#— a boy who couldn't see the difference between damage & devotion.

[wndybird]

‘ fuck your feelings . ’ / ‘ i’ve had dreams where there’s blood on you . ’ / ‘ i’m just fine ‘cause i know that you are mine . ’

‘ fuck your feelings . ’

her retort falls short when he spits out the words , stopping only to look over at him with such pure contempt that she isn’t quite sure how she keeps herself from reaching over the threshold and wrapping both delicate hands around his throat. she doesn’t know where the impulse comes from — the horrid depths of her person that she tries to keep nice and tidy , nothing left out of place , no smear of dark ink on her conscience, but god , if she didn’t know better , she’d say peter was the one who’d given her such awful thoughts in the first place. they hadn’t begun to bloom in the recesses of her mind until — it’s no matter , now. she unzips the jacket she wears; it’s his , of course , a scarlet bomber that is just as much of a calling card for her as it is for him , with how often it hangs from her shoulders instead. tosses it towards him as she faces him again , lips drawn in a snarl , teeth bared. she is the wolf’s mother , like this , with her hackles raised. truly , she doesn’t like who she becomes when he pushes and pushes and pushes her.

“   get out. get the fuck out of my apartment , peter.   ” it’s the first time she’s referred to it as her apartment and simply not home in decades. the words don’t tremble; they are steadfast and they burn with her animosity. she’ll get the locks changed , fuck it , she’ll move if she has to — she wants him out and she wants him out now , tired of his flippancy when it comes to her feelings , her thoughts. she does everything she can for him save murder and still , he walks about as though she is a doll to toss aside. he has been here long enough to have learned better , to know better , and yet he refuses , believing his childish ways will continue to enamor others. wendy swallows every terrible , screeching thought she has to hurt him , really hurt him , and stays glued just in the doorway of the foyer , fingers clutching the arch frame so hard her knuckles ache.

“   i said get out of my fucking apartment. don’t come back tonight— i don’t want to see you.   ”

‘ i’ve had dreams where there’s blood on you . ’

yours or mine ? someone else’s ? her head lifts off of her pillow just barely as she looks at him , lips parted in a way that makes it seem as though she knows fully well what she wants to say , but cannot. she doesn’t know how long she stays quiet for , but wendy knows her head presses into the pillow again , gaze distant. after minutes pass in silence , she finds her voice:

“   me too.   ”

‘ i’m just fine ‘cause i know that you are mine . ’

it’s supposed to be sweet , wendy tells herself. at least , she assumes it is; peter is a fan of games , maybe he’s lying again , building her up under false pretenses so he can knock her down again. if he is being true , it’s unfortunate for him that today wendy feels cold and empty. devoid of everything save the want to traipse off into the woods and disappear forever , not even a whisper of her left on his lips. i’m just fine— are you ? you are mine — am i ?

“   of course i am.   ” wendy forces herself to fill her voice with the same overeager , lovestruck lilt she normally retorts with whenever he’s soft with her , pressing her cheek against the glass of the window. of course.

[wndybird]

when: the evening of october 18th. where: wendy’s apartment. who: @ambiguousinnocence

WHAT BETTER WAY to distract herself from the crisis inducing news about scarlet than to spend the day at a pumpkin patch with a few friends ? it was fun , she hadn’t been able to linger on the possibilities of what the woman’s disappearance meant — better yet , she hadn’t worried about anything at all. not scarlet , not school , not even peter. she’d put her phone on do not disturb , and she’d let herself enjoy the day , stress free.

the pumpkin she’d picked , of course , was probably not as enthused with the way things had gone. the large gourd sat atop wendy’s small dining table , guts lying in a pile beside it , as wendy brought a kitchen knife to its skin. it was all rather gruesome if you thought about it — she chose not to. absorbed in her task of getting the eyes just so ( they had to be as even as she could get them ) , it was fair to say that she wasn’t taking much notice at all to the world around her. when the slam of her front door echoed violently around her , she startled , jumping , fumbling , and crying out when the knife slipped and bit into her hand instead of the pumpkin. the wound was nowhere near large enough to need stitches , but it was already beginning to bleed , and it needed to be cleaned — her head turned in time to catch sight of none other than peter , and she offered a weak , nearing guilty smile , injured hand cradled against her pounding heart.

“   oh , evening , peter. could you — i just need to address this , i’ll only be a minute. promise !   ” standing from her chair , she gave a little flash of a wave with her cut hand , as if to prove that it really was a bit more pressing than entertaining him. she wasn’t cross with him, honestly; she should’ve been more tuned in to her surroundings. as she darted to the bathroom , she called out to him again: “ i got you a pumpkin , too , if you want to carve it with me ? just promise to be more careful with the knife than i was !   ” ever the one trying to make light of things , aren’t you , wendy ?

[wndybird]

when: night of october 20th where: wendy’s apartment. who: @ambiguousinnocence

IN THAT PLACE between sleep and awake , wendy drifted among the clouds in the night sky , peacefully dozing in the blanket fort crafted in her living room. it was an integral part of her apartment , a center piece of sorts; if at any time it was not present , wendy and peter would usually end up constructing it once more , like a sacred ritual. on the muted television , the credits to scream were still rolling , the remote lying beside her as though it were snoozing as well. every so often she would twitch or sigh , curling up on her side and pressing her face further into the pillow beneath her head , and it would seem as though , with her sleep undisturbed , she was dreaming only of good things. nothing could wake her.

nothing , of course , except for the click of the lock being turned , and footsteps thudding into the hushed apartment once the door had been thrown open. blinking back into the waking world , stars danced in her vision as she sat up far too quickly , suddenly startled , squinting into the darkness of her kitchen. it was peter , there was no question — he was the only other person aside from herself that had a key to get in. the habitual butterflies that’d made a home within her began to flutter; he’d come home tonight. crawling from the fort to greet him with a sleepy curve of her lips , she stretched once she’d risen , tugging down her ( his ) shirt as she met him halfway , in between the kitchen and the living room. and , to her sudden concern , it was then in the dusky glow of the tv and the fairy lights strewn across the fort , that she took notice of his injuries with pursed lips.

they weren’t what you’d call monumental , a collection of bruises , scrapes across his knuckles , though the most pressing were the gashes across his face: a split lip , and a longer cut trailing his cheekbone. “   peter.   ” it was no louder than a whisper , voice raw with the grit of sleep. before he could reply , her hand was on his jaw , fingers brushing faintly against a bruise as she did her best to assess him in the low light. “   let me — let me go grab the peroxide. i’ll get them cleaned up , okay ?   ” it was without another word that she left him , just for a moment , to grab what she needed from the bathroom.

[wndybird]

@, $, ✉

send “@” for a SCARED text.

[ TEXT TO → PETER 💫✨ ]: peter , someone is following me. i’m on my way home , i don’t know what to do. i don’t think it’s one of the boys.[ TEXT TO → PETER 💫✨ ]: i’m not joking , i don’t know who it is , can i call you ?? i’m gonna call you. if i have to i’ll just leave you a weird, long voicemail so they think i’m on the phone.

send “$” for an ACCIDENTAL text.

[ TEXT TO → PETER 💫✨ ]: some days i feel like i just can’t do it anymore , you know ? like i can’t even get out of bed in the morning.

send “✉” for a text that WASN’T SENT.

[ TEXT TO → PETER 💫✨ ]: i need you to tell me what you really want , because you make me feel like i’m not it. and if i’m not , i’d rather know now , rather than let myself keep going on thinking i mean more to you than a plaything. this hurts , peter.

[wndybird]

“I’m not jealous, why would you say that?” / “I’ll miss you when you leave.”

“I’m not jealous, why would you say that?”

THE SIDEWAYS GLANCE wendy shoots him is nothing short of withering , as if to say ‘   well now , peter , why would i go and say a thing like that ? it’s not like you’ve ever given me any reason to accuse you of jealousy before—   ’ but of course , he misses it , too busy making a show out of how much he isn’t looking at her. sometimes , he is charming , even when he’s like this. today , however , wendy cannot help but roll her eyes at him. courtesy is her default , but not even wendy is entirely innocent , eschewing her gentleness now in favor of serving up peter a dose of his own medicine , no thought to spare for the consequences: “   well , if you aren’t jealous , then i suppose i will take him up on that offer for coffee. no big deal , right , peter ?   ” as much as he loves to use her words against her , this is what he gets , a small serving of retribution that really doesn’t begin to compare to what he’s done to her. were she able to see passed the barriers of her world , of course , she would see all of us , warning her not to do so. alas , she will have to learn on her own time.

“I’ll miss you when you leave.”

FROM HER SPOT curled in the blankets , wendy blinks at him , sleep blurring her vision; his words had bled together into one vaguely coherent string in wendy’s sleep addled mind , the words miss you and leave standing out against the rest acutely. rubbing one eye with the back of her hand , she fishes for the rest of his statement , words dripping into each other like some distant memory. “   leave ?   ” wendy’s voice cracks with weariness , and the hand not currently resting over half of her face reaches out until her fingers just barely rest atop his. “   ‘m not leaving. not going anywhere at all , peter. i promise.   ” her murmuring drifts off into a yawn , and she shifts until she’s on her side , facing him , cheek pressed into the gentle cradle of her pillow; her mouth curls into something as soft as angel feathers , and her pinkie finger curves around his own weakly. a promise is a promise , and now she’s made it real , spoken it into the world with that one little movement. “   see ? now you can hold me to it.   ”