Chapter Text
“What is it, love?”
Stede woke very suddenly to the sound of shuddering breaths, and reached out in the dark. His palm found warm skin that trembled under his touch, and he scooted closer to Edward, pressing himself against his side.
“The dream again?”
Edward let out a quiet noise to confirm, but words seemed to be a bit beyond him for the moment. Stede pressed close to his side and waited for him to stop shaking, the only thing that seemed to be of any help at all when this happened. It wasn’t often that Edward had the dream, but it always left him rattled. Stede wound an arm around his waist, held him close, and waited.
“Dunno,” said Edward, then stopped. Stede heard him swallow, then draw a ragged breath. He waited some more, not wanting to throw him any more off kilter than he’d already been thrown.
“Dunno what I’d do,” said Edward finally, his voice soft and hoarse like he’d forgotten how to speak properly. It frightened Stede a little, though he’d never let that part on. It was a voice he wasn’t used to hearing from his lover except for on nights like this.
Edward lapsed into another silence, and Stede nudged at his side.
“If we’d never met,” said Edward finally, “I mean, what are the chances-”
“Of you holding up my carriage? Very likely, given what I’ve heard about your prolific career as a highwayman.”
That got the desired huff of laughter from Edward.
“S’pose you’re right. Would’ve bumped into you eventually.”
“And we’ve both retained our dashing good looks, so you needn’t worry about being charmed by me if you’d ran into me a little later.”
“What about earlier? What if I’d tried to hold up a baby?”
“You would have been a baby too.”
“A baby with a gun. Stede, I could have killed the both of us.”
“Have you ever seen a baby hold a gun? You probably would have dropped it. Babies don't have those kinds of fine motor skills.”
“Hmm. I’m glad we didn’t meet as babies, then.”
The laughter this time was forced, and Stede felt Edward's head come to rest on his shoulder.
“Edward…” Stede’s voice was tentative, sensing the swirling mass of something hovering below the surface of Edward’s attempts at humour. There was danger perched in the darkness with them, poised and ready to strike if he said the wrong words.
“I don’t know what you dreamed about, but… we’re here, aren’t we? What’s the point of worrying about something that didn’t happen?”
He felt his nightshirt pull against his skin as Edward’s fingers curled in the fabric, holding on tight.
“That’s the problem,” said Edward, “right now, it feels like it did .”
Stede didn’t know what to say to that. He held Edward close, hoping the physical contact might help to ground him, remind him that they were here, together, like they’d been for so long now. He hoped that the sun would come up soon to chase away whatever it was that had risen up overnight inside Edward’s subconscious. Then the two of them could go downstairs and open up the saloon. Edward could tinker away on the piano while Stede got the place ready. Sunlight would filter through the dust in the room and hopefully they’d forget for a while that there’d been a night at all.
*
When Izzy woke that morning, it was to a tapping at the window. The sun hadn’t fully risen yet, and it was a grayish haze that made its way into his cabin with the promise of a blessedly cool morning.
He’d had the dream again. The tapping always came when he had the dream, and he could still taste the faint salt of sea spray on his tongue, still felt unsteady on his feet when he rose and braced to keep his balance, only to find that the ground was unmoving. Of course the ground was unmoving. They were nowhere near the sea.
The tapping was growing more insistent, and Izzy limped over to the window, foregoing his cane in favour of getting the noise to stop.
“Alright, in you get,” he muttered, opening the window with a grating creak.
The seabird hopped in, looking around the room with its beady black eyes. Izzy ran a finger over the top of its head, then went and shook out a few peanuts from a jar on the shelf, which it greedily snapped up.
“What d’you know that I don’t?”
The bird watched him as he got a fire going and filled the kettle with water and coffee.
He didn’t particularly mind its presence. It was probably the one companion he had around these parts, and certainly the least annoying conversationalist in town. He only wished that he didn’t have to have the dream first for it to show up.
He’d given up on trying to reach for the details. They slipped through his fingers like so much saltwater, leaving him only with the faint impressions of having been at sea amidst acrid smoke and muffled shouting, and a pain that lingered in his bad foot when he woke.
The seabird finished its peanuts and hopped over to where he stood, leaning against the wall while he waited for his coffee. It paused by his hand and stooped to nudge at him.
“Leave ‘us alone will you?” muttered Izzy, though there was no real irritation in the words. He ran a finger absently along the feathers on the bird’s chest while he waited for his coffee to boil. Sometimes he wondered whether the presence of the seabird was some sort of omen, a harbinger of bad luck perhaps, the sort of thing that strange man named Buttons would call out about from the back of the donkey cart he rode around town. Izzy wasn’t particularly worried if it was - there was little in his life that could go much worse for him at this point, but at the same time he couldn’t bring himself to quite believe that there was any ill will in the bird.
He always felt unmoored after the dream. Bereft, like he’d lost something important while floating in his subconscious, and by waking he’d left it behind. There was a sharp sting of emptiness in his chest on mornings like these, and a part of him dared to wonder if perhaps the seabird was simply taking pity on him.
“You’re certainly the one who causes me the least amount of trouble,” he muttered, pouring himself a cup of piping hot, bitter coffee, “don’t think I’d much like you if you could actually talk.”
Which reminded him that that godawful Stede Bonnet would be around later today. The man was always hovering around the graveyard when there was a burial happening, arms full of wildflowers like there was nothing better around to occupy his time. Izzy made sure that any attempts at socialising after a burial were kept to a minimum, but the fact that he needed to make the effort was more than enough to secure Bonnet’s place in his mind as an annoyance.
As if to respond to the turn his thoughts had taken, the seabird nipped lightly at his fingers.
“S’not like I’m sayin’ it to his face,” said Izzy, “and he deserves it when I do anyway. Man can’t leave me to just do my fuckin’ work.”
Another nip had Izzy pulling away and splashing hot coffee over his hand. Just his luck.
*
Izzy started his work as early as possible to stay out of the worst of the day’s heat. It was relatively simple. Most days involved keeping the graveyard clean and well tended to. Sometimes he would need to dig a grave. Not every day, but significantly more often here than most other towns. Izzy had grown to quite enjoy the times where he would have a day’s hard work behind him, and he could end the day pleasantly sore and tired so that sleep might come a little more easily.
Today would involve a grave.
The seabird perched nearby while Izzy took the necessary measurements and fetched his tools. When it had first arrived in town, when the dreams had first started, when Bonnet and that… partner of his had opened their saloon, it had made an attempt to ride on his shoulder. For some reason it bothered him. It reminded him of picture books, where a pirate with an eyepatch and a skull on his hat would pose with a parrot on his shoulder. For some reason the mental image bothered him, and for some reason the seabird appeared to respect that. Or maybe his shoulder was just too bony and uncomfortable.
“Gotta be careful I don’t start thinkin’ we’re actually havin’ a real conversation,” muttered Izzy, “first sign of madness, you know.”
He dug out shovelfuls of dirt, tossing them to the side with practised ease. The repetitive motion was enough to erase the last vestiges of the dream from his mind, keeping it blissfully blank of anything but the focus on his work. The seabird stayed for a little while, until Izzy was absorbed enough that it could fly off without being noticed.
After a few hours, Izzy snapped out of the trance he'd fallen into to discover that his arms and back ached, and that he was parched. He sat with his back to a particularly large headstone to keep the sun off his head while he cooled down, drank some water, nibbled on some bread and dried beef. He was about to start again when he heard the sound of footsteps coming towards him.
He was on his feet in an instant - people didn’t normally come here for the sake of it. The people buried in this graveyard had mostly been passing through, laying low. Being one of the last towns around without an official Mayor or Sheriff around to keep an eye on things, it was both a blessing and a curse. One could move around mostly unheeded, might even find help if Jim or Oluwande decided they were worth their time. But then again, enough people ended up here to make the gamble a precarious one.
People in the graveyard had seldom been up to any good in the land of the living.
Two men had arrived, rich ones from the looks of their clean jackets and embroidered waistcoats. Their clothes matched - and so did their faces. Twins?
“What d’you want?” growled Izzy, his grip tightening on his shovel.
“Good morning, lovely to meet you,” said the twin on the right, inclining his head. The one on the left did the same.
“What,” said Izzy again, “do you want?”
“Straight to business. Excellent, I appreciate that greatly, people like you have such a refreshing way of getting right to the heart of the matter. My name is Nigel, and this here is my brother Chauncey. We’re new in town, you see.”
“And we’d just like to know the whereabouts of the, ah, the Revenge. ”
Izzy rolled his eyes - of course they wanted directions there.
“Not a fan?” said the man on the left, Chauncey.
“Why would I not be? Saloon’s the fuckin’ social hub of the town, isn’t it?” snapped Izzy.
Chauncey tipped his head to the side, a glimmer of something in his eyes. Excitement?
“Go on,” he said, the corner of his mouth curling upwards.
To tell the truth, there was no real reason why Izzy should hate the place, except of course that he felt… wrong there. People inside were happy, chatty, full of life while he was tired and grey and stank of the grave. At best, he’d be pitied if he set foot in there, and at worst - at worst he’d have to speak to Edward .
Not that he even knew the man, not really, but every time the two of them so much as saw each other Izzy would feel a strange kind of anger, one that made his back itch with sweat and his teeth grind while his eyes searched desperately for something to look at that wasn’t Edward Fucking Teach.
The worst of it was, that Edward… Edward seemed frightened of him. Not anything that approached outward terror, but the words he exchanged with Izzy were terse, like he was waiting for something terrible to happen. Bracing himself.
“Stede Bonnet is really fuckin’ annoying. Shows up to put flowers on all the graves and talk my ear off on the regular.”
That was an easy enough fact to fall back on.
“You keep following the main road into town though, you can’t miss it. Biggest building there, painted up all gaudy-like. Looks and sounds like a carnival.”
The twins lingered a moment longer, watching Izzy as he took a tentative step back towards his work.
“If that’s all?” said Izzy, eager to get the fuck out of this conversation.
“For now,” said Nigel, inclining his head again, “you’ve really been a great help, Mr..?”
“Izzy.”
“Mr Izzy.”
Not really what Izzy had been going for, but he’d take it if it meant these two would leave. And leave they did, which was good because they were carting the body meant for this grave up here in a few hours, and he still had half a hole to dig before he had to contend with Stede Bonnet.
