A/N: Been wanting to write an Edmund fic for a while. This sort of angst-with-a-happy-ending, but heavy on angst.
Apologies if I mixed up any canon details-it's been a while since I read the books.
To the end of his days, he'll wonder if it was the magnetism of her evil that drew him to her, like a fly to a web, or if it was his own small, consuming pettiness that upset some small balance in a strange new world and twined their paths together.
He followed Lucy into the wardrobe.
He didn't have to, but he did it out of spite. Spite breeds ugly things—Edmund would know.
...
He was given the Western Wood, and he loves the inimitable greenness of moss and leaf, the shadowy spaces and the branches raised up and silent on a windless day, as though they are listening.
Edmund loves the Wood, but sometimes he wishes for the Sun that was Susan's.
He wishes for its warmth.
...
He never wakes up screaming, and maybe that's a mercy. But he wakes up alone, the rich silken sheets tangled around him like vines, and his chest feels stiff and chilled, as though icy fingers have been clawing at his ribs.
...
He grows older, stronger. He is a man and a king, and the nightmares fade with time. He walks, arms swinging, unafraid. When winter comes, he is the ambassador to Calormen, where heat rolls out like a carpet across the wide desert, no matter the season.
No one questions such choices of a King.
Except, perhaps, his siblings. Peter asks him, once, when autumn is coming to Cair Paravel—when the leaves are falling like the living panes of stained glass windows.
"Winter is near upon us, brother," he said, looking out towards the sea, but he must have seen Edmund go still. Peter turned to him and asked gravely, "Think you, still, of the witch?"
Edmund had struggled to stand firm under his gaze. You are a king, he told himself, but she was there too, and she was laughing. You are a king, son of Adam. Did I not say it would be so? Is this not my doing?
He cannot speak of this to Peter. He can laugh and hunt and drink with Peter, he loves his brother more than his own life—but Peter's is the sky, clear and open. Edmund's is the forest, dark with secrets, laid bare by winter's chilling touch.
"How many years is it since she was slain?" he had asked, almost airily, and if he clenched the balustrade a little too tightly, if Jadis kept laughing in his ears, Peter did not seem to notice.
...
The white stag leads them to destiny, to a dream within a dream and a rod of iron that is achingly familiar. Branches-branches-coats-wardrobe, they tumble onto the dusty floorboards and Edmund is taken with how small his hands are, how thin the wrists.
"We're back," says Peter, and Edmund feel it all rush away like the sand dragged by undertow—kingship and castles, horses, books, and living trees.
Edmund the Just is just Edmund again.
Edmund is eleven, no time has passed at all, but memories are memories, and the nightmares followed him back.
...
Eleven, twelve, thirteen. It fades, but not as quickly as he wants it to. There are too many nights slumped over the edge of his bed, knees shaking. Vomiting and staying up far, far too late because sleep is worse than exhaustion.
Mum thinks it's because of the bombs.
...
Narnia is a thousand years older when they return. Lucy cries for their friends past, but they all turn their minds to the road ahead. With one grave difference—Edmund follows Lucy out of trust, not out of spite. They wander through the forest he loves, and the sun is warm on their shoulders, if not in his chest.
Winter is long, long ago. He doesn't know why it just won't leave him alone.
...
"To think," Lucy shuddered, "They were trying to bring her back."
Edmund drums his fingers on his knees. A war is coming, and there is much to be done. He busies his every moment, hoping it will help.
Jadis is angry, furious, ice-cold. She was so, so close.
Double the traitor, she hisses, in the dead of night. You betrayed me too.
He leaves his new torch in Narnia.
He doesn't leave her voice, or the chill of her touch.
...
Turkish delight. He can't bear the taste of it, ever again. And it is ages ago, in this land, and some years, in his own, but he doesn't think he can forget the shame of trading his family for candy and a few empty compliments.
I was only a child, he tells himself. It never helps.
...
He's the first one to forgive Eustace. Eustace is grateful, and he shouldn't be.
"You were only an ass," Edmund tells him, while his heart beats heavy. "I was a traitor."
And traitors never forget who they are, even if everyone else does.
You were my traitor, Jadis lilts, between the lapping of the waves at the side of the Dawn Treader. And Edmund's voice catches in his throat, because he wants to tell her he was never hers, but he knows better than to answer her.
They cannot return. The light is going out in Lucy's eyes, and Edmund fights for it. "This isn't the end," he tells her "Come, Lu. You can't give up hoping."
Lucy wraps her arms around his neck. "Oh, Ed. I know. I just—it's so dreadfully hard, to leave it all behind." She brushes her tears away after a moment and tries for a brave smile. "I guess I just have to remember, we'll always carry it with us. Always."
Edmund has to try for a brave smile, too.
...
He has a bad time of it when his first term of university ends, when the stress of exams grinds on him and he's not quite not up to bat again at Christmas, despite the glorious efforts of Mum's roasted goose.
Susan is laughing with Mum and drinking wine, and Lucy has curled up in the study to talk books with their father. Edmund slips out to the edge of the lane, and watches a few stray autos grind by, wheels straining on the ice.
It's snowing.
He's eighteen for the second time, and it hasn't gotten any better. He lights up a cigarette and tries to make out a star or two, but the clouds are thickening.
"Didn't know you'd taken up smoking," Peter says, coming out beside him.
Edmund exhales. The glowing ember at the end of the cigarette peers at him like an angry red eye. "Just here and there," he says. He doesn't know how to tell Peter that he'd rather the burning in his lungs and the bitterness on his tongue than the endless persistence of the cold.
He doesn't want to explain why he stands out under the falling snow anyway. As though it's a challenge, or his eternal punishment.
Peter shuffles his feet. He'll be twenty-two next year. Peter the Magnificent is reaching his prime again, even though his shoulders are not as broad under the greatcoat as they were in Narnia.
Edmund sighs. Nothing is ever the same, except the voices in his head.
His brother is watching him. Edmund clenches his cigarette between his teeth so he can rub his hands together, and then asks, "You staying till New Year's?"
"Of course." Peter shows the edges between his gloved fingers.
"Jolly good."
"You?" Peter queries.
Edmund shrugs, noncommittal. "Maybe." He doesn't say that, for all his homesickness at Oxford, he may have to go away again. It's his worst bout in a while, and he thinks he might be better off alone.
They stand in silence. The streetlamps are burning gold. Somewhere in the distance, a bell chimes. A church bell, deep-toned and solemn. But bells are bells are bells, and Edmund shivers.
Son of Adam, Jadis whispers in his head, and her gaze is on him and in him, if only in his mind.
"You've been jumpy lately." Peter looks worried. "What's gotten into you?"
"Exams. Becoming a barrister, dear brother, will be no easy thing. Can't afford to let anything slip."
He means, can't waste time, or have too much time to think, but he can't say that.
Peter barks out a laugh. He puts a hand on Edmund's shoulder, and it sends the voices away, if only for a moment. "You need a holiday. A real holiday. Stay until New Year's, at least."
Stay, breathes Jadis. Stay. I haven't finished with you yet.
...
The rings are in a paper package in Peter's breast pocket, and the train is whipping around the tracks as though nothing can stop it.
"Once a King of Narnia," Peter says, with a wry but happy smile, and Edmund nods, leaning back against the cushions.
Peter stares out the plate window for a moment, and then says, "It's all so long ago. But there's some things that just—have a way of sticking."
It's true, Edmund thinks. Truer than Peter knows. "I suppose so."
"Growing up twice—how many people d'you think can say that?" Peter's in a nostalgic mood. "Truth is, we were grown up as soon as we stepped through that wardrobe, we just didn't know it yet."
"I was a little blighter," Edmund said. The bitterness in his voice surprises his brother.
"You don't still…"
"There's some things that just have a way of sticking."
"Well…" And Peter pauses, unsure of what to say. He pats his pocket. "We're about to help them out one last time. You've made up for what you did a thousand times over, Ed. Over a thousand years, too, so to speak. You were Edmund the Just! Surely that's enough."
Enough for Peter, Edmund knows. And enough for all the rest. But not enough to keep him warm at night.
He nods, all the same. "For Narnia and for Aslan," he says quietly, and the train takes a sharp turn.
...
It's all very muddled and confused, and then quite stark and clear, as a world ought to be when it's ending. Edmund watches Father Time put out the sun, and thinks that that was Susan's sun, and he clenches his hands, missing the sister whom he knew best.
Further up and further in.
Sorrow can't last here—the world is getting brighter. There is a waterfall that crashes like immortal laughter, and there are birds and beasts who know only freedom. And as they greet old friends and older friends, from all their time beloved by Narnia, Edmund has scarcely a moment to think.
"We're back!" Peter cries out, joyous and proud and happy, and the whole multitude cheers for the High King.
"Oh, Edmund," Lucy says beside him, clasping his hand. "It's just like you said—this was worth hoping for."
Edmund stops, stills, feels as though he should be remembering something. But the last bits of darkness are ebbing away, he does not know what he should remember, and then he does not know to remember it all.
All he hears is his sister, and the blare of trumpets, and all he feels is warmth.