Chapter 4

John Pevensie looked up at his home as he opened the slightly creaky gate. He tried to be quiet, so that his children didn't hear him, as he and his wonderful wife had planned that his arrival home was to be a surprise.

He knocked on the door loudly, so he could be heard. The door opened not a moment later.

"Yes, How can I help you?"

It takes him a minute to recognise his baby girl, but when he does, he can't help but frown at the confused look on her face. He waits for a moment before she recognises him.

"Father!" She exclaims.

He thinks nothing of the fact she calls him Father instead of Dad, instead choosing to open his arms for her to hug him.

Lucy runs into his arms immediately, and smiles falsely for her Father sake. She moves out of his embrace as soon as she hears Peter's distinctive footfalls coming down the hall.

Peter appeared in the door way, and Lucy immediately stepped into his side. John noticed how his eldest wrapped a protective arm around his youngest's shoulders. He couldn't help but feel that Peter was protecting Lucy from him.

John spent the whole night getting hugs from his wife and hugs and smiles from his children that he can not help but think are half-hearted.

The children escape to their room as soon as the clock strikes nine, and John gets up to go after them, but stops and sits down when his wife shakes her head.

"If you wait for half an hour, and we go up, we can hear some of Peter's stories." Helen explains, thinking of the times she listened in on her children's bed time stories the past two months.

So they waited half an hour before trudging up the stairs quietly, making sure to make as little sound as possible. Helen led John to the boy's door. They stood on either side of the closed-door, and pressed their ears to the wood so as to be able to hear better.

Inside the room, Peter sat at the head of the bed. He had Edmund in between his bent knees and his arms wrapped around his little brothers shoulders. Susan sat opposite him at the foot of the bed, her legs bent and towards the side. She had Lucy's head in her lap, from where she was laying on the bed. Lucy had her head in Susan's lap, her torso covering Ed's feet and her feet up by Peter.

True to their Mother's word, today's story had just began.

"They looked around in wonder at the white world. Snow covered every surface - the tree's, the ground, and the lamppost." A giggle was heard throughout the room and out in the hall.

It was nearly an hour later that the story was finished, and the two adult Pevensie's were about ready to go to sleep themselves. They hadn't understood any of the story, but judging by the comments and laughter from his younger siblings, they all understood Peter's story perfectly well.

As the adults went to bed that night, his children's words echoed through his mind -

"Once a King or Queen of Narnia, always a King or Queen of Narnia."

John, as he had become accustomed to, rose with the sun. After he had quietly left the bed and pulled on a dressing gown, he tip toed his way down the stairs.

Whatever he saw when he got there, he did not expect.

Susan was at the stove, and seemed to be stirring what smelt like tea. Edmund and Peter were sat at the table, sweating slightly, wooden swords lent against the table near them. Lucy was dancing around the kitchen, humming a tune he had never heard before. They were all smiling.

John watched from the doorway as Peter grabbed his youngest sister around the waist as she flitted by him, and pulled her to him and onto his lap. She shrieked slightly before Peter covered her mouth with his hand, hushing her. She just smiled as he pulled his hand away.

Deciding to make his presence known, John cleared his throat slightly before stepping into the kitchen.

He almost wishes he didn't. They all jumped, and he watches as Peter, almost automatically, quickly takes Lucy off his lap and crushes her into his side, as his other hand goes to the empty air near his hip.

Edmund jumps up, his right hand also grasping at the thin air near his hip. Susan had spun around, and almost like it was natural, her hand had flown to just behind her head, as if to grab something.

He does not notice, however, how Lucy moves her hand as if to grab something at her hip also, or how Susan's other hand is held in front of her, as if holding something, or that Edmund looks as if he too is grasping something in front of him.

They don't relax, even when they do recognise him.

Peter watches his Mother, who stood in front of him, fretting about them going back to school. He just stares at her blankly, not wanting to go to school and be away from his siblings, but also wanting to get away from the stifling house they had been staying in the past two months.

John watches from the doorway, where he stood after putting his children's luggage in the automobile. He smiles when he see's his baby girl run into the room, and waits expectantly for a hug that doesn't come.

Instead she run's around her Mother, and goes right up to Peter. Peter automatically holds his arm out, and tightens it around Lucy's shoulders when she is settled into his side.

John couldn't stop the jealousy that rose up when Peter kissed Lucy on the head, and Lucy looked up at him with a bright smile.

"Where are the others, Lu?"

"Ed's looking for his new torch, and Susan's helping his, claiming 'even if you are the only one in this family with a sense of direction besides Lucy, you are absolutely terrible at finding things'. Edmund's face was hilarious." Lucy answered.

Peter chuckles slightly, knowing quite well that while Edmund could probably show you the way from Narnia to Archenland, but if he lost something, he could never find it without help.

As Helen and John dropped their children off at the station, they couldn't help but see how different they were from the last time they had dropped them off to go to school.

Peter stood tall and proud, his head held high, and his even longer blond hair all over the place. He had one arm wrapped around Lucy's shoulders, pulling her into his side. His other arm was wrapped tightly around Susan's waist. Susan had one of her hands in the crook of Peter's elbow, her other carrying a bag. Lucy had one arm wrapped around Peter's waist, and the other was wrapped around Edmund's arm. Edmund was carrying two suitcases.

As they walked into the station, the two oldest Pevensie's could have sworn they saw crowns on their children's heads and robes billowing out behind them.

As Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy ran towards the sea, they couldn't stop the excited smiles that nearly broke their faces in half.

They were home.