Susan Pevensie was cold. It wasn't only because there was a draft piping through the church windows in January. No, this was a different kind of chill. It settled in her bones eight days ago when the afternoon radio broadcast played over her cup of raspberry tea.

Dead, they were all dead.

She gripped a kerchief in her lap. It had been ironed that morning but was now wrinkled in a roadmap of lines from the clench of her fingers throughout the church service.

The chapel was mostly empty.

Apart from family and a few close friends, most people had their fill of funerals to attend. The year was 1949; it was only the dusk of the war. So many had buried loved ones.

There had been times Susan thought that she must be lucky with Edmund being too young to fight and Peter studying abroad, but right now, she couldn't. There was a tiny hole growing in her chest that shot, stabbed, or slashed its way around her memory every time she heard their names. Three coffins faced her at the front of the church from small to tall: Lucy, Edmund, and Peter.

The brunette drew in a ragged breath, absentmindedly rubbing the stitching on the cloth in her fists. LHP was embroidered in messy cursive. Lucy had never liked sewing the way Susan had. Her sister always said she hated sitting still and the needles poked her fingers. Both were true, but the eldest Pevensie daughter had always believed that the end result was worth a little inconvenience.

"Ouch!" Lucy cried out, tears gathering in her giant blue eyes as she sat next to Susan on the inevitable train ride towards a new year of school. "It pricked me again. Stupid needle."

She threw a piece of mending to the floor of the car, arms akimbo. The tears gathering in her eyes didn't overshoot the cross look on her face. "I hate sewing."

"Come on, Lu," Susan reached for the shirt, which had a hole in the collar, thanks to her younger sibling's tendency to constantly tug and pull at the seams. "It's not that bad. It just takes some patience, I promise."

The twelve-year-old glared.

Susan sighed. Breathe, Susan. In. Out. "I promise."

Lucy pursed her lips, "Every time the train goes over a bump, I prick my fingers."

"What happened to your thimble?" Susan barely managed to keep a straight face.

Lucy glared, again. "Thimbles are stupid. There aren't thimbles for ten fingers."

This time, Susan had to laugh. "Well, that's true, but if you had a thimble on every hand, you couldn't sew." She took the shirt from her sister's poked thumbs and began to work. "How about you go watch the scenery and I'll finish?"

"Really?" Lucy's eyes lit up as the two-inch square of sewing was lifted from her hands. "You're the bee's knees."

Susan shook her head moving the needle in and out of the fabric as she watched her little sister curl up in front of the window, imagination hard at work.

Bees may not have knees, but I'm pretty sure in her head they do...

The room slowed until Susan realized that it wasn't moving at all and the thump thump thump of the train car she was hearing was only the beat of her heart rushing in her ears.

Breathe. In and then out.

Susan tried to listen to the preacher speak, her eyes wandering the cramped room. For so long she had never understood why her siblings had sometimes complained about sitting quietly in church when they could find Aslan other places, but today it made sense. "The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised."

Praise the Lord? Why should I praise the Lord? My country is ravaged by war. My family is dead. Is this supposed to be funny?

If it was, she certainly wasn't laughing. It was all she could do to keep from bursting into tears.

Susan could barely lift her head.

Susan, soothe your nightmares, Susan.

Susan, fight your battles, Susan.

"The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen." The robed man closed his black book and silence reigned resilient over the room.

Grace? Love? What kind of being in grace and love tears a family apart? What kind of god? What kind of Lion?

Susan glanced upwards, her emotions buried far beneath the porcelain exterior that housed her blue eyes. Ignoring the impropriety, she kicked her shoes from her feet and hugged her knees up to her chest. She was alone. There was no one here to see her deal with her grief. The eldest Pevensie ran her fingers along the grooves in the wood of the church pew. Edmund had always insisted on sitting in the outside. He'd said being stuffed into a line of wooden rows in silence made him claustrophobic. Up until their Dad left for the war, they had been a regular family of churchgoers. After that, it had faded in importance. First, the occasional Sunday had slipped and before long, it was only Easter and Christmas spent in the familiar pews.

Susan's fingers caught on etching in the otherwise smooth wood and she peered down to investigate, even in her sadness, curiosity getting the better of her. Right within reach were three letters. ECP— Edmund Charles Pevensie.

What a rascal.

Susan almost smiled.

My rascal.

Her hand slipped down the wood as her gaze again looked toward the front of the church.

He's really gone, isn't he?

Her stomach hurt.

"Shut up, Su! You can't make me wear a tie." The door slammed, ricocheting off the beams of the door as Edmund stormed off into the bedroom he shared with Peter.

Susan bit her lip, words forming on the tip of her tongue before they slipped away. It was just a clip on. Peter was going to wear one. She and Lucy were all dressed in their Sunday best. Mum still had a shift at the hospital, but she swore that she would be home on time to get them to the Easter church service. It was tradition, or at least it had been. When Dad was here.

The door was cracked open. It didn't have much of a lock, after all. Peter had gone as far as he could to donate metal to the donation drives, even if it meant few doorknobs.

She knocked. There wasn't an answer. "Ed?"

"Go away." The pre-teen's voice was muffled from being stuffed into a pillow.

Oh, bother it all. Susan steeled her nerves and pushed the door open.

Edmund didn't look up from his faceplant in the bed. "ImngongoSu."

She sat on the bed, dangerously close to being angrily evicted. "Come on, Ed, we don't spend a lot of time together lately apart from in bomb shelters. I think Mum would really appreciate it."

Edmund rolled over. "Dad's entire life is a bomb shelter. Or bombs without a shelter." His eyebrows angled down into a sharp line. Despite the baby fat in his cheeks, it was a serious look. "Why should we get to have any fun?"

"Well, I don't think going to church ever was about having fun," She forced a smile. "But, we do get to be together and maybe I can ask Mum if there's enough spare change we could get an apple pie for tonight."

Edmund visibly breathed. "Do I have to wear the tie?"

Susan nodded, as a big sister compromise was practically her middle name, "I think we can make an exception and go without ties."

Edmund smirked. "Do I have to wear shoes?"

Susan lightly smacked him with his striped apparel, "Yes, you buffoon. We're not hobos!"

"As long as we have pie and no ties." Edmund sat up and to Susan's great surprise gave her a half-second hug. "I'll go."

When did he get so smart? Susan sighed, sitting to herself for a moment as her younger sibling ran out of the room to tell everyone about their possible dessert. No one cherished sweets the way he did and especially in war times, it could be hard to remember that at eleven years old, he was still a child. I wish you were here, Dad. You always knew how-to-Edmund. He's so much like you.

Susan's eyes lingered on the portrait of her Father on the windowsill for a brief second before she closed the door behind her.

I can't do this alone.

I never did.

Ever since she was small, Peter had been the one that she leaned on for support. It wasn't only when times were tough. The two of them had been inseparable. People had said they were like twins. Despite the two year age difference, Susan had been eager and quick to jump to everything that was her big brother's level. Whether it was in academics or even sports. It wasn't until Edmund came along that their family dynamic shifted.

She learned to be responsible and to take care of others.

It wasn't Ed's fault. He was sick as a baby. Always screaming. Those high fevers had him attached to Mum's hip.

The days of playing Rugby in the yard with Dad and baking cookies in the kitchen with Mum were now things of the past.

I still remember that time Mum came home from letting me watch the boys for five minutes while she returned a dish to the neighbours. I was seven. When she got back, Edmund wasn't breathing.

Susan felt air catch in her chest as she looked up at the coffins in front of her. She's a nurse. It's probably the only reason there's still four of us. We all spoiled him a bit more after that. Especially Mum. But, she never explained to me...that it wasn't my fault. I was just a kid.

She gripped the pew, fingers digging into the wood. The moment drew into miserable solace as Susan's hands touched solid ground. Her family was deathly quiet apart from occasional whispers and the blowing of noses. Susan didn't want a tissue. She wanted someone that stand up and say how wrong this all was — the way Peter would have done. Her big brother might have been a bit of a peacock, but right now she would nurse him through a hundred years of the flu just to see that smile.

"Susannn." A groan as grumpy as it poured from the living room sofa. Peter's voice was as nasal as it was invisible. The flu nearly always struck the Pevensie house in the winter and the boys usually got the worst of it. "I need a glass of water."

"Get up and get it yourself, you big baby." She laughed, peeking into the next room, where her older brother lounged on the settee, trying to make himself appear as miserable as he could. "It's nearly Christmas and my arms are covered in the kitchen."

"I thought that was what gloves were for." Peter poked at the buttons of the radio. "There are gardening gloves, what happened to baking gloves?"

"I suppose you'll have to invent them," Susan said cheerfully. The war was over; her father was on his way in from the train station. Nothing could bring her down this year.

"Inventing is Edmund's gag." Peter coughed. "Seriously, Su, a glass of water?"

Susan pushed her ingredient covered arms under running water. "Okay."

"That okay sounded like it came with,"a cough. "Conditions."

"Maybe," She laughed. "You aren't dying, Peter."

"I feel like I am…" He blew his nose. Loudly.

She sighed, coming to lean against the open doorway with a towel on her arm. There was just a glitter of mischief in her eyes, something that had been misplaced for the last few years. "Sing first two lines of the next Christmas carol that comes on the radio."

"I can't sing -" Peter's voice squeaked in protest in a way it hadn't since puberty.

"Well, you can walk…" Susan turned back towards the kitchen, dusting off her fingers.

As if on cue, Jolly Old Saint Nicholas paraded through the radio waves.

"It's time." Her mother's voice seemed far away.

Moments passed like hours. Susan once again found herself on the hard pew in an unfriendly environment. It was cold, but nothing like Christmas.

"I think...I could use a minute." Susan's voice caught in her throat and she failed to meet her mother's eyes. Her voice met her ears but sounded forced and foreign. She was floating away to the clouds like a red balloon.

Helen nodded, resting a hand on her daughter's shoulder for a brief moment, before joining the rest of the family. The click of her heels faded along with the slow hum of the rest of the family.

I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't be here.

The thought pressed faster and faster against her skull until the helium carrying her upwards popped and Susan came crashing down into the darkened room.

Susan didn't often allow herself to depart from reality. She liked her feet on the ground, but right now it seemed distant and the higher she sailed the closer her siblings seemed. She wasn't used to feeling so small.

Susan stood on shaky legs and walked towards the singular source of light in the room.

Her feet were hesitant to carry her closer to the empty space that had only moments before held three coffins which were the final resting place of people she had most cherished in this world. Her heels shuffled along the waxed floor. With a cringe, she bent down and removed the offensive shoes, letting her bare feet meet the wooden planks. A shiver shot up her legs. Nylons weren't much for warmth.

A spark of light caught her hand as it strayed along the edge of the pews. Susan bent the corner and the glow began to fill the whole room. The soft pink light spread across her arm into an array of other colours which originated from a magnificent window in front of her. The stained glass was half-covered by scaffolding and muslin cloth, but the afternoon light still flickered into the room below. This was one of the only churches in London that hadn't been completely destroyed by the blitz. Even after many years of repairs, things like stained glass windows weren't the first things on everyone's mind to rebuild. They were art, not a necessity.

As Susan ventured forwards, she wondered.

Had this old building been hiding a rainbow behind its walls all these years? The broken glass before her was carefully crafted into the shape of a lion. It was a glimpse of nostalgia that her sister had always loved. Yet, even before their first trip to Narnia, Lucy had been drawn to this window and the depiction of a large cat in a crown.

Susan bent downwards and placed the hanky on the tiled floor. The clean, crisp square seemed out of place in such a dark room, but this was where Lucy belonged. She had always had blind faith in everything: in magical lions, in crossed fingers, in birthday wishes, and pieces of clover.

Susan had never understood.

She turned away, running her fingers once more over Edmund's initials carved in the bench. Steeling her nerves, she bit her lip — hard. It stung upon the release.

Don't look back.

Susan's eyes darted back to the front of the church. The light through the window had faded. It was April; an afternoon rainstorm was drifting in, perfectly guaranteeing that the burial ceremony would be miserable.

What does a broken window mean to a child that I can't grasp?

There was a clap of thunder as Susan pushed up her umbrella and stepped into the rain leaving the church behind.

Nothing…it means nothing. It's just a fairytale.