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Title: The Seduction of Wendy Darling: A Tragedy in Three Parts
Author: seraphcelene
Email: seraphcelene at yahoo dot com
Rating: PG-13
A/N: Movieverse. There was something about Jeremy Sumpter and Rachel Hurd-Wood, both on the cusp of adolescence, that made the 2003 film uncomfortable and darker than its usually played for. I can't say that I'm exactly happy with this, three years later and it's still not quite what I was aiming for (especially the second section), but I guess that I am content. Or just damn tired of it sitting unfinished on my harddrive.
Feedback: Yes, please.
Disclaimer: Peter Pan belongs to the JM Barrie estate of which I am not a part. This is just for fun and not profit.
Summary: Some girls wander by mistake.
one. of folly and mad obsession
Wendy huddles into the warmth of Hook’s embrace, mesmerized by the rumbling bass of his voice and the bewildered tattoo of his heart beating frantically against her back. With his mouth pressed to her ear, Hook purrs to Wendy his dreams of the Pan: Peter’s blood on his blade; Peter’s broken body abandoned on Marooner‘s Rock; Peter’s head gracing the tallest mast on the Jolly Roger. She drowns in his vision of conquering the Neverland with Red-Handed Jill at his side.
Gently, Hook fits the ceramic bowl over her nose and mouth, and this time Wendy inhales the opium easily.
“You could be my … my companion,” he lazily promises beneath the hover of smoke. “Tell grand tales about my daring adventures. I’ve heard you’re quite the little storyteller. But mother‘s always are, aren‘t they?” He sets the pipe aside, the tube coiled into a heap beside the hookah.
“Would you call me Mother?” Wendy lays collapsed into the curve of Hook's chest and the cradle of his lap. Lost in clouds of scarlet and roses, Wendy dreams as wide as the sky and bright as stars. Her body is heavy only when she remembers to think of it.
“Of course,” Hook whispers. “Whatever you would like.” He kisses her on the temple and again just behind the ear. “Would you like that? If I called you Mother?”
Wendy stretches beneath him then, strains away from the heavy throb in her veins and between her legs. "There is something unsettling about all of this," she responds. "Your eyes remind me quite suddenly of Father and to be honest, I'd much rather be Jill."
"Well, I am no father to babes," he snarls and leans in close, dips down to kiss the corner of her mouth and inhale the sweet tinge of the opium on her breath.
Peter is the ghost between them. Masquerading as the cock that crows them awake. His shadow dances bare foot across the ceiling by candlelight. Beyond the port hole there is the flash of his smooth cheeks and sulky man-child smile.
When Hook touches her, he grunts out stories about Peter and what he will do should he ever manage to catch him.
“Peter Pan!” Hook shouts.
“Peter,” Wendy echoes.
*
Wendy sees in Hook, cuddled around her, one hand tucked between her thighs, the boy he once was and the man Peter could become. Beyond the crow of the cock, Honor and Good Form are spread thinly across the warmth of his skin. It is in the scent of his breath and the tickle of his hair curling along her neck. When Hook speaks the deep growl of manhood cloaks the mew of the nursery, as it must, and for the briefest moment Wendy can picture him, a doddering old fool staring at the dim stars over London and waiting for a shadow to appear at the window. The man who refused to grow old, finally aged, waiting for the boy who refused to grow up. And like all boys that would be men (and men that would be boys) he hides his fear beneath bluster and vitriol, brandishing his sword and shouting at the clouds.
She imagines them in London, Peter and Hook, and the way they would fade like the Darling’s summer roses, growing brown and wilted with the passage of time, the nursery their prison once more. And if they should grow old, staring at the stars, trapped in the gray of London, she has lost them. She has lost the warmth of Hook at her back (swinging from the masts and sailing the high seas) and the promise of Peter in the corner of her eye.
two. thimbles
She comes, just barely remembering the way, and she cooks, tidies and calls Peter "Father." He calls her Mother and they tuck the Lost Boys into bed, dispensing pats and kisses, tipping flowers full of dew into hungry, gaping mouths.
They do not kiss the way that parents do or cuddle or say My Dear or Darling. Wendy knows the words but she does not think that Peter will quite take the meaning. In any case, they do not talk as they once did. The length of Wendy’s legs and the summer she spent with Hook is a wall between them.
In the midst of longer spring days, Wendy bleeds and Peter panics, sending one of the Lost Boys to fetch Tiger Lily.
Tiger Lily laughs in his face. “Silly boy,” she says. “Take her back. Wendy has outgrown you. Things cannot be as they were or remain as they are. Such is the way of the world, even in the Neverland. “
*
Wendy finds Peter perched in a blossoming tree and naming stars with Tink. The night is balmy and soft. A lazy crescent of moon hangs gently in the sky.
“Peter, come down,” Wendy calls breathlessly. “I have a gift for you.”
“What sort of gift?” asks ever suspicious Peter.
Wendy stares up at him, her eyes momentarily glittering with tears before she blinks them away and smiles a sad, warm Wendy smile. “It is a gift for men and not for boys, and you can only have it if you come down.”
“What good would it do me if it is a gift only for men,” Peter throws back at her. “I am a boy and the best boy there ever was.”
“But Peter,” Wendy sighs, for this is the same argument that they always have. “Don’t you want to grow up? To be a man with a house and a wife and boys of your own?”
“I already have a tree house. And I have you, and boys are just babies and good for nothing. Besides I would need to work to feed them and pay for the house, and wear ties and tight shoes.”
“But, Peter.” Wendy moves closer to the tree, places her hand against the trunk to feel its heartbeat. The tree sighs at the contact.
“No!” Peter shouts, leaping to stand on a branch. Petals, the softest, shyest shade of pink Wendy has ever seen, spin down.
Peter was so sure that he was right and what more could there be to adulthood then children and jobs and things called mortgages. Wendy’s insistance on growing up was unfathomable, an itch beneath his skin and at the back of his brain.
Determined, Peter hops lightly onto a higher branch, pokes his tongue out at Wendy below and steps up even higher. But blossoming trees are sensitive trees and not like other trees. This one took offense at Peter's callous treatment of Wendy's delicate sensibilities and as Peter jumped, took the opportunity to swat him right out of the air. Too surprised for a moment to fly, he tumbled, landed on Wendy and whooshed the breath right out of her.
Wendy closes her eyes and thinks of Hook's blue eyes and the room that her father had given her on the floor above the nursery. She lays still and thinks desperate, impossible things. The way that Peter's hair curls along the back of his neck and how his hands are too big for his body, rough and square dangling at the end of his childish arms. She thinks of map making and star charts and instructions for flying. Wendy laughs wickedly at the thought of Tinkerbell stored in a jar for fairy dust.
Peter taps her cheek gently, worridely calling her name and apologizing for falling on her and cursing the tree all at once. Tinkerbell hums gleefully around his head until Wendy leans up, quite suddenly and presses a kiss squarely on his mouth.
He tastes of Peppermint, wishes and summer strawberries. Wendy could kiss him forever. For a moment she thinks that he will let her. Pressed against her ripening body, he holds very still, relaxes and sinks softly against her. For a moment, Wendy holds everything she ever wanted tangled in her skirts and clasped between her thighs. Until Peter breaks the kiss, his head guided by the jealous tug of Tink's hands in his hair.
His eyes are wide and startled. Wendy holds her arms outstretched as he flies away, yearning and desperate and sad.
"Peter," she whispers.
three. kisses, hidden or otherwise
Every Sunday Wendy Moira Angela once Darling wears a hat to church. She also wears white gloves with pearl buttons at the wrist and a demure smile that says “Hello, I am pleasant. I am safe. I will not surprise you.” But just behind the gentle spread of Wendy’s mouth are teeth.
Wendy wears that meaningfully pleasant smile on other days as well. It is there on Monday when she gives the week's menu to Cook and on Tuesday when she joins the Ladies League for tea. It is there Wednesday, Thursday and Friday for brunch and walks in the park. On Saturday her laughter is a trifle louder and her teeth flash from the part of her lips.
Her children lie in wait for Wendy's Saturday laugh. Her head thrown back, hair unraveling as she romps with them on the nursery floor. It is a pirate’s laugh they realize. The laugh of an Indian warrior maid. The raucous call of merriment between mermaids. The children lay traps for that laugh. Their fingers dance up her ribcage, dart into the cuddle of space where her shoulder and neck collide. They tell jokes that begin with "knock knock" and "there once was a man". Jigs are danced to much applause, the youngest of Wendy‘s nestlings tucked into her lap safe from flying elbows and knees. Through it all, Wendy smiles at her children and laughs broadly.
When the children run down like the tick of an alligator clock, Wendy tucks them into their beds. She brushes the hair from their sweaty, tired faces and presses a kiss onto their foreheads to sweeten their dreams.
Jane begs for one more story and the lament is taking up by the others. Even in their weary, half-slumbering states they cling to Wendy, horde the brittle bones of her smile for as long as they may. Wendy tells them a nonsense tale and when they sleep they dream of gnashing teeth.
Wendy kisses the children once more and the children kiss her back. They kiss her in the right hand corner of her mouth, seeking with their lips what is no longer there to be found. Wendy touches the empty right tip of her smile as she stares down at her slumbering babes and thinks of how she should have saved that kiss. Held it tight until she could kiss it into her babies or at the very least she should have saved it for her lawful husband and not a dirty faced boy who had forgotten her with the dawn.
But how could she have resisted. Of all the boys in the world Peter Pan was the bravest and most beautiful. A boy made of dreams for just such a girl as she once was. Even now she feels a clawing hunger as she throws wide the nursery window.
Wendy stares into the night for as long as she dares and waits for his shadow in the clouds.
Wendy thinks of her very own mother during those quiet hours. She thinks of all the time her mother spent in the nursery her gaze always straying to the window. She suspects that the kiss hidden conspicuously in the right hand corner of Mother’s mouth had always waited there for Peter. She also suspects that Peter has always come to windows searching for mothers and that there behind the glass he's seduced away many a darling girl old enough to know better but still too young to resist the twinkle in his eyes.
Wendy is also quite sure that Peter has forgotten them all.
Sometimes, Wendy creeps out onto the roof and stares at the sleeping world and wonders what would happen if she stepped out into the air. Would she remember how to fly and could she make it to the Neverland? Surely flying would be like riding a bike, something she’d never really forgotten even though, perhaps, she’s a bit shaky at the beginning. She’d plunge down a little at first, brace herself for the kiss of earth but at the last possible moment she’d swing upwards, skimming the snow.
Wendy stands on the edge of the roof with her arms thrown wide. The world is quiet and still and there’s no breeze to speak of, nothing to catch her falling body. No air to gust into the folds of her gown and buffet her gently to the Neverland.
Author: seraphcelene
Email: seraphcelene at yahoo dot com
Rating: PG-13
A/N: Movieverse. There was something about Jeremy Sumpter and Rachel Hurd-Wood, both on the cusp of adolescence, that made the 2003 film uncomfortable and darker than its usually played for. I can't say that I'm exactly happy with this, three years later and it's still not quite what I was aiming for (especially the second section), but I guess that I am content. Or just damn tired of it sitting unfinished on my harddrive.
Feedback: Yes, please.
Disclaimer: Peter Pan belongs to the JM Barrie estate of which I am not a part. This is just for fun and not profit.
Summary: Some girls wander by mistake.
one. of folly and mad obsession
Wendy huddles into the warmth of Hook’s embrace, mesmerized by the rumbling bass of his voice and the bewildered tattoo of his heart beating frantically against her back. With his mouth pressed to her ear, Hook purrs to Wendy his dreams of the Pan: Peter’s blood on his blade; Peter’s broken body abandoned on Marooner‘s Rock; Peter’s head gracing the tallest mast on the Jolly Roger. She drowns in his vision of conquering the Neverland with Red-Handed Jill at his side.
Gently, Hook fits the ceramic bowl over her nose and mouth, and this time Wendy inhales the opium easily.
“You could be my … my companion,” he lazily promises beneath the hover of smoke. “Tell grand tales about my daring adventures. I’ve heard you’re quite the little storyteller. But mother‘s always are, aren‘t they?” He sets the pipe aside, the tube coiled into a heap beside the hookah.
“Would you call me Mother?” Wendy lays collapsed into the curve of Hook's chest and the cradle of his lap. Lost in clouds of scarlet and roses, Wendy dreams as wide as the sky and bright as stars. Her body is heavy only when she remembers to think of it.
“Of course,” Hook whispers. “Whatever you would like.” He kisses her on the temple and again just behind the ear. “Would you like that? If I called you Mother?”
Wendy stretches beneath him then, strains away from the heavy throb in her veins and between her legs. "There is something unsettling about all of this," she responds. "Your eyes remind me quite suddenly of Father and to be honest, I'd much rather be Jill."
"Well, I am no father to babes," he snarls and leans in close, dips down to kiss the corner of her mouth and inhale the sweet tinge of the opium on her breath.
Peter is the ghost between them. Masquerading as the cock that crows them awake. His shadow dances bare foot across the ceiling by candlelight. Beyond the port hole there is the flash of his smooth cheeks and sulky man-child smile.
When Hook touches her, he grunts out stories about Peter and what he will do should he ever manage to catch him.
“Peter Pan!” Hook shouts.
“Peter,” Wendy echoes.
*
Wendy sees in Hook, cuddled around her, one hand tucked between her thighs, the boy he once was and the man Peter could become. Beyond the crow of the cock, Honor and Good Form are spread thinly across the warmth of his skin. It is in the scent of his breath and the tickle of his hair curling along her neck. When Hook speaks the deep growl of manhood cloaks the mew of the nursery, as it must, and for the briefest moment Wendy can picture him, a doddering old fool staring at the dim stars over London and waiting for a shadow to appear at the window. The man who refused to grow old, finally aged, waiting for the boy who refused to grow up. And like all boys that would be men (and men that would be boys) he hides his fear beneath bluster and vitriol, brandishing his sword and shouting at the clouds.
She imagines them in London, Peter and Hook, and the way they would fade like the Darling’s summer roses, growing brown and wilted with the passage of time, the nursery their prison once more. And if they should grow old, staring at the stars, trapped in the gray of London, she has lost them. She has lost the warmth of Hook at her back (swinging from the masts and sailing the high seas) and the promise of Peter in the corner of her eye.
two. thimbles
She comes, just barely remembering the way, and she cooks, tidies and calls Peter "Father." He calls her Mother and they tuck the Lost Boys into bed, dispensing pats and kisses, tipping flowers full of dew into hungry, gaping mouths.
They do not kiss the way that parents do or cuddle or say My Dear or Darling. Wendy knows the words but she does not think that Peter will quite take the meaning. In any case, they do not talk as they once did. The length of Wendy’s legs and the summer she spent with Hook is a wall between them.
In the midst of longer spring days, Wendy bleeds and Peter panics, sending one of the Lost Boys to fetch Tiger Lily.
Tiger Lily laughs in his face. “Silly boy,” she says. “Take her back. Wendy has outgrown you. Things cannot be as they were or remain as they are. Such is the way of the world, even in the Neverland. “
*
Wendy finds Peter perched in a blossoming tree and naming stars with Tink. The night is balmy and soft. A lazy crescent of moon hangs gently in the sky.
“Peter, come down,” Wendy calls breathlessly. “I have a gift for you.”
“What sort of gift?” asks ever suspicious Peter.
Wendy stares up at him, her eyes momentarily glittering with tears before she blinks them away and smiles a sad, warm Wendy smile. “It is a gift for men and not for boys, and you can only have it if you come down.”
“What good would it do me if it is a gift only for men,” Peter throws back at her. “I am a boy and the best boy there ever was.”
“But Peter,” Wendy sighs, for this is the same argument that they always have. “Don’t you want to grow up? To be a man with a house and a wife and boys of your own?”
“I already have a tree house. And I have you, and boys are just babies and good for nothing. Besides I would need to work to feed them and pay for the house, and wear ties and tight shoes.”
“But, Peter.” Wendy moves closer to the tree, places her hand against the trunk to feel its heartbeat. The tree sighs at the contact.
“No!” Peter shouts, leaping to stand on a branch. Petals, the softest, shyest shade of pink Wendy has ever seen, spin down.
Peter was so sure that he was right and what more could there be to adulthood then children and jobs and things called mortgages. Wendy’s insistance on growing up was unfathomable, an itch beneath his skin and at the back of his brain.
Determined, Peter hops lightly onto a higher branch, pokes his tongue out at Wendy below and steps up even higher. But blossoming trees are sensitive trees and not like other trees. This one took offense at Peter's callous treatment of Wendy's delicate sensibilities and as Peter jumped, took the opportunity to swat him right out of the air. Too surprised for a moment to fly, he tumbled, landed on Wendy and whooshed the breath right out of her.
Wendy closes her eyes and thinks of Hook's blue eyes and the room that her father had given her on the floor above the nursery. She lays still and thinks desperate, impossible things. The way that Peter's hair curls along the back of his neck and how his hands are too big for his body, rough and square dangling at the end of his childish arms. She thinks of map making and star charts and instructions for flying. Wendy laughs wickedly at the thought of Tinkerbell stored in a jar for fairy dust.
Peter taps her cheek gently, worridely calling her name and apologizing for falling on her and cursing the tree all at once. Tinkerbell hums gleefully around his head until Wendy leans up, quite suddenly and presses a kiss squarely on his mouth.
He tastes of Peppermint, wishes and summer strawberries. Wendy could kiss him forever. For a moment she thinks that he will let her. Pressed against her ripening body, he holds very still, relaxes and sinks softly against her. For a moment, Wendy holds everything she ever wanted tangled in her skirts and clasped between her thighs. Until Peter breaks the kiss, his head guided by the jealous tug of Tink's hands in his hair.
His eyes are wide and startled. Wendy holds her arms outstretched as he flies away, yearning and desperate and sad.
"Peter," she whispers.
three. kisses, hidden or otherwise
Every Sunday Wendy Moira Angela once Darling wears a hat to church. She also wears white gloves with pearl buttons at the wrist and a demure smile that says “Hello, I am pleasant. I am safe. I will not surprise you.” But just behind the gentle spread of Wendy’s mouth are teeth.
Wendy wears that meaningfully pleasant smile on other days as well. It is there on Monday when she gives the week's menu to Cook and on Tuesday when she joins the Ladies League for tea. It is there Wednesday, Thursday and Friday for brunch and walks in the park. On Saturday her laughter is a trifle louder and her teeth flash from the part of her lips.
Her children lie in wait for Wendy's Saturday laugh. Her head thrown back, hair unraveling as she romps with them on the nursery floor. It is a pirate’s laugh they realize. The laugh of an Indian warrior maid. The raucous call of merriment between mermaids. The children lay traps for that laugh. Their fingers dance up her ribcage, dart into the cuddle of space where her shoulder and neck collide. They tell jokes that begin with "knock knock" and "there once was a man". Jigs are danced to much applause, the youngest of Wendy‘s nestlings tucked into her lap safe from flying elbows and knees. Through it all, Wendy smiles at her children and laughs broadly.
When the children run down like the tick of an alligator clock, Wendy tucks them into their beds. She brushes the hair from their sweaty, tired faces and presses a kiss onto their foreheads to sweeten their dreams.
Jane begs for one more story and the lament is taking up by the others. Even in their weary, half-slumbering states they cling to Wendy, horde the brittle bones of her smile for as long as they may. Wendy tells them a nonsense tale and when they sleep they dream of gnashing teeth.
Wendy kisses the children once more and the children kiss her back. They kiss her in the right hand corner of her mouth, seeking with their lips what is no longer there to be found. Wendy touches the empty right tip of her smile as she stares down at her slumbering babes and thinks of how she should have saved that kiss. Held it tight until she could kiss it into her babies or at the very least she should have saved it for her lawful husband and not a dirty faced boy who had forgotten her with the dawn.
But how could she have resisted. Of all the boys in the world Peter Pan was the bravest and most beautiful. A boy made of dreams for just such a girl as she once was. Even now she feels a clawing hunger as she throws wide the nursery window.
Wendy stares into the night for as long as she dares and waits for his shadow in the clouds.
Wendy thinks of her very own mother during those quiet hours. She thinks of all the time her mother spent in the nursery her gaze always straying to the window. She suspects that the kiss hidden conspicuously in the right hand corner of Mother’s mouth had always waited there for Peter. She also suspects that Peter has always come to windows searching for mothers and that there behind the glass he's seduced away many a darling girl old enough to know better but still too young to resist the twinkle in his eyes.
Wendy is also quite sure that Peter has forgotten them all.
Sometimes, Wendy creeps out onto the roof and stares at the sleeping world and wonders what would happen if she stepped out into the air. Would she remember how to fly and could she make it to the Neverland? Surely flying would be like riding a bike, something she’d never really forgotten even though, perhaps, she’s a bit shaky at the beginning. She’d plunge down a little at first, brace herself for the kiss of earth but at the last possible moment she’d swing upwards, skimming the snow.
Wendy stands on the edge of the roof with her arms thrown wide. The world is quiet and still and there’s no breeze to speak of, nothing to catch her falling body. No air to gust into the folds of her gown and buffet her gently to the Neverland.
