As the sun sank from the grey sky into the even greyer churning waters, Wendy squinted, trying to keep the horizon in her sight.
Lying on the couch that she and Pan had pulled to face the window, she tried her very hardest to focus on not throwing up. But despite the potion, the world still rocked and tossed and made her stomach do somersaults
She tried to breathe calmly, in through her nose, out through her mouth, slowly, counting the seconds to try and keep herself sane, but nothing was going to stop the rocking of the ship and nothing could help the fact that the line where the sky and sea met was disappearing quickly in the dimness.
A chair scraped across the floor softly, and without glancing over, she knew Pan had come to sit with her in front of the open window. A blanket fell heavily onto her legs and before she could open her mouth, Peter said, "You're going to freeze with that window open without a blanket."
Her mouth twisted. Since when did he become such a nag?
"You didn't eat dinner," was her counter.
"Didn't like a taste of your own medicine then? Hm?" Pan returned quickly. "You're deflecting."
"So are you," she said, wishing she could take her eyes off the horizon so she could stare him down, but she wasn't really sure that would move him much. Not to mention that she knew what he looked like. Beautiful and ethereal, but gaunt and grey, cheekbones too sharp and skin pale against his dark hair and light eyes. He always seemed to be a couple of days late on shaving lately and his clothes didn't hang on him exactly the way they used to. "And I didn't reject the blanket."
"Always have to have the last word, don't you?" he said, not quite chiding but not quite jesting either.
She couldn't control herself for a moment and her eyes slipped to him. He lounged in the chair, looking as she had guessed he would, in a dark grey sweater, hand propping up his chin. She didn't know why her eyes had slipped, why she had needed to have him in her sight, if only for a moment, before she turned back to the horizon.
"I wouldn't have the last word if you had an actual comeback."
She could practically hear him roll his in return, but he said nothing further.
She suspected he would tell her when he wanted to, if he wanted to, about what was going on in his head. She had a murky idea but she wanted Peter himself to explain it to her.
"Help distract me from the seasickness," she said after a long moment, squinting at the horizon. "Let's make a plan for when we get off the boat."
"You mean, write out a plan that you dictate," Pan said dryly, but she heard a glimmer of a laugh in his voice and calmed.
"We're partners. You're free to add what you want. You taught me."
She heard him stand up from his chair and grumble, "I'm surprised you can even admit that."
"Yes, well, how else will I tell people that I am the student who surpassed the master?" she joked back and she heard him try to stifle a laugh before letting it escape. He laughed, full and hearty behind her and again, she couldn't help herself. She turned, peering over the couch to see him with his hands on his knees, wheezing with laughter and for a moment, time skipped forward and she knew, without a shadow of a doubt, she was seeing the future.
Once the laugher subsided, she watched him as he scrounge around for a pen and pad of paper. Her eyes followed the lines of his arms, his back, his chest. Soon, he turned and their eyes met. "What?" he questioned.
"Nothing," she said quickly before ducking her head back down and turning back to the horizon.
She heard shuffling and soon Pan was back in his seat.
"Are you ready?" Wendy asked.
A hum in affirmation.
"I think first we need to deconstruct the structure of the spell, how it builds the successive layers that allow someone to bring a person back from the dead. One use of magic built atop of another use of magic and so on," she explained, but despite the jesting she was quite sure Pan had probably already thought about this too.
"Once the structure is dealt with," she paused, considering, "did you get all that?"
Without looking, she knew he was rolling his eyes. "I've been writing longer than you've been alive," was the dry response that came.
"Alright then," she said, a smile twisting her lips. "Once the structure is dealt with, then we deal with the themes that are brought up throughout the spell and then imagery and motifs that build upon both the themes and the overall structure. We should pull from spells that use opposing imagery and themes to further deconstruct the spell."
Pan hummed in approval and warmth bloomed in her chest. "I agree, I just have one thing to add on. We're essentially making our own reversal spell so I think precedence is also important here. We need to also be able pull from reversal spells in order to be able to construct the spell after the deconstructions. We need to look at how their structure complements their original spell, how the motifs and imagery and themes play between the two. We also need to consider the effectiveness of different reversal spells and follow the ones which not only are most effective but directly counteract their spells."
She asked him to read back what he had written.
The list was long. There were so many things to go over before they would even be able to begin writing the spell. And then there was the editing to think of. And not to mention whether they would even be able to test it out. Was it even possible?
"So?" she asked, sombre. "What do you think?"
"I think for the bare bones of a plan, it's very good," he said, no hint of laughter in his voice anymore.
Shimmers of laughter, of joy amongst the darkness, the unknown, made it feel much less terrifying, but it didn't change how terrifying it really was.
"It's a lot of work," she said after a long moment.
A hand on her knee, long fingers squeezing gently, warm and reassuring. "We'll manage it."
XXX
"They're expecting a big snow storm soon," Wendy told Pan as they were getting ready for bed one night at an inn. She stood over her bag at the foot of her bed, folding clothes to try and keep her things organized as they made their way to the next mansion.
He looked up from his seat on her bed, leaning against the headboard (she had told him already to get off but he had just given her a grin), his fingers idly holding his place on the page.
Silent and grey, he sat across from her, a ghost. He always seemed to be a day or two behind on his shaving and it looked like he really needed a haircut. No matter how much she pestered him, no matter how many times she poked and prodded, he wouldn't tell her just what was bothering him.
"Yes, I was talking with the waiter just before you came down from the room and he said that they're predicting a foot and a half of snow…"
He was still himself, of course. His mind was sharp, and his tongue even sharper. Never for a moment did she forget he was Peter Pan, King of Neverland, who sat with her amongst crumpled papers in candlelight with ink-stained fingers.
"They use magic here to predict the weather, but my brothers told me that they use these things called computers to make—Oh, damn, what did they call it?"
"Programs."
"Yes," she said, "Thank you. Computer programs to create—I'm forgetting again—"
"Weather models."
It was at this point that she realized she was telling him about something that he obviously knew much more about than she did.
She grinned. "Very kind of you," she said before turning back to her folding.
"Oh?"
"I'm surprised you're willing to let me ramble about something you know much more about."
Her family had never tolerated her know-it-all attitude. In hindsight, she felt sorry for her parents that they had had to deal with a child like her, who always had to be right and had to make sure everyone knew it, in Victorian London. Even when she was reunited with her brothers, spats broke out over what the correct conversion was between tablespoons and cups, and who left that book where and pretty much anything else Wendy had ever thought about. But Peter, cruel and unkind, in the same breath, was simply letting her educate him on a topic he already knew about and that she knew very little about.
He shrugged and his eyes fell back to his book. "You weren't talking to me for a long time. Kind of missed it." He said it as if he was commenting on the weather.
She swallowed.
She had never explained to him why she hadn't talked to him for so long. And they way he had described it was kind. She had been cruel to him, every single time she had been conflicted about how she had felt.
She hadn't apologized either.
Through all the time she had known Peter, there had never been an occasion where she needed to apologize to him. He had always been in the wrong. He continued to be in the wrong. If anything, she was the one who was most owed an apology, but looking at Peter then, pale and beautiful, calculating and cruel, father of her child and her captor, she knew he needed that kindness.
"I'm sorry for how I've treated you lately," she said after a long moment. "I was cruel and unkind and I only said what I said to hurt you. I shouldn't have."
She had thought that when she said those words the world would turn upside down or hell would freeze over or pigs would fly. She had thought it would be a cruel trick of the universe that she needed to apologize to Pan, even before he had ever uttered an apology for what he had done to her, but it didn't feel like that.
It just felt right.
He looked up from his book again, a wary look on his face. "It was deserved," he said, his voice distant.
She had spent the last little while enjoying his company that she had forgotten that there were parts of him she really did not care for.
"No, it wasn't," she corrected him, firmly.
"Fine. Thanks. Apology accepted."
"No, that's not—"
He gave her an unamused look. "Is there a certain way you'd like me to accept your apology?"
She opened and closed her mouth a few times before saying, "You're not supposed to accept it like that." She cringed as the words came out but she was having trouble explaining to him what exactly it was that he had done wrong because she wasn't entirely sure what he had done wrong; just that he hadn't done it right.
"Oh, I didn't realize that was etiquette around apologies. I just thought the recipient got to choose." Mischief sparkled in his eyes and she wanted to smack him because this was such an annoyingly Pan thing to do. "Please tell me, bird. How am I supposed to accept apologies?"
Staring at him then, with her cheeks burning, wanting to scream, she remembered that making peace with her feelings didn't mean that she adored Pan all the time. It simply meant that different feelings could exist within her at the same time. Hating what he had done and who he was and loving what he did now and who he was. All of it existed on the same plane; there was no irony, no unfair hand she had been dealt; it just was.
And what was, at this moment, was that she was really annoyed with him.
She huffed. "This is not how I wanted this to go."
He feigned an accommodating look. "Alright. Apologize again and I'll have another go at it." His hand circled in the air, motioning for a do-over.
"That's not what I meant," she said, her voice careening far too close to 'shrill' for her own liking.
"Oh?"
"It was not deserved," she ground out. "You don't deserve to be treated that way."
He rolled his eyes. "Evens things out."
"No." Her voice had been a shriek then, piercing, but she was past caring. "There's no evening things out. You can't even out what you did to me."
There was no more mirth in his eyes, no more joking and dancing around the issue. He stared back at her, his gaze cold and biting.
"You're right," he said, sombre. "I'm sorry, Wendy."
She let out a deep sigh and sat down heavily on the bed, her back facing him.
Her hands twisted in her lap. "I know," she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
She heard him move on the bed beside her and soon, his weight was shifting the mattress next to her. She hadn't realized acceptance would be so messy.
"I don't want you to think that you deserve to be treated that way," she said softly.
He brushed a lock of hair behind her ear and she leaned into him, almost on instinct. "I know."
It wasn't agreement and she knew it. But now wasn't the time to push it.
"For what it's worth, I forgive you," he said after a long moment. "Before you apologized, I already had."
XXX
As Wendy had said, it snowed.
It snowed for what seemed like forever.
Peter and Wendy had just managed to get to the next mansion as the snow had begun. With frozen fingers and spell book pages ripping in the wind, he had managed to break down the defences for the mansion.
While he had set up the stables for the horses, shovelling hay and making sure neither wind nor snow got in, Wendy had gone to find the most easily accessible hearth. Once he was finished, he had stamped snowy boots on marble floors, the noise echoing into halls, and his breath puffing out before him in a cloud.
He had followed the muted noises of rummaging and footsteps down hallways plastered in ornate wallpaper and decorated with bucolic landscapes in golden frames. This mansion could have been confused for a homey manor if one was not careful.
He had found Wendy in the kitchen with the fireplace lit and blazing brightly. She had already found some candles and lit them, filling the kitchen with warm light. The room was wide with warm tiled floors and dark wood cupboards lined the walls with a fireplace in the middle of the far wall. In the centre of the room was a large wooden table with matching chairs where Wendy had already peeled off her gloves and scarf and left. The ceiling was low and the room would have been claustrophobic without the windows on the walls perpendicular to the fireplace that looked out onto a wooded area that sloped down towards a valley.
Wendy had already made herself at home and was busying herself by opening every drawer and cupboard.
"This is another level of nosy," he said, shrugging off his coat and hanging it on one of the chairs at the kitchen table.
Wendy turned around and gave him an unamused look that would have been much more worrisome if not for the grin she was trying to suppress. "How was the hay in the stables?"
He shrugged as he untied his boots and tossed them by the fireplace. Very carefully, he put his socked feet on the floor and moved for the mop in the corner to clean up the melting snow. "Pretty good, actually."
"I'd bet it was more of a preservation spell than a protection spell. I'm checking if any of the food left is any good," she explained with her back to him as she peered into a cabinet on tiptoes.
Mopping finished, he returned to his seat. "Optimistic."
She moved onto the next cupboard and finally found what she was looking for. A small container with what looked like warm beige sand.
He gave her a questioning look.
"Oh, come on, Pan, you can't be serious?"
"I know you may think this, bird, and with good reason, but I'm not all-knowing," he joked.
"Yeast," she said. She placed the container on the counter and then stooped next to the fireplace where she picked up a cup. "Come over here, you child." He stood and made his way to the opposite end of the table where she dipped her finger in the cup, nodded in approval, and shook a little bit of yeast into the cup, that he found was full of water.
"Care to explain?" he asked as he peered over her shoulder.
She turned around abruptly and gave him a horrified look, her cheeks and nose still rosy form the cold. "You really don't know?"
"You get to be the teacher this time," he told her.
She rolled her eyes. "I'm blooming the yeast to see if it's still any good. I've already found flour, sugar, salt, oil, jams, pickled vegetables. If the yeast is good, I'd bet the rest is good too."
He nodded and then looked back down at the yeast, still confused. She had explained herself but not really. He had no idea what 'blooming the yeast' meant, because really she had just dumped it into some water.
He was about to open his mouth to point out that she wasn't the best teacher before she said, "I melted some snow in the cup by the fireplace. If it's too hot, it'll kill the yeast. If it's too cold, it won't activate. It should be the same temperature as your body. When I put it in the water, it will hopefully activate so we can use it in recipes."
He nodded again and looked down at it. "When will we know if it's any good?"
"Five to ten minutes," she said as she grabbed a chair and moved it close to the fireplace and placed the cup there. She caught his continued bewildered look. "It should be in a warm place and this place is still freezing. Let's go find the library and when we come back, we'll know if it's any good."
They found their way through echoey hallways and both of them regretted leaving their gloves behind and Peter, most of all, regretted taking off his boots. His toes were nearly frozen by the time they arrived in the library. He pushed open heavy oak doors to find a gorgeous room full of floor to ceiling windows.
"This is colder than anywhere else we've been," Wendy observed, her breath puffing out in front of her as she circled the room. She tugged her sleeves down, curling her hands into the fabric.
"No fireplace," he said. Peter came to stand at the windows and looked out at the landscape. Wind howled and trees moaned under its fierceness while snow whipped across the flat planes, creating a dim haze of grey and white.
"I don't think we'll be working in here," Wendy said, coming to stand beside him.
"Kitchen it is," he agreed.
Wendy sighed beside him. "We need at least one bedroom with a fireplace."
They did find several bedrooms with fireplaces, much to their relief. As they lit fires in two of them, Wendy mused that perhaps the library had not originally been a library. "It could have been a sunroom with bookshelves, that was intended for use only in the summer," she said, almost dreamily.
"Stupid to have a library without a fireplace. What else are you meant to do in the winter?" he asked her as they found their way back to the kitchen.
"Exactly my thinking," she agreed.
They found the cup of yeast foaming and Wendy told him that meant it was working. Which sent her puttering around the kitchen, boots forgotten by the fireplace and hair haphazardly thrown into a braid, measuring flour and finding the appropriate bowls for things. He watched her quietly from his seat at the table.
It was a strangely familiar scene, the living following the tracks of ghosts. He had spent hours in her kitchen in Neverland, lounging in a chair as she had baked, kneading bread or rolling out biscuits. They would argue back and forth, words sharp, acid on their tongues. Different people going through the same motions.
His heart twisted in his chest to think back to that time. He had come to her gilded prison to taunt her, to get a rise out of her for fun, something to do. Guilt roiled in the pit of his stomach and he sat queasy, remembering who he had been or perhaps still was.
He often didn't even realize he was reliving his past life, memories of terrified Lost Boys, children stolen from their homes, until he was in the middle of it. He never realized he had fallen into the past until he would blink and find himself in the present. Sometimes only a breath separated him from the ghosts he had made and the living.
"You slipped away again."
He jerked his gaze up to find Wendy across from him, kneading shaggy dough on the table.
He furrowed his eyebrows.
"You know I can cast spells to make us food," he told her, purposefully evading her bid for information about where he had slipped away.
Her mouth twisted for a moment, knowing he was being obtuse on purpose. "I miss baking and cooking."
"A very human activity," he remarked, watching her. Her hands were dusted with flour as she kneaded the dough into a smooth ball. Her movements were unhurried and graceful, someone at peace. A few weeks ago, Wendy never would have allowed herself to indulge in baking a loaf of bread for a few hours.
She gave him a long look. "Don't you worry you'll have to take it up one day?"
He paused and considered her question seriously. "I do, bird." He didn't mention that he actually had many other things to worry about that worrying about becoming human was at the very bottom of his list.
"Matthew mentioned—" he stiffened at the man's name "—that you might be able to miss it once, but he didn't know you before." Her voice was soft, as she waded back into her memories and he wondered for a moment if they still tortured her as much as they used to. "You're much more human these days."
He gave her a long look, watching her hands as she pushed the dough away from her and then brought it back. Some things never changed, it seemed. No matter how much he tried to convince her, no matter how many arguments they had, she still believed in his humanity and now, that belief grounded him.
"You've spent a long time believing in that," he said, his voice creaking
She glanced up at him, eyes that warm brown he had come to love. His feet were firmly on the ground when he looked at her.
"As I said, I've yet to be wrong," she said, a small smile ghosting across her lips.
"Did you know that sometimes you're a bit of a know-it-all?" he teased.
A full grin broke out. "No one's ever told me that," she said, voice dripping with sarcasm.
They fell into silence easily, Wendy going back to her dough and Peter back to lounging and observing, as they had done for decades and decades. Some things never changed, it seemed. But this time, the silence was almost a comfort to fall into. There was no rush to say anything more nor was there a need to keep the quiet.
After a while, he muttered, half to himself, "My powers are dwindling though. I've begun to worry about whether I'll be able to do the edited spell when the time rolls around."
Wendy nodded, still focused on the dough. "No Emma."
He scoffed. "I doubt she'd help out Rumple even if she was in this universe."
"She loves Baelfire," she said. "They have a son together."
"I always forget about that." A pause. "I very much doubt Regina would help us."
Wendy sighed, reaching across the table for a rolling pin before dusting it with flour. "I wouldn't bet on it." Another pause. "Where is Pixie Hollow?"
He grinned. "Now, that is a good idea, bird." She smiled back at him. "They're close to three of the most southern mansions. Tink is a great option."
"We'd have to blow your cover," she pointed out as she began to roll the dough out into a rectangle.
Every living person he had wronged would know he was alive. A reckoning would be upon him. Justice would come eventually. He wasn't horrified by the idea. "It's going to come out eventually."
He realized as he finished saying it that it wasn't entirely true. The few Lost Boys he had rebuffed knew he was alive. The few people he could have done right by, he had been cruel and uncaring and detached when he had seen them.
A lump was in his throat suddenly and he wasn't sure if it was because of what he had done to them or because he was lying to Wendy.
He had to tell her sometime.
Another wrong he had done to her. Attempted to trick her again with the promise of saving her brother.
All roads lead back to his wrongs. He didn't experience a waking moment now that wasn't careening towards his past, all the sins he had committed, the guilt he carried.
"You're right." Wendy's voice pulled him back again, dragging him up out of cold waters, murky with faces of long-dead ghosts. "When this is over, I'll have to explain to my brothers."
"When this is over," he repeated.
She looked up from her bread, rolling pin hovering just about the dough, realizing what she had unknowingly treaded on.
What was beyond this warm kitchen, with the crackling fire and their boots next to each other?
Wendy was a part of a family. She had people who were missing her right now and people who she would return to after this was all over.
He had no one and nothing to return to, just the promise that people would come for revenge and justice eventually.
"Peter," she began.
He held up a hand. "Let it be, bird." His eyes found the fireplace. "I've made my bed and I have to lie in it."
"You know, the good thing about humans is that they can change." Her voice was soft and comforting, a balm.
He shook his head. "You're too hopeful about my humanity. Still." The words came out harsher than he had meant but it didn't seem to faze Wendy.
Instead, she set aside the rolling pin, frowning, and began to fold the dough into thirds before pinching the seams together. "You talk as if I see only the good parts of you and ignore the bad." Shaking her head, she grabbed a tin and placed the dough into it and covered it with a towel. "As if I haven't been on the receiving end of all the bad you've done."
He was silent, but he could feel the words on his tongue. Sometimes, I worry you do. That I tricked you after all.
She finally looked up at him and pinned him with a golden-eyed glare that made him think for a moment that she had actually heard his thoughts. "I see you all at once, you know. You're a whole to me, never parts or pieces," she said in a voice that was not just a hundred years old, but perhaps thousands.
It wasn't a compliment. It wasn't said to make him feel better or reaffirm her belief in his humanity. It was just the truth.
XXX
Sitting hunched over the large kitchen table, with warm bread, jam and butter that had been magicked out of thin air and cups of piping hot tea, Peter and Wendy began the beginnings of their spell in earnest.
As the storm raged on outside, covering the land in a deep layer of snow that drowned out all noise, they took apart the spell together, peeling back layer after layer of magic, trying to understand how it had been built, with notes and shorthand shoved into the margins of copies of the spell. Words were circle and underlined, colour-coded to assign meaning and power. Periods and commons and semi-colons were worried about.
In between sessions, they lounged, reading novels, talking idly back and forth, their conversations wandering between the mundane and the intimate. Wendy watched with hawk-like eyes as Pan's slices of toast were left nibbled at despite the fact that he was always nursing a cup of coffee now. She would watch him when she knew he had slipped away, lost in his thoughts and to her, worrying over his drawn face, his skin that had grown so pale that it now clashed with his dark hair.
She pestered him at dinners he had cast spells to create to the point where dinner conversation seemed only to be about what he had or had not eaten. When he told her in a biting voice that they could simply eat alone, she softened.
At night, they would venture out into the cold hallways and when she thought Peter believed she was asleep, she would hover by his door, hoping to hear the sounds of snoring. She always turned away, disappointed.
She began to wonder if she had cursed him.
Perhaps, instead of a blessing, his humanity had come to him as a curse.
"They're salting the streets," Pan observed, peering out the window of their inn, his breath fogging up the glass.
Wendy glanced up quickly from the latest copy of citations to the poem that she was editing. They had finally moved past the structure and were onto themes. Her pen was hovering over the page she was waiting to return to.
"Wonderful," she said, turning back to her work.
After the snow had stopped and they had left the previous mansion, they had had several days of easy travel and clear skies before the sky slowly turned grey. Five days after they left the previous mansion, the clerk at their inn explained they were expected freezing rain to start over night.
Wendy had had seventeen winters in London. It wasn't that she was unfamiliar with snow; she had seen her fair share of snow storms and cold weather, but London was tempered by the Thames and the ocean. The Enchanted Forest's seasons were harsher, swinging like a pendulum to extremes that London never had. So once they were in their room, Pan, who apparently read her like an open book now, explained that this was actually the preferable order. Snow before ice was obviously an issue and made it hard to travel, but ice before snow was hard to catch and made travelled treacherous because you never knew what exactly you were stepping on.
Which meant that even though the small town they were in had been meant to simply be a night's stay, it was now home for the meantime.
It wasn't terrible. Even though they were still reading through relevant books from the libraries they came across, most of their efforts were now dedicated to the study of the spell and understanding it. They weren't going to lose any time on the spell, but they were losing time getting to Baelfire.
So even though she was plenty occupied, the three days that they had been cooped up inside were beginning to grate on her.
"They'll be walkable soon," he continued.
She glanced up warily, unsure about why Pan was chattering to her like this. "The roads leading out of town won't be rideable any time soon," she reminded him.
"That's not what I'm getting at," he said. The floorboards creaked underneath his weight as he came to stand at the foot of her bed, where she sat hunched over.
She let out an exasperated sigh. "Pan, I'm trying to work. It's fine that you're not working, but—"
"We both need some fresh air," he said.
She looked up at him. "I'm working."
"You know," he began, drawling, with a hand over his chest, in the most beautifully obnoxious way, "a teacher's work is never done."
She rolled her eyes, but was relieved to find that he could still joke around like this.
"As a student, it's okay that you didn't know this. You're still learning," he continued in an orator's voice, full of an amount of self-assuredness that most people only ever dreamed of. "This—" he gestured to the window "—is what is called a snow day. No work is to be done on snow days."
She glanced at the window. On one hand, they weren't travelling and were losing time to get to Baelfire and studying would make up for that. On the other, it would be an opportunity for both of them, especially Pan, to take a break and perhaps relax a little. Her eyes rolled up to the ceiling as she considered her options.
Was she betraying her brother if she went window shopping with Pan? Choosing to help the person responsible for ruining their lives relax while she could be studying to help him instead?
Would the few hours she would gain studying make a difference in the long run? Would a couple of hours matter if they weren't getting out of here for a the next few days or even a week?
Again, she was reminded that just because she made peace with her emotions didn't mean that she would never experience conflicting ones ever again.
"A compromise," came Pan's voice, an answer to her thoughts and for a moment she worried that he saw straight through her. "An hour for a bit of time to relax and regroup so you and I will be even more productive tomorrow." She didn't point out that tomorrow was her birthday. "There's no good light in here in the evening so you have't done much studying after dinner anyway the last few days. I say, dinner an hour earlier and then out for a bit of perusing of the town.
She considered it a moment longer. She didn't feel like she was being torn at the seems anymore; it was gentler now, perhaps tugged was a better word for it. And because she knew that she probably wouldn't be completely satisfied with either option, she agreed.
XXX
"Oh my God, it is so cold," Wendy breathed, stepping out into the frigid air outside the inn. It whipped through her immediately, slicing through all the extra layers that she had put on to come out.
"Learning new skills can be difficult," Pan said, patronizingly, next to her. And even though he had deep circles under his eyes and had barely had more than a dozen bites at dinner, he looked completely unfazed by the cold.
"Aren't you freezing?"
He gave her a shrug. "Teachers aren't wimps."
"I'm not a wimp," she protested as he placed a hand on the small of her back and guided her to start walking. "I just don't have any magic."
"Blaming it on the magic is just a crutch," he joked, but leaned in close to her ear, his breath warming her neck and said, "In the mountains, I told you I'd make sure there wouldn't be a next time, and I meant it."
She stopped in her tracks, cheeks flushing, and her heartbeat thrummed in her ears. Her body hummed with electricity, warmth pooling in her stomach, deliciously aware of where his hands were, where his mouth was, just how close his body was to her.
He pulled back from her, face neutral, as if he hadn't just done that. Even with bags under his eyes and only a few bites in his stomach, he was still just as charming and dazzling as ever.
"Come on," he said, his voice light. "Still have a bit to go."
And he turned with his hand still on her back and led her forward.
If not for the fact that she was simultaneous burning and freezing cold, the walk would have been short, a little bit more than ten minutes. But instead, all Wendy was aware of the entire walk over was how much she liked that Pan was protective and steadfast, how much she liked the feel of his breath tickling her neck and his hand on her back.
She glanced up at him every once in a while over the course of the walk, but his face remained neutral, which was to be expected.
Turning through streets half-lit by frozen gas street lamps, a dim rumbling began which soon turned into the dull sounds of a crowd and after one more turn, Wendy found herself in a large square bathed in the golden light of street lamps and bonfires spread out before them filled with people's voices. Townsfolk bustled around, wandering through open-air stalls and shops that lined the square, cups of steaming drinks in their hands and bags hanging on their elbows.
She turned to Pan.
"An outdoor market," he explained. "Clerk told me about it on our first day."
She turned back to the sight. For a second, she could have believed she was in London a hundred and twenty years ago, out with her family in the final days before her birthday and Christmas, shopping for presents and not so subtly dropping hints to her family about what she wanted for her birthday.
"I used to go to these before Neverland," she breathed.
"Me too," he said. She glanced up at him, his eyes turned silver in the light and she remembered for a moment that he had lived a human life before Neverland that must have had some similarities to her. Family dinners, winter nights before the fire, Christmases and birthdays. She wondered just who he was before Neverland, what a purely human Peter had looked like.
Perhaps, the image of him bathed in gold light, wrapped up in a scarf with hat pulled over his head, dark hair peeking out from underneath, bright blue eyes and soft lips wasn't too far off.
He stepped forward without any warning and began to walk over to the nearest stall.
She scurried, careful not to slip on any unsalted ice and came to stand by him as he stepped into what appeared to be a line for all manner of hot winter beverages. Peering around the people ahead of them, she saw a hot toddy, mulled wine and hot chocolate on the menu.
But standing there she realized something was missing.
"Pan," she said. He turned and looked down at her and she was caught on his beauty again, the statuesque lines of his face, high cheekbones and sharp jaw, straight, regal nose. "I liked where you hand was before."
He grinned and the optical illusion flickered again; Peter from the present and the past overlaid with each other. That grin that she had loathed for decades that now made her heart flutter in her chest. "Bit of an obtuse way to ask," he said.
She straightened and remembered how she had been with suitors. Haughty and most certainly in charge. "I wasn't asking."
He laughed, loudly enough that the people in line in front of them turned around. He slipped his hand back around her and she leaned in for a moment, into the solid planes of his chest and the smell of him.
Once their drinks had been bought and drunk, they turned and began to meander through stalls, which, at the moment, were mainly housewares that neither of them needed.
"You know you can be quite charming," he told her as they stopped for a moment at a woodcarver's stall where he demonstrated to a small crowd how he etched delicate, intricate designed into wood.
She turned to look at him. He had said this before when she was very much not in the mood to talk to him. "Is this your way of saying that I was charming just now?" she asked.
He rolled his eyes. "If you'd like."
She grinned. "It was a necessary skill in London. I mean, we weren't nobility but it was important for the family that I was well-liked in all our social circles and largely stayed out of whatever drama happened in said social circles."
And because he didn't say anything else, she continued, "On Neverland, I didn't need it. So, I'm a little rusty."
He nodded, almost solemn. "The underlying skills, though, you used all the time. Understanding people and their wants and needs and motives." She hummed in agreement. "I I don't want you to take what I'm about to say as a compliment," Pan began and she looked back at him, confused. "But I'd see flashes of those skills when I held you captive and I'd muse about how you'd make a very good Queen of Neverland, if you hadn't been so morally inclined."
She tilted her head, thinking back to her days of carefully worded compliments and meticulous observations, wrapped up in silk and lace, and full of the echoes of clinking glasses and dinner conversation. "I don't disagree," she said. "In another universe, we might have led very similar lives."
He gave her a questioning look.
"There are reasons beyond our intelligence that we work well together," she said. She glanced at the wood carving that was now forgotten. "Let's keep moving."
Meandering to the next stalls, they found Christmas decorations. Stepping into one of the stalls that was lit brightly inside, they walked up and down between rows of tables that were covered in baskets of different kinds of ornaments.
Taking off her mittens and stuffing them into her pockets, Wendy let her fingers ghost over felt ornaments; reindeer and cardinals and snowy owls. She didn't protest when Pan's hand slipped from her back as he went a few paces away to pore over some glass ornaments. He returned a few moments later with a gaudy glass bauble with a ridiculous amount of designs on it that made her head hurt.
"It's something," she said.
He gave her an unimpressed look. "I like it."
"I never would have thought you would like something like that." She took it from him and held it up closer, examining the intricate designs of gold, green and red. It sparkled even in the dim light.
She looked back at him and found him looking crestfallen. A few months ago she would have laughed at the mere idea that he could look like that, but there he was, trying hard not to show that he was disappointed she didn't like it, but too exhausted to do it well like he normally did.
She chewed her lip. "What was Christmas like for you?" she asked.
He shrugged. "It's so long ago, I can't remember." He held out his hand, expectantly. "Here, I'll put it back."
She pulled her hand back, keeping the ornament out of his reach. "Were they happy?"
He sighed, giving her an exasperated look. He paused and turned and his fingers drifted down to a set of straw angels. For a moment, she thought he was going to put up a fight about it. He was always reluctant to speak about his past. "Sparse." She thought he would stop there but he continued, "My mother came from money so we'd sometimes go to parties hosted by her father that were very lavish and got nice presents, but we'd always return home to a tree that was nearly-bare with next to no presents."
She watched him, his mouth turning into a firm, thin line. "But they were… When she was alive, it didn't matter if things were sparse. After that, it was a different situation."
There was a long pause. "You should buy it," she said gently.
He scoffed. "For the lovely Christmases I'll be having in the future?"
She bit the inside of her cheek. The longer this journey went on, the closer they got to the end of it. She had no idea what lay beyond late night studying in fancy libraries and hands on the small of her back and endless horse rides and banter. And as much as she had always believed in Pan's humanity, many others did not and that didn't bode well for his future.
"Then I'll buy it and put it on my tree for you," she offered.
He gave her a suspicious look. "You think it's ugly."
"I like that you like it."
If she had been anyone else, she wouldn't have seen it, but his face softened. "And when you say you'll buy it, that'll be with my money?"
She shrugged, grinning. "Left my wallet at home."
He looked back at her, feigning an infuriated look. "Wendy Darling, if you weren't so charming," he warned.
With his ugly, gaudy bauble wrapped up in a paper bag with ribbon, they left the stall with his hand on her back. They walked from from stall to stall, admiring ornaments and trinkets that were incredibly unnecessary but so lovely to pick up and examine.
Peering at table of snow globes, Wendy finally said, "Things really changed after your mom died." She didn't dare look up from a snow globe with a small town inside it, all the tiny buildings decorated with wreaths and garlands and painted to look as if the windows were glowing.
Pan stiffened next to her, snow globe he had been examining still in his hands. "Yes," he said, words short and clipped. "You know the story. Mother dies, Father drinks and abandons family, and I was left with Rumple."
"How old were you when she died?" She looked up at him, done pretending the snow globe was more interesting than this conversation.
This time he didn't pretend he didn't remember. "Seven when she died. Twelve when he left."
She just stared at him. "I'm sorry."
He huffed, putting back the snow globe. "You're not the one who should be apologizing."
And because she knew he was working up to apologizing to her and that it was a gargantuan task, she didn't retort, "Then where's my apology?" Instead, she said, "I'm apologizing because I understand."
"You love your parents."
She shrugged. "'You're the eldest, Wendy. You'll grow up first and that means you'll be responsible for this family,'" she recited the words her father had said to her nearly every day and George Darling was the kind of man who never said anything lightly. "I'm reflective enough to know that my temperament wasn't the only reason I was willing to give up my life for Baelfire. Both times."
He stared at her a moment, his eyes flickering over her face, examining. "Did you ever actually get to be a child?"
"Did you?" she returned.
He laughed, the sound harsh and cold. "Not for a lack of trying," he said, tersely, his jaw tensing up. He put his hand back in its place and said, "Come on, I'm tired of snow globes," and led her out of the stall into the deep blue of the pathways between shops and stalls, warm gold flickering on the edges of the cobblestone.
She looked up at him, his pale skin cast in shadows, breath puffing out in front of him, nose and cheeks rose. The sense that life was large and full, the universe ever-expanding but full, descended on her. And for a moment she was an optical illusion, her past and present overlaid perfectly, juxtaposed with his optical illusion.
"You know we're two sides of the same coin, right?" she asked.
He glanced down at her. "Both saddled with a crushing responsibility to their younger siblings," he said, speaking as if he were a storyteller beginning an epic, "One chooses is willing to ruin their own life and the other ruins hundreds of other lives."
She raised an eyebrow. "You don't have to be so dramatic."
"Was this all to prove your point earlier that there are other reasons we might have led similar lives in another universe?" he asked her, dramatic voice gone.
"I was just curious, honestly," she said. "But it obviously doesn't hurt to be right."
He rolled his eyes. "Spending my money, digging up my past just to be right." He grinned down at her. "And to think I'm about to hand you over some money."
She gave him a questioning look, smiling.
"A bit of a challenge. We've seen most of the market, so I'll give you money and take the same amount for myself. You buy me a Christmas gift, I buy you one and we meet back here in half an hour and we'll open them on Christmas."
She scoffed. "Why didn't you tell me that earlier? I would have been able to get you the ugly ornament."
"You said it wasn't ugly," he said accusatorily.
"I was actually very careful not to say that," she laughed. "I'll figure it out though." A beat. "I do love the idea. It's very thoughtful."
"Don't mention it," he joked. "I have a reputation to think about."
They returned to the inn with gifts wrapped up in brown paper and left them on the table by the window sill as they wound down for the night.
While Peter changed, Wendy sat at one of the chairs by the window, looking at the box that was her Christmas gift, trying to figure out what Pan had gotten her.
And as she had predicted, there was still a heaviness that sat in her stomach. Not crushing, but most certainly present. She cherished the time she had had with Pan at the market. For a little while she did get to be a child; she forgot about her responsibilities and lived her life as her own. But she did it with Peter, who had ruined her life and her families' and countless others. There was no getting around that fact, or forgetting it.
"I hope you're not peeking," came Pan's voice from across the room.
She turned and found him in his pyjamas. "I would never," she said, as if she hadn't figured out all of her Christmas gifts as a child by Christmas Eve.
He came and sat across from her. Without a word, two cups of piping hot tea and a cupcake with chocolate frosting and gold sprinkles with one glowing candle on it appeared on the table between them.
She turned and looked at him. "My birthday is tomorrow," she said. "And I didn't even know you knew."
"You groused about it a little while ago," he said. Ah yes, back when she was barely speaking to him.
She turned back to the candle. "This is early."
"We've actually been here four days, not three. You've got your dates wrong," he explained. "Today is the twenty-first. Longest night of the year. The market was a solstice market."
She grinned because she knew he was about to say—
"So, you can be wrong and are," he told her triumphantly.
"Alright, I'll give you that one," she said.
He picked up the cupcake and held it out to her. "Happy birthday, bird. I hope you have many more birthdays many times happier than this."
And she wanted to tell them that she was happy in this moment. She adored the warm glow of the candle, the chocolate frosting that was her favourite flavour, the birthday surprise he had given to her. But she was also was sad. Because, despite what he was in this moment, he had still brought her so much pain past and still the present too. And because she wanted him at her future birthdays, but wasn't sure if he should be there.
She accepted the cupcake and blew out the candle, wishing for a future where she didn't have to accept conflicting feelings, but would be purely content.
After the candle was out and the cupcake had been divided between the two of them, Pan handled her a small velvet box which she took cautiously. Inside was a golden pendant with an oval sapphire set in the centre, light blue and glimmering, with small diamonds circling it.
"Oh my God," she breathed. "It's gorgeous."
"It's a locket," Pan explained. "For the star."
Beautiful and practical. Something she never would have gotten for herself. The perfect gift.
"I love it, Peter," she said and looked up at it, eyes misty for a reason she didn't have the words to explain. "Thank you."
She fished the star out of her pocket, in its usual velvet bag. She handed it to Pan (a simple gesture that demonstrated the trust she never thought she would have had for him) while she opened the locket. Pan handed her the star, out of the bag, and it glowed silver in the dim light.
She took it and it prickled in her hand briefly as she put it into the locket and closed it. Undoing the clasp, she handed it to Pan who took it wordlessly and stood behind her chair. She swept her hair up and allowed him to put it around her neck, his hands brushing her skin, warm.
Once it was on, he came back to his seat.
"How does it look?" she asked.
"Beautiful," he said, eyes soft and warm, the colour of a late summer sky.
She leaned over, hand on his thigh, the other one ghosting over his jaw. He kept his eyes on her the whole time as she leaned closer, their breaths mingling. She kissed his cheek, the stubble brushing against her lips. And then the side of his mouth. And then—
He turned abruptly, pulling back.
Feeling like she had just been pushed, Wendy sat back heavily in her seat, biting the inside of her cheek.
Pan sat turned towards the window, being very careful not to look at her.
With a growing pit in her stomach, Wendy realized that Peter was denying himself more than food and sleep.
XXX
On Christmas Day, they did not work.
Peter spelled a Christmas tree to fit in their tiny room and with cups of mulled wine Wendy brought up from the dining hall, they opened their gifts for each other, bantering back and forth as they always did, conversation looping around spells and books, but also around their pasts, before Neverland and during, of Gavin and how much he would have loved Christmas.
Peter had gotten Wendy a cream cardigan made with chunky, soft wool and warm brown buttons with a matching pair of thick socks in the same wool that Wendy had immediately put on. He had also gotten her a new novel from one of her favourite Enchanted Forest authors.
In return, Wendy had gotten Peter a new set of flannel pyjamas in a deep forest green. Additionally, she gave him a mug that said, "Don't talk to me until I've had my coffee," printed in long, thin letters. He appreciated that at least she had a sense of humour about his situation, even though he noticed she was reserved with her physical affection after her birthday. Honestly, he hadn't even meant to turn away. It had just been a knee-jerk reaction, but he supposed it was the correct one.
The rest of the day was spent lounging, reading and chatting and drinking cups of tea and coffee.
A beautiful blip across the centuries.
"You're up early," Peter observed as he slipped into the mansion library, padding softly into the room with a pot of coffee in one hand and the mug that Wendy had gotten him for Christmas.
Wendy glanced back at him, as she stood hunched over a large wooden table in the centre of the modest space, crumpled papers stacked into teetering heaps and books on the floor, piled up so high they reached her waist. She gave him an assessing look, clearly disappointed.
"You're up late," was her reply.
He joined her at the table, managing to set the coffee pot and mug onto a clear space.
The ice had finally cleared on New Year's Day and they had spent the last three weeks on their way to this mansion. The weather, even though it was no longer snowing or pouring freezing rain, had been unforgivingly cold. When they had arrived late last night, she had ordered both of them to bed immediately once they had stabled the horses and broken past the magical guards. She had pestered him into climbing the winding staircase up to the second floor of the sprawling mansion, her boots clicking on the marble floors as she nearly threatened him to go to bed and stay there. She had rummaged through his bags before tossing his pyjamas at him and ordering him to change. She hadn't been satisfied enough to leave him until he had gotten into his bed and made a good show of reading a novel by candle light. She had left, still suspicious, and with good reason.
He had gotten out of bed an hour later, peeked through her bedroom door to check that she was fast asleep before creeping downstairs to brew himself a pot of coffee which he took to the library, which was plain for Rumple's standards, deep burgundy carpeted floors, dark wood and golden chandeliers, but only a story high and only the size of a couple bedrooms. He had holed up in a leather chair by a window and had begun his actual nighttime routine.
Which was sipping coffee, staring out into the middle distance, and admonishing himself for all the wrongs he had done.
"You look like crap," she said. On the other hand, she looked well rested and fresh faced, with her hair pulled into a low bun, wearing a plain grey dress with the cream sweater that he had bought her for Christmas buttoned over it.
He hadn't expected her to be up this early, honestly. Outside, the sky was still a dark, deep blue and the world outside was cold and uninviting. He had been planning on drinking another pot of coffee before washing himself and getting dressed in order to pretend he had absolutely slept, thank you very much for asking.
"Did you even sleep?" she asked, her voice demanding, if not a little concerned.
He shrugged, refusing to meet her eyes. God, he used to be so much better at lying. "I got a few hours."
Her eyes narrowed. "Liar."
He rolled his eyes, exasperated. "So what?"
She looked at him as if he was an idiot. "You're unwell." She pulled the coffee pot and mug towards her and told him, "Go to bed. Get some rest."
He stood there, not quite knowing how to explain to her that he couldn't.
"I can go without my sleeping potion. Take it yourself," she said, almost reading his mind.
"You've sufficiently worked through your grief and guilt over your parents?" he asked, too sharply.
Her eyes flashed, hurt. "No," she said through gritted teeth, "but I'm willing to begin working through it."
He looked at her, skeptical.
"Do this for yourself, Pan, so you can do the same," Wendy told him forcefully. She closed the distance between them and pushed him out of the library, down the hall, up the stairs and then through a corridor before she shoved him past the doorway of his room.
He turned around, grinding his feet into the floor so she couldn't push him any further. "I don't need to be manhandled," he told her.
Wendy ignored him. "Potion, now," she said, holding out her hand.
In a burst of light, the potion appeared in her hand. With her other hand, she pointed forcefully at the bed. He paused, considering whether or not to listen to her, but the look on Wendy's face made him turn around and sit heavily on the bed.
She came and sat beside him, her shoulder brushing his.
"This is the part where you sermonize at me about what I should be doing," he said and again, his words were too sharp, jagged.
She turned and gave him an unamused look. "They don't work well as bedtime stories. But I can list all the ways you're being an ass right now. That should help."
He did not drop her gaze. "I'm sorry," he said, meek and mild, a shadow of the being he used to be.
She nodded, an acceptance of a sliver of the apology she deserved.
"It's not like I'm not listening," he said after a pause. "It's more complicated than that."
Her face softened. "I know," she said. "I just want you to be well." She reached across and tenderly brushed at a lock of his hair from his forehead and he jerked back. She stared for a moment, her hand hovering in the air.
He hadn't meant to pull back like before.
It had just felt… it was—
"Do you remember when I gave you the sleeping potion?" he asked, suddenly, words tumbling out of his brain.
Her hand fell to her lap. She didn't say anything, just looked at him, eyebrows furrowed.
"You said… you said you couldn't remember what your parents' faces looked like." The words felt halting, large stones pushed with great effort, but he heard them rushing out quickly.
She continued to look on. Concerned.
"I remember all their faces," he said all in one rush.
He wasn't sure if it was a curse or a blessing, but with Wendy's eyes on him, he knew she was looking straight through him. For a reason he did not know, she was the soul in the universe who understood him completely.
And so she answered his roundabout explanation with, in a steady voice that spoke of milenia lived, "You know, suffering doesn't earn absolution."
It was what he deserved. What else was there to do but suffer?
"That's naive," he told her, his voice too sharp again, too cutting.
"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind," she returned, voice hard.
They both looked at each other for a long moment, both aware that this could become an enormous argument.
"We don't need to have this fight right now," he said after a long moment.
"We don't need to have this fight at all."
He huffed.
She huffed.
Two sides of the same coin, he supposed.
He held out a hand, an olive branch. "Give me the potion."
She considered him for a moment before handing him the vial. He uncorked it and swallowed it in one gulp, gagging as it slid down his throat.
She watched him with a hawk-like gaze the entire time as he set the vial aside and lay back in bed, throwing back the covers, still suspicious that he might pull something behind her back to stay up. And he didn't blame her for that. It was something he might pull.
His eyes began to droop, the world became fuzzy and for a moment, he was just so fucking excited to sleep and to sleep well.
"Don't… don't worry I'll wiggle out of this," he sighed, words slipping and sliding into each other.
"I'll worry about what I like," she said, characteristically.
And even though he was mad with her, he grinned. "Classic."
"Go to sleep," came Wendy's voice out of the grey that was eating up more and more of his vision. Apparently, she wasn't as assumed.
If he had not been nearly asleep he might have opened his eyes and pretended to be wide awake to spite her, but instead he grumbled out, "I'll do what I like," which he was almost certain was complete gibberish.
As he fell into the inky blackness of sleep, he felt Wendy's hand gently brushing at the hair on his forehead, tracing the lines of his face, gently, tenderly.
And this time he did not pull away.
Hello! I have not been consistent about updating this! I'm kind of bored with FF so if you'd like a more consistent posting check out my posting on AO3 where I'm much more consistent /works/4780286/chapters/67665100