Note: So I have to admit that, as we're a few years down the road and I'm still having issues with Edmund's chapter, I still have no idea when this will get updated. My apologies. :(

Disclaimer: If I owned Narnia, I'd probably be just as amazed by myself as Susan is.

—viennacantabile

How It Happened

Chapter Two: Of Beauty, Belief, and Eyeliner

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...in which Susan monologues upon the wonder of herself.

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Ding-dong.

"Dr. Lewis's office, how may I help you?" said Alice Carroll automatically, before realizing that it was the bell above the office door that had sounded, and not the telephone. She blinked as a plain young girl with far too much makeup on flounced in.

"I'm here for an appointment with Dr. Lewis," said the girl, flashing a bucktoothed smile.

"Oh—er—yes," gaped Alice, fumbling through her files. She was never normally this flustered when confronted with a patient, but the girl was just so—extraordinarily plain. "What did you say your name was?"

"Susan—Susan Pevensie." Again the girl smiled lazily, slowly blinking sparse black lashes over dull blue eyes.

"P-Pevensie?" Alice asked, dropping the folder marked 'Ketterley, Andrew' as much from recognition as from the repeated sight of Susan's crooked teeth. "Not—Peter Pevensie's sister?"

"Why, yes," she said, tilting her head of dark hair. "He was here yesterday, wasn't he?"

Alice nodded in assent, too nervous to speak. She kept her light blue eyes trained on the girl. That Monday had been the strangest day of her life. She had never seen so much as a hair out of place on Dr. Lewis, yet Peter Pevensie had shaken the psychiatrist to bits. She didn't know what had happened, but whatever it was, Alice knew that it had to be strange.

As Alice searched for Susan's file, she noticed a strange, off-key buzzing noise that reminded her of the cry of a baby scorpion in distress. "S—Susan, do you hear that sound? It's so—" she trailed off, unable to continue.

"What?" Susan looked startled, then smiled. Alice cringed again. "Oh, you mean my singing. Humming, to be more precise, I wasn't really singing just yet. But it's lovely, isn't it?" She tossed her lank hair. "Mother says a talent agent will be approaching me any day now. Everyone at school pretends they don't like it, but I know that they're just jealous."

Alice forced a smile, then practically fainted with relief as she pulled out Susan's file. Glancing at the appointment notation, she frowned in consternation.

"Er—your appointment was at nine o'clock sharp, wasn't it?"

"Oh, was it?" Susan asked, sounding bored.

"It's eleven," Alice pointed out.

"Is it," Susan repeated. She sighed. "Well, I simply couldn't get up that early. It's the holidays, you know. What's the problem? I'm here now, aren't I?"

Alice shrugged, deciding to let the doctor deal with the impudent girl. "Well—Dr. Lewis happens to have had a cancellation, so you can go right in. Straight ahead, to your left."

"Ta, then,' Susan flapped a hand in dismissal as she headed in the indicated direction.

After sliding Susan's folder underneath the slot in the small window connecting the reception area and the office, Alice shook her head and decided to brew some tea. She could already tell that this was not going to be Dr. Lewis's day.

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Dr. Lewis scanned the file in front of him. Susan Margaret Pevensie, lately of Bristol, recently moved to Finchley, the second of four Pevensie children. However, the girl sitting in front of him looked nothing like the pretty young innocent in the filed photograph. The pictured girl did not enjoy an inch-wide layer of bright blue eye-shadow on her eyelids, nor did she have two bright red circles on her cheeks that reminded the doctor of the clowns he had seen in a circus when he was a child.

"Susan Pevensie?" he asked, just to be sure.

"Of course," she nodded. "Oh, you're wondering about the photo?"

"To put it bluntly, yes," he said dryly.

"Well," she sighed, "that photograph was taken a year ago, during the war. I can understand why you might be surprised. I mean, I was terribly plain in those years."

Dr. Lewis hastily turned his shout of surprise into a consumptive cough. Susan eyed him warily, then moved her chair back ever so slightly.

"And well—I've just become ever so much more beautiful since then," she finished with a posturing smile. At this, Dr. Lewis deliberately dropped his pencil and hurriedly bent down to retrieve it. He couldn't bear to see anything less than beautiful.

After steeling himself to whatever else he might see (though he certainly hadn't thought anything that nauseating had been possible), Dr. Lewis reemerged from beneath his desk with a pasted-on smile and took a quick look at Susan's file. Sure enough, Mrs. Pevensie had written In love with herself. Help!!! as Susan's ailment.

Dr. Lewis's inward grimace turned to a sigh of relief. He had dealt with plenty of these cases before and knew just how to begin.

"Susan," he murmured, "what do you think of other people?"

"Other people?" Susan repeated with a blank stare.

Dr. Lewis nodded. "Other people."

"Well—" Susan fidgeted. "To be honest, I don't think about them much."

The doctor nodded knowingly. So far, so good. "And why is that?" he prodded.

Susan tilted her head thoughtfully. "For one thing, I'm not entirely sure they exist yet."

Dr. Lewis's eyebrows shot up. "What about your family? Your brothers and sisters?"

"Oh, them?" she shrugged, a hint of a smile playing around her mouth. "They only exist to do my bidding."

He stared at her, dumbfounded, until he finally decided that she had to be joking. "That's splendid," he chuckled nervously. "We should all be so lucky."

The grin remained on Susan's face. "You think I'm kidding, but I'm really not," she said sweetly.

He groaned. One step forward, two steps back. He scribbled a superiority complex onto his notepad, then tried a different tactic. "Susan, have you heard of Helen of Troy? I imagine you must identify with her a great deal."

"Oh—" Susan rolled her eyes, leaning over to him conspiratorially, "you understand, when they say Helen of Troy, they're really talking about me, you know."

"I'm afraid I don't quite understand," Dr. Lewis said delicately, steepling his fingers. "Are you, in fact, telling me that you are...Helen of Troy's reincarnation?"

"No, not at all!" gasped Susan, blue eyes blinking very fast. "That's preposterous! Simply impossible! Do I look like a blonde to you?"

"Oh, no." Dr. Lewis shook his head. "Not at all."

"I'm much more beautiful than she ever was, I assure you," Susan smiled sweetly. "Blondes are overrated. Wouldn't you agree?"

Inflated sense of self. "Well, yes, you are a lovely young girl," nodded the doctor cautiously, deciding to play along. He wondered where this was going and how much trouble he would be in if the girl took that last comment to her mother out of context.

Susan's eyes flashed. "Beautiful, not lovely, Doctor," she corrected archly. "There is quite a difference, you understand."

"Ah...yes," said the doctor. "I see."

"And of course, that business with marrying her, and all. She had what, fifty suitors?" Susan asked skeptically. "Fifty is not such a big number. Shows what they must have thought of her, doesn't it? Me, on the other hand—I'm at number two hundred and forty-three. And still counting. Top that, Helen of Troy. It's Susan of Finchley's turn."

Dr. Lewis began to wonder whether maybe it was time to retire.

"Let's see...there was Robert Davenham—he was so very clever, and the most charming boy you could ever meet. And then, of course, there was William Matherly—he was simply magnificent, really. Absolutely rolling in money, and nearly as nice to look at as myself—which is saying a lot, you know. Really, Will meant a lot to me. It's just a pity that horrid Anna Pembridge turned his head before the proper hesitation period was over. It doesn't do to accept them too early, you know. It simply isn't Nice. And I'm sure she only won him over because she happens to look the merest, slightest, tiniest bit like me."

"Susan," Dr. Lewis said slowly, "I must ask—how old are you?"

"Only twelve," sighed Susan, "but I'm a mature twelve. If you know what I mean."

"Oh, I can see that," replied the doctor dryly. "Anyone else?"

Susan gave him a scandalized look. "You can't be serious," she said primly. "I haven't even reached silly old Edward Cherry, or Matthew Barr. One mustn't forget one's admirers, you know, just in case. Timothy O'Connor—I remember him especially for that frightful red hair—told me that. He said I'd come around one day, but of course, I shan't. I'd even rather have dear little Harry Wellington," she sighed woefully. "He was ever so sweet, but he was an entire two months younger than me. I simply couldn't ignore something like that, though he was so heartbroken afterwards."

"Seems a pity," murmured the doctor, adding a deeply discriminatory to his notes.

"But of all of them, I never will forget that Ralph Abingdon," said Susan plaintively. "He seemed rather dashing, at first, but then he started putting on ever so many airs, as if he were—a prince, or a lord of some silly kind. The mostridiculous thing I ever saw! And clumsy, clumsy, clumsy. He tried to pick me a rose, and ended up getting his the back of his shirt caught on the thorns. Edmund had to rescue him. Edmund—my little brother! It really wouldn't do."

"I see," said Dr. Lewis, clearing his throat. "Susan. As delightful as our interview has been, I feel I must now bring it to an end."

"Oh?" she said, raising her eyebrows.

"Yes," he nodded. "I believe I've come to a conclusion on what seems to be the trouble."

Susan tittered coquettishly. "Well, go ahead, then."

"The most alarming terrain of your psychological map lies in your erotomanic delusional disorder," he began. "Combined with the most developed case of narcissistic personality disorder I've ever seen, well, we've got a problem. You are also highly histrionic, conceited, and prone to episodes of unbelievable snobbery."

"Excuse me?" she asked, furrowing her brow. Then, realizing exactly what she had done, she clapped her hand to her forehead. "Oh my God—a mirror! Give me a mirror! I—I just wrinkled my forehead! By the Lion, what have I done??"

Dr. Lewis started violently, turning a delicate shade of green. "L—Lion, did you say?"

"Yes, yes, yes," cried Susan impatiently, frantically digging through her purse. "That blasted Lion my idiot brother Peter's always blathering about! Now, for the love of all that's holy, get me to a mirror!"

Still in shock, Dr. Lewis ushered her to a dimly-lit mirror inside the office's bathroom.

"Lion?" he repeated feebly.

"Peter's said it so often that I can't help saying it, either," she groused, peering worriedly at her reflection. "It's been showing up in my dreams, too, saying meaningless things about Beauty and Belief and and Eyeliner."

"Eyeliner?" echoed Dr. Lewis again.

"Well, that was just once, I think, when I'd had a bit too much to drink—oops, wasn't supposed to say that! this is confidential, right?—at a lovely party. The Lion spoke to me in my dreams about true Beauty and Believing whatclearly isn't there and how Eyeliner would lead me to my doom. Utter rubbish, of course."

Satisfied that she had not done irreparable damage, Susan turned once more to the doctor. "Now, what did all that gibberish mean?"

Regrouping, he sighed as they returned to his office and a subject he knew very well. "Erotomanic disorder means that you are convinced that persons of a higher class than yourself are deeply in love with you."

Susan nodded. "Of course."

Dr. Lewis took a deep breath. "Susan, dear, you simply must face the facts. You are not the center of the universe. No one is in love with you. You're simply Susan Margaret Pevensie, and you should remember that."

"What are you talking about?" she asked, her voice rising dangerously. "You're the delusional one, trying to analyzeme."

"Susan, calm down," said the doctor soothingly.

"I am perfectly calm! It's not my fault that I'm perfect. And of course they're in love with me!" she finished at the top of her lungs. With that, Susan flew at him, and would have caught him by the throat if Dr. Lewis had not already discreetly pressed the concealed button under his desk to alert Alice, who now stepped forward and injected a tranquilizer into Susan. The young girl gave a muffled shriek and abruptly slumped forward onto the desk.

He made another note. "Add Brief Psychotic and Intermittent Explosive Disorder to that, Alice."

"Done, sir."

"She'll have to be separated from her family, of course," thought Dr. Lewis aloud, "for their own sanity. I recommend a stay in Madam Plummer's Retreat in the countryside," he said to Alice. "She is especially adept at working with young girls. This is a case for her, I'm sure. And Susan can be comfortably housed and treated there until she comes to the understanding that she must live in the real world."

"Madam Plummer, real world," repeated Alice as she jotted it down underneath 'Recommended Treatment.' Anything else, sir?"

"Just—just a cup of tea, if you please," the doctor said, forcing a pained smile. "I'm feeling a little worn out. And call her mother, to arrange for transportation to the Retreat."

"Right away, sir," she nodded, and briskly trotted away.

Dr. Lewis sighed, massaging his temples. This family was beginning to wear upon his nerves.

"You're a very strange lot of children, you know," he reflected to Susan's prone form, still sprawled over his desk. "I can only hope the rest of you will be easier."

"Oh, I highly doubt it," came an amused rumble from behind him.

Dr. Lewis paled and spun around, looking around wildly for the Lion who had visited him yesterday.

"Who—who are you?" he squeaked.

"I am Myself," He said, with the barest hint of a chuckle in his deep voice.

"Oh, come off it," scoffed the doctor, forgetting himself for a minute. "I'm a psychiatrist. Like I haven't heard that one before."

The Lion roared. And Dr. Lewis dove under his desk.

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.end.