Chapter Text
The sky is a cold blue, not a cloud in sight, and she stares out the window. Desperately she tries to blink the image of the coffins burned into her eyelids, six identical wooden boxes carrying the remnants of the entirety of her family’s remains. It’s no use, since she saw them, she hasn’t stopped thinking of them.
Eventually, the last person takes their leave with a dry press of lips to cheek and cold words that are meant to be reassuring and she’s left to stand outside her childhood home in the cold. Her breath curls out in front of her in white clouds of fog, the sight is jarring, ugly, she hurries inside.
Susan can’t stand the sight of the house. She shuts herself in the guest room and lays across the thin comforter on the hard mattress. Her old room would be more comfortable but she shared that with Lucy and, well.
Without meaning to, she falls asleep. She dreams of a bowstring under soft fingertips, of a sword arcing through the air, a crown nestled in soft blonde hair, a Lion mid-roar, boots unmoving from their place on the ground.
She wakes with a start, tumbles out of bed and shuffles her way to the kitchen with only the dying rays of the sun to guide her.
Sleep doesn’t come easy that night.
——
If Susan is perfectly honest with herself she did not forget naturally, instead she saw what laid ahead and turned on her heel and walked away, forced the memories from her mind.
She tore her memories to shreds and pieces and screamed until her voice was harsh and it's siren-lure was gone.
Susan preserves her heart with shaking hands and lipstick-stained teeth.
——
If Susan is perfectly honest with herself she hasn’t cried once since her family’s deaths.
She sees them everywhere she goes. She doesn’t cry. Lucy is in the painting hung on the wall. She doesn’t cry. Edmund is in the worn pair of children’s shoes still resting at the door, a remnant of her parents’ sentimentality. She doesn’t cry. Peter is the clear blue skies that follow his death for a solid week. She doesn’t cry.
Her heart aches, grows heavier with every step she takes, and still she perseveres.
——
Susan wakes one night with her breath caught in her throat. The room swims around her and she’s hyper aware of the air against her skin, oxygen gusting past her dry lips with every inhale and every exhale.
Her fingertips buzz with remnant pain and she grimaces as the motion of her laying down sends the room into an upheave of movement. Her head aches, pain curling around her forehead, whispering across the top of her head and trailing down her spine.
Susan groans as she turns onto her side. She lays there for a long moment, staring into the darkness of the room, willing herself to sleep. Eventually, she drifts into the welcoming embrace of unconsciousness.
Her dreams are not sweet, but bitter reminders of times gone by and blood on teeth and hands and dried into the corners of her smile.
——
Sometimes, Susan wishes she could throw herself off a bridge. She wishes she could go to her family. She wishes that she could see them, stay with them.
She doesn’t.
She doesn’t because the birds singing in the trees remind her of Lucy. She doesn’t because the children laughing and giggling in front of the deli remind her of Edmund. She doesn’t because she has Peter’s lips and Eustace’s nose and she doesn’t because tomorrow is supposed to be sunny and in May there’s a carnival coming to town.
Susan Pevensie wants to live, desperately, some days.
Susan can’t afford to wait any longer. Her heart beats unsteadily in her chest and her lipstick still stains her teeth, but Susan Pevensie will tear the world apart with her bare hands before it can make her stumble.
So, she applies to university. She meets a man and she breaks up with him a month later.
She finds that every time she went out with him she couldn’t wipe the lipstick from her teeth no matter how hard she tried.
She graduates and she gets her first job and this time when she meets a man he sticks around. They marry and they have children and Susan flourishes.
Her youngest is an echo of what used to be though, laughing like she’s crafted of the wild and sometimes Susan has to raise a hand to cover the old grief that settles across her like a veil. Her eldest smiles down at her siblings and helps them to their feet and Susan has to turn the photo of Peter on the mantle so she can’t see the long gone smile. Her only son is mischievous and is far too smart for a boy of his age and Susan never lets him buy Turkish Delight.
Additionally, her youngest dances like the child she is and Susan tells her of another girl that was far too old for her bones. Additionally, her eldest can’t fight if her life depended on it and Susan tells her of a boy with trembling hands and bloodstained fists and sword. Additionally, her only son knows nothing of politics and Susan tells him of a boy who just wanted to be enough, who learned how to rule a country when he was far too young.
Additionally, Susan tells her children about a gentle woman who could not follow her siblings to their graves. Susan tells them about a woman who stood firm on her feet. About a woman who grew far older than she ever had before, a woman who forgot and a woman who remembered and Susan smiles as she tells them.
Susan Pevensie dies an old woman, with grandchildren and great-grandchildren and stories of child-monarchs and dragon-boys and she runs into her older brother’s arms and when she smiles her teeth are covered in blood.
Susan Pevensie will not bend.