She is bigger than him, stronger, and she pins him with ease. By the cave’s light, Wendy sees the silhouette of her hand fall across Peter’s face before she even realizes her arm is raised to strike. Peter blanches, freckles standing out like spots of rust, spots of blood. He looks so young. He looks afraid.

Before he ever stole her daughter, he stole her. He stole years of her life. All that time she spent locked away, believing in him, refusing to give up, he never came for her. He ordered her to love him, but did he ever even think of her once when she was out of his sight? He’d wanted not a mother in truth, but the idea of a mother, like his idea of pirates and Indians, soldiers and war. Someone to tell stories and keep the monsters away. Someone to save him from himself.

He’d demanded love like a shield, without understanding that love can be a blade as well, cutting far sharper than any pirate’s sword. Loving something means having something to lose, something that Wendy understands all too well and Peter never will.

All at once, the rage drains from her. Wendy lowers her hand. Peter breathes hard. What has he made of her? What has she become?

“Help me hold him.” Wendy’s voice shakes and she doesn’t dare look at Tiger Lily.

Tiger Lily made no move to stop her when she raised her hand, but still Wendy is ashamed. She has to be better than this, better than Peter and his temper-born cruelty.

She forces herself to look at Peter, really look at him. The boy who wanted to show her wonders, who taught her how to fly. Tiger Lily kneels, bracing Peter’s shoulders. Peter’s eyes are so wide that in the blackness of his pupils, Wendy is certain she sees stars. She thinks of the mermaids, dead in their lagoon. She thinks of Peter laughing and holding her hand. There is good and bad in him, just like anyone else, only more extreme.

“Hush, now.” Wendy brushes the hair back from Peter’s forehead. She almost leans to kiss his brow, a mother soothing a child awoken from a bad dream, but stops herself. A small kindness is enough.

She takes the needle and the thread from her pocket. Her hands are remarkably steady. Tiger Lily watches her silently, and it only takes Wendy one try to slip the thread through the needle’s eye. She leaves the rest trailing from the spool. How much will it take to join boy to monster, to make an ancient creature whole again?