AN: Long time no see. I had a nice long break from this story. Honestly, while I have the chapters written this part of the story is not my favorite. This chapter in particular. Thank you for everyone who has supported this story. This chapter really feels short now since I have since started working on Phoenix Sorcerer which chapters are like double the length. Anyway, enjoy.

Chapter 23: Broken Bird

Neverland

Wendy Darling had lived in Neverland for the past one hundred years. Give or take a decade or too. Nothing had really changed in Neverland.

At least until recently.

Pan had been unusually quiet recently and had left that buffoon Felix in charge. A part of Wendy was grateful. Not having to see that face that taunted her every single day of her imprisonment was a blessing, but she still couldn't escape.

There was no escape in Neverland.

She remembered when she had first came to this God forsaken island a century ago. She had thought Pan was charming then. Had been fooled into thinking he was a boy hero by the name Peter, who was going to help her find her friend Neal—but nope, just nope.

Instead, he took her away from everything she loved. And Neal, God knows what happened to him. He was probably dead.

She remembered that day he had protected her, showed himself. And that day Pan had ambushed him with those boys. She hadn't really cared much sense then. Being locked up was fine in a cage. She dealt with Pan's insults.

Why did it matter?

And had time passed.

She was told her brothers were still alive though, that was something to hope for. But it got to the point that Wendy often wondered if it was just another cruel trick. Pan wasn't beyond taunting.

Wendy remembered the last time Pan had talked to her.

He seemed a bit down, less murderous. Not that Wendy cared, why did things matter.

"Why so glum, Wendy Bird?"

She hated that name. She tried to rationalize it for years, but she could never figure out why. She didn't answer him; she found it was better to act like she forgot about everything. If she didn't say anything, he didn't have anything to twist and contort.

"Such a stupid little thing," Pan huffed. "I know you can still speak, time stops here, you know. You don't age. You don't grow."

Did Wendy know that? She had been twelve years-old for a century, and while there were parts of her that longed to be grown up, she was still very much a child forever suspended in what seemed to be an endless twilight of purgatory.

"Talk!" Pan hissed. "If you care about your brothers, talk!"

Of course, he knew just what to threaten her with—Michael and John. They were still out there, someone. For years they had been lost boys, but when they finally realized what sort of monster Pan was they had tried to rescue her, and she hadn't seen them since.

"What do you want me to say, Pan? I have nothing to say. I mean, I guess we could talk about the weather, but it's always the same here."

Hot and miserable.

He glared at her. "I need someone to confide in."

"Then talk to Felix."

Peter shook his head. "That dolt is completely emotionless. Besides, you're supposed to be our 'mother' Wendy. It's why I've kept you around as long as I have."

"You kept me around as leverage." Wendy said.

"You have a smart mouth," Peter said. "I don't like smart mouths."

He then got a very creepy look on his face.

Wendy groaned. That was the thing with Pan you never knew what he was going to do. Peter laughed at her. He knew she was scared and he didn't care.

That's when he surprised her by grabbing her from her cell. She screamed and he laughed, before smacking her causing her to hit the ground hard.

She should've known at that time, she never had a chance. But she remembered struggling even after he had managed to restrain her and she remembered struggling even more when he pulled out his knife.

The knife he always claimed cut off the hand of Captain Hook, even though she had heard that the Captain's hand had been taken by a crocodile.

"Don't take my hand." She remembered pleading.

It was strange, how she could remember every precise detail of those harrowing moments. The boy who never grew up laughed and laughed. Before he smirked and said, "It's not your hand I want."

"Then what—" Wendy never got to finish that sentence. That sentence which would be the last time she spoke since Pan choked her at that moment into her tongue was hanging out of her mouth, and then he chopped it off.

She still couldn't describe the pain she felt. At first everything felt numb. All she could see was stars and then she felt the blood dripping down her neck and the agony. She tried to scream but the sound didn't come out coherently. It sounded monstrous not like her.

And what did Pan do, but laughed.

"A little parting gift from me, sweet little bird. You'll never sing again."

Bursts of insanity like that, was what made Pan truly dangerous. He left the pieces of her tongue there with her in her cell. Smiling as he went. He said she could eat it for dinner, no use hunting when there was fresh meat there.

It was about a week before Felix had came, and not even he had tried to force her to eat the maggot feasted remains of the organ, like she knew Pan would.

Although, Felix was just as bad as his leader. At least there were moments of sanity there, he had ordered Wendy's cell be cleaned and made sure she wasn't going to die. Because Pan needed a hostess, even if it was one as foul as her.

He wasn't that much better though, he told her she deserved everything she got. And then laughed that she couldn't talk back.

"Fitting isn't it?" He said, "All those years you pretended you couldn't talk, and now you really can't."

Wendy gagged as she attempted to say something and Felix just continued laughing. "You got to hand it to the Boss Man."

She hated him just as much as Pan then, but at least he hadn't tried to take away any of her other organs and he didn't like being around her that much so she was pretty much left alone.

Starving most of the time, since he wouldn't come back till weeks at a time. But she didn't care.

Oh, how she wished she would just die. She hated it here so much, how it had taken so many things away from her. But she had to live for her brothers.

Someday they'd find a way, she told herself. Though at this point, she wasn't even sure if she believed it.

One of the most depressing things about Neverland, she found that each and every day was inevitably the same to some degree.

Well, with varying degrees of horridness. In the beginning it hadn't been so bad, when she had her brothers, and Tink hadn't been banished to her little hut in the middle of the forest forced to produce pixie dust for Pan and his minions.

God, she missed Tink. It was sort of amazing that they didn't get a long at first, but she was probably the closest thing Wendy had left to an ally in this God forsaken place.

But not even she could help her now.

She looked at the sunset. One thing about her cage, it had a gorgeous view. One might say it was generous, but in reality it was just another element of torture from Pan.

She had seen so many sunsets. They all were so gorgeous. Wendy didn't really remember sunsets like this in London when she was home, but London was such a long time ago.

She heard movement that broke her out of her thoughts. She tried to remember how many sunsets it was since Felix was here was it one, two, way too early.

And then something in her stomach clinched up, was in Pan?

She thought about pretending to sleep, but didn't bother since she knew that if she did, Pan would make sure he woke her up. If it was really him. She knew he'd gawk.

He hadn't said anything since he cut off her tongue and threw it at her to eat.

Wendy told herself she could handle whatever, he had to throw at her. But what she wasn't expecting was for a few of the Lost Boys, lead by Pan to drag in a fully grown woman.

Pan despised grown ups.

He had made that statement very well, with the way he tormented Captain Hook and Tink. Why was he bringing another adult into Neverland?

"Open the cage," Pan said to one of the boys. "She can be Wendy Bird's new roommate. Might as well give the little bird who can no longer sing something to enjoy."

Wendy stared at him. Pan just smiled back and said, "Good to see you're still alive."

Like he cared.

He seemed to notice the look on her face.

"Careful," He said, "If you give me too many glares like that, I might take you sight, bird."

Wendy couldn't help but shutter, after last week she knew he wasn't bluffing when he said that.

Peter smiled at her, "Good girl. It's nice to see that a few modifications have made you more agreement. Which was why I bought you a friend. Actually, your idiot brothers screwed up. But hey—it's a win for you , not that you two will do much gabbing. Well, at least you won't."

He chuckled at that before walking off to probably plot something else horrible. As soon as he was gone, Wendy approached her new roommate.

Besides being fully grown and unconscious the first thing that she noticed about the woman was that she was very beautiful.

She was the sort of woman that Wendy had always hoped that one day she'd miraculously look like when she grew up, but knew was impossible.

And not because she was stuck in Neverland for what appeared to be eternity. No, Wendy did not have any makings of a great beauty, at least that's what she told herself. Her nose was a little long, her hair a little stringy, her eyes were not the right shade of blue, and god knows she could never hope at all to have some shape to her gangly body.

She sighed heavily feeling bad for the lady who was lying on the ground. Wendy gently tried to proud her since she could not very well tell her to wake up. And she wasn't about to attempt to make one of the muted grunts she could now make. God knows, she sounded hideous.

The woman woke up eventually, she appeared drugged or something, Wendy noted. It didn't surprise her. No one seemed to come here with Pan willingly anymore. Even the lost boys had seemed to dwindle in recent years.

During one of his many rants, he told her about how much harder it was to get new recruits these days. Apparently, the world where she came from was a much more dangerous place for children these days and there was something called stranger danger.

Kids had started looking at Pan odd, not wanting to go with him for a plate of cookies.

She wished there was stranger danger back when she lived in London. Maybe then, she would've avoided going with the brute.

"Where?" The woman asked and then she eyed Wendy as if she couldn't expect an answer.

Wendy looked at her and pointed to her throat.

"You can't speak."

Wendy nodded.

"I, well, then. I'm taking it you're not here by choice either?"

Again Wendy nodded.

"Well, help me up then." The woman said, "And let's see if we can figure some way out of this mess."

She held up her hand and Wendy blanched when she saw that the woman's finger was missing, just like Wendy's tongue.

Chapter 24 Preview: Harry walks in on his mother doing something disturbing with Hook.