Being pulled through the sky is like being pulled through his own skin. Turned inside out, stretched, and drawn along the length of his spine. James is traveling to Neverland. He is Neverland. And an incessant screaming slices its way through his very being.
He remembers drowning.
His body wants to thrash, but someone has ahold of him in an iron grip, and he remembers Wendy Darling’s daughter, Jane. He remembers the purpose of their trip, and peels them apart from now, disentangling the two until he can breathe again.
They do not land so much as crash. The air goes from his lungs, and for a moment, all he can do is lie on his back, wheezing, while starbursts of gray explode behind his eyes. Through the ringing in his head, he hears the faint rush of the tide. The salt-smell is the sea he knows, so different from London.
There’s a shout nearby and James manages to raise his head to see the boy—Michael, though not truly a boy anymore—try to run. His hands remain bound, but he uses his elbows to lever himself to his feet, staggering a few steps along the beach until his bad leg betrays him, and he goes down with a grunt. Whatever lives inside him is still at least partially bound to Michael Darling’s flesh, and in the end, that is what might save him.
Jane catches up with her uncle, breathless. She gets a hand on his shoulder, to help him or to keep him down, James can’t tell. It occurs to him that it’s dark, a strange kind of dark. In his memory, the sky over Neverland was always an aching blue or a velvety black, speckled with stars and gilded with moonlight. This is something else, a low, sick, burning color, the girl and her uncle indistinct against it.
A brilliant flash lights the sky, freezing everything in a stuttering series of tableaus—Jane trying to keep hold of Michael, Michael throwing his weight back to knock her off balance, Michael kicking out with his good leg, barely missing catching Jane directly in the jaw.
James forces himself up, his cane sliding in the sand and fighting him. He expects his own leg to buckle, but the twinging ache isn’t there. Instead, there’s a low kind of hum, a resonance trapped inside his skin, like music played using his bones as instruments. And layered overtop of it is the new, bruising hurt of his fall from the sky, but that is easy enough to ignore as he strides toward where uncle and niece tussle on the sand.
Strides. Yes, he thinks, because Captain Hook does not have a bad leg. Only James does, and here, he is… Here. Two jagged halves that do not quite make a whole crushed together. He is. He is…
“Stop!” His voice echoes command.
He grabs Michael by the collar, hauling him bodily away from the girl with strength he didn’t have a moment ago. He tosses Michael to the sand, where the boy blinks eyes gone momentarily pale again in utter confusion. James shifts his grip, holding the cane like a sword, though still at his side. A threat implied.
Jane’s eyes widen. James sees it clearly when the sky cracks with light again, and for a moment, the object in his hand actually is a sword, blade crimson-slick. He isn’t certain which of the two pathetic wretches before him he means to run through first.
He is…
He steps back, shifting his grip until the object in his hand is only a cane again. The light goes on flickering, and he tilts his head up to look at the sky.
It is bloody—there is no other word for it. Black clouds pile against the dark, their edges jagged each time the lightning strikes. Only it isn’t lightning. It is…seams, cracks, pulsing, like the space behind the sky is on fire. Michael Darling glares at him, or rather, something else glares at him through Michael Darling’s eyes. Jane, for her part, looks stricken.
“You, up.” James points his cane at Michael, just short of striking him.
Michael growls, low in his throat, but he climbs to his feet. The wet sand has soaked damp patches into his clothing. He sways, but does not fall.
“There’s rope there.” James speaks to Jane without taking his eyes off Michael. “Secure him so he can’t run off again.”
Jane fetches the rope lying coiled on the sand, but once she has it in her hands, she makes no further move.
“What is it?” Impatience creeps into his voice.
“I know this place.” Jane scans the shore. “This is where I landed the first time I came to Neverland. The ship… But it’s different.”
James follows her gaze to the dark, broken bulk farther down the shore. How could he possibly have missed it? His ship. His ship.
He steps past Jane, ignoring her when she calls after him. He keeps walking until he stands before the curving hull. The prow now points toward the wrong-colored sky. Half a ship. A broken thing. It shouldn’t be here at all. He sailed it through the stars. He tore it apart. The fragments of the broken blade in his leg hum.
James—or is he Hook now, he’s not certain anymore—rests the tips of his fingers—wood chased in silver—against the hull. The light catches in the decorative whorls, like ribbons of blood dripping from his hand. An echo of voices, shouting against the storm. Rushing all around him, scrambling to secure the lines as the sea and the wind conspire to tear them apart. He strains to hear Samuel’s voice, to feel him amidst the thronging ghosts trapped in the wood. He aches, and it’s a terrible thought. He doesn’t want Samuel here, not like this, and yet… Just to see him again. Just for a moment.
The same wanting that opened the door between worlds in the first place.
The hand resting against the hull isn’t wood at all; it’s a bright curve of metal, the tip wickedly sharp. The deck sways and creaks underfoot. A coat of red, the color of blood and poppies swirls around him. He is—
“Captain!” Not one of his men calling him, but Jane, her voice sharp with alarm.
James lets his hand fall. Not a hook. Wood and silver gleaming dully in the light. He turns to look at Jane. She’s looped the rope clumsily around her uncle’s waist, dragging him behind her.
“That’s a terrible knot.” James indicates the poor job she’s done. It would be no work at all for Michael to undo it.
“Well, I’m not a sailor,” Jane snaps, and James can’t help the smile as her concern gives way to annoyance.
“Luckily, I am.” He instructs her how to tie the rope properly. Michael watches with sullen eyes, but makes no further attempt to escape.
“What happened when you were here before?” he asks.
Jane is a quick study, her second knot far more secure than her first. He tests it with a quick pull.
“This is where Peter brought me. He gave me a tea that made me forget myself.” Jane frowns. “Something made of flowers, I think.”
Flowers. A sick, dizzy longing hits him, a need like claws buried in his skin, like a voice screaming in his ear. No matter the quality of the opium Samuel obtained for him in London, it could never compare. He wants it, suddenly and deeply, like the need for air, the only thing that can save him from drowning. A tremor passes through him and James clenches his jaw. Jane continues, her tone thoughtful.
“My mother told me the beach was the first place Peter brought her as well. Only the ship wasn’t wrecked then.” She points to the slick, dark water. “Perhaps it’s part of the door. A hole between this world and home.”
“Indeed.” His ship, and perhaps the tether holding part of him here.
It tugs at him even now, like the tide lapping in the dark. The ship wants him to tread its boards again, even broken. It wants him to be the pirate captain he is not, and the longer James spends standing here, the more he has the sensation of standing exactly in a door such as Jane described. It is not a comfortable feeling.
He turns, striding back down the beach. His bag lies just beyond the reach of the waves and a pang goes through him as he crouches to open it. Jane huffs as she trots up beside him.
“You brought luggage?” Her face scrunches, just now noticing the bag, seemingly unsure whether to scold him or to laugh.
There’s only one thing inside James truly needs, and he lifts it reverently, cradling it in the crook of his arm. The blood-light splitting the sky catches on the silver whorls chased through Samuel’s skull as it did the whorls in his hand. Was it wrong to bring him here, all for his own selfish reasons? But he was never the strong one; it was always Samuel. James cannot image doing this without Samuel at his side.
Holding the skull steadies him. He’s only aware of the smile on his lips when he raises his head to find Jane staring at him, expression shading to disgust.
“What is that, some sort of war trophy?”
“No.” James curls his body protectively, smile turning to a scowl.
“Ah, the surgeon.” Michael’s lips produce Killdeer’s voice, dripping with scorn.
His smile is not human, but a reptilian thing. The sick-gold light back in his eyes, brighter than before.
“I remember. Your little pet. Your toy. Or was it the other way around?”
The words are slick, voices braided together, sliding like oil. He feels them along the bones of his spine. The voice sounds most like Chauncey’s now. Mutinous, treacherous soul. The coward, who fled. A growl answers it, from the other side of Michael’s mouth, like the voices arguing among themselves. James wants to spit in disgust to hear what he and Samuel had together reduced in such a way.
Hook doesn’t even realize the sword is in his hand again, his arm raised to slash down until Jane steps between him and her uncle, her eyes shocked-wide, but not backing down, willing to take the blow.
“Don’t hurt him!” She holds her hands out as if to catch the sweep of his arm. Over her shoulder, Michael grins.
“Jane, sweet Jane, thank you. You would never let anything happen to your old uncle, would you?” The voice is cloying, like honey if it could rot.
Jane’s face becomes a storm cloud, and she whirls, her body shaking with adrenaline as she points a finger at her uncle’s face.
“Not another word from you, or I’ll let him strike you next time. Better yet, I’ll strike you myself.”
James can see she means it, and he feels a strange surge of pride toward this girl he barely knows.
“We should go,” James says softly.
“Where?” Jane turns to face him.
“I’m not certain, exactly. But I’m sure it will come to me.”
Jane opens her mouth as if she will object, but James can see she doesn’t have any better suggestions. Instead, she merely shrugs, moving to follow him, pulling on the rope binding her uncle more roughly than necessary so he stumbles behind her as he falls into line.
* * *
Smoke leaks from James’s mouth as he leans back in the chaise. The light through the window makes a pattern on the ceiling in the shape of an eye, the city looking down at him. He imagines looking back through that eye, seeing every part of London at once—the tops of all the buildings, the glittering line of the Thames. As if he’s flying.
The door opens and closes again, and James drifts, listening to Samuel putting packages away. It’s comforting, like the hush of the sea on the rare days when the waves were calm and Pan had no plans for starting a war. Days when his time was his own, and they could simply sail.
The sound of a wracking cough shakes him from the illusion and James sets his pipe aside, rising. The opium, no matter the quality, loosens its hold easily enough. In fact, if he doesn’t concentrate on remaining in a half-dreaming state, the world comes rushing in all at once. Just as he was once cursed with eternal life in Neverland, he now seems cursed with eternal wakefulness, eternal awareness of everything around him.
As such, it isn’t merely the sound of Samuel’s painful cough – he feels it as well, an ache in his chest, but Samuel waves him away when James reaches for him.
“It’s nothing.”
“You’re a terrible liar.” James nudges Samuel toward a chair. “And you work yourself too hard.”
He feels Samuel watching him as he takes over putting away the rest of the packages. Despite James’s urging, Samuel remains standing, one hand braced against the back of a chair, as if the slightest movement might unleash another coughing fit. He’s convinced Samuel to take laudanum occasionally, but even that he uses sparingly enough.
“You could stop,” James says, keeping his tone as even as he can, as if nothing rested on Samuel’s answer.
A fist squeezes James’s chest. He doesn’t turn around, but he feels Samuel tense. They’ve had some version of this conversation dozens of times before. And James can’t seem to help saying the wrong thing at every turn, protesting that he could take care of them both, that Samuel doesn’t need to work himself to the bone, spread himself thin to the point of vanishing. He’s braced for a fight, so it startles him when there’s a chuckle from behind him instead.
“What?” James turns.
“I know that look.”
“What look?” It emerges defensive. James holds a box of tea against his chest like a shield. This is new; he doesn’t know what to expect.
“Your guilty and feeling sorry for yourself look. You can’t wait to beat yourself up for the fact that I work so hard and have a good wallow in your misery.”
Samuel shakes his head, but the faint smile on his lips takes some of the sting from the words. Some, but not all. James opens his mouth and closes it again, feeling pinned.
“Has it ever occurred to you that I like my job? That I do it because I want to and not because I have to, and that I would work this hard regardless of you? My entire world doesn’t revolve around you.” Samuel steps forward, takes the tea from James’s hand to place on the shelf.
As he steps away, he lets his hand casually brush James’s shoulder then drift to the small of his back—a brief spot of comfort and warmth. It doesn’t entirely take the hurt away, nor does it distract James from the suppressed cough that crackles in Samuel’s chest. Samuel’s knuckles are white where he grips the back of the chair, leaning almost all his weight onto the piece of furniture.
“I can help people.” Samuel cuts James off before his protest can rise this time. His cheeks are drawn, but there’s an almost manic shine to his eyes. “The people other doctors won’t help.”
There’s an openness to Samuel, a rawness as well, as if every moment in this city causes him pain. Not his pain, the pain of those around him. In Neverland, the hurts he encountered, however horrific, were at least self-contained and all dealt to pirates who participated willingly in the violence. Here, though, a whole city sprawls around him full of addicts, fallen women, the poor, the indigent, those who would otherwise slip through the cracks without him, and Samuel’s heart bleeds for every single one.
James wonders though, after his paying clients, how many who cannot afford to pay him anything does he see? A complicated feeling twists through him, a stab of misplaced jealously, a kind of pride, and topping it all, fear.
“You can’t save the whole world.” James mutters it, compensation for the fact that he hadn’t meant to say it aloud at all.
Samuel’s heart is in the right place—of course, it always was—but if he burns himself out trying to save all of London’s destitute? What then? The irrational itch of jealousy returns, the wild desire to scour London’s streets of its vermin and keep Samuel for his own.
“No, but I can try.” Another fit of coughing chases the words.
Each wracking sound is a blade driven through James’s skin. His shoulders rise, a bony and useless defense. No storm has broken between them this time. Some perverse part of him wants to go on needling Samuel until it does. He’s comfortable with the fight, with tempers flaring on both sides to burn themselves out later in heat and forgiveness. This weariness, this reason, though, he cannot grasp. It twists itself around and slips through his hands.
Despite Samuel’s gentle remonstration that his world doesn’t revolve around James, that his pain and his choices are his own, there’s a deeper truth at work. When James tore them apart to bring them here, something essential was left behind. He’s always known Samuel to be the stronger of the two of them, but much less stubborn, much more forgiving of the realities of the world. James—Hook, when need be—will rage against London and Neverland both as long as he can. He’s too proud, too full of anger to let something as petty as death take him. But Samuel is different.
How much longer will Samuel be able to hold on? And the worse question still—how much longer will he want to?
“You should rest,” James says.
There’s a different kind of storm coming, not a fight, but a slow and creeping thing as terrible as Pan’s hunting beast. He’s felt it for months now, a thing hovering in the corner of his vision that he’s tried to ignore, as if by avoiding looking at it head-on he can deny it exists at all. But the knowledge is there, sure and unsettled in his bones. What’s wrong with Samuel is not merely exhaustion and overwork, and it’s not merely physical.
James doesn’t sleep, but when he smokes, sometimes he dreams. In those dreams, he sees Samuel standing in the corner even as Samuel lies fast asleep beside him—like a precursor of his ghost, haunting him. His lips move, shaping words without sound: Let me go.
He’s selfish, keeping Samuel here. He knows as much, and knows as well that he doesn’t intend to change. If he could forbid Samuel from leaving, if he could chain him to this life, he would. Because yes, he is selfish, and he hasn’t entirely forgotten how to be cruel.
“And what would we do for money while I rest?” Samuel asks.
“If you’d just let—” James clenches his jaw, edging back to anger, to territory he understands.
“No.” Samuel’s voice matches James’s sharpness, but the weariness remains underneath.
He knows James, well enough to know he’s being pushed toward a fight, and he’s tired of it all.
“I know how you’d get us money.” A shadow passes across Samuel’s face, expression grim, deepening the bruised quality of his skin.
The way the light strikes him, it’s almost as though James can see right through him. He half expects Samuel to mouth let me go, but he merely stands there, gaze challenging until James is the one to look away.
James clenches his flesh and blood hand, braces it in a fist against the counter. How can he make Samuel see that what he is could be good for them too, that no one else matters? As long as they’ve spent here, as much as James has rooted himself in this life they’ve made, it’s only a matter of thought to call Hook to the surface of his skin. Samuel has plied his own trade of kindness and healing to keep them alive for this long. If Samuel would only let him, James could do the opposite, unleash his own particular talents for cruelty and violence.
After all, he’s done it before. He hadn’t even thought twice the first time he slipped a hand into another man’s pocket and relieved him of the notes he found there. It had come to him as easy as breath, and he’d found himself doing it again and again until it had become reflex anytime he’d left the flat. Other habits returned just as easily—cheating at cards, extorting money based on secrets let slip by inebriated men.
He’d justified it by telling himself that no one was truly getting hurt. But in truth, James hadn’t really cared. He reveled in it. What did the people of London and their tiny lives matter to him? If they were stupid enough to spill their secrets, to allow themselves to be bilked at cards, or were careless with their wallets and purses, how could he be blamed?
If only he could find a way to make Samuel see as much. But Samuel is stubborn in his own way, stubborn about all the wrong things, refusing to see this is the only thing James is good at, the only thing he will ever be good at.
The look Samuel gives him now—disappointment—only furthers James’s fear that Samuel is not only tired of this conversation, but the larger fundamental difference between them. James cannot change who he is at the core.
And deep down, James fears that is the crux of it, the paradox of their situation. He is not worthy of Samuel’s kindness, and it can only be a matter of time before Samuel realizes it. Yet if James buries Hook too deep, lets himself become the kind of person worthy of Samuel, then he will not be able to survive the moment when Samuel inevitably decides to let go.
Better to hold on to the monstrousness. Better to embrace it.
And he has. In the time they’ve been in London, he’s done worse than thieve and cheat at cards.
There’d been a night when he and Samuel had been returning from a pub. Still, thick, the air dewed and distorting the lights around them. The streets had been strangely empty, as though no one existed save for the two of them.
Until a man had stumbled drunkenly from the pub doorway after them. James had marked him when they’d been inside, casting glances, expression sour—as if James’s and Samuel’s very existence offended him, as if he felt their happiness was undeserved and wanted to take it away. Samuel hadn’t seemed to notice, and so James had schooled himself rather than walking over and striking the man. For Samuel’s sake.
“Oy!” The shout had echoed, the man himself apparently not content to let it lie—a single word like a slap, and James had stopped.
Samuel had glanced back then, seen the man, and tried to urge James on. And James had tried. He truly had, letting the man’s slurs roll off him. He hadn’t acted until the man had grabbed Samuel’s shoulder, yanking him backward, sick of being ignored.
The decision hadn’t even been a conscious one. Like taking a breath after holding it for so long, a red haze had descended over him. Cane in hand, hefted and smashed into the man’s face, breaking his nose instantly. The bright shock of blood had only urged him on. He’d hit the man again and again, even as the man pleaded, as Samuel tried to drag James off him. And the entire time, his stance had been steady, and his leg hadn’t ached once.
Hook, utterly eclipsing James.
He’d come back to himself crouched over the man, smeared with blood, riffling through the man’s pockets, and had found Samuel looking at him in horror. Samuel’s face had been paler than the fog around them, almost a ghost, staring at James as though he’d never seen him before, as if he’d forgotten who and what he could be.
The moment James straightened, using his cane again as it was intended, Samuel had startled away from him. In that moment, Hook remained too close to the surface, released and now refusing to be tamped back down. Instead of remorse or guilt, anger had snapped in him and James hadn’t been quick enough to keep it at bay, lips twisting into their old sneer.
“Would you prefer I’d let him kill you? You should thank me.”
Samuel had taken one step back, the sound of his heel over-loud on the stone, his breathing harsh and shallow. James himself might have been hurt, however unlikely, but no fear for him had showed in Samuel’s eyes, only fear of him.
“You don’t know that.” Samuel shook his head, green eyes catching too much light in their wideness.
Sickness roiled in James’s gut, cold against the anger. Deep down, he’d wondered if Samuel was right. What if defense was only an excuse? Hadn’t it felt good—hadn’t he felt good, killing, breaking his promise? More like himself, more alive and more useful than he’d been since Neverland.
“What do you expect when you ally yourself with the Devil?” In the face of Samuel’s horror, he’d tried for a grin, but the expression slipped off his face and twisted into something nasty. “Do you expect a mad dog to cease biting merely because you put it on a leash?”
He’d shaken bloodied hair out of his face, expression hard where he met Samuel’s gaze. It would have been easy to apologize, to back down, but none of that had been in him. He’d wanted to push, to see where and if the bond between them would break. He’d been spiteful enough, and deep down, self-loathing enough, that some sick part of him had wanted to drive Samuel away.
Samuel’s expression had crumbled, hurt, and James had leaned into the hurt, putting pressure on a bruise. He’d thought that Samuel understood. That he knew James for what he was, saw him, and chose him anyway. Had he merely been waiting, hoping, for him to change? Did Samuel see James as that same broken-winged bird he’d spoken of a lifetime ago, cutting his hands to ribbons with its beak when he’d only been trying to help?
“Do you remember what you told me about the first time you saw me? You didn’t seem bothered by my bloody-mindedness then. A terrible angel to protect you, a weapon to keep you safe so you wouldn’t have to dirty your own hands?”
He’d bared his teeth, a half-feral grin, not caring whether his words were true or if he even believed that Samuel felt that way. He’d only wanted to wound, dealing in another kind of violence after the death of the man lying crumpled at his feet. He’d felt more like Hook than ever.
“If I’m a monster, then let me be a useful one.”
“You’re not…” Samuel had shaken his head, the hurt in his expression deepening, seeming almost on the verge of tears.
“Why then? Why stay?” James’s own voice had turned rougher than he would have liked, smaller.
“I always saw more.” The words caught, ragged, like sailcloth tearing to shreds in Samuel’s throat; Hook—James—barely heard it.
“You’re not a dog,” Samuel had said. “And you’re not a monster. Behind the Devil, I saw that you could be whatever you chose—if you chose. Not just what Pan made of you.” Samuel’s tears slipped free at last. “That’s why I stay. Because I care. And because I do love you. But you do have to choose.”
Samuel turned his head, ready to leave.
“Wait.” James had caught Samuel’s arm, then frozen, staring at Samuel’s sleeve and the smear of crimson he’d left behind, a bright accusation.
“I’ll try.” The words were harder than James would have thought, but he meant them.
He’d always meant them. Like he’d always meant to keep Samuel safe, apart from the worst of everything, including himself. He’d meant to protect him; he’d meant to be better, to deserve him.
“Let me try?” James had managed to meet Samuel’s eyes, just barely, to see the conflict on Samuel’s face.
Fear had curdled in James’s belly, and words had caught in his throat. There was a bridge, one he wasn’t yet willing to cross. And so he’d turned away from the hope, the shadow of expectation Samuel couldn’t quite keep from his expression.
Because I care. And because I love you.
Why couldn’t he say the same in return? Instead, he’d deflected, hoping at least to make Samuel smile, to forget his disappointment and save his decision of whether to stay or go for another day.
“You forgot the other reason you stay.”
“What’s that?” A small amount of wariness had showed in Samuel’s eyes.
“I’m devastatingly handsome.” James had flashed a grin, made it as brash as he could. At the same time, he’d held his breath, hope a fragile thing ready to shatter in his chest.
“Well, there is that, yes.” The corner of Samuel’s mouth had lifted, and relief, a tide, had washed over James, set to drown him.
But how long would it last? Behind all his words and underneath the anger, there’d been fear. Of Samuel leaving, of losing himself. Because he had tried to change. He’d become something more, but in that moment, he couldn’t find it anymore—Hook rising to claim him as though he’d never left Neverland. And he’d wanted it. He’d wanted to kill and soak in blood and never be anything other than a bloody pirate.
As always, Samuel had been the one to cross the bridge, to heal the rift between them, or at least bandage it for a time. He’d been the one to reach through the space between them and pull James back from the edge. He’d placed a hand alongside James’s cheek, the look in his moss-green eyes unraveling the bloody pirate captain to find the man underneath.
“Are you with me?” Samuel had asked, and when James hadn’t had an answer for him, hadn’t even understood the question, Samuel leaned his forehead against James’s own.
“Are you with me, here, or are you determined to lead a life antithetical to everything I stand for as a doctor sworn to save lives?”
James had swallowed, throat gone thick. Despite the dark, the fog, there was nowhere to hide from Samuel’s gaze. It occurred to him that the alarm should have been raised by now. He’d just murdered a man, but time seemed to have stopped, holding them here in this moment—a far worse reckoning than any that could come from the law.
“Because if you’re with me, then you should be with me. Here. In London. In this life. Not always half in that other world. Stay here.” He’d pressed a hand to James’s shirt, despite the blood there, breath warm on James’s cheek, and James sharply aware of his heartbeat against the palm of Samuel’s hand. “Stay here with me, where you belong.”
“What about you?” James had closed his eyes, unable to bear Samuel looking at him any longer. “Are you with me? Because if you’re only with me because you’re hoping I’ll change, then you may be disappointed, and that isn’t fair to either one of us.”
They’d stayed like that for a very long time, holding on to each other as they had once upon a time in a storm.
He can’t remember now if Samuel had answered him. James remembers that he tried though, to be what Samuel saw in him. He is trying.
“Promise me you won’t turn pirate again.” Samuel’s voice is soft, bringing James fully back to the here and now. “My sickness will pass, you’ll see. There’s no need for you to do anything…rash.”
Samuel’s lips are pale around his smile, a brave front. Does he know his words are a lie? Does he truly think the sickness will pass, that he’ll get better, or does he merely want to keep James in check? There isn’t as much bitterness in the thought as James would have expected. In this moment, he would happily be leashed as long as it meant Samuel would stay by his side.
“I promise.” The words come easily, perhaps too much so. The same promise he’s made countless times before, intending to keep it every single time.
James crosses the room and lays his hand against Samuel’s cheek. Stubble rasps against his palm as Samuel leans into the touch. Here, in this moment, James truly does mean it. He wants to be the man Samuel believes he can be, no matter the consequences, no matter how vulnerable it leaves him.
“I’m tired.” Samuel closes his eyes.
“Sleep,” James says. “I’ll wake you for supper.”
Samuel doesn’t move, and for a moment, it seems as though he’ll fall asleep leaning against James’s hand. There’s a blurring at Samuel’s edges, and again, James sees him as a ghost. Let me go.
If Samuel knew how afraid James is, would he fight harder? But surely he must know, mustn’t he? Even though James hasn’t said it aloud. He must know, after all this time, what James is, and that he has tried, and will keep trying for Samuel’s sake. Surely that must be enough.
James swallows around the ache in his throat, around words like something barbed that he is unable to spit out.
He watches Samuel move toward the bed. Samuel turns, curling on his side beneath the covers, his breathing soft and regular. It doesn’t change when James sits lightly on the edge of the bed beside him.
“You’re stronger than you think.” The covers rise and fall gently over the topography of Samuel’s body—a jagged landscape, too much bone and not enough flesh holding him together.
James’s breath catches. He wants to argue. Tell Samuel that he—not James—is the strong one and always has been. He remembered, all those years while James forgot, he carried the burden for both of them, and what use has James ever been? Could he order Samuel, as captain to surgeon, to stay? It would be cruel; it would be selfish. But he can see himself doing it, and Samuel obeying.
Samuel’s breathing deepens. James is about to rise, but after a moment, Samuel’s voice comes again, slurred and half-wrapped in dreams.
“You’ve always been kind to me. Why can’t you be kind to the rest of the world?” James has no answer for him. “Why can’t you be kind to yourself?”
The second question is so much worse, hollowing him out. Samuel doesn’t seem to expect an answer; the lines of his body go slack beneath the covers. Even if James did have an answer for him, Samuel wouldn’t hear it.
Why can’t he be kind to world? Why can’t he be kind to himself? Because once upon a time, Pan broke him, rewrote him, and made him into the villain in his private tale. Because as that villain, James died a thousand times and was born again, and he remembers every one of those deaths—teeth in his skin and the air crushed from his lungs. He remembers what it is to be run through with a sword wielded by a child, and he remembers what it is to drown.
He cannot be kind to himself, because he does not deserve kindness.
A part of him fears that the scarcely-more-than-a-boy who left his sister on the docks with a kiss and a promise he never intended to keep was only ever a veneer over the cruel thing he became when the beast severed his hand. He was always made for violence, for blood, for a blade, and Pan only set that nature free, stripped the skin to show his red and terrible self to the world. Samuel is the best part of him, the only good part. What will James do when he’s gone?
James raises his hand as if to touch Samuel’s shoulder, wood and silver gleaming softly in the light. A word sits heavy on his tongue. He lets his hand fall.
Samuel already does so much. He already fights so hard to stay, and James knows that it isn’t on his own account that he does so. He stays for James’s sake—loyalty, selflessness, a desire to take care of him. If it weren’t for James, he would have let go long ago, crumbling like so much wet paper in the rain.
It’s only a matter of moments before the gentle sound of Samuel’s snore drifts through the room. Despite his promise, he does not wake Samuel for supper. He lets him sleep, looking him over occasionally and waiting for the troubled creases on his brow to straighten themselves out. They never do.
NEVERLAND – NOW
They move along the beach. The sky doesn’t change. It remains red and bloody, the tide sluggish and relentless as it washes over the sand, though it never seems to rise or withdraw.
Jane does a quick hopping double step to close the space between them. She’s let the rope out to its fullest extent, and Michael seems content to trail behind them, even dragging his feet on occasion to further slow them. The maddening smile never leaves his lips, taunting without saying a word.
James tries to avoid looking at the boy, but he notes how Jane continually glances over her shoulder as if unable to stop herself. Her movements are skittish, haunted, caught between equal parts fear of and for her uncle.
“Why do you carry that, if it’s not a trophy?” she asks, her eyes flicking to the skull then quickly away again. “What did Uncle—What did he mean when he called it the surgeon?”
James sighs, lifting the skull to the level of his eye without breaking his stride. He still carries his cane, but he needs it less and less here.
“His name is—was Samuel. He’s someone I loved very much. Someone I love. But I never told him as much and it is my life’s greatest regret.” The sky’s eerie light rests in Samuel’s eye sockets and makes the silver chasing in the bone gleam.
Now, when it is far too late, the word comes easily—love. It leaves a bitter taste on James’s tongue.
A frown tugs at Jane’s lips. James resettles the skull in the crook of his arm as she chews his words over. She carries regret as well, plain to see. Not a beau, he thinks, perhaps her mother? It’s impossible to miss the tension between them, so that may well be regret weighing on Jane now. Or perhaps there’s something more.
“You were here when Neverland broke,” he says, as much to distract himself as her. “What happened?”
“I…didn’t see, but my mother told me what she did. She sewed Peter’s shadow back onto him and made him whole. But it broke everything else. I guess it made it so he couldn’t lie anymore about this place, or what he was, and it made death here real. And my friend, he—”
Her voice breaks, and Jane lets the words lie. Timothy. The boy Wendy mentioned. Perhaps that is the regret the girl carries. James can almost see it, a weight upon her, a shadow wrapped around her and dragged behind her with every step.
A shudder passes through her, and James feels unease himself. All the times he died in Neverland and returned. If he dies here now, it will be for good.
“Eight years ago.” Jane does not look at him as she answers.
Eight years. Samuel had started to fade long before that. In the back of his mind James had been holding on to hope that Wendy Darling was to blame, that he could lay Samuel’s death at her feet, rather than his own. But no. It is all down to him.
If he hadn’t listened to the mermaids. If he hadn’t consumed the flower. If he hadn’t sought the blade.
The flower. He stops suddenly, making a sharp turn so the water is at his back, facing in toward the center of the island. The blade.
“I’m going about this all wrong.”
“What are you talking about?” Jane hurries to catch up as James strides forward again.
A grimace tugs at his mouth. No, he is going about things exactly right, because this is always where he was going, was it not? The heady, sticky-sweet scent of flowers swirls around him, a memory, but tangible and real, a thread tugging him farther inland.
“There’s something here I need.”
James quickens his pace even further. Jane lets herself fall back a few steps. Behind her, he feels Michael’s grin. And inside James, the hollow gnawing at his core grows and grows into a hungering roar.