lost_boy | forever a lost boy

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home plot

forever a lost boy

I woke with a start, my eyes open suddenly, instantly awake and without the slightest bit of grogginess that sometimes followed me into the morning. In Darrow, I had allowed myself to relax. When I slept, especially the nights I snuck into Eddie's room, I slept heavily. I slept like someone who felt safe, but this morning as I came awake, I knew everything had changed.

Somehow, I had known it even before my eyes were open, but now that they were, I could see everything in the dim sunlight that filtered in through the roots of the tree.

Slowly I sat up. The animal skins and furs piled on top of me fell away and it was a strange sort of relief to discover I was still wearing the t-shirt and striped pyjamas pants I had fallen asleep in. If nothing else, that meant Darrow hadn't been a dream, I hadn't gone there in my mind in some desperate attempt to escape Peter. Darrow was real and I was no longer there.

The very thought of it broke my heart.

I inhaled shakily, stifling the sob that wanted to slip out, then looked to my left. If I was here, it would be time to wake the other boys. Time to tell them what Peter was really like, but as I reached for the shape I thought would be Charlie or Nod or Crow, I realized the person lying next to me was familiar, but not for the reasons I would have thought.

I gaped at them, then turned to my other side and flung back the animal furs. I stood, stepping over shapes, pulling back the furs and skins so I could see those around me and another sob almost slipped out of me as I realized I wasn't alone. My friends were here. My friends from Darrow. I was overwhelmed with relief and gratitude for just a second before an absolute terror the likes of which I had only felt once before replaced my pleasure.

If they were here, they weren't safe. Not a single one of them. Peter would know I cared for them far more than I could ever care for him. He would see them as a threat.

As if my very thoughts had summoned him, a shape from the other end of the tree moved. Peter, holding a sharp blade in one hand and a rough piece of wood he'd been carving in the other, stepped into the midst of bodies, most of them still groggy, having just been pulled from sleep. He looked them over, a king surveying his domain, then smiled at me.

His teeth were perfect, tiny white pearls; his baby teeth. The ones I had knocked out the last time I'd seen him.

"Hullo, Jamie," he said cheerfully. "Welcome home."

[Initial post for anyone under 18. Feel free to use this for explanations, adventure, run-ins with fairies or mermaids or Peter, who will be outwardly cool to everyone, but won't be violent yet. In a few days I'll post a new top level for Jamie and Peter's fight.]

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"The beginning of October? I'd--I heard there was something that had happened, people falling asleep for days, but..." Rosie trails off, something that feels too much like guilt mingling with her still-present panic. She'd been so wrapped up, so absorbed in all the good that had come into her life that she hadn't even noticed. "But I didn't know you were involved."

There's something so tightly wound in him now--the set line of his jaw, the rigidity in his shoulders, even the way his hand grips hers just on the edge of too tight--that Jamie's almost a different person. It's understandable, in a way, but as he leads her towards the hole in the tree Rosie still allows herself a quiet moment of sadness that he's had to become this again at all. Her pajama pants had slipped a little low on her hips; after hitching them back up, she grabs onto a convenient knob of root, using it as a handhold to start boosting herself up towards the sunlight.

"So, it's...we're all still asleep, back in Darrow?" she asks as she climbs. "And we'll go back there, once this is...done?"

I nodded and simply said, "I was."

It was too much to go over it all again, even though we had woken up and everything had been okay. The trauma of Richie dying, being taken so violently, the way it had felt like a punch to the gut, a physical blow that had shattered Eddie so completely and rattled me in ways I wanted to forget, all of that wasn't something I wanted to talk about if it could be helped.

I followed Rosie out into the sunlight and felt a little better. The view was familiar, achingly so, and I gazed out at the forest around us for a moment before turning to look at her again.

"That's how it was before," I said. "Regan's foster mother took her to the hospital, but the rest of us were just at the Home. The workers said it's happened before, it isn't anything to worry about, and we did all wake up after two days, but it felt like... like so much longer inside the dream. And it didn't feel like a dream at all."

Just as this didn't. A sweet smelling wind rippled through the trees, carrying with it the scent of the ocean. The leaves under our bare feet were real, damp and cool from the morning dew. In the distance, I could hear the buzzing of the Many-Eyed. I had so many things I had to warn everyone about.

If they were still at home--and it was home for her now, more than Oxford had ever been--Rosie might have indulged her natural curiosity, she thinks; peppering Jamie with questions, learning all she could about whatever place Regan came from and what they'd found there. But not here, not at a time when the both of them are so unnerved. "Two days," she echoes, worrying her lower lip in her teeth for a moment. "Everyone's going to be beside themselves."

Any questions she might have asked fly out of her head the moment she emerges from the tree and takes in the sight before her. "Oh, it's beautiful," she murmurs, looking around at the surrounding forest and feeling the gentle ruffle of the breeze. There's birdsong, and even the low sound of something chittering off in the distance doesn't sound quite as disturbing as it might have, in another context. "I know it's...I know what you've told me, and I haven't forgotten," she says, trying to choose her words with care even though they're alone for now. "But there's something lovely about it too."

Rosie wasn't wrong. For a very long time, I had loved the Island, I had loved living here and being part of it, knowing I was special to Peter in ways no one else ever could be. This had been my home, my entire world, and it was lovely.

But it was also dangerous. Poisonous. It was a place that would eat people whole and never give them back because Peter forgot them the moment they were gone. My gaze was drawn to the west and although I couldn't quite see it through the trees, I knew the graveyard wasn't far away.

"It's a wonderful place to be a child," I agreed. "But eventually we all have to grow up."

Rosie nods solemnly, fighting the urge to hug him once again, to provide what little comfort she could--or take some for herself. "We do," she says, following his gaze then looking away once more. Whatever it is he's looking at, or for, she can't see, but it feels somehow...private.

They both stay quiet for the moment, lost in their own thoughts. Rosie's are a little more scattered: concern about everyone she's left behind; the panic and terror Nick or Neil or Charlie and Sabrina must be feeling now, finding her unconscious in bed with no explanation as to how or why; the creeping sense of danger for herself and Jamie and the rest of them, trapped on an island with a child-tyrant from a storybook. It's enough to make her head spin, to cast a pall over all the wonder she feels at the sights before her.

"Do we just...wait to wake up, then?" she asks, the question coming out soft and small and a little unsteady. "Try not to get into trouble for the next...however long it is?"

"I think so," I said. "But I don't know how long that might be. Back in Darrow, the workers at the Home and Stan said we were only asleep for a few days, but it felt like we were with Regan's family for weeks."

I hated the idea of us being here for that long. Maybe Peter couldn't truly hurt anyone, not physically, but I knew what he could do to a person's emotional state, too. I knew all the cruel, callous things he was capable of. I didn't want any of my friends having to deal with that or listen to the casual way he would dismiss their lives.

I breathed in deep, then exhaled and said, "All right. We ought to find ourselves something sturdier to wear. Then I'll need to check the traps for food. Would you want to come with me for that?"

Her eyes widen at the thought of being here for weeks, trapped in some dreamworld, and another frantic wave of panic ripples through her before she can fully quash it. Even if it was only a few days in the real world--as much as Darrow itself was real--she'd rather naively hoped the same might have been said for where they were now.

Jamie's plan, though, is enough to pull her out of her thoughts before she can sink too far. "I'll come with you," she says. "I'm not...whatever's in the traps, is it already going to be dead?" Rosie looks down, feeling a little useless for having asked the question at all. "It's just...I've never had to kill anything before, and I don't know that I could."

"You won't have to," I said with a shake of my head. "If anything has lived, I'll do the rest."

I would be the one skinning and butchering the animals as well. It had always been part of my duties on the Island and over time I'd gotten very good at it. It wasn't a skill I had needed in Darrow, but I doubted something like that was ever going to be lost to a person once they had already learned.

"Back into the tree first," I said to Rosie as I ducked back through the holes in the roots. It was a tighter fit for me now than it had been even when I'd left the Island and I was aware that I had kept growing, even if I didn't notice the difference like I had once. Peter wasn't going to like that very much at all.

Back inside, I began to sort through the clothes left in a heap on the floor. I didn't want to put Rosie in anything too old or ragged and I eventually found a pair of well made deerskin pants and a button down shirt that had belonged to Del when he had first arrived. He'd been fastidious and the shirt was still clean and without any holes. "Will these do?" I asked, offering them to her.

"Alright," she says quietly. "Thank you." She should feel guilty, she knows, at how quickly relief washes over her at that. Neither of them should need to do it--neither of them should be here in the first place--but they are, and Rosie lays the responsibility for whatever they might find in Jamie's capable hands without a second thought.

Casting one last look around at the surrounding forest, she follows Jamie back down and into the hollow of the tree. They walk quietly and with care, doing their best not to disturb the others, and once they reach the clothing pile Rosie kneels to search along with him. The pants and shirt Jamie holds out are clean and look like they'll fit her well enough; she takes them from him with a nod and another murmur of thanks, then stands.

"I'll..." She trails off, abandoning her sentence before it had even begun, and shakes her head. "There's not really anywhere private to change here, is there?" Of course there wouldn't be; not here, in a land of boys, all of them wild and shameless and unrefined. "I'll be just a minute."

Blushing hard, Rosie takes the clothes to a nearby corner. It's not what she wanted, but it's the best, it seems, she'll be able to do. She turns her back to the rest of the room, exchanging her pajama pants for the soft leather trousers first. It takes her a moment after that, a few uncertain breaths, but then she's peeling off Nick's t-shirt, exposing the bare line of her back. The shirt Jamie found is only slightly worn, large enough to fit her comfortably; she changes into it as quickly as she can manage, doing up the buttons with mostly-steady fingers.

"Okay," she says, leaving her old clothes where they are as she pads back to where Jamie's standing. "Let's go."

Most everyone was outside by this point, which left Rosie with at least some privacy and I took care to look elsewhere while she changed. I used the time to get my own clothes, the deerskin pants I had worn for years, hand sewn myself. The pants were a little too short, because I had grown taller, but they still fit around my waist and I left my t-shirt on, imagining it would be better than trying to find anything else in the pile of discarded items.

Because just there, lying in plain sight, was a familiar red coat I had worn for many years. I had the same coat stuffed far back in my closet in Darrow and I had no intention of wearing it ever again. Not even here.

"Right," I said when Rosie joined me again. "We'll have to be careful not to get too close to the plains, that's the Many-Eyed territory."

Rosie hasn't the slightest idea what a Many-Eyed could be, but it sounds unpleasant enough that she doesn't even think of arguing about that particular instruction. "I'm sticking with you," she says, trying to keep her tone light and hoping the effort it takes to do so doesn't show. "I promise."

"We'll be all right," I said to Rosie, hearing her tone, knowing she was forcing herself to sound less worried than she felt. I was worried, too, I was worried Peter would hurt my friends, not physically, but emotionally and mentally. I was worried he might work to turn them against me like he had done with Charlie.

As I climbed out the tree again, I turned back to offer Rosie my hand just in time for Peter to arrive at my side.

"We need food," he announced and I sighed, exasperated, then nodded.

"Rosie and I are going to check the traps," I told him.

Peter eyed Rosie thoughtfully. "Holding hands with girls now, are you, Jamie? You know they're not allowed on the Island."

Once again, Peter's just there quicker than a blink; once again, Rosie feels that cold spike of apprehension as she sees his pert, slightly feral little face. "I tripped on a root, lost my footing," she lies, keeping her tone even and just slightly apologetic. Though every bit of her wants to keep clinging to Jamie's hand until Peter loses interest in them again, she makes herself pry her fingers from his grip. "Clumsy of me, I know."

The rest of it stings her, makes her bristle with an offense she tamps down as hard and swiftly as she can. "Why aren't girls allowed on the Island?" she asks instead, still timid, still polite, still deferential in a way that turns her stomach. "I'd heard once that...that one girl's more use than twenty boys, but maybe that was wrong. It probably was."

Throwing out that line from the story she knows, the story he's from, might not have been the wisest choice, but it satisfies a small, defiant part of her. There's little shame she can find in that.

Rosie was smart, she knew how to deal with Peter, how to appear to him, and I wanted to thank her for it, but it also made me hate Peter a little more. He should have been kinder to her. He should have liked her because she was smart and kind and quick. He would never know these things about Rosie, though, because he would never pay enough attention to her in order to understand.

It made me so angry.

"Maybe," Peter answered, looking at Rosie again. "But I've yet to meet one who proves that."

"We're going to check the traps," I repeated, looking hard at Peter, who already seemed to have lost interest. I supposed I should have just been glad he hadn't started insisting on a raid. Or worse, a Battle.

"They're your responsibility, Jamie," he said as he wandered away from us. "If any of them can't keep up, that's on you."

Hearing that and seeing the cold dismissal in Peter's eyes, Rosie comes dangerously close then to saying something else, something ill-thought and ruinous that would do nothing to help their current situation. She chokes it back, and since she can't draw comfort from Jamie right now--let alone any of the people she's left behind in Darrow--she digs her fingernails into her own palm until she nearly hisses with the pain of it. It's only when Peter leaves again, tossing off the kind of idle threat even she's canny enough to recognize, that she finds herself able to breathe a little more steadily.

"Let's...let's go," she says. She doesn't dare look at Jamie, and even though she knows she's doing it for his own protection, for both of their sakes, it still feels like a betrayal. "To see to the traps."

We walked in silence for a few moments, because I wanted to be sure we were clear of Peter before I said anything. He wasn't that smart, he wasn't capable of being truly manipulative, but his indifference made him dangerous. We were all still just toys to him. Once I had been special, but I could tell that was no longer the case.

"I don't know what he'll do anymore," I said finally as I ducked under a low hanging branch. The trees grew closer together here and despite how I felt about Peter, I did sometimes miss this Island. The air was heavy and familiar and I breathed deeply, then looked over at Rosie.

"It used to be I was his favourite," I told her. "If he wanted something done, he would get me to do it, but he knows I'm growing up now. And I don't know what he'll do."

Rosie walks alongside Jamie as often as she can, whenever the paths they take are wide enough to allow it, hoping that at least the sight and solid presence of her will be enough. When he breaks their self-imposed silence, she just listens, taking everything in. On its surface, the forming rift between Peter and Jamie seems not dissimilar to the ebbs and flows of any childhood friendship; the loss of the sunlight of someone's regard and the chill it leaves behind.

Beneath that, though, is something crueler than any child ought to be.

"He seems capable of...I don't even know what he's capable of," she says, shivering a little despite the warmth of the day. "But whatever happens before we wake up or go back to Darrow, whatever he does, I'll do whatever I can to help you."

I nodded, then smiled faintly as I looked over at Rosie.

"He used to make us fight," I told her. "There's a place we would go, just past the stream to the south east. We called it the Battle Rock and whenever he was bored or if he was mad at someone and wanted them to be punished, we would all go there and they would fight. But Peter never fought. Never. Not right until the end."

I thought back to my blood seeping into that smooth white rock and shuddered a little as I scanned the trees for the traps.

"I was the only person he fought. I was fighting him right before I came to Darrow. He had cut me and I know he meant to kill me."

"Well, we're absolutely not going there," Rosie says, looking up at him with her eyes gone wide. It's a silly, stubborn thing to say, especially given how trapped they are; near-prisoners on the Island for nobody knew how long, obligated to go along with the whims of their captor to avoid incurring his wrath.

She never thought she'd hate Peter Pan, of all people. He wasn't even supposed to be real.

"I'm sorry," she adds, her voice softer and more sorrowful than before. "I didn't...I didn't know that's what happened to you, just before you came." It occurs to her like a cold stone settling in her gut that Darrow often brought people from the moment of their deaths. While it seems neither of them know for sure if that had been the case for Jamie, the fear that it could have been, that it may very well play out once more, almost overwhelms her for a moment.

I wondered if we would have a choice.

If Peter wanted me to fight, if it was between fighting him or seeing someone I cared for being hurt, I knew I would still choose to fight him. Even knowing it was pointless, knowing he would always win, I would never let anyone else be hurt because I was too afraid to fight.

I had never been afraid of a fight before and I wasn't going to start being afraid now.

Smiling a little at Rosie's apology, I looked over at her. "I think he meant to kill me, but I don't think he would have been able," I said. Worse things had happened in my time before Darrow than having to fight Peter. "We'll be all right. I'll make sure of it."

Rosie doesn't know if the confidence she thinks she hears in Jamie's voice is real or some false bravado, a courageous face put on so as not to further frighten the rest of them. Maybe it doesn't matter; there's enough surety to it that she feels she can take some for herself, let it comfort her even briefly.

"You will," she says. "You're one of the bravest people I know."

I smiled at that. Small, but genuine. That meant a lot to me, hearing Rosie say I was one of the bravest people she knew. It made me feel more brave than I thought I actually was.

"This way," I said, stepping down another familiar path as I led Rosie toward the first set of traps. They were full, which was lucky, because people were going to get hungry. Once the shock of this wore off, the reality that we were going to have to survive would set in and hunger would be the first. The rabbits were already dead in these traps and I stowed them carefully in a bag, making sure Rosie didn't have to see them if she didn't want.

"We should get some berries, too," I suggested.

Rosie catches only the briefest glimpse of brown fur and once-bright eyes clouded over before Jamie puts the first rabbit carefully out of sight. It's necessary, only a step or two removed from the kinds of things she'd seen and shopped for at the butcher's back home, she knows. Something about it still makes her just a little startled and settles a faint twist of grief in her chest, and she averts her eyes until all the traps are clear.

Jamie's suggestion is a good one, and kindly intended; she nods, giving him a soft smile. "We should," she agrees. "Just...tell me if there's any I should be avoiding because they're poison or something."

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forever a lost boy

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