Peter turned to Wendy with wide, disbelieving eyes.
"Is he serious?" he asked, willing her to say no, willing her to laugh her wonderful laugh and tell him that Hook was just lying, that she would never betray him like that.
Wendy eyes glimmered with unshed tears. She nodded miserably, not meeting Peter's gaze.
Peter felt as if a crocodile had just taken a giant bite out of his heart.
Hook saw Peter's distraught, disbelieving face and laughed wickedly, his voluminous black curls quaking around his head. "Didn't anyone ever tell you not to trust a woman, Pan? Oh, that's right, of course not," Hook snickered. "You've lived with little boys all your life."
Peter Pan stood tall and resolute, but if Wendy and Hook could have seen inside him, they would have seen a cowed little boy, crouching, his bottom lip quivering, his steel crumbling. "How—how could you do it, Wendy?" Peter finally managed to stutter. "How could you?"
Hook sneered at Pan and then turned to the girl. "Yes, Wendy, how could you? I think Peter deserves to know," he said mockingly.
Wendy raised her misty eyes to meet Peter's. He was still confused. He had not yet hardened his gaze into a glare. But Wendy was not sure whether his glare would hurt more than the scared, injured eyes that looked back at her now.
"He-he offered me a family, Peter," she finally said, her voice trembling. "He promised to give me a family."
"But you have a family!" Peter protested. "You have a family with me and the Lost Boys and Tinkerbelle!"
"Had," Hook ejaculated. "She had a family with you and the Lost Boys and Tinkerbelle. Now her family is me and my crew."
"Wendy, what happened to our family!?" Peter pressed. "What was wrong with us? I thought you were happy."
"I was happy," Wendy said bitterly. "I was happy at first. But the longer I stayed, the more it became you and the Lost Boys and Tinker Bell off on adventures, and I was back at the hideout doing imaginary dishes or preparing imaginary supper or collecting berries or sweeping the floor or darning socks or patching pants or knitting sweaters!"
"But Wendy, those are things a mother does!" protested Peter. "I thought you came with me here because you wanted to be our mother!"
"I came to Neverland with you because I wanted adventures. I heard you talking about all the adventures you and the Lost Boys had, and I thought if I was the mother of such daring boys that meant I would have adventures too. But no, I was stuck at the hideout, doing mundane chores and having hardly any fun at all."
Hook sneered nastily at Peter Pan. "You have women all wrong, Pan. If you thought you could keep one at your house doing nothing but chores while you went off gallivanting with the Lost Boys-"
"-and Tinker Bell," Wendy chimed.
"Yes, and Tinker Bell," Hook continued, "then you were sorely mistaken. Ladies do not take to that at all, Pan, not at all." Hook grinned sadistically. "Keep that up and you'll get yourself into the deepest trouble a man can get himself into."
Peter glared at Hook. "What's that?"
"Women trouble."
Peter shuddered at the wicked glare in Hook's eyes. "This must be a trick. That's what it is, a cruel, nasty trick."
"No tricks, Peter," Wendy said softly.
"Then it's….a dream! A horrible nightmare. I'll wake up any minute now and you, Wendy, will be sitting over me, stroking my hair and singing a lullaby, and you'll get me my medicine so that I can go back to sleep peacefully."
"It's not a dream, Peter," Wendy whispered, tears quivering on her eyelashes.
"You see, Pan," Hook said smugly, flashing his perfectly straight, yellow teeth, "you can't always win. For once I'm the one with the upper hand. Or should I say, upper hook." The pirate chuckled at his own joke as he twirled the golden hook that served as his left hand. "This time, I'm the winner."
Peter wrenched his gaze from Wendy and thrust out his chin. "What are you going to do to me? I can't fly, I don't have my knife, my friends have either abandoned me or betrayed me-" he said this with sharp bitterness and steel, obviously directed at Wendy "-and I have no way to escape. What are you going to do to me?"
Any other day Hook would have been elated to hear Pan saying these words. But somehow the way Pan was speaking took all the enjoyment out of it. The boy stated everything so matter-of-factly it was like he was scolding Hook instead of groveling miserably. The pirate's lower jaw trembled in anger as he bit the inside of his bottom lip, but that was the only sign that he was infuriated at Pan for being so….unafraid.
Hook smiled wickedly as a perfectly delicious idea occurred to him. "I'm not going to do anything to you, Pan," he sneered. "Rather, I'm going to be the gentleman and let the young lady decide your fate."
Wendy gasped. Peter paled.
Hook turned to the girl. "My dear, make your decision. Anything you wish, my men and I will carry out for you. That's what family is all about. We do anything for each other." Hook looked pointedly at Peter.
Wendy bit her lip. Was she really going to go through with this? She had thought for so long about whether she was doing the right thing. Did Peter deserve all this? Was she a terrible person for doing all this? Really this wasn't about family. This was about Tinker Bell. Tinker Bell, the primary object of Peter's unconscious affections. Tinker Bell, that fairy who hated her so and would have killed her the first chance she got. Wendy was as jealous of Tinker Bell as Tinker Bell was of her. Hook had promised Wendy that he would kill Tinker Bell, and he had convinced her that the fairy was not the only one to blame for her misery, but that Peter was also at fault as well. And so here she was, about to voice the fate for Peter that she had imagined for weeks.
"Feed him to the crocodile."
