This is Lucy's chapter, but there's a lot a Edmund in it. He's a bit more fun to write :-).
I hope you enjoy!
The fear of every child is being left alone in the dark.
The fear of every parent is leaving one there.
---
Lucy wasn't afraid of the dark. So many children were, especially after the Blitz. When the bombs fell, the lights went out. Families separated. Homes and lives fell apart and were shattered in the dark. And all anyone could do was hide away in the dark and watch dreams and futures shatter. So Lucy understood the fear.
Dark brought destruction. Dark brought the demons in the night down upon people. Dark was filled with the terror of uncertainty, the fear that the next dawn would never come.
But come it did. It must. And that was why Lucy was not afraid.
Nothing could stop the dawn. It always came. The battle might be long; the bombs might fall and cover the earth in ash and soot. The swords might break, and the strongholds fall. And someday you might wake up and find the world you fought for, bled for, loved and protected, had fallen and forgotten and changed over and over until it was no more the land you knew. But even then, even as the world covered itself in war and hate and change, the sun would rise. Nothing could stop that. No power on earth could hold it back or force it to fall. And so Lucy was not afraid.
Because in the light came knowledge and freedom. In light, things could be rebuilt or remade. There can be understanding instead of fear. And the light always came.
Lucy had learned to wait a long time for light to come into her world.
And even now, she would fight for it to stay. Because that's who she was. It was something she'd always done, a choice already made. No hesitation. No fear.
Just patience. Just love.
But if love had ever been enough then Lucy would have watched the sunrise with a world full of those who saw hope and a future. Instead, light trickled thinly down to the masses that barely even raised their heads to acknowledge its existence.
If your world is darkness, light blinds. Hope stings. You don't want to see yourself there, in the light. You can't hide if it's all light. But in grey you can slip by, in grey the crowds will hide you. In grey, you can hide in an empty room.
And eventually, day by day, you'll try to tell yourself you're happy. That this is what you wanted. And when you can't even believe that anymore, you'll convince yourself it's your duty, penance for being born, toil for dreaming impossible dreams. For it was a dream, wasn't it?
Lucy had never understood how anyone could live like that. It was hopeless. It was horror to watch her sister slip into something more closely akin to apathy than anything she had ever known.
She tried to tell herself that if Susan was happy, then it was her choice. That she would be happy too. She couldn't bring herself to admit there were problems she couldn't fix. There had to be a solution. There just had to be.
--
Susan sat at the table, musing over a letter covered in rheumatic handwriting. She had been writing more and more to the professor lately, but his replies were hardly leaving her any the wiser.
She sighed and put the letter down. After all, the poor old boy was almost eighty. It was hardly likely he would remember all the occurrences of one small summer when he had been unceremonious deposited with four children in the middle of wartime. Still, she had hoped, perhaps this letter…
It was foolish in the extreme. Why should it matter so much that she remembered that golden summer so little, except in its happiness? She supposed that the unhappy memories are the ones that make an impression. But it was sad to remember so little.
After all, was it her fault Edmund was so changed this past year? Hadn't she always been kind to him, even when he was so rude, just because she wouldn't play along with a silly game? Didn't he understand what a child he was when he acted this way? At least, that's what Bill said, and she agreed whole-heartedly.
Bill was Susan's "gentleman friend", as her mother put it. He was studying to get a degree at university and had taken a psychology class, so he knew what he was talking about. He said Edmund was an interesting case. Edmund didn't like him, but Bill said that was normal, too.
And since when, she thought rebelliously, have I needed Edmund to like my friends? She had nothing to reproach herself over. Really, both her brothers were quite ridiculous.
Peter could be even worse than Edmund when he put his mind to it. She didn't see him as often now as he had gone into law, and frankly, that was just fine. Peter didn't rage and yell like Edmund. It was harder to write Peter off as insignificant. Bill said he was jealous, but that wasn't like him. He just had a way of looking at you- as if he wanted to see something else there, and you were second-best. It had made her angry more than once. But still, these days, there was something about Peter that made her irritated when in the same room as him. He talked a lot about justice and right.
Really, Bill had said he might have a child complex as well. Such basic ideas, seeing the world in black and white and seeing it as his duty to fix things. He was probably right.
The door opened behind her and Edmund walked past. He didn't look at her or bother saying anything, just grabbed some bread from the larder. Munching it, he looked over at her.
The silence always bothered her more than his anger.
Luckily, Edmund couldn't stay quiet for long. He picked up her new hat, then threw it back down onto the table with an exclamation of disgust. "Is everything you own grey?"
Susan felt affronted. "Grey is very fashionable right now. I'll thank you not to treat my new things that way." She snatched the hat back and continued reading the letter, though she had in actuality finished with it.
"Grey is very fashionable right now," he mocked, throwing himself into the other chair at the table. "So's foot-binding in China".
Susan ignored him. She had long since learned that ignoring Edmund was the best way to fuel his anger and to get him to go away.
In this case, he just sat and stared at the letter. "Who's writing to you, anyway?" Who would, his tone implied.
She could have just ignored him, but saw no reason to. "It's from Professor Kirke. Poor fellow, his rheumatism just seems to be getting worse."
"You're not telling me he went to the trouble of writing you just to say his rheumatism's getting worse."
"No, I'm not." She was irritated. Why did it matter to Edmund anyway? "Anything else you want to know?"
Edmund flushed, and pushed his chair back from the table. "Your new hat looks like someone sat on it." He made as if to leave.
When irritated, Susan fell back on her favorite retort. "You're such a child, Edmund." And it was true, he was. No one but a child would be so stupidly rude.
True to form, Edmund stopped moving and turned to face her. "You're so fond of saying that," he spat, and his voice was bitter. "You've no idea… you can't ever understand. You think you understand so much."
Susan was stung. "I know a good deal more than you do. And even if I didn't, I can tell a selfish, spoiled boy when I see one! I don't understand? You're the one who makes yourself pathetic by trying to deliberately stay in the past."
"Don't talk to me about the past!" He was standing now, hands balled into fists. "Don't you dare," he hissed. "You, of all people…"
She stood up as well, mirroring his posture. "Who are you to tell me what to say? You're just terribly bitter, Edmund. Things can't be as they were, and you keep trying to change that! You can't accept the times we're in, so you'll never be happy? Why can't you just let go of the past?"
"This isn't about the past!" he yelled.
"Well, what is it?" she shouted back. "You, of all people. This is about some insane dream of yours that could never exist."
"This is about making choices!" His voice rose even higher, and he walked a step closer to her. She realized with a start that he was as tall as her now.
"I've always been able to make my own choices." Her voice could have dripped ice. She was staring at him, the force of her personality not in the least diminished by the slight memory of a time when choices didn't have to be made alone.
He gave a harsh laugh which was no laugh at all and turned away. "Of course. You've always been good at being by yourself. None of us matter."
Susan started guiltily. He sounded genuinely hurt. "Edmund, I'm not saying that," she continued in a gentler tone. "But you don't even realize what you seem to be. I hardly understand you any more. You act like you hate me. Surely that is reason enough for not including you in some of my choices. And for the rest of it, it's my life," she finished snippily, "and not your affair."
If anything, he seemed angrier. If her tone had been frosty earlier, his seemed to dim the whole room. "Hate you? What have I ever done but love you, and see that love despised by your choices?"
"If this is about Bill-," she began, but never had time to finish. His laughter cut her off.
"Bill? Bill? You don't know…" Susan was beginning to be a bit concerned. She put a hand on her brother's shoulder, but he shook it off as if her hand burned. "You gave up when it mattered." And then he was turning to face her, and his face was contorted in anger and disappointment. "You gave up! How could you?! You coward! You coward!" He turned and ran out the door, slamming it behind him. He did not turn to see Susan, shaking like a leaf in the wind, staring at a plain wood table with a grey hat and a single letter, her eyes made suddenly blue again by the presence of tears.
--
Lucy had heard everything. How could she not, when her room was just above the kitchen?
Even if she hadn't heard it all, she could guess what had been said. Edmund and Susan fought all the time now. All one had to do was put them in the same room and sparks would fly. Peter had once joked that if they were ever out of matches, they could get Edmund and Susan to argue near some wood and they'd soon have a nice fire going. No one had laughed. Things that are sad are sometimes too true to be funny.
She had watched Edmund storm out of the house. Now he would stay away until night, when he would storm in, still angry, and hungry. She looked at the sky again. And possibly wet. In about a half-hour's time he would remember he had come in to fetch some papers and the new book Peter had lent him. He wouldn't return to get them, though, because he would still be mad at Susan. So he would blame her for keeping him from his interests, when in fact it was his pride that kept him from returning.
She saw it all as it had happened before, and would continue. She saw the sun sinking on the horizon and the rain clouds gather. Lucy kept watching outside. Kept waiting. She was good at waiting for the light.
Then— it happened. Just before the sun sank completely, the flash of brilliant color. The whole world was illuminated and bathed in a rainbow of colors. Just for a few minutes. But it was enough to give Lucy hope.
She stood up and picked something up from her bedside table.
--
Below in the kitchen, Susan barely saw the sunset. She was washing off the tabletop again, just for something to do. But as it got dark, she headed upstairs to her room and nearly collided with Lucy. She murmured an apology, and tried to move past.
Lucy, however, wasn't budging. "Look, Susan," she said, her tone awed. "Look at the sky."
Susan looked out. The sun was setting and there was a pale yellow glow on the back gate. "Pretty," she said, as Lucy obviously wanted to hear agreement. Lucy turned to look at her, surprised. "Lu, I want to get by here." Lucy murmured an apology and moved to the side. Susan, hat in hand, headed into her room and closed the door.
There were no windows in Susan's room. This was not exactly by choice, but neither did it bother Susan. Her room was fine; pretty enough, but without much touch of personality.
There was also something out of place in it. On the bed, there was a small pile of ribbons and fabric roses. There was also a little note. Curious, she opened the note and saw her sister's handwriting.
It was very short. I saw these in a store and thought you might like them for your new hat. Susan sat heavily on the bed, with a little smile of exasperation. She had thought at first they might be from Bill. But that wasn't really his style. He thought that little tokens and that sort of thing just took up space, and they weren't really necessary in a relationship as strong as theirs. While she agreed, such things were fun to have.
It was just like Lucy, she thought, to leave little tokens with such and understated note. She had obviously saved for the ribbons and made the flowers herself. If Susan accused her of it, she would deny vehemently that it had been any bother or cost anything at all.
She sat staring at the little pile. It was silly to be sentimental about some ribbons. But they were quite nice. And Lucy had thought of her, wanted to do something nice for her. Something special.
Bill would tell her not to bother making additions to her hat. He would tell her it was not sensible to bother adding more poorly made additions to a profession, chic hat. He would say they weren't right.
Susan sat on her bed, looking at brightly colored ribbons, a grey hat, and a decision that seemed to mean much more than just a hat.
--
Lucy rarely saw Susan in the morning. If anything, she just stuck her head in the door and said good-bye. So she wasn't surprised to hear the click-click of Susan's heels going down the stairs, and then the door shutting a few moments later.
With great effort, Lucy pulled herself to the window and looked out. She could just see Susan's silhouette walking down the road. She was wearing a thick blue winter coat, and, Lucy could just see, a grey hat surprisingly topped with fabric roses and trimmed in blue and gold ribbon.
Lucy smiled and lay back down, watching the light stream through the window and onto the ceiling.
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