"Long ago
In a grotto by the sea
Grew a magical
Fire lily.
It holds the key
To youth eternally.

Back to the beginning."

Peter watched her take a drag and ran a hand through his thick copper curls. Dawn was slow in approaching and the four of them lazed back in the Darling's long abandoned nursery, heads tilted to take in the peeling murals that had once covered the high domed ceiling.

"What do you think they're doing right now Peter?" John scoffed, pushing his plastic frames up higher on the bridge of his nose. "You know, in Never Never Land?"

Michael made a face and buried his eyes in the stomach of his mangled teddy bear.

"You think they're like us?" he went on. His lips curled, head lolling to the side. "Stoned out of our wits, watching the paintings dance for the eleven hundredth time or do you think that they're out having real adventures?"

Peter shrugged, tugging his worn blazer down over his shoulders and trying not to look his way. What had once been an innocent craving for knowledge, had twisted the boy into something that the red head had quickly begun to fear. Hair dyed black, long rips in his jeans, butterfly knife a constant lump in his back pocket. Never Land had given him courage, changed him from the shy fellow that he used to be, into someone almost unrecognizable. Arrogant.

"I don't know," Peter mumbled beneath his breath.

"What was that?" John asked, cupping a hand to his ear. Smoke weaseled its way from the corners of his lips. "Peter doesn't know? Why doesn't he find out? Why doesn't he just go back to where he fucking came from?"

"That's enough John," Wendy said softly, bony hands knit together around her dime store lighter. Reliable Wendy.

"Don't play the 'Peter's faultless' card," he said, throwing his cigarette at her. She batted it away and rubbed it into the ground with the toe of her slipper.

"Peter didn't do anything," she shot back. The light from the tall windows dappled her gaunt silhouette in a pale light. Peter found it almost painful to look at her. The years had not been kind to her and as she turned her eyes to gaze dreamily out at the familiar stars, he still saw the look of longing on her sunken face.

Internally she had not changed much. She was still the dreamer of the group, the one who fervently believed that there was a way for them to get back what was lost. That there was still a way for them to gain entrance to that magical place of pirates and mermaids and adventures, even after the final parting.

She had not given up.

What was loss of innocence to one who would always be innocent?

Peter found it heartbreaking.

"What the hell is wrong with you Wendy?" John growled. His nostrils flared. "He's the one who decided that he was going to stay here. That he wanted to grow up."

"He was trying to protect us!" she cried, hands darting to her face. It was an impulse for her now, a habit to rip at her face with her long nails whenever she was upset. There were deep red welts that hid the last of her lingering prettiness.

"He was trying to protect you!" John shot back.

Michael whimpered, his fingers grappling for a firmer hold on the stale fur of his bear.

"And a fine job he did," he snarled. He raked both hands through his black hair and closed his eyes. "We had a choice. It wasn't just his choice. It was all of ours..... and he decided for us."

"He was trying to help," Wendy said softly, through the cage of her fingers.

"And look where it got us."

Peter pushed himself up from the foot of Wendy's bed, silencing the two of them. Despite his forsaking Never Land, he was still an overwhelmingly romantic figure with his wild curls and the curvature of what were once mischievous eyes. His legs forever long and gangly, his cheekbones ever so slightly defined, his lips still generous. He was the perfect picture of a boy taking his first venture into manhood and the moonlight on his chest and arms caught all three of the Darling's spellbound.

There was a noble misery in the way that his fingers fumbled with the old world latch of the window, with the billowing lace curtains, and as he threw the window open wide and leaned over the window seat out into the chilly winter night.

The streetlamps were already lit and glowing brightly against the shadows of the night. The city was drowsy in its youthful glimmer of headlights and shuttered windows. The trees stretched up to the heavens as though waking from a long slumber and the world seemed to exhale beneath the blanket of stars.

There was a time nearly five years ago when Peter would have played tag with those stars, laughing with them, dancing with them, and singing their strange songs. He and Tink had made a game of it once, seeing who could acquaint themselves with the most stars in one night. Tink had won, she being the more nimble due to her excess pixie dust.

Oh, there were many things that he used to do beneath the stars. He remembered lonely evenings in the mermaid's grottos watching the stars fall over the ocean. He remembered long nights of dancing with his lost boys, smoking hookah and making strange and wild sounds. He even remembered the way that the sky looked on that last night on Hook's ship, the way that Tink and the other fairies' pixie dust lit up port and starboard and made the stars all the more vibrant.

He remembered saying goodbye to Wendy in her little blue night dress, returning her thimble, promising to come back for her when the time was right. He remembered the way that she smiled beneath that light, her face glowing, all freckles and dimples as pixie dust fell all around her from the curls of his hair. Her tiny hands grasping his, making him swear that he would come back, cross his heart and hope to die, making his shadow cross his heart.

And he remembered the Wendy of today and the night he found her buried beneath her sheets, crying her eyes out. The way that she clung to him like a dream that would disappear. The way that she threaded her hands around his waist and wept, told him all of her sorrows. How those boys had hurt her, how they threatened to do it again.

Michael had wandered in, sucking on Teddy's ear and John was nothing but a bombshell of anger waiting for it's fuse. He raved around the room, throwing things, screaming, pinning the blame on Peter for not having come back when they needed him.

"I'm sorry Wendy."

He kissed her cheek, her knuckles, the tips of her fingers.

"I'm sorry. I'm not going back to Never Land. I'm staying here. To protect you."

Tinkerbell was livid, a riot of angry tinkling. She was as violent as John in her own way, threatening in the little voice that only Peter could hear, that it was either Wendy or her. That she was the way back to Never Land and that without pixie dust he would grow up and turn old and then melt into dust.

"I love you Wendy," he whispered in her ear, nose nestling into the forest of soft stray hair. "No matter what I'm going to protect you."

And to the best of his ability he had.

He gave up Never Never Land. He said goodbye to the adventures, to his lost boys, to Tink, and to the Indian tribes. He gave up everything he had ever known, for Wendy.

Unable to live with the Darlings he fought for a job as a bus boy at a local restaurant and spent his nights moving from shelter to shelter. With the money he earned, he bought Wendy whatever beautiful things he could afford. Jade bracelets that reminded him of the natives in the old mysterious hollows of his home, ornaments for her hair and ears that reminded him of Tiger Lilly and her adoration of pretty jewels, and every once in a while a new paper back copy of their story in a new language. 'The Adventures of Peter and Wendy' in Latvian was the latest edition.

Hurt and angry Tink had left him behind and soon even his shadow had abandoned him. The only things that he had left to remind him of his home were the thimble, his green tunic and stockings, and the red feather that rested in the crest of his old hat.

John had never forgiven him for forsaking Never Land. In his mind it was the perfect escape. It was the best place to run from the divorce of their parents, Wendy's rape and a school life that was less than perfect. He believed that Peter could have taken them all back and that they could have started over again just as they had years ago. He believed that there had still been hope for a family that was falling apart.

Michael meanwhile had receded into himself, talking only to Teddy and occasionally to Wendy when he really wanted something. He lived in memory, reliving those days again and again when he ran with the Lost Boys and fought Hook alongside everyone else. There was nothing in him anymore but old images and the basic necessities. He didn't need Never Land. In his own way he had already refused to grow up.

But Peter was affected as well. He desperately missed his lost boys, his friends in the face of all hardship, who would have never ever abandoned him. No, they hadn't even abandoned him when Hook had them tied up to the railing of his ship. They had always remained, and he had abandoned them. He hadn't even said goodbye. His brothers... Now only colorful ghosts that danced and played, that wrestled with him, that spat at one another yet fell asleep without restraint in the same cots. Those boys who blubbered and drooled at night and shot sling shots at pirates in the early mornings. Ambushes with the Indians!

He pressed his fingers to the pane and sighed, breath escaping onto the glass and fogging it up. "Where did we all screw up?"

John laughed deeply in the back of his throat and lit up.

"Long ago
In a grotto by the sea
Grew a magical
Fire Lily.
It holds the key
to youth eternally.

Back to the beginning."

And Wendy was singing that absurd song again in her tired little voice, fingers playing through her fried curls. She was watching Peter at the window with distant, dreaming eyes. Watching her knight in a ripped cardigan stare up at the stars.
Peter closed his own eyes and fell limply against the window pain. What had any of it accomplished anyways?

Here they all were in the Darling's abandoned old house. They'd taken the midnight metro and broken the lock on the back door, letting themselves in to the old shuttered flat. Peter had cringed at the familiarity of the nursery. Every time they had come back to the Darling's old home, he felt that oldburning in his chest that told him that this was not where he was meant to be.

He longed for that open sky, that clear blue, sapphire sky in which he had bathed for hundreds of years without a care in the world. He yearned for the companionship of his shadow, his ever loyal friend who had been beside him through every fight and every venture no matter how absurd. He wished for his lost boys, his family, those dirty faced scoundrels who looked to him as a leader and perhaps subconsciously as a father figure. He even missed Tink and her merry laughter, the way that her little face would turn beat red when she was angry and even the way she would make such a riotous fuss when he looked at other girls. He missed all of it.

The nursery, the monumental host of stars that stretched onwards and forever from the Darling's window brought back so many memories. Good memories.

"Peter," Wendy called softly, her voice scratchy from the three packs of cigarettes that she smoked a day. "Peter, I want you to go back..."

"I made you a promise," he said sternly, fingers curling around the peeling paint of the white sill. She told him that she wanted him to go back every night for the last year. There was no way back. Pixie dust was the only way. One could only get back to Never land by flying. Even if he wanted too, the way to his home was closed to him. "I made you a promise that I'd stay with you and protect you. I'm not going to throw that away Wendy."

Michael made a nervous noise in the back of his throat, chewing anxiously on Teddy's ear. His dark brown eyes were wide as though pleading for Peter to watch where he treaded with his words.

"And look where it bloody got us!" John mocked bitterly from the foot of Wendy's old bed. "Look at us!"

"You know as well as I do that I didn't get you guys into this mess," Peter said softly, not turning to face the dark haired boy. He was afraid of what he might see.

"Oh of course, crow boy over here says that he didn't do this to us," he said, throwing his box of cigarettes across the oak wood floor and rising slowly, drunkenly to his feet. "None of this would have happened if you'd let us stay together with you in Never Land. You knew what we were bound to become!"

"Drug addicts!?" Peter shot back, his fingers loosening a little. "You have Wendy so high every night that sometimes she doesn't even recognize me! You're so gone now I wonder that you're the same person you were in those days. Michael can't even piece together a coherent sentence anymore! You think that I could have imagined this hell that our lives have become?"

"You could have taken us back with you!" John yelled, stepping forward and catching himself as he stumbled. He was snapping. His reserve was breaking. There was too much anger in him. Too much blame.

"You were all homesick! You ran to your mother and father crying. Or do you not remember?" Peter said, hoping sincerely that it would sway him.

"And now look at them!" he said, gesturing widely and drunkenly. He was wobbling on his feet. "Gone gone gone. What can you do when parents grow to hate one another and leave? Wendy still cries her eyes out every day because of the divorce."

"And you're blaming me for that?"

"Who else is there to blame? Who else turned our lives upside down with his stories of a land where nothing dies, where perfection is everywhere, happiness, family? Lost dreams," he breathed. "Like all of those lost boys... They are just the lost dreams that everyone recalls just at the brink of their memory when they wake in the morning. They fade away, just like ours. You knew it would happen."

"You're so high you can't even walk straight," Peter growled, watching John's reflection in the open window pane.

"What else am I supposed to do?" John asked, with a cynical chuckle that he quickly consumed. "Watch everything rot away in front of my eyes? At least this
way I can see things die in Technicolor."

"You're so gone John..." Peter sighed. "Watch yourself or you'll hurt Wendy."

"If anyone's hurt Wendy it's you!" John cried, wiping his nose on his sleeve. "Filling her head with dreams of Never Land. Telling her that one day that you'll find a way back and take all three of us home with you. Young forever.... You're poisoning her with your lies!"

"John!" Wendy cried, but she was so weak that she could hardly lift her arm to motion for him to calm down. "We will all get back to Never Land one day!"

"Do you see? Do you see what you've done to her? She clings to your every word, your every gift!" he cried, livid. "She believes everything you say! AIDS Peter! She has fucking AIDS! She'll be dead in another half a year! Why can't you just let her go? Why do you have to keep lying to her!?!"

"He's not lying to me!" Wendy screamed through her tears. "We're going back to Never Land where no one dies. It doesn't matter if I have it... No one dies there!"

"You're a liar Peter! A liar!" John cried. "You're driving my sister insane! You broke my family apart!"

"How could I have known!? How could I have known what was happening? I didn't know when Wendy was raped! I wasn't there! I couldn't have done anything!"

"You could have taken us back!"

"Fly us away from here Peter..." Wendy whispered. "The fire lily, it holds the key to youth..."

"I couldn't just take you from your parents! They loved you! They would have been heartbroken!" Peter cried, turning from the window and watching as John advanced towards him.

"You could have saved my sister's life! You tore our family apart! You were the one who did this to all of us! It's your fault!"

"John!"

Michael whimpered.

"It's all your fault!"

A bullet whizzed through the glass of the window.

John's shadow, the gun resting against his palm trembling.

Peter was on the ground clutching his stomach with blood stained fingers. His shoulders were quaking, his eyes wide with shock and pain.

"Peter!" Wendy shrieked, throwing herself beside him, covering him with her thin arms.

"Die bastard!" John breathed, raising the gun for the final shot that would put his nightmare to rest.

"John stop!" Wendy was screaming, her hair loose and matted around her shoulders, her fingers twitching. "John! Stop it damn you! John!"

The gun was pointed again at the figure of the red haired boy, draped in the shadows of the old room. His finger tensed on the trigger. His eyes narrowed with satisfaction. An end to pain. The only way to end the pain.

And then like a strange guardian angel, Michael jumped onto John's back, throwing Teddy over his head. Through the haze that clouded his vision, Peter could see that Michael was biting his shoulder, strangling him with his reliable, torn little bear. "No hurt Peter!" he cried as his brother's blood gushed into his mouth. Teddy was choking him, making it so he could hardly breathe.

"Get the hell off of me!" he was screaming as Michael's fingers stabbed into his eyes.

"Peter!" Wendy cried, holding him up by his shoulders as he threw up blood, his eyes almost completely veiled over with a tinge of red. Her hair fell into his face and she pressed her nose against his cheek, whispering quickly, fitfully, "Peter. The old song that Tiger Lilly taught to us. The song that she was named after. You remember it don't you? Say you remember Peter.... Please..."

His whole body was throbbing with pain, tremors running through him, but he managed to nod.

"Long ago," she choked through her tears, struggling to form words as she watched Peter's blood gushing from the wound in his stomach. "In a... in a grotto by the sea.... grew a magical fire lily..... it holds the key to... to... youth eternally.... back to the.... back to the beginning. We can go back, don't you see?"

She was crying fiercely now, holding Peter as he tried blindly to see through his own bloody tears. "We can go back Peter. We can start over.... do things right.... If we just... just find that lily! Peter... we can do this over again..."
John was screaming, bashing Michael's head again and again with the butt of his gun.

"We can't....... go back...." Peter wept through his pain. "There's no..... way back now."

"But there is Peter! There is!" And from her coat pocket she took the thimble that he had returned to her on the last night of their adventure in Never land. Her hands were shaking fitfully around it and her voice was just as tremulous with her tears, "Peter.... when you gave me the thimble... it was your hair... you shook.... and pixie dust.... pixie dust rained down on me and we both laughed..... do you remember? Peter... there's pixie dust in the thimble... enough for just one person. Enough for you."

"Wendy..." he managed to breathe, his hand reaching out to grasp hers roughly.
"You have to go back! You'll die if you don't Peter!" she cried, throwing her arms around him. "You have to go back and bring us back the fire lily. Then we can start all over again, as children, like this never happened. Peter! You have to go! Please Peter!"

"Give it to me!" he gasped, pulling her into a tight embrace.
And with one great flick of her wrist that golden dust coated his red hair, his fingers, his shoulders, his eyelashes, his blood.

"I love you Wendy Darling!" he whispered, kissing her roughly on the mouth.

"I love you too Peter!" she breathed, weeping uncontrollably as he lifted up into the air, the blood dripping down his pant leg and down his sneakers. "Promise you'll come back for me Peter!"

"I'd die before I forgot about you!" he swore fiercely through his pain. "I'll come.... I'll come back for all of you!"

"Wendy! He'll leave us again! He'll leave us again!" John screamed, throwing
Michael from his back with one more swing of the butt of his gun. The little boy collapsed in a heap against the carousel wallpaper and lapsed into unconsciousness.

Peter flew to the window, his lithe body silhouetted against the stars. "I'll come back for you Wendy Darling. I promise you! I'll come back!"

"Die you lying bastard!" John screamed, shooting blindly and wildly, shattering the remaining window, but Peter was already embracing the familiar touch of the night, floating beside the moon, following the north star.

"I'm coming home...." he breathed to himself as he saw the broad ocean stretching out into forever, merging with the stars. He was descending into a sea of blues and grays and silvers and coppers. His eyes were melting closed, his wounds were faint, as though they never existed. He was slipping away, slipping away beneath an ocean of stars.

"Tinkerbell," he whispered softly. "Come to me.."

And there she was, a distant light growing steadily brighter, tugging his hair, his eyelashes. Worried. A frenzy of blonde curls.

He was drifting into sleep, remembering a beautiful girl in a blue night dress, remembering that he promised her something, but not remembering exactly what it was....

"Long ago
In a grotto by the sea
Grew a magical
Fire lily.
It holds the key
To youth eternally.

Back to the beginning."

"Wendy Darling.... I'll come back for you," Peter whispered. His eyes fluttered closed. "I promise.

-Lauren Hatch 2007

(Note: None of these characters belong to me! I do not claim them in any way. Thank you)