Teach Me To Live (OUAT//Peter Pan)

Chapter twelve

I continued to heave out the remaining water in my lungs, I felt Pan's hand on the small of my back. When I finished I slowly rolled into a sitting position.

"Hey..." That's seriously all I could think to say. My voice sounded like I'd been eating gravel for the past five years.

"What were you thinking? Oh my God, you could've been killed..." Pan's words were those of anger, but fear leaked it's way into his voice in the form of a mild tremble. He looked out at the lagoon and then shifted his eyes back to me, his face changed when he noticed my arm and gasped.

"Come on, we have to do something about your arm..."

I didn't move an inch. "I don't want to go back to the camp, I don't want the boys asking questions."

"We aren't going back to the camp."

Quickly Pan swooped down and picked me up.

"What the hell are you doing? I can walk myself thank you very much."

"Trust me love, if you don't want to pass out in the next five minutes because of innate blood loss, I'd let me carry you."

I only shut up because I didn't want to get into a fight, and I really think the blood loss might've been getting to me. Black dots seemed to fly around in my vision, and it felt like I was spinning.

"Alessia?" Pan looked down at me, I was too busy watching the black dots fly by. Suddenly my mouth felt as if it were full of cotton. "Alessia!" Pan began running through the dark green tress. I have no idea how he knew where he was going, but he somehow did. These were his woods, his island, and now I was a part of it. When he slowed down I noticed that we were by a massive tree, Pan set me down on moss as soft as the mattress I used to sleep on at home. As I looked a bit more carefully at this tree I noticed that It looked as if it were glowing. Light strung through the trunk, spreading through each leaf into what looked to be pods of fruit. The next thing I felt was a bitter liquid being poured down my throat. Then, like magic, the black dots went away and my head finally stopped spinning. When I looked at my arm, Pan had wrapped a section of ripped cloth on it to stop the bleeding.

"Alessia?" Pan's voice was quiet. It sounded broken, shattered. In that instant I forgot who Pan was, and who I was supposed to think he was. In that moment I could only respond with the single word that would find my lips.

"Peter..."

A gasp of relief escaped him like the opening of a flood gate.

"How did you know? Know that I was in trouble, that I needed help..."

"I- I can't really explain it. It was just a feeling."

Peter looked at me with eyes that have seen too much. I sat up slowly and he put his hand on my shoulder before quickly taking it off.

"Peter, why do you think I have magic?" That was the question I had needed to know the answer to since this morning. I realized just then that i'd called him by his first name. Pan was the name that had a reputation, Pan was the name that struck fear into people's hearts. I was not speaking to Pan right now.

"I..." He took a breath before looking up at me, "for years I haven't felt my heart. It's just been there like a block of ice, functioning like a machine. But the minute you landed in Neverland, It felt like my heart was on fire. That's what you do to me Alessia. You aren't like other people, you aren't lost because other's weren't kind to you...you're lost because you can't find yourself. You're mind works in a million different ways and you can't understand one of them. You have power pouring through your veins. It's overwhelming. So you shut yourself off, you hide your fear behind organization and planning. Well, you can't organize what you feel Alessia, your power. You can't plan out your emotions. You want control because you feel like every other part of your life lacks it. Your heart is just as caged as mine, so please,

let me set you free. Let me teach you to live."

His voice was pleading and his face was only inches from mine. I suppose in the darkness of the night, truth can slip it's way past the walls we all like to put up during the day. A tear dripped down my face, I didn't stop it. I spoke in a whisper, trying to pry the words I wanted to say out of my mouth.

"I'm- I'm sorry I got mad at you earlier. It's... it's just" Suddenly my voice cracked and the tears were flowing faster than I could control, and my words were crumbling away from my heart and flowing through the air. It was as if every emotion I'd ever wanted to tame was lighting itself like the match that starts a wildfire.

"I have spent my entire life trying to control my thoughts. Trying to ignore the feelings that I knew other people wouldn't understand. I have always felt so... just so messed up. Like damaged goods. That's what I was in my mind, worthless-"

I was cut off when Peter's arms wrapped around me.

Maybe we weren't ideal in the eyes of others, but in that moment

we were perfectly broken.

Together.