Chapter Text
When Lucy passed through at the end of the line—following Edmund, then Peter, then Susan—she did so with a brief glance over her shoulder at the world she loved so much. She had not known the last time that she was marching her family through an old wardrobe, away from the kingdom they’d made a home of and abruptly into a place she hardly remembered. It had taken weeks for the truth to set in properly—that she would not see Narnia again until Aslan deemed it necessary. But the vision of Narnia with its wide open skies, bright blue waters, and creatures big and small all around, had faded from her mind’s eye much quicker.
This time, she might feel the warmth of Narnia’s sun for just a little longer or keep the faces of her friends in her memory better, and so she watched as she passed through the portal in the trees, hoping it might be enough.
But with her head still turned back, the clear Narnian sky and the faces of those she loved—Aslan, Caspian, Trumpkin, and even the people of Telmar she hadn’t had time to get to know properly—darkened into the dismal tunnel of the London Underground. For how different she hoped this departure would be, the lump forming in her throat, the hollow pit in her chest beneath it, and the sudden loss of Narnia’s peaceful quiet were all too familiar.
It hurt to feel this way again, even if she had known it might be coming this time. But as was sometimes the case with reopened wounds, there was a particular dullness in her chest too—like the stab of recollection hadn’t been able to pierce her heart as deep as before. It reminded Lucy of before… Not the before she thought of previously—bright and golden with all of Narnia at their feet—but rather the dark and dreary England that could not and would not compare.
The time In Between, she supposed, would be more accurate.
“Aren’t you coming, Phyllis?”
The question came from a gangly boy, vaguely familiar, standing inside the train doors, and for a moment, all Lucy could do was stare. Surely, he hadn’t meant them. But then she caught Susan’s eye, and exchanged grim looks with Peter and Edmund. The four collected their things quick enough to board the train before its doors were closed on them.
Standing huddled around a pole, bracing her feet to prepare the inevitable lurch when the train started up again, Lucy nearly missed Edmund’s question.
“Do you think there’s any way we could get back?”
It came sooner than she anticipated, but she wasn’t surprised. Of course they were eager to return. And Edmund, she knew, would be just as concerned about the passage of time as she was. One year, in exchange for more than a thousand. Her siblings couldn’t endure that again, any more than she could. But the levity in Edmund’s face when he looked up spoke of something different from her own concern.
It was not the desperation that had haunted each of them this last year, while they waited for Aslan to call them back home, but rather, some small piece of hope and brightness that Lucy was more used to seeing in the mirror than in her brother.
“I’ve left my new torch in Narnia!”
There were laughter lines around his eyes, breaking before the rest of his cheeky grin graced his face. Then, before Lucy could properly react to it, Susan let out a gentle, laughing sigh that filled in the space around Peter’s warm chuckle, lifting the hollowness out of his face even as he closed his eyes.
And suddenly, Lucy found herself smiling. The pressure in her chest lifted as she chuckled, exchanging looks with her siblings. Not entirely of course, but enough.
It would be different this time, this home coming.
Easier for being a second trial, but more difficult too for just that reason. In fact, Lucy expected it would be a longer wait for them this time as well. Perhaps not in Narnia—oh, she hoped not there—but here, in England. She couldn’t pinpoint exactly why she thought it, but as the doors to the train car closed in front of them, Lucy could only believe it to be true. Something bigger was coming. When it did, they would get to experience something grander than the life they were used to, whether here in England or there in Narnia.
All in good time.
Until then, Lucy hoped they could each hold onto a little luck. Enough that the bittersweet hope rippling through them now—in the soft smile tugging at Susan’s lips, the amused shake of Peter’s head, and even the silent, subtle shake of Edmund’s shoulders—would keep them company until the time was right.