Peter
The basement is a tomb, and we’re the ones digging the graves.
The air is thick with the smell of industrial cleaner and the cold, sharp scent of gun oil. My ribs are a map of agony, every breath a reminder of the night Wendy was ripped out of my world. The medic is done, but the sting of the staples is nothing compared to the hollowed-out rot in my chest.
I close my eyes for a second and I see her.
Not the woman in the cage, but Wendy in the morning light, her hair a messy halo, smelling like vanilla and safety.
Now, she’s out there in the dark, and every second I’m sitting on this crate is a second she’s terrified, wondering why I haven’t saved her yet.
My stomach twists into a hard, cold knot.
If they’ve touched her—if they’ve dimmed that light—I’ll burn this entire city to the ground just to keep her warm in the ruins.
Across the room, Tahlia is moving like a ghost. She’s got her oversized hoodie pushed up to her elbows, and she’s methodically checking a tactical vest. She isn’t crying.
She isn’t soft. She’s sharp edges and bitter survival.
She’s checking the weight of a blade, her blue eyes fixed on nothing, lost in whatever hell she carries around.
I lean toward Hook, my voice a ragged whisper that barely carries over the hum of the fluorescent lights. “Look at her, James.”
Hook pauses, a half-loaded magazine in his hand. We both look. She’s in her element—the cold, the steel, the preparation for a war she didn’t ask for. She looks like a child trying on a soldier’s skin, and it’s the most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever seen.
“She’s going to break,” I mutter.
Hook doesn’t answer. He just sets the magazine down with a heavy clack and starts walking. His boots are slow, deliberate thuds on the concrete. He stops right in front of her, his shadow swallowing her whole.
“What the fuck are you doing, little fairy?”
His voice is silk over a razor blade. Quiet. Dangerous.
Tahlia doesn’t look up. She tugs at a strap on the vest, her knuckles white. “Getting ready. What does it look like?”
“It looks like a mistake,” Hook says. He reaches out with his good hand, his fingers catching the heavy fabric of her vest. “Take it off.”
“No.” She finally looks up, and the fire in her eyes is enough to start a blaze. “I’m not sitting in this basement waiting for the phone to ring. I’m not staying in the dark again, James. Not for you. Not for anyone.”
“You aren’t coming,” Hook says, his voice dropping an octave, becoming that immovable wall of ice. “This isn’t a game. It’s a slaughterhouse.”
“Then let me be a fucking butcher!” she screams, shoving at his chest. “You think I haven’t seen blood? You think I’m some porcelain doll you can keep on a shelf? Fuck you! I’m going!”
Hook’s hand moves faster than she can blink. He grabs her face, his fingers digging into her jaw, forcing her to look at him. He isn’t being gentle. He’s being desperate.
“Listen to me!” he roars, and for the first time, the ice in his voice shatters into raw, jagged emotion. “I don’t give a fuck what happens to Peter. I don’t give a fuck if every man in this room ends up in a body bag tonight. I don’t care about the girl. I don’t care about the money.”
He leans in until their foreheads are touching, his breath hot against her skin. His voice breaks, a low, wrecked sound.
“I can’t lose you, Tahlia. I can’t fucking lose you.
You are the only thing in this godforsaken world that isn’t rot.
If I go out there and I’m worried about where you are, if I’m looking for your head in the crowd instead of the man with the gun, we both die.
And I can’t live in a world where you don’t exist. Do you understand me? I can’t.”
The fight drains out of her all at once. Her hands, which were curled into fists against his chest, open up, clutching at his tactical vest. She starts to sob—not a quiet, pretty cry, but a deep, racking sound that comes from her gut.
“What if you die?” she gasps, her face crumpling as she buries it in his chest. “What if you don’t come back? What the fuck am I then, James? I’m just a ghost in your house. I’m nothing. I’m back in the cage. Don’t leave me here. Please, don’t leave me alone again.”
Hook wraps his arm around her, pulling her so tight it looks like he’s trying to merge their bodies.
He buries his face in her hair, his eyes closed tight, his jaw working as he fights back his own ruin.
He doesn’t say it’ll be okay. He doesn’t lie.
He just holds her while she falls apart, the steel of his hook pressed against her back like a cold, protective wing.
I turn away, my own chest aching so hard I can barely stand.
Watching them—watching the way he devours her fear with his own—it makes the hole in my chest scream.
I am so fucking jealous it tastes like bile.
Hook has his world in his arms, and mine is god-knows-where, bleeding out or begging for a death I wasn’t there to prevent.
Then Hook snaps. He isn’t just holding her anymore.
He tilts her head back, his thumb digging into her chin, and crashes his mouth against hers.
It’s not a kiss; it’s a collision. I see his tongue slide into her mouth, claiming her, his hook tangling in the hair at the nape of her neck while his good hand slides down to grip her hip, pulling her flush against his gear.
Tahlia whimpers into his mouth, her legs going weak, her fingers clawing at the black Kevlar. It’s so raw, so violently intimate, that I have to look at the floor. The sound of their lips meeting, the wet, rhythmic gasps—it’s too much. It’s the kind of love that destroys people.
“Fuck,” Hook groans against her lips, his forehead resting against hers. “Little fairy, you’re killing me.”
In that second of total surrender, Tahlia’s hand moves. She’s fast—viciously fast. She snatches the gun from his hip holster before he can even blink. Hook freezes, his eyes flying open, arctic blue meeting her tear-streaked blue.
She shoves the cold barrel of the gun directly against the soft skin of his throat.
“Take me,” she breathes, her voice trembling but her hand steady. “Take me with you or use this. I won’t stay behind.”
Hook stares at her. A slow, dark smirk spreads across his face, something wicked and proud. He actually laughs, the sound vibrating against the muzzle of the gun. “You going to kill me, Tahlia? You going to blow my head off in front of the help?”
Tahlia’s lip quivers. The bravado cracks. She shakes her head, the gun slipping an inch as her strength fails her. “No,” she whispers, her voice breaking. “I’m begging you. Take me. Please.”
The gun clatters to the concrete floor.
Hook doesn’t hesitate. He scoops her up, his arm hooking under her knees, his other hand supporting her back.
“I can’t fucking lose you,” he growls, his voice a low vibration in his chest as he starts walking toward the back of the room, away from the maps and the men.
“I fucking love you, my poisoned little fairy.”
He kisses her again, deeper this time, walking blindly as she wraps her arms around his neck, gasping into his mouth. I watch them go, the shadows swallowing them as they reach the far wall near the heavy iron radiator.
He sets her down, but he doesn’t let go.
He keeps her pinned against the brick, his mouth never leaving hers, his hands roaming over her hoodie as if he’s trying to memorise the shape of her through the fabric.
Tahlia is limp in his arms, her eyes closed, her breath coming in ragged, shallow hitches.
“James,” she gasps, her head falling back against the wall. “James, please…”
His hand moves to his belt. I hear a heavy, metallic clink.
He drops her. Not gently, but sudden enough that she stumbles, her back hitting the cold iron of the radiator.
Before she can realise what’s happening, Hook has her wrist. He’s fast, clinical, his surgical steel hook glinting as he loops a heavy industrial chain around the radiator pipe and snaps a padlock shut around her arm.
“James?” she whispers, her voice small. She tugs at her arm. The chain rattles—a cold, final sound. “James, what are you doing? Let me go. Fucking let me go! Don’t do this!”
“I have to,” he says, standing up and towering over her. His face is back to that mask of ice, but his eyes are wet. “I told you. I can’t lose you. And this is the only way I know you’ll be here when I get back.”
“No!” she screams, tears falling fresh and fast, staining the concrete. “Don’t leave me like this! You promised! James, I can’t… I can’t be in the dark! I’ll die! I’ll fucking die!”
“I will come back,” he says, his voice cracking on the last word. “I promise. But you’re staying where it’s safe.”
He turns his back on her screams, his boots heavy as he walks back towards me. I see the way his hand is shaking as he picks up his rifle. He looks like he’s already dead inside.
“Let’s go, Peter,” he says, his voice flat. “Before I change my mind and burn this whole city down just to stay in this room with her.”
The heavy iron door of the warehouse groans as it swings shut, sealing Tahlia’s screams inside. The sound of her fist hitting the metal is muffled, a dull, rhythmic thud that syncs with the frantic pounding of my own heart.
The rain hits us instantly. It’s a cold, vertical sheet of grey that turns the alleyway into a river of oil and grit. I pull the collar of my tactical jacket up, but the water is already soaking through, chilling the skin around my fresh staples.
Hook is ten feet ahead of me, his pace relentless.
He doesn’t look back. He doesn’t even seem to feel the rain.
He walks with a jagged, lethal posture, his rifle gripped in his good hand while the surgical steel of his hook glints under the flickering streetlamp like a shark’s fin cutting through dark water.