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Roach is a fucking terrible ship’s doctor.
There hasn’t always been one, on the ships Izzy’s been on - they all know how to sew up a wound, chop off a limb, cauterize a bullet hole if needs must. Anyone with more knowledge than that is a rare commodity, an oddity really, if they’ve had that kind of book learning but they’re still out here with society’s refuse.
But Bonnet’s crew are all green as hell. From the sounds of things, Roach’s past crews haven’t been much better - ragtag ships he’s hopped to and from, never staying long enough for anyone to realise he’s little more than a good hand with a knife. The casual, sure grip Roach keeps on his cleavers is more than enough to convince them.
In the galley though - that’s where he earns his keep. For all that he lacks in finesse when sewing up a wound or making his prescription of alcohol, willow bark, and poppy, in the galley he’s in his element. He works quickly and methodically, and Izzy wishes he were allowed to stay and watch because there has to be something magical about the way he can get a full breakfast spread onto Bonnet’s table while simultaneously keeping the crew full and happy - and still have time to set aside that spiced, buttery porridge Izzy prefers to eat. Izzy’s seen the adjustments Roach makes - Frenchie doesn’t like things that crunch, and Swede stubbornly refuses to eat any sort of fruit or vegetable. Roach swaps things out, makes adjustments. Hides sauerkraut in the Swede’s food so his teeth don’t start to fall out again.
Roach watches him as he enters the galley with an armful of jars, eyes moving while his hands continue to chop the vegetables on his board into small, even cubes.
“Good haul today,” says Izzy, putting the jars on his countertop and then taking a step away.
He puts his hands behind his back and waits for Roach to be done, looking off somewhere to the side. He knows, on an instinctual level, that he is in Roach’s domain right now.
The rhythmic sound of chopping stops.
“What are these?” says Roach.
“Found them. The writing - it looks like the one you can read.”
The one that goes from right to left in elegant strokes and dashes. He hears the clink of glass on wood as Roach picks them up to inspect them.
Roach gives a low whistle.
“These are good. Expensive. Some of them are quite hard to find.”
Izzy feels a warm glow envelop him from somewhere deep inside his chest.
“Thank you,” says Roach, “we will eat well with these, I think.”
“Good.”
“Open them,” says Roach.
Izzy can’t help himself - he finally looks up. Roach is gesturing at the jars with his knife.
“What?”
“Open them, have a smell. I want you to tell me if there are any you think you will not like.”
The warm feeling grows as Izzy does this. It’s like a coal, the way it glows, and it fills him with such a strange energy that he wants to shout, wants to - wants to squeeze something, wants to bite-
He makes a face at a dark, licorice-smelling powder, and Roach huffs out a laugh at him.
“That one will taste different when I put it in the food.”
“Then how will you know if I like it or not?” teases Izzy.
“You have already eaten this one, little man.”
Izzy puts the lid back on, screws it shut as tightly as he can manage.
“Do you do this for everybody on this ship?”
The corner of Roach’s mouth ticks upwards.
“Only the people I like.”
A faint memory of Bonnet red faced, fanning his mouth and chugging water enters his mind’s eye, and Izzy lets out a quiet chuckle.
“I’ll take that as a compliment then,” he says, “don’t work too hard, Roach.”
“The pot and the kettle,” says Roach.
The chopping resumes. Izzy wants to say more, but he knows he doesn’t have a leg to stand on.
But Roach often looks tired. He looks it now, his eyes a little distant and half-lidded as he watches his work. Izzy knows a little of what it’s like to expect more of yourself than you can physically give. He knows what it’s like to try anyway.
He gives Roach a parting nod, then goes off to do his own job.
*
They’re calling for Roach. Izzy wants to tell them to stop it, unless they plan to chop him up and serve him for dinner. Calling for Roach is as good as calling for anybody else, and right now he’d much rather have Fang or Ivan, who at least have the good sense to hold him down properly before going in with a needle or a knife.
“We should get him somewhere familiar,” Edward’s saying, “somewhere comfortable. Get him to his own room - light some candles, come on, move!”
“Alcohol, Captain?”
Frenchie’s voice.
“The good rum. From my room. And keep everybody else out. He - he doesn’t like too much noise-”
Izzy’s heart sinks. It’s bad then.
Not that he doesn’t know it is, from the white hot agony slicing through his middle right now, from the way he can feel his heartbeat from the steady ooze of blood that’s still coming from the gash in his stomach. These kinds of wounds hurt like hell, and then you fucking die.
Edward’s just trying to make him comfortable.
He tries to tell them not to get Roach. He doesn’t want to live out the last few hours he was in even worse agony, or out of it from laudanum. He just wants to fade the fuck away in peace.
But he doesn’t seem to be able to separate his teeth. Every muscle in his body is pulled taut, his clothes soaked, his neck slick where Edward’s hand is supporting him. He’s overheated and fuck, it fucking hurts.
“Where is he?”
Roach’s voice.
No. No no no no no-
“Nnnnh-” moans Izzy, trying to force his cotton-dry mouth into compliance.
“Here,” says Edward, “you’re the doctor here right? What can you do for him?”
There’s a long silence. Izzy waits for the penny to drop, for Roach to admit what Izzy’s known all along - that wounds like these are beyond his powers, and that being sewn up by Roach’s or Edward’s or the fucking Swede’s hand wouldn’t make a single bit of fucking difference.
“I can help,” says Roach softly, “but you will need to leave the room. Please.”
Another silence. Izzy can’t hear what’s going on past the pounding in his head and the sound of his own ragged breaths.
But he does eventually hear the door close.
The tall, dark blur next to him sends a brief spike of anxiety through his chest, but then the candles illuminate Roach’s concerned features as they swim into view.
Roach meets Izzy’s eyes, and then he -
He puts his cleaver down, and he sinks to his knees beside the bed.
“If you tell anybody about this,” says Roach, “I will lie. And nobody will believe you anyway. Move your hands.”
Izzy shakes his head. His hands are clamped over the wound, blood spilling out between his fingers. It feels like his skin is tasting the metallic tang of it. He doesn’t want to find out what will happen if he lets go.
“Izzy. We will swap. Let me.”
Roach sounds like he’s about to burst into tears. Izzy sucks in two quick breaths, and then figures, what the hell.
He lets go, and then arches backwards as Roach’s hands press down firmly, sending fresh agony shooting through his body, rendering him immobile. Izzy very nearly blacks out from it, his vision greying at the edges as his jaw locks itself into a wide, silent scream. He can feel tears leaking from the corners of his eyes and for a moment he knows nothing, nothing other than pain pain pain pain pain pain PAIN -
But then something worse starts happening.
He feels something inside him move. Something burns in his throat as he chokes on his own vomit and forces himself to swallow it back down, because his insides are fucking moving. He can hear the wet slide of flesh against flesh as it does it, and horror engulfs him so completely that it’s not until Roach lets out a quiet grunt of effort that Izzy realises that very suddenly, he doesn’t hurt quite so much anymore.
Izzy’s panicking, his breaths coming shallow and fast while he watches Roach with his brow furrowed in concentration, sweat sliding down his cheeks and panting like he’s just run a mile. He screws his eyes shut briefly, shuts them tightly like he’s steeling himself for something, and then there’s one last wet sucking sound that comes right from Izzy’s wound.
Roach collapses backwards, and Izzy leans over and throws up over the side of the bed.
“What the fuck,” he croaks, spitting into the mess he’s made.
Roach is lying on his back, his chest rising and falling rapidly while he tries to get his breath back.
“I will sew it up in a moment,” he gasps, “I just need - just give me time-”
“Not that, you fucking twat!”
Now that Izzy looks down, he can see that the wound is still there, but shallower. He doesn’t have a front row seat to his own guts anymore.
“Please,” says Roach, “a moment.”
Izzy waits then, while Roach gathers himself. By and by he picks himself up off the floor, then drags himself to his kit. He takes out a needle and catgut, but his hands are shaking so badly from exhaustion that he can barely thread the fucking thing.
“Here-” says Izzy, “here, give it-”
He grumbles under his breath as he threads it for him, then hands it back.
“What the fuck,” says Izzy.
He doesn’t ask why Roach has never done that before. Not when he can see what it’s cost him.
“Is that how you got to be the surgeon?”
“The first time, yes,” says Roach, “easier to do it again when you can say you’ve already done the job once. Makes you sound useful. Nobody needs to know how I got there.”
Izzy winces as Roach begins to sew him up but the pain is, comparatively, nothing.
“If people knew you could do that though,” says Izzy, “you could-”
“Die trying to fulfil all my orders,” Roach finishes for him, “Izzy Hands, nobody can know about this.”
A hard edge has crept into Roach’s voice. There’s more there that Izzy wants to probe for, multitudes behind tired eyes and gritted teeth.
“How am I supposed to make this decision when there is more than one, hm?" says Roach, and Izzy thinks he can see them there, the ghosts of the people he never let in on his secret.
"I will not do it. Nobody is saved, but I do not have to choose.”
“Why me then?”
Izzy can’t stop the question from falling out of his mouth. He suspects, but… a selfish part of him wants to know.
“Because I am growing sick of lying,” says Roach.
He finishes, and folds to his knees again. This time he rests his head against the bed, and though he lets his hair cover his face, Izzy can see his breath hitch. He drops his filthy hand to Roach’s head, smearing the side of his face with blood as he pets him, at a loss for what to say to that. He knows how it feels, being crushed by your own secrets.
He wishes he had an answer for what to do, a way to sew up the hollow that that sort of thing eats away in you. He won’t say it, but there’s only so long that the two of them can go on pretending that they don’t care.