₁.₀ YES TO HEAVEN; peter pevensie ✔

016.

"You were gone again."

Peter sighs heavily, resisting the urge to run his hand over his face. Birdie's words weren't meant to be an accusation - in fact, they seemed to make a question rather than a statement - but he can't escape the pang of guilt that hits him straight in the chest. It's not like his absence was caused by some whim of his, after all, it was duty that called him away from Cair Paravel, and only for a few days... yet he knows it must have felt much longer for Birdie, trapped not only by death, but by the castle walls also.

He still remembers the morning when he first made the discovery, waking up in some inn (run by a family of very talkative badgers), suddenly startled by the fact that his dreams that night had been... normal. He'd managed to forget what it used to feel like to dream of strange lands and unlikely events and, truth be told, he didn't really feel as though he was missing that much. When he opened his eyes with no recollection of seeing Birdie - for the first time in months - not only did it surprise him, but also made him feel angry, like it was taken away from him by force. Scared, too, because Peter found himself terrified by the possibility of having lost that inexplicable connection with the girl.

He rushed to the castle back then, as soon as his task was done, and Peter didn't care at all about the strange looks given to him by his companions. All he wanted was to make it back to Cair Paravel before the dusk would fall, so that he wouldn't have to meet sleep elsewhere. Just so he could make sure that Birdie would be back there too, that need tugging at his heart as though there was a string wrapped around it that would make it impossible for him to last longer than a single day away in the country.

Looking back at it now, Peter feels a little ashamed of the fact that he would view Birdie almost like an... accessory, of sorts, much like his throne or the enormous wooden desk in his study - just waiting for him, unchanged by the time he is back - but it was easy to ignore that feeling in the past, when a wave of relief crushed over him as he saw her again the following night.

"We've got news about yet another group of Jadis' followers gathering in the Western Wild," he answers now, suddenly aware of the fact that he's trying to make his voice sound apologetically. He can't help it, not really, because Peter might not like being away from the castle... but Birdie must hate being stuck here even more, which makes his shoulders slouch and his lips press tight together each time he rides through the castle gates.

"It's been over a year now and- Because it has, right? I can't quite tell the time in here..."

She's asked him the exact same question before. The last time he had to leave the castle and the time before that, maybe even the time before that time also.

And one could say he's had enough practice to be used to answering it. Perhaps he should, and yet it doesn't come any easier than it did at the very beginning. On the contrary, it breaks his heart each time he has to force words past his lips and watch the way her expression changes: at first, there is a creased forehead and furrowed brows, but soon the weight of his answer dawns on her, followed by a little disbelief and, then, shame.

Because Birdie... forgets things. Not the way someone does when they are tired and have too much on their plate to keep up with everything, not the way it happens when some pieces of information just slip one's mind. If it was only about not remembering minor events or conversations, Peter wouldn't really be that much worried. Hell, he would much rather have Birdie forget the date of his birthday (not like he's ever told her that, because, now that they're in Narnia and unable to glance at a calendar?). But she... gets some things mixed up sometimes, more often than Peter is ready to admit. Time and places, some names too, seem to melt and interchange now and then in the girl's mind, especially when they come connected to what used to be, to what their lives looked like before they first set their feet on Narnian soil.