Disclaimer:

The characters and larger portion of the plot belong to C. S. Lewis and Akira Amano. I'm just playing with them.

Warning: Mention of suicide

Chapter 1

Susan had always been ruled by logic. She lived in a time of war. Her father fought and may have not come back. As the second eldest she needed to be strong for her siblings; to support Peter, to reassure Edmund, to comfort Lucy. She needed to be the anchor for their flights of fancy. Logic was her lifeline.

Narnia defied logic. It was terrifying, but also wonderful. In that brilliant world, she found a new logic and adapted. After all, she still had her brothers and sister to look after. She grew up there, they all did.

That made it all the harder to go back, she supposed. They came back and suddenly lost all the growing up they'd done. Adjusting was difficult, but clinging to logic, Susan adapted. Logically what else was there to do? But it was difficult and she wasn't done yet when her Horn called them back.

Everything had changed but she managed to slide back into the role of gentle queen. But the year in between had shaken her faith. She was not like Lucy whose faith and trust where so willingly dispersed. She struggled. The logic she held so tightly to was a barricade from true faith.

So when she was told that she was never going back, instead of turning to faith like her brother and later the younger two did, she clung to logic. According to logic, there was no way Narnia actually existed. Logically it couldn't have been anything more than a game. And so it was, Susan decided. And so it must have been.

Her logic drove a wedge between her and her siblings and chased her into the arms of the world. She took solace in parties and boys and chained away the queen. She chose not to see how she was hurting her brothers and sister. She closed her eyes to the hurt she was causing herself.

Until the day of the accident. The day the rug was tugged from under her feet. The day everything was taken from her in a blur of speed and a screech of twisted metal. Susan broke, shattered pieces falling in on herself. She stopped going to parties, stripped every facet of the girl she had been until all that was left was a gaunt and grieving queen, still bearing the heavy chains she'd draped herself in.

At that point there was nothing left but to admit the truth. They had gone back. Aslan had called them home. And she'd been left behind. A bitter voice inside whispered that even if she'd been there, it wouldn't have mattered. She wouldn't have been welcome. Caught in fits of depression and self-loathing she tried to rejoin them, hoping against hope that she'd open her eyes and see Narnia, fearing she'd wind up somewhere else.

When she opened her eyes, it wasn't Narnia she saw, but it wasn't some other afterlife either. She was still alive. She hated it. Every attempt ended the same way. Opening her eyes with breath in her lungs, a steady rhythm in her chest, and a world where she was alone.

It took longer than it should have to realize she wasn't aging. Then again, she was living through the motions, simply waiting for death. She was well into her thirties when she finally realized that she looked no older than twenty-two. It was with some measure of frustration that she realized that, at the rate she was going, she would never go home. With no other recourse, she used the money her parents left her to buy a cottage by the sea where she could mourn alone.

Logic had no place in her life. Not anymore. After all, where is the logic in immortality? Besides, it was her devotion to logic in the first place that split her from her siblings and from Aslan and Narnia.

There was comfort in her new home. The sound of the waves on the coast took her back to Cair Paravel. Words that she had long forgotten resurfaced. Once a queen of Narnia, always a queen of Narnia. Those words were her hope. That maybe, just maybe, she would be taken back. Her immortality cursed her everyday, but ever so slowly, Susan began to heal.

True mending began with a motorbike. Susan had never been terribly interested in the things before, (that had been Peter's hobby) but when she saw it lying abandoned on the side of the road, something long thought dead stirred inside of her. It was the memory of her brother that caused her to bring it home, and a desire to feel close to him once more that made her ride it. At that point though, it became all for her.

She couldn't remember when she had last felt so free, but it was probably back in Narnia, mostly likely the first time. She wondered what her siblings would say if they were watching her now. She wondered what their friends would think. The Gentle Queen, tearing across the country on a motorbike. The Motorbike Queen. The thought made her laugh. With a start, she realized that that was the first time she'd laughed since the accident.

Susan threw herself into mechanics. She taught herself to maintain the bike and began to upgrade it. She cut her hair short so as to keep it out of the way when she was working and riding. Before long, she felt she had an aesthetic all her own. And really, by this point she was seventy-five going on twenty-two. Anything she was going to do she was going to do in it's entirety. So in a move that was quite literally spur of the moment she dyed her hair violet. She could practically hear her siblings laughing at her. Graceful, elegant Susan turning into a punk. The thought of their laughter brought her joy.

Stunt riding was something she stumbled across quite by accident. Susan was out riding as she often did when her brakes failed. Ordinarily, this wouldn't be much of an issue as she could simply coast to a stop. Unfortunately, she was on a hill at the time she discovered this and at the bottom was a rather nasty ditch. Running low on options, she floored it and aimed for the little ridge of the edge of the ditch. She made the jump successfully and landed with little issue.

The thrill she'd received from that little stunt carried her the rest of her way home. From then on she began experimenting. She would do more and more risky stunts. Inevitably, it bore some painful results. However, those results did uncover a possible source of her immortality.

It was after a particularly nasty fall during which she'd sliced open her shoulder. The impact knocked her out but when she came too she felt a warmth over her arm where she'd sliced it open. Propping herself up to take a look, she was shocked to see purple fire burning in the injury. She watched, dumbfounded as muscle formed over the gash and then skin formed over that. Susan simply sat in shock for a time before common sense spoke up and demanded she treat herself. Shaking herself out of her daze, she picked herself up and walked her bike home.

Susan continued with the stunts, but she now split her focus between her bikes and the fire. She rather despised it, for keeping her alive despite everything, but with such a thing, she thought it wise to gain some understanding of exactly what it was capable of. It took a good deal of time for her to take notice of its exact effects. It expanded things, or perhaps, propagated was a better word. The tree branch she accidentally lit on fire certainly didn't expand, at least not outward. It grew rapidly until it was thrice the size it had been originally. She did find a sort of dark irony in the fact that the fire was the same color she'd chosen for her hair. She considered redying it but decided against doing so for the time being.

She'd been doing stunts for several years before she was noticed. To be perfectly honest, joining the circus had never been in her plans. She had planned to live out the rest of her years alone in her cottage with the sea and her bike. But when the ringmaster, an aging man by the name of Tybalt (" Call me Terry.") Peck offered her a place after watching her practice, she didn't take long to think about it before agreeing. While the time to herself had been good for her, she was starting to go a little crazy with no one to talk to.

It didn't really surprise her that she loved it. Doing stunts was one thing. Doing stunts for a crowd was another thing entirely. People were in awe. Hearing their gasps as she did something particularly dangerous followed by their relieved and awestruck applause brought warmth to her chest. It made her feel loved. These people didn't know her, but that didn't matter. They appreciated what she did, and took joy from her passion. It was easy for her to imagine Peter, Edmund, and Lucy in the audience, cheering her on. Her performances brought her closer to them than she had been since they died.

Something she hadn't initially thought about when joining, was a stage name. Susan Pevensie certainly wouldn't do. After all, Susan Pevensie was well into her fifties now. At least on paper. It was a little boy, son of two of the acrobats who suggested Skull DeMort. Susan, after a minute or two of staring into a mirror and testing the name on her lips shrugged, and decided, why not? After all, it wasn't like anyone had any better ideas.

So from then on Susan Pevensie became Skull DeMort,The Motorbike Queen.

Skull had been at the circus for nearly a year when her name was changed again. It wasn't a full change, more like an addition, but she felt that it was the most accurate description she'd received since she was twelve and crowned queen of Narnia. The addition was earned when she'd walked away from horrid crash, physically unharmed though more than a little bit dizzy and just a bit roasted, the burns themselves, healing in a matter of days. To be perfectly honest, she didn't remember much about the incident. All she could recall was the gasps turning to screams of horror, then pain, pain, pain, and then relieved and disbelieving cheers as she stumbled out of the burning wreckage. Her friends in the circus were shocked as well, and spent the next month worrying over her until she finally told them she was fine and it wasn't the first time such a thing had happened.

It was actually the rumours from those who were there that coined her new title, and after hearing from Skull herself that the incident had not been a fluke, the circus adopted it for their posters. She was now The Immortal Skull DeMort, Motorbike Queen.

AN

Fair warning, updates will be sporadic and further between the further I get into the story. I'll do my best to stick with this story though as I do love the concept and the characters. Susan has been a favorite of mine since I was young and hopefully that will counter distractions long enough to eventually finish it.

This story was inspired by The After by TheFictionAddictionIsReal. The concept is the same but since it hasn't updated in over a year, I decided to try my hand at it.

-Glorificate