lost_boy | all this has happened before

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all this has happened before

We were running. Running from Peter. Running toward the pirates.

It hadn't been difficult to convince the others this was our best option, not after all Peter had done. They knew now, they had seen what he was like, they'd been viewed under the cold, dismissive gaze of Peter Pan and understood he thought nothing of them. Of us. Because I may have been his favourite once, but it was clear I was too grown up, too close to being a man to be loved by him any longer.

I knew that had upset me once, but now, surrounded by my friends, running toward other friends, I didn't feel that same sense of loss that I had before. As with Charlie and Sal and Nod, I was choosing these good people, people I loved, and I was turning my back on Peter.

We crossed the Island, skirting the plans with the Many-Eyed, taking the path up into the mountains, toward Bear Cave, and then beyond. I paused at the cave, remembering Harry and his death here, but only for a moment. I had learned long ago how to mourn my friends while on the move and today was no different. My other friends needed me now, they needed me to lead them to safety away from Peter.

Leading the way down the mountain path, past the Marking Rock, I could see the camp and the cove in the distance, the shipped docked where it usually was when the pirates weren't away, raiding whatever places they were able to find. And I could see people. Pirates, yes, but familiar faces, too, and I picked up my pace, hurrying the others toward them.

[Coming together post! Gathering, as usual, Jamie and everyone who was with him at the tree is going to come to the pirate camp/the Jolly Roger, so feel free to have threads that take place on the ship or on the shore at the camp. Also feel free to employ fairies if you like, they'll be spying for Peter, who'll be coming soon enough. In a few days I'll post a second top level for Jamie and Peter's big final fight where Jamie will be losing his right hand.]

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When she first woke up, Aggie had observed that the island looked unreal, like someone's funpark version of a place. In some ways, she still thinks that, but she's also seen that the island is not so benevolent as that. There are wicked creatures and hungry monsters, whose presence is almost a relief. Better to know the dangers of the place rather than persist in a false sense of safety.

Monsters, Aggie is good at fighting. It comes of having been one herself. It keeps her wary as she sits by the campfire. The crack of a branch makes her stand, spinning around with her hands up, power surging to her fingertips.

"Stop!"

As they ran, Rosie had tried to stay as close as possible to the people she knew and the others from Darrow, neither wanting to outpace them and get lost or lag behind and be forgotten--or worse. It had worked for a time, adrenaline and terror fueling the thud of her feet along the forest floor, but before long she tired, falling further and further behind until she found herself well out of shouting distance. Swallowing back a helpless little cry, she looks around, trying her best not to think about everything that might be waiting for her in the shadows of the trees or behind a rock.

When she spots firelight nearby, her feet start moving towards it before her head can catch up enough to warn her that this might be a terrible idea. The snap of the branch sounds almost like a gunshot, and when the person sitting by the fire wheels around with something almost electric crackling in their hands, Rosie lets out a strangled, frightened yelp. "I'm not dangerous! I promise, I'm..." She blinks once, then again. "Aggie?"

"Rosie!" Aggie lets out in an equally surprised gust of breath. Her hands lower and she quickly runs forward to grab the other girl's wrist and pull her towards the fire. It's not as if they're in a particularly vulnerable spot but Aggie's already learned how quickly that can change around here.

"How many of us are there?" There'd already been a good bunch of them on the ship but Rosie's appearance changes things.

"We were all running to the beach, but I fell behind," she explains, letting herself be pulled closer to the fire. Even though her hands had been full of that green-yellow lightning only a second before, when Aggie's fingers close around her wrist Rosie doesn't even think about flinching away from the touch. "I thought it was just those of us who'd been at the tree," she says, taking a seat on an overturned log. "Jamie, obviously, plus some others who used to be at the Home. Or are now, I think. Eponine, Regan, Luke. Beverly and Richie. A boy I don't know, he's short, with curly hair...Stan, I think his name is."

She pauses for breath, studying Aggie's face in the flickering light. "And now you. You haven't been on your own out here the whole time, have you?"

"What? No!" Aggie's just as surprised by Rosie's concern as she is by the idea that there have been a whole other group of them this whole time. Her eyes go very wide as she considers it. Does that make this Jamie's world? The way Rosie says obviously makes it seem so.

"There've been lots of us. Me, Magnus, Daine. Eddie's here–Jamie's Eddie?–but he's older now. You know how it is with Darrow." It's a relief to know that at least Rosie hasn't also been here all alone either.

"Goodness," she says, the only thing she can say after that flood of information. It seems almost as though the city's brought everyone that means anything to Jamie here all at once--and maybe it had. Maybe that was the point, if the whims of Darrow could be said to have any point at all.

Rosie watches the fire for a moment, turning it all over in her mind. "When we woke up, the group I was with, it was inside this treehouse in the middle of the forest. It's where Jamie lived, before he came to Darrow. This is--" She stops herself before she says Neverland, before she lets slip the secret of Jamie's origins. "It seems we're all on the island he'd come from."

"That's not good." It's out of her mouth before Aggie can think to say it more tactfully. She doesn't know very much about Jamie's home but it's always been clear in what little he has told her that this isn't a world he misses.

"We woke up on the pirate ship, asleep in a bunch of hammocks like we'd been part of the crew for years." Except that the crew plainly hadn't known what to do with them either, which had only served to deepen everyone's confusion.

"No," she agrees. "It's not." Aggie's bluntness is somehow more reassuring than if she'd tried to say something gentler; even though she's desperate to return home, Rosie's almost glad they've met up here, together for whatever comes next.

The bit about the pirates--real, actual pirates--makes her eyes go briefly wide. It shouldn't sound so ridiculous, not after everything else, but somehow it's still not what she'd expected the other girl to say at all. "That explains why we hadn't known you were here," she says. "We all got divided up somehow."

"But everyone is okay?" Although plenty curious and clever, Aggie hasn't traveled a wide range from the ship. There's something that feels off about the forest and has since the moment she woke up. In a way, it reminds her of Cabeswater and the ley line, but this place doesn't respond nearly as warmly to her presence. She senses that it already has a master and has no need to change loyalties.

"I wonder why that is. Us being split up."

"Probably some Darrow nonsense," Rosie says, unable to keep herself from rolling her eyes. Though she's almost certain she'd be all the more suspicious if the city ever stopped doing the strange things it does, that doesn't at all mean she approves of them. "Make Jamie and me and all the rest of us think we're the only ones here, make you think you've been kidnapped by pirates. Make Eddie old and think he's been kidnapped by pirates, which...he's really an old man now? Goodness."

The longer she talks, the more further afield she's getting; she dismisses it all with a wave of her hand. "Whatever the reason, it's done now, and we're all together. Or mostly together. And everyone's...I think everyone's fine, we had to run away from the tree because Peter tried to attack Jamie, but we're all as safe as I suppose we can be."

"I mean, he's not old old. He's, like, forty." It's frankly one of the least important things in this equation. It does seem particularly unfair to get double-tapped by Darrow's mischief but at least the ship gives him a safe recourse away from the dangers of the island. Waking up under a tree sounds very...exposed, especially with those many-eyed monsters out there.

"People on the ship kept talking about a Peter," she adds, expression contemplative now. "It sounds like they're afraid of him."

"Still, older than usual," she says, unable to stop herself before she lets the matter drop. Considering that based on her birthday, she herself was meant to be a much more grandmotherly age, Rosie supposes she doesn't have quite that much space to argue--not that that's ever really stopped her before. "Poor Eddie, though. He's probably having an attack."

Rosie nods, seeing the thoughtful look on Aggie's face. "They're right to be," she says, the faintest of shivers running down her back as she recalls the sharp glint in Peter's eye and the way he smiled at all of them with those pearly little teeth. "He's...just like Eddie looks old now, but he's really young? Peter looks tremendously young, but something about him seems as old as the Island. And as dangerous."

Aggie nods, supposing it's fair enough. Age is slightly relative for her, counting plenty of grown adults, mortal and immortal, as her peers. Being centuries old herself only further complicates matters. "He's not taking it well but..." Well, he's had to accept it, hasn't he? At least plenty of people who woke up on the ship have long experiences in Darrow.

Rosie's description of Peter checks out. "To be fair, you could say the same thing of me." It's not meant as a reassuring comparison. Although Rosie doesn't know her full history, Aggie knows full well that her powers are semi-public knowledge among their friends by now. "More reason not to trust him."

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"Aggie, it's me," I said quickly, slightly out of breath from my run down from the mountain trail. It was such a relief to see her, to know there was someone like her here on the Island, someone the likes of which I knew Peter had never seen.

And it was a relief to see her safe.

"There are a bunch of us coming," I added, coming closer. "We woke up back in the tree where I spent most of my time. With Peter. I think... I think anyone under eighteen woke up there and anyone over woke up with the pirates."

It takes Aggie a second to realize who it is–still so keyed up from the dangers of the last day–that she doesn't lower her hands until a few long seconds pass and the words sink in. "Jamie. You're okay! You're..." She pauses, tries to dim down the adrenaline and use her brain instead of her instincts. "Most of your time. So this is your world?"

She can't help but drift back to her former, quickly-dismissed comment about how this place seems like some kind of fairytale version of a place. The thought strikes her again now anew as she considers what she knows of both Jamie himself and a story she vaguely remembers from reading at the library.

"Peter...Pan? Is that who you mean?"

"It's where I... well, where I spent the fifty years before Darrow," I said. I couldn't say it was home, really, and I couldn't say it was the place where I had grown up, because I hadn't, not until those last few weeks.

But it was mine, I supposed, more than anyone else's.

I nodded when Aggie asked about Peter. She wasn't the first to know his name like that, even though I was sure I had never said it in Darrow. Not like that. I wasn't sure I wanted to know how they all knew who he was. The possibilities made me feel like I was losing my grip on everything I had known.

"Peter Pan," I said, my voice soft. "Yes, that's him."

"Fifty years," Aggie breathes. She isn't sure which sounds worse. Being in and out of conscious death for three hundred years or being caught in timelessness, awake the whole time, for fifty. It's made her perception of time strange, especially in unfamiliar places like this. It's hard to think of Jamie persisting on like that.

"I think he's some kind of fairytale for a lot of people." She narrows her eyes, considering the island she's spent the last few days on. "People forget that fairies aren't always nice."

A fairy tale. That gave me pause and made me wonder just how many people knew about Peter and had never said so when I told them about him. It made me wonder, too, what my part of such a story might be. Aggie says it as though people don't realize what a monster he can be and I wonder if that makes me the monster instead.

"No," I agreed. "They're not. He isn't nice, not at all, but he's... well, he makes it seem as though you're the only one in the world when he cares for you. It's just that his care doesn't always last very long."

He forgets you then. And that leaves you feeling small and alone.

Aggie knows what it is to be made into the villain of her own tragedy but she's long stopped sparing herself any pity. What they did had wronged and harmed her and she had wronged and harmed them right back. In the end, Aggie had just been the monster everyone thought she was to begin with.

"He's charming," she concludes, frowning. "But he's no prince."

Leaning over, she reaches out for Jamie's hand and gives it a squeeze. "You're my friend." She doesn't care what the storybooks say about who Peter Pan ought to be. Everything she knows about Jamie has proven to her more than once that he's got a good heart.

To Aggie it might have only been a small gesture, but for me, it did wonders toward bolstering my confidence. I had never really been just like Peter, even if he wanted to believe otherwise, and I had escaped him once before. I could do it again.

I could be a better person than the one he wanted me to be.

"Thank you," I said, squeezing Aggie's hand gently in return. "I just hate that I dragged you all here somehow. None of you should have to live through Peter's foolishness."

Aggie doesn't let go of Jamie's hand, letting their fingers comfortably interlace in a way that has no expectations or illusions attached, a gesture between friends. "I think it Darrow," she admits. "This happens to people, sometimes. It might not feel good to hear it right now but our bodies should be safely asleep in our homes."

She wrinkles her nose, fully aware it sounds terrifying all on its own.

I nodded and said, "It happened to a bunch of us at the Home recently. Beverly, too. We all fell asleep for days and in that time we were somehow in Regan's home, too. It- it was awful."

I hated saying that, because Regan was my friend and I had very much liked her parents, but Richie dying right in front of Eddie and everything that happened after was something that would never go away.

Aggie blows out a breath and nods. A lot of them come from unpleasant worlds and it seems like Darrow takes pleasure in sending them to those rather than anything that might pass for safe or ordinary. Jamie's home is pretty enough but she's already encountered the less than pretty dangers that lurk beneath it, even without directly meeting this Peter Pan.

"That's Darrow for you. It never plays nice."

"I hate that I've brought you all with me," I said. "But I am glad I'm not alone."

I wasn't sure what would happen to me here without the rest of them. Peter could be so cruel, so dangerous, but also so manipulative and convincing. If I was alone, if I thought there was no chance to see my friends again, I had to wonder if I might end up back with Peter. Only long enough for him to kill me, of course, because I was too grown up for him now. He didn't like seeing me like this. Almost a man.

It had been a surprise to find I liked growing up, but Peter would never be able to. And he would never keep anyone who could.

"Scary with you is better than scary without you," Aggie says, leaning over to give him a hug. There's something about this Peter that leaves Jamie rattled in a way she can and can't place. It's somewhere between fear and love, leaving him on unsteady ground. Aggie, who lives on that territory, can understand.

"You've got us now. Who needs Peter?"

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