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The Lost Girl

Pairing: OUAT Peter Pan x f!reader

a/n: One of the first ever fanfics I read on Wattpad were OUAT fics and I always wanted to write a fic about the show but I was too young then so I'm going to post now, even though it's been a while since I've rewatched the show and the fandom is likely not even active anymore. The fic idea was still floating in my head. This fic is combining: Chapter 1 - "Straight from Storybrooke", Chapter 2 - "Life in Neverland", and Chapter 3 - "Malcolm". Warnings: reader is a teenager, canon divergence, won't make sense if you don't know the lore.

The air in your cramped bedroom had been stale for years, thick with the weight of words unspoken and expectations you could never meet. That night, it had become unbearable. You had slipped out your window with nothing but a backpack slung over your shoulder, your heart hammering a frantic rhythm against your ribs as your sneakers hit the soft earth below. The plan was simple, etched into your mind like a prayer: make it to the next state, to your grandmother’s house, the only place that had ever felt like a safe harbor in the storm of your life. You had money saved, a bus schedule you’d memorized, and a desperate, burning hope that propelled you forward into the cool night.

For hours, you walked along the quiet, dark roads, the Maine woods a dense, black wall on either side of the asphalt. The air smelled of pine and damp earth, and the only sounds were the crunch of your footsteps and the distant hoot of an owl. You were making good time, your internal compass pointed south, when you saw it: a small sign that read "Storybrooke," with an arrow pointing down a narrow, winding road that cut through the forest. The town wasn't on any map you'd ever seen. You were sure of it. You’d pored over your route for weeks. A shortcut, you thought, a prickle of unease mingling with your determination. A town has to have a road out the other side. It could save you miles. You turned down the road, the trees immediately closing in around you like a tunnel.

The town itself was quaint, almost unnervingly so, like a picture postcard from a bygone era. Charming storefronts were locked up tight, and a clock tower stood sentinel over a silent, empty street. You had just passed a diner called Granny’s when the world went terrifyingly, impossibly wrong. A sudden, unnatural gust of wind extinguished the streetlamps one by one, plunging you into near-darkness. From the corner of your eye, a black shape detached itself from a wall. It was a shadow, but not your own. It was a silhouette of a man, standing on its own, its edges sharp and impossibly dark.

It cocked its head. A scream tore from your throat, a raw, primal sound, but before you could even think to run, it lunged.

Cold, smooth, and impossibly strong hands, as insubstantial as smoke and as solid as iron, seized you under your arms. The ground vanished from beneath your feet. You shrieked, the sound swallowed by the rushing wind as you were yanked violently upwards, past the rooftops, past the clock tower, past the treetops. The town of Storybrooke shrank to a tiny constellation of lights below you. You kicked and thrashed, your screams turning to choked gasps as the air grew thin and bitingly cold.

The shadow's grip was unbreakable. Higher and higher it flew, towards the impossible scatter of stars that seemed to be growing larger, brighter, closer. The world spun, the black shadow, the dizzying height, the stars blurring into streaks of cold fire. Panic, thick and suffocating, finally closed over your head, and everything went black.

The first thing you registered was the smell: damp earth, lush vegetation, and something sweetly floral you couldn’t name. The second was the sound of murmured voices, young and sharp. You groaned, your head pounding, and forced your eyes open.

You were lying on a bed of soft moss in a clearing, sunlight dappling through a canopy of leaves so large and vibrantly green they looked painted. But your attention was immediately seized by the figures standing in a loose semicircle around you. They were boys. A dozen or so, ranging from children to lanky teenagers. And they were dressed as if they’d stepped out of a history book about medieval times: in rough-spun tunics, patched trousers, and leather boots. Each one of them carried a weapon. You saw knives glinting in belts, short swords, and a few held crossbows aimed casually at the ground. They were all staring at you with a mixture of intense curiosity, open suspicion, and utter bewilderment.

Your gaze landed on the tallest of them, a lean boy who looked to be about seventeen or eighteen, with shaggy blond hair and a thin scar that ran from his cheekbone down to his jaw. He held a heavy, gnarled club propped on his shoulder and his pale eyes were the coldest you’d ever seen. He took a step forward. “She’s awake,” he announced, his voice flat and devoid of warmth.

He was the one who introduced himself as Felix, Pan’s first in command. The name meant nothing to you. The questions started then, flying at you like arrows.

“Who are you?” “Where did you come from?” “Why are you dressed like that?” “Are those boy’s trousers? Why are they blue?”

Your head spun. You struggled to sit up, your backpack still miraculously strapped to your shoulders. “Wait, wait,” you croaked, your throat dry. “Where am I? Who are you people?”

You looked around at their wild, unkempt hair and their archaic weapons. “And who the hell is Pan?”

A ripple of hushed surprise went through the group. Felix’s eyes narrowed to slits. “You don’t know?” He took another step. “You’re in Neverland. Peter Pan’s island. And we,” he gestured with his club to the boys around him, “are the Lost Boys.” His assessing gaze swept over you. “And since you’re here, that makes you a Lost Girl. The first one.”

A disbelieving laugh escaped your lips. “Neverland. Peter Pan. That’s...that’s a fairytale. A story for children.” But even as you said it, your denial died in your throat. Your memory slammed back into you: the living shadow, the impossible flight, the stars. Your skin went clammy. You had seen it. You had felt it.

You looked from one face to another. They weren't joking. Their expressions were a mix of curiosity, distrust, and something else you couldn’t quite identify. Felix watched your dawning horror with grim satisfaction. “Pan is our leader. He’s the one who brought you here.” He paused, a cruel twist to his lips. “Or rather, his shadow did. Against his orders. He’s currently in the skull cave at the heart of the island, arguing with the shadow for bringing a girl, not a boy.” He crossed his arms. “It has to be a mistake. Pan will either kill you or send you back. He has no use for a girl.”

A chill that had nothing to do with the forest air settled deep in your bones. Kill you. The other boys, however, seemed less certain and far less cautious. While Felix stood back, radiating silent apprehension, the younger ones edged closer, their curiosity winning out. One of them, a boy with a smear of dirt on his nose, pointed at your backpack. “What’s that? What’s in it?”

With trembling hands, you unzipped it. Your clothes, your map, your small stash of money…and a bag of cookies and a handful of candy bars you’d grabbed for the road. You pulled them out, the crinkle of the plastic wrappers making the boys flinch back. “It’s…food,” you said, your voice still shaky.

Breaking off a piece of a chocolate bar, you offered it to the smallest boy. He took it as if it were a jewel, sniffed it, and then popped it in his mouth. The reaction was instantaneous. His eyes went wide, and a beatific smile broke over his face. He let out a whoop of joy.

“What is that sorcery?!” another one cried, and suddenly they were all crowding forward, hands outstretched. You broke the cookies and candy into pieces, sharing them out. The joy was pure, unadulterated madness. They had never had chocolate before. They had never tasted anything so sweet. The initial hostility dissolved into a chaotic, sugar-fueled frenzy.

Their lack of guile was, for a moment, endearing. Until one of them, a stout boy named Devin, pressed a wooden practice sword into your hand. “Now you can play!” he said, his mouth still smeared with chocolate. You could barely hold it. The weight was all wrong, the balance unfamiliar. You swung it clumsily, and the boys erupted in laughter. “She’s too girly!” “She’s too weak!” “She can’t play Lost Boy games!”

A flash of indignation cut through your fear. “Maybe I can’t play your games,” you said, your voice gaining a little strength. “But I can teach you some of mine.” You sat down on a fallen log, ignoring the way Felix watched you from the shadows, and pulled a worn deck of cards from your backpack. You dealt a hand of Go Fish for a small, captive audience, and they were instantly mesmerized by the bright numbers and the mysterious faces of the Jacks, Queens, and Kings. They picked up the simple rules with a sharp, competitive intelligence.

Since you only had the one deck, you used a stub of pencil from your bag to painstakingly draw the symbols onto bits of parchment, creating a second, makeshift deck. The camp, which had been a place of interrogation and dread, was now filled with the sound of boys bickering over a game of War.

This was the scene Peter Pan walked into. He had spent an infuriating hour in the skull cave, a cavern lit by the sickly green glow of the island’s heart, shouting at his own silent, infuriating shadow. It had refused to communicate, its form flickering against the cave walls, impassive and defiant.

The shadow, the first being he’d ever truly bargained with, the entity that brought him here, a carefree boy forever, in exchange for his little brother Rumpelstiltskin, a burden he was more than happy to abandon along with a life of poverty and a drunken father, had betrayed his trust. It had brought a girl. And worse, it refused to undo its mistake. Rage, hot and acidic, still churned in his stomach as he walked back to camp, choosing the winding forest path to clear his head instead of simply appearing by magic.

He thought of a cage, wrought from bamboo and wicker, suspended from a tree. He thought of the lagoon, and how the mermaids would shriek with delight at a fresh, feminine form to drag into the deep. He thought of setting the boys on her, letting them hunt her through the jungle, though one glance at her had told him she’d provide no more sport than a baby deer. It would be a waste.

He stopped walking, the image of her standing behind his eyes. He had almost forgotten what a girl looked like up close. Even in the Enchanted Forest, in the grimy taverns and cobblestone streets he’d grown up on, he’d never seen one like her. She looked like a princess from a story, but dressed so strangely. A pout had rested on her pretty lips, even in unconsciousness. Pretty jewelry glinted on her ears and her delicate wrist. The strange blue trousers and simple shirt could not hide the gentle swell of her chest or the full, womanly curve of her hips. A new, different kind of anger stirred in him. A cage it was, he decided firmly. A cage just for him. He would not share this one with the boys. This one was a puzzle, a curiosity, a possession to be kept apart.

His decision lasted until the moment he walked into the camp. Instead of a fearful, shivering prisoner, or a corpse, he found a festival. His Lost Boys, his soldiers, his subjects, were not at their posts. They were clustered in groups, shouting over what appeared to be squares of parchment with markings on them. And in the center of it all, sitting on his log by his fire, was the girl. She was smiling, a weak, tired but genuine thing, as she explained a rule to a young boy.

They saw him. A cry of “Pan!” went up, and in a flash, his carefully honed authority was engulfed by a swarm of boys who abandoned their games to charge at him. “Pan! The new girl taught us this! It’s called War!” “She has a sweet called chocolate, Pan! You’ve got to try it!” “Don’t let her leave, Pan! Please, let her stay! She’s a bit weak with a sword, but don’t let her go! Don’t send her back!” “She made us more decks! Look!” Felix stood to the side, silent, his expression saying, I told you. It’s a disaster.

Peter Pan, the immortal boy who commanded the very magic of this island, who had faced down pirates and kings, stood frozen in a sea of pleading voices. His eyes met yours across the chaos. They were not the eyes of a boy. They were a deep, fathomless green, ancient and knowing, holding a sharp, predatory intelligence that made your blood run cold. The decision to cage you, to kill you, to banish you, warred on his face for a fleeting moment. He took in the scene, the boys’ joy, the crude but effective card games, your guarded but defiant posture.

A slow, impossibly charming smile spread across his lips, a smile that didn’t reach those ancient, calculating eyes. He held up his hands, and the boys fell silent. “Now, now,” he said, his voice a smooth, captivating melody that held the promise of adventure and the threat of absolute dominion. “What’s all this fuss about a guest I haven’t been properly introduced to?” He walked through the parting crowd of boys and stopped directly in front of you, tall and lithe, radiating a dark, magnetic power. His smile sharpened as he looked down at you, finally getting a close look at what had wandered into his territory.

“Welcome to Neverland,” Peter Pan said. “We’re going to have so much fun. We’ll start your training to survive this island at dawn.” His gaze flickered over you with an unnerving gleam.

The first night, you refused to sleep on the ground. It wasn't a tantrum, exactly. You had simply looked at the bed of leaves and moss the boys had prepared for you, then looked at the dark, crawling forest floor with its skittering insects and unseen things that rustled in the undergrowth, and you had crossed your arms. "No," you had said, your voice quiet but immovable. "I'm not sleeping on the dirt."

Felix had sneered, suggesting they tie you to a tree and let you sleep standing up. The other boys had looked bewildered, as if the concept of a bed was as foreign to them as chocolate had been. But Peter had only watched you with that unnerving, unreadable expression, his head tilted like a crow examining a shiny object. The next morning, a tree house stood at the edge of the camp. It was a sturdy, remarkable thing, woven from living branches and vines, with a roof of enormous palm fronds and a ladder that could be pulled up from the inside. A single, large leaf framed one wall like a window. He had built it with magic, with a flick of his wrist and a flash of green light, while the boys watched in awe.

"That's the only concession you'll get from me," he had said, appearing behind you so suddenly that you jumped. His breath was warm against your ear. "Don't ask for another."

It was the only concession he made. Your life in Neverland quickly settled into a brutal, exhausting rhythm. Dawn came early, and with it, Felix's club banging against the trunk of your tree, rousing you for training. The chocolate ran out within a week, and the sweet, fleeting joy it had brought was replaced by the grim reality of survival. You learned to hunt. You hated it. The first time you had to help skin a wild boar, you vomited behind a bush.

Peter had been there, leaning against a tree, watching your misery with a faint, amused smile. "You'll get used to it," was all he said. You did, eventually. You had to. You learned to fish in the sparkling streams, your hands clumsy at first with the crude poles and lines, until you could pull a silvery, thrashing fish from the water with grim efficiency. You learned to cook over an open fire, the taste of woodsmoke becoming a permanent fixture in your hair and clothes.

Then came the weapons. Felix oversaw most of this training, and he was a merciless instructor. He put a dagger in your hand first, teaching you how to grip it, how to slash, how to aim for the soft, vital parts of a body. The sword was heavier, and your arms ached for weeks as you learned the basic stances and strikes, the wooden practice blade leaving your palms blistered and raw. The crossbow was the worst. The string bit into your fingers, and your aim was abysmal for a long, frustrating time. The boys no longer called you too girly to play, but they still bested you in every sparring match, their laughter now tinged with a rough, brotherly kind of teasing rather than outright scorn.

You didn't complain much. You were too proud for that, too stubborn. But you did ask for things. Practical things. Your backpack had become a strange, sacred artifact in the camp, and you guarded its remaining contents. When the pack of wet wipes began to dwindle, you marched up to Peter where he sat on his log throne and held out the crinkly plastic package.

"I need more of these," you said, not a request but a statement. "And more of these." You produced a sanitary pad from your bag, holding it up without a trace of embarrassment. "They're essential."

Peter stared at the items with an expression of profound, almost comical bewilderment. He prodded the pad with one finger, his brow furrowed. "What is it?"

"You don't want to know," you said flatly. "Girls need it. Just make more."

He did. With a wave of his hand that suggested he was doing you an immense favor, he multiplied the items until you had a neat stack of them in your tree house. He never asked what they were for, and you suspected he genuinely preferred his ignorance. There were perks to it, you supposed, watching him wrinkle his nose and mutter something about strange girl contraptions.

One of those perks was your perfume. It was a bottle filled with pink, sweetly scented water, a little luxury you'd grabbed on a whim when packing. The body wash you used had the same floral fragrance, a scent of peonies and freesia that clung to your skin long after you bathed in the secluded stream the boys had shown you. The first time Peter came close to you after you'd used it, he stopped dead. His eyes fluttered half-closed, and he inhaled deeply, a sound rumbling low in his chest that was almost a purr.

"What is that?" he demanded, his voice strangely rough.

"It's called perfume," you said warily.

"Give it to me."

You refused, clutching the bottle protectively. Instead, you allowed him to refill it with magic when it began to run low. He did it without a single sneer or barbed comment, his fingers brushing yours for a moment too long as he handed the now-full bottle back to you. After that, he found excuses to stand close to you, his presence a constant, unnerving warmth at your back. You would catch him leaning in, his nose almost brushing your hair, his breath hitching slightly as he drank in the scent of you.

Your most valuable skill, it turned out, was not your slowly improving aim with a crossbow or your ability to gut a fish. It was your mind. You became an educator. It started by accident. One of the younger boys, the dirt-smeared one named Thomas, had picked up a stick and was scratching meaningless shapes into the dirt. You had crouched beside him and, without thinking, drawn a letter. "That's an 'A'," you'd said. "It makes the sound 'ah'."

Within a week, half the camp was gathered around you every evening, scratching letters into the dirt with intense concentration. You taught them the alphabet. You taught them how to write their names. The crude playing cards you'd made were now labeled with words, their games becoming more complex as they learned to read simple sentences.

Then came the stories. You told them tales from books you'd read, carefully sticking to the fantasy genre. Narnia was a hit. Middle-earth was met with gasps of wonder. You tried once to explain the concept of the internet, and the blank, baffled stares you received made you abandon the attempt entirely. Magic and dragons and dark lords they understood. Wi-Fi signals and electricity were a step too far.

Peter watched these sessions from the edges, his arms crossed, his expression unreadable. Then, one evening, after the boys had dispersed to their own shelters, he materialized in your tree house without warning. You were braiding your damp hair, the scent of your floral soap thick in the small space. He stood by your leaf-window, looking uncharacteristically stiff.

"Teach me," he said. It wasn't a request.

"Teach you what?"

"To read. And to write." His jaw tightened, a flicker of something old and bitter passing through his ancient green eyes. "I wanted to learn. When I was a boy. But education wasn't for peasants like me."

There was a raw, unexpected vulnerability in the admission. You didn't trust it for a second, but you found yourself nodding anyway. "Alright. Sit down."

The Lost Boys, in the meantime, had been conducting their own investigations. They had noticed your jewelry first, the small gold studs in your ears and the delicate chain around your neck. Gold was gold, and in their experience, only nobility possessed such things. Then Devin had picked up your jacket, the one you'd shed during a particularly grueling training session, and had spilled water on it. The water beaded up and rolled off without soaking the fabric. He had screamed as if he'd witnessed a miracle. Your backpack and boots received the same treatment, both proving to be mysteriously water-resistant.

"You're a noble lady," Felix had declared, his voice carrying a note of grim certainty. "You have to be. Common folk don't have enchanted garments."

You had tried to explain the concept of a middle class, of merchants and trade and a comfortable life that wasn't nobility. Their faces remained blank, uncomprehending. Feudalism, it seemed, was the only economic system their minds could grasp. "My family has merchants in our lineage," you finally said, simplifying as best you could. "We're not nobles. Just…traders who can afford to buy such things."

"Merchant nobility," one of the boys said sagely, and the matter was settled.

So Peter came to your tree house. It became a ritual. He had a nasty habit of appearing out of nowhere, slipping through the shadows or simply popping into existence with a soft crackle of magic. You would be tidying your small space, or mending a tear in your shirt with clumsy stitches, and suddenly he would be there, too close, filling the room with his presence and the scent of the forest.

He would sit beside you on the woven mat you used as a bed, his thigh almost touching yours, and you would trace letters onto a piece of smooth bark you used as a slate. "A, B, C," you would say, pointing to each one. "Now you write them."

His handwriting was surprisingly elegant, his quick mind picking up the shapes with unnerving speed. He learned the alphabet in three days. Within a fortnight, he was reading simple words. Within a month, he was devouring the scraps of paper you wrote stories on, his lips moving silently as he sounded out the sentences. He was brilliant, and it infuriated you.

He liked you. It was obvious in the way he looked at you, in the way he always found a reason to touch you. His hand would brush yours as you passed him a writing stick. His fingers would trail over your shoulder as he leaned in to look at something you'd written. He pressed close to you during your lessons, his chest almost against your back, his breath warm on your neck as he inhaled your scent. He twisted strands of your hair around his fingers idly, a gesture so intimate it made your skin prickle.

And then he kissed you. It was after a particularly successful lesson, when he had read an entire short story you'd written for him without stumbling over a single word. He had looked up at you with a triumphant, boyish grin, and then his hand had cupped your jaw and his mouth was on yours. It was surprisingly gentle, his lips warm and coaxing. You allowed it, your heart beating a steady, unimpressed rhythm. When he pulled back, his eyes searching your face for a reaction, you simply looked at him.

"If you possess such great magic," you said, your voice perfectly even, "you could send me back home."

His expression flickered, the warmth in his eyes cooling. "I told you. My shadow refuses to obey that order."

"Then make it obey. You're Peter Pan. Doesn't everything on this island bend to your will?"

He pulled back, a muscle in his jaw twitching. "The shadow brought you here for a reason. It doesn't do things without purpose. Maybe," he said, his voice lowering, "you're meant to be here."

You sulked. You couldn't help it. The unfairness of it all crashed over you in a wave, and you turned away from him, your shoulders hunched. You expected anger. You expected punishment. Peter Pan was not a creature known for his patience or his mercy. But the punishment didn't come. There was only a long, tense silence, and then the soft sound of him disappearing, leaving you alone with your fury and your stubborn, unbroken will.

He had learned, it seemed. Punishing you only made you bitter. When he had tried, in those early days, to cage you or deny you food or set Felix on you with extra training drills, you had responded not with fear or submission, but with a cold, simmering spite that made you even more unmanageable. Your fear of him was real, but it was a cautious, rational thing, the kind of fear one felt for a dangerous predator in the woods. It never grew into the cowering terror he was used to inspiring. It was always quickly overshadowed by your anger, your defiance, your icy indifference.

You didn't even seem to fear death. He had hinted at it once, a veiled threat wrapped in a charming smile, and you had looked at him with such flat, unimpressed disdain that he had actually laughed, a surprised, genuine sound.

You were nothing like poor, docile Wendy, whose spirit he had broken and whose story he had twisted. This girl, this strange, impossible creature from another world, was made of something harder.

You had run away from home, he knew. You had told him as much during one of your lessons, the words offered up with a shrug, as if it were a trivial detail. A typical story, he had thought. Children ran away. Boys found their way to him. But you had a destination. A grandmother. A plan. You weren't lost in the way the others had been lost. You weren't abandoned or forgotten or wishing for a new life. You had been heading somewhere with purpose and hope.

Why had his shadow snatched you up?

The question gnawed at him. It was a splinter in his mind, an anomaly he couldn't explain or control. The shadow had always been an extension of his will, a dark servant bound by their ancient bargain. The boy who would be Pan, tired of being an adult, tired of caring for his little brother while their father drank away their coin, had made a deal. The shadow had brought him here, to eternal youth, to power, to a world where he answered to no one. All he had to do was leave Rumpelstiltskin behind. It had been the easiest decision of his life.

But now the shadow was defying him. It had brought a girl. It had brought you. And it refused to explain why, refused to take you back, refused to obey. The mystery festered, and so did his growing, possessive obsession with you.

You demanded to speak to the shadow yourself. You cornered him one evening, your arms crossed, your chin lifted in that defiant way that made him want to kiss you and shake you in equal measure. "I want to talk to it," you said. "Your shadow. I want to ask it myself why it brought me here."

"No." The word was immediate, sharp.

"Why not? It's my life. I have a right to know."

He knew what you would do. You would demand the shadow take you home. You would beg it, bargain with it, command it. And if it listened? If it obeyed you where it defied him?

The thought made his stomach clench with a cold, unfamiliar dread. He didn't want to part with you. Not anymore. The answers to the mystery be damned; he wanted to keep you, with your floral scent and your sharp tongue and your stories and your stubborn, unbreakable spirit.

But you wouldn't let it go. You argued. You reasoned. You used that maddening, logical tone that made his head ache. You wore him down, day after day, until his refusal became a weary, frustrated silence. And eventually, he agreed.

"Fine," he snapped, his eyes flashing a dangerous green. "You can speak to it. But I will be there. Supervising. And if you try anything..."

"You'll what?" you interrupted, raising an eyebrow. "Kill me? You've already established I don't care."

He had no response to that. He simply stared at you, his jaw tight, his ancient eyes burning with a mixture of fury and something far more vulnerable. Tomorrow, he would take you to the skull cave. Tomorrow, you would speak to his shadow. And whatever answers it gave you, whatever you asked of it, he would have to find a way to keep you here, on his island, in his world, by his side.

The Skull Cave was exactly as its name suggested. Carved into the face of a cliff at the island's heart, its entrance was shaped like a massive, gaping skull, the eye sockets dark and hollow, the mouth a jagged maw that seemed to swallow the light. The air that breathed out of it was cold and dry and carried a faint, mineral scent, like old stone and older magic.

Peter led you inside without a word. His hand found your elbow as you stepped into the darkness, his grip firm but not painful. Torches flared to life along the walls as he passed, green flames that cast dancing shadows across the rough stone. The cave opened into a vast chamber, and there, at its center, the shadow waited.

It hung in the air like a tear in reality, a man-shaped void that absorbed the torchlight rather than reflecting it. It had no face, but you could feel its attention on you, weighty and unnerving. The temperature in the chamber seemed to drop by several degrees.

"Speak, then," Peter said, his voice echoing in the cavernous space. He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall, his posture deliberately casual, but his eyes were sharp and watchful.

You stepped forward, your heart hammering in your chest. The shadow didn't move, but you felt its regard intensify.

"You brought me here," you said, proud of how steady your voice sounded. "I want to know why. I wasn't lost. I wasn't alone. I had a destination, a family waiting for me. I wasn't like the others you've taken. So why me?"

The shadow was silent for a long moment. Then it spoke, and the sound of its voice made the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. It was like a rasp drawn over gravel, like wind through dead leaves, like the echo of a scream heard from very far away.

"No."

The single word was flat, final. It offered no explanation, no elaboration.

"No?" you repeated, a flare of anger cutting through your fear. "That's it? You took me from my life, you dragged me across the sky, you stranded me on this island, and all you can say is no?"

The shadow didn't respond. It simply hung there, implacable and silent, a monument to your frustration.

"Take me back," you said, and now your voice was harder, more demanding. "If you won't explain, then undo it. Take me back to where you found me. Take me to my grandmother. Take me anywhere but here."

"No," the shadow said again, and this time there was something almost amused in its rasping tone, as if your demands were a source of mild entertainment.

You took a step closer to it, your hands balled into fists. "Why?" you demanded. "Why did you even bring me here in the first place? What was the point?"

The shadow shifted. It was a subtle movement, a turning of its featureless head, and you realized with a chill that it was no longer looking at you. It was looking past you, at the figure leaning against the cave wall. Its arm lifted, a dark slash against the green torchlight, and one long, insubstantial finger pointed directly at Peter.

"For Malcolm," it rasped.

The name hit the chamber like a thunderclap.

You turned, confused, and saw that Peter had gone absolutely still. The color had drained from his face, leaving him pale as bone. His green eyes were wide, his lips slightly parted, and for the first time since you had met him, he looked genuinely, utterly shaken. The arrogant boy was gone. In his place was something older, something rawer, something that had been buried for a very long time.

"Malcolm?" you repeated, looking between the shadow and Peter. "Who is Malcolm?"

Peter didn't answer. He was staring at the shadow with an expression you couldn't quite decipher. Rage, yes. But also something that looked almost like grief.

"Nobody," he said finally, his voice rough. "Nobody has called me that in a very long time."

Understanding dawned, slow and unsettling. "Malcolm is your name," you said. "Your real name. Before you were Peter Pan."

He pushed himself off the wall, his movements stiff and controlled. "We're done here," he said, and his voice brooked no argument. He grabbed your arm, his grip tighter than before, and began to pull you toward the cave entrance. The shadow made no move to follow. It simply hung there as Peter dragged you back into the light.

He didn't speak as you walked. The jungle closed around you, thick and green and humming with life, but the silence between you was heavier than any words. You could feel the tension radiating off him, a coiled, restless energy that made the very air around him feel charged.

It was only when you reached a small, sun-dappled clearing with a waterfall cascading into a crystal pool that he finally stopped. He released your arm and walked to the water's edge, his back to you. His shoulders were rigid, his hands clenched at his sides.

"My name was Malcolm," he said, his voice flat and distant, as if he were reciting a story that belonged to someone else. "A long time ago. In another life."

You didn't speak. You sensed that any interruption would shatter whatever fragile openness had taken hold of him.

"I had a father," he continued. "A drunk. He spent what little coin we had in the tavern, leaving me to look after my little brother. Rumplestiltskin. He was just a baby. Crying, always crying. Needing to be fed, to be changed, to be held. And I was just a boy myself. But there was no one else. So I became the parent, the provider, the one who had to be responsible while our father drank himself into oblivion."

He paused, his voice growing harder. "I hated it. I hated him. I hated the weight of it, the endless, grinding burden of having to be an adult when I was still a child. I wanted to play. I wanted to be free. I wanted to be powerful and youthful and make my own rules, not spend my days scraping together coppers for bread while my father wasted our future on ale."

You watched his back, the rigid line of his spine, and something in your chest tightened. You knew that feeling. The suffocating weight of responsibility. The desperate, clawing need to escape. You had felt it yourself, in the house you had fled, with the mother who had never understood you.

"The shadow came to me one night," Peter said. "It offered me a deal. It would take me to a place where I could be a boy forever, where I would never have to grow up, never have to be responsible for anyone but myself. All I had to do was leave my brother behind." His voice dropped, barely above a whisper. "So I did."

You moved then, stepping closer to him, your footsteps soft on the mossy ground. "What happened to him?" you asked quietly. "To Rumplestiltskin?"

"Three weaver women," Peter said, with a dismissive wave of his hand that didn't quite hide the tremor in his fingers. "I left him in the cottage. They took him in, raised him. I told myself that was enough. That he was better off without me. That I was too young, too selfish, too broken to be what he needed." His voice hardened again, the mask sliding back into place. "I don't regret it. I made the right choice. I got what I wanted. I got Neverland."

You stood beside him now, close enough to see the profile of his face, the way his jaw was clenched, the way his eyes were fixed on the waterfall as if it held the secrets of the universe. He was lying. Maybe he believed his own lies, but you could see the cracks in them, the places where the truth bled through.

You didn't judge him. You were surprised to find that you couldn't. You had run away too. You had left your own family behind, your own responsibilities, your own suffocating life. The difference was only in degree, not in kind. You understood the desperation that had driven him, even if you couldn't condone the choice he had made.

You should have been angry. You should have raged at the unfairness of it, the cosmic injustice of being stolen from your life to serve as some kind of gift for an immortal tyrant. But standing there in the dappled sunlight, watching the waterfall cascade into the pool, you found that your anger had drained away, leaving something quieter in its wake. Resignation, perhaps. Or something more complicated.

You hadn't judged him aloud. Perhaps he had seen it in your eyes anyway, but he had chosen to ignore it. His mood suddenly improved. The shadow wouldn't take you away. That was all that mattered to him. He kissed you freely, his hands cupping your face, his mouth warm and insistent. "Make peace with it," he had murmured against your lips. "Living in Neverland. With me."

That night, he had stayed. He had stretched out beside you on your narrow cot, his lean body pressed against yours, his face buried in the curve of your neck. He had nuzzled your soft skin, inhaling your floral scent with a contented, almost purring sound, and had fallen asleep with one arm draped over your waist. You had lain awake for hours, your mind churning, the weight of him both oppressive and strangely warm.

Then, at midnight, the shadow came.

You had finally drifted off, exhaustion dragging you under, when a cold draft woke you. Your eyes snapped open. The leaf-window was dark, the moonlight thin and pale. And there, standing at the foot of your cot, was the shadow. It was a silhouette of absolute blackness, its edges sharp and flickering like a flame made of darkness. It raised one hand and gestured to you, a beckoning, urgent motion.

Peter slept on, his breathing deep and even, his arm still heavy across you. He didn't stir. He didn't sense the shadow's presence at all.

Slowly, carefully, you slid out from under his arm. The shadow didn't wait. As soon as your feet touched the woven floor, it lunged forward, its cold, insubstantial hands gripping you under your arms. You didn't scream this time. You barely even gasped. The tree house, the camp, the sleeping island fell away beneath you as the shadow shot upwards into the star-scattered sky. The wind whipped your hair around your face, cold and sharp, and you squeezed your eyes shut against the dizzying speed.

When your feet touched solid ground again, you opened your eyes to a place you had never seen before in the skull cave. It was vast and cathedral-like. The air was thick with the scent of earth and something else, something ancient and decaying and faintly sweet. In the center of the cavern stood an enormous hourglass. It was taller than three men, its frame wrought from what looked like twisted, petrified wood. Sand trickled through it, a steady, whispering stream, but the sand was not sand. It glowed faintly, each grain a tiny ember of dying light.

The upper chamber of the hourglass was nearly empty. The sand was running out.

The shadow stood before the hourglass, its form flickering in the gloom. It raised one dark arm and pointed, not at the hourglass, but at you. Then its voice came again, that same rasping, distorted sound that scraped against your eardrums like fingernails on slate.

"His time is running out," it said. "And so is Neverland's."

You stared at the hourglass, at the dwindling stream of glowing sand, and a cold, creeping dread settled into your bones. "Explain," you whispered, your voice barely audible over the soft hiss of falling sand.

The shadow did. Its voice was halting, fragmented, as if speech was a difficult and unfamiliar effort, but the meaning was clear. Neverland was not meant to be inhabited. It was a place people only visited in their dreams, a fleeting fantasy, a wisp of imagination. Peter had broken that balance when he came here, flesh and blood and magic, and he had broken it further with every Lost Boy he brought to the island. The magic of Neverland was not infinite. It was draining, bleeding out grain by grain into the void. Time did not stand still here, not truly. It only moved more slowly, imperceptibly, a clock winding down towards zero.

"When the sand runs out," the shadow rasped, "Neverland will die. And Peter is connected to it. Its magic is his magic. Its life is his life. He will die with it."

The words hit you like a physical blow. You thought of Peter's ancient eyes in his boy's face, the way he commanded the island with a flick of his wrist, the way the very trees seemed to bend to his will. He had tied himself to this place, or it had tied itself to him. Either way, the cord could not be severed.

"There is a way to stop it," the shadow continued, its empty face somehow managing to convey a grim urgency. "The heart of the truest believer. In your realm. If Peter finds it, and if it is willingly given to him, the clock will stop. The magic will be restored. Peter Pan never fails." The shadow's voice held no admiration, only a cold, factual certainty. "Felix says it often. It is true. He will find it."

You swallowed, your throat dry. "Then why did you bring me here? If he's going to find this heart anyway, why am I here?"

The shadow was silent for a long moment. When it spoke again, its voice was softer, almost reluctant. "Because there is another way. The most powerful magic of all. True love's kiss."

The words hung in the air, shimmering with a meaning you didn't want to understand. The shadow pointed at you, its dark finger aimed at your chest.

"I saw you in Storybrooke. I sensed the potential, seized the opportunity, brought you to him instead of the boy. True love's kiss could save Neverland. It could restore the magic, stop the clock, break the curse of dying time." It paused, and when it spoke again, its rasping voice was heavy with a bitter, knowing irony. "But you do not love him. And Peter barely knows what love is."

A choked, disbelieving laugh escaped your lips. Love. The shadow had brought you here, ripped you from your world, because of some theoretical, magical potential for love? You didn't love Peter. You were fascinated by him, perhaps. Repelled by him, often. You pitied the desperate, abandoned boy he had been, and you were wary of the dangerous, manipulative creature he had become. But love? The word was a foreign, impossible thing in this context.

"He doesn't know," you breathed, understanding dawning. "You didn't tell him about the true love's kiss part."

The shadow shook its head, a jerky, unnatural motion. "He would not understand. He only knows the heart of the truest believer. That is the path he walks."

Before you could ask another question, before you could demand more answers, the shadow stiffened. Its form flickered, its edges blurring. "He wakes," it rasped. "He searches. You must go back."

The flight back was a blur of cold wind and streaking stars. The shadow deposited you silently at the base of your tree house and melted away into the darkness, leaving you shivering and alone. You climbed the ladder with trembling hands, your mind reeling, and had barely pulled it up behind you when the air crackled with green light and Peter appeared in the center of your small room.

His hair was disheveled, his eyes wild, his chest heaving as if he had run across the entire island. The moment he saw you, the wildness in his expression shifted, relief and fury warring. "Where were you?" he demanded, his voice cracking with an anger that was almost panic. "I woke up and you were gone. I searched the whole island. I thought..." He stopped, his jaw clenching. "What did it do? Did it try to take you away?"

"It showed me the hourglass," you said, your voice flat. There was no point in lying. He would see through it, and you were too exhausted for games. "In the skull cave. It told me your time is running out. That Neverland is dying. That you'll die with it."

Peter went still. The wild panic in his eyes cooled, hardening into something sharp and defensive. "It shouldn't have shown you that," he hissed. "It had no right."

"It said you're looking for the heart of the truest believer," you pressed, watching his face carefully. "That you need it to stop the clock."

He stared at you for a long moment, his expression unreadable. Then, slowly, the tension bled out of his shoulders. He stepped closer, and reached up to tuck a strand of wind-tangled hair behind your ear. His touch was surprisingly gentle.

"Is that what you're worried about?" he asked, and there was a hint of his usual arrogance creeping back into his voice. "Don't be. I will find it. I will find the heart of the truest believer, and I will take it, and the clock will stop. Peter Pan never fails." He smiled, that charming, predatory smile that never reached his ancient eyes. "There's nothing to worry about."

He made it sound so simple. So inevitable. You wanted to believe him, or at least to take comfort in his unwavering confidence. But the shadow's words echoed in your mind, a dark counterpoint to his golden assurances. You do not love him. And Peter barely knows what love is. There was another way to save Neverland, a way that had nothing to do with truest believers or willingly given hearts. But it was a way that neither of you could reach, a door that was locked from both sides.

Peter misinterpreted your silence. He leaned in and pressed a kiss to your forehead, his lips cool against your skin. "Come back to bed," he murmured. "You're shivering."

He led you back to the cot, pulling you down beside him, wrapping his arms around you with almost desperate tightness. He buried his face in your hair and breathed deeply, as if reassuring himself that you were still there, still his. Within minutes, his breathing evened out, his body relaxing into sleep.

You did not sleep. You lay in the darkness, wrapped in the arms of a boy who was running out of time, and you thought about love, and sacrifice, and the dying grains of sand falling endlessly in the heart of a cave. The shadow had brought you here for a reason, a reason Peter didn't know and couldn't understand. But knowing the reason and fulfilling it were two very different things. You could not force yourself to love him. You could not magically manufacture a true love's kiss. And even if you could, even if by some miracle your heart softened, what then? Would you be trapped here forever, a living battery for a dying island?

You had run away from one cage. You had no intention of being locked in another.

a/n: To be continued... Likes, reblogs and comments are appreciated. <3

a/n: You can donate on Ko-fi, your support helps me write more: https://ko-fi.com/catbayunthestoryteller <3

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