Title:
Mask
Character: Susan Pevensie
Fandom: The
Chronicles of Narnia
Theme: persona
Rating: G (K)
Warning (if any): Post Last Battle Angst.
Summary/Note:
Susan doesn't want to remember anymore. This was written for solitaire3
on LJ.
Disclaimer: I don't own Narnia.
Word Count:
582
This mask was all she was. She was no longer Queen Susan the Gentle. How could that wonderful Lion tell her she was never to go back? Narnia was the one place where she felt loved for who she was. Back in London everyone was so judgmental. It hurt to try and ignore the glances that other girls gave her. These looks that told her that that she wasn't good enough. They broke her heart.
That summer was the start of when she decided to create the mask. She went to America with her parents. It was an amazing opportunity. She was away from her siblings and the talk of the one place she felt home, but could no longer reach. She learned how a young lady was supposed to act in her home and started to implement those changes. She started wearing the latest clothes and makeup. She made sure her hair was in place at all times. She started meeting suitors and going out with them. Here in London she learned that one did not push a suitor away, as she had done in that other place.
Soon that other place was just a silly game that they had played that summer while they stayed with that queer old professor. It wasn't important to her anymore. She stopped thinking about it; she stopped talking about it; she stopped believing in it. She had achieved her goal of forgetting about that other place. She was just Susan Pevensie of Finchley. Her life became consumed with material things and boys. She thought she was content.
Then her world as she knew it ended.
Her parents, siblings, cousin, her cousin's best friends, that queer professor and one of his friends were all killed in a train wreck. She was the one who made the arrangements for all of their funerals. She was the one who sorted through their belongings. As she went about these tasks everything she had strived to forget washed back to her in waves that flooded her memory.
A faun. A talking lion. Griffons. Centaurs. Caspian. Jadis. Reepicheep. Gowns for balls in a great castle. All of these memories haunted her.
What was worse was the one thing she could not sell of the Professor's. The large wardrobe that now sat in her spare room was her only connection. She knew that that is where the must be now.
She would crawl into that wardrobe and bang on the back of it screaming to be with the ones she loved again. It never worked. She wished that Lucy, who always wanted her to believe again, would find her horn and call her to Narnia. She hoped that if they forgot about her as some sort of horrific side effect Edmund would locate the electric torch he lost and be reminded of the other world. She hoped Peter was taking care of them because she couldn't help. Most of all she hoped that if she ever saw them again they would forgive her.
Susan soon forgot about her mask, and the clothes, makeup and boys. She started to realize that Aslan may have taken them to get her to remember. Maybe she had more to do here. But as she sat crying in the wardrobe one rainy afternoon she still wished she could forget. They never knew how much she really loved them. That's why it hurt to remember. She just wanted the pain to go away, like her mask did.