Fic: Maybe
Title: Maybe
Author: cuban_sombrero
Recipient: eriphi
Rating: PG
Possible Spoilers/Warnings: Spoilers for The Last Battle
Summary: Lucy, Peter and Edmund discuss the fact that they all miss Susan.
AN: eriphi, I really hope you like this - thanks for giving me a really fun prompt to work with, especially for my first Narnia fic in quite some time. I tried really hard to include all four siblings, but exploring the change in dynamics when one of them was missing was too much fun! :D
“Do you ever miss Susan?”
Heaven has completely enveloped them when Lucy asks the question, and it leaves both her brothers surprised. This world has affected them in ways no one could have imagined, and the lack of sadness that comes with something as surreal as death is one.
“I mean, do you ever wonder what life would be like if she was here, if we were all her. The four kings and queens of the Golden Age.” Lucy picks up her mug and takes a sip, trying to act casual. Some things are still engrained in her, all these years after they were Narnian kings and queens, and the art of conversation is one of them. She remembers these things so easily, slipping back into her old life like it’s a nightgown, comfortable and secure.
They’re eating dinner like they do every other night, and sometimes one of the things that surprises her is that heaven never gets old or boring. They’re going to be here for eternity, and like the Narnia she grew up in, the Narnia she tended to with her bare hands, it folds itself around her, making her feel love at the strangest of times, in the strangest of places. Like in the Narnia of old, Lucy feels at home.
She shouldn’t be surprised, really - Narnia’s bigger on the inside and maybe, just maybe, her heart is too.
“Yes,” Peter says finally. “Yes.”
He pauses, deliberates - it adds more weight to his words and Lucy shudders, wondering what he’s going to say next. There’s still that aura of kingliness surrounding him that makes her shudder with the gravity of it all.
“She was our sister, Luce, and whatever she did, we should forgive her for that.”
“It’s not that I don’t forgive her,” Lucy says. “I do. That’s why it’s so hard.”
She pauses for a second, fiddles with the bracelet on her wrist, continues. There’s a hope she’s been clinging to for too long, hiding in her breast pocket like a token of the sadness she’s not supposed to feel. It’s been swelling inside her, consuming her in the way that only Narnian things can, and it takes her a while to voice it.
“Maybe Aslan has a plan,” she says. “I mean, we’ve seen what he does to Talking Beasts who no longer believe, but Susan, she’s different. She was a queen.”
There’s a strange intonation in her voice as she says the word; it’s almost as though she’s twelve and on the steps of Cair Paravel; she’s fifteen and hunting in Archenland; twenty-two and dancing with another suitor, a man of honour and bravery so documented that England couldn’t dream of it. There’s a certain kind of hopefulness that only comes with being a true devotee to Narnia, and that’s what counts.
That’s the worst part, Lucy thinks. It’s not that Susan turned her back on Narnia, it’s hat she turned her back on them. In every memory, she’s in the background, giggling and laughing, and stains like that on the conscience can’t just fade away. They remain forever, fading slightly but never disappearing, a shadow spread across photographs that mean so much. Even if Aslan could never have been her saviour, Lucy and Peter and Edmund, they would have been, could have been, should have been.
They should have tried harder. Lucy knows that now.
Peter interrupts her thoughts. “I don’t know,” he says, the mug of ale awkward in his hands.
They’re supposed to be happy here, and it’s always a dangerous sign when they’re not. Heaven was supposed to drain the sadness and the misery from them, and it has - and yet it hasn’t. Their sorrow is fleeting, but even after so long, it’s still there.
“I don’t know,” Peter says again. “If nothing else, Aslan has a reputation for being fair, and Susan wasn’t always faithful to him, even when we were in Narnia. Remember that time we tried to cross the ford with DLF.”
He’s not being cruel, just honest. Lucy loves that about him - Narnia seems to have taken their best traits and amplified them. They are stronger here, less about the sum of the parts and more about the whole - everyday, her heart swells with more love for Narnia, her ribcage expanding, the ventricles and chambers straining, and this is not a feeling that can be explained by science.
Somehow, Lucy knows this is why Susan never made it back to Narnia. It wasn’t the lipstick or the fancy parties or Andrew Keaton from the corner store; it was the fact that she dissected things, rationalised them; for her it was less about the moment and more about the explanation. She’d examined the remnants of her life in Narnia until it became certain that logic meant it couldn’t possibly exist. Right?
In Susan’s mind, the details no longer added up as Narnia dissolved into the background of her mind like tea parties with her dolls and the crush she’d had when she was five. It had become fractured, tiny little stress lines creeping up under her makeup until it all became too much. Until she forgot.
“Maybe she’s happy in England,” Edmund says. Steam rises from the tea in his hands and somehow, it makes him look wiser. Older, but wiser. It reminds her of magic, like Merlin’s tales from the childhood stories of Britain (although, how much better the stories are here). Youth was never associated with wisdom back there, and maybe that’s how heaven works - you can look different, but more beautiful. It’s not so much that their features are more defined but that their personalities are enhanced here.
“And maybe,” Peter says. “But her whole family’s died…”
“Maybe she has a family of her own,” Lucy replies.
They all laugh for a second at the idea of Susan with a child, and then they quieten. If Narnia has changed them so much, then maybe England, which is only a peninsula of a world so big they will never explore it all, has changed Susan too. Maybe, it’s changed her for the better; maybe Susan has become molded into the shape of someone else - a mother, a lover, a friend. Maybe, with all the tears that must have come from their death, the mask she wore over her buried belief in Narnia has washed away.
“Maybe.”
Everything here is made from maybes, not certainties. Lucy loves it, the way you can push boundaries, run faster, leap further, jump higher, Aslan’s breath slowly floating you to the ground before you fall. The only boundary they can’t push past is sadness, there are rules to control it, contain it like a feral pest. But sometimes, like a rogue child, it slips behind them, haunting them. In times like this, they can’t let it go.
It’s Peter that has the final word, like he always did, in a time that was so long ago and yet so close to their hearts.
“No matter what,” he says. “She’ll find us in the end.”
Maybe he’s right. Maybe one day, things will be better.
And for now, that’s enough.
Original Prompt:
What I want: Sibling fluff and day-to-day interaction. No dramatic action, no exciting adventure, no grand discoveries, just family being family. Could be any setting (i.e. Golden Age, England, post-LB or whatever takes your fancy) sad or happy. Preferable all four siblings, but any combination would also be good.
What I definitely don't want in my fic: incest/out of character-ness.
Author: cuban_sombrero
Recipient: eriphi
Rating: PG
Possible Spoilers/Warnings: Spoilers for The Last Battle
Summary: Lucy, Peter and Edmund discuss the fact that they all miss Susan.
AN: eriphi, I really hope you like this - thanks for giving me a really fun prompt to work with, especially for my first Narnia fic in quite some time. I tried really hard to include all four siblings, but exploring the change in dynamics when one of them was missing was too much fun! :D
“Do you ever miss Susan?”
Heaven has completely enveloped them when Lucy asks the question, and it leaves both her brothers surprised. This world has affected them in ways no one could have imagined, and the lack of sadness that comes with something as surreal as death is one.
“I mean, do you ever wonder what life would be like if she was here, if we were all her. The four kings and queens of the Golden Age.” Lucy picks up her mug and takes a sip, trying to act casual. Some things are still engrained in her, all these years after they were Narnian kings and queens, and the art of conversation is one of them. She remembers these things so easily, slipping back into her old life like it’s a nightgown, comfortable and secure.
They’re eating dinner like they do every other night, and sometimes one of the things that surprises her is that heaven never gets old or boring. They’re going to be here for eternity, and like the Narnia she grew up in, the Narnia she tended to with her bare hands, it folds itself around her, making her feel love at the strangest of times, in the strangest of places. Like in the Narnia of old, Lucy feels at home.
She shouldn’t be surprised, really - Narnia’s bigger on the inside and maybe, just maybe, her heart is too.
“Yes,” Peter says finally. “Yes.”
He pauses, deliberates - it adds more weight to his words and Lucy shudders, wondering what he’s going to say next. There’s still that aura of kingliness surrounding him that makes her shudder with the gravity of it all.
“She was our sister, Luce, and whatever she did, we should forgive her for that.”
“It’s not that I don’t forgive her,” Lucy says. “I do. That’s why it’s so hard.”
She pauses for a second, fiddles with the bracelet on her wrist, continues. There’s a hope she’s been clinging to for too long, hiding in her breast pocket like a token of the sadness she’s not supposed to feel. It’s been swelling inside her, consuming her in the way that only Narnian things can, and it takes her a while to voice it.
“Maybe Aslan has a plan,” she says. “I mean, we’ve seen what he does to Talking Beasts who no longer believe, but Susan, she’s different. She was a queen.”
There’s a strange intonation in her voice as she says the word; it’s almost as though she’s twelve and on the steps of Cair Paravel; she’s fifteen and hunting in Archenland; twenty-two and dancing with another suitor, a man of honour and bravery so documented that England couldn’t dream of it. There’s a certain kind of hopefulness that only comes with being a true devotee to Narnia, and that’s what counts.
That’s the worst part, Lucy thinks. It’s not that Susan turned her back on Narnia, it’s hat she turned her back on them. In every memory, she’s in the background, giggling and laughing, and stains like that on the conscience can’t just fade away. They remain forever, fading slightly but never disappearing, a shadow spread across photographs that mean so much. Even if Aslan could never have been her saviour, Lucy and Peter and Edmund, they would have been, could have been, should have been.
They should have tried harder. Lucy knows that now.
Peter interrupts her thoughts. “I don’t know,” he says, the mug of ale awkward in his hands.
They’re supposed to be happy here, and it’s always a dangerous sign when they’re not. Heaven was supposed to drain the sadness and the misery from them, and it has - and yet it hasn’t. Their sorrow is fleeting, but even after so long, it’s still there.
“I don’t know,” Peter says again. “If nothing else, Aslan has a reputation for being fair, and Susan wasn’t always faithful to him, even when we were in Narnia. Remember that time we tried to cross the ford with DLF.”
He’s not being cruel, just honest. Lucy loves that about him - Narnia seems to have taken their best traits and amplified them. They are stronger here, less about the sum of the parts and more about the whole - everyday, her heart swells with more love for Narnia, her ribcage expanding, the ventricles and chambers straining, and this is not a feeling that can be explained by science.
Somehow, Lucy knows this is why Susan never made it back to Narnia. It wasn’t the lipstick or the fancy parties or Andrew Keaton from the corner store; it was the fact that she dissected things, rationalised them; for her it was less about the moment and more about the explanation. She’d examined the remnants of her life in Narnia until it became certain that logic meant it couldn’t possibly exist. Right?
In Susan’s mind, the details no longer added up as Narnia dissolved into the background of her mind like tea parties with her dolls and the crush she’d had when she was five. It had become fractured, tiny little stress lines creeping up under her makeup until it all became too much. Until she forgot.
“Maybe she’s happy in England,” Edmund says. Steam rises from the tea in his hands and somehow, it makes him look wiser. Older, but wiser. It reminds her of magic, like Merlin’s tales from the childhood stories of Britain (although, how much better the stories are here). Youth was never associated with wisdom back there, and maybe that’s how heaven works - you can look different, but more beautiful. It’s not so much that their features are more defined but that their personalities are enhanced here.
“And maybe,” Peter says. “But her whole family’s died…”
“Maybe she has a family of her own,” Lucy replies.
They all laugh for a second at the idea of Susan with a child, and then they quieten. If Narnia has changed them so much, then maybe England, which is only a peninsula of a world so big they will never explore it all, has changed Susan too. Maybe, it’s changed her for the better; maybe Susan has become molded into the shape of someone else - a mother, a lover, a friend. Maybe, with all the tears that must have come from their death, the mask she wore over her buried belief in Narnia has washed away.
“Maybe.”
Everything here is made from maybes, not certainties. Lucy loves it, the way you can push boundaries, run faster, leap further, jump higher, Aslan’s breath slowly floating you to the ground before you fall. The only boundary they can’t push past is sadness, there are rules to control it, contain it like a feral pest. But sometimes, like a rogue child, it slips behind them, haunting them. In times like this, they can’t let it go.
It’s Peter that has the final word, like he always did, in a time that was so long ago and yet so close to their hearts.
“No matter what,” he says. “She’ll find us in the end.”
Maybe he’s right. Maybe one day, things will be better.
And for now, that’s enough.
Original Prompt:
What I want: Sibling fluff and day-to-day interaction. No dramatic action, no exciting adventure, no grand discoveries, just family being family. Could be any setting (i.e. Golden Age, England, post-LB or whatever takes your fancy) sad or happy. Preferable all four siblings, but any combination would also be good.
What I definitely don't want in my fic: incest/out of character-ness.