Disclaimer: Generosity and faith are not things anyone but their Creator could own.
Beta'd by trustingHim17, with my thanks.

"The problem with surviving was that you ended up with the ghosts of everyone you'd ever left behind
riding on your shoulders."
~ Paolo Bacigalupi

Susan could not afford to keep the house.

Her father had not made much, but Susan made much less. That meant another loss in a long line of losses.

The loss felt hard, as did the solution. Susan, with no other options, called her Uncle Harold. He and his wife grudgingly agreed to let Susan come and live with them—"Though she doesn't get his room, do you hear me, Harold?"—till she found her feet. Aunt Alberta did not say much about their own loss to Susan's face, though she pointed out that it was very hard on them, while grieving, to care for a poor relative as well.

Susan bit her lip and wished she had Ed—her brother with her. He would help her argue this through, till Susan experienced more than anger and dread at the thought of her new home, her new family.

Susan hated the thought of moving in with her uncle and aunt, almost as much as she hated the idea of leaving the house. But things had to be done, and so she did them—always doing them at night, to keep the ghosts at bay. Her family normally would have been sleeping, so she did not feel their loss like a bleeding wound as she walked through the house, as she pulled the suitcases out from the closets. She packed the smallest first, the carpetbag Lucy often—the one with worn colours and faded patterns, one that Lucy said—

She packed it with Edmund's favourite books (the ones she remembered him liking, and it hurt that they were not the ones by his bedside now), Peter's orderly stack of papers, and Lucy's hanging of a lion. She did not look at that painting, sliding it into the bag facefirst. Suddenly it being night did nothing to silence her memories.

Why did everything in the house recall her ghosts?

Why, when the ghosts chilled her and ripped her to pieces, couldn't her heart give up the house?

She packed her clothes in another suitcase, carefully wrapping them around the dishes she did not want to lose—the chipped plate Peter always took (so his siblings didn't have to), Edmund's huge mug, the crystal butter dish Lucy put out with every meal and sometimes surrounded with small flowers.

Her father's three books went side by side with a few dried clippings of her mother's favourite plants. It was easier, in the dark, to pretend she was doing it for them, that they'd come home and be happy with her work, that they'd see how she loved them.

That the things she wanted to take with her were the things they loved.

But there was still more to pack.

So she pulled out the big suitcase, the one she'd left to her brothers because the strap was broken, and in the dark nights, a candle burning beside her, she set herself to mend it. In and out, in and out, pushing a metal needle through the new leather strap.

The one Lucy had bought, to spare Susan work.

Susan dropped the strap, the needle, the thread, and covered her face with her hands, struggling, again, to breathe through this pain. Everywhere, everywhere, the ghosts of her family were everywhere. Susan ran from them, ran into her own room, candle in hand. Panting, she stopped in front of the vanity. The large mirror reflected an empty room, free from all ghosts.

It reflected the living, panting woman—and nothing else.

Because Susan had survived. Not by choice, not by desire, but because she'd been away from her family. She'd lost them. In five days she'd lose the house as well. She started to cry, watching her reflection and the tears on its cheeks.

"I don't want to leave!" she choked out, the words taking all the air her lungs held. She told her reflection, only her reflection, because there wasn't anyone else to hear. She crouched nearer the floor and fell back against the bed, arms around her knees. Her family was everywhere in this house, and she couldn't take it, couldn't take how everything, even a leather strap, reminded her that they were gone and weren't coming back. Now she faced losing the house, going to Uncle Harold and Aunt Alberta, with their science and their hate and their own broken hearts…

"I wouldn't even have the ghosts then," Susan whispered. She rubbed the tears from her face, the cold streaks that irritated her skin, and flinched when she saw the movement reflected in the top of the mirror. She saw her own face, dark skin under her eyes, her cheeks white, her eyes red; she saw it and laughed bitterly. "I'm a queen fit only for the ghosts now." She lowered her face, refusing to see that ugly reflection. "What happens when I lose even them?"

She fell silent, and so did the house. There was nothing in it that could answer her; no people, no pets, no birds or dogs or spirits of trees. All of the magic had left her, like she'd wanted.

She had wanted that so badly once. Now she wanted the opposite. Now—could she have the opposite?

"What if I welcomed you back?"

The darkness did not answer.

"I—I could try to believe again," she promised. Surely magic could hear.

Still nothing answered her.

Silence could be the answer magic was giving. It was certainly the answer she deserved. She'd silenced it often enough. But believing, when there was only silence—Susan gave up trying and wept.

Then, with nothing else to be done, she went back to packing the next day. She finished mending the strap—during the daytime. She put the important things in it, the dress Lucy wore in the garden that had more stains than original colour, the scribbles (in calligraphic handwriting) Edmund had made about their games, Peter's plans for the future and his letters from London. She collected all the things that truly mattered.

Four days left.

Susan walked the house again and again and again, filling the biggest suitcase with all the remaining reminders of her family, of their dreams, their loves, their habits.

She had to take those with her. She couldn't lose them. She couldn't bear to forget them.

Three days left, and the doorbell rang.

She opened it, and saw a flashback of fear that a policeman stood there. But—it was the one from the station. She looked at his face and suddenly her mind was back, smelling the awful scent of smoke and blood, hearing the wood creaking under her feet as she climbed the stairs. A hand grabbed her elbow, just like it had back then, and she blinked.

The policeman let her go when she pulled herself upright. His eyes, his face—they were written with a sorrow so strong it made it hard to breathe. She knew that very same sorrow, she suffocated under it every night; she didn't want to face it now. She tried to pull herself together.

"Why are you here?"

"I am sorry to bother you when you're struggling, Miss Pevensie, but I've been asked to give this to you." He held out a sheaf holding several pieces of paper, and she took it slowly in her right hand, her left reaching up to hold it steady so she could read it.

The front page read Title Deed, with the address of her parents' house—her house—listed underneath.* She looked back up at the policeman. "What is this?" Her voice was sharper than she meant it to be, sharp enough she flashed back to an elderly housekeeper in the country.

"I believe there's a note on the second page that explains some things, ma'am."

Susan looked back down at the paper, lifting that first page. The second had a note on thick, yellow paper, written in handwriting as ornate as Edmund's at his most formal.

A very long time ago, a king of England offered me as much land as I wanted. I seldom want any, but I took the liberty of purchasing this plot of land for you with some of the gifts he gave me. Take good care of it. You will need it at least once a year. It is entirely yours now, and no one can take it from you.

I will see you soon, if your choices lead our paths together.

Susan looked up, questions crowding through her brain for the first time in many days, but the policeman was gone. She looked back down at the papers, trembling in her hands.

Her hands were shaking.

She went inside and shut the door. She walked past the small table with her father's hat on it—the table she didn't have to leave now, the hat she didn't have to stuff into a suitcase—and into the kitchen. She set the papers carefully on the table and made herself some tea.

Tea would help her think. Tea might help her plan.

She needed to put everything in the suitcases away. She needed to put the things back, because she wasn't leaving now.

I'm not leaving. I—this is my house.

How?

And—who is that policeman? Who bought this house? Why would they give it to me?

Should I accept it? It's not…it's not safe, to be in debt to a person I don't know. Things like this don't happen!

Yes, they do. They did. They did to you once, and you remember it. An old man who took us in, during the war. And he's not the only one. Mom and Lucy gave freely to everyone who had a need.

But those were small gifts! They weren't a whole house! Who can afford to give a whole house?

She closed her eyes. She brought her tea up to her face and inhaled the steam, the herbal scent of Earl Grey clearing her head.

It made things real.

She opened her eyes and looked at the papers lying on the table corner. They also looked real. She reached out and touched them, felt the stiff, smooth surface, and laid her hand directly under the words Title Deed.

It was real too.

It was an answer, a mystifying answer, speaking back to her late night despair. It was an answer she didn't know what to do with, an answer that lifted her out of her aunt and uncle's care and back in with her ghosts. An answer nothing could explain. She looked at the calligraphic handwriting, reading the words again. A prior King of England? How long ago? How did it connect to the here and now?

Is this magic? Or is this real?

She ran her fingers along the edges of the paper, feeling the crisp, sharp edges that threatened to cut into her skin.

Real.

As sudden and mysterious as a fairy tale, but real.

Could it be both?

If it is—could other magic exist?

She swallowed and set down her tea. Rising, she went to the carpetbag, standing in the front hall with the other suitcases. Opening it, she drew out Lucy's painting, still keeping its face away from her. She went back to the kitchen and got the sugar jug from the counter, setting it in the middle of the table.

She paused.

This is madness.

So is getting the house.

But I'm not mad. I'd have to be partly mad to do this.

Yet—I want answers.

She swallowed, reached over, and leaned the painting upright against the sugar jug. She set the sheaf of papers directly in front of it, and glanced at the rest of the table. Her breakfast bowl and spoon were still on the other side, and she hastily set them by the sink, wiping her hands on her skirt as she came back. The entire thing felt ridiculously ceremonious.

As ridiculous as something her siblings might have done.

But if she was going to appeal to what they believed in—what she, possibly, had once believed in—it seemed fitting to go about it the same way they would have.

She sat down in the chair in front of the picture and raised her eyes.

The lion was upside down.

A rueful smile lifted her lips. She must be out of practice with such ceremonies, to have made a blunder like this; but somehow the mistake took away her awkwardness. She reached out and turned the painting right-side up.

The Lion—somehow he deserved a capital letter now—did not seem to mind her innocent mishandling. His eyes, painted with gold glints and deep shadows, looked into hers.

She could not take his gaze for long.

Her eyes fell to her hands, thumbs under the table and out of sight, fingers resting on top. "I do not know what to say to you," she admitted slowly.

The painting, of course, said nothing. She glanced up at it, and almost instantly her eyes fell again. The Lion—if it is so hard to face him, how am I to ask for his help?

"Speak your thought, Daughter of Eve." Those words, she'd heard them once; she'd heard them spoken in that voice which could not be disobeyed. The voice no one disobeyed without great cost. Speak your thought.

I'm speaking to a painting.

If it was only a painting, it would not care what she said. If it was more—

Speak your thought.

"If you took them—if, somehow, you sent them there to die—" her voice choked. "Lucy was seventeen, and that was so cruel. You—" had no right, was the thought that started in her brain, but it would not bear speaking, not in front of the painting.

If the Lion was real, He had every right. Lucy had always been His. His as a child, His at seventeen, His when she lived and His as she died. But why would He kill her? "She was Your favourite. Or not, we were told, but she was the one who saw You the most. Why take her? Why Peter, who only ever obeyed? Edmund, who—"

Edmund, who had spoken many true things. Like—

Sooner or later, there will be consequences. Edmund had said that.

She didn't want to ask these questions, not really, not when the answers choked her brain; she wanted to ask, "Why did you leave me behind? How could you take them, and not take me?"

She covered her face, unable to ask more, unable to get past that question, that loneliness, that consequence. She knew the answer to that burning question, and she could not face it.

Stay tonight, Su. It's important.

If she'd stayed—

What had they seen? Peter and Edmund came back hushed and determined, swift movements and implicit understanding, like they used to have when—

When they went to fight battles. They'd acted as if they were on a campaign once again, that day. They'd come home with absurd costumes, wearing clothing of professions that weren't theirs. They'd been too busy to ask much about her life, and Susan admitted to herself the red lipstick, the one she hadn't been able to touch it again after picking it up off the floor at night, the same day her world changed—that had been in part to flaunt her life in front of them. To stop them from ignoring it.

What if she had stayed instead?

What would have happened? No one is ever told that. They'd heard that in another world, she thought she remembered it, but what if—

What if she'd stayed? Would she have seen something to make her believe again?

She looked back at the Lion.

"There was once," she whispered to it, "once, long ago, when Lucy said You were near, and I didn't believe her. Once when I knew I could have let myself believe, deep down, if I'd just tried."** She closed her eyes, trying to hold back the tears. "Should I make a different choice this time?"

Should she?

Could she?

Perhaps. She could try.

But she couldn't speak the words out loud. Not yet. So she made a silent promise, eyes closed, a painted Lion's gaze on her face.

I'll believe. I'll believe in you, if you just—just kept them alive somewhere. Even in a different world. If there's a chance of meeting them again, I'll believe, no matter how ridiculous the game—or the truth.

Tell me they're alive. Tell me there's a chance I can meet them again, and I'll believe.

*I am not an expert, nor even an amateur, at buying property in England. I've never been there (sadly). This is the result of five minutes of reading, so if it's wrong, my apologies and please let me know.

**Susan says as much to Lucy in Prince Caspian.