The Neverland Wars

Chapter 5

Peter

Emma sits on the medical table, her eyes cast downward as the nurses examine her. The scrubs she's wearing hang loosely on her thin frame, nearly swallowing her. Seb and I stand on opposite sides of the room, mirroring each other with our arms crossed over our chests. He occasionally glances at me, but I keep my eyes on Emma, cataloguing each bruise and scar into my own mental archives. Seeing her now in better lighting, she's even paler than I initially observed. Her skin seems thin as paper, and her veins are dark underneath. Under her left eye is a nearly-healed shiner, just turning yellow around the edges. Her nose had been broken at some point and healed a little crooked, creating a sharp angle in the bridge of her nose that wasn't there before. Don't get me wrong, she's still beautiful, as beautiful as I remember even though it's been a few years. She's just...different.

Seb's eyes meet mine across the room, and I can tell he's doing the same thing I am. I don't doubt he feels the same guilt I do, that we had promised for so long to protect her, and we failed her. Em is tough, we both know that, but we also know just what it's like to be pushed to your limits.

One of the nurses takes her temperature and places an oxygen marker on her index finger, while the other roves a scanner over her body, paying particular attention to the foreign port in her arm and also her head. Her vital signs flash on the glass wall behind her, showing a normal heart rate, oxygen levels, and brain activity. I scan through the list quickly. She's underweight, which is unsurprising.

Em, what did they do to you?

Her violet eyes glance up at me, as if she heard my inner monologue. I offer her a small smile of reassurance, and she returns it. Despite her good spirits, her face is so hollow.

She flinches when one of the nurses administers an antibiotic through a needle in the back of her arm, and the nurse murmurs a quiet apology in response.

"Stop staring you two," she finally breaks the silence, making me jump slightly. Her eyes, even with the dark circles under them, are twinkling with mischief. "It's creepy."

"Would you prefer we face the other way?" I tease. 

"Yes, as a matter of fact. I'm gone for three years and the two of you go and forget your manners. Unbelievable."

She grins, but I find my brow furrowing at her words. She catches it immediately.

"Peter, I didn't mean it like that—"

Peter, Tink's voice comes over the intercom in the medical ward, cutting Emma off. My sensors are picking up Mr. St. Clair's ship about a mile away. Arrival in sixty seconds.

"Thanks, Tink."

"I don't want to see him," Emma grumbles. "Not yet. I don't want to talk to him. I need more time."

I turn to Seb, who frowns at her. "Emma, he's your father."

Thirty seconds.

"I don't want to talk to him," Emma says again, her eyes desperately searching mine.

St. Clair evaporates into the room before I can respond. His stone-cold violet eyes immediately zero in on his daughter. "Emma," he says in relief.

"Hello, father," she says flatly, her face expressionless. I can't gauge her reaction, but I can tell she's not happy.

"I'm thrilled we found you."

"Are you? Because I don't remember you actively searching for me. What happened the last time I saw you? Oh, that's right...you sent me into the field alone and I walked into an ambush."