Disclaimer: so despite one of my best friends and I reading this series (well, four out of six books) till it's worn out and then scrapbooking our favourite quotes and character moments, I don't own it. Or Narnia. Or Middle Earth. I own the Doorkeeper, though—as much as any author owns a character, which isn't much, because most of them object to slavery.

WARNING for the aftermath of torture. And for spoilers for The Queen's Thief.

Beta'd by trustingHim17!

"Your blindness to my downfall
Has gone too far to be a joke,
As I stand ablaze before you,
And you tell me you smell smoke."
~ e.h

Windows to other worlds were not as cold to go through as doors, and Susan was grateful. Though it was odd to see Huan in an English graveyard. Stroking his head, she looked at the Doorkeeper. He studied her keenly, and Susan realised he probably had been doing that for several seconds.

"What is it?" she asked.

He sighed and shook his head. "I am trying to decide if the warmth Huan provides will be enough to offset the coldness of your heart as you move through the frame." A low, soft growl emanated from Susan's left; she could feel Huan's body vibrate with it. "Yes, I know, you want it to be, but can you protect her from her own heart? Even her siblings could not do that."

That—if the Doorkeeper had slapped her with all his strength, it would not have hurt so much. Susan's fingers closed on Huan's fur. That was the only thing she could move.

Because he was right. The Doorkeeper was right. Her siblings had tried and tried to—

Susan never came back. Susan never believed. Now—what business did she have being a Walker? She hated life, hated her own world, her own self. She couldn't walk through the doors to get to the only work that felt worth doing.

"Aslan's Queen. What is wrong with you? Can you hear us?"

A hand on her shoulder. It was warm, as warm as the entire body pressed into her other side. But she didn't have any strength to answer that voice.

"It was something I said, wasn't it? I should not have said it. Whatever it was. I tend to rattle on—can you do anything with her?"

Something nudged her shoulder. She stumbled forward—would have fallen, but that warmth on her side suddenly stood in front of her, letting her fall on him. Little by little, the warmth herded her to a bench, and pushed her to sit on it. The warmth moved to her feet, her legs; Huan was laying across her feet, she realised. She blinked. The world came back into focus with sudden colour—green trees and grass, grey skies, her own plaid black-and-red skirt. The Doorkeeper sat on the further end of the bench, frowning deeply. Susan could feel her anger rising, sweeping to her defence, readying her to attack and to stop someone from hurting her again—

But—she'd been the Gentle Queen. She shoved the anger away. It was not as if the Doorkeeper had said anything untrue. It had not been said wisely or lovingly, but it had been harshly, bleakly true.

"I'm impressed," the Doorkeeper said after a moment.

"What?" Her voice sounded strained to her own ears, and she reached down to pet Huan.

"There are not many who could have pushed that anger away."

A moment, a moment to take that comment like an olive branch from ancient Greece, and then, "I do not like anger," Susan admitted.

"I am deserving of it more often than I should be. I apologise, Aslan's Queen," he added formally. "I am worried about you going through the doors, and I let worry make me mean. Your pushing away of your anger shows you are stronger than I thought. Forgive me, for both the misjudgement and the words."

"Forgiven." She said it because he expected it, and because it was the right thing to do, but honestly she felt like it didn't matter. Like very little mattered.

"Do you want to wait on your next task, or do it now?"

"Now." She knew the reason for her answer, and knew it to be a poor one. She knew because she knew Edmund would disapprove. But she was not sure, if Huan went away, what she would hold on to, or how frail she would get.

"Very well. I accept your judgement. I would recommend going on a walk with Huan, however, before we go through the door. Try to—I don't know, I don't like the company of other people. But you do, so do whatever you do in company. I shall go open a door for a wizard, and be back in a half hour." He stood, stepped—and vanished.

Susan could feel Huan's sides lift and fall in a sigh. She scratched his head one more time. "Should we take a walk?" Funny, how often she found herself doing that now. Even though it felt like she was getting nowhere. Huan got to his feet and looked back at her. The brown depth of his eyes pulled her in; the waiting, the patience—a patience only love could give.

Leaving him waiting—she had had enough of doing that, to the people she loved. She got up and began walking. He matched her pace easily, though he steered her away from some turns of the path. When she finally had the energy to wonder why, she realised they led to the more frequented paths. Perhaps Huan could smell people, and kept them both away from others.

She kept her hand on his back. When she realised she was stroking him, cold hand buried in warm fur, an echo of memory caught her mind. The fur had been gold then, longer, with a wild and sweet smell, but the sorrow—

The sorrow had been present then as well. Mostly in Aslan, walking to His death, but it had been so strong that she and Lucy had felt it too. They'd cried when they'd kissed Him goodbye.

Narnia had its own tears, and its own despair. Her world was not the only one with broken hearts.

A whine broke through her thoughts. Huan was watching her.

"I'm not—gone again," she reassured him, finding it difficult to put the experience into words; how did one say, time meant nothing, I could not see or hear or do anything but feel, and even that was too much life for my head or maybe my heart would be a better word? "I'm still right here." Another two steps. "I'm a little worried about where we're going." It was easier for her to talk about the future than the present. "The Doorkeeper said the grieving one had been tortured; I do not know how to comfort someone like that. I walked with Aslan, and that helped; He had not wanted to be alone, and we didn't let Him be, not until—until that last part. He was all alone then. And I've comforted soldiers after battle, but this—intentional pain when someone is helpless is entirely different than being wounded in a war. I think." Huan made no noise. What would her siblings say?

Do the task at hand; worry about the next task when it comes; or better yet, do not worry about it at all. Follow Aslan. Peter's firm, steady tones—it'd been a while since she'd heard them, and she smiled to hear them so clearly now. Speak from the heart, and also from the head, from Edmund, and Trust Aslan and work! in Lucy's clear voice.

The sorrow in her heart remained; but it brought her siblings closer, through her work, in a way hate never would, and Susan could feel that difference now.

"Aslan's Queen!"

Turning, she saw the Doorkeeper striding after them, dark fabric draped over one arm, huffing and puffing. "Must you walk about so?"

A hand on Huan's head, and it was easy to let the anger go and see the humour. "Were not you the one who told me to walk?"

"Perhaps I did. Perhaps I did. Did it help?" He'd caught some of his breath back and was already fussing with the pocket of his brown suit jacket with one hand.

"I think so."

"It is well. Very well, then. Let's see if you make it through the door. But here, take this again, it will shelter you from prying eyes—" and he flung a cloak around her shoulders. "Huan, you keep to the shadows. Do not let anyone see you, other than Aslan's Queen. Where should the door be, I wonder?" He glanced around, started, and took a step back. "Well."

"Well?" Susan asked after a few seconds passed by.

"The door is practically made—or, the opening is, but not the door. Your heart is very strong. Regaining strength, I think. I don't like this at all."

"It's not good for me to be strong?"

"Of course it is, but there are dangers to natural openings; they're not unexpected, made in a moment and then gone the next. Sometimes things find them. There is nothing I can do about that at the moment, however. I do hope it doesn't cause trouble in the future."

"Does that mean I can open doors?" Susan asked, suddenly curious. If she could open the one to Huan's world, she could visit him every evening.

"No, of course not. But you would not know that, would you? See, if a mortal's will is bent to a path that he is supposed to walk, then the worlds begin to bend. But an opening is not a door, and while beings may wait outside it, they cannot go through it without a door there. Oh, it's as if a cave opened in a mountainside, but there's no way up the cliff or down it without a rope. I create the rope—the door. But it is a lot less work to have the cave already there, rather than digging it out. But all this is besides the point. Are you ready?"

"As I can be."

"Wise answer. Hold on—" and he drew a handkerchief out of his pocket. He waved it back and forth in front of him, and the light began to shine, the cold and the change to blow through. The Doorkeeper stepped through it—she could see his silhouette block the light in the middle for one moment —and then Susan took a deep breath and stepped through herself.

The cold pierced.

Gasping, she staggered. Huan's warm back stood in front of her immediately. Leaning into it, she closed her eyes.

"Shhhhhh!" the Doorkeeper hissed in her ear. She tried to quiet her breathing, in and out, in and out, more slowly, more deeply. When she had it mainly subdued, she straightened.

The hall in which they stood was dark and narrow, lit by a few flickering torches at one end, where there might be a room. The walls were stone and almost cold; if she had not worn the cloak, Susan would be shivering.

There was also a noise. A voice, Susan realised after a moment, a voice talking nonstop, begging nonstop. The voice did what the cold could not; Susan shivered.

"What is it saying?" she asked the Doorkeeper.

"He is begging his gods for mercy," the Doorkeeper said soberly. "I have unlocked the door to his cell; it is that one." He pointed to a door almost all the way down the hall. "You are to help him, and then, when he can hear you, tell him that he will go home. He will make it home, and his work for his god is not done."

Susan winced. "I do not think—work is not a comfort, when someone is at the end of all they can do."

"That is why you must comfort him first. If he required only truth, I could be the messenger."

Perhaps he should learn a little bit more of comfort, Susan thought, but she did not say it. An argument right before she went into a tortured man's cell would not be any good sort of preparation.

"Fare well and wisely, Aslan's Queen."

"May thy words be as wise and fair to those thou meets," Susan responded, the formal words coming automatically, to her own surprise. But something about this world called to the Queen in her. The Doorkeeper smiled and stepped sideways. Susan turned back to the cell door. Seven steps, eight steps, Huan pacing by her side—she was halfway down the hall, and she still did not know what to say. The voice grew louder, the words in a language she did not know, but the tone—

The begging of someone in deadly pain. The kind of pain that brought Lucy's cordial out at once. A pain inflicted by the people here.

She stopped outside the cell door. It was a solid door, not one of bars, not one she could see through; on the other side—was she able to deal with what she would find.

A head knocked into her shoulder, and she turned to see Huan looking at her, shifting from one side to the other. He's in pain, the sympathetic eyes seemed to say. Susan turned and opened the door at once.

The smell nearly knocked her backwards. Blood, rust-scented and coppery, and burned flesh. Dirt and sewage mixed in, too, under the scent. She took a shallow breath through her mouth and entered. On a low bench—or cot—against one wall lay a man, his frame slight and wiry. A chair stood by his head, and a little straw was strewn on the floor, barely visible in the dark. The man was moaning.

Suddenly Susan didn't need to know what to do. This, at least, she could do. Shedding her cloak, she made her way to the man's side and lifted his head, gently, sliding the cloak under it. At the touch of her fingers the man opened his eyes. His pleading ceased.

Susan waited for a moment, to see if he would say anything; but he said nothing, he only looked at her, dark eyes clouded, shallow breaths gasping from his mouth. Stroking his hair back from his forehead, Susan began to work her way downwards, dim memories of the healers' lessons in Narnia coming back to her. His shoulder had one burn, and Susan pulled the fabric away from it before blowing on it a few times. His chest rose and fell regularly, if rapidly, and he did not respond with moans to any pressure on any part of it. The thin arms seemed firm at the shoulders to the elbows, and it was not till she got to the end of the second one that Susan realised he had no hand. And that the wrist had blood smeared around the seared flesh at the end.

Bile burned in her throat, her mouth, and Susan turned to the side to throw up. A flash of movement in the corner caught her attention; Huan about to move towards her. She shook her head no. Wiping her mouth, wishing she had water, and then wishing it again to give to the prisoner, Susan turned back. She took her handkerchief out of her pocket and wiped the blood away as best she could.

She finished, laying back down—and heard a sob. She looked back at the man's face, and found him crying, tears streaking down the dirty face. She'd already used her handkerchief, but she brought one of her sleeves down onto her hand and wiped his face as best she could. He did not cry for long. When he'd ceased, shutting his eyes, Susan checked his legs and feet. There were bruises and cuts, but nothing that would not heal. She returned her attention to his head, resting her hand on his forehead. He flinched.

"Your hand is cold," he rasped. She began to lift it, but his arm—the one missing a hand—lifted to stop her, then dropped back.

"You have a fever," Susan said after a moment, leaving her hand there. His head shifted under her hand as he nodded. "What's your name?"

"Eugenides." He paused. "Gen." After a second he opened his eyes to look at her again.

"Are you a god?"

"No!" The question startled her; but then, he had been praying to his gods. "No," she added more gently. "But I am sent by my God. He sent me to tell you to hold on. Hold on; you will make it through this. You will go home again. There is still work for you, and it is waiting for you." He closed his eyes and shifted his head away from her. "I am not lying," she told him gently. "And the one who bid me tell you does not lie either."

"I lie all the time." He said it baldly, without any regret. She couldn't help but smile, a little, at his tone; it was very like a Narnian child caught in a game they'd been told not to play, and not regretting it. She must have made a sound, too, as he looked at her again.

"Will you stay?"

"I will stay as long as I can—but I will have to leave. When I do, you must not tell anyone I was here."

He smiled back at her, a hard, exhausted smile. "I have kept many secrets."

"That does not surprise me." She stroked his hair again. "You look like a man who knows secrets."

"They do not help me in here."

"They will help you once you get out."

He lifted up his left hand and caught her wrist. "That feels a long way off."

The echo of her own pain hit her; that feels a long way off. It doesn't feel like this will change.

I hate this world and the person I am in it.

But she could see in his life what she struggled to believe in her own, and with that belief in her voice she leaned forward to look into his eyes. "You will live to see it change."

He didn't smile, didn't move—just watched her with the eyes of a man who has seen the impossible before, and is wondering if it will happen again.

That was when he fainted.

She stayed where she was, stroking his sweaty forehead and hair, hoping it brought him a little comfort. His pain, now that she did not have to comfort him, fell on her more heavily. This was so wrong.

When would it end for him?

A cold wind blew on her back; it did not surprise her when the Doorkeeper's voice said, "Well done." Susan stood, and he added from behind her, "Take your handkerchief." She untied it from around his wrist, uncaring that it was bloodstained. "Let us begone. Huan, when you walk through, you will be in your own world. No, Aslan's Queen, you cannot go with him this time. Dark things are lurking around the doors, and I would have us through them."

The sharp rending of her heart at separation bit. But she was too overwrought to protest; when she walked through the door, she found herself at her own home. To her surprise, the Doorkeeper was still with her.

"Yes?" she asked, and heard the exhaustion that fogged her brain. Believing for the handless thief had taken more of her heart than she'd thought she had to give.

"How are you?"

Susan blinked. That had not been the question she expected. But at it, she found herself beginning to cry.

"I thought so. I am not good with this—words wise and fair indeed. Why am I called to this? But there's no one else, and you'll have to do with me. Here, sit down—somewhere. In that living room. Let's go this way, wasn't it? And I'll make tea; that seems like your nation's answer to many problems."

It took Susan several seconds—until she was lowering herself into the armchair—to realise the Doorkeeper was concerned; and by then he was vanishing through the door into her kitchen to make her tea. It was good he left; perhaps she needed concern, but his was exhausting. She lowered her head into her hands and breathed, and cried, and let herself be weak and cold and sad. Fortunately, her guest stayed in the kitchen till the kettle boiled and the tea steeped; by the time he brought her a cup, she'd regained a little control. She took the tea with a nod of thanks. To her surprise, the Doorkeeper sat down across from her. "Better?" he asked.

"Yes. Thank you," she added with an effort. She took a sip of the tea—bitter tea, steeped in water far too hot; this was obviously not what the Doorkeeper regularly made. It woke her mind up a little. "What will become of that thief?" she asked.

"He has an interesting life. He'll become king over three nations, become a husband, become a father." He paused. "He marries—and loves—the woman who cut off his hand."

Susan choked on the tea for entirely different reasons. Had she heard correctly? "He married the woman who did that to him?"

The Doorkeeper nodded.

"Did he—forgive her?"

"Yes."

"How?"

The Doorkeeper shrugged. "Love allows the heart to do many things no heart could otherwise do. You, too, have been forgiven," he added, as gently as Susan had ever heard him. "Everything you have ever done—to your siblings, to the One who made you queen, to your parents—all of that is forgiven."

The teacup clattered as it hit the saucer; Susan's shaking hands couldn't hold it any longer. The Doorkeeper went on relentlessly, "And you are loved. It is not the love your family gave to you, but everywhere you go, you are loved. You disarm the most suspicious, quiet the most angry—because you are easy to love. And even when you were not easy to love, your family and your God loved you still." Susan could not look at him. "Do not hold onto what God has forgiven." Susan heard him sigh. "There's a lot more I could say, but I am trying to be better at this. I don't think you're ready for more now. I must say, it is a great deal easier when I am not worried or impatient. I shall do my best to remember that, and to speak less when my heart is fretting." A pause, but Susan could not speak. "I suppose I'll hear praise for that at a later time. Do you need to call a friend for tonight?"

Susan shook her head.

"No, I suppose none of them could relate to what you've been through." Another pause. "I am reluctant to offer this, for it will be offered very seldom, perhaps never again, and you will long for it once you've had it once—but you need rest tonight. You may spend the night with Huan."

Susan did look at him at that, hope—oh, how hope hurt, even when it was going to be granted—filling her heart. The Doorkeeper nodded.

"Yes, I mean that. However, it cannot happen often. You must be rooted in this world. You'll need to come back on your birthday every year, at least; and times in between, enough that it still feels like your world. But that may lessen as time goes on. Still, spending the night elsewhere, somewhere you will want to be home, is a bad idea. Just this once, then."

"Just this once," Susan whispered, heart aching with something she'd fall in love with that she'd have to say goodbye to, again. But worth it; she already knew it would be worth it. She barely noticed the cold when she stepped through the door, so eager to see Huan.

She heard his bark, and saw him running towards her with the long steps of a hunter's dog; she met him with a hug. He was real in her arms, solid, comforting, warm. The air of that world, that forest, filled her lungs. "I can stay the night," she whispered into him, and he turned at once, leading her to a shelter made of three enormous trees growing very close together, large enough to form three walls. He lay down inside the hollow in the middle, and tugged her skirt with his mouth till she tumbled down next to him. It felt like the time she'd stayed in a cave in Narnia after her horse dumped her and fled; hugged in Bear's arms for warmth during the winter night, it felt like protection and love and safety all at once.

She had not slept so well in a long, long time; when the dawn came the next morning, turning the leaves to golden glory as she opened her eyes, it felt like hope fulfilled.

Until she remembered that this was not her world.