Prompt: "If you ever feel so inclined, I'd love to see a fic (or chapter) about the two brothers' reconciliation."
AN: I received a request for a reconciliation between the brothers, which I at first figured would follow The Granite Girl, but now I'm thinking it might actually not. Or, well…it didn't turn out the way I planned. This picks up right after Jadis' cameo in the movie-verse. Completed in three chapter (so far).
On a Bed of Moss in a House of Willows
Now
He couldn't breathe. It felt like something was pushing its way through his chest, and the sensation left him wanting to run from the How. Run all the way back to England and keep running until he felt safe again.
It would never happen, he realized. Rationally he knew, She would never return in any form as formidable as the one she'd once possessed. But She wasn't gone. She would never be gone for as long as Narnia or Edmund lived. She would stay in the shadows on most days or nights, but every once in a while he would be confronted with her again. He understood now. He had been saved without costing the lives of any Narnian, but he would never shed whatever She had put in him. He would never be completely free of her, and the thought tainted him somehow.
"Edmund?"
He recognized Susan's voice instantly, and moved blindly forward. He didn't want to see her, or any of them. He just wanted a few minutes of peace, could they not just give him that. His breath was evening, and would stay so until he allowed otherwise. Temporary control was enough.
He'd given them everything since coming here, he'd tried to be a better version of himself, and remain a sliver of the king he once was, but it was coming apart. Just for one moment in time he wanted them all to leave him the bloody hell alone! Give him a second to fall apart and put himself back together without worrying anyone. His hands were shaking and it felt difficult to breathe, but he wasn't panting. Still not panting.
They should've been grateful he didn't throw it in their faces, and just leave him alone.
But to be alone he needed to escape outside. Inside the How there were Narnians everywhere he turned. He needed out, and the thought became an obsession.
He could do this, keep it all inside and packaged away neatly until he had a moment to himself. He just needed to feel fresh air on his face and know that he was allowed this one transgression. That it was not his fault Jadis would never truly leave. That it wasn't all because of him. That he didn't cause the grimaces of disgust he sometimes saw on Peter's face. That he wasn't the reason Susan sometimes looked so lost and alone. That he could fix Lucy's hope and return it to what it had once been.
He just needed someone who could tell him it was never because of him all this horrible madness had been allowed to flourish. That it wouldn't've mattered whether or not Jadis had found him in that forest when he was still so young.
He had made it past the outer wall and took a quick turn, subconsciously in a south-western direction. As far into the middle of a big, wild forest as he could get.
He realized where precisely he wanted to go and so changed direction, veering towards an old river. What had once been a spillway of the Fords of Beruna, but was now little more than a slight hollow in the woodland hills. It had once joined two magnificent rivers, merging their violence in the calmest of ways, and he had admired that about the River gods and goddesses that had controlled it.
His feet knew the way even if his eyes didn't recognize anything to guide him. He missed his old landmarks. Missed being able to look out across any stretch of land and know which direction he was looking in. Always knowing which direction was home.
He had followed that river both out and back more times than he could remember, and the thought of it having dried up made him infinitely sad.
He walked across boulders, half buried in the forest floor, and realized he was close. River sediment. That little river had carried rocks from Beruna towards Glasswater for almost a thousand years before he came there, and somehow it always managed to grind down the edges or the rocks in its current along the way.
His breaths were even deeper now and his fingers were tingling.
He suspected the river had been a secret favorite of theirs, the river goddesses. They had sometimes withheld it in summer or winter, only for it to bubble to life again in spring. Giggling as the first sprays filled the riverbed. There had been merriment by that river.
His feet touched rubble, buried amongst layers of fallen leaves and mulch. But there beneath his feet as it had always been. He remembered the lovely river goddesses in their billowing gowns, as they made a ceremony of allowing the river to spring forth every year. Echoes of laughter.
Something lodged in his throat and he felt like he was still running. He kneeled as his hand automatically sought out his chest. He felt his heart thumping like it was still trying to escape, and the thought made him weep. A long solitary sob that sounded ever so pathetic in the majestic forest all around him, but he couldn't help it any more than a tree could stop growing. So he kneeled, allowed his knees to sink into the ancient riverbed, and his one hand to grasp lumps of the ground to keep him sane.
He was lost in time.
He was back when it all started, and dear god, Aslan had given his life for him! It felt like someone was rifling around his stomach. Like an unwanted touch that he'd been too simpering to fend off, but now he felt it. Now it mattered whether or not it infected him ever again. Every single creature back at the How mattered. From Mouse to Giant.
He held his breath until he couldn't, and did it again and again until it became easier to think. He opened his eyes, and found he had to blink a couple times to see clearly, but the ache in his chest was dulling. It was retracting into itself like before. Into something he could manage.
He drew anther deep breath, all the way to the bottom of his stomach, hand above his navel just to make sure it wasn't just his imagination. And he released it. He did it again with closed eyes, and did it a third time through his nose, smelling everything around him as he did.
Feeling the way his fingers were clamped into the ground, and now dirt was creeping under his fingernails. Clotting dark new moons at the tip of each finger, and getting into creases of surprisingly weathered hands.
He ripped the clumps free and brought them up to his face, sank his nose into the dirt and breathed deep.
It was alright. Jadis was there watching, but she wouldn't come forth for a while yet. He would see her in his dreams tonight, he knew, but it was alright. It was normal, and combined with once again being back in his country it was damn near soothing. He breathed deep the smell of soil again. It was alright. Everything would be alright.
His eyes closed and in an instant he felt tired beyond belief. It was then he looked up and realized, with a stirring of worry, that he wasn't as alone as he'd thought. Someone was smoothly walking through the forest, unbelievably quiet for their enemy's usual clumping manner.
It was then he realized it probably wasn't. Unusual manners, that is.
He huffed a grin when a flash of red peaked out behind a bush only to vanish again. Quiet footfalls walked a calm perimeter around his forgotten riverbed. Whoever was there was Narnian. He decided to never acknowledge the guilt over his near collapse, but to rather ignore it as he had done in the past. It wouldn't matter what happened in his solitude, only what he chose to do after once he was back in public. Only actions, never reactions.
He stood and hobbled slightly from a wobble in his right knee. It was acting up after he'd kneeled on a buried rock just beneath the ground, but the pain was surprisingly refreshing.
He looked around for signs of other watchers, but saw nothing. It soothed him to know there was one friend who hadn't missed his departure, and decided not to involve anyone else. He admired that kind of strength in action.
Action had always been Peter's forte. Edmund's had been reason, at least until they came back and everything was undone, but he wasn't thinking of it now. He would stow all doubts away until later when he could indulge in them all without consequence, or fear of anyone overhearing.
Once they returned to England, he realized. The idea was quite new, but he recognized instantly the truth of it. They would return home, but this would not be the last time either of them saw Narnia again. The thought returned whatever melancholy had been chased by panic.
It felt quite pleasant to return to that stage of morose control, and he recognized it for the blessing it was. His feet carried him back with intermittent crunches of soft leaf, or twig, to alert him of his friendly follower.
He was not built, like Peter or Lucy, to handle grand emotions on a near constant level. He was made for quiet contemplation and reasoning, much like Susan.
Their two siblings had always handled their emotions with far more grace than anyone would've imagined, he remembered back to when Lucy was brand new and he himself was still a little one in a world of giants. Lucy had always managed to turn a frown upside down, and Peter had always drawn his focus from violent emotional upheavals.
Edmund just felt unsettled. He would always feel unsettled when emotions went beyond his control.
His escort moved closer as the ferns gave way to tall pines and willow trees. A pair of broad shoulders flashed between the greens, and a peek of golden hair.
Too tall to be an Animal, too short to be a Centaur, Edmund concluded easily enough who it might be. For some reason he didn't feel bothered when his brother's footsteps haunted the perimeter of his hearing, and Peter followed him a little while through the forest.
Edmund could see the How and felt himself settling back into the poise and calm he'd possessed since arriving, even trying on a little smile he hoped would soothe the nerves of their Faun watchmen.
He never made it that far.
TBC