England (Peter and Warren's apartment, the bathroom): September 14th

11:48 PM

Aquamarine was simply exhausted, but as she rested in the lukewarm water-filled tub, her quickly healing tail hanging over it-looking much stronger and far more elegant than it had only a few days before-she found she couldn't fall asleep.

Her ears seemed to pick up every little sound that came her way. A dog barking outside, a stray cat knocking over a garbage can in an alleyway not far from the window, Warren crying himself to sleep, Peter's snoring (she had listened and waited for it, but even now, he had not wept), and the cars on the street below. She couldn't hear Azure, though, and she was glad of it. At night, the merman slept in one of the neighbors' pools. It was a terribly foolhardy thing for a creature that most humans think of as mythical to do, but he was surprisingly careful and the owners didn't use their pool at this time of year anyway; the air was too chilly. In all honesty, Aquamarine didn't see the good in a chaperon who went away at night but haunted a couple during the daylight hours. Sure, he couldn't help it because of his tail forming, but really what was the point? What use was a chaperon who let them be alone together all night? Of course, they weren't really together (what with the separate rooms and all that), and Aquamarine had her tail.

Maybe that's it, the mermaid thought-simply because she had nothing better to do, he probably thinks we wouldn't be able to do anything because I have a tail until the sun comes up. Huh, how about that? Perhaps Azure's a little smarter than I give him credit for.

The last part of her thought was so preposterous that she laughed wildly to herself. After all, she was probably giving the situation more thought than Azure had! And she didn't even like Peter in that way-or at all, really.

All of a sudden, the night seemed to grow gloomier, quieter. The dog stopped barking, the cat calmed down, and the number of cars on the street lessened. Aquamarine's mind turned to the funeral that morning: Peter's stony expression and the faces of his dead siblings in their caskets. Those nearly-regal, dead faces were bewitching somehow, they clung to her mind. Leaning up in the tub, arching her back so she could look out the half-open window shutters, Aquamarine wished she had gotten a chance to meet them when they were alive.

A few tears slid down her face, illuminated by the sliver of moonlight falling in from behind the shutters. She wasn't crying for his siblings now; she was thinking about Hailey and Claire. They'd died, too, but there was no memorial for them yet because their bodies hadn't been found, just like Peter's Lucy.

No matter what happens, I'll still remember them, thought Aquamarine, that's what Peter has to realize, I think, that's it's okay to remember.

England (the Pevensies' old house): September 16th, 1949

1:45 PM

Once, not so very long ago, this house had been home to four little children who'd had a liking for racing one another up and down the stairs until their father shouted for the love of all that was holy for them to 'please stop that racket'. There had been giggles and secrets and hidden sweets in-between mattresses. The two girls had braided each other's hair and the boys had traded marbles. School terms meant they had to leave, but during the holidays, the good old times came back. They'd lived through the first bombing in that house together, those children, until they were sent away into the country for a little while.

As Peter opened the front door now, it creaked. Funny how he didn't remember it ever creaking even once during his childhood-not one single time in eighteen years-and it creaked now. Outside, the sky was mostly blue in spite of a mild over-cast but inside of the house all of the light that reached through the drawn curtains was an ashy shade of gray.

There was nothing destroyed or smashed, no shattered windows or anything of the sort, but, to Peter, as he stood in the entryway and looked around in a sort of dazed wonder, the house felt broken.

"Peter, I think it's starting to drizzle out here." a voice behind him said.

In the sleepy, hollowness of the place that had once been home, Peter had nearly forgotten that he hadn't come alone; Warren, Aquamarine, and-yes, sadly-Azure, were right behind him, waiting to be let in.

He didn't mind Warren there and he could almost put up with Aquamarine's presence even if it felt a little out of place, but Azure coming along really irked him. The whole ride over, Peter kept thinking about how rude it was for the stupid merman to want to tag along to a place that didn't concern him in the least. Standing in the doorway now, however, he realized this house didn't really concern much of anyone anymore. Not anyone he knew or had ever known, anyway.

A lot of the furniture was already gone: the couch in the living room, the stool by the coat hooks, the coffee table where he, Edmund, and Susan used to like to play chess (Lucy preferred to use the pieces like little dolls and make up stories about them, rather than bother to learn the actual game), and Mrs. Pevensie's favorite rocking chair were all no where to be seen. Peter had arranged for those to be sold already and the collectors had come mere hours before to take them. There were more debts on his hands now than Peter had expected; it wasn't too bad seeing as Mr. and Mrs. Pevensie had been pretty careful with whatever expenses they'd run up, and whatever money they stored in the local bank, but it was enough that some things needed to go. The house itself would be sold as soon as someone made a reasonable offer; and Peter was there to see if there was anything important he needed to take with him back to the apartment.

This didn't feel quite as sad as that other place did when he saw it in ruins. That castle called Cair Paravel. No, it wasn't real. There was no castle, there were no ruins of it, either. No Lions, no Telmarines, just a sad chapter in a pretty story.

Azure whistled an annoyingly high-pitched tune to himself that had the effect of making everyone, except for Aquamarine, feel sea-sick. Peter threatened to gag him if he didn't stop it and made him sit down by the old window-seat until it was time to leave.

"How come Aquamarine doesn't have to sit here, too?" Azure protested sullenly, his face puckered and sour-looking like he'd just swallowed a lemon wedge.

"Because I say she doesn't." Peter huffed, in no mood to argue or explain himself to the merman who, for all the trouble he was causing them, wasn't even that good at being a chaperon. Sure, he followed them everywhere and glowered a lot, but as a whole, he did a pretty pathetic job at it. If he and Aquamarine had actually wanted to fool around, they probably could have by now without him even realizing it. Azure was the most easily-distracted person Peter had ever met. He knew two years olds with a longer attention span!

"Fine." he pouted, holding his own right hand, cradling it like it was an injured baby bird.

"Stay." Warren told him pointedly as if he was a dog with a habit of disobedience.

Walking up the stairs, to his siblings' bedrooms felt funny, like he wasn't really there, as if he was only traveling the house the same way he could travel any familiar place in his mind when he couldn't fall asleep right away at night. And yet, it didn't even really feel all that familiar anymore. Maybe he'd forgotten about that, too. Maybe one day he, Peter Pevensie, would be a memory-less nobody. Or maybe he already was.

The first bedroom was the one that he used to share with Edmund before he grew up and went away to a university, giving the room up completely to his younger brother. Aside from the fact that it had evidently been cleaned and tidied up a little less often since he had last been there (Peter was more a neat-freak than Edmund) nothing much had changed. Not even the fact that there were two beds (none of the beds had gotten sold yet and he was strongly considering just leaving them all for whomever decided to buy the house) as if Edmund hadn't given much thought to taking over his new turf. He didn't even seem to have used Peter's side of the room much; a layer of dust was on the dresser there, as if the half was completely untouched. There was a picture hanging up on the side that had formerly belonged to Peter, a little drawing of a flower garden Susan had done when she was four. He used to like that drawing quite a bit, but it occurred to him that he didn't care for it at all now. Unable to bring himself to take it, much less to peel it off the wall and throw it in the dustbin, he just left it there and went on to Lucy's room, wanting nothing from this part of his past, either.

Lucy's bedroom was different from the other rooms in the house Peter had been walking through; the curtains were lighter here, letting in yellow light as the sun rose a little higher. The comforter on the bed was embroidered with blue jays and a few sloppy silver-white stitches which had been Lucy's failed attempts to add clouds into the picture until she realized how difficult and boring it was. The bookshelves were over filled with various titles which Peter would not look at; he'd have to sell them, of course he would. Either that or just leave them with the house.

Slowly, as if expecting something to jump out at him and pull him in, Peter opened the closet door and slid aside the clothing hanging there. No point in saving those either. On a little white shelf behind them were two medium-sized objects made of wood. The first was an old doll house he and Mr. Pevensie had once tried to make for Lucy. It was a really bad-looking piece of junk but Lucy refused to let them toss it and buy her a 'real' one; she called it beautiful and played with it all the time until she got too old for dolls and such things and had carefully tucked it away back here.

The wood was rough and it was a wonder the poor child hadn't gotten a sea's worth of splinters playing with it. Then, Peter remembered her coming to him quite a few times with splinters as a child, usually stuck in her fingers. He didn't often ask how it had happened, much more concerned with getting it out and comforting her afterwards, now he figured it out. The ones in her knees might have been from tree climbing but the finger ones...definitely the doll house. He had helped build it, her pain was sort of his fault then, wasn't it? Of course it was, everything was his fault now. It only fit that this would be, too. The doll house would have to be pitched now, like it should have been years ago, but he couldn't bring himself to touch it.

Sighing, Peter looked at the other object. A wooden box, smooth and well crafted with an L engraved on the top of it. It had been brought from an old shop a few years ago, he wasn't sure what Lucy kept in there, but he decided to take it with him anyway, for all he knew, it might be the only thing worth rescuing.

Meanwhile, it was Susan's old bedroom that Aquamarine had wandered into. A confusing place that had withstood one too many phases over its past resident's lifetime. The carpet smelled faintly of perfume that could not be washed out and the dresser had a couple of old make-up stains on it. In one draw, the mermaid found several empty lipstick tubes and a few torn-up nylons. These objects didn't seem to reflect the person who had lived there most recently, however. Nor did the silver mirror which she somehow knew had been looked into far too often, tell her much about the young woman who had died.

A head appeared in the doorway and Aquamarine jumped a little, relieved to see it was only Warren standing there as if he was glued to the spot.

"She had a nice room." Aquamarine commented rather pathetically.

Warren didn't call her on it. "Yeah, I guess..."

"You know you don't have to stand in the doorway like a guard on duty." Aquamarine pointed out, trying not to laugh (failing somewhat at this endeavor, somber as the situation was).

Warren chuckled mildly. "I'm not used to seeing the room from any other angle."

"You've never been in here?" the mermaid asked.

"Are you kidding?" he shook his head and blinked at her awkwardly. "If I had ever been in this room with her, Edmund would have killed me and Peter would have brought me back to clean up the mess."

"Protective brothers," Aquamarine noted, looking around as if uncertain what she ought to let herself focus on.

"Do you have brothers?"

The mermaid smiled. "Sisters."

"I see."

"They're pretty protective themselves though."

"Do you miss them?" Warren asked.

"I don't really think about that, I guess." said Aquamarine, wondering exactly whether or not she did miss them. "It's complicated."

"I'm going to go downstairs." Warren told her, unable to bring himself to step all the way into his girlfriend's room, even now that she was gone. "Someone's got to make sure Azure isn't up to anything insane."

"He's probably done something stupid by now," Aquamarine had to agree. "it's been ten minutes, if he hasn't acted up, it would be a new record for him."

After Warren was out of sight, Aquamarine's eyes landed on a slip of paper sticking out from under a rug were it had either been hidden, or else dropped and forgotten. Curiously, she picked it up. As she read it, her eyes widened. It couldn't be true, could it? But it was! One thing was for sure, she would never be able to look at Peter the same way again. Because now, not only did he know what she really was, she knew what he really was, too.

AN: Please don't forget to review.