Silver Linings

POV: Martin

Narnian Christmases are exciting for a great many reasons, not the least of them being that the holiday always turns into a weeks-long affair. The majority, if not the entirety, of the month of Yule is spent visiting relations, gift-giving, feasting and generally making-merry. The accepted list of Yule activities did not include contracting pneumonia and hypothermia, but I had always been something of a rule-breaker. Now, one week after the incident which brought my illnesses about, I lay in my bed and thanked the Lion I hadn't lost any extremities into the bargain. Sipping mulled wine, I looked down to the foot of the bed, where Moira the Kerry Beagle and her sleeping pups nestled against my feet. After I rescued them last Christmas, the Dogs had attached themselves to me with the sort of loyalty that is so common to their admirable species. Feeling a sneeze coming on, I sighed and grabbed my handkerchief.

"A-choo! Achoo! Atishoo!"

Lucy, who had fallen asleep in a chair next to my bed, startled awake.

"What? Martin, are you alright?"

I scowled.

"The first illness of my adult life has laid me low at Christmas time. Of course I'm not alright!"

Lucy looked at me sternly as she stood and stretched her limbs.

"You make rather a poor patient."

"I'm never sick, Lucy."

Her expression softened just a touch.

"You wouldn't be sick now if you hadn't decided to play the hero!"

"Nothing heroic in it," I replied, sipping more wine and trying not to cough. "I merely did my duty."

All pretense at anger vanished from her face.

"So you say. And I can't be angry with you for it, especially since you saved my life."

"I always knew I disliked ice-skating."

She laughed and scratched behind Moira's ears.

"I think the flash snowstorm had more to do with it than the ice-skating."

"You wouldn't have fallen in if we hadn't been skating."

"And I wouldn't have wound up on that thin ice if the storm hadn't blinded me."

She walked to the head of the bed, leaned over, and kissed my forehead.

"Thank you, Martin."

"You don't have to keep thanking me, you know."

"Oh, but I think I do," she said as she clasped my hand. "You went above and beyond the call of duty."

The clear blue eyes I had come to know well gazed softly into mine, radiating genuine gratitude and affection.

"Far be it from me to disagree with a lady."

She smirked.

"Since when?"

I chuckled, which turned into a coughing fit. I took another sip from my goblet and leaned back into the pillows.

"Would you like me to read you a story?"

"I'd like you to go to bed. You haven't really slept in days. You heard the healers. I'm well out of danger now, so long as I keep warm and dry."

"And are nursed properly."

"Properly doesn't necessarily mean by you every hour of every day."

She harrumphed and returned to her chair.

"I'm reading you a story, and that's that!"

I felt movement at my feet. One of the pups must have been rolling about in his sleep. From the sound of her soft snoring, Moira indicated that she had finally nodded off.

"Only so long as you whisper."

"I am whispering," Lucy replied as she thumbed through the table of contents of a collection of fairy tales which had been written by Queen Helen herself, though in the introduction she attributed these "Celtic Tales" to someone by the name of Joseph Jacobs. Since arguing would be of no use, I lay back and closed my eyes. In her gentlest and clearest reading voice, Lucy began:

"It happened in the old days at Rome that a slave named Androcles escaped from his master and fled into the forest..."

The wine and the sweet, soft rhythm of her voice soon saw me off to sleep. I woke part way some while later, and Lucy was still reading:

"...and they were married on the spot. Then the son of the king of Tisean was thrown into prison, and the next day they put down a great fire, and the deceiver was burned to ashes. The wedding lasted nine days, and the last day was better than the first."

At that I drifted off again and did not wake 'til morn.

Five days later, one week before Christmas, I was bent over my desk catching up on a fortnight's worth of missed paperwork when a page poked his head in the door, much to the chagrin of the clerk .

"My apologies for interrupting your work, Sir Martin-"

"Not at all," I said, rising joyfully from my chair. "I need the interruption!"

The clerk scowled, but the the page merely gave me a confused look and a raised eyebrow before continuing.

"Queen Lucy requests your presence in the stables. She says she has a surprise for you."

I dashed out of my room as quick as my feet could carry me, despite the clerk's protests.

The Valiant Queen stood holding the reins of two beautiful dappled grey mares.

Lucy gestured to her left, "this is Lady Jane." She then passed me the other horse's reins with her right hand. "That is Lady Grey."

"These are thoroughbreds."

"Yes," she giggled.

"Are they the surprise the page told me about?"

"Yes!" she exclaimed, smile beaming across her face.

"They must have been extremely costly. I can't accept!"

"You can and you will," she said firmly as one of the stable hands helped her mount Lady Jane. "It would be a great insult for you to refuse a Christmas present from a Queen of Narnia!"

She spurred the mare and galloped away, giggling and shouting to me:

"Catch me if you can!"

About an hour later, after a rousing race, the Queen and I were walking through a grove of fir trees, leading the horses behind us. Snow blanketed the ground, but it wasn't dangerously deep.

"It was such a pleasure beating you, Sir Knight."

"You didn't beat me. I caught you."

"But you didn't arrive ahead of me, Martin."

"How was I supposed to know where we were going? I was following you!"

"Perhaps you should have learned how to read my mind by now."

I glared and she giggled.

"I'm glad to see you're back to your usual stubbornness and obstinacy. You're well and truly recovered!"

"We spent almost two weeks together in joy and peace without any interruptions. No plots, no kidnappings, no suitors nipping at your heels. If I had known that was all it took to be able to spend time with you and capture your undivided attention, I'd have caught pneumonia a lot sooner."

She grew serious again.

"You will accept them, won't you?"

"If you insist. Though by their quality, I wouldn't be surprised to learn they cost half the treasury."

"Not even close. I have friends far and wide. Having connections is one of the perks of being Queen of Narnia. And excellent prices happen to be one of the perks of having connections. That said, I would insist on your accepting them even if they had cost half the treasury. Magnificent as they are, they don't come even close to the Christmas present you gave me."

As sometimes happened when conversing with the Valiant Queen, I found myself utterly confused. And as often happened when conversing with the Valiant Queen, she could read my confusion clearly on my face.

"You saved my life, Martin. I owed you some kind of thanks. After all that, there had to be a silver lining."

We stopped, finding ourselves standing in front of an enormous fir which the locals had decorated with ribbons and home-made ornaments. We tied the horses' reins to a nearby limb and examined the gaily adorned tree. A few errant snowflakes drifted down from the sky; Lucy flinched when one landed on the end of her nose. I took her hands in mine and looked into her eyes.

"Lucy, you are my silver lining."

She blushed redder than the bows on the tree and opened her mouth as if to speak, but before she could get the words out, King Edmund and Philip came cantering up, followed by a train of jabbering Dogs. Philip pulled up and the Dogs began circling and rolling and sniffing the ground nearby. Upon closer inspection, I realized one of them was Moira. Edmund cocked an eyebrow as his gaze drifted from me to his younger sister.

"Are we interrupting something?"

Lucy glanced down to her hands, which were still clasped in mine, then back to her brother. Looking him dead in the eye she said:

"I was just thanking Martin for saving my life and explaining that his Christmas present is also a thank-you for saving my life."

The Just King smirked cheekily.

"I should have thought your playing nursemaid for a week-and-a-half was thanks enough."

Without missing a beat, Lucy replied:

"Oh, really? Well, I disagree. In fact, I think proper thanks looks something like this!"

No sooner had the words left her mouth than she threw her arms around my neck and kissed me square on the lips. Initially I pulled backward in surprise, but after a moment I returned the kiss, closing my eyes as I did so. After what must have been ten or fifteen seconds (although it felt much longer), Philip coughed. Lucy drew back. Opening my eyes, I saw her straightening her dress and her hair. I glanced over at Edmund, whose mouth hung open in shock. Lucy, a sassy, almost coquettish look on her face, tossed her hair, picked up Lady Jane's reins, marched over to the horse, and swung herself into the saddle. She then stuck her tongue out at Edmund, wheeled, and galloped back toward the Cair. The Just King blinked slowly as if in a daze. Moira, the only one of the Dogs who seemed to have noticed what just transpired, made her way over to me.

"Is everything alright, Sir Martin?"

"I think so, Moira," I said as I retrieved Lady Grey's reins.

"King Edmund seems stunned."

"He'll come out of it eventually," I said as I mounted the mare. I tossed a glance at the King, who slowly turned his head to face me.

"She likes you," he said.

"I gathered," I replied.

"All the suitors, she's never paid them the time of day. You're the first man she's ever shown interest in."

"I gathered that, too."

"How much of that was just to spite me, do you think?"

"I honestly can't say."

"You can't?"

"Won't. Serves you right for being nosy!"

Philip whinnied. Edmund snickered, then guffawed.

"She's rubbing off on you, Martin!"

I laughed.

"There are worse fates than being like your venerable sister in tone and temperament."

Moira padded over next to Lady Grey and looked up at me.

"Is everything alright, Sir Martin?"

"Yes indeed, Moira. I've never been better in my life."

Around nine o'clock that night, I answered a soft knock on my door. The Queen Valiant stood before me, lantern in hand. Still dressed, I stepped out into the hallway and closed the door behind me.

"I didn't do it just to spite Edmund, you know."

The cheetah guard who had followed Lucy at a respectful distance flicked her tail and pretended to look in the other direction.

"Didn't you?"

Lucy's nostrils flared in frustration.

"Of course not!"

I grinned. She slapped my arm.

"You really are awful!"

I leaned in closer to her.

"Admittedly so."

She tilted her head and moved forward until her lips were less than an inch from mine.

"You don't deserve another kiss."

I smiled.

"No, of course not."

She kissed me anyway.

A/N: This is hideously late, but it was intended to be my Christmas story for 2018. Better late than never, eh? Moira and her pups come from my another my little tales, All I Want for Christmas. And, to answer the question I'm sure you're all about to bring up: Yes, "Androcles and the Lion" is technically a part of Joseph Jacobs's Europa's Fairy Tales, not his Celtic Fairy Tales, but my head-canon is that Helen got her book titles mixed up and mis-remembered things. Brownie points if you can remember which Pevensie sibling referenced "Androcles and the Lion" in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader! Double Brownie points if you can name the other tale which Martin hears Lucy reading to him!

I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

P.S.: I have not abandoned Knight of the Vial. There have been some deaths in my family recently and that has taken up the majority of my time. I will work to complete it as soon as I can, and start on the other re-writes/edits once KOV is complete.

P.P.S.: Chronologically, this story occurs after All I Want for Christmas, which occurs between the events of Nightslayer and Time Well Spent.

Lion keep you all,

-Jake/AoR