From my dark place, to the world.
Beauty was in the eye of the beholder. That's what people say, anyway:
Since she was young everyone around was marveled by her looks. The beauty of the family they said. People only commented about it as if everything else that made her didn't matter as much and she learned to store it away so it won't be seen as a stain in the perfect image that people had of who she was.
The problem was how she believed them more than she trusted those that really loved her.
Lights and ballrooms with pretty gowns and simpering boys worked as a siren call for a girl that grew up in a war and had to take care of her younger siblings, that's what was expected of her… right?
All girls had to be motherly and nurturing, expert housewives and capable at basic needlework and mending clothes, not to mention the kitchen and run a household. That's what men wanted in a wife and if on top of it all she was a looker… well that's hitting the jackpot.
No one was that lucky. But you see. Her friends, family, neighbors and acquainted people said that such a man would be the one that married Susan Pevensie. Even people who hated her couldn't come up with an answer beside an angry frown.
Well, her fiancée didn't think he was lucky at the time: they found out how Susan's family died in a massive train crash and she… she wasn't exactly depressed and he didn't really understand her. She was so filled with anger and hate, and even if he wasn't big on religion he didn't want to marry an atheist. That is, if said atheist consented to be married in a place she utterly despised.
She had declared that God didn't exist. At first everyone let it slip. They thought it a phase, that even if she struggled for a while, she will, eventually, get back on her feet.
After a year, the engagement was called off. She was adamant about not wanting to get married in a church. Not wanting anything to do with any religion at all. His conservative parents weren't in the mood to accommodate such a daughter in law that also came as a heavy burden instead of an asset.
No one knew of a girl called Susan Pevensie for years to come.
Years passed and those who knew her got old, some died, and almost no one remembered her anymore, even with her "unforgettable" looks and the world shattering tragedy that ruined her life. For the family it was as if she vanished from the face of the earth to never be found again.
Ballrooms and nightgowns gleamed in luxury. This held an appeal to her even if everything else was just a blur, some never-ending sequence of events that ultimately led to a pretty short break from the world she so despised.
You see, her goal hadn't been achieved and she went through the notions of living, like one would go through a grueling work shift with the difference of getting no solace or respite.
Reasonably speaking that made her a really bitter person.
It was pretty simple but also ironic: Her disregard of anything other women might see as blessings, that's what made her get it.
Her husband couldn't care less, she just had to look beautiful and smile emptily at his guests if anything. Looking like the perfect, silly, pretty wife.
Even if she was anything but that, if pretending got her what she wanted, she didn't mind.
She was past the point of caring how everyone else perceived her. With a husband thirty years her senior and his sons hating her… not to mention other women who failed to secure a marriage with him. People wagged their tongues and seethed in envy, but at the end of the day they just wanted something she had gotten without effort and that made them pathetic.
Someone that apparently came out of nowhere, she managed to fascinate her husband not just for her looks (even if it was a big part at the beginning)
You see, he was looking for something all of his money couldn't pay, something she found completely by accident, while searching for the only thing she wanted, really.
Even if she wasn't interested in living forever or retaining her looks, her aging husband obeyed her every word when she managed to bring him back from the brink of death.
She wouldn't call herself a witch, not quite. She still remembered Narnia and what they went through thanks to a witch. No, she didn't have a name for what she was, but it was clear she wasn't a common human anymore.
She didn't age as quickly as those around her, no. But she still aged.
Her family was far away where she couldn't reach them, no amount of counseling or praying could change her mind, she was determined to see them one more time, to save them if she managed to do so. Consequences be damned.
That her family had been taken away from her and she was left behind… intentionally.
That was something she would never forgive or forget. Not in this life or even the next. Why would she?
When she and Peter had been told they were no longer allowed in Narnia and had to "find" Aslan in their own world, she had been devastated. She had loved Narnia, her life as Queen Susan and all of her friends and subjects.
Having to let go of that and come back to… this.
That had been devastating and something inside her just broke and things weren't the same afterwards. A rift of some sort had been developed between her and her siblings.
specially her younger siblings. She couldn't quite look Lucy in the eye knowing she still could go to that place where she wasn't allowed and she desperately wanted to go.
If she could no longer step into Narnia, she most certainly didn't want to know anything about it. It hurt too much!
How she regretted not taking that train. Because she knew, somehow her parents and her siblings were together in death. Separate parents and children would be too cruel. But even so, Aslan, God or whatever his name was, he had deemed fair to leave her here.
And she could never forgive that. She wouldn't beg. If that worked she surely should be with her family by now.
She had done everything she could think off. Death wasn't the end; she had to meet them again.
This "life" was nothing but a sham. A mockery, it could not even be described as an illusion or a dream. It might fit better in a nightmare; she didn't want such a life. She wanted what was forcibly taken from her. And if she couldn't get that, she didn't want anything else.
This whole charade could crumble, die and turn to dust and crystal shards for all she cared.
Maybe that could make her feel more alive than she had felt in three lifetimes.
All of these years she had lived, she just treasured that shard of her life... when she was revered and loved in a world of wonder.
Her smiling mask firmly in place, she mingled, danced, chattered and tittered, her empty eyes not gleaming.
Time was but a drag... a curse and a jailor that kept stealing away from her.
That which she desperately wanted to forget, if she wasn't able to have it back again.