Once and Always the Story to Tell, a chronicles of narnia fanfic

Once and Always (the Story to Tell)
by Camilla Sandman

Disclaimer: Not my characters, just my words.

Author's Note: This is a sort of fixit for Susan's fate in The Last Battle, without trying to handwave it all. A bookverse/movieverse/AU threesome of sorts. Huge thanks to denorios for beta.

It is Peter who sees her first, and he seems to pause at the sight; his face still and his eyes never leaving her, hand still halfway through his hair in a motion he seems to forget to finish.

Edmund looks up a few seconds later, and his smile is genuine but hesitant, holding as she approaches.

It is Lucy, always brave even with affection, who doesn't hold back, coming at her in a run and almost crushing her in a hug.

"I always knew you'd come back," Lucy says, laughing delightedly, words spilling out of her. "I knew! Oh Susan, isn't Narnia even more beautiful here, in Aslan's country? The beavers are here, Mr. Tumnus, everyone's here and now you're here."

"I'm here," Susan says, closing her eyes. "Now I'm here."

Once a Queen of Narnia, forgotten a Queen of Narnia; Susan Pevensie's story to tell.

It takes her two days after they've fallen out of the wardrobe and back into their own world to dare look at herself.

She looks in the mirror and sees a stranger, a child; Susan Pevensie and not Queen Susan the Gentle. She can remember the child, but it feels distant, as if London was a dream and Narnia is her life.II

There isn't the age on her face she has surely lived, not the curves and flesh of the woman she still feels like. Only her eyes feel her own, so much older than the rest of her body.

Susan Pevensie, she thinks. Time to sleep again.

Lucy never stops talking, and Susan finds herself almost relieved. It postpones questions and explanations she's not sure how to give.

The others, she knows, thinks it started when Lucy and Edmund came back, filled with tales of adventures on the sea, and very carefully let it slip that King Caspian had found a bride.

She still remembers meeting Lucy's eyes and feeling Peter's at the back of her neck, and her own too casual words, dismissing it.

"It doesn't matter."

A lie. It did matter, another end to a long line of them. But it wasn't where it started, and looking at Edmund and Peter, she knows it still has to find an end.

It's hard to find friends when she feels nothing in common with all the girls who look her age and feel a decade younger. Their chatter feels a foreign language and she can't master the grammar. They talk about boys; she remembers men courting her. They giggle at skirts; she remembers gowns of silk. They whisper about teachers; she remembers learning Narnian dances with steps that always changed.II

Her mother doesn't understand, but seeing Edmund and Peter come home just as alone as her, she knows they do.

In the end, it feels easier not to even try, to make it a choice rather than a failure.

They are really all here. The horse that she so often rode, the mane as soft as she remembers; the beavers, as talkative as ever; Mr. Tumnus, awkwardly shaking her hand; her entire family, not just Lucy, Edmund and Peter.

When her mother sees her, there are tears; none of them Susan's. She can't seem to, not of joy or grief or anything, as if something in her is still waiting for release.

"You look beautiful," her mother tells her one morning, and Susan feels only dread at it.

She was beautiful in Narnia. She saw it in the admiring looks, the giving smiles, the slight hesitation in someone unfamiliar to her approaching. She saw it in herself and felt no shame in it, but also no particular pride.II

The problem with beauty, Susan realised, was that it is so often enough for strangers and thus so easy to think it enough for yourself. But she was also Susan, Queen to a country she learned to love, sister, 'the gentle' to those she walked amongst and true to herself above all.

She is growing beautiful in London, but she isn't sure what else.

Strangely, it is Edmund who takes her aside first; she's forgotten the strength in him that makes him unflinching. Peter might have been High King and often the leader, but Edmund was a rock behind him, already having weathered so much to make him strong.

She thinks she knows him a little bit better now, facing some of the same.

"It is hard to be forgiven, especially so when you've done something to need it," Edmund says quietly, and Susan thinks understanding is no less hard to accept.

They always talk about Narnia, they can't help it. Lucy breathlessly, Edmund persistently and Peter wistfully, herself with a bittersweetness that sometimes felt more bitter than sweet. Remembering, repeating, like a ritual of memories to keep them strong.II

Narnia. Aslan. Cair Paravel. Dancing, riding, swimming and the time Edmund tried to beat a goat at head-butting. Songs. Once, a King or Queen of Narnia, always a King or Queen of Narnia. A mantra.

But all the talk, and it is still London she wakes to. Remembering doesn't bring Narnia back; and at some point she stops talking and merely listen to her sister and brothers repeat themselves.

"You all held it against me a little bit," Edmund says, no anger in his voice. "You forgave me, but it couldn't be undone."

"Ed..."

"It's all right, Su. I knew I did something wrong from early on, but it's hard to let go of a choice, even when it's a bad one."

"Yes," she says quietly, closing her eyes. "It is."

She almost wishes they didn't get to return to Narnia at all.

She had just grown almost used to life in London, and now she must do it again. Had almost stopped thinking of herself as a Queen, now she has to forget being treated like one again. Had almost convinced herself she could live with never going back, now she has been told she can't ever again. Had almost stopped feeling like a woman, now she must deal with never seeing again a boy that caught her eye.

Return to Narnia, just to have it be last time for her and Peter.

"It's all right," Peter tells Lucy, but Susan thinks it isn't at all.

"Why did you do it?"

"I wanted to be the greatest," Edmund says, looking over at Peter with just a flicker of a smile. "You and Peter, you had your pretend-adult club, Lucy was the child. I was between. I wanted you all to bow to me. Purely selfishly, I wanted to be the greatest. Why did you do it?"

"I don't know," she says, and she knows Edmund knows it for a lie.

She sees Peter at the window one day, watching the silhouettes of buildings against the horizon as if he doesn't really see them. He's got a bruise on his cheek; she imagines if she touches it, he'll flinch away and scold her for mothering.

She merely moves to stand next to him, remembering all the times she did it in another time and place; King and Queen, fellow rulers of Narnia. How are they expected to give up that?

"I don't know, Su," he says simply, a reply to a question she hadn't really intended to ask.

When she does touch him, he doesn't flinch away.

Time has a strange feeling here, Susan is beginning to detect. It has the air of Narnia, and she suspect time passed here is not equal to time passed elsewhere. But it has another sense too, of calm and change at once, as if it is future and past braided into present.

"How long have you been here?" she asks, and Edmund shrugs.

"Forever and no time at all. It's the same thing here. How long for you?"

"A few years."

"Lucy never doubted you would find your way. Aslan wouldn't say. I trusted Lucy. Peter..." Edmund pauses, watching the last stretch of sunlight across the courtyard of Cair Paravel. "Peter thought you lost to us."

She comes home late one evening, in a pretty dress she's saved up for and wearing the best make-up she could find, feeling pretty and light and almost like a normal girl.
II

They're still awake, Peter, Edmund and Lucy, probably spent another evening talking of Narnia. They always seem to.

How the argument begins, she forgets, but she does remember telling Peter he isn't the King of her, never was and watching the hurt like heat in his cheeks.

They don't ask her where she's been; she doesn't tell them she's been dancing like she loved to in Narnia.

They never stopped loving her, she knows. Family is family, and they were hers. She never stopped loving them. Not when Edmund went to the White Witch, not when she felt jealousy Lucy and Edmund got one more stay in Narnia, not when she felt resentment they couldn't seem to understand why memories weren't enough for her, not when Peter declared she wasn't a Friend of Narnia anymore and she almost hated him a little.

They love her now, but she still feels lonely when Lucy hugs her again.

She comes home from America with a flurry of impressions and stories, bursting to tell Lucy, Edmund and Peter all about it. She knows they're a little angry she's the one who was chosen for the trip, but she intends to share it all until they feel like they were there with her.

It is Lucy and Edmund who share, and she is left silent.

Narnia, they tell. They went to Narnia and Caspain lives and Eustace was turned into a dragon and Caspian is to marry a star's daughter and they faced an island of nightmares and saw Aslan again and isn't it wonderful Susan?

Peter thinks it's wonderful, and shares their pain of being told they too are too old to return now. It's all right, Peter assures them. They're friends of Narnia, Kings and Queens of Narnia always.

Always is a long time when you have to grow up twice in a lifetime, Susan thinks.

IIShe briefly sees Caspian across a crowd, a beautiful woman at his side she knows must be his queen and wife.

Lucy takes her hand, Edmund puts a hand on the shoulder and Peter looks uncomfortable, but neither of them understand.

It doesn't hurt like that. He was never for her, and she not for him, and the loss of a what-might-have-been is not the worst she's had to endure.

IIIILucy doesn't seem to feel awkward around her, asking about London and Susan tells readily enough of non-personal things. New shops. New stamps. New government. New fashions. Always the new.

Edmund gathers them all for 'news' one night, and it isn't until he begins talking she realises it's Narnia news he means, not something that would affect their lives here.

Eustace has been to Narnia again, Edmund tells. With a girl named Jill. Caspian has died, but his son now reigns in Narnia.

"What does it matter?" she simply asks, and leaves.

Narnia might have been their past, but it's clearly not their future.

Edmund seems more relaxed as well, or perhaps he is merely acting it well enough, knowing what they don't need right now is more tension.

Peter is uncomfortable enough for two, for her and him and the last time they saw each other.IIII

Afterwards, she can't really remember the words.

Funny, that. She rather thought she would remember how she told her brothers and sister they were all clinging on to childhood fantasies, and how they told her she was no longer the sister they remembered.

She isn't meant to be, she wanted to explain. It's growing up, changes, natural, and they're the ones clinging on and she can't let herself drown.

All that comes out is anger, and she can't even remember what she says. Everything she can to hurt them, all she can think of that is precious and one thing beyond all.

Narnia.

She does remember Lucy's tears, Edmund's tense jawn and Peter's eyes, never leaving hers for all she yells at him.

"Someone wants to see you," Lucy whispers, nudging her shoulder slightly.

It is strange how much terror such a simple phrase can hold, Susan has long since learned.

She was expecting this when she was told she had a visitor. She was expecting a boy, maybe Gary that she danced with or Bill that she smiled at, or even James who wants a word about the plumming.

"I'm sorry for your loss," he goes, but Susan has stopped listening. Lucy, she thinks. Brave, bright Lucy. Edmund. Dependable, clever Edmund. Peter. Oh, Peter too.

She wasn't expecting Jonah the man from the railway, or the police officer whose name she forgot the moment he said what they'd come for.

They can't all be dead and left her for life.

Aslan waits for her when she walks up to him, larger and brighter than she remembers or perhaps he is merely more of everything here. She doesn't quite meet his gaze, but she doesn't look away either; acknowledging her fear without surrendering to it.

She kneels without thought, the memory of doing it so long ago still in her knees.

"Rise, Queen of Narnia," he rumbles, and she almost wishes he would roar. If she had to face his anger, maybe she could easier let go of her own. At her family, at herself, at him, at everything that is a knot inside her.

She lifts her head as she stands up, meeting his gaze unflinchingly this time.

"You did a very brave thing, Susan," he says, and she finally understands why she is here.

She goes to the cemetary once a month, every month for two years. She can't know, won't know for another few minutes, that this faithful habit will kill her.

Tuesdays, usually. She has an earlier shift at the hospital on Tuesday, but it is often still almost dark when she arrives.

There aren't many others around at that time, and she likes it like that. Doesn't want he looks of sympathy as people realise she lost so much of her family in one blow, doesn't want the questions about why all the headstones have 'always' on them.

She's not sure she could even find the words to explain when the answer is in her heart.

She is late this Tuesday, having stayed later at work . When she finally gets her nurse qualifications, she hopes she can arrange her hours better, but for now she doesn't mind too much. Three years ago she would have, but times change and she's had a lot of it the last two years.

If she had been an hour earlier, she wouldn't have seen the girl and the car, but she does. Does, and reacts, and hears the scream of breaks, the feeling of cloth against her hands as she shoves, the sensation of blood in her mouth as something hits her too hard , much, much too hard.

She distantly hear screams, and tries to focus when a small face leans over her. For a moment, it almost looks like Lucy, but eyes are the wrong colour and she knows she's just seeing what she wants to see.

"Gentle, love," a male voice says, distantly, and it might not even directed at her. It still makes her skin tingle, and her mind fill with familiar images.

"I haven't been called gentle in many years," she says, and is surprised when her voice doesn't even tremble. She's dying, she can feel, but somehow it doesn't seem too bad. It feels… Familiar. "Not since I was a Queen of Narnia."

"When were you Queen?" the girl asks, voice fascinated.

Everything hurts and Susan still can't help but smile.

"I always was," she says.

Five minutes later, she isn't there to hear them pronounce her dead.

It is Peter who waits for her when he returns, Peter who finally takes her hands in his own and leans his forehead against hers, as if branding her back to them.

"I'm going to tell you why," she whispers fiercly. "All of you. I want you to understand and I want us to bow to Edmund just once and I want us to trust Lucy more and I want, I want..."

She breathes and closes her eyes, trying to get too many words out at once and realising all that can wait. They'll have time to sort it. Here, finally, she will have time.

"I'm sorry," she says, and Peter's kiss is so light across her eyelids it feels almost insubstantial.

"Don't be," he says.

One day, she thinks, she won't be anymore.

FIN