easily but it hurts, it hurts like I've never wanted to admit, and I pull away to bury my face in my hands, as if I can hide from the guilt and the shame that run in my very blood.

Peter draws me toward him, and I curl into his chest, my tears soaking his nightshirt. "When I first saw you," he says, so softly I have to listen for each word, "I'd already had all your sisters presented to me, and I was so tired I thought I would go to sleep on my feet right there in front of the Duke and the Duchess. Then you stepped forward, and your ridiculous headdress toppled off when you curtsied, and underneath it your hair was shorter than mine."

A sick feeling bubbles in my throat whenever I remember that moment—the humiliation, the dread of later facing my mother—but Peter's still speaking.

"Your hair looked so familiar that for a moment I thought you were—"

"Edmund."

He flinches. "Yes. But then you peeked up at me, and you—you weren't. I think it was the first time I'd noticed another person all year. I remember thinking you looked scared and angry, and like you'd been crying, and that your eyes were brown."

"You looked like a wild man of the woods, with your long hair and beard." I reach up to kiss him, nuzzling along his jaw where Celerus shaved him smooth today. "Mad Maid 'Monda and Wild King Peter."

He kisses me back, and then breaks it off to say. "Wild King Peter has not forgotten his grumpiness over his curtailed freedom."

I lower my head and look up at him through my lashes. "Oh? Will King Peter have to punish his D for being naughty and speaking out of turn?"

"Oooh," he growls. "As High King, I say you must be spanked for that."

"You'll have to catch me first!" I cry, leaping off the bed.

"Dare you defy Our authority?"

"I do! I do! I—aaaah! Wait! Let me talk first!"

He halts, pinning my arms to my sides. "What do you have to say for yourself?"

"My King, I know how you enjoy our rides together and the games we play to amuse ourselves, yet we cannot always be leaving the castle, and as you yourself said, the dungeons downstairs start to feel small after a whole winter cooped up inside. Therefore, since I am a wise and thoughtful Queen, who anticipates her King's desires before he knows them himself—"

He kisses the side of my neck, and I grin.

"—I spoke a fortnight ago with the Moles, and arranged for a perfectly delightful network of tunnels and caves to be dug underneath the dungeons, as a surprise for your birthday, where we can while away the hours playing that we flee imagined enemies together, or rescuing each other, or hiding in caves we find along the way to tend each other's wounds. Just like in the old days."

He is silent for a moment, wavering between the beauty of the gift I have arranged for him and the invitation of my coded words. "Nevertheless," he says, considering—

I hold my breath, waiting for his choice. I've had about all the soul-searching emotion I can stand in one day and I really would rather he not go the route of soppy gratitude.

"Nevertheless, D, while that is an extremely lovely birthday present, I fear you still must be spanked for openly defying my express command and resisting punishment."

I hang my head, but can't resist smiling as I slide into the game. I know there is more to be said between us, more stories that need to be told and names that need to be said, but the dam that has kept them locked away inside us for so long has finally cracked. It is enough for today, and now, this is how we slowly begin to heal each other's hurts.

However much pain still lies buried, we have a solid love to stand on as we dig it out, and ten years of comforting each other even when we don't know what the matter is. After so long, there's a deep familiarity to the way he moves, the way he breathes, the way he looks at me and the adoration in his eyes fills the aching places in my heart. Here with Peter, I am never unwanted or unloved, and he is never alone. I am worthy. I am needed, just as I need him. We complement each other perfectly, his strength to my weakness and my insight for his blindness. It is a rhythm, a dance, a song, this marriage of dark and bright, silver and gold, night and day.

King and Queen.

AN2: Well, if you made it this far, we applaud you. In case you still were wondering—

This fic was born one night as V and I discussed the brotherfic/bromance phenomenon, and how unrealistic it is for grown men to cry in each others arms and discuss their emotions to the ends of the earth and back. It's just not something guys really do, and the only place you see that outside of brotherfic is ... slash. So we looked around and read some slash in the pursuit of research, and did a major o.O at how similar it all sounded to standard Peter & Edmund brother bonding.

We concluded that the fanon Peter & Edmund relationship is far too intimate for a pair of platonic brothers, and is actually on a level better suited to a married couple. Not only that, but it would have to be a pretty abnormal married couple to be that angsty and guilty and weepy.

There's other negative characterization tropes at play in the brotherfic/bromance genre, but the biggest is the marginalization of women. Besides Susan and Lucy, who almost never appear except in relation to their brothers, and rarely have any kind of real agency (Susan portrayed as the fussy older sister and later, the apostate, Lucy a perpetual child), it's extremely hard to find a Peter & Edmund fanfic that has any good woman characters. Too often the women are the sorceresses, the villainesses, the helpless weaklings, the evil Sues come to divide the brothers and entrap them in horrible romantic love.

So, you see, this story was an experiment in real-world ramifications of a relationship like the fanon Peter & Edmund one, and also a tweaking of the tropes. The infantalized women? Here, they're actually children (and we couldn't resist pointing out why the original Susan and Lucy were awesome queens). Peter tying Edmund up "for his own good"? Here, it's a game they play and both enjoy. Women in cultures where they don't have much agency and are more or less the property of the men? Here, with Estyl/D, we tried to touch on the damage that can cause. The brothers being separated and the other one being unable to bear it? Yeah. Here it is taken to its extreme and logical conclusion: they would be devastated, and it would take years to heal, especially if Aslan doesn't always show up to wave a magic wand and bring everyone back to life.

Anyway, this is a treatise-length Authors' Note to tack onto a long concluding chapter to a story that became far longer than either of us expected. We only planned on two chapters!

To those of you who read and reviewed all along, thank you again for your time. We hope we made you think.

~ V & K