the steps they fall on
Disclaimer: I do not own Chronicles of Narnia.
Warnings: Last Battle spoilers
Summary: she's forgotten something special and he's given up
--x--
Before she can properly understand what it is he's trying to say, Peter is already out the door and heading to the shed outside. She's left in the kitchen, staring out with question after his dark figure in the dusk air.
The others have gone to town and with that, Susan has been home all day with him--even mother left with the two others, feeling well enough to accompany the children.
By now, it's finally dark outside, the night blooming its foreboding darkness. Candle light flickers and dances around the room in a light-hearted display.
Lethargically, a sigh falls through her lips. There hasn't been many tasks to do today, so Susan has been thinking. Thinking of her life here, thinking of mother, thinking of this old house. Susan wishes to leave this place and start a new life, but what Peter had just said causes her to think that maybe he wants the same.
His words he had spoken, before he left to work in the shed, still play over in her ears: "I'm done pretending this is the life we will have to live forever," he had muttered, low and discouraged, "We deserve more than this."
Even now, she doesn't understand, because, for some lost reason, it seems as if she had spoken those words long ago and cannot remember. As if she had, at some point, reached the end of her rope and allowed those very words slip from her mouth. And, now, Peter was simply repeating the action. But she doesn't know why and will not remember.
The door is opened and cold air rushes through the house, only met by more chilly air. Peter places some firewood down in the fireplace as she stares up from finishing the batter for bread. Cleaning off her hands, she makes her way to him, into the living room with small and uneasy steps.
"You're too tired," Susan tells him as she touches the side of his face, softy.
She moves to kiss his his cheek, but he turns away, seemingly pained by the gesture. Instead, enclosing her fingers that had stoked his face in one hand, he averts his gaze away from her eyes.
He murmurs, "You are too."
She stares at him until he drops her hand and leaves the room, his shadow disappearing and candle light flickers again. She'd like to pretend he doesn't want to leave--just to keep her company and warmth as he has always done in the past. Or, more honestly, like she has always been there for him. But, really, it shouldn't matter, should it?
But Susan abruptly realizes he has given up hope on something she has forgotten about--something that they used to share. And now, perhaps because she no longer recalls, he desires to be gone and leave this place for good.
So, Susan concludes, she wants to walk away more than Peter. Because, that way, he doesn't have to leave (hurt) her first--betray her first.
Peter and the others leave to the professor's six months later. The train crashes and so does her life; none of them make it. (Peter doesn't make it, she realizes numbly.)
And, now, this old house is all she has to hold onto.
Peter won--he left first. (Betrayed her first.)
But, then she wonders if she was truly the one to leave before him after all. If Peter had longed for something that was no longer there, did that mean she had changed enough to "leave" him? Had she been the one to leave first?
Susan doesn't care, in the end.
--x--
A/N
She'll care when she gets back to Narnia.
Despite that I wish to make a Edmund and Susan ficlet, I found this theme fitting for the Susan/Peter relationship.