Title: Island

Disclaimer: I do not own Peter Pan. I do not own Hook.

Notes: I must give credit where credit is due. A few plot points, and the way Rufio will be portrayed, are thanks largely to a very good RP I was involved in. The writing is my own, but much of Rufio's characterization is Michelle's.

Chapter three: Lucifer

Captain Hook was prowling the deck of the Jolly Roger. His statuesque form was wrapped in leather and a coat of brocade green velvet and aging lace. The hat was large and black, the plume green and flecked by snow. His good hand was held over eyes that squinted into the swirling gray sky, and his hook rested on the railing, tracing agitated patterns in the ice.

There was a time when he could sense Pan's departures and arrivals. It was a twinge of something in both the chest and at the nape of the neck. It forced attentiveness through the veins of the gentleman pirate, and if the boy had left, it drove him to pace the deck until the snow melted. The twinge faded during his time inside The Crocodile.

Ah, The Crocodile. It had been a simple matter, really. Hook had waited, pensively, in the darkness of the belly, collected his thoughts and laid them out in the blackness. When he had banished the irrational plots and the mad internal monologues, he steeped for a time in his rage.

Then, with one clean swipe of the hook, he killed and exited the crocodile. After a terribly meticulous cleansing process, he reemerged from the cave a collected but completely vengeful man.

The Crocodile's corpse was left to rot in the water of the cave, its blood never quite fading. But when it did not rot, Hook sent some of his newly scavenged crew to bring the beast back to the wharf and set up a monument. While sewing the monster's cloven belly, the scalawags noted its vaguely red color, dyed so by the blood. When notified, Hook merely made a comment on its aesthetic value. The statue was still in progress.

The pirates that remained after Hook's fall, including Smee, had built the wharf, feeling the need for increased protection. Smee had overseen the Jolly Roger. He was only mildly surprised when its Captain returned. There were few changes, and Captain James Hook liked it that way.

Save one. His sense was gone. For a briefly elated moment, Hook thought that perhaps the boy had died. He dismissed the idea promptly, and at the precise moment there sounded the spectral ticking of a clock. Pan arrived moments later.

When Hook emerged from the shock of both the boy and the awful sound, he immediately tied the two together. At the dawn of their second fight the ticking came again. With exquisite melancholy, Hook accepted the hated tick as his new herald. He fought gallantly and lost.

That morning the snow came soon after the tick. Hook calmed, for this meant Pan was gone, and began to pace the deck.

After four hours he was at the railing, pondering the reason for the boy's first departure since the pirate's defeat. The only sounds were the wind and the hushed scratching of his hook.

Perhaps he had died? No, that was a vain, happy thought. If that was so, Hook knew he would feel distinctly giddy.

A new Lost Boy to be claimed? No, Peter never bothered to bring them. They came to him, and he hardly remembered their names at all. What then?

It could not be another girl. It could not be a girl at all. Unless. his hand had stopped some time ago, and now he noticed the absence of the sound. He looked down.

There, engraved in the grain of the rail in perfect penmanship, was the name Wendy.

Of course! Hook mused upon the slyness of his subconscious, then left the rail and began to pace again. There were many things that could be done, redone and done well. It merely required the proper plan. And Captain James Hook excelled in the matter of conniving. He smiled.

'Yo-ho, yo-ho the frisky plank, you walks along it so.'

Oh, meritorious day.