The scars remain.

Peter doesn't even notice them himself at first. He tries to avoid paying much attention to his body; after a few months it still feels vaguely wrong to be fourteen. He won't hit his real growth spurt for three years, and it feels wrong to know that as well. Sometimes he still catches himself running his fingers over the smooth lines of his jaw, simultaneously fascinated and disturbed by the feel of smooth skin rather than scratchy beard.

So he isn't the one who notices, and it isn't one of his siblings either. They don't talk about it, but Peter thinks they're having just as much trouble settling back into their old lives. He's seen Ed absentmindedly stroking his own chin, the way he used to when negotiations weren't going the way he wanted, and Susan has started avoiding mirrors. The week after they all return home, he finds Lucy in tears because she needed a stool to reach one of the high cabinets over the kitchen counter.

He's playing football--that's how it happens. He's at school, and he's playing football, and it's unseasonably hot for late October, so he takes his shirt off. He tosses it on the ground outside the painted lines, turns, kicks a neat pass to Owen Finch, who is so busy staring gape-mouthed at him that he misses it completely.

"What?" asks Peter.

"Mate--what happened?"

Peter stares at him. "What are you talking about?"

The ball bounces harmlessly off of the brick wall. Owen looks to the boys on either side of him. One of them--a big redhead Peter thinks is called Jake--opens his mouth, glances at Peter, then shuts it again abruptly.

"Your--what happened to your chest?" Owen points, and Peter looks down, sees the great gash that bisects his torso from nipple to navel, two inches wide and puckered, a souvenir of the skirmishes with the Giants in the seventh year of his reign. A spiked club ripped through his mail shirt, and he lay feverish and insensible on a cot in the centaurs' camp for three days before the northern passes could be cleared enough for Lucy to make it through with the cordial. She arrived without her escort, outdistancing all of them on the Unicorn who agreed to bear her, and he scolded her about that when he woke up, and she cried and said she didn't care.

He almost tells Owen, actually opens his mouth to begin explaining before he remembers where he is. He shuts his mouth, hesitates, then picks up his shirt and pulls it back on. He can feel the silent weight of their stares on his back, but that doesn't matter. He cannot explain about Narnia and he will not lie. Let them think what they like.