breakingdreams | peter pan; Missing the Sky

Title: Missing the Sky
Character: Wendy
Summary: She wakes up the next morning, and puts Neverland out of her mind. Inspired by Heather Nova's I Miss My Sky.
Disclaimer: I don't own Peter Pan in any shape or form.

Missing the Sky

She wakes up the next morning, and puts Neverland out of her mind. While her brothers chatter excitedly about their adventures, she moves out of the nursery. She immerses herself in Growing Up, only she doesn't think about it that way because only a child would do that, and she is (still) not a child. Not anymore.

And she Grows Up and marries and has three children and they live happily. She's always there for her children, for her husband, with soft words and sweet smiles; the perfect mother, the perfect wife. A mother who would never, ever (has one too many times) abandon her children. A wife who (doesn't) loves her husband.

The (im)perfect family.

And then war breaks out and there's rations and bombings and Adult Things and her husband goes away to fight and he—

dies.

She doesn't cry. She carries on, as she always does. She's still the perfect mother.

At least, that's what she tells herself.

Her children whisper as she leans out of the window in the (tallest tower) attic. They're children, yes, but they've already Grown Up, far too early. And they worry, worry about a mother who spends forever looking up at the stars, feeling the wind against her cheeks instead of patching worn-out clothing and trying to make dinner out of nothing.

A mother who's failed at being a mother (again).

And she wonders. Wonders why she gave it all up, for people who have already turned to dust (and broken, bloody bits of flesh, lost in anonymity on the battlefield.) Wonders why she left, why she gave up magic and adventure and pixie dust for Growing Up and raising a (second) family and war. Wonders why she abandoned people who Needed her.

(Who were her family.)

So she closes her eyes, and leans out of the window, desperately trying to fly once more.