Just a small note-Jill wearing reading glasses is a bit of fanon I stole off Rosa Cotton (I'll put it back where it came from if you want, Rosa). Go and read everything she's ever written. You'll be glad you did. (But leave me a review first, please).
A longish update, to make up for the filler-ish-ness of last chapter, and the long wait before that.
Disclaimer: I don't own Narnia. Or the London Underground, for that matter, though I did get spectacularly lost in it quite recently, on my first adult-free trip to our capital.
"Where are we?" Jill wondered nervously, as he brought her down from the dark, smoky London street into the dark, smoky Underground station, neither of which was familiar. She glanced around, and then noticed something else. "Also, where are your gloves?"
"I left them in the theatre," Eustace replied sheepishly, thinking that the detail probably wasn't relevant right now. "My hands were too hot during the performance so I took them off and-" he looked at Jill, who seemed to be trying to get his attention. "Yes?"
"You are an ass, Scrubb," she sighed. "First you lose your gloves, and then you lose us." She didn't seem especially angry, just weary, but he knew that would all change as soon as he confessed they would have to take the Tube alone. He couldn't believe it. Five minutes and they'd lost sight of his cousins-and he knew better than to surge on in a city he hardly knew and Jill didn't know at all.
"I'm sorry," he began, "but-wait, what?"
Jill was, judging by the direction of her gaze, still upset about his gloves. "It's five below, at least! Scrubb, your hands are blue."
Eustace shrugged. It wasn't nearly as cold as Narnia. There were more important things to worry about, anyway. Such as, he had no idea how to get to Finchley from the West End. He hadn't really been paying attention to their journey on the way there. Getting separated from the Pevensies wasn't really something he'd anticipated. He called up a fuzzy picture of the Tube map in his mind's eye, mentally tracing the various lines and trying to work out which would take them to a station where they could change for Finchley. Until something distracted him. "Pole?" he asked confusedly. "What are you doing?"
"Give me your hands," she clarified irritably. "Your left one first." She tugged her gloves off with her teeth, and kept them clamped there. She took Eustace's left hand in both of hers and began to rub it, trying to get the blood pumping through the frozen veins again.
At least, that's what Eustace presumed she was trying to do; he couldn't ask her, however, because she was muttering to him-or to herself-through a mouthful of glove. He wasn't sure what she was saying, but from the tone of her voice, it seemed to be a sort of rambling remonstrance. He did catch snatches of it-about Puddleglum and giants and last time he was blue-tinted. The memory made him smile now, but he did have other things to worry about.
"Pole, this is probably-" he started to say, intending to finish with "not necessary at the moment."
Jill stopped rubbing his hand, and he was almost disappointed for a moment, before he remembered that he was going to ask her to anyway and gave himself a quick scolding. Edmund's teasing had got inside his head.
"Put it in your pocket to keep it warm," she instructed, spitting her gloves into her hand and putting them into the pocket of her coat. "Give me the other one."
Eustace held out his right hand, and Jill began to rub it as she had the other, still muttering almost frenziedly to herself, and suddenly Eustace understood that this was her way of dealing with the Tube station being a small, dark space. Well, he could allow his hands to be a distraction for a while. He didn't mind terribly. Once she was done with all this, though, he wondered what he would say. Ah. There was his answer. Jill tried to take his left hand again. He snatched it away from her.
"Thanks, Pole. I can feel my fingers again." He shoved both hands deep into his pockets. Jill had to be rational now. "Here we are. I have a confession to make. I don't know how to get to St Pancras from here." He saw Jill take a deep breath in, as if preparing for some sort of verbal explosion, and decided to cut in. "However, I do at least know that we need to get to St Pancras, and we can catch a workhorse from there to Finchley. I need you to come with me and find a map, and I need you not to worry about the fact that the station is small and cramped and underground. You've done scarier things than this, Pole. Serpents and giants and-"
"I'm not scared!" Jill snapped.
"I know," Eustace replied calmly, not believing a word of it. "I'll hold you to that. Come on," he added, taking his first steps towards the information kiosk and feeling unspeakably childish in a world full of adults. Jill hung back, and, worried that she would get swept off in the bustling crowds, he grabbed her hand roughly, and dragged her forwards with him. He addressed the man at the kiosk, trying to sound confident and adult, and hoping his voice wouldn't crack or squeak in the middle. "Excuse me, good sir, but do you happen to have a Tube map about your person?"
"Good sir?" Jill hissed with raised eyebrows, but very quietly, so that only her friend heard. The kiosk attendant gave the two young people a dubious look, but handed them a map. Jill, who had heard a great deal from her parents about the Londoners' desire for money, was pleasantly surprised to find that it was free. Eustace, who (out of a subconscious desire for moral support) had not yet dropped Jill's hand, pulled his friend into a corner where they both pored over the map. Then, and only then, did he let go of her.
"Finchley Central is on there," Jill announced at last. "That's the station we got on at. We don't have to go to St Pancras."
"All wonderful," Eustace said, fighting hard to keep the sarcasm from his voice, "but I still have no idea how we need to get there. What station are we in?" He glanced up, realising that he hadn't even bothered to look before entering. "Sloane Square," he read, the name emblazoned in creaky, dusty letters on the wall. "That's there."
"Okay, so we need to catch... westbound M&D to South Kensington-that's only one stop-then, er, eastbound-what the dickens is the blue one? This wretched key is almost unreadable. Piccadilly to..."
His pauses made Jill nervous again. She snatched the map away from him. "Give it to me, Scrubb. Sloane Square to South Kensington, one stop on the westbound M&D. South Kensington to, er..." She sighed, and handed back to Eustace impatiently. "Oh, I can't do anything with this. I don't have time to get my reading glasses out. You complained about girls' map-reading skills, you do it."
"I was," he muttered. However, their journey was planned in his mind by that point, and he pocketed the map, hoping that it would be easy (and cheap) to buy tickets. "Look for signs to the westbound platform," he said. "And," he took her hand again, "don't let go. Lu got separated from Su and Ed once, got caught up in the crowds. Don't go vanishing on me. I don't really want to go trawling London, looking for you. I've got far better things to do with my holidays."
"Don't be any more of an idiot than you can help. I'm not going anywhere without you. You'd probably end up in Canada."
Who had sorted out their journey? Eustace very nearly asked her that same question, but kept himself from comment, with only a slight scowl on his face. This wasn't a normal Jill, this was a very frightened Jill, no matter how well she hid it. Instead, he simply tugged her forward, towards the westbound M&D. They would be fine, he thought, just as long as they didn't split up.
"Scrubb!" Jill called. They had nearly managed it. They had come from Sloane Street to Tottenham Court Road, via South Kensington and Leicester Square; all the difficult parts were over, and there was only one stint left on the Tube; the station was smoky, dark, and full of disreputable characters, and there was absolutely no way she was allowing him to disappear. Of all the times! Goodness only knew what sort of trouble he'd get into. "Scrubb!" she shouted, hoping she sounded angry instead of scared. It was nearly eleven at night-she was a fourteen year old girl alone in the middle of London, with every right to be scared. She jolly well wished Scrubb would answer. Or that Lucy or Edmund or Puddleglum were there. "Eustace Scrubb! If you get yourself hurt, I'll kill you!"
"I'm here," a voice said reassuringly from a long way away. If Jill had been paying full attention, she would have noticed that Eustace sounded every bit as scared as she felt. In actual fact, she just felt irritated that he was patronising her. "I told you not to let go."
"Don't you ever do that again," Jill growled. "Where are you? There are drunken sorts blowing smoke into my faces from every which way. I'm not tall enough to slap them."
"Need my protection, Pole?" Eustace smirked, now appearing through the blue air. He held out his hand. "We're nearly done. Just don't let go again. I thought-well, you had me worried for a minute," he admitted. Even he knew, despite his limited knowledge of the capital, that Tottenham Court was not the safest of stations to be stuck at.Why it wasn't safe to be stuck at wasn't something he wanted to consider. He looked around the badly-lit station. It was almost impossible to see the signs, but he knew that the lines crossed and that getting a northbound Northern line wasn't going to be enough. "Look for a sign to High Barnet, will you? There are two northbound Northerns from here, and we need to get the right one. The other goes to Hendon and out that way."
He had spoken casually, but he was now very concerned indeed. The trains, to the best of his knowledge, stopped running at midnight. He decided that this was perhaps something Jill didn't need to know. It did mean that this was probably their last chance to get to Finchley that night, though, and he didn't fancy camping out with the drunks and the painted girls in the station.
"There!" she suddenly said excitedly, dropping his hand to point. Eustace, who had just caught sight of some unpleasant-looking men in the corner, grabbed it again and tried to look intimidating and possessive. He was taller than most of them, anyway, he told himself. The sign to High Barnet was a dismal sight by most standards, but he had rarely been happier to see something.
It was only when they were safely seated (well, standing in a corner, really) on the Tube that Eustace truly began to realise how badly that evening could have gone wrong. They had been so very lucky in so many respects-the Tube journey had been reasonably simple-only a few changes-none of the ill-intentioned men that frequented the Underground late at night had taken an especial fancy to Jill-even when he had lost her, she had turned up again scared but unscathed-not to mention that he had not run out of money, or been robbed. He took a deep breath in, and quietly thanked Aslan for having looked after them. It didn't alleviate his feelings of guilt. Apologising to Jill was never easy, because it meant swallowing his pride, but he squeezed her hand more tightly.
"Sorry I got us lost," he whispered to her, not really wanted the others in the carriage to know that they weren't Londoners. She squeezed back.
"Thanks for looking after us," she replied, also in a whisper. Remarkably, her tone seemed free of sarcasm. She sighed. "Now all we have to do is find a way of explaining this to the undoubtedly angry Pevensies that await us."