Disclaimer: I have long wished to meet this king, but I would be afraid to do so if I had wrongfully claimed him as my own.
Beta'd by trustingHim17, with my thanks.

"What sort of man will this be that is born to be King [...]?"
"Prouder than Caesar, more humble than his slave; his kingdom shall stretch from the sun's setting to the sun's rising, higher than the heavens, deeper than the grave, and narrow as the human heart. [...] The greatest of warriors; yet he shall be called the Prince of Peace. He will be victor and victim in all his wars, and will make his triumph in defeat. And when wars are over, he will rule his people in love."
~ Dorothy Sayers

There was a light burning in her room again. For the second night in a row; I don't want to do this again. If it is Lucy, perhaps I can hug her and that will be enough. That old and dull priest says truth should be spoken in love, Edmund quotes that often, and that wasn't what I did—I can say I'm sorry I didn't say it better. More kindly, that is. More lovingly.

But I can't be sorry that it's said. There's enough unsaid as it is—

It wasn't Lucy.

Peter, her older brother and the worst of her judgemental siblings, was sitting quietly in her chair before her vanity. He faced the door, and her mirror reflected the back of his head—he'd worn a golden crown, she could see the pattern against his hair—

Lucy! Stop it! Why am I remembering so much, so vividly?

Why can't I remember that all the games are empty, next to the real world we live in? Worthless.

Susan walked past Peter, setting one bag on her bed and opening another to dig through it, admitting to herself she was doing so as an excuse. She didn't want to look at her brother. "Did Lucy send you?"

"I stayed to make sure you made it home safe." His voice, like the implacable sea on the calmest of days, offered all she craved; all she hated herself for craving. He, more than any of her siblings, was safety and surety; back when the war was on, when bombs were falling and she was so afraid, he'd been everything. She remembered that—but the war was over. She knew that. She should be able to handle herself, and she hated him interfering in her life, for being so calm about it all. "But I also saw Lucy's grief, though she would not tell me its cause. Do you know aught of it?"

"We quarrelled. We're sisters, and it happens. I thought perhaps she ran to you for protection, since your arrival was all she could think about."

She dug deeper in her bag as the quiet grew heavy, the hair on her arms raising—Peter was angry. Where is that soap?

"Do you really think this of our Valiant sister, that she would seek out me for protection from you, her sister? That she would carry tales of disagreements to darken my return?" A dangerous tone, and a dangerous question. Susan didn't care.

"She's still such a child. It's what a child would do."

"You do not know her at all, then."

That reproach brought Susan's temper boiling to the surface—that ignorance worked both ways! "And you know me so well? You think yourself the judge of our quarrels? You might be the older one, Peter, but you've been gone. And none of you even cares enough to enter my world, to understand—" She broke off.

Peter heard the hurt in her tone, and it softened him. His siblings' sufferings always did. At least, it did once he grew up a bit in the country. Though he never once bent his noble standards, not even a breadth, no matter how great our pain. What good is a compassion like that?

Still, it made his tone and reply gentler. "Am I not entering your world, through college? Is that not also the world of adults, the world that we both live in?"

Susan laughed in spite of herself. Steady, earnest Peter, comparing his world to hers. As if the whole family hadn't agreed she hadn't much of a head for schoolwork. Lucy could be a veterinarian, and Edmund would be a judge—but Susan had none of those gifts. Only Peter would try to equate earning a degree with the life of a belle. He saw all of life as the various outworkings of his precious standard, his right and wrong. "Studying isn't my world, Peter. I've never been good at that, and it's unkind of you to make that comparison. Our worlds are as different as…as the countryside from London."

"Some of us remember the country in London; and some of our habits stayed with us when we left."

Something about the way he said remember made Susan wary. She had been remembering odd things of late, and didn't want to be, so she redirected the conversation. "So you'll try to enter my world, if I try to enter yours? Is yours the country, and mine London then?"

"The Professor is most assuredly in the country," Peter replied dryly, dropping the quaint language his anger or passion always brought out. "But my purpose was two-fold in staying up tonight." There, that language again—Susan had had enough of the reminders of those stupid games, with their stupid make-believe, and stupid everything!

"I'm too tired tonight," she began, but a look from Peter silenced her. She fought him when she could, but something about Peter could awe the worst of rebels.

"A single question. Tonight the three of us met, apart from our parents, and discovered we have been remembering Narnia more often of late. It comes to mind, to memory, daily. For brief moments we live there. It is as if the world were remembering us—or perhaps calling for us. Our sister and brother write to our cousin and friend, and I to the Professor and Aunt Polly, but I would ask thee too. Dost thou find that the memories of Narnia come to mind with vivid sight and constant repetition, these past few days?"

Susan looked at him—at those eyes, troubled and waiting. This weighed on him. He, too, was seeing the memories their imagination painted—and once he mentioned it to Edmund and Lucy, of course they'd remember it more vividly as well. Once someone mentioned the game it captivated their minds, all three of them, binding them in a narrow fruitless tale and its imaginary events. It filled them till reality had no hold.

Of course, that was what happened to war orphans. She'd read about it in one of those tiresome magazines Aunt Alberta had, but this one made perfect sense. The four of them had been scared, away from home, not knowing if their father was alive, if their mother would survive—they had latched onto a world where they were in control, where evil was defeated. They had made up a game to escape from the reality that scared them, and it had changed them (or the country had changed them). Yes, Susan was prepared to admit that the game had some uses when they were children—it had bound them closer together somehow.

But the war had ended. The War Orphans were welcomed back home; the four of them had both father and mother. There was no reason to keep going back to a game, to shut out reality for this land of fantasy, no matter how vividly Susan could remember it.

And Peter encouraged it! He treated this mere strengthening of memory with the same seriousness he treated the calls of the actual war. This was a game!

"It is useless to remember that child's play. You'd do far better to start remembering your lessons." Susan dropped the last bag on the floor and took off her coat. She removed her hat and let down her hair, clearly readying herself for bed. Peter, with the old courtesy that looked so out of place in public, but so, so… good in a home, stood and walked towards the door.

Then he turned and looked right at her. "You call it a game, and I hear you. You say it does not come to mind. So I will ask this once, and know, Susan Pevensie, that your answer is not one without consequences. If you answer yes, I will ever fight for you, and fight with you. If you answer no, I will let you go your way, for you have shut yourself off, and the door is closed to you. Are you, or are you not, a friend of Narnia?"

Susan looked at him, standing in the doorway as if he were a knight of old, swearing oaths of loyalty and asking allegiance.

He has read too many books.

You know he means it. You know it with the part of you that loves the images you remember. You know if you shut this door, they will let you. They'll let you open it again, too, but it will have to be you that does it.

The red dress, still stained, caught her eye. She remembered Robert's car, Nancy's laughter, and the echo of all things pleasant filling the dance room and pouring in her ears.

She looked back at Peter and held her head tall. "There is no Narnia."

A grief as deep as a Lion's moan filled Peter's face. There were no tears, nor hardening, but he grew old and weary of soul in that brief, brief moment.

Then he bowed, a full bow from the waist—the bow of a King to a Queen, calling up a hundred images that Susan shoved away, too fast to see—and then Peter left.

Susan sat, suddenly breathing hard. That look—that grief—that had been—

I did not want this. He forced me into it. I didn't want to hurt him, but I have the right to choose my own way; he even said so.

But he looked—

And that bow, that old thing, that gold thing, of the tales of romance and courts and kings—Peter, why are you so old fashioned that you must bow? We're brother and sister, not…not royalty.

Susan looked at herself in the mirror, taking in a deep breath. "I can't be a friend of Narnia," she whispered to her reflection. "Narnia never happened."