Present Day:

Winter thought the doors would slide open after Slightly gave both a retinal scan and a hand scan, but they didn’t. They heard a voice coming from speakers around the compound. “Answer to question 4?” they heard.

Slightly smiled and hushed out, “Milky Way.” Even though it was a whisper, Peter and Winter still heard. Peter rolled his eyes at the comment as Slightly winked at him.

“You have to memorize questions?” Winter asked.

“Every week we submit new questions and have to memorize them,” Slightly nodded. “That way there’s no way anyone can penetrate our base. Even if you are somehow able to get our scans, an enemy won’t be able to get those. And if a Lost Boy is captured, all they have to do is sustain whatever torture they’re receiving for a week before their answers become obsolete.”

Winter couldn’t believe all of the tactics needed. The fact that they had them cast a darker shadow on Neverland that Winter hadn’t seen before. You don’t set rules unless you need a reason for these rules, which meant someone likely was kidnapped and tortured for their password.

Winter, Peter, and Slightly entered the facility and Winter’s face lit up. The whole area had a sleek and rustic feel to it. Their headquarters’ walls were made of silver metal with rust growing on every panel. Robots of all different shapes and sizes roamed the halls.

“How many robots do you have?” Winter asked.

“Eh I don’t know. Those are just maintenance droids. They clean the halls, work in the kitchen, make our beds. Normal sort of things really.”

“You can’t even make your own beds?”

“Not a lot of time to make beds when you’re saving the galaxy, love.” They continued down the hallways. Winter was very impressed with their headquarters.

“This is amazing! The way you boys act I thought it would be terrible and homemade. Like really rough, but this is mad,” Winter exclaimed as she gazed at the ultra-high ceilings. Slightly and Peter both gave her a skeptical look.

“Oh, how nice it would be to be this naïve again,” Slightly said.

“Hey!” Winter said insulted.

“This is rough Winter, very rough,” Peter said gesturing to Slightly. “You should see the Red Men’s headquarters.” Slightly nodded in agreement. “Now theirs’s is…” Peter stopped talking when he noticed something to his right. Winter looked over to see a man with messy chopped hair that he clearly hadn’t cut in a while. His beard was grizzled and had bald patches. It appeared that he had burn scars where the patches laid. A few of his fingers were missing and instead had robotic ones attached.

“I’m so sorry,” Peter was barely able to speak as he approached the man and gave him a gigantic hug. Winter squinted, trying to see a nametag or something that gave her some sort of correlation between the two. “Nibs, I’m so sorry I didn’t come earlier. I wish I was there,” Peter said still holding on tightly. This struck a different chord with Winter. She had yet to see loss in Neverland. For some reason, she regarded Neverland in a different light than Earth, as if there wasn’t loss here. She was too swept up in the wonder and mystery of the galaxy she forgot Peter had told her everyone here only cares about survival.

As she saw Peter and Nibs hug, she a vision of her mother crept into her mind. Every time she was in the hospital she would always greet and say good bye to her mother in the same way. Tight, but soft. Warm and gentle. In each hug she gave, she tried to think of all the ways it felt. Her mother’s touch, scent, the way her hair felt on her arm, everything. Each hug goodbye she acted as if it would be the last. Until one day it was. Then she remembered hugging her father after it all happened. How broken and lost both of them were. She felt a tear welling up in her eyes and quickly brought herself back to the present. Casually wiping out the tear, she refocused. She wasn’t going to allow herself to cry, especially when it was a memory of her father that caused it.

Nibs finally managed a smile, possibly the first one he had in weeks. “How ya doing, Peter? Still conquering the galaxy like always?”

Peter was taken aback by his comment. He thought of the past few months for him. The loneliness, the lies, and the loss he had incurred. He couldn’t let anyone know about this. He had a reputation to uphold and if he was ever going to let down his guard, it wouldn’t be in front of Nibs in this moment. He took a hard swallow pushing down all of his pain and produced a huge carefree smile.

“Great! Everything is awesome, as it always is! Hook is up to his usual semantics so of course I have to take him down. But luckily that’s led me to working with the Lost Boys again!” Tears welled up in Nibs eyes. “Oh, come on man! No need for that! This is a happy moment.” Peter gave him a pat on the back as Nibs wiped his tears out of his eyes.

“Sorry, it’s just been a while since I’ve seen you. You’re still that same always optimistic guy you were when I met you. I really wish I had that right now.” Peter was speechless, but just kept smiling more. “Oh, to think happy thoughts again.”

Peter could hardly keep eye contact with Nibs, knowing it was all a lie. “That’s why I’m here mate! To remind you,” Peter placed both his hands on Nibs’s shoulders, “That it will get better.”

Nibs managed a smile and Peter moved away. not to just allow Slightly in, but also because he didn’t know how much longer he could keep this charade up. As Slightly went up to Nibs, Winter stared at Peter’s façade of a face. Something in his voice told her he was putting on an act. Tink was right. He was his usual self that she had heard about, when he was with Tock. But his acting now, something was hollow about it.

Her concerns were confirmed when she watched the big smile he put on for Nibs, slowly fade away. Vanish as if it was never there. All of the emotion in Peter’s face disappeared and the only thing that was left was a dead look in his eyes he would sometimes have when he lost his attention. Winter came back to attention herself when Slightly spoke.

“You doing better, mate?”

Ugh she thought, she hated hearing that when her mother died. Of course she wasn’t better, she would never be better.

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“I’m okay. Miss him you know? Everything seems to remind me of him. I just keep thinking how he was all alone when it happened.” Winter noticed Peter tensed up. “Did he know how much we cared about him? Could we have done something to save him?” Winter saw Peter’s hand turn into a fist so tight that if he wasn’t wearing gloves, he would have punctured his own skin. “I just can’t stop thinking about that.”

Peter couldn’t seem to take it anymore and stepped in. “Slight, sorry, but can we go see that message? Sorry Nibs, just duty calls.”

Winter could hear the shame in his voice as he spoke. Peter didn’t stop the conversation to get back to Hook’s plan. He did it to stop whatever emotions were stirring inside himself.

“Yes sir,” Slightly said clearly aggravated. “Right this way, sir,” he said as he continued down the hallway.

“Don’t worry Nibs, you’ll be fine,” Peter said putting his hand on Nibs’s shoulder.

“Just think happy thoughts, right?” Nibs mumbled trying to let out a smile.

“You got it,” Peter winked. Once Peter turned away from, he dropped the smile and allowed his dead eyes to return. Winter saw him leave a poor and broken Nibs. She couldn’t leave him like that. She rushed over to him and stopped him heading back to his quarters.

“Nibs?” she asked. He turned back, a little confused as to why a complete stranger stopped him. “I lost a mother a few years back. I know how hard it is to lose someone so close to you.”

“I’m sorry,” he barely let out.

“You don’t need to say that. I don’t know about you, but I was really aggravated when someone said sorry to me. As if it was their fault or that one sorry would solve everything,” Winter groaned.

“I have heard that word quite a few times,” Nibs said as he let out a sad chuckle. “How’d you handle it? Knowing you’ll never see her again?”

“It’s tough. Especially on anniversaries or birthdays.”

“Birth what?”

“Never mind.” Winter thought about her mother and when she was at her gravestone and a slight smile came across her face. “But I’ve found that when I draw and paint, it’s like she’s back with me. Right by my side, as if she never left. I talk to her and think about how she would respond. It really helps.”

“Painting? Drawing? I don’t mean to cut your process short, but, what’s really the point of that?”

“Wow, you really don’t care about art here do you?” Winter couldn’t believe just how right Peter was. “That’s the point. It doesn’t have to have meaning necessarily. It can, don’t get me wrong. I think the beauty of it is, that it can mean different things to different people. One can see it one way, while another can see it in a very different light. Sometimes it’s just a great way to escape. At least that’s what my mother called it.” Nibs’s eyes began to light up with wonder.

“Winter! C’mon! You’re falling behind!” Peter called for her.

“Just try it out,” she said to Nibs as she walked away. “It might help.” Nibs nodded, still unsure if she was right or wrong.

Winter ran into the room Slightly and Peter were in. “Welcome to our command center Winter,” Slightly said heading to the center of the room. She stumbled into the most advanced technological center she could have ever imagined. Holographic screens were projected on the walls, some detailing certain planets and alien creatures. There were three main console decks in the room, each manned by a series of Lost Boys. All around the room were various other projections that Winter couldn’t quite decipher why they were there. Lost Boys were constantly coming and going out of this room.

“I’m assuming this is quite rough as well,” Winter asked downplaying her naivety.

“We do alright,” Slightly said as he pushed a Lost Boy away from the main console and took over the keyboard. “So naturally all of Hook’s requests go straight to our spam folder.”

“Of course,” Peter stated. Winter was impressed she could finally relate to something technological that both Earth and Neverland had.

“Really?” She asked. “You also have a spam folder?”

“But, despite the security measures we put in place,” Slightly went on ignoring Winter. “This request still came in.”

“Even with all this amazing tech,” she gestured at all the holoscreens around them, “You still can’t make a working spam folder?” Peter gave half a laugh, but Slightly was more annoyed more than ever and turned to Winter.

“Do you have to have a sarcastic comment on everything?”

“Slightly, let’s get back to the message,” Peter stated.

“Right,” Slightly said as he returned back to work. Glancing back at Winter, Peter rolled his eyes and gave a quiet chuckle, clearly amused by her nature. Slightly pulled up the message on the screen so they could follow along.

“He wrote, ‘Lost Boys! I would like to extend a hire request to pull an asset from the planet Grottowia. Message me for more details. BIG REWARD!’ End message.”

“Odd,” Peter said offput by the message.

“Yeah, he’s being way too polite here. There was no barking or back handed compliments. It’s very clear someone wrote this for him.”

“It’s also weird that he capitalized ‘Big Reward’ as if the caps would make you more likely to take the job,” Winter added.

“That would be the only reason we would take the job honestly. Give him credit, he was close,” Slightly sarcastically said. “And why Grottowia?”

“It’s weird,” Peter agreed.

“Earth girl here remember?” Winter stated to both of them. “Can anyone fill me in on what Grottowia is? It sounds damp.”

“Why would he want someone to steal from the mermaids?” Peter asked causing Winter’s face to light up.

“Mermaids!” Winter rushed to Peter’s side.

“Peter! We have to go! It’s my dream! Please!” Winter begged.

“Of course not! If Hook wanted this to happen, he clearly laid a trap for us. Something I won’t fall for.”

“Ugh! At least tell me about them! Do they have fish tails?”

“No.”

“Do they spend their days brushing their hair with fish bones and singing songs?”

“Where do you get this from?” Slightly asked.

“No, they don’t Winter.” Peter wasn’t sure how to end Winter’s crazy asks.

“Do they wear seashell bras?”

“What kind of ludicrous idea is that?” Peter yelled. He quickly recomposed himself. “Sorry, it’s just out of all the things he could have added, he added seashell bras?”

Winter was about to add more questions when a giant blaring alarm went off. Red lights started flashing all around them. “Oh, thank god. I thought we were going to talk about mermaids for ages,” Peter commented.

“What is that?” Winter screeched as she cupped her ears. They all noticed an alert pop up on the main screen that Slightly was reading Hook’s message on.

“It’s an SOS.” Slightly typed a few commands into the main console to open the message. “From the Red Men. Asking for immediate fire power. Compensation after the task is complete of course.”

“Red Men? I would ask questions, but they’re clearly not allowed,” she said as she rolled her eyes at Peter. Peter disregarded her.

“Well Slightly, looks like this is where we part ways. Let’s go Winter. We’ve got to find out what Hook wanted from Grottowia.” Winter’s face lit up again, excited to meet the mermaids. “Without you actually going there. It’s much too dangerous for you.” Winter’s face dropped into a frown. Peter headed toward the exit and Winter reluctantly followed.

“Pan, wait,” Slightly said trying to catch Peter. “Come on, Pan.” He stopped him just as he got to the door. “Join us for battle! For old times’ sake. Bet I can show you a few new skills.”

“Not when Hook has a scheme in motion. Would love to fly, but Hook is more important than a battle. I know, it’s weird that I’m saying it.” Peter turned to head back towards the exit.

“Well what if I said where the Red Men are...” Slightly started. Peter stopped, something caught his attention. He turned slowly to Slightly.

“Are near a planet that’s called…” Slightly continued. A smile slowly creeped upon Peter’s mouth, excited for what Slightly was about to say.

“Grottowia?” Peter asked, hoping he had the right answer.

“Grottowia!” Slightly confirmed. They brought their hands in, clapping them.

“I’m in!” Peter exclaimed.

“Yes!” Winter shouted. “Mermaids! Red Men! Whatever those are! Let’s go!”

“You always know how to bring me on to any mission,” Peter said to Slightly.

“Oh, the cleverness of me,” Slightly said with a wink at Peter. Peter shook his head with a smile. He always felt teased whenever someone brought up his own story. He used to love it, but then remembered why his story was told in the first place. Wendy needed help. More help than Peter could ever help with.