Title: Happily Ever After

Author: Syn

E-Mail: veruca_werewolf@hotmail.com

Word Count:  1,000 exactly.

Fandom: Peter Pan

Content: Wendy/Peter

Disclaimer: I do not own these characters.

A/N: Because Cantinera made me. :p Written for the Multifandom1000 Challenge on LiveJournal.  The topic was “endings”.

Feedback:  Tis my crack.

 

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"What does 'happily ever after' mean, Wendy?"

 

This question is put forth in a soft, thoughtful voice, breath stirring against the shell of her ear, spreading fingers of warmth down the column of her neck.  Wendy turns to meet Peter's green, open gaze, noting the soft touch of hazy light spirited on his curling eyelashes.  Soft, verdant light covers the shadows and contours of his face, bits of sunlight gleaming palely against his skin as the breeze tosses leaves overhead.  The air is warm and sultry, moisture clinging to her skin, the bare earth beneath her curled knees damp and soft.  

 

"What a question, Peter!" she exclaims, the corners of her mouth curling upward.  Peter, crouching near, his head ducked close to hers, frowns. "Happily ever after is...is..."

 

She trails off, turning away from Peter's intense gaze to ponder this question.  Odd how she'd never thought of it before.  What did "happily ever after" mean?  She looks down at her hands, where a needle she'd fashioned of bone is pinched between her thumb and forefinger and a long thread of vine with leaves jutting here and there along its juicy, twisted stem is waiting for her to return to her task of sewing her own kirtle.  The leaves are bright green and waxy against the soft glowing white of her dressing gown. 

 

"Well...why do you want to know, Peter?" Wendy asks, turning her gaze back upon the boy crouched beside her in the dirt.  He cocks his head, sun kissed loops of blonde hair thrown against his golden forehead.

 

"You always end the stories that way.  'And they lived happily ever after'!  What is this place?  Can you go there?" Peter asks as he touches her arm, his dirty fingertips lightly sliding along the folds of her sleeve.  Her breath hitches in her throat.

 

"Oh, but its not a place!" she says, dropping the needle and vine and rising to her feet, her toes digging into the soft, warm earth. "Happily ever after is the end of the story!"

 

"End?" Peter floats to his feet, hands on his hips, his mouth demanding answers that he will forget in a moment's time. 

 

"There isn't anymore...and yet there is!" Wendy says, biting down on the swell of her lip.  How to explain these things to Peter, who had never known an ending to anything?  His life was one adventure after another, the last one forgotten before the other had started.

 

"But don't they ever have any more adventures?  After they kill the pirates and get married and put their feet in the glass slippers?  Don't they go on and on?" Peter asks, stalking around her, green shadows and sunlight battling over his skin in dazzling flashes.

 

"Yes, I suppose they do.  But we aren't to hear of them.  That is why they lived happily ever after, Peter," she says, following him, her hands worried in an intricate knot of fingers and thumbs.  A warm breeze whistles off the sea, bringing a salty scent through the trees and lifting her curling hair off her shoulders.  Peter lights on the twisted stump of a tree, bits of crumbling bark digging into his feet.

 

"Why can't we?  What does it mean?" Peter strangles out, his features twisted in annoyance. 

 

"Oh Peter, how am I to make you understand?  Happily ever after means that they, the characters in the stories, lived always happy, together and safe.  If they had adventures, none were so perilous as the one that was first told of them and we don't know of them.  That is why the story ends by telling you this, so you don't go looking for them again.  You'll find them only in that story and nowhere else," Wendy says, approaching the stump and gazing up at him. 

 

He lifts his chin, his hands on his hips, the small, boyish muscles in his arms bunching and rolling, a shrewdness to his eyes that Wendy is inexplicably drawn to. 

 

"I'll bet I could find them!" And a mad, adventurous light gleams in his eyes as he says these words, making Wendy draw her eyebrows up in worry, knowing it is all but hopeless now. "I could find them and see if they had other adventures!  If Cinderella's ugly stepsisters ever showed their faces again!  Or...or...anything!  I can do anything!"

 

"They're just stories though, they aren't real," Wendy sighs, turning away from him and starting away before he could crow.  She is stopped as he lands down in front of her, blocking her path, his hands on her arms drawing her flush with his chest. 

 

"Not real?" His breath is sweet and warm against her skin as he looks imploringly down at her.  Wendy smiles sadly.

 

"Pretend, Peter," she says, knowing he won't understand.  His whole life is one glorious pretend, a glittering map of fantasies and falsehoods that are as real to him as the setting of the sun and the bite of cold steel. "They're just stories.  They always end, but you may revisit them whenever you choose.  Like memories..."

 

A shadow flickers across the surface of his eyes at this and Wendy feels a faint stirring in her heart.  Of course this is hard for him to understand.  He has very few memories that don't flicker and fade, slip away from his outstretched hands.  But he doesn't complain or make a demand of bravado as she expects.  No, the corners of his mouth crease with the faintest touch of foreboding and his voice comes softly through his lips.

 

"Are we to have a happily ever after, Wendy?  Is this to end?"

 

Wendy looks away from his maddening, breath-stealing gaze, the rise and fall of his chest against hers a soft, steady beat through her veins.  She doesn't know how to answer. 

 

Gently, he lifts her chin, her gaze rising to meet his once more.  She smiles then, a soft curling of her lips to reassure him. 

 

"Never, Peter.  Never, never," Wendy lies with all her heart.

 

(end)

 

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