lost_boy | 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.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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."

forever a lost boy

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