The last hour of training went by much more quickly than the girls expected, and it was mainly due to the fact that it stopped raining and the wind stopped blowing. Mercy dismissed them all before the end; much to everyone's relief her mood seemed to have improved since the last time she checked on them.
She had no idea what happened for the storm to stop and the clouds to disperse so quickly, but the sun had never felt so delightful on Mercy's skin. When the first ray pierced through the branches of the trees, Mercy raised her chin and closed her eyes to better appreciate its warmth. The sudden silence made her aware of the pounding of her heart in her chest and for the first time of the day, she breathed in and relaxed. Her shoulders were tense, her feet hurt and she was tired. She sat on the nearest rock and simply enjoyed the sun for as long as she could before it set.
Which happened all too soon. She stood up the second it stopped basking her in its rays and walked back to the training field. All the girls froze and stopped talking when they saw their leader arrive. Mercy ignored the wary glances and smiled gently.
"You've done well today," she complimented them, walking past Sybil who was covered in mud from head to toe and panting. "I know I make you work hard and it doesn't always seem justified or fair, but I have your best interest at heart. Now go get cleaned up so you can eat and rest. I'll be the only one on watch duty tonight and tomorrow's training is canceled. Everyone will participate in bringing food back to camp."
Sybil looked angry and like she was going to say something she would regret, but Winnie placed a hand on her shoulder and gave her a squeeze that made her swallow it back. Dorothy let out a sigh of relief from across the training field when she was certain that the situation wasn't going to escalate. Sybil, the troublesome child, the wild one. Mercy liked the girl, if only because she stood up for herself and her friends, but she needed to learn the right way to do it.
The girls began to walk toward the pond to get rid of all the dried dirt and the leaves in their hair when Mercy grabbed Winnie's arm. She waited until the others were gone before speaking.
"You did a very good job today at showing the new girls the fighting moves and sharing your knowledge – it's noble, but it's not what I'm asking of you. You can't just fight smaller than you, you'll never improve this way. Try and pair up with Sybil next time, she's a fighter, she plays dirty, and that's what you need."
Winnie lowered her head in shame and nodded faintly, thinking she just got scolded.
"But again, you're a good person with a lot of skill. And you might have a positive influence on Sybil too. Mutually help each other, and let me take care of the young ones." Mercy punctuated her sentence with a smile and looped her arm around Winnie's shoulders to lead her to the pond. As they approached they could hear laughter and loud conversations, it lifted the mood.
"Join the others," she said and pushed her slightly forward.
Their surroundings basked in soft, orange-red light filtering through the branches of the trees around them, and the girls relaxed in the water and washed one another's hair as they chatted and let the steam out. Mercy lived for moments like these.
"Hey!" Dorothy called from up on a rock. Her hair was back to the usual shining blond everybody secretly envied her. She was a beautiful person inside and out. She kept waving at Mercy to come over, and she did just that. "No offense but you look like you need a bath too," she simply said, as though she was any other Lost Girl and not the stern instructor who has yelled at them all, all day long.
"Do I?" Mercy asked with a smirk as she snapped her fingers. Gone were the dirt, the wet clothes sticking to her body and the leaves tangled in her hair.
"That's cheating!" She exclaimed, joined by a couple other girls who approved her statement.
"Teach us how to do it!" One of the last two girls who arrived sudden blurted out, a huge grin on her face. All the girls turned to her with a closed off expression, and the mood dropped. The young one seemed to notice and her smile vanished – she looked like she wanted to crawl in a mouse hole.
"Nancy it is, huh?" Mercy asked. She didn't need confirmation, she knew all of her girls' names, but this one looked like she would whither away if Mercy so much as said her first name too harshly.
The little girl nodded. She must have been seven or eight years old, and she would never age a day in her life. Mercy had seen her walk around with ridiculously long black hair which she constantly fiddled with the first days of her arrival, but since then the older girls had made an habit of braiding Nancy's hair into intricate hairstyles so it would stay out of her eyes and not get tangled in bushes. Now she fiddles with her clothes or anything she could get her hands on really, almost like she was used to having something in her hands.
"Magic is dangerous when you don't know how to use it. Magic has a price; it is whimsical and elitist. Either you have the gift-" Mercy gestured vaguely with her left hand to make a teddy bear appear from nowhere. "-or you don't."
She handed the plush over to the little girl who immediately cradled it against her chest.
"I don't teach magic because it's a burden more than a blessing. I don't teach magic because even if I did, it wouldn't bring much to any of you since you don't have the gift. You'd be able to turn a stick into a knife, to change the color of your hair, to play little tricks, but that's it. It would wear you down for nearly nothing. It takes a toll on you, slowly you start to feel your body ache for it – like a drug. It's what happened to the Lost Boys whom Pan used to teach magic when I first came here. Even he stopped doing it. Let it be a lesson – if Peter Pan himself thinks twice before doing something, you should avoid it at all costs."
Her little speech lasted long enough to permanently ruin the happy mood of the girls and the sun had completely set. It was getting darker by the minute. Dorothy didn't smile anymore, her hand was on Nancy's shoulder.
"Everyone clean?" Mercy asked and was answered by a round of positive responses. "Perfect. For tonight and tonight only, I will provide. I have been harsher than you deserved and you all earned the feast that is waiting for you at the bonfire. Go now."
The group dispersed in a matter of seconds and soon the pond was a deserted area. In the distance, Mercy heard the joyful chatter erupt again. The knot in the pit of her stomach tightened and she bent in two, feeling sick all of a sudden – sick of herself. She wanted to throw up but she hadn't eaten anything for almost twenty-four hours and there was nothing left to throw up whatsoever. Another, far more familiar feeling raised the hairs on her neck - the unmistakable feeling of being observed - and Mercy jumped on her feet, ready to face whoever was lurking in the dark.
Of course it was the Shadow, silently waiting for her to abandon her defensive stance. Mercy hated herself for doing it, but she nodded at the thing and she waited for it to do it's usual trick of pulling one of Pan's flowers out of nowhere. Except it didn't.
"What are you waiting for?" Mercy barked when she couldn't take it anymore. It was testing her patience and she wasn't known for having a lot of it.
The Shadow flew away before she even finished the question. If it had flown up she might have turned on her heels and walked back to her cabin, but it moved slowly and went through the trees so she figured it wanted Mercy to follow. It went against everything she taught her girls, but if there was one thing that Mercy knew to be true, it was that Pan didn't want her dead, and the Shadow would never hurt her.
She walked for a long time and if she didn't know the island like the back of her hand, Mercy would have been way more anxious than she currently was.
"Where the hell are we going? I'm not walking through Neverland at night time, leaving my girls alone, and potentially heading straight into a trap just because you want me to follow you," she told the Shadow after half an hour of wandering deeper and deeper into the forest.
It merely looked at her – if this thing could even look somewhere – and resumed its floating. Five minutes later, Mercy fell on her knees. Her face was buried in her hands as she collapsed on the humid ground in the middle of a small meadow. When she finally removed them she still couldn't see farther than the tip of her nose because the tears blinded her. A scream so loud that it physically burned her throat came out of her mouth and echoed through the island. When would it stop? When would she be at peace?
"Why are you doing this to me?!" She screamed at someone who wasn't even there. But she was certain that he listened. He always listened, he always watched. He was the invisible presence that made her hairs stand on ends, and the cause for her paranoia – he might as well be standing behind her and leaning over her shoulder, for the feeling was the same. "How you must hate me to keep torturing me like this after all these years! What is the point of this, why don't you let me go?! Just let me go Peter! I need you to let me go!"
She repeated he words over and over again until they lost their meaning, until they no longer felt right. Mercy forgot what she was saying in the first place when finally her throat became too sore to say another word and she fell on her back. She blinked a couple times and stared up at the sky and its stars. They were blinded out though because the meadow of glowing blue flowers she laid in the middle of shone brighter than the moon. In this exact position and lulled by the soft sound of far off music, Mercy felt her eyelids grow heavy and before she realized it, she was asleep.
000
Time passed, bruises appeared and faded, bones broke and healed, Mercy toughened up – not because she had to, but because she wanted to. Not because Peter Pan didn't leave her a choice, but because one day she wanted to better him, and he wouldn't have any other choice than let her go.
Constantly on guard, that's how Mercy lived. She looked over her shoulder wherever she want in order to anticipate any attack from Peter or the Lost Boys – he'd ordered them to surprised attack her and to challenge each other as often as they could. A ride or die mentality took over the camp and friendships became a rare thing – not that Mercy cared, she didn't come here to make friends. She didn't come here at all, she was abducted and schemed to go back.
It appeared that this fact slipped Pan's mind a lot – the way he acted and spoke to her let her think that he believed it was an honor and privilege for her to be part of his gang of underage delinquents. They weren't like this before he corrupted their minds, they merely needed care and attention but the lack thereof caused them to hear and follow the hypnotizing music of Pan's flute. Like Mercy. She still wondered what pushed her to do that. She didn't feel like she was unloved. She didn't feel like her life was that terrible.
"You only hear the flute if you need to hear it," Pan had told her in-between two of their lessons, one of the rare moments when he agreed to give Mercy a break to catch her breath and answered her questions. "I don't choose who hears it, I only play."
His voice sounded distraught and tired, Mercy didn't dare say anything anymore. Contrary to the rest of the time when he tried so hard to look dangerous and scary, she couldn't find it in herself to spit a nasty comment at his face. Was it all an act? It sure didn't feel like it. She never got a chance to know because these moments were as fleeting as they were rare. If Peter Pan felt the wall surrounding his heart - assuming he has one – shatter, he immediately built another, higher, thicker one. But when would such an occasion present itself again?
"Why do you play?" Mercy risked the question and regretted it when she saw Peter's face close up.
"Have you forgotten the first rule on Neverland?" He scoffed, his voice full of scorn as he stood up.
"How could I, you remind me at least once a day," the girl grumbled and crossed her arms in sign of protest – she was tired and would not engage in any more fighting today.
"And I will keep doing it until you learn to respect it," he added and flicked his hand to magically make her stand to her feet, causing her to wobble on her legs and almost fall. "No more questions. I only ask one thing of you: silence and obedience."
"That's two things – none of which you will ever obtain by the way," Mercy laughed bitterly and walked past him.
She tried to, at least. Pan grabbed her by the upper arm as she walked by and forcefully pulled her back. Mercy was taken by complete surprise as he rarely ever used physical violence to make her do his bidding, magic was always his go-to solution. This time she didn't get the usual treatment – her back didn't hit the nearest tree, her legs weren't tied together by magical ivy. In a swift and practiced motion, Peter whisked Mercy off her feet and made her lose her balance and fall to the ground. He had swiped her feet to the right while pushing her upper body to the left and watched her face plant with a smug smirk on his face. The shock knocked the air out of her for a second but Mercy recovered quickly and jumped back to her feet – only to be once again thrown in the dirt. This time Pan placed a foot behind her own then put his right forearm across her shoulders and pushed. It happened so quickly she didn't have the time to react.
"Stop it!" She protested when it was clear that he would do it again if she tried to stand up. "What is the point of this, what are you trying to prove now?!" She deliberately provoked him.
Mercy was hot blooded and he just made her very mad. Taking in some punches for the sake of training that she could endure, because it helped her reach of goal of getting away from her tormentor. But being pushed around and mishandled for the sole pleasure of this self-proclaimed King of a slice of earth and a bunch of kids was too much for Mercy's nerves.
"I have nothing to prove my dear, but you needed a little reminder. I can defeat you without magic, I can out-smart you, manipulate you, and I can break you if you refuse to bend."
Mercy was fuming. Still on the ground - but looking high and mighty nonetheless – she glared daggers at him, her nostrils flared and her fists clenched in anger. Pan knelt down to be at eye level with her, or maybe he simply enjoyed this position of dominance.
"My dear, unyielding Mercy," he began and she already knew she wasn't going to like what would come next. "Do not think for a second that your sudden enthusiasm during our training sessions went unnoticed, I am no fool and I know exactly what your cunning little mind came up with. But a few hand-to-hand combats with me won't make you a better fighter than I am, you have no chance of escaping, believe me. Smarter, stronger people than you have tried."
"You don't know me," she spat at him, making him back away the slightest bit when she leaned forward to say this. "And now where are those smarter and stronger people you speak of if they haven't escaped? I see no one around here challenging me in those two departments."
"You see, as smart as they were they made the very stupid decision to fight me instead of joining my cause. For this reason their bodies now rest at the bottom of the ocean - if you'd like to join them let me know and I can arrange that."
It was and would always be uncharacteristically intimidating to hear Peter Pan threaten you directly. His aura was dark as night and there was no doubt that he would put his menace to execution if Mercy pushed her over the edge, but somehow she couldn't take him seriously. She couldn't because she knew that what he just said was a lie. She had no idea how she knew it, or what imperceptible change in his expression gave it away, but he lied that she was sure of.
"Duly noted," she said begrudgingly and raised a hand, gesturing Pan to help her to her feet. "Does this mean the end of my private fighting lessons?" She asked as soon as she was up. Pan had rolled his eyes and reluctantly taken her hand to help Mercy stand up and she felt like she just won a battle.
"Certainly not, you just got yourself an extra daily hour of beating for your impertinence," he told her. "You progress fast – even if you're a few hundred years late to catch up on me – so we'll move on to the difficult part now. Magic."
"Magic?" Mercy snorted and crossed her arms. Her laughter got stuck in her throat when she saw the way Pan stared at her. "Why would you teach me magic, you just said you knew that I wanted to escape and now you're offering me the occasion to learn how to do so?"
Great Mercy, good way of not raising suspicion and persuading him to continue his lessons.
"It's not everyday that I meet someone with magic abilities, it would be a terrible loss if I decided not to teach you for such trivial reasons. You represent no threat to me and I can keep you here as long as I please. Make no mistake my dear Mercy, I can make you do anything, I have power of life and death over everyone and everything on Neverland - I can kill you with a snap of my fingers just like I can force you to stay alive in case the thought of putting an end to your life merely to get away from me crossed your mind."
There it was – the truth. Peter Pan didn't want her dead, oh no. For a reason she had yet to find out, Mercy knew that Peter desperately wanted – or maybe needed – her to stay alive, and to remain here on Neverland, with him.