20. Tink

"Where the hell are they?" I pace the length of the sitting room, stopping at every turn to look out the window running one wall. "Where did they go?"

"Settle down, Tinkers." Wes is cleaning out his gun, a thoughtful frown on his face. "You're wearing a hole into the carpet."

"There's no carpet."

"Oh no," he quips, "then it's already too late. You've worn it down to nothing."

"You're not funny, Wes." I stop at the window, bury my fingers in my hair and pull. "Something's wrong. I can sense it."

"Really sense it, or is it only a dramatic line from the latest book you read?"

"I haven't read anything since the last Wendy went mad," I mutter.

"Hm." Wes gets up and comes to stand beside me, folding his arms over his chest. "I thought Peter only wanted to show her the changes on the island. Get her ideas on how and why this is happening."

"Why would she have any clue?"

"Don't underestimate her," Wes says.

"Why, because inexplicably her nightmares keep bleeding into Neverland?"

"Because she doesn't hate us." Wes shrugs. "Yet."

"Give her time. She will."

"We don't even know if she has time," Wes says grimly.

"Fuck." I lower my hands. "Peter is convinced she's the one. She apparently isn't hurt by the island, and manages to both make it shrink and get the Reds to break the anniversary truce, but that makes no sense because he fucked her. Hell, you two also fucked her, which should have erased her magic."

"Which leaves you," Colt says from his perch on the sofa. He isn't cleaning his gun. He's just been staring down at it, but now he's looking at me. "You haven't fucked her yet."

"Don't go there," I warn.

"We could distract you," Colt says, the relentless asshole. "Get you to loosen up."

"Fuck off."

"But you never want that, do you, Tink?" Colt goes on.

"No idea what the hell you're talking about."

"All that violence but not sex. Never sex. And yet you're no angel."

A laugh escapes me. It fucking hurts my throat. "Angel."

"Exactly my thoughts. And yet." Colt gets up, moving toward us, and suddenly I feel cornered between them and the window. "And yet, Tink." He places a hand on my arm.

"Get off me," I snarl.

"Grab him, Wesson."

"No." As Wes' arms close around me, a darkness falls over me. I thrash against him, howling like a banshee that's definitely in my bloodline, elbowing him and kicking at Colt—at the shadows holding me, torturing me, burning me from the inside out. "No, damn you, let me the hell go!"

"Easy, now. It's just that with Wendy, you seem calmer," Wes says. "When you lay on top of her on the sofa… I thought you'd gotten over whatever trauma it is you have."

"Fuck you," I breathe.

"Okay." Wes releases me, and Colt steps aside. I shove at him anyway as I stumble past him and head for the door. "Wait. Tink."

"You motherfucking asshole," I mutter. "Fuck you and your ancestors."

"I don't care about my ancestors," Colt says, his tone light and bemused. "Just you."

I'm frowning as I throw the door open. "Got a nice way of showing that you care."

"Tink." Wes is coming after me, hands spread, palms up. "Listen, I've been here for years and decades, and you never want to open up about your past. Something fucking happened, I just know it, it's so fucking obvious, but you won't let us help. You—"

"Help?" I stop and turn back around, panting. "Help? You've been here for decades, Wes. Decades. I have been here for fucking centuries. And not even Peter knows much about my past. Why should you?"

"Because," Wes says and swallows, the knot in his throat bobbing. His eyes glimmer like old gold. "After all the centuries, it's about time you talked about it, don't you think?"

I'm breathing hard. No matter what I do, I can't seem to be able to catch my fucking breath. "Stay back."

My broken half-shadow writhes about me. My magic sputters and sparks.

He lifts his hands. "Don't turn me into a frog, okay? I'm just saying, we wanna help, Tink. Both of us."

"You can't."

Wes grimaces. "And who can? Can Wendy help you?"

"No, I…" I shake my head. "Why her?"

"Because," he says slowly, as if to a dim-witted child, while Colt remains silent, "she's a woman, and those who hurt you were men, weren't they?"

No, I can't breathe, can't fucking draw a single breath. When did I let my walls fall and now everyone can see right fucking through me?

With a curse, doing my best to rein my magic in, I turn and run out into the woods, hearing faintly behind me Wes calling out my name.

* * *

I'm running,threading among the trees, weaving the pattern of my panic. What the hell has gotten into the Twins? I can't talk about my goddamn past. Can't think of it.

It's not like I can completely escape it. It comes to me in my dreams. They aren't as bad as Peter's, I don't think, judging from his screams, but they're bad enough.

I've built a wall between the past and my mind. I'm not forgetting, it's not that. No, I have shut the past out deliberately.

It's for the best.

It's for my sanity.

We all suffered in different ways growing up with absent or twisted shadows. I never asked the Twins to share the burden of their childhoods, or Peter about how he ended up here. I mean, I know the broad strokes but not the details.

That's where the devil is, or so the mortals say.

"Stop running," I tell myself out loud. "Fuck, stop running now."

Ever wonder why I have no Shadow?

How it was torn away?

"Shut up," I whisper to myself, "shut up!"

Can't outrun the past. And you're not a little kid anymore. Back there, that was the Twins, dammit, not your ghosts. You're an adult. You have magic. You're damn dangerous.

Even Peter stays away—but fucking Wes had to go and put his arms around me.

He didn't know.

How could he? I've never told anyone the details.

Back to the devil you know.

The devil of a past.

And it's not helping that someone is grunting like he's having sex.

Goddammit, mind, stop making this up. I don't need the soundtrack. Keeping the wall up between my thoughts and memories is fucking hard enough as it is.

I rub my face, hit my head with my open palms, hoping to stop the sounds.

But they persist.

Oh, what the fuck. I know that voice.

Rage blasts through me. Talk about the mother of all bad timings. With the ghosts battling it out in my head, trying to make their escape and torment me, this is the last fucking thing I need.

And on top of that…

"Peter Pan, you fucker." I wade through the weeds off the path and see them almost immediately.

He has her bent over a rock and is fucking her from behind, the way he likes to fuck. I know how they all like to fuck—but I don't. Don't like to fuck, not unless it's all under my control, unless I lose control, and the aftermath is never pretty, so…

My mind shifts the scene, showing me dirty walls and floors, showing me fanged, snarling mouths dripping blood, echoing my own screams back at me.

"You, asshole," I growl, advancing on him. My magic punches into his back, piercing him like a hook, lifting him off his feet into the air.

I see his eyes widen, his arms windmilling—

"Tink, no!" she shrieks.

—and I slam him into a tree trunk, hard enough that bones audibly crack.

Peter slides down to the roots, slack like a puppet with the strings cut, head bowed.

"You killed him," Wendy says, her voice hushed. She turns and sits on the rock, pulling on the hem of the white dress I picked out for her. Her face is pallid.

"He can't be killed," I dismiss her worry. "But he can feel pain, and fuck him."

"He can't be killed?" she whispers with a frown.

"Surprise," I say flatly.

"What's the matter?" Peter breathes after a long moment, a way too long moment, lifting his head and coughing. Blood spatters his lips. "Because you can't fuck, you decided we can't, either?"

"You, motherfucker." I march on him, ready to beat him into a pulp, my hands sparking. "I'll fuck you up, alright."

"Whoa." He lifts a hand. "Slow down, Tinker. What's going on?"

"You bastard, you slept with her again!"

"And why wouldn't I?" he mutters.

"Yeah, why shouldn't he?" Wendy whispers.

"You never do that. You sleep with a chick once, you discard her like a used rag. That's what you said. Your exact words. Used rag."

Peter has the gall to shrug. "So?"

"In all the centuries, you never looked at a girl twice, never went back for more."

Wendy makes a small sound and takes a step back.

"What's your point, Tink?" Peter asks.

"My point?" I want to crucify him on the tree. "My point is that… forget it. Fuck."

"Are you jealous?"

I feel the blood draining from my face. "My fault for giving a shit," I mutter.

"Are you really worried about me, Tink?"

"What if I am? What do you care? What if all this worries me?" I twirl a finger in the air. "You didn't take Wendy because you thought she is the one, did you? You watched her, saved her, got attached to her. And then when she grew up, you were hard for her."

"Tink—"

"Stop thinking with your dick, Peter." I jab a finger at him. "I don't understand what is going on here, but whatever it is, it's not going to save the Island. It's not going to save us."

"Who says I hope to be saved?" He climbs back on his feet. "Who says we can be saved?"

"What? But I thought—"

"We tried. For centuries. For fucking centuries!" His voice is rising. Wendy shrinks back as his shadow pulses. "And what do we have to show for it? Might as well live for the moment. Forget the pain for a blissful hour. The island is shrinking. Soon we will be mermaid fodder and as for her…"

"What about me?" she whispers, still pale.

"There are many paths into madness," Peter says, not unkindly, but she flinches.

"Maybe she's not the one changing the island," I say. "Maybe she's just the last drop, the last wrong Wendy we have brought over."

"That I brought over, you mean," he says, bleak. "I failed. And I don't know if I can go back. My shadow is tearing me apart, Tink. It's shredding my mind. I don't know how much longer I can hold on."

Fuck.