Always Your Darling

One day when she was two years old she was playing in a garden, and she plucked another flower and ran with it to her mother. I suppose she must have looked rather delightful, for Mrs Darling put her hand to her heart and cried, ‘Oh, why can’t you remain like this for ever!’ This was all that passed between them on the subject, but henceforth Wendy knew that she must grow up.

[neverloseyoudarling-blog]

“nodofneverland:

“You won’t like knowing.” Sometimes Nod wished that he didn’t know. That he could go back to that naive child who had been brought to Neverland with his brother, that he could be that child reveled in the hunt and would dance around fires.  He didn’t dance anymore.    

“Well, you must have obviously forgotten how dangerous it was because you came back. Back! Why in the world would you ever want to come back here?” His voice was forceful and almost angry as he finished his sentence. Was it any wonder that they all thought her a naive child. No one in their right minds would return to Neverland after leaving this place.

Maybe at one point Nod might have been able to like Wendy, she seemed nice enough after all.  But how could he when she represented everything that he wanted. The only person to ever convince Peter to take them home and then she came back.

 “Of course I mean humans.” He wasn’t even sure how many mermaids and small folk there even were on the island. Especially since the mermaids weren’t necessarily confined to the island. Plus, he wasn’t sure he could even count that high. But he wouldn’t say that, especially not to Wendy.

“I may not enjoy the knowledge, but it would have to be better than everyone looking down on me because there are things I’ve chosen that upset them. Somehow, everyone here from the pirates to the merfolk seem to know me better than I know myself, or they very much think they do. Everyone, including some of the lost boys now look at me as if I’ve grown a second head instead of simply deciding to return.”

Wendy had always been curious after all, eager to learn anything she could about everything she could. She had always loved finding books about subjects she did not understand and trying to make the connections that she hadn’t made before. Always before, it had been clear to Wendy where her understanding was lacking, but this time in Neverland, she felt there was a thread missing, but she didn’t know where the gap truly was.

“It made sense for me to come back, maybe not to anyone else, but to me. Everyone else went back to the Other Place and they forgot. They forgot Peter and they forgot Neverland. They even forgot pieces of themselves and who they’d been, but I didn’t forget.” If only she knew how untrue that was.

Her brothers had made fun of her when she’d spoken of Neverland, continued to tell stories of its verdant forests and chilling waters. They’d said that she was quite silly, always playing in her make believe stories, but their adventures had never left Wendy, not even for a moment. Still, things were not as she’d left them and Wendy intended to find out where the gaps in her understanding had come from, whether it was simply time or something else.

 “Oh, and who has been here longer than you but less than Peter?” Somewhere inside, she supposed she knew the answer would be Hook. After all, wasn’t it always Peter and Hook?

[neverloseyoudarling-blog]

losthcart:

“Is that why you wear such huge skirts? The bigger the skirt, the less naughty you are?” 

Curly bat his eyes at Wendy, stealing long glances down at her legs as if he were expecting her to sprout tiny wings on her ankles or hooves. With the way she was blushing so aggressively, he might’ve thought that she had more hidden under her skirt that she really didn’t want him to see if he wasn’t certain that there was really nothing under there but pale, slender legs. 

He looked down at his own legs, growing uncertain about his ankles as he compared the two of them and found nothing too different. He was certainly getting hairier, which he was still conflicted about, but it had kept him plenty warm in the winter so he wasn’t too upset about it. 

“They’re just knickers. I don’t suspect you’ll have them for very long here. I lost my pants down the river nearly immediately. I don’t know if you remember.” It was an exercise in cleanliness that Curly had failed the first time around on the account that he lost almost everything he’d arrived in, thanks to a stream that bullied his pants all the way into the ocean. Curly eventually became grateful for the mortifying experience because it taught him not to bathe in running water or leave his laundry unattached to things but the idea of progression and learning only made him feel so much older. Still, his curiosity was infinite, growing and growing the more he fed it like an insatiable little beast that yearned to venture into a place where it didn’t recognize the footprints in the dirt.

He touched a tree branch overhead, able to hang onto it at his height with enough slack in his elbow to not make it fun anymore.  “What was the Other Place like? I mean, when you left it. Was it different?”

Wendy chuckled at Curly’s assertion, but even she had to admit that, as crazy as it sounded, it was probably a sound social theory. “You know Curly...honestly, I think that you might be right about that. It’s like the more layers between  a woman and the outside view, the more acceptable she is to society.” The more Wendy thought about it, the more the rule didn’t seem to make sense. Had she stopped to think about why she wore all those huge dresses? Why everything she wore was supposed to evoke visions of feminine virtue? She had been trained to be the perfect model of society’s belle, but she had never questioned why.

Neverland was different in so many ways. There was no expectation between the boys on the island, no push to pretend to be better or holier than thou. With her boys, she realized, she could probably wear anything and it wouldn’t be any kind of blemish on her reputation, or no more a blemish than was already there for being weak with skinny pale legs. 

“I do remember you telling me that story. I remember laughing quite a lot about it, but it was also one of the first things I learned in Neverland the first time I was here. It helped me learn where it was okay for me to bathe and how not to get my clothes washed away.” She had eventually found a perfect little inlet for washing and it had been her secret place ever since; after all, despite trying to be more like the Boys, Wendy still made sure to bathe once a week, ducking out when she was sure that no one would miss her.

It was so different from her bathtub at home, but maybe that was what made her value it all the more, the fact that she had been forced to find it. “The Other Place? hmmm,” Wendy mused, wondering where to start answering Curly’s question. “Well, we have a Queen, her name is Victoria and she wears black because her husband died years ago. But she’s powerful. She has lots of children. And apparently, people say that Britain is very powerful because we have a lot of colonies. But, I’m a woman so we aren’t really supposed to talk about all that. We’re supposed to talk about our homes and the newest fashions and children. So yes, it’s very different than here, but some things aren’t. I mean there are still kids who are hungry and people in charge.” But Peter wasn’t like those in charge back in London, he couldn’t be.

[neverloseyoudarling-blog]

lostcuntrol:

Rufio was the kind of boy who had learned, the hard and painful way, that the world owed him precisely nothing and that he owed it exactly as much in return. The wrinkle of his nose, filled with the disdain which he hoarded like a dragon hoarding treasure, was evidence enough of precisely what he thought of how much he owed Curly, but in case it wasn’t entirely clear he turned his head to spit into the dirt in that loud and profoundly disgusting way he’d learned down at the docks.

“I thought it was funny,” he mumbled, scratching at the back of his neck before setting to the task of attempting to ring the river water out of his pink-tinged shirt. Rivulets of blood-tinged water rolled between his fingers and down his arms, soaking into the damp earth at his feet.

He had decided that maybe he loathed Wendy in the abstract way that he loathed all girls who looked remotely like her: with her pretty curls and gentle manners.  If he got to know her better he imagined he could find specifics to work into that loathing, like perhaps the way she lectured the boys or exerted her properness and femininity like it had any place amidst the dirt and grime and blood that he was beginning to relish about this place. She was a pair of reigns presented to a wild stallion. Utterly out of place.

“Your idea of family and mine are very different,” he decides after a moment of observing her through coal-dark eyes, the grin that carves across his face not remotely friendly and decidedly more alarming than his usual sullen scowl. “If you like families so much, why did you come here?”

Spit. He had just spit on the ground in front of her and every fiber of her being screamed with the impropriety of the gesture. Of course, Wendy knew that men back in the Other Place probably spit (she had seen a couple of men by the docks or on the street corners do it), but no one in her family’s circle would have thought of doing so in front of her. Still, she knew that The Boys, her boys, were not often from the same places she was. Unfortunately, where she would have asked the other boys to not spit in front of her or would have joked with them, she could do neither with the brash boy in front of her.

“I thought it was barbaric. You shouldn’t be fighting each other when this island is hard enough as it is. We all need each other to get by here and Curly knows that more than most; after all, he had to survive a great deal of this past winter almost completely alone. You can’t just go around hitting people here. It’s just not done.”

Or it hadn’t been done before. Sure, Wendy remembered playful scuffles among her last boys; they’d fought, but always like siblings in her mind. They had argued and punched and swore, but then Wendy would come in and talk to them and they’d find some kind of mediation before the two parties would be off and playing together again. She had no sense of that camaraderie from Rufio. Where most of the boys could play at violence, Rufio craved it, like a dog conditioned to fight from birth. He did not play fight; he played for blood.

“I came here to do what all women eventually do in some way, which was to carve out their own family. I just decided that I would much rather have my family be Peter and those boys and Echo than the alternative. I love family, I just chose to come home to Neverland and be with family here. Family isn’t always blood, you know?”

[neverloseyoudarling-blog]

@alanaofthelagoon in response to this from the Penny Dreadful Starters

Wendy wanted to believe Alana, wanted to think that there was someone who had the simplicity of uncomplicated happiness, but she was not one of such people. She loved Neverland, had convinced herself that surely she was happier there with Peter than she would have been in the Other Place, no matter how many others seemed to doubt the sincerity of that thought or seemed dead set on getting her to reconsider. Still, there was part of Wendy which would always live in the Other Place especially with John, Michael, and even Nana. There was even part of Wendy which went with the first Lost Boys that she’d met, the ones who’d come with her.

Alana, however, did not seem to have the effervescence that she assumed uncomplicated happiness would bring. Though Alana was beautiful and still playful, like the others of her species, there was a depth to her, one which seemed, to Wendy, to speak of more than happiness. There had been more in Alana’s life and Wendy was terribly curious to find out more, even if Alana could not directly give her the answers she desired. “I’m happy, thank you for asking, but I’m also very lucky. I don’t know why I’m asking you, just that you seem to want something and there’s almost a want in your eyes. I just wondered if I saw the right thing. I could be wrong though.”

[neverloseyoudarling-blog]

runchxrlie:

continuation from [x] with @neverloseyoudarling

The girl’s response took Charlie by surprise. Not the young part. He’d been told that plenty of times – though time would change that and he was torn on how to feel about it. No, it was that he seemed familiar to her. That they might’ve seen each other before. This was why she’d been staring at him? He turned around to fully face her. His eyes narrowed slightly, brows furrowing as he took in her appearance, trying to see for himself if she was indeed right. He’ll admit, there was an air to her, much different than those of the pirates and anyone else in Neverland. She seemed almost out of place in a world as cruel as this. Charlie tilted his head to the side, “What is your name?”

Her memories of being on Hook’s ship were shrouded in mist in her mind, pieces of them cut together or stuck like two pages of a book that had gotten wet and refused to part from each other, obscuring what had been written. In them, faces mixed and blended together turning from friendly to fierce and everything in between. Nod, she’d been able to place instantly, his face tied directly to Hook, but the other pirates still seemed indistinct. Charlie’s face seemed to spring into her mind though but there was no part of her that could make an enemy out of the boy’s face. “I’m Wendy, Wendy Darling. I was in Neverland four years ago.”

[neverloseyoudarling-blog]

@lostcuntrol in response to this

To say that Wendy was protective of Curly would have been an understatement. Thus, when the fight had broken out between Rufio and Curly, Wendy found herself terrified for her (former?) friend. Her first check in had been with Curly who had swatted her away as one would an annoyance like a fly or mosquito, but her next stop led her down to the water’s edge where Rufio was washing up. 

Wendy had not understood many of Peter’s new additions to his lost boys when she’d first arrived, Rufio most of all. How could Peter bring such an uncouth character to Neverland with the rest of the boys? It was like lighting the fuse to a stick of dynamite into the middle of Parliament and waiting for the explosion. Rufio seemed to hold no regard for rules, decency, or other people in general. It had been clear from the moment Wendy stepped foot into camp that Rufio held little affection for any of the other Lost Boys; unlike the others, he didn’t even seem to have a particularly strong love for Peter either. He was boorish and incendiary and Wendy thought him a poor addition into the group of boys she’d grown to care for. Still, after he’d assaulted Curly, she was more than speculative, she was angry.

She came to the edge of the creek and stood with her hands on her hips, her voice chiding in that honed maternal way. “Curly is Peter’s second which means you owe him your respect and your loyalty. Peter would not enjoy the fact that you’ve roughed up the one person who takes care of most of this camp. And no, Rufio, this is far from funny. We are a family here and if you can’t act like a family, you’re going to need to calm yourself down. Neverland is hard enough to survive without children starting fights.”

[neverloseyoudarling-blog]

@cptxhook in response to this

PENNY DREADFUL

Wendy Darling had changed since last coming to Neverland; she had gotten taller, filled out more, but James Hook had not changed one bit since the last time Wendy Darling had met him aboard the Jolly Roger. Her memories of the incident, of course, had been tampered with, but the vision of Hook with his quick dark eyes and, of course, his shiny hook, had never shifted. Seeing him again sent a shiver up Wendy’s spine, a shiver that caused the look of doubt to cross Wendy’s face when he said he meant her no harm.

“Captain Hook,for obvious reasons I doubt your sincerity. After all, you are still Peter’s enemy, are you not? What did you need to know that seeing me would tell you? That I came back?” She stepped back from his hand, wondering at his expression. It didn’t seem to be one of enmity though she couldn’t imagine that Hook could possibly not mean her harm. “I missed Neverland.” There was no need to explain that she had missed Peter as well, missing Neverland  and missing Peter were almost synonymous. 

[neverloseyoudarling-blog]

losthcart:

Curly thought it was simply hilarious the way Wendy yelped and changed colour all the way up to her hairline, though he couldn’t figure out exactly why she looked so horrified by all of it. Rage he could understand, but Wendy seemed… embarrassed. His gaze dropped down to her knobby knees, following the long trail of white stems that lead down to her feet and ankles with passive interest. He would’ve been right to assume that she wasn’t much of a runner for her little legs were about as impressive as her little arms but he didn’t think it was anything to be ashamed of. 

“Don’t what? Whatever else would I be looking at?” he questioned, batting his eyes owlishly as he trailed after her flustered shuffle into the brush. His curiosity peaked the longer she remained silent, picking at him in a way that made it all feel so very urgent to know what was bothering Wendy because the guilt of ruining her dress was peskily making its way into his awareness and he didn’t like that very much when he much rather it stay funny the way it were a moment ago. 

Curly crept around a tree, circling around the trunk so that he emerged on the other side of it and Wendy in order to see her face. After a beat of quiet lingering, he said, “You’re not really upset, are you? It was going to get ruined anyway. I’d say that’s far better use of all that cloth.”

Wendy huffed as she went behind the brush, busily trying to tie the edges of her torn skirt around a tree and looped another on a vine that she could possibly use to pull the ends together when the rabbits hit the trap; at least she supposed that was the way it would work. She was no mechanical or trap genius and she had never tried inventing much before. John had always been the one to engineer their play contraptions, clever as he was. How she wished that he had come too, though when she left, he had been too old to believe in Neverland anymore.

She could hear Curly’s questioning from where she worked and her flush grew deeper. How could she tell him that it was entirely improper for a lady of her station to be seen by a male, especially one of his age, in her undergarments. To explain it to Curly, she’d have to understand it herself and, though decorum had been impressed upon her for her entire life, Wendy had absolutely no idea why such constructs seemed so important. As if the sight of her legs were going to drive Curly mad with lust. He was Curly after all. What did he know of such things?

By the time he came around the tree, she’d mollified a bit. “No, I’m not upset Curly. You’re right that this is a far better use. It’s just...in the Other Place, these would be considered naughty, but we’re not in the Other Place, are we? I suppose no one here is going to care very much about what’s proper or not.”

[neverloseyoudarling-blog]

@heartlcssboy in response to this

There was something about the way that Peter asked her to go with him, the way his eyes lit up with excitement that made it impossible for her to refuse him. He could have told her that they needed to go dive off a cliff and Wendy would have happily leapt from the highest peak she could find, trusting that before her she dashed herself on the rocks below, Peter would come to save her. If there was one thing she thought of as being concrete, it was that Peter would never ask her to do something she couldn’t handle. There was even a part of Wendy that thought Peter might know some secret about herself, might hold some kind of key to her hidden strengths. There was always something promising in that smile of his. “Lead the way,” Wendy prompted, eagerly.

[neverloseyoudarling-blog]

“Can I help you in any way?”

Penny Dreadful Sentence Starters 

Wendy squinted at the boy in front of her, memories tickling in the back of her brain as she struggled to remember who he was, why he seemed so familiar to her. She’d seen him before, that was for certain. It took her several moments of both of them standing in the clearing before she answered him. “I just...you seemed familiar and I was wondering why. I mean you must be a pirate as you’re definitely not a lost boy, but you also look very young and I think I’ve seen your face before.”

She should have been scared she supposed or at least more wary because of who he was, who he followed, but she also saw so much youth in the boy in front of her that her nervousness was instead supplanted by curiosity. Plus, if he had intended to harm her, he would have done so in the time it took her to make up her mind to talk to him. He had a chance to wound her, but he hadn’t. That had to mean something.

[neverloseyoudarling-blog]

losthcart:

Curly pressed his lips together and stifled a snicker at Wendy’s annoyance, finding infinite amusement in her reactions. It was about as much fun as he allowed himself to have in recent days when his mind was constantly plagued with worries about whether the boys had enough to eat or who he was going to wake up to in the middle of the night standing over his bed with a knife in their hands.

He pursed his lips at her question, considering the skirt billowing by Wendy’s ankles. Even he could admit that it was a pretty thing, though Curly didn’t care too much for pretty. Pretty and ornate didn’t have a place in Neverland, much like Wendy herself. He circled her and flicked at a blade of grass in her hair, sending the curl whipping around her face as he hummed contemplatively, feigning deep thought.

“I may have something for you,” he mused aloud as he withdrew his dagger. Making a quick incision into the skirt of her dress, he gave the fabric a sharp pull and tore it from her body in one swift spin. Curly finally broke into laughter as he held the sheet up for her, his smile as bright and sunny as anyone could remember. “Here you are.”

There was a part of Wendy that could appreciate the fact that, though he was laughing at her, Curly was at least laughing which was an improvement in what his mood seemed to be these days. Who would have predicted that her soft, sweet Curly boy would grow into such a serious, pensive man (not that she could tell him that she saw him as a man)? At least now he had the flickers of pleasure on his face even if it was her own failure inspiring it. She just wished that maybe he’d smile at something in a way that was a little more sincere than sardonic.

She watched the intense furrow of his brow and gasped when he split her skirt and yanked it from her, leaving her in her knickers with her translucently pale legs visible below her knee. “Curly!” she exclaimed, reaching down to try and cover herself from his view with her arms though she still had at least one layer shielding her from his eyes. The impropriety of it still sent a flush to her cheeks. She had never been so undressed in front of a man before and though Curly probably saw nothing to it because he’d lived in Neverland so long, Wendy still felt the shame of her very traditional upbringing.

When he held the skirt out for her, she grabbed it back and wrapped it around her waist before looking over to where the bunnies seemed to be. Why did he have to be right? The skirt would work far better than anything else she had to trap the rabbits. All she’d have to do would be to tie the edges and run the rabbits toward the skirt, making sure they’d have nowhere else to go. Then she’d have them. 

“I’m going to go put this up. Just don’t...keep your eyes on the rabbits if you please.”

[lightrfluid-archive-blog]

Penny Dreadful Sentence Starters

“You’re pretty goddamn sure you know what’s going on all the time.”

“And that everything can again be like it was… though I know that can never be.”

“You do not belong here, even less than I.”

“I wonder what lips yours have kissed and where. Too many, I’m sure.”

“So have the courage to face your own sin before you cite mine so easily.”

“When the moment comes, look into my eyes and pull the trigger.”

“May I kiss your neck?”

“How cruel you are…”

“Can I help you in any way?”

“And what do you seek to escape?”

“I believe in everything but god.”

“I thought you liked games.”

“Where is your master?”

“I hate him, that fucker, God, you see.”

“You should’ve kissed me. Will you kiss me now?”

“Her passing was a thing of grace, I promise you.”

“What a simple thing it is to snap your neck. You are so fragile, you…”

“Don’t let me hurt anyone.”

“There was a time I would gladly have killed you, and there may come a time when I gladly shall.”

“Your hands want to touch, but your head wants to appraise. Your heart is torn between the two.”

“Do not be amazed at anything you see… and don’t hesitate.”

“To save her, I would murder the world.”

“Whatever interest, whatever need you think you have, you must forget you ever saw it.”

“You can do better. Give me words.”

“What happened to your lip?”

“As you grow up, you’ll learn we all do things which cause us shame. Sins we have committed…”

“No, no, I don’t want to sleep!”

“I love you for your weakness.”

“Did I deserve that?”

“There’s something wrong here. What haven’t you told me?”

“Perhaps it has always been there – this thing, this demon inside me – or behind my back, waiting for me to turn around.”

“There are things you can’t control.”

“You really shouldn’t come in here…”

“Your daddy says come home, so home you come.”

“Stop this right now.”

“I could never love you.”

“Because the truth is unendurable.”

“Right behind you. Don’t you feel him in the dark? On the back of your neck, his breath… Now one finger reaching out… Do you not feel it?”

“If your goal is to have me surrender to you, that day will never come.”

“There’s always a way to make a living when you’ve a bit of flesh, isn’t there?”

“Nothing I would say would come as a surprise, so you simply want the satisfaction of hearing me say it. Very well.”

“Hell, you sought it out and fucked it.”

“And what will you do with this little bit of my soul?”

“That’s why you’re a virgin.”

“Do what you have promised me!”

“Who can tell about such things, such hidden things? Such secrets we all have, don’t we?”

“I’ll not bore myself with explanations you cannot possibly understand.”

“We shall live with our guilt, you and I.”

“We’ve all sinned. No one knows that better than me.”

“But I love you in a different way.”

“If you let all this happen so that you could manipulate her… I’ll rip your throat out.”

“Don’t be naïve; it doesn’t suit you.”

“You can’t resist me forever, darlin’.”

“Don’t be frightened. Here it is. Everything.”

“Would you like to see something interesting?”

“Answer me, you rude thing.”

“It’s not an easy thing, this you ask of me.”

“Don’t ask permission. If you want to do a thing, do it because it is your desire, not my allowance. You must risk rejection.”

“You won’t be able to deny it.”

“Say it like that and you can get me to do anything.”

“I’m so sorry about last night.”

“God, how I envied you. Perhaps I even hated you.”

“This is a long, grueling, dangerous thing you ask.”

“I’ve not been good. What waits for me on the other side of the door?”

“Something whispered… I listened.”

“You play your role well, but this is not who you are.”

“I… I see things sometimes.”

“Now kindly stop wasting my time, and get out!”

“You have no idea how I fight this thing. This thing inside me.”

“I think you’re bloodthirsty.”

“I believe in a place between heaven and hell, between the living and the dead, a glorious place of everlasting rebirth. I believe in salvation. Do you believe in such a place?”

“This is obscene! You mustn’t!”

“I should warn you; this is not completely legal.”

“I would choose her over you. I might even hope I get the chance.”

“After all this time… she came to me.”

“No wonder you fled from me.”

“What’ve you done to yourself?”

“I’ve never fucked a dying creature before. Do you feel things more deeply I wonder… Do you feel pain?”

“My, my! That temper of yours!”

“In that case, would you like to have an adventure?”

“I like to be looked at.”

“This is a bit beyond my usual practice.”

“You should let me die.”

“Just know that you have made my visit here truly memorable. I shall never forget you.”

“Between us, there’s a rare connection. I won’t deny it, but that very intimacy released something unhealthy in me, something I cannot allow.”

“I suppose we take the happiness we can. Do you?”

“Little girls shouldn’t play with toys like that.”

“There is no going back from this moment.”

“Can I ask you a favor?”

“I’m so glad to see you recovered.”

“There are times when we are compelled…”

“She’s been possessed by the devil.”

“Do you believe in fate?”

“There’s no goddamn future in it for either of us! Who’re we trying to fool?”

“Best you didn’t kiss me anymore. Keep a safe distance.”

“You know my name. Aren’t we family here?”

“I have a complicated history with the Almighty.”

“We’ve all done things to survive. There are such sins at my back, it would kill me to turn around.”

“Do you feel I owe you an explanation?”

“I can’t seem to get it out of my head.”

[neverloseyoudarling-blog]

losthcart:

Curly folded his arms as he watched her chase the rabbit from a distance. Her reactionary time was lackluster and he couldn’t stifle the amusement that made its way onto his face as she skidded into the grass with all of the grace of a newborn foal. He’d never seen anything but beauty and grace from Wendy which made it all that much more interesting to see her with her clothes all rumpled and with blades of grass in her hair as she rose from the earth like a pissed off daisy.

“Well, rabbits tend to run in circles so your best bet is to wait until it comes back around and try again.” What he left out was that typically it’d be a good place to start building a trap to save all the trouble of trying to get it, or wait for it in a tree and snipe it quicker than it could run away again but he suspected that he could wring the moment for all it was worth as long as he sounded vaguely helpful. She deserved it anyway. Chasing rabbits all day was what she was going to get for leaving and daring to come back to Neverland. He’d make her run until her face was blue. 

(Maybe not too blue.)

“You know, what really works with the rabbits is if you make yourself unassuming, like a bird. Might I suggest warbling? It might really calm him down enough to come back.”

Oh good. Wendy thought to herself. They’ll be coming back around and I’ll have time to fall on my face again. She didn’t even have to look up to see Curly’s face, to see the smirk that flitted across his lips, remaining at the corner of his mouth. The laughter seemed to lurk in his tone, hiding behind his advice in such a way that Wendy didn’t know whether to believe him or not. Wendy stood up and brushed the grass and leaves from her dress, not bothering with the ones that were speckled through her dirty blonde curls and bent down, ready to try (and probably fail) again. 

“Curly, if you’re not careful, I’m going to think you’re mocking me.” Did he really think she was that dense? Warbling like a bird? He might as well have told her that the bunnies would come if she made herself seem like one of them and told her to hop around and twitch her nose. Wendy could see the bunny lurking just under a bush and she tried to figure out a better way to catch it than with her hands. A net would have been better if she’d had the foresight to bring one; she hadn’t, however, and there was no use focusing on what she didn’t have.

“Do you have a net or some extra fabric or something that I could use to catch them? Maybe I could set it back that way and chase them into it and then pull a rope or something to scoop it up. I don’t think I’m fast enough to just catch it this way.” 

It wasn’t that she wouldn’t try to catch them by running after the rabbits, but Wendy had spent four years learning to be a proper lady and ladies in England did not run for almost any reason. In fact, their whole wardrobe was specifically made to make running and playing a thing of the past for them. The best thing she could hope to do was to outwit the forest creatures, not outrun them.

[neverloseyoudarling-blog]

losthcart:

Curly scoffed as she passed him. He let her go ahead for a few paces before he trailed behind her. It would do him no good to scare away the prey before she got a chance to chase it (and chase it she would, for he didn’t expect that she knew how to catch one). The efficiency of hunting rabbit with a knife was very limited to how quick and smart one was and while he didn’t doubt that in time, Wendy could make good use of her slight frame and tiny feet, the purpose of their exercise had more to do with showing her the difficulty of catching something that really didn’t want to be caught.

Rabbits were the best animals to start with, he’d learned. Their symbolic innocence and soft vulnerability made a perfect canvas to paint the brutality of their murder upon. He still remembered the first time he’d ensnared a rabbit and how horrible he felt about it before recalling the camp of hungry Lost Boys who needed its meat to recover from a raid that went way longer than necessary. Everything fell into perspective then and although Wendy had better foresight than most of the boys, he didn’t think that she had felt the same sense of desperation yet.

“They’re not my friends. I don’t see how I would know where their burrows are. It’s not like they’re calling me over for a spot of tea and biscuits.” It wasn’t true as he’d grown so accustomed to looking for signs of habitation in the brush that he might as well have been a rabbit whisperer. Curly ducked under a low hanging branch as they entered the wooded area, eyes scanning the forest floor for shuffling bushes and thick patches of grass while moving very carefully as to not make too much noise. Rabbits tended to roam the area more plentifully when it was dark but the influx of babies would mean that there was bound to be a stray bouncing around on its own in search of a tasty morsel of grass to eat. 

A rustle in the thickest patch of grass drew his attention across a small clearing, though he said nothing as he watched Wendy wander aimlessly ahead. He could see a little rabbit twitching in the grass from where he was standing, its chest rapidly pumping with every panicked breath at the detection of a predator. 

“Wendy,” he hissed over her shoulder. “There’s one right over there.”

Wendy hated the thought of hunting, even for her boys. She had no memory of the pains the island had held before. In fact, Wendy had never even seen an animal killed in front of her before, not that she remembered in any case. She worried over it though, the flashes of blood that seemed to fill her vision as she looked through the brush with her knife in her hand, clutched tightly as if to scare the bunnies away from the doom she was bringing them. Was it bad that she was slightly hoping to fail in this venture? But she’d have to succeed if she was going to prove to Curly that she wasn’t dead weight on the island.

It wasn’t assured that she was going to be able to catch one of the rabbits anyways; as it stood, she was hardly fleet of foot and it was hardly easy for her to find the tiny animals in the lush greenery of Neverland’s forest. She knew that it would be easier for Curly to find the rabbits; after all, he was a practiced hunter, maybe the best one on the island. If only she wasn’t so mad at him, she might have been happier for his help; if she wasn’t so mad at him, maybe she wouldn’t be hunting him in the first place.

“Wait, you mean you don’t have bunny brunch with them every Sunday morning?” Wendy asked mockingly, shooting him an arch look as she moved through the grass, her slippers damp with dew. But then, suddenly, there was a rustle. At first Wendy didn’t hear anything, charging ahead with her eyes glued in front of her, but then Curly’s voice brought her back to herself. She swung around and ducked down low, trying to creep closer before she leapt, grasping at the fast creature, missing by a bound and landing on the ground hard as it disappeared from view.

A very unladylike word burst forth from Wendy’s lips and she pounded her fist on the ground before getting up and focusing on the ground, her eyes sharpening. “Got any tips on how to catch it before it runs away?” she whispered though the edge in her voice was unmistakable. She couldn’t do this, she was just too slow and too weak, but she had to keep trying until she couldn’t manage any more.

[neverloseyoudarling-blog]

losthcart:

If Curly was amused by Wendy’s moxie, no one could be the wiser, not when his face was stuck in a perpetual state of displeasure like he was having a hard time reading small script on the horizon. It wasn’t that he didn’t think Wendy wouldn’t try but it was the prediction that she would inevitably stop short of savage that made hims dread the whole affair and make him feel like some kind of demon for making her do something as horrible as gutting a living animal. The boys were easy enough to teach because he’d never quite seen the glee matched in their eyes at any other time than while opening up a wild hen for the very first time.

He glanced down at the frill on Wendy’s collar as he walked past her and wondered what she’d do when something’s heart inevitably exploded onto it.

“You’re not wrong,” he commented without heat. There were plenty of things he’d rather be doing and he could count them aloud if he really wanted to make himself miserable but Curly wasn’t in the business of making himself feel bad when he was certain it was just around the corner waiting to nip him where it hurt.  He shot her a sideways look when she asked him to point her in the right direction, offended at both her question and the fact that it appeared as if she was giving him cheek.

“Where, pray tell, do you think the bunny rabbits are in the woods, Wendy? They’re not up in the trees, I’ll tell you that.” 

At first she was too focused on the weapon in her hand to take much note of Curly’s gaze at all. It wasn’t too heavy, but it was definitely no kitchen knife. This was not something her mother would ever have had in her kitchen, let alone something she would have used to cut up her food. Even when they’d visited the country, the Darlings had never had to partake in the dressing of their own meats; the most Wendy had ever done was learn to milk a cow for herself (she’d been very proud when it had yielded its milk, at that), but she’d never assumed she’d have to go try and find a small rabbit to butcher. I’m sorry Bunny wherever you are. Please forgive me. She had to stop giving the rabbit feelings before she stepped forward or she never would.

However, Curly’s comment shook all the bunny-loving thoughts from her head and she spun to face him, her chin jutting out as she gave him something that could have been construed as a glare if it weren’t for Wendy making it. She just didn’t see why Curly had to be so sour when all she was trying to do was be a better Lost Boy for all of them. It wasn’t as if she was asking all of them to dress up in corsets and try to go for a hike in the woods; then, she would have understood Curly’s attitude.

“Well then Curly, you can go. No one is stopping you. I’ll take the knife -thank you for that by the way- and I’ll just get out of your hair.” She started walking, looking down at the ground for anything that might lead her to some tracks. She was going to be terrible at this, she could just tell. The only time she’d ever seen animals in Neverland had always been by luck; they had always just seemed to wander out to her, but that had, of course, been before she was trying to kill any of them. 

“Haha, very funny,” she snapped. “I was asking if you knew of any bunny burrows or something oh boy of the woods, but since you’re just going to sit there and be a smart alec about it, I’ll just go find them myself.” She huffed and picked a direction, right as it happened, and started striding away, murmuring to herself as she set off.

[neverloseyoudarling-blog]

losthcart:

Curly frowned at Wendy’s response. It was to be expected but he didn’t remember being so incredibly annoyed by her the first time they’d met or feeling so inexplicably tired. Perhaps it was the number of new boys he watched bumble their way through the camp like it was all fun and games making him envy how it had been a long time since he last acknowledged anything they did as fun or a game. Perhaps he was irritated at Wendy’s naivete and how it appeared as if she hadn’t remembered what daggers could do to a boy who was none too careful. He searched the trees as well, eager to find something to focus his energy on than the thickening knot in his belly that made him want to retreat back to camp until Peter returned and picked up his Wendy for a little story time far far away from him.

After another beat of awkward silence, Curly seemed to had made a decision and pulled the knife from his boot and tossed it onto the floor by Wendy’s feet where it landed with a dull ‘thud’. It wasn’t as big and terrifying as the dagger at his waist but it was fashioned out of a tusk he’d found in the mountains, making it lighter than steel. 

“Alright, then. Let’s see it,” he said resolutely as he folded his arms. “The forest is filled with little baby animals since it thawed. It should be easy enough for you to catch one for supper, yeah?”

Curly was well-aware that he wasn’t being very fair but it would’ve done neither of them any good if he coddled her too much. Hunting was also a very focused activity which left no room for musing or talk of feelings and other such bollocks which made it his favourite. The last thing he needed was to stir up feelings he thought he’d laid to rest in the ice.

“Don’t worry, I’ll oversee you in case you accidentally upset something you shouldn’t.”

Wendy’s eyes widened as the knife flew into the ground, quivering in the dirt. She didn’t know what she had expected Curly to do with her suggestions, but she hadn’t expected to have to confront her expectations all that quickly. She had figured she’d find one and then learn to handle it over time, the course of a few weeks at least, but there the knife was, waiting for her to grip it and put it to use. Curly was testing her mettle, seeing if she really had what it took to be one of them. Wendy should have thanked him for helping her in spite of either of them, but instead she felt attacked, as if he was trying to have her fail just so she would know exactly how out of her depth she really was.

“Yeah, fine...let’s go and hunt then,” she murmured to herself, pulling the knife out of the ground, feeling very much as if she’d pulled some sort of bastardized Excalibur from its stone only to be told that being King Arthur was just going to get her killed. Maybe that was being dramatic, but the thought of hunting a baby animal did make her chest tighten. Curly had a point though (of course he did) that she would be far better off going after the baby animals than the grown up ones, no matter how much it felt like she was preying on the weak. In her hand, she gripped the knife loosely, as if she’d rather not touch it at all.

“You don’t need to come though if you don’t want to. I’m sure that you probably have other fun stuff you’d rather be doing rather than making sure I don’t upset something I shouldn’t.” Her words were slightly pointed, his words turned back around at him. Still, she knew that he would come. After all, he still had to wait around to see her fail or cry, she wasn’t sure which was the end result. Either way, she wasn’t going to give him that satisfaction, not easily anyways. “You just point me in the general direction of where I should start looking and I’ll take it from there.”

[neverloseyoudarling-blog]

heartlcssboy:

Peter should have playfully batted her hand away from his hair as he normally would have done. But instead of pleasantly annoyed by the affection — pleasantly because, though confounding as it was to him, it was still an expression of devotion and that he understood — he found himself yearning for all of her little touches. It befuddled and petrified him as much now as it had when he’d first brought her back to the island and she’d hugged him seemingly out of nowhere. He did nothing now to dissuade her from the act, even going so far as to angle his head back into the touch. His reaction to something so stupid as Wendy messing with his hair alarmed him, causing a ball of apprehension to swell in his chest. It was so startling that he nearly missed the start of her story altogether.

When Peter focused his attention back onto the words she was saying, he remembered his alarm was better directed elsewhere. He didn’t really think Wendy knew anything damning about his shadow and was proven correct by the direction her story took off in. His shadow only ever went into the Other Place when he did, and often not even then. It better served him on the island. He forgot the feeling of worry as quickly as it had seized him and allowed himself to be pulled fully into her story. He didn’t understand a lot of the words she used, but that didn’t matter. The details were trifles. Besides, he got the gist from the inflections of her voice alone. She had his absolute and rapt attention. He’d forgotten all about the knife and wood in his hands.

Peter absently wondered if he should have a magic staff, but quickly dismissed the idea in favor of scrambling to sit up right, turning around so he could watch her face. It wasn’t the same if he couldn’t see the faces she made while she telling the story. 

“What did they do, Wendy?” Peter asked with wide eyes, eager to hear more, “Did they find a way in? Did the vizier person get away with it?” 

He gasped all of the sudden, recalling the story’s introduction, “My shadow helped them, didn’t it? I bet it did! I’m right, aren’t I?”

Wendy couldn’t help the giggle that escaped from her as Peter bolted upright in the midst of her story. As she’d hoped, he asked all the right questions, pushing the story forward, his guesses always in line to where the plot was moving, ever in step, like a dance between the two of them, more important to Wendy than any waltz she’d ever done. With his wide eyes and slightly mussed red hair, the years seemed to fall away from the two of them and Wendy felt like she was right back to being twelve again, sitting outside the Wendy house with Peter and the rest of the Lost Boys like Toodles and Slightly. She couldn’t help but wonder if there was any part of the boys that remembered sitting around the camp and telling stories too.

“You’re so smart Peter,” Wendy cheered. “You know just what happened. You see, your shadow had been watching the scuffle and he couldn’t stand how the vizier had rigged things in his own favor. The shadow really did not care about the government after all, but using a person’s family against him or her just struck your shadow as being horribly unfair so he flew around the castle, darting along the wall and through crevices and corners until he found what he was looking for, a secret passage deep in the underground of the palace with a secret entrance through a rock that led right into the vizier’s bedroom. So, that night, when the vizier thought he was safe and had gone to greedily count his money and enjoy torturing his opposition in his torture chamber, your shadow showed the revolutionaries the passage and let them all in. They rounded up everyone and found the viziers magic staff. When they found it, they broke it into a million pieces and the spell was broken on their loved ones. Then, they found the vizier. The coward had tried to flee while all the people were getting reunited, but the shadow had tracked him through the passages and brought him back. The last thing the shadow saw was the crowd fall on the vizier. When they moved back, he was in pieces just like his staff. Afterwards though, the people of the country were much happier and they have a day every year just devoted to the shadow of a boy they will never know.”

It hadn’t been a terribly long story as much as Wendy had hoped to stretch her time with Peter out for as long as she could; she couldn’t help the feeling. When Peter was with her, Wendy felt lighter than air, as if she could fly again, even without the pixie dust. When he smiled at her, she doubted that she was still on the ground. When it was just the two of them, her and her favorite boy, Wendy knew where she stood, knew exactly what her purpose was. How she wished that he wanted her with him more often; still, she understood why she couldn’t do everything with him and the boys. She was a girl after all and there were things that she couldn’t do yet. She would learn soon enough though. “Peter, do you think I could learn how to fight?”