‘ELLO, LOVES!
Well, I’m back again, with my first-ever one-shot! (:
-fanfare!-
Wrote this after attending a funeral for the first time last month. Dead depressing. Didn’t even know the man and I was bawling my eyes out. Mm. So, here’s a slight warning…ahee…
I’ve heard from reliable sources that this fic is…rather a bit of a heart-throb, if you know what I mean. It’s depressing. So if you begin to get depressed…it’s normal. It’s what I was aiming for.

I’m horrible, I know.
Enjoy, loves. ^^; Even if it’s not perfection in your eyes, I still want to hear what you think. Just try to keep in mind that I’m only thirteen and can only do so much. :P
LOVE YOU ALL~ (:

P.S. Thanks so much to Tonzura123 for doing an OUTSTANDING job on how she beta-ed this story, and I couldn't have asked for anyone better to help me through this. (: Snugs are being thrown your way in rapid succession.

DISCLAIMER – …whatever. You already know exactly what I’m going to say, so I won’t.
:D

The first time he had ever stepped foot into a church was for a funeral.

The distant, unfamiliar sounds of weeping women and children mixed with the eerie resonance of rolling thunder, the diminished snapping of a broken-hearted flag outside, whispering to the wind her country’s loss, crying for her absent men.
All was lost to his ears as he stared at the tips of his faded, too-large secondhand shoes, desperately trying not to make a sound while the sobs of brokenhearted individuals filled the spaces that Silence had taken for its own.

It was too much.

He could hear his mother somewhere to his right, her anguished moaning reaching his heart and falling heavily upon it, a crushing weight. Tears at the mere internal pain of hearing her cry nearly overtook him, but he mastered the sensation, struggling to keep a blank façade while the moaning grew only louder still. Stealing half a glance to his left, he saw his sisters – Susan, oh, grief-stricken Susan – and Lucy, who was still so young and didn’t fully understand why there were so many sad faces, so many tears. She was merely acting upon emotional impulse, he decided, so her tears weren’t genuine to him, even in the meanest form. His aching, bitter heart was groaning loudly in his chest, forming a lump in his throat and nearly constricting his breathing altogether.

Peter stood off to his right with their mother, his shaking arms around her waist as he tried hard not to cry. The trembling sky lit up in a shock of lightning; an explosion of thunder ensued, warning everyone of the unavoidable event of rain to follow. Quivering tears finally escaped the brilliantly blue eyes that were veiled behind closed lids, and his head fell forwards as he joined the sorrow-ridden congregation in their agony.

“Weak”, the younger spat mentally, cursing his brother for shedding the tears he himself could not, a scowl darkening his features as he leaned back against the hard, cold wood of the pew. His father would tell them to stop crying, to live with it and bear it, because it probably wasn’t getting any better.

A sudden, sharp pain exploded somewhere in the six-year old’s chest region, and he gasped, paling fast as recognition brought him, staggering, to a cold reality.

Except…his father wouldn’t tell them that. Not now, not ever again.

Dead. Died overseas, died fighting for his country, died in ruthless, merciless combat. Hundreds of British men and women, all rotting somewhere in the blood-soaked, churned-up earth, unrecognizable, irretrievable.
And among them was his father.
No matter how much he wanted to, no matter how much the constricting feeling in his throat screamed out to be let loose in a flood of tears, he couldn’t cry. His eyes were completely dry, without a trace of weeping in any form.
The patched, worn black suit that loosely fit his skinny frame could not keep an ounce of heat inside of him anymore. The chill dread of living under one parent, without a father figure, was so stifling that it even seemed to suffocate a part of his heart, mercilessly tearing him apart on the inside.

Still, he could not cry. He couldn’t make a sound.

The blackened, grimy stone in front of him sitting on the altar spelled out two words in monument for the deceased family members and loved ones.

“IN REMEMBERANCE.”

That was it. There had been a short, insignificant little service, the little stone had been placed on the altar, and then the congregation was left to mourn. The cries grew louder with each passing second, and he was nearly smothered beneath them. His head pounded horribly with the roar of the thunder, the dull pressure behind his eyes threatening to make his skull implode, the weight of his heart growing heavier and heavier with each passing second; but he still could not shed a single tear.
All he could do was stare, gaping at the second-rate memorial stone created for the brave soldiers’ death as he gripped the object in his hands tighter than ever.
Before long, he heard the shifting of people leaving the church’s pews, the monotone and sparse conversations attempted, and his arm being gently tugged upon. Blinking stupidly, he looked up and saw his brother, his face red from crying, trying to pull him along with the rest, outside the building. Consenting without really thinking about what he was doing, the six year old allowed himself to be led out of the chapel, his mind reeling, his vision non-focused and incomplete. Bright flashes of white erupting everywhere, everything tinged a sickly gray color – only the crimson of the roses was remotely contrasting; the roses laid on the stone that was representing the graves of hundreds of people who were murdered overseas. His brother let go of his hand, and he stopped moving altogether as he realized where he was;

Right in front of the memorial stone.
His dark eyes rested upon it, and everything became suddenly very still and slow. Everything was melting together – the gray was fading so quickly…

Frigid. His entire being seemed to be frozen, lost somewhere between reality and complete insanity, buried waist-deep in the snow. He was much taller, his stance awkward and gangly as he quite nearly swam through the powdered ice.

Get there. He had to get there. There was no question about it – his mind was fogged, clouded – nothing rational could possibly pass through it. Arms wrapped tightly around himself, his entire form shaking, he threw one foot in front of the other, wading through the endless sea of white. His veins pounded with hatred, seeping into his bloodstream, lost in the sea of emotions screaming to break free. The ghost of his far younger self was left standing alone in the snow, interchanging between the point of view of his older self and who he was in the present, eyes wide.

What was he doing? Where was he going?

Why?
Hated. Hated them. Oh, he hated them so much. His teeth ground together at the mere whispered thought of turning back to them. What did they care if he left, anyway? They would soon learn that they cared. Oh, yes. More than even he knew.

The taste of far-too-sweet candy made him gag heavily before an extreme white light exploded in his mind’s eye, yanking him from one vision to another.

A white-hot pain seared through his veins, his body repetitively thrown against the ice and stone; broken upon it. His shattered wrist screamed out in pain even as he himself did – the eerie, greenish light in the dungeon flooding his vision; shadows flitting across it. He was roughly seized by the collar and thrown against the wall; his head colliding with the mercilessly hard surface – lights popping dazedly in front of his eyes. He could feel a stream of hot liquid dribbling down his neck from his head, warming the solid, resilient ice. Begging for an end to this Hell, he screamed out – a tortured, elongated howl of raw agony, pleading for unconsciousness.
Slam. Slam. Slam. His skull was sure to break open any second – he was being thrown back against it, his head smashing against the ice in repetition, a sickening rhythm. He couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe…

“Your fault…all your fault…” a cool, mocking voice crowed softly, frosting against his ear, resounding against the walls of ice, the walls of his mind, breaking everything apart with it’s firm validity…

His siblings were dead, stone; buried beneath the freshly fallen snow, blanketing the crimson-stained ground, obscuring the vindictive, horrendous murder -
All for revenge. Just a petty decision, a few choice words, and their souls were sold.
It had been so, so easy.
“PETER–!”
Screaming, screaming. His throat was going to be rended in two, but his bleary, unreal state wasn’t taking anything into account other than what he needed to say, what he needed to scream.

“PETER, I’M–“

He was interrupted by his own voice, drawn out in a long, agonized wail as bones snapped, chilling laughter rang out, blood poured in torrents.

“I…–“ his consciousness was fading. Black was obscuring his sight like a veil as he closed his eyes against the sight of a woman, skin whiter than the snow, walking slowly nearer.

Everything became silent and still.

And a voice, speaking words that he would someday so long to hear, so want to obey, came crashing through the silence, shattering it.

“Child…come home.”

All at once, there was the tinkling and cracking of ice being shattered against cold steel, and his eyes widened as a broken rod of ice was being hurtled towards his chest, surely going to run him through – a Lion’s Roar shattered his ears, resounding, growing only steadily louder –

The object in his hands slipped from numb fingers; the crash of splintering glass brought him back to the present.
Gasping for breath, horrified – the six-year old dropped to his knees on the solid, wonderfully real ground, staring at the broken item lying on the cement, dead center between his two hands. His eyes finally slid back into focus, and he saw the broken, fractured remains of a picture.

The broken glass was strewn on the ground, lying over the black and white photograph of a dashing, strong-willed man in his late thirties, holding a gun over his shoulder, complete in uniform. Gasping, the shivering youth continued to stare at it, as if it would magically fix itself back together.

It didn’t. And wouldn’t.

His mind was racing. What had he just seen? Why? What would he be involved in – and where? Who was he in the future? He couldn’t stomach the idea of going through that kind of pain someday – it had been excruciating enough as a ghost from the past. Nothing had seemed real…nothing but the Voice that had called his name. Still remembering it clearly, he reached out a shaking, pale finger to touch one of the larger shards of glass, picking it up to examine it properly. It nearly immediately sliced through his tender, young skin, drawing blood. He stared at his bleeding finger, eyes not diminishing in their size, wavering slightly as they focused on the tiny cut. How could such a small slash cause so much crimson? It trickled down his finger, the only valid thing that kept him grounded in this surreal, dreamlike state.

Reaching over, the scruffy-haired child carefully lifted the remaining bits of the photo off the ground and into his hands.

Staring down at the handsome face of his father, kneeling before the monument to his name, listening to the moaning of the clouds and the sympathetic, whispered conversations of those who walked by him, he made an abrupt assessment. He didn’t care if it caused him ill or not later on, he just knew;

No one would ever replace his father.

The tears of the clouds mixed with the tears of a lost, confused child upon the picture frame that held the single frozen, photographic memory of his father, blood and water mingling together in a despairing sort of harmony.

The last time Edmund Pevensie had ever stepped foot into a church was for a funeral.

“As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another…”

(:
C&C much appreciated, loves. MonkeyMuffins for all who review! I promise my cooking isn’t THAT horrible! D: