[ con ] but our hearts get torn up

[starlitsonata]

but our hearts get torn up
(susan, peter/susan) susan grows up twice.
a/n: this refused to end. will probably rewrite the ending when my muse comes back. also: i regret nothing. nothing. spoilers throughout the series.
 

if the children don't grow up,
our bodies get bigger but our hearts get torn up.
- "wake up," arcade fire

She falls in love with the idea of royalty at the age of six. Lucy is just a baby, so they dub her the princess, stubborn Edmund the prince (“You’re too young to be a king, Ed.”), and Peter the king, mighty and brave with his wooden sword and invisible shield. “Peter, Peter, what am I,” Susan asks, and she likes the idea of being a princess because princesses are always the ones that get rescued-always the ones that get the happily-ever-afters in her fairytales. There are no wars, no fathers that run off to fight, no soldiers that walk in the streets there.

“You’re the Queen, ‘course,” Peter replies. Susan tests the name, enunciating it carefully.

“You’re missing something,” he says suddenly and then runs off, coming back with a handful of crushed weeds. The crown he fashions her out of dandelions makes her sneeze and it’s much too big but she loves it anyway.

He takes a step back and grins toothily, admiring his handiwork. “There,” he beams, “Queen Susan.”

Susan is the first to grow out of it. Edmund quickly follows (“baby games,” he declares to Lucy) and Lucy is left behind in a world of fairies and knights and dreams of Neverland. Peter moves from swords to guns, imitating the dropping of bombs and the rapid fire of a machine gun. Instead of royalty, he chases after the ghost of their father, the glory of war.

When the sirens wail their warnings and the ground shakes with death, Peter is the one that runs after the past. He’s never been able to let it go.

Years later, much later, Susan is crowned Queen of a land inside a closet. It’s ridiculous, really, and she keeps trying to convince herself it isn’t true-that the trees will transform themselves into brick walls and the grass beneath her feet will become wooden floorboards, that this is all just a dream and she will wake up soon.

She looks at Peter. Queen, he mouths, lifting his eyebrows.

King, she mouths back, mimicking his expression.

She looks at the endless stretch of land, at the sun touching down to the trees and grass and sea. This is theirs, now.

“Do you ever think of them? Mum and dad.”

She rolls over in the field, resting her chin in her hands, staring down at him. His hair’s growing longer, and the stubble on his chin is scratchy when she touches it. Peter folds his arms behind his head and gazes at the sky.

“I try not to.”

Somewhere in Britain a bomb may have destroyed their house. Perhaps their mother had a quick death. As for their father-who knows what happened to him?

What scares her the most is how easily memories fade. how one day the bombs raining down on Britain can rattle her bones but the next day she cannot feel a thing; how three days ago she remembered her father’s face but now, she-she can’t.

Susan tries to forget (it hurts too much to try to remember).

The next war comes and maps are laid out before him, what do we do King Peter what do we do, but he doesn’t know what to do-nobody knows what to do. “Susan,” he looks at her and grasps her shoulders. His hands are shaking and he can’t look her in the eye, can’t swallow properly without choking, and how can he be king if he cannot even do these simple things? “I can’t do this, Susan,” A harsh exhale exits his mouth; he shoves away the papers, rips the map and knocks down paintings and cups.

Peter crumples and looks very, very small. Susan swallows and prays for the faith she’s never had.

“Yes, you can,” she cradles his face in her hands and he closes his eyes, leaning into her, and she’s trying to be strong, but all she’s thinking about is how no one should have to live through more than one war.

In her head Susan tells Aslan that she hates him. This a secret that she keeps close to her heart, and one she cannot bear to be revealed. Sometimes she hates him for putting the crown on their heads and making their game of pretend real. Sometimes she hates him for what he’s doing to Peter-to them all. Most of all she hates him because she remembers that once, she lived another life, as a refugee fleeing the war-she remembers that, beyond all belief, Narnia is impossibly real. But so is home.

Lucy learns quickly that she cannot save everyone. She goes from person to person, animal to animal, bent over their cold bodies. Her fingers tremble around the stopper of her healing vial and Susan turns away, the back of her throat burning a hole down to her chest. Peter is the one to pull Lucy away, bringing his hand up to cover her eyes.

Edmund is taller than her, now. He looks at her with a weary face that does not belong to the Edmund she used to know. “What do we do now?”

“We lead,” she replies, and takes up her bow once again.

“Look, Peter,” she says quietly, plucking a dandelion from the ground. In the midst of the war-torn field, it is the only living thing remaining. She tucks it behind her ear. “Do you remember?”

“What?” he smiles bemusedly.

Her lips curve upwards into a sad imitation of a smile. “Nothing,” she says, and he never quite figures out what she meant.

“How long do you think this is going to last, Peter?”

“Su-”

“We’re not meant for this! What made us think we could be-could be Kings and-and Queens? Look at everyone!”

“Calm down, Su-”

“You said it yourself.” Susan looks down at the marble floors that have always been much too fantasy-like. Her fingers run through the length of her hair and rub her forehead. “We’re just playing pretend.”

Peter looks like he wants to shout at her. Tear his hair out. He is a word away from breaking and some twisted part of her wants him to, wants to see him shatter and yell and shout. She moves towards him and he automatically shifts away. Maybe he hates her now, hates her bitterness and doubts, hates how she reminds him of things he does not want to remember.

“I’m sorry,” the words stick in her throat, “I didn’t mean it.”

Peter looks at her. His eyes are tired and his body is tired and he doesn’t seem to have as much energy as he used to. “Yes,” he says, “you did.”

On High King Peter’s birthday they throw a large feast. A celebration of sorts. The nobles and lords parade their daughters in front of him, pushing future prospects of marriage one after another. Peter frowns and says, “I already have a Queen,” and entwines Susan’s fingers with his, pulling her towards him. “If I should die,” he continues, “Susan will inherit the throne.” But Peter knows. They are only four, and if none of them marry, the line will end.

They discuss Peter’s marriage prospects in the courtyard. Peter’s sitting on the grass, leaning against the trunk, Susan standing in front of him. They talk of the throne, of future heirs. “Kyria was pretty,” Susan comments later. “And so were the others. You really don’t want any of them?”

“And you, dear sister? Marriage doesn’t interest you?” Peter teases.

“No,” she says. “Because then I’d have to leave.” Susan touches his hand. “I’d have to leave you.”

She doesn’t add and Lucy and Edmund and Mr. Tumnus and the others, doesn’t speak such pretences when they both know the truth. “My place is here,” she says quietly, “You may be the High King, but I am also a Queen.”

Peter stares at her contemplatively before taking her hands. She skins her knee as she stumbles towards him. She can feel his breath hot against her lips, and his eyes dart down to her mouth before dragging back up to her eyes. His fingers slide through the spaces in between hers. Two halves of a whole.

“And I have you,” he whispers.

“Yes,” she says, “you have me,” and presses her lips to his.

Time passes. They grow up.

It is very, very easy to forget.

And then.

Then a chase leads them into a thick forest. They are suddenly stumbling over each other’s toes and shrieking and laughing and the prickles from the pine trees are soft fur. Suddenly they feel smaller and the ground on their feet is no longer dirt but hard wood, and they are bursting out of a closet they’d gone into a long time ago.

“What-?”she stops there, breathes, and listens to her own voice. When she looks up, what she sees are the ghosts of the family she’d known long ago.

Bright, innocent children, and there is Peter’s boyish face looking at her with a stunned sort of expression, Lucy looking down at her tiny body and Edmund whipping his head around to stare at where they were. Susan crawls over to where Peter is and touches his face, feels the telltale lack of stubble there, traces the spot where scars used to line his skin. He is frighteningly unfamiliar to her.

“Su,” he says. His voice cracks a little, and it would be funny if it weren’t so horrifying. “Su,” he says again when she scrambles to her feet, pressing her hands against the closet, reaching inside to feel something other than the reality they face now.

“It’s-it’s gone,” her hands lift to cover her face as her knees buckle underneath her. “We’re back,” she says, because the word home does not seem right anymore.

“I didn’t think I’d have to go through puberty a second time,” Edmund muses to himself as they settle back in their rooms, trying to make light of things. Peter is still in a state of shock and Susan busies herself with taking inventory of the clothes they have.

Lucy is the only one to laugh.

“You got what you wanted, Su.”

“What?”

“You were right. Narnia couldn’t last forever.”

His smile is bitter and cold and does not look like Peter at all. She swallows down her retaliation-the part of her that says, I never said I didn’t want to stay, does it look like I’m happy, I never wanted to be right-and says, “I know,” two words that add fuel to a burning fire.

Her brother swallows and gives her a look of unjustified anger before walking off. Susan presses the heels of her hands to her eyes; this, too, shall pass, and this is what she tells herself.

“I’m sorry,” he says later.

Peter has nightmares. She knows this because she’d found him nearly decapitating one of the servant boys more than once back in Narnia, thinking him to be an enemy. This has not changed; his mind remembers what his body does not, and when their first night back comes around, she finds herself holding him down and humming a lullaby in his ears. A Narnian one, something that Lucy picked up from Mr. Tumnus.

“We need to go back, Su,” he says raggedly, and tries to get up. Susan presses him down. He is supposed to be the strong one; he is supposed to be stable when everything else is not.

“We can’t,” and the words swell in her throat until her breath shudders, “we can’t.”

“But Edmund,” their mother says when they first see her again-alive, unlike what Peter and Susan had thought, “you used to love Turkish delight.”

Her brother goes very pale and he lifts his eyes to the sky before bringing them back to the woman they call their mother. (They hadn’t recognised her at first. It was only until they heard their names being called that Edmund suddenly looked up and said, “Mum?”)

“I used to,” he agrees, “I don’t anymore.”

They go back to Narnia to fight a war (as if there wasn’t enough fighting back home already). She was moving on. They fight a war for Aslan, they win, she meets Caspian-

(She was moving on.)

It would be so easy. Just-just to have someone to lean on. Someone that isn’t Peter, or Lucy, or Edmund; someone that does not know about the ghosts living in her body or the memories that lurk inside her mind.

But she can’t come back. She leaves and can’t come back, no matter how many times she wanders through the train station, no matter how many times she says Aslan’s name and presses her hand against the wardrobe. No matter how many times she tries to convince herself that Narnia was (is) real.

“Were you in love with him?”

Susan pretends not to hear him. Peter grinds his teeth before blowing out a sigh.

“Never mind.”

She doesn’t know how to talk to him anymore, besides Narnia. Peter is no longer the Peter she knew; he will not comfort her, will not reassure her that everything will be okay, because they’ve lived too long to say such delusions. He stays away from her now, like she does to him. She misses the Peter that would hold her in bed and make an effort to keep her smiling. Reality and the war has kept them both grounded and reminded them that this world is not Narnia, and is much less forgiving.

Some say that it takes a lifetime to learn how to live. Susan needs two.

It’s like learning a new language. Modern English is unfamiliar on her tongue; the sayings and expressions lost upon her. She’s forgotten how to speak; language should only belong to the living and those who have something worth living for.

They cope in different ways.

Peter enlists in the army. Lucy takes up different hobbies and studies more. Edmund learns how to play various sports. Susan-

Susan plants her own garden and makes her own happily-ever-after ending with what she has left.

“Susan,” Peter says, in this unsteady sort of voice, and it’s just them this time. They are too old to play these games now. “How long d’you think-?”

“Time goes quick in there.” She never says it. “Who knows?”

Edmund and Lucy return and it is the four of them again. None of them know what to do. The clock may turn back time on their bodies but their minds never forget what their muscles do: the pull of an arrow through a bow, the clash of metal against metal, the feel of marble pillars in the dining hall. They all feel it down to their bones: another life, another world, another time.

“Do you feel it, Susan?” Peter never seems to be able to rest.

“Feel what?”

“Narnia. It’s-it’s calling us back. I know it.”

Susan smoothes down her dress, tugs up her nylons and twists her hair into a bun. When she whirls around to face him, he isn’t even looking at her. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You don’t-it’s Narnia, Su, you can’t tell me that you don’t feel it. You’ve wanted to go back for so long.”

“Are you still going on about-?”

“It’s not a game, Susan, stop talking about it like-”

“Yes, it is!” Her brush clatters to the floor. Her face crumples and something inside her snaps, and then she’s yelling and he’s yelling and suddenly she’s saying, “It wasn’t real! None of it was real and Aslan wasn’t real and I can’t go back, Peter, I can’t, you can’t make me-!” Her breath shudders out of her and she stops, lips pinched tightly together, breathing harshly through his nose.

He goes deathly silent. Peter’s face reddens and, oh, he’s angry, angrier than she’s ever seen him before. “You always said you missed Narnia, don’t you remember what it felt like-”

“It was all just a damn game, Peter-”

“-not, if you’d just listen-!”

“-remember last time, I can’t go back, Narnia isn’t real, Aslan isn’t real, just leave me alone!”

Peter doesn’t know what to say. He steps towards her unconsciously. Susan smoothes her hair back, sighing.

“I love you, Peter,” she says without thinking, and he flinches, eyes dragging up to hers, “but you have to stop this.”

The door slams noisily behind him.

Somewhere a train crashes.

It is only by chance that Susan happens to turn the radio on. She hears the news, hears it but doesn’t process it, but the dress in her fingers slips out and falls. It is only until names of passengers are being rattled off that she runs for the phone, fingers shaking as she turns to the right numbers.

“Hello? I need-my name is Susan Pevensie. My-my brothers and sister were on the train.”

They tell her they cannot help her and she takes the car to the crash site. The air is filled with soot and smoke and the fire still rages on as civilians stop and watch the destruction. She doesn’t have to ask if there are any survivors. She only has to look at the destruction to know.

Susan finds herself back at the old wardrobe.

She is too tall to stand inside it, but can crawl. Her fingers press against the wood, then they press harder, but no matter what she does-no matter how hard she tries to make herself believe-Narnia is not there.

“Please,” she breathes, “please, Aslan, anyone, please,” but no one answers.

Death comes in warmth and bright lights.

When she opens her eyes, there is a lion standing a little ways off, smiling curiously. But the lion is not what captures her attention.

Peter stands above her, the Peter she knows, holding out a hand. Once she’s standing steadily on two feet, he pulls her into a hug. Susan looks at him. Her memory of him had been blurry for the longest time. It isn't, now.

“It took you long enough,” he says, and then grins. “Welcome back.”