Disclaimer: If you recognise it, it's not mine.
AN: Strange chapter, this. Peter and Wendy are taking over my story and making it all . . .fluffy. More fluffy than I meant it to be. Anyway – I'm sorry to disappoint you, gentle readers, but I am a prim and proper lady author and don't write smut! You'll have to resort to your wicked imaginations.
Once again, thank you thank you thank you to everyone who reviewed. You are truly the wind beneath my wings. *cracks up * Sorry, I'm in that kind of mood. It's been that kind of evening.
Okay, on with chapter thirteen. I meant to say some other stuff here but I forgot, and you're not here for the Author's Notes anyway.
Chapter Thirteen.
Peter stayed awake long after Wendy had become a dead weight on his right arm, just watching her. He'd watched her sleep hundreds of times before this, of course, but tonight she was asleep in his bed, and that made all the difference. It was a source of limitless fascination to him, this new licence he had to touch her – she was a source of limitless fascination, all these remarkable little things neither of them had known about her until now – like that throaty little laugh of hers that had surprised them both, and that very interesting thing she did when he bit her lower lip . . .
She snuggled closer to him in her half-sleep, mumbling something he thought was, God, you're warm. He closed his eyes. Smiled.
Peter had not had the old dream in over a year, but when he finally slipped into sleep there it was, as fresh and vibrant and immediate as ever.
High over the ship in this one perfect moment he rests, within and outside himself, Wendy and loved the only coherent words, no painfearhate no more crawling creeping sameness between him and that man, and all is joy and light and youth and power and her soft whisper, This is yours.
Utter sweetness, because yes she is so very sweet.
"This belongs to you, and always will." He knows now that you can live for three years on the memory of words alone, if they're the right words – if you're loved. Perfect clarity, knowing he'll wait til the end of the world for her. He dreams this one moment for hours on end, this one, perfect moment.
Then the dream shifts and changes, as it never has before, and he hears her crying. He has time to think, oh –
- and then he was awake.
Wendy was crying, slowly and gently, in her sleep.
Like many boys, Peter was rendered helpless by a girl's tears, and for one moment he had no earthly idea what to do. He'd seen her cry like this so many times before and had known then exactly what he would have done, had he been allowed past the glass; had indeed tormented himself thinking of what he would have done. But now that the dream was reality, he knew only that it hurt to watch her cry. That last night, at her house, he had whispered to her and tried to console her in her dreams, but he could not stand to let her endure that again.
Some of her hair was tangled over her face. He stared at it for a moment. It seemed the thing to do to brush it away, so he did.
Taking action made him feel more in control. He followed it up by pushing her gently, whispering, "Wendy. Wake up, Wendy. Wake up."
She stirred a little, her lips making a small, soundless motion that what might have been no, or don't, and then her eyes slowly opened and focussed on him and she was awake. With a sob, she clung to him, running her hands over his skin and tangling them in his hair and saying in a low voice that caught and shook, "Are you real? Peter, are you here? Are you real?"
In response he murmured nonsense, inanities, fervent endearments he would never have admitted to in waking hours, and then gave up on words altogether.
Later, they lay awake in the half-light.
"What do you dream, Wendy?"
The question was direct, and demanded a direct response.
"I dream you're dead. Every night. I dream I'm lying beside you on that ship, and the hook comes down and you scream -" here she closed her eyes in pain, "- oh God how you scream – and I grab your hand but you're dead, you're already cold and I know it's not possible, but you're cold. Then I die, but when I die, I wake up. I'm not in my room; I'm in a strange room. I sit up and the first thing I see is the bassinette, and the second thing I see is the man beside me . . . I've grown up and married, and you never came back, and my whole life now is this baby and this man, and maybe you forgot me or maybe you died." She shivered and added, almost to herself, "He has such a cruel face. Even asleep, he looks so cruel."
There was a long silence. Peter's eyes in the low light were dark green.
He said only, "I will never leave you," and held her close.
After a time they slept again. Wendy did not dream.