Just a little One-Shot that came to my mind when I read the first Narnia book by C.S. Lewis, though it's movie-verse...
Ill
It happened slowly, creeping. At first, she was feeling unwell. It was just some weird tiredness like you have on a cold winter morning when you can't find the energy to leave bed. Then she lost color. Her family and teachers explained it with the lack of sun. But then she started to lose weight. She wasn't eating any less than before but still her weight reduced more and more. That was when they started worrying.
Susan had stopped laughing a long time ago. In fact, the last time she laughed was before their return from Narnia. Now she did little less than sitting in her room and staring out of the window. Sometimes she drew, but nothing more. Soon the girl was unable to keep down any food and only laid in bed because she was to weak to do anything more. Her siblings were desperate. No doctor could help her, they couldn't even name what she was suffering of for heaven's sake! And so Susan laid in her bed in a state between sleeping and waking unable to talk or draw and her state only worsened now that she was cut of from her only source of peace.
When the Pevensie siblings had returned from Narnia, Susan had spend days sitting in the garden drawing. Her drawings usually featured Narnians, nature or buildings but she had made three drawings that were even more precious than those others. One was a drawing of a young man on a dark horse and it was one her family was alowed to see, the second was a lion's head, expertly drawn were both the mane and face, this one she gave Lucy, a picture of her beloved Aslan. The third and last was the portrait of the same handsome stranger that was also in the first picture.
She had it always with her. It was her sole consolation. Lucy tried to cheer her up, sitting at her elder sister's bed and telling her stories of Narnia. Peter and Edmund tried to find anyone who knew how to help her. But in vain. Lucy even tried to contact Narnia in hopes of finding a cure. But she couldn't make contact at all. And so they all suffered with her because they couldn't do anything else. Then Aunt Polly came to visit.
She looked at Susan and recognition displayed at her face. Later that evening she took Peter aside. "Peter", the aunt said, "I have seen something like that once. When I was a little girl, a boy, Digory, lived in the house next door. His mother had a similar desease as Susan, though Susan's is far graver. "What happened to her?" Peter asked her. "Did she..." he didn't finish his sentence. "No. She made a full recovery. The man Digory and his mother lived with, was it his uncle? I can't remember... Well, this man played with things he didn't understand, in the end he made Digory release an evil sorceress and Digory and me brought the two of them accidentaly to a newborn world. In fact, we were there when it was born out of a lion's song. To make up for his fault, Digory was sent on a task by this lion to bring him a golden apple from a garden far away. I accompanied him and in the end, from the apple grew a tree. A tree that for the following centuries meant protection to this newborn world. To Narnia. Because the lion had a great heart he picked an apple from the tree and gave it to Digory. After our return home, Digory fed his mother the magical apple and she recovered from her terrible deseas even though no doctor had been able to help her." Polly ended her explanations. "Then we need to get Susan such an apple" Peter exclaimed. Polly sighed. "If it only was that easy, my dear boy. But no one knows where to find those apples apart from the lion who gave Digory one." "When you say lion you mean..." "Aslan, yes. And the evil sorceress was Jadis, the white witch. But the point is, the only possibility is Narnia. If we could only get there."
Lucy woke up from a whisper. It was nothing strange for her to wake up by something like that. Unafraid the girl followed the whispers to the garden Where she found that the tree, that grew there, had formed a hole and through that hole Lucy saw Aslan. "Aslan" she cheered. "Hello Lucy" the lion said with the same fondness as always. "Aslan, please, Susan needs your help, she's terribly ill, and we can't figure out what's wrong with her" the girl pleaded. "Shh shh" the lion soothed. "I know, and I know what will help her. Unfortunately the procurement of said cure will take time, time your sister does not have. Just like Digory's mother all those years ago, it was grief that brought her to this state. If we can lessen the grief we can buy her some time. Hopefully that will be enough to get the cure." Aslan explained. "But how do we do that?" Lucy asked the lion. "Bring her here, to this tree every day, and through the hole in it she will be able to see and talk to the only one who can lessen her grief. That should buy us time." Lucy nodded and Aslan said: "Now go back to sleep, little one."
The next day, Susan was moved to the garden, so she could sit by the treehole. There she saw not Aslan, as Lucy did the previous night, but Caspian. The young king talked to the girl for hours and you could virtually see how Susan's health got better and better. Still she was weak but at least the girl could ingest light fare. Her siblings could even hear her laugh again. But once it was time to return her to her room for the night, her fragile health broke down again and was even worse than before. "Hurry up Aslan" Lucy prayed silently.
The days passed and Susan's health got better and better over day and worse and worse over night. Soon she could talk and draw when she sat at the tree and saw Caspian but was terribly weak and unable to keep down what she had ingested over day in the nights. "Seeing him and losing him day after day is killing her" Edmund summed it up one day. The siblings could only nod. They all saw how Caspian was good for Susan and how being seperated from him worsened her fragile state. "Can't we do anything?" Lucy asked desperately. "I'm afraid not. Aslan said Susan and me could never go back to Narnia." Peter apologized. With tears in her eyes Lucy watched her sister laugh in the garden. soon the sun would set and the laughter would be gone for another nine hours of pain and fear it would be the last.
One day, Aslan finally woke Lucy up in the middle of the night again and gave her an apple. "Give this to you sister" the lion told her, "and when she eats of it, she'll recover." And that she did. But the treehole and with it Susan's only connection to Narnia was gone when they woke up the next morning.