A/N: yay! another chapter. Thanks again to all who are reading this, and please comment! I'll try to get the next chapter up soon, but no promises. I'm not very satisfied with the ending on this chapter, so I might fix that, but probably not anytime soon. anyway, hope you guys enjoy!

I try

But it's so hard to believe

I try

But I can't see what you see

I try, I try, I try

Susan walked over to the apartment door, still worrying. Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she raised a hand and knocked on the door. Nothing. "Peter," she called. No one answered.

She knocked harder and louder. "Peter, open up! You can't stay mad at me forever," she begged through the door. Can you?

Well, Peter was obviously still out. Susan knew that there was probably a logical explanation, but she couldn't help but feel that something was wrong. Surely he was just out with friends or some other such thing. But, why couldn't she get rid of the horrible feeling in her stomach. Come on Susan, she told herself. Everything's fine. Get a hold of yourself.

Giving up, she turned and left the apartment building, heading towards the neighborhood a few blocks away where the rest of her family lived. At least one of her siblings should be home by now.

Arriving at the house, she rang the doorbell. No answer. What was going on? She tried again, and again, and finally started knocking. Nothing.

Suddenly remembering something, she dug through her handbag, finally coming up with a small key. Using the key, which she still had from her days of living at this house, Susan unlocked the door and stepped inside. "Anybody home?" she called out to the empty house.

Susan had a really bad feeling about all of this. She knew she should leave and wait at her home to call again tomorrow, but for some reason, she couldn't bring herself to leave. Wandering towards the back of the house, she took in the familiar setting. Very little had been changed about the house. It was still the same as it had been just a year previously when Susan had moved out.

But in that year, she had managed to become distant from her siblings, through the irrational fights about Narnia. Her siblings had always been so close to her; she felt their absence like a hole in her heart.

Looking up from her thoughts, Susan found herself standing in Lucy's room. She felt loneliness settle over her. She wished to be a child again, when she would stay in Lucy's room all night, giggling and talking with her younger sister until they both fell asleep in the early morning.

Smiling softly at the memories, Susan wandered over to Lucy's desk, where she found several sketch books lying around. Without realizing what she was doing, she reached out and picked up the closest book. Looking down at the cover, she froze. Lucy had labeled the cover in her faciest script, with just one word: Narnia.

With the book still in her hands, Susan sat down on the edge of Lucy's bed, still frozen. Eventually, she managed to turn to the first page, where she saw a magnificent castle overlooking the most beautiful ocean Susan had ever seen. In the corner, Lucy had written a title for the castle, Cair Paravel. Something stirred in Susan's mind. She sat there, staring at the picture, trying to remember, trying to believe that it was real. She recognized it from the name as the castle they had made up for them to live in while they pretended to rule Narnia. But though it was just a game, and she therefore really should have only recognized the name, something about the picture looked oddly familiar. Perhaps Lucy and I both imagined it the same way.

Shaking her head, Susan turned to the next picture, then the next. Flipping through the book, Susan suddenly wished that Narnia was real. Lucy's imagination had transformed the fairy tale into such a beautiful place. Near the end of the book, a particular picture caught Susan's attention. It was a picture of a huge crowd of people, standing in front of a village and a castle, different from Cair Paravel. In front of the crowd stood a great lion, Aslan. Next to him were five people. Four of them were the Pevensies, but the fourth was a tall, handsome King. Caspian. Susan remembered this scene as one of the ones in the later stories they had come up with, one that took place after a great battle. This had been the last part of their games, the last story they had made up to take their minds off the war.

But the thing that had caught Susan's attention was the figure of Caspian, exactly how she herself had imagined him. Without telling her siblings, Susan had made up fantasies about herself and Caspian falling in love during their last few times playing the game. She knew her siblings would laugh at her for making up such stories. But in her mind, at this final scene, she had always imagined kissing Caspian right before walking through the portal back to Earth, thus ending the story.

Susan stared at the picture, as tears leaked out her eyes. She tried to make herself believe. She tried so hard, her head hurt. She wanted to believe, she truly did. But no matter how much she begged, her mind refused to accept the impossible fantasies of Narnia. It wasn't true, and she couldn't change that. But she tried anyway, wondering how her siblings could believe it, what they could see that she couldn't.

Susan tried, but couldn't believe.

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Caspian paced around the room, trying to make his mind pay attention to the story Lucy was telling of how the three had come to be in Narnia once again. He could hear what she was saying, and a part of his mind was noting the important parts of what she was saying, but most of his attention was on the painful shock he had just received. How could Susan not believe in Narnia? Not remember all the things she had experienced here? It didn't make sense to him. She had ruled Narnia, fought for it. But though she had left it twice, only now had she truly abandoned it.

He was brought out of his reverie by Edmund's voice. "Caspian, are you all right?"

Caspian nodded, stopping his pacing and turning toward the young King. "Yes, just surprised." And shocked, and betrayed, and hurt, and heartbroken. But he didn't mention any of that.

Edmund, as always, seemed to know what he hadn't said. "We all are," he said gently. "But she made her decision. Perhaps one day she will finally remember, and come as well."

But all of them knew how unlikely that was. Susan could be quite stubborn, and always tried to go with the logical answer. And there was nothing logical about Narnia. It was something you just had to know, had to believe.

"We tried to convince her," came Peter's quiet voice. "She wouldn't listen. It led to months of fighting. We came back here in the middle of one." He looked terribly sad and a little angry as well.

"Why wouldn't she believe you? Why can't she remember?" asked Caspian.

This time it was Lucy who answered. "I think she tried to convince herself it wasn't real, because she couldn't come back. It must have been less painful than to remember the loss. I guess she eventually succeeded. Now she regards Narnia as just a silly fairy-tale."

"Is there no hope?" Caspian had to know. If it was truly hopeless… No, there had to be some way.

"I don't know," said Edmund. "She wouldn't listen to us."

An idea suddenly occurred to Caspian. "She wouldn't listen to you," he said, as the idea solidified to a plan in his mind.

Edmund was the first to understand. "You think it will work?" he asked, suddenly excited.

"I think it's worth a try."

"What?" exclaimed Peter, who hated being left out.

Understanding blossomed in Lucy's eyes. "You mean, that maybe she will believe you?"

"Yes," Caspian nodded. "I do."

"You would go to Earth to find her?" questioned Peter.

"I would do anything for her." In that moment, all the Pevensies could see the truth in his eyes. They knew then that Caspian loved Susan with all of his heart, and truly would do anything to get her back.

"I'll go with you," said Peter, standing up.

"No," said a voice they all recognized. "This is something Caspian must do alone."

"Aslan!" cried Lucy.

"Yes, dearest one, it is I. You have all done everything in your power to help your sister. Now it is Caspian's turn." The voice faded away, and they all knew Aslan was gone.

The Pevensies turned back to Caspian. "Please," said Lucy in a soft voice. "Please bring Susan back to Narnia."