𝐑𝐄𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐈𝐒𝐂𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄 ━ edmund pevensie¹

Three

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𝕬 𝖒𝖔𝖒𝖊𝖓𝖙 𝖑𝖆𝖘𝖙𝖘 𝖆𝖑𝖑 𝖔𝖋 𝖆
𝖘𝖊𝖈𝖔𝖓𝖉, 𝖇𝖚𝖙 𝖆 𝖒𝖊𝖒𝖔𝖗𝖞
𝖑𝖎𝖛𝖊𝖘 𝖔𝖓 𝖋𝖔𝖗𝖊𝖛𝖊𝖗

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━━━━━━━１９４０ 

EDMUND WAS miserable.

It had only been a week since they'd come back from Narnia but to him, it seemed like an eternity had passed. Every day that went by he felt nothing. His emotions seemed to be muted and far away and yet the abyss of emptiness was inescapable. 

His siblings gave him concerned, pitying looks that he hated but the expressions forced him to do something, so he ate and drank even though he didn't feel like it, even though food tasted like cardboard and water metallic. He spent most of his time in front of paper, a pen clutched in his hand as he wrote a letter a day to his missing soulmate. Edmund told her about everything that had happened since she'd been gone, from their stay at the Professor's to how he felt without her (because he highly doubted she'd ever receive them.)

The one thing he could not force, though, was sleep. It evaded him every night as the darkness that cloaked his shared room and taunted him mockingly. Every time he closed his eyes, hers were looking back at him, the brilliant blue (as blue as the Narnian sky) watched him from across a vast hall. When he tried to run towards her it only seemed to stretch and grow in size to prevent him from ever approaching her.

After the first few nights of this, he gave up the bed and went upstairs to the wardrobe— the only connection he had left to his soulmate. He lay the coats on the floor and folded himself in the small, dusty space to wait away the night. His pointer finger traced over the name embedded in his skin as he tried to recall every detail of her face and the memories they'd shared.

(Except, by the fourth day, Edmund wasn't certain if he could accurately remember the sound of her voice.)

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Eventually, school started back up again.

Before Narnia, Edmund had run with a rather rowdy and misbehaving crowd of boys that had seemed to understand him. He'd seen the error in his ways, of course, and dropped them immediately. They didn't understand why he suddenly stopped hanging out with them but after several attempts to include him, they gave up. He then spent his lunch sitting alone as he wrote yet another letter.

Surprisingly, it was Peter— golden boy Peter— who took his place. His brother started fights almost daily though he could rarely finish them; it was often Edmund's job to make sure he didn't have just two sisters. He didn't really mind, though (even though Peter never thanked him.) It was cathartic to repeatedly punch someone in the face as he took out his anger and frustration on them. If he'd been his old self, he'd certainly have started just as many fights as his brother did.

Instead, he tried to immerse himself in schoolwork (though that didn't take away the constant pain he felt.) Before what he called "the change," he'd rarely spoken in class unless it was to disrupt it, often causing his professor to sigh and write him a demerit. Now he paid attention to the lecture and took notes, surprising his teacher when he turned in work on time and accurately.

On the first day of school their instructor— male, as it always was— stood in front of the class and stared them down with a stern, no-nonsense expression as he announced, "to begin the school year, we will be completing a group project," groans of complaint met his words but he silenced them with a glare, "your job is to chose a decade and do research on it, to be presented orally. The criteria is in the rubric that is being handed out. Your—" he paused when he saw a hand in the air, "yes, Mr.—?"