What happened between the penultimate comic in Playing With Dolls, and the final image of Susan lying peacefully in bed, with three of her dolls draped over her? I wanted to find out, so I had to write it...

I've written fanfic before, but this is the first time I've posted any.  It's very distracting doing all the research, too easy to get caught up in an archive dive.
The events here happen just before this episode of "El Goonish Shive: NP", which is a canon background story of the main comic strip.
(And if anyone reading this doesn't know about El Goonish Shive... you're in for a treat.)

Also crossposted on Archive of Our Own, which has some fun EGS fanfic: Chapter 1