Never, Never (21 page)

Hook ignored the odd feeling in his gut and asked, laughing, “Is that so?”

“Yes. Now, unhand the knave,” the boy said, voice bright and loud for his size, blue eyes narrowed.

“You dare challenge the authority of Captain Hook?”

The child laughed brashly, in the way of little boys, then stared into Hook's face and faltered, mouth falling open, tip of the sword crashing to the ground.

“Father?” said the boy.

Hook was silenced rather immediately. The boy staring back at him, he realized, was no miniature pirate. Hook was staring at a near mirror image of himself.

W
HAT DID YOU SAY?
” H
OOK SAID, VOICE UNSTEADY
.

“Only that you look just like…”

“Spit it out, boy. Or my hook will persuade you.” He thrust out his hook at the boy, and the child shrank back. The threat was empty, but to an eight-year-old it was effective.

“You look just like my father.”

Hook breathed in and out, barely noticing when the clanging and the gunshots quieted. Daniel Thatcher behind him jerked his knife across a man's throat. After the fellow thudded to the floor and soaked the wood with blood, he simply stood, eyes trained on Hook and the boy. Starkey and the man he'd been grappling with both stilled together. Blackbeard hadn't yet risen from the floor, and one by one, the rest of the pirates, his and the boy's both, had slowed to nothing.

There was a charge in the air, one that no one could ignore. It made the hairs on Hook's neck stand on end.

Hook clenched his jaw, staring the boy down, peering into his eyes, which were the exact same shade of blue as his, and the little half-smirk he kept waiting at the corner of his mouth, the lips that were thin and expressive, like his. But it wasn't him, not really. His hair was much darker than the boy's, and the child had a prominent spray of freckles over his nose and slightly rounder cheeks. But the
straight nose, the high cheekbones, the cornflower-blue eyes—everything else was the same.

What's your name, pirate?” the captain asked, slowly letting his hook fall to his side.

“I am Captain Bloodheart,” the boy boasted, puffing out his tiny chest.

Bloodheart. A name that could only be conceived in the mind of a child.

Hook rolled his eyes. “No. Your real name.”

He lowered his gaze a smidge, then glowered back up at Hook. Then, he heaved a great sigh. “My real name's Timothy. Timothy Hook.”

All the air left Hook's lungs, and he bit down on his tongue. He blinked several times, too quickly, and noticed that all the members of each crew were gathered around them.

“Starkey!” he shouted.

“Aye, Captain?”

“Send the rest of these men back to their ship. The boy comes with me.” He grabbed Timothy's upper arm.

Timothy blustered, but furrowed his brow until he looked quite brave and quite menacing. “Don't leave without me, ye scurvy lads! Or I'll have you all clapped in irons.”

Starkey snickered, but none from the other crew reacted. They simply obeyed, walking heavily and slowly back to their ship. Timothy stumbled along beside Hook, who was forcing himself not to look at him. Hook opened the door to his quarters and gestured for Timothy to enter.

Timothy kept his face carefully expressionless. He truly did look like a tiny pirate captain, Hook mused. But gruffer than him, apparel-wise. His garb was deep brown and weathered, layer upon ratty layer sticking to his little chest. He had worn leather straps that crisscrossed in front of him, a gun fastened in them. The boots were scuffed,
his hat wide-brimmed, but not elegant, not garish. Simple. Like the rest of his outfit, deep brown.

“Timothy Hook?”

“Aye.”

“Do you know my name?” he asked, voice low and imploring, fiddling with his hook.

Timothy smiled proudly and puffed his tiny chest out, and Hook realized that his front tooth was missing. “Of course I do. You're the scourge of the seas. Captain Hook.”

“Captain James Hook.”

Timothy frowned. “James Hook?”

“Indeed.”

“Strange,” he said, looking at the ground and then back up, peering into Hook's eyes. Did he see his own there, Hook wondered, when he looked?

“You're familiar with the name?”

Timothy screwed up his mouth and looked at his shoes for a moment. “It's odd. I've heard Mother whisper it in her sleep. And Father too. I'd a brother once. Name the same as yours. I never met him, of course. Died before I was born.”

Hook was staring at the boy, not even blinking. His voice cracked when he said, “She still does that?”

“What?” Timothy said.

“Talks in her sleep?”

Timothy took a step backward, stubby little fingers brushing against the wall behind him. “What do you mean?”

Hook breathed in shakily and sat on his bed. “I'm not your father, Timothy.”

“Of course not,” Timothy said, rolling his eyes and crossing his arms tightly in front of him. “I'm not an idiot.”

“I'm your brother.”

Timothy regarded him with shock and grave suspicion. “You're—you're not my brother. You're Captain Hook.”

“I am both.”

“You're dead.”

Hook sank down further into the bed and crossed one leg over the other, resting an ankle on his knee. He regarded his brother, gaze intense and focused, and set his chin in his fingers. “That's a truer statement than my presence would suggest.”

The boy backed up until he reached a heavily gilded and crimson-padded chair. Then he sat, the gigantic seat making him look even smaller than he was. “How do I know you're telling me the truth?”

“I never tell a lie.” Hook looked up at the polished, wooden ceiling of his room then, and allowed himself, for the first time since he'd come here, really, to
remember
. “Your father,” he said, “he's a sailor. When he comes home, he looks just like me, but with hazel eyes, and without all the getup. He smells like the ocean. And your mother, she loves music, sometimes more than you, you think. But it's all right because when she sings you can feel it in your soul. And when she cooks, you can feel it in your stomach, but it isn't anticipation. It's dread. She's always been a horrid cook.”

Timothy's little face was white; his mouth was hanging open and he was clenching and unclenching his hands over and over again. “How could you know that?”

“I'm your brother, Timothy. I swear on the
Spanish Main
herself.”

“You're a figment of my imagination.”

“I resent that.” Hook sat up straight and raised an eyebrow.

Timothy got a rather haughty look on his face. “No, that's what you are. I'm only dreaming anyway. It's where I always come at night. Well, not dreaming exactly. In that in-between place. And here you are. You know all these things because I know them, so of course you would if I
dreamed you up. Just like I dreamed up Blackbeard and my pirates and my ship.”

“You're a quick one,” Hook said, smiling. It was strange to see himself in the face of a child. “But, while you're here anyway, you might as well indulge me. It's not often a boy gets to have a chat with the infamous Captain Hook.”

Timothy seemed to give this some consideration, and he scooted back a bit further on the chair, crossing his tiny legs and settling in. “Fine then, figment. What questions have you?”

Hook paused thoughtfully.

“Don't take too long, pirate. I'm liable to wake up at any time.”

Hook stifled a laugh at the boy's demeanor. Then, “Mother and Father, how are they?”

“Quite well,” he said, picking at his nails, casual, as though this was all terribly normal. “Mother doesn't sleep much, but she never has. And Father's always off on his adventures at sea, you know. Rose is little and annoying.”

“Rose?”

“My sister. She's more of a pain than anything else.”

“I've got a sister…” Hook trailed off, looking out at nothing, trying to suppress the jealousy burning in him. It wasn't fair to be angry at his parents for replacing him. Of course they had. They'd thought him dead, and what were they to do? But, use whatever logic he might, he could not get rid of the dull pain. His family had built a new family. And he had never replaced them. “Do they talk of me?” he asked, ashamed at the hoarse crack in his voice.

Timothy shrugged. “Sometimes. Not usually. It makes Mother too sad, and Father just gets angry. They talk about you a lot when Mother sits at the piano. She says you were a thousand times better than she ever was.”

Hook smiled. She was speaking the truth. “And you, boy. What of you?”

“What about me?”

“What are you like? What sorts of things do you do?”

He considered this for quite some time, and his face was very thoughtful. He was giving this a great deal more concern than any of Hook's other questions. Of course he was.

“Well, I'm a dreadful student. Father thinks I've got no chance at all of getting into Eton.”

Hook bit his cheek. Eton. He hadn't thought of that place in a while.

“But it doesn't matter anyway,” Timothy said, shaking his head. “I don't want to grow up and be an Eton man.”

“What do you wish to be?”

“A pirate.”

Hook felt a grave melancholy at this, a hard knot in his stomach, and he looked away from the child in his cabin.

“I'd like to be a pirate who's just as fearsome as you, Captain James Hook.” Admiration and innocent excitement laced his voice, and his eyes brightened when Hook looked back toward him.

“You're doing a fine job of it already,” Hook said, giving him a little nod. “Your men respect you a great deal.”

Timothy jumped off the chair and stuck out his chin, inspecting all of Hook's things from the bottoms of his eyes.

“They do, don't they? They fear me.”

“It seems so.”

“I'm the second-fiercest pirate in the sea, you know,” he said, crossing his arms. Then he turned to look at Hook. “Second only to you.”

The edge of Hook's mouth ticked up. “I don't doubt it.”

Despite only having known him for a short time, Hook felt a great kinship with this child; the bonds of
brotherhood were able to overcome any difference in lifestyle or reality. So, he was betraying his fierce reputation with uncharacteristic kindness.

“Someday,” the boy said, pulling his little sword from its sheath, “I'll be even more fearsome than you.”

“I don't know about all that. I'm rather a tough figure to best.” Hook stood and straightened his hat.

“Have you ever plundered a place?” asked Timothy, cheeks raised and rosy, eyes alight.

“Many.”

“Kissed a wench?”

Hook was taken aback for a moment by the boy's language, but answered him nonetheless. “More still.”

Timothy paused. “Killed a man?”

Something clenched in his gut, but he answered, “Hundreds.” This may well have been an exaggeration, but the boy would not know the difference.

“How about a boy? Have you ever killed a boy?”

Hook looked away from Timothy then, ignoring the sharp twist of pain in his belly, and stared off into nothingness. “One.”

Timothy shrank back just slightly from Hook. “And what of the one boy? The forever boy?”

Hook darkened and stared intently into Timothy's face. “Peter Pan?”

“Yes.”

“I prefer not to speak of Peter Pan.”

Timothy continued anyway, words running into and over one another. “They say he's your mortal enemy, the only one you can never beat.”

Hook slammed his hand onto his desk. “I prefer
not to speak
of Peter Pan.”

Timothy flinched a bit and nodded, and then he approached the captain.

“Can I see it?”

“What?”

“Your hook.”

Hook unfastened the cuff from his arm and handed it to Timothy. His brother was at first distracted by Hook's mangled wrist. It was a sight to behold, and undeniably fascinating if one was an eight-year-old and was drawn to violence. Hook did not try to hide it; he allowed the boy to look.

Hook peered at Timothy, struck by his youth. Had he only been here for eight years? He chewed on his cheek. It felt like a great deal longer than that. And his face suggested that he'd aged more than eight years. Ten, perhaps. Eleven? He blinked rapidly, trying to bury the sudden, intense feeling that he'd been robbed. Of his brother, his sister, of years of his life.

When he tired of the gore, Timothy held out his hand and took the cuff and hook, and Hook jumped, drawn from his introspection by the touch of the boy's fingers.

Timothy beamed, and set the hook atop his hand. Then, he leapt and danced around the room, yelling out various pirate-like phrases and jabbing at the air with his little sword and the captain's massive hook.

Hook leaned back against the wall and watched him, filled with pain and peace intertwined. How long ago had that been him? Bouncing and laughing and dreaming of piracy? Forever. It had been forever.

Timothy wound down eventually, and he walked up to the captain and held out the hook. He took it from the boy and put it back on immediately; it was uncomfortable now to be without it.

“I think I'll be going home soon,” Timothy said, unafraid to look Hook directly in the eyes.

“Yes, you're looking a bit dim around the edges.”

“Well, I've got to wake up for school, you know.”