A New Adventure
Fandoms: Lost/Once Upon a Time
Characters: Richard Alpert, James (Sawyer) Ford, Miles Straume, Jacob, Frank; Dr. Whale, Ruby, Henry, Emma, Jefferson; Miles/Ruby
Rating: PG13
Wordcount: 9,146
Spoilers: Takes place within the S1 finale of OUaT; spoilers for all of Lost
Summary: Dr. Whale may not know who he really is, but Richard Alpert does.
A/N: Written for
joyyjpg at 
vacationthon. About to be jossed so hard by season 2, I'm sure.
Richard lets himself into the beach-view apartment he still calls home; the scene he walks into looks much as he expected (meaning, exactly as he left it).
James lounges on the La-z-boy, the evidence of his alcoholism displayed on the coffee table in front of him. Miles is sprawled on the floor with his feet propped up on said coffee table. His big toe is about half an inch away from enacting the beer bottle version of falling dominoes.
The James Bond rerun they’re gazing at is so loud that no one hears Richard come in. He thinks this might be the same Bond movie they were watching the day he slipped out. They might even be wearing the same clothes.
Frank, the only functioning human being in the place, sits in the dining alcove, reading the local paper while shoveling cereal into his mouth. He’s the only one who looks up. He raises his eyes heavenward and mouths silent thanks.
“Look alive, boys. We have company.”
Miles slowly props himself on his elbows and James tilts his head backwards to see.
“Back already, Old Man?” James asks, keeping one eye on the TV. “Did you remember the milk?”
Richard’s been gone for six months. Things have gotten even worse than he feared. “Let’s go.”
“Go where?” Miles asks, his tongue heavy in his mouth, as though he hasn’t spoken in days.
Anywhere you like, as long as it’s out of my hair,” Frank snits. To Richard he adds, “You couldn’t have sped up your little soul-searching trip a little? You see what I’ve been dealing with here.”
“It takes as long as it takes,” he replies. “Aren’t you coming, too?”
“I’ve got a job, unlike these yahoos. Take ‘em. It’ll be good for them. Just bring them back in one piece. Yourself, too. Your room’s still upstairs. And it’ll be here when you get back.”
“Thanks, Frank.”
“Gimme a ring when you need bailing out. ‘Cause I know you will.”
Frank winks. He knows his gruff facade wouldn’t fool a child. Richard wonders if he’ll ever stop pretending not to care.
“Where’re we going?” Miles asks, his mind finally awake.
“We’re taking that all-American roadtrip you promised me.” He thinks, but doesn’t say, We’re taking that all-American roadtrip you both desperately need.
That was three weeks ago.
Now, Richard sits in the backseat while James drives and Miles navigates. Salt, vinegar and oil from the bag of potato chips they devoured a few hours ago have made his fingers too sticky to touch anything. Horrible 80s power ballads he will never enjoy blast from the stereo. The stink of James’s most recent belch fills the car.
Richard can’t remember the last time he felt this happy. He hopes (thinks) the others feel the same.
It didn’t take long for Miles and James to jolt out of their lugubrious rut. Richard knew it wouldn’t; it had only taken him an afternoon—on the docks with Miles, on the plane with James. They’d helped him that day, put the rusty pieces of him back together and gotten the clock to start ticking somewhat merrily away again. As soon as he’d finished tying up loose ends, he knew it was his turn to return the favor.
Even if they weren’t his friends, Richard has spent too many years as a surrogate not-quite-father figure not to help them. It’s the only thing he’s good at, and if he’s learned anything from life, from the island, from Frank, it’s to find ways to keep doing what you’re good that.
And he has a feeling that one of the things Miles and Sawyer are good at is adventures. Even if even if they don’t think they want any more. Actually, especially if they don’t think they want any more. The only difficulty Richard faces is in finding one; he’s never had to look before.
“Where are we now?” he asks.
“Vermont,” Miles says.
Something about Vermont jabs at a dormant memory “Are we far from the border into Maine?”
“You wanna go to Maine?” James asks suspiciously. “Why?”
“There’s a special place there I heard about once.”
“Haven’t we had enough of special places?” Miles asks.
“Have we?”
And there it is: the awkward silence of confirmation. They know it, too.
No one says anything, but James takes an exit marked for Maine.
“You gonna direct me, or are we just using the Force on this one?”
Richard isn’t sure. He reaches between the front seats and gently pulls the map out from under Miles’s leg.
“You know, we have a GPS for that,” Miles says. “We can just put the name of whatever town you want in the computer.”
“It’s more of a coordinate.”
Miles and James exchange matching eyebrow raises. They don’t know where they’re going, but they have a sense of where this is going. However, it’s a promising sign that they stay on course.
And he doesn’t want to scare them, but given where he thinks they’re headed, Richard is pretty sure the GPS is going to cut out any minute now.
***
Jacob gives Richard a grand tour soon after his arrival. It takes them almost a week to cover everything. For a deserted and uncharted island, there are a surprising number of landmarks and points of interest—ruined statues, seething volcanoes, mystical wells, dark caves full of mysteriously carved symbols… even a whole other island.
The tour ends at the top of an ancient lighthouse with mirrors that reflect various scenes. Even though Jacob says this is the least of the wonders in store for him, Richard can’t stop staring at the mirrors; he’s never seen anything so blatantly magical. But Jacob’s words break his enchantment and turn it into terror. “Meet me here when I return next week.”
“Return? Return from where?”
Richard didn’t think it was possible to leave, had hoped Jacob never would.
As if reading his mind (or maybe he actually does), Jacob reassures him. “I’ll only be gone for a day. And I promise, you will be as well-protected in my absence as you are when I’m here.”
“How do you leave?” Richard asks, mostly as a way of masking his relief.
Jacob reaches under the giant compass and pulls out two, then three, then four scrolls, but he only unravels two of them. The first looks like a rendering of the island, with dots for all the special places they passed on their tour. The second is an impressively large and colorful map of what Jacob assures him is the entire earth (Richard has a hard time believing the two sides are meant to join together; the world can’t possibly be round, can it?).
“Where is the island in this one?” Richard asks.
“It’s hard to say. It’s constantly moving, you see.”
Actually, no, Richard doesn’t.
“There are anchors all around the world, all connected by the same source of water” Jacob continues, leaning over Richard to point at places on both maps. “This well on the island connects to this spot here, in Siberia. The one we saw yesterday connects to this spot here, in northern Africa. And the one we drank from today connects to a well here.”
Jacob’s finger crosses draws a line from a dot on the island map to a dot on the world one that Richard knows is somewhat north of New York, in New England. Where he was supposed to have gone with Isabella.
“I don’t understand,” he says.
“If you were to crawl through the wells, you would come out in these places. And if you know the right trick, you can use the same passages to come back. These places all over the world are like anchors for the island.” Jacob leans back, preparing for the impending metaphor; Richard’s quickly learned that there are few things Jacob likes more than setting up a metaphor. “Like a tent, the island sways with the wind, but it’ll never fly completely away, because there are ropes anchoring bits of it to stakes in the ground. There are also tentpoles in other worlds, since the island travels through those, too, of course.”
‘You see.’ ‘Of course.’ None of these things are as obvious to Richard as Jacob assumes.
“Other worlds?”
Jacob fingers the remaining two maps, considering unrolling them, but instead he puts them away and pats Richard on the back. “I think we’ve covered enough for today.”
***
Richard has never been here before but he turns out to be right; the GPS doesn’t help. Neither does the map, for that matter. There are no signs for a town until, suddenly, a quaint marker welcomes them to a place called Storybrooke.
“Is this it?” Miles asks, peering into the darkness.
“I think so.” Richard isn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed. Nothing here looks any different from the rest of the New England countryside they’ve been driving around all day.
Perhaps he misremembered the coordinates.
James heads in the direction of a tall clock tower about a mile away. It’s the only well-lit structure they can see. “Let’s hope they have a motel or something in this bush, ‘cause we’re probably gonna have to spend the night.”
As they near the center and the buildings crop closer together, a couple of pedestrians come into view. Miles calls out the window to a serious-faced little boy carrying a backpack.
“Hey, kid! Do you know where we can get some dinner around here? Maybe a drink?”
The boy opens his mouth to answer automatically, then thinks better of it.
“There’s only one place.” Richard can see the boy’s testing them, testing a hypothesis. “Everyone from Storybrooke knows that.”
“Well, obviously, we aren’t from here,” Miles says.
The boy’s eyes widen in unreasonable excitement. He bounds towards the car and looks around conspiratorially before sticking his head in through the rolled-down window.
“You wouldn’t have been able to get in here unless you’re special. So maybe you’re part of the story, too. Are you here to help?”
“There ain’t nothing special about us,” James lies. For a conman, he’s terrible at it.
Richard smiles at the boy, the encouraging one reserved for special children—he’s known many, can tell this is another one—and tries to keep him talking. Between the lack of GPS and maps, and now this, he can tell there’s something more here. “Why don’t you get strangers here? Why is this town not on the map?”
It’s obvious the boy has told this story many times, to anyone who will listen, and even to those who won’t, so he’s trained it to come out in a rush before no-nonsense grown-ups can stop him. “See, this isn’t a normal town. Nothing here is real. They’re from another place. Everyone here, everyone except for me, is under an evil curse. They’re not who they think they are.”
James and Miles exchange glances.
Ignoring them, Richard prods. “If they aren’t who they think they are, then who are they?”
“Characters from fairy tales. You know, like Snow White and Prince Charming and Cinderella. My mom is the only one who can break the spell, but she hasn’t yet. And now she wants to leave. I don’t know what to do. Maybe you can help. You know, help her believe.”
Miles and James look at one another. In unison, they shake their heads. “That’s some imagination you’ve got there, kid,” James says, “but we’ve got places to go. Thanks anyway.”
Miles rolls up his window and leaves the boy open-mouthed as he watches them pull away.
“That wasn’t kind to the boy,” Richard admonishes.
“Don’t tell me you believe this crap,” James says.
“I don’t know.” And Richard really doesn’t. Even he has to admit it’s a little silly, a schoolboy’s escapist make-believe…
Miles mutters to himself. “Fairy tales. Fucking fairy tales are real? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Richard leans back into his seat and folds his hands, remembering something that’s true even if this isn’t. “Just because a story is in a children’s book doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”
“I’m not sayin’ weird stuff isn’t out there,” James agrees. “We all know better than that. I’m just drawing the line at goddamn Disney on Ice.”
Miles turns on the radio. “Whatever. At least we’re five minutes away from dinner.”
Granny’s Diner looks like everything the name suggests, or at least that’s what James says. Richard’s traveled a lot by this point, but still, he wouldn’t know. There’s a bed and breakfast adjacent, and as soon as they’ve checked in with the surprised elderly proprietress, the head inside to eat.
It’s long past peak dinner time but it’s still crowded with the late-night drinking crowd. The only three seats together are at the bar. The waitress sidles over and leans in front of Miles so that he gets a full view of the inside of her flannel shirt. Her gaze is friendly and predatory at the same time. “You’re new in town.”
Miles glances at his friends before facing her again and going glassy-eyed. “I’m Miles,” he says after a gulp.
“Ruby,” she says, still speaking only to him. “Welcome to Granny’s. What can I get you?”
Richard is relieved. The pretty girls they’ve encountered so far have usually paid their attentions to James or to himself; Miles, the only one who actually wants attentions, needs this. James is pleased, too; he gives Richard a high five under the table.
When Ruby flashes him another sultry smile, the man next to Miles narrows his eyes, glaring at them all. He makes brief, annoyed eye contact with Richard before reaching over and gently touching Ruby on the elbow.
With this man, she’s eminently professional, which only makes things worse. “What do you need, doc?”
James looks up at the nickname, smiling slightly to himself, as if remembering something fond and bittersweet.
The man flares his nostrils but keeps things light, playful. “Just a drink. Whatever you want to mix for me.”
“I’ll get you a beer.” Turning to Miles as she makes a show of opening the bottle, she says with extra sweetness, “Have you guys figured out what you want yet?”
While Miles and Sawyer order, Richard is mesmerized by the way the man shrugs to himself. As if to mitigate his disappointment, he flips a coin between his index finger and thumb; it flies high into the air and he scowls at it in petulant frustration, but then his frown turns into a smug smile of self-satisfaction when he flips his hand over and catches the coin between his index and middle fingers. Mood adjusted, frustration gone. Just like that.
The place is all wrong, but Richard has watched this trick a thousand times, watched the same unblemishing of mood. He looks at this man, blond, blue-eyed and nonchalant… he’s a stranger, but somehow he feels as familiar as Richard’s own shadow.
Richard leans over Miles. “Do I know you?”
The man fixes his blue gaze first on Miles before transferring it over to Richard. He purses his lips. “Nope.”
Oddly though, the rudeness—the arrogance—of the denial only serves to make Richard even more certain.
It’s too bad the only person who (insistently) comes to mind is the one person this doctor—this man—couldn’t possibly be.
***
Richard sits with Jacob on their favorite log, eating a fish and watching the sun set, just down the beach from the statue remnant in which they both now live. They do this every day, and the only marker of time is the way the remnants of the statue sink, day after day, almost imperceptibly deeper into the reef.
He hears them before he sees them. Then, as though it were perfectly natural, there’s a crowd of miscreants all around them. It happens so quickly, so seamlessly, that Richard has to forcibly remind himself that it shouldn’t be happening at all. They stream out of the statue and are so involved in their chase that they don’t seem to notice they shouldn’t be here. Their trajectory takes them down the beach and into the surf.
The children are flying. Richard knows it’s impossible, but there’s no other word for it. They swoop down into the crashing waves, and for a second Richard thinks he was mistaken, thinks they’re swimming, which makes sense, as far as any of this makes sense. But then, no, they swoop back up again and the man—for the lone runner is a man, the lone, earthbound man in a group of flying children—grabs futilely into the sky. The boys laugh when his fingers just miss their ankles.
It takes a minute for the shock of it to catch up with Richard, but once it does, he stands up straight and turns to Jacob, who sits and watches this unfold as though it were a piece of theatre.
Jacob keeps his eyes on the strangers, but tugs at Richard’s sleeve, pulling him back onto the log. “Let it play out.”
The boys change direction in mid-air and begin flying back up the beach. The cartwheels they spin around the base of the statue distract Richard from the fact that the chase is no longer on. Only when the boys slow down to wonder where their pursuer is does Richard follow their line of vision, too.
The man remains standing in the surf, contorting his body in a way that doesn’t seem natural. He’s beside the head of the statue, the terrifying crocodile head with massive stone teeth and evil eyes that glare just over the tops of the waves. Richard will be glad when it finally sinks out of sight, in what will probably be years from now. The sight of it still terrifies him, even after months here; this strange man has not had the luxury of time to accustom himself to it, and is, quite understandably, terrified out of his wits.
His arm also appears to be stuck inside the crocodile’s horrible stony mouth.
“Jacob,” Richard says, twitching with conflicting instincts, one to run out and help, and the other to follow Jacob’s lead.
Jacob shakes his head and his eyes narrow. He always seems to see more than Richard does. “Hold.”
The children taunt and scream at the man, but Richard notices they keep their distance, revealing that they are much more afraid of him than he will ever be of them. Only slowly do they seem to notice their apparently new surroundings, and stop long enough to look around.
Jacob finally, finally, stands. He strolls towards the boys, smiling as though they are perfectly normal children, like the ones Richard used to play with back home. As though they belong here.
Jacob takes no notice of the man, who continues to thrash and curse at the ocean and the monster’s head that has him trapped. Richard can’t ignore it, and sneaks glances to check on his progress, even though he knows his job is to act as Jacob’s loyal assistant.
“Which of you is the leader of this troupe?” Jacob asks, his eyes falling on the smallest one, already knowing the answer.
“I am,” the little boy insolently answers. “My name is Peter Pan. Who are you?”
“My name is Jacob. And this is Richard.”
“Where are we?” the children ask in a chorus.
“How do you fly?” Richard asks. This is even better than the mirrors.
Peter scoffs at their idiocy. “Fairy dust, of course.”
This child and Jacob have some things in common, it seems.
Jacob is unmoved. “Would you like help going home?”
A terrified murmur sweeps through the group. Variations of “Home? No, anywhere but that,” echo down the beach.
“We’re never going home,” Peter states with finality.
“Everyone goes home sometime,” Jacob responds, looking off into the trees. “The only question is when. And when you get there, you’re not quite the same as you were when you left. That’s the beauty of life.”
“Not us. Not me. I never want to go home and I never want to change,” Peter states confidently. He looks down the beach, and Richard gets the feeling the man trapped in the waves might be part of what drives this sentiment.
Jacob looks closely at the boy. “All right. You don’t have to grow up, for as long as you want to remain just as you are.”
There’s another terrified murmur through the crowd of boys. “Peter!” the oldest one says.
“Really?” Peter asks, suspicious of Jacob, mostly because he’s an adult.
“Just ask Richard. I did the same for him. It's a common wish. So, anyone else?” Jacob asks, conversationally.
No one says a word.
“Good. Well, Richard and I are here whenever you want anything. Otherwise, the island is yours to enjoy. Make your home wherever you want.”
“We don’t need anyone. Come on! Off we go!”
The children fly off into the jungle.
“Is this… Was that…?” The word ‘wise’ keeps almost slipping past his lips, but he knows he shouldn’t even be questioning such a thing. Of course it is wise. Jacob is all-knowing… isn’t he?
Jacob shrugs, and flashes Richard an openly sardonic smile that’s all bright teeth and mischievously bitten lips. “Didn’t you say you and your wife had hoped for children? Well now you have some.”
Jacob is certainly not the devil. But he is no angel either, Richard is beginning to learn.
As he follows Jacob back into the statue, Richard looks over his shoulder. The man in the water continues to thrash and pull. He’s in serious pain, and if he doesn’t free himself from being caught in the statue’s teeth soon, the incoming tide will drown him. Richard feels heartless doing nothing, but…
It’s as if Jacob has eyes in the back of his head, because, without turning around, he says, “Leave him. He doesn’t belong to us.”
As if on cue, black smoke rushes out of the trees, down the beach, and engulfs the man. Richard quickly shuts the statue door shut.
***
“I’m flattered and everything, but the staring’s starting to creep me out, man.”
Richard apologizes, but he doesn’t stop staring. He just assumes on the old island leader mask and says, “You really do look familiar.”
And for a millisecond, there’s hesitation there, a spark. And then it’s gone again, replaced by an oddly aggressive fog behind the eyes. It sends a dark chill down Richard’s spine.
“Hey, look,” James says, pointing behind the bar in an effort to ease the awkwardness. “They have McCutcheon! Ya’ll weren’t around when Tiny Tim and the Button King drank me dry, but I’ve been wanting that bottle for… oh years by now.”
“I can get you some. It’ll be on the house,” Ruby says brightly.
Miles, who has recovered his game by this point, manages to brush his fingers against hers while she refills his water. “That’s expensive stuff. Sure you won’t get in trouble?”
“She’s my granny,” she explains with a mischievous grin. “It’ll be okay.”
After that, the man gives up and slumps into his stool. He looks tired, with bags under his eyes and a grey pallor to his cheek, as if too much work and too little fun have been weighing him down. Now even the girl he likes doesn't care for him (even though liking a girl doesn't make sense . Richard doesn’t know him—maybe—but this feels very wrong.
The bells over the door chime as someone new enters the diner and clomps up to stand between Miles and the doctor.
Richard’s armhairs rise in horrified unison, and he find that he can’t speak, can’t move.
He was right. The impossible answer was right.
Just to confirm things, the new man slams his arm down on the bar: his arm, but not his hand, since he doesn’t have one. It’s just a stump hidden in his sleeve.
The doctor at first tries to play it cool, but his eyes go wide with the fright of an often-cowed victim, and Richard doesn’t understand, because that isn’t how it is between them. That can’t be how it is. It’s as if the world has gone topsy-turvy.
Miles shoves the man slightly out of the personal space he is encroaching upon. “Hey, I’m sitting here.”
“And I’m standing here. What of it?”
Miles finally looks up and gets a proper look at the smooth-faced individual he’s dealing with. After all they’ve been through, Miles knows how to spot someone who shouldn’t be messed with. Without missing a beat, he backs down. “Nothing. Stand wherever you want. Be my guest.”
Miles stands up, and Ruby throws her apron down. “Shift’s over!” She and Miles disappear into a back storeroom. James tries to give Richard another high five, but is left hanging.
“You better head to the hospital, Whale,” the newcomer, this Hook without a hook, barks at the doctor. “The ambulance just left. It’s Henry, the mayor’s kid. He’s coming in.”
And then something so tragic happens, so depressingly out of character with the person Richard knows—but still can’t truly believe—this doctor has to be.
The doctor… Peter… shrivels into himself, utterly cowed, with his previous arrogance nowhere to be seen. Richard can almost smell the fear, how utterly beaten his Peter is around this old adversary.
“There’s another doctor on shift right now. More senior than me. I haven’t eaten since last night. I can finish and get there in five minutes.” He looks hungry and tired and overworked. It’s horrifying.
“I’ll finish the dinner for you. Why don’t you go now?”
Peter, all grown up and unhappy and wrong, slides off his stool. Forgetting himself, Richard grabs him by the elbow, half expecting him to take off into the air and escape him as he did so many times. “Peter?”
“Look, dude, you must have me mixed up with somebody else.”
“It’s me. Richard. Don’t you remember?”
Peter struggles. “I’ve never seen you before in my life.” He looks at James. “Can you tell your friend here to cool it?”
James kneads Richard’s shoulder. “You’re gonna make the doc late. Come on, buddy. I think you’ve got the wrong guy.”
Peter extricates himself from Richard’s grip and practically runs out of the diner.
Hook-without-a-hook smirks at the retreating figure. He turns to Richard. “Friend of yours?”
“Yes, actually.” And Richard does something equally uncharacteristic—though, actually, something he’s done in the past. He clocks Hook square in the nose. He goes down in a mess of swearing and vitriol.
It feels just as good as it ever did.
The ladies in the bar scream. Hook gets up and is about to go after Richard, but James drags him out of the diner. Together they run around the back and out of sight. Through the windows, Richard can just make out the townspeople holding Hook back and letting them make their getaway.
“We gotta get Miles and get out of here,” James mumbles to himself. He takes his phone out of his pocket.
“There’s no time. Leave him a message and tell him we’ll be at the hospital.”
“The hospital?”
***
In some ways, Jacob is right; Richard does welcome the company. Having people to take care of and who will look up to him the way he looks up to Jacob is a nice change. And yes, he does like children; he quickly assumes a paternalistic attitude towards this little brood.
However, it’s difficult to take care of children who tauntingly and violently refuse his help. Richard knows he’s invulnerable to all but the most minor of wounds, but the fact that these children want to harm him hurts in ways that their slingshots can’t. The older ones show promise; they seem scarred by some unknown trauma more than anything else, left so twistedly desperate for a nurturing father figure that they self-destructively reject the one who comes their way. However, with time (and if there’s anything he has, it’s time), Richard knows they will come to him.
Peter, though, is another story. He is the most scarred and the most frightened, which means he’s also the most closed-off, shut down and recalcitrant. It, sadly for everyone involved, also means he’s their leader. He’s the one who keeps the other boys from Richard’s side during his visits to the bizarre yet impressive complex they’ve somehow erected.
“Why are you living in the trees?” he asks one day when he comes to see them. Richard makes a point of checking on them once a week, both for some varied company, but also to ensure they have food and clothes.
“Because he can’t climb them,” one of the boys says, looking around him to make sure Peter is out of earshot and won’t catch him speaking to the adult. Richard thinks this one is named Edgar.
“Who?” Richard doesn’t understand; besides himself and Jacob, there’s only one other ‘person’ on the island, and in smoke form, he can most certainly climb trees.
“Our old master.”
Richard’s overheard enough of their whispered chatter to have gleaned that the boys were all orphan apprentices to the man who blundered onto the island with them. He knows they suffered cruel, unnatural treatment from the man. They were running away when they found themselves transported to the island. There was something about a fairy helping them and giving them dust to fly… Richard never understood that part.
“He drowned. I saw him stuck in the waves. The black smoke…”
“…The black smoke saved him,” maybe-Edgar says. “He lost his hand, but he has a hook now. He lives on the pirate ship.”
Richard knows it’s a slave ship, but he can see why the boys think it’s a pirate ship.
“I think it’s worse than a hand,” another frightened boy interjects.
“He’s after us.”
“He’s wants Peter,” yet another boy corrects.
“Of course everyone wants me, because I’m the cleverest.” Peter swoops down from the trees. Richard has figured out that Peter’s cajoled, wheedled, charmed, and bullied the others into giving him their remaining fairy dust, and thus, he’s the only one who still flies. But somehow, it doesn’t seem to work quite the same now, after a few weeks on the island. Richard wonders if perhaps it only works properly in their world. Peter jolts and jerks through the air more clumsily with each of Richard’s visits, but he’s too proud to acknowledge it. As a reflex, he reaches out for the child’s arm, only to receive a kick in the face for his trouble.
“Get away from me, old man. We have no use for you here.”
“Peter,” one of the boys says, glancing apologetically at Richard, “he brought us food.”
“So did I. Which means we don’t need his. Aren’t I such a good provider?” Peter holds up a couple of fish, barely enough to feed two of the boys, but his grin would make one think he’d caught a whale.
“I only want to help you, Peter.”
“We don’t need any nasty old grown-ups spoiling our fun.”
The other boys crowd around, looking back and forth between Peter and Richard, weighing their loyalties. Richard is where their heads tell them to go, but Peter’s charisma is like a spell that’s hard to break.
“As you please,” Richard says, nominally to Peter, but mostly to all of them, “but if you ever have need of me, you’ll find me by the statue. With Jacob.”
“Faugh,” Peter says.
But as Richard leaves, one of the boys drops from a branch and whispers, “Thank you, Mr. Alpert.”
Later that evening, as Richard gets ready for yet another night in the statue with Jacob, he tugs at his courage enough to ask, “Did you know? Did you know the black smoke would save him?”
“I suspected.”
“But why? They are children. Defenseless. And he is persecuting them.”
“It’s the way of life here. I’m trying something new with them.” It sounds so cold, and gets worse. “And they’re hardly defenseless. Like you, I made it so they can’t be killed by him. I see by the bruise on your chin that you were caught in their net again.”
Richard ignores the teasing. He’s quivering with… he doesn’t know what, but something he has never had cause to feel about Jacob. “Is this what I am to be from now on? An observer to an endless, stagnant war?”
“Essentially. That’s all this has ever been.”
“It’s horrible.” The words slip out before Richard can catch them, before he remembers to remain respectful.
But Jacob doesn’t seem to mind. He actually seems pleased at Richard’s rudeness. “Atta-boy,” he says.
Jacob sometimes uses the oddest expressions. They never sound quite right, quite now.
***
“Hold on a sec,” James says, panting as he tries to keep up with Richard, who’s practically running down the street in the direction of the hospital. “You’re tellin’ me the island is freaking Neverland? You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
“A tropical island that can only be reached by following an extremely specific and time-sensitive bearing? A pirate ship that never seems to sail anywhere? Residents who never age. JM Barrie lived on the island for awhile. All the other details were just him trying to fictionalize the story. But you’re familiar with all the elements. And I’m telling you, that man was Hook, and the other man was Peter.”
“But that guy’s all grown up. Did he start aging once he left? Is that it?”
"He left almost a hundred years ago. So no, that is not it. It also does not explain why he has aged but Hook looks exactly the same as when I last saw him. And it does not explain why neither of them recognize me. Something is terribly wrong.”
They arrive at the hospital, but once there, Richard has no idea how to proceed. Only now does he realize he can't make any more headway here than he did in the diner. Peter doesn’t recognize him; neither does Hook.
James voices the question they’re both thinking. “What are you going to do? If they don’t know they’re fairy tale characters, it’s not like you’re going to make them remember.”
Still, Richard asks to see Dr. Whale. A nurse sends them upstairs where they see the doctor leaning over the boy they talked to earlier in the evening.
“Great,” James sighs. “And now we’re down the only person who knows what’s going on. How are we supposed to convince Peter Peter he’s a character from a book?”
Another doctor passing by stops and leans in closer.
“I couldn’t help but overhear,” the stranger says. “You aren’t from around here, are you?”
Richard thinks he’s losing his mind. Has that entire world passed through his life?
“Did you ever find Valyria?” he asks.
The man stares at him and then grins, sort of crazily, with the same dimples and crazy teeth Richard distantly remembers. “You! Yes, I did. You were right. I had taken a wrong turn.”
James looks at both of them like they’re crazy. “The hell?”
“Ships that pass,” the man sighs.
“I never did get your name,” Richard says.
“Jefferson.”
“Richard.”
“So who are you supposed to be?” James asks. “Cat in the hat?”
"Not too far off..." Jefferson sighs, and then pulls down his shirt to reveal a nasty scar that goes all around his neck. “It was off with my head. But then back on again, obviously.”
James goggles. “You’re joking.”
“I was still in Wonderland when the curse went into effect. The curse reached into the multiverse and captured all of our world’s living inhabitants. One minute I was there, and the next I'd been dragged here, kicking and screaming.”
Finally, when he least expected it, an explanation for something that happened so long ago. “I saw the same thing happen to someone else.” Richard nods and points through the glass at Dr. Whale. “To him. How do we stop it? How do we get them back?”
Jefferson shakes his head. “You don’t do anything. You can’t. Only the savior can. In the meantime, I’m working on something else.” He looks at a door Richard hadn’t noticed before.
“So,” he guesses, “you aren’t a doctor.”
“No.”
“Do you need help?” James asks.
“No, I’ve got it. You two should get some sleep. I'll probably meet you back here in the morning. Tomorrow’s going to be a big day. I can feel it.”
***
As the years go by, Richard wins and Peter loses… in his mind. You can only lose when you think there’s a contest; there isn’t one for Richard, but Peter refuses to believe him.
Within a few years, the boys start growing up and become less interested in taking orders from a cocky eight-year-old. They also get sick of fending off Hook on their own, whose sole occupation is concocting nefarious schemes to hurt them, destroy their food supply, ruin their living quarters… anything he can do. Peter leads the boys in impressively audacious counter-attacks... He doesn’t have anything else to do either.
So the boys leave, one by one, to seek Richard and Jacob out by the statue. It’s strange; Richard had thought his first charges would be shipwrecked castaways like himself. He never expected to populate the island with people who'd literally popped out of nowhere. But it works better this way; since they’ve known Richard since boyhood, they respect him more, and are easier to lead and protect. He and Peter are living examples of the kinds of miracles Jacob can create, so there isn’t any difficulty in getting them to pledge allegiance.
As they grow older, and come into middle age, and meet with a boat of women who actually do shipwreck on the island, Richard notices that they slowly forget their old lives. When Richard tries to ask them about the world they came from, they have trouble remembering. It’s disappointing for Richard (and for Peter, who shrugs them off and pretends he never cared).
This all means Peter is left increasingly on his own, compensating for his loneliness with even more insouciance. Even worse, with no one else to fight the battles with him, the skirmishes between him and Hook intensify. It’s a nagging question in his mind why Jacob allowed the black smoke to help this monster, and it chafes to see this endearing little boy—whom Richard has come to love in spite of Peter’s best efforts to stop him—being beaten and attacked and mistreated by a psychopath.
More and more often, it’s Richard’s job to step in. He and Hook don’t really speak; they just fight. It’s immortal against immortal… and even against immortal again, since it takes years for stubborn, immature Peter to realize Richard’s on his side.
He carries him to the lagoon one day, after a horrible incident in which Peter had spent a week trapped without food or water in a tent Hook had strung up to trap him in. Richard had been on his way to visit the boy (even though he has a campful of people looking to him for leadership, Richard’s visits have become more frequent these days, as Hook’s aggression has increased). It’s one thing not to be able to die; it’s another to feel the protracted pain of dying without that finality, and that’s what Hook has figured out. It’s cruel and it’s horrible, but Jacob insists the “rules” dictate that he only help Peter after the fact.
This time is the worst, with Peter’s skin bruised and cut and his eyes hollowed out by sleeplessness, tears and fear. It’s more scarring than whatever happened back in his world to make him ask Jacob for the gift.
Peter sits by the side of the stream for so long that Richard thinks he might drink the island dry. He then gobbles down the fruit Richard puts in front of him.
“Peter, I’m so sorry. How can I help—”
“Look,” he says, changing the subject. “I taught myself a trick.”
Peter pulls out a coin from his sock and flips it high into the air. As he catches is, his expression transforms from the depression of entrapment and back to the merry carefree state of eternal youth.
Richard wishes he could do that, just break his mood like that. He supposes that is the difference between being eternally thirty-five and being eternally eight.
“Isn’t that clever of me?”
There isn’t much he can do with someone who refuses more than anyone else to grow up and become serious. All Richard can do is look out for him. “Very. It’s very clever.”
Peter meets Richard’s gaze then, and holds it, giving him the first real, serious, mature smile he’s ever given him. And then the unthinkable happens. “Thank you,” he whispers.
Another first.
“Not all grown-ups want to hurt you. I promise. I will never hurt you. And as long as I am able, I will always come save you.”
“Don’t say that. Grown-ups are always making promises they never keep. Grown-ups lie.”
And there’s nothing Richard can say to that. But something changes that afternoon. Peter will continue to pretend he doesn’t care, that nothing matters except fun. He’ll keep living in his lonely treehouse, with no Lost Boys beside him, but he finally acknowledges Richard. He even comes to meet him at the lighthouse some times. He likes to look at the pictures in the mirrors.
One day, Richard heads back to the statue after a pleasant visit with his littlest and most favorite charge, but Jacob isn’t there.
That doesn’t mean the room is empty, though.
A man steps out from behind Jacob’s tapestry-in-progress, casually, as though stepping out of thin air is a perfectly normal thing to do. He’s dressed for winter, in thick scarves and oddly colored pants. He has scraggly long hair and even scragglier teeth, but he grins wide in a way that brightens his face.
Richard’s been here for enough years now that he can keep a straight face through even the most bizarre occurrences with deadly calm. “Can I help you?” he asks.
“I’m looking for a dragon tamer,” the newcomer says hurriedly, about to take off his coat and make himself at home. “If I remember correctly, there’s an old man just a couple of miles from here.”
There’s a difference between keeping calm and knowing how to respond. And dragon tamers… that’s almost too much, even for him.
The man looks the room for the first time, takes in Richard’s blank expression, and nods to himself. “This… isn’t Valyria.”
“I think you took a wrong turn.”
“Oh. I’ll be on my way then. Nice to meet you.” And he disappears again.
Once Richard comes out of his stupor, he peers behind the tapestry. Nothing.
No one should have to get used to this.
And then, just like that, Richard doesn’t have to anymore.
He goes to meet Peter for a competitive fishing expedition when a horrible stench and a greenish smoke rush out of a cave he’d never noticed before. A soft yellow light is replaced by a greenish smoke. Peter, sitting beside him, begins screaming, but Richard has no idea what might be wrong. He holds on, but it feels as though Peter is being taken somewhere, as if thin air is taking him away.
And then with a poof, his arms are empty and the boy is gone.
Richard goes to find Hook the next day, thinking the whole thing is a new evil plot, but he’s gone, too.
Jacob doesn't like it. Jacob is furious and scared and confused, emotions Richard hasn't seen since his first day on the island. He can tell something very bad has happened, but Jacob first goes into a funk, and then overcompensates by being secretive. He never explains. Richard has a feeling this might be the one thing he can't explain, the one time something happened that was not in his grand plan.
He worries about Peter. He worries for a century. The guilt of not having saved him never goes away.
***
The next morning, Richard stops by James’s room before going to wake Miles.
“I hope he’s okay.”
James chuckles. “I’m pretty sure he’s better than okay.”
Just to prove his point, one of the doors opens and Ruby stumbles out of a bedroom, looking dazed but satiated, her long hair a tangle of bedhead and her makeup rubbed off. Richard thinks she looks much more beautiful like this than she did last night.
She freezes for a second, but she giggles, betraying herself as the kind of reasonable person who knows when you’re caught, you might as well make the best of it.
“Hey,” she whispers, with almost no trace of embarrassment.
“He still in there?” James asks, equally relaxed.
“Yeah, but you might want to give him a while. He’s kind of…”
“Naked?” James asks.
She bites her lip. “And asleep.”
Richard gets a new idea. “Do you know Henry? He’s a little boy who—”
“Yeah, of course. Emma’s kid. What about him?”
“Does he have any close friends? Anyone he confides in, has been working on a project with?”
Ruby thinks. “He and Mr. Booth have been meeting at the diner this week with walkie-talkies. It’s pretty cute.”
“Where is this Mr. Booth now?”
Ruby points at the farthest door down the hall. “He’s a stranger here, too. He only came to town a few weeks ago. But I have to get cleaned up and down to work. See you for breakfast?”
“Maybe,” Richard says, and Ruby nods and slinks down the stairs.
“Let’s get Miles first,” James says. “We can give him a hard time first and then all go talk to this Booth guy together.”
When they barge into Miles’s room, the floor is covered in clothes and shoes and open luggage (Miles must have been digging frantically through his bag for a condom). The man himself is sprawled naked on top of the sheets.
Richard’s seen worse. Specifically, he’s seen worse from Miles.
The click of James’s camera phone causes Miles to spasm into wakefulness. He looks down at his naked body and then scrambles to pull the sheets over himself, but the fact that he’s still mostly asleep means he overshoots and ends up trapped and tangled, yet still exposed. “Where’s Ruby?”
“She had to work her shift,” Richard says. “But I think she enjoyed the evening.”
“What the hell are you doing in here?”
Without missing a beat, James says, “It was a busy night, though maybe not as busy as yours. Richard got in a fight with Captain Hook, and then we stalked Peter Pan for awhile until the Mad Hatter told us to go home.”
Miles frowns; he is so used to catching James’s drift that incomprehension is a new sensation for him. “You know, the nickname thing only works if the other person already knows who you’re talking about.”
“They aren’t nicknames,” Richard says. “That’s who they are.”
Miles, now firmly covered by an awkward arrangement sheets and blankets and pillows, scratches his head. “We’re back on the fairy tale thing?”
“Yeah, we’re back on it,” James drawls, and he pieces it together as the words come out. “Apparently, the island is Neverland… I don’t know how that works, but just roll with it. Which means Peter Pan is an old friend of Richard’s here, except he’s all grown up for some reason, even though Captain Hook—yeah, Captain Hook—is exactly the same age. Oh, and also, Peter Pan doesn’t remember Richard from Adam, which in my world probably means he’s not Peter Pan, but hell, what do I know? Anyway, this guy’s important to Richard, so we’ve gotta help that weird kid from yesterday make his mom believe in all this crap so everyone can remember who they are and go back home to their parallel dimension where fairy tales come from. Only problem is the kid ate a poisoned apple turnover last night that his other mom the Evil Queen made, and now he’s in a coma, Snow White-style. So we’re gonna go talk to a friend of his down the hall and see if we can get any info before we head over to the hospital.” He pauses. “You got all that?
Miles’s eyes flutter shut and his head leans back against the headboard. He lets out a long, beleaguered sigh, but when he opens his eyes again, the lucid, easy-going twinkle that epitomizes everything Richard likes so much about him—about both of them, really, and Frank, too—is back.
“So who's Belle? You know, the beauty. Bet she's hot.”
“No idea. Can't be hotter than Ruby, though. Nice work there, Enos."
Richard and James wait in the hall while Miles gets dressed. “He’s taking it well,” Richard observes.
James just smirks at him. “You knew exactly what we were walking into when you wanted to come here, didn’t you?”
“Not… exactly.”
“Right. Feel like old times, huh?” James punches him gently on the shoulder. He understands and is grateful, even thought he’d never admit it.
Miles joins them a second later and the three of them head down to the room Ruby indicated.
“For the record, I still think this is all a load of crap,” Miles says.
The door to Booth’s room is slightly ajar, but Richard knocks anyway, just to be polite. But when there’s no answer, Miles pushes it open.
Inside, the room is silent. Someone—something—is on the bed. A man-sized wooden doll. It’s somehow sadder and more terrifying than anything they’ve ever seen before. It also makes all this real in a way it wasn’t before.
“Okay then,” Miles says. “Fairy tales it is.”
James whistles. “Guess we found Pinocchio.”
“We need to help them break this curse,” Richard says. The others nod.
There’s nothing more to say after that, so they walk in silence to the hospital, picking up muffins and coffee on the way. If there's anything they've learned over the years, it's to eat when you can. James pumps Miles for details on the night. The town is incredibly quiet this early in the morning. It truly does look like an enchanted place with dangerous magic lurking under the surface.
A lot like the island.
The hospital has a few more signs of life, but not many. They ride in the elevator with a blond woman in a red leather jacket. She looks harried and overwhelmed.
“You must be Emma, the savior,” Richard says.
She snaps out of her daze and sees them for the first time. “Yeah,” she begins to respond, but she stops herself once her eyes lock onto James, who is staring at her with a hard-thinking, furrowed brow. “Wait a sec… didn’t I bust you once?”
James looks just as caught yet calm as Ruby did earlier. “Nice to see you again, too, sweetheart.”
Miles grunts, and he and Emma simultaneously shake their heads and say, “Unbelievable.”
“We’re here to help,” Richard says. “We need you to believe.”
She snorts. “Believing hasn’t done any good. My kid’s still in a coma.”
“Why don’t you try true love’s kiss? That always seems to work in the stories,” Miles suggests. His tone is almost offensively sarcastic, yet…
“You know, I actually haven’t tried that,” she says, sounding thoughtful.
They exit the elevator together, and follow Emma into Henry’s room. A quiet, sad crowd is gathered, including a nun, a beautiful woman with short dark hair, and Peter.
When Peter sees them, he rolls his eyes. “You again? Hey Emma, can I get a restraining order on this guy?”
There’s no point in responding. Not until the curse is broken.
The woman goes over to Henry’s bed and leans over him. “I love you, Henry,” she says, and follows her words up with a kiss.
It somehow isn’t a surprise when a shiver seems to go through the room. Richard doesn’t feel it—Miles, James and Emma don’t seem to, either—but he watches it start in Henry and go through everyone else in sight.
Henry wakes up.
There’s a brief bit of confusion in which the woman with short hair (who Richard now realizes must be the Evil Queen) tells Henry she loves him, too, to no response. The others, specifically the nun, put her to flight.
As soon as she leaves, Peter looks over and sees Richard for the first time. “Richard?”
Peter’s feet lead him over to where they’re standing. Miles moves out of the way so Richard can give Peter the hug he’s wanted to give for over a hundred years. For the first time, Peter actually accepts it.
“You’ve gotten shorter!” Peter says with the same insufferable bluntness that was always his trademark.
And that’s when the full horror this curse has wrought hits home for Richard, even though it hasn’t yet for Peter himself. It’s one thing to grant someone eternal childhood. It’s another entirely to deprive someone of adolescence and youth. Richard looks at the 30-odd year-old man in front of him and gently says, “No, Peter. You got taller.”
“That’s imposs—”
But then he looks down at himself. Then he impulsively grabs Richard and holds on tight. The little boy inside begs, “Richard, I don’t understand. I’m… old.”
Miles chuckles. “Shut up. You’re maybe only as old as I am. Seriously, it’s not that bad.”
Peter barely registers Miles’s words. “Why did I get older and you didn’t? It’s not supposed to work like that. It's not fair. We’re supposed to be the same together. Always.”
It’s the closest thing to an open admission of caring that Peter has ever made. And it’s now, so long after Richard had stopped ever hoping for it or thinking it possible. It should feel strange to hold this grown man and pat his head and smooth his worried brow, but it doesn’t. He’s an adult, but he’s still Richard’s little Peter. “It’ll be okay. We’ll figure it out. It’s just another adventure. A bigger one.”
The reunion is interrupted when Richard notices everyone staring out the window. “What’s going on?”
Henry points at a slowly growing purple cloud. It’s eerily similar to the green one that took Peter away from the island.
Even more distressing is its resemblance to a black cloud of smoke that’s also familiar to Miles, James, and Peter as well.
“What is it?” Emma asks.
“Something bad,” Henry says.
“Is it… is it him?” Peter asks.
“Who?” Henry asks.
James shakes his head, keeping his eyes on the smoke creeping towards them. “No. We killed that one. But I guess there could be another.”
Richard gets an idea. “There’s a well nearby, isn’t there? A special well?”
Emma nods. “Yeah. Yeah there is.”
“Someone has put something in that well, and what’s coming out now is bad. Very bad indeed.”
“Think it’s time to call Frank?” Miles says.
“Yeah. I think it’s time.”
Characters: Richard Alpert, James (Sawyer) Ford, Miles Straume, Jacob, Frank; Dr. Whale, Ruby, Henry, Emma, Jefferson; Miles/Ruby
Rating: PG13
Wordcount: 9,146
Spoilers: Takes place within the S1 finale of OUaT; spoilers for all of Lost
Summary: Dr. Whale may not know who he really is, but Richard Alpert does.
A/N: Written for
joyyjpg at vacationthon. About to be jossed so hard by season 2, I'm sure.Richard lets himself into the beach-view apartment he still calls home; the scene he walks into looks much as he expected (meaning, exactly as he left it).
James lounges on the La-z-boy, the evidence of his alcoholism displayed on the coffee table in front of him. Miles is sprawled on the floor with his feet propped up on said coffee table. His big toe is about half an inch away from enacting the beer bottle version of falling dominoes.
The James Bond rerun they’re gazing at is so loud that no one hears Richard come in. He thinks this might be the same Bond movie they were watching the day he slipped out. They might even be wearing the same clothes.
Frank, the only functioning human being in the place, sits in the dining alcove, reading the local paper while shoveling cereal into his mouth. He’s the only one who looks up. He raises his eyes heavenward and mouths silent thanks.
“Look alive, boys. We have company.”
Miles slowly props himself on his elbows and James tilts his head backwards to see.
“Back already, Old Man?” James asks, keeping one eye on the TV. “Did you remember the milk?”
Richard’s been gone for six months. Things have gotten even worse than he feared. “Let’s go.”
“Go where?” Miles asks, his tongue heavy in his mouth, as though he hasn’t spoken in days.
Anywhere you like, as long as it’s out of my hair,” Frank snits. To Richard he adds, “You couldn’t have sped up your little soul-searching trip a little? You see what I’ve been dealing with here.”
“It takes as long as it takes,” he replies. “Aren’t you coming, too?”
“I’ve got a job, unlike these yahoos. Take ‘em. It’ll be good for them. Just bring them back in one piece. Yourself, too. Your room’s still upstairs. And it’ll be here when you get back.”
“Thanks, Frank.”
“Gimme a ring when you need bailing out. ‘Cause I know you will.”
Frank winks. He knows his gruff facade wouldn’t fool a child. Richard wonders if he’ll ever stop pretending not to care.
“Where’re we going?” Miles asks, his mind finally awake.
“We’re taking that all-American roadtrip you promised me.” He thinks, but doesn’t say, We’re taking that all-American roadtrip you both desperately need.
That was three weeks ago.
Now, Richard sits in the backseat while James drives and Miles navigates. Salt, vinegar and oil from the bag of potato chips they devoured a few hours ago have made his fingers too sticky to touch anything. Horrible 80s power ballads he will never enjoy blast from the stereo. The stink of James’s most recent belch fills the car.
Richard can’t remember the last time he felt this happy. He hopes (thinks) the others feel the same.
It didn’t take long for Miles and James to jolt out of their lugubrious rut. Richard knew it wouldn’t; it had only taken him an afternoon—on the docks with Miles, on the plane with James. They’d helped him that day, put the rusty pieces of him back together and gotten the clock to start ticking somewhat merrily away again. As soon as he’d finished tying up loose ends, he knew it was his turn to return the favor.
Even if they weren’t his friends, Richard has spent too many years as a surrogate not-quite-father figure not to help them. It’s the only thing he’s good at, and if he’s learned anything from life, from the island, from Frank, it’s to find ways to keep doing what you’re good that.
And he has a feeling that one of the things Miles and Sawyer are good at is adventures. Even if even if they don’t think they want any more. Actually, especially if they don’t think they want any more. The only difficulty Richard faces is in finding one; he’s never had to look before.
“Where are we now?” he asks.
“Vermont,” Miles says.
Something about Vermont jabs at a dormant memory “Are we far from the border into Maine?”
“You wanna go to Maine?” James asks suspiciously. “Why?”
“There’s a special place there I heard about once.”
“Haven’t we had enough of special places?” Miles asks.
“Have we?”
And there it is: the awkward silence of confirmation. They know it, too.
No one says anything, but James takes an exit marked for Maine.
“You gonna direct me, or are we just using the Force on this one?”
Richard isn’t sure. He reaches between the front seats and gently pulls the map out from under Miles’s leg.
“You know, we have a GPS for that,” Miles says. “We can just put the name of whatever town you want in the computer.”
“It’s more of a coordinate.”
Miles and James exchange matching eyebrow raises. They don’t know where they’re going, but they have a sense of where this is going. However, it’s a promising sign that they stay on course.
And he doesn’t want to scare them, but given where he thinks they’re headed, Richard is pretty sure the GPS is going to cut out any minute now.
Jacob gives Richard a grand tour soon after his arrival. It takes them almost a week to cover everything. For a deserted and uncharted island, there are a surprising number of landmarks and points of interest—ruined statues, seething volcanoes, mystical wells, dark caves full of mysteriously carved symbols… even a whole other island.
The tour ends at the top of an ancient lighthouse with mirrors that reflect various scenes. Even though Jacob says this is the least of the wonders in store for him, Richard can’t stop staring at the mirrors; he’s never seen anything so blatantly magical. But Jacob’s words break his enchantment and turn it into terror. “Meet me here when I return next week.”
“Return? Return from where?”
Richard didn’t think it was possible to leave, had hoped Jacob never would.
As if reading his mind (or maybe he actually does), Jacob reassures him. “I’ll only be gone for a day. And I promise, you will be as well-protected in my absence as you are when I’m here.”
“How do you leave?” Richard asks, mostly as a way of masking his relief.
Jacob reaches under the giant compass and pulls out two, then three, then four scrolls, but he only unravels two of them. The first looks like a rendering of the island, with dots for all the special places they passed on their tour. The second is an impressively large and colorful map of what Jacob assures him is the entire earth (Richard has a hard time believing the two sides are meant to join together; the world can’t possibly be round, can it?).
“Where is the island in this one?” Richard asks.
“It’s hard to say. It’s constantly moving, you see.”
Actually, no, Richard doesn’t.
“There are anchors all around the world, all connected by the same source of water” Jacob continues, leaning over Richard to point at places on both maps. “This well on the island connects to this spot here, in Siberia. The one we saw yesterday connects to this spot here, in northern Africa. And the one we drank from today connects to a well here.”
Jacob’s finger crosses draws a line from a dot on the island map to a dot on the world one that Richard knows is somewhat north of New York, in New England. Where he was supposed to have gone with Isabella.
“I don’t understand,” he says.
“If you were to crawl through the wells, you would come out in these places. And if you know the right trick, you can use the same passages to come back. These places all over the world are like anchors for the island.” Jacob leans back, preparing for the impending metaphor; Richard’s quickly learned that there are few things Jacob likes more than setting up a metaphor. “Like a tent, the island sways with the wind, but it’ll never fly completely away, because there are ropes anchoring bits of it to stakes in the ground. There are also tentpoles in other worlds, since the island travels through those, too, of course.”
‘You see.’ ‘Of course.’ None of these things are as obvious to Richard as Jacob assumes.
“Other worlds?”
Jacob fingers the remaining two maps, considering unrolling them, but instead he puts them away and pats Richard on the back. “I think we’ve covered enough for today.”
Richard has never been here before but he turns out to be right; the GPS doesn’t help. Neither does the map, for that matter. There are no signs for a town until, suddenly, a quaint marker welcomes them to a place called Storybrooke.
“Is this it?” Miles asks, peering into the darkness.
“I think so.” Richard isn’t sure whether to be relieved or disappointed. Nothing here looks any different from the rest of the New England countryside they’ve been driving around all day.
Perhaps he misremembered the coordinates.
James heads in the direction of a tall clock tower about a mile away. It’s the only well-lit structure they can see. “Let’s hope they have a motel or something in this bush, ‘cause we’re probably gonna have to spend the night.”
As they near the center and the buildings crop closer together, a couple of pedestrians come into view. Miles calls out the window to a serious-faced little boy carrying a backpack.
“Hey, kid! Do you know where we can get some dinner around here? Maybe a drink?”
The boy opens his mouth to answer automatically, then thinks better of it.
“There’s only one place.” Richard can see the boy’s testing them, testing a hypothesis. “Everyone from Storybrooke knows that.”
“Well, obviously, we aren’t from here,” Miles says.
The boy’s eyes widen in unreasonable excitement. He bounds towards the car and looks around conspiratorially before sticking his head in through the rolled-down window.
“You wouldn’t have been able to get in here unless you’re special. So maybe you’re part of the story, too. Are you here to help?”
“There ain’t nothing special about us,” James lies. For a conman, he’s terrible at it.
Richard smiles at the boy, the encouraging one reserved for special children—he’s known many, can tell this is another one—and tries to keep him talking. Between the lack of GPS and maps, and now this, he can tell there’s something more here. “Why don’t you get strangers here? Why is this town not on the map?”
It’s obvious the boy has told this story many times, to anyone who will listen, and even to those who won’t, so he’s trained it to come out in a rush before no-nonsense grown-ups can stop him. “See, this isn’t a normal town. Nothing here is real. They’re from another place. Everyone here, everyone except for me, is under an evil curse. They’re not who they think they are.”
James and Miles exchange glances.
Ignoring them, Richard prods. “If they aren’t who they think they are, then who are they?”
“Characters from fairy tales. You know, like Snow White and Prince Charming and Cinderella. My mom is the only one who can break the spell, but she hasn’t yet. And now she wants to leave. I don’t know what to do. Maybe you can help. You know, help her believe.”
Miles and James look at one another. In unison, they shake their heads. “That’s some imagination you’ve got there, kid,” James says, “but we’ve got places to go. Thanks anyway.”
Miles rolls up his window and leaves the boy open-mouthed as he watches them pull away.
“That wasn’t kind to the boy,” Richard admonishes.
“Don’t tell me you believe this crap,” James says.
“I don’t know.” And Richard really doesn’t. Even he has to admit it’s a little silly, a schoolboy’s escapist make-believe…
Miles mutters to himself. “Fairy tales. Fucking fairy tales are real? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Richard leans back into his seat and folds his hands, remembering something that’s true even if this isn’t. “Just because a story is in a children’s book doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”
“I’m not sayin’ weird stuff isn’t out there,” James agrees. “We all know better than that. I’m just drawing the line at goddamn Disney on Ice.”
Miles turns on the radio. “Whatever. At least we’re five minutes away from dinner.”
Granny’s Diner looks like everything the name suggests, or at least that’s what James says. Richard’s traveled a lot by this point, but still, he wouldn’t know. There’s a bed and breakfast adjacent, and as soon as they’ve checked in with the surprised elderly proprietress, the head inside to eat.
It’s long past peak dinner time but it’s still crowded with the late-night drinking crowd. The only three seats together are at the bar. The waitress sidles over and leans in front of Miles so that he gets a full view of the inside of her flannel shirt. Her gaze is friendly and predatory at the same time. “You’re new in town.”
Miles glances at his friends before facing her again and going glassy-eyed. “I’m Miles,” he says after a gulp.
“Ruby,” she says, still speaking only to him. “Welcome to Granny’s. What can I get you?”
Richard is relieved. The pretty girls they’ve encountered so far have usually paid their attentions to James or to himself; Miles, the only one who actually wants attentions, needs this. James is pleased, too; he gives Richard a high five under the table.
When Ruby flashes him another sultry smile, the man next to Miles narrows his eyes, glaring at them all. He makes brief, annoyed eye contact with Richard before reaching over and gently touching Ruby on the elbow.
With this man, she’s eminently professional, which only makes things worse. “What do you need, doc?”
James looks up at the nickname, smiling slightly to himself, as if remembering something fond and bittersweet.
The man flares his nostrils but keeps things light, playful. “Just a drink. Whatever you want to mix for me.”
“I’ll get you a beer.” Turning to Miles as she makes a show of opening the bottle, she says with extra sweetness, “Have you guys figured out what you want yet?”
While Miles and Sawyer order, Richard is mesmerized by the way the man shrugs to himself. As if to mitigate his disappointment, he flips a coin between his index finger and thumb; it flies high into the air and he scowls at it in petulant frustration, but then his frown turns into a smug smile of self-satisfaction when he flips his hand over and catches the coin between his index and middle fingers. Mood adjusted, frustration gone. Just like that.
The place is all wrong, but Richard has watched this trick a thousand times, watched the same unblemishing of mood. He looks at this man, blond, blue-eyed and nonchalant… he’s a stranger, but somehow he feels as familiar as Richard’s own shadow.
Richard leans over Miles. “Do I know you?”
The man fixes his blue gaze first on Miles before transferring it over to Richard. He purses his lips. “Nope.”
Oddly though, the rudeness—the arrogance—of the denial only serves to make Richard even more certain.
It’s too bad the only person who (insistently) comes to mind is the one person this doctor—this man—couldn’t possibly be.
Richard sits with Jacob on their favorite log, eating a fish and watching the sun set, just down the beach from the statue remnant in which they both now live. They do this every day, and the only marker of time is the way the remnants of the statue sink, day after day, almost imperceptibly deeper into the reef.
He hears them before he sees them. Then, as though it were perfectly natural, there’s a crowd of miscreants all around them. It happens so quickly, so seamlessly, that Richard has to forcibly remind himself that it shouldn’t be happening at all. They stream out of the statue and are so involved in their chase that they don’t seem to notice they shouldn’t be here. Their trajectory takes them down the beach and into the surf.
The children are flying. Richard knows it’s impossible, but there’s no other word for it. They swoop down into the crashing waves, and for a second Richard thinks he was mistaken, thinks they’re swimming, which makes sense, as far as any of this makes sense. But then, no, they swoop back up again and the man—for the lone runner is a man, the lone, earthbound man in a group of flying children—grabs futilely into the sky. The boys laugh when his fingers just miss their ankles.
It takes a minute for the shock of it to catch up with Richard, but once it does, he stands up straight and turns to Jacob, who sits and watches this unfold as though it were a piece of theatre.
Jacob keeps his eyes on the strangers, but tugs at Richard’s sleeve, pulling him back onto the log. “Let it play out.”
The boys change direction in mid-air and begin flying back up the beach. The cartwheels they spin around the base of the statue distract Richard from the fact that the chase is no longer on. Only when the boys slow down to wonder where their pursuer is does Richard follow their line of vision, too.
The man remains standing in the surf, contorting his body in a way that doesn’t seem natural. He’s beside the head of the statue, the terrifying crocodile head with massive stone teeth and evil eyes that glare just over the tops of the waves. Richard will be glad when it finally sinks out of sight, in what will probably be years from now. The sight of it still terrifies him, even after months here; this strange man has not had the luxury of time to accustom himself to it, and is, quite understandably, terrified out of his wits.
His arm also appears to be stuck inside the crocodile’s horrible stony mouth.
“Jacob,” Richard says, twitching with conflicting instincts, one to run out and help, and the other to follow Jacob’s lead.
Jacob shakes his head and his eyes narrow. He always seems to see more than Richard does. “Hold.”
The children taunt and scream at the man, but Richard notices they keep their distance, revealing that they are much more afraid of him than he will ever be of them. Only slowly do they seem to notice their apparently new surroundings, and stop long enough to look around.
Jacob finally, finally, stands. He strolls towards the boys, smiling as though they are perfectly normal children, like the ones Richard used to play with back home. As though they belong here.
Jacob takes no notice of the man, who continues to thrash and curse at the ocean and the monster’s head that has him trapped. Richard can’t ignore it, and sneaks glances to check on his progress, even though he knows his job is to act as Jacob’s loyal assistant.
“Which of you is the leader of this troupe?” Jacob asks, his eyes falling on the smallest one, already knowing the answer.
“I am,” the little boy insolently answers. “My name is Peter Pan. Who are you?”
“My name is Jacob. And this is Richard.”
“Where are we?” the children ask in a chorus.
“How do you fly?” Richard asks. This is even better than the mirrors.
Peter scoffs at their idiocy. “Fairy dust, of course.”
This child and Jacob have some things in common, it seems.
Jacob is unmoved. “Would you like help going home?”
A terrified murmur sweeps through the group. Variations of “Home? No, anywhere but that,” echo down the beach.
“We’re never going home,” Peter states with finality.
“Everyone goes home sometime,” Jacob responds, looking off into the trees. “The only question is when. And when you get there, you’re not quite the same as you were when you left. That’s the beauty of life.”
“Not us. Not me. I never want to go home and I never want to change,” Peter states confidently. He looks down the beach, and Richard gets the feeling the man trapped in the waves might be part of what drives this sentiment.
Jacob looks closely at the boy. “All right. You don’t have to grow up, for as long as you want to remain just as you are.”
There’s another terrified murmur through the crowd of boys. “Peter!” the oldest one says.
“Really?” Peter asks, suspicious of Jacob, mostly because he’s an adult.
“Just ask Richard. I did the same for him. It's a common wish. So, anyone else?” Jacob asks, conversationally.
No one says a word.
“Good. Well, Richard and I are here whenever you want anything. Otherwise, the island is yours to enjoy. Make your home wherever you want.”
“We don’t need anyone. Come on! Off we go!”
The children fly off into the jungle.
“Is this… Was that…?” The word ‘wise’ keeps almost slipping past his lips, but he knows he shouldn’t even be questioning such a thing. Of course it is wise. Jacob is all-knowing… isn’t he?
Jacob shrugs, and flashes Richard an openly sardonic smile that’s all bright teeth and mischievously bitten lips. “Didn’t you say you and your wife had hoped for children? Well now you have some.”
Jacob is certainly not the devil. But he is no angel either, Richard is beginning to learn.
As he follows Jacob back into the statue, Richard looks over his shoulder. The man in the water continues to thrash and pull. He’s in serious pain, and if he doesn’t free himself from being caught in the statue’s teeth soon, the incoming tide will drown him. Richard feels heartless doing nothing, but…
It’s as if Jacob has eyes in the back of his head, because, without turning around, he says, “Leave him. He doesn’t belong to us.”
As if on cue, black smoke rushes out of the trees, down the beach, and engulfs the man. Richard quickly shuts the statue door shut.
“I’m flattered and everything, but the staring’s starting to creep me out, man.”
Richard apologizes, but he doesn’t stop staring. He just assumes on the old island leader mask and says, “You really do look familiar.”
And for a millisecond, there’s hesitation there, a spark. And then it’s gone again, replaced by an oddly aggressive fog behind the eyes. It sends a dark chill down Richard’s spine.
“Hey, look,” James says, pointing behind the bar in an effort to ease the awkwardness. “They have McCutcheon! Ya’ll weren’t around when Tiny Tim and the Button King drank me dry, but I’ve been wanting that bottle for… oh years by now.”
“I can get you some. It’ll be on the house,” Ruby says brightly.
Miles, who has recovered his game by this point, manages to brush his fingers against hers while she refills his water. “That’s expensive stuff. Sure you won’t get in trouble?”
“She’s my granny,” she explains with a mischievous grin. “It’ll be okay.”
After that, the man gives up and slumps into his stool. He looks tired, with bags under his eyes and a grey pallor to his cheek, as if too much work and too little fun have been weighing him down. Now even the girl he likes doesn't care for him (even though liking a girl doesn't make sense . Richard doesn’t know him—maybe—but this feels very wrong.
The bells over the door chime as someone new enters the diner and clomps up to stand between Miles and the doctor.
Richard’s armhairs rise in horrified unison, and he find that he can’t speak, can’t move.
He was right. The impossible answer was right.
Just to confirm things, the new man slams his arm down on the bar: his arm, but not his hand, since he doesn’t have one. It’s just a stump hidden in his sleeve.
The doctor at first tries to play it cool, but his eyes go wide with the fright of an often-cowed victim, and Richard doesn’t understand, because that isn’t how it is between them. That can’t be how it is. It’s as if the world has gone topsy-turvy.
Miles shoves the man slightly out of the personal space he is encroaching upon. “Hey, I’m sitting here.”
“And I’m standing here. What of it?”
Miles finally looks up and gets a proper look at the smooth-faced individual he’s dealing with. After all they’ve been through, Miles knows how to spot someone who shouldn’t be messed with. Without missing a beat, he backs down. “Nothing. Stand wherever you want. Be my guest.”
Miles stands up, and Ruby throws her apron down. “Shift’s over!” She and Miles disappear into a back storeroom. James tries to give Richard another high five, but is left hanging.
“You better head to the hospital, Whale,” the newcomer, this Hook without a hook, barks at the doctor. “The ambulance just left. It’s Henry, the mayor’s kid. He’s coming in.”
And then something so tragic happens, so depressingly out of character with the person Richard knows—but still can’t truly believe—this doctor has to be.
The doctor… Peter… shrivels into himself, utterly cowed, with his previous arrogance nowhere to be seen. Richard can almost smell the fear, how utterly beaten his Peter is around this old adversary.
“There’s another doctor on shift right now. More senior than me. I haven’t eaten since last night. I can finish and get there in five minutes.” He looks hungry and tired and overworked. It’s horrifying.
“I’ll finish the dinner for you. Why don’t you go now?”
Peter, all grown up and unhappy and wrong, slides off his stool. Forgetting himself, Richard grabs him by the elbow, half expecting him to take off into the air and escape him as he did so many times. “Peter?”
“Look, dude, you must have me mixed up with somebody else.”
“It’s me. Richard. Don’t you remember?”
Peter struggles. “I’ve never seen you before in my life.” He looks at James. “Can you tell your friend here to cool it?”
James kneads Richard’s shoulder. “You’re gonna make the doc late. Come on, buddy. I think you’ve got the wrong guy.”
Peter extricates himself from Richard’s grip and practically runs out of the diner.
Hook-without-a-hook smirks at the retreating figure. He turns to Richard. “Friend of yours?”
“Yes, actually.” And Richard does something equally uncharacteristic—though, actually, something he’s done in the past. He clocks Hook square in the nose. He goes down in a mess of swearing and vitriol.
It feels just as good as it ever did.
The ladies in the bar scream. Hook gets up and is about to go after Richard, but James drags him out of the diner. Together they run around the back and out of sight. Through the windows, Richard can just make out the townspeople holding Hook back and letting them make their getaway.
“We gotta get Miles and get out of here,” James mumbles to himself. He takes his phone out of his pocket.
“There’s no time. Leave him a message and tell him we’ll be at the hospital.”
“The hospital?”
In some ways, Jacob is right; Richard does welcome the company. Having people to take care of and who will look up to him the way he looks up to Jacob is a nice change. And yes, he does like children; he quickly assumes a paternalistic attitude towards this little brood.
However, it’s difficult to take care of children who tauntingly and violently refuse his help. Richard knows he’s invulnerable to all but the most minor of wounds, but the fact that these children want to harm him hurts in ways that their slingshots can’t. The older ones show promise; they seem scarred by some unknown trauma more than anything else, left so twistedly desperate for a nurturing father figure that they self-destructively reject the one who comes their way. However, with time (and if there’s anything he has, it’s time), Richard knows they will come to him.
Peter, though, is another story. He is the most scarred and the most frightened, which means he’s also the most closed-off, shut down and recalcitrant. It, sadly for everyone involved, also means he’s their leader. He’s the one who keeps the other boys from Richard’s side during his visits to the bizarre yet impressive complex they’ve somehow erected.
“Why are you living in the trees?” he asks one day when he comes to see them. Richard makes a point of checking on them once a week, both for some varied company, but also to ensure they have food and clothes.
“Because he can’t climb them,” one of the boys says, looking around him to make sure Peter is out of earshot and won’t catch him speaking to the adult. Richard thinks this one is named Edgar.
“Who?” Richard doesn’t understand; besides himself and Jacob, there’s only one other ‘person’ on the island, and in smoke form, he can most certainly climb trees.
“Our old master.”
Richard’s overheard enough of their whispered chatter to have gleaned that the boys were all orphan apprentices to the man who blundered onto the island with them. He knows they suffered cruel, unnatural treatment from the man. They were running away when they found themselves transported to the island. There was something about a fairy helping them and giving them dust to fly… Richard never understood that part.
“He drowned. I saw him stuck in the waves. The black smoke…”
“…The black smoke saved him,” maybe-Edgar says. “He lost his hand, but he has a hook now. He lives on the pirate ship.”
Richard knows it’s a slave ship, but he can see why the boys think it’s a pirate ship.
“I think it’s worse than a hand,” another frightened boy interjects.
“He’s after us.”
“He’s wants Peter,” yet another boy corrects.
“Of course everyone wants me, because I’m the cleverest.” Peter swoops down from the trees. Richard has figured out that Peter’s cajoled, wheedled, charmed, and bullied the others into giving him their remaining fairy dust, and thus, he’s the only one who still flies. But somehow, it doesn’t seem to work quite the same now, after a few weeks on the island. Richard wonders if perhaps it only works properly in their world. Peter jolts and jerks through the air more clumsily with each of Richard’s visits, but he’s too proud to acknowledge it. As a reflex, he reaches out for the child’s arm, only to receive a kick in the face for his trouble.
“Get away from me, old man. We have no use for you here.”
“Peter,” one of the boys says, glancing apologetically at Richard, “he brought us food.”
“So did I. Which means we don’t need his. Aren’t I such a good provider?” Peter holds up a couple of fish, barely enough to feed two of the boys, but his grin would make one think he’d caught a whale.
“I only want to help you, Peter.”
“We don’t need any nasty old grown-ups spoiling our fun.”
The other boys crowd around, looking back and forth between Peter and Richard, weighing their loyalties. Richard is where their heads tell them to go, but Peter’s charisma is like a spell that’s hard to break.
“As you please,” Richard says, nominally to Peter, but mostly to all of them, “but if you ever have need of me, you’ll find me by the statue. With Jacob.”
“Faugh,” Peter says.
But as Richard leaves, one of the boys drops from a branch and whispers, “Thank you, Mr. Alpert.”
Later that evening, as Richard gets ready for yet another night in the statue with Jacob, he tugs at his courage enough to ask, “Did you know? Did you know the black smoke would save him?”
“I suspected.”
“But why? They are children. Defenseless. And he is persecuting them.”
“It’s the way of life here. I’m trying something new with them.” It sounds so cold, and gets worse. “And they’re hardly defenseless. Like you, I made it so they can’t be killed by him. I see by the bruise on your chin that you were caught in their net again.”
Richard ignores the teasing. He’s quivering with… he doesn’t know what, but something he has never had cause to feel about Jacob. “Is this what I am to be from now on? An observer to an endless, stagnant war?”
“Essentially. That’s all this has ever been.”
“It’s horrible.” The words slip out before Richard can catch them, before he remembers to remain respectful.
But Jacob doesn’t seem to mind. He actually seems pleased at Richard’s rudeness. “Atta-boy,” he says.
Jacob sometimes uses the oddest expressions. They never sound quite right, quite now.
“Hold on a sec,” James says, panting as he tries to keep up with Richard, who’s practically running down the street in the direction of the hospital. “You’re tellin’ me the island is freaking Neverland? You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
“A tropical island that can only be reached by following an extremely specific and time-sensitive bearing? A pirate ship that never seems to sail anywhere? Residents who never age. JM Barrie lived on the island for awhile. All the other details were just him trying to fictionalize the story. But you’re familiar with all the elements. And I’m telling you, that man was Hook, and the other man was Peter.”
“But that guy’s all grown up. Did he start aging once he left? Is that it?”
"He left almost a hundred years ago. So no, that is not it. It also does not explain why he has aged but Hook looks exactly the same as when I last saw him. And it does not explain why neither of them recognize me. Something is terribly wrong.”
They arrive at the hospital, but once there, Richard has no idea how to proceed. Only now does he realize he can't make any more headway here than he did in the diner. Peter doesn’t recognize him; neither does Hook.
James voices the question they’re both thinking. “What are you going to do? If they don’t know they’re fairy tale characters, it’s not like you’re going to make them remember.”
Still, Richard asks to see Dr. Whale. A nurse sends them upstairs where they see the doctor leaning over the boy they talked to earlier in the evening.
“Great,” James sighs. “And now we’re down the only person who knows what’s going on. How are we supposed to convince Peter Peter he’s a character from a book?”
Another doctor passing by stops and leans in closer.
“I couldn’t help but overhear,” the stranger says. “You aren’t from around here, are you?”
Richard thinks he’s losing his mind. Has that entire world passed through his life?
“Did you ever find Valyria?” he asks.
The man stares at him and then grins, sort of crazily, with the same dimples and crazy teeth Richard distantly remembers. “You! Yes, I did. You were right. I had taken a wrong turn.”
James looks at both of them like they’re crazy. “The hell?”
“Ships that pass,” the man sighs.
“I never did get your name,” Richard says.
“Jefferson.”
“Richard.”
“So who are you supposed to be?” James asks. “Cat in the hat?”
"Not too far off..." Jefferson sighs, and then pulls down his shirt to reveal a nasty scar that goes all around his neck. “It was off with my head. But then back on again, obviously.”
James goggles. “You’re joking.”
“I was still in Wonderland when the curse went into effect. The curse reached into the multiverse and captured all of our world’s living inhabitants. One minute I was there, and the next I'd been dragged here, kicking and screaming.”
Finally, when he least expected it, an explanation for something that happened so long ago. “I saw the same thing happen to someone else.” Richard nods and points through the glass at Dr. Whale. “To him. How do we stop it? How do we get them back?”
Jefferson shakes his head. “You don’t do anything. You can’t. Only the savior can. In the meantime, I’m working on something else.” He looks at a door Richard hadn’t noticed before.
“So,” he guesses, “you aren’t a doctor.”
“No.”
“Do you need help?” James asks.
“No, I’ve got it. You two should get some sleep. I'll probably meet you back here in the morning. Tomorrow’s going to be a big day. I can feel it.”
As the years go by, Richard wins and Peter loses… in his mind. You can only lose when you think there’s a contest; there isn’t one for Richard, but Peter refuses to believe him.
Within a few years, the boys start growing up and become less interested in taking orders from a cocky eight-year-old. They also get sick of fending off Hook on their own, whose sole occupation is concocting nefarious schemes to hurt them, destroy their food supply, ruin their living quarters… anything he can do. Peter leads the boys in impressively audacious counter-attacks... He doesn’t have anything else to do either.
So the boys leave, one by one, to seek Richard and Jacob out by the statue. It’s strange; Richard had thought his first charges would be shipwrecked castaways like himself. He never expected to populate the island with people who'd literally popped out of nowhere. But it works better this way; since they’ve known Richard since boyhood, they respect him more, and are easier to lead and protect. He and Peter are living examples of the kinds of miracles Jacob can create, so there isn’t any difficulty in getting them to pledge allegiance.
As they grow older, and come into middle age, and meet with a boat of women who actually do shipwreck on the island, Richard notices that they slowly forget their old lives. When Richard tries to ask them about the world they came from, they have trouble remembering. It’s disappointing for Richard (and for Peter, who shrugs them off and pretends he never cared).
This all means Peter is left increasingly on his own, compensating for his loneliness with even more insouciance. Even worse, with no one else to fight the battles with him, the skirmishes between him and Hook intensify. It’s a nagging question in his mind why Jacob allowed the black smoke to help this monster, and it chafes to see this endearing little boy—whom Richard has come to love in spite of Peter’s best efforts to stop him—being beaten and attacked and mistreated by a psychopath.
More and more often, it’s Richard’s job to step in. He and Hook don’t really speak; they just fight. It’s immortal against immortal… and even against immortal again, since it takes years for stubborn, immature Peter to realize Richard’s on his side.
He carries him to the lagoon one day, after a horrible incident in which Peter had spent a week trapped without food or water in a tent Hook had strung up to trap him in. Richard had been on his way to visit the boy (even though he has a campful of people looking to him for leadership, Richard’s visits have become more frequent these days, as Hook’s aggression has increased). It’s one thing not to be able to die; it’s another to feel the protracted pain of dying without that finality, and that’s what Hook has figured out. It’s cruel and it’s horrible, but Jacob insists the “rules” dictate that he only help Peter after the fact.
This time is the worst, with Peter’s skin bruised and cut and his eyes hollowed out by sleeplessness, tears and fear. It’s more scarring than whatever happened back in his world to make him ask Jacob for the gift.
Peter sits by the side of the stream for so long that Richard thinks he might drink the island dry. He then gobbles down the fruit Richard puts in front of him.
“Peter, I’m so sorry. How can I help—”
“Look,” he says, changing the subject. “I taught myself a trick.”
Peter pulls out a coin from his sock and flips it high into the air. As he catches is, his expression transforms from the depression of entrapment and back to the merry carefree state of eternal youth.
Richard wishes he could do that, just break his mood like that. He supposes that is the difference between being eternally thirty-five and being eternally eight.
“Isn’t that clever of me?”
There isn’t much he can do with someone who refuses more than anyone else to grow up and become serious. All Richard can do is look out for him. “Very. It’s very clever.”
Peter meets Richard’s gaze then, and holds it, giving him the first real, serious, mature smile he’s ever given him. And then the unthinkable happens. “Thank you,” he whispers.
Another first.
“Not all grown-ups want to hurt you. I promise. I will never hurt you. And as long as I am able, I will always come save you.”
“Don’t say that. Grown-ups are always making promises they never keep. Grown-ups lie.”
And there’s nothing Richard can say to that. But something changes that afternoon. Peter will continue to pretend he doesn’t care, that nothing matters except fun. He’ll keep living in his lonely treehouse, with no Lost Boys beside him, but he finally acknowledges Richard. He even comes to meet him at the lighthouse some times. He likes to look at the pictures in the mirrors.
One day, Richard heads back to the statue after a pleasant visit with his littlest and most favorite charge, but Jacob isn’t there.
That doesn’t mean the room is empty, though.
A man steps out from behind Jacob’s tapestry-in-progress, casually, as though stepping out of thin air is a perfectly normal thing to do. He’s dressed for winter, in thick scarves and oddly colored pants. He has scraggly long hair and even scragglier teeth, but he grins wide in a way that brightens his face.
Richard’s been here for enough years now that he can keep a straight face through even the most bizarre occurrences with deadly calm. “Can I help you?” he asks.
“I’m looking for a dragon tamer,” the newcomer says hurriedly, about to take off his coat and make himself at home. “If I remember correctly, there’s an old man just a couple of miles from here.”
There’s a difference between keeping calm and knowing how to respond. And dragon tamers… that’s almost too much, even for him.
The man looks the room for the first time, takes in Richard’s blank expression, and nods to himself. “This… isn’t Valyria.”
“I think you took a wrong turn.”
“Oh. I’ll be on my way then. Nice to meet you.” And he disappears again.
Once Richard comes out of his stupor, he peers behind the tapestry. Nothing.
No one should have to get used to this.
And then, just like that, Richard doesn’t have to anymore.
He goes to meet Peter for a competitive fishing expedition when a horrible stench and a greenish smoke rush out of a cave he’d never noticed before. A soft yellow light is replaced by a greenish smoke. Peter, sitting beside him, begins screaming, but Richard has no idea what might be wrong. He holds on, but it feels as though Peter is being taken somewhere, as if thin air is taking him away.
And then with a poof, his arms are empty and the boy is gone.
Richard goes to find Hook the next day, thinking the whole thing is a new evil plot, but he’s gone, too.
Jacob doesn't like it. Jacob is furious and scared and confused, emotions Richard hasn't seen since his first day on the island. He can tell something very bad has happened, but Jacob first goes into a funk, and then overcompensates by being secretive. He never explains. Richard has a feeling this might be the one thing he can't explain, the one time something happened that was not in his grand plan.
He worries about Peter. He worries for a century. The guilt of not having saved him never goes away.
The next morning, Richard stops by James’s room before going to wake Miles.
“I hope he’s okay.”
James chuckles. “I’m pretty sure he’s better than okay.”
Just to prove his point, one of the doors opens and Ruby stumbles out of a bedroom, looking dazed but satiated, her long hair a tangle of bedhead and her makeup rubbed off. Richard thinks she looks much more beautiful like this than she did last night.
She freezes for a second, but she giggles, betraying herself as the kind of reasonable person who knows when you’re caught, you might as well make the best of it.
“Hey,” she whispers, with almost no trace of embarrassment.
“He still in there?” James asks, equally relaxed.
“Yeah, but you might want to give him a while. He’s kind of…”
“Naked?” James asks.
She bites her lip. “And asleep.”
Richard gets a new idea. “Do you know Henry? He’s a little boy who—”
“Yeah, of course. Emma’s kid. What about him?”
“Does he have any close friends? Anyone he confides in, has been working on a project with?”
Ruby thinks. “He and Mr. Booth have been meeting at the diner this week with walkie-talkies. It’s pretty cute.”
“Where is this Mr. Booth now?”
Ruby points at the farthest door down the hall. “He’s a stranger here, too. He only came to town a few weeks ago. But I have to get cleaned up and down to work. See you for breakfast?”
“Maybe,” Richard says, and Ruby nods and slinks down the stairs.
“Let’s get Miles first,” James says. “We can give him a hard time first and then all go talk to this Booth guy together.”
When they barge into Miles’s room, the floor is covered in clothes and shoes and open luggage (Miles must have been digging frantically through his bag for a condom). The man himself is sprawled naked on top of the sheets.
Richard’s seen worse. Specifically, he’s seen worse from Miles.
The click of James’s camera phone causes Miles to spasm into wakefulness. He looks down at his naked body and then scrambles to pull the sheets over himself, but the fact that he’s still mostly asleep means he overshoots and ends up trapped and tangled, yet still exposed. “Where’s Ruby?”
“She had to work her shift,” Richard says. “But I think she enjoyed the evening.”
“What the hell are you doing in here?”
Without missing a beat, James says, “It was a busy night, though maybe not as busy as yours. Richard got in a fight with Captain Hook, and then we stalked Peter Pan for awhile until the Mad Hatter told us to go home.”
Miles frowns; he is so used to catching James’s drift that incomprehension is a new sensation for him. “You know, the nickname thing only works if the other person already knows who you’re talking about.”
“They aren’t nicknames,” Richard says. “That’s who they are.”
Miles, now firmly covered by an awkward arrangement sheets and blankets and pillows, scratches his head. “We’re back on the fairy tale thing?”
“Yeah, we’re back on it,” James drawls, and he pieces it together as the words come out. “Apparently, the island is Neverland… I don’t know how that works, but just roll with it. Which means Peter Pan is an old friend of Richard’s here, except he’s all grown up for some reason, even though Captain Hook—yeah, Captain Hook—is exactly the same age. Oh, and also, Peter Pan doesn’t remember Richard from Adam, which in my world probably means he’s not Peter Pan, but hell, what do I know? Anyway, this guy’s important to Richard, so we’ve gotta help that weird kid from yesterday make his mom believe in all this crap so everyone can remember who they are and go back home to their parallel dimension where fairy tales come from. Only problem is the kid ate a poisoned apple turnover last night that his other mom the Evil Queen made, and now he’s in a coma, Snow White-style. So we’re gonna go talk to a friend of his down the hall and see if we can get any info before we head over to the hospital.” He pauses. “You got all that?
Miles’s eyes flutter shut and his head leans back against the headboard. He lets out a long, beleaguered sigh, but when he opens his eyes again, the lucid, easy-going twinkle that epitomizes everything Richard likes so much about him—about both of them, really, and Frank, too—is back.
“So who's Belle? You know, the beauty. Bet she's hot.”
“No idea. Can't be hotter than Ruby, though. Nice work there, Enos."
Richard and James wait in the hall while Miles gets dressed. “He’s taking it well,” Richard observes.
James just smirks at him. “You knew exactly what we were walking into when you wanted to come here, didn’t you?”
“Not… exactly.”
“Right. Feel like old times, huh?” James punches him gently on the shoulder. He understands and is grateful, even thought he’d never admit it.
Miles joins them a second later and the three of them head down to the room Ruby indicated.
“For the record, I still think this is all a load of crap,” Miles says.
The door to Booth’s room is slightly ajar, but Richard knocks anyway, just to be polite. But when there’s no answer, Miles pushes it open.
Inside, the room is silent. Someone—something—is on the bed. A man-sized wooden doll. It’s somehow sadder and more terrifying than anything they’ve ever seen before. It also makes all this real in a way it wasn’t before.
“Okay then,” Miles says. “Fairy tales it is.”
James whistles. “Guess we found Pinocchio.”
“We need to help them break this curse,” Richard says. The others nod.
There’s nothing more to say after that, so they walk in silence to the hospital, picking up muffins and coffee on the way. If there's anything they've learned over the years, it's to eat when you can. James pumps Miles for details on the night. The town is incredibly quiet this early in the morning. It truly does look like an enchanted place with dangerous magic lurking under the surface.
A lot like the island.
The hospital has a few more signs of life, but not many. They ride in the elevator with a blond woman in a red leather jacket. She looks harried and overwhelmed.
“You must be Emma, the savior,” Richard says.
She snaps out of her daze and sees them for the first time. “Yeah,” she begins to respond, but she stops herself once her eyes lock onto James, who is staring at her with a hard-thinking, furrowed brow. “Wait a sec… didn’t I bust you once?”
James looks just as caught yet calm as Ruby did earlier. “Nice to see you again, too, sweetheart.”
Miles grunts, and he and Emma simultaneously shake their heads and say, “Unbelievable.”
“We’re here to help,” Richard says. “We need you to believe.”
She snorts. “Believing hasn’t done any good. My kid’s still in a coma.”
“Why don’t you try true love’s kiss? That always seems to work in the stories,” Miles suggests. His tone is almost offensively sarcastic, yet…
“You know, I actually haven’t tried that,” she says, sounding thoughtful.
They exit the elevator together, and follow Emma into Henry’s room. A quiet, sad crowd is gathered, including a nun, a beautiful woman with short dark hair, and Peter.
When Peter sees them, he rolls his eyes. “You again? Hey Emma, can I get a restraining order on this guy?”
There’s no point in responding. Not until the curse is broken.
The woman goes over to Henry’s bed and leans over him. “I love you, Henry,” she says, and follows her words up with a kiss.
It somehow isn’t a surprise when a shiver seems to go through the room. Richard doesn’t feel it—Miles, James and Emma don’t seem to, either—but he watches it start in Henry and go through everyone else in sight.
Henry wakes up.
There’s a brief bit of confusion in which the woman with short hair (who Richard now realizes must be the Evil Queen) tells Henry she loves him, too, to no response. The others, specifically the nun, put her to flight.
As soon as she leaves, Peter looks over and sees Richard for the first time. “Richard?”
Peter’s feet lead him over to where they’re standing. Miles moves out of the way so Richard can give Peter the hug he’s wanted to give for over a hundred years. For the first time, Peter actually accepts it.
“You’ve gotten shorter!” Peter says with the same insufferable bluntness that was always his trademark.
And that’s when the full horror this curse has wrought hits home for Richard, even though it hasn’t yet for Peter himself. It’s one thing to grant someone eternal childhood. It’s another entirely to deprive someone of adolescence and youth. Richard looks at the 30-odd year-old man in front of him and gently says, “No, Peter. You got taller.”
“That’s imposs—”
But then he looks down at himself. Then he impulsively grabs Richard and holds on tight. The little boy inside begs, “Richard, I don’t understand. I’m… old.”
Miles chuckles. “Shut up. You’re maybe only as old as I am. Seriously, it’s not that bad.”
Peter barely registers Miles’s words. “Why did I get older and you didn’t? It’s not supposed to work like that. It's not fair. We’re supposed to be the same together. Always.”
It’s the closest thing to an open admission of caring that Peter has ever made. And it’s now, so long after Richard had stopped ever hoping for it or thinking it possible. It should feel strange to hold this grown man and pat his head and smooth his worried brow, but it doesn’t. He’s an adult, but he’s still Richard’s little Peter. “It’ll be okay. We’ll figure it out. It’s just another adventure. A bigger one.”
The reunion is interrupted when Richard notices everyone staring out the window. “What’s going on?”
Henry points at a slowly growing purple cloud. It’s eerily similar to the green one that took Peter away from the island.
Even more distressing is its resemblance to a black cloud of smoke that’s also familiar to Miles, James, and Peter as well.
“What is it?” Emma asks.
“Something bad,” Henry says.
“Is it… is it him?” Peter asks.
“Who?” Henry asks.
James shakes his head, keeping his eyes on the smoke creeping towards them. “No. We killed that one. But I guess there could be another.”
Richard gets an idea. “There’s a well nearby, isn’t there? A special well?”
Emma nods. “Yeah. Yeah there is.”
“Someone has put something in that well, and what’s coming out now is bad. Very bad indeed.”
“Think it’s time to call Frank?” Miles says.
“Yeah. I think it’s time.”