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Title: Shh
Chapter: One - When Lucy Was Eight
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Will eventually be Lucy/Tumnus; Peter/Susan subtext.
Summary: Lucy's life, from the morning after the coronation to the inevitable return through the wardrobe. Told not continously, but in moments.
A/N: Yes, this is a multi-chapter fic - you could almost say it's a warm-up for the massive epic Narnia fic I'm planning on writing this summer. I'm trying out a new style for this, a sort of continuous, vague style that leaves a lot to the imagination. And yes, there will be some Peter/Susan along the way. It IS, however, all subtext, as in the fact that everything will be implied, however blatant it may be. I hope those of you against incest will choose to read it anyway - I'm quite proud of the work I've already done on this.

The morning after the coronation, Lucy Pevensie wakes to find that she is still a queen. Her body is wrapped in satin sheets and sunlight bursts through the window and winter is gone, gone, gone.

Birds fly past, tap their pretty yellow beaks on the glass. “Such a lovely day,” they sing. “Such a lovely day!”

And Queen Lucy the Valiant smiles and rushes to greet them, because for a moment, she feared it may have all been only a dream.

“This is our life now,” Edmund says, flecks of bread sticking to his lips. There is something beautiful in his eyes; something that has never been there before. “Isn’t it grand, Lu?”

The jam is sweet on her tongue, and when she says “yes,” she feels it, from the silver edges of her wreath to the tips of her satin shoes.

“I always dreamed of being a princess,” Susan laughs, and her golden wreath melts into the sun.

Peter says nothing for the first few days. He sits in his throne, holds his crown in his hands, smiles, as though he has some sort of wonderful secret bundled up inside of him.

Lucy joins him now and then. She sits in his lap, rests her head on his shoulder, and when he takes a breath, every stand of her hair rustles, as though stirring from a dream. He smiles, a soft, sharp turn of the lips, and all is right in the world.

“He is fine,” she tells Susan, who wonders.

The first word Peter utters after the coronation is not a grand declaration, or a bold statement, or an important announcement.

“Toast?”

He innocently offers a piece to Susan, and when the gentle queen falls out of her chair in surprise, Lucy wonders if she will ever be able to stop laughing.

“I never thought that I would be the friend of a queen,” Tumnus proudly tells her, and she can’t help but smile. Peter allows her to go with him, back to the little cave at the edge of the woods.

“To salvage what is left,” he quietly answers when asked, and she is so preoccupied with how lovely the flowers look in the breeze, how green the green, green grass is that she can’t even recall why.

She sees the door, fallen like a wounded soldier, and it all comes back.

It is just as desolate as she remembers.

He picks up the broken frame of his father. Slivers of glass fall to the ground, and she whispers, “I’m sorry,” because that is all she knows how to say.

He pats her head and says it’s all right, but his hand is cold against her sun kissed hair, and she knows it isn’t.

She dreams of war.

She drowns in the blood and feels the tears and sees the blade, colored with fire.

The lion’s last breath kisses her face.

Her screams pierce the night, and no one seems to hear them.

She steps onto the balcony, and the night feels like ice on her arms.

Peter is standing across the way on his own balcony, but he doesn’t see her. His shadow falls and his head hangs low and the breeze ruffles his blond hair, so softly that it reminds her of a whisper.

He must dream as well, she thinks, and wishes it were not so.

Peter has never been one to forget.

A dryad brushes her hair in the mornings, and a faun prepares her lunch in the afternoon, and when she returns to her bed for the night, the covers are tucked in and the pillows are placed just right and it is perfect, as perfect as a painting on the wall.

The first council is held - to discuss what to do about those who fought in the witch’s army - and Peter hesitates a step from the door.

Lucy comes up beside him, worried. Her palm comes to rest against his sleeve, and he trembles, looks to her with wide eyes.

“All of them - they’re all waiting,” he stutters as voices echoes from the room.

And then Susan is there, a painted smile on her lips. She takes his hand in hers and Peter breathes again - a deep sort of breath that only comes after nearly drowning.

“They’re waiting for you,” she whispers.

“I - what if I don’t know what to say - what if I’m not what they‘re expecting?" His voice trembles, and Lucy wonders if she has ever seen her brother this way before. "What if I‘m not good enough?”

“Nonsense. You‘re Peter,” they all turn and look at Edmund, standing in the back, wearing a crooked grin that doesn’t seem to fit along the sharp lines of his face, “of course you’re good enough.”

And for a moment, they are not royalty.

They are family.

In the hall, Lucy overhears a centaur’s comment - “The High King is young - but wise, so wise!” - and is so proud, she could cry.

Tumnus lives in the castle now, in a room that Lucy picked out herself, where the walls are a soft brown and a large fireplace sits, waits to be used. “It will come in handy during the winter,” she proudly states as she shows him, and he laughs and says, “Very clever, my queen.”

When she isn’t busy with dinners and meetings and oh-so-boring affairs, she comes to keep him company. He always plays a song for her, soft and sweet, and candlelight dances along her hands and the warm tea bubbles in her stomach and it is perfect.

She can’t help but frown when there is a knock at the door, and Susan is calling her name.

Edmund is the one who teaches her how to ride. He leads her to the stable, picks out a horse - be gentle, she hears him say - and helps her up, his hands like whispers along her waist.

It’s difficult at first. She keeps sliding off, hitting the dirt with a thump, a cry, a scrape, and soon, all she wants is a bath and a bed, but Edmund keeps her at it. He picks her up when she falls, wipes away the blood when she cries. He says, “you can do it, Lu,” and soon, she believes him.

And soon, she is proving him right.

They ride along the beach, the sun in their hair, the spray on their faces. Edmund is laughing, a joyous kind of laughter that fills Lucy up inside, and for a moment, she wonders what happened to that angry boy she once knew - a long, long time ago.

She watches the sun linger along the sand, like some sort of magnificent golden mane, and the name Aslan is on her tongue, so suddenly that she almost chokes on it.

Oh Lord, she misses him.

She doesn’t like to sit in her throne. It’s lovely, yes, but much too big, much too tall, as though a giant should be sitting there and not a little girl.

“You’ll grow into it,” Peter says, and ruffles her hair like Father used to.

Susan braids her hair, softly, carefully. They sit on the bed - Lucy’s legs dangling off the side, Susan’s dress folded beneath her knees - and sometimes, they talk, and sometimes, they laugh, and sometimes, they even sing, but mostly, there is silence.

When her sister is finished, she takes Lucy by the shoulders and leads her to the mirror. She only sees herself, the same as she’s always been, but Susan’s gentle face fills with a smile and she whispers, “you’re beautiful,” so softly that Lucy might have imagined it.

She dreams of porcelain skin, icy whispers, and forgetting her slippers, she runs to Edmund‘s room - just to know that he’s there, there and not in a castle or with a witch or somewhere where she can’t find him.

Usually, he’s in bed, chest rising, falling, rising again - but she creaks open the door to see his shadowed figure, splayed against the moonlight. He turns at the noise, and his eyes flash weary red.

“Lucy,” he cries, voice slurred with sleep, “It was my fault, my fault - I hated you and she said those things and I believed them and...oh, Lucy, I almost ruined everything!”

He trembles in her thin arms for a minute, an hour, an eternity - time begins to blur together after a while. All she can do is hum a lullaby in his ear, the one that Mother used to sing; all she can do is wait for the moment where he will sleep and not remember any of this come morning.

No one ever wonders when they will return.

No one ever asks why they don’t tell their subjects that one day, they must leave.

No one ever stops and says, “This is not our home.”

And Lucy cannot help but hope that it will stay that way.

Edmund takes her riding, and even though it is dark by the time they return, she still goes to see Tumnus, because she promised she would, and Queens always keep their promises.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather retire to bed?” he asks. The candlelight swims in her eyes, and before she can even deny it, her head falls to the table.

She dreams of stone.

She jolts awake, and the tea is still warm and the candle is still bright and he is still sitting there, across the table. Tears linger in her eyelashes, and when he comes to see what’s wrong, she says nothing and thinks everything.

He escorts her upstairs. It is late, and the castle hums with soft snores and rustling blankets. The bronze handle of her door feels cold in her hand.

In a quiet voice, she asks if he will stay with her, and he takes her hand and whispers, “of course,” as though he has known all along.

She wakes to the soft dawn in her hair and his snores, from a chair next to her bed.

“We mustn’t live in the past,” Peter tells her, and in his rich blue garments, his beautiful golden crown, he truly is a King, “we must think of the future.”

The dreams fade away. Councils begin to discuss affairs other than the battle, the pain, the memory. Creatures mention the Witch’s name and no longer tremble in fear.

Soon enough, the war is but a story on the shelf. The vaguest of memories to those who were there to see it happen; an incredible tale of triumph for those who did not.

Soon enough, there is nothing but Narnia and the Kings and Queens and the Golden Age, and Lucy could not be happier.

Someone calls, “Queen Lucy,” and she turns, as though she has never known any other name.