Monster // Peter Pan (Robbie Kay) (OUAT)

Chapter Thirteen

Warning, long author's note at the end.

Chapter Thirteen

Days In Neverland: 17

Evening came in with a drag, lethargic and sluggish like it dreaded the notion of what Pan could be thinking. Planning. Brewing up in that scheming mind of his...oh what devious games and snide plots he could devise.

I suspect evening could discern that, and so it dragged on, slowly, lead-footed at first, before it crashed down quickly in a display of blackened nightfall and flaming orange clouds. The sky knew what would happen at dusk. And so it tried its hardest to resist the falling sun.

Felix had clamped a brawny hand around my bicep, clenching, squeezing steadfast with unwavering strength as he kept his chin tilted up in his march. Felix, though husky in his speech and nearly, dare I say supreme-like in his step, was...pacifying. He could appease most likely anyone (maybe not Pan, but then again, maybe) into doing exactly what he liked them to do. And if he liked dragging me down the Training Path with a painfully pushy grip, I'd let him.

It did cross my mind to endeavor for a liberation and seek out escape routes, but in the way Felix held me, it was almost a tacit whisper to tell me that it'd be best to follow through with whatever Pan had in store. I'd be better off.

The sky hung gray with night, raveling thick like static tempest and motionless smoke. Gray hung low like backdrops and curtains, except for the indisputable moonlight breaking it apart with beaming hands.

I felt compelled to speak then, the orange of torch light flickering in the distance. Felix picked up the pace in his feet, his cloak swishing against his thighs and his boots dusting along the top of the grass blades. And I felt obliged to speak, like the ocean feigning with eager waves to follow the wind. I saw the mouth to the clearing. I saw the boys shoulder to shoulder with Pan standing to their side. Torchlight between the targets twisted in anger, and fear, and I needed to speak.

"Do you know what Pan wants with me?" I asked quickly, forcing my heels into the soil and making Felix halt. He turned to me in shock, his grip on me never slackening.

"Huh?" he spat, uneasily glancing back and forth between the clearing and I.

"You heard me," I said, "don't you know what Pan wants with me? Why am I locked up?"

Felix sighed and rubbed his mouth with his thumb. "You lit his training center on fire," he said, "of course he'd want revenge."

"But he fixed it," I urged, then looked down at my feet best I could in the darkness.

There was a short silence between us, the only noise being the whistle of night wind whispering into my ears and through my hair. Felix's fingers didn't press as hard as he blinked slower, then he took in a deep breath.

"Andria," he said, leaning into my face until his darkened fawn eyes were level with me, "all your attempts to trick Pan are going to collapse. He is the Alpha, the Omega, the cleverest of us all. And must've you've forgotten, you're a girl."

I frowned. "I'm more clever than you'd care to admit."

Felix snickered. "There are faults in your plans," he said, "and they're all going to backfire." Then, he laughed to himself. "No pun intended."

The clearing was nearly indistinguishable with the first training center, not a speck of ash left embedded between the grass blades. Every target was still arranged in a ring around the edges, the staff still trim and willowy, the weapon tree still coiling with stocky branches reaching to the clearing ends like wicked fingertips. But, the automatic bows didn't hang this time. Instead, the manual ones and their quivers dangled like wind chimes beneath the leaves.