Chapter Text
Izzy is standing at the back of the makeshift meeting room, trying his absolute hardest to tune into the conversation being had in front of him. For once on this God forsaken vessel, it actually holds some level of importance, the summing up of their weekly operations.
He is decidedly not succeeding.
He’s- he gets like this, is the problem. Got his own kraken, though the thought of comparing his own fragility to Blackbeard’s ferocity makes him ill.
The thing about being a pirate, is that it's all routine. It seems like chaos, and disorganisation, and spontaneous fights all the time, but that's not the truth of the everyday life of it. There is nothing more rigidly managed than piracy. There are chores that have to be done, every day, at the same time. Each raid has to be meticulously planned out, weeks in advance, if you’re working under someone as fastidious (and unforgiving) as Blackbeard. Every single person on board has a role, a job they carry out, every day, and the jobs they carry out best. Nothing ever changes.
On the Queen Anne, Izzy could have come onto the deck at any time, on any day, and told you exactly where every crew member was, the job they were performing, and the standard they were performing it to. There was no room for mistakes, none for beginners' hands. You either got with the program, or you faced the consequences.
Izzy remembers when Edward used to be a consequence. When he was a thing of consequence.
Izzy had never once strayed from his duties on the ship. He had performed the same menial tasks, day in, day out, for the chance to go raiding with Blackbeard. Had cut his hands up the same way, in the same places, until sometimes he felt more callus than man. And at the end of the day, when every task was done, the crew could settle into the same camaraderie they always had. They drank on the nights that were laid out by the ration board and, when the mood was right and the booze was good, laughed together until the sun rose in the early hours.
This had been enough for Izzy. This has been his life, and he had lived for it. He had gotten so comfortable in his own little monotony, that he had become complacent; he hadn’t noticed that it had stopped being enough for Edward.
He doesn’t know when piracy stopped holding appeal for the pirate. He can’t pinpoint where it happened. He was never the best at reading people. He thinks it was probably a thousand little things, hundreds done by Izzy’s own clumsy, worn hands. But at some point, Izzy’s life became a cage that was holding Edward in, and, inexplicably , the key has been placed in Stede Bonnet’s hands.
Izzy resents being made the villain of this story; the monster who locked the princess in the tower. But more than anything he resents Edward for turning on a dime. Resents him for turning him into something he couldn’t stomach anymore.
Edward can play lapdog with Bonnet if he so wishes; there is certainly nothing Izzy has ever been able to do to stop him from doing anything . He can play house with the crew, and drink high teas, banish the word Blackbeard out of existence and scrub all the dirt out of the grooves in his fingertips with Bonnet’s lavender scented soaps, but he can’t scrub the scars out of Izzy’s skin.
Edward can unmake himself all he wants, but if he wants Blackbeard gone, truly gone, he’ll have to carve him out of Izzy. And Izzy would take it. But that would bloody Stede fucking Bonnet’s deck, and so Edward, this new Edward, will never do it.
So Izzy is trapped, walking around with the ghost of a man who stopped wanting to exist clinging to every inch of skin he has, writing his name in every tiny little milk white groove where the cut didn’t quite heal right -
He’s tuned out again.
Everyone is staring at him as though he is expected to speak. Will joys never cease.
He gives a curt nod, hoping that will do the trick.
Everyone looks more than slightly surprised. The boy, Lucius, leaning against a table to his left, ducks his head, snorting.
With a sinking sense of dread, Izzy wonders what he has just agreed to.
Bonnet, the fastest to recover of them all, begins outlining his plans for a play. Fucking brilliant, one more thing to entertain these fucking louts who should be building their own calluses.
Edward has renounced piracy in any meaningful definition of the term. But Izzy certainly isn’t going to give up and drown with this ship simply because Edward woke up one day and decided everything integral to their existence no longer held value to him. There was a time where he would have died for Blackbeard, no matter what. No questions asked. If there was a blade destined for Edward’s neck, you could bet it would find a home in Izzy’s gut.
But… There is no Blackbeard anymore. Would he die for a concept?
If it came down to it, Izzy thinks he would give his life effortlessly. He would do it like breathing. Sometimes it feels like the only oxygen he’s getting in is from his own blood, greedily swallowed down. But he will not be giving his life to death by poor planning.
On his old ship, his crew knew him as harsh, but fair.
Perhaps that's not quite true. Harsh, but knowledgeable. As is the job of the first mate. He had never had to manage his crew, to truly threaten or injure them - they had known their jobs, and they had done them, and they had done them well. Izzy was elevated above them by his position: right hand to Blackbeard, pirate of thirty or forty odd years, but he was still a member of the crew. He still drank with them, took shore leave with them. Ate with them in the galley. Easy moments of kinship.
The crew on this ship have a wanton disregard for their lives that on any other ship would border the line of suicidality.
Izzy has become the perpetual tormenter, the whipmaster, the incessant nag. He’s dangerously close to inciting a mutiny and he isn’t even the stupid fucking twatty captain.
He is, humiliatingly, floundering.
They don’t have respect for him, which is the fundamental issue. He doesn’t know how to get it from them. They act unlike any other pirate crew he has ever encountered. They should respect him because he knows what he’s doing. They should respect him because he could kill them in a hundred ways more than they could even begin to think of. They should respect him because he is doing his absolute damndest to keep them all alive.
They respect nothing.
Izzy has never had Edward’s taste for punishment, serious punishment. He still feels sick when he thinks of the scars he has inflicted on innumerous cabin boys for their disobedience in Blackbeard’s presence.
His threats are empty, and slowly, they realised that. He is not clever, not like Bonnet, not like Edward. He is a good pirate - that’s his one skill.
He has found himself on the only boat on the globe where this means nothing.
He isn’t clever. He has no idea how to make the crew obey so…
He can’t even admit it to himself.
“Izzy, are we on course?” Bonnet asks expectantly, turning to face him.
Izzy blinks.
There is something soporific about this dark room, lit only by candles. He feels like the heat of all these people and the flames are shrinking his skin. He feels constrained, and exhausted.
“Izzy?”
What the fuck is happening? Why is this happening?
“Izzy.” Edward repeats, and it's an order. Izzy snaps upright and is talking before he can even process what he’s doing.
“We have adjusted two points to Starboard,” He rattles off, unthinking. He knows, intrinsically, what he’s saying is true, but it feels as though he can’t even feel his own tongue in his mouth. Every inch of his body feels disconnected from this hellish room and this hellish life he has found himself dumped in. “We are traveling at approximately…”
He can feel himself talking still, but can’t parse out what he’s saying. He looks up, meeting Edward’s eyes. There’s something in them he can’t recognise, some kind of emotion that never used to be out in the open like they are now.
He looks back down.
This too, is a kind of defeat.
He thinks he’s finished talking, he can’t really tell. Bonnet nods at him, reluctantly appreciative.
Izzy doesn’t think he had the wherewithal to add even the mildest of insults to his report on their quite frankly abysmal progress, which is most likely the cause of both Bonnet’s ridiculous facial expression and the looks being exchanged between the crew.
Near him, the boy stares daggers into his head until Izzy turns to face him. His face is scrunched into a displeased frown. Izzy can’t even track what he might have done this time.
Bonnet is speaking again, he can see his lips moving, but no noise is making its way into his head. There’s a dull roaring in his ears blocking it all out, all the sounds are smearing into each other, flickering and blurry like the shadows from the candle flames.
Izzy feels as though he’s being isolated in his own head. It, unfortunately, gives him all the more space to listen to his own thoughts.
He should admit to himself, at the very least, in the safety of his own skull.
He has no idea what to do. So he… gave up.
The most frustrating thing of it all is that before Izzy arrived, the ship had survived for months. Someone had been doing something, however inexperienced, however infrequent, however lackluster, that kept this ship alive and running.
Now that is not the case. The second the crew smelled Izzy on the breeze, they stopped any and all efforts at running the ship. That’s the best thing about a villain - they aren’t actually real. They’re mythical, they run on nothing but spite, which, admittedly, is not untrue of Izzy, but he at least used to get his six hours.
Now, he runs the ship alone. Edward is either too busy or too indifferent to notice that Izzy has become the sole person working. After two months of this nonsense, he has all but given up attempting to get the others to help him. It's wasting his precious time. And that's no exaggeration - his time is a commodity he has to ration carefully in return for their lives. Sleep has been the main casualty of this new reality. He no longer bothers Black Pete, or Frenchie, or fucking anyone, to do fucking anything, really.
He could show them how to do a job perfectly, threaten them till he’s blue in the face, and have them readily agree to the task at hand, only to return less than an hour later to find them asleep on the deck. There’s no time , he has to do it himself.
Every day is an unpredictable mess of tasks that all need to be done emergently. He feels like he’s bailing water before they’ve even hit rocks.
His anger at the unfairness and exhaustion of it all is like a physical sickness. It’s shameful and embarrassing. He’s a pirate, he knows these things: the sun sets west, hardtack spoils last, and life is never fair. Fairness is for children and the dead. But these lessons, at the very least, were consistent. Nothing is solid, on this awful boat. Everything is mushy and soft and pliable and moves with every second of every day, there’s no understanding of what he’s doing for Izzy to grab onto. He finds himself staring at walls, checking out, getting lost in his own head because nothing about his surroundings makes any sense. He’s rotting from the inside out like the hull of this ship and he’s poisoning everyone else around him with it. No one on this crew has seen him be anything but a stressed out, furious bastard.
Pitifully, he wishes he could have his old life back. This is the worst kind of death Edward could have subjected him to.
It has to be some kind of punishment.
If it isn’t, what does that say about the years they had spent as practically the same person?
Izzy thinks he must have done something awful. To deserve this. He hopes he has, because he can’t imagine Edward doing anything that feels more horrible than this. To be killed without the allowance of the peace of death.
His old life doesn’t even exist anymore. Maybe he’s the ghost, haunting Edward and his new happy, uppity life, with nowhere left to go, chilling the backs of everyone else around him and unable to move on.
Izzy blinks, hard. Tunes in to what his eyes are telling him.
He’s slid in his spot until he’s leaning against both the edge of a table and the wall, cornering himself in.
He feels loose, floppy. Like it's the sole thing holding him up.
Inexplicably, Bonnet is still talking. His words are like the washing of the waves against the hull, a waxing rush of noise and a waning drone of nothing before the next rush. They lap at Izzy’s ears, meaningless. Noise for the sake of noise.
He can’t fathom how the other man can possibly have anything more to say. Are there any words left that haven’t been spoken over the past month?
He blinks, and everyone in the room shifts.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
His own kraken, did he say?
It's been weeks of exhaustion. Of grueling, tiring work completed by him and only him. Of spare moments trying to find Blackbeard in the shell that Bonnet has husked out of Izzy’s only friend.
He finds himself losing his grip. Losing time, losing space. Feeling crushed in his tiny cabin, gasping for air for no discernible reason. He plans out his time, to try and lend some order to this mess, and when Edward thoughtlessly tramples all over his schedule he finds his eyes hot. When he yells at the crew, his hands come up by his face, swinging wildly, and when he tries to subdue them, they glide over the smooth leather of his well worn pants, over and over and over again.
Thank God for his clothes, if nothing else. He has kept that small piece of routine, not that he had much choice in it. All of his possessions were left on the Queen Anne, but that’s just one more slight among many. Their loss stings, but he has been telling himself that they may still be on the old ship. Telling himself being a pirate is owning nothing but what you wear. His only clothing shall start to smell unbearable shortly, he’s certain, and he doesn’t know what he’ll do when that happens. But for now, it’s manageable. He has his cravat, he has his ring. His glove, on the same hand as always. Faded old shirt from years past, thin from overuse and memories and tied at the elbows to keep his hands free. These small pieces of the life that was ripped from him like a plant from the earth. These little roots that allow him to keep moving, keep growing, like a weed.
This is what he has been reduced to. Relying on old cotton shirts and leather vests to hold himself together. Has he always been this dependent on his inane little schedules? How has he not noticed this glaring weakness before?
Today, on the day he had meticulously planned out to the second for fixing the biggest issues, as they were pulling into port, Bonnet had dragged them out on a ‘mandatory excursion’.
“Good morning Izzy!” Bonnet had called cheerfully.
An awful start to the morning, as far as Izzy was concerned.
He had grunted in reply. No need to exert any unnecessary energy on a response.
“So, I’m thinking we’ll have a little trip today, down to the market perhaps?”
“Yeah.” Izzy says dully, eyeing up the ropes to work out where he’ll start first.
“Oh? Alright then, well- that was easier than expected… ready in ten, should we say?”
“What?” Izzy asks, baffled. “Why would I be coming with you?”
“Well, you just said yes?” Bonnet says, an infuriating expression of earnest confusion on his face.
“What?” Izzy asks, genuinely baffled. “Why on earth would I come on your little date with Edward?”
“It is not- ” Bonnet exclaims, cutting himself short. “I would like for you to come!”
“Sorry. Jobs.” Izzy says, still reeling from the U-turn of a conversation. This at least is true - Bonnet can’t deny that.
Bonnet seems to be preparing to deny that. He puffs up his chest, schooling his face into what Izzy recognises is meant to be his ‘captain face’. It largely just makes him look constipated and entitled.
“Ed was very keen on you coming also. It's mandatory, even.” He says primly. “And as one of your Captains, I think I may make it an order.”
Edward approaches from behind Stede.
“Yeah, Iz. You’re coming with.” He calls out casually, walking over to the bow of the ship. “So don’t be trying anything. Captains’ orders.”
Izzy gapes. He feels his plans slip away from him like rope out of soaked hands in a storm. The same sickening fear. The weight of everything that needs doing seems to pile on top of him all at once. The ropes, the rigging, the rip in the sail. The cannons that they all used in some kind of game the other day, or week, that never got moved back. The gunpowder packing, the supply inventory - the list feels endless. It had been manageable, stacked up against the minutes of the day and the acceptance that he wouldn’t be sleeping, and now, he can feel every minute stolen away like a physical blow.
It doesn’t feel right, which is childish. ‘It isn’t right.’ But it isn’t. He doesn’t- he had planned what he was doing. He had his day. And it was his day. The rest of the crew is on shore leave. Even Blackbeard allowed shore leave. Is he not even allowed this one day? His day.
How is he ever, ever going to fix this mess?
Panic is a familiar sickness crawling up in him, as is indignant outrage, that Bonnet thinks he can just swan in, and change everything, like it's nothing, like it means. Nothing.
“I think you’ll fuck.” He snarls, bitter and furious all of a sudden.
His heart beats a fluttering, disjointed tattoo in his chest, tense and awful.
He- fuck, he can’t do this again. His hand is clenching and unclenching around the fabric of his sleeve, desperately gripping at the fabric and he can’t stop it, he’s so thrumming. Hopefully Bonnet thinks he’s going to punch him, the twat.
They’re all actually going to fuckin’ die and all he can think about is how unfair this is. Like anything would ever be fair. Like he had the right to expect that, or the optimism to think that Bonnet would ever treat him like his prissy little crew.
“Iz,” Edward warns but Izzy is tired. His day. It was his day.
“No, you fucking, you-” He cuts off, running a hand over his mouth, looking away. The whole… everything, feels too big to articulate. The words are getting caught up in his screwed up wreckage of a day, nothing is going to come out right now because nothing is right at all. What the fuck is he meant to do?
God, this never gets any less humiliating.
“Edward.” He starts slowly, cautiously working his tongue around the syllables. “I have jobs.”
“Well, Izzy, it’s your day off! We’re going to have a lovely little outing.”
Izzy is going to be sick. Right here on the deck, surely. He’s going to spill his guts right in front of Stede fucking Bonnet.
“You just- can’t, fuck, there’s- fuck, you can’t just-” Izzy explodes, waving his arms wildly in Bonnet’s face, delighting in the brief flash of fear that that instigates.
“Izzy!” Edward calls. Like he’s calling off his dog. That’s what he is to Edward, these days. A retired guard dog that just can’t stop barking. An annoyance.
“You’re both fucking cunting arse twats and I’m on leave!” Izzy finally manages to spit out.
Izzy’s eyes flick to Bonnet’s, just briefly, so he can see the true hatred for what he’s done to him in his very soul. They’ve widened at the onslaught of profanity. Fucking good. If Bonnet was feeling even one third of the empty, nauseating dread Izzy was feeling, he’d be blubbering on the deck of this fucking ship and that would be the closest thing to maintaining it he would have ever done. Izzy would make him fucking mop it with his tears if he could.
“Izzy.” Edward says, dangerously, and Izzy turns his head so fast to look at him it feels like he just might snap it. “You’re coming. Get the shit ready.”
And it's that simple, isn’t it? Why is he bothering?
From the moment he told Edward exactly what he should do - leave, get off this shitty not-ship and never fucking look back as long he’s breathing - and then let himself be coddled into staying on with the bare bones of a promise they both knew would never come to fruition, they drew a line in the sand, stepped right over it and just kept walking.
It doesn’t matter how furious, out of place, miserable or outright suicidal Izzy is at the turning of events on the Revenge - he’s not leaving. He’s not held hostage, he could end this madness at any point. Walk off to his shore leave and never fucking come back.
But he won’t. He’s tied to Edward like his skin is tied to his muscles.
He turns, spits vindictively at the ground when he’s just far enough from Bonnet’s shoes that he can’t be accused of anything, ignoring the noise of disgust or dismay from whichever crew member has evidently lingered behind to hear this debacle, and see what they’ll later be swabbing, and descends the stairs to his tiny hovel of a room.
Then, when the feeling feels as though it could crawl out the very pores of his skin and reduce the ship splinters, he lifts up his hands and pounds them against the sides of his skull until everything is ringing and all his plans for the day lay in a scruffy pile at the bottom of his brain to be forgotten about.
How he gets the items needed together, he doesn’t know, but he does it because he always will, and finds himself standing on deck with a decidedly unimpressed looking scribe and the two captains.
“Hey Jizzy!” Lucius calls out maliciously.
Edward says nothing, so Izzy doesn’t bother. Whats the fucking point. The tensed waves of panic have lapsed into nothing but awful, numb acceptance of just how much work he’ll be doing over the next week to try and make up for this missed day.
He’s checking out again. Doesn’t bother responding to any of Bonnet’s inane conversation as he leads their party off the boat, onto solid ground.
It feels bizarre under Izzy’s feet - he never really gets his land legs back after so many years adjusting to the rocking of the deck, and he stumbles over the smallest pebble as they turn the corner to the cobbled market courtyard. He wobbles precariously and then tips, reaching a hand out and bracing for impact. But, inexplicably, his fall is halted.
He glances up. The boy has grabbed onto his sleeve, pulling him back upright. They look at each other for just a moment, the boy’s eyes creasing. No insult makes its way out of his pursed lips, and Izzy watches them curiously, confused by the absence of mocking.
Then, Lucius releases his arm with a shoving motion, as though he’s only just realized what he’s doing.
“I guess it would be weird to be on land if you were abandoned at Blackbeard’s feet in a little basket at birth.” He taunts, face twisting cruelly.
Izzy scoffs, stomping onwards, refusing to let it get to him.
“You can just fuck off, you ignorant twat.” He spits, and then, quieter. “Wouldn’t know loyalty if it did you up the arse.”
Lucius stays behind him for a couple seconds before he can hear the scurry of his legs, matching his stride with ease. Izzy is hateful of the inches between them, and resists the urge to draw up his spine just to close the distance somewhat.
“That’s- I wasn’t-” Lucius squawks.
Izzy rolls his eyes, fully aware of the hypocrisy of resenting the boy for his inability to string together a coherent sentence when he had been reduced to worse moments prior.
“You are not easy to talk to, you know.” He eventually huffs, falling silent.
Edward and Bonnet meander purposelessly behind them - Izzy doesn’t even know where he’s walking.
Eventually, Bonnet offers some form of direction, points towards a stall full of leathers and leads all of them there excitedly. Then, he starts holding up items against Izzy.
Izzy shakes his head vehemently to every single one. He will not allow himself to become indebted to this poncy idiot. Bonnet deflates after the fifth rejection in a row, and gives in, turning to Edward.
Izzy checks out, after that. It's stall after stall and they all look the same. Shit he’ll never have, so it doesn’t matter. He honestly can’t work out why Bonnet has ordered him along, other than the ritual humiliation at every stall, where he is offered items he could never afford. The slight easing of tension between him and Bonnet over the past few weeks clearly was not destined to last long - the friction between them is so tangible it feels like it's burning his skin.
By the time they visit the third knife stall, the noise is truly grating at him. Hooves of the horses, Bonnet’s incessant cheerful chattering, the bustling noise of people, and he is becoming even less willing to accommodate this farce.
After Lucius attempts to diverge the conversation towards the more neutral topic of their next heading and away from the particularly mean bile Izzy spits at Bonnet when he offers him a comb , of all things, Izzy implies some insult about molly-boys and the nature of his relationship with Bonnet, and the boy has clearly had enough of him.
“You’re a right bastard, you know that?” He growls, storming off like a child in a temper tantrum. Edward and Bonnet have moved onto the next stall, only the tail end of a fancy coat to be seen, and, finally alone, Izzy tucks himself into the gap between two tables, dips his chin to his chest, and takes three deep, deep breaths. In the darker, enclosed space, with some of the flow of noise cut off, he almost feels human again.
Almost feels regret, which is when he knows he has to get moving.
They visit several more stalls with an uneasy silence from both him and the boy, but the animosity fades, mellowed by the monotony. Izzy feels a bit like he’s going insane, the environment simply too much to handle.
They reach another bath-items stall, Izzy has lost count of the number they’ve passed, but Bonnet evidently is familiar with either the specific nature of the items or the owner herself of this one, because he pauses, conversing animatedly with her. She nods enthusiastically, turning behind her to the cupboards of stock. The boy sighs next to him, the stall-minder lets out a cry of success as she locates the specific concoction Bonnet has requested, and Izzy physically winces, looking down.
Evidently, he is not allowed this small reprieve from the onslaught, because Lucius elbows him in the side, over and over until he looks up.
“You may not have noticed, but Stede quite likes a fancy bottle.” He says with a grin.
“Course I’ve fucking noticed, not an imbecile, am I?” Izzy replies gruffly.
Lucius falters for a second, the smile slipping.
“Okay, that was sarcasm, Mr I’m-too-cool-and-leather-clad-for-basic-conversation.” He says petulantly, turning away with his arms crossed.
Izzy flushes, and prays he isn’t looking to see it happen.
Lucius is all sarcasm, which is one of the things he finds so discomfiting about the boy. Never knows where he is in the conversation. He’s a baffling little creature.
Izzy’s simply too tired to interpret it; he truly thought he was being insulted.
Maybe it's this thought that makes him say it. Maybe it's that, despite himself, he's lonely. Maybe it's just because he’s exhausted and needs something to focus on amongst all the noise.
He doesn’t know what it is, but he offers “Seems Edward does too, now.” as a belated response.
Lucius looks at him with something like surprise on his face.
“...he didn’t used to?” He questions slowly, like he can’t quite believe Izzy is engaging.
“No.” Izzy says shortly, and only works out as Lucius turns away yet again that he is probably supposed to say more.
“He… always fucked around with his hair.” He says, scrambling for the words. “Even if he said he didn’t. Bottles and wax and shit. But we were pirates. We bathed when we- when” A horse has started braying loudly somewhere behind him, the words spinning out of control as soon as he gets started. “When we, uh, got the chance.” He finishes lamely, head pounding.
“Well I suppose not many captains fit their quarters with a full sized bath.” Lucius jokes, and Izzy hums in agreement. He considers responding further, isn’t truly minding this interaction despite its stiltedness, but Bonnet reaches out for his arm, for what, God knows, but Izzy flinches away. Bonnet moves them onto the next stall.
It’s even louder, right next to a raucous tavern, and Izzy catches sight of a rope store, which immediately reminds him of their criminally disorganized rigging.
That kills the conversation dead. Izzy gets so tangled up in thoughts of what he should be doing that he can’t say anything, and Lucius gives up after the third attempt, just starts scratching in that book of his, muttering to himself.
The time passes far faster than it should, and the endless trailing from stall to stall finally ceases as Bonnet leads them out of the courtyard. The sun has sunk in the sky, which shouldn’t be possible. Izzy counts the time out at a couple hours, maybe three, but the sun tells a tale of at least four.
He dumbly follows Bonnet and Edward, arms now laden with the spoils of their trip, out onto the busy main street, relaxing just slightly when he spots the familiar mast of the ship in the middle distance.
Not so far, and he can be alone, and just breathe. Sort himself out.
It's this relaxation that does him in, and he’s unprepared for the cart that goes thundering past in front of his nose. It nearly fucking flattens Bonnet, who rears back in alarm, and it would be hilarious if Izzy’s heart wasn’t pounding a staccato beat in his chest, beating at his ribs. Instinctively, he brings his arms up around his head protectively, his fingers drumming at the skin on the back of his neck, against the bone.
There’s a buzzing in his ears that slowly dissipates - he can see Edward checking over Bonnet, just about hear the droning sound of his worried check in. Bonnet’s shaky reply nothing but a mess of noise.
There’s a burst of static by his face, and Izzy turns.
Lucius is looking at him with a weird expression.
Izzy pulls his hands down, clenching them into fists by his sides.
“What?” He asks, the roaring clearing away to nothingness.
Lucius pauses, then scowls.
“Nothing. Captain, are we headed back to the ship?”
“Ah, yes Lucius, sorry about that, just had ah, a bit of a shock, didn’t we! Alright gang, successful trip I feel, though I do wish we’d found something for you, Izzy.” He says, ending his sentence with a mournful tone.
Izzy just barely resists the urge to bare his teeth. He is exhausted. Too tired to deal with Bonnet’s bullshit, but too tired to deal with the consequences of his own actions if he bites back.
Blankly, he had followed the lot of them back onto the ship, which was when the panic had come rushing back, the lines even more of a mess than when he left. He had wanted to punch something, bite, rip his own hair out with the frustration of it. He had also wanted to scream, and at least he managed that, for a full minute he had yelled into the crew’s faces before Edward had stopped him.
He had wanted to curl up like a wounded creature, lick his wounds. But when has Izzy ever gotten anything he wanted? Whole ship fucking meeting. That’s what he got. The rest of them had all settled on the deck to eat some of the snacks bought at the market before said meeting, but Izzy had ducked into the room five minutes early, lighting a truly obscene number of candles on Bonnet’s orders until the room glowed like the belly of a firefly and spent the rest of the time remembering how to breathe.
He needs to stop getting lost in these trailing spirals of thoughts, memories. Focus on what's happening around him, he can’t live the rest of his life floating like this.
There’s a hand on his shoulder. That’s new.
He shifts his eyes upwards - the very action feels exhausting. The candles, in their number, cast the entire room in orange. It's difficult to parse out the different faces, people, structures, it's just one big warm blur. When they were at port on the Queen Anne, a woman had yelled out at Edward once, and he had taken a hand and ran it straight through her still drying oil on canvas.
The painting was ruined, countless hours lost, and the woman didn’t cease her wailing even after they had left. Izzy remembers that it almost looked artistic. That she could have made it work to people pretentious enough to care about those things. To people like Stede Bonnet. The hills bled into the houses, the houses into the people, the people into each other. One long blur of color and detail. Human, recognisable, but gone all the same.
The room seems to smear into itself. Colors and light and nothing detailed. Oils.
The hand on his shoulder shakes him, just once. The buzzing in his ears is becoming unbearable, he wishes Edward could be violent, just once more. Just one more time. Lop them off for him, have them gone.
Van Gogh.
He could lick the blood off Edward’s hand, if that was the problem. He feels like he needs something on his tongue, his mouth tastes like his flesh, his tongue tastes like his tongue, his skin touching the air feels numb and hypersensitive all at once.
Fuck, he needs to get back to his cabin.
That’s what Edward does, isn’t it? Goes to his cabin, where no one disturbs him. No one but Izzy. Him and Izzy, but not Izzy and him. When Izzy goes, he goes alone. Isn’t that how it happens? Isn’t that how these things work?
He used to know these things. He has defined his life so centrally by Edward that when Edward changed, his very center of gravity tilted. He can’t navigate. Even the decision to leave this room feels monumental, insurmountable. Inconceivable. He just can’t map the course.
The hand is shaking him harder now. Izzy focuses his eyes. It's… Lucius?
What the fuck.
God, he almost wishes he was more out of it. Sunk so deep into himself that he becomes nothing but body. Pirate and no brain. Anything to avoid staring into dull green eyes that are examining him with something bordering concern.
The Lucius boys’ face twists, suddenly directly in front of him. Izzy jolts backwards, but there’s nowhere to go - he’s well and truly cornered himself in, fucking idiot.
The boy’s mouth moves, but Izzy’s head is still pounding too loudly to work out anything other than his own name in there, and that’s largely from lip reading. The heat of the room is getting to him, he feels- faint.
Dizzy Izzy Dizzy Izzy, Dizzy little Izzy.
He can hardly tell if he’s hearing his own thoughts or the boys’ words. The rotting feeling intensifies - he has to clench his eyes against it. Sucks in a shaking breath and then nearly bites his tongue off trying to swallow the noise back down.
Pull yourself together. Pull yourself together.
Another hand glances against his other shoulder, the wrong angle to be the boy, and Izzy stumbles in… some direction, any, trying to get his feet under him. It's a difficult task - he feels like he’s been molded out of clay and this blasted hot ship from hell has melted him in this shitty little room.
He bites his nails into his palm, but can’t feel the sting. Panic is growing now in his gut, festering, clawing.
Bizarrely, this seems to sink him further into his own skull, the feeling intensifying and relaxing in rushing waves.
He looks up again.
Lucius has him by both shoulders. Edward is behind him, an odd look on his face. Bonnet, further behind. The rest of the crew, he believes are still around him, can feel their presence somehow, but he physically cannot process their faces as such. Something is going wrong , inside his head.
Of all the fuckin’ moments.
Lucius appears to be attempting to talk to him. Edward is doing the same, but not to him, exactly. His head is angled towards Bonnet, whose mouth is also moving, because when is it ever not? They are talking about Izzy, in front of him. Izzy would be more offended by this slight if he could actually understand their words.
The hand on his shoulder is smacking his skin. This is sharp.
Izzy licks his lips. Imagines the taste of salt.
Dumbly, he looks to face Lucius again. His legs fold out from underneath him like they’re made from nothing more than water and powdered gelatin.
There is a rush of noise. A bright, bright spark of something closely tied with panic runs up Izzy’s spine.
He shuts his eyes, and time takes a great leap. When it stops spinning, his eyes are open. He doesn’t remember opening them. He can’t work out what’s happening, what’s going on. Everything, literally everything, from his eyes and his legs to his life, his routine, and everything he thought he knew, truly knew, is spinning wildly out of control. He has no idea what could happen next, what could happen after that. After that. He’s without a mast, nothing is solid, nothing is here, nothing is his to hold onto, not even his time.
Through this panic, he can see the crew, still.
The humiliation is exhausting. He has no idea how he’s going to salvage this, he has no idea whether Edward is even going to let him live.
And because never once in his life has Izzy ever been looked upon favorably by any kind of higher power, at this exact point in time, Edward leans right into his space, reaching a hand up near his face.
Logically, Izzy can rationalize that he could be doing any number of things. Logically, Izzy could have told himself that Edward would never hit Izzy in front of Bonnet, shattering his nice new facade.
Emotionally, Izzy thinks absolutely none of this, and when two hands come up to rest on his skin, every single nerve in his body simultaneously lights on fire and he finds himself immediately consumed by the flames.
Like any good first mate, Izzy Hands goes down with his ship. His body, the vessel.
He does the only thing he can do, as noise pours into his very brain and his skin constricts until he can hardly breathe - he loses his absolute mind.