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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]

"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?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot nods a little as she speaks, thinking all of this over, and at her question he raises an eyebrow. "My love, I am sure I do not know. But I have faith in thy good sense, and besides," he strokes her cheek, "it is not down to thee alone to keep things in order."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"No," Susan agrees. "But I believe I've got more of a vested interest in it than most here, too."

[lanselos_du_lac]

A little laugh, "I would agree, and I would not stand in thy way."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan sighs, "I love you," and then, registering her own words, her eyes fly to his face.

[lanselos_du_lac]

He's watching her with surprise -- pleased surprise, but clear surprise all the same. He has waited for... how long now? He has not been tracking time; he didn't want to become impatient, and in some ways it didn't matter so much whether Susan ever professed love for him. He knows how he feels about her, and he knows how they are together, and both of those are good. She treats him well, she likes his company, they are compatible and careful with one another and regardless of naming, their connection is strong. He knows all of this and he has never doubted it.

But he also hadn't quite accounted for how he would feel upon hearing it from her. He's struck by the bloom of warmth he feels, the sudden buoyant elation, the way he suddenly feels he own love for her even more fiercely. It's been a long while since he had reason to feel that, or even to recall that feeling. It is wonderful in the most literal sense.

All of this plays across his face in a flash, but the smile is solid. He takes a breath and starts to speak but then stops himself.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

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.

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot leans into that touch, squeezes her fingers gently. "Oh, sweet-heart, I'm glad. I love thee so well."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Well," says Susan. It's soft - her tone isn't even the slightest bit businesslike. The edges of her smile are still raw - it's still a marvelously difficult day - but the smile itself is brilliant, genuine. "What a convenient coincidence."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Indeed so," he reaches up to clasp her wrist, gently. "Christ, but I am glad."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Good." Susan has no intention of apologizing for taking the time she needed to sort this out, but she really is ever so pleased to have gotten here. She strokes her thumb along his cheekbone.

[lanselos_du_lac]

He holds her gaze, with that same wondering smile, for another long moment before drawing her in for a sweet kiss.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

When he kisses her - when she kisses him - she feels something at her core unwind. Not fully - not even a lot - but enough that some of her terror at this new change in their environment recedes.

[lanselos_du_lac]

His hand comes up to cup the side of her neck, and he lets the kiss draw out, focused and warm.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

And she lets herself relax into it, fortifying herself with that warmth and that focus. A little more cold melts away, too.