#wendydarling

When the footsteps stopped, Wendy slowly lifted her gaze to lock on the boots standing just outside the cell door. Then the legs attached to them - and finally, the incredibly wrong face, where her husband's should be.

He was alone. Morning light filtered weakly down through the grates overhead, washing him pale grey-blue in the dimness. He looked older now than he had up on deck, somehow. More tired. His coat was, as she would have always expected, flawlessly draped over his shoulders. His dark curls gleamed with a shine that looked fake, the inky black shade contrasting with the deep-set lines on his aged face.

Wendy swallowed. She had never thought she'd see James… old.

Yet here he was, scanning her face silently as she sat on the tiny cot. She could tell he'd been awake most of the night as well - he'd been trying to puzzle her arrival out, as much as she'd been trying to figure out how to escape this strange world. He remained silent for a long moment, obviously accustomed to taking his sweet time when he wished to.

Then his eyes slid down - to Maggie, asleep in Wendy's arms. His brow quirked up, and his head tilted a single degree to the side.

"Well," he said simply, looking back up at Wendy. "The two of you became attached rather quickly."

"You locked her in a cage," Wendy whispered. Straight to the point, unblinking as she held Maggie protectively against her. "I became concerned rather quickly."

Hook sighed and rolled his eyes. "Come now. The brat is unharmed -"

"She is freezing," Wendy gritted quietly, keeping her voice low for Maggie's sake. "And terrified. Why on earth do you have her down here?"

Hook's brow raised incredulously, seemingly unused to being interrupted. But he inhaled slowly, before replying in a very measured voice, "She became insubordinate and aggressive during a rather important lesson. Thus, it was decided that her lesson would be better learned here, for the evening."

Wendy opened her mouth to snap something at him, but closed her mouth quickly and looked down to recenter herself.

Surprisingly, Hook did not continue to speak. He allowed her a moment to gather herself, silent as she took a slow breath and whispered, "What do you want with me."

His response was immediate. "Answers, to start."

Wendy looked up to see him begin to prowl around the cell, walking quietly in a circle as he eyed her like captured prey. It made Jill twist in displeasure between her ribs.

"You arrive from nowhere," Hook mused quietly, twirling his hook at his side. "An unfamiliar face masquerading under a familiar name."

"It is no masquerade," Wendy said quietly, not taking her eyes off him as he walked. "I am Wendy Darling."

"Wendy Darling left the Neverland decades ago, woman," Hook said quietly, still studying her. "She is far older than you are now. And you are not her daughter, we located the family some time ago - though I have no desire to retain the brats' mother's name in my day-to-day thoughts, I do not recall it being Wendy the second."

He stopped in front of the cell again, squinting at her.

"So pray, tell me," he murmured, reaching out to caress the bars with his hook. "Who are you really?"

Wendy stared at him, her brow furrowing as she listened to his musings. Then the Wendy from this world had not returned to the Neverland. And if her daughter was Maggie's mother, then that would make her alternate self…

She blinked, looking down at the girl in her arms, unable to fathom the idea of holding a grandchild of hers so close.

It was a long moment before she could speak again - and this time, she could not summon any flowery words or deflections. She was entirely out of her depth here - and the fact that the Captain was pressing the issue so firmly, she was gathering that her arrival in this strange place hadn't been his doing at all.

"I am telling the truth, Captain," Wendy whispered, looking up at him slowly. "I am Wendy Moira Angela Darling. But not from… this world."

Hook's brow furrowed slightly, and he murmured, "Explain. Now."

Wendy took a slow breath, measuring her words as best as she could. "I am… from another Neverland. I was… brought here, and I don't know why." She shook her head, hoping he could tell how sincere she was. "I'm afraid I'm as confused as you are."

Hook stared at her endlessly, clearly scanning for any sign of a lie. "What you describe, madam, is nothing short of impossible."

"I've given up trying to rationalize the Neverland, Captain," Wendy said quietly, looking down at Maggie in her arms and shifting to keep her comfortable. "Every time I try, it finds a way to turn my world upside down again."

The seas between worlds announced themselves quietly.

That was what Wendy would remember afterward.

There was no lightning, no thunder - not at first, at the very least. The night had still been warm, the water black-blue velvet beneath the hull, the lanterns along the stern swaying gold against the dark. Somewhere below deck, one of the children had been laughing in their sleep.

Wendy and James had found themselves at the taffrail together, just gazing out at their paradise. It had been several years since Ayrel had been restored, and they'd returned to live out eternity with the gods and fae. All of the children - Alice, Jane, Alexander, Maxwell, Giselle, Theodore, Luca, and Isabela - were safe and happy, growing up on the ship as the pirates frozen in time watched over them.

Wendy had just finished putting Alice and Jane to bed, before she'd walked outside and found James standing alone. Now she stood with him, his arm wrapped lovingly around her waist, the two of them content to sit in the quiet whenever pockets of peace found them.

And at first, that's all that was around them. Quiet. The gentle swish of water beneath them, creaks in the hull of the wood. Distant low calls from the animals of the island, creating a soft hum of magic and rightness in the world.

But when an odd feeling surfaced from between her ribs, Wendy went still.

She had not received a warning like that since the days of Pan. Her brow furrowed and she straightened, her eyes going distant as she tried to determine what was wrong. James turned to her, sensing the shift, concern clouding his own eyes. He squeezed her waist gently, opening his mouth to ask in a low voice, "My beauty, what is -"

And then Neverland went silent.

No water swishing, no creaks, no animals. The breeze around them died down to nothing, leaving the air still and tight. Wendy looked up from where she stood beside the rail.

Even the stars had stopped moving.

That frightened her more than anything.

Beside her, James stilled almost imperceptibly. Most people would never have noticed it — the slight tightening of his shoulders, the way his thumb paused against her side — but Wendy had loved him too long to misunderstand the language of his silences.

The ship drifted, no wind filling the sails. The lagoon had become glass.

“James,” Wendy said softly in warning.

“I know.”

His voice had gone very calm. That frightened her too.

The Jolly Roger and her crew had been through so many things in the Neverland. Wendy and James knew more than most how strange the Neverland could be.

But it was never still.

A strange shimmer moved across the horizon. At first, Wendy was relieved to see all the stars shifting again. But she realized immediately after that they were moving too fast.

The beacon star - the Second Star to the Right, back in the Mainland - was rapidly shrinking and moving across the sky with the others. As though the Neverland's orbit around Erev had sped up inexplicably, travelling faster than usual to the furthest point away from Earth. Wendy reached out a hand to grip the taffrail, but felt very little change in the world around her.

James did not hesitate. He tightened his hold on her and began to angle her toward the bow, saying at once, "Below deck."

Wendy blinked, resisting for a moment. “James -”

“Now.”

Not anger. Fear.

The air began to hum around them again. But this was not the peaceful song of a sleeping world - this was different. The sound slipped beneath her skin, low and ancient and wrong, like a violin string drawn too tightly. The lantern flames bent sideways.

In the sky, a tear opened - similar to the rips that opened in the sky whenever Nirmat would allow the crew to go on another journey to the Mainland. But this one was jagged around the edges, flickering roughly above them as shadows and flames of light danced just past the opening of the chasm.

The constellations that had been wheeling violently overhead like sparks caught in a whirlpool - they abruptly stopped. There was no denying the effect the sudden pause had on the gravity of the world this time - the ship lurched violently, the mast groaning as the crew shouted below in alarm.

James seized Wendy's arm before she lost her footing, both of them instinctively reaching out for each other to steady themselves. There was a wind again, now - not Wendy's wind. But not their Neverland's, either.

This was a new wind, a wrong wind, that made the sails swell in the opposite direction they were supposed to. The ship began sailing backwards, stern first, toward the rip in the sky as the wind and waves began to grow more insistent.

Wendy and James looked at each other, both of them unable to hide their terror. Wendy glanced behind him at the dark island, waiting for Nirmat or any of the gods to show themselves, to stop whatever this was. But for the first time since living in the Mainland, her prayers went unanswered.

"Avis!" Wendy shouted, throwing everything she had into the call for her fairy. She nearly whimpered in relief when the golden light darted out of the trees, far away but rocketing toward the ship. Avis would know what this was, she had to.

But the current was growing faster than Avis' wings could propel her. Wendy could hear yelling below deck, the sound of Giselle crying now - and she instinctively turned from James toward the sound.

The moment she did, the world tore apart.

Something seized her. Not hands. Not water.

She would never know how to describe it. It was as though some enormous unseen force had suddenly recognized her and James' shapes, and decided they belonged elsewhere.

The deck vanished beneath them both.

James shouted her name, and she screamed for him in return, reaching for him blindly.

For one terrible moment their fingers caught.

Then slipped.

Wendy tumbled over herself, falling sideways through starlight and darkness. The ship disappeared, the lagoon along with it. She heard James roar somewhere in the chaos, his voice getting further and further away as she hurtled past streaks of stars and galaxies. She glimpsed fragments of strange images as she spun.

Another large ship.

A window.

London beneath snow.

Two children, a boy and a girl, who she did not know.

The shadow of a grown man flying through the air.

Sapphire eyes that weren't quite right -