Title from T. S. Eliot's 'The Fire Sermon'

When Lucy came home her hair was still damp, fluffed around her face like a mane, and when Susan hugged her, the smell of the chlorine from the pool seemed to cling to her skin.

Susan pulled her close, dropping her head to Lucy's shoulder, and breathed in, so different from the salty tang of a sea they no longer lived by. Lucy squirmed away almost immediately.

"What are you –" She looked up at Susan's face, and must have seen something in it, for she stopped short. "What's happened?"

Susan clenched her hand around Lucy's arm as if to hold her in place, to keep her real and there, and alive. "I dreamt that you were dead. That everyone I'd ever met was dead, and–"

"It was just a dream," Lucy said softly, but her voice sounded very far away. Susan only held onto her tighter, dug her fingers into her sister's skin.

She shook her head. "It was like one of those I used to have, back in –" The word choked her, for the memories still hurt too much, like the phantom pain of a cordial-healed wound. She could not imagine it ever quite going away.

"Nothing is like it was, back home." Lucy stepped back, and in the tiredness in her face, Susan thought she could see the inner maturity that used to be reflected there. But then she blinked and it was gone, but they were still far too old for their bodies.

"This is home."

Lucy shook her head adamantly. "We lived there longer than here. Su, we grew up there. We had lives, and a purpose, and –" She bit her lip tightly, and scrunched her face up, because at heart she was still Queen Lucy the Valiant, who would not cry at her losses.

Susan would have reached out for her, but it would have been unwanted. So she kept her arms very carefully at her sides, and said, as matter of fact as if it had not destroyed her life, "And then it was just taken away."

Lucy's gaze was harder now, though her eyes still shone as though she might burst into tears at any moment. She kept blinking hard. "But we were the ones who walked through the door! Don't you get that it was all our fault? And we were at war, and then we just left –" Her hands were crossed in front of her chest, accusing.

"They could all be dead by now." Her hand flew to her mouth by instinct. She had not meant to say that.

"Don't say that!"

Susan sighed, "We wouldn't know." The Narnians would have sent out search parties to look for them, and only a fool would have failed to take advantage of such a perfect opportunity for attack. The Tisroc, curse him, had been many things, but no one could ever have accused him of that.

"They were our people," Lucy said softly, and a tear ran down her cheek, then another. She rubbed them away with the palms of her hands, but they just kept on coming until she was nearly sobbing.

"Come here," Susan said, and pulled her into an embrace. Lucy's head dropped down to her shoulder, and she could feel her sleeve getting wetter as her sister's tears fell, but it didn't matter. She moved her hand soothingly over Lucy's back. "Shh, it's all right."

"It's not," Lucy said into her sleeve, voice half-muffled by the fabric. "It'll never be alright again."

"Shh."

"It won't. We shouldn't be here!" she lifted her head back, and the suddenness of the movement made her hair fall backwards like a mane. "We should be there!"

"I know," Susan said, though she knew it was hardly an answer. She hesitated, but she could not quite shake the thought. "I don't think any of us can ever go back."

Lucy looked at her for a long moment. Then she clenched her jaw tightly and took a deep breath. "We will," she said, as if she could make it happen through blind faith and sheer determination.

It had worked well for her before, though England would be less complaint than Narnia had been, for fewer listened to a schoolgirl than a queen.

Then Lucy shook her head as if to clear it, and smiled weakly. "I'm sorry I've made this all about ho – Narnia. What was your dream?"

Susan hesitated, but she soon found herself talking nonetheless, for there was still that probing glint in Lucy's eyes that had served her so well in Narnia. "I was walking through the throne room in Cair Paravel, and there was blood everywhere, and I sank further in with every step I took. And there were bodies all around me, everyone we knew. Oreius had had his throat slit, and –"

She closed her eyes to avoid seeing Lucy's face, to make it less real, but all that did was make the image return, excessively bright like a child's drawing, yet too macabre and gruesome for any child to have drawn. She could still see herself standing in that room with its winding arches splattered in blood, and slipping in it, and landing face-first in a growing puddle of blood. When she had looked up, she had looked straight into Peter's glassy eyes.

And then the castle came crashing down around her, but she had not been harmed.

"One of us was beheaded," Susan said in a small voice, but could not bring herself to elaborate further, for an explanation would make it more real, even in this small grey kitchen in this gloomy world where nothing like Narnia seemed even slightly possible.

She was not aware that Lucy had moved until she felt the other girl throw her arms around her and squeeze her tight. Her easy warmth was a comfort, her arms like an anchor to a less terrible world.

"It wasn't real," she said into Susan's ear.

Susan hoped she was right, like she had been about Aslan and Mr Tumnus, and even Narnia itself. But – "I've dreamt true before."

"But it wasn't exact. It never happened quite like you saw." She pulled away to look into Susan's eyes. "It'll be alright."

Then, quieter, "it'll have to be."