Wendy hadn't gotten through any of her readings that day. Not anywhere close.
She had harshly assured Pan that she could easily get through the Ozabras and Mizor texts before lunch when he offered to split them, but it was nearing noon and she had hardly gotten through a hundred pages.
She was too busy starting daggers at Peter Pan's head.
Whether or not he knew she was glaring at him was something she had decided not to worry about in the last few weeks.
She most certainly had not been subtle about it and Pan was far from stupid.
"Alright," Pan said, stretching with the elegance of a cat in his chair, "let's break for lunch." He stood without waiting for her response and crouched down to their food bag. Surrounding them were towers of books, held in dark wooden shelves. They were seated at a small table by the fireplace, so small that it groaned under the weight of all the spell books. The library was richly carpeted and tapestried, cushioning them from the cold stone walls. Outside, the sky was grey, threatening sleet and rain. Winter was fast approaching and the weather made it clear what was on the way.
Pan returned to the table a moment later with a meagre spread of bread and cheese. He went to the fire and placed a portable kettle over it, a purchase Wendy had made the week before, hoping to aggravate Pan with her spending, but he had welcomed the impulse buy instead, infuriatingly.
Most of her attempts to get any sort of rise out of Pan these days backfired.
In the weeks leading up to their encounter with the Cloak of the Fates, Wendy had thought she had seen Pan at his most broody, but evidently that had been nothing. He wasn't callous or mean; he was just distant and not even purposely so. From what she could tell, he didn't seem to sleep anymore and had grown accustomed to the constant exhaustion. The circles under his eyes had grown even darker and he now had a scratchy dark beard forming (which Wendy would absolutely not admit made him even more handsome). He didn't talk much anymore and the long, winding conversations about Gavin and novels and spells had disappeared completely.
If she hadn't been so furious with him, she might have been heartbroken over the development.
He pushed over her slices of bread and cheese and sat down to his own. He took out one of her novels and began to read, laying the book open over an already open spell book. She continued to stare daggers at him, furious that he seemed content just to languish in the silence.
Once lunch was finished, he packed up his food and then turned to her.
"You've barely eaten anything," he said, voice even. He squinted and looked at her book. "Or read anything."
"Worry about yourself," she snapped.
He rolled his eyes and went back to his book.
She wasn't even sure why she acted like this. She didn't even want to act like this. It just… descended on her and it hadn't left.
The morning after she rescued Pan in his drunkenness, Wendy had woken up in an empty bed; the spot where Peter had laid was cold. She had sat up abruptly, a lump in her throat. He had told her he didn't want the star anymore. Perhaps, he had slipped out in the night, their deal broken.
She had sat in the bed for a few moments, trying to breathe through the terror, the gaping hole in her chest steadily growing. Curling her hands into fists, she decided that he wouldn't get to make that decision alone; she would have a say in whether or not he took off. She threw back the covers and stalked to the bathroom to prepare to leave only to find Pan, hungover, passed out on the bathroom floor.
She stared at him, heart beat slowing. She leaned against the doorjamb and sighed. He hadn't left her. The lump in her throat had evaporated and the rapidly expanding hole in her chest had disappeared. She took one step forward, ready to wake him up and bring him back to bed and then, she saw herself.
What was she about to do? Crouch beside Pan, brush the hair from his face and gently wake him up? Make him drink some water, perhaps brush his teeth, before leading him back into her bed, where he could sleep off the hangover he had created to avoid what he had seen? What the hell was she about to do?
She recoiled back into the bedroom and sat down heavily on the bed. Pan had seen all he had done the day before. And in response, he had gotten ridiculously drunk to avoid facing it head on. Sure, he felt remorse, but only because the Cloak had dragged him, unwillingly, through everything he had done. And then what, he crawled into her bed because he couldn't deal with it? He wanted her to comfort him after all he had done, done to the Lost Boys, to his brother, to her?
Fuck that.
She was going to boil over. She had to do something. She stood abruptly and dressed quickly. She grabbed their bags from around the room and began to pack. She folded and shoved and tossed angrily, but the fury didn't leave her.
Behind her, the door creaked and without a second thought, she knew Pan was awake. "You don't have to tiptoe," she said tersely over her shoulder, "I'm awake."
The door swung fully open and she heard Pan's feet on the wooden floor. "Get dressed quickly," she said, pointing at his bag. "You need to go find Philipe before we leave."
She was glad when he didn't respond, simply went back into the washroom to change. When he exited, she told herself that she wouldn't even look at him, but the need to see him overwhelmed her and she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye.
Heat flooded through her. Some stupid part of her brain, perhaps the monkey or lizard part of it, told her she needed to touch him, that it would feel very good if she did and that if she didn't soon, she may die.
She clenched her hands into fists so hard that she knew she had left finger marks on her palms. She held her breath, waiting for him to leave until she let it out in one angry, "Fuck."
Like some overdramatic teenager, she threw herself back onto the bed, cursing.
She couldn't acknowledger her feelings out of the corner of her eye anymore. They welled up in her and threatened to burst. They weren't shapeless anymore, some amorphous faraway reality. They were turbulent, crashing waves that were going to flood out of her at any moment.
For the first time, she didn't think about the injustices that had been done to her brothers or how her feelings towards Pan would affect them. No. She remembered, believed, that her life was her own.
He had snatched her life from her.
She wanted him to suffer. She wanted him to feel all the hurt he had caused her. She wanted him to feel what it had been like to be ripped away from her family, to have all she loved taken from her. She wanted—
—him.
She wanted him to touch her. She wanted him by her side in libraries, bantering across the table at her, in her bed. She wanted his laugh and his mind and his body.
She had covered her face with her hands and groaned.
She was furious.
With him. With herself. With this entire situation.
Ever since then, she had no fucking clue what she was doing with Pan. There was something roiling in her, warlike, but desperate for peace. And so, because of that, she ended up just acting like a huge bitch.
She sighed, resting her chin on her hand and nibbled at the cheese. It was tasteless in her mouth as she chewed. The silences weren't uncomfortable, far from it. It was easy to exist across from Peter. It was just infuriating that this was the existence they had ended up with.
With lunch half-finished, she began to attempt to read through the spells. She tried her best to concentrate, the familiar pressure of saving Neal pressing on her. Soon, she was sucked into the word of metaphors and similes, word choice and illusions. Before she knew it, the room was cast in a cold, blue light.
As the room grew darker, Pan waved his hand and a piping hot bowl of stew was in front of her. He set the kettle to boil again and they shared another silent meal that she hated.
Pan stood and poured two steaming cups of hot water and added the tea. He turned back from the fire and passed a cup across to her.
"I didn't ask for this," she blurted, her voice sounding harsh and foreign.
He stopped, still leaning over the table. She was pulled into her gaze, the way she imagined the moon was pulled into the earth's gravity. His eyes were still cool, unnaturally blue, but they looked miserable in that moment and she wanted desperately to take back all her words.
She had been trying her hand at being cruel lately and it had been awful.
Once he had left to retrieve Philipe that day, she had practiced lines in front of the mirror, not entirely sure why she needed to prepare. She then went downstairs and checked out. She waited for Pan by the stables, the bags at her feet.
He had returned with Philipe in tow and she pretended she didn't noticed that his eyes were puffy and his nose was red. She stood abruptly and held out her bags to him.
He had paused, looking at what she wasn't giving him.
"Philipe usually carries the book bags," he said.
"You don't want the star anymore," she said quickly. "There's nothing keeping us together." She had practiced that line in front of the mirror so many times, but her heart had still thudded in her chest and her fingers shook.
Pan straightened, his mouth twisting into a firm line, eyes cold.
"The terms of our deal are changing," she continued, hating the words coming out of her mouth. "It's only logical."
"I don't know why you're being so careful with your words when we both know what you're ignoring," he said tightly.
She squared her shoulders and remained silent. She didn't have a practiced line to respond with.
He took the bags from her and tossed them at Philipe's hooves before brushing passed her into the stables. He returned a moment later with the book bags and tied them up to Philipe and then attached the rest of his bags. He swung up ono the horse and looked down at her and said in a cool voice, "I'm not leaving you."
Looking up at him then, she wondered if he had any idea what those words did to her.
It wasn't the grand confession of love she had read about it books or the one she had imagined for herself in daydreams; it wasn't even a confession of love. But it had the same gravity to it, the same deep meaning. She had imagined that when this happened to her, she would have been elated. She hadn't thought that it would have shredded her heart into pieces.
She turned quickly into the stables and returned atop Ash, quickly falling into step with Pan along the path leading away from town. Drying, brown fields stretched out before them, naked trees bending in the harsh wind that followed them everywhere.
Once the town was just a smudge on the horizon behind them, Pan said without looking back at her, "If you're ashamed, you don't need to pull stunts like that."
"I'm—"
"Lying isn't a good look on you, bird," he said, his voice flat, still looking ahead.
Except she wasn't lying; she wasn't ashamed. She was furious.
"Cruelty isn't either," he continued. He shook his head. "Really, kicking a man when he's down."
She snorted. "Kicking a monster when he's down." The words tumbled out of her mouth, pushed out by the agony inside her.
Pan flinched, pulling on Philipe's reins. This time he turned and instead of the icy glare she had become so familiar with, he just looked miserable.
His eyes were a clear blue, sad and deep. His mouth wasn't twisted into a sneer or a frown, it hung open, as if he had been slapped across the face.
She wanted desperately to swallow up her words in that moment, but they were already there, festering.
It was exactly how she felt now, staring at Pan from across the table, a cup of tea a border between them.
Cruelty didn't suit her, she knew, but she kept stumbling into it, pulled by her anger.
"I— thank you," she finally murmured.
Pan gave her a wary look before sitting down in his chair.
"I'm having trouble with the Mizor text," she said, words halting and awkward. She wasn't really. It had been many months since she had truly struggled with a text, but she was grasping at straws now.
Pan eyed her cautiously, and she was quite sure that he knew she wasn't actually having trouble with it. After all, lying isn't a good look on you, bird.
Pan stood from his side of the table and rounded the corners, coming to sit beside her. He was close enough now that she could feel the heat of his body, smell the pine and mint scent. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye as he leaned over the book and began to explain the context that Mizor had been living in when he wrote his spells, falling into the comfort of wizards and history.
Peter distantly realized, as the words came out of Wendy's mouth, that it had been a long time since he had been hurt. Well, emotionally, at least.
Kicking a monster when he's down, still hung in the air around them.
The words clawed at him, crawling their way up his body and latching onto his throat, suffocating him. He forgot what it felt like to breath for one, two, three heartbeats before Wendy turned her burning gaze from him and pulled ahead of him on Ash.
He was left blinking back tears as he remained stalled on Philipe.
Wendy had a sharp tongue and even sharper mind. He had often mused that she could have become a fearsome Queen of Neverland if she had been so inclined. He could have imagined her verbally lashing enemies until they cowered in their boots. Even when he was on the end of one of her sermons, he had to admit, she was cutting. But this hurt.
He hadn't expected it to hurt. Hadn't even expected that she might say something so cruel. Because that was always kept his musings musings and not aspirations. Wendy wasn't cruel. She was hot-tempered and could fly into terrifying rages, but Wendy was never cruel.
He had figured she was ashamed that she had allowed him into her bed the night before (probably bemoaning how her brothers might disapprove), but that flash in her eye, the sharpness in her voice. He hadn't heard that tone from her in years, decades. The last time she had looked at him like that she had been on Skull Rock.
It seemed that the past had been dredged up for Wendy, too.
Something cold struck the centre of his chest. He didn't want the relationship he had with Wendy back then; when he was her captor and jailor and she was his prisoner and plaything. He wasn't that thing anymore. He was more now. More of what he wasn't sure, but he didn't want to go back to how things had been in the very beginning. He couldn't tolerate that kind of animosity from Wendy.
Not now, when things were crumbling.
Over the last few weeks, foothills had given rolling hills and then the comforting swell of the land had turned flat. In every direction, the land stretched out, straight towards the horizon where the land met the sky. Peter knew that in the summer, the fields were full of deep golden yellows and vibrant, lush greens that met the bright blue sky. Now, though, the sky was grey and the land were full of half-frozen soil, brown and dull. But at night, the sky was clear, a deep colour that Peter had never been able to decide if it was blue or purple, filled with blinking stars and milky tendrils of faraway galaxies.
When he went out recruiting, he used to look up to those skies, proud and triumphant. They were his kingdom after all and glory and adoration awaited him in that deep, dark expanse. Looking out at it now, stretched out like a cat in a leather chair before a library window at one of Gold's mansions, the infinite darkness did not make him feel victorious; it made him feel small and mortal, a blip in the cosmos.
Coffee steamed on the window sill, its sharp, bright smell bringing him back to Earth. He reached for the mug and blew on the coffee once before taking a scalding gulp. He let the coffee scorch through him.
His coffee intake had skyrocketed as of late, not unsurprisingly. The day he had touched the Cloak of the Fates, part of the reason he had gotten so drunk wasn't just to avoid his waking thoughts, but to also send him off into a sleep so black, so deep, that nothing could reach him there. But he couldn't be drunk all the time now. So instead, he tried his best to stay awake, trading sleep with nightmares he couldn't control for sleepless nights with thoughts he could try to keep at bay.
It didn't really work. And he wasn't entirely sure he wanted it to.
Getting trapped in memories, mired with shame and guilt, was a small penance he could pay, but he wasn't quite ready to accept it all, to let everything he had done consume him.
He spent his nights sifting through memories, thinking of Lost Boys who he hadn't even thought of in decades. He walked himself through his time in Neverland, slogging through every day, letting the horror seep into him.
It left him cold and sick to his stomach. He wanted to turn away, to find solace, but there was none. Wendy was no longer sympathetic to him and although it stung that she no longer gifted him with any warm, he knew it was fair. She was one of his victims, after all.
When the sun would finally creep up into the sky, he would find himself, bleary-eyed and uncomfortable. There were chunks of times he couldn't remember each night and figured that he had had at least a few hours of sleep. He would wash himself and change his clothes. He couldn't be bothered to shave anymore and his hair was growing shaggy now. He would then share a tense breakfast with Wendy where she would glower at him and he would try to act like he didn't see it, even though it pierced something inside him. They would ride or research. Whatever the activity, he tried his best at it; half-penance, half-distraction. Now that there was no end goal in sight, he simply just… tried. Baelfire was also his victim, he could try to at least undo the mess the idiot had gotten himself into. Then, with terse words, Wendy would go to bed and he would repeat his night time routine all over again.
He wasn't sure how long he could keep this up, but the future wasn't something he wanted to dwell on much. Just get from one moment to the next was all he could do.
He took another swig of his coffee and this time it burned less.
He propped his head on his fist and let his eyes rove across the sky. He watched the stars flicker and blink, turning back to a time when he was proud to live amongst them. Time must have passed as he slipped into the past because the next sip of his coffee was cold. He spat it back into the cup, undignified but uncaring. He couldn't tolerate cold coffee.
"That is one of the most unbecoming things I have ever seen you do."
Peter whipped his head around to find the silhouette of Wendy sanding amongst the stacks of books to his right. He couldn't quite make her out, her features dim in the silvery light of the library, but it was clear she was wearing her robe and pajamas, her hair in braids.
He must really be losing it if he hadn't heard her enter.
"What are you doing up?"
She lifted her chin. "What are you doing up?"
He touched the side of his mug, the coffee boiled for a moment and then calmed, curling tendrils of steam tickling his face. "I asked you first, bird."
She huffed. "You weren't in your room."
He quirked an eyebrow he was sure she couldn't see. What was she doing in his room? Better yet, what was she doing looking for him? For a brief moment, he wondered if she felt about him the same way he felt about her, itching to be near him, desperate to have him in her sight, unsettled when he wasn't around. He quickly brushed that off; no, he was pretty sure that was not how Wendy felt about him these days.
"Snooping in my room. I think that's rather unbecoming."
She let out a sharp breath, not exactly a hiss. "I was not snooping. You— I was—" She let out a frustrated growl. "You don't sleep enough. I was checking to see if you were in bed, but instead you're wallowing in self-pity here, risking—"
"I'm not wallowing in self-pity," he said sharply. Pity was not something he felt much of these days; guilt, shame, regret, yes to all of those. But he did not pity himself. He was the cause of all of this and he wouldn't pretend he wasn't. "Don't act like you know what goes on inside my head," he bit out. "You get to be as angry as you—"
"Oh, thank you so much for allowing me to be angry," Wendy nearly shouted. She mocked a deep curtsey. "The great and powerful Peter Pan, King of Neverland, has allowed me to feel angry. What a gift, what a blessing." She bowed a couple more times for emphasis.
"If you're determined to misunderstand me, you can leave," he said, grasping at the icy voice he knew she hated. He may have missed her almost desperately, but it didn't mean he had to tolerate her cruelty. "You know where the door is."
Wendy stood still for a moment, clearly contemplating what to do. A slammed door would have made for a classic, furious Wendy exit, but Wendy wasn't just angry then. She stood for a moment before taking several strides to fill the space between them. He watched her with furrowed eyebrows until she was standing above him, glowering. He could now see her face clearly, so twisted up it was barely recognizable.
His blood turned to ice looking at her then. He sucked in a breath to try and grasp at something to calm her, but before he had let out one word she had reached across them and grabbed his mug. She held it for a moment before hurling down across the library. It shattered distantly.
"I hate you," she cursed, her voice raw and torn. She had said this countless times before, but this time, the weight of what it meant crashed down on Peter as he stared at her, silent, shocked.
She looked down at him and for a second, she wavered; her lower lip trembled and she let out a small gasp. He felt himself lurch forward to touch her, to comfort her, do something, but the look was gone before he could do anything.
She turned quickly on her heel and swept out of the library and, characteristically, slammed the door behind her.
After a long moment, Peter finally let out the breath he had been holding. Except, it wasn't a breath. It wasn't even a gasp. It was a sob, raw and loud, ripping its way up his throat. He leaned forward and put his head in his hands and sobbed.