ANOTHER WHOLE LIFETIME

TITLE/S: Another Whole Lifetime

PAIRING/S: Lucy/Tumnus

RATING/S: PG

WARNING/S: Angst; the barest hint of interspecies; het, but NO SEX; and it’s a DRABBLE (100w)

NOTE/S:

1. This is my first het pairing! Am I going soft? At least this is queer in terms of the human/faun thing. There are so many ways to run with this pairing (anyone for a stranger-danger fic about the characters’ first meeting?), but this fic assumes that GrownUpNarnia!Lucy and Tumnus eventually “admit their true feelings” (loving the euphemisms). And when the siblings return to England… Imagine how Lucy feels, torn away from the person she loves and had stood beside for most of her life, and thrust back into the body of a child. Imagine the realisation that her partner will grow old and die while she does not, imagine the knowledge that she can never go back and say goodbye. Imagine not even being able to remember it clearly.

2. Although I have read the books, I am basing this fic purely on the 2005 film of LWW, imagining that the end of the film is the end of the story. If you haven’t read the books, do so! Also, I'm not entirely sure i have the quotes right, so feel free to correct me, and i'll re-vamp the drabble

3. The title comes from a song (sung) by Joan Baez, “Love Song to a Stranger.” It is a gorgeous piece, and I hope I’m not insulting her by quoting it. The lyric runs: “If love means forever, expecting nothing returned, then I hope I’ll be given another whole lifetime to learn,” and listening to it again, I think the whole song has possible Lucy/Tumnus potential… do I feel a series coming on? (Wow, never written so many notes before!)

DISCLAIMER/S: I do not own the rights to the characters or dialogue in this fic – they belong to C.S. Lewis, his estate and some branch of Disney. I am making no money from, and no offence or disrespect is intended with, the publication of this piece. Don’t bully me, legal people – your reputation is scary!

ANOTHER WHOLE LIFETIME

“I don’t think you’ll get back in that way.”

Lucy starts like a little girl, coming up from the dream-lake, grasping for air, water on her cheeks (were you hiding from -me-?).

She struggles with memory and time (lips brush her skin, shy as a snowflake), flails like an exhausted swimmer.

She fights for the surface (he is searching, calling, slipping away like water through cracks in the world), but the dream-lake has frozen over.

Her eyes in a child’s face are winter-strange (you need this more than I do), and her smile is lost.

 “You see, I’ve already tried.”