Title: NeverRememberLand

Author: ClarySage

Reviews: Please

Rating: pg-13 later R, after that, probably nc17 and over at aff.net

Disclaimer: I don't own the original story, but I do own this, though I make no profit, phooie.

Warnings: This fic contains: weirdness, wordiness, Peter Pan, someone else who you'll find out about soon enough, Neverland, and is based on the book in all its glory.

It was with an immense heaviness that Nap swam back to the surface of consciousness, his mind still clinging to the memories of the sun and the wash of the water. Sitting up he at once realized he was alone, and wondered if perhaps Peter had already forgotten him. It was with a turn of his head that the memory came back suddenly, sharp as a knife.

A small group of mermaids played in the water between the trees; he could just see their tiny figures and blond hair. That was what had done it then, so easily capturing his mind in dreams of what had been. And he suddenly knew what too the King of the sea had taken from him...from Pan.

Each petite mermaid had not only the blond hair, but as well the occasional sparkling green eye could be seen flashing in a wink. The golden scales rippled upon them, and Nap knew they were Peter's just as they were his. The King had taken Peter's patterning and cut of cloth as if to make a costume, in what way might never been known, though perhaps it was a shortage and the King stole from all he could.

The way the King had kept shifting in colour and shape, now Nap understood, why the last change had been to gold and silver. It had been Peter he'd stolen that day, and yet he'd left behind Peter as well. But then, the ways of fish were assuredly different from those of men, and so it should only make sense that the King could steal in this way.

Nap started in surprise when Peter sat down beside him, handing over a large shell with fresh water in it. Then he hadn't been forgotten, which was something new. Though it was true, Peter could remember some things if reminded of them often enough. Nap wondered if he could remind Peter of his memories, and erase them from his own that way. Perhaps if Peter remembered some things, then Nap could forget them.

"Those are strange mermaids," Peter told Nap offhandedly, offering up a boyish grin.

"They are, aren't they?" Nap wondered where to begin, and suddenly he knew. "I'm sure it was the Sea King."

"What?" Peter asked curiously. For Peter could never resist the knowledge of something he did not know. He used to make sure the Lost Boys never knew anything he himself did not, but Nap seemed different than that. And for once Peter could not bring himself to play his normal games. Even though Nap dressed too closely to Peter, and he looked too similar, Peter did not want to change him.

"The Sea King, but then, you don't remember him, of course. You never remember. But I do."

"What do you remember?" Peter took back the empty shell and laid it to one side, cocking his head and raising his shoulders. He did not bother to question that Nap knew things he did not, and that he seemed to know things Peter should. Perhaps Neverland itself was intruding then, though it may never be known for sure.

"Everything you've forgotten, I remember. Everything you've lost, I've found." Nap said solemnly, glaring out at the mermaids in the distance. "Each betrayal you've had, I feel. Each scar that's faded I've watched heal."

"But, why?" It was not often Peter's expression took on such hurt curiosity. Pain was always such a foreign thing to him he never quite knew how to deal with it.

"I am you r reflection, I am your opposite in all things."

"Are you?" Peter at once sat up straight, his normal conceit firmly sliding back into place. "Then you are like my shadow, and should stick to me."

"No! I am more than a mere shadow."

Peter reached out and patted one of Nap's arms, and then he pinched the skin of one shoulder rather sharply. "You seem real enough, more solid than my shadow. But you cannot be me, there's only one of me, and I'm it."

"I'm not you!" Nap cried in annoyance. "And I am not your shadow!"

"And you are not my new lost boy, and you are certainly not a fairy. So what are you?"

"How did you get here?" Nap tried, swerving his thoughts onto a new track.

"I ran away the night I was born."

"You didn't."

"I did! I heard my mother and father talking about-"

"No! You didn't. You merely say this because you think it is true. But I know the truth."

"You cannot know anything I don't!" Peter shouted, by now quite upset by this turn of events. It was frustrating to have a new boy who would not follow a single order, nor admit that he, Peter, was the leader. For one of the few times he could remember, Peter abruptly felt like crying.

Now it was not true that Nap had none of the kinder emotions, for emotions of love and caring were always somewhat unknown to Peter, deny them as he did. At once Nap felt ashamed of his shouting and wondered at how to comfort the boy beside him. Though just as quickly he knew he could not, should not, and would not. "I know everything you don't," he said instead, and rather cruelly.

"NO!" and Peter was in the air and away just as fast as could be, a blur of leaves and skin in the sky.

Nap stared after him for a long moment, and then slowly picked up the bow and quiver that lay beside him and began walking back towards the little house in the trees. Sooner or later Peter would come to understand whether he wanted to or not, and he would remember even if it did the worst thing possible, and made the forever boy grow up. Nap would see to it, he would force Peter to remember the memories that hurt, and the memories that were so beautiful they shone in the darkness of his forgetful mind. "Pan or me," he whispered to sea and the sky, and walked home.

Already daylight was leaving Neverland as it tended to on a daily basis. The sky slipping into a nightgown of peaches and reds, its hair carefully arranged with stars and comets, awaiting its lover the moon. Peter sat atop the little house, eyes faraway as he gazed into the middle distance, his lips pursed in the playing of his pipes. Whenever Peter was upset he could only seem to find solace in the music, in the cloying notes that hung from the branches around him.

Though already he had forgotten things, a few stray thoughts would not leave, and he was forced nearly to spite himself and remember Nap's words. Like deep bells they rang and rang, louder and hollower with each repetition.

Peter wondered if it was true, if Nap really did remember everything Peter could not. If it were true, then he also knew all the stories Peter had forgotten, and that could be a wonderful thing. For Peter loved nothing more than to hear stories about himself. There were also things he'd like to ask, adventures that had left behind a scent and a feeling, but nothing more.

He blew thoughtfully into his pipes, letting the melody wander and wind its way wherever it thought to go.

"You may wonder where the pipes came from," a familiar voice said from beneath Peter.

Peter did not stop in his playing, tilting his head to eye Nap who stood below looking up.

"It was a story you heard, about the pipes. You don't remember it though, because I do."

A shrill note leapt from the pipes and knocked all the other notes down from the tree branches.

"I do remember everything you don't, only, it doesn't all come at once, and it's not all there laid out for me. Things need to remind me, and now those pipes remind me of how they came to be."

The sound changed again, becoming frisky and curious as a puppy. It leapt from branch to branch and sniffed with vigor at Nap.

"Unlike you, I don't claim to know everything that I don't know. So I will tell you the story, if you wish." Nap tried not to let his elation show as Peter slowly nodded though he kept playing the pipes. "It was a small house, and the single light down below attracted you, inside you could hear your favorite thing, a new story. And so you settled in to listen..."

There was once a land different and yet the same as ours, in which lived people called gods. One god was named Pan. Yes, just like you. Pan was a god with the bottom half of a goat and the top of a man. He had a love of music, dancing and women, and one day he was out wandering the land when he spotted a beautiful nymph by the name of Syrinx. But his appearance terrified her and she ran from him.

As Pan was about to catch her she sent a fervent wish to the earth and it was granted. She at once turned into a clump of reeds. Distraught, Pan fell down amongst the reeds and sighed heavily. The reeds caught his breath and amplified it plaintively. Pan was intrigued and plucked seven of the reeds, cutting them into different lengths, and binding them together. So was born the instrument called the Syrinx, though later it merely held the name of its creator and became the Panpipes.

Nap glanced up at Peter again, the sound had finally stopped, and Peter was all ears for the story. "You thought it was such a great idea that you at once flew back to Neverland, and though you had never yet seen any reeds of that sort you knew there must be some. You searched the island for many days and then at last, as if in an answer to your wish you came upon a clump of reeds just as had been told in the story. You plucked them, discovering them to be much tougher than you'd been led to believe by the story. It took you a few more days to figure out the right sizes and how to bind them, but eventually you got it right and made your first set of pipes."

Peter was carefully eyeing his pipes, as if they were something he'd never seen before. He'd never really considered where they might have come from, and the thought that they were not his idea bothered him greatly. They seemed a great deal more foreign then they had ever been.

"You named yourself then, always before you'd been just Peter, but forever after that story, you became Pan as well."

Peter wanted to say that this couldn't be true, it was all a lie, but deep inside, buried beneath countless adventures, he knew it was the truth. He glared at his pipes, wishing to throw them as far away as possible, yet too connected to them to do so. At last he bowed his head, full of confusion. "It is as you say, isn't it?"

"I would not lie to myself, nor to you."

Peter stared at Nap for a long moment, as if weighing the possibilities of truth and lies, and then he stared at the pipes in his hand again. "I wonder if the reeds were really a woman, and if that is who sings when I play."

"It is hard to say," Nap responded, climbing up onto the roof to join Peter. He pulled out the set of pipes he'd made himself upon waking in Neverland, understanding now why he'd made them before even finding himself something to cover his nakedness with. "The reeds have grown back from when you cut them so long ago. And you might wonder how long it has been. For now they are a tall clump, thick and dense, as if many years have passed."

Peter sat still, eyeing the twin sets of pipes, though his own seemed more tarnished with age then did Nap's set. "You know all the stories I've forgotten," he said at last, almost wistfully.

"I do."

"I don't know if I want to know them," Peter admitted, a worried look to his eyes. "What if I begin to remember?"

"Then you can hold them yourself, and I can forget them at the last."

"Do you hate them so?"

"Some, though some I think to hold forever, and never let you see."

"That's very cruel."

"Yes, it is, isn't it?" and Nap smiled in a sly way.

Pan grinned in return, gazing off into the trees with a thoughtful air. "Yes."

-tbc-