「 ʙᴀʀ ᴋᴇᴇᴘ. 」

Effie laughed meekly at Leo’s joke, gaze remaining on the ground as she watched the glass being cleaned up. She knew she was more distracted than usual and that made her want to apologize to Leo. But in return, she knew her apologies would be brushed away.

“Sor– I can always buy new ones if you need it. That isn’t the first I’ve ruined.”

“Come off it, broken glass happens, especially in a pub. Nothing we’re about to fall out over.” With the worst of it cleaned up, he stood straight and emptied the dustpan into the bin, placing it back under the bar where he got it. Bartending was easy once you knew what you were doing, but everyone had to start somewhere. There was no shame in needing more time to get used to it. 

“You seem a little distracted tonight, is everything okay?”

Mary welcomed the arm around her, mirroring the gesture with a hand taking it’s supportive spot on his back. Remembering what the loss of his father had done to the man beside her. Last time she saw her mother she was still a kid stealing her sister away in a carrier, and last she heard of her father he was only coming out of jail to head back in same as always. If either of them turned up dead, she doubted she’d feel anything close to what Leo did for Jerry.

He had been the only adult in her life who made it feel like the world made sense, someone she could look up to instead of down or across at. It was a feeling she never had again. Still it isn’t half what Leo had gone through. The moment Jerry left the world, it was like it tilted itself onto another axis and never really went back to the way it was. 

At least Dante would be in good company. 

“He’s a good man.” 

“He was.” Leo concurred, still to this day he was the best he had ever known. The thing that pained him the most was that he had only realised that once he was gone. Wasn’t that how it always went?

“Been too long since I’ve been here.” He admitted aloud to her, sure she would know nonetheless that it had been running through his mind. Mary just had a way of knowing what he was thinking even when he refused to share it. 

“So I sampled the cafe food, I’d say take a hard pass on that.” It was on the few true stereotypes in the world. She had been to at least ten hospitals in England and enough around Europe on vacations with her family that one thing remained the same throughout: hospital food really was as bland as the jokes made it out to be. “So I went and got enough takeaway to feed this small army. Who’s going to help me unload the car?” 

“I’ll give you a hand with it.” Leo offered, not in the slightest surprised by the gesture. It was Thea all over -- kind and thoughtful. 

“Think this lot might be singlehandedly keeping Ali’s in business with the amount of kebabs they go through.” Seeing them slobbering over one while drunk at the Sheep was a regular enough sight for him. 

Head reeling with rapid-fire thoughts and worries, there was no surprise that the brunette was staring off in space behind the counter, absentmindedly cleaning the same glass that she’d been cleaning for the past fifteen minutes. At the sound of someone trying to grab her attention ( maybe it wasn’t even hers they were trying to grab ), Effie flinched as the glass slipped from her fingers, shattering against the ground. 

Her cheeks flared red as she bent down to pick up the shards, internally scolding herself as she did so. “S–Sorry.”

“Oh, careful, careful.” Leo said as he stepped in and shooed Effie away from the glass decorating the floor. Tea towel in hand, he tossed the bigger pieces into it and wrapped them up before using the dustpan and brush for the smaller bits that were more likely to stick in his foot when he came down barefoot of a morning. 

Effie was without a doubt the least naturally apt for bartending bartender he had employed and yet he found himself feeling unmistakably proud every time he seen her behind the bar. More than anything, she tried. 

“Luckily for us, we have dozens of glasses. Might need them if you keep on like this.”

Di had done her very best to hold it together in the face of the sudden chaos. She’d forced warm smiles the the clumps of Lost Boys who kept milling about, and she’d bought about every sweet that the gift shop had had to offer to get a smile out of her son. Because that was all she could seem to do, and she felt so helpless…

When Leo spoke, she knew his words were true. That car bomb wasn’t a punctuation, it was an ellipsis. This wasn’t the end, there was more to come, and the thought of her son being dragged under the wheels of it…

Dianna’s hands flew up to cover her face, her body keening forward to that her elbows were resting on her knees, a sharp sob finally finding it’s way to escape her mouth.

When he spoke he knew he had said the wrong thing, a perpetual issue of his that he often spoke without thinking. Or did without entertaining the possible consequences. He never felt worse than when he saw Di cry, decades had come and gone since the first time he witnessed it and it still struck him as deeply to this day. 

Moving closer, he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and just held her as she cried. 

“Just give me a second.” Mary called forward. She’d been slipping out of her shoe since the second her heel first slide into the damp grass. Placing her hand flat on the top of the stone next to her without looking at the writing etched in it, and tightened the strap on her ankle with it’s help. It had been a couple years since they’d been here, but every time they came they relived every death. It soaked into their skin the second they walked through the gates. 

Her eyes drift to the carving, and she lets out a small chuckle at the name. Nostalgia and longing washing over her as stared the word Davis straight in the face. “Wouldn’t be the first time you’ve helped a stumbling fairy would it Jer?” She thought outloud, affection pouring out in every word. She wishes he was here, wishes he could see his son, his grandson, his granddaughter. 

Mary knew how much that man meant to this place, and exactly how much it changed when he was no longer in it. She could still remember his voice, all the words of reason back when they thought they had all the answers. What the hell would he say now?

Leo made his way along a path he walked many times before in the passed, three rows away from the crematorium, six stones to the left. His visits to his father’s grave had been more frequent in the first few months after the man’s passing, when he tried to be the dutiful son to make up for all the ways he had let him down when he was still breathing. 

Much like Jerry had feared when he spoke of Leo moving out, he only visited now on holidays and his birthday. 

Ridding himself of the last of his reluctance, he knew he could only avoid the it for so long that day. Joining Mary at her side, he placed a hand on her lower back, telling himself it was to steady her but knowing it was to steady himself. Despite all the years that had crawled by without Jerry behind that bar, he still missed him every day. Fleeting moments most of the time, but others he sat up late drinking into the small hours still haunted by the fact he had no answers. 

“Hey old man, been a while.”

Leo. His ex friend. The one who had seen it all. Been through it all with him. The man who is sleeping with his wife. The man who was trying to steal his family. His fist curled until he realised what Leo was doing. The bartender didn’t owe him anything, not really. And here he was, putting his ass on the line. 

“I fucking want them to try.” He hissed but he took a step back. That was enough for Leo to realize that he was getting through. There was another minor bang and George grabbed Leo, yanking from the danger. “Go home, Leo. I’m going to deal with this.”

Leo let George grab him, he would let him yell at him, take a swing for him, whatever he needed to do in the moment as long as it got him off the street and out of harm’s way. 

“You’re not because I’m going to let you, I don’t care if you go through me. You go running into this tonight then your kids might end up losing their father too. You want that? Let Hook have tonight, it doesn’t mean he’s won.”

Di had forced herself to keep a level head when she got the call about Lewis. She’d swallowed down all of her panic to get the the hospital as quickly as she could, she’d channeled all of her terror into questions for the doctors, she focused mental and emotional energy in willing her son to regain consciousness – as if they shared some sort of telepathy from the years of it just being the two of them.

She hadn’t even had a chance to process the loss of Dante yet, she’d been so focused on Lewis…

“Did you see the car?” she asked softly, her voice thready as she looked down at her lap. She took a breath, shook her head, everything pouring out. “It’s just…Obliterated, Leo, there wasn’t even a shell…There were fucking bricks knocked out of the wall of that building, there wasn’t glass in a single window…” 

“I know.. I know.” He could still see it as clear as day in his mind. The car, the body, George’s face. Leo hadn’t made much time for Dante since he arrived back in town, he was always so in and out he assumed that he would catch him another day. Now those days were gone, and the only way he would see him again would be in his twin’s faces. 

“It’s just going to get worse from here.”

Di had discovered when she was seventeen that the chapel of the hospital was the most empty place in the entire building. It was a good place to hide, cry, catch a quick sleep in the pews. No one here bothered with God. Not anymore, at least.

That had been when her parents got sick, both taken within two weeks of each other by a freak bout of flu followed by pneumonia. She’d spent a lot of time in the hospital then. She never thought she would be back in this room. She never thought it would be Lewis…

She had ducked out of the room to give her son privacy as some Lost Boy with a ridiculous name came to visit, hiding in the chapel with a long cold paper cup of hospital coffee in her hands. Di to a drink, just for the sake of doing something with her hands. The coffee stained bitter on her tongue, the wrinkle in her nose seeming to carry all the way to the corners of her tired eyes.

Leo had headed straight for the hospital once he was told the other casualty of the car bomb, having to lie his way in to get Lewis’ room number. When he had stuck his head around he found him there with Tootles, telling him quietly the would be back later before he set off to find Di. 

There was something twisted about it being the same hospital where she had suffered through both of her parents dying. It had been renovated in the years since but Leo still remembered the twists and turns of the hallways like the back of his hand, he had visited her there as much as she had visited them. 

He knew where he found find her, in the one place supposed to offer solace in a hospital but never seemed to do so for either of them. 

“There you are.” He said as he sat down in the pew beside her, still trying to wrap his head around the loss he knew they were all feeling that night. “I came as soon as I could.”

Effie: I saw fire in the distance.

Effie: Are you okay?

Leo: I'm okay.

George didn’t feel it. The pain. Not right away. Then it twisted, a piece of barbed wire around his heart, gripping, tugging, pulling, squeezing. He didn’t feel the heat as he ran to the car. He wasn’t gone. He wasn’t gone.

“No. No! Get out! Dante, get out of the fucking car!” He was snarling at the car, his hands blistering and burning under the hot metal of the car. He didn’t accept it, he refused to. He couldn’t. He couldn’t lose another person on that fucking doorstep. The glass shattered under his fists but he felt hands grabbing him, pulling him back and his elbow raised and jerked, crunching into Silver’s face. It was her yelp that caused another jerk of horror in his heart. It was John’s Dante that he attacked. That was some fucking poetry. It was then that he finally stopped, watched as the woman clutched her bleeding mouth on the ground. He spun on his heel, his face wild, his eyes searching for a moment that would take him back. Then he was only filled with revenge. It burned, a singular bright in the darkness that was consuming him. George Darling didn’t cry for people. He avenged them. “I’ll kill them. Kill them all.” It was an mantra, the only thought in his head. They’d be dead by morning. Because that was all George Darling knew. When he felt something, anything, someone had to die.

The commotion had rumbled through Neverland in one loud burst, cracking windows of buildings nearby and bellowing throughout both sides. Leo had ran right to the source, following the flames and having to shield his eyes instantly as the car was engulfed in fire. 

Dante. 

Leo knew his car, and he knew George. His face and the sight of Silver on the ground next to him was the sort of anger that he had only seen elicited a few times before when he had been wronged more personally than professionally. If he blinked, Leo could almost have been convinced they had stepped into decades gone, that very same spot where Louis had been slain now destined to hold that same darkness for another of those who had seen this place built from ground to greatness. 

He didn’t think much on his next move, heading straight for the bull and blocking George’s path with his body while trying to usher him away from the fire that was in danger of spreading. 

“You need to get away from here, you don’t know if there’s another one about to go off or if there’s a fucking gun on you somewhere.” The man may have liked to think himself invincible, but the body of their friend now desecrated and departed was proof he wasn’t. No one ever was. He knew was inserting himself smack bang into the line of fire of a man on edge, one who wasn’t pleased to see him at the best of times but he didn’t care. He remembered vividly where that mantra he caught the tell end of him muttering had landed him before -- a prison cell. 

❝ AN EASY SMILE met her features at the sound of his voice. leo was family – and she was more than glad to have him around all of those years; faintly, she acknowledged, maybe without him, she wouldn’t have been able to last that long in that world of theirs. 

“ what? i am trying to be refined. isn’t this what rich people do? ”

“I wouldn’t know, I’m still not one.” Leo joked, his drink of choice far stronger than hers, and her namesake so as far as he was concerned it was like a tribute to her in a glass, neat no mixer. 

Whiskey being there was a comfort to him, one that reminded him of just how much he missed having her around the bar every day, though he was happy that she had moved on to the next stage of her life. 

“You must be used to this sort of thing now.”

“Trainers, comics, cars. Boys love their toys.” Mary shrugged, smiling into the quick peck before closing the door behind him. “Thank you,” She said in retort to his compliment as they made their way to the elevator in the back. She wondered how long it had been since Leo rode this elevator, but the question dies on her lips before she asked it. Instead she’s just grateful he’s here, knowing how it must feel for him to walk into a room full of Darlings. “You ready?” 

“As I’ll ever be.” Leo told her as he stepped into the elevator once it had pinged open. What had once been a trip he made several times a week had now become the road never travelled, just how much things had changed in the last couple of years not going over his head. While Leo would never admit as much aloud, he did miss his friend, even if that bridge was one he had doused in gasoline and set alight the second he was truly honest about how he felt about the woman stood next to him. 

His hand rested on her lower back as the elevator climbed upwards, relishing in the dwindling moments that wouldn’t be either awkward or uncomfortable.

❝ IT FELT STRANGE. scarlett looked out of the window, turning her wedding ring over and over with her thumb – a habit acquired that didn’t seem to be going away any time soon. everything seemed normal, but it was strange nonetheless – being an official darling would never not be strange. she frowned, raising her hand to dismiss the flute of champagne “ i will have some water, instead. thank you. ”

“Just water?” Leo emphasised the liquid, feigning shock at the choice. Of all her time spent working at his bar before all of this, that was the drink he had seen in her hand the least. 

“It’s like I don’t even know you anymore.”

“Don’t you look handsome,” Mary greeted Leo in the back of the Fairy, she’d brought her change of clothes to work with her for the dinner for time’s sake. And even managed to sneak in getting final approval from Alivia before he’d arrived. “You know, normally I like girls to be the stars in this place, but in that tie you might just earn some wings.”

“Think I could be a main draw?” Leo joked, gripping his tie while including his best smoulder to match. He kissed her quickly in greeting, running ever so slightly late thanks to his teenage son who liked to test his patience more and more these days. 

“Sorry I’m a bit late, Liam insisted on hounding me for money. How many pairs of trainers does one lad need? You look amazing by the way.” If he was honest, there was at least ten other places Leo could think of on the spot he would rather be than this impending dinner, one of which included pulling a double at the Sheep. Yet, two years as her partner had made him more flexible when it came to placing himself in situations he had previously made a life skill out of sidestepping. Give and take, that was the only way it could work.