Brave Reborn (OUAT/Peter Pan Fanfic)

Chapter 11

It was the morning after the hunt. I returned to my tree house and waited for Pan and his armed forces. In the meanwhile, I started to prepare for the worst. Every muscle felt tight, sprung for action and I could not even walk. My body screamed at me to sprint down the forest, to spend the energy that kept piling in regardless of my inability to use it. Even my face felt tight, like smiling just was not an option today. My usual calm had been replaced by a carousel of ideas, each one more worrying than the last. 

When I saw Pan come, he was alone. I came down from my treehouse and he greeted me.

"Here," Pan handed me a new honeypot, "To replace the one that I broke." It had a reddish-brown body with a brown strip near the curve. On it was the word, "HUИNY."

I said, "Pan, that's..." Then looked at his face. He was smiling a little, knowing that this was a serious matter. I understood that the honeypot was not just a replacement, it was a piece of apology. 

"Very sweet of you. Thank you," I whispered. We stood in silence.

He spoke, "Can we talk about last night?"

"Okay," I whispered. We sat on the logs around the fire pit.

"Why didn't you say anything?" He asked.

"You wouldn't understand. I just couldn't." I admitted.

"Is that why you came here?"

"Yes." I started to snivel, "I k—killed so many innocent people. It was an accident. My family feared me. I'm an m—monster."

"I wished I knew. I should have never invited you."

"It's alright, the secret would come out sooner or later," I said.

Pan started to rise up and leave. I told him he could stay and ask some more questions. I answered every question the best way possible. There were even some that I needed answers to. He sat on the edge the log, his eyes trained keenly on me. It was odd for me to make a connection so fast, to give my trust so easily, tentative though it was. There was something in the way he smiled, a warmth, a genuineness, a softness of spirit I just could not pass up. He listened like he was absorbing my words, not simply getting me "turn" over and done with so he could return to some other topic. The more time I spent with him the more my spirit lifted, he was the new friend I'd needed for so long.

"Did any of the lost boys saw?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said.

"How did they react?"

"Some indifferent, others not so happy."

"Great." I sarcastically exclaimed.

"Don't worry, I fixed it. You shouldn't have any problems going to the campsite."

"I'm not going."

"You can't avoid those who hate and fear you forever."

"I can try."

"At least just go to the camp once. If it's so bad, I'll never make you go there again."

I thought about it. "Okay," I muttered.

•••

The next day, I worked up the courage to go to walk to Pan's camp. I took a shortcut to get this over with. As I entered, the boys stopped what they were doing and just stared at me. 

"What? What are you all looking at?" I asked. "Oh—do I have something in my teeth?" Still silence. I knew what they were thinking about. 

"Alright, fine—we might as well get this over with. No, my mother wasn't a bear. Yes, I've always been one. No, I was not raised from the wild—"