Startled at the sound of his voice so close to her, Anne clutched the box to her chest, taking a step away. There was a soft laugh that fell from Pan's mouth, short and stiff as he took another step forward. "C'mon, babygirl, you know, that despite everything, you still want me. Therefore, your heart belongs to me."
Anne's jaw painfully clenched and she hid the box behind her back. "You still don't get it, do you? You are a monster, a cheat--selfish, and you won't get away with--"
Cut off by a sudden, overwhelmingly passionate kiss, Anne felt Pan mold their lips together warmly and curled his arm around the curve of her side. The lost girl wanted more than anything to resist, though she couldn't--not that Pan was physically keeping her from yielding, but just the mere fact that Anne's inner lost girl was clinging to him emotionally.
Pan wasn't supposed to feel, though what if that was a lie? What if somewhere deep down, he still could?
"I have the key, don't I?" He abruptly mumbled through the kiss, before he broke it.
Breathlessly, Anne's brother's heart was thundering in her chest as she was speechless in the darkness. Then before she could comprehend words, the torches became lit again and the box was absent from her hands. Throttled into panic, Anne caught Pan several feet away, having walked off with it.
Angrily cursing, she shot him a glare. "What gave you the right to take what doesn't belong to you?!" Anne questioned in a demanding tone.
"Myself," Pan replied bluntly, concentrating on the key hole of the box.
Boiling over, the lost girl ran at him--anxiously, like she was fearful of him just seeing the inside of the box. He turned his back at the last minute and she tumbled over. She hit the ground with a loud 'umf!'. She panted out words, "damn you, Peter Pan!"
Proceeding to ignore her, Peter heard a click and pulled the key back out.
"No!!" Anne panicked, though it was too late. The box flew open.
~ ~ ~
Coming to a halt, both Hemlock and Benjamin became overshadowed by a stretching, ominous mountain that its points touched the stars in the sky. It was almost like a large black castle, though without the lightening and there were no windows, only chambers.
"This is it," Hemlock spoke breathlessly, glancing back down to his fellow lost boy friend.
"It's so..."
"Daunting?" Hemlock suggested. "Isn't it?" He added with a smirk.
"Welp," Benjamin rotated on his heel, "nice knowing you." But just before Benjamin could take a step, he was pulled back by Hemlock's seemingly demanding grip.
"Don't even think about it," he commented, annoyance tainting his voice. "So, what? You're just going to move in on Pan's lover and run scared like a coward?"
Benjamin abruptly tore his shoulder from Hemlock's grip, scowling at him. "I'm not cowardly!"
"I thought Pan taught you better than to leave a brother behind," Hemlock spat.
"Bullshit! He abandoned all of us!" Benjamin exploded furiously. "Don't be such a bloody hypocrite, you were the second one to do the same."
Hemlock clenched his jaw, debating the words to say. Though he found that his fellow brother couldn't be more right. "Fine, I'll admit I did, but we're together now--"
"How can I be so sure?!" Benjamin forced out. "How do I know you're not still working for him?? How the hell do I know you aren't Pan himself?!"
A short laugh fell from Hemlock's lips. "Cute, though I'm sure we can both figure he's probably out there losing his damn mind over restraining his precious little Anne. You remember how she was, admirably determined to save her brother and to leave the island." Hemlock then cocked a brow.
Benjamin grew timid, looking down. "Except she's not anymore, is she? Since she's pregnant." He smoothed out the dirt beneath his boot.
Hemlock snorted. "You're so gullible to the point it's pathetic."
Benjamin gaped at him in defense.
"Anne isn't pregnant. She would never let him have her that way, I mean c'mon, she's the long lost sister of Pan's second-in-command. She's nobody generous enough to let a boy take something so valuable from her, she has more respect for herself than that."
The way Hemlock talked about Anne sounded so much like her and Benjamin felt obligated to believe him. However, he was doubtful to the point he felt as if he hardly knew her anymore. Though did he ever really know her at all? He knew her motives, her self-respect and determination. She was just like Felix in a way and Felix was Benjamin's best friend.
That was when the lost boy realized. If he knew Felix well enough, he knew Anne too. And in that moment, he was almost one-hundred percent sure that everything Hemlock was telling him still remained intact. "You think so?" Benjamin finally asked, a hope beginning to linger in his eyes.
"I know so," Hemlock replied as if it were the truest words in the world.
Benjamin gently sighed, tilting his head at the black-haired boy. "You know it's all so strange..."
"What is?"
"That we used to be just like each other. As Pan's messenger boy, you were just as gullible as I am now. And I used to work so hard to get what I wanted, just like you're doing now. I had a bad attitude too." Benjamin reflected back on that particular day where he chased Anne down to what felt like the ends of the island--just to get back at her for humiliating him.
However, though, he realized that it was never her fault. It was Pan's...that day in the cave where Pan was the one that humiliated him. No one else. Ultimately shaking his head to rid his thoughts of that day, he looked back up at Hemlock. "What happened to us, do you think?"
"Well..." Hemlock's voice was suddenly defeated, surprising Benjamin. "I'm dying and you're realizing you have a reason to live that's always been beyond you until these last few days."
Benjamin felt a sprig of pain in his hollow chest, remorseful for Hemlock's unfortunate fate. "Hey, mate," he grabbed his shoulder, giving it a squeeze, "you're not going to die." He wanted to believe. "And I do have a reason to live, we all do--even you." With that, Benjamin's arms came around Hemlock's shoulders. Closing his purely ice-like blue eyes, Hemlock relished in the warmth of the hug, overwhelmed with the disheartening reality that it may be his last one.
Ultimately letting go, Benjamin expressed a foreign determination on his face. "Now let's go rescue our brother."
~ ~ ~
Scrambling to her feet, Anne's breath hitched as she watched Pan pick out her heart from inside the box. As he began to examine it, the color drained from Anne's face and her shoulders fell heavily. This was it, she thought, he was going to enslave her completely, and there wasn't a thing she could do about it.
Hunger and triumph welled in Pan's eyes at the sparkling, purely glowing pink. The surface, itself, was naturally reddened, glossed over the static core where Anne's inner most love strings danced and jumbled about.
"Wait!" Anne suddenly interrupted, praying he'd pay mind to her.
Relieved when he glanced over at her, she watched his brows lift expectantly.
"Remember when I was kidnapped by Henry's family? When the boys came up with a diversion so you could rescue me?" She felt as if she were hanging by a thread, desperately praying she could get through to him. "The boys told me you took me to a spring to cool down my fever--and I couldn't believe it at first, how you could be so caring...though what changed it all was when I realized how much trust my brother put into you. I thought that I could do the same."
She roughly swallowed with dry lips, her eyes pleading him by that point. "Then that night you told me about..." her voice faded, "we went swimming together, and you were so oblivious to how reluctant I was, how terrified I was...though as you tried so hard to open me up, I practically melted into your arms--hell, I even slept in your tent with you. Absolutely nothing could have been easier..."
She paused, watching the slightest effect of her words translate on Pan's face, gradually, however. Anne then rushed back into her words. "That night I felt something different for the first time...I saw something in you, Peter, a way out--you don't have to do things like this, you were already winning me over before you altered everything, before you became so dark..." She paused once more, clinging her hardest to the hope that Peter felt something from her words.
Beginning to fondle her heart, Pan appeared as though he were contemplating all that she had said. "You're right..." he suddenly replied.
Anne's breath fell from her lips with relief.
Pan then approached her, intimately gazing into her eyes. "I don't have to do things like this..." his gaze then suddenly darkened into sheer coldness and ice, alerting chills to race down Anne's back. "I want to." With that, he shoved his hand into her chest.
Sharply gasping, her shocked gaze fell down onto his wrist--then she was paralyzed as he tore Felix's heart out. Alarmed as she looked back up at him, she felt her strength dwindling and she was trembling. Limpid of any remorse in his ice pools as he studied her reaction, he began to mentally wallow in pleasure at the sight.
Then he gracefully tilted his head, lightly pouting. "Did I forget to count to three?"
Choked with disbelief, Anne stared at him in sheer betrayal and watched as he bitterly turned away. Turning her heart in his fingers, he began to pace backwards. "For someone that's been abandoned all her life, you have yet to succumb to all the hatred you've felt over the years." Raising his brow, he turned the heart some more for further examination.
Anne made sure to sharply glare with all the simmering distaste she felt for him in that moment. "Unlike you," was all she could manage. She could have said a million things to him, though she'd just waste her breath.
He smirked knowingly, lifting his chin toward the heart. "Indeed," he mumbled, before he instantaneously clenched the pulsing organ in his grip, constricting Anne's breathing.
Alarmed by the tightness in her chest and throat, she felt herself begin to dwindle even further, and she was trying to panic out loud. "Peter...stop!"
Letting up on his vice grasp, he regarded her carefully, and watched as she weakly sank to her knees. Having pressed her hands into the dirt, she was violently coughing and trying to capture her breath. In the midst of her struggle, she heard Pan's boots begin to walk toward her. As she sank onto her hip, she peered up into his dark features that casted a shadow down onto her own.
"Damn," he spoke with a soft earnest, "you're so pretty when you're broken." He then crouched down in front of her and her eyes fell, crestfallen. "How does it feel?" He breathed, letting his eyes wander her body. "To come so close only to end up so far..."
Painfully clenching her jaw, Anne kept shaking her head back and forth to drown out his voice. Pan expressed feigned concern for her, tilting his head in the direction of where her face fell. "Don't you worry, my little Anna," he lifted her chin with his fingers, "I'm going to take good care of you, good care..."
Angry tears burned in her eyes as she glared at him with the little strength she had.
"Now let's go home, we've got guests."
A.N. Just briefly, I'm not going to elaborate on the chapter or anything, but I'd just like to remind you guys about the whole "counting to three" thing, it was from the first book in the chapter titled, well..."count to three,"--which, by the way, also has the whole Benjamin getting humiliated thing in it. So if you don't remember, you should definitely look back! More updates soon <3 Oh, and I hope you enjoyed this chapter, I know it was so much fun writing it!
P.S. I posted that Halsey song because I'm absolutely in love with her new album, and parts of this particular song sort've go with what happens in the second half of Pan and Anne's section (basically the ending scene)--mainly for the reason that Pan dehumanizes Anne, in a sense. Also, I finished this update at four AM, and I've revised it, though if I've missed any mistakes in the text, I apologize! Goodnight, everyone!