VILLAINOUS (III) : peter pan ouat

Bonus Chapter: The Seeker

She sat, legs dangling precariously over the side of her old building. Legs swinging back and forth like a pendulum, Charlie can't help but feel as if every second she waits is a year she waits. After all, who knows if they've moved. Who knows if she finds herself perched on the right roof, to the right building?

Perhaps it wasn't best to return to this small town in Maine. Unlike Elizabeth, she had nowhere to run.

Charlie guesses that running wasn't enough for Elizabeth. Before she left this morning, Harry told her the news. Begged her to stay, to be there for the others who had lost her. He was the only one who was both home and who knew how to answer the phone.

Harry didn't want to tell Jared without her there. It's not as though Charlie cared much. As of late, Charlie was too tired to care about much of anything. Every time she slept, she feared another of those messages. Dreams washed and wilted over time.

Her mother was not the only one who new how to leave messages for the living.

Charlie couldn't figure out how to make the recordings. In this world, magic had left her skin, and left a bitter stain on her hands. So, instead of visiting her in her sleep, Charlie finds hers elf sitting on the roof of her old house.

She walks through the doors. Her hair, what once was blonde, is now a darker brown. Has she really changed this much?

She looks much older too. She walks more upright and more stiffly, her head turning sharply as she looks across the road. This girl before her seems to bitter to be Brae.

It's snowing out, the snow collecting in her hair. Charlie finds herself climbing down.

Brae must be 14 now, heading off to high school. It took Charlie this long to find the courage to see her again. Brae chooses to walk on the road, instead of the sidewalk as she heads to school. Moving further and further away from Charlie.

It has been so long since she has used her arms and legs like she does now. Before, Charlie could climb any surface like; scaling cliff-sides and trees with minimal difficulty. It has been so long since she was on the island, however, and now there is so much pain that fills her arms as she climbs down the stairs. The metal is cold against her fingers, and the ice is slippery, but she can't take her time. Charlie must see Brae, for more than just a second.

Once she is down, she finds herself moving quicker, trying to catch up to Brae. It crosses her mind that someone may recognize her. Though she feels different, she looks the same as she always has. With the exception of a scar across her jaw, running up into her hairline, and the old scar from her stab wound, not much has changed.

Brae wears a pea-coat, properly buttoned up. Her shoes are nice, brown and shiny, and her black skirt is perfectly ironed. It is impossible to tell that she grew up in the same house Charlie lived in.

From what Johnny told her, which he knows from what Alison told her, is that Brae has a different father, and Brae does not have magic. From what they also told her, Charlie knows her step-father tried desperately to make her feel lost, though he loved her.

It was all about the prophecy, which is why Brae is safe. Charlie knows what it is to be left in the dark. She too was left by their mother. She too feels so alone in this world, and she just can't do that to Brae.

The girl before her is listening to music; her ear buds releasing a soft hum Charlie can hear from a distance. Her shoes crunch against the freshly fallen snow.

Her life must be good.

That is what makes Charlie stop. Fer feet pause, shifting against the ground. She stands here, behind her sister, who is walking away. Who is she to be here?

Charlie fiddles with the black buttons on her fraying cloak. The material is much rougher than she remembers. This wasn't her cloak on the island, but the cloak of another Blaize. Perhaps before that, a boy wore it who died. Perhaps he even died in this cloak.

Brae doesn't know about any of this. She doesn't know that Charlie was abducted, nor attacked and brutalized. She doesn't know the true cruelty of humans. She doesn't know about magic or about Neverland.

Brae has been given a luxury Charlie wished she had herself. No one has forced Brae to take down the boy she loved. No one will force her to murder, or to confront what it means to live. What it means to be safe. What is means to be loyal.

Peter is dead, and though Charlie did not stab him, she killed him. In ways, she is better and no better than him. His skin is her skin; that is what happens when you fall in love with someone. It's different here, she thinks. She has dated people before Peter, and loved before Peter, but it isn't the same.

Loving on an island is violence and brutality. Loving without consequence and without choice is poison. Charlie doesn't know if she is dead inside and out, but she knows that Brae doesn't know.

Possibly she believes Charlie abandoned her, just as their mother abandoned them. Or, Brae might think she was tortured and murdered. Although, it is most likely that she thinks Charlie, along with Johnny ran away, and that they came back for Alison later.

She wonders if it hurts Brae that her sister left her.

She wonders if it would hurt more to know that her sister wished she didn't. It might be worse for Brae to know the lows her sister hit to get back to her. Finding Brae was not easy. It meant killing boys, and going to war, and sacrificing Peter. Charlie would be lying if she said she did all of this to find Brae, but she would also be lying to say she hadn't thought about her sister.

If Brae had the choice, would she want to know the truth? Does it matter what Brae wants?

Her shoe prints are disappearing with the snow covering them up. Brae is only half a block ahead. Charlie could still catch her. She could still grab her, and tell her the truth.

But then what? Would Charlie move back to Brae, force her to watch Charlie suffer? Would Charlie leave again? Abandon her sister once more, when her sister knows she could stay? Would her sister believe her? Would she forgive Charlie?

This isn't what her mother wanted, and Charlie knows. The prophecy was to stop Peter Pan at any cost. Charlie didn't know what she was getting into until now. She didn't understand the life, and the lives she was giving up in order to save a people she didn't know nor understand.

She can see her breath in the air. This isn't fair to Brae. She shouldn't do this to the poor girl. Torture her and ruin her as if she is nothing.

Brae turns around, and sees Charlie.

She stands still, her feet planted firmly on the ground. Her skin is paler than Charlie remembered, her cheeks pinker. Her mouth is agape, staring at the girl. Charlie can't tell if her eyes are watering from the cold, just as hers are, or she is crying. Their chests huff together, in shock and in silence.

A car rounds the corner, cutting off Brae for Charlie sight for only half a second. It is all Charlie needs to realize she can't be here. She darts off, straight into the backyard of a stranger she doesn't know. Scaling their fences and leaping into the snow that fills their property.

And she is running as fast as she can away from Brae.