He had always been one to get into trouble. She had always been the one to help him pick himself up after it. They always joked that this pattern was going to keep going their whole lives.
Peter had taken her alone to play in Kensington park, back when Edmund was a babe in arms and Lucy wasn't even a dream yet. It was a cold day. They met Peter's best friend, Tommy. Usually Tommy laughed and played with them both. Bet today was different. Today he was angry. He grabbed her coat and ripped it, making the bright silver buttons bounce all over the snow. Peter had bloodied Tom's nose in his anger. Before an adult could hear her cries and intervene, Tommy had shoved Peter into a pond.
Tommy's father took Tommy home, walking slowly through the snowstorm. Susan was crying because her favorite coat was torn, so Peter made her wear his coat. He was not wearing it when he fell in the pond, so the thick blue wool was nice and warm. But his clothes were wet, and by the time they got home he was coughing.
That night two people came, the doctor and Tommy's father. Susan saw them talking to Da. She saw Da walk into Peter's room. Mum would not let her visit Peter. Mum said that Tommy had to go to a hospital that was very far away.
That night, she heard crying. She tiptoed down the hall and opened Peter's door. Her big brother was curled up in his bed, coughing and sobbing for Tommy.
They never saw Tommy again.
When the war had come, it took Da away and it brought bombs. There were bomb drills in their schools. One day, her school sent her home, but it didn't send Peter home.
That day, the bomb drill wasn't a bomb drill.
When Peter came home from the hospital, he wore a bandage around his head. He took it off right away. He didn't talk about what it had been like in the rubble. He didn't want to meet any of the other boys who had gone home. Instead he quietly packed for the journey to Professor Kirk's house.
The first night in Professor Kirk's home, she heard shouting. She followed it to Peter's room, where he tossed and turned on his bed, screaming names. She recognized those names: they were the names of his school friends who had not come home.
It took her a long time to get him to wake up but when he finally did he told her he was glad she had done it.
The first time they had lost a battle in Narnia, it was raining. They had drawn back beyond the shelter of the river. Many of their soldiers were wounded, more were fallen. Peter had taken charge of the vanguard, remaining behind to protect the flank in their retreat.
When the vanguard came back, broken and scattered, there was no Peter.
Edmund disappeared into the rainy night with only his sword and Phillip. He brought back his bloodied and feverish brother in his arms.
Susan sat beside the cot all night. Peter's wounds were so many and so various it was a wonder that he was alive at all. Yet alive he was, and he clung to that thread of life. He moaned and muttered all night, deliriously calling out orders to his dead troops for attacks that had failed. Susan it was who shook him awake time and again, forcing him to drink medicine and rewrapping his disheveled bandages, until the nearest Wood-god who knew the best healing magic came in a flurry of leaves and wind.
After Aslan had sent them home to stay, Susan had watched Peter carefully. He bore up well under the blow, throwing himself into his studies. When his acceptance letter to Oxford College came, he danced with her and Lucy all throughout the house. Edmund had gotten a playful bout of fisticuffs that ended in Mother's best lamp being broken.
Two days later, the draft letter had come.
When he came back from the war in the Pacific, he was very quiet. There was a splint on his arm and scars on his face. Mother tried to tempt him with all his favorite dishes, but he could not eat without getting sick. Lucy tried to play with him, but he only touched her cheek and walked away. Even Edmund's banter and Father's queries could not get him to open up. He walked about the house listlessly, looking at the ordinary, everyday objects of their home with confusion in his eyes.
Four nights into his return home, Susan woke up to find him asleep on the floor of her room, shivering. He was whispering a litany of names and instructions, some of them in a strange language she did not understand. This time, she couldn't get him to wake up.
So she held him instead, singing soft songs until he calmed. When he woke the next morning, he had found her there, asleep sitting up, and had carried her to her bed. That day was the first day since his return that he smiled again.
This was different. She knew it was going to be different. The police car stopped in front of the low brick building of the hospital. The police man smiled at her sadly as he opened the door and offered her his arm. She took it numbly. He had to guide her up the stairs and through the halls. She closed her eyes, refusing to look at the dark lettering painted above the door they waited in front of. The harsh, horrible word still flashed in her mind.
Morgue.
The white coated doctor led her to a closed room where a row of tables stood. White sheets covered figures, too many figures. She stopped, swaying, and the police man kindly caught her shoulders, guiding her to a chair.
"Would you like me to leave, Miss, or to stay?" he offered gently. He was an older man, about the age of her father, and his eyes were kind and compassionate.
Her white hands gripped the sleeve of his uniform in a silent plea and he nodded. The white coated assistant crouched beside him. He was a young man with a quiet voice, and he waited until she had gathered herself together enough to meet his patient, understanding eyes.
"Ms. Pevensie?" he asked.
She nodded.
"You have come to identify your family." He stated.
She nodded again.
"Is there anyone else who can do this for you, miss?" The police officer asked.
It hurt to speak. When she finally managed to, it was only a few words, and weak ones at that.
"No one."
The two men looked at eachother.
She carefully stood, and nodded at the tables. "We should….begin." she said, waveringly. The police officer took her arm, and the young orderly led her to the first table.
Father. Mother. They were relatively unharmed and easy to identify. A young girl she didn't know, who lay near a boy with a bruised face whom she recognized as her cousin, Eustace. Lucy followed, poor, brave little Lucy. There was a cut on her forehead, and dried blood in her hair.
Edmund. When she saw him she had to hide her face in the police officer's shoulder. The orderly quickly covered the body again. She would not look at it.
"I'm sorry ma'am. But I need you to tell me if…." The orderly looked at her helplessly. She covered her face with her hands, tying to wipe the image from her mind. It was hard to tell, and that's what made it horrible.
"Is….is there a small round scar on his right palm?" she asked, waveringly.
The orderly checked, and nodded. "Yes, miss."
"He got it when he was trying to get Lu's cat out of a tree." She murmured, walking away from the table as quickly as she could.
The last table. The police officer was almost carrying her as she staggered towards it. the orderly reached for the sheet and she stopped him.
"Is he…is he like…." She glanced over her shoulder.
"No, miss." The orderly said. "He's not like that." He rolled back the sheet.
Susan covered her mouth.
Peter lay on the table. His shoulders were covered with an old dirty jacket and his cheeks were stained with dirt. But his eyes were closed and his limbs were relaxed. There was none of the tension in his body that he had walked with fore months now. The haunted looked in his face was gone, replaced with a quiet smile. Even the white scars had faded against his pale skin. He looked like he had as a young King of Narnia, a boy who had fallen asleep on a couch over his books of war tactics. His golden mane of hair flopped over his eyes, and she half expected him to wake up, look up at her sleepily, and ask her when breakfast would be ready?
"Peter?" she asked, before she could stop herself. The figure did not wake.
"No, Peter." She said, shaking his shoulder. "No, Peter, please!"
She was crying, sobbing now. Her Peter was'nt asleep. He had been hurt, but her comfort and care was not needed anymore.
She never knew what brought the name to her lips, but she heard herself sobbing it repeatedly. "Aslan. Aslan. Aslan, please. Aslan!"
Then her head swirled, she staggered, and fall back into a darkness.
"Susan, Su! Susan!"
Bright light stabbed her eyes as she jerked awake, gasping and panting. Peter stood over her bed, grasping her shoulders and shaking them. His eyes were bright blue orbs of concern, his hair flopped over his face in that familiar bedhead look. She gripped his sleeve.
"You're alive! You're alive! You're not dead!" she sobbed.
His face twisted in confused concern, but apparently he decided now was not a time for questions. "No, I'm not." He sat on the side of the bed and let her cry into his shoulder. "I'm just fine, I promise you."
Susan sighed heavily, wiping her tears from her face. Peter's eyes were large and wary, but also somewhat hopeful. Susan forced a laugh and climbed out of the bed, wrapping her robe around her nightgown.
"Well, silly me, getting all riled up about nothing but a dream!" she joked. "Look at the time! I must hurry if I am to meet Elsie at the Café for breakfast!" She opened her closet door and began to flip through her dresses.
"Don't forget." Peter warned, standing to lean against the door frame. "Mum, Da and the others will be arriving on the train at 10. Professor Kirk is coming to visit, you know. And Lu's excited to celebrate now that she has graduated."
"Oh, I won't forget. I'll meet you all at the restaurant sometime around 1." She said airily. The blue, she decided. It would make her look lovely on a day like today. "Peter, why are you standing there? Areny you going to get ready?"
Peter looked at her, and there was a solemn gravity in his eyes that reminded her too much of another time, another place. "Su…" he faltered "you called for Him. for Aslan. Are you…do you remember, at last?"
She hesitated. She wanted to say yes. She wanted to tell him. tell him how all the time the spent chasing boys and going to parties was her screaming for the joy she remembered in…that other place. How ignoring…Him…was her way of punishing Him for not letting her come back.
She flinched. Peter would never understand. He loved Aslan to understand that. And whatever else she lost, she couldn't lose Peter. She laughed.
"Peter, stop it! you know I am far too busy to be bothering my head about childish nursery rhymes. Go get ready and come to the Café with me, just for breakfast."
The bright life in Peter's eyes died away, but he covered it with a brief smile.
"You forgot, sister mine. I have to head up to Ed's. He needs my help for something at his dorm."
"What did he break now?"
"Nothing. He just needs my help getting something…important."
"Well, don't be late for the train, and don't do anything silly or dangerous." She warned, turning back to her mirror.
"I won't." Peter said, and closed the door.
Susan sat in the back of the police officer's car, clenching her handkerchief in her hand.
It wasn't supposed to be like this.
It was never supposed to end.