“Here is Bill Jukes, every inch of him tattooed, the same Bill Jukes who got six dozen on the Walrus from Flint before he would drop the bag of moidores”
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Name: William Jukes Nicknames: Bill, Billy, Jukes Age: 23 Birthday: December 27, 2001 Height: 6′2″ Sexuality: Bisexual but doesn't use a label Occupation: "Ex" gang member / Bouncer
Bill Jukes never had a place to call home or people to call family. He was born to vagrant parents, both of them dying by the time he could start making meaningful memories. He was found as a child by a member of the Jolly Roger gang and taken in, raised in their culture of crime and violence to become a perfect obedient dog for James Hook to use and abuse, as he did all his men. Though their leader was the most ruthless of the bunch, the rest of the gang were no less cruel, Billy suffering greatly at their hands until he developed a thicker skin to cope. The only man who was kind to him was Robert Mullins, who became the only sort of paternal figure Billy had ever known.
Mullins got sick when Jukes was fifteen, eventually succumbed to his illness and left Billy alone in the gang. Without his one real friend around, Billy entertained thoughts of finally escaping this lifestyle, even though he wouldn’t know where to go or what to do being paperless and uneducated in anything besides the life of crime. He couldn’t imagine anyone but other unsavory characters hiring a mean-looking, heavily-tattooed kid. When he was sixteen, he finally took his chances on stealing from the gang’s coffers—i.e. Hook’s coffers. Despite doing the dirty work which pulled in so much of the money the Jolly Roger crew collected, each member was only awarded a small percentage, while the rest belonged to the man at the top.
Billy had no savings, no means to make a better life for himself, so he stole what he could carry hoping it would last him long enough to find his feet in the world, and tried to run. If he had fled with only the clothes on his back, they might have let him get away, but taking the money was his mistake. When he was caught, he was punished severely: six dozen lashes that left him beaten and broken down. Most who crossed Hook weren’t that lucky. He should have been dead, but it seemed like the captain still had a use for him, and the punishment was enough to keep him in line for the time being.
The purpose Hook ultimately revealed was for Bill to act as a spy, infiltrating the Lost Boys to get close to Peter Pan and report back any weaknesses they might exploit. It came as no surprise to Billy that he’d been chosen for this role, being both the only member of the gang young enough to fit in with the Lost Boys and having a backstory that the orphan-herding Pan would be sure to fall for. Hook’s vendetta against the boy was no secret to the entire crew, and he understood that one of Peter’s weaknesses was his good nature—it wouldn’t even occur to him that someone like Billy Jukes coming in and vowing he had renounced his old ways would be lying.
So that was what he did. Cornering one of the lost boys Jukes had met before who seemed an easy mark—Slightly had found him crying in his desperation over Mullins’ sickness and offered to help get him medicine back when they were teenagers—he fed him a sob story of how he was seeking refuge from the gang, and Peter was the only one who could potentially keep him safe from Hook. Feeding Pan’s ego was another exploitable weakness, because it worked like a charm and Billy was living with the lost boys before he knew it.
The only problem is that the longer he lives with them and not only sees how a real family interacts, but experiences it firsthand as they include him and treat him like one of their own, the more Jukes’ hardened heart softens. He’s no longer sure how he can go through with his mission now that he knows Peter and the rest of the group personally, dreaming of a future where he truly does defect from Hook’s gang and is enveloped in the lost boys’ protection. However, the last time he entertained thoughts of leaving the gang for a different life, he was suitably crushed. This time, he knows he wouldn’t get off with a warning, but would meet his end on an iron hook.
Bonus facts:
Jukes started getting tattoos very young. Nobody in their right mind would tattoo a child, but the Jolly Roger gang wasn’t made up of sound-minded individuals. Ink was free from their resident tattoo artist, a man by the name of Skylights, so Bill was free to get as many as he wanted, even if the oldest ones had stretched and distorted as he grew up.
When his scars from the whipping healed, Jukes started getting a large piece done on his back to cover them up, but Hook killed Skylights before he could finish, so only some of his scars are covered.
Billy has a ridiculously high pain tolerance; years of abuse, getting inked and training his mental fortitude made it possible for him to endure a lot of physical trauma before he’ll break.
The only reason Bill knows how to read and write is because Mullins taught him; he probably would have been illiterate if his rearing was left only to the rest of the gang. He still doesn’t care much for speaking properly or spelling anything correctly.
After moving in with the lost boys, he got a real job for the first time in his life, working at the House of Mouse as a bouncer (and he has Cubby to thank for the recommendation that got him hired there.)
