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For we will be wicked and we will be fair
And they'll call us such names, and we really won't care,
So go, tell your Wendys, your Susans, your Janes,
There's a place they can go if they're tired of chains,
And our roads may be golden, or broken, or lost,
But we'll walk on them willingly, knowing the cost --
We won't take our place on the shelves.
It's better to fly and it's better to die
Say the wicked girls saving ourselves.
Lucy watched her older sister grow into adulthood twice over. Once brimming with gentleness, strength and hope. Second brimming with the same strength and a coldness that had not been there before.
Lucy saw her sister the first time at sixteen. Dancing gayly with an ambassador from Calamore at the first ball of the year. Susan had been so happy. She’d written the trade treaty herself, slaved over it with the centaurs, dwarfs, badgers, dyads and nymphs. Edmund had listened to every whispers from his spies, Peter had sent the formal invitation and Lucy had planned all of the entertainment. The treaty though was Susan’s labor and Susan’s victory.
Lucy saw her sister for the second time at sixteen. She saw her sister's face pinched and shallow as Susan snuck back into the school dorms at dawn. Her apron stained with the blood of the soldiers she tended to each night. Lucy watched her older sister sneak out the window each night and back in each morning. She watched Susan’s skin become pale and more bones than a girl. She watched Susan sleep through the morning classes and breaks only to sneak out again.
“It’s not right Lu, we had our country and our duty. How can I sit by here and just watch? I was raised to be a Queen Lu, we were raised to be queens. How can he ask us to be anything else?”
“I don’t know, but here I’m still too young. I’m twelve. They won’t let me near the hospitals and I don’t have my cordial.”
“I know Lucy, I know.”
Lucy watched her sister stand up to their teachers and peers and anyone who dared question her abilities. She watched the gentleness grow into coldness.
Queens who were gentle in Narnia aren’t allowed to be Gentle in England it seemed.
Or so her sister believed that as it seemed.
Lucy watched her sister be ripped from their home in England, ripped from their home in Narnia, taken back to Narnia and told she’d never go back again.
“He used us Lu, he played with us to get what he wanted. It wasn’t what was best for Narnia. It was what was best for him. So he could come back in his splendor, save it all again. It wasn’t what was best.”
“Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t something we couldn’t see.”
“I don’t believe that Lucy. He said I couldn’t return, I don’t think I’d be able to go back again. I think it would kill me.”
“It’s killing you now.”
“At least it’s a death I can choose.”
Lucy went back to Narnia, back with Edmund and her cousin. She heard Caspian ask after her sister. She saw what she desired in the mirror. She heard Aslan say that they’d never be able to come back. It was their Last time.
She went back to England. Back to school. Back to see her sister again.
“Was it like this Su?”
“Like what?”
“Feeling like color had been sucked from the world. Like you’ve been shoved back into greys and only greys.”
“Yes. But it gets better. You can find colors again.”
Lucy looked at Susan- fourteen in this world but still unable to hide her almost thirty years of life. She wondered if her own twenty five years showed through her skin. Lucy the Valiant. The one who could always find Aslan. Sometimes Lucy wondered if that was a much of a curse as it was his blessing.
“It was a children’s game Lu. Say it enough and sometimes for a minute you can believe it’s true. It eases the pain.”
“I can’t Susan. I have to believe. It’s the only chance I have at going back, someday maybe.”
“I know Lucy, I know.”
Lucy watched her sister at twenty one the first time. She watched her sister laugh, smile and charm ambassadors and treat with them. She saw her help build a kingdom to rival any in their world. Possibly any in their old world but those memories were distant now- Lucy could barely remember the cobbled, smoggy streets of London. Narnia was her home.
Lucy watched her sister at twenty one the second time. She watched her hold fast against any who would challenge her or her siblings. Susan might call Narnia a fairy story but damn to anyone else who did. She watched her sister rebuild herself into England and watched the gentleness become coldness.
She watched her sister take her foot out of Narnia and plant both feet firmly in English soil.
Lucy didn’t have that particular strength. Narnia was all she had know for so long she couldn’t stop giving her faith to a faithless God.
She didn’t know which sister was more damned.