Title comes from the Thomas Wyatt poem. Thank you so much to cofax for the marvellous beta. Any remaining errors are entirely my fault.
This was written for the Narnia Big Bang over at livejournal, where sophiap did some wonderful art for this story.
"No, Peter," said the lion gravely, and Susan could see Peter clench his jaw out of the corner of her eye, and knew with heavy familiarity that it would hurt later. "No magic can bring back the dead."
"You returned," Susan countered, sharper than she would have usually dared, and stared intently at the jagged cut that ran straight through the middle of the Stone Table beneath Aslan's paws. They looked even softer in comparison, far too velvet for what she had seen them do.
"Yes," Aslan agreed sadly, "but it was not Deep Magic which killed your brother."
Susan knew it wasn't; could still see the remembered the dull flash of the assassin's blade swinging down in slow motion, and Edmund turning a moment too late, every time she closed her eyes.
She had not slept since then, and had heard, even through the thick stone walls, her sister's night-time cries.
The first time it had happened, she had knocked into Peter outside Lucy's door, and they had both shoved the door open, Susan's fingers already pulling back the taunt string on her smaller bow when she had realised that Lucy was the only person in the room, and then she had collapsed on one of the many chairs in the room, too relieved to even berate her.
"And our parents," Susan began, with a voice so thin it sounded like it belonged to someone else, and ignored her siblings' startled looks. "What will they think? What do they even know of our departure?"
"No one," said Aslan, bowing his head until he was on eye-level with her, "is ever told a story that it not fully their own, Daughter of Eve."
Out of the corner of his eye, Susan saw Peter flinch, and Lucy reached out for him with a clammy hand.
"But why, Aslan?" Lucy asked. Her voice shook.
It was curiously bizarre to hear her sister question him, and Susan realised with a start that she had never heard her do so, never heard one word of criticism from her sister's mouth about him, though she could be more brutal about foreign dignitaries than even Edmund.
"No one is ever told that either, dear one." Aslan replied, like that was any comfort at all, but he did not protest when Lucy stepped up to him and clutched at his mane with one hand, burrowing her face into it.
It was nowhere near as enthusiastic as it had been once; as if Lucy was simply going through the motions even with Aslan.
Lucy read Edmund's book without turning the pages, as if the imprint of his gaze was still etched into the rough letters, and if she stared long enough she could somehow bring him back. She had grown so used to injuries being reversible by her cordial that it had blindsided her even more than Susan or Peter.
"Do you think," Susan started, hesitating only when Lucy looked up, her eyes black holes in an ashen face, "that we'll ever get over it?"
"How can you say that?" Lucy jerked up and strode out of the room, her unread book left abandoned on the small table by the window. Susan watched her go, and thought she had lost more than just one sibling.
Peter didn't even bother to look up, "I think every memory stops hurting so much if you leave it for long enough."
"Peter," she said slowly, remembering the sun shining on Aslan's mane with a sudden flow of bitter hatred. "Do you remember our parents at all?"
"No, but I doubt they mattered much," he said, and she wondered whether one day, he would dismiss Edmund's memory as easily. Perhaps getting over tragedies wasn't a good idea. "Susan, we still have a country to run."
"I know," she answered dully, but she had been delaying matters of state for the past week. Tomorrow, she had to pass final judgement on a legal case Edmund had heard.
When Susan had first read the evidence, she had disagreed with his suggested solution. She still did, though she knew that come morning, she would order it all the same, because it had never been her decision to make.
She walked over to the window and wiped it dry with the edge of her sleeve. Outside the wind was howling, but the trees did not even twitch. They had not stirred since Edmund had –
Susan bit her lip and turned away, her eyes stinging.
Peter still hadn't moved, nor did he glance up when she left him alone to his hopeless plans of justice, and retribution, and closure. There was no space left for mercy anymore.
Later that day, Lucy asked, blankets dragged up to her chin, an empty sketchpad on her lap, "Were Adam and Eve our parents? I hardly remember them."
"I suppose they must have been." Peter agreed, frowning slightly. "They wouldn't call us that otherwise."
And Susan just stared at the freckles scattered across Lucy's nose, and thought helplessly of the wrong sibling.
The neighbouring countries had all sent wreaths of course, and careful condolences, but there was triumphant satisfaction in more than one ambassador's lowered eyes, and she heard some of them laugh too vibrantly for her taste as she crossed the courtyard.
When Susan turned around, there was no one there at all. She glanced up, and down, and around, but the sky was uncharacteristically empty and the stones were just stones.
The worst part was that there was a glint of that same mad triumph in some of their subjects' eyes, always fleeting enough to make her second-guess herself, yet constant all the same.
She walked back into the building, footsteps echoing on the stone steps, and stopped in surprise. The corridor was deserted, and the only sounds Susan could hear were her footsteps and her sister's laugh, somewhere around the corner. She hurried towards it, but Lucy had stopped any pretence at mirth.
"What do you mean he didn't say?" she was asking as Susan stopped just before the corner, and peeked around. Lucy's voice was dangerously low.
Her companion, a dwarf as thin as he was short, seemed to shrink back into himself. "We questioned him, Your Majesty, but he was not forthcoming."
"Well, of course, he didn't want to tell you," Lucy sighed. "But I had thought you were the best for," she hesitated, "extracting confessions, shall we say?"
"Indeed, Majesty, only," this time it was the dwarf who hesitated. "There have been… complications."
"What kind of complications?" Lucy asked, cold as steel.
"Unfortunately, the murderer did not survive the third stage."
Susan turned away, feeling distinctly queasy. Nonetheless, she heard Lucy's exclamation that the dwarf and his companions was supposed to know better.
"What did you do with the body?" asked the queen too brave to ever back down, the sister who would stop at nothing. Susan envied her conviction sometimes, though she did not wish for it.
She did not stay to hear the dwarf detail arrangements as little matched to the honourable Narnian funeral system as possible, apparently in the belief that this would make some difference to Aslan.
Instead, she went to the main audience chamber and took her seat next to her remaining brother, before giving the signal for the herald to open the heavy doors and announce the first business of the day.
It did not take long for a particularly dim-witted ambassador to propose an arranged marriage between Edmund and the Tisroc's oldest daughter, a Princess Reyhan, going as far as suggesting further discussion "once his Majesty has returned."
"Where from, my lord?" asked Peter, because enquiring whether someone had been living under a rock was insulting to the Talking Beasts who did. His expression had been getting gradually more thunderous with every word spoken, though he ambassador did not appear to have noticed.
"O, great High King of this most noble country, the illustrious Tash has not seen fit to bless this poor servant of the Tisroc (may he live for ever) with the whereabouts of so great a personage as your noble brother."
Susan beckoned a page and had the man escorted out of the audience chamber with a polite request to better acquaint himself with recent events before Peter could do something drastic. Then she closed court for the day, and their attendants hurried out, though the two of them continued to sit there, both next to an empty throne.
It felt like they were the only two people in the world.
"Do you think," Susan started later, reading the Calormene ambassador's letter of obsequious justification, "that Aslan could have prevented it?"
Peter looked over at Lucy, curled up on the windowsill and asleep for over an hour. "I don't think it matters. He didn't."
"But could he have done?" she persisted, because that made all the difference.
Most of the Narnians held Aslan in such high regard that to question his deeds seemed almost like blasphemy, but he had not come to help for a hundred years of suffering under the Witch's rule. Susan had always thought that merited some explanation, but had simply been informed that it was not her story to be told.
"Susan," he said bitterly, not even bothering to look at her. "Stop trying to be Edmund."
"I'm not!" But the thought nagged at her as she woke Lucy and then retired herself.
The following day, Susan finally lost her temper with Lord Peridan.
It started innocently enough; she had selected a random diplomat to send to the Lone Islands, and it could have easily been anyone else. But Peridan had been idle in Narnia for longer than any of the others, so Peridan it was.
She waited for over half an hour before sending for another servant, because Lucy claimed it took twenty minutes to shuffle slowly across the entire castle, and four to sprint it when the hallways were nearly empty and the run was clear and straight.
Arhen, his personal manservant, fidgeted when he finally stood in front of her, shifting from one foot to another the way Edmund used to when he was lying, back in England. "Unfortunately, your Majesty, my lord is indisposed."
"He seemed perfectly well this morning," Susan commented. "And therefore I suspect he is perfectly healthy now."
"The doors are all locked, your Majesty, and I must confess I have not seen his lordship since he dined with Lady Brinna at six."
Once, she could have gone to Edmund and known immediately, but now Susan could only sigh and send him away. She ended up leaning forward with one elbow perched against the wood, fingers trying in vain to rub away a headache, which felt like it had been slowly tearing her head apart all day.
Some time later, Susan got up and walked down the crumbling stone steps down onto the small sliver of beach near the castle, flicking off her shoes on the last one. The sand was rough between her toes, but still wet enough for her feet to sink down enough to leave a clear path for any who wished to follow her. Her guard lagged a few steps behind, ostensibly to give her privacy, in reality grumbling to themselves. Krisya hated the beach, and the constant roar of the waves in her ears, everything so soothingly familiar for Susan.
She arrived at the cave soon enough, a large cavern casting virtually no shadow at that time of day. A rather out-of-place door was hammered across the opening, somewhat haphazardly, the nails dented and broken.
There were small signs like that scattered all over Narnia, steady reminders of the Witch's long reign.
Whatever its appearance, or its difference to the castle at whose feet it perched, it was the home of the second – no, now the first-in-command of Narnia's intelligence service, and her information was worth a little occasional discomfort.
She knocked carefully, but did not bother to wait for a reply, pushing the door open and stepping inside. The water came up to her knees, a small and recent courtesy towards visitors. When Lucy had first come here, the water had covered her almost completely, leaving only the very top of her head peaking out.
"Queen Susan," said a voice from the depths, verging on respect. A long, scaly peaked out, its eyes heavily lidded.
"Good morning," Susan replied, then inquired into the whereabouts of Lord Peridan.
"On The House," said Madame Ness, who had been Edmund's second-in-command since merely two or three weeks following their coronation, when she'd surprised them at their swim. "Since eight o'clock."
A whorehouse, Susan realised, with a sudden burst of rage. All this, and he still finds the time and inclination?
Her nails dug into her palms, but she thanked the sea-serpent politely and exited almost calmly. Her guards were waiting outside, shivering in the piercingly cold wind.
"May I sug-gg-gest heading up to the castle now, Your Majesty?" one of them asked, her teeth chattering. She had come with excellent references, but being human did pose difficulties, though Susan could hardly have refused her on that basis.
For a long moment, Susan did not reply. Instead, she looked out into the horizon, where the sun was beginning to set, slashing bold colour against the murky depths of the water. The colour at the place where the two met was almost exactly the shade of Aslan's mane under the glow of firelight.
"Indeed," she said, but her voice sounded a long way away.
"We all have responsibilities, my lord, now more than ever. It is hardly the time for you to go gallivanting around as if you haven't a care in the world! If I look for you, I expect to find you near immediately, is that understood?"
"Your Majesty." He had inclined his head respectfully, but his mouth was pursed in harsh resentment. With a sudden spur of fear, Susan wondered whether he would be the next traitor in the night; or perhaps even secretly responsible for the first one. If he could only persuade his wealthy father that Edmund's demise would prove advantageous, he would easily have had access to scores of the finest known assassins.
Perhaps she shouldn't have chosen to send him away from Cair Paravel after all, though it would probably prove harder for him to plot away from the castle or the border.
You have no proof, she reminded herself sharply, but the doubts nagged at her all the same.
Lately, she and Peter had suspected everybody, running through seemingly endless lists of motives, even as some of their suspects walked the corridors outside.
Maybe they had lost more than just a sibling that night, but something invisible had been quietly ripped apart, and now they were lost, adrift in a world they were beginning to hate, trusting no one at all, not even each other.
Did I wish for this, in some way, Susan sometimes asked herself at night, twisting and turning beneath suddenly too hot covers. All those times we were annoyed at him, did we ever wish for this?
If they had, it would have only been the careless spitefulness of children, I hate you forgotten in a few hours, but maybe it had made Aslan, or the Emperor-Over-the-Sea, believe that they had meant it after all: maybe they were the ones truly responsible.
Perhaps it was all just their fault, and they were unworthy of the crowns Aslan had placed on their bowed heads.
Some days Susan almost expected Edmund to come strolling idly through an open doorway, with ink stains on his fingers and hair falling into his eyes.
She kept seeing him around corners, the way she had once seen her parents when the first humans had come to Cair Paravel; a flash of hair, or a glimmer of regal-looking fabric, or even a particular phrase, no matter how ordinary.
When she thought about it, she couldn't remember her parents clearly anymore, only faint memories of a plump woman with Edmund's eyes and a shaky smile, and a tall man with close-cut hair and a laugh which sounded as friendly as Lucy's no longer did.
So in hopes of preventing that from happening again, she wrote down endless lists of things she could still remember about her brother, and tried to ignore that certain statements kept repeating, and some thoughts were forgotten before she could set quill to parchment again.
"Oh," was all Lucy said when she found out, having come in unexpectedly to see Susan scribbling frantically, her writing un-regally messy. Then, "Why?"
Because it's the only thing I can do now, Susan thought, but she wasn't used to admitting weakness, not even to her siblings. "In case I forget, that's all."
"I don't think we'll ever forget," said her sister, with all the idealism not yet fully knocked out of her by experience. "I don't think we ever could."
Susan had once thought they couldn't ever forget their parents, stuffed on a busy train and spat out at in the middle of nowhere. And yet, it hadn't been long after their coronations when she had stopped being able to visualise the Professor's face, or the precise shape and function of a gas mask.
"Lune could have done it," said Peter when he returned from his ridiculous, though thankfully rather short, conquest of Ettinsmoor. Both Lucy and Susan had pleaded with him, to no avail, that the giants weren't intelligent enough to purchase an assassin who could murder a monarch, at which point Peter had switched his suspicions to the Marshwiggles.
"Oh, honestly," Susan sighed, "They can't all be involved."
"But if it's Calormen," Lucy commented, looking up from the stack of petitions Susan had been adamantly ignoring, and chewing her quill thoughtfully. "Then we can't attack, they're far too populous."
"Exactly," Peter agreed, "so it only makes sense to conquer the others. Then we'll have a bigger army, and stand a far better chance against them."
"But then we'll have more rebellions to deal with," Lucy argued. "Most people don't like being conquered, you know, and besides, people die every time you decide to fight. Our subjects, Peter. We're responsible for their welfare, and you're just gambling with their lives."
"Sometimes they die of colds!" Peter snapped back. "We can't prevent it, the cordial can't be used everywhere at once, nor can we afford to use it all the time. It'll run out soon, or possibly even get smashed in a battle. You can't take it so commonly to the wars!"
"It's mine," Lucy protested, bright spots of colour appearing high on her cheeks. It reminded Susan of the way Edmund had always argued back. "Father Christmas gave it to me!"
"Aslan made me High King," Peter answered, but it lacked any real bite. Nonetheless, a rather awkward silence descended on the room, in which they all avoided looking at each other.
Glancing around, Susan noticed that the curtains on the window looked strangely worn, and squinted. Moth-eaten, perhaps. She would have to get some owls or ichneumon wasps to catch them, though they were most likely just dumb beasts rather than treasonous subjects.
"Lune has only just recently lost a beloved son," she said finally. "I hardly think he would be so quick to cause others that pain."
"He might think we were involved," said Peter stubbornly.
"We helped him chase Bar," Lucy protested.
"But we failed," Susan pointed out.
"Still, he's our friend."
"I don't think royalty can afford friends," said Peter sadly, who had been claiming that they could merely weeks ago, his arm around some good-looking young Galmian, who he insisted was 'just a friend'.
Lucy scoffed, almost laughing, "What nonsense. Mister Tumnus is certainly my friend. He protected me, remember?"
He brought you into the danger in the first place, Susan thought but didn't say, because they had had that argument already.
"Peter, you can't blame everyone" she said finally, even though it broke her heart. "It's done."
"We can't just let it go like that. Someone ordered it!"
"Yes," she agreed, "but we don't actually know who." That was the worst part, the thing preventing any real closure, because if you didn't know, then you let them get away free, which meant betraying Edmund's memory. They couldn't protect him in life, and were now unable to avenge him in death.
She reached for her own pile of petitions, and began to read, writing a neat 'denied' on every application to leave the country, whether to return home or visit close ones.
Her hands never shook.
Later Susan sat alone in her private study and watched the flames flicker in the fireplace, feeling utterly cold. It took a long time for the plan to fully form in her mind, but she had been certain of one thing all along: it really wouldn't do.
So the next morning, she called on Aslan himself on the beach, wind pressing her hair flat against her scalp, and eventually he appeared, stepping out of the sea foam. Bizarrely, she found herself remembering the legends of Venus, about whom Bacchus was ridiculously close-mouthed , though he always flushed the colour of fine Galmian wine.
She was almost absurdly relieved he had come at all; after all, he wasn't a tame lion.
"Susan Pevensie of Narnia," he said, his voice soft as always, and for a minute it was all Susan could do to restrain herself and not step forwards to sink her face into his soft mane like Lucy had done so often. "I do not think you are fully aware of the repercussions which await you."
There were no questions poised there, just pure comprehension of motives.
"I am," she responded, sinking her fingernails deep into the palms of her hands. It was too late to turn back. Royalty could never seem indecisive, and she had been doing this for long enough that to be otherwise shouldn't have even crossed her mind.
"He will not be the brother you remember. The dead can never replace the living, for experience changes all men." Aslan warned, and perhaps this was where Susan should have stopped, reconsidered, asked him how. Maybe she should have turned back, and walked back to the castle and forgotten about her brother.
Instead, she lifted her head high, and met Aslan's eyes in an unspoken challenge. "That doesn't matter."
"Everything matters in the end, Daughter of Eve. The smallest change can cause great effects."
She did not hesitate. "We need him back. Narnia needs him."
"You and your siblings are enough to rule the land."
"And yet what use are broken rulers to a country? We failed him before we first came, and now we have failed him again. We should have been more careful, appointed more guards to watch over him. Maybe then he would still be alive."
"All things come in time, O Queen."
"We would not have lost him so soon. Aslan, it was our fault." Susan said, and then, when he did not answer, corrected herself. "No, it was my fault. I was supposed to take care of them, and I failed."
There was something obscuring her vision, turning even the lion into a golden blob, bright against the glasz of the sea. When she lifted a hand to her eyes, it came away wet.
"After the Battle against the White Witch, you asked Lucy if more must die for Edmund. But you know what Peter will do better even than he does. He'd raze whole countries; massacre everyone he thinks might have been involved. Thousands of lives, lost because just one was taken. And he'll tear himself apart doing so, and rip apart Narnia in the process, because nothing will ever be enough."
Aslan had remained silent during her speech, but when he spoke, it was with the voice that had sung the very world into being. Susan felt the ghost of it ripple across the air, run up her arms like shivers or goosebumps.
"There is always a price to be paid, Susan Pevensie of Finchley."
She dropped to her knees on sand, feeling a stone stab her knee as she landed, and begged, her head bowed in supplication. "Please Aslan."
"There is always a price to be paid," he repeated. "And it is not only for those who seek."
"I would give up anything."
"You may change your mind in time, Daughter of Eve," warned the lion. "And help does not come when called."
"I won't." Susan assured him, with all the confidence of one unaware of what she was losing, both for them and for Narnia itself.
Then Aslan tossed back his mane and roared to the sky, and the very ground beneath Susan seemed to twist, shifting beneath her like the Whirling Sands told of in whispers in Calormen.
Some of the sand flew upwards into her eyes, and she reached up with a hand to rub them. When she could finally see properly, Aslan was gone, and there was a very familiar body lying on the ground next to her, his chest rising and falling in impossible semblance of life.
Her first thought was that he somehow looked younger, though of course the memories had already began to fade.
He fit into her arms just the same; chin butting familiarly against the sharp bone of her shoulder.
"Let's go up to the castle. Peter and Lucy will be delighted." Susan said, and he followed her without complaint, though his steps were unsteady and slow, and soon enough he had to lean on her for support, his arm wrapped tight around her waist.
His easy obedience should have been a sign, really.