The word came from her Uncle Harold. She almost wasn't there for the call, but she was running late, and when the telephone operator came down to find her, Susan was just on her way out the door. Upstairs, under the careful ears of the operators (mostly women), Susan Pevensie listened to her uncle. He had to yell over his wife's sobs, and the static that came naturally with talking on the telephone, but the message came through clear enough.

Her parents. Peter, Edmund, Lucy. Her cousin Eustace. The professor who had cared for her during the London evacuation. An explosion. Some sort of crash.

Her Uncle fell silent. She could hear the grief in the static of the line. She stared blankly at the operator who's phone she'd borrowed.

'Susan?' Uncle Harold's voice only just registered in her thoughts.

'Thank you, Uncle. I will return as soon as I can.' Her voice was calm. Too calm. The way it always got when faced with impossible news. She handed the phone back to the operator, who placed it back in its cradle.

'Susan, what is it?' She asked. Was her name Lydia? Yes. That was it.

'I need to go home,' she said, as though she had a home to go to now. As though there was anything left for her back there.

Susan was used to leaving things behind. She'd left England for the frontier of America. She'd left home for the knowledge of university. She'd left London for the safety of the countryside. She'd even left Narnia behind her.

Narnia.

Susan frowned. It was the puzzled frown that creased her forehead. Mother had always told her it would give her wrinkles one day, and certainly she tried very hard to avoid that, but her mother wasn't there anymore. Nobody was there anymore.

In just a few brief moments, Susan had lost everything she had left.

Leaving Lydia behind her, Susan walked without seeing, out of the busy telephone operator office, down the steps, out into the early afternoon sunlight. It felt strange on her face. Too warm. Too bright. Her heart wanted to encase itself in ice to numb the terrible pain that, for the moment, lingered as a thought on the outskirts of her mind. As long as she didn't think, she could keep it at bay.

She looked up to get her bearings. Directly in front of her, as though she'd been walking all along towards this intersection, was a small church.

'You must come to know me in your world, now.' The words were a hollow echo in her mind. A bitter reminder of the things she'd left behind… of the things he had made her leave behind.

Lucy was lucky. She could live on faith. She could go on believing even when everything said it was impossible. Susan was more practical than that. Too practical, it turned out.

Then again. Susan was still alive.

Why would they all be there? What would bring all seven of them to the same place?

Susan stood there, staring at the little wrought iron fence of the little whitewashed church. There was a sort of lion motif to the iron work, it seemed. Or perhaps that was Susan, seeing things that weren't there. Her eyes fixed on the shape, but the more she tried to see it, the harder it got, and she did not want to go any closer to the church. Maybe she could find Aslan in there, but it was never him that she had wanted to see again.

The streets were starting to fill with people getting out of work. Susan was aware of them only because they sometimes jostled her, or walked across her line of sight. Her eyes remained fixed on the peculiar pattern of the iron fence, and slowly, despite her best interests, she started to walk towards it.

There was nothing left now. He'd taken it all.

She was at the gate. The iron work really did look like lions now, but her vision had started to blur, so she still couldn't trust her eyes.

'Why Aslan?' She whispered, running her finger over the smelted lion. 'Why all of them?'

'Excuse me, can I get past?' Susan jumped back. Free of their jostling, she'd forgotten there were others in the street with her. She stepped back and let an older woman open the gate. Just as she was stepping though, she looked back at Susan. 'Are you alright, dear? You look lost.'

Susan stared at her for a long moment, and the woman stared back, patiently. 'I need to get to London,' she said at length. At the very least, she had to say goodbye. Maybe she was being selfish, but she thought that Aslan owed her at least that much.

'You'd best try the harbour, dear. It's not far — straight down that road,' she pointed to the left. 'I could take you, if you like?'

Susan shook her head. 'No, thank you. I can manage.'