I was beginning to actually enjoy my life again. I'd managed to convince Lily to stay for exactly forty-five days, which would be about three days on Neverland if Pan didn't change the timeline. Hopefully he wouldn't; he rarely did anyway, and now that there was an actual threat to the island it was even more unlikely.

Or at least, that was what I told her.

There was something Lily didn't seem to entirely grasp, and that was that Pan was losing power. For whatever reason, she seemed to assume that he stayed at the same level of power even while he was dying, but if that were the case (which I now knew for sure that it wasn't), she wouldn't have been able to hide from him so easily. I decided against telling her that in her current emotional state, though, because it was very possible that if I did, she would go back as soon as she deemed herself able, and she wasn't really capable of deeming herself able anymore-- never had been.

No, Lily needed to stay with me. Even in the first few days, there was improvement. Within the first week, she'd become good friends with Tommy, which I found a little strange-- he tended to shy away from people from what I could tell, but he bought the "siblings" lie easily enough so I supposed that it didn't matter much. By the end of her second week in Camelot, she was eating regularly again. By the third, she was sleeping through the night.

Something had triggered her nightmares again. Even she didn't know what it was, but I knew that it had something to do with Rosalie and Uriel, the personality that took over when the girl next to me woke up in the middle of the night, whimpering and so terrified that she didn't know her own name. Luckily, those nights faded with the nightmares; Uriel wasn't as easy to deal with as the others.

The only thing that didn't improve (seemed to worsen, actually) was Lily's control over the... others. The smallest thing could set her off, could bring out those other sides of her. If I spoke too loudly or a floorboard creaked at night, when everyone was supposed to be asleep, she'd curl into herself as Uriel, murmuring apologies for misgivings she hadn't committed. If she got too irritated (or, god forbid, homesick), Rosalie would rear her head, fiery and dangerous. It was all I could do to keep her calm and happy; fixing them altogether was impossible, especially since when she switched back, she had no memory of anything happening.

So yeah, when the nightmares stopped, I was glad. But the switches- when they happened -were far, far worse.

I'd read something about this once, from one of the books Pan got me from the land without magic. Dissociative Personality Disorder or something like that. There was no cure, not without serious magic that I wasn't capable of. Lily's issue wasn't psychological; mostly, it was mystical. Something I couldn't help for the life of me.

That's not even to mention my own nightmares, but those didn't even compare in the grand scheme of things (though sometimes I still woke up paralyzed from fear) because she needed my help so badly. When she would shake me awake at night (I would already be awake, my eyes burning, blistering from a pain long since past), I talked her down quietly the way I would for the younger boys when they woke up from nightmares or homesickness. I learned what I could about Uriel when she was calm enough to talk at night (a scream of agony stuck in my throat) and bonded with Rosalie when she appeared, which was pretty often in the beginning. Rosalie reminded me of myself before Neverland (before the echo of my brother's comforting words bounced poisonously in my ear), before I met Peter. Naturally, that brought back old memories long-since buried (the acrid smell of that burning liquid, the pain of my skin bubbling, tearing) and not necessarily good. I wanted to help her, but without a leader, I'd never been much good.

I was too broken to help.

There was something comforting in watching Felix work. The orphanage we were staying in had started falling apart over the years, and he seemed dead set on making it livable again. Holes in the roof? Patch them up. Rotten beams? Replace them. Termites? Lily, you can do something about that, right? Absolutely.

I couldn't even begin to say why it was so nice to just sit there and watch someone else do boring tasks. Maybe, in a sense, it was a little like watching him back home on Neverland. No matter the environment, Felix moved the same, acted the same, spoke the same.

That other boy, Tommy, was pretty nice as well. And he was startlingly accepting of my unconventional attitudes toward certain things. He asked once why I didn't wear skirts and when I told him that they were hard to move in, he just chuckled and agreed and that was that. We actually grew to be good friends very quickly. Felix voiced his concerns at one point that Tommy might be weirded out by my switches (once he explained what was happening with those, I shared those concerns), but from what Felix told me, he handled it surprisingly well. Once he was told that it was "a magic ailment that causes certain aspects of her personality to manifest as totally separate people," he apparently took the switches in stride. Not that I would know, since I lacked any memory of them actually occurring, but I knew that Felix wouldn't lie.

Little by little, Felix started opening up to me. He told me that he lived here, in this orphanage, for a month or two before Pan got to him, trying to recover from some serious wounds he'd gotten at home. He wanted to restore it because his eyes had been damaged and he didn't know what it looked like when he stayed there. He wanted to restore it to the way it probably was. He wouldn't tell me what the wounds were or who caused them or how bad they were. The one time I asked, his whole face darkened with a hatred that looked foreign on his face.

I didn't ask again.

As for Uriel, Rosalie, and Pietro, they were... loud. Well, Rose was loud and Uriel was whiny, but still. I couldn't seem to keep them quiet, no matter how hard I tried. They haunted my every waking moment and even the occasional dream. Two weeks after I came to Camelot, I was sitting on the floor watching Felix fix a hole in the floor when they started pestering me.

You know you're going to have to go back eventually, right?

Shut up Rose, I thought. You're the one that hated him in the first place.

Of course I hate him. He hurt Pietro. Tell her, Uri.

Um... I don't want to take sides... I don't want either of you to, um, get mad at me.

Well, you're useless.

Sorry, Rosalie.

I shook my head in a futile effort to clear it, but they kept muttering away in my head. I tried my best to ignore it. Tommy walked out holding a plate with enough bread and cheese for everyone to have breakfast. Felix set down the hammer and we all took a piece. I rubbed my temples as I chewed, feeling the beginnings of a headache coming on from the other people currently camped out up there.

Tommy looked at me with pity in his eyes and I couldn't even find the spare energy to be annoyed. I just took a bite and avoided everyone's eyes.

"You said that this was a magical problem?" Tommy asked out of the blue.

I didn't respond, but Felix did. "Yes. I think it's a side effect of magically induced amnesia and trauma, but we aren't sure. Why?"

"I may know someone who could help, if you like," Tommy offered. "At the very least, she could probably identify the problem for you."

That caught my attention. "Really? You would do that for me?"

That could make it easier for me to go home, I thought. I could go HOME.

"Of course. And Felix is welcome too, naturally."

I looked at Felix, who seemed just as surprised as I did. "Who is this woman?"

"The Lady Thitis. We work together," Tommy said.

The look on Felix's face was... hard to identify. I had never seen that expression before on him: panic. "I, um... I don't think I should go."

Tommy and I looked at each other in shock. Of all the reactions he could have had, that one might have been the one either of us expected the least.

"Do you have a past?" Tommy asked, not unkindly. "Has she done something to offend you, or you her?"

Felix shook his head quickly. "No, nothing like that. I just... Thitis knows my family."

And just like that, the pieces fell into place. Felix's family, who had hurt him. Who had cast him aside for reasons that he refused to specify. Who had hurt him so deeply that Pan had come for him first, of all of the lost children in all the realms.

Had this Thitis person known Felix? And how was she still alive after all these years? Felix said to me once that he'd been on Neverland for six hundred and fifty years at least. She must have been important to history in some way; if she knew Felix's family, did that mean that he was also somehow important to history, or that someone he was related to was?

"The Lady would never tell anyone who you are, if that's what you're worried about," Tommy says confidently. "We place the utmost priority on discretion."

Felix still looked mildly worried, but he agreed to go. Once we finished breakfast, we followed Tommy outside and down an unfamiliar path into a forest. He stopped at a tree and touched one of the knots on the trunk. A passageway opened and a stairway led down into darkness. He turned to us with a reassuring glance.

"It's a bit creepy, but we aren't far," he said before walking down the steps and disappearing into the darkness.

I looked at Felix. "I'm not the only one that's wondering what Tommy does for a living that requires secret passageways in the middle of a forest right?"

Felix shook his head stiffly. He was nervous, that much I could tell. This Thitis woman was scaring the crap out of him and I wasn't exactly sure how to make it better. I asked the others if they had any ideas, because if there was one thing we were united in, it was our affection for Felix.

Honestly, I couldn't help you there.

I decided to just do this my way. I grabbed Felix's elbow and forced his hand to his side, looping my arm under his.

He looked at me strangely. "What are you doing?"

I tossed my hair dramatically. "A man should offer a well bred lady his arm when descending staircases, Felix."

"Yeah, okay," he said, rolling his eyes with a little of his normal good humor. "I don't see any well bred ladies around, but I guess you'll do."

I smacked his arm playfully, but didn't retort as we walked down the stairs. The passageway closed behind us, plunging the narrow corridor into total darkness.

Let me repeat that.

Narrow corridor.

Total darkness.

The last thing I remembered was Uriel freaking out and screaming inside my head and the next thing I knew Felix was carrying me into a well-lit room that looked for all the world like a cave, murmuring comforting words into my ear.

"Wh'appened?" I muttered. "Lemme down, Felix."

"Sure." He set me down immediately.

I wobbled a bit, and he held his arm out to me in the same way as earlier. I took it gratefully. "Did Uriel make an appearance?" I asked bitterly.

Felix nodded with a small smile. "It's okay, sweetheart. I don't mind."

Tommy cleared his throat. "Alright you two, they're ready for you." He grinned wryly. "Unless you need a moment...?"

What could he... Felix and I looked at each other in confusion and then horror as the meaning behind his words sunk in. We sprung apart quickly.

"No!"

"Ew, what?"

Tommy let out a noise that sounded suspiciously similar to a giggle. "Please. You didn't expect me to believe that you two were siblings, the way you act, did you?"

"I-- Well-- She-- No," Felix spluttered unhelpfully.

"We're not related, no," I said, flushing a deep red, "But just... No. He really is like my brother."

Felix looked even redder than me in the torchlight. "Can we just go inside and forget that this conversation ever happened? Please? For the sake of all of our sanity?"

There was something other than amusement behind Tommy's gaze when he nodded. If I didn't know any better I would have thought it was relief, but it was gone too quickly for me to be sure. Interesting, but something to put on the backburner for the moment.

He opened the door to reveal a large table and several adults. I was immediately uneasy at the way they were already looking at us, as if they'd been staring at the door, expecting us. There were two men and three women, all dressed in similar dark cloaks. One of the men was dark-skinned and built, like a warrior or a soldier. The other was lighter in skin tone and much leaner, but by no means weak. Both had swords at their sides and severe looks on their faces. I disliked them immediately for their obvious... adultness. The women were all relatively light-skinned and of similar height. They seemed to be young, for adults; maybe mid-twenties or early thirties. Two of them, the one in the center and the one on her right, had the same looks on their faces as the men. But the last one smiled at us.

Tommy knelt to the woman in the middle respectfully. "These are the ones I told you about, my lady."

The woman snorted. "Tom, what have I told you about propriety? Get your ass up off that floor, it's filthy."

And all at once, the tension broke. The dark-skinned man chuckled and placed his hand on her shoulder. "Gwen, you really should get that mouth of yours under control."

"And Tom should get the stick out of his ass. We all have flaws, my love. Deal with it."

I glanced over at Felix, whose jaw was hanging open. I reached up on my toes and waved my hand in his face (being short really sucked, especially since Felix easily cleared six feet and I was a measly four foot eleven). I gripped his shoulder as much for balance as to snap him out of it. "Hey. You good?"

I heard cooing from the other people. Yeah, the men too. I looked back at them sharply. "Could you not?"

Tommy stared at me in awe and horror. "Lily, do you know who--"

"I couldn't give less of a fuck. I'm short, not a baby." Strangely, Felix seemed to tense even further at my words. The others didn't seem to react at all, though. In fact, the cooing got worse.

"She's adorable!" the foul-mouthed woman squealed. "Lance, can we keep her? She's so young, she has to have parents somewhere. Do you think they would let us keep her?"

The other woman was just as entranced by my apparent, ugh, cuteness. Jesus christ. The older woman and the leaner man were silent, but they had serious shit-eating grins on their faces.

I let go of Felix and sent the group a withering look. "You absolutely may not keep me. I may not have parents, but I'm not up for grabs. What you can do is tell me who you are and why the hell my brother seems to know you."

They seemed a bit surprised by that. The dark skinned man looked back and forth between Felix and me: Felix in all his height and light hair and eyes and tiny little me with dark eyes and black hair. "You two are--"

"Adopted," I muttered. A general Oh okay murmur floated around the room.

"Well," the woman who wanted to keep me stood up. By the way she held herself, I could tell she was royalty even before she said anything. "My name is Guinevere, queen of Camelot. This is Sir Lancelot and Sir Kay of the Round Table. These lovely ladies are the Lady Thitis and the Lady Glitonea, sisters of the sorceress Morgan leFey. And your name, adorable orphan?"

"Lily," I snapped. "But you haven't answered my question. Why is Felix so afraid of you?"

Guinevere lowered the hood on her cloak. "I haven't the slightest-- wait. Did you say Felix?"

"Yeah, I--" Felix gripped my arm tightly, almost to the point of pain.

"Come into the light, you two," Guinevere ordered, seeming like a totally different person than she had a second ago. "Let me see you clearly.

The room was thick with tension again. I looked at Felix, who was scared stiff, and put my hand over where his was on my arm. He looked at me and took a breath. We walked forward together, into a part of the room where the torchlight shone brightly. I blinked at the sudden light change, and wasn't able to see who gasped. It was definitely more than one person, at least one man and one woman.

"F--Felix?" someone whispered in shock.

Once my eyes adjusted, I could see everyone's faces clearly. The only people that weren't surprised seemed to be the sisters. They kept their faces carefully void of all expression. Lancelot in particular, though, and the other knight-- Kay, was it? --looked as surprised as they did ashamed.

"Felix, is that really you?" Kay reached out his hand.

Felix flinched away in the same way that Michael used to when Pan was particularly angry with him. Kay immediately reeled back as if he'd been burned, but I'd had enough. I drew my knife and crouched in front of Felix protectively. "What the hell did you do to him?"

Guinevere stepped toward me with her hands out in a placating gesture, but I bared my teeth in a feral snarl. "Back off."

She did as she was told immediately, the magic in the words forcing her to comply. "Felix, what--"

"Shut up." She did so. "Now sit down." She did so, without complaint.

I looked at Felix, who looked a fraction less terrified. "Say the word and we're out of here, and damn Rose and Uri."

Felix didn't say a thing. Tommy, on the other hand, looked even more terrified than him. "Lily, I didn't know that Felix was that Felix."

I rolled my eyes and turned to look at him. "Oh, don't you start with me. You knew exactly what we were getting into the second Felix freaked out at breakfast."

He had the decency to look ashamed. "Okay, true, but I didn't think it would be--"

"Shut up." He did as he was told. I looked at the rest of them. "I'm going to have a word with him. Maybe we'll be back, maybe we won't. That depends on him. Understood?"

Everyone in the room nodded. Those sisters, though, looked more thoughtful than surprised, as if they had expected my powers. The feeling was mutual. They practically oozed magic power.

I didn't dwell on it, more focused on getting Felix out of there. In a puff of dark blue smoke, we were in the forest again. Felix's breathing was shallow, but regular. I sat us down on the ground and waited for him to calm down. When it became clear that that would be harder than I thought, I pulled my pipes out of my belt.

I peered into his eyes intently. "Do you want my help, Felix?"

When he nodded, I thought for a moment before putting the pipes to my lips. By the time I was finished, Felix had visibly relaxed, but was by no means okay. At least he was capable of coherent speech now, though.

"You want to know what all that was about, right?" he asked quietly.

I shook my head. "If you don't want to talk, I don't want to hear it. I meant what I said. I'll find another way of dealing with the switches. You're my top priority."