Peter and the Shame of the Embrace

Chapter 1 - The Library

It was raining. Well, it was London, so it was always raining. But to 14-year-old Molly Aster, staring out of the library in her family's castle-like home in Kensington Palace Gardens, the rain seemed colder than usual. Sharper. If she were out there, in this downpour, with no coat or shoes, just a thin cotton shirt and some battered shorts keeping her from the seemingly endless deluge, she was sure she would freeze to death, or drown. Anyone would. But there was one boy who didn't freeze. He kept his chin up, forged through the omnipresent darkness London had to offer, and found her. In a city of four million people, Peter Pan had been able to find her, all on his own.

With everything that had been going on that week – her mother being kidnapped, her and Peter's desperate quest to find her father, George's involvement – Molly hadn't stopped to think about what Peter had gone through until much later. Much much later. So late, in fact, that it embarrassed Molly now, how selfish she had been. How unempathetic. 

It had been almost exactly a year since Peter came to London.  Molly closed her eyes, trying to slow her heartbeat. Breathe. But there it was again, as clear in her mind's eye as it had been that night, with Lord Ombra in her room. Peter, backlit by a slim crescent of a moon, his shorts billowing around him. His eyes shone a bright sky blue. His hair, tinged green by the London smog, was still a halo framing his face. His jaw squared in that moment by stress and fear. Peter ground his teeth a lot when he was stressed. Molly wondered if he even knew that. He outstretched his hand, calloused in the middle and at the tips, but otherwise soft. Molly pondered what he had done to harden his fingers that way. Perhaps fishing did that, or making tools.

So much had changed since that awful night. There was the obvious, Peter's friends – James, Ted, Thomas and little Prentiss – had since taken residence in the Aster household, where they had been living for the past nine months. James had shot up like a tree, but was considerably lankier than the family had expected to be. He was taller than Molly now by a good inch and a half, who had also grown considerably. She was now eye level with her father's collarbone, and he was not a short man. Ted had almost matched James's growth spurt, but was broader about the chest. Thomas and Prentiss hadn't grown as much as the older two boys, but judging by their foot sizes, they would both become tall men as well. 

It wasn't just everyone's height that had changed. Ever since that afternoon on the beach so many months ago, when she and Peter shared their kiss, Molly had felt a shift in their relationship, even though the pair hadn't seen each other since then. Molly though about that moment frequently too. It felt like the end of their... thing ... rather than the beginning. As though now that they had both experienced each other, the flame had died out in a sad sort of way. When Molly thought about Peter nowadays, it was as if he were a close friend, or a relative, not a... a... Still, though, Molly still conceded that Peter was an incredibly attractive young man, even if she hadn't fancied him as much as she had a year ago, and she often though about the last time they saw each other, on the island.

Peter's arms were around her waist, Molly's on his shoulders. Her face was wet from crying, but Molly could tell from Peter's eyes that he didn't even notice. He didn't shed a tear, but his eyes were red and his cheeks were blotchy from saying goodbye to his mates moments before. Molly though about Peter's eyes more often than she would like to admit. Yes, his tangled mass of fiery orange hair would always take center stage, but, at least in Molly's opinion, his eyes were his best feature. Molly wavered between considering his eyes cerulean or sky blue.

She once brought this question up to James, who had stared at her like she had three heads until she rescinded the comment. Molly was close to all of the original Lost Boys, who would occasionally joke that they were now the Found Boys, but she was partial to James in particular. This was not only because of their ages, though James was closest in proximity to Molly when it came to seniority. James also just seemed to get  Molly a little more. Whenever Peter was brought up, James acted as awkward as Molly felt. He never teased her for her affection for their friend, nor had James rolled his eyes when she would rather sit and read or do needlepoint instead of fish when the Asters had gone to their summer home for the summer holiday. One time, he even tried to join her, until the other boys mocked him for being a ninny.

"Daydreaming again, eh?" Molly jumped at James's voice, which had dropped at least an octave since he left Mollusk Island. She still wasn't totally used to having so many people in her house. "It's fine." James chuckled before Molly could even respond, "I know you get like this when it's raining so hard."

"Do you ever... get worried about him?" Molly didn't typically like expressing her fears like this to people, but she also trusted James more than she did most others. James sighed, staring at the rain for a minute with a misty-eyed look, and something else, something a little deeper in his eye.

"No."

"What?!" This response actually threw Molly off. Of all the people she now shared a roof with, she thought that James would be the most understanding. James shrugged.

"I didn't know Peter as someone who would trudge about in London in the rain. I knew him as someone who would yell at you if you interrupted his naps. I mean, yeah, he would die for us, but he was also a bit of an idiot if he wasn't careful. We just knew him a lot longer, and, you know, in a bit of a different way."

It was Molly's turn to sigh and stare out the window. She cared for James very much, but some small part of her resented him for his relationship with Peter. Peter and James had spent most of their lives together, a fact that James brought up frequently when their conversations turned to the flying boy.

"Do you have any ink cartridges, by the way? My pen's almost out, and I want to get ahead on this Literature essay so I don't have to spend the summer stressing about it." Molly smiled. Of course James would want to get an essay done in early June, right at the beginning of the summer holiday. Ted would leave it to the last of August if he could. Molly would probably get it done in mid July, right in the middle.

"No, but I'm sure Father's got loads of spares in his study. That's where I always nick mine from, anyway." James smirked and shook his head in disbelief.

"Molly, have you seriously not noticed that the office has been locked since noon? Your dad's in there with a bunch of Starcatcher people right now, I gather." This was the second time in the conversation that Molly had been thrown off guard.

"Imsorryjameswhat?" Molly hopped off the reading nook where she had set up camp. The cushion beneath her held her impression for thirty seconds. James, for his part, had to clutch the window sill to keep himself from laughing.

"God, Molly, how long have you been looking out this window for?" Molly strode her long legs to the other side of the library, where a door connect it with Molly's father's impressive study, but it was too late.

The mahogany door burst open from the other side, where the lanky form of Leonard Aster took up most of the frame. Inside, Molly could just see behind her father's shoulders, stood perhaps half a dozen men and women, all staring at her father's back with some level of shock. Molly recognized many of them as Senior Starcatchers, whom she had known since she was a little girl, but there were a few new faces. Mr. Magill, whom she had first become acquainted with in Sailsbury, was smoking a fat cigar near an expansive map of Europe framed on the far wall. Patrick McGuinn, son of the late Richard McGuinn, was leaning uncomfortably on Leonard's desk. He looked very pale.

"Molly! Just the girl I wanted to see." Boomed Leonard Aster. His tone was warm, but his cheeks were flushed in a way Molly recognized as being very upset. He was trembling slightly.

"Y-yes Father?" Had she done anything wrong recently to warrant her father's anger? Nothing in particular.

"Will you do me a favor, princess, and gather up the boys here in the library. We have a couple of questions for them." If Leonard wasn't in such a precariously explosive mood, Molly might have admonished him for using his pet name for her in front of so many people, but she knew now was not the time.

"I'm here!" Piped James, who had taken up residence on the window seat where Molly had been only moments before.

"Great." Aster had kept up the cheerful tone, but James could also tell that Leonard was clearly furious. His hands were balled into fists, his knuckles white. "You can be the first, then. Up you get, come on." James leapt from the window immediately and bounded towards the man. Though James was moving decently quickly, to Molly, it felt like he took forever to finally enter the study.

As Molly's father shut the door with unusual abruptness, Molly could hear James asking, "What's this about?"

"Oh, just a few questions about Peter. I promise it will only take a minute or two."

Molly stomach dropped.