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i. jetsam: the part of a ship, its equipment, or its cargo that is cast overboard to lighten the load in time of distress
Stede fished the book out of the water, holding it by the sturdy embossed leather cover in an admittedly misguided attempt to keep the pages from tearing. It was a book of fairy tales, one of Stede’s favorites; carefully, he peeled two of the waterlogged vellum sheets apart to a page that had once shown a lovingly detailed illustration of the little mermaid emerging from the sea on her newfound legs. Now, it was just a blur of black ink.
“I just don’t understand it,” he said. “Ed asked you to do this?”
“Well technically,” Oluwande said, where he was sitting sandwiched extremely tightly between Pete and Buttons, “Izzy did. But he said it was the captain’s orders.”
“Honestly, I thought Izzy had just finally snapped,” Roach piped up from behind him, in equally close quarters with Wee John and the Swede. “But then, you know…”
“Edward left us all to die,” Wee John finished.
Another book bumped up against the hull of the dinghy; Stede retrieved that one as well. “Ed wouldn’t do that,” he said quietly.
“Blackbeard would,” Pete muttered.
In grim silence, Stede surveyed the scene before him: his handbound books and fine furniture waterlogged and bobbing in the gentle swell of the sea, with surely dozens more artifacts—china teapots, gold jewelry, silverware, cut-glass tumblers, shiny bronze candelabras—already sunk to the bottom of the ocean. Stede had given up his wealth to Mary and the children gladly but he had rather expected to have something to come back to.
Still, his dismay at the sight of all his things discarded as unceremoniously as a bucketful of chum was nothing compared to the twisting of his heart at the thought of what must have compelled Ed to do it.
“It’s my fault,” he said heavily.
“What happened between you two, captain?” Oluwande asked. “He was like a whole different person when he came back.”
Several emotions struggled for dominance in Stede’s chest: sorrow and guilt, but undeniably, a deep and newfound joy too.
Stede cleared his throat. “Well,” he said. “It’s rather difficult to say, and, um. I’m sure will come as a surprise to you, but Ed and I… well, we kissed.”
Stede hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Ed kissing him since it happened, even when he was trying his hardest to pretend like he could go back to his old life. It was unlike anything he’d ever experienced, that lingering chaste press of sea-salt softened lips. He’d kissed Mary before, of course, during their rare (and usually drunken) occasions of lovemaking, but Stede had kissed her mostly because he knew it was the thing that was done rather than because he really wanted to.
He hadn’t known a kiss could make your heart jump directly into your throat, that it could steal your breath away and draw an unexpected little noise out of you, that it could make your body buzz with pleasure. Hadn’t known that it could make you want to do it again and again and again.
For a moment the crew just looked at him in blank expectant silence, then Wee John asked, “For the first time?”
Stede blinked. “Er,” he said, “Yes, of course.”
Roach swore audibly, and all at once the tiny boat began to sway dangerously in the water as the crew jostled amongst themselves to pull coins from their pockets and pass them back and forth between each other.
“I was so sure you guys had fucked already,” Pete said mournfully, pouring a handful of doubloons into the Swede’s eagerly awaiting palms.
Stede’s face warmed. “Of course not!” he sputtered.
“You’ve been making eyes at each other for weeks ,” Wee John said.
“Well now,” Stede said. “Making eyes , that’s not, I mean I wouldn’t say exactly — look, that’s all besides the point.”
“And what exactly is the point, cap’n?” Buttons inquired with an arched eyebrow.
“The point,” Stede began, then paused before continuing more softly, “The point is that we made a plan to run away together and I … well, I left him waiting. I … I went home.”
How long had Ed waited, he had to wonder? Stede felt like he could picture it clearly, Ed sitting on the edge of the dock, happy and ready to start their new adventure, his long beautiful hair stirred by the sea breeze. At some point his excitement must have dimmed. Then he must have been confused. Maybe he’d been worried, maybe he’d even come back to the barracks to look for Stede himself. And meanwhile Stede had been stumbling half in a fugue state away from Chauncey’s limp bloodied body, headed for Bridgetown with no other thought than that he had ruined everything he’d ever touched and maybe it had all been a mistake for him to think that he could be anything other than what he’d been raised to be, anyway.
“You went home,” Oluwande repeated in disbelief. “You mean, you stood him up … to go back to your wife and children?”
“Er, yes, that’s about the measure of it,” Stede said, and the whole crew groaned in dismay.
“Aye, it’s no wonder the cap’n was near out his head,” Buttons said somberly.
“How stupid can you be?” Pete said.
“Alright, alright,” Stede said, a bit miffed. “I’ll admit it was not my best decision, but really it worked out because I’ve set things right with Mary now and I’m going to make it up to Ed too.”
“How are you going to do that?” the Swede asked with genuine curiosity.
And it was admittedly an excellent question. What could he say to Ed that would explain why he’d fumbled the heart Ed had offered him and dropped it into the sand? I’ve never done anything like this before. I liked you so much it scared me. I thought I’d muck it all up just like everything else. I didn’t want to hurt you like Mary, I didn’t want you to die like Nigel and Chauncey. I didn’t know what I’d do in China, I don’t even speak Chinese. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’ve come back and this time I’ll never leave. I love you, please can I kiss you again?
“That’s for me to know and you to find out,” Stede said, scanning the sea around them again. “But first we’ve got to catch up to him, and then we’ll work it out and everything will be perfectly—”
He stopped. Something else had just floated within reach of the dinghy. Stede reached into the water and picked it up. It was a darkened, almost black color due to being completely drenched, but the cut of the lapels and the fringe along the cropped hem was unmistakable. Lucius’ red jacket. The one Stede had basically never seen him without.
There were several stunned moments of silence as every last one of them stared at it in dismay.
“Oh, fuck,” Pete finally said.
“Now, now,” Stede said, still reeling. “I’m sure this isn’t what it looks like.”
“Lucius never takes that thing off,” Oluwande said quietly.
“And we didn’t see him at all before we got marooned,” Wee John said. “Not after he went off to give Edward an update on the talent show, remember?”
“And did you see the look on Izzy’s face when I asked about him?” Pete said, sounding furious. “Fucking smug bastard, he already knew.”
“Does anyone know if Lucius can swim?” Stede asked faintly.
“Even if he could,” Buttons said gravely, “There’s nary a spit o’ land in sight besides yonder island we were on.”
“Oh god,” Oluwande said. “Do you think Blackbeard—to Jim, and Frenchie too—”
“If Blackbeard did this I’ll kill him,” Pete growled. “I swear to God I fucking will.”
“As if you could,” Roach muttered.
“No one’s killing anyone!” Stede shouted over them.
“Apparently someone already has,” Wee John said pointedly.
“No,” Stede shook his head. “No, this is all a misunderstanding. All of it.” He stared down at Lucius’ jacket clutched tight and dripping in his fists. He thought of Ed and the soft hopeful light in his eyes the last time Stede had seen him, Ed sitting alone on a pier. “Just a misunderstanding.”
Ed didn’t kill, not since the first time, he’d said so himself. And yes, there had been Calico Jack’s disquieting story about the burning ship, and yes, Stede had seen Ed stab and slash several men during the raid he’d brought along Stede’s crew to observe, inflicting wounds of the sort that would certainly lead to death one way or the other if not properly treated, and yes, he had certainly ordered his men to murder a few merchants here and there, not to mention the nasty business with the escargot fork, but--
But this was Lucius. Lucius, who Ed liked. Lucius who liked Ed, in his own flippant and irreverent way. Lucius who Stede had come to think of as just as essential to The Revenge as the sails and rigging itself. If Ed really had done this…
Living on a small tropical island had given Stede intimate insight into the meaning of a sea change. The same waters that could sparkle calm and inviting in the afternoon sun could turn to a frothing, raging maelstrom with a bad turn of the wind. A storm in the nighttime could stir the sea up into a ruthless creature, and in the morning that same sea would sigh softly upon the beach as scavengers picked over driftwood and wreckage and carcasses left lying in the sand. Even seasoned sailors could stumble shellshocked and shaky into the village tavern after a voyage in which the ocean they thought they knew so well turned on them in some unexpected fashion.
The sea was just like that: a pure mercurial force of nature, untameable. So, so beautiful and so, so dangerous.
Stede was beginning to realize he was even more of a fool than he thought. He wasn’t going to just row up to the side of the ship with an apology and maybe one of his men strumming a romantic tune on the guitar and put everything all back in its proper place just like that. Not if Lucius was dead by Ed’s hand. Not if a sea change had pulled the man Stede knew under the waves, then left him stranded on the beach as something new—something hurt and hungry.
“Captain,” Oluwande said. Stede looked up and met the grim faces of his crewmen. All except for Pete, who was bent over with his head between his legs and Wee John’s consoling hand on his back. “What are we going to do?”
“I…” Stede began, and trailed off, because there was one more thing that had just caught his eye upon the surface of the water.
He dropped Lucius’ jacket and took the oars in hand and with a few strokes brought them within reach of it. The crew looked baffled as he bent out over the water and fished the thing out: a red square of silk, worn thin by many years spent hidden away. The last time Stede had seen it, he had folded it up neatly and slipped it into Ed’s breast pocket, his fingers brushing against the steady warm rise of Ed’s chest and Ed looking at him wide-eyed in wonder under the moon. Now here it was again, amidst all the rest of the wreckage of Stede’s making.
That was another thing you learned about the sea, in time. Just when you thought something was gone and drowned forever, she had a way of bringing it back to you.
“What is that?” Buttons asked as Stede carefully wrung the handkerchief out and unfolded it over his thigh.
“Something special,” Stede said quietly. He folded it into fourths, the same motion as before, but in the plain and simple clothes he was wearing there was no place to put it but in his pants pocket. He’d just have to hold onto it until he could return it to its proper place.
“Er,” Pete said after a few moments. “Are you, uh, crying?”
Stede touched his cheek. Ah. It seemed he was. He hadn’t even noticed, over the maelstrom of emotions wrestling for pride of place in his chest.
“No shame in it, gentlemen,” Stede managed as best he could. Now that he’d realized it, the tears were coming faster and hotter than before.
His crew stared at him in uncomfortable dismay. Oluwande reached out and awkwardly patted him on the knee. “Uh, it’s ok captain. It’s, um, not your fault.”
“It definitely is, actually,” Roach muttered under his breath. Wee John elbowed him hard enough in the ribs to make him wheeze.
Stede waved a hand in front of his face, uselessly. “No, no, it’s not—it’s not that, exactly,” he said thickly—even though it was, a little.
Wordlessly and with great solemnity, Buttons produced a filthy rag from somewhere in the folds of his clothing and offered it over. Stede took it and dabbed delicately at his face with the cleanest corner he could find.
“Do you know, it’s just that, all my life, every time I made a decision I was so terrified it was the wrong thing to do,” Stede continued. He sniffed. “And this is–this is the first time I’ve ever been so sure about what I wanted.”
And what he wanted, of course, was Ed: Ed in whatever form he may be in. Even if Ed were to turn away from him, even if he were to drive a sword through his heart, Stede would love him all the same. It wasn’t something he could help; he understood that now.
“Let’s hope it’s not too late, then,” Wee John said grimly.
“Nae,” Buttons said in a tone of total surety. “Whit’s fur ye’ll no go by ye, cap’n.”
There was a pause. Stede sniffed and replied, “Well said, Mr. Buttons,” although truthfully he did not parse Buttons’ meaning at all, and by the looks on their faces neither did the rest of the men.
Stede folded up the rag and handed it back to Buttons, who just tossed it over the side of the dinghy into the sea. Stede wiped at his face once more with the back of his hand and took up the oars again.
“Well, gents,” he said, summoning up the cheery optimism he’d shown them from day one, “Let’s go get our ship back.”
ii. flotsam : the wreckage of a ship or its cargo found floating on or washed up by the sea; people or things that have been rejected and are regarded as worthless.
Ed didn’t sleep much these days.
That wasn’t anything new, necessarily. Ed was old friends with insomnia; it came and went from his life like a fickle wind, just as much as the days where all he could bring himself to do was roll over and go back to sleep. Usually he’d just take the night watch when sleeplessness struck him, or at least make Izzy stay up and drink or play cards with him so he wouldn’t be alone with his thoughts. But neither of those options felt very appealing to him right now, so here he was out on deck bent with his arms folded on the rail, watching the dark water below.
They were anchored off a string of mostly deserted islands at the moment. Far from naval patrol routes, but far from shipping lanes too. The crew would be getting restless before long; he’d be forced to choose a heading soon. But Ed didn’t know what to do, where to go, that didn’t feel like treading the same old waters.
A bloom of jellyfish was swimming slowly beneath the ship. Ed watched more and more of them leisurely glide into view. It was a rare and captivating occurrence, seeing them swarm like this. In all his years at sea Ed had only seen this many in one place a few times. But he couldn’t stir up the old awed excitement he’d always felt before.
Probably because, despite his best efforts, Ed was thinking about Stede. He tried not to do that very much but he couldn’t help it. Stede Stede Stede, stuck inside his head like a sea shanty with a hundred verses.
The jellyfish glowed faintly blue in the darkness, letting the current carry them by in serene silence. Big gelatinous bells and meters-long tentacles, dozens of them drifting through the water aimlessly without a care for up or down.
They were beautiful creatures, Ed thought, but deceptive, with their pale lengths of tentacles that looked like wisps of cloud or brushed-out cotton; begging to be touched, as if you could lift one to your face like a cashmere scarf and it would be soft and it wouldn’t hurt you.
But it would hurt you, Ed knew. It would sting like tattoo needles wherever it had touched you for days and days and the pain of it would keep you awake at night.
Ed pressed a hand briefly over his eyes and sucked in a deep, shaky breath.
It was just that. He didn’t know what fucking happened . Stede had kissed him back. Stede said yes. Stede held his hand and leaned up close against him as they sat there on the beach. And then he just fucking vanished into the night, and Ed was going crazy because he’d never know why , he’d never know what it was about him that made Stede decide that actually, he wasn’t even worth a fucking goodbye.
That was why he was awake each night, that was why he couldn’t sleep. He was running every single interaction they’d ever had back and forth in his head, trying to figure out where he went wrong. Where he’d misread the signals. Where he’d said something stupid. Where his oh-so-casual touches had gone a bit too far. Even with that kiss, he’d been so, so careful; he’d had a feeling it was new territory for Stede, touching men like that, and he’d thought he’d managed to do it without scaring Stede off.
Ed, of course, had been with men before. Loved men before, even, though none involved would ever, ever call it that. Love with sharp edges, love with blood in its teeth. Love like a whip in the balls, like shears through flesh and bone in the dark. Love that said, touch me hard, make it painful; I trust you to hurt me only in the ways I can bear.
But Stede was something else. Stede had made him walk around with his head full of fluffy white clouds and hummingbird wings in his chest. That one peck of a kiss had, for the remainder of the day, left Ed dreamy and sighing like a debutante at her first ball. Uncomplicated happiness, that kind of love. So he’d thought. But it had turned out to be an even worse kind of love: love that said, I will not hurt you all except in the one way you cannot bear.
Out of the corner of his eye Ed saw a shape coalesce out of the darkness. Izzy. He’d always been good at that, blending in with the shadows. Ed didn’t even know if Izzy was, in truth, just passing by on patrol, or if he’d been watching him stand here staring at the sea.
“Everything alright, captain?” He asked, in what, to Ed, seemed a carefully neutral tone.
Izzy, Izzy. Ed didn’t know what to think about him sometimes. Insubordinate, lately, stubborn and difficult and unable to chill out for two fucking seconds. But also: vitally competent and loyal as a trained dog. Ed had long known that no matter how much Izzy’s pragmatic nature chafed against Ed’s scattered eccentricity, he could count on him to stick around, to take care of the boring or difficult things for him. Still, apparently even Izzy had his limits, and Ed had had to reckon, in that tense furious moment between them in Stede’s cabin, with the fact that he was on the verge of losing that rock-steady loyalty — losing Izzy himself —on top of every other fucking thing.
So Ed had to keep it together and be Blackbeard or else Izzy would leave too, and then Ed would really have nothing left to depend on in this godforsaken world.
Ed stared down into the water for a second longer. It used to be fun, all of this. It used to give Ed a head rush like nothing else to step foot onto a ship they were attacking, the dead-calm center and ruthless commander of a hurricane of chaos. It used to make him feel alive, the deadly strategic dance of combat. It used to be gratifying to see the exact kind of men who used to treat him and his mother like human shit look up at him in terror, to regard him as a madman. And maybe he was a madman, to enjoy it so much, but…it used to be fun. Now he supposed he was just too good at it, too used to it, for it to be anything but stale.
And Izzy…well, Izzy used to be fun too. Ed and Izzy used to be a seamless unit of deadly efficiency; he the head, the mastermind, Izzy the bloodied hands. With a couple of meaningful glances they could coordinate an attack that would bring down a ship in minutes. With a mere tilt of his chin Ed could get Izzy to finish off anyone he wanted. With a few well-placed words Izzy could get Ed up and out of bed on the days the old familiar melancholy felt like it was keeping him pinned down.
And more than that, they used to get drunk together on the regular, and they used to cheat each other at cards, and Izzy used to kneel down to strap on Ed’s knee brace on the mornings he was too stiff to bend over and do it himself. And they used to practice their swordplay on deck until their sparring turned into more of a show, all the crew watching breathlessly as they spun and slashed from forecastle to quarterdeck and back again until one of them got lucky and pinned the other with the point of the blade at the pounding pulse in his throat, both of them panting and flushed and grinning.
It wasn’t entirely Izzy’s fault, really, that it all felt dead and cold to Ed now. It was just that, since meeting Stede, Ed had realized that however well he knew Izzy and Izzy knew him, they’d never fully understood each other. Not in the ways that really mattered.
Although now it seemed like he hadn’t actually understood Stede at all, either. God, he wanted to just cut out his heart and lock it in an iron chest and send it sinking down into an abyssal trench. But at least he could do the next best thing.
There was a cold and callous center inside Edward that he knew well how to tap into. It had first formed just after his father had gone entirely limp at the end of Ed’s rope, in the deafeningly silent moments before Ed had rolled his body off the dock to be meat for the barracudas. It had served him well over the years; it was the thing that made pushing Lucius over the side of the boat seem both obvious and easy, the thing that left him untouched by the boy’s screams. It was the thing that made all those monstrous stories floating around out there about him believable even when he’d never been the one to cast the fatal blow. It was the thing that made emotions distant and dull, locked up somewhere where they could not bother him.
And it was the thing that made him, now, turn to glare at Izzy and say, “Everything’s fine. Don’t you have somewhere to fuck off to, First Mate Hands?”
Izzy paused, though his composure didn’t falter. He studied Ed for a moment; Ed didn’t waver. Narrowed his eyes in warning.
“Yes, sir,” Izzy said, just that; and a moment later he had slid back into the shadows.
Ed watched him go. A little vitriol was enough to keep him in place for now, but Ed was foolish to have let his walls down out here in public where anyone could have seen. Izzy was right about that much.
Get it together, Blackbeard. Let the cold callous thing guide your hand. Hurts less that way, doesn’t it? And you might as well just try and forget about Stede entirely, just take that knife and cut him right out of that soft spot where you’re keeping the memory of him, because even if he did love you then, he doesn’t love you now and he certainly won’t love you again.
The kraken was hungry. It wanted his heart. Every time Ed loosened the leash on it, it took a little more. But it didn’t hurt—in fact, the relief was heady and sweet as strong Portuguese wine. How freeing, how painless, to have no heart, to not care. Not about Stede. Not about Izzy. Not about anything or anyone at all. Take another bite, Ed told it. Or go ahead and just swallow it all. You cold and callous thing.
Ed stuck his hand in his pocket and felt a crumbling half-disc of hardtack he’d left in there. He pulled it out and tossed it down into the sea below. A hungry fish took notice; it swam a curious circle then darted upwards towards the tack. But it never made it, getting tangled up and twitching in the tentacles of a particularly large jellyfish. Stupid bugger. Should have known better.
Ed turned on his heel and made a beeline for his cabin. He’d embrace the insomnia and spend the night poring over charts and shipping schedules, find them a nice fat merchant ship to raid. That, at least, he knew he’d never fail at.
An experienced captain always knew exactly what was happening on his ship, like it was an extension of his own body. As Ed paced across the deck, he knew that Jim was up in the crow’s nest probably plotting their revenge; Frenchie was down in the galley strumming a sad song on his guitar; Izzy was slinking about in the darkness with God knew what on his mind. Fang and Ivan were playing cards on the forecastle and the new crewmen whose names Ed hadn’t bothered to learn were slumbering in their swaying hammocks or toiling through the night watch.
And like a black whirlpool in the middle of it all, there was Ed, the only one who knew the truth: that this whole ship, and everything on it, and Ed himself most of all, was just one big piece of detritus that no one wanted, just wreckage that hadn’t sunk yet. Only a matter of time before it did.
But luckily, without a heart, that was just another thing he wouldn’t have to care about.
iii. derelict: in maritime contexts, goods that have sunk to the ocean floor, relinquished willingly or forcefully by its owner, and thus abandoned, but which no one has any hope of reclaiming
Izzy thought the raid was going predictably well, for the most part.
Surprisingly, the Dutchmen had not chosen to surrender. Maybe they were thrown off by the new addition to Blackbeard’s flag; maybe they were just stupid; maybe, even, they’d heard rumors of what Blackbeard had been up to in recent weeks and thought he’d gone soft enough to give them a chance. Didn’t matter now anyway—they were quickly learning to regret it.
Since marooning the majority of Bonnet’s idiots, they’d picked up a number of new hands that were far closer to Blackbeard’s old standards. They still needed some training and discipline yet, but they were performing well enough right now.
And besides, Izzy was glad they hadn’t surrendered, because up on the quarterdeck Edward was facing off with the captain of the vessel—who was proving surprisingly adept with a blade, for a merchant. And Edward, with the smoky kohl around his eyes and a savage bloodied grin on his face, looked a lot like his old self again. While the merchant captain, clutching at one heavily bleeding arm, looked suitably terrified for his life.
So really, Izzy was figuring they were just about finished with the bloody subjugation portion of capturing this prize when it happened.
Izzy pulled his sword out of the heart of a Dutch crewman he’d just downed and looked up to see a young deckhand, who couldn’t be more than fifteen by Izzy’s estimate, tipping over a barrel of gunpowder about ten feet away. The powder spilled across the deck like glittering ash; the boy himself scrambled up to the stairs to the forecastle. Izzy only realized what his plan was when he saw the boy snatch a lantern off its hook and unlatch its glass housing.
“Hey!” Izzy shouted, lunging towards him, but he was too far to stop the boy from tossing the lantern off his safe place behind the forecastle rail down into the gunpowder trail.
There was a deafening boom. Izzy registered heat and flame, had two precious seconds to realize he was airborne and take in a breath, and then he hit the water.
Izzy was a strong swimmer, and despite the ringing in his ears and white-spotted vision and sudden disorientation, he knew how to suppress the instinctive inhale and to let the rising bubbles tell him which way the surface lay. What he didn’t account for was a sudden powerful tug pulling him farther down.
Izzy looked down and saw his legs had gotten tangled up in a knotted length of rope that was tied to the wheeled housing of a cannon. The cannon had also been blown off the deck by the explosion and its weight was inescapable. Izzy fumbled at the rope with his bare hands but the force of the sinking cannon had pulled it tight around his ankles.
Don’t panic. If you panic you’re already dead. Thankfully they were in the shallow waters around Nassau, so within a few moments the cannon hit the sea floor in a plume of silt. Izzy could look up and still see the sunlight filtering through the churning surface of the water a dozen or so feet above. But it would almost be crueler to drown when the air he desperately needed was only just out of reach.
Izzy reached for his knife at his hip and grappled at empty space. Panic was proving an increasingly difficult enemy to evade. Izzy looked around desperately and saw his knife half-buried in the sand ten feet away. He swam down towards it, the already immense pressure of the water around his head increasing painfully.
Izzy’s pulse pounded urgently behind his eyes as he scrabbled for the knife and sawed frantically at the rope around his ankle. By the time the last fraying threads snapped, darkness was already creeping in on the corners of his blurring vision. Izzy struggled immediately upward with leaden limbs—almost there, almost there, but not near enough.
Strange, Izzy thought distantly through the agony of an oxygen-starved brain. Weren’t you supposed to see your whole life in the moments before you died? But as his body betrayed him and sucked in a lungful of saltwater, the only thing he could think of was Edward standing perched out on the bowsprit of the Queen Anne’s Revenge, the silver in his wind-tousled hair catching flashes of the sunlight.
And then—Izzy’s head broke through the surface of the water. Barely clinging to consciousness, he managed to grab onto a splintered chunk of wood nearby and float listlessly as he proceeded to hack his fucking lungs out.
“Izzy!” He heard from the deck of the ship above, and tilted his head back to see Fang bent over the rail. “Are you dead down there?”
“Do I sound like I’m fucking dead?” Izzy shouted hoarsely back, which triggered another fit of coughing.
Fang looked doubtful. “Well, you sound like you’re dying, anyway.”
“Will you just throw the fucking ladder down, you idiot,” Izzy snarled.
Fang’s eyeroll was nearly audible. “Yeah, yeah, alright, boss.” He disappeared beyond the rail again and a moment later the rope ladder unfurled down the bulkhead with a clatter.
Izzy paddled over with one arm still slung across the hunk of wood, only letting go when he had a good grip on the ladder. Climbing up was a more arduous affair than usual, but soon enough he had both feet on the deck again and took a moment to bend over with his hands on his knees and cough up a little more water. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Fang raise a hand halfway as if about to pound Izzy on the back, but he wisely seemed to think better of it and lowered the hand back to his side.
Izzy finally managed to suck in a breath that didn’t set off another coughing fit and straightened, taking in the scene around him. The raid seemed to be drawing to a close; all the opposing crew had either been killed or tied up, and their own crew had already begun the process of moving cargo from this ship over to the Revenge. The explosion that had sent Izzy flying had blackened a large portion of the deck and obliterated a section of the rail, but it was smoldering instead of actively smoking, so Izzy figured they wouldn’t have to worry about the ship going up in flames while any of their own crew was still on it.
“Where’s the captain?” Izzy demanded of Fang, who shrugged.
“Think he went into the cabin.”
So off to the cabin Izzy went, his boots squelching unpleasantly with each step. He pushed open the door and automatically scanned each corner of the room for threats, despite the fact that Edward was standing loose-postured at the desk in the middle of the room, gun and knife both holstered. If there was any threat, Edward would have taken care of it by now, and there wasn’t anywhere for someone to be hiding in wait. It was a small and intensely practical cabin, verging on austere; Izzy had seen many of its like during his time on naval ships. There was a berth with a single thin sheet and flat pillow, a desk similarly affixed to the floor, an unvarnished side cabinet, and not much else.
Edward had already found perhaps the one thing worth taking in the room: a silver jewelry box, which he had open on the desk in front of him and was rummaging through when Izzy entered. He looked up and paused at the sight of Izzy dripping onto the floorboards. He raised an eyebrow.
“You go for a nice swim, mate?” Edward said lightly, and went right back to the jewelry. He slid a gold ring onto his right hand ring finger and regarded it listlessly. Izzy could tell, just by the flat taste of the air in the room, that whatever bloodlust had animated him during his sword fight on deck had already drained away.
Izzy took a breath. “Something like,” he said.
Edward just hummed, clearly disinterested. He picked up a locket by its chain and flipped the pendant open, plucking out its contents: a lock of gold hair tied by a short length of black ribbon. Edward held it up in the light and ran a thumb over its soft shorn edges, then tossed it aside and slipped the chain over his own neck.
Edward had always had magpie-like tendencies when it came to jewelry, shiny little trinkets he could adorn himself with for that extra flair of drama. Izzy watched him slide on another ring, watched him clasp a bracelet around his wrist, but his movements were rote and the familiar flat expression on his face made Izzy’s stomach turn. Boredom. It’d been a perennial fixture in the days before Bonnet, that expression, and despite all the work Izzy had done to get Edward back to his old self, here it was again.
After a minute in which the clinking of jewelry and the drip of water from Izzy’s hair were the only sounds, Edward looked up again. “You have something to report, Izzy?” he asked pointedly.
Izzy opened his mouth, then closed it again, struck dumb by the realization that in fact, he didn’t actually know why he had come in here. It had been something like instinct, the impulse to see Edward the moment he had dragged himself back out of the drink. And why? So Edward would see him and somehow instantly know how close he’d been to drowning, give him a consoling pat on the back and say there there, mate, you’re alright now ? As if. Edward would never do that, and anyway Izzy wouldn’t abide by being treated like some coddled deckhand on his first voyage.
“We’ve got this ship’s crew fully subdued,” Izzy managed to say. “The boys are transferring the goods over now. Looked like sugar and coffee, mostly.”
“Oh,” Edward said leadenly, and let another moment pass in silence. “That all?”
Izzy met his eyes, his dark expressive eyes.
Izzy had seen those eyes bright with mirth and burning with mania and deepened by rage and swimming with tears, but right now—right now they were dead as old coals. Here they were fresh on the other side of a successful, profitable raid, and where once upon a time Edward would be high with adrenaline by this point, grinning and apt to smack Izzy excitedly on the back, now he was a thousand leagues away. And it made Izzy feel…it made him feel…
No . It made him feel nothing in particular. Because Izzy was a proper pirate and furthermore a proper man . That meant no regrets. No apologies. No second-guessing choices once they were made. One show of weakness, and this world would tear you down—despite all Izzy’s warnings, in the past month Ed had just gone and learned that lesson all over again, himself.
So never mind that more and more these days, Izzy got the vague sickly feeling that somewhere along the way he’d made some sort of miscalculation. Never mind the constant sharp pain where his toe ought to be, the sense-memory of a hand over his mouth and the crunch of toenail between his teeth. Never mind that Edward had never touched him like that before—and, as was somehow worse, hadn’t touched him like that since.
Never mind that the spirit of brilliant violence that had possessed Edward that day had burned itself away within a week and plateaued swiftly back into Ed’s old sluggish doldrums. He’d get over all this eventually. He always did. He always did.
It took Izzy a moment to realize that Edward was actually looking at him for a second, his gaze flickering from the water pooling around Izzy’s feet to the singed patches along his shirt sleeves to just above his eye where, Izzy discovered when he lifted a hand to touch, half his eyebrow had been burned away.
All he said, though, was, “Izzy. Anything else?”
He sounded almost expectant. Izzy recognized a chance to hold on to Ed’s attention when he saw it; but, as ever, he had no fucking clue what Edward wanted from him.
“No, Blackbeard,” he said, because it was the truth, wasn’t it, even if it meant watching with a sinking feeling as Edward visibly drifted away again.
“Right then,” he said, flipping the lid of the jewelry box shut. “Let’s wrap this up. Double rations for the crew tonight too, I think. Someone might as well enjoy all this.”
Izzy’s gut twisted at that as Edward breezed past him back towards the deck. After he was gone, Izzy let out a sigh and went over to pick up the jewelry box. There were plenty of precious metal trinkets still rattling around in there after Edward had taken his pick.
And just because Edward had discarded something didn’t mean it couldn’t still be of use, couldn’t still be valuable to him, in the end.
Izzy tucked the box under his arm, heavy and cold against his still-wet skin, and followed after Edward who, of course, hadn’t bothered to pause and look back.