When I brought her here, I wanted to do just that.

Break her.

But Wendy was always broken.

Just like me.

I’m beginning to understand that is part of the reason why I’ve always felt called to her. I couldn’t see that when she was first here. When I was just a boy, just as lost as she was. But being this close to her again, being forced to remember the night I almost broke her, just like I found her broken the first night we met, I see things differently than I ever have before.

“Something about you has changed,” Wendy whispers, forcing my thoughts back to the present. Raising her glass, she gestures to me across the table, and I sink back in my seat, retreating into my darkness. The shadows. “Not your manners, or your cockiness,” she rolls her eyes, and I smile, “but your appearance.”

She studies me and I calm my nerves by raising my glass and taking a large sip of the wine. Her eyes try to make out what her mind is telling her, something I’ve worked tirelessly to keep hidden. I avert my gaze by setting my glass down, pulling my pack of smokes from my pocket, then take a generous amount of time lighting up, waiting for her to continue.

“Maybe not,” she finally mumbles, and I breathe a little easier.

On a heavy sigh, she sets her wine glass down and pushes away her dinner plate. Leaning back in her chair, she lets her eyes roam around the dining room, instead of leaving them fixed on me. I relax slightly but still keep my guard up.

“Maybe I’ve had too much wine.” She finally confesses in a whisper.

A light chuckle escapes my lips at her comment. Exhaling, I gesture towards her with my cig just as she looks back my way.

“Careful,” I tease, “the wine in Neverland is not like the crap you must be used to drinking back home.”

“What,” she huffs, “you going to tell me the fae laced it with magic? You trying to put a spell on me, Pan?”

She couldn’t be more right on with all the truth in that statement. Instead of telling her so, I take another long drag of smoke and exhale as I say, “If I was, it would never be as strong as the spell you’ve always held over me, Wendy.”

We both grow nervously silent. My confession hangs between us like the thickest fog. After a moment, I push angrily out of my seat, irritated for not being able to stop myself from sharing such a private thought. My careless reveal has made both of us nervous. I look back her way, then watch as her gaze lowers to her lap, she fiddles with her napkin just as I glance away and pace to the far side of the room.