SINNER MAN PART THE SECOND
In a maddening if unsurprising turn, it only took about a day to make it back to Neverland. The heroes' less than triumphant return.
The island came into sight suddenly, cutting quick and green through the fog. The sight made Hook's stomach turn. His home, Limbo, Hell. With Wendy here, he saw his circumstance with new eyes. And he was not pleased.
The girl herself, seemingly only exhausted in body rather than spirit, wanted to excuse herself to the cabin soon after they weighed anchor.
"We must discuss our next movements," she said. "And I must choose a proper cutlass!"
"Ah. So you will be the one to send the monster to the depths, then?"
"Not without a proper sword, I won't."
She placed a hand on his shoulder before she left, and he returned a smile. There was no reason she should know how empty he felt, after that trip into oblivion. He might spare her that pain. It wasn't as though she wouldn't be as low as he in time.
Too long on the island would do that. One never found any danger that wasn't already lurking within. And it did bring out the most terrible in people.
After she left, he turned back to contemplate the Neverland. Hook wondered afresh what folly precisely it had been to bring the Storyteller here, for himself.
His story--a different sort of story than she usually told, he knew. Song for a sinner. There were so many slimy little shameful gullies of human nature she could never know. So much evil appeased, lusts gratified--moral principle become idle fancy become memory. But this was never how it was supposed to be, he didn't think. Never ever. Never-never!
Hook knew, he was supposed to have a story fit for a proper young lady to tell. Here: Once upon a time, he was beautiful and beloved. Blue-eyed boy. A veritable prince. Favored by man and woman alike. A man with a future instead of a past.
And now he had neither.
Sea-dark wine, and wine-dark sea.
See.
All Hook knew now was the black damned present, forever pursued by time.
And time here was eternity. Tick-tock, tick-tock.
(Hook's afraid of an old dead clock.)
He had wanted new life, he remembered that much. To escape, and begin again. To never see them again.
Not anymore. Now all he wanted was an end to the story. A real end, the road to dusty death--this truth he would spare the girl. Sinner man. The things he had done, those perfect precious things he had lost, what he would never have or be again! And now not even death would give him rest. Just a new start on hell.
So to kill the crocodile? Why not? There was nothing else to do. A child's folly, anyway.
Hook walked slowly back to his cabin, listened to the fall of his heeled boots. He paused at the door. His nameplate, the shiny gold. Capt. Jas. Hook. Not his real name.
He must speak to Wendy, to warn her at least.
His hand on the door, he remembered, hatefully, the last woman's heart he had broken. Then he pushed the door open.
The captain found Wendy at the vanity, brushing out her own honey-brown hair with his comb, rearranging it back in her pirate's coiffe. She did nothing to acknowledge his entrance but smile into the mirror, so used were they to each other's company .
He gave a nod at her reflection, and went over to the drinks cabinet. Poured himself some wine. He knew there were many ways to drown oneself.
(The sea, it won't take you.)
Hook returned to the table to finish a second glass. Some propriety had to be observed, after all. Good form. Perhaps she might note that he was drinking from the glass instead of the bottle, and wine instead of rum--the bottle of harder spirit being his companion on most nights. Along with Smee, he amended.
Wendy finished with her ablutions and with a gentle clatter of accessories closed the drawer he had set aside for her. She pulled a chair over to his table herself, without waiting to be proffered one. It was an encouraging sign, that she was coming into her own. Losing the irritating trappings of both helpless child and worthlessly trained society woman. Becoming an equal, or at least becoming less frightened of him.
If she ever was indeed frightened of him. Why he felt encouraged by these developments, he thought, only God knew. Or His old enemy.
Wendy only waved away his offer of imbibement. While she never vocally disapproved of his sailor's thirst, she never joined him, either. Instead the young woman placed her chin on intertwined fingers, eyes bright as pixies staring up.
"I must admit, I am quite looking forward to this next chapter. You see, I feel we must make at least a token attempt to slay the monster. For form's sake, at least," she said.
And what did she know of form! He hid his sneer behind another sip. "Which is an intriguing thought, of course, but I thought I would tell you now: the crocodile cannot be killed."
Wendy gave a thoughtful pout. "Which intrigues me. Can anything die on this island?"
"Of course it can die. It just can't leave."
Beautiful eyes not so bright now. "So...you mean it will return, even if destroyed?"
"Oh, good heavens, lass. I could not tell with any certainty. Perhaps not as a crocodile. Perhaps...as a nightmare. A hurricane. Perhaps as a little boy. Who can say?" Hook was aware he was being needlessly unpleasant...but. Even thinking of the beast sickened him. Disgusted him. Made him upset. Made him so sad.
He had been so sad for so long, and utterly impotent to find solace.
"You must have tried a very many times, I realize," she said, but he cut her off. Gentle man.
"You presume too much," he said, "too much, I think." This is what he said, and indeed he said it harshly! but he wanted to say so much more.
Oh Wendy, he wished he could say, to make her understand. If you only knew how terrible it was. How it would cut and kill and destroy you, such a lovely thing, to become a bull tortured in a bull ring, the longest death of a thousand cuts. It takes you bit by bit. Innocence. Happiness. Hand. Heart. Soul. You know how the rest goes. It is an old song.
Oh Wendy, he wanted to say, to well and truly break her heart. If only you knew how terrified I am, and me, the most terrible of all! How it freezes me, how it bleeds me. How it was all the fires of hell, the river Styx itself in its dark maw. How there was no comfort in being enveloped. Slimy skin and yellow eyes. Like it was decaying. It was decay. It was entropy, it was evil, it was loneliness.
He wanted to express to her how hell was such a very cold place after all.
Oh Wendy. Oh, friend. Oh, darling.
But instead he looked into this woman's eyes, the soothing grey, and hated her for being beautiful and young and free, and he could not continue with his monster story. His ghost story.
What he knew she must come to understand--the real monsters are never under the bed, or under the sea. They are much more clever than all that.
He was much more clever than all that.
Instead he continued. "That is, I determined long ago that it was fruitless and ended only in death."
Still he felt cruel, he was upset, and it was sweet as lies to be joined in his pain. He leaned forward. "Now there's a thought! What a chapter for your story! Would you like to die, my dear? It is, after all, an awfully big adventure. Is that what this is about? Some glorious...climax?" He let his mouth linger around the word perhaps a little longer than was necessary, and certainly longer than was proper.
Wendy bit her lip and glared, but was unruffled. She really did have preternatural poise, he was coming to realize. "Very well, Captain, do try to frighten me. If it does indeed give you pleasure. But I believe I was recruited onto this ship for my prodigious storytelling skills, and especially my superb understanding of narrative convention." Flat affect. She almost sounded bored. Certainly not frightened, or even unsettled.
"And only to help a poor broken sinner, of course." How childish of him!
She smiled at the poor broken sinner, a devilish half-smile that had quite come into its own as of late. How he wanted, more and more as of late, to possess it for himself. "And of course, to find the next chapter in my own story."
He would not be soothed, even by bewitching smiles. He wondered if he could make time to find some Lost Boys to shoot, and remembered with a pang of disappointment that they had not yet reappeared.
Blast.
"Perhaps we did not sail far enough..." he said.
"You are frightened," Wendy said, as if amazed. She immediately looked like she regretted the sentiment.
"And you of all people should know why," Hook said quietly. Dangerously. "You've told so many stories, you seem to know all, and yet you offer me nothing.
"Oh Captain. I don't even know my own story right now," Wendy said sadly.
"And I have lost mine," he confided. "It's amazing how one loses certainty the more experience one acquires. All one is left with is scraps, and scars, and bits of--never mind. At this point, I don't even remember what I was trying to forget, which is a sort of triumph, I suppose. And yet here I am."
"All right," Wendy said, "so you don't remember. Perhaps we have to conquer what is so terrifying?"
"You do not seem to understand, you of all people! You cannot conquer the crocodile. It is...like I said. Death, despair, entropy, it is the inevitable force of things we do not understand and cannot control. It is time. It is pain. It is betrayal. It is every mistake you've ever made. Every sin. It is regret."
"And it will always pursues you, even outside the Neverland. It's just that here, it has been given form."
A smile. "Well then! We should be rejoicing, it has given us a body at which to aim our guns. All the more reason to try!" Wendy said. "Hook...that is, James," she said more softly, and reached across to put his wine glass down, grab his hand, and hold it. Not hard, not aggressively, but affectionately.
Although hand-holding was entirely discouraged behavior for a cabin-boy, Hook was enchanted, and decided promptly to not mention the breach of etiquette.
"Wendy," he said.
"I know you have a dread fear of the crocodile," and when he then tried to pull away in protest, she held him fast. "And I am only beginning to understand it. But a story is no story unless all the obvious avenues are explored. And this is the most obvious avenue."
"It will end in death, Miss Darling."
"Yours? You might welcome it, I daresay. Mine? Hook, you would never let such a thing happen to me."
"Are you sure? I've tried to kill you before, you know."
"And failed, might I remind you."
"This is true. What will you do if I manage to die, and leave you here all alone?"
"Why, Captain, I hope it is not too forward to suggest that I would happily step into your empty position as Captain Jill, Scourge of the Seven Seas?"
"Not at all, I was going to suggest it myself." He twisted his hand, so he was the one holding hers, and raised it against his cheek. "I do rather prefer James."
She smiled, so open and delighted and strong, that it was then that James Hook fell in love slightly.
Of course he would not handle it well.
**********
It was never difficult to find the crocodile. All one had to do is stay in one place long enough. Maybe remember. Maybe regret.
In the Neverland, as in the real world, it is never enough to just tread water.
By now rising and preparing for the day together was a comfortable ritual. After breakfast, they had briefly discussed a sort of battle plan, as it were.
He explained how he thought it would go: cannons and guns and steel. The crocodile would attack and they would parry. He explained what parts of the ship she would be most useful, with her sharp eyes, and also which would be safest. Wendy showed a certain keenness that Hook found heartwarming, but this could have been evidence of his new and inexplicable regard for her.
It could not be denied that what she lacked in proficiency in naval warfare she more than made up for in audacity and enthusiasm. He suggested a more cautious approach, to come in contact as little with the crocodile, she wanted to go in cannons blazing.
They agreed in the end to try it her way. It was her smile, he thought later, that did it, and rather marveled at the fact that such an inconsequential thing could still have an effect on him, as it once had.
The men would not be so charmed, and were quite vocal in their disapproval of the day's venture.
"It will kill us!" they cried.
"It will eat us!"
"It will tear the ship in two!"
"It will tear us in threes and fours!"
"And I will do worse," Hook growled, or started to, before Wendy standing strong before the mast drowned him out.
"But men!" she cried. "What if I told you the story of Cinderella first?"
"Not a soppy girl's story!" one scoffed.
Wendy scoffed right back. "And what is soppy about Cinderella? Have you forgotten the cowboys? And the pirates? The centaurs?"
From the looks on their faces, they had.
She put her hands on her waist. "The blood pact most foul, that almost undoes the whole matter?"
The young woman was a wonder. The men were utterly hers to do as she wished with. And it must be said that her agreeable additions quite improved the usual listless narrative.
After the tale was told they waited together, Wendy and Hook, at the railing, side by side. The wind was brisk, salt spray occasionally reaching the deck. Wendy's face was unreadable. Hook fancied his expression was as well.
All they had to do, he had instructed her, was wait--and think, and remember. Really contemplate your life, and everything that you had done wrong. Everything wrong and terrible. All the roses left to rot.
Think of your life.
A man of feeling--o man unfathomable!
He turned to her. "I do not require your assistance, in this..." he said. "I am quite enough of a lure for the crocodile alone. Besides which, I cannot imagine such a young woman has many regrets."
She looked up at him sharply, the stormy sadness in her grey eyes taking him back. "And what do you know of me, Captain, other than I am a pretty young Storyteller?." Ah. Evidently his more untoward attentions had not gone unnoticed. "You know nothing of any pain I might have. You have been alone too long." With that, she turned back toward the sea, and was silent.
Remember before, his other life, his real life, when it was bright, and he was loved. And then he failed. He wasn't brave enough. He couldn't do it, he couldn't love them as they deserved. The woman. The golden boy, of before. He could never be what any of them wanted him to be. He had run away. He had escaped.
It wasn't supposed to be like this. It was never supposed to be like this. Oh no no no no no.
The light dimmed, the air thinned. The nauseating purple green of the tornado. How the salt air smelled almost like blood.
It would all engulf him soon enough.
The children--and the Indians, and the mermaids--laughed at his fear of the crocodile. Even his men, he knew, did not completely understand his complete dehumanizing dread, although they were careful to disguise their thoughts. As much as they could, deceit was beyond their limited capabilities.
Oh but they didn't know. It was her eyes, it was his eyes, it was the red and tears in his own. It was the years that overcome. It was everything terrible and lonely.
He was so very trapped, and he ran away to make it better. Of course it did not get better. Everything was even more hopeless than before.
And where would he run to now? There was no place left!
Salt tears.
It was very dark, then. Way beyond nightfall, the sort of nauseating nightmare greenishness giving Hook and Wendy's pale skin a waxy luminescence. The wind picked up, whipping plastering their hair painful against their pale faces. Hook put out a proprietary arm out against Wendy's back, reflexively. Like it could do any good.
There was a break in the waves before them. A different sort of texture. Scales and skin, not chop and foam.
(Because he would not be betrayed first, by anyone. Not again. Not ever again. And her, with her perfect--)
It slithered, it writhed, ocean water briny slime. Stuck to its scales like all disgust. Every regret. The red in its eyes reflect his own. Despair like the black bile it swam in.
See it slither. The senseless denouement. And wasn't it all?
And oh see its teeth. Feel the blind white panic.
Project your own darkness.
(Where are you going to run to? Where are you going to run to, now?)
It hissed, it heaved. It closed in.
Hook froze, which was not part of the battle plan. The men around looked to him, worried, expectant. They were only affected by the size of the beast, not the accompanying wash of feeling. Perhaps they had never had anything to haunt them. And while James himself had maybe forgotten the exact form and function he had not forgotten the pain itself.
Our man of feeling!
"To your posts, men," Wendy cried out. She was not incapacitated. "Or be devoured as well! To it! Go! GO!"
They knew by now to listen to the girl.
She turned back. "James," Wendy said. She was terrified, wide eyed and thin lipped. He supposed later he must have seemed alien, awash in such terror. But she stayed by his side and did not cry out. She trusted him.
"Wendy," he said, before he felt the very rictus on his face and body and shook himself out of it. At least barely. Enough to turn and yell.
"Kill it!" he cried--let us not say shrieked--to his men. "Kill it, blast ye, kill it!" He was not hysterical. Not quite.
The men knew this song. The only changed lyric was the Wendy. They sprang into action, relieved at least at the release of all the tension of waiting--a coiled spring.
Tick-tock tick-tock. Men at the sails, men at the cannons, all were shouting. They ran up and down the black deck as if possessed, the very ground churning under them as the crocodile stirred the sea.
The ship lurched as the reptile drew up against the side, teasing. Hook had his footing, but Wendy almost stumbled. Almost. In time she would make a better pirate than he.
"What can we--" she starts.
"Hope the cannons strike true," he said. "Take up your gun."
She obeyed, pale, lips pressed to a line. He had already reviewed with her how to use the gun. Of course, with an animal of that size she did not need to be an excellent marksman. Other men had been similarly instructed. Aim for the mouth and eyes. Any vulnerable spots you could find.
Of course if Hook was right--and he knew he was--then the creature had no vulnerable spots.
Cannon fire; deafening. Hook could follow the progress of the crocodile round the ship not only from the way the boat is lurching, but from which of the Jolly Roger's cannons was firing. Of course every few moments a crewman would get overexcited and shoot at a shadow, but that was only to be expected.
The cannon fire died down, and the ship stopped lurching. The air smelled of salt and gunpowder and terror, all sharp. Hook and Wendy found themselves on the starboard side, some yards apart, daring a look into the water.
Nothing.
The beast had either left, or merely dove down under.
Captain Hook was not looking forward to dying again. It did not even provide the smallest amount of relief anymore. All he was sometimes was a wounded animal. His hand--his hand! And what else!
Yet what he was looking forward to even less was losing his Wendy. His woman.
In the stillness, the only sound was the flap of the sails and the eerie groan of the ship.
Then a splash, a roar, a scream of shattered wood.
Before Hook and Wendy, rose the monster. Its mouth was agape, smiling at them.
Everything seemed for one perfect moment to be still. Hook saw the monster hang in midair, lunge towards him--
No--not to him. To Wendy, with her pale little cutlass and useless gun and perfect face and sad little heart.
Tick-tock, tick-tock.
She screamed, and time started again.
The crocodile snapped, missing the girl. The head landed on the side of the ship, pulling it over and down with its extraordinary weight. Wendy fell to the deck from the impact. Hook managed to keep his footing. He heard the cries and splashes of men falling overboard.
It seemed to open its mouth even wider. Its death smile, its death head. The shape of its skull.
The shape of her skull!
Oh Wendy.
Oh my darling, the thoughts rushed, the memories started. It's gone all wrong again.
Take me instead
not my
pure girl
My girl.
Oh my!
He leapt for her, wanting to throw her out of the way, although he knew it was death. But the villain froze. Again. This was what he could not bear. He only joined her--he could not sem to make the extra leap and save her.
Clocks can wait. Time would take her, anyway.
(His boy had blue eyes too, though hers were dark. He had been so pleased.)
It was Wendy who gave an inhuman shriek, and plunged the cutlass into the crocodile's mouth even as the Captain came to his senses and pulled her away.
The crocodile groaned, and sank back into the depths, taking a good portion of the deck with it.
The pirates had landed out of harm's way, but only barely. The men clustered around them, until Hook yelled at them to disperse and for god's sake get them aground.
They obeyed. It wouldn't be too difficult. The ocean was quiet now, the waves lapping softly.
Wendy had tears in her eyes and was taking shuddering little breaths, but did not appear unduly upset.
"Is it gone?" she asked.
"Yes."
"Will it come back?"
"Not for a while."
"It didn't even bleed. Did it? I don't think it bled."
"It can't."
Smee, who was much more practical than Hook about the emotional capacities of young women unused to such mortal terror, came over. With a nod to his Captain, he helped Wendy up and bundled them both off to the cabin, and made himself useful.
Hook was quite used to Smee's mothering ways and accepted his drinking chocolate without a word. Wendy, however, thanked the mate profusely, and was rewarded with a flush of embarrassed pleasure.
"My pleasure, Miss," Smee said, bowing. "Is there anything else ye'd like? Some more blankets? Biscuits? Cigar?"
"Out, Smee," Hook ordered. Perhaps a little sharply. The man obeyed.
Hook and Wendy were left alone.
"Well!" Hook said. "I hope you are quite pleased with the day's exertions? My ship destroyed, my crew demoralized. Is that what you thought was to happen? The whims of a Storyteller are cruel indeed?
He could not help but be snide. He was pleased they were both alive, to be sure, but it did not change the fact that they would be incapacitated for some time. And all for the precious whims of a precious girl who thought she knew just everything!
Wendy did not seem to hear him. She was staring wide and furious off into middle distance, which is never exactly a harbinger of a sound and untroubled mind.
"It didn't bleed, James!," she hissed. "It didn't bleed or even act hurt! You were right! You were right and I should have listened! And it cannot die!"
Now she did focus on him. "Perhaps...perhaps I am cursed now, like you. Perhaps in escaping from that dreary quotidian existence I am also condemned to...to...this purgatory of the mind!"
Her normally sweet face was darkened with anger. "And--you knew this! You knew this could happen. How dare you!"
She stood up, putting her now-cool chocolate aside. "How dare you steal me here. How dare he keep me here!"
Hook only sneered and sipped his drink as she railed on. He noticed his chocolate was warmed with brandy, and rather wondered about Wendy's. She would feel better after an outburst. He always did.
When she slowed down, he set down his mug and stood. "Do not play the innocent; you are ill-suited for the role now. You knew full well the consequences. I warned you. And after all," he smiled mirthlessly, "you remember the mermaids! Those dark ladies did say the crocodile would devour us both."
She had no answer, for he was correct. "Evil lost man," she finally said. "I should have known."
He gave an ironic bow. "I am, as ever, the villain in my own story. Perhaps you are too, darling Wendy."
She did not say anything, just stood and shivered. It occurred to him that she was still cold, and from the looks of it, quite damp. The wet was still clinging to her form. It was so hard to remember the little girl she once was.
He would stop trying.
Hook realized there was a completely beautiful and completely devastated young woman before him and felt some conflicting urges--to corrupt and protect. Fortunately he did not have choose, because in one action he could indulge both.
He let his face melt into warmth, with just the right hint of melancholy. Never mind if it reflected any actual feeling.
"Come here," he said, holding out an arm. The one with the hand. He said it so softly, so gently, with such concern and sadness in his eyes. Entrancing, he knows too well.
She jerked toward him, uncertain, put a hand out in front of her. He closed the distance, expertly, his arms round her chastely, if a little tighter than necessary.
Any port in a storm.
"There, there," he said, with that little drop of poison distilled in his very own heart, from his very own tears. It was deadly--most deadly, in fact, to lost girls. "My girl. It is all right. It will be all right. There is no need to be frightened--"
It was as if he had stabbed her. She pushed away from him as if he had run a knife through her breast.
"Frightened!" she said in disbelief. "Frightened! Me!" she said with blistering contempt. "I cannot believe--oh!--"
Wendy Darling turned and ran out the door, leaving a very baffled Captain Hook.
He found her on the deck, of course, although he was worried he'd have to climb into the rigging or search the rowboats for her.
"There you are," he said, neutral, as if nothing had just passed between them.
"Of course I am," she said dully. "There is nowhere else to go. You know this, Hook. There is nowhere to run to. Nowhere to go home to. Home is just a memory and now all I have is sea and sand. Her past is just a story she knows by heart--and more and more of the details are slipping."
"It will pass," the Captain lied. "We will find a way to get you home."
"Oh Hook!" she said, and turned to him. "It is as I said before! My heart is forever heavy and I cannot fly. I know you are the same. And I cannot determine why we are caught here, together." The pain was beginning to show through, the usual bloom in her youthful face drawn and desperate.
She could be as ruined as he in time.
It was he who had to look away. "Yes. I see no way you can escape, now. I am sorry." And he was.
He approached her again. At his first footfall she turned, with cutlass and sneer.
"Vile, sinister man," she spat. "Come no further!"
The sword pressed against his cravat, the sharp point threatening his skin. He felt real pain, and saw real anger in her eyes, and both delighted him. He gave his best pirate smile.
"Sad, foolish woman," he said. "Run me through, if you dare!"
A moment, fraught. Hook gratified his imagination in imagining his grisly death at the hands of a beautiful woman.
"I cannot," she said finally, although she did not lower the blade. "For you see I feel my story is inexplicably intertwined with yours, Captain."
"How does it end?"
"I...do not know."
"Poorly, I suppose. The crocodile has a taste of your blood too, after all."
"I will not give in."
"I will not let you."
"And yet all we have is sea and sand. And...each other," she said. She lowered the blade, dropped it with a clatter clang at her side, and stepped closer.
"Look at me," Wendy said. And her face was so intent and inscrutable. She put out her right hand against his cheek. Her hand was smooth and warm, against the chill. Her eyes were so fierce he might have have mistook her expression for anger.
"I think I shall give you...a kiss," she said.
He did not put out his hand. That is, not to receive something. Instead he pulled her closer.
"I would welcome such a gift."
Her wicked half smile. "Oh! So you are not going to laugh, and say, how like a girl?"
Hook quite ignored her insouciance. He pulled her very tight, possessive with his hooked arm, so that she gave a little gasp. His eyes not meeting hers but on her face, intent like before, his mouth unsmiling except the cruelty at the corner of his mouth. He held her face as he had when she was but a prettier sort of child bound to the mast, harshly, and ran his thumb again over her soft lips--
(There's always room for a storyteller.)
--"You do not know what you ask."
"I know more than you think," she whispered low and just as harsh, and he believed her.
Wendy leaned in, and pressed her lips to his. It was all he could do to hold himself back, and to merely accept what was given and take nothing for himself.
It was the sweetest kiss he could remember.
She pulled back. "You were in my stories long before I was ever in yours."
The men were nowhere to be found as they returned to their cabin. Generally they had a good instinct for this sort of thing.
The young woman preceded him into the room. Luxe darkness, sinking into the velvets, dripping into corners like honey. Smee, having an even finer honed instinct then the men, had cleared their dishes and made himself scarce.
Wendy lit the candles herself, with what lucifers remained.
She turned to him, appearing slightly agitated. "Captain," she said. "I feel we must make more permanent arrangements for myself than the cabin boy's effects."
He sat on the chaise longue, not near enough to frighten or suggest. "Oh yes? I can hardly put you with the crew, I think. What a way to treat a lady."
"Quite. But perhaps for tonight, if we both promised to comport ourselves, I might sleep here in the bed?" Her hand was on the main bed. His bed.
He raised an eyebrow, and could not stop his eyes from briefly raking her body and considering certain possibilities--
But some better part of him knew how frightened she was, however much she demurred.
"Of course," he said, in his same deferential tone. He had dried her tears before, years ago. He could certainly do so again.
She only nodded, with a curt little smile, and proceeded to remove her jacket and shoes, and nothing else. She slipped between the covers and watched him, a daring sort of look on her face.
His pirate girl.
"My good lady--I am at your command."
Without looking at her, although he could feel her eyes on him, he removed his own shoes and jacket. Because she did not know what she was asking, and he was not so corrupt as all that, he stayed above the blankets. Because he was cruel, he leaned across her to blow out the candle.
She only laughed, and turned on her side to face him after he settled himself. It was dark, and he could only see little glitters off her open eyes and teeth, and then only briefly. But he felt her take his prone right arm, hook and all, and entertwine her own arm with it. Carelessly, affectionately, as if he were a pillow or stuffed bear. He twitched--his hook--but she held fast.
It was the most touching gesture he had experienced in so long. It was the first time he had such a beautiful woman in his bed for so long.
This would only grow more difficult, he knew.
Wendy fell asleep quickly, leaving Hook very, very much alone in the dark.
This was all proceeding very fast, and very dark.
There would be nowhere to run to soon.
(Sinnerman--where will you run to?
The sea, it rages!
The grave will not hold you, the sea will not have you--where will you escape to now?)
A/N
Okay. Look. Let's be real:
I quote the Spielberg Hook in this.
Gah.
Let's still be friends.
(Also reference de Sade, if you can find him. Hooray!)
As usual, sorry it took so long to update, but this is the length of like three normal chapters if that makes up for anything. We have definitely rounded the corner of the narrative, and I hope to have this finished by the end of this year, especially since I'll be moving back to Utah and starting school again come January.
I hope this chapter didn't get too bogged down in my elaborate mental mythology of the Neverland--that is, I hope you enjoyed it!
If you did or didn't, let me know! I want to make the best story possible.
Love always,
Dollfayce