A/N: Thanks to all my reviewers! You guys are awesome. This is the second bit of a three part story, and the third part isn't quite finished yet, but I should have it done as soon as Darth Real Life decides to give me a break and let me write. D
Oh, and I still don't own Narnia.
Always a Queen
Lucy shut the fitting room door behind her and sank down onto the bench with a sigh. "Susan," she whispered wearily.
Motherly and practical, her older sister had always seemed to bring out the best in others. Ever since their first return from Narnia, the former queen had been consistently using her abilities to understand people, showing them the talents that they didn't realize they had, casting light on the facets of their gifts with her own luminous encouragement. Lucy's musical abilities blossomed under Susan's admirations and criticism, and Edmund discovered a passion for law after she gave him a subtle nudge in the right direction. Her popularity was not solely for her beauty; she had a genuine gift for helping people feel better about themselves. Even now that she had renounced Narnia, she was Susan the Gentle, and all were heartened by her presence.
Except her. She had allowed her pain to push Narnia, Aslan, and then queen she had been out of her heart and her mind, and she was quickly learning that the vacuum in her soul once filled by a bright Lion could not be assuaged by any number of lipsticks and party invitations. She longed for more, but would not look back. So she thrust aside the queen and embraced in her place a painted shadow, a cruel parody of what she was meant to be, living in the moment and weeping only in the anonymity of darkness. And Susan Pevensie, whose love and support was the pole star by which others steered, was herself lost.
Lucy ached for her sister, watching helplessly as Susan had locked away the part of her that was still Narnian, ignoring any mention of the land beyond the wardrobe door. Lucy had, at first, tried to make her sister remember, somehow show her that the memories didn't have to hurt. Susan only became cold and distant, and Lucy had subsided to keep from losing her altogether. A tense peace reigned between the Pevensie siblings –of which Helen and James were blissfully unaware– and Peter, Edmund, and Lucy carefully avoided any mention of one topic around Susan.
Lucy stood abruptly, brushing aside her thoughts. It did no-one any good to brood.
She looked at her reflection in the mirror critically. The dress had gone over well, she decided. Not quite as well as she had hoped, but far better than she had feared, considering that it was made in almost the exact style as one of her favorite gowns in Narnia. True, the fabric had a distinct machine-woven feel, instead of the light, intricate texture of cloth woven by skillful dryad fingers, and it could not begin to compare to the ease with which ever her fanciest gown at the Cair fit, but it was by far more Narnian than anything she had ever seen in England.
She raised both arms, holding an imaginary bow, and drew back the invisible string.
The fabric stretched and tightened across her shoulders disapprovingly.
"Hmm," Lucy said aloud. Alright, she thought, so I will be engaging in no archery contests while thus robed. She twirled a little, hopefully, and grinned widely at the result. While it lacked the versatility of her royal wardrobe left behind, the skirt was nearly perfect.
Without pausing for thought, she began the intricate steps of the Ilydaer, slowly at first, gaining speed as her feet remembered the pattern. She and Susan had learned the Narnian spring dance a few weeks after their coronation, and it had remained Lucy's favorite through the years of their reign. Memories flooded her as she danced faster and faster. She closed her eyes, and for one glorious moment , she was in a grassy clearing, surrounded by fauns and dwarves, centaurs and talking animals, naiads and dryads. The warmth of a paw or hand clasping her own was almost tangible; her own voice was melded with the high, clear tones of the fauns and the centaur's powerful resonance, singing her joy as the sun rose…
A gentle, yet insistent rapping on the door jerked her sharply back out of her reverie. Her startled reflection, breathless and disheveled, peered back at her.
"Lucy?" came her sister's voice, muffled by the barrier between them. "Are you coming?"
"Just a minute," Lucy called back.
"You've been in there nearly ten minutes. Do you need anything?"
Lucy blinked. That long? "Sorry, Su," she said through the door. "I'm coming."
Her sister's footsteps receded, and Lucy regretfully began to change. In a moment, the queen had disappeared, replaced by unremarkable, average Lucy. And yet…
Those brown eyes, still alight with the knowledge of who she once was, had looked out over a vast kingdom, had brimmed with tears of loss and of joy. That deep golden hair had been graced by a delicate silver diadem. Those hands had shaken with cold and fear as they stroked the remnants of His mane on that longest of nights, and then grasped that same mane fully-grown, absorbing its living warmth in the morning's radiant glory – she never could remember if the brilliance emanated from the new-risen sun or from the Lion's joy. She was a Queen, once and forever, and she could no sooner forsake that vocation than fly.
Lucy squared her shoulders and lifted her head, taking a posture of which her etiquette instructor would have been proud, and went out.