He doesn't like how she's become. Human, taller than life, whatever it is that she is now. Tink hadn't been like this; she had been full of life, full of smiles, like a breath of fresh air that was always at his side. He could still remember the heat of her, like a little piece of his own personal sun, hiding away against his neck. Now it seemed as if she thought she were a demon, as if she thought she had this darkness inside her. People don't just become that, they aren't born that way. In a way, he believed, she made herself into this by telling herself it every morning. After all, the longer you hear the word monster, you begin to believe it after a while. Whatever it is she thinks she is now, it only serves to push Peter away farther, because what is it he had to come back to, if Tink believed herself to be this way?
'After fifty years of this, I think that we've said everything, Pan.'
"I think you would've known by now," he murmured with a hum of his tone rolling through his chest. "Time means nothing here. We have forever and a day."
There's a voice inside him that's screaming silently, the sort of voice that wonders why she giving up, his Tinkerbell, the one he had brought back from death itself with tears as he held her in the palm of his rough hands. He can see it in her eyes, that she wants to give up on him, and it turns his heart cold. He wonders, vaguely, if he still smells the same as he did before; like someone who's ridden the back of the wind, and spent a thousand fun summers beneath trees with mud coated feet. But Pan has always been there, Peter had just been the best of both, the balance of dark and light, the cruelty of a child and the pure love of an innocent heart. Perhaps, now, he smelt of only brim fire and dirt, the scent of a festering wound. The thought doesn't settle well in his stomach.
He wished there were stars out tonight. The stars, they were the only company he's truly had since everything happened, like a thousand blinking little fireflies glistening in comfort. He wishes he could let her go, and she'd still stay there above the earth, fluttering little wings so fast it sounded like bells. He could feel her heart beat through her chest, his own thrumming with the gentle brush of the night breeze. He keeps his grip around her waist tight, yet loose at the same time, as if any minute now he could let her go and she'd fall right back down.
'But I have to bring you back to me,'
"Bring me back?" he whispers tonelessly, before he near barks out a laugh, his arms shaking around her. "I've always been me, Tinkerbell. I've always been inside his mind, I've always been here." He prods a finger into his temple, lip quivering. "This is me." The words 'she set me free' were implied, of course, but he couldn't say them because he knew they weren't true. She trapped to halves of one whole, took the goodness that shone bright like a star, and stored it away in his mind until all that was left was darkness.
"You say you want to fight against her, you want to end her reign here on this Island, but you can't fight darkness with darkness. What you imagine yourself to be, this thing you've created in yourself. Your hatred is twisting you inside you." Like the Hangman's trees, the way the roots had grown and swirled around each other. "You say I'm gone from you, that I'm different, but you're becoming something your not, Tink. You're losing your light. You're losing your magic." Because he knew that magic didn't have to be all light shows and disappearing acts, it could be the simplest act, like holding a friend as they cried, or saving a little boy fro a garden so long ago.
Don't let her take your magic, Tink. I'm here. I've always been here.
'I cannot be your wings anymore when I have none of my own.'
"You've never needed wings to fly," he admonished. "All you ever needed was a happy thought, and it seems your blood lust has clouded it all. We're not so different, you and I."
