I don't own a single franchise. Nyah~
Her eyes slowly fluttering open, Lucy Pevensie didn't have to bring a single finger to any of her pulse points to know that her pulse was racing dangerously fast. Her heart was hammering against her ribcage, two-hundred times a second it felt like. She wanted to cry, but she found she was honestly so upset that she couldn't even bring herself to do that much. She was in a state of shock - plain and simple.
"It was only a dream," she said aloud to herself, before giving a hiccup, one that was particularly harsh, panging in her chest.
Still, it didn't seem to matter that it'd only been a dream - no, a nightmare - that she'd awoken from. Her body was still in a state of fight or flight over it, was it not? The imagery had been all too real. The sounds too loud, the notions too real - it was enough to keep any young woman startled for a good while. This was no silly, over-imaginative night scare, where a monster from the depths of Narnia had chased her through the woods.
She had been standing at the window of her aunt and uncle's house in the vision, peering outside to watch as her brother walked up the street, apparently heading home, coming from who knew where. Out of nowhere, a horse and buggy had come - quietly at first, then louder, galloping horse hooves against the street blocks. The horses were neighing loudly, as if giving a warning that they were coming, and to keep out of the way. The wheels on the black, iron-wrought buggy behind the animals screeched and scraped against the street, adding to the commotion of it all.
"Look out, Edmund!" dream-Lucy had cried out, though she was sure that the thick panes of the window had simply reverberated her voice back to her, despite how well she could hear what was going on out on the streets below. In any case, the point of the view in the dream then changed, and Lucy found herself right in front of the on-coming horses. She was surely going to die, and she found that her shoes wouldn't lift from the spot where she stood, to allow to her to make a last-minute run for it. Not at all. Doom and dread and panic flooded dream-Lucy's heart in swells.
Feeling a shove, the girl was suddenly out of harm's way, and fallen instead by the side of the street. Looking back behind dream-eyes to see who had pushed her to safety, she'd snuck a peek just in the nick of the time to watch, with much horror, as her second-oldest brother was struck full-on by the horses and the buggy. Run under the hooves and the wheels of what followed it, Edmund was rendered a torn, bloodied mess.
She felt sure she wanted to scream, but dream-Lucy found she had no voice anymore, so instead she scrambled to her feet, before slipping almost at once, falling and scraping her knees on the street. After this, she simply crawled the rest of the short distance to reach her poor brother. She had taken one look upon his somewhat disfigured face when the dream decided to come to a close, rendering the real Lucy terrified beyond reason when she came to. It had been a nasty thing to witness, even if it hadn't been real, and she was now fearing for her own health in earnest, seeing as - though her hiccups had since subsided - her heart was still continuing to pound, and quite painfully at that.
Finally managing to sit up in the bed, Lucy gave herself a bit of a hug, only to then realize that she was covered in a cold sweat, as well. Bringing a hand to her forehead, she found herself to seem oddly warm, especially since she felt rather chilled otherwise, all over the rest of her body. Swinging her slender legs over the side of the bed, she stood up rather wobbily, keeping her arms crossed over the bosom of her nightgown as she headed for her cracked-open bedroom door.
She needed to see Edmund, and see him right now. She didn't even care if it disturbed her cousin Eustace's sleep in the process. She had to see that he was, indeed, alright. A lot of things had changed since she'd last sought to wake him up. Sure, she'd still snuck into his sleeping quarters from time to time, but she hadn't actually gone so far as to stir him since the time about a year and a half prior, when he'd told her that she'd never be too old for him to comfort.
Well, despite him having said this, Lucy found it more questionable as time had gone on. Even if he meant it in the sincerest of ways, her mind had grown along with her body in the months since that night, and while she took on a figure and face more and more akin to Susan's every day, her mind also sought to tell her more and more frequently that she simply was too grown to ever seek comfort in her brother's bed ever again. It was inappropriate, no matter how innocent. Her own aunt had told her so that last time she had awoken and left for the loo, only to discover her neice hesitating in the doorway of Eustace and Edward's shared room.
Still, no matter. She'd turn on the lights and awaken the whole household if it made it more so-called appropriate, but Lucy had to check on Edmund this night. She'd made it part of the way down the hall on her still-wobbly knees when she found herself experiencing a sudden attack of light-headedness. Pausing and leaning to the right, so that she was partially propped against the wall at her side, Lucy brought her hand to the side of her face. It felt clammy, and still it was covered in sweat. She blinked a few times in the darkness, trying to better adjust her eyes to it, though it appeared to be in vain, for everything she could make out swam before her in an odd way. Not another moment later she felt as if she was leaving her own body - floating right on out of it. Seconds later she lost actual consciousness, and fell forward to the floor with the slightest of thumps.
When Lucy next opened her eyes, at least a week had passed by, not that she was aware of quite anything at first, as she slowly moved to sit up in her bed.
"Where am I?" she asked, before groaning slightly and lying back down, just as slowly as she had sat up in the first place.
"Still in your room," a familiar voice answered her. "Aunty just left to go in to town with Uncle, so they could go and fetch the doctor again. They were worried that you hadn't come out of your sleep yet, but now you have. I'm so glad, Luce'. I've been so worried."
Feeling weak and a bit dizzy, the brown-haired girl turned her head on her pillow to look over to Edmund, noticing that he was holding one of her hands within both his own. As she continued to look back at him, she watched as he brought his lips to her hand, kissing at the knuckles of her fingers. "So, so worried, Lucy," he then added.
"Why were you worried? What's been wrong, Ed?" the paler than usual looking girl asked, before bringing her other hand to her forehead, feeling a cold sweat there.
"You came down with some kind of fever – some kind of illness. The doctor wasn't sure exactly at first what it was, but after another visit, he had suspicions that it might be pneumonia. Aunty was right about us going out in the changing weather without any jackets on after all, wasn't she?"
"Pneumonia?" Lucy repeated back, before moving up a bit further on her pillow. "Didn't someone die of that back when I was very, very young – back at home; One of the neighbor's children or something?"
Nodding his head somberly, Edmund answered her, "Why else do you think I was so scared, Luce'? Not knowing when you'd wake up again, well, it was a nightmare."
Hearing this last word, the young woman blinked a few times, before swallowing hard, her mind flashing back hazily to a now seemingly distant memory. "Edmund," she said, "I had a dream before, from what I can remember – you were in danger in it, and then I was, but then, you saved me from the danger - the horse and buggy coming at us. You died saving me in that dream. I wanted to make sure you were okay after I woke up, even though Aunty had told me before that it wasn't right to go in the room at night with you anymore - not at all."
"Aunty said what?" Edmund quickly answered her, releasing her hand to instead move one of his own to place a stray strand of hair off of her forehead, tucking it behind one of her ears instead. "Look, it was just a terrible, terrible dream. I'm perfectly fine, Lucy, but, still, anytime you need me, you come for me. I'm here for you – always. That's the case no matter who says what. Even aunty."
"Okay, Edmund," Lucy answered him simply, giving him a faint smile, before moving to sit up in bed again, leaning over to plant a kiss on his cheek this time.
Though it wasn't the first time she'd done so - giving Edmund a peck on the cheek - Lucy felt a strange feeling stir within her stomach when she did so. Her pulse skipping a beat, before rushing a few times, and then finally returning back to normal, she hesitated for a fraction of a moment longer than she normally would have there, her lips barely moved away from the side of his face as she allowed her inexplicably stirred up self to try to return to normal.
Edmund himself felt a bit weird inside, as well. A kiss from his sister was nothing new, but it felt vaguely strange now, almost as if she was kissing him for the very first time ever. In fact, it felt as if it wasn't even his sister giving the kiss – though just for a moment, and then the awkwardness began to subside, and Lucy finally stopped her strange hesitation by his cheek, moving herself back onto the pillow, instead. Looking back to one another, the pair of Pevensies simply held each other's gaze for a few seconds, before smiling in a simple way at one another.
"I'm glad my nightmare wasn't real," Lucy said to Edmund then, after another couple of moments had passed, to which he replied: "And I'm glad my nightmare didn't come true."
Sharing another smile, the two then looked over to the door as their aunt and uncle entered into the room, along with a local doctor. Breaking into smiles, the three of them hurried on over to Lucy, surprised but grateful to find her awake now. Also smiling still, Edmund moved and got up from the chair he'd been sitting on, before bowing his head in his sister's direction to bid her good day, then taking his leave from the room; he left with both himself and his sister both feeling happier than they ever had before to know that the other was indeed okay.