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Iris

The day that David Pevensie returns from the war, his youngest child opens the door.

She's home alone, and mail has been either sluggish or slow or some myriad of events has led to the solution that he is here, unexpected, and his youngest is home alone.

Small fingers are curled around the green tinged copper knob. Silence hangs in the air as she props open the door. David notices the thick sludge adhering to the dirtied paint and how it has chipped and weathered since he has been away. It's an oddly surreal moment. It's her expression that catches him off guard.

Pale blue eyes blink at him hollowly, and the baby fat around the edges of her cheeks don't sit right on top of her skin; like its trying to fit back into a form that it wasn't in before. Freckles are dusted across the pale skin and the thin wisps of blonde escape half-hazardly into the smog filled London air.

She catches herself; like an old woman who has toomuchwieght touching her heart and mind and chest. His eyes catch hers; identical pools of icy blue. And all thoughts of rushing forwards to embrace a lively child with tiny fingers, rosy cheeks and shrill decibels of laugher canteering out through her nose grind to a stifled pause. David hesitates slightly, and he has the oddest feeling of meeting an old acquaintance on the train station unexpectedly, after being apart for years.

Lips pursed, Lucy peers up at him, dull recognition catching in her eyes. It's like a flame starting in the back of her mind, her posture changing and the idea just only starting to take root behind furrowed brows, heavy in concentration.

Some part of his mind recognizes the transition and lights up with a heady rush towards hislittlegirl; the one with freckles and toys and bows and Helen's baby like dimples and she's two years old and he's teaching her how to walk.

But, it is the point five seven seconds that catches him.

He's a delirious young man, returning home from war. And there is a detached mental rundown that she gives him, before matching his eyes, shell-shocked apathy for shell-shocked apathy. He's looking at a fellow soldier, at a ragged woman who has lost too much from the war.

Then the flame catches up behind Lucy's eyes and with a click reality catches up on itself and she's in his arms again. The baby fat has melted back to the right places in his memory and maybe it was just more the animation of her face, as her frame slinks back into jerky childlike movements.

David catches her eyes again and the memory of this moment seeps from his head like water. Some days though, he can't help but feel a sense of loss, and a ringing in his ears.

Maybe it's more like a roar, but as he settles into his home, and he laces his fingers through Lucy's own, he can't help but think that he's glad to be home again.