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[fic] Clothed With Desolation
21 July 2012
This fic is also on AO3, if you find it easier to read there
Fandom: The Chronicles of Narnia, by C.S. Lewis
Focus: Susan Pevensie & her siblings
Setting: post-canon
Length: 2,101 words
Themes:
grief; crossdressing; siblings
Summary:
This is her only make-believe now, making believe that she is perfectly all right, and she can't even manage that.
Foreword:
Thanks to my wonderful betas, Sentientcitizen and Verity!
Fic:
Susan doesn't mean to spend so long staring at herself in the mirror. She is cataloguing herself: eyebrows, lips, cheeks, lashes, all carefully attended to, all perfectly beautiful and perfectly feminine. Her hair which she spends so much time on, her flattering dress, her necklace of pearl beads.
She frowns, red mouth turning down at the corners in a pout she knows looks appealing, then makes a sudden gargoyle face and turns from the mirror.
It's pointless.
None of this matters.
Patricia's call drifts up the stairs. "Susan?"
Susan is late. She turns back to the vanity mirror and creates a smile, decorating her face with it as easily as she does with her makeup. There's a party tonight, and it wouldn't do for Susan to be dreary.
The party is as parties ever are these days; Susan shines brilliantly but cold. Her old admirers flock around her like moths to a candle, but her flame is nothing more than paint on canvas. Eventually most move on to nicer girls, ones whose fires still burn warm.
"You used to be fun," one fellow says, voice sharp. "Still not over it?" laughs another, and Susan can't stop herself from flinching. She will never be over it.
A pang of longing stabs through her for the parties that only existed in her imagination, in the make-believe games she played with her siblings. At those parties she was effortlessly loved by all -- but such fantasies are ridiculous, and she pushes the thought aside with the ease of practise. She refuses to dwell on her family, when they are gone and there's nothing she can do. She wishes she could have played one last game of make-believe with them, been assured that she still loved and was loved in return; but it's too late.
This is her only make-believe now, making believe that she is perfectly all right, and she can't even manage that.
Later, when she's home from the party, she watches herself in the vanity mirror as she slowly wipes the makeup from her face, leaving her cheeks pale and her eyes unsparkling. She's wholly different with a bare face, and she thinks she hardly looks like herself at all.
She can see her siblings in her face: Lucy and Edmund and Peter reflected in the shape of her nose, her chin, her cheekbones. They stare out of her eyes, and she looks away, unable to bear the implacable judgement.
They have been dead for months and only she is alive; she who lives -- lived -- for parties and foolishness. Now she's alone with nothing but guilt, a companion growing ever more familiar.
She pushes away from her vanity, overwhelmed with distaste for herself, and collapses onto her bed where she knows she will cry herself to sleep.
In the morning she searches her face in the mirror again for her siblings, finding them one at a time, and she discovers she cannot make herself pick up her lipstick, her mascara, her powders and creams, and cover them up. She's glad she doesn't have work today.
She spends the rest of the day with her mouth pulled in a thin line and her chin up, proud and self-contained, uncaring of the stares she knows she is receiving on the street. She doesn't look.
She stays in that evening, pleading a headache when Margery comes by and invites her for dinner -- Still not over it? Susan hears, resounding through her head -- and opens her wardrobe doors to reveal the things she has inherited from her dead brothers and sister. The trunks and suitcases have sat untouched since the day they were delivered to her, since she hid them away behind the wardrobe doors where she wouldn't have to look at them. She dusts them off now, and pulls out the first suitcase.
It's brimful of Edmund, books about railways and science and history, a torch tucked into a corner unfilled by books. At the bottom is a careful hand-drawn map of an almost-familiar land. However long she stares at it, she can't quite call to mind what part of the world it is. It is not labelled.
She sets the case aside, and opens the next: a haphazard mix of childhood toys. She even sees in the jumble a doll she thinks was hers, once. Under the toys are dress-up clothes, carelessly folded.
The next case is filled with sheets of music mixed up with fairy tales and adventure stories -- Lucy -- and the next is unfathomably empty.
By this time suitcases and their contents are scattered around her where she is kneeling in front of the wardrobe with tears tracing silently down her bare cheeks. She has no more room to open anything more. She grips the wardrobe door and stands, clutching one of Lucy's adventure books with an unsteady hand, and retreats to her bed. She spends the rest of the evening reading it, imagining how Lucy must have enjoyed it, but when she's done she cannot remember what it was about.
Susan falls asleep holding the book, and in the morning when she wakes, tears dried on her face, the book is still held tightly in her arms. It is Sunday, and she does not go to church.
She rises, still wearing the rumpled clothing of the night before, still clutching the book. She sets it down on her vanity and sits, but only a moment later she stands again and returns to the wardrobe. She sets aside another adventure novel from the stack -- this one promises pirates -- then opens one of the untouched trunks to find it stuffed with Peter's clothing.
She pulls on a cap that's poking out of the pile, and it sits low over her eyes. When she tucks her long hair up, though, the cap fits better, more tightly, and she can see.
A glimpse of herself in the mirror inside one door of the wardrobe makes her start. She averts her eyes from it, focusing on the trunk in front of her.
She pulls out the clothes, one by one: shirts, trousers, coats and waistcoats, socks and shoes and underthings. The trunk is small. Peter was never a man of fashion, and the clothing rations had only just ended, so there are a few well-worn essentials and nothing more.
It dismays her to realize that though Peter had these clothes long enough for many to need mending, some do not look familiar to her. Susan was distracted and scornful for too long, and she presses a shirt to her face to muffle her tears.
When she's cried out, she lowers the shirt again, and inspects each article of clothing more carefully. Typical of Peter, not bothering to darn his socks or patch his shirts, she thinks, and barely keeps herself from dissolving again into tears.
Instead she stands up determinedly, pauses to let the dizziness fade from her head, then fetches her mending basket.
It takes longer than she intended, to return Peter's clothing to a presentable state, but she's pleased with herself when she's finished. She looks with satisfaction on her tidy stitches. She knows Peter would have been grateful to her, were he still alive to wear the mended clothes. Peter could always be counted on for affirmation and appreciation, though he could be high-handed in his phrasing of it.
Distractedly she reaches up to twirl a strand of hair about her fingers, and and is briefly alarmed to find herself hairless. The hat. Of course. She pulls it from her head and examines it for holes or stains, and discovering none, she sets it aside on the folded pile of mended clothes.
Her head feels bare.
She puts the hat back on, and feels ridiculous. She takes it off again and bundles the whole pile of clothing back into the trunk from which it came. She tidies up books and toys, she carefully latches each case and trunk, and she pushes the whole collection of things back into the wardrobe. It can stay there forever as far as she cares, she thinks viciously.
She stays away only a week, a miserable week of pretending to be cheerful for her dreadful boss, of hating herself each day when she paints her face and covers up her siblings, of making excuses to her friends when they come to call.
Feeling shaky but certain, she pulls the wardrobe open, takes down the suitcases that threaten to tumble onto her, and lifts the lid of Peter's trunk.
Peter is -- was -- larger than Susan, wider in shoulder and longer in leg, but Susan's not so small for a woman. (Stately, her mother always said, and Susan chokes back a sob.)
She gathers her hair above her head and pulls the cap on, then hesitates. But she's here, and she knows why she's here, and she couldn't stay away, so she strips herself of her skirt and blouse, unfastens her bra and girdle, pulls down her stockings, and leaves herself in nothing but her knickers. After a moment she removes the knickers as well.
Peter's drawers feel unfamiliar and too loose, but her hips hold them up well enough after they're buttoned. Peter's shirt: the sleeves are only slightly too long, but the buttons gape a little over her chest, and she frowns. She adds a waistcoat, carefully rearranging the shirt and her breasts until everything lies smoother, but it still isn't right.
She needs something to flatten her breasts more thoroughly.
Remembering the dress-up clothes, she's sure there must be something that could be of use. She opens the case, and dumps the toys and clothes onto the floor. A bright flash of red catches her eye. It's a sash she remembers fondly -- or a scarf, or a narrow shawl. Lucy loved it, and used it often and imaginatively. It is long and sturdy and soft. When she binds it around herself, it's perfect. The shirt and waistcoat fit.
Peter's trousers are definitely too long. She rolls up the hems, but it makes her feel like a boy trying on his father's clothes, so she pulls the trousers off again and hems them up carefully without trimming the excess fabric.
She feels daring, sitting calmly cross-legged on her floor and sewing, wearing what she's wearing. The drapes are shut.
When she finishes hemming, she shakes the trousers out and puts them back on. Much better. Next are the socks, which are too big but look fine. The shoes, though, are unalterably awkward on her small feet, and for a moment she's afraid that's the end of it. But Edmund -- Edmund had smaller feet than Peter, she thinks with sudden inspiration. Surely there's a pair of Ed's shoes in one of the other trunks or cases.
She pulls the whole collection out of the wardrobe, and throws suitcases open frantically. Things spill out: more clothes, more books, pens and pencils and paper and a compass and maps and makeup, model trains, quilts. The detritus of three lives surrounds her, and finally she finds a pair of Edmund's shoes.
She sits down on a quilt and laces Ed's shoes to her feet. They're a bit long, but far better than Peter's. They work.
She exhales, relieved.
She pulls on one of Peter's coats and, flushed with an emotion she cannot name, stands. There, she thinks, her body thrumming, and then she realizes she forgot a tie. She knots one of Peter's expertly around her neck, viscerally reminded of many years ago when she used to help Ed with his tie. She pulls the ends under the waistcoat.
Then she finally allows herself to look in the wardrobe mirror.
All she sees, for an agonizing moment, is Peter staring at her with tragic eyes. Her face crumples with unshed tears and the effect is broken, but as she squeezes her eyes shut, Peter haunts her. Wildly, desperately, she thinks: he's here, he's really here.
She opens her eyes again and forces herself to stare at the reflection boldly. Those are her eyes, that's her nose, that's the unfortunate spot which appeared yesterday on her forehead and she couldn't resist popping. Edmund's shoes are on her feet, and a hint of red shows through the shirt just above the waistcoat. But without makeup she doesn't look herself, and in these clothes her unfamiliar face transforms into Peter's.
The mirror is lying: all she has is Peter's clothes, and Peter's sister wearing them. Peter is not resurrected in her.
But she is surrounded by her siblings, inside and out. She stands tall, and breathes.
Comments:
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