❝Never fight fire with fire.
Everything you love will burn.❞
➳
Adi Morris has fire. Peter Pan likes fire. But she's prepared to use that fire against him if it means keeping her freedom. Adi has never been one to follow the rules, and not even a man...
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"I taste you on my lips and I can't get rid of you so I say damn your kiss and the awful things you do." Nicotine - Panic! at the Disco
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PETER HAD THOUGHT he was well on his way to understanding Adeline Morris. In the short time he had known her, he'd learned to anticipate her predictable unpredictability. He had known that if he told her to follow him, she wouldn't turn and sprint in the opposite direction; she'd follow, but she'd find another, quieter way to slip away. She liked to think herself overtly rebellious, but really, it was in the small moments, the way she would let him guide her through magic lessons but would question every direction he gave, the way she allowed herself to be vulnerable at times but at others locked her thoughts in a journal he could not flip through.
So, really, he shouldn't have been as surprised as he was when she dragged that arrow down her arm, shouldn't have been surprised when she smiled like she had won, and he definitely shouldn't have been surprised when she collapsed.
Still, Peter found himself shocked by her sheer audacity.
There was blood trickling from her lips, splattering the stone entryway of Dead Man's Peak. Adeline wasn't moving; she had mere minutes before the dreamshade claimed both her heart and brain.
Felix wordlessly set Adeline down amid a small puddle of her own blood while Peter shoved a magically-created canteen under the water until it overflowed.
Black veins trailed all the way up her neck, curling over the slight burn from the fight with the shadow creature that morning and blending in with her hair splayed across the ground.
For a moment, he hesitated. Held the cure to imminent death not a foot above a dying girl, and hesitated. He thought of the way she pointedly told him not to touch her. Of her clear boundaries, unspoken rules. Peter could not imagine a single reality where a conscious Adeline would accept the terms of the water's deal: live, but only here.
"Peter." Felix sent him a pointed glare.
But of course, Adeline was not here to decline. And Peter valued her far too much to let her slip away from him.
(All those times you were called heartless, and now you think to act human?)
Peter tipped the water into her mouth.
Time slid by painfully, silent save for the trickle of the waterfall, the rustle of leaves, the impossibly loud pound of Peter's heart in his ears. Felix shifted, glancing over to Peter and then back to Adeline's still form.
Maybe they were too late. Maybe Peter waited too long, hesitated too much, and she died before the water hit her system.
Then Adeline took in a shuddering, choking breath. The inky veins retracted from her skin, leaving it pale and untouched once more. The burns on her neck and forearm healed and vanished in a matter of moments.
