We Seven

A Narnia & Mirror, Mirror Fanfiction

Part 14

Susan felt she could have coped if only the tent – the dirty-sided, tarp-like thing which had been erected over what was left of the train platform – smelled and sounded the way she expected it to; if it reeked of blood and echoed with loud crying and the buzzing of flies.

She could have been brave if her expectations there were met.

Girls like Lucy, who chiefly read fairy tales, have one sort of silliness (not always real silliness, but that's another topic entirely), and girls who – like Susan – read newspaper reports and sensationalised romantic stories about red-cross nurses in two separate world wars who wade through mud and never mind the sight of blood, have another. The sight of a man with half his face blown away or missing a limb could not have broken far through the cloud of numbness hanging over her since the officer first came to her door and said there'd been a terrible accident and she must come right away.

The wails of the others who were there to identify bodies still being discovered in the wreckage, she wouldn't have flinched at; it was their quiet hiccuping that did for her. It was the fact she could smell antiseptic and not blood, something artificial instead of natural.

There are times perfume will choke you and leave you desperate if what you need most in the moment is fresh air. Even an air which smells vile, not so fresh really, is better than a cloying chemical scent at such a time.

They had three bodies they thought Susan might be able to give a positive identification to, and none of them were her parents – the only persons she'd even known would be on the train today.

To be fair, these three did not appear to have been on the train at all. They'd only had the misfortune to be struck in the wreckage because they were too near the end of the platform.

Oh – oh, God! There was not a single fly in the air. The bodies here were too fresh. The bugs did not know they were dead.

Susan drew in a breath as they pulled back the sheet.

Edmund.

Yes, it was him – he, she meant.

The second was Peter, a little more bruised – more banged up – than Edmund, with a trace of purple and sickly yellowing about the bones round the eyes, which – and this was the most dreadful part – were open.

They were icy blue marbles staring at nothing, not looking at her, not aware of the world. This was Peter, and she told them so, but Peter was not in there.

Well, there hadn't been too much doubt, they told her. Edmund was the one they puzzled over more, since Peter had had some identification on his person – in his pockets – they'd just needed to be sure.

The last one, now...

They warned her it wasn't a pretty sight, but even so Susan – for all she screwed her courage – swayed and nearly fainted. One officer and another gentleman she didn't know the position of put out their arms in case she should swoon into them.

But she rallied herself and set her teeth.

"Nicholas," she said, though she wasn't certain until she looked at his hand and his wrist. "He's... He is–" She broke off, her throat feeling tight and sticky. "He was..." Oh, sweet merciful God... "He was a... He had uh..." She forced the words out: "He suffered from haemophilia."

He was so swollen and bruised, so black and blue, she could not make out the features she'd known since she was fourteen years old. She couldn't even tell whether his eyes had been open or shut when he died. The face once so handsome was rendered grotesque in death. He might as easily have been identifiable as the reincarnation of Joseph Carey Merrick as he was Nicholas Kirke.

For a horrid – and sickeningly hopeful – second Susan hoped she was mistaken because of his mere proximity to Edmund and Peter. He could have been another man who happened to be standing next to them. Who said he was Nicholas? Was she seeing Nicholas in truth, or did she only expect to? Was this one of those mind puzzles where, seeing the number sequence of 5, 6, 8, you assume there is a seven also, until you look again, more carefully, and realise it was skipped over?

But his hand removed all doubt.

On his middle finger was a ring she'd seen him wear before – most recently when he and Jo tried to get her to forsake her fundraiser to visit Miss Plummer with them – acquired for his shop but liked so well he kept it for himself rather than resell it.

It was silver and had a winged baby, something like a cherub, and an eagle engraved on its flat surface.

On his wrist was a band – a sort of bracelet made of grey ribbon and purple thread. It was what a child might create. A child had created it. Lucy made it for him years and years ago, which was why it was frayed a bit.

He only ever wore it when he knew he was going to see Lucy, because he knew it pleased her.

Which made Susan feel cold all over.

If he was meeting Lucy, might her sister have been on that train, too?

It was the most likely conclusion.

They were still finding mangled bodies on the train. Her parents had not yet been uncovered. Might they bring out a dead Lucy next?

A stretcher came past right then. It did not contain Lucy, but its occupant only convinced Susan all the more that another was very, very likely to.

"Royce!" She squeaked and put a hand to her mouth.

Royce's familiar striped jumper, Royce's gold-and-black wristwatch – given to him by their father for his most recent birthday – Royce's blonde head, a shade paler than the golden head of his twin sister...

She would have known him miles off. There could be no mistake here.

"That's another one, then," murmured an officer standing in Susan's blind spot.

She had to whirl around to see him, startled to hear his voice – a very deep voice it was, too – before she knew he was there. He was a large man holding a clipboard, the little pencil he checked off names with almost invisible between his giant fingers; he had a bushy blonde moustache and looked very sombre. Somehow, he fit Susan's idea of what a baker would look like more than a policeman. She thought he seemed like a man from a nursery rhyme, completely out of place at the scene of a real and gruesome tragedy.

Still, she managed not to faint. She did not blub, either, though tears made her eyes burn hot as fire. They could hardly have been burning hotter if she'd rubbed pepper into them. The world did look distorted all around her, yet she still saw the rescue worker in his green coat with the red cross on the sleeve approach as clearly as if nothing obscured her vision, as if there were not lava-tears swimming in her eyes.

Or so it seemed in her memory when she thought it over later.

She saw him bend his head to the officer with the clipboard – for although the giant was broader, he was slightly taller, making Susan wonder bemusedly if the giant were not so massive as her first shocked impression made him out to be – and whisper something; and then the officer lowered his clipboard, coughed, and nodded.

Approaching Susan, the rescue worker said, "Pevensie?"

"Y-yes, I'm Miss Pevensie." She gasped out the words as if she had just answered the telephone after a sprint.

"Miss Susan Pevensie?"

"Yes." Irritation crept into her voice. Why wouldn't he just deal the blow and fell her once and for all? Tell her Lucy was dead.

"You're needed in the wreckage, miss, if you think you could bear it."

"In the wreckage?" she repeated stupidly.

"We cannot bring her out to you; she was crushed under the luggage."

"My sister?" She checked to be sure – and now the tears ran freely down her cheeks, scalding little rivers of lava.

"Yes, miss, we think so. We think it is your sister."

"Sir," said Tirian to the High King Peter after he had introduced his friends, cousin, two brothers, and sister – the beautiful and merry Queen Lucy The Valiant of old. "If I have read the chronicle aright, there should be two others. Has not your majesty three sisters?

"Where are Queen Susan and Lady Josephine?"

Susan had prepared herself. She'd thought she prepared herself better even than could be expected, given the dreadful situation she faced. She prepared herself for the – very likely – mangled body of her baby sister.

She prepared herself so she would not scream from the shock, even if she couldn't help a yelp of anguish.

Underneath the tumbled luggage, Lucy was bound to look pretty bad. Her poor little sister might be as banged up as Nick. She might struggle to identify her. She might have to guess by her size and do a great deal of assuming simply because a little seventeen-year-old girl travelling in the same compartment as Royce was bound to be his twin.

Unless she was wearing the iron bracelet Jo gave her for her sixteenth birthday, of course; that was distinctive enough...

Of Jo, Susan was thinking only dimly.

Part of her mind was stowing away the notion – once she'd settled about Lucy – she would need to give the policemen her address – the antique shop's address – so they could tell her about Nicholas, if they hadn't contacted her already.

Probably Jo would want to hear it from them over her.

It would be different if they were still close, of course – once upon a time, Susan would have run to her side to console her, back when Jo was almost as much her older twin as Royce was Lucy's in spite of her adoption, but things were changed now.

They weren't children anymore.

Yes, she would have to give them Jo's address.

And – that conclusion reached – she put Jo firmly from her mind, perhaps too ashamed and afraid to think what misery Jo would suffer hearing about Nicholas; how – eventually – she would need to go to her, to do something for her, even so...

But with Jo's tragedy so squared away and compartmentalised, Susan was taken aback – her heart nearly skipping a full beat in her chest – to see her.

It was not Lucy they were taking her to identify. The sister they had found under the luggage was Jo. Her eyes were as open as Peter's, but they were not lifeless dark marbles – she was still here. She stared out from them, blearily and clearly in unimaginable pain; but she was seeing.

Her mouth parted, with difficulty, and she croaked, "Su? Why're you here?" Then, sotto voce, "I don't feel my legs."

"Is this your sister?" The nurse stroking Jo's bloodied brow – crouched in a gap between a fallen steel rod and a row of trunks, leaning over the rubble to tend to her – asked.

Susan thought she was asking her. "Y-yes, yes," she blurted in jumbled rush. "She's my–" She coughed. "She's my sister."

But the nurse was asking Jo, who she had not taken her eyes off.

"Yeah," Jo moaned. "That's Susan." Her lips curled into what was either an ironic smile or part of a wince. "Leave it to her to be beautiful and pristine even during a trainwreck." Sounding confused, "But you weren't meant to be here, Su. We didn't tell you..." Panting for breath, "I don't understand..."

"Neither do I." Susan looked at the nurse. "She's alive, for mercy's sake! Why aren't you getting her out of all this rubbish?"

Finally deigning to look at Susan, tears filling her eyes, the nurse beckoned her over. "Step this way, if you can manage it, dear, but try your best not to scream. Agitation won't help her none."

Susan stepped gingerly and looked. It hadn't been visible from where she'd stood before, but another rod from the rack, opposite to the first one had gone clean through one of Jo's sides.

"We believe her organs were missed, but she'll need to be cut out and we don't know how long–"

"Couldn't you lift her off it?"

The nurse's chin trembled. "It would likely finish her off if we tried, love."

Crouching, Susan took her sister's hand. "Jo? Jo, you're going to be alright. Once they've cut you out and got you to hospital, you'll be right as rain."

"My side hurts like the dickens."

"I daresay it does." Susan gave her hand a squeeze. "But they're going to give you something for the pain soon. Just hold on."

Jo squeezed back. "I can feel that, at least – I can't feel my legs at all."

"It's only the shock, I expect." She wouldn't let herself believe it was anything worse.

"Are you going to stay with me?"

"Of course! What do you take me for?"

Jo gave another bleary blink. "My head hurts worse than my side does."

"You got a nasty bump on it," Susan said practically. "A trunk must have struck you."

"Su, did you see Nicholas?"

"I–"

"He was supposed to be meeting us – with Peter and Edmund."

And Susan knew she couldn't tell her the truth. If she told her sister he was dead, that she'd seen his body, Jo would give up. Her hand would slacken in her own and she would lose her forever.

Well, perhaps part of the truth would do.

"Yes, I saw him." The words burned on her tongue. "He's outside."

"Do you want us to send someone for him, pet?" asked the nurse, before Susan's quick – almost imperceptible – headshake warned her off.

"It would be too dangerous for him," Jo whispered, eyes half shut. "Climbing down here. He has haemophilia. That's when you can't stop bleeding."

"She's a nurse, Jo, she knows what it is."

"Oh. Right. Yeah. Sorry – stupid."

"You're not stupid." Her hand felt hot and cold at the same time – and also slick. Horridly slick. Hard to hold onto. "Take slow breaths, okay?"

"If I don't make it..."

"You will."

"If I don't, promise you won't let Mum be sad about me? Break it to her gently."

Susan bit her lip; she didn't know if their mother was even still alive. No one had found her or their father yet. "Very gently," she promised.

"Oh, I should have just gone ahead and married Lex twice," Jo exhaled. "It wouldn't have hurt anything. I thought it would cheapen the first time, in Narnia; I was angry he even asked again. I thought nothing could be worse than being called Mrs. Kirke or facing you mocking me for 'playing pretend games'. But it wouldn't have been so bad – it would have been nice, I think. I could have got used to being Mrs. Nicholas Kirke.

"I think I was a little afraid of growing up... At least in this world, where all the rules are different." One didn't have to play by the rules, as Susan did, to know they were there, like a loose tooth you could touch with your tongue and neither get out nor make steady again, and to be rankled by them. Jo was a born rule-breaker, perhaps, but she was never as consequence-free as her sister imagined her. "I hated how easy it seemed to be for you. You took to it like a fish to water. You forgot. The past was just a game to you. But I had to remember everything – every moment you pretended never happened – and it felt like such a burden sometimes."

"Jo, what I said..." Susan's voice cracked. "What I said two years ago – I didn't mean it. It was a horrible thing to say."

"Why did you?" Jo's eyes opened a little wider. "Say that, I mean. It's always bothered me."

"Oooh! Where are the rescuers with the tools to cut you out already?" Susan glanced over her shoulder. "What's bloody keeping them?"

"I don't know," said the nurse. "Just keep talking to her."

"Why did you say it?" Jo repeated, panting. She wasn't letting her off so easy.

"I don't know, Jo, it was a long time ago."

"You had a reason, though, didn't you?"

Susan swallowed hard. "It doesn't matter."

"It does to me – tell me."

"I felt like everybody loved you first and best – I was jealous because, no matter what rules you broke or how you failed to live up to their expectations, you were still the one everybody saw and fell in love with."

"Nick," said Jo solemnly.

"And Mum. And the others."

Her eyes darted back and forth. If she could have, she'd have shaken her head. "That isn't true, you know."

Susan shook her head, damp black curls swinging round her shoulders. "I'm not certain I did." I'm not sure I do. "People have children and sisters they don't want all the time – in most cases it's out of people's hands entirely. You were chosen. You were always chosen. You've always been so special. So blessed."

"Blessed?" whispered Jo, bloodless lips set to quivering. "Su, do you know how many people would kill to be as beautiful as you? D'you realise, except for Nicholas, every man we've ever met has looked at you first? And when we went to America, our parents knew it would be an opportunity for you? I might as well never have gone – all I did was be homesick and mess about." Her chest rose in a shaky breath – the pain must have been worsening – then sank back down. "I'm never going to be more than what I am right now. You could be anything."

If I'm so beautiful, Susan thought, if everyone looks at me first, why don't I feel loved? Why does it always seem like love passes through me like water and goes straight to you, Jo? If I could be anything, why do I usually feel like nothing?

But she did not make this argument verbally because right then she knew what she wanted to be – she wanted to be Josephine Pevensie's sister. All her other ambitious in life were evaporating. She wanted Jo to live. To survive this.

The nurse was right, agitation wouldn't get her through this.

She promised herself, if God would let her keep Jo, she'd never let herself be jealous of Jo again. She hoped everyone would love Jo more than they did her forever, if it meant she could go on loving Jo, too.

Heaven knew Jo would need a lot of love to get through the awful days that must surely follow if Susan got her dearest wish.

She'd be as good as a widow, with Nicholas gone. And without their other siblings, she would be lost. For, in truth, though she'd not yet been found, Susan was not entertaining any hope towards Lucy's having survived.

Susan would be lost, too, but she was the sort who always found herself strongest if she had a task – and if her task was helping Jo, her own pain would be lessened.

Oh, where were those wretched men with their cutting thingummies?

It felt like ages, but finally Jo was indeed cut out from the luggage rack and brought up out of the wreckage.

The nurse – in a quiet whisper into Susan's ear – warned her it didn't look promising; the rescuers had taken much too long, and Jo's wound, while relatively clean, was severe. Moreover, she was very, very weak.

But her low moan and half-opened eyes reassured.

Jo was so tough.

She'd make it through.

Susan recollected when they were kids and – though she'd told her not to – Jo had insisted on climbing that damn pine tree in the park. The way she'd landed when she fell, she should have broken her neck, but – because she was Jo Pevensie: Miracle Girl – she'd got out of the scrape with only six stitches.

This would be just like that was – it had to be.

In the open air, Jo opened her eyes wider still. There was a great deal of effort involved; she was horribly pale, her face drawn. She seemed to be looking for someone.

Susan planted herself beside Jo's stretcher, elbowing the nurse aside to do so. "I'm right here."

But Jo's eyes drifted – with clear anxiety – beyond her, waiting and hopeful. "I have to say goodbye," she choked out, lolling her head to the side. The blood on her brow – previously clotted – was trickling freely again. "I can't just go without saying goodbye. Let me say goodbye."

"Goodbye?" echoed Susan. "To me? Nonsense. Why, there isn't any need! I'm coming with you and–"

But she hadn't meant Susan.

Not having known Nicholas was dead, she'd been holding on not – as her sister thought – via some miracle, or because she believed she'd pull through if she could only fight a little longer, but because she wanted to say goodbye to Nicholas, who Susan had led her to suppose was waiting outside the wreck.

Both realised the truth at the same ugly moment.

And so – finding no familiar face on the chaotic smoky platform – Jo looked at Susan again; her glance was not one of anger from being lied to, having had the full story kept from her, but rather pitying.

"Nicholas died," she asked brokenly. "Didn't he?"