Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When Susan opens her eyes, she finds herself sitting at the edge of a great hall that is packed to the brim with people, animals, and all other varieties of creatures. Jaunty dance music is being played by a dashing-looking group of bards in an opposite corner and everyone is milling about, dancing, chatting, and plucking snacks off the trays being held aloft by wind spirit waiters. Susan smiles, pleased at the scene. The tiara on her head is a bit heavy, perhaps, and sitting on the throne for so long is slightly uncomfortable, but otherwise, the party is so grand and everyone seems so happy that she can’t bring herself to mind. 

There’s a young girl with hair a few shades lighter than Susan’s sitting on the throne to her left, smiling brightly and tapping her feet in time with the music. To her right, a tall blonde boy is trying to teach a reluctant-looking dark-haired one the steps to a dance, and Susan giggles as they step on each other’s toes. Something tells her she should scold them and make them sit back down, so as not to embarrass themselves in front of all the guests, but she’s having too much fun watching them to follow through on the idea. They both scowl when they notice Susan watching, and she’s about to call out to them, telling them not to stop on her account, when the hall doors slam open loudly, letting a burst of cold wind sweep through. Some of the guests shriek or gasp in fear.

A massive lion walks through the doors and into the crowd. Susan thinks she can almost feel the ground shake with every step of his paw.

When the lion opens his mouth and begins to speak, everyone in the crowd falls silent. “Susan Pevensie,” he begins, slowly and resonantly, and she pushes herself up out of her throne to acknowledge that he’s addressing her. She thinks that perhaps she has not understood the true meaning of ‘awe’ until this moment; she feels equally reverent and fearful as she stares into the beast’s eyes. “It is not enough not to forget. You must remember .”

“Remember what?” she asks, desperate to comply immediately with whatever he asks. Whether it is out of a desire for approval or a fear of punishment, she does not know. 

“You will understand someday,” the lion says, rather than answering her question, “It will be you who has to make the choice to begin it all again. Not your sister or your brothers, but you. You have always thought yourself the least important of the bunch, have you not? The forgotten sister with so pitifully little to set herself apart from the magnificent, the just, and the valiant?” A tugging in Susan’s gut tells her the statement has struck a chord, even if none of it sounds particularly familiar. “Well now you have been given the chance to prove yourself wrong. Do not waste it, daughter of Eve. Remember.” 

And with that, the lion turns and marches out of the hall. The mutterings of the crowd start soft but grow louder quickly, and they all seem to be concerned with Susan herself. She glances left and right, hoping for a supportive look or gesture from one of her companions, but none of them will meet her eyes. 

Before she can say anything else, the vision begins to blur. The grand hall is eclipsed by a rainbow of bright light and a cacophony of sounds; a horn being blown, a harp being played, a lion roaring, the wind whistling through the trees in a way that makes it seem as though the trees themselves are giggling. And then, ending it all, one piercing shriek of a train whistle, the crunching of metal, and the feeling of having all the air forced out of her lungs. 

“Get up!” A loud voice shatters the picture, and Susan’s eyes flicker open as she sits up in her tiny rickety bed, head still swimming with all that she’s just seen.

“You don’t get to have a lie-in if none of the rest of us do, lazy!” scolds the voice, which Susan is now able to connect to a familiar-looking girl her age (at least she thinks, because right now she feels older somehow than she’s ever been) standing over her with an irritated expression and a laundry basket on one hip.

“Sorry, Denise,” Susan mumbles, the name easily supplying itself before Susan can ever question it, but Denise’s scowl doesn’t fade. She chucks a rag from the basket at Susan, who manages to dodge on muscle memory alone. 

“I don’t think I have to remind you that Sunday is deep cleaning, given how long you’ve lived here,” Denise snaps as she starts to walk away, “And you’re on bathroom duty, sleeping beauty!” 

Susan makes a rude face at Denise’s retreating back, but she climbs out of bed and begins getting ready anyway. She pulls on her navy blue cotton dress, one of only two clothing items she has that aren’t part of her school uniform, and her grungier, older pair of saddle shoes. As she gets to work scrubbing the floor of the bathroom, which manages to become thoroughly disgusting within a week given that it’s shared by over twenty girls, she allows herself to think about her dream again.

It was more confusing, more dramatic, than the ones she usually has. Usually, her dreams are blissful reprieves from her none-too-blissful life; with her and the three other children going on wonderful adventures. They’re always the same children, with deep blue eyes and mischievous grins that mirror Susan’s own, and they call themselves Peter, Edmund, and Lucy. Common enough names, Susan supposes, that she might have heard anywhere and picked up subconsciously. But still, she’s never met other children quite like those in her dreams. No one she’s lived with at the orphanage has ever had Peter’s courage, Edmund’s sense of justice, or Lucy's profound kindness. No one has ever protected her the way Peter does, schemed and planned with her like Edmund does, or laughed with her like Lucy does. No one has her dream siblings' deep eyes that reveal wisdom beyond their years, their understanding of court politics, or their passionate unspoken bond. (She assumes that no one has their skills with swords and daggers either, but she’s never been able to test that theory.) When Susan wakes up every morning and feels the details of the past night’s adventure slip away from her, like grains of sand running through her fingers, it’s those three she remembers, holds on to desperately, and every night she tucks herself in hoping to meet them again. 

Susan is still thinking about the dream the next day at school. That afternoon, she gets so caught up in trying to remember all the tiny details while pacing quietly around the playground that she runs right into a group of popular girls from her class that she usually does her best to avoid, who are sitting in a circle in the middle of the grass and all holding little plastic tea cups. 

“What are you doing?” Susan asks sharply, irritated to find someone sitting in her walking path.

“Obviously we’re having a tea party,” answers the girl who’s clearly in charge of the whole thing, “We’re all queens from different kingdoms and we’re going to talk about queen things; how many crowns we have, what color dresses we’ll be wearing to the next big royal wedding, that sort of thing.” She says this all with a barely disguised sneer that makes it very clear that Susan is not invited to take part in any portion of the game. 

“Those aren’t the sort of things that queens talk about,” Susan scolds. “Queens have real work to do. Trade and diplomacy and war, those sorts of things. They don’t have the time to have silly tea parties every day or to count their crowns.”

The girls all scowl at her. She is ruining their fun, just like she always does. “How would you know?” asks the ringleader pointedly, “ You’re not a queen.” 

Susan thinks for a moment. She can feel it, some sort of answer there in her mind, hovering frustratingly just out of reach, behind the swirling colors and sounds of last night’s dream. She isn’t quite sure how she knows all the things she does, but she’s still sure that they’re true. She settles on “I just know, alright.” 

“Sounds to me like you’re making it up,” sneers one of the girls. 

“I’m not making it up! I just can’t explain it.” 

The girls raise their eyebrows skeptically in unison. “You’d probably be too stupid to understand it, anyway,” Susan snaps, before stomping away in a huff. The other girls all laugh cruelly, not bothered by her insult at all.

“Little Susan Pevensie, queen of the orphanage,” calls the ringleader at her retreating back. 

“She’s bossy enough to be a queen,” says another girl.

“But not nearly pretty enough,” counters a second. There’s another wave of laughter. Susan clenches her fists and bites her tongue to stop herself from turning around and shouting something very rude. When she reaches a hidden corner of the playground far enough away that she can’t be seen, she collapses against a wall and sulks. Somehow, she can’t let go of the idea that there used to be a time no one would dare contradict her. When no one bullied her for being a mousy and petulant little orphan, because she simply wasn’t one. Wherever and whenever that was, even if it's just her dreams, Susan wishes she could go back. 

Or maybe she wishes that the people from her dreams were here. Peter would never let her get teased on the playground. He’d stand up to the bullies. Edmund would probably put a frog in the schoolbag of any girl who dared to try and mess with her. Lucy would hold her head up high and host tea parties with her, ones with better snacks than all the other girls in her class had. 

She misses the three of them, in a way that is terrible and painful and confusing, because while her brain says that they aren’t real, because she’s never seen them outside of her dreams, her heart says they must be. 

It doesn’t help Susan’s loneliness any that she manages to confuse adults just as much as she manages to annoy the other children. 

One Saturday, when Susan is perhaps eight years old, the matron of the orphanage takes them all on an outing to the zoo. Susan overhears some of the older girls whispering that the only reason she’s taking them anywhere is because someone from the government is there to observe and take notes on how they’re being treated. This makes Susan scowl to herself. She hates people who pretend to be nicer than they are when other people are watching, and she hates the zoo. It just always feels so sad to her. Whenever she peers into an enclosure or an aquarium and the animal turns to face her (which feels like it happens more often than it really should) they stare deeply into her eyes, and it feels like they’re trying to say something to her, something that she should be able to understand but for some reason can never quite grasp. 

So when the orphanage director takes them to the zoo, rather than running around to look at everything like the other children do, Susan reads a book on a bench in front of the fox enclosure. It is usually quiet there, because the people who are just there to see cute animals have bad ideas about foxes, no doubt influenced by fairy tales and legends, and the people who are there to see ferocious beasts have higher standards. Susan, for her part, likes foxes very much. She finds them clever and loyal. At one point, one of the workers comes around, supposedly to make sure she is enjoying herself. 

“Susan, dear,” the woman asks, “Have you been sitting here the whole afternoon?” 

Susan nods, wanting to be left alone. 

“But don’t you want to see anything besides the foxes?”

Susan looks up, thinks for a minute, then shakes her head and returns to her book. 

“What about the dolphins? Or the bears? Or, oh, I know! The lions are right next door. Surely you’d like to see the lions?” 

“No,” she answers simply, “I don’t like lions. They’re liars.” Susan doesn’t quite know what that means, even though she said it. But it was the first thing that popped into her head, and she wants the worker woman to stop asking her questions. The statement seems to have the opposite effect, though, because the woman sits down on the bench beside her, looking worried. 

“What are you reading, Susan?” she asks, as though that will reveal some huge secret as to why Susan behaves so differently from the other children and why she holds such strong opinions about lions. Susan turns the cover towards the woman without speaking, and moves her fingers so that she can read the title. 

“ The Secret Garden ,” the woman reads aloud, “What is it about?” 

Susan turns the back cover towards the woman, so that she can read the plot summary. Internally, she rolls her eyes. What self-respecting adult doesn’t know the story of The Secret Garden ?

“Ah,” says the woman brightly, as though she has just fit the last piece into a particularly difficult puzzle, “Do you feel particularly drawn to stories about orphans?” 

Susan scowls at this, externally. “Most stories are about orphans. Anne of Green Gables , Oliver Twist , Jane Eyre ,” she lists them off on her fingers, “Parents just make stories more difficult. Even if they were alive, you wouldn’t want them to be around, would you? How else would children ever go on adventures?” The argument makes perfect sense to her. She never has parents in her dreams, just her brothers and sister, and they are constantly going on adventures. “And besides, maybe I just feel particularly drawn to stories about gardens.” 

The woman doesn’t say anything else after that, and Susan is glad. When she glances up from her book a few minutes later, she could swear one of the foxes winks at her.

Chapter Text

Susan grows older, as all children do, though she still can’t shake the strange feeling that she’s done it all before. It’s a lot of little things that build up to the feeling, really. The way she knows answers on pre-tests her teachers give before they’ve even covered the material in class. The way she settles comfortably into her changing body in a way the rest of the girls her age can’t seem to manage, as though she can anticipate every sensation and feeling that comes with aging. The way she always manages to predict the murderer in the old mystery novels she borrows from the library, despite never having read them before. The way that the same exact gossip and parties her peers call exhilarating and give the utmost importance, she finds dull and childish. 

Having little to no patience for socializing with others her age means that Susan spends almost all her time either reading or working on school work, so no one is surprised when she gets an offer to attend university in London, fully funded by a scholarship from an old professor who’d made it his life’s work to ensure that bright little orphans were granted the best possible educations. 

Susan packs up all of her belongings (which barely fill the old, moth-bitten carpet bag that the matron had let her have), says goodbye to no one except the local librarian and the street cats, and hops on the train without so much a second look back at the place where she spent the first eighteen years of her life.

She finds her niche at university easily enough. Her roommate is nice and at least isn’t openly disdainful of how barren Susan’s side of the room is when they first move in. She finds her classes more challenging than anything she ever had in secondary school, and enjoys talking to the professors about the topics they specialize in – she and another boy in the 19th Century World History class have a rewarding conversation with the professor about the unification of Germany that lasts so long Susan almost misses her next lesson. She joins the campus literary journal and bonds with a few girls over an appreciation for Jane Austen. But in hoping that these new friends would fill the hole she’s always felt in her life or meet the standards set by the siblings from her dreams, she finds herself sorely disappointed. She decides that university is just going to be more of the same, and nothing changes her mind until a fateful Friday in October when one of her new friends from the journal (Moira) drags her to a fencing tournament the school is hosting. 

“You’ve got to get out some time. You can’t spend all your time holed up in the library,” Moira wheedles, “And it's only fencing. It won’t be nearly so frightful or loud as a rugby or cricket match would be.” These girls seem to have confused Susan’s reticence for socializing with general shyness and timidness, and she’s done nothing to correct them. It makes them feel good about themselves to think that they’re helping a poor wallflower out of her shell. 

Susan agrees to go, but packs her bag with snacks (homemade scones) and an emergency book (The Bell Jar) in case she gets bored. 

It turns out to be the least boring evening Susan’s ever had in her life.

The tournament starts out normally enough.

Lots of young men in pure white suits and metal masks that remind Susan of an Alexandre Dumas story take turns hitting each other with swords. There is a lot of clanging noise from multiple matches occurring at once, which some in the audience seem to find disconcerting, but Susan finds comfortingly familiar; like if she closed her eyes she could imagine a battlefield laid out before her, where she commands armies with the same confidence and know-how she always finds in her dreams.

She watches one match more particularly than the others, if only because it involves what are clearly the two most skilled fencers. While the other athletes are all clearly trying very hard to be victorious, to that pair it seems more like an effortless dance, where they are partners rather than opponents. Still, points have to be won, and Susan finds herself clapping and cheering along with the crowd whenever they are. Clearly, she’s not the only one who can recognize the most skilled players, among the group, and in the excitement, she decides not to wonder why an itch in her brain seems to just understand the techniques involved. If she wanted, she could almost call the parries and strikes herself, but she stays quiet.

When the winning fencer pulls his helmet off and shakes out his hair, Susan feels her heart leap out of her chest. He’s a perfect copy of Peter; blonde hair curling around the tops of his ears and blue eyes twinkling with mirth. She feels her mouth fall open in shock against her will, and she can’t force herself to close it.

“Susan, are you quite alright?” asks one of the friends who dragged her here, whose name suddenly seems amazingly unimportant.

“Huh? Oh, yes of course.” Susan answers quickly, not taking her eyes off the fencer, “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well, you’ve been staring intensely at that blonde fencer since he stepped out of the ring. It’s…slightly concerning.” 

Susan tears her gaze away in order to give her friend a reassuring smile. “Sorry. Just lost in thought. You know what I’m like,” she responds, taking on a very deliberate self-deprecating tone.

The friend nods, rolling her eyes long-sufferingly, before turning back to watch the next match. Susan ignores the gesture, as she always does, and then follows suit. She quickly notices that the Peter-lookalike has made his way to the sidelines, where he’s taking a drink while talking to a man who must be the coach. Once he sets the wattle bottle down, he begins tossing his sword carelessly from hand to hand in a way that’s so familiar to Susan that it aches. When he turns to go through the door to the locker room, her fists clench subconsciously. He can’t leave. Not before she can talk to him, if only to convince herself that she’s being crazy, letting figures from her dreams leak into real life.

“I’m going to go get something to eat,” she tells her friends, practically leaping out of her seat and rushing down the stairs. As she dashes across the side of the gymnasium, Susan wonders if she should be worried about how quickly lies always seem to come to her, and just how easy it is to get others to believe them. One of the workers at the orphanage used to call her a junior politician because of how good she was at getting what she wanted. Today, Susan decides to take that in stride, even though she knows it was never meant as a compliment in the past.

Quick as a flash, she decides on a tactic, and digs into her bag with one hand while she walks. After a bit of rummaging, she grabs a pen and small notebook that she uses to take notes during labs in her science classes. Then, she pulls her hair up into a more professional-looking bun, just in time to approach the fencing coach, who’s sitting on the first row closest to the locker room and pouring over a clipboard of stats. 

“Hello Coach…Victor,” Susan says, reading the name embroidered onto the duffle bag on the bleachers behind her and pretending she knew it the whole time, “I’m Susan, a reporter from The Herald.” She holds up her pen and paper like they’re some sort of press pass and hopes that her name drop of the student newspaper will get her the chance she needs. “I was wondering if I’d be allowed to interview tonight’s winning fencer.”

“You want to talk to Peter?” the coach grumbles, barely looking up from his notes, and Susan nods, not allowing herself to be thrown off guard by the fact that this boy who so resembles the brother from her dreams shares his name as well. 

“Alright,” she shrugs good-naturedly, “Not my place to stand in the way of journalism.” He shuffles over to the locker room door and knocks his fist against it twice. “Hey, Petey-boy!” he calls, before pushing the door open, “There’s a pretty young lady here who’d like to meet you. I’d suggest you make yourself presentable!” 

Susan rolls her eyes while the coach isn’t looking, but then thanks him dutifully before walking into the locker room. 

She runs smack into Peter, who must have intended to answer the door. He is still dripping sweat and breathing heavily from his match, but grins at her clumsiness anyway, not seeming to mind the body check. 

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” She apologizes quickly. Now up close and personal with him, she’s more taken aback than originally expected. The resemblance isn’t just uncanny, it’s exact: all the way down to the chipped front tooth and the pale smattering of freckles right on the bridge of his nose.

“No problem at all, really,” he assures her, grinning even wider. “Pleased to meet you, Miss. I’m Peter Pevensie,” he introduces himself, sticking out a hand, which Susan takes. His handshake is firm and domineering, as though it belongs to an older, more well-established gentleman. 

“That’s so odd,” Susan whispers, mostly to herself.

“Pardon? What’s odd?”

“It’s just,” she says quietly, “That my name is Susan Pevensie.” They’ve never given themselves last names in her dreams, Susan realizes, only royal titles. She’s not sure what exactly she expected this boy to be called, but she knows his real name is not at all what she would have guessed. 

Peter looks briefly taken aback, but he corrects himself quickly. “Well, that is odd indeed,” he laughs, although it doesn’t quite reach his eyes, which are still wide and confused, “I’ve always found it to be a rather uncommon name. Perhaps we’re distantly related somehow?”

“I wouldn’t know,” explains Susan apologetically, “I have no known relations, being raised in an orphanage.”

Peter’s eyes grow even wider. “Another uncanny coincidence! I’m an orphan myself.” 

The two stare at each other for a moment, each unsure of what to say next. Desperate for something to break the tension, Susan digs through her bag again and pulls out the scone she packed herself to eat in the library later. “You were really impressive in your match. Fencing seems so tiring,” she tells him, holding out the package, “I thought you might like something to eat. You know, as a victory celebration.” She remembers the way her Peter always clears the plates of scones that are served at the feasts they hold after winning battles, and assumes that the same logic might apply to sports matches here. 

Peter gives her a strange, searching look as he takes the package, but unwraps and bites into the scone without asking any further questions. 

“Thanks,” he mumbles, mouth full of crumbs and eyes nearly shut in enjoyment. “Did you make this? It’s really good.” He swallows, hard, having inhaled the whole thing in less than thirty seconds. If she hadn’t seen it in action before, Susan would be impressed by the voraciousness of his appetite.

“Yes. I’ve had a bit of practice, you know, cooking for the other children whenever they wanted something sweet,” she explains. 

Peter nods understandingly. “Was that lemon and blueberry?” he asks. 

“Yes. And a bit of poppy seed.”

“Ah. Inspired,” Peter claps his hands together joyously, “I’ll have to pay you back sometime. I’ve got my own recipe with cheese and chives.”

“Cheddar or Parmesan?” 

“A little bit of both actually-”

After that, she and Peter slip into such an easy rhythm of conversation that Susan entirely forgets her false pretense for coming to talk to him in the first place, and fails to ask a single reporter-ly question. They flow from baking to books to movies to theatre to campus gossip to politics without batting an eye.

When the clock on the wall reaches 10 pm, they both break out of their conversation about next year's general parliamentary election to realize how late it is. 

“I’ll walk you back to your dorm,” Peter says, standing up and stretching, “Can you pass me my bag?” he asks, pointing to the duffel on the bench behind her. Susan picks it up with one arm, finds it a bit heavier than she expected, and slumps over a bit. She supposes Peter must carry hand weights around with him or something. 

“Sorry, I should’ve warned you. It might be a bit much for-” 

Eager to prove him wrong, Susan puts her back into the effort and slugs the bag over her shoulder. “I can carry it,” she smiles, “Since you’re probably tired from your match.” She did always have a bit of a competitive streak where her brothers were concerned. 

“Huh. You’re surprisingly strong.” 

“I spend a lot of time carrying books around,” Susan shrugs, and Peter pushes open the back door for her, beginning their starlit walk back to the dorms. 

“Not just that. I think I might have a bruise from where you ran into me earlier,” Susan nearly trips over herself to apologize before she realizes that Peter is joking with her, “Do you play any sports, Susan?” he asks.

“Oh, no, I don’t,” she admits and feels slightly embarrassed, as though she’s disappointed this stranger somehow, “Well, I suppose I had alright times when we ran in school. And I’ve always wanted to take up archery.” She does not mention that this desire stems from her dreams, where she and Peter stand back to back during battles, him with a sword and her with a bow. 

“I can take you by the campus’s range sometime then, if you’d like,” he offers, “You’re in your first year, aren’t you? I haven’t seen you before.” 

Susan nods. “Yes, I am. And it would be lovely to see the range.” 

“If you know the student in charge, they might even let you shoot a few.”

“Oh. Well, I don’t know anybody.”

“Don’t worry about it. I do,” Peter grins mischievously, “We’ll make a school athlete out of you yet, Susan.” 

Something in Susan’s heart crumbles a little bit to hear Peter call her by her full given name. In dreams, he always calls her Su. Almost immediately afterwards she mentally scolds herself for her disappointment. It’s no good expecting this Peter to act like the one she’s known all her life, she decides. 

“And maybe I’ll make a better student out of you in return,” she suggests. 

“Who says I’m not a good student?” asks Peter, as he jumps up to tap the rim of the doorway to the breezeway they’re walking through. 

“Just a guess,” Susan says, “Based on observation of the correlation between participation in atheletics and overall academic performance.”

“Now you’re just trying to sound pretentious. No one talks like that.” 

Susan giggles, and is briefly confused by herself. She doesn’t think she’s ever giggled before in her life. 

“It was very good to meet you, Susan Pevensie,” says Peter with an air of diplomatic self-importance when they reach her dorm room. 

“You as well, Peter Pevensie,” she responds, smiling up at him and resisting the urge to curtsey. 

When she gets back from her classes the next day, Susan finds a crinkly piece of folded-up notebook paper that has been put on her desk. On the side facing the ceiling is a sloppy sketch of a dog, with the words ‘Read Me’ coming out of a speech bubble. Susan drops her bag unceremoniously and picks up the note. It reads:

To the other Pevensie–

I have a class with your roommate Moira and I asked her to bring this to you, I promise it’s not creepy and I didn’t break into your room. I realized I didn’t ask you last night if you wanted to get together again– I never finished giving you my thoughts on the Theatres Act (I have a friend who saw Hair right after it reopened, and it’s amazing even second-hand). I live on the second floor of Reid Hall. Stop by whenever you’d like, either for a chat, for me to take you to the archery range, or to collect that promised scone. You can slip a note under the door if I’m not there (I’ve just given a wonderful example), or ask my roommates, they usually know where I am. Hope to hear from you soon!

Your new friend,

Peter

PS: They never give first-year reporters the sports stories. You’ll need to think of a better cover story next time. And if you’re gonna pretend to be a reporter, you should at least ask your interviewee some questions. 

Susan laughs to herself. As she looks down at the note, reading it over and over again to fully take in the oh-so-familiar slope of the letters, the way the a’s curve at the top and the t’s are occasionally left uncrossed, she has the strange feeling that the choice she made to speak to Peter after the fencing tournament may just be the most important thing she’s ever done, and that things are about to change very rapidly from here. 

When she looks out the window at the darkening London street, she can almost hear a deep, echoing voice commanding her to remember. But what it is that she has to remember, she’s still not exactly sure.

Chapter Text

Having Peter in her life opens Susan up to a whole world of happiness she barely knew was possible. He follows up on his promise to take her to the university archery range, and the bow feels so comfortable in her hands that it only takes a few rounds of practice before she’s scoring bullseyes, which irritates Peter to no end (“Not an athlete indeed. You lied to throw me off and beat me at archery.” “I didn’t just beat you. I slaughtered you.”) and he demands a rematch, this time in fencing. A few days after that, she ends up dropping by his apartment to sample the offered scones, but Peter sets his sights higher than mere snacks, and they spend a very comedic yet stressful afternoon walking to the nearest grocery store to pick out ingredients and then attempting to copy a full Sunday roast recipe out of an old cookbook they find in the school library. If the chicken ends up a little dry and the Yorkshire puddings fail to rise, well, Susan’s still had far worse meals, and Peter claims the boys on his hall will eat anything that’s free. When they go back to the library the next day to return the cookbook, they accidentally spend several hours in the history section as Susan pours over copies of illuminated medieval manuscripts and tries to force information into Peter’s head for the ‘Europe in the Middle Ages’ class that he claims to have chosen at random for a general education credit. This becomes the first of many nightly library sessions where Susan reads and works on both her own homework and Peter’s homework in equal measure. The difficulty is not really in getting Peter to learn the content, Susan quickly realizes, but in forcing him to focus on one thing long enough to actually prove to the professor that he’s learned it.

The two begin to spend so much time together that Moira and the other girls briefly start teasing Susan about having a ‘beau’, which she quickly shuts down (“He’s like a brother to me, really.”), and Peter’s roommates have started waving hello every time they see her on campus, which confuses any and all passersby who know of their reputations as exuberant jocks and Susan’s reputation as an uptight, reserved academic.

So, yes, Susan is happier than she’s ever been before in her life. But still, when she lays down to go to sleep at night, something itches inside of her, telling her that things still aren’t quite right. Something is still missing. Or maybe two somethings. Because if Peter is real, that must mean that Edmund and Lucy are too, right? 

She still isn’t quite sure what all Peter remembers, if he’s ever had dreams of their adventures, their hunts and battles, their feasts and balls. If he’s lived in those moments the way Susan has. There are several signs that seem to point to yes. For example, his skill at fencing is just as adept as dream Peter’s sword fighting. When they play chess, he always starts with the King’s Gambit, which Susan knows three different ways to counter because she’s seen him use it so many times before. He pretends to be totally lost in his ‘Europe in the Middle Ages’ class, but when Susan reads his essay on the importance of chivalry culture and the knightly code, it seems just a little bit too well-written, as though the author was intimately familiar with the subject matter. And then sometimes, when he thinks she’s not looking, he gives her these long intense looks, like he’s searching for something that’s been hidden away. 

She decides to test him a bit, a few weeks into their friendship, while they’re on a walk through Regent’s Park. She isn’t quite sure how she’s going to do it, but luckily, an opportunity presents itself. While passing the lake, they see a small boy who’s managed to slip away from his mother’s watchful eye, run up to a goose and try to hit it with a stick. Susan gasps and nearly breaks away from Peter’s side to shoo the boy away from the poor creature, before someone beats her to it. 

“Hey! Leave it alone! What’d the goose ever do to you?” another little boy scolds, taking the stick out of the first boy's hand and chucking it into the lake. The boy's mother, finally having spotted him, runs up and pulls him away from the shore, hissing angry words at him under her breath while he pouts and drags his feet. 

The heroic boy turns back to the goose, who seems relatively unbothered by the whole thing. “Sorry about him,” the boy says, “Not all humans are like that, you know. Some of us are quite nice, really. And we care about things like treating other people and animals well, the way we’d want people to treat us. That’s a big rule for humans.”

“Reminds you of the sort of thing Edmund might have done, doesn’t it?” Susan comments as they walk away from the scene.

“Yes, it does,” Peter mutters, still watching the boy with an oddly sentimental look on his face. After a moment, his eyebrows furrow as he takes in what Susan’s just said, and he spins around to face her. She keeps her face carefully blank, despite his confused expression. “What did you just say?” 

“Just that the boy reminded me of Edmund,” she says again, with leading inflection, as though she’s trying to remind a forgetful old grandfather of something he already knows, which she supposes she is, in a way. 

“You know Edmund too?” he whispers finally, so softly that Susan has to read his lips to make out the words. 

She nods, and tears suddenly fill the corners of Peter’s eyes. “I thought I was the only one. I thought they were just-”

“Dreams,” Susan finishes for him, “So did I, until I met you.” 

Peter drops all pretense of formality and rushes her into a hug in the middle of the park. Passers-by are probably watching them strangely, but Susan can’t bring herself to care, not when she’s feeling her brother’s strong protective arms around her for the first time in what feels like eons. 

“Oh, Su. I thought I was going crazy when you showed up after the tournament,” Peter admits as the two of them break apart, and the sound of her old familiar nickname makes Susan’s heart feel whole again, “Maybe that the stress of competition was making my dreams bleed into real life.”

“What kinds of dreams were yours?” Susan asks, hoping beyond hope that they match up with hers.

“Oh, the kind of dreams a very lonely child would have. Three loving little siblings, a castle-”

“Talking beavers, fauns and tree nymphs-” she adds, too excited that she finally has someone to talk to about these things with to care about politeness. 

“Hunting parties, war councils, balls and galas-”

“Sparring on the grounds, playing chess in the library! Edmund telling stories by the fireplace at night, Lucy singing along to songs on the wireless-”

“Edmund and Lucy!” Peter gasps, “Oh, how I’ve missed Edmund and Lucy!” 

As they walk along the path through the park, sharing memories, their reminiscences sweep back and forth between England and Narnia with ease and without mention. A magical realm that they ruled together and a little house packed to the brim with a hearty, loving family–both seem equally fantastical to these two orphans who had never known how truly lonely they were until they found each other. 

They spend the next few days coming up with ideas of where Edmund could be and what he could be doing. Peter hopes he’s followed in his older brother’s footsteps and taken up fencing, while Susan makes a compelling case for the debate team and political clubs. 

“I suppose the most important thing is that he’s happy,” she decides eventually, after a long and playful argument about which song off The White Album Edmund would like the most (Peter advocates for Back in the USSR , while Susan prefers Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da ). 

“Do you think he could be happy?” Peter asks, soft and serious, “Without us?”

Susan thinks about it for a moment. “Well, were you happy? Before me?” she asks as a response.

“I thought I was, sometimes. But no, not really,” he admits.

“Me neither.” 

“I sort of want to run outside right now and turn the whole city upside down until we find him, and hold him tight so that he never gets away again.” While he talks, Peter turns to look out the closest window, as if hoping that Edmund will walk by outside at that very moment.

“Yes,” Susan agrees, “I think I’d give anything, go anywhere to see Edmund and Lucy again. Though I have this strange feeling that if we try and look we won’t find them, but if we sit back and wait we will. The same way we found each other.”

“I have the same feeling,” says Peter, and then he pauses for a moment. “Is it bad that I still want to try and look anyway?” 

It turns out they don’t have to do much active looking.

Because at that next week’s literary journal meeting, something strange happens. Diana, a first-year member like Susan, manages to find the courage to get up in front of the whole staff and ask all the older members if they’ll consider looking at an unofficial submission (this in and of itself is already strange, but it’s not the really strange part). 

“I know that we’re only supposed to accept work from current students and faculty,” Diana says as she sets the file folder down on the table, “But do you think we could at least give this a passing look?” Thalia and Cleo, the two co-editors of the journal, exchange suspicious looks, but Diana stands firm. “The boy my parents are fostering wrote it, and it’s actually quite good. He says he just wants feedback on grammar and spelling, mostly.” 

Thalia flips through the pages, and the unimpressed expression she’s been holding onto slowly slips away as she skims the writing. Eventually, she passes it to Cleo, who does the same. 

“Just grammar and spelling?” Cleo repeats, and Diana nods. 

“We can probably spare one editor to look over it and make some notes,” says Thalia, looking around the table for a volunteer. 

Susan raises her hand without really thinking. “I’ll do it,” she offers, “I enjoy proofreading.” This is not a lie, she really does enjoy proofreading. But there’s something more, too. She feels like the piece, even though she has no idea what it’s about, is calling to her somehow, and she just has to read it. 

“And you’re not working on editing too many other pieces right now,” says Cleo, glancing over towards their chalkboard schedule, “That works. Thank you, Susan.” 

Susan smiles graciously and takes the offered folder, holding it gently for a moment as though it’s some sort of precious artifact, and then slipping it into her bag, careful not to crease the corners. 

That night, Susan waits until Moira wanders off to dinner with friends and she’s alone in their dorm before she takes the folder back out of her bag. For some reason, reading it feels like something that she has to do alone. So the second the door clicks shut behind Moira, Susan dives into her bag and pulls the folder out, setting it gently down on her desk and flipping it open to the first page of writing. After positioning herself as comfortably as possible in the desk chair and flicking on the lamp, she begins to read:

The enemy forces are stronger than our spies allowed us to guess. The sounds of wolves howling, cyclopses sharpening their swords, and witches casting dark protective charms bury their way into my skull, sending fear sparking through my veins. 

Even though I am a King, and it is my job to believe in my people, to be at the head of our armies as they charge down the hill, I am not sure how likely victory is on this occasion. Part of me, the cowardly part I keep hidden as far inside as I possibly can, wants to turn tail and run, send all my armies home to their families, and spend the rest of whatever life I have left hiding somewhere quiet and cozy with my brother and sisters. 

But then, my younger sister Lily comes into view, pulling her horse up beside mine on the right. She would not run, even if I gave the order. She is the bravest of all of us, and the most sincere in the belief that goodness and righteousness must ultimately prevail. I know that even if every other member of our force turned back, Lily would stay and rush down the mountain herself to take on the enemy, dagger and crown both glinting in the wind and looking every bit like the Queen she is.

So I stay put. For her. And for Percy and Susannah, who are holding the castle against invaders from the south, many miles away from here but not far enough that I can’t feel them supporting me, encouraging me to fight on and make them proud. 

I raise my sword into the air and command my army forward. Lily laughs in delight as we charge down from the hilltop, entirely fearless, and I know in that moment that it is impossible for us to lose. 

Waiting until she was alone ends up being a very good decision, because barely a few paragraphs into the piece she’s already bawling her eyes out. The rest of the story goes on in much the same vein. The enemy armies are vanquished and the siblings all reunite in victory at their castle. It is not, by any means, the most polished or innovative or well-written story Susan has ever read, but she thinks it might just be the best. It’s all she can do to pretend to have it together when Moira comes back, and not to start crying again when she goes through the piece to make the spelling and grammar notes she promised. She uses a blue pen rather than the typical corrective red, because it feels so much kinder, and because she remembers it being Edmund’s favorite color. 

Susan returns the writing piece to Diana when they see each other in class the next day, but not before she meticulously copies out the whole text into her own notebook, misspellings and all, just to have. This is the copy she shows to Peter.

“And it was all done on a typewriter, so I couldn’t check handwriting or anything,” she explains while he reads through it and she paces back and forth anxiously across her dorm room floor, “But who else could have written it? It’s-”

“-the same as our dreams,” Peter finishes for her, “With the talking animals and dancing dryads and fights against evil ice witches.”  

“Exactly. Maybe an imaginative child could come up with some of those details, but all of them? At once? It’s too specific to be a coincidence. And the names of the characters; Percy, Susannah, Edward, and Lily? It’s too close. Far too close.”

“Though, frankly, I’m insulted to be called Percy. What am I, a member of the landed gentry?” Peter frowns, but then tries to put on a happy face for Susan. “This means he’s close, Su. Somewhere in the city.” 

“Living with strangers!” Susan sighs deeply, “Strangers who don’t care about him the way we do. What if they’re…what if they’re cruel and abusive and make him do all the housework and sleep in the freezing attic and never feed him enough!” 

Peter pushes himself up off the bed to wrap his arm comfortingly around Susan’s shoulder. “You said you know the girl who’s his foster sister, right? Does that seem like something she would let happen?” He asks it as a real question, not as a patronizing rhetorical put-down, which Susan appreciates.

“I don’t know Diana that well, but no, it doesn’t seem like she’d let anything awful happen to Edmund. Still, I just wish we could see him. To make sure.”

“I understand. But it’s not as though you can just walk up to this girl at a journal meeting and ask her brother’s name and her address.” 

“I know that! Ugh!” Nearly boiling over with frustration and confusion, Susan kicks the side of her desk, causing her bag to fall over and spill its contents onto the floor. This almost makes her ever angrier, until she notices a small scrap of paper float down along with the mess of pens and books. She grabs it out of the air, reads it, and gasps audibly. 

“What?” Peter asks.

“Look at this!” Susan shouts, shoving the scrap of paper into his face, “It was in my bag, so it must have fallen out of the folder the story was in.” 

Peter takes the paper from her and reads it aloud; “If found, please return to Edmund Pevensie, 1950 Richard St, London.” His eyes jump up and meet Susan’s, looking just as hopeful as she’s feeling. “We have to go,” he says immediately, “We have to go find our brother.”

Susan wrings her hands together as they stride through the tube station. She’s feeling rather anxious about the whole plan, which Peter picks up on quickly.

“Calm down, Su. It’s not like we’re going to abduct him or anything,” he jokes, and Susan’s nervous countenance briefly breaks open into a soft smile. “We’re just going to visit, you know, check things out, see how he’s doing, and whether he’s really our Edmund.” 

“What are we going to do if he is?” asks Susan. 

“We’ll…figure that out when we get there,” Peter shrugs, quickening his stride. 

“This is why Edmund was always the strategist,” Susan sighs, but she follows Peter out of the tube station and down the street.

“It’s number nineteen-fifty,” Peter reads off the scrap of paper once they reach Richard Street, as though he hasn’t memorized it by now, the way he’s kept it grasped in his hand and not let go since they found it a few hours ago. Susan glances up and down the street of houses, looking for the right one. Eventually, she spots it. 

“There. The one with the violets in the window boxes.” 

She and Peter walk, shoulder-to-shoulder, down the sidewalk and up the little brick steps to the door, which is emblazoned with the same golden numbers they’re looking for. They lock eyes, and then raise their fists and knock in unison. 

After only a few moments of waiting, Susan hears footsteps coming from inside the house, and the door swings open. Right there behind it, holding the knob, is Edmund, and Susan immediately has to forcibly resist the burning desire she feels to rush forward and wrap him in a hug. Somehow the idea that this little boy, who may be seventeen years old now but will always be little to her, has been out in the world all alone, without her to protect or guide him, hurts so much more than knowing the same thing about Peter. It probably has something to do with her powerful sense of older sister responsibility that she’s never had the chance to feel for anyone in real life before. She feels tears well up in the corners of her eyes, and turns quickly to wipe them away before her emotions threaten to overwhelm both herself and Edmund. 

“Hi,” Peter whispers, clearly just as affected by the moment as Susan is, “We’re looking for Edmund Pevensie.” 

It’s a ridiculous thing to say, but Susan can forgive him for it. Nothing could be more clear than the fact that this boy is Edmund Pevensie–the shaggy black hair that tickles the tops of his ears, the intelligent blue eyes, the sharp chin, and the way he’s looking at the two of them like they’re characters from his favorite book come to life.

“That’s me,” he says eventually, dropping the doorknob and stepping out onto the stoop, “I’m Edmund Pevensie.” 

“Of course you are,” whispers Peter reverently, as though he’s finally taking in the sight in front of him. Edmund seems unconcerned by the stares he’s receiving, and he returns them just as piercingly. 

“We go to school with Diana,” says Susan, reaching into her bag to pull out her notebook with Edmund’s story, “And we read your story.” She says this like it’s an explanation for everything, and in a way, it is. Edmund seems to understand, because he nods slowly, not even taking his eyes off Peter and Susan for a moment in order to look at the notebook Susan’s indicating. 

“We really liked it. Good worldbuilding. Solid character writing. Compelling plot,” Peter adds, and Susan sighs aloud at his inability to say what he means. 

“For God’s sake, we’re not literary agents trying to publish it, Peter!” she scolds, turning to shake her head affectionately at him.

“Peter?” Edmund repeats softly, questioningly, and they both nod in response. 

“And I’m-”

“Susan,” Edmund finishes for her, “You’re Susan.” 

With that, Susan finally snaps, and throws her arms around Edmund’s shoulders, pulling him close. He lets out a soft gasp, but then quickly melts into her embrace, squeezing her back as hard as he can. Finally dropping his detached facade, Peter lunges forward to join them, wrapping his arms around both Susan and Edmund. The three of them stay like that for a long time, on the front stoop, no doubt looking very strange to passers-by. 

“If it wasn’t both of you together,” Edmund whispers into Peter’s shoulder, “I might not believe it. I might just think I was going crazy.”

“We both thought that too,” says Susan, pulling away slowly, so that she can memorize the shades of blue in her little brother’s eyes, “When we met for the first time.” 

“How long have you-” 

“A few weeks,” answers Peter, “But as soon as we (or just me, I guess really, because Susan always knows everything before I do) as soon as we realized they weren’t just dreams-wait, have you had the dreams?”

“Of course. How else would I have recognized you?”

“Well we’ve been thinking and talking about you practically the whole time since we realized they were real memories.”

“Real memories,” Edmund repeats, like he’s never heard a more lovely idea, “Are you sure?”

“There’s too many things that match up between Peter’s dreams and mine for them not to be,” says Susan, knowing that Edmund always needs evidence before he believes in fantastical things, “And you knew us, and our faces.” 

Edmund nods. “Will you think I’m rude if I test it?” he asks.

“Not at all,” answers Susan.

“It’s just–I’ve been hoping for something like this to happen my whole life. I don’t want to be disappointed and find out it’s another dream or some sort of hallucination.” 

“We understand that,” says Peter. 

“Alright then,” Edmund thinks for a moment, “What’s her name? The one of…us who’s missing?” 

“Lucy,” Peter and Susan answer together, and her heart gives a longing pang, still reaching out for its last missing piece. She sees a similar pain reflected in both of her brother’s eyes. Both of her brothers . She revels, just for a moment, in the joy of having the two of them here with her, after spending years apart not even truly knowing what they were missing. 

Edmund nods again, biting his lip and seeming to try and think of another question. Susan takes the moment to look at him, really look at him, for the first time. Briefly, she thinks that he’s worryingly thin, but a puzzle piece seems to snap into place in her brain and that becomes familiar too, as though she can remember the same Edmund both as skinny and nervous and as full and happy. His fingertips are stained with ink, as though they’ve interrupted him while he was in the middle of writing, and the cuffs on his slightly oversized sweater are thoroughly worn, as though he fiddles with them a lot. This is familiar to Susan too, and she smiles softly to herself while taking it all in. She almost wants to reach over and brush down the cowlick on the back of his head, but given that Edmund doesn’t quite trust that she and Peter are real yet, she thinks it might not be the right time to show him that sort of affection.

“Do you know where she is?” he asks eventually, and Susan realizes this is a genuine question rather than another test. 

“No,” she sighs, “We don’t.” 

Edmund steps back within Susan’s reach and leans forward to set his head on her shoulder. She knows immediately what he wants, and wraps him up in another hug, taking the time to reach around and smooth out his hair as she does. 

“If this were fake,” Edmund says, “She’d be here, too, I think. Or you’d promise me you knew where she was. Fake things are usually a bit too good to be true, but real things are always at least a little bit sad.” 

Susan squeezes him even tighter, this boy who’s lived such a life that he cannot equate happiness with realness. Susan understands the feeling all too well. Until these past few weeks, almost the only happiness she ever experienced happened while she was dreaming. 

“I’d invite you inside, but it might be hard to explain to my foster parents,” he says, breaking away from Susan to reach over and hug Peter in turn. 

“Are they…good to you?” Susan breathes, hopefully.

“As good as I’ve ever had,” Edmund answers, “The orphanage I lived at closed down a few years ago, and since then I’ve been moving from family to family every few months. Most of them have been pretty okay. And I’ve always had my writing. And you guys, in my dreams.” 

Peter ruffles Edmund’s hair affectionately, and Susan sighs. “I just fixed that, you know.” All three of them laugh at the scene they’ve played out what feels like hundreds of times before.

From inside the house, a voice calls out; “Edmund! Who have you been talking to for so long out there?

“Just, uh, some people asking for donations for the, uh, the church, Ms. Forton!” 

“Give them a few coins from the dish and then close the door, please! You’re letting in a draft.” 

“You’ll come back to visit again, won’t you?” Edmund whispers, “Sometime when we don’t have to do our talking on the front steps?”

“Of course,” says Susan.

“We’ll come back tomorrow if you want us to,” says Peter, and Edmund’s eyes shine. 

A thought comes to Susan, and she pulls her notebook back out. Quickly, she scribbles both her and Peter’s dorm addresses onto an empty page, rips the page out, and stuffs it into Edmund’s hand. “And you can come visit us,” she says, “Whenever you like. It won’t be exactly like living together again, but-”

“It’s good enough for now,” says Edmund, “Better than anything I’ve had before.” 

A few days later, in the afternoon after all the secondary schools have gotten out, there’s a sharp knock on Susan’s door. She takes great pride in getting to introduce Moira to her little brother, but hopes Moira and Diana never meet each other, which might lead to some awkward questions. 

“I thought you were an orphan,” says Moira, without thinking, after Edmund’s introduction. Then she claps her hand to her mouth in embarrassment. “I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have-”

“It’s okay,” Susan laughs, “I understand how it could be confusing.” 

“Orphan just means you’ve got no parents,” says Edmund, the ghost of a smirk on his face. Susan feels a similar one coming on as she remembers how well she and Edmund used to be able to talk circles around foreign diplomats who came looking for trouble, “Orphans can still have siblings,” he continues. 

“Yes, of course,” agrees Moira, still clearly mortified. 

“We have an older brother as well,” Susan says casually, trying to act as though she’s not beaming with joy at the words. 

“And a little sister,” says Edmund. Susan nods, now trying not to act as if those words don’t break her heart just a little. 

Chapter Text

Edmund becomes a fixture around campus, to the point where most people (professors included) start assuming that he’s a regular, enrolled student. One day, when the public secondary schools are out for a holiday that university students don’t get off, Susan sneaks Edmund into one of her big general education lecture-based science classes and laughs silently to herself as he manages to answer several of the professor’s questions on balancing chemical equations that are stumping the actual university students. 

He tells his foster family that he has a job tutoring in the afternoons, which Susan supposes is half-true based on how often he ends up helping Peter with his homework, so he eats dinner with the two of them in the dining hall (complaining about the quality of the food and then going back for seconds) and joins them for study sessions in the library (grumbling about the other library patrons who he thinks are being too loud but refusing to move to one of the silent study rooms). Susan wonders how long it will be before she stops finding this behavior, as well as his near constant affectionate bickering with Peter, endearing. She usually shrugs it off with the idea that Ed’s got nearly sixteen years of little brother antics to catch up on, and decides to appreciate the fact that he feels safe and secure enough around them in order to be an annoying little git sometimes. 

Still, things aren’t quite perfect in Susan’s life, even if they’re closer than ever before. Peter and Edmund are the two greatest brothers anyone could ask for, but they’re still no substitute for sisterly company. They roll their eyes and give unhelpful answers when Susan tries to take them shopping with her to buy new dresses or wall art for her apartment, and their ability for gossip is pathetically underdeveloped, given that they don’t ask follow up questions in conversations with their friends and so they never have any new interesting tidbits to exchange with Susan. She loves them, of course, more than she’s ever loved anyone, but she still becomes rather tired of having to remind them both that it’s impolite to put your soiled trainers on someone else’s bedspread.

So even now that she has her brothers, she finds herself missing Lucy more and more. Maybe it’s because she finally has other people to talk about Lucy with, to remind her of other little details about Lucy that she’s forgotten and to bring Lucy up even when she’s trying to keep herself distracted. Peter, in particular, enjoys laughing about all of Lucy’s funny little habits, like how she said thank you to the clouds whenever it rained and making wishes on the lightning bugs she caught. Edmund has a habit of pestering Susan for all the stories she remembers about their youngest sister, in order to fill in his own reminiscences, always slightly envious of Peter and Susan’s memories of her youngest childhood moments (first steps, first words, first imaginary friend) that Edmund himself was too young to retain. 

Sometimes, when Susan’s alone and feeling a particularly sense of longing, she’ll reread the portions of Edmund’s writing where Lucy (barely disguised by a different name) appears, to remind herself that other people remember that little firecracker of a girl, who fought hard and loved even harder, who never lost belief in herself, her world, or her siblings for even a second. 

Susan wonders which is worse; to live an empty life, so dissimilar to what you had before that you can barely remember what that happiness felt like, or to live an almost full life, so close to being what you had before that you are reminded every second of the last thing you’re missing. It’s a question she cannot answer, no matter how long she mulls it over.

“Do you think she lives in London too?” asks Edmund one day, while the three of them are sitting in Peter’s dorm, finishing off the scraps of a fish and chips dinner they’d picked up from their favorite chippy down the street from the dorm building. There is no need for him to explain who ‘she’ is. There’s only ever one ‘she’ that they talk about when they’re together, and it’s always in that same soft, sorrowful tone. 

“I don’t know,” answers Susan eventually, mulling it over, “You were born here in the city, but Peter and I both moved here from other villages. So maybe she’s here, and maybe she’s not.” 

“But she has to be somewhere in England, right?” Edmund asks, looking to Susan rather desperately for reassurance. 

“If the patterns are anything to go by, then yes,” she says, delicately. 

“We’ll find her,” says Peter encouragingly, not showing any of Susan’s hesitation, “Just like we found each other.” 

Edmund nods, assured by Peter’s confident tone, and returns to his chips. Susan shoots Peter a grateful look that he returns with a sad smile. It is very difficult, sometimes, being older and looked to for all the answers. 

“There’s something, I think,” Peter continues, “Drawing us towards each other. That’s the reason Su and I ended up at the same university and she turned up at one of my tournaments even though she hates spectator sports. It’s the reason she got your writing from Diana and your address was in it so we could come find you. And that same thing will lead us to Lucy, too.”

“Will it lead us to her soon ?” Edmund asks.

“I certainly hope so,” Susan sighs. 

For a while, it seems like Peter’s theory isn’t going to lead to anything, or worse, be proven incorrect altogether, as things in the three sibling’s lives remain stubbornly unchanged. 

Every day, Susan wakes up at 6:30 in the morning, the same time she always has, though the joy of being able to do so in her very own cozy dorm room rather than a drafty crowded room shared with over twenty other girls can not be overstated. She pulls on a paired dress and cardigan in whatever color spoke to her the night before when she laid it out, and the two-tone oxfords she bought herself for daywear when she first got to university. Then she packs whatever books she needs (both for class and personal reading purposes) away in her bag and marches to the dining hall to meet Peter for a bracing cup of tea before classes begin. They chat, usually more casual fare so early in the morning, about the most recent mystery novel Susan’s read or the new plot twists on the radio dramas they both like or the latest campus gossip Susan’s heard from her roomates (which Peter pretends to be thoroughly disinterested in despite always being the one who brings it up). Then she jets off to her classes, leaving the dining hall (and Peter) as late as she can manage while still being on time. She sits on the front row in every class except for Chemistry, which she hates, taking notes as diligently as she can, only occasionally having to pinch herself out of daydreams about picnics with talking animals and dances with dryads. If she has time between classes, she’ll read in the library, work on editing the pieces she’s in charge of for literary journal (though she often gets distracted with attempting to fix the grammar and spelling in whatever new piece Edmund’s given her), do homework, or meet up with one of her girlfriends for tea, snacks, and chatter. Moira likes to take Susan out to try new cafes and visit clothing stores, insisting that Susan needs to diversify the colors in her wardrobes away from just her comfortable shades of black, white, brown, and navy. Susan, privately, agrees, but always feels disappointed with the lack of long flowing jewel-tone gowns and shining metallic headpieces in modern fashion, so she decides that clothes entirely different from what she really wants are a lesser evil than clothes that are closer but not quite right. (“Honestly, Susan! It’s as though you still think there’s war rationing going on, they way you limit yourself!” Moira cries plaintively, and Susan smiles a bit sadly to herself). 

Dinner is her favorite part of the day, because Edmund’s gotten out of school by then and has taken the tube over to campus to eat and chat with Susan and Peter. She always loves hearing Ed’s accounts of his school days; his witty impressions of his dull teachers and foolish classmates never fail to send her into a flurry of giggles, even if she has to put on a big-sister frown afterwards and tell Edmund that he needs to respect his elders and scold Peter for staining his shirt by snorting into his drink. They split after dinner, Peter off to fencing practice, Susan off to literary journal or student government meetings, and Edmund off to join whichever of his older siblings he claims is annoying him less at that particular moment. Getting Cleo and Thalia to let a fifteen-year-old boy into their coveted meetings is a bit of a struggle at first, but once Edmund proves he knows where to place a semicolon and the difference between mood and tone, they allow him to sit in and give occasional feedback (only because they’re looking for reactions from a more diverse set of readers than the staff can provide, not because they actually trust his opinions, Thalia is always quick to remind him). Fencing is easier. The first time one of the boys questions his right to be there, Edmund picks up his own epee and challenges the boy to a match. After Edmund works his way up through the ranks, beating every fencer but Peter (who he still manages to keep on his toes for a good while), the boy retracts his complaint and Edmund’s allowed to practice with the team. 

Susan always makes sure to walk Edmund to the tube station, and Peter always makes sure to walk Susan to the tube station, which means that they all go together. They wave goodbye at the top steps of the station, promising to see each other the next day, and then Susan and Peter walk home together. They talk about more serious things now that it’s later in the day; the protests against America’s war in Vietnam and the UK’s governmental regime in North Ireland, their irritation with Enoch Powell and Parliament, and John Lennon’s divorce, among others. They say goodbye at the door to Susan’s dorm, hugging each other tight, struggling to let go even though they’re going to see each other again in less than 12 hours. They both know all too well how everything can change all at once, and how you can end up lonely for years, missing someone you used to see every day.

Then Susan bathes, chats to Moira while she gets ready for bed, and finishes the chapter she’s working on in whatever book she’s reading. She tucks herself into bed promptly by ten, ready to get up and do it all again the next day. Once she’s still and waiting for sleep to overtake her, not constantly distracting herself with work and books and her brothers, a wave of melancholy typically descends. She tosses and turns, trying to silence her own thoughts that are calling out, echoing powerfully through her head, for what they’re missing. Susan prays for the relief of her dreams, wishing that they could help her now the way they used to help her through when she was just a lonely little child. The dreams come less frequently than they used to, now that she has Peter and Edmund, but she still goes to bed every night hoping for one, if just to get a glimpse of Lucy’s smiling face and to hear her tinkling laugh.

Her routine stays almost unchanged as fall officially slips away into winter, leaving the window panes of her dorm frosted over with glass at night when she goes to bed and the trees in the courtyard sometimes spotted with snow when she wakes up. As the temperature drops, Susan and Moira have to go out on a shopping trip to buy themselves thicker stockings, and Susan also buys a fashionable pair of high waisted plaid pants, gleefully imagining how the matron of her old orphanage would have reacted to such an ‘immodest’ garment. But nothing more drastic than that wardrobe change seems imminent. 

Susan tortures herself with images of Lucy celebrating Christmas all alone, staring out a rain-soaked window pane over the smoggy city skyline, wondering why no one has come for her. Or maybe worse, images of Lucy celebrating with a big adopted family and a table piled high with roast turkey, mashed potatoes, and piles of Christmas crackers, with stacks of presents Susan will never be able to afford all gathered under an immaculately decorated tree, waiting for Lucy to joyously rip them open without a thought for the siblings she’s missing. 

While she’s out buying presents for her brothers (a new gym bag for Peter and a fancy fountain pen and notebook set for Edmund) Susan sees a big, cuddly stuffed beaver in the window of a toy store. Before she even knows what she’s doing, she’s bustled into the shop, picked up the beaver, and taken it over to the checkout line, not even glancing at the price. She lugs the thing halfway home before she stops to question herself and realize she has no one to give it to. Briefly, she considers returning it to the store, but the beaver’s fur is so soft that it reminds her of better times full of cozy lodges and motherly hugs, and the creature’s glass eyes gaze up at her so sadly that she takes back to her dorm, sets it up in the windowsill, and when Moira asks about it, introduces her politely to ‘Mrs. Beaver’. 

Susan throws herself into even more activities than normal to serve as a distraction from her longing. She takes on more pieces for editing in literary journal than is probably advisable, and volunteers to co-chair several committees for student government events that she really couldn’t care less about. She even agrees to help Moira run a day camp over the winter holidays, where groups of students from grammar school get to visit campus and work on holiday-themed community service projects, like writing Christmas cards to homebound elderly folk and packing gift boxes for soldiers.

During this given volunteer opportunity, she and Moira are in charge of one of the youngest groups of grammar school girls, and Susan remembers that despite having been one once (or twice) she really hates thirteen-year-old girls.

They barely get fifteen minutes into some very disastrous cardmaking (involving a glitter fight and two separate instances of one of the ringleader girls putting red sequins on her face to make fun of another girl’s acne) before Moira realizes that they’re missing one of their charges. 

“...thirteen, fourteen, fifteen…There should be sixteen here,” she says, looking down at her clipboard and counting the names again, “Who are we missing?”

“The crybaby’s hiding in the bathroom,” announces the snooty-looking blonde girl who’s clearly the ringleader of the posse, “Probably embarrassed that she’s not going to get sent any Christmas cards herself. I told her as much myself before we got here.” The rest of the girls giggle and whisper among themselves, clearly spreading rude gossip and rumors. Susan is vividly reminded of her own public school experience, and wonders where all those girls who used to exclude her from their tea parties have ended up. She’s not entirely convinced that they aren’t standing in front of her right now, so stuck in their ways and self-obsessed that they simply never got any older.

“Hiding in the bathroom? Poor thing,” Susan whispers so only Moira can hear her, “Though I don’t blame her, honestly, having to put up with this lot.” Moira chuckles and gives Susan a gentle scolding shove.

“Can you go find our deserter while I manage things here?” Moira asks, and Susan nods.

“Sure thing. Just try not to get any paper balls thrown at you while I’m gone.” Susan stands up, brushing glitter off her skirt, and begins making her way towards the nearest girl’s bathroom in the building. 

When she gets there, she can hear small sobs coming from inside, which make an effort at silencing themselves once Susan pushes the door open, though there’s still the occasional hiccough. Susan walks over to the stall with a little pair of legs and brown tweed skirt visible under the door, and leans herself up against the opposite sink.

“Hello,” she says gently, “Are you alright?” 

“No,” says the voice piteously, and Susan nearly slaps herself on the forehead. Of course a child crying in the bathroom when she’s supposed to be making Christmas cards isn’t alright.

“What’s wrong?” Susan asks, trying again, “Maybe I can help.”

“You can’t,” the voice stubbornly pouts, “It’s not a thing anyone can help with.”

“Try me.”

“Well…all the girls in my class make fun of me. Especially Erin,” the voice sniffles, and Susan assumes that Erin is the girl with the blonde ringlets and cruel grin, “They say I’m a crybaby, that I’m too sensitive and I care too much about silly things. And that I’m ugly.”

“Trust me when I say those girls dont know anything,” says Susan, indignation swelling inside her at the familiar situation, “There’s nothing wrong with being sensitive or caring about the things that matter to you. I was made fun of for the same things many times as a child, and I’ve turned out just fine. Oh, and I’m sure you’re not ugly.”

“I don’t know…my older sister is the most beautiful person in the world and I don’t look anything like her,” muses the strained little voice. 

“Well, there are lots of different kinds of beautiful,” says Susan sagely, “I’m sure your sister thinks that you’re beautiful just by being you.” She knows that it’s cliche advice, meaningless despite being well-intentioned, but she can’t think of anything better at the moment.

“Maybe,” agrees the voice, “But Erin and the other girls don’t care what my sister thinks. I bet they’d bully me no matter what I look like. All because I like to rescue worms left on the sidewalk after rainstorms, and I used to try to get them not to kick the littlest kids of the swings in grammar school, and I cry when sad things happen to characters in books,” the voice mourns, “Oh, and because I’m an orphan. They wouldn’t have to know that part, except Erin’s mother gives money to the orphanage where I live, and she and Erin saw me there while they were taking a tour to see where their money goes. Everything got much worse after that. Erin doesn’t like girls who don’t have rich, prominent families, so you can imagine she can’t stand girls with no families at all to speak of.”

“I was an orphan too,” Susan muses softly, an idea beginning to occur to her, no matter how ludacris and hope-filled it is, “The girls in my class used to call me ‘little Susan Pevensie, queen of the orphanage’.” 

Suddenly, the door of the stall slams open, and Susan catches a glimpse of the girl she’s come to find in the mirror even before she turns around to face her. The girl has short, honey blonde hair curling around the tips of her ears, dimpled pink cheeks, and wide curious blue eyes. Even when they’re red-rimmed and tear-stained, Susan knows those eyes perhaps even better than her own. 

Before Susan can even compose her thoughts, it’s Lucy that approaches her first. They stare at each other without speaking for a moment, Lucy gazing thoughtfully into Susan’s face with an expression as though she’s trying to remember a word just on the tip of her tongue. She seems to find it, because she blinks a few times in rapid succession and then says; “It’s good to see you again. It feels like I’ve been waiting forever.” Then she surges forward and wraps Susan in a tight hug, her little face, still red and swollen, now pressed into Susan’s middle with eyes shut in comfortable bliss. Of course, Susan thinks, Of course Lucy remembers. Of course she’s had the dreams and trusts them to be true. She always was the best of us. Susan smiles so hard her cheeks begin to ache even as she feels tears begin to pour down her face, and she holds her little sister tight, stroking her hair comfortingly, and knowing that their family is finally complete again. 

“You’ve never been ugly,” she promises, voicing the first thought that comes to her mind, “And I love that you’re sensitive. It makes you so caring and kind hearted towards others, and that’s part of what makes you my favorite person in the whole world. Well, that and your laugh.”

“Am I really your favorite?” Lucy asks, softly, pulling back to look Susan in the eye again, “In the whole world?” 

“Of course,” Susan promises, “In fact, I’ve got a Christmas present just for you in my dorm room, and I’ll let you have it today, before I even wrap Peter and Edmund’s gifts.” 

Lucy’s eyes light up and the mention of their brothers. “Are they here too?” she asks, pausing to think, “Well, of course they are, you were born first so it makes sense that you found each other first,” she decides, answering her own question. 

“They’ll be so excited to see you, Lu. We’ve missed you oh so much.” 

“Even though you had each other?”

“Especially because we had each other,” says Susan, squeezing Lucy even tighter around the shoulders with affection, “We’re just not complete with you, Lucy.” 

Lucy’s eyes grow, if possible, even wider, and both of the sisters collapse into tears once more. After they dry their eyes, Susan sneaks Lucy back to her dorm, refusing to make her spend any more time than necessary with the bullies in her class. She’s sure that the other university students can handle running the event, and that if they’d ever met Lucy Pevensie, they’d understand the need to drop everything else to see her smile. 

Chapter Text

That first Christmas with all four Pevensies together is a joyous event, perhaps the most joyous of any Christmastime ever had before or since. 

Susan presents herself at the orphanage where Lucy lives, dressed in her finest (a velvet dress, fur muffler, and high-heeled shoes all borrowed from Moira’s practically endless closet), carrying two separate forms of identification and a letter introducing herself as Lucy’s older sister, asking to take the youngest Pevensie home for Christmas Day. It takes a few appeals to Christian charity and references to the Christman-deprived likes of Ebenezer Scrooge to convince the squinty-eyed, suspicious old matron to hand over her charge, but Susan’s years of practice with diplomatic negotiations get her there in the end. Lucy skips down the sidewalk all the way back to Susan’s dorm, where they’ve set up for the day, and Susan is so happy to finally be together with her favorite person again that she can’t stop herself from joining in (nor does she really want to, when she hears how it makes Lucy giggle to see her normally dignified older sister making a total fool of herself in public and not even caring). 

Peter works a similar miracle at Edmund’s foster home, though Susan privately thinks that the Fortons wouldn’t notice Edmund was missing until at least a week had passed, bringing the four Pevensie siblings together to celebrate the holiday for the first time in over twenty years. 

They decorate Susan’s dorm to the fullest extent they can manage without getting a fake snow machine (although Edmund is strongly in support of that idea). 

Susan and Peter even manage to pull off a daring secret nighttime trip to the nearest Christmas tree lot, where they purchase the very last live tree the vendor has. They then carry it home several blocks to Susan’s dorm at the university (stopping at several keys point along the way to catch their breath and readjust the branches to be less scratchy), get it inside, then set it up and decorate it with tinsel and a popcorn garland, all without waking Edmund and Lucy, who are sleeping soundly in a cuddle pile on Susan’s bed.

The Christmas dinner they attempt to cook up in the dorm kitchen is slightly less successful, possibly because Edmund and Lucy prove to be more of a hindrance than a help. They run in circles around the counter island playing some strange and extra violent version of tag, dare each other to pick hot potatoes straight off the roasting pan with no oven mitts, and re-enact dramatic swordfights with the stirring spoons, but Susan doesn’t berate them for any of it. She thinks that this is probably one of the first times in either of their lives that they’ve gotten the chance to act younger than their age, and so she believes they deserve time to enjoy it. 

This also happens to be the same advice she gives Peter when the two burgeoning pranksters steal every present from his stocking and replace them with black rocks, and then feign ignorance at the whole thing, telling Peter he must have simply been so naughty over the past year that even Father Christmas noticed. After a few minutes of giggles and smirks that they probably think are subtle, Susan gives them both her patented look of skeptical disappointment (the key is the arched left eyebrow) and they return all of Peter’s presents to him. 

Presents are exchanged on Christmas morning, and the siblings who have never before had someone to get gifts for or to get gifts for them find even more joy in the process than normal young people. Lucy, who thanks either to fantastic intuition or dumb luck, has been getting ready to spend the holiday with her brothers and sister for longer than she’s known them, presents her older siblings with fantastically detailed drawings of a very familiar-looking old castle and grounds, with the horse stables, archery range, jousting arena, grand hall, library, and royal bedrooms all given their own drawings, and small cartoonish versions of the kings and queens exploring around. If she didn’t know that such a thing was impossible, Susan would swear that sometimes the little figures move around between the drawings, visiting each other and trying out different activities. Edmund has written them all personalized stories that he’d described to an English teacher as ‘a cross between high fantasy and historical fiction worlds constantly crossing over due to unknown magics’, but that the Pevensies all recognize as collections of their best moments in the shared dreams they once lived. Peter, bemoaning his lack of creative talent compared to his two youngest siblings, gives out his store-bought gifts, but takes back his complaint when Lucy exclaims that no one’s ever bought her something ‘that they had to walk all the way to Camden Market for and got all wrapped up’. The gifts include a silver pocket watch for Susan that he found at a secondhand store, a handy pen-knife multitool for Edmund, and a knit winter hat with a bright pink pom-pom on top for Lucy, which she immediately jams on her head and then refuses to take off for the rest of the day. 

Edmund and Peter both thank Susan multiple times for their gifts and put them to immediate use, Peter packing up his new gym bag and Edmund starting to write another story, the plot of which he’s just dreamt about, in his new notebook with the fancy new pen. Lucy pretends to be annoyed with Susan for spending even more money buying her a second gift, but the way she immediately starts drawing a picture of the stuffed Mrs. Beaver in her new sketchbook tells Susan that she’s only joking. Susan herself, who was somehow not expecting any presents despite taking on the bulk of the organizing for the holiday, comes away with the largest haul of her life. She supposes that years of previous bleak and disappointing holidays have stopped her from ever getting her own hopes up, but that just means she’s entirely taken aback and overjoyed when her siblings pile her lap high with packages, including a secret final gift from all three of them; a beautiful silver necklace with a series of star-shaped charms on the end. 

“We pooled everything we had,” Peter explains, while Susan gapes at it, “I found the chain in the same secondhand store as the pocket watch and brought it to the father of one of the guys on the team to make the charm and do the engraving. He’s a jewelry maker, and gave me a good discount because he knows me.”

“The design was my idea,” says Lucy proudly, “One star for each of us, see? And they’re all connected like a constellation, the same way that we’re connected.” 

Susan’s eyes begin to well up, but she holds it back. 

“Read the writing on the back,” suggests Edmund, “I wrote the engraving.” 

Susan turns the charm over in her shaking hands and reads: For Susan, who brought us together again . Then, she really does burst into tears. 

It’s not until Christmas and New Year's have passed them by that the real problem in the Pevensie siblings' lives reveals itself. 

One bright and crisp January morning that should have been very happily spent between two sisters searching for deals at the Farmer’s Market, turns rather messy when Lucy is nearly half an hour late rather than her usual five minutes early, and then arrives at Susan’s door with tears pouring down her face, rather than her usual skipping and smiling. Susan ushers her quickly into the dorm, trying not to let her shock and worry show too obviously on her face. Lucy tries to blubber out an explanation, but Susan just shushes her and pulls her up onto the bed to cuddle her and stroke her hair.

Eventually, Lucy’s sobs subside enough that Susan can make out the words. “Er-Erin told me that she’s going to-going to tell her mother to get me transferred to a-a different orphanage. Because she’s-she’s tired of having to see my ugly, smug face.” Lucy breaks down in hiccoughs again, and Susan has to rub her back in comforting circles and whisper kind things for several minutes before she’s ready to speak again. “I think it’s because, well she said that that-that I’ve been ignoring her lately, and I think she’s annoyed that she can’t make me cry as often and that I’ve been so much-so much happier since I’ve found you guys and the other girls in class have noticed and some of them have been a lot nicer to me, which Erin hates and-and so she’s trying to get me sent away from you. Because no one wants me to be allowed to be happy! I’m finally happy for the first time in my life and she’s going to take it away forever!” With that, Lucy fully breaks down again, collapsing into Susan’s lap, inconsolable. 

Susan relates the whole scene to Peter the next day, pacing frantically back and forth across the floor of his dorm room as she does, and appealing to him for help finding a solution. “And I tried to tell her that it's all going to be okay, but I don’t know if she believed me. Not that I blame her, since I don’t know if I believed me either. That awful, snotty little Erin brat really wants to ruin everything for Lu, and I’m afraid that she’s got the power to do it too.”

“But what can we do to fix it, Susan? Go visit the place uninvited and try to convince the matron not to send Lucy away? I don’t see that conversation going too well,” Peter sighs desperately. 

“We could…adopt her or something,” Susan throws out suddenly, flailing her arms around as she brainstorms, “We’re legally of age. And we could adopt Ed, too, while we’re at it, get him away from those neglectful Fortons.”

“Would the government even let us adopt them?,” Peter asks, trying to be the voice of reason, “I’m about to turn twenty and you’re only eighteen. We’re not exactly the kind of people the government trusts to raise a thirteen-year-old and fifteen-year-old.”

“But we’re their older siblings, even if the government doesn’t know it! We’ve still got the same last name, for crying out loud, that has to count for something!” Susan pauses to think harder for a minute, even as she continues violently pacing back and forth across the floor, “Maybe we could claim that all the records of our family got destroyed in the war!”
“Susan…the war had been over almost five years when I was born,” he reminds her, “Or, well, the second time I was born.” 

Susan nods, embarrassed by her mistake. Events between all of her lives have been blurring together in her mind recently, now that she has all her siblings back together. But she continues on anyway. “We just can’t leave Lucy in that horrid place with all those girls who are so mean to her, we just can’t, Pete. I see how it’s affecting her, even when she tries so hard to hide it and put on a big brave smile for us.”

“I know, Su, I know.”

“It’s just, if we wait much longer…” Susan actually stops pacing now, her face softening and eyes beginning to water, “Then that awful Erin girl could do something really awful with the power her mother has over the orphanage and…get Lucy sent somewhere else. She could take our Lucy away from us. Take our little, sweet, innocent sister away! I can’t live without her again, Peter, and neither can you, or Edmund! We’ll fall apart, you know it.”

“I know Su,” Peter says again, stepping forward to wrap his arms comfortingly around her shoulders. 

“We have to do something,” she mutters into his shoulder, trying to hold back sobs, “We just have to.”

That’s how, one week later, Susan and Peter find themselves wearing the best clothes in front of a rather boring-looking woman’s paper-strewn and disorganized desk at the offices of Her Majesty's Inspectorate, appealing for guardianship of their two younger siblings. 

“We were a very happy family, you see, Ma’am,” Susan is explaining, while the woman fills out the appeals form, “Until we lost our parents, that is.” She and Peter had agreed before they came–no outright lying to the government–and this is not a lie. It’s more of an omission, or a misrepresentation of facts. “After that, we were given into the care of a…well, I suppose you could call him an Uncle. A guardian, anyway. He took in the four of us, but we didn’t stay with him long. He was…” Susan trails off, not quite sure how to describe it.

“Difficult,” Peter continues for her, “Very kind and generous some times, cruel and withholding at others.”

“What was this Uncle’s name?” the woman asks, pen hovering over a line on her paperwork.

“Aslan,” says Susan without thinking. 

“Aslan?” the woman repeats, raising her eyebrows skeptically. 

“He was an odd sort, you understand,” Peter jumps in, “It may have just been an alias, but it was the only one he ever told us.”

“I doubt he’ll be in any records under that name,” Susan says, after pretending to think about it, “He was always sort of difficult to pin down.” 

The woman nods, looking unconvinced, but keeps filling out the form anyway.

“After we’d been looked after by our Uncle for a while, tumultuous though it was, in his favor one moment, out of it the next, there was an…accident,” Susan says, continuing to spin the slightly altered tale of their lives, “And I think he must have blamed us for it because afterwards he split us up, sent us to different parts of the country, different orphanages, with no way whatsoever to contact each other or him.” 

“And then years went by, without us knowing if we’d ever even see each other again,” continues Peter, “Until recently when by total coincidence Su-sorry, Susan-and I reconnected at university.”

“And we were quite happy to have found each other again, because we’d each lived so long with no family to speak of. So then we decided we just had to find Edmund and Lucy, assuming they were feeling the same sort of way, and to make sure they were safe and well-cared for, you understand.” 

“And are they?” The woman asks, looking up from her papers, “Safe and well-cared for, that is.”

Susan and Peter exchange strained eye contact, trying to silently agree on a succinct yet truthful answer. Luckily, the government woman has just realized her pen is dry, and so has turned away to grab a new one from an overflowing mug and does not notice the Pevensie’s lightning speed conversation with just their eyes. 

“I wouldn’t…exactly say so,” Susan begins delicately, “Our youngest sister Lucy lives at an orphanage here in London, and she’s had a lot of troubles with the place. Bullying, harassment, and the like from the other girls, you understand. All made worse by the fact that her biggest bully at school is the daughter of one of the orphanage’s biggest philanthropic supporters, so none of the adults in the situation have done anything about it. Right now she’s terrified out of her mind that the girl who hates her is going to get her transferred out of the city, to another orphanage, away from us and everything she’s ever known.” 

Susan hopes she’s not imagining the way that the government woman’s eyes soften. “So you would be willing to make a formal complaint against the,” the woman pauses to check the name in her files, “Barathrum Home for Girls? And to jointly file for custody?” 

“Yes, Ma’am,” nods Susan, refusing to allow even the smallest of trembles into her voice. 

The woman makes a note on her paperwork, and then continues to flip through the file in front of her. “And the boy’s guardians?” she asks, “The…Fortons?” 

“Neglectful, Ma’am. They had a daughter who was very kind, but ever since she’s gone off to university, things have gotten decidedly worse in the house. Edmund has to do practically everything for himself. Cooking, cleaning, getting himself back and forth to school and any other activities he might want to do. We try to help where we can, of course, but it’s difficult with the distance-”

“He says it’s not a problem for him, because he’s very self-sufficient,” says Peter, “But we don’t think he should have to be, at that age. He should have someone who cares, to help and look out for him. You understand?”

The woman nods again, eyes now definitely softened, and she makes a few more notes. 

“If you were to be granted custody,” she asks, “Where would you and the children be living? It’s not as though they’d be allowed to have trundle beds in your university dorms.” She gives a little giggle at her own joke, but cuts off when she sees the looks on Peter and Susan’s faces. 

Peter looks at Susan, and then sits up a little straighter in his chair, preparing to answer the question. 

“I admit that housing may be a potential issue, but…”

Then he trails off and descends into awkward, stiff silence. He shoots Susan a desperate, begging look and she wracks her brain for something suitable to say, but comes up empty. 

Then, suddenly, the government woman snaps her fingers together as though an idea has just occurred to her, gets up from her desk (sending several stacks of papers toppling over onto the ground), and begins rummaging through the filing cabinet behind her desk. For a moment, Susan wonders if they’re being dismissed, albeit very strangely. 

“I thought your names sounded familiar,” she says, back still facing them as she opens drawer after drawer, clearly in search of something specific, “But I couldn’t put my finger on it until just now when you mentioned housing. I saw your names, several weeks ago, on a document-”

Susan and Peter exchanged confused looks. 

“What?” Susan mouths silently, “Why would our names be on a government document?”

Peter just shrugs in response. 

“It’s here somewhere,” says the woman, pulling papers upon papers out of her files and letting them land around her, “With the other wills.” 

“Wills?” repeats Susan, “As in end of life wishes?” 

“Yes, yes,” says the woman vaguely, still ruining whatever precious little organization existed in her office to begin with. “Aha! Here it is!” She emerges from the filing cabinet, triumphantly holding up a wrinkled manila filing folder with the name ‘Plummer’ written across it in smudged ink. She wades back across the office and sits down at the desk, flipping through the folder rather than giving Peter and Susan any real explanations. 

“The woman who’s will this is, Ms.Plummer, she died almost 20 years ago, and her house has been managed and kept-up by a distant relative, a cousin or a niece or something, I think. But anyway, the relative, whoever she is, has suddenly and unexpectedly received a proposal of marriage and is going to move out to the country with her new husband.”

Susan nods along to the story as politely as she can manage, though she still has no idea what this has to do with them. A little itch begins in the back of her mind, though, while the woman continues to speak, a familiar sensation telling her that there’s something she needs to be remembering. 

“While she was clearing out the house to prepare for her move, she found an original copy of Ms.Plummer’s will, with an extra provision no one in the family had seen before. So they took it to the family lawyer, who verified its authenticity and said he remembered helping Ms.Plummer write it all those years ago. Anyway, they sent it off to the government to see if it could still be fulfilled after all this time, and it ended up here in my department, because we’ve got the most complete set of birth records in the whole country and they wanted us to try and track down the people who the will refers to. But I’m so busy, you can see, I just filed it and never got around to working on it-” She gestures around to the mess of an office, and Susan silently sends up a prayer that their guardianship paperwork won’t get lost in the ocean of papers. “But anyway, here, why don’t you look through it and see if anything sticks out to you?” With that, she slides the old, fragile-looking document across the desk towards Susan and Peter. Scared to pick it up, Susan leans over the desk and begins to read:

This is the last Will and Testament of Polly Plummer. I, Polly Plummer, being of sound mind and body, do hereby declare-

“Bottom of the fourth paragraph, dear, that’s what will interest you,” the woman suggests kindly. Susan directs her eyes down to the aforementioned section and continues reading:

I leave the deed and usage of my London home, 1955 Woodland Way, to my second cousin Penelope Plummer, until the time either of her marriage or death. At the occurrence of either of these events, ownership will be passed to Peter Pevensie. If he is either unwilling or unable to take responsibility for the property, it passes to his younger sister Susan Pevensie, and so on through the line including Edmund Pevensie and Lucy Pevensie. This bequeathment is made in the hopes that the home, in particular the attic and the gardens, will give them a place to come together and remember all their joyous, magical adventures. If none of them are able to take responsibility, the house will be sold and all profits donated to the London Children’s Hospital. 

Susan has to hold back a gasp when she sees her own name on the paper, in handwriting that seems eerily familiar. “When was this written?” she asks. 

“You see, that’s the strange thing,” says the government woman, looking politely bemused and also slightly hopeful, as if she’s expecting Susan will have an explanation, “It was written in 1946. Before, correct me if I’m wrong, any of the four of you were born.” 

Comprehension washes over Susan, and she hears Peter let out a soft ‘aha’ beside her, showing that he understands as well. The woman raises her eyebrows expectantly at both of them, and Susan scrambles internally for an explanation. 

“Ms.Plummer knew our parents,” is the first thing she thinks of, which is essentially true but also potentially misleading.

“They had our names picked out very far in advance,” Peter adds, “And they always knew they wanted four children.” 

The woman nods, and Susan hopes she’s just as gullible as she is disorderly. “And what does this mean, this note here, about how she hopes the home will be…’a place to come together and remember all your joyous, magical adventures’?”

“Oh,” Susan grins at this question, because she can actually answer it easily (although maybe not entirely truthfully), “Ms.Plummer’s house was the place where our most beloved childhood make-believe games were born; games she helped make up and taught to us, which we still remember fondly to this day. So it holds great sentimental value to all of us. She likely was already planning to teach them to us before we were born, so she was just looking forward a bit when she wrote it down.” 

“Ah,” the woman nods pensively, as though she’s trying to decide whether Susan’s claim makes sense, “Spent a lot of time at her house growing up, did you?”

“I suppose you could say that,” answers Peter delicately. 

The woman looks down to make a few more notes on her papers before speaking again. “Well, I suppose that solves the housing question.” 

Susan pauses to let herself imagine it, her and her siblings living in Ms. Polly’s old house, having it all to themselves. Separate bedrooms for each of them, that they could decorate to their heart’s content. A kitchen where they could make big family dinners. A study for Edmund to write in, the attic converted into a studio for Lucy to paint in, a large backyard for Peter to practice fencing, and, of course, a library for her to read in. It’s beyond anything that’s ever appeared in her wildest dreams. Susan can’t help but feel it shouldn’t quite be possible, and yet it is. 

“And assuming that you make enough money to maintain the household, keep yourselves and the two younger ones clothed and fed…” the woman pauses for confirmation of this fact.

“Yes, Ma’am,” says Susan promptly, “I receive a very generous scholarship for attending university that more than covers my tuition, and given that I wouldn’t have to pay for housing, I could put even more of it towards raising Ed and Lucy. I also earn a bit on the side through academic help, tutoring and editing people’s papers, those sorts of things.” 

“I work a few hours a week as an assistant sports and games coach for the local secondary school,” says Peter, “And I could take on more if we needed the money. Though I don’t anticipate that we would.” 

The woman writes all of this down and then flips back through all the notes she’s taken thus far during the meeting, reading them back over. Susan is frankly astounded that anyone can decipher that handwriting, even the person who wrote it. 

“Well, seeing as you’re the closest living relatives, you have housing and sufficient income…” she says, “I can see no reason to deny your application for custody of your younger siblings.” With some difficulty, she pulls a large green stamp out of an over-crowded drawer and then stamps the word ‘Accepted’ over their main application form.

Susan lets out a little happy shriek and then has to stand up and pace a bit to get her excitement out. Meanwhile, Peter leans almost entirely over the desk to shake the government woman’s hand enthusiastically. “Thank you so so much, Ms…” his eyes flicker down to the nameplate on the desk, which has become unhidden during all the shuffling around, “Ms.Vesta. It really does mean so much to us, to have our family finally together again.”

Mrs.Vesta smiles warmly at him, even as she has to readjust her hair and sweater after Peter’s over-eager parting gesture. “Of course, dear,” she says, patting his hand kindly. All of her carefully built dull government worker facade has come crashing down within half an hour of meeting the two eldest Pevensies. 

“If you ever want any help straightening up the office,” Susan offers, stepping over a pile of empty tea-stained mugs on her way towards the door, “I’ve got plenty of experience with cleaning and sorting.” 

“I might just take you up on that,” Mrs.Vesta smiles, “And who knows, maybe there’ll be a job with Her Majesty’s Inspectorate in your future.”

Susan tilts her head to the side, considering the offer. She imagines what the job would be like; helping place other orphaned children in their forever homes, making sure all the schools are up to snuff and serving every kind of child, and reuniting other families besides her own. “I’d like that,” she decides, and Mrs. Vesta smiles even wider. 

With that, they all say goodbye, with many more thank-yous and vigorous handshakes, and Susan and Peter manage to wade their way out of the office without breaking anything. 

“What do you say to finding and adopting Eustace next?” Peter jokes as they walk out of the office, elbowing Susan playfully in the side. 

“Oh, Peter, don’t,” Susan half sighs and half laughs, “If Lucy hears you say that she’ll never let it go until we actually do go and find him. And while I may be able to tolerate cousin Eustace’s company at the best of times, I certainly can’t raise him in my own house.” 

Peter laughs exuberantly enough that another government worker sticks his head out of his office door, confused, but Susan can’t bring herself to mind. She doubts whether she’s even been quite so happy in all her life as right now, knowing that nothing is ever going to tear their family apart again. 

At the doors of the government building, the two exchange a quick, triumphant hug, and then split off in opposite directions, to go collect Lucy and Edmund.

“Remember, don’t tell her anything,” Susan calls at Peter’s retreating back, “Just say that we’ve got a surprise!”

Peter sends a thumbs-up back towards her as he continues to walk, and as soon as she watches him descend safely downward into the nearest tube station, Susan turns around and continues on her way to go fetch Edmund.

When they’re all back together in Peter’s dorm, she can hardly wait to break the news, and fidgets impatiently all throughout Peter and Lucy’s chess game, while Lucy gives a forcefully positive account of her school day.

“Has Edmund put bugs into your stockings again, Susan?” she asks eventually, “You’re acting awfully strange.” 

“Hey! I haven’t done that in years!”

“Once is enough,” mutters Susan darkly, before answering Lucy’s question. “I’m fine, Lu. Just excited. You see, Peter and I have some news to share with you two.”

“Are we getting a cat?” asks Lucy eagerly. 

“...no.” 

“Aww, shucks.” Lucy sighs and pretends to sulk. 

“It’s even better than a cat, Lu,” smiles Peter.

“Okay,” she says, abandoning her fake pout, “Just know you’re setting up some awfully high expectations here.” 

“Well, Peter and I went to visit a government office today and-”

“Why?” interrupts Edmund.

“Maybe you’d find out if you ever let me finish,” says Susan, channeling her inner school teacher.

“I think you might just want to cut to the case, Su,” Peter advises, “You’ll never get through the prologue with these two.” 

“Fine,” Susan sighs, slightly annoyed that the introduction she’d been mentally planning on the walk over is going to be wasted, but still too excited about the news she’s delivering to feel any real blow to her mood, “We found out that Ms. Plummer, Polly, left us her old London house in her will. And the four of us are going to get to move in a few months from now. Together.” 

“Together?” repeat Edmund and Lucy.

“Yes. Together,” says Peter, beaming now, “Because we’ve been granted permission from the government to adopt you and become your official adult guadians.” 

Edmund and Lucy both let out happy screams and leap up to hug their older siblings, eyes suddenly filled with tears, though Edmund might deny it later. 

A few minutes later, once the initial excitement has subsided, Lucy’s settled back down at the chessboard and Edmund’s settled behind his newest book, Susan takes a moment to remind everyone what this momentous occasion really means. 

“We’re all going to be together. All the time,” she promises, relieved and proud that for the first time in her life, she’s certain that what she’s saying is true. 

“Just like we always were in Narnia,” says Lucy, sighing with nostalgia.

“Narnia,” repeats Peter, whispering the name of their old kingdom like a prayer. They’ve never said it out loud before, and the first time doing so feels like they’ve opened the window of an old, dank room and let in a gust of warm, fresh air. All four of the siblings sit in joyous silence for a while, reveling in the magic of the moment. 

“Was Narnia…a real place?” Susan asks eventually, raising a question that has been on her mind for months, if not years.

“I always assumed it was a game we’d played as children,” answers Peter, “But the memories seem so…”
“Vivid,” Edmund finishes, “As though they must have really happened.”

“Of course they really happened,” says Lucy simply, not looking up from the chessboard where she’s contemplating her next move. 

“That would certainly explain a few things,” says Susan casually, as though that is not a deeply earth-shattering idea to accept, that even that fundamentally unbelievable parts of her dreams have been real this whole time.

It has all seemed so real, almost touchable, this whole time. But to say that it actually is, that the four of them really became kings and queens of a magical world and lived a whole life there, is an entirely different thing altogether. 

“We found each other, didn’t we? We’re all real. Why would only one part of our dreams be true?” asks Lucy rhetorically, and Susan can’t deny the logic there. 

“So we really were kings and queens,” Peter whispers, “The Magnificent, The Gentle, The Just, and The Bold.” He looks at each of them in turn as he speaks their old titles, and they all sit up a little straighter, as if imagining crowns on their heads and thrones at their backs. 

“But why are we back here in England now, then?” asks Edmund. 

“We’ve come back before, haven’t we?” asks Susan in an attempted answer, “England then Narnia then England then Narnia then England again.” 

“Or all that but then add another Narnia and England, for me and Ed,” says Lucy.

“Right. We weren’t allowed back.” Susan looks over at Peter and finds the same decades-old pain and betrayal she’s feeling freshly reflected in his eyes. “Lions really are liars.”

“What?”

“Oh, nothing. Just something I remembered back from when I was a child. The third time. Or was it fourth?”

“Depends how you count,” shrugs Edmund, “But that doesn’t answer my real question; why are we doing this all again? What happened the last time? The last time we were going to try and go to Narnia?”

Susan thinks as hard as she can, but whenever she gets close to what feels like an answer she hears the piercing screech of a train whistle and feels her whole body recoil. When she looks up, all of her siblings are wearing pained expressions like they just experienced the same thing. 

“Something bad,” is Peter’s whole answer, “Something very bad.”

They all sit in silence for a very long time, as the chill they banished only minutes ago seems to seep back into the room. Susan nearly starts to shiver, and pulls on the closest garment, which happens to be Peter’s fencing team sweatshirt. It dwarfs her skinny frame and messes up her hair, making Lucy giggle at her. The silence breaks, as it always does with the tinkling sound of Lucy’s laugh, and suddenly they’re all laughing together and Susan is flailing her sleeved arms, using them to hit whoever is closest. 

Eventually, she sinks back into her chair, smiling once more, and attempts to put the conversation back on track.

“Everyone else in the whole would would think we were crazy, you know,” she says, “If we ever told them what all we’d lived through.” 

“Imagine trying to explain to one of our history professors that we remember the war too,” Peter jokes, “Even fought in a few ourselves.” 

“Imagine if I tried telling the Doctor that the reason my bones are so brittle is that this is the third time I’ve been fifteen,” adds Edmund. 

“Imagine if I could tell the other girls in my class that I used to be adored by thousands of subjects, threw the grandest balls in the land, and had new gowns made every season,” sighs Lucy. 

“You’re better than any of them even without all that,” Susan promises, and Lucy blushes. 

“I just can’t think of a way that we could prove it was ever real. What would we even do, go find our old castle? You can’t exactly look up ‘Land of Narnia: fantastical kingdom of magical creatures and mythical beasts’ on a map,” snarks Edmund. 

“No one likes pessimism, Ed,” says Peter, scolding, “Or sarcasm.”

“What are you, my teacher?”

“Thank goodness for me and my sanity that I’m not.” 

A pen hits Peter smack on the forehead, and Edmund ducks down behind his book, feigning innocence. 

Susan rolls her eyes at the both of them while Lucy giggles, but then she pauses to think for a moment. A memory occurs to her, unbidden; Aslan the lion’s deep voice echoing through the crowded ballroom, commanding her to remember. She feels an immense pressure on her shoulders, one she’s gotten used to over time but that hurts nonetheless. The pressure to remember one small detail that’s hanging just out of reach. She used to feel like it was hopeless, and would give up without trying, but now, when she looks around at her siblings’ faces, (Peter smiling at the challenge as he looks around for something to throw in return, Edmund pretending to stare studiously into the pages of his book but actually looking smugly pleased with himself, Lucy pink-cheeked and grinning mischievously as she swaps Peter’s chess pieces around on the board while he’s distracted), Susan knows that she can do it. She can remember, for their sakes. So she thinks, as hard as she possibly can about how they could possibly get back to Narnia, until something sparks somewhere in the back of her mind, and she finally, really, remembers. 

“Wait! I do know a way!” she shouts, jumping up from her chair and then rushing over to her desk where she begins rifling through the drawers while her siblings shoot confused glances at each other. “Aha!” Triumphantly she pulls out an old, wrinkled envelope and marches back over to where the others wait. She throws the envelope down on the table, and they all stare down at it. 

“The Professor Digory Kirke Memorial Scholarship Fund,” Peters reads aloud.

“There’s a return address here,” notes Edmund, “And it seems rather familiar.”

“The wardrobe!” Lucy gasps, understanding washing over her face as though she too has just remembered everything thanks to Susan’s prompting, “Do you think it’s still there, in the Professor’s house?” 

“Well,” says Susan, reaching back to adjust her hair and mentally beginning to compose a packing list, “There’s only one way to find out!”