A/N: That's right, it's a double update! And in three weeks this fic will be completed, gosh...
"'Don't come looking for me,'", Jack read aloud.
"'I'm never coming back'..?" Wendy finished.
The two looked at each other, at the paper, and at the clothes that laid scattered on the bed. Although none of them could point out any missing pieces of clothing, the fact that Peter's only backpack had vanished was a big enough indicator in itself. No wonder why Jack's usual ramblings about this and that hadn't been enough to fill the silence this morning; For one, Alfred was at work, and second: Peter hadn't even been in the house!
Now, it wasn't always that Jack was able to uphold his promise of filling the silence in the first place, as it came in waves. But when he happened to be in the mood for it, he was more vocal than most.
"Where do you think he went?" Jack asked into the open air, earning no response because Wendy's eyes were trained onto a certain spot, and caught up in her inner monologue. She turned her body in the same direction as her head and stared at the door at the end of the hallway. At the cold, cold rusty key hanging on the wall next to it. Though there was a possibility, the thought of it was somehow too heavy for her to bear. Wendy decided to shake the idea out of her head, but when she turned back to look in the bedroom, Jack was looking at the door of the basement as well.
"Jack-" Wendy said and lifted her hand to tug at his shirt, but was a second too late.
"I'll just have a quick look!" Jack snickered, "Kids are so emotional, it won't surprise me if Peter decided to mentally rot away in there."
His long steps had him by the door in no time, his hands now fumbling with the unnecessarily tightly knit string that the key was hanging from. Not wanting to deal with that herself, Wendy waited for him to get the key loose before she spoke.
"I can go in," she said carefully and approached him, and Jack of course brushed it off with the most oblivious eyes.
"It's alright, it's just a quick-"
"Jack," Wendy tried again, more stubbornly, as she tugged at his shirt at the hips. He paused his movements before his grin fell to an expression that was neither exaggeratingly sad nor ignorantly blissful. Simply serene, perhaps a tad apologetic. He didn't say anything as he handed Wendy the key and stepped away. Wendy unlocked the door and entered the light-deprived basement that smelled of cardboard boxes.
"Peter?" she quietly called out and listened for anything that sounded vaguely out of place.
The possibly most silent place in the house, she thought.
She soundlessly walked around the boxes. As she had expected, there was no sign of Peter anywhere, and she could conclude that he had disappeared somewhere outside the house's premises. Exiting the basement and internally taking notice of the comfortable temperature change, Jack seemed to be fumbling about in Peter and Aflred's bedroom instead. Wendy hung the key back on the wall. For a second she back-and-fronted in her head whether to knit the string as tightly as it had been previously. To argue pro-cause: It would make it more bothersome to have to go in the basement, which neither Peter, Jack nor Alfred benefited from yet. In the end, she didn't consider the arguments against the cause before she tightened the knot so much it was impossible to loosen it without something sharp.
Not that it mattered much to her to begin with. She just hoped she was doing someone a favor.
"You're sure you're alright sharing rooms with Peter, right?" Jack called from the little bedroom across the floor.
"Yes," Wendy replied and stepped into the door frame, "Where should we look for Peter?"
As Jack was on his hands and knees on the floor seemingly looking for something under the bed, he took his sweet time before he sat up on his knees empty-handed. He rubbed his palms on his pants before getting to his feet with a little vocal manifestation of his inflexible body.
"Do we need to look for him?" he asked calmly as he headed for the staircase. Wendy quickly closed the door to the bedroom and followed, not being pro nor against what Jack was saying. She rarely had opinions when it came to people's choices, so she preferred to listen without any bias.
"The way I see it, I think getting away for a bit would do him good," he casually explained, "Why don't we wait it out and see what happens?"
"And if he doesn't come back?"
Jack lingered clumsily on the question before chuckling.
"That'd make me worry big time."
In contrast to the unnervingly quiet morning, there were now sounds, furniture, and people filling the house that afternoon. Rumors that the children's bedroom was to be re-organized to make space for Wendy had spread like wildfire around the tiny town, and apparently plenty of people felt entitled to have a say in it. Initially Wendy had gone out of her way to spend time wondering why, but after reasoning it out with some of them that people were thirsting for some event to take place in the usually colorless town, she had somewhat understood. Although they called Smalltown "colorless", she found the inhabitants of it far from it.
As a plethora of voices downstairs were either debating where the closet should stand, kindly suggesting that this wasn't the time for fighting, singing sea shanties, or all of the above, Wendy spent time upstairs learning how to cook with Francis and Feliciano.
"It smells so good," Wendy remarked as she spooned a bit of the fragrant, sweet dough to make a ball, and slid it gently into a pot half-filled with hot sunflower oil. The little ball of dough sizzled pleasantly.
"Doesn't it," Feliciano said cheerfully, dropping a ball of dough into the oil as well, "There are raisins soaked in grappa in the dough, which makes it sooo flavorful!"
"What's 'grappa'?" Wendy asked, not quite pleased with the chuckles she earned as a response.
Feliciano had brought an already risen dough from home to spare the cooking time, and it had come to Wendy's attention that they were making a sort of doughnut. Feliciano had introduced it with an exaggerated and welcoming Italian accent as "frìtoles", to which Francis had sighed in delight and Wendy had spared her eyes wide open in curiosity. She preferred Smalltown to any other place in that way – The many cultures that were concentrated in such a small place gave her a taste of everything Europe had to offer.
"Do you like to cook, Wendy?" Feliciano asked, to which Wendy huffed, even more so when Francis answered with the exact thing she had wanted to say.
"I think it's more of a question whether anybody else in the house cooks," he suggested with a defeated chortle.
"We can teach you lots of things, you should come to us!" Feliciano said invitingly as he turned over some of the sizzling frìtoles.
"I strongly recommend learning from them," Francis added with a flick of his hair, "Feli, Roma and Tonio are all quite skilled, I must say."
Wendy said nothing, but had to admit the offer softened her heart. In retrospective, she and Jack had lived in Smalltown for just a little over a month, and they had both been so warmly welcomed by the townsfolk. Jack was a matter of course, as he was young and mingled easily with people no matter where he went. Wendy, on the other hand, had a social life as praiseworthy as a brick in the sidewalk, and had initially been afraid to come to such a small place. But lately she had realized that it truly wasn't as bad as she had expected. Frankly, she enjoyed the stay so far, and wasn't too keen on the fact that they were moving out soon.
"Brother, please-" came the defeated voice of Ludwig when his rambunctious brother greedily served himself some of the fresh, slightly cooled, frìtoles. They had been covered in a generous layer of sugar too, and Wendy was impatiently waiting for the hard workers downstairs to have a bite so she could taste some as well.
"Oh, man, I haven't had these in forever," Gilbert moaned as he chomped down the food, and opened the outer door to let in some air.
"You had them last week, you fucking goldfish," Romano's disembodied voice snapped from somewhere inside the bedroom.
Being one of the half that decided that snack break was the time to sit down and recharge, Gilbert simply tittered carelessly and sat down in the entrance and leaned on the wall. And it went without saying, Wendy had observed, that Antonio joined him.
"Did you make these, Wendy?" Antonio asked as he popped a sugary treat in his mouth. Not everybody had taken one yet, but the rest seemed to be finishing something in the bedroom, so Wendy put the plate on the chest of drawers.
"No, Feliciano apparently had some dough from home that he brought," she replied. As Gilbert made a tiny remark about "who's the goldfish now?", Wendy gently picked up one of the pastries and inspected its rough texture with her fingers and eyes. The raisins made it lumpy, but she preferred a lumpy and rough pastry dough to pastries that were completely smooth. There was a charm in the rusticness of lumpy doughs. She popped it in her mouth, savoring its ever so subtle pungency.
Feliciano came to join them along with Matt after having taken a quick peek in the room. Matt seemed curious about the little pastries and took his time to look at them, but Feliciano swiftly grabbed one and gulped it down.
"What do you think, Wendy, do you love them?" he eagerly asked, and took another one. She quickly nodded before swallowing the frìtole as quickly as possible, dusting her hands on her skirt. With determined eyes, she looked at Feliciano.
"You have to teach me as much cooking as you can before we move out," she nearly commanded, not moving a millimeter with her body nor eyes. Feliciano didn't seem to make a big deal out of it, though, and ruffled her hair with a lustrous grin.
"Whaaat, but I want to teach Wendy cooking!" Gilbert complained from the floor.
"You are very welcome in our house, Wendy!" Antonio said dramatically, deliberately ignoring Gilbert's sulking next to him.
"We'll teach you all the wonders of Mediterranean cooking," Feliciano sang.
"Wait it out and you'll see you regret you didn't spend time learning German cuisine!"
"The hell are you talking about, 'cuisine'?" came Romano's spiteful voice, now accompanied by his body, as he approached the break station, "German food is like British, but at least you people know what the fuck you're doing."
Apparently the statement didn't sit right with Gilbert, as he now took to his feet and blaringly chased after Romano who had quickly sprinted outside. The ones remaining looked toward the door, releasing a collective sigh of defeat before serving themselves another round of frìtoles.
"Do you know where you're moving to yet?" Matt asked, and Wendy was grateful to know that Smalltown also had soft-spoken souls residing in it.
Gosh, men.
"I don't know, but I think we wanted to move south," she replied.
"South as to London, or south as to Spain?" Antonio followed up.
"South as to Cotswolds?" Matt tried with a little chuckle, reaching for another pastry. The bottom of the plate was now visible.
"I think it's more like London," Wendy affirmed, "But I'm not sure. I just know that we won't be staying here for much longer."
'Much longer'. It surely didn't have a happy ring to it. Wendy was glad Peter wasn't at home to hear this. Even Wendy, despite having barely stayed in town, felt that there was more weight to the words than what had come out of her mouth. Francis, who had been present all this time but stayed quiet, sighed, something Wendy interpreted as an affirmation to her assumption.
"I think the Moores started a little trend by moving out," he thought aloud, "Eliza and Lily are planning to move out as well soon."
"Who isn't?" Antonio said, leaning his head back. The flow of the conversation drastically slowed down. "Ah, it's been a good twelve years, no?"
A quiet cacophony of agreeing hums rumbled throughout the room, and Wendy found herself unable to say anything. Once again she was caught up in problems that didn't concern her, and had to deal with all these emotions that she had no connection to. Fair enough that times were tricky, but in moments like these she truly noticed her lack of a former social life. However, it didn't seem to bother the others in the slightest. She appreciated that.
Eventually, the last two people came out from the bedroom.
"Where did Gilbert go?" asked Ludwig perplexed, slightly concerned, before his eyes landed on the pastries.
"Oh, I swear I remember this smell from last week when I walked down the street," Jack muttered excitedly as he approached the plate. Antonio chuckled.
"I think we found the opposite of a goldfish," he remarked, before getting to his feet to get another pastry.
They all promised to get working again after 'just a few minutes', but Wendy caught them spending the whole afternoon simply chatting over a gradually emptying plate that was left with stray lumps of sugar. At some point, Gilbert and Romano returned and looked ready to drop. Ludwig scolded Gilbert. Romano promised he didn't care that there were no frìtoles left, but everybody knew his inner mind had other opinions. After a while, Wendy couldn't quite find her rightful place in the conversation and headed upstairs.
She didn't mind at all, as she sat down with her pencils and papers.