Title: Out From the Shadow-Lands
Author: Cirolane
Chapter: 4/6
Rating: PG13
Prompt: If I waited to be right before I spoke, I would be sending little cryptic messages on the Ouija board, complaints from the other side. -- Audre Lorde
Summary: "The morning was grey. When she looked out the window, it looked as if someone had forgotten to put the colour on this day." After the death of her family, Susan tries to cope.
AN: Only one chapter left plus the epilogue. Thanks a bunch to Elecktrum for the wonderful beta, without her this story wouldn't be this good. This was written for the Femgenficathon on LJ.
Chapter 4:
The sun didn't come out. The day was grey, which suited Susan's mood fine. The world should know that this was a sad day.
The church was big and cold and Susan didn't like it at all. She had never really liked going to church. Their mother had always taken them there every Sunday. Susan always associated God's house with long hours where she had to sit still listening to a boring sermon, and getting cold and stiff all over. She hadn't been there in very long time. Church always made her think about Aslan, and she didn't want to think about Him.
In front of the altar lay the five coffins they were going to bury today. She didn't look at them long. It was almost unimaginable that the ornate wooden boxes held what was left of her family. They hadn't told her much, they had wanted to spare her the details, but what she had read from the papers told her that the accident had been brutal. The people who were on the train had been crushed, while the ones standing on the platform died instantaneously. They hadn't asked her to identify the bodies. She wasn't sure why, maybe her aunt had done it, to spare her.
The service seemed to last forever. Susan was only half- listening to what the priest was saying. People was looking at her funny, she guessed they expected her to cry. But she couldn't, even if she wanted to. She was numb, she felt too much and she felt too little. She was hiding from the pain, yet embracing it. And the tears wouldn't come.
"But now, we can only hope that they are in a better place. In heaven with God."
The voice rang through her foggy head and brought her back to the present.
'In heaven with God?' she thought, 'No, I hope they're with Aslan. That's were they'd want to be.'
She followed everyone outside; they walked across the cemetery to where five empty graves stood waiting. She was suddenly so very cold. She couldn't stand the thought of putting her siblings down into the cold damp earth.
Susan stood alone as she watched her family being lowered down into the ground. She wouldn't let anyone touch her. It started to drizzle as she stood unmoving when the priest said the last words before it was time to leave.
Before her aunt pulled her away, she left a single daisy on Peter's grave. She has many memories where they spent hours in a meadow making flower chains with daisies.
She left a white lily on Lucy's grave. Susan had a faint memory of Lucy telling her that at the end of the world there were lots and lots of lilies, and how pretty they were, and how she wished Susan could've seen them. Susan thought Lucy would like to have lilies on her grave.
And on Edmund's grave she left a red rose.
The air was warm, and the sun had just set. The two monarchs were taking a walk in Lucy's beautiful garden. They used to do that once or twice every month. It had started when they felt that their royal duties had taken up so much time that they hadn't had any time to talk to each other anymore.
"I love roses," Edmund said suddenly.
Susan looked at her brother with a smile. "Roses? I wouldn't have thought you for a rose lover."
The king laughed at that and grinned down at his sister. To Susan's chagrin her little brother had grown a lot taller than her.
"I don't know much about flowers, but if I had to choose which one I thought was the prettiest, I would say roses," he said simply.
"No, you don't know much about flowers or gardening at all! Lucy can't believe that you are so incompetent when it comes to growing things," Susan said, teasing her brother.
"It's just so boring!" Edmund exclaimed. "And when I can't even make anything grow, then it just becomes even more boring."
Susan patted his arm and they continued walking. The garden was gorgeous. Everyone who lived at Cair Paravel loved to spend time in Lucy's garden. It was a known fact in Narnia, that the youngest queen was an excellent gardener. She had spent many hours learning from the dryads, and she had used her knowledge well. Her garden was one of a kind.
Susan and Edmund usually spent their walks in the rose garden. They both had a love for the roses, while Lucy herself liked the lilies best. Peter on the other hand liked the wild flowers found growing in the meadows.
Susan sighed and looked around. She wanted to have a clear recollection of the place. Tomorrow they were leaving for Calormen, and she wasn't sure if it was such a good idea to leave Narnia while Peter was off fighting the Giants in the north. She knew that Edmund would prefer to be at his brother's side, rather then coming with her.
But she also knew that he would come, since she had asked him to accompanying her. He didn't like Rabadash, and he really didn't want her to marry him. But Susan felt that she had to explore the feelings she had for the prince, so tomorrow they would leave and sail for Tashbaan.
"If I ever were to get married, there would only be roses in the wedding," Edmund said with a faraway look.
Susan laughed and said, "Wouldn't that depend on the bride and her taste in flowers?"
Edmund thought about it. "No, I think that whoever I was to marry, would like roses just as much as me."
Before she left she took one last look at the graves. They all lay on a row, with her parents laying next to each other at the right. Beside her mother lay Peter with Lucy at his side, and beside Lucy lay Edmund. Even in death they protected her.
The gathering afterwards was horrible, in later years she couldn't remember much of it. She remembered that it was loud, everyone was saying something, but she could never really hear what it was. She remembers a hoard of old people, claiming to have known her parents and that the last time they saw her she was only a little girl.
"Bad business this," They would say. "Such a horrible accident," and they would pat her hand. "Poor child, how are you keeping up?"
She would smile a tight smile and mumble something, and they would leave to make room for even more people she didn't know.
The worst was her friends, and her siblings' friends. She never really knew that they had had so many friends. She had always thought that Narnia had been pulling them back from living normal lives. That was one of the reasons she lied and denied Narnia.
But clearly she had been wrong. There were many young people here. There was a group of sixteen- year-old girls mourning Lucy. There were a big pack of young men, some of them she recognized as the boys Edmund and Peter used to play football with, mourning her brothers. And then there were her own friends, most of them girls, standing in the corner, admiring Peter's friends. And she was struck by how silly they looked.
For the first time she felt that she couldn't relate to her friends. Well, if she was to be honest she had never been able to completely relate to her friends. Sometimes she would catch herself thinking that they were so young, that they didn't really know what life was about. Sometimes she would slip up and say something like she missed wearing beautiful clothes, and the girls would look at her strangely and she had to think fast to find a way to explain it away. She had never consciously acknowledged that to herself before. But know, she realize that she didn't want to be like them.
Again, it hit her how unfair life was, and how the death of her family was what she needed to take a second look at the person she had become.