Title: Dragonfly in Amber
Author: FaithfulPureLight (and her sister)
Disclaimer: I wish. I really do! But alas I do not and I am only borrowing them. (Looks over to her lawyer. "Was that good?" lawyer nods. "Yay! Ok on with the introductions and then the story!" sister cheers in the background. I pull out Edmund and Peter and my sister pulls out Lucy and that witch Susan. "We own u as soon as the documents are done remember that") again just kidding!
Rating: For reasons explained later I am rating this a M for mature
Summary: Lucy starts having nightmares that she can't remember. Soon Edmund and Peter are too. What could be so terrible that our heros would willingly forget a memory of Narnia?
Dedication: My older sister, my cousin (who named this chapter), my twin, my Edmund, Emmy, Cheeky, and my BETA's E and Dear Heart
Chapter 14: The Darkness
I knew that it was going to be my turn soon enough. After Lucy and Ed had both been visited by demons of the past who else would they have turned to to haunt? Susan doesn't remember. I should say refuses to. But I can't dwell on that. It's too painful. Besides, I think Lucy has a plan. She seems to know something that neither Edmund nor I know. I trust that she'll tell us both in her own time, though.
The four of us had been having such a good past few days. I should have seen it. I wish I had.
Mother and Father trusted Susan and me enough to go on vacation for a week or so, and that meant that Su couldn't go to any parties. Strangely enough she was happy to be home with us. It feels like it did before she went off to America. Natural. Close. Family.
The four of us hadn't been alone together all that long, a few days at most perhaps but it felt like it did when we lived in Cair Paravel, with all of us running the house without parents looking over our shoulders. I caught Su teasing Ed and Lu again the way she used too...and that look in her eyes. She was more Queen Susan the Gentle then I've seen it in a long time. She had come back, if only for the moment.
I let my guard down as I should not. I allowed the nightmarish thing that hunts us by night a way past my barriers. It seeped in slowly, trying not to draw the attention that it warranted. Perhaps if I hadn't been so relaxed...but no. Something tells me that this would have happened even if I had been paying attention. After all, how could I stop this?
Now I sit here in the early morning, still dark enough to be only an hour or two past midnight, my mind wanders down paths it shouldn't . Down paths that I don't want it to go.
Everywhere around me is completely and utterly dark. I can't see a space in front of me, I wouldn't even be able to see my hand in front of my face if I tried. Only the bone-chilling, penetrating darkness. It's enough to send shivers down my spine.
A scream shatters the silence, but not the dark. It comes from all around me, impossible to pinpoint. In the corner, a sliver of a shadow catches my eye, and I spin around. Nothing is there. Nothing at all.
A flash of icy blue, a gasp, and I am left in the dark once again. Another screams rips through the air, one I would know anywhere. Susan appears, obviously hurt, clutching her shoulder, only to disappear again. Lucy, too, shimmers into being, something that looks awfully like blood leaking down her blue silk dress. Leaking is an understatement. One side of the dress is completely covered in the red. My heart convulses. Then she too, fades away.
I already know Edmund won't show up. The blue light was only too familiar. I'm not sure if I prefer the infinite darkness or the blue light that cast it out.
Even now, though it's been an hour or so since I have woke panting, with a nameless fear gripping at my heart, I still want to scream. It's a good thing that Edmund was sleeping soundly enough that he was in his own room tonight. He would have never slept through that. And I would have had to tell him everything. He doesn't need any more fodder for his nightmares.
"Peter?"
Susan stands, silhouetted in the doorway. She steps uncertainly into the room, coming to sit beside me on the bed. I struggle to pull myself together. None of my siblings need to see me like this.
"I'm fine Susan." She levels a glare at me that said she clearly does not believe that.
"Really Su, Go back to bed."
Susan is not going to listen it seems. She settles herself on the bed with me, wrapping her arms around my shoulders. I don't have the strength to fight her, even if it is awkward for her to be comforting me. Usually I'm the one who comforts them.
"It's all right Peter. I promise we'll get through this together."
Her reassurances carry down the hall, pulling in Edmund and Lucy. Neither say a word, simply drawing solace in the peace that now fills my room. Susan and I move over, allowing our younger siblings to pile into the bed. The four of us fall asleep in the same room for the first time since Susan came back from America, and something feels like it finally has been fixed.