Belief Extraordinary

Blood

He found her, as he'd suspected, at her willow. The tree was quivering as though it could sense something was wrong. The whole island, in fact, felt on edge, though from which of the two connected to it Felix couldn't say. Maybe both, or maybe the fact that they were at odds gave the island the feeling that at any moment, it might very well rip apart. He stood outside the branches for a moment, turning over what he could possibly say to calm her down. For all they looked to be the same age, Sarah was young – and worse than that, she was naïve. She didn't understand that sometimes good things came at a price. He pushed away the feelings of fear – they wouldn't do him any good in this conversation – and lifted his hand to part the willow fronds.

"Who's there?" The sharpness of her voice sounded as if it were masking something. "Oh. It's you."

"Came to talk." Felix called up. Silence answered. "Quite a show in camp."

"It wasn't a show." More silence.

"Suppose it wasn't." No answer. Felix sighed. "I warned you you didn't know what Pan was capable of." Sarah shimmied down the trunk, her face appearing through the leaves. Felix noticed the red around her eyes, the trail of tear-tracks down her face. His work was cut out for him. She wasn't crying any more, but he suspected this is what the initial sharpness of her voice had been hiding. He wasn't good with tears.

"You warned me in terms of what he might do to me." Sarah accused. "You never warned me he was planning to kidnap and murder a child." Felix didn't react.

"Ends justify the means," Was all he said. Sarah gaped.

"You can't be ok with this," She insisted angrily. "You're going to help him murder an innocent child so that he can keep his power? Are you serious?" Felix was loyal to Pan, but this was really going too far.

"It's one life for many." He met her glare with a steely calm. "Not just him, all the Lost Boys. One heart from a stranger, in exchange for all the Lost Boys there are now or ever will be."

Sarah didn't flinch. "Genius." She spat. "No wonder he gathered you all up. Now he can murder and make it look like he's being a hero." Her heart complained at this assessment of him, but she smothered it. Knowing what she knew, it was far easier to see him a monster than to accept that someone so close to her could do such a thing.

"You have no idea what he took us from, little bird." A sharp edge began to creep over Felix's voice. He was growing impatient with Sarah's high-minded morality when she didn't know the first thing about why Pan might decide taking a heart was a necessity.

Sarah leaned in closer, as close to his face as she could get without standing on her toes. "And what did he take you from, Felix?" Her companion was silent. He didn't want to answer her questions. She scoffed, turning away from him. "Right. Of course. I should know better by now than to expect answers from you." He didn't want to – but doing so might be the only way to bring her back. He sighed, resigning himself to his fate.

"How old is a man where you're from, Sarah?" Sarah scrunched her forehead in confusion as she turned back to face him. What did that have to do with anything? Was he going to quibble on who really counted as a child? "Where I come from, a man is anyone big enough to hold a weapon." A sardonic smile split Felix's face. It didn't reach his eyes. "And I've always been tall for my age." Slowly, the gears in Sarah's mind clicked into place.

"You were a...soldier?" It made sense, she supposed. His fighting skills. Spending time before the island with men, not boys – his discipline and his stoicism. Felix scoffed at her response.

"I was fodder." His false cheer dropped. "We were all fodder. We dropped like flies and no one cared." He leveled her with a steady gaze she could not meet, standing speechless. "Boys as young as 11, throwing themselves on a field to die. One life is nothing." She opened her mouth – that couldn't be right – but shut it again, shamefaced. What could she possibly say to Felix after what he had gone through?