Work Text:
Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.
They run through the jungle, sharp laughter cutting through the air. The trees grow and fall and grow again in their wake. These are not the trees that they knew at home, but they are happy among them.
Different creatures stalked the lands once. Serpents slithered in the darkness, cats chuffed and roared in the distance. They have faded now, replaced by mermaids and pirates, but the memories are there, echoes in the land.
They run across the sand, leaving faint footprints in their wake. The tide washes them away. The water is always warm here, and it does not rise, does not fall; this land does not change.
They fly; Peter shows them how. The boys bring new things to him: metal knives, woven fabric, new languages. He tells them stories of ice and snow, of great tusked beasts and fanged cats that stalk the caves and windswept plains he knew.
His name was not Peter then, but he does not recall what it was, and it doesn't matter. He is Peter now; Peter Pan, laughter and panpipes and wild whoops. He still remembers knapping stone and sharpening wooden sticks, but the world in his head has grown and changed and become wild. Neverland has built itself around his thoughts, and the boys have come to join him.
They do not die. They never will. Their memories fade over time, and they become timeless creatures, without rules, without conscience, children forever, ruling this world with capricious hands and fickle minds.
Sometimes they... leave. Those boys who start to feel too much, become weary, start to wonder what comes next when Neverland is all about the moment... they slip out of being again. Sometimes their stories whisper in the night, and their silhouettes might appear in shadows, but they are gone.
It does not take long for the others to forget. They are children, after all.
And they cannot grow up. They cannot die. They cannot change, or they will cease to be.
So those who do not fade live on. And on. And on, into the perpetual days of Neverland. And chief among them is Pan, who remembers deep history and yet from whom each day slips away as he closes his eyes in sleep. There he can escape the pain of eternity, and hold on to what it means to be a child.
Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.
For they cannot.