Skull Rock was not well named.

Wendy had seen skulls before at nursing school. Sandy white and completely dry. Bone dry, in fact. But Skull Rock was damp and dark and fucking miserable. Everywhere she sat or stood or lay was cold. She could only dimly remember what it was like to be comfortable.

It was hard to remember what anything was like before this.

Her days were long and monotonous.

She would wake up, shivering, in the corner of her cell. She could hear the slosh of water beneath her, the waves slapping against rock. She could only tell the difference between day and night; time of day meant nothing to her. At night, everything was pitch black, but in the day, whatever sunshine was outside, filtered into the cave, turning it into a muffled grey light that reminded her of the cloudy water the servants at home would turn out of the laundry buckets.

After she would wake, she would weep. She had had energy months (years?) ago to cry loudly, to sob and to wail, but now she couldn't muster it up. She let the tears slip down her cheeks as her consciousness fell back into her body and she realized where she was. She would curl in on herself and try to pretend it was her mother or father holding her tight.

Once her tears dried, she could force down some sips of water and a few bites of whatever had been left for her. She considered perhaps starving herself, but then what would become of Baelfire if she was gone? And what would her family do if she never came back to them?

Then she would crawl over to a new spot and curl in on herself. She would close her eyes and try to build a world around herself out of memories. Sometimes it was of home, Christmas morning or trips to their country house. Sometimes, it was more mundane, a trip to the bank or her anatomy class.

Sometimes she fell back asleep. Other times, Pan would arrive.

He would appear out of thin air on the other side of the bars of her cell. At first, it was hard to tell when he was there. He was usually silent until he noticed her. Observing his caged bird. But she got quicker, trained her ears to notice.

Once she realized he was there, she would hurl her cup and food tray at him. She hadn't been able to actually hit him with anything yet, but she liked to believe she was getting close to smacking him in the face one day.

She would sprint to the bars and reach out with thin, shaking hands to try and claw at him. She wanted to pull at his clothes and slam him into the bars. She wanted him to pay. She wanted him to suffer. She wanted him to know what it felt like to be ripped from all her home and her family.

The rage inside her would break out of her chest. She would scream at him until her voice was raw. She wanted him to understand what it was like.

And then, inevitably, like always, the rage would break. She would crumple onto the floor and beg him, tears streaming down her face. She would beg him to let her go home. She had family that was missing her, family that she missed. She was a missing part of a whole.

He would stare down at her, head tilted, like a dog not entirely understanding its owners commands.

"You're trying to appeal to my humanity and I regret to inform you that I have none," he would say, voice smooth and cool, with a slight lilt, an accent that had faded over time.

He then would disappear as soon as he had come.

With her tears spent, she would crawl back into the corner and stare at the wall until she eventually fell asleep.

And then the days would repeat.

Wendy sat with her back against the wall, cup in hand, trying to replay the events of a croquet match from a few years before. She tried to imagine the smell of the grass, the heat of the sun on her back. She pretended she could hear her friends' laughter and voices and—

—a foot scraping lightly against rock.

Pan had arrived.

She didn't change her position, didn't let on that she knew he was there.

And then, just like she had practiced, she whipped the cup at him, where she knew he would be standing. She watched as it arced through the air and grazed just past his ear.

He grinned. "You're getting better." He stood, hands in his pockets, wearing his usual tattered green clothing. She often wondered how she had ever thought he was just a normal human teenager. His movements were too lithe and his form to ethereal to be anything close to mundane. But, then again, she had been able to believe that he was just a beautiful miracle and not a poisonous mirage.

She leapt from her spot, grabbed the tray and hurled it through the bars. It clattered a few feet away from him.

"You still have room for improvement with the tray."

"Fuck you!" she screeched. She came to the bars and stuck her arms through, trying to grasp at him. She wanted to claw at him, leave scratches down his perfect face. She wanted him to feel as wretched as she did.

He smoothly stepped back, just barely out of the reach other fingers. He was so close, painfully. She could feel the heat from his body on the edges of her finger tips and if she just reached a little further, she could get him.

"You fucking bastard, let me out of here!"

"Oh, so you can try to hurt me?" he asked, feigning fear.

"So I can kill you!"

He laughed. "I know you don't have that in you."

She let out a scream, long and raw. In that moment, she was pretty sure she could kill him. She wanted to wrap her hands around his throat and throttle the life out of him, she wanted to sink a knife into his heart, she wanted to slam his head on the rocks.

"Let me out of here, you fucker! I'll make sure that you live through this hell!"

Pan just grinned.

She let out another scream and shook at the bars.

"If I ever get out of here, I'm going to make you pay, you evil piece of shit!"

"Then why would I let you out?" he said, laughing.

"Let me out of here, you fucking, evil, vile, fucking piece of goddamn shit. Fucking bastard. Fucking ungodly, unholy, demon from fucking hell, let me go!" She hated the filth that streamed out of her mouth, hated how they clawed their way from her heart up to her mouth. She wasn't supposed to be like this, so filled with rage.

Life wasn't supposed to be like this.

And then in a breath, her legs gave out from underneath her and she was on her knees, weeping. Sobs bubbled out of her, slipping across the ragged tatters of her throat. Tears streamed down her cheeks, tears she was sure she had cried out months ago, but they were still there, stinging her eyes.

She clasped her hands together. "Please, please, please, let me go," she sobbed. "My family is missing me. My mother won't be able to handle this and it'll ruin my father. And my brothers—" She couldn't finish the thought, couldn't bring herself to think about her brothers, silently keeping the truth of her disappearance a secret. They knew what was happening to her and they couldn't do anything about it.

She grasped at him now, to shake him, to make him understand. "Please, let me go. You must have loved someone once. You have to understand that I need to go back to them."

"I understand, I just don't care," he said mildly.

"Please," she sobbed.

She wrapped her hands around the bars, her forehead resting against them and she wept. Dimly, she could hear him shifting, sitting down in front of her. Blearily, she looked up and saw Pan's face only inches from hers, considering her.

"You know what I don't understand?"

She didn't respond, just let the tears stream down her face.

Her breath came in short spasms, hiccuping out of her. She wanted someone to hold her, smooth down her hair and care for her. She wanted her mother, but at that point she would have taken any cold comfort, a hand on her cheek, a kiss on the forehead, even just a blanket.

It felt like a cruel joke to have something so beautiful, who looked so human, stand before her, with a face that she knew could mimic emotion, and just be… a hollow shell. Nothing more than a vacuum that consumed anything and everyone in his path.

"I mean, I get both responses, objectively. You're angry with me that I've kept you here and then you're sad because you aren't with your family. Totally logical. Annoying and weak, but it makes sense," he continued, flippantly, as if he were recounting an uneventful game of chess. "I just find it so strange that it always happens the same way. You're angry with me and then a switch flips and you're a puddle of tears. I don't understand it." He leaned back and considered her, evidently waiting for an answer.

She glared at him through the tears. "Are you that thick?" she asked, her voice hoarse.

"I am not stupid," he said. A petulant child.

"Well, you're being stupid now."

"No, I'm just trying to understand what it's like for someone with humanity."

She took a deep breath.

"Has it really been so long since you were human that you can't understand?"

He tilted his head, considering her, watching her like a new bird at the zoo.

"I just can't believe that you would forget."

He shrugged. And even that simple movement was mesmerizing with the graceful fall of his shoulders. "Forget isn't the correct word. I just choose not to remember."

"Well, then, choose to remember and you'll understand."

He rolled his eyes. "This conversation isn't about me, bird. I just want to understand."

She contemplated not telling him, exacting a little torture of her own, but she needed him to understand. "Because it's unfair."

"What is?"

"It's unfair that I'm here and my family is out there and that this entire situation exists! I'm angry at you and then I realize how unfair this all is and I can't help it!" she burst.

He looked at her as if she had spoken in complete gibberish.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" she demanded.

"Unfair?" he asked. "Who cares about unfair?"

"I care!"

"I can't believe that's your answer," he said, sounding disappointed. He laughed under his breath. "That's one of the things I actually do remember from when I was a human. That the world is unfair. That's just how it is."

She paused. The image that Pan project wavered in front of her and for a moment, she could see a young man who believed that nothing was supposed to go right, that you just weren't meant to have people who loved you. That the world was supposed to be cruel and that's just how it was.

She had no sympathy for him. Just anger that her captor happened to be someone who loved the refrain of, "Life is unfair. Who ever told you it would be fair?"

"The world is not supposed to be this way," she said vehemently, "and you know it."

"I make the world the way I want it to be and I've made it unfair. Some people get to be king and some people get locked up on Skull Rock," he told her matter-of-factly.

"That's utter horse shit," she said through her teeth.

He rolled his eyes and stood, dusting himself off. "Unfair," he scoffed under his breath, "Unfair." And the next moment, he was gone.

Wendy stared at the empty space where Pan had been before turning and crawling to a new corner. Exhausted and spent, she curled into herself and tried to imagine that the world wasn't so unfair.