Alone

The first time Edmund lost Narnia, lost her, he raged and railed, started fights, acted belligerent, barely spoke to anyone outside of his siblings, who gave him space, support, and affection because they knew. The second time he lost Narnia, without ever having seen her, he grew withdrawn, silent, depressed, never spoke unless spoken to, even with his siblings. Lucy was the only exception because she too mourned for her lost sister, his lost wife, and their other brother and other sister seemed determined to forget that they'd ever had a place where they belonged, a place with magic, a place with love.

Then there was his third trip into Narnia, where at first it seemed like the last, magical but not enough, never enough, but then she came and he got to hold her, to touch her, to kiss her, and he vowed to never let her go again, forcefully ignoring the traces of desperation than tainted their every word, every glance, every caress. He held her at the end as tightly as he dared, welcomed the tiny pricks of pain from her nails, and wept when they were ripped away because he did not think he could survive losing her again.

When his tears dried, he felt hollow, blank, light, as if his heart and emotions had been ripped away with her, leaving nothing behind. He threw himself into life, into normal life, with a fierceness and intensity that both frightened and pleased his family. He went to Oxford and studied education, in honor of the Professor whose house had begun it all. He joined the University's rugby club and quickly rose to captain, his grasp of strategy and utter lack of fear serving him well.

Only he, and maybe Lucy, knew that while he experienced life with a fullness that others admired, he was not truly living at all. He was an empty shell, and would remain so until he saw her again.

x

Lying on the hard and lumpy hotel mattress, Liz tried to remember the last time she'd cried and couldn't. No matter how much pain and grief she felt in this life, it was overwhelmed by the grief from losing her real life, and so the tears never came. Not when Alex died, not when she had to leave home for fear of her life, not when they got the news of her parents' death, not during the now nightly fights where Max screamed and sobbed because she still refused to marry him after all this time.

She was already married, to the only man she had ever loved, and although she might never see him again, she refused to betray their vows, something she could not, would not, explain to the boy who would be king, who was now sleeping on the floor. A soft, bitter chuckle escaped her lips at the thought of Max as king. Maybe, in a past life, he had earned the title he bore, but in this one, in this one he did not compare to the Kings she knew, trusted, and served. He could not compare to the King she loved and ached for, body and soul.

Her title was another source of contention between them, once her body had accepted the changes his alien powers unlocked in her DNA, he had tried to get her to accept the seal of queen, and had been shocked and hurt when she refused. He did not know that she was already Queen, that she already had a country, a people. She would help him, had helped him, had fought by his side ever since he dragged her back to life, but the thought of swearing her allegiance to Antar made her physically sick with the utter wrongness of the act.

She didn't even consider herself American anymore. She was a Narnian, a Queen, a wife, and it was those identities she clung to possessively in the quiet dark of night, those identities that kept her from throwing herself in front of the next energy blast, because she would not dishonor her country, or her King, by taking the easy way out, no matter how painful it was just being alive without him.