The Piper Boy (A OUAT Fan Fiction)

Chapter 12

Two weeks have passed since Amily came to Neverland and life has never been better. She can shoot an arrow with accuracy and has caught game for dinner multiple times. The Lost Boys have accepted her and Amily regards them as her brothers now. She holds close the times when her and the boys played ball on the beach or went swimming in the lagoon. Even Felix has warmed up to her.

Amily had stopped caring about things she did in the past. Hygiene and looking pretty no longer mattered to her and she was not afraid to bathe with the other boys. They didn't care either. She was one of them now. Looking back, she noticed sometimes how radically her life had changed.

Pan refused Amily's plea to tell the Lost Boys about their dalliance. She didn't know why. She supposed it could make Pan look weak. But Amily didn't care. Pan was hers.

So they kept things quiet. The occasional stare across the camp fire of visit to each other's tent never got old and Amily was happy. Happier than she had been her whole life.

Or at least that's what she told herself. Whatever it was between her and Pan was lovely and passionate. But it wasn't the romance Amily thought she would one day have. She didn't want to sound whiny and ungrateful. When it came to boys, Peter Pan was the greatest. But there was just something missing.

***

Silence fell over the jungle as Amily and 2 other Lost Boys, their names Charlie and Aaron, crept silently through the fog-filled evening. They had tracked a wild boar down this way and the hunt had made Amily's heart beat. It was such a rush being a predator. This boar didn't know what's coming.

"The tracks stop here. We must be close" she heard Charlie whisper.

Aaron was ahead of them. He was older than both Charlie and Amily and had decided that it was his job to lead them. Amily figured he knew nothing about tracking but he knew a lot about being a moron. Aaron peeked around a tree and held up a hand to shush Charlie. Amily rolled her eyes. She marched straight up to Aaron and tapped him on the shoulder.

"What could you possibly be looking for? The tracks lead East. That's that way!" Amily pointed left of the path they had just come. The exact opposite direction Aaron was looking.

"Shut it, Lost Girl" said Aaron in his caveman of a voice. "I hear something over there by the creek"

Amily listened and heard something too. It couldn't be the boar they were tracking, the footprints lead no where near the creek. This sound was different. Amily listened harder and heard cracking wood as if being snapped or cut and the pinging of something hard against metal.

"What is that?" Amily squinted to make more out of the sound but couldn't quite determine what it was.

"Don't look at me, I'm not finding out!" Aaron looked at her with wide eyes and scurried back the way they had come.

"Coward" Amily muttered under her breath. The suspense was too much. Amily moved forward to look.

At first the scene before her was not alarming. It looked like a normal camp site complete with tents and a circle of stones for a fire when the evening got darker. But then Amily got a close look at it's occupants.

Six or seven men were filling up water canteens or practicing sword-fighting. That wasn't what alarmed Amily. That was the fact that these men were adults. Adults in Neverland! Amily hadn't seen an adult in two weeks and immediately felt threatened. The only men she knew to even come close to Neverland were... pirates!

Amily didn't know what to think. This was the first time she had seen pirates up close and they looked just as dangerous as what she'd heard in stories. Pan had said that he had an agreement with the pirates... with their leader. The pirate with a hook instead of a...

As if on cue the captain of the Jolly Roger emerged from his tent. It was larger than the others and closer to the creek. His hook gleamed in the now shining moon.

Hook looked around the camp with a look full of hunger. For vengeance. He looked annoyed as a squat man in a red beanie approached.

"Cap'n, the men are worried about this plan. You know, first-hand, of Pan's trickery. We could be led into a trap at any moment" Amily was surprised by that. They had a right to be afraid of Peter. He could be very dangerous when he wanted to.

Hook flashed a charming smile and rested his hook on the squat man's shoulder. He instantly froze.

"Not to worry Smee. The boy will get what's coming to him. Right lads?" He yelled the latter and Amily noticed him raise a glass bottle, as if in a toast, before taking a swig. Every pirate roared in approval and Smee smiled, satisfied.

But the look in Hook's eyes was not merry or warm. She knew that look. It was the look every Lost Boy as well as herself had before they captured prey. When they were ready to kill.

Amily gasped loudly and every head in the camp turned to where she was hidden in the bushes. Clamping a hand over her mouth, she tensed, before the pirates shrugged it off and resumed what they were doing. Hook remained staring into the bushes long after his crew had given up. Amily didn't stop to check whether he had seen her or not. She turned and ran as fast as she could.

***

"Wha- what's wrong? Amily!" Charlie emerged from the bushes as Amily ran. He had a sack slung over his shoulder. She paid no notice to the fact that he was the only one that called her by her actual name and stopped for a second to catch her breath.

"Pirates-Hook-camp-Pan!" she panted. Aaron also emerged from the bush at this point and looked at her like she had two heads.

"What are you talking about?" he stared at her, bored. Amily panted.

"Can't-talk. Gotta warn..." She didn't finish what she was saying. Amily just continued running back towards her own camp.

"Oi! Lost Girl! What..." She had no time to know what Aaron would've said.

Once she reached the camp she found Pan within the second of arriving. She threw herself at him and he caught her just in time to be stunned.

"Amily?! What?" he hugged her loosely but Amily didn't care. She just savoured the fact that he was holding her.

"Pan, I..." after running so much like she did, it was even harder to make words. She choked.

"Amily, calm down. What happened?" Pan was scarily calm now, all business.

Amily moved over to sit down on a log. The Boys were beginning to build the fire now and she focused on that while trying to regain her sanity. Pan didn't sit next to Amily but crouched in front of her knees and looked up into her face. She wondered if she'd cry or if Neverland had knocked that out of her.

"Tell me what happened" Pan said seriously.

Amily took a deep breath.

"I saw pirates. Camping. Out there in the jungle. There were... I don't know... maybe seven of them. Hook was there too" She looked at Pan pitifully. He had the oddest expression on his face and Amily was confused.

"Peter. What's going on?" she said, her voice cracking. "I heard Hook say... he sounded like he might hurt you. That can't be, right? You two are close" Amily realized how pathetic she sounded and desperately tried to keep it together. Pan ignored her.

"Felix, get over here" Amily noticed Felix's head snap to attention from the weapons table. He walked over sullenly. 

"We have guests" Pan looked at him evenly. Amily wasn't stupid, the two of them were hiding something.

"You knew this would happen?" Felix said. He sounded unconcerned, almost entertained.

"Of course!" The two boys laughed. Normally this would have delighted Amily but it just made her angrier.

"What would happen? Pan, what's going on?!" she sounded hysterical.

Once again Pan ignored her. He may as well have been skipping around the camp. He looked like a child at Christmas.

"Pan, when are we going after them?" asked one Lost Boy. Pan looked down at him fondly.

"Oh don't worry, Arnold. They'll come to us"