The lighting in this room was covered save for Tinkerbell's flickering pink glow.  Wendy stood at the doorway for a moment, her eyes trying to accommodate the darkness, and listened to the fluent cursing.  She would have blushed if she'd understood half of it.

"I didn't tell the fairies they could ruin it." he said, and the clatter of something metal reached her.  "You heard me, didn't you, Tink?  I didn't say they could come down."

Tinkerbell did not respond.  Wendy heard the Nightmare Thing shuffling and Tinkerbell followed it forward, until the barest form of the boy could be seen.  He was hunched over a table, hands flitting over a strange tangle she couldn't see.  The Nightmare Thing lifted Slightly in front of it in presentation (the boy had gone glassy and boneless as a rag doll, and for a moment Wendy feared that he was dead, but the erratic twitching of his eyelids claimed otherwise.)

"I didn't ASK for him yet, did I?" Murhedd spat.  A pause. The Nightmare Thing made a whining noise and he scoffed at it, but instead of hitting it, suddenly swore and dropped whatever metal thing he fumbled with to stick his fingers in his mouth.

"God damn it, fairy, can't you get any brighter?  I can't see what I'm doing."

The glow increased.  Wendy Darling could now see both figures relatively clearly now, and clapped her hands over her mouth, nearly giving herself away.

The first item of startlement was what Murhedd seemed to be doing.  The table he was hunched over was wooden and the bits she could see were rotting.  At the visible corner was a heavy iron shackle set into the wood, and hints of other shadows sat at the other corners.  Laid out atop of it was an array of strange instruments she had no way of identifying.  Most were heavily caked with rust, but she identified among them at least two short, stubby knives, who's blades had rusted to the hilt.  Even she could understand what the others had to be.

The second cause of surprise was the Nightmare Thing itself.  While she had expected to see in this room both Murhedd and the shiny, decaying mimicry of Peter Pan, she was instead met by TWO equally pale boys in equally outdated clothing, though the nightmare thing's was in a far greater state of decomposition.  In this strange and somehow more frightening version his hair was gone from his head completely and his jaw hung at a broken angle, revealing toothlessness in his head.  His eyes were both ruined and swollen with broken blood vessels, and his skin had broken to spot.  What was this Nightmare Thing pretending?

Murhedd glared at his morbidly aged double for a moment before sticking one of the knives calmly through the Nightmare's hand.  It yelped and tore itself on the blade.

"Knock...that...off." Murhedd said slowly.  The doppleganger glared back but in the end had no say in the situation, for a muted flicker from Tinkerbell forced him back into the body of Peter Pan.  The boy grumbled something about worthless dream-stuff and wiped the knife on Peter's cape.

Behind her, Wendy could hear the noises of battle through the crack in the door.  The monster made quite terrible noises and the boys' shouting over layered it, and she could not tell who was winning.  The question did not even seem to trouble Murhedd.

There wouldn't be any better time to confront him.  Wendy knew this, but was also frightened of the prospect.  It was not often she faced her enemies alone, especially with no reserves to call, and no way to protect herself.  She took a deep breath to temper her courage and, head held high, face carefully composed, kicked the door shut behind her.  Immediately Murhedd's head was up and his eyes were wide, mimicking a startled deer as perfectly as the night before.  Now that he was listening for her presence it only took a moment before he had found the sound of her breathing.

"Tinkerbell.  Light." he snapped briskly.  The fairy shot towards Wendy and suddenly the girl was awash in pink, though to the rest of the room she was blinded.

Wendy set her shoulders.  "Murhedd." she said by way of acknowledgment.

"Wendy." he answered in kind.  He was too quickly within her range of sight and his hands held tight behind his back.  "Why did you follow me, Wendy.  Don't you want to help your friends?"

"My friends will do fine without me."  she replied.

"Ah.  Just couldn't wait your turn then, hm?  Well I'm not exactly set to accommodate you at the moment, but I'm sure that once I am, the blond boy won't mind letting you go ahead of him."

"I didn't come here for your games, Murhedd. I want you to let them go."

"Oh really.  Well THATS certainly unexpected, isn't it." he deadpanned.  "You aren't in a position to bargain, Wendy.  I'll take what I want.  That's all there is to it."

"What if I have something you want more than the Lost Boys?  Something to trade?"

A pause.  Murhedd's eyes narrowed to slits.  "What could you possibly have that I wouldn't just as easily lift off your CORPSE."

"This."

Wendy, though her heart was faster than a panicked rabbit and her ribs had begun to sweat, threw her arms around Murhedd, forcing her eyes closed.  Because of this she didn't see the terrified flicker across his face when he had realized her intent.  For the tiniest of moments she felt muscles taught as stone under her arms, and the next, the back of her head cracked against the door and she fell to her knees on the flooring.  Her vision flooded with a sharp pang of red.

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!" she heard him shriek.  Wendy looked up despite the throbbing ache.  Murhedd now had his back to the edge of the table (as far as he could retreat without going around) and his eyes were almost perfectly round in his head.  His teeth were clenched and bared and his entire body was ridged, and despite the defensive hunch of his shoulders his ribs managed to heave far faster than they had any reason to.  Wendy was momentarily dumbstruck: he was terrified. Of her.

Though her head had yet to clear the girl pushed herself to her feet and took a tentative step closer.  "Murhedd...what--"

"DON'T TOUCH ME!"  She froze in place before he pushed himself back onto the table, hurting himself on the instruments (or bringing himself the idea to grab one.)

The noises of the fight, which had muffled greatly at the closing of the door, suddenly tapered and were met with a stone-shaking thud out in the gallery.  Murhedd's eyes flickered.  When after a few moments the sound did not resume Murhedd bolted past her like she was a poisonous snake and flung open the door.  Wendy stood blinking, and didn't notice when the Peter Thing crept behind her.

Tzesrikan hadn't captured any of the Lost Boys.  In fact, the monster was currently laying with it's legs up in the air, all three Lost Boys rubbing it's belly under the bisection line.  It made a contented whuffing sound and stretched.

"Give it up, Murhedd!  We beat your monster!" Nibs shouted down at the boy.  The Lost Boys left their positions and hovered in front of Murhedd with Nibs at the point, ready to fly if attacked. (But how strange that there were only three: where had gone the Storyteller, the Queen, and her Captain?  Wendy wondered if the monster had eaten them all)

Tzesrikan gave a low whine and rolled over onto his belly to pout at the lost attention.

Murhedd glared at them with his mouth pulled back into a snarl, each of his painful looking teeth glistening pinkly in the light.  "You're not allowed to touch Tzesrikan!  He's mine!  MINE!" Murhedd's voice was shrill and cracking.  His eyes gave Nibs the strangest impression of cracked eggs, the transparent whites dripping over his eyelids and down his chin.

It took Nibs a scant second to formulate an intelligent response to that (which is really quite astounding, since few people alive could have found an intelligent response to that) but unfortunately we shall never know what that response was, for the moment his mouth opened he instead let out a yelp, and ducked a boney fist aimed for his nose.  Curly caught hold of Murhedd's arm as the boy stumbled forward with the intent of twisting it behind him, but Murhedd let out an odd sounding cry of protest and jerked back before he regained his balance, sending himself and an unfortunately placed Toodles to the ground.

A clumsy scuffle began.  Wendy shouted for them to stop and moved to try and effect it, but she'd hardly taken a step when something sharp and bright cut against her ear and shot into the gallery.  She jumped and covered the offended lobe with her hand, but when she turned her head instinctively to see where it had come from she realized just how close the Peter Thing was, and jumped back with a cry.  It's eye sockets had begun to slide to the middle of it's head and it's nose flattened back until it was only a gap in the skin.  It blinked at her and gave her a wide, wet grin, and rolled past her without a comment.

Suddenly the fight was no longer three against one.  Murhedd shouted something that sounded nearly obscene and the Lost Boys were wrapped by slick, greyish tentacles that ripped them into the air and covered their mouths over with it's slimy skin.  Tzesrikan, now dwarfed in the cramped quarters, shoved himself into the opposite corner and covered his head with his claws.  The Nightmare Thing had become massive and grey and slippery.  At the end of it's head, where it's mouth should be, instead rose rows of twitching, prehensile whiskers, parted in the middle by a pair of wet eyes.  A slit down the length of it's breast leaked a foul black fluid that carried with it all the offenses of a satin-lined coffin left two months in the earth, an old cat bursting with flyspawn Wendy had found beneath the porch last year, and the sweet, sick scent of a funeral parlor once the attendant had gone home.  Wendy choked and covered her nose with both hands.

"Murhedd, leave them alone, please!" she shouted at him in a voice that she hoped sounded authoritative, but in fact sounded only nasally from her blocked nose.

"Oh, right, or what?!" his voice cracked over the great roiling noise of the Nightmare. "Or you'll do WHAT, exactly?!  Have a fit?"

Wendy couldn't have really said WHAT she expected to do, but she though maybe she could punch him if she had to.  She'd seen Peter do it many times before and it didn't look that hard.  However, she wasn't exactly sure she wanted to be hit in return.  Murhedd turned to face her, hips to the side and arms akimbo, with a bitter, wet expression on his face.

"There's nothing you CAN do, Wendy!  You want to play poker but you haven't got the cards!  Do you really think there's a damn thing you can do against an entire WORLD of Nightmares?"

Wendy lifted her head up "You're wrong, Murhedd.  You haven't got all the cards.  You were afraid of me in the other room, and I think you're still afraid of me!"

"Why would I be afraid of you!" he spat.  "You're just a stupid, false thing!  You're not even a real mother!  Why should I be afraid of you, Wendy, tell me that!"

"Because you're still crying!"

Murhedd blinked, as though he hadn't noticed it before, and tried to dry his face with his sleeve.  He looked so very much like a boy just then Wendy felt almost sorry for him, but the tiny step she took towards him caused him to jerk back and fix her with a glare unlike any she'd ever received before.

"You ARE afraid of me!" She insisted.  "I don't know WHY you're afraid of me, but you are!"

"I am not!"

To prove her point, Wendy walked towards him.  He tensed but held his ground until she got within three feet of him, and which point he broke and stumbled back, falling onto his rump with a shout.  Wendy knelt down by his ribs, her knees nearly touching him.  Every muscle was ridged and every tendon pronounced; his eyes were dilated and red, and his fingers clutched into the stone beneath him spasmodically.

No one had ever been afraid of Wendy Darling before.  Some didn't like the feeling.

"You're afraid of me." she said again, but softly this time.  Behind, she could hear Tzesrikan shifting closer, a warning growl on his teeth.  She didn't dare look back at him, though.

"Murhedd, I want you to let the Lost Boys go." she said evenly.  "I want you to let go any fairies, and redskins, any animals, anything at ALL you have trapped down here.  Every single thing, Murhedd."

He shook his head in a weak protest.

"Yes, Murhedd.  Everything."

Wendy put a hand gently on his chest, and whatever small composure he had left shattered as he tried to scuttle away from her.  He made it all of three feet before his shoulders hit the ground and he curled in on himself, sobbing against the fading floor.

Tzesrikan's shadow broke the light.  Wendy could feel the monster's breath on her back as he leaned in, warning her.

She didn't look.
 

The Twin heard the voices long before he saw the light.  High, whispered, tiny voices, and the awkward inhuman sound of Captain Partlet's fawnings.  He felt his pulse rise but he couldn't make a sound to call them, or warn them.  There was the creak of metal, an enormous snap, and the whine of rusted hinges.  They must be opening one of the cabinets.  He waited to hear one of the Lost Boys tumble out and fall into a coughing fit, but instead there came a chorus of disgusted noises and the sound of the door being shut again.  That couldn't be good.

"...this one looks like it's been opened recently."  he heard a crisp female voice state.  He could see fairy glow along the gaps in the door.  "The bar's been moved, see?  Rupert, bring them here, lets pull this one open."

"What if it's another....thing!" whined a second female.

"We won't know until we open it!" snapped a third.  It sounded like Queen Mab.  "All of you, get off your skinny asses and help us open this one!"

"You heard the Queen, hop to it!" Partlet chimed.  There was a congregation of SOMETHING outside the door now.  He heard the whine and shriek of metal again, so very much closer than it had been before, and the sides of the cabinet began to cave.  Suddenly it ended in a pop, and the congregation scattered.

"Ready yourselves." said the first female.

The lighted edge of the door creaked open, inch by tiny inch, and the Twin squinted shut his eyes at the light.

"This one's alive!"

Some single person cheered.  The door flew open and clattered as it's hinges fell away.  Sitting square in the middle of the entrance was the familiar Captain Partlet with his bright red beak, and hovering above his head was Mab, who for likely the first time in her life had broken a sweat.  At the top left corner was an elderly fairy in a blank pink dress sitting astride two beetles, and everywhere else about the entrance was the mad, unlit swarm, drifting in a lazy sphere around a tiny white fairy in a maid's uniform.

"Are you quite allright there, Deputy Twin?  Nothing broken, I expect" Partlet asked in a falsely boisterous voice.  "Well are you going to stand there all day or aren't you coming out?"

"He's tied in, you nitwit." said the fairy in the pink dress.  "Rupert, send someone around to the back to loosen that collar.  It ought to be on a screw, if it's the same ones."

The little maid turned to whisper to the swarm.  A few leaned close and nodded, then disappeared from sight behind the cabinet.  A moment later metal squeaked against metal, and his collar pulled back all the tighter.

"Other way, other way!" shouted the Queen.  "You're choking my deputy!  Incompetent weirdos."

Metal squeaked again, and this time the collar loosened slowly.  The twin gasped for air as soon as he was able, and even after he could rightfully talk just hung there for a moment, enjoying the pleasures of unobstructed breathing.

"Allright then?" Partlet asked again.

The twin nodded best he could.  "Yes.  Allright."  Talking hurt.

His arms and legs were held by buckles, which were easily slipped, and the Twin stumbled out unsteadily, holding the side of the cabinet for support.  It took a few moments to get his bearings.

The old fairy lighted her beetles on his shoulder and stepped off.  "He didn't hurt you, did he.  That's good.  But we have to hurry, allright?  We need you to help with the next cabinet.  The other boys are distracting Murhedd's monster for us and we haven't got much time.  Do you know which cabinets your friends are in?"

He nodded.  He didn't ask about the cabinet they had opened before his.  When Tzesrikan had pulled open the boxes for them, they hadn't been entirely empty.  He'd seen the monster put his claw into the boxes and crush their shadowed contents into dust, brushing away the fragments.  The floor was awfully gritty here.  He intentionally didn't think about it.

They got the other twin out next.  The metal wrap was stubborn but it was still just as old, and it snapped before their muscles did.  They caught hold each other's hands the moment that they could, and did not let go until Mab forced them to, to help with the opening of Michael's cabinet.

Finally there was Peter.  They knew which one it had to be, and the ominous red stain on the door made them hesitant to open it.  He didn't scrabble at the sides as he had when Murhedd had taunted him, and he didn't make a sound.  The red stained cabinet was eerily silent.

"Come on, then." the old fairy said, bolstering her courage.  "Everyone, grab ahold.  On the count of three.  One, two, three!"

The metal was weary and snapped too quickly, sending them all onto their backsides on the floor.  Captain Partlet grabbed the edge of the cabinet door with his beak and pulled before anyone could loose nerve.

Inside the cabinet, there was blood.

But it hadn't come from Peter.

Peter Pan was quite alive, and strung up like they all had been.  The boy had been divested of his shirt and cape, and his belt where his sword had hung, and in the uneven light that seeped into the cabinet his bare torso was pale and painted.  Dried, crackled red was drawn in a line from the top of his trousers to his chin, and even higher, so that his lips were painted with a dull red that he'd refused to lick away.  The Twins began to compulsively loose his restraints, and before even talking or acknowledging them at all he scrubbed the back of his hand against his mouth and spat on the floor.

"Where is he?" he growled, eyes snapping to the Twins with a most murderous glare. "I SAID, where IS HE!?"

The Twins blinked, startled by his anger, and he shoved past them for the door when they didn't voice a reply.

"Wait!  Peter!" The elder fairy flew to stop him, but he'd already shoved open the door.  The others had no choice but to follow.
 

Wendy heard a door shriek open mere seconds before a familiar and unnerving voice bellowed into the gallery.  Her head snapped around and her heart lifted at what she saw, to be immediately replaced by worry.

"Peter!  Oh Peter you're alive!"  She untangled herself from a long-silent Murhedd, unclasping his arms from around her neck and ran towards Peter with her arms outstretched, catching him around the ribs and hugging him a bit too hard.  She pulled back and quickly checked him up and down.  "Peter, are you allright?  Where's the blood come from?"

"Ask him." Peter said icily.  He pushed her gently to the side and stalked towards Murhedd with made fists.  The boy blinked his leaking eyes and slowly scrambled from his place on the floor and under the chest of his attendant monster, falling over Tzesrikan's foreclaw and pressed his damp face to the bone.  The monster immediately locked the other claw over him like a cage and lowered his head to Peter with a great whuffing snarl.

A startled cry from Michael was the only thing that made Peter aware of the OTHER presence in the room, the vast, dripping, grey presence.  Neither it nor Tinkerbell had moved from their places, and all Curly, Nibs, and Toodles were still held mute sixty feet above the ground, heads nearly touching the webbed ceiling.  Peter flared.

"Murhedd, LET THEM GO!" he shouted, tensing more, and if it weren't for the constant whuffing reminder of the monster's breathing he likely would have jumped him anyway.  Murhedd's eyes rolled in the direction of the Nightmare and he lifted one shaking arm to gesture through the part in Tzesrikan's claws.  Tinkerbell suddenly flickered and her wings stopped working; she fell through the air to land with a wet smack on the flank of the Nightmare Thing.  The Nightmare itself blinked and looked startled at it's sudden freedom.  After a wavered moment of indecision it picked Tinkerbell up with one grey tentacle and deposited her on the ledge of a lighting basin.  Partlet was already on his way to the rescue when the Nightmare pressed itself to the ground and disappeared, leaving Curly, Nibs, and Toodles drifting in the air above.

"There.  They're free." Murhedd said blankly.  He dropped his forehead against Tzesrikan's claw again and made no further comment.

Peter was entirely confused.  Wendy gently took hold of his elbow and tugged him towards the door.  "Peter, please, lets go.  No one is hurt.  Just leave him be."

"We can't do that unless we have the keystone." The Storyteller said matter-of-factly.  "Without the keystone we can't seal the door, and I don't have enough power on my own to make another one."

"Keystone?" Peter asked.

"Yes.  Something had to move it for the seal to be broken." she eyed him.  "We used a diamond because it's the stongest stone.  This big?"  she gestured with her hands.  Peter blinked.

"Tink...Tink saw something sparkle in the briars.  She went down to see what it was, and then....." he trailed off.  "Where's Tink?"

"I've got her!" Partlet answered, keeping his beak closed so not to drop her.  He landed clumsily in front of Peter and the boy knelt down to take her from him.   She looked up at her boy with bleary eyes and mumbled something at his worried expression, before falling back asleep against his fingers.

"She's been used up, just let her rest." said the Storyteller.  "Now Peter, what happened to the stone after Tink moved it?  Where did it go?"

"Murhedd took it, when he knocked her out."  He shot Murhedd a venomous glare, but the only one who even noticed was Tzesrikan, who clicked his teeth at him.  "He'd have it somewhere."

"Oh, you can't mean to lock him down here again!" Wendy said finally, putting a hand to her chest  "He hasn't hurt anybody, not really.  Why not just leave him alone?"

"Because he HAS hurt people and he WILL hurt people, Wendy."  The Storyteller said gently.  "It's for the best."  She nudged the beetles towards the protective monster, waving it's head off as an annoyance when Tzesrikan tried to snarl at her.  The beetles dropped her carefully on the bone talons by Murhedd's face and stood waiting beside her.

"Give me the keystone, Murhedd." she said too softly.  The boy closed his eyes and shook his head.

"No.  I won't give it to you.  You owe me something, Pinwhistle."

"I don't owe you your freedom." she said sternly.

"...No.  You don't owe me my freedom." he agreed.  He shifted so one wet, empty eye could see her.  "But you owe me something else."

"Oh?"

"Yes.  Out of all the things you took from me, I just want one.  One thing." He held up a finger.  "Then you can have the key."

"And what thing is that, Murhedd?"

He stared at her with his vacant eye for a long moment, then rolled onto his back, folded his hands on his stomach, and closed his eyes.  The Storyteller didn't move for several seconds before rubbing her forehead and gesturing her beetles over.  They carried her faithfully back to the Lost Boys and company.

"Well?" Mab asked her with her usual impatience.

"He'll cooperate.  He just needs something first." she answered softly.  "Wendy, take your boys up the stairs, and Mab, you go too.  Everyone go.  Rupert, take take the other fairies with you.  They need to come back with us to Small Monday Island."

"But what are YOU going to do?" Rupert asked.

"Does it matter?  I'll be fine.  Just all of you go.  It will be allright."

The Storyteller tapped Peter lightly on the bridge of the nose, leaving a faint glow of magic on his skin.  The boy blinked and relaxed his fists, a blank expression in his eyes, like when Mrs. Darling was given a dose of laudanum.

"Come on." he said faintly.  "Lets go."

Even under influence of magic, that would be the only time in his life Peter ever took an order.
 

Wendy had forgotten the sun was shining.  In the docile light of day, the door was only a door, and the briars that twisted and snatched around them were only plants.  The Lost Boys had clumped themselves on a raised section of the valley, not really caring that they were sitting in the mud.  Curly, Slightly (who had been so thoughtfully retrieved once Nibs had remembered him) and Nibs were leaned against a grimy stone, separated a few feet from Toodles, Michael, and the Twins, who were atop it.  Rupert and her court had filled a briar bush, their wings glistening like flies in the sun.  Mab sat quietly on a branch a few yards from them, Partlet waiting on the ground below her.  Peter Pan had simply fallen against the mud wall, put his head back, and closed his eyes, and Wendy sat patiently beside him with her hand on his knee.

When the mouth of the door was finally lit by a drifting glow, Wendy had nearly forgotten they were waiting.  She nudged Peter, who slowly rolled his eyes to look at her.  The Storyteller landed on the granite slab and fished her hand around for a catch on the bottom lip.  Something inside the wall began to clank, and the stone grated harshly as it dropped the few feet to meet it's base.  It was quiet.

Wendy came to stand before the Storyteller, fingers twiddling and an anxious look on her face.

"Hold out your hand, Wendy." The Storyteller said quietly.  She fished in the pocket of her dress and fixed her fingers around a bulge and transferred it into Wendy's palm.  The girl stared at it.  It was a diamond the size of her thumbnail, worn on the faces and chipped here and there, but sparkling in the sun the way glass never could.

"The keystone?" she asked.

The Storyteller nodded.  "Seven hundred years, Wendy." she added thoughtfully.

"B-beg your pardon?"

"What I asked earlier.  When we were going down the stairs.  How long does it take a boy and a beast to build their own tomb?"

Wendy blinked, and closed her hand over the diamond.

"Take you boys home, Wendy.  See that they get some sleep.  It's been a long night for everyone."

"I-I will.  Thank you."

Mystified by the persistent pricking behind her eyes and writing it off to the glare of the sun, Wendy turned to her boys and held her arms out to them.

"It's time to go home, boys.  Come on.  It's been a long night."

No one argued.