{ never never } maybe this world is another planet's hell.

[neverneverqueen]

More than only James Hook reside in Neverland and, naturally, more than only James Hook require notification that Captain Darling has made her way back to these waters and doesn't much care to have to tell anyone twice that they should avoid remaining long in her path. The second time, one might presume, she stops using words - the early weeks are

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[envy_not_hook]

It takes a little bit of courage to repeat back gossip of Hook's exploits to James himself, with his bo'sun being the likeliest to get away with the worst of it. But it doesn't mean Hook is entirely deaf to words, and at least they're getting one detail quite correct:

He fired first.

And at least it isn't all terrible, the speculation behind what it means to give a lady his coat. The truth is bad enough and so elaborations are fairly welcome, but it does mean that she truly is wearing the damn thing, in the same manner as the hat she'd claimed off-- whoever it was. Hook has no need to see any of this for himself, setting the logical courses for pillage and trade and general fear-mongering in the waters of which he is most possessive, or keeping the indigenous fearful of their own coasts. The oceans, conveniently, are quite big.

But the towns are quite small.

By the time Wendy is emerging from the traders' building, the Jolly Roger is a distinct shadow on the cove, anchor down and smaller boats pulled away from it to dock, cargo unloaded and the crew set free for the evening. It wouldn't do on any pirate vessel, or indeed even merchant, military or lesser sea-thieves, for the captain to socialise with their own men, and so when she sees him, Hook is contentedly on his own, resplendent in navy and silver and none the worse for the mark she left on him, as much of an inconvenience it had been.

He's moving at gentlemanly leisure, hand wrapped about his hook behind his back, the click and shift of flintlock pistol and sword both at his belt noisy and ostentatious (and therefore, they fit in well with the rest of him) as well as implicit warning. It's a pirate town, the noise of it punctuated now and then by someone getting shot at.

And yes, he did, of course, notice her ship at port. As he makes his way for the merchant offices, he is certainly keeping an sharp eye. Just apparently not enough.

[neverneverqueen]

In point of fact, Wendy is wearing the infamous coat in question now as she ignores Hook's warning as blithely as she ignored the trader's before him and falls in step beside him on an immediately-satisfied whim. She is also wearing the hat, its near-bridal veil settling behind her in place of her long hair, tucked and pinned out of her way beneath with only hints of red visible when she turns her head this way or that.

She is, naturally, smiling.

"Why, fancy this coincidence," she greets amiably, setting her hand to his elbow as if he's a gentleman and she's a lady and as though she didn't just melt out of the evening shadows in the vague hope of giving him a bit of a jolt. "Aren't we looking well this night."

[envy_not_hook]

Oh. There she is.

He doesn't jump, but his head turns fast enough that should he have been wearing a hat, it might have stayed where it was beneath its own weight. Offense wrankles his features in a brief glimmer before he sets stony glare out at the street before them, and doesn't do himself the indignity of shaking her hand off after his steps initially pause-- and resume, his chin lifting as if this is completely how he expected to encounter her, allowing the corner of his mouth to twitch into barely genuine half-smile. "Fancy it indeed.

"But while I can hardly disagree with you on my account, I dare say you aren't speaking for yourself. You look entirely mannish in that get up." So there.

[neverneverqueen]

"Ah? One wonders what manner of men the Hook is keeping company with these days." A pair of cheap shots, to be sure; they're both in their own ways not especially progressive individuals, even if Dorothy is slowly and relentlessly beginning to rub off on her flightier friend, like waves crashing into a rock. (Third wave, if you will.) The way she walks and her tightly-laced waist leave very little doubts about her sex, beneath that heavy and recently-altered coat, but perhaps - she will concede - he might refer to the cocky way in which she strides beside him, no Edwardian ideal of the demure.

A moment later- "Come, now, won't you indulge me with a civil conversation? It's been so awfully long since we had one of those, mere novelty must compel us." Presumably she doesn't include their most recent encounter amongst 'civil conversations' that they've had, what with being sandwiched between death threats, but then, they argued more often than they didn't before she fled his ship, too.

[envy_not_hook]

Civil conversation is a thing that Hook would consider himself to be well-versed at, even, raising an eyebrow at this proposal. "No, I suppose picking up where we left off would be out of order. I have since accepted your relentless presence in my waters, at your persistence, and cast you to the very back of my mind." But he moves his arm for her to place her hand better on his elaborate, stiff-fabriced sleeve, hook arched like a single claw but otherwise merely incidental.

"It is with great civility, then, I inquire as to your business. There's been talk of the strange artifacts you've been profiting from. Managing your own finances is beastly business for a woman, wouldn't you say?" There is affectation and, as requested, indulgence in his voice, but obviously the tiniest hint of interest despite proclamation as to where she rests on his list of priorities. "Aren't there other things you'd rather be doing?"

[neverneverqueen]

Another little smile quirks at the edge of her mouth as he obliges her, and in truth at the casual way in which he lays claim to these waters. How like James to claim the unclaimable; perhaps an explanation for the two of them lies in that, somewhere, but Wendy leaves such distasteful analysis to more introspective types. In Neverland, it's so easy to set aside what she doesn't wish to look at. (Except when certain individuals make nuisances of themselves.)

"But I do so love the things that all those boring little numbers can make themselves into, dearest," she returns archly, playing to the stereotype on her own terms. (As she prefers to do most things.) "And I've heard it said that if you want a thing done right..."

Considering whose ship she fled to take her own that might be something of a loaded observation, but Wendy doesn't give him long to dwell on it before she's speaking again. "In any case, I'm rather enjoying this foray into imports. Artifacts are the very least of it."

[envy_not_hook]

He twitches the beginnings of a glance her way as if to dog after that implication, but the conversation moves too swiftly for him to very elegantly pin that point down and dissect it accordingly. Besides, if Hook worried about every single barb in their interactions, they'd be here all night. And, you know. Vice versa. He guides them around a murky puddle in the cobbled streets of the pirate town, occasionally scanning the faces of those they walk by, more avidly than he does the fronts of buildings.

"What a grand adventure you must be having," he says. "Not many manage to thrive on a little fairweather pirating, but I'm sure there are some who would quite take their hat off to you, provided you don't shoot it off first."

[neverneverqueen]

'Fairweather pirating' makes her laugh, quick and sharp and lovely. "Shall I always be a girl running to catch up in your eyes, my dearest? I wonder if you haven't long since simply ceased to look." The thoughtful tone she adopts is, presumably, a genuflection to her own request for a civil conversation and not an argument. They're merely having a discussion - taking a stroll together, however unplanned.

"Oh, well; I shall hardly complain of my successes." A spot of smuggling isn't something to sniff at, not when her cargo is so curious. "You've an interest in my imports...?"

[envy_not_hook]

As long as we're being pleasant--

His good hand reaches across himself to seek her's in a clasp that is not snatching but still manages to be quick and firm. "My dear lady," Hook says, "like it or not, I'm afraid that you will always be, at least a little, Red-handed Jill." His intention then is to turn her, waltz-like, on the spot, her arm to go over her head and rest again once she is back to face him, his body language open as if to receive her. "She who tells stories, but mustn't be expected to pillage.

"But I suppose some things will change." And on the topic of her imports, his gaze wanders somewhere above her head, gesturing a little with his iron claw. "Call it a fleeting curiousity."

[neverneverqueen]

The cut of the coat since alteration means it flares from her hips when she permits herself to be twirled, with the last threads of her earlier laugh still lingering in the process; at the end of the turn she catches herself with a hand at his shoulder, as if they might begin to dance there on the street.

They are a story, now, half-fairytale and half-nightmare. Now and then she wonders how it will end, as all stories do.

"Well, darling, you do know what they say about curiosity."

[envy_not_hook]

Hook, being something of a constant story himself, who refused epilogue in the belly of the crocodile when he took his own poison, isn't plagued with these kinds of wonderings. As Wendy herself knows, he's almost a chapter in one to be returned to and reread. He is currently preoccupied with this fractional moment, and sliding his hook into a belt loop of the pilfered coat she wears, taking care not to slice it when he tugs her closer, although the proximity remains cordial and dance-like.

"It kills cats," he says, his tone one of guessing and simultaneous inquiry as to whether he got the right answer.

[neverneverqueen]

"Quite." She's as sinuous, as graceful as the cat of metaphor, but- well, perhaps not as easily dealt with. Wendy Darling is more the cat that came back, if she's anything. "And cats are troublesome little things, so I suppose no one much mourns..."

Rather like pirates, in that way.

[envy_not_hook]

His hand splays beneath the one that took her's, testing its sit on his palm with a study of the joining sent down the length of his nose, before there is the minutest of twitches at the corner of his mouth, the beginnings of his usual sulk that had all but gone in light of civility. "I sense you've led this conversation astray. Do you keep secrets from me?

"Wendy?" As if, maybe, to counter her constant use of his first name, he uses hers as an afterthought, a sharp edge to it. "Or do you simply seek to escape my shadow for a little while longer?"

[neverneverqueen]

"Do I keep secrets from you?" The curious repetition is, in itself, a sort of answer- why, of course she does. For so long she had so few from him and now she hoards them as greedily as a dragon upon gold for no more reason than the simple fact that she can. He was privy to her most vulnerable moments, and now she picks and chooses what he's permitted to know about her after them. So she concedes, almost playfully, "A few- here and there. Does it worry you?"

[envy_not_hook]

He isn't going to answer that question, not in blunt words, desiring to be robbed of nothing -- she can see that, in the closing off of thoughts behind bright blue eyes, chin tipping up pridefully.

Which means, at least in some way, yes, but in what way specifically is something that Captain Darling will have to guess herself. His hook comes up from her waist to absently nudge the veil affixed to her hat back over a shoulder where it had become disordered from the impromptu twirl. "You know, I think it rather unfair," he begins, again.

"People come to Never Never Land for a reason. Do you remember what it is, my beauty?"

[neverneverqueen]

Her head tilts, slightly, to assist in his adjustment of the sit of her veil - but her gaze doesn't shift, fixed on him as she turns opaque and inscrutable as a still ocean night. "I remember why I came," she says, her voice far lighter than her expression- the locket she still wears hangs heavy against her skin, Richard and Jane's pictures sealed inside, a constant reminder of why she came back. "But remind me- do."

The thing to do with James Hook has always been to let the story play out.