Fic: In Pieces

[gmtaslash]

Title: In Pieces
Author: gmtaslash
Fandom: Narnia: Part One is set during the Golden Age and post-The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; Part Two is set during and immediately post-Prince Caspian; and Part Three is set immediately post-The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Rating: M
Summary: In the end, it was her choice to walk away.
Notes: This fic took eight months to write. It was originally three interconnected drabbles by Trojie. Then Bridget happened to it and, as usual, made it better. Big thank yous to a huge posse of beta-readers - ineptshieldmaid, warrior_joe and tawaki, each of whom had a profound effect on the finished product.
A side-fic to the 'Poignant Pevensie Porn' series.



Part One


It's Ed's seventeenth birthday, and Susan has a special present for him. A chess-set; the board made of stone, inlaid with cunning designs in the border, and the pieces of gold, set with gemstones. It's heavy, but then it will hardly be moved frequently; she and Edmund always play their nightly game in a corner of their private salon in the castle, while Peter reads and Lucy practices her flute.

His face lights up when he sees her gift. That, for Susan, is all the thanks she requires. Her little brother is too serious, too careworn, at the age of seventeen, than she feels entirely comfortable with. A smile is altogether too rare, and all the more precious for its rarity. He picks up a knight, stroking it gently, admiring the care the goldsmith took in crafting it. It has always been his favourite piece with which to lead. At least until he realised that she'd noticed. But it still suits him; it moves sideways, never advances the way you think it ought. It isn't direct, like the rook (Peter, on the few occasions he plays chess, always begins an attack with his rooks), neither does it sidle, crabwise and sneaky, like the bishop.

Susan herself likes to lead with the queen. It is an indulgence, she knows. But, self-reference aside, the queen is a powerful piece, and she likes its versatility. Lucy, though she doesn't play chess even as often as Peter, professing boredom, prefers to use only her pawns, claiming that they ought to be given a chance, and is usually defeated before even remembering to castle her king.

Both Peter and Lucy come over to admire the board, and to give Edmund their own gifts; a shield, blazoned brightly with the Stone Table - a fitting sigil for the king named for justice - in silver on good Narnian green, and a lap-harp, which is Peter's idea of a joke. At a banquet not long ago, Edmund had professed an interest in learning an instrument, but then sighed that he hadn't the time to do the harp the justice it deserved, looking with a tiny bit of longing at the floor-standing harp being played by a Faun in the corner.

'This one has less strings,' says Peter, grinning. 'Less to learn, right?'

Susan has to cover a smile. For all his joking, Peter has also done their brother a service; now that he has the harp he will make the time to learn it, and to practice. It will keep him from spending too long in his study, poring over papers. By tacit agreement, this birthday they have given him nothing even approaching a book, or anything else that represents anything less than enjoyment and leisure. Lucy's gift is a tilting shield, and she obviously hopes to encourage him out onto the lists more often; he is the only knight of the court who will joust with her. The others refuse to even level a weapon at a Queen, valiant or not, and she yearns for a target more satisfying than a quintain.

After supper, they retreat to their private parlour, and each in turn challenges Ed to a game of chess, even Lu.

Susan plays last; they all know that when Edmund and Susan lock horns in battle on that chequered field, it could go for hours. When, eventually, he wins, taking her queen with his ruby-eyed knight, checkmating her king, she smiles at him.

He smiles back, one hand still holding the chess piece, and she treasures the smile, and the moment.

***

Susan often thinks of that night when they are back in England. It seemed as though she and her siblings were closest that night, and ever since they came home, things have been strained. She and Ed still play their nightly chess game, usually watched approvingly by Father. Their ability has grown in leaps and bounds, he says, watching them and smiling as they play, their eyes fixed unwaveringly on the chipped wooden board and the well-worn pieces.

Edmund still leads with his knight, but Susan is trying something new. She wants to take him by surprise, and instead of reaching for a knight as soon as she has an opening, she advances with her king's pawn. He looks at her.

'Giving up already?' he asks, raising an eyebrow.

'Why do you say that?' she says blandly.

'You're playing a Lucy gambit.'

'If I were playing a Lucy gambit,' she says, smiling her best 'mysterious' smile, 'would I have just taken your queen?' Her rook sweeps in - he's been distracted by her machinations, and didn't see it.

'Assuredly not,' says Edmund, and the game is on again, banter forgotten.

It's the strategy of the game she enjoys, really. It's a poor substitute for days spent untangling court intrigues, negotiating contracts and all the things she used to do, but it's something that isn't interminable rounds of housework or schoolwork, and gossip, which is the life that she's apparently supposed to aspire to. Susan cannot even begin to articulate how tiresome she finds her schoolfriends these days, how little she cares for the futures they aspire to, and all the little rules that English society seems determined to burden her with. Her reputation, in Narnia, wasn't her treasure. It was her game-piece, often, and sometimes her weapon. It was something with a use.

The first time, in Narnia, Peter had railed at her for besmirching her honour, and she'd smiled calmly at him, quirking an eyebrow, and said that she was still as much a virgin as he was. He coloured violently and left, after that. Lucy shrugged at her remaining brother and sister.

'If I don't go after him, he'll no doubt wander off and hack bits of furniture to death for daring to stand in his way,' she said with a tiny smile. 'You know how he gets.'

When they were alone, Edmund inspected his fingers for a moment and then, without looking up, said, 'Galma agreed to exclusive trade in wool this morning.'

'I thought they might,' said Susan.

They don't need to say much more. He knew what she'd done, how she'd played her game. He's done it himself, though not the same way - few of the eligible ladies of foreign trade parties are both interested in the bookish younger brother of the High King, and in a position to be politically vital. A few pursued an alliance with him, but they tended to get distracted by Peter once they visited. Edmund and Susan both knew a few reasons why Peter had no retort in response to Susan's jibe. Edmund's way of playing is higher-risk, bigger stakes ... but some noblemen do not react the ideal way to a flash of feminine ankle. They have other weaknesses. Weaknesses Edmund is willing to play on, and play with.


'You shouldn't have let Peter find out,' Edmund added after a few more minutes' comfortable silence. 'He hates knowing that this kind of thing lurks behind his shining golden throne. It upsets him.'

Susan snorted in an unladylike manner. 'He needs to learn that there are times when honour isn't applicable. Not if Narnia needs us to be ruthless.'

'Do you think so?' He looked at her quizzically.

Susan looked at him. 'That doesn't sound like you, Ed.'

Edmund rubbed his chin pensively. 'I'm not so sure,' he said finally. 'Lucy would say that if we don't have honour, then Narnia is lost.'

'But if we did things Peter's way, he'd have challenged every leader for hundreds of miles around to single combat over the silliest things. The people can't eat foreign soldiers' helmets.'

He didn't really have an answer for that. 'Honourably, of course,' he said instead, 'you ought to have married that Galmian baron to secure the trade agreement, instead of-'

'What makes you think I went after the baron?'

'You didn't?'

Susan smiled again, secretively.

'Then who?' Edmund pressed. Knowing whom she'd manipulated would be important for further negotiations. No doubt he was mentally running through all the options amongst the noblemen of the Galmian party. His expression was so worried that she burst out into a fit of giggles. 'Su?'

She picked up her fan, beginning to flutter it around her neckline. 'The Baron's nephew,' she choked out. 'He was so shy,' she elaborated when Edmund raised an eyebrow in mildly stunned inquiry. 'And so obvious, despite it. It wasn't hard, Ed, to ... well, let's say I was shocked at his conduct, and his uncle was most anxious to appease me, and ... I am glad I spent that time picking up Galmian court manners and fan signals, you remember, last time we had the ambassadors to stay... How was I to know that my innocently keeping a breeze flowing about my face was leading him on?'

She assumed a face of innocence and shock, and Edmund grinned.


Yes, maybe they had treated politics like a game, but then, they've always taken games seriously. Either that, or they never took politics seriously enough. She puts aside that interpretation as soon as it pops into her head. She took it seriously. Ed took it seriously. But they knew how much to gamble in order to win. And winning is everything.

No matter what one has to lose first.

She finds herself remembering another conversation with her brother, an even earlier one. She'd woken one morning and gone to her study, to find a neatly-written report in code on her desk. The Terebinthian delegation she'd been having trouble negotiating with had suddenly capitulated. The seal at the bottom was of the Lion and the Table - Edmund's seal. After some searching, Susan found him up in the highest tower of Cair Paravel, staring moodily westwards. He refused to look at her, refused to even acknowledge her arrival.

'Ed,' she'd said, carefully. He said nothing. She deliberately didn't see the redness around his eyes, the wrinkles in his clothes, the tangles in his hair.

It was his eighteenth birthday, she remembers. They'd had a feast organised for that evening, the Fauns and Dwarfs had a musical recital planned. Ed was going to play his harp for them all. He'd become quite a skilled performer.

'The chambermaids told me you weren't in your room this morning,' she went on. 'Your valet told me where to find you.'

'I trust the paperwork I left on your desk was to your satisfaction?' he asked coolly, still not looking at her.

'It was a surprise,' she said. 'I thought that the Terebinthian delegation was my concern.'

'The ambassador didn't appear to be swayed by your overtures.'

There was a pause. Susan had known very well that the Terebinthian wasn't swayed, as Edmund put it. This kind of thing happened only infrequently. If they didn't listen to reason they were normally persuaded by flirtation. But not that one. That one had other aspirations within the Narnian royal house, and she'd thought she'd managed to keep them from her brother.

She really shouldn't have been surprised that Ed'd found out that the nobleman's levers lay not in the hands of women. Edmund always found out these sorts of things. She'd wondered if he made the right choice, to act as he had. It was needful, but ... she never was able to ignore her brother's hurts.

'Su,' Edmund said, after a few minutes. His voice was low, hoarse. As if he'd spent it all the night before. 'How far?' he asked raggedly. 'How ... how far?'

Susan could always lie to Peter. Could lie, would lie, did lie to Peter. And could lie to Lucy, much good though it ever did her. She had never even tried to lie to Edmund.

'Far,' she said, thinking back over the past few years. 'Never too far, though.'

'Too far for whom?'

Peter would say that any distance at all was too far, she thought wryly, before answering 'Too far for me.'

He licked his lips, finally looked at her. It was patently obvious that he hadn't slept, that he came up here as soon as he could. After writing a report for me, she realised.

'Nobody expects a gently-reared woman to promise more than a kiss,' he said. There was almost accusation in his voice. 'A touch, or, or an ounce of flirtation. Further than that?'

'Some things are worth more than that,' Susan replied, thinking of treaties and territory and duels and lives.

'They expect more from men,' he said. 'Either they think they can demand higher prices from us, or that we do not value our selves as highly as women do.'

'Edmund,' she said, faltering, seeing him thin as a lath against the greying evening sky, holding himself so tightly in check that she feared he would break. 'I would have given all to spare you-'

'I know,' he said. 'I know how far you've travelled to spare Peter the sword's edge, to spare Lucy expedient marriages. I wanted to spare you, this once.' He was distant, staring out towards a remote ripple in the horizon that marked the site of two hills and a ruined castle. 'I knew what he wanted, Su. It was ... something I could give him. Something I couldn't let him have from you. I got him to agree. He signed the treaty, everything. But ...' Edmund shivered. Suddenly he wheeled, stared at her with frightened eyes. 'Don't tell Peter,' he rasped. 'Don't tell him.'

'I wouldn't tell anyone-'

'He'll think me unmanned.'

'He wouldn't-'

'He would say that there is a proper way to defend your kingdom, and that I had not taken it.'

'Peter is an idiot,' said Susan with feeling. 'He thinks that single combat to the death is the only way to solve problems.'

Edmund laughed bitterly. 'In a way, perhaps it was a duel. I almost feel Peter could have approved. A last resort, for when diplomacy fails. We all put our bodies on the line for our kingdom in one way or another, I suppose.' His mouth twisted wryly.

'Ed-'


When he turned to her again, there was a shadow of the old mischief in his eyes - there was a smudge of triumph there with the shadows. 'I suppose, if we are going to gamble with lives, we should get used to the stakes.'

At his birthday feast, that evening, he played for the court, eyes fixed on the table where his siblings sat, and where Peter clapped his hand on the shoulder of the Terebinthian ambassador, their new ally.


Susan shivers, then shakes herself. She hasn't thought of that in a long time. He never spoke of it again, and neither did she. It became another unspoken normality in their lives, like the ever-increasing amount of time Peter had to spend with the healers after his campaigns, like the fact that they all knew Lucy was sneaking onto battlefields, past her guards, past the front lines, and trying to rescue the wounded.

Things they didn't want to talk about. Things that would hurt too much to bring up. Secrets piling up. And every night they would sit together in their private room, and play chess, and nothing would be said but she'd know, in the way he looked at her as he manoeuvred his knight around the board, even sometimes in the pieces he attacked first, who it had been. And the reports on her desk, in their private code, would tell her why and what. And as for her machinations - she suspected he knew the same way she did, but knew that he corroborated it with information from his various palace whisperers. They were planted to keep track of visitors, but if they passed on what they knew about his siblings, who could blame him for listening? Susan didn't. He shared what he knew, when it was relevant.

And now that they play chess in England, with their father looking on, she can still read him. She knows, for instance, that he argued with Peter earlier, by the way he takes out both rooks quickly, angrily. She knows by how dark his eyes are that he hasn't been sleeping, and because they've played every night since they got back from school, she knows that it is something to do with school. She knows. It has always been this way.

He looks at her as well, though. She wonders what he sees. She leaves her queen where it is, shepherding rooks and bishops and knights through the hoops and gambits and traps he leaves for her, but her mind is elsewhere. Tonight, Edmund defeats her. She's been distracted, and he's just as fast as she is to exploit a weakness. Coupled with her unorthodox tactics, distraction has been her undoing.

'You'd have won, had you used your queen,' he says.

'I don't want to get too reliant,' she says. 'It's only one piece. I ought to be able to win without it.'

Part Two

When they return, Narnia is so changed she could cry. Cair Paravel is in ruins. It all feels like some punishment - they abandoned Narnia, and so they have to come back to see the destruction of all they loved and worked for. It feels like some cruel jibe that the clue that shows them what they'd almost refused to see is a piece of that chess set she gave Edmund so many years ago.

When she looses her arrow, hears the 'thunk' as the apple hits the ground, and knows that Trumpkin has been bested again, it's all with the weight of a golden chess piece in her school uniform pocket. It's heavier than she remembered. It's brighter than she remembered, too, the way the light seems to dance off everything. The air is heavy with stronger smells. Everything is more. It's almost overwhelming. And this is Narnia overrun by enemies. A Narnia without Aslan, and still it overpowers her.

If she sees Aslan now, her heart will burst with hope and with guilt. So she lies, fingers curled around the chess piece in her pocket, as if, like crossing her fingers behind her back, it can absolve her of that sin. She doesn't want this ruin to be her fault. Her mind wails that she didn't plan for this. How could she plan for this?

When they have to travel the Rush twice, when she denies having seen Aslan, when they finally ascend that hill and see the How and the Narnian army in front of them, when she lays her hands on the Stone Table again after all this time, she realises that it's not just the chess piece weighing her down.

'Battles are ugly when women fight.' Someone said that, long ago, so long ago that the edges of the memory are faded and torn in her mind. She knows why, now. She never really fought in pitched battle, after the death of Winter; she left that to the boys, and to Lucy. Stayed at home, or went abroad on political trips. She had other duties.

And she had seen Lucy when she returned from sieges, and she held her when her façade crumbled and she had to cry, voice trembling, the names of all those she helped and failed to help and couldn't even try to help tumbling from her lips, the numbers, the blood, the cries. Susan helped her sister through those times, but she never joined her there. Battles are ugly when women fight, and Susan is, or was, a woman. Was never even as good as a boy. She always said, usually to Peter, that not all problems can be solved in battle, that there are always ways to avoid a conflict, if only you are prepared to try them.

'Aslan,' she says, during the Romp, when Lucy is distracted. 'I could have prevented this.'


He sees what is in her mind, and says, gently, 'Dear one, no-'


'I could, though,' she presses on. 'If I had only thought.' She swipes furiously at the bitter tears that spring, unbidden, to her eyes. 'An heir for Narnia ... I could have done that.'


'Wars are like weeds,' Aslan says, his amber eyes fixed on her brown ones. 'Even pulling them up by their roots only leaves space for more to flourish.'


He is trying to comfort her. He never wanted any of them to feel bad. But Susan feels the certainty in her mind as cold and clean as the knight in her pocket. This is what playing games leads to.

She kisses Caspian, on their last day. In front of everyone. She almost decides to stay, to be a proper Queen and redress her errors. To be mother of Narnia's heirs - a true feminine destiny, true immortality. But instead she turns and follows Peter, dutifully, out of one world and into another for the last time. And she won't deny it - she is relieved.

***

Edmund left his torch in Narnia. He didn't mean to. Likewise, accidentally, Susan brought the chess-knight home to England. All the time at school, when they get back, she hides it under her pillow, clutches it tight after the other girls' breathing has slowed into sleep, and cries herself into slumber.

When she is back at home the next holidays, when Edmund rattles the old wooden box that contains the chess pieces at her, she shakes her head.


'I don't feel like it,' she says.


'Sure?' he asks. 'One loss can't have hurt your confidence that badly.'


'I'm sure,' she says, laughing. 'Boost your ego by crushing Pete.'


He does challenge their brother, in the end, but it's all over quickly, and she can see that Edmund is hurt by her refusal to play their game.

They do the washing up, that night. She washes, he dries. Mother is in the sitting room with Father, listening to the wireless. Peter has no doubt secreted himself in the boys' room again, and Lucy might be with him, might be in the girls' room. It means that Edmund and Susan are alone in the kitchen.

'You're not sleeping,' she says to him.

'Not you as well,' he says tiredly. 'I get enough of this from Peter. I'm fine. It's a bout of, oh insomnia.'

'Why aren't you sleeping?' she says quietly, scraping at a piece of burnt potato skin on a plate. The china squeaks under her fingers. 'Tell me the truth.'

He looks at her. 'If I told you I was sleeping, would you believe me?'

'Well, obviously not, Ed.'

'I am, I swear. I'm just ... dreaming. A lot.'

'Dreams don't make people tired.'

'You aren't having these dreams,' he says.

'Nightmares?'

'No! No. Good dreams.' He grins, then, turning away from her to put a glass in the cupboard. There's a hint of the old King Edmund in there, triumphant, and also of Peter after a night spent somewhere other than his own chambers, and Susan guesses exactly what kind of dreams he's having. She colours - she can feel the blush burn her cheeks, but says nothing.

But then something strikes her. 'Good Narnian dreams?' she asks, pensively. There is something in his manner ... and she remembers, suddenly, how he won his game with Peter - taking a knight with a knight to mate the king - and it all clicks into place.

She can't say it. Can't say the name. But now she remembers more - remembers that last afternoon. Remembers the look Edmund gave Caspian. At the time she'd thought it was jealousy, that the Telmarine was taking their joint throne, but ... no.

So Edmund's power plays have extended to cover the new regime as well as the old, have they?

She kissed Caspian. It was honest. It would have been an offer. She would have stayed, and given a child of her blood and her body to knit the kingdom ever firmer into stability. But even when she wants to make a gesture, something clean and pure and wholly her own, not the Queen's, even then she is foiled by politics and sordidness. Nothing is safe.

No more games. She swears it to herself. No more games.

She puts down the last glass on the countertop, drains the sink. Leaves Ed to finish the drying, and goes to the sitting room, catches the last of the programme Mother is listening to. Goes to bed.

How can he play that game? Against her? Or is it against Caspian?


Well. She is leaving games behind now. Right now. And to seal that promise, that night, she slides out of the house and buries the chess knight under an apple tree. It is too much to bear, having that lump, a knight in shining armour, a fantasy, under her pillow. Like the princess and her pea, only Susan would rather have the night's sleep than the nobility.

Part Three

She makes herself forget. It can't have been real anyway.

It hurts too much for it to be real. To think that ... all that time, all those things that she did, and for what? To be shut out. They were children, she was a child, and it must have been her imagination. They were playing a game, nothing more, and she's mildly horrified that she could have dreamt up such an awful, perverse role for herself in a game.

When Mother and Father asked her if she'd like to come to America with them, she jumped at the chance. It was a whirlwind of colour and socialising and fun. She managed to forget for a while about all the confusion she'd left in England and the little metal lump buried in the garden, and she wished that she could have that forgetfulness forever.

But she and her parents are home now, and while waiting for her siblings to return, she unpacks and tidies her things and tries to settle her mind, shoving away memories and fears that her siblings will still cling to that awful game they played.

She sits down one day to write to her schoolfriends, girls she remembers as annoying though she cannot think why now, to tell them about her adventure in a foreign land - how she made friends in America, and all the things she saw and did on her trip; mostly everyday details. Things that have suddenly assumed an importance for her that they lost suddenly, after the war years and Professor Kirke's house, when she became, for whatever reason, unable to enjoy playing Mother any more.

She is determined to rebuild her life, a proper girl's life. And in America she met people who understand a proper girl's life. So her letters to the friends she is anxious to reconnect with are full of chat about recipes, quilting (she learnt to make log-cabin patchwork on her journey, and is working on a bedspread made from offcuts from Mother's rag-bag), how her brothers and sister are getting on at university and school and so forth. She tells them about young men, as well. Little bits of gossip always help as an ice-breaker, she remembers, though she does not know where the thought comes from.

The first young man she'd met in America was named Jack. His father was something in local government, and she overheard Mother telling Father one day that he was a nice boy. And he was. He opened doors for her, and he pulled out her chair, and took her to nice restaurants, and barely even touched her hand. She kissed him on the cheek at their first goodbye, after their first date, and had felt like he'd thought her forward. His expression, when he saw her, reminded her strongly of that of a spaniel. Sometimes a supercilious spaniel, though, whenever she advanced an opinion that was not on needlework or flower-arranging.

'Did you read the paper this morning?' Susan had asked Jack one evening, as he opened the menu. He always took her out to a restaurant after the movie. He said he liked to spoil her, that she deserved it. 'They're forming an intergovernmental-'

'Do we have to?' he'd asked, flashing a bright smile. 'I get enough of that political stuff at home from Dad. We're supposed to be out here for fun. I mean, I appreciate that you're trying take an interest and all, honey, but how about you tell me about your day instead?'

'Sorry,' she said, and subsided into some inane tale about ironing, her mind ticking over all the while and feeling vaguely furious and very frustrated. Taking an interest indeed.

Jack didn't last very long.

Attempt number two, Simon, was admittedly a bad idea. Mother didn't approve of him and Father didn't know.

He'd taken her to a restaurant too, but no movie. And afterwards he'd driven her out to some dark, tree-lined lane. A shadow of suspicion growing in her gut, she'd made very sure she memorised every twist and turn he drove around.

After they'd parked, the suspicion solidified.

'Come on, baby, just let me-'

'No.'

'Aw, come on.'

'No.' Susan unwound his arm from about her waist with dignity. 'Simon, please stop.'

The passenger seat of his ancient and battered Ford was uncomfortable, and stank of stale cigarette smoke.

'I'm not asking much,' he said, and grabbed for her again. 'I just bought you dinner!'

This time she shoved the heel of her shoe into his instep with as much force as she could muster, and made for the handle of the door. She walked home, glad of her sense of direction and that the stars were out to guide her. There was a run in her stockings by the time she made it to the little house she and Mother and Father were staying in.

Mother met her at the door, and took in the state of her hair, and the wild look in her eyes. 'I wasn't expecting you so early,' she said, raising an eyebrow.

'There was a change of plans,' Susan said grimly as she stepped inside.

She threw away the nylons the next day, a bitter, angry tear in her eye, and teased the knots out of her hair, and thought of her brothers and sister. Lucy would have railed at the unfairness and made unladylike comments on his parentage, and Peter would have defended her, would have sworn and paced and threatened him, and Edmund would have placed a gentling hand on her shoulder, would have taken the hairbrush and helped her, all with a look of steel in his eye. And she doesn't know how she is so certain of this. It isn't like she has ever been in this situation before, after all.

The third young man she met just after their return to England. His name was Robert, and he listened to her.

This threw her off-balance momentarily, when she realised it. So off-balance that she found herself meeting his parents. That's very nearly a statement of intent. It's too fast, and she told him so, a little sadly.

'I'm sorry,' he said, holding her hand earnestly. 'I'd just thought, since we were getting on so well-'

'And we are,' she reassured him, smiling as dazzlingly as she could. 'I just think we need more time to think about things. We're both only young.'

In the end, it wasn't Robert's doing that caused her to stop seeing him. It was the expression on her mother's face when she went through an old box of baby things. The way she held up a tiny dress or coat or hat, and admired it, and then looked beyond the piece of clothing to Susan, eyes misting up. Susan can't face that idea. She isn't ready. She is only young. There will be time for this sort of thing, later. Much later.

And so Robert joins Jack and Simon - out of her mind and into her letters.

***

She sent a letter to Edmund from America. She felt sorry for him, staying at Aunt Alberta's. The woman has such strange notions of housekeeping, for a start. And besides, she thought that he, of all her siblings, would probably be the only one to reply. So she passed on messages to Peter and Lucy in the same epistle, and told him about America - not about the young men, though - and asked for news of his holidays. His reply was nothing but a short note - 'Took a surprising trip and met an old friend. Ready to get thrashed at chess again?'

She would have replied, but when she and Mother and Father arrive back in England, Lucy 'phones from their Aunt's, and after a conversation that despite the calling charges is not short enough to prevent Susan from deciding that her first inkling of the destination of this 'surprising trip' has been entirely correct, she puts Edmund on the line.

'Well?' he asks.

'No,' she says, rolling her eyes even though she knows he can't see her.

'Frightened?' There is almost a hint of scorn in his voice.

'I have better things to do,' she tells him loftily.

He asks her to put Peter on after that, and when the 'phone is finally put back on the hook, Peter flashes her a look that is so ... older-brother-ish and exasperated that she feels an unaccustomed stab of hurt.

When Ed and Lucy come back to the house, the way they carry themselves tells enough of a tale. They're all still fooling themselves.

Peter is nothing but pride when he sees them. He claps Edmund on the back, and they share a look before Pete envelops Lucy in a hug, grinning as she shrieks and bats at him. Susan goes to kiss her sister on the cheek. Lucy throws her arms around her. She is just a bit taller, carries herself just a bit straighter. When Susan pulls back, she sees a bright eye regarding her, a bit sadly. Ed shakes her hand, for goodness' sake. She yanks him into an embrace.

'Don't you dare,' she hisses in his ear. 'I'm still your sister.'

His arms are as bony as they ever were where they wrap around her waist. 'Always,' he says, squeezing just that extra bit and letting go. 'Pete, we need to have a word about Eustace,' he then goes on to say, sitting on the sofa.

'Why?' Susan asks. 'Is he alright?'

'He's fine,' says Edmund. 'I think you'll find he's improved, as a matter of fact.'

Lucy snorts in a most unladylike fashion, sitting with her legs curled under her on the hearthrug. 'He certainly found our visit entertaining,' she adds. 'After a while, at least.'

'How are things?' asks Peter eagerly. 'And how are people?'

'Our friends are very well,' Edmund says, and has the gall to wink at Susan. 'There's going to be a happy event sometime soon, as well.' He doesn't look so happy at that announcement, but then again Peter is frowning at Edmund's emphasis on 'friends' and it's obvious that Peter knows who Edmund is talking about.

Someone imaginary, yes, but the thought still makes Susan flash a little with anger, and even some shame.

She decides to finish making the pastry for tonight's pie just to get away from them, even though it hasn't chilled enough yet. She feels like she cannot breathe.

It's not real, she thinks to herself, angrily, taking the roll of buttered dough from the 'fridge and slamming it down on the floured countertop. It isn't real and it isn't fair, that they can clutch at these straws and look as though they're held up by the strongest of ropes, when she knows that it can't possibly be real, and yet she feels about as stable as jelly. She wants it to be real, but it can't be. Things like that - the endless Winter, the Lion, that night, that dreadful sudden night on the Stone Table, a thousand year wait, the war - they don't happen. She never wore leather and armour, she never wore velvet.

Not real. She buries her hands in the pastry, rolls it and folds it and thumps it and rolls it again, trying to ground herself in its very ordinariness, until Mother comes in and insists that she goes and spends time with her siblings. She fists her hands in the rough cotton of her dress and goes to the sitting room.

She can only take ten minutes of thinly veiled references and bright, happy faces filled with lies before she leaves them to it once more and escapes for the peace and quiet of her room and a book on gardening. It isn't long before she's followed.

Susan looks up at Edmund as he enters the room, and puts her book down. 'Don't,' she says. 'Don't even start. America was lovely, by the way.'

'Su-'

He has that look in his eye. 'I said don't start, Ed. I'm sick of silly kids' games. I learnt a lot in America. I feel like I've grown up. It's time you started to grow up as well.'

That look in his eye turns suddenly to a different one, though one she knows just as well. Scornfully he says, 'Well, if that's what you're calling it, I'd rather be a kid, thanks.'

'Look, you don't really think you went ... there, do you? Honestly. It's just make-believe, Ed.'

'Is that what you think?'

'No, Ed, I know it. You know it, if you'll stop for a moment and think.'

He pulls something out of his pocket, and rolls it in his hands.

'I got this for you,' he says at last, and tosses it to her. 'I thought it might jog a few memories. Caspian says hello, by the way.'

Later, she unwraps it. It's a golden chess piece. A knight.