lost_boy | forever a lost boy

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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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"Rosie," she says, sighing in both relief and worry, and sits up, tucking her legs under her. It really isn't just people from the home, though it looks like Rosie might be one of the only others. Here, at least. Whatever that means.

"I think it might be all right," she says, low, then explains, "I mean, a little. It's like -- oh, you weren't there at Regan's. I think sometimes Darrow does this. Takes us to other places, and brings us back."

At least, she's sort of hoping. Because that means that if something does happen, it's all right back in Darrow. Richie's not dead, so if something happens here --

Well, she hopes that's what it means.

"No," she says, again feeling that faint twist of guilt in her chest. "I wasn't at Regan's." She's been so disconnected, so focused on the changes--so many of them good--that have occurred in her life over the past few months that she hadn't even known anything was happening until it was already over. Rosie breathes out a quiet sigh, more aggravated at herself than anyone else, then turns to Eponine with a slightly grim little smile.

"So it's a Darrow trick, then. Fantastic."

"It's better that you weren't," Eponine says, and she means it. She's glad Rosie didn't have to fear for her life, or experience pain or loss even if it wasn't lasting. And back then, they didn't know it would end.

"I think so. I think I hope so. Things -- bad things happened there, but -- everyone woke up all right. In one piece, anyway." She's feeling a bit guilty herself, that she can just put it aside. It's not practical to linger on things, even real things, and if something didn't turn out to be real -- well. It might come back to her later, but for now she's going to enjoy that no one's actually dead.

She hasn't quite missed that Rosie's wearing a shirt very much not her own, but that's not the most important thing to linger on either, and she pushes her mind past it. "I'm glad we're here together, though, now that we do know that," she says, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. "Whatever happens, it will feel very real, even if it isn't."

Rosie takes another breath, a little steadier than some of the ones that have come before, and nods. "I'm glad you're here as well," she says. "And that you...know what this is, even if it was horrible last time." Might be horrible this time, too, she thinks, but doesn't say. She's heard too much about the Island--and has to assume Eponine has too, with how close she is to Jamie--to believe that the next few days will be any kind of idyll, no matter the pleasant nature of their surroundings.

There's still a panic creeping at the edges of her mind and churning in her gut, and even the knowledge that she'll wake up at some point does little to quell it. "Everyone back home is going to wind up in fits if I don't wake up," she says, blurting out the words like it'll make her feel better to do so. It doesn't. "That I haven't woken up."

She nods. Eponine's already thinking about how horrible this might be. She's been introduced to Peter, or had him introduce himself, but it's hard to reconcile this -- crafty gamin of a boy, not far off from Gavroche in some ways -- with the conniving evil that scares Jamie so. But she trusts Jamie, and so she knows there's more, especially as Jamie has just as much Gavroche to him as well, even if he's older.

The words sting, though Eponine's sure Rosie doesn't mean them that way. She chuckles instead of letting herself linger on it. "Your fault for moving out of the home," she teases. "Last time, apparently, they told anyone who asked we were fine and not to worry." She nods over at where Luke is sleeping. "That little one had half a panic. He started playing spy, it seems." It'd made her feel oddly fonder of him, not trusting the staff entirely.

"Neil'll take you to hospital, I'm sure," she says, then chews on her lip. "Or --" She glances at Rosie and her particular set of pajamas, lifting an eyebrow. Not Neil who's likeliest to find her, maybe.

She rolls her eyes a bit at the teasing, but acknowledges Eponine's point with a faint flash of a smile and a nod. Like so many of the other Darrow natives, the staff at the Home seemed to take all of the city's strangeness in stride whenever it happened, often with an edge of boredom. Glad as she is to be free of the Home, Rosie can't entirely deny that being under their care might have been preferable to whatever distress is now gripping all of the people she cares about.

"Oh no, Luke," she says when Eponine points him out, the small curve of his blond head just poking out from a nearby fur. "I met him at Jamie's party." Though she's still resolutely determined not to play out the beats of the story she remembers--the one she and Eponine and the rest of them have fallen into, absurd as it still seemed to her to think of it that way--Rosie still feels a sudden surge of protectiveness when she glimpses him sleeping there. "At least this time, he's not been left behind. Not that that's much of an improvement, maybe."

Rosie looks away from Luke in time to catch Eponine's canny, assessing glance at her clothes and the accompanying quirk of her eyebrow. The sense of a question there makes her blush, even as it also sends a slightly baffling prickle of annoyance through her. "What," she murmurs, looking up at Eponine and wrapping her arms around herself; a slight, unthinking motion. "Neil might telephone half of the people we know in a panic before he thinks of ringing the hospital," she says after a beat, and while it's not exactly fair to him Rosie thinks it's still more true than not. "I never meant to worry him. Or anyone else."

Eponine nods, her expression a little fond as they both look at the small boy. "Well, we can keep an eye on him," she says. "There's that, anyway."

There's a slight challenge to that what; or perhaps Eponine's reading too much into it. She feels her expression fall, just slightly, in confusion more than anything else: Surely Rosie must know Eponine has no room to judge her?

She snorts a laugh at Rosie's description of Neil. "One of them will tell him to call a doctor, surely," she says. "I don't think he could possibly think you meant for this."

Eponine pulls her knees up to her chin. "Neil, or anyone else," she adds, echoing Rosie's phrasing. "I wasn't trying to say anything, Rosie, you know that. I was just --curious."

Edited 2019-10-12 04:46 (UTC)

"I know," she says, and while she smiles as she says it, for a moment it doesn't sit quite right on her face; feeling a little too awkward, maybe, or uncertain. "You'd never think less of me, not after...you know, David and everything. I do know that, I promise."

It doesn't feel right, almost, to be on the cusp of the conversation she thinks they're about to have. Not here, in this odd place of childhood fancy. Not that she's said much about it in Darrow, either. It had been easier not to, when she was still getting used to the idea, simpler to stick close to everyone involved, to the three people who understood. In a way--and it's a thought she dislikes, one she tries to push away as quickly as possible when it rises to the front of her mind--she's been the one keeping things a little secret and shadowed this time around.

No time like the present to change that, she thinks, and takes a breath. "Neil's going to be the one who...finds me, I'd imagine," she starts, "but it's Nick who'll be most upset. My, um. My new boyfriend."

Her smile isn't quite as assured as Eponine would like her to be, and she wonders a bit if she's done something to make Rosie feel unsure of her, or if it's something else.

And of course, it twists a little expectedly in her stomach when Rosie says Nick, my new boyfriend, but it's not the way she'd have expected it. It's been long enough of her being aware of her own feelings for Rosie, and of other things going on, too, that it's just a sort of inconvenience. She's more concerned with why Rosie doesn't seem particularly inclined to speak to her about it.

"See, that wasn't so hard," she says, her tease gentled by her expression. "And I don't want anyone upset, but he sounds better than David already."

"Besides, you're not the only one who's been --"

She pauses in her almost-confession as a thought interrups her. "Wait, -- Nick, Nick?" Thankfully, she stops herself from saying Sabrina's Nick, which would be horrifying. That's how she even knows who he is, that and his friendship with Rosie. They've never spoken: Eponine just tries to know who everyone is. Besides, she's not entirely certain if he is Sabrina's Nick, especially if he's Rosie's Nick.

Eponine's fully aware and fairly non-plussed by all sorts of configurations of relationships -- she hadn't been shocked by Grantaire and Neil and Edgar, either, when she'd caught up with Grantaire: multiple partners all aware of each other was a thing that's probably happened for millenia, the only change is that in Darrow they can all marry each other. She'd sussed out that Charlie and Nick are -- or were -- both Sabrina's boyfriends already, if she'd been inclined to be shocked: she just wasn't.

Rosie being all right with being the second of someone's girlfriends is a little more interesting, though, if it's true. Rosie's always seemed a bit more proper about things, and it's a surprise, certainly, but almost delightful, too, to find out she likes someone enough not to be.

"Oh, he's worlds better than David," she says, her tone brightening several shades and the smile on her face getting steadier and more assured. "No comparison at all, really."

It's Rosie's turn to look a little sidelong and teasing when Eponine starts to mention some secret of her own, but then Eponine interrupts herself, blurting out Nick's name--twice--in some kind of tone, one that makes Rosie all the more uncertain again. "I...yes, Nick," she says. "Nick Scratch, he's...oh goodness, I might as well just say it. He's Sabrina's boyfriend from home, and he's Sabrina's boyfriend here. And mine too, now. Since September. And everyone knows, and nobody's, you know, sneaking about or doing anything funny behind anyone's back about it." The longer she spoke, the easier it was, to Rosie's great surprise.

"So, you know, you don't need to fight him for me or anything. We're all...honestly, we're all terribly happy, I think."

Eponine can't help but relax a little at that beam from Rosie. No matter the complicatedness of it, what she wants the most for Rosie is happiness, and she can't help but want for her anything that results in that sort of smile, as long as it stays.

Rosie gets a bit of a coy look of her own, and Eponine almost blushes, but they're derailed. Nick Scratch. That's right. It sounds like an alias, like he'd fit right in with the Patron-Minette, though she doubts anyone who can court two such strong and intelligent girls is likely to be off murdering people.

"Since September?" She's more astonished at herself for not picking up on it for a whole month, perhaps two depending on when it started. "Well, I feel stupid." She's smiling, though. "It sounds wonderful, Rosie. As long as you are, happy. Too many people are concerned with being conventional, or just not alone, and they don't see that they could be happier."

"It's funny, catching up on gossip here, I suppose," she says, wrapping her arms more comfortably around her legs and leaning back in towards Rosie, chin on her knees. "But we might as well."

"Middle of September, so you needn't feel quite so stupid," she says, her tone as light and jokingly chiding as Eponine's own. "Sabrina and Charlie laid a bit of a trap, left us with everything we needed for a movie date at Nick's flat." Rosie ducks her head slightly, her cheeks growing pink all over again as she recalls how wonderful that first night had been, the two of them slowly starting to figure out the new shape of things between them.

Eponine settles, her body listing slightly in Rosie's direction, and Rosie shifts in turn, leaning in a bit closer. "I've had to adjust, a little," she confesses. "It's not the sort of romance I thought I'd find myself in, but it's...that's not so bad, being unconventional. And it helps, having Charlie there to talk to, and Sabrina." She breathes out a quiet, happy little sigh at the reminder; lets it distract her from the direness of their current situation for another minute more.

"Oh, it's the strangest place to be gossiping, isn't it?" she agrees when Eponine comments on it. She tips her head up, studying the network of roots above their heads. "But with nothing else to do, until...well, until we wake up again, or we figure out what to do, it's as good a way to pass the time as any." That pointed look from earlier returns to her face, and she reaches out a hand, nudging one of Eponine's legs. "Though speaking of gossip, I have a sense you've got some of your own, Mademoiselle." Rosie laughs, the sound light and almost musical. "Out with it."

Eponine laughs at that. "Little matchmakers!" she declares, in a tone a little shocked -- mostly faux -- and very amused. It's impressive, she has to admit, them all being so comfortable with their situation as to coax Rosie and Nick to have out with it. She thinks she'd be prone to being jealous, if she were in the same position.

Though, she feels easier with her own stupid jealousy over this, the more Rosie speaks about it, and knowing she is properly happy. So perhaps not. It's hard to say. "No, not so bad," she grins, as she is very much not conventional herself, then adds, "I suppose it would, since all of them are sharing someone. I'm glad you have each other," she says with more decisiveness, and finds that it's true.

Eponine flushes just a little at that nudge and that dulcet giggle, and she nudges Rosie right back with her toe, smirking. "Well. I don't think I could go so far as to say I'm anyone's girlfriend. But." Though they've ventured fairly close to what she'd call courting, back home, at least. Delightfully so, but also confusingly.

She drops her voice just a little, though it seems silly. "You know Ellie, don't you?"

That feigned shock pulls another laugh from Rosie. "Oh, they were very pleased with themselves for weeks afterwards, Sabrina most of all. I'm sure if you said something to her even now, she'd still gloat a bit about her cleverness."

She quiets easily, even happily, when Eponine starts to share her own news. Despite their current surroundings, despite the gulf of time that lay between the places the two of them called home, even despite the faint awkward tension that had stretched between them for the last few months, some things were universal--and companionable chatter about romance was a very pleasant example of such.

"Ellie?" she says, her brow furrowing slightly as she mulls over the name. "I don't know that we've met, not properly." There is something familiar about the name, and given how closely those in the city who'd come from elsewhere tended to stick together, Rosie's sure they've been in the same place on occasion--maybe a party, or one of those festivals in the park. "But if you've gotten to know her quite a bit better," she continues, with a faintly, fondly protective tilt to her head as she speaks, "perhaps I ought to."

Eponine grins at that. She doesn't know Sabrina well, but the few times they've run into each other she's usually been doing something a little rebellious, so she can easily imagine her face, pleased with herself.

"Were you there for that big party, oh, forever ago now, where we all got a bit tipsy and played spin-the-bottle?" she asks. Time blends together now and she can't remember properly who was there and who wasn't, although she thinks it might have been one of the first times Eddie kissed a boy -- she remembers him nearly having a panic attack over it. "That was at Ellie's. She lives out in the country a bit. I think you must have seen her around before, she's a bit taller than me, sort of -- chestnut hair and this tattoo of a fern and a moth all down one arm, and very green eyes."

She grins at herself, for very green eyes is not exactly a basic description. "At any rate," she says, "I don't know if it's a real something, but. Well, we'd been teasing a bit here and there, and then she sang at one of those open mic nights and it was beautiful. And well, we ended up kissing a bit, only my mind is ridiculous and I had a bit of a panic at her. But she wasn't upset at all, just talked me through it and walked me home and we just talked."

Which makes it feel a bit more like something than it would have if it had just been fooling around, or if panicking had ruined the mood, and she thinks Rosie might understand that.

The party Eponine references doesn't ring familiar--whether because it had happened before her time or when she was so new to the city she hadn't merited an invitation, she couldn't say--but something about the description of the girl in question sparks a faint recollection.

"Oh, wait, she was at--" Rosie starts, about to say Jamie's party before her caution and the reminder of their surroundings catches up with her. It seems unwise, maybe even dangerous, to mention it here; to provide evidence of how much Jamie mattered to people who weren't Peter, how special so many of them thought he was. "Ellie was at that pool party, in August," she says instead, trusting Eponine to know what she means and why she's framing it like that. "Wasn't she? I know I saw someone with a tattoo like that."

She listens to the rest with as much delight as she can manage, setting aside her concern for another moment. "Oh, that all sounds lovely," she says. "Aside from the panic, but that's...I mean, I'd understand being a little out of sorts about it, if you hadn't expected to want to kiss another girl."

Eponine catches her eyes as Rosie deftly changes her phrasing. From the little she's seen of Peter, the way Jamie's talked about him, she thinks she understands enough that some things are better avoided. Perhaps all of Darrow, really.

She very much was at the pool party, though, and Eponine nods. "She was, yes." She smiles a little shyly. "There was a bit of splashing and chasing. I didn't think it was going to be anything, though." She's still not sure if it is, exactly, but there's certainly more than splashing and chasing.

Eponine lifts her head at that. Perhaps she wasn't as desperately obvious as she'd thought she was being, then. She flushes, explaining. "Oh, well. That -- I've known for...a little bit, now, that I might want to kiss a girl. I mean, it certainly took me a while to understand that." She looks away, embarrassed, and tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. "No, it was more. Well. I was nervous, you know? And I wasn't sure why I was so nervous, for it wasn't the first time I'd kissed anyone, and then it sort of got in my head, what people say and things that .." She winces and waves a hand. Rosie knows.

Edited 2019-10-30 04:25 (UTC)

"I think splashing and chasing are the usual way of things, in situations like that," Rosie says, warmly fond as she sees that quiet little smile cross Eponine's face. It's such a delicate expression, a little at odds with how boldly, brashly sure her friend so often is; for a moment, Rosie feels almost as though she's just become privy to something secret and beautiful. "But it certainly sounds like it's turned into a bit more since, so...good for you."

When Eponine blushes and rushes to explain, her halting sentences tripping over one another a little bit, Rosie nearly cuts her off to apologize. She knows--far too well--the kinds of things people say, the way rumors can start and build and become something both humiliating and ridiculous. At times, it almost feels as though all the things David had said last summer paled in comparison to the whispers that she's overheard since school had started, fervent murmurs of the things she, Sabrina, Nick, and Charlie are supposed to be doing the instant school lets out. Or before then, sometimes.

Rather than speak, Rosie holds herself back, commits to listening until Eponine's fully finished; when she is, Rosie sighs and nods, her smile grown rueful. "No, I know what you mean, it's...it's hard not to think about what people might say. Even if you know they're wrong." She shrugs, a faint rise and fall of her shoulders. "Even if you know you're happy, kissing whomever it is you've found you like to kiss."

Eponine laughs, a real laugh, and quiets it. She'd been nervous, at first, how Rosie would take it, how she would even feel admitting to Rosie how she feels about Ellie. But it's just -- nice. It's nice, the possibility of happiness, even if it doesn't go anywhere, and one of her best friends being happy for her.

She frowns a little at Rosie's knowing response, and nods. She can only imagine what gets said, and knowing the way the world is it'll somehow manage to be congratulatory toward the boys and demeaning toward Rosie and Sabrina, all at once. Not for the first time, she finds herself wanting to pick a fight.

"I think that was part of it," she says with a little wry smile. "It was ...one of the first times, maybe the first time ever I'd kissed someone just because I wanted to. No other purpose, or plot, or because I had to."

It sounds so terrible, it is terrible, and she flushes, but Rosie knows so much about her that even though her cheeks burn, Eponine doesn't think she'll judge. It's hard, too, to separate who she wanted to kiss, and who she didn't, exactly. Montparnasse had kissed her sometimes, and she thinks she'd liked it, but she'd also been 14 when it started, and well aware he would kill her without a second thought if she crossed him.

"It's ...much more nerve-wracking, as it turns out."

There is something quietly and instantly sobering that goes through her at that, the thought of Eponine being made to kiss someone--though she has a stomach-twisting and horrible sense that it had in truth gone well beyond that--and for a moment she's not even sure what to say. It's not even that surprising, after all she'd learned and all that had happened two summers ago now. Still, Rosie regrets so much that there's anything like that in Eponine's past at all.

"It is," she says, finally finding if not the right words, entirely, at least ones that are true. "Nerve-wracking, that is. But in a wonderful way, and...and one that's different from anything that you might have had before." She reaches out again, though not to nudge or tease this time; just a gentle, reassuring touch of her hand to Eponine's knee. "And I'm happy for you that it is." She pauses again, her smile turning a little more wry. "Though of course, if Ellie's ever anything less than wonderful, I'll be very cross with her."

Eponine nods, smiling at Rosie's gentle touch and putting her own hand over her own to squeeze it back. The sweetness of that gesture still tugs at something in her, but not in quite the same tumultuous way, and she thinks that's all right. If Rosie and Sabrina and their boys should show anything, it's perhaps that it's all right to have messy, warm feelings about more than one person. Even if it doesn't always end up in everyone together.

She's never had a friend like Rosie before Darrow, just like she hasn't kissed anyone like Ellie before. Both are nerve-wracking and wonderful.

Eponine grins, the idea of someone being cross on her behalf bizarre and delightful at once. "Well, I don't know that you have to worry just yet, I don't know if this even is anything except -- nice. But I'm...glad that you would."

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