Yes hello I'm back hi. Conflict is somewhat resolved. Oh and more Peter. :)
Jenna ran. It's all she could do. She ran out of the cabin and off the ship, slipping from the rope ladder and landing in the water where it was thankfully only shallow. Jenna didn't give it any thought however; she just pushed herself to her feet and carried on running, across the sand and into the forrest, tears streaming across her face and her mind confused and scared and conflicted.
She ran until she couldn't run anymore. With her lungs burning for air and her legs staggering from exhaustion, Jenna collapsed against a tree and slid to the leaf-littered floor. She held her head in her hands and just sobbed, until she had cried herself calm. Jenna couldn't say how long she had sat there, weeping for all of the forrest to hear. When she had finally stopped, and the shock had abated, Jenna wiped her face and stood, leaning heavily against the tree. "Get your shit together, Jenna." She told herself out loud, breathing deeply and controlling her mangled emotions. She did not feel ready to return to the ship, and she certainly had to assess the situation, and her feelings, before doing so.
So, Jenna got up. She stood, took a deep breath, wiped the tears from her face and gathered herself. Now is as good a time as any to explore, she thought, as she hadn't had any chance to see much of Pan's Island, and she certainly wasn't going back to the ship any time soon. Might as well while away the hours out here. And so she began to make her way further into the forrest, her path lit only by the moonlight that shone in-between the branches of the high canopies above her.
Jenna did not know how long she had been walking for, in fact she didn't even know what time it had been when she fled from the ship, but it was beginning to get progressively lighter the longer she walked, and she assumed it was the early hours of the morning. That's when the sun usually rises, she presumed.
Jenna was in fact contemplating returning to the Jolly Roger, when she got the nasty surprise of falling down a hole in the ground. She let out a yelp of surprise as she began sliding down a dark shute, only to come to an abrupt, tumbling halt in the middle of an underground room. A room filled with Lost Boys.
"Peter! Peter!" One of them called excitedly, while the others immediately crowded around her, picking at her clothes and arguing loudly over whom she might be. Jenna pushed the boys off her and stood up, only to have them grab her and lead her over to a long table, where they pulled out a too-small chair for her to sit on.
"Who are you?" A little boy asked, once she was seated and they were too, all around her.
"Are you a lady? Like Wendy!" Another proclaimed.
"Can she tell us stories?" A third exclaimed.
"I know exactly who she is." A voice said, and the Lost Boys silenced. Peter Pan. Jenna thought, and couldn't help but be in awe at the sight of the boy, hovering over the table before her. He swooped down to sit cross-legged directly in front of her, and gestured for the boys to give her some space, which they did. "She is a pirate." That brought a collective gasp from the boys.
"My name is Jenna." She introduced herself, holding out her hand. Peter seemed taken aback by her civility, but he took her hand and shook it, if with no small amount of distrust.
"What are you doing here, Jenna?" He asked.
"I ran away from the ship, and I got lost in the forrest. Next thing I know, I'm falling down a hole and right into your hideout." She explained frankly.
"You ran away?" Peter repeated, as he floated up from his spot on the table, beginning to glide slowly about the room. "How do I know you're not lying? You could be spying for Hook," he spat the name like a curse, "trying to find my secret hideout to tell him where we are."
"I told you, I ran away. And honestly, I would quite like to return now." Jenna admitted. Being interrogated by a twelve year old boy would not normally be so unpleasant, but knowing that Peter Pan was capable of cutting off a man's hand and sending him to his death; that was scary.
"Why did you run away?" Peter asked.
"Why does it matter?" Jenna countered.
"You're already grown up. I ran away because I didn't want to grow up, but you're already grown up, so why else would you run away?" He replied. Jenna saw the genuine curiosity on his childish features, and thought, Why not tell him? He'll probably forget in a day anyway.
"Because Hook hurt me. He didn't mean to, but it was still scary." Jenna said.
She didn't know what reaction she was expecting, but all of the Lost Boys and Peter shouting and cursing Hook's name, threatening to kill the Captain for laying a finger on her, was certainly not it. "Stop! Stop!" She cried, trying to be heard above the din. "I don't want him dead!"
Peter stopped shouting and crowing, and so did the boys at his command.
"Why not? He hurt you! He deserves to die! Any man that hurts a lady does!" He cried, to the applause and cheers of the boys.
"I know you think that is a...noble sentiment, Peter, but he didn't mean to hurt me at all. I don't think he would ever hurt me on purpose." Jenna said, trying to calm the irate boy.
Peter looked genuinely puzzled then, and flew back down to her level, standing by her chair so he could talk to her face to face. "Why would you think that? He's a pirate, and he's evil. He'd hurt anybody."
Jenna was so shocked by that statement that she actually laughed, making Peter scowl. "I'm sorry, I'm not laughing at you, Peter." She apologised, and Peter smiled at her then. "James- Hook, I mean, he's not evil! A pirate, yes, but certainly not evil. Hook can actually be very charming, and kind, when he wants to be."
Peter screwed up his face in disgust, and flew up to the ceiling."Yuck! Captain Hook is a villain and a blackguard!"
"Perhaps the way you see him! But to me he is a kind and caring man, and a man who would never, ever hurt me deliberately!" Jenna remembered the look of abject horror and regret on Hook's face once he came to his senses, and it only fuelled the fire of her words. "Now if you would please show me the way out of this godforsaken forrest I would be truly grateful!" Jenna didn't realise she was shouting.
Peter broke the deafening silence by calling for Tinkerbell. The fairy was not impressed at having been awoken, but her curiosity was peaked by Jenna's presence, so she didn't complain too much. "Tink, I need you to lead Jenna back to the Jolly Roger. Not yet, but soon, when I say she can leave." The tiny fairy nodded, which was accompanied by a light tinkling sound.
"What do you do on the ship?" Peter asked. Oh, joy, yet more interrogation. Jenna thought.
"I...don't know." Jenna realised that she didn't really have a proper role in the crew, she just followed Wendy's orders during the day and got the usual combat lessons from James. "I just sort of...live there. I do as I'm told and help where I can."
"And Hook treats you well?"
"He treats everybody well. He doesn't kill even half the men he used to. That's your Wendy's doing." Jenna said with a smile.
"Right. And where do you sleep? With the crew? That must be horrible." Peter crinkled his nose at the thought of it, and apparently the boys agreed, if their chorus of, "Ewww." was anything to go by.
"No, I er...I share his cabin." She answered. "And his bed." She added. Might as well get it out there now, she thought, bracing herself for the worst.
"Why would he let you do that...? You're just a lady pirate." Peter puzzled. Jenna gave him the benefit of the doubt and assumed he didn't know that he was being rude.
"I might just be a lady pirate," Jenna began indignantly, "but I am also the lady pirate that Captain Hook happens to be courting."
She didn't know why she thought they would understand what that meant, and she was bombarded with questions of, "What's courting?" and, "What does that mean?"
The Lost Boys gathered around her as though she were about to impart them with some life-changing wisdom, and even Peter seemed interested from where he hovered above them all.
"Er, well." She began, and was encouraged by the boys' rapt attention. "Courting is what happens when... Well. When...when two people like each other very much, in a romantic sense, they can court. Which means that they spend more time together and can do things like holding hands and hugging and kissing, and after a while of courting, they might decide to either stop courting, if they don't like each other anymore, or they might get married, if they end up...loving each other." Jenna finished, finding herself a little breathless.
"Do you love Hook?" Peter asked quietly, almost darkly, from the back of the room.
"I...I don't know. Maybe. I mean...I could love him, if we court for a while longer." Jenna replied, and the realisation startled her. "Now, if you don't mind, I really do wish to return to the ship."
"Sure. Tink." Peter called, and the fairy flitted over to them. "But you have to promise not to tell Hook where our secret hideout is."
"I promise." Jenna said, nodding her head in a goodbye to the lost boys, as she followed Tinkerbell out of the room.
Jenna took a deep breath of the fresh, clean air as she finally emerged from the forrest, surely hours after beginning her journey out of it. She thanked Tinkerbell, who had been a surprisingly pleasant guide, and watched the tiny golden light fly away into the trees. Jenna smiled, as she could see the great ship from where she stood, and it would only be a short walk across the sand before she could board it once again.
Jenna eagerly climbed the rope ladder that hung over the side of the ship, but was not pulled aboard as she normally would be. No, for the men that were above deck regarded Jenna with a cold indifference, and from a distance. She climbed over the side and onto the deck, unconsciously shrinking away from the glares of the crew.
"What?" She asked them. "What!" She shouted, when they gave no reply. Jenna scowled and hunched her shoulders, deciding to ignore their odd, and hurtful behaviour, instead carrying on to where she needed to go.
She walked up the steps to Hook's cabin, and was nearly stopped by Tom, the cabin boy, until he was dragged back by a menacing looking man whom nobody was wont to argue with.
Jenna took a steadying breath and knocked on the cabin door. When she heard no reply she slowly pushed it open. Jenna moved inside the room and closed the heavy door behind her, but found that she could barely see, for the air was thick with cigar smoke. On her first intake of breath she began to cough, almost choking on the stifling fumes. She batted the smoke away with her hand, and slowly walked further into the room.
She stopped, silent, and listened. Steady breathing. Hook was in there, but asleep. Jenna cleared her path of smoke again, and made her way over to the portholes, opening the windows with a muffled cough. She wiped her eyes, as they had begun to water in defence of the assault, and tried to waft out some of the smoke. After deciding that it would drift out eventually, she left the portholes and walked over to Hook's desk; where she could now see that he lay at.
He was a mess. He was slumped over onto the wooden surface, his head face-down, a bottle of whiskey in his slack left hand and no hook attached to his right. The objects previously covering the surface of his desk were scattered across the floor around him, as though they had been swept off it in anger. In fact, now that the air had cleared slightly, and she really looked, Jenna realised that the entire cabin was a mess. James must have wrecked it in a fit of rage, Jenna thought, and took in the extent of the damage. Paintings that hung on the walls were now torn and abandoned on the floor, the glass in the frames shattered and trodden into the rugs. Chairs were overturned, shelves were empty with their contents littering the ground, and the bedposts had deep nicks in them, as though he had taken his hook to them again and again.
"Jenna...?" Hook's deep, sleep roughened voice said. She turned to face him, seeing that he had pushed himself up into a sitting position. He looked exhausted. "Jenna?" He repeated.
"Yes, it's me." She replied, going over to him when he reached out to her. He tried to stand, but was either too inebriated or too tired to do so, as he fell back into his chair.
"I thought you were gone." He said, and the words were filled with such raw emotion, such fear and relief and pain and disbelief all at once, that Jenna had to try intensely hard not to cry. He seemed so broken, and so vulnerable, and Jenna knew that she needed to be close to him, to assure him that yes, she was here now, she was back, and there's no need for him to look so damn forlorn and tragic.
Hook pulled her to him as soon as she was within reach, grasping for her like a starving man would for food. Jenna held his head in her hands, running her fingers through his hair and speaking soothing words to him until he let her go.
"Come on James, we're going to bed now." She said, helping him stand and guiding him to the bed. He collapsed on top of it, and she lay next to him. Jenna pulled what remained of the ripped covers over them, and stayed with him at his desperate request, watching him until he fell back asleep, eventually doing so herself.
When Jenna awoke, the sun had set, and so it took her a moment to notice that she was alone in the large bed. Hook had pulled a chair up to the bed, and sat, awake, watching her from it, an unreadable expression on his face. A cigar hung loosely from his lips, and he took a heavy drag before removing it, blowing the smoke out into the air.
Jenna sat up in the bed, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. "Why are you sat over there?" She asked with a smile, "Come back." But Hook only turned his face away from her, leaning back in the chair.
"Why did you return to me?" He asked, his eyes beseeching.
"I couldn't stay out in the forrest forever. And besides, I didn't want to. I wanted to come back to you." She replied.
"Perhaps it would have been best if you did stay away." Hook said bitterly, taking another deep drag from his cigar.
"What is that supposed to mean?" Jenna asked sharply, moving to sit on the edge of the bed closest to Hook.
"You know exactly what it means. I hurt you, Jenna. I'm dangerous. You need to be as far away from me as possible."
"Now that's just rubbish-!"
"You deserve better!" He interrupted with a shout. "Look what I've done to you." He said, and took out a handheld mirror from a drawer in his desk. He held it up in front of Jenna, and she swallowed in shock as she saw the dark, purple bruises that had formed on her neck.
"You didn't mean to." She said quietly, putting the mirror down.
"Exactly. I can't help myself, I can't control it. I just...destroy everything that is good." He said, almost savagely.
"James." Jenna said sternly. His eyes snapped up to hers immediately. "You have to allow me to make my own decisions. If I want to forgive you, then that is what I'll do, and you are not going to stop me." Hook frowned in confusion, as Jenna forgiving him was last thing he had expected. "Come back to bed, James. I ran around a forrest, and you wreaked havoc on your poor cabin and then drank yourself into a stupor last night; we both need to sleep."
After a moment Hook relented, climbing back into the bed. He sat up against the headboard and continued to smoke his cigar, staring straight ahead of himself in something of a daze. He seemed surprised when Jenna cuddled up close to him, wrapping her arms around his middle and laying her head against his chest.
"You are too good for me." He said, bringing his right arm around her back and squeezing her tight. Jenna noticed that he had screamed his voice hoarse.
"Hush now." Jenna scolded, smiling up at him.
"I will never deserve you." He continued solemnly. "Ow!" Hook exclaimed, as Jenna pinched him under his ribs.
"I said hush." She repeated, turning her head and kissing his chest. Hook did hush after that, favouring placing kisses atop her head over speaking any more.
