Innocence (OUAT/Peter Pan)

Chapter 44: Follow You Home

THIS IS THE SECOND-TO-LAST CHAPTER. And you will probably hate me for this one..I'm sowwy :( buuuuut I do have a surprise for you at the very end of this book (which is SO soon)!

Holy fudge balls y'all...this story has so many reas and comments and likes...I can't even. Like, I look at my profile and I do NOT believe it! Your support and appreciation and ADORABLe/HILARIOUS/FANTABULOUS comments make my day!!<3 hugs and kisses I love you all!

I'm not super talkative soooo...enjoy:) READ AND COMMENT<3

ELLE’S POV

Elle’s breath came in short, shallow gasps, but she kept them quiet and pushed her muscles to keep moving. She felt tired, her knees and arms were shaking slightly. And she had no idea why. This had happened before, this fire, this loss of control—but she hadn’t been so weak afterwards. In fact, she’d gotten up and sprinted about an eighth of the incredible island. Her hair was so dull, it produced almost no light, and hung limp and slightly damp with her sweat against her head and shoulders. Glancing down at herself, Elle’s skin looked paler all over.

            Still, she tried to help the Lost Boys gather scattered materials, and scavenge anything only partially damaged. Nothing was completely untarnished. Elle wasn’t sure which was more exhausting, using her natural strength or using magic, both were making her a bit nervous.

            Baelfire and Rumplestiltskin walked into the site, Baelfire holding a small leather sack. Elle could feel the magic of the water inside it, carried from Dead Man’s Peak…but it was off. It seemed weaker, shakier. Like her. Like the island, which had barely healed itself from her fire, but—she noticed as she suddenly looked around—hadn’t regrown anything beyond saplings.

            “Princess,” Felix’s voice right at her shoulder startled her out of her realizations, and concentration, and she stumbled forward as her knees weakened more. Felix’s arms, long and thin yet strong, shot out across her back and chest, propping her upright. As Elle gasped for breath, her grey eyes flitted around seeing that they now had everyone’s attention. The Lost Boys were still, staring with eyes wide and anticipating. The grown-ups had stilled, listening, but weren’t looking directly at them. She knew Felix noticed, but he didn’t seem to care.

            “Let’s go,” he said, voice flat, nodding in the direction he’d gone off in earlier. Where the grown-ups and the boy had come from, where Pan was.

            “Felix,” she breathed. She couldn’t go to him, see him, speak to him. It had been too long, and the last times she had seen him had been since the grown-ups were here. They had been fights, and painful meetings. But she doubted Felix knew about those. “It’s been years, it doesn’t just—”

            Felix cut her off, silencing her with to words carrying so much weight that Elle would have lost any remaining strength she had if Felix’s arms hadn’t still been caging her. “He’s dying.”

            “You’re her, then?” a new voice, clear but slightly dazed, cut in before she could even begin to think of a response. She saw Felix’s eyes narrow and his jaw tighten in confusion and suspicion, before turning to look back at…the boy. He was awake now, sitting up on the ground with Emma kneeling next to him, watching him and them carefully. No one knew what to say, but no one told him to be quiet. Or to explain.

            “I’m who?” Elle choked out, taking an unconscious step closer to him. There was something in the boy’s eyes—flitting around the camp and people, trying to orient himself—that drew her in, made her curious. They were bright and alert and…gentle. Like he knew something, and was determined to do something, but was still kindhearted.