FIC: All Your Fault

[gmtaslash]

Title: All Your Fault
Author: Trojie (with ending supplied by ineptshieldmaid)
Fandom: Narnia, Golden Age
Rating: G
Summary: Edmund and Peter wander off into the forest in order to get away from Cair Paravel and all of its inherent irritations.
Notes: Drunkenness, mud, long words, inadvisable breakfast foods. Written in response to ineptshieldmaid leaping upon Trojie in gchat and demanding a story (after calling me 'Trojieface', I might add *indignant pout*). Beta-read by Bridget.



'This is all YOUR fault,' said Peter exasperatedly to Edmund, as they traipsed through the forest towards (hopefully) Cair Paravel.

'I beg to differ,' retorted Edmund. 'It was your stupid behaviour that lost us our horses in the first place.'

'It was your idea.'

'You modified it into the form which enabled it to lose us our horses.'

'Well ... maybe. But the mud, the mud is all your doing.'

'Perhaps the mud is my fault,' allowed Edmund, attempting and failing to wring out his chainmail. 'But it was you that pulled me into it, so I'm telling the armourer to blame you when he sees the state of my hauberk.'

'You'll have plenty of time to do so while sharpening my sword,' snapped Peter. 'It'll never be the same after what you did with it.'

'Honestly, Peter, all I did was chop an onion. Stop being such an old fishwife.'

It had been a charming morning in the forests between Cair Paravel and the Glasswater, and it had followed an equally charming evening, in which the two young kings of Narnia had decided to go on a brief camping and hunting trip, entirely sans retinues, bodyguards, enterprising Leopards with ideas about palace security, giggling daughters of foreign potentates, seneschals, court minstrels, elderly dowager duchesses, and especially, sisters.

And so they had ridden forth, mercifully without the sound of bugling and a procession to herald their departure, into the forest. It was sunny that afternoon, and after bagging two rabbits for supper, they set up a small tent and proceeded to toast the meat over a cheerfully crackling fire, broach the bottle of blackberry wine Peter had thought to bring with him, and get merry.

Possibly too merry.

It was after the fifth unsavory and badly told joke about Calormene men and their vices that Edmund decided he'd had enough of humour and that what he'd really, really like to do was to have a race.

There was an issue with this in that he was finding it difficult to stand.

So Peter suggested that they race on horses.

Edmund thought this was a brilliant idea.

Admittedly, getting on the horses was perhaps as much of an issue as standing, but once on, and with feet in stirrups and hands on reins, it all felt quite doable.

Until the first treebranch, at least

The first treebranch was Edmund's undoing, of course. Peter managed to avoid that. But turning in the saddle to laugh at his prone brother was possibly not the greatest idea he'd ever had, and so High King Peter the Magnificent, Knight of the Order of the Lion, joined his brother on the turf, groaning at the pain in his backside.

They then attempted to find their way back to the tent. And failed.

However, Edmund did find a large and enticingly slurpy mud puddle.

'Hey, Pete,' he said, reaching out towards his brother. 'C'mere a moment?'

'Why?' asked Peter, suspiciously. 'And why the hell did we think it was a good idea to go rabbit hunting in chainmail?'

'That wasn't my idea,' pointed out Edmund, still trying to entice his brother closer. 'That was the Captain of the Guard's idea.'

'Why are we employing such an obvious imbecile as Captain of the Guard?'

If you'll recall,' said Edmund, wriggling his fingers at Peter now, 'it was a compromise - either we took a full company of Men and Beasts with us, or we promised to wear the chainmail at all times.'

'I agreed to that?'

'Yes, you did.'

'How drunk was I?'

'I don't believe you were drunk,' said Edmund, catching Peter's arm. 'Not unless you habitually imbibe before breakfast.'

'Not habitually, no,' said Peter, and grinned. 'Why, my dear brother. I do believe you were entertaining notions of dumping me in that puddle of mud.'

Edmund attempted to look innocent, and at the same time mused on the fact that while he himself was tiddled enough that motor skills were an issue and vision was on the edge of being doubled, and he was reasonably certain that Peter was in at least as bad a state, this did not impair their ability to converse polysyllabically.

In fact, Edmund continued to muse, he would never ordinarily even use the word polysyllabically unless heroically intoxicated.

It was thus, whilst pondering his chemically enhanced vocabulary and therefore unable to defend himself, that Edmund was thrown bodily into a mud puddle by his only slightly more co-ordinated brother, who managed to teeter on the edge of the sucking, slurping morass for a full five seconds before following Edmund into the mess.

'This is all your fault!' spluttered Peter, who'd managed to get a mouthful of the mud whilst floundering around.

'And yet it was you who caused it,' said Edmund thoughtfully, giving up on any hope of managing to get himself out, and lounging back into the surprisingly comfortable sediment ooze. 'Must be a high silt proportion,' he mused to himself, watching Peter try and fail three times to get out of the puddle. 'Why is it,' he asked himself, 'that I can only ever manage to recall those tedious lessons on geology when I've consumed unwisely?'

At this point Peter managed to both get himself onto what passed for dry land in this forest, and to latch onto Edmund's ankle and drag him clear. The dry land wasn't really that much drier than the puddle.

Edmund looked up with interest and noted that it had started to rain. Possibly it had started some time ago, actually, because it was really rather damp now.

And if the greying light was anything to go by, it was nearly dawn.

'Did we walk through the forest all night?' he asked Peter. Peter let out a swearword that Susan would not have approved of and that he'd probably learnt from Lucy. 'So we did, then?'

'It appears that way, yes. Do we have anything for breakfast?' Peter's thoughts were evidently on his stomach. As usual. At least, usual except when they were on other portions of his anatomy, and of that of the giggling daughters of foreign potentates, at least. Or of court minstrels. Or, occasionally, his bodyguards.

Edmund suddenly recalled that he was not supposed to know about this sort of thing, and decided to derail that train of thought. He looked around to see what he could find for breakfast. He recognised a patch of strappy green leaves growing beneath a tree. 'Uh, there's onions,' he ventured, tentatively.

'Onions.'

'Yes?'

'The unpleasantly sharp-tasting, sour, bitter bulb?'

'Only if you don't cook it.' Edmund, for some reason, felt an urge to defend the vegetable. His head was starting to pound.

'And where do you propose we get the means to cook it?'

'I ... see your point.'

'I am not eating raw onion. It will only bring on the hangover. Not that I get hangovers.'

'You do,' said Edmund accusingly. 'There was that time, after that ball for the Archenland-'

'I. Do not. Get hangovers.'

'Well, seeing as you don't get them, you'll be pleased to breakfast on this fine repast of onions, then,' said Edmund, pulling at the leaves of the plants. 'Onions have many healthful properties, in any case.'

'Do their many healthful properties include hangover amelioration?'

'I thought you didn't have a hangover. Anyway, pass me that sword.'

'What sword?'

'Your sword, you pillock.'

'No!'

'Why not?'

'Because ... I don't want you getting onion all over it.'

'Peter, you kill people with that sword. After they have it jabbed, you know, THROUGH THEIR HEADS I don't think they'll object to it smelling of onions. However I think you'd rather this onion was at least peeled and cut into bits before you have to eat it.'

Peter gave in with bad grace, and, munching on his onion, set out in the direction of what he thought was Cair Paravel. Some hours later, he was still refusing to admit to either the hangover or to being lost. It was only his own churning stomach and clanging head that prevented Edmund from bludgeoning his brother to death and eating him raw, with onions.

Fortunately for all concerned, two kings covered in mud and smelling of onions are easily tracked.

And so it was that they endured the ignominy of being dragged home by their own Palace Guard. There were no buglers or processions to witness their homecoming. However, there did appear to be an unfairly ample selection of dowager duchesses, giggling princesses and sisters. And a court minstrel.

It was some months before the onion jokes entirely died down.