BEAUTY (The Sea)
Second star to the right, and straight on til morning. She repeated this mantra. It could be the way home.
He had found himself a Wendy, and lost her all the same. Of course he could not bear it.
The captain did not watch her leave—he would not indulge either one of them--but pointedly went to the other side of the deck, and waited. The cabin would be truly unbearable. He would stay here. Until the Neverland erased all. Until his own mind would erase her. He waited for some time, before it seemed his breathing became strangely difficult.
Hook was a proud man but he knew when he was bested. There was nothing left for him here, on this ship, in this land, in this limbo forever, even if he waited for the end of existence. The ship's wood creaked sickly, the waves lapped tepid. The air dust in lungs. Even the very sky seemed dead, and all on the horizon was abyss.
His ever-damned present.
And damn that girl for leaving him. Damn her to the same hell he knew so very well. He should have torn her to pieces on sight. He should have taken her, and made her love him, and ripped her heart out all the same. He should never have let her go alone. He should never have let him leave her.
He should—but nothing else came, only blue eyes gazing at blue infinite. Oh man unfathomable, indeed.
She sought the mermaids, and resisted their call, their temptation of eternal death. They only told her what she already knew to be true, which is all oracles do anyway. She said goodbye to childhood, in the form of red and blue flowers on the fairy golds and greens of the Wendy-House. Peter was nowhere to be found. She did not expect him to be. She was glad he was not.
He would take to sea, to seek his End. With or without her. For she would surely not return to this forsaken place.
The gentlemanly thing to do, Hook realized, would be to say farewell to Smee. No sooner was this decision made, that Smee appeared, a prescience testament to the loving centuries the Irishman had dedicated to his willful Captain.
As Hook gave what he believed was a very pretty speech, full of camaraderie and brotherly spirit while keeping at the forefront a proper awareness of the huge gulf in superiority between them, he noticed something distracting:
The small man was not listening at all, and was sporting the same expression sported for most of his Captain's drunken tirades.
Hook was rather affronted, especially given his very delicate emotional state, and said as much.
"Perhaps you do not even remember England," he sneered, "But I--"
"Oh, I remember England, Capn'," he said affably. "Popped by again some weeks back. Try to keep up with the grandchildren, and all that."
Smee had never come so very close to being disemboweled.
"Ah?" was all Hook managed to choke out. "And—ah--why was I not afforded the same privilege?"
"I've invited you," Smee said, a reproach in his voice if there ever was one. "You always laugh, and say something rude about the missus, or m'daughter, or--"
"Quite, quite," Hook said. "You are not answering my question. How is it you can return to England, and I cannot—at least not for any length of time?"
"I'm not sure I understand, sir."
"Try," the captain growled.
"Well, you can always go home. But, Cap'n, this is always your home. Why d'you think you kept coming back?"
Hook opened his mouth, but could not form a response. He looked sadly at his mate. "Farewell, Smee," he finally said. "Perhaps I shall meet you in England someday."
Smee nodded, and smiled, and went about his duties quite untroubled. Hook rather suspected this was not the first dramatic farewell he had performed for poor Mr. Smee.
It would be the last, however. He would make sure of it. This time.
She made her way, finally, to the Black Castle. Follow me, she whispers across the water. Follow me, please.
Hook set off alone on the black water, did not look back at his splintered leviathan of a ship. Perhaps he would see it again. Perhaps not. He rowed himself, out onto the waves, which rise and fall in shuddering breaths. All else was ash. He finally knew what the Neverland looked like when fires went out.
And for one of the first time in James Hook's life, he is not running from, but only to.
His heart beat faster when his boat pierced into the mermaid grotto—but the young woman was nowhere immediately in sight. Further investigation proved Wendy was not at the grotto at all. He beached the boat, walked around to make sure, called her name. He didn't really expect her to be there—he rather doubted she had talked to the mermaids at all, damned slippery sylphs. They would only drown her.
Which was a rather terrifying thought indeed.
But she could not be drowned. She could not. Because oh, what would happen then? What could happen then?
Other than a very determined massacre of merfolk, that is.
The air had grown chill. Hook cursed, floridly, but made no other concession to the cold. He knew better than to try to call the mermaids, both as murderer and man. Instead he looked up, and around, desperate, at the winter trees, as if seeking her.
He found something else.
A quite peculiar phenomenon was developing in the sky—everything was thin and growing thinner. A distinct lessening of the atmosphere, the threat of encroaching stars even in the daytime sky. Boundaries shifting. Borders fading. The subliminal becoming liminal.
Soon, he felt, if this kept up he would be surrounded by only stars. Too much, too far—the unfeeling vertiginous beyond.
An ultimate dissolution.
The pirate shivered involuntarily, and caught his breath, and reached his hand out to the rocks for some concrete support. He did not remember this ever happening before. Which is not to say it never had. But, now, it did not seem to bode anything but evil.
Which only meant--The Black Castle.
If he moored the rowboat upon arrival, it was only out of dumb habit, for he was not contemplating return. And nothing at all could describe his feelings as he bounded up the stairs to the ledge he somehow knew she would be on--
He burst forth as before, blade and hook raised. Sharp eyes and sharp blades. All edges, in this border place. And although they are not up high and the day is not cold there is something precipitous--in every sense. It loomed. The first breath of a sigh. The gasp without the exhalation.
The wind, usually so fierce and unrelenting up here, was curiously still. The eye of the storm, as it were.
She was there, waiting for him, and she smiled. She sat on the very edge, dress spread all about her. Sea-spray, a sleek mermaid body underneath.
He imagined she was teetering on the edge of a cliff, and without breaking his stride lowered the weapon he can lower, and went to her side.
She seemed so very much older and yet ageless. Perfect. And he was not so ruined as he thought.
"James," Wendy said, and smiled.
"That is, Captain Hook," she modified, archly. "Could you not wait for my return?"
"Wendy Darling," he said, even more haughty. "What good fortune I should arrive, as you shall surely fall to your death perched there. These rocks are treacherous."
"I am quite safe," she said, and stayed right where she was. "And we are right where we need to be. Here—join me." She settled him across from her.
"And did you--"
"This is where I first saw you, you know," she interrupted. "First saw you with my very own eyes, when I was young."
Hook said nothing, his lip curled and eyes hooded. "Then let us leave this place."
"And how beautiful you were, to me, even then."
"Brave girl!"
She laughed. "Foolish girl, you mean, and my ruined man, brought low by his own stubbornness and pride and fear. My morning star, with the red pooled poison in his eyes!"
"I never said I was anything but." He felt a surge of hate, and bile. How could he have imagined this girl could care for him.? Even mere weeks past, he would have embraced this hatred, and since he was attractive, and he was charming, and he knew how to touch a woman even with one hand and, yes, even with a hook—it would have gone badly for her in the end, and perhaps some day a century from now he might even have stopped thinking of her.
But much had happened since Wendy's arrival, and Hook would not have her harmed, even by his own hand.
He stood.
"Perhaps it is fitting, then, that now will be the last time you see me. I trust from your cheer that your conversation with the mermaids went well?"
(It is always good form to be courteous.)
She stood, too. A white shade. An obviously exasperated shade. "Hook, we shall never be free of one another, if that is what you are wishing! And good luck for it too, as the crocodile is on its way already.
Hook blanched, before he could process the entire meaning. "Then your conversation must have gone very ill indeed."
"No," she said, "for I have found our escape."
"The crocodile is coming?" he said.
"Yes. I have already called it."
"You said you were seeking our end," he said. "But I could have given you this death, myself."
"Oh Hook!" she cried. "Oh, James, now who is foolish. There is no end. There is no growing up and staying that one way forever. There is only what happens next!"
"The crocodile is coming?" he repeated.
"Yes, James," she said sadly. "It's the only way."
Hook could not countenance this, this violent death as viable solution. For himself, yes, but never his misguided Jill. "I shall lure it away," he said, scarcely believing the words himself. Smee would be pleased to see him again, he thought darkly. And he could use the rest.
Wendy looked even more sad than before. "This heroism! No, it cannot be lured away, for I have called it myself, with my own fears." She smiled. "I am part of your precious Neverland, after all."
"And shall you conquer it as well?" he scoffed, icy disbelief all over his face.
"We shall. Unfortunately, James, this is just the beginning." She reached out for him. "You were already dead. Come to life again."
Unbidden image--His little boy with blue eyes. His woman. Life lost forever.
"But Wendy," he whispered. "The world is not kind to an adventuress, and stories rarely have a happy ending."
"They do," she said. "You always just stopped at the wrong time. Like here. But there is always a next chapter. You think your story ended with Pan's last victory? Then when did it begin? Your birth? Your death? The first time you kissed a woman? When you lost your hand?"
She softly took his hook, and held it safe and close against her breast, and continued.
"And myself--did my own story start the day Pan flew in the window? Or when I told stories on my own? Or when I first dreamed of you? Did it end when I returned home, am I forever a little girl? Is my own story irrevocably intertwined with that little-boy spirit who shall never know love? Or do you see me right here, before you now?
"It is too late, I say. There is no going back or going on. Not for me. Wendy—you do not know--I lost my love. I lost my child. I lost my hand. My memory. My life. Oh—oh Wendy." Tears, albeit only a few, ran down his face. "I've lost everything. I've lost everything. Even myself."
"And here, where all denizens are lost and Lost—even myself, my darling Captain—have you found me. Have I found you."
He looked at her, and calmed himself. "That I have. And for this I would die again, I suppose. But not you—you--"
She smiles an almost-cruel smile. "Where would I be, Hook, without my story? Even more lost."
He smiled his own almost-cruel smile. "I suppose that you are correct. Where is the adventuress without her adventure? And I am all that and more, and I love you so much. Without me, you never will find someone in blood and black and scarlet and gold, will you? You will return to either marry a pallid watered-down man or not, it doesn't mater really, for watch you grow colder and older and more and more faded, til you are but evening frost, all your fire gone."
At this Wendy's face went blank, and Hook knew he spoke the truth.
Hook could see, suddenly, very clearly, a future Wendy sad with war and loss, and without him. He could not bear it. He pulled her close. "I would give you a kiss," he said, his eyebrows raised, eyes narrowed lazily, as detached and ironic as if he were but issuing the merest order. "I would kiss you."
Wendy's expression could still not be read, and she looked up into the sky. Hook followed suit, and what they both saw was forever.
The sky seemed so very close now—or rather, so very far. Although it was day, the sun gave but little light but hung there, a nightmarish yellow, next to the moon. Atmosphere almost absent. Mourning stars, shining over the Neverland. Watching over everything that had ever gone missing.
"It won't be long now," she murmured. "Please kiss me."
Hook leaned forward, until he could feel her breath. Until her eyes closed, and lips parted, and there was nothing but the two of them, and Hook could feel red rising--
He pulled back. "But I would surely ruin you. I am evil, and dark, and desire dark things. I would destroy you. Mine is a black heart, Wendy."
She sneered, only a little. "Oh Hook. Sometimes I could feel you forget how sympathetic our spirits are, and how well I know you. How is this--I will watch out for your black heart, if you will watch over my own. You can kiss me, or watch me leave." She pressed herself against him, daring him to do what he wanted. "The choice is yours." Her eyes were dark.
The choice was always yours, he heard, but could not determine if Wendy said it aloud, or he said it to himself.
He kissed her. He tasted ocean salt, and something else. He felt rising again, a rush of wave and blood and sheer hot want—her yielding to him, her breasts and hips and mouth against him, his broken body, whether she desired it or not, her moans--and before he gave in entirely he pulled back once more. Surely, she did not know what she asked.
"No! Take it," she commanded, breathing hard, as angry and haughty as he ever had been. But her face softened, and she laughed a little. "James! For whenever was a pirate king so difficult to kiss! Certainly not in one of my stories!"
"I am not one of your stories!" he pouted, before he could restrain himself. "But I would never—not you--"
"You take what is given, you steal what is not. My pirate. My gentleman." She rubbed her hand coarsely, urgent, over his cheek, to his neck and breastbone. The red in his eyes was quite matched by her own. "My Hook."
It was then that Hook felt premonition of the dissolution of his own personality—but this time, unlike the others, it filled him with anything but dread.
Without a word--James Hook looked at his Wendy, all that flame inside sky-white skin and sea-grey eyes. Honeyed hair. Beautiful bright thing. His hand went to her side, above her waist, where the curve of ribcage and breast met. Her breath caught, a little. The curve of his hook traced its way gently up her neck, giving her one last chance to protest, against the danger he falsely imagined he was threatening. When his liberties met with not a sound, and with the point of the hook now, he tilted her chin ever so slightly up so it appeared she was at his mercy.
"My Wendy," he returned, with a half-smile.
He kissed her again, softly at first, then with all the considerable violence and passion that a man such as he possessed. The woman Wendy Darling, with her romantic mind and sweet mocking mouth, responded just as fiercely.
When they pulled apart, both were quite serious. Wendy, though, knew what to do, as women always do. She reached her hand up to Hook's face, looked at his mouth, touched his lips lightly.
"That has done it," she said slyly, looking up through long lashes.
"What do you mean?" James asked.
"My kiss," Wendy said. "You must take care of it, or I shall have it back."
"Then I shall steal it back once more," Hook snarled, in an almost convincing piratical fashion.
"Why! Captain! You will be welcome to try," Wendy said haughtily, or at least tried, for he kissed her again.
They embraced. And here, where all things are lost and Lost, did they lose their hearts truly and irrevocably to one another.
It is only the truly heartless who can fly.
When they finally stood next to each other, on the ledge, facing the blackness, it was Hook who asked, "Is this all, then? Will the clock finally have us?"
"You know it is not all, James. We shall return, I hope, and there will be suffering and pain, and a thousand more demons to conquer. We are going right back into the quotidian mess of it all, but together, as an adventure. Pirate and Storyteller. Man and Woman. I—why! I shall be upset at your avoidance of life's problems, you shall occasionally grow weary of my dreaminess. And we shall fight and be bored with each other and our children will get sick and make poor decisions and we will worry about money, but we will move beyond that and grow stronger, and it will all be wonderful, in its own way. And if there is Limbo, who is to say there is not a Beyond? But even if there is not--"
"It will be a difficult adventure indeed," Hook agreed. "But what of the crocodile?"
"I don't think we will fight it anymore."
"I shall be glad of that."
"Hook," she said. "It will be quite terrible at times. Are you certain? I..." she looked down. "I don't think I shall be able to do it without you, which troubles me."
"I am tired of being dead, and forgotten, and broken," he said, distant. "With your help, I think, I can live."
"The crocodile is coming, now," she said. "See the wake on the waters." She was correct. Something was cutting towards them, on the sea, trailing a tumbled blade of a wake.
"I know," he said sadly. "Let it come. You know what we must do?"
"Yes."
"You are not frightened?"
"I am extremely frightened," she admitted.
"As am I," he admitted back. "Was—was this really the end you had in mind?"
She looked into his eyes, the color of forget-me-nots. "It was," she smiled. "Exactly."
"Then I will bow to my storyteller," he said, and they both faced the sea.
And he stayed, and did not run, and she stayed, and did not fly. They stayed there til first light of a false morning, when the crocodile came.
The beast approached quickly, implacably, impossibly.
It was more immense than either one had ever seen it. A leviathan. A demon, in black skin and yellow eye. All of time itself, snapping and clawing, devouring. All terror, all magnificence. As the beast lept upwards, for the last time, a tidal wave of tooth and scale, Wendy and Hook knew what they must do
You see, the Neverland is never meant for mortal life. It is a liminal space, to be passed through, not lived in. And it in the end it is only the heartless that can fly. We, all of us, wherever we are, must hurl ourselves into the unknown until fate finally reveals itself. The realm of myth and magic, which is to say growing up. The infinite. The immensity of sea, and sky, and life.
The Neverland was already fading. Even the Beast, the ticking Clock, seemed inconsequential. It was only the other who was bright.
They looked at one another for the last time, here.
They leapt, together, into the blackness. They fell. The crocodile's jaws closed around them.
It only hurt for a moment. It only ever hurts for a moment, although that is an easy thing to forget.
For sometimes he was broken and evil, and sometimes she was weak and cruel. And the terrible is so close, so close really, to the sublime.
And then they flew.
********
A/N
Okay so there's one more chapter here, so just know they're okay. I'm aware it's reading a little like a Decemberists song here. It's just so how do you make it out of the highly archetypal Neverland without a symbolic death of sorts? Trading one world for another. You know how it goes. I mean, you're all here. (Right?)
I hope I hope I hope you guys like this. It's been sitting open on my desktop for over a month now as I freaked out about how to end this beloved exasperating monster of a fic. My own crocodile, of sorts. But I'm happy with this, mostly, even though it might be hilarious to anyone who knows me because I am decidedly not a traditionally romantic person. I think our protagonists are, though I do hope I kept Hook's malevolent side and Wendy's saucy side, though. And sorry it took so long—but was moving cross-country and starting university again after a couple years off. But that's all settled down, now.
This was mostly written under the influence of Sigur Ros. I know. I know.
And not to make this an Oscar speech, but to my darlings who have continued to read this, offered me advice and support, beta'ed my chapters, just everything—you have no idea how much that meant to me. Well. A lot, is how much. More than is probably reasonable, as well. I love you.
And love to all the rest of you too. I hope this has brought you some measure of enjoyment.
~~Dollfayce