Culmination | A Tinkerbell Fanfiction

Chapter 1: No Team In I

All was quiet throughout the Hollow.

A little too quiet in Tinkerbell's opinion.

It was a mild spring afternoon. All of the deliveries had been made, all of the projects for the week had been completed ahead of schedule (thanks to Fairy Mary's insistent begging), and most of the Nook had been deserted for the remainder of the afternoon to prepare for the upcoming seasonal festival scheduled to take place later that season.

Tink did not like the stillness. It reminded her far too much of last time and the absolute last thing she wanted to be thinking about right now was that. Even though the incident (as the Hollow had come to call it, and for all they knew, that was all it had been) had happened almost a year ago, it still rang fresh in her mind. And they'd come close. So close to failure. It scared her to even think about it. Even a moment longer and things might have ended very differently. Well, she knew one thing; if Shade hadn't been stopped when he had, she was sure she wouldn't have been sitting here in the workshop now.

It was strange to think about it, even after all this time; how different things had been since that day. It was like Neverland had shed its skin and revealed its most intricate and darkest secrets into the light and now it was impossible to unsee the secondary world that had been uncovered to her.

The world of Protectors.

She saw it everywhere she went now. When she was walking alone through the seasons--or even when she was hard at work like she was now--it was all she could see. What secrets do these trees contain? she'd caught herself wondering more than once as she helped Fawn collect syrup from the Maples. How many generations have they stood, watching the Hollow defend itself? The same went for the stars. Did they shine over the fairy's kingdom hundreds of years ago? What kinds of stories would they tell, if they could?

And she saw it whenever she saw him. No longer was it just the nervous, uneasy smiles he would occasionally flash her way, assuring her that everything was okay--that they were okay. Or the way he seemed to shift toward her whenever they were working on the same project--a subtle reassurance that everything was all right, that everything was the way it was supposed to be.

But Tink didn't feel reassured. Not at all. One could not just drop the whole, "Oh, and by the way, I'm not really a tinker talent at all and I'm actually secretly capable of wielding all of the talents and it's my job to single-handedly protect the entire Hollow from destruction, sorry I didn't mention it before." and expect her to be okay with it.

She wasn't, for the record.

Not in the slightest.

Today was just one of those days, she decided, where everything seemed to be going so right that you could just sense that something was bound to go wrong sooner or later. It was only a matter of time. So, all she could do was sit at her little mushroom table and continue pounding away at her newest invention and wait for the inevitable proverbial straw that would break the camel's back.

Or maybe it would be an actual camel. It was difficult to tell anymore.

She sighed for probably the umpteenth time that day and laid her head in her hand, eyeing the mangled piece of metal she'd been attempting to unravel for the past hour. And what secrets do you have? she asked it. Any magical properties that you'd like to share?

Great. I'm talking to an inanimate object.

She probably should talk to someone about this--get some help for this...whatever this was. But who could she talk to? Everyone who had learned the truth was either in on it or still reeling at the revelation themselves. And the Queen certainly did not have the time to listen to her ridiculous concerns. She needed to handle this on her own somehow. Her own way. By confronting the problem instead of running away.