Disclaimer: If you recognise it, it's not mine.
AN: This is set in an alternate universe, in which the events of the movie occur in 1914, not 1899. It's a strange little bunny that I thought of as I was writing Neverland, and I thought it was probably best to get it out of my system. I'm sorry if it's a little awful; I was the slightest bit tight when I wrote it.
A Peep Into The Future.
Peter has not been in this city for five years, but even his fluid sense of reality tells him that this is a different London from the one that he left. And this place . . .
He doesn't like to doubt Tinkerbell, but he'd found himself highly sceptical when she'd brought him to this building.
The Wendy girl spends every night here, she'd said. Sometimes she stays here until the sun comes up.
He has landed in the courtyard behind the small building. It's a dirty, hopeless sort of a place where rubbish is stacked. There is a small door in the filthy wall that leads inside. He shouldn't be frightened to open that door, but he is.
It had seemed such a good plan.
He has spent so long in Neverland, patiently letting her grow up a little, rather less patiently allowing himself to do the same. He wants her to make her choice now, on the cusp of childhood and womanhood, knowing exactly what it is that she wants. He does not think in these terms, knowing only that this time, he wants it to be right.
It had seemed a good plan.
But this place . . .
He is glad Tinkerbell isn't here. He would hate for her to see him like this, staring at what he must admit is a rather ordinary sort of door. It's not like him to be so anxious, but he has a terribly bad feeling about this.
"Wendy is in there," he says aloud, hoping to bolster his courage.
He opens the door and slips inside before he can allow himself to wonder why that thought frightens him more.
The room is small, dark and loud. Noises assault his ears – braying laughter, women's brittle voices, people of both sexes shouting and shrieking at one another and, under it all, some kind of music that is gay and desperate all at once and makes him want to scream.
Tinkerbell has explained to him what a night-club is. He didn't believe her until now. He also didn't believe that Wendy would ever be found in such a place, but he thinks now that he might have been wrong about that, too. For he has seen her.
There has always been something in Peter that has known Wendy, that would have known her anywhere, that could have pointed her out to him within a heartbeat even if all the nations of the world were gathered about her. It is something in her that draws his eyes and makes his heart turn over in his chest.
Were it not for that, he would not have recognised her now.
Wendy – for it is impossible even now to think of her in any other way – sits at a crowded table, leaning lazily back in her chair. Her brown hair is bobbed, straight as a pin. Her eyes are almost hidden behind rings of kohl. Her laughing mouth is lipsticked red. She holds a cocktail in one hand, a cigarette-holder in the other, and the arm of the man beside her as if it were a stole. She lowers her lashes as he whispers in her ear.
Something hits Peter like a sword through the heart, and he seems to see the red eyes of Captain Hook through the swirling smoke of the room.
Hoarsely, terrified, he calls out her name.
For a long, agonising moment he thinks she has not heard him – but of course she could not hear him, the room was so loud – but she would hear him, she would she was hisWendy she would hear him anywhere –
And then her head turns, and she is looking at the door. Though he cannot read the expression on her suddenly still face something choking and tight in him seems to loosen just a little.
She excuses herself and makes her way to the door, and when she is walking towards him he realises that she is not walking, she is swaying towards him, all stiletto heels and silken stockings and painted eyes, and it is only when he has come to this realisation that he sees her recognise him in the darkness.
He cannot speak. She does not.
They stare at one another, and then he pulls her out into the dingy courtyard. The door falls to behind them, cutting off the sound and fury from within.
"Wendy," he says, and is horrified to hear it sound like a plea.
"Peter Pan," she says.
He does not know what she means.
They look at one another again, and she makes a short sort of motion to him with one gloved hand. His breath catches, and she stops.
Hopelessly, he says, "I've come to take you back. You wanted to stay, so I. But I . . . I waited for you. I grew up for you, and I waited. Wendy . . ."
He doesn't even know what he's saying, but something has to fill this awful silence. The silence of the courtyard is bad, but the silence in her eyes is far, far worse.
"Peter." she says again. "Come to take me back."
She looks away, tapping the ash from her cigarette. She takes a long, practised drag. This is something he has seen Hook do, and it kills him to see her do it now.
"It's been five years, Peter," she says, and now her eyes when she looks at him are cold and distant. "Do you know what five years is?"
"What has happened to you?" he asks miserably.
She laughs at that, a harsh laugh that does not suit her.
"A war has happened, Peter. It has happened to the entire world. I have seen boys I went to school with trot merrily off to war; coming back from the Front in pieces or not at all. I have played Mother to filthy warehouses of boys barely older than I that have been gassed, wounded, maimed – boys that have died drowning in the fluid in their own lungs while I watched, I -"
She breaks off at that, drawing again on her cigarette. Her voice when it next comes makes his blood run cold.
"Last year John enlisted. Lied about his age. He was killed less than a week before hostilities ended. Slightly contracted influenza and died not long after. Mother cracked – she's in a lunatic-asylum in Kent."
He does not realise he is crying until he tastes tears in his mouth.
"So you see, Peter," and her voice is so cold, "you've come too late. I grew up a very long time ago."
"No," he manages, "No. You don't belong in there, Wendy. You don't belong in that place; this isn't you!"
"This is me!" she returns vehemently. "I've cried my tears and I've watched my people die and now all I want to do is be a bright young thing and have fun!"
"That isn't fun!" he cries, "That's death! Can't you feel death in there?"
She backs away a step, shaking her head. Her voice trembles. "This isn't real. This isn't happening. I've cracked just like Mother did, and now I fancy I'm talking to Peter Pan behind the club. I've gone mad. You're not real."
"No," he says, gripping her roughly by her slight shoulders. The distance in her eyes is beginning to panic him.
"I can't hear you."
"No, please!"
"I can't see you."
"Wendy!" he howls desperately, and it's happening, and it hurts so much more than he'd ever imagined.
She dislodges his grip with gentle black-gloved hands.
She looks into his eyes.
Her voice is a whisper.
"I don't believe in fairies."
The door shuts behind her with the faintest click, and for a long time all Peter does is cry.