Disclaimer: Sometimes the hardest thing in the world is to wait. I've no wish to own the terrible, necessary task of teaching patience through such means.
Beta'd by trustingHim17
"How to Love Someone Who is Broken"
Gently, lay your hands on their soul like a whisper
and find the places in which they are broken.
Then love them until these fractured places
become crevices, and the crevices become
thin white scars, that they only just barely remember."
~ Nikita Gill
This is the problem with promises, Susan thought, staring up at the blue sky. It's harder to trust them over time.
It had been a week since she'd heard Aslan's promise. A week since she'd been unquestionably certain that magic would rebuild her life and make it something…better again.
An entire week.*
A week didn't seem so long at first. There were times—when she was a belle, a Narnian Queen, or even just an older sister—when a week would have gone by so quickly she couldn't separate the days after they became memory. But a week was a very long time when all there was to do was—to wait.
The promise had seemed less certain by the third day. By the fifth, it seemed old and well-worn, faded from the constant repetition playing in her head, the surety she tried to hold to. Now, Susan had to fight the parts of her mind—trained by so many conversations where she'd scorned her siblings—that told her she'd only imagined the promise.
Susan had filled the time as best she could, cleaning the house, walking the streets, and even going to visit the people who had known Lucy and her mother. Those visits had been incredibly hard; she had only been able to go twice. Everyone wanted to speak about who Lucy was, or the gentle strength of her mother. And Susan was not ready for that. She was not ready to have the loss spoken of so openly, and she'd left the visits struggling to breathe.
There were easier things. Going to rugby games as Edmund's team played. She could sit in the stands and speak to no one, but still feel the fire, the competition, and the way everything was so alive.
And she began working again.
She had not wanted to, and she had a house she did not have to pay for, but she still needed to eat. She avoided her fellow employees at work, refusing to acknowledge their curious, pitying, or even compassionate glances. The compassion was the worst, for it could break through her control. And she was no longer the beautiful girl all the customers listened to and flattered, but she could still dredge up an empty smile, answer questions, and direct people.
And she started to notice, now, the people who were having bad days. On hero own bad days she just nodded at them, but on the good days—
She could not smile at them. But she made her voice soft, her tone gentle, and everything about her quietly kind.
It was everything she wished someone would give to her. On the good days, she gave it out to others.
She noticed, after a couple weeks, that the promise was easier to believe on those days. Maybe it was because they were good; maybe it was because of what she had done. But that, itself, gave her the strength to try a little more.
Just a little. Just for the quiet, plain coworker with dull blond hair, who sometimes spent her lunch crying by herself. Just to sit with her at lunch, on the days when Susan could see she didn't want to talk much, and to make it less lonely.
Just enough to pick up the phone and call Nancy, and, hearing the misery in Nancy's voice, invite her out for a picnic.
Susan almost invited her to eat in the graveyard, before she caught herself. Nancy might know misery, but not the kind that Susan knew. So they went to lunch and talked about nothing at all, but Nancy seemed less frantically cheerful, going home, than she had been when she arrived.
And though it did not lift any weight from the grief, Susan was not so lonely.
She would not have called her days living. But she moved, she did her job, and on good days she spoke more than the brittle words that politeness demanded.
Every day she went to the graves. She told her mother about the two times she visited her mother's friends, told Edmund when his friends won the rugby game, told Peter about how the world grew a bit steadier, after the wars.
She told them all when she spoke to her coworker. She told her mother about her lunch with Nancy.
But sometimes she just came and sat.
Sometimes she came and cried.
Four weeks passed. Susan wondered if, beneath the grief, she'd started to accept the pain of being in England again, if she would revert back to who she was again, that person so separate from her siblings. But she thought of Carol, of how Nancy felt more at peace after being with her, and held that against her doubts.
Then one evening, coming home late, she opened the gate and let it swing shut with a hard crack!—she was too tired to catch it—and looked up to see the brown professor-like form standing in front of her door, staring at something in his hand.
Her heart began pounding. She took two quick steps forward, faith triumphantly telling her stunned brain to look, look, here was the proof she'd known magic!
He looked up from his little book, and with practised fingers began folding it back up with a single glance down. "Working, were you?"
Yes, I need bread to live—no, I've been out for a stroll, I so enjoy those these days—where have you been? All these crowded on her tongue, but the last, the most important, burst out of her instead. "Can I—is it time for another trip?"
"Obvious—" he cut himself off, shaking his head. "Patience. I have fallen out of the practice of patience. Yes, it is time for another trip, but not while you are so tired. That would be disastrous. Tell me, what is the next day you do not work?"
"Two days from now—Saturday," Susan responded. Her heart sank, even though she could feel her trembling fingers, feel every pounding of her heart, and knew he was probably right. "Are you staying?" she asked, hope rising. He hadn't moved from her doorstep, and for all he tried her patience, to have a magical being for a few days would be—
"Of course not. I'm making a door. I'll step through it into your Saturday. What time? Oh, let's say seven in the morning. Americans like to be about early, and we must be there after they've gone, so we'll have some time to talk first. I'll see you in a few moments." He didn't open a door Susan could see, he merely stepped to the side—and vanished.
Susan walked towards the space where he'd stood. She looked to the side, tempted—Saturday seemed too far away. Could she take the same shortcut?
But that would mean she would not go to work, and she could not afford to lose her job. No, she would have to wait.
To wait more.
Friday morning seemed to take an eternity. Susan straightened the shop, put things away, nodded to each customer that came in, and tried so very hard not to glance out the window every five minutes, to look at the position of the sun. But the minute hand passed so slowly…
She was so wrapped up in her own impatience she missed, at first, the sound of crying. It took her several minutes before she realised what she was hearing: a child crying softly, scared and sad.
She set down the stack of pale brown shirts she had been folding and looked around. She couldn't see anyone. So with quiet steps, listening as intently as she could, she followed the sound, to find a golden-haired six-year-old boy, hiding behind a barrel of buttons. She crouched beside him.
"Are you lost?" He shook his head, still not looking up from his hands. "Where are your parents?" He shook his head again.
She raised her own head and looked around, seeing no one. Perhaps she should get to the heart of the matter. "Why are you crying?" she asked, as softly and persuasively as she could.
"I need to go out the door," he sobbed, his clear voice breaking.
"I can help you with that," she promised, standing and holding out her hand. He looked up, his eyes a startling deep brown, and looked at her doubtfully. She smiled and dug into her skirt pocket for a handkerchief. "Let's dry your face first." She patted his cheeks gently and wiped his eyes and then his hands. "There. Take my hand," and she held it out.
He took it, and to her surprise, pulled her along, in the direction of the door. She followed the child's lead, nodding at customers as they passed them, watching for any that might be his parents. But no one paid them any mind, and she stopped at the door he led her to. "Where are your parents?"
He smiled up at her. "My father is always with me."
"Do you need help getting home?" she asked, looking down the street one way and then the other.
"No. But it has been fifteen minutes since you've thought about the time," he told her. She froze, looking back down. "Be faithful where you are placed." He turned away.
Susan watched him, clutching the door frame, her heart hammering once more. She did not know for certain who that was, but it felt like one of His servants. One of His own.
He had been right, the time had flown when she was helping someone else. Also—
Surely it would be good for her work as a Walker, if she practised compassion where she was placed.
So she went to find Jane, the quiet coworker, and asked if she wanted to eat lunch together. Later she went about helping others with their work. The hours passed a little more quickly, till finally she went home to sleep.
Sleep did not come easily. She lay awake for hours in the dark, unable to calm her mind. For once her thoughts dwelt on the future just as much as the past, memories of Narnia, her siblings, England, Canada, and the world of the forest and river alternating with wonder about where she was going—and what she would be called to do.
The morning came at last. Susan dressed, ate, and, looking for something to do, hung the Lion painting in the hall, where she would walk past it every time she left the house. It seemed…it seemed like something Peter would have approved.
Then, promptly at seven, she opened her door, shivering suddenly. She watched while the Doorkeeper stepped into the space in front of it.
"A few seconds indeed. You don't look much more rested. But perhaps more ready. That will matter. You are going as a Walker," he added seriously, "and I am here to tell you about your charge."
Susan suddenly felt a stir of something like laughter, or the beginnings of it. She'd opened her door, and he'd just—appeared, and begun talking.
"Will you come in?" she asked, stepping back while holding the door open.
He blinked. "I suppose so. Yes, next time I shall just appear in the living room. If I can find something to make a door, of course. In the meantime, perhaps some tea while we talk? I've grown very fond of this British habit of yours…"
He'd led the way into the living room, and Susan waited till she saw him sit in one of the chairs before going to the kitchen to make tea. It did not take long. She added some scones and took the tray in, handing him his teacup and then sitting across from him.
He took a long sip before leaning back in his chair. "No questions?" he asked, raising his thick eyebrows.
Susan counted to three, reminding herself that reacting like a defensive child would not be a good way to prepare for this. "I do not know what to ask yet."
"True, and also wise. I am under orders to send you to someone who has what you do not; who has had much of it, in fact."
Trying to separate her reluctant pleasure in his compliment from what else he said, Susan asked, "Has had much of what?"
"Time."
"I have been waiting four weeks," Susan snapped, before biting her lip. She had not meant to be angry, either.
The Doorkeeper set his cup down with a small clink. "That can be a long time to wait," he agreed, his tone quiet. "But it's not much time, overall. Would you call it enough time for your grief to settle?"
Susan thought of the magnitude of the change, her heart's unending hole that the rest of the world could never fill, and nearly laughed a bitter laugh. "No."
"No," he agreed. He took another sip of tea. "Time does things for grief that nothing else can accomplish. It grows the wounds back together, so the hurt is a little less deep, the bleeding not so threatening, the scar a little tougher. Scars are not always bad things. A scarred hand is what saved the world, you know."
"How much time has this person had?" Susan asked, trying to get the conversation back to the trip. She was too keyed up to follow the Doorkeeper's thoughts.
"Months," he responded quietly. "She is young, she is dying, and she knows it." Susan set her own teacup down, startled, as he continued, "She has had a good deal of time to get used to the idea."
"That is—I don't—even in Narnia—" Suan paused, collecting herself as he tilted his head, waiting. She had no desire for his sharp replies. "I haven't known anyone like that before. How can I help?"
"You can help because one of her deepest struggles is also your own. She is alone."
Susan looked down, tears welling in her eyes. She blinked them back; this was not meant to be about her. If she let this other grief too close, it would mix with her own. "Her family?"
"They are with her, but they think she is merely sick. She is alone because she is the only one who knows she is dying. She will tell her family after a little bit of time passes, but it will be easier on her if she can tell someone else first."
"Me," Susan said softly.
"You."
Susan kept her eyes on her teacup. That sounds—almost easy. Just listening. Just being there, and hearing her.
But if it were easy, someone else could have done it already.
Can I do this?
I…I want to, actually. I want to be kind again. I want to be gentle. I want to be the person my siblings remembered, someone more than the broken person I have become. More than I am on those dark days.
I want to be someone people can talk to.
"Are you ready to go?"
"Is there anything else I need to know?" She asked it quietly, steadily, and she saw the Doorkeeper smile in approval. He took one more long drink of tea before setting the saucer and cup to the side.
"This girl has three sisters. One is married, one stays abroad, and one works fiercely to keep her well. Her parents are kind and wise, and you would do well to avoid them. They see more of souls than most, and they would see yours. A Walker must not become too tangled in another world, if she's only there for a visit. I intend to take you there for perhaps an hour or two, and then come back for you. When it is time to leave, simply walk through the door to the room again. But pay attention to the opening of the door!" Susan had been a little caught up by his mention of the time, and was not paying much attention now.
An hour or two? That—that isn't much, after four weeks of waiting.
Perhaps more than enough, though. There's so much that can happen in a few hours.
"Aslan's Queen!" His sharp voice broke into her thoughts. "Your attention, please? Thank you. That is, I think, all you need to know. Are you ready?"
Susan nodded, rising to her feet. He stood himself, brushing scone crumbs off his lap, and Susan's eyes went a little wide when she noticed they fell through the air and vanished before hitting the ground. He gestured for her to go first, and she led the way into the hall, hesitating. When she looked over her shoulder he looked pointedly at her front door.
She reached it, holding the handle, to hear him count, "One, two, three" and she shivered again, feeling a strange sensation, as if she could see with her emotions, glimpsing something with them out of the corner of her eye. She opened the door and walked through it.
It still felt like walking through a ghost, goosebumps rising on her skin. But nothing hit her heart this time, and the next moment she was through.
*The older I get, the more astonished I am that Abraham could trust God's promises for so many years, with no faith made sight.
Two A/N: If you're tired of me asking this question, please ignore it! It's just fun for me, so I'll ask again: any idea where Susan is going?
Also, my family life is getting intensely complicated and painful, so while I will try to keep the once-a-week updating schedule, I may not be able to.
