[Fic] "But Every Hour Is Saved from That Eternal Silence" -- Chronicles of Narnia/BtVS
rollinginbooks said: susan pevensie, sleepwalking/sleeptalking, at home in a thunderstorm.
Note: Um, so. This fill A) has approximately nothing to do with the prompt (though Susan does technically sleeptalk, and is at home during a thunderstorm), B) isn't especially fluffy, and C) accidentally turned into a fic that I kind of implicitly promised
rthstewart that I'd write several years ago as a companion to my remix of her lovely ficlet. Also it's a BtVS crossover and a TLB fixit. But you know, I wasn't getting anywhere at all with my more straightforward approaches, so I went with the one that was actually willing to be wrangled into writable form. *hands* Brains, man. Brains are downright weird. (1,450 words)
[ETA: The slightly revised final version is now up on AO3!]
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But Every Hour Is Saved from That Eternal Silence
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Susan stretches in her chair, groaning as her vertebrae pop and realign. Her neck crackles as she rolls her head from side to side, and she can feel a low, insidious ache taking root behind her eyes from too many hours of fruitless reading. The racket of Shoreditch pouring in through the open windows isn't helping, but closing them would be even worse in the abominable heat that summer has brought on as a last challenge before autumn's onset.
She thinks a thunderstorm may be brewing, and hopes it breaks before much longer.
"I'm going to kip for an hour or so, before I start seeing double," she says over her shoulder to Alice, who murmurs agreement without looking up from her own book.
They have a portal to locate and barricade within the next week, unless they want half of England to be swallowed by a random hell dimension. As Susan has a slight aversion to facing catastrophes that could range from an invading demonic horde to a sudden need to learn how to breathe chlorine gas, she would prefer to find the mystical doorway sooner rather than later. She suspects her countrymen would concur.
In her more rational moments, she doesn't blame the Watchers' Council for losing track of one relatively inactive portal during the Blitz. The bombs smashed London's magical infrastructure along with the physical, and, Hellmouths aside, dimensional weak points tend to be intermittent and migratory even without that kind of disruption. In her less forgiving moments, though, Susan is furious. Those self-righteous prigs wouldn't even know the portal was a concern if she hadn't stumbled across a record of one of its previous activations in a battered secondhand spellbook, and she still suspects their avowed confidence in her ability to handle the problem alone is simply a polite way to avoid saying they don't believe her warnings.
(She would have called her family in for help, but they're all at the Professor's house reminiscing about Narnia. Susan prefers to live in the world she's been given rather than the one she was forced to leave behind. This one, at least, she can still protect.)
Susan curls herself onto the modish but terribly uncomfortable sofa she and Alice purchased last year in a misguided attempt to make their flat look like it houses two perfectly ordinary shopgirls rather than an uncalled former Potential and a novice witch, tugs a cushion over her face in a halfhearted effort to shut out the noise and the slanting evening sun, and tries to stop thinking in Sumerian and spell components.
Cuneiform figures dance and shift in mocking columns and rows, chasing her down into uneasy slumber.
She wakes, pillowless, to a hand on her shoulder and Alice's voice repeating her name in far too urgent a tone to make any sense.
Susan blinks, and swallows, and grimaces at the unexpected dry soreness in her throat. "Yes?" she says. "What's wrong? Please tell me you didn't find a footnote that means the portal is going to open in ten minutes in bloody Liverpool."
"No," Alice says, drawing out the word in a worrying fashion. "But I think something -- or rather someone -- found you. You started talking in your sleep, and, well, read this." She hands Susan an open notebook, its pages covered in an even less legible version of her usual scrawl.
Susan levers herself upright and glares at the words for a minute, willing the letters to stay put. Then she gives up and hands the book back to Alice. "I can't make heads or tails of your penmanship. Read it yourself."
Alice rolls her eyes. "My penmanship is perfectly fine; you simply won't admit you have dyslexia. Additionally, this may well be the least cryptic prophecy I've ever heard of, even if I don't understand half the references."
"Prophecy!"
"What else would you call a personal message from the Powers That Be?" Alice says. "You ran through the whole thing twice, which is fortunate since I didn't pay attention until you said your own name three times in a row."
Susan grimaces.
"Yes, even you aren't quite that pretentious," Alice agrees, and neatly ducks the cushion Susan tosses at her by way of complaint.
Susan tugs her plait over her shoulder, unties the string, and starts combing out the inevitable tangles. "Pish. Read this supposed prophecy and I'll see if the references make sense to me."
Alice plunks herself down onto the sofa, pauses a moment to adjust her skirt, and adopts her best schoolteacher voice and expression. "Ahem: 'Susan Pevensie, daughter of England. Susan the Gentle, Queen of Narnia. Susan Magos, beloved of Hestia and Artemis. We bring you a warning, an opportunity, and a choice. The lion's soap-bubble world has smashed into a more solid plane. The king of Narnia has called across worlds for aid, but even the lion cannot preserve a fragmentary dimension once it shatters. Do not break his rules. Do not seek the rings. Instead, seek the portal in the old king's treasure hall. Doorways can open to more than two worlds at once, if one has the proper key. Ask, and we shall join the lion to grant you time and strength to save your former land. Choose wisely. And don't take the train to Bristol.'"
Susan absorbs this for a moment, hands stilling in the heavy mass of her hair, then says, "I don't see what Bristol has to do with--"
Alice cuts her off with a wave of her hand. "Perhaps it's general advice, perhaps it's simply the obligatory cryptic window-dressing, but that isn't the important part. The important part is that apparently you're the queen of a country in another dimension and never bothered to tell me about it. I'm wounded, Su. Deeply, tragically wounded."
Susan rests her elbows on her knees and drops her face into her hands, massages her fingers against her aching temples. "It was all very long ago, it involves time manipulation that sounds like balderdash even to experienced scholars of the supernatural, and my family is forbidden to ever return to Narnia. I prefer to look forward rather than back. You should understand."
Alice, who has never discussed her Council training, the family the Watchers removed her from, nor what happened in the year between her dismissal as a Potential and her meeting with Susan in the middle of a vampire nest, sighs and rests her hand on Susan's shoulder.
"I suppose I'll have to look back, at least for a while," Susan says into the muffling curtain of her hair. "Damn all gods for meddlers. What ever happened to the concept of free will?"
"Mmm," Alice agrees. "On the bright side, we now have a much better idea of where to find our portal -- somewhere that's been a royal treasury -- and way to use it for something good instead of simply stitching it shut and ensuring nobody opens it with ill-intent. I'm sure it will be a hundred times more difficult, but we could save two worlds at once. It's your choice -- your prophecy, and obviously the key will be a spell and therefore your lookout -- but I say we try."
And put that way, how could Susan possibly say no? She sighs and raises her head. "In for a penny, in for a pound, I suppose. Let's see. You'll need to scout the Jewel Tower and every other place that's been a palace treasury, I'll need to find a spell of opening and gather the right supplies, and we should probably call in some support since magic on that scale will draw the attention of every demon and practitioner in fifty miles." She grimaces at the thought of yet another grubby battle in the dark, holding back foes whose existence the world refuses to admit.
"And your family?" Alice asks. "Will you pass on the warning?"
"Of course," Susan says as she stands and stretches. "No Rings, and no trips to Bristol until this mess is done and dealt with. But fair warning: if I know my family, which I do, they'll come like a shot the moment I tell them Narnia is in danger and I have a way to help. So might the other four who've been to that world. We'll find ourselves rather crowded for the coming week."
"Duty demands sacrifices. They can take the sofa," Alice says blithely. "Go call them. I'll pull something together for supper and pretend not to eavesdrop."
Susan scoops the fallen cushion off the floor and tosses it at her friend's retreating back.
Outside, thunder rumbles as the storm finally breaks, a torrent of rain washing down to chase away the heat and frustration of the day.
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Do not go looking for Alice in BtVS or AtS canon, either television or comics. She's an OC invented specifically for this fic.
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