A/N: Just something that popped into my head one day. Very short. Drabbly. Probably won't make much sense, but then again, neither do I. My first attempt at C.S. Lewis fiction, so hopefully it'll be as good as, if not better than, my other fics, which aren't much anyways. R&R please!
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There's a time in everyone's life when they grow up, when they cease to be a child. For Lucy, that time never came. Sure, she'd matured and eventually, as her mother had once said to Susan, "blossomed into a woman", but that wasn't the same thing as growing up. At least not to her. She had seen countless battles, most of them bloody and completely unfit for a young queen, yet she had still fought and kept her innocence. She had healed a myriad of soldiers on the verge of death, soaked in blood, the sight of whom would have made most maidens wretch in disgust and sorrow. But not Lucy. She retained her child-like views through all of it, always believing and hoping, always either blind to suffering or rended in two by it. And thus, she never truly grew up.
Peter said it was a fool's hope, trying to get back. But she still believed. She constantly found herself wondering if there were other ways in. After all, she had gotten in through several different ways before, why not another? She would glance twice at mirrors, cabinets, windows, paintings, and one time she even searched for an entrance through a book. But in the end, Peter was right, and she never found another way. But she never stopped hoping. Susan thought she was being childish and silly. "Stop pretending, Lucy", she would say, "That silly game was over a long time ago." But Lucy didn't stop pretending. She knew it hadn't been a game, or dream, or anything of the sort. It had been real, and it wasn't over. It couldn't be. Susan had forgotten Narnia, had left it for good. But Lucy hadn't. She had never truly left Narnia, she convinced herself, so long as she still remembered. So long as she still believed. And she did.
Edmund at least understood, although he resigned himself to the fact that he wasn't going back sooner than Lucy had. He was there when she needed to talk about Narnia and all their adventures, but he knew that it was gone, just like his father had gone. But that was at least better than forgetting or denying. Edmund was helpful, but it wasn't enough for Lucy to just talk. She missed Narnia. She missed the sea. She missed Tumnus and Caspian and all her old friends. Yet her grief slowed after a time, and she was able to go about without glancing over her shoulder every few minutes, thinking she had seen a flash of a golden yellow mane or a bright red scarf with a matching umbrella.
Others may have called her just Lucy, or Lu, or Miss Pevensie, but in her heart she would always be Queen Lucy the Valiant of Narnia. It was her belief in Narnia that kept her childhood alive. It was her hope, and her belief, and her love. She had never stopped hoping, like Peter had, or stopped believing, like Susan had. When her train crashed suddenly and the world went black, her last thought was of Narnia. That she would never see it again. Then she opened her eyes and saw the lush green fields, smelled the fresh scent of the fruits of the young trees, and she was home at last. So in reality, when others thought her immature or childish or dumb, she had had it right the entire time. The important thing about Narnia was not that you knew it was there, or whether or not you could get in, but if you still believed, and were a child at heart, you could find it anywhere. Even in death.
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That probably didn't make much sense, but it just came into my head and I had to write it down or my overworked muse might have just killed me. She is overworked because my friend and I are writing a novel, which is why (to readers of my Tamora Pierce fanfic) I haven't much chance to write fanfiction lately. Review please.