AN: I've made this chapter sort of a humor-chapter because I have some sadder ones planned for later and I didn't want the whole fic to be all gloom and doom, so to speak. Plus also, I had to have some reason for Azure not leaving them. I've done my best to avoid it getting OOC.


England (Peter and Warren's apartment): September 12th, 1949

1:15 PM

"So what do you call these round things?" Azure asked with his mouth full, wolfing down another sleeve of the 'round things' he was referring to.

"Cookies." said Warren, wondering how on earth the situation had turned from Azure storming in and beating him with the flat of a blade to Azure sitting across from him at the table, eating him out of house and home.

"They're good, I like them." Azure decided, nodding solemnly to himself as though he had just discovered the date of Armageddon.

"Great..." Warren replied very unenthusiastically, wishing Peter and Aquamarine hadn't left him in charge of their unusual guest while they talked behind the closed doors of the sitting room.

Behind those doors, Aquamarine was pacing back and forth as speedily as her crutch would allow, looking annoyed and flustered.

"Will you stop doing that and stand still for a second?" Peter grumped, getting fed up with her quite quickly, having almost entirely forgotten the notion that they were sort of friends and taken the idea of very nearly blaming her for Azure's appearance in his and Warren's lives. "You're going to drive me mad."

"Azure is here and he wont leave..." Aquamarine muttered to herself, ignoring Peter and continuing to pace anyway. "...there must be some way to get rid of him."

"We could just spin him around very fast a few times until he's really dizzy, shove him in a cab, and then tell the driver to take him as far away as possible." Peter suggested in a begrudging tone, only half-joking, still irritated with Aquamarine's pacing.

"Unfortunately, for some unfathomable reason, my father likes Azure." the mermaid said, though whether she was still speaking only to herself or actually talking to Peter was debatable. "So, we aren't going to get any help getting rid of that idiot from him..."

"No to the cab thing, then." Peter said dryly.

"Cab?" Aquamarine spun around and bared her teeth furiously. "I'd rather shove him out a window!"

Peter managed to crack a smile at that. "I'm flexible."

"My father would be livid, though." sighed Aquamarine, tiring out and sitting back down in her wheelchair, much to Peter's relief. "Unless..."

"Unless what?" Peter asked, actually looking at her with a level of interest in whatever plan she was coming up with.

The mermaid shook her head. "No, you've done too much for me already, I couldn't ask you to do this..."

"Do what?" his eyebrows sunk down into a deep, almost-pointed frown.

Aquamarine cheeks flushed a pale sky-blue. "Azure has some notion of rescuing me and re-gaining my hand in marriage or something like that...but if there was a rival suitor..."

The meaning of what she was saying slowly dawned on Peter, but he preferred to play dumb rather than admit it. "Yes, I think you and Warren will make a lovely couple."

"No," Aquamarine's blush darkened a few shades to sapphire, seeing right through his fake stupidity. "not him..."

"How do I get myself into these messes?" he reached up and rubbed his forehead.

"Besides," Aquamarine continued pointedly. "would you really want to see the man who was in love with your sister going around with someone else, even if it was pretend?"

He had to admit it did make him feel a tad uncomfortable; strangely enough, more so even than the idea of pretending he himself was interested in Aquamarine did.

"Let me get something straight first;" Peter mused over the situation, still not even completely sure how he'd gotten himself into that mess in the first place. "I pretend to be interested in you in front of Azure and he goes away? Just like that? Then you stay until you're better and then you go away?"

A little relieved by his reaction, Aquamarine gave him a sort of half-smile and nodded. "Azure's a coward and it's not like he's in love with me or anything. We don't have love down there and he has far too many bubbles in his brain to think it exists anywhere else."

Peter was a little confused at that. "If he doesn't love you, why does he want you?"

Aquamarine laughed, really laughed, a deep, rather pretty-sounding water-melody of a laugh that seemed to echo off of the walls as if it was a water-fall sliding down them. "He is too stupid to look for anyone else to marry on his own. He's been going around with this puzzled look on his face ever since the wedding was called off."

"I see." said Peter, secretly admiring her pretty-sounding genuine laugh though he wouldn't have admitted it even under out-right torture.

"But as long as Raymond was alive, Azure has mostly stayed away, he doesn't actually want to fight anyone to get my hand in marriage-he doesn't want me that badly."

"Considering how he burst in here and started hitting Warren with a blade, I find that a little hard to believe."

"You would be surprised." she told him, shaking her head again and widening her smile just a little bit. "Trust me."

"Fine then." he said, giving in and agreeing to go along with her plan until Azure was gone. "So what do I say to him?"

Aquamarine though it over. If Azure was even the least bit sentimental, she would have come up with something a little flowery and deep for Peter to say, to make it seem more realistic and love-like; she had always been the romantic one in her family. As it was, however, any effort in coming up with such a speech would be useless, going completely over the idiot merman's head. So she realized she had to come up with something simple and point-blank. Something that would clearly be as much of a lie as the former, just much more boring.

After Peter had-quite easily-committed to memory what Aquamarine told him to say to her ex-betrothed and even managed to sound quite believable, he had one more question before they put their plan into action. "What is your father going to say when he finds out?"

A smug look came up onto the mermaids face. "I'm not marrying anyone, certainly not you, Azure was simply misinformed."

Couldn't she say 'you' with a little less disgust? Peter thought to himself-but said nothing about it out loud, not wanting her to think he actually cared what she thought of him.

Moments later they re-entered the room where Azure was now munching on a box of crackers he had swiped from one of their cabinets while Warren, ever patient, tapped his foot anxiously on the floor.

Thanks goodness, he thought the second he saw Peter and Aquamarine coming towards him-thinking they were going to take Azure away at last.

"Azure, I must say you have greatly offended my household." Peter said, glancing at Aquamarine and giving her what-Warren thought-looked like a sort of wink. For a moment it looked like Peter was trying not to laugh, but he got a hold of himself and went on. "I intended to make Aquamarine my wife; preparations were almost completed and you have come without even an invitation."

Warren's jaw dropped and he almost fell out of his chair from pure shock. "Seriously?"

"Yes, we've been planning this for a while if you know what I mean." Peter raised his eyebrows at Warren pointedly until he got the hint that this was all for show.

"Oh, right!" Warren nodded vigorously, only wanting to help. "The wedding, of course...because you were um...going to marry...Aquamarine..."

He was a bad actor and he squinted far too often to appear even a little believable (this was how his mother used to be able to always tell when he was trying to lie to her) but Azure wasn't paying any attention to him, he was too busy blinking at Peter in a very uncomprehending fashion.

"You and Aquamarine?" the merman replied dumbly, folding his arms across his chest. "Really?"

"Maybe you would like to challenge my new betrothed to a duel." Aquamarine suggested with a phony smile planted across her face as if she was straining to hold back more of her watery laughter.

"A duel?" Peter spun around and looked at her in disbelief. She hadn't said anything about a duel-real or fake-he was only supposed to claim he wanted to marry her and this annoying merman was supposed to vacate his apartment! "Aquamarine!"

She wiggled her eyebrows at him, trying to hint that he was supposed to talk to her in a more pleasant tone in front of Azure.

"Aquamarine," he couldn't help speaking through his teeth out of frustration. "he doesn't want to duel."

"Sure I do." Azure decided, oddly enough sort of warming up to the idea.

"What?" Peter and Aquamarine blurted out at the same time.

"You weren't supposed to say yes!" Aquamarine couldn't help exclaiming before catching herself and adding, "You...you don't know how to duel with a human...it's very different..."

"Different!" snorted Azure, tossing back his head proudly. "Anything this human can do, I can do better."

Peter found that extremely hard to believe. This merman could barely hold a sword, never mind fight anyone. He'd have never made it on a raid against an army of giants at the northern borders. Memories again started coming back to the high king's mind; they came in such a hurry that he didn't have a chance to block them like he always did-or at least tried to. With surprising clarity he saw the giants and himself fighting, almost as if through someone else's eyes, like he was watching it all happen. How distinctly he could hear his thoughts from back then, too. Susan and Edmund had been away in Calormen because Susan was courting that awful Prince Rabadash.

No, stop it! He told his mind sharply, please stop...it's not real, it's like a dream or a story or something. There are no giants, there was never any such person as a Prince Rabadash, he and his siblings were never royalty, and he, too, just like Azure, probably didn't know the first thing about dueling. How quickly Peter willed himself to forget the skill he had unintentionally shown earlier when he'd disarmed the merman. What skill was it really though to unarm someone who was as clumsy as Azure? No skill, certainly not that of a king. Not royal training, not instinct, just a fluke or a likelihood or something.

"Excuse us for just a moment, will you?" said Peter in a surprisingly gracious-almost kingly-tone as he grabbed onto the side of Aquamarine's shoulder, nudged her over to a corner of the room, and whispered, "Have you lost your marbles? I'm not going to duel with Azure in the middle of my own kitchen!"

Of course not, Aquamarine thought jokingly to herself-though she didn't dare say it out loud when Peter looked this angry, there's more room in the park.

"Aquamarine!" Peter snapped bitterly. "This is not the deal we came up with!"

"Look, you wont have to duel with him." Aquamarine promised, appearing-much to Peter's annoyance-to be struggling to hold back yet another laugh. "I'll talk him out of it."

"You'd better!" his voice was higher-pitched now.

"Shh...keep it down, you'll give it away." she cautioned him.

"I'll tell him everything!" Peter threatened, frowning angrily at her. "I'll tell him that we're only pretending to be engaged so he'll leave you alone, I swear by the Lion, I'll do it!"

Aquamarine only blinked in confusion. "The Lion? What Lion?"

"It's an expression." he brushed it off, not willing to get into the details of it-they made him feel uncomfortable.

"He wont fight you, alright?" the mermaid huffed, rolling her eyes. Men! It was one little fake duel that wasn't even really going to happen! Why did he have to get so worked up? Maybe if Aquamarine had ever actually been in a real duel herself, or else had seen someone she truly cared about in one, she might have understood, but because she never had, she didn't.

"What if I use my wish to make him go away?" offered Peter, thinking that he might have finally come up with a reasonable solution.

"You can't," Aquamarine explained. "a wish given to a human by a member of the merfolk can't be used against other merpeople; other humans, sure."

"Oh, that's fair..." Peter growled sarcastically.

The mermaid shrugged her shoulders. "Don't look at me, I didn't make up the rules."

"Go talk Azure out of it, then." he folded his arms across his chest and tightened his glare into a very no-nonsense expression.

Sighing deeply-and even whimpering slightly-Aquamarine, slowly tugging herself along with the crutch, went over to Azure and whispered something in his ear. The merman murmured something that sounded like, "Huh?" about six times before whatever she was saying finally got through to him; then he proceeded to shake his head no. She whispered something else and pouted sullenly. Rolling his eyes, Azure appeared to be weakening in his resolve (at least, Peter certainly hoped he was, though it might have been wishful thinking).

Warren was actually standing close enough to hear what they were saying, but he couldn't understand a word of it as they didn't seem to be speaking English. Merpeople speak all languages, but they also have their own, which was what Aquamarine and Azure were speaking in at that moment.

Finally Azure nodded and Aquamarine pouted again, still appearing quite displeased in spite of being a little patronized so to speak. Sort of timidly, she limped back over to Peter's side and whispered, "Good news and bad news."

Peter didn't say anything, he flinched slightly and waited for her to go on.

"The good news is there's no duel, like I promised, I talked him out of it."

That sounded good; what could the bad news possibly be? "And the bad news?"

"Well..." Aquamarine's complexion turned a chalky shade of foamy-green.

Almost involuntarily, Peter raised an eyebrow.

"...he's not leaving."

"Why not?" he had to struggle to keep himself from shouting.

"He insists on staying behind as our..." the mermaid looked like she was going to be sick. "Ugh!" she tried again to finish her sentence. "...chaperon."

Frustrated beyond all reason, Peter slapped his forehead and moaned inwardly.

AN: Please review!