Title: Christmas Memories.
Summary: Lucy can't quite remember her own mother...
Rating: T
Word Count: 1049
Other Chapters: No.
Disclaimer: C. S. Lewis and his heirs own The Chronicals of Narnia and all realted trademarks. I do not in any way profit from the use of these trademarks.
Pairings: Rabadash/Susan (mentioned briefly)
Contains: familial bonding
Warnings: No major warnings
On a bright Christmas morning, when Lucy was seventeen years old (or rather believed she was based on the rough number of winters she'd seen go by since she and her siblings had arrived in Narnia), she shut her eyes and tried to picture them. She felt as though she ought to be with herentire family on Christmas, at least in spirit if she couldn't do it in person.
She couldn't do it. Not the way she wanted to, anyway. She could just see strange blurs in the vague shapes of much taller human bodies. She could almost remember their voices, or at least she thought she could. She could remember a hint of a northern accent on her father, and she could remember her mother singing to her to calm her down as bombs fell. Her mother wasn't much of a singer, rather unlike Susan, who was really very—
That was the problem. Every time she tried to think of her mother, she ended up thinking of Susan. It happened to a lesser extent with her father and Peter, too. Had her mother looked a great deal like Susan? All Lucy could remember on the matter was that they both had dark hair. It had been so long since she'd seen them. Lucy hadn't been six years old when her father was sent off to war, and not long after they'd been sent out to the country, away from their mother, and they'd found Narnia. In many ways, Peter and Susan had raised her. They'd done a very good job of it, too, if Lucy was allowed to make that call herself. She was confident, skilled, and lively, and she wanted for nothing in love, in faith, or in material possessions.
It just wasn't the same though.
Lucy looked into Cair Paravel's exquisite library and found Susan bent over one of the writing desks, no doubt composing a message for her new lover in Calormen.
"He's not going to know what you mean if you wish him a happy Christmas," Lucy teased.
"On the contrary," Susan said without looking up, "I'm explaining the whole thing to him right now. I'm a very good teacher, so he should understand perfectly."
"Well," Lucy said, "Be careful that you're not so busy describing Christmas that you miss the thing itself. It only comes once a year."
They smiled at each other, and Susan set her quill down. "Am I missing anything terribly important? It can't have been an hour since breakfast, so dinner won't be for quite a while yet. Are you and the boys doing something?"
"No," Lucy said quickly. "To be quite honest, I'm not sure where our brothers are at the moment. I just... wanted to be with you. Could you braid my hair?" Susan looked uncertain for a moment, and Lucy quickly clarified, "—If you'd rather not leave your letter just now, I'll understand—"
"No!" Susan said, standing and moving for one of the sofas. "Come! Sit down! My letter can wait."
Lucy settled in in front of her sister, facing the window, where snow was falling steadily, and she felt Susan pull her ribbon out of her hair and get to work. "Do you suppose Aslan will come to dinner?"
"He usually does," Susan said. "Yes, I suppose so..."
"Susan?"
"Yes?"
Lucy stared out the window and let the sight of the falling snow and the feeling of Susan's hands in her hair soothe her, and she found her courage (It seemed silly to lose it over so casual a thing—Lucy had been to war before!) and just asked: "What was mother like, Susan?"
Susan's hands stilled for just a moment. There was a long beat of complete silence and Susan spoke, in no less cheery a tone than before: "You don't remember?"
"I remember very little," Lucy said. "Her name was Helen, wasn't it?"
"Yes," Susan said.
"And she had darker hair, like yours."
"A couple of shades lighter," Susan said, "But darker than yours or Peter's..."
Lucy shut her eyes and adjusted the vague mental image. "What colour were her eyes?"
"Brown."
"Was she very pretty?"
Susan laughed. "Father certainly thought so. And I think I did too..."
"Do you ever have trouble picturing her?"
"Not too much," Susan said. "I had more time with her. Whenever things start to slip away, I just... focus on a clear memory. I started doing the same thing with father when he left for the war, so it was easy to start doing it for mother as well when we were out in the countryside and when we came to Narnia. Do you remember our very last Christmas with the whole family?"
"I remember..." Lucy shut her eyes and chewed her lower lip and tried to focus. "I remember father coming home late that Christmas Eve. Mother was worried about him because of all the snow."
"It was uncommonly cold that winter," Susan said. "Father was at the university late, finishing up research." She sighed. "I don't recall what it was on, but mother kept saying that it was terribly important. We wouldn't go to bed until he was home, though. None of us would. Peter asked if he could stay up and she said yes, and the rest of just... refused to go to bed. So we sat around the fire and mother made hot coco and we all just talked and Peter read to us. It seemed like we waited half the night. You and Ed were already asleep by the time he got home..."
Susan pulled the braid taunt and ran a finger down it. "They carried you and Ed up to your rooms and made Peter and I go to bed. They told us Father Christmas would never come while we were awake."
"Was that true back in England?" Lucy asked with a smile. They'd see Father Christmas at dinner tonight, almost certainly.
"I think it might be," Susan said, in the voice she used when she was trying to sound more sure than she felt.
"... Do you think we'll ever see mother and father again?" Lucy asked as Susan tied off her hair with the ribbon.
"I'm sure we will," Susan said immediately, in the exact same tone of voice.