They left two days later in the early morning fog. Loaded up with supplies and a new horse for Peter, they headed out down the long winding path that led north, heading away from the coming summer. Peter had suggested that during the summer they should go up north, where the season would temper the harsh climate. Then when it was winter, they would go south where it was warm and mild. Wendy had actually conceded that it was a good plan.

They travelled through a half-thawed spring. The ground was still hard and frozen. Wind whipped across their faces without the comforting scent of spring in it; the trees were bare and shivered in the gale. Peter exchanged his tattered clothes for warmer clothes. His rags had served him well in a tropical climate that was now only a memory. He wore a black shirt and sweater, black slacks and a black wool coat, bundling up against the cold.

Most stretches of the journey were silent. Neither of them had much to argue about with the other. Peter was no longer revelling in the chaos of his island and Wendy was no longer decrying it. She no longer sermonized at him about despicable deeds he was no longer committing. On Neverland, there had only been a handful of moments when the two were not arguing. There were hardly ever silences around Wendy before. He had filled them with chatter and goaded Wendy into self-righteous monologues. But things had changed. His days were filled with chafing silences.

The search for her brother was urgent and she was focused. It was harder to rile her up now, harder to draw her away from her steadfast piety. She seemed older, more mature now. She had aged almost a full year and had grown into her features. If she had ever deigned to smile at him, she might have had a charming face with warm brown eyes and wild, dark blonde hair framing it. Now dressed in fine clothes, wrapped up in her navy cloak, with her hair pulled back in a bun, she looked regal. She was very different from the Wendy he knew on Neverland. He now caught glimpses of how she might have been had she never left Victorian England.

The last month and a half he had spent wandering on his own. He had sacrificed Felix for nothing. Without Neverland, the Lost Boys gave him to excitement. Their cheers and whooping had turned into whines that rang painful in his mind. He wondered how he had ever tolerated them before. He had been brought back to a lonely world.

Now, Wendy was going to be his only companion for a long time. He was not looking forward to it and he was sure she was not either. He could feel her glare boring into the back of his skull. He wanted to tell her to quit it, but it seemed a ridiculous thing to say, even for him.

Her horse, Ash, kept meandering over to his horse, Phillipe. They whinnied at each other and swished their tails. At least there were two creatures on this journey that enjoyed each other's company.

He suffered under the silence, breaking it only occasionally to bark out directions. Glacing back, he found her staring. Her eyes were not filled with fury in those moments. She was observing him. It was unnerving.

"What are you looking at, bird? Keep your eyes on the road."

She ignored his command. "The black's different," she commented coolly. "It makes you look older."

He stared at her over his shoulder. He opened his mouth to tell her that he had had the same thought. The darker colours, the well-made dresses and cloaks and her new hairstyles all made her look like a young lady. He thought better of it. Why would he be making these mundane observations to Wendy? Why did he care what she looked like? He closed his mouth and turned back to the road ahead.

XXX

Wendy attempted several letters to her brothers. In the evening after full days of riding, she sat down, bore tired and aching and strained her eyes in the candle light to try and put to gether words to somehow explain to her brothers that she was working with Pan to find Baelfire.

Dear John and Michael,

Peter Pan is helping me find Baelfire in exchange for the second star to the right. He'll be able to commit more atrocities, but our brother will be returned to us—hopefully.

Dear John and Michael,

I'm giving up the star to Pan and my morality for Baelfire. I will reckon with the consequences once he has come back to us safe and sound.

Dear John and Michael,

Pan and I are posing as a young married couple. We are neither young nor married. The innkeepers thought we were a very sweet couple though and asked if we were considering children.

Dear Michael and John,

Today, Pan accused me of stealing the last piece of bread at dinner, then I accused him of being an evil bastard. I kept the last piece of bread.

She scrapped every single letter. They all ended up in a crumpled ball on the floor. Every time she picked up a pen, she could imagine the looks on their faces, the fear and the heartbreak. There would be no way for them to respond, to ask if she was safe, ask if she had lost her mind, ask what the hell she was thinking. They would just be held in limbo, hoping, praying she was okay. Just like they had been before.

She decided to leave Pan out of the letter. She didn't want them to spend the next few months frozen in their worry for her. She also didn't admit how far she was truly willing to go to save Baelfire; she was risking another Neverland just for him.

She scratched out a letter saying she was on her way to search for Baelfire in each of Gold's mansions. She explained briefly that Gold had given up his knife and had subsequently gone into hiding with his son. She didn't mention that they were sharing the same body. She tried to assure them that she was safe and healthy and would come back to them soon. She grit her teeth as she signed it.

In spite of her omissions, her letter would still hold them in limbo, albeit a more tolerable one. She thought of the lives her brothers could have lived. John would have been a successful lawyer with a wife and family and Michael would have found his way, too. But instead they spent a century under Pan's thumb, at his beck and call just for the tiniest sliver of hope that she would be returned to them. Now, history was repeating all over again with Pan at the centre. They were stuck again, held motionless, always in the same place. They couldn't grow into their futures. She hated Pan that he had taken that away from them and now here he was, decades later, keeping them in frozen in time again.

A cold fire burned in the pit of her stomach. She knew what he had done to her brothers. She knew what her brothers had experienced and knew how they would feel.

Pan's sins were no longer abstract, shapeless. She had witnessed them, seen her brothers bear them.

As she folded her letter, Pan snatched it from her hands. He read it and said, "Am I really so embarrassing, Wendy?" He brushed an imaginary tear away. "I thought you liked travelling with me. This breaks my heart."

"Like you have one," she retorted. She did not care to remember the sound of his heart while he had carried her to safety, wrapped in his cloak. No, it was much easier to let that cold fire burn.

The jab did not get the rise out of him that she had wanted. He instead lounged back on the bed in their room. He looked completely unfazed. She wanted to scream just looking at him.

She sent the letter despite her reservations.

The day after she sent the letter, they arrived at the first mansion. They found a respectable place to stable their horses and paid the keeper handsomely. Wendy had initially protested, but soon their boots started to get caught in the mud and when the mud had reached her shins, she decided that perhaps leaving the horses was a better idea. The lakes that surrounded the estate had bled into the surrounding terrain and made it marshy and wet.

Trekking through the marshes was less than pleasant. Rot permeated the air, clinging to her. Her feet slid on the ground underneath her as she struggled through the mud. She felt as if the area was shifting; sometimes, she was sure she had seen one stretch of land before and then other times, it seemed as if they had stumbled into a completely new area with just one step. It was disorienting and she hated the strangeness.

Gritting her teeth as she tugged her skirts through the muck, she reminded herself that at least it was not sleeting anymore.

After nearly three hours, the mansion came into view. Vines covered it and fog wafted over it. Under the vines, there were large floor-to-ceiling windows. Near-black wood made up the rest of the house. The mansion sprawled like the vines covering it, slipping and seeping into the landscapes as the lakes had. She strained her eyes as she took in the house and it felt as if the house was shifting with the fog as she looked at it. The more she tried to look at it full on, the more it seemed to change. She was exhausted from the hike, she reasoned, perhaps that's why her vision was swimming.

Pan, however, seemed unfazed. He jaunted lithely up to the front door; he was not nearly as tired from the hike as she was.

Intricate carvings of lily pads and vines and trees covered the door. It towered above Pan, more than twice his height. He reached for the large handle and tugged, but it refused to open. Cursing under his breath, he took a step back and bumped into Wendy. Without even thinking, she shoved him. He whipped around, incredulous. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Be careful where you step," she snapped. She felt like a whiny child saying it. It had been even more childish to push him. This was not the grown up Wendy she had imagined she would become.

"I thought I was the one who got scolded for acting like a child." He looked at her, still furious. She just glared back.

This time she got out of his way as he backed up. He took a running start at the door. He pushed at it with all his force behind him. His hands glowed green as he pushed and finally the doors swung open with a pop of dust.

Stepping inside, it was just as damp as the swamp outside. The air clung to her as the shadows shifted around them. On the vaulted ceilings were dozens and dozens of landscape paintings of lakes and bogs and marches. The colours were smudged, smeared across the canvas, seeping into each other.

As they stamped their muddy boots, the stomps echoed out into the house. The foyer narrowed into a single hallway that seemed to stretch on forever, with no doors or corridors. With nowhere else to turn, they began to walk down the hall in silence. After ten minutes with no change in sight, Wendy began to wonder if the manor was just one long hallway. "Where is this even going?" she wondered aloud.

Peter shrugged. "My brother is a big fan of confusing architecture."

"I meant where are we going?"

"To a library, of sorts."

He was being purposely obtuse and she wanted to scream. Pan spoke in half-answers and half-truths. He had spent nearly half a millennia manipulating people this way and she wasn't about to let him continue. She was no longer trapped on Neverland and had no patience for any of his usual antics.

"Are you going to explain yourself properly?" she demanded.

He stopped and looked at her. "I see you haven't changed," he observed. "And, no." He continued walking past her.

She threw up her hands in frustration. She wanted to shake him. "Are we at least going to look for Baelfire?"

He stopped again and looked back at her. He gestured to the windowless, doorless hallway. "Be my guest, bird," he said.

"The purpose of this is to find Baelfire. I don't want to go traipsing through these places if the purpose isn't to find him."

"You've got a one-track mind," he said, waving away her complaints as he started walking again, picking up his pace. Wendy jogged up to him and tugged on his shirt sleeve, but he continued on his way. "With this house, it's easier to get to the library first and then look."

"I don't even know what that means," she said. Her voice barely contained her rage. She was almost running to keep up with him. "This was my quest before you barged in and I won't let you take it over. Now, explain to me what you mean right now."

"You don't even know what you're saying," he said lightly. "You don't know anything about this realm. Or any other realm, for that matter. You don't know anything about magic or finding the Dark One. You can't even travel on your own without getting hypothermia and almost dying. If I let you be in charge, we'd both end up dead." He looked down at her and she got the sense that he saw her as a small, annoying pest. "So, I'll be in charge and we'll do things my way, which means that you just need to keep your mouth shut and follow me."

She sucked in a breath to curse him out until a doorway caught her eye. It was the first door she had seen. Pan rushed right past it, but Wendy paused and peered in. It looked just like a large library. The ceilings shot upwards with rows and rows and stacks and stacks of books. The room was so large that it looked like a ballroom. Light poured in from a large windows at the back and flooded onto the comfy furniture and a large grand piano. How can he have missed this? she thought.

She stepped into the library and called over her shoulder, "Pan, you missed something." She heard Pan's footsteps scrambling distantly. She had barely taken two steps into the library before Pan was trying to tug her out. She wrenched her arm away from him, furious that he would even touch her.

XXX

"Pan, you missed something," he heard Wendy call over her shoulder as she stepped into the library. Peter scrambled after her, his feet slipping on the floor. He tried desperately to tug her out of the library, but she wrenched her arm away from him.

The door slammed with a loud bang and Peter cursed.

"Fuck! Do you realize what you've just done?" He kicked at the door, but it didn't budge.

"No, I don't," she responded, her voice acidic. "You told me we were looking for a library and I found one."

"No, that's not-" Pan slammed his fist against the door and rattled the handle. "That's not the point!We're off the fucking path now." Pan leaned his head against the door and continued to curse.

This is what he had been talking about earlier. She didn't know anything about what was going on. She didn't know about the intricacies of magic or how this realm operated. She was just blundering through, pig-headed and furious, searching for that dolt she called a brother. He hated her.

He turned back and glared her down.

Her golden eyes burned defiantly as she met his gaze. She stood tall and proud. He wanted to pull his hair out just seeing the look on her face.

"You said a library of sorts. Is this not a library, of sorts?" she questioned. She pointed a finger at him. "You never told me that we were on a path or that you had any sort of plan." Her voice was raised and as she spoke, he could tell she was getting angrier and angrier with him. On Neverland, he was able to just push her fits aside. He would even poke and prod at her until she burst sometimes for fun. But just then, he did not have the time or the patience to deal with her temper.

"This mansion is a maze," he explained through gritted teeth. "The mansion shifts and-"

"That's why it looks so strange," she blurted. He rolled his eyes. She had the same grasp on magic a child would have had on world politics.

"Your observational skills are unparalleled," he commented dryly. She let out a huff and her hands curled into fists. "But yes, the house is a maze and it's constantly shifting. I was following a path that would lead to the centre. Once we got there, we would be able to actually find our way to the library."

He fixed his eyes on the shelf of books directly behind Wendy's head. He quickly walked toward them, brushing past her. He was beginning to grow tired of her. It had been much easier to deal with her when he could come and go as he pleased. It was much harder having her as his constant, angry companion.

She followed after him and caught his hand. She pulled him to face her and glowered up at him. He could smell her now. She smelled like the forest still, but with a hint of floral notes. He wouldn't admit that he liked it.

"You weren't going to tell me, were you?" It was more of a statement than a question.

"No, I wasn't," he admitted. Wendy was a big girl. She could handle being left out.

She shoved at his shoulder. Evidently, she couldn't.

"Did you think I came here without a plan? Just traipse blindly through my estranged brother's mansion?" He shook his head. She was just proving him right. "You haven't thought this through. Hell, you don't even know enough to attempt to think this through."

"You could have at least told me to keep on the fucking path," she said vehemently. Colour had risen to her cheeks and she looked like she might burst. "I'm capable."

He looked at her. Granted she was a force to be reckoned with. He wasn't too proud to admit that. But she wouldn't be able to get through this on brute force, tenacity and hope alone, like she had on Neverland. He knew she was smart. She could learn about magic. But he didn't have the patience to teach her. Nor did he care enough to teach her.

"Sure you are," he said sarcastically. He shook her off his arm and returned to the shelves. He ran his hand along the spines of the book, looking for a title that his brother might have used as the entrance to the maze. He began to toss books over his shoulder, not really caring where they fell. It felt good to fling things around.

After a few minutes, her voice came again. "Pan," she said. He ignored it. He had had enough of her for today. But she persisted, "Pan." Finally, he turned around with a retort on the tip of his tongue and stopped short. In her hand she held a small, navy, velvet bag. He didn't even have to ask. He knew what it was.

He swallowed. "Is that…?"

"We could have avoided all of this unpleasantness if you just told me anything," she said. She sounded much too proud of herself. He wanted to tell her that simply having the star was not an accomplishment. It did not make her anymore useful. A good box could have essentially done what she did. He was about to tell her this when she pulled out the star.

She held it in her hand and its silver light filled the room. It bathed the room in starling, illuminating every the darkest corners, spilling out the window. Standing in its light then, Peter wondered how he had even seen in the room before. They both stared for a moment, awestruck.

Home, was all he thought.

He struggled to keep his hands at his side. He locked his shoulders into place or else he would reach out and snatch half of his salvation.

The irony of the situation was not lost on him. They would be led on by the remnants of the realm that they had shared for more than a century, leading them to the person that lead to Wendy's imprisonment.

She frowned at the star in her hand and said darkly, "I suppose the universe has a sense of humour." Apparently, the irony was not lost on her either.

Peter straightened. "The star will lead us in the right direction to the library, but the maze is constantly changing. So, we'll have to keep up with the path it creates, or else we'll get left behind," he said the words slowly, as if she was a child. If she grew more irritated with the way he spoke, she didn't show it.

She took a deep breath and released the star. It bounded across the room and knocked into a seemingly normal wall. They followed. He pressed on the wall and a door slid open to reveal a dim tunnel, only lit by the star. He stepped in and Wendy followed. The star zipped on ahead and they raced after it, around several twists and turns. He initially worried that Wendy wouldn't be able to keep up, but she made good time and was always right by his side.

As they rounded another bend, the floor gave way underneath them and turning into a steep slope. He and Wendy both lost their footing and tumbled down the narrow slide. His hands scraped against rough stone as he groped for something to hold. Once they skidded to a stop, he pulled Wendy up and dragged her along as he followed the star. He could hear walls and floors sliding behind them as they made their way forward. He began to lose track of all the twists and turns they had taken, how long they had been in the tunnels. It was disorienting; the tunnels never looked any different from the last, all that changed was the obstacles.

Arrows whizzed past his head as they raced down a tunnel. Dropping to the floor, he began to crawl on his belly. He paused to look back to Wendy, about to bark at her to get down, but found her already crawling on her stomach just behind him. As he stared, an arrow grazed his shoulder and he yelped. Frustrated, she cursed at him and pushed him forward.

Once the arrows stopped, they sprinted a head. They ran over shifting floors and narrowly dodged crumbling walls. Every hall they turned down, every corner they rounded looked the same as the last and Peter began to wonder if they would ever get out. His chest was tight as he heaved for breath. He glanced over his shoulder and found Wendy, still by his side. Her cheeks were flushed and her hair had come out of her braid, but she was still keeping up. He begrudgingly admitted that she was doing well.

He shouldn't have been looking at her though because the next thing that he knew was happening was that he was being slammed into hard stone. He was knocked backwards and he only had a second to be stunned before Wendy was pulling him up beside her. He looked wildly at the thing he ran into and found a large, stone bear standing in front of a darkened cave that he could only guess it came out of.

The bear stood so still Peter might have fooled himself into thinking it was simply a statue. But when it breathed, stone ground against stone. The entire creature was made entirely of a smooth grey rock. It moved haltingly and without grace, each of its movements blunt and dull. Its large black eyes stared back at him, only revealing a glimmer of feral strength.

"What in the fuck?" he breathed.

The star hovered to the right of the bear, casting silver light down another tunnel. They had precious moments before it continued on without them.

The creature let out a roar and swiped furiously at the two of them, rock grinding against rock as it swung its paw. Peter stumbled back. As he steadied himself, he reach into his chest, trying to find his centre. He felt his power flow through him as he set his hands ablaze and they glowed green with his magic. He let them flare up, bright and menacing, warning the bear. His magic lashed out at the bear, a long green tendril that whipped out and curled around the bear's haunches. But it reared back and slammed down heavily into the floor and shook it off as if it was shaking away water.

His mouth went dry. It was immune to his magic. He had no control over this. He was a helpless mortal and he felt as if he might shrivel up.

He looked at Wendy and she looked back at him. Her eyes were far more steady than he felt and for a moment he did not feel so powerless. He opened his mouth to tell her the bear was charmed but the bear swiped a paw at him and he was sent him flying backwards. He smashed into the wall and crumpled in on himself, the air forced out of his lungs. He rolled over, gasping for air, trying to let out a groan.

He lay on the floor, cursing Baelfire. His nephew ha dragged him back from hell only to shove him into dangerous situations that he no longer had the power to handle. His hands weakly reached out for magic, power, control, but he found nothing. His powers had weakened, he admitted to himself. It left a bitter taste in his mouth.

Peter swore that if he ever saw that bastard Baelfire again, he'd make him pay for what he'd done.

Blearily, he lifted his head to find Wendy standing before the bear. He didn't have enough breath to tell her to fucking move. He could see her looking about frantically, her hair swishing around her shoulders. He didn't even need to see her face to know that the gears in her head were turning and churning, desperately trying to find a solution to the situation.

Resolutely, he figured he might die again. Wendy was smart, but not that smart. They were at death's door. Somewhere, in a part of his mind that wasn't writhing in pain, he was furious that he was going to die lying down, crumpled up on the floor like one of Wendy's discarded letters.

Suddenly, she stilled. He wondered what had come over her. The bear continued to stalk towards her. She let it get terrifyingly close before she burst into motion, lunging forward and sliding under the bear, her skirts flying. The bear looked around for a moment, its blank, black eyes wide. Then, it turned and gave a great roar, finding Wendy behind him, standing up. She dashed into the darkened cave. The bear bounded after her.

Peter let his head loll to the side. They truly were doomed. What in the fuck is she thinking, running into the pen? he thought. He closed his eyes. Perhaps, he could pretend death was not so near if he just didn't see the bear bounding towards him. Suddenly, he heard a deafening screech of metal grating across metal. The wall above the pen began to lower at an alarming speed. Well, now he would never get the answer to his question now that Wendy had decided to lock herself into the pen with the bear.

Just before the wall lowered to the floor, Wendy came sliding out, skidding over the stone floor. She picked herself up quickly and lunged over towards him. He barely noticed the slash on her face, presumably from the bear. She quickly pulled him onto his feet and bounded after the star. They had no time and he was far too astonished to be alive to breathlessly ask her what the hell she had just done.

They raced after the star as it zipped down the halls. Energized from her encounter with the bear, Wendy outpaced him quickly. He was too stunned to be angry with her for proving herself to be more than capable.

Suddenly, they rounded a corner that led to a bare wall. They came screeching to a halt in front of the dead end as the star hovered in place. As he caught his breath, Wendy moved forward and ran her hands along the wall, prodding. The star floated above her, casting its silver light onto her dark gold hair. Soon enough, she pressed into the right place and the wall slid aside, revealing a large room with white furniture, filled with the strange green light of the swamp. The walls flew up high, adorned with books.

Wendy turned, her hair a mess with a large slash down the side of her cheek, the shoulder of her dress torn, and gave him a triumphant glare. "I told you so."

j j j

"You seem quite angry today," Pan observed coolly as he cleaned up the gash of Wendy's cheek. It looked a lot worse than it was, having bled a lot. But Wendy had seen enough cuts and scrapes to know it would heal just fine after it was cleaned up.

He had been rather sullen after they had emerged from the tunnels into the glorious library. Evidently, he was not pleased that she had proven him wrong.

The library was the nicest one she had ever seen in her life. Green daylight from the swamp filtered in through large windows and crystal chandeliers dangled from the ceiling, twinkling in the light. The walls soared high above them, almost every one filled with books all the way up to the ceiling. Shifting paintings decorated the walls that were bare, but they didn't make her dizzy this time. Instead, she felt as if she was seeing the reflection of the world shimmer and shift in a pond.

She sat in a luxurious leather chair by a window that overlooked the tangled marsh the mansion was nestled in. Pan leaned over her and dabbed at her cut from the bear. He was not nearly as skilled as she was and his hands were not nearly as gentle.

"Yes, well, we just barely survived an extremely dangerous situation unnecessarily. All because you did not deign to share basic information with me," she told him. Her eyes flicked up to him and she glared.

He waved away her response as he stood back to consider his work. "No, no. I know that. Even before though, you were cross." He paused. "Why?"

She stared up at him, incredulous. She pushed herself out of the chair and stalked towards the window. Clenching her hands into fists so hard she was sure she was drawing blood, she glared up at the clear sky. He wanted to know why she was angry with him.

"Why would I be angry with you?" she asked. She stared hard out the window. She couldn't even look at him. Below she could see the tangles of vines and streams and moss stretch on for miles. It would have been a nice scene if she wasn't furious with him. "Pick a reason! Any reason and you would be correct!"

"No, no. There's a specific reason and it's new," he told her. She felt like tossing something at him. She hated that he was able to guess. She tried to take a deep breath. She was older now. She had lived many months without Pan. She knew that he liked to taunt and that—"Come on, bird. Don't be so dull. I'm bored."

She whipped around and glared at him. "Is this entertaining for you?"

He smiled a cat-like smile. "Of course, it is."

"I do not exist for your entertainment."

"Debatable." Oh, God. She hated him. She thought for a moment that she probably hated him the most now. And that was really saying something given how long they had known each other.

There was a long pause and she turned back to the window. She held her breath, waiting for him to break it as she glared out the window. But again, she was surprised by his silence. She glanced back at him and found him lounging the chair, observing her. The weight of his icy gaze was on her and she wanted to toss it off of her.

"I know now what you did," she said plainly. He raised a dark eyebrow at her. "My brothers' lives… I always knew they had been at the very least disrupted. But their turmoil was collateral damage on my part. You were only ever indirectly responsible." Of course, he was also still indirectly responsible for her parents' misery.

Pan nodded. "I see."

"You destroyed their lives. Kept them under your thumb for decades. They never got to live," she explained. Her voice was high. She was ready to burst, unleash the rage that had been sitting in her stomach for days.

He rolled his eyes at her. She felt like screaming, just seeing the look on his face. "They're alive. You can go back to them soon." He gave her a grin that was all teeth. "You can thank me for that."

"Fuck you," was all she could come up with.

He clicked his tongue and gave her a show of mock disappointed. "How unbecoming of you, bird."

She couldn't help herself when she burst, "How could you? How could you do that to them? They were already suffering and you came and made it worse! You strung them along for decades! And you never even told me! I thought they were dead and there they were, just hoping, wondering if I would ever come back to them. How could you?" Her breath came in short puffs and colour rose to her cheeks. Her hands were still clenched at her sides and her nails had dug in so far that they had drawn blood.

"You keep doing this," he observed. His tone was so casual he might have been commenting on the weather. "You keep acting like I'm a human and that I'll act like one. How long until it gets through your thick skull that I am not?" She glared at him. She had no words. "Do you expect me to apologize? To ask for forgiveness?"

"I don't know," she admitted. She didn't quite know why she had told him all of this. She would never expect Pan to apologize or show any remorse.

"I don't care much for what you think or feel, but thanks for the show."

She let out a growl and stalked over to the far side of the library. "I can't look at you right now!" she shouted back.

She found another leather chair amongst the stacks and flung herself into it. She was too angry to even consider sifting through the books to look for something to help Baelfire. All she did was sit in the chair and fume. She mentally listed off all the things she hated about Pan. His amorality, his callousness, his disregard to human life, his face… The list went on.

She sat and stewed until she saw him move out of the corner of her eye.

"I told you I don't want to even look at you right now," she said.

"Well, I'm bored."

She didn't respond.

"You irritate me just as much as I irritate you." She wasn't sure where the comment had come from, but she immediately turned in her chair to give him a dark look. He stood leaning casually against the stacks. He looked completely unaffected by the situation and she felt like stamping her feet like child. She hated that he always looked like that. Another thing to add to her ever-growing list.

"Yes, but one of us held the other captive for a hundred and twenty years and made their siblings work for them," she ground out, getting up out of her chair to point an accusatory finger at him. "The other just doesn't like lectures."

"You've never been on the receiving end of one of your lectures," he pointed out.

"Don't you realize all the pain you've inflicted?" she asked him, seriously.

He paused for a minute and considered. She could see the gears turning in his head as he chose his next words. "I most certainly do; I'm not stupid. I just don't care." She knew him well enough not be surprised by his answer, but for some reason she was still disappointed to hear it.

She just shook her head. "I hate you," was all she could muster.

"Yes, well, the feeling is mutual. But you're going to have to reign in your temper if we're to continue to work together," he said.

"That's another thing!" she burst. She poked him in the shoulder. "I'm no longer your captive. I'm your partner." She poked him once again and tried to hide her satisfaction when he flinched. "If we're to continue to work together, I have to be in on the plan."

He considered her coolly and then extended his hand. "Then we have an agreement. You work on your temper and I will… share things."

She considered his hand for a moment, looking at it as if it were a bug that needed to be squashed. Ultimately, she took it and ignored how surprisingly warm and strong they felt. She shook it.

"Agreed," they said in unison.