AN: Another Susan story. :) There's just something so fascinating about the "Last Battle" Susan.
Disclaimer: Nope, don't own it.
"Will you marry me?"
The words I'd always wanted to hear. When I was a little girl, I'd lie in bed with my feet hanging over the edge and my eyes raised to the ceiling, building dream castles and wondering (as children do) what my future would hold. I'd be married (of course), but the face of my betrothed was blank. A blank canvas waiting to be filled. The number of children I would have was a blur, ten being the minimum; and the house was but a storing place for all my dreams. All my ambitions.
"Will you marry me?"
Four simple words; they signified the beginning of my hopes. Countless times as a child I would sit on an empty park bench, watching the neighbourhood boys playing their games. I would picture a future with each and come back to reality dissatisfied. I was too young, the wedding dress didn't fit, and the bridegroom was picking his nose. No, I decided. Now was not the time. Give a year, take a year, and perhaps I would be ready to wed. I put aside my wedding plans and stole the ball from Charlie Penning.
After all, how long is a childhood?
"Will you marry me?"
The four simple words redisplayed themselves in my consciousness when I reached fifteen. A lot had happened in those years. I had discovered a magical land known as Narnia. I had fallen in and out of love. I had become a woman. The four words were no longer mere words, but a promise. A promise of a lifetime of devotion, and I decided that I was ready to give and receive that devotion.
But how do you go about being fifteen when you feel so much older?
"Will you marry me?"
It was at the age of sixteen that I made my decision. I must forget. I must put it out of mind. Out of my heart. If I forgot, then I should feel my age. I should fall in love, once more. It was quite shocking how easily I cast those memories from my heart.
"Susan," I remember Edmund saying, "do you remember the spring festival in Narnia?"
"Narnia?" I replied, genuinely puzzled. "Oh! You mean the quaint little game we played as children?"
The room grew quiet. Peter and Lucy looked up from their chess game; their faces displayed mirrored shock.
How comical I thought it then.
"I'm sixteen; I shall act sixteen. Such games are for children." That was all I would ever say on the subject; and gradually I became used to Peter and Lucy's pained expressions, and Edmund's sad, yet knowing look.
"Will you marry me?"
I thought about those four words when Peter went off to university, when Edmund graduated with honours, and when Lucy went off to school without me for the first time. They all seemed so content. The future was simply there, for them, and it did not bother them how long it took in coming.
They wished to remain in never-ending childhood. I envied their quiet faith and mysterious knowledge that everything would turn out fine, no matter the trial.
I wished to be a never-ending child, too.
"Will you marry me?"
The future was too long in coming. I was unsettled and half-crazed with pent up thoughts and emotions. My eighteen birthday came and went, and I decided that this was the age I wished to remain. Not quite a child, and yet not an adult, either. Silly as a spoilt child, with adult privileges. I drank; I smoked; I looked for love, yet never found it. No one was willing to offer the promise.
A betwixt and between, I was, and I deluded myself into believing that this -- this was living.
Some life.
"Will you marry me?"
I thought of the words as I went about my everyday life. I lived in an apartment. I owned a cat who screamed in mortal agony if I applied lipstick in his presence. (He was a kindred spirit to Peter, I am sure). I had many admirers, but they were shallow and dull.
At night I'd lie in my bed with my legs hooked over the edge, and my eyes raised to the ceiling. It was times like these that I'd remember what seemed to be alien memories. A cool and tinkling stream, sounds of something richer and more poignant than a flute, and (most strangely of all) a lion's wild roar. The promise I sought seemed to be avoiding me. The words seemed destined to be never spoken.
"Will you marry me?"
The day my family died, I thought of the words. They stirred no emotion; indeed, all feeling was dead inside me. I could never love again. No longer was I a strange hybrid in personality. When I heard the news, I cast off the figurative cloak I wore and assumed my duty as a woman.
As a queen... of Narnia.
As I pen this, dear, I think of the words you spoke but an hour ago:
"Will you marry me, Susan?"
Although they are the words I've wished to hear all my life, and the promise I've been yearning for, I can not give you the answer you desire. The Susan that was then is not the Susan that is now.
The girl you love is no more.
Sincerely,
Susan E. Pevensie.
Susan lifts her pen from the page and places it upon the table. To her, it is final. Being written, it can not be erased. She lifts the paper, folds it lengthways, and holds it in her hand for a barely perceptible moment, before stuffing it hastily into a plain white envelope.
"John Morgan," she scrawls with careful precision across the front, blatantly ignoring the sharp click of her fingernails upon the smooth surface of the pen. She hasn't clipped them since the accident, and has no time now. The nail on her index finger bends and snaps, but she does not pause in her writing. She has a purpose; a goal that must be achieved.
She no longer lives all alone in an apartment -- with a cat. She has moved back into her old home; which is, in her eyes, but a husk of its former self. No longer does Edmund slide with wild abandon down dusty bannisters; and no more does Lucy's cheerful voice ring out in greeting. Peter is no longer her steadfast companion, no more her confidant. No one is there to quarrel with her; no one is there to look at her with hurt in dark eyes. She misses the pout of Lucy's lips and the way her eyes shone after accomplishment. Peter's pen-marked desk looks empty without his long legs stretching around the side, and she cannot even glance at Edmund's dirt-thumbed books without a lump rising in her throat.
She feels hollow and empty, true, but to even contemplate love after the accident does not enter her mind. She must find what she has lost. She must keep her siblings and her parents alive in her heart.
Rising from her chair, Susan moves mechanically towards the coat rack and takes scarf and hat from their respective hooks. She pulls on thick boots and slips into her heavy coat. She glances in the cracked mirror as she searches for her gloves, and pauses in the task.
The cracked mirror. She remembers so clearly how it became cracked. Edmund, ever the boy, had been hiding under her bed, in a game of hide and seek with Lucy. In struggling out, he had toppled backwards, and his elbow had collided with the fragile glass.
"I was so angry, Edmund," Susan murmurs, slim fingers ghosting over the shattered pane; "but, if you were to do it again, I wouldn't even care. I wouldn't even care..."
She meets the eyes of her reflection, and pauses once more. Reddened eyes blink back. It is a curse, she reflects, that it is so hard to hide the evidence of her tears. Pushing her hands into her tiny gloves, Susan offers her reflection a half-hearted smile, and turns towards the door.
She stumbles down the narrow staircase and runs quickly to the door. She dares not look into the different rooms, for every displaced cushion and scuff mark is but a reminder for what is gone, and she does not feel physically well enough to see the evidence of lives cut short. Opening the front door with a shaking hand, she enters the street and closes the door gently (so gently) behind her.
The street is bustling and merry. A direct contradiction to her sorrow. Walking briskly along the left side of the footpath, Susan offers a dull smile to her neighbour's cheerful greeting.
"Hullo, Miss Pevensie," the neighbour's son, a tall, strong lad says gaily. He is a notorious flirt, and finds the mysterious young woman very intriguing. "Need some help there, Miss Pevensie? The rain's made the paths nigh impossible to walk on, see?"
"No," Susan answers curtly, "I am fine."
The neighbour's son shakes his head softly and jumps over the low hedge which separates his mother's land from the street. "It'd be on my conscience, see, to let a young lady walk alone when I'm ready and willing. Please, Miss, if you should turn your ankle, I'd never forgive myself."
Susan turns blank eyes in his direction, and shakes her head once more. "Excuse me," she says, with a small incline of her head, "but I must go."
"Now see here --" the neighbour's son begins (for never has he been snubbed), when he is stopped abruptly by his irate and elderly mother who smacks him sharply on the head with her gardening glove, and mutters crossly about a certain "arrogant young upstart, who is just like his father was (God bless his soul), and may he please shut up for once."
"Good-day," says Susan, a flicker of gratitude changing the normal sad expression of her face.
"Good-day, dearie," the neighbour says, grinning a toothless smile and leading her son into her house by his ear. Never again does the neighbour's son bother Susan, for her seeing him in such an undignified position has thoroughly crushed his pride.
Susan continues down the street, the bus stop in sight and her hand keeping a tight hold on the letter addressed to John Morgan. She fishes in her pocket for the correct change and sits upon the bus stop's bench.
It is lonely sitting there, with a drunk on a neighbouring bench keeping company with his bottle, and a fashionable young lady on the far end of the drunk's bench reading a newspaper and smoking a cigarette. Susan looks down at her feet and fingers the flap of the envelope.
"Hello," the fashionable young lady greets, stepping off the drunk's bench and seating herself on Susan's. "I'm Cynthia Greymarsh. Who are you?"
"Susan Pevensie," answers Susan, blinking slightly at the forward manner of the somewhat giddy girl.
"Dreadful weather, isn't it?" Cynthia continued.
"Yes."
"What's wrong, love?" asks Cynthia, smoothing her dress. "You look like today is the worst day of your life."
"Today," says Susan, wondering at herself for talking to this stranger, "I must tell the only man who ever really loved me, that I cannot love him in return."
"Oh?" Cynthia perks up considerably, and pauses in the action of a deep drag of her cigarette. "Why? Family troubles, jealous lover, money...?"
Cynthia obviously has no sense of subtlety or tact.
"My family," says Susan, lifting her head to look at the sky.
"Oh, tell them to mind their own business," says Cynthia, offering her favourite piece of advice. "Are they the strict, uptight sort?"
The bus pulls up at a pondering speed, and Susan rises from the bench. "No," she says, placing one foot on the bus's step and looking back at the well-rouged young lady, "they're dead."
It is exactly ten and a half minutes later, that Susan steps off the bus and walks towards the house of the man who's name is printed in careful letters across the front of a letter clutched in a sweaty hand.
The house is low and cosy, almost a cottage, and Susan's hand is shaking slightly as she reaches for the polished door-knocker.
Knock. Knock.
It sounds dreadfully loud, and Susan takes an involuntary step backwards.
"Down, Harry," sounds from within, "Down boy."
The door opens and Mr. John Morgan looks down at Susan with a kind, and slightly shy smile. The dog at his heels gives a smile, too; but whether it is kind or threatening is anyone's guess.
"Hullo, Susan," the master of the dog says, cheerfully glad to see the woman he hopes to make his wife.
"Hello, John," says Susan quietly, a familiar ache in her heart. "I - I want you to read this."
The letter is presented, and John Morgan takes it in his large hand. "A letter?" he asks, with a quirk of thick eyebrows. "Wouldn't a yes or no have been faster?"
"Just read it," says Susan, looking up at the tall young man. "And maybe you will understand."
"Won't you come in?"
"No; I must go."
"Oh. Alright. Good-bye, Susan."
"Good-bye, John."
The dog cocks his head at the finality of Susan's tone, but his master is ignorant to any and all implications. Susan opens her mouth as if to say something further, but snaps it shut and hurries towards the gate.
"Good-bye, John," she repeats, with her hand half-raised.
The master hears it not, for at that moment his dog howls with all the heartache of despair; and Susan's face turns ashen as her hand drops lifelessly at her side. She gives a last backward glance before her figure is lost around the corner, and John Morgan, rather perturbed, returns to his fire and his dog.
He opens the letter and smiles slightly at the neatness of the hand that wrote his name on the envelope.
"A pretty hand for a pretty girl," he remarks to Harry, who lies with graceful ease on the hearth and stares up at his master with doleful eyes. The dog seems alert, almost anxious; and, as he lies there, he lets his eyes flicker towards the great clock that frowns down from the corner wall.
Unfolding the paper, John Morgan's eyes travel across the sometimes blurred writing, and the skin between his brows creases harshly.
"I fear, Harry," he remarks, after a few minutes of agitated reading, "that Susan Pevensie has no desire to become my wife. Poor girl, so torn with grief that she's rambling about magical lands."
Getting to his feet, John Morgan runs both hands through his short hair and starts pacing.
"She doesn't understand how much I love her," he murmurs to the ceiling. "I didn't fall in love with the stupid, uncaring Susan. After the accident, she changed... Harry, she was different. Quieter, more observant. Gentle. Oh, Harry, she became so much gentler. It seemed to define her."
John comes to a stop in front of the mantelpiece and looks down at the fire.
"I remember the day we met," he says to the dog lying obediently at his heels. "I was just the ticket-checker, then, Harry. A few times a week I saw her when the train pulled into the station. She'd be standing there, looking like an angel in red plaid, and I'd smile at her. Sometimes, she'd smile back. The day I met her, she clambered on to the train and gave me a smile and her ticket. She told me her name. I don't think I've ever been so happy."
John bends his knees slightly so that his face is level with the fire, and pats the dog behind his ears.
"We always talked after that, and sometimes she'd turn up on my break. She wasn't happy even then, old boy. Always with a cigarette in one hand, and her powdercase in the other. She talked about what parties she attended, what dress she planned to wear, and what girl said what about the couples going around. Often, though, the talk would turn to her family. She loved them, Harry, although she'd never say it. Her eyes would shine when she talked about them, she was so proud."
The clock chimes the hour with mechanic precision: midnight. John stretches his legs and retrieves the letter from where he had left it on the low side-table. He reads the contents again, before he scrunches it in his left hand and throws it into the fire.
He sits by the fire until the flames die down and even the embers burn out.