Fic: Five Times Susan Almost Remembered Narnia
On my Gimme Prompts, Pretty Pretty Please post debacul asked for the Pevensies, and Susan in particular. I would just reply to her comment with this fic but...it got too long. Oops? :P
So!
i.
Susan is eighteen and three different boys want to take her dancing on Saturday night.
One boy, though, wants to take her to an archery range - something different, he says, and grins toothily - and despite the curlers in her hair screaming otherwise, the pumps gazing at her forlornly from her closet, his is the invitation she accepts.
She just wants something different, she tells herself. But instead she finds something achingly familiar (was there perhaps a time when a bow and arrow were not foreign objects in her hands, was there perhaps -).
Then the boy reaches his arms around her (here, it’s like this, he says, his left hand wandering) and her fingers fumble. The bow goes slack.
She makes an excuse to leave early.
ii
Susan is twenty-one and this dinner party is all mother has talked about for weeks. Who will be there, and who will see her there, and who will hear that she was there, and who will care. Susan is excited, of course. She long ago learned that the opportunities presented at dinner parties are far greater then those presented in job interviews. And of course, looking the part is half the struggle.
Hair up, or down? Earrings? Necklace? Diamonds, or pearls? Mascara? Lipstick? How much is too much?
And a dress. Oh, a dress.
Lucy follows along reluctantly while Susan shops, making unhelpful comments about pettiness and small portions. But still, it’s Lucy who spies the dress, and for that Susan is grateful.
It’s silver, and flowing. Somehow the lines are simple - somehow, it is exquisitely intricate. And somehow, it fits her flawlessly.
She emerges from the dressing room and twirls around once, twice under Lucy’s cheerfully appraising eyes. For an instant Susan remembers a time when she and Lucy wore dresses like these, and smiled at each other without reservations.
“That’s lovely on you miss,” an attendant says, “but would you like something a bit more modern?”
More expensive is what that means. But Susan is trying to create an image that opens doors.
Still, she avoids Lucy’s eyes as she agrees.
iii.
Susan is twenty-four and being given a guided tour of the ancestral home of someone’s famous first cousin.
The someone whose famous first cousin had famous ancestors is puffed up with pride and sending her sideways glances every two seconds. Her name, Susan thinks, is Alice, or maybe Helen - no, it’s Alice - and Susan is doing her best to look impressed. After all, Alice is sweet, if bland. But the ancestors of her first cousin didn’t have particularly good taste.
“And this is the old entrance hall,” the first cousin says, and Susan gasps.
The chandelier, presiding gracefully over the room, is immense and regal and splendid. Made of shimmering gold and lit with what must be hundreds of candles, she is sure that just around that twist it will achieve perfection.
“Oh the chandelier,” Alice says loftily, “yes, well it has it’s own sort of charm I suppose, doesn’t it? But it’s so hard to keep up, and really it’s awfully impractical. Expensive, too. I’m sure it’ll be gone soon enough.”
And Susan, jarred by Alice (who is loftier than she has any right to be, the bland twit) and her worldly chatter, has her gaze redirected to the “lovely tapestries - don’t they look positively ancient? But Martha had them aged! Oh you won’t give it away will you?”
iv.
Susan is twenty-five and walks down the street with her head held high. It is a precise art, ignoring the rumbling cars and the chattering crowds to make polite and meaningless small talk with your companion, but she has learned it well. They talk of the weather, and Alice’s shoes, but the music still manages to intrude somehow.
It is perhaps a horn, and perhaps a guitar, and perhaps some sort of flute (but that is silly, Susan thinks, because street musicians do not play flutes) and she wants very badly to follow it to its source and can listen, uninterrupted.
But Susan Pevensie, twenty-five and with tremendous prospects, beautiful and levelheaded and clever, does not so much as glance at street musicians. She does not even hear their music.
Susan rather fails to hold up her end of the conversation, after that.
v.
Sometimes, she knows there is something different about them.
Lucy facing down a runaway horse, her feet planted firmly in the ground, determined to keep the people behind her and of course (for this is Lucy) the horse in front of her, safe.
Edmund, so careful and quiet but sometimes - sometimes his voice commands attention, and even Susan must bow to his superior logic.
And Peter.
Peter is noble. Peter has taken the chivalry and pure-hearted bravery that was supposed to have died with King Arthur and made it his own, shaping it and bowing to it all at once. Peter is, Susan thinks with a flash of unease, a flash of regret, Magnificent.
She gets the strange feeling, somehow, that she has been left behind.
So!
i.
Susan is eighteen and three different boys want to take her dancing on Saturday night.
One boy, though, wants to take her to an archery range - something different, he says, and grins toothily - and despite the curlers in her hair screaming otherwise, the pumps gazing at her forlornly from her closet, his is the invitation she accepts.
She just wants something different, she tells herself. But instead she finds something achingly familiar (was there perhaps a time when a bow and arrow were not foreign objects in her hands, was there perhaps -).
Then the boy reaches his arms around her (here, it’s like this, he says, his left hand wandering) and her fingers fumble. The bow goes slack.
She makes an excuse to leave early.
ii
Susan is twenty-one and this dinner party is all mother has talked about for weeks. Who will be there, and who will see her there, and who will hear that she was there, and who will care. Susan is excited, of course. She long ago learned that the opportunities presented at dinner parties are far greater then those presented in job interviews. And of course, looking the part is half the struggle.
Hair up, or down? Earrings? Necklace? Diamonds, or pearls? Mascara? Lipstick? How much is too much?
And a dress. Oh, a dress.
Lucy follows along reluctantly while Susan shops, making unhelpful comments about pettiness and small portions. But still, it’s Lucy who spies the dress, and for that Susan is grateful.
It’s silver, and flowing. Somehow the lines are simple - somehow, it is exquisitely intricate. And somehow, it fits her flawlessly.
She emerges from the dressing room and twirls around once, twice under Lucy’s cheerfully appraising eyes. For an instant Susan remembers a time when she and Lucy wore dresses like these, and smiled at each other without reservations.
“That’s lovely on you miss,” an attendant says, “but would you like something a bit more modern?”
More expensive is what that means. But Susan is trying to create an image that opens doors.
Still, she avoids Lucy’s eyes as she agrees.
iii.
Susan is twenty-four and being given a guided tour of the ancestral home of someone’s famous first cousin.
The someone whose famous first cousin had famous ancestors is puffed up with pride and sending her sideways glances every two seconds. Her name, Susan thinks, is Alice, or maybe Helen - no, it’s Alice - and Susan is doing her best to look impressed. After all, Alice is sweet, if bland. But the ancestors of her first cousin didn’t have particularly good taste.
“And this is the old entrance hall,” the first cousin says, and Susan gasps.
The chandelier, presiding gracefully over the room, is immense and regal and splendid. Made of shimmering gold and lit with what must be hundreds of candles, she is sure that just around that twist it will achieve perfection.
“Oh the chandelier,” Alice says loftily, “yes, well it has it’s own sort of charm I suppose, doesn’t it? But it’s so hard to keep up, and really it’s awfully impractical. Expensive, too. I’m sure it’ll be gone soon enough.”
And Susan, jarred by Alice (who is loftier than she has any right to be, the bland twit) and her worldly chatter, has her gaze redirected to the “lovely tapestries - don’t they look positively ancient? But Martha had them aged! Oh you won’t give it away will you?”
iv.
Susan is twenty-five and walks down the street with her head held high. It is a precise art, ignoring the rumbling cars and the chattering crowds to make polite and meaningless small talk with your companion, but she has learned it well. They talk of the weather, and Alice’s shoes, but the music still manages to intrude somehow.
It is perhaps a horn, and perhaps a guitar, and perhaps some sort of flute (but that is silly, Susan thinks, because street musicians do not play flutes) and she wants very badly to follow it to its source and can listen, uninterrupted.
But Susan Pevensie, twenty-five and with tremendous prospects, beautiful and levelheaded and clever, does not so much as glance at street musicians. She does not even hear their music.
Susan rather fails to hold up her end of the conversation, after that.
v.
Sometimes, she knows there is something different about them.
Lucy facing down a runaway horse, her feet planted firmly in the ground, determined to keep the people behind her and of course (for this is Lucy) the horse in front of her, safe.
Edmund, so careful and quiet but sometimes - sometimes his voice commands attention, and even Susan must bow to his superior logic.
And Peter.
Peter is noble. Peter has taken the chivalry and pure-hearted bravery that was supposed to have died with King Arthur and made it his own, shaping it and bowing to it all at once. Peter is, Susan thinks with a flash of unease, a flash of regret, Magnificent.
She gets the strange feeling, somehow, that she has been left behind.