disclaimer: disclaimed.
dedication: to Sailor V, on her birthday.
notes: barfs.

title: an uncivil twilight
summary: Is everyone here make-believe? — Baelfire/Wendy/Peter.

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Neverland was nothing like Bae had thought it would be like. He'd thought there'd be no responsibilities, no rules—but of course, that had been a delusion brought on by Peter Pan's flute. He'd promised them endless riches, endless freedom, endless whatever-would-make-them-happy.

But the Pied Piper had lied.

Somehow, Bae wasn't all that surprised.

Neverland was a death trap on a good day and his own personal hell on a bad one. The jungle hung hot and heavy around him, the air thick with moisture despite the smoke from the fire.

He hadn't signed up for this, he really hadn't.

Peter flopped down next to him, grinning. There was a dangerous lilt to the slash of his mouth that set Bae on edge—no good could come from that grin. "Baelfire, what's got into you? You don't come and dance with us, anymore. Why's that?"

"I'm tired," Bae answered, and that was the truth. He was very tired, though he was disinclined to say of what. In his time in Neverland, he had only really learned one thing: do not anger Peter Pan. Your life depended on it.

The other boy laughed, a sharp bark of sound in the night. "Everyone gets tired, eventually. You haven't even been here all that long! Though…" he paused, levelled a measuring look in Bae's direction, "S'pose it's time you met her."

"Her?" Bae asked.

Peter's smile turned knife-cut, scalpling up in the dark like an open wound across his face. "Her," he said. "Come on. I'll show you."

He hoisted himself up, then reached down to help Bae up. Bae didn't hesitate, though there was a part of him that stood apart from the rest of his consciousness, and quietly took stock of all the things they could use as a weapon. Peter Pan had secrets, every Lost Boys knew that, and all were closely guarded. The sharing of one was something sacred, though often it was a manipulation.

Bae knew this, and went anyway.

He followed Peter away from camp, along twisting paths that he'd never been down before. The unspoken hierarchy of the Lost Boys placed Pan at the top, then Felix, then everyone else. Everyone else went where they were told, and nowhere else. These paths were not ones Bae had walked before.

The forest opened up before him, into a tiny clearing. There was a tall, ancient tree in the middle of the clearing, with a trunk so wide Bae couldn't have wrapped his arms around it by his lonesome. From the tree's high branches hung a wooden box, a strange incongruent man-made monstrosity against the stark wildness of the jungle.

"Mother," Peter called, "are you awake?"

With horror dawning deep in his gut, Bae realized that it was not a box at all.

It was a cage.

And there was someone inside.

Peter clambered up the tree like it was nothing, swinging and slipping through the shadows and for a moment, Bae lost sight of him. A minute later, Peter perched on the branch from which it hung, the cage went whistling towards the ground.

Bae didn't move, and Peter cackled.

It stopped, hung on inch above the ground, and then cracked open.

"You can come out, now," Peter said, back at Bae's side as suddenly as he'd left.

A pair of eyes gleamed from within the depths of the cage, but only for a moment. Her hesitation was a tangible thing, and she left the wooden sanctum slowly, in bits and pieces. Hands first, nails bitten down to the quick, then a rustle of heavy fabric and the bow of her head. She was small, for a girl, with honey-coloured hair and very dark eyes. Her dress looked old, too, and not in the way of other people having owned it—it looked old-fashioned, somehow, something from another time.

(Another world in another century, in fact, although Bae couldn't fathom which one.)

Her name was Wendy, and she wasn't Peter's mother at all.

Peter touched her distractedly, strange and possessive, though he looked like he didn't realize he was doing it. His gaze was hungry on her face, and Bae watched them as though through a lens.

"Wendy," Peter said, "this is Bae."

"Hello," Wendy said quietly through the confines of Peter's arms. She looked at him straight in the eyes, teardrop face pale against the relief of her hair. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Now, Wendy-bird," Peter snickered into her hair, "don't be like that! So polite, and look where you are. Bae's one of us, Miss Darling, he shan't be running off with you."

"I never asked for that, Peter," she said steadily, but she did not move her stare from Bae's face. "You know I don't want to leave."

She was lying, Bae could tell.

She wasn't a very good liar.

But Peter smiled (really smiled, too, something warped into almost-goodness that lightened his face considerably), and Bae realized that it didn't matter whether she lied or not. It didn't matter that she, all of maybe-thirteen summers, looked at him with a level dark regard that might have put the universe to shame. It did not matter that the wanting in his stomach tightened at the sight of her. It didn't matter at all.

Because Wendy-bird Darling belonged to Peter Pan, and that would never change.

And everyone knew it. Everyone.

Especially Wendy-bird herself.

—

Bae drifted.

Time in Neverland passed differently than it had in the Enchanted Forest. The sun was forever setting, forever rising, and nighttime lasted an aeon. Bae thought it must have been years and years, but he wasn't growing up at all. His body was trapped in the interim, locked in the awkward stage between childhood's roundness and a young man's gawky edges.

Peter lounged wherever he ought, dressed in black and sometimes red, and seemed entirely at ease with the lack of change. The other Lost Boys didn't seem bothered by it, either. Bae withdrew, content to wander the jungle by his lonesome. It was easier.

He stumbled onto the clearing where Wendy hung more often than not, though, and sometimes they would talk.

"Wendy? Are you awake?"

"It's Miss Darling," she retorted flatly. Her hands appeared between the bars for a moment, white and small. "You're not Peter, you don't get to call me that. And yes, obviously, I am."

"I didn't—I'm sorry," he said, surprised. She hadn't been that direct, the first time he'd met her. She'd had a very old judgement and a solemnness that was at odds with the youth in her face.

But that probably had to do with the fact that Peter had been there.

Now, Bae thought, she was going to be a hardscrabble little thing, tight in her regret and furious in her vengeance. Peter had brought a storm to Neverland in the form of a diminutive girl with honey hair and dark eyes, and he didn't even realize it.

It started to rain.

"So what do you want?" she asked.

"To say hello," Bae answered.

"Well, you've said it. Is that it, then?"

The rain was heavy, fat droplets against his face. "Aren't you getting wet?"

"No," Wendy said, and she must have shook her head imperiously, because he caught a flash of gold against the rain. "Neverland doesn't touch me the way it does the rest of you."

"Prove it," Bae said, before he could stop himself.

There was a hiss of air through her teeth, and then: the rain froze in midair. It hovered exactly where it had been, clear lovely baubles glimmering in the suddenly moonlight-drenched clearing.

Wendy-bird had stopped the rain.

Bae couldn't breathe.

"Told you," Wendy said, and then the rain crashed to the ground in a torrent of water.

"How did you do that?" he asked.

"I wanted it to happen, so it did," she said, very simply. He thought he could hear a smile in her voice, something a little like pride at his wonder. "Neverland likes me."

"How?"

She sobered. "Peter's coming. You should go."

Bae didn't know how to respond to that, so he left.

—

"Wendy—"

"I said no, Peter, and I meant it!"

Bae watched as Pan caught the tiny golden girl up, arms clamping down. He spoke very quietly into her ear, and Bae couldn't quite hear what he'd said.

"No! I won't!" Wendy said, shoved against his chest, unbridled fury in her eyes. Even from this distance, Bae could feel the waves of rage rolling off of her like water.

"Wendy—" Peter tried again. He watched her like something hungry, dug his fingers into the fabric at her hips. If it hurt, she made no mention of it, only stared up at him. They were both oblivious to everything but each other.

"I'll kill you, Peter Pan," she said, quiet and deadly. "I'll kill you if you try. Leave my brothers out of this."

"You wouldn't," Peter grinned out of the corner of his mouth. His teeth were very sharp in the moonlight, a nightmare maw to bring down around the world and swallow it whole. "You like me far too much, Wendy-bird."

"I don't," she said.

He threw his head back and laughed.

"Oh, Wends," he said. "So transparent."

"You're a little boy," she bit back. "What do you know about transparent?"

"I'm know more than you," he said, eyes glinting something darker than laughter.

"No, you don't! You don't know about—about anything, about marriage or love or—or anything! Let me go, Peter, let me go!" she kicked at him, screaming with it.

Bae watched as Peter's hands closed around Wendy's too-thin wrists, the bones creaking under his grip. Wendy-bird, he thought, no. You're going to get hurt—

But there was nothing.

Peter had bent down, sealed his lips across hers. Wendy looked to be caught in the middle of it, about to run but too close for it. She shoulders went slack, the kiss hidden in her thimble to protect her heart.

(Really, though, she was already so lost. They said there were no Lost Girls, but they were wrong.)

"I hate you," she whispered into his mouth.

"I know," Peter told her, smugly. "I know."

—

Three weeks later, Bae left Neverland and Wendy-bird Darling behind.

He didn't even try to bring her with him.

After all.

There was no rescuing those who didn't want to be saved.

—

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fin.