Potential for Darkness (Peter Pan)//(Robbie Kay)

59 ~ Underwater

Heyy sorry for the lateness of the chapter, I wasn't initially even planning on updating before the end of my exams cause I've been really busy (I know I always say that). For some reason the university's medical faculty decided it would be a good idea to cut our exam session by half, meaning that we have half the time to study and the exams are far less spread out in time, so needless to say the stress levels have been through the roof. I've been using the entirety of my weekends to start cramming early in, but I saw a comment left on my story recently saying that it had been over a month since my last update and were hoping for a new one soon, and I felt so bad, I couldn't leave you hanging for another month.

With that being said, I still hope you enjoy the chater despite it being a bit rushed :)

Oh and come on, did you really think I was going to kill her off like that? (If someone's killing her it's gonna be Pan)

<<<Day 240>>>

It was with more than the deep-sea pressure weighing on her shoulders that the mermaid sighed, letting the cloth curtain fall behind her as she exited the council's chambers she had been dismissed from. What a bunch of stuck ups. The shock of violently red hair she adorned floated in front of her face as a current changed and she swatted them out of her face impatiently.

"Arista!" yelled a woman out in relief as she swam towards her. It was her mother. She had been waiting out there for her all night, pacing in front of the hall's entrance, awaiting her daughter's fate. "You're all right! What did they say? Are they mad?" her mother asked as she fretted anxiously around her child, checking for any signs of harm.

Arista grimaced. "To say they're mad would be an understatement. They were livid."

"Well," her mother huffed, disapproval in her tone now that she had confirmed her child's wellbeing, "you're lucky they didn't condemn you right there and then." She tutted, shaking her head. "I can't believe you could be so foolish as to save that lost girl. What were you thinking?"

Arista became defensive as she pried herself out of the woman's clutches. She rubbed at the reddened skin. "I was thinking that I would be an actual decent person by saving someone from being killed for something that wasn't their fault."

Her mother shook her head, not following. Of course. That old woman did not care for anything that happened outside the ocean and scorned anyone who gossiped about the happenings of the outerwater. In this instance, the apple had fallen quite far from the tree as Arista was very much the opposite, spending most of her ample free time gathering every scrap of information that she could from anyone who had been to the surface recently. Very few merfolk swam near the shores of Neverland these days anymore, for their kind weren't as welcome as they once had been. The scarlet-haired mermaid had taken quite the interest to the lost girl, especially upon learning that she was a close friend of Felix's on top of being the girl of the prophecy.

"She's with Pan," her mother argued. "Whatever you think you know about that girl, she is far from innocent." Arista rolled her eyes and began leaving the plaza, wishing she could be left alone. "Don't swim away from me when I'm talking to you, young lady!"

"Mom," she groaned, "I have to go to the detainment center to see her and tell her what's going to happen to her. I'll see you tonight, okay?"

The woman, lips pursed and tail the same cardinal color as her daughter's swishing with displeasure, said, "They're going to execute her, aren't they?" She scoffed. "There's no way the council would let something like her live; she's a menace. You should've left her for dead. That lost girl would have died anyway, might as well have taken her out of her misery sooner and saved yourself all of the troubles you're now in."