“Nowthatfilm is fantastic, and gloriously underrated.” Hook chuckled. “Even if I was annoyed at the ending, as I usually am.”
“It’s one of my favorites.” Pulling her legs up onto the bench, shecrossed them underneath her. “Talk about a movie that got the point of the original and played within the themes without feeling the need to break anything. And I like the ending.”
When he shot her a look, she only smiled sweetly back at him. If he was going to drop her into holes and give her a hard time, she was going to return the favor. Especially if she knew he wasn’t going to murder her since she was on his “side.”
“The one thing I appreciate about it the most was that they felt no need to give me some sodding weepy melodramatic backstory.”Hook grimaced as if it made his stomach churn.
Curious. “I mean, I don’t disagree, I don’t think all villains need a tragic backstory. But I thought you’d want to be understood. Empathized with. Have people on your side. Y’know, redemption in the eyes of the audience.”
The expression of sheer and total disgust and horror on his face—like she’d just recommended eating a baby, though she suspected that would actually get less of a reaction out of him—was so overblown it was comical.
Laughing, she shook her head. “Okay, okay. Clearly that’s not what this is about. Sorry.”
“Redemption.” He spat the word out like it was cancerous. “Why would I ever want something like that? I am what I am, my dear! I am a monster. And I embrace that. Whether or not it is necessary for the audience or the reader to understandwhythat iteration of myself became the monster is up to the needs of the story. Sometimes, yes. Wonderful. But this?—?”
He gestured in front of him with his hook, as if referencing the world outside the ship. “This sickening need to make me sympathetic in every new piece of media is a waste of good villainy! It’s missing the entire point of what I’m meant to be! Now that is goddamn tragic, if you ask me.”
“Noted. Killing the hero won’t count. Check. Don’t needlessly try to redeem the villain. Check.” She chuckled into her glass of port asshe took another sip. It was helping to settle her nerves. And made him a little easier to talk to.
“Thank you. No one likes being proselytized to.” He went to the bar to top off her glass and pour himself a second. “And I receive enough half-assed lectures from my brother.”
After replacing the bottle of brandy on the bar, he sat down next to her on the bench. “They will be going to visit the mermaids.”
“That’s where the story really kicks off, doesn’t it? You attack them there, you injure Pan, he almost drowns…and I forget what happens after that.” It’d been a long time since she’d read the book, to be fair.
“Mmhm.” He sipped his glass.
“What if we just…don’t go?”
“Do nothing?”
“Exactly. Don’t ambush them. Don’t start the story. Just stay here, drink, play pirate games, or whatever the hell you weirdos do when you’re not being pirates.” She stared down into her glass. What did fictional characters do when they weren’t on the page? Probably like characters in video games, she assumed. They just blinked out of the console’s memory and didn’t exist.
“So your solution to a unique story is no story at all.” Tone flat, he stared at her in disbelief. “Genius. Utter genius. Pulitzer Prize winner in the making, you are.This story intentionally left blank.”
“I’m trying to come up with an idea! I don’t know what I’m doing!”
“This is precisely why I keep telling Virtue to stop feeding you this stupid hopeless line about escaping with both of your lives intact. It won’t happen. Because as charming as this conversation has been, I’m getting bored, and I’m about to jump to the next chapter.”
“What do you mean?” She furrowed her brow. Chapter?
Raising his flesh-and-blood hand, he smiled. “We will control the vertical. We will control the horizontal.”
He snapped his fingers.
* Firstly; Not even villains tangle with copyright law. Secondly; Search the phrase “My Uncle Oswald + snozzberries” Hopefully, I have ruined your day just a little. -V
CHAPTER SEVEN
Sidney wasflying!
All right. This whole “being sucked into a terrifying fictional world for an unwilling competition to the death against her sister” wasn’t a good thing.
But being able toflywas a serious upside.
Peter Pan was holding her hand as they soared above Neverland. The wind took her joyful laughter as she spread her arms wide and embraced the moment for everything it was.
It was a moment that people could only ever dream of. And here she was, getting a chance to do it forreal.She was flying! And Peter was beaming in pride as he dove low, barely avoiding touching the treetops as he took her on a veritable tour of the tropical paradise that was Neverland.
