After two weeks of searching, Peter had found his housekeeper. Mrs. Madeline Wilson was a matronly woman whose husband was also hired as the head groundskeeper for Rosewood, and she was a very nice lady with experience in her line of work. Yet, she was fraying Susan's nerves to the very end.

The woman had a tendency—alright, a passion—for mothering, and four newly orphaned children would normally be within her forte. She was not dealing with normal children however, and the woman could not seem to wrap her mind around that little fact. She meant well, but she was overbearing.

This was Susan's house. She was the Lady of Rosewood. She handled supper menus and school schedules and cleaning schedules. Already an obsessive list-maker with her homework, Susan now had an estate to run, and she was having the time of her life. Everything had a place once more. She had staff to manage, rooms to decorate, and gardens to upkeep. In other words, she loved it. This was the closest the young girl had been able to get to her homeland since they returned, and she was genuinely happy. She felt like Queen Susan the Gentle once again, and it was marvelous.

That is, until Mrs. Wilson appeared.

Susan, with her delicate lists and organized office, had all of her plans swept away with the matron's arrival, and she felt that she was to be insane if the woman was not dealt with! Mrs. Wilson had taken control of Rosewood, and everything was a mess. Rooms were cleaned wrong, supper was served at the wrong time, and the roses were allowed to grow too far out into the gardens. Worst of all, her desk had been alphabetized.

Susan Pevensie, the woman who was eternally in control, had had her desk—which held all of the necessary paperwork to run Rosewood, as well as plans for a dinner party—reorganized into an alphabetical system, instead of the Narnian one that she was familiar with. Mrs. Wilson had done it herself as she felt that it would be, "more helpful and simpler to use than that convoluted mess you had going on".

When Susan had first discovered the disaster, she had tried to stay calm. Then, when she discovered that Mrs. Wilson had taken the plans for a dinner party-a party to which many high-ranking people were invited-to modify them, she lost it.

"Mrs. Wilson! I have tried to stay calm here, but this is the last straw. You cannot keep undermining my authority like this! I am the lady of the house. Not you. I make the final decisions. Not you! The only ones who are allowed to overrule my decisions are my siblings, and they would not dare!" Susan tried to explain.

"But my dear, you are so young! You cannot possibly know how to run an effective household. Leave it all to me. Everything will be set right." The placating voice of Madeline Wilson soothed.

Inside, Susan seethed. It may seem petty, but this was getting ridiculous. She did not have a mother from the ages of fourteen to twenty nine, and she ran a country quite well during that time. She had learned how to run a castle at the age of fourteen, and had done a very good job of it. Now, her parents were dead, she was essentially banished from her land, and a neurotic housekeeper was messing everything up. This was a disaster, and it was time for the Gentle Queen to put her foot down.

"Mrs. Wilson. Please stop talking and listen to me for once!" This got the woman to be quiet. Susan breathed in and out deeply. "I run this household. I do. Not you. I am in charge of where things go, of when things should be cleaned, which parties will be thrown and when. I am in charge of the supper menus. I know what to do. I can run this estate with an effective hand, but you are undermining my authority and everything is becoming disastrous. Now, you may choose to listen to me as an equal, or you may leave!" Her tone softened slightly. "If we work together, and you listen to what I have to say, then you will realize that I rule with a competent hand. However, until you begin to submit to my authority, Rosewood will continue to fall apart."

"But my dear—" Mrs. Wilson started to speak, but the Gentle Queen cut her off with a sharp look.

"You are a housekeeper. You were hired to assist me in the everyday running of Rosewood Manor. Yet you are acting more like a governess! Please, do your job. I am perfectly capable of handling mine—without your assistance." Susan nodded her head briefly at the older woman, and took a seat at her desk. "Please excuse me. I have an office to reorganize, and a dinner party to plan. Any questions may be directed to me after lunch or through a list. Good day, Mrs. Wilson."

Mrs. Wilson got the obvious hint that she was no longer welcome in the study of Susan Amelia Pevensie, and she swiftly departed.

Susan sighed deeply, letting out the stress that was pent up inside of her. Everything was going wrong. Rosewood was not Cair Paravel. It was not Pearlcombe. It was simply another estate that her siblings were trying to make into their home, and it was not the same. She yearned for the sweet breeze of Narnia, for the dancing of the nymphs, and the Talking Animals. She wished to be back in her land, to be in a place where she was valued, to be in a place where she was loved. She felt misplaced back in England, like she was betraying her land by trying to copy it.

This would never be Narnia, and it killed her to say it. Exhausted with keeping up the pretense of happiness, Susan Pevensie, aged fifteen, let her grief for her land out. She sat at her desk, a sniveling, weeping, mess, and simply let her heart cry out for the Lion that she was searching so hard to find. She did not know why she was sent back. She did not know why she was not allowed to return. That was all she desired. All she wished for was to return to her motherland, and she was denied. That thought made her heart burst once more, and she wept harder.

Susan wept for her land—her poor, tortured Narnia. She wept for her subjects, for the people who were displaced, and for those who suffered the torment of war. She wept for the casualties and their families. She wept for the ruins of Cair Paravel. She wept for the small chance that she might have had with Caspian. She wept for The Golden Age of Narnia, and the fact that it ended. She wept for the twin Princes Cor and Corin, and the Lady Aravis, and the fact that she was never able to say goodbye to them. She wept for Mr. Tumnus, and the General Orieus. She wept for the fact that she had been the one to suggest that all four of her siblings go hunt the White Stag. As much as it would tear her heart to be away from her family, all four of them knew that Narnia came first. If three went back and one stayed behind, and it was for the better of Narnia, so be it. Better to rip apart a family, than rend a nation in two. Yet that is exactly what happened. They left Narnia, and the nation was invaded. She wept for her foolish years—for the way that she was drawn in easily by Rabadash, and they way she put her and Edmund's lives in danger for him. She wept for the months she spent in England, wasting her time on silly, childish endeavors. But most of all, Susan wept for the Lion. She wept for the way that she had denied him so vehemently. She hated herself for straying away. She was forgiven—the Lion will forgive a truly repentant heart—but she still felt guilty for her actions. She had almost torn her family apart, and it took an attack on her and her sister to snap her out of the pit she had dug. It had taken bodily harm to her baby sister to wake her up, and Susan was disgusted.

What kind of person allowed herself to go that far? Had she really strayed to that point? Had she really fallen that deeply? What had changed? She loved the Lion with her whole being. She had watched the Lion die on the Stone Table for her and her sins. And yet she—the one who had seen the terror—had denied him so easily. She had fallen without a backward glance. Without a care. She had simply stopped caring.

She had been angry with Aslan. Angry that he would send her away, and not let her return. Angry that he would give that privilege to Lucy and Edmund, but deny it to her and Peter. She had been angry with the Lion, and it had caused her to deny him. She was not proud of herself for it. She had been miserable, those four months that she had denied herself the love and affection that came with being one of Aslan's Chosen Ones. She had let fifteen years' worth of love and trust slip through her fingers, because she was angry. Who did that?

She feared the dark side of her. She saw what she could do when mad. She saw that she was manipulative and mean and Susan had come to hate the portions of herself that did not embody the moniker of The Gentle. In the recesses of her mind, Susan felt that she was no better than Jadis, for she had turned—not against the Deep Magic—but against her family and her Lord.

All she wanted was to be the Gentle again. She just wanted to be the Queen that she knew she could be. Susan, in her obsessive over-achieving way, wanted to be the absolute best person that she could be, and that person was Susan the Gentle, Countess of the Southern Lands, Lady of the Horn, Queen of Narnia. She had the potential to be someone absolutely great again, and Susan simply strived to be that woman. She wanted to be the Susan of Narnia once more, even in England, but it was so hard.

Yet, she would try. She was a resilient woman in her older days, and a stubborn girl. Yes, she would strive to be the woman that Aslan had deigned her to become, because that was who she truly was. That was the piece that she was been missing and yearning for. She was not complete in England, because somewhere along the way, she had lost her Gentleness. Slowly, as she tried to be better, she was gaining it back. It was a long and arduous process to gaain back her Gentleness, but she would do it. And first, she had a wrong to right. Her words were not Gentle in the least, and she had to fix that.

As Susan stood up and made her way to the door in pursuit of Mrs. Wilson, she could have sworn that she had heard a Lion's roar in the distance. And for the first time in England since leaving Narnia, Susan Pevensie truly smiled.

AN: I must admit, I was not planning on writing such a Susan-centric chapter, but this one really took off and wrote itself. Susan needed her time to deal with all of her raging emotions, and she finally got that time.

I hope you enjoyed this latest chapter, and thanks so much for reading!

By the Lion,

Inky