Susan is also surprised. She'd meant to wait until she was certain before she said anything.
Galahad said that he realized he loved Claudius when Claudius got hurt. But Lancelot's hurts are less obvious, and she's been angry about so many things for so long it's hard for her to distill what's about how he's been treated, and what's a projection about how she, herself, has been treated. It's not a useful metric. There are, she has found, very few useful metrics that can be universally applied to the question of love.
The science Susan has cared about has always been of a tangible sort: animals and their observable behavior; humans and their observable natures. She's been reading more broadly since she arrived, though, making times for things like chemistry and engineering and geology. Recently, she visited some of Einstein's work on physics. For example: Gravity warps the weft of space. Larger, more massive celestial bodies alter the direction of movement of smaller objects, and so the moon orbits the earth and the earth orbits the sun.
Susan would never classify herself as a smaller celestial body than Lancelot, but like Europa and Jupiter - in both myth and the cosmos - when she enters a room, she gravitates toward him. She looks to him and seeks his happiness; she circles around to his side. He's the same way, of course; perhaps a better analog is the binary systems she's just started to learn about. But stars are lonely and cold and ever so distant, and with Lancelot, she feels the opposite. He brings her ease. He brings her joy. After months, if not years, of prioritizing only the things that bolster her happiness, she finds herself considering his as dearly as she considers her own.
Hurt (Susan's, or Lancelot's) needn't factor into her feelings for him at all. He looks at her with palpable gladness, and she feels that same gladness welling up in her when she's with him. He's precious to her. She doesn't like showing vulnerability to most others, but with him, she knows that she's safe to reveal that soft underbelly she keeps so well-protected around everyone else. If she does, in fact, deserve something uncomplicatedly good, then it's him that she wants.
Susan Pevensie is not given to feeling certainty. She's always been less able than her siblings to take things on faith. She's too pragmatic, too practical, too fearful. She requires evidence.
But here, now, she hasn't got any questions. So perhaps, in blurting that she loves him, she's realized that she is, in fact, certain. There's no need to second-guess: she does love him, terribly much. Perhaps she's even loved him for ages. That's not important, though - this hasn't been a race. She's here now, and that's what matters. "I love you," she says again, slipping one hand into his and cupping his cheek with her other.
no subject
Galahad said that he realized he loved Claudius when Claudius got hurt. But Lancelot's hurts are less obvious, and she's been angry about so many things for so long it's hard for her to distill what's about how he's been treated, and what's a projection about how she, herself, has been treated. It's not a useful metric. There are, she has found, very few useful metrics that can be universally applied to the question of love.
The science Susan has cared about has always been of a tangible sort: animals and their observable behavior; humans and their observable natures. She's been reading more broadly since she arrived, though, making times for things like chemistry and engineering and geology. Recently, she visited some of Einstein's work on physics. For example: Gravity warps the weft of space. Larger, more massive celestial bodies alter the direction of movement of smaller objects, and so the moon orbits the earth and the earth orbits the sun.
Susan would never classify herself as a smaller celestial body than Lancelot, but like Europa and Jupiter - in both myth and the cosmos - when she enters a room, she gravitates toward him. She looks to him and seeks his happiness; she circles around to his side. He's the same way, of course; perhaps a better analog is the binary systems she's just started to learn about. But stars are lonely and cold and ever so distant, and with Lancelot, she feels the opposite. He brings her ease. He brings her joy. After months, if not years, of prioritizing only the things that bolster her happiness, she finds herself considering his as dearly as she considers her own.
Hurt (Susan's, or Lancelot's) needn't factor into her feelings for him at all. He looks at her with palpable gladness, and she feels that same gladness welling up in her when she's with him. He's precious to her. She doesn't like showing vulnerability to most others, but with him, she knows that she's safe to reveal that soft underbelly she keeps so well-protected around everyone else. If she does, in fact, deserve something uncomplicatedly good, then it's him that she wants.
Susan Pevensie is not given to feeling certainty. She's always been less able than her siblings to take things on faith. She's too pragmatic, too practical, too fearful. She requires evidence.
But here, now, she hasn't got any questions. So perhaps, in blurting that she loves him, she's realized that she is, in fact, certain. There's no need to second-guess: she does love him, terribly much. Perhaps she's even loved him for ages. That's not important, though - this hasn't been a race. She's here now, and that's what matters. "I love you," she says again, slipping one hand into his and cupping his cheek with her other.