Peter Pan

A Young Boy No More

By Raekitty13

Disclaimer: After all this time, do I really need to post a disclaimer? Really? Would a TRUE author like J.M. Barrie leave you hanging THIS long? Yeah… didn't think so. Please see Author's Apologies below…

Author's Notes: thank yous go out to YourLipsMyBiggestWeakness, Animelover1002 && Blood Midnight && to ALL of my previous && current readers. You guys ROCK. Not even kidding.

Author's Apologies: Here I am, groveling for your forgiveness upon my knees. Look me in the eyes and tell me that you hate me for being such a lazy, good for nothing fanfiction author that has abandoned her most faithful readers && critics… and then re-read what you've forgotten and carry on [if you can find it in your soul to do so, like I know you can! You've made it this far, haven't you?]. Again, I'm groveling here people && only you have the power to forgive my negligence. I'd tell you that to make it up to you I'll never be late on a post again, but we both know that'd just be another lie, so I'll spare you the heartache [although said heartache may very well exist only in MY mind… don't pop my precarious bubble! I'll tell Jess that you're Hook && set her loose on you—wait… what kind of apology is this? … Wow, do I fail or what? Carry on then…]

But in all seriousness, I'm super sorry, guys. Did I mention you all rock?

Like literally, R-O-C-K.

Chapter Seventeen- The Last Bargaining Chip

"Peter, the Never Land isn't going to make it. Once that Volcano blows..." Jacob whispered.

"So does the Never Land," Peter finished, looking as mad as I was starting to feel. "Think I don't know that? I've know the Never Land was falling apart for a while now. After All, it is a part of me."

"Then why did you want me to stay?" I demanded.

"Because here you're in my house, here I'm the best you're going to get. Here, I'm the top dog, the biggest competition. Here I don't have to worry about losing my good looks to old age, or my patience to raising kids. Here I can make the world out to be anything I want." Peter supplied. "Here, this is what I'm used to, boring and broken as it is."

"But it's going to die, Peter. It's going to die and swallow every single one of us with it when it goes," I stressed. "How can you be so cowardice? How can you assume that death would be more fun than growing up?"

"You don't think it'd be scary to die?" Peter asked, his voice a quite calm before the storm.

"Oh, I know it would be scary-"

"So who are you to call me a coward?" He bellowed. "I'm not afraid to die. I'm not afraid to be loyal. I'm not afraid to stay here. Unlike the rest of you. If you ask me, growing up is just your way of avoiding death."

"Maybe it I," I told him, "But at least I know that I'll die in the end. I'm just trying to get as much out of life as I can. Didn't you learn that the first time the girl you loved walked away? Don't you feel lonely here, Peter?"

"I'd rather be lonely than be forced into school, and then a job. Responsibility isn't fun."

"But you've shown all kinds of responsibility here, raising your Lost Boys, saving my life countless times, Peter, you're more responsible than you give yourself credit for," I couldn't take my eyes off of him. He wasn't really listening. I could see it in his face. His thoughts were elsewhere, anger was calling the shots, every other emotion suppressed into the trunk of his mind.

Etched plainly across his face was the question "How dare you call me a coward?"

"Times have changed, Peter," I told him quietly. "Work doesn't mean a desk job anymore. You can be whatever you want. Personally, you'd make an excellent street cop. Or a fireman, you could even be a professional stunt double. Or you could play video games all day."

"For real?" Andy asked. "I could get PAID to play video games all day?"

"What's a video game?" Asked Shorty, apparently despite his younger age, he had been here the longest out of all the other Lost Boys because he was the only one not excited about the idea of getting paid to test out video games.

"Believe me," Jimmy told him. "I'd be like getting paid to be a kid forever, except you'd get to grow older. Possibly get a girlfriend as pretty as Jacob's."

He was looking at Tonya funny, like he was sizing her up and I didn't like it.

Neither did Jacob apparently because despite his blistering blush he wacked Jimmy upside the head. "Can it, James. She's not my girlfriend."

"So I can have her?" Jimmy asked as Shorty cringed.

"No!" Tonya and Jacob insisted at the same time, both of their faces turning red.

"Girls have cooties!" Shorty exclaimed synonymously with Tonya and Jacob, "Right, Peter?"

"They're poison to a boy's mind, that's for sure," Peter said, giving me the stink eye. "Look't what she's done," he was now pointing at me with one hand and waving the other around the clearing. The ground shook again as if to further demonstrate his point, ash falling all around us like dirty gray snow. "She's brought back Hook. She's going to kill us all."

"No she's not. Are you, Jess?" Tonya demanded, eyes steely hard. "There's a way to save us all, but you'll have to give up Never Land, Peter."

"Never! You can't make me. I refuse to grow up!" Peter stomped his feet, planting them firmly in the ground. "But if any of the rest of you are feeling like cowards, by all means, run away with the two pretty girls and grow up. Go to school and get a job. I'm not gonna run from death with my tail between my legs. I'm gonna stand up and fight it like a m-"

"Like a man, Peter?" I asked quietly. "Don't you see? You've already grown up. Your mind is so far advanced. Women do poison the minds of men. Look at my father and Miss Daisy. She's got him wrapped around his little finger. He thinks he's in love. She thinks it's all just a game. You can see through her bull shit the same as I can.

"So you can see my point of wanting to fight it with childish pranks. Growing up doesn't mean you can't stay young at heart. It just means that you give up the right to throw temper tantrums and be reliant on people. But you gave most of that up years ago. How many little boys do you know of that live on their own?

"Peter, even your lost boys have a father figure."

"We do?" Gary demanded, slightly confused. "Who?"

"Me," Peter said quietly.

"You always did enjoy playing house," Tonya confirmed. "Great grandma Wendy could never stop talking about how you were the father and she was the mother."

"But not all relationships end that way," I hastily added, twiddling my fingers. "Some relationships are meant to last forever."

I looked up at him then, and caught his gaze. He was still really angry, but at least he was listening now.

"Like my mum and my dad," I told him. "That was a relationship that was meant to last forever. The only thing that got in the way was my mum's death. And she didn't choose it. You don't get to choose when you die. So stop being stubborn, Peter, this isn't the end. If you're really all about adventures then look at it this way. Growing up is just another adventure, another chapter. It's not an end, just a continuation. It might be scary on your own, but we'll do it together. You and me. Happily ever after."

So I was trying to use his own words against him. Hopefully it would work. Hopefully he would listen. Tonya was right. Nobody had to die. If he would stop being a stubborn coward, my actions wouldn't even be a betrayal. If anything what I had done would just pull him out of his rut.

I wanted him to trust me. I wanted him to forgive me. I wanted him to live with me forever, in the real world. I needed him to take this leap of faith for me, like I had taken a leap of faith for him when he had pulled me out of my bedroom window, into the night sky. I needed to save him like he had saved me.

But was this need, this want, this urge, just my way of trying to ease my own guilt? Was I just trying to erase what I had done? Was I just trying to make things right in my own mind? Was I just trying to save myself?

"Stop tainting my mind," Peter moaned. "I'm not your prince charming. I'm never going to grow up and to be fair, you're no princess either. Princesses don't go against the ones they love."

I didn't have a choice! No matter how much I wanted to shout it at him, I couldn't. My mouth wouldn't work. My breath and caught in my throat again. I just wanted to cry.

Did I love him?

He had a point, I had gone against him. But I had done it for Okami. I had done it to save my fairy. I had done it because I didn't know then like I knew now, how much it was going to kill me to watch Peter die. I couldn't lose him.

I needed him, whether I wanted to admit it or not.

"Peter," I cried. "Please don't do this."

"Get out of here. Take the Lost Boys, take the fairies, and take whatever else you want, just get the hell out of here and leave me alone. I don't ever want to talk to you again. I don't ever want to see you again. Thanks for killing me off by the way; you've at least managed to grant me my last wishes."

"Peter!" Don't be such a jerk, I wanted to add, but I knew that to some degree he was being an ass for my sake. It's easier to leave someone behind if they tear your heart out and stomp on it a little bit. "Peter, please!"

"I said get out! Leave! Vamoose!" Leave while you still can, his face betrayed his angry demeanor. He was scared, scared for all of us, himself included. So why wouldn't he just leave with us.

I held out my hand to him and he turned away. "Don't touch me."

"Peter," but the other Lost Boys and Tonya had taken his warning seriously. They had gathered up needed supplies and were dusting themselves with Okami's fairy dust. Someone grabbed my wrist, but I didn't even turn to see who it was. I didn't care.

I felt Okami's dust trickle down my head, coating my body in its golden radiance. But I would never be able to life off of the ground. My heart was filled with dread, my thoughts as heavy as lead. Peter wasn't going to come with me. He would rather die than grow up with me.

I was never anything more to him than Wendy had been. He didn't love me. He didn't even know me. I didn't even know him.

So why did it hurt so much? How come it felt like my heart was being ripped in two, if I didn't even love him? If he was only a stranger? If he didn't mean anything more to me than I did to him, why did it feel like the world was collapsing?

"Maybe because it is", a little voice in the back of my mind reminded me. The same voice that had me convinced that killing Daisy was the only way to win my dad back. The same voice that had told me for years that I was never anything better than scum. The same voice that told me that it was my fault my mother had never come back. "The world is literally crumbling around you. And it's all your fault. Proud of yourself now, Jessica? You've managed to wreck both of your homes, both of your worlds. First the one with your father, now the one with Peter. You just don't belong anywhere, do you?"

"Peter," the faint twinkle, I recognized as Tinkerbell, was trying to convince him this time. "Stop being stupid this instant. You have to come with us. I won't leave without you and Okami won't leave without me. Without Okami, Jessica won't leave either and you'll kill us all."

Peter glared at Tinkerbell. "You're not my fairy. You've betrayed me as much as Jessica has. You'll leave and you'll do it now. Tinkerbell that's an order!"

"You can't boss me around if I'm no longer your fairy!" Tinkerbell told him defiantly.

"Tink you have exactly two seconds to hightail it over there with the rest of them or I'm gonna squash you like a bug."

"You wouldn't dare."

"Watch me!" Peter took two steps toward her and clapped his hands, narrowly missing her. "Get the hell out of my life you stupid pest."

Tinkerbell let out a sob. Peter wasn't kidding. He hated us all.

I held out my hand to her, and she landed there with only a moment's hesitation, crying her heart out like I was. Being disowned was harsh. It was cruel. And it was unnecessary.

"I'm sorry, Tink."

"Don't talk to me. This is all your stupid fault. If you stupid girls would just leave him alone! He'd never be in this predicament in the first place."

"You mean if stupid girls wouldn't come here all the time you wouldn't be forced to side with Hook all the time? Jesus, Tinkerbell. This is the THIRD time you've helped him over me! THE THIRD TIME!" Peter bellowed. "Some friend you ever were."

"Hey," I barked, voice hollow, but deadly. "Cut the fairy some slack. You're a right foul git, you know that? So selfish. Look at you! You'd rather die than grow up because in the real world you're afraid nobody's gonna play the game the way you want to. You don't know how to cheat the system in the real world so you don't wanna play at all. Maybe you really do deserve to die in this hell hole."

"Never Land isn't a hell hole," Shorty proclaimed. "And I've been in the real world. I don't ever want to go back. This is my safe haven. If Peter's allowed to stay, then so am I."

"Get out of here," Peter hollered at him.

"No," he planted his feet squarely in the mud, same as Peter, mimicking his stance to a T. "If you're staying so am I."

"Go!"

"No! You can't make me!" He sounded just like Peter. And it nearly broke my heart again. He looked like a little boy following his father around. He wanted to be just like daddy.

"Peter!" he shouted, as Peter shoved him at me.

"Take the kids and get out of here. NOW!" Peter yelled at me, and suddenly we were gone.

I don't know how it happened, or where everything went, but in one loud bang the world exploded and everything went dark.