Disclaimer: Peter Pan, and everything recognizable to Peter Pan, belongs to the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, to which Mr. J. M. Barrie bequeathed his copyright when he died, in 1937. I was not even born when this happened and I had nothing to do with the creation of Peter Pan (Although it would be really cool if I had). I am just a lowly fan, and writing this in my own time, not making any money whatsoever. Heh. I hope you have as much fun reading this as I did writing it.
Chapter 8: Growing Up
~~ "Shall we still be respectful subjects of the king?" "You shall have to swear 'Down with the King!'" "Then I refuse!" "And I!" "Rule Britannia!" ~~
Zan and Beetle flew off at an amazing pace, back to London, to find their mother. However, the Island, being what it was, did not want them to leave. As such, it was a long time of floating amongst the stars before they so much as saw the shadow of the mainland. It wasn't really an unpleasant thing, flying amid the stars, above the ocean, seeing how many shark fins they could tag on their way to London, but they were in a hurry, and didn't want to have an adventure.
By the time they finally reached the mainland, nearly a day had passed. It was hard not to think about what might be happening to their companions, but they tried their best to think about the task at hand, and not the boys back on the pirate ship. They had to find Katie.
If they thought at all, which is highly unlikely, they thought that Katie would be sitting on top of Big Ben, waiting to be shown the way back to the Never Land. However, as was to be expected, they were not so lucky. Once they got to London, they had a lot of looking to do to find the girl.
Zan thought she remembered the way to Katie's house, having been there not so long ago, but her memory was not so good as it could have been, and the two ended up searching for a good deal longer than they would have liked. It was night, the city was cold, and Beetle was very tired and ready for sleep. However, they were still just wandering around by the ruins of Margaret's flat, and had no idea where to go after that.
Beetle and Zan spent a miserable night, shivering in the cold, on top of a burnt out building, wondering where they would find their mother, Katie, to bring her back to the Never Land.
* * * * *
Katie's friends were quick to accept her the next day at school, but she suspected ulterior motives. They welcomed her back into their circle, and protected her from Sue's angry glares and snappish comments. Katie, however, felt no more comfortable with them than she had before.
The truth came out at lunch, when one of the girls looked away from her boyfriend, to Katie, and asked, "So when are you going to teach us?"
Katie blinked, confused. "Teach you what?" she asked.
"To fly, of course," The girl answered, and stood up. "I mean how do you do it? Where are the strings? The magnets?"
"I don't need strings or magnets to fly!" Katie shouted. "And if you think that I need those things, then you'll never be able to fly yourselves, no matter how hard I might try to teach you!"
Her 'friends' looked to her. "You're just trying to keep it to yourself, trying to make us look stupid," one of them called out.
"You're just a stuck-up, conceited, good-for-nothing bitch!" another cried.
"We befriended you, and you just hate us for it!"
"Ungrateful snob!"
"Selfish harlot!"
"Skank!"
"Slut!"
"Whore!"
Katie blinked. They surrounded her. Their angry faces glinting at her with lurid hatred. She turned and ran, no, flew, away from the school and her friends turned once again traitor.
Once she got to her neighborhood, she slowed to a walk. What good was being Peter's mother when everyone hated her for it? She wished she had never gone to the Never Land, or never come back. She wished that somehow she could befriend her former friends again, but she knew that in all likelihood, there was no way. Some things were permanent, and her friends didn't seem to take this difference between them, that she could fly and they couldn't, as a temporary friction between the two parties.
Right then, it seemed an impassable crevasse, a gulf so wide that the other side was invisible. It seemed a barbed wire fence, a hundred feet high and strung with electric wire, impenetrable in every way.
It was enough to make her break down and cry.
Her mother would not accept any excuse as to why she wasn't in school then. Her mother would want her to turn around and march right back to the miserable building. Her mother would want her to grow up. But Katie didn't want any of that. Her steps slowed to a shuffle, and she wondered if she shouldn't just run away, live in Kensington Gardens, with the fairies.
Only, she knew for one thing that fairies didn't take pity on teenaged girls, wandering about nights in the Gardens. More likely, it was the dealers that did that.
All in all, life seemed more and more hopeless by the minute.
She was a block away from her house when she heard the scream. A little boy, a round ball of fur, fell out of her bedroom window, and floated mid-air. She squinted, wondering what could be going on, and then recognized the little boy. Beetle. They had remembered her.
She flew the rest of the block, up to her window, and saw Sue swatting at Xanthippe with both hands. Carefully directing Beetle through the open window, she followed, and grabbed her bag. "Zan, what's going on?" she asked.
The statement in and of itself showed exactly how much thinking she was doing, because she couldn't understand Zan for the life of her, but Zan rang out a reply which Beetle happily translated as, "Peter's been kidnapped, and the lost boys are captured by the pirates! We've got to save them!"
"They're trapped?" Katie cried in response, forgetting her previous, every-day loyalties, and answering the call of the Never Land. "We've got to save them!"
She nearly jumped out the window, but Sue grabbed her hand, looking violent and vindictive. "No," said the younger sister, terrifyingly soft and cold. "You aren't leaving. You're staying here and living with the world you tried to give away. You're growing up, just like I have to, just like any normal person has to."
Katie tugged at her arm, but Sue didn't let go. She slammed shut the window, and locked it. "You're not leaving unless I can come with," she finished.
Katie looked to Zan, Beetle, and her sister. Sue was grown up. Sue had decided that she didn't want to be a child. However, Sue apparently had changed her mind, and was now insisting that she be taken, as a child, to the Never Land. Zan flew slowly over, and showered the girl with more pixie dust than was technically necessary. The dangerous look on Sue's face remained.
"Sue, what are you doing home?" Katie carefully asked. School wasn't out yet.
"I saw you leaving and guessed something was up, so I called mom and got home before you." Sue glared at her sister. "I'm not letting you leave without me this time."
Katie nodded, shakily, only now understanding the full meaning of the situation. Sue had a frantic look in her eyes; a look that Katie knew meant that her sister wasn't thinking. Sue had lost her pretense of childhood that day, and she wanted it back. Sue didn't want the responsibility that came with adulthood. After all, who would?
However, as much as Sue acted like a little child, she wasn't a child anymore. There was no getting around the fact that Sue was a grownup. However, one could always try.
"Now, think wonderful thoughts, and you'll float," reasoned Katie cautiously. Sue squinted, evidently trying to find a happy thought. "Just hold on to that thought, and let go," Katie coaxed.
Beetle floated about the ceiling, and Katie longed to join him, but she knew that flying herself would only postpone their escape to the Never Land. Sue closed her eyes, and whispered a name. She jumped into the air.
Katie could see it coming, her sister leaning onto thin air as she jumped forward. She could see her sister begin to fall, but she stood, transfixed, watching as her sister tumbled through the air and landed, flat on her stomach, on the floor. She winced. Sue was motionless for a moment. It was a long moment, a moment that stretched out to infinity before and after.
Katie gulped, but her sister moved. "It… Didn't… Work." Her voice was colder, if possible, and angrier, than before. She stood up shakily now with the shield of her wounded pride in addition to her previous armament of jealousy and anger. Sue glared at Beetle, Zan, and Katie, as if they were convicted murderers deserving of the death penalty.
"You will never leave," she said, "You will never leave because I won't let you. Katie is staying right here, and growing up, just like I have to. I won't let you leave, not if I have to stay here."
And then, to make sure that they didn't sneak away during the night, Sue sat down at the foot of Katie's bed, and waited, awake, until dawn.
* * * * *
The pirates were gloating over their victory, in front of the captured lost boys. Surely, Smee was the most fearsome, despicable, and generally nauseating captain that had ever floated a dinghy on any of the seven seas. They were proud underlings of such an undoubtedly evil man.
Now if only he could be taught to wipe his sword rather than his glasses, after a fight. That was his only weakness, and not much of one in the eyes of his fearful dogs. After all, if he was the only man Hook feared, he was certainly a fearsome man after all.
It was perhaps fortunate that Smee now did his hemming in the dead of night.
Of course, the boys had a very different opinion of Smee than did the dogs, and they were rapidly growing to not mind being imprisoned under such a man as Smee. Whenever he so much as neared the captive boys, they called out his name in joy, and although he would hit them with the flat of his hand in rebuke, they loved him. He was still unable to use his fist against a child. Smee had, after all, very good form.
It had been the one reason Hook had contemplated killing the poor Irish bo'sun.
Being of good form, Smee had deemed it necessary to first offer the boys a way out of their deaths, that is, to offer them positions as cabin boys on the pirate ship. Hook had offered the previous group positions, he remembered, and why therefore shouldn't he?
It was for this reason that the boys were lined up on deck, in front of a table, and their chains removed. Smee smiled, evilly. He quite thought himself the slimiest wretch in the entire ocean at that moment. The boys stood politely in a line, smiling and making the best impression they could on Smee. After all, Peter had said, first impressions were important, and this was really the first time they had seen him outside of the hold.
"You boys can count yourselves lucky," Smee growled, trying to scare the wide grins off of the boys' faces, and failing miserably. He had a sinking feeling that there was a possibility that the boys weren't terribly afraid of him. He didn't know where he got it, but it was there, nagging him at the bottom of his gut. However, he continued, hoping that they would be terrified of him with certainty before the day was out. "You are being offered a choice. You can either sign on to the crew, or you can walk the plank!"
The boys gulped at the mention of the plank, but said nothing. Smee looked them over, choosing the eldest. "You, boy," he called to John. "Surely you have wanted to be a pirate? This is your chance!"
It is certainly ironic that John's namesake be faced with the same quandary that the original boy did. We can only hope that this John behaves with more decorum than did his predecessor. "I… at times I have, sir," John replied. It was a fact; some days while swimming in the mermaid lagoon he had fancied him a pirate with a huge ship, and a crew to obey him. "I have imagined myself a pirate named Black Eyed Bill, at times."
Now, Peter over heard all of this, still locked up and witnessing the scene, and he let out a cry of the most terrible variety, assuring himself that he would banish John as soon as he got out of this mess. After all, it just did not do to have a lost boy who wanted to be a pirate.
However, Smee was speaking again. "Well, and we shall call you that, certainly!"
John looked greatly pleased at this, but he heard his captain's cry, and he was suddenly caught between two very harsh predicaments. On the one hand, remain a lost boy forever and bow down to Peter Pan, and on the other hand, become a pirate and make a life for himself but face the peril of a fight with his leader. Then again, it wasn't so harsh a predicament at all; he could beat Peter. What did Pan have that he didn't, after all?
"You shall?" he asked. The pirates certainly did seem to have bested the boys. Here was a way out, to prove that he was as good as Peter at anything, to live when Peter died.
Smee chortled. "Why, of course, boy! Now, come and sign your name, here, in the book!" And Smee pointed to the register, for John to sign.
Shakily, John walked up to the register, and held a quavering hand onto the paper. To be honest, he didn't know for sure how to write his name. He looked up at Smee, uncertain. If this required writing, he wasn't sure if he could do it. After all, it wasn't really worth it, was it? And what if Peter won? Did he really want to be a pirate?
Starkey, seeing the look of fear in his face, stepped forward. "You seem like a reasonable boy," he said. John was taken aback. As much as Smee was a lovable character, Starkey ignited fear in the boys to the greatest degree. John quavered and stepped back. "Why, you're larger than that Pan is, aren't you?" John smiled, he was. "I'd say you could take him in a fight. Why do you hail him as your leader, anyway? Here we can teach you things you don't know, teach you how to be a real man!" John grinned wider. That was what he wanted, to be a man. Not any of this boyish nonsense.
"Sir, how do I spell John?" he asked, now sure of himself. This was the way to greatness, to adulthood.
"J-O-H-N," replied Starkey, fully expecting that the boy wouldn't know how to spell the name.
"And how to I make the letters?" John grasped the quill with muted excitement.
Smee bent over, and carefully guided John's hand in the fashioning of his name. Four capital letters, wobbly but legible, filled up half the page. John laughed. It was a cruel, loathsome laugh, as of one fully acquainted with the art of being a pirate.
The lost boys stared, in shock. "John!" Dows cried. "John, you can't be a pirate! You're a lost boy!"
But the traitor turned back on his former compatriots. "I'm no lost boy, no longer will I follow Peter Pan! I'm a pirate now! And my name isn't John! It's Black Eyed Bill!" He growled at the lost boys, as he shrank into the mass of pirates behind their captain.
Peter cried in astonishment, and anger, and slammed anew at the bars in front of his cage, and John, or Black Eyed Bill, sneered at him from outside.
None of the other boys budged. Their companion's betrayal had cemented their opinions of piracy, and they were all of the opinion that all the pirates should die painful and horrifying deaths.
"To the plank!" yelled Black Eyed Bill, from amidst the ranks, as none of the boys stepped forward to be next appointed cabin boy. "Make 'em walk the plank!" It is fearsome to note that he was already the most gruesome and violent of the bunch.
However, Smee hadn't the heart to make those three helpless boys walk the plank without so much as a night to think over their decision not to become pirates, and so he growled back towards his potential cabin boys, "You have chosen death. Think over your choice, for if you do not reconsider, off the plank with you, come morning!"
His crew protested, they were looking forward to the death of the children, but he left, and they pushed and rough-handled the boys back into the hold, snarling and cursing at them all along the way. Daisy whimpered, Dows fought back, and Tobby yelped, but they were all alone in the end, and as night fell, they contemplated their death.
After all, what else was there to do? Surely they couldn't go against their leader, and join the pirates. After all, Peter Pan was the greatest boy ever to live. But if they didn't betray Peter, then they would die at sunrise.
And so they slept fitfully, trying not to think of their deaths.
A/N: I'm back! Aren't you surprised? * nervous laughter * In any case, what with the musical and then AP exams and lots of other stuff, I lost track of this story, only recently picking it up again and thinking; "Why am I not writing this?" So… The prodigal author returns. I've written the rating-changer chapter (next one) and it will be PG-13… and I'll probably get a lot of complaints at the end of it but I've had it planned out since the beginning, so… yeah. In any case, thanks to Marina, who was the only one to review chapter seven so far.