The Arrow Saga: The Tale of the Sensitive
Disclaimer: I don't own Once Upon a Time or Peter Pan, or Peter Pan in Scarlet, for that matter.
A/N: Independent of everything else I've done for this fandom. AU as of 2X09.
The Curse
It wasn't even a plan. It was more like a last desperate bid for...for whatever he hoped to achieve. His lungs burned for air, but if he stopped running, he was dead. Something thwacked hard against a tree trunk. They were close. The trees began to thin out. If he made the beach, he was free.
His feet slid into the sand. He stumbled for a bit but kept running. An arrow whistled past his ear. He ducked and tripped over his own feet. He struggled to stand but was hastily and unceremoniously shoved aside. "What do you think you're doing?" He recognized the voice of the captain, and he looked up. "I said, what do you think you're doing?" He opened his mouth to speak but ended up coughing instead. The captain hoisted the boy to his feet by his upper arm. An arrow buried itself into the sand next to them. "Maybe there is a legitimate reason for you to run into me."
"I'm gonna die," the boy rasped.
The captain released him, and he collapsed to the sand. "Better keep running."
"Where do I go?"
The captain smirked. "You're a Lost Boy."
"Not anymore. That's why they're hunting me."
"So he finally tired of one of you. Like I said, keep running."
"And as I said, where do I go? They won't stop until I'm dead."
The captain grabbed the boy by the hair and jerked him up again. Then his eyes widened. "You're the little boy from the bar all those years ago, Milah's son. And that crocodile's." He snarled his last sentence and threw the boy to the ground. The arrow shaft snapped in two beneath his shoulder blades.
"His name is Rumpelstiltskin," the boy snapped.
"No wonder you're a Lost Boy." The boy kicked the captain's legs out from under him, rolled over on top of him, and punched him in the nose. Then he sat there, breathing heavily and staring at the captain's wide eyes and and the blood trickling down the side of his face.
"Listen to me, Hook," Bae snarled (for the first time in a long time, he felt like his old self), "you will not ever, EVER, insult my father again." Hook paled. "Do you understand?" The captain nodded, and Bae stood and stepped aside. Hook stood and dusted himself off with the hand that he still had. "Now, I'm getting off this island one way or another."
"And you assumed I'd help you," Hook said, raising an eyebrow.
"I knew you had a ship. If you kill me for being a stowaway, I'd rather that than be captured by that boy Pan. He makes you look like a saint."
"Excuse me while I try to figure out whether or not to thank you for that." Bae paused and looked around. "What is it this time?"
"They should've come by now," Bae said softly.
"They're lying in wait, toying with you."
Bae tipped his head toward the arrows in the sand. "Pretty sure they weren't toying with me then."
"All of life's a game to your lot."
The Lost Boy turned slowly toward the forest and then took a small step back. Hook's eyes slowly drifted away from the minor but persistent annoyance of a boy, and his irritation instantly dissolved into dread.
A rolling black cloud had smothered the forest and obscured the stars, and it was racing toward them. "What is that thing?" Hook asked.
"Not sure," Bae replied, "but I don't like it." The cloud swirled around them. Bae reached for it, but it recoiled from him. "Stay close to me. I don't think it will touch us."
"You're sure about this?"
"Positive."
Hook looked around at the cloud and then up at the column that it formed, with them at the center. He and Bae stood back to back, both staring at the top of the column, a circle of stars that danced like frightened fairies. Then the cloud obscured even these points of light. Bae put his hands to his temples, stumbled two steps, and collapsed. Hook turned toward him, and then he collapsed, as well.