✓ | a little pixie dust ( modern peter pan )

( 07. the storm )

DESPITE HER STATE of pure bliss— Peter's hands and lips on her bare skin, the pixie dust amplifying every kiss by a thousand— Wendy felt something was wrong. It had been a wild night; she'd done at least three illegal things: from drinking at Poppy's party to breaking into a police station to letting Peter give her some hallucinogenic drug. The girl knew she had to stop somewhere.

But it felt so damn good.

Wendy felt no sense of alarm when there was a flash of light outside Neverland's downstairs window, it was just a firework, right? Nowhere in her drugged, lust-fueled mind did it occur to her that there might have been someone in the woods, looking for them. She had no fear for the crackling of leaves outside the shack, the shadow sneaking through the trees, the metal finger cocking a gun she might have heard had she not been high out of her mind.

It was only when Tiger had noisily bolted down the stairs, brown eyes wide and shining, and urgently whispered "he found us" that fear trickled into Wendy's gut. She didn't know who he was, or why Tiger was on the verge of tears, but suddenly Peter's lips and hands on her thighs didn't feel so good anymore.

"Shit," Peter whispered, untangling himself from Wendy and stumbling out of the alcove. His hair was on end and his lips were swollen and it was evident that he was in no way sober.

 "Who's here?" asked Wendy. Her voice sounded disembodied, far away. "Who's found us?"

"Hook." Tiger paced the dirty wooden floor, to the wall of knives half-hidden by a ratty curtain. The name registered vaguely in Wendy's mind; Peter had told her about him. The dog bit his hand off. Wendy remembered the supposed alarm clock Tick-Tock had swallowed and giggled. Again, the sound was as if she was at the bottom of a pool. Odd.

Before she knew it, there was a hand gripping her arm and dragging her off the floor. Stars burst in front of her. Pretty, Wendy thought, reaching out to touch them but coming into contact with Tiger's chest. The room was hazy, and it felt like she was dreaming. She swayed on her feet, suddenly cold because of Peter's absence.

"Wendy."

Suddenly, a voice shook the girl out of her daze.

"Wendy, get it the fuck together," said Tiger, her dark eyes meeting Wendy's own ones. Her voice was low and deliberate, making sure every word got through. "There is a police officer outside right now, he is coming to arrest me and Peter and maybe even you. You are high as a kite and you need to sober up right now because we are leaving. Do you understand?"

The disoriented girl limply reached out to Peter, who stood at the base of the stairs, hands running through his wiry hair.

"I said, DO YOU UNDERSTAND?" 

Tiger's harsh tone was accompanied with a shake of Wendy's shoulders, who promptly began to cry. Long, ugly sobs wracked her body and she stumbled over to the wall, clutching the wooden planks just like she had the first time she ended up in Neverland. God, that first time was only a few hours ago. It seemed like a lifetime. How had her night spiraled into such a mess, so quickly? 

A flashlight beam swept in through the window, causing Tiger to grab Wendy and pull her down to the floor.

"Shh, shh," she murmured. Then, frantically signaling to the still-standing Peter, "Mate! Get down!"

But Peter did not listen. His eyes had taken on a eerie, glassy shimmer in the half-light, and to Wendy's horror, his hand was fastened around a shotgun. When he spoke, his voice was off, but that might have been the pixie dust.

"You can have anything in life," he said, "if you sacrifice everything else for it." 

The beam swept by again, this time catching Peter full in the face. It stayed there, like a spotlight that lit up the maniacal glint in the boy's eye. That same glint had thrilled Wendy in the dash through the vents in the police station, but now it only contributed to the fear coiling in her belly. A grin tugged at the corner of Peter's mouth and he raised the shotgun to the ceiling so that it too was in the flashlight's glare.

So that Hook could see it.

A convulsion seized Wendy's body and she threw up, gasping and sputtering and not recognizing the boy who had led her through this evening. 

"I can end this," muttered Peter, more to himself than to the two girls. With a glance up the stairs to the sleeping children and a whisper of what Wendy could've sworn was I'm sorry, Peter Pan brandished his gun and marched out of Neverland's door, into the woods.

"Peter!" Tiger cried, abandoning her dedication to staying unseen and unheard. She stormed after the boy, fingertips grazing the back of his shirt but failing to pull him back into the safety of the shack. 

It was happening too fast for Wendy. Quiero mi madre, she thought, for the first time that night realizing that her parents probably had no idea she wasn't asleep at Poppy's. She was going home. Now. She didn't care what happened to Peter. He was a drug dealer. He was a criminal. 

Girls like Wendy didn't belong with boys like Peter, that's what she'd been brought up to believe. If she'd only followed her parents' advice she wouldn't be in a goddam drug den in the middle of the woods.

She pulled herself up. She steadied her shaking knees. She moved step-by-step towards the door and gingerly pushed it open. It revealed only the dark shapes of trees; the night was eerily quiet.

And then it wasn't.

A gunshot, followed by a bellow of anguish and a high-pitched scream.

That was it. Wendy lurched into a stumbling run, crashing through the underbrush. Leaves and branches snagged at her hair, thorns opened cuts on her bare legs. She couldn't tell who had shot, but judging from Peter's state when he had left Neverland, it was he who had shot Hook. The shot reverberated through her eardrums, the piercing scream accompanying it. 

Wendy made it out of the woods. The stars were back, dancing in front of her even when she closed her eyes. She followed them through the streets. There were still fireworks going off, but the pops and bangs were no longer a celebratory sound to Wendy. They were gunshots coming closer and closer, pushing her to run faster, even though she was ready to slump down against the side of a building and give up.

She didn't know how she ended up on the bridge. But there she was, wind whipping her hair into her face. It was nice, that feeling of a cool breeze on her sweat-drenched skin. She stepped up to the railing and realized that the echoing of the gunshots was gone.

It was peaceful, quiet. The stars still leapt in and out of her vision, but they were closer now. She could touch them, if only she reached a little further...

She stepped up onto the guard rail of the Tower Bridge.