AN: This was supposed to be fix-it fluff in the post 3.11 fallout. However, Peter is a little shit who refuses to fall in line so this did it's own thing. I apologize in advance for your feelings.

heart-shaped box

There is a truest believer born every generation. Peter thought it was Baelfire but it was Wendy Darling. His shadow knew it. This is why it takes her from her nursery one cold London night and flies her gently to the second star to the right. It talks to her and tell her of the wonders she will experience because it knows these are things she needs to hear. Then it drops her into the trees that blanket the island and she flutters like a broken bird all the way into the strong arms of the Forever Boy himself.

Years later, as Peter's power wanes and rises with the waxing of the moon and the search for the next generation's truest believer verges on desperate, the shadow's decision comes under intense scrutiny.

Peter had sent Wendy back once, had had Baelfire on his island and found him lacking, had sent for another boy and gotten the same girl again. Now, he keeps her heart in a box and her body in a cage and wonders everyday as to their uses. The shadow insists that the girl must be on the island. She is part of Neverland as much as Peter is. But he cannot see how. He cannot fit her into a place around his sprawling influence and he does not like it. She fits neatly into a box in none of the ways that matter.

He understands, of course, that Wendy is the truest believe of her lifetime. He knows that her heart is the one he seeks.. But he does not use it. He convinces her, slowly over time, that she needs him. That she needs magic and Neverland and all the wondrous things it holds. That she belongs to the island, to him, as surely as she breathes. Still, all his efforts give him no control.

He succeeds in winning her so well, in wooing her so sweetly, that she goes willingly with him to Skull Rock. He makes it romantic, a lovely little moonlight boat ride across serene water. He takes her delicate little hand and helps her out of the boat, shows her all the ins and out of the rock's cave systems. Then he shows her the hourglass. It is not as empty as it will be in Henry's time but it not as full as it had been in the beginning.

She watches it with awe, with reverence, and asks what it is. And Peter, as wooed as she is yet none the wiser, tells her everything. He explains his connection with Neverland in ways he never had before and never will again. He tells her of the heart he has been looking for, of the boy and father he had found on the shores and tricked soundly. He even admits to Baelfire's importance.

Wendy is not a stupid girl. She recognizes what it means when he speaks of sending the shadow for Bae and having it come back with her. She knows her own heart and can make her own extrapolations. She stares for a long time after Peter stops speaking up at the trickling sand. Every grain a second of Neverland's life, of Peter's life, falling away.

"Take mine," she whispers, eyes still locked on the hourglass.

Peter whips his head around to face her, feeling none of the victory he had anticipated. Instead, all he feels is dread. But this is what he wants, what he needs, for all of Neverland. So he nods. He takes her hand again, leads her into the moonlight, and does the spell. He gives her the dignity of removing it herself.

He watches her reach into her chest, his own heart pounding loud enough to match hers even as she holds it out to him. It is a little fluttering thing, pink and innocent and undamaged. For the first time in his long, long life, Peter fears breaking something.

Wendy stands before him, heart in hand, nervous not about death (she assumes death will come for her when she is just a body without her heart) but rejection. She has offered and he has accepted but what if, now that he sees the very core of her for what it is, Peter doesn't want it? What if he thinks it too small for such a gargantuan task, too fragile? For Wendy knows she is strong to the point of stubborn but she can hurt. She can hurt very, very badly and she knows Peter can see it. So she cups both hands protectively around the rapidly beating organ and waits.

Peter extends one hand, fingers hovering dangerously close to the pristine surface of his Darling's heart, then retreats. Wendy's face falls.

"I can't," he mumbles. In front of him, Wendy shrinks into herself. Her shoulders hunch and she curves around her exposed heart protectively. Peter hates the sight of it.

"Tonight won't work," he lies. It is the first lie he has ever told her.

She looks up then, confusion overtaking pain on her pretty features. Eventually, she makes sense of his statement and, opening her hands again, she asks, "Then what do I do with this?"

Peter can put it back, make it like she never moved a single part of her out of place. But he doesn't want to do that. He cannot let this particular heart slip out of his fingers. He does not want to use it right now but he wants to possess it completely. He thinks quickly, thinks of where he would keep something that important (that precious), and two options become clear:

The first is material: in his hands a pixie-wood box appears, carved intricately with birds of all shapes and sizes, lined in the softest, finest cloth he can imagine, exactly the right dimensions to hold Wendy's heart. Peter knows instinctively that he had carved it out of his own Thinking Tree; can feel the power ingrained in the wood itself.

The other option — the safer one, the one he likes the most — is to hold her heart in his own chest. To let it beat alongside his until he decides to use it. To keep her in his control, to keep her as his, forever. He can make her his Forever Girl and she would never know.

Peter turns the box over in his hands before presenting it to her. He lets Wendy appreciate all the details, watches the way her eyes light up at the little hidden delights in the carvings, let his eyes linger on the pretty flush she wears as she realizes the design's significance. He does not turn away when she raises her eyes to meet his. He lets her see him unguarded for this one moment. Before he can think about it too hard, he makes one last request of her while she still holds her own heart.

"Will you do something for me, Wendy-bird?" he asks softly. "Something else?"

She takes a step closer, lamb to the slaughter, blue eyes clear and bright, and tells him, "Anything, Peter."

Peter soaks in all her willingness, all the magic of her radiating belief in him, and asks, "Will you kiss me?"

Wendy's eyes widen at the completely unexpected request. She had been prepared for many things but Peter Pan does not talk of love, ever. They have had this fight already, this endless disagreement over the merits of deeper emotion, and he has always decried any need for it. She searches his face for truth and finds, as usual, only mystery. But Peter's green eyes shine as they watch her and, more than anything, she wants to kiss him. Her heart quivers in her hands at the thought.

"Alright," she breathes.

Peter's eyes flash with triumph and something else — something Wendy has never seen before and cannot name. She does not try to. Instead, she takes a deep, steadying breath and steps forward. Peter waits, completely still, for his bird to come to him.

Wendy steps into Peter's space, a mess of curls and white lace and single beating heart, and brings the best scents of the forest with her. She smells like all the best flowers, like the magic of pixie dust, like a cool breeze on a beautiful day, and Peter wants to pull her to him and bury himself in her being. He wants to wrap himself in her skin and own her entirely. He will have her heart but he wants more than that. He is a selfish boy; he wants everything she can give and everything she can't and he wants nothing to be left for anyone else, even her.

She raises her head to him, lips pink and moist, and pushes up onto her toes. Her mouth is soft and hesitant against Peter's. Her hands clutch at her heart so hard Peter fears she will crush it. He places his own hands on her shoulders, helps her balance on her toes, and tilts his head just so. His Wendy-bird's kisses are like feathers and he takes them all.

They stand there, heart of the truest believer pressed between them, kissing for what feels like hours. Then, he opens the box and lets her give him her soul.

Peter never gets rid of the box. He does take Wendy's heart out of it soon after they leave Skull Rock. He takes her to her tree house, lays her shaking form in a warm cocoon of sheets, then takes his heart-shaped box back to the tree from which it came. In the highest branches of his tree, he opens the box with reverence. His fingers still feel too filthy to handle a gift so pure. He stifles that notion quickly — nothing is beyond Peter Pan — and wraps his long fingers around it.

It shivers at his touch, warm and exquisitely frail. It is the softest thing he has ever held and it burns in his hand. He studies it carefully, looking for flaws and finding none. He has the heart of the truest believer.

Peter stares at it for a long, long time, eyes glazed with thoughts of the girl from whom it came. He could use the heart and be done with his search, be done with worries for Neverland for hundreds of years more. There will be another truest believer after Wendy Moira Angela Darling as there were others before her.

But there will never be another Wendy Moira Angela Darling.

Peter presses Wendy's heart to his mouth, tastes the very essence of her beating against his lips, and burns his own mark into it for all eternity. Then he nestles it softly to his chest and lets it sink into him.

Wendy becomes his Forever Girl but Peter finds quickly that he has no control over her. He knows how hearts work, has used them once or twice before to get what he wants. He has Wendy's so she should do what he wants her to. And she does for a long time. She obeys but he knows, can feel it in his chest, that she is willing to obey him. She is not being coerced. And later, as things get more desperate in Neverland and she disagrees with him more, he cannot fathom why the magic of her heart does not work the way it should.

He spends many long nights examining it, rolling it between his fingers and trying to find its defenses. It has none. Once, when he was absolutely livid with her, he chucked it back in the box and threw the box back at her across the tree house. She surprises him by picking it up and hurling back at his head as though it is nothing more than a shoe.

"How dare you!" she cries, tears making her eyes shine in the dim candlelight. "You can't give that back."

"It's defective," he snarls at her, vicious in his rage. "I don't want it anymore."

"You broke it!" she screams. "You broke it and now you can't give it back, Peter!"

"I can!" he roars. "I am the Pan, I will do what I want!"

"Not to me! You can't do this to me!" She clutches at the fabric above her chest and tells him much more quietly, "The pieces don't fit in here anymore, Peter. You broke it and you broke me and now you can't give us back."

He remains unmoved until she whispers, "Please, Peter. You can't let me go."

He keeps her and her heart. Lets her put it back it back in his chest for safe keeping herself. And things are as they always have been. She obeys when she wants and he thinks he knows now why that is. But he will not admit, not even to himself, that what he wants from her most is for Wendy to be herself. Because that is the girl he wants to keep forever.

Much later, he puts her in a cage but that is not her prison. She does not smile when she is freed because she knows she will never be free. When Regina rips Henry's heart of out of Peter's chest, Wendy feels it. When Peter manages to evade capture by Pandora's Box, Wendy feels it. When Peter's heart screams for Felix, Wendy's screams too. Her heart knows what is happening.

And then, when Rumplestiltskin drives a knife through Peter's back and cuts two hearts in half, Wendy Darling faints in a New York airport, a heart too heavy beating against her breast.

END