together again

[herejustforher]

Near the end of his life, he had almost lost hope that he would ever see his beloved Queen again, in Narnia or any other world. It had cast a pale shadow over the rest of his time in Narnia, especially as the imminent Telmarine threat grew towards the end of his days. But he had tried to remain positive, and keep the faith.

Had tried not to lose his temper with the Lion when he was finally sent to His land.

It seemed that, at last, his patience had been rewarded, for one day-- and Tumnus would not be able to tell if it was a year or an age that had passed since his death-- Aslan had called to him and told him that he would be sent Beyond as the Navigator, the Star's Daughter, and the Naiad had been before him.

Of course he had accepted. How could he do anything else?

And so, one Lion's Breath later, he was in a part of Spare Oom-- which his mind supplied to him was really called London-- standing under an umbrella in the rain, and there before him, soaking wet to the bone, was unmistakably his Queen Lucy.

As he stepped forward, he couldn't help but speak the first words that came to his mind.

"Here," he said, holding the umbrella over her, "You need it more than I do."

They'd have a good laugh about the irony later, he was sure.

Comments

[childishgames]

In all her lives, Lucy Pevensie has done her very best to ask for as little as possible. It's a tricky sort of thing, Ed had often teased, how she found a way to ask for little and yet always get the world. She'd be lucky if it lasted through growing tall enough to lose her dimples again.

And it is, sometimes, a tactic she's grown practiced in using. It's just that it's not something she's ever thought to be a piece of her faith.

Because she does still have faith. It had been in her even before her fingers were allowed to tangle in the Lion's mane, and it had followed her, wrapped close and warm as a fur jacket many sizes too large, back out the other side of the wardrobe. It had stuck to her heart and her smiles and her hair braided in spring with little flowers that Susan would brush away and Peter would call childish.

She hadn't asked for Caspian, as sorely as her heart had wished something would help her sister find peace again. She hadn't asked for Lilliandil or Ismenis, as ardently as she had hoped her sister and her dear friend would feel the comfort of being properly loved.

She had never, even in her two trips back to Narnia, asked for the faun who had been all but the other half of her heart for a decade she could never return to.

All she ever really asks, these days, standing beneath the glare of the sun or, as now, proud and defiant beneath the storms of London's rain, is to know she still walks with the Lion. To hear His roar distant in her ears and imagine she feels the brush of his fur against her fingers.

No matter who else had returned, she would never have asked for the impossible. Her eyes, lightly closed against the rain, squeeze tighter shut for a moment against the sound of a voice she'd know anywhere in any lifetime, no matter the obstruction of raindrops falling on an umbrella rather than her hair.

Because when she does ask for things, it's always easier with her eyes squeezed shut.

"...please... be real."