Viktor crouches down when she lowers her gaze, his weight pressed into the balls of his feet, his wings gently fanned out behind him for balance. He’s not sure what’s brought the littlest monarch to tears, but he won’t ask either. If she wants to explain it, she will. Otherwise, he won’t point out that he’s seen. It seems unkind.
Instead he covers her tiny hands with one of his own. “I do not remember my mother either,” he tells her. “Or my sisters’ names or…what my people are called or where I was born. Big, important things are long since gone.” Maybe it won’t help her to know he understands all too well, but it’s worth a try. “I cannot change it, even if I try. And I will never go back, so all of it is lost. It does not mean it does not matter. It still made me who I am. It is still with me, but in a different way.”
He tries to catch her eye, and smiles softly at her when he thinks he has it. “Forgetting… These things happen to everyone. It does not mean anything bad…” He sighs softly. “Do you miss it? Your home?” Most of her family is here, so he assumes that’s not it. He also knows the kings and queens love Narnia and so he assumes that it’s not that she wishes to go back–or at least, not fully. What else it could be, he’s not sure. “I promise not to tell, if you would like to tell me.”
Wide eyes stare upwards to meet Viktor’s earnest gaze, and Lucy tries to blink back her tears, firmly refusing to let her lower lip wobble. His outspread wings seem like a SHIELD, separating her from the world and its expectations. ( It makes her feel safe. SAFE like Aslan did, almost. )
Lucy likes the way he talks to her, like a FRIEND, like a confidante — not like a LITTLE GIRL who doesn’t matter or a QUEEN who must always be right. She’s never really had friends before. Is this what it’s like to have them?
If it is, she likes it. She likes it quite a lot.
Do I miss it? Lucy thinks. She wants to say no. She wants to say that Narnia is her TRUE home now, that she doesn’t miss the blackouts or the sirens or the constant smell of smoke. That she doesn’t miss the teasing or her mother’s wrinkled brow or her father’s absence. Everything here is SO MUCH BETTER, so why should she miss London at all? And yet—
“I do,” she whispers, letting the stray curls of hair hang down over her eyes to hide her tears. It’s not something a proper queen would do, but Lucy doesn’t feel like a queen right now. She feels like a little girl. “I do miss it.”
