Author's Note: So, it's been over two years since I last updated. And I am so very sorry for that. I promise to have the next chapter up before another two years passes.

Chapter Three: Broken

Susan didn't know how long she stood there before Dr. Winters' voice broke into her thoughts.

"Ms. Pevensie, I'm sorry, but I'm being paged to another room. This is Dr. Wyse, he's been following your brother's case, and he can answer any questions you might have."

Dr. Winters gave her an apologetic smile as he slipped from the room, and Susan turned to look at Wyse, who was staring at Edmund with a bored expression on his face.

"If you ask me, I'm amazed that your brother wasn't splattered all over the platform, let alone that he survived at all."

Wiping hot tears from her eyes, Susan shot the doctor a furious glare.

"A little bedside manner goes a long way," she informed the man, icily, and he at least had the good grace to blush in embarrassment.

"Is Edmund ever going to wake up?" she asked, after they had stood in awkward silence for several long moments.

"In the condition that your brother is in," Wyse told her, "I very much doubt it. I'd be surprised if he ever even recovered enough to breathe on his own, without the respirator."

"He's going to stay like this for the rest of his life," Susan stated, flatly.

"The kindest thing," Wyse said, "would be to just let your brother go."

"No!" Susan cried, whirling on the doctor in anger. "I can't – I can't just let Edmund die!"

"Your brother will very likely never recover," Wyse pressed her. "Keeping him like this, in this half state, is both cruel and selfish, not to mention a drain on the resources of the hospital, especially after such a tragedy, when we're already stretched to the absolute limit."

"I don't care about your resources," Susan snarled at the man. "He's my brother. He's the only family I have left."

"He's probably not even aware enough to know that you're here," Wyse told her, insistently. "You're not keeping him alive for his sake, you're keeping him alive for yours."

"I'd like to be alone with my brother, now," Susan said, ignoring the doctor's last comment.

"Ms. Pevensie-"

"Get. Out," Susan growled, not looking away from Edmund's still form. "Please," she added, through gritted teeth, with Wyse simply stood there.

Wyse huffed out a breath. "If you believe in God, Ms. Pevensie, I'd pray to him."

A few seconds later, she heard brisk footsteps on the tile floor, and then a sharp click as the door to the room was closed. Susan let out a shaky breath and dropped, gracelessly, into the hard plastic chair beside Edmund's bed.

"I don't care what that brainless prig says," she said, speaking to Edmund's still form. "I know that you can hear me."

"What were you and Peter doing on the train platform?" she asked, plaintively. "Were you-"

She broke off as tears choked her voice and she took a deep breath to try and compose herself.

"Were you trying to get back to Narnia?" she asked, her voice barely more than a whisper. "Edmund, that was nothing more than a silly game we invented. You know that. And even if it wasn't-"

She trailed off into silence, again, unwilling to pursue that line of thinking. She didn't want to consider what it would mean if Narnia and Aslan weren't a game, if they, and everything that seemed like little more than a half-remembered dream, were real.

So, she pushed any thoughts of Narnia, and of Aslan, to a far, dark corner of her mind, and she focused on other things. She talked for hours, filling the silence with everything she and her brother had never had time to talk about, over the years. She talked about her fears of not being able to keep up in school, about the boys who came calling around her and Karen's apartment, about anything and everything that came to mind.

She tried to talk about how empty she felt, how sorry she was for not telling Peter and Lucy that she loved them, more, but the words wouldn't come. The pain of losing her family was too soon, too raw, for her to talk about it, and so she left it alone.

She paused only long enough, now and then, to take sips from a glass of water that someone, Dr. Winters, probably, had placed on a table near her elbow. She shifted only slightly in the hard chair as her legs grew stiff from sitting so long; she refused to move if it meant leaving Edmund even for only a few minutes.

She knew, as she was talking, that nurses and doctors came in and out of the room, and they tried to engage her in conversation, but she ignored them. At one point, Karen came to see her, but Susan refused to take her eyes off the figure in the bed. Everyone else was unimportant next to her brother, and they didn't need her attention. Edmund did.

Susan was afraid that if she stopped talking, if she took her attention off Edmund for even a second, then she would lose him. So long as she kept talking, Edmund stayed in the bed, solid, and warm, and alive.

Shadows stretched across the room as the sun set, and Susan caught herself yawning in exhaustion. Blinking hard, she tried to stay awake, but found that she kept nodding off every few minutes. Finally, when she found herself sliding off the chair because she couldn't keep herself upright, she succumbed to the inevitable and, stretching out carefully next to Edmund on the bed, she gently gripped one of her brother's hands in her own and allowed sleep to take her over.

When she opened her eyes a few seconds later, she discovered almost immediately that she was dreaming. After all, there were no snowy woods in London, and certainly none with lampposts in the middle of a clearing. So, when Edmund appeared out of thin air and walked toward her, she shook her head in emphatic denial.

"This isn't real," she informed the apparition. "You're not real. I'm tired, and I'm grieving, and you being here, now, is nothing more than a wishful dream."

"Oh, Su, do you always have to be so practical?" Edmund gave her a gentle smile as he spoke, and Susan felt her heart breaking all over again.

"I'm hallucinating," she insisted, and Edmund shook his head.

"You're only half right, dear sister," he told her. "This is a dream, or, rather, a dream state, but you are very much awake inside of it, and I am no hallucination."

"You're not real," Susan repeated, sharply, dashing away the tears that sprang to her eyes and blinded her vision. "You can't be real."

"And why can't I be real?" Edmund asked, gently.

"Because," Susan choked out, "if you're real, then it means that none of it was ever a game, and I could have gone with you, and I wouldn't have to be alone!"

She broke off, burying her face in her hands as she was overcome with sobs that wracked her body, and she felt Edmund wrap his arms around her in a tight hug.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," she cried.

"Do you remember Narnia, Su? And Aslan?" Edmund asked, quietly, and Susan nodded, her face still buried in her brother's shoulder.

"Why did you forget me in the first place, child?" a deep voice asked, and Susan straightened, turning slowly to see Aslan standing, solemnly, by the lamppost.

"You said that I could never come back," Susan told him. "That I was too old. And it hurt so much to think that I could never see you or Narnia, again, that it was easier to just pretend that it had never happened, that it was all just a game.

"I was wrong, Aslan," she continued, softer. "I lost my faith in you, and I'm sorry."

The Lion nodded, accepting her heartfelt apology. "What's done is done," he said, and Susan and Edmund shared a quick, secret, smile, both remembering that first morning in Aslan's camp.

"As for your future," Aslan continued, "when you awake-"

"Wait," Edmund interrupted, the smile falling off his face as he and Susan got identical, panicked looks on their faces. "When she wakes up? Isn't she – can't Susan come with us, Aslan?"

"I am afraid not," Aslan broke the news, gently. "Susan has a life to live, and much to do, before she is to join us. We will journey on alone, once the proper measures have been taken."

"Proper measures," Susan repeated, uneasily. "What do you mean by that, Aslan?"

"I think he means me," Edmund answered, softly, realization dawning on his face. "You have to turn the machines off, Su. You have to let me go."

Susan immediately shook her head.

"No," she said, tears springing, anew, to her eyes. "I can't, Eddy. I can't let you die."

"I'm already gone," Edmund pleaded with her, his own tears making his eyes overly bright.

"I can't," Susan repeated, weakly.

"You have to," Edmund said, firmly, as he wiped at his cheeks. "Besides, it's not forever. You heard Aslan; we'll see each other, soon."

Susan pulled Edmund into a bone-crushing hug, in response.

"Tell Peter, Lucy, and everyone that I love them," she whispered, holding on to her baby brother as hard as she dared.

"I will," Edmund promised, hugging her back just as fiercely. "I love you, Susan."

"And now forget, child," Aslan told her, as the siblings parted, breathing gently on her face. "Forget until you are ready to remember, again."

Susan stumbled backwards as the gust of warm air hit her face, and she felt like she was falling. That was when she woke up.

Susan blinked, sleepily, as she sat up, Edmund's hands still clasped in hers. The wispy remnants of a dream teased her memory, but the harder she tried to remember it, the faster it slipped away. She frowned in disappointment, knowing, somehow, that what she had forgotten was very important.

A soft beeping sound drew her out of her thoughts, and she glanced first at the machines, and then at Edmund, watching as his chest rose and fell as air was pumped into his lungs. She brushed a stray lock of hair away from his face, then looked up at a quiet knock on the door.

Dr. Winters stepped into the room, a chart in his hand.

"I've spoken to Dr. Wyse, at length, regarding his behavior, yesterday," he said, without preamble, ignoring her red eyes and mussed hair in a way that made Susan think that he'd found a lot of patients' families falling asleep in their rooms last night.

"He's been issued an official reprimand, and he's written a formal apology," Dr. Winters continued.

"I don't want his apology," Susan said, firmly. "And I don't want him near my brother."

"He's been assigned to another wing of the hospital," Dr. Winters told her. "But, he did raise an important point, yesterday."

"I'm not letting Edmund go," Susan said, at once, her eyes flashing with anger.

"I didn't mean that," Dr. Winters said. "I just mean that you have an incredibly hard decision to make."

"To kill or not to kill my brother," Susan said, harshly, fear and grief making her short-tempered.

"Susan," Dr. Winters said, gently, "this is your choice. If you say no, if you choose to keep Edmund hooked up to the respirator and the cardiac monitor, I'll go and make the arrangements to have him transferred to a long-term care facility."

"But," he continued, "I have to tell you, his chances of ever coming out of the coma just don't exist. Those machines are the only things keeping him alive."

Susan nodded, and turned to look at Edmund.

Could she do it? Could she go and see her brother every day for the rest of his life, knowing that he would never wake? Knowing that his heart only beat, his chest only rose and fell, because of the machines he was attached to? Knowing that the too-still figure lying in the bed was nothing more than a shell of the vibrant baby brother she'd loved?

As her heart gave her the answer, Susan dropped her head into her hands, weeping.

"Susan?" Dr. Winters prompted, gently.

"Do it," she said, her voice hollow. "Shut the machines off."

She pressed a kiss to Edmund's forehead as tears streamed down her face.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered, brokenly. "I love you."

Then, the beeping of the machines ceased; the room was silent. Edmund's heart stopped; his chest fell as his last breath left his body.

He was gone. And she was alone.