sometimes you wake up

It's exactly like every other morning, as Lucy opens her eyes and grimaces to find some of her hair in her mouth.

(That part, actually, doesn't happen every morning. Only the ones that she doesn't bother to pull her hair back before sleeping.)

It's exactly like every other morning, as she shifts and props herself up on one elbow, looking down at Caspian.

(Well. Some mornings he wakes up first.)

His face looks exactly the same, and when his eyes are closed he looks so very young that it's ridiculous, in a way. She doesn't laugh, for all that, just reaches out and lightly--lighter than she thought she could, because she doesn't want him to wake up right now, more than anything she doesn't want that--touches him. And he feels exactly the same, under her fingertips, when she touches him, his hair and shoulder and arm and back, and when Lucy leans over to kiss his forehead, it's exactly like every other morning she's woken up in this bed.

(Except for the morning when he kisses her awake. Or she tickles him awake. Or...you get the idea.)

Lucy can move as silently as she chooses to, in many ways, and she's careful to walk now, as she gets out of bed, as if she's in the woods, walk the way the dryads taught her, because she still doesn't want him awake. Because right now, it's exactly like every other morning, as she walks into the bathroom and turns the water on.

(Well, some mornings he bathes first, and sometimes it's not a matter of first, and sometimes--the point's been made, possibly.)

When she finishes dressing (clothes Susan would approve of, that she barely wears these days, smart and green with darker green trim, and makeup she's used possibly three times in the past year on her face, because some things if you do them you need to look proper for) she stands there, for a moment, and then sits slowly on the bed next to him and pushes his hair back to see his face, briefly.

She can't not notice the fact that his skin is just barely cooler, if she thinks about it, than her own, or how loud her pulse seems now in her head, or how aware of every breath she seems to be. Those things are true, and she can't make them not true (yet).

But she presses her lips, gently, to the top of his head anyway and whispers, "I love you. So very, very much," against it.

And despite the fact that most days the details vary, and despite the fact that a very large one is different now, and despite the fact that she knows on one level that "fixing it" is a euphemism for something more unpleasant, if she thinks about it, and despite the fact that she knows damned well that whatever she told Caspian that her mind was made up the minute he said she wouldn't be there and she decided that she damn well would be--despite that--it's exactly like every other day.

sometimes the fall kills you

one-two-three-four-five

The average human heartrate is 72 beats per minute. Ten litres of blood per minute.

one-two-three-four-five

It's not easy. It's simple, because Lucy knows what she wants. Knows exactly what she wants, and Caspian said no, originally, and wanted to be fair, and how could he ask her to stay (he never asked her to stay, then, and sometimes she thinks she rather wishes he had, even if she hadn't been able to, but she's allowed to be selfish for a moment or two, she also thinks) and it's fine and well and good, but.

It's her choice.

It's her choice, and Lucy knows what she wants. Has always known what she wants, very clearly. And sometimes she hasn't had a choice and felt it unfair.

She does this time.

The average human heartrate is 72 beats per minute, and Lucy can feel every one of them, and she knows what she wants. And she won't say, if asked, that she doesn't want a family, doesn't want a life, doesn't want those things Caspian thought of. Because she does. Oh, she does, and she knows it and part of her hurts for it.

And she knows what she wants more than that.

Lucy wants to live, and wants to tell Adam no, and wants to go out and go to school and be a nurse and get married and have children and grow old and grey and die. Saying she doesn't want it is a lie.

But she wants it with Caspian. She wants Caspian.

He didn't ask her to stay, then, and she knows that she couldn't have kept any promise to stay in Narnia (or could she have? What ifs hurt more than reality), and Lucy also knows that she's promised against his neck and mouth to never leave, and this time he asked. And she can keep that promise. And she wants to.

Lucy has always known what she wants.

The average human heartrate is 72 beats per minute, and Lucy's heart beats one-two-three-four-five-seventy-two times, as she smiles at Adam.

And then it doesn't.

Not a bit of pain, not a bit of anything, and it's as easy as taking in another breath that she doesn't really need.
It's bigger on the inside than the outside. It can hold the whole world.
And there's nothing different, really, at all, and she feels the same as she walks back to her room and curls up in bed.

And then she's very, very tired.

And it's nearly fourteen hours she sleeps, and she wakes again, and goes about her business and her day, and sleeps again.
But she's still tired.
And sometimes she dreams.

(no subject)

Lucy feels quiet.

She didn't know she could feel quiet, but she is, as she sits under a tree and picks at her skirt, pull threads and lint away.

She's made her choice, whether she told Caspian she'd wait or not, but in the meantime--

She's alive.

And she still doesn't know what she thinks about that.