blackheartbiohazards:

Cut Down

Written for @febuwhump day 26 prompt: “help them”.

AO3 link

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Peter Pan was a ruthless killer, but he was not an efficient one.

‘Thank god,’ Wendy thought to herself as she parted the little knot of boys that had huddled around the body on the ground. Thank god he was not an efficient killer.

Nibs still had a chance.

She knelt beside the boy, pale and still, his breaths slow, his chest barely moving. There was blood across the grass where he lay. Cut down by his own captain for high treason. Officially, for growing up. But they all knew that it was for challenging Peter.

“I need a needle and thread,” she snapped, fire in her eyes as she looked around the ring of confused, frightened young faces.

“I’ve a needle,” one of the twins said.

“And thread?” she demanded.

“Fresh out.”

She looked around the group of boys, her heart beginning to sink.

“Who has thread? Someone must have spun some this week, surely. Or, or stolen some from the tribe?”

There was a murmuring around the circle and a shaking of heads.

“Mr. Smee’s got thread,” a soft, familiar voice spoke up. Wendy’s littlest brother, Michael, poked his head through the circle. “Saw him mending the old captain’s shirt.”

The lost boys went quiet.

Wendy bit her lip. She looked at the boy on the ground. Her boy. Her Nibs. 

And she thought of Peter. Her Peter. And his anger,

She looked up. 

“Who’s the bravest among you now that Nibs is down?” Wendy demanded. “I want the bravest lost boy to help me carry him.”

~

Wendy, Slightly and Michael flew quick as arrows to the Jolly Roger, Wendy and Slightly holding careful and tight to the fading figure of Nibs. They flew low and cautious as they approached, skimming the water so as not to be shot down, and Michael showed them the window to the ship’s galley, where, he revealed with the candor of his age, that he sometimes spent an hour or two helping Mr. Smee to peel potatoes. No one was in the mood at that moment to question such a revelation.

Michael knocked on the window, and the funny, birdlike little irish pirate with his small spectacles answered the knock cheerfully.

He was less cheerful when Slightly put the knife to his throat.

“Michael says you have a needle and thread,” Wendy said, not plaintive but warning. “Get them. You’re going to help Nibs.”

“Oh dear,” Smee murmured, adjusting his spectacles as he looked at the boy, and the blood, and Wendy– who was now covered in the stuff. “Ah.. come in, come in… let me just find them, just a moment.”

Nibs was carefully passed through the window, Slightly first, and Wendy after him.

Peter was going to be angry. Angrier than when he had cut Nibs down.

Wendy frankly found that she didn’t care.

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