My thanks to littlesoprano for her sensitive beta-reading. A story like this certainly needs it!

Thanks also to Musingpadawan for requesting a sequel to "Under the Gun," and for the ingenious idea of how to begin this story.

Sherwood Schwartz created Gilligan's Island, not me. I'm just stretching the envelope – a lot.

Two of a Kind

"No! Ramoo, I said get your hands off me! Skipper!"

The Skipper jolted awake as the voice above him shattered the darkness. Scrambling out of his hammock, the big man was on his feet in seconds. "Gilligan! Wake up, little buddy!"

In the faint, filmy moonlight, Gilligan was flailing his arms at some unseen assailant. The Skipper leaned over his writhing form and grasped his shoulders, but Gilligan jerked away, eyes clenched shut. "I mean it, Ramoo! Don't touch me like that, you creep, or I'll let you have it!"

The Skipper froze at the rage and terror that vibrated in that voice – and at that name. Why Ramoo this time, and not Kinkaid? Ramoo had been nothing but a henchman, a hired goon. He'd had no hatred for Gilligan – or had he?

Now the first mate's voice contracted in anguish. "Mr. Howell! Help me!"

Mr. Howell? The Skipper felt a momentary stab of jealousy. Why should Gilligan call on him?

"Please, Mr. Howell! Don't leave me alone with Ramoo!"

The Skipper's jealousy sank in the wake of his mounting dread. There had been only one time when Gilligan, Mr. Howell and their brutal visitors had been alone together: the night before the hunt, one week ago, when Mr. Howell had tried to bribe Kinkaid into letting Gilligan go. Anxiously the Skipper cast his mind one week back, summoning up every detail of Mr. Howell's return.

The five castaways had been waiting around a little campfire in the cave where Kinkaid had ordered them to spend the night. "Oh, dear, what's taking Thurston so long?" said Mrs. Howell. "He should have been back before now!"

"I should have gone with him," muttered the Skipper, looking towards the cave's mouth.

"No you shouldn't, Skipper, and you know why," the Professor reminded him. "I'm sure Mr. Howell will be along in a moment, and Gilligan with him. Let's just all keep calm."

Suddenly the sound of the millionaire's signature whistle filled them with hope. When Mr. Howell emerged out of the darkness, his wife rushed into his arms. "Oh, Thurston! Thank heavens!"

But when no slim figure appeared behind Mr. Howell, the Skipper's heart turned to lead. "Howell! Where's Gilligan? What happened with Kinkaid?"

Mr. Howell's haunted eyes met the Skipper's. "It's hopeless, Captain. Kinkaid just kept on saying no. I went higher and higher – eventually offered him half a million! He said he wasn't interested in money. All he's interested in is..." Mr. Howell paused, loathe to say it. "...our young friend's blood."

For a moment the other five castaways stood silent and appalled. Then Ginger pulled the Professor into a corner and began whispering urgently to him as Mary Ann buried her face in her hands. Instinctively the Skipper gathered her under his big arm and pulled her close.

"Skipper, this just can't be happening!" she cried. "What are we going to do?"

"Easy, Mary Ann," the Skipper murmured, though he felt three times as helpless as she. "We're not licked yet."

"But Thurston, I don't understand," said Mrs. Howell as she sought the comfort of her husband's arms. "Why on earth does that dreadful man want to harm the poor boy?"

Mr. Howell shrugged, dazed by the monstrous evil of it all. He clutched her gloved hands tightly. "He's a fiend, my darling. So dead inside that nothing but murder excites him anymore." The patrician voice trembled. "How I hated to leave the boy in that den!"

The Skipper shook his head. "Don't blame yourself, Mr. Howell. At least you tried!" Gently he handed Mary Ann off to Mrs. Howell and took Mr. Howell aside, away from the others. "But tell me about my little buddy. Did you see him? Is he okay? They haven't hurt him, have they?"

Mr. Howell seemed about to speak, but then hesitated. His eyes grew even more haunted.

Horrified, the Skipper seized Mr. Howell's arm. "Have they?"

That grip seemed to shake the millionaire out of his trance as he shook his head and cleared his throat loudly. "No. No, Captain, I promise you. He's absolutely terrified, of course. But he's bearing up, somehow." Mr. Howell sighed bitterly. "I tried to reassure him as best I could. He wanted to see you, but I explained why that was out of the question."

The Skipper clenched his fists, fighting for control. Every nerve in his body screamed at him to go and burst into that hut, come what may, but Kinkaid's threat still echoed in his ears. "Don't try to come and see him, Skipper. I'd hate for those girls to have to pay for it." Desperate for reassurance, the Skipper looked at Mr. Howell again. "But you`re sure they won't hurt him – not tonight?"

That haunted look returned for a moment; Mr. Howell rubbed his chin as his eyes narrowed. Then he stared fixedly at a spot on the sandy ground as though it were the last card turned up in a round of poker. "Kinkaid's a fiend, but he's no fool. He wants Gilligan in top condition for the hunt tomorrow. The boy's safe enough - for now. God help him tomorrow! God help us all."

Gilligan had survived the hunt - whether or not by the grace of God, the Skipper didn't know. But he did know that something else had happened the night before; he had sensed there was something more than the hunt behind the horror in Howell's eyes. Now he was sure of it.

Still in the throes of his nightmare, Gilligan continued to struggle. His voice choked in desperation. "Mr. Howell, if you leave me with him, you know what he's gonna do to me! Don't let him, Mr. Howell! I'd rather die! Please, you've gotta help me!" The first mate broke into sobs, curling in upon himself.

The Skipper clutched his friend's shoulders as if trying to pull him from an unknown deep. "Gilligan, little buddy, what is it? What was Ramoo going to do? I know he didn't beat you – I'd have seen the bruises! What could he have done to you that didn't leave any mark?"

Even as he said the words, the Skipper suddenly stopped as a nauseating chill swept over him. He had spent enough years on long sea voyages, isolated from land and women, to know the things that could happen between men in the dark corners of ships. His eyes widened in horror. "Oh, no. No, dear God, no. He couldn't have!" The Skipper held those thin shoulders like they were made of straw. "Gilligan! Gilligan, little buddy, wake up!"

At last Gilligan gasped awake, and his wide, panicked eyes stared straight ahead. The Skipper whispered urgently. "Gilligan! It's me!"

Gilligan blinked and focussed in the darkness. His hands came up to clutch the Skipper's arms. "Skipper?" he whispered.

"Yes, little buddy! It's me! You're all right now!" The Skipper's throat tightened. "They're gone. You're safe now."

"No I'm not, Skipper." Gilligan's voice shook with despair. "Now they come for me in my sleep. I can't take it anymore - I'm gonna lose my mind, Skipper! Please make it stop!"

"Gilligan, I'd do anything to help you, but you've got to meet me halfway!" The Skipper swallowed and steeled himself before speaking in the gentlest tones he knew. "You mentioned something a minute ago about Ramoo. You were dreaming about him. You were scared half to death." The Skipper was afraid too, but he forced himself to go on. "Why, little buddy? What did he do?"

Those great eyes fixed on the Skipper for a moment in a look of shame and fear. Then Gilligan shook his head violently. "N-nothing, Skipper. I don't remember!"

"Don't remember?" In spite of himself, the Skipper gripped Gilligan's shoulders more tightly. "You were screaming his name! Telling him to get away from you! What the hell did he do to you?"

Gilligan shrank back, his fingers curling away from the Skipper's arms. "I can't tell you, Skipper! Don't ask me! Please, don't ask me!"

The words cracked the Skipper's heart. He couldn't move. Silently he stood looking down at his young friend as the very earth seemed to plummet from beneath his feet. At last he nodded in assent, grateful for the shadows that hid his face. Then drawing his hands away from Gilligan's shoulders, the Skipper wrung them beneath the hammock in sheer helplessness.

Gilligan gave a shaky sigh in the darkness. "Skipper, I'm so tired. I want that stuff...that stuff the Professor made."

It was a moment before the Skipper could trust himself to speak. "Th-the sleeping drug, you mean? Oh, little buddy, I don't know...you know the Professor said it could be dangerous if you take too much."

"Please, Skipper. I don't wanna have that dream again."

The Skipper hadn't the heart to refuse him. He reached out automatically to pat Gilligan's shoulder, but suddenly fearing that Gilligan might shrink from the touch of any man, he halted with a terrible newfound awkwardness. Miserably, he turned instead and blundered his way in the dark hut to the water cask, where the ambient moonlight gave just enough illumination for him to fill a coconut cup and pour in a measure of viscous liquid from a nearby glass vial.

The Skipper brought the cup to the hammock. "Are you sure you won't change your mind, little buddy?" He knew as he asked that his question had nothing to do with the drug, and Gilligan seemed to sense it.

"Yes, Skipper." Gilligan's fingers briefly brushed his own, and the young sailor downed the mixture. As Gilligan did so, the image of a desperate man drinking poison flashed unbidden into the Skipper's mind. He caught up the cup as Gilligan's head dropped onto the pillow and the pale eyelids fluttered into stillness.

For a few minutes the Skipper stood silently, throat working. His grip tightened on the coconut cup until it burst into fragments, and with a savage curse he flung them into the shadows. Then he crossed the room in one stride. Seizing a bamboo-and-grass chair, the Skipper smashed it to pieces with his bare hands, snapping the thick bamboo stalks like matchsticks. He wanted to take the whole hut, the whole jungle, the whole of this forsaken island, and do the same. And he desperately wished he had killed Ramoo when he had had the chance. But Ramoo was beyond his reach now, and so was Kinkaid. The Skipper took a great, deep breath as the memory of Gilligan's cries haunted the darkness.

``Mr. Howell! You know what he's gonna do!``

Realization burst upon the Skipper like a bomb. So that had been the reason for Howell`s mysterious reticence that night. He had known what was going to happen, and simply walked away. And then he had lied about it. And the Skipper, believing that lie, had sat there useless in that cave while Gilligan was...

The ghostly moonlight flushed to burning red. There would be a reckoning for this. There had to be. Clenching his great fists, the big sailor stalked out the door.