lost_boy | (no subject)

This was it, my very first birthday party.

I was nervous and excited and I was probably driving Eddie and Magnus both absolutely mad with all my checking and rechecking of things. I wanted to make sure everything was exactly right, because I had never thrown a party before and although Magnus had helped me quite a bit, I still felt like I needed to make sure I didn't make a mess of it. I knew the rules -- no going upstairs, no alcohol -- and I would make sure everyone else knew it, too, because I didn't want to disappoint Magnus with any terrible behaviour. He was doing me a very big favour, letting me use his place and his pool to have a proper party and I wasn't going to take that for granted.

There was food and drink of all kinds, and plenty of snacks. The pool was lit up with different colours that would get brighter as the sun set and all sorts of inflatable toys could be found so people could just float if they wanted to. At the shallow end of the pool was a little floating basketball net and a bunch of inflatable balls to use with it. There were toys for diving, even a little obstacle course under water with rings people could swim through. The towels were big and fluffy, the chairs were comfortable, and there was even a big birthday cake with my name on it and seventeen candles, although that was for later.

All I had really wanted, I told Magnus, was for it to remind me of his party with all the colours. The one where Eddie and I had first kissed, and he had come through for me. The decorations were fun and bright and everywhere I looked there was a different coloured light.

I had invited all my friends, regardless of their age, so that meant there were little kids on the guest list and adults, too. A part of me worried some of the other kids around my age might think that was weird, but in the end I decided I didn't care that much. I wanted my friends to be here with me, all my friends, and not all my friends were the same age. I liked that about them all very much.

As the first people started to arrive, I clutched Eddie's hand nervously, beaming at him, then kissed him quickly on the cheek before going to greet people. I was supposed to be the host, after all. It was my first party.

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"...jesus," Ellie said, because what else could you say? She could barely conceive of it. Somewhere else, she might have called bullshit, but that was just the sort of thing that happened to people, before they ended up here. Plenty of people might have called bullshit on her life. "I can barely even remember being eight. It was just kids there? No adults?"

"There were adults, but they were pirates," I answered. Some time ago I had realized something terrible, something that had settled deep inside me and wouldn't let go, something I found difficult to accept. Not all of the boys had died. Some of them had grown up. Some of them had become pirates.

And I killed pirates.

"You never had the chance to learn to swim before?" I asked, trying to shake that thought away.

"I grew up in..." she paused, trying to figure out how to describe this to someone from an island where no one grew up. Probably easier than some, when it came down to it. And he was from London originally, anyway. "There was an infection, so everyone where I grew up was kept in just a few blocks. The Quarantine Zone. You weren't meant to go out, in case you caught it, and there wasn't anywhere to swim inside. Pirates with like fucking ships?"

"Only a few blocks?" I asked, trying to imagine it. On the Island, we had been able to explore almost anywhere. The Many-Eyed had their territory, of course, and we steered clear of them, as they weren't worth the fight when we got too close. We'd lost too many boys to them in the early days, before Peter brokered the truth he never told anyone about.

But besides that, we had been free to go anywhere at all. Everywhere, really.

"Pirates with ships, yeah," I answered, grinning. "Mostly just the one big ship, the Jolly Roger, but a few smaller ones, too."

"The Jolly Roger like with the skull and crossbones? Pirates with eyepatches and parrots?" Ellie said. "Jesus, if I was eight, I'd've signed up for that."

Not just because anywhere that wasn't the Quarantine Zone would have sounded good. But maybe partly that. It wasn't her favourite sort of adventure story -- she was more of a space girl -- but it was adventure. Hell, it would've had appeal long past eight. "It probably seems less fun if it's real."

"No, it was fun. For awhile." For a long while, really. I had been there for a long time and I had loved the Island for most of that period. It was only toward the end, once Peter brought Charlie to the Island and began to torture him that I realized just how cruel he was capable of being.

"But then you grow up," I said and smiled. "Just a little. A little is enough sometimes. Then pirates and fighting and violence stop seeming like as much fun as they used to."

"Yeah," Ellie said. "Yeah." It had seemed so easy, before she'd had to do it. Hell, she'd had run ins with the infected, before she'd ever had to kill a person. That first one had gotten to her. And then it got easier, and maybe that was the worst part. Everyone she'd killed had meant her harm, but where did that start and stop? Knowing that Joel had been one of those scavengers, she'd wondered if she could do it. Hurt someone who hadn't done anything to her, just to survive.

She still didn't know. She hoped she never had to find out.

"Stories make it out like it's dramatic and glorious, but it's just... shit."