Disclaimer: Despair has claimed me before, and I've no wish to make that claim the other way round; but one day, God will make despair a stranger to me. That day sometimes feels slow in coming.

Beta'd by trustingHim17, with my thanks.

"All my grief says the same thing:
this isn't how it's supposed to be.
this isn't how it's supposed to be.

and the world laughs,
holds my hope by the throat,
says:

but this is how it is "
~ Fortesa Latifi

The policeman who walked with her tilted her head down once again; and she did not see the sheets as they walked. He must have steered her away. She saw blackened boards, discarded belongings, and occasionally a hand picking up the debris.

And then she saw the street. The packed-down dirt, the dust floating around her skirts, and her ears filled with the tramp of feet and the calls of people to each other. She did not see the crowd gathered around, just their shoes, resting on the dirt.

Surely, surely, Peter, Edmund, and Lucy would walk again. My father. My mother. Surely—

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and man returns to the dirt.

No. I won't believe it.

Her arm was pulled upwards and so she climbed up three stairs, black from hundreds of feet going up and down each day. A warehouse, probably not used as much since the peace started—those thoughts were in passing as they headed towards it. She saw the threshold, stained with dirt, as they passed through the open door. She lifted her head again.

Line upon line of white rectangles, each with a shape under them—each with the top of the sheet folded down. Some had heads visible, hair hastily arranged, eyes closed.

Some did not have heads.

Two thirds of the warehouse held the lines; the back third, furthest from the door, had people moving about, some laying sheets over bodies, some kneeling, patting along—

Checking for belongings, Susan thought, feeling bile rise yet again. She swallowed it down. Peter and the others may not be here. I don't know that they're here.

They can't be here.

"Are you here for something, sir?"

"Five people, last name of Pevensie," the policeman said quietly. "They're her family."

"Poor dear"—I do not need your sympathy, they are not here—"I can take you right to them."

Susan looked up, into a wrinkled face under a nun's white habit. She has to be wrong, she has to be—they can't be here. But the nun turned and walked towards a row with the letter "P" traced in the dirt before the first body, talking over her shoulder as she did.

"They were easy to remember—even to me, and I've seen so much death. There's something about their faces, like the faces of saints on stained-glass windows with the sun shining through—they've faces people remember. We all saw them. Jackie near teared up when she closed their eyes, even though most of us had gone numb by then. I'm sorry, my dear. The world will hurt with their loss."

The worlds, plural, the Professor would say—

The Professor. Aunt Polly. Weren't they coming too?

No. No. Not—I cannot take another loss.

But they'd turned down the row, and the nun was kneeling. "...so we put them all together. They looked like a family."

The hand did not tilt her head, but Susan looked down anyway.

Five white sheets, five neat folds at the top, and five familiar heads looking back at her. Lucy's golden hair, smeared on one side with oil, around her white, white face—a face that still held a smile. Her mother beside her, bareheaded. She had always liked being bareheaded—

Susan felt something hit her knees hard, and she was closer to the faces, closer to the ground, reaching out towards her father, who was nearest.

A black-clad arm reached with her, grabbing her wrist and bringing her arm back to its side. "You do not want to touch them," whispered the policeman, so, so gently. Susan swallowed, and looked further.

Edmund, face at rest. He looked so beautiful when he slept, he always had, and they'd laughed, because waking him up had always been dangerous, but it was hard to believe when he slept…

We will not laugh together again.

Edmund will not sleep again.

Susan could not comprehend these thoughts; she did not let them sink it. She shoved them away.

"Can you hear me, ma'am?"

That was the nun. Susan could barely understand her, like the chattering of a three-year-old playing tea with dolls in the background. Unimportant.

Susan looked past her, at Peter.

Peter, who had been safety when Susan was a child, and Susan needed that again, needed that voice to quiet her, that shoulder to lean on, that strength to hold her up as pain hit her.

"Peter!"

Her voice carried over the bodies of the dead, it stilled the living; but it was not enough, not nearly enough, because Peter didn't move.

"Peter!"

The grip left her wrist, curving around her shoulders, holding her like family, like the kind comforting the mourning.

Just beyond Peter was Jill, lips set, face white, and eyebrows raised in wonder or surprise. Susan did not have room to care, to feel that loss at the moment. If Peter would not respond—

"Edmund! Edmund, please—"

He stayed white, unmoving. Forever at rest.

"Lucy. Lucy, you have to hear me—" She couldn't see Lucy anymore, couldn't see past the water in her eyes, the blurring of the world, the real world, that couldn't be real.

This is a part of their game—

The thought was so absurd even Susan could not hold it for long. She covered her face with her hands, gasping air through the tears.

"Poor dear. The whole family, then. I'll never understand the ways of God, but she'll be all right, if she's His."

What a cruel, cruel thing to say. This world will never be all right again.

"Where should we send them?"

"Send them to the closest undertaker to…" and the policeman gave her address.

She had not given him her address.

She latched onto that, onto that one real fact, that thing she didn't understand—the thing her mind could demand to know, the mystery that didn't relate to this.

How did he know my last name? My address?

Two hands under her elbows, lifting her up. "I'll see you home," he told her. "Thank you." That must be to the nun.

He tried to turn her, but she didn't let him. She looked down—down at the five. "I can't leave," she whispered.

I can't leave them.

It's so cold here.

"They are not staying here either," he told her, voice still quiet. The noise from the further side was picking up again, as people turned back to their business.

Their horrid, horrid business—of sorting and identifying the dead.

A red dress, music, laughter, and a shining diamond in a ring flashed through Susan's mind—what would they say, to this horrible world?

She wanted them right now, wanted Nancy, Robert, Mary, Carol, or Donna.

Instead she had a policeman who knew her name, her address, knew more than she had told, and was pulling her towards the door.

Towards the world she didn't want to go back to. A world where her family wasn't, where they would never walk again.

But she went, because he was pulling. She had nothing left to argue with.

They were at the door. The crowd across the street shifted and pushed and turned; Susan wondered how they could stand to be under that black cloud. The policeman pulled her to the side, and they waited as two men brought another body through the door. The arm hung limp, the fingers bouncing. Susan turned away, gagging, throat burning, barely escaping being sick again.

Then her companion's hand guided her arm through his, and he led her down the steps.

He started for her home by the fastest route. But she pulled her arm from his, and he turned towards her.

Not that he was angry, nor impatient—just waiting. Waiting with old, old eyes; like the Professor's had been. Only his had twinkled—been so young—at least as often as they'd been old.

"I did not tell you where I lived."

His eyes weighed her, assessing. Then he reached into one of the pouches on his belt and withdrew a small slip of thick, tan paper, which looked oddly mediaeval. Handing it to her, he waited with that same gentle patience as she unfolded it till it lay flat. It was about as long as her hand. On it, in precise, neat letters, was written her name, her address, and the fact, blackly, blatantly written, that she had six family members and three friends who were in an accident.

She choked, crumpling the paper in one suddenly-shaking hand. She looked back up at him, tremors running through her.

"I was sent to help you," he said softly. "I should take you home."

Susan stepped back. Sent.

Sent by—

Fairy tales and children's games; four children sent to free a world; called by a Lion back a second time—

A Lion.

His name—

Susan turned and ran for home.