Work Text:
Peter wondered sometimes whether it hadn't all been a little too easy. He always felt guilty afterwards, because of course it hadn't been easy at all: Edmund had planned for years so that he and Lucy could run away together, and if it had all worked out, that was more a testament to Peter's brother's spectacular strategic skills than his luck. But it was still a little odd that everything had worked out, and worked out so well, and when Peter was feeling unhappy and existentialist, he liked to think that it was proof that something beyond mortal comprehension was looking out for the Pevensie children, whatever names and guises they took.
A very little bit of their escape had been luck, pure and simple. Professor Kirke had died just before Edmund finished school, leaving the country estate and a considerable amount of money to the four children he had sheltered during the war. Edmund quietly had his name changed to Kirke, an eccentric but unobjectionable gesture of respect, graduated university and promptly faked his own death in a motorcar accident.
Lucy's escape was simpler to execute but had required more planning; in the end, all she did was tell something close to the truth. She left in the dead of night with a single suitcase, leaving behind a note that stated she had fallen in love with someone her family would never approve of and was running off to elope, which was accurate enough. Edmund had helped her draft the letter, which strongly implied that the reason her mother would not condone Lucy's fiance was that he was Jewish. No one would come looking for Lucy. It wouldn't matter if they did, anyway; they wouldn't know to look for Valentine instead.
Edmund Kirke married Valentine Pevensie in a quiet church in Dover, and then they finished uprooting all traces of their former lives by boarding a ship bound for Boston. A few months later, Peter Pevensie made the most straightforward exit of all: he packed his bags, kissed his sister and left, never to return. Susan had the country house and plenty of money, which soothed his conscience, and an address if she ever wanted to write, because hope sprang eternal, even when Peter might have rather wished it would stop.
Peter rather liked Boston, all told: it reminded him of England, so it was familiar in the beginning, and eventually it became something like home. Professor Kirke's money made it possible Edmund to go to school rather than working right away; he studied law, and Val worked as a nurse at the hospital, because she was hardly suited to staying home and keeping house. Peter might have drifted longer, except he found that he liked the hospital when he went to see his sister, and so when Edmund finished school and got a job, Peter became the family scholar for a few years, so he could be a doctor.
Years passed in Boston, and Peter was comfortable if not completely happy. He had Ed and Val and a pretty townhouse that they all shared, and his little sister teased him at the dinner table about the nurses who made eyes at him at work. It had been a bit of a shock to look at his sister one day and realize that even in his mind, he called her Val, not Lucy; that he really thought of Edmund as his brother-in-law, not his brother. They had lived their fiction so long and so well that they all believed it, and that was the most comfortable fact of all.
Saturday morning was always slow in the Kirke-Pevensie household. Val hadn't even bothered to dress yet, only shuffled into the dining room in a dressing gown with her hair still in its night-time braid. Peter was half-finished with his coffee and the morning paper by the time Edmund emerged from his bedroom, yawning ostentatiously.
"Mail for you, Doctor Pevensie," murmured Mary, the quietly efficient girl who doubled as their cook and their maid, as she set a plate of eggs in front of him. Peter took the letter with a frown; Mary knew to leave his post on his desk with the rest of his work-related papers. The frown cleared as soon as he took a closer look, though confusion drew a line between his brows: the letter was addressed to Peter Pevensie, not Doctor, and had been posted from England.
He pushed away his eggs, appetite gone, and slit the envelope open with his butter knife. "It's from Susan, Valentine," he said, when she gave him an inquiring look. She and Edmund both went still and silent as he skimmed the contents of the letter. Then he forced himself to slow down and read it again, unable to process what she had written.
"Mother's died," he told his sister, and his brother-no-longer. "She's not been in the best of health these past few years, it seems, and she caught a chill... well, I suppose it doesn't really matter. She's dead."
"Father?" Val asked, mostly for Edmund, who was clutching her hand under the table.
"Gone, five years since, she writes. Heart attack."
Val bowed her head briefly, but she seemed mostly unmoved when she raised it again. Her parents had been dead to her since she ran away; Susan's letter was only the details. "I dare say we're fortunate she wrote to tell us at all. Is there anything else?"
"I... do not know," Peter said slowly. He offered the strange, short and stilted letter, handwritten in a beautiful, womanly script, to his sister. She took it without comment. He could tell when she reached the last few paragraphs, because her eyebrows suddenly contracted and her lips thinned.
I cannot presume that you have some way of reaching Edmund and Lucy, but I have hoped, since I cannot believe that freak coincidence could take you all from me in so short a span, that you have managed somehow to remain together. If this is the case, please give them my love, and know that it rests, as ever, with you as well. I have retired to the Professor's estate, and can be reached there if you wish.
I lived bound by obligation and responsibility since we were children. Now that I suddenly find myself free, I scarcely know what to do with myself, except to tell you that I am so, and that if you still want me, I can at long last be yours.
Your loving,
Susan
"Well," Valentine said, her voice clear enough to be heard by Mary in the next room, "that is wonderful news indeed, Peter, to hear that Jenny has accepted you at last, though I suppose I shall have to offer a shoulder for most of the younger nurses to cry on. Of course you must go to England at once to fetch her home."
Peter stared at her, uncomprehending, as she rose and moved across the room to the fireplace. She took the box of matches from the mantle, struck one, and lit the corner of the letter on fire. By the time Peter realized what she was doing, she had dropped the burning page into the fireplace and returned to the table to finish her marmalade and toast.
"Congratulations, Peter," Edmund said with a smile, clapping him on the shoulder. "I rather thought she would give in eventually, but you must permit me to know my own sister better than even the most steadfast lover."
"Yes, of course," Peter replied numbly. It was slowly sinking in. "My gentle Jenny Kirke," he murmured, "and your valiant Valentine."
Perhaps this had been in Edmund's plans all along. Perhaps it was only the most fortuitous of happenstances. Whatever the reason for this unexpected happiness, Peter intended to grab for it and never let Susan go.