1.01 | Out of Place

"Come away little light,
come away to the darkness;
in the shade of the night we'll come looking for you."
Come Away to the Water - Maroon 5

THERE WERE MANY ways Adi envisioned the early morning hours of her seventeenth birthday. Being magically transported to a mythical island that only existed in fairy tales was definitely not on that list. If she had known it was even an option, she would have done everything in her power to avoid that.

But fate had an irritating habit of forcing things to happen no matter how much she resisted.

Midnight in Storybrooke, Maine on a chilly night like the seventeenth of November was so harsh and definite it could have swallowed the entire street whole if not for the street lamps pushing back against the darkness. Those street lamps cast a warbled reflection of orange across the inky black waves of the Atlantic, the only source of light save for the stars.

Adeline Morris knew the stars well. From her careful perch at the end of the dock, she could easily make out the telltale pentagon of Auriga, Orion's sword and shield, the misshapen W of Cassiopeia. And then there were her favorites, the ones a little harder to spot: Lynx and Perseus and Taurus, hidden among the easily visible constellations.

Right above her, thick clouds blanketed the heavens, but they cut off abruptly where the ocean began so that she could see the celestial beings to the east.

Her stars glittered against the sea, pinpricks of light against an enormous blanket of ebony; this, it seemed, was the one thing that belonged only to her. These peaceful, lonesome nights were where she sought refuge from the chaotic mess of her life. No one could touch her here.

To Adi's right, one of the boats tied to the pier knocked against the wood. The hollow echo it produced sounded like a shout into the night that would wake the entire town. She flinched, but nothing else moved.

Shaking her head slightly, she turned her gaze back to the sky. Her breath came out in a cloud of fog and disappeared in the air above her. An offering to the stars.

Down here, she couldn't help but feel insignificant - even more than usual - but they made her feel at home, like she really belonged on Earth, beneath the constellations she knew so well.

At least, she thought she knew them well.

A little above the twin stars of Gemini was a third object. At first, Adi had disregarded it as Venus, but as she flipped open the book of star charts from the bag by her side, she realized Venus was in orbit below Earth's horizon. Meaning it shouldn't be visible.

Meaning there was something extra that didn't belong in the middle of a constellation that had been there for billions of years.

Abruptly, Adi stood, still gripping the thick, well-worn paperback in trembling hands. It wasn't a star - stars twinkled, and this thing was definitely stationary. Well, she thought that - until it flickered. In and out of existence, the object shimmered, for lack of a better word, among the rest of the sky.

"What?" she whispered aloud, furrowing her brow. As if the single word triggered it, the thing reappeared once more and stayed there, neither twinkling nor disappearing.

As Adi kept staring at it, mouth half open in equal wonder and confusion, she couldn't help but feel a strange sort of connection to it. Like her, it was out of place in a well-working system. Neither of them fit, and both stuck out because they didn't belong.

The thin film of snow that blanketed the ground shifted as she pivoted on the spot, head tilted back so she could see the rest of the sky. Everything else seemed to be in place. Adi blinked into the few flakes falling from the sky, wondering if perhaps she was simply tired, and tomorrow night that thing would be gone.

A sharp, tinny beep cut through the still air. Adi flinched a little, but relaxed when she realized it was only her phone: she had set an alarm for 12:41 in the morning, the exact time she was born. She had a slight superstition about making a wish at that time every year on her birthday, one that was especially hard to shake.

Adi spoke her wish into the cold, snowy air, and imagined the letters falling like snowflakes into the water before her. "I want to be free, and I want to belong."

Silence.

She wasn't sure what she expected. Nothing ever happened when she made her yearly wishes, and none of them had ever come true. But something about tonight felt different.

When nothing else happened, she sighed and shoved her star map book back into her bag and sat back down.

That thing was flickering again, like some kind of beacon reaching out to her.

And then, just when Adi let out a sigh of frustration, every single streetlamp flickered out. The pier and road behind it fell into a sea of darkness, with only the stars for illumination.

Adi froze. The snow began to fall harder, dotting her dark hair and clothes white as she stared around her for a source of the disruption. Nothing. Empty air and the gentle crash of waves against the pier.

Shuffling through her bag for her phone, she was surprised to come up empty handed. Not two minutes ago had she last had it. Adi ran her hand over the icy dock around her - maybe she'd set it down there - but all she found was a single gold coin.

It was a strange thing (almost as strange as the unknown sky object; UFO, she was beginning to call it), copper and tarnished with a hole punched clean through the middle and thinly carved waves all across the bottom half. The top had microscopic circles here and there, representing what she assumed were stars. And on the other side, she could just barely make out the minuscule script in the metal, a single word: never.

Adi frowned. There was no way that had been there before - she always checked the area around her for chewed up gum and trash before she sat down.

Humming curiously, she muttered, "Never," under her breath as she turned the coin around and around in her fingers.

Her mouth was the gun and the word the trigger. In an abrupt, almost robotic motion, she moved, unsure if the actions were hers or were forced upon her by an outside force. Unconsciously, she pushed the coin up to her eye so that she was looking directly through the hole in the middle, the UFO in the center of her vision. It aligned perfectly.

"Never," she breathed again, but the word was not her own.

The moment it left her lips, Adi crumpled to the ground, dark hair splayed out on the snowy dock, coin still clutched tightly in hand, the stars twinkling innocently down on her.

Then, simultaneously, both she and the object that shouldn't have been in the sky disappeared, leaving only the slight imprint of her body swirled into the snow and a half-open backpack behind.

Peter halted mid-note when a strange sensation came over him, one he hadn't felt in a long time: the feeling of someone arriving on his island. That was impossible - no one could come or go without his permission. He hadn't sent his shadow for a new boy, and he certainly hadn't allowed just anyone to come without his consent.

Troubled, he left his boys chatting happily around the fire - they didn't even notice the cessation of music, nor did they pay attention as he disappeared from camp and reappeared in the middle of the forest, following the mental map of the island laid out in his head.

It was dark, hard to make out at first, but as his eyes adjusted to the shadows, Peter was able to make it out: the crumpled form of a person covered in an odd white substance - snow? He couldn't tell, for he hadn't seen it in centuries - and dressed in the weirdest clothes he had ever seen.

He reached out to touch the person, pushing on their shoulder so that they rolled back, face up in the dirt. Upon seeing their face, Peter recoiled as if burned by their skin.

It was a girl.

Her skin was pale as ice, hair an odd shade caught between black and brown, eyelids fluttering frantically as if she sensed his presence even in her stupor. And her clothes were different than any he'd ever seen on a female: the unusual tight pants adorning her legs, black jacket zipped halfway up, revealing a shirt of the same color underneath.

She was dusted in a thin layer of snow that speckled her hair and dark clothes but was quickly melting in the humid heat of Neverland. Her left hand was clenched tightly around something.

Though still and comatose, Peter remained wary of the girl. No one entered his island without his agreement, and she was no exception. There had to be something different about her.

He dug further into his mental map, looked deeper into the outline of the body in front of him, and was stunned he'd missed it before. Blatantly, she radiated of magic. The dark-haired girl lying helplessly at his feet was full of the stuff; it pulsed intensely through her veins like a wildfire.

Peter leaned down, though her presence was unwanted and her skin cold as ice, and picked her up like a child.

He appeared back in camp with her in his arms, and was glad to see that the majority of the boys had already gone off to bed in their respective tree huts; only Felix remained. His hood was pulled down, pooling around his shoulders, and he stared around in confusion when he heard the rush of wind that signaled Peter's return.

An expression of equal perplexity and dismay flitted across the second-in-command's angular face as he rose from his perch on a log and stepped beside Peter.

The girl fidgeted restlessly, like she could sense the proximity of the two who held the most power on the entire island and was nervous to be powerless in front of them.

"What the hell?" Felix managed, glancing from Peter's face to hers and back again. "When did you send for her?"

Peter shook his head. "I didn't. She got here on her own."

Felix responded while reaching for her left hand, which was still clenched into a fist and rested on her stomach. "Is that even possible?" he questioned, prying open her fingers to reveal a rusted copper coin with a hole through the center. Waves were engraved into one side with a fine knife, while the other displayed a single word. "Never," he read, furrowing his brow in confusion. Peter, on the other hand, paled like he was going to be sick.

"So that's how she did it," Peter murmured, astonished, as he set the girl down in the space between Felix and himself and took the coin. She stilled the moment she was out of his grip. "The question is, how did it come into her possession?"

Though he was slightly afraid to ask, Felix did anyway. "Peter, what is that?"

Peter only shook his head as his eyes traced the outline of the coin. Then he blinked, drawing himself from his daze. "Before I became as powerful as I am now, I would travel between realms with this. Once I learned enough to do it on my own, it disappeared - I never knew what happened to it. I just want to know how she has it."

"Does she have magic?"

"An arsenal," Peter confirmed, not taking his eyes off of the metal. "I don't know what world she's from, but I do believe she is powerful enough to summon it and use it to her advantage. Its magic works no matter what realm the user is in, as long as they hold their own magic. I think she - " He didn't get to finish his sentence.

"If you wanted to know, you could've just asked," a sudden voice muttered. Both boys looked down, mentally cursing for not realizing that their guest had risen. She sat calmly on the dirt, watching their conversation as if it were a mildly interesting television program. Then she hauled herself up and crossed her arms over her chest.

Now that she was awake, the girl held herself with a surprising air of composure Peter was impressed she even had the will to summon. But he didn't miss the nervous flitting of her icy blue eyes back and forth between him and Felix and the chaotic camp and the foreign place she was so suddenly thrust into.

She leaned heavily on her right leg so her entire body curved and her back arched in a slight yet uncomfortable slouch. As she spoke, she shifted her weight from left to right and back again, never once standing up straight.

Despite her suspicion, her chin still rose and she leveled Peter with a cold stare. It was different in a refreshing way. Every boy he'd brought to Neverland either cried or ran or panicked.

"Where the hell am I?" she demanded, looking between the two with raised eyebrows. A wild determination flickered in the abrupt tensing of her muscles.

Peter and Felix shared a glance and the former locked eyes with her, a wry grin twitching at his mouth as he spoke. "Neverland."

A pause. Her blue gaze flickered from Peter to Felix and back, and then she let out a short laugh. "You're kidding, right?" If there was humor to the situation, she failed to see it. When neither of them said anything, her eyes widened. "Please tell me you're joking."

"Afraid not," Peter sighed dramatically. "I'm Pan. Peter Pan. This is Felix."

"I - what?" she blinked, running a hand through her hair and shaking her head. "Okay, you're definitely not being serous right now."

Pursing his lips, Peter fixed her with a hard glare. "I assure you, we are. What's your name?"

Her mouth half opened while she hesitated, like she was trying to decide if she should trust them with something so valuable. "Adi Morris. Well, Adeline, actually, but I don't go by that."

Something about the way she spoke, the way she held herself struck a chord of familiarity inside Peter. The name Adeline, however, wasn't one he knew, so he dismissed the notion.

"Alright, Adeline, where are you from?"

Perhaps starting with the basic questions would make her calm down a little. Lots of the new boys tended to feel more comfortable once they became acquainted with each other. But Peter hadn't really spoken to a girl as an equal in forever - and this one was especially unpredictable. Factor in her magic and he had the equivalent to a bomb in front of him.

"Uh...Maine?" Adeline phrased it like a question, uncertain. Strange. Usually people were quite sure about where they came from.

Peter tilted his head to the side. "Where?"

"Storybrooke, Maine? America? Earth?"

"Oh - the Land Without Magic."

"Are you implying that there's...magic...everywhere else except Earth?" She shifted her weight to her left, baffled.

Peter shrugged offhandedly. "Essentially, yes."

The majority of his boys had come from magic-bearing realms, usually the Enchanted Forest. But the few from the Land Without Magic all had the same preconception about Peter Pan: he was a simple fairy tale, and when they wished for his shadow to take them away, they failed to realize they were actually calling his real shadow to do so. Quite the shock for them to see the truth, but it didn't take them long to warm up to the island. Young boys have the tendency to believe anything.

Adeline, however, wasn't a young boy, and looked paler than before, like she was going to be ill.

"So...you're Peter Pan. That's Felix. I'm in a place with magic."

"Yes," Felix replied. Though he barely spoke, he watched the two interact with a vague interest.

She continued as if she hadn't actually registered his confirmation. "But you're a fairy tale. You're supposed to be some eternally young nine-year-old in green tights and a hat that helps people when they're crushed by responsibility, or whatever."

"Sorry to disappoint," Peter snorted. "Somehow I find it hard to believe you actually wanted a nine-year-old to save you."

At his last two words, Adeline's head snapped up like she'd been shocked. "I don't need anyone to save me, Peter Pan," she spat his poisonous name in his face. "And I didn't ask to be here."

"No, you didn't. Not directly, at least. But you internally wanted it enough or you wouldn't be here in the first place. You know how you got here? Magic. If you don't want to believe in it, so be it. But it's what runs this place, and you're going to have quite a hard time here if you refuse to accept that."

"I'm sorry," Adeline glared at him. "You seem to be under the impression that I'm going to be staying. What the hell makes you think that? I woke up less than five minutes ago, and I've already managed to start yelling at you. Bad omen, if you ask me."

Peter laughed. "You of all people managed to summon a magical coin in a non-magical world, and then used it to transport yourself here. Of all the realms available to you, you ended up in Neverland. There's something important about you, Adeline Morris, and I intend to find out what."

"Who cares? If I leave, it won't be your problem anymore. Your perfect little island will go back to the insane Lord of the Flies place it probably is during the day. You don't need me."

Adeline lunged forward toward where she knew the coin that had brought her to Neverland was: in Peter's left hand. She was fast, but he was faster.

At her sudden movement, he disappeared and reappeared behind her so she fell on empty air with a grunt of surprise. She whirled around, breathing hard, to see Peter holding the coin between his first and middle fingers. He winked, shot her a mischievous smirk, and it vanished.

"Whoops," Peter feigned sympathy. "Looks like you're stuck here."

"You - " It seemed to occur to Adeline that her frustration was only fueling him. She let out a slow, steady exhale and let her eyes flutter shut. Silence. Then she opened her eyes and, though they were blazing like the cobalt inside of a flame, her voice was much more controlled. "I don't know what you think you have to gain from me being here, but I doubt it will be much."

"Actually, love, you were the one who asked to be somewhere else."

It was a guess. It was what most of the boys wished for - freedom from their mundane, boring lives surrounded by irritating adults demanding that they grow up and stop acting so childish. Peter could only guess she was the same.

Apparently, she was.

"So what if I did?"

Peter's face broke out into an easy smile. "I think you'll fit perfectly here. Just give it a chance. Not like you have much choice."

Adeline stiffened. "Fine," she said through gritted teeth, like the word itself was difficult to choke out. "But if I were you, I wouldn't expect much."

Already, Peter could tell that this girl wasn't like the others from the Land Without Magic. No one had ever been able to hold their own against him for so long, much less minutes after regaining consciousness in an unfamiliar place.

Unless, of course, she wasn't from Earth at all. There were many ways to find out, and far worse games to play.

"Oh, trust me. I am."

Your move, Adeline.

Of all the interesting places in Storybrooke, Henry Mills quite liked the simplicity of the ocean. He, of course, couldn't swim in it in the chilly onset of winter, but he could stand at the edge of the dock and pretend summer was coming soon.

Summer meant freedom. Henry really wanted freedom.

Not that he could complain. He was in a town where he knew every citizen, where said citizens were fairy tales from the Enchanted Forest. They didn't belong on Earth - he was the only one who did. Henry thought it was the coolest thing ever. Really. Ever.

It had snowed last night. Not a lot, but enough to delay the start of school and give him time to take a walk around Storybrooke before he had to go to class.

Henry's sneaker-clad feet slapped against the icy concrete as he made his way down the street, steaming Styrofoam cup of hot chocolate threatening to spill over with every step. A few of the marshmallows had dissolved already, but he had backups: the seven-year-old had shoved a couple extra into his pocket for when the time came that he ran out.

His mother called him a smart kid. He was just prepared.

A few people called out greetings to him as he walked by, and he returned with a couple of waves. Being the mayor's son meant everyone recognized him, and Henry wasn't entirely sure if that was a good thing or not.

When he reached the end of the dock, Henry discovered something rather curious. Setting his cocoa down in the half inch of snow, he picked up the ownerless bag sitting alone on the pier. Beneath his feet was a strange disturbance in the slush, but nothing more than that.

Henry raised his head up to check if anyone was nearby. Clear.

Carefully, like the cloth was made of glass, he rifled through it: a book about space, a half-empty water bottle, some gum, a cracked phone, a couple pens, a set of keys.

For a moment, Henry paused, debating, and then opted to pick up the keys by the violet lanyard they were strung on. Amid three differently shaped keys and a keychain shaped like a flower, he found a thin red wallet.

Part of him felt guilty, but the other half consoled him by reminding him that he would be able to find the owner a lot easier this way. Besides, someone could steal their stuff - not that a bunch of empty granola bar wrappers would do a thief much good.

The ID tucked into the clear plastic sleeve inside the wallet displayed a face he knew well: Adi Morris. The girl he had never heard speak, but whenever he passed her, he swore the air grew warmer. Like her skin was a furnace. Her dark hair was much shorter in the photo, wide smile on her face, pale skin almost glowing against the flash.

Henry knew Adi never went anywhere without her bag - wherever he happened to see her, it was over her shoulder, one hand clutching the strap like it was the very thing that grounded her to the earth.

She wouldn't have just left it.

Then Henry went to look at the sky. It was relatively clear to the east, where the sun had risen but was hazy through a thin layer of clouds that settled low on the horizon, and the rest of the heavens were pale blue.

That was when he saw it: a brightly glowing object, the only star left out of millions, twinkling innocently at Henry as he stood there with the beige backpack of a missing girl clutched in hand. It hit him suddenly, like a punch to the stomach - Adi was gone. Henry wasn't entirely sure where, but she was out, maybe somewhere she could be her old self from the Once Upon a Time book. Before the curse hit. Before her life was ripped away from her.

Not like she had a particularly exciting one in the Enchanted Forest.

Perhaps this was Adi's chance to start over, away from all she knew. Henry didn't know much about her, but based on her pre-curse life in the Enchanted Forest and the few things he was aware of, she needed to be somewhere else. Somewhere away from his mother.

Henry slung her bag over his shoulder and didn't look back at the object twinkling in the sky as he began the walk toward school.

It didn't look back either, for it had disappeared.

sorry, bit of a boring beginning but stuff has to happen so i can set certain things up. i'm really excited for this bc i love adi so much

also: if you're confused at all, this is in third person, but the point of view shifts a few times. so when adi is speaking, she's adi and pan is pan. but when pan is speaking, she's adeline and he's peter. just a lil fyi in case you didn't pick up on that