AN: I know this chapter really is on the short side. Making it longer just felt too forced. I think this short ending works best. Hopefully you'll all agree with me on this.

Five years. That's how long it's been. Almost six, actually, since I lost her.

Once or twice a week, I visit her grave and leave something. Usually some sort of flower-often a rose.

Upon occasion, I see her parents there. We don't say much to each other. We never really had a great deal in common aside from loving the same person. But that is enough for us. There is an understanding between the three of us in each nod, greeting, and small smile exchanged. We all loved Lucy, and this is the place we can come to remember her. That is enough for us. Or, rather, it has to be.

I closed on a house the other day. A house with an apple orchard in the back. Given, it will be a very long time until I can settle down there.

I'm in university now.

One might rightly wonder how I could afford to buy a house when everything with my education is so hopelessly expensive. Well, I'm sort of kind of there on a rugger scholarship. But before you get too disappointed, I'm still drawing. The reason I decided to take the scholarship in the first place was because they happen to have a wonderful Art program here as well.

As for my new house, well, Peter chipped in a bit. Okay, Peter chipped in a lot. I'm going to pay him back, though. After I graduate. Besides, he can afford it. One of his paintings just sold for a million pounds. He's getting quite famous. Needless to say, he didn't end up going to medical school after all.

Today I have just won one of the biggest rugger games for the university this year. I feel tired, a little sore, and quite sweaty. But to be honest, I also feel pretty good.

I am getting so many congratulations that I hardly know who's hand I'm shaking at what moment.

Then a loud voice starts going, "Okay, move it people, unless you want to be knocked down."

Thunder-Fist is elbowing his way through the crowd like a weed-whacker, dragging Susan by the wrist behind him.

"Prop-forward's girlfriend coming through!" he yells at my teammates who have decided this would be a good time for a group hug. All I'm thinking is that they really need to hit the showers right about now.

Someone gives Thunder-Fist a rather funny look after he brings up the 'girlfriend' thing. He wrinkles his nose. Motioning at Susan, he goes, "Her, you idiot, not me!"

"You won!" cries Susan when she finally reaches me. She pries me away from my teammates and throws herself into my arms.

I spin her around twice before putting her back on the ground.

"Way to go, Justaciturn!" Peter comes over. Apparently he came to see the game, too.

"Come off it." I cock my head to the side, slightly irritated. "Don't we know each other well enough for you to call me Edmund more often?"

"At least he's finally dropped the 'Mister'," says Susan, shaking her head. "It's progress."

"I think we know each other well enough for me to call you 'Eddie'," Peter teases.

"Justaciturn is fine," I assure him hastily.

"Smile!" Thunder-Fist's twin brother snaps a picture of us. He's got an internship with a real newspaper now. Local and small and all that rot, but he seems happy. That's what really matters, I suppose.

Thunder-Fist himself is in the middle of a fight with one of my shorter team-mates. Hardly surprising. It's when he's not fighting that we get concerned.

All the same, Peter asks, "What are you doing?"

"I'm about to box the snot out the dwarf!"

The 'dwarf' whimpers and takes off like the wind. What a flyer! I remember why he made the team in the first place now.

"Hey, get back here!" shouts Thunder-Fist, running after him.

"So," Peter says, choosing to ignore the ensuing fight in the background for now, "why don't we celebrate? We can have dinner some place."

"Sounds good," Susan tells him.

"I'm game," I put in.

"Who's car are we taking?" asks Susan.

"We can take mine," Peter offers, taking the keys out of his pocket. He has a new sports car.

When he first drove up to the university in it to pay me a visit last month, he was suddenly surrounded by half of the student population, all willing to become best friends with him. I heard a few teachers and visiting parents magically appeared at his elbow, too.

It's beautiful out. The sky has been blue all day and it's a purplish crimson now that the sun is getting lower.

The ride to the restaurant is mostly quiet except for the sound of the radio.

I'd bet anyone else with a sport's car would start drag-racing. Riding with Peter, however, tends to be more akin to a reenactment of 'Driving Miss Daisy'. As Susan has frequently felt the need to point out when they're late getting somewhere because he more or less came to a full stop at a yellow light instead of trying to make it. Good old Pete.

While we are taking our seats in the restaurant, I notice something out of the corner of my eye. There is a grumpy-looking, dark-faced maintenance man holding a plunger. He is pouty and sullen. He is also rather over-weight and greasy in appearance.

I know I've seen him somewhere before but I cannot place him. I squint and rack my brain. Then it hits me. This is Rabadash. Yes, the same Rabadash that used to go out with my current girlfriend and once attempted to attack my previous one.

By Jove, I think, he really let himself go!

Susan has got to see this. I nudge her arm and motion over at him. Her brow crinkles. Her eyes widen. She puts her hand to her mouth.

Peter bites back a smirk, pretending to be fascinated with his silverware.

"Rabadash," bawls a tall, lanky man with a cockney accent who I assume is his boss, "I thought I told you I didn't want to see your ugly mug again until that blasted toilet was unblocked. Now get back in that bathroom and do your bloody job before I fire you."

I sigh contentedly, enjoying the show more than I probably should be. He disappears into the bathroom, holding his nose.

When our drinks and meals arrive some time later, Peter holds up his glass and announces a toast. "To a bright future, and to the three of us being happy just as we are today."

"And to those of us who aren't with us today," I add, my voice clear and distinct, "but are always in our memories and hearts…in spoken words and in silence."

Miles away in a grave-yard the last rays of sunlight slide away. They are casting their final bits of golden-orange light on a certain tombstone with a pink rose tied to a crown-shaped model of a laurel placed beside it.

What is lost and gone is never truly vanished. For Lucy Valiant is never forgotten. She is the dream and the inspiration. She is the source of the faith I've gained over time. And she is my voice.

And now I look to the future. It seems bright. I can't live in the past. I know I can't. But I also know that I can see it, that forgotten country of time, from where I stand in life, and call to it across that distant dark chasm. That is where she always waits for me. In the realm before my year of Golden Silence.

AN: Please review. I'd like to know what everyone thought of the ending!