Pan couldn't believe what an idiot he was. He watched helplessly as Wendy ran deep into the jungle leaving him behind. No matter how hard he told himself to chase her, he just couldn't.
Pan always thought the hardest part of loving Wendy Darling was getting her to love him back. He had been wrong.
The hardest part was to control himself. To actually love her the way she should properly be loved.
Wendy was the most amazing thing in Pan's world. She captivated him in ways no words could attempt to explain. He had to constantly remind himself of all the ways he could hurt her in order to be with her.
She had seen the darkest sides of him. She used to be terrified of him. He showed her the villain inside himself before he understood his feelings for her. Back then she was just a girl with his heart. A girl with power he wanted.
If he knew this would happen, he would have never showed her the darkness he possessed.
Pan remembered when he used to be satisfied by her tears. And now it ripped him apart.
"If it takes so little to break your faith in me then maybe you shouldn't have led me to believe you loved me too."
Pan couldn't believe the words that had escaped her lips.
It was the most ridiculous sentence that she had ever spoken.
Of course he loved her. He never stopped. He couldn't believe she thought he didn't. But then it all made sense.
All the times she had said I Love You. Every single time she spoke it, he hadn't answered back. And it was because of how scared he was that he never told her.
Pan was scared for many reasons. For one, Evanna. The one and only person who he ever said I love you to, was dead. Loving someone after her at seemed impossible until Wendy. And Wendy was a gift he didn't deserve. Pan had always known that.
If he said I love you now, and something happened to either one of them, it would kill the other one. Pan never wanted to see that pained expression on Wendy's face again. And he sure as hell would never lose her to anything ever again.
His alternative was losing her because of himself. His ego. His darkness. Pan had sworn to himself that after Syrena he would never let her go. And Pan also had made the promise to Wendy. He would never let anyone hurt her ever again.
The right thing to do was to let her go. Villains don't get happy endings. Heroes do. And Wendy was a hero. He knew she was.
I
He had to let her go. No matter how much it hurt- no -killed him.
But the darkness inside him would not have it. Pan would hate to admit it, but being the villain he was gave him the strength to chase after her.
Pan tore through the jungle with a silent promise to her.
No matter how much it hurts.
That's how long he would always stay with her.
~~~~~~~~
Wendy's eyes fluttered open to a cave wall. Four, actually. It was pitch black, and no human being could tell whether or not they had been buried alive; but mermaid eyes could make out the rocky surface.
She gasped and then screamed.
She had her voice back. She could actually scream.
"PAN!!!!!!!!!" Her throat burned from the shrill of her raspy voice.
Her scream became clearer, "PETERRR!!!"
"Oh please! Will you shut up?" A woman's voice commanded.
An orange glow lit up the room and with a flick if the woman's wrist the flames leapt out from her fingertips to the floor of the cave creating a ring of fire between them.
The woman's face made Wendy shrink against the chair she was chained to. Her face was as pale as moonlight. Her hair a raven black. Lips full and a blood red color. It was the eyes that terrified her. They were an unsettling shade of blue. It was different from the wolf's red eyes. Different because the blue did not give her the panic the red eyes had.
The blue eyes chilled her to the bone.
"Ursula-" Wendy managed to force out.
"And the bird! She speaks!" Ursula laughed and Wendy paled.
"What a cute girl you are. So magnificent too. How on earth could you have possibly stayed alive through everything I put you through? I wonder if thats why Pan fixates himself on you. You do amaze us villains..." She mused to herself.
"What do you want with me?" Wendy whispered. She was weak. The room was spinning.
"I should have killed you sooner." Her playful dominator seemed to disappear completely. "Before you gained his heart."
Wendy gripped the chair arms with her fingernails.
"This is about Pan?"
"This has always been about him." And then Wendy recognized the want in her eyes.
"Do you love him?" Wendy asked shocked. Her stomach burned and all she wanted was to scratch Ursula's eyes out.
"Wendy, Wendy. A villain cannot love." She told her as if she was a child learning something for the first time.
"He can." Wendy said in a hard voice. She let the fear drain out of her voice. Ursula narrowed her eyes.
"I know exactly who he is." Wendy almost snarled.
"So you've seen him kill? You've seen him tare apart a whole village of innocent people? I have. And you are breaking him. You are turning him into something he's not. A hero. And if Peter Pan turns into a hero.....you won't live long enough to appreciate it." Somehow the woman's eyes grew bluer.
"So that's it. You think I'm destroying him? His talent? His darkness? The solution is to kill me." Wendy spat.
Ursula chuckled annoyed, "Well if he gets what he wants, a heart, he will spend eternity with his WendyBird. If she were to suddenly be taken out of this world, I think I know Pan well enough to know that the blackest of clouds will engulf us all." She smiled.
Ursula walked through the flame and put a strand of hair behind Wendy's face. Wendy flinched and was now leaving claw marks in the wood of the armrest.
"Kill me then." Wendy whispered. She hoped Ursula wouldn't but then again if she did.....Wendy did not forget the fact that Pan had rejected her. He was no longer her's. Wendy didn't think he ever was.
"What's the fun in that? The Dreamshade will take care of you for me." Ursula let out a sheer laugh and then vanished in a swirling black smoke.
Ursula spoke inside her head.
Suffering is more my style.
~~~~~~~~
Felix sat anxiously in a stool beside the blond beautify before him. The scent of medical herbs burned his nose and were rubbed on every inch of her skin. He had bandaged her shoulder that was much infected. Felix had busied himself doctoring her up until there was nothing to do but let her wake.
And Felix couldn't take it.
He hadn't fully grasped the fact that Tinkerbell, the love of his life, was in fact not so dead. That she was breathing, or wheezing, right next to him. That all the grief he had experienced was for nothing. Nothing because she was safe and here and alive. Felix couldn't process it all.
To him she wasn't alive until she opened her pretty blue eyes.
The Lost Boys swarmed around the tent. They still hadn't gotten the explanation of why he left them after Tink disappeared. He knew that technically Pan ruled over the Lost Boys, but Felix always felt that they were his responsibility.
Felix sighed as Rudolph walked in. The boys sent him because he was the bravest of them all. Felix knew the question before it escaped his lips.
"No. She's not dead."
"That's....good?" Rudolph said questionably.
"Yeah, it is."
There was silence for several seconds. Felix noticed his stare was directed at Tink. Felix tensed his shoulders unsure of whether or not to protect her.
Rudolph's dark eyes finally lifted from Tink's face and then locked with his.
"You're lucky."
"Excuse me?" Felix asked surprised.
"To have her. To have someone to love." Rudolph suddenly looked down as if he had spoken out of turn. He swallowed noticeably.
"I know am." Was all Felix could think to say. It didn't take Rudolph look to excuse himself from the tent.
Felix couldn't read the expression on the boy's face.
Rudolph was just another mystery on the island. There was too many to count and Felix was tired of trying to.
As long as it didn't concern himself or Tink, Felix wouldn't get involved anymore. As wrong as it was to think of Wendy, he did. If Tink hadn't crossed paths with her, she wouldn't have ever been abandoned. She would have never gotten attacked by Syrena, and he would just be with her.
Felix realized that he would probably never stop hating Wendy. Even if he respected her now, every time he closed his eyes he would think about what could have been Tink's death.
So for that, Felix would never forgive her.
~~~~~~~~
Wendy didn't know how, but she was sleeping. Occasionally she would wake up in gasps only to be pulled under again. She had strange dreams. Dreams leaked with a thousand rainbows of color. Others so bland it made her want to cringe.
Most of them were about home, or what home used to be like. How she got bullied in school. That was one of the black and white dreams. Her mom singing her brother's lullabies. That one was in color. And then there were the ones that made Wendy believe it was real.
Those dreams were the ones with Pan. A lot of them were of them together. Just happy and content like they never were. Like she didn't get her heart crushed. Like they didn't break up. And when she did get those brief moments of clarity when she would wake herself up and found herself in the cave, she wondered if the Dreamshade would actually be the thing to kill her. It seemed like the memories would.
The Dreamshade was painful. Sometimes the pain was so intense it would leak through to her dreams and she would witness one of her loved ones being the ones dying. Wendy just wanted it all to stop.
And it did. Almost the instant she wanted it to. There was just erie silence. Everything stopped; the pain even stopped. Wendy laughed gratefully. She smiled and her eyes teared up in relief.
Before Wendy could grasp her escape plan, her world swirled into another dream. This one was different. The colors didn't blur together, they were crystal clear. When she found Ursula carefully moving through the jungle towards the cliffs, Wendy knew she was witnessing something real.
It didn't occur to Wendy what was happening. Ursula pretended to be focussed on what was in front of her instead of knowing that Wendy was watching. Ursula forced the smile off her face.
Wendy watched as Ursula sat herself down on the edge of the cliff. Wendy noticed when she sat up straighter.
Wendy watched helplessly as Ursula let black smoke cover her form.
"Wendy!"
Wendy gasped at Pan's voice. For a moment she wondered if he had found her unconscious body in the cave. If she was just in a trance and he found her and she was safe. But then she heard jungle brush being roughly pushed aside.
Pan was there. There in the vision. A panic went through her. He would find Ursula and then she would kill him.
It made sense. A fate worse than death. Something Ursula felt would tear Wendy up inside. Something to make her suffer.
Wendy couldn't talk in this vision. She couldn't even scream to a cave wall. All she could do was watch helplessly at Ursula and waited for the billowing smoke to clear.
When Ursula emerged, Wendy couldn't believe it. Her heart sunk and she felt her pulse jump. She wasn't even paying any attention to Pan anymore.
Ursula was not Ursula anymore. Her hair went from jet black to golden brown curls. Her pale white skin transformed to a rosy tint. Her height shrunk significantly. And finally her head lifted to answer Pan's call. Her eyes were no longer the icy sea blue color. They were chocolate brown.
Wendy was staring into her own reflection.
The new Wendy Darling spoke the same voice, "Pan...? What are you doing here? I thought..."
Wendy finally tore her eyes off Ursula to see Pan looking at her with such regret in his eyes. "I'm so sorry, Wendy."
Wendy? Wendy?!
Pan was fooled. He really and truly believed he was staring at her. At the real her. It made Wendy's heart ache to know that if Ursula hadn't captured her, he would have really been running to her. Maybe they could have fixed their fight.
"Yes, you should be." Wendy was shocked by how exact Ursula already mimicked her personality. It was exactly the response she would have given him. She would never be sorry for not wanting a death on her hands.
Pan stepped toward her and placed a hand on her arm. Wendy felt a rage like no other. Ursula was so controlled at playing perfect Wendy. She hoped and prayed Ursula would do something, anything, wrong and tip Pan off.
"I know. I know and I'm sorry. I can't explain how to make it better. Killing the next heart holder is the only answer right now, but I would never do that if you didn't want me to. You're more important to me than that...." He paused thoughtfully and placed his hands on either side of her face. Wendy's heart burned.
"You gave me a chance I never deserved."
"Of course you deserved it." Fake Wendy smiled sheepishly. "I will never stop believing in you."
"I love you." Pan's voice was firm. Ursula/Wendy looked at him and blushed. Pan hesitantly pressed his forehead against hers. And then Wendy found herself unable to break the spell that forced her to watch. She couldn't close her eyes to save herself the sharp pain. The final blow to her heart. Pan kissed her so passionately and the Wendy he kissed clung to him just the way Wendy really would.
And that's when Wendy went numb all over. It was the first time Pan had ever said he loved her and it wasn't her. The first time he actually held her. The first time he broke a thin layer of the rough wall around his emotions. And it wasn't really Wendy. Wendy felt the pain. the agony, and the sorrow like never before.
After Wendy and Pan had pulled themselves away from each other, the vision stopped. Wendy was staring at the stone wall so hard until she was really sure she wasn't watching them anymore.
And then she cried. She cried like a wounded animal because that's what she felt like. For the first time since she reached Neverland, she actually felt what it was like to lose all hope. The one string that held her together was that she had Pan.
And now that string had been cut.
"LET ME OUT! PLEASE!" Wendy screamed over and over until her voice gave out.
Wendy knew in that moment Ursula had won.
Ursula had shown Wendy a fate worse than death.
And there was no going back for her.