I don't own Peter Pan or any of the characters in the book/movie.
She curled up in a ball, tears dripping off the end of her nose, squeezing them out of her eyes every time she blinked, trying to keep them in, but failing miserably. Her muffled sobs were not heard by her parents, for she had none. They had either died or left her, but she had lived at an orphanage for most of her life, until when she was 13, she realized she could find more food and love on her own than the caretakers at the orphanage ever gave her. So she left. The London streets were cold and drab, but at least she wasn't locked up, forced to work for the two bowls of gruel and the thin, watery soup she received each day. Water was rationed out strictly, and she never had lost the itchy, scratchy sensation that made her cough every time she swallowed. She couldn't imagine life getting any worse than at the orphanage.
But it had.
"Martha?"
God, she hated that name. Martha. It was so plain and ordinary. Just like the rest of the orphanage. There was no note when she and her twin sister had arrived at the orphanage as babies, so the nurses decided to name the girls themselves. They chose Martha and Magdalen, but everyone called her Maggie for short. As luck would have it, her sister got the pretty name.
"Marthaaaa?" My sister whined a little more this time. Martha groaned and rolled over on her cot, the thin blanket barely keeping back the chills.
"What is it, Maggie?" She tried to wipe the sleep from her eyes, but she found herself drifting back to the black nothingness that made her life worth living.
"Tell me about Mamma."
Magdalen knew that she and Martha were twins, but Martha had managed to convince her sister that she had faint recollections of their dear, sweet mother. In Martha's honest opinion, she felt her parents had to be bastards, considering the fact that they were left on the god-forsaken door of the poorest orphanage in London. Who cares if it werethe only one? The poorest parents could take better care of them than this place could. But Martha would never allow her sister to think or speak badly of their parents. They needed hope, and hope that their mother had been a wonderful lady was the only hope they had at this point in their lives.
"Oh, Maggie, Momma was the sweetest mother a girl could ever have. She would tuck us in at night, running around making sure the pillows were fluffed just right, and kissing us on the forehead before turning off the lights. Sometimes, she would tell us bedtime stories."
"What were the stories about?" Magdalen interrupted. Martha ignored that and continued.
"They were such lovely stories. Stories of pirates and little girls and boys who didn't have to work, but got to learn to read and write and after school were able to sit at a table with wonderful food their momma and poppa made for them. There were mermaids and sailors and fairies. It was absolutely magical."
She turned over in her cot again, and the creaking covered her sister's snoring, but she heard it once she got settled. Smiling, she snuggled as much as she could into her concrete mattress and tried to fall asleep. Several hours later, she succeeded.
The sky was grey and cloudy before Martha decided to heave her aching body out of the gutter. Leaves stuck to her clothing, but she was too tired and groggy to try to brush them off. She wished she could remember what happened, but the last thing she remembered was her head hitting the Commons lawn, the biggest park in London. Unfortunately, how she got so high up in the air to get a concussion from falling, she could not remember.
Her stomach growled, and Martha clutched it, trying to ease the pain. She hadn't eaten for 12 hours, and her body was letting her know. She found a garbage can and decided to jump in. Leafing through the newspapers and moldy greens, she eventually landed a brown apple core that someone had obviously thought was too bitter for them to eat. Taking a bite, she almost spit it out, it was so mushy, but she was too hungry to waste any sort of nourishment.
After finishing the apple, she stood up to get out of the bin. It was about five feet to the top of the bin, and then three feet on the other side to the box which she climbed up to begin with to get into the trash can. She needed a boost.
"Maggie!" She called out before she could remember the fact that Maggie wasn't with her anymore. Maggie always helped her out of the huge trash bins. It's kind of why she left, actually...
Martha was dumpster diving for the fifteenth time that day, but she couldn't seem to find anything that would be of any sustainable nourishment. When she resurfaced, Magdalen had a hopeful look in her eye, which died as soon as she saw Martha come up empty handed.
"Martha, I'm starving here," Maggie whined. She looked like she was about to cry.
"Do you think I'm full? Why don't you go into the trash for a change?" Martha huffed as she wriggled up out of the bin, and picked up the loot that they had managed to find, namely a juice box filled with backwash and a melon rind. She had heard somewhere that those were poisonous, but at this stage in the game, she wasn't sure she cared.
"At least at the orphanage, we had regular meals." Magdalen sounded bitter.
"Excuse me?" Martha stopped to stare at her sister. "At the orphanage, we had nothing. Nothing! I helped us escape a cage of entrapment and helped us gain at least a path to something of a future-"
"A future?" Maggie scoffed. "What future? Digging through garbage cans? Eating old melon rinds and juice boxes?"
"Well, technically, you drink the juice boxes..."
"IT DOESN'T MATTER, MARTHA!" Maggie shouted. Tears were flowing down her face. "I'm done," she whispered.
"I was just kidding-wait, what?" Martha stood in shock. "Maggie." She couldn't believe after all these months of surviving together, much less all those years living together, her sister would run off like this. "Maggie, don't go." Martha felt tears flowing down her face. It didn't help that it now started to rain, the drops mingling with the tears on her face.
"Maybe once you figure out how to survive on enough food for more than one, I'll come back."
"You're almost sixteen; they'll either kick you out or marry you off!" Martha saw a flicker of fear in Maggie's eyes, but it was soon replaced with resolution.
"At least I'll be fed." And with those words, Magdalen was gone.
Thank you DOCTORSINTHETARDIS for your review. Please, guys, go and read their first fanfic, Beneath the Skin (Rise of the Guardians), and welcome this wonderful writer into the family! Also SweetToothForLife left a lovely review, so please go read her fanfic May the King Fall. It is so riveting!