Chapter Text
All children grow up.
We all come to realise one day that we cannot stay young and carefree forever - that we must eventually learn to not only live, but to survive. One day we are rolling about in the grass, the next we are marching off to school; we blink and we are being thrust at a new marriage prospect.
And yet it is not until our parents are no longer there to guide us that we realise we have been tricked into growing up. We mourn the ease of our youth and berate ourselves for not sensing the trap we’ve walked into.
I’d known about this trap since I was very young - though there was a brief time, when I’d flown to an island in the sky with a boy who had promised to never grow up…
To give myself credit, I’d tried to fight it with every fibre of my being. I stayed in the nursery with all my brothers for an extra two years after returning to Bloomsbury, telling them stories and helping them adjust to their new lives. Tootles, Nibs, Slightly, Curly, and the twins all took a fair bit of time to get used to their new routines as schoolboys, but they all did in fact grow up - despite having previously sworn otherwise.
Michael had a great deal of trouble understanding that our parents were indeed our parents, and for almost a year he had insisted that I was still his mother - a declaration that must have torn Mother apart, though she never did show it. John made the change much easier, always was one for practicality and logic just like Father, and it was almost no time at all before he’d forgotten our little adventure.
Though I fought to keep myself from growing up too quickly, it seemed that devoting all my attention to my younger brothers gave Time the chance to sneak up behind me while I was looking the other way. I blinked, and suddenly I was a woman.
I blinked again, and I was a wife.
I blinked once more… and I was an orphan.
Was this living? Was this the awfully big adventure I was promised?
I was not too sure anymore.
-------------London / Early January, 1930----------
I held my breath as my husband slammed the door behind him.
The sound of him stumbling down the stairs was almost drowned out by my heartbeat pounding in my ears. I remained where I was, perfectly still, as he moved roughly through the house and donned his winter garments. I didn’t move until I heard him fumble with the front door handle, swing it open and shut, and finally manage to lock the door with his key.
All was quiet and still.
With the house now empty, I took a shaky breath - too loud as it broke the silence around me. I lifted my head from the pillow beneath me and looked around the bedroom, cataloguing the damage - torn curtains, another hole in the wall, bed askew and small flecks of blood dotting the chilled wooden floor.
Blood… I remembered suddenly, reaching a numb hand to touch my lower lip. Sure enough, the tips of my fingers came away marked with red, a stark difference to the fingernail beds beneath, still tinged with blue. With my other hand, I carefully prodded at my throat. To my disquiet, the tenderness of the area nearly promised I’d be wearing high collars for a time.
Wincing, I extended my legs and swung them over the side of the bed. I kept my eyes up, not looking down at what I knew must be a new series of bruises on my arms and legs. I gasped quietly as my feet finally touched the floor, the chill of the wood sending a shiver up my spine. I scrambled for my shawl, left partially torn and discarded on the bedspread. Wrapping it tightly around my shoulders did little to assuage the tremors wracking my frame, so I exchanged it for the comforter. With some effort, I rose to my feet, stumbling towards the mirror.
Without looking at my reflection, I fumbled blindly for the fabric hanging over the edge, finally finding it and pulling it over the mirror. Hiding from what I didn’t want to see.
What I never wanted to see.
It had been some time since Daniel had gotten this angry, and I berated myself for letting myself slip too far. It was amazing how quickly one broken rule could cause him to snap nowadays - but at least his anger had eventually carried his feet away from me. He would be gone for a few hours at best, finding the darkest corners of London to gamble more of our money away. At least the harlots he came across would satisfy him enough to spare me later.
My aching legs protested until I collapsed unceremoniously into the waiting armchair next to the window. I kept the window closed as much as possible during the winter, in an effort to conserve as much heat as possible. Our money - Daniel’s money, rather - was more often used to fund the lives of random women working the streets, rather than our own home.
I had often debated creeping silently into his office while he was out on nights like this, scooping up whatever coins I could find and running, far away, far away. Even now, some long-forgotten ember was flaring back to life in my gut, pushing me to open the door and flee to… to…
To where? I felt that same spark of hope flickering and dying, blowing away like ashes in the wind. I forced myself to stamp out the notion before it could go too far again. Even if I could get out, I’d have nowhere to go. And he would find me.
Still, I couldn’t quite help but think through a list of options. Each one, all paths I’d examined before from every possible angle, were flung from my mind immediately without question. It was impossible.
My traitorous mind was not so easily deterred. But once upon a time, I did the impossible . I went to the Neverland with a boy who found a way to never grow up. I fought… pirates and… mermaids and… something in the water…
What was in the water?
I furrowed my brow. There had been something in the water. Something about a clock. And a man - not a boy - afraid of something in the water. I strained to remember more than flashes of waves and the glint of iron, but no matter how hard I tried, the details of my adventure stubbornly refused to come into focus.
What was in the water? What did I have to believe in?
And one final question startled me more than anything:
How did I even get there?
I stood, the comforter slipping from my shoulders, but the goosebumps on my flesh did not distract me. I was forgetting again.
Memories surrounding Neverland were fickle things - the more time someone spends in Neverland, the fuzzier the details of their past life become. The longer you are away from Neverland, the less of your adventure you recall. Michael, as a young boy, hadn’t been able to fight the magic as well as John or I had. But even John had forgotten it all eventually. Somehow I could still remember, but sometimes I would reach out for a detail and instead grasp empty air. It happened more and more often now, and there was always only one way to stop it.
I turned to the window.
When my vivid memories of Neverland started to fade and blur, I instinctively knew I needed to open the window. To look up at the star, the one thing I was certain I’d be able to locate even on my deathbed. Even if I were blind, I’d be able to point unseeingly at the sky, and say with great accuracy: “Look. There it is. My greatest adventure. Second star to the right and straight on til morning.”
Just like every other time I’d started to forget, I felt the urge deep in my gut. Some deeply-buried part of me, the part of me that housed my foolish hope and determination - it whispered, making my hands twitch toward the glass before me.
Open the window, Wendy, it coaxed me. Open the window.
And so, with trembling fingers, I carefully unlocked the latch. I opened it, tormented and relieved at the same time by the blast of frigid air on my cheeks. The torn curtains billowed, and for a moment I was back in the nursery, watching the curtains blow with wind, sparks, magic…
But there was no magic now. No sparks. The air tingled with nothing but falling snow, car exhaust and the distant glow of the street lights below.
Magic or no magic, I carefully climbed through the window to stand on the small balcony. My bare feet protested as they crunched on the light dusting of snow, but I couldn’t focus on the pain. My entire attention was locked on that star, almost mocking me as it winked from the inky black of the sky.
And suddenly, it was as though I could hear the star laughing. No, it wasn’t the star… it was the voice of a boy, an echo of a cheerful voice in the back of my mind, whooping and crowing. More sounds resurfaced, as they always tended to first - the crackling of a fire, the shouts of Lost Boys, crashing waves, the ticking of a clock, the roar of a-
Crocodile . My brain finally latched onto the image of the beast, huge and grotesque and entirely inhuman. Cold black eyes looking around in cruel anticipation of its next meal. Eyes much too aware and malicious for a normal animal to possess. How do I always forget the crocodile?
More sounds appeared. Gun and cannonfire, battle cries mixed with drinking songs, the creaking of a wooden ship in the water, the enthusiastic shushes of an enraptured audience while I…
While I told them a story .
Oh, and what stories I used to tell. Stories about princesses and pirates - and then after my great adventure, there were countless tales about boys with fairies who…
Fairies. The echo of a small bell floated through my memories.
Tinkerbell.
And with that large piece of the puzzle regained, I had an answer to my pressing question. An answer so obvious I was bewildered how I had forgotten it, something I had never forgotten before -
I flew.
This made me uneasy. How could I have forgotten the most integral part of the journey? I had never forgotten about my flights before, but it almost didn’t matter - I could feel the sensation of cold winter wind pushing against me as I soared over the city as a girl. With my eyes closed, I allowed myself to get lost in the memory, feeling myself flying through the streets of London all those years ago, then locking into a path towards the star - flying through the air so fast I could barely see, all I knew was I needed to hold on to the boy in front of me or I wouldn’t make it… and I had to make it, I had to see Neverland in all its glory. The good and evil, Lost Boys and fairies, crocodiles and mermaids, pirates with tattoos all over and hands on backwards and missing limbs with cold blue eyes and a mocking mouth -
Captain Hook .
This startled me again - The Captain had visited me many times in my nightmares, especially in the few years after I returned home. When I would dream of him, I would wake drenched in cold sweat, my chest heaving as my eyes darted around the room. I would stare at every individual shadow, looking for a sign that he had managed to find me again. I hadn’t dreamt of him in recent years, but even the memory of those nightmares was enough to send a shiver down my spine.
But were they always nightmares? my mind whispered again.
No, indeed. For years, my dreams of Hook had been nothing short of terrifying - but there had been one night, when I had just turned twenty, where I’d dreamt of him again. And when I’d launched upright out of sleep that night, fighting back tears, it had been from reliving the Captain’s final moments. Seeing him plummet into the crocodile’s waiting maw, and disappearing beneath the waves.
The nightmares had lessened after that night, and many of them had not really counted as nightmares at all.
But I struggled, as always, to ignore this line of thought. Captain Hook was the villain of my story. He and Peter were sworn enemies, and so I must feel the same. Growing up had brought a new perspective on many things, and occasionally, the dreams had… morphed into something different - but I refused to let my impression of the Captain be swayed by my experiences in adulthood. I swore not to develop any sort of appreciation for those thick black curls, the cool demeanour, that infuriating head tilt, how both his warm hand and freezing hook could be rough or gentle on a whim -
Stop. I commanded myself. He is the villain. And I shall not think of him this way.
Is he the villain? that other voice inside sneered. Is he the one who abandoned you here?
I squeezed my eyes shut as though that would silence my treacherous thoughts. Deep down, I knew that Peter had long forgotten about me. That night fifteen years ago, even as I’d heard him laugh gleefully as he’d promised to remember, I’d known that he would not. He could not. Neverland was quite small, nicely crammed with hardly any space between one adventure and another - there was no room for the ordinary Wendy-bird.
But Peter was still my one and only solace. My memories of him were always the last to fade, my own little spark of bright hope in the back of my mind. But lately, it had felt like the bright green eyes and glowing face were gone from my everyday thoughts, replaced instead by his elusive shadow I could never catch. Peter was like a fleeting thought - here as the most important thing in the universe one moment, gone the next. And no matter how many times I had stood wishing at the window, he had never answered my call. I knew I hadn’t imagined Peter, but he had now become nothing real I could count on. Only a memory I could try to hold onto.
You wanted to be able to count on someone else.
Stop. I warned myself again, but I found my thoughts drifting nonetheless. Green eyes became crystal blue, youth became maturity, a grin became a smirk hidden behind a perfect moustache and beard. I’d wanted to join his crew that day, I’d ached to say Yes! Let me stay! Let me be Red-Handed Jill! And his voice -
‘Wendy… Darling… ’ He had purred in my ear.
We had seen the Captain die - he had been swallowed by the Crocodile, which meant even entertaining this line of thought was foolishness. But if anyone could escape such a death, I knew it would be the Captain. Was it wrong to have grown up? Was it wrong to want to see him again? To hope against all odds that he’d survived?
What would Neverland be, after all, without Captain Hook?
Peter forgot, as children often do. But Hook was a man. Would he remember me? Since Neverland, my wish at the window had always been for Peter to return. But now I felt it shift to something else - something more.
All I wanted was to matter to someone in Neverland as much as they all mattered to me.
No matter who it was.
“Do you remember me, Captain?” I murmured to the sky. If I had opened my eyes, I may have seen the Second Star to the Right wink a little brighter for a few moments. “I remember you. I don’t want to forget.”
A small gust of wind gently blew my hair to the side. I opened my eyes, looking at the now-normal star. I stood in the same position for a while longer, until I had remembered all I could and my skin was numb. Whatever I was waiting for - it did not come.
I let my eyes drift down for another moment, peering down at the deserted street below.
How much more? that foolish voice pleaded with me a final time. How much more can you endure here?
I didn’t know how to answer myself. So, with a sigh, I blinked tears away and turned back towards the window.
Just as I reached it, a velvet voice spoke from the dark corner of the balcony.
“Wendy, Darling.”