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[quote_gentle_unquote]

Although she realizes almost immediately what's going on (she has, after all, been fearing it, and has the greatest measure of the general contents of each room in this place), the full weight of the situation takes a day or so to hit Susan, as she flits from closet to cupboard to store-room and finds them empty save for the items she's specifically handled in the past. Her emergency closets - the ones she's been appointing - are intact; the rest seem relatively barren.

And so, she thinks, grimly, the other shoe has dropped.

Certain residents would be forgiven for imagining that Susan Pevensie might gloat, to have her worst fears proven right. A Cassandra, vindicated, smugly telling others left and right that she told them so, and they ought to have been more interested in preparations. But they would have been wrong about this, too. Distracted and panicked enough to forget entirely about her standing lunch date with Lancelot, she instead walks steadily, smoothly to her room, where she shuts the door firmly (she means to latch it, but she's so caught up in her frenzy that it slips her mind) and paces, pulling at her hair until it's half-snarled, tugged partially free from its usual crown of braids. Her other hand she keeps firmly in her pocket, clutched tight around the very last cruel new thing the Mansion had given her, right before it stopped cooperating entirely.

Water, she thinks, abruptly, mid-step. Will the water run out? But there's a lake out there, and there are trees to boil it; it might be significantly less convenient but they shan't run out of water. The taps are still flowing, but will that last? And so she fills some of the vases she's been accumulating with whatever will come from the tap, just in case she needs it later.

Then, with the wind fully out of her sails, she sinks into a seat on the edge of her bed, despondent, with her head in her hands for a spell. It might be a good twenty minutes, it might be several hours - she couldn't say. She'd been ever so worried about this - she ought to have pushed harder. She ought to have been more organized, to have really impressed upon people that they oughtn't assume that just because they've got a good thing now, it'll be there forever. But she let herself get distracted. There were other, more pressing things - things that seem ridiculous now, in retrospect. Sorting through junk papers? Getting caught up with a man to the extent where she forsook her self-appointed responsibilities for days on end? Love - if that is indeed what she feels for him - is no excuse. She should have - she could have - she ought to have -

I mustn't fall into this trap again, she tells herself, firmly, springing from her bed as swiftly as she'd sat down and striding over to the desk she'd moved into her room when she started writing her letters. (She's now missed dinner, too. The light outside is already dwindling, and the electricity doesn't seem altogether forgiving - it's working, but it's dimmer. But she oughtn't waste the few candles she'd set aside. What if they're needed more later?) It is far too easy to get caught blaming oneself until all that's left is blame. I really mustn't go back there.

But that tiny knot of cold in the center of her - the one that she'd very nearly unpicked over the past few months - tightens and grows. Grimly, she takes out paper and a pen. Her mood is dire. It's only appropriate to start the next one:

Dear Peter, she writes. I hardly know what to say to you.

She sticks the end of her pen in her mouth and chews.

Comments

[quote_gentle_unquote]

She takes a deep breath, and then another. Then she retrieves the rook and holds its weight in her hand, turning it over and over, running her thumb along the dent in its base. "So many of the others believe there is some sort of intelligent power here," she says, still quiet and distant again. "Shaping the direction that things take."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"That may be," thoughtfully. "So thought folk of God, at home. That God has His plan and that we carry out that plan."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I mislike it." She's quiet for a long moment. "God was much more hands-on in Narnia."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Dost know," in that same thoughtful tone, "I was never certain of God. And I think we cannot know, here. But-- We cannot control the world, no matter what world we're in. We can plan, and prepare, and then we must trust one another to work together."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I was certain of Aslan." She's still so quiet, but this time it's an angry quiet. "I can't have it here. I can't--"

[lanselos_du_lac]

Softly, "Have what?"

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"Function at the whim of some awesome being who thinks he's got the right idea of how things ought to go," she says, fiercely.

[lanselos_du_lac]

In truth, he does not know what to say to this. He wants to say that they have more control than that -- but he doesn't know that to be true. He has thought, before, that he was sure enough of what would happen here and has been wrong. He doesn't know any more about the powers in charge here than he did before he came; he only knows that he cannot always choose and that they must bear up under what comes their way.

He suspects that none of this would comfort Susan.

In the absence of anything that feels useful to say, he nods. If nothing else, he understands her sentiment. After a moment he says, "I will do whatever I can for thee. To aid thee. I am thine."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"So there must be some other explanation," she says, as if he's not said anything at all, and then she looks up at him. "Oh, Lancelot. My dear sweet good man."

[lanselos_du_lac]

He gives her a little smile, finding her hand again.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

There's a touch of wonder in her eyes. "You bring me ever so much ease."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"I should hope so," holding that gaze, "I want very much to do so."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I ought to--" she says, partly to herself, and then nods, also to herself, and meets his gaze again. "I should like to show you something."

[lanselos_du_lac]

His expression is all adoration.

"Anything. Lead and I shall follow."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"You needn't move," says Susan, and twists around.

Then she frowns. "There was a book on the desk a moment ago," she says. "Poetry. Did you see it?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Ah-- no. I admit, my focus was all on thee."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

She presses a hand to his heart and leans in to brush a kiss against his lips. "Sweet man."

[lanselos_du_lac]

He gives her a little smile, then recalls and glances around. "Something did fall."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan Pevensie is, largely, a private woman. Most of the time, she establishes clear boundaries and then maintains them rigorously. The reasons have differed - in London, she never mentioned Narnia, even to her closest friends; at the time, she'd thought she hadn't wanted them to think her siblings mad. Generally, she doesn't want to be pitied; she also doesn't want to burden anyone with her troubles. Ingrid, of course, knew about everything save the barest mention of Narnia. Miriam knew quite a bit, too, but they'd been growing more distant, in the months before Susan's arrival here, and slowly, Susan had drawn back and let boundaries grow between them.

She has no interest in holding herself apart from Lancelot. He's seen her at both her best and her worst since arriving here. He loves her. Whilst Susan is still trying to sort out what it means to her that she's almost certain she returns the sentiment, what's more important to her is that he's her dearest friend, her closest confidant. She trusts him, is the thing. She's worked very hard at not having secrets from him, and the closer they grow, the more she wants him to know her.

But this - this is just a little embarrassing. It feels a little juvenile. Still, perhaps it will convey her headspace of late more than her fumbling attempts to articulate her thoughts now. So she casts around and finds the book and the paper that fell out of it; when she spots it, she climbs reluctantly from his lap to retrieve it and hand it to him.

None of the letters she's written have been particularly polished, but this one has more fumbled-over than the others. There's very little of substance, yet; by the time Lancelot had arrived she'd finished barely even a paragraph despite sitting at her desk trying to get words down for ages. In between the scratched-out words and sentences, it reads:

Dear Peter,

I hardly know what to say to you. In the end I think one of your pet charges was protecting the family from outside threats - starting with Maugrim and then expanding to anything that threatened any part of the whole of Narnia, rather than just me and little Lucy and, later, Edmund. But I think by the end I had, in your eyes, become one of those threats.

But how did that come to pass? When did I stop being your little sister Susan and start being a silly woman to dismiss and revile? I believe you must have hated me, but I cannot fathom why.

As Lancelot is reading the letter, Susan goes to her bookshelf and retrieves a copy of Plato's writings and Sky Island. She withdraws the letters from those, too, and places them in front of Lancelot.

And then she waits.

[lanselos_du_lac]

It takes him a little while -- he reads well, but not very quickly, and he is paying very careful attention. His expression, readable as ever, shifts almost immediately. Susan's pain, and longing, the love she has for her siblings, her sharp honesty, are all apparent. It is moving enough on its own, but in combination with his feelings for her... well. It is a little overwhelming; what floods over him is not sorrow, but a tide of love that's almost painful in its intensity.

Lancelot does not look up until he has finished reading all three letters. When he does, at last, look for her his expression is very soft, full of that same love. "Oh, my heart, come here."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan goes. "I suppose I've been trying to - confront my grief," she explains. "So it's... closer."

[lanselos_du_lac]

He draws her in, nodding, "Of course."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I -" She tucks herself against his front. "Have you got any questions?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot presses his cheek to her hair, "I-- no. Not just now. Though I thank thee for sharing these."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I believe they always thought I was awfully silly," Susan says. "In Narnia. For caring about supply and infrastructure and avoiding battle. Peter would always lead the armies, and Edmund would always write the treaties, and Lucy would go off to battle, too, and work the medical tent, and I'd be in Cair Paravel ensuring we were importing enough food if the fighting should be near the farmland south of Ettinsmoor." She presses her lips together. "But they didn't remember the Blitz as I did, because I'd protected them from that knowledge. I didn't care for the wars. They didn't excite me, the way it did the others. Oh, I know what the Narnians said about me. Susan the Gentle. Not Valiant, like Lucy; some of the younger ones would talk about how she was 'as good as any boy.'" Susan snorts, humorless. "But someone needed to keep things in order. I suppose Peter needed annex Ettinsmoor to stop the giant's raids, and I suppose it makes sense that he sent me south. If Rabadash hadn't been so foul outside of the hastilude, a marriage alliance with Calormen might've strengthened our armies and won that war more quickly, and anyway it kept me and Ed away from the fighting. I suppose I would have done my duty, if it kept things in order."

She looks up at Lancelot. "How am I meant to keep things in order here, if the rules keep changing?"