^ [open post]

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan doesn't believe in the mansion spirits, but she is being followed by something in a way that makes little sense.

It begins when she wakes up. Opening the drawer to the sideboard in her room to retrieve tea, she finds another gold chess piece wrapped neatly in ribbon. Lancelot didn't put it there - it hadn't been there when she made her pre-sleep cuppa the night before, and she woke up when he did and sleepily saw him off to his training; he hadn't gone near the drawer. She shuts the chess piece firmly away, makes her tea, and dresses blearily for her own archery practice.

There's a new bow in the closet, too. To her pleasure, it's a heavier one that requires a stronger pull - she's quite got used to the draw of the ones the closet first supplied to her.

After her shooting routine, she finds a lipstick in the precise shade Ingrid used to wear on the bathroom vanity. When she's showered and dressed for the rest of her day, she finds her favorite pastry - a sort of breakfast roll she used to get from the shop by the tube station she'd walk past on her way to work, back in London - on a platter in the kitchen.

It's when she opens one of the closets in the hall off the library to return a pile of laundered wash-cloths that she receives both some clarity and a deepening of the mystery: a jumble of assembled balloons tumbles out, made of some queer material and filled with a gas that keeps them afloat. The writing on them reads: HAPPY BIRTHDAY SUSAN PEVENSIE.

She stares at them, perplexed.


Susan's birthday post! Three days (by our reckoning) and eight months (by her reckoning) early! Feel free to have your puppets run into her in any reasonable location at any point during the day; she's just going to be accumulating more Stuff she can't get rid of as the day goes on.

Comments

[lightbearinglord]

"I have not," he admits. There is an incredible, dizzying volume of human history within the library, waiting for him to catch up on it.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"In the first half of the twentieth century, there were two. So-called because they spanned much of the globe. I arrived here from the aftermath of the second, which officially spanned from 1939 to 1945... though things were rather fraught in the lead-up, too, as you might imagine. From what I understand, things in Asia were already fraught." Susan takes a sip of her tea. She sees no reason to prevaricate, so she says, "Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931 - that's nineteen years ago, in my time. This complicated internal friction in China. A civil war was set temporarily aside to resist the invasion, and resumed at its culmination."

[lightbearinglord]

Wars that spanned most of the globe. Lan Wangji can feel his stomach sinking, soured at the thought, although his expression is unchanging and he takes a slow sip of his tea without difficulty. It does not quite surprise him to think that war, global and civil and petty and all-consuming, continues for hundreds of years past his own likely death, if he had stayed. But it does dismay him. He meant it when he told Magnus that he hoped and intended to create a kinder world for the children who came after him. If he succeeded, that success must have melted away under the deluge of history.

In any case, he only nods, quietly absorbing the new information. Susan is not at fault, naturally. "Understood."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan surveys him. "It's dreadful, isn't it?" she says, softly. "I imagine it's terrible to digest all at once."

[lightbearinglord]

"Mn," he agrees, matching her volume. "I fought in a single war, far from large enough to span the globe." And yet, his silence implies, even a small war, a short one, was enough for him.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I've lived through several," says Susan, quietly. "The second World War, of course, and several in Narnia: the Winter Revolution, the Ettinsmoor War, the Archenland Conflict, the War of Deliverance... I can't say I truly fought in them, but I was... involved. I hate them."

[lightbearinglord]

"I hate them, too." It is a simple declaration, and a quiet one, but one buoyed by perfect sincerity.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Then we are alike in this," says Susan. She's quiet for a moment and then, fiercely, says, "They're dreadful. I imagine some must be necessary, but I can't help but imagine there might be a different way. A better way."

[lightbearinglord]

That burst of idealism endears Susan to Lan Wangji instantly, a little tendril of warmth, one tempered by his own experiences and regrets, unfurling somewhere within him. "Some are, in my experience," he says, "but I find that they last too long and that their effects extend too far."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Yes," she says, thinking of the White Witch. "Yes, precisely."

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji doesn't ask her to elaborate. If she wants to speak on it, she may, but they are not well-acquainted. The knowledge of a small kernel of shared conviction seems like enough for this moment, enough to more than justify the shared pot of tea, too.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan clears her throat and savors a sip of her tea. By the times she sets the cup down again, she's decided she simply wants to say, "So in sum, I'm afraid the situation in China in my time is... complicated."

[lightbearinglord]

Quietly serious, Lan Wangji nods. He is nursing his own tea slowly. "Matters were complicated in mine, too. Within the cultivation world and without."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I suppose the same could be said of any place, in a great many times."

[lightbearinglord]

"Mn. Even this one."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Yes." Susan hesitates for a long moment, then nods to herself. "You and Claudius are very close."

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji is unsure where she means to take this, but in any case, he nods. "He is my closest friend, and my sworn brother."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"So you must know," she murmurs, and then lifts her eyes and meets his gaze. "Bacchus told me some truly troubling news earlier, about the reprehensible way Claudius was treated by Luo Binghe." It might not sound like a question, but there is a question undergirding her words.

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji's expression flattens, an icing-over -- not, naturally, directed at Susan, but an outgrowth of his lingering anger. "Luo Binghe tortured him."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Yes." Her own anger is steady. "That's what Bacchus said."

[lightbearinglord]

Carefully, Lan Wangji sets his teacup down. "I witnessed it."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan takes a delicate sip of her tea and sets her empty cup gently to the side. "I think it's dreadful. No - that's the politic thing to say. I think it's jolly unacceptable. If Bacchus hadn't pointed out the risk of confronting a man who can cause such harm, unprovoked and unannounced at a distance - whilst not even in the same room! Not even close enough to be confronted with the reality of the damage he's causing! - I swear I could've marched right up to him and boxed his ears." Her anger makes her bright, focused. "Was it dreadful? I keep picturing it. Bacchus wasn't clear on what precisely happened, besides some sort of - some sort of magical blood infection which caused tremendous pain?"

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji is contrastingly very quiet, silent with the continued memory and the effort of controlling his reaction to it. He speaks slowly, wanting to remain calm. "Claudius and Luo Binghe shared a flirtation. Luo Binghe slipped Claudius his blood in the soup they were preparing together." It is almost precisely how he explained things to Magnus. "If another person ingests Luo Binghe's blood, it grants him control over that person's body. He may puppet his target, or he may cause intense pleasure or pain."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan's mind is already whirling. "Surely there's some sort of device we might use to determine if any further food has been tampered with," she says. "Some sort of technology or spell that one might touch to their food and see that it's all right. He oughtn't have that sort of power over anyone." She flicks her gaze up. "I take it that this wasn't some sort of sexual play to which Claudius initially agreed. It wouldn't matter if it was, of course; it clearly went beyond any sort of degree one might expect from such things. But if it wasn't, it's a double violation and mustn't be tolerated."

[lightbearinglord]

"No." The whirlwind of Susan's thoughts is understandable, and Lan Wangji has a soft spot for people who think and talk this way, so it hardly bothers him, but his response is of a more methodical nature. "Such things do not exist in his world. He never knew he had been poisoned until Luo Binghe became angry days later."