Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/1014879.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      F/M
  Fandom:
      Once_Upon_a_Time_(TV)
  Relationship:
      Wendy_Darling/Peter_Pan
  Character:
      Peter_Pan_(Once_Upon_a_Time), Wendy_Darling_(Once_Upon_a_Time), Captain
      Hook_|_Killian_Jones, Tinkerbell, the_whole_neverland_crew
  Additional Tags:
      Dirty_Bad_Wrong, Smut, darkish, not_the_neverland_you_thought_you_knew,
      Pre-Series
  Stats:
      Published: 2013-10-23 Completed: 2013-10-24 Chapters: 2/2 Words: 10207
****** like something hungry ******
by winterbones
Summary
     wendy darling's adventure in never neverland is not a tale that will
     find its way into henry's storybook. growing up is terrifying.
     not a darkfic, but something very close to
Notes
See the end of the work for notes
***** Chapter 1 *****
"I am a blank paper on which you and your magic wrote a girl. Just the kind of
girl you wanted, all hungry and hurt and needing. A machine for loving you.
Nothing in me was not made by you."
-catherynne m. valente
 
 
 
She landed with far less ceremony than she imaged she would, had imaged all the
artless grace her mother possessed would cushion her gentle drop to the ground.
Instead, the cool, ghostly hand dropped her, indifferent to her scream of
terror. Wendy scrambled for air, clawed at it, as if to find some perchance
there but tumbled down, crashed through brittle branches that snapped beneath
her thrashing legs, down down into the dark earth.
The moss was oddly buoyant, more like one of the decorative pillows on the
parlor’s settee than ground. She could feel it rippling beneath her weight. The
air smelled different, electric, charged and she thought there was an odd glow
at the corner of her bleary vision as she blinked her eyes open.
Wendy rolled to her knees, muslin sleeping gown crinkling beneath her. Her
hands slipped along thick moss, wet and warm.
A sword—to her throat.
Wendy stilled and remembered Baelfire’s warning—for the first time. Her magic
boy, seemingly sprung out from the secret fantasies Wendy had always kept
locked up tight inside her, released only in the safety of the nursery, acted
out in childish games.
Baelfire who said—magic is evil.
Impossible, Wendy had thought, and scoffed at him. He didn’t understand. Magic
was wonderful, magic was everything, magic could stop her from growing up, from
doing terrible things like entering into society and finding a husband and
having children. She didn’t want to understand the world of secret kisses
hidden away at the top of her mother’s curling lip, endless nights of balls
with ideal chatter about nothing important and nothing interesting, boring
operas about sad stories in a language she couldn’t speak (except, of course,
she did; playacting in a nursery did not quite satisfy the way it had and she
woke up sometimes in the most quiet, darkest parts of the night with an odd,
nameless ache between her legs and she was too ashamed to ask her mother if it
was normal, because what if it was not? What if she was defective somehow?
Wrong?) Magic could make her right. Baelfire was wrong.
Except there was a sword at her throat.
A boy—a man? He seemed to transition between the two, like a candle flickering
in a wind, hard and soft all at once, never staying long enough to make a term
stick.
He smiled. Hard and cruel, his teeth rows and rows of sharp needles, like the
ones she pricked her fingers on when she embroidered.
“A girl?” he called it upward, to where the shadow had let her fall. “What use
does the Pan have for a girl?”
 
 
 
 
 
Wendy was not indoctrinated into this group of misfit boys with dirt on their
cheeks and blood under their nails. She hadn’t imaged lost boys, had filled her
head with lovely mermaids with seaweed dresses and pirates in bright hues of
red and purples—if she had she would have imaged children, as wild as the woods
but kind.
When the Pan dropped her into their midst they jeered with ill humor, tossing
her about. Wendy shrieked and clawed and that pleased them more; it was a game
of some sorts, the way full grown predators would play with their evening meal.
A boot smashed into Wendy’s shin and she screamed, the hem of her dress rent up
its side but they took no note.
The Pan watched it all from his claimed position against a hollowed out tree
trunk, reclined as a king would on his gilded throne.
“Oui! Enough! Enough!” Hands shoved boys aside, grabbed at hoods, smashed faces
together until Wendy could breath, and breathing hurt and terror made her legs
heavy and back into the mossy ground she sunk, trying to stifle her heaving
sobs.
“Leave off, Tink, we were only having a bit a fun!”
“I’ll show you a bit o’ fun!” A yelp, something and hot splattered across neck
her. When Wendy swept a hand through the slick liquid it came back dark red.
“Alright, alright.” The Pan’s voice was a blanket of calm descending them all,
commanding instant obedience. She felt a stillness in the air, like the whole
world braced to leap. “Tink, you’ve made your point.”
“What were you thinking?” Unclothed knees dropped into Wendy’s view and she
still commanded enough of her senses to be scandalized. She followed smooth,
tanned legs to a bright green skirt so short Wendy could feel her cheeks
heating. The face the shameful clothing belonged to, at least, was round and
lovely and warm, not like skeletal Pan with his knife-smile and glinting, dark
eyes.
“What you get for giving a job to a shadow, suppose,” Pan laughed, coming to
his feet, as fluid as a dancer. He came closer and Wendy bumped into Tink’s
legs in an effort to hide. “I wanted a boy—a very specific boy. What good is a
girl for?”
“Well send her back,” Tink said. Her hand pulled at one riotous curl clinging
wetly to Wendy’s cheek. “You can’t keep her, Peter.”
A laugh, harsh, nothing jovial at all—but dark and twisted and it made the
muscles in Wendy’s stomach knot, like those nights when she’d awaken to the
sounds of her brothers breathing and feel that restless rumination in her legs.
It was a tactical error. Wendy recognized it, and the woman must have too
because she stiffened.
“Can’t I?” He swept his arms out in an arch. “This is my kingdom, fairy. I am
the only master here. I will keep whoever I please.”
Wendy swallowed bile, swallowed her tears, pressed her face into the woman’s
knees and gripped the flesh of her calf tight enough to leave half-crescent
marks in her flesh.
“She stays,” Pan said, with thundering finality.
 
 
 
 
 
Tink—Tinker? Tinkerbelle? Wendy wasn’t sure. Everyone seemed to have a
multitude of names, and none of them really theirs; they never ask her and she
wondered what they called her—proved her point, that she was willing to shed
lost boy blood if they got rough with the Pan’s latest catch, and so Wendy was
left to her own devices.
“Sorry, pet,” Tinkerbelle had said, disentangling Wendy’s grip from her legs.
“But you’ll need to look elsewhere for a savior. I’m not much in the way
of—well, anything actually.”
Tinkerbelle left her—abandoned her—but Pan lost interested the moment the fairy
left. He had only wanted her because Tinkerbelle had told him he couldn’t have
her, and Wendy spent countless days curled up in the hollow of a mossy, mud-
slick tree with her face in her knees, alternating between sobbing and begging
to go home.
No one listened to her.
Every so often one of the Pan’s lost boys brought her a meal, cooked meat that
Wendy didn’t ask about, but otherwise paid her little attention.
Neverland (Tinkerbelle had called it that) was sticky and hot, but Wendy
shivered in her nightgown, felt her stomach churn at the feeling of mud caking
between her toes, at the grass and leafs in her hair. She used to dream of wild
nights in the woods, streaking through the trees like one of those antique wood
nymphs, just out of the reach of a greedy god.
Now she just wanted to go home, and she sobbed and sobbed until there were no
tears left and then she heaved, emptying her stomach over and over again. The
lost boys never gave her a glance, and at least saved her from the
embarrassment of being so violently ill.
And then she slept.
 
 
 
 
“I remember girls,” a voice whispered above the heavy blanket of sleep
descended over Wendy. “Only I think they were called mothers then—I had one, I
remember.”
“Shuddup—what if Pan heard ya? You know we’re not supposed to talk about before
we got here. Whatdya think he’d do?”
“Gut you like a pig,” one boy was happy to supply. “Spill all your insides out
and let the mermaids have a grand feast.”
Everyone left, Wendy flailed out of her dream at the gory image, screaming,
throwing her hands out. She clipped one of the boys in his nose, felt bone
crunched beneath her knuckles, and he yowled, flopping backwards.
More wild laughter, jeering at the other boy, cheers when the nose was
discovered to be broken. Wendy stared in abject horror at their lust for
violence.
Undeterred, the boy who had first spoken, his nose shoved up towards his eyes,
lips pulled unevenly back over his teeth making him look like a mouse, said,
“I’m just saying—think about it. Since she’s here and the Pan says we gets to
‘ave ‘er why not make her a mother? They do things, I remember, like cooking
and cleaning and—”
“Shuddup up!” More serious this time, one boy clapped the speaking one over his
ears. “Or I’ll put me sword through yer belly meself. What if Pan hears? Then
we’re all in for it. He’d—”
“Think it a grand idea.”
Wendy shrunk back against her allotted tree as the Pan sidled up, long legs
stretching in each stride, giving him an awkward, gangly swagger. His knife-
grin cut his face from ear to ear as the boys made hasty room for him.
His fingers reached for Wendy. She hissed like an offended cat and swatted at
him, drawing her nails down the back of his hand hard enough to draw a beading
line of blood. Pan’s eyes darkened, his lethal smile turning downward into a
fierce, angry scowl. He reached for her again, lightning fast, fisting a hand
in her hair and dragging her forward.
Wendy stumbled awkwardly to her feet, pulled against the lean body, inhaling
the strange mixture of sweet and earth and fresh grass on him.
“Like I was saying,” he barked into her face. “Mother. And mothers do all sorts
of things—the cooking and the cleaning, telling bedtime stories, caring for
injuries, singing us songs, and—”
“—commanding the obedience of her children, because they love her best,” she
snarled into his face, the spark of anger and hate in her heart giving a
bravado in the face of his cruelty. She jerked her head back to meet his eyes,
ignoring the whine of protest from the roots of her hair. “They do as she says.
They listen to her. They protect her from harm. So that means you have to
listen to me, Peter Pan.”
A cruel laugh, a hot blast of air in her face, and Wendy shivered. His free
hand pinched at her side punishingly. “But I’m not going to be your child,” he
said, face coming in close hers, peering at her like a wolf looking at a
rabbit. Something at the back of Wendy’s knees trembled. “I’m going to be the
father, and everyone knows the mother has to obey the father.”
 
 
 
 
 
He made her sit in his lap at their makeshift table, pressing small pieces of
food to her lips, pinching her side when she refused to open them.
“I’ve seen mothers and fathers do this,” the Pan informed her, the look on his
face smug, pleased with his knowledge.
Wendy liked it better when he ignored her, found no interest in her, had only
wanted her as a passing stubbornness against a fairy. She doesn’t like the
hungry gaze he fastened on her. It didn’t matter that the Pan looked at
everything like he was starved for it, that at everything he gazed there was
always a direct, unflinching need there. She didn’t want those dark eyes on
her.
“No you didn’t,” she snapped at him. “That’s not what mothers and fathers
do—that’s what husbands and wives do.”
He didn’t seem to understand those terms, didn’t understand that mothers and
fathers were interchangeable with husbands and wives, and she lorded this
information above her, her superior knowledge to the Pan. He only understood
wild things, brutal things, and she preened with the understanding of the
secrets of adulthood, secrets that an always-boy would never have whispered
into his ears.
With a grunt he shoved, and Wendy fell out of his lap. Instead of laughing the
lost boys were stunned into silence, as if they are already thinking about the
lessons Wendy had thrown at them—children love their mother, protect their
mother.
The Pan stalked away.
 
 
 
 
 
The littlest of the lost boys brought her a bustle of flower the next day. They
seemed to have all forgotten the Pan’s anger, though Wendy refused to. She let
her own stew inside her, twisting around the tattered remains of her nightgown,
letting it side like bile on her tongue, never swallowing. She didn’t want to
forget in this place that seemed to carry amnesia in its very air.
“I remember I used to bring flowers to my mother,” the boy said, the crinkle in
his brow suggesting that he was not quite sure how truthful he was being.
How can a boy forget the touch of his mother, the warmth of her hand? Wendy
yearned for her mother, for the safety of her arms, for the hidden kiss just
above her lip.
She took them, clutching them until the thorns of the wild roses cut into her
palm. She wanted to toss them into the flames, but she was not that cruel, even
she did occupy the role of makeshift mother to the Pan’s monstrous children.
And James is the nicest of all the lost boys.
“Thank you,” Wendy forced out.
“It wouldn’t do for a father to come without a present, I suppose,” said the
Pan, reclining into the little alcove of the small tree she and the other lost
boys are camped out in, watching the exchange with an odd glint in his eyes.
The rains splattered fat and cold on the ground, and those the lost boys are
happy to spend their days covered in mud and leafs, even they don’t want to be
washed away.
The Pan tossed his gift at her, a frothy mess of pink and white, the frills and
laces ruffling with the sudden explosion of movement. Wendy sputtered at it as
it closed around her face, and she heard the laughter of the other boys—and
pulled free with a red face.
“Don’t like it?” That cruel smile was back.
Wendy had just begun to be initiated into the secretive world of womanhood, had
only just stood on the cusp of it, when a shadow had stolen her away. But even
she remembered governess lessons and whispers behind her mother and her
friends’ hands. A woman must not accept clothing from a man who wasn’t her
husband or she would be one of those sorts (it didn’t matter that Wendy didn’t
know who those sorts were; she knew they were bad).
But her nightgown was in beyond repair.
She clutched the dress close to her breast. “Out,” she muttered.
“What?” the closest boy at her elbow asked, peering close.
“Out!” She whipped the dress at them like a lash and they jumped back. “It
isn’t proper for children to be in the same room as a changing lady.”
They exchanged look and Wendy tried again. “Your mother orders—!”
They left. All except the Pan.
“You have to go, too.”
He unfolded himself from the alcove, landed softly on his feet, graceful as a
panther. He stalked to her, and Wendy pulled the dress tight against her
breast, like it was a shield against him. That seemed to amuse the Pan, and he
laughed, one finger hooked into the silky fabric.
“Don’t fathers stay with mothers when they remove their clothes?”
There was only a curious look in his gold-rimmed eyes. He poked at the dress,
as if it were some animal playing possum, and he wanted to see if he could coax
it into revealing its game. He had no interest in her, not really. She was a
novelty, and a passing interest. That made Wendy angry, somehow, though that
was foolish. She knew that there was a whole collection of gazes in which a
woman was to be wary of when a man looked at her, and she should be relieved
that she did not see one on Pan’s face.
“No,” she said, her voice soft. She swallowed rapidly over the strange lump
formed at the back of her throat. “No. That’s husbands and wives.”
He didn’t like the reminder that there may have been something out there that
she knew more about than him. He retreated a step, then another, then spun on
his heel and pounded up the steps. The door slammed behind him.
Wendy rushed to the back corner the room, eyes squeezing closed as she peeled
the destroyed sleeping gown from her body. She was naked and alone and for an
odd moment her fingers stole of their own accord down her neck, down the
blooming curve of her breast. She shivered as a finger ghosted across the
distended point at the center, a strange jolt of electricity slamming into her,
settling between her legs, uncomfortably warm. An unwelcomed but familiar
sensation, like the ones she had felt a handful of times in the nursery like
the one she had felt when the Pan—
Wrong. There must be something terribly wrong with her, and she pulled the gown
over her head. Even with the pale, white sash ruthless tied into a tight knot
it sagged on her. It was meant for someone taller than her, and wider, fuller.
It was meant for a woman.
Wendy’s fingers trembled as she fastened the buttons up to her neck. She had
never wanted to grow up, had never wanted the title of woman attached to her,
had only wanted make believe adventures with her brothers in the nursery, had
wanted to play pirates and knights and dragons and never worry about silly
adult things.
Now she was nearly floored with the craving. She wanted to run home, wanted her
mother, wanted her to whisper all those secret womanly things into her ear.
Wanted to know—understand waking up at strange hours in the night with an
undeniable ache.
Wanted a husband. Wanted children. Wanted to be a mother.
She turned, and the Pan stared back at her.
Now there was something hungry and dark in his eyes and Wendy realized he must
have been there the whole time, must have never left. It was likely meant to be
another cruel jest from the Pan, but he seemed as unnerved as her, dark eyes
moving from the pink fabric that swept against the dirt floor and up to her
where her lips moved wordlessly.
Then he spun, and left, and with him he took all the air—there was nothing to
keep Wendy from collapsing to her knees.
 
 
 
 
The Pan returned to ignoring her. The tension boiled between them, and made the
other lost boys uneasy. Felix, who Wendy didn’t like at all, took to sneering
at her—as if this was all her fault.
She stayed in the tiny room beneath the tree, curled up on the hammock,
refusing to be moved. Some of the younger lost boys stopped by, tried to coax
her out and into the sunshine, but she simply kept her back to them, and her
hands clamped over her ears.
Until the Pan came.
He shook her fiercely, and when she refused to acknowledge him dragged her out
of the hammock by her hair. She screamed and clawed at him, and felt so alive,
so brutally alive. She struck his chin, and drew blood. There was a wild look
in the Pan’s eyes that Wendy knew had a match in the look in hers. She suddenly
didn’t care.
“What are you doing to me?” he snarled in her face, shaking her so heard her
neck ached with whiplash. “Did the fairy teach you some magic? Some spell? It
won’t work. Not on me. This won’t work on me.”
She had no idea what he was talking about, but felt no need to tell him so. Let
him sit and stew, let him think her dangerous. She felt dangerous, and wanted
to be. She wanted to be a predator, she wanted to be the wolf and the dragon
and the monster.
“I’ve seen it before but—I didn’t care.” His voice was garbled, not wanting to
reveal to her whatever vulnerability he perceived was her fault. It was wise of
him. Wendy would have driven a dagger into his heart if she could have. “Now
I—now I—”
“I want to go home!” she thundered at him, kicking him in his shin. The Pan
yelped and she wanted to crow with satisfaction.
“No!” he snarled right back into her face, his breath hot like a sticky
Neverland night against her cheeks. “No, you’re staying! You’re mine!”
“Selfish, horrible boy! I don’t want to be here!” She thrashed against him, but
he held her firm. It made prickling tears of loathing and grief collect at the
corners of her eyes. “I want to go home! I want my mother! I want my father! I
want Baelfire, and my brothers—”
“Brothers?” His gaze shifted, like a hawk sensing a rabbit, and landed back on
her face. “You have brothers?”
Wendy’s eyes widened in horror as she realized her fatal mistake. “No.” She
only had strength for a strangled whisper.
The Pan laughed and pushed away from her. Wendy stumbled backward, hip crashing
against the tiny table. “At first I thought the Shadow was punishing me—sending
you and making me want to—but you have brothers! They were the ones who were
supposed to come here, come to me. Not you, you stupid girl!”
“No. Peter, don’t—”
It was only a handful of seconds, but they seemed to crawl by in Wendy’s
suddenly hyperaware senses. The Pan lifted two fingers to his lips, and she
understand—that was how he summoned his shadow, a shrill whistle, and he would
send it out, back to London where her brothers were. The Shadow would bring
them here, and her brothers would be lost boys, would turn all twisted and mean
and wrong and she—
“No.”
She was on him before he realized what she planned, fingers curled into the
coarse fabric of his tunic, dragging him down against her. Her mouth slammed
into his a moment before his fingers touched his lips, his knuckles brushing
hard against her cheekbone.
It felt like the ground shifted beneath her feet. Everything was still around
them. The Pan’s eyes were on hers, wide and something very close to terrified,
but Wendy could not take satisfaction in that. She was terrified too, and
trembled so hard she thought she would splinter apart.
And then the Pan’s mouth opened, wide over hers, and his fingers gripped her
hips with bruising force. She squeaked in surprise, and ruthless as he was, the
Pan took advantage of it. She felt his tongue crawl into her mouth, pressing
against her teeth. Something inside her stomach jumped, the ache between her
legs returned and she felt true, true horror stick to her ribs.
Her eyes closed, her body humming beneath the violent shove of his mouth. It
was wrong, surely it was, how vindicated she felt at how rough he was. Her
fingers still gripped his shirtfront, and she felt the hard thundering of his
heart, like a wild horse brought to a rest. He tasted like the forest, and the
blueberries some of the lost boys had brought her only yesterday—he must have
had a taste for them to.
The rest of her thoughts scattered when her hip hit the table again, the pain a
strange compliment to the hard mouth she was meeting bite for bite. The table
didn’t wobble when she fell back against it, she was small and though the Pan
was much taller he was reedy and thin. It simply teetered to the left, some
stolen chinaware falling to the side and shattering.
An instinctive understanding had Wendy rolling her hips. Something bumped
against the apex of her thighs, and it sent a jolt through her, made her limbs
feel like they were molten liquid. She aware, absently, of a strange wetness
between her thighs, and might have been embarrassed of it if the Pan had lifted
a hand and pressed it her breast, curling his fingers around it. She gasped
hotly into his mouth.
Then he was shoving away and she was left to stare blindly up at the arched,
wooden ceiling.
“What have you done?” the Pan snarled, all monstrous and dark, half a shadow in
his rage. Wendy pushed herself up to her elbows, staring into his hate-filled
face. As cruel and mean as he had been to her before, he had never looked at
her like he hated her. Like she was something vile and horrid. “What did you do
to me?”
“I didn’t do anything—”
“You did! I’ve seen them do—do that before and I never cared! I never cared, it
didn’t look very fun. But now—” His eyes speared down her body where it rested
half on the table. His lips twisted into a snarl. “But now. You’re wrong and
now you’ve made me wrong!”
The secret fear in her chest twinged like a pinched nerve. He couldn’t have
known how effective his rebuttal had been. She felt stripped bare, a festering
wound peeled back and left exposed to the open air.
“I’m not wrong!” she screeched at him. “I’m not wrong!”
She clamped her hands over her ears and ran. The Pan didn’t follow.
 
 
 
 
Wendy ran. Her dirty feet slipped through mud and moss, her hair tangled in low
hanging branches and leafs. She had thought her tears gone, rung out dry the
first few days in Neverland (how long had it been? A month or two perhaps, but
it felt like an eternity).
She ran. Away from the Pan and his vile accusation. There was nothing wrong
with her!
She ran, blindly, splashing through puddles leftover from the rain, ran until
she was streaking through the rocky outcrops of a lagoon. She had never been
allowed to explore the jungle. The Pan had never let her—
Her ankle snagged on a coarse, braided rope. Wendy tripped forward, and then
her world titled. She was flung upward, her leg wrenching nearly out of its
socket as she dangled feet above the lagoon. Her dress billowed over her face,
and her world became dark.
She twisted her head toward the sound of branches crunching underfoot.
“Peter?” Wendy hated that her voice sounded hopeful.
“And here I was hoping to catch a mermaid,” someone said, his voice rougher,
deeper than the Pan’s. The same someone shifted the fabric obscuring Wendy’s
view. “You are must certainly not a mermaid.”
This was no lost boy’s face Wendy peered up into. Moonlight slashed harsh and
bright across her eyes, and she blinked owlishly down at the cause of it. The
man had a gleaming hook for a hand.
“Well, love?”
His voice, and his face, was not kind. Wendy still felt that she was safer with
him than she would have been with Peter Pan.
***** Chapter 2 *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
we have found each other
thirsty and we have
drunk up all the water and the
blood,
we found each other
hungry
and we bit each other
as fire bites,
leaving wounds in us
 -pablo neruda
 
“I didn’t think the Pan had much interest in females,” the captain said,
sprawled in his rich leather chair, hooked hand tapping against the wooden
table lined with assortments of map and star charts.
“He’s not. His shadow grabbed me by mistake.”
“Ah.”
His accent made a pang of homesickness resound in her breast, in ways she
hadn’t felt before. She recognized the fall and raise of his words; her father
spoke in a similar gait, a nuance of words that spoke of some learning, Eton in
his vowels. She was lulled by it, but Wendy knew better than to trust him—he
was a pirate, after all.
It was his first mate, a Mr. Smee, that had brought Wendy the tea that now
warmed her chilled palms. Her feet dangled inches above the carpeted floor,
obscured by the frayed hemline of her gown, and Wendy felt the beginnings of
embarrassment stain her cheeks. She knew the pink gown was not only overly big
on her, but that it had been torn by the Pan’s callous hands. It hadn’t
mattered, when she had been running, and she hadn’t given much thought to
appearances among the lost boys, who were always covered in mud and caked
blood.
Now—she could feel her world encroaching on this one, in the guise of a
leather-clad pirate with mocking politesse in his words. Wendy didn’t know how
to feel about it, didn’t know how to feel about anything—least of all the Pan,
from whom she had fled, whose fingerprints she could feel on her body like
scorch marks.
“There now, miss,” Mr. Smee said with an uneasy, fatherly warmth. His fingers
patted the back of her hand. “It’ll be alright now.”
It wouldn’t be.
Wendy burst into tears. The pirate captain stood, unconcerned with her grief or
having no wish to be around a woman’s tears, and crossed to the wide, railed
windows at the back of the room.
“What’s your name, girl?” he asked.
“Wen—Wendy,” she managed to hiccup. “Wendy Mo—Moira Angela Darling.” It was
such a strange feeling to say it, after having gone so long without even
thinking of it.
The Pan didn’t know her real name, she thought, nor did the lost boys, but they
hadn’t given her a name like they had given ones to each other—the Pan, and
Felix, and Nibs, and Tootles; silly names, but ones that created a sort of
camaraderie among the boys, bond them tightly together. Sometimes she thought
she heard the boys referring to her as a bird because of her ungraceful
landing, when they weren’t calling her mother, but those weren’t names. She had
never belonged to the group, never invited into the secret circle that the Pan
claimed as his own. Even if she had wanted, she had never been allowed to be
apart of it.
It made her cry harder.
“There now, Miss Darling,” the captain said. “There’s no crying on the ship of
Captain Hook, you hear?”
She nodded fiercely, afraid he’d make her walk the plank if she didn’t obey,
and messily swallowed her next sobs.
“Aren’t you—are you from London?”
“London? No. But I’ve been north a time or two.” Captain Hook rolled his
shoulders. He was a handsome man, but there was something about him that made
her uneasy—some kind of flinty, rawboned anger in the hollows of his cheeks.
The Pan was angry, but in an almost playful way, in this man there was
something far more deadly, a rage that was honed by grief.
“Please,” she whispered, voice warbling out over the watery remains of her
heaving sobs. “Please, captain, take me home. Please take me home. I want to
see my family again. I want to—”
His hook cut through the air, effectively cutting her words. “Sorry, love,
you’re going to have to look elsewhere for a savior.”
She had heard that before, Wendy thought, her tongue burning with something
bitter.
“Why not?” she demanded hotly, fingers balling over the fabric of her ill
fitted gown.
“The Pan may make it seem easy, but it’s a bit of trial getting into
Neverland—once I leave I might be able to get back.” Lots to the miasma of his
own thoughts, dark ones by the sharp glint in his eyes, the captain lifted his
abbreviated hand, the silver of his hook gleaming harshly in the lamplight.
“And I won’t let this all be for naught.”
Wendy didn’t inquire about the strange statement. She didn’t care, not bout
whatever had put that look in his eyes. She didn’t wanted to be dragged down
into Neverland’s secrets any more than she already was. She didn’t want to hear
anything about his pains, about what unfair hand life had dealt him, this
pirate with a hungry look in his eyes and hate in the strong line of his jaw.
Mr. Smee had left them some time ago, and Wendy belatedly remembered lessons by
her governess—it is not proper for a miss to be alone with a gentleman, less
others think ill of her and it reflect poorly on her family—but what did all
that matter? There was no such laws here, Neverland operated with its own
savage customs, and she had been made the Pan’s heathen queen, even if it had
been just for a lark. She answered to no laws higher than her own.
The knowledge made her feel uninhabited, fierce and powerful, and she curled
her slender fingers over the wrist of the captain’s severed hand. She could
feel the bumping flesh there, only just healing, and he jumped, dark brow
quirked in surprise.
“Take me home, Captain Hook. Please.” Her lips puckered, a promise she didn’t
realize she was making, driven by instinct and some hidden intuition that had
always laid dormant in her veins. Tears clung to her thick sweep of lashes,
making her eyes luminous and glowing.
Harsh laughter escaped him, and reminded Wendy of Pan’s. “Exercise those
feminine wiles somewhere else, love,” he advised her. “I’ve no time and no
patience for girl pretending to be women. Even if I still considered myself a
man—I’d be too much of one for you to handle. I’ve no thirst for anything
except revenge.”
She yanked her hand away as if it burned.
“You can spend a few nights,” the captain said. “But if the Pan comes ‘round to
reclaim you, don’t expect me to play knight in shining armor.”
 
 
 
 
 
The room that was given to her for her stay was overly small, and smelled of
potatoes. There was no cot here for her to sleep on but Mr. Smee had piled
enough blankets to fashion a makeshift mat for her.
Wendy collapsed bodily into it, too fatigued to even weep. She simply stared at
the rotting wood of low hanging ceiling until she passed out into dreamless,
exhausted sleep.
—And woke up to the rocking of the ship. With the ship anchored (she didn’t
even know its name) it was a gentle, swaying motion, like a mother rocking her
child to sleep. Wendy woke up with sweat collected on the back of her neck, and
gathered at her knees.
She felt a restless humming in her throat, in her stomach, familiar aches that
she tried to bury, tried to ignore. She couldn’t. Unbidden, the image of the
Pan rose up, all sinewy limbs and knife-sharp smiles poking into her. She
remembered his hot mouth on hers, opened wide like he wanted to swallow her up,
she remembered the heat she had felt pool in her belly. She remembered his hand
on her breast.
Her own hand slipped down, curled her fingers around the mound, though it only
felt mildly pleasant until she recalled the image of the Pan’s hand there,
until she started pretending it was his rough, bony fingers pulling and
pressing into the flesh. The familiar ache between her legs increased, causing
her to instinctively rub her legs together, creating delicious friction there.
Against her will, Wendy’s eyes fluttered closed and the images played like
moving pictures on the backs of her eyelids—the Pan’s dark face, his hungry
mouth, his fingers on her. She rolled her hips against the chilly air and
before she could think the better of it, her hands pushing her dress to her
hips, exposing herself to the night.
But there other concerns, her fingers moving stealthy over her hip, like thief,
pressing her fingers into the damp, wiry curls at the apex of her thighs. Wendy
bit her lip, as if worried that she would be discovered and punished for doing
something so obviously unladylike, but the jolt of pleasure that careened down
her legs encouraged her to peruse it, fingers moving over the slick cleft
between her legs. A hidden, sacred place she had never dared touched before
though she had realized that ache that awoken her in the middle night had
originated there.
Now she explored, poking and rubbing, surprised and intrigued by the electric
shocks that answered each tentative touch. Once more, the Pan intruded into her
mind, and she imaged what his cruel hands would feel like, moving over the
slick, swollen folds, imaged the knife-cutting grin as she whimpered helplessly
beneath him, desperate and hungry for more sensation.
Her fingers pushed inside her, and she gasped, canting her hips against the
heel of her hand, working ruthlessly towards a finish she didn’t understand.
The heel of her palm pressed into knot of flesh at the top of her folds and the
sensations rioted. Wendy muffled a scream beneath palm.
Something burst beneath her flesh, white-hot, and as she rocked against her
hand. The muscles in her legs trembled as they liquefied, no longer able to
keep her balanced. She collapsed back onto her makeshift bedding, panting like
she’d been held under water.
In the shadowy corners, Wendy thought she heard the Pan laughing at her.
 
 
 
 
She was left to her own devices on the pirate ship. There were no clothes to
mend or food to cook, or bedtime stories to tell, as she had with the lost
boys. Her presence made some of them uneasy, but Wendy had heard stories about
how sailors thought that women on ships were bad luck. Magic, in its own little
way.
Wendy stay mostly in her sequestered room, waiting for the day when Captain
Hook told her she had to leave. He seemed to have forgotten her entirely,
caught up in his own affairs. Wendy left him to them, and hoped they brought
him nothing but more grief, still embittered by his refusal to help.
The Pan haunted her nights, but she refused to weakened and allow herself the
indulgence of those touches at they once had. It felt too much like letting him
win.
Was there something wrong with her? That the Pan’s cruel, gaunt face could
cause that wetness between her thighs? That pleasure only came by imagining him
touching her in all those intimate, dark ways only a husband should be allowed?
That her lips tingled every time she remembered that hard, angry kiss between
them—she had done it to save her brothers, to distract him, but afterwards she
couldn’t claim that her brothers had remained in her thoughts after. Yet
another sin.
But the Pan never came for her, though Wendy often climbed up and looked out at
the green stretch of shoreline. She never saw a figure on the beach, or a
shadowy entity stalking through the air. Perhaps the Pan had forgotten about
her, and she prayed that he had forgotten about her brothers as well.
“What if he doesn’t come for me?” she demanded the captain after an hour spent
with her weather-eye on the horizon.
He shrugged. “Not my concern.” He tilted his chin toward the shoreline. “But he
will. Don’t know the Pan well myself, but I know enough of boys to know they’re
a selfish lot and don’t they care to share. Especially not boys with their
first—” His eyes titled toward her, a creeping ghost of a smile crossing his
face. “I do feel sorry for you, lass. Truly. Boys are rarely gentle
creatures—and I image eternal boy-children are atrocious.”
Wendy thought of the kiss—as she often did, as hard and biting and hateful and
wonder what it said of her that she enjoyed it.
 
 
 
 
 
The Pan did everything with a bit of fanfare, so it came as a shock to Wendy
one day when he merely settled his feet on the railing of the ship and waited.
“You have something of mine.” There was something oddly contained about the
Pan, his untamed ferocity caged, controlled, the grip on his sword disciplined.
Wendy had never seen him like that.
“Do I? You’ll have to be most specific.” With a sweeping gesture and a falsely
amicable grin on his face the captain said. “I’m known for taking many a thing
as it pleases me.”
“Wendy. She’s mine.”
Wendy stilled, trying to remember how he might know her name—why he might know
her name; Peter Pan who never remembered the names of anyone. But he knew hers.
Captain Hook nodded, the way one would to a hungry wolf so as not to become its
next meal. “So she is,” he agreed. “Bring me the girl.”
Mr. Smee at her back, pushing her by her shoulders. Wendy’s mind flashed with
images—cruel laughs and mean kisses and his fingers bruising into her hips. Her
heart thudded into her throat. “No,” she whispered. “No. Please. Don’t make me
go—don’t send me—please—”
“I am sorry, miss,” Mr. Smee said, sounding sincere, and gave her a forceful
shove.
She tumbled to her knees on the wooden planks, already scrambling back. The
captain caught the back of her gown with his hook and dragged her to her feet,
brandishing her at the Pan like a hunk of meat.
“Mine,” the Pan snarled, leaping to the deck. He seemed to be enraged by the
way the captain shook her.
“Never would have claimed otherwise,” the captain placating. “And I don’t have
much room for girls aboard my ship. She’s all yours.”
Another fierce shove that sent Wendy propelling forward. The Pan caught her,
fingers digging into shoulders as he dragged her against him. The captain
watch, dark eyes hooded to shield his thoughts.
“A dangerous game you play, boy,” he said quietly.
The Pan’s wild laughter ruffled Wendy’s salt-and-dirt matted hair. “Those are
the most fun!”
“Perhaps—but what if some innocent lass gets hurt?”
The laughter turned biting, like an early winter frost. “It’s not your concern,
you old codfish. Don’t forget that Neverland is my territory, and if you want
to remain here to wait out your crocodile you will only do so by staying on my
good side.”
“Of course.”
“You coward!” Wendy screamed, straining against the Pan’s hold. “You coward!
You monster! You can’t just let him take me!”
“I’m rather afraid I can, love,” the captain said easily. “And I never claimed
to be a hero.”
She would have railed him more but the Pan stepped back onto the railing, and
then over the side. They plummeted toward the crystalline waters below the
ship, but at the last moment the Pan flew.
 
 
 
 
 
He didn’t take them back to the lost boy encampment. They flew by trees and
lagoons, everything a whipping blue-green-brown blur. Wendy clung to the Pan,
inhaled his earthy scent, her legs pressing against his as she gripped him for
dear life.
Night had settled when they finally landed, a circular opening among the crush
of trees. Their landing disturbed a nest of fireflies and sent them dancing
around their heads, casting eerie green glows on their skin.
Wendy shoved at him, but the Pan refused to release her, fingers biting into
the flesh on her arms. She sobbed, more out of frustration and anger than any
actual sadness, and wretched one arm free. She slapped him as hard as she
could, the force of it rattling up her arms, settling against her teeth.
The Pan looked shocked that someone had dared and Wendy felt a bubble of
hysterical laughter burn up her throat. “I want to go home! I want you to take
me home! I hate you! I hate Neverland!” Her hand reared back to slap him again.
His bony fingers encircled her wrist, catching her before she could landed a
blow, with a dark, terrible look on his face. He pushed her, sent her sprawling
to her back. She would have scrambled to her feet, already hissing her hate at
him, but the Pan came down on top her, pressing his palms to her wrists,
bracing them against the sides of her face. Trapping her.
She thrashed beneath him, trying to kick him to lodge him free.
“This,” he snarled low into her face, “Is all your fault. Look at what you’ve
done to me. I was already—already growing up and now—!”
“I hate you!” she screamed.
He slammed his mouth down on hers. Wendy had seen it coming, had thought
perhaps she should twist her head away but couldn’t, only arched her neck to
meet him. Her teeth clamped down on his bottom lip and a hot burst of blood
pooled into her mouth. The Pan yelped and reared back, staring at her, but she
should have known violence would not deter him. He licked his lip and came back
down, and she tasted the metallic tang on his tongue as he shoved the appendage
into her mouth.
Her fingers clawed at the backs of his hands, but she didn’t want to push him
away. She just wanted flesh beneath her nails, and wanted him close. She felt
skin whine beneath the press of her fingers, the Pan shuddering above her. His
knee slammed up between her legs, but that felt good too, a jolt to her center
and she gasped into his mouth. Her hips wriggled, desperate to feel more
pressure between her legs.
The Pan’s fingers streaked down her side, pulling at her gown. He bunched it up
at her hips and pushed it up and over her head. Without the sash it was easy to
pull away. He seemed intrigued by what he had revealed, but reluctant to
release her hands. He licked at her chin, at her rapidly swallowing throat, and
he craned down farther to lick at her breast.
A cry escaped Wendy and the Pan stiffened, but then seemed to have decided he
enjoyed the sounds. His head dipped down again, flicking his tongue over the
peddled flesh and she whimpered and twisted beneath him, muscles bunching in
her stomach. She didn’t know what she wanted, for him to stop or for him to
never stop, but she needed movement. She felt hungry, starving, understood at
least perhaps that look of starvation in the Pan’s eyes.
His teeth closed over the point at the center of her breast, curiously dragging
it into his mouth. He made loud suckling sounds and Wendy’s cheeks flamed with
embarrassment at the lewd noises. He shifted and she felt something hard poke
between her legs, but this time it wasn’t the Pan’s leg. That grabbed his
attention and he leveled himself off her, glancing down between their bodies,
thoughtful frown twisted on his face.
Then he released her. Her fingers battered at his shoulders before digging into
his coarse tunic and dragging him against her. He was reaching between them,
and she cried out when his knuckles brushed against her damp curls and
overheated flesh. That gave him another pause, but the Pan’s concerns were
elsewhere.
Wendy stilled when she felt something blunt and hard press against the small
opening along her cleft, eyes widening. Some instinctive part of her made her
stiffen, but the Pan had little concern for her feelings and he pushed forward,
the head of his manhood easing passed her saturated folds.
Pain exploded at his intrusion and everything inside her tightened in defense,
doubling the pain. She couldn’t make herself relax, couldn’t find the words to
demand he stop, that it hurt too much, could only gulp at the air, her neck
arched, as the Pan forged into her, eyes zeroed in on where he pushed and
shoved.
The pain didn’t lessen, not even when he was seated fully inside her, and Wendy
squeezed her eyes shut and prayed it would over soon.
The Pan eased out, but not all the way. He gave a small, uneasy push back
inside her and her nerve endings burned with pain. She whimpered, and he licked
her chin again, like a wolf to a wounded pack member, but didn’t stop. The
muscles in his arms quivered where they leveled him by her head as he thrust
back and forth inside her. Wendy bit down hard enough on her lip to draw a
trickle of blood that rolled down her chin. The Pan licked that too.
His shoves became bruising, the force of it scooting her forward on the wet
grass. She cried out with each thrust, mostly in pain but the beginnings of
sparks began to dance just beyond her reach, odd tingling in her toes that
eased upward to where the Pan was buried inside her. Her heels scrapped against
the grass until she had pushed into the mud below. The Pan gasped and panted
harshly above her, lashes fluttering as his thrust became more and more
erratic.
His chest slammed down into hers, stealing her breath, her breasts scrapping
against the smooth skin of his as he shuddered above her. She felt some sticky,
thick fluid leak out between her legs.
When the Pan rolled off her, she was relieved, the sore pressure between her
legs abating as he freed his manhood from her with a wet pop. She would have
crawled away, found some dark corner to catalogue her wounds, but he wouldn’t
even give her that, wrapping an arm around her waist and lashing her to his
side.
Fireflies danced around her legs as the Pan drifted into sleep.
 
 
 
 
Wendy must have slept too, because without her awareness the darkness of the
night gave way to streaming sunlight, burning her closed eyelids. She refused
to open them, but could not ignore the aching soreness between her legs. She
knew the night could not have been a dream, too raw and painful, but she could
have hoped—
Something strange tickled the inside of her thighs, and made Wendy’s toes
wiggle. Still, she struggled against wakefulness, too afraid to face the day.
Something moved through the sticky collection of blood and fluid on her thighs
and between her legs, stroking, making her aching limbs waken.
A finger, she realized, and her eyes popped open.
The Pan crouched over her, a furrow etched into the skin between his brows. He
touched her where she was messy from her blood and his release, rubbing, and
glanced up at her when a moan escaped from her lips, unbidden. His lifted his
fingers up into the sunlight, rubbing the substance between them, and brought
it carefully to his extended tongue.
“No, don’t!” Wendy cried out, horrified, clamping her legs together.
She should have known the Pan would have only seen this as a challenge, as
another way to exert his perceived dominance over her.
“Quiet,” he said, curling a hand around her knee and forcing her legs apart.
She shook her head fiercely, beyond embarrassed. No man should ever look at a
woman there, in that hollow. She knew it, a wordless lesson from her governess.
A proper lady would never let a man, no matter how wild and terrible, and she
should—
He bent down, tongue swirling around her naval, like the way any animal would
to discern an uncertain taste. She shuddered, tried to scoot away on her
elbows, but then the Pan moved lower, grasping the inside of her thighs and
pressing his tongue to the mess between her legs. She screamed this time,
arching against him on no conscious violation of her own. The Pan nosed through
her wiry, dark curls, tongue lapping at liquid between her thighs.
Her cheeks flames, but she already growing wet at the attention. The Pan
pressed a thumb to her folds, pulling one side back to expose her to him,
tonguing the aching flesh. Her soreness still throbbed a dull remainder, but it
was being drowned out in sensation. It felt like a whole universe was beginning
to unfurl beneath her skin.
His teeth scrapped against the top her cleft, where the knot of flesh throbbed,
and she cried out so loudly the Pan was shocked into stopping. Wendy almost
screamed with frustration, fingers clawing at the ground, mad with abbreviated
pleasure.
His fingers moved over her stomach, rubbing at the jumping muscles. He eased
her onto her side, and then again on her stomach. Cupping the underside her
hips, he dragged her to her knees. Wendy buried her face into the arms she laid
out in front of her.
Like animal. Somehow that felt right, with the trees around them, the jungle
teeming with the sound of cicadas and life. But she didn’t want him inside
her—except that she did. Despite the pain, she found herself selfishly yearning
for that sort of closeness. Perhaps there was something wrong with her.
There was a pinching pain again when he pressed his manhood inside her, but not
agonizing and burning like it had been the night before. Her muscles were more
relaxed now, used to him stretching her, and lightning seemed to spark each
nerve ending inside her. She was gasping and sobbing without realizing it, her
hips rocking back into his.
The Pan leaned over her, forehead pressed between her shoulder blades as he
undulated against her, not as desperate and forceful as he had the night
before. It helped. Pleasure bloomed like the first spring flower at his gentle
motions, and she canting her hips upward, clawing at the ground. Her hair
spilled over her shoulder, wild and tangled, her breasts swaying with each
gentle thrust.
One wide, thin hand curled around a swaying breast, squeezing it tightly, an
alarming juxtapose to how slowly and tenderly the Pan moved inside her. The
other hand gripped her hip, helping her to move back and forth on his shaft.
She didn’t need a guide, though, more than willing to chase her own pleasure,
sacrifice the last of her inhibitions and reasonings in the desperate grab for
pleasure.
“Peter,” she wept, forcing him to move faster, slamming back into his hips.
“Peter, please. Oh, please—please—please—”
The hand left her breast, curled tightly in her hair and yanked her neck back,
leaning them both up on her knees. Her back was flush against his chest as he
plowed into her. Wendy reached behind her and clawed at his face, but that only
spurred him on. His teeth fastened against her neck, clamping down, as he
slammed into her.
Her free hand streaked down over her breasts and quivering stomach, to where
the place where they were joined. The Pan cursed loudly when her finished
brushed over his manhood, but Wendy was more concerned with touching herself,
fingers moving through her slick cleft. She pressed her fingers against the
distended ball of nerves, rubbing and, when that wasn’t enough, pinching.
The universe beneath her skin exploded into a thousand stars, and a strangled
scream escaped her. She fell back to her hands and knees, shuddering, the Pan’s
hands on her hips the only thing keeping her upright. Wetness rolled down her
thighs, she pressed her face back into the grass, inhaling the scent of wet
earth.
The Pan bowed over her, hooking one arm around her middle, and holding her
still to receive his harsh thrusts. The skin on her bottom rippled with each
push, little sounds escaping her throat as he plowed into her, buried so
impossibly deep.
He hissed into her ear, breath on her skin. She turned her head instinctively
toward his, and he caught her mouth, tongue diving inside hers in a mimic of
his thrusting below. She knew what his sudden stillness, the tightening of his
muscles, meant now, knew the harsh grunt meant he had spent himself inside her.
They fell together back to the mossy ground, the Pan’s weight almost crushing
her. His lips moved across her sweat-slick back, licked the dip of her spine
when she trembled.
For a long, long moment neither of them moved, or spoke, though Pan would
occasionally pluck a wayward leaf or blade of grass from her hair.
A savage marriage ceremony, Wendy thought, and knew she should be more
horrified.
 
 
 
 
 
When Wendy woke next the Pan was gone. Without him, her embarrassment returned
tenfold and she suddenly wanted nothing more than to clean the drying fluid,
and proof of their mating, from her thighs.
She walked on wobbling legs to a nearby lagoon, dived headlong into and
scrubbed her hands along her sore, exhausted body until her skin glowed pink
from irritation. She floated in the waist-deep, blue waters—wondering if there
was another world waiting for her if she decided to dive to the bottom of the
lagoon and never come up.
But eventually she crawled out of the lagoon. Her hair was clean, and her skin
was clean, and she was clean—at long last, after long months being covered in
dirt. And she ambled back to the clearing the Pan had left her in.
He was waiting for her, the tattered remains of her nightgown clutched in his
hand.
Without preamble he tossed it to her. Wendy caught it, holding it tightly to
her naked, clean body.
“I don’t know what you’ve done to me,” he sneered at her, voce as wild and dark
as the first night she had met him. “But I’m done. No one beats the Pan at a
game. Certainly not some stupid girl. You tricked me—I know you did. I wouldn’t
ever—I’ve got no interest in doing stupid, adult things. Especially not that.
The spell ends here.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she hissed, dragging her nightgown
over her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t done
anything.”
He lifted two fingers to his lips and blew—shattering her world.
The shadow materialized against his side. “I want her gone,” the Pan said, not
taking his eyes from her. “I mean—take her home. Bring her home, to her house
in London. And leave her there.”
“Peter—” She took an aborted step toward him.
“And bring me her brothers,” he snapped, blotches of color making his face
glow.
“No!” She lunged at him, clawing at his tunic. “No. Peter, you can’t! Not my
brothers, please!”
He grabbed her wrists, disentangled her from him. “The Pan obeys no rules but
his own.” His breath was hot and vile on her face, the scowl worse than any of
his knife-grins. “I don’t want you. I don’t need you.” He thrust her away with
such force that she fell backwards. A wild, near feverish laugh rumbled out his
chest as he threw his arms wide. “Goodbye, Wendy-bird.”
The shadow grabbed her arms and yanked her up. She kicked and screamed. Begged
for her brothers to be left alone, begged Peter to stop, and swallowed the
other words—the ones that wanted to beg him to let her stay, to not send her
away. She screamed at him instead, how much she hated him, how horrible he was,
the worst sort of monster.
Her cries went unheeded. The straight, stiff line of the Pan’s back was the
list thing she saw as the shadow lifted her high into the clouds.
 
 
 
 
 
The window to the nursery was still open, as if she had only been gone hours,
not months. When the shadow gently lowered her to the windowsill and dissolved
into the morning light, everything was still as it had been when she had first,
foolishly accepted the ghostly hand of a boy’s shadow.
Wendy realized she hadn’t been gone at all, that those months in Neverland had
been but hours in London. She could wept over that too. Each moment in
Neverland had meant nothing at all.
“Wendy?”
It was Baelfire, easing himself out of the shadows, innocent eyes wide with
shock and careful hope. Her beautiful magic-boy who had tried to warn her. She
should have listened.
“Oh, Baelfire. Bealfire!” she sobbed, rushing into his arms. She rubbed her
runny nose against his chest. He smelt clean and fresh, like her mother’s
washing soap.
Guilt slammed into her, because all she could think about was how earthy Peter
Pan had smelt, a living extension of the jungle.
“You got away,” he breathed in wonder. “You got home. What—how?”
“He let me go,” she wept into his chest. She willed her heart to hate the Pan,
swore that she would for all her years to come. If she ever saw him again,
she’d put a blade in his heart. Whatever she might have done to him, he’d
returned the favor. He’d made her as violent as he was. “He didn’t want me.”
And if that was a lie, then only the Pan would know.
Chapter End Notes
     1. tried to sprinkle from JM Barrie references because OUAT seems to
     just want to thumb their nose up at the poor man's work i'm so sorry
     buddy
     2. yes in case you didn't notice i am not the biggest fan of ouat at
     the moment (for many reasons)
     3. wow that was a lot of sex you guys
     4. i did warn you this wasn't your mama's neverland
End Notes
     1. blame tumblr. no really.
     2. in going on the idea that there is a time discrepancy between
     neverland and our world (or wendy's world in this case), which is not
     how OUAT is probably going to play with it but they screw up their
     own timeline nearly every episode so. whatever. i do what i want.
     time discrepancy it is.
     3. just case i was a little to vague: peter pan is villain-cast on
     ouat and actually looks aroudn 17/18. you know how 17/18 boys are.
     but because neverland seems twisted, so is pan, because pan is the
     creator and master of neverland, and the outward reflection of it
     4. so pan is "wrong" because he's becoming more adult-like and he's
     supposed to be the boy that never grows up. whoops. but things aren't
     so bad because peter pan's has never met wendy darling until that
     point, so he's at least stayed innocent in that area (that area being
     sex)
     5. then he meets wendy and onward into adulthood!
     6. yes nothing in these notes are capitalized despite the proper use
     of punctuation. that's how hipster i am.
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