Hey guys, back again after a bit of a delay. Sorry, but school and my first ever novel kind of took all my time. I rewrote this chapter like six times and I'm still not really happy with it, but I hope you guys enjoy it anyway! Sorry again for the delay and thanks to all my amazing reviewers and people who favorited/subscribed, you guys push me to keep going! As per usual I own nothing but my own OCs and story line and I make no money off of this!

Also, trying something a little knew with the title, let me know what you think!

Dreams and an Interlude

.

.

Sarah was dreaming.

She felt like she was floating, held aloft by a strong current of air that had no apparent source. She became aware of the sensation of falling, though it didn't feel like she was moving very fast. She was surrounded by gray clouds that left ashy trails against her skin as she moved through them. It was this that brought the realization that it was getting difficult for her to breathe. She began to cough as she broke through the ash clouds and felt a scream catch in her throat. She was above Neverland. The only way she could tell, for the landscape had changed entirely, was from the ship moored just off the coast.

She felt herself begin to sob as she watched a blanket of lava engulf one whole side of the island, inch by inch, burning through the ash covered forest, devouring the trees she had grown to love. She expected to see a flurry of golden sparkles but there were none. Instead there were only screams as animals and fairies alike were swallowed by the white hot liquid. The other side of the island looked like a war zone. There were huge divets and furrows blasted out of the mountain side and surrounding forest land. Most of the tree growth on that side had either burned down or was currently being swept away by a vicious landslide. She looked down to the coast, praying to see at least some form of life but there was none. No Peter, no Lucas or Lost Boys, even the Indians had been consumed by the savage onslaught of nature.

This sparked a new kind of fear in her. The pirates…what had happened to them? Were they safe on their ship? Was Hook alive? And poor Mr. Smee, so timid and kind, was he still alive? She had to know. She turned, or tried to turn, toward the ship and facing down. Perhaps she could steer herself toward the rather small deck of the Jolly Roger. Whatever was holding her aloft seemed to be in a cooperative mood and soon she found herself hovering next to the railing of the battered ship. This time, the scream made it out.

Everything was in shambles. There was rigging all along the blackened wood of the deck and all the sails were draped across the masts, giving them the look of ghosts. There were bodies everywhere, some burned, some crushed by volcanic rock, if the debris was anything to go off of. But some appeared completely untouched. It was as if the horror of what they had seen had robbed them of their will to live. She touched down on the deck without realizing she had moved any closer and walked to one of the bodies. She knew who it was without looking, the red cap and white hair was enough to let her know that her, for all intents and purposes, father, had gone to meet his maker.

She knelt beside him, shaking and sobbing, and saw that he had been stabbed. Not run through, as if by a sword, but stabbed, right in the belly. The wound looked eerily familiar, she knew its cause. Hook had done this. The mad pirate captain had done this to his crew. But why? What was the reasoning? Hook never did anything that wasn't part of a larger plan, usually one to kill Pan admittedly, but still, he had a cold logic and form that he lived by. This went against it entirely.

She sat down, her leggings soaking up what little liquid blood was left on the deck and allowed herself a moment to mourn. She knew she didn't have long, something was coming though she couldn't put a name to it, and she didn't want to be caught unarmed and unprepared when it did. She pulled Smee's head into her lap and gently closed her eyes. His face still held a look of terror and sadness, but it looked less ghastly with his eyes closed. She cradled his head to her chest for a moment and cried, letting down all the barriers she had built against the pain of her life. She let all the disappointment and anger she had felt since coming out of rehab spill out of her eyes, soaking into the shirt of a dead man. Slowly, and painfully, she bared her soul to the dead around her, cleansing it in their blood and pain.

A sound woke her from her saddened reverie and brought her attention to the Captain's Quarters. The door was opening. She was prepared for practically anything, she had seen Hook at some fairly bad times, but she wasn't ready for this. It wasn't Hook. It looked like him, dressed like him, even had his same cold blue eyes, but something wasn't right. It was the smile, Hook never smiled. He smirked and grinned, grimaced and frowned, but never an outright smile like what was plastered on the face of the man standing above her.

There were no words exchanged, no banter or quips. He charged her and she fired the pistol she had pulled from Smee's holster. The bullet buried itself deep into the chest of the charging madman and brought him up short. Sarah watched as he looked down to the now bleeding hole in his chest. She expected him to say something, or to fall, but not the laugh that bubbled up his throat. It sounded subhuman, like a hyena, all high pitched and uncontrolled. She watched as a steady drip of blood ran down his lip and began to drip onto the already stained boards of the deck. His eyes refocused on her and he began to move again, running straight for her, hook raised and ready to tear at whatever part of her it got to first.

She began to back crawl away from him, pulling off something like a crab walk to get over the bodies. The maneuver worked right up until her palm landed on the sharp edge of a sword. She gave a shout and fell, narrowly missing the rest of the blade and held her injured hand to her chest. She didn't have time to react, she couldn't get the sword's hilt loose from it's now deceased owner and he was moving too fast. All she could do was scream as the hook came down at her heart.

Hook was dreaming.

He was in his quarters, but it looked wrong. The lighting was too red. He liked his room to have a golden glow, anything too bright hurt his eyes, but it had never been this copperish before. It was also too quiet. His crew was never this well behaved. It put him on edge immediately. He stood from his desk, laying aside the map he had apparently been looking over. It was a map of Neverland and it was covered almost entirely in red X marks. What did the marks mean? What was he planning? Why couldn't he remember?

His thoughts were shattered by a thunderous booming. It came from the island. The red light intensified to an almost painful level and he found his feet carrying him to the port hole above his bed. The mountain was exploding. He watched as rocks the size of his ship began to rain down on the island. They were red hot and glowing, instantly putting to fire anything they touched. He watched as several ship sized boulders bounced down one side of the island, leaving giant furrows and divets in the forest, catching all the trees ablaze as they rolled down to the beach. He watched as the sad under them became scorched and glassy, the heat crystallizing the sand as the stones slid toward the water.

The steam that rose from them gave the whole scene a ghastly ghost-like quality that sent shivers down his body. He felt a fear he couldn't place. It wasn't danger, he knew his ship would be damaged but they would be spared the majority of the destruction. It was something else, a menace that was closing in on him. It had something to do with the volcano, he knew that much. He had been here for a time longer than the count of years and never once had that mountain so much as rumbled. He had thought it long since dead, so why now? Why was it suddenly so destructively active?

His mind raced as he went over all of the events in the past two months. Sarah had arrived, bringing change and chaos in her wake. She had changed the entire island and those on it. Pan had changed, attacking them all. Perhaps the eruption was just the latest in a string of changes that Sarah had inflicted on all of them. Why had she come? Why hadn't she died on that beach? What pulled her here? Why hadn't she left like all the other Darling women that had visited Neverland's shore? Damn her and her infernal influence! He should have ended her life when he had the chance. It would've been so easy to simply slit her throat as she lay unconscious on his bed.

That thought brought him up short. He was many things, but he was not a man to slaughter an innocent woman in her sleep. Where had that thought come from? He shuddered again, turning without thought to see that a man, no, a fairy was standing behind him. It was the largest of its kind he had ever seen. It was the size of a man and pitch black. The only distinguishable features on the thing were its eyes and the mad, white toothed smile it was directing at him. He pulled his pistol from its holster but never got the chance to shoot as the creature, for it was no fairy, plunged its hand into his chest.

He watched, helpless, as the creature slowly melded with his own body and screamed in futile frustration as he felt it billow into his mind as well. He fought like a Helion to remain in control of himself, but knew that it was fruitless as his hand slowly replaced the pistol. He was a prisoner in his own mind, trapped by a creature as black as the deepest pit of hell. He now knew what had been changing everything. It wasn't Sarah, it was this thing. This demon, Tobias, was a figment of a past lover that she had buried in her mind. Somehow, perhaps in the travelling or her near death on the island, he had been released and had been working in some form or another on the entire island. It was he that was responsible for the eruption of the mountain.

He had been trapped under the island, in the caverns below the mountain where the dreams of children slowly rot, and he had grown strong from them. He had fed on those poor deformed little creatures, dangled them over the quiet fire at the base of the mountain until they screamed and absorbed their fear into a kind of power. It had made him strong, the despair of those piteous babes, forgotten by all save the most evil of creatures, and now he had come in full to Neverland. He would remake it, twist it into a hellish nightmare that would swallow the souls of the children that entered into its boundaries.

Hook found himself cringing away from this creature's intrusive mind. He knew he should fight, that Tobias was planning terrible things with his body, but he couldn't fight it any longer. He felt permanently stained by just the touch of this creature's mind. So he turned away from it. He retreated back into a place in his mind that he knew he would be safe. It sickened him to do it, but for the first time, Hook ran from an enemy. He ran and he hid in the past, in happy memories that this vile thing could never touch. He could still see, could still perceive what was happening, what "he" was doing, but here it was not to raw, not so real. Here, he was a boy again, safe in his mother's arms as his father taught him of honor and good form and how to treat a lady.

He watched, unbelieving as stones the size of melons fell upon his ship. They tore his sails and smashed through his decking. He watched as his men were crushed and burned in an attempt to save the vessel that had consumed their lives. He watched as they called out to him for orders, for aid and he did nothing. He watched as he went through the scattered bodies, ending the lives of those that had been unlucky enough to survive. He wept as he saw his hook disappear into the body of his first mate. He saw the look of sadness and fear on the old man's face as he questioned his captain. His eyes did not ask "why", they merely said "what have I done?". Even in death, Smee was loyal. He had chosen to believe that his death was because of a short coming on his part instead of the clear lunacy of his captain.

Hook felt his heart constrict as the old man fell down dead. His body seemed so small now, so old and feeble. Where once there was the strongest man he ever knew, capable of drinking the whole crew under the table and still fight, now there was just an old man, broken by a hard life the Hook himself had been partially responsible for. Why had he always been so cruel to the old man? Perhaps it was because of his father, all the pressure that he had felt to do well and excel in the Navy. Had he truly hated the man for it? Had he perhaps taken that out on Smee?

He was shaken from his thoughts by the sound of a door closing. He was back in his quarters now, though he did not remember his body moving. He sat in his chair, the muscles of his face straining to erase the smile from his lips. It was useless, this creature inside of him had total control now and all he could do was watch and wait for an opportunity. It came sooner than he thought.

His body did nothing for a while, merely faced the porthole so that the destruction of the island could be seen but then he rose from the chair and, after selecting the most wicked hook he owned, exited his quarters. Sarah was on the deck, holding Smee and sobbing into his beard. The sound was heart breaking to him, but more so the thought that she was going to die and there was nothing he could do about it. He railed against the creature's control, trying every trick he knew to gain control even long enough to warn her off of trusting him. But his girl was smart, she knew him, better perhaps than he knew himself, and she knew he wasn't right. She had been expecting this. He felt himself begin to charge her but was stopped in his tracks as she shot him point blank in the chest. She missed the heart, perhaps that was intentional, but it was enough to give her time to begin moving away from him. He screamed at her in his mind to fly away, he knew she knew how by now, but all the came out of his mouth of a mad cackle and a dribble of blood. Gods, he didn't even sound human!

He watched as she began to back crawl away from him, fear slowly overtaking the anger that had been shining in her eyes. He watched as she fell, her hand bleeding badly from the ragged sword blade she had just put her hand on. It was over, she knew it, but he wasn't going to allow it. She was his woman by gods and only he could kill her. Only the true Hook could end Sarah Darling's life. He screamed in his mind, watching as she struggled to free the sword from Noodler's dead grip. He felt the thrill of happiness from Tobias as he realized she was defenseless. He heard the scream as his hook swung down and answered it with a battle cry or his own as he pushed through the creature's control. He broke free just as his hook sunk into her chest.

It was as if the whole world rushed in to meet him. The pain of his chest wound, closer than he had originally thought, began to radiate through his body and he heard the echoes of his love's screams around him as he pulled his hook free.

"No. Gods no!" He knelt down beside her, holding her to him as she gasped out something. It was too quiet for him to hear over his own keening sobs. He felt her hand, warm and soft on his cheek and looked down at her. She was still beautiful, even bloodied and dying she still managed to be beautiful.

"I'm…sorry. I…I couldn't…wait." She smiled for a moment before blood began to bubble up to her lips, staining them a scarlet that he normally found beautiful. On her it was just ghastly and ugly.

"No. Sarah, you can't. I, oh gods Sarah I love you." He looked down at her, she was gone. She was smiling, her eyes closed as if in sleep. Tears slid down her cheek, mingling with the blood running in a small rivulet from her mouth and dripping into a pool on the decking. They mingled in a beautiful ballet of pale pink and deep crimson that began to swim in his vision as blackness clouded them out. His end was near, he knew it, that shot hadn't been intended to wound and his girl knew how to shoot. He felt his body go slack, falling forward over that of the only woman he had ever loved.

The ground shook under them, waking both. Hook as the first to full consciousness, though his dream had left him shaken. It wasn't until he heard the muffled sobbing that he remembered where he was and who he was with. He turned to see Sarah, naked and shivering on the floor of the tunnel, her shoulders racked with sobs. He felt fear creep into his belly as he remembered his dream. He had seen her like that in it, right before he'd killed her. Surely though, that was just a dream. He was beside her in a second, pulling her to his chest in a rough, almost possessive grip.

Sarah took a moment to enjoy his embrace, even if it wasn't as tender as she would've liked. She reveled in the sound of his heartbeat, strong and steady, though a bit fast and gloried in the feel of his body, warm and alive. She took a few calming breaths and pulled herself out of his embrace.

"Get dressed. There is something down here with us and I would rather not face it unclothed." His voice had returned to its usual gruffness and the moment was broken. She sighed and grabbed her breeches and bra, pulling them on and fastening them. Her leg hurt considerably less now, probably from the time exposed to the air and dryness. The wound had scabbed over entirely now and was no longer leaking plasma. Her shoulder was sore but also on the mend. She looked over at Hook, enjoying the eye full she was getting as he laced himself back into his breeches. Damn that man was fine. He looked up just as her eyes were sliding over his ass and cleared his throat. "While I do appreciate the thought my dear, perhaps we should find our way back to the surface before our next…skirmish." His voice held all manner of promise and it set her skin to tingling almost immediately.

"Oh shut it, you'll have to do a lot more than look good in some pants before I touch you again." She smirked at him as she spoke, her eyes dancing with mischief as she turned. "So, which way, deeper in or back the way we came. Maybe the mermaids will be back." She looked to him, a genuine trust in her eyes that hadn't been there before.

Seeing that in her made his heart flutter. No one had ever trusted him before. It was a foreign feeling, something that made him equal parts happy and nervous. He was completely out of his depth now. He had acknowledged his feelings for her, though not to her face yet, and would have to eventually deal with the fact that he had allowed himself to fall in love. It gave added pressure to his need to protect her. She was his now and he would never allow any harm to come to her.

That thought brought visions of his dream to his mind and must've shown on his face because she was in front of him a moment later. She reached up slowly, giving him plenty of time to pull away as she rested her palm against his cheek. He met her eyes and felt his heart still as the dream washed over him again. This is how she had given her farewell. He pulled away, closing his eyes as the vision of her face, dead and cold, swam into his vision.

"Hook, James, what's wrong?" She put a hand on her hip, the attraction from a moment ago disappearing into her usual irritation. "Seriously man, get a grip, I was just making sure you were alright. You looked murderous there for a second." She laughed, the sound bringing him back to the present and giving him something to ground himself in. She wasn't dead, he hadn't done any of that horrid stuff to his crew and it would not come to be. Not like the other times.

"I am well, and I think we should return to the beach." He turned, not catching her eye this time, and began to march back up the corridor. He didn't see the man sized shadow creep up behind them, red eyes flashing as a white toothed grin spread across a pitch black, featureless face.

Hey guys, thanks for reading the chapter. Sorry again for the long delay. I'm gonna write the next chapter tomorrow hopefully so you guys can have something to read while I figure out the rest of the plot lol.