Robbie Kay/Peter Pan Imagines

Divided We Fall - Part 12

He had given her space – more than he would have liked, and more than she could have hoped for. He had given her time, too, although each second was torture. He gave her everything she needed from the moment she left him to live on the opposite side of the island, where they wouldn't run into each other by accident.

Peter Pan thought himself quite generous in these aspects, even if Mercy liked to think him incapable of such sentiment. He was surprised too at first, but he had realized that he lost all sense of reason when it came to Mercy. She could have asked him for the moon, and Peter would have snatched it out of the night sky to give her on a silver plate. But Mercy didn't know that, she didn't know how much power she had over him because she was blinded with rage.

It was alright: better she hated him but lived with hope in her heart than the other way around. Or so Peter thought, until recently. It weighed on his heart to know she was so close, so near and yet completely out of his reach. Besides, it had become quite evident that she wasn't happy at all, far from it. Had Peter's self-sacrifice meant nothing? He had begun to feel the effects of such constant suffering, it began to show on the island itself. If Peter hurt, so did Neverland, and the same went the other way around too.

When Mercy had burned the clearing, it had scorched him. And when Peter ached, nature withered, heavy clouds hovered in the sky, and everything went silent. After years and years of self-imposed torture, Peter noticed his magic dwindling in a way that should have scared him.

Except he couldn't find it in himself to be alarmed, because he knew exactly why it happened and how to revert it. He just couldn't do it.

For years upon years, Peter had made sure she didn't lack anything. He tasked the Shadow with bringing her food, supplies, everything she could have use of. At first, she sent it all back, too stubborn to accept charity from the one responsible for her misery. She didn't know it had nothing to do with charity. She just rejected it – she rejected him – over and over again. After a white, reason must have overcome her stubbornness because she stopped returning whatever he sent.

Then, one day, Peter had the Shadow bring her a girl. A companion that would fill her lonely days: Dorothy. She had been so broken at this time, so utterly broken. Peter half expected Mercy to burst into his shack and yell at him for bringing yet another girl, for robbing yet another person of their future by kidnapping them and trapping them in this timeless place. But she didn't.

He tried – and failed – not to read into that. Was she simply too desperate and lonely to give up this chance at having company and possibly a friend? Was she more alike him than she liked to pretend and selfishly decided to accept this new gift? Hadn't she expected more to come after the first one? Or had she, and did she merely decide not to tell him she didn't want more girls?

These questions haunted him, and to this day, he still wondered, sometimes. Mercy was intelligent and knew the consequences of her actions. It was natural for Peter to deduce that she acted on purpose. Maybe she didn't hate him entirely. Was there hope yet?

He was going to find out today.

Setting fire to his peace offering was a step too far, and Peter had reached the limits of both his patience, and his sanity. If he kept what happened – what really happened – to himself any longer, he was going to implode, and Neverland with him. Therefore he had to tell her – tell her everything he put so much effort into hiding from her.

How would Mercy react to the news?

Surely, she would lash out at him and call him a liar and a cheat. He smirked at the sheer thought. He hadn't seen her in so long that he would take anything, anything at all. She would scream and curse him all she wanted for what he cared, as long as he got to see her again.