★────── ✦✧✦──────★

A soft knock echoes between the walls of my bedroom until the sound escapes through the open window like a fluttering bird. The green checkered curtains move gently in the spring's breeze and the faint shadows dance on the wooden floor. Outside, the sun sinks towards the horizon but I haven't done much all day. I'm still sitting on my bed, a dark blue cotton pillow squeezed between my arms and stomach as I rest with my back against the wall.

'Susan?' Lucy's voice accompanies the second knock when I don't answer and I glance at the door as my younger sister tries the door knob. It turns slowly and then the oaken door swings open, the hinges creaking in a shrill tone, and Lucy stands in the shadow of the doorway. Her auburn hair falls in a slightly wavy manner around her youthful face but her expression reads concern.

'I haven't seen you sleep, eat or drink anything in the past few days. Are you going to be alright?'

I smile at her, though I know my blue eyes don't sparkle with the smile as they used to do. 'I haven't slept, eaten or drank anything in the past few months, Lucy. I'll be fine.'

Lucy's eyes shoot back at me and then at the plate on my dresser. I haven't touched it and it is probably cold by now. It's been three weeks, almost a month, since Peter, mum and I returned to England, but I feel like my heart is scattered over this whole world and another one. A deep gash tore itself through my heart when I learned that Lucy and Edmund had returned to Narnia for a third time; and unlike our second travel, this time there hadn't passed another 1300 years, but a mere three years. Both of my younger siblings had seen him, my King, my love, for a second time while I'm stuck here, destined to never see him again. I miss him so much, and every waking and sleeping hour I long for his touch, to feel his arms wrap around me once more.

I squeeze the pillow tighter and my vision becomes blurry as new tears fill my eyes. I miss him, terribly. It's unfair.

'Susan Margaret Pevensie,' Lucy roars as she stamps into my room.

I blink rapidly, forcing back the tears and my heart skips a beat by her sudden outburst. Lucy never loses it like as of right now. Lucy halts by my bed, setting her hands in her side and giving me a stern look. With a sniff, I rub with the palm of my hand over my heated cheek while avoiding her eyes. I hear commotion in the room next to mine and Edmund rushes inside, storming through the open door. His face is a little red and his eyes look tired.

'What is happening? Susan? Why is Lucy yelling?' he asks me in wonder.

I sit up straight and set my feet on the ground while laying the pillow next to me. I still avoid their gazes as I push myself of the bed and set course towards the dresser. Lucy had cooked something that looked like potato mash and some vegetables. Maybe she's just upset that I didn't like her cooking?

'Ed, she hasn't eaten a thing in weeks! Look how skinny she is!' Lucy roars in anger as she points at me. Edmund looks at Lucy and then at me. His face falls, his brown eyes displaying sadness.

'She is right, Su. You look rather skinny.'

'We all look rather skinny. The whole country is on ration,' I say, trying to sound logical as always. What are they trying to do? We are at war for heaven's sake. Of course I look more skinny than usual. I want them to eat the little we've got. However, a nagging voice in the back of my head argues that's not all that's going on.

The hot tears that I've fought so hard to keep in, stream down my cheeks and I wipe them angry away. 'Can you two just please go. . .'

'Not until you have eaten something,' Lucy tells me, her voice thick of tears as well. She sits down on my bed in a protest. Her brown skirt is old and is worn too many times. When I look into my younger sister's eyes, I can see she means it. She huffs.

Ed shrugs and lifts a pillow from the chair in the corner. He holds it and throws it suddenly at my head.

'Ed!' I groan as the pillow hits my face. 'If you do that again! I'll throw you out of my bloody window!' I scream at Ed as he slowly walks over to my window and leans a bit forward to look below at the sidewalk and street.

'What are you doing?' I say a bit perplexed, his actions making little sense to me.

'Checking how high the drop is, see if it's worth it.'

On the bed Lucy begins to laugh. At first she tries to hold in it, but soon her laughter echoes through my room.

Edmund smirks as he looks at me and closes the window.

I chuckle softly, but soon my laugh echoes alongside Lucy's chuckles.

'What's so funny?' Peter leans casually against the door frame, a smirk on his face as he takes in his laughing siblings; a sight he hasn't seen in what feels like forever.

'Susan wanted to throw Ed out of the window and he looked to see if the drop would be worth it,' Lucy manages to say between laughs.

However, everything stops abruptly. Suddenly I am laying on the floor, no longer standing on my feet. The house shakes all around me and I can't see or hear anything. A high-pitched sound penetrates my mind as my senses grow stronger again. I feel a pain flash through my body and I try to move, to scream, to make any sound at all.

Then, the blackness makes way for my destroyed bedroom. Pieces of the ceiling and the walls lay everywhere but I slowly realise as the dust clears that I'm no longer in my bedroom. . . but in our living room.

A bomb!

We never even heard the air siren, or any sign or warning.

'Susan!' Edmund appears in front of me, the left side of his face is bloodied and grim while his clothing is covered in gravel and dust. He pulls me up and pushes me through the debris out of the house.

Now I hear the sound, the alarm ringing through the evening London air. It is a sound I will never forget, a long ringing in increasing and decreasing waves that causes the small hairs on the back of my neck to stand upright.

Bombs, that is our reality from the previous four years. It never ends. It never stops. During the Golden Age of Narnia, I fought battles, but at least then I had my weapons, I had my family. I focus on my family, trying to shake the shock off, I still have my family. We need to keep each other safe, like always.

Peter is standing with Lucy in his arms, waiting for us while his gaze flies around the street, keeping an eye on everything. His temple is bleeding and he has a gash on the right side of his upper body, his blouse torn from the falling debris. Lucy looks unharmed but her eyes flutter shut from time till time.

'Lucy?' I cry out as Edmund releases me. I stumble towards my big brother. I hold his arm to steady myself.

'She is alright,' Peter says quietly, trying not to freak her out.

I have heard this voice from him many times. To tell me that Edmund was injured or we had lost a number of soldiers. I know she is not alright. I think a concussion or worse. I swallow my tears, I can't start crying now. I kiss her forehead long and carefully.

'We are going to be alright, Lu,' I whisper in her ear.

'You?' Peter whispers as he looks at Ed. My little brother nods, letting us know he is alright.

'I think I hurt my leg,' I answer truthfully, biting on my lip as my left leg stings from pain and I don't dare to put my weight on it.

Peter tries to look, but Ed beats him. 'A gash from her knee to the ankle. It is still losing blood,' Edmund tells Peter.

Edmund takes my arm as we rush away from the place we once called home. People laying dead on the street, covered in debris. Children crying and calling out for their mothers.

It breaks my heart to see my people like this, but we are strong. We survived four years and we can do four more. The alarm sounds again though, and the people scream in terror when the bombs fall down out of the darkening sky again.

This time, we are not in time by any shelter. The closest underground is miles away.

Ed pushes me against an automobile with Peter next to me. He hands me Lucy as he takes me in his arms. Edmund does the same. The boys are trying to shield Lucy and me from the terror, from the bombs above and. . . death.

Death though, doesn't wait for anyone, it has no mercy.

I know it took me, all of us, while the ringing of the air sirens reverberate between the walls of my mind in a crescendo, growing stronger and stronger, and it feels as if I'm ripped apart by the sound only.

A sting of pain travels over my spine, a flash of white light blinds me and then the street full of collapsed walls, stones and flying dust is gone.

I take a few trembling deep breaths while noticing and feeling the hot sand beneath my shoes. The rays of sunshine warm the top of my head and my brothers pull away from me and Lucy. I have to shield my eyes against the bright sunlight, squeezing them almost shut as I take in the golden sand hills all around us.

'Are we dead?' I ask my brothers in a whisper. In my arms Lucy moves and her eyes flutter open. She looks around and then back at us.

'No, we are back.'

Back?

'Narnia,' she mumbles before she loses consciousness once again.

★────── ✦✧✦──────★