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James is a forbidden name. You learn this the hard way the first time you use it, jeering and flaunting it like a toy as your blade slices through his flesh and his hand goes tumbling to the sea. For a second you’re not sure what is reddest; his blood or his eyes – and then he’s gone, fled bellow deck, and his quartermaster Smee nearly shoots a whole through you with his blunderbuss.
The next time you fight, it isn’t a game. He’s bandaged up and you’re baffled – why don’t you fix it, James? – and he bares his teeth at you like a beast of the forest and stabs you through the stomach.
Tinkerbell tuts and frets over you as the Lost Boys sew you shut and her fairy dust paints your insides golden, and after a few days’ rest, you’re fine.
You don’t call him by his name again. For a while he’s simply villain, or pirate, or if you’re feeling generous, captain.
Then comes the hook. For the longest time – it might be years; time flickers like dust on the wind in Neverland – you believe he’s actually grown it. You call him captain Hook because it’s an interesting choice, growing a hook for a hand – you ought to honour it – and he doesn’t strike you down, so it must be right.
*
Every so often, when you bore of boys you barely have time to get to know before they outgrow Neverland, you go to find him – to tease, to bother, to work off some steam. One time you catch him truly unawares, having snuck in through his window: he reads, one hand flipping pages, and the other – naught but a stump – supports it.
You pause on the windowsill. “I thought you grew a hook,” you say, and his gaze flicks to you. The only sign of his surprise is a tenseness to his shoulders.
“Grew?” he says, eyes thin. You don’t miss the way his fingers twitch toward the blade by his side. “Not quite so. Why are you here?”
“I… I don’t understand,” you say.
The silence lies thick between the two of you.
From the other side of the room, never looking away from where you’re perched, he shows you how the harness works: how the leather keeps the hook in place, how he fastens it to ensure it won’t slip, and you watch the lines of his face tighten in pain though he makes no sound.
“Does that sate your curiosity?” he says, all dry and seemingly uncaring, though you realize, with a jolt, that there is humour in his eyes. You haven’t seen that before, never in him, only in your Boys and the fairies and the Natives; this discovery is the ripple that one day becomes a tsunami.
“Quite,” you say, and leave without looking back.
*
In your little cabinet beneath the tree roots, you stare into the darkness of sleeping boys. One is awake on the floor underneath you; you whisper to him, knowing he will answer: “did you know Hook didn’t grow a hook?”
“He’s always had a hook,” the boy mutters, voice thick with sleep. “Guess he was born with it.”
You sit up, blinking down at him though you see nothing but a dark shape against the blackness. “He wasn’t born with it,” you say. “You’re being silly.”
“He had it when I came here,” says the boy, no more awake than before.
Something cold touches your skin, then, something very much like curved metal pressed to a racing throat. “How old are you?”
“Twelve,” says the little boy who isn’t quite so little.
You wet your lips. “How old am I?”
More than half-asleep, now, the boy mutters, “you’re Peter Pan.”
*
“Tink,” you say, slow and uncertain as the two of you balance on branches and twigs far, far above the ground. “How old am I?”
She looks at you like you’re stupid. She looks at you like you’re dying. “You aren’t,” she says, “you silly ass.”
“Of course,” you say, “of course I’m not old. But how young am I?”
Tinkerbell shakes her head, wings fluttering, whispering: ageless timeless eternal.
You don’t sleep well that night.
*
You meet his eyes over crossed blades, split lips drawn back into a grin, his mouth bloodied from where you hit him earlier. “Your skin will make an impressive flag for the mainmast,” he taunts, and his crew hoots in delight from the sidelines. None dare step in or help: he has on you like you on him, first and only right.
There, a gap in his defences, if you twist now, you’ll drive your dagger into his ribs! Your boys wait silent in the sails for him to fall lifeless to the floorboards; for his blood to spill into frothing waves.
You think of his hook, and the tense lines of his face, and fairy wings whispering ageless.
“Catch me first!” you cry, laughing as you dart aside from him, hungry for combat but starving for company. “If you can, that is!”
He takes chase, jumping over barrels and ropes as the two of you dance across deck. You slice your sword across his cheek, drawing a stripe of blood, and he carves a new scar into your thigh. “One day I will, Pan,” he tells you, dark and menacing, as you hover just out of reach. “One day.”
You celebrate a victory with your boys in the belly of the earth, though none came from the encounter unscathed.
*
Some time later – and it might be days, or it might be months – you count your numbers and realize they’ve shrunk. “Tink,” you say, quiet in the dark as the two of you watch over sleeping forms. “What happens when they grow up?”
Her wings flutter, disgruntled. She’d much rather go to bed, you know, but this is important. “Most leave,” she eventually concedes. “Some join the Natives. The rest…”
You wait.
One of your boys snore.
“The rest?” you nudge.
“Well,” says Tinkerbell. “There’s only two places for grown-ups in Neverland.”
*
Next time you face the Natives, it is with scrutiny. There are familiar faces, in that noses are ones you’ve seen before, pale eyes surrounded by dark, the twist of a mouth you’re sure has smiled at you ages gone. It’s not before you battle the pirates once more you get a true shock; your blade locks with that of a man, hair graying, surely at least fifty – with the eyes, the aged face, of a little boy of twelve.
You stagger back. He seems as surprised as you to be recognized.
“What?” you whisper. Because, surely. Surely, just a few moons back, you had spoken to him in the darkness, had asked him his age, had asked yours.
*
Fairies, as much as they are your truest family, are as confusing as they are little. You will find no answers of them; that is, they will answer, and you will not understand. It frustrates you, not understanding, and being frustrated frustrates you more.
Humans, while also confusing, are far more straightforward. And so you go to the only constant you can think of, the only who will answer you in kind; you creep through the crack in his window, resting on his windowsill for many long minutes as you watch him from behind.
He plays the piano. You knew this, of course, but you’ve never truly heard him play. In the shadows of his curtains you linger, eyes on the tide of his shoulders, in time with the melody and the tones. There is a gleam of metal; he wears his hook, still. Clever, you catch yourself thinking, to use it like so.
How long has he had to practice?
A sting of guilt blooms at the thought, and in your hurry to move on from the alien feeling, you blurt: “how old are you?”
He slams his hand and hook onto the tangents, a sour harmony, before swinging to face you, blade drawn. His eyes are wide and wild for a full second before he’s focused on you, blinking the beast away. “What?” he says, though he says it not like a question but like it tastes foul.
“Your age,” you helpfully supply. “How old are you?”
His upper lip curls, baring his teeth – it isn’t a smile, and it isn’t a snarl. “What’s it to you?” His eyes do not stray from yours.
You think on it for a moment. “I have follow-up questions,” you settle on, which is a truth, but not the truth. You have no love for lying.
He narrows his eyes. They are still undeniably forget-me-not, despite the shadows of his proud brow. You aren’t sure what he looks for when he scrutinizes you, but you keep your chin up, as unafraid as ever.
“Fine,” he allows, at last, and sheaths his blade. “I shall answer your insolent questions, if only you leave me alone after. My age? I was in my thirties when I came here.”
“And now?”
“Pah! You do the math.” He sits back on the stool by the piano, back straight, one knee over the other. “Certainly, one could count the days by the clock, if only I could stand the infernal sound. Alas, I lost count far too long ago.”
He is old, then. As old as you? That can’t be right. Younger? Older? You remember his arrival, but do you remember a life before that? How long ago was it, truly?
How many of your Lost Boys has he seen come and go? Is he human? He cannot be. No human has eyes like his. Was he human before he came to Neverland?
Were you?
“You’re taking my boys to piracy,” you say, when the silence stretches ever on and he begins to shift. “Did you know?”
He raises an eyebrow. Nothing else of his unimpressed expression changes. “Yes.”
You look away, resting the back of your head against his wall and letting your eyes slide close. He will not hurt you; you trust he will not hurt you. It would be unfair, unjust, when you are clearly not here to fight.
The thought comes from deep within, a secret place, a sacred place: does he believe in fairness?
You brush it aside. Of course he does; if not you would have a hook plunged in your chest, buried to the hilt, even now.
You open your eyes.
He hasn’t moved. He watches you like a feline stalking prey, nigh unblinking.
It makes you smile. Seeing him on edge like this, focused on you like you could, within a heartbeat, have his throat slit. He’s right; you could. But you won’t. You do something worse: you ask, “why don’t you age?”
His lip curls. It is a smile, this time, though humourless and cold. “Why don’t you?”
You have taken to the skies when faced with fear your whole life. You have fled and fought and flown, walking off cliffs knowing the air will bear you.
Now you leap. Into the fear, into the depths, and there is no knowing, only hopeless, desperate faith.
You say, a mere breath past your lips, “I don’t know.”
*
One could be forgiven for thinking Neverland is never-changing, if only because it changes so terribly slowly. A sheet of ice in spring, melting a single drop at a time, so little that to the mortal eye there’s no difference at all, until – snap! – it splits in half, rocking the world.
Like the ice, you have been melting – for ages, perhaps even eons – and now, this admission of ignorance, this whispered I don’t know, is the sudden crack.
Standing on the outside of yourself looking in, you don’t notice how you change, only that you do. Your boys, however, are clever; they don’t comment on it, not in a way you understand, and when you don’t take their bait, they let it go – fearing your ire, or perhaps respecting your privacy. It’s hard to tell with them, at times.
Tinkerbell has no such qualms, and she takes you out to sea so you can skim the waves together, gathering froth in your palms and tasting the salt on your lips. “Do you know what’s happening to you?” she asks, her eyes older than you, younger than you.
“I’m changing,” you say, and for a second, your reflection in the water doesn’t look like you.
“You’re aging,” says Tinkerbell, in a moment of clarity utterly unlike her. “You’re coming into your own.”
Physically, there is little change. You are the same timeless youth. But you feel… secure. Not entirely mature, but there is something about admitting defeat and confusion that makes you feel at peace with Neverland in a way you haven’t in a long time. Digging your toes into damp soil and knowing you don’t know; enjoying the cool touch of a star’s kiss at night, flown all the way up into the sky.
*
You lie on the main boom of the Jolly Roger, back flat against the wood as you play an aimless tune on your flute. There are no crew around; you suppose they’re on a supply trip – it is only evening, and the fruits are swollen with juices this time of day. You’re light and happy as ever, not much of that tenderness you’ve born for a while hanging about.
“Where did you learn that, boy?”
You cease playing, a smile sprouting on your face as you roll over to grin down at him, glaring at you with crossed arms from deck. “I don’t rightly know,” you tell him, because it is the truth, and it’s been so easy to say those words ever since they first left you. “Why?” Taking on a mocking tone, you add, “not quite to your liking?”
“Tsh!” He has a cigar in the corner of his mouth, you see now, smoke trailing from it toward the sky. “One would hope, since it be my making.”
You laugh, surprised, crossing your ankles as you lie there. “I had no idea! Pardon me then, captain, I had no intention of stealing your music. Theft is a pirate’s job, after all.”
His face does something strange, a sort of half-twitch, before he turns aside. “What you spend your measle free time doing is none of my business – nor did you mangle it all that much. Why are you here? Just to be a pest and a bother?”
“Well,” you say, “you can’t come to me, so I have to come to you if I wish to speak. Isn’t that so?”
“If you only told me of your hideout, I would gladly come to you,” he says, with all the pomp and charity of a liar. It makes you laugh; there is a threat to it, yes, but you don’t think he means it. Well, he does, but you think he would hesitate – if only for a second – before acting upon it.
“And be ambushed in my sleep? I think not! That is why I’m here, though.” You sit up. “I come to offer a truce.”
You are utterly delighted to see his jaw drop. “A… truce,” he repeats.
“A truce,” you echo. “Well, I’d like to keep fighting, if it’s all the same to you, though I’d rather we lessened the bloodshed.”
His eyes narrow. “Why this?” he says, voice dark. “Why now?”
You think on it, for a moment, trying to find the right words to tell him. There are none, no good words to explain the realizations you’ve had, the ways you’ve changed because of him. You settle on the next-best thing. “I would not see you dead,” you say, and the honesty wells in your throat. “You are… more to me than a villain.”
You see the way his chest flutters, lips parting for an inhale. His deep eyes are wide as they lock with yours; a seagull cries overhead as the wind flirts with his hair.
Time moves strangely in Neverland. You aren’t sure how much goes by before his throat works around a swallow, before he steps forward, before his warm palm slides against yours. “A truce, then, Peter Pan.”
You beam. The skies split, sunlight spilling forth like marbles from the pockets of a child. “A truce… James Hook.”