Summary: The fate of the Darling women proves inescapable, even to those who do not have daughters. Three orphans of the Neverland Orphanage are swept away by Peter Pan, despite a Darling's best efforts to prevent just that. This story means to tell of the three orphans' adventures in the Neverland, and the adventures of those who preceded them. This story is based on the book by JM Barrie, not any of the movies. The rating has been cranked up because later chapters will be dealing with violence & other non-K things.

Disclaimer: While the characters of the Neverland Orphanage are of my own creation, Peter, Smee, Wendy, John, Michael, Wendy's daughter & Wendy's granddaughter are all belonging to JM Barrie. Michael & John's descendants are of my own imagination, too.


Chapter Two: The Lost Girls

The fragile truce Hattie and Sylvia had established that night had shattered by the following afternoon, when Hattie proudly tattled to Anne that the twins were snooping around the attic.

"Exploring," Sylvia corrected, wrenching her arm from Anne's grasp and flinging herself into a chair across from Allison's desk. She glowered at Anne, who was still holding fast to a stonily silent Olivia, then at Allison seated on the other side of the desk.

"Young lady, the upper floors of this building are off-limits to you and all of the other girls. You two know this rule." Anne's voice was tight, as if she were straining to keep her temper. The twins always seemed to rile Anne more than anything. Allison saw a muscle in Anne's cheek twitch when Olivia freed herself with a violent jerk of her arm and squeezed into the seat beside Sylvia. With a nod, Allison dismissed Anne, who left in a hurry, nearly slamming the door behind her.

Once Anne had left, the twins' expressions noticeably softened from indignant to sulky. They gazed broodingly across the desk at Allison's unsmiling face and she looked back for a quiet moment.

Sighing, Allison disentangled a pair of spectacles from where they had been pushed up into her hair when Anne had rushed in with the girls. Some much needed book-keeping had been interrupted by the sudden clamor of a half a dozen voices. There was Anne, breathless and slightly too proud as she presented the twins like red-handed culprits: "I've caught them prowling about the attic, Miss –"

"I caught them, Miss Allison!" That was Hattie, trying to shove her way past Anne and into the office so that her gloating could be better heard.

"Miss Allison," came Penny's soft, timid voice, before it was cut off.

"Hattie, stay back here in the hallway!" And there was Holly, trying in vain to hold Hattie and the other girls back. "I'm so sorry, Miss Allison, I'll keep them outsi-"

"They had to go up there, Miss Allison! They saved us all from the prowler!"

"Melissa! There was no prowler!"

"Miss Allis-" Penny again.

"There was, Miss Holly!"

"There was not and I caught them!"

"Miss Allison, I-"

"That's enough!" And, unfortunately for Penny, there was Anne again, her sharp voice casting a sudden silence. Holly took advantage of the moment to herd Melissa, Hattie, Penny, and a few of Hattie's hangers-on away from the door, shutting it firmly.

Allison had let her pen drop to the desk and looked expectantly at Anne. Words, for the moment, had been beyond her.

But they were coming back now, as the two dusty girls watched her keenly. Allison eyed the smudges of dirt on their cheeks and standard issue blue uniforms. "Please explain what business you two had in the attic."

If possible, the girls became even sulkier. They recognized easily Allison's voice: it was the tone she used only when she was truly disappointed in the girls, and the only one that truly upset the girls. It would mean shorter stories, but it was really Allison's disappointment that affected the girls. As subtle as she tried to be, the four-to-twelves had a keen suspicion that Miss Allison liked them better than the other girls at the orphanage. For the most part, they did not rub this fact in the faces of the older girls (except when they got particularly uppity), but even in secret they bore Allison's fondness with pride and the thought that they had fallen out of her favor was nearly unbearable. Side by side, the twins sank just a bit lower in their seat, and together they sighed.

"We were just looking around," Olivia began cautiously. Allison kept her face blank as she listened. "It seemed like a perfect opportunity for a first rate adventure, really."

Sylvia picked up here: "The attic, Miss Allison! You know, the teens even say there's a ghost up there?"

"A girl ghost!"

"Or a child ghost, anyway. The teens say it giggles and prances."

"They can tell by the thumping."

"I think it's a ghost, but Penny thinks it's Peter Pan. And Hattie –"

"Oh, Hattie!"

"Yes, well, she was just beastly to Penny, and then Ollie –"

"Oh, that's me, Miss Allison," Olivia chirped, unnecessarily. Allison nodded and suppressed a small smile.

"Oh, yes, we call her Ollie."

"And Sylvia is called Sly."

At this, Allison came dangerously close to losing the battle with her smile. "About the attic, girls, if you please," she prompted, quickly clenching her teeth together to control a smirk.

"Sorry, Miss Allison, but it all comes down to Hattie in the end, really."

"Honest, Miss Allison."

"See, Hattie was being just awful to Penny, and after we'd spent so much time getting her to talk to us!"

"She tells wonderful stories, you know. They're nearly as good as Melissa's."

"We call her Pell Mell. She came up with it on her own."

"Girls," Allison sighed, sounding stern but ducking her head to hide the twitching of her mouth.

"Well, so, Penny said this thing about maybe it was Peter Pan in the attic and not a ghost and then Hattie was just terrible to her about it and told her it was a stupid, silly idea and who had ever heard of such a thing and why on earth would she ever say something so dim –"

"And it was terribly rude, Miss Allison, it was. Penny was near tears."

"So, Ollie said that it very well could have been Peter Pan because isn't Peter Pan just as believable as a ghost –"

"And Peter Pan certainly is as believable as a ghost."

"But old Hattie still wouldn't let up on Penny –"

"And it was positively cruel, so –"

"You see –"

"We just had to go up to the attic –"

"We had to, to shut her up!"

"And, of course, she had it all laid out –"

"Like a trap!"

"And went skipping off to Miss Anne just the second we'd got up there –"

"Before we'd even a chance to see if it was a ghost or Peter Pan or what – "

"Or have anything like a real adventure at all!"

"Hattie set us up, Miss Allison."

"And it's hardly fair that we're in here explaining while she's out there dancing –"

"And gloating –"

"And having a time of it –"

"At our expense!"

The girls sank back into the seat together and Allison blinked a few times to clear her vision. As different as the girls looked, they were twins enough to blend into one another, especially when they traded sentences as they spoke. They had resumed staring, now anxious for Allison's reaction rather than sulky, and as Allison looked back at them, she realized that she could not say which of the two had finished telling the story.

Allison cleared her throat to break the silence that she feared might have gone on a bit too long. The girls had begun to look more comfortable in their seat and Sylvia had a conspiratory grin blooming on her lips, but the sound from Allison snapped the twins back to anxious and contrite.

"You two know that the attic is off-limits –"

"But Miss Allison –" they began in unison.

"And," she continued firmly, raising her voice just enough to overpower theirs. "You know that it is not restricted because it is hiding ghosts or Peter Pan or any other sort of adventure. It is dangerous for anyone unfamiliar with the attic to be up there. The floorboards are loose and might be rotting. What if one of you had fallen through and hurt yourself? What if one of the other girls had – Penny or Melissa? It isn't safe and, I promise you, that is the only reason you are prevented from going up there. And you know that." Allison leaned forward slightly in her seat, looking more intently at the now sober faces of the twins. She observed that their wide eyes were now half-hooded in a disenchanted sort of way and thought to herself that this was her only complaint about the four-to-twelves: the worlds of fantasy and reality were too close together for them. Bright and clever as they might be, they could forget all their common sense for just a hint of adventure. Their imaginations were almost dangerous, Allison thought, and tended to literally run away with them. And the way they could just forget! It frightened her.

But they would learn to remember, she knew, as they grew up. They would learn to be cautious and safe and it would age them. She had seen it happen all her life, to every girl in the orphanage, and to herself. Maybe it was the forgetting that kept you young, she thought, and she smiled ever so slightly at the twins seated before her.

They caught the smile, of course, and their eyes were suddenly bright again, their own lips beginning to curl up in delight. Allison relented and sat back in her chair. "I am very glad that you weren't hurt, girls, but I don't want you two going up to the attic again, no matter what Hattie says."

"Yes, Miss Allison," Olivia cheerfully consented, but Sylvia huffed grumpily. "Can't you do something about Hattie, Miss Allison? She's just so awful to everyone!"

"Hattie is different from you and Olivia, but that doesn't make her awful."

Sylvia huffed again but did not attempt to argue the point any further.

Olivia jumped in as her twin pouted beside her. "Miss Allison, there are Lost Girls in the Neverland, aren't there?"

Allison sat up straight very suddenly, startling the twins, and stared hard at Olivia. "Why do you ask that?" Her voice was odd: tight and high-pitched. Olivia seemed reluctant to answer.

"We argued with Hattie about that, you see," said Sylvia, coming out of her momentary sulk to step up for her twin. "Hattie says there can't be any because Peter told Wendy that girls were too clever to fall from their prams. But of course that was all tosh that Peter said to make Wendy tell stories and not be cross and I said as much."

"She told Hattie that not all girls were too clever," Olivia chirped, but even as she exchanged a smirk with Sylvia, she eyed Allison warily.

"But Ollie and Penny and Pell Mell think for certain that there must be some Lost Girls – you see, that's what the names are for. They are Lost Girl names. Penny says she has one thought up but she's much too shy to tell us."

"Sly isn't a Lost Girl name, though. Sylvia is a pirate. Though Hattie says there aren't any pirate girls, either."

"And that's all tosh, too. But we figured anyway that we ought to ask you about the Lost Girls, because you know everything there is to know about the Neverland."

Allison gave the girls a small smile, though it was hardly a convincing one. "I'm sure there are Lost Girls and pirate girls in the Neverland. Even though it wasn't very polite, Sylvia, you are probably correct: not all girls are clever."

For what seemed like a joke, the statement fell heavily from Allison's mouth. The twins split a weak, nervous giggle and looked down at their knees, disturbed at the sudden changes Miss Allison had gone through. She had swung quickly from that agitated, tight-voiced state into a glum sort of detachment. The girls were surprised to find themselves relieved when Miss Allison dismissed them with a distracted promise to see to Hattie. They left side by side, making sure their backs were to the closing door of Miss Allison's office when they pulled faces at Hattie, and clattered up the stairs two at a time.

" 'S a shame about the attic, innit?" Olivia said after they had climbed up to the next floor.

Sylvia nodded silently and trained her eyes on the stairs. Her brow was creased with a deep frown, and Olivia knew that meant she was thinking hard about something. She also knew, from past experience, to wait for Sylvia to voice her mind rather than attempt to press it out of her.

Olivia had not long to wait. As the girls reached the third-floor landing, Sylvia brought her heels together with a decisive click and turned her wrinkled face to Olivia. "Didn't Miss Allison act so strangely just before?"

"When we brought up the Lost Girls, you mean?"

"Yes, didn't she seem so queer?"

Olivia nodded. "I don't think I've ever seen her behave like that."

Sylvia's face puckered even tighter upon itself as the frown deepened. "I wonder what could have put her off like that?"

The twins were then interrupted by a clanging bell from the main floor of the orphanage that indicated the beginning of their lessons. Sighing together, they turned and clattered side by side back down the stairs. They were joined as they went by the other four-to-twelves and the older girls, and all of them thundered past Miss Allison's office, but only Sylvia took the half-second to raise her head and frown at the closed door thoughtfully. It was only a half-second, for it was all she could spare as she kept pace with Olivia and the others.


Allison listened to the distant rumble of the girls' footsteps growing steadily louder as they descended from their dormitories. At first it was like thunder, then like the rushing of a nearby river, and then, as they stampeded past her door, their footsteps were like an earthquake that set the entire room trembling. The spectacles shivered atop the paperwork on Allison's desk and the floorboards conversed with the walls in creaks and moans. Allison slouched in her chair and let the noise surround her, the much needed book-keeping forgotten as she gazed thoughtfully at the ceiling. "Not all girls are clever," she murmured to herself, turning the words over and over in her mind. She had heard them before, once upon a time, and the odd coincidence of Sylvia saying them had pulled Allison into a reminiscent stupor.

But was it coincidence? Allison wondered. Hadn't Emily said the very same thing that night...that night...

They were eight-year-old girls in matching blue nighties, jumping about the Rochester's nursery with Emily's younger brothers in tow. Allison was climbing to the top of a chest of drawers that served as a mountain to catch a glimpse from above of the Indian camp below. Her wolf cub, played by Jude, the youngest, bounded up panting and leaned against her leg, staring down the mountain and ready to fly at her command. Allison patted Jude-the-wolf-cub's head affectionately and it turned under her hand, attracted by a commotion from another part of the Neverland.

Across the nursery, Emily was engaged in fierce make-believe combat with David, the middle brother. Emily's hair was tied up and stray strands had slipped free to whip about her face as she parried and thrust with fervor. David sneered as he blocked her blows and delivered some of his own, one eye obscured by a scrap of fabric looped about his head as a makeshift eyepatch. He growled and swiped, she dodged and laughed and struck out again, and so on. As they circled the nursery, jumping up onto furniture or diving around it, the fight seemed like an intricate dance to Allison and Jude, who followed the steps carefully from their vantage point on the mountaintop.

"Have at thee, wretch!" Emily cried gleefully. "Come closer! I'll gut you and hang your head on the highest mountain peak!"

"Ye will rue the day you crossed swords with me, Pan!" David snarled, and tripped off of a footstool. "Em!" he whined in a voice very different from the gruff tones he had been using. He looked over his shoulder and scowled up at Emily on the footstool, for it really had been her fault that she had fallen. According to the elaborate steps of their battle, as David had lunged forward, Emily ought to have jumped down from the stool and dodged, allowing him room to spring down after her. But Emily had not dodged or jumped or moved at all. Her imaginary sword had dropped to her side and she stood motionless as David lunged and stumbled. Now, however, she hopped down to offer David a hand and smiled.

"I'm not Peter Pan."

"What are you talking about?" David rose grumpily to his feet and straightened his pajamas.

"You called me Pan. I'm not."

David stooped to pick up his imaginary sword before answering. "Well, who else would you be?"

"I'm a Lost Girl," Emily replied, puffing out her chest and raising her chin proudly.

"What?" David guffawed. He looked from Emily to Allison and Jude, who now stood beside the footstool, with a disbelieving smile. "There aren't any Lost Girls!"

"Of course there are! If there are Lost Boys, there must be Lost Girls!"

"Well, who would lead them?" David scoffed.

"A Lost Girl, I imagine," was Emily's scathing reply.

David rolled his eyes but seemed stumped. "Well – but – didn't Peter tell Wendy there weren't any?"

"Um –" Emily faltered, but cut David off in the middle of a triumphant smirk. "Did he, Allison?" she asked, turning to her cousin. David looked to Allison, as well, and Jude tilted his head to look up at her from where he sat, on his haunches at her feet.

Allison was acknowledged as the official storyteller of the cousins and the keeper of all the knowledge of the Neverland. The stories had been in the family, of course, for generations, but Allison had shown a keen interest in gathering and retelling the stories to her cousins, particularly if she was allowed to sit on the window seat while they lay drowsy and warm under their covers. She was especially fond of smoothing down the comforters of the boys' bed before slipping into the bed she shared with Emily. "Think happy thoughts and we will all meet in the Neverland," she whispered to them all before lying down, and the four of them would dream of the pirates and Indians and Peter himself. And Allison would dream mostly of sitting on a tree stump in the home of the Lost Boys, with a dozen round faces turned toward her, hanging on every word of every story she told.

So it was with a steady gaze that Allison fixed each of her cousins, taking in Jude's mild interest, David's consternation, and the strange, wild brightness of Emily's eyes. She turned the story of Peter and Wendy over in her mind.

"Well," she began slowly. "Peter did tell Wendy that girls were far too clever to fall from their prams and become Lost –"

"There, you see!" David jumped in, turning to Emily. "You see, he said it himself! There aren't any Lost Girls!"

"But," Allison pressed on, shooting David a stern look; "Peter was flattering Wendy when he said it. She'd been upset, remember?"

"Besides, not all girls are clever," Emily said smugly. David looked cross as he sheathed his imaginary sword.

"That's quite a compliment you've paid yourself, Em," he growled, sulking off to the other side of the nursery.

It was then that they heard the laughter.

Emily's retort died in her open mouth as all heads turned to the window, from which everyone could swear they had heard the giggle of a child no older than Jude. There was no room for fear in their anxious hearts that had leapt at the joyful sound, and they waited eagerly for the face they knew would appear: they knew from the stories and they knew from the elation blooming inside them.

And suddenly, to their delight, the window flew open as if blown by an intrusive wind and Peter broke through.

Allison could today remember him clearly as she had seen him those years ago, standing proudly in the air just above the window seat. No older than six – Jude's age – and everything about him boyish and soft: the roundness of his freckled cheeks, the plump arms and legs forever held in a state of just beginning to lengthen and harden into muscle, and most attractively the gleaming pearls of the first teeth he would have for all time bared in a bold smile. Allison had not missed, however, the glinting silver of the blade tucked into his belt, the incongruous touch of adulthood marring his childish ensemble. Her eyes could not long be kept from his face, however, or his blue eyes that shone with a wildness similar to that she had seen in Emily's just moments before. But Emily's eyes had shown but a flicker compared to the bottomless feral youthfulness of Peter's. They sparkled with mischief, Allison had thought, though it may have been a reflection of the fairy fluttering around Peter's shoulders.

They had left with him at once, naturally. It was all but expected of the children in their family, for which Peter Pan and the Neverland were not merely entertaining stories but tradition. And the Rochester children and Allison did the family legacy proud, sporting about the Neverland for weeks. It is remarkable that they did not stay longer, for of course they found all of their dreams waiting for them on the island. Jude ran with a pack of wolf cubs on all fours and became a wild thing, even napping beside the wolf mother in the afternoon. Only Allison's soothing voice could turn him from wolf into boy again, and only at bedtime. David took advantage of his brother's newfound animalistic traits to sneak close to the far side of the island, where he could gaze from afar at the pirate village in the valley below. With a new and much more convincing eyepatch gifted him by Peter (one of his many pirate trophies), David would stare longingly at the finely dressed captains and dirty bosuns as they strolled the cobbled streets. The raucous singing from a grimy pub thrilled him and he was intrigued by the richly dressed ladies that giggled and fawned over even the most unwashed of the pirates. Emily, meanwhile, found an unusually amicable fairy by the name of Ember who helped her locate the Lost Girls. There were a handful, more than anyone had expected to see: Peter, like David, had scoffed at the idea of Lost Girls at all, saying that he had never run into any. But Emily and Ember rounded them up from every corner of the island, flushing them out of hiding in ones and twos and threes until the girl and the fairy had scrounged up ten very lost Lost Girls and couldn't find anymore. The youngest two were four-year-old twins and the oldest was a waifish twelve-year-old and, as they had no leader, they took to Emily immediately and were as dutiful to this eleventh Lost Girl as the Lost Boys were to Peter. Peter himself grudgingly accepted Emily and the Lost Girls, allowing them to come along on his adventures with the Lost Boys and even joining in on some of their own adventures, as recompense for giving them room and board in the house under the trees.

It was in that house that Allison found her Neverland dream had indeed come true. With the nine Lost Boys, Jude, David, Peter, Emily, and the ten Lost Girls, Allison had so many faces turned toward her each night, so many ears hanging on every word of her story, and so many covers to smooth before whispering a good night that she was nearly always dizzy with happiness. She gloried in being a darling mother to all the Lost Boys and Girls; rejoiced in mending their leaf frocks with the juice from new plants; delighted in preparing pretend meals for her many children. It is a wonder the four cousins returned to London at all when even Allison could hardly bear to be torn away from the Neverland.

But back they flew, David and Allison each holding fast to one of Jude's arms as the wolf-boy howled and writhed and struggled to break free and return to his pack. Emily and Peter flew far ahead, their shapes barely discernible in the night sky from where the others soared steadily onward. Without the lights of their fairies dancing around the two children, Allison and David would surely have been lost.

The nursery window was open, of course, because the grownups knew their part as well as the children had known theirs. In the four cousins had tumbled, giggling breathlessly as they burrowed under the covers. Jude's howls had faded to whimpers by they time they had passed over the primary school and he was now grinning at the familiar sight of the nursery walls around him. "Won't they be happy to see us in the morning?" he had mused. "Yes, let's get on to sleep and they'll be so surprised, like we'd never left!" Emily had sounded so happy to be back that they all fell asleep without waiting for Allison's good night.

The grownups were, as predicted, beside themselves with excitement to find their children had returned to the nursery. "But where's Emily?" Mrs. Rochester had asked, once Jude's face had been thoroughly covered in kisses. Allison still remembered the awful, slow fading of every smile as Emily's absence from the nursery grew more pronounced. All eyes were on the window, which hung open and pointed like an arrow to where the second star to right would be seen if it were not morning. "She is a Lost Girl, I guess," Allison had said, and allowed her father to pick her up and carry her home.


Allison sighed, picking up the spectacles from her desk and toying with them idly. A moment later, she tossed them back onto the paperwork and pushed herself out of the chair, stalking toward the window. There was no seat, but she perched on the rather broad sill and peered out at the bright, grey afternoon. It had been like this when Emily had come back again, she remembered.
Emily had been in the Neverland for eleven years, while Allison had spent those years growing up. She was away at university when the dormitory phone rang and a breathless fresher had rushed to her door, claiming there to be an emergency at home. Her father's voice had cracked when he told her: "Emily's come home."

She was more of a lost girl back in London than she had ever been in the Neverland, it seemed. The look on her face when Allison had finally arrived back at the Rochesters' almost made Allison wish her cousin had never come back at all. Emily looked horrified, as if Allison had committed the ultimate betrayal by growing up. And Allison could only feel pity for the eight-year-old girl who looked just the same as she had the night she deceived them all and slipped back to the Neverland. Why had she come back at all, after all this time? Allison had asked. "I missed you," Emily replied, blushing fiercely and looking hard at the floor. Allison had fought the urge to sweep Emily into her arms and rock her like a child.

But she was a child, and she had every right to behave and be treated as one. Mr. and Mrs. Rochester were grey-haired parents sitting on an empty nest: Jude and David both off at boarding school and Emily a tragedy they had just begun to move past. How bewildering for her to return and find that everything had moved past her.

Emily stayed only for a month. The night she left again, Allison and the Rochesters had a rather loud argument about what was "to be done" with Emily. Allison felt it was obvious that she belonged with her parents, in the nursery she knew. But Mr. and Mrs. Rochester had grown accustomed to the solitary life. They were done with raising children, they said. They had raised theirs. Mr. Rochester suggested that Emily stay with Allison. "What am I to do with a child! We are not expected to have children until after university, Uncle David!" Allison's outburst was followed by the pounding of small feet on the stairs to the nursery, then the sound of the window crashing open. Allison had raced up after Emily and arrived at the window just in time to glimpse the rapidly shrinking speck of white that was a girl in her nightgown, flying away to the Neverland. "Mea culpa," Allison had murmured, sinking to the window seat with her eyes trained on the speck. She had had a classical education.

Allison returned to university and afterward devoted herself to lost girls in London. She had never had children of her own, too wary of the Darling family legacy to risk losing them. Instead, she rounded up the lost girls of the city much like Ember and Emily had sought out those in the Neverland. Each night, they turned their faces to her and hung on every word of every story, and she searched their eyes for the glint of wildness that had sparkled in Emily's the night Peter broke through. She did not think she could bear to lose another girl.


The bell that declared the end of lessons and the beginning of dinner sounded through the quiet halls, jerking Allison away from her memories. She rose from the windowsill as the sound roaring flood of the girls pouring into the hallways below filled her ears.
Note: To my reviewers, thank you so much! You guys are the reason I finally got this second bit finished & up, & I'm off to finish up the next piece right away. Keep reading & reviewing, guys: I need you!