Scene #8721: A Meeting of Myths

Owner	Pose
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Madeleine waits for Captain Hook outside an apartment building. Today, she wears a knee-length Gothic dress with an open chest, long sleeves, and decorative silver chains, along with the tiniest top hat you've even seen on a normal-sized person, and a pair of high-laced boots. She tips the hat to the Captain as he arrives. "How do you do." Leading the captain inside, the apartment building is neatly maintained but unremarkable. Up the stairs to the third floor and into... a studio apartment, furnished with only an ornate full-length standing mirror in the dead center of the room. Just what does this woman do with herself? The answer becomes apparent as she approaches the mirror, leans forward to adjust her hair under the top-hat, and the world... changes. Fades away, replaced by a grey-white void. Then a different world begins to assert itself, slowly coming into shape as if sketched by hand, then painted over with new reality. The Captain and Madeleine now stand in a well-appointed sitting room, with white wallpaper and black carpet. The furniture - an assortment of couches, chairs, and small tables - is all in dark wood and immaculate white upholstery. At one corner Madeleine stands still fussing with her hair before a mirror identical to that in the apartment. Another corner of the room is occupied by a butler with no facial features whatsoever, holding a covered silver tray. Outside the room's windows, a snowy forest of leafless oaks is silent and still. "Well," Madeleine says at last. "Make yourself comfortable." She remains at the mirror as the last details of the space fill themselves in.
Captain Hook	Captain William Hook is larger-than-life not in the way of a myth but in the way of a man. From the feather on his skull-and-crossbones hat to the deep blue coat slung 'round his shoulders like a cape to the laced-up boots with gold trim to the silver hook where one hand ought to be, right down to the way he walks with a gait that almost resembles a dancer's and belies an impeccable sense of rhythm, Hook stands out. But he stands out because he makes himself the center of attention rather than because he is somehow beyond it - he stands out because no one compares, rather than because he does not belong. Yet that was forged in a land of story and dream, and William Hook knows lands of dream all too well. He removes his hat with his hook hand and bows, a gracious, deep bow with a sweeping arm right out of an old romantic movie. "I do well, madam," he says as he rises, "Though I never do good, for pity a poor pirate who sees it as his role to do good in the world. No Robin Hood, I, I'm afraid; merely Captain Hook. Captain William Hook, at your service." He follows her inside, casting his eye about, his free hand in his pants-pocket. He's armed, of course, with a flintlock dangling from one hip (curiously, the hip the hook hand is on) and a powder-bag on the other tucked over his cutlass sheath, but he doesn't seem paranoid. It's just...expected, that a pirate carry a cutlass and flintlock, isn't it? It's just common sense. The common sense of children and imagination. The world changes. Hook whistles, a low, appreciative whistle as fineries appear, as the silver tray stands out amidst monochrome. It reminds him greatly of a black-and-white sketch pouring itself from the page onto the world. His good eye is settled on the silver tray with a curious glint of greed, like he's just...passively evaluating its worth as a treasure, a little bit of covetousness that he simply can't hide no matter what. He sits. He sits with impeccable posture, upright and proper, in the manner of a well-educated and well-mannered man. No rough pirate brute here but a refined gentleman, no gruff sailor but a man who sleeps with a thesaurus under the pillow. "And what, then, may Captain Hook do for you, madam?"
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Finishing up at the mirror, Madeleine walks across to the butler. The faceless servant can apparently see, removing the tray's cover as she approaches to reveal some kind of liquor bottle - brandy, by the looks of it - and a set of drinking glasses. Madeleine pours one for each of herself and the Captain, carries a drink over to him, and then sits on an adjoining couch. "You may tell me what it means to be the Pirate. In a multiverse of many pirates, on all of land, sea, sky, and stars, a multiverse which may yet have better pirates, what does it mean to be an exemplar of your profession?"
Captain Hook	Hook blinks. Then, he laughs. "Isn't it obvious, madam?" He leans forward a bit, holding out his hook hand. "It means that I am what children think of when they think of a pirate. I am what adults imagine when they imagine a pirate. I am the gentleman on the boudice-ripper, with his white-ruffled shirt askew, whom ladies and gentlemen fantasize about either being or being with." He waves the hook hand slightly. "It means that I am a man who carries a cutlass and a flintlock at all hours of the day and am exemplary with them both, a man who knows how to swash and buckle in equal measure. It means I have a Map With An X On It, because all good pirates ought to, and I hunt for treasures wherever they might be not to spend them but to keep them as a miser clings to the smallest penny." Hook crosses his legs and sits straight and proper again. "It means that I am, that I have made myself, what I dreamed of being as a boy, and what I was forced to be as a man, and what I have chosen to be as an adult, which is something very few people in this world are privileged to achieve." "Why, may I ask? I thought it was somewhat self-evident, but then, I can tell I am not in a realm where self-evidence is itself evidence." He smiles and waves his hand at the brandy. "No alcohol, thank you. I'm a tea-totaller by nature, I'm afraid; I realize that grog is the expected but I haven't the stomach for the stuff and frankly it ill-suits a gentleman. Some tea with a hint of lemon, though, would be divine." There's a glint in his eye. "Or should I be wary of using that word hereabouts?"
Madeleine Cadrasteia	The butler leaves the room upon hearing the request for tea. Madeleine carefully reaches out, takes the Captain's glass, and places it next to her own. She chuckles softly at the Captain's quip about the divine. "Oho, Captain, I have as much right to claim that word as the 'true' gods of my world. They looked outward from their creation, and feared what they might see. Divine creators as they were, they thus saw what they had feared. I and my kind - the Excrucians - we are the end of the world given flesh. An end every bit as divine as its genesis. As for your question, well." She takes a sip of brandy from her glass as the butler returns with a steaming pot of tea, a cup, and a saucer. "I am the bump in the night, I am the eyes you might feel on the back of your neck. I am the Huntress. And I too was not always so fit for my position. The beasts that plague me taught me to fight, but it is in the wilds beyond this manor that I realized my potential to hunt." She waves a hand in the direction of the windows, to accentuate her point. "I am not, perhaps, the everyman's picture of an ideal huntress. That is a failure of their limited minds, and not a lacking of my form. What others see when they look at me is but an expression of my true nature, my inner dream-of-self." A pause. "The way you explain it, your decision to become the Pirate was as much a realization that you already were such. My dream-of-self was always there, waiting for me. Even before I knew I was an Excrucian, it was my destiny to become one. And in so becoming, to have always been. Do you think Captain Hook was inside the Peter Pan you used to be, waiting to be realized?"
Captain Hook	"I've never met the end before, and I wasn't expecting it to be lovely, so I'll consider this a pleasant surprise." Hook takes the teacup in his good hand and sips it delicately, exactly like a proper English Gentleman of old might. "Well, I see you've hunted quite the right leaves for this." "You know, it's rather funny. Something very much like you is the reason I'm alive." Hook sets the tea down and whirls his hook in the air. "Isn't that funny? I owe my life to one huntress and here I am taking tea with a second. And both of you are magnificent in your own ways. She, a great primordial wonder, and you, a stalker; she, pursuit, and you, shadow. Funny old world, really. I suspect you'll like her. Or you'll hate her. I don't know how this sort of thing works. I've met semi-gods, and demi-gods, and would-be gods, and things that claim to be gods, and things that perhaps were gods, but all of that was in dreams, and dreams, well, they both exceed and distort the real thing, don't you think?" Hook looks up at the ceiling thoughtfully. "No, I don't." "I don't think I was doomed to become Captain Hook. I don't think it was inside me all along." He looks back at her, and the look in his eye is as sharp as his cutlass - not cruel but simply cutting, an absolute certainty carving away any pretense. "I think it is an addiction. I think being Peter Pan was an addiction, and I think becoming Captain Hook fed the addiction, and I think that death was accepting that the hit was wearing off. And then, when I was freed, I chose to pick up that addiction once again, because I could not bear to go through a withdrawal where the colours are dull and the world is empty and grey and ordinary."
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Madeleine smiles at the Captain's compliment. "Why, thank you. I do try to look my best. I should clarify, I suppose, that I've stepped away from actively ending the world. I have found it to be beautiful, and certain things in it to be worth preserving." Madeleine nods along with the Captain's talk of gods and dreams, and then meets his gaze as his eyes return from the ceiling. A star falls across one of her eyes, then the other, and out of sight. "We all have our methods of coping with the world. I do not thing you should be ashamed of yours." Another sip of brandy. "Do you think... that something might have done this to you on purpose? Led you to Neverland, taken your innocence, killed you. Behind the curtain, might something be pulling the strings? I've known and hunted creatures that fed by stranger processes before."
Captain Hook	"Have you," Hook says, in a tone that can only be conversational despite the context of the conversation, without judgment or assumption, "Are you quite certain of that? The way you speak, it seems as if you believe it to have been inevitable, that you would become this. Are you quite certain you've turned it aside so easily? Are you quite certain that, if it's always been within you, it isn't still?" That cutting look remains in his bright eye as he raises his teacup to his lips. "Are you quite certain that you have given it up? Or have you, perhaps, instead, only set it aside?" He sips. "Damned fine tea," he says, without a hint of irony, as he sets it back down. "Damned fine." "Well, yes, of course something approached me. A faerie. A pixie. And I have no doubt Neverland seeks out children who dream of indulging in the addiction of childhood forever. I don't know about the rest. Perhaps killing Captain Hook isn't inevitable, but I imagine that Neverland selects for children who will, or who can be coaxed into it with dreams of heroism." "I doubt it's an intelligent manipulation. It would be too easy for it to be a manipulator." Hook shrugs. "A natural force, like so many dream-lands. A hellish Heaven, a heavenly Hell, but I doubt one created for malice or benevolence, or even created with intellect at all."
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Madeleine shifts uncomfortably and looks down at her glass. "I, ah. I've not turned away from being the huntress. I am still what I am, only... I've turned to different purposes. I care more about myself now, and less about fighting for the Excrucian cause, no matter how much they might want me back in their number. I suspect that may be how I ended up Unified, even. I wanted a world without the Excrucian War, and I got one. The rest of my kind didn't come along with me. It's just me and my sanctuary." She gestures at the room around her. "I do not believe I could give up the hunt, nor even could I wish to do so. It is what I am, my deepest, most immortal self. To stop being the Huntress would be to change beyond recognition, to..." She trails off. "Whether or not Neverland has malice or will, it's certainly dangerous. Have you thought about destroying it? Or finding someone who can?"
Captain Hook	"No," Hook says, picking up his tea, "Because destroying dreams is a dangerous thing. Who knows what it might do to those who dream of endless youth? Who knows what repercussions it may have? I'm a greedy man, but not a selfish one - I want to own all the treasures I can find, not destroy all things I disapprove of. I'm content warning people of its dangers." Another sip, as if to punctuate his next thoughts. "But you aren't." "You aren't what you are, are you? You said it yourself. You've stepped away from actively ending the world. You've rejected that part of yourself and already become something different than you were." "That isn't simply a cause, the extinction of all things. It can't simply be called a cause but a calling. I do not imagine you can simply ignore a calling any more than I can ignore a gold coin on the street. I imagine you can suppress it, dampen it, and cover it up with all the pleasures and wonders you can find, but I suspect that you are telling yourself otherwise because it would be deeply, deeply uncomfortable to face the idea that you may still desire that promised end you represent." "After all, hunting is ending. Killing is ending. There may be more, but that is there, too, isn't it?" He sets the tea down again and adjusts his coat slightly on his shoulders, purposefully. "Can you really stop being what you are? I know that I could, though the withdrawal would be miserable. I do not want to, but I am capable of contemplating it. Are you truly unable to even wish that?" "Because that, my dear lady, must be the most miserable sort of prison, to be imprisoned in your own self."
Madeleine Cadrasteia	"I am-" Madeleine's eyes narrow. "Do I look imprisoned to you? I see no bars here. It may be true, that in rejecting war against the world I am battling my nature, my origin. Perhaps my calling, as you said. But I am stronger than what I used to be. I have my dream-of-self to thank for that. It was there for me, when nothing else could be. It is the foundation of who I am. To become otherwise, to abandon the hunt, would be to abandon my self. I..." A long pause, a sip of brandy. "I am not willing to do that, so whether I could is moot."
Captain Hook	"Are bars the only kind of prison a huntress can imagine?" Hook asks, idly, fiddling with his cup thoughtfully as he looks at her, "Can you not imagine being trapped in a photograph, or in yourself? I would have thought you would speak a language of metaphor when the whole of this place seems constructed of it." "Ah, but, don't mind me, I suppose. It's not an accusation. I'm hardly the sort to accuse anyone of anything other than legitimacy, and that's a tremendously awful thing to be accused of, and one I should hate to accuse a lady of on our first meeting." Hook sets the empty cup down.
Madeleine Cadrasteia	"I have been my own jailer before, Captain," Madeleine says coldly, "though I do not wish to speak much of that." Then, lighter, "more tea?"