VIOLET
"Wendy, darling."
Always, when she remembers that moment, those two words - not even her name but twisted into something else, with some other meaning - she remembers liquid steel and decaying wood, being choked by the faint stench of cigars and expensive cologne. His quarters are the pinnacle of opulence, perhaps a one-man attempt to hide the rotting cracks in the ship's facade - the way the pale skin, beautiful features, mass of immaculate thundercloud hair hid the dark monster of his being, to only show itself in the slice of his smile, the poison in his eyes. He is so much more colorful than any man Wendy would find in the real world, and a thousand times more destructive. As slick and bejeweled as the oily surface of the Thames.
Sometimes, when that moment of first facing Hook in the flesh arises in her dreams, she curses herself for falling to the tricks of a man her own stories should have warned her against. Most nights it is a wonder she dreams of him at all.
Wendy's world would once have made the very rainbows in the spring sky jealous of its brilliance. Rapturous golds, exhilarating greens - the coldest blues, the most violent reds. And as such, she is something of an expert on the way those shimmering threads dance and weave together; it was very much how she always thought of her stories. It was not inventing something out of nothing, only the simple act of finding what already waited there, ready and shining, for her to start the next chapter in her mental tapestry.
On her return from Neverland, it did not surprise her in the least when she began catching glimpses of those shimmering magics in her dull, thoroughly English life. Flashing in the corners of her eyes on the street, ghosting past that corner of her mouth. Side effects of visiting a realm out of her time, she supposed.
When she dreams of Hook, it is always in shades of red.
He is never playing the same song as she enters the cabin, Smee signaling her to stay quiet. Most times he plays things she recognizes; Bach, Vivaldi, Handel, the few names she still recalls from her long-ago music lessons. In any other context, such melodies might inspire the impressions of eloquence and divinity in which they were originally intended; he certainly played them flawlessly. But the Neverland twists all, and anything done by the Villain must always itself seem villainous. Whatever splendor Hook might have brought with him from his own far-away time, they now carry that mocking sense of grandeur that permeates every plank of that spectral war bird, The Jolly Roger, and she knows what mood she will find its dear captain in when she hears them.
"Wendy, darling. Didst thou ever want to be...a pirate, me hearty?"
False smile, false sincerity, things she has learned a great skill for recognizing in her time Growing Up. It is these times she knows she will dream of the exact events of that Fateful meeting.
But there are times, when she opens her eyes to the swaying dark inside her forest house, and strains her ears as she stands barefoot in the moonlight of the opposite deck, she catches a thread of something much blacker and heavy-handed, with much more angered longing riding each crash and caress of those chipped ivory keys. And every time when this happens, she cannot bring herself to follow the sound - it is too personal, she should not be here - and her eyes well and loose deck splinters prick her feet until she awakes, trembling and deeply sad.
As things always have their natural progression, it has been more than a few years now; wisdom and tragedy and a heart made heavy by the times make the eyes that once viewed super novas see nothing but black holes. Or gray holes, if there ever could be such a thing. Wendy always found gray a much more distressing shade than black. It held the potentiality for brightness, if only the dust of apathy could be shaken loose. No, when she contemplates it, black is far too roiling a word. There is a beginning and an end - there is an absolute in black. There is no absolute, no hope in gray.
When she spots him standing on the platform of Charring Cross Station, the essence of Neverland clinging to his skin nearly blinds her. He always was one for having an entrance.
The steam from the train gives him far too alluring a look - pale eyes burn as cold as new ice out of an expression just as frozen, tendrils of steam and stormy hair curling and twisting together. It was longer than men wore it, his satin and brocade centuries out of fashion, but no one else seemed to note his presence. No one saw him at all. No one but the young, deeply disturbed woman staring out from a foggy car window at a ghost that should not still exist, but has haunted her anyway for a very long time.
The train screeches to an ungraceful halt, the door of her carriage opens and a blank-faced porter helps her out, before leaving her alone to stand on the hard stone of the platform. Alone despite the bustle of passengers whizzing about her - around them both. Wendy Darling faces the Pirate Captain, completely unprepared.
"I've caught you at an inopportune moment. I apologize." Smooth as a crocodile. Sharp as a knife. She swallows.
"No apology necessary, Captain. Surely I dream you, and we are not as we really are." It was a hope, if a faint one.
"Ah, but you know better than that, m'dear." He proffers an arm, as lush and corded with strength as her memory recalls. He was not nearly as tall as before. And surely she has nothing to fear? A creature - for he is a creature, entirely more beast than man, and more magic than anything else - a creature of a little girl's dreams can never really leave the shadow world behind the closet door, or under the dripping bed skirts. His presence may be seen, or heard, or felt, but to cross that line of intangibility into one of physical coercion would surely shatter whatever tenuous hold on her world existed for him to even be here in the first place. But the moment stretches on, and Wendy must make a decision, all justifications aside. Nervously gripping the handle of her small travel bag a little tighter, she steps forward to accept. She notices - not entirely to her comfort - that it is not the hooked arm she has her fingers curled around, and she wonders.
Like a slice of moonlight, feral and cruel, that smile both condescends and comforts, and she doesn't know what it is she's done.
A/N: I have more planned, PLEASE R/R so I know this present tense business doesn't sound ridiculous. I don't why it chose to be that way, but I certainly had nothing to do with it. Also any other continuity issues that need addressing, sometimes I can get long-winded~!