A/N: So this is a companion piece to my story Quiet Secrets. It can be read alone, although it makes a little more sense if you read my other story first. This would fit in right before the prologue of Quiet Secrets.
I've had this on my computer for a long time now - practically since I finished Quiet Secrets and someone mentioned that I should write a sequel. I did start, but ran out of inspiration and ideas pretty quickly, and this work was resigned to a fate of gathering dust. Then the other day I was looking through some stuff and I found this, and when I read it, I realized it works well as a one-shot. So I've decided to post it, and I hope everyone likes it!
The Pevensie children are dead; only Susan remains, but she is a ghost of her former glory.
Narnia is dead. Susan can feel it in her heart, although she pretends not to. The constant ache of loss is so similar to the ache for her family that sometimes she cannot distinguish between the two.
The Queen is dead. Susan is too lonely now, and too afraid to become her other self. The only traces of the noble are hidden in the memories tucked in drawers and locked with keys – hidden in places no one would think to look.
Joy is dead. Susan is drowning in her sorrows, drowning in her loss. She feels the world threatening to suffocate her, and she sinks down into despair.
It feels to her as though death overcomes all.
_____
Susan sits on the bed of her tiny apartment's bedroom and wonders how easy it would be to simply drift away – away from life and the troubles that accompany it. She is thinking about inevitability – no matter how hard anyone tries, they all die in the end. She wonders if there is any real use in trying – it would be so much easier to give up, drift away, join the clouds.
This whole week has been a bother – it has been nearly a month since the accident, but the mournful visitors haven't gone away. Susan is sick of hearing consolations, sick of seeing others upset over her loss. She is tired of being told that she will see her family one day in heaven. How can there be a heaven when there is no God, and how can there be a god who would let such terrible accidents happen?
Or perhaps, Susan thinks quietly to herself, this is my punishment. I turned my back, so he took away everyone I ever loved. But then she remembers that the other place isn't real, but is just another of those memories of her siblings. And in thinking of her brothers and sister and the fun they shared and the love they had and the arguments she created, the floodgates open, and Susan collapses into her pillow in biting despair.
_____
Aunt Alberta is in the kitchen, rattling pots as she makes a meal. Susan doesn't want her to; she's tired of stewed carrots, tired of Aunt Alberta's criticising comments, tired of stumbling upon her aunt's moments of private grief for a lost son and brother. But Aunt Alberta has decided it is time to sort through the boxes where everything has been packed since the Pevensie house was sold. Susan doesn't want to look at those boxes, doesn't want to even think of them, but perhaps it will make her aunt leave sooner. So she drags the first box to the middle of the room and slits the tape with her fingernail.
The box is filled with china – all the beautifully patterned pieces Susan's mother had collected over the years. Even in mourning, Aunt Alberta is shrewd, and she sorts the china into what Susan shall keep, what other relatives shall receive, and what shall be sold.
Susan pushes her pile to be sold; she wants none of the painful memories stamped on the china. Aunt Alberta purses her lips but says nothing. However, Susan notices that when she stacks the china carefully in separate boxes, she keeps the pile designated for Susan separate from the rest.
Then Susan drags the next box forward and slits the tape and opens the flaps. This box is filled with towels and bedding. Susan tries to forget the twin beds and the bedroom she and Lucy used to share. Once again, everything is sorted. Again Susan chooses another box, drags it back into the room, and slits the tape.
This box is filled with clothes. This triggers a memory of the empty, lifeless bodies of her family in their coffins, lowered slowly into the ground. Susan remembers staying away that entire night screaming and crying and trembling.
She doesn't even notice the tears that are running down her cheeks until her aunt hands her a tissue and helps her to her feet and leads her from the room. Susan in left in the hall, unable to comprehend this surprisingly sympathetic gesture. All she can see are the coffins in her mind's eye.
_____
It takes some time, but Susan finally manages to calm herself. She makes a silent vow that there will be no more tears shed until the sorting is complete – but when she renters the room, Susan finds that her aunt has finished.
There is still a small pile for Susan to sort through, miniscule compared to what her aunt has done. Susan sits on the floor beside it and begins to sift through the pile, until her hand falls on a smooth, familiar surface. Stunned, she pulls out a red, leather bound journal – her journal, from so many years ago. It has been long since she last thought of it, and longer still since the day she left it in Lucy's room in denial of the memories tucked inside.
The tears have begun to spring again, and Susan wipes at them almost angrily as she opens to the page where her name is written, ever so precisely,
Private Diary of Susan Pevensie
Gentle Queen of Narnia
Yes, this is a rather cliffy sort of ending. I did intend it that way. Please review to let me know what you think!