distingue | welcome home // psl

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welcome home // psl

Pity the man who tells Captain Hook that one Captain Darling is back on the seas of Neverland.

It had mostly been to convenience and proximity rather than mercy that the solid iron tip of his hook had buried into bar top wood rather than the softer gut of the messenger himself, but the barman had known better than to stand very close in the first place, even with the counter-top set between them. Splinters came up when he'd wrenched the implement back out in sullen drag of iron through oak, sweeping back out into the port town and the dull of the evening with an agenda coming together in his mind, quite unstoppably. It was a far easier thing to know of Pan's comings and goes, with the shift of icy winter in favour of bright spring dawn and back again, but in this case, Hook could only rely on chance and rumour and it isn't as though he ever asked. Very much.

Time is difficult to track, in this place, but it doesn't take very long.

Staring down the sight of collapsing telescope, the click of brass on iron, the Queen Margaret is only so familiar a shape, anchor down in the cove and away from the shallows. It is possible that whoever is on watch could see that they, in turn, are being watched, but the Jolly Roger sits dark and quiet on the evening horizon, lamps snuffed and voices at whispers, as if they were lurking some fat merchant ship headed out to sea and not a fellow piracy vessels. The crew is a mixture of being on edge at their captain's strange, new priorities, or too dull to be on any sort of edge at all, but that is of no consequence. Punishments come in the form of whippings or the end of his hook. Being nervous and unsure is a state of normalcy.

Turning from the rail, he sets his sights on his bo'sun. "Let us welcome the good captain back to our waters."

They hear it first, over there, some few minutes later -- a thunderous clap of gunpowder and a spark of flame in the distance, before the cannon ball cuts through the air at a hiss, knifing through the rigging of the Queen Margaret, a wooden screech of stress as it snags through rigging and sails into tangles of mess, before it makes its impact on the other side, a rickety shingle in the outlawed port fairly exploding in pieces of brick and wood in unfortunate collateral damage.

To see in the direction it came from would be to see the Jolly Roger promptly sailing in their direction, ever distinctive flag raised aloft and the pale glow of lamps from its deck.

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And here, Hook fights with almost as much mad enthusiasm as he gives Peter Pan, no shortage of growls and snarls over the sounds of clashing steal, or the solid scrape of iron when his hook is used to parry a blow. His crew know much better to interfere when it comes to these sorts of fights, especially ones with terms -- it's a different sort of definition to when his opponent has even more teeth than Wendy's grin, and comes with a tickticktick.

Spying an opening, Hook steals that split second to lash out with his hook, which is known for not only drawing first blood, but quite a great deal of it.

In darting back out of range, Wendy moves with such haste that her boots skid on the quarterdeck - god take the rain lately - and her balance becomes something not of her control as she stumbles backward. The stairs are at her back and she lunges with one hand for the railing beside them, but less than a moment later her expression shifts and she doesn't fall but rather all but twirls into the air, her sword still pointed at him.

Not the most dignified thing she's ever done, she'll privately concede, but somehow worth it.

"Cheating," she shouts, laughing, as she swoops back in.

"Lucifer spare me!" is a growl of exasperation-- cheating indeed!-- going on the defense in fending off the attack of her slimmer sword, ever moving so as not to find himself cornered. The meeting of metal to metal is designed to be strong, to tire, the heels of his boots thudding hard the wood as if this really were a dance. If she learned off him, then--

She really ought to know all about good form.

He spins to avoid a blow, blade sweeping up to knock her's off at awkward angle. "More flying tricks, and I'll just have to call upon your unhappier thoughts, my dear," is wry threat.

"Do you wonder what propels me?" she inquires in a breathless taunt, pressing the advantage of - shall we say - higher ground to the best of her ability. "Perhaps next time we gamble, you'll have of me a secret- or have you had your fill?"

Her boots touch wood as she lunges.

"I can surely--"

...dodge, basically, sidestepping, and putting grounding distance between them as he blazes a look up at her. In the heat of battle, Hook is a little more transparent than what artful words and mock-negotiations and shouted taunts would otherwise suggest. He does hate it when they sodding well fly, it makes him feel so grounded. "I can surely guess. Did that wonderful husband of yours come back for you?"

A sword swipe. "No, I don't suppose so -- you wouldn't be here, now would you?"

Her eyes betray her - how dare he bring that up, that man, and here of all places, with an audience - but a moment later she dismisses Richard in two words, flippant and cruel in their callousness- "What husband?"

Evers, watching from the bridge of the Queen Margaret as Wendy strikes at Hook, begins to anticipate a very long week.

That earns laughter, dry and just as callous, before Hook pushes back on the offense as far as he flight allows. It's a good thing he has some several decades-- or more, who really knows, the way Neverland works-- practice at fighting those with this kind of advantage. It's a testament to his duties as a gentleman that he never goes for the pistol lashed to his hip, or something like that.

There's a scrape of flying sparks as his hook catches down the length of her blade, twisting in effort to disarm with his sword held high in preparation to come down.

Rather than being disarmed, she arches in the air to let her body move with the blade and use his own momentum against him in the process - her sword comes down and her with it, sliding forward to slice down along the outside of his side, his hip, clear through fabric. She wounds only to draw blood, though, and presses her luck no further than that.

"A glass of wine and a bit of sport," she says, musingly, as she rests at last upon steady feet, standing on his deck and well within his reach. "I could hardly have planned a better homecoming. How sweet you are to me, James."

She'll be doing no begging this evening.

He barks out a cry too late to pretend that she's done anything else but draw blood, hands too full or too absent for him to immediately tend to the wound that springs dark red-- darker than the standard shade-- into his fine fabrics. Blessedly shallow, but still seals the deal, as it were, and he turns a clearly enraged stare towards her.

Though his sword is lowered, his hook arm is wound tense, but never springs. He also doesn't immediately start screaming at his crew to open fucking fire, because, well. They had a deal. And he's a better class of pirate than that.

There's a smattering of uncertain applause to begin around his crew, which brings around a roared, "SILENCE!" from Hook, echoed loud enough for the other ship to hear. It does its job. Standing taller, Hook fixes his attention on Wendy, even as he says, in a voice that barely holds steady with suppressed anger, "Mister Smee. You and another go down to the hold and select the finest spare canvas we have for the Queen Margaret's sails. I myself will calculate the coinage needed for added expense.

"If that suits the lady captain?" His knuckles are white on his sword hilt.

As Hook sees to the arrangements that must be made, per their agreement, Wendy attends to her sword - fastidiously wiping the blade clean of his blood before she sheaths it - with a small, satisfied smile that is perhaps all the more irritating for not being turned directly on him. She only looks back at him when he addresses her, tossing her hair over her shoulder and turning, an insouciant incitement to riot, to collect her half-empty glass of wine from where she'd set it down before their match.

(Evers knows his captain too well; he reserves judgement on a reassessment of the situation until such time as she's back on the Queen Margaret. There's still time for this to go wrong.)

"Yes, I daresay it does. Shall we?" She inclines her head toward his cabin. "I have a prize to collect and you, I believe, desired a conversation."

His blade makes its cutting sound through the air as he hefts and sheaths it, although even when his hand is free, James will continue to entirely ignore the scratch he's been given, more inclined to fix the sit of his coat and push elaborate collar back into place with the curve of his hook. His anger still tangible, in the tense precision of each movement and the tautness of his mouth, but slowly winding back into place.

Steps even and thudding across the deck, he approaches her in transit to his cabin and offers an arm. Well. He offers his hook, preferring to deal people the cold and unyielding gesture of this implement than a crooked elbow or clasped hand.

His mouth twitches into false smile. "Desperately."

Accepting his hook with one gloved hand, Wendy doesn't pretend for a bare second that she isn't just a little bit (perhaps more than a little bit-) pleased with his suppressed fury, both the fact of its presence and his tight leash on it. "Then far be it from me to deny you."

It occurs to her briefly that when last she stepped inside this cabin, she was sharing it; she sets this troubling thought aside, unexamined.

In truth, back when they were sharing this cabin together, it was probably a rare if not entirely impossible sight that Wendy be escorted so fairly and delicate inside of it. It lacks presumption.

The place has barely changed, in the same way that Hook barely ever changes. Some new furniture to replace the old, but all the same stolen splendor of polished wood and brass. The harpsichord remains in place. He turns his hook out of her hand as he moves deeper inside, headed straight for where his twin cigar holder rests on his desk. He sets about replacing it in the slow but practiced methodology of someone with only one hand.

It's the matchbook he may need help with, but for now, keeps his back to her. "There's a chest of jewelry in the corner. You can have a peruse, if you so desire something shiny."

As the door closes behind them, she watches as he goes about, neatly removing her gloves with precise, small tugs on the end of each finger. It's all very deliberate between them now, in battle and in conversation, but she is satisfied to find herself still under his skin. So many years have passed, and she had-

Nothing. Nothing at all.

"So I may, at that." Her fingers trail over his belongings with a proprietary air that's entirely casual, her interest as much in what hasn't changed as what has. For all her lightly expressed interest in the jewels, she's in no hurry to see them. "This is your conversation, oh captain, my captain; what shall we talk about?"

He turns in time to see her creepycrawl her fingers over his things, mustache twitching ever so in sneer before he focuses back on his task, clenching the stem of his pipe between his teeth and taking out the black-headed matches, between thumb and forefinger. Then, Hook wanders closer, and offers the latter thing.

It's a talent, to talk through ones teeth, and it's among his. The two cigars barely shift between syllables. "Oblige me, dearest," he requests. His eyes are bright, almost too sharp with inquiry. Yes, he's interested in conversation.

"And then why don't you regale me with your latest adventures."

With the very faintest of smiles, she lights the match and his cigars - the flame burns nearly to her fingers under her watchful eye before she shakes it out, taking a moment to pocket her gloves. "My latest adventures," she echoes him, turning away to return her attention to objects rather than the man who claims them (would Captain Hook himself be considered an item upon this ship-? a curious thought). "I found a place between worlds, as Neverland and not, a great deal, like Neverland at all. I spent a good deal of time in the port of Wonderland, after I befriended their little girl-queen. They were at war, there, I thought it might be amusing for a while."

It had been; so had the Hatter.

The smoke is breathed deeply, and then follows him like a small, grey cloud as he finds his own territory within the cabin to claim. A handkerchief, embroidered, is used to dab at leaking red through torn cloth, the slice in fabric and skin both too fine to need much immediate fussing over, and then tossed aside.

There is hardly war, in Neverland. Skirmishes, more like.

Plumes of smoke escape his nostrils like steam from that of a bull's, chin tipping back as he listens. "And no Captain Hook to cast a shadow over your glory as feared pirate captainess of the seas. No Peter Pan to stir tricky feelings."

"A Hook," she disagrees, an odd smile tugging at the corner of her mouth as she moves through the room - picking things up and turning them over in her hands, replacing them as she found them, investigating the room as if she must in some peculiar way reclaim space that was hers, once. If she notices the attention paid to his wound, she makes no sign of it. "A man with a face very like yours, a name...but of some other life not lived by you or I; he wasn't mine." Not as he is here.

She doesn't deign to respond to the mention of Peter Pan, though for a moment it tests her resolve not to take more than they'd fairly agreed upon, out of impulse and a hint of spite.

"But I don't find you cast much of a shadow over me, my dear captain. Wherever I am."

What.

The idea of another Hook induces a stab of disgust and odd paranoia that others probably wouldn't have, more for his own legacy than his physical self and presence, and disturbance flashes behind his eyes as he glances again her way. Placated once more, in some strange way, of who happens to be Wendy's, and it being him -- brought about at the same time when he finds that idea most offensive.

He watches her toy with things and reclaim the space, puffing cigar smoke to turn the staler scent of past cigars into fresher sharpness. "Of course, silly me. Wendy Moira Angela Darling, who ran away to become a pirate, would never dare let her past keep its clutch on her. Not especially when," and the creak of floorboards signals lazy approach, his voice at a hiss, "she slits throats and abandons ship just to get away from it.

"But believe me, my love -- there will always be that shadow, for as long as you are in Neverland."

Wendy glances to the side of her at his approach, but doesn't quite look back over her shoulder; she is aware of him, and that suffices. She doesn't point out that she couldn't have taken a ship alone, or that she'd then killed them for an attempt at sabotaging her and handing her back to Hook for a traitor- he is hardly going to abhor their behaviour as she had at the time, and in the end she had merely taken what she'd learned and used it.

(But he is the only one who knows, truly knows her of past, present and future and it is a knot in her shoulders that won't ease.)

"You are a creature of contradictions," she informs him, pitching her voice as placid and unaffected as she isn't quite, "to attach such an endearment to such a speech."

"It is among my many attributes."

He's closer, now, from the proximity of his voice and the reek of cigars, although these are held away to smolder as they like. "Does it bother you?" In truth, it bothers him that it's pointed out, enough that he affects a sort of simper in his voice that is transparently disingenuous. The sound of a metallic slither slides by her ear, when the rough tip of iron hook takes the liberty of pulling almost intangibly through her hair as if parting curtains.

His voice adopts its edge once more as he adds; "I'm afraid that contradictory will have to suffice when it comes to my view of you, lady captain."

Her fingers flex on the hilt of a dagger - his dagger, lifted from the case in front of her as they spoke - but she only tilts her head, permitting this peculiar intimacy. The smoke and the steel are as familiar as as the sense of him at her back, and she is briefly vexed by that familiarity, by how easy it comes. Still.

"In fact, I had thought I might drive you out of my memory," she says, almost thoughtfully, as she tests the edge of the blade, "with the Hatter's two hands."

Yet here they are.

The change in his breathing is the only thing that warns her before his hook slips forward enough to conform its cold curve over the base of the throat, the tip set against her collarbone and a sharp tug backwards threatening to break skin -- although he is well-versed in its use enough that the angle keeps it blunt.

He only wants to get her attention, after all.

"Then perhaps I ought to leave more marks," is hissed uncomfortably close to her ear, all rough gravel in his voice rather than affected silkiness. No one forgets Captain James Hook.

Wendy's back collides with Hook's chest and she slides the dagger in her hands up between herself and the hook, the flat of the blade against her skin before she uses it to establish herself a little more space free of steel. "Are you jealous, James?" she murmurs, injecting just the right hint of amusement into her voice, turning her head enough to see him behind her.

She could say it was only a fling, that the mere fact of her presence now proves how much she still remembers, a hundred things- but she feels no such obligation to explain or justify herself to him.

It is among my many attributes is a phrase that might have gone better here, but admitting anything of the kind is so far out of Hook's mind that it's barely even true. His head tips enough so that he can peer at the obstruction between his hook and her throat, and at this distance, she can probably get a sense of his too even breathing.

He doesn't answer her question, nor does he back off.

"Why are you back? Why have you returned?"

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