Work Text:
Rip Tide
Lucy dreams of him, the first night she returns to England.
Caspian stands on the balcony of their room in Cair Paravel, looking out over the sea. Though it is nighttime in England, it is dawn in Narnia, the sun just beginning to creep over the horizon and light his face. He is haggard, pale with grief and exhaustion, and Lucy knows that he has not slept.
Lucy speaks, knowing in her heart that he will hear her. Dream this may be, but she and Caspian are bound by more than love - bound by blood, bound both to Narnia and each other, and bound to Rilian, wherever he has been taken.
“Caspian, my love.”
Caspian turns at the sound of her voice, and Lucy realizes in wonder that he can see her, as well, as his eyes widen with shock and then inexpressible relief.
“Lucy,” he rasps, and the sound scrapes across Lucy’s heart like ground glass, leaving a thousand tiny cuts in its wake. Caspian comes across the room toward her, tears already streaming down his face. “You are alive. Please tell me you are alive, and this is not some terrible delusion of a broken heart.”
“I am alive, dearest,” she reassures him softly. “Back in England, and as brokenhearted as you, but alive. I am not sure that I would have chosen living, if my death could have spared Rilian whatever horror he is currently experiencing,” she adds bitterly, ”but it was not my choice.”
Caspian reaches for her, and Lucy knows before he tries that it will be futile - his hands go through her, though she can feel something nonetheless, just a whisper along her skin. Caspian must as well, for his hands linger on her arms, even while his mouth twists with pain. He shakes his head, slowly.
“Do not wish for such things, my Lucy,” he murmurs, his voice thick. “Do you know where I have spent this night? I was down at the ocean, looking toward the East and watching the stars - the stars that are my friends because of you, my love - and praying to the Lion, with all my strength, that I had not lost you both. When Eurelis told me that you had seemingly disappeared, my one hope was that perhaps you had been spared, that you had been spirited back to England rather than killed or captured with Rilian. It gives me strength to know it - and Rilian needs you, regardless of what world you are in.”
The mental image of her Caspian, alone at the ocean for hours on end, is both agonizing and makes her ashamed. “It is wrong of me,” she acknowledges, low. “I did not think it would end this way. And what good am I to either of you here?” Lucy asks, her voice breaking. “I cannot help you, I cannot save Rilian, I am gone from all our people. What good am I to you like this?” She gestures angrily at herself, at her semi-corporeal form, at her much-younger body, helpless fury washing over her again as she realizes afresh the gulf between them, not just in time and space but physically.
Caspian blinks, seemingly taking in her younger self for the first time. “Stars, Lucy. You do look so very young,” he breathes softly. “I had almost forgotten what it was like, to see you like this. Will you believe me when I tell you that I did not even notice, when you first appeared? You are ever Lucy the Valiant to me.”
He reaches out, more carefully this time, and strokes her cheek, and it makes the pain in her heart sharper to feel only the echo of his touch. “Do you remember, on the Dawn Treader , when I told you that I always see both Lucy the Valiant and Lucy of England in you? That has remained true, my love, for all these years. I love both of them and always shall. You do not lose either, no matter where you are. And you are always my Queen, and my heart.”
He carefully puts his arms around her, then, and a shadow of his embrace though it is, Lucy can still feel it, can still hear the pounding of his heart.
“Do not lose faith, Lucy,” he whispers. “You have always had the most faith of all of us. My heart is less heavy now, knowing you are safe, and we will find Rilian. I swear it.”
“I love you both, always,” Lucy says through her tears, afraid that if she does not, she will never have another chance. “I will love you forever, Caspian.”
“And I you, my Queen,” he whispers, and then he is gone.
She wakes in the dark, her entire body aching for him, and weeps.
The dreams continue, sometimes brief, sometimes longer, and Lucy is grateful for them, yet finds them only a small respite from her own agony. She knows Caspian feels the same. The interludes of being with each other help them both survive the anguish of being without Rilian, and their own anguish at being separated.
Despite clinging to Caspian’s faith in her, his love for her, like an anchor in a stormy sea, Lucy cannot stop reliving those last few minutes in Narnia - watching their son be utterly hypnotized by the Enchantress and willingly following her away. Being helplessly pinned against the rocks, screaming for Rilian, only to be overtaken by the tide and stranded back in England.
She had fought. Oh, how she had fought, certain she would drown if she did not, fought with all her strength against the water and the Enchantress’ magic, against leaving Caspian and Rilian alone. And she had failed.
She had not seen it. She had been guarding Caspian against that fiend for twenty years, and she had not seen through the woman’s deception, had not been able to save her own son.
During her waking hours, it is Edmund, unsurprisingly, who sustains her through those first awful days and weeks. When she first falls back into England, her self-hatred is so intense that it is almost more than she can bear, and she has never been so grateful for Edmund’s quiet strength.
It is Edmund who holds her as she weeps and rages, Edmund who murmurs reassurances to her because he knows, he knows what it is like to feel that you have failed those dearest to you, to know that you have left them behind despite every every atom in your body screaming to do otherwise. It is Edmund who promises her that all is not lost, and that she will find herself again. It is Edmund who sits with her, holding her hand for hours in silence. It is Edmund who coaxes her to eat and drink just a little, and if she does not care for herself, she manages it for him.
(And sometimes, for Eustace, who hovers around them both, quiet and stricken and helpless.)
It is Edmund who writes to Peter, unbeknownst to Lucy, and the two of them who make up something, anything, to tell Harold and Alberta, so that when her oldest brother appears at the door in Cambridge, Lucy gives one cry and then falls into his arms, and they hold each other without a word, tears streaming down both their faces.
It is Peter who writes to Susan, Lucy knows, when a letter arrives in her sister’s looping hand, so short but so full of meaning.
Lucy,
I love you. I’m here. Tell me what you need.
Susan
It takes Lucy a full day and more tears to process that, for she has missed her older sister more than she has ever admitted, and though Susan makes no mention of Narnia, the open declaration of love and support tells Lucy more than any words. How can she articulate to Susan what she needs? She has no idea, and yet, when she sits down to write, the thoughts come unbidden.
Susan,
I don’t know how He could do this. I need your strength, your anger - both. Either. I don’t know how to bear it.
Lucy
Gradually, small moments break through the waves of pain, so small at first Lucy can barely comprehend them. When she smiles upon waking, hearing the birds in the trees outside her window. The flowers that Eustace leaves on the bedside table for her. The first time she makes tea of her own volition. The first time she hears Peter and Edmund laughing together.
During one of their quiet moments in the garden, she looks over at Edmund. “This must have caused you to relive so much grief, Edmund,” she says softly. “I am sorry.”
Edmund is silent for a moment before he squeezes her hand. “Perhaps - that grief was meant to be akin to this one,” he answers. “I understand, Lu. I was as angry and devastated as you. I would change it in a heartbeat, as you would. I would do anything in the world to have it be different. But, since it is not - if living through my own grief has helped you survive yours, perhaps that is enough.”
“I wish it had been different for us both,” she whispers, leaning her head on his shoulder and tightening her fingers around his hand.
“I know. So do I.”
When Susan’s reply arrives, it knocks the breath out of Lucy. She has cried so much in the past few weeks that she had thought all her tears were gone, yet Peter finds her sobbing on her bed, Susan’s letter in her fingers.
Lucy,
I have been angry for so long that I have forgotten what it is like to live without it. But it is not my anger you need. You always had your own strength, little sister, and it is in your heart, your faith, your love that you have always given so freely.
Peter says that you dream of Caspian. That you are bound to him. That you can speak to each other, touch each other, however imperfectly. Do you suppose that you could cross space and time and worlds, sweetheart, without Him knowing?
I have believed many things of Him, most of them downright heretical, and I do not think that will change. He and I do not agree, and He has much to answer for. But know this: I do not believe that what happened to you, and to Caspian and Rilian, was His will or His doing. We lived through Jadis, as well as much other evil, and there were many things He could not prevent. Evil lives, regardless of His will, and that is not His fault.
It is the rest that I cannot forgive Him for, the things He could have changed and did not. But - you are alive, and perhaps that will give Him and I a starting place.
Susan
Peter sheds his own silent tears as he reads, then pulls Lucy against him, holding her close as they both cry. “Aslan’s mane,” he says wonderingly. “Su actually wrote about - Him. About Narnia.”
“I know,” Lucy answers, and her sob is almost a laugh. “I thought she never would again - I thought we had lost her forever, Peter. And I don’t know whether to scream or cry or throw something, knowing that it took - this - to bring her back. And for her - to be writing words of comfort and faith to me - Peter - ”
She breaks down again, unable to finish, and Peter hugs her closer. “As Su said - perhaps it’s a starting place. For her, and for all of us with her.”
It is a few days after that when Peter persuades Lucy to come to the garden, just as the gloaming is beginning to steal over the day, and she finds Edmund and Eustace waiting for them. They have turned the garden into its own small Narnian corner, warm blankets and pillows among the flowers, and candles that they have found heaven-knows-where, since Harold and Alberta are far too modern to believe in anything so old-fashioned.
Peter settles next to Eustace, and Lucy finds a seat, curling herself around a pillow. “What’s all this?”
Edmund leans forward from his place and takes her hand. “Tell us the good things, Lu.”
She feels wrong-footed, looking at her brother’s earnest face. “What do you mean?”
“You were home for two decades,” Edmund says quietly. “With the person you loved so much that you bound yourself to him after barely asking his permission,” he teases gently, his mouth turning up in a small smile.
Lucy gasps in mock outrage, shoving at his shoulder. “It was a protection spell, Edmund Pevensie, not actual bonding, as you well know! - not quite,” she admits, a reluctant smile spreading over her face.
“Tell us the good things, Lu.” Peter, this time, amused and loving. “I hope there were many.”
Lucy looks around at all of them, and her heart feels a little less broken. There is still love here - so much love that she is so fortunate to have. Here, in this moment, living seems possible again. She takes a slow breath.
“Well,” she begins, “I suppose I should start with the wedding.”
It is Eustace - newly quiet, stoic, practical Eustace - who surprises her.
He has been such a brick, through all of this. Lucy knows he has talked to Edmund and Peter about being a dragon, about how strange it is to be back and to feel so different, to want to be different. He has not said one cross thing to any of them and, more surprisingly still, has given Lucy space in her grief, showing his concern with small gestures that Lucy knew were heartfelt, even if he was terrible at expressing things aloud.
He meets Lucy in the garden one morning, before the others are up, and there’s a fierceness in his eyes that she can’t decipher, until he speaks.
“Will you tell me what happened, Lu?” he asks bluntly. “At the end, I mean. I know you’ve told Edmund and Peter, but I thought it might be - easier, now.”
She hasn’t told him,- not directly, and perhaps that’s unfair. Whatever he’s pieced together has to be from what he’s overheard or been in the room for, and conversations with her brothers. But -
“Why?” she whispers.
His chin juts out in determination, and there’s the cousin she has always known, stubborn beyond all reason. “Because I’m going to find him for you. For you and Caspian.”