Chapter Five: Pan's Impatience

Pan

Peter followed the boy, flitting from rooftop to rooftop, as agile and as light on his feet as he'd always been, despite the new terrain. He watched as the boy approached a regal yet menacing building – some sort of elite private school, from the look of it. The boy walked through the tall, wrought iron gate, and entered the tall, brick building. A memory, something from before Neverland, gave him pause and made him wonder why the boy didn't stay in the dormitory of the private school. Private schools like these provided a place for their students to stay on school grounds, did they not? A vague, half-formed memory of thick, expensive paper and crisp letter, and his mother and father talking – no, whispering – behind a closed door, something about sending him away, that a bed and a place to stay year-round would be provided…Peter shoved the memory away, and it fell down, down into that rabbit hole of his subconscious. Whatever the case was, it seemed that the boy wasn't staying at the school dormitory and hadn't wanted to be seen emerging from a grimy, dingy, less than sanitary alleyway. He would have to follow this boy around for just a little longer before he could befriend him. So, Peter waited, perched on the roof of a nearby building, his gaze locked on the iron gate surrounding the school.

At first, time seemed to pass quickly as Peter thought about what the best way would be to befriend the boy. When that ceased to amuse him, he started thinking about what it would be like to have the lost boys back. But soon, he tired of that, too, so he preoccupied himself with listing and plotting all the different ways he could and would kill Wendy once he got ahold of her. At that, the hours began to pass quickly again, but all too soon they began to drag once more when he ran out of things to think about to pass the time. He began to worry that he'd been wrong to assume that just because the boy wasn't staying at school, it meant something. Maybe the school didn't have a place for its students to stay. Maybe it wasn't a school at all. At that thought, Peter grew even more restless, shifting from the near gargoyle-like crouch he'd stayed in since he'd first seen the boy go through the school gates. Another memory, more of a recollection, really, probed at the back of his mind. Schools were meant to take very long. They were meant to end when the sky first began to darken, not when the sun was still high overhead like it was now. So, Peter continued to watch and wait, his thoughts becoming chaotic and sluggish in turn, depending on the moment or the hour. Peter had always been an impatient boy, and whereas other boys who had matured to adults had been cured of this flaw, Peter, the boy who wouldn't grow up, hadn't been. He was as impatient as ever, maybe even more so because there was no one, none of the lost boys, waiting on hands and feet to satisfy him now. But never had Peter been so focused on a task before, never had he needed a boy before; it had always been other boys who needed him, the lost boys who would still be, if not for him, lost. Now they were truly lost boys, lost to him and to Neverland. But not just to him, he was, in a way, Neverland, so if they were lost to him, they were lost to the island, too. But no, they were also lost to boyhood, to fun, and to make-believe. They could never again fly, and their happy thoughts would be few and far in between. Maybe that was why they couldn't have any happy thoughts because they were all grown up, Peter mused. But here was the first time he'd needed a boy's help, something that only this boy could do, and something that the all great, the all-mighty Pan, could not. So, he would wait and temper his impatience.

Peter had gone into a near cationic state, his eyes glazed and his lids heavy from staring at the sill gate that had not moved, when the sensation of a bucket of water being poured over him without remorse jolted him awake. The sky was dark, and it was raining. He vaguely recalled the heavens of Neverland resembling something of what London's looked about now, dark, angry, and wet. "Of course, wet. Rain is wet, you fool," Peter thought, starting to shiver like a wet kitten. His tawny, golden locks were flattened wetly to his skull, making his face look smaller and younger, and all too vulnerable. Which was a lie, because the Pan was anything but vulnerable, and he'd been fifteen for more than a hundred years. One didn't get very far in Neverland if one didn't learn early on that looks could be deceiving. And there, just over there by the gates, quickly becoming wetter and wetter the longer it stayed in the downpour, was the figure of the boy, his boy. Peter instantly flattened himself against the roof he crouched on – it wouldn't do to be seen – and watched as the boy opened the gate just enough for him to slip through, before scampering down the road. Peter shook his head, flinging wet droplets from his hair like a wet dog, the little good it did him, too, because he was just as wet a moment later, and began to follow him; the boy who would help Peter regain his crown.