"It's that hallway," Wendy said, pointing down a long stone corridor that led deeper into the mansion. She tried to say it as confidently as possible, but if she was being honest, she wasn't so sure.
"No, it's that way." Pan pointed the opposite direction. It was almost heartening to see that he could be just as stubborn as usual after his strange display earlier that day. She had never seen Pan so unsure of himself when he had asked her about Gavin and his parenting. Pan was always so sure of himself, so suffocatingly confident that it was worrisome to see him like that.
"How do you know?" she questioned.
He gave her a sharp look. "How do you?"
Wendy rubbed at her forehead, walking towards one of the crude windows that lined the halls. She looked out it and sighed. "It's the same view as it was before," she said. "The same view as all the others." They had initially thought that perhaps the windows might help orient them, but they offered no help.
She turned back to him. "Perhaps, we should open a door."
"What makes you think that will make this any better?" he asked her.
"We should at least try," she said. "I mean what else are we going to do? Just walk in circles?"
"We know the problem we are facing right now. I do not want to literally open up a door to more problems," he said. His usual icy irritation wasn't there, but the way they spoke— it was almost normal; two partners worrying about what to do.
Her eyes landed on a door that was positioned slightly differently than the others, closer to the door to its right and farther from its left than all the other doors. It was a break in the pattern and hopefully that meant a break in the illusion. "I'm going to open that door," she declared, pointing towards it.
He slid in front of her, blocking her path. "No," he said firmly.
She glared up at him, dressed in a dark grey, nearly black cloak and a grey sweater with dark pants. Despite his obvious fatigue, the angles of his face and the blue of his eyes made her catch her breath. Now was not the time to admit it, but he was beautiful.
"You're being stubborn," he said.
"You're being stubborn," she retorted.
"I'm not the one coming up with stupid ideas." He folded his arms.
"At least I'm coming up with ideas." She held his gaze for a long time, calculating. She knew that the longer she spent calculating, the more likely he would figure out what her plan was. So she had to be quick. She lurched past him, one hand reaching for the door and the other pushing him aside. He tried to grab at her, but she was already moving, catapulting herself to the door. What ended up happening was what neither of them had planned on. Pan was unable to hold Wendy back from opening the door, and Wendy was unable to barge through the door after pushing Pan aside. Instead, Wendy careened forward and Pan grabbed onto her. His added weight made her lose her balance and they both fell forward.
Except, the fall was far too long. Air rushed past Wendy's ears as someone screamed. They hit the ground with a thud, the air forced out of her lungs as she lay on the ground, stunned and confused. The world spun, all grey with shadows. She belatedly realized it was her that was screaming as they had plummeted. After a few moments, Pan was standing up, evidently much more secure on his feet.
Wendy turned over on her back and got up. She stared up, blinking at a stone ceiling. Stone walls shot up impossibly high, meeting a lofty ceiling. If she squinted, he could see the door that they had come through far above their hands. Lower to the floor, there were several unlit oil lamps on the walls. Wendy quickly went about lighting them. They offered a pale, dreary light to the desolate room.
"I told you it was a stupid idea," he told Wendy dryly. She turned and glared at him.
"At least I was trying to fix it," she retorted.
"I would not call our situation 'fixed'," he returned.
She gave him another glare for good measure before turning to circle the room, hands running along the stone walls, cold and clammy. She circled the room once, twice before she came back to stand beside Pan. "You said that the illusions are lifelike," she said.
Pan nodded.
Wendy swept her hand around the room. "This is an illusion, isn't it?"
Pan nodded again. "I think so."
Irritation bubbled up hot in her throat. "We were never even in the mansion!"
Pan nodded once more, not nearly as angry as her and she wished that he felt the same way or even an ounce of the way she felt. She didn't want to feel so alone in her anger. "Probably."
She looked at him. "Why don't you just fly us up?"
He scoffed, a flimsy thing. "You don't know what you're talking about. My magic won't work here."
"That's complete bullshit," she said. Her swearing was getting worse these days. "I know enough to know that it definitely can. Could you be decent for a little while and just tell me the truth?"
"I'm out," he said through gritted teeth. They had cast several spells before they entered the mansion. Spells that, evidently, were useless. "I've burned through it all for right now." Admitting weakness had never been a strength of Pan's.
She took a deep breath, trying to calm the fury inside her. "Then we just have our wits." Both of them could admit that they had plenty of that.
She took off her cloak and bag and laid them both on the ground. Then she sat down cross-legged on the cloak and rifled through her bag until she found her journal that she kept her notes in. She took out a pen and then looked up at him expectantly.
He sat down.
"It's too high to climb," he told her. "You can write that down." She wrote that down and crossed it out.
"We also most certainly can't dig ourselves out," she said. She wrote that down and crossed it out, too. "Do you think he'd leave a back way out?"
Pan considered for a moment. "He does enjoy clever humans," he said. "I'd say that it would be more likely than not. Considering that the humans who are coming through here would have already been allowed into his first mansion. So he'd have already deemed them worthy."
"So would it be more of a riddle for them to solve or a back-up safety plan?" Wendy asked.
"I'd expect it would be a mixture of both," Pan said after a moment. Gold liked to toy with people. A trait that seemed to run in the family.
"It would have to be something that whoever knew Rumple would be able to think of," Wendy said. "Perhaps the stones could be a key, like press the correct ones and then get out." They both looked up and scanned the room, looking at the hundreds, if not, thousands of stones that made up the walls. "I think that would be too specific."
He nodded. "I agree." He thought for a moment. "I think it would need to be some way to break out of the illusion."
Wendy hummed in agreement. "Do you think this is part of the illusion?" she questioned, waving her arm around the room. He looked at the stone walls, the high ceiling, the small oil lamps.
"I don't know," Pan said after a long moment, "but I think so."
"Alright, then what do we know about illusions? And about breaking them?"
"They're easily to fall into," he said. He gave a short laugh and a small smile cracked through Wendy.
"To break an illusion, you generally need to be able to focus on something real, that isn't part of the illusion," Wendy murmured, half to herself as she jotted down notes.
"Or be pulled out of it," Pan added. She knew he also was thinking of their encounter with the imp.
She nodded and wrote that down, too. She wrote a couple more lines and then stopped. "I can't believe that we keep forgetting about this," she said. She rummaged through the pockets of her dress before she produced a velvet bag, pulling out the star.
She took it out of the bag and it cast a silver light over everything. It was the brightest thing in the room. The stones of the walls reflected back the light, their raw edges and uneven texture clear in its shine.
She released the star and it spun up over them. It flew high above their heads up to the ceiling and smashed into it. It bounced off the ceiling and back down to the wall on their left. It bounced off that and to the wall behind them. It continued to bump into walls and then move to another without any clear pattern. Wendy let it go for several minutes, her eyes trained on the star. Eventually, she called it to her and tucked it back into her pocket.
"My greatest desire is to get out," she said. "Not to break the illusion or solve a riddle." She shook her head, disappointed. "I think our best bet is to look for irregularities in this room. There's got to be something that isn't part of the illusion."
They both got up off the ground and moved to opposite ends of the room. They methodically examined every pebble on the floor, each stone in the wall, the specks of dust and everything else inside. They combed over each piece, examining it carefully to see if it was somehow different or out of place.
Time started to stretch on. Wendy's neck began to ache as she inspected every single little detail of the room. Her eyes began to water and with every minute stretching on before her, her chest got tighter. Her heart hammered in her chest as she combed over every stone, fingers aching for an exit.
She knew she was tired when her stomach grumbled, but she couldn't stop. She had to keep going. She didn't stop when Pan sat down against one of the walls and broke bread, even when he offered it to her and she didn't stop when she saw him nod off.
She had to get out.
XXX
Peter realized that he had fallen asleep. He only knew this because he blinked into consciousness, not remembering anything from a few moments before. There was a crick in his neck and his mouth was dry. He turned his head to look around, his neck sore.
The room was darker and he realized that some of the oil lamps had gone out. He looked around and Wendy was standing with her back to him, at the opposite end of the room, inspecting the stones in walls, running her hands along them.
He blinked blearily in the dimness. "Did the lights really go out that fast?" he asked.
Wendy didn't turn to look at him. "No, I put them out. To save the oil," she said. "I think we've been down here a long time."
"We've gotten out of worse scrapes before," he said.
She turned to look at him over her shoulder, unimpressed, and turned back to the pebbles she was inspecting.
"How long has it been?" he asked, but before she answered he knew that she didn't know either. She shrugged and continued on. "Have you eaten?" he asked. They had had lunch but he knew it was drawing into the evening now.
"No, not yet," she said, moving along the wall, crouched over the stones. Wendy wasn't still as she examined the room, flitting back and forth between the walls and her notes and the few books she still insisted on bringing.
He stood and crossed the room towards her. He bent next to her and put a tentative hand on her shoulder. She hardly seemed to notice. "Go eat and I'll take over for you," he said, trying to make his voice comforting like hers.
She waved him away. "No, I have to do this," she said.
She was full of a buzzing energy, unable to stay still for more than a moment. She got up and turned back to her notes, flipping through them so quickly he wasn't sure that she was even reading anything.
"None of this is helpful," she burst. He turned and stared at her, hair bursting out of her braids, torn out by her hands, constantly running through them. "We spent weeks working through those spells and now—all that time wasted!"
"We did what we could," he said, trying to sound calm, but Wendy's irritation and his inner turmoil was a mix he didn't really want to experience.
"We could have done more," she said, turning her angry gaze on him. "I was always telling you that—"
"What were were going to do? Produce spells that don't exist?" he demanded.
"I told you so," was all she seemed to be able to come up with before turning away again, dropping her notes back on her cloak before running her hands along the walls. He wasn't going to argue with her; Wendy liked to be right and in the state she was in, it didn't seem like a good idea to argue with that.
"Just sit down and give yourself a break for a moment," he told her from across the room.
"No, I need to keep working."
"You've exhausted one idea so sit down, eat something and let's come up with another," he said. A few months ago, before his death, it was so easy to convince almost anyone about anything. His words had been so simple, so easy and smooth to use, but now they were rough and clunky in his mouth.
She narrowed her eyes at him over her shoulder, but after a moment went and sat down by their bag, opening it up and rummaging around for their bread and cheese. She sat back and ate mechanically, chewing quickly. He had learned that even when Wendy set aside her own pride to agree with him, which wasn't often, there was still a streak of stubbornness in what she did. Yes, she would eat, but she would do it quickly.
"Don't chew so fast," he told her. She gave him a disapproving look. "Just take your mind off it for a few minutes. It'll help when you come back to it."
She humphed. "Not all of us can be so unaffected." He ground his teeth. He was feeling less and less unaffected these days.
"Just think of something else."
She shot him a look as if to say, Easier said than done.
She was silent for a couple moments before she leaned back and closed her eyes. He watched her shoulders rise and fall as she took several long, deep breaths. He tilted his head. It looked like she was trying to calm herself.
It was so strange to see. Wendy was fearless to a fault, stubbornly so. She continually threw herself into dangerous situations, but he had seen only a few short weeks ago that she could still be completely overtaken by fear. Something sickly curled in his stomach thinking that that might happen again.
"Do you think the horses will be okay without us?" she asked suddenly, eyes open now.
He held her gaze for a long moment. "The horses?"
"Yes," she said, nodding. "Do you think they'll be alright without us? It's been a while and they'll need to be fed." She tilted her head and stared up at the door they had fallen through. There was a melancholy in her voice that was hard to place. A longing, perhaps.
His initial reaction was to ask her why she was wondering about the horses at all. Who cared about the horses? They were replaceable. But staring at Wendy then, caring and lonesome, it felt cruel to say that to her. Instead, he said, "If they really wanted they could probably break off from the branches we tied them to. The branches weren't particularly thick and they're strong."
Wendy nodded, satisfied. But the peace only lasted for a moment. Her mouth turned down into a frown as she finished up the food. "All that time wasted," she said, shaking her head. "We put in so much effort and it didn't even matter."
"We can't change it now," he tried to soothe. It felt awkward and foreign, but somehow right.
"We could have done more," she lamented, ignoring him. "We should have known it wouldn't work."
He looked at her for a long moment before walking over and crouching before her. He reached out and tilted her head up so she would look at him. There it was, that melancholy, that longing that he couldn't quite place. She held his gaze, but her eyes were narrowed as he said, "We can't change the past. All we can do now is try our best." He licked his lips. "The worst that will happen is we'll have to wait through the night for my powers to come back and then we'll be out."
She said nothing, but didn't pull away.
"We've gotten out of worse scrapes before," he said. "You don't need to worry."
"I'll worry about what I like," she told him and he almost smiled. At least she still had the sense to fall back on one of her favourite refrains.
"Tell me about the book you're reading. The one I'm supposed to read next," he coaxed. He sat down next to her and offered her the water canteen. She took a swig before passing it back to him.
"You're trying to distract me," she said. It sounded like she was scolding him but there was no disapproval in her voice. If he was being honest, it sounded like banter.
"Is it working?" he asked, pulling on a grin.
"I don't want to spoil it."
"Just tell me."
"It's a romance, but there are these two characters that are juxtaposed so well," she began.
"Foils."
"Yes, they're foils to each other and one is most certainly the antagonist while the other is the protagonist and they were born into such similar places in society, but their views of family and status shape how they deal with the issues they face," she explained. "I've enjoyed it thoroughly so far."
Peter nodded. "I think I'll like it. Lots of material to argue over."
Wendy hummed in agreement and was silent for a long time. He didn't poke and prod her, instead letting her sit and think on her own. She was able to give him space to think and wrestle and he could do the same for her.
Maybe a few minutes or perhaps a few hours later, Wendy finally said, "A major part of the illusion is the buy in." He turned and considered her in the dimness. "'The illusions are lifelike'. All the spells we used were to ward off illusions that had to do with emotions and feelings, memories. Not the physical environment. Not reality. I think they key is to just not believe it. We have to reject it as the reality."
"How?" he asked.
"I think we just need to try exiting. Just walk through the wall."
Peter laughed. "You want to walk through a wall? Be my guest."
"Gold would want us to overthink, run around like chickens without heads," she said. She seemed hopeful now that she had caught onto a new idea.
He motioned to one of the walls, inviting her to take the first step. Confidently, she packed up her things and swung her cloak around her shoulders. She paused a moment and looked back at him before reaching a hand out, taking a step and—
—disappearing right through the wall.
When he had started his journey with Wendy, he might have been furious she figured out that out. But now, all he could do was laugh and clap his hands together. "Know-it-all," he chuckled.
He got up and approached a wall. He closed his eyes and imagined the sparse forest and the foothills that had surrounded the mansion. He imagined the warm breeze he had felt earlier. He took a few steps and imagined the breeze ruffling through his hair and clothes, bringing its sweet smell with it. He took a few more steps and suddenly, he felt the breeze. He opened his eyes and looked around.
It was the middle of the night, but he was in a field that he recognized. The sky was clear and the moon and stars shone down on him. The field was cast in a silvery light and everything seemed to glow. He hadn't expected to be so glad to be outside.
A few metres ahead, Wendy stood watching him, standing next to the horses. A smile was on her lips and there was light in her eyes that hadn't been there before. He joined her next to the horses and helped her untie them.
"I hadn't thought I'd be so glad to get out," he said.
She hummed in agreement before swinging up onto Ash. The melancholy and longing that had been there before was gone, the anxiety that had trembled through her was no more.
He stared up blinking at her for a few moments as realization dawned on him.
She had been afraid she was going to be trapped again.
Peter had spent all that time thinking that she was simply not afraid after he initially captured her. That little girl from London swallowed her fear and decided to bound off into Neverland, but that fear hadn't really been gone, that longing for the life she missed out on, the melancholy… it had always been there when she was on the island; she just hadn't allowed him to see it.
He had thought all this time she showed him everything, but she had kept it from him. Hidden it. But now she felt… comfortable enough to let him see just a fraction of how she had felt. A fraction of how he had made her feel.
He had done that. He had caused that anxiety. He had caused that melancholy and longing.
That sick feeling twisted again, this time all over him.
How could he have done that to her?
He should have gotten her off that island. He should never have even kidnapped her in the first place.
How could he have done that to her?
How could he?
How could he?