A/N: Feeling sad today. Felt like writing something sad to go along my mood. At midnight. Whatever. This can be taken as sharing universe with "Eternize Us". I listened to Lux Aeterna (the song) on a loop while writing this. So warnings. This shit gets dark (mentions of death: assassination, suicide, murder, this one doesn't have a happy ending).

Those Left Behind

They were eight years old.

Albert and Brenna, both considered miracles, Aslan's gifts, since the moment the Just had born them. Twins, complimentary souls, as touched by the Deep Magic as their parents, seemingly favoured by the great Lion.

Where was that favour now?

They were eight years old, when one of their fathers came back carrying the other's cold corpse, mad already with the kind of grief that would lead the Magnificent to his ultimate doom as well. They were eight years old, and as much as they prayed, and begged, and swore upon their souls, the Lion did not answer. They were eight when their world was irreparably shattered into pieces.

It would still take them some time to realise that there was no salvation awaiting.

{xXxXx}

The High King carried the Just King's body right towards their bedchambers, before locking himself in for a whole week.

Albert had been playing with the Talking Horses that had bothered to visit the stables, and so he knew nothing when his sister rushed to him, already a crying wreck as she tried her best to tell him the awful news through her sobs. She had been at the Throne Room. She had seen their father run with their mother lying limp in his arms.

They were eight years old, but Aslan had gifted them both with the same sort of uncanny wisdom They had granted their parents and aunts. Even so, all the wisdom in the world could not make them understand why, why, why, why Aslan could have ever let something as awful as Death snatch away the Just from the Magnificent. It was as unfathomable as a day without its night, as a sun without its moon. There was no possible way to reason such a loss, and so the Twins didn't.

Their father had taken their mother to their chambers. Surely, it was so that the Just could recover peacefully. Surely, it was so the Magnificent could protect his beloved better. Surely, it was just their father being paranoid after another almost death of the one he loved more than anything else in the world.

Albert and Brenna repeated these truths, and kept each other close. If their Aunt Susan, the Gentle, had not worn any other colour but black... Well, it was understandable. Not so long ago, her latest consort had died of old age, had she not? Poor Aunt Susan. One would think that, in her long life, she would have gotten used to her beloved's short life spans.

And if their Aunt Lucy seemed to burn her way down the hallways, a blazing supernova shrouded in red and black leather, demanding retribution... Well, it was understandable. Mum had gotten hurt in the latest battle against Archenland, a realm they had thought an ally 'till their strange attitude towards their parent's love drove them to wage war against Narnia. Aunt Lucy must have felt so devastated, knowing that there was no more hope for a peaceful resolution with Cor's descendants. Brenna had been told by several nymphs of a time, long before her birth, when the royal houses of Archenland and Narnia had been as close as family. How King Lune had been their most steadfast ally, how his sons, Cor and Corin, had followed the tradition of being Friends of Narnia, even when they themselves wrinkled and wasted away as the Four Monarchs of Narnia remained ever young and beautiful, forever frozen at their twentieth spring, unable to age further by the Lion's wishes.

Why Ram chose to declare war on Narnia, the Twins could not fathom, but having to fight Archenland, after almost having been allies for such a long time–since very early in the Four's reign, no less!–had taken a toll in their whole family.

It was strange, how the start of the war seemed to coincide with the Twins' birth, but when Brenna had asked their mother, not a year ago, if they were the cause of the conflict, the Just had seemed rather upset, whole body shifting within a blue haze before fully settling in their most female form, as they did when they wanted to drive a point home while in full Mum Mode, as Aunt Lucy had amusedly dubbed it.

"You and Albert were a gift from the Lion Themselves. This... conflict with Ram comes from a clash of different points of view, my love. But it's not your fault, nor your brother's. Never doubt that."

The Just had fixed an unwavering stare on the girl, and so Brenna had been convinced, quickly running to tell her brother about it all. Her brown eyes–those deep brown eyes Brenna so envied in her brother, as much as he in turn envied her blue ones, which she had undoubtedly inherited from their father, who had in turn inherited them from the grandfather they would never meet–had been absolute, unwavering in a way that the Four Monarchs of Narnia seemed to share, a way that was rarely seen, reserved as it was for extremely serious situations. The Just's eyes had been fixed in that unwavering stare, and as such Brenna–and later Albert, when she told him about it–could not bring herself to doubt for a second if her mother's words were true.

All in all, it was easy to justify why their aunts were acting as they were, and why their father had locked himself with their mother.

If Philip, their mother's trusted Horse, seemed heart-broken and desolate, well, it surely had to be because he could not be by the Just's side.

And yet...

Aunt Susan had begun some sort of project, soon after the Magnificent locked himself in with the Just, that the Twins had been expressly forbidden to approach, somewhere within Cair Paravel's lower level.

And at first the Twins had thought it was meant to be some kind of surprise for their parents once their mother was fully recovered...

(Was the Just being stubborn again, denying the quick healing of Aunt Lucy's cordial for a more conventional healing unless it became absolutely needed? Maybe that was the reason the Valiant seemed so utterly furious? Was she only exasperated with her sibling's ways?)

But all those assumptions were quickly washed away when Albert saw the dwarves carry downwards what was, unmistakably, a tombstone.

So that very night both him and his sister sneaked in the chamber that had seen so much traffic lately, eluding the Talking Racoon that acted as their nanny with an ease that would have left them baffled had they not endeavoured to exhaust her all day long.

The chamber was oriented towards the West, maybe honouring that their mother reigned most through the western lands of Narnia, as Aslan had seen fit since the coronation, and it was enormous. A Rotunda, as they had seen not long ago in their lessons with the centaurs, for as massive as it was, the room was perfectly circular, its dome already sporting several paintings of the Just in both male and female forms, columns at regular intervals around the room, and yet...

The Twins, frozen in middle of the suddenly horrifying chamber, could not appreciate its beauty, for their gaze had been taken by the open sarcophagus that presided the room.

It was beautiful, carved from marble with the spotless masterfulness only found in the dwarves' best works, the tombstone Albert had seen them carrying towards the room now mounted seamlessly in a pedestal that overlooked the sarcophagus.

Both it and the tombstone were of the purest marble, magnificently decorated with sapphires and silver and emeralds, yet the siblings could not admire their beauty. For the words carved in the tombstone, the words that had been filled with silver to be seen more clearly within the whiteness of the stone...

The Just

Beloved Brother, King, Consort and Father

Someone is screaming, an agonizing sound that tears through the siblings just as swiftly as the words they've read–the words, in the tombstone–, and it takes them a while to realise that the agonizing sound comes from them.

For they were granted a special kind of wisdom, like the Four before them.

For they were born amidst a war, with Aslan's sacrifice for the monarch they call mother a constant tale before going to sleep, and as such death has been something they learned about quite soon in life.

They know what seeing those words, in a tombstone, in a room fit to be a King's final resting place means. Because so many things make so much sense and oh do they wish they had headed their Aunt's orders and never approached the thrice damned room.

The Just is dead.

Somehow, the Impossible, the Unfathomable happened, and Edmund "Ed" Pevensie had been taken from them. Forever.

Somehow, all their prayers for their mother's wellbeing went unheeded by the Lion.

Somehow, not even their Aunt Lucy's cordial was enough.

(They'll learn, much later, that she had not reached her brother in time. That she had been tending to the wounded back at their camp. That Edmund Pevensie had bled far too much, far too quickly, to reach her on time, no matter how quickly the High King had taken him to her.)

There are steps approaching, heavy and constant, as if the continuous agonized scream that still leaves the Twins' lips had somehow managed to go unheard. Were the children able to do something more than desperately pray for their realisation to be wrong, for the Just to come back from death's grasp as Aslan had once, they would have–maybe–worried about being caught in the room the Gentle Queen had expressly forbidden them to enter. Were their world not being shaken loose by the realisation that one of the Four Monarchs of Narnia–the Four that have always seemed so utterly immortal, so impervious to seemingly silly things like death–has died, they would have cared about the potential punishment, the lecture Aunt Susan would surely give them, her blue eyes shining with disappointment as they squirmed under her gaze.

But the Just was dead, and so everything had been rendered meaningless.

The steps reached the room, stopping briefly at the doorway–surely when whoever it was took notice of the siblings sobbing on their knees, eyes fixed on the sarcophagus and the tombstone–before proceeding, eventually passing them by.

It was the Magnificent. Their father.

And he was, without a doubt, carrying the Just.

{xXxXx}

The Magnificent had left the Just in the sarcophagus, taking his time to properly arranging the body, before he took off the bundle he had been carrying on his back, unwrapping the swords the Twins knew had belonged to their mother. Whatever he did with them, or he arranged them within the sarcophagus, they didn't know.

Seeing their father had startled them into silence, tears still marring their cheeks as the weight of the reality they still wished to deny seemed to leave them pinned to the cold ground, on their knees.

It felt as if someone had brutally ripped something fundamentally necessary from their very souls, and their father's actions–as he slid the lid of the sarcophagus closed–somehow made it all real.

He remained by the now closed sarcophagus for a while, his back to them, whole body tense even as he seemed to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders.

When he finally turned around, facing them, his blue eyes were dark, blazing. And something deep within the Twins rejoiced, for the rage simmering in those eyes echoed the desolation that threatened to consume them all. That rage seemed to swear retribution, in a way neither Albert nor Brenna had ever seen before.

Before them, the Magnificent had given way to the Golden Fire, and they knew those who had taken the Just from them would pay. With a single stare, their father had sworn them so, right before he took off to do exactly that: crush Archenland, make Ram pay for having taken the Just from Narnia.

Had they known that they would lose him too, that Archenland's ultimate doom would claim the Magnificent as it had already claimed the Just, the Twins would have done anything–anything–to keep him from going.

Yet they hadn't, and so not even two years after losing their first parent, they lost the second.

Albert and Brenna became orphans officially when they were ten years old, but somewhere deep they knew that the Magnificent had died the same day the Just had.

For they remembered his blazing, dark blue eyes. On hindsight, those had been the eyes of a dead man, swearing to take his beloved's killers out before joining him in death's embrace.

That they may have reunited in Aslan's Country offered them no comfort.

{xXxXx}

A new room, north of the one that held the Just, was prepared the second news of the High King's demise reached Cair Paravel, via one of the many Talking Beasts that had once seemed to orbit around the Just–the ones that now did so around the Gentle–, and under the crushing weight of their grief, the Twins couldn't help but marvel at their Aunt's composure.

For as much as they heard her cry herself hoarse when she thought no one could hear her, somehow she managed to seem poised in the mostly black dresses she hadn't stopped wearing since her younger brother's demise, managing the preparations for the Magnificent's final resting chamber with the same unwavering efficiency she managed everything else.

If Aunt Lucy burned like a supernova, blazing grief manifesting in dark red clothes and a broken look in her blue eyes that borne ill for their enemies, when not showing the soul-crushing pain of Aslan's prolonged absence–the Lion's apparent disinterest in the tragedies that had befallen them–, Aunt Susan burned cold, like the lowest depths of the Sea, or maybe even the famed touch of the long dead White Witch.

And maybe it was precisely that which made them clung to the Gentle and not the Valiant. Or maybe they already knew, somehow, that Aunt Lucy would burn herself out.

One way or another, they didn't try to sneak into the room that was to become their father's final resting place, and they didn't say anything when the Gentle readied another two chambers.

Because maybe, just maybe, their Aunt Susan knew it, too.

{xXxXx}

They were eleven when the Valiant died.

Their Aunt Susan had been telling them a story about Rabadash the Ridiculous–how he had once tried to force her to marry him, and how she and the Just had escaped his capture–when the news arrived, from one of the Talking Raven. Apparently, it had been an assassin, whose arrow had cowardly pierced the Valiant Queen's neck from behind as she tended to the remaining wounded Talking Beasts that a group of Carlomen had tried to enslave, only to find themselves falling to her dagger.

A most dastardly deed, for which the assassin had paid with his life, trampled to death by Philip, who had aged considerably since the Just's demise. Apparently seeing another of the Four die in front of him had been too much for the Horse, and after killing the assassin, he himself had fallen dead.

The Twins felt the blow of the loss, if nowhere near as devastating as their parent's deaths had been–losing the Just and the Magnificent had hollowed them far too much for that–and wondered internally what had their family done to have aggravated the Lion so, that They would allow not only the Kings but also their most favoured Monarch perish.

It was a harrowing thought. For if Aslan would allow the Valiant, of all, to fall, what mercy could be expected for them?

{xXxXx}

The Valiant's tomb had been mostly finished by the time she had died, and so no many preparations were required to put her to rest.

The Gentle's tomb was equally as ready, though, and even with such a warning–that their Aunt, the only family they had left, would take such care as to ready her own tomb–, the Twins could not fathom losing her too. Aunt Susan seemed so utterly composed, after all...

Brenna found her body, not even six months after Aunt Lucy's demise. There were no wounds, no clues beyond an empty vial that still contained traces of what the nymphs would soon identify as deadly nightshade.

Because, apparently, the Gentle had not been as composed as she had seemed.

{xXxXx}

Albert and Brenna were crowned King and Queen of Narnia when they were both eleven years old.

Aslan didn't appear for their coronation, as They hadn't appeared for five years already. The Twins' crowns were made of bronze, for they had refused to wear any of the Four Crowns, nor gold nor silver.

The crowns weren't ornate. There was no celebration.

Their only order was for the dwarves to craft the Gentle's tombstone–for it had been the only thing she had left unprepared, her tombstone–and four statues.

No chamber was readied for them, even if they both knew that their reign would be short. It didn't matter, not really.

{xXxXx}

Six months later, the Twins were twelve years old, and the statues were ready.

They sealed each one of them, knowing that Aslan had appeared to the dwarves, if not to them, and that Cair Paravel would one day shelter the Four again.

It was disheartening. Infuriating. Soul-wreaking, even, to know that the Four had been taken away. To know that even if their parents would one day return, they would not be there to welcome them. Aslan had taken the Four away, as swiftly as They had once brought them into Narnia, and nor Albert nor Brenna knew yet why.

So they went to the place they thought might have some answers.

On their own, unfollowed by their subjects, who all seemed to know that they had to make the journey alone, they walked towards the Stone Table, or more exactly, the How that had been built around it.

Fearless, for nothing had they left to lose, not truly, the Twins delved deeper within the How, 'till they reached the fractured Table that was said to have been the place of Aslan's ultimate sacrifice for the Just.

Brenna looked at the Stone Table and she wondered, bitterly, when the Lion had stopped caring. When had the Just's life stopped being worth saving. The Lion hadn't been a strong presence in her life, after all. She had been six years old, far too young to remember anything properly, the last time the deity had bothered to manifest. All in all, Aslan had always been little more than a mythical figure, that had lost more and more of its strength, more and more of her faith, with day since the Just's death.

Albert, as well, pondered why he or his sister were supposed to adore the Lion, when They had done so little to deserve it. After all, for all the talk about the Lion's sacrifice to save the Just, in the end, Aslan had let him die. The Just King. His mother, who most of the time was male–had been born so, if the stories were to be believed–, and yet allowed him and Brenna call him mother, and mum, without a word of protest, even if he was in his fully male form. His mother, who hadn't muttered a single word of complain when he apparently blew his cover for the other realms, what with calling him mum in front of King Ram.

He hadn't known that, to the world, to those not of Narnia, King Edmund and the High Queen–the High King's consort–were two different people. He hadn't understood it would make a difference, for them to learn that they were one and the same. After all, it was known to all that Aslan Themselves had appointed the Magnificent's wife.

It seemed beyond absurd to deny something so obviously approved by the Lion. After all, hadn't Them chosen each of the Four uniquely? Granted them all a role as Monarchs of Narnia? What did it matter that the High Queen and the Just King were one and the same?

Oh, Albert had been just a baby calling for his mother, too young to realise something might go awry from revealing such a thing. Not even two, Brenna and him had started to talk already, not more than twenty words or so, but enough to name their parents and demand their attention.

Years later, when his sister approached him relieved after their mother had reassured them that the war with Archenland was not their fault in any way, he had done as he thought a proper older sibling would–even if he was such by only a minute–and acted as if he believed it too. It wasn't as if Brenna did, whatever she may wish to tell herself.

In a way, both of them knew it was their fault. That something about them, and what their mere existence meant for the relationship between the Magnificent and the Just, had caused the war. Had caused whatever feeling was strong enough in King Ram to merit declaring war upon Narnia, just as it caused the awful names the wannabe assassins that managed to reach Cair Paravel–just to be swiftly eliminated by one of the Four–to spout such vitriol about the Monarchs of Narnia and their depravity, whatever they meant with that.

And as they pondered, standing by the broken Stone Table, a being that, like their mother, was hard to define as male or female appeared on it, lying calmly on the broken stone as if it was the most comfortable support ever. Their skin was dark, darker even than that of the few Carlomen assassins that had managed to reach the palace, merely a tone or so lighter than ink, their wild, golden mane and eyes striking a rather strong contrast.

The Twins hadn't seen the Lion since they were six years old, and yet no words were needed to know it was, indeed, the Great Cat. The only one whose reach extended to all known and unknown lands, even further than Tash's or any other deity. Maybe it was the eyes.

{xXxXx}

Going into the How, the Twins had known, deep down, that they would never get out again. That their deaths were swift and painless was an unexpected mercy.

But then, Aslan's punishment hadn't been meant for them, not really.

(They had never been meant to live past twelve, and so it didn't come as a surprise when they didn't. They were never meant to last.)

A/N: I'm so sorry. But hey, at least they died quickly and painlessly. The Narnians that remained suffered the Telmar invasion, and many died painfully, so...

This is unbetaed, written from midnight 'till 4 am, so excuse the typos (I'll fix them, I swear).