When Wendy is fourteen, and Peter comes back for her, she is only too ready to leave. The year he missed had, hurt.
Her first sighting of Neverland in nearly two years makes her cry. Oh, she'd missed it!
The adventures this year are, if possible, more wonderful and terrible than ever and the new Lost Boys , Dog, Moss, Cubby, and Fiby adore her within minutes.
Peter is different, he helps more now, and though the adventures are as dangerous as ever, it's actually more fun because he doesn't forget them as he fights, and he is truly the leader now, and is not so taken in going off on lone adventures.
Now when he calls her mother, it sounds much more like 'wife'and when she call shim father, he knows she is saying 'husband'.
She smiles one night over Fibby's little head at Peter and her heart flips when he smiles back, his eyes echoing her own feelings back.
They are all the way back at the nursery window and Wendy is getting ready to extract the same promise from him again.
"Don't forget me."
But the words stick in her throat when he grabs her arm before her feet touch the sill.
His eyes are for once quite serious. His words even more so.
"Please, Wendy Lady, come back with me. Please. Don't leave me again"
Her eyes close in rapturous agony.
She opens them, meeting Peters' own green star filled eyes and says, "Yes."
And when he throws his head back and crows she joins him exalting in the fact that she can crow if she pleases for there is no one who can tell her that young ladies don't anymore.
The noise brings her mother and father into the room, followed by Nana and the boys.
Mrs. Darling takes one look into her daughters star filled eyes and knows that this wild, free, leaf clad girl will never be able to marry a nice dignified gentleman and settle down to live and nice dignified life.
She gives a watery smile in farewell, even as George shakes his head vehemently in denial.
Wendy smiles back, kisses her father's cheek, takes a hold of Peters hand and flies out the nursery window for the last time.
Her feet never even touched the sill.
The return to Neverland is different this time. Instead of her usual wonder and awe, there is a sense of fierce joy, as though she has returned to her true home.
Peters hand is warm in hers and she knows that, although her heart will twinge every now and then, from missing her family, leaving Peter would break it.
Besides, in her own way, this is growing up. By not staying in England, sure, her body won't grow, but both her and Peter has matured in a different way. Peter asked for her to please stay, he did not demand her to and Wendy realized that living her life to please others wasn't growing-up anymore than playing forever with dolls in the nursery was.
Plus, what did a grown-up woman in England have that she didn't?
The Wendy house and the home underground were as tidy and lovely as the finest Edwardian manor, she had four lovely sons, and, she blushes thinking of it. A wonderful husband who gives her thimbles and kisses by the dozens every day, really, what else could a woman want?