Sorry about not checking my reviews until now! Thank you for all the love!
MCH: Sorry... Maybe next Valentines I'll write a story about her meeting a boy in England who's not Caspian :)
Just Me: I hadn't heard about that, but it makes sense. I always wondered too.
Guest: A little pointless for me to respond now, but yes, he is.
Pevensies49: didn't know maugrim said "long live aslan" lol jk. I was listening to My Fair Lady songs while writing this fic because I've been pulling ideas from it about females being valued just by their exterior and this song came up referencing someone thinking she might be a Hungarian princess: . . I put a Hungarian prince in there because it was the first place in my fic that I could find to reference My Fair Lady.
Tstark & IvoryMoonlight: Ahh, Thanks so much! 3
Girl on Fire: Yeah, that's my plan now, since apparently I don't know the definition of a "short fic" is. It's taken on a life of it's own, so I'm not gonna try to stop it from getting long if that's how long it takes to tell the story.
Susan walked home alone as she was accustomed to doing. Suddenly, there he was again, that annoying Xavier, trying to wedge his way deeper into her life.
"Sometimes a walk alone is nice," Susan hinted.
"Could be dangerous, couldn't it?" Xavier grinned, though Susan hardly knew why he would.
"Yes, it could be dangerous. The type of guy who would put his arms around a girl in the opera might also be the type to take advantage of a girl walking home alone," Susan said coldly, quickening her pace. She didn't really think he would, but she hoped her harsh words would send him away.
"Yeah about that… What happened? I thought the courting, I mean date went well?"
"Please, X, just leave me along. Go find some other girl to fall in love with you. I'm broken; I cannot love. You… you're a nice guy, you deserve someone who loves you. Not someone like me who's just... a pretty shell of a person."
"I refuse to believe that. You never were nor ever will be simply your looks. And of course you can love. You simply love too much," Xavier said, pushing a strand of hair behind her ear. She looked into his eyes and was frightened by the intensity she saw there. She didn't know what to make of it, so she started running so she could get away from him and clear her mind.
"Susan?! Susan!" he yelled, chasing after her, but she knew the area much better than he did and quickly slipped away from him.
But there was someone had been secretly following them who knew the area just as well, if not better, than her that was following them.
Susan threw herself into the bushes, far enough in trees to hide from the world. She thought no one would be able to find her, but then she heard a familiar voice.
"Alright there, miss?"
Susan gasped as she saw a man who looked perfectly identical to her brother whom she kept dreaming about at night.
"But… you… you're… how? I'm awake. What.. By the Mane! How are you alive?" she asked, her hand flying to her heart in shock.
The man smiled and reached out a hand to help her up.
"Sorry, I… I thought you were someone else. You look so much like him. My brother… Peter… never mind. What's your name, kind sir?"
"Simon," he said with a teasing grin, pulling leaves off of her. "We should get you back home, miss. You look a mess. Beautiful, of course, but that hardly matters as much as the mess inside."
"I always look a mess. Everyone I care about has died," she blurted out. His incredible resemblance to her brother made her feel comfortable around him.
"And then they are with God and perhaps happier than they were in this world," Simon said gently.
"Just my luck. You're one of those super-religious people. I don't… I'm not sure what I believe," Susan said.
"I understand. You know what's helpful? Talking about faith, rather than holding your doubts inside."
"I supposed you want me to tell you everything. All my deep dark secrets," Susan said sarcastically.
"Tell it to someone you trust. Someone who knows you well and will love you no matter what you say. You could even talk to your siblings, and they'll listen to you from where they are," Simon said gently. "So, um, where do you live?"
Susan looked up, and noticed that somehow Simon had been leading her towards her aunt and uncle's house accidentally.
"This way," she said, continuing the same way they had been walking to the house. When they reached it she said, "Thank you, I'm fine now."
"Alright. Goodbye Susan," he said. Only after she had gone inside did she wonder how Simon knew her name.
After frantically searching for Susan for awhile, Caspian ran to the house to see if by any chance she had returned there. While he was sneaking in to check it out, he heard two familiar voice. His heart sinking low, he realized Peter was with Susan. He grimly started trying to figure out how to mollify Peter's anger which was sure to be directed towards him. After Susan went inside, Peter walked away and Caspian ran up to Peter. The moment Peter saw Caspian he glared at him.
"Peter, please, I swear, I don't know what happened. I didn't do anything. I don't know what set her off," Caspian pleaded.
"You don't know what made my sister run away and go cry in some bushes?" Peter said sarcastically, shoving Caspian against a wall.
"Pete, please! I swear by Aslan himself, if I had known she was going to react so, I would have never approached her! You know I wouldn't!" Caspian implored, grabbing Peter's arms.
"What did you say to her?!" Peter snarled. He was tempted to shove or hit Caspian again, but held back, knowing that he would not have used Aslan's name if he wasn't absolutely sincere.
"I don't know! I asked her what went wrong with the date since she's been acting particularly cold towards me, but she wouldn't tell me. Then…" his voice faltered.
Peter balled his hands into fists. "Then what?! Caspian, you better not lie to me."
"I would never! Then she told me I should go find some other girl, because I was a nice guy and she thought I… deserve to be with someone capable of loving…" Caspian's voice faltered as tears started forming in his eyes. "Like I would want any girl but her, even if she's only a shell of what she was. And she's wrong. She is capable of love! It's love for you, her family, that made her this way, not lack of love!"
Peter unclenched his hands and was visibly less tense. He then surprised Caspian by slinging an arm around his shoulder. "She's lucky to have you."
"Um… thank you," Caspian said. "That's something I never thought you'd say. Although I don't quite agree. I think I'm the lucky one just to be able to be around her."
Peter smiled, now fully appeased by Caspian's loyalty to his sister. "So, continue with what happened."
"Not much. I told her I didn't believe her, about being incapable of love and just a pretty shell. She looked at me for a few seconds with this wild look in her eyes, and I tried to calm her by pushing back a strand of hair, but then she ran off. I tried to chase her, but she was too fast. Did… did Susan recognize you?"
"Yep, but then she decided it must be an extraordinary coincidence how much I looked like… well, myself. But, Caspian, there's some hope. She… she swore "by the Mane" at the shock of seeing me. She's started to revert back to her old habits. That's some success."
"What did you talk with her about?" Caspian inquired.
"Faith. How it is better to talk about your doubts with someone than it is to hold them in. Maybe, just maybe, she'll finally open up," Peter said hopefully.
"So, Pete, just checking, you're not too mad at me after all? You don't blame me for what happened?"
"Nah, but I blame you for her forgetting about Narnia," Peter said teasingly.
"What?! How do you figure that?" Caspian protested.
"Why do you think leaving Narnia hit her so much harder than the rest of us? What hurt so much that it was easier for her to pretend Narnia never existed?" Peter said with a smirk. He started walking off and Caspian silently trailed behind, thinking seriously about what Peter had said.
After a few minutes, Caspian caught up with Peter again and asked, "Do you really think so? She loved me that much? I... I hurt her that much?"
"She did. She didn't want to admit it, but she did," Peter said. Caspian thought it over silently for a few minutes, hardly believing that Susan could have loved him anywhere near as much as he had loved her.
"So do you have another plan?" Caspian finally asked.
"When do I ever not have a plan?" Peter teased.
"So you don't. If you did, you would have just said it," Caspian stated.
"I have a few ideas," Peter said. "I didn't just randomly talk with her about faith for no reason. She has to still have some belief. Maybe, maybe we were going down the wrong track, starting with trying to make her believe in Aslan. Maybe just belief in Christ will be enough, for I think they are one and the same. And then, if she believes in Christ, we could then get her to believe in Aslan and Narnia, even though she's denied Aslan twice already. Once to me before I died, once to the both of us the other night."
Caspian nodded. "I don't know much about Christianity, having only been here a few months, but something just felt so right about it when people talked about it."
That night, the two of them crept into Susan's room yet again.
"Caspian, you hide here. I will talk to her alone tonight," Peter whispered. Caspian frowned, but decided it was better to not argue with Peter. She was his sister after all.
"Susan," Peter whispered, gently waking his sister.
"Peter," she murmured, hugging him. "I saw someone who looked just like you today. So close you could be twins."
"I always wanted a long-lost twin," Peter joked. "What did this twin say?"
"He told me I should talk about my doubts. But I'm afraid. I pushed you away so many times when you wanted to talk about faith."
"Sister, you could push me away a million times and I'll always come back. There were times I pushed you away because I thought I could do everything on my own, and then you were always there when I invariably failed. That's what siblings are for. For so long, I was too stupid to realize it, thinking I had everything sorted all by myself. But we all need each other, and we're always going to be there for each other."
Caspian started feeling uncomfortable, like he was intruding on something incredibly private, and started wondering if Peter would mind if he snuck out.
Susan began crying and holding onto her brother. "I love you, dear brother. Why did you have to die? Why did you leave me?"
"Have faith and we will be reunited again," Peter promised, running his fingers soothingly through her hair.
"I will! I… I'll try to. What must I do, brother?" Susan asked.
Peter hesitated, not having planned for her being so amicable to the idea of faith. "Tomorrow, your friend Xavier will ask you out again, and he'll want to bring you somewhere. Go with him, no matter how strange the request seems."
Caspian frowned, wondering what Peter was talking about. This wasn't part of any plan he was privy to.
"I will. For you. And for Lucy and Edmund," Susan whispered.
"That's my good sister," Peter said fondly, rubbing her shoulders. He then got up and began leaving. "Farewell."
"Farewell," Susan said, falling back asleep.
The next morning, she got ready for school and saw a note on her desk. She picked it up and read it: Remember what I said, royal sister.
"Impossible," Susan said, crumpling up the note and tossing it inside. She missed that on the back it said: We will always be there for our sister that we love so much. And all of Narnia is hopeful for their queen's return.
