Wendy inhaled, wanting to tell him in a rush of words who she was and what she meant to him but the look on his face stopped her. He appeared no older or younger than the Peter she knew but his eyes were so different. There was none of the calculation, none of the sense that he was plotting something cruel for his own amusement. There wasn't any of the intense greed in his eyes for her, just a gleam of confused interest. However he did not have young eyes, even now, but he was not yet weighed down by the passing of the years. But he was Peter and his eyes sparkled with triumphant giddiness.

He clearly liked that kiss.

"I…my name is Wendy and I – oh this is so strange!" she said and couldn't stop herself from hugging him again. He fluttered his hands over her back before curling them into fists in the grass by their knees.

"I don't understand what is happening but are you okay?" he looked across at Felix, who was groaning in the grass. Peter's green eyes flashed dangerously and there was the lover she knew. Peter attacking Felix was so bizarre that she almost felt like laughing but she looked up at the cottage as candle light spilled onto the lane all laughter died in her throat. Her brothers were at the window and they could see Peter.

"Oh god, no! You have to run!" she urged and jumped to her feet, dragging him up with her. He was not dressed in his usual green but in a white, thickly woven shirt, brown breeches and knee high lace up boots. His hair was a little longer, curling over his forehead. He was just as breathtaking. He blinked at her, his jaw set.

"Run? From who?" he asked with a touch of arrogance but Wendy ignored him and pulled on his hand.

"Come on or they'll kill you!" she shouted and she could hear him scoff behind her but he followed, his hand in hers. Behind she could hear her name being yelled and she ran harder. Peter looked back and seeing the intense look of rage on the men who were pursing them his disbelief faded and he quickened his pace, out racing Wendy until he was the one dragging her. She was lagging, breath sucked in and out in short bursts.

"I don't understand? Who are they? What do they want?" he pulled her into the trees, his movements sure and there was giddy grin stretching his mouth. He knew where he was going but Wendy had no clue and neither would the men.

"I – I can't explain but you just have to – to trust me," she panted, sweat running down her face and he stared at her in confusion. He skidded to a stop at the top of a slope and Wendy collided with him. She leaned against his side for support and he gazed down at her.

"Are you unwell?"

"…something like that," she said hoarsely and saw below a wooden bridge arcing over a river. The River Fleet. They just had to get to the bottom of the incline and hide. Wendy took a step and her legs buckled under her and she slipped over the edge. She felt his fingers grasp at her dress, skimming the material but he was not quick enough. She rolled down the slope, hitting roots and rocks and skinning her hands and knees before she grabbed onto a tree and stopped. Peter was at her side a second later, eyes wide and he pulled her up.

"Are you hurt?"

"Just my pride," she winced, showing him her scrapped hand and seeing that she was not badly injured his lips started to twitch and Wendy narrowed her eyes at him dangerously.

"Forgive me," he laughed and she rolled her eyes.

"Something's never change, you're still terrible."

"What?"

But she could not explain because the sound of her brothers shouting echoed through the trees, coming closer. Peter grabbed her wrist, avoiding her hand, and pulled her under the bridge and they crouched down. Peter gazed at her and Wendy smiled, feeling strangely shy at his searching gaze. She knew every pane of his face, the feel of him under her fingers but he was now seeing her for the very first time.

"Wendy…" he said quietly, tasting the name on his tongue. "That's an peculiar name."

"I suppose so," she replied offhandedly, straining to listen but froze when his fingers touched her cheek. She was flushing and she knew that she would not last much longer. The running had taken the last of her strength away.

"Why did you kiss me?" his eyes flickered to her mouth and Wendy bit her lip. What could she say? She could not tell him the whole truth, she felt that would be unwise but then a thought crawled into her mind.

He will not remember any of this…Wendy gazed at him sadly, staring deeply into his eyes and spoke softly. "Because I love you."

He inhaled an almost inaudible gasp and blinked but he did not have time to respond as someone suddenly appeared under the bridge. It was Felix and at the sight of him Peter tensed, poised to spring but Wendy grabbed his arm and moved in front of the blonde boy.

"Stop! He's your friend."

"My what?" he asked incredulously, staring at Felix who was wearing a matching expression. But Felix quickly shifted into action and addressed Peter in the same tone of respect he always had.

"I think I managed to lead them away from you."

"Those men? Why would you do that?" Peter asked, narrowing his eyes at Felix. It was a fair question, after all he had just punched him in the face. Wendy became aware that Peter still had his hand ringed around her wrist protectively.

"It's what I do," Felix responded dryly and flicked his gaze to Wendy. "You need to go back, you have to," he said and glanced at Peter, inferring his meaning. Wendy straightened, chin lifting.

"I don't have to do anything," she said but the words came out in a strangled gasp. Her heart was palpitating horribly and her vision was starting to swim. Felix made a noise of frustration and moved towards her but Peter tensed. Felix moved back slowly.

"She's sick and if I don't take her back home she'll die," he explained for Peter's benefit, who gazed at Wendy's pale face in concern.

"Is that true?"

"It is," Felix answered as Wendy nodded weakly. "I brought some water from Neverland with me but its back there." He motioned his head towards the cottage, where the flask was.

At the mention of the island Peter became very still and something guarded came over his face. Wendy had seen the look before when he felt threatened or was unpleasantly surprised. He looked between Felix and Wendy with a gaze that was brimming with concealed unease.

"You're both from Neverland?"

"You – you know it?" Wendy asked and he looked into her eyes. It was a searching look, one she had been on the receiving end of many times. Finally he nodded, swallowing.

"It's my island," he stressed and something possessive flashed into his gaze and it was terribly bitter. "It was mine for years but…" he trailed off, his gaze unfocused and haunted.

"You left, you wanted to go home" Felix offered gently and Peter looked up as Felix speared him with a proud look. "But Neverland is and always will be yours and there are people who will always be loyal to you. Me."

At these words Peter straightened and the seeds of his destructive fate took root. He stared at Felix's unwavering, faithful gaze and Wendy's loving but sick face and he seemed to bask in it. Wendy watched the subtle change come over his face with a sense of laden doom but she could do nothing to stop it. She reached for him but it hurt to move. Her eyes rolled back and she just had the impression of Peter leaning forward to catch her before she fainted.

Felix agreed to go back for the flask as Peter stayed under the bridge with Wendy. If they took her back there would be a greater risk of them being caught by her brothers. Her head rested in his lap and he brushed her face with a damp neckerchief. She was feverish and he could feel the heat of it radiating off her. The last hour had been a rush of surprises and impending danger, too much to take in, but now he contemplated the girl below him.

She loves me?

Maybe she was addled, and the boy Felix, but there was something in their gazes that told him otherwise. He had been used and tricked so completely once that he regards any acts of kindness or love with a critical eye but it felt different now. She was different. The kiss they had shared had ignited a response in him, something intense and almost frightening in its scope but it was strangely familiar.

It's what I feel for Neverland.

Whoever she was Wendy was his and like everything he cherishes he holds onto it with an iron grip because someone or thing would indefinitely try to snatch it away from him. He ran the back of his fingers down her cheek experimentally and her eyes fluttered open.

"Peter?" she croaked and he leaned over her with a smile.

"Yes, it's me. Felix has gone back for the flask."

She nodded and grimaced. On her arm was a spider web of black poison and it was that sight that settled his doubts. It was clearly Dreamshade but how she had been poisoned with it he could not say. He had been careful to keep it contained and had made absolutely sure that none of it got off the island.

What if it's her? What if it's Blue? The thought slices through his mind sharply and his stomach rolls with fear and hate. The fairy was the root of all his troubles and so his paranoid thoughts turned to her swiftly.

"Talk to me," she muttered and Peter blinked, pulled away from his dark thoughts.

"About what?" he asked gently.

"You…yourself. Your mother," she breathed and he grew tense, staring down at her sick face.

"My mother…?"

"I know…you don't like to but – but if I'm going to die -"

"You're not going to die," he whispered, a stab of pain shooting through him. It surprised him in its intensity. She had run with him, knowing full well that she would likely die just so he would be safe. She was a stranger but he felt he knew her, had always known her. Who was this girl and what was she doing to him? He had just met her and he already felt half in love. Wendy smiled below him and he wanted to kiss her again.

"Okay…but tell me, please. You – you remember?"

"…Yes," as if he could ever forget that nightmare of his early childhood. Why on earth would she want to know? "It's not for the faint hearted."

"I can take it," she said, opening her eyes and he believed her. There was something about her that was also reflected in him. She was older than she looked, her eyes too experienced, too haunted for a young woman.

"Are you like me?" he asked without meaning to and he did not want to sound so desperate but he could not take it back. For years he had been alone and it had ate at him but if she even knew an inkling of that feeling? She smiled again and the ghost in her eyes shone.

"Oh, a little…if it hurts you don't have to," she said faintly, quietly suffering in his arms and he felt mortified. She was dying and this was her request, as personal and odd as it was.

"If you wish it," he said and on impulse he kissed her forehead. Her skin burned his lips and he felt a flare of rage at the illness inside, wishing he could conquer it for her. He looked up for Felix but he was still miles away.

"Begin," she instructed, like some queen at court and he smirked.

"…Do you believe in magic?" it was a dangerous question to ask. Fear of witchcraft, being accused of it, could get you imprisoned or worse but it was the root of his tale. To his surprise Wendy smiled in amusement.

"I do."

"In fairies?"

"I do, I do."

"So did my mother," he said and the smile on her lips died. "She was younger than you when she gave birth to me, no more than a child herself…there was no father, he was never mentioned and if I tried to ask she would cry," Peter swallowed, gaze becoming unfocused. "I was a peculiar baby, according to the sisters; the two women who live in the cottage back there," he clarified and she nodded.

"There said you were a beautiful baby, an angel," she said with a smile and he smirked but the bemusement dripped off his face.

"I never cried, I never screamed but I misbehaved. I was a happy child, always laughing and I grew quickly. I could walk and talk before other boys, my intellect outgrew them and soon even hers. She was religious, I am not," he confessed, a heresy but he felt safe confessing to Wendy.

"Some children develop quicker than…than others, it must appear like witch – witchcraft to the unaware," she explained breathlessly and Peter felt something horrible crawling in his stomach at the sound of her struggles to breathe.

"My mother did not place her fear on witchcraft, her doubts laid elsewhere. She believed with all her heart and soul that I was a changeling."

"What?" Wendy tried to sit up but she was too weak. She stared up at him with a frown. "A fairy?"

Peter nodded. "She thought her real baby had been taken away and I was the replacement. It's a common fear but – but it was one that I grew to believe," he admitted and felt oddly light headed for saying it.

"But…you're not…are you?" she asked haltingly, looking unsure and Peter shrugged.

"I honestly don't know. I just know that I'm not like other people, I never have been and my mother knew it and it scared her to death," his lips thinned and the hand holding the cloth to her cheek went white at the knuckles.

"What happened?"

"At first she looked after me, thinking if she treated me well her real son would come back but soon she realised that wasn't going to happen. She – she resorted to tests. She's put sheep shears over my cradle – I was told of this afterwards - because changelings hate iron. She'd feed me foxgloves, which are poisonous, make sure I'd bathe with them and -" here his voice caught and Wendy gazed at him in pained empathy, finally understanding.

"She tried to drown you?"

Peter nodded, his hands shaking. "She stopped, she couldn't go through with it but after that I knew the truth. I was not her son and so she was not my mother. I need no mothers or adults to take care of me," he said and he sounded incredibly bitter. Eyes now searing he continued. "I stayed away from home as much as possible because the older I grew the more her fears seemed to be proved right. I would dream things and they would come true. I could see the magic in the world."

"You believed," she offered lightly, her eyes fluttering open for a moment.

"Yes. I was special but she couldn't understand why, not really. Finally she took me to Kensington and left me in the woods. There were rumours that fairies lived there you see. I was lost for days, just wandering and hungry until my aunts found me," there was an unmistakable current of warmth in his words.

"Your aunts?"

"The sisters, that's what I call them. They looked after me until I was twelve…then I met Blue," he paused, his face contorting into an ugly look and Wendy was very familiar with it. Peter looked at her arm and saw with a horrible lurch that the poison was spreading but it was not near her heart yet. "Felix needs to make hast."

"Keep going," she said. Half delirious, death did not frighten her.

"The Blue Fairy, Reul Ghorm…I was completely taken in by her. She knew I was special, she could see it and she sought me out. She told me what I had suspected for so long; I was like her, magic ran through my veins but it was nothing to be ashamed of or hide. She said my father was probably fey, some banished fairy…She called me her little betwixt-between," he spat out the endearment, his eyes blazing with reproach. "She said I had a destiny and my fate was important. I was the Truest Believer and it was my duty to sustain magic," he said this with a starry eyed look but then stared down at her with bitter resignation. "She lied to me, she deceives everyone but no one will do anything. No one can see what she really is..."

"I see," Wendy said weakly. "She took you to Neverland?"

"No, I took her there. I created it. You see there was this place, a nowhere place that no one could find but there were legends and myths about it. Dreams. She figured it out. I hate her but she's cunning. She realised the source of all magic, of immortality, only exists in the mind: imagination. She needed someone with the ability to create it, to make it real. But it needed to be a place that had some earthly bases…"

"Where?" Wendy was drifting in and out of consciousness now and he felt like screaming. He looked with a vicious need through the trees. He didn't know Felix but he would punish him for this. What was taking him so long?

"The spring of eternal youth. Legends said that it was just a spit of land rising from the sea and no human could venture there, not without being cursed. I – I found it, I created Neverland around it and magic was born there. I sustained it and it sustained me…" he looked into the distance sadly. "I thought I was getting freedom, a land all to myself and no one to tell me what to do, I was such a child…in truth she had left me in a prison and expected me to stay there. She needed the magic."

"Why?"

"Immortality? I don't know. I think that woman is a spider and she sits in the middle of a web and the threads stretch on for years. She is very old and very patient."

"Sounds like you," she muttered, barely audible and Peter frowned but then dismissed it.

"I think our friend must have been apprehended," he said with a sigh and before she could speak he lifted her into his arms and stood.

"But they'll hurt you."

"They can try. You'll die if we don't go back. So they can beat me bloody, I don't care because I'm going to save you Wendy," he promised and moved out from under the bridge. If her brothers love her then they should be willing to listen to him.

"Water," she breathed and Peter nodded and stared down at her tenderly, the beginnings of something fierce blazing in his eyes.

"Yes, you'll feel well soon but I'm going to do more than that. I'm going to save your life, I'm going to cure you," he said and struggled up the slope and stopped as Wendy's brothers turned around sharply, Felix at their feet. They yelled and came at him but with Wendy in his arms they stopped. They were incensed with rage and worry but ignoring Peter they poured the water from the flask into her open mouth, more concerned for her well being than revenge.

"She needs the cure," he says before they can shout at him. He can see the murder in their eyes. For some reason they utterly detest him. What was happening?

"Yes we know that," John snapped at him and he was taut as a wire. His face was bloody, Felix must have put up a fight. Peter glanced down and saw that his odd friend was still breathing.

"It comes with a curse," Michael said, more reserved but his anger was under the surface. Peter had no assumptions that he would stab him through the heart and not even blink.

"Yes, one I'm willing to pay," he said firmly and everything seemed to stop. The brothers stared at him in shocked distrustful silence until the eldest spoke up.

"You'd do that for Wendy?"

"…Yes," he hesitated before answering, staring down at her now sleeping face. She looked better and his heart ached for her. It was impossible but he was falling in love with someone he had just met. However he had other less than noble intentions. He looked back up and the softness in his eyes hardened into something blood curdling and he smiled in the dark.

"You need a fairy heart and I know just whose heart to take."

a.n:

BOOM! PETER SOWING THE SEEDS OF HIS OWN FATE.

I know this was an info dump but some things should be clear now. I must take this time to thank everyone who is reading this and supporting me! I can't convey how much it means to me, especially those who have stuck with me since A Very Sweet Subject. Thank you all so much!