Chapter 12
There were a lot of things Maggie had done in her life that she wasn’t entirely proud of.
She ran from more things than she wanted to, she left behind lives she would always miss.
The dreams she craved were ones she was bound to never have.
The wishes she made couldn’t come true, not with her luck.
Maggie grew used to regretting things, to wishing for something else, to looking upon a shooting star with an open heart.
It was like she was born begging for a different life, one that didn’t make her work so hard to feel happy with it.
Things never did come easy, but she grew used to telling herself that it was what made it all worth it.
But there, as Maggie laid on the floor of Captain Hook’s ship, waiting for him to lash out with his revenge, pride only touched her.
For the first time in her life, regret did not seep into every thought.
There was no second guessing. There were no more chances, no do-overs.
She was finally doing something for herself, on her own, and proved to be more brave than she ever realized.
Perhaps she wouldn’t be the heroine she had always read about, but in her story, she was just as important at that.
Hook let out a frustrated shout before grabbing her by the arm.
He yanked her onto her feet, ignoring the sharp yell she sounded in his ear.
Locking an arm tightly around her waist, Hook gripped her against his side, until her hands were forced to flatten against his chest. Up close, Maggie saw how his shirt was unbuttoned near the collar, revealing dark and wispy hairs along his chest. It was odd, she realized, to recognize someone as villainous as him as also a human being.
“Do you see what you’ve done, pet?” Hook snarled in her ear, pointing toward the smoldering cabin below the ship’s wheel.
“No, actually,” Maggie muttered. “Looks rather the same to me.”
Hook grappled with her until she was forced to face him. “There is nobody in all of Neverland who dares to touch my ship!” He leaned in close, the anger practically radiating off him in hot waves. “You show up and ruin it!”
“It’s only a ship,” Maggie spoke through gritted teeth as she tried to pull herself out of his tight hold.
Hook shook her, eyes wild. “Only a ship? Is that really what you just said?” He thrusted a finger toward the smoking cabin. “There is only one Jolly Roger, pet, and there will only ever be one Jolly Roger!”
“You put lives at risk! In town!” Maggie’s voice echoed across the ship, across the ocean even. It was almost unrecognizable in her own ears. “Did you honestly expect me to sit and watch while you and your fighting hurts the townspeople? Not all of us are as selfish as you!”
For a brief moment, Hook was silent. His mouth was held open, jaw slack and ajar as he watched her.
The words seemed to linger in his eyes before the anger returned, and he was holding her against him like she was a prisoner and he was her jail cell.
Somehow she poked through his walls and shell, but it was put back up within an instant.
There was no convincing the captain of anything other than the ways of piracy.
“So, what, you’re Peter Pan’s secret weapon?” Hook sneered. “His dutiful cook and weapon? Sent to badger in my ear and ruin my prized possessions?”
“I am not his anything,” Maggie muttered.
Noises were beginning to come from below deck, where there was an entryway to a staircase nearby.
Hook approached it expectantly, dragging Maggie along with him and not daring to let his grip loosen.
Holding her frighteningly close to his side, Hook leaned over to murmur in her ear, the words echoing in her head long after he had uttered them.
“Maybe you’re right, and that is why no one has come to save you.”
It struck her far harder than she wanted it to.
The struggle left her for a split second as the logic tried to overwhelm her.
Peter and his Lost Boys found their fights to be a form of entertainment, their way of a good time.
Why would they stop to consider where she might be, when they only expect to see her safely tucked away in the treehouse?
Was she, in the end, only their cook? The girl Peter Pan stole to feed his hungry island?
No.
Maggie straightened, her hands tightening over Hook’s iron-clad grip.
I write my own story. I am writing my own story.
Perhaps she wasn’t the heroine of the stories she remembered, but that didn’t have to be a bad thing.
Sure she was brought to Neverland for her cooking skills…
where’s the shame in it? Unlike so many people on the human lands, Maggie used her natural born talents to feed an island full of living beings, to give them pieces of her heart, to inject love and happiness into a small fraction of their days.
It was not like fairy dust, it was not even like any sort of magic she had ever known.
Maggie’s pride grew as large as the Jolly Roger, as large as the island itself.
She was gifted in a way Hook would never understand.
“You’re wrong,” Maggie whispered.
Pirates who were lingering below deck were climbing up, running frantically to their captain. Hook waved his free hand wildly, barking orders and demanding buckets of water be brought.
The captain’s gaze barely landed on her. “What?”
“You may not think so,” Maggie said, “but I am important.”
Hook lowered his head, dark eyes landing on her own.
Her lip curled upwards. “Peter will come for me, and you’re going to lose.”
“Is that so, pet?”
“It is,” Maggie murmured. “And you can stop calling me ‘pet.’”
The captain’s lips parted, another argument ready to break through the surface, when a clatter of noise came from the remnants of his study. “What are you buffoons waiting for?” Hook bellowed, using his sword to point at the doors. “Get in there!”
One of the pirates wore a flushed, sickly face. “W-We can ‘ardly get inside, captain!”
“Try harder!”
The trio of pirates glanced around at each other before bracing the flames and ripping open the doors.
Billows of black smoke exhaled from within the room, filling the air and pulling a slurry of coughs out of everyone who remained.
The cloud curled upward until everything was foggy and hazed.
Maggie whipped her head around, ignoring how the smoke made her eyes burn the more she looked.
There was a figure within it all, one that darted expertly above their heads, creating streaks within the smoke.
Maggie almost wanted to laugh with relief.
Peter.
As the smoke began to dissipate with the constant breeze coming off the gentle ocean waves, Maggie kept herself within Hook’s grasp, no longer struggling.
If Peter was still looming overhead, he surely had a plan of escape, one that she’d need to catch onto the moment it happened.
Hook was still in the middle of barking orders, his voice scratched and coarse from the smoke.
“Well, well, Hook. I have to say: I like what you’ve done with the place!”
The captain’s arm instinctively tightened around Maggie’s waist. She gazed up at him, catching his expression the moment he realized that the King of Neverland was aboard his ship.
While she wouldn’t call it outright fear, there was nothing in Hook’s face that told her he was ready for it. Maggie bit back a smirk.
“Peter Pan,” Hook snarled as he turned around. “I’m surprised. You’ve stooped so low as to drop helpless, weak damsels on my ship.” He reached for Maggie’s face, using the hilt of his blade to tug at her chin. “Oh, how the mighty have fallen.”
Maggie jerked back. “Speak for yourself.”
Finally, she turned to look the King of Neverland in the face.
Everything about him was lit up with energy and excitement.
Dirt and sand was smudged along his skin.
The shirt he wore had a few new rips along the bottom hem.
His sword was well used, the shorter blade Maggie saw before no longer on his person.
In the midst of battle, he looked as handsome as he was at peace.
“Holding beautiful women against their will aboard a flaming ship is out of line, Hook,” Peter called out, his lip tugging into a smirk as the sunlight bounced off his blade. “Even for you.”
“The young lady may no longer want to be leashed to you, Peter Pan,” Hook boisterously boasted, as if she had agreed to it long ago. “Have you considered that?”
Peter raised a brow, shimmering eyes only glancing in her direction. The playfulness never left him as he raised the sword, taking on the stance of a skilled warrior. “Suppose we let the swords do the talking, Hook?” He grinned. “It’s the only thing you’re slightly good at.”
The captain released an infuriated bellow before lunging at Peter.
Not once did Hook’s grip leave Maggie, his hold on her only tighter than before.
They moved like they were caught in each other’s orbit, a dance that could not be replicated by anything else.
Peter was unflinchingly fluid, like someone who spent a lifetime being on a stage.
In front of him, Hook parried and stabbed with an unavoidable assertiveness.
They were yin and yang, they were each other, they were nothing alike but exactly the same.
All of it felt neverending. Peter’s eyes remained fixated on the captain until a random moment, when he dove forward, his blade shrieking as it slid alongside the other.
There was a look in his gaze, one that Maggie wished to savour like a chocolate.
It spoke of hundreds of things, but in that very moment, she somehow knew exactly what he needed.
Peter stepped back as Hook advanced, manipulating the King’s assertive move for himself.
Hook curved, forcing his arm to loosen around her just enough.
It was a sliver of weakness, the inch needed for her to make a single movement.
Anything else, and it would’ve all been for nothing.
Anything else, and she might get them both hurt… or worse.
No, she told herself. I am the heroine of this story.
Maggie jerked her elbow high above her head before slamming it into the center of Hook’s abdomen.
She heard the exhale be forced out of his chest as he began to lean forward.
Lifting her leg in the same fashion, Maggie didn’t escape his arms until she heeled him in the crotch.
Hook’s groan bellowed over the ship’s deck as Maggie leapt in the opposite direction, already hovering in the air.
As the famed Captain Hook collapsed to the deck, Maggie shot into the sky high above their heads, not daring to even steal a look over her shoulder.
She didn’t stop until the fairy dust felt strained, and she overlooked the haphazard beach and smoldering pirate ship.
Out from a cloud of black smoke came Peter, his expression bright as he came up alongside her.
On the shore, the remaining pirates rushed back to their row boats.
The Lost Boys followed them all the way, making sure that there weren’t any stragglers who might’ve tried to bother the town later.
The fire raged on, no matter how many buckets of ocean water were tossed over it.
Maggie could only imagine Hook’s contorted look of anger from where she hovered, a grin already pulling at her cheek.
“What happened to staying at the treehouse?”
Maggie raised her eyes, almost surprised to hear his voice. The exhilaration was leaving his expression, replaced by a softness she didn’t quite understand. Perhaps he was simply concerned about her safety. When she hadn’t responded, Peter came closer.
“Be honest with me, Magpie. Was that your stunt? Setting the fire?”
A blush as warm as the flames scurried across Maggie’s cheeks. “N-Not that it was planned, you see. I-I wasn’t ignoring you at all. I-I got the Lost Boys, but once everyone was gone, I just couldn’t –”
The King of Neverland surged forward, arms already outstretched.
He enveloped her in a tight embrace, not at all like the captain’s cold iron-clad grip.
Laughter pooled out from his lips as they spun around, the sky and world around them entirely fading away.
As they came to a stop, Peter grasped Maggie’s warm cheeks, and brought his lips down upon hers.
The feeling was not at all like their previous kiss.
Maggie knew she was already miles upon miles in the air, but she suddenly believed it to be possible that the kiss ascended her into the heavens themselves.
She walked on the air, she frolicked through the clouds, she plucked stars from the sky and swallowed them.
The feeling was so strong it might’ve burst from within her stomach, if she didn’t pull away for a much needed gasp of fresh air.
“Each day,” Peter breathed, “I wonder how the humans managed to lose you. How could they not see how clever you are? How talented?” He shook his head, a smile broadening across his face, like the rising sun. “No matter. I’m only glad to have found you.”
He extended a hand toward her. “I’m sure the townspeople are still frightened. A friendly face against whatever villains remain would brighten their spirits, don’t you think?”
Maggie was overwhelmed with all of it. With belonging, with love, with feeling like she was valued, with the idea of being needed.
It was far more than she ever knew before, but she wanted every last crumb of it, like a greedy child who ached for cake.
Maggie reached for the King of Neverland, letting her hand melt against his own.
She let him lead the way, and never once questioned the path she was on.