I don't own Narnia or the Pevensies. I just think about them when other people are discussing less interesting things.

Author's Note: I'm not feeling that this chapter is up to scratch - I'm sorry in advance for out of character-ness, but it's the downfall of everyone eventually. Read, enjoy, review, thank you.


"Lucy," Susan whispered gently, shaking her younger sister's shoulder. The sleeping girl's eyelids lifted a fraction. "Lucy, you're needed, come on now."

The insistency in Susan's voice prompted her to open her eyes fully and she became aware that she was in her hammock. Morning sunlight flecked the room with faint rainbows, the droplets of water upon the window acting as prisms. She gave a small grumble of irritability.

"We need your cordial, Lucy," Susan said. "If you won't come, then give it to me."

Suddenly, Lucy remembered the chaos of the night before, and she sat straight up, eyes wide with fright.

"Where's Peter? Is he…"

"Peter is in his cabin. He's not badly hurt," Susan reassured her with a smile that hid none of her own relief. Then her face darkened. "But some of the sailors need your help. It isn't pretty."

"Just a moment," Lucy replied, standing and pushing past her sister to open the closet. Her dress was still uncomfortably moist, she noticed, as she pulled the belt that held her cordial from its hook on the wall and fastened it about her waist. Her boots were still quite wet, so she left them on the floor. Susan had stepped into the hallway. She exited the room and followed her down to the door that led to the sailor's quarters, waiting as her sister knocked briefly, then entered.

The room the sailors all shared was a great deal larger than Lucy and Susan's, though the ceiling was equally low. Wooden posts were placed every so often, to hold the ends of hammocks that were hooked on the walls. Several of them were occupied by limp bodies with oddly bent legs or arms. Lucy hurried forward to the closest one, pulling her cordial from its holder and quickly undoing the top. The man within the hammock seemed to be asleep, so she quite nearly jumped when he opened his eyes to stare up at her in a sort of dull, agonized stupor.

"H…here," she stammered. "Drink this, it will make you feel better." She brought the cordial to his lips and tipped a drop of it into his mouth. He shuddered slightly, then clutched at his twisted arm frantically as the bones knitted themselves together all in a rush. Lucy hurried away from his hammock, Susan taking her place to calm the surprised sailor.

She repeated this process for the eight other men who had been injured in the storm, some by falls from the mast and others by flying debris. A few were alert enough to murmur thanks before falling asleep, and one man with a particularly bad break in his leg had actually wept with gratitude when she had healed him. A different girl Lucy's age might have been made sick by the smell of blood and the sight of bone erupting from flesh. But she had seen this much and worse before, on the battlefields of the war before her rule, and so she bore it all with a quiet determination far beyond her years.

When she was sure there was no one else in need of her potion, Lucy left the room and stood quietly in the hallway until Susan joined her, looking sobered and maternal.

"You never think of the wind that way when you're in a castle," she said reflectively. Lucy nodded in agreement, fidgeting ever so slightly.

"Susan?" she ventured.

"Yes?"

"Can I visit Peter?"

Her sister smiled warmly.

"Of course. He might be resting, though, and we shouldn't wake him. Shall we check?" she said. They crossed the hallway to the door of their brothers' cabin and she knocked lightly. There was the sound of someone getting up, and the door opened enough for Edmund to poke his head out. He raised a finger to his lips, then silently pushed the door all the way open and beckoned them inside. Their cabin was an identical match of the sisters' and as such there was very little room to be moving about in.

Peter was indeed resting, sleeping peacefully in his hammock. There were scratches on his arms and face, and a nastily dark, swollen bruise on his left temple, but other than that he seemed unharmed. His siblings quietly filed out to leave him in peace. Together, they carefully climbed the still wet staircase and onto the lower deck, the sky above deceptively blue and cloudless. Lucy gave a shiver.

Susan turned and looked towards the mast. Squinting, she examined it critically from top to bottom as her younger brother and sister followed her gaze. The thought Peter had been up there on the crossbeams while the ship bucked like a toy in a bath scared them more than they wanted to think about. But however crazy it had been, he had miraculously survived it somehow. This reminded Lucy of a question she had wanted to ask.

"What happened to his forehead?" she said. Edmund shrugged, but Susan, who seemed to know everything, replied.

"He cracked it against the mast." Strangely, an amused grin had spread across her face. Noticing the baffled looks of her siblings, she laughed a bit. "I suppose it wasn't so funny at the time. Actually, when they carried him down, I was terrified, I thought he was…well…you know. But no, they said he'd done a really superbly stupid bit of heroics and dove off the second sail beam after a crew member who'd lost his balance. He was tied to the mast at the time, else he'd have gone all the way down, but he likely saved the man's life. Unfortunately, he swung straight into the mast after that and dropped the poor bloke the rest of the way because he'd been knocked out cold."

Even Edmund had to grin bemusedly at that.

"I think he's overdoing his part just a bit," he commented.

"Well, you know Peter," said Susan. "He hasn't quite found this concept of self yet."

Lucy laughed and had to agree. And as she made her way to breakfast with them, she couldn't help but feel extraordinarily lucky to be a part of such a marvelous family.