Chapter Text
A pirate ship is no place for a child, even if Bonnet’s idea of piracy isn’t exactly the most obtrusive violence Izzy’s ever seen. There are any number of things that can kill, bloodshed need not be involved. Izzy’s seen enough sharp young men meet their makers in the watery depths to know that. Whatever begrudging, awkward sort of fondness for one another this crew has formed makes him too anxious to go soft on them, the youngest of them no exception.
“Baby on deck!” Buttons calls, as that widow gull of his circles overhead and Izzy feels the thickening of a migraine coming in.
Maybe it’s the summer heat, the sun strong and the sky clear. Or maybe it’s just that tightening of his jaw, clenched so tight he hears his teeth creak. Either way he stalks to the railing, glowering over the deck of languid pleasure time the crew is enjoying.
Michael zips, from in the Captain’s quarters where he’s been having reading lessons with Bonnet every afternoon. The pitter patter of bare feet scramble across the deck.
“Where are your shoes?” Izzy demands over the cheer that rises from the smattering of crew milling about.
“Uh the shoes, um, gone! Fuck the shoes!!!” Michael cries, hoisting his doll triumphantly into the air as Frenchie and Wee John whoop and holler him on.
He does a victory lap, hopping over Jimenez’s legs as he does so. His footing nearly slips and it’s only Wee John’s quick hands that stop him from toppling over. Izzy’s grip tightens on the banister.
“Right Jim? Right?” Michael asks, unphased by his own clumsiness even as Wee John sets him straight.
“Yeah, fuck the whatever.” Jim replies, not bothering to lift their hat from where it’s protecting their face from the sun for the duration of their nap.
If they’re concerned with Michael’s daredevil antics around them, they don’t show it. In fact, Michael preforms a poorly executed kick off the wall of the ship that earns a smattering of applause from the crew who witness it.
“He’s told ya, Iz. He only fancies boots. Like Captain’s.” Frenchie says, plucking strings and tuning his lute as he does.
He doesn’t even bother to look up from his task, his heel knocking against the barrel he’s sitting on. When he does look at Izzy, he barely can contain his blatant amusement at the first mate’s annoyance.
“Or yours.” Wee John adds, meaningfully.
He’s been taking an absurd amount of delight in Michael’s habit of copying Izzy. Izzy snarls back at him, but it’s not particularly effective. Both men hide their snickers in their shoulders, and even Mr. Buttons at the wheel is visibly in on it.
“Yeah! Only, only FANCY BOOTS! For special boys! Pirate boys” The child declares.
The doll, who recently went overboard and was saved thanks to Izzy’s quick thinking (and diving), mocks him with its empty stare. It’s only once Michael nearly catches his feet on a coil of ropes that Izzy feels the anxiety bubble over.
He’s quick to take the last few steps down from the helm, shoulders tense and brow furrowed. Each step is punctuated with the sharp tap of his cane, and the hollow thunk of the prosthetic leg they’ve fashioned for him. He’d love to think he looks an imposing figure to the crew around him, but he also feels the way his shoulders ease when Michael does, in fact, stop running. In fact he stops fully, his bare feet skidding on the freshly mopped deck.
Izzy tugs him closer by his shirt, rougher than he means to at first. He eases his hold, just barely, and examines Michael to make sure the boy isn’t hurt. Michael giggles, standing excitedly before him once he realizes Izzy’s taking a knee to get on his level. He holds the doll closer, even if his smile betrays how happy he is to see Izzy. Izzy tries to keep a stern face; he can feel the eyes of the crew on him.
“You have to stop running. You could catch a swell at the wrong time, or trip, or get caught in ropes.” Izzy says, slowly. He keeps his voice down, and he pauses to shoot a glare at the onlookers surrounding him. “You need to understand where your feet are going to be before they’re even there.”
Michael nods.
“Otherwise I go into the drink!” He sing-songs, a bit too enthusiastic for a child talking about his potentially violent and painful death by drowning.
Izzy tries not to think about it.
They’ve had this conversation before. Bonnet calls him an ‘effervescent’ child, and Ed seems amused by him above all else. A pirate ship is absolutely too dangerous a home for him, for his excitement and joy to experience the world.
Catching himself on the precipice of the crushing weight of being tasked with caring for this child, Izzy scowls and adjusts Michael’s mussed clothing with more force than necessary. If the boy seems upset by the manhandling, he doesn’t show it.
“And you can’t be barefoot all the fucking time.”
“Why not?”
“You’ll hurt yourself.”
“You get to be barefoot.”
“That’s a wooden leg, it doesn’t count.”
“Can I get a wooden leg, then?” He asks as Izzy straightens the ties that hold his shirt closed.
“Sold our last one.”
Michael groans.
Ever the practical one, Izzy fixes him with a look.
“What about your shoes?”
“But I’m a pirate and pirates have boots. Like your, uh, like your SKIN leg.” Michael says, wiggling his toes as Izzy finishes the tie in an awkward bow.
He has perfectly good shoes. Shoes that Bonnet had brought for him from Barbados, that his own daughter simply out grew. They’re perfectly usable. Even if they aren’t Izzy’s taste, he can admit that they’re of good quality. And they’re a bit big, yeah. But he’ll grow into them, it’s the sound decision.
And he needs to learn some time, doesn’t he? That you can’t always get the thing you want, that sometimes people like them need to settle for what they can get. That he should be happy for his shoes, because not every little boy has them.
But Izzy also knows the feeling of that in his stomach. That anxiety that started so young, about money and his place in the world. The line between understanding and dread is so thin for Izzy that he doesn’t have the skill set to tell them apart now. How is he supposed to do this right? He doesn’t know the words; fuck he can barely even tell Oswald the words. How is he supposed to explain all this to a eight year old boy?
“Better get fucking started saving, then. You either buy them or steal them.” He settles on masking the rising fear with annoyance.
It works, save for the scoff from their audience.
Eager to be both free from prying crewman eyes and to get shoes on the boy as quickly as possible, he waves the boy forward. It barely takes any prompting at all, even if Wee John’s complaints are enthusiastic.
“Besides, they don’t sell boots that small.” Izzy reasons, standing at the bottom of the ladder as Michael climbs down to ensure he doesn’t fall.
“I’m not even KINDA little!! I’m 8 an 3/4ths! I’m a big, big boy, like basically I’m almost 9 which means I’m almost 10. And being 10 is like, practically an adult!” Michael declares as he hops the final few steps into the belly of the ship with the doll still in his grip.
Izzy guides him with a hand to his lower back, easing him to scoot around Spriggs and Swede on a ration-counting mission. The little boy waves to both of them, which earns him a wink from Lucius.
“You keep him on a tight leash?” Lucius calls, while Michael nods an excited affirmation.
“No one is in charge of me.” Izzy snaps, a bit too much bite to it by the way the little boy flinches.
He curses himself, especially when Michael begins to chew on his thumbnail. Izzy doesn’t apologize, and Michael doesn’t stray far from his side.
The rest of the walk is quiet.
Izzy has to dig through the chest at the foot of the bed, the one he didn’t ask for and certainly didn’t want. The one that has blankets and pillows for the boy, the elusive pair of shoes, toys and games and shirts and socks that Oswald sent with them when he said goodbye that May morning. He finds them shoved under his spare boot, the one that no longer suits him now that his leg is gone.
While he looks, Michael sits on the bed crisscross applesauce and babbles about whatever nonsense that Roach has been teaching him about cooking. The disappointment is clear when Izzy manages to pull them from the depths of the trunk, but he obediently hops off the bed and picks a pair of socks to wear.
The shoes fit okay. They’re actually a little big, which makes sense given that Michael is a tiny thing. Even for a nearly nine-year-old boy he’s still smaller than Izzy can possibly imagine. He’s even asked Roach to split his portion between himself and Michael, but he refused. He’d just doubled the boy’s portion instead, said he’d talked it over with the Captains.
But with a thick pair of socks? They’ll hold up just fine, and keep him safe from anything too pointy around the ground. And Michael actually listens. He wears them, even shows Izzy how he can put them on himself.
But, Michael asks constantly over the next few weeks.
“Can we get me boots?”
“Can we get me boots?”
“Can we please get me boots?”
“Can we pretty please get me some boots? Pleaaaase-?”
—
“You could just buy the boy the boots.” Bonnet suggests, although his nasally tone and tense posture tell Izzy he’s actually concerned.
He’s busy pouring them all glasses of the fine cognac they swiped from a gunner ship a few months ago, the first raid Izzy’d been back for. At his side, Ed points his pipe at Izzy as he pauses in clearing the bowl.
“He’s not wrong, Iz. That’s all he’s been yammering about for weeks now.”
Ed blows into the pipe, looking to dislodge something. Stede looks fondly at him, coming over from his place in front of their library to rest a hand on Edward’s shoulder. The three glasses are placed on the table, and Izzy’s quick to grab his. Stede leans down to press a kiss to Ed’s stubbled cheek, but Edward turns into it and kisses him so softly, so gently that Izzy has to look away. He downs his drink like a shot, the burn not even enough to assuage the awkwardness bubbling in his gut.
“What, want him to stop ruining your girl’s shoes?” Izzy snears.
Stede frowns, but Edward’s the one that speaks up.
“That’s not how we meant it and you know that, mate. It’s just up until now, you’ve been a mother hen. Been spoiling the baby rotten.”
Izzy scoffs. “I have fuckin not.”
“It started, was it the request for milk? For his, I think it was bones?” Stede starts incredulously, settling next to Edward on the chaise.
Ed’s now abandoned his pipe, his full attention on the task of mocking Izzy.
“Oswald said that’s important or something!” Izzy protests.
“Then it was not letting’em smoke.” Edward recalls.
“He’s a child, Edward!”
“And you said he couldn’t participate in art night!” Stede pipes up.
“Because fucking Spriggs’ books’re filled with -“
“Oh come on now, Izzy! Lucius is a visual artist! The children go to Mary’s art shows, and you have no problem with him participating in Edward’s artistic endeavors of fuckery.”
“Your ex wife doesn’t draw fucking dicks-“
“Oh it’s the human body, Israel! Really.”
“Yeah, mate! We saw dicks all the time as lads.”
“Doesn’t mean he needs to!”
“I just think as the boy’s father-“
Oh.
Oh fuck.
He’s got to put a stop to this right this second. He opens his mouth, and Edward’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline before he can even speak. But what is he going to say, really?
“He’s the ship’s baby, not mine.” Izzy says through grit teeth.
“You takin’ him with you in the summer?” Ed demands, his eyes the sort of darkened, narrow furrow that has forecasted Izzy’s demise in the past.
“Oswald wants him, not me.” Not a particularly good deflection.
His captains share a look. They look back at him, not nearly the blank slates they surely think they are. Stede’s nose is scrunched up in upset, like he’s moments away from-
“Well I certainly hope, Israel, that you aren’t planning on letting HIM in on that.”
Yup. There it is. Izzy doesn’t fucking need this shit, certainly not from Father of the Year Bonnet.
He flips them both off and stomps out, his steps down the stairs hurried as he shoves past Swede and Roach. He doesn’t notice the worried look the pair share.