AN- This is set towards the end of The Secret Commonwealth, but don't worry if you haven't read it - this is fine to read after just the original trilogy or the BBC/HBO show. It's mostly just a good old-fashioned Will and Lyra reunion!

You don't really need to know anything about The Secret Commonwealth except that (spoilers ahead!) Lyra is 20 and has separated from Pan due to them falling out over her losing her 'imagination', and a series of circumstances has led her to the desert to look for him. She was attacked on her journey and broke her hand, and also her ex-teacher, Malcolm, fancies her (ew) but she doesn't know.

So yeah, things aren't going great for Lyra. Enter... fanfiction :)

Lyra closed her eyes as the hot sun beat down on her face. Her guide, Ionides, was explaining the route they were going to take, but she wasn't really listening.

She was thinking about Pan when she felt it. A jolt of excitement - no - a jolt of sheer joy. She tried to think of what could possibly be happening to him to make him so happy, then she felt it a second time, even stronger, and suddenly she knew exactly what it was.

"Wait," she cried, clutching at her chest. "I can feel him. I can feel my daemon close by. He's excited. He's… but no… he can't have!" Before she could finish her sentence she took off into the desert, abandoning her guide and the two camels he was readying for them. She was guided by a magnetic-like force, pulling her towards Pantalaimon.

"Miss, where are you going?" Ionides called after her, but she either didn't hear him or didn't care to. She could make out a reddish spot amongst the sand in the distance, getting ever larger as it bounded towards her.

"Pan!" She yelled.

"Lyra!" He called back. Soon, they were together, running so fast they almost collided.

"Oh, Pan, it's you, it's really you!" She cried.

"Lyra, I'm so sorry I left you. It has killed me. So much has happened," he cried back.

"I know Pan, I know," she said desperately, falling to her knees in front of him and cupping his warm, fluffy face in her hands.

"Lyra-" he started, but she interrupted him. She knew what he was going to say; there was only one thing that could've made them feel what she felt just now.

"There isn't one, Pan. There can't be. The feeling I just had, it feels like you found… but there can't be!" Overwhelmed with emotion, tears began to pour down her bruised face.

"But there is Lyra! I found one. I found a window."

"I…" Lyra felt as if she could collapse. She took a deep breath and, despite how fast her head was spinning, clambered to her feet and chased after Pan who had already started running back in the direction he had come from.

They ran together like they hadn't in years, struggling slightly as the sand beneath their feet gave way more easily than the solid pavements and roof tiles they ran across in her childhood. Pan came to a stop suddenly and stared into the air. Lyra followed his gaze and there it was, shimmering in front of them. To anyone else it would look like the heat, or a trick of the light, if they even noticed it at all. But not to Lyra. Lyra knew what she was looking for; she looked for it every day, everywhere she went. Every sunbeam, every reflection, every flicker of light made her double take just in case she was lucky enough to have found one, one remaining window, somehow overlooked. And finally, here one was. She gasped in disbelief and put her hands to her mouth, simply staring at it for a moment. Pan looked back and forth between her face and the window as though to make sure she was definitely seeing it before excitedly winding around her legs in a cat-like fashion. Everything that had passed between them the past few months was suddenly put on hold.

"Oh Pan, it's really here," she breathed, eyes still round and staring at the window, unable to look away for fear it would disappear if she did.

"It is. We have to go through. It could be…"

"It could be his world." Lyra finished for him. Pan nodded.

"And hers," he added, picturing the beautiful black cat daemon they'd last seen in Lyra's dreams.

But Lyra slowly dropped her hands from her face, furrowing her brow and shaking her head.

"No. No. This could be to anywhere, Pan! The chance of it being their world is one in… well one in infinity!"

"It doesn't matter, Lyra! We have to try. Besides, it must be theirs. I can just feel it! Can't you?" he asked.

"Yes, I can…" she replied after a second. He was right, she could feel a kind of energy emanating from it. She didn't know how, but it just felt like his world. Will's world. A small smile began to form on her face but it was gone as quickly as it appeared. "But even if it is his world, how would we find him? We're on the other side of the planet! We don't have the right currency! We-"

"We'll find a way, Lyra!" Pan interrupted her. "You've regretted parting from him every day since you did. I know it because I have felt it too, right along with you. We've been sharing this pain, Lyra, and yet taking it out on each other. Your dream of Kirjava told you to come to the desert, didn't it? Well, maybe this is where it was leading you."

"My dream told me to come here but Pan, I came to find you. I was trying to find the Blue Hotel. My dream led me here because you're here, so we could be reunited."

"But Lyra, don't you see? This is it! This is what reunites us. We've struggled so much these past few years because part of us is missing. And I just know our missing part is through that window."

"But we couldn't stay there, Pan, we couldn't." Tears began to fall down her face again, thick and fast, a thousand possibilities shooting through her head.

"Then we could leave this open and come back. Or maybe we could find a way to stay there. I don't know but we have to try, Lyra." He looked at her pleadingly.

Pan was right. Of course he was; he knew her heart better than she did. These past few years she had become melancholy, searching for feeling in places she shouldn't and failing to find it. If she saw Will again, even if only for a short time, maybe she could finally feel true joy again.

There was something else bothering her though, something that she was too scared to say out loud for fear of speaking it into reality. What if Will had moved on?

"Lyra, please. We have to go. I don't want to be apart from you again," Pan said quietly.

Lyra wasn't quite sure what he meant. Was he implying that he would go without her if she didn't agree to go? Or did he mean that if they didn't go, if they stayed here, there would always be a distance between them like there had for the past few years - that they would always feel apart? The magician in Prague, Agrippa, had told her that she would be reunited with her daemon in a way she did not expect, and that she would have to make a great sacrifice; maybe this was the sacrifice. Leaving her world behind and going into another, one not meant for her, one that would slowly kill her.

Her expression turned resolute as she made her decision. Pan was right - she had to do this. She'd tried living in a world without Will and it had been unbearable. There had been good times of course, she'd even enjoyed the company of other boys, especially Dick Orchard. She smiled a little at the thought of him. The problem was she could never truly connect, even to him; she was always holding back, and so was Pan. Even when she'd been entwined with Dick rather intimately, Pan had given her true feelings away, never truly getting close to Dick's vixen daemon, and certainly never getting close to Dick himself. The rest of her life was much the same - something was always missing, even between her and Pan. Part of her heart was stuck in another world and she had to find it, even if it turned out the one who had it had given his own to someone else. Pan let out a relieved sigh as he felt her reach her decision before she even said anything.

"Ok." she said simply. And with that, she stepped forward and walked through the shimmering cut in the air, Pan jumping through after her.