When a Return Happened

"Where is Johnny?" I ask Harry, walking up to him.

Harry's ears go red. Never a good sign with him. "He's in lock up."

I roll my eyes. Harry is great and all, but he doesn't like to be the barer of bad news. "Alex?"

"Johnny is in our version of jail. He's going to be there for the next week or so. He got lucky, he could be dead right now. News like you need to learn to control your tempers. Don't bite the hand that feeds you."

I can always count on Alex to be honest, no matter how brutal his words are.

"So I should just whine about the hand behind its back and not try to change anything?" I ask. "I'll take a page from your book and be a coward next time."

"You are a plunter," Alex sighs, "and you are going to get yourself killed."

With that he turns around and walks away. That kid is the biggest ass on this island, even more so than Keaton. One day, he'll learn.

"He's not stupid you know." Harry tells me.

"There's a difference in knowing how to pick your battles and avoiding them all like he does." I respond.

Harry rolls his eyes. "What's up with you?"

I shake my head. "I'm deciding where to go from here."

"What do you mean?" He asks.

I'm about to explain myself when I hear shouting over towards an edge of the clearing, behind where Harry stands. Someone is shouting for help over there, and boys begin to rush over, shoving by me and Harry to get through.

Harry grabs my wrists and disappears, darting through the crowd with me in tow. The boy is small and sneaky; he slithers through until we are finally through the crowd. Before us are three boys. They are caked and coated in dirt from moving around the forest.

More Earth than human.

One of the boys, the Asian one, holds another in his arms, trying to keep his body off the ground. The third boy has short blonde hair, and is collapsed on the ground, blood almost pooling around him.

The Asian boy begins to sway until Harry and a few other boys rush forward, helping hold him up. The boy begins to cry, shouting something I can't understand. Maybe it's because the language is foreign to me, or maybe his shrieks are simply blurring together.

The boy in his hands slips down out of his grip and I reach forward to catch him. I miss. He rolls on to the ground, landing on his face. I kneel over and roll the boy over, he is cold to the touch. Colder than ice, colder than Pan's soul. Colder than the living.

I immediately yank him into my arms. Which is not something I thought I would do when faced with a dying boy. I expected to go into shock, but all I want to do is save him.

He's very heavy. Robert grabs him and helps me to remove him from the circle of boys. I head towards the med tent but Robert shakes his head and pulls us towards the other direction.

I follow Robert out into the forest. We twist and turn, walking in silence for nearly thirty minutes, until we find a ladder leading up inside a rock. Pan's house. Pan suddenly is in front of us, trying to help the boy.

Still don't like how he moves about without using his feet.

"It's Nick." Robert says. "We had to get his body out of the way, was bothering Wilbur quite a bit. Didn't want Jared to see him."

He's dead. I'm carrying a dead boy. I can't figure out if it's more unsettling that there is a dead boy in my arms, or that it barely bothers me that he's dead.

"That's not possible." Pan says. His face is slightly paler than normal. Shock. Or maybe he's actually upset.

"I would've noticed his death. He can't be dead, I would've noticed it. Are the others alive?"

"Wilbur's alive, I'm not sure about Caleb though. I can do an autopsy on Nick to find out how he, died," Robert suggests. "It'll only make Jared upset if he has to do it, you know he gets when around death. Ever since that incident back in-"

"Let go Charlie," Pan instructs. He reaches to where my arms are and holds Nick from where I am.

My hands leave Nick's body, as the three boys suddenly disappear. I take a step back, falling down on to the ground. I've never seen him actually disappear before, I've only ever seen him no longer near me. It was much more surprising than I had expected it to be.

Pan is in front of me again and I quickly snap to my feet. My hands find my hat, my hair still all tucked inside. My name should be changed from Charlie to Lucky.

"You certainly are less squeamish than a few days ago." He musters out. "You cut a boys knuckles a while ago and ran to the coast."

"I can handle violence, I just don't like to be violent myself." I retort. "You know, normal healthy people tend to be uncomfortable with hurting people."

"Well normally healthy people aren't on my island are they?" He counters. His behaviour is off. He's completely off kilter. He seems fake.

I roll my eyes and turn around, heading back to camp.

"I'm surprised you didn't vomit at the sight of Nick's corpse." He swallows.

"I'm surprised you didn't vomit either." I spit.

"Maybe I should bump you up to medic." He sidetracks. "I only need one person on clothing duty anyway."

"It's a job that never ends." I tell him. "Devin still working on it and it's been what, three days now?"

"I could put you back in the hunt." He offers.

"Over my dead body." I laugh.

He grabs my arm and yanks me backwards towards him, only about 20 feet away from the clearing.

"Why are you so intent on avoiding the Hunt? A while ago you were mad at being kicked out and now you refuse to join."

"I'm not going to become violent and cruel. I'd rather be on clothing duty than behave like a barbarian. Besides, I'm going to be out of here in 47 days anyway, don't think I forgot the bet. When I return to civilisation, I would still like to be civilised. You know what civilised means, right?"

He scoffs. "You think you'll actually win the game?"

"I know I will." I tell him. "You'll never figure out my deepest secret."

"Don't be so sure of that." He says it menacingly, but lets me go.

I roll my eyes and walk back to the camp. He doesn't follow me.

All of the boys are sitting around the long table, staring at each other. They refuse to move or get back to their activities. They seem shaken up by the whole ordeal.

I hear screaming coming from inside the medic tent so I run over. I try to get in but to many boys are already inside. I reach forward and grab hold of a boy by their arm. I pull him out of the tent before he turns around and stares at me.

Marcus' face is one that I haven't seen since I attacked him during the training session. He shrugs out of my grip, and almost chuckles before walking off. That kid is a Pan in the making; all devil inside. I'm begin to think he's even more like Pan then Pan is.

I take his spot in the tent, shoving people aside until I'm up next to Jared. The med tent is built to have at most six people in it at a time, but there currently seem to be over ten bodies all jammed together in here.

Harry, James, and another boy hold the Asian boy. Wailing and thrashing in their arms, he's calling out for someone. Jared is struggling to help the blonde boy, who is lying down on his front, his lanky arms off the table. Jared has no room to do anything.

"Get out." I yell to the half dozen boys just observing.

They don't seem to answer me.

"Out!" Another voice shouts.

I turn to see Alex, beginning to shove boys out of the tent. They slowly begin to file out after he commands it, still turning around to stare at the boy who can't awake and the other who can't seem to calm down.

Alex goes up to the Asian boy, grabbing him out of the other boys' grips and pinning him to the ground. He rolls him onto his front as he kicks and screams. I jump down and sit on the boys legs, which they wriggle about beneath me but I manage to keep him steady.

"Where is Robert?" James asks.

"Robert is with the body." I grunt. "He says he's going to do an autopsy."

"An autopsy?" Jared asks. "Who's body?"

"Nick's?" I yell over top of the Asian boy's screams.

"Nicholas is dead?" Alex asks.

The boy continues to cry beneath us. A shred of me feels bad for him; the rest just wishes he would just shut up already.

Jared comes over with some sort of white powder in his hands. James bends over and helps hold the squirming boys head still, and his mouth open. Jared drops the powder down into his mouth and shuts it.

The boy begins to move more violently and wildly than ever before. He bucks me off his legs and begins clawing at Jared, who is unmoving. Alex shoves Harry off of the boy and grabs the boy's hands, pining them on to the ground with full force. I grab the boy's ankles, and with Harry's help I keep him on the ground in his lower half. The boy's body begins to shake until he goes limp.

"Did you just make Wilbur have a seizure?" James demands.

"Never! I just gave him a sort of sedative." Jared clarifies. "Wilbur will be fine, don't worry about him."

"What about the one on the table?" I ask.

"I can't work on Caleb with you all in here." Jared shoos us out of the room. "James, Alex, you two are on call for when Wilbur wakes up. For the mean time let me be alone with them. Get Robert in here as soon as you can."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Alright, so I know it's not Friday, and this is short, but my computer shut down last night so I posted it as soon as I could. And, I figured since it was eventful I'd rather post this than filler.

Anyway, let me know if you liked if, and if you hated it, I'd still love your feedback.

As always, remember to breathe, and I'll see you Monday.