Stumbling

QueenSusanofNarnia

QueenSusanofNarnia

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My first TDL fan fic in a really long time! I'm kind of excited about it, actually!!! :)

So here it goes. Takes place during the Golden Age of Narnia.

***

A pair of bright brown eyes peered at Susan from underneath the table.

"Lucy, get a grip," Susan muttered. "You're a queen now, you had best start acting like one." She was getting a little - to say the least - impatient with her sister's silly games.

Peter glared at Susan. "Give her a break, Su, she's nine years old."

Susan frowned and went back to her book. "Stop defending her, Peter, when you know I'm right." From beside her, Edmund rolled his eyes; he was always listening to his elder siblings bickering about how Lucy "ought to behave." No one was really quite sure; after all, how many nine-year-old queens had Narnia seen?

Most of the time, she would hide in other parts of the castle, away from Susan and her rules, playing with the cooks' children or spending time with the animals, or off having tea with Mr Tumnus, or frolicking with the Dryads and Niads and fauns...or doing one of her many other Lucy-ish activities.

Lucy now emerged from underneath the table and huffed out of the room. Peter sighed and glared again at Susan.

"Couldn't you just let her have some fun?" He snapped.

"She has to act like a queen," Susan retorted, not looking up from her book, one of the many she'd brought from the Library in the West Hall of Cair Paravel. "You know that."

"She's nine!" Peter repeated. "You can't expect her to act like she's thirty! You can't expect her to act like ... like ... like you or - "

He had struck a pressure point in Susan. "Excuse me?" She demanded, looking at him. "How dare you!"

"Lay off it," Edmund said as Peter opened his mouth to retort. "You two are always bickering these days, and I'm sick and tired of it, and so is Lu!" He looked at both of them with a hard gaze. "So just give it a rest, would you?"

The elder Pevensies faltered and looked at each other.

"He's right," Peter muttered. Susan rolled her eyes and returned to her book.

There was silence for a moment, and then someone, somewhere, screamed.
 
If Susan (meaning Pevensie, not QSON) knew more history of Earth, she would know that LOTS of kings and queens indulged in some form of play.
 
Haha thanks guys. :)

**

Peter and Susan looked at each other, alarmed. Edmund glanced around, his eyes wide.

"What was that?" He asked his siblings.

"Like we know," Peter muttered. The three bolted out of the room, hurrying along the hallways. From doors along the halls, people were appearing, looking as confused as their kings and queen were.

"What's going on?" Lucy's close friend, Madeline, one of the daughters of their head cook, scuttled out from a room. She tugged against Susan's skirts.

"I don't know," Susan told her. "Where's Lu?"

Madeline shrugged. "I don't know - I haven't seen her since lunchtime. Maybe she's in the garden."

Susan turned to Peter. "You and Edmund try and find out what happened; I'll go find Lucy." Peter nodded, and he and Edmund hurried off down another hallway. Susan began her way down the other hall, hoping Lucy was alright, and that the scream had been nothing -

"LET ME GO!"

"LUCY!" Susan screamed at the sound of her sister's voice. It had come from one of the rooms just ahead on the right...Susan pulled open the first of the doors, but the room was empty. In the second one, a dog was dozing while his master, one of the wizened, old tutors, snored loudly. It was in the third that Susan found Lucy, being bound by two short men. One had a long, scraggly black beard, whilst the other's beard was shorter and blond. The doors that led to the room's balcony, which looked over the ocean, were open wide, the breeze whipping through Susan's hair as she stared in horror at the sight in front of her.

"LET HER GO!" Susan found herself shouting at the two dwarves. They looked up and saw her, and the short-bearded one, so quickly that Susan didn't even see, drew and threw a dagger at her. It missed, but barely, and so he threw a chair at her with remarkable speed and strength. One leg clipped the side of her head, and she stumbled against the wall. In that brief moment, the black-beareded dwarf then dragged a still-screaming (though the sound was muffled by the cloth now around her mouth) Lucy to the balcony. The blond dwarf helped him get Lucy over the edge, and she fell, fell, fell into the boat below. She was caught in the net set out on it, but her head was quickly covered by a bag by someone she could not see.

When Susan regained her balance, she watched in horror as the dwarves launched themselves after Lucy. With a scream of terror, she ran to the balcony and watched as the boat quickly rowed away, her sister on board.

"This is all your fault!" She screamed at herself, still watching the boat. "Lucy! LUCY!" Tears streamed down her face, and she pounded the rail of the balcony angrily. "Oh, God, Susan, this is all your stupid, stupid fautl," she sobbed.

Lucy was gone. All because Susan had allowed herself to stumble. Perhaps if she had ignored the throbbing pain in her head, her human reaction to feel pain, she could have stopped the dwarves, she could have overpowered them.

But no. She had stumbled.


 
Haha thanks guys! :) It's kind of weird, writing fanfic again! The last one I wrote was ... gosh ... two years ago? I'm working on the next little bit, so I'll have that up soon! :)
 
Gah! I'm such a terrible author for not posting....I've been busy with school and getting a website put together. Sorry!

Here's the next bit:

**

"...and they just...got away?" Peter said, his voice constricted with some emotion - anger? Fear? Sadness? He was sitting on the chair behind the desk in his study. He didn't look at Susan, who sat across from him, hands folded in her lap. Behind them, Edmund sat with his legs pulled up to his chest, his forehead resting on his knees.

"I'm sorry, Peter," Susan whispered. "There was nothing I could -" She cut herself off. There was something she could have done. "I'm sorry," she said again.

"Being sorry isn't going to bring Lu back," he told her, standing up. "Ed?" Their younger brother glanced up, tears staining his face. "Ed - word of this must not get out, do you understand? Find Aldo, and tell him to keep everyone's mouths shut!" Edmund nodded and hurried out of the study to find the adviser in question.

For a while, neither Peter nor Susan spoke. Guilt was still raging through Susan, and Peter seemed so distraught.

Then, Peter said quietly, "I have to go after her."

"Peter, you don't even know where they went, or who they are!" Susan said, aghast. "You can't just go wandering around the world until you find her."

He stared at her. "So you're just saying ... do nothing?"

"No," Susan quickly corrected, "But you can't make snap decisions like this. You're High King, Peter! You can't just go gallavanting off on all these -"

"LUCY IS OUR SISTER!" Peter bellowed, his face contorted with rage. "HAVE YOU GONE MAD? WE CAN'T JUST LEAVE HER TO BE KIDNAPPED, SUSAN, DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND? MUM TOLD ME TO KEEP YOU ALL SAFE, AND I -"

But suddenly, he and Susan both realised the same exact thing.

"Mum," Susan whispered. "Home..."

They had forgotten it completely.
 
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