The Shadow's Keeper ~OUAT Peter Panfiction (Book 2)

The Old King

The Jolly Roger surfaced out onto the ocean of Storybrooke. The older lost boys were placed in a group home, taught how to get a job, a home, etc. Some even considered college. The little ones were placed in the Storybrooke foster system, and some were adopted beforehand. As for Benjamin, he went back to the Enchanted Forest with Anne and Felix, in the hope that he would find his mother. She had to be older by this point, maybe even dead, but Benjamin didn't want to think that way. He could hardly remember her, but if in turn, she was dead, he would stay with Felix and Anne, at Lily's.

It would also turn out that Benjamin would stay with them, wander the forest for a trace of her. They were hardly around anymore. They would write Anne, telling her they're getting closer to finding her whereabouts. But Anne knew better. They wanted adventure, and a part of her did too, but the majority part of her wanted to stay at home with Lily, and find a purpose around the village. She didn't fit in with anyone, she never did. But she was determined to find a way.

Their parents ventured off shortly after they had gotten back to Hamelin. They claimed they started tending to business with the king of a royal family, but Anne never heard from them after they left. She figured they were just wanderers, that they'd always be wanderers. Felix was, Anne might've been but she refrained. She preferred the quiet of Lily's cottage, to collect her thoughts that so incessantly ran away from her. The older villagers had gained immense respect for her, being the parents The Pied Piper had so dramatically stole from. They believed she had taken down the Pied Piper for good, and perhaps she did. No more boys went missing, but no one ever asked Anne what happened. No doubt, rumors spread.

At first, Anne never knew the source of the problem, how they even knew she went to Neverland; up until she discovered how much of a gossiper Lily had become all that time Anne was away. It felt so much longer than what it actually was, her stay in Neverland. About a month, Lily told her. Anne wished...it had been longer. She would frequently take out the box her parents left, the one that had told her everything she knew about Neverland. She couldn't open it though; she had given Henry her roped key to remember her by, to be reminded that she was always an older sister to him so he wouldn't ever feel completely alone.

The boy appreciated the gesture, Anne knew, so she was content with her decision. She didn't want to open the box anyway, she didn't want to read about Pan the way her parents described him, she had a feeling she knew him better than anyone by this point. In fact, he was the only one she felt she really knew. She thought she knew Lily and Felix, maybe even Benjamin, but they had all proven otherwise. She often wondered what became of Neverland without a shadow, or a keeper, if kids still dreamt of it, if the island just died away. Her memories of it never did, though, her connection to it never faded.

She was almost convinced a few times that she actually saw Pan; like when she was picking up some things at the market place; she was examining some flowers, lilies very specifically, for Lily's fiftieth birthday. Anne remembered the way Felix had given her flowers for every birthday growing up. The lilies were the plain kind, white with yellow sprouting from the center, but they were still pretty.

Anne was abruptly bumped into by a cloaked figure. She thought she heard them mumble their apologies as she peered up. The cloak looked just like the Pied Piper's, and the person wearing it was just glancing away, but not before Anne could catch a glimpse of a green eye. She ran after him, attempting to shove through the crowd of other villagers, when she lost the figure into the woods.

She ran back home to Lily's, dropped the basket she was carrying onto the porch, lifted up the bottom of her dress and ran into the forest. She might've searched all day before she gave up. Another time was when she woke up in the midst of the night at what she thought was the sounds of a pan flute, but faded as she gained consciousness. She figured she had just been dreaming. That time at the market place, she figured it was just a look-a-like; after all, everyone wore cloaks, and although green was a rare eye color, Pan and her weren't the only ones with such a color.