A/N: A rewrite of Masquerade, with added Edmund and Lucy. An attempt to look at where social pressure and personal choice blur into one another.
Disclaimer: If I'm C.S. Lewis, someone had better call the press and inform them I'm not dead after all. (Don't do that.) Also, the gorgeous cover image is by wizardeens on deviantART, who can also be found as qutzalcoatl on tumblr.
What happens to Susan is simpler than anyone thinks.
In the days after they all tumble out of the wardrobe again, there's a new and essential closeness between the Pevensie siblings. At different schools, they write to each other, handwriting growing smaller out of necessity, eventually adding more in the margins in a desperate effort to cram as much onto each sheet of paper as possible; at home, they take walks together, spend time sitting in each other's rooms reminiscing, or simply sit together, each with a different task, revelling in nearness to the others. (Their parents seem a little bemused by this surge of family spirit, but rarely remark upon it.) Do you remember…? Do you remember…? Sometimes they even slip back into the Narnian way of speaking, treating each other as kings and queens once more, worthy of all honour and esteem.
So long as they remember Narnia, keep it alive in scribbled, coded letters and words breathed in the privacy of someone's room in the dim light of the evening, it's still there. They have carried it out of the wardrobe with them – not the land itself, painfully beautiful as it is, nor its dearly loved inhabitants, but something more essential than that, a kind of spirit of it: now they must keep it alive between them. Four sets of hands, shielding a flickering candle from the wind. To remember Narnia, you must remember how to be Narnian; to remember how to be Narnian, you must stay in practice, always.
It takes a toll on each of them: there's a quality about Peter and Edmund now that makes them a little distant from the other boys through no fault or effort of their own, only that every now and then that kingliness – not pride, only a sense of honour and responsibility – makes itself known, and their peers withdraw a little, unsettled by something they cannot recognise. Lucy has a bold, wild air about her, and where once she was a candle she now burns like a star. And Susan –
On Susan, it takes more of a toll than on anyone else, and never more so than in the weeks she spends in America, far from any confidant. Susan was a queen, Susan the Gentle, Chatelaine of Cair Paravel. Clearheaded in a crisis; a mind deeper and lovelier than any physical beauty, given to contemplation; strength like that of the mountain's heart, enough to turn back tides. In truth the title of Magnificent would have suited Susan just as well, except that her splendour was subtler, gentler, had a stillness all its own. In England, Susan is the eldest girl and the prettiest, and that defines her. No need to worry your pretty little head about it, dear. Goodness, Susan, I never can tell what you're thinking these days. You ought to be going out and having fun, a girl your age! And have you got a regular young man, hm?
(And how can she tell them she has always been more than just a list of lovers? How can she tell them that if they can't tell what she's thinking, the fault lies in them, for not looking for the right thoughts? How can she tell them that fun and joy are two different things that only sometimes overlap, that she can't enjoy the sweetness without the substance? These people are schoolmates, teachers, parents, friends. She cares about them.
The process of being moulded can be slow and soft and unbearably gentle, and how can you fight something if you never see it coming?)
The tipping point comes in America. Edmund and Lucy have each other; Peter has the Professor. Susan has no-one. Susan has a role and a set of expectations to fulfil, and the reality of desperate loneliness if she ever, ever shows more of herself than Susan Pevensie the pretty English girl. Ever the diplomat, she makes conversation, she tries to enjoy herself and she does. She's always liked dressing up and going out to parties, using her beauty and her wit to make the evening fun for everyone around her, talking to people, making connections, brightening the gathering with charm and grace and humour. She's good at it: it's a kind of power, one she's familiar with. She laughs and joins the game, making conversation, enjoying a little courtly flirtation now and again, using the rules rather than fighting them, as every great player does. (And self-censoring, quietly, unconsciously, constantly. Gradually, unnoticeably becoming more and more selective with her words, deeming some topics appropriate, others off-limits.)
Pressure can be a very gentle thing, but so is water when it wants to be, and yet it can shape stone. And no one person has the strength to withstand it, not without the strength of others to give them an anchor. An anchor is precisely what Susan lacks. Susan Pevensie advances with confident step; Queen Susan the Gentle quietly, discreetly recedes.
And Narnia…what a beautiful game it was, in its time. What a magnificent make-believe. Susan remembers it warmly, wistfully, with a little sadness. But if we committed ourselves to every belief we held as children, every make-believe that was real to us then, we would free-fall into a terrifying, unknown future, and we would have to do so alone.
It seems so natural to call it a game. Surely that was all it was.
(Her siblings look at her with strange, sad eyes. Still waters ran deep in Queen Susan. What is left now is just the light dancing on the water.)
"A game," Edmund said quietly, staring at the window where dim light, filtered through a wall of dark cloud, shone in the drops that patterned the glass. "That's all it is to her now, a game. I wish we'd gone to America with her, Lu, even if –" He broke off for a moment. "Even if we would have missed seeing Caspian and all the others, I wish we could have been there with her. I wish we knew what happened to her there."
"I think I do know," Lucy said, her voice even softer. Edmund started: this was Lucy's voice when she was terribly sad, and terribly angry. "We all came back from Narnia different, don't you see? That's what we were allowed to bring back from Narnia: ourselves, but our Narnian selves. So we have to try to – to stay in character, if you know what I mean. We have to stay in practice. For you and Peter it's alright: you're boys, you're expected to be kingly and gallant and all that. And I can get away with it because I'm still young enough to be called a child.
"But Su's older, and prettier than me besides, and I think – I think perhaps she's not allowed to be Narnian here. I don't mean by law, I mean by – by expectations. She's not expected to be like that, here, so she just…forgot how."
"And if you forget how to be Narnian," Edmund murmured, "then of course you forget Narnia."
Lucy nodded miserably. "She didn't mean to – I expect she didn't even want to. I think it just sort of happened to her so slowly that she didn't notice."
Edmund said a rather foul word he'd picked up on the streets of Tashbaan. "It's not the parties per se that I mind," he said tiredly.
"Of course not," Lucy agreed. "We all know Su's magnificent at parties, to borrow the title from Peter for a minute –" They both laughed. "She's kind and beautiful and very good at talking to people, and making sure that everyone has fun. It's no wonder all her friends are wild to invite her. It's just that – when was the last time you heard her talk about politics, or philosophy? Don't you remember – all those little comments she used to make about the ambassadors, and you'd always have to fight not to laugh because they were so accurate –"
"Not to mention she could quote you any poet you pleased, Narnian or Archenlander or Calormene," Edmund added. "And remember when we first came back here and heard those political debates on the wireless, and Su started arguing with them from her chair?"
"Not to mention the theology debates," Lucy said cheerfully. "And speaking of Calormene poets – she was always so interested in Calormen and its culture, remember? I think that must have been half the reason she found Rabadash interesting in the first place. And don't forget all those obscure songs she learned on our first visit to the Lone Islands."
"The last time there were theology debates on the wireless, she just switched it off," Edmund muttered.
"Yes," Lucy said, her voice becoming subdued. "I found a book of translated Chinese poetry the other day, just the sort of thing I thought she was bound to like, and she just said, That's lovely, Lucy darling. She sounded exactly like one of those ghastly friends of Mother's, the ones who always want to pat you on the head."
"That's what I'm worried about," Edmund said. "It's all very well to enjoy parties, and I'll be the first to say that Su's marvellous at them, but –" He broke off, unable to find the right word.
"But it's sort of like muscles atrophying, isn't it," Lucy said softly. "Or only exercising one limb. If she never does anything else, I worry that she'll forget how to do anything else."
"Why?" Edmund said, helplessly. "Why would she just – stop, like that?"
"I suppose it's another thing that happened to her in America." Lucy's tone was thoughtful, but angry, too. "I mean, come on, Ed: you know what happens when she tries to talk about – philosophy, or something, with people here. We're the only ones she can talk to about it these days, and we weren't there. I supposed she started sort of…censoring herself. Until she stopped talking about it or thinking about it altogether."
"Yes," Edmund said. His voice was heavy. "And if she tried to talk about it, her friends would ask what had got into her, or someone would say there was no need for her to worry her pretty little head about politics, or that it was all very well for a girl to be clever but she'd better be careful because most men don't like to be contradicted. And she'd stop talking about it, not because she agreed with them, but just so as not to make them uncomfortable."
Lucy nodded. They sat in silence a moment.
"I do wish Eustace and Jill would shut up about it, though," Lucy said, after a while. "They've no right to talk about Su that way."
Edmund sighed. "Eustace thinks of Narnia as…redemption, I suppose. That's what it meant for him. I suppose it must irritate him to see Susan calling it a game, when for him it was the difference between being the person he is now and being a right little beast."
"He still needn't talk that way, though," Lucy said unhappily. "Just because something's a game doesn't mean it has no meaning. Just think about the kind of story, or game, that's so beautiful that telling it, or playing it, makes it more than it is: gives it meaning. I think perhaps that's what Narnia is for Susan, now."
"A game, but one that meant something." Edmund sounded a little more hopeful now. "Do you really think that'll be enough? To keep her from becoming someone we don't know any more?"
Lucy smiled. "It's something, anyway. Don't you remember what that Talking Hare said about her? That being around her was like being near a very still clear pool, or the darkest parts of the forest on a summer day? All still and cool and so beautiful it hurt?"
"'She's very deep, Queen Susan is'," Edmund quoted. "Yes, I remember."
"Well, then," Lucy said. "If anyone could hold onto something beautiful even if it was just a game, it would be Susan, don't you think?"
The rain grew heavier as Edmund nodded.