Chapter 13 - Calling Out Winter

Wendy closed the door behind her and stepped into the warm light of Hook's cabin. Twilight glittered through the windows and reflected on the sea, but all she saw was him. He sat draped in his armchair, his left knee pitched over the plump arm of the chair and his right leg splayed out comfortably, lean and long as it stretched toward the floor where his elegant foot tapped gently to the rhythm of a song from the gramophone. In his lap sat a massive bound volume with his hook poised to turn the page. He had about him the look of a cat that ate all of the canaries.

She stepped forward. "I won't ask how you could do such a thing," she said, "because I would be lying if I said I did not already know."

Hook stared at her, genuinely puzzled. "What are you talking about, my dear?"

For a moment, Wendy's eyes rolled and she looked much younger than she ought to have, but she regained her composure and stood firm. Her arms rested at her sides, but her hands balled into small fists. "You know perfectly well what I mean, Captain." She tilted her head and stared hard at him, but he only looked back with a curious glint in his eyes. "You used me, sir. You used me to torment him." A dawn of understanding broke across the captain's face as she spoke, and he nodded once then closed his book slowly. His lips curled into a familiar languid smile, but Wendy did not give him a moment to reply. "Please do not insult my intelligence by denying it."

"I would never do such a thing, my dear," he said, somehow leaning further against the plush back of his chair. "For one, you are absolutely correct—at least on one point—about what transpired earlier today, but I am also, of course, a gentleman, and—"

"You are not a gentleman!" Wendy shouted, finally letting out her anger. "A gentleman would not have spoken about me in such a way in front of his crew; he would not humiliate me for the sake of teasing a child!"

The instant Wendy's ire rose, the captain's face became dangerous, but he sat still. "What do you know of gentlemen?" he asked. "Is your father a gentleman? Do gentlemen seek to rid themselves of the treasure that is their daughters at the earliest convenience?"

"Leave my father out of this, Captain."

"A pity it is, Miss Darling, if you think so highly of him and so little of me. I took you in; I fought for what you asked of me, and I did it as I thought it was necessary and best."

Wendy laughed and threw her arms into the air before placing her hands against her hips. "What could you know about what is best for me?" she shouted.

"I know what you claimed to want, that you asked to stay here."

"I asked not to go back to Peter."

Perhaps if she had taken note of the subtle mood changes in the captain, she would not have been as shocked by the more blatant shift of disposition, and, really, it ought not to have surprised her anyway when he stood, recklessly pounded his hook into the book next to him, and threw it across the room only feet from her head. Wendy screamed and jumped away from the crashing book, looking both shocked and furious. She stared open-mouthed at Hook and attempted to catch her breath to more easily speak, but he did not give her enough time. "Foolish girl," he said. "I might have guessed you would be this predictable."

Wendy laughed. "I'm predictable? What do you call that crude song and dance routine you played today with Peter?"

"I call it winning the day," Hook said, not bothering to look at her. He fiddled with one of the pearl buttons on his jacket and sighed. His smile returned, but it was as cruel and patronizing as it had been the day he'd made her walk the plank. "I call this," he said, waving a hand in her direction, "predictable. You are a simple two-act play, my dear. Act one is your attempts to ingratiate yourself to some would-be fool, and act two is you throwing everything back into his face. First there was your father, then Peter, and finally me. I have been duped. I really did think better of you." He sighed again and began to brush imaginary dust from the front of his waistcoat, pretending not to notice Wendy shake with rage.

Several minutes passed before Wendy spoke, but when she did, it was with tears pouring from her eyes. "You are every inch a monster!" she breathed. "You say you did great things for me, but it was only as a means to your end, the only end you've ever wanted!" She breathed quickly between sobs that only worsened when she saw the embarrassed look on the captain's face as he observed her. "I don't know what I expected," she said, glaring fiercely. "I ought to have known it would always be about Peter. It's always been about Peter. It's always going to be about your stupid obsession with a little boy!"

"'How bold of you to accuse me of an obsession I have never denied while you deny your own. I understood it when you were a child, Wendy Darling, but surely now as an adult you see how silly it all is, how profoundly and breathtakingly stupid it was to believe that playing pretend with an immortal forever child and his ragtag acolytes would be anything other than what it is— a pathetic attempt to regain some sense of freedom you never had in the first place and an excuse to mope about circumstances rather than seek to change them."

Wendy scoffed but knew she had no defense for the truth, which of course made her more angry. So she did the only natural thing and lashed out where she knew it would hurt. "I know you, Captain Hook. For all your bluster and menace, you're just as much playing pretend as I was. You can't let go of your own mistakes or missed opportunities, whatever it is that brought you here and fills you with desperation to keep failing at your one goal." She punctuated her barbs with a well-timed kick at the volume he'd thrown, and the book crashed into the table next to his chair.

Hook only glared at Wendy, the violent turmoil in his thoughts showing itself in his eyes, and when he spoke his voice was perilous, "Tell me, my dear, what is this new epistemic privilege you have imagined, and from whence has it come? What is it that makes you think you suddenly know so much about me? You barely know yourself, girl." He casually bent down to retrieve his book and gently placed it on the table as if it was not totally destroyed by his own outburst.

He felt a sudden pang of disappointment at the idea that she did not truly understand him or his vendetta, that she thought the broader picture of things was so simple. Hook had thought, of all people, Wendy might understand his inexorable dance with Pan for what it was: an unnatural but very real spiral of two forces twisting through forever and never. It was important not to think of things as binary, not to imagine time as an hourglass with finite spaces that must be filled, flipped, repeated to continue; time, like all things in Neverland, was a circular clock face that never needed to be wound. The figures on the face and the arms that twitched along didn't matter because the circle was eternal. It simply was. He longed for someone to understand, but it could not be forced and rarely could be explained. Hook could settle for at least accepting these riddles, or at the very least of his wishes, he desired someone in whom he could confide things darker than murder and more personal than flesh.

Wendy had no way of knowing what was on Hook's mind, but she was able to detect melancholy in his fantastic eyes when it flickered there, and it was for that reason that she managed to soften her voice, even through her anger. "I know more than you realize," she said. She didn't know—not really—why she felt suddenly compelled to be less abrasive, but she found that Hook's face softened slightly along with her voice; more importantly, she found that it pleased her to see him less agitated. Now that she was not overcome with rage, she found it difficult to look directly into his eyes, but she did it anyway after wiping tears away from her cheeks. "I know you didn't start the fight," she said. "I know Peter started it a long time ago when he… when he cut off your hand."

Hook only blinked in response, but something happened behind his eyes that Wendy would have called surprise if she didn't know better. He regained control before she was even certain he'd lost it and allowed an amused shadow to cover how genuinely interested he actually was in what Wendy might have to say. "How could you know such a thing?" he asked, tracing the hook with his left index finger as he spoke. "I am quite famously a murdering pirate; I might have started any old quarrel for any old reason."

A smile tickled Wendy's face momentarily, but she was too conscious of the truth of his words to take them lightly. "A thief and a murderer, no doubt, Captain," she said, "but not a man who would needlessly waste years on a few innocent children."

"They are most assuredly not innocent," Hook said, and the renewed anger in his voice surprised them both.

"My point, sir, is that you have spent—well, I really have no idea how long, and I suspect you don't either—fighting back and forth with Peter, and I'm sure that had he not wounded you so egregiously and without provocation, then you would not still try so desperately to kill or equally harm him." Wendy watched as Hook internalized her words; his shining eyes had a veil of mistrust, and she thought them beautiful.

As much as she wanted to hold onto her anger and lash out at him, she could not deny how much she had come to empathize with what she understood to be his position in the conflict. Peter was an obnoxious, arrogant tyrant, and he would always be all of those things, even when he was adorable and enticing; it was his nature. Hook was more arrogant, sometimes more obnoxious, and more dangerous than anyone Wendy had ever known, but he at least owned up to it. He never claimed to be anything other than that for which he was known. It was that realization that diffused Wendy's anger.

Such ownership of one's deeds was not by any means an excuse or reason to pardon heinous acts, but it was at least honest, and it was more than she ever got from Peter. It was something to work with. Moreover, it had been enough for the last couple weeks, and he had done more than prove his ability and even willingness to perform good acts. He could be and seemed to enjoy being compassionate and kind. Wendy felt a jump in her chest as she finally allowed herself to feel that empathy again, and she stared intensely at Hook. She closed the space between them and carefully wrapped a hand around his hook. "I know how it happened," she said. "Peter told us. He said you were just leaning against a tree and… I don't know, but he even said that he only did it because he wanted to, that you had only just arrived and had never harmed him."

Confused, and a little annoyed with her sudden change in attitude, Hook frowned at Wendy and extricated his hook from her hand. "Why are you telling me this now?" he asked. Hadn't they just been screaming at each other? What now possessed the girl?

"I don't know, sir."

Her intensity was beginning to trouble Hook, and he had to struggle not to push her away. He had been angry that she was angry, but now she seemed full of pity, and there was very little that James Hook found more distasteful than pity. His annoyance grew and blossomed into full-blown acrimony, and he shoved Wendy backward, not hard, but firmly. Her hurt expression made him feel worse than he expected. "I do not need your pity any more than I need your contemptuous whining about being used," he snarled.

Wendy glared and again closed the gap between them, but this time she shoved him back, and because he was not expecting it, she managed to push him back into his chair. Pretending it was not a lucky accident, Wendy used the opportunity to crowd him so he could not get up without hurting her and pointed a slender finger at his chest. "First of all, Captain, it was not pity. It was compassion, and you would do well to learn the difference. Second, you obviously do need it or I would be dead by now and not part of your crew, and, finally," she said, jabbing her finger hard into the flounce of his silk shirt, "What you call contemptuous whining, I call correctly pointing out when you were being an arse who could have at least had the decency to warn the young lady about which he spoke so crudely and certainly ought to have apologized afterward!"

Wendy seemed to realize by the end of her outburst that she was in an extremely dangerous situation, if not through common sense, then definitely through the face of the captain. He looked as if he could not decide how to kill her rather than just whether or not he would do it in the first place. She made an effort to jump back that failed when Hook snared her wrist in his left hand and used his sitting position to trap her legs between his; she was effectively immobilized. "Captain, I—"

"I apologize," Hook said. "In earnest, I apologize. I am not sorry for taunting Pan, but I could have warned you it might be a tactic, and I am sorry that I made you feel violated. That was not my intention, but surely the intent is not the matter when the result was your pain." He waited patiently for a response, and when none came, said, "Well?"

"I, well… thank you, Captain," Wendy whispered.

"I trust you are sorry for manhandling me," He said, letting go of her wrist to inspect his shirt.

"Yes, sir, very," Wendy said quietly. "Only," she continued, "you did push me first."

"I apologize for that, too. Now," he said, "no doubt you believe yourself to be fully informed on how this," he indicated his hook and continued, "came to be a part of me. You are more than likely somehow misinformed, but I do not desire to speak of it this evening. It is enough for me to know that you do not blame me or assume certain facts based on my past. Let that be enough for you for the time being, Wendy, please, and I will do my best to accept your compassion."

He released her, but she did not move. Wendy smiled softly and stayed still between his legs. Sitting straight up, he was still nearly at eye level with her, and he could see a flush creep along her throat. He had meant every word he said to Pan that day; she was lovely. "Come here," he sighed and tugged her wrist gently until she fell into his lap and he allowed her to give him the hug he needed.