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Izzy woke late into the afternoon, painfully sober. For some reason Bonnet hadn't bothered him, despite being the de facto first mate of the Revenge , nor had the crew woken him with any of their usual antics. Izzy had passed out not long after having to stomach Edward's too little too late apology and just shut out the world.
Now his stomach was growling and his bladder was full, so Izzy dragged himself out of bed and got dressed. Strapping on the unicorn leg was a novel addition to a routine he had kept for three decades, having always replaced his worn out clothes with similar ones over the years. It filled the place of his second boot, taking a little more effort. The biggest issue was that his leg wasn’t really done healing yet, so it smarted something fierce to put weight on it, making Izzy’s new gait horribly uneven.
The crew had made him a fine tool for getting around. Izzy was impressed with how sturdy it was, but it was the gold paint that made him love it. It was a reminder of the one thing Izzy had going for him now: a crew that gave a fuck what happened to him.
After relieving himself, Izzy walked into the galley and found Roach working furiously. There were platters of biscuits and rolls laid out on a table already and several pans going on the stove top. The whole room smelled of rich spices and succulent meat. Izzy had no idea what the occasion could be and prepared himself to fume at Bonnet about rationing and pragmatism now that the man had given up his fortune.
"Ah! There you are, little man!" Roach said, looking up to spot Izzy coming into the room. "Been wondering if I should check on you, but it's been so busy."
"Fuck's all this?" Izzy asked, willfully ignoring the cook's consideration of him.
"It's Calypso's birthday!" Roach beamed, spreading his arms wide.
A corner of Izzy's mouth turned up as he approached the kitchen service window. "Bonnet fell for that then, did he?"
"Yeah. Edward even decided to sell some of the loot that you all acquired from…before," Roach said with an awkward wave of his cleaver. "We stopped in a little fishing village, and I got all kinds of ingredients."
"Fuck. Slept through all that, did I?"
Privately Izzy wondered what Ed was up to letting the crew throw a Calypso party. Maybe he thought he was making up for things, or maybe he just didn't give a fuck what happened to all that loot from breaking Ned Lowe's record. Or, knowing Eddie, he might have wanted an excuse to party just as bad as the crew. He had his boyfriend back after all, and the crew were all mostly willing to sail with him again.
Roach hummed sympathetically. "You didn't sleep at all in the night, did you, little man?" he asked with a knowing arch of his brow. "Fang said you were really out of it when he ran into you this morning."
Izzy looked away. "Fuckin' snitch."
But Roach didn't scold him. He reached through the window and clapped a hand on Izzy's shoulder. Sensing he was waiting, Izzy turned his head and looked the cook in the eye.
"Come to the party, Izzy," he implored. "We all need a little celebration in our lives, mm?"
Izzy nearly scoffed at the idea that he had anything worth celebrating, but just as he started to roll his eyes, the look Roach gave him stopped him in his tracks. He supposed he did have this lot. Izzy still got sick to his stomach when he looked at Ed, but even Stede was decent enough company these days. There was a frank, no nonsense care in Roach’s eyes that froze Izzy in his tracks. The man’s unrelenting care was disarming, no matter how much Izzy tried to shrug it off.
“Fair enough,” he said.
Before he could ask for food, Roach passed him a plate with a small serving of a couple hot dishes. “You can take a little of what’s out there too. Just get out of my hair,” he said with a smile that was too fond to take the dismissal at face value.
“Sure,” Izzy said, stepping back from the counter, relieved to escape Roach’s hot gaze.
He grabbed a roll and a biscuit on his way out of the galley and took the plate back to his berth. Izzy didn’t realize how hungry he was until the food was in his mouth. He was glad he was alone because he couldn’t help the moans of satisfaction that left him. Roach knew his work.
Izzy couldn’t remember when he’d last eaten something substantive like this. Certainly not in more than a day. There had been the soup Roach prepared when they first reconvened on the Revenge , but Izzy hadn’t taken any then. He had some later, when the cook sought him out with a lukewarm bowl. It had been delicious all the same. Surely Izzy must have eaten something since then, but he couldn’t recall for the life of him. He blamed the booze, which he had no intention to stop drinking.
Still, it felt good to eat. Izzy felt better with food in his belly. Maybe he’d attend this party with the crew after all. The one issue was that Edward would be there, but Izzy could avoid him. It was harder to channel his fury at a shark when Eddie was making puppy dog eyes in hopes of easy forgiveness. That was the other thing about the shark that he’d failed to tell Lucius. Sharks don’t ask to be forgiven.
Izzy carried his plate out into the passageway, planning to do Roach the courtesy of bringing it back. Maybe he’d even offer to help the cook set up the party food on deck. But before he reached the galley, Izzy passed by the room that Jim and Oluwande were now sharing with Archie and spotted Wee John inside. He was sitting in the corner staring into his reflection on a silver platter he’d propped up on a barrel.
As Izzy walked into the room, setting his plate aside on some free surface, he spotted all kinds of bits and things laid out on the barrel in front of Feeney. His curiosity went from mild to intense in a blink. Izzy recognized the soft brushes and fine powders. There was even a small pile of little swabs of cotton. It had been a long time since Edward had interest in stocking this sort of thing on his ship.
Izzy wondered where Wee John had found it all. If the loot Blackbeard had amassed was spent on these purchases, there would be a sweet satisfaction in putting them to use. Maybe it was the strength he got from a good meal, but Izzy was feeling oddly bold. If this was the sort of party the crew wanted to throw, the sort Izzy hadn’t enjoyed in probably two decades, there was no way he was going to miss it.
He came up behind Feeney, sure that his heavy, uneven gait gave him away, and leaned over his shoulder to look at him with their reflections. John had some makeup painted on his eyes already, a modest wing, and he was powdering his face. It was a pretty good novice painting, though Izzy thought immediately that a man like Wee John, with his fair hair and beard, would benefit from more color. Especially since they had it in stock.
“What’s all this then?”
“I’m working on my look,” Feeney said, pouting back at him in the reflection of the platter.
“Look?” Izzy asked, straightening to move around and face John properly. “The fuck’s a look?”
“Well, tonight I’m going as the sea goddess Calypso,” John told him, a saucy bit of flair in his delivery.
A flicker of fondness bloomed in Izzy’s chest. That flair would serve John well if he was to perform the role of Calypso tonight.
Feeney looked back at his reflection and gestured to his face. “I’m thinking dramatic eyes, dramatic lips…” he said, a touch wistfully. John looked back at Izzy in a way that said he assumed Blackbeard’s first mate knew nothing of such things. “Drama on the cheeks.”
Izzy’s brow furrowed as he considered what to do. He badly wanted to show Wee John a thing or two, lean into this whole Calypso business and just say fuck it all for a night. What held him back was that look from John. Even after the odd kindness of the last few days, this lot knew him as Blackbeard’s bloodthirsty and harsh first mate and nothing more. How would they react if he showed them that he had once been something different?
Izzy had spent the days since their reunion utterly lost, unsure what the fuck he was anymore. Teaching Bonnet had given him purpose, but the man was a difficult student and the thought of following along correcting his mistakes for the rest of his life made Izzy so fucking tired. He had that, and he had protecting this ragtag bunch of idiots that had somehow, for some fucking reason, attached themselves to him. Or he had to them. Izzy wasn’t sure anymore.
Fuck it.
Izzy found his resolve somewhere in the rubble of his mind and leaned back down over Wee John, meeting his eyes in the reflection. “Let me do it,” he said.
“What?” Feeney asked, brow crinkling in confusion.
“Never called it a fuckin’ look before, but I can give you the paint job you’re after,” Izzy promised.
John looked him over again with that same sassy, doubtful look in his eye. Izzy smiled, a lopsided, tired thing, knowing that actions would speak louder than words with this.
“Fuckin’ c’mon,” he said gruffly, gesturing for Feeney to give him the brush in his hand. “The fuck’ve you got t’ lose, eh? If you hate it you can scrub it off an’ start over.”
John pursed his lips, audibly sucked on his teeth, and then said, “Alright. Gimme your worst.”
Izzy pulled up a crate to sit beside John next to the barrel, settling in to work. The other man didn’t say anything while he dusted up a brush in some more indigo laced eye paint. He leaned in close to Feeny’s face, brush at the ready.
“Close your eyes.”
John obeyed and even stayed fairly still as Izzy began to paint color onto his skin. It didn’t take long for Izzy to fall into an almost hypnotic old habit. Didn’t matter how many years it had been since he’d taken a brush to skin like this—Edward’s or his own. (That shitty grease paint they’d worn recently never counted. It was a slapdash mockery of what they used to be. Like everything about the last few weeks…) Izzy found the arc of John’s brow and pulled the color up and over it, giving his face a new shape that would transform him from a simple pirate into Calypso herself. Somehow it was the easiest thing he’d done in months.
“You done this before then?” John asked.
Izzy just hummed in reply, lacking the energy or interest to explain himself.
“Like, a lot?”
Izzy paused and pulled back enough to actually make eye contact with his subject. “D’you really think Edward had the patience to do his own face back in the day?” he asked, smirking when he saw the slight widening of Feeney’s eyes. “He didn’t invent fuckeries all on his own, you know. Now quit scowling. This line needs to be straight.”
Wee John relaxed his face again, closing his eyes gently as directed. “You’re drawing on my fuckin’ forehead,” he observed with a critical tone.
“Mhm. You asked for drama.”
Feeney didn’t say anything for a moment, but then, “Suppose you always were a dramatic bitch.”
A surprised laugh startled from somewhere Izzy couldn’t even name. John opened his eyes and smiled back at him as Izzy got control of himself, unable to paint with his shoulders shaking. It wasn’t even that fucking funny, but there was music playing somewhere above them and lively muffled voices. And truth be told Izzy didn’t think he could fall any further. If the crew could still follow his order after watching his peg leg break out from under him, he reckoned nothing would lose him their respect. The fucking bunch of idiots.
“Aren’t we all,” Izzy said as he reached up to finish Calypso’s left brow.
She chuckled a bit too, and then stayed quiet while Izzy finished up her eyes, complete with a freshly done wing in black. He let her look and smirked with satisfaction when she gasped in awe.
“Oh my god. Izzy, you’re like, really good at this,” Calypso said.
“I know,” he said, pleased it had all come back to him so quickly. He set the tools he’d been using away and reached for a clean brush. “Drama on the cheeks now, right?”
“Please,” she said, sitting up straighter than before as she assumed the position.
Izzy dipped the brush in a tan powder and started dragging it up along Calypso’s cheekbone. He was properly enjoying this now. For the life of him, Izzy couldn’t recall precisely why they’d stopped doing this sort of thing. At some point it had all turned routine, lost its magic. For Izzy and Eddie both.
“Are you gonna put on a look then?” Calypso asked him.
Izzy paused, an eyebrow raising. She hadn’t asked if he was going to the party, just taken that as a given. Izzy hadn’t even considered painting his own face for the occasion.
“Oh, c’mon, you have to,” Calypso urged with a smile. “All this talent! Spend some on yourself for once, eh?”
A puff of breath left Izzy’s nostrils. “No one wants t’ see that.”
“ I do. And I think the others would too.”
Izzy hummed noncommittally, setting the brush aside and looking over the supplies. His first thought, the one that had become instinct, was that the crew would mock him. But not this lot. He was painting Feeney into a goddess, for fuckssake. Spriggs would certainly have something to say, but Izzy might be able to use it against him actually.
“Aw, c’mon, Izzy,” Calypso implored. “When are ya next gonna have the excuse to have a bit of fun like this?”
“Fun like what?” Jim’s voice asked. “Whadda we have goin’ on here?”
Izzy sighed, knowing immediately that they were going to make him cave. He’d finished blending crushed hibiscus into the beeswax that John must have bought when they’d gone ashore while Izzy slept. He kept his eyes on his work, dabbing the thinnest brush they had into the mixture.
“ Ay , is Izzy Hands doin’ your fuckin’ makeup, mate?”
Calypso smiled, and even with her look incomplete it was dazzling. “Tryin’ t’ convince him to do himself up too.”
“Ooh! Ooh! And me too!” Jim begged.
“Jesus Christ, I’m gonna end up stuck here painting the lot of ya if I’m not careful,” Izzy griped. “Part your lips, love, final touches now.”
Calypso did as he asked, which luckily shut her up for the moment too.
“C’mon, cabrón . Just gimme a little like, uh, mustache or somethin’!”
“A mustache?” he asked dryly.
“Yeah, something with some romantic flair, ya know?”
“Can’t say that I do. Okay, rub them together like this.” Izzy demonstrated for Calypso then dug around for a clean bit of cloth. “Press your lips on this to remove the excess,” he said, holding it out folded neatly.
“ C’mon , Hands,” Jim begged, leaning their weight on his shoulders. “Clearly you’ve been holding out on us. Secret artiste this whole time! You look amazing by the way, babe,” they said to Calypso.
She released the cloth from her lips and smiled bashfully. “Thank you.”
“Don’t be a blushin’ bride about it,” Izzy told her. “You’re Calypso! Goddess of the sea! You’ve got t’ be regal!”
“Why don’t you show me how it’s done then, eh?” she said, picking up the tan dusted brush and offering it to Izzy handle first.
Jim made a noise of excitement and started snapping their fingers. Izzy sighed, shook his head, and glanced into his reflection in the platter. Well, why the fuck not? He’d already decided to go to the party, might as well make the most of it. The crew were right about one thing: if you didn’t make your own fun in this world you were sure to end up miserable.
“Fuckin’...fine! Alright?”
They both cheered, unreasonably excited for something they hadn’t even seen yet.
“Fuck off an’ get dressed then,” he told Calypso. Then Izzy looked at Jim. “If you want a fuckin’ mustache or whatever you’d better sit down before I change my mind.”
They sat down quickly but didn’t shut up with their excited squeals. John had assembled a whole outfit for Calypso, including a fine dress that he must have found amongst the takings from Blackbeard’s unyielding assault on the sea. Jim explained that they'd come down to get changed into their own party outfit and started in on asking Izzy what he was wearing.
“Fuckin’ this , whaddya think?” he snarked, brushing more fine black lines over their upper lip.
“Well, you should do it up a little bit to match the face, shouldn’t you?” Calypso argued.
“I dunno, the leathers do have a certain kind of class.”
“Thank you, Jim,” he nodded gratefully. “Alright, you’re done. Lemme have that seat, the light’s better.”
Izzy had already decided by this point what he wanted to do. There was a packet of gold leaf amongst the treasures that Feeney had gathered, and they would match his new unicorn leg nicely. It was selfish of him to use them, greedy even, but they might go to waste otherwise.
Izzy put the brush to his face, evening out his canvas before starting on his eyes, and was surprised by how nice it felt. The soft bristles soothed him, and Izzy enjoyed watching his tattoo fade behind the pale makeup. He did his eyes first, carefully caking the gold onto his face moistened with a bit of oil.
It was a little surreal to be painting his face with care again. The black rings that hollowed out his eyes for Blackbeard’s recent raids were soulless by design, and Izzy had drawn them on with minimal attention, not even caring if the edges were even.
Now that he actually cared about the details, he noticed how the makeup pooled in the creases around his eyes. That wasn’t an issue he’d had the last time he was playing with color, nor something he could have anticipated happening at the time. Izzy had never expected to get old enough to have as many lines as he saw in the silver platter before him.
He couldn’t decide how he felt about it. Some would call it an achievement, but at what cost? Glancing across the room at Jim and Calypso, he wondered if they were destined to lose as much as he had, or if there was any chance for the alternative. That somehow, these fools had some secret to keeping hold of their identity in this wicked world.
Once they were dressed, Jim came and fussed over him again. Izzy scowled, but he privately glowed at their praise of how his “look” was coming along.
“You gonna do something with this hair, hombré ?” they asked, ruffling the top of Izzy’s head.
“Gonna have to now that you’ve fucked it up,” he griped, no real bite in it.
“You nearly done, love?” Calypso asked, leaning closer. “Figured we ought to make our entrance together.”
There was a cheer from the deck above and they all glanced upward.
“Yeah, you two have fun with that. I’m goin’ to the party,” Jim said, taking off before they could reply.
“Well, fuckin’ bye then,” Izzy muttered.
Calypso chuckled and moved to stand behind him as Izzy picked up the brush he’d used for Jim’s mustache.
“How ‘bout I do your hair,” she suggested. “Then you can finish that, and we’ll be ready in a jiff.”
“Fine,” Izzy agreed, completing a slim line that arced just so over the gold on his right brow.
Calypso fetched the pomade and spread it between her hands as Izzy painted on his other brow. He studied himself in the mirror and considered the absence of his Polaris tattoo. In a way he liked the clean slate, the transformation into something other than the man he had been these long years. But on the other, that mark was a part of him that he did not want to erase. It was a mark of his devotion to the pirate lifestyle and reminder of where he found salvation.
Thinking about it, Izzy had built these skills of showmanship in order to fortify the sanctuary he and Edward were creating within Blackbeard’s fleet. It became more and more about defense instead of celebration. He had let fear drive him and had encouraged Eddie to do the same.
Izzy was done being afraid, if only because he had nothing left to fear. So he painted Polaris back on his face, a little lower than where it sat on his skin, like some rich dame might place a faux mole. Then he went for the reddened wax to color his lips.
“There we are,” Calypso said, nudging the last little bit of Izzy’s hair into place. “Now you look radiant.”
“That’s your job,” Izzy scoffed.
“I’m a generous goddess,” she argued with a smile. Then Calypso swanned away and picked something up off the bed where her clothes had been laid out. “One final touch,” she said, offering it to him with a swirl of her skirt.
It was a red hibiscus flower, already fashioned into a boutonniere. Izzy wondered when John had had time to get it ready. Surely it must have been meant for someone else originally. Calypso herself? Jim? It would be just like them to conspire like that.
Izzy acquiesced with a sigh and a smile and let Calypso bless him with her gift. Then she gave him a hand to help him up and took one final look at her reflection.
“Are you ready to grace them with our presence?” she asked him with a wicked smile.
“If I shine, it is only in your light, my lady,” Izzy said, offering her an arm.
Calypso laughed at him, tossing her head back. “While I’m not sure which of us has the strongest gait anymore, you’re much too short to pull that off, m’dear,” she tittered.
“Oh, fuck off,” Izzy grumbled. “I’ll just leave you down here then, shall I,” he said, heading for the door.
Calypso sighed dramatically. “Still can’t take a joke, eh, Hands?”
He paused to glare at her and was unsurprised to find her smirking back. Izzy stepped to the side in the passageway to let Calypso past him.
“Ladies first.”
“You’re damn right,” she grinned, lifting her skirt as she walked.
They reached the stairs, and Izzy paused at the bottom and watched her go ahead. The lighting above was bright yet soft. Izzy could see a warm abundance of color on deck that shone around Calypso’s silver hair and sparkling dress. Izzy allowed himself a very small, private smile and felt the heaviness of the makeup on his skin, reminding him of the transformation he had gone through. It didn’t matter that Edward was up there somewhere; Izzy would ignore him. Any good Calypso’ing was always a production by the crew for the crew, and Izzy was about to show this lot how it was done.