unforgettable. || peter pevensie || complete

prologue, part i

[please read a/n at the end, important update info xx]

[this prologue takes place in june 1941, and peter's prologue happens in august, because phoebe's storyline starts further back than peter's x]

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She'd never quite felt the same since she returned. Perhaps it was something to do with dying and coming back to life, or perhaps it was the way everyone looked at her differently now. There was fear in their eyes whenever they saw her, blank stares filled with unanswered questions. She hadn't ever told anyone where she'd been for the eight months she'd been 'missing', but it wasn't as though anyone had ever bothered to ask.

Eight months was a long time when she thought about it. Two-thirds of a year. She didn't understand it. By all technicality, the Pevensies had been out of Narnia for almost a year, and yet they hadn't been called back. Phoebe could only imagine what it was doing to them, having ruled over the land for fifteen years. Phoebe already considered it her real home, and she'd barely been there a week. In fact, it had been only a few weeks after she'd got back home that she realised she was sixteen years old, as of nine days prior.

Even the professor, the one person Phoebe had thought would trust her, or would at least want to know where she'd been and what had happened, didn't seem to want to talk to her. He continued tutoring her, but nothing was the same. She doubted it ever would be. Something fundamental had shifted the moment Phoebe had seen Mrs. Macready cross herself when she'd passed by her in the hall. She'd crossed herself as if Phoebe was something to be feared. It wasn't as though Mrs. Macready had been a mother to Phoebe, but something in that gesture hurt more than Phoebe cared to admit.

The winding, creaking halls of the manor no longer seemed to call to Phoebe. It was as though even the house feared her now, saw her as a stranger harboured in its walls. Sometimes, late at night, when Phoebe couldn't sleep, she questioned the choice she'd made. Should she have returned to England? Was she only causing more trouble than she was worth? She didn't know. Phoebe made it through the stares and whispers simply by reminding herself of Narnia and the Pevensies. She could withstand it for now.

Phoebe knew that the professor knew the Pevensies' address. When she'd first returned, Phoebe had begged and begged him to let her send them a letter, contact them, let them know she wasn't truly dead, and yet he'd denied every one of her requests. Whether it was out of some moral principle, or something he felt he owed to the Pevensies, Phoebe didn't know. All she knew was that it hurt so, so much. Knowing that they were out there, and she couldn't reach them. Knowing that they were alive and safe, and yet knowing that they didn't know those things about her. It was like a steadily twisting knife, digging into her spine. It just hurt. She didn't have a better way of explaining it.

No one seemed to want anything to do with her, and if anything, that only made things worse. She couldn't comfort herself with a routine or distract herself with work. The only time she was ever distracted was when she had tutoring sessions with Professor Kirke, and even those were few and far between. The rest of the time, all she could do was walk aimlessly around the house or its gardens, alone with her thoughts.