The clatter of iron against iron as swords were unsheathed and brandished filled the air, and war-cries echoes from one side and the other. The Lost Boys might be young but Pan had trained them to fight from day one, and they were deeply loyal and unquestionably devoted to him. They would fight teeth and nails to bring him victory.

Felix stood a few steps to Mercy's left, his grip on his weapon so tight his knuckles had turned white. Her eyes skipped to his face and spotted a devious grin – he was looking forward to the bloodshed, and he probably didn't even feel the pressure in his hand.

Across from them stood the pirate – not in a clean line, no, but in a disorderly group of drunkards. Some of them were old, some of them missed a limb. Mercy would have huffed, however she knew better than to underestimate her adversary based solely on looks. There were seasoned pirates who had survived a lifetime of sea battles and weren't afraid to kill.

She wasn't either. Mercy had never killed a man before, but all her years of training led her to this day, and she refuse to hesitate and fail Pan. He was her captor, but he was also her teacher, her... her friend, in a way, and she wouldn't let him down. Besides, she wouldn't benefit in any way from letting the pirates win this battle, so why even consider holding back?

Disorderly as they may be, the pirates slowly stepped aside and formed a path for their captain to walk forth and stand before Pan. From where she stood, Mercy couldn't see his face, the best she could do was to read his body language. His shoulders were down, relaxed, hands on each side of his body, no weapon.

A good sign, right?

"Peter Pan," the captain said, his voice low and raspy, a testimony to his age and way of life.

He looked in his mid-thirties, rather tall, though not particularly broad or muscular. Then again, he was a pirate, not a soldier. When one trod on the treacherous sea, being lean, swift, and deft provided more advantage then being large and brawny.

On his hips hung a long-sword to the left and a short cutlass to the right. She could also spot a pistol tucked inside his open coat, and suspected he carried more hidden weapons under his clothes, or perhaps in his boots.

He did also miss a hand, and that was the strangest part. In its stead was a hook – not the most practical replacement, if you asked Mercy.

"Long time no see, old friend," he added when Peter didn't answer to his previous greeting.

Pan crossed his arms over his chest, and Mercy tightened her grip on her cutlass. She didn't miss the way he stood straight and planted his heels in the ground. Most of the time, peter sought sources of entertainment, as he grew bored very easily, and Mercy would have thought this pirate attack was just the thing to lift his mood, and instead he grew tense and showed no sign of enjoying himself.

She could guess the scowl on his face, the glare in his eyes. The pirate seemed unfazed by this, as did most of the others.

"Not long enough," Pan scoffed, gritting his teeth. "Wasn't last time enough for you? Did you come to get your other hand chopped off, Hook?"

The nickname was clearly meant to mock the pirate, and it worked a little. Mercy saw the slight waver in his smirk, the twitch in his eye. This man hated Pan with all his being, there was no doubt about that. He forced another big smile on his face, knowing it would infuriate Pan.

It was so troubling to see the roles inverted – Peter so serious and his enemy smiling.

"You know why I came back – and why I'll keep coming back again, and again, and again..." he trailed off, holding up his hook and twirling it around.

It caught the sunlight and hit Mercy in the eye, making her blink to get rid of the black spots in her vision. Her instincts told her something was amiss, that little show of hubris wasn't merely destined to rile up Pan, it was a distraction.

"Peter watch out!"

Mercy barely had the time to scream. She lurched forward, taking a small knife from a Lost Boy's hand and throwing it towards Pan.

It hit with sharp precision the other knife, deviating it from his trajectory and saving Pan from a potentially ugly face scar.

Everyone stood still and stared at her, Peter too, while Mercy didn't dare move. Her hand was still in the air, her breath short, and her eyes darted on the two knifes now lying in the sand.

"I see you haven't changed your lowly ways," Pan sighed, focusing back on Hook. When he spoke, the tension broke, and Mercy let her arm fall back to her side. "Nothing's beneath you apparently."

"I believe the end is more important than the means," Hook replied, grinning as if he hadn't really expected this to work, but did it anyway because it was fun to watch the look on Pan's face.

The man who had thrown the knife smirked to himself; he was already playing with another knife, twirling it between his fingers like only a master knife thrower could. Mercy memorized his features and took a mental note to go after him first once the fight broke out.

"See, this is were you're mistaken, and also why you'll never beat me," Peter huffed, now visibly enjoying himself, and even more so when Hook's smile faltered. "The means are everything."

That was one lesson he had made sure to teach Mercy from the very first day she came here. Twenty years that she heard him say the same thing. Hook clearly hadn't learned his lesson.

"And the end should always be-" Pan opened the palm of his hand, and a sword appeared with a swirl of pixie dust. "-a surprise."

All hell broke loose.

000

Pan and Mercy had reappeared in the very clearing that she destroyed not long ago. The ground was still smoking, their shoes black from the ash blown by the wind. Peter wanted to show the destruction she left in her wake. He wanted a dramatic setting, too. Sometimes, the right context was required to say something.

From the moment they materialized there, Mercy had stubbornly refused to open discussion and simply stormed away. Was she upset by his choice of place? She should be; she was the one who had burnt it to the ground.

Still, he ran after her, made her stop. When she neared the edge of the clearing and tried to enter the forest, Pan rose his hand and cast a spell. As soon as Mercy stepped into the forest, she reappeared on the other side of the clearing, looking confused, then frowning, and glaring at Pan.

"Don't use your tricks on me!"

"Then stop running away!"

"I don't have to listen to you, Pan. I don't owe you anything."

He shook his head, rubbing his face with both hands and turning around. With a groan, he squatted down, letting his frustration with the girl have the best of him.

"Undo the spell," she demanded.

He heard her walk towards him, heard the muffled sounds of her steps approach from behind. He recognized the defiance in her voice, and everything in him screamed to answer it.

"No."

"Then I guess we'll never get out of this clearing," she said, chin up, eyes burning with anger and the unmistakable glimmer of sadness that always danced there. "I don't care what you have to say."

"Yes you do! You do, because otherwise you wouldn't have come here with me; you're scared of your own reaction, that's why you didn't want to talk in front of your Lost Girls!"

That was it. Mercy lurched forward and jumped at his throat, claws out – metaphorically speaking. Peter reacted a bit late but his reflexes had always been better; he blocked her kick without much effort and knelt down to swipe her off her feet.

Mercy fell heavily to the ground, lifting up a cloud of ash that made them both cough.

She hadn't had a decent opponent in quite some time and had become rusty after all these years. Nothing whipped her blood quite like a good fight with somebody who could stand their ground and didn't cower away from her blows.

"You wanted my attention?! You have it now, I'm done walking away."

There was a time for avoiding confrontation, and then there was a time to face your demons. Mercy's personal demon stood before her, and she was tempted, so tempted, to listen to him. She had to remind herself that she had – she had spent years listening to him, and it got her nowhere.

In a fit of uncharacteristic rage, she made a quick hand-gesture, her fingers tightly pressed together, and she slashed the air before her. The wind bent to her will and rushed towards Peter, cutting like a sword. He only shorty avoided having an ear cut off and retaliated with an attack of his own. The ash on the ground lifted up and blinded her for a moment, making her cough and struggle to breathe until it fell down, and Pan had disappeared.

Except he hadn't really, he wanted her to listen to him, and he wouldn't rest until he got what he came for. She darted her eyes around, blinking back tears and protecting her airways with her hands.

"Don't be a coward now!" she shouted in the empty place, though the goosebumps on her back told her he wasn't far.

Movement on her left caught her eye and she attacked before checking if it was Pan or an innocent squirrel. Fire, blue as her flowers, erupted in Mercy's palms, and she let it lick her arm, feeling nothing. You can't get hurt by your own magic, Peter had once told her. She threw a fireball towards the moving thing, not caring what or who it was. The clearing was a scorched land anyway.

"Stop it, Mercy! You've done enough damage to this place!" she finally head his voice, and there he stood.

He was merely a few steps away from her. The fool dared looking concerned, and Mercy saw red when she spotted that glimmer of worry in his eyes and recognized it. He couldn't look at her like that! He wasn't allowed to! She didn't know why she was fighting him anymore, but after decades of doing just that, she wasn't sure she knew how else to behave in his presence. Was there a time they got along? She could swear that yes, but it was a painful and distant memory.

Running on adrenaline and fury alone, Mercy cried black tears of ash and soot while throwing fireballs at Pan who deflected all of them, sending them towards the already burnt down trees or extinguishing them – until finally he caught one.

Mercy paused, expecting to be on the receiving end of an attack soon, but he didn't move and the fireball simply burnt away in his hand. It didn't look like it hurt him either, but Mercy wasn't too surprised about that. What was he doing? He stared at her, long and hard, and she could read hesitation in his veiled gaze – veiled with an emotion she could not name – before eventually closing his fist on the dancing blue flame. A thin trail of smoke swirled in the air, but no fire.

This fight, however brief, had been intense for them both and it was hard to see anything around them, or even breathe for that matter, what with the ash in the air filling up their lungs. To Mercy, it didn't make that great of a difference, as far as memory went, she had always felt a bit short on air around Peter. Still, she hadn't used this much magic in a lifetime, and she felt the effect it had on her body.

Mercy froze to calm her her heartbeat and even her breathing while Pan stood across from her, his chest heaving too. Her rage and incomprehension grew tenfold when she realized he wasn't fighting her at all - he didn't attack her but simply blocked her attacks. It wasn't what she wanted. Mercy was in for blood, she wanted him to answer her blows, she wanted bruises and cuts and dizziness. Any physical pain would be better than the constant emotional turmoil she had been living in for decades.

"What are you doing? Why don't you fight back?" she barked at him, seeing red. Pan looked diminished, like a flower who hadn't seen the sun in too long. A sad glimmer sparked in his eyes; he said nothing. "Do something!" Mercy yelled and attacked yet again. "Hit me! C'mon! I said hit me!" With each word, she threw another punch or attempted another kick. "Why do you stay there like that?"

"I don't want to hurt you," he finally told her after deflecting her last strike. Mercy bore no wound from this one sided fight but her ego took a blow upon hearing that.

"Do you honestly think I'm that easy to beat? Do your worst, Pan. If I go down I'll take you with me."

"I don't want to beat you, Mercy!" His voice echoed through the forest and all other noise quieted.

No leaves rustling, no howls hooting. Not a sound. Mercy froze and tilted her head a little bit to the side. She hadn't heard him use her name in forever. A strange ache in her chest almost made her drop her defensive stance but she knew better. He had taught her better.

"I only want to talk," Pan continued. Exhaustion transpired in his voice, and it wasn't the physical kind. There was weariness in his eyes and in his heart.

"I don't care what you have to say. Whatever it is, you're are decades too late. Let your fists speak or leave me the hell alone!"

Mercy was blinded by rage and pent up frustration. She wouldn't be open for discussion unless she got her fight and Pan was aware of that. So he gave her want she wanted. Peter abandoned the idea of getting through to her without fighting, and he retaliated each of her previous attacks. She wanted to have it the hard way? He would give it to her.

Magic wasn't needed at the moment, magic was for fighting from a distance, and Mercy and Peter wanted to fight hand to hand. The blow that tipped the balance in Pan's favor was the one where he kneed Mercy in the lower stomach, cutting her breath, and making her stubble back. She crossed her arms in front of her face to protect herself but the cutting wind Peter cast her slashed through her skin and blood began to run down her arms and to her elbows.

He was giving her a taste of her own medicine by using her own attacks on her now that they fought for real. She hadn't expected anything less from him, and smirked before wiping some soot off her face to see clear. It left a trail of sticky blood on her cheeks and the bridge of her nose but she didn't care.

Her legs ached after Pan managed to tackle her on the ground, sending a flash of pain through her spine, though she used that position to wrap her legs around Peter's waist and secure them by locking her ankles together before rolling them over. A small knife appeared in her hand just as she was going to slam it in Pan's face, but he blocked it at the last second, pushing upwards while she leaned forward to put all her weight on her blade.

They fought dirty, both of them. There was no honor in the way they did each other dirty and attacked from the back, or used what they knew about each other to gain advantage, even for a second. Mercy wanted to throw up, she hated herself for participating in this masquerade and giving in to her foulest yearnings. If she hadn't been so busy dodging out of way at an increasing fast pace under Peter's unrelenting attacks, she might have broken in tears and given to her earlier urge to collapse and cry until she felt better.

She had asked for it, and she had gotten it. Mercy finally got some bruises of her own, along with split lip and several cuts all over her arms. The only way this was going to end, was with one of them stepping out, or stepping over.

It all finished in a split second, when Mercy used the knife she materialized earlier to throw it at Peter while he stood up from the ground where she had sent him flying. It hit him.

Pan grunted in pain when the knife entered his flesh and pinned him to the tree behind him. The pain was vivid and exhilarating - he hadn't felt this alive in years! Though it probably had little to do with the blade buried in his shoulder and everything to do with the fire he saw dancing in Mercy's eyes.

All the anger, all the resentment was gone in a flash.

When her weapon hit her target, she gasped and covered her mouth with her hand, dropping her stance. Her eyes widened in shock. She bad expected him to dodge. The realization that she never expected to actually hit him came crashing down. In truth, she knew Pan was stronger, faster and more powerful than her, she never even dreamed of getting the upper hand in combat with him until this very moment. Seeing him clench his teeth so hard his face become red with effort took her aback.

"Nice trick," he complimented her. An old habit of their teacher-student years. "Didn't see it coming."

It was true too. He didn't let her have this small victory just to flatter her ego. Mercy had won this round on her own.

"I never- I thought-" she stammered, unsure of what to say. "You didn't move out of the way."

"Well isn't that the whole point of throwing a knife at someone? You should be savoring the moment because it's the last time it happens."

Now Pan ground his teeth and reached for the handle, bracing himself before pulling the knife out with a loud curse. Mercy lurched forward when she saw him collapse but he didn't need her and quickly recovered from the action. She was the one to collapse first, feeling too worn out and wobbly on her feet to stand anymore. Mercy had been feeling hopeless, devoid of motivation to carry on and live. And now she understood why with full force. What do you do when the person you'd lay down your life for is the one killing you? Pursuing an answer to this philosophical question was bound to rob her of many nights' sleep. But that was what she felt when she saw Peter.

"Mercy, all I ask is that you listen. You've never given me a chance to explain."

"To explain what exactly? Why you went back on your word and didn't keep the promise you made me?" she barked at him, hissing like a thrashing snake whose tail had been stepped on. "To explain why you let me believe I had a chance of leaving Neverland for ten long years and then took that hope from me? You're a liar and a cheat, and that's the only explanation!"

Tears had welled up in her eyes but Mercy would be damned if she shed but one. He wasn't worth crying over, at least not when he could see her tears.

"You're a deceitful snake, and I should never have trusted you! I never- I should have-"

Uncontrollable sobs interrupted her sentences, but she swallowed them back too and took deep breaths until she was calm again. Mercy blinked a few times to get rid of the tears in her eyes before meeting Peter's bereft gaze.

"I never meant for things to go like this, Mercy. I intended to go through with my promise when we made that bet. I swear I never intended to deceive you," he lost himself in apologizes, holding up his hands in surrender. "Please, let me tell you the truth now. I can't bear it anymore..."

"You- you can't bear it anymore?" Mercy now sobbed and laughed at the same time, hysteria having subsided anger. "How dare you even say that to my face? You're the one who lied! You've the one who put us in the situation in the first place! You have no right, Peter! No right!"

"I can't bear to see you miserable anymore," he corrected her, effectively making her stop speaking and stare ahead of herself, eyes loosing focus. "You'll never move on if I don't tell you what happen-"

"Mercy! Mercy!" alarmed shouts cut off Peter in the middle of his sentence and brought Mercy back from her trance-like state.

Her might became alert again and she looked around, searching for the source of the shout. She had recognized that voice: Dorothy.

"Mercy," Peter said her name, begging her with a single, desperate look to not answer that call and listen to him. "Please."

She looked at him and a familiar wave of unrestrained attraction washed over her, nearly forcing her to take a step towards him. His eyes pulled her to him, they were like an extended hand, asking her to trust him one last time.

"Mercy! Mercy where are you? Something happened!" came Dorothy's voice again, urging Mercy to make her choice.

Her heart ached like it split in two – she was torn, between love and hate; between trust and spite; between the past and the future. She shouldn't be, she should know better than even consider Peter as an option.

Never in her long life had she been so painfully aware that she still had a foot in the past, and its grasp on her was firmer than ever. Peter was right, she was miserable and she hadn't moved on from their tumultuous past, so perhaps he was worth listening to if he was bent on telling her the truth behind his motivations.

On the other hand, she couldn't simply run from her responsibilities now that the Lost Girls counted on her. Each of her decisions had consequences, and Dorothy's tone bode nothing good.

Both Peter's wide-eyed stare and Dorothy's pressing calls proved to be nerve wrecking for Mercy as she tried to make the wisest choice. Over time, she had made a great number of mistakes, and she liked to think she had learnt from them.

Therefore, right as she as on the brick of going mad with indecision, she opted for the opposite of what she wanted to do – because she couldn't rely on her heart to help her make the right decision, even after years of trying to harden it.

"I'm here, Dorothy!"