"some painful secret, hid behind bared teeth"
Title: some painful secret, hid behind bared teeth
Fandom: Chronicles of Narnia.
Characters: ensemble, with focus on Lucy.
Word Count: 5773
Rating: 15
Summary: Lucy’s good at lying. Some Lucy/OMC; mid-Golden Age.
Warnings: violence/disturbing imagery, some graphic; discussion of a miscarriage
Notes: Roughly written for hc_bingo (my bingo card is lurking here), for the prompt nervous breakdown. Kinda. Debatably. Basically, this is me getting back into the writing swing, perhaps. (Oh fuck, so much work I haven’t even touched… Remind me why I let myself in for all of this?? *facepalm)
some painful secret, hid behind bared teeth
The Guard rush past, summoned better by the clash of swordsteel than any warning bell. Or, they try and rush past - but Lucy has heard Edmund’s cries (and they are cries-sharp and fraught and full of pain-and Edmund never makes a sound when he fights), and they may be the Royal Guard, her defenders, but she is not helpless. (They’d be surprised if they knew the extent of how not-helpless she is - but that’s her secret; hers and Peter’s. It’s not for the Guard to know how their laughing Queen spends those absent hours, in blood and lure of shadows.) And now Edmund needs her - the idiot.
She hears Peter grunt, and the crow of some would-be assassin - but that’s okay, because Peter isn’t Edmund: he makes as much of a racket as he pleases. He is the High King. (Her heart beats in her throat. Ed. Ed.) Her shoes smack the slabbed stone floor with abandon, and she has dagger in hand as she races-
A hand closes on her wrist, jerking her away from her goal - and she has madness already creeping its red haze over her eyes; ‘Valiant’ can be just another way of saying ‘bloodthirsty’. She’d snarl, if that befitted a Queen of Narnia: “My brothers-”
She’s met by nothing but stubbornness - and it’s a stubbornness to match her own. “Can’t let you put yourself in danger, Your Highness.”
“Stellima-”
And there’s almost a curse on Lucy’s lips, because, sometimes, there’s no place for the Guard’s zeal - because Peter and Edmund are stupid and reckless and her family, and she’d let Jadis ice over the world before she didn’t do every little thing she could to keep them safe. And she’ll say just that, too-spit it in Stellima’s feline face-because she won’t be ruled by anyone but Peter’s throne (him, in and of himself, she’s not so bothered about: brothers can be manipulated by a flutter of the eyelashes and the little sister charm) - but she can’t. She’s pushed back - shoved back, with a gauntleted paw slammed so hard into her belly-it’ll bruise, if not break the skin: she’s anticipating blood-and she’s forced back against the wall. (Pain. Sharp and searing and oh, she might see stars.) Kursim gallops past, spear hefted high as Edmund cries out - and Lucy aches to go to him to save him, to help-
There’s a strange sensation in her stomach.
Lucy starts away from the wall, starts after the snarl of Stellima’s leap into battle - but Susan has followed in the Guard’s wake, and the clatter of her sister’s footsteps is enough to halt Lucy’s onward rush. She has more siblings than are manageable, in this world of intrigue and stabs in dim corners - and she turns to her gentle sister with a forced smile and a calming word- But no, because Susan’s lips are set. She presses that old crystal vial into Lucy’s hands, a darkness in her eyes. “I heard Ed,” she says, and sometimes Lucy forgets that she’s not the only one who’s nearly seen her brothers die a hundred times over.
Lucy takes the vial, and only half-sees the dagger that vanishes up Susan’s sleeve. They turn; they run.
“Your Majesties,” Stellima howls.
Lucy feels her nose scrunch as her feet beat the stones (like the petulant child she used to be), and she half-thinks, Not that you wanted me around half a heartbeat ago - but she knows the lie in her own words. Sometimes she thinks she might hate the Guard, because her every breath is monitored, written down, reported to the Castle Guard and analysed for meaning - but, then again, she has no right to hate them, for what they’ve done. They guard her because they care, and she has too many dead on her conscience to begrudge them her freedom.
She shouldn’t be thinking about this - it has no bearing on what she’s doing; on the race of life-and-death to see who can be first to save Edmund’s life. Oh, please - Ed. Her mind is wandering. She thinks she hears gasping-panicked, pained gasping, out of sync with the thudding of her feet and the pounding of her heart-but she can’t, because quietness never was a battle’s forte-
So much blood, and it’s spilling over Peter’s hands and the gilt of his tunic - but it’s not his blood, not his blood.
“Ed.”
And there’s no way to describe the fear and shock that pain and terror that spills from Susan’s lips, all bottled up in the name of their vacant-eyed brother.
At night, Lucy walks in the gardens of Cair Paravel. Grass is lush underfoot, blades bending and bowing beneath her bare feet, and the starlight that whispers from above glints off the broken stems she leaves in her wake. She doesn’t cry, not yet (Ed, please), but the starglimmer on broken things looks like tears - Lucy’s eyes are dry, but Narnia cries for her. Narnia knows her better than she knows herself. Lucy folds her arms, pauses in the shadows. If she closes her eyes and holds her breath, she can hear the dryads hum as they sleep.
Waves whorl against the sands, so far below.
“How’s your brother?”
She can feel his warmth, through the air - but she doesn’t turn around. She’s tired. “Better,” she answers, bitterly, “not that he’s not holding his guts in with his own hands.” Not an image she’ll be forgetting anytime soon - and her hands clench, white-knuckled, in her skirts. Narnian Queens don’t cry from the sheer fear; Narnian Queens aren’t that weak. “He’s sleeping.” She doesn’t add won’t wake up and it’s scaring me - just bites her lip, feels that ache in her stomach again: phantom pain, perhaps - remembering Peter’s palms pressed to Edmund’s belly as he cried out, screamed. “They were Calormenes,” she says, “maybe. Their assassins like the slow kill; they like to watch.”
Hands close around her upper arms.
“Ed’ll be okay,” Lucy says, as if to herself - and there’s a hollowness in those words, because she remembers the look in his eyes as he lay lolled against the courtyard steps.
“I know,” he answers, and guides her back against his chest - pushes her hair aside (fingers ghosting the hairs on her neck into holly-prickles), presses his cheek to her skin. His palm splays over her stomach, beneath the swell of her breasts-oh please, Ed, don’t go, wake up-and soft breaths whisper across the tip of her nose as she turns her head to meet him. Lips, inches from lips - and her brother lies inside, maybe dying, because he was slipping away even as his blood pulsed around Peter’s fingers.
“Darys,” she says, breathes, “I can’t-”
“You think that’s what I’m after?” And he holds her, tight and close, and touches his palm over her heart. “Lucy,” he says, with a richness to her name that she’s never heard before: like the mountains of so-blue ice that carpet Beruna in winter; like the warmth of a campfire in the woods at night. Lucy closes her eyes, lets herself be held - doesn’t cry, just listens to the dryads breath.
“Susan not coming?” Lucy asks, flicking out a napkin across her lap. The breakfast table is so empty, and she doesn’t look to Edmund’s empty seat. Her stomach clenches, hurts - Stellima bruised her, perhaps, but when she looked earlier there wasn’t nearly enough bruising to warrant this much of an ache; this deep an ache.
Peter shakes his head, slowly. “She was up all night with Ed - I sent her to bed at dawn.” There’s a haggardness to the set of his eyes, and golden stubble has pricked its way across his chin. None of them slept last night, Lucy is realised - save Edmund, of course. Peter’s head is bowed, now, and his hands are clenched white-in frustration, maybe-but there’s still something of the High King in the timbre of his voice and the set of his jaw. “She was exhausted.”
Lucy draws the fruit-bowl towards her, and doesn’t think about how she didn’t spend the night - with her family, where she ought to be. “We all are,” she answers. She takes an apple, cool in her palm, and asks, “Has he woken?”
Peter doesn’t even look up. “No.”
The cordial-vial glimmers in her hands, and Lucy spins it restlessly in the sunlight - it casts redness in spatters across her palms. (Not blood; not now. The courtyard is scrubbed clean.) She lets the vial drop to her lap, because she can’t exactly hold something quite that valuable when her hands are shaking like they’ll never stop - and she won’t think about the stillness in Edmund’s limbs as he sleeps, because the cordial’s never failed before, and it can’t now; just can’t-
Darys’ hands cover hers, and pluck the cordial from her lap. “Be patient,” he says, softly, and tucks it back into its pouch, caught at her waist.
And the only words that will allow themselves to cross Lucy’s lips are, “My stomach hurts.” Some Queen she is. She feels sick.
From the windows of Edmund’s room, Lucy can see across half of Cair Paravel, from the towertops down to the glittering of the sea - and as the dimming light of the afternoon glances across rooftops and courtyards, there’s a blaze in the air that sets something warm in her heart. (Narnia. Even the name is beautiful.) Lucy stands at her brother’s window and watches the city’s bustle - because that’s so much easier than turning around and sitting down in the city where Susan whiled away the night in wishing. Besides, the view is captivating: this is their kingdom; this is what they created out of the ashes of winter. Ed used to say that he chose these rooms for that view - he’s not in the North Wing, where tradition dictates that monarchs make their homes, but halfway up the central tower, with rounded walls and a spiralling arch of a stairway connecting the three levels of his space. Lucy comes here in the winter, when bitterness and snow blanket them in, and they light a fire in the grate and discuss the Archenland succession.
There’s the clash of steel on steel from below, but Lucy doesn’t look, doesn’t panic - she doesn’t need to. The whole court (and half their enemies) know how the High King gets out his anger - and Lucy knows Peter’s exertion: knows his grunts and his hisses and the music of his war. Right now, he has nothing to fight against but himself.
(There’s blood on the skirts of her dress, and she doesn’t know how it got there. Yesterday’s dress is ruined-stained and discarded: Stellima couldn’t save her from everything-but today’s should be spotless - fresh from cleaning; fresh on this morning. There are spots of blood on the skirts, seeping through from inside - and that ache that was in her belly is sharper, more insistent. She would say that was normal-she is a woman; she is aware of these things, no matter how much Peter would like to think her innocent and eternally babyish-but it’s not time - and, if she thinks about it, it hasn’t been that time for her for a few months, now. She’s not stupid - she half-knows (even if she doesn’t want to) what that means - but she isn’t going to think about it, now; she can’t. The ache in her stomach - an emptiness, perhaps, but there was never anything there to begin with. (Was there?)
Fingers are white-knuckled around the balcony rail. She doesn’t touch her skirts.
“Lucy?”
And the voice is less a whisper and more the fading ghost of a rush of air, but oh, she knows that voice (that whisper; that ghost). Something clutches at her throat, and she spins, peering into the room she’s spent so long avoiding even thinking about (because her brother’s body, limp and motionless, sets terrors in her heart that she’d rather not consider) - and he’s pale, drained, but awake. Curled in the bed that looks so big right now, with hair more mussed than not and something hollow in his eyes - but he’s awake, he’s aware. He knows her.
“Edmund,” she breathes - and doesn’t run, but that’s only because she doesn’t need to. Two steps, and Lucy closes her touch around her brother’s limp hand - and there’ something in her that quails at the weakness in that touch. (He’s Ed; cocky Ed, brave Ed. King of Shadows and the West.) She remembers to force a smile - because even when she wants to hide herself, she has a duty. She has needs - and needs must. “You almost had me worried.”
Edmund’s eyes are dark and empty, focused on some point above her shoulder - some phantom she can’t see, but can almost feel. He’s afraid - or, would be if he had enough energy to feel.”They came out of nowhere,” he rasps, voice absent, like he’s talking to himself, like she’s not even there. “I barely-” And he stops, stops himself, and there’s bile in Lucy’s heart as horror flits across his expression - because he knows, and she can’t imagine- Edmund tears at the sheets cocooning him into warmth and safety, but his fingers are weak, so weak, and so he does nothing but paw uselessly at blankets with colour frantic in his cheeks - and it’s pathetic, and it’s not Edmund, and Lucy wants to cry.
“Stop,” she says. “Stop.” She takes his hands, presses them between her own. His eyes are wild - and she says, “Ed, listen. You’re okay. They’re gone, and you’re okay. I promise.” And she doesn’t talk about scars-about the band of pink-white scabrous tissue that’s wound across his stomach; about the fragility of his appearance, and of the healing; about how Ed you nearly died-just smoothes a hand across his forehead, and says, “Rest, Ed. Don’t think about it. You’re safe.” Which is a lie, of course - because those creatures that nearly tore her brother in half vanished like the silence of the dawn. Ignorance and uselessness - they’re driving Peter mad. It’s why he fights, rages. It’s why he doesn’t sleep.
Even the pinkness of Edmund’s tongue seems dull, almost - but he licks his lips, as she’s seen him do a thousand times before, and looks at her (finally), and says, “I trust you, Lu.”
(Her heart twists.) She squeezes his hands; leans forward and kisses his forehead. “Then, next time,” she says, “don’t get caught up in Peter’s heroics.”
Edmund’s eyes are glassy - but that’s okay, because it’s the lull of sleep that’s wrapping his mind in knots. (It has to be.) “How d’you know,” he almost slurs, words running into words, “there’ll be a next time?” And he slips into the pillows, eyes half-lidded, as if ten seconds of talking and remembering (with all the pain that brings) is enough to exhaust him. Maybe it is.
Lucy pushes back hair from her forehead, and forces her heart to quell its swelling. (It’ll be okay. He’s okay. Thank you.) “There always is,” she answers, soft as the breezes outside his windows.
Edmund shifts, just a little, arms sliding fractionally across the blankets - and he says, “Lu, there’s blood on your dress.” And he sleeps.
Below, Lucy hears Peter spit his frustration to the skies.
It’s midnight, nearly. The stars are high in the sky, and as Lucy paces past windows the lights spatters across his cheeks - patterns stencilled out of the universe. Her feet are wrapped in soft shoes, the fabric barely cushioning her soles from the smooth chill of Cair Paravel’s floors - but she doesn’t care about the shudder of impact through her heels and the slenderness of her calves, because she makes barely a noise as she treads the halls. Right now, she wants to pretend she doesn’t exist - and so she wears a man’s shirt (stolen from Edmund’s wardrobe, so long ago) and loose trousers, and wanders through the shadows. She’d say there’s something strange about Cair Paravel at night, but if there is, she doesn’t feel it - distracted, disoriented.
(Her dress is balled in a corner of her rooms, now, bloodstained and ignored. It’s the wrong time for her to bleed - it shouldn’t be now. Lucy won’t think about that, because she half-knows - or, she might do. Please, no.)
Lucy breathes - just breathes.
“I heard Edmund was awake,” Darys says, keeping half a pace away from her. She doesn’t look at him-not directly; she can see him, in the almost-corner of her eye, and his silhouette against the shimmer of torchflame is all lines and angles (nothing soft)-but she can hear his expression in the cadence of his voice: concern, but not for Edmund; not for the one who needs it. (Abruptly, she needs him. But no.) “And that you were with him.”
Lucy crosses her arms, more to stop her plucking for her absent skirts than anything else. She is Queen, not some maid in need of the reassurance of her femininity. “Just briefly,” she says. “He was- Disoriented.” And she bites the inside of her cheek, screws nails into palms, and continued: “But he remembered it all quite clearly. I don’t-” And she stops, stops herself, because she can’t quite vocalise the look in Edmund’s eyes as he remembered his innards trying their best to slither out of his body - that wound, gaping red and slick under Peter’s panic, and Ed’s eyes, lolled back in his head. (And then the ache - the ache in her stomach, sharp and dull and throbbing, throbbing.)
She whispers, “I think I’m going to be sick.”
Darys steps forward, concern in the tilt of his fingertips as he reaches for her hands - flamelight licks red across his cheeks, and Lucy thinks there’sbloodonyourdress (with Edmund’s silvered tones dulled to nothingness by the chafe of healing). She vomits; spins away and heaves into a corner, in the shadows. Her eyes are wet - but she won’t cry, because what does she have to cry about? She’s not invalided in bed; she’s not only just alive; she hasn’t had her stomach rent apart by nothing more than happenstance.
(But, then again.)
“Lucy,” Darys says (low, intense), “are you bleeding?”
And she can’t even face him, now. Stellima pushed her aside for her own safety-to save her from Edmund’s convalescence-but she pushed her with the force of an armoured paw to the stomach (almost a punch, really, because Stellima knows Lucy’s stubbornness better than any-not that that’s an achievement to crow about-and Lucy’s never minded the rough-and-tumble before, because there’ some part of her that knows it’s necessary). The crash of memory makes Lucy almost tremble. Hands palm-flat on the stone floor, hair caught up in Darys’ care, she shakes, and there’s no way she could stop herself even if she wanted to. Her eyes are glassy, because Edmund is the one who needs care; Edmund is the one whose life has been split apart - and she’s just Lucy, Queen of happiness and healing. She can’t-
“Lucy,” Darys says, “talk to me. Please.” And there’s a plea in that ‘please’, she knows - a plea and a wish and a throb of help me understand.
She’s not quite sure how to say I think I’m losing your child (the one I didn’t know existed) - and something break in her, at that thought. This isn’t how things are supposed to be.
Spring is hardly cold, but Lucy stokes the fires that blazes in her rooms, piling it high with coal and tinder and the embers of the last blaze that burnt itself away. She burns it all up, and the heat winds its way through her hair and her clothes and leaves her sweating.
She ran from Darys, last night - left him in the castle’s corridors with only the contents of her stomach as a memento of her presence, and ran. Silent, like a ghost; like death.)
Lucy balls up the dress she wore yesterday-bloody and crumpled and torn, because she couldn’t get it away from her skin fast enough-and pushes it into the fire. Flames eat at the thickness of the fabric, at its gilded edges and fleurs de lis embellishments, and there’s a tremble in Lucy’s fingertips.
The bleeding hasn’t stopped.
Peter grasps her hands in the courtyard, whirls her in a circle - and he’s laughing, laughing. He hasn’t even smiled in days - and Lucy can’t help but smile along with him, now, because they haven’t lost a soul, and that’s a lie to celebrate. (Edmund’s awake. He’s awake and grumpy and bedbound, and alive.) Peter catches her up in his arms and spins her through the air like she’s a child, and he’s splitting his face with the razored edges of his grin (but there are still tears in his eyes and on his cheeks, because he knows better than so many how close they came to the loss none of them can imagine) - and when he judders to a shaky halt, he doesn’t put her down: he hugs her, crushes her to him with a fierceness that makes her tongue thicken with emotion.
And the people smile, because they might not know the full tale - but when they see their High King twirl his sister in Cair Paravel with nothing less than ecstatic abandon, they know things are good; better than.
Peter presses his cheek to hers, and Lucy feels his tears slip across her skin.
(Today, she wears a red dress.)
Lucy is dreaming. She knows this - it’s clear enough from the way the trees don’t move with the wind, and the absence of the dryads; the way she wears the dress of a home she’s almost forgotten (grey and drag and the wartime of England, not Narnia). She stands in Cair Paravel’s gardens, barefoot (but with her feet crushing boot-treads into the soft soil), in that spot where maybe the life she couldn’t protect came about-Darys’ hand around her wrist, tugging her out into the grassy avenues with a whisper of live a little: and she did, but to such irony-and it must be winter in her mind - it’s bitterly cold. Behind her, snow dusts itself across the castle’s rooftops, icing a blanket of clarity over the mess of life.
Oh. Her hands are clasped over her stomach. If she thought about it, she’d feel so ill (broken; empty) - but she is Queen. She has no time to think.
She knows him before she sees him - knows the pawpads upon the ground and the whisper of lion-breath on the air. (Why is it that he only comes when she feels the hurt might kill her?) He doesn’t speak, in those rich tones that some part of her will always associate with war and trouble and the roar of Peter’s armies plunging into battle - but he doesn’t need to. This is a dream; Lucy understands. He has come to grieve with her, in the only way he can.
“How could I not know?” she asks, in the fluidity of the dream. “How could I just-” And she breaks off, stops herself, because she can’t think like that, can’t blame herself. She wants to-oh, how she wants to-but if she didn’t know she couldn’t change her ways-couldn’t protect the maybe-child that unfurled in her belly-and in many ways she’s as reckless as Peter. Absently, she sees that she’s pinching the skin of her arm between her fingertips, as if to wake herself up - but it doesn’t work, and it’s not like she can just leave the dream and forget all this. (The bleeding hasn’t stopped - and sometimes (she feels sick) it’s not just blood-thick; clotted-and her stomach churns, empty and clenched tight like the touch in a lover’s hair.)
Aslan doesn’t speak, but Lucy can feel the brush of his mane against her bare arms as he breathes.
She shakes. My child. “I could’ve been-”
“Don’t,” Aslan whispers, almost. She hears a rasp in his voice, perhaps, and Lucy thinks, Grief. But, then again, this is not what happens - she grieves (sobs, weeps), and Aslan is her comfort. He doesn’t cry, his voice (roar) doesn’t crack - but that isn’t to say that he doesn’t mourn. Rasp, or the rumour of her own despair? - not that it matters, now.
It’s snowing, suddenly, and Lucy turns her face upwards; flakes catch in her eyelashes, and the chill flutters against her eyelids. (In times to come, when she is shocked out of her maturity and back to innocence, when she thinks of Narnia she will think of snow - the most perfect snow that might ever be wished for, lying thick in the streets with Tumnus’ hoof-prints marking the way through the blizzard. She won’t think of this dream, though-not in any conscious corner of her mind-but that’s okay: they live a lifetime here, and it becomes them. Once and always Queen, and sometimes she hates it in the depths of her battered heart.) She doesn’t cry - just stands in the snow of her dreams like if she breathes she might just drift away.
I could’ve been a mother, she thinks.
But she is Queen Lucy, beautiful and laughing - and it’s Ed who has the right to cry, now, because what is her pain compared to his? She wasn’t gutted, belly split like a seamstress slicing linen; she never went to that edge (went and came back - just sent someone else in her stead).
“Don’t,” Aslan says, sonorous and deep.
Lucy wakes, and the sheets on her bed are bloody.
She opens her sleeping mind to a knocking on the door - “Lucy?” Susan whispers, and there’s something in Lucy’s heart (some worm curled in the blackened edges of her spirit) that can’t help but hate the contentment in her sister’s voice. “Lucy, are you awake? I can’t sleep.”
“Come in,” Lucy answers, absently, and piles the blankets around her waist, edges tucked under corners tucked into seams. She’ll send them to wash tomorrow, and her maids might know most everything about her, but they know when not to ask questions - and oh, Susan’s closing the door behind her, and the moonlight slanting through the window (open to the Narnian night) picks out the tousle of her curls and the silver-threaded details on her nightgown.
“Oh, Lu,” Susan says, and her voice brims over with relief. “I thought we’d lost him. I thought-” And she sits heavily (or, as heavy as Susan could ever muster) on the edge of Lucy’s bed, and, in the darkness (of starlight and moonlight and the bleakness of everything Lucy’s only now realising she’s lost), Lucy feels Susan’s hand feeling for her own. She takes it, clings. “I don’t know what I’d’ve done,” Susan says, quiet, sober. “I can’t take this, sometimes: the near misses, once every other day.” And there’s a darkness in her tone, now - a darkness that Lucy can appreciate oh so well. “Weren’t we supposed to bring peace to Narnia?”
Lucy swallows, coils her soiled bedsheets around her. “People die in peace,” she says - and there’s that rasp, the one she never heard in Aslan’s voice (harsh and dry and full of heartbreak). “We can’t save everyone.”
And Susan’s voice brightens, in the night: the sun, coming before its time. “But we did,” she says, “this time. Those creatures that hurt Ed were caught in Archenland, heading south - Oreius brought them back this afternoon. And he’s okay, Lu - he’s okay.” Susan’s grip is tight around her hand - and there’s nothing Lucy can say, now, because what good does it do to load hurt on her family when they frolic so in their joy? Bloody sheets and bloody dresses - but it’s okay, it’s okay, because it’s her burden to bear. Queen Lucy.
(In the darkness, in the night, Lucy’s cheeks are wet - but she won’t cry, she won’t.)
“Oh, Lu,” Susan says, and it’s like she’s sighing - tension draining and fears slipping away, and she curls her feet beneath her on Lucy’s bed. “If only everything could end like this.” There’s still something bittersweet in her tone - but it’s bittersweet, rather than bittersweet.
(Bitter.) Lucy doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry - so she says nothing, sits in her silent cocoon, and grips Susan’s hand like it’s the only thing keeping her from losing herself. Maybe it is.
Edmund finds her, in the end, on a balcony of Cair Paravel’s highest tower. If she’s honest, it’s not her best choice of hiding place-they all know where she comes when she doesn’t want to be found-but she likes the calmness it gives her.
It’s morning, now, with the sun just breaking itself over the horizon, and early breezes chuckle with the hem of her skirts, dancing in whispers around her ankles - and Lucy stands, at the edge, fingers crooked around the railing and head in the clouds. Or, not in the cloud, because there’s no way her mind is light enough to spiral through the air the way it ought - like everyone thinks it does. She’s not happy.
Darys is looking for her, she knows.
Lucy can hear Edmund coming: there’s a peculiar bump in his step, sometimes, that marks him out from anyone else she’s ever heard pad past her door late at night - and now, today, his steps are laboured. The cordial heals, yes, but it doesn’t make the recovery any easier. They’ve learnt that, over the years - now, they know it so well it makes Lucy’s head hurt.
Edmund clearly knows she’s there, just waiting (and watching Narnia wake, and trying not to think), because he says, still inside the winding staircase, “These stairs are not good for me, Lu. If I break myself because of your bloody moods-”
“Didn’t ask you to follow me,” Lucy points out, half a splinter of ice in her tone - but she still turns, takes Edmund’s arm. “You’re an idiot. You shouldn’t be here.”
“Thanks,” Edmund answers. “Love you too.” There’s something far too cheerful in his voice, and Lucy’s first thought is, he knows - but then she thinks, how could he know? She avoids his gaze, looks out across the sea. He stands beside her, waiting, hand splayed across his stomach (in something that almost looks like protection)-and oh, that hurts her heart more than it ought-and she realises that perhaps he does know, in some way, on some level - because he’s lost something, too; lost confidence, lost security. He might not know the emptiness in her belly, but he knows the wrench of loss in her chest - he’s lost a part of himself, just as she has. He’s not okay, she knows, because he couldn’t come that close to dying without something changing.
“How are you?” she asks, softly, and masks her pain in concern for another.
He glances at her; smiles almost like he means it. “As well as can be expected,” he answers. Pauses, then, loaded with meaning, “And you?”
Lucy keeps her gaze steady out across the waters; affects an absent, caring smile. “I wasn’t the one who nearly died,” she reminds him - and maybe that’s cruel, driving home just how close it was (despite Susan’s joy, her optimism), but she won’t talk about herself, she can’t. She’s Queen; sometimes, Queens are cruel.
Edmund turns, leans his hip against the railing that’s all that keeps him from plummeting to earth (like a bird that doesn’t know how to fly) - and, absently (somewhere in her mind), that insouciant lean makes her think of Darys: his charm; his smile. The feel of his hands against her skin - but no. “I’m not blind, Lu,” Edmund says quietly, that particular intensity taking over his eyes that he usual reserves for the interrogation of prisoners; when he touches Peter’s elbow and says, Let me - and they leave him, on his own with the sneering dwarf and arrogant Calorman, and hear nothing but silence in the gap between. “Invalided, yes - but I remember that there was blood on your dress. You fixed my wound - so why were you bleeding?”
And Lucy can hardly think - because she could dismiss him with some flippant reference to her monthly bleed (something no man wants to even consider), but he’s her brother: he knows all too well when she’s lying. And she doesn’t want to lie anymore-wants someone to hurt with her; wants someone to tell her that it’s not her fault, that it’ll be alright-but this is her burden, her sorrow - and Edmund has suffered enough. He doesn’t need to know about the nephew (niece? oh, please, no) he never had.
(The bleeding’s over, now. That’s her: her mistake; her guilt. She has a people who look to her, and she can’t even nurse a child-daughter; son-within herself.)
“Lucy,” Edmund presses.
(She won’t cry.)
Lucy takes his hand, and she feels that he’s shaking - what from, she doesn’t know-doesn’t want to know, because there are some things that need to go unsaid-but his fingers interweave with hers, almost on instinct, as if to say, it’s okay, Lu. As if he understands that that’s what she needs, right now. She closes her eyes, feels the wind in her hair (and her eyelashes, like the snow that clotted Aslan’s mane in white), and takes her brother’s hand - rests it over the not-curve of her belly. And she doesn’t know if he understands-he is a man, unskilled in such matters-but his touch spasms, almost, and she feels her eyes dampen as he pulls her tight into his embrace (stomach arched backwards, away from her, because the cordial regrows flesh but doesn’t entirely make it perfect: scars, still).
“Lucy,” he says, and it’s like her name is a prayer.
“Ed,” she gives in reply - and nothing’s better, now-nothing’s fixed; everything is still in flux-but she can hide from the reality of Narnia, here, because her brother is hiding from it too. She knows him - he would fight with his silver-streaked tongue rather than that slender steel, if he could, but that isn’t to say that he doesn’t rely on his strength to make himself King (and yet all it takes is two Calormen and the flick of a blade through flesh). “I’m sorry,” she says, and she barely knows who to or what for. (She doesn’t think about Darys. She doesn’t think she can.)
Edmund’s arms tighten around her, just fractionally, and all he says is, “Don’t.”
finis
Fandom: Chronicles of Narnia.
Characters: ensemble, with focus on Lucy.
Word Count: 5773
Rating: 15
Summary: Lucy’s good at lying. Some Lucy/OMC; mid-Golden Age.
Warnings: violence/disturbing imagery, some graphic; discussion of a miscarriage
Notes: Roughly written for hc_bingo (my bingo card is lurking here), for the prompt nervous breakdown. Kinda. Debatably. Basically, this is me getting back into the writing swing, perhaps. (Oh fuck, so much work I haven’t even touched… Remind me why I let myself in for all of this?? *facepalm)
some painful secret, hid behind bared teeth
The Guard rush past, summoned better by the clash of swordsteel than any warning bell. Or, they try and rush past - but Lucy has heard Edmund’s cries (and they are cries-sharp and fraught and full of pain-and Edmund never makes a sound when he fights), and they may be the Royal Guard, her defenders, but she is not helpless. (They’d be surprised if they knew the extent of how not-helpless she is - but that’s her secret; hers and Peter’s. It’s not for the Guard to know how their laughing Queen spends those absent hours, in blood and lure of shadows.) And now Edmund needs her - the idiot.
She hears Peter grunt, and the crow of some would-be assassin - but that’s okay, because Peter isn’t Edmund: he makes as much of a racket as he pleases. He is the High King. (Her heart beats in her throat. Ed. Ed.) Her shoes smack the slabbed stone floor with abandon, and she has dagger in hand as she races-
A hand closes on her wrist, jerking her away from her goal - and she has madness already creeping its red haze over her eyes; ‘Valiant’ can be just another way of saying ‘bloodthirsty’. She’d snarl, if that befitted a Queen of Narnia: “My brothers-”
She’s met by nothing but stubbornness - and it’s a stubbornness to match her own. “Can’t let you put yourself in danger, Your Highness.”
“Stellima-”
And there’s almost a curse on Lucy’s lips, because, sometimes, there’s no place for the Guard’s zeal - because Peter and Edmund are stupid and reckless and her family, and she’d let Jadis ice over the world before she didn’t do every little thing she could to keep them safe. And she’ll say just that, too-spit it in Stellima’s feline face-because she won’t be ruled by anyone but Peter’s throne (him, in and of himself, she’s not so bothered about: brothers can be manipulated by a flutter of the eyelashes and the little sister charm) - but she can’t. She’s pushed back - shoved back, with a gauntleted paw slammed so hard into her belly-it’ll bruise, if not break the skin: she’s anticipating blood-and she’s forced back against the wall. (Pain. Sharp and searing and oh, she might see stars.) Kursim gallops past, spear hefted high as Edmund cries out - and Lucy aches to go to him to save him, to help-
There’s a strange sensation in her stomach.
Lucy starts away from the wall, starts after the snarl of Stellima’s leap into battle - but Susan has followed in the Guard’s wake, and the clatter of her sister’s footsteps is enough to halt Lucy’s onward rush. She has more siblings than are manageable, in this world of intrigue and stabs in dim corners - and she turns to her gentle sister with a forced smile and a calming word- But no, because Susan’s lips are set. She presses that old crystal vial into Lucy’s hands, a darkness in her eyes. “I heard Ed,” she says, and sometimes Lucy forgets that she’s not the only one who’s nearly seen her brothers die a hundred times over.
Lucy takes the vial, and only half-sees the dagger that vanishes up Susan’s sleeve. They turn; they run.
“Your Majesties,” Stellima howls.
Lucy feels her nose scrunch as her feet beat the stones (like the petulant child she used to be), and she half-thinks, Not that you wanted me around half a heartbeat ago - but she knows the lie in her own words. Sometimes she thinks she might hate the Guard, because her every breath is monitored, written down, reported to the Castle Guard and analysed for meaning - but, then again, she has no right to hate them, for what they’ve done. They guard her because they care, and she has too many dead on her conscience to begrudge them her freedom.
She shouldn’t be thinking about this - it has no bearing on what she’s doing; on the race of life-and-death to see who can be first to save Edmund’s life. Oh, please - Ed. Her mind is wandering. She thinks she hears gasping-panicked, pained gasping, out of sync with the thudding of her feet and the pounding of her heart-but she can’t, because quietness never was a battle’s forte-
So much blood, and it’s spilling over Peter’s hands and the gilt of his tunic - but it’s not his blood, not his blood.
“Ed.”
And there’s no way to describe the fear and shock that pain and terror that spills from Susan’s lips, all bottled up in the name of their vacant-eyed brother.
At night, Lucy walks in the gardens of Cair Paravel. Grass is lush underfoot, blades bending and bowing beneath her bare feet, and the starlight that whispers from above glints off the broken stems she leaves in her wake. She doesn’t cry, not yet (Ed, please), but the starglimmer on broken things looks like tears - Lucy’s eyes are dry, but Narnia cries for her. Narnia knows her better than she knows herself. Lucy folds her arms, pauses in the shadows. If she closes her eyes and holds her breath, she can hear the dryads hum as they sleep.
Waves whorl against the sands, so far below.
“How’s your brother?”
She can feel his warmth, through the air - but she doesn’t turn around. She’s tired. “Better,” she answers, bitterly, “not that he’s not holding his guts in with his own hands.” Not an image she’ll be forgetting anytime soon - and her hands clench, white-knuckled, in her skirts. Narnian Queens don’t cry from the sheer fear; Narnian Queens aren’t that weak. “He’s sleeping.” She doesn’t add won’t wake up and it’s scaring me - just bites her lip, feels that ache in her stomach again: phantom pain, perhaps - remembering Peter’s palms pressed to Edmund’s belly as he cried out, screamed. “They were Calormenes,” she says, “maybe. Their assassins like the slow kill; they like to watch.”
Hands close around her upper arms.
“Ed’ll be okay,” Lucy says, as if to herself - and there’s a hollowness in those words, because she remembers the look in his eyes as he lay lolled against the courtyard steps.
“I know,” he answers, and guides her back against his chest - pushes her hair aside (fingers ghosting the hairs on her neck into holly-prickles), presses his cheek to her skin. His palm splays over her stomach, beneath the swell of her breasts-oh please, Ed, don’t go, wake up-and soft breaths whisper across the tip of her nose as she turns her head to meet him. Lips, inches from lips - and her brother lies inside, maybe dying, because he was slipping away even as his blood pulsed around Peter’s fingers.
“Darys,” she says, breathes, “I can’t-”
“You think that’s what I’m after?” And he holds her, tight and close, and touches his palm over her heart. “Lucy,” he says, with a richness to her name that she’s never heard before: like the mountains of so-blue ice that carpet Beruna in winter; like the warmth of a campfire in the woods at night. Lucy closes her eyes, lets herself be held - doesn’t cry, just listens to the dryads breath.
“Susan not coming?” Lucy asks, flicking out a napkin across her lap. The breakfast table is so empty, and she doesn’t look to Edmund’s empty seat. Her stomach clenches, hurts - Stellima bruised her, perhaps, but when she looked earlier there wasn’t nearly enough bruising to warrant this much of an ache; this deep an ache.
Peter shakes his head, slowly. “She was up all night with Ed - I sent her to bed at dawn.” There’s a haggardness to the set of his eyes, and golden stubble has pricked its way across his chin. None of them slept last night, Lucy is realised - save Edmund, of course. Peter’s head is bowed, now, and his hands are clenched white-in frustration, maybe-but there’s still something of the High King in the timbre of his voice and the set of his jaw. “She was exhausted.”
Lucy draws the fruit-bowl towards her, and doesn’t think about how she didn’t spend the night - with her family, where she ought to be. “We all are,” she answers. She takes an apple, cool in her palm, and asks, “Has he woken?”
Peter doesn’t even look up. “No.”
The cordial-vial glimmers in her hands, and Lucy spins it restlessly in the sunlight - it casts redness in spatters across her palms. (Not blood; not now. The courtyard is scrubbed clean.) She lets the vial drop to her lap, because she can’t exactly hold something quite that valuable when her hands are shaking like they’ll never stop - and she won’t think about the stillness in Edmund’s limbs as he sleeps, because the cordial’s never failed before, and it can’t now; just can’t-
Darys’ hands cover hers, and pluck the cordial from her lap. “Be patient,” he says, softly, and tucks it back into its pouch, caught at her waist.
And the only words that will allow themselves to cross Lucy’s lips are, “My stomach hurts.” Some Queen she is. She feels sick.
From the windows of Edmund’s room, Lucy can see across half of Cair Paravel, from the towertops down to the glittering of the sea - and as the dimming light of the afternoon glances across rooftops and courtyards, there’s a blaze in the air that sets something warm in her heart. (Narnia. Even the name is beautiful.) Lucy stands at her brother’s window and watches the city’s bustle - because that’s so much easier than turning around and sitting down in the city where Susan whiled away the night in wishing. Besides, the view is captivating: this is their kingdom; this is what they created out of the ashes of winter. Ed used to say that he chose these rooms for that view - he’s not in the North Wing, where tradition dictates that monarchs make their homes, but halfway up the central tower, with rounded walls and a spiralling arch of a stairway connecting the three levels of his space. Lucy comes here in the winter, when bitterness and snow blanket them in, and they light a fire in the grate and discuss the Archenland succession.
There’s the clash of steel on steel from below, but Lucy doesn’t look, doesn’t panic - she doesn’t need to. The whole court (and half their enemies) know how the High King gets out his anger - and Lucy knows Peter’s exertion: knows his grunts and his hisses and the music of his war. Right now, he has nothing to fight against but himself.
(There’s blood on the skirts of her dress, and she doesn’t know how it got there. Yesterday’s dress is ruined-stained and discarded: Stellima couldn’t save her from everything-but today’s should be spotless - fresh from cleaning; fresh on this morning. There are spots of blood on the skirts, seeping through from inside - and that ache that was in her belly is sharper, more insistent. She would say that was normal-she is a woman; she is aware of these things, no matter how much Peter would like to think her innocent and eternally babyish-but it’s not time - and, if she thinks about it, it hasn’t been that time for her for a few months, now. She’s not stupid - she half-knows (even if she doesn’t want to) what that means - but she isn’t going to think about it, now; she can’t. The ache in her stomach - an emptiness, perhaps, but there was never anything there to begin with. (Was there?)
Fingers are white-knuckled around the balcony rail. She doesn’t touch her skirts.
“Lucy?”
And the voice is less a whisper and more the fading ghost of a rush of air, but oh, she knows that voice (that whisper; that ghost). Something clutches at her throat, and she spins, peering into the room she’s spent so long avoiding even thinking about (because her brother’s body, limp and motionless, sets terrors in her heart that she’d rather not consider) - and he’s pale, drained, but awake. Curled in the bed that looks so big right now, with hair more mussed than not and something hollow in his eyes - but he’s awake, he’s aware. He knows her.
“Edmund,” she breathes - and doesn’t run, but that’s only because she doesn’t need to. Two steps, and Lucy closes her touch around her brother’s limp hand - and there’ something in her that quails at the weakness in that touch. (He’s Ed; cocky Ed, brave Ed. King of Shadows and the West.) She remembers to force a smile - because even when she wants to hide herself, she has a duty. She has needs - and needs must. “You almost had me worried.”
Edmund’s eyes are dark and empty, focused on some point above her shoulder - some phantom she can’t see, but can almost feel. He’s afraid - or, would be if he had enough energy to feel.”They came out of nowhere,” he rasps, voice absent, like he’s talking to himself, like she’s not even there. “I barely-” And he stops, stops himself, and there’s bile in Lucy’s heart as horror flits across his expression - because he knows, and she can’t imagine- Edmund tears at the sheets cocooning him into warmth and safety, but his fingers are weak, so weak, and so he does nothing but paw uselessly at blankets with colour frantic in his cheeks - and it’s pathetic, and it’s not Edmund, and Lucy wants to cry.
“Stop,” she says. “Stop.” She takes his hands, presses them between her own. His eyes are wild - and she says, “Ed, listen. You’re okay. They’re gone, and you’re okay. I promise.” And she doesn’t talk about scars-about the band of pink-white scabrous tissue that’s wound across his stomach; about the fragility of his appearance, and of the healing; about how Ed you nearly died-just smoothes a hand across his forehead, and says, “Rest, Ed. Don’t think about it. You’re safe.” Which is a lie, of course - because those creatures that nearly tore her brother in half vanished like the silence of the dawn. Ignorance and uselessness - they’re driving Peter mad. It’s why he fights, rages. It’s why he doesn’t sleep.
Even the pinkness of Edmund’s tongue seems dull, almost - but he licks his lips, as she’s seen him do a thousand times before, and looks at her (finally), and says, “I trust you, Lu.”
(Her heart twists.) She squeezes his hands; leans forward and kisses his forehead. “Then, next time,” she says, “don’t get caught up in Peter’s heroics.”
Edmund’s eyes are glassy - but that’s okay, because it’s the lull of sleep that’s wrapping his mind in knots. (It has to be.) “How d’you know,” he almost slurs, words running into words, “there’ll be a next time?” And he slips into the pillows, eyes half-lidded, as if ten seconds of talking and remembering (with all the pain that brings) is enough to exhaust him. Maybe it is.
Lucy pushes back hair from her forehead, and forces her heart to quell its swelling. (It’ll be okay. He’s okay. Thank you.) “There always is,” she answers, soft as the breezes outside his windows.
Edmund shifts, just a little, arms sliding fractionally across the blankets - and he says, “Lu, there’s blood on your dress.” And he sleeps.
Below, Lucy hears Peter spit his frustration to the skies.
It’s midnight, nearly. The stars are high in the sky, and as Lucy paces past windows the lights spatters across his cheeks - patterns stencilled out of the universe. Her feet are wrapped in soft shoes, the fabric barely cushioning her soles from the smooth chill of Cair Paravel’s floors - but she doesn’t care about the shudder of impact through her heels and the slenderness of her calves, because she makes barely a noise as she treads the halls. Right now, she wants to pretend she doesn’t exist - and so she wears a man’s shirt (stolen from Edmund’s wardrobe, so long ago) and loose trousers, and wanders through the shadows. She’d say there’s something strange about Cair Paravel at night, but if there is, she doesn’t feel it - distracted, disoriented.
(Her dress is balled in a corner of her rooms, now, bloodstained and ignored. It’s the wrong time for her to bleed - it shouldn’t be now. Lucy won’t think about that, because she half-knows - or, she might do. Please, no.)
Lucy breathes - just breathes.
“I heard Edmund was awake,” Darys says, keeping half a pace away from her. She doesn’t look at him-not directly; she can see him, in the almost-corner of her eye, and his silhouette against the shimmer of torchflame is all lines and angles (nothing soft)-but she can hear his expression in the cadence of his voice: concern, but not for Edmund; not for the one who needs it. (Abruptly, she needs him. But no.) “And that you were with him.”
Lucy crosses her arms, more to stop her plucking for her absent skirts than anything else. She is Queen, not some maid in need of the reassurance of her femininity. “Just briefly,” she says. “He was- Disoriented.” And she bites the inside of her cheek, screws nails into palms, and continued: “But he remembered it all quite clearly. I don’t-” And she stops, stops herself, because she can’t quite vocalise the look in Edmund’s eyes as he remembered his innards trying their best to slither out of his body - that wound, gaping red and slick under Peter’s panic, and Ed’s eyes, lolled back in his head. (And then the ache - the ache in her stomach, sharp and dull and throbbing, throbbing.)
She whispers, “I think I’m going to be sick.”
Darys steps forward, concern in the tilt of his fingertips as he reaches for her hands - flamelight licks red across his cheeks, and Lucy thinks there’sbloodonyourdress (with Edmund’s silvered tones dulled to nothingness by the chafe of healing). She vomits; spins away and heaves into a corner, in the shadows. Her eyes are wet - but she won’t cry, because what does she have to cry about? She’s not invalided in bed; she’s not only just alive; she hasn’t had her stomach rent apart by nothing more than happenstance.
(But, then again.)
“Lucy,” Darys says (low, intense), “are you bleeding?”
And she can’t even face him, now. Stellima pushed her aside for her own safety-to save her from Edmund’s convalescence-but she pushed her with the force of an armoured paw to the stomach (almost a punch, really, because Stellima knows Lucy’s stubbornness better than any-not that that’s an achievement to crow about-and Lucy’s never minded the rough-and-tumble before, because there’ some part of her that knows it’s necessary). The crash of memory makes Lucy almost tremble. Hands palm-flat on the stone floor, hair caught up in Darys’ care, she shakes, and there’s no way she could stop herself even if she wanted to. Her eyes are glassy, because Edmund is the one who needs care; Edmund is the one whose life has been split apart - and she’s just Lucy, Queen of happiness and healing. She can’t-
“Lucy,” Darys says, “talk to me. Please.” And there’s a plea in that ‘please’, she knows - a plea and a wish and a throb of help me understand.
She’s not quite sure how to say I think I’m losing your child (the one I didn’t know existed) - and something break in her, at that thought. This isn’t how things are supposed to be.
Spring is hardly cold, but Lucy stokes the fires that blazes in her rooms, piling it high with coal and tinder and the embers of the last blaze that burnt itself away. She burns it all up, and the heat winds its way through her hair and her clothes and leaves her sweating.
She ran from Darys, last night - left him in the castle’s corridors with only the contents of her stomach as a memento of her presence, and ran. Silent, like a ghost; like death.)
Lucy balls up the dress she wore yesterday-bloody and crumpled and torn, because she couldn’t get it away from her skin fast enough-and pushes it into the fire. Flames eat at the thickness of the fabric, at its gilded edges and fleurs de lis embellishments, and there’s a tremble in Lucy’s fingertips.
The bleeding hasn’t stopped.
Peter grasps her hands in the courtyard, whirls her in a circle - and he’s laughing, laughing. He hasn’t even smiled in days - and Lucy can’t help but smile along with him, now, because they haven’t lost a soul, and that’s a lie to celebrate. (Edmund’s awake. He’s awake and grumpy and bedbound, and alive.) Peter catches her up in his arms and spins her through the air like she’s a child, and he’s splitting his face with the razored edges of his grin (but there are still tears in his eyes and on his cheeks, because he knows better than so many how close they came to the loss none of them can imagine) - and when he judders to a shaky halt, he doesn’t put her down: he hugs her, crushes her to him with a fierceness that makes her tongue thicken with emotion.
And the people smile, because they might not know the full tale - but when they see their High King twirl his sister in Cair Paravel with nothing less than ecstatic abandon, they know things are good; better than.
Peter presses his cheek to hers, and Lucy feels his tears slip across her skin.
(Today, she wears a red dress.)
Lucy is dreaming. She knows this - it’s clear enough from the way the trees don’t move with the wind, and the absence of the dryads; the way she wears the dress of a home she’s almost forgotten (grey and drag and the wartime of England, not Narnia). She stands in Cair Paravel’s gardens, barefoot (but with her feet crushing boot-treads into the soft soil), in that spot where maybe the life she couldn’t protect came about-Darys’ hand around her wrist, tugging her out into the grassy avenues with a whisper of live a little: and she did, but to such irony-and it must be winter in her mind - it’s bitterly cold. Behind her, snow dusts itself across the castle’s rooftops, icing a blanket of clarity over the mess of life.
Oh. Her hands are clasped over her stomach. If she thought about it, she’d feel so ill (broken; empty) - but she is Queen. She has no time to think.
She knows him before she sees him - knows the pawpads upon the ground and the whisper of lion-breath on the air. (Why is it that he only comes when she feels the hurt might kill her?) He doesn’t speak, in those rich tones that some part of her will always associate with war and trouble and the roar of Peter’s armies plunging into battle - but he doesn’t need to. This is a dream; Lucy understands. He has come to grieve with her, in the only way he can.
“How could I not know?” she asks, in the fluidity of the dream. “How could I just-” And she breaks off, stops herself, because she can’t think like that, can’t blame herself. She wants to-oh, how she wants to-but if she didn’t know she couldn’t change her ways-couldn’t protect the maybe-child that unfurled in her belly-and in many ways she’s as reckless as Peter. Absently, she sees that she’s pinching the skin of her arm between her fingertips, as if to wake herself up - but it doesn’t work, and it’s not like she can just leave the dream and forget all this. (The bleeding hasn’t stopped - and sometimes (she feels sick) it’s not just blood-thick; clotted-and her stomach churns, empty and clenched tight like the touch in a lover’s hair.)
Aslan doesn’t speak, but Lucy can feel the brush of his mane against her bare arms as he breathes.
She shakes. My child. “I could’ve been-”
“Don’t,” Aslan whispers, almost. She hears a rasp in his voice, perhaps, and Lucy thinks, Grief. But, then again, this is not what happens - she grieves (sobs, weeps), and Aslan is her comfort. He doesn’t cry, his voice (roar) doesn’t crack - but that isn’t to say that he doesn’t mourn. Rasp, or the rumour of her own despair? - not that it matters, now.
It’s snowing, suddenly, and Lucy turns her face upwards; flakes catch in her eyelashes, and the chill flutters against her eyelids. (In times to come, when she is shocked out of her maturity and back to innocence, when she thinks of Narnia she will think of snow - the most perfect snow that might ever be wished for, lying thick in the streets with Tumnus’ hoof-prints marking the way through the blizzard. She won’t think of this dream, though-not in any conscious corner of her mind-but that’s okay: they live a lifetime here, and it becomes them. Once and always Queen, and sometimes she hates it in the depths of her battered heart.) She doesn’t cry - just stands in the snow of her dreams like if she breathes she might just drift away.
I could’ve been a mother, she thinks.
But she is Queen Lucy, beautiful and laughing - and it’s Ed who has the right to cry, now, because what is her pain compared to his? She wasn’t gutted, belly split like a seamstress slicing linen; she never went to that edge (went and came back - just sent someone else in her stead).
“Don’t,” Aslan says, sonorous and deep.
Lucy wakes, and the sheets on her bed are bloody.
She opens her sleeping mind to a knocking on the door - “Lucy?” Susan whispers, and there’s something in Lucy’s heart (some worm curled in the blackened edges of her spirit) that can’t help but hate the contentment in her sister’s voice. “Lucy, are you awake? I can’t sleep.”
“Come in,” Lucy answers, absently, and piles the blankets around her waist, edges tucked under corners tucked into seams. She’ll send them to wash tomorrow, and her maids might know most everything about her, but they know when not to ask questions - and oh, Susan’s closing the door behind her, and the moonlight slanting through the window (open to the Narnian night) picks out the tousle of her curls and the silver-threaded details on her nightgown.
“Oh, Lu,” Susan says, and her voice brims over with relief. “I thought we’d lost him. I thought-” And she sits heavily (or, as heavy as Susan could ever muster) on the edge of Lucy’s bed, and, in the darkness (of starlight and moonlight and the bleakness of everything Lucy’s only now realising she’s lost), Lucy feels Susan’s hand feeling for her own. She takes it, clings. “I don’t know what I’d’ve done,” Susan says, quiet, sober. “I can’t take this, sometimes: the near misses, once every other day.” And there’s a darkness in her tone, now - a darkness that Lucy can appreciate oh so well. “Weren’t we supposed to bring peace to Narnia?”
Lucy swallows, coils her soiled bedsheets around her. “People die in peace,” she says - and there’s that rasp, the one she never heard in Aslan’s voice (harsh and dry and full of heartbreak). “We can’t save everyone.”
And Susan’s voice brightens, in the night: the sun, coming before its time. “But we did,” she says, “this time. Those creatures that hurt Ed were caught in Archenland, heading south - Oreius brought them back this afternoon. And he’s okay, Lu - he’s okay.” Susan’s grip is tight around her hand - and there’s nothing Lucy can say, now, because what good does it do to load hurt on her family when they frolic so in their joy? Bloody sheets and bloody dresses - but it’s okay, it’s okay, because it’s her burden to bear. Queen Lucy.
(In the darkness, in the night, Lucy’s cheeks are wet - but she won’t cry, she won’t.)
“Oh, Lu,” Susan says, and it’s like she’s sighing - tension draining and fears slipping away, and she curls her feet beneath her on Lucy’s bed. “If only everything could end like this.” There’s still something bittersweet in her tone - but it’s bittersweet, rather than bittersweet.
(Bitter.) Lucy doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry - so she says nothing, sits in her silent cocoon, and grips Susan’s hand like it’s the only thing keeping her from losing herself. Maybe it is.
Edmund finds her, in the end, on a balcony of Cair Paravel’s highest tower. If she’s honest, it’s not her best choice of hiding place-they all know where she comes when she doesn’t want to be found-but she likes the calmness it gives her.
It’s morning, now, with the sun just breaking itself over the horizon, and early breezes chuckle with the hem of her skirts, dancing in whispers around her ankles - and Lucy stands, at the edge, fingers crooked around the railing and head in the clouds. Or, not in the cloud, because there’s no way her mind is light enough to spiral through the air the way it ought - like everyone thinks it does. She’s not happy.
Darys is looking for her, she knows.
Lucy can hear Edmund coming: there’s a peculiar bump in his step, sometimes, that marks him out from anyone else she’s ever heard pad past her door late at night - and now, today, his steps are laboured. The cordial heals, yes, but it doesn’t make the recovery any easier. They’ve learnt that, over the years - now, they know it so well it makes Lucy’s head hurt.
Edmund clearly knows she’s there, just waiting (and watching Narnia wake, and trying not to think), because he says, still inside the winding staircase, “These stairs are not good for me, Lu. If I break myself because of your bloody moods-”
“Didn’t ask you to follow me,” Lucy points out, half a splinter of ice in her tone - but she still turns, takes Edmund’s arm. “You’re an idiot. You shouldn’t be here.”
“Thanks,” Edmund answers. “Love you too.” There’s something far too cheerful in his voice, and Lucy’s first thought is, he knows - but then she thinks, how could he know? She avoids his gaze, looks out across the sea. He stands beside her, waiting, hand splayed across his stomach (in something that almost looks like protection)-and oh, that hurts her heart more than it ought-and she realises that perhaps he does know, in some way, on some level - because he’s lost something, too; lost confidence, lost security. He might not know the emptiness in her belly, but he knows the wrench of loss in her chest - he’s lost a part of himself, just as she has. He’s not okay, she knows, because he couldn’t come that close to dying without something changing.
“How are you?” she asks, softly, and masks her pain in concern for another.
He glances at her; smiles almost like he means it. “As well as can be expected,” he answers. Pauses, then, loaded with meaning, “And you?”
Lucy keeps her gaze steady out across the waters; affects an absent, caring smile. “I wasn’t the one who nearly died,” she reminds him - and maybe that’s cruel, driving home just how close it was (despite Susan’s joy, her optimism), but she won’t talk about herself, she can’t. She’s Queen; sometimes, Queens are cruel.
Edmund turns, leans his hip against the railing that’s all that keeps him from plummeting to earth (like a bird that doesn’t know how to fly) - and, absently (somewhere in her mind), that insouciant lean makes her think of Darys: his charm; his smile. The feel of his hands against her skin - but no. “I’m not blind, Lu,” Edmund says quietly, that particular intensity taking over his eyes that he usual reserves for the interrogation of prisoners; when he touches Peter’s elbow and says, Let me - and they leave him, on his own with the sneering dwarf and arrogant Calorman, and hear nothing but silence in the gap between. “Invalided, yes - but I remember that there was blood on your dress. You fixed my wound - so why were you bleeding?”
And Lucy can hardly think - because she could dismiss him with some flippant reference to her monthly bleed (something no man wants to even consider), but he’s her brother: he knows all too well when she’s lying. And she doesn’t want to lie anymore-wants someone to hurt with her; wants someone to tell her that it’s not her fault, that it’ll be alright-but this is her burden, her sorrow - and Edmund has suffered enough. He doesn’t need to know about the nephew (niece? oh, please, no) he never had.
(The bleeding’s over, now. That’s her: her mistake; her guilt. She has a people who look to her, and she can’t even nurse a child-daughter; son-within herself.)
“Lucy,” Edmund presses.
(She won’t cry.)
Lucy takes his hand, and she feels that he’s shaking - what from, she doesn’t know-doesn’t want to know, because there are some things that need to go unsaid-but his fingers interweave with hers, almost on instinct, as if to say, it’s okay, Lu. As if he understands that that’s what she needs, right now. She closes her eyes, feels the wind in her hair (and her eyelashes, like the snow that clotted Aslan’s mane in white), and takes her brother’s hand - rests it over the not-curve of her belly. And she doesn’t know if he understands-he is a man, unskilled in such matters-but his touch spasms, almost, and she feels her eyes dampen as he pulls her tight into his embrace (stomach arched backwards, away from her, because the cordial regrows flesh but doesn’t entirely make it perfect: scars, still).
“Lucy,” he says, and it’s like her name is a prayer.
“Ed,” she gives in reply - and nothing’s better, now-nothing’s fixed; everything is still in flux-but she can hide from the reality of Narnia, here, because her brother is hiding from it too. She knows him - he would fight with his silver-streaked tongue rather than that slender steel, if he could, but that isn’t to say that he doesn’t rely on his strength to make himself King (and yet all it takes is two Calormen and the flick of a blade through flesh). “I’m sorry,” she says, and she barely knows who to or what for. (She doesn’t think about Darys. She doesn’t think she can.)
Edmund’s arms tighten around her, just fractionally, and all he says is, “Don’t.”
finis