This is something which has been bouncing around my head for a while. I just simply can't bear the thought, which appears to be the prevailing one, that Susan spends her life in regret after the Last Battle and wanted to write her a proper send off.

Warning: Brief suicide mention, though not essential to story.

'Excuse me Madam, have you heard the Good News?'

Susan marched straight past the old man with hands clutching his pamphlets with determined zeal, impressive for her octogenarian frame. Scampering behind her a significantly less fit fifty something year old woman dashed to keep up with her.

'Really mother, there is no need to be so rude!' she panted, grasping her arm to slow her down. Susan sighed, and after making a determined effort to relax her appearance, turned to her with a smile.

'I'm sorry Carrie, I just don't want to be late for Lucy. Wouldn't want her to think we'd forgotten her, would we?'

'We have half an hour till we said we'd meet her! Besides, I love my daughter but you know as well as I do that she'll be late, she always was, even before she started university!'

Conceding the point, Susan slowed, much to her daughter's relief. They continued their way along the busy street, dodging the other shoppers and avoiding anyone holding clipboards or pamphlets. Caroline glanced at her mother's still hardened expression and, deciding now was as good a time as any, gently said

'You do know that David wants the whole family to go to the sermon tomorrow morning, don't you?'

Susan glared at her, but after seeing her child's beseeching expression, muttered

'You did mention it, yes.'

'So you will come?' More pleading looks, that Susan attempted to ignore, but failing dismally, eventually nodded stiffly. Her daughter's face broke into a wide grin, as she gabbled about on about how wonderful it was going to be, with her daughter home on her holidays and her mother coming to church as well and how David would be SO happy.

Susan chuckled, remarking on how peculiar it was that David would be so excited to see his mother in law. Internally however, a lump of pain and panic had risen in her throat.

Xxxx

When she and Peter had first been told that they would never return to Narnia, she had accepted it with good grace, and threw herself into her life on Earth. She threw herself particularly into the Church, Aslan's thinly veiled comment about learning to know him on this Earth not exactly being lost on her, putting to good use her excellent singing voice in the choir and trying with all her might to be a perfect Daughter of Eve.

Yet after a while, she noticed something. Aslan was silent in this world.

Not only that, but Aslan didn't do anything, either. He left her and her siblings entirely on their own, and whilst her three siblings reminisced with glee about their time in the magical other land, she began to see what they refused to: they were well and truly abandoned.

And it wasn't only them. The war may have ended a few years ago but conflict still went on, and horror stories were brought to England, and to America when she travelled there, of the atrocities people suffered in the communist countries. Not to mention the horrors she saw all around her; beggars on streets, veterans hobbling along with missing limbs, hungry children scuffing their feet on the dusty streets as they walked.

In fact, as far as Susan could see, Aslan didn't care about Earth, and his equivalent 'God' seemed at best fictional, and at worst a tyrant.

The final straw was the loss of her school friend, a darling, wonderful girl, found lying in a pool of her own blood next to a scribbled tearful goodbye.

Susan immediately stopped going to church, remembering all too well the prayers she had woven for her friend whilst she was still living. She stopped acknowledging Narnia, pretending to have forgotten that it was anything more than a game, to her sibling's disgust.

She decided, also to their disgust, to make of her life what she could, accepting party invitations, dressing herself how she pleased, enjoying her free time as a single woman, whilst working as a nurse to pay her bills. She worked hard and diligently at the hospital, and was beloved by both her patients and co-workers for her determined attitude yet extremely kind and gentle manner. Whenever the epithet was used to describe her Susan felt a slight jolt of discomfort, but ignored it. She could be appreciated for her gentle nature without being introduced with it tacked on the end of her name.

Despite this aspect of her life, her siblings were disgusted by her new 'obsessions', but Susan ignored them. It was hard, when she saw the judgement in their eyes as she slicked on her lipstick, or came home after midnight with it slightly smeared, though it became easier.

For the first time in her life, she was living as SHE wished.

The first Christmas after the accident was hard. No one had expected anything else. She spent the holiday with her friends, all trying to help her fill the hole of her missing family with wine, presents and laughter.

She still refused to go to the church, entering the graveyard from the back gate so as to avoid attention.

Her wedding day was the next hardest day, as she walked up the aisle unguarded (why should she be? She was a grown woman after all, not a possession) to her fiancé's outstretched hand.

She and Patrick had married in a Church, to appease his family, and out of her great love for this wonderful, patient, loving, intelligent man she had made little complaint.

They had met as she was leaving the graveyard one afternoon, when he had almost knocked her over on his bicycle. Through his unceasing apologies, despite her laughter and good humour, she had ascertained his name and a time for their first date.

Their relationship was like nothing any of Susan's previous flings of the heart had been, and despite her longing to see her family sat there with pride and happiness on their faces as she bound herself to Patrick for life, her wedding was still one of the happiest days of her life.

Carrie came along within a few years, followed by Samuel and Thomas. Whilst Patrick's career as a banker easily fed the family, once all the children were at school Susan found herself back at the hospital, unable to simply sit at home.

A Queen of Narnia had to be kept incessantly busy.

She never mentioned Narnia to anyone, even her beloved husband, knowing how insane she would sound if she did. But she also never forgot it. She took the family camping every summer, attempting to regain the bond with nature she had once felt, all those years ago, and still did her hair in the traditional Narnian way, ignoring the fickle fashion trends yet still remaining effortlessly stylish.

However, the deep seated betrayal and hurt she felt towards Aslan remained, and she refused to attempt any form of reconciliation with the church. Which wouldn't have mattered a jot once the swinging sixties and relaxed seventies were upon them, had her daughter not wed a vicar.

Still, the marriage had brought her three of her grandchildren. Lucy, the eldest, was so like her namesake it sometimes hurt to even look at her. But on the day when Carrie had tentatively told her that her baby grandchild as named after her dead great-aunt, Susan had wept tears of joy.

That great love she felt on that day only grew with time, and she would tell anyone who would listen all about her granddaughter the medical student, with her dark soulful eyes and clumsy cheerfulness, or her brothers Peter and Edmund, the bright young twins who were never happier than when they were together. Or indeed her little grandson Patrick, named after his late grandfather, who her son Thomas had only recently shown her photos of his first day of 'Big School'.

Not so little any more, any of them.

And so, as Susan sat in the uncomfortable pew the next morning, flanked by the half asleep (and slightly hung-over, she expected with a jolt of slightly misplaced amusement and pride) Lucy and equally uninterested Peter, listening to her sweet son-in-law drone on about the love of God, she didn't feel the usual build-up of rage and disbelief.

After all, she chuckled, she had done quite well for herself, even without Aslan.