Matters of Heart
by guardyanangel
Summary: Time was always the real enemy. PC and Suspian, through Susan's eyes. Movie-verse.
A/N: I am not, in book canon, a Suspian shipper, but in movie canon it is a different beast entirely, and adventures with my RP buddy have only made it worse. More than anything, though, I am a big fan of Susan Pevensie, and have many Feels and Opinions about her fate in the books. So this is something that kind of came out of both of those things.
Not related, sadly, to my other Narnia fic Will They Still Call Me Gentle? Also, the line break things I usually use were broken, so I had to go with the big honkin' ones that FFnet gives us. Apologies!
Enjoy!
"You're not exactly what I expected," Caspian says, and as he scans their (young, too young) faces he catches her eyes and her heart stops. She knows, then, how it's going to end.
Still smiles, because he's so young (too young to be fighting a war, but then; weren't they?) and he needs the reassurance and the soft smile is the only way she knows to let out the lightness she feels from meeting his gaze.
Edmund sees, suspects, and turns the tide of the conversation to the matter at hand (he'd always been a sharp one, her little brother.) Susan, grateful for the distraction, turns her eyes and mind to the Narnians and away from the dark-haired young (too young) man who thus far has led her people.
This is a time for fighting, after all, and matters of the heart have no place here.
Peter and Caspian are arguing (again) and she wants to smack the both of them for playing the fool. This is a war, and they are playing with people's lives with their unspoken battle of wills. For them it is not, for all that Lucy says, a matter of dying here or dying there— it is a matter of who has the right to rule.
And Susan knows, for all her brother hates to admit it, that Caspian has that right.
She cannot tell Peter so here, not with the others present, so instead she takes Caspian's side in the hopes that Peter will listen to her counsel (because he used to, before, but they were older then.) The look he gives her is one of betrayal and she realizes quickly that even were she to bring this matter up again in private, he still would not listen because he is a (too old) king forced into a (too young) boy's body and there is nothing able to reason with that anger.
She knows this. She has lived through the anger and arrived already at the point of resignation.
"You're being an idiot," she tells Peter later, "This isn't for you to decide. Our time here is done."
"My time, you mean," comes the sharp reply, "Because isn't that what you're hoping? That when we win he'll make you his Queen again?"
(He'd always been a sharp one, her big brother.)
"Don't be ridiculous," she manages to answer, "I'm too old for him."
A bitter, cutting laugh, "He's almost as old as you are, Su."
No, she thinks with a heavy sadness, but Peter is already walking away.
Caspian pleads with them to find the professor, reminds them of the old man's involvement in their presence here, and Peter looks at her, genuinely asking for her input (too late, she thinks, but it isn't time for that now.) There isn't time, really, for them to look for the professor, either, and she almost says no, but then her heart repeats again that they would not be with here without him and she is glad to be back, isn't she?
(She almost says no to that, too, but all that comes out is an agreement to the alteration in the plan that she isn't able to take back.)
Love and war are inexplicably tied, she remembers with a sudden, bitter taste in the mouth.
She still cannot help but watch Caspian go with a heavy fondness and a desperate, unspoken plea that he will come out of this safely.
Narnia's kings, Susan decides, have a tendency of being hot-tempered fools at the most inconvenient of times. Which means that, given Caspian's behaviour is just as brash as her tempestuous brother's, that he will likely be as good a king as the Magnificent once was.
Granted, of course, that he survives the night.
But he is not thinking— too rash to as he presses the blade against his uncle's throat. Still, she is the Gentle Queen, and she was known for her way with even the wildest.
"Caspian, this won't make things any better," she argues— because she knows, better than he does, that a life for a life does nothing in the end and he hesitates; and she's almost certain that she could get him to back away if it weren't for his Lion-forsaken uncle and his aunt, who she feels nothing but pity for until her arrow is being launched into Caspian's arm.
Susan has no compunctions, then, about aiming to kill the Telmarine king, and is for a moment entirely terrified when she misses (but she knows why; it's because it's been too long and she no longer trusts this bow, no longer trusts this land— no longer trusts the Lion who surely had some plan he refused to reveal upon bringing them here. It's a dangerous thing to think.)
"You're an idiot," she murmurs to Caspian as she pulls the arrow out. She doesn't think he hears. His mind his elsewhere.
Hers is, too, by the time the battle breaks out properly.
They are grieving and even faithful Lucy does not dare speak at the moment about calling to the Lion. Susan helps her younger sister tend to the wounded that escaped the castle alive, does the proper mourning rituals with the centaurs and fawns as she learned to long (had it only been a year?) ago. Peter and Edmund join them, her younger brother's eyes dark in a way she'd not seen since immediately after their fight with Jadis and—
Jadis
—they all feel the unnatural cold that settles in when the witch is called. Edmund understands it first, perhaps, but it is Lucy who puts the pieces together (she'd always been a sharp one, her little sister) and gasps with tight horror, "Caspian."
Peter comprehends with a suddenness Susan does not wish to delve into and is off towards the (too young) Prince in a heartbeat. Edmund and Lucy are close on his heels.
Susan takes a moment, calms the now-concerned Narnians her siblings had left in their wake, before she makes her way to the Stone Table. She does not hurry. She knows that Edmund, at least, will have it sorted.
She also does not hide her disappointment when she meets Caspian's eyes in the aftermath, and is gratified to see that he looks ashamed.
(But she has to walk away when her gaze drifts towards the Lion upon the wall, because she understands the Prince's desperation better than she gives voice to. She is not faithful Lucy, after all, and like Peter she is tired of waiting to prove herself to the one who had forced them to abandon their home in the first place.)
She listens, still, when Lucy asks them to try again, and she does not know if it is hope or despair that makes Peter agree, but they both know the instant he does that their youngest sibling will not be going alone. And maybe it is the weight of the battle or the likelihood of facing Aslan that gives everything such finality, but Susan knows with the same way she has always known of bad things coming that their time is soon at its end. It's unsettling.
Caspian sees them off, giving her his horse and offering her back her horn and the air is heavy with all the things that should be said—
("Why don't you hold on to it?" she replies with a smile, "You might need to call me again."
It's sounds too encouraging. Sounds too much like 'we will have a chance. You will be able to call me again.' She should have known better.)
—But Lucy is here, and their time is over, now, and he is so young (too young, but he's growing up the same way they all did) and so she smiles a little brighter this time and encourages the horse into motion, leaving him behind.
Lucy teases, and Susan pretends her heart does not ache as they ride away.
Their time is done— or at least, hers is. Lucy will not get through to Aslan if she does not make this stand, and for the sake of their people, Lucy must get through to Him. So Susan thinks nothing of it as she slides off the horse and bids her sister farewell.
She puts up a good fight. Of course she does. She is just as valiant as Lucy for all she does not bear her title. She is ready for the end when she thinks it is about to come. She stares the approaching man unflinchingly, does not dare greet death with closed eyes.
A lion roars, or maybe it is just a young (except not really) man's battle cry, and Caspian offers her his hand and another chance at life and for the first time she allows herself to hope that maybe Aslan will grant her this happiness. She retrieves her bow, takes his hand and rides back with him towards the battle with a lightness in her heart she has been denying since they'd first looked each other in the eyes.
There is shame when she finally sees Aslan. Shame that almost entirely smothers the pride she feels when Caspian is invited to stand, a king of Narnia at last (and he is not, she realizes suddenly, so young. They were younger when they came to the throne.)
The shame and the hope battle inside her, but she does not blame Aslan this time. She is the one who turned her back; she would understand if the Lion did not think her deserving of this.
Selfishly, she hopes He will decide one time parted from their homeland is enough.
Caspian takes her aside when they arrive at the castle. Confesses what he feels and what she knows she does as well with a hesitancy that is endearing. She does not have the heart to tell him that she doubts that it can last. Does not have the strength to lie and say she does not feel the same. Asks instead that they only let themselves try to see how things will pan out from here, without rushing into anything hasty.
(It is more than she deserves, she knows. Can feel by the weight of the Lion's eyes upon her when they rejoin Him and her siblings. But she pushes that aside to embrace instead the happiness that exists when a love is felt and returned.)
It is peacetime, after all, and surely matters of the heart can have their day.
They have a week. A week of private conversations between the Queen of Old and the new King, of repairing, of settling Caspian into his castle, of giving him advice he listens to now, freely, even from Peter, on how best to integrate the Telmarines and Narnians. There is a proper coronation, and a ball, and she dances with Caspian much to the disapproving frowns of her brothers, and she lets herself hope it will last.
They have a week. Later— she tells herself, as Aslan breaks the news that they are to leave and never return— later she will be grateful she had even this much time (but later is not now, and likely will not ever be.)
She does not speak to Caspian in the hours before their departure. She would not be able to bear it. Would be forced just upon the sight of him to go to Aslan and beg to remain.
(But she is a Queen, and she does not beg, and so the King will be greeted only with shrugs and expressions of sympathy when he asks for the Gentle Queen and finds he cannot locate her anywhere.
Hiding away as she is, she tells herself that he'll have to get used to it soon enough.)
She tells the young (and he is young, still, but he is learning) man that it would never have worked out, that she was too old (and she almost believes it, because at the moment she feels so old that her own bones are almost too heavy to carry) and walks away with the intention of never looking back— Except she does look back, and she decides that if is the last she is to see of him and her home, then why listen to what the rules of propriety say?
So she kisses him hard, (and he tastes like Narnia) and when she turns away, she smiles at her siblings because if she does not she knows instead she will start crying.
They know what that smile means (they've always been sharp ones, her siblings) and so Edmund smiles gently back, Peter gives her a look of sympathy (and he looks his age, now, but she isn't sure which age she means,) and Lucy squeezes her hand in a way that lets Susan know that for all her younger sister has ever been free of heart, she is wise enough to understand when one is breaking.
(She does not look back when they finally turn away. Does not look to the Lion or to the King. She closes her eyes when they walk through the portal, afraid of this final parting in a way she was not afraid of death.
It is a kind of death, in a way, for though she will not realize it until years down the road, Queen Susan the Gentle dies the instant she leaves Narnia for the last time.)
When they are back (it will never be home) in England, she tastes Narnia still on her lips. But then the geeky boy is asking about whether or not she is getting on the train and the truth kicks in hard (and she is so old and her bones feel so heavy, but she scrambles about like a young girl for her things and rushes on the train with her siblings.)
Edmund, ever good at distraction, offers a joke that is still painful for its rawness, but Susan is (was) the Gentle Queen and she is an expert at dealing with wildness, and so she reigns in the ache running rampant in her chest and laughs, holding her head up high.
("It's not how I thought it would be," Peter had said to Lucy before they left and
"You're not what I expected," Caspian had said when they returned and)
This isn't the way she thought she would go, not how she would lose her land or her heart (or, slowly, though she does not realize it now, herself) but time was always the enemy, in the end, and she, Queen Susan the Gentle was too young (and too old) to fight it.
So the queen is set aside with quiet resignation, and Susan Pevensie rises to live— to fight— in her place. Any love felt for a dark-haired young (but not so young) man is tucked away as well.
This is, after all, a time for fighting (though her battles are not of bow and arrow but of fitting into a world not her own.)
Matters of the heart have no place here.
A/N: So that was largely an explosion of thought. Completely un-betaed, so I'm certain there's issues. And it really became a kind of Caspian/Susan/Narnia thing by the end so. Yeah. Hope you liked it!