The Haunting of Mrs. Darling

[scripsi]

Author: dancing_salome
Title: Thre Haunting of Mrs. Darling
Pairing: Hook/Mrs. Darling
Rating: R
Category: Dubious consent, mind-fuck
A/N: Thanks to japanpeterpan for beta.The whole story sprung from this quote in the last chapter of Peter Pan: “Mrs. Darling was now dead and forgotten.”


It began some months after the children came home. Of course she loved them all, but children are children, and there were now so many of them. Mrs. Darling found that by the end of the day she felt exhausted, but she couldn't sleep. She just lay in bed while the hours ticked away, thinking about Wendy's need for longer skirts, John's new scabs, or anything and everything that the children wanted or needed. The doctor lamented her
loss of weight and prescribed laudanum. It made her sleepy, and she went to bed thankful for the slightly weird feeling that she would probably fall asleep on the floor if she didn't get to the bed soon enough.

Rough hands were pushing her forward, and when she tried to shrug them off, she found that her hands were tied behind her back. She couldn't protest, because someone had thrown a sack over her head, and then gagged her over it, so she could neither talk, nor see. Mrs. Darling could hear voices, but they were muffled, and to her they sounded like the excited chatter of monkeys. A change in the air told her that she had been brought from an outside to an inside, and then she was pushed down, so that she was kneeling on a bare floor. Then a voice cut through the chatter, crisp, educated and annoyed.

“What's this?”

The chatter rose to a new level, and Mrs. Darling thought she could make out her daughter's name, before the chatter abruptly stopped. The voice ordered whomever it was who had brought her there, out, and as a door fell shut, everything was silent. Then she was brusquely freed from her gag and blindfold, and she blinked at the lights, even if they were quite faint and flickering.

A man was sitting before her, and his appearance belied his well-bred voice. A tousled mane of black curls streamed over his naked shoulders, and though his face showed the remains of a small neat beard and moustache, it was now so long since he was last shaved that they were almost lost in a full beard. Mrs. Darling couldn't make out any other features, because she was caught in his gaze, and she was so astonished over the brilliant blue of them, that for a moment she forgot her predicament and stared up at him like a
rabbit caught in the light of an approaching car, helplessly waiting to be crushed.

The spell was broken when he spoke again. “You are not Wendy Darling.”

Mrs. Darling tore her stare away from his, it slid down over his chest and to her horror she saw that he was not wearing a shirt. Instead his broad chest was most curiously crossed by leather straps that dug into his skin, here and there betraying angry red lines as if it chafed. He leaned forward, and Mrs. Darling would have liked to back away from him if she could have done so. He radiated danger, and when he suddenly grasped her chin and bent her head back, she could feel terror stream through her like water rush down the sink when the tap is turned.

“Who are you?”

It never occurred to her to lie. “I'm Mrs. George Darling. Mary Darling.”

He released her and leaned back.

“I see. The mother. Trust my dogs to never do anything properly. I should have done it myself- if I hadn't been a bit indisposed lately.” He looked at her intently. “Do you know who I am, Mrs. Darling?”

She begun to shake her head when he suddenly moved his right arm forward. Until now it had been hanging down his side, but now he placed it on his knee, and to Mrs. Darling's horror he had no hand. Glittering sharply against the black fabric of his breeches was a sharp metal hook, and in an instant she understood the leather straps.

Mary gasped when her daughter's words flew through her mind, Wendy's excited voice when she told her tales about Peter Pan and the deadly Captain Hook. But the man in front of her little resembled the elegant man Wendy had described. Still there was the hook. The hook.

“You can't be Captain Hook,” she whispered. “He is dead.”

“And what makes you think that I'm not?” Hook took in their surroundings with a sweep of his arm. “Look at this.”

Mrs. Darling looked. They were in a cabin, but once again it was not what Wendy described. This place was dark and dank, furnished with ill-made and ugly furniture. There were no carpets, no ornaments, no beauty. Outside the window she saw nothing but swiveling mist.

“Is this Neverland?”

“No. This is something else. For lack of better name I call it hell. For all I know, I may be right, though it certainly lacks the warmth I was assured would be connected to that place.”

“Why am I here?”

“By mistake. I wanted Wendy. I wanted revenge. But perhaps you will do. After all, isn't it a mother's duty to do anything for her child?”

Mrs. Darling was still working on an answer to this question when Hook leaned further toward her, grasping her hair as he did and dragged her closer to him. It occurred to Mrs. Darling that this must be a nightmare, probably induced by the laudanum, but this knowledge brought no relief, she was still terrified. It was much more real than she had ever felt a nightmare could be. She was not just aware of what she saw, she could feel rough boards through her nightgown, and when the man above her bowed his face close to hers she could feel the alcohol and tobacco in his breath.

She tried to turn her head away, she had never cared for those smells and always frowned and refused George on the few occasions that he indulged himself. George had always respected that, but this man ignored her attempt to avoid him.

“I can't take what I have no right to. Will you come back? Give me your word that you will come back and your daughter is safe from me.”

His breath was hot against her skin, much too real for any dream. As she hesitated the grip tightened, forcing her head back, and she could feel the hook press against her breast, so close, all too close to her heart.

“Promise!”

“It's just a dream,” Mrs. Darling thought. “I can as well promise, because soon I will wake up.”

“I promise,” she said, and Hook's eyes lit up in triumph over her word.

“Then I claim you,” he whispered in her ear, and then he kissed her. He tasted like he smelled- too much of tobacco and alcohol, and Mary gagged, but she couldn't break it. He kissed her, and she fought him, until he released her, and she could breathe.

She took a deep breath, sitting up in her bed. But she could still feel Hook's taste in her mouth, and she tumbled out of the bed, running into the bathroom. In her haste she just shook out the tooth powder in her hand, rubbing it into her mouth with her fingers. She frantically cleaned her mouth with her hands and rinsed, and she could still taste him, so then she did use her brush, brushing until her gums bled. In her mind she could only
repeat that it had just been a dream, a nightmare. She was pale in the mirror, and the braid she always wore at night had loosened and her hair tumbled all over her face and shoulders.

Eventually she got back to her bed- George still slept peacefully, and Mary fell asleep. In the morning she had convinced herself that she had had an unusually vivid dream, and by nightfall she took another dose of the laudanum to be able to sleep again.

This time she was sitting in a chair, watching Hook as he shaved. He did it slowly, clumsily, as if he was unaccustomed to do this on his own. Mrs. Darling felt a little touched that he was making an effort, though the absence of a shirt still disturbed her. She watched him for a while, but then she rose and took the razor from his hand.

“Let me,” she said, and he nodded. Perhaps she ought to find it peculiar that he would let her yield such a deadly tool, but this was after all a dream, and Mrs. Darling was feeling quite frivolous as she carefully removed the too long hairs, and then trimmed the small beard and his moustache with a small scissors. She had never done the last task- George was always painfully clean-shaven, but she thought she did a pretty good job. Hook's
face emerged from the towel, a much more handsome countenance than she had somehow expected.

Mary become aware that she was standing very close, and she tried to take a step back, but Hook stopped her, encircling her with an arm and pulling her close. She could feel his body through her nightclothes, and she could feel herself grew warm and willing, despite herself. It was after all a dream, and what harm could it be to give in. She felt as if the bones in her body were melting, and it felt that it was so easy. So right. To straddle his
lap and slide down on the hard heat of him.

Mrs. Darling had never done anything like this before, and it surprised her that it felt so different, so much more when she moved- suddenly having the freedom to move closer or further without a body over her. She laughed, and then she cried out as the heat became too much for her, rushing over her in a tingling exciting feeling, and she could feel the man swell and his arm held her hard against him, and she couldn't move anymore. Mary could feel a stinging pain over her back as his right arm slipped a bit.

This time she awoke very hot, but not until she turned, trying to feel a cool spot of the sheet did she feel that her back hurt. In the safety of her bathroom she saw that her nightgown was torn, and a red slash, shallow but long, adorned her back. Mrs. Darling had a quiet case of hysterics then, sitting on the cold floor and shaking.

The next evening she took no laudanum. She didn’t sleep. She held out the next night, and the next, her nerves fraying, and scaring her family with unusual bouts of crying. She could not sleep, her mind filled with more than the thoughts of her family. In the end George coaxed her into taking her medicine, but she did so reluctantly, and when she could feel sleep coming, she did not welcome it.

The sheets in Hook's bed were damp. Mrs. Darling doubted that they ever felt dry, or warm, for that matter. This time she fought him, but his heavy weight forced her into immobility. He'd never treated her with tenderness in his caresses, but now he grew brutal, and he hurt her. But she still wanted him, and if the pleasure when he took her bordered on pain, it made the pleasure so much the stronger.

Afterwards, she cried in his arms. “Why?” she asked.

“Because you promised me. Because you gave me your word.”

“Then I take it back!”

“It's too late now.” He relented a little at her desperate sobs and added more kindly. “It's always too late.”

After that she refused the laudanum for a long time. She grew weary, and then ill. She pushed George away until she ran out of excuses, but she received him dry, and it was hurtful. She wondered why it was so when she was in the arms of the man she loved and had married. She pushed at his chest, begging him off her, but George was too consumed by his own lust that he paid no heed. Not even after did he understand what he had done.
Mary said nothing, but after that she always locked herself into the guest room when night fell.

In the end she had to take the laudanum, so she could at least get some kind of rest. But she woke from the dreams, if dreams they were, with a weary mind, and with bruises and nicks upon her body. She thought that she was slowly going crazy, and she became fearful of talking, lest she would let something slip. Despite that, George started to talk about sending her away, so she would be able to rest, as he said. But Mrs. Darling only saw the closing walls of an asylum when he said that, and she came to fear her husband.

They came for her anyway in the end. One evening she spotted an ominous black car from her bedroom window, and she saw cloaked men disappearing into her house. The door was locked, but when she heard them knock, and then pound on it, Mary knew that they would not relent until the lock broke down. She opened the window then, leaning out and watched the ground. In the end it was so easy. There was no one in the room when the door was finally opened. Mr. Darling was much pitied in the following years- the poor man left alone with his children after his wife grew mad and threw herself out of her window.

Mary stood in the doorway of the cabin. It was impossible to see far, the mist never lifted. It occurred to her that she had never seen Hook's crew, she only had only heard them. She saw no one now either, but she could hear distant voices crying out. She jumped when something touched her elbow, and when she turned she saw Hook standing behind her.

He was fully dressed- the clothes heavy and ornate, and the hair was combed, shimmering waves around his head.

“What's the occasion?” she asked.

“You, of course, my dear Mary.” He had never said her name before. “ I have to celebrate the fact that you won't leave me anymore.”