Chapter Text
Harry Hook is a fucking idiot. He’s pinballing down the alleys towards the dock, knocking rotten crates over, scraping against piss-stained brick walls, tripping over the perpetual layer of junk on the ground, dripping blood.
Harry keeps his crew fed and clothed and safe.
He takes a moment that he doesn’t have to sit on a splintering pallet. He clamps his arms tight over his blood-slick shirt.
At the sound of a man’s barked orders and the unmistakable assents and scampering of minions, Harry tries to stand. He drops heavily to one knee.
And that yappy little asshole doesn’t do any of that.
He’s not sure how he gets there, but Harry slides across the gangplank and collapses on the deck of the Lost Revenge. It’s more than he expected. Harry always knew he’d bleed out alone in one of the endless alleys of the Isle. Maybe not tonight.
“Harry Hook, are you bleeding on the deck of my fucking ship?”
Uma. Harry lets his eyes slip closed, or maybe they were already closed. Either way, he relaxes, and his arms are too weak to keep any kind of pressure on his wound.
Harry wakes to anger (Uma) and worry (Gil) and tears (also Gil, but Uma’s eyes are suspiciously shiny).
“‘M I dead?” Harry says. The words are painful, choked out through his too-small, too-dry throat.
“Harry?” Gil throws his bulk across Harry’s groin, not his chest, and Harry wheezes out a pain-filled groan.
“Gil,” the single word is enough to snap Gil upright. “Take Jonas and nick a bottle of whiskey from your dad.”
“But Uma,” Gil protests.
“Get the alcohol or Harry’s gonna die,” Uma intones.
Gil’s tears redouble, and he flees to obey.
“Harsh, Captain. Scarin’ poor Gilly like that,” Harry breathes.
Uma’s expression gets, if possible, even stormier, “Bonnie’s not fit to sew you up, but she’ll be in shortly to – to walk me through it.”
Harry knows how strong, how capable, Uma is. She’s a better leader than any asshole on this Isle. He’s never heard her sound so weak. And over Harry, of all people.
“Cheer up, Captain. Jus’ need to sleep this off and I’ll be annoying the shit outta ye,” Harry takes a sharp, shallow breath through his nose, “in no time.”
“Damn it, Harry,” she raises her fist to punch his shoulder, but hits his thigh instead. Then kicks the table he’s laid out on.
He bites through his bottom lip to keep in a groan of pain – no need to make it worse.
Harry blinks his eyes, and Gil’s holding the lip of a bottle to Harry’s mouth.
“Drink some, Harry. Please,” Gil whispers.
Harry obeys, pulling a long, deep drink from the bottle, knowing the drill by now and what it feels like to have someone slowly drag a needle in and out without the warm floatiness of strong liquor.
Someone sticks a piece of wood in his mouth a second before Harry feels the sharp burn of alcohol on the slash across his ribs. He’d have liked to be passed out for the next part, but he feels every slow, methodical prick of the needle. Voices and hands push Harry’s shoulders against the surface of the table.
Harry eagerly opens his mouth when someone tips the remaining whiskey into it.
He wakes again and again. Harry’s alone, so no one can see his feeble and fruitless efforts to sit up. There’s a creaking just outside the door to Harry’s room. He wonders if his blood still stains the table in the galley. He’s not ready to face Gil, the only person who could be hovering at the door. Captain would barge in, and no one else would care or bother.
“Go away, Gilly,” Harry calls. He flexes his fingers over the edge of his cot and slips back into unconsciousness.
Three days later, Harry drags himself to the Chip Shoppe for lunch. In Harry’s long list of stunning attributes, stubborn son-of-a-bitch is second only to devilishly handsome.
“He lives,” Jonas is the first to spot him.
The familiar sound of a dropped tray of plates echoes from the kitchen a half-second before Gil darts through the swinging door.
“Harry!” he cries, and Harry’s afraid he’ll start crying again.
Harry had been prickly. He’s not done yet. “Alright, alright. Quit yer blubbering,” Harry claps Gil on the back where he’s clinging desperately to Harry’s shoulders. He shoves Gil back, but he doesn’t budge. “Fucking. Git off me, fish bait.”
Gil steps back. Barely.
Harry projects his voice to the whole crew and any other patrons in this dump, “Take more than one measly sword to take down Harry fucking Hook, eh?”
The crew obligingly bang their mugs and fists on the tables. Harry basks in their admiring words and grips Gil’s arm in a punishing squeeze. Not because he’s feeling dizzy.
He lets Gil guide him to a stool. Harry leans into Gil’s bulk and tugs him in to take a biting kiss from Gil’s always pliant mouth. If that means Gil wraps a strong, steadying arm around Harry’s stomach, his chest to Harry’s back, no one needs to know.
“And then I tell ‘em, I say, ‘Ye better think real careful about yer next move.’ And he swipes at me with his cutlass. Nasty bugger, but I’ve had worse. Then, I just look at him and –” Harry’s tale of his mighty battle is cut short by Uma’s arrival. “Uma,” Harry says.
“I’ve got news,” Uma says. When the crew, who are currently spread out around the Chip Shoppe, doesn’t jump to gather round, she repeats herself. “Turns out a little birdie from Auradon,” Uma begins.
Everyone hisses at the name.
“Paid a visit to our illustrious and evil tyrant,” she pauses, and Harry’s so in love with the way she controls the room. “Turns out her demon spawn,” Uma and the entire crew spit on the floor, the table, and sometimes each other. “And that little band of misfits she runs with are invited – by the prince – to live in Auradon. Seems like they get a free ride to the land o’ plenty while the rest of us are stuck in this hellhole,” Uma sneers.
“My dear son,” a voice from a man very used to being listened to stops their ranting cold. It stops Harry’s heart cold, too.
“Father,” Harry says, even less capable of sitting upright than he was earlier. Still, he spins on his stool and shoves Gil back a few steps.
“I have marvelous news, my son,” Captain Hook holds up his hook, on it is a sheet of parchment, stabbed through many times. “You get to go to Auradon. Isn’t that just wonderful?”
Staying upright by pure spite, Harry stands to grab the holey sheet of parchment. He passes it to Uma without looking at it. Uma’s the reader between them. No use embarrassing himself. He keeps his eyes on his father and spends the time while Uma reads, cataloguing the changes since he’s last seen his former captain. Captain Hook’s hair is now liberally streaked with grey. His once too-cold, too-keen eyes now bulge out of his waxen face almost comically. Harry has the inane urge to give his dad a good smack on the back of his head to watch those bug-eyes pop out of his head.
“He’s right. It’s an invitation to Auradon. And it says you’re going with seven peers,” Uma whispers.
“What’s that mean?” Gil whispers, though his voice carries much farther than Uma’s.
Harry counts in his head and says, “There are three other people going to Auradon with me and the dragons.”
“Who are the other three?” Uma asks.
Harry knows better than to call her voice hopeful. It’s strange, though. Not her usual cutting command.
“Do I look like some sort of, of messenger to you?” Captain Hook screeches. “I’m merely wishing my darling son well, and reminding him of his familial duties.”
Harry knows his father’s obsession with Peter Pan and his trollop, Wendy Darling. He has no love for that asshole child or the bint he kidnapped, of course. But if his father couldn’t manage to kill one measly child, Harry’s not gonna help him. Anyway, he’ll never tell anyone, but he feels a certain kinship with the brat. He knows what it’s like to be the subject of his father’s relentless ire.
“I remember,” Harry grits out and hopes he’ll take the command as read.
The old captain’s eyes seem poised to jump out at Harry, who draws back in disgust. His father must read it as fear because he grins. Captain Hook says, “Very well.” He turns and pauses just inside the swinging front doors. “And don’t forget to keep an ear out,” he wiggles his hooked hand and smiles his worst crocodile smile. Harry knows he’d be perfectly happy for Harry to lose a limb or two to the beast who ate his own hand.
When he’s gone, the room’s spinning too fast for Harry to play it cool as he grabs Gil’s vest. Gilly gladly takes Harry’s weight, but instead of herding him back to a stool, he scoops him in his arms and sits with Harry cradled in his lap. Harry lets his head fall over Gil’s arm and crosses his arms in what he hopes is a casual way. A king on his throne, as is his due, not a weak boy suffering from a nasty gash because he can’t staunch his fucking bleeding heart and let Carlos take the blow instead. He says, “What a fucking twat,” and pretends like this was his plan all along, to sucker Gil into catering to him. Uma doesn’t buy it, if the scowl she’s wearing means anything.
Uma disappears, and Harry closes his eyes. Maybe Gil won’t ask Harry any questions if he thinks he’s resting.
“Are you really gonna go to Auradon, Harry?”
So much for that. Harry sighs, “I’m gonna do whatever Captain says I should do. My captain, not that two-bit washed-up arsehole.”
“Why would anyone ever wanna go to Auradon?” Bonnie asks, but her words are sharp and bitter.
Harry’s seen the discarded fashion mags she nicks from the barges and hides in her bunk. She’s no hoity-toity fashionista like Princess, but Harry’s heard Bonnie bitch about how much better Auradon is. How nice it must be to do shit like buy clothes in a store. All with a seething jealousy that Harry well understands.
“I don’t wanna go, do I? Ye think I asked to be around those stuck-up Auradon brats?”
“Fuck no!” the crowd roars.
Harry should have stayed on the ship. At this rate, he’ll need Gil to carry him back to his bunk. Maybe he’ll be merciful and sling Harry over his shoulder instead of carting him like some fainting damsel.
Harry cuts off the mutters, “Can it, the lot o’ ye.” He isn’t in a position to bang on the table, though he’d like to. “Don’t ye lazy swabs have work to do? If not, ain’t nobody cleaned the latrines in months.” They scatter, and Gil hums what Harry thinks might be random melodies from several different shanties. Harry fights to stay awake until Uma returns. She wouldn’t leave him with this bombshell for long. He tries not to think about Auradon or leaving the Isle or Neverland or the gaping hole where his certainty about his future used to be.
Uma doesn’t return before Harry decides he needs to leave now, while he’s still mostly conscious. He convinces Gil to let Harry be upright, even if Gil lifts his feet almost entirely off the ground as they make the short trek through the docks and onto the ship.
Harry doesn’t see her in the galley for dinner, either.
Late into the night, Harry’s yanked from sleep by Uma’s voice.
“Harry,” Uma’s voice is pretty much always a command. It takes him much longer than normal to fight through the fog enough to notice she’s perched on the edge of his bed and Gil’s a hulking presence against the closed door. It’s cramped with three people in Harry’s room.
“Captain,” Harry says belatedly.
“Gilly and I are also going to Auradon,” Uma says, never one to mince words, his captain.
Too bad Harry is sailing half-mast at best. “What?”
Uma sighs and looks to Gil, keeping her back to Harry. She says, “I talked to my mom,” yelled at her, more like, Harry thinks. “And overheard Gaston boasting that he was gonna send one of those assholes, Junior or Trois, pretending to be Gil.”
“We got the best LeGume, then don’t we?” Harry decides not to face the indignity of struggling to a seated position. Neither Harry nor the captain has ever been as blase about Gil’s family’s treatment of him as the boy in question always is.
When they’ve run through their usual keelhauling of Gaston, Junior, and Trois’ many, many horrific qualities, Harry finally asks, “So we’re really doing this? Going to Auradon,” Harry blames his wound for the way the last word comes out weak and small and scared.
“Yep. We’re going.”
Gil lights up, but Harry can’t just let him have this. Harry asks, “What about the crew?”
“Jonas and Bonnie can handle it. Won’t be forever. Those Auradon bastards have another thing coming if they think I’m not gonna get every last one of my crew off this– this fucking deathtrap.”
Harry knows she means the Isle and not the ship, but he feels a spike of indignation rise, anyway.
“We’re not going there to do whatever bullshit they’ve got planned. We don’t leave anyone behind. That beast king is going to get every last kid and petty criminal and sidekick,” she means LeFou and Smee, of course, “out of this prison.” She doesn’t need to say or else because Harry’s sure that overgrown bear isn’t going to refuse Uma. Who could? She’s perfect, and she’s right.
“Aye aye, Captain,” Harry says. He trusts she’ll give all the orders he needs when he needs them.
“We leave tomorrow.”
“Already?” Gil asks.
“Who the fuck do they think they are?” Harry protests.
Uma smiles, but it’s strained. Harry doesn’t think she’ll lose the divot in her forehead until their mission’s complete. She says, “Get some sleep. We’ll pack in the morning.”
“Yes, Captain,” they say.