A/N - Okay, so I'm updating again but I'm considering turning this into a Peter Pan book properly, not just an imagines book that features him. But I don't know. What do you guys think?
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My fingers dug deep in the sand and my heartbeat sped thrice up.
What's going on?
The emerald eyes stared down at me, almost probing for something they could not seem to find. My eyes could not break away from them either. It was as though there was an invisible tie that connected them, not allowing either of us to glance away and ease the mounting tension. To extricate myself from the eye contact seemed almost dangerous, as though it would shatter some kind of ancient law that would bring the world crashing down on my head.I could do nothing more than peer up at my... my what?
Who was this person? My captor? My saviour? I had no way of knowing. And what might be exactly the right thing to do in the face of my friend could be the exactly the wrong thing to do concerning my enemy. Again, I was lead to the conclusion that I could not, for my own safety, break away from the gaze. I was at a total loss for what else to do.
My heart continued to pound in my ears like it wanted to fly free of my chest and escape to somewhere safer, less intense.
Luckily, to my extreme relief, a slight breeze fluttered past then, blowing the pungent briny scent of the sea through my nostrils and causing two tendrils of hair to dance across my face. This seemed to distract the eyes for they suddenly flickered to my cheek where my hair was, before finally looking away completely and glaring at something a few feet behind my head. I was at least released from my metaphorical bondage and the unbearable pressure that had captured me dissipated away to almost nothing. A gasp of air burst through my lips and I realised I had been unconsciously holding my breath throughout the entire ordeal.
I took the next moment to evaluate my surroundings, to calculate my next move. My eyes slid hastily over the person, now preoccupied, hovering above my body.
He was young: that was my first impression. His cheeks still hinting at childish roundness and his wrists thin and bony as a boy's. He could not have been more than eighteen. His mahogany hair, which glowed slightly in the afternoon light, was cut messily, untidily framing his face as though it was a hastily completed work of art. His eyebrows were strong and thick, like scaffolding that held up his face. And of course, there were his eyes. His incredible eyes. I forced myself to look away from them for fear of losing my will again.
His top half was clad in deep green swathes of fabric that hung off of his body as though they had been made haphazardly, though his legs were sheathed in cracked and aged leather which hugged their curvature and accentuated his muscular calves. I hadn't time to look further before he began to move.
His hand reached up to motion to something out of my eye-line and my attention was brought to it simultaneously. His hands were odd. They did not match his slim wrists in the slightest. They were course, calloused things, as though he'd spent years - far more than his lifetime could possibly be worth - in the toughest, most demanding physical labour. Those hands seemed as though they knew their way around a weapon.
As he was motioning, he began to speak. His voice was, again, boyish and youthful in its nature, but held an incomprehensible age that made him seem far too wise for his years.
"What are you staring at? Do it!" he commanded, as though he had not been totally transfixed himself moments before.
I wondered what the 'it' was that he had so forcefully commanded his companions to do, and then I realised I most probably did not want to know.
Whoever he called out to clearly hesitated in their execution of 'it' as it was not two seconds later when the boy in front of me wrenched his frame erect and proceeded to roar a torrent of insults at them until they complied.
Hands clutched at my arms and I was yanked to a standing position and held far too firmly. They forced me into an uncomfortable stationary stance like they were showing me off before the youth with the green eyes.
My eyes shot to the fists that had ensnared me and I noticed that they too were all brutalised as though they had spent too long with their fingers wrapped around dangerous things. But again, when I traced their arms up to their shoulders and faces, not one of them (and there were so many, too many to count, yet not one girl in sight) could have been more than in their late teens. Interestingly, none seemed older than their captain.
As stupid and shallow as it may seem, the only thing I could think at that moment was that I didn't want the boys to hold me up because I couldn't bear the thought of them knowing how heavy I was. It was something I had always struggled with; my weight. I don't know how I knew this as I could not recall a single instance from my past when my self-consciousness has made itself known, but I definitely knew and I knew it as clear as day. This sudden on-set fear soon evaporated though, as I realised that at that moment, there were more important things happening.
After that moment of appraising my impounders, I returned my attention back to the leader. I had known him for all of five minutes and yet he had so furtively and unequivocally proven himself to be my captor, probably the worst of all the possibilities I had decided upon. It really didn't seem like a good idea to look as vulnerable as I did in front of him, but for the moment, there was nothing I could do.
Whatever shock had initially entranced him when our eyes first met had disappeared without a trace; he stood, smirking a terrible grin and eyeing me up and down like a piece of meat for his plate.
"What the hell is going on?! Who are you?" I screeched at the top of my lungs, "Get off of me!" I commanded, still staring directly at him, the obvious ring leader of the bunch. I received no answer in return. He only continued to sneer as he appraised me.
"What's wrong with you? Who do you think you are?!" Still, only more grinning came.
"Someone please tell me what the fu-" I began, but for the first time he interrupted me.
"Uh-uh, watch your mouth please. There are children present." A wicked chuckle echoed deep within his chest and I fell silent in fear of what he might do now that he was being responsive.
A moment passed in which the boys surrounding me only stared at their commander and he glanced around lazily as though deciding on what to do.
"Right, boys! Take her to The Cages," he disclosed finally.
The Cages?! First off, The Cages really didn't sound like the kind of place I wanted to spend the beginning of my remembered life in. Second, what did I ever do to him?
"Wait, hold up! What's going on? What did I do?" I shouted over the sudden roar that had emerged in the face of his command. Despite this, the boys still towed me along as though my mighty shriek had been nothing more than a timid squeak. Panicked, I began kicking and flailing in a futile, desperate attempt to be free.
"Stop." The commander said it in barely more than an audible murmur and yet every single one of the boys on the beach immediately skidded to a halt in their tracks and turned to face him. I stopped thrashing, eager to hear what he had to say. Maybe he'd reconsidered his rash order and had changed his mind about The Cages.
"What did you do? Now let me think..." the boy muttered, tapping his temple and staring at the ground in mock contemplation. "Ohhhh, right. Now I remember. Absolutely nothing!" He exclaimed in a tone that bordered on insanity.
I scoffed. "What do you mean, 'absolutely nothing'? You're dragging me off to a bunch of cages in God knows whatever this place is, and the only thing you can say to me is that I did absolutely nothing to provoke it?"
"Yep! Pretty much. That's about right," he said, "Not much more to it than that. And for your information, this is usually called Neverland. Though, 'God knows whatever this place is' has a nice ring to it as well." He cocked his head to the side, still snickering.
The boys began dragging me along with them again, obviously seeing some kind of signal unbeknownst to me that their leader was finished with his end of our little conversation. We were almost to the edge of the beach, a wall of dense forest looming over us when again I yelled out.
"But what am I doing here? Who the hell are you?"
"Me?" he questioned, an offended expression momentarily clouding his face. "Who am I? Has no one told you? I'm Peter Pan, of course."
And with that, we reached the sombre line of trees and departed into the gloom, Peter Pan was left behind watching as we disappeared from sight.
The Cages had turned out to be a collection of rickety-looking wicker boxes that stood together in a little clearing in the forest. But despite their fragile appearance, they were all but impenetrable once you were inside.
After being forcefully shoved inside one of them, I spent the next hour or so screaming myself hoarse to be let out, and when that hadn't worked, I began beating the walls with my fists and feet in an attempt to escape. Needless to say, that had proven a worthless waste of energy. The only thing that came of that was an accumulation of splinters and cuts across my knuckles that stung like hell when anything touched them.
Eventually, I gave up trying to find a way out of the cage and had settled myself with my back tucked painstakingly tightly in the furthest corner of the cage from the little door on the front of it.
The hours dragged on and no one had been to see me, not even one of the boys who had carried me here. And the leader - Peter Pan - was nowhere in sight. In all the free time, I had been able to mull over my situation.
The place I was in was very obviously not somewhere I had ever been before. Even if I had no memories, I could at least tell this wasn't somewhere I knew. In fact, my intuition told me that very very few people had been here before. It was filled with boys who ran around dressed in little more than rags and followed orders from a sadistic teenager called Peter. Not a concept that was at all familiar with me in the real world, just maybe in stories. It took me a while to come to terms with it.
Eventually though, I realised that pondering my whereabouts and it's leader was a completely pointless task unless I knew what he planned to do with me.
For that, I could come to no good conclusion.
The most probable solution I could imagine was that the boys here were that starved for women and had turned to a much darker path than I cared to admit. I hadn't, after all, seen a single girl since I got here... But no! Most of the people here were nothing more than children! Far too young to be thinking anything like that.
Actually, come to think of it, was I too young to be thinking something like that? How old was I? I could tell that I wasn't old, not by a long stretch; the skin of my hands was still soft and delicate but my fingers were long and agile. From these factors, I estimated that I was probably somewhere in my mid-teens. But even so, I couldn't be sure.
It was an odd thing, to know nothing about yourself. To be completely and utterly lost in the maze of your own mind. Quite disorienting. And the more I searched, the more hopelessly lost I became. Just like before I woke up, there was nothing in my head. No memories at all. I still had all the knowledge that you would expect an average person to have - for example, if you asked me what a car was, I could tell you in an instant - but I could not think of a time when I had learnt any of it.
I had just begun to think of my past life: who my family, friends, anyone I could have known were, but I could come to no conclusion. I hadn't much time to worry, however, because all of a sudden, he appeared.
He stood but a few feet away from my cage, the picture of confidence. His hands clutching at his waits and legs spread in a sanguine stance. Head held high and proud, but his face held a conflicting expression. It seemed as though he was utterly and hopelessly confused over something.
"You," he called suddenly, making me jump out of my skin.
In an unexpected burst of confidence, I replied sarcastically: "Yeah, me. What do you want with me?"
"You're a girl." He ignored my sarcasm and and stated the odd fact.
"Well, yeah, last time I checked."
"I've not seen a girl in a very long time."
"Oh, really? Well, I have to say, that isn't surprising if this is the way you treat them." I continued along with my mocking tone but secretly, my thoughts from earlier returned. The younger boys might not be opposed to taking advantage of someone in my position, but I had my doubts about Peter Pan. He didn't seem like the sort who would be perturbed by sinister things like that.
He seemed distracted though, and carried on staring at me like I was anomaly in a zoo. (Which, with a start, I realised I was.)
"What are you doing here?" he asked, confusion crossing his face.
That seemed like an odd question. If he didn't know what I was doing here and I didn't know what I was doing here... then what was I doing here?!
"I was hoping to ask you the same question." He ignored me and stared bitterly towards the leaf-covered floor.
Silence passed between us for a few moments. Neither of us spoke and not a sound could be heard which was odd, considering the fact we were in the middle of a forest.
Abruptly, Peter jerked his head up.
"I wonder..." he began strongly, but trailed off as though he had thought better of sharing his idea at the last moment.
"You do?" I asked, only half bitingly.
"Yeah. I do. I wonder. A lot. About a lot of things..."
I couldn't help but notice how he'd changed from when we were on the beach. Then, he'd seemed the tough, sadistic leader who ruthlessly attacked and captured a clearly defenceless and unthreatening girl, for absolutely no reason that he could explain. Now, as he remained before me, he was almost vulnerable himself. He seemed nothing more than a curious young boy, unsure of whether to share his thoughts. It was both unsettling and confusing, the way he'd altered so drastically.
In the time I'd been comparing his prior self to the current one, he had walked a couple of steps closer to my cage and bent into a crouch. He was no longer looking at me, but was warily watching the ground, contemplating something.
As I observed, he stood up quickly and walked a few feet away, waving his hand in an eloquent fashion in front of his body - as though he was turning a key - before uttering one last 'hmm' and winking completely out of existence. Shocked, I crawled to the door of the cave, the one I spent hours earlier trying desperately to open, and leaned lightly against its bars.
Without so much as a creak, the door swung effortlessly open.
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A/N - So, wow. That turned out to be pretty shit. Yayy!! In case you couldn't tell, at the end of the chapter, Peter opened the door of the cage with his magic and let our heroine go. In the next few chapters, there'll be more Peter and I'll explain why he was acting so extraordinarily un-Peter-ish. I have a few basic ideas for what's going to happen but I'm winging a lot of the actual writing, if you didn't notice. Also, I would like to say a HAPPY BIRTHDAYYYYYYYYYYY to my friend siriuslyfangirling2 , whose birthday it is in thirteen minutes. Happy birthday!!!!!! Okay, I'll go now, bye.