[fic] Along the Midnight Edge 9/14
Dec. 31st, 2010 09:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
keire_keTitle: Along the Midnight Edge
Rating: 18
Genre: drama, romance
Pairings: Edmund/Caspian
Wordcount: 80k
Warnings: it is rated 18 for potentially disturbing themes
Summary: Narnia ended a mere two hundred years after Caspian’s reign, as though he was the climax of her 2,500 years’ history. He was. There were stories unfolding in Narnia of which none of her rulers were aware, and stories must run their natural course, even though their heroes are dead.
[CHAPTER NINE -- All is Truth]
When Edmund opened his eyes, he was looking at a sky clouded with dust. Where he was, however, what he saw, was nowhere near as pressing as the fact that he couldn’t breathe, for there was a weight across his chest. He clenched his eyes and managed to suck a little air into his lungs, foul though it was. Focus, he told himself. Slowly. Shallow breaths. There was air; he was not wholly buried, he could breathe.
It wasn’t enough. He started counting, inhaling and exhaling rhythmically until the black spots stopped spinning and he dared to open his eyes again, though there was little to find in his field of vision. His eyes worked and he could breathe; now to see about the rest of him.
Slowly, as though he was waking up from a deep sleep, he tried to kick at whatever was holding him down and found he couldn’t move his legs. Panic gripped him and, against common sense, he struggled and immediately regretted it when a wave of nauseating pain swept throughout his body, very nearly dragging him into unconsciousness.
He wasn’t paralysed, that was a comfort, he thought wryly, even as he fought to stay awake. The pain was blinding, but he felt it in his legs, so there was hope, though staying awake was no easy fight, for the dark spots before his eyes grew bigger every time he drew a shuddering breath, but would threaten to drown him when he didn’t. A tough choice to make, so he had to be calm, had to be patient. Shallow breaths, he reminded himself. Slow and shallow.
Sound, previously absent, seeped into the world and Edmund was becoming aware of the noise. There were distant cries and moans, and now and then a clank as though something heavy had fallen from a great height.
Was it a bombing, he wondered, staring at the grey sky. No, it couldn’t be. The war ended before his eighteenth birthday. What, then?
Again he focussed on breathing, in and out, like the beat to a dance. He would dance with it, until the very end, he would follow the steps, in, out, dance unto death, never stop, never fail, never miss a beat. He wouldn’t pass out again. He was in pain, that was fine. He could handle pain and breathing at the same time, but he needed to move, to find out where he was; he needed to be careful as he moved, as injuries were easy to make worse, if he wasn’t.
There was still the matter of the weight pinning him down, but that had to wait. First he needed to know how far he could go, where the dance would take him, where he could go on his own, where he would need saving.
His left hand was asleep -- his lower body was half on it side and the hand was trapped underneath his hips. His right was a bloody mess, he found when he managed to turn his head to look. An open break, with warm blood soaking into the cloth, staining the white bone within. It could be healed, no matter how horrid the edge of the bone looked, how red was the blood. It would heal, Edmund told himself.
Still slowly, so as not to invite the black spots, Edmund turned his head left, trying to see what obstacles lay in the way of him getting his left hand back.
Instead, he found Peter.
The world hushed for a moment and Edmund blacked out. It couldn’t have been long, however, it was more like a long blink, for when he opened his eyes again nothing had changed, nothing whatsoever. Even the cloud of dust overhead only changed its shape around the edges, only enough to convince him this was no dream, no vision, and there was no escape, no way out.
“Pete,” Edmund whispered, and was shocked to hear nothing. “Peter,” he tried again. His lips were parched. He must have inhaled too much dust, he thought, as he felt something scraping in his throat. “Peter!”
But Peter didn’t move.
His upper body was flung across Edmund, and that was worthy of a curse, that was worthy of every curse Edmund knew, in whatever language, for there was a metal rod spearing Peter through, and he must have seen it coming, for all the good it did him.
Unbidden, unhelpful, horrid and hateful came the thought that his own good was not what put Peter in its path, and as soon as the thought arose Edmund knew it for the truth. He saw it plain as day in the twist of Peter’s body -- God almighty, the rod of steel was wider than a palm was long; it must have gone through the spine as easily as a knife goes through butter -- he felt it in the weight of Peter’s head on his chest. Blood matted his fair hair, but the side of his face was mercifully untouched, and he might have looked like he was sleeping, but for the stillness that no living creature could affect.
Edmund screamed until he had no air to scream with and the darkness tugged at the edges of his consciousness. He grasped at it, because everything would be better than this, than Peter’s face, so peaceful in death, even when his body was broken and torn.
His throat gave out long before his lungs did, and the scream died down to a weak, pitiful mewl, which drowned out neither the howls in his chest nor the sounds of the outside world. There were voices in the distance, hurried and organised. Rescue flitted through Edmund’s mind, inconsequential, because there was nothing to rescue, no one to go back for, nothing, nothing, nothing!
But even so they were coming, and they were no stragglers. Their manner, from what he could hear, was that of guards sifting through the battle field to recover what could still be recovered, and they would find and judge him salvageable, because he breathed and he screamed, even when his brother was dead and gone.
Soon enough there were heads in his field of vision, followed by hands, which lifted away his brother’s broken body along with the debris. Edmund closed his eyes and focussed on breathing, if only to beg to be left alone. He wished for nothing else, he needed to be alone, he needed to not see Peter when he closed his eyes, needed to remember his face animated with life, not the lifeless husk that was lying across him, hampering his breathing. He groaned and fought against the hands which took away the weight, the stone and iron, he fought until a doctor got his hands on him and there were needles and blessed unconsciousness.
*****
He woke again to the pale ceiling of a hospital. His vision was curiously flat, but a short investigation revealed that it was a case of bandages applies to the right side of his head, so that they covered his eye, and that the eye underneath was in working order.
“Don’t take those off,” someone said. Edmund turned his head to see a woman in white, a nurse, tending to a middle-aged man in the next bed. She paused when she saw him looking and came over to feel his forehead. “Don’t fiddle with the bandages. They are there for a reason.”
“My eye seems fine.”
“You eye is fine, but the stitches on your temple are still raw.”
Edmund obediently put his hand down and watched the ceiling. “What time is it?” he asked.
“One thirty in the afternoon,” the nurse said, as though the bright golden light coming in through the window wasn’t enough of an indication. “You were brought here yesterday morning.”
“When was yesterday morning?”
She sighed, but gave him the date. “I’ll tell the doctor you are awake.”
Edmund nodded, even though she had already turned to finish what she was doing and then winced when the movement caused his head to spin.
The room was fairly small, with only one bed other than his own and the one the nurse was tending to. The walls were pasty yellow, bright and dirty, and his eye hurt just looking at them. He could barely move, and turning was out of question -- most of his body was encased in plaster. Strange, but he could not remember what had landed him in this position. He and Peter had been going to the station, to give the magic rings to Eustace and Jill, and then… He must have wandered off, because Peter should be in the bed next to his otherwise, and he wasn’t. No matter, he would be here soon enough, he had a terrible habit of dropping in whenever something happened to Edmund.
The doctor arrived soon after Edmund gave up trying to remember the nature of the accident that managed to break most of his bones and damage his head. Edmund disliked the man on sight, unfairly perhaps, but it was so hard to be fair to the bearer of bad news, and that the news was bad he saw coming from the moment the doctor appeared in the doorway. “Mr Pevensie,” he said. “How are you feeling?”
“Hard to say.” Edmund had whiled away the time before this visit trying to wiggle his extremities. He found that while his left hand was badly bruised, he could move it freely. The right was in a heavy-looking cast, suspended on a line, but the fingers twitched if he put his mind to it. Both his legs were in casts as well, which was most disheartening, but the toes were visible and they moved, so Edmund found a cautious optimism in his rather disquieting situation.
“You were lucky,” the doctor said. “Only a handful of people survived the crash.”
Crash! Despite the crushing pain in his chest, Edmund attempted to sit up. The vision of a train coming towards him filled his mind. “My brother and sister, my parents! Sir, my sister was on the train, and my cousin, my brother--” but he could speak no more, because he remembered Peter then, Peter whose dead body had weighed him down on the platform, Peter!
The name must have escaped his mouth, because the doctor laid a hand on his shoulder, no doubt in an effort to calm him down. “I am sorry,” he said with genuine sympathy. Edmund’s estimation of him rose a little. “Your sister -- your other sister, I presume -- is here. We’ll let her see you in a couple of minutes.
“Now,” he continued before Edmund could get his breath back. “I’m pleased to say you have a good chance of recovery. Your right arm was badly broken. We pieced the bone together, and it will be functional, but it is unlikely to return to full dexterity -- the damage to the muscles was considerable. Both your legs are broken, naturally, but there you are in luck -- the right is a clean fracture to the bones of the feet, in about a month you will be able to walk. The left was in worse shape; the fibula cracked under the strain. Nothing to worry about. Far more serious is the trimalleolar fracture, it’s not as neat; you absolutely mustn’t put any weight on it for at least six weeks, but it will heal.
“Head wounds are always worrying, but as you are awake and coherent, I expect you will make a full recovery. Do not try to move too suddenly, mind. There is also the matter of your ribs, but again, you were lucky. Three cracked ribs, severe bruising, but nothing life-threatening.”
Edmund assumed this was all good news, by the amount of times the doctor mentioned luck. It didn’t feel like it, when all he could see was blood matting golden hair. Fortunately, the doctor had only a little time to spare before turning to the next patient. “See, this gentleman here. He has yet to regain consciousness. I was told he was the engineer of the train that crashed.”
The hospital managers, Edmund decided, must have been chosen its professionals for their medical talent, rather than their tact or knowledge of the human soul. Though something within him roared, he took the news in good grace, nodding when the doctor looked at him over his glasses.
Then the doctor disappeared (thankfully) and in his place Susan arrived, dishevelled and pale as death.
“Paleness doesn’t become you, Su,” Edmund said lightly. “Not when you’ve been crying.”
“Oh shut up!” She flung herself into a chair and grasped his hand in a death grip. “Edmund,” she said and started crying anew. Edmund stroked the back of her hand with his thumb as she sobbed into the duvet.
“What happened to Lu and Eustace and the rest?” Edmund asked when her weeping became interspersed with silence.
“They are dead,” Susan said flatly. The last of the tears were dried by a fresh handkerchief and she sat up straight. “I was down at the morgue with Aunt Alberta. Lucy, Eustace and Peter. So are mother and father. I made enquiries. Professor Kirke and his friend, and the girl they were with, they were killed too.”
Their parents’ faces flitted across his mind, but all he could think of was “I knew they were on the train,” he said, and it was so wrong of him to be satisfied that he had known that. Lucy and Eustace and Jill, he thought, and he felt so hollow as he recalled their faces. Peter. Digory and Polly.
“The funerals are in three days and no, you may not go.”
“But,” Edmund started saying, but she interrupted.
“No. I will have enough to worry about, I won’t have time to see to you. You are not well enough.”
“I’m so sorry, Su.” It should have been him to worry about laying their family to rest, not her. He was not so badly hurt he couldn’t at least plan, so that she didn’t need to think about the horror of it. “If I can help, in any way, anything you need me to do, just say.”
She looked at him and for a moment he feared there would be more tears, but no, Susan had a grip on herself again. She was regal and she was stone-faced, much more so than Aunt Alberta and Uncle Harold, who were just now walking through the door.
Edmund was grateful to have the excuse of having been in the worst catastrophe since the war ended, and as such his claim of an aching head and wooziness was treated seriously. Susan wasn’t so lucky, but she bore the weeping aunt with good grace. Edmund extracted from her the promise to visit before the funeral, and then the three of them were ushered out of the room by a nurse.
*****
The following days were, if nothing else, slow and embarrassing. Using the lavatory required far more attention that he was comfortable with and since he couldn’t walk, and carting him anywhere was too much trouble, he was confined to the bed, where a couple of times a day he would be treated to a visit from a nurse, or a doctor or two, who would peek under the bandages on his head and his ribs and tell him it was doing very well.
They tried to tell him over and over how lucky he was, but Edmund thought he should have either died in the crash or been unharmed, because this in-between state he couldn’t stand. He wasn’t doing well. He felt for sure that if he were allowed on his feet he would have run, past the doctors and nurses, past the door and into the street, just to be away from the hospital. Hospitals were full of sickness and death, and people who served both, people who were impenetrable and false, who would smile and lie through their teeth and tell him he was doing fine. When his brother was dead, his little sister and cousin, his friends, how could he be fine?
The stench of antiseptic and medicine made him gag. It crawled down his throat, thick and cloying, digging deep into his tissues, poisoning him when he should be recovering.
He was surprised by how physically painless the ordeal had been so far, though that was a cause for wonder for less than an hour, as the pain started returning and the nurse arrived with morphine. Edmund recalled little for the following couple of hours, then he was woken from a doze by the man in the next bed thrashing about.
He was running a fever by the look of him, and the white wrappings on his chest were turning rapidly red. Fortunately, a nurse was around, so a few moments of struggle ensued and then the man was breathing peacefully once more.
Edmund went back to sleep. His head was aching.
… someone was calling him, in the darkness. There were voices, some laughing, some solemn, but all of them so familiar, his heart ached. There was no light to see by, but there was a hand closed around his own, a smile, a whisper in the darkness, and even though the whisper was “no, never”, that was fine, it was perfect, it was right, and though the night -- was it truly night? -- was so cold, he was warm, he was safe, he was happy…
“Edmund,” someone said, very softly, and he opened his eyes in the lazy afternoon hours of the English autumn. The window was just clean enough to allow the light to shine through, though not so clean it would arrive without half-visible shadows. Either that, or his eye was playing tricks on him.
Susan was at his side, barely visible over a magazine. She was still pale, but her mouth was red as cherries, like the lipstick he remembered she bought two weeks ago, and her short hair was woven into a precarious curl over her forehead.
“Hey. How have you been?” Edmund struggled to sit up and Susan got off her chair to fetch a pillow he could be propped on.
“Glorious. I have been arranging four funerals and assisting with a fifth, so as you can imagine it was a barrel of laughs.” She rolled her eyes, touched the coif. Edmund saw that her hands were shaking. “I think I have it under control.”
Edmund reached out as far as his battered shoulders would allow and stroked her face. “What are we going to do, Su?”
“There will be plenty of time to wonder later,” she said, and her voice was quite cool, though she leaned into the touch. “I contacted the university about your situation. You’ve been granted a leave of absence, until you are fit to resume your studies.”
“Thank you,” Edmund said. It hadn’t even occurred to him. “Could you contact someone else for me, too?”
Her expression softened, and for the first time in a long while Edmund found he and Susan were thinking alike. “If you mean Jane, I have already sent her a telegram. I went through the notebook in your desk,” she added. “I apologise for that. I’d thought you’d have more people to alert.”
“Thank you,” Edmund said again, ignoring the jibe -- because in Susan’s mouth it was a jibe -- completely. If their situations were reversed, he would have gone bankrupt trying to contact everyone Susan would have wanted to know.
“She’ll be coming down for the funeral. She’ll probably visit you then.” Susan squeezed Edmund’s hand and rose from the chair. Her eyes were misty and Edmund held on, because it was wrong, so very wrong, that she should shoulder this alone. “I must go, visiting hours are nearly over and I have errands to run.”
She had brought him a mystery novel, for which he was grateful -- he’d read the paper six times since the morning, and there was only so many photos of the crash he could stand. One would think nothing whatsoever happened in London, and they had to run the same story three days in a row.
“Bye.” His eyes were closing again and he could barely remember a time when staying awake wasn’t a chore.
*****
It was late when he woke up again. He wasn’t sure what was it that woke him, then he attempted to shift and a blinding pain shot up his side. Apparently the morphine had stopped working, just in time to ensure a restless night.
Edmund sighed and tried to make himself comfortable. He failed in that.
The man on the next bed was slowly waking up, if the tossing about was any indication. Edmund watched him with detached interest. He was still hazy from the morphine, from the pain and humiliation that a man restricted to his bed must endure in a hospital, so when his mind told him this man had Lucy’s and Peter’s and Eustace’s blood on his hands, he didn’t question it.
“Noooo,” the man let out at last and his eyes opened.
“Good evening,” Edmund said pleasantly.
There was confusion and surprise on the man’s face. “Who said that?”
“I did.”
“What are you?” the man asked fearfully, looking at the ceiling as though his life depended on it, as if something dreadful would spring on him the moment he turned to face it.
“Edmund Pevensie. I’m told you were operating the train that crashed.”
“Oh God,” the man whimpered. “I crashed the train!”
“Killed a good number of people.” Edmund watched as the blood drained from the man’s face. “My brother and sister among them. My cousin. My parents.”
“It wasn’t my fault!”
“Probably not. I expect a train is mighty difficult to stop, once it gets going.”
“I was stopping! I swear to God!”
“Strange, because I was on the platform, with my brother, and the last thing I remember was not the train stopping.”
The man became paler, then he reddened and paled again. Tears poured down his face and he tried speaking, but any sensible words died in a jumbled, fevered mess. He clawed at the sheets and begged for the Lord, for the angels and saints to testify on his behalf; he begged for anyone to listen, but no one spared him a thought. “I was stopping,” he repeated over and over again, as though saying it enough times would make it true, as if saying it would bring Peter back.
As if saying it would return the life to his eyes, wash the blood from his hair.
Edmund took pity on him eventually and called for a nurse.
*****
Memories were pouring into his head, slow, thick, conjoined and mixed, when the doctor declared that morphine was no longer necessary and he must learn to deal without it. The bandage around his eye had come off and he was able to see properly again, a blessing he would gladly exchange for the use of his legs. Now, instead of glaring at the ceiling with one eye he would do it with two, and the improvement was miniscule.
Narnia floated to the forefront of his mind, the hills and forests and lakes, the creatures that gazed upon him with unblinking eyes, as though wondering if the winter followed him. The hare sprang from the corner of the room to freeze before him into a marble statue of unparalleled beauty, and then break into a hundred pieces.
Edmund startled himself awake. Narnia!
Narnia was dead. He could recall it as clearly as he recalled his name. He had stood at the door, watched the endless progression of creatures through the doorway, watched the sun being extinguished.
Narnia was dead. He was free.
There was something beyond the end, however. He remembered turning away from the darkness and stepping into the sun, into the world which was more real and true that almost anything else. It had been heaven. He had been there, he had walked the green grass and slept underneath the brilliant blue skies. There were no stars in the heavenly sky, he remembered with a jolt. At night there was but darkness, nothing, echoing the hollow in his chest. At night, no one looked to the sky.
He slept for a few hours more, even though the sun appeared and the patients around him begun their morning routines. When he woke his mind was muddled, but for those three thoughts: there had been absolution, there had been heaven and there were no stars.
It made no sense.
“Edmund?”
“Jane,” he said with some surprise. “Oh, I forgot. Susan sent you a wire.”
“She did. I’m so sorry,” Jane said, folding her hands in her lap. “And Peter, too!”
The mere mention of Peter caused Edmund’s throat to constrict. He closed his eyes and just trembled until he felt a gentle hand on his forehead. “Do you want me to get the nurse?”
“No, don’t. Thank you for coming.”
“Like I wasn’t going to, idiot,” she said fondly. Her pretty face brightened with a soft smile and Edmund felt the ache that had always accompanied him through his life. It was a memory, strong and clear among those that faded, a face that looked at him and only him, dearest, most precious memory, and he had lost it, let it drift away.
“Oh God,” he whimpered, as the threads of it escaped his grasp when he almost had it. He could feel its warmth against his fingers when it slipped away, and it was gone.
“Ed,” someone whispered, close to his ear, and though he knew it was Jane and he saw her coral lips move, it was a man’s voice calling his name, a man’s hand in his.
Caspian -- the fond look in his dark eyes whenever their gazes met, the cupid’s bow that crowned the curve of his mouth, the feel of his calloused hands on Edmund’s naked skin, the touch of his lips between Edmund’s ribs, feather-soft among the pricks of his beard, the texture of his hair between Edmund’s fingers…
Edmund sat up so quickly his ribs and head exploded with pain, delighting him with a myriad of colours which flickered before his eyes.
He would have ran out of the room, mindless of the casts and the pain, but there was a gentle pressure on his shoulders, pushing him back onto the bed. “What is wrong with you? Can’t you sit still when you obviously cannot move by yourself?” Jane was glaring at him, but at least her voice was hers again, and not Caspian’s. It didn’t make his heart leap out of his chest.
“I need to,” he started saying, but she shut him up with an elegantly arched eyebrow. He had to smile. “Apologies. I need to stay in bed and recuperate.”
“You’d better.”
Jane stayed until the funeral. Edmund was grateful for the company, even if he spent much of the time trying not to bite through his tongue in an effort to hold in the wail that the mere hint of Caspian threatened to tear out of his lips. He understood, now, what Peter meant when he likened Jane to Caspian, understood and cursed himself as he did. Companionship be damned, he ought to have romanced some brainless creature who would giggle at the drop of a hat and understand nothing whatsoever, because at least then he wouldn’t be hearing the echoes of Caspian’s wit whenever Jane picked up a paper to point to a headline, or see the quirk of his mouth whenever she smirked.
When she kissed him good bye he had to dig his fingernails deep into the flesh of his palm, to quell the ache. He watched her leave and was relieved, though the memories and echoes would not disappear with her. His body hurt, the mending bones and tissue itched so badly that he thought he would scratch the cast and the flesh away, if he could just reach, but none of it came close to the gaping hole in his heart, into which all that he might have once loved about England poured, and it would not fill even a fraction of the space.
His head was swimming more often than not, not only because of the pain, providing him with facts and images and not a single clue as to the timeline into which they fitted. He would have to work it out for himself, he supposed, which was a blessing in disguise, as he had something to while away the long days with nothing but the hospital ceiling to keep him company.
He’d almost had it, too. The shape of the matter. There were still holes in his memory, but even these were filling up quickly, too quickly. Two days after his siblings were put in the cold, English ground Edmund was sitting in his bed, cursing the slow rate at which his bones were mending. He needed to get out of the bed, out of this accursed hospital; he needed to find the door to Narnia, he needed, he wanted!
He had to.
This was not the time for anger, however. Edmund forced himself to count, to recite, to quote, until his mind was lulled into a semblance of peace. Anger helped nothing. He recited the Bible, then the multiplication tables; he even tried to play chess against himself in his head, but the lack of physical pieces was a hindrance, and he would get frustrated three moves in. The elderly man who shared his room had a Bible with him, and, as he spent most of the time in a deep, drugged sleep, Edmund went through it meticulously translating whole passages into Greek, then from Greek into Latin, so that he had something to focus on.
It was obvious that he needed to return, as soon as possible, which was exactly the problem. How long had it been? He couldn’t even hazard a guess -- as far as he knew the progression of time in Narnia deviated from linear whenever it could. It couldn’t even be assumed that Narnian time went fast, because according to Eustace, the week between Tirian’s appearance at the supper table and the train crash had taken all of five minutes in Narnia. Time moved very specifically, as though to ensure the visitors arrived at precisely the right time. Which, he thought dryly, was the case. Narnia called and they had to answer the call.
A loud moan interrupted his translation of a particularly tricky passage (King James had the most peculiar thoughts about Biblical language). Edmund closed the book with a snap and glanced at first the elderly man, who was sound asleep, then at the engineer. He was moaning in his sleep again. If it wasn’t for the drugs, Edmund would have found having to share his room with such noise frustrating. Thankfully modern medicine dealt with it on a nightly basis.
The real trouble started to emerge when the words became more intelligible. Edmund focussed on whatever book he had handy (a few of the nurses brought books with them into the hospital, and so Edmund’s education on the modern romance was considerably broadened), but there arrived a time when the nurses could no longer sedate the man like they ought to and then came the apologies, uttered at no one in particular, broken sobs and prayers offered into the ether.
At long last Edmund closed his book, annoyed at having to stop when the intrigue was just getting juicy, and turned towards the man.
“Speak,” he said simply. “It’s is far from ideal, but I was due to be ordained soon, so at this time you either wait for someone to visit you, or someone who’s been ordained, or you speak to me now. I promise I won’t judge you.”
“Bless you, son,” the man all but whimpered and Edmund listened to the broken confession for an hour. Words circled one another and there was no clear story to be heard, but one of terrible guilt and lack of understanding, on both their parts, as although Edmund knew the train schedule by heart, but the mechanical details were lost on him.
“I could swear to it in court,” the engineer was saying, “that I was braking, I did everything I could, but there was a lion, it told me not to! Oh God, a lion. It was so huge, I swear I only closed my eyes for a minute, and there he was, and I thought what a strange dream and then I saw the print on my console. Dear lord, please forgive me!”
Edmund’s mouth opened and remained open. He felt as though his veins had filled with ice and for a moment he couldn’t move or think, as the words repeated themselves over and over in his mind. A lion told the man not to brake, he thought and something in him broke, threatening to erupt with a scream, a curse, anything. Then control poured rushing in, sweeping down the barriers like the tide sweeps the sandcastles on the shore. Edmund found, for the first time since he came to the hospital that he was acutely aware of every inch of his body; that he was in full command of himself. He could have risen and walked out, regardless of his broken bones.
“The lion spoke to you?” he asked, in a voice that was gentle and full of indulgent surprise, with just enough disbelief to be realistic and tempered with understanding that ensured the man would not grow defensive.
“Lord, our father, who art in heaven, oh Lord, forgive me,” the man muttered and Edmund helped out by reciting the Lord’s prayer, over and over, until the man calmed and muttered alongside him.
“The lion spoke to you?”
“It spoke, or perhaps I imagined it speaking,” the man said. He turned to look at Edmund. “Said not to fear. Said there was a malfunction. Said there was nothing to fear, it had.”
“I understand. It wasn’t your fault,” Edmund said serenely, though inside he was boiling.
The man breathed and whined for a few more minutes, but exhaustion soon set in and he slept, leaving Edmund to his thoughts.
Less than an hour later a nurse wandered by, to see whether they required anything. Edmund gave her a look like that of a frightened child, one he knew his boyish face carried well, and whispered, “Please, that man frightens me. He speaks in gibberish, some nonsense about animals and trains! Often I don’t even understand what he says, but it sounds frightful.”
Her face was a picture of compassion and Edmund was gratified when not even an hour later the engineer was taken away and another patient was wheeled into his place, another elderly gentleman who would spend all day drugged into oblivion.
Edmund lay back and waited for Susan to arrive. Susan must not hear the confession, and that it would have been repeated as the engineer became conscious more often Edmund was certain. So she would be kept unaware, until he knew what was to be done about it. True, she might not think much of it -- she had denied Narnia’s existence for years now; there was no guarantee she would recognise the signs even when they were bloody obvious, but Edmund wasn’t willing to take the chance. A grieving mind was not one prone to logic.
Susan arrived shortly after visiting hours begun with a Heyer novel that Edmund had already read, and a bag of sweets. Her hair smelled of fresh air and cigarette smoke, no doubt one of her boyfriends had taken her for a walk, just before. There was a faint smudge of lipstick on her cheek, too, so perhaps this one was going to last longer than a fortnight.
“Turkish Delight, really?” he asked when he unwrapped the package.
“It used to be your favourite.”
Edmund laughed. “Thank you. Tell me Su, were my things brought to the hospital? I had a bag with a box in it.”
“I’ve got them. I threw the bag away. It was torn, bloodied, and worse.”
Edmund felt his pulse quicken. “You took the box out first, though?”
“What kind of a fool do you think I am? Your papers, the box and the notebook, anything that could be salvaged. I don’t think you would fuss about the handkerchief. It was beyond help.”
“I won’t. You are right.”
“I did look inside the box, to make sure it was fine inside,” Susan said slowly. “I’m sure Jane will wait for you to recover. We have spoken a little. I am certain she never thought of abandoning you.”
It took Edmund a moment to realise how she made the connection. “The rings,” he said at last. She thought he was planning to propose in short order, though how she leapt to that conclusion when there were so many rings in the box, he didn’t understand. Unless she only peeked inside, and didn’t notice the others, which he had taken care to wrap up.
“I’m sure it will be fine,” Susan was saying meanwhile, and Edmund had to laugh. Nothing would be fine.
“No, Su. It is okay. Don’t worry. Do you by any chance know when I will be allowed home?”
“Not for a couple more weeks, at least,” Susan said.
“Am I to stay here the whole time?”
“You can’t go home in the state you’re in now! I can’t carry you upstairs, so you’ll have to stay here until you’re mobile.”
There was logic in that, Edmund supposed. Pity that his heart wouldn’t respond to logic. Then there was the matter of the discussion they absolutely must have, which would be best conducted behind closed doors, where he could stand between Susan and the phone. Convincing her that he must return to Narnia was not going to be easy. Su could run as fast as he, if she left the high heels at home, so he didn’t want to be handicapped in any way that would slow him down.
He needed time. The bruises that coloured most of him (the parts that he could see) were a sickly green, but these were of no concern. He could force his body to obey despite them. The casts were a far more serious matter, for he could push it, but a bone could only take so much before snapping and though he could crawl, when he was going to be up against stars and knights and worse, he would much rather have the full use of his limbs.
He needed time he might not have. What time was it in Narnia, he wondered, when Susan was gone and the pillow underneath his head stubbornly refused to be Caspian, even when the lights went out and the shapes of shadows on the wall could be anything, dragons, houses, boats.
He needed time to figure out where should he go from here. He was relatively sure he was safe in England, and if he was safe, Caspian was untouchable -- stars couldn’t cross between worlds, and the stars of his universe were no danger at all. At least he hoped they weren’t. If they were conscious here, then they might have been capable of triggering explosions that could consume planets, but that seemed excessive. Whatever else they were prepared to do, Lilliandil at least had tried to avoid collateral damage; it was therefore safe to assume that the Earth was safe from cosmic revenge.
What remained? He could stay in England and stall, avoid death for as long as he could, but then what? He would die, eventually, and it would be no trouble at all to go from the other England to the other Narnia, and from there to the dead Narnia. So at most he had some fifty years, following which he would go to the place where most of the population wanted him deader than dead.
He needed time! He balled his fists and glared at the ceiling. Why was this so hard?
“Because I was very nearly killed in a crash caused by Aslan,” he told himself, quietly, but previous experience indicated that short of screaming at top of his lungs he could get away with any volume that wouldn’t alert the nurses. The two elderly men on either side of him slept like the dead.
So, Aslan had caused a train crash in England. He was hardly limited to the shape of a lion, had told them as much, so that he chose this form to appear in England sent a pretty clear message. This was about Narnia. Logically, then, it was about Edmund. Eustace and Jill could have been transported there any other way, while Lucy, Peter, Digory and Polly were too old. Plus, naturally, the entire world-changing mess seemed to hinge on killing Edmund. He wasn’t being conceited by leaping to that conclusion.
“Why” became the most important question then. Why now? He would surely die in another thirty, forty years; why bother to speed up the process?
Unless… unless it was important that he die now. Unless he needed to be in heaven, which still was shaky, as the time was unequal in the two worlds, and even more so in Aslan’s country. But suppose for a moment that it was about time. What else was dependent on time that he knew of?
Lillliandil, who was dying in Aslan’s country. The world which was dead, but worlds apparently had very strong inertia. Words were written before a world was brought to life, so clearly that was the beginning, of sorts, and words were written after its end, so as to conclude it.
So, he had needed to die either before Lilliandil died in heaven, or before the dead world ended and disappeared. Possibly both.
So, Aslan killed his whole family, just to allow for the attack on him and Caspian.
Edmund prayed that there was another explanation, but he could think of none.
Rating: 18
Genre: drama, romance
Pairings: Edmund/Caspian
Wordcount: 80k
Warnings: it is rated 18 for potentially disturbing themes
Summary: Narnia ended a mere two hundred years after Caspian’s reign, as though he was the climax of her 2,500 years’ history. He was. There were stories unfolding in Narnia of which none of her rulers were aware, and stories must run their natural course, even though their heroes are dead.
[CHAPTER NINE -- All is Truth]
When Edmund opened his eyes, he was looking at a sky clouded with dust. Where he was, however, what he saw, was nowhere near as pressing as the fact that he couldn’t breathe, for there was a weight across his chest. He clenched his eyes and managed to suck a little air into his lungs, foul though it was. Focus, he told himself. Slowly. Shallow breaths. There was air; he was not wholly buried, he could breathe.
It wasn’t enough. He started counting, inhaling and exhaling rhythmically until the black spots stopped spinning and he dared to open his eyes again, though there was little to find in his field of vision. His eyes worked and he could breathe; now to see about the rest of him.
Slowly, as though he was waking up from a deep sleep, he tried to kick at whatever was holding him down and found he couldn’t move his legs. Panic gripped him and, against common sense, he struggled and immediately regretted it when a wave of nauseating pain swept throughout his body, very nearly dragging him into unconsciousness.
He wasn’t paralysed, that was a comfort, he thought wryly, even as he fought to stay awake. The pain was blinding, but he felt it in his legs, so there was hope, though staying awake was no easy fight, for the dark spots before his eyes grew bigger every time he drew a shuddering breath, but would threaten to drown him when he didn’t. A tough choice to make, so he had to be calm, had to be patient. Shallow breaths, he reminded himself. Slow and shallow.
Sound, previously absent, seeped into the world and Edmund was becoming aware of the noise. There were distant cries and moans, and now and then a clank as though something heavy had fallen from a great height.
Was it a bombing, he wondered, staring at the grey sky. No, it couldn’t be. The war ended before his eighteenth birthday. What, then?
Again he focussed on breathing, in and out, like the beat to a dance. He would dance with it, until the very end, he would follow the steps, in, out, dance unto death, never stop, never fail, never miss a beat. He wouldn’t pass out again. He was in pain, that was fine. He could handle pain and breathing at the same time, but he needed to move, to find out where he was; he needed to be careful as he moved, as injuries were easy to make worse, if he wasn’t.
There was still the matter of the weight pinning him down, but that had to wait. First he needed to know how far he could go, where the dance would take him, where he could go on his own, where he would need saving.
His left hand was asleep -- his lower body was half on it side and the hand was trapped underneath his hips. His right was a bloody mess, he found when he managed to turn his head to look. An open break, with warm blood soaking into the cloth, staining the white bone within. It could be healed, no matter how horrid the edge of the bone looked, how red was the blood. It would heal, Edmund told himself.
Still slowly, so as not to invite the black spots, Edmund turned his head left, trying to see what obstacles lay in the way of him getting his left hand back.
Instead, he found Peter.
The world hushed for a moment and Edmund blacked out. It couldn’t have been long, however, it was more like a long blink, for when he opened his eyes again nothing had changed, nothing whatsoever. Even the cloud of dust overhead only changed its shape around the edges, only enough to convince him this was no dream, no vision, and there was no escape, no way out.
“Pete,” Edmund whispered, and was shocked to hear nothing. “Peter,” he tried again. His lips were parched. He must have inhaled too much dust, he thought, as he felt something scraping in his throat. “Peter!”
But Peter didn’t move.
His upper body was flung across Edmund, and that was worthy of a curse, that was worthy of every curse Edmund knew, in whatever language, for there was a metal rod spearing Peter through, and he must have seen it coming, for all the good it did him.
Unbidden, unhelpful, horrid and hateful came the thought that his own good was not what put Peter in its path, and as soon as the thought arose Edmund knew it for the truth. He saw it plain as day in the twist of Peter’s body -- God almighty, the rod of steel was wider than a palm was long; it must have gone through the spine as easily as a knife goes through butter -- he felt it in the weight of Peter’s head on his chest. Blood matted his fair hair, but the side of his face was mercifully untouched, and he might have looked like he was sleeping, but for the stillness that no living creature could affect.
Edmund screamed until he had no air to scream with and the darkness tugged at the edges of his consciousness. He grasped at it, because everything would be better than this, than Peter’s face, so peaceful in death, even when his body was broken and torn.
His throat gave out long before his lungs did, and the scream died down to a weak, pitiful mewl, which drowned out neither the howls in his chest nor the sounds of the outside world. There were voices in the distance, hurried and organised. Rescue flitted through Edmund’s mind, inconsequential, because there was nothing to rescue, no one to go back for, nothing, nothing, nothing!
But even so they were coming, and they were no stragglers. Their manner, from what he could hear, was that of guards sifting through the battle field to recover what could still be recovered, and they would find and judge him salvageable, because he breathed and he screamed, even when his brother was dead and gone.
Soon enough there were heads in his field of vision, followed by hands, which lifted away his brother’s broken body along with the debris. Edmund closed his eyes and focussed on breathing, if only to beg to be left alone. He wished for nothing else, he needed to be alone, he needed to not see Peter when he closed his eyes, needed to remember his face animated with life, not the lifeless husk that was lying across him, hampering his breathing. He groaned and fought against the hands which took away the weight, the stone and iron, he fought until a doctor got his hands on him and there were needles and blessed unconsciousness.
*****
He woke again to the pale ceiling of a hospital. His vision was curiously flat, but a short investigation revealed that it was a case of bandages applies to the right side of his head, so that they covered his eye, and that the eye underneath was in working order.
“Don’t take those off,” someone said. Edmund turned his head to see a woman in white, a nurse, tending to a middle-aged man in the next bed. She paused when she saw him looking and came over to feel his forehead. “Don’t fiddle with the bandages. They are there for a reason.”
“My eye seems fine.”
“You eye is fine, but the stitches on your temple are still raw.”
Edmund obediently put his hand down and watched the ceiling. “What time is it?” he asked.
“One thirty in the afternoon,” the nurse said, as though the bright golden light coming in through the window wasn’t enough of an indication. “You were brought here yesterday morning.”
“When was yesterday morning?”
She sighed, but gave him the date. “I’ll tell the doctor you are awake.”
Edmund nodded, even though she had already turned to finish what she was doing and then winced when the movement caused his head to spin.
The room was fairly small, with only one bed other than his own and the one the nurse was tending to. The walls were pasty yellow, bright and dirty, and his eye hurt just looking at them. He could barely move, and turning was out of question -- most of his body was encased in plaster. Strange, but he could not remember what had landed him in this position. He and Peter had been going to the station, to give the magic rings to Eustace and Jill, and then… He must have wandered off, because Peter should be in the bed next to his otherwise, and he wasn’t. No matter, he would be here soon enough, he had a terrible habit of dropping in whenever something happened to Edmund.
The doctor arrived soon after Edmund gave up trying to remember the nature of the accident that managed to break most of his bones and damage his head. Edmund disliked the man on sight, unfairly perhaps, but it was so hard to be fair to the bearer of bad news, and that the news was bad he saw coming from the moment the doctor appeared in the doorway. “Mr Pevensie,” he said. “How are you feeling?”
“Hard to say.” Edmund had whiled away the time before this visit trying to wiggle his extremities. He found that while his left hand was badly bruised, he could move it freely. The right was in a heavy-looking cast, suspended on a line, but the fingers twitched if he put his mind to it. Both his legs were in casts as well, which was most disheartening, but the toes were visible and they moved, so Edmund found a cautious optimism in his rather disquieting situation.
“You were lucky,” the doctor said. “Only a handful of people survived the crash.”
Crash! Despite the crushing pain in his chest, Edmund attempted to sit up. The vision of a train coming towards him filled his mind. “My brother and sister, my parents! Sir, my sister was on the train, and my cousin, my brother--” but he could speak no more, because he remembered Peter then, Peter whose dead body had weighed him down on the platform, Peter!
The name must have escaped his mouth, because the doctor laid a hand on his shoulder, no doubt in an effort to calm him down. “I am sorry,” he said with genuine sympathy. Edmund’s estimation of him rose a little. “Your sister -- your other sister, I presume -- is here. We’ll let her see you in a couple of minutes.
“Now,” he continued before Edmund could get his breath back. “I’m pleased to say you have a good chance of recovery. Your right arm was badly broken. We pieced the bone together, and it will be functional, but it is unlikely to return to full dexterity -- the damage to the muscles was considerable. Both your legs are broken, naturally, but there you are in luck -- the right is a clean fracture to the bones of the feet, in about a month you will be able to walk. The left was in worse shape; the fibula cracked under the strain. Nothing to worry about. Far more serious is the trimalleolar fracture, it’s not as neat; you absolutely mustn’t put any weight on it for at least six weeks, but it will heal.
“Head wounds are always worrying, but as you are awake and coherent, I expect you will make a full recovery. Do not try to move too suddenly, mind. There is also the matter of your ribs, but again, you were lucky. Three cracked ribs, severe bruising, but nothing life-threatening.”
Edmund assumed this was all good news, by the amount of times the doctor mentioned luck. It didn’t feel like it, when all he could see was blood matting golden hair. Fortunately, the doctor had only a little time to spare before turning to the next patient. “See, this gentleman here. He has yet to regain consciousness. I was told he was the engineer of the train that crashed.”
The hospital managers, Edmund decided, must have been chosen its professionals for their medical talent, rather than their tact or knowledge of the human soul. Though something within him roared, he took the news in good grace, nodding when the doctor looked at him over his glasses.
Then the doctor disappeared (thankfully) and in his place Susan arrived, dishevelled and pale as death.
“Paleness doesn’t become you, Su,” Edmund said lightly. “Not when you’ve been crying.”
“Oh shut up!” She flung herself into a chair and grasped his hand in a death grip. “Edmund,” she said and started crying anew. Edmund stroked the back of her hand with his thumb as she sobbed into the duvet.
“What happened to Lu and Eustace and the rest?” Edmund asked when her weeping became interspersed with silence.
“They are dead,” Susan said flatly. The last of the tears were dried by a fresh handkerchief and she sat up straight. “I was down at the morgue with Aunt Alberta. Lucy, Eustace and Peter. So are mother and father. I made enquiries. Professor Kirke and his friend, and the girl they were with, they were killed too.”
Their parents’ faces flitted across his mind, but all he could think of was “I knew they were on the train,” he said, and it was so wrong of him to be satisfied that he had known that. Lucy and Eustace and Jill, he thought, and he felt so hollow as he recalled their faces. Peter. Digory and Polly.
“The funerals are in three days and no, you may not go.”
“But,” Edmund started saying, but she interrupted.
“No. I will have enough to worry about, I won’t have time to see to you. You are not well enough.”
“I’m so sorry, Su.” It should have been him to worry about laying their family to rest, not her. He was not so badly hurt he couldn’t at least plan, so that she didn’t need to think about the horror of it. “If I can help, in any way, anything you need me to do, just say.”
She looked at him and for a moment he feared there would be more tears, but no, Susan had a grip on herself again. She was regal and she was stone-faced, much more so than Aunt Alberta and Uncle Harold, who were just now walking through the door.
Edmund was grateful to have the excuse of having been in the worst catastrophe since the war ended, and as such his claim of an aching head and wooziness was treated seriously. Susan wasn’t so lucky, but she bore the weeping aunt with good grace. Edmund extracted from her the promise to visit before the funeral, and then the three of them were ushered out of the room by a nurse.
*****
The following days were, if nothing else, slow and embarrassing. Using the lavatory required far more attention that he was comfortable with and since he couldn’t walk, and carting him anywhere was too much trouble, he was confined to the bed, where a couple of times a day he would be treated to a visit from a nurse, or a doctor or two, who would peek under the bandages on his head and his ribs and tell him it was doing very well.
They tried to tell him over and over how lucky he was, but Edmund thought he should have either died in the crash or been unharmed, because this in-between state he couldn’t stand. He wasn’t doing well. He felt for sure that if he were allowed on his feet he would have run, past the doctors and nurses, past the door and into the street, just to be away from the hospital. Hospitals were full of sickness and death, and people who served both, people who were impenetrable and false, who would smile and lie through their teeth and tell him he was doing fine. When his brother was dead, his little sister and cousin, his friends, how could he be fine?
The stench of antiseptic and medicine made him gag. It crawled down his throat, thick and cloying, digging deep into his tissues, poisoning him when he should be recovering.
He was surprised by how physically painless the ordeal had been so far, though that was a cause for wonder for less than an hour, as the pain started returning and the nurse arrived with morphine. Edmund recalled little for the following couple of hours, then he was woken from a doze by the man in the next bed thrashing about.
He was running a fever by the look of him, and the white wrappings on his chest were turning rapidly red. Fortunately, a nurse was around, so a few moments of struggle ensued and then the man was breathing peacefully once more.
Edmund went back to sleep. His head was aching.
… someone was calling him, in the darkness. There were voices, some laughing, some solemn, but all of them so familiar, his heart ached. There was no light to see by, but there was a hand closed around his own, a smile, a whisper in the darkness, and even though the whisper was “no, never”, that was fine, it was perfect, it was right, and though the night -- was it truly night? -- was so cold, he was warm, he was safe, he was happy…
“Edmund,” someone said, very softly, and he opened his eyes in the lazy afternoon hours of the English autumn. The window was just clean enough to allow the light to shine through, though not so clean it would arrive without half-visible shadows. Either that, or his eye was playing tricks on him.
Susan was at his side, barely visible over a magazine. She was still pale, but her mouth was red as cherries, like the lipstick he remembered she bought two weeks ago, and her short hair was woven into a precarious curl over her forehead.
“Hey. How have you been?” Edmund struggled to sit up and Susan got off her chair to fetch a pillow he could be propped on.
“Glorious. I have been arranging four funerals and assisting with a fifth, so as you can imagine it was a barrel of laughs.” She rolled her eyes, touched the coif. Edmund saw that her hands were shaking. “I think I have it under control.”
Edmund reached out as far as his battered shoulders would allow and stroked her face. “What are we going to do, Su?”
“There will be plenty of time to wonder later,” she said, and her voice was quite cool, though she leaned into the touch. “I contacted the university about your situation. You’ve been granted a leave of absence, until you are fit to resume your studies.”
“Thank you,” Edmund said. It hadn’t even occurred to him. “Could you contact someone else for me, too?”
Her expression softened, and for the first time in a long while Edmund found he and Susan were thinking alike. “If you mean Jane, I have already sent her a telegram. I went through the notebook in your desk,” she added. “I apologise for that. I’d thought you’d have more people to alert.”
“Thank you,” Edmund said again, ignoring the jibe -- because in Susan’s mouth it was a jibe -- completely. If their situations were reversed, he would have gone bankrupt trying to contact everyone Susan would have wanted to know.
“She’ll be coming down for the funeral. She’ll probably visit you then.” Susan squeezed Edmund’s hand and rose from the chair. Her eyes were misty and Edmund held on, because it was wrong, so very wrong, that she should shoulder this alone. “I must go, visiting hours are nearly over and I have errands to run.”
She had brought him a mystery novel, for which he was grateful -- he’d read the paper six times since the morning, and there was only so many photos of the crash he could stand. One would think nothing whatsoever happened in London, and they had to run the same story three days in a row.
“Bye.” His eyes were closing again and he could barely remember a time when staying awake wasn’t a chore.
*****
It was late when he woke up again. He wasn’t sure what was it that woke him, then he attempted to shift and a blinding pain shot up his side. Apparently the morphine had stopped working, just in time to ensure a restless night.
Edmund sighed and tried to make himself comfortable. He failed in that.
The man on the next bed was slowly waking up, if the tossing about was any indication. Edmund watched him with detached interest. He was still hazy from the morphine, from the pain and humiliation that a man restricted to his bed must endure in a hospital, so when his mind told him this man had Lucy’s and Peter’s and Eustace’s blood on his hands, he didn’t question it.
“Noooo,” the man let out at last and his eyes opened.
“Good evening,” Edmund said pleasantly.
There was confusion and surprise on the man’s face. “Who said that?”
“I did.”
“What are you?” the man asked fearfully, looking at the ceiling as though his life depended on it, as if something dreadful would spring on him the moment he turned to face it.
“Edmund Pevensie. I’m told you were operating the train that crashed.”
“Oh God,” the man whimpered. “I crashed the train!”
“Killed a good number of people.” Edmund watched as the blood drained from the man’s face. “My brother and sister among them. My cousin. My parents.”
“It wasn’t my fault!”
“Probably not. I expect a train is mighty difficult to stop, once it gets going.”
“I was stopping! I swear to God!”
“Strange, because I was on the platform, with my brother, and the last thing I remember was not the train stopping.”
The man became paler, then he reddened and paled again. Tears poured down his face and he tried speaking, but any sensible words died in a jumbled, fevered mess. He clawed at the sheets and begged for the Lord, for the angels and saints to testify on his behalf; he begged for anyone to listen, but no one spared him a thought. “I was stopping,” he repeated over and over again, as though saying it enough times would make it true, as if saying it would bring Peter back.
As if saying it would return the life to his eyes, wash the blood from his hair.
Edmund took pity on him eventually and called for a nurse.
*****
Memories were pouring into his head, slow, thick, conjoined and mixed, when the doctor declared that morphine was no longer necessary and he must learn to deal without it. The bandage around his eye had come off and he was able to see properly again, a blessing he would gladly exchange for the use of his legs. Now, instead of glaring at the ceiling with one eye he would do it with two, and the improvement was miniscule.
Narnia floated to the forefront of his mind, the hills and forests and lakes, the creatures that gazed upon him with unblinking eyes, as though wondering if the winter followed him. The hare sprang from the corner of the room to freeze before him into a marble statue of unparalleled beauty, and then break into a hundred pieces.
Edmund startled himself awake. Narnia!
Narnia was dead. He could recall it as clearly as he recalled his name. He had stood at the door, watched the endless progression of creatures through the doorway, watched the sun being extinguished.
Narnia was dead. He was free.
There was something beyond the end, however. He remembered turning away from the darkness and stepping into the sun, into the world which was more real and true that almost anything else. It had been heaven. He had been there, he had walked the green grass and slept underneath the brilliant blue skies. There were no stars in the heavenly sky, he remembered with a jolt. At night there was but darkness, nothing, echoing the hollow in his chest. At night, no one looked to the sky.
He slept for a few hours more, even though the sun appeared and the patients around him begun their morning routines. When he woke his mind was muddled, but for those three thoughts: there had been absolution, there had been heaven and there were no stars.
It made no sense.
“Edmund?”
“Jane,” he said with some surprise. “Oh, I forgot. Susan sent you a wire.”
“She did. I’m so sorry,” Jane said, folding her hands in her lap. “And Peter, too!”
The mere mention of Peter caused Edmund’s throat to constrict. He closed his eyes and just trembled until he felt a gentle hand on his forehead. “Do you want me to get the nurse?”
“No, don’t. Thank you for coming.”
“Like I wasn’t going to, idiot,” she said fondly. Her pretty face brightened with a soft smile and Edmund felt the ache that had always accompanied him through his life. It was a memory, strong and clear among those that faded, a face that looked at him and only him, dearest, most precious memory, and he had lost it, let it drift away.
“Oh God,” he whimpered, as the threads of it escaped his grasp when he almost had it. He could feel its warmth against his fingers when it slipped away, and it was gone.
“Ed,” someone whispered, close to his ear, and though he knew it was Jane and he saw her coral lips move, it was a man’s voice calling his name, a man’s hand in his.
Caspian -- the fond look in his dark eyes whenever their gazes met, the cupid’s bow that crowned the curve of his mouth, the feel of his calloused hands on Edmund’s naked skin, the touch of his lips between Edmund’s ribs, feather-soft among the pricks of his beard, the texture of his hair between Edmund’s fingers…
Edmund sat up so quickly his ribs and head exploded with pain, delighting him with a myriad of colours which flickered before his eyes.
He would have ran out of the room, mindless of the casts and the pain, but there was a gentle pressure on his shoulders, pushing him back onto the bed. “What is wrong with you? Can’t you sit still when you obviously cannot move by yourself?” Jane was glaring at him, but at least her voice was hers again, and not Caspian’s. It didn’t make his heart leap out of his chest.
“I need to,” he started saying, but she shut him up with an elegantly arched eyebrow. He had to smile. “Apologies. I need to stay in bed and recuperate.”
“You’d better.”
Jane stayed until the funeral. Edmund was grateful for the company, even if he spent much of the time trying not to bite through his tongue in an effort to hold in the wail that the mere hint of Caspian threatened to tear out of his lips. He understood, now, what Peter meant when he likened Jane to Caspian, understood and cursed himself as he did. Companionship be damned, he ought to have romanced some brainless creature who would giggle at the drop of a hat and understand nothing whatsoever, because at least then he wouldn’t be hearing the echoes of Caspian’s wit whenever Jane picked up a paper to point to a headline, or see the quirk of his mouth whenever she smirked.
When she kissed him good bye he had to dig his fingernails deep into the flesh of his palm, to quell the ache. He watched her leave and was relieved, though the memories and echoes would not disappear with her. His body hurt, the mending bones and tissue itched so badly that he thought he would scratch the cast and the flesh away, if he could just reach, but none of it came close to the gaping hole in his heart, into which all that he might have once loved about England poured, and it would not fill even a fraction of the space.
His head was swimming more often than not, not only because of the pain, providing him with facts and images and not a single clue as to the timeline into which they fitted. He would have to work it out for himself, he supposed, which was a blessing in disguise, as he had something to while away the long days with nothing but the hospital ceiling to keep him company.
He’d almost had it, too. The shape of the matter. There were still holes in his memory, but even these were filling up quickly, too quickly. Two days after his siblings were put in the cold, English ground Edmund was sitting in his bed, cursing the slow rate at which his bones were mending. He needed to get out of the bed, out of this accursed hospital; he needed to find the door to Narnia, he needed, he wanted!
He had to.
This was not the time for anger, however. Edmund forced himself to count, to recite, to quote, until his mind was lulled into a semblance of peace. Anger helped nothing. He recited the Bible, then the multiplication tables; he even tried to play chess against himself in his head, but the lack of physical pieces was a hindrance, and he would get frustrated three moves in. The elderly man who shared his room had a Bible with him, and, as he spent most of the time in a deep, drugged sleep, Edmund went through it meticulously translating whole passages into Greek, then from Greek into Latin, so that he had something to focus on.
It was obvious that he needed to return, as soon as possible, which was exactly the problem. How long had it been? He couldn’t even hazard a guess -- as far as he knew the progression of time in Narnia deviated from linear whenever it could. It couldn’t even be assumed that Narnian time went fast, because according to Eustace, the week between Tirian’s appearance at the supper table and the train crash had taken all of five minutes in Narnia. Time moved very specifically, as though to ensure the visitors arrived at precisely the right time. Which, he thought dryly, was the case. Narnia called and they had to answer the call.
A loud moan interrupted his translation of a particularly tricky passage (King James had the most peculiar thoughts about Biblical language). Edmund closed the book with a snap and glanced at first the elderly man, who was sound asleep, then at the engineer. He was moaning in his sleep again. If it wasn’t for the drugs, Edmund would have found having to share his room with such noise frustrating. Thankfully modern medicine dealt with it on a nightly basis.
The real trouble started to emerge when the words became more intelligible. Edmund focussed on whatever book he had handy (a few of the nurses brought books with them into the hospital, and so Edmund’s education on the modern romance was considerably broadened), but there arrived a time when the nurses could no longer sedate the man like they ought to and then came the apologies, uttered at no one in particular, broken sobs and prayers offered into the ether.
At long last Edmund closed his book, annoyed at having to stop when the intrigue was just getting juicy, and turned towards the man.
“Speak,” he said simply. “It’s is far from ideal, but I was due to be ordained soon, so at this time you either wait for someone to visit you, or someone who’s been ordained, or you speak to me now. I promise I won’t judge you.”
“Bless you, son,” the man all but whimpered and Edmund listened to the broken confession for an hour. Words circled one another and there was no clear story to be heard, but one of terrible guilt and lack of understanding, on both their parts, as although Edmund knew the train schedule by heart, but the mechanical details were lost on him.
“I could swear to it in court,” the engineer was saying, “that I was braking, I did everything I could, but there was a lion, it told me not to! Oh God, a lion. It was so huge, I swear I only closed my eyes for a minute, and there he was, and I thought what a strange dream and then I saw the print on my console. Dear lord, please forgive me!”
Edmund’s mouth opened and remained open. He felt as though his veins had filled with ice and for a moment he couldn’t move or think, as the words repeated themselves over and over in his mind. A lion told the man not to brake, he thought and something in him broke, threatening to erupt with a scream, a curse, anything. Then control poured rushing in, sweeping down the barriers like the tide sweeps the sandcastles on the shore. Edmund found, for the first time since he came to the hospital that he was acutely aware of every inch of his body; that he was in full command of himself. He could have risen and walked out, regardless of his broken bones.
“The lion spoke to you?” he asked, in a voice that was gentle and full of indulgent surprise, with just enough disbelief to be realistic and tempered with understanding that ensured the man would not grow defensive.
“Lord, our father, who art in heaven, oh Lord, forgive me,” the man muttered and Edmund helped out by reciting the Lord’s prayer, over and over, until the man calmed and muttered alongside him.
“The lion spoke to you?”
“It spoke, or perhaps I imagined it speaking,” the man said. He turned to look at Edmund. “Said not to fear. Said there was a malfunction. Said there was nothing to fear, it had.”
“I understand. It wasn’t your fault,” Edmund said serenely, though inside he was boiling.
The man breathed and whined for a few more minutes, but exhaustion soon set in and he slept, leaving Edmund to his thoughts.
Less than an hour later a nurse wandered by, to see whether they required anything. Edmund gave her a look like that of a frightened child, one he knew his boyish face carried well, and whispered, “Please, that man frightens me. He speaks in gibberish, some nonsense about animals and trains! Often I don’t even understand what he says, but it sounds frightful.”
Her face was a picture of compassion and Edmund was gratified when not even an hour later the engineer was taken away and another patient was wheeled into his place, another elderly gentleman who would spend all day drugged into oblivion.
Edmund lay back and waited for Susan to arrive. Susan must not hear the confession, and that it would have been repeated as the engineer became conscious more often Edmund was certain. So she would be kept unaware, until he knew what was to be done about it. True, she might not think much of it -- she had denied Narnia’s existence for years now; there was no guarantee she would recognise the signs even when they were bloody obvious, but Edmund wasn’t willing to take the chance. A grieving mind was not one prone to logic.
Susan arrived shortly after visiting hours begun with a Heyer novel that Edmund had already read, and a bag of sweets. Her hair smelled of fresh air and cigarette smoke, no doubt one of her boyfriends had taken her for a walk, just before. There was a faint smudge of lipstick on her cheek, too, so perhaps this one was going to last longer than a fortnight.
“Turkish Delight, really?” he asked when he unwrapped the package.
“It used to be your favourite.”
Edmund laughed. “Thank you. Tell me Su, were my things brought to the hospital? I had a bag with a box in it.”
“I’ve got them. I threw the bag away. It was torn, bloodied, and worse.”
Edmund felt his pulse quicken. “You took the box out first, though?”
“What kind of a fool do you think I am? Your papers, the box and the notebook, anything that could be salvaged. I don’t think you would fuss about the handkerchief. It was beyond help.”
“I won’t. You are right.”
“I did look inside the box, to make sure it was fine inside,” Susan said slowly. “I’m sure Jane will wait for you to recover. We have spoken a little. I am certain she never thought of abandoning you.”
It took Edmund a moment to realise how she made the connection. “The rings,” he said at last. She thought he was planning to propose in short order, though how she leapt to that conclusion when there were so many rings in the box, he didn’t understand. Unless she only peeked inside, and didn’t notice the others, which he had taken care to wrap up.
“I’m sure it will be fine,” Susan was saying meanwhile, and Edmund had to laugh. Nothing would be fine.
“No, Su. It is okay. Don’t worry. Do you by any chance know when I will be allowed home?”
“Not for a couple more weeks, at least,” Susan said.
“Am I to stay here the whole time?”
“You can’t go home in the state you’re in now! I can’t carry you upstairs, so you’ll have to stay here until you’re mobile.”
There was logic in that, Edmund supposed. Pity that his heart wouldn’t respond to logic. Then there was the matter of the discussion they absolutely must have, which would be best conducted behind closed doors, where he could stand between Susan and the phone. Convincing her that he must return to Narnia was not going to be easy. Su could run as fast as he, if she left the high heels at home, so he didn’t want to be handicapped in any way that would slow him down.
He needed time. The bruises that coloured most of him (the parts that he could see) were a sickly green, but these were of no concern. He could force his body to obey despite them. The casts were a far more serious matter, for he could push it, but a bone could only take so much before snapping and though he could crawl, when he was going to be up against stars and knights and worse, he would much rather have the full use of his limbs.
He needed time he might not have. What time was it in Narnia, he wondered, when Susan was gone and the pillow underneath his head stubbornly refused to be Caspian, even when the lights went out and the shapes of shadows on the wall could be anything, dragons, houses, boats.
He needed time to figure out where should he go from here. He was relatively sure he was safe in England, and if he was safe, Caspian was untouchable -- stars couldn’t cross between worlds, and the stars of his universe were no danger at all. At least he hoped they weren’t. If they were conscious here, then they might have been capable of triggering explosions that could consume planets, but that seemed excessive. Whatever else they were prepared to do, Lilliandil at least had tried to avoid collateral damage; it was therefore safe to assume that the Earth was safe from cosmic revenge.
What remained? He could stay in England and stall, avoid death for as long as he could, but then what? He would die, eventually, and it would be no trouble at all to go from the other England to the other Narnia, and from there to the dead Narnia. So at most he had some fifty years, following which he would go to the place where most of the population wanted him deader than dead.
He needed time! He balled his fists and glared at the ceiling. Why was this so hard?
“Because I was very nearly killed in a crash caused by Aslan,” he told himself, quietly, but previous experience indicated that short of screaming at top of his lungs he could get away with any volume that wouldn’t alert the nurses. The two elderly men on either side of him slept like the dead.
So, Aslan had caused a train crash in England. He was hardly limited to the shape of a lion, had told them as much, so that he chose this form to appear in England sent a pretty clear message. This was about Narnia. Logically, then, it was about Edmund. Eustace and Jill could have been transported there any other way, while Lucy, Peter, Digory and Polly were too old. Plus, naturally, the entire world-changing mess seemed to hinge on killing Edmund. He wasn’t being conceited by leaping to that conclusion.
“Why” became the most important question then. Why now? He would surely die in another thirty, forty years; why bother to speed up the process?
Unless… unless it was important that he die now. Unless he needed to be in heaven, which still was shaky, as the time was unequal in the two worlds, and even more so in Aslan’s country. But suppose for a moment that it was about time. What else was dependent on time that he knew of?
Lillliandil, who was dying in Aslan’s country. The world which was dead, but worlds apparently had very strong inertia. Words were written before a world was brought to life, so clearly that was the beginning, of sorts, and words were written after its end, so as to conclude it.
So, he had needed to die either before Lilliandil died in heaven, or before the dead world ended and disappeared. Possibly both.
So, Aslan killed his whole family, just to allow for the attack on him and Caspian.
Edmund prayed that there was another explanation, but he could think of none.
