Mercy stomped within the camp borders like a fury, the air made electric around her, quite literally sizzling. As soon as the girls saw what kind of mood she was in, they fell silent, waiting for a word, an order, something. She didn't say anything, instead she materialized a curved sword. The girls to her right jumped back as she approached but she only raised her weapon when she reached the target tree. It was normally used to practice archery for the young girls because the target was large and close. Only this time Mercy wrecked it, stroke after stroke she destroyed the tree until the red paint was completely scraped off. Screaming and grunting, she let steam off until the sword broke in two, and she froze.
The girls were tense and still, holding their breath in fear of getting beheaded by mistake. Not that Mercy ever made mistakes like this. One of them at least decided to speak up before the accumulated tense would make a storm break.
"Did something happened?" A tiny voice asked. It was a new one, a small girl who didn't know Mercy well enough to be paralyzed by the mere thought of interrupting one of her anger fits.
Mercy sighed, her shoulders fell and she dropped the broke sword. It vanished before hitting the ground.
"You could say so," she eventually snickered without any trace of humor. The others stared at their leader wide-eyed. "Sorry about the mess."
With a dismissive hand gesture she made the chopped wood and dust disappear. Her girls were still hesitant to say anything, and they stared even more obviously after hearing her apologize for an outburst.
"Don't stay there ogling me, go back to work."
As the usual hustle resumed around her and Mercy was about to head back to the training field to do some more damage on another poor tree, Winnie and Dorothy followed her, sharing a quick glance to agree on finding out what was going on. Mercy as temperamental as she could be, did not often lose her composure in public. Not to mention that she had been using a tremendous amount of magic these days, which was completely out of character for her – there was a time when she barely acknowledged that she could use it.
"What do you want?" Mercy asked the girls who were following her to the field, not turning around as she spoke.
"Tell us what happened," Dorothy said, her voice not even wavering as she gave a direct order to her leader and Winnie stared at her in shock.
Mercy froze.
"My, my, you sure gained in confidence my dear Dorothy," she laughed, putting her hands on her hips as she did so. The girls stopped walking and still stood a few steps behind her – maybe it was for the best if they didn't meet her gaze. "I suppose there is no point in keeping the truth from you, and I haven't had a chance to properly vent in a while."
"A while? You just massacred a tree in front of the whole camp!" Winnie exclaimed in a tone that could only be qualified as reproachful. For what it was worth, Mercy wasn't proud of herself, and if even quiet Winnie raised her voice at her, she must have made quite the show. "You scared the young ones!"
"They know I wouldn't hurt them," Mercy replied sharply, finally turning around to meet her girls' scolding glares. When had they become so bold?
"No, Mercy, they don't," Dorothy answered. "None of us know what you are truly capable of, we simply chose the lesser of two evils."
"Two evils? You put me in the same box as Pan?" Mercy spat back, her nostrils flaring in rage already.
"You have no idea, do you?" Winnie asked again, her voice low and gentle this time. Mercy highly disliked the look on her face, the pity she read on it. She didn't want anyone to feel bad for her. "How long has this been going on? How long have you secluded yourself? You talk to no one, you give orders and teach us how to survive, but you have no idea how to live!"
"It's killing you slowly, and you'll take us with you if you go down," Dorothy concluded. "Speak to us. What happened? Meddling with your soldiers won't make you any less of a great general."
"Don't be obtuse, you're not soldiers to me," Mercy told them in a sigh.
She wasn't sure she had enough fight left in her body to go against her girls, this was too far out of her comfort zone. Too close to where it hurt. The last time she had entrusted someone it ended really badly for her, and since then she kept to herself – how many years had it been? She lost count, but it seemed that she was finally at the verge of bursting.
"But we are!" Dorothy protested. Her golden hair always made her look out of place in the hostile forest. "We get dumped on this dull island and you expect us to toughen up and fight for you because of some out dated grief you have against Pan!"
"You have no idea what he's capable of!" Mercy replied, a pained expression on her tired face.
They couldn't understand, they had never lived amongst the Lost Boys. No one could fathom the extent of Pan's cruelty towards those he considered below himself. And while Mercy was no role model and had had her own low moments, she was never pointlessly cruel towards others.
"Then tell us! What exactly did he do?! Why do we keep fighting?"
Mercy snapped and turned around, resuming her angry walk to the training field. But her girls were stubborn and trained never to give up – talk about getting bitten in the ass – so they followed her. Winnie shuddered when Mercy picked up a bow and a quiver full of arrows.
"You want to know how Peter Pan abducted me? Took me from my parents in the dark of the night for no reason?" She fired the first arrow, hit the closest target. "You want to hear the lovely tale of how I spent the first few weeks on Neverland in a cage, starved for talking back?" The second arrow she shot right next to the first one, right in the center of the target. "The way he subdued me? Made me train until my bones hurt? Bruised every inch of my body under the pretext of toughening me up? Dangled hope before my eyes so I would obey his order blindly? Manipulated me into thinking I had a change of getting off this doomed island so I would fight for him? Is that what you want to hear?"
As she rambled on and on about everything Pan made her endure, Mercy shot arrow after arrow, not even aiming at the target anymore but at farther, smaller targets in the trees.
"Do you want to hear me cry about how I have been betrayed and am ow forced to live here forever? Would you not rather have a confident, reliable leader who shows no hesitation whatsoever? I didn't ask for this! I didn't start kidnapping little girls in the middle of the night because loneliness bore me. Peter sends you to me, he keeps me busy with you. He makes sure I have my hands too full to rebel and attempt to escape. He knows I wouldn't abandon any of you behind!"
Dorothy and Winnie stood there, their arms hanging by their side and their eyes wide as ever, speechless. It must have been the first time they heard Mercy speak that much all at once. Unsure of what to do or to say, they remained still, waiting for Mercy to finish, hoping that she would feel better after letting some steam off.
"I don't even know why I tell you all of this. It's none of your business, and as you said, it's outdated. You're right, you girls have no reason to fight the Lost Boys other than the one I gave you. But it's important that we do. If we don't keep busy, we'll go crazy, trust me on this if not on anything else. As much as I would like it to be different, we are all stuck on this island, and we have all eternity to fall into madness."
Mercy was out of arrows, and her temper cooled down. She was done having silly outbursts like an over emotional little girl. She might be stuck forever in this young body, but her soul was old enough to know that it was a fleeting moment of weakness that she shouldn't repeat.
"Is there no hope at all?" Winnie asked after a long moment of quietness.
When Mercy's eyes met hers, she saw tears and infinite sadness.
"There is always hope. And that's why I make you train and fight. Right now, the future might seem gloomy, but it one day Pan ever made a mistake, we would only have one shot at freedom."
"Thank you for telling us," she told her, going as far as to reach out and place a friendly hand on Mercy's shoulder.
Winnie was such a gentle soul. Mercy didn't know why she was here, what had happened to her in the Enchanted Forest for the Shadow to pick her out of everyone else. Mercy never asked the girls about unpleasant things of the past, though maybe she should, maybe they would like it if she showed a little more interest in them. She didn't keep her questions to herself out of disinterest, but because she hated dwelling on past things so naturally she didn't put her nose in other people's past either. Her own hand covered Winnie's, and the two girls exchanged a look that no words would account for.
"Come, take a bow you two," Mercy declared, and Dorothy huffed with a smile on her face, faint but genuine. "I challenge you to do better than me."
"What's in it for us?" Dorothy inquired, one eyebrow raised in defiance. She sure felt daring today.
"Play with me, and I'll tell you what happened today," Mercy offered, and after sharing a quick nod, Winnie and Dorothy grabbed their weapons and took position.
Her thoughts brought her back to Pan the moment those words crossed her lips – it was rather like him to offer information in exchange for entertainment and to speak of games and playing. Surely no one could spend as much time as she did with Pan without picking up a thing or two from them? She could only hope that this didn't only go one way and that maybe – maybe – he had picked up something from her too.
Dorothy fired the first arrow and made a perfect hit, smiling widely at Mercy in a way she hadn't done in a long time. They were so very right – Mercy had gone cold and aloof, her girls barely knew her anymore. If only she put a little effort into being kind her relationship with the Lost Girls would greatly improve and benefit both sides.
"So what has you cutting a whole tree into split wood?" She wondered, briefly glancing at Mercy before shooting an arrow in a tree, only for a pheasant to drop a second later. "I caught dinner."
"How did you even see it?" Winnie asked in wonder, already running to pick up the creature and retrieve the arrows fired so far.
"She's hungry," Mercy answer in Dorothy's stead and the girl stared, impressed that she would even notice that. "When you're hungry, you learn to see the potential food."
"That doesn't tell us what has you so upset," the blonde-haired girl pointed out just as Winnie came back with their dinner hanging over her shoulder.
She dropped it and grabbed her bow, aimed, and fired.
"I never hit the target," she grumbled when her arrow hit the tree but missed the red paint.
It visibly infuriated her and it was understandable. Winnie was the closest in age to Mercy and one of the girls who has been living on Neverland the longest. She used to be good at archery, but then the accident happened. After a long day of training and during a fight with the Lost Boys, arrows, hands, rocks, and other weapons of fortune where flying around, and one of them hit Winnie. Since that day she lost some of her sight on her left eye, sometimes her vision even went all black when she was tired. Her aim had never been the same anymore. Try as she might, Mercy could not heal such damage.
Winnie never blamed her – at least not out loud – for not being able to give her back the use of her eye. She worked even harder in hand to hand combat and learned to trust her other senses more instead. Still, she picked up her bow and tried again, refusing to give up just yet.
"You don't have to be good at everything," Mercy reminded her. "And if you must know, I ran into Felix while being on a rampage in the woods."
This time Winnie completely missed the tree.
"Wow, that one was way off, Winnie!" Dorothy laughed and gave her a tap on the shoulder. "Felix, huh? Haven't seen this one in a long time, I thought he stopped trying to wander on girls' territory."
"He did," Mercy sighed, rubbing her eyes with her thumb and forefinger.
Her state of exhaustion was such that she couldn't even bother to hide it today. Whether it was due to physical weariness or emotional exhaustion that was hard to tell. With her head tilted to the left, Dorothy frowned in incomprehension.
"W-what do you mean?" Winnie asked.
She targets had lost her interest and now she only looked at Mercy, waiting for an answer.
"He hasn't stepped foot on your part of the island in ages and today was no exception. To be truthful he couldn't have if he wanted to," she huffed, a small smile of satisfaction painted on her lips. "That dimwit pushed Pan's buttons and ended up trapped inside a tree. I must be the last thing he expected to encounter, or owe his freedom to. I rejoice in the knowledge that he must dread the idea of owing me any kind of debt."
"In a tree?!" Winnie exclaimed, putting away her bow and joining Dorothy's side.
"What were you doing so far out in the woods?" Dorothy wondered, crossing her arms over her chest.
Mercy's eyes were darted on an arrowhead, inspecting it minutely while thinking about what to say next. There were things that she mistakenly held back from her girls, that much was true. But it didn't mean that she had to shared everything. Some thoughts, some emotions were her own, and for no one else to witness or know about.
"I was thinking and I wandered too far away from the camp."
Dorothy and Winnie, as daring as they felt today, were not reckless enough to call Mercy a liar to her face.
"What did he say?" Winnie asked.
"Who?" Mercy frowned.
"Felix. What did he say?" Winnie insisted.
"Nothing of any importance or interest. He gloated and spat his venom like the snake he is," Mercy scoffed, obviously feeling a great deal of enmity towards this Lost Boy in particular.
Winnie never mentioned it but she noticed a few differences in the way Mercy spoke of the Lost Boys, of Felix, or of Pan. While the Lost Boys as a group she merely considered an inconvenience and victims of circumstances, Felix she despised for being weak and useless – according to her – and she often called him stupid and thoughtless. Whereas Pan, while she hated him with every fiber of her being, she still held in high respect. She valued his skills although she disapproved of his methods. In many ways, she was still under his influence, though Winnie couldn't blame her for it, for she saw her try her damnest to shake it off.
"Inside a tree..." Dorothy repeated slowly, picturing the scene. "I wish I had been there to see it."
After that they asked no more questions, and since Mercy seemed to have calmed down from her earlier fit of rage, they decided to go back to the camp. Night was falling and the girls must be hungry, they had orders to wait for everyone to come back before starting to eat. It was an easy way to take the roll and make sure no one was forgotten or got lost in the forest during a hunting trip.
With Mercy's pheasant and easygoing smiles on their faces, the girls were greeted like royalty by the others. And the mood lightened even more when the sweet smell of roasted pheasant reached their noses, further rousing their hungry stomachs.
To everyone's utter amazement Mercy laughed heartily with her girls, and no one complained. For the first time in decades, she forgot that she wasn't here by choice, that this was her prison, and not her kingdom. She was no leader, she was a Lost Girl. She was the Lost Girl. The one without which all the others would still be with their families.
Their feast lasted well into the night, until the moon was high and drowning everything in her pale light. Their dinner had turned into an evening of celebration – of what she didn't know, but she was glad, and her heart didn't ache for a short while.
And when she lowered her guard enough and allowed herself to have a good time, someone inevitably took advantage of the situation. Under the cover of the night, Winnie silently slipped away, being careful not to alert anyone.
Devastated. There was barely anything left from the previously breath-taking meadow filled to the brim with shiny blue flowers glowing in the dark. The flames had engulfed it until everything was but ashes and thick black smoke. The ground itself would stay sterile for years after such a cataclysm. Peter Pan always knew that Mercy was a force of nature but now he had proof. She spared but one flower – a feeble, delicate thing in the middle of the ravaged meadow, struggling to breathe, to stay alive. Alone.
Oddly enough that was pretty close to how Peter felt. He used his hand to swipe the air in front of him from left to right, wiping away the remnants of flames and glowing ashes. Neverland ached, and so did Peter upon being inflicted such a wound. He felt as though the burn was on his heart. He knelt down to touch the hurting ground and he felt it screaming. The flying specks of ashes stained his clothing and made it difficult to breathe – though he hadn't been able to breathe properly since the fateful day Mercy left him so what more damage couch a bit of ash do?
His hand was black when he lifted it up from the ground. His green eyes darkened upon seeing what Mercy had done. It wasn't in her habit to destroy, she never liked to destroy things with her magic, that was more his specialty. Mercy on the other hand always tried to repair, to heal. She was like a balm: soothing. He thought he was finally taking a step towards her, that he learned from her – but his gesture was interpreted a different way. Instead of a peace offering, Mercy took it as the ultimate insult, and she made sure he would know about her discontent.
And thus the roles were exchanged: Pan the peace maker, and Mercy the destroyer. He never thought he would live a day like this. Peter Pan, for all his years on this earth, for all his knowledge and trickery, had no idea what to do in a situation like this. After years away from her, he had finally grown weary, and decided to reach out to her.
But he wasn't foolish enough to think that it would be easy. A smirk stretched his lips, and he stood up. He was not giving up.