Disclaimer: I don't own anything. The excerpt is from J M Barrie's "Peter Pan".

Chapter Three

The Jolly Roger

After reading Peter Pan, I decided to go and investigate The Jolly Roger. I knew that it was in Storybrooke, Hook had mentioned its presence during his hospital stay. He'd asked me if I knew what had happened to his ship. But whereas Barrie had written the description of The Jolly Roger as:

"a rakish-looking craft foul to the hull, every beam in her detestable like ground strewn with mangled feathers. She was the cannibal of the seas, and scarce needed that watchful eye, for she floated immune in the horror of her name."

Hook had written:

"a beautiful craft, as clean as the men could make it (punished or not, I'll not have a dirty ship, and neither would Milah). A craft her builders could be proud of, a craft I cherish to this day, my home. And if anyone shakes in fear of her name, I'm proud of that too."

So I had to see her for myself. The magic had been pulled off the ship, to expose her for what she really was. The Dark One had done it himself, but the Charmings stopped him from doing anything more. They needed to look it over, find evidence. Hopefully it wouldn't be roped off or anything. I hoped they got what they needed. But just in case they didn't, I gathered a couple pairs of latex gloves (I'm a nurse, I keep a box in my work bag at all times) and a box of Zip-Locs, q-tips, and a little Swiss Army knife.

I headed to the docks and walked along them. It wasn't difficult to spot the Jolly Roger. She was a very pretty ship, just as Hook described her – clean. Well painted, at least I couldn't see any signs of paint chips. Hook must care for her a lot, or his crew gets in trouble often – did, maybe. Where was his crew?

The plank up to the ship had police tape marking all over it, but I slipped some hospital socks over my sneakers to avoid messing up any evidence too badly, and decided that this time I would do the right thing – that I would know what to do with the information I had. If Hook deserved prison (I didn't think he did), then I would know from what I found and heard. I've known from patients that there's a lot you can tell about a person by what they bring to the hospital. Hook hadn't brought anything, but this ship was his home, I could learn from that. And he'd told me that Mr. Gold attacked him on his ship.

All this in mind, I stepped over the police tape and went about my way.

No one else was there. No guardians of the ship, just me and the cries of the birds.

I didn't know ships. I really didn't know much besides my life in Storybrooke and the hospital and my home back when…well, I lived inland, on land, the closest I got to water was swimming in a pond. And baths. Baths count, I suppose? So which direction would I find the most evidence? On one end was the big steering wheel – the helm? Could I apply that Star Trek term to real life? The other didn't seem to have much. High above was a crow's nest, where the lookout would be. I knew that from Titanic. I carefully looked over the climb it would take to get up there and decided against it. Slip-free hospital socks over my sneakers didn't seem to be the most promising for climbing. Waxed floors? Yes. Climbing a pole? For some reason, I thought not. I headed to the big wheel – helm…maybe I should have brought a nautical dictionary?

Standing next to it, I looked ahead and was absolutely sure that this was where a captain would stand. This was the control of the ship. I put my gloves on and then touched the helm/wheel. This was the bridge, but what was the wheel called? I could ask Hook. I could imagine myself sailing on this ship, sailing along, the land behind me, a distant past. I could leave Storybrooke, leave behind the memories of Mr. Gold, the curse cast by the Queen, and be my own person, subject to the weather only. I'd lied to Hook earlier, I was subject to things. But I never harmed them; they just harmed me and my family.

My parents had made the deal with Rumpelstiltskin to save our house and for another reason – to save my brother. My eldest brother had been falsely accused of a crime and the Queen wanted to have him pay for it. They'd accused him of stealing a palace horse. He hadn't, the horse ended up near our house after my brother found her in the woods with a broken hoof. He'd brought her home to take care of her and then go tell the Queen. He just made it home when they came to arrest him.

I left the steering wheel alone and went down the steps to where there was a jumble of rope and cargo – or what I assumed was cargo. It was around the area where I'd entered the ship. The sails above me flapped and I looked up at them, they seemed to wave to me, to encourage me. I looked down and noticed some odd rust colored spots on the rope.

Rope didn't rust…

I knelt down and brought the rope close to me so I could inspect it. This wasn't rust at all. It was dried blood.

And it wasn't just on the rope, there were spots on the floor, but there wasn't a sign that anyone had marked it as evidence. I reached into my pocket and took out the Swiss Army knife and flicked open the blade. I scraped some of the blood and put it into a bag, sealing it shut, evidence. I took out another bag and put some more dried blood in it. I had a friend in the lab, I could have them run a DNA analysis and see if it was Hook's. We had already drawn his blood and must have the readings there somewhere. We do keep records after all.

I finished there and tucked the now used bags into my pocket and found some stairs. Carefully I went down them. I knew not where I was going, but I needed to make sure I remembered how I got there.

I explored the ship and found that most of it was empty, save for what seemed to be essentials.

Finally I found Hook's cabin. (Cabin? Quarters? Room?) I took out my phone and made a note to go to the library and check out a book on ships. His room was the biggest room of them all, which was fitting, he was the Captain. A bed, large enough for two people, was pushed to the side nearest the window. His sheets were messy, the bed unmade. I looked at the desk and the closet, deciding which to open first.

I grabbed the doors to the closet and opened it. Leather jackets hung, pants were on the floor. I closed the doors; clearly Hook used his closet for legitimate reasons, unlike me. I shoved anything into the closet if I couldn't figure out where to put it and I had to clean on short notice.

Last thing was the desk. There were maps rolled up and in easy to grab cases. I unrolled two and looked over the map of our land. I found the spot where my home had been and I touched it. According to rumors, that land was ruined, gone. My home was gone.

I rolled up the map and turned to the other papers on Hook's desk. There was a ton of math, I hadn't seen this much math since my – well, since a final in Storybrooke's little college. I could barely figure it out until I remembered that he would have to plot the courses and then it made some sense. There were lists as well, lists of crew members, of losses, of gains, of things needed (I saw a lot of fruit and rum, if I didn't know about scurvy and preservation of food, I would have been confused. Milk would spoil, any drinkable liquid other than liquor and water would go bad or become alcohol. All their food would have to be easily preserved and stored, it wasn't like they had fridges and freezers for meat on pirate ships back home.) Then I saw a book near the bed and picked it up.

All the pages were filled with drawings just like the ones Hook had given to me in Peter Pan. There was one drawn of a woman, a smile on her face, hair blown back from her face. In Hook's hand, he'd written her name: Milah.

I turned a few pages and looked through some of them. One was labeled Peter Pan. Another was Tiger Lily. These were Hook's memoirs, in a way. I held it tightly and wondered if I should take it with me, take it to protect it. Clearly they'd decided that it wasn't worthy of evidence, but I thought differently. This showed what Hook went through, what he experienced – not in words, but in pictures.

What if Mr. Gold were to find this? He'd destroy it.

I flipped through more of the work and saw a lot of Milah, plenty of scribbles as well, plenty implying that his memory wasn't standing up to the test of time. This was something Hook needed. I put it in my bag. I would keep it safe and talk about it with Hook.

I looked out the window and tried to imagine what Hook felt when he first came to Storybrooke. He was different from us in that he was aware of his arrival and remembered it all.

My phone rang and I jumped. With fumbling fingers, I took it out and answered it. "Hello?"

"Hi, Penny, it's Mother Superior from the hospital."

"Is there a problem?" I asked, worried.

"Sort of, Melody's sick, so she can't come in to work today. I was wondering if you'd take her shift?"

"Oh," I breathed a sigh of relief. "Of course. When does her shift start?" Mother Superior told me and I agreed to be there on time.

I left the ship and headed home. I had to hide Hook's book, just so Mr. Gold didn't find it. I also needed to get my scrubs and feed Wendy, since I would be away during her usual feeding time.

I hid Hook's book in my underwear drawer, like I kept all my secrets. It was stupid, but honestly, wasn't the last place anyone wanted to go through the place where you keep your underwear? I covered it with socks and old bras I didn't wear any more but couldn't throw out. One day I might need it for parts, like if a still good bra gets its hook stuck in the dryer and I have to replace the clasp.

I changed into my plain scrubs and put my hair up to keep it away from my face and headed to work with one plastic bag. Before reporting for the shift, I successfully convinced Mark to run the blood sample against Hook's blood report. It wouldn't take long, and it wasn't that hard to get Mark to run a test like that, he really liked it. No idea why.

Midway through the shift, with vomit in my hair, and headed for the shower, Molly held out a portable staff phone to me and said, "It's for you."

"Can whoever it is call back?" I asked. "I have vomit in my hair."

Molly made a face but wasn't otherwise surprised. One of our cases had a severe case of food poisoning. And no, it wasn't from an apple. And at some point in our careers we had all been exposed to practically every sort of body fluid available, gastric bile being one of the more frequent. She put the phone to her ear and spoke, "Can you call back? Well, she's a bit busy. No. No! Surely you're joking. That's rude! And disgusting!"

I had a funny suspicion that I knew who was on the other end of the line. I held out my hand for the phone. Might as well get this over with. Molly handed it to me and I put it against the cleanest ear. "What do you want, Hook?" I asked.

"Penny, darling, you don't sound overjoyed to learn I've managed this contraption or to hear my pleasant voice!"

"I'm covered in vomit, Hook, I can't say there's much I would be pleased to hear that isn't a shower."

"Well, I'll make this brief then. I want to know why you're so afraid of the Crocodile. What did he do to you in our land? Or in this land?"

I pushed a vomit covered tendril of hair away from my forehead and wanted to gag. The problem with hair was that it was so easy to get stuff into it and so difficult to get stuff out of it. Maybe I should have just shaved my head. But then it would be on my skin as well as the skin on my forefinger – oh gross. I really wanted to shower.

"Penelope?"

"I don't want to talk about this." I said honestly. "You can't pester me at work either. Some of us have jobs – honest jobs." There was too much venom in my voice that escalated way too quickly. One moment I went from feeling icky to feeling outraged.

"You've asked me many questions," Hook's voice was hard. "And I've not lied to you. The least you can do is answer one of mine."

"No. I did the least of what I could do." I'd broken the law and gone into a crime scene illegally, I'd gathered evidence and removed an object from a crime scene – or a sort of crime scene. I'd helped him learn to breathe with his busted ribs, I'd taught him a bit about this world. "I've gone beyond that, Killian. And I really don't –" tears were hot in my eyes as I thought of my brother's protests that he was innocent, of my father going into town to look for Rumpelstiltskin, of my mother's screams – those of labor and birth to the ones when her child was taken away. I thought of the hole in my life that was never knowing, that was not knowing how to go about knowing – "I don't want to…" I tried to compose my voice but it faltered and wobbled. Tears splashed down my cheeks. "I don't want to talk about this. I'm going to shower." I took the phone away from my ear, pressed "end", and looked at it. Even though that ear had been covered with the least amount of vomit, it still had some smudges of rejected body fluid on it. I grabbed a tissue and wiped it off before giving it to Molly at her desk.

"You ok?" she asked, seeing my face.

"I feel sick," I told her. "I'm going to shower." And I ran down the hall to the staff women's restroom.

After work, Matt gave me an envelope containing the test results, and I headed to my car. In my concern to hide the book and get to work on time, I hadn't placed much thought to putting my keys in the right pocket. So I had to dig through my purse to find my keys.

"Hello, Penelope."

I looked up from my open purse to see Mr. Gold leaning on his cane and looking at me. "Mr. Gold," I said politely, "is Belle all right?"

"She's fine," he didn't sound all that friendly, but he wasn't mean either. "I wanted to ask what's your interest in the pirate."

Interest? Odd way to phrase it, I resumed my search for my keys and spoke. "I merely want justice done. I want it handled honestly, fairly, and accurately. Like the trial my brother wasn't given," I reminded him just who I was and that I remembered. Let him think that I was upset with Regina. "That he has good representation and doesn't have to resort to the lowliest of lows just to keep his life going." Well, cat was out of the bag now, so to speak. But maybe he still thought I was angry with Regina. I wasn't going to confirm or deny any of that. "I'm a nurse. I might not be a doctor, but I know the Hippocratic Oath and I know what my mother taught me when I learned to be a healer: and this first, above all, do no harm." I found my keys, unlocked my car door, and got in. Before I shut the door I wished him a good night.

Safe at home, I opened the contents of the envelope.

The blood matched Hook's.