Something rather different for me. Thank you WingedFlight, cap_red, and Metonomia for the critique and support while I was trying to get this finished.

She doesn't think she's doing it right, but she doesn't know what else to do. Susan, post LB.

Joe scowls at a little boy hanging about the gates when they go into the club. "Blasted little pickpockets," he grumbles to her. "They're everywhere."

It's true that there are an awful lot of children on the streets lately, even with the war over. She doesn't blame them for not wanting to go to the various Children's Homes orphans are packed off to; she remembers what it was like to be sent away from home to strangers. And some of them probably do pick pockets; how else can they get money? But that one, she thinks, just looked hungry.

As the party winds down, she looks at the food on the buffet. It had been a lavish spread; everyone, it seems, is celebrating the end of rationing at long last, and there is far more food than even this many guests could eat. She has a word with Barbara about what will be done with the remains. Told they're to be binned, she makes a quiet request.

While Joe is lingering over a last cigar and a talk with one of the guests (he hopes to impress the wealthy businessman), she walks down to the street with a parcel in her hands. The boy is still there, hanging about wistfully, watching the well-dressed guests leaving. She presses the parcel on him. "Share it with your friends," she admonishes gently, certain that he must have them; children band together more readily than adults.

He blinks, and blinks again at the weight of the package. "Yes, miss," he says obediently. Before he can say more, Joe calls her name.

"What on earth were you doing, darling?" he asks in the car. "Talking to that filthy little urchin. I hope you checked your purse." He goes on in this vein for some time; she tunes him out. When he finally stops for breath, she says, "He was hungry."

* * *

She's kept the coat for years, at the back of her closet. It still smells like him, some indefinable combination of aftershave and soap and tobacco with something else that just means home and safe and love. She took it out to hug it quite often in the days after the crash, though less and less as time wore on. Lately she tends to finger it when another beau breaks up with her, reminding herself that there was once someone who always thought she was wonderful and beautiful and who loved her. Now she plucks it from its hanger, folding it neatly over her arm, and for good measure she pulls a scarf out of the bag at the back of the cupboard.

He's still there when she gets to the corner, the soldier huddled on the bench with a crutch across his lap and his hands in thin, patched gloves wrapped around a paper coffee cup that's probably long since gone cold. "Excuse me, sir?" she says politely, and when he turns to her she holds out the coat and scarf wordlessly.

"I can't -" he starts to say, but she shakes her head.

"Please. He'd like you to have them."

He gets up, bracing himself against the bench with one leg stuck stiffly to the side, and takes the coat from her hands, pulling it on over the jumper he's already wearing. It fits like it was meant for him, and she smiles when she hands him the scarf. He looks stunned, wrapping the knitted length around his neck by rote.

Because she can think of nothing else to say, and it is after all in three days, she says, "Merry Christmas, sir."

"Merry Christmas, lass," he echoes.

* * *

She's kept the small flat, although she's making more money these days, modeling for catalogs. She lives simply, fashionable clothing her grand indulgence. Otherwise she might as well be living on the tiny shopgirl's wages still. It's not, she explains at the orphanage when they ask if she's certain about that donation, as if she has any nieces or nephews to spoil, and she knows what it's like to be alone. It's one thing, she tells the astonished ladies collecting for the soup kitchen, for her to eat lightly -- after all, she's watching her figure -- and quite another to truly go hungry. And the thing about luxuries, she muses to the friend urging her to find a nicer flat, is that they're never as nice as you expect them to be, and what's the sense in wasting money on a disappointment?

She knows about disappointment.

Beaus are wonderful, but they never stay. Sometimes they end it and sometimes she does, and she cries for a bit and then finds another because she is a beautiful woman, and a beautiful woman should have a man. That's how the world is.

Parties are thrilling and perhaps even magical for a night, but they all have to end. And in the morning she gets up and goes to work and comes home to her solitary tea and goes to bed and does it again the next day. That's how the world is.

She keeps the flat.

Her neighbors adore her, though they do sometimes shake their heads over how sad it is that such a sweet girl should be alone. And she is a sweet girl: she turns the skipping rope for the two little girls in Number Three, so that they won't have to tie one end to a doorknob, and she teaches the boy in Number Six how to bat a proper cut. On Sundays she has tea with Mrs. Number Five, and listens patiently to the same stories about the son lost in the war and the husband lost in the one before that. When Mr. Number Two loses his job and starts coming home drunk, she drops by with a new knitting pattern for Mrs. Number Two the morning after the couple's third fight and stays for a long chat with them both. Two weeks later he's taken the pledge and has a new job.

* * *

As the bus barrels toward her, some part of her mind wonders if it's her family's curse to die in crashes. Some other part wonders if it will hurt, if her family suffered. The strike comes with a flash of something too wholly overwhelming to be called pain, and sound and sight drain away to nothingness.

* * *

Birdsong filters back in first, then a sound she cannot place at once although she is certain she should be able to. Breathing deep, she smells salt and that moment knows the sound for distant waves. But how has she come to the seashore? She sits up and gazes on a land of green, more shades than there are words, in the grass and the trees and the leaves. In the distance she can see where the land drops away to the ocean; the surf she hears is hidden but the far horizon meets blue to blue in a melting line.

She knows this place, but it cannot be real.

"And why not, daughter?"

Before she turns she knows what she will see. The golden presence works on every sense; she tastes it and feels it tingle over her skin.

"Aslan." All at once the memories come rushing, every cold word and bitter laugh she had given her siblings, every time she had tossed her head and waved off their 'silly stories.' She cannot meet the Lion's eyes, and stares instead at the grass brushing against her knees. The cloth draping them is light and soft, Narnian as she had worn of old.

"Susan." He pads closer to her; she can just see his paw at the edge of her vision. "Why do you look away?"

Surely he already knows, she thinks. Why does she have to say it? "Because I am ashamed."

She hears a soft rumble in his throat, and he says, "You have done my work."

That brings her eyes up, sheer surprise driving her to meet the Lion's gaze. "I? But, Aslan, I have done nothing," she protests. The words catch in her throat, but she makes herself go on. "Once... once I knew how to feed a country in famine, or house people after floods, how to welcome home an army and comfort its survivors, but that was a long time ago. I haven't done anything... Not since Narnia."

"Daughter, when were such things asked of you?" His voice is very gentle, but still she ducks her head under the scolding. "My work is not done solely in great deeds, for I love the mouse as I love the elephant. When you were in Narnia you cared for the kingdom, for that charge was given you as queen. But when you were in your own world, your care was in smaller things, for your charge was in each person." He leans in close to her, until she can feel the warmth of his breath when he speaks again, softly. "You have not failed of that charge."

She closes her stinging eyes, breath catching in her chest, and says nothing. He lets her sit quietly for a time, comforting her with his presence, until she steadies. Then he rises. "Come," he urges, nudging her to her feet. "There are many who are waiting for you."

And Susan, her fingers tangled in the Lion's mane, steps forward into the land of her heart.

For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him. Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath's sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him. - The Last Battle, C.S. Lewis

Then the righteous will answer him, saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?' And the King will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.' -- Matthew 25:37-40