Tenshi-san: God, chapter 9 already? Wow. Here's to hoping it's better than the absolute crappola I wrote in chapter 8. Heh, what can I say, I confuse myself. Yay for more on the evil witch that happens to be my main character's mum. Flashbacks are fun! :)

Save, your smile for me,

even although you cry for me

remember me and love me always.

Love, and smile for me,

Hold on to all that we had

remembering and love me again.

-Gackt (December Love)

Peter sat on the bed watching Lili. He vaguely remembered doing this before, and the faded memories made him feel a little better. It gave him something solid to latch onto, a clue that his life hadn't been all bad, that there was something else other than the pain of today.

"Damn." Lili threw the files to the floor. "Damn her anyway. How could anyone..."

"What's wrong?"

"She drugged me, Peter. Not for a week, but nearly a year. No wonder I can't remember anything after I came home. There's nothing to remember." Lili wrapped her arms around her knees.

O.K. So it wasn't identical to what he remembered. Lili had never sat before him looking like a lost puppy before. In fact he had never seen her look so lost before. Ever.

"She... stole a year from me. I didn't have much of a childhood to begin with, and she made sure it was shorter. If I didn't already know better, I'd be tempted to shout 'It's not fair!' in an annoying tone of voice."

Peter shifted uncomfortably on the bed. "Seeing you're on the Never Land, I don't think it matters what you yell. Gibberish, whatever, you can yell. It's the point of being here. This is childhood."

"When did you suddenly figure that out?" Lili was resting her head on her knees, looking up at him.

"I can't imagine what that was like. I never have to grow up, never have to abandon all hope."

"Never have to deal with feelings."

Peter glared. "Never have to deal with mothers." he sighed, "I could have told you, mothers with always ruin everything fun. Mothers are highly overrated." He flung himself back onto the bed somewhat theatrically. "I don't see what the big fuss over them is."

Lili sighed and leaned on the bed. "I-it's hard to explain," she shook her head, golden hair flying about. "When I was little, really little, she was everything. I thought my mother hung the moon. But... then it all changed...."

Lili had been playing outside, making small gardens, and spinning stories under her breath of what went on in the miniature world. Girly stories of fairy princesses competed with bloody tales of fighting, pirates, and nefarious deeds done in the dead of night. Normal children's tales. Her mother worked on a flower bed a yard away, Raina's amber hair glowing in the bright sunlight.

"And he flew in, saving the beautiful girl from a fate worse than death!" Lili waved around a ribbon, its worn silkiness the same color blue as her eyes. Small hands scraped back hair, loosed from the blue ribbon's bondage, and she ran to her mother. "Mama! It came out again!" Raina just smiled wordlessly, smoothed back her daughter's long blonde hair, and retied the silk ribbon for the fiftieth time that lazy afternoon. Lili was four, and nothing bad could ever happen. Her mother was the most beautiful woman in the world, life was simple, sweet, and every day was perfect. But a small child can view the strangest things as 'perfect', and nothing troubles a happy child.

Things began to warp once Lili turned five and began kindergarten. Exposed to other children, a library full of unread books, and other adults who were nothing like her sweet, but strict mother, Lili began to tell stories. Long tales, spun from her imagination and pieces of fairy tales. This gift for imaginative story telling quickly made her beloved in her class, aside from the few surly girls who would in later years become the 'popular' crowd. Storytelling was frowned upon in the Leonhart house, but what Raina didn't know couldn't hurt her.

The bouncy, bubbly little girl became a bouncy, bubbly, but strange seven year old. Her mother sniffed at the amount of reading Lili brought home, but was loath to stop her. As long as she did well in school, she could read to her heart's content. Lili did her school work, but quietly on the side started to write some of her stories. Those little composition notebooks teachers were so fond of giving out filled quickly with her childish hand, and included were illustrations. These became quite popular with students and teachers alike.

This went on for months until Lili brought home a tattered copy of Peter Pan. Lili dropped her pile of books on her desk, and had run off to a friend's house to give a tea-party/story telling session. Raina had picked up the abused book, and read the title. What was even more interesting was the notebook that slipped from between the pages of the novel. It wasn't a story as she was used to seeing. Raina was fine with most of the stories her daughter wrote, they had a single uninterrupted theme. That of good triumphing, and resistance to temptation that struck a note with Raina's good Christian sensibilities. But what this innocent looking notebook contained wasn't a story. It was a journal of sorts.

The first entry, dated 9-11-1992:

I had a funny dream. I remember something knocking on the window and I got up to look and see what it was. But when I got to the window and pulled back the curtains, there wasn't anything there. It doesn't matter, my window is high up, and nothing could knock on it, unless they could fly which is silly. No one can fly, unless they are in a plane. But I'm making sure the window's locked tonight. Flying or not, it scares me a little.

9-13-1992:

It happened again, but when I woke up, the window was half open. That's why I woke up, it's not warm out, and it was windy. How can a locked window unlock and open? Maybe I did it in my sleep. But I never opened windows before...

9-22-1992:

It was a boy! And he can fly! He said he had always listened to my stories, and wanted me to come home with him. He says there are lots of adventures, and I bet if I went, I could get ideas for the most thrilling stories. His name is Peter, and he's taller than me, but our hair is almost the same color. He's not always very nice, he tried to drag me out the window... but what would Mother think if I ran away? I want to go, but I love my mother.

10-5-1992:

Peter came every night, and asked if I would come home with him. I'm scared of him, he gets an idea in his head, and it doesn't stop. I say no every time but he keeps coming back. I'm glad he keeps coming back, he tells a little about Never Land each time before he realizes what he's doing. It's funny, watching him tell a story, and stop half way because he said I had to go to find out what happens. His eyes get big, he gasps, and then he glares at me like it was my fault he told the story. He keeps pulling me out the window, but I don't want to go. Not if I have to leave my mother.

Raina dropped the notebook at the sound of a slamming door, and the happy chatter of Lili, back from her play-date. She went to bed without dinner that night, and cried herself to sleep. Lili had refused to say that the notebook was lies.

Peter came that night, and she went with him. It seemed like a good idea. Then Raina would have to believe the truth of the matter. Not that her daughter was possessed by the Devil, and telling malicious lies.

"You came with me because you were mad at your mother?" Peter raised his eyebrows.

"I rarely lie, and she hurt me. My mother refused to believe something just because it was implausible."

"I offend reason." He said, smirking. "But you still want to offend it with me, don't you?"

"If you'll let me stay." Lili looked up at him, "I can see why if you don't, I only came here in the first place to punish my mother."

"So did I. Why would I hurt you, the same thing happened to me."

"You ran away. You wanted this. All I wanted was my mother back. I didn't want this strange lady who said I was evil, that I was going to hell because I could see something she couldn't to be my mother."

"They hurt you, even when you try to help them." Peter rolled over and hung upside down beside her. "If they had really loved us they would have understood. We aren't meant to be out there."

"Are you saying we shouldn't grow up?"

"I'm saying we can't grow up. What would we do, what would we be?"

"You have a point. I could be a writer, but you..."Lili trailed off.

"What?"

"I think you'd end up a serial killer."

"At least I'd be interesting. Most grown ups are bloody boring." he sighed, "Even the Lost Boys became boring men. Someone you wouldn't look twice at on the street." Lili laughed.

So the truth behind the first flight of Lili to Peter's waiting arms and the Never Land. She was angry and hurt by her mother, who had been becoming more and more psychotic since it was becoming obvious Lili was a natural born story-teller, and that was against the grain of Raina's extremely puritanical Christian roots.

For storytelling was useless, and drew attention from God. Her own flesh and blood was adding to the evil in the world. And Raina couldn't let that happen.

The transformation was complete after Lili returned. And caught between her mother's drugs, and Peter's inability to just go and kidnap her and take her back home, Lili grew older.

She grew older, but wasn't graceful about it. You could say she fought growing up tooth and nail. Much to Raina's displeasure, whose greatest wish was for her daughter to become a mother and conform to her place as a woman.

Lili won, in the end. See, no one ages in the Never Land. Galen's a testament to that. Galen is almost as old as Peter himself. Not that it shows, Galen is youthful as any kid, and that youth is reflected in his features.

What? Everyone knows pirates are immortal. In a sense, because God knows they die just as easily as a wild beast or an Indian. Or indeed, as easily as a Lost Boy.

But Galen's story isn't to be told now, but the time that is to be told of now is when Lili fist came to Never Land, and the happy year she spent. Never said she didn't have fun, did I?

"Do you remember when we stalked that party of pirates?" asked Lili.

Peter grinned, "The one we dropped out of the trees? How could I forget that, they screamed like little girls."

"Hey! I did not scream like that!" Lili threw a pillow at Peter.

"No, you dropped out of the tree, and played all innocent..." Peter trailed off

On an overhanging branch, Lili and Peter exchanged glances, and looked back down at the small party of pirates skulking about beneath them. Peter nodded once, and grinned at her. They both dropped silently from the tree, Peter behind the throng of pirates, Lili dropped in front, slightly harder, as if she had fallen is surprise from the tree. She kept her head down.

"Well, what do we have here? A girle?" one pirate, whose name means little in the long run, as he's short lived.

Lili grinned, and looked up. "Girly? You're going to regret that." The pirates laughed.

"You? You couldn't fight your way out of a wet paper bag."

"Really?" this came from behind, Peter stood en garde and grinned. With a blood curdling shriek, they initiated the fight.

Afterwards, Lili raised a good question. "Don't you ever run out of pirates?"

"Huh?"

"I mean, couldn't you kill all the pirates off?"

"I guess... but there always seems to be more for every one I kill. So I don't think I can run out."

Tenshi-san: Heh. Who knew pirates were a renewable resource. :D Some rather fluffy flashbacks. Ah, to be a child, and live with a sociopathic thirteen year old. Though I think the tree dropping bit was brilliant, on my part. So many people underestimate girls. Lili is just as dangerous in her way as Peter. Heh, like you guys care. But I like writing her past, so more of happy fuzzies coming up. With Barbarrossa, of course. Can't miss him, he'll be bitching about the state of his wardrobe. :)