Disclaimer: If you recognise it, it's not mine.
AN: Meanwhile, in London . . . Thank you for your reviews, they keep me writing. I saw the movie again yesterday, and was newly traumatised. What else? Oh yes: no, the Imp's no relation to Peter, but they're very similar. And very, very naughty.
Sorry about this chapter, but I wanted a little more Wendy/John backstory.
(You know, I never thought I'd have to type the phrase "Wendy/John".)
Chapter Eleven.
Wendy's room was cold now.
She had only been gone a few hours, and it was already cold.
John hadn't lit the lamps; didn't see the need, not with her gone; sitting on her cold little bed in the dark, watching his moonlit reflection in her oval mirror.
There wasn't a sound in the house. Everyone had already discussed how glad they were, and how it was all for the best, and how happy Wendy would be. Now Mother and Father were in their bedroom with the door shut. Aunt Millicent sat in the drawing room pretending to read. The Lost Boys sat in the nursery and did not look at one another. Michael cried and would not be calmed. Nana whimpered every now and then.
The window was shut.
John remembers a day. Summer's day, a few months ago now, when he watched Wendy stare at herself in this same mirror. She was barely fifteen then, but Aunt and Father and Mother and the governess Miss Plum were already planning to have her come out next Season. Her hair had been put up that day for the first time. She looked so different, child's face under that elaborate woman's hair. The nape of her neck was bare between that hair and the collar of her dress, and, strangely, John remembers that detail now.
He sat on the bed, watching her watch herself with an expression he could not read.
Hours passed. The light faded.
Something moved in the corner of his eye, at the window. She whispered something he couldn't quite hear. He thought it might have been I hate this.
They introduced the corsets and long skirts the week after. He wasn't supposed to ask questions about these things, but sometimes, in unguarded moments, he caught her looking as she had with a hook at her throat.
"Does it hurt?"
"All the time."
He heard her crying in her sleep every night.
Wendy's room was different now, like an empty birdcage. He was glad. He was glad.
Her dresses hung like ghosts of herself in her wardrobe. Her books sat disconsolate on the narrow shelf. A boudoir doll was perched on her dressing table, its eyes glinting in the pale light.
John slept that night with her sword by his bed, and felt somewhat comforted.