Threads

Prologue

Living in London made him grow used to constant noises, to the hustle and bustle of the city. He had grown busy burying his face in books, learning the most he could out of school. He listened to everything and everyone around him: cars, the news on the radio, the chit chat on the train.

He listened to his schoolmates complain about work, ponder going to university or not. He listened to Peter complain about the English mailing system and how it ruined his letters of admittance for American schools. And he also listened to Susan. He listened to her shushing them all every time any of them mentioned Narnia. It happened so many times, that most of them had forgotten all the memories they so desperately wanted to hold on to.

But most of all, he listened to Lucy; how she sighed when she heard the leaves of the trees rustle with the wind. How she talked during her midday naps about mythical creatures that seemed to be a lifetime away.

Edmund heard how, slowly but surely, the Pevensie children were beginning to forget about the summer when they were sent away from the blitz. Himself included.

But at that moment, the sound of bells tolling only made Edmund's head pound with pain, aggravating the mild headache he woke up with. He breathed in and shook his hair, trying to keep bad thoughts at bay. As Edmund's eyes flickered down at his black shoes, he felt a sort of quiet settle within his body, one he had not felt in a long time.

The strange silence that permeated their lives, was now obviously present in the room. The Pevensies were there, but all of them stood still as the radio played a song they had heard that summer.

"It used to be your dad's favorite—don't you remember?" some uncle sitting next to Peter said. Mrs. Pevensie was the first to break the silence, intending to say something. Instead, she erupted into soft sobs, making all gazes turn to her. Susan was the first to stand up and hug her mother.

That was the second in which Edmund's headache turned into a migraine. His thoughts felt like they were closing up, and threatening to suffocate him.

"I do, uncle John, I do," Edmund said hastily, and looked out the window. Memories combined with the flashes of light the migraine provoked. He remembered that same window breaking from the explosion of a bomb, and his hand bleeding because of the shards of glass he touched when he tried to grab his father's photograph, all those years ago.

Edmund felt stillness inside him, an emptiness that he was no longer familiar with. He felt lost, like that child that would have given up everything to not be himself—he felt his facial expression, his brows knitted together.

He looked upwards and around the room, trying to distract himself.

He turned his gaze to Lucy, sitting and fiddling with her hands. Her hair fell on her face like it did when it was short; clear tears streaked her cheeks. Susan, as she hugged her sobbing mother, looked around the room. For something clever to say, his thoughts automatically said. That voice inside his thoughts sounded a lot like when he was about 11.

And then, Peter.

Peter turned to look at Lucy and hugged her as he scrunched his lips, just as he did when he was 14, desperate to choke back tears, too.

They were in their childhood home, Edmund kept looking at it as if it was nothing but an illusion. They were in their living room, but it felt a lot like being in the Professor's tea room, trapped inside because of a hailstorm.

As if reading his thoughts, Lucy turned to Edmund. Then, they both turned to Peter. He nodded too. Susan noticed this, and looked at everyone, befuddled.

"What's going on?" Susan asked, elongating the last syllable into a whisper.

The three siblings shared another look, and Lucy leaned forward, "It's the air, Su. It feels like…"

She let the phrase hang in the air; Peter wanted to continue, but he stayed silent.

They all kept silent as if waiting for someone to gain the courage to pick up the conversation. Lucy looked agitated, so Edmund was the bravest.

"It feels like Nar—" Edmund opened up his eyes at the interruption.

"Will the three of you stop!?" Susan said a bit louder than it sounded in her head. Others turned around and witnessed Susan's eyes fill with tears.

"Dad's gone, and you're still talking about that!? That is unbelievable!" she said in a quiet, angry whisper, that despite her hardest attempt to be discrete, all family members listened, including her mother.

"Did-did you say something, Su?" asked their mother. Susan quietly shook her head.

A tear rolled down her cheek, and she wiped it away with such force that it left her cheek red. Peter looked down, ashamed. Lucy's eyes started to water as well. Edmund merely clenched his jaw and felt warm water rolling down his face, too. He was so numb he did not notice the lump in his throat before that moment.

Did Susan believe it was a childish game? Some sort of coping mechanism? Edmund had to confess that there were days where it certainly felt like it, where that world and those moments felt like a dream…but how could she deny it when all of them were so profoundly marked by it?

Edmund surely was. Every time he had a dream about Narnia, it transformed into a nightmare about the cold dimly cell the Witch threw him in. He usually woke up drenched in sweat, and with a bleeding nose, knowing that he could never take back what he had done.

And then there were also the physical scars—he had a deep, curved scar on his stomach and another couple of slashes on his right thigh. The first scar came from a wound he tried not to remember, but one that reminded him of winter. The second was a reminder to keep his attention on his enemy's sword; a mistake he never made again.

The Pevensies never really talked about the things that they carried with themselves, physical scars, or the tender things that remained in their hearts. None of them did, but each held them within. How could Susan pretend none of that was real?

Susan held a sob in and abruptly stood up. Her place wiping away her mother's tears was replaced by another aunt. The silence after Susan left the room was so deep, that when a tear rolled off her cheek and hit the carpeted floor, it almost had an echo.

The song stopped and was replaced by dreadful static. Peter was the one to stand up and turn it off. He was dressed in black clothes, but to Edmund, it seemed like he was wearing that horrid green shrunken sweater from all those years ago.

Like that very first night at the professor's house, when Peter turned off the radio after he caught Lucy listening to the news. Edmund sighed and closed his eyes. He felt shaky.

"Ed. Ed—" Lucy moved closer to him. Edmund opened his swollen eyes lazily. "Are you alright?"

Edmund pondered on the question. How did he feel, truly? What was he grieving for, the loss of his absent father, or the loss of his childhood?

"I don't know, Lu." He took another breath and stood up to get a glass of water.

Mr. Pevensie had gone away to war without hesitation. He enlisted with the rest of his brothers, and that was it. One day all of the Pevensie men lived scattered across different regions in England. The next day the left their homes and weeping families behind.

The day that Edmund's father said goodbye to him, Edmund remained standing at the door for ages. Hours or minutes with his legs going numb, hot tears down his face. He only remembered what sent him off a trance: a knock on the door.

Mrs. Pevensie had opened it, and Edmund had hoped to see his father. But instead, it was only Frank, his neighbor. And his mother.

"Evening, Mrs. Pevensie. Frank here was wondering if he could invite young Ed to the swings just around the corner. He's been cooped up inside all day and wants some fresh air."

"Sure!" Mrs. Pevensie answered before even asking Edmund. "He could use the fresh air, too."

Edmund couldn't remember much, but he faintly recalled that little Frank tried to cheer him up as if he knew exactly how Edmund was feeling.

Some days or weeks later, when Edmund was only beginning to feel better, two officers knocked on Frank's door. He answered, and then he called his mother. His mother told him to leave as she received the news, but he refused. The soldiers didn't wait.

They handed her a letter, causing her to erupt in tears. Edmund remembered he ran across the street once they left, and tried to comfort his friend, without really understanding what he had seen.

Edmund no longer remembered the fine details, except for being pushed away by his friend. Some names were called so loudly that Mrs. Pevensie crossed the street to investigate what was the problem. But Frank looked at Edmund with a kind of look he didn't recognize and couldn't understand then. But the next day of school, he clearly remembered.

He saw Frank standing by himself, and Edmund wanted to approach him. He wanted to say he was sorry, at least that was what his mother told him to say. He wanted to be there just as Frank had been there to cheer him up. But as he was approaching him, Frank turned around, with that same look of hatred he failed to recognize the previous day.

"What do you want?"

"I just wanted to—"

"Yah, what do you want?" An older kid than they approached. The older kid walked very close to Edmund, invading his personal space.

"N-nothing! I just wanted to—"

"You wanted to what? Cry and run to your mommy?"

"Oh..you're mommy's boy, who cries in her lap!" The older kid said.

Edmund felt the shakiness inside his body, but he also remembered his father's advice, the first piece of advice he ever gave him. Don't let anyone tell you who you are. Stand up for yourself, always.

"Oh, look!" One of the kids said, "He's red in the face!"

"He's gonna cry!"

Before any of the kids could pull closer to him, Edmund felt his fist come up to Frank's face. The kid's pulled up in surprise, except for the older one.

The other one pulled up his fist to the air to pull it down to Edmund's face. Before any of that could happen, Edmund squatted and missed the blow. He hit the older kid with his books before running away.

That day, Edmund returned home without a scratch and lost the person he thought was his best friend. And that day was the first of many where he had to fight for himself to keep his head upright. From that day on, his experience at school changed. It no longer was a place of learning, but a place of surviving.

From that day on, returning from school meant having to hide from his neighbor so that there wasn't another fight. It meant having to invent clever ways to justify the bruises and hiding the pain. It meant keeping silent when any of his siblings or his mother asked him if he was alright if he was happy.

It was when he developed that dreadful silence. That silence that almost took him an entire life to draw away from. It was that coping mechanism that almost led him to let go of the only thing that mattered most—family.

And those memories were suffocating. He chugged the glass of water and looked out the window.

Narnia was nothing but a memory. It was a far and fantastical place, one where they lived longer than they had in England. Despite all of Susan's effort, he couldn't bear the thought of just discarding it as if it was nothing.

What was incomprehensible was that in that short time they had been back, life took Edmund's father away from him. The war wasn't yet over, but his father was gone. His mother had been absent ever since the notice came in. Not even a body to bury or to grieve. The pain was indescribable.

Died in service of his country.

Was a good man, a good husband, and a good father.

That was all of what his father was reduced to. Words and omitted memories.

Eventually, Edmund emerged from the kitchen.

Eventually, the rest of the Pevensies gathered around the fireplace in their living room. Their mother was curled up the couch, weeping. There was silence, nothing but that annoying familiarity.

None of them had anything to say anymore. Hours of prolonged numbness went by, tears dragged down Edmund's cheeks, and still, he didn't feel a thing. He thought felt someone caressing his hair, and whispering words of comfort. He didn't listen to it, and neither did any of his siblings. The world could fall on them, literally this time, and none of them would even notice.

Was this the point of coming back? he wondered, to be miserable? ´To feel small, as if I never matured, and rather stay feeling like a child forever?

He remembered the time when Lucy told him about the moving figures in the fire. How Lucy saw the prettiest illusion of dryads and trees dancing around the music that Mr. Tomnus played. She told Edmund exactly how she felt in that moment, how those little figures were so mesmerizing that she started to lose control of her body, and how her mind followed after soon enough.

At first, she described, it was like falling within a dream. It was that liminal space between falling into a pool of lucid dreaming and being able to shift away from sleep. It was that endless pit, with nothing to hold on to.

"In that moment", Lucy said, "I felt much like Alice instead of me, falling down the rabbit hole. And if it hadn't been for Him, I would have."

Lucy never described the roar that shook her away from that trance, but Edmund could only imagine. She only ever mentioned that it felt like finally being able to run away in a nightmare, and when she finally opened her eyes, it felt like a warm hand pulling her back to safety.

That story was the reason why Edmund kept looking at the fire, almost without blinking. He was waiting for that moment, for His roar to keep him awake, to bring him back to life. He looked so closely, he could feel his face burn. Footsteps came and went behind him, the weeping around him ceased.

At that moment in time, the only thing Edmund wanted was to feel that safety. The safety Lucy felt when she was awakened, the safety he felt when was but a kid, falling asleep in the living room with his toys right beside him, and his father carrying him to his room.

He sobbed. Loudly. That sound almost echoed; and when he turned around he saw no one except for Lucy. She slid next to him and hugged him.

"It won't always feel like this, Ed," she said tenderly.

A/N: Hello! Well, it's been some time! This is just a small prologue to sort of understand where all the characters are coming from, particularly Edmund obviously :) I should mention that this story will have some mature themes, hence this prologue. I'm sorry for all the sad parts...but what's a story without drama?

The story happening in Narna is set during Prince Caspian, but there'll be bits and pieces of things that happen before/after PC when the characters aren't in Narnia, to spice things up a little bit more (as you've seen here!)

I don't want to rush anything this time haha so….let's enjoy the ride meanwhile and hopefully, you'll find Ed's character as intriguing as I do!

Also, if any of you kind readers have read and remember The Romance of Sadness, I just want to say that I truly have been trying to finish writing it after all these years, but I reached an impasse—so this "new" story is my way of continuing (and hopefully actually finish it!).

Therefore, both stories will be very similar at times, and my OC's name will either be the same or it will be quite alike….But no worries! The story itself won't actually be an exact copy.

Follow and drop a review if you liked it please! xoxo