*Note: Hello all! Short chapter again, promise to get some more meat soon. This one is more of an experiment really. I had some positive feedback on the moments between Lucy, Peter, and Edmund in my last chapter, so I put in a bit about their adventures in Narnia, that seem to be missing from Lewis's account, in a flashback. Let me know what you think! Also, because my own big brother got a huge gold star this week for a start of the new semester present that brought me to happy tears, there's a lot of big-brotherly love in this chapter. Enjoy!

The Next Morning

When Helen wasn't downstairs for breakfast by eight, Peter wandered through the house, up seven staircases, around three corners, through the upstairs parlor and to the closed door of a small spare room. He knocked on the door, for he knew it was very foolish to enter a teenage girl's room without first knocking.

"Lu? Uncle Ed made pancakes..." When there was no response to her favorite breakfast food, he gently pushed open the door in case she was still asleep.

Peter was surprised to find his daughter not snuggled into her duvet, as he had expected, but, rather, standing, wrapped in her bathrobe, staring at the back of a large, familiar wardrobe. It took him a minute to understand exactly what he was seeing.

"Lu?" he said again, and his daughter turned.

"Dad," she gasped. He was suddenly worried. Was she okay? She had to be. He rushed to her, wondering... No, that was impossible. She couldn't have been... "I had a dream about Narnia." Her eyes were as wide as saucers, and she looked almost comically terrified. His relief was palpable

"Yeah?" he asked. He sat down on her bed. She sat beside him, arms still crossed tightly over her chest, her lips pressed into a thin line and a little wrinkle between her eyebrows. He thought she looked a lot like Grace, though he'd never tell her. He did all he could to keep his own giddiness out of his features.

"I opened the wardrobe and there...on the back panel...Well, there wasn't a back panel at all. There was daylight."

"Did you go in?" he asked.

"Of course not! I was terrified! The next thing I knew, I woke up in bed."

"Are you sure it was a dream, Lu?"

"Of course it was a dream! There's no feasible way there could be a world inside a wardrobe, Dad!"

Peter sighed. He supposed his daughter really believed she only had dreamt of his beloved Narnia. If she had declined the invitation, the wardrobe might be rather cautious about its next appearance. He kissed her hair and shooed her away to the bathroom to freshen up and head downstairs. He stayed in the room, yellow light streaming through the window, flowered duvet on the floor, and the wardrobe looming over him. He looked at the walls his sister had painted, knowing they told stories of her favorite times in Narnia. All around the room he found little moments-an apple tree hanging over a ruined castle, a ship with a sun on its sails, a lamppost with a funny-looking man in a red scarf-while the main painting was of her beloved dancing cherry trees.

"Hello, old friend," he murmured, though he knew it was very silly to talk to a wardrobe. With the early morning sunlight coming in through the window, it felt like that beautiful day they'd been running from McCreedy and the four siblings all found themselves stuffed inside, then pushed into the white-washed world of Jadis's Narnia. He closed the wardrobe door and rested a palm against the wood panel on the front. He traced his fingers over the etchings of the birth of Narnia, lingering on one of Aslan.

"Pete," he heard from behind him. He whirled to find his sister, looking oddly domestic with her hair in a ponytail and an apron, watching him with a combination of bemusement and worry. "Ed is all finished. We're about to sit down."

He smiled.

A Long Time Ago:

"Ed and Susan just got back!" Lucy cried, skidding into Peter's office, out of breath.

"From the Islands?" he asked, pulling off his glassed. He closed the very dry book on the weather patterns of Northern Narnia on his desk.

"Yes!" Even aged the few years she was, she looked like a child. He smiled and grabbed his cloak off the back of his chair, figuring the greeting at the docks would be somewhat a formal affair.

His baby sister didn't seem to care, as she raced barefoot through the palace halls, hair untamed, even strangled under a tiara. He knew the past few weeks had been tough on her, with Susan and Edmund on a diplomatic mission to the Lone Islands and he, himself, helping Narnians survey lands in the South. She'd been too much on her own.

"I'm going to ask the kitchen if we can have a real dinner, all together. We'll sit down at the table, all at the same time." The two of them arrived at the side palace doors which lead to the sea, where a carriage waited to carry them to the docks.

"If it's all the same to you, I think I'd rather walk," Lucy told the servant with a smile. They nodded and smiled back. Peter gave a nod of his own, acknowledging that he, too, would walk down.

The path down the cliff was smooth and well-maintained, as if someone had come through and made it safe for them, even with Lucy's bare feet.

"Remember the path behind the Professor's house?" Lucy volunteered suddenly.

"The one that lead to that tree with the hole in it?" he clarified. They'd found it on one of their outdoor excursions of the house's grounds.

"The same. The dirt was so soft, we could see animal tracks," she said. Peter cocked his head, confused about her train of thought. "The four of us used to spend hours out there with books and notepads to figure out what they were."

"I remember. Susan would quiz me on what the Latin names meant."

"We don't spend much time the four of us, anymore."

Peter stopped and reached for her hand. "Lu... I'm sorry."

"No, I just...when we were first coronated, we did everything together, closer than we'd ever been after all we'd gone through. And I know that was a very long time ago, but..."

He wrapped his arms around her, there on the path, and kissed her hair. "I have an idea," he said, taking a step back. "Why don't the four of us plan a little trip. We can go west a few weeks, before my next scouting trip. Just the four of us."

She beamed. "I'd like that very much. Just the four of us."

November, 1972:

"It's nice having more than just Ed and me," she said as they made their way back to the kitchen. Helen said she'd be just a minute. "I adore him, but it gets lonely just the two of us in this big house. There was time we didn't see each other for days."

"You and your family meals, Lu. I never understood why they meant so much to you."

"I mean, in London, they were when we saw Dad and could ask him about work. Before the war, you know? And Mum always... I dunno, she always seemed so happy. It reminds me of them."

"I'm just sorry I can't show Charles that beautiful table that was in the dining room."

"Made whispering to the person next to you hard, though," she said with a smile. Peter laughed and wrapped an arm around his baby sister.