A/N: Ok, so after just one day, I'm BACK! I wrote this today, and liked it so much, I just couldn't wait to share it with you! This is in a similar vein to the fic I posted yesterday, The Dearest of Aslan, so go check that out! However, this one is from a Helen Pevensie's point of view, which I liked as we really know very little about her, and so she has become, in this story at least, a prism through which we can view the four. Please enjoy, and leave a review, and without further ado; the story!

Of Fools and Foolishness

Part One

Helen Pevensie was not a foolish woman. After all, there was a war on, and there was very precious little time to entertain the idea of foolery, if one were to live to see tomorrow. No, Helen Pevensie was not a fool. If she were, she would not have been expecting to see changes in her children when they returned from the country. As she stood at the station, awaiting their train, Helen mused that having been away so long, she would have been a fool to expect them to be the children she waved away so long ago.

Peter had been a boy, then, adult responsibility peeking out at the edges of child-like expressions. A man, trying to emerge from his childhood. The war had forced him, and so many, to grow up before their time. His father enlisting had left Peter the man of the house, at an age where his father was crucial to his development. Peter's journey from a boy to a teen had been rocky- marred by his quick temper, pride and adolescent naivety. At just a teen he had towered over her. Now he would indeed be a man, Helen supposed. It would be foolish to expect the same, young, lost child to return.

Helen Pevensie was not a fool.

Susan, a girl at just 13 would be a young woman now, she thought. It was surprisingly easy to imagine Sue as a woman, as the girl had always been so ahead of her years. Whilst Peter had shied away from adulthood, casting aside the toils of getting older, Susan had embraced it and the freedoms that came along with it, even in a war.

At 13 she had been dabbling in make-up, curling and setting her hair, and fussing over the younger ones. Helen supposed though, it would be foolish to hope that the young woman returning on the train would be in need of direction, as she had been those long years ago. Helen remembered her own, awkward forays into adulthood, of dances and boys, and she sighed as she remembered arguments with her own mother over dresses and lipstick. It would be foolish to expect Susan to hold the same idealised view of her mother that she had so long ago, untarnished by adolescent thoughts.

Helen Pevensie was not a fool.

Edmund, her darling boy, just 11 when the war began. So small, so pale. So delicately balanced. The absence of his father to the front lines had caused a sort of rebellion in the boy, a childish fantasy that poor behaviour may bring his family running home. Helen had seen the fear behind the anger, though. The primal childish need for love (was it so childish?). But Peter, just a boy himself, reeling from the impacts of war, had not. And Susan, for all her adult behaviour, had not yet developed the motherly empathy that Edmund so craved. It would be foolish to expect Edmund now to still need her, as he once had. Foolish to ask for time to turn back and gift Helen her baby boy once more.

Helen Pevensie was not a fool.

And Lucy, just a baby, a sunny smile and fair complexion, happy eyes and golden hair. So innocent. So pure. Helen wondered just how much innocence the elder version of her daughter had maintained. How much had her older siblings been forced to fill in the roles of parents? For too long, certainly. (Curse this blasted war!). Would Lucy even remember her mother and father? (Frank had left to fight when Lucy was only 8). How much love could Helen expect the girl to express to her? (Oh! The child of war!). Was it foolish to ask for her children back unchanged? Yes, certainly physically they would be different, but how much love does time erode? Not from Helen, naturally, as a mother's heart can stretch as far as the ends of the Earth, and never break, but from children? How much could Helen expect? Was expecting anything foolish?

Helen Pevensie was not a fool.

And then she saw them, emerging from the crowd, as their train chugged out of the station (how far lost in her thoughts had she allowed herself to become, that she had missed their arrival?), waving, smiling. Peter, tall and fair in the lead, striding purposefully toward her. Chest out, shoulders back, with power in his steps. There was a kindness and a wisdom to his eyes now, as though the man that had been so lost in the child had at last stepped out to take his role.

Next came Lucy, sunny as she had ever been, taller, with long hair dancing as she walked. Her dress (a country style, certainly) flowed prettily as she grasped Peter's hand, and pointed toward Helen, a smile gracing her face. Ant the world seemed to brighten as she did so, nearby soldiers smiling with her. Lucy meant light, after all, and her youngest daughter was light personified.

And then came Susan, gracious and beautiful, elegant, but not in the styles she had been emulating before. Just like her siblings, she waked with power and certainty, confident as Helen had never seen her before. Gone was the fashion obsessed girl, here now was a stylish young woman in control of herself.

Lastly came Edmund. Tall, and more muscular much like his brother, he also carried himself with an air of authority, but also of real power, as though he were a lethal weapon just waiting to be used. His eyes were lighter now, his face less creased and he too had an air of wisdom far beyond his years. He appeared, to Helen, as though all of that pent-up anguish had been released, as though someone had gifted her boy the chance to show his worth, to handle responsibility, and he had proved it through determination and sheer effort.

It would have been foolish to expect her children to be returned to her unchanged after so long away. Yet, as they reached her, her darling grown-up children, and gathered her in a hug, Helen knew that the love within their family would never change.

Love was eternal and it would be foolish to expect anything else.

(Helen Pevensie was not a fool.)

AN: So, there you go! I hope you enjoyed this, as I said earlier, if you did, please let me know with a review, and check out my other Narnia story, which focuses more on Lucy, and how Narnian she appears to be, at least through the eyes of her brothers. If you have any prompts or story requests, let me know too, and I hope to be back soon with another fic for you all!