KrissyKat91: There. It's finished. Make of the ending what you will.

Ch. 5: Year Eighty-one

Wendy Pritchard née Darling is eighty-one, and she is dying.

She has outlived both her brothers by a wide margin—Michael having died in the war, John from some nameless wasting disease, neither having married—as well as the son she bore for the man her father had chosen as her husband, whom she has also outlived. She can't help but wonder if Ciar had done something to extend her lifespan all those years ago.

Ciar. It has been sixty-five years since that night, yet Wendy can still remember it as if it had been yesterday.

She had stayed awake for hours, alternately hoping for Ciar to come through the window and terrified the Sidhe would, but she'd never caught a glimpse of a faerie ever again.

After a year of waiting, she had slowly begun to consider the idea that he was dead. She mourned the thought for another year before her father, fed up with his daughter's strange behavior, arranged a marriage to a clean-cut man of decent social standing.

She had liked Edward well enough, but had never loved him, and had only been able to bring herself to give him two children. She had never quite been able to give up that tiny, frail hope that Ciar would return one day. But now she is dying, of something the doctors can't identify, and she doesn't know if she can keep that hope alive any longer.

Her daughter, Jane Weston née Pritchard—who moved back into her mother's house to care for her—has just left her bedroom in order to prepare dinner for the two of them, leaving Wendy alone. The curtains have been drawn away from the window at the elderly woman's request, revealing an abnormally clear sky for a winter night in London.

Shifting slightly, Wendy closes her eyes, intending to catch a few moments of sleep before Jane comes back. It seems to only be seconds after that a quiet creak echoes through the room, a cold wind coming along with it.

"Hello, Sorcha."

Eyes snapping open, Wendy pushes herself up as much as she can and stares.

Ciar stands at the foot of her bed, looking exactly the same as he had sixty-five years ago, save for a few new scars on his face and a thin circlet of ebon metal on his brow.

"Ciar," Wendy breathes, slumping back against her pillows. "You're alive!"

"Yes," he says, stepping closer. "Though only by a somewhat bizarre twist of fate. There was a hobgoblin living in the park. It took offense at the Sidhe's presence. I escaped whilst they were attempting to fend it off." Wendy's confusion must show on her face, for Ciar smirks a little. "Hobgoblins are immune to all but the most powerful of Magicks. The Sidhe chasing us were… decidedly less than that."

"But-but why didn't you come back?"

"I could not. The Sidhe's actions against myself that night triggered yet another war, which ended in the favor of we of the dark. The Sidhe have always been more numerous than the Unsidhe, but the decline of belief is slowly whittling away at their numbers, which put us on more even ground."

"I don't understand. Why would attacking you cause a war?'

Ciar suddenly looks highly uncomfortable. "I, ah, well, I may have neglected to mention in our time together that I was the Crown Prince of the Unsidhe."

Wendy knows she's staring, but she can't help it. "The… Crown… Prince? Wait. What do you mean 'was'?"

A storm of emotions crosses the dark faerie's face, grief and loss and fury. "My father was one of the casualties of the war. I am the King, now."

"…I lost my baby brother to the world war," Wendy offers quietly.

Ciar closes his eyes. "I fear our own war may have, if not caused the mortal one, then at least exacerbated it. For that, I am truly sorry."

"…Why are you back? Not that I'm not glad to see you! But, well… why now?"

"Every king needs a queen. I was hoping you would be mine."

Wendy gapes. "You-you want to marry me?! Ciar, have you taken leave of your senses?! Look at me! I'm old! I have great-grandchildren, for pity's sake! And I'm—" Her voice cracks. "I'm dying. The doctors say I only have a few weeks left, if that."

He smiles almost awkwardly. "You are not dying, Sorcha."

"What?"

"You are not dying. You are Changing." His smile dims. "After you returned from Neverland, I… well, I was selfish. I was afraid Peter Pan would some day whisk you away again, so I planted a… a Seed of Magick, for lack of a better term. With regular infusions of Magick, the Seed would have transformed you into what we call a Changeling by your twenty-first year. At that point you would have had a choice: to remain mortal, in which case the Seed would have died off and done nothing other than make you mildly ill for a few weeks, or to complete the Change and become an Unsidhe. Unfortunately I could not make those infusions, and so the Seed was left to germinate over a normal human lifespan."

Wendy's eye twitches. "And were you planning on telling me about that? I don't care for having things done to me without my consent, Ciar."

"Of course I was going to tell you! I simply never had the chance."

For a long moment the room is silent, then the mortal looks at the faerie.

"Do you love me?" she whispers.

"More than anything."

Wendy smiles, feeling something release inside her. "Then yes, Ciar, I'll go with you. I'll be your queen."

The moment the last word leaves her mouth, Wendy feels an incredible, indescribable burst of pure power erupt from somewhere inside her. Colors she's never seen flash through her vision, and sounds she's never heard ring in her ears. Lightning races through every nerve in her body, yet there is no pain.

When it's over she finds herself standing in front of a wildly grinning Ciar, feeling more alive than she ever has before.

"Oh, Sorcha," he breathes, "you are beautiful."

She looks over at the looking glass on the opposite side of the room and gasps.

The woman in the glass is not the elderly woman who had been laying in the bed. Nor is she the young woman who had almost pined away for a faerie. This woman is tall and stately, with a perfect figure, elegantly shaped features, silvery-blue eyes, and long wavy hair in that nameless shade that's too dark to be brown but not dark enough to be black. She is clad in a gown of dark purple and pale grey, with amethyst slippers poking out from under the gown's skirts. And, perhaps most importantly, a pair of butterfly wings in amethyst and silver adorn her back.

"Oh," she says, "that-that can't be me!"

"But it is you, Sorcha," Ciar replies, coming up behind her and wrapping his arms around her shoulders. "You are Unsidhe now. Come, we must be going. The Faerie Realms need to meet their new Queen."

"Alright," Wendy—no, Sorcha. She's Sorcha now—casts one last look at the bedroom door, beyond which is her daughter, before nodding. "I'm ready now."

The doctors will say the elderly lady had passed painlessly in her sleep. The funeral will be a small, private affair for family only, and Jane Weston will be given many condolences for the loss of her mother. Many hours later, while working to put the house in order, Jane will pause and study a small jar on the kitchen table—a jar full of sparkling silver and indigo dust—which she recognizes as faerie dust even though she's never seen those colors before. She will stare at that jar, recalling how she found the dust on the floor around her mother's bed and upon the sill of a window she is sure she didn't open. She will stare at that jar, and she will wonder.