Daughter of Eve, Niece of Thomas
By JalendaviLady
Timeline: A few days post-The Last Battle and beyond.
Disclaimer: The upcoming movie belongs to Walden Media and the books belong to the current holders of the C. S. Lewis's estate.
Chapter 1: Grief
It is the first time she has been in a church since that long ago trip to America.
She sits alone for the first time ever, the first pew stretching, empty, to both sides of her.
Five coffins, and the Professor, his friend, Eustace, and Jill already in the ground.
She cries through the service, remembering.
She wants her throne, with Peter beside her, his crown glinting in the Cair Paravel sun.
She wants the mourning cloak she once wore to state funerals.
The royal parents, High King Peter the Magnificent, King Edmund the Just, and Queen Lucy the Valiant deserve better than her closet in this world can offer.
Earth and Narnian customs were so different, after all.
Tumnus would have had a fit. A Queen of Narnia, wearing black? And the High King buried without Aslan's banner flying?
But even if there were a way to break Aslan's instructions and reenter Narnia, everyone from back then is long dead.
She'd thought she was used to being alone, but now the world is proving her wrong.
And as the church empties around her, she is alone and longing for the days when she wrote invitations to princes instead of thank yous for fruit baskets.
He had told them not to come back.
She reminds herself of this as she sits in the quiet house meant for six.
Spring is coming soon. Edmund always had his way of getting distressed during the entire Lent season and the rest of the family had their ways of quietly ignoring it.
Susan avoids the Easter services and has ever since that first journey. The words are too close, the meanings too powerful... Lucy loves – loved – the season, but for Susan it is forever tinged with leering creatures and bloody knives.
The romp... the romp seems so far away and oh, what she would give for one moment of her face buried in his mane again.
She knows she figured out Aslan's words about needing to find him in her own world far too early. It was one thing to obey and quite another to understand.
Why follow a thousand rules when he who gave the rules left you in charge of a country he loves without much more than a "bear it well"?
Why go to Easter pageants when you have heard the stone table break, kissed his nose before, and had your face licked afterwards?
She had never let Edmund know she woke crying every year. She regrets it now, knowing they had been the closest of the four in Narnia for a time, the lady diplomat and her just brother who bailed her out whenever this or that prince took things too seriously.
The dance of nations, the layers of finery and polished words... for all the talk of bows, that had been her battlefield. The dances, the preparations for feasts and making sure the right people would be at the proper spots at the high table...
Things she can never do again.
She tries, plays the socially conscious young woman.
But the very things that made her Queen Susan the Gentle do not work here. The rules are every bit as complicated as those of the Tisroc's personal court, only even less sensical.
Did we even have a protocol for mourning the High King?
She doubts it. There was never a need for one before. But now...
What flowers does one leave at the gravestone? What prayers does one offer?
Do Narnian prayers even work on Earth? It seems silly for prayers for the Lord of Cair Paravel to be made in anything but Aslan's name – that name and not another, no matter if the names belong to the same being.
"May they find their way to Aslan's country, and may the High King be ever safe between the lion's paws."
The name rings in the air. Has it really been so long since she said those two syllables?
She has tried to hard to follow his order. Tried to become part of her own world, tried to know him better on Earth than in Narnia.
On both counts she considers herself a failure.
A table full of fruit baskets.
Some random cut of meat Eustace's parents had dropped off "on the way home from the market".
A fire poker.
A fireplace.
She sighs.
It would have to be Narnian cooking for dinner, wouldn't it? Can it really have been seven years?
Now, how did Peter
and Trumpkin do this?
Earth beef and apples alone were nothing compared to Narnian honey-fed bear and apples with friends.
Even so, it had been wonderful, burned fingers and all.
She sits in front of the dying fire, wrapped in a thin robe with the Professor's own Bible, a big thick monster of a book with pages and pages of scrawled notes tucked here and there.
She has decided that tonight she will indulge her losses, forget trying bury everything away from the world she was born in.
Alone, it does not matter if she lets the Gospels bring the memories they inevitably bring, does not matter if she reacts to the memory and not the words.
It has been eight years since she could read of the clearing of the moneychangers without seeing Aslan breathing on statues and the smaller lion sniffing at his own tail as his hindquarters turned live again.
Eight years since she could read of Pilate without seeing Jadis.
Eight years since she could read of poor doubting Thomas without remembering a warm rough tongue on her face.
It was the first summer after Caspian when she really understood why. She'd suspected after finding out how badly Lent, especially Holy Week, treated Edmund. She had practically figured things out when Aslan had evicted her and the High King himself from Narnia.
She could never talk about these things with Peter or Lucy. They thought in terms of the brighter parts of life, always. Darkness lasted only until the light came.
Peter the Magnificent, sword shining in the sun, cleaning out the remaining purely evil things from Narnia.
Lucy the Valiant, bring hope among the nearly fallen with her cordial, unable to go to the next unfortunate soldier until she sees blood returning to ashen cheeks.
She and Edmund were of a different mold.
Edmund the Just, sitting with all the seriousness ever made resting on his brow, not eating as he obsessed over the vague details of yet another odd case of warped intentions or heated passions gone awry and eventually he starts pacing the throne room until she calls up hot tea for them and lets him vent to her on the dais step.
Susan the Gentle, keeping castle while Peter runs off to battle and Lucy tours the countryside, dealing with obsessive suitors (at least Rabadash had tried to hide his real plans) and the poor shattered souls who drag themselves to Cair Paravel to petition Adam's flesh and Adam's bone for help.
They had dealt with the darkness of a wrecked world, and not in the passing way of their siblings. There were light times, and laughter, but they knew intimately that Narnia was no paradise.
She and Edmund did not speak of what happened at the Stone Table that horrible night and blessed morning. They never had and now they never could.
The others were never an option. They had not seen the glory of him that morning.
And so Susan Pevensie lies sobbing in the soft glow of embers, engulfed in memory and simple knowing.
It was breaking down like this in the middle of a church service that made her stop attending.
She falls asleep there.
The next morning, she begins reading Professor Kirke's notes.