Chapter Text
“Second star to the right, and straight on till morning.”
Luke Hemmings was fifteen years old, and he was tired of living by his parents’ rules.
Tired of the strict schedules pinned to the refrigerator door. Tired of the quiet expectations that seemed to follow him from room to room like invisible shadows. Tired of the way every adult glance felt like a silent inspection, as if each step he took had to be measured, careful, perfect.
He didn’t understand why the weight of it all seemed to fall only on him, his brothers had never carried it. They were allowed to make mistakes, to change their minds, to improvise their way through life like everyone else. They laughed loudly, lived freely, and if they stumbled, it was simply part of growing up.
But Luke didn’t get that luxury. Luke had to be the example, the good son, the one who never failed, the one who didn’t ask questions.
The irony, of course, was that none of them were actually like Luke at all. They were different from him in every possible way, yet somehow they possessed something he didn’t: a clear future. A stable job waiting somewhere ahead. A life that looked solid, sensible, and already mapped out.
Luke, on the other hand, had nothing but questions.
Questions that stretched long into the night when the house finally went quiet. Questions that buzzed in the back of his mind like restless insects. Questions about who he was supposed to become.
And beneath all of them, a single feeling he couldn’t shake:
The quiet, suffocating sense that he was trapped in a place that no longer felt like home.
He dreamed of leaving.
Of running far away from that house, from that name, from the version of himself everyone else seemed so determined to shape. Sometimes he imagined disappearing completely—before he woke up one morning and found himself staring at a stranger in the mirror, before he became someone he hated.
But wishes are strange things.
Some of them should be thought through more carefully, because once you say them out loud—or even worse, once you think them with enough desperation—there’s no taking them back.
Neverland is not just a place. It’s a dangerous promise.
A world where growing up hurts…but refusing to grow up costs even more.
And once you arrive there—nothing is ever the same again.