Thanks: Thanks again to my husband and Mara Trinity Scully for their beta-reading. And thanks again, also, to those who have taken the time to review.
Disclaimer: These characters don't belong to me. This fic, however, is mine. Please don't take it without my permission.
Chapter 14:
Voices in the Dark
~
Wendy woke late in the night, long after Mother and Aunt Millicent and Dr. Woodhouse had left her to sleep. The bedroom window was open wide, still framed with festive Christmas greenery, the curtains blowing in the wind, snowflakes drifting in to melt upon the floor. The fire was not lit, and there was no moon, and so the room was deeply in shadow. To protect her from the snow, Aunt Millicent had pulled the sheer curtains 'round the bed. Wendy lay within this sheltered nest, her head aching, and tried to reason what she had seen and heard that evening.
She had certainly been in no condition to venture abroad tonight, but she had felt that it was necessary and important to learn if Hook was truly here in London, and so she had done what needed doing. It had left her far more ill, however.
In her weakness and pain, Wendy found comfort in the fact that her mother had left the small embroidered pouch attached to her wrist by its silk cord. Holding the pouch within her hand, Wendy squeezed it gently, reassured by the feel of the handkerchief and thimble within, as if Peter and her family were somehow here with her. It had been kind of Mother to leave the pouch with her, rather than removing it from her wrist when Wendy had been put into her nightclothes.
As Wendy lay in her bed, thinking of these and other things, she heard a stair creak in the hall. Who would be walking about at such a late hour?
Next, Wendy heard the door to her bedroom open with a soft click, and then close again. "Aunt Millicent?" Wendy called weakly. "Lottie?"
"No, my dear Wendy," came a familiar deep and growling voice from the shadows. "It is I."
Wendy's eyes grew wide. She had pushed her body to its weakened limits in her earlier adventure to Hook's house, and her feverish limbs now trembled when she attempted to move them. She was quite helpless, which was an unfamiliar and terrifying feeling.
"Who is there?" Wendy cried, her voice quavering. She could see nothing of the room, contained as she was within the bedcurtains, but she could hear ominous footsteps.
"Pretense between us now would be quite absurd, my stricken beauty. Do you not agree?" Hook's voice came from quite near the curtains, but Wendy still could not see him. It was maddening, and she felt as if she might scream.
"Surely you cannot see properly in such darkness, my dear. Allow me to light the lamp." And suddenly the room was illumined, though the light shone against the bedcurtains such that Wendy still could still not see beyond them.
"You are a very naughty young lady, Wendy Darling. Peering through a gentleman's windows." And here Hook tisked with ironic disapproval. "You must have known that I could not allow you to expose me. You surely knew I would come to you, sweet Wendy." He strolled casually through the room, casting monstrous shadows upon the bedcurtains as he passed in front of the lamp.
"How could you keep a dead body in your house like that?" Wendy asked, still horrified by what she had seen.
"Well," replied the unseen Hook with a rather unpleasant smile in his voice, "in all fairness, it is his house. It would have been rather ungentlemanly of me to toss the fellow out like so much rubbish."
Footsteps sounded once more, and Hook's voice was much nearer when it purred, "And asking that question, my beauty, proves that you could never have been a pirate, Red-Handed Jill or no. I'm really quite disappointed in you."
"No!" cried Wendy, as suddenly one of the bedcurtains was pulled aside, and there stood Hook, his dark hair once again long and curled, his right hand now quite gone, revealed by his rolled-up right sleeve. His arm once more ended in gruesomely healed scars, as if his hand had been lost years hence.
He still wore a gentleman's clothing, but the neat trousers, starched shirt, tidy vest, and pinstriped jacket looked quite ridiculous now that Hook's true form had returned. He made a mockery of gentlemanliness. But, then, he always had.
Hook carefully tied the bedcurtain back, using its attached satin ribbon. He smiled pleasantly down at Wendy in her bed, and then walked once more out of her sight. He seemed to enjoy speaking to her when she could not see him.
"It has been you from the very first," accused Wendy. "Pretending to be a doctor, insinuating yourself into our lives, toying with Aunt Millicent's affections..."
Still out of Wendy's sight, Hook sighed theatrically before replying, "Oh I must admit your dear aunt's money was something of an attraction, but as time went on and I began to remember myself, I grew far more interested in you, Wendy Darling, and the wonderful opportunity to hurt Pan where he feels most."
Suddenly, the bedcurtain at the foot of the bed was pulled aside, and Hook stood grinning at her as if he were enjoying this game extremely. He once again tied back the bedcurtain by its satin ribbon.
"But," Wendy stammered in confusion, "but Peter is gone!"
"Yes, I know," grumbled Hook with a disappointed expression. "I did not remember myself quickly enough to kill him. So very disappointing, don't you know." And then, tilting his head and eyeing Wendy with a mocking smirk, Hook continued, "And how sad for you, dear Wendy, to be cast aside so easily, left all alone by the boy you loved. I suppose you are too old for Neverland now, in any case, and so why would Peter Pan have any use for you?"
As Hook walked out of her sight once more, Wendy found herself coughing quite fiercely, shudders shaking her frail form. When the coughing came this strongly, there was little she could do to stop it. Her body began to shiver from fever and chill, and she feared that she might faint again as she had done outside Hook's house.
"That's quite a cough you have, my dear. Perhaps you should see a doctor." Hook laughed lightly before continuing, "It's quite tragic, really."
Breathing heavily after her coughing fit and wiping blood from her lips, Wendy spoke past the excruciating pain in her chest. "Tragic?" she gasped. "What is tragic?"
Pulling aside the last bedcurtain with a jerk, Hook shook his head in mock regret as he tied the satin ribbon to hold the curtain back. "Poor Wendy Darling could certainly have been saved. Alas! If only she'd had a proper doctor attending her ... instead of a bloodthirsty pirate!" And here Hook laughed delightedly, as if he had told a rather wonderful joke.
"But how am I to know?" Hook pondered, posing with his left hand upon the bedpost, his chin raised high as if he were standing for a portrait, rather than only terrorizing one young lady in her bed. "I have stolen only a doctor's life, not his medical knowledge."
Wendy began to speak again, but at the first sound that passed through her throat, the coughing seized her once more, and this time she very nearly lost consciousness. She lay prostrate upon the bed, watched Hook with eyes that were bright with fever and wide with fear.
"You would die soon enough, my beauty, but I tire of waiting. You might expose my schemes, of course, but my more pressing reason is that Pan is gone. I can now but wreak my revenge upon the one part of him that remains: his Wendy."
As Hook seated himself familiarly upon the edge of her bed, Wendy saw that he had a revolver in his coat pocket. But what concerned her more immediately was the syringe he set upon the bedside table. Hook reached for her arm to pull it from beneath the bedclothes, but Wendy struggled against him.
"You are too weak to fight me, my lovely Wendy. You may as well relax." Hook then chuckled once more as if at some private joke. "Oh, the pain this shall cause your Peter Pan! How delightfully delicious!"
Wendy attempted to wrench her arm from his grasp, but her strength was no match for him. "No!" she gasped breathlessly, coughing again as her throat reacted to the sound.
Holding her arm in place with his scarred stump, Hook took the syringe once more into his hand and leaned close to Wendy, tendrils of his hair falling forward to lay upon her breast.
"I have always appreciated a good poison," Hook smiled into her face with a wicked smirk. "The morphine shall serve quite admirably ... though it causes no pain, which rather takes the fun out of it." Hook sighed, his breath brushing her face and stirring her hair.
And then with a sharp jab the needle was in Wendy's arm and she renewed her weak and futile struggles. As the deadly dose entered her arm, Hook watched her face with great enjoyment. And then when he removed the needle, Hook explained pleasantly, "It will take but a short while to do its work, my dear girl."
Peter arrived at Wendy's window, only to hear talking coming from inside. Afraid to be seen, Peter hovered to the side of the window.
Wendy's weak voice said, "But how...? You were dead..."
A deep growling voice replied, "Was I dead, my beauty, if I lived on in your stories?"
Peter started. That couldn't be Hook! Hook was dead! But ... but what was he talking about? Peter fought the urge to fly inside immediately to attack this possible-Hook, but decided to wait and listen a moment first, so that he might know what he was up against.
Wendy had apparently made some small sound, for the deep man's voice continued, "Oh, yes, Wendy Darling, your stories renewed me, just as they renewed Pan. You have even reclaimed my hand."
Wendy's voice was barely a breath when she replied, "But ... how? You died."
"Hmm. I suppose I did. But allow me to ask you a question, my lovely. Did I ever die in your heart? Or did you continue to tell my story? Even when your stories died, when you thought they were all gone, Pan and myself were not destroyed. For some small part of our story burned as the tiniest flame in the darkest corner of your heart. We could not be destroyed, Wendy Darling. Because you would not destroy us."
Peter risked a glance into the room, and indeed the man not only spoke like Hook, but looked like him as well. The long curling hair, the missing right hand, the arrogant posture ... despite the odd clothing, it must be Hook! But, then, was what he said true? Had he and Hook been saved by Wendy's stories somehow?
"And so when you destroyed Neverland, my dear..." Hook paused at Wendy's gasp, then smiled charmingly. "Did you not realize that it was you who killed Neverland, lovely girl? When your stories died, it died with them. But Pan and I were cast out, not destroyed, but with our world destroyed behind us. Nowhere to go. Because of you."
Peter's head was spinning with all he had heard. But as he hovered at the window lost in thoughts almost certain to make him cross with confusion, Hook had not been idle.
"A kiss, my beauty, my lovely storyteller, before we part. And if there is blood upon your lips, it will make them only that much sweeter." Hook's grin was quite quite wicked in the darkness as he leant toward Wendy helpless in her bed.
"Get away from her, you!" Peter screamed, flying in at the open window to hover in mid-air in the middle of the room, holding his knife in his hand and ready for battle.
Hook turned slowly, his grin growing even more pleased. "Why, Pan! How very nice of you to join us!"
To Be Continued ...