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, looking pitiful and bent, as though it knew what happened, and grieved.
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 in agony. The flying specks of ash 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.
000
Mercy foot wriggled nervously in a fashion that clearly showed her annoyance. Today was meant to be a relaxing day, and the growing hustle outside of the shack was beginning to get on her nerves, and distracted her from the book in her hands. Where the hell was Pan? He should already be down there yelling at the perpetrators of such noise.
A few weeks ago Pan had decided to give Mercy a token of his trust in her and a reward for her hard work, and let her use his personal library. It was but a shelf give a handful of old-looking books, yet she couldn't have asked for more. She had always loved stories and hadn't realized ho much she missed reading until Pan brought up the subject. Her daily chores were done, it was only ten past noon and she was determined to enjoy the rest of the day, noisy Lost Boys or not.
That is, until they actually started to wreak havoc in the camp, undoubtedly taking full advantage of Peter's absence – where was he? With a grunt, Mercy slammed her book shut and put it back on its shelf. Her left eyebrow was already twitching upon opening the door of Peter's shack as violently as she could, which earned her silence at long last. All the Lost Boys froze and stared at her in fear as she walked down the steps and up to where the bustle was.
"Where is Pan? Or Felix?" She barked at one boy who nearly wet himself right then and there under her fiery glare.
She stood in front of the trembling thing with her arms crossed until he mumbled out an answer.
"I cannot hear you, speak up!" She ordered.
She was not used to playing judge and jury in the camp; most of the time Mercy stood behind Pan, looking threatening and broodingly silent, and it did the trick to keep the Boys in line. But when she did exercise her role of Second in Command, she was a force to be reckoned with.
"They l-left an hour ago M-Mercy," the young boy stuttered and looked at his feet while talking.
"And you lot found nothing better to do than misbehave the second your leader stepped out of camp?" She asked, turning around and staring at all of them. They all ended up looking down in shame.
"We just wanted to play pirates," another one dared to say, causing yet another eyebrow twitch as Mercy slowly spun around to have a closer look at the bold Lost Boy who thought it a smart idea to answer her rhetorical question.
"It wasn't really a question, Marlon," Mercy barked at him and the boy cowered. "And what exactly do you have here?" She lunged forward and grabbed what the boy was holding and trying to conceal behind his back.
Everybody stopped breathing as Mercy took in what she saw. It was a branch of Dreamshade. How thoughtless could these young idiots be? Did they not listen to a work Pan told them? Did they not believe him?
"Do you know what this is?" Mercy asked, her tone flat and calm, and yet even more alarming than her shrieking tone when she yelled at the Lost Boys.
The thin black branch twirled between her fingers, Mercy waved it under Marlon's nose as if to dare him to say no. Everybody on Neverland knew about Dreamshade and its lethal properties.
"What on earth would pirates do with Dreamshade?" She wondered aloud, feigning to think about it.
Marlon's complexion was slowly going whiter and whiter as he realized his lie was coming apart. The boy jumped back in fear when Mercy made a quick move with her hand, feigning to approach the branch and its poisonous thorns from his cheek. A laugh fell from her lips.
"You!" She pointed at a quivering Lost Boy who was sitting on the ground, looking scared witless – of what she didn't know. "Tell me what happened and I'll forget to mention your name when I report to Pan later."
The poor boy looked positively sick, he was gray in the face, and wobbled on his feet when the boy next to him helped him up before speaking to Mercy.
"Speak now, the offer only stands for so long," she pressed him, growing impatient. She only wanted to instil some fear in them and return to her book knowing they won't dare to disturb her a second time.
He was one of the knew boys, Mercy could not remember his name, and if she had to guess she would say he was being pushed around by the others for being the new guy and a very young one at that. No older than eight when most of them were around thirteen.
"What's your name?" She asked. He blinked lazily, and she briefly wondered if he could even hear her.
"His name's Jack," the boy who helped him up told her – Devin if she remembered well.
"Jack. Jack?" Mercy called, kneeling in front of him this time.
The boy was still not looking at her, his eyes glazed over and looking past her as though she wasn't right in front of him. Then it clicked. Mercy's face whipped to her left to look at Marlon.
"What have you done? This boy has been poisoned!"
Marlon's lower lip quivered so hard he couldn't have answered in an articulate fashion if he had tried. The dawning realization that he had made a grave mistake and would have to answer for it was slowly overcoming him. Mercy's concern was not on him right now though.
"You take care of him while I go get Pan," she ordered Devin and a few others who looked more like innocent bystanders than active participants in this mess.
A relaxing day, it was supposed to b a relaxing day, Mercy thought to herself as she bolted from where she was kneeling and rushed out of the camp, disappearing through the bushy trees, as if swallowed by the thick greenery of Neverland. Her feet carried her as quickly as they could from one place to another, going to every spot she could think of where Peter would take Felix to train him. Dreamshade was not just any poison, it was fast and lethal, and probably even more so on such a small child.
Acting quickly was crucial, therefore she had to push herself a little more in order to find Peter before it was too late to save the boy. Without paying attention to where she stepped like she usually did when she walked through the forest, Mercy slipped and tripped in the mud and unstable ground, but she kept going.
"Peter! Peter, where are you?!" Mercy shouted in the open space, hoping against hope that he was somewhere close and not on the other side of the island wasting his time training stupid Felix.
"Peter, I need you, c'mon! Show yourself!" She kept on calling him, growing antsy and impatient.
Suddenly there was a pop to her right, and there he stood.
"Need me?" Peter asked with a boyish grin on his face as though he was been around all this time but waited for her to say that to show himself.
Instead of replying with her usual bite, Mercy threw herself at Pan and grabbed him by the collar of his shirt.
"Something happened, we have to go back to the camp!" She told him, and Peter must have seen the urgency in her eyes because his smirk dropped.
He took her hand in his, and in the blink of an eye he transported them both to camp, right in his shack.
"Come with me," Mercy ordered him, dragging him behind her by the arm.
In any other circumstances he would have scolded her for ordering him around, or teased her for holding onto his hand the way she did, but even Peter Pan knew when it wasn't the right moment to crack a joke.
"The boys were messing around and Jack got scratched by Dreamshade," Mercy told Peter when they reached the group of Lost Boys all surrounding the wounded Jack.
They looked up and stared at her all of a sudden, but Peter wasn't paying attention to them and simply ordered them to make way so he could see Jack. She just lied to Pan to save their asses. She didn't look at Marlon but she wouldn't be surprised if he fainted from relief.
"Mercy, come here," Pan called her, bringing her attention to him. "Help me carry him. And everyone else go back to work!" He suddenly shouted at the Lost Boys, setting them in motion like an army of robots, not one of them making a sound or showing hesitation.
Without any further ado, Mercy grabbed the boy, then extended her hand for Peter to grab. As soon as their hands touched, the camp disappeared from view.
"Where are we?" Mercy wondered, not recalling ever seeing this place. From what she could gather from their surroundings, this place was sheltered from the wind and hidden from prying eyes by the side of the mountain.
"At the Spring of Neverland," Pan said in a solemn tone Mercy did not know him. "The source of all magic on this island."
000
Winnie's footsteps were light as she ran through the trees, not losing a second. Something was off, she knew in it her heart. As soon as Mercy mentioned her encounter with Felix she knew things were moving. For the longest time things were to a standstill on Neverland, everybody kept an unspoken status quo. But now it was over, something brewed in the air, like a storm ready to break at the slightest disturbance in atmosphere.
Her feet brought her to a white tree deep in the woods, somewhere near Crocodile Creek. It was their landmark, the spot they agreed to meet whenever they could. Winnie opened her palm and focused – Mercy had only taught her very basic magic, but it was enough to send a signal. She placed her hand against the bark of the dead tree, and it glowed.
Luckily for her she didn't have to wait too long until she got proof that it worked – she was doubtful every time. The familiar rustle of leaves made her ear perk up and she looked in the direction of the noise.
"Winnie?" His voice called her and her heart rate dropped. She feared the day someone would find out about their little forbidden meetings late at night.
"Felix!" She called back, already running towards his voice.
She crashed into his body and clung to him, immediately sobbing in relief. Felix wrapped his arms around her while she hugged him as though her very life depended on it. He had hoped that the news didn't travel so fast, but apparently Mercy kept no secrets from the Lost Girls and so he shouldn't be surprised that Winnie heard about the tree incident. In truth it had been the longest hours of his life. At least he was free now, and she needn't worry.
"I'm fine, just got a little closer to nature than I would have liked," he tried to shrug it off, but Winnie pulled away and looked him in the eyes with a stern expression.
"What on earth happened? What did you do to anger Pan in such a way?" She questioned, trying to find answers to the many questions that plagued her mind from the moment Mercy told her and Dorothy what upset her.
Surely there was matter to be upset about, that she couldn't deny her leader. But it was difficult for Winnie to stand there and pretend to be taken by a contest of archery when all she wanted was for the sun to set so she could find Felix.
Felix sighed and rubbed his neck.
"I don't have much time, I have to be back soon or I'll get way worse than a few hours being trapped inside a tree."
Winnie noticed that he eluded her questions, and while she never refused to spend a bit of quality time with Felix, she wouldn't be brushed off either.
"Tell me!" She urged him. "Mercy was furious when she came back. She said that you tried to provoke her, why would you do that? You know she hates you more than she does Pan!"
She didn't know why, and though she had asked Felix many times and she always told her that he was clueless, leaving her none the wiser. But she suspected he didn't tell her the whole truth.
"Pan was furious because I brought up Mercy without thinking about it." Upon seeing Winnie's outraged expression, he added, "I was mad! It just came out, I didn't purposely push his buttons to get myself prisoner of a tree!"
"Of course you didn't, that's not what I meant," she sighed. "I'm just worried your temper will get the best of you one day. What happened then?"
"When the bark opened up to let me out I expected to see Pan, having calmed down, but when I saw her I just saw red. Somehow I blamed her for my situation, because it was the mention of her name that got me there, and I threw Pan's name in her face, thinking his name might affect her the same way hers did to him."
"It most certainly does not," Winnie scoffed this time. "I have a hard time believing that the mere mention of her name makes Pan snap like that. She mentions him quite a lot, if only to make sure the newcomers are well aware of the danger and don't try to escape in the dead of night."
"Like you do?" Felix couldn't help teasing her, earning an eye roll.
"The point is, Mercy spits out Pan's name once a day to remind us all that he's the source of our misfortune."
"I don't doubt it," Felix said, feeling particularly bitter at the thought.
Of course Mercy would blame everything on Pan and him, as if her misfortune wasn't her own doing. On the other hand he understood, it was much easier to live with yourself when there's someone else to blame for all your troubles. Pan was the perfect scapegoat. He was the villain of so many stories, so why not hers too?
Sometimes Felix thought Pan was the villain of his story too. There was no doubt in his mind that he would've never been promoted to Second in Command had Mercy not left the position vacant. Everyday he lived in her shadow even though she hadn't set foot in the camp in ages. He felt Pan's accusing eyes drilling into the back of his head, resenting him for not being her. It was only natural that Felix snapped every now and again, especially when he was only trying to live up to Pan's expectation, even though they were unreachable.
"What's troubling you?" Winnie asked, her bright eyes delving into his in search of some truth.
"Nothing," Felix answered too fast.
He saw determination in the eyes of his sweet Winnie, though the left one was a bit unfocused. He had to constantly remind himself that she too wore scars of her own.
"You're lying again."
"I wouldn't even know where to start if I wanted to," Felix admitted. Exhaustion set in and he was beginning to feel the soreness of his muscle after his endeavors. There was no fight left in him to argue with Winnie of all people.
"Then show me," she said.
Her hand brushed against Felix's and she gently hooked her fingers around his, offering him a gentle smile, one she hoped would be reassuring. There was an unspoken rule between them never to spy on each other's side. Felix had never been allowed near the Lost Girls' camp because of Mercy's system of watch that would immediately betray Felix's presence. Winnie on the other hand, had been to the Lost Boys' camp a handful of times – well, not quite in the camp, but very near. No Lost Girl had ever set foot there apart from Mercy herself.
Tonight was one of those nights Felix would give in to her and lead her to his camp. She had to be careful and watch her steps while she following him, though Felix seemed to make his way through the forest seamlessly, like he knew it by heart and could walk back with his eyes shut.
He stopped and Winnie started, almost bumping into him. He didn't say anything for a minute but the words hung between them.I don't need to tell you to keep this to yourself.
Winnie put a hand on his shoulder and together, they walked the last few meters separating them from the cages, where the Darlings still cowered in fear.