Chapter 7

It was less than a second before Margot had begun to hurl herself down the stairs to the main deck. Emergency mindset kicked in, from childhood. She'd had to rescue her mother from unfortunate circumstances before; usually, though, they were a result of her mother's own self-deprecating behavior, like benders.

Thus, as Margot descended the stairs, she was inundated with memory after memory from her childhood. Catching her mother before she passed out drunk on the kitchen floor. Catching her mother before she drunkenly collapsed… in the liquor store. Catching her mother when, sober yet out of the blue, she had dissolved into a fit of inconsolable tears.

She couldn't catch her mother now. Tiffany had already fallen.

But before she could make it even a foot further past the stairs and onto the deck amongst the fray, James had abandoned his fight with Pan to catch her instead with his good arm solidly around her waist.

"Margot, no! You can't go diving into those waters after her!" he demanded, not at all sure how to calm this woman out of her frenzy at this moment.

"You got me out of that water! You rescued me! Please, James!"

Hook cursed under his breath. He had never been so easily manipulated on his own ship before. Then again, there had never been a full grown woman aboard his ship before. Even of the lost souls who washed up in wrecks to become citizens of Pirate Town, none of those women had ever been permitted on his ship.

"Smee, send out a boat to look for that fairy!" Hook called out in vague order, not even knowing where his bosun currently was but assured that he'd be close enough to hear the order.

Sure enough, "Aye, captain!" came the response from further down the ship.

Peter Pan, for his part, was stalled of his own accord now. There was a lot of new information coming at him all at once that he really couldn't make heads or tails of.

Had that been Tinkerbell? It looked like her but old. Why would Tink be old? She'd only been missing for a few days, right? And who was this other adult, trapped in Captain Hook's clutches but… willingly? Had she just called Tink mom?

"Lost boys! Let's go!" Peter hollered abruptly before steadily rising into the air, as if it was the most casual thing in the world. Within seconds he was dozens of feet higher than the deck, safely out of reach.

And all around them, the vicious little army of young boys that Peter had brought with him rose into the sky as well, grinning with maniacal eyes. Margot felt herself involuntarily shudder in repulsion at the sight. Hook felt it too and couldn't help but feel some triumph at her response. He'd told her. Hook did not hunt children, he hunted bloody monsters.

"I'll be back Hook! If you just killed Tink, I'll have my revenge on you yet, you dirty pirate!" he promised, just before blasting off into the sky faster than one of Hook's own canons. One by one, the members of his terrifying demon child army followed him.

When they were all gone, Margot wrenched herself free from James's grasp and sprinted towards the bow of the deck. James let her, sensing she had no attempt to jump this time.

Indeed, she didn't jump but she did push herself nearly halfway over the ship's railing to search. As ordered, there was a small wooden rowboat in the water below containing Smee and a few other men, already rowing around in search of someone in the water. Margot's eyes frantically scanned the deep blue waves too but she couldn't see anything. The water was rough and choppy today too, adding to the difficulty of spying anything.

James was by her side in an instant, his hands suddenly at the back of her dress, intent on helping her lace back up without letting his eyes leave the water for a second either. It didn't occur to Margot in this new state of anxiety to be grateful, but once she was able to stop clutching the bodice of her dress to her chest to remain covered, she did feel a lot more comfortable.

"Report, Smee!" James called out.

The bosun looked back up to the ship, "We can't see anything. She's not here Captain!"

"Well of course she fucking isn't!" Margot spat back, "It's been god knows how many minutes! You should have let me follow her when I had the chance!"

"I'm sorry to inform you, but there is no God here." James, intoned softly. He was trying to keep his temper in check but, hell, no one around here, not even Pan, would attack him with that kind of language.

"There's no god anywhere you idiot!" she roared in return.

For the first time, Margot saw his eyes flash in a dangerous scarlet, directed towards her. Ever so slightly, he raised his hook towards her, an almost imperceptible inch. Margot's eyes widened in angry response and a punk's sneer, almost identical to the one Peter Pan wore around on his own young face, graced her features.

"Oh? You wanna hit me, big man?" she snarled out in defiance. Vaguely she was aware that she had just been extremely, inexcusably rude, but every synapse in her brain was firing at the same time right now. She was more than spiraling out of control. Margot always rescued her mother, no one else. There had never been anyone else around. And, in this fraught moment, that was beginning to feel like it had once been a good thing. Things just generally did work out better, in Margot's opinion, when she was in control. You couldn't trust other people.

Hook released the hold he'd had on the back of her dress since he'd finished re-cinching her in. Margot hadn't realized how much she'd been relying on his physical support and she collapsed into a heap on the deck once he released her.

"If you no longer desire my assistance, madam, then feel free to take leave of my vessel," the Captain offered coldly, "I'm afraid the only exit available to you at this particular moment would be walking the plank."

The throngs of other pirates surrounding them, watching the display with interest, laughed heartily at that suggestion.

James's good hand was gestured out behind them to somewhere on the port side of the ship. Briefly Margot was reminded that she only even knew these few ship terms from the amount of time she'd spent following around her roommate, Sarah, to various events on Sarah's fiance Rex's very fancy yacht. This was no yacht. This was a goddamn, real life, 17th century pirate ship.

Sure enough, as her gaze followed the direction of his hand, there it was at the side of the ship. A gap in the railing, where some over eager members of the Captain's crew were already securing a thin wooden plank that led nowhere over the water.

Margot was not immune to threats. This proposition had the needed effect of calming her temper quite quickly. Despite how quick she'd been to make this very same leap into the waves after her own mother, Margot's better sense was steadily beginning to prevail. All temper, like her mother, in one moment and then all logic the next. The latter trait she'd had to develop on her own. She swallowed thickly before looking back up to Hook.

"Or… maybe we could go back to your cabin?" she asked, timidly, her demeanor turning on a dime.

"Or, maybe we could return to my cabin," James intoned smugly in return. "What a much more civilized idea."

He held out his hand to her, then, and she accepted it. James pulled her upright.

Tiffany had been shot. Luckily just through her shoulder — less luckily, then exiting her shoulder and tearing a hole through her upper right wing — but the sheer force of it had been enough to knock her over backwards and into the water. She was pretty sure that no one had even been aiming for her. It seemed that a stray bullet intended for an unfortunate Lost Boy had hit her by mistake.

The water was an icy shock to her system when she hit it. Though it had been warm when she first arrived in Neverland just minutes ago, apparently the water had only recently unthawed from one of Peter's foul moods. But, far more startling than the icy shock to her system, were the sudden onslaught of claws, digging into Tiffany from every angle.

Historically, the Neverland mermaids had unabashedly hated Tink. Perpetually in awe of Peter, the mermaids had been jealous of Tink's ongoing closeness with him. But, now? Tiffany could feel herself being rapidly rushed towards the surface of the water.

Her head bobbed above it and, yes, Tiffany inhaled and coughed at the shock of the much needed air assaulting her lungs

And within a second the same fingers grabbed her again and sucked her beneath the choppy waters. Tiffany felt the cold hand wrapped around her ankle tighten its grip as she watched cannon fire and smoke disappear from view above her. The tearing of the mermaid's claws let up in their pressure and Tiffany was now only being trapped by their insistent but gentle grasp.

They swam so quickly, even in these swelling waves that seemed on the cusp of a storm, that they were already many dozens of yards away from the Jolly Roger's Neverland Port in literal seconds. Dizziness from lack of oxygen began to overcome Tiffany yet again but, just as it did, soft lips were pressing into her own, overtaking them completely, and blowing in. The mermaid's hand deftly squeezed the top of the fairy's nose to keep her nostrils shut and Tink breathed in the sweet breath offered to her.

Once she had, they were off again. She was pulled rapid fire through the waves surrounding Neverland so quickly that Tiffany couldn't make heads or tails of what was going around her.

But she knew where they were headed.

Sure enough, seconds later, before she could even process the need for another breath, Tiffany was unceremoniously tossed onto the shallow shores of Mermaid Cove. From here Tiffany was left to her own devices, the help of the scaly hands that had previously been dragging her suddenly disappeared once the water became shallow. Grasping desperately for purchase on her hands and knees to the sand beneath her, Tiffany forced her head above the continuously crashing waves of the cove's shore.

Her deep inhale led to hacking and shaking coughs as she continued to inch forward on the shore. Tiffany's right shoulder and wing were blossoming in pain but shock was helping to dull this effect.

Well it hadn't been the gentlest rescue in the world but a rescue it had been nonetheless, and Tink couldn't be exactly sure why. If the mermaids hadn't recognized her, they almost certainly would have dragged her to the bottom of the sea, as they did with anyone foolish enough to trespass in the waters they called home. But if they did recognize her? Well, Tink still wasn't sure why that meant she would be saved considering their notoriously poor past relations.

But something was different about Neverland. Darker. Wrong. Chaotic. Yes, the weather had always been somewhat malleable according to the swings of Peter's moods but, considering the young man lived in perpetual youthful joy, that typically kept things breezy and tropical. This new constantly morphing Neverland, one blooming into and out of hurricanes and ice storms was unfamiliar to Tink.

It was also leaving her shivering to death as she continued to pull herself out of the icy waters. First things first, Tink needed to think about survival. Before she sat down to think about what to do next to find Margot - hell, what to tell Margot - Tink needed to build herself a fire and patch up the bullet hole in her shoulder and wing. After that? She had a handful of options…

"Is she to be our new mother Peter?"

"Yes, Peter! We haven't had a mother in such a long time!"

"Do you think she knows stories? She must know stories…"

Peter Pan was not really listening to the continuous chorus of children's questions being fired at him ever since they returned to Hangman's Tree. Leader of his Lost Boys, yes, but a good one? Not particularly. Wasn't that why they still always longed for a mother?

The Lost Boys were referring to that woman, the one that had been with Hook and who had called what looked like an older Tinkerbell "mom." Peter had first thought to tease Hook with the same question, the stupid old pirate that thought he deserved a mother, ha! But something about Hook's reaction had stirred some kind of distant memory within Peter's own mind… No. That woman wasn't mother. Not his mother; not anyone's. But he wasn't exactly sure how he knew that. He was pretty sure he'd never met that pretty lady before; despite simultaneously feeling like he'd known her his entire life?

Peter couldn't get it out of his head, any part of it. It was too perplexing. He wasn't entirely sure he really recognized either woman, I mean, had that really been Tinkerbell? If so, why had she grown up? Why was she big, like human size? And why was she so interested in that other woman with Captain Hook?

"Margot!" The maybe-Tink had called the younger woman Margot. That was when Margot had shouted back "Mom!"

Peter's stomach felt uneasy, like he knew the answer, it was just tucked away in a dream he couldn't remember.

"No!" Peter crowed abruptly, standing from his makeshift throne of gnarled tree roots in the underground of their secret treehouse. "She is not our mother. At least, I don't think so. She was with Captain Hook so she must be a pirate!"

"A pirate?!" all the other boys called back in tones conveying a range of emotions varying from confusion and fear to excitement and daring.

"Yes, Hook now has a lady pirate!" Peter declared, "And since he is certainly responsible for our Tinkerbell's disappearance… fair is fair and I say we kidnap his lady pirate until he agrees to give back Tink!"

"Yeah!" the Lost Boys echoed back, like a hive mind of child neglect.

"Alright Lost Boys, let's get to work…" he ordered, knowing somewhere deep down that he was not deploying this new mission for the reason he'd just given. None of the others had seen Tink, or older Tink, or maybe Tink, or whoever else that had been. One thing was for sure though and that was that whoever it had been had been cleanly shot and blown to pieces into the choppy waters. There was no way anyone could have survived.

So Peter's only chance for answers now lay with this new mystery pirate named Margot… and why the heck did she seem so familiar?!

Back at Hook's cabin, he was watching Margot to make the first move. What did she know about her mother, exactly? Her pitiful knowledge of Neverland suggested that Tinkerbell had kept as much as she could of her past a secret but there was no way to be positive of that for now. Margot had looked genuinely beyond shocked to see her mother there but this too could have been some kind of clever deceit.

If it were not deceit though… did she even know who her mother truly was?

"There's a chance she'll be okay won't she?" was the first thing Margot said, though, when James had safely tucked them into his cabin again. "We're not that far from shore, there's a chance she'll make it back to the island, right?"

"The waters of Neverland practically have a mind of their own," James responded carefully, "There's always a chance. I'll make sure we have some of the crew out patrolling the shore for any signs." He paused for a moment as Margot continued pacing and then continued when it appeared she was somewhat stuck within the stupor of shock, "You said she was your mother?"

The question stopped Margot dead in her tracks and she whirled back to James with frantic, almost pleading eyes. "Yes! I mean, I think so? How could she be here? How could she get here? Did you see her? Did she have wings? Did I see that right?"

But before James could have even answered those questions if he'd wanted to, Margot was firing off a whole new round of ranting.

"I haven't seen her in years. I hadn't seen her in years? I'm not even sure how long. It was just my birthday, she tried to call me, but I didn't pick up…"

Again, Hook wasn't exactly sure of her meaning, i.e. calling and "picking up?" but he got the general gist. They were estranged and Tinkerbell hadn't told her daughter much of anything, likely. But it had just been Margot's birthday? Finding out her age might give him a general sense of time for how long Tinkerbell had been gone exactly, but Hook would have to pocket the question for later. He could hear hidden tears walled behind Margot's stoic tone, threatening to spill out.

Likely, the young woman had just witnessed the death of her own mother and James couldn't help but feel genuine sympathy towards her. But if Tinkerbell was now officially dead and not just missing? Then Pan wouldn't stop his war for revenge until the whole of Neverland was torn apart, possibly at the expense of his own daughter even. James was sure of it.

"We will be alerted the moment any of my men find a single possible trace," Hook said, attempting to modify his tone into one of silken reassurance. "Now, here, you need to sit. You've had one shock after another since you've arrived here in Neverland and you need to get your bearings."

Pliantly, Margot allowed herself to be gently led over to one of the plush leather armchairs by all of James' books. She found herself genuinely grateful to be able to grasp onto one of his arms for support for their short walk across the cabin. Margot was shaking terribly.

"I'll put on some tea in the fire," James said as he sat her down. Margot couldn't help but feel she was being treated a little bit like a cat that might attack at any second but, then again, she supposed she was. There were so many confusing questions and emotions flying through her head right now that Margot wasn't quite sure what reaction might come roaring out of her next.

Thankfully, James' calm demeanor as he turned back towards the fireplace in his cabin, picking up a kettle next to it, was working just about as well as anything could right now to stop Margot from 100% losing her shit.

"She had wings… I saw them…" Margot murmured distantly.

Hooked turned back to her, placing a delicate china teacup in front of her on the table between the two leather chairs in his small library.

"Well she would have them, wouldn't she?" Hook mused, taking the other chair and sipping his own tea thoughtfully and being cautious not to share too much information, "If you're a fairy, then certainly she must be."

"My mother isn't-" Margot started the sentence with a scoff before trailing off and staring blankly at her cup of tea. "Oh, what the hell do I know? Nothing about anything anymore."

"Welcome to Neverland," Hook replied, drolly lifting his teacup towards her in mock cheers.

When Margot didn't make any sort of indication that she'd heard him, James started to get a little more worried about the level of her shock. She wasn't going to be any use to him in some form of catatonic grief, after all.

"Margot, I think you might try a drop of this," he said, standing abruptly to turn to a drawer in his desk that required a key for opening, "A little fairy dust helps perk anyone back up."

She watched him pull out a small vial from his desk, a glass treasure encapsulating what appeared to be enchantingly swirling iridescent gold - like crystal and newly shined rose copper all mixed into one. And if there was something to distract Margot from replaying the past ten minutes from out on the ship's deck over and over again finally, it was the appearance of this elixir. She'd never seen anything like it in her life… it didn't look… physically possible. Every time she thought she'd finally grasped the reality of the situation she was in, there was something new here to throw her for a complete loop.

In return, Hook was cataloging her response as well. Had she ever seen pixy dust before? Maybe even produced some herself? The way she'd glowed earlier when they'd almost- well it seemed to suggest she could, didn't it?

Well clearly she didn't know about pixie dusty, anyway, from the mesmerized look on her face, that much was clear. Lucifer, Tinkerbell had certainly gone through a fair deal of trouble to keep her daughter's true past a secret, but why?

This vial of golden liquid beckoned to Margot like a beacon of pure light, hummed to her at a frequency she could feel deep within her bones and it only grew stronger as the Captain approached, unscrewing its top to reveal an old fashioned dropper.

"I don't really take drugs from people I don't know…" Margot began at first, eyeing the dropper cautiously, never letting it out of her sight, even as she could feel her lips beginning to part in unbidden anticipation of a taste.

"This is no drug, my lady," Hook said and smiled when she pliantly opened her mouth when he stood before her, her pink tongue resting delicately in anticipation on her plump, inviting lower lip.

And there it was, Hook saw. Her kiss.

Wendy Darling all those years ago with the story of her mother and that ineffable "kiss, tucked conspicuously away in the right corner." Utter nonsense, he'd thought at the time, and not much more about it than that. Of course, he'd seen women who wanted to be kissed, who wanted to kiss him. But he'd never encountered this treasured thing the Darling's held in such reverence: a secret kiss reserved for someone. But here one was, in front of him just waiting to be pirated, all the same.

To Lucifer's credit, it was a beautiful sight. One of the greatest temptations anyone had ever laid before him, probably. But Hook didn't let it distract him. Before she might change her mind, he placed a drop of liquid pixie dust onto her tongue, steadfastly ignoring every loudly protesting bone in his body telling him to instead lean down and just kiss the girl.

What must have been a kiss from the cosmos, instead then, landed on Margot's tongue, and it was warm. If anything bad had happened to Margot in the past 24 hours, hell if anything bad had happened to her in the past decade, for just a moment it all melted away from her. That glow again, Margot didn't even need to see it this time, the feeling was so strong, cleansed every inch of her from any lingering pain and cleared the foggy anxiety riddled headache in her mind.

And as her mind cleared from the fog, something new replaced it. The Island, Neverland, she felt it bloom within her.

Her mother was there. Somewhere within it all; Tiffany was alive.

The temperature and the climate had never shifted so quickly on Neverland, Hook was sure. Certainly not for Pan who needed to be in a palpably foul mood to turn on one of his storms; and the boy was currently nowhere near kicking up one of his tantrums. But the lingering chill from Peter's last battle quickly grew into thick tropical heat around them, making the flare of the cabin's fire not only unnecessary but almost uncomfortable.

Through the stained glass windows and round portholes of the cabin, the dreary gray of the winter storm abruptly shifted into the beautiful ombre final rays of a sunset. And all the while, Margot seemed to glow contentedly with all of it, as if she was the source of the day's final sun herself.

She was every bit the most ethereally beautiful thing Hook had ever seen in his life, quite a feat considering the many beautiful treasures of Neverland.

And so he made a promise to himself, then and there that, yes, he would indeed have Miss Margot Belle's secret kiss as well. He'd always been a sort of "have your cake and eat it too" type of man - it was why he had abandoned the Royal Navy for a life of piracy after all.

Softly, as the small drop of pixie dust he'd given her eased its most immediate effects, the golden glow faded from Margot and the sunset across Neverland eased into a quick but calm evening sky. So then, like her father, she could influence the weather and time in Neverland perhaps as well? Interesting.

Margot's eyes eased open in the aftermath of the strange effects James' potion had had on her. He'd been right, she certainly felt rightfully perked up. But also…

"My mother is alive," Margot said with complete certainty.

Well, after what he'd just witnessed, Hook had no reason to question that.

"Then I will find her, and reunite her with you," Hook said with the most altruistic and gentlemanly tone he could muster.

In reality, a large part of him was thinking of nothing but this unexpected bout of pure good fortune: not only was he going to manage to kidnap Tinkerbell once and for all after all, but now he was in possession of Peter Pan's daughter too? For the first time, he truly held all of the cards.

But, if there was anything anxiety still nagging somewhere at the back of the Captain's brain? It was the fact that there was at least some part of him that did, incidentally of course, also want to help Margot. That was the sort of impulse James had needed to worry about in a long time.