Little games

Disclaimer: I don't own OUAT and I have difficulties with grammar; don't remind me!

Chapter 2 A Playing Piece

Peter doesn't return to her cage for the next few days and she wonders if she's scared him off. It is beginning to grow quiet dull without him to constantly bicker with.

There is something about the quiet that makes it easy to get lost in own memories. She thinks of a time long before when their games were not as strategic as this, innocent even. She laughs recalling the euphoria of running and playing hide and go seek or tag in the vast forests of Neverland. Then laughs again because there is a certain irony to the situation she finds herself in now. The games haven't changed not really; they are still trying to trap one another but the physical has been conquered. It's all words and talk now.

In the second week she begins to feel the confinement of the cage. It's cramped so she can never really sit fully upright or lie down flat. They let her out at times; so she many eats or go to the bathroom or (if one of the kinder lost boys is on guard duty) stretch. Still it's always "back to that cage Wendy." She knows she could run if she wanted to, but there's no real way off the island without Peter's consent. Besides that's not the game they are playing.

So she doesn't run; she stays in her cage and plans her next move.

In time she begins to pick at the bamboo of the cage fraying off pieces and making little dolls or bracelets with the pieces. They scatter on the floor and it makes it difficult to sleep; but while she's at it, it keeps her from complete boredom. Then one day she fashions basket; it's so small it barely fits over her fingertip but she knows immediately what it looks like. She wants to laugh and cry at the sweet memory bound to it but in the end she just tosses it to the floor of the cage like all the others.

She doesn't play with the fray much more after that.

After that she focuses on watching the foliage the only thing on the island to ever change, until one day she see something in the shadows. The Lost boys who are supposed to be watching her hardly notice it or perhaps they don't care. It's most likely the latter.

But she is sure of it the next time it happens that the trees are moving without a wind or creature to rustle them.

Suddenly her eyes go wide in understanding.

"I know it's you shadow!" she calls out pressing her face to the bars of her cage. "There's no need to hide…" The shadow floats up from the ground flickering for a moment before attempting to manifest itself into the one person she doesn't want to think about at the moment.

"Or disguise yourself as him…" she adds and the shadow stops and turns back into darkness.

"You were always the better half of him, anyways." She says watching the phantom creature drift towards her with interest.

"Plus you don't have that smile of his, at least not that I can see." Peter's shadow hasn't visited her since she's been locked up. Wendy thought it was strange; the severed entity was always as much of her friend as Peter himself.

"I know you can talk, say what you want must." She stares into the mass of swirling matter. The hollowness of the figure used to scare her, now it seemed more comforting than the hollow boy it was a silhouette of.

"He'll know all I say." rasps the shadow in a mere wisp of a voice.

"I should hope so, you are as much of a part of him as he is of you." She replies. Her hand reaches out curiously to touch the gray mist and feeling the soft pull of some strange gravity at her fingertips.

"He is wondering, why you kissed him." states the shadow never one to mince words or turn them into riddles like Peter.

"Why well that seems unusual of him. Doesn't he have things to concern himself with other than me?" she replies wishing confirmation that Peter was going as crazy without her company as she was without his. The shadow turns its blank face to hers as if there were eyes on it to bore into her own.

"Yes and no…' the shadow begins, "The boy…"

Wendy sighs it is always her or him.

"I know of the boy and your quest to find him, but what does that have to do with anything" she says. It is as if Peter only ever thinks of two things causing trouble for her or finding the boy from the picture. Peter always believed himself a god and made no effort to hide it; but the boy and Wendy those were where his faith lay.

"He is here." explains the shadow in a grave tone and her eyes widened.

"Well that certainly changes things; doesn't it?" She tries her best to dismiss her initial shock so it won't catch either the shadow or Peter's attention.

"So you'll stop trying to trouble him…?" asks the shadow hesitantly. Wendy frowns; it is never a cordial visit when it comes to the shadow.

"Hardly, he asked me to try my best and I intend to do so…" she replies curtly.

"His focus is already somewhere else, you shouldn't distract him…" The shadow pleads with her something the real Peter would never do in person.

"If he is distracted; it is his own fault. If you only came here to ask for my silence; I can't give it to you." She retreats into the cage not wanting to look at the shadow of the man too cowardly to come and speak to her about a kiss.

"I didn't imagine you would…" says the shadow, sighing.

Her hand rests on the ground when she feels something in her hand. It's the thimble she'd woven earlier out of frayed bamboo and her next move forms suddenly in her mind.

"In the meantime, you can give our dear friend this," she holds up the thimble, letting the shadow envelop it in its form. The shadow looks at it; it too remembers a day when a much younger Wendy gave Peter a very similar gift. Then it was innocent, now it's merely a playing piece.

"You're playing a dangerous game, Wendy…" the shadow spoke, finally.

"So I've been told." She replied.

A/N: I am totally ignoring my work but I had to get this out of my system. Still don't know it this is going anywhere... :/ -Song