Grounded - Peter Pan After Neverland

Chapter 10 - The Kiss

Peter was half carrying, half dragging Eliza down Wendy's old street in London. Eliza had complained that her feet hurt, so she had jumped onto Peters back. However Peter had not been prepared, so she was at an odd angle with one of her feet dragging on the ground. Peter would normally have been feeling annoyed or at least a little tired, but not that night. It was going to be the final night of this selfish, high pitched and bad tempered Wendy, so he might as well put up with her for one more night. Finally she was going to remember.

Peter had spent all day trying to buy a ladder tall enough to reach the roof of a house and finding a person who wouldn't mind a ladder set up outside their front window. He had been working on this plan since the night that he had met Wendy and he was going to go all out on it. He wasn't going to let the girl that he had been searching for his whole life get away. Not even with her amnesia.

Peter wasn't annoyed at the heavy girl weighing down his shoulders, but he was annoyed at how his day had been wasted. It took him ages to find a place that sold ladders and the man in the store had been awfully rude to him. Then he had travelled to Wendy's old street and found her house, which took a very long time. It didn't take that long to find the house itself, but when he saw it he felt hot tears running down his face. He hadn't thought about what he would feel like when he saw that place that he had been searching for, but he could never have expected the happiness that he felt. It may have wasted his day, but that was one of the best moments of his life.

By the time Peter had returned to his home, it was already time for him to pick up Wendy for their date. He had wanted to go and see Eliza in the park before he went to pick up Wendy, but he just didn't have the time. He wanted to apologise for the night before, for the way he had acted. In all honesty he wanted to tell her that in another life he would not have apologised. He would have loved her and been with her for the rest of her life. In another world he would have focused his whole life on her. But that was another life, and in this life there were far too many reasons why he could not say those things to Eliza. He had already focused his whole life on another person who was dearer to him than anyone in the world, or so he remembered. In this life however, Peter had let himself love Eliza for a moment. If it had been two moments even, he might have forgotten about Wendy, but he could never let that happen. He wasn't going to throw away years of searching for a woman he had known for a week. No matter how... perfect she was.

Peter pulled Eliza to the ladder that he had set up earlier. It was leaning against the windows of the house three doors down from Wendy's house and it reached the roof top.

“Peterrrr I'm tiiiiired...” moaned Eliza as she climbed off Peter's back. “Where's this restaurant anyway?”

“We're almost there Wendy,” said Peter, stretching his aching back. “it's just up this ladder.”

Eliza looked at the ladder leading to the icy roof tops and squealed unpleasantly.

“Peter I don't want to go up there!” she shrieked, trying to clamber back onto Peters back. “You said that we were going to a restaurant!”

“We are!” said Peter, pulling Eliza down once again. “It's a rooftop restaurant. Very expensive! It's just a little hard to get to.”

Eliza thought about this for a while and examined the ladder.

“How expensive?” asked Eliza, closely inspecting the icicles that were hanging from the ladder.

Peter did not like lying to Wendy, but he told himself that he was lying for a good reason.

“Extremely expensive,” said Peter firmly. “I won't have any money for a week.”

Eliza thought that for a rich actor to have no money for a week would be ridiculous. Eliza thought about this for but a moment before squealing and scrambling up the ladder, only to slide back down on the icy rungs.