The train ride is uncomfortably quiet with Peter and Lucy squished so close on either side of me and the boy with the glasses making eyes at Susan, who looks only as half as receptive to his advances and his insistence at calling her Phyllis –even though we've all pointedly called her "Susan" at least three times each –as she was back home when suitors came from all over the world asking for her hand in marriage. I'd be thinking, if I could, about how I was supposed to explain the loss of my torch to Mum and Dad, but I can't, because between the cramped space and awkward flirtations, Peter keeps looking at me like he has something important to say, but either keeps forgetting he can't discuss it in our current company or he's trying to figure out how to word it. I suspect it's a peculiar combinations of both, because once we're away from the boy with the glasses on the second train home, Peter still doesn't speak, but looks at Lucy and Susan like he wishes they would both go find somewhere else to sit, just so he could talk to me.

But even when we are alone, behind a closed door in our room unpacking, Peter just keeps looking at me, and a couple of times, he takes a breath like he's going to begin, and one time, he even manages a half-convincing "Ed–" but shakes his head like it wasn't quite right, and starts the whole process over again.

The next time he looks at me I am so incredibly frustrated that I stop him before he can start. "By the Lion, Peter!" I snap. "If you've got something to say then say it, but if you haven't then just let it go!" Peter grumbles a little, but we remain in an uncomfortable silence until we go to bed.

This trip to Narnia must have knocked quite a few brain cells loose from his head, because I swear he waits on purpose until he knows I'm on the edge of sleep to start up his escapade of starting the "private-and-delicate" conversation he's been waiting to have with me all day.

"Edmund…" he says from his bed. I suspect he's sitting up, looking at me, feet flat on the floor, but I'm on my side, turned away from him. After twenty years as king, I learned there's hardly anything so important that it can't wait until morning. But when I don't answer, he sighs irritably. "Ed, come on. I need to talk to you."

"And I need to sleep, Peter," I tell him matter-of-factly. "You waited all day to tell me, you can wait another few hours."

"Please." I grumble. High King Peter doesn't say "please" to his little brother unless the thick-headed little brother needs to understand that certain matters can't wait until morning and are absolutely necessary to be sorted now.

I'm still fairly certain Peter could have waited until morning to tell me, but he's said the word "please" to me about four times since we first came to Narnia. (Of course, he's begged Susan and pleaded with Lucy plenty of times, and, because it's polite to say "please," he's said it loads to ambassadors and nobles alike, but to me…) It never came to it, I suppose, or we compromised (or I was right), but he's only ever legitimately said "please" to me when he's desperate, so I drag myself into a sitting position and face him, keenly aware that when I hang my legs off my bed, only my toes touch the floor. "What is it, Peter?" I groan.

He's looking sheepishly down at my feet grazing the floor lightly, like they can't possibly belong to his brother, and I know if I look, I'll feel the same, and I'm getting more and more impatient with Peter each second that passes, so I groan again to hurry him along, but all he says is, "Well, Ed…I just…the thing is…" I slam my head back down on the pillow in response. "Hey, none of that!" he protests.

"Then tell me what you want," I growl.

Peter huffs. I have the uncanny ability to make everyone around me irritable when it's convenient for me, and once I learned how, it's come in handy on more than one occasion, if just to rile up pompous royalty into inaction –or, in Peter's case, action. He's so irritated, he opens his mouth and lets whatever has been eating at him all day out in one frustrated bark. "I just thought you'd like to finish our conversation from the other day!"

I groan and sit back up. I pray a quick prayer of solace to Aslan, with my head in my hands and eyes closed. "When I said 'later,' Peter, I meant 'never,'" I say. There are lots of conversations I don't want to have with my older brother as I'm trying to go to sleep in my own bed for the first time in weeks, and this one, the one where Peter thanks me for doing my job and staying true to my king even when my brother was gone, was at the top of my list. "Or at least 'daylight,'" I add. I don't need the gratitude Peter is wont to give, and I don't want it, but it's better to do it around lunchtime tomorrow than the witching hour tonight.

"Ed…" Peter insists, and I look into his eyes. They're tired and old, but there's a strength and vitality I haven't seen in years, something sad and hopeful. It must be whatever Aslan said to him and Su in private because it's the same sheen I saw in Susan's eyes this afternoon as she deflected the pursuits of "Phyllis's" affections. He looks just like the High King again, after all these months, tired of me resisting his instructions, an order poised, waiting on his lips. He was going to order me to take this seriously, and we were going to talk about it now, when he saw fit.

There's a bitter "Your Majesty" hanging off the tip of my tongue, so I bite my lip to hold it back. I nod my understanding or compliance or allegiance or whatever Peter's asking for so we don't have to go there.

"I'm sorry," he says. He looks so earnest when he says it, I can't help but say, "Don't be." It's a reflex. Usually, Peter has very little to be sorry for.

"You haven't wronged me, I mean," I say. One thing's for sure, Peter has done wrong. To Susan and Lucy, to Aslan, to Narnia, to Caspian, and to lots of the Old Narnians who were depending on their Kings and Queens to deliver them from tyranny. Susan says that Peter has a lot to apologize to me for, but I don't want to hear it.

"But I have, Ed, worse to you than to the others," Peter says. "Of course you'd follow me, of course you'd support me, of course you wouldn't speak out against me in a room full of strangers! Aslan, Ed, I'm your king!" I wait. I want to respond, but I have nothing to say. Besides, Peter's not done. "All year, you've been by my side, all year you've backed me up and called me out, and been by my side because that's your duty to me as my subject."

There's a pause where Peter's unsure whether "subject" is the right word, the word that describes what exactly my obligation to Peter is, but he's hit the nail on the head; even when we're not in Narnia, Peter is my king, my commanding officer. He says jump, I ask to what end, and unless I can find a compelling reason not to, I jump anyway.

But of course, it's not just that. "To be fair, My King," I tell him, and he looks at me and knows the adoration is said equal parts respectful and mocking. "I also did it because you're my brother."

Peter huffs a laugh. "Well," he mutters, and the air of two kings discussing politics over tea we had going since Peter first started this course of discussion lingers only for a second or two longer before disappearing. We're just two school boys, sitting in the near-dark discussing girls or homework or something equally as non-consequential. "Thanks," he says.

I shrug. "Can I go to sleep now?"

Peter shrugs too. "I just thought you ought to know how much it means that you still back me, even when I'm being an ass. And that, in the future, you don't have to, you know." I raise an eyebrow at him, but there's no telling if he sees. "Susan and Lucy have made out just fine criticizing me in front of any and all audiences," he explains.

I laugh a little, and Peter stiffens. I support Peter, I support Narnia, whether they come one in the same, or whether they're separate, the way, I suppose, they will be from now on. But when they weren't, when what Peter decided to have for breakfast was based on the advantages it would have to his country, I made sure that my loyalty lay first in Aslan, and second in Peter. He knows that. He's known that for years, and even though there are a thousand remarks I could make, I make none, expecting Peter to continue on or giving me the "OK" to go to sleep.

But he doesn't say anything me after that. And he doesn't dismiss me either, just holds my gaze in the near-dark, takes a breath, thanks me again, and then, wonder of wonders, he apologizes. "I'm sorry," he says. "For –for the other things…"

The other thing, the thing I don't want to talk about, the thing I hashed out by myself, and don't know the benefit of talking about it ever, especially now, when I just want to go to sleep. "I realized I never properly apologized for it. To anyone." He shuffles around for a few seconds and turns on a lamp. I blink at the suddenness of the light, but I hope Peter can see how weary I am.

"I don't want to talk about it," I tell him seriously. "Just –drop it."

Peter sighs. "Ed…" he says. He looks as tired as I feel, and as much as I don't want to talk about the close call with the White Witch, it seems that Peter has a deep, earnest need to, and even though anyone who has ever met me would advise letting me get my way after midnight, Peter is decidedly not anyone and is going to get his way, just this one time.

I let my shoulders drop so he knows he's won, and he smiles a little, but then, he's stuck. He doesn't know where to start.

So I start.

"It's not your fault, Pete," I say.

He rolls his eyes in the yellow light. "That's my line," he mutters, and I snort. He smiles.

"I understand."

"Ed," he says. He's smiling big and his voice has risen to the point that I can't believe no one else in the house has woken up. "Can I say something?"

I'm a little concerned about the smiling and grinning and I wonder if he's on the edge of hysterics or some weird euphoria that occurs almost two weeks after traumatic events, but still, I say, "Go ahead."

"Well, it's just that…" he starts. He's shuffling on the edge of his bed again, not looking me in the eye. I know that feeling, the feeling that you've screwed up and you have to face the ones you love for the first time. "Well, I told Lucy, and I spoke to Caspian about it briefly, and Aslan had a good few words to say about it..." He's avoiding the point. If it were me, I would go on to list the reaction of every person I'd ever met before getting right to it. Time is not of the essence for Peter, but in that split second before he starts the long list that doesn't get to me until the very end of time he decides he's not going to be embarrassed about his lapse of judgment, his nearly fatal mistake. He's going to look me in the eye and face this head on. "I realized, I thought maybe you'd like a real apology."

"For nearly selling yourself to the White Witch?" I say. It's a little more biting than I mean it to be, but I can't actually bring myself to care. "I really don't." When I say that, he looks a little like he wants to punch me, so I add quickly, "I've been there, and I understand. But I don't want an apology."

Peter nods. I'm not angry with him, for that anyway, and at least he's not angry with me. But he purses his lips, and asks anyway, "Do you…?"

"Do I what?" I say. "Forgive you?" I bite my lip, grin at him. "I'd be a hypocrite not to, I suppose."

"That's not what Susan thinks."

I laugh a little. "Yeah," I say. "Susan has already told me what she thinks. She said she would probably never forgive you." I smirk at him. Hardly an hour after the incident, Susan was seen talking to Peter like she always used to after a particularly hard defeat, comforting him, telling him that even if he made mistakes he could always put them right, at least a little bit, planning their next course of action, mothering her older brother a little bit, telling him and anyone who would listen that there's just too much pressure on Peter's shoulders, he's only one man.

"What do you think?" he asks. He's smiling about Susan, who will probably be mad at him for the rest of her life, but won't let that stop her from forgiving him, as counterintuitive as that sounds, and it sure won't stop her from helping him.

But what do I think. I think I don't know. I think I want to forgive him, and I think I will. It puts Peter on my level when we first entered Narnia, I suppose, which isn't exactly something I want to dwell on, but it means, in reality, that either I absolve him of this sin, like it didn't happen and it doesn't matter, or I hold on to it, forever.

I know I'm not angry, not anymore, and neither of the two options that I'm logically being presented here sound like effective uses of my energy, so I tell him just that. "I'm not angry, Peter," I say. "I was for maybe a minute, maybe two, but I'm not angry."

"Is that as much forgiveness as I'm getting out you?" he asks. His tone is light, but his face is all twisted up into little knots of anxiety like knowing that I can't forgive him is going to kill him, or at least any chance of sleep he has for the night, and I can honestly say that I'm not even thinking that Peter not sleeping means that I probably won't sleep either when I amend my previous answer to be more specific.

"No," I say slowly. I want to make sure I mean what I say, but Peter's face has already loosened up and the relief that I feel at Peter's relief is so great that I realize that of course I forgive Peter. It might as well have been nine-year-old me standing before the Witch, only Peter had much more pressure on his shoulders than even the pressure nine-year-old me imagined I felt on my shoulders. I found it in me to forgive myself a long time ago, and Peter forgave me even sooner than I did. The least I can do for Peter is give him forgiveness. "How could I not forgive you?"

Peter smiles. He's very tired. His eyes are drooping and his head is sagging. He wipes a hand over his face, and when he looks me in the eye, I'm surprised to see he's crying a little. He doesn't thank me again.

Thank Aslan.

Then there's another second of silence in which Peter lays back down, and then, "Good night."

He closes his eyes, and I reach over and shut off the light, and finally go to sleep.