Hi! It's been an abysmally long time since I posted and I am so very sorry for that! I could spend time making groveling apologies, but since it's already been nearly a month I'll just get on with the chapter. I hope people are still reading!

Aslan's Daughter: So glad I'm doing a good job of portraying Lucy :-). Also, your idea is not too prescriptive at all...i was actually considering doing something similar anyway, but definitely will now that I know someone would like to see that happen!

Rosazul66: Thanks for reading! Sorry it's been so long, hope you don't mind that this is Susan's chapter...:-)

13th. of Greenroof, 1012—Eighthday

Both Lucy and Edmund seemed incapable of keeping tidy rooms, Susan mused dejectedly as she pushed open the door to her younger sister's bedroom. The general messiness of Lucy's room however shared very little in common with what she was certain she would have found in Edmund's. Edmund had a terrible habit of leaving books and papers strewn about—covering every available surface—but Lucy did not limit herself to such simplicity. True, there were several heavy volumes of stories and history tossed haphazardly onto her desktop, but the majority of the disaster was caused by clothes and enormous bouquets of half dried flowers hanging from the wall, the ceiling, and even the furniture.

Susan was very familiar with Lucy's habit of collecting flowers every summer and drying them to brighten up the castle in the winter—and she suspected that the habit was another of Lucy's nearly constant efforts to keep Edmund from brooding—but she had yet to understand why the process needed to be completed in Lucy's bedchamber. Although, she supposed Cook would have been less than pleased to find them in the kitchens, and even Lucy knew better than to infuriate Cook. Had known better.

"I suppose it hardly matters now," she remarked to the empty room, noting with a sinking sadness that a fine layer of dust was already beginning to coat everything. "I wouldn't have scolded you for it if I had known you would be gone so soon." She sniffled into her lace edged handkerchief and gingerly moved aside an enormous bouquet of roses so she could sit on the edge of the unmade bed.

The servants it seemed had long since given up on their attempts to keep the chambers in any semblance of order, and now Susan suspected that they viewed the rooms as nearly hallowed ground and everything within as sacred relics of their beloved queen's life. Personally, Susan could have very easily done without such relics if only Lucy were somehow restored to them.

Sitting there, surrounded by her sister's things with the brilliant late afternoon sunlight streaming through the open curtains, Susan wasn't quite sure what she felt. She had cried so much that there seemed to be no tears left, no more room for abject grief, and now she was left with a terrible sense of emptiness—as if there were suddenly an unfillable void in her life.

She hated herself even for thinking it, but Edmund's death was more expected and somehow easier to bear because of that. She had been preparing—however unwillingly—for the day he would fail to return from one of his wild missions for years. True, that preparation offered little consolation to her now, but it did serve to make his loss less shocking. Lucy though—she had never considered that Lucy might leave one day never to return—such a thing had been as unthinkable as the sun failing to rise in the East.

The room was stuffy, the dust-thick air nearly choking her, and she shook her head, stumbling to her feet in a sudden flurry of anger. She nearly collided with a large Badger in the hallway, barely recognising Sundance the Librarian, and not pausing to apologise despite his low growl of annoyance as the stack of books he was carrying scattered to the floor. Stopping to apologise and help him would have been both gentle and gracious, but Susan did not find either of those words appropriate to describe herself in that particular moment. Lucy had always been the one to bring out the best in her, to cheer her with a sunny smile and calm her flashes of temper with a cup of tea and ready kindness. Lucy was a ray of sun in the darkest storm, and she was gone, her light extinguished in the very moment when Susan needed her most. It was selfish, she knew, to think of herself at such a time, but it was somehow easier to think of herself than of Lucy—to bemoan her own loss, rather than imagine her sister, her friend, sinking beneath the waves of an unforgiving sea.

She barely took note of where her feet were taking her until she threw open the heavy door that led to the ramparts atop the East tower and was met with a gust of chill wind, blowing salt-scented up from the sea. She shivered, pulling the light shawl she wore closer around her shoulders and fighting back the tears that threatened to tear their way from her already raw throat.

The tower was her customary refuge on the rare occasions when she could break away from her duties and the still rarer occasions when she allowed herself to do so, but today there was little comfort to be found in the silence there. Evening was approaching, and the air was chill, damp, and somehow oppressive, the wind tore at her hair and gown and snapped open the banners flying from the ramparts with enough force that they were in danger of tearing free of their fastenings. Four banners, four standards, four rulers.

Her eyes stung and she averted her gaze swiftly, refusing to lose her tenuous control over her tears, and looked down. The path below ran along the cliff's edge and was unusually crowded with a slow-moving parade of silent, dejected figures—Narnians making a grief-stricken pilgrimage to pay final homage to their fallen rulers. Never mind that there were no bodies to lay to rest, there would be a funeral—it was only proper—but without the necessity of haste Susan was loathe to make preparations. Better to wait, she told herself. Waiting would allow time for distant friends to make their way to Cair Paravel, perhaps her suitors would even have learned to display some modicum of decency and departed by then—this was rather unlikely, but that did not stop her from fervently wishing for its occurrence.

The banners whipped sharply in the wind, the sound drawing her eyes unwillingly to them. Peter's, a roaring, golden lion on a field of rich, dark blue that mimicked the northern sky at midnight bordered by intricate patterns of gold, her own, a drawn bow beneath a golden sun set upon a field of white, and the other two banners that brought a fresh wave of tears to her eyes.

Lucy's banner was customarily a white gull flying across a field of interwoven silver and blue, recreating the colour and shimmer of a summer sea, now the banner was black—the gull appearing ghostly in the fading light of evening. She deserved better, Susan thought bitterly, though she wasn't entirely certain whether she meant her banner or her life—perhaps both.

Edmund's had been changed very little by the colours of mourning—silver scales above crossed swords set against a background of green so dark it appeared almost black had been changed minutely to a field of pure black behind the silver. She doubted she would ever look at it again without remembering Peter's look of shocked horror as he showed her Edmund's signet ring, engraved with the same pattern, lying on his cut and bloodied palm.

Grief had never been a particularly easy emotion for Peter—he reacted first with cold anger and shock, masking his pain and grief until it overcame him utterly. Looking back at her own reaction Susan felt vaguely disgusted by how quickly she had lost control—she had broken, sobbed and screamed, locking herself in her chambers and shouting at anyone who dared approach her. That was no way for a queen to behave—Peter at least had grieved in private, if he had allowed himself to grieve at all—and she knew she needed to be stronger. She needed to find her shattered mask of control, to somehow rebuild, reforge it into one so strong that it would never falter again.

Lucy and Edmund would become memories, distant and treasured like the dim, warm recollection of her mother's smile and the still more distant memory of her father's voice—never forgotten but faded and ephemeral. Peter would grieve eventually, she knew him to well to doubt that his strength would waver, his control shatter, and he would fall into abject depression until his anger returned—all-consuming as he rode out to wage some distant war. Without Edmund at his side Susan couldn't quite believe that he would return—Edmund was always the calm that sought to balance Peter's rage, and when that failed he had never hesitated to throw himself between his brother and danger. Without him, there would come a day when Peter rode to war and did not return, instead doomed to bleed out his life on some mercy forsaken battlefield.

She would be the one to endure, to outlast the darkness that would shroud the land in the wake of such incalculable loss, and if that was her burden to bear then it was high time she stopped moping and got back to the business at hand. She straightened her shoulders briskly, wiping away the traitorous tear that had escaped her left eye with the edge of her shawl and brushing a few miniscule wrinkles from the fabric of her gown. Her hair was a disaster, of that she was certain, but there was little she could do about that until she returned to her chambers.

I'll send for Jala, she can-

The door in front of her that led up from the stairs flew open, the wind catching it as it swung wide and slamming it back against the wall with a deafening crash, and a moment later Peter emerged from the opening. His face was flushed, his was breathing rapid, as if he had just run all the way from his chambers, and however detached Susan had recently determined she must be she could not fail to notice the pained set of his jaw and the heavily pronounced limp that indicated his ankle was not as well healed as he would have everyone believe.

"Peter James Pevensie! Sit down this instant!" There were a grand total of two people (herself included) who could (and did) speak to the High King in such a fashion without risking an imminent and explosive display of annoyance. Orieus (the only other person who would not risk Peter's wrath by speaking as she had) rarely exercised his ability to do so, but Susan certainly had no such reluctance—not that she often expected to be listened to, but that was hardly the point.

As a matter of fact, Susan had not been particularly hopeful that Peter would obey her command, she had spoken more out of habit than expectation, and was rather surprised when he smiled, with the sheepish air of a scolded schoolboy, and dropped down to sit with his back against the parapet.

"I need to talk to you."

Obviously, otherwise you would likely be moping in the privacy of your own room. She hadn't missed the smell of strong wine that clung to him, or the bloody cuts on his hands, and it was obvious enough that he had reached the stage of his grief where loss had overcome his anger, however temporarily.

It doesn't make sense. He had left his room, he was relatively calm, if somewhat out of breath, and hardly looked the part of a grieving elder brother. Susan had never been very fond of puzzles, particularly those which failed to obey logic, and she was currently in no mood to speculate about Peter's strange behaviour. She sighed, hoping her annoyance was conveyed clearly enough, and sat next to him, crossing her legs under her and staring determinedly across the tower's flattened top and down to the woods beyond. She was in control, she was calm, and she could remain that way as long as she did not see her own grief reflected in her brother's expression.

"Well?"

"I spoke with Aslan." She glanced over sharply, despite her earlier determination, and saw that, despite his disheveled and bloody appearance, he did seem to be surrounded by the faint, golden glow that often accompanied Aslan's presence and sometimes lingered even after He had gone.

Or possibly he's simply drunk and I am desperate to see something that isn't there. "And?"

He didn't answer immediately, instead settling more comfortably against the parapet and clasping his cut, bruised hands around one knee. He was thinking, considering, determining what to tell her and, quite possibly, what not to tell her, and Susan found that she was in danger of becoming extremely cross.

What could possibly require such careful consideration? He certainly hadn't appeared to consider so carefully before telling her that their brother was dead. That isn't fair of you, she told herself sharply. It wasn't his fault, she mustn't blame him, and yet she did—whether she wanted to admit it to herself or not.

"Lucy is alive." The words seemed to strike her with the same force as the news of Lucy's death had, stealing her breath and setting her heart to racing in an uneven rhythm, but she would not lose control, not this time. This time she would behave in a logical matter, and logic dictated that people did not simply come back from the dead.

Peter, it seemed, was not done speaking, though he had paused as if waiting for her to react. When she did not, he sighed, apparently resigned to her reticence, and continued. "I set sail for Calormen in the morning."

That hardly seemed the best course of action given what he had just told her, and Susan frowned in spite of her recent determination to remain aloof. "Why Calormen? If Lucy is alive then shouldn't you be going after her, not searching for pointless revenge? That seems the logical course of action."

Peter sighed audibly at her mention of logic but nodded. "Ordinarily I would agree with you, but Aslan told me to go to Calormen and look for Edmund. He said Lucy would have her own path, but He promised that she would return to us at the end of it."

"So Edmund is alive as well?" She tried not to sound overly skeptical but judging from Peter's frown she didn't do a particularly good job of it. She did not yet dare to hope, but her heart thudded frantically, struggling against the rationality that drove her skepticism. They were dead. Peter had been so certain that Edmund was gone, the Swallow had seen Lucy die—such evidence could not lightly be ignored, but if Aslan had said…if.

"He didn't say that precisely." He shifted uncomfortably, clasping and unclasping his hands, nervous energy practically crackling in the air around him, and Susan bit back a cutting remark concerning his own lack of precision when speaking. It wouldn't do any good to start an argument.

"Aslan said I have to go to Calormen immediately to look for Edmund, and that he will tell me what needs to be done, although—" he broke off, frowning down at his interlocked fingers and Susan knew there was something he was failing to tell her.

"Although?" she prompted after a moment, trying not to allow her own frown to become too obvious.

"He said that Edmund is neither dead nor alive, and what I am supposed to make of that I really can't imagine." He gave her a pleading look, as if she had answers he did not, and that was the last straw.

"Peter, isn't it possible you were dreaming?" She tried to say it kindly, even though she wanted to shout, wanted to shake his shoulders in frustration and call him a fool.

He shook his head emphatically, almost desperately. "I wasn't Su, Aslan was here. He told me what I needed to do, and Lucy, at least, is alright—He promised me that."

If it was true…if, and that was the problem, because how could it be true? She trusted Aslan, was ready to accept His words, but Peter…She loved her brother, trusted him with her life and the protection of Narnia, and over the years they had learned to work together, to listen to each other, and rarely argued as they once had, but still Peter was not necessarily the most reliable source of information. Especially if he is drunk, which he may well be, and I can't say I blame him if he is.

"Couldn't you have imagined it?" she persisted quietly, refusing to look over and see the expression of betrayal she was certain she would find on his face. Instead she focused on the distant horizon, squinting through the dusk until the blurred line where horizon and forest met came into sharper focus. There were figures moving there, more Narnians making their way to Cair Paravel, and she blinked sharply, trying to clear the persistent haze of tears from her eyes. "Couldn't you have dreamt that Aslan appeared to you and told you what you wanted to hear?"

He sighed, and out of the corner of her eye she saw him roll his shoulders in a motion vaguely reminiscent of a shrug. "I might give some credit to that if He had told me what I wanted to hear." He sounded vaguely bitter, and suddenly weary, as if the great weight of grief which seemed to have lifted slightly had settled back on his shoulders. "But Ed—Su, you can't believe that's what I wanted to hear."

No, she couldn't, and he sounded so certain that she almost believed him. She wanted to believe him but how could she? If he was wrong, it would be so much worse to have been given hope only for it to be proven unfounded and have reality come crashing back, destroying any semblance of control she had regained. And, even if it was true, shouldn't he still send someone after Lucy, or better yet, go himself rather than chasing a vague pronouncement that might mean anything, or worse, might mean nothing at all?

Susan said nothing of what she was thinking, however, painfully aware that it would do no good to argue with her brother when he was so determined. The Narnians had always considered Edmund to be the most stubborn of their monarchs, and it was true that he was often terribly stubborn, sometimes to the point of foolishness, but Susan understood, as few others did, that Peter could be far more stubborn than anyone else she knew. He had made up his mind, that much was obvious from the stubborn set of his shoulders, and he had come to her, not for council, but to inform her of his plans—regardless of whether or not she approved.

"Do as you will," she said shortly. "Aslan guard you," she added a moment later, more kindly when a look of hurt flashed briefly across Peter's face and was certain that an equally brief expression of regret had crossed her own features.

"Brickle and Menwy will be accompanying me—Orieus is to remain behind to guard you." His voice was strained and Susan gritted her teeth, wishing she could be less distant, wishing she could throw her arms around him and beg him not to go, not to leave her alone with her grief and the crushing weight of her duty to Narnia.

"It's probably best that you tell no one this news, or where I'm going. I don't plan to announce my presence in Tashbaan, and there's no use raising the people's hopes if—" he left the sentence incomplete, hanging heavily in the air between them, but Susan understood what he had left unsaid. "If I don't find Edmund; if I don't come back." It made sense, in fact, it was the most sensible thing he had said since their conversation began, and Susan nodded silently.

"One last thing," he scrambled clumsily to his feet and offered a hand to help her. Susan ignored the offered aid and rose with far more grace than her brother, brushing the wrinkles from her skirt automatically. "If Sallowpad returns from Tashbaan while I'm gone send a Sparrow after me."

Susan found herself nodding blankly, swallowing back her tears with difficulty, fists clenched in the folds of her dress to keep her hands from shaking. Don't make a fool of yourself—you are a queen first and a sister second, you have no other choice.

He regarded her gravely, seeming to understand—perhaps for the first time—the necessity for her withdrawn behaviour, and put a cautious hand on her shoulder. "I know you will look after Narnia in my absence but promise me you won't forget to look after yourself as well, sister."

I can't. I can't promise you that. But she nodded, not trusting herself to speak, knowing that if she did she would no longer be able to hold back her tears.

He didn't say goodbye, only nodded in return and limped heavily back through the door that led to the winding staircase. Susan bit her lip so hard she tasted blood, fists clenching until her fingernails dug into the skin of her palms. Don't go. Please don't go, Peter—I can't lose you too. But she said nothing, and the door swung shut behind him with a terribly final sounding thud. Don't leave me here alone. But even if she had spoken there would have been no one left to hear her plea.

It's a little short, sorry about that, but at least I got something posted! Please leave me a review :-) I swear I will do my best to be better about updating in future, but I'm not sure when the next chapter will be posted. Thank you so much for reading and all the lovely reviews :-)

Cheers,

A