"And afterwards, Edmund-" Susan halted, furrowed her brow. "Edmund changed after that."

"Changed?"

"I fell into the painting… and I can't go back, Alberta, I can't."

"What do you mean he changed?"

Susan raised her eyes to meet Alberta's, almost instantly falling to her lap.

"Well, we say he changed," she qualified. "Lucy, Peter and I say- said" - she took a short breath. "And Mother commented on it when we came back."

Her lower lip trembled and her eyes were flints of ice in the winter sun.

Victor had looked like that, too, Alberta realised with a strange start; when he had returned home from the war. He had been sitting in the drawing room, and Eustace Clarence had dropped a jar- probably one with his lollies- on his bedroom floor, and the sound had resounded through the house- and Victor had jumped like a frightened rabbit (one of those creatures he loved t point out at Hampstead Heath). And his eyes had gone so cold, so hard, just like Susan's (just like the lights in the hospital)-

"Susan," she said, and as she spoke she heard the tremble in her voice. "Susan!"

Susan blinked owlishly once, twice, gave a little start

"What were we- ? - oh, Edmund," she said, and frowned again. "Well, he was nicer after we left Professor Kirke's." THe lip biting resumed.

Soon you'll have no lips left to bite.

There, that was her mother's voice.

"Nicer?" she prompted, glancing (surreptitiously) at the clock behind Susan. She really ought to head soon, it would soon be four; already three bells had tolled, three tugs from home while still she sat here, hearing a half garbled story from a stern, half-grieving girl who seemed to have forgotten the story she was meant to be telling, who could not speak with any real ease, who (is Victor's daughter) and she didn't know her or like her, and, oh, but how cold Susan was! The living room felt like winter; autumn had already flown away (already died).

"- It was the war, you see; he grew up, as we all did." Susan smoothed her skirt out, gave Alberta a small, tight smile. "What point would there have been in being so cruel to each other when Father was at war and Mother was so far away?"

"But you said-" Alberta began, wishing she did not sound quite so stupid.

"Well, of course," Susan said, and that strange but familiar look of pained joy filled her face. "We were not always kind- but then, we were so lost, so lost. Put on your coat, darling, and take your lunch, Mother told us, and then we were at school, and we were whisked away on a train- and of course, Edmund was so young, and was missing Father so dreadfully. Is it any wonder he behaved poorly and needed to settle down?"

And yes, of course, it all made sense, so-

"- hence, Narnia."

"And Aslan."

"- Yes, and Aslan."

But there was something in Susan's voice, perhaps not even in her voice; perhaps it was in the silence before she spoke, as faint as a dropped stitch in a coarse handkerchief, or the edge of a canvas peeling away from the drying paint.

"You grew up," she said, and each word was so heavy it was an effort to speak. Yet something her wouldn't- couldn't- be still, and it burst forth, gasping for air as if it had been journeying in a dark, cloistered tunnel. "Susan, why was Edmund at the train station this month?"

Her voice caught, latched onto the splinters still in her throat (heart).

Why was anyone near that train station?

Susan gave an odd gasp as though she had forgotten how to breathe.

"He was there-" she began, and her voice dropped to a whisper. "He was there for Narnia."

Her eyes were wild and terrified

(weave a circle round her thrice)

For Narnia.

"But Alberta… I haven't told you about Narnia- or Aslan, the great lion- Alberta!"

"I'm sorry, I really don't remember any more," said Susan tightly, though not crisply. She swept out of her seat and picked up the tea cups deftly. "Thank you for calling about the house, Aunt Alberta, and I'm sorry I couldn't help you more."

And with that she smiled, a tight, painful smile that Alberta was sure Victor would not have approved of, and led Alberta to the front door, feeling rather suspiciously as though she had been pre-emptively kicked out.

For Narnia, she thought, footfall quiet on the half-shadowed pavement. For Narnia!

It sounded like some foolish patriotic war call, like those recruiting posters "For England" and "For the nation"; those wretched posters she had seen as a child, from before her own father's conscription into that terror that had failed to 'end all wars'- for England!

But patriotism led to war, and oh, but how stupid it was to fight over a nation! She and Harold had been firm on this point, and she had tried to dissuade Victor from fighting.

"Don't you remember Papa?" she had hissed, flinging his army cap at him. "Don't you remember how broken our mother was, how hard its as for all of us?"

The flash that had been in his eyes! She still remembered, still felt it.

"He was conscripted, Bertha-"

"- And you are choosing this?"

(and how the pain and betrayal had swirled, ugly, senseless strokes slapping scars on half-marked white)

"- that war was different. This time it's-"

"It's what? Just? I never thought I'd see the day! My brother, a killer! My brother- a murderer!"

How he had drawn himself up, then, till the ceiling seemed barely heigh enough to contain him! She still remembered, or at least in her memory it had seemed as though the fire had burned lower, and she remembered feeling so small, so very young, had felt their three year age gap more pertinently then than in the years that he had been married with Peter, Susan, even Edmund, and she had felt somehow left behind.

"And what of the Edelsteins, the Kacelniks? Alberta, they were your friends, too, and you know- you know their fears for their families! Can I not fight for them?"

What had she done next? She felt the thread, grasped it, and it fell between her fingers with the breeze.

Remember, remember, what else is there to remember?

"Senseless," she whispered, and somehow she recalled that word- had she shouted it, or had he? One of them had, she knew, and how ironic that the only fragment she could grasp from the years floating past was that one word, senseless, that slid through her fingers like liquid.

But that word, it had been central to that conversation, ahdn't it? Senseless.

"War is, senseless, Bertha."

Or had it been, "Death is senseless?"

Did it even matter which it had been?

But Victor's response,there had been something about Victor's response! What had he said?

"I can't sit by doing nothing?" Oh, but had there been something about Christ coming and setting things right? Or "Christ has no hands but his church?" (she was sure the last one was a quotation, but couldn't for the life of her remember where it had come from).

But why did it matter, what Victor had said? He had had his rationale, and she did not buy it, have never bought it, and they had discussed it before, so why was it bothering her now? And, in any case, why was it making her think so of -

But no, she was being silly. The lion, Aslan? Heavens, and it wasn't even a real lion!

She checked her watch; heavens, was it really that time? Briskly, she picked up her pace; if she dawdled any longer, it would be very nearly six! It was time now to file away her thoughts for another day, to wrap them up and place them on the shelf, and leave them behind with the used tea cups. Pausing only a moment to breathe in the hedge roses in a nearby terrace, she trained her eyes ahead, and made her way home.

A/N: Oh my dear. I have no excuse... And this is not even edited so it probably has a dozen or more mistakes in it, but I just feel so bad about how I haven't written anything for this story in an age that I just needed to get SOMETHING up. To borrow something I saw someone writer on tumblr, writing is like the alethiometer and I am like Lyra, and the older I get, I can't, I can't :(

The quotation, if anyone was interested, is from a prayer/poem written by St Teresa of Avila, to whom George Eliot writes a somewhat touching homage in Middlemarch.