Disclaimer: I do not own the His Dark Materials series

A/N: Hey, everybody! Sorry for the hiatus. I've been drowning in homework and papers as the semester draws to a close. However, just one final exam left, so I'm free to write for a while. Here's some more of the story, and I thought it'd be nice to get a little bit of everyone's POV on this :) Enjoy!

19.

Perplexing Perspectives

It was all a blur of white. Kicking and screaming, Lyra was lost in a blaze of blanche as the Magisterium soldiers brought her inside the building and held onto her tightly. Pan, locked in the grip of the men's bloodhound daemons, merely snarled and whimpered as he struggled to get back to her, and all Lyra could think about was the fear and the panic that had consumed her inside the blade back at Bolvangar.

I knew something like this would happen, Pan thought, flailing his polecat limbs. One of the bloodhounds growled at him, and he thrashed his tail. We should have never stayed with her! We should have run while we had the chance!

As she stood there trapped in the soldiers' grasp, Lyra sincerely wanted to agree with him. Looking around at the eerily blank and expressionless walls, her heart ached for something, for anything, to happen. She felt utterly suffocated in the maze of white and serenity. Deep inside her heart, Lyra truly wanted to agree on escaping and never turning back.

However, even as the guards let her go and told her to sit in a small, feeble chair, Lyra couldn't agree. Seeing that Mrs. Coulter was right behind them, Lyra wanted to call out to her and bury her head inside her furs. She wanted Mrs. Coulter to rock her, to sing to her, to soothe her; she wanted Mrs. Coulter to make all her troubles go away.

But also, Lyra realized that Mrs. Coulter was the cause of all her problems. In a way, Lyra felt trapped within two separate vortexes. It was similar to how she felt when she had first left Jordan College. She had been eager to leave and explore the regions of the North, but at the same time, she had been reluctant to leave her home and everything she had ever known. Now at that particular moment, Lyra didn't know what to think as she sat in a chair and watched her mother approach her, and in all sincerity, she didn't know what to do.

Pan started snarling, and as Mrs. Coulter shrugged out of her furs and came over to them, her blue eyes were soft and her smile was warm. "Lyra. Darling, I'm sorry that I had to do that."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Lord Asriel couldn't believe it. Walking back to the hotel room, Stelmaria in his wake, he just couldn't believe it.

"We underestimated her,"his daemon said, her growl soft. "She acted sooner than we had anticipated."

Indeed Lord Asriel had underestimated her. Of all the things he had expected her to do, sneaking out to a sledge in the middle of the night was not one of them. She had more class and more nerve than that. He assumed she would have cozied up to a guard or ordered some of her patrols to come out and arrest him; he assumed she would have done something more meaningful.

In the end, since she obviously still had some sort of jumbled feelings for him, Lord Asriel didn't expect Mrs. Coulter to outright slap him in the face.

"What shall we do now?" Stelmaria asked, matching Lord Asriel's pace. "Do we find her?"

"Of course," Lord Asriel spat, giving his head a rough shake. "That idiot told us where to go, and after we get some rest and pack up our things, we'll follow her."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Mrs. Coulter had expected Lyra to be upset, but she didn't expect her to be so unreasonable. Indeed, as Mrs. Coulter bent down next to her daughter and tried to explain, Lyra just wouldn't have it. Squirming away from her, Lyra spat at her mother's face and then jumped off her chair and tried to run away, screaming and scratching at the guards as they scooped her up and dragged her back. She was acting like the most ruthless, barbaric Gyptian child in Oxford, and it was enough to make Mrs. Coulter want to vomit.

"Lyra," said Mrs. Coulter, hearing her tone start to sharpen. "Please. There's no need to worry and there's no need to shout. Will you please listen to me?"

"Why?" Lyra's face was a blaze of hatred, and Mrs. Coulter couldn't help but scowl. "You're just gonna bring me back to them Magisterium people. I knew it; I shouldn't have went with you!"

Did this child honestly not understand? The golden monkey lashed his tail, and Mrs. Coulter let out a frustrated sigh. Surely Lyra could perceive how precarious of a situation they were in. After traveling around in the wilderness for weeks while completely abandoning Bolvangar, the Magisterium needed some answers. And after showing up right at their doorstep, Mrs. Coulter was doing everything that she needed to do.

But of course, none of this was relevant to Lyra. Mrs. Coulter had sacrificed everything for her, but it still wasn't enough for the girl to trust her, and it still dulled in comparison to Lyra's insistence that Mrs. Coulter wanted nothing more than to ruin her life. Didn't she see how much she had done for her? Didn't she see how much Mrs. Coulter loved her?

"We're merely stopping in," Mrs. Coulter sang, trying and failing to place a hand on Lyra's head. "We need them to help us get a zeppelin, dear. How else do you think we're going to head back to London?"

"Mrs. Coulter," said a voice from a few yards away. Twisting around, Mrs. Coulter saw the head of the Trollesund deity strolling towards her, his smile wide. "It's good to finally hear from you. We heard that you were in the utmost danger."

Turning to give Lyra a sharp glare, Mrs. Coulter stood up and prayed that her daughter wouldn't say anything rash. She was starting to feel utterly drained from all of their activity, and as she moved towards the priest and offered her hand, smiling delightfully, Mrs. Coulter didn't know how much longer she could keep it up.

The truth of the matter was that she willingly chose to go with Asriel and then knowingly left him to his own devices back at North Gorvsy. Of course she'd have to tell the Magisterium that she was held against her will and was threatened to travel with him, and of course she'd have to lie and deceive them in order to ensure a flight back to London.

Is this what you really want? As Mrs. Coulter bent her head towards the priest and listened as he relayed what happened at Bolvangar, she felt something stir deep within her. Do you really want to settle back in London and live like a pretty pet?

The truth, Mrs. Coulter knew, was that she didn't want to go back to that life. His tail raised high with arrogance, the golden monkey screeched as Mrs. Coulter realized she had no idea what she was doing. She knew that she wanted Lyra and she knew that she needed to be away from Asriel, but in the end, she knew that she couldn't find it in her heart to actually get away from him.

Love was such a strange, touchy thing. Love had made Mrs. Coulter battle at the ends of the North, but it had also caused her to run away from everything. She knew that she loved Lyra and that she needed to be with her, but the complication was that she loved Asriel and that she wanted to be with him as well. It was really a rather preposterous thought, but yet again, it was all due to that crazy thing called love.

Glancing back over at Lyra, who was glaring at her venomously, Mrs. Coulter didn't know what to do. Yet glancing back at the priest, who was looking at her expectantly, Mrs. Coulter knew what she ultimately had to do.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

It was all so confusing. Lyra felt tears slide down her cheeks as the guards steered her towards a door and out of Mrs. Coulter's sight. Pan raked the bloodhounds' muzzles with his claws, but they didn't react. They merely blinked and bit down a little harder, causing Lyra to whimper aloud with her daemon.

As they rounded the corner into a steel-lined hallway, Lyra heard the door shut and felt her heart start to beat rapidly in her chest. She knew that Mrs. Coulter had to talk to these people in order to get them out of trouble, but why did they have to treat her this way? Why did they make her leave the room? Why were they dragging her so roughly?

"Stay in here, kid," one of the guards muttered as he opened a wooden door and pushed her inside. "Be quiet until she comes for you."

"But why?" The door slammed in Lyra's face, and she started to slam her fists on the door. "What is she doing? What's going on?"

"We have to get out of here!" Pan leapt into the air and changed into a black panther, extending his paws to slash at the door handle. "I don't know what she's doing, but I don't trust her!"

Did Lyra trust Mrs. Coulter? She honestly didn't know. The room was adorned with a small table and a set of wobbly chairs, and Lyra felt defeated and destroyed as she sat down and put her hands in her lap. Mrs. Coulter had been so incredibly kind to her for the past few weeks, and she had never known her to be more loving. She took care of her, sang to her, helped her, entertained her – she did everything for Lyra.

Yet where was she now? Talking with some stinky priest who paid her to cut away children's daemons? As Pan changed back into a cat and crawled into Lyra's lap, Lyra had a bad feeling. Something cold and hard twisted in her stomach, and as she sat there petting Pan's stiff, ruffled fur, she couldn't help but wonder if Mrs. Coulter was merely tricking her all along.