Disclaimer: I only own the effort it took to write this. I don't think I know what I'm doing anymore.

"I wish you a kinder sea."
~ Emily Dickenson.

Susan rolled over the next morning and stared blankly at the ceiling. White, solid, with flickering shadows from the tree limbs outside her window.

She wasn't sure what she felt.

Queen Arwen—her memory breaks me a little bit more, now that I cannot feel the life from the river. I wasn't wrong not to want to be her.

I still do not know if I have what it takes to be a Walker. All the people I can ask—Hester, the Doorkeeper—aren't giving me straight answers. And most people I can't ask.

I wonder what the Bookkeeper would have said, if I'd asked?

She felt the pull to dwell on that mystery, to let it distract her. Or to go downstairs and call Nancy, call Carol, and listen. Even if it made her angry—though perhaps she would be a little less angry now? Perhaps—perhaps she would be better—

But none of those things would answer my question. And I know what would.

And I want to go back to their graves and be alone with them this time. I want to tell them about Hester, Arwen, and everything. And I want to tell Edmund about the books, Lucy about the singing river, Peter about the thing I'm attempting…

If I want to do that, I'd better get going.

She flung her blanket off and got up. She opened her tiny closet, running her eyes over the clothing inside, and hesitated.

Most of these are to make me look beautiful. And there's nothing wrong with that, there isn't, but somehow I don't think I can sit in the grass in these. Or describe Queen Arwen's beauty while wearing them. She reached instead for an older outfit, shoved all the way to the side, of a plaid skirt and a plain top. Lucy had once told her she made them look beautiful, and Susan had smiled, for she knew the difference between making the clothing beautiful and the clothing making the wearer's beauty more apparent.

I was often beautiful to you three, I think. Why would I need to dress up for you now?

But not at the end. I don't know if you saw my beauty at the end. That thought hit her heart like a fist, and she tightened her fingers on the clothing, holding them like an anchor and chain for a moment, till the pain passed and she could breathe.

That, I think, hurt the worst. I was never clever like Edmund, so noble and charismatic, like Peter, or…pure, like Lucy. That would have been the word. Purely herself; purely the Lion's. Jealous sometimes, of course, and she could be impatient, but—she drew hearts like Peter drew attention.

I was always the pretty one. Till I wasn't.

And then I didn't know who I was to them.

She remembered Lucy's diary, her insistence that one day she and Susan would be Queens together again.

But I wasn't a Queen to her then. What—what was I? I wasn't the pretty one, I wasn't a Queen, I—

What was I?

And Arwen came back to her mind, the lady who would always be a Queen but wasn't, and Susan thought, I was the ruins of a Queen.

Or the ghost of one. Perhaps, and her throat closed as her eyes filled, perhaps it is just that all I have now are ghosts.

She threw on the clothes and went downstairs. She almost went into the kitchen for a quick breakfast, but the Lion painting was still there, still facedown, and Susan did not want to either walk past it or have a conversation with it.

So she bought breakfast on the way, one of the hot penny buns on the street, and made her way to the cemetery with a brisk walk. She slowed when she entered the gates, and slowed more as she walked past the bench where she'd sat with Tom. The bench where she'd sat with the Doorkeeper.

There is more than the dead here. There's magic.

And she stopped in her tracks. There was a thought there, a thought she could almost reach—something about death and magic.

Maybe I can talk to Edmund about that.

Talk to his grave, and yes, that thought still hurt—but she had something to say to him now. And that was not a little thing. Not something she dredged up just to have something to say.

She headed for the church, blinking away the tears but smiling a little as she realised that she knew the way now.

I know where you are, or at least where I can talk to you, and hope that you hear. I know where I'm going.

She arrived a little out of breath, not realising how quickly she'd been walking. She sat down facing the stones, sending a smile towards her mother and father's stones before turning to face the other three. She cleared her throat, surprised to find she was a little nervous.

How do I begin? I have so much to say this time, and I—I want to get it right. I want to give them this, give them something…good, after giving so much pain.

But how do I begin?

Lucy would say to just begin anywhere. Susan closed her eyes against the tears—and then remembered Hester, and let them fall. Lucy would not mind.

None of them ever did. She opened her eyes and smiled a trembling smile at Lucy's stone. She cleared her throat again and looked towards Peter.

"I met someone," she began, and stopped. "Not—not like that. Not someone in our world. And not Aslan, either, Lucy—you would probably ask. But I met him, the Doorkeeper, the one I told you about, and now I've—I've been to other places. Not just to see Anne—I know I told you about her before. I went somewhere else this time. A different world. And Lucy, the trees grew with silver trunks under a blue sky, with these beautiful yellow leaves. But you would have loved the river most. It sang—Edmund, you remember the mermaids singing? Their voices were the most piercing thing I'd ever heard, but this—water had a voice. If the mermaids and the river sang together—"

She stopped. "I don't have words for that," she admitted with a soft sigh. "But there's more. I went there to meet someone. Queen Arwen. She had been a queen once, married to a—someone who sounds like a good king, Estel. But she had left her race behind to love him, and she lived much longer than he did—"

And Susan broke off again, eyes going wide with horror. That—that will be me. I'm going to live so much longer than all of you—

She felt her stomach clench and she bent over, trying not to heave. One moment, one more, one more—she counted them off, trying to calm her stomach.

"Sorry," she whispered, when she could speak without hurling. "I'm not—I'm not going to be just like her. She was the ruin of a Queen. I had been a ruin, too, when I saw you last, but I'd built a tourist trap on top of it. She just—had nothing. And she was so beautiful, as if the stars and the velvet sky at twilight gave their beauty to a girl, but the stars had gone out. She couldn't love. And I knew I didn't want to be like that." She paused again, and her eyes fell to the grass; it was hard to even look at Peter's name. "I want to be like the other people I met," she whispered, speaking the wish as if it could break her fragile heart. "Hester, and Anne, and Tom but better. I want—I want to go to other worlds. I want to see magic, and taste rivers that wake my heart, and see beautiful Queens that warn me about what I could become. And I—I want to do a bit more than that too," she added, the words coming faster now. "I want to give to other people what Hester gave to me. I want to be a strength to people when they don't believe it exists anymore. I want to be something—" beautiful, she admitted to herself. "I want to be someone you all would call pretty again." Because maybe then a little of the pain would go away; maybe then I could believe that beauty matters again.

Because I want magic to restore my heart enough that I can believe in beautiful things again.

She sat there in silence for a while, feeling the wind touch her face and watching it move the grass. But after a while she blinked and looked at Edmund's stone. She'd questioned something about magic earlier, hadn't she?

"I had a thought while coming here. Something about magic and death springing from the same place. Can you help me with it, Edmund?"

Silence answered her, and she felt like crying again. It was hard to feel like she no longer mattered to them, even while she felt like her words could hurt them terribly if she said the wrong thing.

"Edmund?" she whispered.

Still nothing happened.

Perhaps I'm doing this wrong. Instead of waiting for his answer, perhaps I should try to remember what he would say.

What would he say?

She could see him, suddenly, one eyebrow raised. "Magic and death?" She could hear him. "Well, there was one time they were very closely related in my experience. Twice, actually."

And when was that, Edmund?

"Lucy's cordial bringing me back after the battle and every other time I'd died; but that is magic triumphing over death, and much as you'd like to believe that while standing in a graveyard, that might not be the lesson you need. Don't go looking for a cordial to bring us back. No, there was one other time the two were connected."

When?

But he just raised his eyebrow again in her memory. And she didn't continue the conversation, content to look at him, to almost let the question go, if he would stay.

He began fading, going blurry, and she hastily thought, When?

When was Narnia's greatest triumph, Su? You were there for it.

And she had been, though she had buried that memory deepest. She had not been able to forget it, to forget that Voice that roared and purred, that shook the earth and spoke as gently as breeze, saying that the sinless had been killed in a traitor's stead, calling into play the deeper magic from before the dawn of time, and death itself had begun to work backwards.

Magic and death. Aslan, You brought triumph out of death before. She waited, wondering if she dared to ask the next question; if her heart could take the hope in it. Hope felt like dying in a way that would never finish, that would just go on and on and on. But she thought of Anne, of the Doorkeeper's promise that Anne's hopes for love had been fulfilled. Even though her heart had known many deathly sorrows, Anne had still blossomed.

It is worth it to hope. Aslan, can You do that in me? Can You use magic and make death work backwards in my life?

Actually, I know You can. Will You?

And she waited again, almost expecting nothing—telling herself she only expected that silence. Telling herself not to hope.

But she heard it, she heard the Voice that spoke only to her and shook her heart. "All in good time, child." A breadth of wind stirred her hair and for a moment she smelled the sweetest scent she'd ever known, as if the Lion had breathed on her. "But I promise I will."