I did not look in depth to the relationship between JM Barrie and the Davies brothers so I am so sorry if it's inaccurate
It all starts with a mystified man and a girl with eyes too old for her sweet young soul.
She's telling one of her grandiose stories when a man with a smile so wide and so filled with wonder comes sprinting into the room.
He glides in with a sort of written aloofness that leaves all of the Davies brothers with a look of teary jubilance as he kisses them all on the forehead. They all laugh and complain with a pretend disgust as he turns to her asking with eyes so drenched in hunger and need that she tell her story once again.
It's a look that painfully reminds her of Bae- but the man doesn't know that, and she gives a sort of tired stare that says this darling young and spirited girl doesn't want to retell her tale of shadows, and lost boys, and poisonous plants, and a neveraging land. But the look subsides like quiet ripples of water, and her blue forget-me-not eyes brighten with glee the moment her brothers' tug at her sleeves and his boys give a sort of pleading look.
Her whole face is painted over with a new coat of yellow brilliance as soon as she opens her lips, and it's like flying through starry ponds and swimming through the calm and hypnotic waves of night time skies the way her words pull at your imagination until your whole being was sucked into her mythical orbit.
He'd never know the whole story because as soon as her voice catches and her eyes well up, she sprints out of the room with a hand to her chest like the words had become her own dreamshade. Filling her lungs with an agonizing poison that burned its way up her throat and replaced her words with airy gasps and knife sharp breaks.
But he remembers the girl as she was, shining among the boys like the North Star as she guided them through her story of terrorizing lost boys and pirates and deadly adventures. He remembers how her eyes would twinkle with a blunt hesitance as if all the words in the world couldn't simply describe how enthralling this land of dreams was.
He never doubted a word she'd say and he hung on like the rest of the boys; remembering faintly in his mind to a time when his dreams were but only known to him after the sun hid behind closed windows. And maybe that small hint in his enraptured eyes was what drove her away.
Because his eyes sparkled like lost constellations and the candlelight flickered and licked her angelic frame warm and welcoming and all but hid what they were underneath.
He never figured out how her story ended but he knew like he knew the boys that came to his door that hers was a story meant to mesmerize the innocent.
Wendy Darling's story was one that seduced and pillaged gruesomely at their ideal childhood dream; her words were bullets that pierced through the ivory flesh of maturity. Stripping it bare of its virginity and soaking it in like a good poison.
It was a lesson- one that only mothers taught in the dead of night.
And maybe that was all she was on that arcane deceptive island.
A mother to lost children with heads floating in a sea of unknown yearning.
But the one who held her chained so close to home was never clear to him and maybe it wasn't as clear to her either as her lips hinted another story at the side of her small bare mouth.
Hence, the day those boys knocked over his inkwell to demand a story that provoked the ways of their English era, all he could think about was the story of a Darling young girl who never wanted to grow up so quickly.
And the way those boy's eyes twinkled once he handed over his manuscript, he knew he did that girl's memory justice.
Because her eyes had shone with gloomy betrayal when her sweet smile was that of a fourteen year old girl, who should've known nothing of their world as she told her tale.
The boys had cried and cried as if their sister was immortalized in black ink and words that his boys helped spin into a literary masterpiece with an ending that he wished with all his heart and soul would be hers.
Those boys had sobbed and wept, bitterly remembering her story of harsh adolescence through the illusion of childhood as their fingers trembled the more they flipped each crisp page.
Their eyes so wonderstruck and their quaint voices thanking him for such a wonderful story never looked so empty to him as he shut the door. He could still remember their soft murmurs as they slipped past the cracks, small comments that made no sense to him then.
He wrote a story that bewitched the world of grownups; played with his words so that he captured hearts the same way Wendy Darling captured his. Whatever truth she held hidden in her untold story became pleasantly cozy under layers of juxtapositions and deep provoking adultlikethings. Embraced by the masses as the greatest story of all, a mistakenly heartwarming story that helped children sleep at night.
The man had liked his softer story.
And sweet secretive romantic Wendy Darling that would have grown into London's ideal socialite (a Wendy Darling that would grow up if she ever had the chance to- by her own way and choice) would have found a hidden part of herself that liked it as well.
And yet, he still yearned for the story of what really happened to the Darling's oldest daughter that cool summer night.
Because he knew like he knew the memory, that Peter Pan wasn't the guiding hand she clung onto on her alluring journey of Neverland.
And her brothers had known it as well even if she hadn't said a word as the shadow tugged her away to cage her in a land of nightmares.
Neverland could never be as kind to these poor open hearts.
For her, it all goes back to the moment the shadow teaches her how to dance.
It's days before she meets Bae and her brothers are both knocked out cold after a long day of pretend in the nursery. She should have been joining them in their peaceful slumber as well had it not been for the curious knock at the window.
Anything but a peaceful drift is unladylike for a girl her age but the moon was shining brightly over their heads, illuminating the room with its dazzling glow as she sprang up and eagerly unlocked the window. Her blond locks were all blown askew by the oncoming wind that gushed in, pulling her back inside the safety of her home and keeping the figure with glowing eyes nonchalantly floating out.
"Stories can be rewritten," its grim voice tells her later as its cold hands spin her around in some silly dance she's seen her parents do once. His voice never does scare her and its more the actions the shadow makes her do than his given appearance- whatever his given appearance is, that makes her feel more awkward than scared.
She remembers a time when she danced and played rescue with her brothers and a wispy black baby elephant on a night with no moon.
This time around, the shadow had worked its magic and the hands that held her were that of a grimy older boy with a long nose and an obnoxious smirk.
And maybe that was why she felt so out of place the day Pan took out his pipes and she danced among the lost boys.
That was the first time she saw his second in command.
And the adrenaline shocked her so much that she felt her heart stop midst the middle of the savage circle.
Because she knew like she knew her own name that this was never supposed to be in her stars.
The shadow had it all planned out- that much was for sure but he never counted on love to play so cruelly on those three broken hearts.
It never would've known how much it'll scar the poor Darling girl.
It never would have guessed how it literally did scar the older boy.
Never would have counted on how well of a reminder she was to the boy chained to the golden skeletal hourglass.
Their story was lost in translation the more Barrie's iconic tale went into serialization.
But the memory still remained in Neverland's soil.
And if you listened close enough you could probably hear the sound of a lost one crying for a girl caged out of jealousy and anger and things that never were meant to be his to keep.
Wendy wasn't a writer- she didn't trust her fingers as much as she didn't trust her mouth.
Storytelling was the work of tone and voice and it was a gift given to god's favorite liars. She knew she could work her way through iron clad mindsets and unhinge a few locks. She always smiled despite herself whenever she manages to enthrall her boys every time she recited the story of the pirates as if it were just mere pity gossip and saw how their eyes twinkled and their gears started shifting.
It left her with a gitty feeling. Left her with an exciting realization that she had basically help shape her brothers' minds into glorious clever things that saw through walls and cut through steel.
She molded minds and provoked images like magic through the weight of her words.
On Neverland though, storytelling meant a whole new thing.
And that power of belief was a route that she never wanted to cross- ever.
Her first nights there are filled with a sort of shy avoidance; as if they were all filled to the brim with salted caramels and roasted sunsets that devoured their tongues and burnt their eyes. There were words hanging by their mouths like wind chimes but the winds never came to incite their ghostly ring.
Not until the night where the hypnotic lull of his pipes seduced their minds once again and Wendy had danced as savagely as they did. Her giggles had become the lead vocals to their makeshift tribal dance and it wasn't too long after that did she begin her storytelling.
The fire had died down, cackling behind her like Hestia's grand hearth as she glimpsed and stared and breathed in the wonder and attention of the lost boys. She would be lying if she said the sight of their mystified eyes wasn't addicting. It'll be a complete and utter disgusting lie if she said she wouldn't have stayed even if their intoxicating belief was hers to keep.
She'd sleep and still feel their sweet aftertaste on the tip of her tongue.
Some nights she was glad she had found a way out of it before it was too late. Their bewilderment ghosted over her like a heavy fog, drowning her senses and hypnotizing her as it hypnotized everyone else. The more she sat in that circle, the more she felt like the Pan when he breathed into his pipes. His second in command was glowering as usual, but even he knew that she was slowly being consumed by Neverland's suffocating glow.
So Wendy was glad that day he took her by the wrist and the Pan blew hard into his pipes, singing his lungs through melodic notes as he started the night's festivities without her words. It was all just giggles and music and the heavy anchor launched in her chest had started to lighten, no longer conquering the night but instead holding her by the hand and leading her into turns and spins.
She had laughed a different laugh and the dance slowly became shockingly close to the ones she danced back in England. Her hand in his was the final knot that Neverland pulled before it swallowed her whole.
Even now, there was still a part of Wendy Darling that never made it back home.
For Felix, his demise started the moment she laced her toes in Neverland's soil for the very first time.
It was a clear night- the stars had all burnt out leaving the huge expanse unpainted. Not even the moon was anywhere in sight; it was just all just her and her pristine white nightgown.
Young little Wendy Darling who knew next to nothing. Disillusioned and seduced by the island's shadow-
Pan's shadow,
he keeps having to correct himself because Pan and the shadow were one and everything in Neverland -
she was the perfect tool for the hazy being. Felix knew, maybe not as much as Pan did, but he knew that her arrival would've signified something worth being part of if the shadow kept slipping away in the dead of night to reunite with the mousey blond girl in her quaint British home and her room of laces and silk sheets.
He just couldn't recount for how on that very night she seemed to glow like a torch midst the dark foliage and her smile seemed to brighten up the night sky.
Angelic thy name was she for a single moonbeam had landed on her like misplaced poetry.
It was the final breaking point in her epitaph, a final kiss that bit her lips till they bled golden dust and bruised her skin black and blue in the Neverland light.
Stars peaked through the clouds the moment they shook hands and she smiled and he knew from that moment on that Wendy Darling shouldn't have ever let the shadow spirit her away from whatever life she had.
Because whatever was going to be laid before her- whatever destiny the shadow forced onto her- poor Wendy Darling will be burnt bare to the bone.
And the young spirited girl who first came to Neverland filled with wonder and glee will leave -
(If Pan ever lets her leave)
- a shell of her younger self that had drowned in agony and forced surrender by Pan's wiry wrath. His dirty fingers will claw at her serenity until there wasn't even any blood red tear left in her glasslike eyes.
He'd turn her from a girl with so much spirit- so much raw love and forgiveness that was left unhindered for decades until he clipped her wings with bloodied teeth and knife sharp words, to a doll that stared lifelessly in their master craft gowns and echoing words that rebounded with meanings half attached, smashing against invisible walls that shattered and cut her poor
poor
daring
heart.
She had fulfilled her role to a T; changed more hearts than she was given and in exchange Wendy Darling lost her own.
But she changed Peter - oh, how she did.
From a boy with life thrilling games and no responsibilities to a dark man-child- a shadow of his own who played the race of ticking clock hands and sprinkling sand.
And oh, how he loved her so savagely.
How his fingers broke ever bone they ghosted over as if she was a glass swan under his tight hold.
Oh, how he loved like he never loved and treated her like she was love itself-
As if she were the riddle of his entire being.
(And Felix was just the ink that scribbled them together-
never them together
never in any tale
Not even in their own)
Now, Felix could only stare at the lost-girl-nomore as she drifted away from the boy that might've saved her and just stared, hand outstretched in a daze as if she was close enough to touch the clouds.
(and at one point, she was- with him
Him ).
She was on the other side of the ship, noticeably staying a ways away from him and Henry- from Pan
( because she knew, she knew )
With eyes that said nothing of the untainted excitement and jubilance that her younger self would have displayed if she was still a century younger. Her eyes twinkled for all the wrong reasons and the intruders- oh, those intrudes and Bae- had mistaken it for all the reasons she had counted on. Her strained smile leaked of lies and pretend . And oh did she pretend-
Darling, it was her who started the pretend game, he tells himself as he watches and watches and watches.
And she turns and stares at him with a look he's seen quite often during her imprisonment.
And Henry-Pan smirks ever so slightly because he's seen it too.
It's a new tale she's spinning, a new adventure.
And somewhere deep in the part of him that wasn't so carelessly devoted to Pan, he hopes there's room for him too.
In her tragedy of blood and lies.
( in their tragedy of salt and sweets )