12. A character has an injury (or treatment for an injury) that impairs him mentally.

Queen Susan's blue eyes were staring at nothing. They were not even staring at the same thing, for her left eye had rolled to the side. The loose gaze made her face appear like a gruesome caricature of itself.

Edmund shifted in his chair, aching to close her eyes, to give her at least the appearance of rest—but he left them alone.

Unless she was in pain, it was better to leave her alone. She fell asleep faster that way. Peter had taken turns working with her hair, matted and tangled into impregnable knots, carefully avoiding the large bump on her head. Edmund preferred to hold her hand, sitting quietly. He had no skill with those kinds of knots.

The healers had just roused her, sliding long arms around her to pull her to a sitting position, and trying to get her to sit on her own. Susan had tried, but it had only taken ten seconds of her begging, politely, "please let me lay down, please, please, let me lay down" before the healers had given in and lowered her back to the bed. She hadn't moved since.

Sometimes, however, her other hand would reach for something. Edmund would always take it. It might be the only way she could call for help now, the Lady of the Horn, and he wanted someone to always be there to answer.

Evenly spaced sounds—metal hooves on stone—sounded quietly down the hall, and Edmund looked up. He waited till the door soundlessly opened and Oreius ducked underneath it.

"How is the Queen?"

"Unchanged. She slept a little better today." Edmund squeezed her hand.

"Is that good news?"

"The healers do not know. It could be her body healing; or it could be her body begining to give in." Edmund bowed his head. "Is there any word from Archenland?"

"I am sorry, my King. The cordial arrived, but not in time to heal the Queen. They received word of our need, and will send it back on the wings of Narnia's fastest messengers. Queen Lucy follows on horseback."

One Queen we were too late for. Aslan, don't let it be another. Edmund did not say the words out loud. They would not help, not now.

"Edmund?"

"Here. I'm here." Edmund took her other hand in his.

"The skies have ships."

Edmund thought for a moment. "Do you mean stars?"

"They'll empty the space."

Edmund waited—he could make nothing of that—but after she didn't speak, he lifted their joined hands to touch her face. "Susan?" Another moment, and no response. "Susan, wake up. Are you thirsty?"

She still did not respond, and Edmund slowly lowered their hands, and released one.

Oreius waited a moment. "Has she made any more sense?"

"During lunch. She understood Peter was working on her hair." Edmund half-heartedly smiled. "She batted his hands away, and told him to practice on his own hair."

"That is good."

"It was." Edmund had lived on that moment—not only of her making sense, but of her recognising Peter—for the next hour.

The after that, time once again dragged, and took most of his hope with it.

Will the cordial return in time?

"There is other news, my King."

"Speak." Edmund did not look away from Susan's face. Oreius would not mind.

"It was an accident." Edmund did not respond. "A Rabbit heard some of it; her horse startled, and threw her. We followed the crushed branches from where we found her to the top of the hill; he'd been startled by a piece of cloth—perhaps a ruined scarf—flapping in a bramble bush."

"So there's no one to blame." No enemies to fight, no retribution to weigh out—nothing to do but sit. Wait. Be there when she spoke or when she moved.

And pray.

Peter had begun braiding Susan a bracelet, made of the finest silk threads. He told Edmund he offered a prayer for every knot; by now he had over a hundred. He said it helped him focus.

Edmund did not want to let go of her hand. But he understood the need for focus. It was hard to focus on anything but the fear, fed large by her stillness, her confusion—and by the future they didn't know if she would have.

"You can go," he told Orieus quietly. "The healers say she should only have one other person at night; it helps her sleep."

"Then I will go and offer prayers for her recovery."

"Orieus." Edmund struggled to find the words, but there weren't any, any but two simple ones. "Thank you."

Oreius bowed and withdrew.

Edmund went back to looking at her face.

The cordial arrived the next evening, when Peter and Edmund were struggling to get her to eat. They slipped spoonfuls of soup between her lips, often wiping away drops from her mouth, but watching with careful eyes each swallow.

A knocking on the window drew their eyes outside. An Eagle clutched the windowsill, letting himself fall backwards as Peter knocked over his chair and bolted for the window. Throwing it open, Peter stepped back, and the Eagle dived through, landing with a flurry of wind and feathers on the back of a chair. Wasting no words, he held up one claw, a diamond bottle hanging from one toe.

Edmund, a little closer, unwound it with shaking fingers. He fumbled to unscrew the top—how did Lucy keep her fingers steady?—and turned to Susan's bedside. Peter was already there, parting the tangled hair aside and holding it with both hands. Edmund breathed—steadied his hands—and let one drop fall onto the bump. He barely noticed the smell.

He watched. The detached part of his mind wondered if his siblings had watched with the same riveted attention after the Battle of Beruna, because this—nothing in the world mattered as much as this, as watching the bump go down, the bruising turn into a pale scalp, and the scabs heal into unbroken skin. Peter let go of the hair, and Edmund screwed the top back on the bottle, but neither of them looked away.

She shifted first, shoulders moving, and her hands fluttering. Edmund seized one out of habit, and Peter called, softly, "Su?"

"Peter?"

She opened her eyes—she focused them, she saw things, her eyes were her own—and frowned at the pair of them. "I think my hair is a mess."

Edmund started laughing at the same time the tears came, sweet relief crashing over him, and Peter pulled both his siblings into a hug. "Good cousin, your work is gloriously done. Get some rest and food. And spread the word, if you will, that the Queen is healed!"

"Gladly, King Peter!"

"Have someone send word to Lucy!" Edmund called out, but he didn't listen for an answer. It was too good to feel Susan moving underneath him, trying to draw herself a little away from her brothers.

"Send Lucy word of what?"

"That you're better." Edmund reached around his sister's shoulders and squeezed. "That everything is fine."

A/N: I wasn't going to write the part where Susan got the cordial—it feels too much like something that should exist in this world and doesn't—but I guess in some ways Narnia exists to remind us that sometimes miracles do happen that way.