Disclaimer: I'm not C.S. Lewis. Unfortunately.

Note: here is the obligatory Susan!fic. Because everyone's got to do one sometime. Enjoy!

--viennacantabile

For Once and Always

one - once

.

At the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears,
Hangs a Thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three years:
Poor Susan has pass'd by the spot, and has heard
In the silence of morning the song of the bird.

'Tis a note of enchantment: what ails her? She sees
A mountain ascending, a vision of trees;
Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide,
And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside.

Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale
Down which she so often has tripp'd with her pail;
And a single small cottage, a nest like a dove's,
The one only dwelling on earth that she loves.

She looks, and her heart is in heaven: but they fade,
The mist and the river, the hill and the shade;
The stream will not flow, and the hill will not rise,
And the colours have all pass'd away from her eyes!

—William Wordsworth, "The Reverie of Poor Susan"

.

Susan is not a dreamer anymore.

After all, Narnia is better than any dream. Narnia is real.

Susan remembers the princes, the moonlit rides, the lovely people, and wonders when she will see them again. She misses them—of course she misses them. She hasn't forgotten that long and lovely other life she'd led as its Queen. How can she? She was beautiful, then.

The boys at school say she's beautiful now, but she doesn't believe them. She tries and tries to find the magic combination of makeup and stockings and clothes to transform herself into Queen Susan of Narnia, but she is always left plain old Susan Pevensie, staring in the mirror, scrubbing it all off with her tears.

But it's all right, really. She'll be back, someday.

She knows it.

So maybe she'll put away the glamour for now.

.

Another year, another visit, and Susan returns to her makeup.

Peter, Edmund, and Lucy think she looked better before, without all the fuss and bother. Secretly, Susan agrees. But the paint and fashion hide the part of her that wishes for talking animals and royal balls and a great golden lion—the part that is much, much safer to keep to herself.

Lion.

The word still hurts. The wounds are still raw. It was a lion who forbade the High King and his sister from returning to Narnia, for no other reason that Susan could see other than that they were getting old.

Old. At thirteen.

Susan doesn't want to be old.

.

Sometimes Susan wishes she could forget. She thought she had, once, when Mother and Father took her to the sights and sounds of America. She'd loved the fast cars and dashing young Yanks and the freeness of it all. But on her return, Lucy and Edmund greet her with stories of an older Caspian ("He's just about your age now, Su!"), and the fantastic islands of the Eastern Sea, and always, always Aslan—

Why them? she screams into her pillow at night. Why not me? I've been good, I promise. It's not fair, and you know it!

It is then that Susan begins to resent her siblings.

.

And then Eustace—Eustace Scrubb, of all people!—goes on a quest to save a prince. Must be getting careless, she thinks, to let him in again. Eustace Scrubb, honestly. The little beast. Is her family to be second to him?

Worst of all is the news he brings. Caspian—the bright, adventurous boy—an old man, dead and gone?

Bad enough, that her whole life in Cair Paravel is lost to the history books. Bad enough that she can never return. But now—another friend outlived, another friend gone. And still, she is left behind.

.

It would be better, she thinks, if she had never known him.

It is so much easier to pretend that it never happened.

It is so much easier to pretend that she was never a Queen in Narnia.

It is so much easier to pretend it was all just a dream.

Because Susan is not a dreamer any more.

.

Soon, it's not pretending anymore. Soon, it's believing.

And Susan, Queen of Narnia, forgets.

Of course, the Pevensies won't let her go without a fight.

"Susan?"

"Hello, Lucy," says Susan as she languidly runs a brush through her waist-length black hair. Try as she might, it will not grow longer, despite a childhood fancy for hair down to her feet. "Did you need something?"

There is a sound of shifting feet. "I—I wanted to ask you if you'd like to come along with us. To see the Professor."

Though Susan's expression in the mirror does not change, her mind is whirling. The Professor, who used to own the old house where the Pevensies stayed during the Blitz—which means the wardrobe. Which probably means—

"Susan—" Lucy says, hope palpable in her voice—"Peter and Edmund and Eustace and Jill and I want to talk to the Professor and Aunt Polly. To—to have a good jaw about the old days. About—" Lucy hesitates, then finally decides to take the plunge—"about Narnia."

Susan pauses mid-stroke. "Not that silly little game again, Lucy?" she asks incredulously. "I thought we were past this. Really, you're getting rather old for this, aren't you?"

"It isn't a game, Susan, and you know it," Lucy says earnestly, blue eyes entreating her sister to believe. "The White Witch, a game? Caspian? And—" Again, Lucy hesitates, unsure as to just how far she can push her sister tonight. "Aslan. Was Aslan just a game to you, Susan?"

Susan sets the hairbrush down with a clatter and stands, nails digging into the polished wood of her dressing table. She is ruining it, she knows, but she is too angry to care, because that name sets her teeth on edge. "I'm getting tired of this, Lucy," she warns, barely able to keep her composure. "You're not a child anymore. The Professor's always been a bit..." Susan struggled to find the word—"eccentric. That's probably how all of us started with that ridiculous play in the first place. But Peter and Edmund shouldn't be encouraging you! That horrid Eustace, too, I don't know how you can bear him."

Lucy's quiet voice cuts through the clamor in her head. "If you believe all of those things, then Eustace is a truer Narnian than you ever were."

She doesn't know why, but this stings more than any cut or scrape ever could. Enraged, Susan is unable to control herself any longer. "And Edmund?" she hisses spitefully. "What of Edmund? The traitor?"

There is a choking noise from the door. Susan turns. Though Edmund stands there, it is Peter who cannot believe what he hears tonight.

"You—you are not my sister," he says, voice shaking with horror and rage and more pain than Susan can stomach. "You—are—not—Susan—Pevensie."

Susan faces him defiantly, pushing aside the little feeling of guilt that flowers in the pit of her stomach when she sees the look in his clouded blue eyes. "Oh, hello, Peter," she says nastily, "come to try to convince me to come along and play, too?"

Peter stares at her for a long moment, "Once a Queen in Narnia, always a Queen in Narnia," he quotes. He shakes his head. "You bore it well, once." Silently, the High King turns on his heel and quits the room.

"You can't fix everything, Peter!" she calls after him mockingly, though more to herself than to her brother. "Least of all, poor, unbelieving Susan."

She turns back to her remaining siblings with a toss of her lustrous hair. "Really, I don't know what all the fuss is about," she sniffs. "I didn't say anything that wasn't true. Did I, Edmund?" she asks pointedly.

Edmund advances on her. "My judge is Aslan and no other," he says calmly. "If He names me innocent, then I must believe that it is so."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Susan scoffs, piqued by the mention of that name again.

"Then why do you call Edmund a traitor, Susan?" Lucy comes to stand by her brother, who smiles gratefully. "Why do your accusations come from what you call a game?"

"It is a game," Susan declares vehemently, backed into a corner and unable to find another explanation.

Edmund gravely shakes his head. "I made peace with myself and my sins long ago," he says quietly. "But it seems you have yet to do that." He gazes at her for a moment, his gray eyes blank. "Once a Queen in Narnia, always a Queen in Narnia, Susan," he repeats. "You have made yourself forget the pain you felt when you and Peter were not allowed to return. And in doing so, you have forgotten Narnia herself."

His sister does not speak.

"Only Aslan can heal you, Susan. Only He can forgive you. And He will forgive you." Edmund turns, makes for the door. "He forgave me, after all," he adds softly, without turning, then vanishes out of sight.

Susan can't face the wounded expression in Lucy's eyes, so like Peter's. "Leave me alone," she murmurs. She is suddenly so very tired. "Leave me alone, like the rest of them."

"Susan, Susan," Lucy pleads, "if you would just listen—"

"Listen to what, Lucy? Susan demands, suddenly furious once more. "The same lies, over and over again? No, thank you!"

"But you must remember Aslan—"

"You don't know what it's like!" she shrieks. The name is so hateful to her ears. "Every one of you believes so foolishly in your talking animals and countries in cupboards and"—it is hard to even say the word—"lion! You don't know what it's like, Lucy! I never had any faith like all of you! None of it ever seemed very real to me. And just when I started to believe, to know that it was real, I was told I wasn't to go there anymore. And I just—" Susan stands there, fists clenched, tears leaking out of eyes squeezed shut. She doesn't know when she'd started crying. "I am just so sick of things that aren't real, Lucy, do you understand that? Narnia isn't real, and no matter how much I hope and pray, it never will be!"

Susan doesn't have to see Lucy's crumpled face or the tears that are beginning to fall to know how badly she has hurt her sister. They used to be close, she and her sister. But things are different now.

Her voice grows soft. "Isn't it easier if you just pretend it was all a dream, if it all never happened? What's the use of Narnia if it's not there every time you look, Lu?" She sinks into a whisper. "What's the use?"

Lucy only looks at her. Lovely, pure-hearted, forgiving Lucy. Though Susan is considered the beauty of the family, at times like this, she feels inadequate standing next to her younger sister. Tainted, soiled, impure Susan...

When Lucy finally speaks, it is barely above a whisper.

"Once a Queen in Narnia, always a Queen in Narnia, Susan. And it will be there—if you believe."

And Lucy is gone.

Alone now, Susan sinks onto her bed, trembling. She has let herself speak of things that have not crossed her lips in years. Can't Lucy see that she cannot, will not, allow herself to believe? She isn't strong enough for this.

But Lucy just doesn't understand. How can she? Lucy, for all that she is considered by most to be an adult, is still a child. An impractical, starry-eyed dreamer who believes in talking animals and chases shooting stars and rainbows. Belief is something instinctual to her, a trust that comes as naturally to her as breathing.

But Susan knows better. Susan knows about the rush of giddiness to her senses when a stranger brushes her waist just-so, or offers her the world, with the moon in his eyes. And even if his hands start to wander a bit after a few drinks, she doesn't care. Because that is something real, something she can touch and see and taste. And that is all she ever wants anymore. Not a beautiful illusion that will touch her head and heart and leave her always aching and wanting more.

If that is all reality is, Susan decides, she will take it. As long as she can keep it.

Because Susan doesn't believe in dreams anymore.