Disclaimer: I do not own any part of The Chronicles of Narnia; it all belongs to the C.S. Lewis estate, Walt Disney Pictures, Walden Media, 20th Century Fox, et al. I write these stories purely for enjoyment; no copyright infringement is intended.
Author's Note: I started writing this little fic on Tumblr, thanks to a lovely photocollage put together by aslansblessings. It has taken on a bit of a life of its own!
Chapter One
It might have been an odd choice, had their lives gone differently. If they had returned to England in a different way, had they been torn less abruptly from the Narnian lives they had loved, they might have chosen other things, become other people.
But they were all so raw and shattered for weeks and months after they came back that they clung together to stay alive, a human life raft of four, trying to survive in a Finchley and a London that were no longer home.
They might have lost Susan altogether - she was so quiet and withdrawn, so depressed, that the other three were truly alarmed and worried about her mental state - but providentially, it was she who saw the cafe first.
It wasn't anything particularly special. Not then. But it was a clean place, with good food, on a quiet street in what seemed to be a friendly neighborhood. The older couple who owned the cafe, Mr. and Mrs. Williams, were looking for help, as they were getting too elderly to run everything by themselves anymore. Susan saw the sign in the window one day when she was out shopping, and she stopped in for a cup of tea and to ask about the position.
"I have to do something," she told Edmund afterward, her face still emotionless and her hands twitching restlessly. "I have to be useful in some way, or I'll go crazy. They're nice. We don't have any life here, so at least I can help to make theirs better."
Edmund bit his lip and nodded. If work would help Susan, if anything would help Susan, he wasn't going to be the one to stand in her way.
Susan worked at the cafe in the evenings three nights a week. Her first night there, Edmund came to walk home with her, and she gestured him in without a word.
He looked around, taking in the wooden counters and tables, the brick walls, the leaded windows, the low ceilings, the warm lights. He gave Susan a little smile. "It feels a bit like home, doesn't it?" he asked. "Not like the Cair, but like the Beavers', maybe."
"It does," Susan whispered, and she gave the first hint of a smile Edmund had seen since they came back through the wardrobe. "The food is a little like Mrs. Beaver's, too."
Susan gradually began spending her Saturdays at the Williams' cafe as well, and the other three Pevensie siblings found themselves gravitating there, almost without realizing they did so. Peter and Edmund initially took turns escorting Susan home, then found themselves staying to do small repairs. Lucy took to reading books at the cafe in the afternoons, then helping Susan if there was a dinner rush. She also made immediate friends with the Williams. Mrs. Williams always brought her tea and scones to eat, and the first time Lucy tasted one, she felt tears well up in her eyes.
"I'm sorry," she said, wiping at her eyes. "We lost our home . . . in the war . . . and Mum tries, but . . . these taste like they used to."
Lucy thought that was the most incoherent explanation she had ever given anyone, filled as it was with half-truths, but Mrs. Williams patted her hand understandingly.
"You can have as many as you like, dearie," she said kindly. "You know, when I met your sister, that first day she came in, I thought she needed a place to care for and where she could be cared for, and I said to David, 'We have to ask that child to work here and give her some hope.' You have a little more light left in your eyes than she does, but I'm thinking you need the same care."
Lucy smiled shakily and sipped her tea, her heart too full for words, but Mrs. Williams seemed to understand, and simply patted her hand again before she went away.
It was Lucy who had the idea to replant and repurpose the garden behind the cafe, turning it into a charming outdoor seating area filled with flowers, lanterns, and a wrought-iron chandelier. Peter helped her build the scaffolding to hold the lights, coming in and measuring everything twice before he spent an entire weekend up on ladders while he and Lucy pounded nails and strung wiring. Susan and Edmund went to the Portobello Road market and found tables, chairs, and the marvelous chandelier, paying for the secondhand furniture out of Susan's wages.
"We'll never tell Mrs. Williams," she told Edmund with a wink. "It will be our little gift to them."
The Williams were delighted with their remodeled garden, and it became the most popular seating area in the cafe, when the weather was fine. Mrs. Williams started teaching Susan how to keep the books, and Peter often joined the two women at the table, learning how to keep track of inventory, wages, and supply ordering.
When term time came again, the four siblings put their collective feet down. They absolutely refused to go back to boarding school; they would not be separated again. Mr. and Mrs. Pevensie, unnerved and a bit overwhelmed by the adamant determination of their strangely adult children, found them local primary and grammar day schools to attend.
On a few evenings when her homework was done, Lucy began drawing flyers, sketching both the interior and exterior areas of the cafe and carefully lettering the name, hours, and phone number of the cafe at the bottom of each one. When she had a sizable stack, she and Susan posted them for six blocks around the cafe, then began putting the second batch up in the business area of Finchley. More customers started to trickle in, and soon the trickle became a stream. The Williams soon were able to hire Peter on as well as Susan; Lucy and Edmund contended themselves with spending as much time there as possible, helping where they could.
All four of them were at the cafe the day they went back to Narnia to help Caspian; it was the weekend before term started, and they had all decided to go to the Williams' for breakfast before Peter and Susan worked their shifts. It was while they were sitting at the table, scones in hand, that the horrible tugging feeling began, and it was to the same table that they returned afterward, stunned by all they had seen and learned.
Susan, her face white as chalk, stood up, threw a glass across the room with a savage scream, and burst into tears. She was shaking with anger and grief, and this time she allowed Peter to gather her into his arms.
"It's not fair! It's not right!" she raged into Peter's shoulder. "He can't keep doing this - bringing us back and then taking us away! I'm glad we can't go back, do you hear me? I'm glad! I can't bear it again!"
"I know," Peter said, making small shushing noises and holding Susan tightly as she sobbed. He blinked away his own tears, his grief more for Susan than himself. He might have re-centered himself, reminded himself of who he truly was on this trip to Narnia, but all it had seemed to do for Susan was to break her heart a second time. The only comfort he had was that she was actually weeping, allowing her emotions out instead of keeping them back. "I know, Su. It's all right."
Lucy felt tears prickling her eyes as well, and she sent a mute look of appeal toward Edmund, who gathered her into his lap without a word.
"Narnia is here as well as there, you know," Peter whispered after a while, as Susan's sobs slowed. "So is He. He said so himself - and we are all here. Once a King or Queen of Narnia, always a King or Queen of Narnia."
Lucy looked up from where she had been curled into Edmund's chest, processing her elder brother's thought. "If we can't go back - or at least if you and Su can't go back -" she said, biting her lip at the painful idea that she and Edmund might return to Narnia without their siblings, "- then we have to try and bring a little bit of Narnia to England. And maybe - maybe that's what He means us to do."
"Well said, Lu," Edmund agreed softly.
"He doesn't get to ask us to do anything," Susan said fiercely. "He took everything from us, our entire lives, and then taunted us with how everything fell apart after we left, as if we ever wanted to leave in the first place! He had the audacity to pull us back there to fix everything, when we never would have allowed our people to be overrun and hunted into hiding! I can't -"
Susan shook her head, swallowing down whatever she would have said next, and stood up, brushing off her clothes with angry strokes and composing her face into hard lines. She marched toward the kitchen, presumably to get a dustpan for the broken glass.
Edmund gazed after her. "Give her some time," he said quietly. "She'll come around."
Peter looked at his brother, his own eyes smoldering with anger and agitation. "She has a point, Ed. More than one."
"I know," Edmund sighed, running a hand through his hair. "She's right. It isn't fair. It's grossly unfair, actually. But Aslan never said it would be fair, only that we had a purpose here. I have to believe that's true."
"Me, too," Lucy said, giving him a sad smile.
Peter took a long breath, then reached over to both Edmund and Lucy, grasping one of their hands in each of his. "I think I do, too, or I'd go mad trying to make sense of it all. Thank Aslan you are both here to remind me."
Lucy smiled at him. "Reminding is all you need, Peter. You are the High King; that doesn't go away just because we are back in London."
"I hope you're right," Peter murmured. "I'm worried about Su. It took her so long to come back to us the first time this happened, and now I'm afraid she won't at all."
"She will," Edmund said with conviction. "She will. We won't let her go, Peter."
Peter's face was troubled, and he shook his head. "We might not get to make that choice."
Susan did come back to them, but she was never the same Susan again after that day. The spine of steel that had always lived inside of her came to the surface, making her sharp, commanding, and intimidating to those who did not know her well. The gentleness she had been known for in Narnia was only shown rarely, mostly to her siblings, occasionally to a human or animal who needed compassion and care. She treated every day as though it were a battle and the field was hers for the taking, running the café with fierce efficiency on the days that she was there and attacking her school books on the days that she wasn't.
She wouldn't talk about Narnia. Peter, Edmund, and Lucy learned quickly not to mention it in her hearing, for the only response they would get was a tightening of Susan's lips and an awful silence.
By the summer following their return from Narnia the second time, Susan almost managed to appear like herself, to everyone but her siblings. The sharpness never went away, but Susan could smile and laugh enough to keep up appearances; occasionally her smiles were even genuine. And despite myriad social invitations from her schoolmates, she only rarely accepted them, preferring to stay with her siblings or work extra shifts at the café. Peter and Edmund's watchfulness relaxed enough that they were not hovering around her every minute, but only keeping tabs on her from a (short) distance, and Lucy's highly obvious efforts to cheer Susan lapsed back into more normal sisterly behavior. Even through the worst of their mothering and anxiety, however, Susan never reproached them for it; indeed, she seemed to cling to them harder than ever, as though they were the only people who mattered in the world.
That summer, Mr. and Mrs. Pevensie were going to America, and they wanted to take Susan with them, but she refused, asking to stay with Lucy and Edmund. Their aunt and uncle, Harold and Roberta Scrubb, agreed to take them, and while they were not looking forward to the extended visit, it was better than being separated. Peter, too, though he'd had an invitation to study with Professor Kirke, was loath to leave them. When he wrote back to the Professor expressing his concerns about his siblings, Susan especially, Digory went to the one person who he was willing to concede was smarter than he was.
"The answer is simple, Digory," Polly said crisply, as she folded Peter's letter and poured the tea. "We are going to Brighton, and we are taking those four children with us. They need our help, as I would have told you if you would have consulted me before now. Peter can study with you, and I will see what I can do with the other three."
Digory raised his eyebrows as he sipped his tea. "They're hardly children, Polly. Technically speaking, they outrank us."
"Tosh," Polly retorted. "They are still children here, Digory, no matter who they are on the inside. Even if you still want to think of them as the Four, rulers need help. They can't do it alone, nor should they be expected to. I was already planning a trip to Brighton for the summer. We'll simply rent a cottage big enough for all of us, and when we come back, those children will know they have a support system. They can hardly confide in their parents; Mr. and Mrs. P. would have them committed."
When Polly spoke like that, there was no use in arguing with her, as Digory well knew. He held his tongue and wrote back to Peter with the invitation, sending a separate letter to Mr. and Mrs. Pevensie.
The Pevensie siblings were delighted with the invitation, and fortunately it did not take much persuading to convince Mr. and Mrs. Pevensie to let them go. The trip to America could not be cancelled, the Professor was already someone they knew and trusted, and Miss Plummer sent them some impeccable references from several well-placed London offices and archives.
Lucy and Susan, however, worried about leaving the Williams and the café, and one afternoon they confessed their fears to Mrs. Williams. She smiled and drew them both into a warm hug.
"Don't you worry, my dears," she reassured them. "Mr. Williams and I will be right here when you come home. The summer is our slow time, you know, since everyone goes to the Lake District or the seaside, and we'll manage very well without you for a few weeks. We have a granddaughter, Lily, who is just a few years older than all of you, and we'll ask her for a visit now that she's out of school. Just don't stay away forever. "
Susan and Lucy both kissed the older woman on the cheek and promised they wouldn't, their hearts easier knowing that their friends and their refuge would be waiting for them.
Their first two weeks at the seaside were glorious. The "cottage" Polly rented was a big old seaside home that was out of repair and lacked many more modern amenities; the one saving grace was that it had indoor plumbing. Due to its deterioration, the owners had been willing to let it for a song, and Polly had no difficulty working the old wood-fired cookstove and teaching the children to do the same. The Pevensies delighted in fixing the various things that were wrong with the house, from loose and cracked clapboards to missing shingles, the old brass and glass doorknobs that had been left in a box in the attic, and floors that needed cleaning and waxing to make them shine again. Polly and Digory would not let them spend money on the house, but they were allowed to use whatever they found about the place that would help spruce it up.
Peter studied with the Professor in the mornings, then joined his siblings and Polly for work, walks, and swims in the afternoons. Brighton was a veritable hive of activity, the long boardwalk filled with games and people of all sorts. All of the siblings enjoyed the novelty of Brighton; the sea breezes kept it cooler than the oppressive heat and humidity of London, and such a diverse and joyous crowd of people was a delight; the atmosphere felt far more like Narnia on a festival day than anything they ever encountered in London.
Though Susan still never mentioned Narnia, she was happier and more like her old self than she had been since their first return. Polly and Digory found moments to talk to the other three about their own connection to Narnia and how best to help Susan. Digory took an entire morning to talk to Peter during the first week, forgoing lessons in order to explain to the High King why he and Polly had felt the need to step in and take them all for the summer.
Peter sat back as the Professor finished, his eyes wide. "So – you are the Lord Digory and the Lady Polly! You never said a word!"
"Did it never occur to you to wonder why I accepted your tale of Narnia so easily, dear boy?" Professor Kirke asked, amused.
"Well, of course, but we thought – that is, we all thought that you must have encountered something of the sort before, but I never would have linked you to the Digory from Narnian history!" Peter said, astounded.
The Professor nodded. "When you came back through the wardrobe, it wasn't time for you to know. Indeed, you were all going through so much grief that I thought it would have made things worse if you had known. You needed a confidant, and I was meant to be that person. It was not a coincidence that you and your siblings were sent to my home; if I ever needed proof that Aslan was still watching over me after all these years, I did not need it after hearing everything that had happened to you. I was responsible for bringing Jadis and her evil into Narnia; by sheltering you and then helping you when you came back, I at least had a small part in ridding Narnia of her as well."
Peter nodded, his face solemn as he thought of Aslan and Jadis, and then returning to help Caspian and how that had affected them all.
"We went back, you know," he confessed to Digory. "Last autumn, just before term started. It was incredibly difficult; so much had happened in Narnia that we weren't expecting . . ." he trailed off for a moment, then shook himself and picked back up again. "Ed and Lu are coping pretty well, I think, and I'm better now than I was, but it almost destroyed Susan. The only thing I'm grateful for is that she has kept us close, this time, instead of pushing us away and shutting down. But she won't talk about Narnia; she practically acts as though we were never there, that it doesn't exist."
Digory leaned forward again, lacing his fingers together on the desk. "Tell me everything."
"It was no ordinary wardrobe, you know," Polly told Lucy on another morning, when they were working together in the kitchen. "When Digory brought that apple back for his mother, he planted the core in their garden, along with his Uncle Andrew's rings – horrid man! The core grew into another beautiful apple tree, but it was blown down in a storm just before Digory's family inherited that big old house in Coombe Halt. Digory had the wood from the tree made into the wardrobe. It was Narnian wood, you see, right from the very beginning."
"That's why Aslan brought us to it," Lucy whispered, her eyes bright as stars and shining with delight. "It held Narnian magic. His magic, so He could lead us there."
"Absolutely, my dear," Polly beamed. "You've no idea how relieved Digory was, when you all told him the Witch was finally gone – he had been carrying around that guilt and worry since we were children."
Lucy nodded thoughtfully. "I understand that – of course he would feel guilty – but if none of that had occurred – if you and Digory had never been to Narnia – we never would have been, either. Surely there was some comfort in that."
"Oh, I know there was," Polly agreed firmly. "I am sure that it was all part of what Aslan intended to happen. Still, you cannot imagine what it meant to Digory to know that Jadis was finished – that she could no longer hurt Narnia after centuries of doing so."
Lucy smiled. "It makes me happy that we did something for him, after all he has done for us – after all you've both done."
"You're meant to be in our lives and we in yours, and no mistake, my dear," Polly said. "Now, hand me that peeler and we'll get to work on the potatoes."
That afternoon, when they were all down at the beach taking a swim, Edmund spotted a figure walking over the sand toward them, and he leaned his head on Peter's should and groaned.
"Tell me that's not who I think it is," he begged Peter, who looked up and shielded his eyes to see down the beach.
"No, it really is, unfortunately," Peter murmured. He stood, brushing the sand off his trunks.
"Eustace," he said neutrally, as the figure got closer.
"Apparently I have you lot to blame for being here," Eustace said nastily, ignoring Peter's greeting. "Harold and Alberta thought it would 'do me good' to go the seaside, after hearing that you were going with those dotty friends of yours. Do me good, when I sunburn and can't swim!"
"You could learn," Edmund suggested, not bothering to hide his sarcasm.
"Of course you could," Lucy said, kindly trying to come to the rescue. She had been down by the water and had come back when she saw Eustace approaching. She did not like their cousin any more than her brothers did, but that was all the more reason not to leave Peter and Edmund alone with Eustace. "I could help teach you. I've been trying to do better at swimming all year at school."
Something flickered in Eustace's face, but all he said was, "I don't like the water. I've got to get back. Just thought I would thank you for having a perfectly lovely summer spoiled."
He turned away and sauntered back down the beach, hands in his pockets.
"Horrid little beast," Edmund said, once Eustace was out of earshot. "As if we coerced Harold and Alberta into bringing him here, when it's the last thing we would have done."
"He does seem to go out of his way to be unpleasant," Lucy agreed.
"He's defensive," Peter said, frowning. "I can't imagine it's easy living under his parents' roof, and he probably isn't liked by many of his schoolmates. I don't care for him either, but I think he's so nasty because he's unhappy."
"Is Lucy rubbing off on you?" Edmund asked. "She's usually the one trying to find the good in everyone. Eustace is a beast, that's all."
Lucy swatted Edmund on the arm. "You're one to talk. As if you weren't trying to redeem every one of our subjects in Narnia who committed some kind of transgression."
"Eustace isn't redeemable," Edmund grumbled.
"Don't be so sure," Peter smiled. "If he shows up again, maybe we can just let him be and see what happens."
Of course, it was just as they were all starting to get comfortable again that the rug was pulled from under their feet. Eustace, despite his animosity toward his cousins, had come by several times in the week since his first appearance. Lucy, convinced at this point that he was so unpleasant because he was lonely, had been true to her word and endeavored to teach him how to swim, though he protested and criticized her the entire time. Edmund was out in the water with them, keeping an eye on them both, as he was a much stronger swimmer than either of them. Peter had elected, on this particular afternoon, to read on the beach in his swim trunks, while Susan was helping Polly with the laundry.
Once she and Polly had hung everything up to dry in the backyard, Susan decided to change into her own bathing suit and join her siblings in the water. At the top of the stairs, there happened to be a window that looked straight out onto their little strip of beach, which they usually left open to allow the breeze into the house. What Susan saw out of that window as she started down the stairs made her freeze in terror.
The water was perfectly calm, rippling in small, gentle waves against the sand – except directly around Lucy, Edmund, and Eustace, where it was beginning to swirl and chop ominously. As Susan watched, she saw Eustace's arms suddenly flail upward.
"Peter!" she screamed, and her brother, thankfully ever on the alert, looked up and immediately tossed his book aside, running for the water. Susan flew down the stairs and was out on the sand in a moment, her legs not a match for Peter's but swift nonetheless, and they both hit the water and began swimming furiously.
Susan had the presence of mind to look for her siblings before plunging in, and she saw Edmund treading water and could hear him shouting instructions, while Lucy tried to contend with a struggling Eustace. The waves around them were higher, now, and Susan's heart went into her throat when she came up and saw a large wave break directly over all three of them. Peter was ahead of her, but she was catching up to him as they both neared the rough water, working harder against the currents that were engulfing their siblings and cousin.
The three heads cams up again, but it was getting harder and harder for Susan and Peter to make any headway toward them, and she could see that all three of them were having difficulty now, worn out against the undertow and waves that were so powerful.
Just as Susan thought she and Peter would reach them, a wave twice as large as all the rest rose up and engulfed all of them, sending her and Peter tumbling backward through the water.
When they both came up, almost next to each other, choking and covered in sand, the other three were gone.
"No!" Susan cried. She plunged back into the water, frantic, searching for hands or feet or hair, but found nothing. She broke the surface again, intending to keep looking, but Peter grabbed her from behind before she could disappear again.
"No, Su, it's all right," he said breathlessly. "They're safe. Can't you feel it?"
Susan twisted around, incredulous, wild with fear. "What do you mean they're safe, Peter? They're drowning, we have to find them –"
She broke off abruptly as, suddenly, she did feel it. Sharp prickling, dancing painfully over her skin like electricity. Not the pulling that she remembered so vividly from when they went to help Caspian, but the same pain.
She sagged against Peter as all the fight went out of her momentarily, flooding her with exhaustion. "Never the same way twice," she said bitterly.
"Just wait," Peter said gently, treading water and still managing to give Susan some support. "You know what it was like when we came back before; they'll be right back."
Just as quickly as she had been drained of seemingly everything, Susan was suddenly filled with fury. She looked up at the sky. "Don't you dare break their hearts the way you did mine," she said viciously. "You give them a proper chance to say goodbye."
Peter began to say something, but just at that moment, the water around them swirled, and Lucy, Eustace, and Edmund all surfaced, gasping for air but unharmed, and Susan fell on them, crying unashamedly as she hugged them and tried to cling to all three of them at once.
"You're all right? Tell me you're all right!" she begged, framing Lucy's face with her hands.
"We're fine, Su, I promise," Lucy said gently, understanding her sister's keen distress. "All of us. We're fine."
Peter shared a long embrace with Edmund, and a newly-shy Eustace even consented to hug Peter, before Peter took control of the chaos.
"Let's all go up to the house and get dry, and then we'll get the Professor and Polly and you can tell us everything," he said, urging the three younger ones toward shore. "You scared us to death!"
They went willingly, but Peter caught Susan's forearm before she could follow them.
"Su," he pleaded, "please stay with us. Listen to what happened to the others. It might help you to talk about Narnia, instead of pretending that it never happened. Obviously our connection with Narnia isn't about to go away."
Susan stopped, her face turned away from her brother. "I want to stop feeling angry and betrayed and brokenhearted, Peter," she said, almost too low for him to hear. "I don't know how. Every time I think I've put myself back together again, something happens to put me back in the same place of loss."
"So don't ignore the loss, embrace it," Peter said, coming around so that he was in front of Susan. He grasped her bicep with one hand and used the other to lift her chin so that she was looking at him. "Don't deny what you've lost or what you've gained, Susan the Gentle. The loss is terrible, but our life in Narnia was also an extraordinary gift. Learn how to live with all of it. That's what we're all trying to do, in our own ways. And I would much rather have you with us on the journey, than have you divided from us."
More tears began to slide down Susan's cheeks, but she managed a smile. "Sometimes I hate you so much, Peter the Magnificent," she said, just managing to get the teasing tone in her voice to overcome the sob that was threatening to emerge instead.
Peter laughed and pulled her close for a moment, kissing her forehead. He kept an arm around Susan's shoulders, and Susan wound an arm around his waist, as they waded back up to the beach.