There was this legend about Peter Pan. Peter Pan and the land of Neverland, the place where little children never grew up. A land of magic and adventure, of mermaids and pirates and Red Indians.
An amazing land where time stopped…where people were forgotten…where the dead came to rest, their bones creaking, their jaws rattling, hollow eye sockets staring out at a lost, distant dream. For who would think about the dead in a land where no one aged? Yet the reason why no one ages is because everyone is dead. It was a long-kept secret of Neverland, and Peter Pan was the only one who knew this secret, and he felt the burden of keeping it weigh him down, day by day.
It was easy to keep up the pretence. Who wouldn't want to come to Neverland? Mortals made the world sound like a dream, a dreamland specially crafted for little children. And little children, despite being the most astute out of all humans, were also the most naïve and the most gullible. It was easy to convince them to follow the nice flying stranger, follow him to a world which promised fantasy and adventure, a break from mundane lessons and chores and mortal hardships. It was so simple that it was almost pathetic – it was like leading blindfolded lambs to the butcher's knife.
He sometimes wondered if he could escape. If he could run away from tricking children, and lead a peaceful life away from Neverland, away from the dark overlords who ruled the place. Neverland – it was a play with words, a tragic, cruel pun – Never Land, don't ever come near the place. But most people simply thought of it as the land where people never grew older, never suffered hardship.
"Kagamine Len," a darkly familiar voice slithered through his mind, and he flinched, the coldness of the voice wrapping around him tightly like a cobra's kiss. "Why are you tarrying still in Neverland? Do your job – find a new child. Your masters and I grow…unsettled," it sounded almost placid, but he could sense the undertone of menace rippling through its words. He shuddered, drawing the old, tattered cloak he wore a little bit tighter around his body, before hurrying on his way. He worried.
He wondered how patient his masters were. He wondered whether they would ever turn on their word and take away his Lost Boys, the only ties he had left to his humanity. They were all he had left in this barren dystopia. They had promised – his masters had promised – that, as long as he was their good little pawn and did what they commanded, they would leave him and his Lost Boys alone. But how much faith could one place in demons? What else could his masters be other than demons?
He knew not what they were, and cared little to find out. All he knew was that they were all-seeing, all-knowing, and all-powerful, at least while in this realm. Their influence could not reach out to Earth. And that was where he came in. Him, Kagamine Len, their little child-servant – though he was hardly a child, in both appearance and wearied mentality – who flew almost nightly to Earth and brought back a child for their sustenance. He did not know what his masters did with each child, and he did not want to know. All he knew was, whoever entered Neverland would never leave again.
"Len," a voice called out as he hurried down the well-trodden old path, the shade of the gnarled old trees blocking the light of the moon. In Neverland, the nights were long and the days were short, and even when the sun shone through the twisted treetops the light was pale and watery, weak. It was a bleak place to live in, a cold and cruel land. He wished he could run away and not be tethered down to this place the way he was now. His Lost Boys were both his hope and his imprisonment.
He turned to face the voice, knowing who it was who had called for him. "Yes, Rei?" he asked, voice low, not quite daring to face the boy – whenever he was on a trip back to Earth, he never quite dared to look his Lost Boys in the eye, knowing that what he was doing to their brethren would be easily condemned by them. They would condemn him for his actions, for his selfishness. And he could not afford to be despised by them. He knew that he had little else left to live for.
"Are you going back to Earth?" the boy asked, picking his way through the dark foliage, pale hands spidery against the black leaves. He turned to face him fully now, leaving his hood up – he didn't want the boy to be able to see his eyes, because he was the perfect liar…until you saw his eyes. He had shifty eyes, they betrayed him whenever he tried to give utterance to a falsehood.
"Yes, I am. I haven't gone back in a while, I miss the place," the lie slipped out of his mouth as smoothly and easily as oil. The lie made him feel the same way oil would – clogged and weighed down, choking to death. "Do you have something you want me to do while on Earth?"
"Don't we always?" the boy's lips quirked up into a bitter sort of smile. "Gumo…wants you to have this," Rei reached out, holding a white envelope that, until that very moment, he had failed to notice in the darkness of the forest. "He misses his parents. He hopes that maybe one day his mother will write a reply. We all told him it's futile to hope, they're probably dead," Rei shrugged, indifferent, "but he carries on hoping. I honestly think that Gumo is the only reason any of us continue hoping."
Gingerly, he reached out, taking hold of the outstretched letter. He studied the envelope carefully, looking at the neat, tidy handwriting – Gumo's handwriting – and seeing how he had meticulously written down his old address, the name of his mother, how he had sealed the letter as carefully as he possibly could. He didn't know how to react other than to look back at Rei, who once again shrugged in that same, indifferent manner, before he turned around and started picking his way back through the trees. He sighed, then carefully put the letter away in the depths of his cloak.
He would not be delivering the letter on Gumo's behalf, though he knew that was the boy's greatest, deepest wish. He wanted to go home. He wanted to be reunited with his parents – with his mother, specifically, for he knew Gumo had never been very close to his father. When Gumo was taken to Neverland, his mother was terribly sick and his father was, as always, too busy to pay any attention to his son. In a fit of desperation, Gumo agreed to leave with the cheerful, persuasive, charming stranger who had shown up outside his bedroom window…to a land from which no one ever returned. Surprisingly, Gumo did not hate him, but he despised being trapped here against his will.
Then again, who didn't hate being stuck here? It was a bleak landscape, a murky future. There was nothing for them here other than death and misery. Oh, it certainly didn't start out that way. In the beginning, Neverland would give up its bounty – its promises of fun and eternal adventure, the place where children could forget all their problems, no matter how trivial and insignificant their problems might appear to be in the eyes of adults. But slowly, eventually, the fun and adventure…changed.
Children were the most astute out of all humans. They could see the most – they were, in their innocence and unknowingness, the closest to their true natures. They, out of all humans, were the least trapped in social prisons, the least cultivated in social norms. They listened to nothing but their own instincts, and after some time in Neverland, that was what their instincts whispered to them – that there was something dreadfully, terribly wrong with this place. That it wasn't truly the Paradise they had envisioned. That true Paradise had always been back on Earth, not in this…façade.
And that was when the illusion of never-ending, eternal joy faded, giving way to the truth of what Neverland was. It was Hell. It was the place bad children were sent to, naughty, unappreciative children. Those who didn't appreciate their lives on Earth. Only those who were tempted would agree to abandon their world – and those who were tempted were sinners. Neverland was an initial Eden, but it eventually fragmented into Hell – and he, Kagamine Len, was the serpent who tempted them into falling from grace. It was a role he despised, but a role that he was stuck in as surely as the children were stuck in Neverland. Try as he might, there was no way for him to leave it behind.
The only thing from the mortal Neverland story that held true was immortality, for those who were fortunate – or perhaps unfortunate – enough to escape the hunger of the masters were cursed with eternal youth. Youth, so they would remember. And eternal, so they would remember their regret and misery for all of time. That was what he was regretting. That was what all the Lost Boys were regretting. It was what tied them together, him and his band of bitter adults trapped in the bodies of children – the sharp, metallic taste of regret that lingered in their mouths no matter how much water they drank, no matter how sweet the food they tasted – it would never go away.
Perhaps child was an inaccurate term to describe the Lost Boys. Boys they might be called, but boys they were far from – Neverland did permit a slow type of ageing, and he suspected that the masters allowed this just to enjoy seeing them writhe in the confusion brought by hormonal changes in their bodies. As if the regrets of their pasts were not enough to haunt them. Now they were stuck as teenagers, bordering on adults – he wasn't sure what was their exact age but from appearances he would place all of them in the range between eighteen to twenty – and it seemed that they would stay this way forever, if the last fifty years were not indication enough of that.
The worst part was the desire, the animalistic urge to copulate, and not having any female body in the vicinity – other than the Red Indians, whom only Piko was ever desperate enough to go to for he had always been the least capable of restraining his banal urges. The women of the Indian tribes were rough and violent, treating their men like their dogs, and Piko always returned from such encounters for the worse. When he returned, he and the other Lost Boys would just quietly bathe and bandage his wounds. They would not berate him – how could they, when they understood his needs perfectly, and could feel his bitter, poisonous desperation wafting off him in waves?
"Oh, and Len, before I forget," he whipped around, rudely jolted out of his musings, and there stood the black haired boy again, sharp golden eyes piercing through the darkness right at him, "we were wondering if you would…bring another one to join us," something like pain flitted across his face. "We know that it is a…terrible request to ask of you, to ask of anyone, but we're…growing needy. We're lonely. Desperate. And you are all we have left to care for us, though we should no longer need to be cared for. If you can…bring a girl," his voice faded into a whisper. "Bring a girl our age – we won't mishandle her," he said quickly, in case his words were taken the wrong way. "Just as a companion. Piko specially requested for that. You know he was beat up pretty bad last night."
He pursed his lips. "Kagene Rei," he started, voice low as always, "you know what it's like to be stuck here and you would ask that I send another person, someone perfectly innocent, to this hellhole? Once she comes in, she will not be able to leave. Is that really something you want on your conscience, Rei? All of you? Will you take responsibility if she's not strong enough to survive here, if she gives in to the manic depression all of us fight everyday – will you take care of her if she goes insane and tries to kill all of us? Are you all ready to face the consequences of damning another?"
There was silence for a while as Rei stared at him, clearly thinking over his words. The boy was a great many years younger than him – he was by far the oldest of their group, maybe five or six hundred years old, he was not sure anymore – but Rei was the oldest of the four Lost Boys. Kagene Rei was three hundred, give or take a few decades, and he took the role of their leader when he was not around. Being the oldest, Rei was seen as the most mature out of all of them, and when it came to group decisions, Rei was always the one communicating the Lost Boys' combined desires to him.
Then those golden eyes hardened, narrowing into slits – challenging, defiant, a sign of emotion he had not seen in a while. "Bring her to us," he said, voice flat. He stared back at the dark haired boy, rightly questioning his decision. "Do it," Rei repeated, still in that same flat tone of voice. "We'll take care of her and any of the possible consequences that come with her arrival. If she goes mad, we will handle it too. Nero's always been good with the lunatics. And the other consequences you're talking about, that I know you're talking about…" Rei let out a bitter laugh. "We're already in Hell, Len. I don't think anything worse can happen to us now. We can't die anyway. At most we'll live with the eternal guilt of bringing a girl here to her doom – but is eternal guilt really new to any of us?"
He knew that Rei would not be swayed on his decision, so he let out a sigh and nodded his head, stepping over to the dark haired boy and quickly, firmly shaking his outstretched hand – a gesture of promise, though he knew that this was a promise he would regret making. Rei smiled – a small, half-hearted kind of smile, before wishing him good luck on his trip back and leaving the area, this time for good. He remained in the little clearing for a while, thinking about what he had done.
What had he done? What had he done that was so new anyway? The process of obtaining a new Lost Child was not up to him to decide. There was…something in lost children, something that the masters deemed unworthy of consumption, or whatever it was they did to the disillusioned children of Neverland. Something in the four boys who were still by his side that the masters did not want to take, and that was the only reason why they were still alive. He did not know what the masters were looking out for, and he knew that they would not tell him what for fear that he would continue bringing the same kind of child to Neverland and thus rob them of their obscene pleasures.
The Lost Boys were unaware of this presence of a greater entity in Neverland. They were under the impression that he was the mightiest person in this place, the one who governed whether they lived or died – metaphorically of course, given that they couldn't actually die – and that he was the one who decided who would join them as Lost Children, and who would not. He did not want to shatter their beliefs. It was better that they believed he was mighty. He didn't want them to worry over another presence in Neverland, greater than him – day-to-day survival was difficult enough for them, there was no need for them to have to fret over the presence of beings there weren't even really…there. The masters were there in voice, but he had never really seen their physical shapes before, always just hearing their voices in his head. He wondered if they were even real, sometimes.
Sometimes, he wondered whether he had just driven himself insane and was following the command of nothing other than mere voices in his head. But then he would think back to the cold, slithery, almost reptilian voice that hissed through his head whenever he was needed to follow an order, and he knew that there was absolutely no way he could have imagined a voice like that.
It was time to leave. He had delayed for long enough here. If he didn't leave soon, if he displeased the dark, sadistic masters of Neverland, they would punish him – with pain, with visions, with what he thought were almost prophecies of the future. He didn't want to know the future, didn't want to be burdened with such a tragedy. What could the future be other than an elaborate tragedy? It was bad enough that he had such a gift – the gift of seeing into the future. He didn't want it. It was the masters who suppressed his gift, his curse for him, and they could lift their lock as and when they wanted. The last time they made him see, he had lain in a dark, damp cave for five days and four nights, huddled up and rocking back and forth, shrieking in agony from the pain of knowledge.
It was best to be a dumb beast. It was best to know nothing and just get through life, one day at a time. Mortals might think that it was best to know things, to have agency and free will, but when one was immortal – when one lived in an empty, barren Paradise – it was best not to question anything. It was best to have nothing but movement. Emotions were a drain, knowledge was a burden. Here, they were children. They returned to the state of the womb, not knowing, not seeing, not feeling, not being. It was what kept the masters happy. It was what kept them all sane.
It had been a while since he returned to Earth. A week or two, maybe. It was little wonder that his masters were starting to get impatient. But he hadn't wanted to come back to this place.
It was a place of immense difference – it was so different from the dismal landscape of Neverland that every time he came, and every time he left, his heart would ache in longing for the scenes he left behind. It was made all the worse by the knowledge that what was welcoming him was cold and desolate. Neverland had nothing in it. It was an empty husk, a shell of what it could have been.
Honestly, no one knew where the masters came from. It had been this way for as long as he could remember. Perhaps there was a time, long, long ago in the past, when he had first drifted onto the shores of this forsaken land as a little boy, where Neverland was indeed a land of fun and laughter. He could not remember those days. But if those days were there, then they were long gone. No laughter rang in Neverland anymore – no laughter other than those of the masters, and they only laughed when they intended to inflict pain and misery on another. He sighed and shook his head.
No, better not to think about such matters. He would make the most out of his time here while he could – better than moping over what he could not change. The state of his home, not that he really thought of that place as his home anymore, was unsalvageable. He still had his responsibilities towards his Lost Boys to fulfil though, and between finding a new child for the masters and giving the Lost Boys the new companion they so desired, he had enough on his plate to keep him from moping or thinking of…depressing thoughts. That was what he liked to call them, the thoughts that came to him when he was at his most emotional and drained all the life and soul out of him.
He circled the area, wondering who he ought to call on. Children, children…there were plenty in this particular suburb. He could see them all over the place, running around in perfectly manicured lawns or playing with toys in their perfect little sandboxes or out running around with their pet dog, the perfect picture of perfect family bliss. And oh, how he hated all of it, how he hated how happy they were in comparison to him. But he had nothing else against children other than his own bitterness. He resolved to move on – these were not the children he sought. They were too happy, their lives too sheltered and cocooned by parental adoration to consider leaving their homes for good.
It was always the broken families which bore the best results. It wouldn't seem like the best place to find such a child, he knew, in this cosy little suburb which looked like it was straight out of some TV commercial – he was aware of what such things were, he had spent enough time in the human world to at least pick up on that – but he also knew from experience that it was the most perfect facades which hid the darkest secrets. Someone, somewhere, in this nondescript version of mortal comforts, was unhappy with her life, and he would find that person and convince them to desire a change. To lead a life, away from rules, away from boundaries, free to do whatever she pleased.
He knew perfectly well that the most flawless things hid the dirtiest secrets. He was a walking example of that. He was blessed, if one had the humour to use such a word with regards to the damned like him, with ethereally good looks. He was the perfect kind of boy, someone most parents would love to have as their son-in-law. The golden boy, the star, the shining leader of a future generation. But what did it hide? His soul was rotting, if he even had any soul left. If you stared hard at him, he would shimmer in and out of existence, neither human nor monster, but something in between. It was the sort of in between that was the stuff of nightmares, neither here nor there.
Still, he continued circling the neighbourhood. Still, he continued his search. He was almost on the verge of giving up – he had never before given up on a particular area before – when he heard, two houses down from where he was currently standing and watching, waiting for something drastic to happen, the sound of screaming. And then there was the sound of something shattering. It sounded like glass, like whoever it was who was screaming had just taken a glass and dashed it to bits at their feet. He perked up, interested – conflict was good. Conflict was an excellent persuader. As long as the person was stuck in the throes of their argument, passionate and unable to think rationally, he could work his dark magic. He was a charmer of the worst sort, a master manipulator and liar.
He reached the house, curious and eager. No one had given him any strange looks despite all the time he spent lurking in the suburbs – he had removed his tattered cloak, and without it he looked just like any other teenage boy, curious and bored but oh so handsome. No one would even begin to think that he was anyone suspicious, that he wasn't part of this community. He stuck his hands in his pockets and whistled a tuneless tune as an elderly man whisked past him on a bicycle, busily steering with one hand while holding on to a newspaper in the other. The elderly man shot him a look as he went past him, but said nothing and continued on his way. He smiled a little, and turned away from the pavement, stepping delicately onto the mown grass of the front yard. He had to see better first.
The house, if one were to judge by mere outward appearances, was no different from the rest of the houses down this street, from the freshly mown lawn to the flowers planted beneath the window to the polished wooden door that beckoned, welcoming all guests into the house. But if he stopped – if he just stopped for a while and listened, he could hear the conspicuous difference. It was the sound of tension. A sound, a feeling almost, of tension within the household – between two people? He had to find out more. The tension drew him in, like a leech to a fresh, warm blood source. He had to know more, almost couldn't prevent himself from stealthily creeping across to the window.
He glanced into the window. No one had noticed him yet. Inside, he could see a living room. It looked fairly large and comfortable – there was a long couch in the middle of the room, and a flat-screen TV situated right in front of that. A coffee table, long and low and a highly polished dark wood, lay between the TV and the couch. There were two clocks placed on either side of the wall above the TV, each one showing a different time, for some unknown reason. The one on the left was the one showing the correct time, he noticed. He looked to see other parts of the room.
There appeared to be an open doorway from the living room that led into the kitchen. In the kitchen, from what he could see, there was a woman bustling around inside with a broom. Most likely cleaning up whatever had been broken in that crash earlier, he deduced. He looked away from the kitchen – there were stairs leading up from the kitchen to the next floor, where he was certain all the bedrooms were. Since there didn't appear to be anyone else other than the woman on the ground floor, he supposed that the antagonist was most likely hiding in their room upstairs.
He snuck around to the back of the house, away from the prying eyes of neighbours – it was the middle of the day and there were plenty of people around, it would be best not to attract too much attention. He eyed the windows at the back of the house – each window was not too far from the one below it, and there was a balcony on the next floor right above one window. He could easily jump up on the lower ledge and haul himself up to the next floor, then settle safely down on the balcony and see what's inside. Or he could always just fly up. He was Peter Pan, after all…
The only reason why he was reluctant to make use of his flight was because, unlike the original tale where there was faith, trust and pixie dust, the only way he could fly was if he cut down on other vital bodily functions. Like breathing. He could only fly because the masters had given him such power, and the reason why him was because he was…special. He could see, see into the future, and that was a gift his masters deemed valuable, even if he did not use it. And that specialness gave him the mental strength he needed to accept flight – something so foreign and strange to human beings.
When he flew, he became birdlike – faster breaths because his lungs couldn't work at full capacity, faster heartbeat, everything was faster. The adrenaline would flow through his veins, powering him enough to will his weight through the air, but at the same time impeding rational thought. He only flew when he had to, from Neverland to Earth – otherwise, he preferred to keep flying to a minimum. After all, he was human. And humans did not fly, especially not at the risk of shortening their own lifespan. He was aware of the dangers of the gift his masters had bestowed upon him.
No, I won't fly this time. There's another way to get up there – let's use that method instead. So he clambered his way up onto the ledge, bracing himself as he let his fingers wrap around the edge of the balcony floor. He was strong, but it had been a while since he exerted himself physically. There was no need for physical stress in Neverland – it was rather pointless to flee from anything when none of them could die. He and the Lost Boys all knew they couldn't die, because they had tried before and it had never worked – no matter what they did, they woke up eventually, in pain but still alive.
After silently counting to three, he pulled himself up, arm muscles working to lift him to the edge. Then he swung himself onto the balcony, careful to make as little noise as possible, and peered inside – the room windows were covered by thin curtains, but the latch was unlocked and he could open the windows slightly inwards, parting the flowery embroidered drapes blocking his view.
His first realisation was that this was the room of a girl. There was little inside the room; it was surprisingly devoid of personal belongings, having nothing but a dresser, a bed, a wardrobe and a desk near the window he was at. There was a laptop on the desk, but it was switched off. His gaze shifted to the bed, which was one of the first things he had noticed for the sheer size of it in comparison to the rest of the room – there was someone sitting there, he realised abruptly, and she had yet to see him. She had to be the person who was screaming at the woman downstairs earlier. He doubted that the woman, who looked middle-aged, would scream in such a high-pitched way.
The girl's shoulders were shaking. Perhaps she was crying. He wouldn't know since she wasn't facing him. Her hair was long, falling a little way past her hips and sprawling out over the white of her bedsheet. It was a very unique colour, something like teal – greenish with blue undertones. He wondered if her hair had been dyed or if it was naturally that colour. One of the Lost Boys, Gumo, was born with green hair after all, so it was perfectly plausible for another person to have a strange hair colour from birth. He wondered what she looked like, since he couldn't see her face.
Whatever she was feeling, she was probably emotionally vulnerable. Anyone would be after yelling at their mother, if he was right in assuming that the woman downstairs was her mother. And he worked best when the person he was targeting then was emotionally weakened. Now was the perfect time to slip in, slip into her room and her heart and mind and convince her to abandon everything – to drop everything and run away on a romantic adventure with a handsome stranger.
He knocked on the window, a smart little rap, and she stiffened – he saw her shoulders go rigid in surprise – and slowly, she turned around. He took in her face, with its pale, elfin features and sharp chin, prominent cheekbones for she was slightly too skinny to be really healthy, the wide, steely emerald eyes that looked slightly too big for her thin face, and noted that she was pretty. Her eyes, already big, widened in absolute shock at the sight of him. He had seen that. It was perfectly normal.
What was not normal was that she would immediately run over to the window, locking it tight and drawing the curtains, before beginning to scream her lungs out. Now that wasn't normal at all.