Archive of Our Own ^beta

Stede doesn’t initially think that he missed much from his initial meeting with Israel Hands. The man is Blackbeard’s First Mate, he’s obsessed with Blackbeard’s image, he’s loyal to a fault, he’s a jealous git, and he’s an unpleasant little brat of a man.

When he was aboard the Revenge with Izzy, the man was vile. He shouted himself hoarse at the crew, he forced Edward into uncomfortable situations, and, most importantly of all, he tried to kill Stede. Twice. At first, Edward was this ray of sunshine, this man that was everything Stede himself could ever hope for in a friend, a partner, and Izzy was his awful little sidekick who just wouldn’t leave them alone.

But when he comes back to the Revenge, Edward is a kohl stained mess who keeps Stede locked in the dirty brig who only visits him to taunt him and tell him how he’s going to kill every single one of Stede’s crew members, who only says hurtful words, terrifying words that make the former aristocrat weep when he hears it. 

And Izzy is the man who brings him food and water.

At first, Stede is suspicious of him.

“Trying to kill me again?” he asks, an unbecoming snarl taking over his face. There’s no point in minding his own manners in a place like this, where he sleeps on the floor and does what he needs to do in the bucket at the corner. “I suggest you don’t underestimate me, Iggy , for I have captained my own crew for months and I have learned the ways of piracy.”

Izzy doesn’t answer. 

Instead, with shaky hands whose outline Stede can barely make out in the shadows, he takes a small sip of Stede’s water and eats a spoon of his food, and then says, voice small and quiet:
“There’s no poison, I swear. Eat, please.”

When he makes sure Stede will eat, he disappears into the shadows of the brig. The encounter leaves him feeling like something is deeply wrong, his heart beating wildly in his chest like he saw something he wasn’t meant to see. This is not the Izzy who set the Navy on him, who used to scream himself hoarse shouting orders, who forced Edward into a role he had no interest fulfilling. This person is someone else. 

And it becomes this routine of theirs. Izzy, mostly hidden in shadows, will prove that there is no poison in the food, and disappear as soon as Stede has started to eat. The plates accumulate through the day, but when the sun rises the next day,  they are gone. He doesn’t know who is taking them. Even when he doesn’t sleep, when he spends his nights awake and anxious, he never sees anyone take the plates.

Once, Stede complains about the food, just to spite Izzy, because he’s angry at Ed for planning to sink his sloop. He wants Izzy to scream in anger, to hit him once or twice maybe, if only for a bit of entertainment in this cell. It bothers Stede that there is nothing to look at, nothing to do, and, on that specific day, he has spent his time pacing around in his cell.

“Who is the cook that made this sorry excuse for a soup?” he asks.

“What is wrong with the soup?”

“It’s tasteless. Disgusting, honestly.”

It’s a lie. The soup is delicious, there’s nothing wrong with it, but Stede can’t help being acidic.

There is a shaky breath. Stede can barely see him, make out his outline in the shadows, and Izzy is looking at the floor.

“I’ve been cooking the meals,” he tells Stede, in a shaky whisper. “Do you think… do you think it’s the salt?”

Izzy is so nervous because of this that it makes Stede’s heart bloom with guilt.

“No. I was… I’m sorry, Izzy, there is nothing wrong with the soup.”

Another shaky breath.

“Oh. Good. The captain and the crew must only eat the best, after all."

“Izzy.”

“Yes?”

“Is there no cook?”

“Not a proper one,” Izzy answers, quietly. “I’m the only one who really knows how. So, I’ve been…”
He trails off. Stede knows what he means.

Stede makes it a point to commentate on the food, just before Izzy leaves, after that. It helps him relax, makes some of that nervousness and tension vanish. It helps Stede to enjoy the food better. He often stays, just a bit longer, to hear if he likes the meal or not.

Once, after Stede says Izzy’s food reminds him of his childhood, of a cook that made his meals with all her love in them, Izzy tells him:

“I bore five children.”

It makes Stede almost spit the water he’s drinking. He doesn’t, but he chokes. Through the bars, Izzy can’t do anything to help him, but, when Stede has recovered, he continues:

“Two boys and three girls. Henry, John, Dolores, Samantha, and Rosemary. Henry, my eldest, was the hardest. The pregnancy was hard and the birth was painful, and he almost killed me in the process. But the others were easier,” he says, fond. “I cooked at least once for most of them. I like it, cooking and baking, mostly because of them. I like making my family happy.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Stede asks, eyes full of tears, voice choked. It’s raw, this version of himself Izzy’s offering him, with such care, the version that bore five children and tried his best to raise them all.

“We were all happy, once,” Izzy whispers, cryptically. “Sometimes we make the most with what we have.”

“Do you still see them? Your children?”

“Only in my dreams, every now and then.”

He doesn’t give Stede any openings after that, disappearing into the shadows.

This Izzy doesn’t come out for much longer after that, after weeks, after Stede’s second ship, a smaller one he stole at a port, had contacted the Revenge.

After, more specifically, a particularly bad encounter with Edward, in which he described in detail how Lucius had flailed and screamed for his help when he was pushed into the ocean. Edward tells him he’ll make the others suffer more. And Izzy visits him when Stede is weeping over the boy. He doesn’t bring food. Instead, he pushes a warm cup towards Stede.

Warm, lovely, Jasmine tea.

Its rich flavor helps Stede calm down.

“Is it to your tastes?” Izzy asks, no trace of mockery in his voice.

“It’s… It’s perfect, Izzy.”

Stede hears the shuffling of paper, before Izzy reads:

No longer mourn for me when I am dead

Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell

Give warning to the world that I am fled

From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell

Nay, if you read this line, remember not

The hand that writ it; for I love you so

That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot

If thinking on me then should make you woe

O, if (I say) you look upon this verse

When i (perhaps) compounded am with clay

Do not so much as my poor name rehearse

But let your love even with my life decay

Lest the wise world should look into your moan

And mock you with me after I am gone.

There’s the soft sound of a book closing.

“Is this one of…?”

“It’s my copy of the Sonnets,” Izzy answers.

“Oh. I always preferred Shakespeare’s plays,” Stede tells him, baffled by this caricature of Izzy Hands that is completely unfamiliar, but still speaks to him.

“I read the Sonnets to reflect, an unfortunate habit I picked up from my husband,” his voice is full of fondness when he speaks.

“Was he the one to give you your children?”

Izzy laughs, quietly. It’s nice to see him relaxed like this.

“Not all of them. Henry was his,” he tells Stede. “Our marriage was arranged, and Henry was his heir, all me and my grandmother could offer his family.”

“That’s terrible.”

“There’s no need for pity, not because of it. We were childhood friends before we were spouses and before we were lovers. He never touched me in a way I didn’t like, he never minded my temper or my moods. I was not a very good housewife, I could never stay still for long. Unfortunately for him, I had always been a brute,” Izzy says. “But James, my husband, is a poet. Wouldn’t hurt a fly. We completed each other. And our little Henry took after him.”

Stede thinks of himself and being called a pansy and a ponce when he was a boy, of being bullied by the Badmintons, and beaten by his father for having sensibilities. Izzy himself called him many names for being too silly, too imaginative, too fantastical for his own sake.

Even so, he calls his husband a poet with fondness and love, like his sensibilities were something precious to be adored, not something that made him less. 

Stede’s eyes fill with tears.

“He read the Sonnets to me, when I was pregnant and ill,” Izzy tells him. “And he read them again when Henry died.”

Stede gasps.

“My little Henry drowned when he was five,” Izzy says, and the heartbreak in his voice is too much for Stede to handle. “The ocean had taken one of his toys. I wasn’t looking when he went to get it, and for that sin of mine, the ocean took him too. I only remember him looking at me before a wave took him and then I jumped into the sea after him,” he says. “When I came to, I was kneeling on the sand, holding his lifeless body as if my embrace and my tears could bring him back.”

Izzy sighs.

“I was depressed after that. I have never been so ill in my life,” Izzy continues. “And every day until I recovered, James would read me a sonnet. I took his copy of Shakespeare’s Sonnets with me everywhere, even after we parted ways, but only recently have I managed to get my hands on it once more.”

Izzy pushes the book towards him with a single finger. It’s a tattered little thing with thin yellow pages and a faded cover.

“I can’t.”

“I want you to have it.”

“Izzy, I can’t. This is yours. It’s too sentimental.”

“Keep it. I can barely see, much less read anything nowadays. For your own reflections,” Izzy says, cryptic. “I’m sorry about the boy. He brought life to this vessel and his presence is dearly missed by those who remain in it. I can’t speak much, but pay attention to the rodents in your walls. They have been bothering the captain lately.”

With that, he disappears. Stede doesn’t really understand what he means by “rodents in the walls”, but he keeps an eye out for any rodents that might bite him in his sleep.

It becomes a habit for them, afterwards. Izzy tells Stede stories, not of princesses and frogs or puppet boys that come to life, but of a yellow farm hidden in the wilderness, of prayers made to the moon and the stars, of a boy told he was worth nothing if not for his womb, of a house full of family paintings, a friend made into a husband before he became a lover , of a happy family torn apart by grief, of a man stuck in the role of a housewife going to sea in the hopes of meeting the same fate as his father, of five children who visit their father in his dreams.

Izzy brings Stede food, and, while he eats, instead of disappearing, the First Mate speaks of the past.

He speaks of giving Jack Rackham and his wife two children, a boy and a girl, John and Dolores, as a wedding present for a woman who is very dear to him. He speaks of his grandmother, who taught him to cook, to clean, to nurse, to pray and to care for the earth, and his sisters, all married off into different families, never to be seen again. He speaks little of his father other than the fact that he was a fisherman and that his mother died of a broken heart when the news came that his boat had capsized.

Izzy tells Stede about little Samantha, a baby he had in secret, one he took to Spanish Jackie, and how begged Jackie to take care of his daughter. He speaks of when he remarried his first husband, the poet, the one with all the sensibilities and delicacies, the one that was everything being a pirate wasn’t, who, even after thirty years, even after losing a housewife and meeting a husband , still knew how Izzy liked to be loved. He speaks of their little miracle, Rosemary, a baby that was born despite all the odds, despite Izzy’s age, the end of an old story of hurt and grief – or, perhaps, the start of a new one.

The world, when told through Izzy’s voice, sounds wonderful. And Izzy has a good memory, he pays attention to his surroundings. Stede can see himself in the little farm where Izzy grew up, where he raised his sisters, where he buried his father, his mother, his grandmother, in the warm yellow sunlight, in the almost too hot weather. He can imagine the house in which he lived with his husband and Henry, the warm oak tones and the paintings, commissioned by Izzy himself, hanging on the wall. He can see Izzy’s mother-in-law, this slim woman dressed in black, pulling him aside on his wedding day to tell him that he was only valuable for his womb.

He knows intimately the layout of the cabin by the beach where Izzy’s husband lives with their daughter, their happily ever after, as Izzy called the place. His children visit Stede in his own dreams too, all matching their descriptions, pronounced with such love and sincerity that they were brought to life. When Izzy tells him of Edward, this vibrant boy who Izzy loved, who Izzy would do anything to make happy, he sees Edward, for the first time as Blackbeard, not the monster but this unstoppable force of a boy, and Stede can taste Edward when he describes their kisses.

He knows of Sam Bellamy’s kindness and his wife’s, Mariah, magic, from when Izzy speaks of the months he spent in their house, nursing a sick Edward. He knows of Anne Bonny, Jack Rackham and Mary Read, an odd family aboard an odd ship, with two screaming children running around. He knows of Spanish Jackie, who married Izzy in exchange for keeping a child safe, how she kept him happy, how she took him into her bed and showed him her own brand of love. He knows of Benjamin Hornigold’s secrets, how he found Izzy so beautiful he would kneel at his feet, how he called Izzy his prince and his God and begged him for forgiveness, how he wept when Izzy held him, in the quiet dark.

The books Stede owns about these people do no justice to their real story. They paint Benjamin Hornigold as a god, and not as the senile and insecure man Izzy walked the hills with to find a proper home for. They paint Anne Bonny and Mary Read as Jack’s whores, instead of the mothers of two very happy children, the three of them in a very happy marriage. Sam Bellamy is the drowned Prince of Pirates, power and terror over the sea that ended when the Whydah sank, and not the man who used to sing to his wife in the evenings, who would kneel at her feet and kiss her stomach, who would promise her the world. Spanish Jackie is ignored by authors, abandoned.

“You should write a book,” he tells Izzy, one night.

“I don’t know enough fancy words to do it,” Izzy answers. “When I’m gone, you can write a book for me.”

“I don’t know these stories as well as you do. I’ll end up distorting them with my own imagination.”

They’re silent. The sun has already set, and Izzy is completely cloaked in the shadows. He is the most comfortable, Stede notices, when he can’t be seen.

“After Edward lets me leave, I’ll write your stories for you,” he offers, expecting Izzy to dismiss him.

“What will the book be called?” Izzy asks him. 

Stede can’t come up with a proper title, then, but he vows to write Izzy a book.

And in exchange for the stories, for Izzy, cloaked in shadows and unheard by everyone else, opening his soul to a man he never really got along with, Stede reads him the Sonnets. Izzy mentioned he can’t read anymore, because of his bad eyesight, and while Stede himself can’t see properly, even less in the shadows of the brig, he likes it when Izzy is happy.

And he is coming close to following up with his promise.

Edward visits often. At first, he screams himself hoarse before leaving. Then, he starts talking about how he’s going to sink Stede’s sloop when they come for them. Then, he taunts Stede about all the people he’s killed, about how he’d kill again.

And then, finally, he listens. And they talk it through.

And Stede, after months trapped in the brig, is released. His beard is long, his clothes are mangled and dirty, but he stands on the deck of his ship and feels victorious. The crew is reunited, he and Edward are making it up with one another. No more misunderstandings.

Even Lucius has abandoned his hiding place in the secret passageways.

Except, when Stede is basking in the sunlight, so comforting after spending so long in the shadows of the brig, Izzy is nowhere to be seen. The kitchen is completely abandoned before they convince Roach to cook for them, there is a noticeable lack of a First Mate walking the decks. Izzy’s cabin is taken by Oluwande and Jim and it’s like no one ever lived there.

And Stede can’t help but need him. 

He went into the brig as a former aristocrat, and he feels like he left it as a defeated man, full of quirks and fear, and he doesn’t really know what to do with himself. So, he works and works and works, non-stop, through days on end, only stopping to sleep, but even the comfort of his mattress against his back feels suffocating and sometimes he inexplicably craves the toughness of the floor below him.

And Stede can tell now, after listening to Izzy’s own tales of how he learned to live on a ship, disguising himself as a mute and being unable to ask for help, after working on things just like Izzy taught him, that the Revenge was abandoned by the crew.

They leave the deck dirty, rope scattered across the deck, barnacles growing on the sides of the ship. One of the sails is beginning to tear, and their flag is dirty. Below decks, the situation is chaotic. Nothing is stored properly, the food being thrown astray, their weapons not having been sharpened in many months. And, worst of all, the gunpowder is unprotected, some of it already moist, and Stede, remembering Izzy’s tales, has to do it all by himself.

“It was a war,” Izzy had told him once. “A war against the Spanish, hundreds of guns, hundreds of men. Their frigate loomed tall in the horizon. Our little ship crumbled under their gaze, me and the other four people who were managing it at the time scared to shit. And, when it came to the conflict itself, our cannons wouldn’t fire, because the gunpowder was stored in humidity. We hadn’t known how to store it properly back then, we hadn’t known it needed to be dry, or it wouldn’t work. I walked on deck, sword in hand and a gun on my waist, and I tried to hold them back, alone, while the others tried to fix the cannons.”

Stede never forgot about the gunpowder, afterwards. He couldn’t forget, in the time between Izzy’s visits, when all he thought about was the things Izzy told him, when he couldn’t think about anything else. But his crew, who hadn’t heard the reason behind Izzy’s orders, always forgets about the gunpowder and a plethora of other things.

The crew thinks he’s raging mad when he asks them to divide the chores equally amongst themselves and Stede. They think he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Edward, his dear Edward, laughs when he shares with him his concerns over the ship.

“Stede, no offense, but the Revenge’s been fucked six ways to Sunday before I even got here,” he says, laughing. “I had to give up on it at one point or another!”

Izzy hadn’t given up.

Izzy had gazed upon the Revenge, saw all these little things that hadn’t been done or had been done poorly, and decided to try and fix it.

Stede ends up in the brig, after that. By his own volition, this time.

He hasn’t visited this part of the ship in months. 

Stede will never tell Edward, but to this day, months after being released, he still fears the dark, he fears what’s lurking in the shadows, he dislikes closed spaces and the awful stench of urine and feces.

The brig is clean, dusty, and, fortunately enough, abandoned. There is no bucket against the wall, and the door to the cell is slightly ajar.

He enters his cell and closes the door.

After a while, though Stede can’t tell how long, he sees a figure in the shadows, who kneels in front of him.

“Oh,” Izzy says. “I didn’t expect you to come back here.”

“When I left, you were nowhere to be found.”

“I’m a creature of the shadows, Stede,” Izzy tells him, in that quiet whisper. “I belong here, as an unpleasant memory of the past, lurking in the darkness, rather than walking about the sunlight.”

Stede is horrified.

“Izzy, you… you can’t think that about yourself. You’re a person . And you’re not unpleasant.”

“Your crew would beg to differ.”

“I would argue with them on your behalf, Izzy, if that’s what is concerning you. I do not tolerate bullying on this ship.”

Izzy laughs, but it’s a sad little noise.

“I tried to find you, afterwards. It was one of the first things I did.”

“Why?”

“I promised you a book. I’ve considered many titles.”

“What was your favorite?”
“ The History of Pirates, as told by Israel Hands ."

"It sounds like a terribly boring biography."

Stede doesn’t let Izzy's teasing get to him, he can tell now, the soft intonations of a joke in Izzy’s voice.

"No matter the title, your book would be the greatest pirate novel of all time.”

“Sounds too good for a book with a pathetic ending such as this one.”

“Which would be?”

“Israel Hands, all stories told, nothing left in him to give, wasting away, lurking in the shadows of his former glory, a mere stowaway aboard Blackbeard’s ship.”

“Edward would gladly take you back as his First Mate, you must know that. He cares very deeply for you.”

Izzy doesn’t answer that. Stede doesn’t know why. Can Izzy not notice how special he is to Edward?

“My return would cause needless suffering. I have no desire to make him weep, not for me."

“Why would he weep?”

“You haven’t seen the state of me. The monster, the creature I’ve become. There's nothing left of the old Izzy Hands if not for this horrifying carcass that—"

“Where are you sleeping, Izzy?” Stede interrupts. He sees a flash of something red in the dark, but he can’t quite identify it.

“Have you investigated the rodents in your walls yet? Can you hear their little voices?”

Realization comes upon Stede.

“You knew about Lucius.”

“I fished him out of the sea,” Izzy tells Stede, quieting down and visibly becoming calmer. “I kept him safe in my cabin for a while, and, when I couldn’t, I told him to hide in one of your secret passages.”

“He never spoke of you.”

“He wouldn’t.”

“Well, thank you. That was very kind of you.”

“Why are you here, Stede?”

“I haven’t been the same. I long for quiet and peace, but I’m unable to stay long without doing something or another,” he answers. “I wake up earlier than my crew. I spend all day running around the ship, finding things to do, because I can’t stop, Izzy. I can’t stand the endless ticking of the clock, like it’s never ending, and there’s nothing there, just…,” he takes a deep breath to calm himself. “Edward doesn’t always understand. But I know you do.”

The former First Mate says nothing.

“I looked for you everywhere. It’s almost like you vanished from existence as soon as I stepped out of here,” the former aristocrat confesses. “And I need you. I need–”

“Someone who’ll understand. Someone who knows what you went through,” Izzy completes.

“Yes.”

“You deserve someone much better.”

“I'll take what I can get. I’m a simple man, Izzy, even if I don’t always look it.”

He hasn’t looked the part of the fancy man for a while now. Silk feels wrong on his skin. Edward threw everything he owned away and sobbed his apologies when he finally took Stede back to the cabin. The former aristocrat, raised in luxury, who knew nothing but silks and comfort for most of his life, found himself strangely empty to this revelation. He feels nothing when he opens his auxiliary closet and finds nothing there.

He finds that he much prefers simple linen, nowadays. He kept the beard, too.

 “I would have hated you for it, before, but you were right. My crew… has not been working to their best abilities. And I, for one, despite being their captain, cannot convince them to do their share of the work.”

“What about Blackbeard?”

“Ed laughed , Izzy, when I told him about all the little things we needed to fix on the ship. I have never felt more desperate in my life.”

“It’s what he has always done,” Izzy says. “He gives up on projects that will demand effort. I used to pick up his slack, but now…”

He trails off.

“Now what?”
“Now, I’m unwelcome,” Izzy concludes. “I don’t belong in the light anymore, but I can help you through the shadows.”

“How?”

Izzy stays silent for a moment.

“Bring us breakfast. We eat together and discuss it through the food.”

“Thank you. Would you mind telling me a story?”

Something about Izzy changes, then, when he begins the tale of how Anne Bonny and Mary Read met. Stede missed this closeness between them, he missed the sound of his voice, and he pays close attention. Eventually, relaxed as he is, laughing about the adventures of James Bonny and Mark Read, who tried to stab Jack twice, he falls asleep. When he wakes, instead of Izzy, kneeling in front of the cell, there’s a concerned Edward, who’s weeping.

It takes a while for Stede to convince Edward that he just needed to think.

It takes a while for him to convince Ed that being trapped in the brig didn’t leave him broken, in a way that Ed might never be able to fix.

But, the next day, like he promised, he brings two plates of food to the brig. Izzy eats like he’s ravenous, desperate in a way Stede wouldn’t have associated with him, moaning and grunting until only a few crumbs are left on his plate. Stede decides then and there to bring him every meal, and a few snacks for him to eat whenever he feels like it. Even if he decides to stay in hiding, Izzy deserves to be comfortable.

While Izzy keeps everything tidy below decks, working from within the shadows, Stede takes notes on his instructions and does his best above deck. It’s hard work, and too much work for only two people, and he feels exposed as the crew watches him, judging what he does and how he’s doing it. But he moves on and he keeps doing his work, quiet and precise.

What hurts the most is Edward looking at him in incredulity as he climbs the mast, folds sails, and fixes the rigging.

But it’s satisfying to sit down, after a hard day of work, and share a meal with Izzy.

“At least the food’s good,” Izzy says, eating a bit of the pasta and chicken Stede brought him. “So the cook is working.”

“Roach is a very hard worker,” Stede agrees. “Edward and I, well, we don’t make it easy for him, with our particularities.”

“It’ll help him. If we work to keep things tidy.”

Stede can tell he’s trying to make him feel better about the crew dismissing his work. It’s heartwarming, it’s something so unlike the Izzy he knew, and Stede wonders if he ever knew Izzy at all, or if this is the first time he’s seeing him.

After dinner, when Stede urges Izzy to rest, he pours himself over parchment, trying to write a proper prologue to their book. He has half a mind to call Lucius and ask him for help, but the fun part about this story is that it’s not his to tell, so he can’t use what Lucius writes for him, because that would be Stede’s perception of events, not Izzy’s.

The thing about writing a book with a story that is not his to tell is that Stede doesn't really know how to write it. He wants a book that will do justice to Izzy's tale, one that will correctly depict the story as it was, without censorship or tweaks. He wants the characters in Izzy's stories to be immortalized exactly as they were in real life and not distorted into epic tales of victory or cruelly told stories of monstrosity. 

Blackbeard was a boy with the most beautiful brown eyes, who laughed and played and loved, whose kiss tasted like tobacco and hardtack, whose embrace carried happiness within. Sam Bellamy was the epitome of gentleness, the loving husband, the dear friend, and his death caused heartbreak. Benjamin Hornigold had been bored and going senile, looking for anything to distract him from the pneumonia that was slowly killing him, looking for love and kindness and novelty . Jack Rackham was a father that liked playing with his kids in the mud, Anne Bonny liked playing dress up with Izzy, the two kissing through smudged makeup, Mary Read was the brains behind their operation and all she wanted was for the people she loved to be safe.

There were no monsters in Izzy's stories, or, most accurately, not monsters the readers expect to encounter in a novel about pirates.

Izzy's mother-in-law who dragged him aside on his wedding day and told him that he'd better give her an heir in a year was one of them. Rodriguez, the Spanish Navy captain who captured Izzy for the first time, who enjoyed making him bleed and watching him weep was another.

Edward doesn't understand what is happening when he finds Stede half asleep over parchment and ink, but Stede feels inspired. He feels joyful and alive.
He feels like they finally have a first chapter.

Trapped within the depths of Blackbeard’s ship, inside an abandoned cell where the sun rarely shone, I met Israel Hands.

I had heard of him before. I believe that most people who have ever read a book about piracy have heard of his name. Israel Hands is as notorious as the likes of Captain Kidd, Benjamin Hornigold, Sam Bellamy, Jack Rackham, Charles Vane. He’s not a Captain, not when Blackbeard enjoys to keep him so close, but, even though there are no physical descriptions of him, any pirate worth their salt in these hostile waters knows what his arrival means.

Israel, I had come to understand, prior to my imprisonment, is an omen of death. 

There is a very small number of people who have encountered him and remained alive to tell their story, and, even then, most of them become mute at the mere sound of his name, and disappear into the shadows of ports when it is known that he is visiting.

He had not shown himself to me, lurking in the shadows of the brig, but I knew enough already to expect a visit from him. And as I made his outline from within the shadows, I began losing all hope of surviving this.

I expected torture. Blood. Suffering and pain and never-ending screams. A hell in Earth that I might not overcome.

Israel – Izzy, as I will call him from now on – knelt in front of me, obscured in shadows, and offered me food, water, and the memories of his past selves.

He eats breakfast with Izzy in the morning, bringing bread, butter, scones and cupcakes to their little banquet, but he also takes a notebook with him. Every description, every nuance, every meaningful word Izzy uses will be dutifully annotated, and used later in the chapter referencing that story. The man doesn't seem too keen on talking about the book, and Stede doesn't understand how he still doubts his abilities as a storyteller. 

He spends the day scraping off barnacles on the side of the ship. It’s uncomfortable and he ends up scratching himself on the barnacles once or twice. But it’s satisfying when he sees the amount of barnacles diminish. When he is just about done, he hears humming. It’s this strange tune, almost unnatural in a way, and Stede moves the little seat towards the window where the sound is coming out the loudest of them all.

The room inside is pitch black, except for a small ray of light coming in through the window Stede is peeking in. He can see a pair of hands with very long fingers working on patching up a sail. The fingers move the needle up and down patiently, sewing closed a tear on one of their sails, and the small needle glints every time it passes the ray of sunlight. The left hand lacks the ring finger, and the right hand lacks the middle one, but Stede notices that this creature , whatever it is, isn’t too bothered by the missing fingers. They were removed, he notices, deep scars surrounding the place where its fingers should have been.

The hands shake slightly as the creature tries to complete its work, and it keeps humming this desperate little tune, one that makes Stede’s heart fill with dread.

The creature shifts, and Stede sees its long gray hair fall like a curtain and cover the creature’s mutilated hands. The worst part is that it looks human, it seems human, but Stede can see that its fingers are just a bit too long, its arms are disproportionate to the rest of its body, so much bigger than the normal for a human. Stede realizes with dread that it must be some sort of giant, something Stede has only read about in fantastical books but never actually seen in real life. The room seems so small for the creature to stand in, and the sail looks like a rag of clothing compared to its size.

Stede doesn’t know how something like this has been hiding in the Revenge for so long.

He approaches the window to look closer, taking care not to completely block the light source, and almost immediately the creature stops humming, its distorted lullaby coming to a halt. Its head turns softly in the direction of the window, and all Stede sees is a red eye turn to look directly at him before he hears an ear-shattering shrill scream.

He moves away from the window desperately, almost falling from his seat and into the ocean down below. He begs anyone that might come by to help, and, soon enough, he’s back aboard the ship, being comforted by a terrified Lucius.

No one believes him when he talks about the creature, not even Buttons and Ed, who are more inclined to believe in this kind of supernatural occurrence. In a rush to prove himself, Stede runs towards the room he was spying into, but when he gets there, he finds nothing, no sign of the creature whatsoever.

Edward tries to calm him down, even after Stede begs him to believe him, promises him that there was something there. Edward doesn’t believe him, he thinks that it’s some way Stede’s mind has found to cope with the fact that he was imprisoned in the brig for so long, and he feels so guilty that, as Stede speaks, Ed sobs and begs him for forgiveness.

Stede says nothing else.

But that night, over dinner, he tells Izzy.

Izzy believes him almost immediately.

“My grandmother used to say that, when a place or an object has been the focal point of suffering for a while, this suffering can ingrain itself into it. It’s why we feel uneasy when we visit the place of a tragedy, why we have nightmares, why we hear things and see things that aren’t really there. The Revenge has, unfortunately, been a witness to plenty of suffering, these past few months."

Stede feels numb inside. The brig seems cold now, and not even Izzy’s silhouette can offer him any comfort. 

"I wasn't the first," it’s not a question; he speaks with certainty.

“No,” Izzy says. “But you’re the only one I could save.”

“What do you mean?”

Izzy tilts his head.

“There are parts of you that are broken, that I can’t mend back together, no matter how hard I try. Some pieces of you were broken long before you came here, others were broken in this very cell,” he explains. “But being broken is very different from being shattered, and I’m glad that you stand here broken, but whole.”

“Sometimes when you speak I can’t understand a single word,” the blonde confesses.

“It’s okay. It might serve as fuel for your later reflections.”

Stede has never been one for introspection. He doesn’t really think before he speaks or acts.

Well, he didn’t.

Now, with this unnerving emptiness eating him from the inside out, Stede finds himself very much acquainted with himself and estranged from everyone else. Every action he takes is carefully calculated beforehand. He can’t stand being still, but he’s still unused to the natural noise of the people around him. In the brig, he was trapped in the dark and in dead silence for most of the time, and the only time that there was any noise was when something terrible was happening outside. He heard Edward sobbing. He heard gunshots and fights, and to this day the sound of chains makes him feel uneasy. When the crew starts speaking loudly, he feels like he’s being smothered, like he’s going to drown.

That night, he finds himself completely unable to sleep, thinking about the creature hiding in the walls. He hears it sing, faintly, in the distance. So, he stands up, sets up an office in what used to be his auxiliary closet, lights up a candle and spends the night writing.

His story began on a farm.

It began with a yellow sunrise, miles of yellow fields in the distance, three sisters, a mother, and a grandmother of an English-Portuguese family. The farm itself was small, nothing compared to the estates and the miles of land that belong to the wealthiest aristocrats, and the nearest town was hours away, but the land, Izzy’s grandmother told him, was special. 

The farm had been in their family’s name ever since they got to the country; it had been blessed by a loving God, and it would provide them with everything they could possibly want, if they treated it right, if only they loved the land as much as much as it loved them.

I found his stories comforting, in the quiet dark. Izzy liked speaking of the farm, describing it with love, even though I know now that his stories of a boy ended bittersweetly.

His father, a fisherman, was taken by the sea. His mother died of a broken heart. His eldest sister disappeared after marrying an aristocrat. His youngest sister ran away before the same could happen to her. His grandmother fell ill, and this boy, raised in the wilderness, who had known nothing except how to love the Earth, who buried his entire family and stood alone now, was turned into a proper housewife.

Stede doesn’t know how long he spends writing. He doesn’t even realize the night is long over until he’s gently nudged by Ed, who offers him a cup of coffee and presses a kiss to the top of his head.

“Had a productive night?”

“I believe so, my dear,” he answers, organizing the papers strewn about on the desk into separate chapters. “I’ll sew these together later.”

“What’s all this?” he asks, gesturing towards the papers.

"My most recent project, my darling," Stede smiles. "The greatest pirate novel ever written."

Edward smiles at him.

"Can I read it?"

"When I'm done, my darling."

Edward smiles with his mouth, but not his eyes. Stede, as the months have gone by, has learned to tell the difference. He is not pleased, this tells him. There is something wrong. Stede has never been good at reading people, but he has spent months in the quiet dark, hearing the faint sound of sobs and hearing the whispers of the shadow of a man that used to scream himself hoarse. But Ed doesn’t tell him, and Stede goes about his day as normal. 

Today must be a strange day.

Izzy is quiet, too, quieter than normal. 

Stede noticed plenty of things. Especially now that he was looking out for them. Izzy is very similar to Edward, but he doesn’t really seem to realize it. He’s most similar to Edward at breakfast, eating good food during his favorite meal, because it is then that he has his best ideas, it is then that his brain works the best.

Izzy’s silence on this lovely morning is unnerving.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Izzy lies. There’s a flash of red coming from the dark. Stede doesn’t mention it. “We should work together, today.”

It’s odd. Izzy is always insistent on keeping Stede where he can be seen. Today, however, they are organizing the storage together. Stede can barely see Izzy working in the shadows, as he demanded that only a single candle be lit in the room. They’re just wrapping up when he hears it.

Edward’s shout.

It’s strange how the entire world shifts under his feet then.

He was so calm before.

Now, it seems this emptiness is about to eat him whole.

He can’t even feel his own body anymore.

Is this how it feels to die?

Suddenly, he’s trapped in the brig again, hiding like a child, hearing the sounds of Edward’s shouts like they’re right next to him. He can’t breathe, he can’t think, he can barely feel his own body, but there’s someone speaking to him, louder than the screams, louder than the sobs, louder than the chains.

“Please, Stede,” he hears Izzy . ”Breathe with me, come on.”

Something is put over his eyes, then. He’s smothered by this darkness, and it only isn’t unbearable because he can feel the weight of another person where he is now.

“In and out, in and out,” Izzy tries to calm him, and it works.

The sobs in the distance get louder and louder, until he feels them tearing at his throat. Is that him?

Izzy holds him until his cries die down. And then they just stay there, being comforted by the movement of the ship, sitting on the floor. Izzy is holding one of his hands, but the blindfold stays on, the silent boundary that it is.

“We’re a fucked up pair, aren’t we?”

Stede laughs a bit.

“I don’t think I’ll ever be normal again,” Stede admits.

“Maybe you won’t. Maybe we’ll never be normal again. No one is expecting you to be normal.”

“Sometimes it feels like it. Like the crew will never take me if i’m not back as their frilly, silly man of a captain. I can’t be that anymore, I can’t keep playing that part. I can’t keep pretending to be someone I’m not, not when the sound of chains makes me want to throw up, not when Edward being angry at anything makes me stop breathing, not when everything feels so meaningless and empty, not when I’m grateful I get to look at the sky.”

There’s an uncomfortable little pause.

“I’m sorry.”

Stede looks for Izzy’s silhouette in the shadows, but he finds nothing.

“Why?”

“It was my fault.”

“It can’t have been, Izzy. If anything, you were the one who helped me the most–”

“No,” he says, final. “I taunted him. I provoked him. I wanted the Edward I knew, I wanted him to be Blackbeard again, just to be safe from whatever was out there, but he was a husk of himself without you by his side. So I was mean and petty and cruel. I told him…. I told him that I should have let him be killed by the Navy.”

“Izzy, no…”

“He used to walk around the ship, weeping, like a ghost in your red banyan, a shadow of the kind and powerful man he once was. I was terrified of what he could become if he wasn’t dangerous enough, of how people could take advantage of it! So, I ruined him. I broke him thoroughly, and through the cracks a monster leaked out, all that suffering, all that hurt came out with it,” Izzy tells him. “I paid for it in blood, though I think I might never be forgiven for what I have done, not when you also were harmed by my decisions. I won’t forgive myself.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Izzy doesn’t answer.

“I helped most of the prisoners. They would starve if I wasn’t the one to bring them food. I would speak to them and comfort them and listen as they wept for their loved ones, their families, their history. But, unfortunately, I was never capable of bringing back the light in their eyes. Edward…Edward always got to them first.”

Stede thinks that, in the process of trying to save other people, he might have sacrificed himself too, confining himself to the shadows, hiding from people, talking about himself like he’s some sort of monster.

“I’m sorry,” Izzy sobs. “All I can hope for is that whenever you feel unwelcome in this ship, whenever you feel strange or guilty or scared, may God forbid, you feel welcome in my arms.”

Hornigold had been drunk. When he drank too much, he was overcome by this inescapable depression, and he’d laugh and dance only for his crew not to notice the emptiness in his heart. But, that night, he held Izzy’s hand like he was his first, led him to the captain’s cabin, knelt at his feet like a dog and opened up his chest to him, only for him to see his shattered soul.

“I was always a brute,” Izzy told me. But I think he was wrong, I think that, in his heart, there is a much gentler man, because when he looked upon the mangled remains of Hornigold’s beaten heart, despite everything the man had done, he took such great care of it that the man fell for him then and there.

Hornigold wasn’t kind, and God forbid anyone call him gentle. But that night, he begged Izzy not to go.

And when Izzy acquiesced, Benjamin kissed him like he was everything, loved him like he was everything, and he sobbed into Izzy’s breast into the morning, like he was a boy again.

“I’ll embrace you.”

By all accounts, Izzy is a sinner, as all pirates learn to be in their way of theft and murder, one way or another.

But, despite his vehement denial, I don’t think he sinned, then, as his child waved at him, Henry’s little body half into the water, moments before a stronger wave pulled him into the ocean. I don’t think he sinned when he jumped into the ocean in his heavy skirts, knowing he could be taken too, like his father had been almost two decades before, and tried to pull his little boy to safety.

Izzy knelt into the sand, dress ruined, crying silently, holding his boy, his baby, his reason for living, to his chest like his embrace alone was able to bring him back. Henry’s little body was cold against his own, and he shook violently in shock, barely hearing the way his husband yelled for anyone to come help them.

“I’ll bring you out of your head.”

“I’ll make you my co-captain,” Edward promised, kissing his hand.

“I’m no good as a captain. But I’ll follow you anywhere, Eddie, I will.”

“How about my first mate?” Edward thought, and Izzy laughed, hiding his face in his neck.

“There is no such thing as a first mate in a pirate ship,” Izzy answered, laughing, but Edward pulled him closer, skin touching skin, a hand on Izzy’s head, the other on his hip.

“There will be.”

The beginning of a legend, I heard. Did they know of Blackbeard, then? Did they know of First Mate Hands, then?

“I’ll be your anchor, no matter how you come to me.”

One would think that, with everything, they might have fallen out of love through the decades. Izzy was no longer the scared orphan in the wilderness, he was no longer the dutiful housewife, he was no longer the cabin boy who took a demented Hornigold to the cabin in which he’d remain for the rest of his day. But James was the same as he had always been, with manuscripts of books written but never published laying in his office, with the gentleness in his broken heart still intact even after all this time. He bore no wedding ring on his finger, a brand new man in a land of dangerous pirates, living the rest of his life in a cabin by the beach.

“I heard you became a pirate,” James told him.

“I did. There was not much else I could do.”

“Did you enjoy it?”

“Yes.”

“Did you love?”

“I did.”

“I never forget you.”

“James, no. I’m not the person you lost that night.”

“You aren’t. You’re someone new. Will you let me love this new person?”

And when Izzy accepted, maybe it was the end of an old story of grief over the little boy lost to sea, over the wife who ran away. James loved him gently, knew just how Izzy liked to be loved, like they had always known each other. And things were different, yes. Izzy had a small beard, James had longer hair, Izzy wore no dresses and carried a sword, James wore no silk and couldn’t stand wearing shoes.

Izzy’s youngest child is James’. A little girl named Rosemary, conceived in a shabby cabin by the beach, on a shabby bed that barely kept itself together, when her parents were learning how to love each other again, after all those years. A little miracle, considering how old Izzy had been, how unlikely it was that he’d get pregnant again.

The start of a new story, I think, one that I will not be here to write about, unfortunately.

“I’ll do it all, Stede, and I’ll do it gladly , because I love you and I’ll keep loving you with all your flaws, and when you’re broken into pieces, even when they’re so tiny that I can barely see them, I’ll do my best to put you back together.”

Stede kisses him then. He misses his target at first, feeling Izzy’s beard against his lips, but he uses his thumb to trace his way to Izzy’s lips and kisses him properly. Izzy melts under his hands, opening his mouth only for Stede’s tongue to sneak between his lips, and he tastes of coffee and the raspberry jam they had with toast for breakfast.

It feels good.

He wants more.

But Izzy is breaking them apart before he can pull him in further.

They sit there, holding hands. Stede feels the bump where a finger should be and asks:

“What happened to your hands?”

“Us pirates often pay for our greatest sins in blood.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was Edward’s first prisoner.”

He doesn’t explain it further. He doesn’t have to, not when Stede knows exactly what it’s like. Edward threatened many times to take body parts, but, for some reason, never acted on those threats, but with Izzy… Stede thinks it ought to have been different. It must have been different, given that Izzy stands here, thinking himself a monster, with missing pieces of himself and scars tracing his body.

Stede understands, then, what Izzy meant about Stede being broken and not shattered. Because Izzy himself is shattered, a husk of the man he used to be, with all his scars and missing fingers forming this agglomeration of a person that doesn’t resemble Israel Hands at all. And Stede understands, there, that he can’t fix him, that they can’t fix each other, that no matter how hard they try, there are cracks in their bodies and souls that will never be mended, and that this will always be a bad memory.

All he can do is offer Izzy somewhere safe enough where he can become someone new.

So, Stede kisses him again, kisses his cheeks, his eyelids, his lips, puts his hand on Izzy’s waist, holds him, overwhelms him with the warmth of his body. It’s all he can offer him, it’s all he can do, and he’ll do it gladly, until the end of time.

Izzy spreads his legs just so that Stede fits perfectly between them, and Stede unbuttons his shirt, and they lock the door to the storage room. He’s half hard already, rubbing himself against the warm spot between Izzy’s legs absentmindedly, because there’s no rush to do anything, they don’t have to do anything, and Izzy cups his cheeks like Stede is everything.

For a moment, he is Benjamin, he is Anne, he is Jack, he is Sam, he is James, he is Edward, he is Jackie, he is Izzy’s . Did they see it then? When they had him at their mercy, did they see how precious he is? Did they understand that he was meant to be loved with every ounce of one’s soul, that he would consume their hearts so thoroughly that they’d barely be able to remember themselves afterwards? Did they know that they would carve their place into his memories?

Stede doesn’t think he fully understands, much as the others didn’t understand before him. Were they as desperate and at the same time as calm as he is now?

That night, he sleeps in Izzy’s cabin, overwhelmed by his scent, by his phantom presence, by his things.

He wakes in the night to the creature watching him.

It barely fits in the cabin, as large as it is, curling into itself awkwardly. It stares at him with its red eye almost glowing in the dark, but it does nothing else. Just stares. Stede’s heart is at his throat, not allowing him to breathe with the terror within him. Its teeth are pointed, its nails, claws, really, are sharp and dangerous, its red eye sparks with an unsaid threat of incomprehensible power. There are scars on its face, on its body, and it looks truly famished, bones poking out from thin skin. Will it eat him? Has it come here to devour them all, only to satiate its never-ending hunger?

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t understand why it’s here, now, when he was so happy.

When he blinks, it disappears, and Stede rushes towards the captains’ cabin, where Edward sleeps.

“Why were you shouting earlier?” he asks with desperation, when Edward is barely awake.

“What?”

“You were shouting earlier.”

“No.”

“Right after lunch, you shouted profanities at the crew.”

Edward widens his eyes, remembering.

“Oh. Yeah, I guess I got a bit loud. Sorry.”

“What happened?”

“I stubbed my toe against one of the barrels.”

It is foolish. There had been nothing wrong, but Stede had been torn to pieces at the sound of Edward’s shout. Had he even been angry, as angry as he was when he was playing the part of the Kraken? He mustn't have been, considering he barely remembered the incident. Had he known Stede would stop breathing at the sound of his voice? It’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard. It’s the saddest thing he’s ever heard.

There is a hurricane in his soul.

Overwhelmed, Stede laughs and laughs and laughs in the dark, illuminated only by the moonlight coming in through the window, he laughs until he’s sobbing, until he’s shaking, until he can barely stand, until Edward is lighting a candle and holding him in his arms. 

Isn’t it stupid?

Isn’t he frail?

“I am broken, Edward,” he confesses.

“Stede–”

“I am broken. Whole, but broken. The pieces that make me still have a shape that vaguely resembles Stede Bonnet, but can I still be Stede Bonnet? There’s an emptiness within me now, I don’t think I’ll ever get rid of it. Am I wiser? Have I become insane? Is there even a difference anymore? Have I grown wise in my madness? When does one know too much? I see mangled, tortured, scarred, famished creatures hiding in small rooms of the ship, watching me with a red eye, letting me wonder what kind of things they’ll do to me. I was not born a captain, a leader, and I can’t stand to speak for long enough. The noise drives me mad, like I’m drowning, and the quiet leaves me so uneasy it makes me want to crawl out of my own skin. I spend my days with the ghost of someone I used to hate, but who I hold so dear that the lack of his presence hurts me, leaves me cold and empty. I am told I am not shattered, but how long can something be broken for before it becomes unrecognizable? Will I be devoured by my own desperation? By my terror and my paranoia? Will I become the ashes of my own past, what remained in that shadowy brig, where the darkness and the quiet were unbearable, and yet where I learned what it means to love and be loved? How far can I swim until I drown? How far can I walk until I can’t stand? What will implode first, my feet or my mind?”

There are tears in Edward’s eyes.

“Breathe, my dear,” he begs. “Please, breathe with me.”

“Edward, what happened to Izzy?”

Edward sobs.

“Please…”

“Edward, what happened to Izzy?”

“No.”

“What happened to Izzy?”

“Stede, please stop.

“What happened–”

Something grabs at his leg and pulls him back into the shadows.

When he wakes, he is in the brig, being held against Izzy’s gentle breast. His hands are tied, rendering him unable to twist in Izzy’s grasp, but he is not blindfolded and he is not afraid. He can smell the jasmine tea and there is a plate of cookies near him.

“You were uneasy, last night,” he says, cleaning the sweat from Stede’s brow with a wet piece of cloth. “Are you feeling better?”

Izzy’s kindness overwhelms him, and his eyes fill with tears. And when he sobs, Izzy holds him, feeds him cookies and helps him drink the tea. Being held by him, Stede doesn’t feel as panicked or as nauseous as he did before, but he can’t stop crying. Even when he stops sobbing, there are still tears running down his face and breathing feels like the most difficult thing in the world.

But Izzy, the miracle that he is, seems to know exactly what he needs.

Maybe he should have felt a bit more self conscious of being naked in front of Izzy Hands, his body and his scars left on display, especially when he can’t see the other man. But there is no judgment when he helps Stede into the bathtub, which has been filled with warm water, sitting behind him and pressing a kiss to his lips. He washes him gently with the lavender soap, brushing Stede’s hair in such a way that it doesn’t hurt, not even a little bit, and Stede can’t help but moan when he moves to wash his back, massaging the tense muscles.

They don’t speak as Izzy dries him off with a towel, and ties his hair into a loose braid. He puts Stede in clean underwear, if only to spare him the embarrassment, and opens a drawer to find some nice smelling ointment, good for the skin. When Izzy kisses him, climbs on his lap, so close, and starts spreading the oil on Stede’s beard with his hands, he keeps his eyes dutifully closed, letting Izzy work in peace, unwilling to cross the only boundary the man established with him.

It doesn’t feel wrong, for once.

“Talk to me,” Izzy tells him, massaging his jaw.

“Will it get better?” Stede asks, almost immediately.

Izzy sighs.

“It won’t be the same as it once was. You’ll never be the same, unfortunately, but you’ll learn how to live with yourself and your past again.”

“Will I be happy?”

“If you let yourself.”

“Have you?”

Izzy doesn’t answer.

“I am broken,” Stede whispers, desperate, tears running down his face, silently.

“You are.”

“And yet you still treat me kindly.”

“Life has shattered me, multiple times. You’ll come to learn that people like me find solace in the broken.”

“You told me you loved me, yesterday.”

“I do. In my own way, of course. Is it enough?”

“Yes.”

The ‘s’ has barely died in the air when Izzy is kissing him again, breathing a sigh into his mouth. He tastes like home.

“Do you promise me that, when things get bad, you’ll be there for me?”

“Yes.”

“WIll you look at me kindly?”

“Of course.”
“Will you love me through my flaws?”

“Dearest,” Izzy answers, final.

A confession.

He needs nothing else.

He doesn’t open his eyes, and Izzy doesn’t blindfold him, but he reckons he sees Izzy for the first time in that bathroom. The man backs away for a moment, but when he returns, Stede can feel their skin brushing. He moves his hands in a way that they trace the outline of Izzy’s body, letting his fingers catch on his underwear, letting his hands squeeze his chest lightly, cup his cheeks softly. He lets his fingers bury themselves in his hair, scratching his scalp, and he notices how long his hair is, how Izzy has let his beard grow, too, and Izzy sighs when Stede undoes the knots on his hair with his fingers. 

His brain is barely registering the shape of the man on top of him before his unseeing mouth is searching desperately for something to latch on, and Izzy is gasping, grunting, sighing against him, as desperate as Stede, kissing him everywhere.

He doesn’t think he has ever made love like they did, on that morning, certainly not with Mary, when everything was an obligation, and surprisingly not with Edward. They’re desperate for one another, competing with how much the two of them want to touch each other, groping and sighing and squeezing and pulling and licking and sucking. It’s a mostly quiet event, if not for the rough sound of their breathing and, eventually, for the incessant slapping of skin against skin as Izzy rides him, Stede holding him by the waist and helping him up and down and up and down…

They kiss like they’re the only two people in the world, begging against each other’s mouths, a mantra of “please”, “harder”, “right there”, “faster”, “ dearest ”.

“Promise me,” Stede begs in a whisper. “That when I come to you and kneel at your feet, you’ll break me, kindly.”

He tastes the smile in Izzy’s mouth, this unsaid acceptance that means everything.

He spends the days writing as Izzy works, sewing the chapters of his manuscript together as he completes them. Sometimes, he meets Izzy throughout the day, when his head is loud and he feels like he's about to crumble into pieces, and kneels at his feet.

"Please," he begs, broken.

"Dearest," Izzy answers, salvation.

Izzy holds him through his darkest times. He fills his mind with stories and poetry and love. He kisses him through his fears, they read the Sonnets like prayers to one another, two broken people finding solace in one another, and Stede reckons he has not known love like this before. Love with Edward is sweet, is the warm light of the sun in the mornings, kisses in the moonlight, laughter and dancing. Love with Izzy is a thunderstorm, it's being taken by the sea, it's adventure and passion, it's being fucked into the wooden floors before going to bed.

And then, suddenly, there comes the day in which Izzy lets Stede look at him.

When the blindfold falls, Stede almost doesn’t recognize him.

His hair and beard are long, his face is covered in deep scars. He is lacking a piece of his ear, and one of his eyes. He is missing his right middle finger and his left ring one, and he looks exhausted, and hurt, and thin.

Stede is crying before he knows it.

And he can't stop crying.

Izzy holds him through it.

Izzy feels almost immaterial like this. Like he doesn't really exist, like he's not really real , because there’s no way someone can survive something like what he went through and still live.

There are gashes on his skin, everywhere. Bullet holes that didn’t quite heal right. Missing fingernails that have just started to grow, missing fingers, the emptiness of a missing eye on his face. Who hurt him like this?

.

.

.

Stede knows.

Stede knows exactly who did this to him.

In a flash, he's angry. He rips himself away from Izzy's arms and storms to the captain's cabin. Izzy tries to hold him back, not caring if anyone else sees them, begging him to stop, hands scrambling for pieces of Stede's clothes, anything he could grab.

"What did you do to him?" he asks Edward, as soon as he steps into the captain's cabin. "What did you do to Izzy?"

When Edward doesn't answer, eyes full of tears, he steps away from the open door and screams.

"Look at him! Look at what you've done to him!"

But, despite Stede being sure that Izzy was still behind him, despite the fact that Izzy's hand was on his shoulder a few seconds ago, there's no one at the door.

Izzy has vanished.

Like he was never here to begin with.

.

.

.

Was he?

Was any of it real?

Is he going mad?

Stede starts cackling, madly laughing even though he feels no joy.

What happened

what happened

what happened

“I think I owe you an answer, don't I? I should have told you sooner,” Edward says, looking away for a moment, before looking back into Stede’s eyes. “After you left, I cut off his pinky toe and I made him eat it.”

I’m sorry.

“He said some shit that I don’t think he even meant, but I got so angry I drowned Lucius and then slipped into his room and cut off his toe. He cried so much, and I’m horrified by my actions now, but I remember being so ecstatic back then that he finally, finally , feared me.”

It was my fault.

“He saved Lucius. I… I found out. And I locked him in the brig for his betrayal.”

I was Edward’s first prisoner.

“It wasn’t enough. I beat him bloody, almost everyday, until he was barely recognizable if not for a single bruise. I took off the ring finger on his left hand, as punishment for his lies, so that he’d never be able to compromise with anyone ever again, and I took the middle finger on his right hand, as punishment for his crudish behavior, so that he’d never be able to raise that finger to anyone ever again.”

Life has shattered me.

“But Izzy was always something fierce. He kept fighting. And I kept taking, until he was nothing but a husk of himself in that dark room. I took his left eye, I broke his arms and legs, I beat him up until he could barely breathe, but he wouldn’t give up. So, I had him keelhauled.”

You’re the only one I could save.

Stede rushes to the side of the ship and throws up, sobbing frantically.

He doesn’t see Izzy again, no matter how hard he looks for the man, no matter how long he stays in the brig, waiting for him to come back. He brings them food, and is disappointed to find that Izzy doesn’t take a single bite from the plates of sweets and delicacies he brings him. Sometimes, he dreams of things that have happened, and he thinks that they might have all been illusions of his, desperate to find solace in anything.

He doesn’t forgive Edward.

He screams himself hoarse in the brig calling out to him, but he doesn’t forgive Izzy either, for bringing out love within him, for helping him heal, and abandoning him without saying a single word.

Sometimes, when he sleeps in Izzy’s bedroom, he dreams of the creature. It doesn’t look as frightening as it once did, but it stares. He wonders if it’s still hiding aboard the ship. Raging mad, he thinks that he’s glad that it found a home aboard the Revenge, and he hopes that it can be happy, hiding in the walls as it is.

He works endlessly on the book. The stories are all Izzy's left him, and there is no greater honor than to be the vessel of his memories, of his life, of his past. He sews the chapters together and, when they head into port, he designs his own leather cover for the book. It has no title, and he doesn’t think any of the ideas he came up with can be worthy of naming such a story.

He brings the book to Jackie’s first, because she’s the easiest to find. He reads her story told through Izzy's eyes, and she cries when she hears it, her hands shaking, tears running down her face, and Stede holds her as they mourn for a shared love. 

And, as per his request, she brings him Samantha.

Samantha is twelve, dotted on by Jackie and her twenty husbands. She’s very different from Alma, and she wears her hair tied up, wears dark red pants like her mother and works on accounting for the bar.

As soon as his eyes land on her, Stede understands why Izzy had her in secret.

She looks just like Edward, with her dark skin, with her long hair, with her adventurous spirit. When Jackie finally allows him to see her, Edward hugs her and begs her for forgiveness, kissing her head, lamenting over the father he could never be to her.

Samantha suggests to him the book’s first title: “Abyss”.

Next, he finds Anne, Mary and Jack. Dolores and John are older, John being twenty-two and Dolores being nineteen, two little thieves raised by a group of notorious pirates. They try to swordfight Stede and to stab Edward at least once or twice, and Stede can finally see happiness in the drunken way in which Jack laughs, calling them his rascals. They cry upon hearing Izzy’s tales of them, how much he loved them. And the two of them give him another title: “Shipwreck.”

Finding Rosemary and James is harder, considering how Izzy kept their location a secret, but he tries. He spends months going over his own notes with Jackie, trying to uncover the location of his last child, and they find them just off the coast of Salvador.

Of course.

An English-Portuguese family.

Of course.

Rosemary is only three, barely able to form sentences, and her smile is contagious. Stede doesn’t bring Edward to this meeting, thinking that Izzy deserves this ounce of respect, no, he goes on his own. James’ eyes are empty when Stede tells him about his husband's fate and he cries when he reads the way Izzy described their story.

“Izzy always had a way with words. He called himself a brute, but I don’t think he ever understood that what makes someone a poet aren’t their delicacies,” he smiles. “Thank you for honoring his memory.”

“It was my pleasure.”

“Rose won’t be able to give you a title, not like Samantha, like John or Dolores have. But I can give you a suggestion.”

“Of course.”

“ Seaborn.”

Stede tilts his head.

“May I ask why?”

“My husband was carried ship after ship, living his years in the ocean. He was killed and resurrected, as a child of the sea.”

Stede gives him his copy of the Sonnets back, before he leaves. And, in the darkness of his office, Stede carves the final title into the leather cover. And he hopes that, wherever he is, Izzy enjoys the fruits of his labor.

As soon as he's done wrapping up the book and placing it on his shelf, he hears someone speak:

“Isn’t it wonderful? Through your words I am beautiful.”

He turns around in a flash.

“Izzy.”

The creature stares at him, a sad look in its red eye.

“You made me beautiful,” it says, voice slightly distorted.

It’s not Izzy.

It can’t be Izzy.

Stede’s eyes fill with tears.

He approaches it and it lowers its head just enough that Stede can reach it, petting him with a single hand. The creature dissolves in golden sparkles, revealing Izzy’s form underneath.

“You love me,” he says, voice full of tears.

“I do,” Stede confesses.

He kisses Stede’s hand, shaking like a leaf.

“You mustn’t love me,” Izzy begs. “I traded a place in the afterlife, in the light, for a place in the Earth, where I could save Edward from himself, and the price was this monstrous form I take, bound to live in the darkness,” Izzy tells him. “You mustn’t love me, I am nothing but the ashes of my other self.”

“I don’t mind.”

“You will never be able to take me by the hand.”

“I know.”

“Stede, please,” he asks, desperate. “You have Edward.”

“I choose you, too.”

Izzy kisses him first, desperately.

For the man who taught me love through the cracks.

For Israel.

Stede laughs and brings them back together when they break apart.