AN: Another Susanfic. Because there weren't enough of those already. What can I say, I'm unoriginal.
Warning: May contain religion. Please restrain your gasps of horror.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Also, credit goes to C.S. Lewis himself for the italicised quote below.
And in the end, Susan thinks, watching the wet grey sunrise in a tiny garden in Cornwall - and in the end, this is how it works.
It's not about punishment, not about redemption. It never has been. Life isn't a test where you're marked down for getting the answers wrong. People aren't just silly schoolchildren sitting in a stuffy classroom, and it's no good trying to work out life as if it were algebra.
The wind is in her hair. There was light rain, earlier: pale sunlight gleams in the water that beads the grass. She smiles, breathing in the sea air. She's slept well since her arrival here.
And was the train punishment? They chose to board it; she chose not to. Cause and effect. They did not board that train to hurt her. They went because it was their free choice. Once she tried to tell herself that they were mad, all of them, dream-mazed, and it was just the madness talking, but –
"Madness, you mean?" said the Professor quite coolly. "Oh, you can make your minds easy about that. One has only to look at her and talk to her to see that she is not mad."
She looks over to the hillside. It's alight with montbretia, as if someone set the hill on fire with flowers. She's never seen montbretia growing wild like this anywhere else.
She was a queen, once. She knows that true absolutes are rare. Right and wrong – who knows? But the world is not a reward-and-punishment system. There is pain, and there is healing. There is blindness, and there is sight. There is stagnation, and there is growth.
The first time she tried to come back here, it hurt. In hindsight, it was a good hurt. They used to come here on holiday – although sometimes it feels as if she knows the place for some other reason. She's learned to accept that feeling.
This time, though, so many years later, it didn't. The relief when it didn't hurt – more than relief, the joy – was overwhelming. It was not the ending of a punishment. It was an indication of growth, and of healing.
If He is there, He is a gardener, not a schoolmaster, and the world is more complex than a test where a right answer wins a tick and a wrong one a cross. The world is every bit as complex as the myriad worlds of the sea, the flowers growing on the hillside, the garden with its intricate interweavings of plants and the thousand insects and the calls of the birds.
There is still joy, and she is still alive to feel it. In the end, they are dead, and she is standing here in the garden of a rented cottage in Cornwall, looking out at the sun rising over the sea and truly breathing for the first time in years.
Note: If anyone's interested, montbretia is nowadays known as crocosmia, but I'm pretty sure Susan would have known it as montbretia. It's a gorgeous flower, and does indeed grow like mad in the parts of Cornwall I've visited.