Narnia:

When Children Cry

Part III

DISCLAIMER: Do I own it? WAhahahahaaaaaaAAAwuaaAAAAAAAAAMUAHAHAhahahaHAHEEEEEEEEEEEAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA – no.

Aww! LucyTumnus good stuff in this chapter (kind of. I guess... maybe?). I dunno. Not very good at detecting fluff when I see it (or write it?). No! I've decided; not fluff, but very sweet and very sad. But YAY! my long chappies are back!

I'm sorry I had to kill Tumnus. I probably deserve all the flames I got. More than you know... because, as you'll find out if you keep reading (and if you're a good person and never read these kinky author's notes), I didn't actually kill him.

Great. Now I feel all crummy inside and the warm fuzzy feeling of Fanfic writing isn't in me anymore. I'm sorry for doing that to you, and I probably lost all of my readers, but it's my book and I control the plot.

But I shall make up for it! (Don't you love that word? It's such a cool word. Just say it: shall. It's definitely going with all my other favourite words, like yeast and mimic and 'tis and all the words in Jabberwocky by Lewis Carrol, and orangutans and breakfast cereals and shrubbery and Ni! and ecky-ecky-ecky-eckshoPANG!shopowlowlooor... is that how you spell it? I don't really know... I could go check, but I'm too lazy...)

OKAY! Enough Monty Python, you came for Narnia, and I give it you thus:

Chapter Thirty-One

A Promise Remembered

This couldn't be happening. Peter stumbled backward, shaking head in disbelief. Not Tumnus. The very Tumnus that had been his friend, Lucy's friend, the Tumnus that had crowned him, the Tumnus that had, in a way, led them to Narnia. Gone.

Peter dared step forward and look upon his sallow, limp face. Yes. Tumnus. But...

'He's not dead.'

'Peter, he is, he is,' moaned Lucy. 'He is!'

'No, Lucy, he really isn't dead!' Peter skidded onto the grass, kneeling by the nearly-dead faun. 'He's breathing, look!' Lucy lifted her head and looked on his cool face.

'Tumnus?' she whispered.

'He needs aid immediately!' said Peter. 'Lucy, where's your cordial?'

A blank look came over her face. 'I don't– It's not here, is it?'

'Damn you, Lucy, for forgetting the cordial!' cursed Edmund, then brought out his own horn and blowed: two short notes and a long note. Almost at once, two Narnian generals – one Red Dwarf, one centaur – galloped forward on horses.

'Your Highness,' said the first, the centaur, in a hurried voice. 'pardon me, but I could've sworn I heard the Queen Lu–' He trailed off at the sight of her in full mail. 'Queen Lucy!' he gasped, and what he was about to say next was lost.

'Brallin, I need you to bring a stretcher immediately,' said Edmund. Brallin stood and gaped. 'Now! Make haste, make haste!' Without a word, Brallin turned his body in the opposite direction and galloped off.

'Lucy, I won't–' began Peter, but didn't say anything more. Lucy had removed her gauntlets and, presently, was prying off Tumnus' gorget (which is the piece of armour that protects the throat), and pounding desperately at the breastplate.

She looked incredulously at them both. 'He needs to breathe! Help me get this off!' Again, she attacked the armour, wrenching off a shoulder piece.

Peter and Edmund both exchanged a look, then joined in the assail of armour. In the brief time it took to remove him of it, Brallin had returned with a small company of dryads carrying a sheet folded over two long poles. They knelt and pulled off his mail, whispering to each other.

'He needs medicine badly; can you not see the wound on his scalp?'

'Oh, feel his forehead, he's burning.'

Lucy screeched, 'Can he be healed?' She was now clutching his hand tightly, seeming as though she'd never release it.

One dryad shook her head. 'I don't know, Highness, but I wouldn't count on it. Unless you have your cordial...?'

Lucy shook her head.

'Help me get him on,' said one dryad to the other, lifting Tumnus onto the makeshift stretcher.

Lucy still never let go of his hand.

'Highness, I think it best if you wouldn't watch...' said Brallin, holding her back at the shoulder. 'This medical business could get a little messy, and you–' Lucy shoved his hand off her and followed the stretcher, ever gripping his limp hand.

'Queen Lucy,' said one dryad, looking at her sympathetically. 'I know how you must feel... He was, after all, your friend–'

'He is my friend.' Voice of cold stone.

'Of course, madam, but it may take a while to heal him. Most of our tonics and healing potions are back at the Cair–'

'Brallin!' yelled Lucy, and the centaur came galloping up. 'Send a messenger back to the castle: they are to bring my personal litter to the battlegrounds.' Brallin frowned but relayed the message to a squirrel, who immediately went scampering East.

'If you could just stand back, Majesty, while we dress his wounds,' suggested one dryad, gently pushing her away from his still body.

'I'll do no such thing,' snapped Lucy, and instead aided the process by placing cool water-cloths on his injuries. The litter arrived soon enough to carry him to the palace, and she would have gone on that with him, too, but the dryads insisted that he be left some air.

So she rode, intensely watching him from below (though she could not see him directly). Each step, she wildly sent her thoughts to him: Hold on. Hold on, just stay here. Don't leave me, not now. Not ever.

Upon arrival at the castle, Queen Susan came all of a flutter out the front doors, crying, 'Oh, Peter, we've victory! Where to begin? Edmund, Lucy's gone missing! No one can seem to... Isn't that her litter? Where is she, then? Oh, Lucy! But... You're in armour! Then who's that in your litter?'

Lucy did not so much as make eye contact with her sister, avidly waiting for him to be drawn from the litter. As he was, Susan's eyes widened, but no attention was to her now. Through the dank castle halls, Lucy never left his side, never ceased her hold upon his hand. He was taken to the nearest empty bedroom and laid on the mattress. At once, flocks of servants entered, carrying flagons of tonic and potion for the faun's healing. With cautious haste, his wounds were dressed and bound, and a special liquid was rubbed onto his mysterious burns which no one knew the source of.

No one, that is, save Lucy.

And she never left him, not through the healing or the binding, not for an instant. Even when all the attendants had left, she stayed further, praying silently. Don't leave me. It wasn't until night had fallen that a lady-in-waiting entered the room quietly, whispering, 'My Lady, shouldn't you be fitted into a something a bit more suitable than armour?'

With much argument, she finally agreed to change into a nightdress and be escorted to bed. The night became restless as she tossed and turned, making a great knot of her sheets – rather an unqueenly thing to do. At last, when she could no longer be chained, Lucy arose from her bed and lit a solitary candle with anxious fingers.

One toe pressed against the cold stone floor, then the rest of her the foot followed. Like this, she crept through the passageways of Cair Paravel down to the smallest bedroom on the ground floor, slipped noiselessly into the lonely bedroom where he lay, barely living.

She knelt beside the bed, looking at his bandaged face void of the laughter that was once there. Timidly, Lucy lifted a frail hand to touch his face. It was warm... In that one hour when she'd left him for her own sleep, she'd only longed to do this one deed, feel his living flesh with hers.

'Tumnus?' she whispered. 'Please. If you can hear me, listen: don't leave me. Do you remember, as we were heading out for battle, what you promised?

'You promised you'd never let go. Tumnus, your grip is slipping.' Her voice faltered on that last word, tears spilling out her fogged, dying eyes.

'I can't – I can't live without you.' She let her face fall heavily into her hands. 'Don't let go. Never let go. Can't you see it? If you... if you die now, I die with you. Oh, I'll live to walk and speak, but I'll never be able to live. Tumnus, if you ever cared, if any of our friendship ever meant anything at all, please don't let go.'

Lucy stood slowly, very gently, laid in the bed next to him. She nestled herself into his shoulder, grasped his arm, let the tears roll down her face onto the pillow.

You promised.

And then, to seal his promise, she lifted a small something from the sleeve of her nightgown and pressed it into his hand. Something small, fabric, and white.

You promised.