Peter Pan X Reader // OUAT

Chapter nine

And suddenly it was just the way my life was before. Trapped, cold and uncomfortable. Just this time I felt so much more uneasy about it. Maybe my mind had already accepted Pan in my life. Maybe I shouldn't have been so naive to put some of my trust in him.

Three days later:

I sat, with my knees lifted up and my arms wrapped around them, in the wooden cage. Dried tears made every blink uncomfortable but I wasn't able to move a lot and it took too much energy I didn't have to raise my hand and wipe the tears away. So I just stayed still and ignored the pain.

After the first day the thirst started to bother me. I became desperate for a bit of water, only a small sip. But nothing.

Pan visited me multiple times a day but he didn't offer anything. He didn't offer me water. He didn't offer me food. He didn't offer me the chance to apologize and to change my mind, to get be under his protection again. And I did not ask him to.

I didn't want to prove him right. I wasn't weak.

The second day was worse. To my already awful thirst came a second desperation. Hunger. It was a slow process of noticing how hungry I actually was and then, once I realized, the immense pain of it grew stronger with every second. It punched in my stomach and it took it's time to fully express the entire pain it could offer.

At that point, I wanted to cry. Not pretty tears, not sadness. Just crying out all my pain. Or maybe I wanted to vomit the pain out of me. But my body was empty. There was nothing left inside me.

But the third morning turned out to be the worst of all. The times of trying to move at all were over. I just sat there without any emotion and I wasn't sure if I would have been able to move if I would have tried. My mouth felt dry, my stomach empty and my body was tired but the cage wasn't build for a possible sleep position.

A part of me wished I would have never met Pan. I wished I would have just stayed on that goddamn ship. But then again, I thought about his face, his eyes, his hair, his voice. The strange feeling he has unfolded inside my heart made me weak.

I craved for him to come back to me. And I hated me for that.

It was hurting me a lot more than expected to know that I actually missed him, Pan. I missed his soft side, the way he had hugged me once or twice. My heart felt heavy in my chest when I remembered what he did to me.
He had tortured me. And yet he had saved me.

I let out a sigh. How, if I would ever make it our of here alive, should I manage to escape him? At first I feared that I couldn't escape him physically. Now I was quite convinced that my bigger problem would be in escaping him mentally.

Suddenly footsteps appeared in the distance. It was Pan's typical morning visit. He wouldn't talk at all, like he did the last days. Although his eyes would speak to me. His cold and unemotional gaze would burn through my skin and I would not look up to him. At first because I was proving him how strong I am, how capable of resisting him. Then out of shame to look at him. By now it was the amount of energy I had left that made it impossible to raise my head.

He stopped in front of the cage. His presence fell like a dark shiver over me. I let out a shivering breath and continued glancing at the wooden bars.

"Can you look at me?"

Pan spoke. I haven't heard his voice in multiple days and in this moment, those five short words, my heart almost stopped. Until now I hadn't realized how much impact he had on me, how much I adored it.

How much I hated myself for this exact feeling.

I could see that he crouched down to me. He put his hand inside the cage, grabbing mine.

"Love?" He whispered. I didn't answer. I did nothing for a moment.

Then I slowly, barely noticeable, pressed his hand. It was all he needed. He pulled his arm back out of the cage, got up again and opened it.

Maybe he would have expected me to move. Maybe he waited for me to crawl out on my own. However, I didn't.

I was not capable of moving.

"Peter..." I whispered. My voice sounded dry and unalive. For a moment he looked surprised, then he shook his head in disappointment.

"Why did you want me to not be nice to you, huh? Do you think I like that?" He asked. I wanted to say "no". I wanted to let him know that I believed in his good side, but I didn't. Because I knew for a fact that there were people existing which he would have held in this cage with so much amazement, it would've been mentally disturbing.

Luckily Pan did not expect an answer. He carefully placed his arms under my body and lifted me out of the cage to lay me down on the ground. A new pain overcame me when my body could finally be stretched fully. I groaned in pain, making Pan immediately lift me up a bit and the next moment he placed my head in his lap to make sure it wouldn't be too much to compensate for now.

It was the first time in three days I got to saw his face and also the first time ever I have seen him look like he was really stressed. He looked tired and unfocused, a dark circle around his eyes. His hair was messy and he missed this special spark he usually had.

But the moment he turned his head down to me, all his beauty was visible again. Even if he looked awful, he was still beautiful.

"What's... wrong?" I whispered, causing my lungs to take a deeper breath of the dry air, making me cough heavily.

Pan immediately pulled a bottle of glass out of his bag and opened it. With one hand he held my head up a bit, with the other one he let me to multiple sips from the bottle until I gasped for air. Then he layed my head back on his lap while putting away the bottle.

"Don't speak love, you are hurting yourself." Pan meant.

"Let me talk, okay? Just listen." I did not answer but my silence was easy to understand. I waited for him to talk.

"You wished for me to be nice to your brother and I was nice to him. But he is a curious boy, a believer in everything good. He understands why we need to hunt to survive and he kills people without loosing his respect for them. What I am.trying to say is, he can manage life here. He does not need my kindness,..." he hesitated before speaking his last words.

"...you do. Do you want me to be nice to you again?" I gulped. It felt like I would betraying Henry with letting Pan be nice to me. But I also knew that Pan couldn't be nice to both of us if he wanted to keep his reputation. Being nice to two people would make him look weak.

...

"Yes..." I mumbled.

And suddenly, he smiled. A tired, soft smile. The kind of smile I would always melt for.

"Then I'll take care of you again."

"Ah great..." I muttered, making him glare at me for a moment.

"Only a sip of water and you're getting sarcastic again?"

I hummed something not understandable and closed my eyes, enjoying Pan's comfort. Tiredness slowly made it's way through my body.