Title: the train's gone down
Day/Theme: 1. Scream
Series: Chronicles of Narnia
Character/Pairing: Susan Pevensie
Rating: PG13 (angst)



Someone screams--a high shattering wail, pain and denial packed into one, riding the fine edge of hysteria. The breath is gone from Susan's lungs, she is scraped raw in her soul, bloodied by an internal wound, no makeup, hair flying, wearing Peter's boots.

She is gone. She is dying inside with each breath as her eyes search survivors. Behind her in her flat the phone was ringing as she ran out the door, banging it shut behind her, hurtling down the stairs. No. No. Oh no, please-- She finds the hard bloody edge of hope inside her, cutting even as it fills her throat, polishes it with every passing second.

The woman's scream spikes and is cut off, so abruptly it's probably by a hand. Their names run through her in a litany, burnishing each trembling fracture of light. Survivors, there are survivors, aren't there? Oh please--

She could die, here, and no one would see, her heart stuttering into a stagnant darkness, her throat trembling with each indrawn breath. She is broken apart, fractured, torn by loss. The people she'd arranged to meet will be wondering where she is.

There is nothing left in her to care. Each passing moment eats her heart away.

"Lucy!" She screams, her throat raw. Her hands smack against coats, backs, she shoves violently, puts all the strength in her arms into it, claws like a wild thing. "Peter! Edmund!" There is hysteria in her own voice, now, a hard-bitten terror that drags bloody-raw from her throat. "Lucy!"

Hers is only one voice, and easily swallowed.

I need that horn, now, she thinks dizzily, and then cannot remember what she thinks of, what use a horn would be to her now. On the ride over her nails gouged bloody into her palms. She cannot breathe; her ribs feel broken, it is the same jagged, pulsing pain and pressure, and yet she cannot remember ever suffering such an injury. The world blurs.

Her voice is one more lost keen, wordless and desperate. She can smell the metal. She can smell the smoke. She can smell the panic.

She knows they are lost to her, and she cannot say why, only that she can feel it.

She must not go down in this crush of people but she cannot help herself; crouching she sobs, harsh tearing noises that she hears seemingly from a distance. Ohgodithurts--she is shoved, knocked about, her knees crack concrete and she cries out, one more inconsequential sound. Once they would have-- she begins, and yet cannot grasp the memory that touches her, painfully fleeting, of a time when her pain would not have gone unremarked.

The pain is vast and unending, like dawn, and between the people, crushed to and fro, she is lost, one small girl and all alone, and the only heart left to her an open wound.

They never have to tell her. She, of all of them, always knew most keenly what she had lost.