He takes his exit, the door across the way slamming shut just as Wendy pulls back the curtain to my quarters. She stares off into the quickly fading sun and my heart constricts in my chest, strangling me as I’m forced to watch from a distance. For the life of me I can’t take my eyes off her. Hell, I never could.

“Hook,” Tiger Lily’s voice calls to me from beyond the door at my side. But all it does is make my dick shrivel as I watch Wendy’s eyes travel slowly down to meet mine.

I expect them to be filled with hatred. I expect her to walk away, to back down like she always did. Always has. What I don’t expect is for them to be filled with sadness. To be filled with tears. I watch as she bites her bottom lip, a lonely tear drop slips from her beautiful eyes and falls slowly down her left cheek.

I expect her to look away.

A piece of me, though, is not surprised when she doesn’t.

Tiger Lily’s voice calls to me again and a sickness builds in the pit of my stomach. Never dropping my gaze from Wendy’s, I stalk across the deck, away from Tiger Lily and my past, and quickly take leave of the ship. Pulling a cigarette free from my pack of smokes, my eyes fall to my hands and I stop once my feet hit land. Lighting up, I study them with a cold heart. They’re stained with the vengeance I just took out on an innocent man; I’m stunned when I see them start to shake.

They don’t shake because of the blood. They shake because Wendy being back here, in Neverland, does something to me it shouldn’t. Makes me fucking feel when I haven’t felt anything but pure rage and vengeance in seventeen years. It’s true he was a man that didn’t deserve to die. But since I took over the Jolly Roger, I’ve never cared who was on the other side of my hook, and I damn sure won’t start caring now.

I glance back up and see Wendy’s stare hasn’t faltered. She gazes back at me from across the ship with the same sadness, the same regret that filled her eyes seventeen years ago when she told me she had to leave Neverland. When she pushed me away. When I desperately wanted to stand by her side most. Although, this time, there’s something else in her stare that pulls me in and makes me nervous. It’s something I can’t quite put my finger on as her spine stiffens and she stands up a little taller, intent on not turning away first.

A man that didn’t deserve to die.

We all die. But not all of us really live.