A/N: Hey Team!
Christmas Eve turned into Christmas Morning while I was writing this, but it was so worth it.
To all of you working off my time difference, I guess you'll get the Epilogue as a Christmas present!
Thank you all so much for the follows, favourites and reviews! I love you my readers, never forget that. =]
Enjoy! xx
Game Over
As Pan collapsed once more on the ground, he struggled to look up at Nevi.
"Why are you doing this Nevi?" he groaned. "You've got Felix. I'm sorry for casting you out but I thought you would come back! I thought you loved me!"
"I'm sorry too, Pan," Nevi smirked, "But you think that kiss meant anything? I was angry, so I kissed him to get back at you, and to know that in my heart, I wasn't the problem, you were. I wasn't incapable of being loved, you were just incapable of truly loving me."
"But I told you I loved–"
"And how meaningless were those words Pan?" Nevi laughed a slightly unhinged laugh. "One minute you said you loved me, the next you banished me."
"I waited for you. Every year, I waited for you to come back," Pan was kneeling before her pitifully, each of them trying to get out the words they needed to say."Does that mean nothing?"
"It means that you're weak, Pan," Nevi spat. "Emotions are weakness. You learnt that when you finally bought your slave. And then you had to go and fall for her, regressing once more. Now you're just a pitiful fool. And soon, you'll be a dead pitiful fool."
With those words, Nevi took her leave of Peter Pan, leaving him huddled on the floor like a lost and helpless child.
Meanwhile, Ella, Hook, Wendy and Tink had decided to go ashore, leaving Tom with the men for safekeeping. Tink's explanation was, "He's a baker, not a fighter."
"Though apparently he's quite the lover," Wendy whispered out of the corner of her mouth, gaining a large grin from Ella. She was growing to like Wendy more and more with each passing day. She really hoped that none of them died today.
"Hey Hart!" Hook threw her a canvas bag as she hopped out of the longboat. "Just in case we have to kill the spirit."
He was giving her the dreamshade.
"You'd give up on the Dark One?"
Killian shrugged, "There's more where that came from."
Apparently not then.
"She's a spirit, Killian," Ella answered, nevertheless swinging the bag over her shoulder. "I doubt any human poison is going to kill her."
"Worth a shot," he shrugged, threading an arm around her waist and kissing her lightly on the forehead in affection. "We're just waltzing into camp, then?"
"We've done it a hundred times before," Ella reminded him, before they looked at each other and clasped their fingers together, hoping beyond hope that it wouldn't be the last time they did.
xxx
"What the hell has she done to you?"
Pan looked up to see a beautiful face looking down at him anxiously. He groaned and looked down again, tired of all Nevi's games. "At least use your own face when you're torturing me, Nevara."
"I'm not Nevara, Pan," Wendy said in annoyance, reaching for him. "Let's go." But she was stopped short by the barrier that surrounded him. Eyeing the girl warily, Pan pointed to the closest of the small boxes. Wendy was quick to shatter it into a thousand pieces with the hilt of her sword and Pan breathed a sigh of relief. Wendy began to haul him up by his arm but he hissed in pain.
"Just give me a moment, Wen," he murmured before searching out his magic and trying to heal himself. It was barely there anymore. He'd used to draw it from Neverland, but he supposed, Neverland had a different master now.
"She'll be back any second," Wendy hissed as his hand glowed softly, the cuts healing way too slowly for anyone's comfort. Eventually, Peter just left it and tried to follow Wendy out of the treehouse as best as he could. They were halfway towards the beach when they felt it.
"Wendy-" Peter tried to warn her, but the damage was done, and the next second, they were up on Dead Man's Peak overlooking the entire island.
"My my," Nevi sighed. "I can't leave you alone for a second, Peter."
"Let her go, Nevi," Pan ordered, but beneath his bravado, he knew that Wendy was just as trapped as he was.
"I don't think so Pan. I think I'll leave the two of you up here while I go and finish your friends. Then I'll be back to kill you all."
xxx
"Felix!"
Ella's voice jolted him out of her reverie. She had an arrow trained at his heart and questioned him dangerously, "Where the hell is Nevara?"
"I don't know." He wasn't defiant about it either – he really didn't know. He seemed almost, tired.
"Well, you're no help then. Where's Pan?"
"He fled with Wendy," Felix answered, recalling what he'd seen. "Towards the beach."
"They never got there," Ella murmured to Hook and Tink who nodded in response. "Right, well, Felix, you're going to help us save Pan."
The boy breathed out and almost scoff-like breath.
"He hates betrayal," Felix murmured, "he won't forgive me after this."
"Won't forgive you after –" Realisation dawned on Ella and she finished, "You sided with Nevara."
Felix nodded, and in him, Ella saw the boy who had been willing to help her all those years ago before she ruined him by stabbing him in the back (well technically, stomach). But his lost eyes, this was more than misplaced loyalty.
This was misplaced love.
"He's changed, Felix," Ella murmured, leaning down to his height. "If you help us save him, he will be there for you more than Nevara ever could."
"How can you know that?"
"Because Nevara's spent 50 years trying to get revenge on Pan, and what's Pan done?"
Felix looked up at her, grey eyes clouded by sadness that lit up with hop when Ella said the next words.
"Peter Pan has spent three hundred years side by side with you; a friend, a brother, a leader. Who would you trust more?"
And Felix stood up, following them through the jungle whilst Nevi lingered on above.
xxx
"I wonder what happens to Neverland if I die?"
"Don't even think like that Peter. You aren't on your own."
"FINALLY!" Tinkerbell all but slumped onto the rock after the climb. Spotting Wendy and Pan, she practically fainted in relief.
"They're here!" she called downwards, "You can all stop acting like a bunch of lunatics now." But just as Hook, Felix and Ella were gaining their feet, Nevara appeared, right in front of the rock face before them.
"I just realised something Peter. You completely misread the signs." Nevi was laughing at him and only him. "It was never one person who would save Neverland when they got their hands on the Neverfall stone."
"But, a heart that is pure, of love –"
Nevi cut Wendy off from her researched explanation of the Neverfall Stone by crooking her finger from side to side. "Now now Wendy," the woman said in a demeaning manner, "it never read like that."
She took a step forward with each finger she put up. "One pure of heart."
Another step forward and she began to smile as she looked at the group. "One who believes."
Stopping in front of Peter Pan, she looked him dead in the eyes and said with a smirk, "And one who loves."
Her words were like a knife stabbing over and over again into Pan's heart. He'd been reading it wrong all these years. To renew Neverland wouldn't take just one person, it would take three.
And Nevi was going to kill them all to make sure that didn't happen.
xxx
Tinkerbell was broken and bleeding, her bronze blood soaking the bare rock as Wendy crawled up against the sharp rocks behind her, Nevi advancing terrifyingly. Hook jumped in front of Wendy, but Nevi pushed him aside as though he were nothing.
Lying, bruised and scraped upon the ground, Ella crawled her own damaged body over to him. She had a plan forming in her mind. And it was crazy, but if they were all going to die, it was worth a shot.
"Do you believe in me Killian?" she whispered to him, their faces less than an inch apart. Even through the pain he was holding back, she could see his love for her.
"I do," he replied softly.
"I love you," she answered simply, placing a kiss on his lips as he stared after her in wonder and horror. Nevi was using her magic to drag Ella back by the hair, sliding her across the rocky ground, but Hook, in that moment, was almost entirely overcome by the fact that Ella had just told him that he loved her.
For the first time.
It was that and only that which enabled him to crawl to his feet in agony, and begin to limp over to where Ella was being sliced open by Nevi's flora. He lay over her, covering her body with his own and Ella saw what he was doing, the understanding of her plan that had wordlessly been transmitted between the two lovers taking place as Nevi attacked them.
Ella rolled out from underneath him and crawled over to Pan, trying to shake him awake long enough to ask him…eventually he blinked open an eye.
"I'm not…dead?" he croaked.
"Do you love me?"
"Do I what?"
"Love me?" Ella repeated at a hiss, hearing Killian groan and flinching herself. "Do you love me? Or…I dunno, Wendy?"
Pan's eyes flickered to the spirit who was inflicting lash after lash on Killian's perfect body.
"You love Nevi?!" Ella hissed in shock. "You mean I'm about to be killed by your jealous lover?!"
"It's been fifty years Ella," he groaned as a particularly painful spot hit him. "I still can't forget her. Why can't I – "
"Was she your first?"
"Love?" Pan blinked, "Yeah."
"You never do forget them," Ella agreed, touching her hand to his face gently, "But you learn to move on."
Ella didn't miss the fleeting gaze that he dropped to Wendy's unconscious figure.
Before Nevi could turn on her, Killian already out cold, Ella reached for her bag, pulling out, not the dreamshade, but the other precious object that Nevara had charged her to keep safe. That crown that she had stolen from Dead Man's Cave.
"This means something to you, doesn't it Nevi? This is the Neverfall Stone."
She spirit snarled, her face distorting in anger as she leapt towards Ella. Ella sidestepped her easily before she saw Killian stirring once again. But Nevi used her moment's distraction to reach her transparent hand through Ella's chest and grasp hold of her heart before tearing her hand away as though burned.
"You," she hissed. And that was all the confirmation Ella needed to take the golden crown tightly in her hands.
"You know the one thing you never do, Nevi?" Ella looked up at her knowingly. "Leave your demise in the hands of a fairy."
Without waiting to see her reaction, Ella had the metal twisting in her hands until she could press it between her small but strong hands. She felt like there should be litres of blood flowing from her hands with the amount of exertion she was putting into it. But eventually, when Ella thought her hands could take no more, she let go.
And in the palm of her hand sat a three centimetre stone of pure gold, glowing with an aura of regeneration magic.
Felix leapt on Nevi at that point, his dagger flying with his jump to land in her back. She swayed a litte as he eyes and mouth widened in shock. "You can't-" she began before falling to her knees, blood dripping from her body. "I'm not human–"
"But you were once," Felix murmured in her ear, not quite angry, but not comforting. "And all humans have a heart."
Ella eyed Nevi dangerously as she pulled Killian's right hand and Peter's left, to sit on her own.
Killian – who believed in her.
Peter – who learned to love.
And Ella – so pure of heart that the dying spirit of Neverland couldn't even touch it.
In unison, they eyed Nevi defiantly as she tried to heal herself from the wound Felix had inflicted. But she was dying and they all knew it. Then and there, Pan muttered with finality in his voice.
"Game over, Nevi."
Then the world exploded in a shower of golden light, and as the three of them collapsed, their eyesight fading to white, Neverland's magic, darkened and broken…
Began to heal.
50 Years Ago
"Hey Nevi," Peter said, holding her in his arms as he kissed along her shoulder, happiness the solid foundation of their emotions. "I'll stay with you forever, you know."
"I know."
"Until the Spirit of Neverland dies and we grow old."
She smiled at his words. They had hundreds, even thousands of years. All that time…to be happy.