Wanted ➢ Peter Pevensie [2]

Chapter XXII - A Captain Goes Down With The Ship

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"This night is cold in the kingdom,

I can feel you fade away."

Let Me Down Slowly

Alec Benjamin

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Chapter XXII - A Captain Goes Down With The Ship

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I knew I would never be forgiven. I couldn't imagine forgiving myself for what we had to do. Ben was breaking down by the minute. The stress of losing his best friend only makes his condition worse. The plans were drawn and the preparations were started. The sleepless night's hours went by fast and the time for action came even faster.

It wasn't until the first sail of our Navy's boat dropped that I heard her calling out to me. I turned, she wore all black and emerged from the shadows in a state of mourning. I opened my mouth to explain myself but she filled in the words for me, "Under our orders, Peter and Lucy have been locked in their room. I put my personal guards at their door to assure they stay there."

"Am I doing the right thing, Susan?"

"Just because it doesn't feel right doesn't mean that it is not correct." Susan's eyes were glassy, "I spent so much time hating her that now I regret every moment of it. She had a kind heart and an intelligent brain. She's a prisoner now. And you know what she would want."

"One for the many." I remembered, "She would have called it good politics."

"Ashton was the only person that threatened me. She is stronger than I have ever been and is more fit for queen than I will ever be."

"They are going to hate us."

"Yes." Ben nodded, "But she would hate us even more."

I had gone back and forth all night. The entire country and everyone I loved was counting on me. The same country that she loved. But as someone I loved the most, I couldn't bring myself to think of driving my sword through her heart. Ashton has been with me from the very beginning. I stepped into Narnia a scared greedy boy and we found each other in the caves of ice built by her mother. I remember how the green in her eyes glowed against all the blue that surrounded us. Her mother's eyes were like ice on a pond, deep blue, and hid millions of secrets beneath it. Ashton's resembled the forest on a summer's morning, clear and captured light in the simplest, most natural way.

I could never forget her. She brought me down to earth and made me settle in the dirt. In her, I found someone I could trust before I could trust myself again. She and Ben saved me without even knowing it. I knew that being used and controlled by her mother again was a fear she tried to lock away, she always wanted to seem so strong. We didn't have to speak on it, but with just a few months as Jadis's lab dog, she haunted my nights more than three times that. Surviving those days was agonizing and growing up that way seemed impossible. Ashton lived with it for sixteen years.