Since the beginning there has been no sign of the Lost Boys, of Felix, of Hook, or even of Baelfire. After the first few years (he assumes that that time was measured in years; life in Storybrooke can only lead him to wonder) he gave up on searching.
He wants to forget. Forget it all, wash Neverland from his skin; erase the memories of running through forests, daggers clanging against swords, explosions of canons off the coast of the sea, wind rushing past his ears, wild birds in flight—take it all from his bones and shake it from his soul.
More than an eternity of solitude in Storybrooke, more than the loss of his magic, and more than the actual curse that sent them all to this hellhole, it is remembering that is the worst—it is his own curse. He is torn between the rupturing in his head and his dreams that pull him towards Neverland and his physical presence which pulls him to the ground. It is the trapped feeling inside the town, the clashing lives inside his head, the longing for the one thing he cannot have—
(Wendy, his mind whispers and his fists clench because he wants to believe all he really wants, all he needs is controlmagicpower)
—and the bitter taste of defeat and of everything he's lost that make life here unbearable. Nothing here holds any semblance to Neverland. Regina is untouchable, and Gold's shop has nothing, not even as much as a bough of dreamshade. It's different for him. He sees everyone as who he knew them as in the other world and he's the only one who can see beyond Regina's spell and heknows and hates that it's set in stone. He'd scoured every inch of the town, yet it always came back to him in the end. Alone. Remembering. With her as the only thing left from Neverland.
(always has and always will be her)
They call her Chloe.
Her hair, though a lot less unruly than it was in Neverland, is still the same shade of honeycomb gold infused with the smallest dash of auburn, and it still catches the rays of the sun with her every movement. She still looks like the girl who wove stories out of starlight and released them into the Neverland sky for the Lost Boys to keep. Her eyes are as big as they are innocent, and when she looks at him, her eyes are no longer tainted with what she believes to be a hard hatred.
(it's not hatred and it's not fondness, but something else entirely that has spanned centuries)
She's prettier, he supposes, and she smiles more now. She keeps to herself, with sort of a quiet air around her and she's one of those people no one, not even him, really knows much about. The kind of girl who spends her Saturdays at the pet shelter or at the library. He wouldn't call her timid—he'd once seen her bring a boy his age who was bullying her brothers and their gang of friends to tears, but she's not the same feisty bird he remembers her to be.
He chuckles darkly. Maybe the mayor's still got a little humor left in her, what with putting Wendy Darling in New England, and all that.
She lives on 14 Maple Street, right off the corner of Main Street, in a white picket fenced house, the kind he's always imagined she'd live in. He knows her parents are John and Mary Kensington, and on every other Wednesday she plays piano and babysits Henry, the son of the devi—queen, he corrects himself with grinding teeth.
Sometimes when he's feeling bored—okay, a lot of the times when he's feeling bored—he'll cross over her in the hallways, or nudge her armful books so that they spill to the ground, or cut in front of her in the cafeteria lines.
"My bad," he smiles at her apologetically, hidden games lingering in his words.
She'll roll her eyes and brush past him or look down at her feet with a mixture of fear and curiosity before pulling away. He never knows which side of her he'll encounters and that's what keeps it interesting. With them, it's a constant game of push and pull, and even though he was never good with keeping up with time to begin with, he's vaguely aware that it's the curse that makes everything seem cyclic. She's drawn to him and her ill-concealed blushes when he catches her staring at him in class don't suggest otherwise.
"I don't know what his problem is," he hears her lamenting to Ashley one time as she's perched by her locker.
"Chloe, he's still pretty attractive for a stalker."
"That doesn't give him the right to harass me in the hallways," she groans.
"Don't forget the cafeteria and in the classrooms," Ashley adds nonchalantly whilst leaning on the wall. "You can't keep denying that you like him forever."
"He's a demon in a teenage boy with a hot accent."
But then things start changing in Storybrooke.
He can't identify what it is but it begins as a slow trepid sensation bubbling in the bottom of his stomach that works its way up to his spine and the rest of his body. Emma Swan comes to town and things are different with Chloe and he realizes the feeling is not coming from his gut but from the hollow spaces of his cold blackened heart. He's drawn so strongly and there is a force uncontrollably pulling him to her. Tripping her in the hallways turns to opening the doors for her in class and observing her from a far every now and then becomes walking with her to the library of Saturday mornings.
She offers to tutor him in Math. He accepts because he's failing and the only thing worse than being stuck in Storybrooke forever would be being stuck in high school forever. He still doesn't understand any of this algebra, and why he needs to solve for any unknown. In Neverland he dealt with any unknowns by crushing them in the palm of his hand. It's exhilarating and deadly and everything he loves and hates and he just wants to win this game.
They're at the docks when it happens.
She's spent a good portion of the last half hour trying to explain the same number to him but it's pointless. His frustration only increases because no one can be this patient and the more she tries to explain, the more the numbers jumble themselves into meaningless knots in his head. The pencil he's holding in his hand splits into two because of the sheer force of how hard he's gripping it and he swears loud enough to make some bystanders look up. Beside him, she is a shadow of her other self and he wonders briefly how anyone in this town can be so unaware of the other world, without any inkling of their other selves, cursed or not. She reaches for his hand unsurely, her hand familiarly warm on top of his, and looks into his eyes, really looks into them for the first time in 28 years, and says four words.
"I believe in you."
He kisses her, or maybe she kisses him—he's not all too sure in that moment—but something inside of him snaps and it's the thing in his memory, the part of himself that breathes the island, tying him down to centuries in Neverland and its eternity of youth because when they pull apart, lightheaded, after what feels like hours and hours of being plunged underwater, he doesn't remember.
"Lucas," her face breaks into a slow and unsure smile.
("Peter," she would've said in another life)
(they do not break the curse then but it is enough for a beginning they never had)
A/N: This can also be found on my tumblr (cheschi dot tumblr dot com) and on AO3 (cheschi). Title was taken from Bastille's Laughter Lines.
Happy holidays everybody!