If I did titles this would be called "A Day in the Life" lol


Days and weeks began to blur together and to Peter's surprise, they fell into a rhythm.

They would both wake early in the morning, grey light filtering in through the window of whatever cramped inn they were staying in. While one washed up and got ready in the bathroom, they other would leaf through their notes and books from the night before and then they would switch. By the time both were ready, they had already exchanged several lines about the plan for the next mansion.

"We should use a vanishing spell for this estate," she told him one day as they padded down the stairs to the dining hall. She had her bag slung over her shoulder and her hair twisted up into a braided bun. She wore a dark navy dress with long sleeves and skirts that just barely reached her booted ankle.

"A vanishing spell? Stone lions guard the place," he scoffed as they rounded the corner into the dining hall. "We need to take them out. I found a very effective blitz spell the other day, I noted it in the Delvaux text."

"Yes, I saw that. I agree that it wouldn't completely drain you." They were shown to their table in the middle of an almost deserted dining hall. A waitress immediately came to take their drink orders. "I'll have a tea with milk and sugar and he'll have a coffee, black. Please and thank you," Wendy told the waitress without missing a beat. "My only thought is if we use a vanishing spell, we won't have to bother with the lions in the first place. Do you think the blitz spell would take them out completely or if they'll wake up at some point?" she asked. "What if we're halfway through research and they wake up and come looking for us?"

He paused to consider. She made a good point, which she did far too often for his liking. He had spent the past several centuries making unilateral decisions, having everyone bow down to his ideas, praising them without a hint of criticism. "Let me check."

He leaned over and dug out the text from the charmed bag and opened it up at the table. He flipped through the pages as the waitress came over and gave Wendy her tea and managed to fit his coffee mug on the edge of the table, next to the book that took up half the space.

"What'll it be for you folks this morning?" the waitress asked.

"I'd like some porridge, please, with whatever fruit you have, please," Wendy said pleasantly. "And Pan?" He waved away her question, knowing she had heard his order enough to know what he would want. "He'll have whole wheat toast with eggs and sausages, please. Oh actually, can I also get two sausages, too, please?"

After the waitress turned to leave, he held up four fingers.

"What?" she demanded.

"Four times. You said 'please' four times." He shuffled through the book. He could have sworn he had left a marker to find the spell. "You sound like a fool."

"I'm trying to be polite," she said. "People appreciate that."

"I don't care what people appreciate," he told her.

"I'm aware," she bit out. "You don't see me telling you that you're impolite, so how about you leave me be?"

"What are you talking about? You lecture me all the time," he accused.

"About your immorality, not your impoliteness," she said primly. She took a sip of her tea and then pointed at the text. "Have you found the spell yet?"

"Give me a minute." He rolled his eyes. If it wasn't the fact that he didn't say 'please' or 'thank you' or the fact that he wasn't wracked with guilt over all the pain he had caused, it was that he wasn't quick enough. "You nag," he told her as he finally flipped to the correct page.

"I wouldn't nag so much if you acted like a decent person." He brushed away her comment. He ran his fingers down the spell and came to the part that detailed the outcome. He took a scalding gulp of coffee and placed it on the page adjacent to the spell. Wendy nearly knocked over her chair as she lurched across the table to grab the mug. "This is why I nag," she exclaimed, pointing down at the coffee stain he had made.

"It's a book. Calm down," he told her. He took the mug from her and took another gulp before placing it on her side of the table. She shot him a dark look, but didn't complain. "They use the word 'stun' to describe what happens afterwards."

"Hm, that's not conclusive," she muttered, sounding disappointed.

Just then the waitress arrived with their meals and Peter quickly closed the book and placed it back in the bag. He turned his attention back to his breakfast and began to dig in. "There might be some precedence from some other spells we've used. The same words get repeated to mean the same thing. Excoriate means this, maim means another," he explained.

"We could check back on some of the spells we've already used. We know how those will work," Wendy reasoned. "I think I remember 'stun' being used in that spell that you used for those alligators the other week. How long did they stay down?"

He squinted. "Couple hours. They were awake when we left and that was what? Six hours?"

And that was what breakfast was like. They discussed back and forth, wracking their memories to try and remember where they had read the word 'stun' in the pile of spells they looked through every day.

Once they ate, they would pack up the horses and begin the trek to their next mansion. While they were on the road, they would discuss back and forth about the plan they had come up with, the finer points of the spells they had chosen.

"We won't have time to figure out how long the 'stun' will actually be for before the next mansion," Wendy told him. "And if we don't know, it'll just be safer to use the vanishing spell."

"But if we use the vanishing spell on the way in, we'll have to use it on the way out. Will I have enough power at the end of the day?" he asked her. "And if we have to stay another day, that's four castings instead of just the two if we use the 'blitz' spell. Only once if it just takes them out completely."

"But you don't know if the blitz will be that long," she reasoned back.

"You don't know if it will be any longer."

They would arrive bone tired at the next inn just as the sun was beginning to set. The world would be cast in a soft blue light, shadows growing longer and the air growing colder. With their cloaks wrapped around them, they would check into a room and then take dinner in the dining hall. Their conversation would continue, ebbing and flowing, as it did when they were riding. Sometimes there were long stretches of silence and other times there wasn't enough time to get all their words out at once.

"I think we should start categorizing spells by words," Wendy said to him over her soup that night. The dining hall was much like the others they were in; wood walls, cramped tables and a warm crackling fire in the back. The bustle of the kitchen with the clanging of knives and voices of the chefs filled the air that was usually sparsely populated with travellers' low mutterings. "Keep track of which words indicate what and index them. We can keep track of what 'stun' or 'maim' or 'excoriate' means and come back to it when we need it. We could even mark which ones take a lot out of you and which ones take less."

He thought about the idea while he sipped his cider. It wasn't a terrible thought. In fact, as he was coming to find with Wendy, it was a very intelligent one. "I suppose those notes you've been taking will be useful now."

She shrugged. "For the index, at least," she said, looking down at her bowl. These days Wendy was always right at the edge of falling into a tailspin about Baelfire. She had spent the majority of her life away from the man, yet her life was dedicated to him and her other brothers. It was baffling that she was toiling through this journey just to fix the mess that Baelfire had made and what's more, she hung her happiness upon his safe return. She seemed to believe that she was the only thing between her family and complete ruin. She had taken the entirety of the responsibility for her brainless brothers onto her shoulders and lugged it around with her wherever she went.

Wendy would have lived a happy, ordinary life if she had just given up her eldest sibling duties as Peter had. Staring at her then, he decided to tell her as much.

Her eyes flashed immediately and he rolled his. He knew what reaction this would inspire, but if she was able to nag him all day, every day, then he could point out her shortcomings, too. "It would not have been a happy, ordinary life," she told him forcefully.

"You could have done whatever you wanted," he told her, lounging back in his chair.

"This is what I want," she said through gritted teeth.

He grinned. "Now, bird, you are so, so many things, but a good liar is not one of them."

"I'm not lying." Her voice rose sharply in the small dining hall and she quickly glanced over to the only other patrons in the room. They didn't look up from their meals and when she decided she hadn't made a fool of herself, she turned back to him and said, "I want my family back together."

He clicked his tongue at her. "Lies," he chided playfully. "Isn't that one of your seven deadly sins?"

"No, it's one of the ten commandments." She rolled her eyes. "Of course, you wouldn't know one from the other."

"Seventh sin or tenth commandment, you're still lying to me and to yourself. I'm disappointed in you," he pouted. "Really."

"Does it matter to you whether I lie or not? Or even if I'm living a happy, ordinary life? I recall you being the one that took that away from me, not Baelfire," she accused. She brought up her imprisonment often. He probably would have too if a beautiful magical being had kept him trapped on an island for more than a century.

"You could have escaped if you had stopped looking for that fool you call a brother," he said before taking a long sip from his cider. For many decades he had been adamant that she really could not have escaped, but looking back on it now, with his pride already so wounded, he could admit that if Wendy had wanted to, she probably could have gotten off the island. Now, whether or not he would go after was an entirely different question.

She turned beet red and sputtered. "I did not spend more than a century in that hell because I was too squeamish to leave," she said, pointing an accusatory finger at him, her voice rising above the idle chatter of the dinner guests. Their eyes slid over to Peter and Wendy's table, subtly trying to see what the raised voices were all about.

"Whatever you say, bird," he said calmly. "But right now, no one's keeping you anywhere. You're throwing away your life currently out of your own volition."

"Searching for my brother is not throwing away my life."

He tapped his chin. "I seem to remember hearing about daydreams of white weddings, a handsome husband, a fulfilling career and many, many little Wendys, each as stubborn and self-righteous as their mother," he recalled. "Are you telling me those dreams have not, at the very least, been put on pause to clean up your brother's mess? In fact, when has your life not been dedicated to him solely? The thirteen years of your life before you knew him and the—what was it?—eleven months you were in the Enchanted Forest before he decided to fuck up his life and yours? Not even a full fifteen years." He tsk-tsked at her. "Always somebody else's lackey."

"Shut up!" Her voice was shrill and rang starkly out through the room. The other diners' heads whipped around and stared at her unabashedly, wondering what in the world could make such a pretty young lady shout like that.

Peter just grinned at her. "You're only yelling because you don't have a good argument," he chuckled. He downed the last of his cider and held up the glass for the waitress to come and pour him another.

Wendy seemed to remember herself, her good Victorian manners and whatever dignity she might have left as she looked around the room. The dinner goers watched her open-mouthed as she gave them a weak smile.

"Why must you be like this?" she demanded after the waitress had filled his glass and hers.

"Like what?" he asked coyly.

"Picking, pestering. Why can't you just leave me be?"

He tilted his head to the side, considering. "Several reasons. One, I bore easily, as you know. Two, you nagged me today so I felt I should return the favour. And three, contrary to what you believe, I do have certain ideals and thoughts about how life should be; there is a method to my madness, as they say. I'm a very firm believer that one should do whatever they want with their life and if you feel like you can tell me what to do with mine, I can most certainly tell you what you to do with yours," he explained.

Wendy glared at him for several moments before begrudgingly admitting, "That's infuriatingly insightful."

"You may hate me, but I know you're smart enough to know I have some sense," he said. He picked up his glass and clinked it with hers that sat on the table almost forgotten. "Cheers to living your life the way you want. May you always remember that your life is your own."

Wendy sat at the table for several moments, silently, narrowed eyes trained on her glass before taking a slow sip of cider. He smiled into his glass at her quiet, angry acknowledgement that the point that he had made was sound. Wendy was stubborn as a mule, and to have her relent and admit that he had been right was a victory he would savour.

Their nights would end as their days began: they would go up to their room and one would get ready for bed while the other leafed through the day's notes and then they would switch. The chatter would wax and wane as the moon up in the sky did. When they clambered into bed, he would produce a vial of the sleeping potion for Wendy and she would drink it in one gulp and would invariably complain that it was far too sweet for her liking and he would return that she did not have to take and that he did not have to give it to her. She would grumble and then turn over, pulling the covers over her head.

But this night, Wendy broke from routine and sat up in bed, chin propped up by her hand, staring at the wall across from her in their tiny room. Peter waited for a couple moments before prodding, "No complaints about the potion tonight?"

"Sometimes," she said after a long moment, "I don't want to be doing this."

"As I said, you don't have to take the potion." But Peter knew Wendy well enough to know that she wasn't talking about the sleeping elixir.

She continued on, knowing he needed no clarification, "I do want those things. The things I daydreamed about." She sighed. "My brothers all have them to some degree. But I… I just take care of them."

He tilted his head and watched her. She had put her hair into two long braids and wore a cotton pyjamas set with light blue polka dots. In the dim light of the candle, he could almost forget that she was nearly a hundred and forty years old. Instead, she looked like a young woman who desperately wanted her life to begin.

"Your life is your own," he repeated.

She shook her head. "I couldn't not do this. I wouldn't be able to live with myself," she said, almost to herself. "But sometimes… I wish this wasn't how things had played out. I wish that maybe Michael or John had gone and not me."

"Here?"

"Or Neverland, as awful as it sounds." She rubbed at her forehead. "I feel so jealous thinking about the lives they've lived and I feel so guilty for even considering… doing what I want, following those daydreams."

He raised an eyebrow. "And you're telling me all this because?"

She shrugged without looking back at him. "You're the great emotionless Pan. You won't make me feel bad for feeling this way."

This was dangerous territory he was in. He shook himself.

"We can start cataloguing words tomorrow for the index. We can start on opposite ends of the alphabet and meet in the middle," he told her. Spells and incantations and definitions were safer territory, neutral. He could allow himself these pleasures, but ruminating on Wendy's hopes and dreams was most certainly not something he could allow himself. But even as he steered the conversation away from such an intimate topic, he couldn't quite quit it.

He looked at her for another long moment, her figure still as she continued to stare off into the middle distance, still caught in her own emotions. She did this frequently. Shared. And each time, he would chastise her for it, remind her that he didn't really care, but these days, he found himself believing that reminder less and less. He could feel himself being pulled into her world, into her mind, locked in place like the moon tethered to the earth.

XXX

Wendy much preferred the days they spent researching in the mansions to the days they spent toiling on the road. She had spent years on the same island, hating that she was trapped there, never seeing anything new, but now, she wished for sameness. She wanted to stay in one place for longer than a couple of hours. So the times where they spent more than a day in one area were almost luxurious. She liked to see the familiar faces of the people in the inn and she liked getting used to how Gold's library smelled, how the chairs creaked or how the late afternoon sun would stream in through the windows.

She took in so much when they travelled on horseback; her mind zipped over directions and room reservations and stables for the horses all while trying to grasp at connections between spells, making sense of this wizard or that. It took some weight off of her brain to not have to get used to new settings every couple of hours. Having some semblance of a routine was calming.

When they were stationed at a mansion, Wendy wouldn't bother cramming early in the morning since she would spend the rest of the day doing that. She would wake up a full hour later when the room was still fuzzy with early morning light. The room would be still and quiet, the only chatter she would hear would be from the birds outside and Pan's soft breathing. She'd stretch and then dress quickly.

Breakfast would be eaten at a slow pace. They had nowhere to be by nightfall, not having to worry if they would get a room at the next inn or get inside before a storm hit. They would sit across from each other as Wendy slowly sipped a tea and read through a novel. Pan would sit across from her, leaning back in his chair like a cat, his fingers idly circling the rim of his coffee mug.

She pretended not to notice the stares from strangers. Pan had wanted to keep a low profile, not wanting his various enemies to know he was back from the dead, but the man did not blend. With his haughty features and strange eyes, it was hard not to notice him. He was beautiful, stretched out in a rickety old chair in the dining hall of a drab inn dressed in fine black riding clothes. Every seat he sat in was a throne, every utensil a sceptre. He had no crown, but he most certainly was a king wherever he went. A king without a kingdom.

A man and a woman, another couple, walked past, their eyes flickering over Pan's figure. She wondered if they knew what he was. No one walked around looking that beautiful, that breathtaking without having been at least touched by magic. Did people see him for what he was? She had spent decades looking at him and couldn't tell any longer.

"I've been thinking a lot about our indexing," she said at length, slipping a fork in between the pages to keep her place.

"You know, they've invented these wonderful things… Oh, what are they called?" He tapped his chin for effect. "Bookmarks."

"It doesn't damage the book and it doesn't affect you," she told him. "Now, the indexes. I've been thinking about how we're cataloguing words."

"Categorizing them by kind and then alphabetically was a good move, but I think we should probably overlap some. 'Shield' could be in defence and creation spells," Pan said.

"I'm fine with that. I also think we could probably go more specific. For example, in offence spells, we could rate by level of violence, too, which would would kill someone versus seriously injure versus hurt," she said. This hadn't been what she was going to suggest, but this had also been floating around in her mind. She didn't like to admit it, but she liked the way Pan's mind worked. Even more, she liked that it worked like hers.

"You would have to define what hurt and seriously injure both mean," he added. "We'll be creating definitions for definitions."

"I'm fine with that, but what I was actually thinking was that we can probably use the index to predict words we haven't come across yet. Depending on what words it's similar to and in what context it's used," she said.

Pan considered for a moment and gave a shrug. "I don't mind that." He drank the last of his coffee and straightened in his seat. "But that'll have to wait for later once we're through with this mansion. I pulled the Blackleach and the Loset texts yesterday for today and I think that'll take up most of our time."

Wendy groaned. "I never like reading through the Loset texts. All the grammar in their spells is weird and it's just a headache," she complained.

"I'll take the Loset," Pan offered. "I don't mind." She pretended not to be curious about his response as she turned back to her book.

Once breakfast was done, they would make their way to the estate. Sometimes, if the terrain was too treacherous, they would leave the horses behind, but most of the time, like this day, the horses were able to come. The mansions were usually only an hour or so away from the inn, a relatively easy and short ride compared to all the days they spent on long stretches of empty road, the wind picking up dust and throwing it in Wendy's face.

They would pick a path down a long-abandoned trail, walking through forests and meadows that were strangely quiet, devoid of all animal life. No creature seemed to be too keen to spend any time near Gold's mansions. High above them, the sky would soar up, no birds or butterflies flying up into the clouds. The silence would hang on her, suffocating.

Each time they arrived at a new mansion, her heart would pound and her hands would shake. Hope would fill her veins and she would imagine walking through impossibly tall doors into an ornately decorated foyer and just knowing that Baelfire was there. She knew that when she found him, she wouldn't have to hear or see him to know that he was there; she would simply feel his presence. She would imagine his face, the crinkles by his hazel eyes, his salt and pepper hair, and his lopsided smile. Closing her eyes tightly, she could almost pretend it was ahead of her, just around that bend and over that stream, he would be waiting in the newest mansion; waiting for her to come save him and take him home.

But when they arrived at each mansion, the silence would still be there, weighing her down. They would leave the horses in the stables, undoing their packs and making their way inside. She would anxiously wait as Pan flung open the door, holding her breath and holding out hope against hope to find the mansions empty. The mansions were always empty. It was not as if someone had stepped out of their house to run errands, no. The place was always deserted. There was no owner who was coming back to tend to the overgrown gardens, to sweep the stoop or to clean out the fireplace. They had been left to crumble in on themselves, alone in the wilderness.

They would walk through the halls, the footfalls of their boots the loudest thing for miles and miles around until they found their way into the library. As the weather got colder as they travelled north, one of them would light a fire in a fireplace and they would push a table close to it to keep warm. They would weave between stacks and shelves, fingers ghosting over volumes and titles that might hold anything that would help them with Baelfire. Pan had all the wizards names memorized and was able to pick out texts easily. She would wander around with the list of names Pan had guessed, her eyes straining for the relevant books.

Once they had found what they needed, they would drop the books on the table, dust puffing out from them and they would sit across from each other and read. They would alternate between comfortable silences and even more comfortable discussions. She could always depend on Pan to explain a spell to her easily and quickly without much fuss. She came to look forward to their discussions about the spells. She liked to hear his thoughts. He was skeptical where she was hopeful. She would pick out spells that were distantly related to Baelfire and eagerly show him the lines, pushing aside his notes and books and lean over his chair and animatedly point out the lines that gave her hope. He would run long fingers down the words, his lips moving as he read and then lean back and shake his head.

"No," he told her.

"Why not?" she demanded. "The winter and summer imagery that's being used is clearly a parallel to life and death."

He nodded. "No doubt, but this is about plants." He pointed to one of the very first lines. "'Where summer meets winter, there you shall be. Once you were bare, now plenty. Life for life, you for me'," he read out. "Summer meeting winter, that's the fall, the harvest. 'Plenty' brings up imagery of the harvest. And then, 'you for me', that's—"

"The plant giving life to whoever's eating it," she finished for him.

He nodded and glanced up at her. "You wouldn't miss this if you didn't get so excited so easily." He sighed. "Jot it down anyway, it may do us well to remember it if we ever starve."

Wendy pulled the book away from him and returned to her seat across the table. "I'd rather have more information than we need than less," she said, pushing the book away like an angry child. "You're too stringent."

"And you're not stringent enough," he replied, barely looking up from his book. "You put too much effort into each spell. That's why you're always behind me."

"Your brother's life isn't on the line," she huffed.

His eyes flicked up to meet hers. "Actually, it is," he said, grinning at her from across the table. "I just don't care if he lives or dies."

"Heartless bastard," she accused.

He put a hand to his chest and feigned a pained expression. "You wound me," he laughed. He gave her another quick grin before turning back to his book.

She sometimes forgot Gold was Pan's brother. The two were similar no doubt; powerful, cunning and cruel, but family was more than just similarity. It was about love; a golden string tethering two souls together. She knew Pan cared little for his brother and vice versa. It was hard to call them brothers when they did not love each other.

Pan had abandoned Gold centuries ago for Neverland, giving up his brotherly responsibilities in exchange many lifetimes spent in chaos and luxury. They had spent more time estranged than they had ever spent together. Siblings in blood only, not in spirit.

She and Baelfire were siblings in spirit only, not in blood. Even though he was lost to her now and had been lost to her longer than they had ever been together, she could still feel him. It was how she knew the mansions were empty without checking (although she still wandered through them, searching, as she had on Neverland). It was a comfort to care for someone like that, to have their existence solidify her. She would have been translucent, thin and breakable, without that golden thread tying her to her brothers.

It was why she had to pour everything into every spell she read.

"Where would the limit be?" she asked, staring down at the spell. "Just plants like wheat in the field or could it be extended to bread, for example, because it has wheat in it? Not to mention that whatever plant product was in it would be dead just as the plant would be."

Pan's eyebrows furrowed as he considered. "I'm not sure. We'd have to try it out."

"A waste of magic to just test out a spell," she said, souring at the thought. She pulled the book back to her and flipped to the next page: a spell on fixing broken bones. She skimmed it, but knew this one would be of no use to Baelfire.

Pan made a non-comital sound. "You're usually right about these things. The guess you made about that vanishing spell last week was right."

She shrugged. "That was more about Gold than anything else. He always goes the offensive route," she said. "I know he would have thought of every way to counter any offence we came up with. It was easiest just not to engage."

"How do you know that?" Pan's voice was incredulous from across the table.

She looked up and rolled her eyes. "It's what you would do. It's how you get a rise out of me."

Pan's mouth curved up a fraction, his eyes glittering in the firelight. "And yet you still fall for it." She felt like smacking him.

"We all have our weaknesses," she sniffed. She had really stepped in it this time and didn't feel like having Pan gloat. He enjoyed it far too much.

"And I'm yours," he laughed, breaking into a full smile. If she had been one of the strangers they passed on the road, she might have swooned. Her heart might have thudded in her ribs and her hands would have grown sweaty just looking at him. Instead, she shot him a warning look before turning back to her book.

They would continue this way, exchanging ideas and theories, teetering on the edge of the safety of spells and potions and the chasm of everything else. She would often find herself straying too close to the edge of what might have been called intimacy. Their research was so tied up in her hopes and dreams she couldn't help it sometimes, but be pulled towards the edge.

They would break for lunch and then when her back was sore from lugging heavy tomes everywhere and her neck was painfully tight from bending over pages filled with fading words, they would pack up. Most of the time, they would make their way back to the inn and have dinner before falling into bed, tugging the covers over and falling into a deep sleep.

Other times, they would stay over at the mansion if the ride was too long. Pan would sacrifice what little magic he had and pull beautiful dinners out of thin air. They would sip on sweet wine and nibble on delicate cookies in the library between the piles of books. Sometimes, she would try and continue working after dinner, but she found that she liked the wine. She could drink three glasses quickly and would find herself nodding off into the spine of a spell book before she knew it.

"I bookmarked the broken bone spell in the Blackleach text for tomorrow," Pan said as he stretched back in his chair, his plate and wineglass empty. "Remind me to take it with us when we go."

Wendy had her head propped up on her fist and was having trouble keeping her eyes open. "Alright," she mumbled.

"Come on," Pan coaxed. "Up. You're not going to even be able to pretend to do any more research tonight." His chair creaked against the stone floor of the library as he got up and came to her side of the table.

"Are we going to get the horses now?" she asked.

"We're staying here. I told you this this morning," he told her. "The ride back last time was too much."

"It's only an hour and a half. We can make it," she argued back half-heartedly.

He pulled the chair back and slipped a cool hand under her elbow, nudging her out of her seat. "It's two hours and even if it wasn't, you're about to pass out. You definitely wouldn't be able to make it."

"I hate sleeping at the estates," she complained as she stood up.

"What are you talking about? The sheets are so much nicer. We might as well have been sleeping on sackcloth at the inn." Peter kept a hand on under her elbow as they walked out the library. She had had three glasses of wine with dinner and her feet and legs were like clouds, soft, not quite touching the ground.

"But these houses are just… desolate."

They turned a corner and began their way up a set of marble stairs, their boots thudding the entire way up.

It was always preferable to sleep at the inns. The mansions were ghosts of homes. They had once been full, but now stood without anything solid or real. Their halls were silent and bleak, with only shadows to fill them. The floors creaked and the only noise in the night was the wind whistling outside.

In the years following Gavin's death, Wendy found it hard to sleep. Nightmares lay just under the surface of her conscious, threatening to crash over her and suffocate her. She could see him in her minds eye, so clearly, cold and lifeless. But staying asleep wasn't her only problem. Getting to sleep was also an issue. With Gavin's room empty above hers, the treehouse was a lonely place. Where it had once felt full of light and warmth, after that it was dark and cold. In those years, she missed her old brownstone even more. She would have given anything to hear her son's feet on the floor once more, to catch the sound of her father's deep-bellied laugh or the scratch of Nana's paws on the rugs.

It had been a luxury to sleep in a home in Storybrooke and in the Enchanted Forest that was full of the people she loved. Even sleeping in the inn was nice. Although the inns were cramped and crowded, Wendy didn't feel alone. Sometimes, if she was especially tired, she could imagine that the voices of the other travellers were those of her parents and their friends. She could pretend that the laughter and chatter she heard through the walls was from a dinner party her mother had thrown. She had been allowed to stay up a full half hour longer than her brothers and had even been allowed a sip of champagne. Inevitably, the reality-altering spell she had cast would break and she would remember that her parents were long dead and the grief would descend upon her, but those moments between sleep and memory were paradise.

In the estates, there were no spells to cast. Instead, she found herself trapped in a curse. She would lie awake in bed, half-asleep after taking the sleeping potion, thinking she was in that lonely treehouse by herself, her son buried only a mile away. The chill would sink into her and all she could think of were all the people she had lost. She would be left alone with her grief.

"Desolate means there are no drunken brawls breaking out in the middle of the night," he told her as they turned into a large bedroom. Dust hung in the air and the room was too still, but it was ornately decorated. Deep red silk hung along the four poster bed and the sheets still shone in the dimness. It seemed that Gold had charmed the beds to stay intact, at the very least.

"Where's the next room?" she asked as Pan set down her bag on the bed. The sheets gave easily under the weight of the bag and she could tell just by looking at it that mattress would have been firm and downy.

"Down the next hall and it's the third door on your right," he said over his shoulder.

"Sounds far," she commented, drifting towards the bed. Her limbs were heavy with the wine.

He turned and sat on the bed—lounged was a better word. He grinned at her. "Are you saying you'd like to share a bed, bird?"

She stiffened and her cheeks burned. She straightened her shoulders. "No," she said primly. "I just… don't like sleeping in these mansions."

"Well, there's no accounting for taste," Pan said. In the dimness, he was cast in the silvery light of the moon from the window. His skin was tinged in blue and he was a creature of the night, cold and beautiful, like the stars.

She wasn't sure if it was the exhaustion or the alcohol that made her blurt, "It's easier to feel their absence. Harder to pretend they're not gone."

Startled by her admission, Pan asked, "Who?"

She shrugged. "My family." She wondered briefly if he knew that Gavin was included within her family. She wondered if he ever thought of him.

He turned his head to the side and considered her. "It's been a long time since I missed someone." Gavin? she wanted to ask. "It's not pleasant."

"It's not," she agreed.

He stood from the bed and slung her bag back over his shoulder. "There's a bedroom closer to the other one. It'll be smaller though." It took a moment for her to realize just what he was offering and what he was doing.

Here she was again, teetering on that edge, looking over the cliff into the chasm that opened wide, inviting her in.

"I don't mind," she said before turning with him out the door.

They changed separately and stood in each other's doorways, exchanging plans for the next day before slowly making their way back to their beds, as they did normally.

That night, she could hear the creak of Pan's bed as he shifted before falling asleep and could almost imagine that she heard his soft breathing as she fell asleep. That night, the mansion didn't feel so empty.