Tinker Bell walks along the shoreline with the easy gait of a fairy, her shoulders borne back and head held high. She stares up at the moon and in a lost and fleeting moment, she hungers for her beauty. She starts running towards the end of the shore in hopes of drawing herself nearer to her, but the moon matches her speed. In a lost and fleeting moment, Tinker Bell wills herself to fly. She curls her feet around the wet lump of sand beneath and pushes herself off the ground.
And in the same lost and fleeting moment, Tinker Bell falls headlong onto the sand. The sea ferries its waves to her, as though they have come to cradle her hair in light of her attempt. She lies on the bank and lets the water warm her thoughts. She has always found comfort in the sea.
"Lady Bell," a familiar voice rings; one that would normally make her heart stutter in fear. But Tinker Bell is much too despondent to be frightened. "Fancy chancing upon you at the helm of the mermaids."
"I like the sea." Tinker Bell sits up and straightens her legs outwards into the water. "The waves are a pleasant company."
"And what might be the trouble, m'lady, if you seek such pleasantry?"
"There is no trouble," the has-been fairy lies through her teeth.
"Lady Bell," the pirate calls softly, and even in the dark Tinker Bell catches the smirk on his face. "I can always tell when you're lying."
"Can you really?"
"Indeed I can." Hook clambers out of the Jolly Roger and approaches her. "Now, whatever's the matter?"
"Pan," she chokes, and coarse tears start springing from her eyes. "He's banished me."
"Banished, you say?" Hook clicks his tongue in mock disbelief. "I thought he only had eyes for you. I thought they all did."
"He's found himself a Wendy."
"The boy will regret his actions, love. You mark my words. Pan doesn't deserve the beauty you possess." When Tinker Bell says nothing in reply, he adds, "What would that selfish boy know about breaking a fairy's heart, anyway?"
"I am not a fairy," Tinker Bell retorts. "Surely you know that."
"Aye, I do. Yet it didn't stop you from sauntering like one from that end of the shoreline to the other." After a pause, he asks, "You were trying to fly again, weren't you?"
"Yes," Tinker Bell responds, her voice hushed and filled with sadness.
"Lady Bell," he says again, "would you care to join me on the Jolly Roger?"
For a brief moment, Tinker Bell is stunned. What would a pirate want with a has-been fairy? What use would she be to him?
"Pan would come after you."
"Would he really?"
Tinker Bell doesn't reply. Her heart still aches from Pan's stinging words. She doubts he — as well as the rest of the Lost Boys — would care if she were to disappear for a while, or even forever. Wendy fit right in the minute she arrived, and they've all taken an instant liking to her.
She eyes Hook for a bit, whose smirk is still plainly daubed on his face. Then she lays hold on his outstretched hand and lets him guide her to the Jolly Roger.
Over the crashing of waves, she hears Wendy Darling's laughter being drowned out by Pan's and the Lost Boys'.
He visits her every night.
Every so often, they exchange pleasantries. Terms of endearment have become a common verse between them, and she has adapted to his mouthful but beautiful language. He weaves her a bouquet of compliments with each visit.
On rarer occasions, he brings along a kiss. His mouth tastes of a bricolage of sea salt and rum, and it begets a tingling sensation upon hers. She allows his keen hook to leaf through her fair hair as he thumbs through her skin.
If the Blue Fairy ever witnessed her like this, not only would her wings have been clipped off; she would've also be regarded as an abomination. Fairies aren't supposed to fall in love. She had been told this under more than one circumstance. She'd even had to witness helplessly as the Blue Fairy ripped Nova away from her true love.
But Tinker Bell is no longer a fairy. She was once a part of the Lost Boys, wild and disarrayed, and now she desires to sail the seven seas on the Jolly Roger.
Over the course of her exile, the shore is Tinker Bell's home. She stays by the sea from dusk to dawn; always looking up at the moon, always wishing to be flitting in the sky.
In her dreams, a pirate dances with her.
"Lady Bell," he greets her as he always does, "where shall we venture out to tonight? Would you like to say hello to the Indians?"
"What say we leave the island altogether?"
"I beg your pardon, love?" Hook doesn't quite comprehend her words.
"I may know of a way," she breathes, hoping her voice is not loud enough for anyone else to hear. "With pixie dust."
"But I thought—"
"My dear pirate, has it never occurred to you that perhaps during our first encounter, I'd lied?"
Hook swallows hard at the mere thought of escaping the accursed island and falling back in the course of his revenge. His voice falters as he speaks.
"You have… magic?"
"Aye, Captain," she mimics him, "indeed I do."
It takes Tinker Bell weeks to conjure up enough pixie dust for a make-do magic bean. He scrutinises it, flipping it this way and that in his palm. It's real. He can escape.
Filled with glee, Hook presses his lips against hers. She breathes deeply into the kiss, tasting salt on her tongue and teeth and the inside of her cheeks. He runs his fingers all over her face; her temple, jaw, chin. With his hook, he rummages through the tangled ringlets of her hair, wild and golden, much like her.
Tinker Bell pulls away briefly to catch a breath. He touches his forehead against hers and laughs.
"For a fairy, Lady Bell, you are quite brilliant."
"Alas, Captain, for a pirate, you have quite a way with words," Tinker Bell ripostes, rolling her eyes before pulling him in for another long kiss.
As soon as nightfall arrives, Hook does the unexpected: he asks her to stay with him on the ship. She lies asleep on his chest as he strokes her hair softly. For most of the night, he hums her the gentle song of the waves.
When morning comes, she wakes to his robin's-egg eyes. They are bluer than the sea and more beautiful, too.
"Is this what it feels like?" Tinker Bell thinks aloud.
"What, sweetheart?"
"True love."
Hook feels his body stiffen. He hadn't expected Tinker Bell's statement, nor has he ever even thought about it.
He cares for Tinker Bell, he truly does. He hasn't felt like he does now in the longest time—not since Milah. But to say that he loves her would be a far-reaching lie, something he can't bear to do to her; not after everything.
For how can he fall in love with a fairy if his heart still belonged to a ghost?
Silence follows; a silence so thick that she starts to feel uneasy. She sits up in the bunk and looks anywhere but into his eyes. When Tinker Bell sees the magic bean lying artlessly on the next bunk, she realises that she has unfinished business.
"I have to get started on the other bean," she says, giving him a hasty kiss before hopping off the Jolly Roger. "I'll wait for you by the sea."
Hook wants to forget the past couple of months he's spent with her. It's selfish, but not entirely — he wants her to forget him, too. He hates himself for what he's about to do. He cares so much about Tinker Bell but shamefully, he cares more about vengeance. Milah is forever etched in his skin as well as his heart. Tinker Bell was not enough to wipe out the flame entirely.
He looks back at the shoreline where his fairy, his Lady Bell, had chased after the moon. Then, without a second look, he tosses the magic bean into the sea and disappears into the portal.
Tinker Bell has just emerged from the cave, her makeshift home, when she sees the Jolly Roger get sucked into a hole in the sea. Tears spout from her eyes as she feels a wave of magic pass through Neverland, replacing the crack in the ocean with still waters. She falls to her knees and weeps as the haunting truth dawns on her; that Hook cared about nothing more than revenge, that a pirate will always be a pirate. She had been a fool to believe that a fairy could find true love. A fairy contrives true love with skills and artifice, but never can they ever feel it for themselves.
"Tink!" Peter calls, issuing himself from the forest. "Tink, please come home. We've missed you."
"Where is the Darling girl?" Tinker Bell asks bitterly, her voice still shaky from all the crying.
"She's gone. I'm sorry, Tink. I shouldn't have banished you. Will you forgive me?"
As Peter Pan leads Tinker Bell back to their camp, she feels the pain of not only of her broken wings, but also her broken heart. Still, she visits the shore night after night — waiting, in hopes that the pirate would return.
In hopes that he would return for her.