#peter pan oc real (shocking)

[rosietrace]

KERMIT JAS HAS TRAUMATIZED ME 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

me: not knowing if i would be able to join vc friday cuz my head hurt

also me: spent 15 minutes singing songs like kermit and Carl Wheezer to Nem and Rosie

[heliads]

Can I request a Peter Pan imagine? Based on the pic of what I wrote

i don't write for OCs anymore so i just made this a y/n fic, but i really liked this one so i hope you enjoy!

masterlist

The night is getting to you again. You’ve felt it in the recent months, or even in the recent years, this all-encompassing wave of grief for a family you never had, but it seems to hit especially hard once the sun goes down. None of this is really your fault, of course, and there’s nothing you can do about it, but still. There is something horrid in knowing that your mother was the Evil Queen Regina, a woman who could handle any spell or challenge that came her way except her own daughter. 

You suppose you should be grateful that you’re not dead. She tried to leave you that way, anyway, had her guard leave you out in the Enchanted Forest unprotected the day you were born. You ended up surviving by pure coincidence, taken home by a farmer and his wife who didn’t really want another mouth to feed but could use a strong set of hands when you grew up. To this day, you don’t know if you’re glad they found you or not. Perhaps it would have been better to fade into that forest as an infant, to let the dark greens and murky shadows take you away. 

Now, however, you don’t have that choice. Whatever glimmer of appreciation the farmers may have had upon seeing you for the first time has quickly faded. They thought they were getting a workhand they wouldn’t have to pay, but instead, they got a witch. 

You are, after all, still your mother’s daughter, even if you don’t know how that’s supposed to shape you. You’ve been careful to keep your magic under control, but it just adds another set of chains tying you down. You don’t know how your mother felt when she looked at you for the first time, but it must have been something like how you feel now, as if she knew then and there that she would never have an ounce of freedom again. 

Tonight, you escape the cluttered, cramped farmhouse and retreat to the very edge of the farm, where the carefully cultivated rows of crops meet the wild, untamed forest. You stare into its depths as if expecting to see someone staring back at you, yet it still comes as quite a shock when you do. 

You blink hard, but when you open your eyes again, the boy is still there. Now, he’s smirking as if pleased that he’s startled you. He glances around, then gestures for you to follow him into the woods. It’s a terrible idea, certainly, but you do it anyway. 

The boy is waiting just a few yards within the limits of the forest, leaning against the trunk of a nearby tree. In the shadows of the night, his eyes seem just as sharp a green as the grass beneath your feet. 

“You came,” he says almost proudly, “I wasn’t sure if you would.”

You fold your arms across your chest. You may be talking with him, but that doesn’t mean that you have to trust him. 

“I was curious. It’s not every day that you find some strange boy in the woods.”

His smile deepens, although you’re not sure that what you said was a compliment. “I have a question for you. Do you know who I am?”

You tilt your head to the side, considering this. “Seeing as you’ve gone out of your way to ask me, I’m assuming it’s someone important.”

The boy chuckles. “I’d certainly like to think so, yes.”

You raise a brow at his comment. “I don’t know. Who are you?”

The boy leans idly back against the tree. “You’re not even going to try and guess? I have to say, I’m disappointed.”

You narrow your eyes at him. “Why do you care? You don’t even know me.”

The boy grins, and his teeth flash in the moonlight like blades. “Ah, but I do. Your name is Y/N L/N, and you live here with people who aren’t your true parents. Your real mother is Queen Regina, and you’ve inherited her magic. I can keep going, if you like.”

You back away from him. “Whoever you are, I’d suggest that you leave me alone. I don’t know what you want with me, but you aren’t going to get it.”

The boy rolls his eyes. “I’m not going to hurt you, obviously. If I wanted you hurt, you’d be dead.”

“Is that supposed to reassure me?” You ask. “Because it’s not really working.”

He seems proud of that. “I’m not typically one to reassure people. Either you trust me or you don’t, that’s up to you. If you want to, you can leave right now.”

You certainly could. It would be quite easy to turn back around and return to the farmhouse. You’re not even sure that your adoptive parents would notice that you’d left. That, however, is exactly why you stay. 

“So you know who I am, and you have to emphasize the fact that I have magic. Can I guess that means you have magic, too?” You ask.

The boy looks pleased that you’re responding. “You can. Is that your answer?”

You consider this a second longer, then nod. “Yes. You’re a boy who can use magic, someone who likes messing with other people’s heads. Is life a game to you, then, that you can go up to whoever you want and expect them to play along?”

He nods. “Precisely right. If you want a name, you can call me Peter Pan.”

The boy bows as he says it, like his name alone is a title fit for a king. 

“And what do you want with me, Peter Pan?”

Peter straightens up from the tree at last, and starts to walk past you, towards the open fields of the farm. “I suppose I’ll ask you about that tomorrow,” he says. 

You call after his retreating figure. “I’ll make sure to have a better answer, then.”

Peter pauses long enough to turn around and smile at you again. “I hope you do.”

Then he’s gone, no trace of him anywhere even after you hurry over to the spot where he’d just been. It’s as if he’s vanished, practically materialized into thin air. You shake your head slowly, and wonder why you’re grinning. 

True to his word, Peter comes the next day, and the next, and the next. Each time, he asks you some sort of question. The second and third days are about him: what you think he’s doing, where you think he would be going. The next three days’ worth of questions are about you: if you would consider yourself lost, whether or not you’re afraid of your magic, what would you do to get revenge on Regina for abandoning you. You do your best to answer as truthfully as you can, and in return, Peter starts talking more about himself as well. 

On the seventh day, Peter doesn’t bother with the usual routine of engaging in parlor conversation, merely strikes at you with a question the second you meet up. 

“Would you go home with me?” He asks, voice eager. “To Neverland, I mean. Would you go with me?”

Peter’s eyeing you almost hungrily, as if the entire fabric of his being will be torn into pieces if you don’t answer. All the same, it’s a rather difficult thing to consider. You don’t always enjoy your life here, but it’s all you have. These people saved you from certain death as an infant. 

Also, you don’t know anything about Peter’s Neverland other than what he’s told you. He could be lying about every little detail down to the sapphire depths of the oceans lapping at its shores. Are you really going to stake your future on what you know of this boy, the one with the bloodthirsty smile and penchant for driving you mad?

The answer, as it turns out, is yes. Peter looks delighted once you tell him so, and holds out a hand for you to follow him. You take one last look over your shoulder at the farmhouse, still looking gravely out at the surrounding night, then turn back to Peter and accept the offered hand. It is time for your new life to begin. 

Neverland is one of the best things in the world. You forget your doubts the moment you step foot on its shores, too busy taking in every sight of your new home. It’s as if it was meant for you, this life, and you can scarcely even imagine a time before it. 

You find that you fit in remarkably well with the other Lost Boys. You get along swimmingly with them, and you pose enough of a threat with a knife or your fists that they have no choice but to treat you as one of their one. Peter likes that, you can tell.

Admittedly, he didn’t like it quite as much when some of the boys started developing crushes on you. There was a time when Devin was practically shadowing your every footstep in a misguided attempt to get you to notice him. Peter had been simmering with an ill concealed rage for weeks during that experience, and it took a turbulent confrontation between the two of you for him to admit that he was actually jealous of the other Lost Boy because he was secretly harboring feelings for you. 

After that, it was easy. You love Peter, and he loves you. The days stretch into hundreds, then thousands, and you never grow tired of a single minute. All is perfect, all is well, and then it isn’t. 

Peter tries to hide it at first, and when he can’t manage it any longer he tells you the truth. He’s dying slowly, a river running dry, and as he does the last vestiges of magic start to leave the island. There’s nothing either of you can do except search for a cure, and that’s far more difficult than it sounds. 

At last, Peter happens upon something. It’s called the Heart of the Truest Believer, and should infuse the possessor with enough magic to defeat any curse, or, say, stay alive despite the fact that their clock is actively ticking down the seconds they have left to live. Getting to the actual Truest Believer will be hard, but their son, Henry, should do the job.

Henry Mills. That’s the part that makes this infinitely harder, isn’t it? To kidnap Henry, you’re going to have to risk the wrath of Henry’s family coming after him. You can handle a Truest Believer, but Henry’s adoptive mother is Regina, your birth mother. After all this time, you might finally come face to face for the first time since she left you to die. It is both terrifying and thrilling.

However, you’re not about to let your own hesitation about meeting Regina come in between Peter and his only shot at survival. Within a week of finding out the truth, Peter has sent for a couple mercenaries of sorts to go kidnap Henry and bring him to Neverland. After that, you and Peter are going to have to figure out how to convince the boy to give up his heart to Peter, but you’re fairly sure that you can handle that. If there’s one thing that the two of you can do well, it’s persuasion. You both lie with the same gilded tongue.

You get your chance to meet Henry a while later, and the boy quickly grows to like you. You’re sure that he’s a nice kid, but every time he opens his mouth and talks about how fantastic it was to grow up with Regina, you want to cut his heart from his chest yourself. How could he possibly have it all when you grew up with so little?

Peter knows this, and he gives you a chance to act upon your vengeful feelings. By now, Regina and a small traveling party have arrived on Neverland in the hopes of getting Henry back. They won’t manage it of course, not if you and Peter have anything to say about it, but you don’t want them stumbling into trouble while either of you are distracted.

Peter offers you the opportunity to act as a false friend of sorts. You can pretend that you’re a Lost Boy in need of rescue, and keep an eye on Regina’s group while reporting back to Peter all the while. It sounds good to you, and soon enough you traipse through the woods and just happen to stumble by their camp long enough for them to find you.

They’re desperate, you can see that. It truly haunts Regina to be so separated from her child. You don’t think she recognizes you, and you certainly don’t tell her your name, but she keeps regarding you with far more suspicion than the others, even excluding the fact that you’re obviously a Lost Boy. Could she suspect that the two of you are closer than first meets the eye? Maybe, but she doesn’t have any proof except her own rambling thoughts.

Still, if anyone’s being affected by your presence at Regina’s camp, it would have to be you. It’s odd to see her after all of these years, to pretend to guide her through the forests as if you’re on the same side. She abandoned you, and now you’re right there beside her as if she never left. 

The worst part is that after a couple of days, you’re starting to lose your grip on that familiar hatred. Regina is cruel and calculating and utterly without morals as compared to, say, the Charmings, but she’s doing all of it for her child. The child isn’t you, but she’s been starting to turn some of that focus on you as well. 

It all comes to a head about a week after Regina’s party first touched down on Neverland. You and your mother have been cautiously lowering your guards around each other, and tonight, you were pretending to scout out the edge of their campsite when Regina approached you, alone. 

Her voice is quiet, her gaze trained on some cluster of ferns on a nearby bank. “Why are you helping us?”

You shoot a quick glance her way. “Pan’s island is a prison. I want a chance to feel like the entire world isn’t against me.”

It’s the excuse you and Peter agreed on when you were first drawing up this plan, and Regina seems to buy it. It’s what she expects to hear, so of course she’ll believe it. 

“You can come with us, you know. After we get Henry. Storybrooke isn’t exactly a paradise, but after this place, it can’t be that bad.”

This time, your eyes stay on her. “You mean it? You’d let me stay in your town?”

Regina chuckles. “No need to sound so surprised. You help us, we help you. That’s how things work. Besides, not all of us are as evil as we like to think.”

You nod slowly. “Wow. I’ve never really had another place to call home other than here.”

Regina’s brow furrows. “That’s why you came here, isn’t it? You figured any place was better than where you came from.”

You remain silent, figuring she’s said enough to make your point. After a moment, Regina picks up where she left off. 

“Listen, I don’t know what happened to you beforehand, but it’ll be better with us. I swear it. You’re one of us now. Just don’t let Swan hear that I was nice or she’ll never stop making fun of me for it.”

You laugh. “I appreciate it, honestly.”

Regina almost smiles. “Don’t worry about it. Like I said, you’re one of us, and we protect our own.”

That’s the part that gets you, in the end. ‘We protect our own.’ Like she had protected you when you were a child and she left you for dead? Is that Regina’s protection, letting you die? You murmur excuses about needing to get back to the Lost Boys’ camp before someone notices you’re gone, and all but vanish into the woods as soon as you can. 

Peter is waiting for you in his quarters, and you’re grateful for the walls protecting you from view. Peter’s face twists with concern when he sees you, and he’s scarcely crossed the room to pull you close before the tears start to come, pouring like a flood and leaving you dazed, your head a dizzy mess. 

Peter stays with you the whole while, hand rubbing comforting circles on your back. In the end, it is the reassuring sound of his heartbeat that makes you calm down. Him, and nothing else. 

At last, you step away, and dash a frustrated hand over your eyes to wipe away the last of the tears. “Let’s give Emma the map,” you say, “I want them to feel like they’ve lost.”

Peter agrees, and the next day, you get to pretend as if everything is normal while watching Emma and Regina struggle to figure out how to solve Peter’s clue. Their fighting is going to tear the party apart, which is exactly what you’d hoped would happen. 

You don’t think you’ve ever acted a better part. You color your expression with nerves, especially after Regina gives up and tries to use her magic on the map. 

“I don’t know, I really think you shouldn’t do that. Pan doesn’t take kindly to people who don’t play his games the right way. Trust me, I know.”

You actually know quite well, but even Regina in all her charity doesn’t want to hear it. “Yes, but this is different. He can’t stand against us, not for long.”

She pushes recklessly ahead through the wilderness of the island, and you wait until nobody can see the look on your face to smile. They have no idea what’s coming for them. Peter Pan always wins, does he not? Regina is about to find that out for herself. 

Indeed, when Regina triumphantly rounds the final bend to see what should be Henry standing with his back to her, she couldn’t be happier. The delight starts to leach from her face, however, when her so-called son starts to speak with Peter’s voice. 

“You know, you really should have listened to Y/N. I don’t like people who break the rules.”

Emma and the rest stare at Peter in horror, but Regina seems stunned the second Peter says your name. You use your magic to appear by Peter’s side in a second, further confirming her suspicions. 

Regina looks as if the ground has been pulled out beneath her feet. “Y/N? You’re alive?”

You smile, although the expression is as cold as frost. “Yes, mother. Although you had nothing to do with that.”

Emma swings around to stare at Regina. “Did she say you were her mother?”

Regina starts to answer, but she’s cut off by the loud whoops of the other Lost Boys arriving on the scene. All of a sudden, fighting breaks out, and you couldn’t be happier to see it. It feels like revenge, your true family having your back against the family that could have been yours if your mother hadn’t given you up. 

Regina tries to use a spell to knock out a large cluster of Lost Boys, but you block it just as easily. She looks stunned that her powers are equal to yours, which makes you laugh. 

“Oh, come now. Your magic is mine. Surely you don’t think you could take me down that easily?”

You raise your arms and a wave of shadow crests around Regina, blocking out all signs of the fight around her. No sound makes it through, nor a stray beam of light. Regina calls out to her friends, but she hears and sees nothing. You can see the terror on her face, how horrified she is that she could be left alone. 

Then Peter’s calling for the Lost Boys to fall back, and you go with them. You lift the spell only once all of your boys are gone, and Regina stumbles out of her daze, face drawn in sickening fear. 

Peter laughs, later at the campsite. “You certainly look pleased with yourself. Having fun ruining your mother’s life?”

You can’t help but smirk at that. “Only a little bit, of course. Let’s get to Henry, I want this done. The longer we wait, the more chances Regina and the rest have at stopping us. I’m not risking you, not if we have a chance to get that heart.”

Peter presses a kiss to the top of your head. “Sounds good to me. What do you say we get him tonight?”

What you want to do is solve this now, but it’s Peter’s life counting down, not yours, so whatever plan he wants is good with you. You nod your assent and watch Peter slink off into the forest to go talk to Henry again. You know he wants to convince the boy to give up his heart without a fight, so he’s taking his time about it, but you still can’t fight the fear that something is going to happen before the two of you can save Peter’s life. 

As the night draws to a close, though, the plan seems to be working accordingly. You and Peter take Henry to Skull Rock once the young boy proves himself capable of believing, and Peter starts the spell to prepare for the change of hearts. You watch the entrance of the cavern, eyes flickering between the hourglass, which has scarcely any time left at all, and the mouth of the cave. 

About twenty minutes after your arrival, you hear footsteps and call them out to Peter. “We’ve got company.”

He nods, brow dotted with sweat from concentration. “Keep them at bay for as long as possible.”

You may not be able to calm your own fears, but you can do that. Regina, Emma, and the rest of the party burst into the cavern, but they find themselves unable to progress any further due to the magical barrier you’ve created to impede their movement. 

Regina tries to break through, and the combined force of keeping her back while maintaining the barrier is harder than anything you’ve ever done before. Still, it's saving Peter, and that is all that matters. You could do this forever if it meant saving the boy you love. 

Regina must realize this, because all of a sudden she stops her magical attacks and walks towards you, as much as the barrier allows. “Y/N, listen to me. You don’t have to do this.”

You laugh, voice strained from the effort of maintaining the magical barrier. “Of course I do. If Peter dies, I die with him, and not just because Neverland would cease to exist.”

Regina nods slowly, realizing what that means. “You love him. Alright. I love Henry too, though—”

You cut her off. “What, like you didn’t love me? You left me to die when I was just a baby. Growing up, I wished you succeeded, but being here with Peter makes me want to live every single day. If you’re such a concerned parent, maybe you shouldn’t have abandoned me first.”

Regina’s voice is quiet. “I know. Leaving you behind was one of the greatest mistakes I ever made. I tried to find you the next morning, did you know that? You were gone by then, but I searched for weeks. I wanted you back, Y/N. I know I can’t heal what I did to you, but let me try. Please.”

You shake your head, although you’re feeling decidedly less sure of yourself than when you started. “You’re just saying that to get Henry back. You don’t mean it.”

Regina inches forward. “I do. You can tell that, can’t you? I need Henry, yes, but I need you too. I’m not asking you to forgive me, I’m just asking you to spare Henry’s life. He hasn’t done anything to you. Please, let him go.”

You risk a glance over your shoulder at Peter, who’s going to take Henry’s heart at any moment. Henry looks absolutely terrified, and it— oh, it reminds you of you, how it had been to grow up knowing that you were utterly alone in the world. You can’t fault Henry for having better luck than you did, and you can’t kill him for it. This would be so much easier if Peter needed a heart from some nameless kid, but it isn’t. 

Across the room, Peter meets your gaze. He knows what you’re thinking, you can tell, but he doesn’t try to stop you. Perhaps he knew all along that this would never work, perhaps he’s been counting down the days until he would well and truly fail. At least now he won’t do it alone. 

You drop the barrier and Emma surges forward, snatching Henry away from Peter, who just backs up. Regina approaches you hesitantly, but you hold up a hand before she can say anything. 

“I’m not doing this for you, I’m doing it for Henry. You owe me, you know? You owe it to me to treat Henry like he’s the best you’ll ever have. Never make him feel like I did.”

Regina nods slowly, looking almost regretful. “I will.”

You jerk your chin towards the door. “Now go. Let me be alone with Peter.”

Regina nods again, murmuring something that almost sounds like a goodbye under her breath. The rest of the party sweeps from the room, leaving you with Peter and the resounding stillness. 

You run to him, you have never been able to stay away for long. “I’m sorry, Peter. I’m so sorry. I just can’t let Henry die for something he never did.”

Peter’s hands touch your brow, then dip, tracing the curves and contours of your face as if he’s afraid that he’ll never see them again. Maybe he won’t, if you’ve damned him by letting Henry go. 

“It’s alright, Y/N. We can find another way. That’s what we always do.”

It’s true. You reach for every healing spell you know, combining some with Peter to see if the two of you can come up with something, anything, to give him at least a few more hours of blessed life. Nothing works, though, and out of the corner of your eye you can see the hourglass relentlessly ticking down the time you have left. 

Eventually, when the sand has all but disappeared from the top of the hourglass, Peter takes your hands, forcing them to still the never ending stream of magic. 

“This is it, then. Don’t waste your energy on a dead man, huh?”

You shake your head desperately. “There must be something else. Anything.”

Peter’s eyes flash a somber shade of green. “There isn’t always a way to win, love.”

You hate hearing that from him, from Peter Pan of all people. Through sheer desperation, you lean forward and kiss him, so you don’t have to keep seeing that dejected look if anything else. You kiss him and wait for him to die in your arms, but for some reason, he doesn’t. 

Indeed, when you pull away, you realize that Peter’s glowing, or perhaps that’s the light emanating from the hourglass as all of the grains of sand fly back up towards the top. This time, they refuse to fall, but stay there victoriously. 

When you look back at Peter, he’s grinning ear to ear. “True love’s kiss. Why didn’t I ever think of that?”

You laugh incredulously. “It worked. Oh, Peter, it worked.”

You don’t know that you’ve ever felt as lucky as you do right now. A strong contender might be when you arrived on Neverland for the first time, or even when you first met a strange boy in the woods back when you were still living on that farm. The connecting thread, though, the one person who always makes you feel worthwhile, is Peter. Now, you have him forever. You couldn’t be happier. 

ouat tag list: @lovesanimals0000, @amortensie

[weeping-bat]

Below the cut i have a list of Alphabetically sorted ‘Call Signs’ for you if you: can’t figure out what yours would be, you need one for an OC, or for whatever other purpose! :)

!! Some of these came off the internet and are real call signs! Some are from Top Gun/Top Gun: Maverick which is probably why some of them may seem familiar. Good luck aviators. !!

A: Angel, Alphabet, Agony, Arrow, Assassin, Aggy, Ace, Animal, Astro, Anxiety.

B: Black Cat, Bronco, Bruise, Brick, Basher, Bulldog, Breaker, Blaze, Boomerang, B.O.B, Blade, Bullet, Bull, Bullseye, Bucket, Biggie, Birdie, Boots, Bones, Badger, Buzz, Big-sky, Baby Bat, Bubbly, Butterscotch, BumbleBee, Bagman, Booty.

C: Cobra, Cypher, Casper, Charge, Cougar, Cyclone, Crow, Cyclops, Chipper, Coyote, Cargo, Charlie, Chaser, Cryo, Chuck, Creed, CooCoo, Cannonball, Circuit, Crash, Colt, Cruella, Creature, Chicken Little.

D: Dynamite, Dusty, Dash, Demo, Dice, Duck, Domino, Dover, Dozer, Diesel, Darling, Dasher, DoDo, Dipper, Digger, Deuce, Django, Dottie, Deception.

E: Elvis, Enigma, Egghead.

F: Flatline, Fireball, Fighter, Frost, Fancy, Feather, Flame, Frogman, Fifi, Firecracker, Fun-sized, Fruit Bat, Fungus.

G: Ghost, Goose, Giggles, Gucci, Ghostrider, Grizzly, Great White (shark), Gills, Gibbs, Gonzo, Ginger, Gator, Growler, Gretel, Graveyard, Ghoul, GG, G-Lord, Glassjaw.

H: Hangman, Hammer, Hijax, Hijinx, Hollywood, Hurricane, Howler, Heater, Hawk, Honey, High-Tech, Hard Shell, Hydra, Horns, Heebee-Jeebee, Heartbreak, Hellcat, Hansel.

I: Iceman, Ivy, Irishman.

J: Joker, Jinx, Jester, Jaws, Jacket, Judge, Jumper, Jaguar, Jigsaw, Judas.

K: Killer, Knight, Kanga, Krunch, Kindle.

L: Lucky, Legend, Little red, Lick, Lightbeam, Lambchop, Lover-boy, Lovebug, Lunch Money, Lucifer.

M: Maverick, Mouse, Mad Dog, Maniac, Machine, Mutt, Merlin, Mellow, Major, Mugsy, Mistletoe, Micro, Mamba, Mule, Mad, Memo, Magician, Monster, Moony, Midnight, Magic, Mastermind, Mare, Mustache, Moby, Mortician, Mortimer, Massacre, Mad Hatter.

N: Nova, Navigator, Nerd, Nugget, Nightlight, Nightcrawler.

O: Ox, Omen, Obi, Octave/Octavia, Oopsie Daisy.

P: Puddle, Porky, Poison, Payback, Phoenix, PopTop, Pyro, Pitch, Puggsy, Princess, Puke, Poltergeist, Phantom, Peacock, Puzzle, Peter Pan, Pandora.

Q: Quiver, Queenie, Q-tip.

R: Razor, Ripper, Rattlesnake, Rooster, Rebound, Rush, Red, Rags, Robin, Rusty, Rebel, Radiator, Rottweiler, Rapid, Rambo, Red Flag, Rockstar.

S: SHOCK, Skipper, Showoff, Sparrow, Slayer, Smiley, Songbird, Shadow, Scooby, Slider, Sundown, Stinger, Sludge, Shredder, Storm, Silence, Stretch, Serpent, Scout, Shark, Stag, Slick, Sassy, Scooter, Soprano, Spring, Strike, Scorpion, Showtopper, Stallion, Sweet ‘n Sour, Scarlet Witch, Surge, Spinach, Shanks, Shenanigan.

T: Tiger, Taz (Tasmanian Devil), Thunder, Twinkle-Toes, Tank, Tweety, T-Bone, Tumble Weed, Trouble, Tombstone, Tug, Toon, Twitch, Turbo, Tart, Teacup.

U: Uber, Unicorn, Ultimate, Unseen.

V: Viper, Vapor, Vampire, VooDoo, Vanilla, Vine, Venom.

W: Wiki, Wolfman, Wizard, Warlock, Wildcard, Wednesday, Wildfire, Wonderland, White Rabbit, Weasel, Weasley.

X: Xeno, X-man, Xanadu.

Y: Youngin.

Z: Zeus, Zebra, Zig-Zag, Zimm.

[lennydaisy]

SWAN SONG || The Walking Dead AU

‘You have to trust that every friendship has no end, that a communion of saints exists among all those, living and dead, who have truly loved God and one another.

You know from experience how real this is. Those you have loved deeply and who have died live on in you, not just as memories but as real presences.’

HENRI NOUWEN

                         The Walking Dead.

        Season 1-?

                                         FEM OC! and ?

This is the prologue for a Walking dead AU that I wrote ages ago, and I feel like its too good to waste. So here it is :))

‘Now to John, who's live at the scene. John, what's happening there?'

'I'm here at Central Atlanta Hospital where there has been a reported disturbance within the wards. Patients allegedly have gone rogue, biting and scratching the doctors and each other.'

'If we pan to our left here, you can see the hallways are overflowing with newly found patients from the attacks.'

Glancing up at the ancient box TV perched in the top corner of the room, eyebrows frowned as I take another bite of my bland chicken sandwich.

The screen displays a lit yellow Hospital hallway with beds and chairs cluttering the space. With no room to breathe, the patients packed together like a tin of sardines.

The camera zooms into one patient in particular, who judging by their attire is a nurse themselves. A sickly colour of unnatural grey washed over their face, a layer of sweat glistening under the cheap lights and her veins protruding from her neck as though she's struggling to keep herself calm.

'Miss, would you be able to explain how your feeling?'

I can't help but scoff at the reporter's request. She is clearly in no condition to answer any of his questions and it's downright ignorant to shove a microphone in the face of a woman who has clearly seen better days.

The women slowly turned to face the reporter, her eyes appearing to lack any colour with bags drooping down to her jaw, and glares with all she can muster. Despite clearly being exhausted from whatever is happening to her body, she has no problem expressing her aggravation towards the man.

'Not responsive I see. Well no mind, as the viewers at home can see, Central Hospital is in desperate need of doctors and nurses. So I'm here to announce that if there is anyone-'

I don't know how to describe what I just saw. Just know that it was revolting enough to put me off chicken sandwiches forever.

In the midst of the reporter's announcement, a pair of hands slowly made their way around his body. Their nails were bitten down to stumps, their fingers a troubled colour of blue as though clogged with blood. The sickly hands, lazily but purposefully, claw at the reports button-up shirt from behind. Tugging on the attachments like grips, the women who the reporter was previously questioning is now sinking her teeth into the man's neck. Trails of blood dripping from her lips as she pulls her jaw roughly away from his neck taking a clump of him with her.

The look of pure horror wash over the man's faces, and mines in probably mimicking his. I've never seen anyone's eyes pop so far from their head. The face of sheer panic and terror covering his visuals as he opens his mouth to let out what I can only assume to be a deafening scream but before a sound is made the camera quickly cuts back to the studio, where the two anchors are now shaking at the sight they just witnessed live.

'We'll be back after this quick intermission,' squeaked out the anchor, eyes still wide, never leaving the screen off camera.

'Were you recently involved in an accident?',  the convenient ad was interrupted by the television being turned off. Snapping my head to my right, only to be met by the sheepish face of Darcy, the department receptionist. Smiling weakly at me from her desk, "I'm sure it's nothing to worry about."

Nothing to worry about. "Were we just watching the same clip," I breathe baffled at the idea of not worrying about what we just witnessed, "That man just had his neck bitten into but some Wednesday Adams looking women," I laughed, struggling myself to understand what just happened.

"I'm sure he's fine," she waves her hand in my direction before quickly standing up as I did seconds before, " What are you doing?" She questions as I grab my hat off my peg.

Rolling my eyes as I make the reach for my keys, "My job," my fingers scraping the keys before they are snatched out of my reach. Looking up at the elderly women with bored eyes, I hold my hands out waiting for her to cave.

"No, half the department is already helping the city, we need you here in Kings County," she argues quickly running back to her desk, sliding into her roller chair. Out of my vision but not hearing, I hear the clashing of keys, the slamming of metal and the sound of a lock.

She locked my keys in her desk.

"Darcy- " I begin only to be interrupted.

"No" she heaves, hands crossed over her chest tightly, "It's bad enough those two are God knows where doing God knows what, I can't allow the only deputy left in the building to leave."

I would be annoyed and honestly, I am, the woman isn't not letting me do my job, but with just a simple look in her eyes I can see why she doesn't want me to leave, "You're scared," I point out pulling my chair over to the front of her desk, sitting my hat on the table.

Refusing to meet my eyes answered my assumption. She was scared and she had every right to be. What we just watched on the news isn't normal but it's not the first we've heard of this 'infection'. It's been going on for weeks, especially in the city. Residents reporting sights of people staggering through the streets, grabbing and biting anything they can get their hands on. Honestly sounds like a typical weekend in the city in my opinion, after a couple of drinks, you'd be surprised what some people turn into. I haven't seen any of these things personally but that news clip just made everything people have been bustling about all too real.

"These things are apparently migrating. It's not just a city virus, they're making their away out into places like this," her hands brushing the nonexistent lint off the top of my hat, her voice so soft, if you didn't listen closely enough you'd miss it.

"I'm not going to fill you with false hope because honestly, I have no idea what is happening but I will say this if I know you at all, something like a little virus isn't going to be the end to the bombshell that is Darcy Peters."

A small smile begins to creep onto her face, "You should have seen me in my youth," flipping her white shoulder-length hair.  Shaking my head with a giggle, I lean over her desk and turn her desktop towards me looking at the set back of work left for her to complete. Moving the mouse to the bottom of the screen I log her off, " Take the rest of the day off."

Knowing fine well she would say no, I left her no room for arguments as I hastily grabbed her coat passing it to her, "Don't tell me no Peters, Deputies orders," I said with authority behind my voice but eventually broke out into a smile at the delightful women before me.

"But what about-" she points at the computer addressing the work she still had to do. Grabbing the women's hands as I begin to drag her out the door, "Don't worry I'll handle it but you need to go home and chill out," snatching her car keys as I begin walking with her hand in hand to her beloved mustard Ford Fiesta.

Opening the driver's door, "M'lady," I bow holding the door. Shaking her head at my act, she wraps her arms around my shoulders, brings me in for a hug, slightly shocked but I hug her back none less, "Thank you, Macy," she laughs in my ear before pulling away, cupping my face like an affectionate grandmother.

Slapping my cheeks lightly she points her finger timidly at my face, "Now no running off play superhero, you're needed here," her eyes never leaving mine as though to challenge me to say otherwise. Well, I like a challenge, "No promises."

A dead look in her eyes causes me to laugh once more, "Okay, I promise I won't run off, I'll stay put. Now beat it, tell Richard I say hi," closing the door behind the women before stepping away from her car.

Just before she was about to drive off, she rolls down her window, "Oh before I forget, here's the key to the desk. Also there's something for Officer Friendly in there you won't miss it," see spoke throwing the flimsy key my way. Nodding my head towards the women, I mockingly salute her off, catching a glimpse of her rolling her eyes smiling.

Tossing the small, rusted key between my hands, I make my way back to Darcy's desk. After a couple of shakes and jiggles, the lock to the drawer eventually clicks. Pulling open the drawer, I grab my car keys stuffing them in my back pocket. That's when my eyes catch a shine reflecting out of the space. Reaching my hand in my finger brush across metal embroidery.

A Sheriff badge.

Unable to help the smile that made its way to my face as I stare down at the achievement of my friend. 'Officer Friendly's going to flip. So will someone else but for a different reason.' Shaking the thought from my head, I quickly run round to the desk of the newly found Sheriff. Going to place the shining badge on the desk, a note stops me;

Gone for a quick lapse of the county. If I'm not back by finish, I'll see you tomorrow, Officer Friendly.

Still sitting the badge on his desk, hoping that he at least makes it back in an hour, his face will be priceless. Snatching the remote from the floor, I flick the television back on, wanting to see if there are any updates on the situation.

'Government officials have requested that everyone stays inside their homes, only leaving unless extremely necessary. Until this is contained, please be cautious. This has been channel 5's news.'

Drowning out the rambling of the adverts, I absorb myself I'm my phone. 7 texts, damn I'm popular.

From Corey. Hey, can you drop me off :) Sent 07:39

From Corey. Oft okay never mind then I know I broke 3 of your car window, but that doesn't forbid access does it?? Fine two can play at that game, I'll walk. Ummmm that's when you're supposed to be the super big sister and say 'no sweet little sister, don't walk and ruin your BRAND NEW BOOTS, I'll happily drop you off' Boo you, you suck :(( Sent at 07:57

From Corey. Hey, can you pick me up ;) Sent at 17:12

This girl, I swear.

To Corey. I'll think about it :)) Sent Now.

Collecting my things, preparing myself for my leave. All too quickly trying to rush out the door, I skid to a halt and turn round to a certain desk in particular. Contemplating my options, I decided to take the newly found badge with me. For one; it is past shift time and I really want to witness his face when he gets promoted.' I'll just give it to him tomorrow when everyone's here', I thought.

Now I'm well aware that my car isn't exactly the best site for sore eyes, I'll be the first to admit that, but it was my dream car and it was the first real big purchase I ever made as an adult. My glorious, yellow Volkswagen Beetle. She's seen better days that for sure, but she means a lot to me and a couple of bumps and scratches isn't going to make me trade her in. Ever.

I grew up in Mormont, Georgia. A small county that no one has heard of and when people ask where I'm from I'm always met with the same look. In Mormont everybody knows everybody. It's a tight-knit community with no secrets. When word got out the resident widow had adopted 3 girls from the now shut down orphanage, the community was sent into a frenzy.

The same woman who was framed for burning down her old farmhouse that her husband happened to be still asleep in, was now going to be a mother of 3 very different daughters.

Without my mom I wouldn't even be here today, I would be how I am today. Mom adopted me when I was 4 years old, and even at a young age, I know that something about me was different from the other kids at kindergarten. Kids would come and leave joyfully holding the hands of their parents whitest they rambled on about what we did that day. I would leave on a bus with a woman who didn't really care enough to remember my name, looking after me in the centre was just a 9 to 5 for her and she got to go home to her family without a care in the world. I will never forget the day I was called down to the main office.

Believing that I had done something wrong, I reluctantly climbed down the creaking bunk beds steps. Looking around the room, I'm met with many stares, some glaring, some shaking their heads. I was in a room surround by judgemental toddlers.

I've never been called down to the office before. I've seen others been called down and they never come back. Tommy told me that Glenda, the houses mistress, feeds them to the two-headed man in the attic. I never believed him, knowing that he only wanted to scare me but now I'm not so sure. 'I don't want to be eaten', I thought.

One step at a time, I slowly make my way down the wooden steps that despite my lightweight still shriek under my shoes. Before I reach the bottom of the stairs, I'm met by the glorious Glenda. Her lopsided, spectacles clawed eyes boring down at me, 'Come,' she said before spinning around and heading to the room she just walked out from, 'There's someone here to see you."

'Someones here to see me? But I don't know anybody' I thought to myself as I follow behind the women with a newfound spring in my step.

"Mason this is Charlotte, she'd like to adopt you."

I guess you could say that's when I knew. When I first land my eyes on hers, I felt something that then in my short 4 years of life had never felt before, safe. Fast forward 22 years and that feeling had never left. Like the light of an eternal flame, that shine behind my mom's eyes never left, never even flickered. It's a constant reminder, I knew it when I was 4 years old and I still know it now at 26, that home isn't found in a physical building but instead found in those you surround yourself with.

No matter how hard I try, I will never be able to fully express my gratitude towards my mother. She gave me a chance and took me into her home with open arms. She says 'Thats what mothers do' and that might be true but she didn't have too. That's just the type of person she is. A heart of gold, a heart that is far too big for this world. She might not be my birth mother but in my opinion no one could do better, I don't know what I did in a past life to deserve the right to call her my mother, all I know is that I'm forever thankful for that.

Cora, or Corey, my sweet baby sister. The best way to describe her would be prissy. A real drama queen but strong-minded. When it comes to Corey no mountain is too high. Basically it's Corey's world and we're all just live in it. I take deep pride in telling her that she was an ugly baby and I'm not telling any lies. One look at her baby pictures sends a shiver down your spine.

She's your basic stressed college student who believes that the world will end if she fails to hand in one essay on time, but has no problem with partying the night before a big exam. Beginning to understand what type of person Corey is?

Then there's Ally. The big sister, my big sister. I remember growing up and always wanting to be like her when I grew up, I thought she was the coolest person in the world. She shaved off her hair when she was 18 and me and my 8-year-old self desired to do the same. Mom was mortified and kids at school did laugh at me for a while but I didn't care, I wanted to be like my sister, buzz cut and all.

As I grew up however I realised something, Ally had a darkness inside her. When I was younger I never noticed, I always saw her acts for rebellion as inspiration for my own mischief but as I got older and matured, she never. She always stayed the same. It some cases that's a good thing if you're a good person that is. I never believed my sister to be a bad person, more troubled than anything. I think why you get to the age of 36 and still rebel against your mother like an edgy teenager somethings not right.

Ally thinks the world is constantly against her, that the whole world is testing her, but that couldn't be further from the truth. I was the first to know she was pregnant, she didn't tell me herself but the positive stick sitting in the bathroom bunker was a big give away. I've seen her anger a handful of times and more often than not it consumes her, her anger is her own worse enemy and that day I meet the worst of it. There was a lot of screaming and hitting, and things being thrown in my direction. Luckily enough no one else was home when all this happened, but it was quite hard to explain why I had a black eye and Ally had burst knuckles. I lied, that's what I did.

'I got jumped,' it was the best I could come up with at the time. I made up a story of me being mugged and Ally saving the day. Mom barked up a storm, ask question after question, and I was slowly running out of ideas for my action sequence. That was until Ally spoke up,

'I'm going away for a while,' she said placing her fork down on her barely touched the plate, 'Work,' she replied to the looks that were sent her way. I refused to meet her eyes but I knew fine well that she was staring at me in particular, that didn't stop me from listening though.

'Oh, well for how long?,' Mom asked swirling around her glass of wine, 'A couple of months.'

'And what work relate thing causes you to be away for a couple of months?' Corey spoke up, her eyes never leaving Ally's as though to challenge her, 'The companies looking for a new manager, I thought I would try and run for it. It is more money,' she spoke trying to convince not only Cora but our reluctant mother too. Reluctant and our mom isn't two words that I would put together, she's a keen believer of 'if you want it, go and get it', but not when it comes to Ally.

'It seems like a good opportunity,' mother said honestly, nodding her head at her oldest daughter, 'seems like bullshit,' I muttered under my breath causing my mom to kick my shin from under the table, only to be faced with the stern stare of my mom.

'Language Mason' sternly spoke our mom making Cora laugh slightly at the use of my full real name.

'I'm just saying, she seems to go on a lot of these trips and comes back empty-handed every time, sorry for having some doubt.'

'That's enough Cora,' Mom said not breaking eye contact with her youngest who is sitting across the dinner table from her, 'yeah whatever, can I be excused?' Before she could get an answer she was already on her feet marching out the room.

Nodding sadly, mom looked around the table at the remaining 2, 'Macy, darling,  you've barely touched your dinner.'

Meeting her eyes, 'I had a big lunch,' the lies pouring out my mouth at this point.

The rest of the dinner that night was filled with awkward silence. The sound of the chair next to me scraping against the old hardwood floor breaks my concentrated gaze on my plate. Ally's hard duty boots marching out of the room and storming up the stairs.

My mom let out a sigh and placed her fork on her now empty plate, looking up at the only remaining daughter at the table. Flashing my mom a small smile, taking a sip of my now lukewarm water, "You make good spaghetti mom"

"Go check on her for me please," she practical begged, her voice suggesting nothing but defeat, "She never talks to me anymore."

'I'm probably the last person she wants to see," is what I wanted to say to my mom, but looking at my mother with her head in her hands at the thought of my troubled older sister broke my heart.

Before taking the dreaded walk up the stairs and to the door at the end of the hall, I placed a hand on my mom's shoulder, squeezing in reassurance.

'Everything will be okay.' I thought to myself.

Knocking on the door, only to receive no reply, 'I know you're in there,' I said continuously knocking on the oak door. Getting bored with being ignored, I did the brave and open the forbidden door, Ally's bedroom door.

Ally's bedroom is something, I don't know what that something is but it screams Ally. It's dishevelled yet bland, perfect for Ally I guess. Nothing but a set of drawers with half the handles missing, piles of dirty washing sitting in the corner of her room that will probably stay there for weeks, and a chipped dark wood bed. And then there's Ally, who is currently packing a bag.

'There is no business trip is there?' I asked even though I fine well knew the answer already. Throwing the last of her clothes in the bag, she stares me dead in the eye from her position at the bottom of her bed, 'I have to get out of here.'

Walking further into her room as she walks back to her drawers closing them loudly, 'Promise me one thing,' I asked looking out the window at the deserted street. Hearing no noise for behind me I continued, 'That we'll get to meet them one day,'

'I can't promise you that,' turning round to stare at her in confusion, 'what you're never coming back?' I asked softly shaking my head at the idea of her leave and never returning. Ally goes away a lot but she always comes back. We might not be as close as we use to be when I was younger but it's a comfort to know that she's here with us.

She just looked at me not speaking yet her glances spoke a thousand words. I didn't know silence could get any quieter but I was proven wrong in that moment. It was as though the whole world stopped spinning, it was like the world ended right and then. Shaking my head at my sister mentality, my heartbreaking even at the thought of what she wanted to do, 'Oh,' was the only response I muster up as I move to sit at the edge of the bed, my legs suddenly feeling like jello.

Rubbing my hands over my eyes and tugging at my hair, trying to get all my thoughts to settle down. The feel of a hand softly holding my shoulder caught my attention. Looking down at me was my sister, my big sister, that I wanted with every fibre of my being to be like when I grew up. But people change, and Ally surely did. That moment made me realise something, Ally never changed. No, she was always the same. It was me who changed, I was just too young to realise.

The day that Ally left, a part of myself left with her, and that necessarily wasn't a bad thing. No, she took the naive part with her. The sense that everything was okay now, that everything was perfect now because I had a family. Sometimes families go through rough patches and for some reason ours was never-ending.

Shaking my head, snapping myself out of my thoughts, focussing once more on my journey home. I love county lanes, there the best to drive on. You can go as fast as you want and when you go over a little hill you get those silly butterflies in the pit of your stomach. My family hates driving with me on these roads. Apparently I'm too careless when it comes to driving, I argue that I'm not careless I'm just used to acting like I'm in the Fast and Furious movies.

Speaking of radical driving, I hit the breaks slowly once I spot what's up ahead. A car parked sporadically in the middle of the lane, but that's not what's got me confused. There are people, a headcount of about ten, all banging their hands lazily on the windows of the car, smearing their faces over the glass.

Cutting the engine, leaning over to the car pocket reaching for my emergency gun, I slowly stalk my way out of the car. Holding the gun with both hands at the ground, the safety still on as I make my way closer but not too close.

"Hey, what are you guys doing, what's the problem-" my voice slowly losing its confidence as the figures around the car turn to face me and begin to walk drunkenly towards me. The noise they make doesn't sound too good, the air now filled with grunts and groans, the sounds of pain. I noticed a couple not paying me any mind, to busy eating something. Oh.

Realising exactly what I'm witnessing. Those are the sick people that has the world on edge. A group of them a coming right towards me. Raising my gun and flipping the safety off, I take aim, "Don't come any closer, I'll shoot," I announce not really wanting to have to shoot them. I might as well not have spoken, they just keep pushing, stumbling over one another as they inch closer.

Lining up, setting my sights on one, in particular, a middle-aged man, a civilian, I shoot one shot into his left leg. Nothing. A slight knockback at most but he's still alive. Trying again, I aim for his chest and the same happened again. Lastly shooting the head, that's what does it. He's down.

That one alone took up to much time, I have another 8 headed my way and I only have a limited amount of bullets. The odds were not in my favour, that much was clear. Making a dash for my car, hastily ripping my keys from my pocket. Silence.

"Come on don't fail me now!" I said through gritted teeth. Shoving the keys into the engine once more and twisting. Sounds of my struggle echo throughout the car as I feel the nonexistent sweat beginning to build as my breath becomes hot with frustration. Now as good a point as any to point out that I have 3 broken windows, no thanks to Cora. Not broken as in they don't go down, oh no, they don't go up. I mean how one single girl breaks 3 windows is beyond me. Honestly, it didn't bother me that much to begin with, it gives my car character. Right now though it's a different story.

If my internal panic with my car not starts wasn't enough, then maybe those things reaching their grimy hands in my car are. Before I knew it my car was surrounded by the creatures, some toppling over the bonnet of my car, others pushing their hands through my half-cracked down windows. I feel the lazy touch of the fingers brushing against my shoulders and hair causing my entire body to shiver.

"Please" I beg over the sounds of the deathly groans and screams. Turning the key again with my sweaty hands, my body shaking in fear of what's to come. As though Jumpstarted, my car roars to life. The sound of my own engine has never sounded so delightful and I should honestly appreciate it more.

Not caring for speed limits, I push the pedal to the metal. The shrieking of my tires scraping on the hard concrete leaving evidence of my wheels spinning. Pushing through the moss pit of things before my car wasn't as hard as it sounds, even though they look like dead weight, they are quite easy to redirect.

Speeding my car a distance away for the scene, next to the car they were previously attacking, before I slow to a stop again, looking in my rearview mirror. They're following me. Looking to my left, I see the beaten car. Curdling blood dripping from the passenger seat window with loose pieces of straggling hair stuck to the wing mirror. Leaning over slightly I see a few fingers laying on the ground. Holding back my gag, I look back up into the car, only to be met with a figure. A hard to distinguish figure. Completely devoured and unrecognisable. Those rabid animals shredded these poor souls face to shreds with any features now ruined.

Shaking my head at the sounds of the things coming closer to my car again, I slowing start moving, only to hit the breaks instantly as a thought came to my head. Looking in my rearview mirror again at the car, tears begin to build in my eyes. A mustard Ford Fiesta. That's the car. That's her car. My cheeks slightly soaked, my hands shaking once again as I roughly grab the roots of my hair. Having enough, I swat away the tears that are trailing down my cheeks, nose scrunched up as I try my hardest not to look back again. I didn't.

Driving down that road, the road that usually fills me with overwhelming joy, felt different this time around. It felt darker. The road that I knew ultimately leads me to home is beginning to feel like a drag. It's a road that I never want to drive down again because the only thought that I can think of now is: it's my fault.

[lowkeyaesthvtic]

Evil Karma - Chapter 13

Chapter 1 - Chapter 12

Word Count: 2,944

Summary: The Lost Revenge Crew finally has Ben in the palm of their hands. Sofi knows exactly what to do to make him snap and fall even further into their trap.

Pairings: Harry x OC, mentions of Ben x Mal, possible Ben x Evie, Uma x OC

Rating: T for minor language, mentions of gore, and quite a bit of violence

Warnings: Minor language, mentions of descriptive gore and dead bodies, violence (both including and excluding weapons), and Ben is kinda in a hostage situation so there’s that?

Tags: @newtshairdryer @descendantofthesparrow @hookedradge @haden-oftheisle @batmanwearsabowtie

Author’s Note: Not gonna lie this might be my favorite chapter I’ve written so far. Also, I’m really sorry for the inactivity. School is kind of being a pain in the butt right now.

The walk back to the Chip Shoppe was relatively uneventful and silent. Harry was laser focused on getting back to Uma and making sure Mal held up her end of the bargain. I was laser focused on getting down to the ship’s lower deck and making sure I could do everything in my power to tear the royal beast apart. I had been so previously fixated on carrying out every small step of this plan that I had little time to focus on how it was affecting me emotionally. But, as Harry and I arrived at where we would take our separate paths, I realized that all I was seeing was red at the mere thought of Ben’s name. I could easily go in there and slash him up until his stringy intestines were burst out of his chest for me to use as jump rope. There were many fibres of my being that wandered into a euphoric haze at the idea, but my daydream was broken when Harry took my face into his hands and looked directly into me. While my mind’s eye saw red, my real eyes could see nothing but the wide sea of blue and the warm air of Harry’s eyes. “Are you ready for this, duckling? You know what to do?” He asked, grounding me in what my limits were. As much as it upset me to admit it, Ben had to come out of this alive. But it didn’t mean I wouldn’t make him wish he were dead.

“Yeah. You’ll keep an eye on Mal when she comes in?” My mind raced to Uma when I responded. We knew Mal would come to the restaurant no matter what. Whether her and Ben were on good terms or not, it’d be idiotic and a sociopolitical suicide for her to leave Ben to be tortured by a bunch of ‘wharfy pirates.’ What we weren’t certain of was whether or not she’d try to pull something. “I don’t even want to think about Uma getting hurt…” I started to speak when Harry gripped my hands tight, a tiny laugh peaking through the cracks of his rarely seen sweet smile.

“Sofi...Uma’s our Captain for a reason. Even if Mal had the balls to pull something, which she doesn’t, Uma would be able to handle her pretty quickly. Not to mention that Gil and I will be watching them the whole time. You need to take a breath and focus on the goal, here. Can you do that for me, duckling?” After a moment's hesitation, I took in a slow breath and nodded. Harry lightly kissed my head as he pulled me in for a quick embrace. “That’s my girl. Now go get us our magic, will you?” He said as he let me go and walked away.

The lower deck of the ship was definitely fit for Ben. It stood nearly bare with only me, him, the chair he was tied to and the millions of cobweb strings hung high and low across the musty room. Tiny drops of water would occasionally drip onto the creaky wood floors, adding a bit of sound to the otherwise dead silent room I walked into. Ben’s head hung low, not wanting to look me in the eye. Too bad he didn’t have a choice. Unconscious or not, he was going to be a part of this game. He had to be. I knelt down in front of him and swiftly swiped my hand across his pale cheek, sending a loud slap through the air and jolting him up. “Rise and shine, your Majesty! Nap time’s over.”

Ben looked around frantically and began to chaotically struggle at his restraints. “Where am I? What is this! You better get me out of here or I swear I’ll -”

I had trouble holding back a laugh. Clearly Ben had never been held captive before. “You’ll what? I’m already stuck in this shithole your father built. Besides, you clearly have no idea how to get out of those ropes. Not that anybody would, Gil’s gotta be the best guy with ropes on the entire Isle. So tell me, King Ben...what are you gonna do?” I smiled and confidently cocked my head to the side. Ben speedily eyed me up and down, scanning me to see if he recognized me. It took him only a few seconds of this scanning to realize that we had seen each other before.

“You...we saw each other on the street. You could have killed me.”

“But I didn’t. You’ll find out why soon, don’t worry. I could kill you now, too. But...I’m not gonna.” I replied simply as I took my dagger out of my pocket and fiddled around with the handle. His eyes widened slightly as he looked down at the blade. I smirked and pointed the tip of the blade down toward his crotch. “Relax, as long as you do what I tell you, you’ll get out completely unharmed. And I promise you, your Majesty, I don’t ask for much.”

I stood up and began to wander around the room, taking in the smell that really started to peak through once it combined with the King’s fearful sweat. “I’m going to ask you some questions. All but one will have a simple yes or no answer, but we’ll get to that one question at the end. The rules of this little game are simple, you’re going to answer each and every question with complete honesty. If you try to ask me questions, dodge your questions or even think about lying, I will know. And you’ll get a nasty cut from this little friend of mine here.” I lightly waved my dagger in his eyes like a carrot to a rabbit. “Not anything deep enough to kill you. But definitely deep enough to hurt. But as long as you follow the rules, you won’t even have to worry about it! Are we clear?” My face went from playful to a dark glare as I stood awaiting his answer.

“Why are you doing this? Do you think that tying me up and interrogating me like this is really going to get you off the Isle?” I groaned and rolled my eyes before making a quick slash up the side of his left arm. He gritted his teeth, attempting to hold back the immense amount of pain that just shot through his body.

“What did I just say? You don’t get to ask questions, Beastie Boy. All I’m asking for is your complete honesty, is that really so hard? Especially after all the shit your family has put me through?” Ben opened his mouth to speak, but was quickly silenced when he noticed the tip of my dagger edging ever so closely to his other arm. He shut off his words and quickly shook his head, finally abiding by my commands. “Good boy. Now, firstly, your father made the decision 20 years ago to bring back every single villain that had been killed...only to imprison them on an island with no magic and no way out. Yes or no?” Ben leaned back, confused at the simplicity of the question. He nods his head swiftly, allowing me to continue.

“Alright, good. Next question. A couple months back, you decided to give some of the kids born on said island a chance for redemption. So you brought to Auradon who you thought were the baddest of the bad. Son of Jafar, son of Cruella De Vil, daughter of the Evil Queen….and of course, daughter of Maleficent. Yes or no?” There was a pause in his response. A shred of hesitancy. I wasn’t going to tolerate hesitancy. I lunged my dagger into his right leg, causing an extremely pained yelp to cry out from the King. “Yes...or no?”

“Yes, yes I brought those kids to Auradon...but I didn’t think they were the baddest of the bad. I had seen one of them before and...I wanted to meet them, but I knew that one wouldn’t come without the others.” I leaned back in a bit of shock. How could he have already known about the core four if this was his first time on the Isle? “Evie...I saw her in a dream. I wanted nothing more than to meet her, to see if she were real. But I knew she wouldn’t come if I didn’t bring the rest of her friends with her.” A devilish smile crept across my face. Evie had found some way to sneak into Ben’s mind and plant the seed that lead to her and her friends escaping the Isle.

“So...even though Evie was the one you wanted to meet, Mal was the one you ended up falling in love with once these Core Four came to Auradon. Then again, I guess you didn’t fall in love with Mal naturally. She spelled you, then somewhere along the way, with her magic mixed in, she caught your eye. Yes?” With a hint of regret, he nodded his head. There was a part of him that still felt that desire to know Evie. I could definitely use that to my advantage..later. “So, given that you fell for Mal, even after the love spell wore off...she probably tells you everything. Yes or no?”

“Yes. Especially after I became King. Her and her friends came to me with a whole bunch of information about the Isle. Like she told me about-”

“Slow your roll, Beastie Boy. I decide what info you share, here. Next order of business, Mal and her friends were the ones who informed you about the corruption behind Peter Pan. Yes or no?” With a hint of reluctance, Ben nodded his head. Hopefully now he’s starting to get a hint of the kind of information I’m in need of. If not now, he would get it really soon. “So when Mal and her friends told you who Peter Pan really was, you sent her, her friends, and your strongest Auradon guards to Neverland to capture Pan and bring him to the Isle of the Lost where you felt he belonged. Yes or no?” After another swift nod, I leaned in close to the captured King. “Alright, Benny Boy. This last question’s a little different. This ain’t a yes or no kind of question, but I still need one hundred percent honesty. You think you can do that for me?” Absolute silence. Then, a slow, fearful nod. “I want you to give me the same order you gave Mal, and her friends, and those Auradon guards. The exact same order. Word for goddamn word.” I removed my dagger from his right leg and placed it against his throat. I knew for sure that I wouldn’t slice him up. But he didn’t. I had to make sure he was scared enough to give me the information I needed.

“I told them to go to Neverland, find Peter Pan, capture him and bring him to the Isle of the Lost by any means necessary.” Of course. Of course it’d be those four little words that would drive Mal and her friends and those guards over the edge. As I saw all those bloodied, gory bodies laying across the beach, staining the sand’s white pigment and leaking into the ocean, I wondered what could possibly drive someone to do something like this to a bunch of innocent boys? Now, I know. I cleaned Ben’s blood off my blade with my shirt and placed my dagger back in its sheath. I stood and couldn’t help but to slowly pace around the room silently. At first, I thought it was all Mal’s fault for telling Ben and being the one to dig the swords into their skin. It still is...but now I realize that they might have been a bit more merciful had Ben not used those four little words.

“By any means necessary, huh? Yep, there’s the ticket. You know, as a fellow leader...I should probably give you a valuable piece of advice.” I slowly leaned closer to his face before letting my fist collide with his right cheek. “Be careful what you say when you’re giving orders. Otherwise, your own words could kill hundreds!” My blaring voice rang through the musty room as I fought back the urge to continue decking him over and over again. His face showed a blatant and pained confusion.

“Fellow leader? What the hell are you talking about? Isn’t Uma the Captain?”

“You seriously haven’t gotten it through your head by now? Whatever. Who I used to be doesn’t matter. What matters is what you did. Those four little words that you threw around like they were nothing? Those words killed hundreds of innocent boys. All because you and your stupid kingdom wanted to lock up some bastard who you weren’t even gonna find anyways!”

“Okay, is this about Neverland? Because Mal told me that all of the Lost Boys were taken care of.”

“That means MURDERED, idiot! Your girlfriend and her friends went to Neverland looking to lock up my father, which they never would have been able to do anyway, and saw my Lost Boys as some kind of obstacle they had to slaughter their way past. All because of your orders.” A short growl involuntarily came from the King’s mouth. It was finally starting to work. “Do you hear that, Ben? That’s your own guilt coming to eat you alive. Do you think it’d get worse if I told you that no matter what your girlfriend did, the only place she would’ve found my father is rotting away deep in the ocean? Peter Pan’s been dead for years. We had quite the utopia going on Neverland before your army ruined it. Every boy felt loved, wanted, special. We didn’t have a whole constitution of rules tying us down. And you….you took that away!” Tiny, dark brown hairs started to grow from Ben’s face as yet another roar flowed through the room.

“What are you doing to me?” He asked worryingly, his voice starting to morph into something more animalistic.

“I’m not doing anything. Correct me if I’m wrong, Your Majesty, but you and your father shift into Beast form when in pain, yes?” Nothing but a gruffy huff in response. I can only assume that means I’m right. “One thing I’ve learned from living with hundreds of teenage boys? There is nothing more painful to a teenage boy than his own guilt consuming him.” As more of his beastly hairs continued to grow longer and thicker, I grabbed the tiny glass vial from my pocket and popped open the cork. As I quickly plucked the hairs needed for the elixir, I relished in every pained yelp he gave and smiled when his beastly roar turned into a cry of regret.

“If it makes you feel any better,” I darkly spoke as I put the cork back onto the vial, watching the beastly hairs inside turn into a cluster of gold sparkles. “Your painful guilt is about to make a lot of wharfy pirates very...very happy. Ciao.” I gave a small, playful wave before walking out of the room and to the upper deck of the ship. There, close to the mast, was Uma. Similar to when we had our first close connection, she sat looking straight out to the ocean. But this time, there was a different sort of air around her. She was waiting for something, but not very patiently. Her angelic sea smile spread across her face when she turned to see me walking towards her.

“How did it go? I heard screaming.” She asked as she softly moved closer to me.

“We’ve got everything we need. Now we just wait for the Doctor to come back with everything else. As for the screaming, let’s say that Beast is a lot easier than we thought he’d be.” I tried to keep my mind focused on the plan, how close it was to being completed and how perfectly it had been going so far. But, what I found out about my boys remained on my mind. Uma knew that too. She took my hand into hers and began smoothing over my skin with her thumb.

“I heard screaming from you too. Are you okay?” I leaned her head onto my shoulder and let go of her hand as I began to run my fingers through her braids.

“Honestly, it hurt a little bit thinking about that day again. I’ve been so busy with this plan and getting settled in the Isle that I’ve never really had the time to let it sink in. I haven’t really talked about it with anybody.”

“You can talk about it now, if you want. I’m usually not the best listener, but I can try.” That little bit of bite in the tone of her voice brought a smile to my face, just as it always has since the day I met her. I brushed off the topic and planted a soft kiss on the top of her head.

“I appreciate that. But the best thing we can do right now is make sure this plan stays in motion. Will Mal be at the ship tomorrow?” I asked, shifting the topic away from any kind of emotional struggle.

“No doubt about it. Knowing her, she’ll probably bring her friends as backup. So, what do you say, Island Girl? You ready to break some bones and melt some brains?” She asked, leaning up from my shoulder and grabbing my hands tightly in excitement.

“My dear Captain, I’ve never been more ready for something in my entire life.”

[joemuggs]

I Don’t Wanna Go

J Mascis is one of the best rock stars ever, I love him so much. I was reminded by this great Rolling Stone interview how great his (incredibly dry) chat is so I dug out this thing I did with him for the late lamented The Word mag in 2007.... actually not sure this ever ran...

FILM/TV: I’ve been watching a lot of DVD TV series, the whole series in one go. Gray’s Anatomy has been good, I like long, long dramas – things like seem like a really long, long, bad movie. I like just the quantity, the fact you can watch it for so long; I can get into just about anything if it’s long enough, if it’s really bad it might take 8 episodes to get into, but I’ll get into it. I started watching Dawson’s Creek recently, having never seen it before; the first series of that was actually really good, but I’m on the second one now and it’s getting horrible quite fast – I don’t know if I can power through another seven seasons or so. The girls all seem to break up with Dawson for absolutely no reason, it’s just not believable, they’re in love one day then the next they want to break up just for drama’s sake. A lot of these long series get horrible as they go on – I’m fed up with the Gilmore Girls which is on its seventh and last series now, and it seems all the talent on the series has been pushed out and the whole thing is just melodramatic and cheesy, where it used to be full of banter, full of people drinking a lot of coffee and talking fast, which is something I really appreciate. Same with The OC this year, it’s got pretty bad – Marissa has died and it’s gone boring. I watched Pan’s Labyrinth and Last King Of Scotland this year – but I was surprised how violent both of them were. I almost wish I’d left before the horrible stuff started – I hate that inevitable violence… I like random violence in movies, non-sequitur violence, slapstick violence, guys losing arms randomly, stuff like that. I loved Grizzly Man, the guy who got eaten by the bear, that guy was just so wild; I love Crumb too, for the same reason: that I like watching people who are crazier than I am. My favourite films are Crumb, Rushmore and Harold & Maude, they all speak to different parts of my life.

BOOKS: I read a lot of rock biographies. All of them, in fact. Just now I was reading the Mick Fleetwood biography – I was really interested to find out about Peter Green and also Stevie Nicks, and about the middle period between those eras. I read a book about the Ramones that their road manager wrote, that was really interesting. I read a lot of kinda spiritual books as well, I like to get different perspectives on what different people are thinking about – recently I’ve read some parts of books by [Amachi] who’s an Indian saint, and Dalai Lama books. I don’t really like it if it’s some yuppie guy who’s decided he’s New Age. I don’t like the New Age, I’m more interested in things that have stood the test of times. I also like Image Guitar Magazine, geeky stuff – I like to know about effects, and see the latest prices of old guitars, just to shock myself. Especially lately it’s really accelerated, a guitar can go from $20,000 to $100,000 in two years in these weird stores that are dedicated to rich people who collect guitars as investments, putting so much money in that they’re afraid to pick it up in case they wipe off a hundred grand in value!

MUSIC: The Fleetwood Mac thing is a big interest for me, I have a thing about the blues kinda rock of the time – Peter Green, Taste, Rory Gallagher, Free, Groundhogs, stuff like that. Dinosaur Jr was always a combining of all the eras we loved, so there was that blues rock, then Beach Boys, Black Sabbath, and from the 80s Birthday Party, Minor Threat, the first Jesus & Mary Chain records, My Bloody Valentine, even REM – these are all things I listen to sometimes, kinda in cycles. For more recent stuff I see a lot of bands play in my town, there’s a scene of all these people playing together, which I see live rather than listening to, a small scene so every show is different, improvisational. MV&EE are a part of that, which is how I came to play the mellotron on their album. Witch, another band I play with, came out of that too, though they’re a bit more Black Sabbath, a bit more song-based than the “free folk” guys like MV&EE. Some of these new metal-influenced bands with drone stuff, that guy from Sunn 0))) for example, are involved with this scene too, and Japanese bands who visit, like Acid Mothers Temple and Boris. Everyone has the same influences, it seems – Black Sabbath, Bert Jansch, Velvet Underground, but the way they combine those have quite different results. It’s still underground, definitely for kids who aren’t fitting in, these are pretty intelligent people, left-wing people, not mainstream at all. I saw Jeffrey Lewis recently, a really funny video of his about Will Oldham, about how all the hip kids on the New York Williamsburg scene are looking for a Jesus figure to give them all the answers. I saw (Smog) solo for the first time the other day, and I was so impressed, he’s funny too, but a great songwrier. Joanna Newsom was following but (Smog) was just in another league. He writes a real pop song.

[captainfile]

Oh What It Is

Words: 19037

Ao3 link

Peter Pan/OC, warnings for major character death, not-super-graphic torture, and Pan being as fucked up as he is in OUAT. 

Summary: Owen Flynn doesn't operate alone. He's got a teenager in tow when he hits Captain Hook with his car outside Storybrooke; his daughter. Both Owen and his daughter think they have an idea of what's going on, but many others are pulling the strings on their lives. Pan's grab for the Heart of The Truest Believer has grander consequences than the family that'll be left behind if he succeeds- the Home Office is very real, and very dangerous.

“Dare to explain what you’re leaving for this time?” 

I look up from my phone and frown at the school’s receptionist. She’s frowning, too, the kind of frown that says she thinks I’m the one orchestrating these absences. Fuck, I wish. Skipping school is way better than being dragged off to who knows where and missing it. So I don’t answer, to her annoyance; instead I look pointedly at the note in her hand stating clearly that there’s a family emergency and I’ll be back by tomorrow. 

I’m never back by tomorrow. Something always happens. In China, stalking one guy ended up including a couple train rides and a typhoon- not to mention the plane there and back. In Mexico, we were trapped in the rubble of an ancient temple for thirty hours. And don’t get me started on Manhattan. No matter the excuse, something always seems to go wrong- I don’t expect to be back for any of my quizzes this week, but I always end up studying anyways, because what else am I supposed to do on a six hour stakeout? When Dad interrogates someone for three days because there was more intel than he thought he’d find? 

“Hey,” Dad greets me when I find him waiting in front of the school. The car’s already packed, but I don't ask where we’re going. He drums his fingers on the steering wheel and I dig through my book of riddles and the road just keeps going. “Tamara, do you copy?” He turns the radio on after hours of silence, switching it to one of his secure channels. We never listen to music. Sometimes I wonder why he brings me. 

“Hey, Knight’s in the bathroom, make it quick.” 

“You have him, then?” Knight is a familiar term. Tamara made it up as a code. He's one of Dad’s biggest targets, also known as Neal Cassidy, Baelfire, Benjamin Darling. There's little traces of him dating back two hundred years, and when Dad’s partner Tamara seduced him, he admitted to knowledge of magic. When is a mind like a fairytale? When it’s made up. Following my dad around all the time in search of it, I’ve seen some pretty strange things, and I know that my grandpa somehow died from it, but I’m not sure I fully get it. “We’re four hours away.” Oh, no. I groan at this update, and get a sharp look, but Tamara's laugh crackles over the radio. 

“I think you’ll enjoy this one finally, Robin, we’re meeting the son.” 

“Okay, I’m cutting you off there, how close are you?” Dad interrupts. I roll my eyes and go back to my book. What can’t talk but will reply when spoken to? “Any other updates?” 

He isn't a cop. He's like a vigilante or something, working for an organization called the Home Office, trying to seek and destroy magic. He wants me to follow in his footsteps, too, but. He doesn’t know the numbers I’ve memorized. 

That would change things a bit. “Storybrooke?” I read off a sign when four hours have passed and the sun has set. Dad hands me his wallet, and I swap his driver’s license. Owen Flynn becomes Greg Mendell, the cheesiest name I could think of when he asked my opinion. My name changes to Robin Mendell, though I did campaign for keeping my real name to make the pun louder and clearer. Dad said it would make his disguise too easily broken through. Our real licenses, I tuck into an old envelope from Sears. Even if our car was searched, it would probably be ignored, treated as trash. Our car has never been searched. We continue driving along the road when suddenly there’s a figure in the headlights- 

“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” 

“My dad just crashed his car, oh fuck,” I gasp, blinking against the darkness and finding smoke in front of me. the hood is crumpled, a branch has gone through the window. “We’re um- we just passed this sign, for Storybrooke?” 

“I’m sending responders your way, there’s a hospital in Storybrooke; can you describe the scene for me?” 

“I don’t know,” I sob, and then turn to my dad and sob again at the sight of him. “He’s unconscious, and bleeding everywhere, and the airbags-” 

“Ma’am, please breathe; what does the car look like?” 

“Like it’s about to catch fire,” I decide, and try to wrench my door open. There's broken glass everywhere, and I start to hear sirens as I fight with my seatbelt. My phone, dropped in my lap, makes some noise, but I stay focused on escaping. Is Dad even breathing? There’s too much smoke to really tell. Next thing I know, I’m wrapped in a shock blanket in the back of an ambulance and Dad is still bleeding. They make me sit in a curtained off area of the emergency room, alone. 

“Hi,” a blonde woman quietly greets me after nearly an hour. “I’m Emma Swan, the sheriff,” she continues, “what’s your name?” 

I go to answer honestly, but isn’t Tamara going to be here soon? “Robin.” The only way I know how to contact her is with the radio in the car. 

“Robin, you and your dad were pretty hurt,” she tells me. Like I don’t already know. “Is there anything you can tell me about what happened, or about your health insurance, or anything?” I tell her we don’t have health insurance, and that I saw a figure and a bright light before we crashed. The headlights, obviously, reflecting off whoever we hit. Wait- we hit someone, didn’t we? “He’ll be okay, and your dad will, too.” How? we must have been going over forty. I don’t ask, but there’s no way someone could have survived being hit by a car at that speed. The sheriff thanks me and leaves me to sit for another eternity. I wish I had even my books, or homework. I sleep in the emergency room, and when I wake up, I’m allowed to visit Dad while he sleeps before I’m escorted to an inn and diner. The car is wrecked, but I’m allowed to dig through it and bag up all our belongings, which sit in my hotel room with me, and while I’m still alone and scared, I’m not bored anymore. 

“Robin, you said?” A waitress at the diner smiles at me. She can’t be much older than I am, still filling her features in young adulthood. “I’m Ruby.” 

I just nod, avoiding conversation for a list full of reasons. Thankfully, Tamara calls my dad’s phone before the waitress can continue trying to talk to me. Her name in his phone is just “Her” for maximum strangeness. “Finally, what’s going on?” she asks. 

“It’s Robin,” I tell her, keeping my voice low. “He’s in the hospital.” 

“What?” she shrills, “I’ll be there in a couple hours-” 

“He’s fine, I know you two have a plan with the Knight,” I tell her, though it crushes my heart to say. I’m allowed to complain, allowed to moan and groan and gripe until the day’s out- but I can’t mess with their business. I did, once, when I was younger, and, well. It didn’t end too nicely. Not that many things do, of course. “We got into a car accident, and they’re keeping him for a couple weeks,” I report. 

“This wasn’t part of the plan,” Tamara admits, which sends my heart right into my throat. “They won’t be happy.” 

“I-” I gasp. I don’t know what to say, really. “Wait, maybe-” 

“You shouldn’t have told me,” she deadpans, and hangs up. I stand quickly, too quickly, and rush towards the exit. Ruby asks me what the hell I’m doing, I still have my computer open on the counter, but it’s the last of my worries. The air bags did some damage, as did the crash in the first place, but I go as quick as I can to the hospital and collapse at Dad’s beside, apologising profusely. 

“Hey, hey, hey, talk to me,” Dad suddenly whispers, awake but clearly drugged to hell. I hand him his phone and just cry. Everything in the last twenty four hours, I just let out. It’s horrible. The fear, the pain, the dread of what I know will come next. Dad said, when he sent me, that he only spoke with the Home Office through code, and Tamara was one of the only two members he’d ever met in person at that point. The other didn’t have a name, his recruiter and boss. He never got to know the mysterious man like I did, and insisted as he took me away that I’d be fine once they briefed me on the importance of the mission. I was briefed, yes, but I don’t want Dad to be briefed. Because it isn’t some meeting with a man in sunglasses explaining how horrible magic is. I was young, strong. What if they kill him? 

Dad doesn’t listen to me, and I stay by his side as much as he tolerates in his recovery. Weeks pass- my school moves me to online classes, finally tired of all the odd absences and now this. Ruby hovers and asks about what I'm learning like she’s never taken calculus before. 

It seems like forever before they let Dad come to the diner and stay with me. He seems fine, though, like the Home Office didn’t actually care about his slip up. I check often and annoyingly about how he’s doing. Finally, Tamara arrives and sneaks into our room to talk and give me a hug. It’s weird, I’ll admit, to be close with my insane dad’s insane girlfriend. Still, she’s nice. Nicer than the rest of the Home Office. I’m often lookout on their missions, so I place myself around town to do homework, making it normal for me to be somewhere strange and alone. They talk business and magic and overanalyze photos and videos and the car crash, finally asking me to camp outside a building near the bay. I'm fine with that, sitting on a dock and filling out sudokus, trying to pretend like I don't hear someone screaming inside, or gunshots. Tamara runs up to me and drags me away with Dad to a clearing in the forest before excusing herself. 

“What’s this?” I try, unnerved by her behavior. Dad frowns, head tipped down, and kneels on the ground. “Dad?” 

“Your grandfather,” he finally says. “My father, he’s buried here.” 

I swallow nervously, and hazard, “why?” 

He gestures, so I sit on the ground next to him. “When I was really young, we used to camp, my dad and I; we had so much fun, seeing all these beautiful forests and mountains everywhere we went. 

“One trip up here in Maine, a storm comes through and our truck is damaged, so we try and hike to find help, and suddenly there’s this town that we both swore wasn’t there before, Storybrooke. We were welcomed, but it was a strange town, it seemed like the same thing happened every day we stayed there. We were in Granny’s Diner, the same one we’re in now, and one evening the mayor had us over for dinner. I had just lost my mom, your grandma, and the mayor for some reason- she wanted to adopt me. Dad said we should leave, that it was the last straw of how strange the town was, but suddenly we were stopped, and he was arrested. He told me to run, and I never saw him again. 

“I ran from the mayor telling me to stay and be her son, and was able to contact the police. They escorted me back here to search for my father; strangely enough, though, the whole town was gone, as quickly as it had appeared. Coming back here now, I was sure of the magic; Regina, Granny, they haven’t aged a day. But Regina insisted that he left.” He rests a hand on the ground under his knees. “But here he is: she killed him.” Why? How? Who could be so desperate for a son that they would abduct him and kill his father? I swipe at my tears, and noticing them, Dad pulls me into a hug. 

“I’m sorry about your father,” Tamara speaks into the quiet, and my dad looks up at her but I don't. 

“Me too,” he replies with voice lower than usual. It rumbles through my shoulders and calms me, so I duck my head lower into his chest. “Did the folks back at the Home Office know anything about that thing?” 

“Yeah, they did,” Tamara whispers, “and you’re never gonna believe what it does.” 

Storybrooke’s mines are dark from my perspective, keeping watch from a bush while my dad, Tamara, and a man who doesn’t introduce himself step in. Something explodes, shaking the ground and my head, but they step out intact before I can panic and run in. The stranger splits, but the rest of us keep watch over the mines for a while longer. 

“That’s Regina, with the dark hair,” Dad mutters when Sheriff Swan and another woman duck into the mines. The sheriff leaves and comes back with a group, trailed by Knight’s prepubescent son. “Okay; stay with Tamara, I'll be right back,” Dad tells me, though Tamara is the one who nods in understanding. They seem more tense than usual, and her gaze is a little unfocused while we wait behind a building. Another explosion sounds, but she seems unworried about it, so I just keep waiting until Dad comes around the corner with Knight’s son in tow. Tamara stands but I balk- this isn’t right- 

Tamara grasps my arm tightly and helps my dad drag the kid towards the dock while I stutter, “Dad, what the fuck are you doing?” When I should have asked that question a long time ago. We approach the water with shouts for Henry, the kid, coming up behind us, but then Dad throws something in the water and a vortex appears out of thin air and threatens to swallow the dock. The water takes on a greenish glow, spinning dangerously, and I’m tugged by my arm into it, and huge alarms are ringing in my head; my dad has kidnapped a child, and now physics is breaking, and stupid Tamara pulled me into it, and I can’t see, and we are going to die. 

I was fourteen. and tired. For so many years, I had followed my dad blindly around the world, telling him when there was someone walking towards him on the street, approaching strangers and pointing them towards my disguised father asking for help. In that time my interest in what he swore could never be a coincidence had waned. His only grew, and it wasn’t contagious. it was my birthday, and I was supposed to bring candy to school for my friends to celebrate, but Dad was called in the morning, and we had to go. Only a short flight later, we were in San Diego. I swapped my dad’s license- since I didn’t have one yet- and sat in the blistering heat all day with him, watching a back road from the roof of a warehouse. We were nowhere near the beach, and though there was a view, all the roofs around reflected the sun too well. Instead I kept my head down and tried to nap to conserve energy. But I was so tired in every way that I couldn’t sleep; I was dehydrated, hungry, frustrated that I had to celebrate my birthday with my dad on an ugly old roof away from my friends. The sun continued to beat down on us, but Dad didn’t say anything. He could be so patient with the outings. Missions. Sometimes I could too, but it was my birthday- goodie bags assembled with care sat in the back of my mind and at home on the kitchen counter. My stomach growled for the millionth time and I decided that was the last straw, that I at least had to do something. Move. So I called a bathroom break, slipped out a broken window on the first floor, and ran in the opposite direction of his lookout. 

There weren’t many houses nearby- I had to run quite some distance, hoping my dad wouldn’t notice, before I spotted a group of kids playing with some adults watching on. Gasping for air in the dry heat, I went up to the adults and begged for some water. It was beyond exhilarating- I felt free, in control, for the first time in my life. They called the police, of course, who came and brought me to a dim station. They asked me so many questions, and I was finally able to voice some of my anger. My dad kept travelling, I told them, pulling me out of school to sit in places for hours at a time. They asked me about my mom, but I didn't know anything. That phone call changed my view of the world more than magic ever could, I think. 

“Penelope?” The voice on the other end asked. I said yes, wary but excited- everyone I knew always had two parents, even if they were divorced. Some of my classmates had fathers in jail, but at least they could visit. “Oh, sweetheart, I shouldn’t have let him keep you, but you can’t stay with me.” Crying, because what if it really was my mom and she didn’t want me, I asked her what she meant. “I’m in jail, Penelope, or I would run to you with open arms; I'll be released in about five years, earlier if I work extra hard, and I’ll come get you, I sweat.” I told her no, I couldn’t keep running around with Dad for another second. “You don’t have to, Sweet Pea,” she insisted, “and I’ll be here for you whenever I can.” It wasn’t fun but I sobbed on a bench until Dad arrived, shouting at the officers for dragging me off. In the end I went back with him. Always the same. 

We went home, my dad and I. Just a little place with a good enough school nearby. Dad told me again about the Home Office, about magic, to convince me to care about his missions as much as he did. The damage was done, though: I had already taken control, even though I had no clue what the woman who called me Sweet Pea was in jail for. It was so relieving and exciting to see a chance at another life, different from how boring and unpredictable mine was. He got a call from the Home Office that night and led me to the front door despite my protests. 

The Boss was a tall man from my perspective then, imposing, and dressed smartly. He wore sunglasses despite the time of day and easily forced me into the back of his dark car. A scratchy bundle of fabric fell across my face, and there was a sharp pain in my thigh, just as I passed out. 

The water breaks, and I can breathe again. There’s salt where it shouldn't be that blinds and chokes me. Dad helps me to a beach- the dock is gone, so I don't know where we are- and then pulls away to stop the boy from running off. 

“Slow down, pal, you got nowhere to go.” 

Tamara sighs and stands beside me, smiling at Dad. “Mission accomplished,” she declares. I look around and take everything in to keep myself from doing something rash like before. For one, it’s nighttime. For another, we’re on a beach with a jungle in front of us. For yet another, what the hell is the mission? Henry’s a kid, and we just almost died. I turn to ask my dad when Henry pipes up. 

“Are you sure about that? Because soon, my mom’s coming to get me; both of them.” 

Dad steps forward and crouches to his level. “You might want to take a look around, kid; you see any clock towers?” The smile on his face is tense, unfamiliar to me. “We’re a long way from Storybrooke.” 

“It doesn’t matter!” Henry quickly yelps, “my family’s been to the Enchanted Forest before, and they can get here again.” Enchanted Forest? I open my mouth to start making some long overdue demands, but a howl cuts through the night, chilling my bones. Pins and needles spread from my sandy palms to the back of my neck. It reminds me of something, I just don’t know- 

“Well, we’re not in the Enchanted Forest, either.” 

“Passing along the favor, then?” 

Tamara whirls on me for speaking. Dad catches my drift and his smile turns to a cold scowl before he snaps, “this is different.” 

“This is mimicry,” I snarl and Tamara grabs my arm again. 

“This is Neverland.” Henry asks if she’s certain of that, too, and she continues, “it’s the mother lode of magic, of course we’re here to destroy it.” How could my dad do this? What happened in Storybrooke? Why isn’t this just stalk somebody and then report them to the Home Office? Dad’s not a fighter. I’m sure of it. “Owen, the communicator, to contact the Home Office?” 

Dad doesn’t flinch at either name drop the way I do. He just reaches into his pocket and hands her a large phone. He doesn’t look at me. “An office, in a jungle, huh?” Henry remarks. “Who works there?” 

“Who we work for is not your concern, kid,” Dad tells him, “just know that they take care of us.” Henry asks how we’re getting home after they destroy magic, and Dad just says, “we don’t ask questions; we just believe in our cause,” and hysteria begins to invade my steely anger. Finally, Dad looks at me, dread in his frown. He opens his mouth to reprimand me. 

“I should have told them everything,” I bite out, “back in San Diego, I covered for you, did you know that? Even though I ran, I couldn’t go through with it when they really started asking?” Tamara punches the phone next to me, unconcerned. “And you,” I laugh at my memory of the Boss, freely, terrified and lost and so tired of this way of life, “You never apologized, and now you’ve kidnapped this kid for no reason!” I don’t realize I'm yelling until Henry flinches. “Dad, they’re going to kill him.” I don’t say how I know, don’t expressly reference the Boss, but Dad rushes towards me and grips my shoulder roughly. I lose sight of Henry and when all I find is my dad’s grimace I remember who wrapped those bags of candy for my friends. I remember who raised me; quietly, enthusiastically, as he does anything else. 

“Fix the communicator,” he snaps and turns me to his partner. Silently, I take the phone and open the battery compartment. 

Sand falls out. 

“Good thing you don’t ask any questions,” Henry says, his voice trembling a bit; he glances between the three of us with sudden nerves. He’s justified, I know, for a million reasons, the most recent of which being my naming of his death sentence. Or maybe he’s scared we’ll be stranded. Dad turns and shoves him towards the jungle. 

They had me tied down to a metal table, one light in the room hanging right over my head and blinding me. I tried to call for help, but the man that came in was armed and stood by the door. The Boss entered next; when he was done, I swore I'd never leave my father’s side again. I swore on life and limb and only stretched my promise once in the time since, when he was in the hospital. 

Dad lights a fire while Henry reminds me of myself- piping up with shaky insults every once in a while because it’s all he has. Defeated, terrified, and guilty from my outburst and the memories, I sit on a log with my head in my hands and don’t look up when there’s rustling leaves and footsteps. 

“Who are you?” 

“Oh, we’re the Home Office,” says a moderately young voice. My head jerks up and I find a group of boys in cloaks with sticks and messy hair gathered at the edge of the clearing. “Welcome to Neverland,” the boy at the front, tall and carrying not just a branch but a club, continues. his teeth bare in a smirk. 

“The Home Office is a bunch of teenagers?” Tamara asks, and Dad frowns at her and shakes his head, Because we both know it isn’t. I mutter so but thankfully, no one seems to hear- especially the impostors. 

“They’re not teenagers,” Henry disagrees, though it isn’t the most important thing. “They’re the Lost Boys.” 

“Look at that,” the leader pronounces, tilting his head so his ratty blonde hair falls over his eyes. Henry asks why they want to destroy magic. “Who said we’re going to destroy magic?” Tamara argues that it was the mission, but the leader doesn’t react visibly except to look at her through his lashes. “So you were told, yes, now; the boy, hand him over.” 

I’d be lying if I pretended to expect her reaction. Whatever I know about her, it’s mostly that she’s insane and tolerable. Tamara steps in front of Henry and declares, “Not until you tell us the plan- for magic, for getting home.” The leader’s lips twitch whlie I watch him, tense and confused. 

“You’re not getting home.” 

Fuck. 

“Then you’re not getting the boy.” 

“Of course we are.” 

The leader chuckles, and suddenly the wind picks up and a- a dark- shadow? A cloud? It engulfs my father, and he screams, suddenly collapsing, right in front of me. My feet rush towards him of their own shocked accord as Tamara tells Henry to run, but sound goes a bit far away. It's like I’m underwater again, apologizing for everything I've ever done, but Dad doesn’t answer me. He just lays there, and when I set my shaking hand on his neck, I find no pulse. He's pale, cold, stiff. dead. I blink, but my vision narrows, and all I can do is cry over my father’s corpse. 

Tamara’s gasps wake me. She's across the clearing, slapping the ground for my attention, but I don't go to her, shocked by the cold still under my hands and the arrow sticking out of her shoulder. A figure approaches her, one I saw only briefly around Storybrooke, but he’s dressed in leather now. 

“So where is he?” Mr. Gold asks her, either ignoring or not noticing me. She gasps. “There, there, I'll help you speak,” he whispers, and waves his hand, and then the arrow disappears into thin air. She thanks him, again acting against what goals she’s voiced before. Magic. It’s real, and it just saved her life, and selfishly, suddenly, she doesn’t seem to mind it anymore. Even if Dad is my only point of reference for such a subject- and I trust him far too much- I still find my fingers curling with old anger. “Where is Henry?” Mr. Gold asks. “They killed him?” 

Tamara looks around, at me again, and answers, “I don't know; I told him to run, and he did.” He asks where. “The jungle. Pan wants him, he’s behind all of this; look, Mr. Gold, I didn't know who I was working for, I'm sorry about Neal, I'm so sorry.” she sobs as the man kneels in front of her and mutters something I can’t overhear. “Can you forgive me?” She asks, but he shakes his head and then- and then just as quickly as he saved her life, he ends it, reaches into her chest like she’s made of nothing but mist and pulls out something glowing and red and crushes it to dust in his hands as she collapses. Tamara is dead. My dad- my dad is dead, still under my tense grip. I know I'm next. 

Mr. Gold steps over to me and I close my eyes, continue to hold onto my dad’s sleeve. “Did you- love him?” 

Surprised, I answer quickly, honestly, “yes, yes.” 

“He did horrible things, hurt people, and you loved him?” 

I tried to ignore it, the gunshots and screaming. When it did happen. Dad’s not- he wasn’t a fighter. “He’s my dad,” I say, throat tight, and let out a sob, bending over him farther, burying my tears in his cold back. Mr. Gold seems satisfied to listen for now. “I just wanted everything to be normal, no magic, no Home Office,” the words come out with a bite, like a curse. With a shiver, I continue, “I just wanted to go to school and go home and be with my mom and dad, not run around and get trapped underground and-” he crouches, and I stop myself from running as I want to. “Are you going to kill me?” I ask. He shakes his head. “You killed Tamara.” 

“And she killed my son,” he mutters. “Death is contagious.” slowly he reaches out, and I lean away, afraid that he lied and is going to kill me like he very obviously can. But instead, he reaches past me and lays his hand on Dad’s shoulder and then stands. “You can come with me and survive, or be taken by Pan.” 

“I don’t want to leave him yet, he should- they should be buried.” 

“Taken by Pan, then,” Mr. Gold nods, and walks into the forest. Before he’s fully past the treeline, though, he calls back, “would you have left him, given the chance?” I pick up a stick and start digging. 

“I was given the chance. I couldn’t, not in a way that stuck.” 

The sun doesn’t rise. I work for what must be hours, hacking at the earth and hoping I'm really in Neverland where there probably aren’t any gas lines, and occasionally feed the fire for warmth and light. I don’t know who Pan is other than Peter Pan, but it doesn’t seem too farfetched based on what I’ve seen today. or, tonight. In Neverland. Besides, I am my father’s daughter, despite my misgivings about it. Finally there’s enough room for two in the grave, so I lay them down facing each other because she wasn’t my mom, wasn’t maternal at all, but they loved each other. Dad always loved talking to her. As I cover them with dirt, I sob, and as I mark out the grave, I lay down next to it and cry with dirt on my face and in my clothes and under my nails. For long hours I just cry. If I get back to Storybrooke, or to America at all, I’ll be put in a group home for the next few months, and then tossed out on the street. Even when Mom is released from prison, she has nothing. At least I have her. Again- if I get back. 

“What’s your real name?” The voice comes from above, sharp and low and accented, and when I look up at the trees, there sits a figure that I can't see because the fire has died in my anguish. I don't answer. “The Home Office, they had records of you under Robin Mendell, but your father’s name wasn’t his, so I can’t imagine that’s yours.” 

“Who are you?” I ask with a voice much more raw and weak and it usually is. The figure shuffles a bit and then falls, and I scoot away but the young man suddenly visible in the moonlight lands on his feet. 

“I asked you first,” he says, putting his hands on his hips. He's dressed strangely like the boys earlier, loose, torn clothing and moccasins. A leather belt hangs from his shoulder. For the life of me I don’t know how he got into the tree above me and I won’t begin to parse how he landed so easily in the dirt. The very air around him seems thin. Off. 

“That is my name.” 

In a way. “Pretty.” I bristle, and he cuts a dangerous smile like the curl of a knife. Whether or not he meant it as an insult is entirely too vague. “But that isn’t what I asked.” 

“It’s Penelope,” I yield in the face of the threat. “Penelope Flynn.” 

He sways a bit from foot to foot before leaning forward and telling me, “I’m Peter Pan.” Right. Fucking knew it. Barely, I don't let out any more sobs or run or really do anything as he stalks towards me, Looking over the dirt on my face with a gaze I can feel more than watch. The closer he gets, the clearer his features are; shadowed eyes, harsh brows, smart and bony all around but with the stance of someone like the Boss. Someone who might shove me in the back of a car and not take an extra breath. “Do like games, Penelope?” I try to keep my own shoulders straight and don’t answer. Taken by Pan, then? 

“What happened to the Home Office?” 

Pan- and I suppose I’ve never noticed that my name is similar to that of a book character without a pig nose- shrugs and steps away. “That doesn’t matter,” he says, “unless, of course...” frustratingly enough he trails off. As he walks out of the clearing, he calls, “come on, Penelope, there’s food waiting.” I swore I would never leave my dad, but my vow has likely expired with him. Nothing more can be done. So I crouch and draw a flower in the dirt beside my other basic grave markings before following the strange young man into the jungle. 

Food is meat off a spit. There's a pile of knives, and I’ve eaten stranger things in arguably less strange places, so I carve a bite for myself and stare at the fire for a while. My hands long for a pen and paper. If this were a riddle, maybe I might have solved it by now. Peter Pan either is or isn’t working with the Home Office; I can’t discern which is worse. Without knowing what he wants and why, I remember Henry. If Pan is working for the Home Office then Henry is dead. If he isn’t, then what? Without that piece of information I can’t move forward. It’s why I asked him such a thing. The Home Office to me begs caution, and I won’t offend my own experience by ignoring it. 

“Girls are kind of rare here.” Someone sits beside me. “I’m Bee.” 

“Robin,” I answer without thinking. A code name is useless here. Bee, ten at the oldest, grins with crooked teeth and cuts himself some meat. “It’s kind of in the name, Lost Boys.” 

“Oh, there’s been girls, just not many.” I narrow my eyes at the fire- that doesn’t make any sense, for one thing to follow the stories if nothing else does. Neverland is dark, Peter Pan a murderer, Lost Boys not so limited. “Adults are kind of rare, too.” At least that still applies. Trix are for kids, I know. “But now there’s like, six?” He laughs. “Seven, I don’t know.” This catches my attention even more. Mr. Gold- how could I be so stupid? 

“I’ve only seen one, a man named Mr. Gold.” The grave flashes behind my eyes and the log beneath me seems to roll forward, the very ground stolen away. 

“Rumplestiltskin,” I’m brought back quickly enough and look away from the fire. Bee nods, and takes a large bite, but continues to speak through it, pieces of meat flying everywhere. “Yeah, he’s here with all those other adults, trying to get Pan, but they don’t know.” He laughs again. “Pan never fails!” 

“Be quiet,” snaps the boy from earlier, the tall one. He stands from his log on the other side of the spit and bares his teeth at Bee, who yelps and scrambles up and away. I watch him clamber up a tree and hear laughter, and something in the back of my mind connects the command with his name. “Hey,” the boy continues, and I turn to find him much closer and bearing a wooden cup. “Take this,” he orders, handing it to me. Water. He sits where Bee did and rests his club over his knees. “You’ll get a name soon enough.” 

“I already have a small collection,” I remark, but frown once the water is gone. Some webcomic about proliferating standards comes to mind. “Penelope, Robin, thank goodness I don’t have a middle name. What a mess.” The boy chuckles, but it’s lighter than before. Fuck, my heart goes to my throat at the memory, and I nearly vomit. 

“I also have two names: Felix and Slightly,” he admits. I just watch the fire and try to breathe as his voice returns to focus. I ask which I’m supposed to use; he answers Slightly, and I nod. Slightly it is. Fuck. I close my eyes and rub at my brow with dirty, meaty fingertips, my head pounding with grief and terror. What does taken by Pan even mean? I still have a living mother to return to, even if I can’t go to her yet. As far as I know, she’s nice. Yeah, she abandoned me as a child, and yeah, she did something awful enough to end up in prison, but I do need something to hold on to. 

Pan makes his presence known somehow, catching everyone’s attention by the fire. Slightly only watches the spit while almost everyone else’s head turns, but his lips twitch visibly. The paradoxically silent and obvious footsteps pause for a second directly behind the two of us. “Making a friend?” 

“No,” Slightly answers, nearly interrupting him. Pan huffs and sits on my other side. “Don’t you-“ 

“Maybe I want to know what’s so interesting about Penelope here.” He knocks his knuckle against the wooden cup and it fills with water before my eyes. “You might be clever, but that could have just as easily been a misstep.” 

“It’s very difficult to interest Pan,” Slightly murmurs. They speak so strangely, like they’re jumping between narration and dialogue instead of really just talking. “Like a goldfish.” 

Pan grips the log next to my hip and leans over me to bare his teeth at Slightly, who bares his teeth right back which only prompts Pan forward, so I’m caught under the pressure of Pan’s shoulder dragging against my collarbone. He doesn’t lean back until Slightly does, but he doesn’t lean back entirely, remaining damn near. “I'm waiting, then,” he declares, face only inches from my own. I gulp, and his gaze flies to my throat, or what he can see of it from his perspective. If he’s speaking to me, it isn’t immediately obvious, his expression trancelike for a minute. 

“Okay,” I say, which doesn’t make any sense but his eyes clear and his slow frown says he has no clue what I’m talking about but I don’t, either. Up close, with the fire, his eyes are still dark and his brows are still sharp, face so defined. He quirks a brow, and then nods. As if that was answer enough. I suppose it could be. Something must call his attention away because he stands and leaves an eerie vacuum beside me when he disappears into the night without a step taken. In the wake of him I struggle to breathe and Slightly, the asshole, seems to be holding in another laugh. 

I settle into the deep hollow of a tree and don’t sleep, but it feels safer than out in the open. My body shouts at me in exhaustion. Something’s missing, though, my heart just healed enough from losing my dad that I’m between passing out and settling down. He never told me outright that his line of work could be dangerous. The only threat I witnessed was the Home Office, though I doubt he saw it that way. It hurts even to remember the things that frustrated me about my dad; surrounded by sniffling from around the camp, I feel trapped. Like I’ll never get to see my mother. Slightly, Pan, and Bee all made it seem normal. Like it’s just the way of things. But Pan is clearly the one who got us here, and I'm certain he can get me back. If he so wishes. 

The sun still doesn’t rise. 

I step out of the tree when someone restarts the fire and begins to cook. It’s as good an opportunity as any to warm my own frozen joints to the tune of fat spitting in the licks of flame. The ghostly pale boy cooking introduces himself tersely as Nibs and lets me try turning the spit. I'm not very good at it, and my arms waver more with physical weakness than with grief and nerves and chill. Nibs laughs with the right hush of early morning and then stops, expression carefully blank, looking behind me even with his just-unfocused eyes. 

“This looks brilliant,” Pan says, coming up next to me and nodding to the spit. His voice is almost as identifiable as his atmosphere; my hands begin to twitch with shivers even though I’ve already warmed them up. “Where’d you get it?” 

“The eastern lake,” Nibs answers, his buck-toothed smile returning. Pan congratulates him and flicks his hands; suddenly a length of fabric appears in his grip, billowing dangerously close to the flames. If he offers, I take too long to respond, so he tosses it over my shoulder and the ties of the evident cloak twist together on their own. Okay. At the very least, I won't freeze to death. It’s yet to be determined if he’ll kill me some other way or if I’ll simply suffocate in the odd space around him. Nibs and I watch as he disappears into the jungle. “You alright?” 

“I-“ what a question! My dad died in front of me, on this island, because of Peter Pan and his Lost Boys, yesterday, or a couple hours ago, or when is the sun gonna rise? I sit and bury my head in my hands, rubbing at my eyes. Nibs continues to turn the spit. “I have no way to tell if anyone’s about to kill me. Are you?” It’s a dumb question. Nibs doesn’t answer, and Slightly appears as I sigh and open my eyes. Or swaggers, more than appears, between two trees and bearing his club. 

“He likes you,” he says vaguely, and sets the club down to help with the fire. 

“Who?” I ask even though it couldn’t be anyone but Pan; Slightly just looks at me for a moment, so I shake my head. “I’m going to die, aren’t I.”

“Pan isn’t going to hurt you.” 

“Because I have a cloak.” Both lost boys nod. Great. 

“Robin?” My head spins so quick I pull a muscle; there Henry stands half out of a tent, and I hurry over to him. “What’s going on? Did Pan trick you, too?” 

“I don’t know yet.” When he shivers, guilt and hot shame wash over me- my own father is responsible for this. Maybe it’s better I’m still here, and I should try to make up for his mistakes. “Are you okay?” 

Henry shivers again, “I’m fine.” He looks around at the tents, the fire with Slightly and Nibs staring at us, the jungle, my new cloak. “Have you really been working for Peter Pan this whole time, while Tamara manipulated my dad?” 

My face runs suddenly warm but given the Lost Boys’ careful gazes, it’s probably best that I didn’t immediately hand over Pan’s gift. Who knows what kind of consequences that would’ve had. We walk to the other side of the fire. “The Home Office is real,” I tell him quietly, “it’s an organization that tries to find and destroy magic whenever possible.” He frowns, and points out what Slightly said when we first met him, but I shake my head. “I don’t know anything about Peter Pan, but I know the Home Office all too well. I’ve been to their headquarters.” 

“Are they- would they do what you said, if they took me there instead of here?” 

“Probably, but I also don’t know if this is any better,” I answer honestly. “Peter Pan arranged for us to come here, not the Home Office.” Henry nods. “They do have their eye on Storybrooke, though, especially after the last few weeks.” 

“My moms can take ‘em,” Henry decides, and because he’s eleven or something, I agree quietly and leave it there. Slightly gives me a look I can’t read through the flames; Nibs just makes Henry help with the spit. 

“Did you not like my gift, Penelope?” A vacuum that’s beginning to get familiar forms when I lean in to the flames to rub my hands together. “Poor Henry’s shivering and you didn’t think it was good enough to give him.” Pan stands with his moccasins almost buried in old ash from past fires, the light turning his bare ankles brown and red. 

“I didn’t think,” I excuse, and go to unfasten the ties when they bind further under my hands, nearly swallowing my fingers. My mouth goes dry and I worry it’ll keep going, grip my throat, so I jam my hands above the collar. Pan doesn’t laugh when the ties stop, but his eyes do when I look up in panic and shame. Like he would have kept going if I hadn’t reacted. 

“No, Henry, you need a cloak of your own, yes?” He suggests, stepping between us and sending a bolt of fear down my spine. It’s an innocent enough idea but my heart pounds. “We can make you a new one.” I nod and decide to never make such a mistake again. Or at least try. It seemed wise- but maybe that’s the problem. Didn’t he ask if I like games? He leads me and Henry into another clearing with tools laid around in the dirt. “In fact,” he continues, “why don’t you make it together, so Penelope can approve of it.” 

I feel the obligation to apologize, but don’t say anything. Henry is quiet when Pan leaves. “I thought your name was Robin.”

“It is.” 

“Oh.” Neither of us know how to sew, but we begin to figure something out among the fabric scraps and sticks and twisted stems. The other Lost Boys begin to wake for breakfast but neither of us move to get any. “How much does the Home Office know about magic?” He asks after a while. 

“I was the lookout,” I admit, and take a deep breath to stop the tears. “My dad never told me anything except that stuff like this exists. I was gonna get out.” Since that doesn’t seem possible anymore, if it ever did with how powerful the Home Office seems to be, I try to imagine what could have been. “My mom’s in prison. He didn’t know I knew her, but I kept track of her, wrote stuff down so I wouldn't forget.” 

“My mom went to prison too. I was born there.” I'm starting to think Henry's family is incredibly strange. “What did they do to you?” Henry surprises me, but thankfully we’re interrupted by the Lost Boys rushing out of the camp with whoops and hollers. The kid runs after them, but it becomes quickly evident that the Lost Boys know where they’re going and Henry doesn’t. I make sure to keep both the kid and the camp in sight so he can’t get turned around. “What do you think’s going on?” 

“Pirates, aliens,” I throw out weakly. Best to pretend he didn’t ask the other question. “Maybe they act on a hive mind, and Peter Pan just called them all to look at a cool rock.” 

“Maybe my family’s here.” 

This I already figured out. Slightly didn’t seem happy about Bee telling me, but Henry seems overjoyed at the idea, so I don't reject it. Don’t remind him what happened yesterday when adults came to visit. We walk back to the camp and Henry happily occupies himself with the cloak, but I lose focus. Only a Lost Boy jumping down from his half-finished hammock snaps me back to attention. “So, you’re the kid Pan’s been looking for all this time,” he directs at Henry. 

“Ask him,” Henry grumbles, and a few other Lost Boys approach to poke and prod at him. They get my best glare when I try to step into the middle of it. “Robin, it’s fine.” 

The first boy scoffs. “If you can’t take some teasing without your big sister, how are you going to handle what Pan has in store for you?” He picks up a stick and encourages Henry to pick up his own while I'm overpowered by Nibs and another child. I shake them off, but stay put while the pair dance around the tools on the ground and fight. 

“Not bad,” Pan decides, from behind me; immediately, as is apparently usual, the crowd falls silent and stops moving like the vacuum around Pan is greedy for time itself. Henry flushes and looks down at the stick in his hand. “But wouldn’t it be more fun if you had real swords?” 

“I’ve never used a real sword,” Henry says, and Pan steps past me to whisper something in his ear. Henry's branch becomes metal within a shallow breath, and he suddenly charges at the Lost Boy while I struggle against Nibs and the other kid’s renewed grips. He’s a child, for fucks sake, and not a feral one like the Lost Boys all seem to be- but that very nature of the ones holding on to me puts me at a disadvantage. The Lost Boys cheer and yell and whoop and holler and bang sticks together with renewed vigor as Henry sets a series of blows upon the other boy. The one defending himself still only has a stick, and Henry ends up drawing blood. As if he’s the one hurt, he freezes and blurts, “I'm so sorry, it was an accident!” 

Pan laughs, though, and asks him, “don’t you know the best part about being a Lost Boy?” He rests a hand on Henry's shoulder. “You never apologize.” Then he raises Henry's hand, and the Lost Boys continue to shout and cheer, and the kid smiles. 

I’m feeding the fire when Nibs comes up and tells me I'm relieved. “You did this earlier,” I point out, and he shakes his head. 

“I earned my name. Just go.” 

He doesn’t say where, but with such a dismissal, it must be at least twenty feet away. I haven’t gone much farther than that from the fire except when Henry chased the Lost Boys out of the camp, but in all honesty it’s all I can do to feel safe. If I can’t extend the favor to Henry with his newfound comraderie, I’ll keep it for myself. So I wander the edge of my self-imposed border until the damp woodsy air shifts and the hair on the back of my neck prickles. No one else around the camp reacts. I pick up my feet and duck against a thick tree, hoping to ground myself with the bark. It feels like I’m being misted- drowned, really- and my hands don’t find any purchase. My gaze wanders and I find someone looking back at me from the far side of the camp, amidst the tents and, deeper in the jungle, a couple of hammocks. 

Slightly doesn’t move from where he’s in a similar position to me, an unbothered mirror image. I can barely identify him from so far away. And yet. My mind registers when the eye contact breaks and he looks at something beside me. 

A shiver runs down my spine even though I’m overheating. Slightly doesn’t look back at me; instead, he glides smoothly from view without breaking his own line of sight until he’s entirely gone. And he doesn’t appear on the other side of the trunk, either. I look frantically around the camp for Slightly, or Henry, or Nibs or even Pan but I can’t find anything or anyone that I can really label. The breaths I yank in are unfulfilling and wet. 

The light burned at my eyes and the cold metal table bit at my thighs and shoulders even through my clothes. My bindings were some kind of fabric or leather that scratched the thin insides of my wrists and my neck, made my calves itch. Every detail demanded attention, even the pressure inside my shoes where they perched at the edge of the table. There were no movies or puzzles or memories I could call upon; everything was new, everything was threatening. I pushed against the restraints and they gave only enough to itch further. The Boss checked each one and seemed satisfied enough to keep me where I was. He turned away to speak, or it sounded like he did, because my eyes wouldn’t adjust to the stark difference between the lighting on the table and the lighting in the room. He said something about carbon and a mask was pushed around my nose and mouth that almost seemed to push air into my lungs. Metallic, plastic, pure air. My eyes began to flutter and I couldn’t hold my squint. Everything was so cold. 

It didn’t hurt then. The pain came much later, but I couldn’t tell my dad, so I went to school and blocked out nearly three weeks of material. No, during, it was like coming in from the cold and wrapping my stuff fingers around a steaming mug of cocoa. Some kind of assistant moved my shirt away from my stomach and stuffed other fabric in its place beneath my back. It was cold and hot, and I had goosebumps that didn’t fade. Like an icicle beneath my skin, where it shouldn’t be, finding all the warmth of my blood and scaring it away. The roof was hot and I ran from it; the room was cold and I could do nothing. My lungs and throat dried with that steady flow of air but I didn’t scream once. 

“No matter how your heart is grieving, if you keep on believing, the dream that you wish will come true…”

A murmured lullaby wakes me to the rhythm of fingers carding through my hair. I blink and there’s Peter Pan kneeling over me, something plush at my back and soft words falling from his mouth. He keeps singing as I try to relax. His ministrations are nice; beyond neat, I feel clean. Again I wonder what carries from the snippets of fairytales I heard at school. 

“What-“ I croak and my throat seizes in a cough. Pan bends further and guides me upright with little difficulty.  

“The mermaids bathed you,” he mutters and continues to comb my hair. I’ve never known it to be all that silken, especially when wet- even more especially when wet with salt water- but his hand glides through. “You might taste salt for a while; Henry chewed their ears off when he saw them mistake your gasping for that of a fish on land.” I roll my tongue against my teeth and find what he means as he stops to hum more of the lullaby. “I won’t pretend it wasn’t funny. He could be so much more powerful, you know, if he wasn’t so tense.” 

There’s nothing for me to say, so I don’t speak. Fortunately this doesn’t seem to be a problem. 

“A dream is a wish your heart makes...”

Henry ignores Pan entirely when we return to the camp through winding paths that I couldn’t recount given a lifetime. Instead he damn near tackles me in a hug, made heavier by his loosely finished cloak. He only reaches my shoulders but makes up for it with enthusiasm. All I’m left to do is watch Pan walk away; he turns just before entering the largest tent and I swear delicate fingertips kiss my eyelids until they close. He’s gone with them. 

“Tootles brought you to the mermaids, and I told them to keep your clothes on, but then they started drowning you-“ 

“Henry.” It’s true, my clothes are starchy with dried seawater. Henry looks up from where he’s been practically shoving his face into my armpit. I’m honestly not sure what to say, but I thank him for his help and he nods. 

Then says, “I have a therapist. You can go see him when we get back.” 

Oh. Wow. 

Something of my dread and offense must show on my face because he scrambles to insist that therapy is an important thing for everyone no matter how supposedly healthy, but I worried him when I was hyperventilating and unresponsive. A nearby Lost Boy snorts. Blah blah, I think, do I look like some kind of orphan with PTSD or something? 

“Whatever,” I grumble and remove the kid from my person. A dry ache invades as if I was actually in that room again, but it fades when I stand nearer to the bonfire. Bee claims Henry’s attention. 

Nibs claims mine. “Music’s starting soon.” If that means anything, I don’t know, but it doesn’t seem important. “Slightly and me are gonna hunt early tomorrow. You should sleep through the festivities and come with us.” He isn’t cooking, but his hands weave between licks of flame and I wonder if the roughness to his skin is a consequence. 

“I don’t know how.” 

“You know some.” 

My stomach turns over again, but Nibs even doesn’t look at me, let alone apologize. Our conversation is cut short by an earthquake, or what feels like one, though, so I leave him and look around for somewhere safe when it dawns on me that I’m the only thing shaking. It’s a pleasant hum, though, after a moment. One I can and do settle into. Like drumming. Like a heart. Low tones filter through the air around me like fog and birdsong and crowded school hallways. I yearn for the idea as suddenly as it clears further into a melody, then further into Peter Pan and his flute at the center of everyone’s attention. Nibs mentioned festivities- they begin as Pan shifts the song without a break and the Lost Boys begin to chant, dance, sing along. They gather instruments and not-instruments alike to join the performance. Henry, eyes closed, cloak tangling with the buttons of his shirt, moves from Pan’s side and the attention moves with him. 

Peter Pan transforms from ringleader to puppet master before my eyes; neither is likely true, but I don’t much care. Instead I retreat towards the tents and the jungle until my head pounds a little quieter. The music- Pan’s heartbeat, if he has one- lulls me to sleep soon after I find another hollow tangle of roots. 

Slightly and Nibs are having a silent conversation above me when I wake up. There’s no noise in the entire camp, in fact; even the jungle sleeps. My stomach alerts them I’ve woken up and Nibs hands me a waterskin to tide me over. Slightly offers me a spear that I’m not sure I can refuse. My socks and shoes were lost to the mermaids, so we set out as quiet as can be through the trees with Nibs’ skin the only thing I can really see. When he ducks and his cloak falls over him, I’m as good as blind, simply trusting that he hasn’t taken any sudden turns and left me to wander. We’ve been up and about for a while when Slightly’s hand lands on my shoulder and the wind picks up. 

“This way,” he whispers, before darting between broad leaves. I follow the subtle sounds of greenery shifting, spear as ready as I can make it; I’m not a fighter, I tell myself, my dad wasn’t a fighter, and I’m not a fighter. The wind picks up further and Slightly moves too far ahead for me to listen to his trail, but the trees above sway and a sliver of moonlight catches on Nibs’ hand against a tree trunk ahead of me. We regroup in a tunnel between bare trees and salted rock, sea air soaring through, and Slightly motions for me to wait where the trees thicken again and the gusts are filtered by ferns and thorns. “We don’t have time right now for you to prick yourself with Nightshade, so resist the temptation,” he mutters right against the shell of my ear with a chilly puff of air and such a deep-baked stench to him that I hold my own breath. Finally, he adjusts my grip on the spear and disappears almost as quickly as Pan. I lean away from the thorns. I’m not left waiting for too long, but the moments stretch with how my eyes burn. 

A harsh gust of wind carries something my body is aware of but can’t identify- something in the sky. It drops, then soars away, leaving its load to fall into the branches and then to the rock. I step forward with the spear out- this must be what we’re hunting- and then the Knight lifts his head and looks directly at me where I’ve placed myself in a moonbeam. 

“What-” 

Slightly and Nibs sneak up on him from behind. “Welcome home, Baelfire,” Slightly greets him. “Pan will be so happy to see you.” They knock him dizzy and bind his arms while I sputter. 

“I- he-” it makes sense that Henry’s father would come to rescue him, but Henry didn’t mention it. Only his mothers, the sheriff and the mayor. “How many of them are here now?” 

“Seven now. Bee can’t count.” Or keep a secret. Without Mr. Gold or Knight, there are five adults on the island. I figure Slightly isn’t factoring my dad or Tamara, so I assume the sheriff and the mayor are two, leaving three that I don’t know. Nibs directs me to help him lift Knight to his feet and we start along the path of salt-poisoned trees. 

Nibs turns his head to me, eyes still lazily wandering ahead of us, and murmurs, “you lied.” This doesn’t bode well for my safety or sanity. “And I was wrong. You don’t just know some; could’a done this on your own.” Does he know that’s worse? I stare down at the spear, visibility better with fewer trees around. Not good enough, however, for me to catch through my horror that Knight has worked himself free and knocked Slightly out cold. It only comes to my attention when Nibs starts running and gets a half-rotted branch thrown at him. 

“Slightly,” I gasp, and rush over to the limp Lost Boy as Nibs soldiers on. “Hey, wake up, asshole,” I tell him without really thinking. He blinks and groans, then jumps up with my help and we follow the bootprint trail until we find Nibs standing over three Lost Boys. 

“Fast for such an old man,” Nibs huffs. 

“He had help.” Slightly decides and limps forward, cradling his head, to examine one of the kids. “Magic. Let’s get them back to camp.” 

Pan notices us immediately as we shuffle into view of the camp. In a blink he goes from forty to two feet away, eyes blazing even in the dark. “What happened.” 

“Baelfire got away.” 

He takes a glance at the kids slumbering on despite how rocky the trip back was and grins. “The Dark One. So father and son have been reunited.” 

“We should move the boy.” 

“Now, Felix, where’s your sense of adventure? The fun’s about to begin.” My exhausted lungs empty when Pan’s attention shifts to me. “Tamsin and the twins can go to the healing tent.” He steps forward until we’re face to face in the dark and those dancing fingertips brush some of my hair away from my neck. “Looks like you picked up more from the Home Office than you think you did.” 

Indignant, I sniff. His nearness isn’t as offending as Slightly’s- he might even be freshly washed- but his words cut much deeper. “I’m not-“ 

“-your father, yes, note the glaring difference between you now.” 

My stomach twists and I taste bile, all of my body straining under Tootles’ weight and my own grief and disgust. This- this asshole- “Pan,” I growl, and his grin is visible in shadow. 

“You really are fun,” he muses, and pinches the side of my neck, his fingernails digging in like teeth. “Penelope.” 

In a moment he’s gone, so I don’t wonder why he said my name so quietly. I just take Tootles to the tent that Slightly and Nibs reach a few minutes before me given their established lifestyles. With food in my hands and the spear put away I notice all the splinters and scrapes building up from wandering the jungle barefoot and bare-handed. Scabs from dry vines and the several tree trunks I’ve cling to litter my arms where my sleeves dried shorter than they’re meant to. Dirt piles up beneath all my nails and in the shallow lines of my knuckles. My feet are caked with mud and debris. The food is ashy and it’s validating to see Nibs drop his serving into the fire with a scowl. 

“You need to clean up, and the vernal pool has a patch of berries,” he says, and nothing else, so I follow him out of the camp again. Tootles and the twins join us with only slight breaks to their steps, but they make it a little less awkward to strip down to my underwear and get to washing. Nibs reclines half-submerged at one edge of the water and picks the berries he can reach, tossing them to each of us in turn. 

“Robin,” Tootles starts after a splash war with the twins dies down and she wades over to join Nibs in gathering fruit. “Why did you dig that hole?” 

For a moment I don’t understand. And then I remember throwing myself to the earth. “It’s what people do when they- when,” I tell her, but don’t really finish my sentence, the word choking itself out of my throat. “They return to the earth, and you can sit with them.” 

“You haven’t gone back.” 

“An opportunity, not a commitment. It’s tradition.” 

Tootles hums around a berry. “No one’s ever done that, here. They get dragged into the water sooner or later, either by their traveling companions or by the mermaids.” 

The thought disgusts me. I scrub harshly at my knuckles until the scabs open. “Well, I did it.” Nibs throws me a berry and it begins to sink a bit in the muddied, bloodied water, but I catch it and eat it anyways. “My mom might make us headstones, but I doubt she’ll be able to afford it for a while.” 

“Headstones?” 

“She can’t afford rocks?” 

“They’re carved,” I specify, “and she’s in prison, so she can’t afford anything.” 

“What did she do?” 

I make a face. I still don’t know, and I’ll never find out. Nibs throws another berry. I sit on a mossy rock so the water reaches my shoulders and I can rinse my hair of sweat. When I don’t answer, they move on. We wash and eat for a while waiting for our clothes to dry by a small fire the twins set up. We only head back when Tootles gets bored and starts smearing mud on her face; it’s all in all a nice afternoon, or evening, or whatever time it is. No sun is starting to fuck with my head. Only the first and slowest mind game of Pan’s, I’m sure, and he provides another when we reach the camp. 

“Took you long enough,” he calls, posed as if checking a watch. But he doesn’t move, and after a moment the twins rush over to him and ask what’s wrong. “It’s our move. See who you can wake up with some of the reserve water,” he tells them lowly and then turns his head just barely when they scurry off. “Tamsin, if you don’t mind, I’ve got ink on my hand. Be careful, or you won’t move for days.” 

The camp is back in motion, dozing Lost Boys rejuvenated, within minutes. Or, a few of them are. Whatever the twins are using is a limited resource. Weapons are amassed and limp bodies are dragged into their tents to recover. I’m just tucking in Curly- nicknamed aptly- when I notice. 

“Where’s Henry?” 

Pan doesn’t tell me, which is as good an answer as any, though I’m not entirely sure who I’m rooting for. “There is a thing that nothing is, and yet it has a name. It's sometimes tall and sometimes short, joins our talks, joins our sport, and plays at every game.” But he leaves before I can begin to guess. The tie of my cloak that I only just managed to loosen back at the pool binds itself in his wake. 

Does it even matter who came for Henry? I doubt it makes a difference. Mr. Gold destroyed Tamara without losing any breath himself. Whoever is here, they can’t be more powerful than that, and if they are? Pan’s fucked. His theatrics and manipulation pale in comparison. Yes, of course, any old human like Tamara or my dad could die anytime to a blown tire or a sinkhole or a particularly determined Canadian goose. But to be murdered- I shiver- and so easily means that any skill my father may have passed on to me is useless. My chances are slim. Curly stumbles out of his tent and throws me a salute. 

“Do you know the fairytale?” 

How Bee manages to sneak up on anyone given his talkative nature is beyond me. “Which fairytale?” I ask. 

“The one with Peter Pan, Captain Hook, the Lost Boys, and Never Never Land.” 

“I thought I did.” 

“Not the truth, Robin, the story.” When is a mind like a fairytale? When it’s made up. I prompt him to tell me. “There once was a boy who lived in a land of dreams, and he didn’t want to grow up, so he didn’t. One day he lost his shadow. You need a shadow, right, to walk in the sun and dance around a fire! So he left his home in search of it. Wendy Darling, who had imagined him up and taken him on so many adventures in Never Never Land and told of his duels against the pirate Captain Hook, found his shadow and caught it. When the boy showed up, she sewed his shadow back onto his feet and he brought her and her brothers to Never Never Land with him. They wanted to stay, and the Lost Boys there were ever grateful that she gave them life and a home, but to stay, she would have to never grow up. That was the rule, you know, but she wasn’t so sure about it. They asked her to stay, to be their mother, and they asked her to tell them all the stories she had told her brothers. But she gathered her brothers and, in exchange for a thimble and a promise, Peter Pan returned them to their house. She grew up and couldn’t return, but she passed the story on.” 

“I don’t think I’ve heard that version,” I admit. “It’s usually just a kiss.” 

“What’s usually a kiss?” 

“The thimble and the promise.” Thinking back, though, they may have called it a thimble. “There was something about a bird, too, but,” Bee quiets as I think. “We watched Fantasia when I was in fourth grade, and then my teacher found out I’d never seen any Disney movies. I didn’t understand Fantasia at all, I mean, no Disney in my household.” That teacher tried so hard to fill me in on what I had missed. The TV cart is a clearer memory than any math I learned that year. 

“I don’t know what knees or a fan have anything to do with it, but the story will always be different. It isn’t true, so there’s no one version.” 

The Lost Boys march into camp and deposit Henry on a rotten log as I nudge Bee in thanks. “I think I can see that.” He laughs loudly, as he is still Bee, and nudges me back. 

“I just wanted to help with your riddle.” 

Oh. I tilt my head at Bee, stiff and surprised, but he gets up and scampers off to bother someone else. Of course Pan’s riddle has something to do with him. One way or another, it has to. Sometimes tall and sometimes short- maybe the Lost Boys? Joining every game? I run through the riddle a few times in my mind. 

Pan crouches over Henry as soon as I do. We watch him slumber on as the other Lost Boys around the camp start to drag themselves awake. On a whim, and on the subject, I decide to recite a riddle of my own. 

“It goes through the door without pinching. It sits on the stove without burning. It rests on the table, unashamed.” 

He’s utterly still. “You could answer mine just as easily.” 

“How about we trade hints?” It’s a gamble that doesn’t feel even remotely necessary, but he nods, so I say, “I miss it.” 

“I don’t.” 

Henry shifts and groans a bit as I take in the new information. It can’t be the Lost Boys, then, or I suppose it could- he doesn’t have to miss them, since he’s always with them. 

“What happened?” Henry brings my attention back to him. Pan’s brow twitches. 

“You fell asleep.” When Henry stiffens, he continues, “oh, don’t worry, it was just a little catnap. Night’s still young.” 

Something about the sentence makes me hold back nervous laughter while I settle in the dirt. “Wait, I- I remember something. My dad, when I was asleep, I-“ he looks at me with more pity than a ten year old should have. “I could’ve sworn I heard him calling for me.” 

“Really?” Pan says quickly, just stretched out enough that it seems like the flick of his eyes to me is anything but a warning. I suppose that settles where Henry was when the Lost Boys all fell asleep. Father and son reunited, indeed. 

“It must’ve been a dream.” 

“Well, how can you be sure?” 

“Because.” Henry throws me another pitying frown. A guilty frown. A pained- I can’t read the kid, really, but he says, “cause my dad’s dead.” 

I blurt “no” before my head catches up and starts piecing things together that I don’t want to make sense of. “He was with… Tamara…” shit. Didn’t Mr. Gold already tell me this? That Tamara killed Neal Cassidy, that death is contagious? Oh, shitting hell… Henry sets a light hand on my shoulder as if I’m the one in need to comfort here. As if! “Henry, I’m so sorry,” I beg of the kid, guilt building upon guilt; it was expressly my job to make sure they could do theirs, and while I didn’t do it enthusiastically, being an accomplice to murder is a new line to me. Or whatever it is that makes Henry and Tamara and Mr. Gold so sure Knight is dead when I just saw him a few hours ago. 

Pan shifts in the dirt. I bite my tongue. “I’m sorry too, Henry; it makes sense for us to dream about the things we’ve lost and the things we hoped for, like your father being alive and your mother coming to find you. But eventually, you’ll find new things to dream about- and when you do, they’ll start to come true.” 

“How do you know?” 

“Because that’s what I did,” Pan answers easily, mirth lighting his expression, “and now you’re here. Neverland used to be a place where new dreams were born. You can bring that magic back, Henry, and we can be your family.” As if moving through mud, he reaches between us and combs his fingers through my hair, smooth as anything. He says something more to Henry that I don’t catch, lost to a thumping in my stomach when the only thing of Pan’s attention that remains on me is his wrist, limp on my shoulder. The vacuum is starting to take my flesh the way black holes eat anything they can reach. Greedy. Hungry. If it’s intentional, I can’t tell. I’m not even sure I care. “Penelope.” 

Henry is long gone when I blink and find Pan. A tension has appeared in his expression, but it clears when I shake my head in a shudder. “What?” 

“It’s sunlight, isn’t it?” He surprises me by saying; it is. When I don’t answer quickly enough, he pulls my elbow until we’re both standing and mutters directly into my ear, breath cold, “close your eyes.” I do. “Neverland is a place where time stands still. The night suits me for now, but it doesn’t always. Magic, of course, always comes with a price.” 

My father hated it. “What really happened?” 

“That’s for another time. I’ve brought you to the day, Penelope, open your eyes and step into it.” 

And he’s right, I discover, wincing at the adjustment before rushing out from the treeline towards a rocky cliff over the water. Salt and sun dig into my skin and breathe life into me in a way I didn’t think necessary until it left me- at fourteen, I had enough of the sun. Now, I’m starved for it. Birds sing behind me and squawk before me, and creatures dance in the water that I can’t identify. Probably because of the distance. Mostly. Content absorbing energy and warmth from the light, I settle on my back despite the stone underfoot. It feels good. Pan’s words don’t escape me so soon, though. 

“What did the cloak cost?” 

Pan doesn’t answer for a moment, and I squint against the daylight to check if he’s done something awful or left. Instead he merely watches from the treeline. “Isn’t it obvious?” He wonders, as if that’s ever gotten anyone anywhere. I hold back a scowl despite how pinched my features probably already are. “You’re a Lost Boy.” 

I’m not a boy, I don’t say, though Tootles doesn’t seem to be, either. Hardly stops her. Instead I sit up and face the treeline so my face falls into shadow and I don’t have to squint. He doesn’t step forward. I’m still not sure who I’m really rooting for- Pan has taken over the Home Office in some capacity, which appeals to me, but with that power he organized all this, which doesn’t appeal to me at all. “What does this cost?” He waves his hand broadly, still keeping to the shade, and a wall of vines that I thought were covering a boulder brush themselves away from a natural looking archway. I stand and look past it to find a spring clearer than any water I’ve ever seen. 

“Have a drink, and enjoy yourself. Stay however long you like,” Pan murmurs, appearing behind my shoulder as soon as I move through the arch. I jump, but the vines have settled again. Hang on- why isn’t he stepping into the sunlight? Why does the night suit him right now? He looks like he’s about to turn and go when I speak. 

“Your shadow.” You need one to walk in the sun and dance around a fire, Bee said! Of course- he doesn’t miss it probably because he gave it up, tore it from his body the same way Dad had his stolen as he died. A predictable accompaniment for most creatures, but not Peter Pan. It works. 

We’re at an odd angle, looking at each other but too close. “What’s been around for eons, but is no more than a month old?” 

“The moon,” I answer easily, though it comes from one of my books. At least when I first read it, I worked for however long it took to come up with it myself. But now it’s just familiar. A beat passes with just the echo of running water in the not-quite-cave. “A man’s title, bread, a motion, cookware.” One of my friends- in those times when I was at school enough to gather any- came up with such a riddle after I tricked them with Einstein’s impossible one. But I cut out the item that would reveal the answer immediately to my audience: one boy. I never solved the riddle myself, though I intended to. My friend took pity on my hair pulling within just an hour. 

The one boy seems to read me, his gaze dancing from detail to detail that I couldn’t follow if I tried, even at this distance. Then he’s gone, and with his absence air rushes into the space he took up beside me and in my lungs. 

There seem to be few choices, with Peter Pan. No room for argument or suggestion. My cloak, which unwinds itself and floats delicately off my shoulders and onto the spring’s rocky edge, was a gift. I didn’t ask for it; Pan himself even called it a gift, from him to me, when I didn’t pass it on to Henry. In speaking about price he implied that I paid for the cloak by joining the Lost Boys. Maybe, though, he paid for a gift by letting me into the Lost Boys. Or maybe Dad paid for the cloak and Lost Boy title by dying. What does the sun cost, then? It cuts through the rock above as if the spring is in a stone vase and lights up the water until everything sparkles. The far wall bears the source of sound, a rapid spout. Again I only have implications- is drinking the spring water paying for the light? Again this wasn’t something I asked for, though. I’m not certain I’ve asked for a single thing since coming to Neverland. That doesn’t seem to matter with Peter Pan. 

He returns after I drink and don my cloak, though it doesn’t tie itself until he’s near. “Is that really all the sun you can take?” My mouth dries of words. Is that really all he’ll give me? It’s been all of an hour! 

“Humans are typically diurnal,” I say, but it comes out quiet and clumsy, “the body has- cycles-“ 

“Do you think I’m not human?” 

“You’re-“ I don’t know. Pan said- Pan said- “time stands still in Neverland, and yet it passes. There’s a past here, for me; not everything is happening together as I observe it. I walked, I spoke, I drank, and now I speak again. It would all be indistinguishable and full of paradoxes if time were truly still.” 

“Say what you mean.” 

Rich, coming from him. But I don’t know what I mean. “Time doesn’t really stand still here, does it? The Lost Boys sleep, the fire dies down, my stomach growls. It’s- it’s-“ I don’t fucking know! The front of my cloak is suddenly yanked forward and I stumble towards where Pan has settled in the available shade. I jerk my head up, keep an eye on him, in close quarters once again but this time the ties don’t loosen because he has one hand twisted in my collar. Even without his vacuum I would be choking. “It’s you.” 

“Seems we’re good at solving two riddles in one, Penelope.” My face heats even with my lungs working with the bare minimum. And his- his face- he’s murderous, gleeful, focused. His dark eyes sparkle but his frown is stiff. “For our next pair, remember what you said about the story of Never Never Land. If you break me I do not stop working; if you touch me I may be snared; if you lose me nothing will matter.” Pan looks below my eyes, then meets me again. “I claim the space beside you.” 

Mentally I divide his words into pieces like a puzzle: what’s usually a kiss, the new riddle, the matching pair. “Promise?” I ask, and he provides the thimble. I’ve never kissed anyone before, nor been kissed, not in ways that matter. But the delicate slant of Pan’s mouth to my cheek is significant enough to forget any similar experience. I find my breath again. 

What does this mean? Is it a good idea? Do I have a choice, can I reject whatever deal Pan has set on my soul? All questions not worth asking. 

“It’s been a long day for you,” he decides. “Go rest in the sun outside, and I’ll send Felix to wake you.” 

I dream of two brothers: the older a Captain, the younger a Lieutenant. They sail together on a Pegasus to a land of dreams. The sun is bright and soft, the sky bluer, water clearer than either of them could fathom. Perfect waves rock their boat as they release the anchor and paddle to shore with their best scouts. All through the journey they grin, honored to be given their mission and awestruck at the magic they’ve witnessed. The older walks just ahead, and they split from the scouts, all with scrolls stowed in their coats. By order of the King they’ll find their bounty. A medicinal plant. They begin their search, trusting the scouts to find and report or neutralize any threats, or to gather the plant themselves should they come upon it, when a boy makes himself known; he’s odd, doesn’t understand their mission, turns them against each other. The boy insists that the plant will decimate populations with a mere nick. That it is a poison without an antidote, even for those gifted with unusually long lives. His eyes sparkle oddly with youth that doesn’t match his words. Nervous, the younger brother turns to the Captain and wonders if he’s correct. They argue, pushing each other to be noble and compassionate in turn, when the older brother marches up to the bush they were led to and drags a thorn across his arm. He falls. The younger brother pays with currency he can’t comprehend just for a few more hours- and then he’s alone. He curses the King’s lie. 

Slightly nudges my arm with a mud-caked foot. “Don’t tell me you’re comfortable. What were you thinking?” Through pained grunts as I unstick my body from the rock, I tell him about the sunlight. He snorts. “I didn’t know you had it in you.” 

“What?” 

No answer. He just shrugs and we make our way back to the camp without too many more words. 

In what is probably a good sign for me, Pan isn’t there when we arrive. Henry is, off to the side with the Lost Boy he fought. Slightly follows my steps when I make my way over and I hold back any protests. Henry jumps when he notices us and sends the boy away. I’m not about to make any assumptions based on his demeanor- I barely know the kid, and Pan is no doubt reserving his most intense psychological games for him. 

“Robin,” he greets me, and adds quieter, “Felix.” 

“What was that about?” I watch the Lost Boy wander off. 

“He was just congratulating me.” Huh? I look back at Henry, and he continues, “on becoming a Lost Boy, I mean.” His gaze keeps flicking between me and Slightly, but Slightly takes the opposite of the hint and grins slow, stepping up and leaning an elbow on my shoulder. 

“That mean you’ll come hunting with us?” 

“Not yet.” Pan interrupts by materializing at Henry’s shoulder, mirroring Slightly’s pose but with his elbow on Henry’s head, given their height difference. They stare at each other for a moment and then break off, prompting Henry to deflate. 

“Henry?” I ask him, herding him behind a tree so we can sit in relative solitude. But I don’t think for a moment that we have any privacy. “Are you alright?” 

Henry sighs. I’m surprised again by how much he seems to pack into his little head. “My family’s here,” he admits. It’s almost too quiet for me to hear. “They said they’re coming to get me, but, I just get the feeling that Pan’s in control of every little thing.” 

I would assume so, myself, but I don’t tell him that. He deserves comfort; I won’t change my mind after a few unsolicited gifts. I won’t even think about the thimble. “Remember what you said, before? When we first got here?” Before. It’s odd, that I can’t really say it, even though Dad’s absence rings incessantly in the space around me whenever I have half a mind to think. Even when I’ve grieved him and grieved who I wanted him to be and grieved Mom and the chance I could have gotten with her and grieved Tamara when she wasn’t Mom and grieved my friends and grieved my life and grieved and grieved and- I wonder if I’ll ever do anything else, suddenly. Pan’s advice for Henry was to forget the things he couldn’t have, and in close proximity to whatever Pan is it seems easy enough. Maybe the trick is he knows it, knows his presence is the only reprieve from the shit he himself is responsible for. 

“I said,” Henry hiccups with shining eyes, “I said they’d come for me.” Yes, he snarked Dad and Tamara, and I did, too; I wouldn’t take that back. But Henry seems to be drowning in guilt. “But-“ 

“Henry.” 

“No, I-“ 

“What changed?” 

“Everything,” he sighs. “Everything’s different, I don’t know. If they manage it, will you come, too?” 

My teeth grind together as I try not to grimace. “I was intending to meet up with my mom outside of prison, but sure, I’ll join her.” My eighteenth birthday is too soon for this. The sheriff and the mayor’s son kidnapped, I’m the only surviving perpetrator, Henry’s been gaslit to hell? When Henry starts arguing that he’d vouch for me, I shut him down. “Henry, I helped them. On purpose. That was my role, I wasn’t just tagging along for the road trip songs, okay?” It feels awful, but I explain. “Even if your mom doesn’t arrest me, I’m headed nowhere fast. I have to stay here for any shot at leading a fulfilling life.” 

“I don’t want to leave without you.” 

I won’t pretend I haven’t been manipulated. Like a marble on a plate, or clouds in a storm system: Pan is the point of lowest pressure, and he’s lifted the plate with his own hands, plucked me out of my general misery to entertain him. The tree we’re hiding behind scrapes my shoulder through the cloak when I start in a direction I can’t see the end of. I don’t know what to say, so I just let my feet go where they will and stop at Pan’s side. 

“I haven’t read much fantasy in my life,” I admit under my breath, “but magic rules are usually more specific than a price, right?” 

“You want to know what I can do and how?” 

Not really. Fire dances in his eyes even though Nibs and the spit he’s always turning are yards away. Fire, and stars. And the cold, stifling vacuum of being spun in Pan’s orbit. “Just tell me what I’m paying for shit I didn’t order,” I say, more than a little breathless. 

Peter Pan turns more fully towards me and tilts his head it what isn’t a nod. Then he steps forward, just off center so our temples knock together when I gasp; when I try to lean back, it’s with resistance from my cloak. My vision tunnels and the air only gets thinner when I dare look at him, so I close my eyes. It’s almost worse. Almost. Blood pounds in my ears loud enough to drown the camp out, but I can hear quiet puffs of air and the creak of every fine hair bent by our heads. An inch to one side and we’d be kissing, an inch forward and we’d be hugging. Or some undoubtably elusive version of such things. Pan moves in neither direction; he turns his head, knocking his jaw against mine until his cold breath draws between the top of my ear and my hairline again. Everything I thought before about him being the one comfort to all his horrors was wrong! Peter Pan is just so fucking overwhelming that it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. I haven’t breathed in minutes, I don’t care to think, by the time he chooses to speak again. 

He says, “no.” 

In my mind the storm cloud has already broken, but when I open my eyes, it seems I have, too. There’s barely any sensation coming from my knuckles when I can clearly see myself trading hits with Peter Pan. My body has decided, for me, to break formation and leap from the plate. There’s other information to take in, I’m sure- I’ve only seen Pan breathe without an audience twice- but the glare of each point of contact is more powerful than anything. I don’t even feel it, not really, but seeing it happen is intoxicating. Is this torture? More mind games? It certainly feels like I’m being puppeted. I could very well just be going insane, which wouldn’t be all Pan’s fault. But for hours I rain and he enjoys it. The head rush takes forever to quiet down. 

When I wake, I feel more rested than I probably ever have in my life. I’m flat on my back, warm, my head supported, no biological needs calling for me yet. The ache in my muscles is comforting, in a way. Grounds me to the moment and helps me think of nothing. When I release my hands from the fists they seem stuck in, I find them bruised and cracked; my body and mind feel rejuvenated, but at the same time, I can’t really go lax. Something draws close to my brow, drifts from lash to lash until I turn away. A puff of air crosses my face. 

My first suspicion is a bug. Dad has never woken me up so slowly, preferring to nudge my arm until I shake him off. Most of the time, he just yells from the kitchen- 

A canvas roof greets my eyes. Dad is dead. 

“Fuck,” I hiss to myself, and “shit,” for good measure. My throat swells, my eyes burn, my ears shift with pressure. 

“Did you know,” Bee starts as he marches into the tent. I look around and find where we deposited the twins and Tootles, but no one is around. “Two brothers came to Neverland once, long ago. They sought Dreamshade, and believed it was a medicine. Pan thought it was funny. To prove him wrong, one brother cut himself with a thorn of Dreamshade and collapsed immediately.” Bee sits. “We Lost Boys watched the remaining brother beg Pan for help; it really was hilarious. Captain Hook, crying like a baby. Pan opened Neverland’s spring to him, which ties all who drink to the island, and Hook’s brother lived long enough to sail away and die.” 

“I think I did know,” I mutter, mostly to myself. But time is irrelevant, so I suppose it’s hardly surprising. That I drank water that has tied me to Neverland on pain of death is unsurprising, as well. 

The tent flap swings on a phantom wind. Any hope of gathering my composure disappears with the air, and I’m left crying without a sound, without reserve. Then he appears. “It’s time,” Pan says, and Bee pulls me to my feet. “The Dark One will die and be trapped in his vault, destroying Storybrooke in the process. I’ve looked forward to this since it was prophesized, as it’s so rare that I get to witness time.” An uncertain quip rises in my mind- he can witness time all he wants, where I’m from- but he seems to see it and flashes a grin. Equally unspoken: gutsy and clever, you lost one. If you lose me, nothing will matter. 

“Pan never fails!” Bee cheers, and shoves me forward, stumbling to avoid the figure in front of me at all costs. 

“That’s right,” Pan answers, and lifts one hand into view just to hold his fingertips a breath away from my mouth. He lowers it and pinches the column of my throat, hard. “Let’s go, then.” 

It’s becoming clear that Henry is woefully virtuous. His optimism knows no bounds, even if his mood isn’t always cheery; there’s a quality to him that says he’s seen the darkness life has to offer and chosen to deny it the satisfaction of breaking him. Can’t relate, but, I respect it. He’s still a kid, though. It grates on me but I am, too. Pan, in his ageless boyhood, has long since dug his hands into those qualities of Henry’s and convinced him there’s an evil afoot that pales in comparison to Tamara supposedly killing Knight. Henry would give anything to help resolve it. Pan all but guides my limbs to pose as if we’re the closest of friends. Did Henry see me, in my moment of fury? Somehow I doubt it: Pan has only encouraged a found family between me and Henry. 

As it is, Pan makes to appear caught up in a conversation with me and Latch when Henry storms up to us and says, “I know about your secret, I followed Felix.” 

Pan also makes to appear surprised by this, and subsequently guilty. “I didn’t want-“ 

“Were you ever gonna tell me?” Henry turns to me for support. “The island’s magic is dying, and it’s taking Wendy Darling with it.” 

“It’s not your fault, Henry,” Pan interrupts, before my grimace is too obvious. 

“Wendy said I can help, you- you said I can help, with the heart of the truest believer, right?” 

Almost sounding hesitant, leaving just enough of a breath to send Henry careening for a goal that- by my calculations, at least, which could be equally brainwashed- doesn’t exist, “yes.” 

“Take me to Skull Rock,” Henry says. Neither of them look at me or Latch but I follow and Latch stays behind. 

The island does look like it’s dying as we walk. If I hadn’t just witnessed mind-breaking horrors, if I wasn’t so keenly aware of the moon peeking between those wilted treetops, I might question it. But I don’t, my feet catching as many stones and twigs as they do on every walk through the jungle. My cloak frays on low vegetation that I can’t quite see, but seems starved for attention nonetheless. We walk a messy path through dry undergrowth, sodden dirt and decay below that, until the trees go from upright to just tilted. Skull Rock- named so for good reason, but only just associating itself with a VHS-quality memory- is across only a lagoon, though. We don’t hit any sand approaching the little canoe that will evidently take us to whatever glows in the house-sized boulder standing untouched by the sea’s erosion. As if it were carved, but it couldn’t be, it looks entirely natural and anatomically correct. It looks to be both stone and bone at the same time. 

“You don’t have to do this,” Pan tells Henry lowly even as the canoe drifts unnaturally towards us. And Henry rises to the bait. 

“Yes, I do.” 

We leave the trees behind and the moon glares down at the boat, at Skull Rock when we reach it and it’s even larger than a house. Close to where the ear would be is an opening with stairs, and Henry and I forge ahead with Pan bringing up the rear after a moment. I don’t even try to guess why. 

“Your arrival here was foretold,” Pan murmurs as we climb. “You would have showed up sooner or later. Still, I’m glad you’re here.” 

“What exactly do I need to do?” 

The staircase curves and opens up, flattening to the open skull with stars and the moon faintly daring to crawl through the eye sockets. Seafaring paraphernalia clutters up the space, an overturned table here and a torn sail there. “This is where Neverland’s magic is weakest,” Pan explains. He doesn’t answer Henry’s question, but then begins giving him simple instruction. “Sit here,” he says, and we settle in a circle where the brain might be, knees locked like magnets. 

“I’m scared,” Henry admits, after a heavy few seconds. I grab his hand; whatever Pan’s making him do, I can’t let him endure it alone, and Pan has allowed me such a role. I’ll take full advantage of it. “Thank you, Robin,” he whispers. 

“Close your eyes,” Pan instructs, reaching for Henry’s other hand. And mine, useless as the idea seems to me. He guides Henry’s to the boy’s own shoulder, then down, pressing over his ribs. “Can you feel it? Your heart?” 

My own eyes have begun to drift shut when footsteps scratch and echo around the room, and then a voice, “stop.” 

Henry flinches. Pan lets go of his hand, but not entirely, as if willing to let them talk but only for a moment. They both twist to face Mr. Gold: like Pan, he has no shadow. It’s only obvious because of Skull Rock’s eerie untraceable light source. Weak magic, my ass. “Mr. Gold, I-“ 

“I know, laddie,” Mr. Gold tells Henry, “you just want to help. You’re a good kid.” His grimace is sour, his hair thin, his posture uneven, but he reaches out placatingly to the three of us. “It doesn’t have to be this way.” 

“I’m the only one who can do this.” 

“It’s his choice,” Pan shrugs, though his arms are spread to hold both our hands. Mr. Gold looks at him and something in his presence reminds me of the moment he tore Tamara’s heart out and crushed it in his hand. Or her lung, or whatever it was. Given the heart talk, I’m inclined to believe the former… 

What can be broken, touched, snared, lost? What can go through all manners of torture and, like Henry, swell again with love? It feels silly to think of the riddles in the middle of what is surely a battle between powerful magic users. But I do it anyways; putting all the answers together, each piece of this exact setting that Pan has been spelling out since I met him and probably for centuries and no time at all beforehand, still provides nothing but the small victory of sorting out a puzzle. I can’t help. I squeeze Henry’s hand a bit tighter. “Your heart,” I say, dumb. He nods. 

“Stop,” Mr. Gold says again, “Henry, this is between me and him. Whatever he’s told you, it’s a trick. I simply owe a debt.” 

“A life debt, that Wendy is supposed to pay.” The tale twists further, whatever it is. “Henry, it’s up to you.” 

“I can’t let that happen.” Mr. Gold decides to demonstrate by conjuring a small brown and red item in his hand, and he waves his other hand over it, but nothing happens. I assume that something is supposed to happen. 

“Pandora’s Box,” Pan names the item. “It can trap anything one wants it to, forever. Or it could, if it were real. See, I have to real one,” he says, and laughs a little. His hands linger but he approaches Mr. Gold with an identical conjured item of his own. In his absence, I’m unmoored, but in the way that I usually am when he’s near, which is all the more disorienting. “I’m hurt that you’d do such a thing, Rumple, I really am, so I won’t hurt you by trying the same.” Both boxes disappear. 

“I can do it,” Henry insists, standing as well and pulling me along. He reaches up again to his ribcage, where his heart must be. I wrench it away without thinking and he gasps, “Robin, I can do it-“ 

“Why, Henry?” I snap. My thoughts are almost as much of a fog as when I fought Pan. Why give up his actual heart? To prove he has one? Pan’s game is above him, and I don’t think he has to die for things to play out. “You said your moms are here, you said you heard your dad, you see Mr. Gold; why should everything rest on your shoulders?” He shouldn’t be here at all. 

“If I can do it, I should, Robin, it would be selfish not to.” 

“It would be selfish to make yourself a hero and a martyr.” 

The room darkens. More footsteps rush up the stairs, eventually revealing the sheriff and the mayor. But Henry seems unconvinced, or even annoyed, by my words, and drives his hand impossibly into his own torso in front of everyone. What he reveals is nothing like the thing Tamara died looking at. It’s a small sun, golden and gleaming, reflecting Skull Rock’s light and overpowering it. I’d be hard pressed to call it a heart. The new arrivals shout in alarm, scrambling forwards only to be stopped by something I don’t care to inspect. All I watch is Henry, and then Pan when he steps up beside me and holds out his hand. All of a sudden I stand on my own two feet again and an inkling of dread plants itself in the back of my mind. Henry surrenders the light. 

“What’ll it be, then, Rumple? His or yours?” Pan asks as Henry begins to wheeze. In a flash, though, wind bursts through the room and Mr. Gold is on Pan, capturing him from behind. 

“Yours,” Mr. Gold snarls, and in the inertia of his attack drives some dagger I just barely see into Pan’s chest. Between his ribs. Through, to his own heart, if the choked-off gasp is anything to go off. “Take-“ he breathes heavily, his final words directed behind him- “take my shadow.” When they collapse, I don’t move. The tangle of corpses by my feet seems hardly real, like the heart still in Pan’s lax grip. The mayor picks the latter up with care and surprising speed to return it. I feel like I know something I shouldn’t, watching Mr. Gold’s body turn to mist. Like Pan allowed his mouth to run the way Bee allows his. After only a moment of hugging and apologizing do the moms turn to me. 

“Gold’s shadow will get us back to Storybrooke,” Sheriff Swan tells me in the same light tone she used when we first met. I nod. 

“I’m fine,” Henry is scowling, brushing his mothers off. “You don’t know that this’ll solve anything.” 

“Honey, he was keeping the island captive. Without him, we can bring everyone to safety,” The mayor argues. The sheriff watches me closely for a few lingering moments. 

She has questions, obviously. I expected that much. Actually, I expected more, but she probably imagines me a grieving daughter more than an accomplice. Even if I did assist with her son’s kidnapping, she treats me the same as when Dad was in the hospital. But the facts catch up when the moment is over. “Gold said they didn’t know who they were working for.” 

“It’s not that simple,” I grimace. Henry will be able to warn them all of the Home Office once they return to Storybrooke. Or whatever remains. The idea of going with them rings through me like a tuning fork to my bones, chilling me; I very well can go, and finish high school in a group home, and find Mom in a few more years. My feet don’t move, however, and that pit of dread tells me I’ve already agreed to something else entirely. 

Neither mother suspects it, or if they do, they don’t say, and Henry says, “what about the Lost Boys?” 

“I’ve been in the system,” the sheriff admits suddenly. “I’ll make sure it’s a smooth ride for them.” With nothing keeping us in Skull Rock, they turn to go, giving me odd looks when I drag Pan’s body with an old hammock crusted with dead algae and left draped across an empty chest. His literal dead weight is almost too heavy to roll into the hammock, and I cringe each time he thumps down another step towards the boat, but I can’t leave him behind. It works. 

I don’t dare look at him as we make our way through the jungle back to camp. Given the beating my feet take on the journey, I don’t want to think about Pan. Carrying his extra weight makes my heels dig further into the mud and definitely gets me a cut or two on rocks that would have done nothing but pinch, before. Nobody helps me; I’m almost glad, I think, it’s better this way. When we arrive in sight of all the Lost Boys tied up and guarded by four adults I don’t know and Knight, however, the mayor uses magic to lift Pan’s body in the air and gloat. 

“What is it you kids like to say?” She waves her hand and grins. “Pan never fails?” Slightly shouts, getting to his feet with a fierce snarl, but he’s quickly shoved back down. The mayor only preens. “Yes, I think that’s it.” 

“Henry,” I murmur, “you should go.” But he glares at me. I remember what he said- that he doesn’t want to leave without me- but the beauty of the idea is intangible. 

“The shadow will fade soon,” the sheriff tells the other adults and Knight after explaining what happened. Knight brings Henry into a tight hug and they both seem to blink away tears after. “We need to go, and quickly.” Meanwhile, the mayor has grown tired of playing with Pan’s body. Slightly begs something with his eyes that I can’t decipher, but I get the sense that we’re on the same page, anyways. I’ll need a weapon: Henry created a sword from a stick, but somehow I doubt the same will happen for me, so I look around at Henry’s family for opportunity. Slightly jerks until I look back at him and follow his own emphatic glare to a man holding a hook. The same man who went with Dad and Tamara into the mines. Captain Hook, I assume, to whom the clutter in Skull Rock likely belonged. Beyond the hook, he’s littered with small shiny things that I can sort through mentally as I try to edge my way towards him without seeming too focused. His face becomes familiar as I get nearer. 

“You’re the younger brother,” I say, quiet enough that no other conversations are interrupted but loud enough for him to face me head on. 

Under the new beard, and the new lines set in his face, and under the wind-burn on his cheekbones and the scrutiny in his eyes, he is undeniably the younger brother. “What did you just say?” He asks me, reaching for one of his weapons himself as I pick the one I’ll take. But the question asks itself. 

“What happened? With the king?” 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“Did he win his war?” I edge closer. “He didn’t get any nightshade, I assume.” Horror fills his expression. 

“Who told you of this?” 

The next words chill me. “Neverland is a place where time stands still.” Spoken with Slightly’s intonation, it catches me off guard, Pan’s voice echoing in my mind, but the chance is there and I can’t pass it up. Hook only flinches when I take the first knife, so I take another and leap away, out of range when he lunges with his namesake. My feet burn but I get the knife to Slightly, then run as fast as my body will allow past the other Lost Boys and back to Pan. They turn so I can cut them free as I go, and the last in line is Tootles. She takes the knife when I hand it to her. The Lost Boys won’t surrender, not twice. And it seems the magicians are out of juice or surprised enough to freeze. Maybe Pan- limp and definitely dead as he looks- is doing something. I don’t know two things about fairytales and this whole experience has only disproved whatever I thought I did know, but surely Peter Pan can’t die. And in Neverland, too? No. 

“Robin?” Henry yelps, dragged away by one of the people I don’t know. “Robin, come with us!” 

But I don’t move. Of all the ways this could end, I guess. The Lost Boys seem to be conjuring magic of their own, forcing the group back, away from the camp, and as soon as the sheriff is past the mermaids she releases Mr. Gold’s shadow so it can possess the sail of their pirate ship. The Lost Boys whoop and holler, sending magic over water that I swear wasn’t so close to camp before. They don’t have the time but Henry takes it anyways, sticking his hand out from the side of the ship as if to reach for me. I see it in the returned moonlight, small and frail and dirty. 

I slump over in the dirt. Pan doesn’t so much as twitch, let alone breathe, even after Henry’s family is gone. Wondering if I put my proverbial eggs on the wrong basket altogether leads me to wonder about that school receptionist. Will she hear that I’ve died? Will we be marked missing, Dad and I, or is this usual enough behavior for him that Mom will have to investigate on her own once she’s out? 

One question, though, I hope I can get an answer for. “Slightly,” I call, as he’s perched at the edge of the impromptu celebration. He crouches over Pan a moment before regarding me. “What happened to the Home Office?” 

Predictably, his smirk sharpens. He brushes some firelit honey hair from Pan’s cheek. 

[musically-melodic]

If I Could Tell Her

Status: Crush

AN: The song is not in the same context as the musical but the lyrics work, although I may have changed some but it was just to sort out points of views, so don't judge. Also OC.

Y/N POV

I have been trying to deny it all week but it is just not working. I am completely and totally jealous. It's just that every time that I see Wally he is always talking to Melody. I mean I know she is my best friend and I know she wouldn't do anything to sabotage my chance with him but...

I don't know, they both have been avoiding me like the plague.

What if Melody told Wally that I like him! What if he really doesn't like me and they are trying to find a way to tell me! What if they think I'm not cool and just don't want to be friends with me anymore! What if...  

My thoughts are interrupted by my phone going off. It's a message from......

WALLY!!!!

When did he get my number? I mean I had his number because Melody gave it to me but I have never actually used it.

Wally: Hey Y/N! Could u             meet us at the park?             Like rn?

I was so shocked. I can barely form a normal sentence around him and now he’s asked me to meet him at the park! Wait... It said us ... Maybe Melody is there with him... WHAT IF THEY’RE TOGETHER!!!

Without thinking I message back

Y/N: I would love to! Where     should I meet u ?

I press the power button to turn off the screen and start tapping my fingers against my phone and pace around my bedroom.

Once again my phone chimes and it's another message from Wally.

Wally: At the bandstand if              that's alright?

I have to be honest. I'm panicking! I take a few deep breaths and start tapping at the device.

Y/N: That's fine I'll see u soon.

I lob my phone on to my bed and start digging  through all of my stuff to get the things I would need.

Doing a last check to see if I have my phone, wallet (you know if it ends up in them saying that they’re together I'm gonna need my heartbreak kit - ice cream, chocolate and sad movies) and keys. I lock the front door and start walking towards the park.

****TIME SKIP****

When I got to the park I saw lots of kids with their parents and carers but there was one pair that really caught my eye. It was a young woman with a little boy. From the distance between me and the two I could hear their conversation.

"Aunty Annabeth can you tell me the story of how you and mummy and daddy became best friends again please!" the little boy said after he had come down the slide and ran to her. She picked the boy up, swung him around once and sat down on a nearby bench with him on her knee.

"So," the woman started, " we all became friends when your daddy and mummy came over and stopped some mean people from school who were being really mean to me. They pushed the bad people away and your daddy told them 'if you ever come near her again you will get a good bashing!'" The boy giggled as the woman raised her fist and deepened her voice, supposedly doing an impression of the boys farther. The woman carried on speaking. "Ever since then mummy and daddy have been very protective over me. And me, mummy and daddy were always going on adventures. When we grew up both me and mummy fell in love with  your very own daddy. Unfortunately for me your daddy was only in love with your mummy so then they got married and had a little boy called Nico," with the mention of what I'm supposing is his name the boy smiled and started to giggle as the woman tickled him. Once he had calmed down, she finished "and they lived happily ever after."

The boy looked sad. " Did you not get a happily ever after then aunty Annabeth?" The woman looked to the sky and the boy followed her lead.

After a moment the woman concluded with, " Hopefully I will get my happily ever after, just like your parents. Maybe I will get married to uncle Percy and have a little urchin like you," She said smiling and pushing a finger against his nose. "But they don't just appear. They take hard-work, good friendships and, with a bit of luck, a little bit of true love."

And with that the boy looked down from the sky, and, jumping off the woman's lap, ran over to two approaching adults. The woman had black, pixie cut hair and wore punk type clothes  and the man had sandy hair and a scar on his face.

I saw how they all smiled at each other and I realised something·  Even if Melody and Wally were going out I should be supportive and I should be a good friend. I decided to head to the bandstand and face the situation head on. As long as Wally is happy I should be. As long as I can keep his eyes in my life I will be satisfied.

When I finally get in view of the bandstand I see two figures standing in the middle. The one with its back to me was obviously Wally with his ginger hair.  I could see him rubbing the back of his neck, a habit he had when he was nervous. This must be important then if he's  nervous about it. Melody must have seen me from over Wally's shoulder because she suddenly stopped their conversation, shoved Wally towards what looked like a stool, then ran down the steps and towards me.

There must have been a worried look on my face because she started to try and reassure me.

"Don't worry it's nothing bad we just have something to tell you," Melody told me as she grabbed my wrist and dragged me towards the bandstand and what looks like a guitar and a keyboard.

Just as we went up the elegant steps, directly in front of me was a four legged stool.  Slightly to the left was another stool however seated on this was Wally, his emerald eyes slightly covered by his bright orange hair, where intently focused on the strings of the guitar, which he was plucking and slightly twisting the pegs and changing the note of each string to tune it.

Melody grabbed my shoulders and frog marched me to the empty stool and pushed me into it. She then released her tight grasp and scooted past everything to stand behind the keyboard.

"Right then," she started, placing both hands on her hips and her feet shoulder width apart in what she calls her 'superhero/peter pan' stance. Wally here has something he would like to say to you but is unable to just say it to you. So naturally he came to the greatest person in the world to figure out how to tell you. Of course I came up with the best idea and that is how we all came to be here today. Just remember this is so uncharacteristic of him so give him some slack.

"So sit back, relax, watch out for the Moulin Rouge reference and enjoy Wally's gift , his song to you... "

Wally , having not looked up during Melody's speech, looked to her and she nodded. He looked straight back down and started to strum the beginning notes to the song.

Then Melody started to speak.

"Listen he thinks you are awesome." she looked at me straight in the eye as if this sudden eye contact meant something special. I shook my head in disbelief.

“He does! I'm telling the truth. Just listen.” She took a pause to wait for the music to catch up with her, keeping an eye on Wally for her que. Her fingers started to move gracefully across the keys as she began to sing.

“Well he said 

There's nothing like your smile 

Sort of subtle and perfect and real

He said 

You never knew how wonderful

That smile could make someone feel

And he knew 

Whenever you get bored 

You scribble stars on the cuffs of your jeans 

And he noticed 

That you still fill out the quizzes 

That they put in those teen magazines”

With each line that Melody sang, I could see Wally’s face slowly covering in a bright red blush. Did he really notice all those things that I did? Did he notice me that much?

“But he kept it all inside his head

What he saw he left  unsaid

And though he wanted to 

He couldn't talk to you

He couldn't find a way

But he would always say…”

At this point Wally finally lifted his head and began to sing.

“If I could tell her

Tell her everything I see

If I could tell her

How she's everything to me

But we're a million worlds apart

And I don't know how I would even start

If I could tell her

If I could tell her”

Holy mother of Zeus! Does this mean he likes me? I can't stop the smile spreading across my face. This is like a dream come true. I decided to play along with their little song.

“Did he say anything else?” I asked timidly.

“About you?” Melody replied with a mischievous smirk, “Of course! I think he could have gone on forever if he wanted to, but right now I'm just going to bring up  the best ones.”

“He thought 

That you looked really pretty”

Wally looked at Melody with a look of shock and irritation and in turn Melody let out a heavy sigh. Me on the other hand had a blush the shade of a tomato. 

“Fine,” she sighed, 

“It looked pretty cool when you put indigo streaks in your hair

And he wondered how you learned to dance

Like all the rest of the world isn't there

But he kept it all inside his head

What he saw he left unsaid…”

Once again Wally took over.

“If I could tell her

Tell her everything I see

If I could tell her

How she's everything to me

But we're a million worlds apart

And I don't know how I would even start

If I could tell her

If I could tell her

But what do you do when there's this great divide?”

“You just seemed so far away” Melody joined in,

“And what do you do when the distance is too wide?”

“It's like I don't know anything”

“And how do you say”

I looked right into Wally’s eyes, wanting to know what he wanted to say.

“I love you

I love you

I love you

I love you”

Each time he said it hit me like a truck. He. He loves me? I have to be dreaming. I can't believe it. Tears started to brim in my eyes. I could feel it. 

“But we're a million worlds apart

And I don't know how I would even start

If I could tell her

If I could”

Wally finally finished strumming the last chord, Melody went and took the guitar off him. She had already packed up her keyboard, doing it with great speed. She grabbed the stools and after she gave me a little nudge with a sly smirk walked down the steps of the bandstand and packed all her things into a pull along wagon and walked away. 

Once Melody had disappeared from view, I turned back to Wally. I could tell he was nervous from his stance. It was one I had never seen him in because with whatever he did, he always did it with a confident demeanor.

“Did you,” Wally paused to swallow the lump in his throat, “ Did you like the song?” 

“Yeah it was really good. I didn't know you played guitar.” I muttered just loud enough for him to hear. We both just stood there, a calm yet uncomfortable silence as a sudden gust of wind blew through.

“OK, here we go. Did you mean,” I paused to catch my breath, “what you said in the song?” I asked, preparing myself to run away if the answer was not the one I'd hoped for.

“Of Course I meant it. Believe it or not Y/N I've had a massive crush on you for quite a while now. And those feelings have just kept growing and growing the more I've gotten to know you. Each new thing you show me about yourself I've either loved or learned to love and I wouldn't change you for the world. At this very moment in time I'm just hoping that you feel the same. And if you don't I'll still always be here for you. Either romantically or not.”

“Wally,” I breathe. The biggest smile you could ever imagine was on my face at this moment. “I'm pretty sure I fell in love with you the moment I met you.” With my last word Wally took the few steps he needed to close the gap between us and tenderly pressed his lips on mine. You know that warm tingle you get from lying in the sun on a summer's day. That's what it felt like. And I never wanted it to stop.

Thanks to my little brother for being my beta reader