Across the water, his ship glows, anchored just where he left it when he jumped at Pan’s behest. The sky is a near-solid black overhead, the water reflecting it, his ship the only brightness he can currently see. Is it always night here? He can’t remember the last time it was day. This night at least is quiet enough for drunken laughter and music—one of his men at the accordion—to reach him on the shore. His men. His ship. And not one of them came looking for him when he drowned.
A small rowboat waits at the water’s edge. Because of course Hook must return to his pirates so Pan’s war might continue. He grits his teeth, pushes the boat from the shore, and rows. The oars are perfectly manageable with his hook and his hand, though he can’t quite work out the mechanics even as he’s rowing. Only that the logic of Neverland dictates that nothing will prevent the cycle starting all over again.
There’s a soft thump as the boat fetches up against the ship’s hull. No pause in the song or the raucous laughter inside. A rope ladder hangs over the ship’s side; Hook climbs. He takes vicious pleasure in scarring the wood, digging his hook in—now clean of the mermaid’s blood—as he hauls himself aboard.
His sword bumps at his hip. Didn’t he lose it? But like the boat waiting for him on the shore, it scarcely matters. Pan’s enemy must have his weapons. There’s a sheathed knife at his belt, another in his boot. He’s fairly bristling with arms, none of which will help him against the child.
His bootheels beat a counterpoint rhythm to the music rising from below as he crosses the deck. Lanterns illuminate a lone figure at the prow. Hook pauses, a sense of familiarity tugging at him. Why isn’t the man below with the others?
Recognition startles him; the man is the one he saw just before Pan made him jump. Hook still can’t recall his name, and the fact that he can’t bothers him. It shouldn’t. His crew clearly doesn’t care for him, why should he care for them? They’re only fodder in Pan’s war, obstacles thrown in the boys’ way to slow them down before they reach their prize—Hook himself.
“Captain.” The man steps forward, but Hook ignores him, and the man doesn’t call after him a second time.
In the mess, liquid sloshes from tankards swung around in careless hands as men gesture in time with the song and swap tall tales. They’re all gathered here as if for a celebration. As if they’ve completely forgotten him, or they’re relieved that he’s gone.
The faintest of sounds, a light tap of his hook against the wood of the doorframe, but the effect is the same as though he’d fired a gun into the room. The music cuts off with an abrupt wheezing breath from the accordion. All eyes turn to him. Hook rests his hand on the pommel of his sword and steps into the room.
He’s gratified when at least some of the gathered faces blanch, but it should be all of them. One pirate at least gives him a sullen look. Harrigan—the name emerges from the fog of Hook’s memory. And the next man over is Killdeer; he raises his chin in a slight gesture of defiance as others look away.
“Is this, or is this not, still my ship?” Hook keeps his tone even, hand light on the pommel of his sword.
Shoulders tense then relax, uncertain, glances exchanged around the room. He keeps his attention on Killdeer and Harrigan. Harrigan breaks his gaze, but Killdeer continues to glare, resentment hardening the line of his mouth.
“Has a mutiny occurred?” Calm, level, not raising his voice—and that at last, seems to unnerve Killdeer.
“We knew you’d return, Captain, you always do.” Harrigan is the one to answer, words muttered quick and low. He touches Killdeer’s sleeve, but the other shakes him off.
“Ah. You knew I’d return, and therefore none of you thought to look for me.”
Feet shuffle, men intent on their plates, their cups, gazes anywhere but on their captain. In the corner, Maitland, the boatswain, snuffles loudly, deep in his drink, or perhaps at least a little ashamed.
“Well, that is a relief. As it is a relief to know that I am still captain. And as that is the case, I assume my word on this ship remains law, and that I am the one to say when the beer is opened, when rations are awarded, and when the watch is ignored.” He swings his gaze back to Killdeer, who clenches his jaw.
“There was no danger, Captain. Pan only comes for us when you’re on board.” Killdeer doesn’t bother to hide his resentment.
A desperate look flashes in Harrigan’s eyes; his mouth opens, but he snaps it closed again. He, at least, seems clever enough to know the thin ice his friend skates upon, but Killdeer seems determined not to be pulled back from the edge.
Does he think he could do better leading these men? Does he think he could kill Pan, even? How would he bear up in the beast’s jaws?
“I see.” Hook moves closer, close enough to force Killdeer to tilt his head back to maintain eye contact.
“Well, as you have deemed it safe to let our guard down, and there’s no need to prepare for an attack, then the men should have plenty of time for cleaning.”
Hook allows a smile onto his lips. At the same time, unease creeps around the edges of his awareness. His gaze remains fixed on Killdeer, but in his peripheral vision he sees the boards where Killdeer sits, stained darker than the rest of the floor. Something terrible happened here. Something terrible will happen here again.
Confusion flickers in Killdeer’s eyes. Around him, men shift, uncertain whether to relax or whether an order has been handed down.
It is the exact effect he wants, throwing the men off guard. It’s a show, in the moment his flair for the dramatic almost equal to Pan’s. His crew must learn their places, and it seems they are too stupid to grasp it otherwise.
“You may start.” Hook draws the words out, strings the air with tension, showing teeth as he does. “By cleaning up the blood.”
He punctuates the sentence with his hook, driven into Killdeer’s throat. Crimson sprays in an arc, spattering Harrigan’s clothing and skin. Men scramble back, all in confusion, the bench crashing over, but he isn’t done.
His hook still buried in Killdeer’s throat, Hook lifts the man, gurgling, kicking, and draws the knife at his belt. He plunges it into Killdeer’s gut. Death waits just long enough that Killdeer’s eyes are able to widen, all the dark of them reflecting Hook—the face of a monster, every bit as terrible as Pan’s hunting beast. Every bit as terrible as Pan. He watches the light go out of them, swallowing his reflection. It is immensely satisfying.
Blood wets Killdeer’s lips, coats his front. His body hangs limp at last, and Hook lets him fall. The sound is so much spoiled meat hitting the boards, a staining spreading atop the already darkened wood.
He is sick and he is thrilled and if he doesn’t leave the ship again now, he will have no crew left to command.
He strides back onto the deck, almost colliding with the man who called after him earlier. The man’s eyes widen, staggering back, and now it’s a different kind of monster Hook sees reflected in widened eyes.
Crimson soaks the front of his shirt, matching it to the red of his coat. The coat itself, though, almost drinks the blood, leaving no stains. It flares as he turns, but this time when he leaves the man behind, staring after him, it feels like fleeing.
* * *
Hook rows away from the ship once more, arms trembling, and not only from the effort of fighting against the waves. The water is choppy where it was calm moments before, tossing the boat, and sweat slicks his brow. He feels feverish, wrong. In the moment, slaughtering Killdeer felt good, right. And now? The way the man on deck looked at him…
Is that who and what he wants to be? Pan’s monster, for all time? As leashed as his hunting beast, as unable to change? He needs to get off this bloody island.
He reaches the shore, sloshing onto the sand and dragging the boat with him. The mermaids’ sing-song voices echo in his head. Sad, bad, mad Captain Hook. He could use a little madness right now. Leaving the boat on the shore, he heads toward the center of the island.
The scent reaches him before the flowers come into view, thick enough to taste, like honey coating his tongue. He finds himself almost salivating, hunger gnawing beneath his skin. When was the last time…? But it doesn’t matter. He will sate himself now.
The bushes are half again as tall him, crowding the path with their glossy leaves. The sky has shifted again—twilight hangs over them, as it always seems to at this particular spot on the island. Fireflies blink against the dark, rogue stars dipping into the massive blossoms as if they were bees, and making the petals glow.
He plucks several blossoms, stripping the petals to be crushed underfoot. It is the sap he’s after, oozing from the broken stems like blood. Thick enough that when Hook gathers a mass of it, he can stretch the substance, pulling it into long strands with the point of his hook before rolling it again with his flesh and blood fingertips, repeating the process over and over again.
As he works the sap, it darkens—gold to amber. He keeps a pipe on him at all times, carved from bone. When the flower-tar is ready, he crouches in the bushes’ shadow. The sap goes into the pipe, and he holds a light under it. As he lifts the pipe to his lips, there’s a rustling along the path in the direction he came from, and Hook whirls around.
A face disappears as the leaves shiver back into place, but he can’t see it clearly. Pan’s feral boys spying on him? Hand on his sword, he listens for the telltale crack of a branch underfoot. There’s nothing. If they attack, he’ll give them a fight, but he won’t give them the satisfaction of chasing them through the trees.
He lifts his pipe again, and draws deep, holding the smoke. The sweetness eats at him, leaving holes in his lungs like moth-eaten sailcloth. When he releases a long stream, it spirals up against the gray-purple sky.
Pale stars prick the twilight, holes punched through the dark. If he could just dig the tip of his hook into one of those pinholes of light, he might tear the sky wide and make his escape. More streams of smoke wind upward. The pipe dangles loose in his hands. Still crouched, his muscles cramp first, and then he doesn’t feel them at all.
He sways slightly without rising. The stars move with him. Not quite a circle, but a looping motion, until he realizes they must be fireflies. Or… A memory, half-formed, of lying sick in bed, in a dirty city far away from here, full of rain. Anna, his sister, brought cold cloths for his head. In his fever, he mistook her for their mother, but by then, it was only the two of them.
The same sickness that laid him low had already taken their mother, a fever and endless coughing that hollowed her out, spotted her sheets with blood. A factory accident had taken their father years before, hand caught and the machinery pulling him in, unable to be stopped until it was too late. Anna had peered down at Hook—only that wasn’t his name then, was as it?—in exhaustion and terror, afraid of losing him as well. She pushed sweat-soaked hair back from his brow, brought broth for him to drink, and told him stories.
Greek mythology, Bible tales, and faerie stories too. Wee people made of light with wings like insects. Tricksters who might be convinced to help if you left out cream or sweet cakes for them. Have the faeries come to help him now? One darts close and he can almost see the wings beating at its back, its pointed face.
There are faeries here, aren’t there? Or there were once. He remembers the dust on their skin. A quick enough hand could catch a faerie and shake some of that dust free. The taste of it had been even headier than the flowers, wild and sweet, peeling him from himself. A sick dread fills him. In a fit of something like rage and something like hedonistic abandon, a determination to plunge himself into oblivion, he’d… The memory surfaces, aching and black. The faeries. He caught and killed every last one, even Pan’s favorite. He’d ground their bones to dust, inhaled it and licked it from the point of his hook until every last speck of it was gone.
His stomach lurches. Hook tries to stand, but his legs have gone numb. He falls, catching himself awkwardly on his hands and one knee.
Hands. Two hands. Both flesh and blood.
Is it simply a side-effect of the flower, or something else?
He lifts them to stare. The light twines between his fingers. He wiggles one hand experimentally, then the other. They feel real. Impossible. He whoops with joy before noticing the lights spiraling away from him.
“Wait!” Hook shouts to the dark.
An eddy, like leaves caught on the wind, and the lights dance farther away. His boots slip on fallen petals, crushed to a pulp, leaving the path slick. He half runs. Branches whip at his face, and he barely remembers to raise his arms to shield himself.
Then all at once, he breaks through the trees, coming to a staggering halt on a beach. The lights scatter, falling like foam and sinking through the waves, rising up to become more stars. The sand is flat and white as bone. The sea too, a mirror throwing back the stars and moon. He’s almost certain he’s never seen this part of the island before.
The only place the water moves is where a stream emerges from the mouth of a cave. Hook sways, unsteady on his feet. The cave the mermaids spoke of. Or, he is flower-drunk, passed out on the forest floor? It wouldn’t be the first time. He squints at the cave-mouth, a blur of darkness.
“Captain!” The shout startles him as a hand catches his arm.
He whirls, hook raised to strike. A hook—not a hand—and he feels a flash of regret. All of this occurs in a split second, and yet time also seems to stretch and slow, like flower-tar, so he watches it and lives it all at once, inside and outside the moment simultaneously. Powerless to change or stop it.
He recognizes the pale, delicate man who called after him on the ship. His arm is already in motion. Too late, he tries to stay his blow. The man jerks his head to the side, but the point of the hook skates across his cheek, drawing blood.
Hook falls back, breathing hard. The man touches his cheek, bringing his fingers away red-stained. The line of red once opened on the man’s flesh unlocks a memory—a similar wound, but on Hook’s leg instead and the other man stitching it closed. He can picture the man’s expression clearly, pinched in distaste—not for the wound itself, but the violence that caused it. The ship’s surgeon. Of course, how could he have forgotten?
Hook still can’t remember the man’s name. It’s almost there and his inability to reach it irritates him, loading a question onto his tongue instead of an apology.
“Were you following me?” The words stretch and warp.
He regrets them, and that annoys him even further. The surgeon winces, touching his cheek again. His bloodstained fingers gleam in the moonlight. Hook has the sudden urge to touch the man to be certain he’s real, and not another smoke-born illusion like his briefly restored hand.
“I was…concerned.” A blush rises to the surgeon’s cheeks.
It catches Hook by surprise. When has any member of his crew ever shown him a moment of concern? He thinks back to the deck of the ship, the man trying to get his attention as he stalked to the mess. And before, when Pan made him jump, a look that was almost sorrow. Hook’s chest constricts. He sees again the surgeon deftly stitching the wound in his leg closed, the look of distaste shifting to something else and then the surgeon quickly looking away as he noticed Hook watching him.
The memory unsettles him and he isn’t sure why. Hook is suddenly sharply aware of his stained shirtfront. He wishes it were clean. He’s embarrassed next to the surgeon’s neatness, but why should he be? When has he ever cared about such things before?
“You were—?” He can’t quite piece the words or sentiment together. “You’re—” He tries again, struggling to summon the surgeon’s name.
“Samuel, sir.” The surgeon looks down, lashes lowered over his eyes, but not quick enough to hide the flash of disappointment—hurt even.
How many times has the surgeon told him his name before? How many times has he forgotten? Hook has the sudden intense and unsettling desire to place his hook beneath the man’s chin, to make him raise his head and look at him again. It’s not like the other memories he’s lost; something feels deliberate in this forgetting. Why would he try on purpose to forget this man?
Samuel. The name resonates, though he hasn’t yet spoken it out loud. The shape of it is familiar on his tongue, a sensation that discomfits him.
The man is a member of his crew, a little kinder than the rest, but nothing more. What does kindness matter here? Hook shakes himself. The air around his head buzzes, a dark ringing in his ears, muffling his words.
“I have to go into the cave.”
“Let me come with you.” Samuel’s eyes are bright, and Hook finds himself almost reaching to touch the surgeon’s unwounded cheek before hastily letting his hand fall.
It’s only the flower, muddling his head. He came here for a purpose. He has work to do. He doesn’t move. One person on this whole damn island cared enough to come searching for him. Another memory seeps into Hook’s mind—standing at the prow of his ship, sails bellied full with the wind and running for the horizon. This time, this time at last, he was certain he would break free. Then all at once, the horizon had vanished before him, the island looming there instead, and disappointment had crashed over him like a wave.
He’d allowed himself to hope. But hope and kindness cut deeper than a blade in Neverland.
An inkling of why he’d want to forget Samuel sits uncomfortably at the back of his mind, but he’s afraid to look at it too closely.
“It’s too dangerous,” Hook says. This time, he isn’t certain whether the image that rises to his mind is a wish or a memory—the sea calm, the two of them standing at the ship’s rail, sharing a drink, a smoke. The image is surprisingly painful.
“Wait for me.” He doesn’t mean to say it aloud, but the words hang there and Hook doesn’t take them back.
He finds he means them, surprised, and Samuel looks surprised as well. Something flickers through the surgeon’s gaze—hope, a fragile creature easily startled away. Hook sees the moment the surgeon tries to tamp it down, clearly understanding the nature of this place as well as Hook himself. For some reason, seeing it makes him want to smile, and he fights to keep his expression neutral.
He slips free of his coat, bundling it and pushing it into Samuel’s arms. Like a promise, like an anchor to hold Samuel there. The blood on Samuel’s cheek has already beaded, on its way to forming a scab. There are other scratches as well. Did Samuel chase him through the woods? Was it his surgeon’s face he saw briefly among the bushes, watching him? Watching over him?
Before he can make an utter fool of himself, Hook turns sharply on his heel and strides toward the cave. Samuel’s gaze follows him, Hook feels it, like a hand placed on his shoulder, but he forces himself not to look back.
A glow emanates from within the cave. Hook crosses the threshold. The ground is uneven, much like the cave he woke in last time he drowned, only there are no shelves of rock or pools occupied by mermaids. There’s only one pool, the source of the glow. It’s visible from where he stands, but he can’t gauge the distance somehow, the very shape and nature of the cave feel malleable somehow.
The sense that he’s not alone cat-paws its way up his spine. It’s a feeling of there-and-not-thereness. He takes a step and stumbles, the place he meant to set his foot suddenly treacherous and uneven. He catches himself on one knee and hisses in a breath sharp through his teeth. He’s on the edge of the pool; a few inches more and he would have fallen in.
He eases forward for a better look.
The pool is shallow as a bowl. At least he thinks so. Is the flower still messing with his head, or is it the cavern itself? The blue-green light illuminating the water comes from everywhere and nowhere distorting his depth perception. The blade the mermaids spoke of is right there—black, lying at the pool’s center, so close he would barely need to wet his arm to the wrist to touch it.
His vision judders, slips sideways. He’s looking at two layers of reality stuck on top of each other. The pool isn’t a shallow bowl at all but a depthless well that goes on forever, a hole in the world, and a dead woman floats within. He startles back at the realization, nearly losing his balance again, and almost immediately leans forward again, fascinated and repelled.
He struggles to hold both realities in his mind. The shallow bowl. The endless pool. The mermaid’s tail forks, once down the middle, or countless times, mirroring the branching realities floating within the pool. Her skin is gray, veined like stone. The lower half of her body is black as ink, undulating as though part of her were spilled into the water. Her eyes are simultaneously open and closed. Hook thinks of the mermaid he killed, one eye gazing sightlessly at him, the other gone.
This mermaid stares right at him with a gaze the color of the fireflies. And at the same time, where her eyes should be, there are only pits of blackness, like a fish-eaten skull. Two conflicting and equally true realities overlapping once again.
He’s no longer certain that she’s dead after all.
Her hands—tipped in pointed black nails—fold over the blade’s hilt, clasping it to her breast. The thought of touching it is a horror. Taking the blade from her would be madness.
Sad, bad, mad captain. Can’t beat Pretty Peter. Not at all.
Did he make it this far before? Is this where he lost his nerve, turned away to drown himself in drink and smoke, forcing himself to forget? Hook reaches. This time, he forces himself not to stop. He tries to hold the vision of the shallow pool in his mind, the blade right there, ignoring the dead woman. The blade is within reach, and all he has to do is—
Cold sears his hand even before it touches the water. Plunging it through is infinitely worse, shearing flesh from bone. The dead woman has hold of him. The water has ahold of him, thick as the sap from the flower, like hardening amber. His feet scramble and find no purchase, his arm wrenched in its socket as he tries to pull away.
The dead woman’s gaze snaps toward him, seeing him. Once again, he has the sense that her eyes are whole, burning with strange light, and empty sockets, both at the same time. Her gaze—there and not—is worse than the water, not merely flaying skin from bone, but cracking his bones wide to suck the marrow from within.
Her eyes were always open. They never close. They cannot close. Unable to sleep, unable to dream, ancient and seeing everything.
The mouth, filled with needle teeth and blackness, opens as well. The scream is nothing human. He hears it underwater and above, a ringing echo that pierces like an awl. The dead thing surges from the water, clinging to the blade.
Hook falls back, expects to find the creature dripping over him, needle teeth poised inches from his face and black limbs wrapped with crushing strength around his own. But she isn’t holding him down and impossibly, he’s still holding the blade. In fact, it’s burned to his flesh, terribly heavy and weighing nothing at all. He couldn’t let go if he tried. Not even when the needle teeth suddenly are there, sinking into his forearm, lamprey-like, turning his blood black and sending it racing through his veins.
He lashes out with his hook, trying to fight free, kicking. None of his blows land. There’s a pounding behind him, a muffled shouting, and he remembers Samuel left behind on the shore.
Hook yanks backward one last time, using all of his strength, all of his will. The blade rips free, metal cold as a dead star still burning his hand. And his flesh rips where the needle teeth have hold, pain like he’s felt countless times beneath the waves as he’s torn apart.
“Captain!” Samuel’s voice rises in panic from outside the cave.
A wall of darkness stands between them, a violent wind trying to push him back. Hook grips the blade, crawls forward.
And then he is on his knees on the beach as if the cave were a mouth, spitting him out. His clothes are soaked, clinging to him. His hair, sopping, falls into his face. He tries to push it back, and nearly falls. Samuel catches him.
He’s holding the blade. Hook stares down at his hand, expecting to see the flesh black and burned. He expects to see a chunk torn from his arm. Both are whole.
“How long?” Hook croaks the word, glancing over his shoulder. There is something wrong with his eyes. He can no longer see the mouth of the cave, the stream running into the sea. “How long was I gone?”
“I don’t know.” Samuel breathes hard, voice shaking. “Where did you go? I tried to follow, but there was a wall, a hole, I couldn’t find my way through.”
Hook tries to stand again, and his legs refuse. He half collapses, Samuel the only thing holding him upright. Leather. The surgeon smells of leather and tobacco. Cigarettes rolled with great care and smoked on the deck on calm and quiet nights while watching the moon.
“I’m quite all right…thank you.” He stumbles over Samuel’s name. Not because he has forgotten it, but because the shape of it frightens him, fitted too intimately to his tongue.
Hook blinks saltwater from his eyes. Moves his hand to rub his face, and realizes he’s still holding the blade.
Moonlight falls on them—Hook, Samuel, and the knife between them. Of the three, only the blade resists the light. Old, pitted, black. Metal or stone, neither or both, Hook cannot tell.
“What is it?” Samuel asks.
Something in his expression makes Hook think of a horse about to shy away from a sting. There is something about the blade in his hand, a blurring buzzing hum. A song not quite heard, a whisper not quite spoken.
“A way out,” Hook says.
He turns his hand slightly as if the moon might illuminate the blade at a different angle. All it reveals is the wound on his forearm, not the gash he expected, but a faint half-circle, the clear mark of teeth in his flesh where he could swear his skin was whole a moment before.
“You’re hurt.” Samuel helps Hook to his feet, and once he’s steady, touches his arm with deft, examining fingers.
Hook starts, the impulse to jerk away tightening his fist around the blade, bringing a wave of pain.
“Hold still. Let me look.” Samuel’s tone brooks no argument.
Hook stills, watching the doctor as the doctor studies him, touch light, fingers skating around the wound in a way that makes Hook shiver.
“This should be cleaned,” Samuel says.
“It’s nothing. It will heal.” Hook withdraws his arm.
“At least take your coat back. You’re soaked, and you must be frozen.” Samuel lifts the red garment from where he must have folded it neatly on the sand, shaking it out and holding it for his captain.
Hook turns the blade, flat against his skin so he can hold it while he slips his arms through the sleeves of his coat. Samuel’s hands linger a moment, as if they would brush sand from Hook’s shoulders, though the fabric of his coat is pristine. When Samuel steps back, Hook slides his hand into his pocket, and only there is he finally able to unclench his fingers, let the blade go. He lets out a breath as he does.
His hand aches and he flexes it, but doesn’t remove it from his pocket yet. The urge to remain near the knife is irresistible.
“What happened?” Samuel angles his head to indicate the cave, and again the motion makes Hook think of a horse, tossing against its bridle. He almost reaches to soothe the surgeon, an absurd thought, and he takes a step back instead.
“I want no word of this spoken to the crew,” Hook says, not an answer, and Samuel looks at him as though he’s lost his mind.
Perhaps he has. Mad, bad, sad captain.
Samuel continues to watch him, and Hook cannot quite make himself meet the surgeon’s eye. Something has changed. He is different. For the first time in a long time, he has hope, and that frightens him. Maybe it was that, not fear of the dead woman in the cave, that made him turn back before.
“What am I not to tell the crew? You’ve still explained nothing.” Samuel hurries to keep pace with him, and only then does Hook realize he’s begun walking.
“Freedom,” Hook says, only half in answer to Samuel’s question, half to himself. “Freedom.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I.” A grin stretches Hook’s lips, and he imagines it is more terrifying in the moment than a snarl.
Samuel lags for a moment, stops, and Hook stops as well and looks back at him. Have he and the surgeon spoken before, shared conversation to pass the time? What does Samuel know about him, and what has he forgotten about Samuel? Does he remember fragments of a life left behind the way Hook sometimes remembers Anna? Does he have a family? A wife, perhaps, even children?
The last thought turns sour in him and Hook scowls. He pushes it away, closing the distance between himself and Samuel until he can clap the surgeon on the shoulder.
“Can you trust me?” It isn’t the way he meant to phrase the question at all.
Samuel looks at him oddly. He gets the sense that the surgeon is about to say one thing, sees him gather breath to do so, then change his mind.
“I will trust you, sir.” There’s a hesitation, a tremor to Samuel’s voice, but at the same time, Hook feels the shoulder beneath his hand slacken, tension letting go. “I trust you.”
Again, he has the sense of words held back. He can almost hear them; they leave him uneasy, almost afraid. Hook realizes he’s taken his hand from his pocket, no longer keeping it next to the blade.
“Thank you.” He lets his hand linger for a moment on Samuel’s shoulder, then lets it fall.
As he resumes walking, a breeze kicks up and swirls around him. The surgeon’s words, the ones Hook is almost certain he heard even though they weren’t spoken aloud, brush against his skin as if carried by that breeze. The answer to his question—can you trust me?—but the way he’d meant to ask it. Do you trust me?
Always, Captain, always.