Disclaimer: But wouldn't it be cool if-? Oh, right. I don't own Treasure Planet (or Treasure Island, either, for that matter). And I'm not making money off this story.

A/N: Originally completed on August 15, 2010. There really aren't enough Treasure Planet stories out there. I love the father-son relationship between Silver and Jim so much, I just had to write one. This story is set near the beginning of the movie. The lines between paragraphs of text indicate passage of time or change in point of view (or both). Review, please! Tell me what I did right, wrong, and what I just plain didn't do.

Day Two

"Ahoy, Jimbo!"

That was the first thing Jim heard on his second day aboard the Legacy. The shock of the sudden yell caused him to jerk awake so suddenly that he nearly fell out of his hammock. The ship's cook stood in front of him with the morph hovering giddily above his metal shoulder. Neither of the two seemed to be troubled by exhaustion, a strange fact considering that on Montressor, the spaceport would not have even sunk below the horizon yet at this time of morning.

"Thinkin' of lyin' abed all morning, are ya?" Silver surmised with a grin. Jim merely grunted as he rose to a sitting position in the still-wobbly hammock and stuffed his feet into his waiting boots. The cyborg had been brutally true to his promise of the previous night: after leading Jim to a hammock below deck with the other spacers, he had chosen his own hammock not five steps away and lain down. Jim had gone to sleep to the sound of the man's snores, accompanied by the occasional rattling of that robotic leg of his.

"Right, now, we've a lot to be doin', so get your space legs under ya," Silver ordered cheerfully. "There's a passel of vacuum barnacles all over the hull just waitin' for the right cabin boy to come along." He smirked briefly and clumped away. When Jim didn't follow immediately, he called, "Quick, now, lad! We're wastin' starlight."

Jim rolled his eyes and shoved his shirttail into his trousers. He was severely tempted to put up a fight, but he wasn't sure how far the cyborg would allow himself to be pushed. The man carried himself with a demeanor that, while not as coolly commanding as the captain, seemed to indicate that he was in charge, somehow. Certainly the other spacers gave way to him—aside from a few grumbled remarks, none of them had challenged him for shouting Jim awake and disturbing the rest of them. Besides, Jim told himself mentally, it's way, way too early for an argument. So he followed his boss quietly to the above deck.

Silver was busily threading thick ropes into a pulley that overhung the bulwark. He tossed one of the frayed ends to Jim as the boy approached.

"Secure that end to the scaffold for me, will ya, Jimbo?" Jim caught it deftly and knelt to thread the line through the knothole and tie it off. The cyborg, tying the rope at the opposite end of the board, glanced over at Jim and chuckled. "Call that secure, do ya?" He scooted toward Jim with a bit of difficulty and yanked the knot loose, retying it with a quick, confident movement. "Remind me to show ya how knottin's done later," he commented jauntily. Jim scowled and bit back a sharp rejoinder as the cyborg heaved on the rope and raised the scaffolding into the air, guiding it until it hung suspended in space over the side. With his metal hand still clinging to the rope, he sat down carefully on the platform and reached out to swing Jim up as well. Ignoring the wordless offer of assistance, Jim leapt up next to him and straddled the board. Silver shrugged and let the line out gradually, bringing them swinging downward. When they were about halfway between the bulwark and the keel, he tied the remaining length of rope to the end of the board, reached into the breast pocket of his coat, and pulled out a crowbar.

"Go to it, lad," he told Jim with a patronizing smirk, tossing him the crowbar. Jim caught it ably and stared up at the ship in disbelief. There had to be more barnacles on the hull than there were stars in the sky! He looked to Silver for confirmation—was he really supposed to pry all these off by himself? The cook merely folded his arms and said pointedly, "Well, Jimbo?" Jim fought off the urge to start screaming at him and turned instead to butt the end of the crowbar against the base of a barnacle. He would take out his frustration on these things. He positioned the bar and gave it the old heave-ho.

And nothing happened. Silver wasn't pleased. "Put some elbow into it!" he barked.

Since Jim was less than halfway done with his monstrous task by lunchtime, Silver left him to finish while he went to get food for the crew. It was a relief to be out from under his critical glare and not to have to hear him bellowing orders all the time. Unfortunately, when Jim was all by himself, there was nothing to distract him from his work. His arms started to ache something terrible, and burned with fatigue every time he pried another barnacle off the ship. Hour after hour he was at it—he even started to keep count of how many barnacles he sent spinning off into space, but he lost count somewhere around two hundred sixty. Finally Silver appeared at the bulwark to relieve him. Or so Jim thought at first.

"Nicely done, lad," the cyborg approved after sending his red-laser gaze all the way down the hull and ending by dazzling Jim. He reeled in the ropes hand over hand, pulling his cabin boy back up to deck level. Jim clambered over the railing and stood erectly in front of Silver. No way was he going to let the cook know how the work had exhausted him. Silver put a metal hand against the small of Jim's back and hustled him along. "Come on, Jimbo—there's supper to get. All galley hands on deck!"

"What?" was all Jim could say. All he wanted to do was collapse into his hammock.

"Well, you didn't think the work was done, did ya?" Silver could be annoyingly chipper, even when the work day stretched on endlessly. Jim trotted down the stairs to the kitchen with the cyborg clumping behind. "Roast hine chops, perp sauce, mashed Copsy tubers," the cook announced. He pushed Jim toward a mountain of tubers and called, "Get a-peelin', lad." Jim turned to shoot Silver a defiant glare, but the cyborg merely handed him a paring knife. Jim gave in with a growl of frustration. This should only take about . . . oh, three hours.

Three hours later, Silver and his charge were down to their last two tubers. Silver finished his more quickly, having access to a larger, built-in knife, besides being more adept at it than Jim. He turned to watch the boy finish. Young Hawkins was staring through the latticed trapdoor at the head of the stairs while his hands worked automatically. He was looking uncharacteristically daydreamy, as if he were musing over something that troubled him. Silver wondered what was going through his head. Someone that young shouldn't have such a long face. Poor lad . . .

Wait, what was he thinking? Did he actually feel sorry for this unruly pup? Silver shook his head to clear it, hefted a barrel of perps, and plunked them down next to the stove.

"Perps to peel next," he announced. Jim snapped out of his reverie, his dark expression in place again. It was obvious he didn't like the cyborg at all, but Silver wasn't concerned about that. He didn't have to win his cabin boy's trust to make him work. Jim threw his tuber down with a bang, grabbed a perp, and set to work on it, sulky. Silver scooped up a handful of perps and activated his rotor blade. He turned the first fruit around and around, following it with the blade until it was perfectly peeled—and all in a matter of seconds. With a flourish, he tossed it into a pot of water boiling on the stove. "Shame not to be a bit faster, eh Jimbo? Ya can't possibly keep up," he commented, lobbing another perp into the pot. Baiting the boy may have been unsportsmanlike, but Silver couldn't resist rubbing his face in it—and, since he had yet to hear Jim say a word today, he wanted to get a rise out of him. But the boy's only answer was to plop a perp into the pot. Skinning another perp in moments, Silver went on idly, "These metal thingamajigs come in right handy, now and again. Can get the work done in half the time." He turned to throw his into the water and was surprised to see Jim lobbing one of his own. Had he peeled another one already? Frowning with puzzlement, Silver turned to peel another, but when he went to toss it, Jim had one already done and was letting it fly. It splashed into the water just before Silver's. Angry now, he went to work in earnest, his blade shearing off the peeling with more speed than even he had thought possible. He would beat the boy this time for sure.

It was just that, when he turned around, there Jim was, throwing two peeled perps into the boiling pot. Silver was so amazed at how fast his cabin boy was getting his work done that he stood dumbly, even forgetting to throw his own fruit in. While Silver stood and stared, Jim continued what he was doing. Silver inadvertently received his answer to the secret of Jim's quick work. The boy was throwing the perps into his own little pot of boiling water. Once they hit the hot liquid, the peeling would loosen. From there, Jim would scoop them out with a spoon, dip them into a cold-water bath, and rip the skins off with almost no effort. "You little scamp!" Silver exclaimed peevishly. Jim smirked without looking his way. Scowling, Silver went back to peeling. The two of them gradually sped up, going faster and faster in the unofficial race between them. All in all, it turned out to be a good day's work—and a faster-done job than Silver could ever remember doing.

After the surprisingly short time it took them to finish, Silver stayed by the pots to cook down the perps and mash the tubers. He set Jim the task of hauling the gargantuan hine chops up from the hold, putting them on trays, and shoving them into the oven.

They cleaned up while the food cooked—scrubbing, mopping, wiping; there was always endless work to get to. Jim teetered on the edge of rebellion, storming around in high dudgeon as he did his chores. But Silver wasn't about to allow his cabin boy to mutiny against him. Whenever Jim dug in his heels and gave Silver one of his acrimonious looks, Silver met him glare for glare until the boy gave in and went back to work. No landlubbing young upstart was going to give this old pirate any trouble.

The crew were getting antsy by the time the meat was done. Silver was in fine form, dishing out food at top speed. Jim ran up and down the stairs to hand out all the loaded plates. The exhaustion of the day was starting to catch up to him, as his sloppy movements made clear. Silver caught him sneaking a handful of perp skins into his mouth as he threw an armload of them overboard. Trust Jim to never ask for food. He felt immediately and unexpectedly guilty. For his own part, he could go for hours without getting hungry much. But he should have recalled, having once been a boy himself, that hunger didn't often leave young boys alone. Pulling a deep bowl from a nearby shelf, he threw in meat and tuber-mash, slopping perp sauce carelessly over both before passing it to Jim. His cabin boy took it to the above deck right away, apparently keen to eat it as far away from Silver as possible.

Silver carried a load of ten more plates of food to the last of the crew members. When he came back down to the galley, Jim was already back. He must have been virtually famished, to wolf his food down and get back to the hold that fast. "Aloft with ya, lad," Silver ordered him, indicating above them. "Time to bus the dishes." For once Jim didn't move to argue, but went quietly up the stairs. He returned with a stack of dishes half as tall as he was, balancing the teetering stack quite expertly. As he got off the bottom step, however, he staggered and pitched to the side. He would have fallen flat and dropped every dish in his arms, but Silver acted quickly. He caught Jim against his good arm, supporting the boy who seemed suddenly unable to stand upright—and he even managed to rescue the stack of plates with his cybernetic hand. "What's wrong, Jimbo?" he demanded to know, setting the dishes down on the counter and his cabin boy down on an upturned barrel. Jim, lips buttoned as usual, didn't reply. "When I ask you a question, boyo, you answer me, ya hear?" growled Silver. He didn't like the way Jim was looking, pale and almost ill. Finally the boy spoke up, almost too softly to hear.

"I'm hungry." The words caught Silver off-guard, and he almost laughed. Was this Jim's not-so-subtle way of asking for second helpings?

"First bowl wasn't enough for ya, eh, Jimbo?" Jim looked at him sharply, his expression perplexed, wary, as though he were sure that Silver was trying to make an uncalled-for joke. It was then that Silver started wondering just where Jim had taken his food earlier. "The bowl?" he prompted his cabin boy. "You remember, now—the one from earlier. Weren't it enough fer ya?"

Jim shook his head in confusion. "I gave it to Doppler," he replied.

"Ya what?" Silver asked. He ran a hand over his face, aggravated, and explained, "Bowls are for the galley hands only, Jimbo, the galley hands!"

"Well, how was I supposed to know that?" Jim shot back.

"You mean to tell me that you still haven't eaten yet?" Silver lost no time in going back to the stove, slopping a mess of grub into a bowl, and bringing it back to Jim. It wasn't exactly pretty, but it would do just fine—especially since Jim looked as if he might keel over at any moment.

Food thrown into a bowl had never looked so appealing. Yet Jim held it in his hands, looking up at his boss without eating it. Wasn't there a catch? "Eat, Jimbo," Silver insisted. He served himself a bowlful and sank down opposite Jim. "I may be a slavedriver, lad, but I'm not heartless," he pointed out in a matter-of-fact way, and started eating. That was all Jim needed to see. He began gulping down the meat and sauce faster than he'd ever eaten before. He had a feeling that Silver was watching him with some degree of amusement, but he was too famished to care.

That night, Jim flopped into his hammock with dishpan hands, aching feet, and several new blisters. He shut his mouth to hold a yell of vexation at bay: the cyborg was sleeping right next to him again. He pushed his face into his bedroll and did the math. Two days down.

And a whole voyage more to go.

}The End{