Author's note: Thank you to everyone for you encouraging words. It's always hard to branch out into a new fandom. :-)

This is a repost of this chapter. I was doing a reread and found a verb shift problem in one part that my betas and I both missed...opps! Fixed now!

Enjoy!


Chapter 2 - Dark Memories

Cold.

Deep bone chilling cold.

Winters in England had been cold, but nothing like this. Cold so pervasive that there seemed there never could have been warmth.

Summer was just a dream of a dream.

A fairy tale.

Cold metal bit his ankles and dug in painfully as he tried to pull his legs in close to conserve what little warmth is left in him.

A noise to his right filtered through his misery. A faun. Just like Lucy said. Something clicked and he realized it was Lucy's faun, Mt. Tumnus. Their eyes met and the look of misery in the other prisoner's stole his breath away. Misery he caused. He was the reason Tumnus washere. Why he was beaten and bound and chained to the floor. It was his fault.

Suddenly, the witch loomed over him. Her brittle, beautiful face full of fury and malice. Malicious glee filled her cruel eyes as she glances at Mr. Tumnus. "You are here because--" she turned to fix her baleful glared on Edmund, her terrible wand reaching out to point at him. "He turned you in--for sweeties."

Shame and guilt swept through Edmund as the faun stared at him in disbelief and disgust.

Every fiber in him wanted to call out. To beg the faun's forgiveness. To stop the Witch from taking Mr. Tumnus away. To make it all stop. He just wanted it to stop. He was sorry. There were no words for how sorry he was. Please, just forgive him. He just wanted them to forgive him.

"Edmund." Hands shook him and he struggled to break free.

"Please," he begged. "No more! Don't hit me!" He pleaded, curling into a ball to protect himself from Ginarrbrik's whip. "Just don't hurt them! Please don't hurt them!"

Suddenly, arms envelped him and rich famliar scent washed over him. He stopped struggling when he finally realized who it was.

"Peter," he breathed, melting in relief. His breathing hitched and broke in a sob. His brother held him tightly as the fear and terror of the dream worked their way out of him.

As his breathing finally evened back out to a more normal rate, Peter leaned back to get a good look at him. "Her?" he asked gently and Edmund nodded. Peter sighed. "She's gone," he reminded him.

Edmund lowered his eyes. "I know. I just--" He let out a long breath. "Peter, I hurt so many people," he started.

"I know," Peter interrupted. "But 'what's done is done'," he said quoting Aslan. "We go from here."

Edmund nodded, hanging his head. This was chewing him up inside. He needed to talk to someone. He couldn't tell the girls. He could never tell them about what he had done...what he had helped do. He suddenly felt sick and struggled to untangle himself from the bed clothes. Peter realized what was happening and helped him out from under the covers and grabbed the chamber pot before Edmund was well and truly sick. Peter was a brick, sitting beside him and rubbing his back in comforting circles until the worst of it was over.

Peter got him a drink of water to wash his mouth out and then helped him back into bed. "We'll talk about this later," he promised. "You need rest right now and things will be better in the morning, I promise."

Edmund nodded, letting his older brother tuck him in. He caught Peter's hand. "Thank you," he said earnestly.

Peter smiled. "That's what brother's do, Ed. We just kind of forgot about that for a while, but not any more." He leaned in and placed a kiss on Edmund's forehead. Before, Edmund would have been disgusted by the show of affection, but now-- He reached up and gave his brother a hug.

"Love you, Peter," he whispered.

"Love you too, Edmund," Peter said, sitting down on the edge of the bed beside him. "Now, go to sleep," he ordered fondly.

Edmund smiled wearily and for once, he did as his brother told him.


Lucy rubbed her eyes sleepily as she headed towards her room, bare feet padding soundlessly against the thick carpeting of the hall that led to the royal bed chambers. Peter and Edmund's rooms lay to the one side and she and Susan's on the other.

Lucy frowned when she saw the door to Edmund's rooms were ajar. Another nightmare. He had so many of them. They all had since the war back in England and meeting the Witch here, but Edmund especially. Anger bubbled up in her chest as she thought about how the Witch had treated her brother.

Edmund rarely spoke of what happened, at least not to Susan or her. She had a feeling he might have talked to Peter, but she didn't know. None of them had asked after Aslan told them not to press Edmund. Lucy dearly wished Edmund would talk to one of them, though. She could tell he was still beating himself up inside about what had happened. He was always too hard on himself. He had been beastly to them, but so had they been with him. They were all equally to blame for what happened, but Edmund took all of it onto himself.

She sighed and went to head to her room when she saw something: the little flower wreath Mrs. Cloverblossom had been so insistent she give Edmund. It lay on the small table outside her brother's room. She picked it up, the small fragrant flowers had begun to wilt badly, but they still smelled very sweet.

Suddenly, she rememberd Mrs. Cloverblossom had asked her to have Edmund put it on his windowsill. She didn't know why and the Rabbit hadn't told her, just made her promise that he would.

She frowned thoughtfully and nodded to herself. A promise was a promise. She held the small wreath gently and slipped silently into her brother's room. She knew she shouldn't go into his room without knocking, but he really did need his sleep, and she was just going to slip in and lay the wreath on his windowsill. She tiptoed quietly to the window and laid the wreath down. She glanced to the bed and wasn't surprised to see Peter dozing, leaning against the pillows at the head of the bed. Edmund was all but invisible under the covers, a small thatch of dark hair the only part sticking out. Lucy frowned at the faint smell of sickness that clung to the room. It must have been a very bad nightmare, she thought sadly. She moved quietly, not to wake her brothers. Peter would watch over Edmund and everything would be fine in the morning. She whispered a soft prayer to Aslan to protect her brothers as she pulled the door closed quietly and headed for her own bed.