Title: Island

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

Author's Notes: Time for Hook again. This chapter was ridiculously frustrating.

Chapter Eight: Muscat

Hook's curses continued to chase Peter Pan long after the boy could not hear them. Not entirely mollified, the Captain produced his pistol and fired a shot out the porthole. When the gun smoke dissipated, one could see that the bullet had rent a constellation into a mess of confused lights. James Hook calmed, and put the gun away.

It always happened this way, and he always wasted a bullet. Hook rested his namesake against his lips in thought. He turned from the window and crossed to his harpsichord.

The matter of undoing Pan was inherently flawed. Hook laid traps, and Pan waltzed through them, often pausing to let the Captain tickle his chin with a weapon before he flitted away. And often did Hook's eyes turn red in anticipation, but the stroke never met flesh. This was a terrible damper upon his credibility, and the pirate was most put out.

Hook began to play. His left hand produced something tuneless while the hook carved harmonies into the air.

Smee entered. He crossed to the harpsichord, placing a crystal goblet on its top and filling it with muscat. He set the liquor down beside the glass, and exited as unobtrusively as he had entered. Hook continued to play, never acknowledging his bosun.

While on hiatus in the belly of a Crocodile, Hook remembered a time before the eternal game of cat and mouse. Unfortunately, the memories were warped and full of holes. Perhaps it was Neverland, or perhaps it was the odor one encounters inside a Crocodile, but it did not take Hook long to realize that he could not even be properly killed until he dealt with Pan.

Of course, the day of Hook's reemergence was precisely the day that Peter Pan realized he was growing bored.

Hook's fingers mused in fifths. If he acted tomorrow, and laid his trap, Pan would come. And then Pan would escape, and Hook would swear, and the Captain realized that he was predicting his days. His hand stopped playing. This was monotony, then. Monotony was dangerous, he knew, for what could come after it but Bad Form?

He stroked the keys, touching his hook to his chin. It was time for a change. He began to play again.

He needed to shock the boy. But how does one shock Peter Pan? There was a log taken down in his head of his attempts, and he was coming to the dreary conclusion that he had tried everything.

He began to strike the same note, softer and softer, until it did not ring at all.

He always acted, and Peter Pan expected it. So perhaps the greatest shock would be no act at all? Yes. Hook began to play again. Yes.

It was time to simply enjoy being the greatest pirate Captain who ever lived. The notes came quickly and easily, like water, and as water floods, they filled the room. And like water, the plans were filling Hook's head again. His mind was turning, not as before, as the creaking water mill, but quite like a wave; vigorous, vigorous, vigorous and violent.

Hook smiled. These plans had a certain novelty, he noticed. It took him a moment of examining their keen edges and the distinctly pungent taste to realize why they were so different. Of course, it was the same conclusion as all conclusions. It was Pan, but not Pan in the normal sense; the distinct lack of Pan.

He was going to wreak havoc like a proper pirate. And if Pan was by chance blotted out amidst the chaos, it would be all the sweeter. But for the first time, Pan would not be his greatest concern. Hook's smile was indulgent.

His eyes fell upon the goblet. At that moment he struck a chord, quite literally. The notes reached out and the crystal caught them. They drowned slowly in the amber liquor, and Hook's hand lifted from the piano and went to the glass. He drank deeply, and with the taste of the liquor came another memory. Hook held the drink at arm's length, examining it in the candlelight. In his smile was a combination of many things, but in his eyes was only one.

Wendy Darling was quite old enough for muscat.