A chill ran down Peter's spine as Hook's bony hand shot forward, and an iron grip closed around his wrist.

"Let go, you stinking stockfish!"

Instead of letting go, the long fingers squeezed even tighter. Peter groaned under the captain's unnaturally strong hold. He pulled on his hand out of reflex, but it was useless.Flesh smacked. Peter's hands shook with effort as Hook pushed the blade back along with his fingers, and the iron smeared with red-black fluid slid from his chest.

"You can't kill me, Peter ... not again."

Hook pressed the iron claws into Peter's soft flesh. Pan cried out in pain, his fingers loosening around the pommel, and the blade fell from his hand to land in the sand with a dull >>Poff<<.

Around them, the mocking laughter of the pirates swelled.

"What's it like, Peter? To know that I took everything from you? To know that I have won?" the captain purred icily like frost crawling slowly but surely over grass and earth. He raised his left hand, and the hook flashed ominously in the moonlight as he placed it against Peter's cheek, and the sharpened point drew a long rift into the flesh.

Peter cried out and now struck at the pirate with his fist. It hit the revenant's jaw in full force - pain shot into his knuckles. The bones of the doomed man were as hard as iron, and Hook didn't even seem to feel the pain.

Instead, Hook let out a roar of laughter and slammed his boot into Peter's stomach. The force hurled Peter back, stirring up the sands of the white bay.

Gasping, the Neverland hero rolled to his side and squinted. The pirates gathered around them, forming a circle and surrounding them. The flying devil had always been able to catch them off guard with his tricks and defeat them ... but apparently, his luck had now run out!

"Back with you! PAN BELONGS TO ME!" hissed Hook to the unworthy worms, who growled and reluctantly obeyed. Each of them wanted his revenge. But Pan belonged to the captain and would not allow any of the bilge rats to dispute his triumph!

"Didn't even the devil wants you and spit you back out of hell, you vile stockfish?!" Peter cursed, as always unwilling to accept his inferior position.

"No..." Hook tilted his head slightly to one side, the exposed bones on his neck cracking sickeningly as he did so. "I owe it indirectly to YOU that I have returned, Pan."

Hook regarded his adversary on the ground with condescending disgust. Peter Pan ... was an adult. However much time might have passed since that damned crocodile swallowed him... it didn't change the fact that he would ALWAYS have recognized the damned changeling! Even if Peter had been wearing a mask. They were the opposite poles of this world, the champions of good and evil. One might think that Peter represented the side of good. Hook, however, saw it differently.

Wasn't it the forest sprite, the fairy friend, who kidnapped innocent children? Hadn't he snatched the Darling children from their loving parents and carried them off here? Oh yes. Pan promised the desperate and lonely souls the adventures and dreams of this place—a paradise for children, full of dreams and endless possibilities.

But in the end, he spoiled them and shaped them according to his twisted thinking. GAME, he called it, to keep coming on the Jolly Roger and killing pirates. Fun, he called it, to let them play tricks on the natives until those took their lives and their scalps. Game, he called it, when he let them starve or treat an injury as a 'doctor,' although none of them would have a clue how. And the dead were forgotten.

Pan sold HIS fun as a great adventure, concealing from the gullible children that many did not grow up with only because they died beforehand during one of his oh-so-fun 'adventures.' And that alone, because Peter would not have let these memories spoil his fun. That he discarded them as soon as they were too old or no longer 'funny' enough, he concealed. Perhaps the boy who never wanted to grow up or the twisted mind of this fairy bellows was not even aware of the meaning of his deeds. Few of the boys wondered where the pirates on his ship came from when Peter consistently thinned out his crew with his Lost Boys, and they couldn't leave the island.

But it was HIM who took in the Lost Boys that Peter cast out. And HE, Captain Hook, would also be the one who finally stopped the child-stealing changeling! The children saw him as the devil... but he was still a gentleman pirate. After all, hadn't he given Wendy and her brothers a chance to join him? They could have helped him put an end to the horror called Pan. But they were just as deluded as the feral children under Peter's fairy magic. So they had chosen sides.

The fact was, Hook would do ANYTHING to kill Pan. He would sink that cursed island into that eternal hell in the sea! Even if it was the last thing he would do! Good and evil ... the definition always depended on which side you were on. Should he be the villain who destroyed this fairy hell? Hook was only too happy to take on that role. And now, finally and after all these years, the forest goblin had put the opportunity to do so into his hands himself!

"Thanks to you, the witchcraft of this cursed place is losing its power. Your selfishness is finally bringing this island the doom that I have been unable to bring about." Hook snorted, "And now ... look at you!"

Hook stepped aside and circled his enemy like a vulture.

"How big you've grown, Peter Pan ..." he taunted his adversary on the ground, eyeing him condescendingly. "So GROWN." He uttered the word Peter so detested with a cruel relish, and it melted on his tongue like sweet honey and did not fail to have its effect. Hook saw Peter's features derail and then contort into a grimace of rage. As expected, Pan attacked him with a headlong roar, leaping forward to sweep the pirate off his feet.

'What a lack of good form,' Hook thought. Of course, he had already expected this and dodged to the side, causing Pan to land in the sand again. A snort escaped the pirate captain, and through his condition, it mingled with the gurgle of salt water still clinging to his body and innards.

"You look grown up, but you're still the same foolish child," Hook stated, pale lips of partially pitted flesh pulling the corners of his mouth even higher. An expression of blank mockery. As if he were a demon who had risen from the underworld again only to Peter's torment.

"Not even death could defeat me. We are back ... and now we will destroy the filthy savages and this hellhole, as it should have been done long ago!" 

Hook noticed Peter's gaze slipping to the side - to where the glow still drenched the wood of the open box in silvery light.

"So you picked up the fallen stars ..." the grown-up boy stated, and the captain grinned smugly.

"Of course we did. Everyone we could find. After the good Smee brought me back by his wish, we recognized in it the key to finally destroying Neverland and leaving the island." 

Hook reached out and pressed the tip of the saber against Peter's chest. 

"But that doesn't matter to you anymore ... because your game ends here."

Wordcount: 1.294 Words