"You can't be my fairy, you know," he said, "because I'm a boy."

Brit thinks of it often, while he flitters around that Wendy-girl. Her Christopher, *hers*, he *is*, and he only wants the Wendy-girl, and he never wanted a mother at all, left his mother to join the fairies and *her*, but now, now he blows bubbles from a pipe and lets the Wendy-girl darn his slippers and he hasn't visited Britney in ages.

"I'm a boy," he said, and she stamped her foot and called him a silly ass. Of course he's a boy, isn't that the point?

She loves him because he's a boy, a dear, sweet, impetuous boy who fights off pirates and indians, and she hates him because he's a boy who will never be a man, and doesn't know love when it pecks him on the nose.

Buttons, she thinks, and the "kiss" he gave her, her very own thimble, makes a lovely boat but doesn't mean a thing. Silly ass.

Justin and Joey and JC and Lance don't understand, of course, but they don't understand anything, not girls nor mothers nor love nor Christopher. They understand him least of all, even as they follow him to sword points and pirateships, and Britney swallows poison and doesn't get a kiss.

Justin and Joey and JC and Lance and the Wendy-girl and John and Michael, they all fly away on her wing-dust, and Christopher is hers to give buttons and thimbles and he'll forget about the Wendy-girl in time, he forgets about everyone after they leave, Captain Hook, and Dead-Eye before him and all the pirate captains going back to Christopher's birth, he forgets them all but he'll never grow up.

"Brit," he calls, and she comes flying. "Brit, it's time for spring cleaning."

"For what?" she asks, wings fluttering, and he laughs.

"Stupid fairy," he says. "You don't know anything. Everyone cleans things out in the spring, and Wendy has promised to clean for me. Give me some dust to fetch her?"

London is as dirty as she remembers, dark and sooty. She lets Christopher go to the Wendy-girl's room alone, and flies around the park. There's a gentleman on a bench, tall, elegant. He holds out his hand, and Britney only hesitates a moment, only spares a small thought for Christopher, off in a nursery.

He's her boy, her dear sweet silly ass of a boy, and she hates him terrifically, and she loves him even more.

Everyone cleans things out in the spring.

"I didn't think you existed anymore," the gentleman says.

"Of course I do," Britney responds. "Silly ass."

He smiles. A soft, sweet smile that shines in his green eyes. "Of course you do," he says.

Britney flutters her wings, once, twice, and wonders if it will hurt to let them go. Everyone but Christopher grows up someday.
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