Disclaimer: not mine.
The Last Battle- part 2
Six coffins stood at the front of a church. People on all sides watched as Susan walked among them, lost in her own world. As she walked in front of them, she remembered.
"Susan," called Peter's voice, as she passed his closed casket. Memories of him ran through her mind as she walked all around it, wishing she could open it, memories and hazy dreams that could have once been real, however impossible it might seem. She felt the extreme sense inside her, deep within, of love and devotion to a boy for protecting her. Scenes flashed in her head, of him as a boy, and as the man he could have been- the man he'd been?
"You are a kid," Edmund had scoffed.
"Well I wasn't always," Peter had replied, and they'd all exchanged looks. Susan felt like she was a ghost walking through that memory- as if, if she tried, she could walk into that scene, where they were all alive and happy together. And then walk right into the adventure she felt certain had followed that
Ed was different. Knowing he was dead was hardest because she had the feeling that he'd already died, years ago. That he'd gotten a reprieve, a brief shot at a better life before this tragic accident.
And the vague memory of that life- what life?
"Oh Susan," Edmund murmured in her ear, and she turned, half-expecting him to be there. She'd felt the slight breeze of his whisper against her cheek, felt the warmth from his body against her shoulder. Susan and Edmund were the most similar of their siblings, the dark to Peter and Lucy's light. But Edmund and Peter were closer than anything else in the world. Lucy was everyone's little sister, but Peter and Edmund had gone through much more than the girls had.
But what?
Susan's body clenched, her hands forming fists, her shoulders hunching in on herself as the voice of the man at the front of the room continued to drone on, a pleasant hum in the back of her thoughts. It would be too much to ask her to hold his words in her mind as well as the thoughts and memories of the people she loved so dearly.
She felt like a traitor, like she had turned on them. If she'd been there, she'd have shared their fate, but she'd be happier than she was now. "Even a traitor may mend," Edmund's voice, deeper than she'd known it ever to be, and thoughtful as well. Touched lightly by sorrow, even.
Her mother and father, her brothers, all gone. Memories came fast and thick, the ones she knew to be real, and the ones that felt real, felt more substantial than any other. The boys fighting, in a subway, in a snowy wood, on horseback with flashing steel.
The pastor said something she didn't hear, and she was late to stand.
Edmund lay dying.
A scream rose in her throat, and she hurriedly choked back both the sound and the thoughts. They were coming back to the train crash, her imagination picking up the pieces she'd heard, pieces with her brothers and sister and parents in so much pain. Jill, so young and full of life, on the verge of being the age where she could join Susan and Lucy at the parties Susan so enjoyed, and Lucy tolerated for her sake. Eustace, the boy who had changed so much since that summer when Edmund and Lucy had gone to visit him.
"Why?" Lucy asked, and once more Susan felt like there was a spirit hanging just out of sight, her little sister's sad face gazing mournfully at her. Remembering Lu was remembering the innocence of youth, without growth. She'd matured without aging- a child in the body of a young woman.
Lu as a frightened child, being sent away, Lu at the Professor's.
Lu running from those wolves in her nightmares, her outrageous stories and imaginative daydreams.
Lucy, running from wolves (when had there been wolves?), Lucy throwing her dagger (when had she had a dagger?), Lucy on horseback (she'd never rode before), Lucy running from more danger, as Susan stood in a clearing, ready to die for her sister. The memories of Lucy, Lucy, Lucy- so many different memories, Lucy at so many ages, so many different emotions not hidden on her open face.
Including anger. The anger that had been foremost on her face the night before the day she'd died, when she'd returned home from the Professor's party, distracted, without her brothers. "Why won't you take your head out of the clouds, and remember? Remember what you once were, Susan Pevensie, who you once were, and come back."
"I don't remember, Lucy," Susan whispered, so softly that her aunt, sitting next to her, didn't hear her. "I don't."
She looked up at the front, not surprised to catch the briefest glimpse of all of them, standing at the alter, evenly space, all nine of those she'd lost in the accident, dressed in their Sunday finest. Her parents, standing together on the far left, next to Eustace, who stood next to Edmund. Peter stood in the middle, his head held high, proud, with his little sister standing beside him, her eyes locked with Susan's. Jill stood to the right of Lucy, and the Professor and his friend, the woman Susan had never met, but had heard stories of, long long ago in that part of her memory that she couldn't reach any more. Polly, who looked at Susan with such disappointment, but some understanding as well. Susan couldn't stand to look at them, so she averted her eyes, but she knew she must, so she looked up again, and the others no longer stood there. Nor did the alter remain. She was looking into a grand hall, standing in front of a dais with four thrones. Three monarchs looked down at her, expectantly, their expressions those of loving parents, waiting for their child to catch up, to join them. A light shone from a Beast that moved up between the eldest's throne and the empty one, looking at Susan, who shook as his eyes touched hers.
She closed them quickly, and the thrones and the kings and queens flashed briefly against her eyelids, transformed to her and her siblings in those same clothes, on those same thrones, wearing those same crowns. As the image faded, Susan murmured once more, "I don't remember. But I'm trying."
If this were the movie version (as I could only wish...) The only difference I'd have for the ending of the actual Last Battle as Lewis wrote it is not bringing back the characters from Horse and His Boy. They'll be introduced in my own end to Susan's story :)
I envision this part as actually having the other three saying things to Susan, but just Susan's buried memory recreating them, not that they are actually communicating from the world beyond.
Sorry I've been away... lots of craziness in school these days, and people coming down to visit for their spring breaks. I'll try to get the next few up soon.
