Note: Several elements of this story were recycled into the story The Subtlety of Nightmares, mainly Caps, Ledger, and Tybalt. I reread this hoping for more character information on Tybalt, and discovered that the majority of Chapter 6 was already written in the file. I couldn't help but put it up. This chapter, and indeed, all of this story, were written when I was 16 years old; please take it in that context, and remember, it doesn't reflect my current abilities ^_^
The addition of another chapter after three years doesn't mean this story is being picked up again. It is still an unfinished work. However, it does increase the chance that the whole thing will undergo a complete overhaul at a later date and be presented in its entirety then. -_-;
This chapter has warnings of violence and perversion on the part of Barbecue.
Chapter 6
Barbecue dreamed.
He dreamed of the old stone streets of Marseille, of the steady thump of his very good boots with his own very good feet inside of them. He dreamed of the low slung streetlamps with their wavering panes of glass, of their black iron poles and steady burning flames that suckled from reservoirs in their bases. He dreamed of the awkward shadows that cropped from every surface and trailed like flags in the breeze. And, of course, there was Pavre, the lewd and lowly sort of creature who looked more at ease in the deeper shadows than any man had right to. He didn't shave as often as he might, and his hair was uneven with a greasy dullness to it. For some off reason, John liked him. Pavre always walked silently, a few steps forward and left of his companion, as though he wanted no concrete association between them to whoever might look on. Fortunately this also cleared Barbecue of any crimes by association (Pavre was knows for his sticky fingers).
This night he seemed less worried over witnesses than usual. They were granted leave of two days in Marseille while the Peronella gorged her belly on hard tack, oil, flour and salt beef. Pavre had made a sport of the two days, and it was with the faintly veiled clarity of opiates that Barbecue followed him through the ribbons of stone that hatched the city.
Was it red? No, it was a white lamp they met the fisherman under, with his great bulk and his broad hands clamped like claws over his son's shoulders. His little boy looked up at them with wide and pale eyes, like white roses; bleached and empty of color, of life, and of youth. Pavre had been expecting to meet this man. He reached into his bottomless pockets and drew his coin purse, dropping a moon of French silver into the father's heavy palm. The man released his son.
The boy was trained by now and didn't run away, but Pavre latched a hand around his small arm anyway and, smirking at Barbecue, followed the fisherman back along the curling streets to a building of renting rooms with a white swan painted above the door. Pavre steered the boy thru the door and into the partial darkness. The fisherman turned to look at Barbecue questioningly. Barbecue shrugged and stared at his feet. After a few moments, the fisherman frowned and followed Pavre inside to keep watch.
Barbecue's mind felt very warm. It was an odd sort of warm, that was somewhere between being curled up in your mother's lap and biting into the shoulder of a squirming, crying girl. He wondered just what had been in those bitter lumps of sugar Pavre had stuck between his lips and told him to suck. It wasn't necessarily a bad feeling, just different from those sour pipes that burned the dark resin, and the sensation was taking a very long time to wear away. He had to remember to ask Pavre after they were finished here.
It wasn't a very long wait (it never was where Pavre was concerned) before the fool came traipsing out, reddened on the cheeks and mouth and disheveled, out of breath. Pavre nodded towards the door and scratched himself.
Barbecue went inside.
It was James whom the battle woke first. The strangeness of this is the fact that James had been known to sleep through midnight oceanic storms, while Barbecue often bolted awake at the sound of one man coughing in the quarters below. This time James had the good sense and memory not to startle at discerning his location, though he was a bit unnerved when he realized the weight on his spine was not his imagination. Sometime during the night the captain had sprawled out beside him, as casually as if he were his wife, and one of his thick arms lay across James' back.
A round of pistol fire was answered with a crowing war cry, and James bolted up. He didn't even have time to flinch at the pull in his shoulder; at the very motion Barbecue had woken to life and instinctively grabbed both the man's wrists, twisting his arms quite painfully behind him. James let out a squeal (a sound he wasn't particularly proud of but couldn't hold in) and only a moment later the captain released his hold. He neither apologized for the reaction or fumbled to justify. Instead he stiffened to attention and listened to the exchange outside.
"It's the damned Lost Boys!" Barbecue spat, sounding for once in his life irritated at the prospect of battle. He shoved James back against the headboard and scrabbled past him over the edge.
Unfortunately, the straps holding Barbecue's false leg to his stump had worked themselves loose during the night, and he hit the boards, his leg going out from under him. James was sure the resulting oaths could be heard all the way to the mainland. Before James could so much as ask if the captain was injured he had cinched the strips again and was up, snapping up his pistols that hung by the door, and with a flash of light from the blasphemous golden dawn he had slipped from the cabin.
It was dark again.
Shameful to say, James's first reaction was to go back to sleep. His addled brain saw no reason to get up as long as the room was dark and the bed was soft. The walls and door muffled the shouts and clashes from his ears, and he flicked the ends of the blanket up over his head to further kill the sound. One second passed, then two, and some body was thrown against the exterior wall of the cabin, shuddering the boards and startling James into jumping. That did it. He was awake now, no matter how hard his mind fought it. With a groan he kicked the coverings away and raised his head up from the o-so-inviting pillow.
One would think the short journey to the door would be simple, even for someone in James's condition, but it was not the act of walking over so much as the idea of it that really impeded him. The previous day had been so wonderfully marked by becoming intimate with the sharp end of an ax not once but twice, and he felt that that should rightly grant him whatever time he wished to spend sleeping for himself. Walking to that door and acknowledging there was a fight would ruin that.
He heard someone shriek, and the redskin war cry.
Today he really hated having a conscience.
Mumbling things that were none too pleasant James swung his legs over the side of the bed and set his feet against the floor. That accomplished, he tried to stand on them. This was his mistake. No sooner had he become upright that the world bucked beneath him and he fell back onto his rump, fortunately padded by the mattress. His shoulder remembered to lodge a complaint, as well, to remind him that it was still as gaping and harassed as ever, and was it really a good idea to be up and about?
More determined than ever he stumbled towards the door, burst it open with his palms, and tumbled blindly into the wretched sun.
Barbecue looked like the devil himself stepping forth from the mouth of black hell. His dark hair was violent in its chaos and in the new dawn, just for a moment, his eyes caught the light and flashed a most vile perversion of the sacred gold. Immediately the pistols went up and the hammers fell. One ball missed its target and burst thru the rigging. The second skipped against a boy's shin, deflecting so neatly from the bone that it left only a welt in its passing (as well as a thin crack, but the boy would never find out and so it never mattered). The captain snarled at the ineffectiveness of his shots, and ripped the sword out of the hands of another pirate.
Peter was not in the mood for games and made no waste in descending down to the captain's level, sword held at ready and little teeth gnashing.
"What have you done with my friends?" he demanded, slinking down to a defensive position. Barbecue, who held the advantage of both height and reach, stuck the tip of his own sword in the deck and leaned on it with amusement, the metal bending under his weight. There were few things Peter hated more than being taunted, and Barbecue knew it.
"Your friends?" The captain smirked. "You mean that bloody little boy in the brig? The pretty little redskin girl? Those friends?"
Peter growled "Let them go now, and I'll give you a fighting chance before I kill you."
"Oh, well isn't that kind of you? All the same, I think I'll have to pass." The taunt fell from his voice. "I don't play games, Peter. When I take something, it's for keeps."
The sword came out of the deck and leveled itself at the height of Peter's throat. Despite the struggle that went on around him Peter should be thankful that was all he saw, not the monochrome memories slipping across the backs of Barbecue's eyes. Peter pulled back from the Captain's blade and raised his to a fighting stance, but he didn't get a chance to meet the edges. Before either party could initiate attack the door behind Barbecue burst open. James stumbled, fell into the captain's back, and landed them both flat on their bellies on the deck.
"JAMES, GET THE BLOODY HELL OFF ME!" Barbecue bellowed, already trying to get up but impeded by the weight. James rolled and stood up, confused and blinking in the light.
For the moment Peter had the full advantage, and he took it. The point of his sword was pressed hard against the stubbled throat of the captain before the man could crawl to his feet. Barbecue's eyes flashed cold, then fiery hot again in an instant, and under that glare Peter wavered. Barbecue's eyes flickered to a point behind him, and Peter knew well enough what it meant. He turned to see his attacker but a moment too late, for James' fist was already an inch from his head, knocking the boy to the deck. The other Lost Boys were shouting insults at the captain while they themselves still eluded their opponents, though the ferocity of it had dwindled to a skirmish, both pirates and boys being tired and irritated by the hour.
"I do believe this means I've taken another prize." the captain said with a silky tone, pressing his sword point to Peter's breast. Peter flipped from under the blade and shoved Barbecue's sword tip into the deck.
"Not yet, you haven't. Come here and fight me like an honest man."
The Captain chuckled "Whoever said I was an honest man?"
In the brig below, Great Big Little Panther dreamed.
He stood upon the frozen grass without his moccasins, sharp crystals of ice crushing beneath his heels and creeping up his legs like insects. To the sides of him rose thick trees, each one traced with slithering paths of silver ice, and each motionless leaf frozen glossy and thick to it's stem. Above, the sky was empty. He stared a moment, mystified by that vast darkness of a black universe.
The stars were not in the sky. The stars were in the trees.
Each little light sat quivering and quiet along the silent trunks of the trees, whispering softly in a twinkling language he didn't know how to understand. Every time he stopped to stare the sharp little crystals made it just a little bit further up his legs, and he knew he was not supposed to linger. The trees had made themselves into a thin and uneven corridor, the end of which was mysterious beyond a tangling of frosted branches. The cold pressed hard against his bared body and made his skin so beautifully senseless, that kind of infectious numbness that made one want to embrace it and sleep. He ignored it.
The end of the path confronted him. He brushed the wood with his fingertips and the branches writhed and suffered with the heat of his body, curling back in upon themselves like punished children. The path was now clear, and Great Big Little Panther stepped forward.
There was nothing there. The path only rounded to a strange and crooked end, the trees stretching up to form a canopy above him. Great Big Little Panther wandered to the center and looked about himself warily. He was alone.
"...Panther......"
Was it possible to startle a Piccanniny? If it was, he didn't show it. His eyes only went a little wider in his head.
"Who's there?"
"I am, idiot. You can hear me, can't you?"
The voice reminded him of dragging his palm through the sand on the young shores of the beach. It was rough and cold, and caught in fragments in the speaker's throat. He wasn't sure he should listen to it.
"And who are you?" he asked carefully.
The voice laughed "Do you want me to tell you? You're dying, you know."
Great Big Little Panther scowled "Dying?"
"Yes! Amazing, isn't it? You'd hardly know it, you're so far asleep." The voice paused to snicker. "Though I dare say poor Tiger Lilly is going to notice when SHE wakes up. A corpse doesn't make the best bed partner."
"What are you talking about?"
The voice made a shrill giggle, like a gargoyle given voice. "Oh! You don't remember! How lovely, you don't remember! I think you'll be in for a lovely surprise, once I tell you. Do you want me to tell you?"
This was becoming irritating. "If it has anything to do with Tiger Lilly, you'd BETTER tell me."
"Marvelous! So forceful! Tell me, did your dear departed wife like that sort of thing or is it a more recent acquirement?"
"Don't talk about my wife." he said, with a low warning growl in his throat. "I don't think you really know anything at all. I think you're just taunting me."
"Oh, well, yes, of course I am! But I DO know SOMETHING." It giggled. A shadow skimmed through the ice on the trees and Great Big Little Panther tried to identify it, but it went to fast for his eyes. "I'm here as a favor to someone who seems to think quite a lot of you, though no god in any heaven knows why. You're rather dim for my tastes."
"Who sent you?"
"Does it matter? Wouldn't you rather hear about the danger posed to your dearest daughter? Or maybe you're own death would be of more interest to you. Indeed, both are very close. If somebody doesn't DO something I'm sure you'll be both happily reunited with your dear....departed...WIFE." It let another giggle. "Oh, I love saying that, just to make your neck twitch there. It's really quit becoming."
"Tell me what you were sent to tell me and be gone!"
It harrumphed "Well if you're going to be snitty it isn't much fun, you know. I could just as easily not tell you anything and just tell my mistress you wouldn't listen to me. It's not like she'd ever HURT me, even if I DID let you die."
The chieftain growled.
"Oh, all right then! Be that way!" the voice snapped. "If you won't let me have any fun...! You and you're daughter are in the brig of the Jolly Roger. Jolie Rouge, if you like the French, not like YOU have any idea what that is but ANYWAY... You were stabbed through the stomach by the Captain, Barbecue, because YOU had the gall to axe his little, er...what shall we call him? We can't call him catamite because he's a little too old and doesn't swing that way, but be that as it may, you axed him, and Barbecue skewered you. Ha! That ought to teach you to mess around with the toys of a one legged pervert, won't it.
"Oh, I can see you scowling at me, you don't believe me. Why don't you remember, you ask? Well you're asleep, do you ever remember when you're asleep? Suspend the roiling disbelief, ye heathen! Before you went waltzing off to battle with a bee in your bonnet you told Tiger Lilly and Hard To Hit to keep their little backsides out of harm's way, but Tiger Lilly didn't listen to you. SHE had to come and avenge your fallen, too! But she didn't expect the pirates to actually win this one, so she was captured along with yourself and one of the Lost Boys, who lost a foot. Lost Boy, lost foot. Ha! There was a fairy who came with you, that puppy-eyed little King of Cats, and you can blame your current condition on him. He thought he was doing you a favor when he deepened all your sleep, but the little fool doesn't know that magic sleep and real sleep aren't nearly the same thing! Real sleep is just a little bit of death, a FALSE bit of death. So it can't really hurt you, see?
"But magic sleep, ah, magic sleep is a little bit of death as well, but it's a little bit of REAL death. It doesn't hurt the average person because the average person is healthy, and a dash of real death just puts a bit of spice in life. You wake up feeling quite rested! But you already had a big ball of real death thrown at you, and the Kitty King adding a bit more was just a bit more than you can handle. Understand? D-E-A-T-H. Death. Bad."
Panther paused "You said there was a danger to Tiger Lilly as well."
"Oh, come ON, isn't your own death good enough?" it huffed. "Fine. The Lost Boys figured out what happened after they scanned the battle sight for corpses, right? They know the Captain is holding you and your daughter and the footless boy hostage. So Peter takes his heroic little butt out to sea and picks a fight with Barbecue. Now, there's a teeny weenie itsy bitsy chance that Peter could actually win this thing, but you shouldn't bet your chickens on it. He's more likely to have to run away and try again later when his boy's aren't so tired. If that happens, and you don't do anything in the meantime, you'll be dead and the poor grieved Tiger Lilly will be left all alone with a ship full of mean and unwashed sailors who haven't seen a proper girl in years. I'm sure not many of them will be all that bothered by the fact she's only eight. Get it?"
"So what do I do about it?" he snarled, angered the voice was telling him the dangers but not the solutions.
"What have I just told you? You're ASLEEP. How do you remedy being asleep? You WAKE UP! Or do you redskins have some other way of doing it?"
Great Big Little Panther blinked. "That's it?"
"That's it."
"...You went through all that just to say Wake Up? Why didn't you just say it to begin with!?"
"Because that wasn't what you asked! Look, I don't personally care whether or not you wake up and get your little daughter out of this mess, but I really think my mistress would rather you live another day. Send Tiger Lilly away, and tell her to take the boy, too. She's smart enough to escape, if she has enough time."
The ice was already beginning to melt around him as Great Big Little Panther forced himself to wake. It wasn't until the dark had begun to seep in around him that he thought to ask one final time "Who IS your mistress?"
It giggled "Haven't you guessed yet? Who else would want to save your hide? Your Sainted, Rotting Wife!"
In the quiet sleep of Tybalt's fashioning, Tiger Lilly did NOT dream. She stumbled from a silent darkness to a broad hand clutching her sleeve and a low, familiar voice murmuring her name. She opened her eyes and sought in the darkness for his other hand.
"Father? Are you alright?"
"Yes, I'm alright." he said with a rough grate to his voice. She felt along his abdomen to try and find the wound but he caught her hand. "Tiger Lilly, listen to me. You're in danger here." he said slowly. His tongue felt thick. "I want you to find a way out of this cell, and I want you to look around until you find an injured boy. Get him out, and take the both of you back to the island."
Tiger Lilly's eyes went wide in the dark "B-but you've been hurt! I'm not leaving without you!"
He sighed and shifted a little onto his side, grimacing at the bolt of pain that went through him, and found her face. "Tiger Lilly, it will be alright. But you have to get out of here right now, do you understand?"
She nodded under his hand.
"Good girl."
His arm dropped and she heard his body slump back to the floor. His breath sounded ragged and pained, and some strange part of Tiger Lilly exalted that she couldn't see him. She didn't want to know her father as anything but the strong and invincible guardian he'd always been, and it shamed her to feel that way.
Being obedient for the first time that day, Tiger Lilly put out her hands and stumbled blindly through the dark. Her fingertips scraped the wall and she put her palms to it, feeling along till she found a corner. Her hands slipped through where the next wall ought to be and she carefully explored the spacings of the cool iron bars. A test of the width of her head proved she couldn't squeeze through them. Fortunately, a redskin always has a trick or two up their sleeves. Or in this case, shoe. Tiger Lilly had decorated her moccasins not with dyed porcupine quills but with the long, pearl-headed sewing pins her brother and her had stolen from Barbecue's sewing kit to show they had courage, quite some time ago. Her father had been so angry he'd nearly hided the both of them. However, he had not insisted on their return.
They could come in good use, now. Quickly tugging two free of the leather of her shoes, Tiger Lilly reached her arms round through the bars, and began to pick the lock.
Asalie Woke Up in a thin and unpleasant hammock, wearing rumpled clothing that was not his own, and already he was being shaken forth to battle. As his wide black eyes looked over the crewman's quarters he knew with a sudden surety that this was no place he had ever been before, yet somehow it seemed familiar. He felt as though layers of his mind were being sloughed away, like topsoil from a stripped hillside, and though he pressed his hands to stop it it could not truly be stopped. He remembered a home, a place of thick grass and deep waters. He remembered a young woman with a basket in her arms. He remembered crying..... the mudslide collapsed into a senseless muck at the foot of the hill in his mind. Asalie looked about him with a blankness that was most painful. The other men had collected their weapons and left shouting, but where were they going to, what was to be fought?
The soil that covered the naked nub of his mind was quickly replaced. It felt like mud being poured over his hands. He was a sailor. He had been a sailor since his early years, and had become a pirate with the Jolly Roger, far and away in England. They weren't in England now. They were in Neverland, and above him crowed the Lost Boys, with whom they had only just fought the night prior. He was to go and kill children.
He rolled out of his hammock and fumbled about himself, looking for a weapon. Sure enough there was a sword and pistol in a worn leather sea bag, hanging from a crooked nail in one of the upright posts. His name was stitched messily into the lip of the bag and it looked as if it had been beaten thru many voyages. Did he even know how to use a sword? The new mud shifted, and suddenly he held it differently, even knew to put the pistol in his belt and to aim well before firing. Perhaps he could succeed in a battle, after all. He walked thru the hold as though he had been aboard this ship forever (and hadn't he?) and looked warily up through the hatch, to where the scuffle fell above. There were children flying through the air. The mud shifted again; of course, why shouldn't children fly thru the air? Children could do such things in Neverland.
Something beneath the stairs caught his attention. It was strange, a wet little sparkle of light in the dark. Ignoring the battle for now, he went down on his haunches and scooted closer to the stairs. Funny! There was a little blue man underneath the stairs, a very little man indeed, half unclothed and wet, with little flashing wings stuck into his back. He didn't look healthy. Asalie prodded him with a thin finger, then picked him up by the chest, trying not to crush him. He was warm, so he probably wasn't dead. What is one to do with a little blue man one finds beneath the stairs? He was sure this wasn't the sort of thing covered in his scholastic years. With a shrug Asalie decided to put him in his shirt pocket, and that he did. He then stood up and tromped happily up the stairs to the deck....
....where he was struck square on the back of the head with a pistol shot, and fell down to the deck boards dead.
Tybalt awoke to suffocate. Even as he struggled up through consciousness he began to panic. He was pressed flat, crushed, airless in a dark where he couldn't even open his mouth to scream. His tiny heart beat faster as he squirmed and flailed without gain, until one shaking hand made itself free of the binding mess, and he could pull himself against it with a panicked and desperate lunge.
Air!
So he had it. The thick rush of senseless gas into his lungs never felt so good, and he puffed at it a moment before hauling against his arms and getting his legs free of the...whatever it was. What was it? He stared blankly behind him, blinking over and again, until the rumpled folds of cloth registered in his mind. In confusion the little fairy stepped back a bit, and now he held a full view of what had just now imprisoned him; the shirt pocket on a crumpled pirate's corpse.
He didn't mean to start screaming, but once he did he couldn't help himself. He stumbled backwards and fell to his rump, his eyes spread wide to stare at the stubble marred face and blood flecked hair, parting with a broken seam where the pistol ball had dug into it. Tybalt was at ground level in the middle of a battle. Scuffling feet brushed too close to him and, with instinct that pushed through even in the midst of terror, Tybalt shot up from the boards, spiraling into the morning air until even the mizzenmast was just another bobbing spear below him. The sails were tied tight to preserve them, and without their obstruction Tybalt could see the entire ship from here.
His Lost Boys were fighting pirates; not hard, it seemed, since there were only three bodies on the deck bleeding out their insides onto the boards. A space had cleared on the main deck, marred by one pale, black haired man standing dumbly and staring before him. In that space, two figures danced furiously with swords; one the unmistakable, incomplete form of Captain Barbecue, a demon in the morning sun, and the other smaller, lighter, clothed in rags and leaves.
His Peter was fighting Captain Barbecue.
Somehow, Tybalt had expected nothing less.
The addition of another chapter after three years doesn't mean this story is being picked up again. It is still an unfinished work. However, it does increase the chance that the whole thing will undergo a complete overhaul at a later date and be presented in its entirety then. -_-;
This chapter has warnings of violence and perversion on the part of Barbecue.
Chapter 6
Barbecue dreamed.
He dreamed of the old stone streets of Marseille, of the steady thump of his very good boots with his own very good feet inside of them. He dreamed of the low slung streetlamps with their wavering panes of glass, of their black iron poles and steady burning flames that suckled from reservoirs in their bases. He dreamed of the awkward shadows that cropped from every surface and trailed like flags in the breeze. And, of course, there was Pavre, the lewd and lowly sort of creature who looked more at ease in the deeper shadows than any man had right to. He didn't shave as often as he might, and his hair was uneven with a greasy dullness to it. For some off reason, John liked him. Pavre always walked silently, a few steps forward and left of his companion, as though he wanted no concrete association between them to whoever might look on. Fortunately this also cleared Barbecue of any crimes by association (Pavre was knows for his sticky fingers).
This night he seemed less worried over witnesses than usual. They were granted leave of two days in Marseille while the Peronella gorged her belly on hard tack, oil, flour and salt beef. Pavre had made a sport of the two days, and it was with the faintly veiled clarity of opiates that Barbecue followed him through the ribbons of stone that hatched the city.
Was it red? No, it was a white lamp they met the fisherman under, with his great bulk and his broad hands clamped like claws over his son's shoulders. His little boy looked up at them with wide and pale eyes, like white roses; bleached and empty of color, of life, and of youth. Pavre had been expecting to meet this man. He reached into his bottomless pockets and drew his coin purse, dropping a moon of French silver into the father's heavy palm. The man released his son.
The boy was trained by now and didn't run away, but Pavre latched a hand around his small arm anyway and, smirking at Barbecue, followed the fisherman back along the curling streets to a building of renting rooms with a white swan painted above the door. Pavre steered the boy thru the door and into the partial darkness. The fisherman turned to look at Barbecue questioningly. Barbecue shrugged and stared at his feet. After a few moments, the fisherman frowned and followed Pavre inside to keep watch.
Barbecue's mind felt very warm. It was an odd sort of warm, that was somewhere between being curled up in your mother's lap and biting into the shoulder of a squirming, crying girl. He wondered just what had been in those bitter lumps of sugar Pavre had stuck between his lips and told him to suck. It wasn't necessarily a bad feeling, just different from those sour pipes that burned the dark resin, and the sensation was taking a very long time to wear away. He had to remember to ask Pavre after they were finished here.
It wasn't a very long wait (it never was where Pavre was concerned) before the fool came traipsing out, reddened on the cheeks and mouth and disheveled, out of breath. Pavre nodded towards the door and scratched himself.
Barbecue went inside.
It was James whom the battle woke first. The strangeness of this is the fact that James had been known to sleep through midnight oceanic storms, while Barbecue often bolted awake at the sound of one man coughing in the quarters below. This time James had the good sense and memory not to startle at discerning his location, though he was a bit unnerved when he realized the weight on his spine was not his imagination. Sometime during the night the captain had sprawled out beside him, as casually as if he were his wife, and one of his thick arms lay across James' back.
A round of pistol fire was answered with a crowing war cry, and James bolted up. He didn't even have time to flinch at the pull in his shoulder; at the very motion Barbecue had woken to life and instinctively grabbed both the man's wrists, twisting his arms quite painfully behind him. James let out a squeal (a sound he wasn't particularly proud of but couldn't hold in) and only a moment later the captain released his hold. He neither apologized for the reaction or fumbled to justify. Instead he stiffened to attention and listened to the exchange outside.
"It's the damned Lost Boys!" Barbecue spat, sounding for once in his life irritated at the prospect of battle. He shoved James back against the headboard and scrabbled past him over the edge.
Unfortunately, the straps holding Barbecue's false leg to his stump had worked themselves loose during the night, and he hit the boards, his leg going out from under him. James was sure the resulting oaths could be heard all the way to the mainland. Before James could so much as ask if the captain was injured he had cinched the strips again and was up, snapping up his pistols that hung by the door, and with a flash of light from the blasphemous golden dawn he had slipped from the cabin.
It was dark again.
Shameful to say, James's first reaction was to go back to sleep. His addled brain saw no reason to get up as long as the room was dark and the bed was soft. The walls and door muffled the shouts and clashes from his ears, and he flicked the ends of the blanket up over his head to further kill the sound. One second passed, then two, and some body was thrown against the exterior wall of the cabin, shuddering the boards and startling James into jumping. That did it. He was awake now, no matter how hard his mind fought it. With a groan he kicked the coverings away and raised his head up from the o-so-inviting pillow.
One would think the short journey to the door would be simple, even for someone in James's condition, but it was not the act of walking over so much as the idea of it that really impeded him. The previous day had been so wonderfully marked by becoming intimate with the sharp end of an ax not once but twice, and he felt that that should rightly grant him whatever time he wished to spend sleeping for himself. Walking to that door and acknowledging there was a fight would ruin that.
He heard someone shriek, and the redskin war cry.
Today he really hated having a conscience.
Mumbling things that were none too pleasant James swung his legs over the side of the bed and set his feet against the floor. That accomplished, he tried to stand on them. This was his mistake. No sooner had he become upright that the world bucked beneath him and he fell back onto his rump, fortunately padded by the mattress. His shoulder remembered to lodge a complaint, as well, to remind him that it was still as gaping and harassed as ever, and was it really a good idea to be up and about?
More determined than ever he stumbled towards the door, burst it open with his palms, and tumbled blindly into the wretched sun.
Barbecue looked like the devil himself stepping forth from the mouth of black hell. His dark hair was violent in its chaos and in the new dawn, just for a moment, his eyes caught the light and flashed a most vile perversion of the sacred gold. Immediately the pistols went up and the hammers fell. One ball missed its target and burst thru the rigging. The second skipped against a boy's shin, deflecting so neatly from the bone that it left only a welt in its passing (as well as a thin crack, but the boy would never find out and so it never mattered). The captain snarled at the ineffectiveness of his shots, and ripped the sword out of the hands of another pirate.
Peter was not in the mood for games and made no waste in descending down to the captain's level, sword held at ready and little teeth gnashing.
"What have you done with my friends?" he demanded, slinking down to a defensive position. Barbecue, who held the advantage of both height and reach, stuck the tip of his own sword in the deck and leaned on it with amusement, the metal bending under his weight. There were few things Peter hated more than being taunted, and Barbecue knew it.
"Your friends?" The captain smirked. "You mean that bloody little boy in the brig? The pretty little redskin girl? Those friends?"
Peter growled "Let them go now, and I'll give you a fighting chance before I kill you."
"Oh, well isn't that kind of you? All the same, I think I'll have to pass." The taunt fell from his voice. "I don't play games, Peter. When I take something, it's for keeps."
The sword came out of the deck and leveled itself at the height of Peter's throat. Despite the struggle that went on around him Peter should be thankful that was all he saw, not the monochrome memories slipping across the backs of Barbecue's eyes. Peter pulled back from the Captain's blade and raised his to a fighting stance, but he didn't get a chance to meet the edges. Before either party could initiate attack the door behind Barbecue burst open. James stumbled, fell into the captain's back, and landed them both flat on their bellies on the deck.
"JAMES, GET THE BLOODY HELL OFF ME!" Barbecue bellowed, already trying to get up but impeded by the weight. James rolled and stood up, confused and blinking in the light.
For the moment Peter had the full advantage, and he took it. The point of his sword was pressed hard against the stubbled throat of the captain before the man could crawl to his feet. Barbecue's eyes flashed cold, then fiery hot again in an instant, and under that glare Peter wavered. Barbecue's eyes flickered to a point behind him, and Peter knew well enough what it meant. He turned to see his attacker but a moment too late, for James' fist was already an inch from his head, knocking the boy to the deck. The other Lost Boys were shouting insults at the captain while they themselves still eluded their opponents, though the ferocity of it had dwindled to a skirmish, both pirates and boys being tired and irritated by the hour.
"I do believe this means I've taken another prize." the captain said with a silky tone, pressing his sword point to Peter's breast. Peter flipped from under the blade and shoved Barbecue's sword tip into the deck.
"Not yet, you haven't. Come here and fight me like an honest man."
The Captain chuckled "Whoever said I was an honest man?"
In the brig below, Great Big Little Panther dreamed.
He stood upon the frozen grass without his moccasins, sharp crystals of ice crushing beneath his heels and creeping up his legs like insects. To the sides of him rose thick trees, each one traced with slithering paths of silver ice, and each motionless leaf frozen glossy and thick to it's stem. Above, the sky was empty. He stared a moment, mystified by that vast darkness of a black universe.
The stars were not in the sky. The stars were in the trees.
Each little light sat quivering and quiet along the silent trunks of the trees, whispering softly in a twinkling language he didn't know how to understand. Every time he stopped to stare the sharp little crystals made it just a little bit further up his legs, and he knew he was not supposed to linger. The trees had made themselves into a thin and uneven corridor, the end of which was mysterious beyond a tangling of frosted branches. The cold pressed hard against his bared body and made his skin so beautifully senseless, that kind of infectious numbness that made one want to embrace it and sleep. He ignored it.
The end of the path confronted him. He brushed the wood with his fingertips and the branches writhed and suffered with the heat of his body, curling back in upon themselves like punished children. The path was now clear, and Great Big Little Panther stepped forward.
There was nothing there. The path only rounded to a strange and crooked end, the trees stretching up to form a canopy above him. Great Big Little Panther wandered to the center and looked about himself warily. He was alone.
"...Panther......"
Was it possible to startle a Piccanniny? If it was, he didn't show it. His eyes only went a little wider in his head.
"Who's there?"
"I am, idiot. You can hear me, can't you?"
The voice reminded him of dragging his palm through the sand on the young shores of the beach. It was rough and cold, and caught in fragments in the speaker's throat. He wasn't sure he should listen to it.
"And who are you?" he asked carefully.
The voice laughed "Do you want me to tell you? You're dying, you know."
Great Big Little Panther scowled "Dying?"
"Yes! Amazing, isn't it? You'd hardly know it, you're so far asleep." The voice paused to snicker. "Though I dare say poor Tiger Lilly is going to notice when SHE wakes up. A corpse doesn't make the best bed partner."
"What are you talking about?"
The voice made a shrill giggle, like a gargoyle given voice. "Oh! You don't remember! How lovely, you don't remember! I think you'll be in for a lovely surprise, once I tell you. Do you want me to tell you?"
This was becoming irritating. "If it has anything to do with Tiger Lilly, you'd BETTER tell me."
"Marvelous! So forceful! Tell me, did your dear departed wife like that sort of thing or is it a more recent acquirement?"
"Don't talk about my wife." he said, with a low warning growl in his throat. "I don't think you really know anything at all. I think you're just taunting me."
"Oh, well, yes, of course I am! But I DO know SOMETHING." It giggled. A shadow skimmed through the ice on the trees and Great Big Little Panther tried to identify it, but it went to fast for his eyes. "I'm here as a favor to someone who seems to think quite a lot of you, though no god in any heaven knows why. You're rather dim for my tastes."
"Who sent you?"
"Does it matter? Wouldn't you rather hear about the danger posed to your dearest daughter? Or maybe you're own death would be of more interest to you. Indeed, both are very close. If somebody doesn't DO something I'm sure you'll be both happily reunited with your dear....departed...WIFE." It let another giggle. "Oh, I love saying that, just to make your neck twitch there. It's really quit becoming."
"Tell me what you were sent to tell me and be gone!"
It harrumphed "Well if you're going to be snitty it isn't much fun, you know. I could just as easily not tell you anything and just tell my mistress you wouldn't listen to me. It's not like she'd ever HURT me, even if I DID let you die."
The chieftain growled.
"Oh, all right then! Be that way!" the voice snapped. "If you won't let me have any fun...! You and you're daughter are in the brig of the Jolly Roger. Jolie Rouge, if you like the French, not like YOU have any idea what that is but ANYWAY... You were stabbed through the stomach by the Captain, Barbecue, because YOU had the gall to axe his little, er...what shall we call him? We can't call him catamite because he's a little too old and doesn't swing that way, but be that as it may, you axed him, and Barbecue skewered you. Ha! That ought to teach you to mess around with the toys of a one legged pervert, won't it.
"Oh, I can see you scowling at me, you don't believe me. Why don't you remember, you ask? Well you're asleep, do you ever remember when you're asleep? Suspend the roiling disbelief, ye heathen! Before you went waltzing off to battle with a bee in your bonnet you told Tiger Lilly and Hard To Hit to keep their little backsides out of harm's way, but Tiger Lilly didn't listen to you. SHE had to come and avenge your fallen, too! But she didn't expect the pirates to actually win this one, so she was captured along with yourself and one of the Lost Boys, who lost a foot. Lost Boy, lost foot. Ha! There was a fairy who came with you, that puppy-eyed little King of Cats, and you can blame your current condition on him. He thought he was doing you a favor when he deepened all your sleep, but the little fool doesn't know that magic sleep and real sleep aren't nearly the same thing! Real sleep is just a little bit of death, a FALSE bit of death. So it can't really hurt you, see?
"But magic sleep, ah, magic sleep is a little bit of death as well, but it's a little bit of REAL death. It doesn't hurt the average person because the average person is healthy, and a dash of real death just puts a bit of spice in life. You wake up feeling quite rested! But you already had a big ball of real death thrown at you, and the Kitty King adding a bit more was just a bit more than you can handle. Understand? D-E-A-T-H. Death. Bad."
Panther paused "You said there was a danger to Tiger Lilly as well."
"Oh, come ON, isn't your own death good enough?" it huffed. "Fine. The Lost Boys figured out what happened after they scanned the battle sight for corpses, right? They know the Captain is holding you and your daughter and the footless boy hostage. So Peter takes his heroic little butt out to sea and picks a fight with Barbecue. Now, there's a teeny weenie itsy bitsy chance that Peter could actually win this thing, but you shouldn't bet your chickens on it. He's more likely to have to run away and try again later when his boy's aren't so tired. If that happens, and you don't do anything in the meantime, you'll be dead and the poor grieved Tiger Lilly will be left all alone with a ship full of mean and unwashed sailors who haven't seen a proper girl in years. I'm sure not many of them will be all that bothered by the fact she's only eight. Get it?"
"So what do I do about it?" he snarled, angered the voice was telling him the dangers but not the solutions.
"What have I just told you? You're ASLEEP. How do you remedy being asleep? You WAKE UP! Or do you redskins have some other way of doing it?"
Great Big Little Panther blinked. "That's it?"
"That's it."
"...You went through all that just to say Wake Up? Why didn't you just say it to begin with!?"
"Because that wasn't what you asked! Look, I don't personally care whether or not you wake up and get your little daughter out of this mess, but I really think my mistress would rather you live another day. Send Tiger Lilly away, and tell her to take the boy, too. She's smart enough to escape, if she has enough time."
The ice was already beginning to melt around him as Great Big Little Panther forced himself to wake. It wasn't until the dark had begun to seep in around him that he thought to ask one final time "Who IS your mistress?"
It giggled "Haven't you guessed yet? Who else would want to save your hide? Your Sainted, Rotting Wife!"
In the quiet sleep of Tybalt's fashioning, Tiger Lilly did NOT dream. She stumbled from a silent darkness to a broad hand clutching her sleeve and a low, familiar voice murmuring her name. She opened her eyes and sought in the darkness for his other hand.
"Father? Are you alright?"
"Yes, I'm alright." he said with a rough grate to his voice. She felt along his abdomen to try and find the wound but he caught her hand. "Tiger Lilly, listen to me. You're in danger here." he said slowly. His tongue felt thick. "I want you to find a way out of this cell, and I want you to look around until you find an injured boy. Get him out, and take the both of you back to the island."
Tiger Lilly's eyes went wide in the dark "B-but you've been hurt! I'm not leaving without you!"
He sighed and shifted a little onto his side, grimacing at the bolt of pain that went through him, and found her face. "Tiger Lilly, it will be alright. But you have to get out of here right now, do you understand?"
She nodded under his hand.
"Good girl."
His arm dropped and she heard his body slump back to the floor. His breath sounded ragged and pained, and some strange part of Tiger Lilly exalted that she couldn't see him. She didn't want to know her father as anything but the strong and invincible guardian he'd always been, and it shamed her to feel that way.
Being obedient for the first time that day, Tiger Lilly put out her hands and stumbled blindly through the dark. Her fingertips scraped the wall and she put her palms to it, feeling along till she found a corner. Her hands slipped through where the next wall ought to be and she carefully explored the spacings of the cool iron bars. A test of the width of her head proved she couldn't squeeze through them. Fortunately, a redskin always has a trick or two up their sleeves. Or in this case, shoe. Tiger Lilly had decorated her moccasins not with dyed porcupine quills but with the long, pearl-headed sewing pins her brother and her had stolen from Barbecue's sewing kit to show they had courage, quite some time ago. Her father had been so angry he'd nearly hided the both of them. However, he had not insisted on their return.
They could come in good use, now. Quickly tugging two free of the leather of her shoes, Tiger Lilly reached her arms round through the bars, and began to pick the lock.
Asalie Woke Up in a thin and unpleasant hammock, wearing rumpled clothing that was not his own, and already he was being shaken forth to battle. As his wide black eyes looked over the crewman's quarters he knew with a sudden surety that this was no place he had ever been before, yet somehow it seemed familiar. He felt as though layers of his mind were being sloughed away, like topsoil from a stripped hillside, and though he pressed his hands to stop it it could not truly be stopped. He remembered a home, a place of thick grass and deep waters. He remembered a young woman with a basket in her arms. He remembered crying..... the mudslide collapsed into a senseless muck at the foot of the hill in his mind. Asalie looked about him with a blankness that was most painful. The other men had collected their weapons and left shouting, but where were they going to, what was to be fought?
The soil that covered the naked nub of his mind was quickly replaced. It felt like mud being poured over his hands. He was a sailor. He had been a sailor since his early years, and had become a pirate with the Jolly Roger, far and away in England. They weren't in England now. They were in Neverland, and above him crowed the Lost Boys, with whom they had only just fought the night prior. He was to go and kill children.
He rolled out of his hammock and fumbled about himself, looking for a weapon. Sure enough there was a sword and pistol in a worn leather sea bag, hanging from a crooked nail in one of the upright posts. His name was stitched messily into the lip of the bag and it looked as if it had been beaten thru many voyages. Did he even know how to use a sword? The new mud shifted, and suddenly he held it differently, even knew to put the pistol in his belt and to aim well before firing. Perhaps he could succeed in a battle, after all. He walked thru the hold as though he had been aboard this ship forever (and hadn't he?) and looked warily up through the hatch, to where the scuffle fell above. There were children flying through the air. The mud shifted again; of course, why shouldn't children fly thru the air? Children could do such things in Neverland.
Something beneath the stairs caught his attention. It was strange, a wet little sparkle of light in the dark. Ignoring the battle for now, he went down on his haunches and scooted closer to the stairs. Funny! There was a little blue man underneath the stairs, a very little man indeed, half unclothed and wet, with little flashing wings stuck into his back. He didn't look healthy. Asalie prodded him with a thin finger, then picked him up by the chest, trying not to crush him. He was warm, so he probably wasn't dead. What is one to do with a little blue man one finds beneath the stairs? He was sure this wasn't the sort of thing covered in his scholastic years. With a shrug Asalie decided to put him in his shirt pocket, and that he did. He then stood up and tromped happily up the stairs to the deck....
....where he was struck square on the back of the head with a pistol shot, and fell down to the deck boards dead.
Tybalt awoke to suffocate. Even as he struggled up through consciousness he began to panic. He was pressed flat, crushed, airless in a dark where he couldn't even open his mouth to scream. His tiny heart beat faster as he squirmed and flailed without gain, until one shaking hand made itself free of the binding mess, and he could pull himself against it with a panicked and desperate lunge.
Air!
So he had it. The thick rush of senseless gas into his lungs never felt so good, and he puffed at it a moment before hauling against his arms and getting his legs free of the...whatever it was. What was it? He stared blankly behind him, blinking over and again, until the rumpled folds of cloth registered in his mind. In confusion the little fairy stepped back a bit, and now he held a full view of what had just now imprisoned him; the shirt pocket on a crumpled pirate's corpse.
He didn't mean to start screaming, but once he did he couldn't help himself. He stumbled backwards and fell to his rump, his eyes spread wide to stare at the stubble marred face and blood flecked hair, parting with a broken seam where the pistol ball had dug into it. Tybalt was at ground level in the middle of a battle. Scuffling feet brushed too close to him and, with instinct that pushed through even in the midst of terror, Tybalt shot up from the boards, spiraling into the morning air until even the mizzenmast was just another bobbing spear below him. The sails were tied tight to preserve them, and without their obstruction Tybalt could see the entire ship from here.
His Lost Boys were fighting pirates; not hard, it seemed, since there were only three bodies on the deck bleeding out their insides onto the boards. A space had cleared on the main deck, marred by one pale, black haired man standing dumbly and staring before him. In that space, two figures danced furiously with swords; one the unmistakable, incomplete form of Captain Barbecue, a demon in the morning sun, and the other smaller, lighter, clothed in rags and leaves.
His Peter was fighting Captain Barbecue.
Somehow, Tybalt had expected nothing less.