Never, Never (18 page)

He opened the door of his cabin and stepped out onto the deck. Alcohol was flowing, and the men were laughing and carousing and literally throwing pieces of treasure into the air. A hush fell over them at the sight of the captain.

He waited for a beat before addressing them.

“Men,” he said, stopping once more, out of eloquent words to speak. Then, he smiled, a rare thing. “Toss me the rum.”

The crew cheered and he joined them, earning a subtle nod and smile from Starkey. Daniel Thatcher stumbled into him, massively drunk already, and Bill Jukes hit him from the other side. Hook chuckled, drowned out by their thunderous, slurring laughter.

“Congratulations, Captain Hook, on your victory today,” said Daniel.

“On
ours
, Thatcher.” He took an entire bottle of the spiced alcohol and ran his hook across the top, slicing the glass. He tipped it back and let it slide down his throat, relishing the heat, as the men cheered again—all but Smee, who just sort of giggled and sipped on his quarter-glass. And the music and the dancing and the rum filled, for a moment, the painful emptiness in his gut.

As the night wore on, Hook celebrated the victory with the rest of the crew and kept up even with Jukes and Starkey, matching them drink for drink. He danced and stumbled and slammed alcohol, losing himself in celebration, until Neverland began to quiet with the night, and that midnight stillness crept into the air.

Then, there was no one awake but he and Jukes and Flintwise. They were sitting on the ship's forecastle, Hook leaning back in an old chair, booted feet crossed on another chair in front of him. Flintwise sat to his right, at the wheel, and Jukes in the middle of them, forming the last point of a very drunken triangle.

“You love that Indian girl, Captain?” Flintwise asked, sloppily turning his skinny neck, raising an eyebrow at Hook.

Hook took another swig of the alcohol in his hand. At this point, he could hardly taste the difference between wine and rum, but he was fairly certain this was the former. “You've seen her?”

He should've been more surprised. Had he been sober, he reckoned he would've been.

“'Course I have, Cap'n. We all have. Not such a secret,” Flintwise said, belching. Jukes laughed.

“Perhaps,” said Hook, finishing off the bottle, reaching for another.

“I was in love once.” Flintwise's voice cracked, and he leaned back against the wheel, shifting to the left, then overcorrecting to the right and nearly falling to the floor.

Jukes boomed out a good-natured laugh. “You? When?”

“Some time ago. With one of them mermaids.”

Jukes laughed harder at that, and Hook simply cocked his head.

“A mermaid?” Jukes spat between peals of laughter and enthusiastic gulps of rum. “If that's love, we've all been smitten!”

He looked at the captain conspiratorially, and Hook laughed a little.

Flintwise stood, then thought better of it, sitting heavily back down. “I have been. I was in love with her.”

“No,” said Jukes. “You were just thinkin' with your flint.”

Hook did laugh at that, and Flintwise grabbed himself, which only made them both laugh harder. Jukes toppled over, barely able to breathe, and crashed hard onto the deck.

Flintwise joined and stumbled over to him, and Hook somehow pushed himself up from his chair and made it over to help him, reaching out his right. Jukes eyed him and took Flintwise's hand instead, and it was then that the captain realized that he'd offered the man a hook, and not a hand.

He fell backward into his chair and stared at the deck.

“We're heading under, Captain,” said Jukes, and he and Flintwise tripped below deck with the rest of the men, leaving Hook alone with the black night.

Hook found that he was rather sad to be alone.

He drank a little more, then stood, feeling his legs give way beneath him, and caught himself on the ship's edge. His hook stuck in the wood, and he grimaced, feeling the sudden urge to cry. He let out an angry growl instead, yanking it from the wood, and threw the half-full bottle overboard. The rest of the wine bled out into the water. Another thing he'd torn open and wasted, like Tiger Lily.

He shut his eyes and unfastened his hook, feeling the weight of it in his hand. Then he stared out over the dark, glassy surface of the sea. More than anything, at this very moment, he wanted to toss it away, let it sink to the bottom.

Maybe if he did, he would wake up with a hand, and the world would be normal again.

He laughed darkly and reattached the hook. The world would never be normal again.

Hook gathered several half-empty bottles in his arms and lay down on the deck, right where he stood. If he stayed out there, he was less alone. If he stayed there, he was simply the latest remnant of a party. And if he stayed drunk and awake, then he didn't have to sleep and not dream.

Sometimes, he wished he could dream.

T
HE NEXT DAY WAS STILL YOUNG
,
AND
J
AMES
H
OOK
was quite drunk. He stumbled about the ship in a rum-induced semi-stupor. None of his crew seemed to mind, as he was decidedly more pleasant under the influence of the stuff, smiling and singing rather than brooding and barking orders.

No one else was still drunk, but then again, no one else had stayed up all night, drinking through painful reveries until that very moment.

Hook felt strange and fuzzy, but found that he was enjoying it, though he assumed he wouldn't enjoy it so much later. He lurched into Smee, who chuckled pleasantly, and raised his eyebrows.

“Smee, the cook!”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Captain Hook, Smee. Captain Hook!”

He tried to sound menacing when he said this, but it just came out blurry, and he devolved into a fit of laughter, because the inadvertent rhyming of “cook” and “Hook” struck him as funny.

Smee nodded and averted his eyes, and Hook threw his arm around the man.

“Careful there, sir. Don't want any injuries from that hook you're throwing around.”

Hook laughed then, but it was humorless. “Any
more
injuries, you mean?”

Smee scratched at his cheek. “More, sir?”

“I've killed a hundred men with this thing. And I've skewered more.” Hook knew in the part of him that had any sobriety left that this was a gross overstatement, but the larger, drunker part of him did not care for facts. “I killed a captain and stabbed a Tiger Lily.”

Smee's eyes shot wide open. “Tiger Lily, Sir? The Indian Princess?”

“Aye, one and the same.” Hook gazed down then, looking like a shamed child.

“Captain Hook, you mean to tell me that you stuck your hook in the princess?”

Hook shut his mouth and puffed out his cheeks, then, trying very hard, and very unsuccessfully, to hold in a cackle. Quite quickly, the cackle won out. “Hardly,” he laughed, blustering. Generally, he was not inclined to laugh at such bawdy things, but alcohol did strange things to a man. “But, I did stick her with this.”

Smee rolled his eyes. “Why would you do such a thing?”

His face fell. “It was an accident, Smee. A terrible accident.”

“Is she all right?”

“Of course. But she hates me now. Hates, hates, hates me.”

Smee put his arm around the captain's shoulders and smiled consolingly. “Now, now, Captain, I'm sure it's not as bad as all that. Why don't you just go lie down?”

He crossed his arms. “I won't. I won't lie down.”

“Even a pirate captain needs rest sometimes.”

Hook was following along with Smee even while he was vocally protesting, so inebriated was he. Smee opened the door and Hook fell into his room. Smee then crossed
the floor to his bed and turned down the covers, patting the mattress, as though Hook was a boy and Smee was a mother, trying to coax him into having a nap.

“That's where it all happened, Smee,” Hook said, sitting in the middle of the floor, playing his fingers on the soft rug, staring up at the bed.

Smee pursed his lips. “Oh dear.”

“I'm in love with her, you know.”

“I didn't.”

As Smee was making conversation with the captain, he was tidying things up and gesturing toward the bed. He looked a fool, Hook thought. A silly, busy fool.

“I'm in love with her and she's all I can think about, and that blasted Pan took my hand. It's his fault I stabbed her, Smee,” Hook said, standing and rubbing his head.

“Of course it is.”

Smee pushed him toward the bed, and Hook frowned. “It
is
his fault,” he said, shaking Smee off. “Of course it is. Why am I here, then? Why aren't I out there getting rid of him?”

“You're in no shape to be killing Peter Pan, Captain.”

The captain stood straight up and thrust out his hook, then smoothed his hair down with his hand. “Fetch me my sword, Smee! Fetch it for me.”

Smee frowned. “I don't think you should be handling a sword in this state.”

Hook pushed past him and threw his hand around the handle of his sword, yanking it up, brandishing the blade. Smee held up his hands and backed toward the door. Hook barely noticed the fellow in his stupor, and pressed through to the deck.

“Men!” he bellowed.

Starkey sprinted up to him and stopped, “Captain?” He wrinkled his nose and eyed the captain's disheveled clothes and hair. “Been hitting the rum?”

Hook ignored him and stared, glassy-eyed, at his crew. They looked somewhat bedraggled, red-eyed and moving slowly. The effects of a hangover were unpleasant, even in a place as magical as Neverland.

“We're leaving the ship,” he said, and raised his sword into the air.

Starkey was the only one among them who didn't look as though he'd already been through a battle. Well, Starkey and Smee, who was avoiding the whole situation by scurrying off to the cook's cabin.

Starkey stepped in a little closer to Hook and lowered his voice. “Captain, I don't believe it wise to be headin' off the ship with you in this state.”

Hook glared at Starkey, and Starkey stepped back with the rest of them, shaking his head, nose twitching in that familiar way.

“We, fellows, are going to kill ourselves a Pan,” Hook said, enthusiasm lighting up his eyes.

The group did not raise a grand hurrah or react, really, at all. Hook glowered at them.

“I said, ‘We are going to kill the Pan!'”

The pirates looked at one another and then threw their arms in the air and shouted. Several of them winced at the loud noise, but Hook smiled with his teeth and staggered off the ship, falling off the side of the walkway a step too early and cackling as he plunged into the waterlogged sand. He pushed himself up and tripped onto the beach, his band of miscreants, Starkey included, following loyally behind him.

At the mouth of the forest, he stopped and looked to his left and right, then reached out his hook to steady himself. He didn't remember the forest ever spinning before. After a beat, he followed his feet into the trees, having absolutely no clue as to where he was headed, but fueled by the confidence that only vast amounts of alcohol
can provide. He barreled through the trees, clumsy and brash and wholly un-Hook-like. Then, he stopped and his ears perked up.

There was a soft whistle heading toward him, a note from the pan flute Peter played so often. He grinned wickedly and headed in the direction of the noise. The land gently sloped up and down, hills rolling beneath him, trees on every side. He stopped and pushed his hook out at the men behind him. There was Pan, in the valley below, hopping and skipping in such a way that he blurred. The Lost Boys were all present. Hook thought he recognized several of them—the twins, Simpkins, Tootles, Slightly, but one or two were completely unfamiliar to him.

On a regular sort of day, he would not have approached the situation as he did. He would not have ventured into the woods without a plan. He would not have compelled his entire blundering crew to accompany him. He certainly wouldn't have called out Pan's name and given away his position. But, Hook's blood was fairly running with alcohol, and so this was no normal day.

“Peter Pan,” he cried, voice reverberating in the clear, green valley beneath him.

Pan looked up toward him and smiled, flying up to meet him.

“Captain Hook,” he said, forgetting the flute. “Come all the way out here just to see me?”

“Indeed.”

Peter screwed up his face. “You stink, Hook.”

The crew beside him shifted, grumbling with one another quietly. Hook furrowed his brow. Peter laughed, injecting instant rage into his blood. Hook thrust out his sword, wavered, and dropped the blade, then bent uneasily to retrieve it.

Pan laughed even more loudly in Hook's face. “In rare form today, aren't we? Catch me if you can, old man.”

That was all it took to bait the captain. Pan flew down toward the boys, and Hook sprinted, falling down the hill after him. The men went along, brandishing their swords and guns and yelling in a very controlled, post-night-of-revelry sort of way.

When they reached the boys, Hook's eyes darted this way and that, searching frantically for Pan. Peter, of course, was flitting about above the battle, calling out various taunts and jeers that Hook could not presently make out. A jumbled sort of frustration seeped into his head, and he cried out gruffly, some harsh rumble that no one knew quite how to interpret.

He spun to his left and then to his right, hook and blade flashing brightly each time he spun. Peter darted down beside him and grabbed his hook. “Well, this is nice, isn't it? Is it new?”

Then, he flew back up above Hook, snickering loudly, and swiped off his hat with one hand. Hook was seeing all of this through a red haze. At one point, he was completely convinced that Peter had somehow duplicated himself, for there was no other sensible explanation for the two Pans flying around his head. Eventually, they fused back into a single boy, and Hook swung his sword around clumsily. Peter hopped to the ground, and as he jumped back up, the captain swiped with his hook. He froze, however, blood running instantly cold, when he felt it connect with something. Pan? But, no. Pan was darting around somewhere in the periphery. He slowly turned to look at whoever or whatever was stuck at the end of his hook, and the blood drained from his face.

Only just now had he realized that he was fighting against the Lost Boys. It was not only Pan he'd brought his men down upon. As the alcoholic rage sharply and painfully receded, he could see the faces of his friends in the foreground, as more than just an afterthought.
Especially the face of this one. His favorite one. Acid boiled in his stomach, threatening sickness.

Bibble. He was sure of it. Tall and awkward and sweet. Bibble, there was no mistaking. Anyone. Anyone but him.

The blur was gone, as was the cloudiness in his mind, and the clarity was sudden and startling and horrifying.

Bibble blinked several times and looked down at his stomach, then dropped his little sword. Blood soaked his shirt, spreading across the fabric. With disbelief in his eyes, he stared up at Hook. Then, he frowned.

“James Hook?”

When Bibble said the words, little droplets of blood leaked out of his mouth. Hook's throat constricted, and his windpipe closed. He stared back at the child and gently pulled his hook out of his stomach, feeling the sickening give when it came free.

“Aye, it's me,” he said, voice gravelly, choked.

Bibble blinked slowly again, and Hook grabbed his arm, fingers shaking, helping him lower himself to the ground. Bibble choked up a little more blood and furrowed his brow, not saying much, just sitting there, staring.

“Bibble?” Hook said, staring into the boy's eyes, his own stinging, everything sharp and aching. “Does it hurt much, Bibble?”

“Does what hurt?”

“Your belly, child.”

Bibble looked down and then back up at Hook, eyes glazing over. “What happened there?”

Hook's face crinkled and a cry escaped his lips. “I'm so sorry.”

“You look old, James.” His words were becoming less and less clear.

Hook let out a heavy breath, blinking past the tears stinging his eyes. “That's because I am old.”

“James?”

“Yes?”

Bibble breathed in raggedly. “The sky looks funny.”

“Does it?” He choked back another sob, not wishing to alert the child to the fact that he was dying.

“It doesn't look like Neverland anymore, James.”

“What does it look like?”

Bibble smiled softly. “Home.”

And his body relaxed onto the ground. Hook stared at him, guilt and disbelief overcoming him, and dug into his arms—fingers, hook, and all. Crimson blood trickled out over the steel and Hook recoiled, pulling the hook away, as though this shell could still feel him.

He'd killed him. There Bibble was, lying there, his friend—his best friend really—heavy and bloody and still. Hook fought the urge to retch into the leaves outside the clearing.

Pan flitted down beside him, and Hook recoiled. He was afraid if he allowed himself to look into Peter's face, he would see himself reflected there. He'd murdered a child now, hadn't he? How were they different? Pale, heavy sickness snaked into his stomach.

“What's this?” said Pan.

Hook hopped up, hand steady on his sword.

“What did you do, Hook?”

Hook took several steps backward. By now, no one was fighting.

“Did you kill him?” Peter cried.

Just then, Hook felt a presence race past him. Bobble stumbled over to his brother and collapsed onto the ground beside him. “Bibble? Bibble? We're having a war, Bibble. You need to wake up,” he said, frantically, shaking the dead boy.

“I—I didn't mean it,” Hook stuttered.