Chapter Text
Helen could barely see the train as it screeched into the station. So many parents, mothers just like her crowded around, desperate to see their children again. They had found out the children could come home about a month ago now and she had been stress cleaning the entire house nearly everyday since. She couldn’t wait to see her children again.
Childish shouts pulled her attention further down the platform where children were spilling out of the train into waiting arms. Carefully pushing her way through the crowd of reunited families it took her a minute to find them, in fact she nearly didn’t. Her eyes swept past the four of them twice before she realised the odd group huddled together surveying the crowd carefully as if they could see things others didn’t, weren’t children possibly abandoned by their parents, but instead the very group she was looking so feverishly for. She waved as she got closer, calling their names. Susan heard her first, her beautiful daughter turning with shocking poise and for a terrifying second all Helen saw was confusion before recognition flickered to life in Susan’s eyes. Susan smiled sweetly but Helen swore it didn’t quite light up her face the way it used to as she tugged gently on Peter's coat sleeve. This one action caught the attention of not only Peter but Edmund and Lucy as well. As a unit the other three turned to first look at Susan then turned in the direction she was looking, which was right at Helen. Blinking, taken aback by how in sync they were, Helen tried not to show how much it unsettled her, she didn’t think she succeeded very well if the quick look exchanged between her two eldest was any indication. “Come along,” she waved them over, “Let’s go home, I’m sure you’re all exhausted.” She tried to ignore the aching pit growing in her chest, the desperate longing for her children to speak to her or even heaven forbid start bickering as they used to. But they didn’t. They barely even look at each other, their eyes constantly inspecting their surroundings as if they expected something to pop out at them any second. They walked in a different formation than they used to. Before the country, Lucy would always latch on to either Peter or Helen chattering endlessly. Peter would walk either next to Helen or slightly behind her, but always close enough to help her keep an eye on his siblings. Susan would do something similar, always walking between the rest of them and Edmund, close enough to all of them that they wouldn’t lose anyone in a crowd. Edmund, especially once his father went away to war, would always stray away from the group, walking as far away from them as possible without losing sight of them. Now Peter walked nearly directly behind Helen so she had to turn her entire body in order to see him. Susan and Edmund stood on his left and right respectively, just a step behind him. Lucy, Helen’s youngest, was now the farthest away from her, standing a step behind Susan and to the left. Another surprise that seemed to just punch the breath out of Helen was that Lucy no longer latched onto whichever hand was closest, she now seemed perfectly capable of making her way through a crowd and keeping up with her family with no help at all. It was a strange thing to mourn Helen reflected, her daughter no longer needing a literal guiding hand, but mourn it she did.
As they got into the car to drive home Helen was about to help Lucy up as she had done a million times before only to find Peter already there helping not only Lucy but also Susan into the vehicle despite the older of the two girls having been able to get in and out of a car for years now. Brushing it off Helen got in herself ready to be home and for her children to return to normal. As they sat in the traffic from so many people headed in the same direction today Helen asked the children about the professor's house. The four of them exchanged meaningful looks Helen couldn’t read before Peter spoke, “It was nice.” Before Helen could ask for more details she saw Susan lightly elbow her brother. Peter furrowed his brow at her for a second, then he apparently realized what his sister was annoyed about because he then cleared his throat, turned back to Helen and said, “Mother.”
Helen was again taken aback by something her children had done, her children had never been quite so formal. Shaking her head to clear it she tried to put all this strangeness out of her mind, it wasn’t important and surely it wouldn’t last long once they got back to the house. Helen was quite astonished that an argument hadn’t already broken out between Peter and Susan from the elbow in Peter’s side a minute ago. But, instead of worrying needlessly Helen asked what the children had done while at the professor’s house.
—
It hadn’t gone away. If anything it had gotten worse. As soon as they had gotten home Helen had started on supper as it was nearly 19:00 already. Susan had offered to help but Helen had denied and sent Susan and her siblings off to their rooms to unpack.
An hour later when she went to tell them the food was ready she found all four of them in Peter and Edmund’s room, huddled together on the ground. They were whispering to each other so quietly Helen could barely hear them. She strained to hear what they were talking about but before she could figure it out Edmund turned towards her as if sensing her in the doorway and silently scanned her up and down. Soon all the children were standing in that strange formation that somehow seemed perfectly natural to them despite how foreign it was to their mother. They all watched her curiously for a moment before Peter asked, “Did you need something,” a very brief pause, “Mother?”
Helen blinked twice before saying, “Time for dinner.”
Settling around the table Helen thought that surely now her children would start acting like themselves again. But they didn’t. They all had such impeccable posture that Helen felt a little self-conscious about her own before brushing this feeling aside as well. Just like in the car the children barely spoke, the only sound around the table was the soft sounds of breathing and clinking of the silverware.
Finally, Helen couldn’t stand the silence so she searched desperately for something to say. Sighing through her nose as she settled on asking more about their time in the country she opened her mouth to speak only for her little Lucy to ask something first, “Could you pass the salt, sister?” Helen felt the ache in her chest grow sharper when she heard the way her daughter spoke. It had a musical lilt to it, and certainly sounded more posh than Helen had ever heard her child sound. Helen again tried to push this worry to the back of her mind. She again told herself it didn’t matter, perhaps her daughter had picked it up from the professor, Helen believed she had heard the professor speak like that when she was younger, after all.
After sipping her water she finally asked, “Peter, you mentioned you all did lessons at the professor’s house. What kind?”
Peter’s chewing slowed as he shared another unreadable look with Susan. Then just before Helen asked again, Susan spoke, “We took a few lessons on politics, a few languages like Latin, and swimming and fencing.”
“Oh,” Helen breathed, trying to not show her surprise at who had answered her or her sorrow at the fact that Susan also spoke in such a way that Helen believed it would be more suited coming from the mouth of one of the royal family in London, not Helen’s twelve year old daughter in Finchley. “You all must have been terribly busy.”
Peter nodded slowly, “I suppose. We didn’t find it all that bothersome. It was actually quite fun, Mother.”
Again with the formal way of speaking and the lilting posh accent. She hadn’t noticed it before when Peter spoke. Out of the three who Helen had heard speak, Peter’s new accent was definitely the most subtle, but now that she had heard it from the others she couldn’t not hear it when Peter spoke. Helen didn’t think she- no, Helen knew she didn’t like this new way of speaking her children seemed to have adopted from the professor. It wasn’t exactly the accent she minded, it was the formality. Peter now called her mother instead of mum and she hated it. Why couldn’t her children go back to normal already, she thought desperately, and oh, wasn’t that just a horrible thing to think about her own children, her babies. Begging God to fix them as if there was something wrong with them, there wasn’t, they had just changed, grown up while they were away. So, just like she had been doing since she first saw them on the train station platform she pushed down her confusion, unease, and sadness as she watched her children finish their meal, and tried to ignore it.
—
It’s fine. Just ignore it. They’ll be themselves again tomorrow.
Helen was now pacing back and forth in her bedroom as she tried over and over to convince herself that nothing was wrong, that this was all normal. It clearly wasn’t working though as she had been trying to convince herself of these three things for the past, she glanced at the clock, hour and a half. Sighing as she ran her hands down her face she figured she might as well check that the children had at least gotten into bed as it was nearly 22:00. Going down the corridor she reached Susan and Lucy’s room first. Cracking the door open she peeked inside to find the room dark but neither daughter was in their bed. Shaking her head she moved across to Peter and Edmund’s room and poked her head inside to find all four children tangled together on Peter’s slightly bigger bed. Lucy was curled tightly in the middle against Edmund’s side with her brother’s right arm wrapped around her. Edmund’s left arm was hanging slightly off the side of the bed like he’d been in the middle of reaching for something when he fell asleep. Susan on Lucy’s other side was laying mostly on her stomach, her head turned towards Peter and one of her legs tangled with Lucy’s. Peter was also on his side, one arm under his head and the other thrown over his sister’s, though Helen suspected that if Peter’s arm was any longer it would also be laying across his younger brother.
This was probably the most confusing of all. The children had never slept like this, all crowded together on one bed with tangled limbs and protective formations. Confusion and worry once again reared up and crashed into her like a tidal wave sweeping her out to the middle of the deep ocean where she couldn’t find her way back to familiar lands. Taking a deep breath she decided she would simply leave them be tonight and closed the door. There was no point dwelling on it. The children were fine. It was going to be alright. They probably just needed a little more time to adjust to being back home, no longer in the country. Sinking down onto her bed after getting back to her room Helen sighed slowly through her nose and relaxed her shoulders before laying down to sleep.
It’s fine. Just ignore it. They’ll be themselves again tomorrow. She told herself one more time as she lost herself to sleep.