Disclaimer: The world of Peter Pan does not belong to me, and the rights to this amazing creation go to J. M. Barrie.

A/N: I just want to say thank you to everyone who read this story, and a warm hug to those who reviewed, as I wrap this up.

I had considered doing this quite differently and not even having an epilogue that was very long, but it soon became apparent that that wouldn't work, and so we have this, the ending to the love stories of Peter Pan and Tiger Lily and Peter Pan and Wendy Darling. I tried to keep each girl's part in this story the same, and though I know I tended more to Wendy, I really enjoyed looking into Tiger Lily's mind and shaping her in my own way.

If you're very familiar with Sir Barrie, you might just recognize a certain name I used near the end, and if you do, I give you a big high five!

Did this madness make sense to you? Let me know what you thought of the ending, and I hoped you liked my first step into Neverland.

StarKatt427

Years passed, the world changed, but not Peter, or Neverland. The Lost Boys of long ago had left to go to Wendy's world, and a new group of children was under his watch, as was a new fairy known by the name of Silver Wing, a quieter fairy than his Tinker Bell but delightful nonetheless. The peace between the boys and the Indians remained, and Peter often visited them, though he tried his best to avoid Tiger Lily and spoke rarely to her. Sometimes, however, she would smile at him, and he would remember their wild days in the woods when she wasn't married and they still belonged to each other.

One day, though he wasn't sure how it happened, Peter and Tiger Lily ended up alone together in the village center, and instead of the awkwardness he had imagined, he fell into conversation with her easily, enjoying her expressions as she spoke about the young braves and the harvest and the Lost Boys, and they even laughed for a little while together.

Suddenly, he asked, "Do you believe there is any way we could ever be friends, like how we were at first?"

Tiger Lily looked at him, her eyes older and sadder. "I don't believe so. If we tried, we would just want more, and both you and I cannot ever have that."

Due to the fact that time passes differently in Neverland than the rest of the world, and because of Peter's disposition, there were days when he didn't even think about Tiger Lily or his Wendy-lady. But the next time he remembered staring out from the cave of the burrow with Tiger Lily or teaching Wendy how to dance as the fairies had shown him, the ache hit him harder.

They still held him.

He tried not to, but eventually, Peter slipped back into Wendy's world. And he wished he hadn't, because when he saw her, she was no longer the same, instead a tall creature with her hair pulled back and a tearful, longing look on her beautiful adult face. She had grown up, as he knew she would, but it didn't make him stop hurting.

There was a good side, however, to this sadness: Peter met Jill, a little girl—Wendy's little girl—who was as loud and outgoing as he was, at odds with how he remembered Wendy as a child. And so he took her to visit Neverland, and eventually came to care about her against his will, though it was nothing more than a close friendship and the softness she showed when she played his mother. He brought her back home to Wendy sooner than he would have liked, but he could tell that the girl had begun to miss her.

Peter talked to Wendy the night he brought Jane home, still uncertain of how to act around her and she around him. He asked of her husband, though only to be polite, and when she began telling Peter about him, he could see a new love in her eyes, love that was not his, and it left him on the verge of either killing the man or breaking apart completely.

After that night, he returned every so often, once more for Jane, once for her daughter, Margaret, who was almost as sweet as Wendy had been as a girl. But seeing Wendy age, seeing her face change and wrinkle and her hair turn lighter with streaks of gray, became too much for him, and after he returned Margaret, he went up to her, kneeled, and put his head in her lap.

She immediately began stroking his hair. "You won't be back again, will you?"

"No."

He looked at her, saw her smile slightly, sad but acceptant, and she leaned forward to kiss his forehead, just as she had done long before. "Then be free, Peter."

More time passed. Peter, as he had said, did not return to Wendy, and his visits to the village became fewer and fewer. The pain of knowing Tiger Lily was so near was too great of a temptation and a heartache for him, and knowing that Wendy was growing every day, changing, and that she had left him behind forever, was enough for him to convince himself to block off his heart, to force down the memories and the longing and focus solely on himself and the Lost Boys, to keep himself at a distance from the rest of the world. He would not be hurt so deeply ever again as he had those two times before, and soon, Peter had nearly forgotten them.

But not completely. Never completely.

And so, many years after he first brought the Wendy-lady to Neverland, and many many more years since he had first met the Native princess in the wood, he lost them both forever.

When the news reached Peter that Tiger Lily, the chief's daughter and wife of a very respected brave, had died at the hand of a pirate wandering through the Indian's part of the jungle, he could not truly believe it. He stood in a daze, unable to conjure up any happy thoughts that would lift him into the air, seeing nothing but a dark face and a reluctant smile that was strangely beautiful, long hair and feathers and paint, remembering the nights he had spent with her, their laughter and touches and kisses.

And then he was running, breaking through tree limbs and tearing past bushes like a mad man, ignoring the brambles that stuck into the soles of his feet and heart pounding, the rushing blood slowly beginning to flood with cold dread as he ran to the edge of the village.

He stared, panting, into a pillar of smoke.

A funeral pyre was burning orange and red and gold and filling the blue sky with thick, dark colored smoke. He could see the villagers around it, but he didn't see her anywhere.

And Peter understood it then, that she was gone, she who had been there since he could remember, forever young and filled with life, only no longer. Tiger Lily was dead.

Later, after he had regained control of himself enough to speak with the chief, he learned that her husband and the rest of the braves had yet to find the pirate and dispose of him. Peter turned dark, determined green eyes to him. "Consider it done. He's mine."

He searched for two days, the lone pirate having retreated deeper into the forest instead of returning to the ship and the rest of the crew and safety, and so when Peter did come across him, he was taken unaware. The man had barely risen from the ground, revolver in hand, when Peter let his dagger fly true and hit his mark, tearing through the pirate's neck and severing his windpipe, nailing him to a tree.

Peter walked toward the gurgling pirate. He picked up the fallen gun, aimed, and shot him in the middle of his chest without blinking, piercing his heart.

Just before the life slipped away from the man's eyes, Peter ripped the dagger from his throat and stood over his fallen form, eyes holding no mercy. "That shot was for she that you murdered."

For days, Peter wandered around in a daze, unable to be reached by any of the Lost Boys or Silver Wing, barely even eating. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to do, knowing that she was gone, because even though it had been many long years since she had been his, he still loved her. Her energy and even her awkwardness, her ability to make him laugh and how she had shown just as much passion as he, how she'd never let him get away with anything.

He understood why it hadn't worked with them, how she had been too much for him to handle too fast, but that didn't make his love for her any less. So what was he to do now?

And then another face flashed unbidden across his mind, a heart shaped one with pale eyes and a kiss hidden in the corner of her mouth, a face that was still a child, not the old woman she had been becoming the last time he had seen her.

Go to Wendy.

Leaving the boys and Silver Wing behind without so much as a note, Peter flew to London, arriving on a warm, spring afternoon with an overcast sky. Normally, he wouldn't have come in the middle of the day, but the need to see Wendy was immediate, demanding, and he couldn't wait. He flew to her home, looking in the window that led into the nursery of long ago, and was surprised to find it locked. Had Margaret forgotten him? Surely not. And Wendy…the thought of her forgetting him didn't even cross his mind; it was not possible.

The only way to find her was to ask someone, which he would rather not do, but Peter plucked up his nerve and landed at the front door, then knocked.

A man appeared as the door opened, tall and handsome and completely unfamiliar, even to Peter, whose memory wasn't the best. The adult looked him over in confusion. "May I help you?"

"Excuse me," Peter began as politely as he could, looking up into the stranger's dark brown eyes. "I'm looking for Wendy Darling."

"Who?"

Uncertainty flashed through Peter. He knew her house; he couldn't have gotten it wrong.

"Robert, who is it?" A woman came into view, young and very pretty, with blonde curls and blue eyes that were all too familiar to Peter, so much so that he had to step back slightly.

"This chap says he's looking for a Wendy Darling."

"Robert, have you forgotten that Darling was my great-grandmother's maiden name?" the lady asked him with a laugh. She looked at Peter, her expression still smiling, but no longer as light. "Why are you looking for her, if I may ask?"

Peter swallowed. "I…I wanted to see her. Just this one last time."

Her smile wobbled. "Do you know where Cherry Street is?"

"I can find it, I'm sure."

"Alright then. She's at the cemetery."

"Whatever is she doing there?" Peter asked perplexedly. "Did someone die?"

The lady looked so sad, and Peter didn't know why, but she reminded him of Wendy at that moment, like when she'd cried her last day in Neverland and when he'd told her goodbye that night in England. She ignored his question. "When you arrive, find the oldest, largest cherry tree there. She'll be underneath it."

After traveling several blocks, reading street signs that still made little sense to Peter, and avoiding any curious glances, he managed to find Cherry Street and the cemetery the woman had told him about, the place where he would find Wendy. But when he arrived, there was only a handful of people there, and he didn't see her; even now, when she was old, he was sure he would recognize her.

Remembering the lady's words, he made sure no one was watching and flew up to look above the graveyard, quickly spotting the tree she must have been referring to, a great beauty of pink blossoms and enormous size. He snuck through the other trees until he reached it, then dropped gracefully to the ground, searching the vicinity. His stomach felt tight at the prospect of seeing her again, knowing she was near, and yet his heart felt lightened.

No one was there.

Nerves pricked him, made him feel lost and unsure as he looked behind the tree for her. Nothing.

"Wendy?"

Coming back around from behind the massive tree, Peter's foot snagged the corner of a stone, and he nearly pitched forward, catching himself against the tree trunk at the last minute. He looked down at he offending rock.

And stared, intrigued.

The stone was flat and neatly cut, smooth gray colored, and with writing on it. Wendy had taught him how to read long ago, but the words came to him slowly, and when they did, he didn't understand them.

Wendy Davies

1892 - 1982

Peter read the words over and over, the knowledge not yet clicking together in his mind.

And then remembered Wendy mentioning a name once, a name he would hate for as long as there was breath in his lungs: Nicholas Davies. Her husband.

Wendy Davies.

Peter inhaled a jagged breath.

This was her.

He had seen many a gravestone, and though no one had ever told him, he'd come to figure out that they represented a dead person, as he would see others standing over the stone crying or laying flowers on it. Now, as he stared down at the stone representing Wendy, his Wendy, the horrible truth that she was dead emptied him.

He stood there, suddenly icy old and unable to breathe properly, his already fragile, broken heart ripping for a second time.

He had come back to see her one final time, to let her play with his hair and kiss his face, to see her eyes and the hidden kiss that he knew was his.

And he had come too late, just like he had once before with Tiger Lily long ago.

Both of them, Wendy and Tiger Lily, were gone.

Peter stayed at her grave until it was nearly dark, cross-legged on the ground and hands resting listlessly in his lap, barely even feeling the soft rain that fell on him. But finally, when he was able to accept that she really was gone, that he wouldn't be seeing her again, he slowly stood and plucked the prettiest blossom from her cherry tree, then laid it across her grave.

"Goodbye. My Wendy-lady."

When he returned to Neverland, the sun was sinking into the ocean line, and he stood on a cliff above the sea, watching as the light began to turn the sky purple and pink and orange. This had been Tiger Lily's favorite part of the day. The next morning, he would get up before dawn and travel to the opposite side of the island to watch the sun rise from the east, the moment that was forever Wendy's.

Tiger Lily. Wendy. Peter had loved both of them, the same love yet different with each. With Tiger Lily, it was rawer and sometimes tenser, faster and passionate, while it had been slower and more giving with Wendy, soft and sweeter and more painful. Now, they were both dead, and he alone remained.

And so he cried for them, a child's tears but also tears only a man would understand, great heaving sobs that ripped through his chest and tore his heart to pieces as he sunk to the ground and cried into his hands. He cried for the girl who had never let herself cry and the girl who had been the first person to shed tears over him. He cried for the love he had had with both of them, for the happiness and sorrows they had all endured.

Two loves lost, but not forgotten. He promised himself to never let them go.

And this time, he wouldn't forget his promise. He would remember them for as long as he lived.