Grim (A Peter Pan Fanfic)

Chapter 18: Sleeping Beauty

"Someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again." –C.S. Lewis

***

"Well?" Peter demands of his shadow once it returns. There's something different about it; it doesn't shine as bright. The darkness that it emanates has dimmed slightly. Peter guesses it's from fatigue, and he hopes that's the only reason.

Obviously, shadows don't talk. Peter's shadow simply nods at him in his lantern-lit room, assuring him that the job has been done. Hook's shadow has been vanquished.

Peter lets out the breath he'd been holding since last night. "Well done." His shadow nods again before taking off. Peter collapses on his bed, relieved that one piece of the puzzle is solved, but already worried about the next piece. Hook himself.

Peter takes out his flute, playing it softly as he thinks.

The prospect of Hook invading Neverland himself seems unrealistic. Hook, a one handed pirate, against five Wayward Women and a dozen Lost Boys? He'd be demolished before he stepped off his goddamn ship. But if he plans to invade, he obviously has an army. Hell, his army is already on the island, slowly but surely waking up to do his bidding. If Hook's shadow could wake them, the man definitely can. Let's just hope we can take him.

A knock.

"Come in."

It's Felix. "Elly is here. She needs to talk to you."

"Send her in."

Annoyingly, Felix winks at him as he shuts the door again. Peter sighs; does he really think that Elly and Peter have time to mess around with all that's at stake here? What a bloody idiot.

Elly comes in brandishing her bow.

"I don't think you'll need that," Peter tells her.

She ignores this. "We need to talk about Hook."

Peter nods. "Indeed."

"Do you have any idea what he's planning?"

"Besides waking up the rest of the monsters on the island and using them to kill us all, thus taking the island for himself? No, I got nothing." Peter moves to his desk that's cluttered with maps of Neverland and books, setting his flute in its proper holder.

"We need to find out what he wants with us," Elly insists.

"He wants to kill us," Peter says clearly.

Elly hesitates. "That doesn't seem like his style."

"How would you know? You've never met him. I have. I know what he's about. He'll kill us all—feed us to the crocodile maybe—but mostly likely make us walk the plank and plunge into our death."

"Does he think us incapable of swimming?"

"Hook's magic is different than ours. Once we walk off that plank, we're under his control. And he can make sure we never come up for air."

Elly frowns. "Oh. That makes him a little scarier."

"Don't worry. We'll defeat him."

"Then we need to improve our magic and our skills," Elly says sternly. "We don't stand a chance otherwise."

"We will, we will."