Work Text:
Two things happen when a crooked dagger is pushed between Peter Pan’s shoulder blades.
One—Neverland has its first blizzard in its history. Two—Wendy Moira Angela Darling faints in line while waiting to board a flight to London.
Neverland’s rage starts as a simmer, at first. The first warning sign is when a snowflake hits a fairy’s nose in the hottest part of the island. Not a second later, two others float from the sky, and the snowfall quickens until there’s a thin layer covering the jungle. The jungle cats and fairies gather at Pixie Hollow, and it takes the fairies’ combined magic to form a little bubble to protect them from the growing storm.
Soon, the snow picks up with a howl, and thunder growls as the snow hits the bubble and sticks. Twin lightning bolts streak across the sky, and the next rumble of thunder is hard enough to shake the ground. The wind howls and Neverland screams its fury to the sky.
They tried to kill our king, the island seethes, and shadows melt into the trees to avoid the lightning that touch down on every part of the island. A mermaid is too slow to reach the underwater cave her pack has reached, and the boiling water dashes her against the rocks. Her blood stains the water red, and the seafoam is pink when it crashes against the once-white beach.
Peter Pan is not vanquished so easily, the island seethes, and a lightning bolt splits the Thinking Tree in two, causing a fire. Despite the snow that beats against it, Neverland’s magic strengthens with every drop of Peter Pan’s blood and the fire rages on, covering everything in sight.
The fairies brace themselves, drained and exhausted without their magic, but the fire only melts the snow covering their bubble and circles the grass outside before moving on. The fire consumes every tree, leaving nothing but ash and Pixie Hollow behind
When it reaches a hollowed-out tree with a small bedroom in its leaves, Neverland’s rage falters as images of a queen flit through its memory. For Peter, the flames murmur, and that is the only part of the island it willingly spares.
Wendy Darling wakes up in her hotel room, and again, her heart is too heavy for her chest. Wendy’s fingertips brush against the spot where her heart pounds against its cage, fast as a hummingbird. “Peter,” she whispers, and a tear drips onto her pillow, unbidden. “You promised me you’d keep it safe.”
When the fire is quenched and the snow turns to a light fall instead of a howling blizzard—when Neverland’s fiery fury hardens into ice—the island releases two shadows.
One used to belong to a boy whose soul Peter held firmly in his hands. The other used to belong to a queen who held both their hearts in hers.
As Peter Pan is left on the ground, with his life staining the asphalt red and feeding Neverland’s magic worlds away, he gathers the strength to hiss a final curse at ‘Stiltskin. “This isn’t the end, ‘Stiltskin. This is just the beginning.”
“I don’t think so,” the imp replies, his crooked, bloody dagger gripped tightly in his hand. “Everyone has to die at some point, Pan. Even you.”
Peter opens his mouth to reply, but all he can do is cough. He coughs so hard he chokes up blood on the asphalt road beneath him, but his thoughts scream clearly in his head. (The Dark One is made of human flesh, but Peter Pan is made from the very bones and teeth of Neverland, and one day, he will see—)
“Peter,” a familiar voice says, and Peter lifts his head to see Wendy running toward him, dressed in the same nightgown she wore when he’d first seen him. Wendy reaches him in a few moments and kneels to the ground, cradling his face in gentle, soft hands.
“You have to run, Wendy,” Peter hisses, and coughs again. The blood that stains his shirt is thick and wet and clings to his body, and when Wendy lifts his chest into her lap, her hands are scarlet when she pulls them away.
Rumplestiltskin steps forward, and Wendy’s head lifts up automatically. Her eyes turn completely black for just a moment—a warning—and Rumple steps away. “What—what are you?”
Wendy ignores him and turns back to Peter, her eyes still black for a moment before they return to her normal blue. In that moment, something in Peter’s chest tightens—Wendy is safe, and ‘Stiltskin cannot get her. “I’m here to take you home, Peter,” she whispers. “Neverland wants its king back.”
She picks him up as if he is a feather and glares one last time at Rumplestiltskin. “You will regret the day you crossed Neverland,” she says, and takes off. Though the stars are hidden, her shadow, just like the girl who detached her, will always know which one is the second to the right.
Peter Pan dies halfway to Neverland, but it is more than enough time for Felix’s shadow to take Belle from the group of those frozen to the street. Wendy’s shadow deposits Peter’s corpse by the Thinking Tree, and she doesn’t stay long enough to see what the island will do with its king’s body.
Felix’s shadow arrives hours later, and places Belle in front of the group of jungle cats. All it takes is a whisper from Neverland before her blood dyes the ash burgundy, and Neverland starts to sing as the magic of her sacrifice soaks into the beach.
It takes two days to knit skin and muscle together, to heal a broken body, to return the king to his whole self. Two days until Neverland allows itself to sigh in relief that it has succeeded again in saving its master.
When Peter Pan takes breath again, his hair is the color of chestnuts instead of golden-brown—and when he opens his eyes, they are Belle’s bright blue instead of forest green.
Wendy Darling has grown used to the newfound weight in her chest. She looks forward to and fears the day when she forgets that she had ever lacked a heart. Tonight, though, it is a reminder of what she has lost.
She sits on her window seat—her brothers have tried so hard to decorate their new home in London like the home that haunts her memories, and a part of her loves and hates them for that—and tugs the window open.
The cool night air washes over her, and she tucks her knees underneath her as her eyes focus on the second star to her right. It seems to shine brighter tonight than it has the last two nights, and that makes her heart ache. “Hello,” she tells the sky, and the breeze seems to caress her hair as it moves past her.
Wendy shuts her eyes, tears already brimming. “I just wanted to let you know—I’m all right. I’m not happy, but I will be, eventually. The school is so wonderful, and there are so many new things about London, I think I might satisfy my curiosity, if only for a little while.”
She tells the stars all she’s discovered, rambles until it’s late in the night and she knows she should be going to bed. Wendy crosses the room to turn off the light, then returns to the window seat, unable to say goodbye to the place that held her heart for one hundred years.
Her heart burns red in her chest as she looks up at the sky, and this time she can’t keep her face from crumpling. “Before I go—there’s just one more thing, I promise. Just one more thing, one more miracle.” She takes a deep breath and squeezes her eyes shut, but a tear escapes despite her best efforts. “Peter, for me … don’t be dead. Please. That’s all I’m asking.”
Footsteps outside her door make her freeze. “Wendy? Are you still awake?” John whispers. Wendy freezes on the windowsill and clutches her knees, holding her breath and listening to her pounding heart until her brother moves away.
Wendy looks back up at the second star to the right and smiles through the tears she can’t keep away. At least Felix is still all right.
That little bit of knowledge is the only thing that can reassure her as she gets off the window seat and climbs into bed, leaving her window open.
Peter hears it all. He wants to fly through her window like his shadow had, so many years before; he wants to steal her away to Neverland like nothing has changed.
But Neverland is ashes, and Rumplestsiltskin is hunting for Belle across the world. It won’t be safe for her if she knows, a voice whispers—a voice Peter had never had before, until his eyes were blue and Belle’s life had been traded for his. It is a voice of goodness, of reason, and it sounds annoyingly like ‘Stiltskin’s true love. We have to protect her. If ‘Stiltskin found out she knew…
It takes several minutes for Peter to make his decision.
When he finally enters her room, Wendy is asleep, but her head faces the open window. Peter approaches her as quietly as he can, and he presses his lips together tightly as his fingers lift up slightly, trembling over her temple.
There’s a new gentleness in him, a kindness that hadn’t been there before Belle’s sacrifice. He tells himself that that kindness is the cause for when his fingers brush a strand of hair away from her temple and smoothes it down behind her ear. Peter leans down, his lips hovering over her cheek—and then they move to her ear.
“Goodbye, Wendy-bird,” he whispers, then straightens and backs away.
As he steps onto the window seat, Wendy shifts in her sleep and murmurs, “Peter, no.”
He freezes and looks over his shoulder, but Wendy has only turned onto her side, her whole body facing the window now. He takes another minute to savor the moment before he turns back to the London sky and steps out the window.
When Wendy Darling wakes up, the window is locked shut, and there is no sign that Peter Pan had ever been there—except for her dream.