Chapter Text
It’s a love story. Because of course it is. Because Izzy really did love.
There is something to knowing that the way you love someone is not in a way that they can return. That the problem was never between the two of you, was never on the other person. That it’s just you that’s the issue. A lost cause from the start. Izzy could barely look at Ed through that love at times. Couldn’t turn to face him, couldn’t stand to witness himself laid that bare.
When Ed stabbed him, Izzy was looking him directly in the eyes.
It had been Izzy’s damn fault. It always had been.
He’d be an idiot. He’d assumed that once Ed came back to real piracy that everything would be exactly how it was before. Izzy grit his teeth when Ed punched him. Ed was barely even conscious as he did it, barely there. Somehow the knowing that he didn’t even really mean it made it hurt more.
Izzy looked at his bruises and thought about how this was so much worse.
One of those nights, quiet and biting, Izzy leaned out over the rails. The familiarity of the ocean comforting. It was good to have something that loved and took in a way that was predictable. Good to have something that he knew. Izzy stared out into the darkness, where the horizon would be, then glanced down. And he saw Lucius, half dead, holding loosely onto the ship’s hull.
There was no moon that night and Izzy was tired and his jaw hurt and he could feel the space in his shoe where his toe was supposed to be. He blinked at Lucius, once, twice, then frowned. And threw down a ladder.
The man was barely awake enough to know that there was another person next to him as Izzy dragged him to the first mate’s quarters. Izzy slept on the floor that night, waking up with his neck stiff and back aching.
Jim was an early riser and Izzy knew that. That morning he brushed by them as close as he risked, slipping a key to them, giving a glance back to his room. Jim’s expression didn’t even shift. But he felt them take the key from his hand.
It’s a process to teach someone to eat again. It’s very easy to give someone who’s starved too much food. To let them gorge themselves only to watch them vomit it back up later. The body has to relearn to take care of itself, has to relearn how to live. That evening Frenchie, Izzy, and Jim made a plan to split their rations so that Lucius would have enough to recover.
The time passed slowly, dizzyingly. The four of them grew into the habit of sitting together at night. It was safer in numbers, not something that Izzy had worried about since before Ed had become Blackbeard, back when they were just kids.
It was one of those nights, a candle burning low, the ship rocking, that Izzy realized that maybe this had never been good. It was a strange thought, almost painful to consider. Because Izzy loved him like breathing but maybe that love hadn’t been good. Maybe there was nothing to do but wait for it to pass, to morph. Izzy looked at his scars, felt the pain in his muscles and chest.
It had never been a good thing. Izzy considered the three people around him. Lucius had slowly been regaining his strength, but the three of them were all tired and gaunt. Not like how they‘d been when he’d first met them. Izzy thought of Fang and Ivan, the way the pair glanced worriedly at him when they thought he wasn’t looking. How they made sure he ate. Maybe Izzy deserved this. But there was a chance that the rest of them fucking didn’t.
For what it’s worth, it took a full moon cycle before Ed found out that Izzy had been harboring Lucius in the first mate’s quarters.
It was a testament to both how distracted Ed had been and how sloppy Izzy had gotten that it had taken that long. Because it was, fundamentally, Izzy’s fault. He’d been tired and working for too long and bearing the weight of other’s errors and he’d left the door unlocked. And Ed had found Lucius.
Izzy was summoned to Ed’s cabin, the same way he was every evening. He went through what had happened on the ship in the same clipped tone he always used. Ed had sat there like a thundercloud. And then he’d stabbed him.
There had been no build up to it, no drama like Izzy was used to. Izzy held his hand against his side. The stab wound should’ve been further to the left than it was.
“You’re dismissed.” Ed said. As Izzy looked at him, his blood seeping between his fingers, he couldn’t tell whether Ed had meant to kill him or not.
Izzy stumbled out of the captain’s quarters, one hand holding pressure against the wound, the other against the wall to steady him. He felt himself starting to slip and worked to make it to the bed in the first mate’s quarters before he passed out.
When he came to, he was propped up. Jim’s hands on his shoulders, Lucius’s on his legs. The pair holding him down as Frenchie threaded the needle. Frenchie was a good musician, born with steady hands, not a tremor there. As he picked up the needle there was the barest hint of a shake. Izzy could see it clearly.
“I’m sorry.” Izzy found himself saying. He wasn’t sure he’d ever said it before. Over and over.
It was tiring. All of this was. Even before this and before Stede, back when it had just been the two of them, Izzy had been tired. An irreversible kind of exhaustion, one that he would never claw his way out of. He felt his eyes start to slip close, the pain too sharp and the pressure too great.
Then he felt a hand against his cheek, too tense to be gentle, too rough to be loving. Jim Jimenez leaned in close to his face.
“You’re not dying on me Israel Hands. Not while you still owe me.” They hissed it at him. Because god knows Izzy wasn’t the only tired person in the room. But still, Frenchie’s stitches were steady and good enough. And Izzy felt himself, once again, lose consciousness.
When he came to the second time, Lucius was sitting by his bed.
He jumped half out of his skin when he saw Izzy’s eyes open, letting out a string of swears.
“Loud.” Izzy croaked, he barely had the energy to glare.
“Count on you to be a prick after being stabbed.” Lucius complained, but his voice was quieter.
Lucius made him drink a glass of water. Izzy drained all of it, but grimaced as he did.
“You’re not fucking dead?” Izzy asked, his voice cracking and dry.
Lucius smiled, it wasn’t convincing. “Tell me about it. Blackbeard’s got me writing hate mail.”
Izzy snorted, then winced.
Lucius tutted at him. “Sleep, Dizzy Izzy.”
“Fuck off.”
For a while, Izzy did try to stay awake. He really did. But eventually he gave in. And he let himself rest.
Izzy couldn’t help but think that perhaps Ed really had intended for the stab wound to kill him. There was an unspoken expectation that no matter what happened, Izzy would never really stay hurt. He looked down at the stitches on his chest and the way Frenchie itched for his lute and how Lucius stared at his wooden finger like he could make Pete find him from that alone. The way Jim got all quiet, their anger unspeakable.
He and Jim had stayed up one evening together, though only one person was needed to be on watch at a time. Frenchie and Lucius were already asleep, piled onto each other.
“If it wasn’t for you, I’d’ve killed him already.” They’d said to him, spinning that knife of theirs in their hands. A family heirloom, they’d confided in him one night, the kind of thing worth dying for. A thing worth killing with.
“I can’t let you do that.” Izzy had answered, but there’d been no anger to it, just resignation.
“Yeah. I can wait.” Jim had looked at their knife, the candlelight reflected back in it.
It sometimes felt as if Izzy only formed relationships when it was needed to survive. The only thing that ever got him to care for another person was desperation.
And a week after he got stabbed, Izzy took a rowboat and set off to find Stede Bonnet.
It had been a stupid idea, but if Ed thought that he was recovering or dead, then he at least could slip out unnoticed. That theory had been wrong, Ed had torn up half the ship looking for him, convinced that he’d killed him. That if he looked in the right corner he’d be able to find his best friend’s dead body. Abandonment made Edward Teach into a dying man, but even through the episode and the anger, he knew that something was wrong. Ed barely even remembered stabbing him. Izzy would have that scar until he died.
Izzy did make it to Stede and the rest of his crew eventually. He knew he would. He showed up tired and dehydrated and shaking, but Frenchie’s stitches had held up. Stede looked down at him and for a moment Izzy worried that he’d be left in the goddamn rowboat to die. Then Stede threw down a ladder and Izzy began the shaky climb up it.
He almost collapsed after he made it up the deck, making his way slowly to the ground, one hand against the wood for support. On closer inspection, even through his cloudy vision, Stede looked almost surprised to see him.
“Find Ed.” Izzy choked out before any of the really just pile of people on the deck could say anything. It looked like the whole fucking crew was there. “Please.” Izzy added.
“Why shouldn’t I kill you?” Stede asked, his voice didn’t even waver. He looked taller and he’d grown a beard, like he was healthier somehow. Still wearing too pretty clothes for the job, but he looked like a real fucking pirate. God knows where he’d even gotten this ship from. But something was off. His face had these lines of sadness in it that Izzy knew hadn’t been there before.
“I don’t fucking know. Find him. Fix this.”
“I will. Where is he?”
And Izzy told him. Spitting out the words. And he felt it again. That wave of guilt and regret and it was his fault. All of this was his fucking fault.
“I’m sorry.” Izzy finally choked out. What he’d been trying to say. I’m sorry and I’m dying and my best friend is a goddamn monster and I love him and there’s nothing I can do.
Stede crouched down next to Izzy. He bared his teeth as Stede leaned in, trying to get away. Stede just frowned and touched his bare hand to Izzy’s forehead.
“Mr Roach!” Stede called. “Our guest has a fever. Please make sure he’s well.”
At that, Izzy felt himself, once again, slip.
A snap in his ear and Izzy had it in him still to flinch. He looked Roach in the eye and he, for once, wasn’t smiling.
“Drink.” Roach said, holding a glass in one hand. “Then you can sleep.”
Izzy drained the cup, it turned out to be water. Izzy felt his own hands shaking. “Are you going to kill me?” He managed.
Roach smiled at that. “Not today.”
And Izzy went to sleep.