"I've had enough of your games;
if you're not trembling, you'd better be."
A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing - This Providence
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FOUR YEARS LATER
THE SUN NEVER rose on Neverland again after Adi left the Lost Boys.
Even after four years away from them, every time she looked up at the strange stars, she still felt like she could blink and find herself standing right next to them while they named constellations she had never heard of.
That emptiness that had gnawed at her insides upon first leaving them only amplified with time. She learned to use her magic without fear; she practiced setting fires with a snap of her fingers, summoning weapons without a second thought, creating objects in small breaths of scarlet smoke until all of it became second nature.
It seemed what she'd learned in school all that time ago was true. Adi did return to her baseline level of happiness, despite everything.
Almost.
"Are you sure you want to do this now?" Tinkerbell asked, voice tinged with wariness as she eyed the map with distaste – the same one she had handed Adi four years ago. "It seems...unnecessary."
Adi tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "You said to wait until I was ready. I think it's been long enough."
Tink gave her a slight frown. "Adi, everything you've been teaching yourself has been good for you. But this? I've seen what it does to people – it can drive the sanest of people mad. Don't underestimate it."
"Don't underestimate me," she shot back.
"Fine, then. Good luck." Tink put her hands up in surrender. "Don't say I didn't warn you."
Shoving the map in her pocket, Adi turned her back on Tink's exasperated headshaking and left her alone at the table. Tink underestimated her. She didn't know what Adi was really capable of, nor did she understand why she had to visit the caves.
Echo, Ensorcel, and Eidolon, the chain of caves built into the base of Neverpeak Mountain, waited for her. The first forced you to tell your deepest secret, the second showed you your worst fear, the third showed you your deepest desire.
They had become Adi's unofficial benchmark, the last step in her self-imposed training. Somewhere along the line, she'd begun to build them up in her mind as a sort of final test – if she could face the caves, she could face anything.
The caves weren't difficult to find. All Adi had to do was find Neverpeak in the northern distance and follow it. It loomed ominously overhead, the place she had nearly died. The same place her brother sentenced himself to his own painful demise. Remembering made her stomach turn.
A gaping hole in the solid rock marked the entrance. Above, Neverpeak's summit towered like a heavy storm cloud. She took a deep breath of the cool night air before she stepped over the threshold.
Damp, thin air surrounded her. The interior was cast in a plain shade of gray, illuminated dully by an unseen light. The ground beneath her feet was smooth, stretching out for a few feet more before it dropped in a deep decline. The bottom disappeared into darkness. Off to the left, the mouth of another cave interrupted the expanse of the stony wall.
Curious, Adi crossed over to the second opening. She wondered what would happen if she were to step into it now, before she had faced the first cave – would the mountain crumble around her? Would an invisible force plow into her and knock her to the floor? Would the stone give way beneath her feet and send her plummeting to death?
Adi warily pressed her hand to the opening. To her surprise, it was none of the above. What felt like solid stone barricaded the entrance, and though she could clearly see through to the nearly identical chamber on the other side, she got the unnerving sense that if she tried to push her body through, she would shatter like glass.
She raised her other hand to touch the shield, more out of interest than self-destruction, but a voice caused her to whirl around with her fingers twitching over her shoulder for an arrow that was not there – and had not been for four years.
"I wouldn't go playing with that fire if I were you."
The figure behind her was shrouded in shadow. Had the pitch not been feminine, Adi would have labeled it as Pan by the arrogant taunt in the tone. As the person stepped into the light, Adi's breath hitched in her throat.
The person had hair the color of night in a sleek curtain around her shoulders, cold blue eyes. She was dressed in a ripped emerald outfit similar to Pan's with a dagger in her right hand and her left on her hip, her eyebrows raised mockingly.
The person was undeniably Adi.
A cleaner, more confident, thinner, taller version of her, but Adeline Morris nonetheless. She flashed a pearly white smile, and Adi found herself hating herself even more – a thought which made no sense at all.
"What?" the real Adi managed.
"Don't tell me you came here unaware of what these caves do. Even you cannot be that stupid. Beware of your deepest desire," the girl that wasn't her recited in a singsong, taking a step closer. "And I believe that would be me."
Adi was unsure if she was breathing. She stared at her (herself?), confused beyond words. "I desire...myself?"
Fake-Adi rolled her eyes. "Are you always this slow? No, don't answer, that was a rhetorical question. In case it wasn't pressingly obvious, I am the better version of you. Adeline 2.0."
"Yeah? And what makes you so different from me, other than a worse outfit and a better haircut?"
"I'm the version of you who stayed by Pan's side. I was so much better for it – leaving was the biggest mistake of your life."
"Leaving was the best decision I ever made," Adi retorted.
"Actually, that's where you're wrong. Let me tell you, you made the wrong decision, sweetheart. I mean, you're going to give in eventually – it's just...fate – but make it easy and stop resisting. See how much better I am?"
Adi's lips twisted at the word fate.
Not-her wasn't finished. "It would have been better if you'd stayed in the first place, but hey – go back now and we can start damage control earlier."
"No, thanks."
"All you've been doing is internalizing your problems, whereas I don't have any, because I stayed where I belonged."
"I am where I belong," Adi insisted. "You're not even real."
The phantom grinned. "I'm as real as you think I am. That's why I'm able to do this." She pushed Adi's shoulder; Adi stumbled back in surprise. "See? If you didn't believe I was real, my hand would've gone right through you. The caves never lie."
Adi could not argue with herself on that. "So how did you do it? I wasn't in a good place when I got my memories back, so how did you pull yourself back together in the aftermath of that? I ran. Clearly, a perfect me wouldn't. Tell me, Adeline Morris, how you did it. How you ignored every single one of your instincts and stayed."
Not-Adi's gaze didn't falter. "It was hard."
"That's it?" Adi said on a little laugh. "'It was hard?'"
"It's hard," Fake-Adi repeated softly. "But you tell yourself to get up, you tell yourself to fight, you tell yourself you're going to get past this. And what if you don't? You try again, that's what. You try and try until your knuckles bleed, because there's nothing else for you to do, and you learn to forge yourself from steel."
"You seem to be under the impression that I was not forged from steel long before I came here."
"You were glass before," she said. "So much in your life fractured you. But now you fall and you don't find yourself broken. And you won't shatter when he tries to break you."
For probably the first time in her life, Adi went speechless. It took her a second to regain her composure, and even then, she couldn't quite look the vision in the eye. "Are you trying to tell me I need to go crawling back to Pan? Because if you're really me, you know there's no way in hell I'd ever do that."
Fake-Adi blinked innocently, but Real-Adi found it impossible to miss the glimmer of mischief in her eyes. "You tell me – I'm your desire. As much as you deny it, you can't lie to yourself. Don't you wish you'd stayed? You would've become me. Look how beautiful you look like this." The phantom touched Adi's cheek and clicked her tongue, shaking her head. Her silky hair followed every movement. "Instead, you're exhausted and lonely and have no idea what you're doing."
"I don't give a shit if I'm beautiful or not," Adi spat. "And I would rather be lonely if it means that I'm free."
"Free!" Fake-Adi let out a musical stream of laughter. "Did you miss the part where magic water binds you to this place? As long as you live, you'll never be free. While you're here, why not be happy? Stop deluding yourself into believing you'd rather be alone. Look what good it's brought you."
Adi's hands instinctively clenched into fists. The rational part of her knew the vision was right, but she couldn't bring herself to face the facts. So she did exactly what every single instinct was begging her to. She ticked back her fist and punched herself directly in the nose.
Too quickly for her liking, Fake-Adi recovered, sporting a bloody nose and a vicious grin with the cruel glint in her eyes that Pan had mastered so well. "Fight it all you like, but you know I'm right."
Seconds before she could get hit again, the phantom disappeared into thin air, leaving the real Adi simmering alone in the middle of Eidolon.
Heaving a deep breath, Adi moved to the opening in the wall that led to the second cave in the chain. Cautious, she held her hand up to where she shield was. Her fingers pressed against the invisible wall for half a heartbeat before the force melted away, leaving her free to move through.
Her breath seemed to ricochet off the walls in the wide span of the cavern as she slowly crossed the floor. For half the second she stood by herself in the cave, she managed to convince herself that it might not be so bad. But bracing herself wouldn't have made the impact any less, because Ensorcel hit her like a sword hilt to the head.
Shapes materialized around her, faint and fuzzy-edged like shadows. She counted eight of varying shape and size as they fizzled into existence. They came into focus like she was looking at them through glasses with the wrong prescription.
Circling her were seven people she missed the most and one she dreaded to face. Seven boys she had called friends, brothers, seven boys whose faces felt like subsequent punches to the gut as she slowly turned to face each of them: Slightly, Ace, Felix, Tootles, Max, Devon. Adi came to a final stop before the last person, in all his arrogant emerald glory: Peter Pan himself, with a taunting smirk and a loaded crossbow.
Another glance around told Adi that the other boys were armed, too, both with weapons and scowls. She had not noticed at first, too stunned at the sight of them. As the seconds elapsed, they stepped closer, closer, until Adi was drowning in a sea of glares and daggers.
"You left us," Slightly accused when Adi looked to him for help, but he had none to give. He shoved her away from him.
She stumbled into Ace, who touched her only long enough to catch her before ripping his hands away like her skin had burned him. "This is your fault."
Beside him, Max sneered, an expression she'd never once seen on his face. "I wish we'd never even met."
"I always knew you were weak." Tootles.
"I should have known a girl wouldn't be cut out for Neverland." Devon.
"Pan should have let you die." Felix.
Adi desperately wanted to believe that these were only contrived from her own mind, but they looked so real. Too real – so much that she believed in their existence, granting them the power to touch her.
All she had to do to get them to disappear was to stop thinking they were real. But with their words ringing in her head, their voices so real, it was impossible.
They kept shouting at her, pushing her away, catching her skin with their blades until she dripped blood. Pain sparked all over: her arms, her face, her heart.
Pan still had not spoken. When she was shoved in his direction the boys fell still. His eyes were soulless voids in the dim light. Nonsensically, Adi wondered if he even had a soul, but she cast the thought aside as he bared his teeth and pushed the tip of the arrow into her sternum.
She didn't have a weapon to reach for. Even if she had, she let her arms dangle uselessly at her sides. She had no defense to offer.
Pan didn't press the trigger, though his finger ghosted tauntingly over it. The razor-sharp tip pierced through Adi's shirt as he moved closer, never once breaking eye contact as he whispered a secret for only her to hear: "Remember this, Adeline: you would be nothing without me. I made you. So that makes you mine."
Her hands trembled by her sides, and then curled into fists as she regained herself.
Adi stepped forward, biting back a wince as the arrow drove into her skin. She shook her head once, decisive. "Call me yours all you like. It does not make it true."
"This is my island," Pan reminded her. "I am its king. I am your king."
She moved closer still. Blood slid down her chest and stomach. "You are king of nothing," she said softly.
Pan and the others vanished in identical columns of black smoke.
Adi trembled, her heart thundering in her ears. Vaguely, she registered that the cuts and blood and pain had vanished; the hole in her shirt from the arrow was gone. Her lungs tried to tear themselves from her body. The walls were closing in.
She knew what the last cave was, and she turned to the next door but could not bring herself to move. Her whole self was raw and exposed. Even though she knew she was alone in the caves, she felt watched, vulnerable.
In a moment of blind fear, she turned to the previous door, the one that led back to the chamber where she had met herself. The barrier was back up. She pressed both hands to it, but it pushed back harder. Adi stumbled away, heaving unsteady breaths.
Once you go in, you can't come out until you're done. She knew that. But part of her hadn't wanted to believe it was true, the way you don't believe you could ever be in a car accident until you're staring the airbag in the face wondering where you went wrong, wondering when it happens all the time, it could happen to anyone turned into it happened to me.
Somehow she made it into the next chamber. Adi couldn't remember the between time, the act of walking to the next door and stepping through. Her brain took her from one blink to the next, trimming the fat. What remained were the facts: she was standing in the last cave, which she knew because the doorway across the cave opened to the dark forest. She was in Echo, the last of the trio, which would not show her anything but would trap her inside until she spilled her deepest secret. She was sweating (not blood; the cave had cleaned up the blood from the last cave — or had it ever really been there at all?) and shaky and her voice was clogged in her throat.
Adi moved slowly forward. Her footsteps echoed in the empty expanse of space, reverberating back to her. Still she felt watched, though when she surveyed the chamber, she found it otherwise empty.
She closed her eyes, as if that would afford her any privacy. "My...my secret is that the visions were right. I'm afraid that I made the wrong decision. That I should have stayed. That I would have been better for it. I am...tired of being alone. My best friends are so close and I haven't spoken to any of them in four years and even though I doubt I meant as much to them as they did to me, I want what we used to have back. I'm not Pan's, and I will never belong to him, but I..." She paused to swallow, finally opening her eyes. "I want to return to him anyway. Even though I know I shouldn't."
Adi uncurled her fingers to discover her palms were bleeding where her nails had dug in.
"Peter Pan has lied to me and deceived me and tried to lay claim to me too many times. I know that. But as much as he makes me want to start sprinting in the opposite direction, he also makes me want to take another step toward him. It doesn't make sense and I hate him for it, but a part of me misses him."
Forget raw, forget exposed. Adi felt unraveled, severed, her nerves pried from her skin.
Again, her brain skipped over the moment of leaving. She couldn't remember going through the door; she only registered the moment she plunged back into the forest, when fresh air flowed into her lungs again. The caves had felt musty and suffocating, not unlike the cell she'd been confined to so many years ago. She fought for breath, severely disliking this new claustrophobia.
As she turned from the caves, the phantom pain of an arrow pierced her chest.
- - -
Adeline could not hide from the truth in the caves. She couldn't hide from Peter either, not even from that far away.
Adeline had thought she was alone.
Peter was listening.
The same abilities that allowed him to feel when humans came and went from his island also allowed him to listen in on every word spoken inside of the Echo Caves.
Putting his flute down, Peter fixed his eyes on the dancing boys but focused on the voice that echoed through the cave. Adeline was talking to someone – a vision, probably; the voice sounded undeniably like hers.
From what he gathered, the apparition was telling Adeline that she would have been better had she stayed with Peter and his boys, had she not run from her problems like a coward.
Peter was inclined to agree.
There was a small bout of silence. Peter could only hear what was happening, as the visuals were for Adeline alone, but the quiet was broken by a collection of male voices. Very familiar male voices. He blinked to draw himself from the daze, and realized the answer was quite literally right in front of him. Adeline was facing her worst fear: being hated by the people she held closest to her heart.
They were telling her they despised her and that she should have died. And then there was his voice calling her his. She hated that more than anything, and by the tremble in her voice, Peter could tell she was afraid of it as well.
He filed that information away for later.
Last was Echo, his personal favorite. It lacked visions and trickery – and although Peter was a proprietor of trickery himself, there was something to be said about the simple subtlety of secrets.
Peter Pan has lied to me and deceived me and tried to lay claim to me too many times. I know that. But as much as he makes me want to start sprinting in the opposite direction, he also makes me want to take another step toward him. It doesn't make sense and I hate him for it, but a part of me misses him.
The second half of Adeline's secret rang loud and clear like a set of bells in his ears long after she finished speaking, long after she would have exited the caves, long after he realized that she was far too proud to ever say that to his face.
It wasn't difficult to miss the matter-of-fact self-hatred in her tone, the reluctance to say the words. The corners of Peter's mouth rose in a grin.
No one seemed to notice his momentary cessation in concentration, save Felix, who had paused in the middle of the circle with his gaze on Peter. Another note sent him falling back beneath the music's spell.
Adeline's revelations had tugged a vague memory from the depths of Peter's mind and dangled it on a string in front of him, barely out of reach but enough for him to feel as if he could catch it if he tried. He should've been able to, but the passage of time had rubbed away at the memory, blurring it at the edges.
Peter stood, brushed the dirt from his pants, and briskly climbed the ladder into his room. On the shelf, among the various handwritten volumes and scattered papers, was a plain beige journal with a lock binding the pages.
Peter ripped one of the cuffs from his wrist and pulled the key from the hidden pocket inside the leather, then shoved it into the lock.
To the unfamiliar eye, the interior pages were empty.
Reaching up to pull the pixie dust from underneath his shirt, he uncorked the chained vial and pursed his lips as he studied it. The supply was slowly diminishing. If his plan worked, it would be back to normal soon enough. All it took was a little faith, a little trust, and much more patience than he possessed.
The dust glowed bright green as he sprinkled it over the ninth page of the thin book. Slowly but definitely, ink manifested beneath every speck until a full page of narrowly scripted lettering came into being.
Peter leaned closer to his own handwriting, hoping his memory served him well.
When Neverland's time runs out and the power of the island begins to deplete, chaos will ensue. All will perish, along with the abundance of magic it produces. The island will die.
There are two known remedies, according to the Neverland Shade. The first is the heart of the Truest Believer. It must be given willingly to the King, so that all of the Believer's trust and hope will transfer into the rebuilding of the island's power. Neverland will heal, and there will be no time to limit that power. Immortality will be granted to the island and all who live on it.
But if the Truest Believer is not found, or refuses to give his heart willingly, there is a second option.
Love means many things. Loyalty, friendship, family. It is difficult to love a king, but if he ever finds his true love, their heart will work the same as the Truest Believer's. The bond must be requited, and the heart must be given willingly, or it will not work.
Peter leaned back. The Shade had told him this while he stood in front of the golden hourglass counting down the moments he had until his imminent demise. Back then, the hourglass had seemed infinite, his time endless. All he'd felt was the land's rich power flowing through him. He had felt invincible.
At the time, he had disregarded the second option. Love made you weak. Love made you grow up.
So he brought only boys to his island, one of which had drawn the portrait of the Truest Believer they would need to work together to find.
That boy became the only goal. And he still was. He was so close, barely out of reach but not yet ready to be found. Now that he remembered, Adeline would be an easy replacement if the Truest Believer failed.
Not that Peter ever failed.
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about the true love thing: give it time. not to worry, things aren't always as they seem...
edit from my 2022 revising: peter makes sure to bring only boys to his island so that he can avoid finding his true love AS IF peter himself or anyone he brings is straight.....honey you've assembled a powerful group of queers and if you think you're straight idk what to tell ya. pan gives me bi energy no i will not elaborate.
i think of our main trio no one is straight: felix is aroace, pan is bi, adi is demi or grey-ace. source: i'm the author and i said so <3