Fic: Peter's Pan Shadow 3/? (WIP)

[nieseryjna]

Title: Peter's Pan Shadow 3/? (WIP)

Characters: Peter Burke, Other

Rating: PG-13

Warnings: AU

Spoilers: none

Word Count: ~ 1700 (this part)

Summary: There was once, a magic world. A world in which you were never afraid of darkness. A world in which your destiny shaped your life. It's all changed in time, but some things reminded.

Beta: by mam711 of fanfiction.net

Disclaimer: Not mine, just borrowing them for fun. White Collar belongs to Jeff Eastin and USA Network.

 All remaining mistakes are mine alone.

1986 - Boston, MA

 

The wind knocked trash around the street, causing tree branches to bend under its power. The street was dark and gloomy in the snow that covered the city in the late afternoon; quite usual weather for the beginning of December.

 

He was almost sure it was a dream, almost. There were small differences: the constant feeling of unreality, the knowledge that he’d been in his bed a few minutes ago, or that it was December when he fell asleep. But ‘almost’ wasn't really convincing, not when you felt goosebumps on your skin and the wind in your hair. The air was hot and humid, making it difficult to breathe, making the jeans and t-shirt he suddenly was wearing cling to his body.

 

He took a careful look around; he stood in the middle of a tent village, with trucks and trailer cars nearby and carnival music playing in the background. It was eerily familiar, but he couldn't remember the exact place; it had been years since he last visited a carnival.

 

Someone shouted somewhere; a couple of kids ran past him screaming; an older man brushed his arm while walking by. Something flashed in the corner of his eye; turning his head he noticed lightning on the horizon, the dark clouds still far away. He finally moved to explore the strange setting he found himself in.

 

The tents held various attractions, from super-elastic twins to a snake man to a booth with a shooting range; it was more like an old-fashioned carnival with lots of mysterious people than the funfairs he’d visited since he’d been a child. He bought a candied apple and was taking his first bite when he saw it: the fortuneteller tent; in front, a beautiful blonde girl was flashing an amazing smile at everyone that passed by. It was almost blinding, rows of neat white teeth, the corner of her mouth turned up at just the right angle; it was a smile that held promise. People responded to it like flies to flame; they were drawn to it, ready to spend ridiculous amounts of money to hear a bunch of lies.

 

Peter was mesmerized by the smile and took a step forward, then another and another; the girl sent a smile his way and he automatically smiled back. In a blink of an eye he found himself sitting at a round table with a dark red cloth and a crystal ball. The old woman was murmuring something he couldn't understand, her brown eyes concentrated on his palm in her hands. A feeling of dread he hadn’t been feeling before started to rise, bile in his throat. There was something wrong; his gut was screaming at him to run away, and he’d learned to trust his gut over the years. He tried to jerk his hand away but the woman wouldn't budge. The murmuring grew louder and louder, changing into a monotone chant.

 

He stood quickly, sending his chair to hit the floor, his panicked eyes sweeping the inside to find something to help him. It was then, when the chanting grew a notch louder, that he heard thunder; the lighting stroke came a moment later, and in the entrance he saw the shadow of a boy. He stilled; there was something familiar in this shadow: he was racking his mind trying to find the memory when another crash of thunder broke the chant. Not even a second later another lightning bolt hit; this time the shadow in the entrance was waving a hand at him. The soothsayer was still chanting with his palm stuck in her hands; the words started to blur into one steady sound; the rumble following the strike came almost immediately after the light. Something inside Peter started to squeeze his heart; the pain grew with every second. When the next lightning bolt hit he found himself on his knees from pain. The shadow of the boy disappeared when his mouth opened and he started screaming.

 

"Noooo...."

 

The roar of the thunderstorm drowned his next words and the chanting stopped. The pain grew again, bending him in half, squeezing tears out of his eyes.

 

"Noo, let us go. Please let us go!" he begged, not really sure what he was asking for.

 

Nothing counted, no conscious thought floated in his mind, just a deep unknown force that made him say the words. The chanting started again, this time going from loud to murmuring in matter of seconds, while the pain grew again. He was way beyond the point of consciousness though his lips were still forming the pleading words.

 

"Please, let him go...."

 

The lighting hit the tent and everything was blinding white for a second.

 

"Peter! Peter! Wake up!" Someone shook his arm. "Come on, wake up, you're scaring me...." The voice was soft and familiar.

 

He slowly opened his eyes in the faint darkness to find himself back in his bedroom.

 

"Peter?" the voice was back.

 

He turned his head and there she was: a blonde, gorgeous girl with a killer white smile; he smiled.

 

"Yeah?" His throat was surprisingly dry.

 

"You were screaming in your sleep; are you okay?"

 

He cleared his throat, blinked few times, and hugged the girl. "Yeah, just a bad dream; don't worry."

 

"You sure everything is okay?" she asked doubtfully. "You were screaming."

 

He tried to roll onto his side to hug her closer when a sharp pain ran through his chest. Something wasn't right: his leg was throbbing and his whole body felt like an army of ants were marching on him.

 

"Cathy?" he called softly, unsure, "What did I scream about?"

 

"You were calling to someone to let him go. Peter, what’s it about?" The green eyes of his girlfriend were filled with worry.

 

The pain slowly subsided and the ants disappeared. He kissed his girlfriend and hugged her to his body, lying back on his side.

 

"Will you go with me to visit my dad this weekend?" he asked after a minute of silence. The only answer was a sleepy "uhuhm" coming somewhere from his chest area where her head was resting.

 

Somewhere in Pennsylvania a thunderstorm rolled over a gathering of tents and trucks; anyone who was awake stared at the skies in wonder. December wasn’t a time for thunderstorms. The carnival had arrived in the city only a day before and would not stay long; they never did. By the fortuneteller’s trailer a boy's shadow flickered on the back of the car with each stroke of lightning. The chanting grew till it was almost in synch with the lightning and thunder. A painful scream cut through when lightning hit the fortuneteller’s tent. The shadow flickered again and disappeared.

 

Under the van an unconscious boy was curled under an old blanket, shivering in the cold that the storm had brought.

 

 

1986 - Ithaca, NY

 

It was the last day that the carnival would be in the city. Peter made plans, stuffed his pockets with his battered wallet and a small green box, and dragged Cathy by the hand to the field. He couldn't remember when the last time was that he’d visited a carnival; it must have been before they moved to Aunt Helen’s. Especially as they came to town only twice a year, in June and December.

 

They had lots of fun at the shooting range, then bumping into each other in the bumper cars. They were almost by his ultimate goal for that day—the Ferris wheel—when Cathy decided to have something sweet to eat. They were standing in a small line for the sweets vendor when he felt the hair on his neck start to rise. It wasn't a good sign; he tentatively looked around and spotted a dark-haired boy staring at him near a fortuneteller's tent. He shot the kid a smile and slowly surveyed the rest of the field; when his eyes came back to the tent the boy was gone. Cathy was in the middle of paying when he felt a slight tugging at his right sleeve. Surprised, he looked down straight into the blue eyes of the dark-haired boy he'd seen a minute ago. The kid looked like a scrawny teenager before hitting his first growth spurt.

 

"Hi," he murmured, smiling; not really comfortable.

 

The kid just kept looking at him without a word.

 

"Peter!" His head snapped up at the sound of Cathy's voice; she was nearing him with a box of popcorn and a candied apple in one hand, and two cans of soda in the other. He was stretching out his own hand to help her when he felt the tugging again.

 

"Who's your friend?" Cathy asked, also smiling down to the kid. She loved children, and hoped for at least three of her own.

 

"Humpf... hey, kid, what's your name?" He directed the question to the mop of dark hair; instead of an answer he got a charming smile, showing a row of almost-blinding white teeth with a gap between the top two.

 

He was opening his mouth to ask again when a hand was stretched out in his direction, holding a battered brown wallet that he immediately recognized as his, followed by a whispered question, “In’ei?”

 

"Thank you, it must have slipped out.... What’s aneji?" He took the wallet from the kid's hand and quickly scanned the contents; everything seemed to be in order. Cathy, being herself, had insisted that she would pay for their snack this time, so he hadn't even noticed he'd lost it.

 

As he smiled at the kid again, stuffing the wallet back in his pocket, the boy cocked his head with a slight frown on his face. “In’ei? You in’ei?”

 

 “I’m Peter, not that …” He made a round gesture with his hand. “… in’ei?”  He repeated the word, unsure. Cathy bent a little to take a close look at the boy’s face; she smiled. “You lose your mom, kiddo?” she asked kindly.

 

The kid shook his head, right before an old man of Asiatic descent showed up and started limping toward them, relying heavily on a cane and shouting something incomprehensible. The boy shot them another smile and ran away, disappearing between the tents.

 

The old man marched by them, shooting an annoyed look at the pair, and continued shouting, "Boy! Boy! Don't steal!"

 

It was almost half an hour later before Peter understood the old man's last comment; he was getting his thoughts together to propose at the top of the Ferris wheel—just like his father to his mother—and put his hand into his pocket only to find it empty. The box with the engagement ring had vanished, as had the old man and the boy he was chasing.

 

 

Several weeks later…  back in Boston

 

Peter sighed, squeezing the middle of his nose; the headache was growing with every minute.

 

“Dad, I made my decision,” he repeated.

 

“Peter, listen to yourself. A cop? You, the math wiz? What about grad school?”

 

“Dad…” the pounding in his head increased. “I didn’t get the scholarship…”

 

“It’s not the end of the world, right? You can try to get another one, some other school.”

 

“No, Dad. I can’t; it’s too late. I’m already in.”

 

TBC