She was brought by mistake. But then again, who goes around saying they 'believe' in front of windows anyway? With a false name and a false identity, Piper (or Pierce) blends in with the Lost Boys. Until someone familiar is captured and brought to Neverland. With her friend on Death's Row, Piper has no choice but to save her. This requires her cover be blown. She was invisible before. Not anymore. Peter Pan never could resist a new game. The question is...who's gonna win? Piper? ...or Peter? Dark!PeterPanxOC
Rated M for language and eventual naughty stuff...because he's Peter Pan and he always gets what he wants.
I own nothing except my characters.
Chapter One: The Shadow
"I believe!" Giggling drunkenly, Piper swayed in the large bedroom. Her two friends, Cortez and Dolly are watching with mild amusement, snickering every time Piper stumbled and had to flail her arms in order to keep her balance.
All three of them are nineteen and all three are homeless. None of them fit in this large, grand house that they broke into. They had just been released from Child Protective Services a week before. Incidentally, that was when the last of them (Piper) turned nineteen. They had all been under the care of the same case worker and since she had a bit of a soft spot for Piper, she allowed them to stay until they were nineteen instead of the more traditional eighteen.
They had tried to get jobs but that is harder than it seem in New York. Especially since the only clothes they have are worn and ratty. They used to have jobs but Dolly was fired because the deli she worked in went out of business. Cortez had worked as a bouncer for some cheap, seedy club but he was jumped by a group of bikers and fired after a broken leg, three cracked ribs, various bruises and busted up face. He is healed now but before...the boss said that if he couldn't defend himself then he couldn't keep the wrong people out of his club, then he had no use for Cortez. With those damaging words, that was the end of his job.
As for Piper...she had a nice job at a library but the place was burned down. She never told the poor lady but it had been her fault for mouthing off to a group of spoiled teens. They had said something to her and she had responded and they...had reacted badly.
Now, all three of their bad luck streaks have continued and they have been sleeping on the streets for the past couple of nights.
Dolly will be able to get another job soon. With wide blue eyes and long strawberry blonde hair, she is just as doll-like as her name suggests. She just needs some new clothes, hence the reason they have broken into this fancy place. They all need new clothes. Cortez is tall and his lean muscles are the main reason they haven't been jumped on and raped. His dark eyes can turn colder than a glacier when someone looks at either Dolly or Piper the wrong way. His thick, dark hair is spiked out and the ends are dyed just as dark a blue as his midnight eyes.
Piper is thin, to the point of almost starved and has cropped short dark brown hair. Her eyes are a dark, soulful brown so deep that it borders on black. She has often complained about how she looks like a boy with her baggy clothing and short hair. When her hair was longer, it had beautiful glossy curls but when she tried to save a few books from the fire, it was singed so badly that it all had to be cut off.
She has boobs, she has often tried to convince herself. They just aren't particularly big. And she definitely has hips, when she has put on weight that is. Right now, she is stick thin and not in a model-attractive way either. Her cheekbones are prominent but right now, almost too prominent and she looks half wild with her gleaming copper skin and tall, slender build.
"What do you believe in?" Cortez calls, sipping from the other stolen bottle of whisky. Piper flings her arms out dramatically in front of the closed, arched window.
"I believe-" Something glittery catches her dark eyes and she cuts herself off, stumbling over to the dresser and picking up the shiny, silver dagger. The handle has intricate flames licking from the burnished silver handle with tiny fluttering butterflies hidden, perched on the flames.
Pretty...A sober part of her coos. Piper has always been a fan of shiny silver things and butterflies used to hold her attention captive when she was younger. She loved the way they were so weightless and delicate, flitting from flower to flower without a care in the world.
"Piper? What's up?" Cortez asks, his voice husky from lack of recent sleep but the brunette isn't listening to him. She has the sudden urge to pocket the dagger. It isn't very long, about the size of the length of her hand and wrist put together. While the blade is sharp, there is a dark sheathe for it. Piper is no stranger to stealing, it used to be all she could do when she was younger and alone. Her mother had died when she was seven and her father is someone she only knows from her mother's stories.
She has a small, burnished silver locket hanging on a delicate silver chain tucked under her shirt. It holds a picture of her and her mother and on the other side is the picture of her father. Piper has never really looked at him though, choosing to devote all of her attention to the parent that actually loved and raised her.
On impulse that isn't entirely from the alcohol, Piper slides the sheathe on and hides the dagger in the folds of her too-large black cargo pants and baggy black long sleeved shirt. The moment the blade is out of her sight, Piper feels the giddy return of the drink in her veins and she flashes a wide, charming grin as she whirls around, flinging her arms out as she resumes her drunken singing of "Believe".
"Man, I need another drink." Dolly says, groaning and climbing to her feet. Cortez hesitates, glancing between the two girls. He feels just as responsible for them as the day the group of them met when they were eleven. Does he go with Dolly to get more drinks or stay with Piper, who is still singing bawdily as she whirls around? "We can hear if anything happens to her." Dolly correctly guesses his dilemma and Cortez nods, following after the short strawberry blonde, glancing back one last time at his friend.
"We are getting more drinks, shout if you need us, Piper." Cortez calls and she pauses, turning to him. Her slender frame looks almost boyish in the silver moonlight but those high cheekbones and gleaming dark eyes are so otherworldly in that moment that he pauses, captivated. Then a gleaming grin flashes across her face as she tosses her head, used to the weight of her glossy copper curls swinging around behind her.
Then she resumes twirling around.
Cortez and Dolly leave without a second look back, that final image locked in their heads.
Giggling at nothing in particular, Piper spins and twirls her way around the room, stopping in front of the window one more time. She thought she saw something. Peering closer, Piper shrugs when she sees nothing and turns, caught in a twirl.
A sudden blast of wind blows the windows open with a bang and she jumps, whirling around, a startled look in her dark eyes. Then the melting shadows move and a scream locks in Piper's throat as terror sweeps through her. The shadow is shaped like a man, with a velvety or rubbery look to him. Eerie, glowing, poison green eyes lock on Piper and though it doesn't have a face, she gets an overwhelming feeling of malicious glee washing off the shadow.
"Piper! What happened?!" Piper can faintly hear Cortez shout demandingly up the stairs but her voice is locked in her throat. Turning, she tries to run but the shadow clasps a hand on her ankle and the scream is released from her body, full of terror and pain. The shadow's touch is icy cold and Piper's leg goes numb almost instantly. Clawing desperately at the wood floors, her ragged nails do little to help her gain purchase.
"Piper!" Thundering feet draw closer as Piper desperately reaches out for something, anything but the shadow gives one good yank just as she feels something soft. Her hands close reflexively on it as she is yanked harshly away.
"Cortez!" Piper screams out, clawing at the air. She feels bruised and almost as though her arms were yanked out of their sockets. "Cortez!" Piper screams again as she is pulled closer to the window. Grasping at the window frame, Piper tries desperately to hold on but the glacier feeling is spreading through her body. Strength is being sapped out of her by the burning cold and relief washes through her when Cortez appears in the doorway with a suddenly fierce looking Dolly right behind him.
"Piper!" He shouts and lunges forward. Piper relaxes almost instantly, knowing soul-deep that Cortez would never let anything happen to her. That was her biggest mistake.
Using her lax body as encouragement, the shadow gave a sudden, sharp pull and Piper screams again as she is yanked out of the doorway and held over the ground. She has no fear of heights but even the sanest person would be terrified of being dropped at such a height. The house is four stories high and they were on the third floor.
"Cortez!" Piper screams loudly, fear spiraling through her and causing her to tremble from the shadow's one handed grasp. Reaching out to her best friend, Piper can't hold back the burning tears anymore.
"Piper!" Cortez shouts desperately, half-hanging out the window as he cries her name. "Piper!" Their eyes stay locked together as the shadow speeds farther away until she can no longer see him. Defeat rings through her, so sharply that Piper is reminded of the time before she met her two best friends. She had been so close to giving up on life that when she had been found, Piper was half feral.
Then, familiar, deadly, burning anger sweeps through her so strongly that Piper snarls, tucking the soft item in her shirt and reaching up, clawing at the shadow's hand. It doesn't really register with her that falling from this height would surely kill her. Piper screams at the shadow, enraged dark eyes blazing as she struggles to reach up. Being dangled upside down as you float at a fast pace into the sky isn't the best place for fighting though.
The coldness continues to spread through her and Piper's teeth chatter as she shivers.
"Who the fuck are you?" Piper snaps out but the angry edge is faint as she struggles to stay bent up so she can face the creepy shadow-man. "What do you want with me?" Piper asks, clenching her jaw with wild anger. The shadow looks away from her as they drift higher into the air. Piper glances around, burning exhaustion tugging harshly at her but she struggles to hold it at bay. She needs to fight, dammit, not admire how pretty the clouds look this close.
A deep shudder racks Piper's body as the cold swallows her limbs and reaches farther up to her heart. Piper starts struggling again, screaming wordlessly until her voice breaks and her throat flares with pain. Piper tries to cry out with pain but more pain flares up as she struggles to force her voice out of her throat. Helpless anger thrumming through her, Piper suddenly stiffens, her dark eyes wide with shock and soul-deep panic as the cold slowly reaches her heart...and she loses sight of everything, darkness claiming her.