Warning/Spoiler: …Linear? What does that mean? (Just read the book.)

Disclaimer: I'm not over a hundred years old, therefore, I don't own Peter Pan.

betwixt

i.

A woman called Miss Wendy died at the age of 85.

ii.

She was 77 when she met her granddaughter.

The baby was her only grandchild, a small thing wrapped in a blanket. Her son was old, in his fifties, and his wife was so much younger than he that it was almost comical, a grey-haired man with his blond wife who was barely thirty and their newborn child.

It would be cold and unloving to say it, but everyone, including herself, knew that her son was a cruel man and his wife as much so. She felt guilty and sorry for the child, knowing that no one could be worse parents than they.

But when the little girl opened her eyes, she had gasped, for they held a green so familiar that it made her heart ache.

When the couple leaves to get food, handing the child over to her, she tells her softly that she will take care of her as if she were her own, to make up for things that only a little girl could understand.

iii.

The day he heard about the wedding, it began to rain.

The showers go on and on, days, weeks, even. The boys worry, and the pirates worry, and the mermaids and Indians and Tinkerbell worries, but nobody dares to try and bring him back to reality, to home.

The storms rage and the lightning flashes and the thunder booms across a gray and blue sky, but it's almost like he's oblivious, for even when the rain is dripping off his hair and down his cheeks, he sits and stares out towards something that no one can see.

"Do you think he'll get over it soon?" One man asks another, a conversational topic as easy to touch upon as the weather as they gaze over stormy seas.

The second man doffs his cap as he looks at the shoreline. "Of course he will. Boy's hearts mend faster than anyone else's. Just give him time, cap'n. Just give him time."

iv.

A little girl rushes into a house, stripping off the confining jacket and taking out her plaits as she runs up the stairs towards her grandmother's room. A finger-painted portrait is hanging from her left hand, still drying as she bounds across hallways, finally bursting through a doorway.

"Grandma! Grandma! Look what I painted in school today!"

And an old woman smiles as the little girl bounds in, changed from a "young woman" to a seven-year-old.

"Look, Grandma, its you and me, and you have to hang it up in your room, okay?"

No matter what her son says, childhoods are sadly underrated.

v.

Despite her actions and her jealousy and her rages, the little fairy cares about the boy.

She watches him toy with his food, spin his dagger absently on one finger, not even paying attention to the boys when they give their reports. She is all too aware of the way he doesn't even notice the Indian princess and the mermaids in all their sea-shelled glory try to capture his attention with looks and flipping hair.

She worries for him, because he is still a little boy and she feels like an older sister, trying to keep him from hurting too badly.

He doesn't even notice when her bell-like tones get even more agitated than usual.

Broken hearts hurt worst when they're your first one.

vi.

She wakes up in the middle of the night, and her heart is skipping beats as she sits up.

The end is getting closer.

She wants to live longer. Her darling, the light of her life, her granddaughter is still only five years old. She knows it would devastate such a young girl to lose her beloved grandmother now.

"Are you there?"

For a second, she hears a voice so familiar it makes everything ache, something cocky and witty and not quite deep enough to be a man, but not high enough to be a boy. Yes?

"Can I ask something of you?"

vii.

The boys notice one day that their leader has left.

They spend a day disconcerted and confused, wondering where he is, what he's doing. After all, it had to have been something big for him to leave, wouldn't it?

But he comes back, and it seems that nothing happened at all. When asked, all he says is that he went to give his congratulations to someone. Later, he confides that he went to a hospital, and saw her grandchild there, a small baby girl with deep green eyes.

"What's it like, to have a grandmother?" He asks, and the fairy can't answer.

It's near impossible to envy a newborn baby, but somehow, he is capable of it.

The baby will get love from a grandmother, from her.

viii.

Her baby is growing up, and she is scared.

She wants to protect her, to wrap her grandchild in cotton blankets and all the beautiful things she can find and keep her little one from seeing all those ugly things that make up "the real world".

But life goes on, and the girl is becoming aware of the world around her, of how her parents fight and her grandmother grows fainter. Fairy tales and stories grow less and less magical, and more and more not.

(The old woman takes comfort in the fact that there is still a small part in her darling that still believes.)

"Grandma, are your stories… just stories?"

She looks at the seven-year-old who still stares at her with total faith.

"Of course they are." She looks at the downcast face.

(Don't worry, there's more to things than just a few words)

"But they're the best kind, because the ones I tell are true."

ix.

The rain has stopped, but the sky is still gray.

The chief worries. He knows that the boy will eventually grow past things, but eventually is a long time, and the child (for he is still not a man) cannot heal as fast as someone who is the age he should be.

They need the sun again, to grow their food and hunt and do the things they couldn't do while it was pouring down rain. They need that light, not this grey monotone that stretches across the heavens.

He prays for the day when the boy will become happy again, for only then will they see the light of day.

x.

Her breaths are slower, harder to intake and exhale, and she can feel herself fade.

She looks at the stars out the window. Just the other day, she had pointed out that star to her grandchild—the second star to the right.

"Are you there?"

The voice echoes, a memory of a memory, a shred of a tone, a cocky assurance that indeed, he was most certainly there.

"Do you remember what I asked you?"

Of course says the echo, of course I do.

"Will you follow through?"

A moment passes, silence stretching as her breathing slows. Two.

Have you no faith?

xi.

One night, he comes into their home late and quiet, unusual for him.

Her chimes fill the space as he stretches himself out on his bed. Where were you?

He looks at the small fairy, his face creased and looking far too old for a boy who's only fourteen, if that. His eyes look so old, and she sees the worry and solemnity and other, nameless emotions reflected in the green.

"She asked me to do something."

She quiets, thinks, her head spinning as she computes the message.

And?

He stares off at something only he can see.

"I said yes."

xii.

She feels so nervous, as she looks at herself over and over again in the big mirror leaning against the wall.

The dress is tight, and she finds herself trying hard to smooth the fabric as she fiddles with her gloves and her veil. Her flowers lay on her vanity, and it takes all her self-control not to try and rearrange them.

"Nervous?" Her brother pokes his head in the doorway.

"Of course I am. I'm about to get married, John!" He laughs at her expression as he pushes his glasses up his nose.

"There isn't any reason too, unless you have regrets." He pauses, straightens the top hat. "Do you have any? Regrets, I mean?"

She looks at the mirror, sees a flash of green reflected in it. A look crosses her brother's face, doubled in the glass, as he comprehends what it is she's thinking as she blinks and looks back at the reflection.

The green is gone.

"…Yes."

xiii.

The funeral is dark and grey, an overcast sky watching everything as mourners in black pass a coffin in stately lines.

Nobody tries to pay attention to the sobbing eight-year-old girl, but eventually all eyes have found her at least once.

Flowers are held as a little man begins speaking, long complicated words filling the space left by an uncomplicated woman.

The girl is still crying, and her parents try to shush her, doesn't she have any respect?

But out of nowhere comes a boy dressed in green, who grasps the girl by one shoulder, protective. He glares at all who look, and the small girl takes comfort in his presence.

She looks up, and sees tears stream from bright emerald eyes.

It begins to rain.

xiv.

Her granddaughter is four years old, and she is asking for a story.

"But I want a new one!" The little girl pouts at her grandmother. Sleeping Beauty and Snow White are getting old, boring. She wants something nobody's ever heard before.

So the old woman sighs, and begins a tale about three children, of pirates and crocodiles, of "Injuns" and mermaids, of fairies and lost boys, but mostly about a bright-eyed boy who refuses to grow up.

And as she hears of a little boy wearing glasses and a top hat as he fights pirates, and of kidnapped Indian princesses, the little girl smiles and listens.

It doesn't take much for a child to believe something, especially if it's true.

xv.

He watches a green-eyed girl sleep, exhausted from meeting someone she thought wasn't quite real. His mouth twitches up into a smirk as the girl breaths, in and out.

Pirates point at the sky, mermaids flip their tails in wonder, and Indians stare at the parting clouds. Lost boys dance, a fairy shakes her head in wonder, and in the middle of it all, a boy watches a girl sleep.

A promise is a promise, isn't it, Wendy?

There is no answer, but it doesn't matter.

The clouds part, a slow decrease of gray.

The sun has come out.

(do you remember?)

FIN

(of course i do)

A/N: As I said: Linear? What does that mean? …Do not ask where this came from. It probably involved something about walking home in the rain when it was very cold. And it has angst and nothing is resolved and way over extended metaphors and wa-hoo!

Review. Because I can ask nicely.