Perdita (A Peter Pan OUAT Fanfic)

CHAPTER FOUR: Sunshine

Just then, a figure clad in green turned a corner, as though he'd been hiding behind a tree the whole time. It was the boy. The leader. Peter.

"Yes, Pan," Felix said, and proceeded to robotically tuck the machete back into its holster, which was concealed deep within his cloak, out of sight.

"So," Peter began conversationally. "Why did you escape?" clearly aiming the query at me.

Why did I escape? What a ridiculous question. When you're locked in a cage against your will, desperate to be free, if the opportunity arises - or in my case, a door magically opens - I'm pretty sure the majority of people would take that as a very nice chance to flee.

"What do you mean, 'why did I escape'? You locked me in a cage, for God's sake!" I responded, suddenly brave again, now that there wasn't a deadly weapon pressed up against my neck.

"Well, I thought we were being quite hospitable. Don't you, Felix?"

Felix's eyes remained glued to my face despite Peter's words. The other boys had not moved throughout the entire ordeal and still stood gathered around me.

No one spoke for a few moments and we all remained perfectly still whilst Peter swung his arms back and forth lightly, as though he was waiting for something to happen. Eventually, it seemed, he realised he was going to have to break the silence himself, and with a slight roll of his eyes, he spoke again.

"Well, we'd best be off, then. Don't want the Lost Ones to miss us too much. Those boys get into all sorts of trouble when I'm gone." The Lost Ones? They must've be the boys I had seen on the beach yesterday. An uncannily fitting name for a bunch of practically primitive children living alone out in the woods.

Peter turned on his heel and stalked away, as though he expected us to follow. Upon realising that in fact, not one of us had moved, he spun back around and looked over at me.

"Felix, carry her, would you." It wasn't question, so much as a command, yet he delivered it in such a way which made it sound like he would've done it himself had be not been too lazy.

"What?! I don't need carrying! Don't you dare touch me! And anyway, there's no way in hell I'm going with you." Somehow, though, I doubted my own words. Somewhere in me, I knew that Peter would never be deterred by such a simple thing as an unwilling prisoner.

He strolled nonchalantly towards me.

"Oh, but I think you are."

By that point, he was striding just inside the circle of boys who parted effortlessly for him without so much as looking where he was, like they had practiced that move a thousand times. This put him no more than a couple of feet away from where I was backed up against my tree. He reached up towards my face, and at first, I thought he was going to hit me, but he merely waved his hand a few inches away from my head in the same elegant fashion as he had at the end of our last conversation at The Cages.

In the next fraction of a second, something extremely odd happened. My knees became suddenly exceptionally weak and started to buckle beneath me, and my eyelids began to shut without my permission. It was not like the night before when I could not keep them open due to my exhaustion. This was different because through this process, I was still perfectly awake, my mind as crisp and clear as his had been a moment earlier.

But nevertheless, despite my most tenacious efforts at controlling my body, I still carried on slouching further and further towards the ground, wilting like a flower. Moments before I hit the ground, strong arms caught me and my head lolled back against a dark covered chest.

Everything went black.

~~~

I rolled over. Something incredibly soft lay beneath me, cushioning my entire body whilst I slept. It was an undeniably pleasant change from the sand and the forest floor I had awoken on before. Not quite ready to wake up yet, I nestled my nose deeper into the fluffy folds of fabric around my head.