Disclaimer: Not mine.
A/N: Whoo. I'm on a roll, aren't I? But it's insanely easy to write Narnia fics in present tense. They just roll of my finger and onto the keyboard.
And it helps that Edmund's my favorite character.
Once again, many many thanks to Sentimental Star, Capegio, SugarHighNutcase, TimeMage0955, Tex110, and Samantha.
Once I start writing a particular fandom, it's very hard for me to stop.
The first time Edmund sees the stone figures, it does not occur to him that they are anything but decoration. And so he mocks them, and doesn't think about them again.
It is only after all his illusions of the witch are shattered, after he has been sitting in the prison for hours, after he has seen and matched the terrified look on Mr. Tumnus' face as he is dragged away to the ones of the stone creatures in his memory that he realizes what they once used to be. And so he pities them, a pity that mixes with some guilt and deep sorrow.
And he continues to sit in the frozen prison, ropes tugging and burning at his wrists and ankles, and no one to keep him company but his own thoughts. And he imagines terrible things (at times his imagination can rival Lucy's); his brothers and sisters dying somewhere, alone, hating him with their last breaths; all of Narnia lying frozen forever and ever, under the rule of a madwoman with a wand; no one, no one caring that he is in this frozen prison, no one caring that it is very likely that he will be killed, no one caring that Edmund is sorry, he's sorry.
And the tears run down his face in a steady stream, dripping off the end of his nose and onto the ground, and he knows that he can't blame anyone but himself.
Edmund wishes he were made of stone.