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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
- 8
- 9
NeverRememberLand
By Cs

Chapter 9

When Peter awoke, he found himself draped around Nap and trembling. They lay together within a wide circle of ash, embers having died down and been proclaimed as nothing more than useless coal. There were smears of black streaked through Nap’s hair and across one cheek, and Peter knew without a doubt that if he could see himself, he would most likely see the same. Though at the same time, he was a little unsure of where he left off and Nap began.

Yet, even as he curled into a tighter embrace the cave crawled across his mind like a lost ladybug, tickling his skin and whispering against his mind of wishes he could make if he blew gently upon her. He felt answers were there, where he could not see them clearly but where they shone brightly nevertheless. Again the treasure of remembrance lay within the darkness, and though he did not fear it, it made him quake.

“Nap?” he whispered, shaking his compatriot of delightful activities, unable to resist petting and caressing the skin his fingers shook. Worlds had opened up, layers of feeling he’d never known, and though he did not question it, it niggled at him through the haze of drifting smoke around their bodies. Had they done wrong?

A green eye of crystal quality cracked open, glazed and wandering it met Peter’s own and winked sleepily at him. One arm looped its way snuggly over Peter’s hip drawing him down and closer, Nap’s other eye opening to greet him as well and he stole a kiss as soon as Peter was within reach, offering his own mouth up for a theft.

Peter burgled him well and thoroughly before asking in a voice filled with the urging of a ‘no’, “Are you ready?”

A silken sigh was his answer, limbs tugging him tighter before releasing him to sit up. “I am.”

~~~

High above Neverland they swam through the currents of air, diving steeply into the eddies of clouds and the shocking cold of strata. Peter was not sure where the cave lay, yet in the dusk of his memory, a beam of remembrance shone out, flashing from near the heart of Neverland. It was there that the trees grew thicker, vines and undergrowth covering every gap that tried to be, peculiar little flowers that could only bloom in shadows and shade.

It was a foreboding place, the regular noises of the island changed and muted to become disturbing. The birds did not come to this place, the animals avoided it, the Redskins whispered that it was poison, and then would dare one another to get close. Peter remembered it only as a nightmare, something that tried to chase him into the daylight. Nap recalled it not at all, and so when Peter pointed he dove fearlessly towards it, more curious than afraid, more Pan than Pan was.

They landed together in a small glade, just barely big enough for the two of them to stand and swing an arm. Peter glanced about with a fear that he was almost able to swallow, it was so fat in his throat. Before, when he had never truly feared anything, this place recalled to him his lost terrors, called them to them, and released them as animals from a zoo, free to roam his mind and create havoc.

Yet even as he considered fleeing Nap turned and found his face, meeting his eyes with a challenge. He had forgotten his hate and his loathing, finally only able to see Peter as a partner rather than an enemy. It was with this sentiment that he extended his hand, his fingers curling tightly about Peter’s when he accepted the gesture, a hollow smile etching his mouth.

“I have lost all my homes,” Peter said in a whisper as they shrugged their way through the underbrush, heading towards the center of the isle as sure as a compass points due North.

However Nap did not answer, instead towing Peter further and further into the shadows of the trees, pulled by a force like a tidal wave, lost to the tug of the sea. It felt in this place as if there were eyes where there could not be any, snouts that sniffed where none existed, mouths held open and waiting where they would never eat. Something was waiting here, and though it was not visible, it hungered and slathered nevertheless.

It was just as Peter remembered it. The mouth of the cave was inky black and palpable, the shadows of it almost reaching out to slide fingers down the back of a knee or the middle of a back. Both boys shivered as what little warmth was left in this hollow of the forest was sucked like the last of a creamy dessert into the maw in front of them. Nap lifted their joined hands to caress the waiting darkness, as if petting the beast of shadows. Then, closing their eyes because they knew sight would do them no good, they entered.

The shadows wrapped around them within the instant of moving inside, darkness so deep it permeated through the skin and bone, hitting at the core of being. In the pit of Peter’s stomach it unfolded and spread wicked tendrils of doubt and fear, terror of being left alone and horror of feeling it to be true that he would be. When he tried to squeeze Nap’s hand he could no longer feel it, and at once he stopped, panting loudly, afraid of his own breath.

Then the hand was there, tugging him along, and in the distance of middle sight there could just be seen a light piercing through the gloom. Even as they approached it, no light was shed upon them or their surroundings, the light ahead only illuminating itself, a selfish light.

At last they came to stand before it, and though Peter had long ago closed his eyes, peering blindly through his lids at the light, he opened them now. In front of the boys lay the nest, long thin threads and silvery rocks, blue crystals and shimmering white pearls. It was beautiful and strangely unreal, as if it did not exist here and now, but rather there and then.

Peter cried out, rushing forward and pressing his hands against the sharp rocks of it, pushing and patting, looking for something that was no longer there. The other Peter was gone.

Desperately he patted the strings searching frantically for what was missing, but only his hands came back bloody, cut from the sharpness of the nesting rocks. A gentle trickle of crimson blood tapped politely on the nest as if it were a door, with the soft ‘pat pat’ of a neighbor.

Nap’s hand grasped Peter’s again, blood brothers united by the cuts on Peter’s palm and fingers. “What was here?” he whispered, his voice falling into the stone of the cave as if being absorbed.

“I was. You were.”

“You or me?"

“I’m not sure.”

It is said that when Neverland can no longer hide the darkness from the eyes of the innocent, that innocence will lose its light. In the darkness of the cave, standing before a light that created itself, near a nest that no longer nested; Peter remembered the first loss of his innocence.

It had not been a night ago, nor two nor three, but years before. It had been gone before Hook, gone before Wendy, long lost since the first time he’d stepped foot on the land that is never.

What makes one grow up but the losing of one thing and the gaining of another? In Neverland it usually worked at the opposite of this theory, taking away knowledge of pain and remembrance and replacing it with nothing at all, but perhaps the balm of never remembering what it was that almost made you grow up.

Now, Peter remembered all of it, every little thing that might have made him grow into a man long ago, all the horrible pain, the treachery and suffering. Within the bloody clasp of Nap’s hand he felt the crumbling of nearly a hundred years of denial and forgetfulness. He would not be lost to it, the wisdom of an eternity falling on his shoulders with the weight of a bag full of feathers.

With their bound hands, it was Peter who reached for the nest, scraping their knuckles across the harsh stone and crystal. Then, almost with an air of nonchalance reserved for the knocking on the door of a friend, he rapped lightly. Inwards it swung like a door on silent hinges, into blackness deeper than they’d seen before, in on the heart of Neverland.

“And in, we will go,” Peter whispered.

Within in the nested door, within in the blackened cave, there was a land. It was not called never, but instead called heart. Peter did not know its name, for he had never been told of it; though he had seen it once. Now, as all memories came back to him as lost dogs do, he recalled the place behind the nest even as it showed itself before his eyes.

Peter was just about to ask Nap if he too recognized what he saw, when there was a sudden flittering form that streaked through the forest ahead of them. For that was what was behind the door of the nest. Another Neverland. Only, Peter knew this was not the Neverland he was used to; the silence was too immense, the colors too bright. Then there was the figure, which he suddenly caught a glimpse of, dashing ahead of them and through the trees.

“It’s us!” hissed Nap, and rushed forward, Peter’s hand still within his own.

The figure paused, as if perhaps it had caught their scent or sound, and as it turned its face towards them, both boys let out gasps. It was another Peter, at least in looks. And as Peter now knew because of Nap, it could look like him, but it would not be him. The boy stared at them, his mouth twisting into a frown, and then he turned and delved through the trees, leaves swishing after his passage.

There was no question of following this new boy, both Peter and Nap silently dashing after him, hands still clasped tightly. The trees attempted to hold them back, clawing at shoulders and legs, leaving lines of red scratching behind on the tenderly tanned skin. With each moment they grew closer to the other boy, until at last they came to a clearing, very similar to the one they landed in not so long ago.

If Peter had known what déjà vu was he would’ve known that he was at that point in time experiencing it. Everything was achingly familiar, right down to where the sun lay on the morning side of the horizon. Yet, he also knew that he was not where they had been only an hour or two before.

The difference that let Peter be aware of this was that the third boy was crouched within the clearing, eyes declaring defiance. As Nap and Peter inched closer, the boy reached slightly behind his back, pulling a far too familiar dagger from his belt. He brandished it, swinging it dangerously from left to right, his lips pulling back from his teeth in a growl.

Peter was stricken with an idea as he watched, a knowledge that he knew would keep him safe; and so with bravery that defined his character, he walked forward. His back iron-straight, his hands held warily in front. He was within a foot of the boy when the dagger swung, slicing across his chest and belly, and spilling things that weren’t meant to see light.

He did not focus on the fluid and flesh that began leaking through his clutching figures, instead, and rather normally for a boy like Peter Pan, he wondered about the dagger. Had this new Peter sharpened his until it glowed with the heat of the stone upon which he slid it? Had he tested it on a hair from his own head?

Even as the thoughts twisted in Peter’s head, the blood dried, the squishy bits that filled his hands retreating, skin merging into one piece - one more time. He peered down at the boy who still crouched in front of him, dagger dangling between his knees as he looked on the point of tears. Then the boy did cry, tears dripping from his glass green gaze to spatter on the ground. Peter knew then, that this boy could not be himself, for he would never cry at the wounding of an enemy.

Smiling, Peter bent down and slid the dagger from the boy’s limp fingers, passing it to Nap, before wiping his still bloody hands upon the ground. “This is not us,” he said softly, crouching down to stare into the eyes of this new boy. “This is…someone else,” he decided, and then he touched the boy’s arm and asked, “What is your name?”

“Peter,” he said firmly, as if daring Peter himself to deny it.

“As am I,” Peter told the boy, “and therefore you are not.”

“I am!” the boy shouted.

“I am!” Peter answered with equal determination.

Just as the fight would have escalated into a brawl, another blond, green-eyed boy crept into the clearing. Nap caught sight of this one, grabbing Peter by the arm and spinning him around to face the new boy. Peter’s eyes widened, and with a primal howl he leapt upon the new intruder, forcing him to the ground with a solid tackle. Peter shoved his knee firmly into the back of the newly newer Peter, head swirling with confusion, and screamed, “I am the only Peter!”

The forest, which had remained so silent, erupted with birds, flocks of them slewing into the sky; the ground trembled as if a giant were passing by only a few feet away. Peter Pan quivered with a rage he could not recall ever having had before. He felt as if he had been tricked somehow, as if his entire life had been nothing but a toy for someone else to play with.

-tbc-

Notes:
sorry it took so long to get this to you ^_^'
as it was recently pointed out in the latest
review for this story, it has been 7 months...oops?
um, i hope this will appease you for a bit
while i get my act in gear and finish it already.
it really only has about one chapter left -sheepish grin-

p.s. i read those reviews, and appreciate them muchly!
if you ever want a personal response, just tell me!

Cs
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NeverRememberLand