A/N: It's a short one, mostly filler but important filler!! I will try to get the final chapter up as soon as possible. I can't believe it's almost done – thanks for everybody's help and support!

Lovers & Friends

"It's definitely a yes, Miss Winstrom," the doctor murmured as he came back into the tiny room. Rachel sat on the bunk, her back to the wall and her knees tucked up to her chest. She paled, glancing up at him.

"I-I'm pregnant?"

"I'm afraid so," he confirmed quietly, patting her arm.

Rachel held her hand out in front of her, the red ribbon tied on her finger seeming so naively romantic and insignificant now. "He's a soldier. I don't know if he'll make it out of this war alive," she whispered.

"I don't know if I'll make it out of this war alive," the doctor pointed out with a soft sigh.

"What do I do?" Rachel asked, looking up at him with fear and loneliness in her eyes.

"You'll wait it out. They say the war will be over soon," he said wryly, tucking his clipboard under his arm as he walked out.

That had been the day the hospital was destroyed, the day her brother verbally murdered her fiancée, the love of her life. And she didn't even know it because she had been at a hospital in Westham, a half hour away.

She gave the baby up, a beautiful little boy with blond hair and blue eyes and a smile she knew would break hearts someday. He was only three days old when they took him home. She never knew his name, never knew what his dreams were, didn't get to see him grow up. He was her baby, their baby, but he was just a nameless face that haunted her dreams.

She went back to work in Hastings when they rebuilt the hospital after the war. Half the people in her life that she cared about had been killed there. Maybe it was morbidity that drew her. Maybe it was a need to be close to him.

---

Peter met lots of girls, blonds, Brits, Americans, brunettes, Chinese, even a handful of redheads, but none of them so much as turned his head. He never stopped wearing the red Christmas ribbon she had tied on his finger in 1944, even though it grew tattered and worn over the years.

He never located the Winstroms. It would seem they didn't want to be found. Whether that was due to him or due to Richard, he couldn't decide.

His family gave him his space but slowly, over time, he came back to them. He wouldn't ever be the same again, he loved her too much, but they could accept that, even Susan. He seemed more human to her, it seemed, with a broken heart than he had trying to be a boy-king in a man's world.

---

1949 dawned and, though it was just another year to everyone else, to Peter, and to his siblings, it felt strange. As though they were on the very edge of something important. For months, they talked about it, the odd sensation that they were being pulled apart. For months, all Susan talked about was her trip to America, how she was going to see New York and meet a handsome American man.

February of 1949, Rachel was complaining of pains and headaches. By April, she had been diagnosed with a brain tumor.

And then it happened. They should have known. A train derailed, killing almost every single person they loved.

Edmund.

Lucy.

Helen and David.

The Professor and Polly.

Eustace and Jill.

Peter.

Everyone except Susan. She wore black for a year, the fashionable veil over her face conveniently hiding the tears. They may have all but hated her in the end, but she never stopped loving them.

The tumor took Rachel in June, her family's tears not enough to save her. For the rest of his life, her father would dedicate his novels to her memory. Her mother closed the new shop in Willenhall every year on Rachel's birthday and visited her grave, a simple headstone with the words:

Rachel Virginia Winstrom
Lover & Friend
1922-1949

Richard never forgave himself.

But their love story wasn't over yet.