Just like all my writings I dont own anything to do with Treasure Planet or Treasure Island but the movie and book.

James Pleiades Silver

Prologue

A soft, gentle smile widened across John Silver's lips as the boy shifted and sighed in his arms. Tilting his head to the right and lowering his eyes, he wanted nothing more than to get a good look at the sleeping angel in his arms. The sleeping angel just happened to be his son.

His son was wrapped in a dark blue blanket made of a fine wool to keep him warm on the cool, damp nights when Montressor's air was not kindly polite. His small head was lying against his father's belly, his right cheek pressed into the warmth. The blanket held him closer than his father's arms, but through the blanket and his father's arms, Silver noticed the misshapen left arm of his son. The smile nearly immediately vanished from his face. He followed every contour of the left arm, making note of the perfectly even cylinders. Lowering his own left arm, he pulled the blanket down with it.

Although his son was clothed, his unbuttoned tunic loosely fell over his left shoulder revealing the sight of skin and metal. Shiny silver began where his skinned shoulder should have been. Within the object shaped like a normal shoulder, wires connected to every one of his son's nerves that worked his left arm. Those little wires were safely tucked away in several metal cylinders and they were nestled in one great cylinder of the finest silver they could afford, which was the finest silver available in all the universe, but not fine enough according to John Silver. Where the elbow should have been was a joint connecting the upper arm cylinder to the forearm cylinder. The process of the cocooned wires was repeated down his son's forearm. At the wrist was another joint connected to a silver plate resembling the palm of a hand outstretched from that. Five jointed silver rods resembling four fingers and a thumb extended from the plate. Altogether, the mechanical unit resembled a normal left arm quite closely, reminding Silver of the greater than small technological advances the universe made since his outfitting of mechanical parts.

Knowing that wasn't the only extent of his son's mechanical units, he used his own mechanical arm to untangle the hem of the blanket away from his son's body on the right this time. He never observed the Cyborg parts his son possessed with such care until now. Perhaps it was because he simply didn't have the time between keeping his mind sane and searching the universe for him. But now that his son was safely nestled in his arm on his own home planet, he found the time.

Gently pulling the hemline of the trousers his son wore to his right knee revealed a scar from his ankle to his knee. When looking upon his leg, none would have suspected anything more than a gruesome scar that was in need of a few more days of healing. The stitches were removed barely four days ago. Fortunately, to the advances of medicine, only the bone was to be removed and replaced with a silver rod to his exact size. However, there was one disadvantage. Since his son was sixteen, there was plenty of room to grow, and after that growth, a new measurement would have to be placed in his leg to become identical to the growth a normal bone would have made.

Hearing his son inhale deeply and sigh even more deep, his eyes turned to his bandaged chest. The white cloth protected his beating heart, but not as well as his ribs. Along with his left arm, his son's ribs had to be upgraded into silver as well. The whole left side of his ribcage was silver, once again matching the exact measurement and width of the adjacent ribs. But between layers of bandages and silver was a scar far worse than the one he bore on his leg. Beginning just below his collar bone this scar cut the left half of his ribcage in perfect two pieces to parallel of his belly button. Stitches were a must to keep this wound together. When asked, his answer was to listen to his son's breathing. The constant steady motion of breath was more likely to pull the skin apart than a gently resting leg.

"Papa," the boy whispered in his sleep as he nuzzled his head into the warm belly and a content grin widened.

As if that wasn't enough alteration to his son, Silver tucked the chocolate brown bangs behind his son's left ear. For a moment, he smiled at the golden earring shining the same color his own mechanical eye was. Like father like son and they received the piercings well before they made their first acquaintance. But when he moved his mechanical forefinger away from the source of light, the candle in the distance brought sight to Silver's eyes of the odd, but necessary scar on his son's face. Depending on the point of view, the scar began below his cheekbone and ended above his eyebrow, creating a half crescent across the left of his face. The half crescent was broken by the permanent redness his son would have lining the left of his left eye. In fact, when he traced the scar with his human finger he traced his son's eye socket. The fact of the matter was a crack in his skull gave need for the entire crack and more to be removed and, of course, replaced with silver so half his cheekbone, eye socket, and part of his skull was silver and where the scar above his eyebrow ended, silver began. Above his eyebrow to his hairline and wrapping around the side of his face to his temple, was a silver plate. Where skin was shallowest, there was no salvaging the flesh covering when the silver was placed in his head. Light would always shine into the skin surrounded silver, but that was better than having half his face exposed to the metal. Every waking moment his son looked at him Silver thanked the Heavens that both his son's angelic blue could look up at him.

Actually, every spare moment Silver was given, he thanked the Heavens his son was still alive and nearly all himself mentally. Never again would his son be the—come to think of it, he never knew his son as a happy-go-lucky, cheery boy his mother once did. He met his son when he was moody and rebellious and lost. Lost still and would always describe his son for the images would never leave his mind no matter how hard he would fight to push them away. In recent weeks, part of the happy-go-lucky, cheeriness returned. The eyes he saw glow brightly once would always remain darker like they did when he spent hours sitting in the rigging staring out into the Etherium, for his eyes would always be lost in the Etherium. That one moment he saw his son's eyes glow, was when he found him and the loot of a thousand worlds helped the glow along.

The loot of a thousand worlds. Silver softly chuckled to himself as he wrapped his angel in the warm blanket. His lifelong obsession didn't end how he thought it would. He thought it would end when, at long last, he held gold and crystals in the palms of his hands. Instead, it ended when he held his son's hand for the first time after being allowed to enter his room in the hospital after everything. Not all treasure was silver and gold. Not all the loot of a thousand worlds was more glorious than his little one, considering he spent the treasure on giving his son the medical treatment he needed and more. A good sum of money was tucked safely away waiting for the day the surgery on his leg would come.

As he tucked him back into his blanket and his eyes ensuring he was warm and comfortable, the sight of a book passed before him. He knew the book was sitting at his son's bedside, but that was beside the point. The book's cover was an old leather and etched into the leather was a planet with rings crossing through and each other. Treasure Planet. Beside this book, the candle flickered in a golden sphere with odd circular markings.

Silver's eyes narrowed and forehead creased with sorrow. His body slumped further against the wall and soft bed. Unconsciously, both arms wrapped around his son, keeping him close to his person to feel an exact outline of his side. The events surrounding how his son came to be his swirled in his mind like little Morph, who was contently asleep in his son's lap, enjoyed doing so very much. The events seemed so long ago in his mind considering his son's sixteenth birthday was the previous week, yet he knew they were still very close in the past considering the wounds were yet in need of stitches.

Now that his mind wandered, the sleep he was beginning to feel was swept out of him as the several images finally came together as one and finally began answering the question he silently kept for himself. What happened? With his son protectively kept in his arms, John Silver watched as bedroom scene surrounding the map to the no longer existent Treasure Planet faded away and became the landscape of Treasure Planet itself, the day his son's world and his own changed forever.

A Note from TurtleHeart:

for those of you that are interested, fellow writer amalimrock has drawn a picture of James Pleiades Silver. The image is located at deviantART under the name LingLiJing and is entitled "James Pleiades Silver" (yes, i've already asked permission to do this). So go check it out if you want!