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

Chapter Thirty Nine

not edited or revised // only about an hour of work so lemme breathe !

Chapter Thirty Nine

Day 97

I wonder how many times I'm going to wake up expecting to be dead.

I opened my eyes and lemon light filled my room, tangling rosy fingers in the glass jars holding candles on my ceiling. Tree branches delicately scraped my window, leaves crinkling and crunching against the woodwork.

Death tried to take me once again, first from dreamshade, next from Oliver's clammy hands squeezing my last breath out of me. I was becoming a neighbor to the afterlife, a regular to the repose. Demise brushed ghastly hands across the overlay of my soul. And yet, I remain. Here, in my bed, back in that Neverland golden light I've become so familiar to.

I noticed Gale asleep on my floor, chest rising and falling, eyelids twitching, sighs leaving his parted mouth.

"Gale," I said, my voice hoarse. I was suddenly aware of the dull ache ache that panged through my throat. I rubbed my neck and then reached down with my other hand to tap Gale's shoulder.

"Gale," I repeated. He opened his eyes hastily and smiled at the sight of me.

"Andria," he said happily, sitting up, "how are you feeling?"

I propped myself up against the wall. "I'm okay," I said. "What even happened?"

He turned his head to the side and scratched the top of the brunette mop on his head, creased from lying on the floor. "What do you last remember?"

"I passed out while he was strangling me," I said.

"Well," Gale got up and crawled into my bed, shifting his legs as he spoke. "Chester told Pan. And Pan revived you and put you to bed."

"Pan did?" I asked, a growing anxious pull manifesting itself in my chest. I moved uncomfortably. I remembered his face hovering over mine as I came to. I remember the gray of his eyes. I remember the rain drizzling in his soul. I remember the feeling of my first breath back--so suddenly, as if it were my first, as if death was the ocean and he was the surface.

"Gale, I should have died," I said.

His face fell. "What the hell are you talking about?" he asked.

"This is the second time," I said, picking at the dried blood under my fingernails. "Second time I should have died here."

"Please stop," he said, plopping his body next to mine and wrapping his arms around my legs. I felt the sigh leave his mouth and hit my knees. "if you were meant to die you would have."

I smiled and ran my hand through his hair. "You're kinda right."

"Pshh. I'm always right," he laughed.

"But... where's Oliver now?"

Gale shrugged. "I don't know. Nobody has seen him since. Maybe he's been condemned."

I felt that familiar clogging in my throat. "You think so? Don't you think we would all be there for that?"

He looked up at me. "Andria, I don't know. He might be condemned. Pan might have just killed him. Locked him in the cage. I have zero clue."

A wave of nausea, of anxiety, of crippling trepidation washed over me. "What if he did nothing?"

Gale laughed ironically. "No way Pan just let Oliver go. That boy cares about you more than anything in his life."