Edit: May 3, 2016
I didn't notice the html was ten types of fucked up. Oops.
Awaiting Your Arrival
A Once upon a Time and Peter Pan Crossover
By YellowWomanontheBrink
When Wendy first met Baelfire, she was out by the shore in Liverpool, trying her best to ignore the stench of the water while ignoring her ancient aunt to the best of her ability. The ten year old girl had just been moved from her nursery to her own room. It wasn't too bad; except it was. The window was tiny, and the carpet was dark and dank, plain repeating pattern in black, burgundy, and white. There were no toys. Even her porcelain dolls had been quarantined to the highest, tallest shelves in the nursery, away from Michael and John's grubby, rough hands. Her storybooks were left behind, and so were her pictures and paints and pencils. The window in the room was tiny and high in the wall, and shuttered. Where the nursery had the most gorgeous view of the street, and she could watch cars and people walking their dogs and the constables roaming the streets and the gas lamps would light up their room even in the dark of the night, her room fit for a lady was small, cramped, professional, and worst of all, isolated.
Wendy knew, that as a little girl, she had been given far more freedom then her peers. Even though her mother was not crazy enough to let her wear pants, she was allowed to play with her brothers while her parents worked; even as middle class, they worked. They gave her thousands of pages of stories and the infinite supply of papers for pictures and the right to imagination and not fear even as they worked hard, even for the middle class.
To have that stripped away was like punishment. Now, everything was to be as prim, and proper as possible, as if she had a drop of noble blood within her!
With the war so close to her home street, her parents had shipped her off to her ancient old auntie. The crazy biddy thought she was still living under Victoria, the way she ragged on the young girl. Wendy hated her aunt, she hated her petticoats, and by God, did she hate her lessons.
The public schools had closed with the bombings in the capital, so Wendy was tutored. Rather than reading, and writing and mathematics, it seemed like the only thing deemed appropriate for a young lady to learn was how to attract a man.
Personally, Wendy thought that the easiest way to attract a man was to dress up like those pin up girls that her father stashed and though she didn't know, but that was indecent, apparently.
Besides, most boys from the prep school were gross. They were uppity and so dull, nothing like her bright little brothers.
But not Baelfire, she thought dreamily.
He had crawled out from the shore, soaked to the bone and reeking like river water and salt, dressed in rags that might once have been fine robes, with his big blue eyes and dark foppish hair and bewildered expression. He was clever and quick and a fine hand with a needle. Wendy loved sewing, it was probably the only thing she was good at, much to her Aunt Biddy's delight. She tromped everyone at it, even the older ladies.
Baelfire believed in magic, and his stories were better than any storybook that Wendy had ever read.
He told her about Dark Ones and fairies and realms far, far away. Like she was a child, he'd start every story with "Once Upon a Time…" as if she were John or Michael and he was Wendy. Apparently, his father lived in a castle.
Even though he'd blush every single time, she was convinced he was her prince.
As if she would need one! she'd protest, and tell him about Red- Handed Jill and the awful pirates she'd lead on trips across the stars. All the treasure she had found in her dreams, off the coast of a twilight island, fighting off dastardly mermaids and defeating every other pirate band out there. She'd traverse dark, heavy jungles and defeat pale savages dressed in cloaks, discovering poisons and the cure to everything. She'd bring her treasures home and her parents would come home, and she wouldn't be quite so alone, because her parents would not work so much and she wouldn't have to be a lady. She'd be a girl forever.
Baelfire's beautiful dark eyes would look sad and he'd laugh, slightly shallow and fake. Wendy never minded. He was from a magical world, so maybe things were just different there. But he never did look at her like she didn't understand, like she was too stupid because she was a girl and not a lady. But neither did he tell her the whole story.
"Where are you from?" she asked him in the stables of the manor. There were no horses there, as there wasn't enough men left to staff them, but it was kept as clean as possible through the sheer efforts of the women sharing the small house. Since they were mostly unoccupied, Wendy had invited Baelfire to live with them. Her mother agreed, a little reluctant about taking in a vagabond, but Baelfire had proved himself amicable enough.
"A lot of places," he had answered, after some consideration. "I'm from a land called Misthaven, but I spent a lot of time in a place called Neverland."
She had jumped up then. "That's where Peter Pan lives!"
Before he could overcome his shock and clam up, she raced all the way back to her house to grab one of her favorite novels. Out of breath, she happily thrust the plain covered paper back towards the boy. "They talk about him here! It's my favorite, you know. That's where I thought up Red-Handed Jill from."
"It's not a nice place," Baelfire said drearily. Wendy's hopes sunk about it, she had hoped to hear a tale. "The thing I fear the most is going back."
"It's an island for lost things, in'it?" she had joked lightly. "You seemed pretty lost to me! I'm just glad that my mother found you…"
"Your mum didn't find me Wendy, you did," he retorted with a smile.
"Yes, but you would have been left in the river, regardless of what I say if my mother hadn't said a thing to the old biddy," she replied just as heatedly.
He rolled his eyes, and Wendy bristled in annoyance. "Sure thing, Gwendolyn."
Baelfire was like the man of her dreams, or so she thought. She could act like a girl all she wanted, and still, she was treated as a lady was. It was easy to ignore all the little things that adults would do that irked her as a very young child, before John or Michael came along, but now that she was older and aware of them, forced into a role that she honestly felt just did not fit, she couldn't relearn that ignorance again.
As wonderfully as Baelfire was with her, he was even better with her brothers. They adored him almost as much as they loved Wendy, and that was great deal. She never minded their private time together. Even though she knew that John and Michael had each other, it could get lonely without three's company, even if Baelfire didn't romp around with them the way Wendy used to, he was the life of the game.
Aunt Biddy said that the best way to find a husband was not to look at him as a spouse, but as the father of your children. Wendy couldn't ever imagine having babies of her own, but they were such delightful, innocent creatures, and when the boys all sat in a circle around Baelfire's knees, it was as if she were back home in London and her father still told tales in the sitting room around a roaring fire.
When she tucked her brothers into bed at night, more than once in their drowsy haze they had called her mother.
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YellowWomanontheBrink
12:10 am
May 3, 2016