I actually began work on this a year ago but never really had the inspiration to finish this. For some reason I did tonight (probably because I'm procrastinating on studying for my AP Statistics test). Funny how that works.
Anyway, here's hoping you enjoy. I've never really tried delving into Susan's mind before or her history, so here's my attempt at it! Let me know how you liked it please, or even if you didn't... please phrase it nicely and leave me a review anyway! :)
Much love!
Disclaimer: Don't own anything. Anything. Not even the clothes on my back...
The first Christmas Susan comes back for, she finds that her cousin Eustace has decided to join the Pevensies for their traditional family dinner. Why he's decided to do so, or why he's suddenly so chummy with Edmund and Lucy is beyond her understanding. She does not understand at first why he actually smiles brightly, why he chatters excitedly with Lucy, why Peter is more affectionate towards him, why Edmund offers to take him around Finchley- then after dinner she overhears Eustace mention something that sounds like Narnia, and she realizes that he's lost, too.
Lost- because he believes in a false world, like her brothers and sisters. She's heard it all before, of course. Heaven knows Lucy has tried to bring her into their make-believe world. Really, Susan thinks to herself, her siblings are well past the ages of make-believe pretend lands. They should grow up, learn how to deal with reality- instead of babbling about dryads and talking mermaids and a talking lion. How silly! Lions didn't talk.
She admits to herself that she did once partake in such fantasies, but she reminds herself that she needed something to keep herself occupied instead of fretting about the war. It wasn't fair that her siblings expected her to keep up the façade! She was eighteen, in the prime of her life and as beautiful as a rose in springtime- men were practically falling over their own feet to get to her. How perturbed would they be, if they heard her indulging her siblings in ridiculous chatter? All hopes for a bright future would be lost to wisps of pure baseless fantasies.
She sits often at her writing table, dashing off letters to her old friends in America while her siblings congregate around the fire and tell tales for Eustace and later on, Eustace's friend Jill Pole. She's another one, Susan observes, lost and wandering in fantasy lands of make-believe. Even when Susan takes her aside, tries to indulge in some actual real woman talk, Jill squirms uncomfortably and makes some feeble excuse to return to Eustace's side, choosing to listen to Edmund tell some tale about a man named Caspian and the Dawn Treader, whatever that may be.
What surprises her, first of all, is how much Peter debases himself, how much he chooses to lose his sense of sanity. This is her oldest brother, the one with the most common sense, the sibling who, quite frankly, she is willing to follow. Except not for this. Peter sometimes takes her out for a meal, but his eyes glaze over when Susan attempts to talk to him, and she has the strangest feeling that Peter no longer listens to her.
It's the same with Lucy, but that at least is to be expected. Susan understands that Lucy has always been…flighty, prone to huge fantasies and a vivid imagination. How else could she invent all these stories about talking mice and flying dragons and amazingly detailed swordfights? Susan wants to scream when Lucy turns to her and begins her sentences with "Do you remember when…". No, she wants to yell at her younger sister, towering imperiously, I don't remember because it never happened! Lucy, unfortunately, never gets the glowering glares Susan throws her way. Or she does, but chooses to ignore them.
Susan is most disappointed in Edmund. Her younger brother is logical to the point of calculating, but not these days anymore. These days it seems as though he is pushing his common sense aside in order to take his place with Peter and Lucy. Susan has tried to talk to him about it- after all, she trusts Edmund the most- but Edmund stubbornly insists on that accursed Narnia being a reality and nothing Susan can say or do will dissuade him from believing otherwise. In the end, Susan watches him go off with Lucy and Peter, and she can't help but feel as though she has just lost another friend.
…
The news reaches her on a cold gray English morning, as she's waiting at a church for her latest courtier. It is nipping, biting cold, and for some reason Susan's mind drifts off to thoughts of a frost-covered lamppost and a toweringly tall white queen. Instead, she sighs, and a wisp of breath escapes her mouth and hangs in the cold English air. It frames her lovely face- lovely but missing something, she remembers Edmund telling her sadly before he left for his trip to London the day before. Susan's hands unconsciously go to the necklace that she found that morning on her dresser- she supposes that Lucy left it there for her, but why on earth would she leave a new necklace in the shape of a beaver, Susan will never know.
The new boy- William, she murmurs in her head- is heading up towards the street towards her, clutching a newspaper in his hand. "Have you heard?" he asks, handing her the paper.
Heard what? Susan blinks at him even as he waves the newspaper around. Her eyes flick to the front page and they catch words as they jump out at her. Accident- train- London-
London.
It takes Susan five seconds to crumple to the ground in tears.
…
Susan doesn't even attend the funeral, because there's no point in having one. They found no bodies, William tells her softly, it was quick and painless. Susan refuses to believe it, though, because she feels this aching pain in her chest that she somehow wishes someone shares with her; but she is orphaned, deprived of her family in one fell swoop.
She doesn't even go back to the place that she once called home. William tries to coax her to go back at first, saying that it will be good for her; but after she's cried herself to the point of exhaustion, he simply leaves the subject alone- and leaves himself. Richard follows right after, then Ben and then Edward and then Oliver. Susan watches all of them leave, somehow not even affected by the sight of one more person leaving her behind.
The rest of the year passes by and soon Susan can't remember anything anymore. She's resorted to surviving hours at a time, stuck in a modeling job that offers her no more happiness. Even waking up in the morning is difficult; stuck in the dreary London mist, she is unable to shake off the gloom that seems to be her constant companion now. It becomes a harder challenge to swing her feet out of bed and stare at her dark eyes in the mirror, trying to find something that is worth living for.
The rare days where she feels the strongest are when she wakes up in the morning with the word Aslan on her lips, though she's not quite sure where the word comes from or what it even means. She seems to remember Lucy mentioning something about it when she babbles to Susan, or maybe it was Edmund commenting on it, or maybe- Susan squints when she seems to remember a hazy memory of Peter on his knees, begging her to please come back, Su, please come back to Aslan and us and Nar-
She always pushes the memory away because she bitterly recalls the timbre of his voice, how desperate and sad and oh, how he must have loved her to blindly beg her like that to come home. Those memories are instantly locked up, never to be opened again because she entertained those thoughts once and was promptly assaulted by nightmares that night.
Susan always runs from those memories- heaven forbid that she would ever try to confront the ghosts who always seem so lost.
…
She runs into Eustace's mother Alberta some time later that next year at a company photoshoot. It is common knowledge on the Pevensie side that the Pevensies and the Scrubbs (with the exception of Eustace, of course) had never gotten along; as such, Susan greets Alberta rather frostily.
Pleasantries are exchanged over a cup of tea, and soon talk turns to more personal matters. "So Susan," Alberta says as cool as can be, "I hear you have a beau?"
She denies it, because that is untrue of course. She hasn't seen anyone in over two months. Alberta clucks unsympathetically. "Well," she says, "best find one. You're not getting any younger, Susan." She looks Susan up and down. "You're a very pretty girl," she says, somehow managing to make it not sound like a compliment, "don't let it go to waste like your sister Lucy. Always nattering on about her little fantasies." She sighs, as though sighing will make her sound sympathetic. "Poor Lucy. Shame what happened to her, isn't it?"
Susan finds her teeth gritted in anger for no apparent reason- because isn't that exactly what she thought about Lucy?- but restrains herself from snapping at Alberta. "Yes, it's a shame what happened to my siblings and Eustace," she says as calmly as possible. (She ignores something in her mind that whispers with pride, "Queen Susan the Gentle".) "Excuse me, Alberta. It's been nice meeting with you, but I have work to return to."
"Of course," Alberta returns. "You always had such a level head on your shoulders, Susan. You were always the sensible one. So were Edmund and Peter, until they began living in their dreams, of course." She nods once, a peremptory nod, and then strides away.
Susan is left standing alone, holding a cup of tea that has by now grown cold. Always the sensible one. Being sensible meant that you had to be rational. Being rational meant that you knew where you were going. Knowing where you were going meant that you had a path to follow. Having a path to follow always meant that you never got lost. Right?
But Susan does not sleep that night, because for once in her life, she has never felt quite this lost before.
…
She does marry another year later. She marries John Clay, an American who is visiting London on business and who lost his wife a year ago. At first, Susan isn't quite sure why she loves this man so much- he is smart, and gentle, and kind, she confides to her best friends, but even though they nod and murmur their congratulations, she knows that they don't understand why she's attracted to this plain man at least five years older than she is.
It is William, now one of her best friends, who finally puts his finger on it. "You love him because he is broken, too," he says simply before resuming his reading.
She scoffs at William, but she goes home that night and twists her wedding band around her finger. And then she realizes that William is partly right. John is broken, too, but there is more to that. She is attracted to him because he is healing from his hurts, because he is slowly winning against his demons.
John does not probe into her past, but Susan knows that he knows. He never asks unless she volunteers information, and soon she finds herself telling him everything. She finds herself describing Lucy's hair, Edmund's habit of chewing on only the right side of his mouth, Peter's strange addiction to dictionaries, Eustace's constant trips, their conversations about Narnia. John asks where Narnia is and what it's like, and she finds herself telling him everything. Over the course of the next few months, she finds herself telling him stories about Aslan and dryads and the White Witch and the Tisroc and Mr. Tumnus and the best part is that John does not laugh at her. Nor does he smile condescendingly. He sits opposite her, holds her hand, and listens, asking questions, paying attention. (Susan almost dares to think that he is a "friend of Narnia", even if she isn't.)
Alberta doesn't approve, of course ("Darling, you could do so much better!") but Susan finds that for once she does not really care what her stuffy aunt thinks. She begins to find meaning in her life again, begins to open her heart to John. She finally grows strong enough to look through all of Lucy, Edmund and Peter's unopened letters to her, and finally she cries for her siblings and for Jill and Eustace and for the others who died on that train.
…
Susan never stops feeling lost, but she doesn't feel as lost as she was before she met John.
Some days, it is harder than others. She still wakes up in the morning sometimes wanting to scream from the nightmares of a train crash and a white witch spreading frost all over the scene, but most days she wakes up with the word Aslan on her lips. These days, Susan knows why the word comforts her.
When she is twenty two, Susan discovers that she is with child. When she finally holds her child in her arms, she doesn't hesitate to tell John that she wants to call their child Lucy. And for a moment, Susan can almost see her siblings standing by her side, smiling approvingly as Lucy bounces up and down with unrestrained glee.
Little Lucy grows up to be almost like Susan's little sister, vivacious and bright and sunny, and soon she is at that age where she is demanding for a bedtime story every night. At first Susan settles for traditional bedtime stories, but it becomes clear that Lucy is bored, restless. John only laughs when Susan mentions this to him. "Tell her about Narnia, then," he suggests.
Susan hesitates and John strokes her cheek. "She deserves to know the place where her mother is a queen," he says gently (and Susan can't help but think that he is a suitable match for a Gentle Queen of Narnia).
So she does, and Lucy drinks it in like water, always asking for more. And Susan never runs out of stories to tell. Finally, one night Lucy asks, "Is Narnia a real place?"
Susan does not hesitate. "Yes, Lu," she says. "It's a very real place and one day you'll be there."
"Will you be there?"
Susan only smiles and kisses her daughter's cheek. "Maybe," she says softly as she gets up to leave. "Maybe, Lu."
…
Aslan comes to her late in life, as golden and bright as she remembers him. Hello, Susan, he purrs.
"Aslan," Susan breathes before dropping into a curtsey.
He pads over to her, nudging her with his nose. You took your time in arriving, dearest one.
Her face colors. "I know, I'm sorry, Aslan. I didn't listen. I didn't remember. I'm sorry, I shouldn't even be here, I…"
Stop. His voice is rich in power, and Susan feels herself buckle at the weight of it. You are home, Susan. All has been forgiven, and your mistakes are washed away. He shakes his mane and roars, the world shaking as he does so. Home, Queen Susan the Gentle. You are… home.
And then she hears it. "Su!"
Her sister comes tearing down the hill, followed closely by Edmund and Peter. Lucy attacks her with a tight hug. "You're home!" she squeals. "You're finally home!"
"I know," Susan says, tears filling up her eyes, "I know, Lu. It's so good to see you again, but I don't…" She turns to Aslan. "I don't deserve it. After all the things I said, after all the things I did…"
You were lost, Aslan rumbles, but now you are found, Queen Susan. Grace comes to all, and it is dependent on whether you choose to seek it or not. You are home now. He breathes on her, a warm breath that seems to take all the pain from Susan's chest. Once a king or queen of Narnia, always a king or queen in Narnia.
"Come on, Su," Lucy says cheerfully, sliding her arm through Susan's and dragging her off. "You have to come taste the scones Mr. Tumnus made! They're absolutely heavenly."
Yes, Susan reflects as she stumbles along, following Lucy's mad dash through the woods, this was where she belonged. She smiles when she realizes that for the first time, she has never felt so free. For the first time since the accident, she doesn't feel lost. For the first time in a long time... Susan is finally home.
Endings have never been my strong suit. Want to help me improve? Feel free to click the review button... :)
Much love!