Peter awoke suddenly. Something was pinching his ear and he swatted at it. His hand connected with something sharp and a flash of light blinded him before everything went dark. He looked around.
Where am I? What am I doing here? He thought, trying to make sense of the dark, the distant noise, the smell. After a few moments he remembered. He was still in the Grey World, he still needed to find his shadow.
After that dog had scared him away from the house he had wandered along the streets, asking people he passed if they had seen his shadow. No one had been very helpful. Either they ignored him or shouted rude things at him. One man had even hit him with his walking stick. He had arrived at a huge stone fortress with men dressed in red standing outside of it. He tried to talk to them, but they wouldn't answer, wouldn't even move. He had marveled that anyone could stand in one place for so long. It seemed like torture.
Finally, worn out from walking, he had collapsed on some large black bags in an alley. They were surprisingly comfortable, although the smell was awful, and soon he had fallen asleep.
Now it was dark and cold and that thing was pinching his ear again. He batted it away.
"Ugh! Would you stop doing that?" Rang out a metallic voice.
Peter blinked rapidly until his eyes adjusted to the flying robotic fairy in front of his face.
"Tink? What are you doing here?"
"What kind of response is that?" The fairy squeaked through her tiny speaker. "I thought you'd be happy to see me. Overjoyed, actually. I was imagining tears of gratitude running down your face..."
"You followed me?"
"Of course! And let me tell you, it was not easy. You left bits of Essentia all over that house with the dog, and I almost got caught by some big, ugly girl."
"Tink, you don't need to worry about me."
"Well, I'm not just going to let you get lost out here!"
"I know my way back."
"Oh, sure. You don't even know where you are right now."
"I'm in an alley."
"Ugh. Boys. Never think they need any help."
The bright light flashed out again as the fairy scanned the surroundings. Peter squeezed his eyes shut, but the momentary brilliance still caused white spots in his vision.
"I was going to go back to Neverland as soon as I found my shadow," Peter grumbled.
For once, the tiny robot didn't respond with anger or sarcasm.
"You lost your shadow?"
"Yeah. Did you think I came up here for fun?"
"But without your shadow you can't play! We'll lose everything!"
"I know, Tink."
At that moment, Peter's pocket started to vibrate. He pulled out the small, circular contraption that had suddenly picked up on his shadow's signal.
"Good news, Tink. My tracker has finally started working again."
"Great. Because this place is giving me the creeps."
"You're not even here."
"Don't insult me. I can see everything. It's almost the same as being there with you."
Peter shook his head and started in the direction his tracker was taking him. Tink followed closely behind him, often flying into his back whenever he stopped. After half an hour of listening to Tink ramble on about how dull Neverland had been without him, he came to a building that seemed vaguely familiar. He started to go up the front stairs, but a black and white cat jumped in front of him, hissing menacingly. It was a small animal that probably couldn't do much damage, but Peter was still wary.
"Hey Tink, do you think you could distract this thing for a little bit?"
"Sure, just use the fairy as bait," she whined, but even as she said it, she wove back and forth in front of the cat, intermittently shining her light around the stairs. The cat jumped at Tink but missed, then went to paw at the light.
"Thanks, Tink, I'll meet you back here in a few minutes."
"If I lose a wing, the repairs are coming out of your reserves."
Peter circled around the building and looked up. Light was spilling out of an open window on the third floor, and according to his tracker, his shadow was in there. There were enough protruding ledges that he could easily climb up. He reached the open window and quietly crawled through into an open room that smelled like paint. It seemed to be a nice place - there was a large couch and a beautiful green rug that Peter was tempted to take with him, but there were a few cracks in the walls and some of the floorboards needed repair. He heard a soft voice coming from another room. He crept around the corner and stopped abruptly when he saw her.
She was kneeling next to a broken ladder, her hands clasped together in her lap. She was staring intently at a splotch of paint on the wall. Peter almost shouted for joy that he'd found the girl from this morning, but stopped himself when she started talking.
"If only you hadn't stayed late at work, then maybe this wouldn't have happened," the girl murmured. "You always think you're doing what's best for other people, but the people you love always get hurt in the end."
Peter couldn't figure out who she was talking to. He thought perhaps there was an invisible person in the room. Nibs had made himself a chameleon suit that would assimilate to his surroundings, making him nearly invisible, but it would be hard for someone to blend into these drab walls. Finally, he concluded that she must be talking to herself, which he thought was strange, but sometimes Curly did that when he was trying to figure something out.
"Just pull yourself together. It will be fine," she said resolutely, wrapping her arms around herself. "She's not dead. She's going to wake up, and you won't be alone." Then the girl began to shake. "But what if she never wakes up?"
Tears began streaming down her cheeks, and Peter had an unfamiliar urge to embrace her, to run his fingers through her messy hair and catch her tears. He studied her for a moment. Her light brown hair was piled on top of her head, but several loose strands fell around her face and neck. Her lips, even though she was crying, reminded him of the moment just before someone breaks into a laugh.
Her sobs grew more intense and great shudders rippled through her body. Tentatively, he stepped forward.
"Girl, why are you crying?"
Her head snapped up and she screamed. In a moment she was on her feet and something was being hurled at his head. Then everything went black.