From the first time Hali saw the son of infamous Captain Hook, she had put Harry on a pedestal… which he swan dived right off of. Hali contemplated this the entire way back to the Lost Revenge. If she wanted to use an analogy fit for a pirate she would say that she made the Harry she thought she understood walk the damn plank.

A fine mist sprinkled the Isle, dampening their clothes slightly. Hali pulled the collar of her borrowed coat a little closer to her throat wishing she had a hat like Harry or at least a bandana like Gil. Despite the fact that they had successfully procured Uma's smuggled item, it still felt like the night had gone horribly wrong anyway.

She lingered on the deck when they returned to the ship. Harry didn't cast either of his crewmates a second glance before retreating into the captain's quarters. Gil paused, however, letting his confusion show.

"What is it Hali?" he asked.

She glanced at the long umbrella in her hands. It was an ugly green color, like the mildew on the rotting wooden boards of the shipyard and it was ripped in a few places. The cheap plastic handle felt loose as if chewing gum was keeping it from falling completely off. Hard to believe that a piece of garbage could cause someone so much pain.

At last, she held the umbrella out for Gil to take. He raised a brow at her odd behavior but took the umbrella from her grasp.

"You go ahead. I'm just going to stay out here for a little while," she said, offering a weak smile.

"Alright."

Gil wanted to tell her not to stay out too long in case the rain picked up and she got caught in the brewing storm over the Isle. She turned away before he could open his mouth and made her way to the railing. He ducked his head and tore his eyes away.

Harry stared vacantly at Gil when he entered the captain's quarters. He didn't ask where Hali had gone and Gil didn't tell him.

They sat across from each other, Uma's desk between them and the umbrella resting on the desk's scratched surface.

The room was quiet for all of two seconds before Gil spoke up. "Why did Uma send us an umbrella? Did she knew it was gonna rain?"

Harry refrained from rolling his eyes at his companion's dumb question. Barely.

He set his hook aside and snatched the umbrella from the desk and immediately began disassembling it's parts. The handle unscrewed easily, and the runner connecting the canopy to the umbrella's metal shaft slid right off. Without the canopy and handle (which Harry swiftly discarded), essentially everything that made the piece of junk an umbrella, all the remained was a long, thin metal rod.

Gil squinted at the object's remains and then skeptically at Harry. The first mate ignored him and shook something free the hollowed out handle. Riveted, Gil watched as an ornate arrowhead tipped out of the handle with a metallic thunk as it hit the desk. With deft fingers, Harry screwed the arrowhead onto one end of the long metal shaft and fletching onto the other.

"Uma didn't send us an umbrella, mate. She smuggled us one of cupid's arrows," he boasted as he picked up his hook again.

Gil's eyes widened when he realized what he was looking at. "Ooooh!" He beamed, overjoyed by Uma's cleverness.

His joy faded however when something occurred to him. "But there's no magic on the Isle. Won't we need magic to make the arrow work?"

Harry shook his head, suddenly bone tired. "That's not how the arrow works. Magic doesn't create love. The love that the arrow creates is magic." He didn't sound like he believed a word of what he said. Even Gil could pick up on his disbelief.

"But the barrier keeps out magic," Gil argued.

"Point is the barrier keeps out magic but it doesn't keep out love!" Harry snapped.

Gil froze, sensing he crossed a line. For a split second he was reminded of how Uma would run out of patience and send him away. Harry had never lost his patience with him and snipe at him which was saying something considering the first mate's short fuse.

"Why is using the arrow so hard for you?"

People didn't date on the Isle, but whatever crew you were running with was sort of a relationship status in and of itself. Harry didn't understand how Gil could forget that. Uma was everything to him. But her plan was to push him away and it was killing him. If only he could force the words out of him to explain all that.

"What do we even know about Hali? At Serpent Prep she was a ghost. Now all of a sudden Uma wants her in the crew? We don't know her and she doesn't know us."

"That's not actually true." Gil winced at the dark glare Harry shot him. But he marched on. "We know that Hali wants revenge as much as us. We know she can't stay on the Isle or Hades is probably going to torture her for the rest of her life. We know Uma wants her on our side. She must have a good reason."

Harry knew that Gil was right. It was quite shocking actually. Normally Gil wasn't so poignant and the fact that he was only spoke to how blinded Harry was to see the truth. He would do literally anything for his captain. Only now did he realize how he never expected that it would be necessary.

There was a time, before they held King Ben for ransom and the disaster that followed, when Harry believed that Uma would never hurt him. She was his captain and he was her first mate. They were always going to be there for eachother. And then Uma went off on her own and tried to steal everything, namely King Ben, from Mal. While he was ecstatic that Uma was finally getting her revenge and was going to free him and Gil and the rest of the crew from their prison, another smaller, more selfish part of him was ashamed that she was forced to do everything by herself after he failed her by letting the King escape. Everything that Uma had done after that had felt like a punishment for screwing everything up.

He didn't want to do this because Uma told him to and he would do anything for Uma. If Harry was going to do this, he had to do this because he trusted his captain to make everything right in the end.

"Go tell Uma, after tonight...we ride with the tide," Harry said, looking Gil right in the eye as he plucked the arrow from the desk.

Gil nodded seriously at him and Harry's eyes flicked to the door. He sprung from his chair, gripping the arrow shaft tightly in his free hand, and suavely left the captain's quarters.

As soon as he stepped foot outside on the deck he became aware of the charged atmosphere. The light sprinkling rain had picked up significantly. In the near distance he could feel as much as hear the raucous thunder. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. It felt like the closer he stepped towards Hali over by the ship's railing the more intense the electricity in the air became. His hat was soaked by the time he reached her, the little white feather wilting into a stringy quill. Incredibly, the sparse rain turned into an absolute downpour until both teens were being pelted by the deluge.

A flash of lightning flickered over the stormy sea, drawing his eye for a second. He gripped the arrow tighter until his knuckles turned white.

"I changed me mind!" he shouted over the thunderous rain.

Hali turned around, startled. Harry hoped he didn't look as much like a drowned cat as she did. Her long ponytail was plastered to her neck and the back of Uma's leather coat. Said coat looked like it weighed twice as heavy from how much water soaked into it. She blinked quickly, droplets of rain clinging to her long eyelashes. He couldn't be sure but he thought she might have been crying.

Her gaze darted to the arrow in his deathly grip. "You don't love me, Harry." And you're already in love with Uma she wanted to add but couldn't. "We barely know each other."

She avoided his eye, keeping her vision locked on the arrow held at his side. He took a step closer until his side leaned against the railing too. "Hence the arrow."

They were facing each other but she still couldn't bring herself to look him in the eye. She feared that if she did she would break into a million pieces and get washed away with the rain. "I already told you, you don't have to do this."

"This is the only way to break yer curse." He brandished the arrow wildly but Hali didn't flinch. "The only way to get ye off the Isle. Away from Hades. I'm doing this because I want to."

Her heart was pounding as if the thunder were in her chest. "It's not going to work anyway. There's no magic on the Isle."

"This will work. I trust Uma."

At last, Hali met his determined gaze. The expression in her eyes said what she couldn't speak aloud. You're already in love with someone else. Won't you be throwing that away? Harry understood exactly what her sad eyes tried to convey. He answered as best he could.

"Cupid's arrow isn't a weapon. It's not going to hurt."

Maybe it is possible to be in love with more than one person at a time. Harry thought of Uma at her best; her pillowy lips parted and smirking at him to tell him "hook me". He pictured Gil, not the quickest fish in the sea, but oh so loyal no matter how many times Harry ejected him from the Chip Shop or the Lost Revenge and was so impossibly sweet despite how poisonous the Isle wanted everyone to be. Harry didn't need anyone else in his life, but as he looked into Hali's red rimmed ocean blue eyes, he knew that she needed to be a part of his life.

He held the arrow up between them. A striking flash of lightning glinted off the sharp edge of the arrowhead. Her gaze darted uncertainly from his eyes to the arrow and then back again to his.

She couldn't believe that Harry was willing to do this for her. Not in her wildest dreams had she imagined that someday Harry Hook would actually love her, or at least whatever estimation a villain kid was capable of. That insecure voice that Hades cultivated in her head hissed that she wasn't worthy of being loved and venomously pointed out how pathetic she was as to need a magic arrow to pretend.

Sure Harry Hook was no knight in shining armor. All of her problems weren't going to go away because Harry Hook fell in love with her. But at least she would be free and there would be people who cared enough about her to join their crew.

"I hope for your sake that you're right," she told him, her quiet words almost drowned in the deafening rainfall.

Her hand shook as she held her index finger over the arrowhead's pointed tip. Harry was standing so close to her, his warm breath ghosted over her parted lips. His hooded eyes slid closed as his thumb poised over the lower edge of the arrowhead's blade. A blinding flash of lightning burned against her closed eyelids as she pricked her finger. At the same time, Harry pressed his thumb into the sharp blade and the thunder pounded like an applause.