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NeverRememberLand	By : ClarySage Category: M through R > Peter Pan > Slash Views: 7728 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Peter Pan, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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NeverRememberLand 6
By Cs

Nap drifted within a blank world, in and out of sunlight and darkness. It was some time before he realized it was tree shadows over his eyelids that did it, waving in the breeze, leaving his face at once in sunshine, then shade, then sunshine.

He’d survived it then, that awful yawning darkness that had clawed at the backs of his calves, the drop into the shadows of his own mind. Sunlight meant he was still alive. He had a feeling he’d know if Peter were dead, and since no such feeling plagued him, he was sure then that Peter still lived. “Pity,” he mumbled, finding his voice dry and parched, crackled like burned paper.

A rustle to his side told him exactly where Peter was, and the following press of a hand against his chin and wash of cool water, let him know Peter was also paying attention. His eyes snapped open and he winced at the brightness that shifted over his eyes as he did so. Then he focused and saw Peter’s worried face hanging above. “Still…remember it, Peter?” he croaked.

Peter nodded, looking away quickly, one shoulder shrugging in an offhand way.

“You don’t like that, do you? Don’t want to know the things I do?”

Another shrug, followed by a quick glance into Nap’s eyes. “It’ll go away, it always does.”

“What does?”

“Memory, I never remember anything for long.” He leaned closer to Nap, a sly grin passing over his lips. “You don’t like that, do you? You don’t like that I can forget it all.” His eyes glittered with green the colour of ancient glass. “I won’t forget you though, not now.”

Nap growled, a dry sound low at the back of his throat, his fingers twitched weakly, ready to throttle as much life out of Peter as they could. All his strength seemed gone though, wiped away with his brief madness. “Not now,” he repeated Peter’s words softly, closing his eyes and relaxing back against the moss of the roof.

After a moment of quiet Peter sighed and filled his cupped hand with water once more. It had worried him when he’d lost Nap, even for so short a time as it had been. He knew he’d had other people in his life, though he could no longer remember their names or faces, he knew they’d been near him. He could still feel the vague warmth of them against his skin, whispers of voices. To say Nap was different was like comparing one thing to something completely else. Nap was Nap, as Peter was Peter. There were no comparisons to be made.

Peter drizzled the water cupped in his palm onto Nap’s lips, watching as the boy lapped at it, obviously starving for the refreshment but refusing to help in any way with the drinking of it. Pan had never thought to examine himself, and so it was with a shiver of curiosity that he studied Nap, slowly letting his eyes rove from hair to toes. He stared for a long time at Nap’s feet, stretching out his own to see if there were any differences, but even the smudges of dirt beneath his toenails looked the same.

He wondered about the cave, he’d been trying not to think about it, willing it to go away again and leave him in peace. There had been the other Peter, the other boy. Was this him then? Was Nap the other Peter? Or was that strange nest still there? Still buried within Neverland and waiting for him? And that was where Peter would stop thinking about it, because it hurt too much to go on with the thought. It was after all a treasure chest he did not care to open. He lifted his hand away from Nap’s mouth at last, turning to the shell full of water he’d gotten. Nap’s hand clasped his wrist, and he froze into stillness.

“I won’t try to kill you anymore,” Nap whispered after a long silent moment of staring. “If I do, I’ll remember it, and… and what if when I remember it, I remember it from your side?”

Peter nodded, scooping up another handful of water. In truth he knew all about memories, and all about forgetting them, so he knew too on a small level what Nap meant. “All right, so, you won’t kill me. But you refuse to be my boy, and you’re not my shadow. What are you, Nap?” Peter paused, watching as Nap drank thirstily from his palm once more. “Are you me? Are you, you?” He grimaced and then asked in a nearly frightened voice, “Are you the other one?”

“The other one?” Nap asked curiously, sitting up and reaching for the shell of water. He drank it down to the dregs and then let go of a long sigh of breath.

Peter waited for a response and then tried again. “The other one, the one in the cave.”

“Cave?” Nap asked, and his forehead crinkled between his brows in absolute confusion. “Cave,” he muttered softly, rubbing at his hair. “I should know this, shouldn’t I? It was just there…”

Peter sat back on his knees and tilted his head to one side, he hadn’t expected this, he should have, but he hadn’t. “You don’t remember it anymore, do you?”

“Remember what?” Nap felt his head begin to spin, not as if on axis but as if just the insides were twirling around and around in dizzying circles.

“What do you remember?”

Nap groaned and clutched at his skull. “I don’t know.” He shook his head hard, and then opened his eyes to regard Peter with a strange, shimmering fear in his pupils. He couldn’t remember anything; it was all wiped away as if it were just writing on a slate, and now only a cool, clean gray surface stared back at him.

~~~

“You’re my boy.” Peter smiled guilelessly at Nap.

“I am?”

“Oh yes, mine. My new…my lost boy.”

But even as Peter uttered the words, Nap knew somehow they weren’t true. Something niggled at his memory, silver fish swimming just beneath the surface of his dark water. “What’s a lost boy?”

Peter frowned, “you are.”

“Obey you, never be the same as you.” A shark of thought was diving after the silver fish now, jaws held wide.

“Yes,”

“No, no, I know you’re wrong about this.” The shark of memory suddenly dived after the silver splintered fish, and it all focused in Nap’s head. Only now, when the picture fitted itself together again, it was changed. Nap could not say how, as he could no longer remember what it had been, but it was different, slightly askew. “The Lost Boys…I know them.”

“Do you? So do I,” Peter said happily. He inched closer to Nap, making himself comfortable beside the other boy. “Tell me about them?”

“I…” Nap felt a wave of dizziness and thought for a moment, “there’s Slightly, and…and the twins…” he trailed off, uncertain. It seemed he did know these people, and yet, something was wrong about it, distanced.

“Yes,” agreed Peter, stretching out his legs and folding his arms behind his head. “And there’s Curly, right?”

“Is there?”

“Oh yes,” Peter nodded rapidly, “I’m sure there is.”

Nap glanced around, looking through the branches of the trees, craning his neck to stare at the sky above, then crouching down to peer over the edge of the roof. “Where are they?”

“Why they’re,” Peter sat up, starting to point and then stopped, his hand dropping to his side. “I’m not sure.”

If Peter’s mind had been a sieve with rocks in it, and Nap’s was the bits that washed away, then imagine if the rocks were all poured together and then crushed and scattered amongst the two minds. You would then begin to understand what had happened, for as they had exchanged memories such a thing had occurred. Now both sat in a vague confusion, knowing that something was off yet unable to finger what it was.

“They’re with Wendy,” Nap said after a moments thought.

“Who?”

“I’m not sure.”

“This is all very strange,”

They looked at one another, mirrors of furrowed brows and softly bitten bottom lips.

“I know you,” they said together.

“You’re me, aren’t you?” Pan asked, staring into Nap’s eyes and seeing his own reflection.

“I must be,” Nap agreed easily, and for the first time since his arrival in Neverland, he smiled with an honest joy. “Yes, and you’re me.”

“I am?”

“You must be.”

Pan smiled in return, his expression mirrored in Nap’s eyes. “Yes, I can see how you’re right.”

Nap flopped backwards, the smile still on his lips. A feeling of relief swelled inside him, his mind in a warm cocoon of peace. “I remember now. I remember Wendy.”

Pan looked curiously at him. “Do you? I remember…thimbles.”

“Silvery buckets that are small?” Nap asked, looking with surprise at the other boy. “Why should you remember those?”

“No, they’re not small silver buckets at all, don’t you remember?”

“I suppose not, tell me.”

Pan leaned close, and said in a low voice, “they’re something I remember receiving, but they’re not tangible as a bucket would be.”

“What are they then?” Nap whispered back, curious as a basket of kittens left alone.

“They’re small, but…” Pan paused, wondering how to explain something he couldn’t comprehend himself. All that remained was a feeling of it, a tentative grain of memory.

Nap waited patiently, everything seemed somehow strange and normal all at once. As if this were what was meant to be. He could vaguely recall that once something else had been in his mind, but now it was wafting gently away, leaving behind something new, something different.

If the boys were to be compared now, the findings would show that there was something different indeed. Before they had been opposites, directly placed across from one another, touching in thought only on the outskirts. Now, they were two halves of the whole, only retaining parts of memories between them, split. Each boy held a handful of sand.

tbc...
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NeverRememberLand