"Tink?" Wendy breaths deep, a weight falling from her chest. "I thought perhaps it was Peter I heard knocking," she admits, a lump beginning to form in her throat at the thought. Alas, the raps against the window had been too soft to be his. But Tinkerbell, she was here!
"I only just found out!" Tinkerbell tries desperately to explain but her faint voice moves too fast for Wendy to understand, she'd only just begun to learn how to speak Fairy before Tink and Peter disappeared. Fairies, as they are so little, can only spare the space in their tiny bodies to feel one emotion at a time. So it is an intense emotion, but Wendy is startled to realize she's never seen Tinkerbell react to anything with such fierce intensity. She didn't know such a small creature was capable.
"Calm yourself," Wendy soothes her, stroking her wings as she steps into the palm of her hand. She closes the window and sits cross-legged by the fire, setting Tink down on a stack of books. As she watches Tinkerbell try to regain her breath (likely lost from her hasty journey from the island) the memories of their last encounter start to become fresh in her mind, as if they'd only taken event last night. The moments were too similar to be ignored as she same panic starts slowly creeping up her spine.
Tinkerbell had come to Wendy's window in the early hours, the sky a pale dusty gray near the horizon, while Peter slept sound in the guest room next door. No one took too seriously her absence for the past week, she often ventured out into England for extended lengths of time. Wendy learned that Tinkerbell had once lived here.
This time as she comes back to the Darling house she comes not as a friend, but as a prisoner of Jas Hook, sworn enemy to Wendy's lover, Peter Pan.
"I was taken," is all Tinkerbell says. "I have two minutes to deliver a message." At this point Wendy is still struggling to understand the language of which Tink speaks, but she is shaken to her core at the sight of something she's never seen before- tears; tears on a fairy.
"Spit it out!" Wendy demands, heart beating so loud she could hear it pulsing through her ears.
"It's Peter, sometime last night, I- I-" Tinkerbell sobs. Wendy's tears spill over, and her abdomen yanks painfully. She begins to speak as though it were a written script, slowly and precisely, each word torture. With each passing second the pain in Wendy's body grows deeper. "I refused to answer Hook's questions, so I called his bluff, and he had Peter killed in his sleep. His men brought back a lock of his hair," she falls to her knees, and her light flickers, dimming as she weeps. Wendy attempts to race to his room down the hall, to confront what she hoped, to all that is holy, may not be true. But as she rises she trips on her nightgown, and takes a nasty fall.
Wendy nods for Tinkerbell to continue, unable to conjure up a possible answer from within her own imagination. She focuses on maintaining her calm, remembering how her haste costed her last time she received news about Peter. But one thing is for sure, Tinkerbell was obviously lied to that night, and Captain Hook has something bigger going on.
"I've just escaped from Hook, and Wendy all this time I was sure Peter was dead but I didn't know Peter wasn't killed after Hook separated us, I thought he'd get information and finally end it all," she covers her mouth, then takes a breath. A sob breaks from Wendy's chest suddenly at the news. Peter is alive! "All I know is that I was taken captive when I was in Neverland. Hook kept asking me about your child, he said he knew there was one but he wanted to know when you'd conceived him, where," she talks softer, thinking to herself.
"That night, after you fell and Peter came rushing into the room, I'd realized I'd played us right into Hook's deadly game. I was supposed to deliver you the message "white doves fly in the morning" though I had no idea what it meant, and as I tried to explain it all to Peter after you...went unconscious..." she stops again, trying to think of the way to explain this properly. "Somehow the words meant something to him, as soon as I said them his haste was shifted. He insisted we return to Neverland, that there was no time to explain and that he'd fill me in as soon as we'd arrived. Peter was so sure it was the only way to make sure everything would be okay."
She stomps her foot angrily. "Silly ass is so clumsy he can't speak and fly at the same time! Why he couldn't have told me what his motive was, I don't know, but I assume that's part what Hook what's to find out. Unfortunately, I don't know this because we were captured the moment we landed on Neverland shores. I don't think that was part of Peter's plan."
"Speak louder," Wendy murmurs quietly, looking dazedly into the weak morning flames as they waft away into the dust. Her initial relief at his status was quickly dimmed when she learns he's being kept prisoner, and supposedly for information about their deceased child. Thoughts revert back to her lost infant, and so the jagged hole in her heart throbs with every pulse.
"I refused to give him any information," she looks up at me for the first time, "Fairies aren't afraid to die," she states. "He knew nothing else would work so he told me he'd kill Peter, and then send me back to England so that I'd bear you the news of his death."
"He just wanted you to confirm what he didn't know for sure," Wendy voices her realization.
"That he was even here, in England."
"But if he's capable of killing Peter, why didn't he that night? What does he want?" Wendy asks, trying to avoid asking the final question: is he alive?
"I don't know, I was hoping you could tell me." She sits down and begins to think back, finally able to explain herself. "I fooled the parrot into letting me out of my confinements, and during my escape I overheard Hook telling some goons to have Peter moved to "the keep"," she explains, further informing Wendy that after a risky investigation she wasn't able to find any more information about his whereabouts, or his soon-to-be whereabouts. She was positive, though, that he wasn't being held aboard the Jolly Roger. She made sure to search the cells and Hooks private quarters before making a hasty departure towards Earth.
"I don't know Tink," Wendy sighs after a moment of consideration. "Whatever he could want with our baby doesn't matter anyway, because he's gone." She rises and buries herself beneath the thick covers of her bed, holding back tears as she tries to latch on to the hope of tomorrow, and the hope that she'll see her beloved Peter alive again.
"Perhaps it's different information he seeks," Tinkerbell suggests. "I fear it'll tear me apart from the inside if my curiosity isn't satisfied, I hate the urge to know everything," she grumbles, more to herself than to Wendy.
Wendy's mind is made up at this point.
"Well you can ask Hook tomorrow, when we go back for Peter." Tinkerbell grins widely at this and sets herself in a comfortable spot on Wendy's pillow.
"I already have a few ideas."