#nrpgintro

TW: grief, psychosis, sibling death, animal(?) death, flagrant fairy genocide apologetics.

lost name : Noland Donald Galloway nicknames : Nod age : oh honey, gender identity : cis man, he/him pronouns sexual identity : presumed heterosexual but that doesn't explain the bedroom eyes he gives marlowe. family : Foley Owen Galloway / "Fog" ( twin brother, deceased ), Jamie "Hook" ( older brother figure ), Charlie ( younger brother figure ) personality traits : loyal, swashbuckling, reliable, playful, boyish, charismatic, evasive, cocky, nonchalant, cool-headed, flirtatious, sarcastic, seemingly optimistic, internally pessimistic, romantic, chivalrous, valiant, gossip queen, humanitarian, candid, nosey curious, patient, steadfast. Which is all fine and good, except that he's been losing sleep and possibly losing his mind and will progressively become more undone, sloppy, and testy until he addresses the problems he keeps suppressing. weapon of choice : Dual daggers (second one originally belonged to Fog), but most prefers to lay traps with fishnets, rope, and loose planks or shallow holes around the Pirates Camp to keep Lost Boys at bay in nonviolent ways. likes : sea shanties and folk songs, card games, darts, redheads, fruit, grog rum, friendly competition, lifting heavy things and generally showing off muscles he's been honing for an ungodly amount of years he's spent on this hell island, getting a smile out of Victor or Isadora, lightheartedly messing with Lost Boys (riling up Rufio or Davie and then leading them into a trap to get them off the battlefield, annoying Bones and Curly in the boneyard, 100% used to teasingly flirt with Fiona when she was rolling with them), dancing, fishing, haggling for goods with other ships (he's a class act schmoozer), collecting postcards and maps of places he'll never get to visit. dislikes : looking Small Folk in the eye.

✖ Despite growing into a steadfast right hand to the only good and honest leader in Neverland, his demeanor is still that of a boyish rogue. He’s prone to wandering into his own adventures or dragging one of his mates with him on his escapades when they’re docked at shore, wont to tempt fate and heckle Lost Boys just before the point of provoking serious retaliation, or mingle with merfolk on nights he knows the moon isn’t too full. He’ll drink and play poker until sunrise with his crewmates if he knows the pirates are in a good, civil place with their adversaries and shouldn’t expect any emergencies that night. (Though sometimes he slips up when walking the tightrope of being the responsible yet cool older brother figure to his crewmates, usually around the times that he starts seeing his twin and reverts back to a less mature level of self-control, finding himself drinking a little too hard to dull his perception of the long-lost Lost Boy haunting his periphery. More on that later~ <3) After aging up, he's developed a flirtatious cockiness, particularly around women. He is prone to holding up the departure of other pirate crews that the Jolly Roger is in negotiations with because he and one of the visiting ship’s female crewmates scurried off into the first mate’s quarters and walked back out giggling. It may put him at odds with Isadora, but he’s responsible enough not to flirt with his own crewmates in a way they would take seriously. Hook probably wouldn’t approve of any inter-ship relationships anyway. And Nod may just be throwing affection at anyone to see if anything sticks. If he can fall in love with anyone who isn’t allied with Peter or Ianthe, maybe he can forget about the bloodthirsty, heartless, evil, siren-eyed, lovely, comforting, warm, kind mermaid he's dreamed about since he was a child.

✖ Kind of extrapolating this interpretation of him from the line in his bio about how the merfolk are uncommonly fond of him, especially for a human: He has natural charisma. I think he’s always radiated personality and confidence, and still maintains most of that, even after everything he's been through--- or at least, he’s very adept at faking it, especially on the ship, where he feels most comfortable. It’s easy for him to be laid-back and reassuring to others when he isn’t the one burdened with the full responsibilities of the captain of the ship, and when he has more experience in Neverland than all but two humans. He makes for a good diplomat with the merfolk when Hook isn’t available to talk to Ianthe, and he knows the mind of a Lost Boy well enough to navigate encounters with them pretty smoothly when he has to. I can see him as the welcome wagon on the ship, as someone crewmates sees as extremely dependable and friendly. He values and cares for every pirate on the ship, in an almost active effort to foster a better community than Peter did with his disposable little strays. If Hook is the strong father figure to the pirates, Nod is perhaps the mother hen, albeit in his own rowdy way, as a lifelong ruffian. In the leadership on the Jolly Roger, I want him to be a foil to Hook’s short temper. I’m going to say Nod grew into a very mature, level-headed, trustworthy man with a good sense of humor. If a crewmate has bad news to share or need to confide any kind of problem on the ship, I could see them coming to Nod with the information first, because he’s least likely to snap at them, and everyone knows that Hook will receive the news better if it's passed on to him through his faithful best friend. They’ve known each other for so long, I imagine Nod knows the best ways to navigate Hook’s temper and keep him zen. I also need to ask Ashleigh how Hook would receive it if Nod still called him Jamie, if he should call him that at all times and even in front of other crewmates, if I should save it for more intimate moments between them, or if he wouldn't like it at all and I should just make it something that slips out accidentally.

✖ Nod has never made physical contact with Alana before. He worries that he cherishes their friendship much more than he should, in the interest of being careful. Alana is the person he smiles with more than anyone else, but he knows that the loyalty of the merfolk will always skew towards Peter, and Nod can’t risk Peter using a vulnerable moment of trust against a pirate. He has a recurring nightmare where, the second his fingers graze her, she yanks him under the water and down to the darkest, deepest floor of the ocean and rip him to shreds. And yet, he can’t help but fantasize about finally running his hands through her red hair, even in the moments where he makes her laugh enough for her to reveal her sharp teeth. Against his better judgment, those are the moments he wants to touch her most. 

✖ He looks forward to new moons, because that’s become his usual time to find Alana and talk for longer than a few passing friendly words. This has less to do with a fear of Alana being more dangerous or temperamental when the moon is full, and more to do with her fellow merfolk minding their own business and not giving either of them any trouble for fraternizing when they aren't in a lunar frenzy. He always arrives with a coy excuse as to why he’s in the area, never admitting out loud that he came to the lagoon to see her. but they both know the truth. At this point, even he smiles incredulously at himself as he’s explaining that he’s just innocuously scavenging for food on a barren shoreline.

✖ Once upon a time, before coming to Neverland, Nod and Fog were little musicians who performed in the street for money. Nod played the fiddle while Fog played the mandolin. They brought their instruments with them and used to play them around the bonfire while the other Lost Boys danced and chanted, and sometimes Nod would walk down by the lagoon with his fiddle and play for the merfolk. Nod still plays to this day, and keeps Fog's mandolin hidden in a chest underneath his bed (he went through a hell of a heist mission to retrieve it from the Lost Boys' tree in the week after his pirate heel turn. He finally tuned the old mandolin and has been learning it in the past few years, but he would never play it for anyone but Alana. He isn't as confident with it as he is with his trusty fiddle, which he loves to use to supplement sea shanties and boost crew morale.

✖ Since becoming a pirate, Nod has taken to wearing the color blue much more, in a subconscious tribute to Fog’s favorite color to wear. In truth, though, his favorite color, and the one he always loved to wear, is red.

✖ As a rambunctious Lost Boy with a reputation to uphold, he used to wait until nobody could see him to try to feed, help, or otherwise befriend other living creatures on the island. During Neverland’s prosperous times, when the boys had so much food that they would throw away perfectly good excess, Nod would wait until dark to sneak away with their leftovers and leave it where animals could scavenge for it. During games where the boys were hunting and recklessly knocked down a birds’ nest, Nod would suggest that they split up to find their prey, and circle back alone to try to put the birds nest back on the branch it fell from without anyone knowing. And after a long time of watching merfolk from a distance and always being able to pick Alana out of a pack by her vibrant red tail, he thought of her when he found a beautiful red-speckled seashell along the area where the beach sand meets the forest floor. The first time he snuck away from Fog to visit the lagoon, he left the shell on the rock that he noticed Alana always seemed to rest on.  

It was silly, of course, to leave a seashell for a mermaid, as if the ocean-dwellers weren’t more than capable of finding their own. He realized that after the fact, and started to look for other things to leave the nice, playful mermaid. Any time he saw a red knick-knack anywhere on land, he would ever-so-discreetly leave it near the boulder he has dubbed “The Red Rock.” Even to this day, he never directly hands his rare little red trinkets to her: marbles, rhinestones, flowers, exotic feathers, painted pebbles, a teacup with roses painted on it. Even as a pirate, bartering away his favorite boots to other ships in exchange for a red pendant necklace to leave on a rock, he doesn’t like to draw any attention to it; he just casually leaves it in his wake after they finish chatting, lest he address out loud how devoted he is to her. Alana has always known that he was the little boy leaving these gifts behind though, from the very first time he thought he was being very sneaky, placing his red-speckled seashell at her rest stop without any eyes watching him from deep underneath the surface of the water.

✖ If Hook’s bond with Charlie is described as paternal in this found family, then I want to lean into Nod’s role as an older brother to him. I think it’s especially interesting given the nature of their relationships with their respective absentee brothers. Nod would commit atrocities without a second thought to keep Charlie safe from harm and never lose a brother again. He loves having this boy he quite literally grew up with in his life after all this time, and he’s at his absolute most lively with him. He can almost relive the way he felt with Fog when he’s around Charlie; he loves him the same way. He’ll tease him like a brother and laugh with him about juvenile inside jokes that they beat into the ground. He might get caught up in a playful moment and go too far, though. At the end of the day, Charlie will always be very different from Fog. When Nod gets carried away and starts wrestling or roughhousing with Charlie the way he could with his unruly twin brother, Charlie might get flashbacks to his biological older brother, whose out-of-control horseplay sealed his fate. I could see this being the reason Charlie will probably never be as close to Nod as he is to Hook, but I also want to maintain that their relationship is still a significantly tender one. Nod is very quick to drop everything in the interest of lifting Charlie's spirits if he realizes he's been too quiet lately. He wants to keep his confidence high and do whatever he can to keep him from feeling too hopeless on this terrifying island. Nod also may end up at odds with Hook when he thinks Hook is being a little too overprotective of Charlie. He may let him get away with exploring a little more than Hook thinks is safe for him, because he wants to see Charlie stop filling the role of the baby of the ship and start growing up and branching out. If he catches Charlie’s eyes linger on a crewmate of a passing ship, Nod may try to talk him up to the crewmate or even “accidentally” knock them into Charlie with a large barrel he’s carrying during a trade.

✖ Fog usually “visits” Nod more often in his periods of distress. The harder Nod has to work to suppress any feelings of guilt, fear, and despair in the interest of keeping morale high on the Jolly Roger, the more Nod appears in his dreams to haunt him about allies he isn’t sure he should trust, or remind him of the atrocities he’s committed after Nod keeps trying to brush off as a necessary evil or downplay by waving the Many-Eyed off as unfeeling monsters, and make sure Nod never escapes the very first hardship he’s still never confronted after all these years: his survivor’s guilt. He remembers Fog as being much more saintly than the little asshole probably was, back when they were such feral, snot-nosed, callous troublemakers that Nod felt he needed to sneak around to have polite conversation with the merfolk, lest his brother find out he wasn’t trying to pelt every living creature on the island with rolled-up balls of animal dung in a slingshot. He looks back on the unwavering trust and loyalty he felt with his twin, and sees it as the ultimate virtue after a lifetime of seeing constant tricks, traps, and betrayals on this God-forsaken island. For example, the Fog who exists in his head seems to haunt him by making him hear the unforgettable sound of Fog’s death rattle any time Nod tries to abandon a Lost Boy in peril, but as a brutal kid, he would probably call a Lost Boy who couldn't find his way out of quicksand "dead weight." Maybe Nod assumes Fog would have turned out to be even more mature and compassionate than Nod is now if he had the chance to grow up, because when they were boys, Fog was the older, louder twin who seemed to be better at everything and commanded more respect, and Nod assumes he would have been better at being a good man, too.

✖ I think Nod would get along with Canary Robb on the grounds of their love of local fauna. I don’t want to steal that character’s stride as the resident nature lover, but I love the mention in Alana’s bio that one of Nod’s best qualities to her was his respect for wildlife, and I want to keep that as a major trait of his. Especially because it highlights how much he’s willing to sacrifice when it comes to keeping Charlie safe. A lifetime of stepping around ant hills and leaving seeds for critters when Peter and Hook weren’t looking can be put aside if the extinction of an entire species is what it takes to save his little brother. He’s sorry it had to end the way he did, but he doesn’t regret it. If the choice is the life of one pirate over the lives of countless Neverlanders, he’ll choose his crewmate every time. Really, he doesn’t even lose sleep over it. Nod isn’t haunted by the guilt of the massacre of two species or anything. Honest. ..... ..............Fog still seems pretty hung up on it, though. 

During the Great Famine of 1879, Fiona's parents stowed her away from Silgo, Ireland to a city in America, where she would work as an indentured servant to a wealthy, pious migrant ship captain. When she wasn’t tasked with the housekeeping and cooking, she was put to work in his wife’s boutique, tailoring beautiful dresses for women living the lives she wanted. She resented going back to work for a man she loathed, particularly when he insisted that she should feel fortunate to get the opportunities (and subsequent unwanted attention) the noble sailor would give her.

She found solace in her friendship with a young boy who was born into a similar lot in life. She would sneak out to meet him on the streets every night, to laugh and play, and commiserate and comfort each other, and feel rare moments of peace and harmony in their tumultuous lives. One night, he told her he had been approached with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, from magical boy who would pluck miserable children like them out of their sad little world and bring them to enchanted land where they could live free and prosper. Fiona’s friend told her that she needed to meet the boys at the end of the piers at midnight the next day so they could leave their sad, scary city and never look back.

Unfortunately, Fiona wouldn’t make it to the pier. After finding out that she had been sneaking out every night to frolic with local paupers, her employer had new lockdown measures put in place to stop her from making herself drowsy on the job the next day. She was left behind, never to see her friend again. Unsure of any other way to contact a mysterious floating boy, she developed a fixation on occultism and pursued any information on The Mystical Floating Devil-Boy, smuggling books on esotericism and alchemy into her master’s manor to read by candlelight while she was locked up at night. After nearly three years of fervently digging deeper and deeper into old magics and experimenting with rituals, her raw willpower was strong enough to make contact with Neverland. Peter, amused and impressed by her enthusiasm, took her in as a promising potential mother for the Lost Boys.

The Lost Boys were baffled to see the stars align in such a way that she stumbled upon the tomes she needed to reach Peter, at a time where he was in a good enough mood to bring her in, or perhaps desperate enough to find his new Wendy that he would take in someone who came across as meek and priggishly as she did. They dubbed her Lucky, and she was too happy to be there to even find the name patronizing. She thrived there for as long as she could, acting as a homemaker and a cheerful playmate to the boys, and a doting, loving devotee to Peter, the boy who became her religion. But as a girl who always wanted a life of elegance and serenity, she was a complete prude about the violence. Peter, in denial that he had picked another failure to replace Wendy, insisted that she was not, in fact, a killjoy, and would prove it by killing a pirate during their next raid. She’s haunted by what she felt pressured to do the next time she was on the Jolly Roger, but not as haunted as she still is by the look Peter gave her during his declaration that she would do it. It was the moment that made her realize that her messiah wasn’t as benevolent as she believed.

The doubt in her heart came to a head during a game of Battle. As her old friend was chosen to fight to the death with one of their own, she was fully confronted with what Peter and the island had done to his humanity. The boy who used to be her only comfort in the world was turned into a cold-blooded savage, and she couldn’t bear to watch him mangle the other child. When she cried out for them to stop, Peter was red in the face with frustration and embarrassment, forced to finally accept in front of all of his Lost Boys that he’d chosen yet another disappointment. In response to her protests, he changed the rules of the Battle to be Boys vs. Girls, and Lucky ran for her life. Under the full moon, she was chased to the lagoon and left to the mercy of the merfolk, where Peter called for the mermaids to dispose of her. In a stroke of insane serendipity, a band of pirates happened to be passing through in time to witness the disaster unfolding, and they saved her from her sharp, watery grave. The captain and two of his oldest pirates, familiar with the way children can be manipulated to do horrible things and then thrown aside by their cruel leader, took pity on her and helped her board the ship.

Now, Fiona is the newest refugee on the Jolly Roger, with a large target on her head courtesy of the merfolk who feel they have unfinished business with her, the small folk who have a vendetta against all pirates, the pirates who are still struggling to trust her after what she has recently done to one of their crewmates in her time as a Lost Boy, and the Lost Boys themselves, who see her as a no-good traitor.

Just her luck.

HEADCANONS

MORE ABOUT FIONA (stuff that got cut from the bio because it’s already way too long).

Fiona isn’t much of a fighter. She carries her weight the best she can, though. Utilizing her thriftiness to gather supplies and ingredients to cook relatively nutritious and tasteful meals, repairing garments and sails with the skills she gained from her work as a seamstress, and attempting to keep the quarters of gruff pirates tidy - or even pretty, when she can find some flowers to decorate with. There’s a cruel irony in the way she’ll never fully escape the duties she had as an indentured servant working as a tailor and keeping the master’s house tidy and his stomach full, but at least her experience makes her useful, and she’s doing the work on her own terms these days.  

She resents the nickname “Lucky,” but it’s the only name the Lost Boys and their allies know her by. Most of them refuse to acknowledge that she’s using her boring old name from The Other Place, these days.

She doesn’t like wearing trousers. She came to Neverland with the dream that she could leave her life as a shlubby workhorse behind, and she hasn’t given up on that. Since her days as a Lost Boy, she’s braided flowers into her hair and made jewelry out of anything she could get her hands on. She fashions her pirate garb into skirts and bows to feel more like a fair lady, and she tries to adorn her drab leather gear and work rags with ribbons and pretty objects she’s found on the beaches. She’s determined to feel lavish and willing to trip and fall and die trying.

Fiona doesn’t remember her family name, or much of her family at all. She was so quick to give Peter her heart and soul upon arrival, her memories from The Other Place faded away faster than most. The only reason she remembered her first name was because her old friend would sometimes call her by her real name when they were talking in private. (Maybe he was the more reluctant of the two to buy into Peter’s world in their first year or two in Neverland, but now the roles have, obviously, reversed.) She’s grateful that she was able to give the Jolly Roger her more human name when she joined their ranks, to separate herself from that terrible changeling Lucky who wreaked havoc on their crew.

Though her loyalty is currently with the pirates, she doesn’t plan to be a permanent member of their crew. Her current goal is to shake her old friend out of Peter’s control and leave Neverland forever. She doesn’t know where they’re going to run off to, but she knows that anywhere would be safer than this island.

She originally grew up in Silgo, Ireland, and her parents sent her away to America during the Great Famine of 1879 to make a better life for herself (and have one less mouth to feed). She remembers very little about this, but it comes back to her during the harsh food shortages on the island.

ON THE JOLLY ROGER.

She still compiles books on occultism from visiting pirate ships, who are usually happy to be rid of them, as well as any other cursed objects that may have brought them to an ungodly hell like Neverland. Could her research really give her any power in Neverland? Uncertain. She should probably just grow up and learn how to shoot a gun. But sharpshooting and swordsmanship haven’t done much to give the pirates any control over their situation, only a way to survive it. Frantic to find any kind of an edge, she’s keeping her nose in her books, probing veterans like Hook, Nod, and Charlie about the island’s lore to become a Neverlandian historian, sampling and experimenting with local flora, and trying to make sense of the small folk’s blood magic. She’s really pushing her luck with Bill Jukes, though. It’s one thing to be a little lass on a pirates ship, but to practice witchcraft on the ship? While being a redhead? She may have another pirate’s blood on her hands after giving Ol’ Jukesy a stroke.

She’s developed a sisterly bond with Anna. They have opposite lives, where Fiona left her grimy servant life behind to become the princess of a fantasy land, and Anna gave away a world of privilege to live as a rugged pirate. Anna may be annoyed by Fiona’s tendency to be a pretentious and materialistic wanna-be social climber, but she still sees a relatable humanity in her. Anna was quick to register the parallels between Fiona’s relationship with Peter and the relationship Anna had with Bowen the Bloody, and she’s doing her best to help Fiona through the aftermath of her affair with him. She empathizes enough to even indulge Fiona when she begs her to help to fulfill her dreams of learning how to dance. She’s constantly bothering Anna to watch her balance ratty, waterlogged books on her head, and asking for constructive feedback on her dainty, regal wave and curtsy.

I think she would have similar relationship options with Isadora, who would be kindred with her as a former Lost Boy, but may see her as much weaker. I think Fiona wasn’t as good at meshing with the savagery of the Lost Boys as Isa was. If I had to guess, I feel like her relationship with Anna might be more amiable and her relationship with Isadora would be more strained. She definitely needs to earn both of their respect, but I suspect Isadora would be less open to her, especially if she picks up on the fact that a part of Fiona is still devoted to Peter.

She tries to be as close to Canary Robb as she can, because she’s constantly trying to drag him along with her to forage for food and get a better understanding on what she can string together into meals for the crew (and maybe ask if this specific ornamental plant is poisonous in some way or carrying microscopic bugs she wouldn’t want to crawl on her head because she may or may not want to make the odd flower crown).  

WITH PETER & THE LOST BOYS.

When I was thinking about how Fiona made contact with Neverland, I was thinking that it had less to do with her fully mastering mysticism in three years, and more to do with sheer willpower. I don’t think she would be able to clearly spell out SOS with a jetty in Neverland, but I think she may poured enough of her heart and soul into her rituals to set out a little distress signal to be decoded. I had the idea that she may have a long history of really loving ladybugs all of her life, maybe always making wishes on them and wishing she could fly away and live in lush meadows like them. Maybe her efforts to contact Neverland manifested in an infestation of ladybugs progressively swarming the island, until Fiona’s friend voiced that he used to know a person who was obsessed with ladybugs, and that might be a sign that someone from the Other Place is trying to reach them.

Though she would never voice it, Fiona is struggling with lingering feelings of gratitude and idol worship towards Peter. No matter how much she’s seen of his true nature, she can’t just let go of her years spent seeing him as her savior, her ticket out of a horrible life, and her noble leader who gave her so much freedom and prosperity.

Honestly, she got attached to all of the Lost Boys, and is really struggling with the rejection, even if she knew towards the end of her tenure that there was tension between herself and most of them. She was happy to have an entire family to laugh and play with. She used to make clothes and accessories for them based on their personalities and stitch and embroider secret messages and symbols into the seams.

She used to be very friendly and inquisitive to the Small Folk, akin to Nod’s relationship with the mermaids. She grew very close to a couple of them, and would questions about their magic and culture. She liked to spend time with them simply searching around the island for anything they could use to craft with. After being a compassionate person to the plight of the small folk, it’s a huge slap in the face to them that she turned around and sided with their mortal enemies.

CONNECTIONS: ✘ Lost Boys: former allies, freshly betrayed. ✘ Wendy: worries for her, relates ; secretly & shamefully envies. ✘ Peter: ex-lover, deity and savior ; fears, loathes, worships. ✘ Anna Cortes: fascination, target of extreme nosiness and endless questions. ✘ (WANTED): the old friend she followed to Neverland.

MISC

PINTEREST!

FULL WRITE-UP FOR THE WANTED CONNECTION. (I have a friend who may be taking this up!! So I won’t put it on the full WC page yet.)

Fiona’s old friend from her home city in late 19th century America (left the city itself up for discussion with whoever takes this WC!). I left his background as just “Ambiguously Poor Boy.” Theoretically, you could probably fit him into one of the skeletons with vague backstories like Bones or Rufio. He could have been an indentured servant like Fiona (potentially working under the same sailor), a street urchin, an orphan, or anything else that would make him downtrodden and hanging out in alleyways at night to chat with other plucky poor kids. The long story short is that their little evening meetups were kind of a carefree, peaceful escape from their stressful lives and the only thing that kept Fiona going during grueling work hours was just looking forward to the next time she got to commiserate and laugh and dance and play with her one and only buddy. We can plot the details and really develop their pre-Neverland friendship to make their current status extra heartbreaking <3

He is the reason she came to Neverland, and the reason she’s still here. The circumstances of how Peter took him away are mostly up to you. He could have come from a little band of teenage thieves or something like that, who were told by Peter to gather up their ranks meet him at the pier the following night, or he could have been approached personally by Peter, and asked Peter to wait one night so he could get his friend in on the trip to Neverland too, promising that this friend would be a great fit, too. Whatever route you go with, the boy told Fiona about the magical flying boy who would save them from their plights and bring them to a fantastical world called Neverland, and told her to meet him somewhere the next night. Fiona would know that he left through magical means, but she wouldn’t be able to make it to the rendezvous point because of a complication with her employer: new lockdown measures in the manor were put in place after he found out she’d been sneaking out at night to frolic with local paupers and would be drowsy on the job the next day. She would become obsessed with reuniting with him in Neverland, to the point of getting invested in late 19th-century occultism and smuggling forbidden books into the house for the next couple of years to find a way to contact him and Peter to come take her with them.

The boy would have been in Neverland for two or three years before Fiona Lucky was brought aboard to be the newest contestant on Neverland’s Next Top Wendy. Over the course of her joining the ranks as a Lost Boy, she would watch as her kind, compassionate friend became less and less recognizable. He may have been slightly reluctant to embrace Neverland’s savagery until after his final desire of having his best friend there was fulfilled? Up to you. Either way, she tried to play along and keep up with the brutality for as long as she could, maiming pirates and setting fires to their camps. The point that broke Fiona was when she was pressured to killed a pirate to prove that she was truly one of Peter’s boys. Fiona doesn’t have a lot of meat on her bones or the fighting chops to hold her own against one of Hook’s men, so I’m wondering if maybe she needed her friend’s help to do this. 👀 I never went into details on how she did it, only that she did it (or at least, got credit for doing it). If he helped her, it would be a moment where she realized just how cold-blooded he had become, but it would also be proof to her that he still had enough humanity to help her keep her place on the island.

The only reason Fiona hasn’t taken the chance to hop onto a passing pirate ship and escape Neverland forever is because she’s determined to break him out of Peter’s influence and take him with her so they can get a fresh start somewhere else. So the only things I would say you really need to maintain is that he’s ferocious and cruel enough that Fiona was shocked by his lack of humanity, and not interested in Fiona trying to snap him out of it.

A fun long-term plot would be if he does eventually become disillusioned with Peter and come around to the idea of fleeing Neverland with Fiona, but as he’s having his redemption arc, Fiona devolves back into her infatuation with Peter and doesn’t want to leave, and suddenly he’s the one that has to bring her to her senses so they can leave. We can discuss more though.

FC Suggestions could include: Dylan Arnold, Brandon Larracuente, Nick Robinson, Toby Regbo, Archie Renaux, Tom Holland, Mark McKenna, Owen Teague, Owen Campbell, Felix Mallard, Hunter Doohan, Justice Smith, Jonathan Daviss, Alex Hogh Anderssen, Marco Ilso, Xolo Mariduena, Joe Keery, Austin Abrams, Chay Suede, Charlie Gillespie, Charlie Tahan, Jannis Niewohner, Ashton Sanders, Henry Zaga, Bjorn Mosten, Will Poulter, Dominic Fike, Lorenzo Zurzolo, Tanner Buchanan, Niko Terho, Bright Vachirawit, Benjamin Wadsworth, Thomas Doherty, Rory Culkin, Charlie Plummer, Froy Gutierrez. Literally anybody. I’m just naming every male FC that I can think of that is vaguely in Anya Taylor-Joy’s age range.

⭐ Headcanons ⭐

Long before the harsh winter that followed Wendy's departure, and even before his time in Neverland with Peter and his Lost Boys, Curly knew fear. His father was a hard man, cold and unforgiving, and his mother... Well, Curly never knew his mother. All he knew was that she existed once. She had loved and laughed. She had filled their little home with joy and light, but then she gave birth to him and it was as if the world decided there just wasn't enough room so it traded one for the other. His father never forgave him. He hated the boy who had his mother's eyes and head of dark curls –her smile too though he would never know it. He would berate the boy constantly and when words weren't enough, he would let his hands teach the lesson. Of course, Curly doesn't remember these things, but some nights he dreams of it. His memories are fickle things, cobweb thin and fractured. They return as flashes in the night; harsh words or the familiar sting of a palm on his cheek. Some nights he wakes crying, but those memories fade as quickly as they came, leaving nothing more than a familiar ache in his chest.

At first, Neverland was a dream come true. There were adventures to be had, lands to explore, and games to play. Here he was not lonely and while the fear he always felt still rattled in his chest, he found joy. For the first time in his life, he had a family. Yes, they fought and bickered at times, but they were in this together. It was enough to distract from the hint of darkness he could see within their leader. Not enough to ignore it all together, of course. He could always see it there. That beast Peter called a heart that seemed to delight in the bloodshed and savagery, but it was simple enough to distract himself though he always did wonder how no one else could see it. Or maybe they had. Maybe everyone could see it too but they all knew better than to speak out lest you find yourself slipping off a cliff or drowning in the mermaid lagoon. It wasn't until Wendy left, taking the family he had with her that he saw just how cruel and thoughtless Peter could be. The winter that followed was unforgiving, but despite all the suffering it caused, he was grateful for the way it opened his eyes. He knew now that Peter did not care for his Lost Boys but also knew that was something best kept to himself. After all, it as far safer to be with Peter than it is to be against him.

As a whole, Curly is soft spoken and deeply compassionate, but don't let that fool you into thinking he is weak. Having not only survived Neverland's seemingly endless winter but having been slowly shaped by it's wilderness, Curly knows what it takes to survive and is not afraid to do it. That being said, he is fiercely loyal to those he cares for, and while he wasn't certain of the new members of their fractured little family at first, he will do whatever it takes to keep them safe. Even those he would rather shove off a cliff. After all, they are all that he has and he would do anything to keep from losing more people he loves.

While most of his time is spent with the Lost Boys, Curly also loves time alone. He can't quite remember if he was always this way or if it's a preference that bloomed during that long winter spent being either berated or ignored by Peter. All he knows, is that on occasion he needs to be alone. His favorite spot is the meadow just outside the forest. There, he will spend hours enjoying the silence of nature while carving small animals out of wood. It's a hobby he started to help occupy his mind in Peter's absence and found that he quite enjoyed it. If you're nice enough, he'll gift you one and has even left some for the small folk and the merfolk.

Headcanons

Just a few days prior to the cursed sizeable haul, Cecco had been persuaded by one of the Righteous Harpy's crew, a man named Danik, they had been particularly close to during their travels, to get their ears pierced. If there was one person aboard that vessel, who could convince the quartermaster to give in to 'silly antics', it was him. They had sailed all over the world, it felt like. Spilled blood alongside each other and gotten far beyond drunk together. Aboard the ship, or on land, the two were inseparable.   So what was one more adventure for the duo? Even if Cecco didn't believe anything but a bit of pain would come from it, Danik was fond of these silly superstitions, as many sailors and pirates especially, were.  He believed that by having given Cecco a golden hoop in their ear, that it would bring the Righteous Harpy good fortune, and, in the unlikely event that the quartermaster ever found their way in the merciless waters, the gold would prevent them from meeting a watery grave.   So with a bit of ripped fabric, and a slightly bent needle stolen from their surgeon, Danik gleefully began. He even gave them his own golden hoops, which were worn with pride.  Now, Cecco isn't a superstitious person, per se, but given the haul that had been bestowed upon them by Neptune's good graces, it was hard for them to deny that the loop in their ear had given them a certain grandiosity. (Though it was a rather short lived advent) Even now however, as a part of Hook's crew, they can be seen absentmindedly fiddling with the golden hoops that never leave their ears. They won't admit it out loud, but they can only wonder if it was for the gold, that they avoided meeting the same fate as the majority of their prior crewmates. Wondering if perhaps Danik would have been the one to survive if he never gave up the hoops.

Whether they are on land, or fulfilling tasks on deck, Cecco can be found creating their own chants and shanties. Having grown up in the Kingdom of Italy, residing in the ocean front town of Naples, it was common to hear singing among the commoners who found it to be one of the few joys they could occupy their free time with. There was the Filangieri Museum, sure, and if you were lucky, you could have gone to the Galleria Principe di Napoli, but there was so little free time for the folk who had to ensure they could survive throughout the month with their families. Cecco was fond of listening to sailors sing from within pubs whenever they docked. There was something about how lively the shanties were, something about the stories of epic monsters and grand heroes resonated with them.  Each time they joined up with a new crew, they would attempt to create or learn a new shanty, one that they would associate with that specific crew, that precious time in their life.

Wanted Connections

{For a crewmate of the Jolly Roger} If someone were to bump against the pillow of Cecco's cot, a tattered leather bound book would become dislodged from its hiding spot. Letters scatter to the floor, all of which are addressed to different people, none of them are crew members of the Jolly Roger, however! They are addressed to their old brother and sisters in arms from the Righteous Harpy. With peaked curiosity, someone might have read these letters, gaining a glimpse in to the quartermasters past.

{For a Lost Boy or a Smallfolk}  Late night meetings. A parental relationship that developed purely on accident. Despite how skeptical Cecco is with everyone who is not a member of the crew, they cannot help the swell within their chest when they see someone in need of help, regardless of where their allegiance resides. They have taken a liking to this person, and wants to ensure their safety, from anything that dares to threaten it.