The years past and with them was a time for growing up, for this wasn't Neverland, there were no fairies or mermaids, boys did not fly and there was no Captain Hook. This was London where crooks wore suits and heroes wore uniforms.
Wendy reminded herself this every day, but her heart still longed for a time where her dreams of that time in Neverland where reality and not simple fantasy. The more time that past the more it seemed to be just that; a dream. The line between reality and fantasy were blurred and the time for growing up came and went, though she was still a young maiden rip for marriage and the birthing of children, her mind was still filled with the fantasy of her youth and with many tales in which she longed to tell. But now her innocence was darkened with the knowledge of adulthood. She wasn't as naive as to ignore the attraction to the opposite sex or what took place behind closed doors. After she had been moved out of the nursery, she had been taught to be the perfect bride. Her days were full of sewing, cooking, and all that came with being a good wife, she would need to obey him and please him in all ways: with her appearance and talents.
She had suitors before; some handsome, some well-bred and some smart, but they were only interested in her status and her beauty. She would no doubt make the perfect wife, but that didn't mean she wanted to. She was stubborn, outspoken and she loathed the thought of never finding happiness on her own terms. She wanted love, the young men that approached her could never love all of her, maybe her body but not her mind or her soul. They wanted a beautiful wife who would simply be seen but never heard.
That was not the life she wanted.
Neverland is where her heart longed to be. But where her heart lay was unclear, as time rolled on her focus drifted from the young red head of the sky, to the matured mastermind of the sea.
She longed to feel that rush of fear when he smiled that wicked smile while his hook dragged threateningly across the skin of her neck. He would never hurt her, she wasn't his enemy, she knew this because when she looked into his sea foam colored eyes they held no hate instead a look of pity and sadness. It was maybe in that moment that the thin line of bad and good were blurred, when who the hero and villain blurred into grey.
She dreamed of that moment so many times that to see him as the villain didn't feel right. In her dreams he was a kind gentlemen who had been robbed of his life and forced the play the game of a bored child. There he was trapped, fighting with his conscience while he fought to destroy the boy that was slowly cutting away at him. He was falling apart, a part of a war that had been going for too long, with every passing day Hook became a simple pawn by the island that was now his prison.
In the this story, the last story she would tell her brothers before her parents forced her hand to wed, she would tell of a very different villain than the one that they had known from their childhood. In this story she would tell of the man that she knew in her dreams. And the man that she loved.