Summary: Susan once believed Narnia to be no more than a game. Now she's not so sure. Post-VODT AU, the canon events are book verse. Also includes Edmund and Lucy's thoughts on leaving Narnia for the final time. Susan's POV. As always, no incest or slash. R&R!
Author's Note: Set right after everyone returns to Finchley. I had Susan stop believing in Narnia soon after PC. I thought it would be interesting to write a post-VODT from Susan's POV, and tie it in with her believing again. I hope I wrote the Pevensies' characters right, this was somewhat harder to write than my other stories. I just got over writer's block, it took me FOREVER to figure out how to end this :/ Reviews are appreciated, I'm not sure how well this turned out.
The Wonderful Thing We Call...DISCLAIMERS: I don't own Narnia. Or the characters. Or anything else you might recognize. Never have, never will. They all belong to C.S Lewis and Walden Media. I don't even own the title. It is a song from Sunset Boulevard Soundtrack. The relevant verses are below:
Everything's as if we never said goodbye
I've spent so many mornings just trying to resist you
I'm trembling now, you can't know how I've missed you
Missed the fairy tale adventure
In this ever spinning playground
We were young together...
...I don't want to be alone
That's all in the past
This world's waited long enough
I've come home at last!
And this time will be bigger
And brighter than we knew it
So watch me fly, we all know I can do it
I walk down the hall, in search of my siblings. I need to talk to them before I come to my senses. I must be losing my mind. That is the only explanation, the one my logical mind clings most strongly to. Thoughts and memories blur together, making no sense. A castle by the sea. A lion. A gorgeous room with four white thrones. A bow and red-feathered arrows. A white horn. I hesitate when I come to the first door. Edmund's room. I can hear their voices from the other side of the door. How on Earth am I to approach this? Just walk in and say, "Sorry I've been so mean, can you help me?" I can't just stand here forever, I tell myself, they are my family. They'll listen. Slowly, I turn the knob and open the door just wide enough to squeeze through. Right away I know something is wrong.
Peter, Edmund, and Lucy are sitting on Edmund's bed. Lucy is curled up in Peter's lap, though she is getting too big for that. Edmund sits next to Peter and Lucy, his head on Peter's shoulder. One of Peter's arms is around Edmund, the other around Lucy. All three of my siblings look unusually glum, even Lucy, who is usually the cheerful one. Edmund and Lucy especially have a look of deep sadness in their eyes, and tear stains on their faces. They freeze when they realize I'm in the room, and glance at one another. Of course. They're talking about Narnia, and stopped because they think I'll scold them. Again. But why are they so sad? Peter looks up at me. So does Edmund. I can see the question in both their faces. What's wrong? I look at them, puzzled. Just like them to assume that something is wrong. And they're right this time. Something is very wrong. These three are the only people who could understand, I have no choice. I close the door quietly behind me and lean against it. The silence pounds on my eardrums. I take a deep breath. "I think...I think I must be losing my mind."
Silence. I look at my siblings, gaging their reactions. Peter and Edmund glance at each other, looking throughly bewildered. Lucy looks at them, then at me, then back at our brothers. "What do you mean, losing your mind?" Peter sounds confused and concerned. For my sanity, probably. And he will have good reason, once I've told them.
My brothers and sister look at me expectantly. No backing out now. I walk over to them and sit on the floor, leaning against the wall next to Edmund's bed. "There has been a talking lion in my dreams. A lion who calls himself Aslan. Exactly like that game we used to play, only...I'm not so sure it was a game." Peter looks thoughtful. "What exactly happens in these dreams?" "He keeps saying to have faith, and that he will always love me," I reply. If anyone can help me with these dreams, my siblings can. "I was in Narnia. At Cair Paravel, to be specific. In the throne room. And somehow the lion-Aslan-fit in there. I don't know how it all happened, it just...did. He kept showing me visions of balls. The gardens at the castle. Our friends. And battles. Always battles. The waiting. The worry. Everything." My siblings smile at one another, as if to say it's about time. Lucy comes down from Peter's lap and sits on the floor next to me.
"It's funny," says Lucy thoughtfully, "right when you start believing again, none of us can go back." Silence. The words echo around my head: None of us can go back. None of us. "What happened?" My voice still won't rise above a whisper, as if my voice has gone with Narnia. Peter must not know the full story either, judging from his expression. He looks curious, yet there's something else there. Something I can't quite put my finger on. Lucy and Edmund look at each other, their expressions unreadable. They must have understood each other, however, because Edmund nods at Lucy.
Lucy takes a deep breath, she looks as though she has been bursting to tell. "We got back to Narnia again! When we were at Aunt Alberta and Uncle Harold's house! Eustace came too!" Peter's shocked face mirrors my own. "Now that is something I wish I had seen. That must have been one interesting trip," Peter says, grinning broadly. Edmund smiles. "Well, that's one way to put it." "Anyway," Lucy continues, "the picture in my bedroom came to life. That's how we got in. It was a picture of a ship sailing. I thought it looked very Narnian, and the waves looked as if they were really moving. Ed, Eustace and I got pulled in by the painting, right into Narnia! Eustace wasn't too pleased about all this, as you can imagine. Caspian told us it had only been three years since last time, and that he had left Trumpkin in charge." Peter and I look at one another, wide-eyed. Lucy continues to describe their trip aboard the Dawn Treader, right until Eustace becoming un-dragoned. Peter and I find the dufflepuds very funny, I can't stop laughing at them. "Eustace's not so beastly anymore," Lucy says happily. "Aslan does have that affect on beastly little boys," adds Edmund. Peter and I just look at them, our mouths hanging open. Lucy continues the story, Peter and I gasp at all the right places; of course whenever we go to Narnia something life-threatening just has to happen.
Lucy has just gotten to the sea of flowers (the Silver Sea) when her voice suddenly falters and dies, as if it has suddenly stopped working. She looks at the floor, her eyes filling up with tears. I am slightly startled to see slight anger mixed with the sadness in her eyes. Silently, Edmund slides down from his bed. Lucy scoots forward so he can sit behind her. He wraps his arms around her, turning his head to rest his cheek on top of her head. "Lu, Eustace, Reepicheep, and I were sailing through the Silver Sea. When we got to land, a lamb appeared," he says quietly. The room is silent apart from his voice. "We could see the tops of the mountains; higher than any in England or Narnia, and still green on top. Aslan's country." Edmund smiles slightly, but it fades almost in an instant. "We asked if this was the way to Aslan's country, and the lamb said it wasn't. Not for us. The way for us was through this world. I couldn't imagine that there was a way into His country through our world, and told Him so. The lamb told us there is a way into His country through all the worlds." Edmund pauses and glances at Peter and I, his expression unreadable, though he is blinking a lot. His voice gets softer and more dejected with each word. "The lamb turned into Aslan. Reep got into his coracle and sailed right into Aslan's country. Then Aslan told us that...that it was our last time." There is a catch in his voice, which I can tell he has tried to mask. Lucy turns and buries her face in Edmund's shirt, silent tears falling freely down her face. Edmund's arms tighten around her comfortingly, he is wiping at his eyes vainly. Lucy speaks for the first time in a bit, her voice sounds stuffy, as if she has a cold. Her voice, muffled by Edmund's shirt, carries pain, a load no girl her age should carry. "Now our only tie to Narnia is Eustace. He's the only one who can go back."
The silence pounds on my eardrums as I let the awful truth sink in and consume me. None of us can go back to Narnia. None of us can go home.
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Lucy voices what everyone has been thinking, speaking almost to herself. "We've spent a lifetime in Narnia. How do you survive, knowing that you must live a lifetime-a second lifetime-without ever seeing Narnia or Aslan?" He expression turns angrier, an emotion rarely seen on Lucy's face. "It's like they-the Narnians-don't need us anymore. Like we were just tools, used for a while then discarded. We defeated the White Witch, were kings and queens for 15 years, put Caspian on the throne. Edmund, Eustace, and I helped to find the lost lords. We do all that, then Aslan says we can't go back!" Peter looks at her. "They do need us. They did, and they still do. Imagine how Caspian must be feeling right now. He has no idea where you got off to, or even if he'll ever see you again," Peter says in an attempt to comfort Lucy. "I never thought about it like that," she whispers. Edmund tightens his arms around her slightly.
Meanwhile, my mind is engaged in a furious debate. Should I tell them the truth? The whole, awful truth? No, I can't. It will break their hearts. The voice in my head argues. They're family, they'll understand. Nobody understands me like my siblings. We've never had secrets before. We've always been honest with one another, I argue back. I'm not strong enough to do this. No, I am. I can do it. They need to know. No, they don't. I need to tell them. I've never lied to them. Great. Now I'm arguing with myself. I really must be losing my mind. My mouth answers before I can stop it. I look at the floor as I say it, my voice soft. "I told myself none of it was real. That it had all been a game, to distract us from the war and leaving home."
A stunned silence follows. Lucy looks at me, a slightly shocked look on her face. "How could you think that? After all we went through there? How could you just forget it all?" I look at the floor, avoiding my brothers' and sister's gazes, and take a deep breath, rather ashamed of my past thoughts. "To tell you the truth, it was easy. Easy to say it was all our imaginations. It was just easier to deal with that way. It was less...painful not to talk about it." I chance a glance at my siblings. They are still absorbing my words, though Peter looks closest to understanding, as usual. Might as well say it all, now that I'm here. "I didn't want to deal with the pain of leaving, of knowing I can never go back...I didn't want to accept it. I couldn't see the sense in wanting something I could never get. I figured I had to live my life here, I have a future here, and I couldn't do that if I was always caught up in Narnia. If you three didn't want to grow up and live your lives here, so be it." Lucy considers for a moment. She, like our brothers, looks somewhat stunned at my words. "You know, we won't ever truly leave. One tends to think leaving and forgetting are the same: once you leave, you have to forget. We don't have to forget. As long as we are remembering, talking about Narnia and Aslan, and keep on believing."
Author's Note Part 2:
Yes, lame ending, I know. I wanted to get something published before school starts, I'm doing marching band and harder classes so I won't have as much time to write.
I also have ideas for a multi-chapter fic with an actual plot. This would be set in the Golden Age, and have some drama (change of pace from all the hurt/comfort =D) The rough ideas are:
There's a spy in Cair Paravel, who steals secrets and starts a war
There's a hard winter and a famine (possibly a war, but that would be before/leading up to the famine)
What do you think?