Disclaimer: I own no six-foot plots of land in England, nor the characters that inhabit fictional ones.
Beta'd by trustingHim17, with my thanks.

"Grief, I've learned, is really just love. It's all the love you want to give but cannot. All of that unspent love gathers in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go."
~ Jamie Anderson

The Lion of the painting never answered.

Just one more thing I needed; one more thing I wasn't given, Susan told herself tiredly. One more thing I shouldn't have hoped for.

But she did not take the painting down. She did not have the energy to make herself put it away, to put that hope in yet another grave. Still, with it on the table, she found she could not sit in the kitchen, nor walk through the nearest hall, glimpsing the dark wood frame and remembering, or seeing the hint of gold, the hint of hope. Even the living room made her uneasy. One night, she set her book down and admitted that she did not want to be anywhere in this house—this house that was hers through some mystery, magic—or wealthy creep. She did not know how to live in this gift, this answer that didn't answer her questions, or allow her to live with the answers—staying in it was hard. She'd put all the things back where they belonged, keeping herself busy, keeping herself from thinking. She did that for as long as she could. But when everything was back—Edmund's books, Peter's tools, Lucy's paintings (except for the Lion), her parents' clothes—she found that she didn't want to stay inside the house. Her house. It was too empty of people; too full of questions.

So she walked to the graveyard.

It was a long walk under a hot sun, and Susan felt as dry as desert sand, meaningless and endless, by the time she reached the entrance.

Standing under the arched iron gate, staring at the road winding through the smoothly rounded grey stones, she realised with sharp pang that she did not remember the way to their graves.

How could she not?

How could she forget?

It was her first time visiting, her mind excused herself; but her heart—

Forgetting felt unforgivable.

Well, she answered her heart, I can find them. Perhaps she should walk forward—she thought they'd done that, on the day—that day. Yes, there—the old stone church rose to touch the sky on her right; she remembered that.

She remembered hating it, hating another beautiful thing that Lucy and her mother couldn't see; couldn't love.

When she saw the church today, the brown stones rising above the green grass and the sharp spire reaching to grey clouds, she felt nothing.

So she walked forward, going around all the grey stones as tall as her waist, glimpsing their engravings with all the names, dates, and comforting phrases. It felt odd, feeling the living green grass under her feet, in a place made for the dead. She walked till the church was roughly where she remembered it.

And there—she could see them.

Five new headstones. Shinier, cleaner, than the old stones around them.

They all had the same last name written on them, of course. They all had the same date of death.

They all stood for holes in Susan's life, solid reminders of people who weren't in her world anymore.

Susan paused, looking at the five of them. Then she quietly went and knelt at her father's grave first. They were too new to have grass growing up around the stone; what was under her knees was still sod. She could smell the dirt. There was nothing to do—nothing to give. She couldn't even clean the grass away from the grave.

She reached to the right and touched the metal of her mother's name, then moved past it to Peter's. Cold, curved, hard—the five letters that spelled his first name. She traced it, letter by letter.

Then…she didn't know what to do. She didn't have anything to say. So she got up, pushing herself off the grass, and hesitated. It felt like she should say goodbye.

That word wouldn't come.

She could not, could not say goodbye. She could not acknowledge it had been forced on her.

She turned to Edmund's stone instead. Peter wouldn't—hadn't—he wouldn't mind waiting.

There wasn't anything to say to Edmund either. Not I was putting on the lipstick you hated when I heard you were dead, not I haven't worn it since, not—what did the dead care about?

What could she tell them? I'm alone now and it's horrible; I'm sorry you felt this at school—that misery was not something he needed to relive; but how could live be applied to the dead, Edmund? Answer me that.

So many words were building up in her throat, and none of them mattered.

Nothing mattered.

What would matter to him? What should she say, if the dead could hear?

Perhaps they could. She believed, with an unshakeable fierceness that had no scientific basis in fact, that the five of them still existed. Somewhere. As she stood trying to talk to them, she realised she knew nothing of where they were, if they could hear, if the living mattered to them anymore; even the church her siblings attended said little about what happened to the dead before Earth was judged.

Judged—Susan knew what it was to be judged. But she had to hope her siblings weren't a part of that.

There had to be some things that still mattered to them. To Edmund, in front of her—all that was left of him. What could she say?

She knew one thing that would always matter to him.

"I took Lucy's painting—the one of the Lion—and talked to it." Her fingers picked up a small twig. She started stripping the bark off of one side, fingers busy, eyes needing something to focus on. "It seemed like something you all would do. Or that she would do." She glanced up at his name again, Edmund in scripted metal, and a part of her begged him to hear, wherever he was. Begged him to be listening, because she had so much to say, so much to ask, all the I am living with the consequences, and they're changing me, they are, I can't help it. Isn't that what you wanted? Can I give you a bit of gladness, wherever you are? Would it make you glad, to see I am not what I was? Is this better? Would it make you happy, that I talked to paint on parchment, because the artist drew it like your Lion? If it would—I hope you hear me.

Can I give you anything?

"The Lion didn't answer. Paintings don't, even in Narnia. But I thought—I hoped—"

Her words stumbled again. In the presence (possibly—hopefully, she couldn't believe they were totally gone, out of sound, out of reach) of a Judge who now knew the answers no living person knew, she could not admit she blamed the Lion for not answering.

A Ruler did not owe an apostate an answer.

"Edmund, I'm stumbling along as best as I can. But I need answers, I need—"

What do I need?

"I need a way to breathe," she whispered. "I need some way to bear the pain without screaming. Edmund, I need tomorrow to be something other than grey hours and black nights. I need—" she broke off, eyes blinking, water falling down. "I need to be other than I am, not so—so broken. So alone. But the world doesn't care what I need." She looked past his stone to Lucy's. "You're all together, and I'm glad you're not alone, Lu, but I—"

I don't have your courage. I don't have your knowledge that the Lion walks with you. You were never alone. I am.

"I don't mean to be selfish," Susan added quietly. "I'm sorry, Lu. I know I'm talking all about me." She broke the twig in half and let it fall, shifting till her back was towards the stones. She scooted over to lean on Peter's.

"I don't want to argue with you all." She'd said that in life, too, said it to their faces. I'd said it back when they could hear. I'm saying it now, and I mean it, but.

But—

I don't mean to be selfish, but all that's left is a Lion I don't understand. I need a Lion that speaks, I need Him here. I need Edmund to explain to me, Peter to guide me, Lucy to give me love. I need Mum and Dad to tell me when I'm wrong. I need you three, you five; I need you back.

She couldn't say that to them. She couldn't admit—and maybe sadden them, wherever they were, she didn't know—that she was miserable.

That she was alive, and hated living. She'd been the one to insist on this world and nothing else, and now that there was nothing else left—this world wasn't enough. Not even enough to make her smile.

That was why she hated the future.

That was why the graves were better than the house, why ghosts were better than her uncle and aunt, or even better than those who only knew how to laugh.

That is too harsh. Mother, I can hear you saying that.

They probably know a bit of grief. That's why they laugh so hard. You used to say that phrase, that there are those who laugh to chase the shadows away, not to enjoy the sunshine.

Mother—I don't feel like sunshine can touch me anymore.

I wish tomorrow wasn't coming. I wither without sunshine. All flowers do.

All that's left of me are these dying leaves.

She heard the wind.

Susan stirred. She must have fallen asleep, leaning against Peter's stone. Her back ached. She pulled herself to her feet, wincing, and looked down at the five stones.

They weren't them—the only things like the people beneath them were the names.

She should go home. She should tell them goodbye, and that she'd come again. It might make speaking easier next time.

But she couldn't. Goodbye was—she'd—it was too permanent.

"I love you," she choked out.

It didn't feel like enough. Somehow the words meant so much more when she couldn't prove them, when they couldn't be heard—when they couldn't be felt.

But it was all she had to offer.

"I love you. I'll come again." She took one step away. "I love you," she whispered.

She hoped they could hear her. That they knew.

She wanted them to know that she loved them. She wanted it to matter, still.

She wanted to be able to offer that love to wherever they were.

But she didn't know if they could hear her.

She didn't know if it mattered.

She didn't know if love could reach beyond death. She would not know for years, not till she died herself.

She began running, away from the graves, skirt twisting around her legs, running towards the arched black iron that would let her out, wiping her cheeks as she went. When her breath started to come in panting gasps, she slowed down. She did not look behind her, didn't look at how they weren't in sight anymore—to see the proof that she left them again, left them behind, she who had nothing to say.

She couldn't go back to the outside world like this. She took a handkerchief from her pocket, dried her face, blew her nose, and tried to breathe more slowly. She looked around, eyes skating over the church, the stones, the quiet place this was—and she noticed a dark form near the entrance. Tall, familiar since she was a child—a man in a policeman's uniform.

A/N: I'm sorry posting has been a bit off this week; it might continue to be so for another week or so. My Grandpa had surgery, and it went well, but he's a stubborn Scot when it comes to recovery, which argues well for the pace of recovery but very poorly for appointed family members who enforce doctor's orders.