Pan's Redemption

Chapter 25 ~Past*

Pan was never meant to be a father. Looking into his son's eyes after his wife Evanna died, he finally realized it.

In another life, one before Neverland, Pan was called Malcolm. He was a good husband to his wife. He adored her. Her coffee brown eyes always made him lost for words. Her dark hair swirling in the wind made him smile. She was the daughter of a merchant. Someone very respected in the small village he grew up in. He wasn't anyone special. No one noticeable. Someone small, but with a big heart.

As he grew older his babyish looks seemed to fade, and thanks to his own father, he became a good looking fellow. He soon learned how to charm the girls in his small village. He hoped he would one day be able to charm Evanna. His princess. His girl. Even with all the charm in the world, she passed by him without even a slight care about him. Somehow, it made him want her more. It was nice to know she couldn't be fooled as easily as the rest.

And one day, he did get her to notice him. Her father was running out of money. In a panic he tricked a soldier to buy a broken item and used the money on food for his family. That warm summer day the soldier came back as Malcolm was walking home. Malcolm heard her scream from the house. When he raced inside he found the soldier dragging her around like a rag doll.

Malcolm panicked. He raced up toward them and grabbed one of her father's priceless vases from the shelf on the wall and smashed it over his head from behind him. The soldier fell, clearly unconscious, and Evanna was safe. Her father was away from home on a trip to sell jewels. She had been alone. She had been scared. He let her cry into his shirt until her father came home.

Ever since that day she never took her eyes off him. He wasn't exactly hating it either. A love sparked sudden and strong. They were married at seventeen. They travelled as much as they could with the little money both of their parents had given them. They explored all of the Enchanted Forest by the time Rumple, their son, was born.

After their first child, Evanna was never the same. She smiled less. She got sick often, and soon on a stormy winter night, she died. Just like that. Malcolm was heart broken. He took Rumple and moved to another remote village in the heart of the Enchanted Forest. He couldn't deal with his wife's loss. He drank all hours of the day. He hardly raised his son.

Soon, Malcolm grew to despise Rumple. He didn't quite understand the reason. Maybe it was because he looked more like his mother. He had Evanna's smile and he had her eyes. He just wanted one more moment. One more day, hour, minute. But he couldn't have her.

It seemed like just an ordinary drunken day when nine year old Rumple brought home a magic bean. Malcolm had spent a normal day of scams in the heart of the village. A simple card game, but somehow the lad had figured him out. In a blinding rage the man beat him. Rumple scrabbled to him.

"Please don't hurt my papa!" He cried to the man.

"Rumple..." Malcolm warned him in a hoarse voice.

The man laughed at them and cursed a few more words and left them alone. Malcolm shooed his son to his work where he was a spinster. The women there told him that everyone in the village knew of his father and what a horrible one he was. They gave him the bean and told him to leave his father and start over.

When Rumple came storming in with the magic bean in hand, Malcolm couldn't believe it. It was his second change at a happy life for himself. A happy ending. He quickly recalled the dreams he used to have in his small shack of a house as a child. Before he met Evanna. Before he had Rumple. He was just an innocent child.

The island was called Neverland. You could imagine up anything you desired. You could fly. You could do anything you wanted if you put your mind to it. They just needed one thing, pixie dust. When Rumple and Malcolm landed on the island together, Malcolm made the move to get some for a magical tree. When he finally reached the top were the dust sat, he discovered it did not work on him.

That's when The Shadow appeared.

"It does not work for you. Neverland is a place for children to visit in their dreams, not a place for them to live. You broke that rule coming here. In order for you to stay, you have to give up what you love most in the world for the youth to stay here."

Malcolm had already lost the thing he loved most. But looking at Rumple at the base of the tree below him, he knew there was one more thing he could give up. And then The Shadow picked him up to fly away, but he was still gripping his papa with all his might.

"Please, Papa, please!" He cried out. Despite himself, he felt his heart break a little more than it already had.

"I'm sorry Rumple, but a child cannot have a child. I was never meant to be a father." And Malcolm ripped Rumple away from him. The straw doll he had made him flung itself from Rumple's fingers and to Malcolm's feet. He watched The Shadow disappear before picking it up off the ground.

"Come on now Rumple, name him." He remembered telling him. He looked up at him doe eyed.

"How about Peter....Peter Pan?"

Peter Pan.

~~~~~~~~

Pan was in love. It was the only explanation to why the ice around his heart was beginning to thaw itself. It was Wendy. And it was strong. It wasn't like Evanna. Of course he would always love and cherish her memory, but Wendy was different. She glowed.

He loved her back when she would look at her feet shyly. When she hated him. When she knew she would never be able to trust he again. At first, he didn't know what it was. Why did he snatch her up from London? Why did he insist on bringing a girl on an all boy island? When The Shadow told him that she was the one he had been searching for, he figured it had been the lure of power that had made him keep her. The unconscious feeling of her being what he needed to survive. But it was stronger than that. The need to protect her was too strong.

When she left him the first time, he thought he might fall apart. The second time, like he might die. He loved her. Loved her small, rare smile. Her blush on her rosy skin. The sparkle in her chocolate colored eyes in the bright Neverland sun. Her golden brown curls tickling his face as she slept next to him in his tent. The nights were she would fall asleep on the very edge of the bed as far away from him as possible, and he'd wake with his arms around her small frame. He loved her. He wanted her to see past all the horrible things he's done. To see some good in him. Enough good to stay with him forever.

When he had seen what he had done with her family in the human realm, he hated himself. He had brought a ghost from he and Rumple's past and shoved it into her life. She dissevered better. She disserved everything. The fact that he teases her in cruel ways was a way of punishing himself. There, she will never like you now. And it had worked the way he wanted it to. She was seeing him for what he really was: a monster.

It was better for her to stay away. To continue to hate him till the end of time. In the end he might hurt her far worse than she has ever been hurt before. But then she started taking little steps toward him. In her sleep she would murmur Peter. Not Pan. It was her way of deciding who he was. Declaring herself a Lost Girl; that was the end of it. No discussion. Done.

No matter what was good for her, he would never let her go.

He was Peter Pan. And he would not loose to the fate pushing them apart.

He would be with his Wendy Bird, even if the realm punished him for it.

He would sacrifice all of it for her.

His Darling. His Wendy Darling.