Disclaimer: Still not mine, after all these years.

Edmund Pevensie slowly opens the door. Before him stands the wardrobe, the door a little ajar. Lucy's fingers hold it shut a second, then vanish. Downstairs he hears Susan counting, and runs to the wardrobe.

He means only to scare her, but the temptation is too great and he steps into the wardrobe, closing the door behind him.

Edmund Pevensie slowly opens the door. Before him stretches the vast wideness that is to be his bedroom. His bedroom. Such a lonely phrase for a boy who has shared a room with his older brother – sometimes enemies, sometimes the best of friends – for his entire life. Such a lonely phrase for a boy who has spent the last several days tied up, almost killed, and absolutely without his brother.

He sighs heavily, finally entering the enormous room. Looking around, he mentally notes that it is larger than the chapel in the Professor's house. He has always had an eye for architectural detail, and now, with the prospect of sleeping in this cavernous emptiness, he wishes he did not.

Though Peter's room is just down the hall – it is still about 100 feet. In between lie other rooms, if the number of doors lining the echoing passage are any indication. It feels like miles. He sinks down on the window seat closest to the wall and leans his head against the cool glass.

King Edmund the Just – only now beginning to get used to the utterly foreign title – opens the door. Before him lies a small passageway, leading straight from his room to that of his brother. They had found the passage not long after being installed as permanent inmates of their enormous bedrooms, and for a long time it was the only benefit of having these rooms. Some well-meaning nobles spoke of removing the passage for the High King's safety, but Peter wouldn't hear of it. The traitor was mended, he said. There was no need to fear him any longer.

King Edmund opens the door. Behind him, Peter, Susan, and Lucy press, and he has just enough time to turn to the bright light that suddenly blooms behind it when they tumble, pell-mell, out of the wardrobe and back into childhood, with the Macready and the visitors speaking in hushed tones behind the door.

Edmund Pevensie, sometime King over Cair Paravel, etc., looks through the open door. Before him stretches all of Narnia, a great wasteland. Washed in red by the dying Sun, this land that once held so much promise now faces its doom. A cold chill runs over him, as the shape of a gigantic man rises, reaching out, squeezing the sun. And, one by one, the only constants of every journey he has taken into that beloved land – the Stars – begin to fall. The Leopard, the Ship, the Spearhead – all are gone. Aslan has called them home.

But behind that open door, so full of darkness, lies a land of inexpressible light. As his brother reaches out and pulls the door to, he blinks in the light of an unimaginable paradise. Edmund Pevensie has finally come home.