Checkmate

40. Be who you want to be

Once the smoke cleared, I slowly lowered the sword, feeling my chest rise and fall in the sudden silence. "What the hell did he just call you?" Regina snapped, extinguishing the fireball at the same time. I dropped the sword as I shook my head, turning to assist David with the lock as the lost boys muttered. Regina quieted them easily by pressing a finger to her lips as Emma tried melting the metal. David and I stepped back, my eyes once more resting on Annie, grateful she was unconscious through most of the ordeal.

"Regina, it's blocked by something," Emma said frantically, pulling all eyes to her. Her eyes widening as she turned to the woman for assistance. Regina inched closer, her eyes shifting from the blonde to the lock for only a moment before she hummed. "Is that good or bad?"

"Both?"

"Both?!" Miss Blanchard snapped, her hands reddened with blood as she desperately tried assessing Annie from her awkward angle. "Regina, we gotta get her out of here!"

"It's blood magic," she sighed, gesturing to me. "Papa here could break it, but I'm guessing he doesn't have access to his magic."

I felt myself scoff. "Magic?" I released a single breathy laugh and raised a single brow.

"Oh, that's where she gets it from," Emma muttered. I saw the lost boys nodding in agreement in my peripheral. I froze in my confusion until Regina grabbed me by the shoulders, pulling my eyes to meet hers. Had she not been in heels, we would have been similar in height.

"Your name isn't Thomas, never has been, you're Pan." I opened my mouth to argue, but she silenced me with her words. "Yeah, you're a monster, but so was I. I got better. Look, Bethany needs your magic, so we are going to have a crash course."

"Now?"

"Now." She turned me to face the cage, my eyes locking on Bethany. "Don't look at her. Look at the target, the lock."

"The lock," I repeated, focusing my eyes on it.

"Annie's magic works on belief, so I'm going to assume yours does, too." She raised my left hand to the lock, holding me at the elbow as her other hand rested on my shoulder. "Focus on the lock, relax your mind, and believe the lock to be open."

"And if it doesn't work?"

I felt her shrug behind me. "We use your actual blood."

"Regina!" Miss Blanchard gasped.

"Not all of it!" Regina retorted as she pulled her hands from me, assuming me to be ready.

I closed my eyes and tried to believe, but the fear of Annie's story took me back to the present. Pan was a monster, a bully, a murderer, a man who abandoned his child for power. I shook my hands and my head as I tried again, my hands shaking from more than just nerves. "I can't," I admitted quietly, dropping my hands. "I don't want to be that person."

I turned to leave, but the boys blocked my way, standing closer together in an attempt to barricade the door better. Some of them had locked arms as Nibs stepped forward, the lot of them refusing me to leave. Nibs looked at me with a silent and pleading gaze, his eyes wide, his head tilted, and his hands clasped tightly together against his chest.

"Please try again Peter," he whispered, his words encouraging the boys to echo them in mutters behind him.

"I am not Peter Pan," I hissed through gritted teeth, my nostrils flaring. I moved to step forward again but felt instead a tug at my collar. My assailant pulled me back to the cage and onto my knees in front of Annie with hardly a huff. She moved forward, her breath against my ear as she spoke.

"You are going to free her, you are going to save her, and then you are going to apologise to her," Emma growled. "Men like Pan run at the first sign of trouble. Don't be like him, be like you."