Whumptober Prompt 27: OK, Who Had Natural Disasters on the Bingo Card?
Power Outage - Narnia
A/N: So apparently my solution to being tired of angst is to write a series of fluffy responses. I'm not really sorry, but if you'd like me to write angst again, let me know and I'll try? I've got three more prompts left.
"Lucy?" Susan breathed the name into the dark almost soundlessly. Residents of London were warned against the dangers of noise as well as light, and while Edmund mocked Susan's fears ("Like they'd be able to hear you above the roar of their planes, you're such a coward, really,"), Susan couldn't bring herself to be louder. But she had to find Lucy. "Lucy? We've got to go below - where are you?"
"I'm here," said a pale, tired voice, and Susan's eyes, adjusting to the dim light from the cracks in the black-out curtain to see her sister sitting underneath the window, looking up through the slit in the curtain to the murdering sky.
"What are you doing? Get away from there!" Susan hissed, voice emphatically low.
Lucy crawled away, but her movements were slow. "I wanted to see."
"See what? The German planes once they come? Lucy, that's the least safe place to be! Mum is sending us away to the country to get us away from the planes, don't stay here looking for them!"
Lucy burst into tears. "I was looking at the sky! We're going tomorrow, and it won't be the same." Susan halted.
Oh. She dragged Lucy to the middle of the room—it was safer—and sat down beside her, an arm around her shoulders. "This isn't about just the sky, is it?"
Lucy buried her head in Susan's shoulder. "Why can't Mum come with us?" she asked, her words muffled.
"Grown-ups aren't allowed. They have to stay here and be brave," Susan said, reciting the words Mum had said when Susan asked the exact same question—only Mum had said it with a gentle smile and a hand on Susan's face, and Susan could hear her own voice begin to quaver as she answered Lucy.
"Then I should stay too." Lucy's stubborn voice came from Susan's shoulder. "I can be brave with Mum. I can stay and help! I was watching, Susan, and the planes don't scare me." Her voice dropped. "Leaving Mum does."
Susan held her sister tighter. "It's harder for Mum to be brave when you're here," she said, choosing her words carefully. She had seen Mum go white, that one time there was a raid and Peter was outside. Those callused fingers shaking, twisted around each other under the table as the four of them waited, Edmund scowling but not saying anything when he looked at Mum's face. "She's worried she'll lose us. The country—it's only for a time, Lucy. I know you want to stay here and be brave, but that's not what we need. Mum—Mum will need you to be brave tomorrow. To get on the train, and not cry, and smile if you can. That would be the best way to help Mum."
Susan felt Lucy's head pull away from her shoulder, though she didn't move out from under Susan's arm. "Da said the hardest way was often the bravest," she whispered, and Susan, though she'd been hoping for her little sister to respond this way, felt her heart ache. It's this war, she reminded herself. It made all us children need to grow up. She just wished Lucy could have stayed a child, just a little bit longer.
But Lucy couldn't, and Susan nodded. "Do you remember what Father said?"
"Sort of. He is not valiant that dares…and something about boldly."
"He is not valiant that dares die, but he that boldly bears calamity."* Susan reached her other hand over and stroked Lucy's hair back. "Bear this," she whispered pleadingly. "Please, Lu. It will be hard enough with Edmund sulking, and Mum-"
Lucy's head hit Susan's shoulder again, but her words were clear, resigned. "Mum will need the rest of us to be valiant."
"Starting now. Come down to the shelter, all right? Mum thinks there will be another raid tonight, and said we might as well sleep there."
Lucy let Susan pull her up, but when Susan turned to go, Lucy clung to her hand and didn't move. "I promise, Susan."
"Promise what?" the older sister asked, turning.
"I promise to be as brave as I can be. To help the war, and help Mum, and make Da proud. To be valiant." Susan smiled, reaching back to hug her little sister in the dark, thinking her sister might be braver than she was, to make that promise when they didn't know what was coming. It gave Susan heart.
"Thank you, Lucy." Together they headed for the shelter, for one more night. To brave the planes in the dark tonight, and tomorrow to wear a different kind of bravery.
OOOOO
*Philip Massinger. I thought about Shakespeare's quote, "Cowards die many times before their deaths. The valiant never taste of death but once," because that fits Lucy, but it didn't fit this very well.