Funfact: working in a small-town newspaper is very BORING xD. Peter and Wendy have a hella more fun than I do!
But somehow, someway…I'm going to find my Cruella de Vil…
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It was too quiet. She couldn't even hear herself breathing. Or the sound of the door she was pushing open squeaking from aged hinges.
"It's not supposed to be silent. I know I heard noises when I came in here."
But…where is 'here'?
Wendy answered her own question when she saw the familiar setting of Mother Superior's office. Her thick magnolia desk. The shelves overflowing with old files. The half of an old metal cross—
"Wait…that's not supposed to be there…"
The chair moved. Someone was in it, and slowly turning it around.
"No, I shouldn't be here. Why am I…"
No.
Mother Superior was gawking at her in her chair, her tongue spasming as her lower jaw rotted of and landed in her lap.
With a yelp Wendy shot up, her foot flying in the air to hit the cold-water handle of the bathtub and sending her into instant awareness.
"Bloody everlasting fuck!" she screamed, struggling to gain a grip on the porcelain as her pants soaked through. She hastily turned the water off and composed her self to proper cognition as the events from last night slowly trickled back.
She glanced down her window, catching just a glimpse of Pan's back door. She wondered how he was handling their shared suspension on top of last nights truth bomb. Despite everything she had an urge to go check on him, but her pride won over. Let him grovel to her for once.
With a groan she pulled herself from her bathtub, making a mental note that she would collapse in her bed the next time she wanted to have a meltdown.
She yawned as she stripped from yesterday's clothes, leaving a trail of her misery through her living room as she felt for her tea kettle.
Yesterday's events began to replay in her mind. Wendy was holding onto a very dark secret now, one that would not doubt tear the town a part if it got out.
She wondered what she could do with such information—if she wanted to do anything with it at all. Keeping it tucked inside was the safest bet. But if Wendy had learned anything in her short time in Storybrooke, it was that secrets had a way of making their selves known.
Wendy groaned and poured her tea. She needed to let it go for now. If the revelation was destined to destroy the town, then it would be on her watch.
"Hmm." Wendy pondered. She really was becoming darker.
After a cup of tasteless tea, Wendy coerced herself to dress. Even while her brain was still on autopilot she wouldn't allow herself to lounge around all day.
She took her time going down the stairs not entirely unconvinced that there wouldn't be a mob outside her door.
Or Pan. That would be much worst but just his style.
But there was no Pan or mob awaiting her. In fact the streets were empty and foggy, the asphalt frosty from the early morning cold.
Wrapping her scarf more securely around her, she locked her door and set off towards the town, sparing a glance in the direction of Pan's flat.
No. This was his problem to fix, not hers.
She breathed in the morning air as she made her way down Storybrooke's main street. Businesses were just opening up or pajama-clad citizens were just now getting their morning papers. It warmed her stomach to see such a setting so like her London's; though most people at home didn't even know each other's last names unlike here. Such closeness produced a kind of domesticity with a thin layer of uncertainty in Wendy's mind.
Such closeness clung to the diner, the towns heart where news and gossip alike sped through there before it could even be printed.
Everyone knew her now. Her position, her name. And her recent involvement with Mother Superiors demise. She recalled her near-death experience with Cruella de Vil and how the entire town seemed to be watching her just like now. How long ago had that been? Months? Years? It seemed so long ago that Wendy couldn't even remember what the devil woman had looked like.
What had happened to her?
As she neared the tight gap between the diner, globs of her memory began to resurface. Yellow police tape. The tight gravel-filled alley that she had been held at gunpoint at.
She crept further in the alley, running her fingers across the door that had saved her from de Vil's bullet. The blood stain that had been there before—her blood at that—was gone. Washed away by rain and a quick scrub. As if she nor de Vil had ever been there.
Had they?
Wendy could almost deny that the whole thing had ever happened. It felt so long ago, and all the trauma she had been through as a result of it had just filtered out of her bloodstream.
"No," she muttered aloud. She couldn't just be over it. She'd almost died. Her father tried to take her back to London…
Edward.
Wendy grimaced at the thought of her extinguished flame. She had never liked him the way everyone expected her to, but their final words had been hard to say…even if she was having trouble remembering just what she said to him.
She shook her head and began speeding past diner, away from the memories the small space held.
She hadn't realized she'd made it to the park until she stopped at a bench in front of the dirty lake…the one she had been sitting at moments before she had heard Storybrooke's missing dogs.
A chill ran up her spine as the barks of the dogs echoed through her head. Those poor creatures had pounced her when she snuck into the dognapers truck, terrified from being snatched from their loving owners and crammed into a dark, unknown future.
Of course, Wendy knew what their future held. her throat tightened at the thought of the pregnant cocker spaniel that met her demise to the rusty end of de Vil's chainsaw.
She eased into the woods were the truck had been parked, the ghosts of the barks tangled with a phantom hum of an engine. She could see the path of broken trees the truck had created, and knew that if she went down that path what she would find.
Did she dare follow it after all she went through to heal from Cruella de Vil's torture?
It would be unwise, and stir up fear and anxiety she did not need.
Yet Wendy found herself following the trail even as the familiar town began to disappear behind her. The path felt like an entrance into a post-Armageddon dimension. Broken furniture and car shells were scattered all around, as if someone tried to set up house in the middle of a landfill.
Wendy scrunched her nose at the mess. No wonder de Vil and her goons were able to run their dog-stealing operation here. Storybrooke had dumped its trash and left.
And smack dab in the middle of the landfill was the ominous slaughter shed, ghosts of police ribbons dancing on the windows.
Wendy released a wet bark of laughter at the giant hole in the side of the shed, recalling vaguely that it had been the pilfered truck that had caused it. A detail she could have easily forgotten had it not been for the absurdity of who had rammed it into the wall to begin with.
The young journalist sighed at her delirious self. She'd been in such shock after her and Pan's rescue that she actually kissed the little bugger…and been caught by her father and ex at that!
She wondered as she caressed the smoother edges of the gap if Pan had actually been trying to save her or if he was just being reckless to add to his story. They hated each other more back then than they did now.
It was too dark to make out anything past the bent wires of the cages, but the foul smell that ventured from the shadowy depths was enough to keep Wendy's curiosity bared.
Even if moments of that day so long ago were a blur, Wendy would never be able to unseen the splatter of blood and guts that de Vil had spewed on her shoes.
She'd seen all she needed and made a quick pace back to the lake lest Cruella's vengeful spirit come after her.
Wendy felt a numbing sense of euphoria as she left the old haunt. She had had such mixed emotions the first time she stumbled upon the case. Fear. Excitement. And then afterwards, the disbelief that she had survived the entire ordeal. She couldn't even leave her home for a week because of the paranoia that came afterwards!
Now, while there was a bubble of nervousness just in the pit of her stomach, she couldn't feel the same apprehension. In fact the memory barely stirred up any feeling, as if she just watched the most subpar movie of all time.
Wendy pondered as she circled the pond if this was a sign of recovery, or one of impending boredom. How did her other misadventures compare to her first if she looked back on them?
She looked up and saw a sign declaring the entrance to Storybrooke's Firefly Hill. The journalist smile at the insane but pleasant memory from her first official story in Storybrooke.
A quick listen to the radio had led her to an unseasonal firefly migration, and right into the center of Pan's ire. But oddly enough it had ended in her favor, and a shift in her and Pan's relationship. He still treated her like dirt, but he didn't quite sneer at her as harshly as before, and he ended up saving her hide a week later.
Wendy sighed, the swaying trees around her reminding her of the time she and Pan had to flee from August Booth's deranged turkey, only to have to take shelter in the car of their rotting foe.
Her stomach flopped at the memory, and more so at the strangely sweet moment that followed between her and Pan. He allowed his walls to crack while he was spread out in her lap, and she as well revealed a bit more about herself.
Surprisingly the things she learned about Pan then, and subsequently the day to follow, weren't as terrifying as she feared they would be. Sure, he was the mysterious brother of Wendy's new possible foe, and he was an ex…something…to Jekyll and a couple of other people whom she couldn't quite place. He had a cat.
Pan was layered, she learned, and if he would stop being such an ass, she could even consider being a friend.
Weren't they friends though?
Wendy thought of the people she'd met in Storybrooke, and tried to place what each of them were.
Lily Tigress had flirted with her when they first met, but Wendy was thankful the young woman didn't push it further than that.
She could call Sydney a friend if she squinted and craned her neck. Sure, the only time they associated with one another was when Wendy and Pan had stumbled into trouble, but he respected her and looked out for her. Afterall, he had used himself as a human shield the night Jekyll's goon attacked her. Who else other than a friend would do that for her?
Tink, Felix, Astrid, August, Belle, Mr. Gold…so many faces that were a part of her story, whether good for bad.
Yet in that story, Pan was there too.
Yet Wendy couldn't place just what they were.
They hated each other more often than not, yet they worked together so well. They had built something between each other, and it was theirs alone. Maybe to everyone else it was odd and dangerous, but Wendy could tolerate it and hopefully build off it.
She returned to the edge of town and could just see the tip of the hospital roof. She gulped lightly, remembering how every single one of her adventures had led her there. Cruella, Jekyll, hell even Mother Superior.
Despite that unpleasant knowledge, she pressed forward without fear, lead there by the whispers of the past past hazy nurses and glass-eyed patients that only turned her way after she had passed them.
Only when she came at the entrance of the abandoned wing where Jekyll had performed his unholy and mysterious deeds, she found the area to be heavily guarded with police tape and warning stands not to pass.
Wendy almost rolled her eyes. Where were such precautions when she wondered in there the first time? Or when Belle was dragged down to an undeserved hell, kicking and screaming?
"Wendy?"
The pacified journalist shot around at the sound of her name, and the site she met both shocked and tickled her.
Peter Pan—who just last night had nearly framed Wendy for murder, knocked out Dr. Whale, and betrayed a slew of people—was standing in his Sunday best with a bouquet of freshly pruned flowers clutched in his hand.
"Hey." Wendy greeted as she withheld a snort.
"Hi…" Pan returned.