Disclaimer: C.S. Lewis owns Narnia, Susan, etc. But I do own Susan's gentleman friend. *laughs ironically*

Rated: T, just to be safe.

Parallel

There were some things he knew he would never understand about Susan.

He couldn't fathom why – after she said she loved him and wanted to be with him – she said no when he asked her to marry him. And then cried into his shoulder for an hour afterward, begging him not to leave, to ask her again some day. He was confused, but he loved her. So he stayed and held her.

He suspected it had something to do with her family. He'd never met them, and she had once told him that she had lost them in a British Railways accident a few years before. An accident where everyone she knew and loved were together, while she was somewhere else. That in itself was a mystery, and raised a whole other set of questions, more things that he couldn't understand.

He couldn't understand why, although she sometimes spoke of the four friends who had died that day, and more haltingly but less frequently mentioned the parents who had been taken from her, Susan only once mentioned her brothers and sister. And even then she merely said, in a voice strange with pain, "I had an older brother, Peter. And a younger brother, Edmund. And a little sister, Lucy." She never spoke of them again.

He supposed that was why she was so odd. Any woman who had lost her entire world like that was bound to be a little different. It didn't bother him. He loved her. It wasn't an issue… except… except for all the little things he couldn't understand.

He couldn't understand why Susan had seemed so eager and determined to meet his dad, but then mumbled something about not rushing things – not this year, Dear… let's wait a while – when he mentioned that Father lived to the east, across the ocean.

He never could fathom why she objected when he mentioned cutting his hair or beard. Susan, fashionable woman though she was, liked it far too long for his tastes. Really, it was almost a mane! And he wasn't sure he understood why, when he looked into the mirror and scowled that - with his blond hair and beard, lightly tanned skin, and intense hazel eyes - he looked as if he was all one color… well, he just couldn't understand why Susan smiled at him with half-closed eyes, and murmured that in the spring sunlight he glowed golden.

But most of all, he knew he would never truly understand why, sometimes, when Susan let her tongue slip slowly over the syllables of his name, "Alan," she said it as if it wasn't his, as if making believe that the something missing in between the sounds, "A – lan," belonged to someone – or something – else.

***

Author's Notes

I know, this is kinda odd, right? This particular plot bunny tackled me at lunch today and dared me not to change a word of what I wrote. But it just seemed like the kind of thing Susan might find herself doing, so…

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