Work Text:
"No, please, I can't go back under," Lucius gasped, his sweaty hands scrabbling to grasp his rescuer's arms. He was pale as the sheet beneath him and sporting a nasty bruise on his forehead, pupils blown wide. "You can't let go, please, please."
"Calm down, you're in a bed." Lucius's hands were pried away and a blanket was drawn up to his shoulders, tucked tight around his writhing form. The boy's eyes darted wildly around the room, seeing nothing at all but his brain's own mirage. "Keep your fucking voice down."
"He thinks he's drowning," spoke the shadow in the doorway, making Lucius crane his head to find the source. "Must've scrambled his brains on the way down."
"And it'll stay that way if he wants to live." Izzy Hands looked down at the boy, curling his lip in distaste at the tears that flowed freely down his cheeks. Lucius didn't even seem to realize they were there, his eyes rolling in his head at a rate that was dizzying to watch. "Blackbeard finds out, he'll drown him in Bonnet's tub like Fang's lame pup."
"Not if he dies in my bed first," Jim snarled, stepping forward into the lamplight. Their hand still hovered over their belt, though their knives had been seized. "You plan on leaving him here to starve, huh? Sick bastard like yourself would rather make it slow and painful. Fucking coward."
Izzy gripped his cane tighter, mentally picturing just how satisfying it would be to swing it right into the other's skull. "You want him dead, keep asking questions," he growled, focusing on the task at hand of shoving pillows behind the bedridden boy's back. "Do the both of you a favor and shut up."
"Aye aye, captain," Jim sneered, falling into place at Izzy's side. Lucius was mumbling under his breath, strings of nonsense that seemed to only be comprehensible to himself. He was still soaked to the bone with stale seawater, the saltiness wafting up to Jim's nose. "Shouldn't we dry him off or something?" they said with slightly less poison, side-eyeing the First Mate. "No wonder his head's still under the ocean. He's getting our bed wet."
"Oluwande's not around to use it anymore," Izzy spoke gravely, staring holes into the boy's crossed eyes. He could feel Jim tense up beside him, but the explosion never came. Lucius suddenly met his gaze with enough intensity that Izzy half-expected him to sit up in bed.
"Pete," he breathed, barely above a whisper but filled with almost enough anguish to make Izzy's heart grow to a normal size. Almost. "Where's... Where's Pete?"
Izzy spun on his heels, hobbling towards the door as quick as his cane and still-bleeding foot would take him. "Don't let him out of this room," he ordered without turning around. "or it'll be on your head."
"Why are you doing this, man?" Jim's voice was sharp, demanding, but Izzy couldn't look over his shoulder and face them. Couldn't look at the fucking mess he'd forced Blackbeard's hand in creating. "Thought you had a thing for licking the captain's fucking boots."
"Shut the fuck up," Izzy muttered again, with no real heat behind it. The fire in his chest had gone out the moment he looked over the side of the ship and saw the boy half-drowned, tangled in a fishing net. Smoke filled his lungs, his throat, his brain. "Ivan's guarding the door. Try not to let him fucking die."
Izzy yanked the door open, stepped through it, and slammed it shut hard enough to echo down the corridor. He felt a little like he was drowning himself, his toe throbbing in his boot with the telltale burning of an impending infection. He stalked by Ivan without either of them saying a word.
Deep in the ship, shut off from the world by a cabin door that barely hid a murmur from strained ears, the Kraken wept. Izzy Hands sank to his knees before it, leaning his forehead against the wood, ever the loyal servant to the dread Captain Blackbeard.