Chapter 21 #4
“I’m going to take my time with you,” Peter said. “And then you’re going to stay with me here forever.” He leaned down. I could see his face through my tears, through the blood and dirt.
I saw John. Bleeding. Pale. But moving. Crawling toward where the dagger had landed. His hand stretched out, fingers brushing the hilt.
Keep him talking. Keep him focused on me.
“You’re afraid,” I spit blood.
His boot ground down harder. Peter’s smile twitched. “What?”
“You’re scared of me.” The words came out broken, bubbling through tears and mucus. “That’s why you want me to beg. That’s why you need to make it slow. Because if you kill me fast, you won’t get to play pretend and think you’re still in control of me.”
His boot pressed harder. Bones grated. I sobbed.
“I’m not afraid of anything,” he said. But his voice had changed. Tightened.
“You are. You’re afraid of growing up.” My lips shivered. I could barely see now. Just shapes and shadows. “Afraid of being forgotten. Afraid that one day children will stop believing in you, and you’ll fade away. Like you never existed at all.”
“Shut up!”
“That’s why you keep them, isn’t it? The children.
That’s why you can’t let them go.” I laughed and choked back blood.
“You’re not keeping them young. You’re keeping yourself alive.
You’re a parasite. A leech. Without them you’re not the great Peter Pan.
Without them, without me, you’re nothing and you have no story. ”
“I SAID SHUT UP!”
He grabbed my hair. Yanked my head up. His face was inches from mine, and it wasn’t beautiful anymore. The mask was cracking, and I could see the darkness underneath.
“I am forever,” he hissed. “I am stories. I am every child’s dream and every parent’s nightmare. And everything to Wendy Darling, and you don’t get to tell me otherwise.”
Behind him, John’s hand closed around the dagger.
“You’re right,” I said.
John rose. Staggered forward. Raised the blade.
“I get to tell you your name.”
Peter’s eyes went wide.
John drove the dagger into his shoulder. Not his heart. His shoulder. But the blade sank deep, and Peter screamed, a high, inhuman sound that split the air. He backhanded John.
Somewhere I heard Agnes scream. Cry.
“Get her away from here, Michael!” I called out.
“Come on,” I heard him say. “We’ll meet you on the path. Please. Hurry.”
John lay crumpled where he hit a tree. But the dagger stayed where it was, buried in Peter’s flesh, its ruby hilt sparkling in the light like fresh blood.
He looked at the dagger. Looked at me. His face twisted with rage.
“You think this changes anything?” He withdrew the blade and threw it at my feet.
“You think a little cut is going to stop me? I’ve been stabbed a thousand times.
I’ve been shot. Burned. Drowned. Nothing kills me. Nothing can kill me. I am—”
“Peter Gideon Bell,” I said.
The name came out quiet. Almost a whisper. But it struck him like lightning. He staggered. His hand flew to his chest. His eyes, those beautiful green eyes, went wide with something I had never seen in them before.
Fear. Real fear.
“No,” he breathed. “No, you can’t. You don’t get to write my story …”
I got to my feet. I don’t know how. My wrist was shattered. My face torn. Blood oozed from a dozen wounds. But I stood.
“Peter Gideon Bell,” I said again. Louder this time.
He screamed. His hands clawed at his face, and where his nails dragged, light spilled, green light, sick and pulsing, like something poisonous trying to escape.
The crows went mad. They cawed and crashed into each other overhead. Some fell from the sky, dead before they hit the ground.
“STOP!” Peter howled. “Stop saying it!”
I walked toward him. One step. Two. My broken wrist hung at my side. The dagger was sturdy in my other hand.
“Peter Gideon Bell.”
Cracks spread across his face. Down his neck. Across his arms. Green light blazed through every fissure, brighter and brighter.
I heard Roger. “Stab him in the heart and tell him he’s nothing. He’s only a story, one that feeds and lives off the lives of others.”
This is for Roger. This is for Hook. This is for the children. This is for me.
“You’re nothing, Peter Gideon Bell,” and I drove the blade deep into his heart.
The name struck like a hammer brought down on glass.
He staggered, not from the blade in his chest but from the sound. From hearing the truth of himself spoken aloud after so long hiding behind a boyhood that had never belonged to him.
His hands clawed at his chest. His breath broke into wet, panicked gasps. The sounds of a drowning man.
His shadow convulsed. I watched it writhe, twisting, folding in on itself, a creature trying to crawl out of its own skin.
It opened its mouth and screamed. Not sound. Void.
Peter looked down at the dagger buried to its hilt. At the rubies pressed against his shirt. At the golden blood already spreading through the fabric.
He looked back at me.
“Wendy,” he said. Almost gentle. Confused. As if he couldn’t quite believe I had done it.
His hand came up, not to grab me, not to fight. Just to touch my face. His fingers trembled against my cheek.
“Why?” he whispered.
His voice cracked. His green eyes filled with tears. “I don’t understand. I thought … I thought you loved me.”
Something twisted in my chest. Something old and stupid and twelve years old.
“I told you I’d give you everything,” he said. His voice was shaking now. Small. Wounded. “I gave you the stars. I gave you flight. I showed you magic when everyone else wanted you to be ordinary.”
A tear spilled down his cheek. Golden. Glowing.
“Was it not enough?” he asked. “Was I not enough?”
My hand trembled on the dagger.
“I waited for you,” he whispered. “I never stopped believing you’d come back to me.”
His fingers curled against my cheek. Desperate. Tender. “And now you’re killing me.” His breath hitched.
A sob. A real sob, broken and small.
“Wendy, please. Please. I’m scared. I don’t want to die. I don’t know what happens when I die.”
My vision blurred. Tears. My tears. Mixing with the blood on my face.
“I’m sorry,” he breathed. “Whatever I did, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. I just didn’t want to be alone. I just wanted someone to stay. I’m stupid. I’m sorry.”
His hand slid down to cover mine. The hand still gripping the dagger in his chest.
“You’re the only one who ever really knew me,” he said. “The only one who ever really saw me. And now you’re …” His voice broke. Shattered. “Now you’re leaving me again. You’re all leaving me. Everyone always leaves.”
I felt myself wavering. Felt the certainty crumbling.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he really was just a frightened boy who didn’t know how to love without hurting. Maybe I was the monster here. Maybe …
No. Wendy. No. Don’t let him do this to you.
“Take it out,” he whispered. “Please, Wendy. Take the blade out and hold me. Just hold me. That’s all I ever wanted. For someone to hold me and tell me I’m not a monster.”
His tears fell faster now. His whole body trembled. “Am I a monster, Wendy? Is that what you think of me? Is that why you’re doing this?”
I opened my mouth. To say what, I didn’t know. To apologize. To comfort him. To pull the blade free and gather him in my arms the way I’d gathered so many frightened children …
Then I saw it.
Behind the tears. Behind the trembling lips and the wounded eyes.
He was smiling, and then I remembered.
“He’ll appear gentle at first, Wendy. Apologize. It will say anything to keep you there. Remember everything he took away from you.”
The corner of his mouth curled up in that old, familiar smirk, the one that said, I win, I always win.
I understood. Even now. Even dying. Even with my blade in his heart. He was still playing a game with me. Still manipulating. Still trying to turn himself into the victim and me into the villain. Still trying to make me feel guilty for the monster he is.
“You’re not scared,” I said. My voice came out steady. Cold. “You’re just angry that it didn’t work.”
His eyes flashed bright green. The mask shattered.
I twisted the blade, hard.
And Peter Gideon Bell began to break.
His mouth opened. His hands came up, clawing at the blade, deep in his chest. The cracks spread down his neck, across his collarbone, and raced along his arms.
His skin flaked away in bloody, fleshy patches. Underneath, there was no muscle or bone. There was just light. Sick, green light. The color of a stagnant pond and of things that glow in swamps.
His hands grabbed my shoulders. His grip was still strong.
“Please,” he whispered.
His face was a ruin. One eye had gone dark. The other still held mine.
Terror. That’s what I saw in him, in it. Not rage. Not hatred. Terror.
Good.
His body held for a moment longer. Light spilled from every crack, every seam, every place where Peter Pan had been stitched together from stolen children and stolen years. His mouth moved. No words came out. Just golden blood, thick and slow, running down his chin.
His chest caved in first.
Then his face.
Then he was falling, not backward, not forward, but inward. His body collapsing, folding into itself like paper crushed in a fist.
The light blazed brighter. I covered my eyes with my good hand.
I heard him screaming. Heard the crows screaming. Heard the island groaning beneath us, the ground splitting, the trees cracking, the whole rotten world tearing itself apart because the thing that held it together was dying.
Then silence.
When I lowered my arm where Peter had stood, there was nothing. Just a scorch mark on the ground. Just ash, already scattering in the wind. Just the faint smell of honey and rot, fading.
The crows hung motionless in the air for one long, frozen moment.
Then they fell.
All of them. Hundreds of black bodies dropping from the sky like stones, hitting the ground with soft, final thuds. Dead before they landed. Dead the moment their master died.