『 Broken Promises 』The Promised Neverland Ray x OC

T w o

"She says that but it's not even true." Ray stated as he looked over the fence with his hands tucked in his pockets.

"What do you mean by that?" Norman asked, looking over to Ray.

"Well look at it, what part of this do you find dangerous? The fence is low and I don't see anything remotely threatening." Ray gave the fence a weird look.

Emma glanced at Ray, "but we should do what mom told us."

"Uh-huh. You really love mom don't you?" Ray asked, with his facial expression nonchalant...as usual.

"Sure. Everybody does-"

"Hey! What are you guys doing way back here?" Don asked coming out of the trees with a few others following behind him.

Norman, Emma, Ray, and Phoebe looked over to them.

"Oh, is the game over?" Gilda wondered.

"We should call it a day. If we're out too late mom will be worried about us." Norman informed.

"Someday we'll have to leave here, won't we?" Don asked, almost hesitantly.

"This is an orphanage, of course we'll leave one day. By the time we turn twelve." Nat implied, looking beyond the fence.

There was silence for a few seconds.

"You know, it's weird. None of us have ever gotten any letters." Gilda frowned.

"Letters?" Emma gave her a confused look.

Gilda nodded "Yeah, nothing from any of our siblings who've been adopted over the years." She finished.

"Oh that? I'm sure they're just being considerate to their foster parents." Norman smiled, trying to change the mood.

"But still we were brought here as babies, were the only family we know. Even if we aren't blood related were truer siblings than most. It's the same with Harper and Phoebe and we've only known them for three years, but they're still family." Don started with a smile, Phoebe and Harper both smiled.

"Maybe...the outside world is so incredible that they've forgotten all about life at the house." Gilda crossed her arms and frowned.

"Well in that case, let's be happy for them." Emma smiled.

Norman smiled at her.

"Well...Phoebe and Harper were out there. Do you guys remember anything about what the outside world is like?" Nat looked at the two girls along with everyone else.

"Ah, hmm..." Harper lit up and pinched her chin.

"I remember our Dad and when he would come home from work and we'd do school. He'd teach us about various things, but we weren't aloud to go out." Harper smiled but it faltered when she reached the end of the sentence.

"Dad didn't really tell us much about what the outside world was like. But he was planning on teaching Harper self defense, he had started teaching me when I was about six. He used to bring us gadgets and random stuff so we'd research them and take them apart, make different things out of them, etcetera. So him wanting to teach us self defense tells me that there are danger-" Phoebe explained with a bland face but then stopped when she noticed Conny was standing by Don.

"I mean...I'm assuming he wanted our brains and our defenses sharp." Phoebe flinched at how stupid she looked.

Ray laughed at her and she rolled her eyes at him, but hid her smile.

"Urgh! I wanna go outside soon too!" Gilda whined with a angry look on her face.

"And what would you do out there?" Nat teased with a smug look on his face.

"Isn't it obvious?! Try on new clothes." She glared.

"This again..." Don rolled his eyes.

"I deserve to! We only have this one uniform! I read a book one time, it said the outside world has hundreds of clothing designs and patterns and I wanna wear them all." Gilda smiled while looking to the sky dreamily.

"I wanna eat all the yummy food!" Nat announced.

"I can't wait to find a cute girl to date." Don added with a glimmer in his eyes.

"You realize that's an insult don't you?" Gilda glared.

"Oh I didn't mean it like that..." He reassured nervously, scratching the back of his head.

"I wanna see a train!" Phil perked up while smiling brightly, shooting his arm in the air.

Gilda and Don bent down and smiled at him "That's a good one." Don said.

"I wanna see my dad again!" Harper beamed with her usual happy smile.

Phoebe smiled and went over to Harper.

"I know Harp, we'll find him together when we get out of here. I promise." Phoebe smiled and Harper hugged her.

'If he didn't betray us.' Phoebe glared as her fathers image flashed in her mind.

"And what about you?" Emma asked, looking in Normans direction.

"Oh well, I wanna travel to see places I've never been to before." Norman gleamed.

"Nice! And you Ray?" She turned to Ray and everyone looked in his direction.

"Once outside...I'd have to learn to survive first." Ray said with little to no emotion.

"You're such a downer." Don gave Ray a weird look, Phoebe frowned.

"He's not wrong...you guys don't know what's beyond the fence, think about it. The only home you've known is here, then we'd have to adapt to life outside of the house. Me and Harper were as sheltered as we are here when we were with our dad too..." Phoebe ran a hand through her dirty blonde hair.

She didn't notice but Ray smiled at her.

"Jeez, you're both downers." Don said nonchalantly.

Phoebe stopped listening to the conversation and was deep in thought. What she said was replaying in her head, what was the real world really like?

Everything went dark and Phoebes body felt numb. A red flower flashed in her mind and she gasped, frantically looking around. She found herself in a black room of some sort.

She started to turn around when a vision of her and her dad was replaying right in front of her. Her face was bloody and she looked helpless as her dad brought a shoe to her body for the twentieth time. Blow after blow until Phoebe eventually stopped moving.

A glass bottle of some kind was hanging loosely in her fathers hand. Then her vision went blurry. That's what happened when you made drunk dad mad.

You got beat. It was only with Phoebe though, she'd never let that happen to Harper. If Harper ever did something wrong Phoebe would take the blame for her.

The memories flashed through Phoebes mind until one in particular stood out. Not a memory. She didn't know what it was. But she saw a dead blonde little girl with a red flower sticking out of her chest.

The memories replayed over and over until she fell to the black floor.

<•••>

"Ph...be!" Someone yelled.

"What happ-"

"I got her." The voice said, then she felt someone pick her up.

Everything was blurry, she was zoning in and out of consciousness.

"I...I can't s-see." She tried squinting her eyes but her head was pounding, she didn't know who was carrying her.

The sun light was burning through her eyelids so she hid her face into whoever was carrying her.

Then she blacked out.

~end of chapter~