[Fic] "Endurance" -- Chronicles of Narnia

[edenfalling]

This is my stab at the obligatory 'problem of Susan' story everyone who writes Narnia fanfiction seems to produce sooner or later. *sigh* Book canon.

[ETA: The AO3 crosspost and the ff.net crosspost are now up.]

[[ETA2: furies has remixed this story for Remix Redux 9: Once a Queen (The Reality Bites Remix)!]]

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Endurance
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"The thing is," Susan tells Edmund once, "you have to live in the world you're given." No matter what you remember, no matter what you dream, the sky is above you, the earth below you, and people all around you, boxing you in, setting the limits of the possible and the permissible.

Maybe she's meant to be strong enough to shatter those limits. But Susan knows herself, and she knows with a quiet, cold certainty that sooner or later she'd break under the strain of that battle.

Yielding is better.

She wraps Narnia and Aslan deep inside, a warm ember to touch in her weakest moments, and gets on with living. Talking about magic lands inside wardrobes will make people call her mad. So she pretends not to remember. Behaving like a queen will make people think her over-proud, naïve, or mad again. So she watches her classmates and imitates them, scrupulously. Expecting equality will only bring heartache. So she learns to chatter and focus on trivialities in public, and bend all her intelligence to finding a job and saving money and making a place to call her own.

Maybe then, once she's established her sanity, once she's disguised herself with years of commonplace behavior, once she has mundane security, she can pull out that ember and blow it back to life. Or maybe not. Maybe Queen Susan the Gentle will always be her private heartbreak and exaltation.

And would that be wrong? Not everyone is called to glory. Not everyone is called to testify in flame and stars and trumpets. Not everyone is taken living into heaven. Most people simply live as best they can.

This is what Peter and Lucy won't ever understand. So Susan laughs through frozen smiles and slides into her chosen disguise and watches them blaze like comets, scorching through the limits of this world of their exile. She watches how they gather fear as much as admiration, how they walk in growing isolation, how they puzzle helplessly over England's petty cruelties and injustice. This is the world they're given, but they refuse to accept it.

"The thing is," Edmund tells Susan, "the world you're given may not be enough."

"So who changes: you or it?" she asks.

Edmund smiles. "Peter would change the world. Lucy would change the way she saw the world, and make the world change in return. You would change yourself."

"And you?" Susan asks.

Edmund shrugs. "I don't think one man can change a whole world alone. But I worked too hard to find myself to start living behind a false face again; there's too much danger I might forget it's only an act. So I fight what I can't endure and endure what I can't fight, and trust that Aslan will help me find the balance."

"I'm no use at battles," Susan tells him. "I'd go mad. Or I'd come to hate... well, you know. I'd rather become a stranger to myself than hate him. I'm not strong enough to stand alone against the world."

"Who says you'd be alone?" Edmund asks, and leaves Susan to stare at her careful shields of clothes and make-up in silence.

Now Susan counts the bodies at the morgue, picking her way gingerly over the frozen floor in her heels and nylons and pretty floral dress. She can survive even this, she knows. She can continue in her chosen path, her camouflage of ordinary life. But... what if Edmund was right? What if she risks a stand? She whispers Aslan's name, and the ember in her heart stirs with a swirl of gold.

She was never one for battles, always the first to compromise. And that's a virtue, too -- knowing when to yield -- but any virtue, carried to its logical extreme, becomes a vice, a trap, a smaller box within the prison of the world.

Susan reaches down with one hand to close Lucy's eyes.

England is the world she's given. One way or another, she will make it be enough.

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Inspired by the 4/15/09 15_minute_fic word #106: bear

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You know, writing Narnia fanfiction is odd for me. On the one hand, I want to be at least somewhat faithful to the series' internal mythology, which does involve a lot of Christianity. On the other hand, I'm not Christian and I find some of Lewis's particular theological views abhorrent. On the third hand, I was raised in a largely Christian culture, so Christian allusions and metaphors do come fairly easily to hand. On the fourth hand, I don't oppose all Christian theology. And on the fifth hand, I am an actively religious person myself, and I know I don't like my religion (Unitarian Universalism -- and no, just because the denomination started out Christian doesn't mean all or even most UUs today are Christian -- I myself am a vaguely agnostic semi-pagan secular humanist) being misrepresented, so I don't want to misrepresent Lewis...

So there's this constant internal tension where I look at the story and think, "You know, maybe I should put in a reference here," and then think, "Oh, this other bit over there, that's verging on actual Christian propaganda, and that makes me really twitchy," and I go back and forth and always wonder how the story comes off to Christians and non-Christians alike (and that's not even going into how very many, many ways there are to be religious that have nothing to do with Christianity, and how little they often have to do with each other).

Mneh. It's all a big mess.

[NOTICE! Just FYI, there is more discussion in the Livejournal version of this post, since people continued to comment over there after I imported my journal and comments to Dreamwidth.]

Comments

[lettersandliars.livejournal.com]

I think everyone has some sort of problem writing for the Narnia fandom. It's always something, right?

Anyway, this is lovely. The Edmund & Susan dynamic here is so very believable, and there are some really beautiful lines I would pick out if it weren't midnight XD Wonderful fic!

[edenfalling]

Thank you!

I confess to really liking Edmund and Susan together. I suspect it's partly a byproduct of their interaction in The Horse and His Boy, but partly also because I think Edmund would be most likely to keep reaching out to Susan despite her determination to turn away from Narnia.

[(Anonymous)]

I think all three of Susan's siblings would continue to reach out to her in their own ways. I think she would respond best to Edmund but I don't think Peter or Lucy would give up on her. (The negative comments about her in tLB were made by Eustace, Polly, and Jill; three people who would not have known her well. Peter only admited that she was "no longer a friend of Narnia" when pressed and put an end to the conversation when the others started insulting her.)

[edenfalling]

I don't think Peter and Lucy would give up either, but I do think that past a certain point they might decide that their efforts to reach out were actually harmful rather than helpful, and take a 'wait and see' stance instead -- they'd be ready and waiting as soon as Susan decided to reach out to them, but they wouldn't make many overtures of their own anymore. Whereas I see Edmund as... hmm... more able to be around Susan without stepping over her self-imposed lines (on purpose or by accident), so he'd be the one to visit her and call her and generally keep the lines of contact open.

Your mileage, of course, may vary. :-)

[hollywdliz.livejournal.com]

This is lovely, and I think you played the references (to Aslan, not even to Christianity -- the Narnian take on religion is so much simpler!) very well. And I do love a good Susanfic! You captured her perfectly.

[edenfalling]

Well, there's some more Christian stuff with testifying and trumpets and being taken living into Heaven (though that last, which references Elijah, is as much Jewish as Christian), but I did make a deliberate choice to only use Aslan's name. :-)

Anyway, thank you! I find all the siblings interesting in their different ways, but I think it's easiest for me to sympathize with Susan and Edmund, so it's a relief to hear I didn't screw up Susan's characterization.

[issen4.livejournal.com]

Ooh, nice! I like how you compared the ways they deal with the world, and how Susan's is compromising. You've put here in a position of strength.

ETA: Being largely ignorant of Christianity when I first read the books, I just thought it was a cool series with talking animals and a big lion and vaguely European-style royalty. With fantastic journeys to the end of the world!

[edenfalling]

Thank you! Yes, compromising is not always a weakness, and there's a strength in knowing your own limits. Then again, if you don't try to transcend your limits now and then, I think you get stifled and narrow of soul and mind. *tilts hands back and forth* You need a balance, you know?

I first read the Chronicles of Narnia when I was about eight. I was thirteen or fourteen before I noticed the Christian elements, and that only happened because someone specifically pointed them out to me. I always figured that Aslan was a deity -- I just thought he was a pagan god. (To be honest, I am still most comfortable reading the books that way, and pretending large sections of The Last Battle never happened.)

[be-themoon.livejournal.com]

Mostly I just pretend LB never happened at all. I tend to substitute AU's fanfic writers have written, or just pretend it didn't happen.

[edenfalling]

Some Narnia AUs, like bedlamsbard's "Dust in the Air," are fascinating to read, but while I can accept other people's world-building within the boundaries of their stories, I have yet to find an AU version of The Last Battle that jibed enough with my interpretation of the books for me to accept it as a true alternate canon. So mostly I just focus on the earlier portions of canon and pretend it won't all end in that particular tragedy. *smiles brightly*

[lassiterfics.livejournal.com]

This is lovely! Well-written, and with sharp observations. I particularly like "Expecting equality will only bring heartache" and "I'd rather become a stranger to myself than hate him".

I have the same issues about accidental proselytizing when writing Narnia fic! I'm not religious, but writing Narnia fandom did weirdly make me understand the more universal aspects of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and I appreciate that. Narnia fandom is such a strange animal anyway, with its Christian roots and metric ton of fics about incest and bestiality.

[edenfalling]

Thank you! Lewis is sexist in a lot of ways, but I always liked that he gave girls actual things to do in his stories, that Susan and Lucy were reigning queens alongside Peter and Edmund, and that Susan was the best swimmer and archer amongst her siblings and was acknowledged as such. I figure coming back to a pre-feminist movement England must have been awwkard after living with that kind of freedom and respect.

There does seem to be a deep divide down the middle of Narnia fandom, with the very clean, often vaguely proselytizing fic on one side, and this very dark, rather deviant fic on the other. It makes me kind of sad, because I like stories on both sides of that divide, but I can see how it can be difficult to reconcile those two vastly divergent interpretations of canon.

[lassiterfics.livejournal.com]

I've read a couple of fics that I think straddles that divide really well, capturing the faith tempered by hope, the burden of duty, the inevitability of it all. Maybe you might like them too:
http://yuletidetreasure.org/archive/33/lanternwaste.html - edmund remembers
http://cupiscent.livejournal.com/460821.html - movieverse peter/caspian/susan-ish
http://zempasuchil.livejournal.com/86670.html - peter/susan in england. this is one of my favorites. the writer in general is one of my favorites, and i recommend every narnia fic she's written.
http://animus-wyrmis.livejournal.com/18592.html - susan and lucy tell stories to their classmates

[edenfalling]

Oh, thank you! I'd read the latter three already (I think I have animus_wyrmis's story memoried, actually), but the first one was new to me, and it is gorgeous.

[slowmercury.livejournal.com]

Here's another Susan story you might like - "Went Forth Unconquered," by gisho. You can read it here (http://gisho.livejournal.com/67699.html).

I very much like how Susan knows her own strengths and weaknesses. I also especially liked her conversation with Edmund; they can both see and understand the other's point of view, but it isn't where they are in their own lives. I love how the end is Susan's acknowledgment of how virtues can become flaws, and her promise of strength. Lovely work.

[edenfalling]

Thank you! I am fascinated by the way most human character traits aren't all good or all bad, but perhaps evolved to be useful under certain circumstances and then end up causing trouble in others. And in the books, Susan is practical and gentle and a peacemaker/compromise-creator, so it makes sense that she's the one who reacts to exile from Narnia by making peace with England and compromising with its cultural norms.

I love gisho's story -- I have it memoried, too. :-)

[rahirah]

I like!

[edenfalling]

Thank you!

[wren-chan.livejournal.com]

It certainly doesn't read obligatory. It's really one of the best of these I've read, and I collect them, because my own name is Susan for all I'm more like Lucy.

Thank you for helping me find a name for the idea I was trying to hold of what she did.

(And I'm a UU too, born and bred ^^)

[edenfalling]

Thank you! I think I said 'obligatory' mostly because the Problem of Susan is kind of an elephant in the middle of the room if you're writing in Narnia fandom, and sooner or later you're probably going to have to deal with it if only to settle in your own mind what you think of the issue. So this was my attempt to explain why I never saw Susan's estrangement from her family and her survival of her their deaths as necessarily a problem. Just because she won't talk about Narnia doesn't mean she's really forgotten, after all, and doesn't mean she can't be living as a good person (who happens to like nice clothes and fitting in to her current surroundings).

I wasn't born a UU, but my parents joined a UU congregation when I was two or three years old, so for all practical purposes, I might as well have been. *grin*

[be-themoon.livejournal.com]

Oh, this is lovely. Very pretty and sweet and somberly sad. Excellent lines and characterization, and it makes me squee happily.

[edenfalling]

Thank you very much!

[uminohikari.livejournal.com]

Aww, Susan :(

♥! You uh, have a lot of hands.. That is the eternal question of Narnia though. :|

[edenfalling]

You uh, have a lot of hands.

Secretly, I am the statue of a Hindu goddess brought to life by alchemy. :-)