Fanfic: Facets, Five things about Edmund
Aug. 26th, 2011 08:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mari4212No, this isn't the one I was asking for a beta for yesterday. When I went to upload that one here, I realized that I'd never put the second or third in the series up. *headdesks* So you'll be getting one per day for the next few days, just so I don't spam flists.
Title: Facets: Edmund
Fandom/Timeline: Narnia, Golden Age/Pevensie reign, pre-Horse and His Boy.
Character: Edmund, mentions of other Pevensies and random OCs.
Warnings: None
Beta: Rishi
Summary: There are sides we don't always show to everyone, sides that no one else sees clearly.
1.
He never let himself forget who he had been before. Ever.
Susan didn’t understand it, he could tell. She was relieved that he had grown and matured, that he’d become a good king in her eyes, that he had worked hard to be a good brother to them all. His gentle sister would rather he had moved on completely and let his guilt go. She believed that he had earned his salvation.
Edmund had knew better.
Peter had understood it a bit more. Then again, there are some things that he thought brothers were just better at getting than sisters, and Peter had spent more time with him than Susan did. Peter had understood what it meant to have a constant knowledge of the burden placed upon your shoulders, how it would both strengthen and exhaust you in turn. Peter’s burden had been his responsibility as High King, and Edmund knew it had weighed upon Peter as strongly as Edmund’s guilt had lain upon him. Still, there was a level that Peter could not have understood. Peter’s responsibility had been laid upon him as a great trust when Aslan had judged him worthy, and Peter had worked each day to live up to that judgement, and had succeeded more than he failed. Edmund’s burden had come from his failure. He carried it, not to prove his worth, but to remind himself of how little he deserved the second chance he had been given. He couldn’t squander that gift with forgetfulness.
It had always been hard for Edmund to tell how Lucy had felt about it. At times, it wass as if she hadn’t ever seen it at all. Whereas Peter and Susan had looked past his former sins and seen him, Lucy had seemed to blaze through them and erase any lingering trace of them without noticing at all. That, despite the fact that all but the worst of his failings had been aimed solely at her.
At other times, he had caught her frank gaze upon him, and had wondered if it was not the case that she had seen his past sins more clearly than anyone else. But having seen them, it had been as if they simply had reminded her that all of them were imperfect and in need of mercy, not just him.
Those were the moments when he thought that who he was before was gone forever.
2.
He had a rather sardonic sense of humor that never failed to strike at the worst possible moments. Like when yet another diplomatic envoy came through proposing a marriage-alliance with Narnia –for once, looking to Peter as the potential victim instead of Susan.
They’d brought the girl along with them, and really, for a foreign princess they knew almost nothing about, she wasn’t all that bad. She was reasonably intelligent, polite to the various Narnians she encountered, and hadn’t said anything to insult or upset Lucy, which automatically put her ahead of a good half of Susan’s potential suitors so far. Especially the last one, who had failed on all three counts.
Naturally, in the face of all this, Peter was terrified of her and spent the majority of his time in her presence in his full ‘High King” attitude. He was polite, gracious, noble, and more stiff and formal than a centaur at his most rigid. This situation lasted for nigh onto a month before Edmund, truly exasperated, finally gave up and jokingly suggested over breakfast that he’d marry the girl himself if it would get Peter to forget about being the High King for a bit and go back to being his brother again.
In retrospect, he might have done better to wait until after Peter had finished eating his toast. Or for a time when Susan had not just taken a rather larger than usual sip of tea.
Lucy had laughed her head off, though. As had the visiting princess, who’d then had the wit to suggest, over her sputtering ambassador’s objections, that they table the matter of an alliance for a few years, and perhaps discuss it later, when Edmund was of marriageable years.
3.
The first time he had muttered a sarcastic comment when they were negotiating mining rights with a group of dwarves, they announced that they’d only deal with him from that point on, because Peter was too nice to be trustworthy.
Peter had turned a fascinating shade of puce before politely washing his hands of it and turning the rest of the negotiations over to his younger brother. Edmund thought the diplomacy with which Peter had accepted the insult to his honor possibly proved their point to the dwarves, so when he took Peter’s place in leading the discussion, he spent most of the rest of the day explaining exactly how much they’d erred in their judgement, sharpening his tongue upon them in a way he’d normally be ashamed of behaving towards one of his subjects.
Later on, after the negotiations were over, Peter said he hadn’t minded, as it got him out of three days worth of tedious councils. Furthermore, he noted that Edmund had gotten a better deal out of the dwarves in payment for their insult of the High King than Peter would ever have pressed for receiving. In the end, their behaviors in this negotiation became one more tactic they would reach for in difficult times, Peter leading with Edmund there to support him against all comers.
4.
He understood Susan the best, he thought, but he was undeniably closest to Lucy.
In truth, Queen Susan the gentle was simplicity itself to understand, if you had only shared her nature. He did.
They had both shared the same sense of remove from their surroundings, the same tendency towards observation, reflection, and a habit of considering alternate points of view in any situation, whereas Lucy and Peter had blazed straight ahead and expected everyone to share the same forthright nature of which they possessed in such abundance. If Edmund had wanted a decent chess match, he would have played Susan and goaded her into giving it her all, because she had been able to plan multiple strategies and hide where she was going better than anyone else. He and Susan had both understood how each other’s minds worked, and they had been able to communicate quite clearly in language opaque to all others around. It was why they had paired so well and so often on diplomatic missions that had left Peter brusque and annoyed or Lucy in a fury. In speech they had balanced one another, her ability to sooth even the roughest temperaments contrasting with his more acerbic wordings. Together, they had rarely been unsuccessful in achieving whatever it was that Narnia had needed from any treaty or accord.
Beyond all that, he had understood and shared her tendency to hold herself to impossibly high standards, and her propensity to lambaste herself whenever she failed. After all, he had done the same whenever his past actions had come to mind. He understood more than anyone the relentless drive to improve, and the feeble hope that by doing so, one might finally feel worthy. It had taken him years to put to rest his own demons, years to remember the words Aslan had spoken to him after his rescue, about grace and forgiveness and not being worthy, but instead allowing another to love you despite your failings.
For him, understanding his older sister had been as natural as breathing.
And yet, even with the great depth of understanding he found he had for Susan, it was Lucy’s presence he had sought out time and again above any other’s. He had not understood her as well, there had been times when he had believed he would never comprehend her openhearted joy and love of life, but he had craved it with every fiber of his being. When he had been with Lucy, he found that he had striven to be the man she had seen him as, a true King of Narnia, and her beloved brother.
Finally, he had realized that Lucy had seen him as Aslan once had, with all of the good and the bad he knew he held within his soul, and had loved him for it. How could he not have loved her company when she had blessed him with that?
5.
He had loved the law in all forms. In the years immediately following their coronation, he’d immersed himself in the laws of Narnia; the wisdom of past kings and queens shaping all that was to follow in the land.
The laws had given him a structure to learn from, a framework which had taught him in every word written and every thought implied, what it was that Narnia had held true and sacred, what ideals had been etched into every Narnian’s soul. The same ideals he had seen reflected in his siblings, bravery, compassion, and faithfulness which had been as natural to them as breathing, but which he had found himself striving and often failing to grasp upon every occasion.
He had struggled for months over the first law he had written as King, painstakingly writing and rewriting it to be clear, to answer the need he’d seen from his subjects and the hole it had filled in the legal code, to make it fit into place among the other laws and offer one more protection for the citizens of Narnia.
He’d been sick with worry over it, stomach a tense knot and throat nearly closed over with anxiety as he’d presented the final draft to his teachers, an extremely patient pairing of a badger and a centaur, for their approval. When Mossfitter had patted his hand with a densely furred paw and told him in his gravelly, whiskery voice that he had done quite well, and Herun had nodded in agreement, he’d had to sit down quite fast in relief.
He’d felt the same kind of tension a short month later, when he’d first been called in to mediate between two arguing otters over a disputed stretch of bank. No one else seemed to understand how much it mattered, how vitally important it was for him to live up to what the others called him, to truly be just.
When he had finally gotten frustrated with the way his siblings had seemed to ignore his valid reasons for being so worried, he had confronted Peter about it, in the confident knowledge that Peter wouldn’t try to protect his feelings when he answered. He had been rocked when Peter had turned around with an exasperated sigh and told him that of course they had ignored his worries, because the only one who couldn’t see how much better a job Edmund did at judging wisely and compassionately than the rest of them combined was Edmund.
He’d never thought that the others might see more in his actions than he himself did.
Title: Facets: Edmund
Fandom/Timeline: Narnia, Golden Age/Pevensie reign, pre-Horse and His Boy.
Character: Edmund, mentions of other Pevensies and random OCs.
Warnings: None
Beta: Rishi
Summary: There are sides we don't always show to everyone, sides that no one else sees clearly.
1.
He never let himself forget who he had been before. Ever.
Susan didn’t understand it, he could tell. She was relieved that he had grown and matured, that he’d become a good king in her eyes, that he had worked hard to be a good brother to them all. His gentle sister would rather he had moved on completely and let his guilt go. She believed that he had earned his salvation.
Edmund had knew better.
Peter had understood it a bit more. Then again, there are some things that he thought brothers were just better at getting than sisters, and Peter had spent more time with him than Susan did. Peter had understood what it meant to have a constant knowledge of the burden placed upon your shoulders, how it would both strengthen and exhaust you in turn. Peter’s burden had been his responsibility as High King, and Edmund knew it had weighed upon Peter as strongly as Edmund’s guilt had lain upon him. Still, there was a level that Peter could not have understood. Peter’s responsibility had been laid upon him as a great trust when Aslan had judged him worthy, and Peter had worked each day to live up to that judgement, and had succeeded more than he failed. Edmund’s burden had come from his failure. He carried it, not to prove his worth, but to remind himself of how little he deserved the second chance he had been given. He couldn’t squander that gift with forgetfulness.
It had always been hard for Edmund to tell how Lucy had felt about it. At times, it wass as if she hadn’t ever seen it at all. Whereas Peter and Susan had looked past his former sins and seen him, Lucy had seemed to blaze through them and erase any lingering trace of them without noticing at all. That, despite the fact that all but the worst of his failings had been aimed solely at her.
At other times, he had caught her frank gaze upon him, and had wondered if it was not the case that she had seen his past sins more clearly than anyone else. But having seen them, it had been as if they simply had reminded her that all of them were imperfect and in need of mercy, not just him.
Those were the moments when he thought that who he was before was gone forever.
2.
He had a rather sardonic sense of humor that never failed to strike at the worst possible moments. Like when yet another diplomatic envoy came through proposing a marriage-alliance with Narnia –for once, looking to Peter as the potential victim instead of Susan.
They’d brought the girl along with them, and really, for a foreign princess they knew almost nothing about, she wasn’t all that bad. She was reasonably intelligent, polite to the various Narnians she encountered, and hadn’t said anything to insult or upset Lucy, which automatically put her ahead of a good half of Susan’s potential suitors so far. Especially the last one, who had failed on all three counts.
Naturally, in the face of all this, Peter was terrified of her and spent the majority of his time in her presence in his full ‘High King” attitude. He was polite, gracious, noble, and more stiff and formal than a centaur at his most rigid. This situation lasted for nigh onto a month before Edmund, truly exasperated, finally gave up and jokingly suggested over breakfast that he’d marry the girl himself if it would get Peter to forget about being the High King for a bit and go back to being his brother again.
In retrospect, he might have done better to wait until after Peter had finished eating his toast. Or for a time when Susan had not just taken a rather larger than usual sip of tea.
Lucy had laughed her head off, though. As had the visiting princess, who’d then had the wit to suggest, over her sputtering ambassador’s objections, that they table the matter of an alliance for a few years, and perhaps discuss it later, when Edmund was of marriageable years.
3.
The first time he had muttered a sarcastic comment when they were negotiating mining rights with a group of dwarves, they announced that they’d only deal with him from that point on, because Peter was too nice to be trustworthy.
Peter had turned a fascinating shade of puce before politely washing his hands of it and turning the rest of the negotiations over to his younger brother. Edmund thought the diplomacy with which Peter had accepted the insult to his honor possibly proved their point to the dwarves, so when he took Peter’s place in leading the discussion, he spent most of the rest of the day explaining exactly how much they’d erred in their judgement, sharpening his tongue upon them in a way he’d normally be ashamed of behaving towards one of his subjects.
Later on, after the negotiations were over, Peter said he hadn’t minded, as it got him out of three days worth of tedious councils. Furthermore, he noted that Edmund had gotten a better deal out of the dwarves in payment for their insult of the High King than Peter would ever have pressed for receiving. In the end, their behaviors in this negotiation became one more tactic they would reach for in difficult times, Peter leading with Edmund there to support him against all comers.
4.
He understood Susan the best, he thought, but he was undeniably closest to Lucy.
In truth, Queen Susan the gentle was simplicity itself to understand, if you had only shared her nature. He did.
They had both shared the same sense of remove from their surroundings, the same tendency towards observation, reflection, and a habit of considering alternate points of view in any situation, whereas Lucy and Peter had blazed straight ahead and expected everyone to share the same forthright nature of which they possessed in such abundance. If Edmund had wanted a decent chess match, he would have played Susan and goaded her into giving it her all, because she had been able to plan multiple strategies and hide where she was going better than anyone else. He and Susan had both understood how each other’s minds worked, and they had been able to communicate quite clearly in language opaque to all others around. It was why they had paired so well and so often on diplomatic missions that had left Peter brusque and annoyed or Lucy in a fury. In speech they had balanced one another, her ability to sooth even the roughest temperaments contrasting with his more acerbic wordings. Together, they had rarely been unsuccessful in achieving whatever it was that Narnia had needed from any treaty or accord.
Beyond all that, he had understood and shared her tendency to hold herself to impossibly high standards, and her propensity to lambaste herself whenever she failed. After all, he had done the same whenever his past actions had come to mind. He understood more than anyone the relentless drive to improve, and the feeble hope that by doing so, one might finally feel worthy. It had taken him years to put to rest his own demons, years to remember the words Aslan had spoken to him after his rescue, about grace and forgiveness and not being worthy, but instead allowing another to love you despite your failings.
For him, understanding his older sister had been as natural as breathing.
And yet, even with the great depth of understanding he found he had for Susan, it was Lucy’s presence he had sought out time and again above any other’s. He had not understood her as well, there had been times when he had believed he would never comprehend her openhearted joy and love of life, but he had craved it with every fiber of his being. When he had been with Lucy, he found that he had striven to be the man she had seen him as, a true King of Narnia, and her beloved brother.
Finally, he had realized that Lucy had seen him as Aslan once had, with all of the good and the bad he knew he held within his soul, and had loved him for it. How could he not have loved her company when she had blessed him with that?
5.
He had loved the law in all forms. In the years immediately following their coronation, he’d immersed himself in the laws of Narnia; the wisdom of past kings and queens shaping all that was to follow in the land.
The laws had given him a structure to learn from, a framework which had taught him in every word written and every thought implied, what it was that Narnia had held true and sacred, what ideals had been etched into every Narnian’s soul. The same ideals he had seen reflected in his siblings, bravery, compassion, and faithfulness which had been as natural to them as breathing, but which he had found himself striving and often failing to grasp upon every occasion.
He had struggled for months over the first law he had written as King, painstakingly writing and rewriting it to be clear, to answer the need he’d seen from his subjects and the hole it had filled in the legal code, to make it fit into place among the other laws and offer one more protection for the citizens of Narnia.
He’d been sick with worry over it, stomach a tense knot and throat nearly closed over with anxiety as he’d presented the final draft to his teachers, an extremely patient pairing of a badger and a centaur, for their approval. When Mossfitter had patted his hand with a densely furred paw and told him in his gravelly, whiskery voice that he had done quite well, and Herun had nodded in agreement, he’d had to sit down quite fast in relief.
He’d felt the same kind of tension a short month later, when he’d first been called in to mediate between two arguing otters over a disputed stretch of bank. No one else seemed to understand how much it mattered, how vitally important it was for him to live up to what the others called him, to truly be just.
When he had finally gotten frustrated with the way his siblings had seemed to ignore his valid reasons for being so worried, he had confronted Peter about it, in the confident knowledge that Peter wouldn’t try to protect his feelings when he answered. He had been rocked when Peter had turned around with an exasperated sigh and told him that of course they had ignored his worries, because the only one who couldn’t see how much better a job Edmund did at judging wisely and compassionately than the rest of them combined was Edmund.
He’d never thought that the others might see more in his actions than he himself did.