A/N: Just something to keep space
Forever
Chapter Ten
Wendy could feel the knot in her stomach as she hurried out of the room. Peter's words kept running through her head like a bad movie. The look of outrage on his face made it even worse. He had been humoring her this whole time. He knew that she had feelings for him in the past life and had confirmed that against all odds they had transferred over. Then he denied the existence of his own feelings - that he had just wanted everything to be an act. Like some sick, twisted game of pretend. The game that he had started up all those years ago and which had, for her at least, morphed into something a whole lot more.
She tried to hurry out of the house before Peter caught up with her. The key word being tried here. With her legs still feeling like some type of rubber band from the run to the house and her stomach feeling like she was going to be sick, Wendy was in no condition to out run the very determined Peter Pan...even if this was a reborn version of him. Just because her body wasn't up for the task it didn't mean that her indignation was lessened.
When he caught her wrist at the end of the stairs, Wendy tried to yank it away. She spun around, pushing at his chest in an attempt to get him to stay away.
"I'm done playing! Done!" The words tore their way through her constricting throat before she had time to stop them.
She started to turn back around but Peter caught her once more, calling out the same thing he had been since she started off - just her name. Like it was a mantra that was going to make everything alright again. Maybe for him it did but Wendy couldn't see that. Her eyes were too clouded, her stomach was too knotted, and she was just too tired of everything that had happened to see the emotions in his boyishly green eyes.
"Leave me alone!" Wendy spewed out passionately, each word heavily emphasised as though there was a dire need for those mid sentence pauses.
Wendy tried to turn back around, though her legs were protesting at it, but Peter was quicker. He pushed her into the wall at the end of the stairs, one hand grabbing at her wrists and the other trying to cover her mouth. Sure he knew it wasn't exactly the most gentlemen of things to do but how could he try to explain anything if she kept talking? And it wasn't like he wanted to keep her quiet forever. It was just that he needed to explain because he realized that something very important had gotten lost in translation.
So focused on the emotionally distraught Wendy, Peter never noticed that the door to the house opened up. He also didn't notice that three not so lost boys had moved into the house.
He did notice that Wendy's attention moved over to them when one of them spoke out: "Mother and Father are fighting again."
"Go!" Peter said harshly to the people he currently viewed as intruders.
With his attention diverted to where her's had seemingly gone, Peter never realized what was happening. Wendy had managed to wiggle enough to that his hand barely covered her mouth. And a moment later, her teeth were biting down. Peter's head whipped back around as he let out a pain filled hiss. He pulled his hand away from her mouth as she cast him a vicious, tear filled look. That was the most dirty, underhanded move he'd ever seen! ...well, felt. Considering that he'd faced Hook back in the day that really did say something.
Instead of letting up like she no doubt expected him to do, Peter switched to holding both of her hands to her side and made sure that she couldn't bring her knee up and hit him either. If she was willing to go for the biting of the hand, he wasn't going to put a knee to the groin past her. She had been the one invited to piracy after all.
Before he got to utter one word, however, Peter felt himself being pulled back. The lost boys, who were quite easily just his size if not larger now, had tugged him away from Wendy. His eyes searched her face as she let out a deep breath, though she couldn't move away from the wall for whatever reason. Peter struggled against the three people he used to call friends.
As he almost made headway, Wendy finally seemed to be able to summon the energy to move. She started away from the wall and through the living room as Peter struggled to get loose.
"Wendy! Wendy wait!"
"No!" She called back in a whipish voice.
"You should have waited! I was trying to fix Neverland for you, for us!" Peter called out in a desperate attempt to get her to hear him out.
He was rewarded by her stoppin at the door, using the beam for support. But she wouldn't look back at him and he wasn't sure what hurt more. The fact that his own lost boys had turned on him or the fact that Wendy wouldn't turn around to face him.
"You should have waited! I - I," His voice broke.
No matter what he felt, Peter couldn't bring himself to say it aloud. Not in front of other people and not when she wasn't even facing him. He wouldn't, in fact, because even he had to draw the line somewhere. And he wasn't going to cross that line just because of some misunderstanding that she had blown way out of proportion.
"I was trying to fix Neverland!" Peter covered back up as he stopped struggling against the three ex-friends (for surely they were never his friends now). "So I could bring you back. Because I wanted you there. Even if it was only for sometimes visits."
"What?" Wendy finally brought herself to ask, even though she couldn't bring herself to turn back.
Peter's lack of struggling and Wendy's almost acceptance must have clued the guys holding Peter that they could let go. Slightly was the last one to let go and he eyed Peter to make sure that the shorter young man wasn't going to do anything too brash. Peter didn't even take a step forward as he tried to gather his thoughts. He had to do this much quicker than ever before. He had to tell her the truth and make her understand what he'd meant. There really wasn't anything else he could do.
But he was not going to talk about feelings, on that he was resolved.
"Neverland got sick."
"Islands can't get sick, Peter," Wendy's voice was a whisper as she stared out into the yard.
"Neverland can. And did. The island was sick. The mermaids became rock statues in the lagoon. Fish were frozen in their place. Not by frost or anything, they just stopped moving and then they stayed that way. The Indians all started to fade away, like some sort of magic cancer or something. And the Pirates...the boat sank. Even the Fairies turned into stone. Magic was leaking away. I was trying to find the link so I could bring you home because it wasn't all pretend for me either. It wasn't. It isn't."
...that was as close to talking about his feelings as he was going to get.
He didn't even realize how animated he had gotten around the end, nor the fact that he'd taken a few steps closer to her. The lost boys were at the back of his mind, a silent threat that if he got out of hand again they were going to remove him from Wendy once more. Bitterly he decided that if they tried that he was going to skin them all and then hang them out to dry. They didn't know what it was like to watch their home wither and die. They didn't know what it was like to feel the shadows of gray and black seeping into their very pores as all their happy thoughts turned against them. They had left him a long time ago. They had chosen to grow up without him.
The worst thing about it was that they had gotten to grow up with their 'Mother'. Meanwhile Peter had been alone in early (and mid) twentieth century Europe. He couldn't remember every day but he could remember enough of the feeling to know that it was not something he'd wish on anyone. Not even Hook.
"Neverland...neverland is gone?" Wendy asked as she turned around, still using the doorframe as a support.
Peter didn't know what to tell her. He really didn't. So he kept his silence and just shrugged, biting his lip.
"I was trying to fix the island. That's why I didn't come to get you. But I never found out how to bring the magic back and eventually I couldn't...I couldn't do anything," Peter tried to explain. "And then all of a sudden I fell, straight into the streets of London. They looked very different when I was flying so I couldn't find you. I didn't know your address and no one would help me. Tink was gone."
"Oh Peter," Wendy said in a sympathetic tone.
She was still a little messed up with her own emotions but at the same time she couldn't help but feel bad for him. From everything she knew, it would not have been a fun time for him to grow up. Especially not on his own without the love and support of family.
"You should have waited, Wendy. You should have waited."
Knowing that his own words were knotting up in his throat like her emotions had done inside of her stomach, Wendy said nothing. She gripped onto the wooden beam and didn't move forward. Her whole body ached and refused to do much of anything anyways. Besides, she knew that she was an emotional ball of nerves right now and from the look of things so was he. Exposed nerves should never come into contact with another set of exposed nerves.
"Boys, do you think you could get me some water?" Wendy asked as she licked her lips.
This was all so awkward knowing that they had seen the both of them break down. It was an embarrassment that Wendy wasn't sure if she was ready to live up to so she was going to try and push it from her mind as quickly as possible. Besides, she was actually thirsty. And it would give her a chance to focus on something other than the petulant sea which had flooded her guts.
Thankfully she wasn't the only one who wanted to escape the awkwardness that had become the living room. Slightly took on the task of getting her a glass of water while the twins made themselves scarce upstairs. Wendy shakingly moved over to the couch as Peter took a seat in the single armchair.
The tense air couldn't sliced through even with a hot butter knife, that's how thick and dense it was. Wendy sipped on her water, her eyes downcast and her thoughts trying to focus on anything other than the very intense pair of eyes staring at her. It was the quickest way to fail, she found. And she might have almost choked on her water more than once as a dry sob or two refused to leave her be. She tried her best to calm herself down after such an emotional rollercoaster but once floodgates were opened it was hard to stop. Thankfully it wasn't a whole snot running out of the nose affair so much as it was body shaking and holding back emotional tears. She wasn't sure if she was sad or happy about the news. After a while, Wendy decided she was definitely sad. There was far too much bad things to think about to not be.
"Wendy?" Peter questioned in a small voice.
Wendy tried her best to look at him while remaining calm but she couldn't manage more than a few seconds before she had to look away.
"Wendy? Are we okay?"
She let out a shaky breath. Were they?
"I don't know Peter," she said in an honest tone. "I don't know what I am right now, so I don't know what we are."
He moved so he was kneeling in front of her, his face as serious and imploring as it could ever be. "I'm Peter Pan...and you're the Wendy Bird."
She tried to crack an amused smile at that but it might have looked more like a grimace. Her lips trembled as she stared down into her lap, trying to get her body back under her control. Maybe it was lucky that Peter had been able to get her to stop because at this rate, she probably would have been hit by a car or something. She could barely see clearly out of her hazy eyes yet she refused to release all the tears that welled up under the disassociated emotional torrent.
"You realize I grew up thinking that it was all just a dream right? This time, or...or whatever it is."
"It's not a dream," he tried to insist in an indignant voice. "I'm here, and I'm plenty real."
"And then I was pretty sure I was going mad," Wendy continued. "Especially when I saw you on that first day. I thought I had crossed the line from slightly obsessional to full on psychotic. Like they should probably put me away for everyone's safety."
"You're not crazy," he insisted in a stronger voice.
"Are you sure?" Wendy asked. "Cause this whole thing feels crazy. Certifiable."
"It's all real. I don't know how or why we got do to this...whatever this life is. I just know that we did. And that's all there is to it," Peter spoke out as he moved up from his kneeling position to take a seat next to her.
He brought her hand up to his chest so she could feel his heartbeat. After everything that had happened it was beating a little fast, but that made it all the easier to feel. He wanted to make sure that she knew that this was real. He wanted to push aside all the doubts but he, as proven from this whole situation, was apparently not very good at words. At least not with her; not with something as important as this.
"Uh, guys," one of the twins said as they peaked down from the top of the stairs.
Peter's glare promised that skinning he'd been thinking about from earlier. Wendy shoved at him as she shakingly brought up: "What?"
"You should turn on the TV," twin one said.
"There's something you should see," twin two continued.
When they did and the channel was on the local news...Wendy's mouth dropped open and she couldn't keep the tears back anymore. Not after what she had just seen. Her entire body flooded with so many different emotions as thousands upon thousands of dark thoughts filled her mind.
The bridge had been blown up. The bridge that she took to get to and from school. The only one that linked the two towns, heck the only way to get to either town from the other one. Which meant that she was cut off from her family.
What was she going to do?