All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust, or so I have been told, so I believed until that day. The day that changed me, took me from naïve child to grown woman in the blink of an eye. I remember it as clear as freshly washed glass, not a smudge of dirt upon its surface to distort the view, no rose-coloured glasses to alter my perspective.
I had left the safety of the little house that you and the other lost boys had built for me, to look for you. You had said that you would be back within the hour for dinner. We were supposed to play house, be a family. Instead, I found myself wandering through the woods in the hazy twilight of a Neverland evening.
I soon found you in a grove of apple trees.
Here, in this magical world filled with wonders beyond imagination, I thought I had found my perfect home. As I watched you savor the apple in your hand, I was never more certain, felt more strongly, that this is where I should spend my forever and ever.
You were perfection to me with your unruly raven locks, piercing green eyes, and sweetly crooked smile. You and I were meant to be together. One day it would be just the two of us in our house —the one underground, not the one constructed for my use— as Mother and Father, but not in jest.
As you lounged under the tree's leafy boughs, a new emotion, which I could not identify, drove me to look longingly at you and wish that you would give me a real kiss instead of a mere silver thimble or button.
"You'll spoil your supper if you eat any more," I quietly chided as I moved to sit beside you.
"I think one apple won't hurt," you chuckled softly. "Would you care for a taste?"
Now that I am older, a grown woman, mother, and grandmother twice over, I can see the irony in your query, and am utterly certain that you were aware of the double-layer meaning as I took the proffered treat.
I latched on to a place where your mouth, your teeth and tongue, had been and bit, hoping, strangely, that I could taste you in my mouth. Your eyes glittered with a peculiar hunger as you watched me devour my bite.
A tear of tangy-sweet juice rolled down the corner of my mouth and you caught it with your thumb, licking it clean.
My mind spun at the action, sending a chaotic swirl of inquiries hurling in my mind. As children are wont to do, I could not contain my burning question any longer, hastily blurting, "What type of feeling do you have for me?"
"Stars are beautiful, but they may not take part in anything, they must just look on forever," you answered cryptically.
"What does that even mean?"
"It means that I can never give you what you desire."
"How do you know what I desire?" I huffed. "What does that even mean?"
I was still on the cusp of things, straddling the line between childhood and adulthood, and didn't fully understand the meaning of such words as 'desire' and 'longing', 'passion' and 'lust'. I only knew that you were acting as if you did not like me anymore, that you had tired of me, that I was already forgotten.
"Ginny," you sighed softly, "I feel for you as a faithful son, his mother… nothing more."
"Could that change?" I asked with quiet desperation and hope.
"Never."
Your reply was brutal in its honestly. I suppose in that way, you were still a child, too: answering with the delicacy of a hammer whapping on the head of a nail.
My childish heart broke at those words. "Never?"
"I am quite certain," you said before decisively stating, "Yes, never."
"But Peter," I whispered mournfully, "never is an awfully long time."
"Let's not talk of such sad things," you ordered with a dismissive wave of your hand.
Suddenly you sprang up from your resting spot and cried, "Come on, Ginny! Let us fly over the Mermaid's Lagoon and climb Marooners' Rock or play with the Indians or something, anything!"
Stiffly, I stood and shook my head. "I must go back. The lost boys are waiting for me. It is well past supper time now."
"As you wish," you said with a bow, a calculating glimmer in your eye. "I will be back later on, Mother."
You flew into the air and were gone in a flash.
I watched you, a tiny speck above the tree line, flitting to and fro in the night sky. Just as I moved to return to the house, the boys, and the hot meal I knew was waiting for me, I saw you fly down to the seashore where a little rowboat was waiting.
Being a child and full of curiosity, I made my way to see who you were meeting. I thought that mayhap you might be rendezvousing with Tiger Lilly or some other fair folk that I had yet to meet, but never in my wildest imaginings did I expect to see whom I saw.
When I first met you, sewed your shadow back to the body to which it belonged, I thought that every word you spoke was truth. You had no reason to lie to me. I was your friend. You were mine and I believed you when you took me to Neverland.
'I know a place where you never grow up', you had said, but you had lied.
At first, I didn't understand. Why were you so close? Why weren't you fighting to get free? Then I noticed the teasing way you stroked his hook.
"So, Pan, this is what you want?" Hook asked with a gleam in his black eyes as he held you close.
"Aye, Hook," came your good-humored reply, "it is."
"What shall I do with you, Pan?" Hook mused, his lank black locks a curtain covering your faces.
"What you will," you sighed when he leaned in, closing the hairsbreadth of distance between you, and captured your mouth.
"What I will?" he lightly scoffed after releasing your kissed-stained mouth. "That is a most dangerous proposition. I could do anything. I might tie you up."
Hook grunted as he pushed your willing body to the ground, crawling over top of you, pinning your arms over your head.
"I could leave you exposed to the wilds for all to see. I might ravish you: simply bury myself in your nubile body and use you till I find my satisfaction, leaving you hungry and desperate for relief and all you can say is 'what you will?'"
"I trust you," you said seriously, more serious than I had ever heard or thought you were capable of. "You would never hurt me."
"As you've hurt me?" Hook said pointedly.
You reached a hand out, pushing back the waterfall of hair that covered the Captain's face, placing a gentle kiss on his silver hook. "That was long ago… before I knew."
"And you are certain now?" The Captain asked with deadly solemnity. "This is not a game, Pan, something to play at in the heat of moment and disregard later on when you have discovered something newer and more exciting."
"No," you said in that decisive tone in which you had spoken to me. "I know what I want. I want you."
"And what of your band of miscreants? What will they think of you, The Great Peter Pan, The-Boy-Who-Never-Grew-Up, willingly tossing his childhood away like yesterday's paper?"
Your eyes blazed at Hook's mocking. "I haven't been a boy in quite some time. I am centuries old, as are you. Aren't you tired of this game? I am. It is old and worn out, with every possibility explored… except this one."
Your words felt like a physical blow to my gut. How could I have not seen it? I should have known. You played make believe so very well.
"As you wish, Pan."
"Harry," you whispered so softly that I could scarcely make out what you said.
"Harry? Who is he?"
I wished to know, as well.
"He is me," you said, a note of worry edging around the corners of your voice. "That's my name. My real name. Harry."
Even from a distance, I could spot the twinkle of mischief in your eyes as you said, "Harold."
An inky brow arched in suspicion. "Truly?"
A wash of rose bloomed on your face. "I thought not," Hook drawled.
"I...just Harry," you murmured sheepishly.
"Harry," Hook acknowledged with a nod of his head.
"James."
Hook sat back on his haunches and removed his scarlet, plumed hat. "If we are being candid with one another, my name is not James."
"What is it?" you inquired.
"Severus."
"Severus?"
"Yes."
You studied Hook's features, cocking your head to the side like a dog as you took in his large nose, dark, fathomless eyes, and thin lips.
"It suits."
For a moment, there was only stillness, a gentle sea breeze kissing my skin, before Hook's dark voice cut through the silence like a knife.
"Proud and insolent youth, prepare to meet thy doom," he whispered low, teasingly, tenderly cupping your face.
"Dark and sinister man," you purred," have at thee."
Suddenly, he pounced upon you, stealing kisses, attacking you as a hungry dog a bone. Using his hook, he sliced your tunic in two, divesting you of your clothing, your small hands pawing at his frock coat with similar desperation. There were moans and groans, looks that I didn't understand.
You looked in pain as he licked a path down your naked torso, yet you did not cry out in such a manner. Nor would you, as I realized later on that what I had first mistaken for pain was actually enjoyment.
I wanted to run to you, save you from this attack, but something inside stopped me, told me to watch.
Soon you were both lying naked on the ground, uncaring of who might see you. I had never seen such things before that night: men without clothing, engaging in such acts. You both were the first, but not the last, naked men that I ever beheld, though of a surety, your body— so young and peppered with scars— and the Captain's— thin, with wiry muscles— were the standard I held all others to when I became a woman.
"Oh God!" you cried as he did something to you, touched you inside.
I didn't understand, I didn't understand at all!
"Please," you begged. "Now!"
And then, you did cry out in true pain.
"Shhh," Hook soothed, "it always hurts the first time. That's how you know you're alive."
Slowly, your whimpers and cries of pain changed and became… happy somehow. One minute you are panting and crying, begging and moaning, the next, you are both freezing, motionless, and your body is covered in something white.
Hook passionately demanded your mouth, once he rolled off the top of you, pulling your body into the circle of his arms.
"Pan, you are a wondrous creature," Hook sighed as he stretched his lithe, feline frame. "I think I can love you, if you wish it."
You looked into your enemy's eyes and softly spoke, "You know that place between sleep and waking, the place where you can still remember dreaming? That's where I have always loved you, I just never realized it till now."
A wide grin bloomed upon Hook's face. It was an unfamiliar expression, not filled with bloody glee, but pure…happiness.
"So it is to be love, then."
"Yes," you said tenderly. "Yes."
Hiding in the underbrush, my mouth agape as a fish out of its watery home, I watched until my innocence had crumbled around me to dust. Under the diamond-scattered sky, in this place where children were to stay so forever, I crossed over. When I saw you in his arms, I laid my childhood by the roadside, abandoned for all time, never to be recaptured. Watching you sink into his tender embrace, the night gentle and warm, I realized 'Never' wasn't as long as I thought.
-The End-