england / september 12, 1946

prompt: "red and brown"

word count: 1,996

xXx

Eustace hadn't meant to catch Lucy crying in the back garden.

He hadn't even realized anyone else was there under the little white awning on the flat stone patio, empty of all plant life save for the tiny patch of short-trimmed grass their Cambridge lot afforded them, and the fiery red ash tree hanging over from the neighbor's side of the fence that always seemed to shed its leaves into their lawn by mid September; a fact which Alberta had nearly gone to the city council over on three separate occasions.

Eustace himself had only come outside to fetch the magnifying glass he'd forgotten yesterday afternoon before the postman arrived unexpectedly with Susan's letter.

"...and I hope you haven't been too terribly cooped up these past few months. I read in Father's paper that it has been a very wet summer there, though we have had sun for weeks on end. Mother says she's very sorry we couldn't make the return trip sooner, but you can expect us by the seventeenth at the latest, as I'm sure the weather will permit. I can't wait to see you both again, and please do give my best regards to our aunt, uncle, and cousin. With love, SP."

Lucy had barely been able to contain her squeals of delight as she read it aloud, and Edmund had leapt up from the patio to catch it from her fingers and read it over for himself, the hunt for ants between cracks in the stone instantaneously forgotten in the wake of such long-awaited news.

But Eustace's spirits had only plummeted like a leaden weight, his smile stiff as wax as the reality he'd put off for so long finally sank in.

That was why, even as he rounded the corner onto the patio and nearly tripped over Lucy's huddled figure—hunched up against the brick wall with her fists balled against her face and her shoulders shaking—he hesitated for a moment in stunned confusion before his wits rushed back to him and he stepped away with a clipped "Oh— sorry."

Lucy sniffed and looked up, her voice thick when she spoke. "No, it's alright." She swallowed, drawing an audibly shaky breath. "You don't have to leave."

It wasn't a very convincing invitation, and Eustace stood rigid as a statue, unsure which way to turn as he met her puffy red eyes and glanced hurriedly down to the cracked stone at his feet. He'd never known what to do around crying girls, owing in large part to the fact that until now it was usually him who'd made them cry.

"Do you… want me to leave?"

Lucy bit her lip and shook her head, red curls bouncing violently against her shoulders as her brows knit against a fresh surge of tears and she brought the back of her hand up to her mouth.

Eustace swallowed.

He couldn't exactly walk away now, no matter how badly his insides itched to bolt.

With a deep breath, he turned and lowered himself awkwardly against the wall beside her, stealing brief glances but always looking quickly away again as she sniffed and rubbed her eyes, attempting to get her tears under control without much luck.

"I thought you would be happy," he muttered when he couldn't handle the silence any longer. "I mean, with your parents coming home and all."

"I am," she choked. "Ah least…" She drew a long, deep breath, and at last controlled herself enough to speak, voice still small and tremulous. "I'll be so glad to see them again, it's been so terribly long, it's just… There's so much I can't tell them." Her lower lip trembled. "And there's so much I want to tell them." A fat tear slipped down her cheek. She brushed it away with the back of her sleeve.

"About Narnia?" he asked quietly.

She nodded.

"You've never told them anything before?"

She shook her head.

Eustace chewed the inside of his lip. Somehow he'd never wondered before whether their parents knew about all their adventures. He couldn't even begin to imagine telling Harold and Alberta about the Dawn Treader, but that was… different.

"So much has happened," murmured Lucy. "It's been such a wonderful summer, and we've spent a whole year together inside of it, and all the others— and Caspian, and—" Her voice nearly squeaked as it rose unnaturally with the last few words, and she swallowed again, wiping her eyes.

Eustace tugged at a loose thread on his trousers, gazing blankly out at the sea of red and brown leaves littering the tiny back garden as a strange stuffiness crept into the back of his throat.

"It's just so different this time." She sniffed, and then almost choked a little laugh. "It used to be the easiest for me out of all of us, settling back into English life. At least that's what Peter said. It never felt wrong to be here, or to be young. But back then I always knew—or, hoped, anyway—that we would be going back one day, even if I didn't know how, or when. Now… now it's…"

"It's different because you're not going back," he supplied softly.

She nodded, eyes glittering with unspilt tears through a tight, tremulous smile. "And I've made so many wonderful friends in Narnia, you know, years and years' worth, and it was always dreadful to leave them behind, but… it used to feel different. It almost felt like they belonged to another life, to… to another me. I don't know if that makes any sense, but with Caspian… he only knew me after all that, he only knew me the way I was. The way I am. Now, I mean. He— he's like a friend from here, you know? He's like— like family, and Mother and Father don't even know he exists, and they can't, because if I ever tried to explain it all they wouldn't even believe— they wouldn't even believe he was real. And— and I'm never going to see him again." She choked down a sob, shoulders shaking with the effort of suppression.

Eustace said nothing. It all came back too clearly; those gleaming, brilliant days on the ship's deck, their ringing laughter, the young King's wide smile, his uncanny knack for understanding whatever nonsense Lucy went jabbering on about when Eustace himself couldn't have hoped to untangle it in a hundred years, the dry looks of pragmatic irritation Edmund would surreptitiously shoot his direction whenever the their wilder counterparts went off down one of their more abstract rabbit trails, the stories they would tell back and forth as if it were a game.

Lucy took a deep breath and sighed, no longer even bothering to mop up the saltwater slipping down her raw cheeks. "I'm sorry."

"What for?"

She pressed her lips together in a pained smile and shook her head. "I'm being silly."

Eustace shrugged half-heartedly. "I don't think so."

"Well, Edmund would say I'm being silly."

"Edmund just doesn't like to see you upset."

Lucy sniffed and looked at him, eyes shining like sapphires, cheeks tinged a vivid shade of pink. She gave a tiny smile, this time gentler, softer, with a hint of mingled gratitude and fondness. "When did you get so perceptive?"

Eustace smirked awkwardly, glancing back down to his hands. "Dragon Island."

He could tell her eyes never left him, but he couldn't quite muster the strength to meet them again, almost uncomfortable under her attentive gaze.

"You learn a lot about people when you can't speak," he muttered with an offhanded shrug.

A long silence passed between them, and a red leaf fluttered down to rest at the edge of the patio, a single spot of color on the dull, cracked stone.

Lucy reached for his hand.

Eustace glanced up in surprise to her round, rosy fingers, hesitating for a moment before tentatively placing his bony digits into her soft, warm grasp.

And for a moment it wasn't just his cousin sitting beside him, but a young queen, cast out of her fairy book and into his dull back garden in Cambridge; the girl who'd always been kindest to him on their adventures, even before he deserved it. Especially before he deserved it.

One of the only two people in this world he could truly call a friend.

"Hey, Stace?" Lucy's voice came out thin and raspy but no longer tremulous, and his heart jumped slightly at the use of the nickname, still new and strange to the ears of someone who'd never had one before.

"Mm?"

"You know we're not leaving forever, right?"

Eustace flushed. Had his melancholy been so obvious after all? He glanced up to his cousin's face and then quickly out to the garden again, out to the world of red and brown already creeping in to the end of summer.

"I know."

Never in the history of the planet had a phrase intended for reassurance sounded less reassuring.

Lucy squeezed his hand tight. "I mean it. There's always next hols, and you could come for Christmas, if you like."

He forced a tiny smile. He would like that. Very much, in fact. But still that suffocating feeling of dread hung over him, like a pit in his stomach, just as it had settled there when Lucy first read the letter aloud. "It's school," he muttered at last, breathing a deep sigh. "The thought of going back in a week's time… it's almost unbearable."

Lucy watched him unwaveringly, the steady attention tingling at the back of his neck as if he were an insect under the curious examination of her magnifying glass.

"And… it's almost worse, you know? Because everything has been so jolly."

Heat tingled around his cheekbones with the effort of the admission, but Lucy only breathed out the faintest echo of a laugh and laid her head on his shoulder. "What a pair we make, huh?"

Eustace swallowed a lump in his throat, the warmth of his cousin's tears soaking in through his sleeve, but he didn't pull away.

A sharp gust of wind sent a flurry of leaves showering down into the yard, each fluttering wildly on its own path before landing among its fallen friends in the sea of red and brown that seemed to blanket the world, aching with the first hints of decay, even as life went on elsewhere, even as America got sun for weeks on end.

"Jolly times always do seem to make the dull times duller," Lucy conceded softly. "But someone once reminded me that even in the deepest loneliness and longing, I would rather feel it all than forget those jolly times ever happened in the first place."

Eustace leaned his head back against the brick wall. "Caspian."

"How did you know?"

He smiled faintly, and shrugged with his free shoulder. "It sounds like something he'd say."

He didn't have to look to see the tears glittering in Lucy's eyes as she suppressed a smile and sniffed. "I wish I could remember exactly how he said it. We were younger, then. He wasn't even King yet."

Eustace tightened his grip on Lucy's delicate fingers, and they both fell silent for a long few minutes before he spoke up again, quietly.

"He was right, I suppose. I'd rather it all happen and hurt than not happen at all."

Lucy looked up at him, the breeze ruffling her blouse against a world of red and brown, rich even against the brilliance of her hair. All red. All aching. The color of longing. The color of decay. But her blue eyes sparkled. "Me too."

Eustace glanced up into the cloudy sky, pierced by spots of fiery red where leaves still clung to their web of branches. "So, you're okay?"

"Yes," said Lucy, and the faintest smile crept into her voice at the question, even still raw from the tears. And even the bittersweetness of it couldn't quite stop him from believing her. "I'm okay."