Title: Hands
Summary: Peter's hands are made of steel, just like his heart. One shot. Darkish.
Timeline: AU, kind of. Peter is not a father. (And considered what he did with poor, little Rumple, he should never be one!)
Main Characters: Peter Pan, Wendy Darling
Disclaimer: I do not own OUAT, obviously.
This is kind of dark, I guess? Blame Peter freaking Pan.
It's only later, that it occurs to her.
Of all the things Wendy tried to forget about Neverland and failed miserably, Peter's hands are what she remembered better.
What she could never forget.
He never really held her hand.
That's what you do with your lover, (the sweet, affectionate one) and there' s never been even the slightest ghost of a lover in Pan.
There only was the monster, the demon, all dressed up with the perfect mask of the boy.
But in reality, all his very boyish smoothness had been cut, shred to pieces and fed to the beast taking over his heart.
So that only the appearance remained.
Another one of his tricks.
Thus he could be sure everyone was fooled so well.
And Wendy, little, naïve, Wendy Darling never made quite the exception.
She knew Pan was powerful (the most powerful) but now, she thinks his hands were the strongest.
It wasn't because he had magic rushing right inside his fingertips, when it came to her, that didn't make much difference.
It was his hands.
His palms, his backs, his touch, his grip, his fingers.
Long, solid fingers, as tough as if they were made of steel.
It certainly felt that way, when he'd held her naked heart in his fingers and mercilessly clenched them around it.
But he hadn't killed her.
Oh, no, he just wanted to see it.
To see her heart, to see how it would look, how it would fit inside his hand.
And then, when he was satisfied, when he decided he liked it there, because it belonged there, just like the Wendy-bird belonged in the cage of his arms, he had made sure his grip was tight enough.
Sometimes, she still wonders if she if the time she flew away from Neverland aboard the Jolly Roger, she ever really managed to get her heart back with her.
If she managed to steal it back from his hands.
The feeling that somehow she forgot to (because after a century she believed that's where her heart belonged too) still torment her nights.
Wendy remembered well how his hand grabbed her the first time he told her she would never escape Neverland.
No, not told, because Pan didn't just tell.
Pan hissed and claimed and ordered.
And that time with her he had rumbled, no differently from a beast.
Because no one got off the island without his permission. And she could have stopped running right then and there because there was no way off his kingdom.
And if she had been the one and only exception once, it was only because she was never meant to be there in the first place.
(If Pan made no mistakes, his shadow apparently did.)
Callous fingers had circled her wrist as she struggled to pull her arm away.
His hand had loosened his grip just to slide down some inches. His fingernails dug into the soft skin of the back of her hand, pressing hard until they scratched her knuckles, leaving red marks and making her cringe, sob in pain.
And he hadn't let go of her all the way back to the camp.
She watched his hands as he held his pipes and blew into the instrument, playing quietly.
She couldn't listen to the music.
Wendy Darling was no lost boy. (She certainly wasn't a boy, but she never really been lost in the first place, not even years and years of Neverland could do that to her.)
Oh, how much he hated her for it, how much he punished her for it.
He had pushed her into the lagoon and almost let a mermaid drown her the first time she told him (almost accidentally) she couldn't hear the music.
She watched as he played, never looking up at her, never meeting her eyes, like he knew she was watching him anyway, his fingers gripping the wood tightly.
The music must have been mesmerizing, addictive and totally alluring.
But she couldn't hear it (and she was glad she couldn't hear it.)
So she kept watching his hands.
She watched his hands as he sharpened his dagger.
Eyes down, concentrated, the movements of his hands, accurate and almost rhythmical, so he could get his blade to have the perfect sharpness.
She wondered who he might want to use it against the next time.
To the throat of who he was going to press it to. One of the pirates, one of his boys or maybe hers.
She had no idea how could she think something like that without being utterly scared and horrified, but by then, she had spent enough time in Neverland to get used to him. To know him.
And that was more terrifying than anything else.
Pan always liked to make a show of anything, for sure, but when it came to killing someone he never bothered himself with using any kind of weapon.
Magic was the strongest weapon of all. He could lift his arm and end a life in a blink of an eye or he could make the torture last until the victim would beg for mercy or death itself with their last breath.
That day, she didn't know what got into him. She couldn't even hope to understand him.
That day, he didn't know it himself either. (Well, that wasn't entirely true, but Wendy didn't know.)
A pirate stepped too close into the forest, too close to the path that leaded to her treehouse, (too close to where she was) and Pan just jumped on him.
He put his hand around his throat and wished for nothing but twist his knife into his stomach and watch him bleeding out.
And he did.
Pan stabbed him and the pirate screamed.
The poor man was already struggling to gasp and bleeding out, when Wendy had thrown herself in front of Peter.
"Stop, please, stop!"
When Pan lifted his dagger, ready to stab the pirate again, he only saw in a flash of white. She was there in front of him. He flinched.
He stared at her blankly for a moment.
She grabbed his wrist, with both of her hands, her fingers shaking with the effort and the fear and suddenly it was his arms that trembled and Peter let his dagger slip on the ground.
When she looked up, his eyes seemed glistening with water.
His hand was still trapped between hers, then, he gave her the slightest of squeeze.
He looked down, her dainty, white fingers were stained with the blood he had spilled. (He would have smirked at the sight, but for some reasons he couldn't.)
If Pan ever knew what holy meant, maybe then, he would have thought that looked just like desecration.
It's not entirely true to say he never held her hand.
She held his hand once.
And he wrapped his palm around hers in return, fingers slipping so naturally between hers, while he leaded her trough the jungle.
Wendy doesn't like to remember it because she might fool herself into thinking that there had been a time in Neverland when she was happy.
A time when he was happy too.
A time when they were happy together.
She couldn't be sure he hadn't pretended, fake it, like he faked anything else in Neverland.
Still, she couldn't shake off the memory of the warmness of his fingers linked with her own, or the playfulness of his smile, or her smile as they walked through the branches and the flowers and some fairies flew away from their hollows, and shimmered around them, like they were made of stardust.
That was something that still remained somehow untouched in the back of her mind.
The last time Peter Pan tried to grab her hand they were at her house.
Her brand-new house in London.
It was barely a couple of years after she left Storybrooke with her brothers and move on for good.
She had wakened in the middle of the night because she swore she heard something.
She turned around and saw that the bedroom's window was open.
She walked to the window, even if every voice in her head was telling her that no, no, no, it was not possible, there was no way he was back, that she was just having another nightmare and she still hadn't woken up because Peter Pan was dead.
Instead, he was fluttering weightless in the air in front of her.
Through the darkness (and the total shock overwhelming her) she could barely notice the smirk dancing on his lips.
"Come back, Wendy, come back to me"
"No"
As he reached out his hand to touch her, Wendy's hand slipped away from his like flowing water.
When she closed the window, Peter didn't dare to smash it open. (Again.)
She crawled back to bed and let Edward's arms embrace her until she fell back to sleep.
Sad enough, for you? It was for me. Thank you if you enjoy the reading anyway!
And just in case you don't know, which I doubt it, Edward is the name of Wendy's husband in the Disney version, since J.M. Barrie never mentions it. Actually, I imagined him being Wendy's fiancé/boyfriend here, just for the timeline of the story.