A MEMORABLE FANCY

("The ancient tradition that the earth will be consumed in fire at the end of six thousand years is true.

As I have heard from hell.")

What had happened was the terrible experiment of a man trying to live a life in a place that is not meant for mortal life. The Neverland was a place of gorgeous paradox and impossible absolutes, of colors so bright they burned, and only the very cruelest of truths. A sharp, cutting place—a prison of sorts, though one was free to travel anywhere. It is a nighttime chthonic place, of dreams and nightmare and imagination. It is not a home.

His name was James. Captain, and Hook, had come later. He died claiming all of those names as his.

The details and circumstance of Captain James Hook's death and his respective involvement with the Boy and the Storyteller are well documented elsewhere.

As he had died, he had felt no pain. No, it had been a mere voyeur/object sinister sensory experience, of immense dark and suffocating black and the only slightly muffled gunshots of his legs crumpling, his neck snapping. Of particular note was the cracking of the sternum—the deep shattering sensation of being broken into a million pieces, like that fairy laugh of legend, and even in the belly of the crocodile he could feel it all gush out.

Disassociation, maybe.

He had felt no joy either. Death, the Boy had said, will be an awfully big adventure. (But that one had no idea what living meant.) No, all Captain Hook had felt was a profound relief. Of giving into darkness, to death, to time: all those thousand niggling nibbling fear-yellow rats of anxiety and despair to die, along with him, by his own hand. Or hook, as it were. Steel bright. Ever his companion. Mostly he thinks he should have opened a vein years ago.

To die, as the poem goes. To sleep no more. Benefits of the best of English education.

If he had remembered the rest of poem—that in that sleep of death what dreams may come—he might have thought twice of giving fully into the clock and his own mortality. That mere sweet fear had been enough to stay the other young prince's hand. Perhaps the captain was a braver man. Perhaps he was even more desperate. To be lost forever in that ocean.

But oblivion was not his to choose. Not in the Neverland.

Silence; then that first deep breath, gunshot gasp, cold as anything, filling his lungs to breaking. James Hook awoke to his own frantic panting. And the sound of his heart, that muffled tick-tick-clackety-clock of blood rushing inside. As if he instead of the crocodile had… but never mind.

He opened his eyes, but was appalled by the light let in and closed them again. Instead he tried to slow his breathing.

It seemed he had little choice in this matter as well, because almost immediately he heard a voice—too sharp, too high, too ingratiating for a man so recently facing all the inevitabilities of life all over again. But there was nothing he could do.

"Cap'n," Smee said, somewhere to his left. "Cap'n! You be awake early!"

At that sound, that interruption, Hook felt bile start to boil, the anger twisting his lips and turning his eyes behind their dark lashes a hideous red. As always, he let it past.

"Smee," he said, instead. "I…was dreaming, methinks. Of death." Talking—or at least, the act of communication—made him feel human again. Part of the race. An English gentleman.

"Death, sir?" Smee would always know how to play along. It was the only reason he was still alive.

"Aye." Hook opened his eyes—still the most startling steel of blue—and found his first mate, at his side. The Irishman was just far enough away to be out of range of a surprise swipe of Hook's eponymous weapon. Smee, as it has been said, knew his captain. He had his red hat clutched nervously in his hands, his head bowed deferentially.

Hook groaned as he tried to sit up. Smee made no move to help, which was fortunate as he would have been disemboweled. Only now was the captain becoming aware of his immediate surroundings.

He was seated on his chaise, in his cabin. They were as he remembered—too much red, too much gold, all in lurid and lush fabrics, colors, prints. All in tribute to some era and some philosophy of life he was no longer a part of. If he ever was. His clothes too, dark damask waistcoats and the finest of shoes—marking him a dandy. A louche, a smiling libertine, moving in dizzyingly high circles that had long since forgotten him.

Forgotten. Alone.

It was enough to kill a man.

"Smee," he tried again, his high voice cracking, and uncertain. "Surely, what I saw and felt was not a dream?"

"Cap'n?" the other man answered.

"Surely," he kept on. "I have died?"

"You're here now, sir," Smee said, which was no sort of an answer at all. "Right as rain, you are."

"Now!" Hook whispered. "And what of then, Smee? Wasn't I…" Hook pretended to trail off, in thought, while glancing sideways at the smaller man. Guilt and terror were scrawled messy on his crumpled-paper face. It told Hook everything he needed to know.

"What, sir?" he said. "I don't rightly know what you're speaking of."

"I think you do," hissed Hook. "And moreover, if you do not tell me immediately what I wish to know…" The pirate tried to stand up, the better to intimidate, but fell immediately back down. "Then…" he was gasping. "I'll…"

"Shoot me right between the eyes? Run me through?" Smee offered helpfully.

"Aye. Shoot you right between the eyes," Hook finished, with as much dignity as he could muster. "Split me infinitives, man, what has happened?"

The first mate looked down at his captain, the ruined beauty of a man clutching to the chaise for balance like a lifeboat in a storm. His captain who always knew what to do, who he had known for years, who got his sea legs first moment he stepped on a ship all those years ago. The first mate also considered his facility for lying to said captain, and possible consequence.

"You mean, sir," he started quietly. "You remember this time?"

"This time?"

"Aye sir," he said. "You never have before. Always just woke up, thinking it was a bad dream mixing poor with last night's rum."

"This time?" the other man asked again, vexed. "Smee, what sorcery is this? How many times…how many times have I died?"

"Don't rightly know, sir," Smee said, offhand. "Lessee. Last time it happened, you were back right before…well, before Peter Pan returned. With the storyteller."

"Wendy…" he whispered.

"Aye, sir, the Wendy."

Hook seemed lost in thought for the moment. "She was my undoing, this time," he said softly, mostly to himself.

"Wendys are treacherous creatures, sir."

At that unflagging support, Hook had to smile. "Are they? My memory…sometimes it is a trouble to me."

Smee nodded solemnly. "Treacherous creatures indeed. You are not the first man to suffer at their hands."

Hook still smiled, and regarded his longtime, his only, his idiot friend. "I wish to go above," he declared. "Have the men go below, as I prepare myself. I would not have them seeing me like this."

He seemed rather unnaturally pleased to be dismissed. "Aye-aye sir! Right away."

Hook waited until the door had shut behind Smee before he tried to stand. So he had died before. Intriguing. Even for Neverland. Although, he must admit, it explained a lot. Made a certain sense. He would question his first mate, perhaps others, later.

But the present was the present.

And the now had to be dealt with. (This is why Neverland is such a dangerous place. There is only, and as ever, now.)

Hook succeeded in standing up, and afforded himself a rueful congratulations. (This, for a man so terrifying even Barbecue feared him!) He made his way over to the armoire, where he kept his most lovely things. Inside the door was the decadent rainbow of color and clothing so prized. And the slight, sickly-sweet smell of rot that was ever present on his ship, in his possessions—while everything on the actual Neverland burst with brightness and health, and purity.

Degeneracy palpable, here on his once-grand ship.

He was a man much given to thought, but he had never before felt so struck by the dichotomy.

For later, though. Instead he selected a jacket, a shirt, and everything else meant to make him feel like himself again. He was not pleased to note that some of the clothes, the jacket especially, were a little loose. He had always prided himself on being in tremendously good shape, even for a man of his age.

Whatever that was. It was hard to tell, especially here. His hair—a source of pride since he was old enough to care about such things—was still the deepest black, and his skin correspondingly, beautifully pale, and unblemished as yet by his favorite vices. The only clues came from his face: the creased lines where he sneered, the border of crow's-feet around his, in his opinion, astoundingly clear, piercing eyes.

Not that it mattered. In this place, what mattered was that he was adult.

A man.

A man that had died many times before, had had always been dragged back for some unknown reason, to relive the same farce over and over again. To never age, never change, never learn.

It was a certain, beautifully constructed, absolutely inescapable hell.

The same story, Hook thought, over and over again. His shiny leather boots clicked and clacked on the wood of the deck, as the sea breeze wound harshly through his hair. This was his ship. His island. His obsession. His hell. And heaven help the man or woman who challenged him.

Or child. A little girl, maybe.

Hook surveyed the roiling ocean, enjoying the near-silence and the rhythm of the waves. Where he felt at home. And Hook thought.

Like Smee had said. This time he remembered. He remembered what had gone wrong, and what the Wendy had said, especially when confronted with the riddle of the Boy's existence. He knew he was only part of the narrative in the Neverland. What he needed was someone who could build the narrative—end it, finally. Or at least tell him what happens next.

Hook's first official decision as a new man was to find the Storyteller, and demand his own story. The answer to his own riddle.

Maybe then he could die. Maybe if he was lucky, he could take it all down with him.

Somewhere else, in the land of Ugly, and Ordinary, Wendy shivered in her sleep.

It had been so long.

A/N—Hooray! This is a marked improvement upon my last Captain Hook story, which I wrote at about six years of age. (And my mother always acts surprised on how I've turned out.)

Read, enjoy, and please review.

Love, Dollfayce