I really felt like writing a modern!au of Narnia, because there are so few of them available. Also, I've always wondered if Susan does find love, and if the person she ends up being with helps her in growing and confronting Narnia again. Although I like the idea, I think this isn't the greatest, but I'm satisfied with it. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I do not own the Narnia series, nor any of the characters. The only characters I own are the OC's that show up in this story.
Once upon a time, there were four siblings who went to a magical land, saved it, went back, then went back again to save it again, and returned. There were lots of characters and lots of adventures and a story that all people should hear. That story can be found in a series of seven books, in libraries and homes around the world. This story, however, is different. This story is not about faith and magic and redemption and children. This story is about a girl who became a woman. The girl is featured in the other books, but in those books, she doesn't get her happy ending.
In this story, however, she does.
It began in a coffee shop in New York City, during an interview for a job position.
"Well, thank you for meeting with me this morning, Miss Pevensie. We will make sure to get back to you within the week," the interviewer said, clicking his pen.
Standing, Susan extended her hand. "Thank you. It was a pleasure." The interviewer smiled, turning his attention back the paperwork spread on the coffee table.
Exiting the small coffee shop, Susan took her umbrella from her bag and opened it, shielding her from the rain. She stopped at the stoplight at the corner, staring out at the horizon, where the endless rows of sky scrapers disappeared.
The interview went like all interviews went: she was poised, polite, elegant, while the interviewer was vague, boring, and male. They would ask her of her credentials, which is when she would say she had none. They would see that she never graduated university, and she would respond with, "Finances." Of course, the interviewer would eventually wonder why she left London for New York, when she could have found a job among her own people at one of the fashion houses. Susan would smile and tell him that she wanted a change of pace, a new locale, a new mentality. Sure, that might be taken as a way to pump up the ever-present New York pride of her interviewers. They didn't have to know everyone she knew died.
Taking the subway back to Brooklyn, Susan looked through the window opposite her, watched the black walls of the station zoom past, until they showed another station, another street, another throng of people. This early in the afternoon, there were few passengers and many seats. Stopping at the Washington Square Park station, the subway opened its doors to let in a 20 something year old college student and an old woman enter. The doors closed, and the subway rushed off again.
From where she was sitting, at the very end of the cabin, she could hear the loud rock music pumping out of the headphones of the student sitting across from her. Susan assumed it to be AC/DC, and only because it seemed so similar to what Ed used to play when working on his school work.
Humming to the melody, she stared at her knees. She rubbed a finger across a small run in her stockings, beginning to blossom near her thigh. These were her last pair, but her next interview wasn't until Wednesday.
"You like the song?" A man's voice broke the silence of the cabin. The old woman, who slept on one of the orange plastic seats, didn't notice.
Susan felt her heart jump from the intrusion, but it quickly settled. Looking up, she met the eyes of the college student, whose headphones were now hanging around his neck.
She pursed her lips and quickly lifted the corners off her mouth. "No, just sounds familiar." She had hoped that would be the end of the interaction; she really didn't want to be reminded of the past.
"It's called Back in Black," he responded.
Her brows furrowed. "Isn't this Shoot to Thrill?" She had heard enough of her brother's music to differentiate the two songs.
The student smirked and put in one of his white headphones. "I thought you didn't know the band."
Susan opened her lips, wanting to retort, but closed them. Smiling, the guy extended out the other headphone.
"You sure you don't want to listen?"
She shook her head. "No, I'm fine. Have a pleasant day." Getting up, she brushed imaginary lint off her skirt and grabbed the overhead bar to aid her in walking out the door.
She didn't stop until she reached the stairwell, when she finally turned to look back at the train. From where she was standing, Susan could only see the old woman's grey head lolling against the window, but nothing else.
Breathing a sigh of relief, she turned back around to face the bright, colored map of the MTA. Waiting for the next train wouldn't be as bad as facing another hour of him.
Although she had better things to do and worry about than some conversation with some boy, Susan didn't sleep, her mind replaying the brief interaction.
She didn't want to admit that he looked familiar, what with his dark hair framing his face and the tan skin glowing in the fluorescent lighting of the subway. But he did, and that hurts almost as much as hearing Ed's favorite band blasting out of his speakers. The entire situation was uncanny.
She had spent years, almost a decade, trying to forget and move on from magic and kingdoms and lions. It wasn't particularly hard; in a world of concrete and in a teenage body, Susan could almost pretend 15 years of her life had never happened. It's not as if she still held scars or long-healed scabs on her body, and stretch marks of years past had vanished, to be replaced with smooth, adolescent skin. It's not that she wanted to stop believing or had stopped loving essentially her entire life. But, every time Lucy or Peter or Edmund opened their mouths and remembered, she wanted to scream. Remembering felt like hitting a bruise over and over again, to never let healing take its place. She was nobody here, while she was a legend and a woman to be reckoned with there.
So, when Susan saw a man that looked so much like a prince that could have been, possible, in another situation, a someday-maybe, she panicked. She didn't need to be reminded of what she had lost; she was well aware of that. No, she had to move on and start over and live like Susan Pevensie of Finchley, aspiring journalist.
Of course, if you believed in fate, you would say that it had different things in store.
Susan had managed to forget her little encounter with the student over the past weeks and was now working in a coffee shop by NYU, while searching in vain for yet another journalist position.
Scrubbing down a table, she grabbed old coffee mugs. Walking behind the counter, she set them into the sink, where she quickly washed her hands. At the register was one of her co-workers, Aileen, who studied Biology at NYU when she wasn't busy serving cappuccinos and lattes.
"Su, can you man the register while I go to the bathroom?" Aileen asked after ringing up a customer. Susan nodded, going over to log herself into the computer system while her co-worker scampered off to the back of the shop.
As the shop was fairly empty at the moment, she took the minute to braid her dark hair and pull it into a bun at the nape of her neck. After adjusting her necklace, she tapped the screen in preparation for a customer.
The door opened and closed, letting in a man in a suit. His hair was tied into a ponytail at the nape of his neck, the only sign of slight rebellion in the clean shaven, well dressed individual.
Susan only glanced at him. "What will you have?"
Looking at the menu above her head, the man bit his lip. "I'll have a grande mocha and," he said, before pausing as he looked back down at Susan. The barista looked up from the computer to inquire of what else he wanted before gritting her teeth.
Suddenly, the professional demeanor of the man changed, into one of amusement. "Weren't you the woman that didn't know AC/DC?"
Susan didn't want to meet his eyes, but years of etiquette and confidence made her eyes look up at him. She didn't smile, nor did she widen her eyes in alarm. Susan merely gazed at him coolly, a trick she had learned once, long ago, to have people leave her alone.
"I don't know what you're talking about. What else would you like?"
The man chuckled. "A croissant, please. Although, I'm impressed by how quickly you picked up what I was listening to, since subways aren't known for being the quietest of places."
Susan walked over to the display counter, where she took a croissant with a pair of tongs and dropped it into a paper bag.
Handing the bag to him, she said, "8.95, please."
He handed her his credit card, which she swiped through the computer system. "Thank you, have a nice day," she said, not bothering to look up at him after handing him back his card.
The man smiled. "You too." Grabbing the coffee Aileen had made him after her return, he strode out of the shop, the bell over the door ringing behind him.
Susan decided then that she really hated the man.
After the student discovered that Susan worked at the coffee shop near campus, he wasn't shy to stop by once a week to bug her. Susan assumed he didn't know why she disliked him (she didn't really know herself) but that didn't stop him from making an effort to make her laugh or even notice his presence beyond just a mere customer.
Of course, he didn't always come alone. Sometimes, he came with classmates, other times with girls. The times he came with other women appeared more like study dates, as they sat in the corner of the shop where they would discuss math, science, politics, and literature, everything under the moon. Even on those dates, however, the man continued to drop in a comment to Susan every once in a while. She pretended it didn't bug her—in fact she pretended she didn't know him—but those interactions always sat deep within her, making her boil with anger every night she came home.
Sometimes, the student attempted for long conversations, which was when she learned his name was Matthew. Other times, he merely asked her how his day was. On those other times, he was quiet and studious, always reading or scribbling something at his table, sipping his mocha every couple of minutes.
On occasion, Susan wanted to tell him to never come back, to leave her alone. Every time he entered the store she felt as if she was looking at a ghost, somebody that didn't exist and never would. She wanted to scream at him and cry and curse the heavens, because why should she always be reminded of that godforsaken land that didn't exist?
She never did, however. She was about, but then, as she looked up at him, she saw his eyes, crinkled with humor and pure joy that all she managed to choke out was a "Yes, my day was good. Thank you."
In those moments, she remembered Matthew was nothing like Caspian. Caspian didn't exist in this world and acted out of a code of loyalty and chivalry. He acted out of duty, as all knights in shining armor did. Back then, she wanted that, a king to complement her queen. Matt was the opposite. He was loyal to nothing and no one, except for possibly her. There was no code he followed or duty he attempted to complete. He did what he wanted to, not what he needed to, which was such an unfamiliar concept to her. Nobody she ever knew had done what they wanted to: not Caspian, not Lucy, not Edmund, not Peter. They were perfectly content fulfilling their duties of saving lives and kingdoms and worlds. Susan was too, long ago. Now, of course, she was doing neither, for she had abandoned her duty of remembering Narnia years ago and felt selfish for enjoying life when her siblings never would.
So, seeing the Matthew laugh and jibe at her, making sarcastic comments even though she would have considered it impolite, Susan was reminded that he was not Caspian, just as she was not just Susan Pevensie.
One morning, as winter was settling and advertisements for Christmas were popping up, she was handing the Matt his coffee when he cleared his throat.
"Why don't you like AC/DC?" He looked up at her, his dark brown eyes wide in question. Although Susan was still holding onto his coffee, his fingers were also grasping the warm mug, his cold hand touching hers.
Letting go, she wiped her sweaty palms on her apron. "Brother listened to it all the time. It bothered me."
It was the most she had told him of herself, or to anyone really. Susan wasn't sure why she did it, or why he seemed to understand, when it was such a vague answer. Perhaps she thought it would finally shut him up. Perhaps he thought she hated her brother. None of that mattered because from then on, their tentative relationship changed. He still bugged her, making jokes and trying to make her laugh. But now, it was not at her expense, but at his own. He would tell her how he's not used to snow, being from California, so one day, he fell in a patch of ice and broke his hand freshman year, right in front of a girl he liked. He would tell her how his sisters once put makeup on his face in 8th grade without his knowledge, and he showed up to school with everyone laughing at him. Susan was amused, her lips curling tentatively up. The first time she laughed, Matt grinned so wide, she was sure that his face was about to crack. Of course, the next second he ruined it by asking for a scone.
Eventually, he asked her out. She didn't know whether to agree, because while she was still aloof around him, they had begun to form somewhat of a friendship, if one could call it that. So, she obliged, to Aileen's pleasure and her own confusion.
She had expected him to take them out to dinner. Instead, they went ice-skating among the other tourists at Rockefeller Center. She was certain it was the most cliché thing she had ever done, but he bought her a crepe and didn't try to hold her hand, after he saw that she could stand very much on her own on ice. So, all in all, she marked the date as a success.
Their other dates were successes too. They went dancing in many places, from underground bars to salsa clubs to out in the street next to a band playing outside some apartment building just because it was fun. Matthew told her about his family, his sisters Wendy and Alicia, and his dog Pepper. Susan told him of her boarding school in Finchley, her parents, and her irritating cousin. She only mentioned her siblings once, when she said that they had died two years ago. He didn't prod for more information, although occasionally he would mention that her brother had good taste in music.
He kissed her at midnight on New Year's Eve and kissed her again five minutes later. It was two days later, when New York City was packing up its festivities until the next winter, that Susan realized she had fallen in love.
She didn't admit it was love. She only realized that Matt no longer reminded her of Caspian and she no longer connected him to Narnia and to irony and to pain. It was then that she began to wonder if this was her moving on, her building her own happiness separate from that of an old kingdom.
In February, she got a job as a journalist in some tiny local newspaper that people normally don't read but use to store fish and meat in. They celebrated with champagne in her dingy apartment and made love with the lights on. When she got up in the morning, she put on her robe and kissed Matt's brow, before going into her kitchen to make coffee. As she was pouring milk into her mug, she felt Matt tug her to his bare chest and she smiled.
"Morning, princess." He often used disgustingly cliché nicknames on her, to make her laugh.
She turned to face him. "I'm not a princess. I'm a queen," she said.
Matt grinned and kissed her jaw, before bending down to her ear. "Oh, I know." After he said that, she grabbed his face and kissed him with such force, he didn't respond for several seconds.
Letting go, she looked him in the eyes. She held one of his hands, squeezing it. She sighed and smiled. "I love you."
He groaned. "You're terrible. You already have my damn heart, what more do you want?" She swatted his chest and pulled him down to kiss her again.
They had been together six months in May, and they celebrated their anniversary on the same day as Matt's graduation. They had gone out to dinner in their favorite Mexican place, and as they waited for their food to come, Susan decided to tell him.
"When I was 12, I went to another world."
Matt looked up from his beer, pausing with the glass halfway between the table and his mouth. "What?"
Susan rubbed her hands on her skirt. "I know it's hard to believe, but when I was 12, my siblings and I ended up in another universe. I'm not really sure how."
His brows furrowed. "I'm confused."
She cleared her throat and took a sip of her beer. "I told you how I spent some time in the country, when my dad was in the army? Well, Lucy—my sister— found a wardrobe which sent us to another world. And we…well, we saved it from a witch and became kings and queens and ruled for 15 years. And then, we came back to England, and we were children again."
Just then, the waiter came with their food. After he left, Matthew rubbed his jaw.
After a minute of silence, Susan said, "I understand if you want to think I'm crazy because I was convinced for a long time that I was crazy so if you want to break up, that's fine, but I needed to tell you. Narnia was—is a huge part of my life, and I'm not Susan without it."
He sighed and looked at her across the table. "So, when you said you were a queen, you really meant it."
She nodded.
He took another sip of his beer. "I believe you. I don't really have any other choice. It's not like you lie on a regular basis. If I can't trust you with this, I can't really trust you with anything, can't I?"
Susan bit her lip. "No, you really can't."
Taking his knife and fork, Matt smiled. "So, should I address you as your Majesty or something?"
She laughed, taking her knife as well. "Only if you want to. I was never a dictator, after all."
Years passed. They married, got jobs. Susan moved up on the journalism ladder, landing a position on the New York Times. Meanwhile, Matt worked in a book publishing company, often sending Susan manuscripts of books she would enjoy. Susan remained friends with Aileen, who became a veterinarian. Her ex-co worker reminded her of Lucy, if Lucy had been an American and gone on to college.
Susan became pregnant with three children. She didn't name them after her siblings, because she didn't want to force a destiny onto her children when she wanted them to forge their own. Her children grew up in a home of stories and fairytales, of truth and love. They grew up listening to their mother tell them stories of her childhood saving countries from witches and from equally evil human enemies. Stories of Narnia were not the only stories they heard however; their father would tell them about his times in school, his own adventures that were no less exciting than their mother's.
Their children grew and moved on. Eventually, even Matt moved on, leaving Susan once again, alone in New York City. This time, however, she did not sit in disbelief, wondering where her life went wrong. Instead, she was ready to face her own end, her own beginning.
She died on Christmas, but when she opened her eyes, it was spring. She was sleeping in a rich bed, dressed in a pale pink nightgown. Although Susan had just woken, she knew exactly where she was.
Supporting herself, she sat up. At the sight before her, she grinned.
Beside her, Matt slept, as young as he was on the first day they met. A line of drool dripped on his pillow. In the chair by the fireplace slept Lucy, a book in her hands. On the floor at her feet, lay Edmund, his hair disheveled. On the couch on the opposite side of the room, Peter was sleeping, one of his legs hanging off the edge of the furniture.
However, the most pleasant was the one at her feet. The proud and loving Aslan sat smiling, his head bowed.
"Welcome home, Queen Susan. Welcome home."
A/N: Hope you enjoyed it! Any constructive comments are always appreciated, as well as anything you liked!