So between work and film festival and some homework, I've been absolutely swamped. I'm sorry that this chapter is 1,000 words shorter than usual, I suck. But please leave reviews. I will not be updating again until next Thursday or Friday and if I can't get any reviews, I will definitely not be motivated. Come on, guys, really?
Anyway, here you go.
Hook leaned into the overstuffed high-backed armchair and looked as his ex-comrade, who was fidgeting in his own seat, his cup of tea sloshing out into the saucer as he adjusted and readjusted his position. "Calm yourself, Smee. I know you're angry. Let the anger out; explain to me just how your convoluted plan was supposed to work."
Smee set the cup and saucer down on the side table before standing and turning to face his Captain, his face a livid red and his voice shaking with years of pent up anger. "I gave you Eton. I gave you the very things you wanted most in your life, honor and recognition and all of your good form meaning something to the world. I gave you a new, working hand to replace the memories that the infernal boy had inflicted on you. I took away the hook that gave you your nickname and ruined you as a scholar, determining your path as a buccaneer and unlawful seafaring robber. I gave you everything you'd ever wanted, Captain, why did you seek me out? Why do you wish to return to Neverland?!"
"Because this time, this place…I do not belong." Hook looked steadily at the quaking, stout man before him, whose eyes were full of subdued, confused rage. "You do not belong. Peter and Wendy's incarnations? They do not belong. The Lost Boys definitely do not belong on a college campus, either. As soon as I remembered exactly what you had done, I started searching for you in every place I thought possible. I did not expect to find Mr. Painter, the Scotsman music teacher, as your alter ego. I came so that we may return home, Smee."
"But why would you of all people wish to return to that god-forsaken island?" Smee asked, sitting down again, his anger transforming to honest curiosity. "I thought you hated it there."
"I did, at first," Hook mused, "But I realized that if I came back to the Mainland, nothing would be the same. The era of my pillaging pirate ways was far over. Times have changed, Smee, and we belong where time never matters, where we can still be the villainous pirates history wrote us out as. Here, on the Mainland, we are but a fairy story recorded by a strange little man and published as fiction. Fiction, Smee! We have no meaning here. But home? We rule the entirety of the Neverlandean Ocean."
"Why would you side with Peter Pan?" Smee inquired, taking a small sip of his tea. His anger faded as his Captain regained the smooth control he'd always had. Smee, for all his silly ways, always admired Hook's grace and elegance and intelligence. He allowed himself to fall under the know-all, understand-all demeanor of Captain James Hook once again.
"Because in order for us to have enough magic to return to Neverland, Pan must figure out what happened to him," Hook shrugged. "He must remember who he is and what his birthright is as Prince of Neverland. He must kiss the girl. It is as prophesy stated when you bargained with the fairies, wiped our memories, and closed Neverland to us all."
"I didn't mean for either of them to die," Smee muttered. His head hung in shame and his white hair looked even thinner than Hook remembered it last. These years on the Mainland were affecting his cohort more than originally thought. "We don't age, James. You and I and the Lost Boys haven't aged for decades. We live in a loop, always waiting for the next Wendy and Peter to come around. Maybe, sometimes, we remember who we are early. Just as they are about to meet for the first time, we get an inkling of our true identities. But every time they die, we return to blank slates. We live on, unaware. Their deaths were accidents, every incarnation was an accident."
"Speaking of Peter, you didn't bring him with you when you made the deal. What happened to him?" Hook asked.
"He came looking for Wendy," Smee explained. "She was already married when he returned to look for her, and he saw her at her window with her husband and her new daughter lying in bed. He was so heartbroken that he lost his happy thoughts, every single one of them, in midair. He plummeted to his death. Wendy followed shortly after, falling from a building under circumstances I still don't truly understand."
"And their incarnations since? None of them have managed to fulfill the prophesy," Hook glowered.
"Accidental deaths, all of them," Smee shrugged. "This is the first successful relationship between a Peter and a Wendy since the original pair."
"And we must protect them," Hook decided. "We must complete the prophesy before it is too late and Neverland completely shuts down. Think of how much damage his death has done! Every time!"
"I was actually trying not to think about those things," Smee grumbled. Thunder suddenly shook the building, and both men jumped from their seats, staring out the window. Clouds were gathering over the campus, Hook could feel the electricity in the air gathering almost painfully. His wrist throbbed, and he was sure that Britney's shoulders were burning (having long since known her identity).
"We need to go," Hook declared.
Smee grabbed his jacket and struggled to both pull it on and follow Hook out of the apartment building. The two men hurried down the streets, pushing against the wind of the gathering storm.
Across the campus in the Middle Mill building, Peter and Guinevere were curled up in Peter and Bryce's dorm watching a movie on her laptop. They were enjoying the film, completely absorbed in the plot, but very close and very ignorant of the violent weather gathering outside. Their closeness was generating power.
Nature was picking up its cues from the fairies: something was coming. Something big.