1A/N: Wow! Why didn't you tell me how long it's been since I've updated? I'm going to make the chapters longer, I've realized how obnoxiously short they are. hehe. So here you go!
"John? Michael?" Wendy stood in the middle of her room. She sighed. This would not be her room for much longer. Aunt Millicent wanted her to have her own room, and the fact that she ran away with her brothers did not help her case. A noise stirred from the staircase down the hall, so she hurriedly grabbed her sword from its resting place against her dollhouse. A small toy fell out, softly thudding to the floor. The husband. Her small family in the dollhouse consisted of a woman, a man, and three little children. She smiled a sad smile, thinking of her own "family." She would give anything to go back to that. Suddenly another noise erupted from the hallway, this one right outsider her door. She froze. That one moment of hesitation cost her everything. Before she could reach the window sill, her mother burst in.
"Wendy!!" she screamed. "Where have your brothers gone to?!"
She racked her mind. One little lie. Any lie would do. Anything but the truth. "She wouldn't understand if I told her the truth," she thought. Her breathing stopped. She knew what she had to do.
"Neverland."
Nightfall had laid its dark blanket over Neverland, and even the soft glow of the fairy forest could not penetrate the night. A deep sigh belonged to the dark landscape of the beautiful island as Peter lay on the clouds above it. The Lost Boys were tucked away in their house. Peter had to get out of it- he could not be around anything that reminded him of Wendy. The soft glow of the candle light. The little white lilies used as medicine cups- he even saw her in John and Michael. Hugging his legs to his chest, he wondered where she was in Neverland. She must be looking for him- that's what the note said. But as he nodded off, he thought of last night- he, once again, spent the night alone. Although the house reminded him greatly of Wendy, he knew he would be better off with the Lost Boys in the warm treehouse. As he landed softly on the ground in front of the tree, he hung his head as the glow of the candles danced around the surrounding trees.
A very shocked and confused Mrs. Darling stumbled out into the hallway while a very upset and heartbroken Wendy sat on her bed, picking at the stitches on her quilt. The hours she spent explaining to Mrs. Darling about Neverland (leaving out the kiss, of course) slipped away unnoticed. Dusk had crawled over the horizon and the sky, now cleared and was dimpled with diamonds. They illuminated the snow that had settled over London. She sighed. Looking out the window, Wendy realized she would never fly over the London landscape again. Once the window was barred, not even a fly would be able to get through, let alone a boy. Wendy had not known that John and Michael were in Neverland. But she told her mother she assumed that was where they were. Peter had flown to Neverland to find her, her brothers and the lost boys following him. What would happen to them? Wendy was to move out to the room across the hall now that her mother had heard about Neverland. John and Michael would probably grow up as proper English gentlemen once they came home and Wendy, a woman. She couldn't stand the thought of a corset, makeup, the stifling lessons of etiquette. When she was with Peter, she felt perfect. Like where she belonged. A new room, in a corset, with a cup of tea in front of her- all places she knew she didn't belong. The stars glittered, trying to cheer her up, as she pulled on her crisp white nightgown. Wendy tortuously crawled into her bed and slipped under her quilt for the very last time. The last thing she remembered before falling asleep in her former room was the sky painted over her bed, and how she longed to badly to travel amongst the clouds once more with Peter.
"Peter! Peter! Look what we found!" The lost boys and John and Michael burst into the dimly lit house, allowing fingers of light to touch Peter's face as he awoke. The little pool of wax that was once a candle no longer illuminated the room. For a moment, he wondered what John and Michael were doing in Neverland- the sleep had clouded his mind. Then it hit him- Wendy. How could he have forgotten her?
"Did you find her? Did you find Wendy?" With his excited questions, Peter instantly jumped out of bed, the cloud of sleep evaporating in his mind. But it was not Wendy they had found. Another girl stood at the bottom of the tunnel to the treehouse.
"This is a girl we found wandering the fairy forests. She calls herself Misty... short for Mysterious, we presumed. She has not uttered a word except her name since we captured her. Shall we KILL HER?" Nibs asked, unusually wordy for once. Peter assumed that having a mother and a real home had opened him up. But opposite Nibs, Peter could not utter a word. Only one, the same one only the girl had.
"Misty."
"No, no, Wendy. Back straight! Stomach in! Careful now. Careful!" Aunt Millicent ordered. But the book that rested atop Wendy's head, for the umpteenth time, toppled to the ground, landing opened on the floor. Looking up to the ceiling of her new room, the emptiness of it glared back at her like two glowing green cat eyes in the dark of night. The hollow feeling in her heart deepened as she longed for the freedom she felt as she looked up at the old painted sky. A deep sigh brought her back to reality- in other words, reality was Aunt Millicent lecturing her about how important posture is. Wendy picked up the book and placed it on her head again.
"Keep a straight back. No, not like that. Here, pull your stomach in here," she placed one of her hands on Wendy's newly-corseted waist, "and pull yourself up through your spine. Yes," she commented as Wendy corrected herself, "yes. Now let's try again." Wendy, once again, with her new straightened posture and the book balanced, she wobbled around her new room. She surveyed the emptiness of the room for the thousandth time, half expecting it all to reappear- the doll house, the window. She missed it all. However, her thoughts were interrupted as that blasted book fell, once again, and the orders were reiterated.
An hour later, after her tea lesson with Mother and the ladies of the neighborhood, Wendy sat at her vanity. The reflection look back at her. A scowl crossed her face, then anger, then sadness. What had she become? Her wild waves were tightly twisted into a bun, complete with jeweled combs. A once-free figure had been restrained into a mixture of fabric and metal. If Peter saw her right now... no. She must stop thinking about him. He's probably forgotten about my by now, she though. He was always forgetting things, only remembering important concepts. A smile crept across her face, taking note he never forgot her all the time she was in Neverland... no!! I'm doing it again, scolding herself for such nonsense. Another scowl crossed her face as she realized Aunt Millicent was rubbing off on her- that's something she would say.
A sigh escaped her tightly-pressed lungs. She knew she could not live both worlds- inside a stuffy room and outside, flying past the moon.
A/N: Well! Did you like it? Much longer, eh? So I left the Peter perspective on a cliffhanger... teehee! Misty will become a major character, but I'm still deciding whether I want to spend time explaining her's and Peter's past together. I'll update sooner and more often, promise!