She gets reaped for the Games on the morning of her sixteenth birthday.
The sun burns her eyes when she glances up at the mention of her name. Regina is the one who takes her hand, assisting her up the platform and a step closer to death. (She finds this out only later, when they watch the rewind of the footage on the way to Capitol because she doesn't remember the actual thing happening. On the screen she sees a girl whose face becomes as pale as her dress and Wendy chokes on something that feels like desperate laughter.)
The sky is bright and clear, not reflecting the storm stirring inside of her. The commons are flooded with people clustered next to each other, grouped together by age and sectioned off by velvet ropes, which are one of the only little luxuries ever seen in 8.
Wendy's the only one from the Darlings to be entered again this year. Her parents are well into adulthood and done with the fear of being reaped. John and Michael are only eleven and nine, respectively.
She doesn't remember hearing anything then, only the sick twisting feeling in her stomach and the urge to crumple to the floor. But before she can do anything, Regina guides her up to the stage and Wendy digs her nails onto the insides of her palms until they form crescents.
Her chances are slim.
She bites the inside on the inside of her mouth to stop herself from screaming. She's not as smart as Bae but she doesn't need to be a genius to figure out that her chances are miniscule, but hearing the thought aloud makes it real. At this point, she'd pick numbing pain over the truth.
Once she's up on the stage and District Eight has secured a female tribute, it's time to select her male partner. She sees the scene unfold in front of her before she can hear it. Mayor Maleficent dips her hand in the bowl once more, reaching for the very bottom.
Bae's name is called but she doesn't hear it.
Rumplestiltskin bursts forward, past the barrier line separating would-be tributes and their parents. Guards try to stop him and he waves his cane but is held back. "Baelfire!" he screams, all flailing limbs and impulse.
Bae comes up on stage next to her and they breeze past the formalities and shaking of hands and waving at cameras. Their eyes meet for a moment and Bae offers her a smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes.
It only truly sinks in when they're carted off to say goodbye to their families. They have 5 minutes, the officer grunts before gruffly shoving her into the room.
"Oh, Wendy," Mary Darling pulls her daughter towards her, embrace engulfing Wendy like a silent goodbye. She can already see her mother coming apart slowly as if pulled apart by invisible threads.
She doesn't know when she stopped wanting to need her mother, but the tension stands, just as she stands there while her mother holds her. A few unsure seconds pass before Wendy's arms snake around her and soon the whole family is embracing her. Her head falls on Mary Darling's shoulder as she begins to cry. She cries because she's afraid to lose and afraid to win and she cries because she's terrible enough to be slightly grateful that Bae is coming with her.
.
On the way to the Capitol, Bae and Wendy watch the rewinds of the reapings across the different districts, as per instruction of their mentors.
"You'll want to watch out for the ones who make an impression from the reaping video footage alone." Regina says. "They're going to be the survivors."
Regina won her games eons ago, before Bae and Wendy were even born. The only decent tribute from Eight's ever produced, many call her. She fought her games by being smart and vicious and thinking two steps ahead of all her fellow tributes. She formed allies early on in the arena and they killed all the men until it was down to her and the octopus-like woman from Four and the grotesque woman with the furs from Two. And then she killed them too.
Hook only nods in response, too buzzed to offer any real advice.
Killian Jones is his real name, but no one calls him that anymore. He's young blood; he won his games three years ago at 18, and he has the hook on his left hand to prove it. His arena had been almost entirely underwater, and to win, he'd shoved the last tribute into the water and had gotten his hand bitten off by the crocodiles in the water. The hook was a gift from the Capitol, made almost entirely out of advanced stainless steel, and meant to be used for more productive things, but truth be told, the most it gets used for is popping open bottles of alchohol and beer.
As they breeze through the videos, only a couple of tributes make an impression. Between the four of them, it quickly becomes a game with commentary.
One's tributes look deadly, but they look artificial, like they were manufactured at a factory specializing in teenagers programmed to kill. They're stunning, but only in a way the Capitol would appreciate.
The boy from Two saunters up on stage, grinning like he's royalty, and doesn't seem the least bit fazed.
Killian snorts. "Boy looks like a bloody demon."
She thinks nothing of the comment, and chalks up the bitterness in his voice to the fact that he's back on the Games rollercoaster, instead choosing to focus on who her fellow tributes are going to be. She sees Two's mentor make a hand sign at the top, signalling for him to stop. She's a lithe blonde who walks lightly like she's floating. ("Tink," Killian says and his eyes harden when he sees her walk up on stage and he downs 3 shots of rum like they're water after.)
The boy from Four with the scar. The fierce-looking girl from Eight and her partner, a boy whose hair is streaked with red. The faces blur past one another and the videos continue on well into midnight.
None of them move for a while after the videos have all finished playing.
"We don't have a chance against them," Bae says finally.
"Damn right you don't," Killian slurs, head tilted back against the couch. "Might as well throw in the towel now, boy, and face it."
"You're supposed to be helping us." she speaks for the first time the whole train ride, aside from mumbling her name out earlier in the night.
"Don't tell me you actually want to win," he laughs and something about his laugh, something about how he's making light of their situation, of the fact that she and Bae could die first thing in the arena, is enough to make her snap.
She reaches forward and knocks the glass out of his hand.
"Listen, you didn't sign up for this, but we have families to come home to, and I would want them to know that I at least tried, even if that means not having your help."
"No, you listen to me." Killian slurs but his eyes sharpen, zeroing in on her as his hand grabs her wrist, grip iron-tight. "No one ever wins the Games. You hear me? No one."
"Let go of me," Wendy pulls away, struggling to break his grip.
"Drop her," Bae says, voice close to a growl.
"Let go or I'm going to break every last one of your fingers until you can't hold another glass of alchohol again." There's venom in every calm word that Regina spits out.
Wordlessly, he lets go and drops her hand.
Later that night, she replays the footage of Killian's game in her head before she goes to bed. When he looked at her awhile ago, it held the same feral sureness as a man determined not to die in the arena.
.
Wendy doesn't know what goes down after their little debacle the night before, but Regina must have pulled magic. In the morning, there's not a drop of alcohol in sight and Killian's wearing fresh clothes, dressed in a pressed white shirt and black pants.
"Pardon my actions last night," he says, taking a seat with them. "It was bad form."
Regina coughs sormething under her breath and he shoots her a glare.
He takes a deep breath. "If both of you want a chance at surviving, you're going to have to be willing to fight. And that starts with fighting for the Capitol's attention."
.
Though all the citizens see on screen is the glamour and gold of the tributes on interview night, backstage is anything but. Absolute chaos would, in Wendy's mind, be a more apt description of what really goes on though, truthfully, she hadn't expected to see a catfight between the stylists of Six and Ten. Tributes are rushing back and forth between the screens set up and their own dressing rooms. The air smells like the strangest combination of glamour gone awry, the musk of a dozen perfumes intertwining with the sharp sting of hairspray. There's more extravagance in a single district's dressing room than she's seen in her entire life.
Wendy passes the other Careers as she makes her way to sneak a peek at the screens. Her own dress is pale blue and gauzy, sung on top and cascades to the bottom like a mermaid's tail, with tiny luminescent gems trailing behind like sprinkles of dust.
Felix whistles appreciatively in Lily's direction. She wears a tight brown dress, but the real highlight of her outfit is the elaborate headpiece that adorns her head, complimenting the dress.
It's Peter nonetheless who's on screen when she gets to the front. He's the one who sets the ball rolling. He knows how to make the audience love him and sends the Capitol cooing as he thanks them for their support, bringing out his stupidly boyish grin.
He looks earnest, almost vulnerable, when he's asked about his experience so far in the Capitol. "I'm afraid to say I've fallen for another one of the tributes."
This elicits a gasp from the crowd. It is common for tributes to have relations with their district partners and a little rarer for it to be with tributes from another district. But they know better than to talk about it on camera.
"Or, rather, I should say that I've fallen for her again."
Syndey's eyes go wide and gestures for him to go on. The tribute from One looks like he wants to stab himself for not coming up with a similar hook.
"Lily and I knew each other as kids before her family was relocated to another district. We grew up together. She was my best friend and my first love."
Sydney claps, clearly satisfied with the answer, which sends the rest of the audience into a frenzy. Rounds and rounds of applause greet Peter as he walks off the stage.
The rest of the interviews pass in a blur and by the end of the night she feels like she knows each tribute a little bit more. Reminders that at the end of the day, they're all just kids with stories to them and loved ones waiting for them to come back.
Felix reveals that his scar was a result of a fishing mishap back home. Rufio talks about how he used some berries back home in Six to get the reddish streak in his hair. Lily talks about her family back home, all 7 of her siblings and their single father. Bae talks about family as well and goes as far as to mention Wendy ("She's the sister I never had.") during his interview. How being in the Capitol is like being transported to an entirely new world.
Her own interview passes briefly and she'd rather forget it than remember what she said on live television by the end of the night. Her voice comes out crisp, with the grace and poise her mother fought tooth and limb to instill in her.
"What would you be willing to do to win?" Sydney's eyes twinkle with fascination like only a true Games fan's eyes can. Like someone who has never stepped outside the sacred walls of the city and Career districts and who has never witnessed the war-torn ones filled with poverty and starvation.
"A girl can't give away all her secrets, can she," Wendy smirks demurely, giving the camera the most innocent smile she can muster.
Her eyes flit to the wings, and where she expects Bae to be, Peter instead stands. He lifts his glass in her direction, takes a sip, and winks over the brim of the glass.
"That was a quite the bit with Sydney back there," he says finally, voice dripping with sarcasm, when she returns backstage.
"What are you going to do to win?"
"Wouldn't you like to know," he muses.
.
"You could have done better with pronunciation and audience response," Regina tells them after the show, "but good job. Both of you."
She feels a small swell of pride in her chest for reasons she doesn't entirely understand.
"Wasn't as good as what the boy from Two pulled," she mutters under her breath.
"Trust me, it's not going to work," Regina chides. "They're from two different districts. No one's going to believe that sappy-eyed boy's excuse for a declaration true love."
Regina, however clever she may be, is wrong about them.
In a short span of time, Peter and Lily become Capitol favorites. The star-crossed lovers, they call them.
It's not as though they actually need it. Individually they are already deadly and with this kind of leverage, they are almost indestructible. The Capitol falls for it, hook, line and sinker, if the newfound support is anything to go by. Letters addressed to Peter and Lily flood the dorms, along with care packages they don't need and promises of support in the arena. How tragic it must be to be torn apart from your lover as soon as you were reunited.
Peter takes it all in stride, strutting around the tribute commons as if he owns the damn place, as if he's already won the Games. Felix follows like a shadow, and the pair spend their days either in hushed corners or showing off to the rest of the tributes.
Meanwhile, Wendy takes to practicing the knot-tying and camouflage with Bae.
.
Training is a preview of what the games are actually going to be like, according to Hook.
In short, if they can't survive that, they have no shot in the actual arena.
Bae drifts off to the ropes, and she tries her hand at archery. She moves to the knives section, running her fingers over the blades of different knives and blades, feeling their grooves. She feels a presence at her side and turns to find Peter staring her down.
He clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth, tilting his head. "Well, it looks as if the little bird's come out to play."
She does not let his taunting bristle her. Instead, she picks up one of the knives laid on the training table, a short one bound with a leather grip, and proceeds to test out her grip on it.
"Nice choice of weapon, but your grip is awful."
Before she can say anything, he strides over to her in large steps, and a hand goes to her waist. She tenses. As his other hand takes the back of her palm, her eyes flit to the corner where Bae meets her gaze. Bae's eyes widen and he almost goes to them, looking like he's ready to set Peter on fire.
She gives him a small shake of her head.
Don't.
Bae eyes them warily, unnerving her so she shakes her head once more for finality. Wendy can handle herself and fighting with another tribute is prohibited by the Gamemakers. She can't go in alone nor can she leave Bae to face the Capitol by himself. The room goes quiet with all eyes on them.
Peter readjusts the hold of her fingers on the knife and guides her hand slowly, rocking it back and forth at first before flinging it at the target. She feels the shift in her weight right as her hand releases the knife.
It hits the bullseye. The knife lodges itself in the middle red circle, blade buried deep into the wood. She lets out a breath she didn't realize she was holding.
"That's how you do it." He breathes along the curve of her neck, just below her ear, sending chills up her spine.
He uncurls himself from her.
Against her better judgment, she follows him to the other side of the room.
"What the hell was that about?"
He shrugs. "Somebody needed to teach you how to throw. Properly, at that. Doing things properly is the only way to get out. You know as well as I do that the game is supposed to be simple. 24 of us go into the arena and one person is left standing."
"You make it sound awfully easy for something that's not."
"I said it's supposed to be simple. I never said it actually is. It gets complicated when you allow things to get in the way," he makes a face. "Distractions, weaknesses, feelings."
"Don't tell me that the star-crossed lover doesn't believe in love." she scoffs.
"I believe that the love of two tributes is enough to make it easier for both of them to stay alive in the arena."
His face is solemn as his eyes drill holes into her. "Could you?"
"I'd do it if it came down to it. I told John and Michael I'd try; I have to, for them."
"There will be no such thing as killing when it comes down to it. If you really wanted to try for your brothers, you'd have to be ruthless. Somehow I don't believe that you don't have it in you."
"If I didn't know any better, I'd think that you were trying to help me. I'm not a Career, Peter. The closest I've come to an actual fight is pushing someone off the swings in elementary."
He nods. "I'll make a mental note to warn the other tributes about Wendy Darling and her swing-pushing ways."
"I suppose you'll go into the arena as a Career then. Take down the rest of us as fast as you can with the help of the other Careers—Felix, Rufio, Lily." The resentment seeps out in that one statement; it comes out more bitter than she had intended, but contains all the pent-up anger she's been keeping.
"No," he draws out slowly, mouth quirking up almost comically. "We'd kill you in a way that would give the Capitol a good show."
Wendy pulls away, turning on her heel, and strides in the opposite direction.
He tugs at her wrists.
His hands are surprisingly soft. Hands that never trembled when he stepped on stage as tribute, hands that have spent years training to kill. She winces a little at the force of his fingers which press into her wrists.
"Play them, don't let them play you."
He pulls away as quickly as he'd whispered, leaving her ear to feel his phantom breath as soon as he draws back and she feels it all the way to her beating heart. The training center is cold but that is not the reason she shivers. As he stalks toward the next station, she can't help but notice the imprints his fingers have left all over her wrists.
Peter Pan is dangerous, she tells herself in her head over and over as she tries to lull herself to sleep that night.
It does not help any more than the previous night's You will make it home you will make it home you will make it home, and it does nothing to quell the burning in her chest.
.
The night before the arena, she slips out of her room to stare at the stars.
Tributes linger outside in the common areas. No one says anything to each other. Felix fiddles with a device on the table, Lily stares at her hands, and Nibs is browsing a book. On her way out, she sees Hook slip out of Tinkerbell's room and kiss her on the forehead.
The stars shine brighter here than they do back home. Perhaps that's because even if the stars are brighter, the night is also darker here in the Capitol.
.
She takes a deep breath, sizing up her surroundings.
Plants. Vines protruding from the ground and wrapped around trees of every kind, bushes sprinkled with a medley of deceptively colorful fruits, thickets that you can barely see through.
It's a little like the woods back in Eight, the ones she used to play in with Bae to feed her hunger for adventure, but she's so out of her element here. This jungle is made of twisted traps and Gamemakers preying on the most infinitesimal hints of weakness.
3, 2, 1.
At the sound of the canon, her mind stops working and her feet take over. She runs like she's flying only stopping to grab a bag near the cornucopia and follows Bae in front of her. In their wake, blood flies everywhere. She doesn't bother to look back until they've reached a tree deep within the woods.
They make their home there the first night, high in the trees. They form a makeshift fort out of leaves and wires, and take turns doing shifts.
Seven canons go off at night on the first day, which leaves 16 deaths to go.
She vaguely wonders which one will be hers.
.
They wake up the next morning to a gunshot and the crowing of birds.
Curly from Seven lays dead on the floor, his killer off trying to find another victim. There are imprints on his arms, left by someone with very small hands.
Both of them agree it's time to move, so they pack up and head to the river. A crossbow is strapped to his back and knives are strapped to her legs.
"You wouldn't have pulled any of that star-crossed lover stuff with me, would you?"
Wendy blanches immediately. "You're like my brother. God, and then there's Emma. No, just Bae, no."
"Good."
She squeezes his arm, hoping the gesture is more comforting than her words are. "Hey, you'll make it home to her, alright?"
Bae nods but he keeps to himself the one fact they both know but refuse to say aloud. If Bae or Wendy wins, the other must die.
.
Her first kill comes unexpectedly.
She's washing her water filter in the river when she hears a rustle behind her. Instinctively, her hand flies to her waist where a blade sits, strapped to her.
The attacker comes suddenly, and an arm from behind takes her by the neck. Wendy lefts out a muffled choke, arms reaching behind her to grab at the tribute. She kicks back, hard, and the figure lets go of her. She spins around and sees a boy from Ten, no older than 15, holding a spear in his hand.
She forgets his name but lunges for the spear. The knife in her hand is shaky and her grip is awful. A scream falls out of him as she drives the knife into his ribs, blood immediately soaking her hands as his body crumples, pulling her down with it. It takes a moment for the life to leave his body but she knows the minute it does, the minute his body goes rigid because his lungs have stopped pumping air.
She stays like that for a while, one hand clutching the blood-soaked weapon and the other clamped over her mouth to stop her for screaming.
Bae is the one who finds her eventually in the cave and help clean the blood off her, tucks the knife into her pack, guides her back to their makeshift shelter.
"I remember now," she says finally at night, looking into the fire, just before the canons go off. "His name was Henry."
.
"Dreamshade," Peter tells his pack, his tone picking up with excitement. Wendy's stomach churns thinking about it. "Put some in the bag. It'll be useful for knocking them down."
"Funny, I would've thought that you knew more about knocking people up than knocking them down." Lily quips.
Felix laughs.
"Come on, we're losing daylight," Peter chides, moving in the direction of the trees, but then stops. He casts his gaze upwards, almost like he can see the exact spot they're sitting in.
He aims to bow upwards and she shifts to the right, and the branch creaks and—
Oh, God.
Peter's head jerks upwards, and his eyes find hers.
"It's the bird and her boy," he hollers. The pack immediately laughs and Wendy hates them all for it. "Come down from your tree and play!"
Lily holds up her own bow, closing one eye, and notches the arrow. Two days ago, Wendy saw her shoot down three tributes in a row without breaking a sweat.
A rustling breaks her focus. A growl emerges from the bushes and she nearly drops her bow
Tigers jump from the foliage, baring their teeth and landing in front of the Careers. They freeze, cornered by the trees. And then they start running. The tigers take down Felix first, and there's a strangled cry and the sound of flesh being ripped from bones, and Wendy and Bae run as fast as their feet will take them.
.
She finds Peter by the woods alone this time.
His head snaps up when he sees her.
"Not so brave now, eh?" he taunts, and she snarls.
From where she's standing, she can see the crossbow in the middle of them. She lunges forward, grabbing it.
She has never used a crossbow. Bae did sometimes when he went to hunt for dinner, and he offered to teach her but she never took him up on his offer. Strangely enough, the bow feels just right in her hands. Feels as though she were made for it. Which is silly, she thinks, because she's probably going to end up shooting herself with it by accident. The brief thought that she could use this to win flashes in her mind, that someone from Eight could come out of this alive against all odds, her especially, but then it's gone and replaced by dread of the days to come.
"Aim the crossbow and shoot me."
"What?" she asks, bewildered.
He hisses, "Go, do it."
The urgency in his voice startles her out of her brief reverie. She does as she's told silently and fires. The crossbow feels right in her hands, righter than it should, and the arrow flies straight, aimed at his chest. He swiftly reaches out and catches it in one fluid motion, eyes never losing their fire. He flexes his hand, but it doesn't move.
"Now run."
.
The wolves catch up to them by the time they try to scale the giant cornucopia. There's just three of them left in the arena right now—her, Bae, and Peter.
Bae pushes her up to the top with all the energy he has left. She latches onto a handhold and looks back down at him. She grabs his hand and pulls.
"Wendy, let go," he tells her, loosening his grip on his hand. "I'm not going to make it."
"What, no," she screams, using her body weight to pull him up.
"You are going to make it, Wendy. I don't care what anyone else says. You are the one who is going to win this."
"I'm not going to let you go," Wendy yells, clinging to his hands even tighter.
"Tell Emma and my Papa that I'm sorry. So sorry." He releases his grip and instinctively she reaches out.
It takes the same amount of time for his body to hit the ground as it does for her to find her voice and scream Bae—no, but by then he's gone and all she sees is a mass of curls and the lifeless look on Rumplestiltskin's face the day of the reaping. It takes another moment for the canon to sound and yet another for her to face Peter.
"Why, bird," he croaks. "I could kill you right now."
"But you won't," is her simple reply. She knows, better than anyone else, that this boy could take her out using a few sharp branches even in his current state. But he won't. She can see it in his eyes.
"Go on, save yourself."
She reaches out and his teeth gnash together, preparing for the blow. But it never comes.
She cleans the blood from his shirt, wipes the wounds with bits of ripped cloth, applies the little healer knowledge she has. He is every bit as awful as she thought he would be, but she understands it a little bit better now. She understands the ferocity, sees it in herself, and understands what it means to die playing this game. They claw at each other, skin against skin, his mouth against hers. They mutter insults at the Capitol into each other's skin and hurl curses at the sky and for the first time, she understands what it means to run out of life before you die.
.
They stay like that for a while, staring at the stars, not moving from their position on the cornucopia until she hears another howl, and reaches out for her sack. Peter lets out a howl of pain. She looks down at the cut the wolves have left and sees that it's turning blue. She dabs at it with the cloth in her bag and he winces. She knows what's going to happen next.
The Capitol will send down a package for their beloved Career so that he can heal and then they're going to isolate them until Wendy and Peter have no choice but to fight to the death. That's what the Capitol always wants. They want to see the tributes die at the hands of one another, to turn them all into bloody killers.
His eyelids flutter. Reality flashes before him in lapses. "The star-crossed lovers—it was n-never me and Lily."
"I can't win." She chokes out. "I-I can't. Not now, not after all this."
The berries are still in her hand. It wouldn't be too late.
Peter isn't dead.
They haven't called her name.
There's still time, short as it may be, to do this. Not just for her and Peter, but for Bae, for Lily, for all the fallen. She opens her mouth, ready to pop the berries in her mou—
A trumpet booms. "WAIT!" comes the frantic shout of Claudius Templesmith, followed by strains of the Capitol anthem. "By decree of the Gamemakers, the victor of the 74th annual Hunger Games is Wendy Darling."
She looks down at Peter. His smile is lazy and almost peaceful, masking the sharp edges of his face. Peter pulls her arm closer to him until her head hovers above his. She knows in her gut that this started even before that day of training before the arena, the day her insides started burning, burning, burning. This began the moment she saw his face in the reaping videos.
"I'm sorry," she whimpers.
A low murmur. "Be strong."
She does not notice how his hand gropes the ground.
She does not see his fingers curl around a shaft.
Then he picks up the broken arrow and plunges it straight into her chest.
Her mouth parts slightly and her eyes widen, realization of what just happened slowly sinking in. She falls to her side with a thud. They bleed into each other and with his last breath, Peter raises their interlocked hands in victory.
Perhaps the odds were in their favor after all.
note: semi-dark and semi-ooc-ish but I'm so glad that this is done. this took me forever to write (this isn't an exaggeration; this thing has literally been unfinished on my laptop for over a year) but it turned out better than I thought it would tbh.
so this started out at a 500 word fic and exploded a 5K fic which is super rare for me and probably the longest thing i've ever written for an au? probs will come back to fix this later bc there are still some inconsistencies
bonus points if you can spot all the little Easter eggs in this fic ho ho ho
thanks for reading and let me know what you think!