Chapter Text
Izzy liked to think he was a reasonable man. Do an honest day's work and he’d have no problem with you. It’s what made him so damn good at his job. He saw what needed to be done and made sure it happened. A perfect compliment to Blackbeard. Blackbeard was a fearsome captain, the kind that legends were made from, but he was not a man made to manage the day to day operations of a ship. Blackbeard looked to one Israel Hands for such things, the only man he would ever trust with something as precious as the running of his ship. It was an honor and a privilege to serve.
Life was about as perfect as could be until Stede Bonnet.
Stede fucking Bonnet.
The sorry excuse for a man had barreled into Izzy's life with all the subtlety of a cannon shot and proceeded to sink his perfect life just as quickly. Izzy could do little more than watch as Bonnet pranced around the Revenge somehow charming Blackbeard with his idiocy. He dragged the most fearsome man Izzy had ever met down from his god-like status and turned him into a tea drinking, silk robe wearing shell of a man who was all too happy to spend his days fucking about with the most incompetent group of pirates Izzy had ever met.
Izzy had hoped that when Blackbeard had returned alone and regrettably beardless from his time with the English that he would finally have his captain back. And for a time he did. Blackbeard became even more fearsome than before. The Kraken was pure hate and fury given physical form and Izzy had never been prouder to serve. Those months of pillaging and burning would forever live in his mind as some of his fondest memories.
But it all fell apart the moment Bonnet stepped back on board the ship. Izzy regretted not simply shooting the idiot in his dumb face as soon as he'd laid eyes on him; but he had hoped that the Kraken might devour Bonnet in his rage. It was just his luck that Bonnet did in fact get devoured, just in the exact opposite way Izzy had wanted. He should have known the moment his captain pulled Stede into his private quarters that it was all over but Izzy held onto his foolish hopes. Hopes that were dashed when the pair reemerged hours later looking decidedly more ruffled and with Bonnet covered in smudges of black face paint in places it had no reason being.
And just like that, the Kraken was gone. Stede Bonnet had taken him away and left Izzy with the lovestruck fool who let himself be called Ed by the least deserving man in the world. It hurt watching his captain regress to a man that let Stede braid ribbons into his hair and giggled (goddamn giggled!) when holding hands. Every day Blackbeard spent plotting raids for new books to fill the shelves he had emptied or wandering after Bonnet like a lost puppy was torture to Izzy. He couldn't just stand by and watch as Blackbeard slipped further and further away from him each day.
There was really only one solution to the problem. Stede Bonnet would have to die.