Double Image

by fowl68

It was morbid curiosity that made Jim ask, Silver knew. But he couldn’t make himself tell the whole story. Because it might make the boy hate him and all the healing that Silver had seen over the past few months would all be undone.

Disclaimer: I don't own Treasure Planet, though I absolutely love it.

Author's Note: My first attempt at Disney fanfiction, so this might come out a bit weird. I got the idea from watching a video on Youtube on this movie with the song Life of a Salesman from Yellowcard.

Also, I don't know what Jim's father's name was, so I'm just going to use Nicholas. If it's something different and somebody knows about it, I apologize.

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"Every garden has a serpent. Every Heaven had its war." –Grace (The Summer King)

-~-~-~-~

"!"

He'd wiped his hands on his apron out of habit. The meat on the stew was rather dry, he'd noticed absently. He'd need to fix that. "Why, Mr. Arrow sir. Bringin' in such fine and distinguished guests to grace my humble galley. Had I known, I'd 'ave tucked in me shirt."

He'd walked a few steps before glancing back because, for a half second, he could have sworn he saw the ghost of Nicholas Hawkins himself standing there. Now that Silver looked closer, he could see faint differences.

"Silver, did ya know? Sarah's pregnant!"

Silver remembered looking over at him, startled. Nicholas had never been the type, for him at least, to settle down. But Sarah was a good influence on him.

"Congrats, Nick."

This boy was a bit shorter than Nicholas had been and the jacket was too short. Nicholas' used to be almost a trench coat, hitting him at the thighs rather than at the waist. The hair wasn't the brown that was nearly black, but much lighter. And Nicholas' eyes hadn't been that blue-gray, but a mischievous hazel.

Silver made himself ignore the similarities and focus on what Mr. Arrow was telling him. Something about the guy in the suit being a doctor. "Love the outfit, doc."

"This young man is Jim Hawkins." Silver knew it. The kid had to be part Hawkins to look that much like Nicholas. As Silver held his hand out, he saw the suspicion in the blue-gray eyes. Oh, this was Nicholas' son.

"Silver!"

He'd been a stocky thirteen back then, still growing into his limbs. "Sir?"
"This is yer new bunk mate. Show him the ropes, won't you?"

"Aye, sir." Silver hadn't had a robotic arm back then, and while Nicholas had shaken it, there had been that very same look in his eyes that said he didn't trust him. And the Hawkins was only eleven at the time!

Silver put on a small show with his mechanical arm. Jim didn't look impressed. But then, Silver hadn't been particularly trying. Before he'd joined a ship's crew as a cabin boy, he'd worked as a juggler and magician on the streets. All things that involved sleight of hand.

"He's…a Morph. I rescued the little thing off Proteus 1." Jim didn't smile like Nicholas had, all lopsided and awkward. Maybe it was that bit of Sarah in him.

"These purps are kind of like the ones back home…on Montressor. You ever been there?"
Only two of the times he'd been there had been truly memorable. The first, for Nick's wedding with the barmaid for the Benbow, Sarah. The other was a few weeks before Sarah was due, for Nick's twenty-ninth birthday.

"Can't says I have, Jimbo." It was easy to find the boy a nickname, just like it had been for his best friend.

"There's a slew of cyborgs roamin' this port." He could see it easily. Jim had a shrewd intelligence, the kind Nick always used to hide behind pranks and laziness.

As he watched the boy go up the stairs, he thought that he couldn't get close to this kid. Besides all of the extenuating circumstances, Nick had said once, partially in jest, part in seriousness, to keep away from his son because he'd be a bad influence. Silver had laughed and promised to stay away. He intended to keep that promise.

* * * *

Silver had had to laugh at the expression on Jim's face when he'd thrown him the mop and bucket. Not just an imitation of Nick, but practically his double. And he'd apparently inherited that odd habit of talking into the air when angry or annoyed.

As eager to step onto a battlefield as well. Silver hadn't expected the boy to inherit the smart mouth.

"I gave you a job!"

"I was doing it until that bug thing-"

"Belay that!"

'Defiant' was the word that came to mind as the light colored eyes became thunderstorms as he glared up at him. Sarah had never been like that. She was a quieter sort.

* * * *

"Didn't your pop ever teach you ta pick your fights a bit more carefully?"

The face darkened, closed off.

"Your father's not the teachin sort." He had been! Silver remembered him. He'd been a good man…or, decent enough. And while he'd never been particularly good at explaining things since his mind worked so much faster and differently than everyone else's, Nick had always at least tried.

"No." How much anger was contained in that single word. "He was more the 'take off and never coming back' sort." Bitterness was there, along with the anger. But somewhere underneath it was sadness and confusion.

"Sorry, lad." Silver wished he could explain better. Wished he could explain how it was his fault that Nick had left in the first place.

"Is this another one of your 'get rich quick' schemes?" Nicholas had asked skeptically over the phone.

"Nope. Same ol' one."

"Treasure Planet?" Silver remembered hearing the smile in his friend's voice. "You know you've got my son reading that constantly now? It's almost all he talks about. That and a solar surfer."
Silver had laughed. "Glad I'm rubbing off on him somewhat. But seriously, this is the real deal. I've got meself a map an' everyting. Just need someone to help cart all that gold back here. You up for it?"
Nicholas hadn't wanted to leave his family just yet. Not when they were still having some financial problems. But Silver had always been a smooth talker.

"…Fine, I'll go. When's the ship leaving for the Space Port?"
"Tomorrow morning."

"Tomorro—Dammit, Silver! Nicholas raked a hand through his dark hair. "You're lucky you're my best friend. I wouldn't even consider doing this otherwise. I need to go. Gotta tell Sarah about all this."

"Good luck. I'll see ya tomorrow."
Sarah hadn't liked the idea of her husband leaving at a time like this. But that light in those hazel eyes had been too much. Nicholas was a wanderer, period. Even when people asked him about how'd he found Montressor, he said 'I stopped here with a crew and forgot to leave.'

But he'd left anyways. Because Nicholas had always been loyal to his friends.

* * * *

Teachin' the boy—not the boy, he had to learn to call him by his name—Jim, how to tie knots almost made him want to laugh. He was thorough, explaining how the end came through this loop and made this knot, but he could tell Jim wasn't paying a lick of attention.

He'd looked back and seen the boy balancing easily on the ship rail, hands shoved in pockets. Observing the knot made Silver smile ruefully. Nicholas had always been better than him at knots.

* * *

Jim liked stories, Silver noticed. And it could be any story. Even little meaningless ones about the escaped chicken on a crewmates farm that turned the small town into chaos would make his eyes light up and grin.

And there was no mistaking the laziness. Oh, Jim wasn't lazy all of the time. He was a hard, efficient worker when he felt like it. But that was the point. He had to feel like it.

Untying the skiff had made him remember all too well how Mr. Bones, the first mate on the first crew he and Nick had ever served on, had taught them. Nick had been excited to leave the ship and had learned all he could. Jim had that very same expression.

But that dejected look on his face as he left the ship made him remember that Jim hadn't known the Nicholas he'd known. Hadn't known the laidback, laughing man. He'd known a harder man, one who'd done what he could to provide for his family. The man who hadn't come back.

Jim was an absolute prodigy with technology. And he wasn't embarrassed or afraid of that skill. He'd guided that skiff like it was an extension of his body. Riding on stardust had to have been something Jim had only dreamed about as a kid.

"Gonna make people see me a little different."

The exact opposite dream of Nicholas. Nick had stood out where he was from, as the human had explained once. Now, he wanted nothing more than to fade into the woodwork and be out in the black, where it was free and exciting and endless.

"Sometimes…plans go astray."
"You're sure this is the right place?"Nick hopped down from the skiff, an empty bag over one shoulder.

"Of course! When have I ever been wrong?"
"Where to start...?" Nick had ducked a playful blow, laughing.

"…How'd that happen?"
It was morbid curiosity that made Jim ask, Silver knew. But he couldn't make himself tell the whole story. Because it might make the boy hate him and all the healing that Silver had seen over the past few months would all be undone.

"You give up a few things…chasin' a dream." Like a best friend, like the family that Nick had never been able to go back to.

"Was it worth it?"

"I'm hoping it is, Jimbo. I most surely am." Because he couldn't live with himself if Nick had died and left behind sweet, sassy Sarah and the bright-eyed kid for nothing.

* * *

"Wasn't your fault you know."
There was that sigh. The one that Silver had heard from a lot of teenagers before. The one that said that they were fed up and didn't want to hear any pity. Jim had jumped down faster than Silver could see.

"I screwed up! For two seconds, I thought I could do something right but…" There it was. The anger, the sorrow and the frustration that came when someone died. Silver had been waiting for Jim to explode and had half-hoped that Jim would rage at him. But not for that reason. For taking his father away.

"Listen to me. James Hawkins." It would be the first and only time Silver ever used his real name. It certainly got Jim's attention though. Ya got the makins of greatness in ya! But you gotta take the helm and charge your own course, stick to it, no matter the squalls. And when the time comes you got the chance to really test the cut of your sails and show what you're made of... well, I hope I'm there, catchin some of the light comin off ya that day."

That hadn't been entirely what he wanted to say, though it had been part of it. But he couldn't add to the sorrow of losing Mr. Arrow with the reason of the loss of his father as well. Nicholas had told him something similar once.

"You'd be great in the Interstellar Academy!" Nick had been fifteen, young and headstrong and currently lazing on a mast.

"Nah. They wouldn't want someone like me."

"What's wrong with you? Let me answer that. Nothing. You got just as much right to go as everyone else."

"…If you say so."

* * *

"Playin' games…are we?" So easy to slip back into the façade of heartless pirate. Effortless, really. "I was always bad at games. I hated to lose."
It had been a gamble, picking that planet. It could have been any number of them in the area, but he had to chose that one.

"Nick, get outta here!"
The human had refused, flat out, to leave without him. And Nick had always been smaller than Silver, so it was doubly difficult to drag the injured man towards the skiff. His entire right side was practically gone and his nerves…well, on fire was too loose a term. Nick pushed Silver into the skiff, panting heavily. Silver struggled to enter the entry sequence to get the skiff in the air. Nick put the skiff in gear easily, but as he was about to climb in, the ground began crumbling beneath him and he let go of the side.

The sudden loss of weight made the skiff shoot lopsidedly into the air and Silver grimaced in pain when his right side was jostled. But even that pain couldn't hurt nearly enough as the sight of his best friend crushed under a ton of rocks.

"You are really something. All that talk of greatness…light coming off of my sails…" Silver suppressed a flinch at the words. Because this was the old Jim, the one that had been so full of anger when they'd first met. And Silver hadn't known that Jim had such a sharp, scathing tongue on him.

"I'm gonna make sure you never see one drubloon of my treasure." And right in front of Silver, James Hawkins stopped being a confused, defensive teenager. He looked like a young man now, proud and—had his shoulders been that broad before?

"Dat treasure was owed me, by tunder!" Silver had to bite his tongue hard to make himself not say why. The situation wouldn't be helped if Jim learned about it all now.

Sarah hadn't even had to hear the words to know the news. She hadn't collapsed in tears, but her eyes, light blue-gray, became real shiny. She was too strong to cry in front of him, but later, she'd cry.

And Silver glanced up at the stairs, seeing a narrow face and an awkward elbows and knees kid crouched there. Maybe he didn't need to hear what had happened either. Maybe he'd already accepted that his father was never coming back.

Silver had pretended not to know who shot away on the solar surfer when he left.

* * *

"I like ya lad, but I've come too far to let ya come between me and me treasure."
Jim's terror was written across his face, but it was mixed with that inherent defiance. But Silver pretended not to notice that pang when he noticed that Jim was afraid of him.

And if there was one sensation Silver had never enjoyed, it was falling. Even if it was that short distance from the ship to the metal sphere.

"Reach!"

"I can't!" Hanging on by a thread that was growing ever thinner, was Jim.

"You ever think about how we're gonna get famous?"
Nick looked down at him from the top bunk. "How and not if?"

"Well, o' 'course! We'll be famous! Silver and Hawkins!"

"Discoverer's of Flint's Trove!"

They reached towards each other at the same time to bump fists, grinning like fools.

"Silver, you gave it up?" Breathless relief colored Jim's voice and for a moment, Nick's image was superimposed over Jim's.

"…Just a lifelong obsession, Jim. I'll get over it." Because Jim had turned out to be a great man, someone he knew Nick would have been proud of.

* * *

"He's a free spirit! Being in a cage…it'd break his heart."

He and Nick had spent a night in jail once, for disrupting the peace with a bar fight. Nick had lounged comfortably against the wall beside Silver. "Silver…I have a feeling Sarah might get a bit angry with me."

Silver remembers laughing. "Yeah, we might've screwed up a little."

Because while a good friend may bust you out of jail, a best friend will be sitting next to you.

"You an' me, Hawkins and Silver, full of ourselves and no ties to anyone!"

It was an offer, a possibility. But he'd known before he'd asked that Jim would have said no. It was something in his character.

Nick was looking down at a paper. He read aloud. "Nicholas Pleiades Hawkins has been formally accepted into the Interstellar Academy."

Silver looked over at him. "Are ya going?"

A lopsided grin. "No way! It'd be boring without you, Silver."

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A/N: So how was my first try in this? At the very least, let me thank your for even reading it all.