***
14
***
The cruelest thing Peter Pan ever did to Slightly was to crow. The sound fell from the trees like a rain of elfin arrows, and the reactions below were instantaneous. Robert Mullins spun on the sound with his feet braced in a fighting stance, regretting with a sharp pang the lack of his cutlass. Billy Jukes' face rose, scanning the jagged trees for a moment before his eyes widened and dropped, falling instead on Slightly. His friend seemed paralyzed. He hadn't turned to face the crow, he hadn't even looked up. Slightly's feet were frozen in the step he'd taken, his muscles pushing the lines of tendon up through his skin. Something in his throat was trembling.
"So this is the company you keep, Slightly!" they heard Peter call through the trees. His childish form drifted down through the branches. "The dove said you were keeping with pirates but I didn't want to believe it, I had to see for myself!"
Slightly turned on him as the boy's feet touched the ground. His eyes were still a little wide and his hands were unable to unclench. Peter stood facing him, arms crossed and eyes dangerous, though precisely what that danger was, no one could have said.
"Peter, this isn't what you think." Slightly said, moving towards his former leader only to have Peter back away equal steps.
"Yes it is." Peter said. His eyes narrowed. "You've betrayed us to go with the pirates. To work for Captain Codfish! I never thought it would be YOU…"
Something small and greyish flitted down through the tree branches to get a better look, and Slightly recognized the diamond dove, silhouetted neatly against the bright pink dress of a stricken looking Wendy. Nibs was shoulder to shoulder with her, brows drawn. He didn't see Billy Jukes move beside him until Peter's eyes flickered to track the movement.
Billy's hand snapped around Slightly's bicep with a bruising grip and flung him backwards, sending him sprawling across the rotting forest floor with a startled cry. Billy squared against a surprised Peter.
"You're even stupider than I thought you were, Pan. Slightly, betray you for US? Ha! Do you think he'd ever go anywhere with a pirate of his own free will?"
"WHAT?" Slightly and Peter shouted simultaneously.
"If you've come to rescue the prisoner you haven't got a chance, I'll beat your skull to splinters!" Billy put his fists up in a mock boxing stance, and Slightly blinked in shock as he realized what he was doing. "Captain Hook isn't done with him yet, and if we let him get away before he's finished his plan, the Captain 'll have my hide for a throw rug!"
"His plan? You mean—" Peter paused, wary, then suddenly his face split into a grin. "Of course! I knew Slightly would never betray us." He said haughtily. "I was just playing along with the bird. I knew he was a prisoner all along! Lost Boys!"
"Aye, Peter!" Nibs called down, shooting down from the trees trailing the Twins, Curly, Toodles, and John. Mullins jerked Billy back towards him and growled in his ear "What do you think you're getting us into, Billy?"
"Just go down quick and stay down!" Billy snapped back.
Slightly had had enough time to stumble to his feet and gaped as Mullins and Billy moved away from each other, allowing Lost Boys to slip between them and opening themselves for attack. Mullins still had his knife out, but now, so did Peter.
"We'll teach you pirates to kidnap one of us!" he shouted gleefully.
The corner of Mullins' mouth was twitching. He gave Billy one very acidic look and snapped his teeth, raised his knife, and gave a clumsy, bluster-filled charge towards Nibs. The Lost Boy easily stepped aside and tripped Mullins with a kick. Billy swung his fist at Peter's face and narrowly avoided a knife slit to the wrist for it.
For some reason, Slightly's voice wasn't cooperating, and an attempt to shout "Billy, look out!" instead came out as a vaguely reptilian croak. Therefore Billy had no warning as the Twins snatched his legs out from under him and sent him on his face with a "Whuff!" He could hear Wendy and Michael cheering from the trees at the play-fight.
Except it wasn't entirely a play fight. Peter wasn't pulling his punches and Billy hadn't taken a hit bad enough yet to believably go down from it.
Amid a string of taunts from the boys, Billy dropped his guard on his right side, letting Curly's punch connect hard with his bruised temple, and he went down.
"BILLY!"
He'd knocked aside a startled Lost Boy and knelt at Billy's side before he even realized what he was doing. It hadn't looked fake, it hadn't-- Billy's eyes snapped open the moment Slightly touched him, and between clenched teeth the gunner hissed "What are you doing???"
"What are YOU doing?"
"Getting you out of this, you idiot! I can't let Pan hurt you because of me!"
The Lost Boys had stopped. Billy sat up quickly and Mullins was there to yank him to his feet in an instant, both falling into a posture of earnest defense against the lot of slack-jawed boys. Slightly was surprised when his brain registered there was a place he filled in the defensive formation.
Peter stared with them, dumbstruck. "…Slightly?"
Slightly shook his head slowly, aware Billy was watching him out of the corner of his eye. "Billy was trying to protect me, Peter. I'm not a prisoner."
Peter's eyes widened a bit more "What are you talking about? Of course you're a prisoner! Why else would you be running around with pirates?"
That was a dangerous question. Slightly resisted the urge to pull back just another few inches till his back touched Billy's; he had to screw up the courage on his own.
"Billy isn't a pirate anymore." He said calmly. It sounded that way, anyway. "Neither is Mullins. There was a slight problem on board the Jolly Roger and Hook is after them now." The calm face broke, falling to a pleading look. "Billy is my friend, Peter, and he slightly needs my help. And since he's not a pirate anymore it's not betrayal, is it?"
There was no answer.
"…Is it, Peter?"
"Of course it is! ONCE A PIRATE, ALWAYS A PIRATE!" Peter shouted, and Slightly flinched back. "You left us in the middle of the night to go running with the enemy, Slightly! If that's not betrayal than what is it?!"
"Peter--!"
"WHAT IS IT, SLIGHTLY?!"
Slightly jammed his teeth together to keep his jaw from trembling and pulled his chin up.
"It…it's friendship, Peter. Billy is my friend." He said, his voice only wavering a little. "And I'm not going to run away from him when he needs me."
"If you're friends with the pirates," Peter started, his voice low and dangerous. "Then you're no friend of ours. Come on. The Lost Boys are going home." He said, taking up from the Earth. He didn't look back. Curly and the Twins gave Slightly an apologetic look and followed, and John didn't even look at him. Nibs stood his ground for a long moment, holding Slightly's eye with an unreadable look that was something like pleading and a little like sadness, but then Peter called after him from the trees and he dropped his gaze.
"Goodbye, Slightly." He said quietly, and left there.
Ignoring both Billy and Mullins, Slightly turned, shoved past them, and started towards the caves.
***
"Aren't you going to kill him?" the diamond dove asked, flitting circles around Peter like Tinkerbell did. Tinkerbell herself was not with him now. Messengers had flooded the Underground House for weeks, begging Tink to follow them back to the mainland. "A family problem." She'd said when she relented. "It will only take a few days."
He wished she were here now.
"I'm not killing him." he said flatly.
"But Slightly betrayed you!"
"Shut up!" He struck out at the dove before he thought about it, and with an eep it plummeted into the trees, disappearing in a split oak. A distance to his right, separated from him by Nibs, Wendy flew, and some part of him was surprised she hadn't come after him yet. She seemed to be deep in quiet conspiracy with his second in command.
He'd only made it a few dozen yards ahead before that little white feather duster was circling him again, this time at a wider range.
"Peter, you always kill the ones who betray you! You were going to kill Toodles that day you thought he shot Wendy! Why aren't you going after HIM?"
"That isn't any of your business!"
"But Peter!" It whined.
"Leave me alone!"
The dove darted out of the way before he could hit it again. With a careful, delicate swoop, it gave a 'hmph!' and positioned itself beside Michael.
Peter never thought he'd need another reason to hate the pirates. He'd never thought they could even give him one if they tried. He'd been very wrong, on both counts.
***
Billy and Mullins kept their distance from Slightly until the trees gave way at the foot of the mountains. The presence of the older man somehow kept forthright in Slightly's mind the admonishment that boys don't cry, no matter how incorrect it was. He'd used to believe it was true. After Nibs became Peter's second in command, Slightly had never seen the boy cry, not even when things went terribly wrong and Slightly felt they should never smile again. He'd thought Nibs was so strong.
But once, Peter was nearly killed, showing off to the others that he wasn't afraid of the snarling mama bear by played keep-away with one of her cubs. She'd caught him by his flying foot and hauled him down underneath her. Nibs had picked up stones and began shouting and pelting her hide, drawing her into a charge against him, and Slightly had swept down and hauled off Peter's body. He'd been bleeding very badly, and though Slightly was flustered and tried to cover the bleeding gouges with his hands, Nibs somehow kept a cool head when he returned. He tied his shirt around Peter's oozing chest and together they carried him back to the Underground House.
Once Peter was safe and asleep, Nibs had picked up a basket and said he was going to gather blackberries. It was ten minutes before Slightly realized it was too early for blackberries. He'd found Nibs with his knees to his chest on a tree branch, sobbing, the empty basket discarded below him. Nibs WAS strong. He knew it wasn't that boys didn't cry. It was that boys weren't to let others KNOW that they cried. It was all for show.
The presence of Mullins made him anxious to keep up the charade. Had it only been Billy, Slightly thought he might have forgotten it. But somehow, he couldn't let Mullins know that he cried.
But Mullins seemed to know, anyway. After all, he kept his distance.
As the trees faded out Slightly slowed to a stop, his face scrubbed dry on the sleeves of his shirt though his eyes and nose were probably red, but there wasn't much he could do about that. If he kept his head down, the bill of his hat would hide it. Billy and Mullins caught up to him in only a short while.
"One of the cave entrances is up a ways." He said curtly, tugging the bill of his hat down. Billy's stomach was making an annoying snarling sound again, still angry from a days worth of forced vomiting and its sheer emptiness. From the red stain across Billy's cheeks Slightly thought it had probably been doing it for a few minutes now.
"Hold on." Mullins said, frowning at the scraggly vegetation that held this space before the forest started again higher up the mountain side. He stalked towards a pathetic, tangled plant with yellow flowers, still talking. "I don't know about you lot, but I didn't get jack to eat down in the brig and I'm about ready to eat my boots." He squatted and jammed the knife blade into the dirt at the base of the plant, twisted it, and popped it out of the earth at an angle, speared through a root of some kind about half the size of his fist. He split it three fourths of the way through and tossed it through the air towards Billy, who caught it automatically and blinked at the thing.
Mullins attacked the plant again from the other side, missed, and retried, popping the bulb out with an audible rip of small roots and making Billy feel a little green with the thought of veins ripping. Mullins cut the tuber and threw it at Slightly.
A third attack on the plant yielded nothing, and he snorted and moved onto its neighbor. When he came back to them, a third root in his hand, both boys were looking at the dirty bulbs skeptically.
"Just eat the bloody things." He said, cutting his own in half. They looked like yellowed potatoes on the inside. Slightly held his back out towards Mullins.
"I don't want it. I'm not hungry." He said softly.
"Yer eatin it." Mullins said sternly and pushed Slightly's hand back towards his chest. Slightly blinked. After a few moments watchful stare from Mullins he tugged the tuber open with a crack that made Billy wince, and bit the edge tentatively. It tasted pale and gritty from the earth and it left a film like raw potato on his tongue. He ate it anyway.
Billy, who looked entirely green at the prospect of eating ANYTHING refused until Mullins threatened to stuff it down his throat, and Slightly had the impression this wasn't a new threat. Apparently Mullins had carried through with it the last time, because Billy paled and put the split tuber to his mouth, nibbling the edge half heartedly while watching Mullins. The man snorted.
"Lead on to those caves, then, boy." He said, splitting his own and crunching it, not seeing Billy wince at the sound. Slightly nodded and started walking as he ate. For some reason, he felt just a little bit better.
14
***
The cruelest thing Peter Pan ever did to Slightly was to crow. The sound fell from the trees like a rain of elfin arrows, and the reactions below were instantaneous. Robert Mullins spun on the sound with his feet braced in a fighting stance, regretting with a sharp pang the lack of his cutlass. Billy Jukes' face rose, scanning the jagged trees for a moment before his eyes widened and dropped, falling instead on Slightly. His friend seemed paralyzed. He hadn't turned to face the crow, he hadn't even looked up. Slightly's feet were frozen in the step he'd taken, his muscles pushing the lines of tendon up through his skin. Something in his throat was trembling.
"So this is the company you keep, Slightly!" they heard Peter call through the trees. His childish form drifted down through the branches. "The dove said you were keeping with pirates but I didn't want to believe it, I had to see for myself!"
Slightly turned on him as the boy's feet touched the ground. His eyes were still a little wide and his hands were unable to unclench. Peter stood facing him, arms crossed and eyes dangerous, though precisely what that danger was, no one could have said.
"Peter, this isn't what you think." Slightly said, moving towards his former leader only to have Peter back away equal steps.
"Yes it is." Peter said. His eyes narrowed. "You've betrayed us to go with the pirates. To work for Captain Codfish! I never thought it would be YOU…"
Something small and greyish flitted down through the tree branches to get a better look, and Slightly recognized the diamond dove, silhouetted neatly against the bright pink dress of a stricken looking Wendy. Nibs was shoulder to shoulder with her, brows drawn. He didn't see Billy Jukes move beside him until Peter's eyes flickered to track the movement.
Billy's hand snapped around Slightly's bicep with a bruising grip and flung him backwards, sending him sprawling across the rotting forest floor with a startled cry. Billy squared against a surprised Peter.
"You're even stupider than I thought you were, Pan. Slightly, betray you for US? Ha! Do you think he'd ever go anywhere with a pirate of his own free will?"
"WHAT?" Slightly and Peter shouted simultaneously.
"If you've come to rescue the prisoner you haven't got a chance, I'll beat your skull to splinters!" Billy put his fists up in a mock boxing stance, and Slightly blinked in shock as he realized what he was doing. "Captain Hook isn't done with him yet, and if we let him get away before he's finished his plan, the Captain 'll have my hide for a throw rug!"
"His plan? You mean—" Peter paused, wary, then suddenly his face split into a grin. "Of course! I knew Slightly would never betray us." He said haughtily. "I was just playing along with the bird. I knew he was a prisoner all along! Lost Boys!"
"Aye, Peter!" Nibs called down, shooting down from the trees trailing the Twins, Curly, Toodles, and John. Mullins jerked Billy back towards him and growled in his ear "What do you think you're getting us into, Billy?"
"Just go down quick and stay down!" Billy snapped back.
Slightly had had enough time to stumble to his feet and gaped as Mullins and Billy moved away from each other, allowing Lost Boys to slip between them and opening themselves for attack. Mullins still had his knife out, but now, so did Peter.
"We'll teach you pirates to kidnap one of us!" he shouted gleefully.
The corner of Mullins' mouth was twitching. He gave Billy one very acidic look and snapped his teeth, raised his knife, and gave a clumsy, bluster-filled charge towards Nibs. The Lost Boy easily stepped aside and tripped Mullins with a kick. Billy swung his fist at Peter's face and narrowly avoided a knife slit to the wrist for it.
For some reason, Slightly's voice wasn't cooperating, and an attempt to shout "Billy, look out!" instead came out as a vaguely reptilian croak. Therefore Billy had no warning as the Twins snatched his legs out from under him and sent him on his face with a "Whuff!" He could hear Wendy and Michael cheering from the trees at the play-fight.
Except it wasn't entirely a play fight. Peter wasn't pulling his punches and Billy hadn't taken a hit bad enough yet to believably go down from it.
Amid a string of taunts from the boys, Billy dropped his guard on his right side, letting Curly's punch connect hard with his bruised temple, and he went down.
"BILLY!"
He'd knocked aside a startled Lost Boy and knelt at Billy's side before he even realized what he was doing. It hadn't looked fake, it hadn't-- Billy's eyes snapped open the moment Slightly touched him, and between clenched teeth the gunner hissed "What are you doing???"
"What are YOU doing?"
"Getting you out of this, you idiot! I can't let Pan hurt you because of me!"
The Lost Boys had stopped. Billy sat up quickly and Mullins was there to yank him to his feet in an instant, both falling into a posture of earnest defense against the lot of slack-jawed boys. Slightly was surprised when his brain registered there was a place he filled in the defensive formation.
Peter stared with them, dumbstruck. "…Slightly?"
Slightly shook his head slowly, aware Billy was watching him out of the corner of his eye. "Billy was trying to protect me, Peter. I'm not a prisoner."
Peter's eyes widened a bit more "What are you talking about? Of course you're a prisoner! Why else would you be running around with pirates?"
That was a dangerous question. Slightly resisted the urge to pull back just another few inches till his back touched Billy's; he had to screw up the courage on his own.
"Billy isn't a pirate anymore." He said calmly. It sounded that way, anyway. "Neither is Mullins. There was a slight problem on board the Jolly Roger and Hook is after them now." The calm face broke, falling to a pleading look. "Billy is my friend, Peter, and he slightly needs my help. And since he's not a pirate anymore it's not betrayal, is it?"
There was no answer.
"…Is it, Peter?"
"Of course it is! ONCE A PIRATE, ALWAYS A PIRATE!" Peter shouted, and Slightly flinched back. "You left us in the middle of the night to go running with the enemy, Slightly! If that's not betrayal than what is it?!"
"Peter--!"
"WHAT IS IT, SLIGHTLY?!"
Slightly jammed his teeth together to keep his jaw from trembling and pulled his chin up.
"It…it's friendship, Peter. Billy is my friend." He said, his voice only wavering a little. "And I'm not going to run away from him when he needs me."
"If you're friends with the pirates," Peter started, his voice low and dangerous. "Then you're no friend of ours. Come on. The Lost Boys are going home." He said, taking up from the Earth. He didn't look back. Curly and the Twins gave Slightly an apologetic look and followed, and John didn't even look at him. Nibs stood his ground for a long moment, holding Slightly's eye with an unreadable look that was something like pleading and a little like sadness, but then Peter called after him from the trees and he dropped his gaze.
"Goodbye, Slightly." He said quietly, and left there.
Ignoring both Billy and Mullins, Slightly turned, shoved past them, and started towards the caves.
***
"Aren't you going to kill him?" the diamond dove asked, flitting circles around Peter like Tinkerbell did. Tinkerbell herself was not with him now. Messengers had flooded the Underground House for weeks, begging Tink to follow them back to the mainland. "A family problem." She'd said when she relented. "It will only take a few days."
He wished she were here now.
"I'm not killing him." he said flatly.
"But Slightly betrayed you!"
"Shut up!" He struck out at the dove before he thought about it, and with an eep it plummeted into the trees, disappearing in a split oak. A distance to his right, separated from him by Nibs, Wendy flew, and some part of him was surprised she hadn't come after him yet. She seemed to be deep in quiet conspiracy with his second in command.
He'd only made it a few dozen yards ahead before that little white feather duster was circling him again, this time at a wider range.
"Peter, you always kill the ones who betray you! You were going to kill Toodles that day you thought he shot Wendy! Why aren't you going after HIM?"
"That isn't any of your business!"
"But Peter!" It whined.
"Leave me alone!"
The dove darted out of the way before he could hit it again. With a careful, delicate swoop, it gave a 'hmph!' and positioned itself beside Michael.
Peter never thought he'd need another reason to hate the pirates. He'd never thought they could even give him one if they tried. He'd been very wrong, on both counts.
***
Billy and Mullins kept their distance from Slightly until the trees gave way at the foot of the mountains. The presence of the older man somehow kept forthright in Slightly's mind the admonishment that boys don't cry, no matter how incorrect it was. He'd used to believe it was true. After Nibs became Peter's second in command, Slightly had never seen the boy cry, not even when things went terribly wrong and Slightly felt they should never smile again. He'd thought Nibs was so strong.
But once, Peter was nearly killed, showing off to the others that he wasn't afraid of the snarling mama bear by played keep-away with one of her cubs. She'd caught him by his flying foot and hauled him down underneath her. Nibs had picked up stones and began shouting and pelting her hide, drawing her into a charge against him, and Slightly had swept down and hauled off Peter's body. He'd been bleeding very badly, and though Slightly was flustered and tried to cover the bleeding gouges with his hands, Nibs somehow kept a cool head when he returned. He tied his shirt around Peter's oozing chest and together they carried him back to the Underground House.
Once Peter was safe and asleep, Nibs had picked up a basket and said he was going to gather blackberries. It was ten minutes before Slightly realized it was too early for blackberries. He'd found Nibs with his knees to his chest on a tree branch, sobbing, the empty basket discarded below him. Nibs WAS strong. He knew it wasn't that boys didn't cry. It was that boys weren't to let others KNOW that they cried. It was all for show.
The presence of Mullins made him anxious to keep up the charade. Had it only been Billy, Slightly thought he might have forgotten it. But somehow, he couldn't let Mullins know that he cried.
But Mullins seemed to know, anyway. After all, he kept his distance.
As the trees faded out Slightly slowed to a stop, his face scrubbed dry on the sleeves of his shirt though his eyes and nose were probably red, but there wasn't much he could do about that. If he kept his head down, the bill of his hat would hide it. Billy and Mullins caught up to him in only a short while.
"One of the cave entrances is up a ways." He said curtly, tugging the bill of his hat down. Billy's stomach was making an annoying snarling sound again, still angry from a days worth of forced vomiting and its sheer emptiness. From the red stain across Billy's cheeks Slightly thought it had probably been doing it for a few minutes now.
"Hold on." Mullins said, frowning at the scraggly vegetation that held this space before the forest started again higher up the mountain side. He stalked towards a pathetic, tangled plant with yellow flowers, still talking. "I don't know about you lot, but I didn't get jack to eat down in the brig and I'm about ready to eat my boots." He squatted and jammed the knife blade into the dirt at the base of the plant, twisted it, and popped it out of the earth at an angle, speared through a root of some kind about half the size of his fist. He split it three fourths of the way through and tossed it through the air towards Billy, who caught it automatically and blinked at the thing.
Mullins attacked the plant again from the other side, missed, and retried, popping the bulb out with an audible rip of small roots and making Billy feel a little green with the thought of veins ripping. Mullins cut the tuber and threw it at Slightly.
A third attack on the plant yielded nothing, and he snorted and moved onto its neighbor. When he came back to them, a third root in his hand, both boys were looking at the dirty bulbs skeptically.
"Just eat the bloody things." He said, cutting his own in half. They looked like yellowed potatoes on the inside. Slightly held his back out towards Mullins.
"I don't want it. I'm not hungry." He said softly.
"Yer eatin it." Mullins said sternly and pushed Slightly's hand back towards his chest. Slightly blinked. After a few moments watchful stare from Mullins he tugged the tuber open with a crack that made Billy wince, and bit the edge tentatively. It tasted pale and gritty from the earth and it left a film like raw potato on his tongue. He ate it anyway.
Billy, who looked entirely green at the prospect of eating ANYTHING refused until Mullins threatened to stuff it down his throat, and Slightly had the impression this wasn't a new threat. Apparently Mullins had carried through with it the last time, because Billy paled and put the split tuber to his mouth, nibbling the edge half heartedly while watching Mullins. The man snorted.
"Lead on to those caves, then, boy." He said, splitting his own and crunching it, not seeing Billy wince at the sound. Slightly nodded and started walking as he ate. For some reason, he felt just a little bit better.