AN: Good lord, it feels like I've been writting this chapter for-ev-ver! I've just been so busy lately that I only had very limited time to work on it. But it was enough to finally get it up now, so that's good.
It was Lucy's second morning waking up at the Experimental Station and so far, it didn't seem to differ from the first one in the least. She awoke at what felt like the same time as the day before, and then was promptly taken away by the same nurse all over again to get herself ready for breakfast.
While eating her scrambled eggs and gulping down a glass of ice-milk, Lucy leaned over her shoulder and looked both ways to make sure no one was standing close enough to hear what she was about to whisper to her dæmon. "I guess we might as well find a way to sneak off today, no point in trying to stay here any longer."
"Have you thought up a plan, then?" Reepicheep whispered back eagerly.
"Not exactly." Lucy admitted, watching carefully for the nurse who was refilling the children's milk glasses, uncertain of when she was going to refill hers. "I suppose we'll just have to crawl out the door of the playroom somehow and get down the hallway to those glass doors at the front of the building."
"And then what do we do?" Reepicheep crawled into her lap and looked up into his beloved human's face, yearning for the sort of comfort and reassurance that can be found only in the complete knowledge of a good plan.
"I suppose we'll just have to make our way back to the lamppost but-oh!" Lucy was suddenly stricken with a distressed expression; her face even twisted and Reepicheep thought for a fleeting moment that she was going to cry.
"Lucy, what is it? What's the matter?" he quickly shifted into the tiniest of all his mouse-shapes, a small white one little enough to rest in the palms of her hands.
"I've just realized something!" She exclaimed, her eyes widening. "We were asleep when the sleigh came and took us here-so we haven't any idea at all as to how far away we are from the lamppost right now. It might be only a mile, or it might be hundreds!"
"I suppose it's no use asking them about it," Reepicheep sighed, shifting back into a larger mouse (a brown one this time), his golden red-feathered band reappearing around one soft, tan-coloured ear.
"None at all." said Lucy brokenly, growing misty-eyed again. "You know they never tell us anything except that it's called the Experimental Station."
The nurse carrying the pitcher of milk came over to their place at the table, refilled Lucy's milk-glass, looked at her so intensely that the poor girl's heart near skipped a full beat from sheer terror (Did she suspect what they were talking about? Did she somehow know they meant to run away at the first chance they got?), but then went on calmly-even humming a little-as if there was nothing to worry about. Her dæmon, a long-faced hound dog, wrinkled with a dreary sour expression on his face, waddled along side her, sticking closer to her toes than to her heels, not even giving Reepicheep so much as a half-glance rather like he expected his mistress to take care of all that.
"We need to find out more about this place, Reep." said Lucy at last, when she figured it was safe to breathe freely and talk to Reepicheep again.
"It really isn't dishonourable to eavesdrop if you're a captive, and I suppose we are-it's not as if we wanted to come here to begin with." Reepicheep's tail twitched in an adventurous fashion.
"The question is, what can we do to make sure the nurses aren't looking at us?" Lucy mused, pushing her empty plate aside and shaking her head at the half-full second glass of milk which she didn't feel like drinking. "I don't think they'd just let us wander around simply because we wanted to."
"I wish they had remembered to give your leather pouch back." Reepicheep commented in a seemingly random manner.
"Why, Reepicheep!" Lucy gasped, laughing a little. "I always thought you hated it."
"Indeed I did," said Reepicheep, nodding somberly at his human. "but that was when I had to hide in it, when no one else was allowed to know about me. Now, though, I don't like the idea of you not having it to keep the Lord Professor's pocket watch safe in."
"We can get it on our way out, when we figure out how to go about it." Lucy told him.
They sat in silence for a few moments until Reepicheep suddenly climbed up Lucy's shoulder and whispered in her ear that most of the nurses seemed to be attending to a few of the younger children who had started crying. The sad thing was that a good number of them were probably sobbing for parents that, in all likelihood, judging by their far-too-lean, pinched faces, hadn't been able to afford them. The poor ragamuffins, these hopeless little street-urchins, probably had better food here at the Experimental Station than they had back home-and yet, they wept for home. They wailed over the loss of a home they barely seemed to have to begin with, too young to realize how wretched and alone they had been. This only added to Lucy's uneasiness and she found herself nearly desperate for the constant protection she'd once had around her at all times. She wanted her elder brother. She wanted Peter. He always knew how to make the scariest things seem like nothing, and at this moment, his disbelieving her about the wardrobe earlier didn't seem to matter at all. Because of her fear, she almost wished-though not quite-that she had never come back into this world. It felt right that she was in this world beyond the wardrobe after all, like she was meant to be here. Here where everyone had dæmons and things made sense, she felt as though she had come back to a place not unlike a pleasant somewhere she had perhaps visited when she was very, very small; but not at the Experimental Station. That felt more like a prison than anything else.
As she made a quick-but quiet-dash for the door leading out into the hallway, Reepicheep clinging to her arm, she held the silver pocket watch tightly with both hands, and decided that if getting back to the lamppost was impossible, or as near to it as it needed to be to make the journey impossible for her, she would find a map or get some other form of directions and get herself to that Bolvangar place. Edmund Coulter, she was fairly sure, would be willing to help her. He and Ella had been her friends, she'd liked them. There was no time to whisper her new plan to Reepicheep right way, however, because she had to carefully loosen her grip on the silver pocket watch with one hand so that she could open the door and slip out.
At first, she was afraid of someone catching sight of her and asking what she was doing wandering around like that, but after a while she started to relax. There didn't appear to be anybody in the hallway at the moment with the exception of one very short, red-bearded man (dwarf, actually, but Lucy's glimpse of him was too fleeting for her to make that distinction) with no dæmon, carrying something that looked like a breakfast tray. He didn't seem to even notice Lucy and Reepicheep standing there pressed up against the wall, praying he wouldn't grab them and drag them back to the nurses. If Lucy had known who the dwarf was a manservant to, she would have been ecstatic and asked him for help.
As it was, she just had to keep going. Eventually, she came across a door she recognized as the one leading to the room she had changed her clothing in when she'd first arrived. It would be delightful to have her old clothes back; especially the Lord Professor's fur coat and her leather pouch. Turning the knob, she strolled inside. The room was darker than she remembered because none of the over-head lights were on, and only one of the smallest lamps in the far corner was lit, casting a dim glow that only went about two and a half feet away from its source. There didn't seem to be much to look at anyway; only a few thick curtains, no longer hung up, folded neatly on a metal bench and about three or four metallic-blue metal bins full of things like dirty clothes and stained rag dolls. It took a great deal of digging, but in the end, Lucy unearthed her dress, coat, and pouch from the middle of a laundry bin that evidently hadn't been taken away to be washed yet.
"We've got your things now, let's get out of here." Reepicheep's fur stood up on his back like the quills of a porcupine in danger, sensing something amiss.
The fur coat had dried funny and felt stiff as Lucy tossed it over her arm, reaching over to place the pocket watch back into the pouch-which she quickly strapped around her waist, glad enough of having it back even if it had dried a darker, less attractive shade of brown (she had never been one to care much about things of that sort anyway). "Alright, we'll go-but we have to find a map or something of the sort."
"What for?" he still seemed very tense, but curiosity softened his fur up a bit.
"We're going to Bolvangar-to find Edmund and Ella, they'll help us." Lucy explained quickly, taking a step back as if sensing some mysterious horror before it actually struck her.
Not three seconds later, it struck; more horrible than lighting, and it seemed to their nervous ears, louder than thunder. It was the sound of feet coming closer and closer to the door and then the sight of the knob turning. Thinking quickly, Lucy dived into the laundry bin, pulling the fur coat over her head. Reepicheep-hiding with her-shifted into a dark-coloured bandicoot, having less chance of being spotted as a drab lump than in some of his more striking, noticeable forms.
Peeking up from her place, Lucy could just barely make out the tall figures of two staff workers-a man and a woman-dressed all in white whom appeared to be both servants and nurses of some kind. The man's dæmon was a puce-coloured snake, slithering on the floor, wrapping itself around his legs occasionally. From Lucy's position, it looked like a thin, dirty stream running up and down his lower limbs. She held her breath and listened carefully as they moved around the room, hoping they did not intend to stay long.
The woman, straightening out her white bonnet and capturing a stray flap that had probably once been a pretty, red-gold ringlet before she forced it flat, and tucking it back in place, turned to the man and said, "So, did you hear what the others were saying about the Scrubb boy?" Her dæmon, a large, furry-legged, black spider, crawled down from her shoulder, onto the near-by metal bench.
"Yes, I heard something of the kind," the man answered. "Is it true, then? Has the lad...expired...?"
Reepicheep, horrified, whisper-exclaimed, "They're talking about Jill and Isi's friend!"
Lucy turned to face him and put her finger to her lips, warning him to keep quiet, they certainly would have it no better being discovered now.
The woman shook her head, not as if to say no, but in a sad, disappointed way, the sort of expression most people wear when their friends say their cat is unwell. "Yes, he's gone...held on for a little while, though."
"What went wrong this time?" the man wanted to know.
"Well," said the woman, reaching over and rummaging through some garments in one of the laundry bins (not Lucy's hiding place). "they weren't sure...at first...but it seems to be fixed now, apparently."
"Ah," the man nodded agreeably. "that's good. But of course a new child must be operated on, if the Scrubb boy's gone."
"It isn't as if he mattered much, poor thing." the woman shrugged her shoulders, somewhat indifferently but not cruelly so. "His parents, Alberta and Harold, I think their names were, barely took care of him-he didn't even want to go back with them. He befriended one of the orphan girls here and wanted to go where ever she went."
"It was all for the best after all, I suppose. That he was sacrificed in the interest of such a noble cause."
Lucy thought she was going to be sick. What had they done to Eustace? Was he really dead? Poor Jill! This whole nightmare had to be related to that operation the children were supposed to get. Something must have gone terribly wrong when they did it to him-and he...died. What was worse was that they didn't seem to care; it was like he was just a lab-rat or a friendly, but not particularly loved, dog. A child had died and they were acting as though it didn't matter, as if it were something that happened all the time.
"His dæmon is gone, too, I'd expect?" The man raised an eyebrow at the woman curiously, eagerly awaiting her response.
"Oh, of course it is!"
"What form did it die in?"
"Don't know, after it was cut away-"
The woman was still talking, but Lucy heard no more. Her ears stopped working after the words, 'cut away'. Were they really saying that they had cut away Eustace Scrubb's dæmon? His heart and soul torn mercilessly from him as simply as cutting a page out of a catalogue with a pair of scissors? Lucy felt her head get lighter and her body sway. The notion of 'cutting' was sick and wrong. How could they? And then just plan to do it to someone else now that his poor little dæmonless body was of no more use to them?
"Dust is all we've got of the dæmon now, just dust, nothing more and nothing less." the woman sighed airily, shaking out a child's soiled plaid skirt.
No longer able to endure it, Lucy's stomach heaved, vomiting out her breakfast all over the inside of the bin, accidentally knocking it over. Everything tumbled out, herself and Reepicheep included. They were almost at once hidden by the avalanche of laundry, and would have likely not been caught if only Lucy's foot hadn't stuck out from under the massive pile.
The man grabbed hold of it at once and pulled her out. "How did this one get in here?"
"Let me go!" Lucy cried, her plea falling on deaf ears.
"What did you hear?" the woman demanded crossly, placing her hands on her hips; none of that pretend-sweetness now.
"You killed that little boy!" Reepicheep accused them, shifting back into his noblest mouse-form and waving his sword at them. "You're murderers! You all ought to have your throats slit!"
"Can't have this one-" the man glared at Lucy, holding onto her arm with the death-grip of a pit-bull. "-telling such horrible tall-tales to the others, it would just cause trouble."
Lucy couldn't believe them; they were cutting away children's dæmons-innocent, helpless children and their sweet, beloved shape-shifting souls-and her panic would case trouble? It was too awful to bear! Too insensitive to imagine, too bitter to swallow, too evil to comprehend.
The nurse strolled over to Reepicheep and picked him up with far too much ease for Lucy's eyes to take in. She was touching Reepicheep! Holding him so tightly he couldn't move-scarcely even breathe! The traumatizing memory of the time children in the world she'd grown up in had unwittingly grabbed her Reep, thinking him to be a pet, flashed back in her mind and all at once, Lucy couldn't stop crying and screaming.
She tried to get free but the man held onto her waist, lifting her up with one arm, clamping the other over her mouth. Of course Lucy wasted no time in biting him, just as Peter had always told her she ought to do if someone ever tried to kidnap her in such a fashion, but the man was too strong for it to cause enough pain. He did wince slightly, but that was it. Reepicheep bit the woman, very hard. He didn't care that she was a female, in spite of his never-ending notions of honour. The woman was a murderess after all-and she had willingly touched another person's dæmon-the rules changed in these kind of circumstances.
The door was opened by another white-clad staff member who had come seemingly out of no where, and Lucy and her dæmon were taken down the hall, no mercy being shown as they turned down a corner into another room Lucy had never seen before.
To say it was a dreadful room would be an insult to dreadful rooms everywhere. For even the grimmest of places had never seemed, to Lucy, or to anyone else in her current position, quite this horrid. It was a laboratory of sorts, she supposed, all white and pale, pale blue in colour with a few test-tubes and knobs and other odd-looking things placed about in a very neat fashion. In the middle of the room was a curved black box-or at least, that's what it resembled more than anything else-with a kind of wire fencing material in its center, divided like two separate chambers.
Reepicheep was put on one side; Lucy, on the other. Then, before she could attempt to kick at the man placing her down and make her escape, another part of the fence-wire was brought down on both sides to lock them in. Out of the corner of his eye, Reepicheep noticed a nurse edging ever closer to something that looked like controllers.
"Lucy!" he cried out, realizing what this must be, only hoping he hadn't made his discovery too late. "This is the operation!" A tear ran down the side of his face as he shifted into one of his most beautiful forms, one he knew his mistress loved dearly, a little red panda with a doe-white face save for some scattered brown markings. "They're going to cut us apart!"
"Never!" shouted Lucy, slamming her wrists against the fencing as if she was attempting to reach through it and grab her darling Reepicheep, bringing him close to her again. "They'll never keep us apart, Reep!"
"Lucy." Reepicheep's paw pressed against the fencing on his side to bid her what might just be a real goodbye, one more painful than either of them could have ever imagined.
"Calm down, it shan't hurt you too much-it's for your own good." a nurse told her in a voice she assumed was meant to be soothing although it was anything but.
How can taking away my dæmon, my soul, my Reepicheep, my dear one, my life and breath, possibly be for 'my own good'? The tears were flying down from Lucy's eyes like a rainstorm now. They couldn't take away her Reepicheep! It wasn't so much the thought that she might die, just like Eustace Scrubb had, as the knowledge that she would lose Reep-maybe forever-that broke her heart in two. What good was life without her dæmon; nothing more than a zombie-like existence. It wouldn't be for her like it was for Peter, who'd never had a dæmon; he never felt like half of him was missing. And yet, Lucy would feel like that for the rest of her life (however long or short it would be) if they did this to her. If they cut him away.
"Sweet child," another nurse cooed. "don't you want to be a brave big girl while-"
"No!" Lucy screamed, at the end of her sanity and endurance, trying to slap at the woman through the fencing. "I want my Reepicheep! You wont take him from me! You wont! You wont!"
She ignored her and went on, "Don't you want to grow up?"
Lucy only cried and scowled some more wishing she could break free and rip the nasty, heartless woman's hair out for trying to do this to her. Any sweetness Lucy usually had was replaced by cold, frighteningly intense fear and hatred, emotions she wasn't used to and didn't like experiencing. For one terrible second she thought maybe that was what it meant to grow up, to feel this broken and scared all the time-how ghastly!
"We're doing this to help you grow up."
She felt her jaw drop, thinking of Edmund and what he had said about his mother 'helping children to grow up'. Worse still was the moment when she suddenly recalled what he had said about seeing a human cut away from their dæmon. It couldn't be! It couldn't! Was it possible that this (the Experimental Station) had been Bolvangar all along without her knowing it? That Edmund's mother was behind this cruel operation?
The separation chamber that was going to tear the bond between Lucy and Reepicheep apart for ever and ever suddenly clicked on at one of the nurse's biddings. A blue blade made entirely of electric light started to slowly flash down the middle fencing that separated Lucy and Reepicheep. Both could feel the cutting, the loss of breath, the pain so severe it was as though their necks were being slit while the other was forced to watch. The light came lower and lower, slowly tearing them apart.
It was almost to the bottom and Lucy thought she would surely die long before it was even completed-deeply admiring Eustace for holding out as long as he had-when suddenly the door swung open and a familiar voice gasped, "Hey, who is that?"
Lucy forced her tired eyelids which had been trying to close-to block out all the horror of her situation-open so that she could see who the speaker was. She recognized him: a dark-haired boy with an owl dæmon perched on his left shoulder. It was Edmund Coulter in the flesh.
"Lucy!" she heard him cry out in an agitated tone, quickly turning around and barking at the staff to stop the blade at once.
Racing forward, he flung the fencing open and put his hand on Lucy's arm. It was cold, trembling violently, and he could hear her sniffling and hyperventilating from the shock of it all. She was shaken to bits but she wasn't separated from her dæmon. She was still a full person; the operation hadn't been completed-thank goodness.
"Reepicheep..." Lucy murmured, wondering through half-closed eyelids if she would be left asking after him for the rest of her life. If they would never be together again.
Feeling frightened for her, Edmund raced over to Reepicheep's side of the chamber and reached in with his bare hands.
"Edmund, don't!" Ella pleaded with him, knowing how wrong it was supposed to be to touch someone else's dæmon. They had seen people do it before-and much more than just that, too-but that didn't mean the owl was comfortable with her own human touching Lucy Pevensie's Reepicheep like that.
Shaking his head, never fully taking his eyes off of Lucy, Edmund ignored his dæmon, knowing what he had to do-he had to do it for her, for poor hurt, scared little Lucy. He gently scooped up the soft-as-velvet red panda and held him as though he was made of easily-broken crystal glass. Feeling his touch through her dæmon was Lucy's first reassurance that she was still whole, but however greatly it relieved her, she still felt sick, weak, and violated. What she did vaguely notice however, was that Edmund's handling of Reepicheep didn't hurt, it was so caring and tender that she almost liked it.
Ever so gently, Edmund placed the dæmon into Lucy's lap as carefully as a mother cat puts down her kitten. Reepicheep clung to his human desperately, shifting back into a mouse and vowing never to let go-never, never, never! His mistress didn't hear the last 'never' he uttered however; she fainted, falling out of the open chamber, into Edmund's arms.
AN: Please review.