Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It shouldn’t have taken so long.

That’s Stede’s first thought once the fighting stops, once the adrenaline wears off and he’s left standing on a strange deck, floorboards slick with blood, terrified sailors begging for their lives as his own crew take care of the stragglers.

He should put a stop to it, maybe. Out of the two of them, that’s the role that falls to Stede: the peacemaker, the reasonable man you could maybe get to forgive you, if you grovelled enough. Blackbeard’s counterpart these days, his lighter shade. But he’s not feeling it today: he’s not really feeling anything, to be honest. Nothing but a slithering thing where his guts ought to be, a heart that beats at once too fast and too slow for things to be fine. He barely feels his own body now, like there’s nothing underneath his skin but a tangled up mess of eels.

It shouldn’t have taken them so damn long.

There’s nothing to it now, of course. Months of running in circles, of weathering Edward’s worst moods and his own shortening temper, the crew’s growing bloodlust. They are working for Blackbeard, all of them, now. Once upon a time, he would have wept in joy at the thought. But things change. People change.

With something that could almost be called amusement, he realizes he’s finally become what Chauncey Badminton once accused him of being. One long look at the deck of this ship and there’s no denying that Stede Bonnet does, indeed, ruin everything he sets his eyes on.

“The hold, if you may?,” he asks, because he may have spilt buckets of blood in the last few months, but at least he hasn’t lost his manners. The poor sod that’s tasked with answering his question babbles, stutters, sobs – and then promptly keels over and dies, one of Jim’s knives sticking out of his neck.

“Too fucking slow, Captain,” they say. Stede rolls his eyes, but saves the scolding for when they’re back on the ship, tasked with talking through this like they do every other raid, rum aplenty and something that started out as fear and fury and has steadily been turned into madness shining in everyone’s eyes.

This time, if they’re lucky, they may call it what it is. A celebration.

“Anyone else? I’d be very much obliged if any of you could point me in the right direction,” Stede announces; when not one member of the subdued crew makes a move, he huffs. “Ed, dear. I’m afraid it’s your turn.”

He turns his back on them. Blackbeard makes quick work of some of those poor sods: there’s no ignoring the gurgling, agonized cries. If he bothered to look, Stede is sure he’d get to see them crawl once Ed is done with them. Never dealing the killing blow: that golden rule still stands, ever since he and Edward reconciled. Not even this little quest of theirs has managed to get him to break it. Not really.

According to Ed, he’s only really killed two people in his life, after all. And Lucius had the decency to come back to life after a few months.

Still, not everyone looks at the world through the eyes of this clever, absolute genius of a madman. The stories that reach port put Blackbeard’s victims in the hundreds. Stede is pretty sure it’s nearing a thousand, what with the whole Kraken incident and this latest fit they’re having.

In the end, though, whatever Ed does is irrelevant. One of the crew members is smart enough to point them into the right direction, getting himself thrown overboard instead of gutted for his troubles, and Stede steps away from the deck and into the famed hold. If their informant was telling the truth this time, this will be it. The bundle of nerves inside of him feels white hot, a mixture of anxiety and hope nearly bringing him out of his own skin.

This ship they’ve boarded is fancy for a third-rate crew like the one they’ve dealt with. Makes one wonder, really, if maybe the man Ed and Roach kindly pressured to give up a name hadn’t been pulling it out of his ass. That, Stede thinks, would be unfortunate. Devastating, even. This place is, at this point, their last lead.

He’s not sure what will happen if he is not here either. Other than the burning down of the whole vessel, of course, and another few weeks of Ed drinking and blaming himself and asking Stede to—

No. This has to be it. There is just no other option, nothing else he’s willing to contemplate.

There’s a hand on his shoulder by the time he finds his way through the ship. The hold is close enough, if that sailor didn’t lie. They usually don’t: not to Blackbeard.

“Hey,” Ed’s nervous voice reaches him from far away, from a world that’s not this world, a ship that’s definitely not this ship. It reminds him of lazy mornings in bed back when things were still working out, lips against his skin, a hot breath and a warm embrace and that strange conviction he let himself have that it would last forever. Three grown men in a too-narrow bed, a not-quite-average crew and a bunch of festering wounds he never even tried to look at closely.

He’d been a fool, hadn’t he? Stede Bonnet, stupidly in love and plain stupid, had dared believe that they could be happy like that.

“He’s here,” he hears Ed whisper. There’s a hint of Blackbeard in his voice, even here: it’s been seeping in more and more often. At times, they’ve become indistinguishable. “Fuck, mate: he has to be.”

He’s right. Of course he’s right: Stede should have known. Edward Teach is a genius, a wonder: the whole of reality bends to his will. If he says Izzy will be here, then here he is, a hunched silhouette curled up at the far end of the brig, the place too dark to make him out clearly but not enough to hide him from them.

It’s been months since the last time they saw him, and something inside of Stede softens up at the sight.

“Shit,” he hears Ed whisper. The hand on his shoulder disappears, and his co-captain brushes past him into the now-open brig. “Iz?”

The smell hits them first, of course. By now, Stede has seen enough of piracy to brace himself. The place doesn’t even have a porthole, and so that awful mix of sweat and blood and humidity and human waste brigs usually sport permeates everything. It doesn’t stop Ed, of course: he keeps walking, straight towards Izzy, unsure and careful. He’s expecting a word, or a scream, or a sob perhaps: but the bag of skin and bones that used to be his first mate is eerily quiet, and for a second something inside of Stede twists, his mouth dry and his heart beating faster than it should inside his chest.

What if he is…?

But no: he’s alive. He flinches back when Ed gets too close, presses himself against the wall when both of them crowd him. It’s hard to see details in the low light, but he looks… like shit, Ed would say. Gaunt and dishevelled, tattered clothes hanging off his body in all the wrong ways. He’d be ashamed to be seen like this, in any other circumstances: right now, it’s all Stede can do not to fall on his knees, hug him against his body, and weep.

“C’mon, Iz,” Ed is saying, though the huddled shape that’s Izzy Hands doesn’t seem to hear him, doesn’t seem to know who it is. It breaks Edward’s heart: Stede doesn’t need to see his face to know. And yet he tries, extends his arm as calmly and carefully as he can, tries to grab his first mate’s shoulder and—

And then Izzy howls, an animal noise Stede is sure he’ll keep hearing in his nightmares, and bites him.

And all hell breaks loose.

***

The thing is, Stede has a tendency to misremember, at times. Being a self-centered dick, is what Lucius calls it when he’s feeling generous. It’s not as bad as Ed’s whole twisting of his memories, of course: at least, he doesn’t think so. But he does tend to add his own personal touch to the stories he tells himself. That’s how he ended up being a helpless victim of Mary’s stiffling control of the Bonnet household, or the instigator of Blackbeard’s worst crimes to date. He can’t help it, really, and sometimes it makes for extremely awkward situations.

Take this, for example. This thing they all three had, months and months of glances and touches and whispered orders, sexy orders that were followed to the letter. He’d come back to find Ed transformed into something else and he’d managed to bring him back from the brink of insanity: it only made sense for everything else to fall into place just as easily. Nevermind the old hurts, the words Izzy had carelessly thrown in his and Ed’s directions a lifetime before, the way he never did that anymore. He’d become pliant and lovely and it’d been only logical, hadn’t it? After all, it’d worked with the crew, and it’d worked with the Edward half of Blackbeard, and he’d said yessir and thank you sir and he’d look at Stede sometimes with a sort of hunger in his eyes. He’d wanted it just as much as they had: the sex and the slaps and the kisses and the whipping, the lazy mornings in bed, the blistering skin and the gasping for breath just to be able to pant their names.

It hadn’t been perfect: he knows that now. He may have known it back then too, back before everything went to hell and they had to dust Blackbeard off and become the sort of pirates with something to prove.

“How is he?”

He’s been patient enough, he thinks. They’re back on the Revenge and they’ve got what they wanted, even if they’ve had to knock Izzy out to be able to bring him home. Stede hopes he hasn’t been particularly difficult with Roach: their cook slash surgeon has a surprisingly small supply of patience for a medical professional.

“He’ll live,” Roach says with a shrug. He doesn’t seem worried: that just means Stede will have to worry for the two of them.

“But?,” he asks, trying and failing to keep a polite smile on. Unimpressed, Roach arches an eyebrow.

“But nothing, Captain. Tell Blackbeard he can play with his dog in, eh, a few weeks, tops.”

That brings some color to Stede’s cheeks, the picture it paints in his mind too good to ignore. It also makes him bristle.

“He’s not a dog,” he protests. Then, as an afterthought, he adds: “And Ed is no longer Blackbeard. Not now that we have Izzy back.”

That had been the deal, sort of. Blackbeard was a mask, but not one that was meant to be worn by just one man. If whoever had taken Ed’s first mate, Stede’s something, wanted the Dread Pyrate at their door, they’d have him. Them. Ed and Stede, Stede and Ed, the bloodthirsty beast and the calculating killer. They were long past the days when Edward had to carry that burden alone.

But now it was done. They’d found Izzy, brought him back: all that was left for them to do was nurse him back to health and maybe hide him away in their cabin so that nobody but them could reach him again.

Roach, though, only shrugs. “Eh. Whatever you say, Captain,” he concedes. Rolling one shoulder, he points towards the door at his back. “Little man’s in there anyway: should still be out cold, dosed him a bit just in case he bit me too. Me, I’m gonna go for a smoke.”

***

Asleep, Izzy Hands is quite a sight. Even now, face sunken and skin paper white; perhaps especially now. There’s a vulnerability to him, a certain fragility that makes something in Stede’s loins heat.

He’s told no one about it, of course. Wouldn’t even know how to start, to be fair. It isn’t desire: at least, not the kind of desire one reads about in poems and songs. It has nothing to do with the way his whole body heats up whenever he has Ed underneath him either. But it is something, it is a something that used to keep him up at night, at times, back when things were still good.

He thinks he’s felt it before. This, or something much like it, in those brief moments Mary had him confront their firstborn, that tiny, breakable bundle of flesh and bones that wouldn’t even live to see his first birthday. He’d hated him then, hated everything that little miracle had represented almost as much as he’d loved him. Maybe more.

He doesn’t hate Izzy, though, he thinks. Not quite so much. But he still wants to see him cower, wants to put his hands around his throat and squeeze until he’s red and gaping and looking at Stede Bonnet like he’s looking up at God.

By the looks of it, someone has beaten him to it. Repeatedly.

He can’t see that much in the dim light of the galley, of course. Thank Roach for his small kindnesses, for the way he seems to understand. He may be a bit too cleaver-happy, but it can’t be denied that he’s a good doctor, in his own way.

What little of Izzy is exposed, the skin not hidden under a flimsy excuse for a sheet or a bunch of bandages, has been beaten black and blue. There are marks around his neck and on his face, and it looks like his nose has been broken at least a couple of times. A chunk of his ear is missing, a small nick that looks like it was bitten off, and Stede is torn between rage and arousal at the thought.

Without a proper outlet for them, though, they both just peter out into something else, something that feels a lot like despair.

This shouldn’t have happened.

Without thinking, he brings a chair to the side of the table. He sits down and tries to hold himself together: his hands flutter about, unsure about where to land. All of the sudden, he doesn’t want to touch any of the marks, any of the bruises somebody else has left on his first mate’s body. He has the absurd notion that it’s going to make it worse somehow, that by virtue of his fingers making contact with them he’s going to make them real.

Which is frankly stupid. No matter what he does now, the damage is already done. There’s no turning back time, no way for him to go up to the Stede Bonnet of almost six months ago and beg him to go search for Izzy before it’s too late.

He’s pretty sure he wouldn’t have listened anyway.

The thing is, he doesn’t feel guilty. He doesn’t. Or, he’s trying not to, after a few talks with Lucius and one strange encounter with, bizarrely enough, Jim. Much as he tends to think otherwise, the world does not revolve around Stede Bonnet anymore than it does around anyone else of the crew. Whoever the people who took Izzy had been, they surely hadn’t been thinking of the Gentleman Pirate when they’d done so.

So, no: this isn’t his fault, strictly speaking, just like Edward’s rampage wasn’t his fault. And still there is that voice inside his head, taunting him every waking moment. You should’ve known something was wrong when he didn’t come back: you should have searched for him, taken your head out of your own ass and swallowed your pride and— And.

This shouldn’t have happened, he lets himself think for the upteenth time. Exhaling slowly, he lets his eyes roam, taking in every inch of Izzy, every new scar. He feels suddenly empty, hollowed out and exhausted. He wants to cry.

***

He wanted to cry that day too. Would have done it, maybe, if it hadn’t been for Ed. Because it would have upset him, and things were still tender at times between them, even after the reunion and their happily ever after and this thing they’d landed themselves in, the one that involved Izzy somehow and that part of Stede couldn’t believe was real.

Things had been fine up until then. Sort of. If one didn’t look too close, at least: and Stede was an expert at avoiding details, at staying on the surface of things long enough it started to feel like there was nothing beneath.

As Lucius had warned him time and again since he’d been rescued from the walls of the Revenge, though, one day all of it would end up blowing up and taking chunks of everyone else along with it.

For Stede, it all boiled down to a single word.

“Captain.”

It was said, spit out really, with such contempt it almost made him see red. They’d been over this again and again, he wanted to scream. Ed and Stede were now co-captains of the ship, and the crew had agreed, and Izzy himself had agreed; and yet their first mate kept on refusing to show him the respect his position required. And Stede was tired and cranky and had woken up much earlier than he’d wanted to in an attempt to act more captainly, whatever that was. And Izzy was mocking him, again.

He stood, crossed his arms and frowned in the older man’s direction. For about a moment, both Ed and Izzy seemed not to notice: they kept their heads down, peering over a map where all three of them had been plotting their course and making plans and stuff.

Only that wasn’t strictly true, was it? It never was, Stede realized. All three of them implied that he, somehow, contribute to it; but nobody ever asked for his input other than Ed’s sporadic ‘that alright mate?’. And now Izzy had dismissed his very reasonable request that they anchor in a scenic little island before making for Nassau with a sarcastic ‘Right, Captain’, and Stede wanted to— He wanted to—

To hit him, all of the sudden; but that wasn’t new. Their thing, their whole thing, was bathed in violence: he’d slapped Izzy more times than he’d kissed him, and it felt exhilarating, powerful, right.

This, though, this anger he was feeling? That was different. Meaner. Sharper.

So he took a step back, and he crossed his arms, and when that didn’t make any of his lovers look up he cleared his throat. Izzy was the first to look to him, a slight frown on his face –different from his normal frowns: this one was just confused– and no apology in sight.

“What’s wrong, Bonnet?”

Another thing he’d never got from him was that, his name. He hadn’t heard it on Izzy’s lips since he came back: it was always Bonnet, or sir when they were in bed.

Of course, Stede could still comfort himself with the fact that at least he wasn’t Ed, who’d become just Captain.

“Are you ever going to take me seriously, Izzy?”

He didn’t mean for it to sound like that. He’d just been trying to keep the despair out of his voice, and he’d let anger coat the words instead. It came out cold and disappointed and he could almost pinpoint the exact moment Izzy froze, like a beast cornered by the hunter.

Just like beasts tend to do, he fought back, vicious and snarling.

“Are you ever going to fucking earn it, Bonnet?,” he sing-songed, a grin on his face that only looked forced if you stopped to look at it, to really look. “So far you haven’t said a fucking word worth hearing; not my fault you’ve got your head so far up your ass that you can’t be arsed to remember we’re not a fucking pleasure cruise. We’re fucking pirates, and that means—”

He’d get like this sometimes with Stede. Just with him, like it was their thing – like he didn’t dare say no to Ed anymore–; and most times it was good fun, truly. But that day he was tired, and cranky, and something must have showed on his face somehow.

“Izzy,” Ed snapped. “Shut the fuck up.”

And just like that, Izzy did.

It was good, at first. It quelled the rage starting to boil within Stede, left him enough space to breathe, in and out, and purse his lips and pout.

“You were saying?”

Izzy gulped, like he was trying to swallow whatever had been on the tip of his tongue. He shrugged.

“Nothing,” he pushed out. He looked at Ed through the corner of his eye before staring at Stede’s face once again. At some point around his nose, perhaps: he avoided his eyes expertly. “Sorry, Captain.”

So, yes: it was good at first. But then Izzy just folded, and Stede’s anger had nowhere to go, and so he kept his arms crossed because the only other option he could think of was clenching his hands into fists and hitting the other man straight on his face.

“Is that all?,” he asked. His voice had grown colder still: even Ed was looking at him with something kind of like worry in his eyes. He expected a fight, an insult: something.

All he got, though, was a curt nod.

“We’ll stop at the island, Captain,” Izzy told him, perfectly professional. Stilted, like it all got at times, in that same tone he used more often than not when they were—

That.

“If that’s all—”

It wasn’t. Izzy looked like he wanted to run, to go hide somewhere: there was still that feral panic in his stance, close enough to the surface Stede couldn’t help but watch it in awe.

Still, he shook his head. And Izzy stayed. And Stede pictured himself stepping up to him, pushing him back against the table, yanking his pants down and kissing him, slapping him in anger like he’d slapped him in want, getting down on his knees and taking, taking, taking; and that was good too.

He couldn’t picture Izzy pushing him back, though. Couldn’t imagine him calling him Stede either: just that one single word, like a prayer, like a plead. Just Captain, this time.

It was too much. It wasn’t enough. It was—

He sighed.

“I don’t even know why I bother,” he said, even though he knew exactly why he did. Still, Izzy looked like he’d been punched, and part of Stede was almost satisfied with the result. “I thought we were over this, Izzy. If you really can’t be bothered to be our first mate, you’d do better just leaving.”

He didn’t know. He can say that: he didn’t know.

Doesn’t make it true, though.

“Shit, mate,” Ed told him later, face kept carefully neutral. He too was protecting this, this fragile peace between the two of them, between them and the world. “That was fucking cold.”

It was. But then, Stede was becoming a pirate. Learning where to stab a man, how to twist the knife so that it’d hurt. It’d be weeks still until he had to make someone else bleed, a couple of months before he’d slit his first throat and cry himself to sleep for days afterwards. But then, there, Stede Bonnet was learning to embrace the worst version of himself, and it felt good.

***

He finds Ed on deck one morning, early enough he shouldn’t even be awake. He’s frowning at something in the distance: when Stede tries to follow his gaze, though, he sees nothing.

***

Even now, Izzy won’t talk to them.

It’s probably to be expected, of course. Stede makes sure to tell Ed this, again and again: he’s been through so much, and he’s recovering, and it’s not like he’s avoiding them or anything. He’s just not talking, at all: he nods and grunts and follows orders, and he’ll eat the food he’s given like he’s still starving, like they’ll take it away at any point and replace it with kicks and punches and lashes.

He even lets them fuck him, kisses and licks and scratches and takes it just like he would do before. It makes Stede’s stomach twist, and yet the first time he comes inside of him is the best orgasm he’s had in months. Maybe in his life.

He can’t lie to Ed about that part, though. Can’t pretend it’s normal, part of the process; so they just don’t talk about it, and Ed cries the second time they sleep together while he holds Izzy in his arms and Stede can’t help but feel heat coil in his gut at the sight of the still-healing scabs on his first mate’s back.

It isn’t good, maybe; but it isn’t bad either. And Izzy doesn’t seem to mind, just like he didn’t seem to mind it before, and sometimes it is easier to just shut up and go with the flow. That’s a turn of phrase Lucius has taught him: go with the flow, let the currents take you this way and that. Let things unravel at their own pace: this thing they had was never meant to last anyway.

***

“Iz?”

They’re in bed when it happens. When Edward cups Izzy’s cheek and kisses him slowly, carefully like Stede can never bring himself to do it, like their first mate is something precious, fragile even now that he’s awake. Maybe he’s right.

“Shit, Iz; I’ve missed you.”

And Stede could melt just from that, just watching the both of them together. Ed is as elegant in this as he is in everything else, his body molding to Izzy’s body, his free hand holding him by the waist. He rakes his nails over his skin slightly, and the older man moans, open mouthed and lax, while Edward’s smart mouth starts leaving a trail of kisses and little bites all through his body.

Stede himself hasn’t got rid of his breeches yet, entranced as he is: he can feel his cock hardening, straining against the fabric –not as soft as he’d like it to be; but then, he’s a pirate now– and begging for attention. Licking his lips and feeling woefully slow, he makes to join them, squirreling out of his remaining clothes and crossing the space between them in just two steps.

Izzy’s got his eyes closed, and there’s something like ecstasy painted all over his face. He spreads his legs wider when he feels Stede’s probing fingers against his asshole, shifts his hips to give him easier access, and it’s all so natural, how is he supposed to know?

He hasn’t healed yet, not completely: there are still scabs on his back, a stitched-up wound Ed is particularly mindful of on his chest, bruised skin peppered about. It had been bad, when they’d found him: and Stede is incredibly glad he’s better, feeling and looking a bit more like himself, even if he still traces the new, pink and tender scars that litter his first mate’s skin.

He digs his fingernails in at some point, and Izzy’s whole body jerks, and he keens. With his other hand, Stede keeps circling his hole, teasing but taking his time. He’s chosen one of the good oils for this, and he can smell it even from here, mixed up with the scent of his partners, with the sweat and the pre-cum already beading on the tip of his own cock, with the leather and the gunpowder and evertything that’s just theirs. If he closes his eyes, he thinks, he could die happy.

There’s a whimper, and a whispered “there ya go, mate; be good for us, Iz,” and Stede’s dick throbs and suddenly all this taking their time crap is looking increasingly stupid. Raking his nails all down Izzy’s body to settle over his hip, he pushes his first mate’s body. On Izzy’s other side, Ed is content enough to be playing with his tits, with his navel and his cock: the man’s ass is all Stede’s.

Slowly, he lets his first finger sink in. He wiggles it around, crooks it before taking it out; it gets a whine out of Izzy, one that Ed quickly swallows into a kiss.

Adding a second finger, and a third one after that, is easy. Sometimes Stede wonders if Izzy could take his whole hand, if he were so inclined: he imagines the feeling around his fist, the burning he must feel, how pliant and obedient he’d be for the whole thing. Not even thinking, he places a kiss against their first mate’s shoulder as he takes out his hand, only to replace it with his cock.

The kiss turns into a bite almost as an afterthought, and that’s when it happens.

Izzy stiffens, his whole body taut, like he’s barely holding himself together. Stede can’t see his face, but he pictures it pinched; he starts to shake around him, makes a sound he’s never heard before, and goes still.

And then he just relaxes, shakes his head, and keeps going, grinding back into Stede and reaching for an Edward that’s plastered against the window, eyes wide with fear.

“Iz?,” he asks, voice broken. “Iz, what the fuck was that?”

There’s no answer, of course. Izzy’s still not talking, stubbornly keeping himself quiet even if he’ll pant and whine and moan like a whore, even if he’s still grinding against Stede and he can’t take it anymore. He starts to fuck his first mate in earnest, both hands grabbing his hips and keeping him in place while Edward looks on and tries to get something out of the both of them.

He should stop. Stede knows he should stop, be the bigger man and sit them all down so that they can talk this through. But he’s selfish, and he’s awful, and he’s getting close now and even if Izzy were speaking, he already knows what he’d say.

Because he knows. He’s known for a while, ever since that very first time the thought ocurred to him, back when they fought for the last time. This is the whole reason they had to let Izzy go, and he’s not sure he’d be able to survive saying it aloud.

Because Izzy, in all this time they’ve been having this perfect little arrangement of this, Izzy has no idea how to say no.

***

He left that very same day. Stede knows now he can’t blame himself for it, not completely: Izzy’s his own man, and he made a decision.

“Out of the three of you,” Lucius had sentenced, “he’s got the least emotional maturity. Which, like, believe me: that’s saying something.”

He was probably right. Men like Izzy didn’t get many chances to face feelings other than anger and fear, Stede suspected.

“So, yeah: he is fucked up, but he’s still his own person, and he made a choice. He’ll come back with his tail between his legs if he doesn’t sell us out to the British. Again.”

Only, of course, he didn’t. Still not Stede's fault, though it’s hard to believe it at times. Izzy’s so fragile, so easily breakable. His skin splits under his nails, his flesh yields between his teeth, and he lets himself be moved, lets himself be taken, and Stede will never get tired of this, of this mine mine mine mine thing that takes up his whole brain, smell and taste and touch and sight and hearing all telling him the same thing.

You can have this. You can ruin this. It’s yours to destroy.

He finishes in him, comes in spurts that will mark every inch of Izzy from inside. He licks at the bite marks he’s left all through his chest and neck, and the older man keens, breath stuttering, life coming back to him. When Stede grabs his cock, still flaccid, he whines.

“Want this?”

He frames it like a question, this time. Gives the both of them the illusion that Izzy can say no, that he can push Stede away and get out of this bed and get out of this ship without the whole universe conspiring to punish him for the audacity. And maybe it’s true, maybe he’ll stop if Izzy asks him; but he hasn’t, and he didn’t, and he doesn’t now either.

Izzy comes too, a sad little thing, eyes squeezed closed and nails digging into the bruises they have left. Stede keeps stroking him for a bit, just this side of painful, before letting go of him and helping him settle, hands petting Izzy’s hair and lips barely ghosting over his skin.

He almost doesn’t want to throw up.

Ed is waiting for him outside, of course. He’s still naked, and he’s apparently been staring at nothing, but he raises his head when Stede opens the door and pushes him back into the cabin. With a glance, he makes sure Izzy’s out – he’s usually fast asleep after sex, and Stede has spent months trying not to wonder whether he has nightmares, and whether those nightmares involve them. Then, his co-captain closes the door, traps them all inside.

How appropriate.

“You knew,” Ed accuses quietly. Something dark and stormy passes through his eyes, and Stede’s blood sings. “You knew the whole fucking time, didn’t you?”

He can’t deny it, not in good conscience. He did know, a bit. Hard not to, really. Izzy’s thoughts and fears and desires are easily read, written all over his face like he’s asking the whole world to see.

“What do you want me to say?,” he asks, voice only cracking slightly. Still, he’s mindful of keeping it down too: after all, Izzy is sleeping.

Ed lets out a choked sob, and he clenches and unclenches his fists instead of carving Stede’s heart out with a snail fork. He looks distressed, wild in that way he gets when the real world finally catches up to him and he’s forced to confront himself. You’re a monster, he’s saying; and something in Stede Bonnet bristles at that.

“You should have fucking stopped it,” his co-captain is whispering. “You fucking—”

“Oh, come on!,” Stede interrupts, not caring for a moment about the volume of his voice. “You knew it too, Edward.”

It’s not an accusation, no matter what Ed thinks. He’s just stating a fact. If Stede Bonnet had noticed how subdued Izzy had been after the whole Kraken affair, then the whole world must have noticed too.

But of course he hasn’t counted on Edward’s uncanny ability to bend the whole of reality to his whims.

“Fuck no!,” he almost screams. On the bed, Izzy makes a quiet noise and stirs, and the rational part of Stede knows they should stop right here, move this whole argument outside at least so that he doesn’t have to listen.

But then, he’s part of the mess too, isn’t he? Arguably the biggest part of it, the point of contention: and the growing half of Stede that gets off on choking the man, the one that would have hurt him worse than whoever took him, given the chance, easily takes control.

“I don’t know who you think you’re fooling, Edward,” he snaps, sudden venom in his voice. Izzy is definitely awake now, blinking slowly in their direction. “After all, you’re the one who took his toes in the first place, along with whatever dignity he may have had.”

It strikes in both counts. Edward recoils like he’s been hit and, on the bed, Izzy gets tense, as if ready to snap. Well: let him, that darker shadow inside of Stede taunts. Let him jump at him, try and rip his throat out with his teeth: he knows how to get Izzy Hands to heed by now, he’d think.

“Only a fool would have thought you were giving him a choice after all of that,” he continues, all of him sharp and nasty and piratical.

He’s shed blood these last few months, he’s killed men and women, he’s stomped out what little softness he’d once had within him so that they could go back to this, to whatever this is; the least Ed can do is accept it for what it is, jagged edges and all. Share the guilt.

But Edward Teach is nothing if not selfish, Stede has found out. He shakes his head, he drives reality out by sheer stubborness, he erases the parts of it that don’t fit his narrative and expects him to just run with it.

“That’s a fucking lie,” he growls. Turning towards the bed, he looks in Izzy’s direction. Stede’s not the only one to have noticed him stirring awake. “Tell him, Iz. Tell him he’s wrong. You wouldn’t have— You would’ve said no. You could have said no, and you fucking didn’t.”

And for a moment there’s nothing. Izzy’s still not speaking –not to them–, and if he were he’d still have nothing to say.

It was stilted, fucking him. Not quite like it was with Mary; but Stede suspects that has more to do with his own predisposition, rather than that of his partners. But fucking Izzy was always tense, like they’d reached a strange balance that could topple with a misplaced word, with a too loud noise. This thing, this whole thing they have, has always been on the verge of breaking down, Izzy keeping his head down and Ed pretending not to see and Stede trying to keep the burning inside him under control.

“I wanted it.”

They’re the first words Izzy has said to them ever since they found him: they make them pause. For a moment, they take the breath out of Stede’s lungs too, bring a wetness to his eyes he carefully keeps in check. But then the words themselves sink in, and then the tone sinks in, and they make everything worse, don’t they?

Because he’s heard Izzy speak in that same way before, right after he came back to the Revenge, back when Ed apologizing had had to be enough for Stede to force things back to normal.

“I deserved it, Bonnet,” he’d said back then, the same surety in his tone. Deadpan, almost emotionless.

A lie.

Izzy’s an awful liar most of the time, Stede has discovered. He has a myriad of tells, from how intensely he’ll look at you to the little twitch in his brow. But he doesn’t do that now, doesn’t give anything away, and bile rises in Stede’s throat because he really believes it, and he wants to punch him and whip him and make him hurt.

Instead, he lets out a sigh and prepares to leave. He’s not ready for this conversation: not now, not ever. He’s not even sure they should have it: things are working out as they are, after all. Putting it all out there, now, will only force them to, what? End things? He doesn’t think he could bear that; not even if it hurts like this.

But, “fuck, Iz,” Edward says, and it sounds heartbroken all of the sudden. He sags, like a puppet with its strings cut, and for a second he almost looks about to cry.

“What.”

Izzy’s voice sounds rough, hoarse from lack of use. He avoids Ed’s eyes and only flinches a bit when his captain drags himself back to the bed, when he sits on the mattress and brings a hand to his hair. Stede expects him to grab at it, tug like he often does in the heat of the moment; but he doesn’t. Instead, he’s gentle, as much as he’d be with Stede himself.

“That bad?,” he asks. Izzy hides his face against the pillow.

“I wanted it,” he repeats, muffled and broken and a little wet, and Stede wants nothing more than to hold him and to pound into him until he’s wailing, until he’s nothing but a whimpering mess, utterly destroyed.

Instead, he makes tea.

“There you go, loves,” he says once he’s poured three cups. Ed’s has more sugar than water, a syrupy sludge he usually downs in one go. Izzy’s is plain, but just because Stede can’t honestly say how their first mate, their lover, takes his tea.

That, more than anything, is what ends up breaking him.

“We need to talk,” he tells them, begs of them.

Still hiding his face, Izzy shakes his head. Ed’s hand pets his overgrown hair, matted with sweat and unkempt. It used to be held in place, Stede thinks, used to be under control, like Izzy’s whole life until he stepped on the Revenge.

“I wanted it,” he insists, and Stede realizes that he’s begging. Please don’t take this away from me.

And he doesn’t get it, but Ed nods and places a small kiss on top of his head.

“I know, mate,” is his answer, rough around the edges perhaps. “Now, why don’t you rest for a while, huh? Better leave this whole talking it through to the crew, I’d say. Need to stretch my legs anyway.”

***

It’s the tea. Stede was willing to never talk about this, to ignore the Izzy-shaped elephant in the room for as long as it took, but the tea— How can he not know? How can Izzy take up so little space when he means so much to them?

Ed gets dressed in silence, smalls and pants and a shirt he tucks in carefully, boots and jacket and gloves. Ed dons the Blackbeard outfit like it’s an armor, like it will keep him safe somehow. From this. From Stede, perhaps.

They leave together. Izzy is still hiding against the pillows, breathing way too fast and way too shallow for Stede’s liking; when he makes as if to stay, though, Ed shakes his head.

“Give’im space, mate,” he whispers when they’re on the other side of the door.

His expression doesn’t betray anything now. It’s such a contrast with how he’d looked, hell, mere minutes ago, that Stede feels like he’s getting whiplash from it. But he’s been sailing with Blackbeard for months now, with the real thing: he knows how Edward works when whatever it is he’s feeling is too much to be dealt with.

Still, and for all his unwillingness to even approach the topic before, there’s the whole matter of the tea.

“He’s lying,” he finds himself saying when he wants to be saying so much more. ‘I’m sorry,’ for one. ‘I should have stopped.’

“I know,” Ed tells him, and he’s still serious, somber, unmoved. “But he doesn’t. He thinks he’s not.”

And Stede wants to protest, even if he knows. Stede wants to tell him about the tea, about how he still doesn’t know where Izzy’s from, about all those nights before when their lover would escape their bed, their lives, the moment he felt he wasn’t wanted anymore. How Stede himself had never been good enough to pull him back to them.

“That’s absurd,” he settles for. Ed shrugs, and so Stede keeps going. “It’s like, it’s like he has no idea, Ed. Like he doesn’t know he can—”

With an exasperated sigh, the Blackbeard facade splinters.

“Look, mate: there’s a lot you don’t get, alright?,” he tells him. “Fuck; there’s a lot I don’t get. It’s not just Izzy, okay? We’re all a bit fucked in the head, and I know I didn’t help, and just a few moments ago you couldn’t be bothered to talk about this shit and wanted me just to, what?, be okay with it?”

He’s right. Of course, put like that, it doesn’t sound great.

It also doesn’t take into account the whole thing with the tea, which is incredibly important, mind you.

“Just a few moments ago, like you said,” Stede manages, trying to give shape to the mess in his head, the things coiling around his heart, “I didn’t know I loved him.”

It’s strange. Should feel earth-shattering; and maybe it does, a little. But not enough, it’s not enough: and whatever wonder Stede may be feeling about finally putting into words whatever’s been going on with him is destroyed by Ed’s half-mocking laugh.

“Seriously? You just picking up on that now, mate?”

And Stede wants to argue, because of course he does: love doesn’t feel like this thing feels. Love is pure and clear and simple, isn’t tainted by the casual cruelty they use against each other. Love can’t have him wanting to tear a man apart little by little just to see what lies inside.

“Stede, fuck. You’ve sailed half the Caribbean for the man; shit, you’ve killed for him, mate.”

He shakes his head. “But I hurt him too,” he says, tries to say. “I like hurting him, Ed. And, just now,” he shudders, “I didn’t stop.”

Ed shrugs again, bites his bottom lip and shakes his head.

“Love’s not all fucking, roses and stuff, Stede. Believe me: I fucking know, alright?”

Because, Stede guesses, you love him too.

But Ed doesn’t say it. Ed’s never said anything of the sort: he’s told Stede himself plenty of times, he’s told him how much he loves him, but he’s never said the same of Izzy. The whole idea is painful, Edward not loving Israel the way Izzy’s devoted to him. It seems unfair, somehow, like the universe is playing with them all, and laughing.

“Anyway; Iz’s not, like, a fucking damsel in distress, alright?,” Ed finishes. “He doesn’t need—”

“Captains?”

And Stede probably shouldn’t feel this annoyed at their acting-quartermaster approaching them, but really: Oluwande has no sense of timing.

“What’s it, mate?”

The man’s worried look is enough to bring Stede out of his thoughts. Straightening, he follows Olu to the deck, along with Edward.

“It’s a ship, Captains,” their quartermaster tells them. “We’re being tailed.”

Chapter Text

The good thing about being a cockroach, in the best sense of the word, is that you’re fucking tough. Unkillable, almost.

Still hurts as fuck, of course.

Rum helps, mostly. Used to be he’d only pretend to get piss drunk, used to be a bit of a, how the fuck did Blackie call’em? A fuckery. But now everything hurts, worse than it did back then, worse than the fucking nightmares and the not knowing if you were gonna be next.

It was kind of a bit of fun, then. Just, enough to keep you on edge, the lashings and backhanding and the lil’ bit of roughousing – it all came with being a pirate, with being fucking free. You could mostly just do you, and if you were lucky you wouldn’t even have to swallow a live crab for it. RIP Felix: really, he was just asking for trouble.

Kind of like him when it comes down to it, of course. Because who the fuck asked him to go meddling in Blackie’s business, c’mon.

(Izzy. Short and long answer: it’s always Izzy.)

And now it all hurts and poor Jack can’t even pay for enough rum to numb that shit, and isn’t that just sad, really? He’d fight some fucker for it, but it’s kind of hard to do that when you’re missing a fucking arm, and then some. At least he’s still got his cock and balls and half his handsome mug. Now, if he could only get sloshed for real, enough to get the whole stupid thing to stop stop stop stop.

But luck’s never been on his side, really: just look at the sorry state of him. He didn’t get the girl –they keep slipping through his fingers, did that even when he still had to whole hands to grip them with–, he didn’t get the ship, he didn’t get the glory even though it was mostly him doing the work and Blackie fucking knows it. Doesn’t mean shit, though. That’s pirates for you: always fucking one another. Over, even.

He laughs at his own joke, stupid as it is, and a tankard fucking materializes in front of him. Good shit too, shit he’s got no way to pay for. Maybe if he runs fast enough, though how the fuck’s he going to do that, no idea. Still, that’s the future, and the future has nothing to do with him. Nah: Jack’s learned the hard way not to plan in advance – just look at where scheming has led him.

So he downs the thing in one go and makes to stand before someone realizes it wasn’t his. Needs to take a leak anyway, though the idea of just letting go and pissing himself doesn’t really look so bad. Shit, Jacky: look at you go, pathetic piece of shit.

He laughs. Cackles. Can’t help it, really. But then there’s another tankard stopping right in front of his face, and he chances a glance to the man sitting right next to him. The guy smirks and waves a bit.

Jack wants to fucking scream.

***

Hands owes him.

That’s what Jack tells himself when he sits down next to the little shit. He’s seen him approach, of course he’s fucking noticed: no way Jacky’s ever going back to being sneaky. Not that he’d tried before; but a ruined leg and a missing arm and whatever the fuck’s going on with his face kind of make him stand out, a fucking sore thumb. So Hands sees him and doesn’t look up from his drink, the fucker.

“You owe me,” Jack slurs out. Mostly the rum: he’s had full pockets for a bit, even if funds have been low for the last few days. There’s the slant to his mouth too, the one he makes sure the little fucker can’t fucking miss.

“You failed,” he replies, curt and cruel. Still sexy, fucking cunt is still sexy even if all Jack wants to do to him at times is hold his head underwater and watch him thrash.

He still plops down on an empty chair, does his best to produce a half-grin and makes a grab for Hands’s drink. Fucker lets him take it, slumps against the back of his chair. Everything creaks: they’re old as fuck, and this dump is old as fuck, and their whole world has gone to shit.

From the look on his face, Hands has reached the same conclusion. More or less.

“The fuck do you want?,” he asks; Jack grins, and this time the half of his mouth that’s no longer his kind of ticks upwards.

“How about a few of these? Then we can talk.”

All he gets in return is a grunt; and, shit, out of the two of them Hands is not the one that got his whole face blown up, thank you very much. But it’s whatever, really, because the fucker still gets up to grab him a bottle, bottom shelf shit that’ll make his head explode come morning unless they somehow never stop drinking.

That’d work for Jack, all in all.

So they – mostly Jack, because Hands has always been kind of a lightweight and he fucking knows it, paranoid little fuck – chug the whole thing down almost in silence, like they’ve got nothing to say to each other. Maybe they don’t.

Hands plays with the half empty bottle, holds it and clenches his fists around the neck like he’s thinking of someone, like he’s picturing flesh instead. And Jack, who’s always been a nosy fuck and has a stupidly soft spot for a man who almost got him killed, bites.

“So, what brings you here? Come to see my handsome face?”

He knows he’s not handsome, not anymore. He’s the stuff of nightmares, burned skin and milky white eye and no way to get his mustache to grow back even. It makes him seethe with rage, that last part: he spent far too long on that little shit and now it’s gone. Worse than his arm or his balance or his dignity, he misses the facial hair like crazy.

But Hands doesn’t know that. He’s never found Jack handsome anyway: he’s not sure the little shit’s ever bothered to even look, way too caught up in Blackie’s shadow. Sad, really: Eddie Teach is way too good for a sad sack like Izzy, and they all know it. Have known it all along.

“Fuck off,” the fucker growls, but they’re on their third bottle of rum and he may be pacing himself, but –no matter how high and mighty he likes to pretend to be– Hands is still only human.

(At times, though, Jack isn’t a hundred percent sure.)

“Got fed up, fucking finally,” he slurs after a while, and Jack doesn’t know if he’s talking about himself – ha!, as if – or if Blackie has fucking finally managed to kick him off, for real this time. He kind of hopes it’s the second one: it’d serve the old fuck right.

“Aw, did you not suck him off well enough? I thought you were a pro.”

The scowl on Hands’s face is familiar territory by now. Jack’s always been good at reading him, after all.

“C’mon: if you’re very, very good, I’ll give you some tips, love,” he tells the man, making sure to leer. He’s not sure how it looks now, with the brand new face and his spotty mustache, but he hopes it gets the message across anyway.

From the way Hands growls again, he’s spot on.

“In your fucking dreams, Rackham.”

It takes all Jack’s might not to laugh, then and there: both of them know that’s a fucking lie. Instead, he just bats his lashes in Hands’s direction.

“Now, now,” he says, as sweet as he can make it, “how do you know what I’ve been dreaming about?”

Fuck, but Hands is easy.

It just takes a little prodding, really. Pushing buttons is Jack’s specialty: and the man is all buttons, a raw nerve just waiting for an excuse. They drink some more, and this time Jack makes sure not to outpace the fucker. A little pain he can deal with, if it makes lil’ Jack not fall asleep at an inconvenient time.

Besides, there’s always tomorrow’s rum. At this, however, he’s pretty sure he’ll just have the one chance.

He can’t help but be reminded of the last fucking time they did this, this stupid song and dance Hands loves to perform for him, for whoever pushes hard enough. As if he won’t drop down to his knees for just about anyone, a little pressure and he’s good for it, gagging and wanting like the whore he’s always been.

Fucking slut wears it well, though. He’s flushed and loose by the time they’re done, the moment Jack chooses to lean on him because he’s only got half a body now, Izzy, c’mon.

“Can’t walk on my own, shit. You ever tried limping out of a dump like this with just one leg?”

“You’ve got two legs, Rackham,” Hands deadpans. He still offers him a hand, lets him throw his good arm – his one arm – around his shoulders so they can get out of this fucking place.

“That’s just my cock, darling,” Jack mock-whispers in his ear before a fit of laughter overtakes him. Hands frowns, never drunk enough to humor him for long.

Last time they did this, this part was easy. Tit for tat: Hands wanted help, wanted a sucker to go get the mighty Blackbeard’s head out of his own ass, and Jack’s never been one to be bought with just gold.

Well. Wasn’t, anyway.

So it was easy, because fucking Hands is easy. Always has been, even before all the shit in the Marianne: whatever fucked him up was there from the beginning. Not that Jack cares.

So it was easy, a few words and a bit of pushing and they were out of Jackie’z, Hands’s knees hitting the ground while he mouthed at Jack’s still covered cock.

“How d’you want it?,” he asked, all of him cold. He could have been a whore, Jack remembers thinking; only whores are actually nice, fucking pleasant at least, and they know how to use their mouths for much more than just cock-sucking. Nothing about fucking a working girl feels this wrong, this right.

Trust Israel fucking Hands to suck the joy out of sex, too.

Still, he did it. Got to work – because it was work for him, and that made Jack fucking furious and that made him fucking horny –, clever hands taking him out, tongue licking at his slit, tracing his veins: he nipped and sucked and swallowed Jack whole, let his cock nest against his throat before swallowing around him; and it may have been cold and lifeless, but it was still the best fucking blowjob of his life.

It’s different now, of course. Jack no longer has Blackie’s life in his hands, and so there’s no bargaining chip this time. He still tries, because of course he tries: he’s never crossed paths with Hands and not thought about eating him up, filling him and having him ride his dick like a champ.

“Fucking stop it, Rackham. Not in the fucking mood.”

To the best of Jack’s knowledge, Hands is never in the fucking mood. He’s seen the man eat hardtack with almost as much enthusiasm as when he offers up his ass. But he’s easy, he’s so fucking easy, and it’s been a long time since Jacky’s had his fun: he has no money for both sex and rum, and nobody’s doing it for free now that he’s missing half of himself. So he bites Hands’s ear, just a nip, playful and soft, and licks the inside of it even though he knows it’ll just annoy the hell out of the fucker.

“I said—”

“You gonna turn me down too, Izzy?,” Jack asks, voice pathetic, fragile and unsure. They’re in the middle of fucking nowhere, in a backward-ass port town half the world doesn’t even remember the name of, and Izzy Hands is the closest thing to a warm body he’s going to find, and he hates the man and he maybe doesn’t, and he’s horny and angry and not drunk enough, never drunk enough.

“I’m not—”

“I mean, I get it,” he whispers: and the hurt isn’t even feigned anymore. “Guess I’m not what I used to be, right? Just, you know: just forget it. Don’t wanna have to watch you get all disgusted and shit when you see—”

Izzy groans. He stops walking, turns a bit towards him, and his eyes are dark in the light of the moon, his lips slightly parted, and he smells of rum and sweat and leather and something else, something Jack can never not think of, in the end.

“That’s not it,” he says, a low growl that nonetheless has defeat written all over it. “You know that’s not it.”

And Jack licks his lips, unable to tear his gaze off. A moment later, hesitant and slow, the other man kisses him.

Fuck, but Hands is just so fucking easy.

***

There was a time, back when they were all kids, when things had been different. But then, Blackie had to go and fuck it all up, fuck off to be Captain and leave Jack in the dirt, no crew and no ship and nothing to his name but a fucking whip.

Down an arm, he's not sure he can still use it.

Hands is not nearly drunk enough for this, of course, so he takes his time. Tells him in a frantic whisper that he’s got a room somewhere, a rented little hole where they can hide from the world while he pounds Izzy’s little hole, am I right?

“C’mon; it was a joke,” he whines when the whole thing falls flat. Hands has got his arms crossed over his chest, a scowl on, and teasing him can never not be fun, really.

“Are you fucking fifteen, Rackham?”

He is, at heart. Or, he wishes he was. Maybe then he’ll have both his fucking arms and no need to be wasted all the fucking time; maybe then he wouldn’t have fucked up. But whatever: life’s shit, and pirate life doubly so. The few perks he’s got, like being able to annoy Izzy Hands of all people, he’s keeping for himself.

It’s always been kind of like this, to be fair. Between the three of them, Hands was always the spoilsport, the one who stayed sober unless they were somewhere he deemed safe –what made a place safe enough, Jack will never know–, the one who scolded them and chided them and kept them from killing one another or themselves. He was steady, reliable, and a fucking bore.

Jack thinks, at times, that he loved the little fucker.

That’s a weird thought, always has been. You’re supposed to love a woman, get yourself a proper wife like he did with Anne before they both fucked off to fuck other people. What you do with a mate is a different matter: dalliances, fucking if you’re feeling blunt. Bedding Blackie’s never been that much of a deal, and other shipmates were just as easy: a friendly hand here, a willing hole there. But touching Izzy Hands has always left him feeling sort of unmoored, somehow.

If this is how Blackie feels about that fucking ponce Steve, then he’s a bigger fool than Jack’s always thought.

“Hey,” he says when they’ve got to his dingy room, with its leaking ceiling and its narrow cot. “Remember the first time we did this?”

Hands doesn’t. Jack is banking on it, and it’s still a bit of a fucking thing when the fucker shakes his head. Busy cunt, that one, back when they were young and he was even more of a fucking joke, skinny and weak and always so pliant. Guess Jack didn’t even register as it was.

“Shit, man,” he manages to say with a smirk. “And here I thought I’d rocked your little world. Guess I better get ‘round to correcting that, huh?”

He does remember. Hands wasn’t his first one, not by far – though most of his trysts back then had been with Blackie, a bit of fumbling in the dark and quiet, not much said and even less mentioned, later–, but it almost felt that way. Couple blowjobs, he got before that: but the first time, their first time, was something else. It was fucking electrifying, having that taut body underneath his, willing to surrender to Jack for once, let him do whatever he wanted.

He’d taken off his own pants before pushing Izzy down, the dusty floorboards not so much of a problem back when they were still young enough to almost be boys.

“’m gonna make you see stars, Iz,” he promised as he fumbled with the other man’s laces, as he found his cock and tugged on it, slowly, then faster, trying to find a rhythm that’d make it good enough, memorable enough.

It took a long fucking time for Izzy’s cock to harden; but then, it also took a long time for him to relax underneath Jack. When he got there, though, it was fucking amazing: he whined, softly, that raspy voice of his turned into the sweetest mewl Jack had ever heard a man make. He jerked him off slowly, savoring each second and never looking away from Izzy’s glazed over eyes, green and shiny and so fucking young, and he could have come, would have come, just from the sight in front of him when the older man closed his eyes and fucking spurted all over his own belly.

With a smirk, Jack licked his hand and pushed at Izzy, flipping him over.

“Can still back out, Iz,” he said, suddenly nervous even though they’d talked about this, they’d agreed and Izzy was still as willing as ever, soft and relaxed and obedient.

“Not getting any younger, Jack.”

He says the same fucking thing, same fucking words and inflection, thirty-some years later. It’s like that fucking thing the French talk about, déjà whatever. Jack feels like he’s lived through this already, like he’s just going through the motions again and again. Hands is waiting for him to settle – “gonna ride you,” he’s said, “might be easier on your, you know”–, looking as bored and uninterested as if they were plotting the ship’s course. Fuck: knowing the cunt, he’d probably cream his pants if that’s what they were doing, instead of this.

But Jack’s an old fool, and he’s learned to take whatever he can in whatever form it comes. He lays on his back and watches Hands prepare himself, no oil in sight but a lot of spit and patience. He makes it into a show, lets him see and touch and prod like a rich brat watching an exotic pet. He even smirks, and pants, and when he slides down on Jack’s cock everything’s warm enough and tight enough that they can both pretend there’s nothing wrong with any of this.

***

In the end, it’s like being a whore, isn’t it? Getting paid – in money, favors, a room or a fucking bottle of rum – in exchange for doing shit others may find disgusting, or wrong. There’s nothing more to it, really: you don’t even have to like it. In the end, they’re all just surviving in this crapsack world.

***

Ben Hornigold was, once upon a time, the best pirate Captain in the seven seas.

Of course, by the time they’d left the old fuck, he was way past his prime. He’d fed a live crab to a cabin boy once, and that had been a laugh, really. Fucking Felix.

But he’d also whipped his first mate to death after catching him jumping ship, and he’d refused to take on fat British ships just primed for them to raid, and he’d fucked Izzy Hands up in so many ways Jack didn’t even know how to begin to unravel that mess.

Sometimes he still wonders if they could have stopped it. If they could have mutinied earlier, maybe, or escaped into the night when fucking Hornigold wasn’t looking. But there’s no use in dwelling on that, on what ifs: if he did, he’d never have time for anything else, and there’s so fucking much he has to do today, really.

Tying knots is one of those things that goes better when you’ve got use of both your hands. Still, Jack manages: it helps that Hands is passed out, helped by both the rum and the little something he himself had him drink in their last, after-sex round. Hasn’t been easy, with how paranoid the little shit is at the best of times, but he’s done it, same as he’s managing to tie the fucker up one-armed. Who’s fault is that last bit, anyway? Hands may not have shot the cannons, but he sure as fuck put the target on Jack’s back.

Funny thing is, it was Izzy who taught him most of his knots, when it came down to it. He was older, and he’d been on ships fuck knew how long, always skulking around and being a little shit. Kind of had to make up for his shitty personality by being the best at something: and that something was knots, at the time. That, and bending over: but Jack didn’t know it then, wouldn’t figure that out until a couple years later.

But yeah, Izzy had taught him how to tie these knots, and he’ll be fucking proud of him once he gets past the whole being trapped and sold out thing, really. Always preened at a well-done job, that one: and Jack’s always been a better study than people give him credit for.

Next thing on the list is getting the fuck out of the room, getting the word out. The old man will know to come quickly enough, he hopes: he’ll also bring him his gold if he wants Jack to surrender Hands. Son of a bitch is worth a couple doubloons at least with the Spaniards, and the French may not pay as much, but they know how to make up for it in fancy shit, he’s sure. And, if all else fails, there’s always Blackie.

Eddie Teach had been a deckhand on the Marianne when they’d met. Squirrelly thing, smarter than the whole lot of them and then some: he’d had half the crew already in his clutches by the time Jack had got them to remember his name. Out of them all, of course, Izzy had been the biggest sucker: he pretended not to listen to the boy’s stories, tried not to be seen with him, but he was down bad. Sad, really, and a little infuriating, because Jack was already doing his best to try his luck with the bosun’s mate and Eddie’s shadow was just too fucking long, too fucking dark.

Still, they managed. They became friendly, jerked each other off, Blackie and him, and Jack can honestly say it’s been one of the best things in his life, barring maybe those three months with Anne and the brief times he’s managed to stay captain of his own ship. Hornigold may have been a bastard, but the three of them were still young enough not to care that much. Or, well. Jack, at least, had been.

The man he finds three streets over doesn’t look too happy to be woken up at this time. Whatever: Jack will take pleasure where he finds it at this point.

“The fuck do you want?,” the twat asks, that posh British accent never quite leaving his voice. If this was the Republic, he wouldn’t last two days: seeing as they are in the middle of fucking nowhere, nobody gives a shit.

“Got a gift for our friend,” he answers, a manic grin on and the hand he no longer has itching to twirl at a mustache he can no longer grow. “Better hurry up before it gets snatched away, though.”

It’ll be enough. The man may look like a particularly ugly chicken, but he’s competent: by now, they’ve got this system down to a T.

“Two days,” is what he tells Jack; and fuck, two days is maybe too long, but it’s not like he can’t make it. He’ll just have to lay low in the meantime, hope that Blackie doesn’t get it in his head to come looking for his missing pet just now, and maybe pray to one of those gods people love to ramble about.

And, who knows? Maybe he can get another fuck out of this whole thing.

***

The bad thing about being a cockroach, in the worst sense of the word, is that sometimes you gotta eat the shit no one wants.

Take this: a couple tankards of beer, a bottle of good rum, top shelf, no notes. Pain in his arm even though it’s not even there, pain in his legs and his guts and his face, the whole world burning and him in the fucking middle of the fire, burning along with it.

He took a cannonball to the gut for this fucker, and he doesn’t even have the decency to stay fucking quiet.

Hangovers don’t get better, never get better, just like the pain never goes away. He’s thought of switching to opium, but he’s seen what it does to men, how it turns them slow and stupid and hollows them in and out. So Jack keeps the opium for emergencies, for when the rum isn’t enough and the need to shit himself just so that everyone can see what it’s like is too big to ignore.

In the meantime, he uses it on Hands, drugs him off his tits as often as he can get away with it. Can’t have the fucker dying from an overdose, not in the couple days he’s gonna have to keep him here; but, shit, maybe that’d be better than this.

Most people, when dosed, tend to lie still. They get that faraway look and their bodies grow loose, and they grow quiet and slow. But Hands thrashes, apparently unable to control his fucking body, and he whines from behind the gag and looks at him with huge, pleading eyes, and fuck if Jack doesn’t want to strangle him.

“You’re fucking lucky I can’t choke you with just the one hand,” he tells him, settling on top of his body and backhanding him. In response, there’s another panicked sound, muffled but still loud enough not to let Jack get back to sleep. “Shut the fuck up, will you? Or I can do that for you, you cunt.”

It doesn’t work. Izzy Hands is a contrary fucker, a mouthy little shit that only knows how to bark and spit and take off his pants. So, whatever.

Jack doesn’t leave the room for long: he can’t really risk it, not now that he’s told the captain about this catch. Even dosed, Hands is crafty enough to find a way out of here if he’s not watched at all times, he’s sure. So he just gets out to grab some food and rum, has the fucker renting him the room leave it all in a pile at the door. There go the rest of his funds: he’d better get paid for this one, and well enough.

He takes a swig of one of the bottles, the familiar warmth settling in him. From the bed where he’s trussed up, Hands lets out a new whine, thrashes a little. When Jack looks, his pupils are dark and huge, and he’s sweating his ass off and looking incredibly panicked. Little shit can’t do anything right, apparently.

“Fuck, but you’re feisty,” he says. He’s not sure whether Hands hears him, but kind of hopes he does. It’d still him, maybe. It would have stilled Jack, once upon a time.

First time he heard Captain Hornigold say the words he’d been on the ship for about three months, and he was already sniffing around the bosun’s mate. It was a late night and he wasn’t even supposed to be on watch, but he liked skulking about when everyone else was fast asleep: back then, he’d have told anyone asking that he was practicing his sneaking, or trying to nick some extra rum, or something of the sort. The truth of the matter, as with everything else, was far more mundane: nightmares were a bitch.

So he’d been up and about when he shouldn’t, and he couldn’t exactly come up on deck without it seeming suspicious, so he just wandered. He may have been searching for Izzy too, because he was a pretty sight and didn’t sleep too much either: but, when he got there, Hornigold had found him first.

It wasn’t about sex, really; not the way he held him against the wall, fist moving fast, unrelenting, as he jerked Izzy off. There was nothing sexual to it, Jack remembers thinking, even though there was a cock involved and that cock was being tended to and some people liked to choke each other when they were having a fuck.

“My, but you’re feisty.”

He watched them, hidden behind some crates, though he’s pretty sure he could have just walked to them and it wouldn’t have mattered. When Izzy came, he did so with a groan, biting his lip and closing his eyes, head hitting the wall behind him with a thunk. Captain Hornigold smiled at him then, sweet as anything, and patted his cheek after tucking him in.

“You’ll be in my cabin to report first thing in the morning,” he said, and that was that. Jack scrambled to get away from his path fast enough: when he dared come back to the rations room, maybe an hour later, Izzy was still there, still slumped against the wall, still with his eyes closed.

“Hey,” he started. He wanted to say more, wanted to ask, to hold, to help. But they were fucking pirates, weren’t they? Pirates didn’t have friends.

That’s been a hard lesson to learn, all in all. Thirty-fuck years later and he’d still been holding on to hope. But whatever.

Hands is still writhing, though. Jack puts his hand on his chest, pushes him down onto the mattress, and it stops him for a bit. He closes his eyes, gulps: there are tear tracks on his cheeks, and he’s still fucking crying somehow. Honest to fuck, Jack didn’t know the fucker could do that.

“C’mon, be a good girl for me, will ya?,” he croons, pushing him further before turning his attention elsewhere. Careful, slow by fucking necessity, he pulls his pants down, first; then his smalls. Bound, gagged, Izzy Hands is still a sight.

He’s still loose from being fucked a few hours ago, Jack’s own come leaking out of him. He prods at his hole with his fingers, scissors them and tries to find that spot that’ll have the fucker keening, that’ll milk something out of him at least.

He finds a rhythm. It’s easier than touching Hands’s cock, easier still than doing any of this while he’s sober, and conscious, and staring at you like you’re a vaguely disgusting bug, maybe. A cockroach.

He ends up fucking him, first with his hand – he puts it in there one finger at a time, patient like he can never be in the light of day – and then with his cock. At some point, Hands tries to roll away, but there’s no strength to his body, not enough coordination; and so he stays, and he takes it, and the painful groans this gets out of him are maybe the biggest reaction Jack’s gotten from the little shit in all the times they’ve fucked.

***

In the end, it’s easy. It’s not even a choice, really. Here he is, Calico Jack Rackham, half a man and half a corpse, nowhere to go and no one to turn to: and over there there’s rum and there’s money for a room and for food and for fucking laudanum when it all gets to be too much, and all he has to do is sell his soul.

Honestly? He’d never thought the damn thing would’ve been worth that much.

***

The captain, of course, doesn’t come in person. He never does, except for that one time, a few hundred miles from here, in an even shittier town with even shittier rum.

Jack’s been drunk for two days straight, hand flying to his whip more often than not, waiting for Blackie perhaps to show up and try and pry Izzy away from him.

(Hoping, maybe, for that to happen.)

He’s fucked the little shit a couple more times too, one with the both of them almost sober, Jack listing a bit to the side and Hands trying to spit at him through the gag. It’s really not so different from fucking him when he’s willing, he thinks with a bitter glee. Fuck, he may be more into it when he doesn’t have to pretend to like it, fucking cunt.

Mostly, though, he’s just sat beside him, giving him little doses of opium every few hours to keep him from leaping out of the bed and trying to clean up the worst of the mess when he pees or craps himself. He’s gonna have to burn these fucking sheets, he fears: either that, or get away from this stupid room, sail to the edge of the world, and jump.

Izzy’s pretty when he cries.

But whatever. The thing is, Blackie doesn’t come, and the captain doesn’t come, but two useless fucks with lots of guns and a huge burlap sack do. They hole up with the British fucker Jack reports to every time there’s something to report until he shows up, then follow him all the way to his rented shithole room with their sack and a smirk he wishes he could wipe off their mugs.

“Here he is,” he tells them, way too sober for this shit. And then he gets out of the way because he knows when to make himself scarce, and he watches as the two dumb fucks put Izzy Hands into a fucking sack like he’s, what?, a fucking piece of trash maybe. One of them lifts him, throws him over his shoulder and gets a weak kick to the back for his troubles. He chuckles.

“Feisty little fucker, isn’t he?”

And Jack’s mouth dries but he grins anyway and nods. Then he holds out his hand, his one remaining hand, and tries to ignore the way his heart beats in his throat.

Fuck, but the pouch they give him is fucking heavy.

“May change dwellings in a few weeks,” he says nonchalantly. “I’ll let the captain know, of course. But, you know. Change of air, all that.”

The man who’s not dragging Izzy Hands away from his life nods, understanding.

“Yeah. Too much time in this shithole, am I right?”

He is.

***

Benjamin Hornigold always knew how to pick them. His crew was staffed with underfed fuckers, men so starved of touch and warmth and fucking humanity they’d become animals at the drop of a hat. And Jack had fitted right in, all in all.

“Honestly?, I knew I could trust you, Jack,” is what the fucker tells him, two tankards in and a bottle of good rum just out of reach. “You were always the smartest of the bunch, in the end.”

It’s a lie: Eddie was the smart one. Fucking cunning, always two steps ahead of everyone, of Sammy and Charlie and old Horny himself: all of him was made of fire, of that same fire that would one day destroy Jack. But it’s good to hear, it’s almost as good as getting rum to drink and a room to stay the night.

Jack’s got nothing by now but his pride and a bunch of new scars. There’s no way he can make a living out of the wounds, of course; but pride has never been worth much where he’s from.

When he shakes hands with Hornigold, using the left one now that the other one is gone, he feels suddenly, worryingly sober for about a second. I can’t believe, he thinks, that I used to be scared of him.

It was stupid, he knows now. He should have been terrified.

***

In the end, of course, it is easier than all that.

He gets his stuff out of the room in less than half an hour. It should be sad, realizing this is it: this is all he has to his name, right now, all that remains of Calico Jack other than half a corpse and a pouch filled with enough gold to purchase a small ship. What a fucking waste: he was never a good captain and was never a good friend, and if he’s ever been a half-decent pirate he’s about to throw that overboard too.

He still can’t sleep well, the pain keeping him awake as much as the nightmares. Three days and he can’t stop seeing that fucker, three nights and Izzy Hands has been with him more than anyone else in his sad fucking life.

So he goes to port, and he asks around, and he waits. For a word, for a sign, for a fucking ship small enough that he can crew it with a bunch of twats that’ll shut up in exchange for a pouch of gold that’s worth less than Jack Rackham’s soul.

It takes time, of course: it may be too late when the sloop finally makes it to port, tiny and light and fast, he hopes. He’s half sober most of the time now, because rum is fucking expensive and he needs to pay for a few sailors to go on a one-way trip.

There’s no coming back from this, he thinks as he haggles with the ship’s captain. Half now, half when they’re back: and he doesn’t tell him they won’t be coming back, just like Hands never told him he’d never make it out. Fucking suicide mission, middling in Blackie’s shit.

And this whole thing, in the end, has always been about Blackie. It all comes back to him, always, even when it’s Jack doing the work or Izzy taking the heat, even when it was the Gentleman Pirate that Hornigold asked about.

So, whatever. The good thing about being a cockroach, in the only sense of the word, is that you can survive without a fucking head. That’s worked well enough for Jack, honestly, all in all.

“So, where are we going?,” the captain of this new ship of his asks, all of him greed and arrogance, like gold can pay for anything. Jack waves his left hand, his only remaining hand, in some fucking direction. He’ll go with the flow, he decides.

“Gotta search for a friend,” he says. “I’ll tell you when to change course and all that, don’t worry.”

It may take a while, of course: but Blackie’s always liked to make a show out of things. His scent will be easy to pick up for a small ship like theirs: then, it’ll be a matter of catching up, and hoping it’s not too late.

But, really, Jack’s worked with worse odds. The good thing about being a cockroach, really. He’ll make it up as he goes.

Chapter Text

It never fucking stops.

It's the voices, mostly. He can’t understand a fucking word they say, but there’s mocking, there’s all that fucking mocking and it shouldn’t be a fucking surprise because aren’t you just pathetic, Israel Hands? So there’s the mocking and there’s the fucking disappointment, and he can hear it and he can see it on their faces too, their real faces, the ones he can touch and lick and bite –only he can’t, can’t bite can’t growl can’t push can’t hurt–, and nothing ever fucking stops anymore and he can’t take it.

He can’t.

It’s too much.

He can’t.

So he tries to close his eyes and he tries to hide away and he can’t find his voice easily, doesn’t want to find his voice because then he’ll have to tell them and what will they do, huh? What the fuck are they going to do when they hear, when they know, when he spills everything the way he did— the way he did—

“You could have said no, and you fucking didn’t.”

Eddie’s right. He’s always right. That’s why he’s Captain and Izzy’s just a dog – He said it, He told him time and again and Izzy tried to fight it but trying to fight Him is like trying to fight the ocean and so he let it all sink in instead. Eddie’s right, Eddie knows best, Eddie knows him best, knows Izzy in ways Izzy doesn’t know himself even though he doesn’t know this very important bit of Izzy, how much of a coward he is – or he would have booted him, thrown him away like he did once, like he tried to do only for Izzy-dog to come back crawling, hands and knees and muzzle off, ready to lick his boots or bite his hand or tear his throat out—

But he can’t now, can’t bite anymore; he’s learned. He’s learned his lesson, learned to keep the growling down and the teeth hidden, tail between his legs; and He told him, watched him beg and crawl on his belly and called him a dog and He was right, He’s always right; that’s why He is Captain and Izzy’s just—

This.

The voices laugh at points. They’re laughing now, at his pathetic attempts to keep this from blowing up, at the way he fumbles and fucks things up even now, even when he’s trying not to find his voice because it just makes everything fucking worse every time, he can’t open his mouth without spitting out poison, can’t bark without letting them all see. Eddie knows this, has always known him better than he knows himself: that’s why he told him, why he showed him, what happened to dogs that don’t know how to heed.

But, “I wanted it,” he still says. Because it’s hard, teaching old dogs new tricks: he can’t help himself. Voice hoarse from disuse, throat closing and mind reeling; and he still says it. There is pain on Stede’s face –there are lines that weren’t there before and it’s all your fault, Izzy– and there’s an edge of madness in Eddie’s words and he can’t let them hurt, has to do something even if it’ll just make it worse.

The voices aren’t laughing now. They still for a second, they quiet down before screaming, howling, cursing at him and he wants to hide away and he can’t hide away and he promised he wouldn’t talk because He said he shouldn’t talk anymore, dogs don’t speak, Israel; you should know that by now. But he’s opened his mouth and now he can’t stop himself, can’t stop this either: but if it works, if it keeps them from hurting, from thinking they’re— thinking they’re—

“Fuck, Iz,” Eddie says, and Izzy doesn’t know where he’s gone wrong. He’s tried, hasn’t he?, he’s fucking tried, he’s told the truth, he’s not trying to hurt him this time.

“What.”

Doesn’t matter, the voices say. Doesn’t matter because that’s all you know how to do, biting and sniping and hurting them; they were better off with you gone. He said that too, He told him that and He knows Izzy better than Izzy knows himself, knows that very important bit of Izzy too even when Eddie doesn’t, Eddie can’t know, please don’t make me say it.

And the voices don’t; they go back to laughing and he wants to hide away again, wants to go back to sleep again or have them around, skin against his skin in a way that doesn’t make him shake, that’s better than he deserves.

Eddie sees. Eddie knows. Eddie’s Captain because of this, because of how easily he can tame his dog. He sits down on the mattress and there’s a hand in Izzy’s hair and for a moment it doesn’t hurt, for a moment the voices quiet down and there’s peace and there’s not even a cock in his arse this time and that’s fucking good. He could get used to this, he would get used to this, complacent and useless, and that’s why it can’t last.

Dogs aren’t meant to sleep on soft beds; He taught him that, a long time ago.

“That bad?,” Eddie asks softly.

Izzy hides his face against the pillow and thinks about dying, suffocating, ripping himself from the inside out just so he doesn’t have to face this because what does he mean? It’s not bad, it’s never bad: it’s just what it is, what they do, the price Izzy pays in exchange for this. For them, for every scrap he can find, every second of thinking that maybe, just maybe, he can belong here.

But he doesn’t. They don’t know that very important bit yet, but they do know that: Eddie’s always known, and Stede is learning. They know to kick him out, they know to slap him and lash him and scratch at his skin, and it’s good, it’s fucking better than the rest of it, it’s—

You deserve it, the voices say. He can’t make out the words, but he gets the meaning, and they’re right. He wants to curl up and cry, because the voices are right and He was right and Eddie’s been right all this time and why the fuck is he still petting his hair?

“I wanted it,” he repeats, muffled and broken and a little wet. It gets stuck in his throat, pushed and pulled by everything else, everything he needs to tell them, everything he can’t tell them, everything He explained very carefully he couldn’t say.

The hand on his hair stills. Nails scratch at his scalp, lightly enough not to leave marks, and he wants them to dig in, wants them to make him bleed just so he’ll remember his place and the voices will shut the fuck up and he’ll be able to— to—

Thought this was what you wanted, Iz.

And if he could cry, Israel Hands would. He’d wail and curl up on himself like a little child, like the boy he may have been once, perhaps. But he can’t, he can’t, he can’t cry and can’t bite and can’t tell them and he needs to tell them and he needs for them to throw him into the sea and let him drown at last.

Instead, there’s tea.

***

He wanted it. Couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t, really, when there hadn’t been that itch, that desperate need to be touched and hurt and held down. It was pathetic, so he didn’t voice it, but he knew others could tell.

Spriggs, for one. Sure smirk and that glint in his eye, have you ever been sketched? Izzy hadn’t. He’d been touched and lashed and fucked and kissed, but he hadn’t been sketched because what the fucking fuck, really? Who went around just posing, naked and vulnerable, for little shits like that one?

Part of what drove him crazy those first few weeks on the Revenge was just that. The itch, the need, the way Eddie wouldn’t look at him –not that he’d ever looked at him, not like that, not ever–, the way he’d become invisible and there were no more slaps and no more lashings and no more violence.

Violence was all he had. He’d learned that from a very young age, when there had been wandering hands and marks on his skin and nothing else, ever.

This ship, this fucking piece of hell, was different. It was empty except for what Izzy brought along with him, his rage a burning thing because how dare they, why the fuck didn’t the world work anymore? The crew was useless and soft and stupid, their captain vapid and weak: they were a floating casket, a disaster waiting to happen, only it never did.

Not on its own, at least.

Once, back when he’d been a boy, Izzy had been told the secret to life, to his life at least. It’d been a priest, a Spanish fuck who’d told him about este valle de lágrimas, how we were all born to suffer through life until merciful death would take us away and give us our proper reward.

He’d been talking about fire and brimstone, in Izzy’s case. He’d screamed it, howled it in between lashes and red-hot iron rods, and he’d still taken his secret, whatever it had been, to his grave.

Captain Hornigold hadn’t been pleased.

But this ship was different, this ship didn’t make sense. Screaming didn’t work and threatening didn’t work and there was no violence anywhere and Eddie never looked at him anymore, never slapped him around or held him by the hair. Izzy had become invisible, and it’d fucking hurt.

So yes, he’d wanted it. Every moment of it, every kiss and every bite, every second of skin against skin, the smell of sweat and sex making him gag. At least he was there when it happened. At least he was allowed to exist if he would just take it, and the itch went away for a moment even if it was Stede fucking Bonnet making him feel alive instead of Blackbeard.

***

They leave, because of course they do. Pathetic, the voices laugh, and he wants to curl up and cry but he hasn’t cried in decades, has tasted his own flesh and bone and has seen himself cut open without shedding a tear. He’s not sure he knows how to do that anymore, same as he’s forgotten so many fucking things he should’ve remembered.

He is going to be angry. He is going to be so fucking angry when He learns Izzy’s opened his big stupid fucking maw again.

There is noise outside, but he doesn’t pay it much attention. The voices keep screaming, jeering, not letting him think. Some of them he knows, some of them he’s been hearing in his nightmares since forever, though it’s not as if it matters. Whoever they are, whatever they are, they’re here to stay. Turns out Hell doesn’t always wait until you’re dead.

He curls up in the end, twists his body around trying to make it smaller. It hurts still, some of the wounds not completely healed yet, his insides raw like they always are, his head pounding. He faces the wall when he would’ve once faced the door, ready to spring at the slightest sign of danger: but what’s the point anymore. He’s failed, he’s fucking failed even if they don’t know it yet, even if Eddie has no idea of how easily he’s broken down, how much he’s been willing to trade for a gulp of water or a bit of food or a fucking reprieve.

“Bad dog,” He said. “What will our Eddie think when he finds out, huh?”

And Izzy’s breath speeds up and his eyes close and he tries hard to forget where he is, what he’s done. What he is at the end of the day, fucking pathetic, Iz.

The voices agree. Of course they do. They know him.

***

Stede fucking Bonnet had come back, of course. Bane of Izzy’s life as he’d made a point of being, he’d shown up with a tan and a scraggly beard and no fucking idea how not to get himself killed. He’d brought his merry band of fuckwits along, all of them whining and protesting having been left to die of hunger and exposure, none of them smart enough to know it’d been a fucking mercy.

Izzy had interceded, back then. He’d planted the seed of the idea: marooning the crew would be better than skinning them all alive, he’d pleaded.

Of course, with Stede fucking Bonnet back to gallivanting around, all anyone wanted to remember was that it’d been Izzy leaving them to die, whispering in Blackbeard’s ear. Not that he’d bothered to correct them; not that anyone would have listened. They were busy rebuilding their happy endings from the ruins that were still left, and so he compromised: he’d shut the fuck up, keep his head down, as long as no one remembered to throw him off the ship.

He hadn’t been hiding, no matter what Edward said.

But things change, and Stede fucking Bonnet’s ability to bend the world to his whims was unmatched, and suddenly the whole of the Revenge was back to inane shenanigans like storytime and team-building exercises, and everyone did their fucking best to pretend not to remember attempted drownings or cut-off toes.

Eddie had gone back to ignoring Izzy, again. Avoiding him like the plague he apparently was, because who the fuck dared pop Ed’s precious bubble with superfluous things like raiding or fucking surviving.

And so Izzy was invisible once more, relegated to the role of shadow. Not first mate, because a first mate nobody bothered to listen to couldn’t do his fucking job; and not a friend, not a lover, not even a pet anymore. He’d been drowning, slowly disappearing, nothing but a sack of flesh and bones, a waste of space. His fucking foot hurt, his fucking head hurt, his fucking heart – whatever he had in place of one of those – had broken into a million pieces.

“Izzy,” Stede fucking Bonnet had told him one morning, a light blush on his cheeks and his right hand clutching at his jacket like a lifeline. “I was wondering if you’d, maybe, be amenable to visiting us. Our cabin, I mean. Say, after supper?”

He obeyed, because of course he did, even if he spat and cursed at the fop first. But Stede Bonnet had won, and he knew it, and so he allowed Izzy that last semblance of control with a beatific smile.

Fucking them was sort of inevitable. Like the fucking tide.

He still does now, relishes the feel of being there, being alive and kind of whole and useful again. Sometimes it’s even nice, having one of them buried so deep inside Izzy they could become one, the beast with two backs the Spaniard fuck he once tortured to death warned him about.

It was one more thing to do, one more role to fill. People tended not to boot those they were fucking, after all, unless they became a handful. And Izzy was already a handful, but now he was both that and a warm hole, and so Stede fucking Bonnet learned to moan his name and Eddie went back to looking at him, in a way. Pain and violence were kept to a minimum, confined to that cabin and followed by petting and soothing and fucking cuddling –Izzy loved cuddling, though he would go to his grave denying he did–, and he wasn’t fed any more of his toes and the marks he wore on his skin he could almost feel proud of, this time.

It was good, all in all. So, of course, it couldn’t fucking last.

***

There is a ruckus outside, voices yelling so loud they almost drown the ones in his head. He curls up even more, tries to become smaller, tries to disappear. Look at you, Israel. Think you can hide from them?

He can’t. He can’t hide from them, same as he couldn’t hide from Him; the best he can do is pray.

There’s no one listening, of course. Or, if there is, they’re fucking laughing, just like the voices are laughing, just like He laughed at him, mirth in His eyes as he watched him squirm and crawl and beg, a kick to the ribs and a hand in his hair and fingers in his mouth prying it open. How far are you willing to go, Israel?

“Let’s see how good of a pup you can be, huh? Open up.”

And Izzy whimpers because he can still feel it, can feel the grime underneath the nails that raked his tongue, and he shuts his eyes and begs for the voices to drown that, to make him forget about what comes next, his breaking down, his bursting open, insides pulsing and weak and easy to prod at.

There’s new noise somewhere, there’s someone at the door and there are steps and the mattress dips, and Izzy keeps his eyes shut and his breath as even as he can make it and wonders what will happen now, wonders how long it’ll take for Him to get here and make him pay.

“Izzy.”

He shakes. Shivers. He clenches his hands into fists and goes back to hiding his face against the pillow, trying to suffocate himself, to end all of this and rest. Blackbeard is back, Blackbeard is here: Izzy knows his voice by now, would recognize it anywhere. It’s different than Eddie’s, definitely different than Ed’s. It is dark and booming and full of promise: Blackbeard has always seen him for what he is.

Maybe he’ll have to swallow some more toes. He’s not sure he can do that today, though.

“Izzy, get up.”

A hand on the nape of his neck –fingers closing around his throat again and again and again, the world swaying in and out of focus, breath such a precious commodity he feels the need to thank them every time he manages to drag some air in–, short nails scratching his skin. It’s soft, it’s too soft, but it’ll draw blood at some point because that’s what he deserves, isn’t it?

You’re pathetic.

And he can’t take it now, he can’t, he can’t take it. He sobs even though he knows it’ll only make it worse, even though he knows Eddie won’t listen, Ed doesn’t care, Blackbeard will be furious.

He hated it too, He has always hated it. Watching him break, watching Izzy Hands devolve into what he’s always been. He writhes on the bed like the worm he is, tries to get away from that hand and from everything that will come along with it.

“C’mon, mate. Won’t say it again.”

He knows.

Izzy doesn’t know how he’s so sure, has no idea how Blackbeard’s found out. He’s kept his trap shut just like He told him to, he’s done his best not to spill everything, make it all worse. But they know now, don’t they? There is rage and hate and disappointment in his Captain’s voice and Izzy’s just a dog and he should know how to heed by now, but he doesn’t.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry, again and again and again and again, a whispered prayer just in case there’s something out there willing to listen and smite him on the spot.

The hand is back. It reminds him of His own hand, the way it’d soothe after each time, petting a dog too cowered to even attempt to bite anymore. There’s another one on his shoulder, grabbing him, forcing him to turn and face Blackbeard and Izzy can’t stop begging, can’t stop blabbering long enough to think, and he shakes and tries to kick and get away and that’s the wrong move because his Captain’s angry, his Captain’s furious and now everything will be—

“Ed, let go of him,” comes another voice; and Izzy’s brain stops, everything stills as he latches onto it, vision swimming and body coiled, and he whines.

“Stede,” he calls, desperate. Like he has any right to that name, like he can even expect him to— to—

He hates you, remember? He hates you just as much as you hate him; but that can’t be, because Izzy doesn’t hate him, can’t hate him anymore, no matter what He said.

The mattress shifts, and there’s Edward’s weight going away, replaced by Stede’s. Stede fucking Bonnet, who takes Izzy’s hand and squeezes it lightly and smiles at him like he deserves it somehow.

“Izzy, love,” he says. He sounds pained and tired: look what you did to him. But he also sounds infinitely patient, and his nails dig into Izzy’s skin and that brings him back to here, makes him feel real for a moment.

“Iz? You there, mate?”

He breathes, in and out. Nods, and the voices quiet for a moment as Stede Bonnet draws blood.

“Yeah,” Izzy manages, blinking through something that could almost be tears, alien as they are.

From where he’s standing, Eddie throws him a weak sort of smile.

“Good,” he says, and then he grows serious again. “Iz, I think we need to talk.”

***

In the beginning, there was always the water.

He’d known it, nosy little fuck he’d been even back on land. There were no real memories of that place, but his body knew, his body seized up when they grabbed him by the nape of his neck and pushed him forward, and he knew to draw in a stuttering breath whenever they allowed it. They would kill him one day, he hoped, rough hands tangling into his hair and dragging him in and out, in and out; and he would close his eyes and beg to just pass out, to go to that soundless place he got trapped into at times.

She left them soon enough. Izzy didn’t remember her, couldn’t picture her face or her smell but he knew her voice, had it embedded into his brain, howls of agony as she pleaded for mercy. There was none: such was the world. She left him just that, just a cheap ring and the memory of screaming that no one else seemed to hear.

Him, though, he’d never be able to forget.

Izzy didn’t dream of Him all that often, lately. There was the odd nightmare, there were flashes of Him tangled in other stories. He turned into the Kraken at times, into Izzy himself: those were the worst ones.

But he didn’t dream of Him all that often because he didn’t even think of Him all that often: it’d been years. He’d escaped, he’d taken Eddie’s hand and he’d slipped right through His fingers and now he was— Not safe, never safe because such was the world; but safer, at least.

And then he’d woken up, opium still running through his system, and there He was, and Izzy had wanted to scream but hadn’t dared.

“You’ve still got your mother’s eyes, Israel.”

He was older than she’d ever been. He’d do good to remember that as they broke his body down, as they dragged him across the cabin just so he wouldn’t bleed all over His carpet. Captain Hornigold had always been very particular about His things; and that included Izzy.

If his captains could see him, he’d managed to think before all thinking had dissolved into incoherence, they’d be fucking ashamed of him.

And then it was all a blur. Past and present mixed, came together in his mind and in his body, old aches and new pains, boots colliding with his back and his side and knives opening up wounds that had been closed long before. He needed stitches after that first day, and He had watched over him and made sure he got them, made sure he was tended to because it was going to take Him a long time to be able to trust Izzy again.

“Anything that comes out of your mouth, at first,” He said, and Izzy tried to argue that nothing was going to come out, that he wouldn’t give them up at all, “is going to be a lie. You know that, I know that, huh? It’s just human nature, Israel.”

He had been right, of course. A week in and Izzy was already begging, making up names and trying to get his brain to twist details just enough to make them believable. But He had known him for decades, He had raised him: you just couldn’t hide from Benjamin Hornigold.

“Shall we try that again, Israel? Try to be a little less obvious this time.”

They started with his hands because they knew it’d hurt him the most, fingers twisted and nails torn apart slowly. Kicks kept raining over him, but he barely felt them anymore. His breath rattled, and his head felt swollen, mind stuffed with cotton, and Izzy floated except for when he didn’t, except for when he came back to find His eyes watching, half amused like they’d been when he’d been a child.

“Fuck you,” Izzy managed at times. It made Him laugh.

“Quite a mouth you’ve got on you, huh? Wonder where you get that from. God knows I didn’t raise you like that, Israel.”

He hadn’t. He’d raised Izzy like a dog, He’d taught him to bite and growl and bark, trained him so that the sound of His voice would bring him to heel. But things change, and Izzy had changed, and a few broken fingers wouldn’t be enough for him to give his captains away.

But He knew that, of course. Captain Hornigold was nothing if not a patient man.

“You may want a reminder, I’d say. Of proper rules of behaviour.”

After a point, Izzy stopped screaming.

***

It still hurts now, some fingers mangled beyond repair. But Stede squeezes his hand and smiles at him, and Eddie’s watching, and Izzy wants to be good. For them. Even if it means moving, even if he struggles to get up to his feet and his steps feel wobbly and Eddie has to hold the door open for him.

***

He met Calico Jack Rackham when the boy was barely old enough to hold his drink. Izzy was bosun’s mate by then, a private joke between him and his Captain at the time. It meant gruelling work and shitty rations just like the rest of the crew, and it also gave old Jenkins and excuse to keep a close eye on him so that he could report whatever he saw.

Not that he ever saw shit, of course. Izzy wasn’t an idiot. A bit of an asshole, maybe: he spat and sniped and gave everyone shit whenever he could get away with it, which was almost all the time if his Captain was willing. But he didn’t disobey, and he didn’t fraternize, and he didn’t even drink with the rest of the crew unless he was specifically ordered to. He was good, that is: he knew his place.

Rackham didn’t.

The boy was lanky and stupid, Izzy could see. Not unusual on ships like the Marianne –not that he’d ever been on other ships–, where turnover was high and a swift death was often all deckhands could aspire to. But Jack was also loud and boisterous, and he had a glint in his eye, and he watched Izzy like a hawk and it was nice. To be seen, to be wanted with that desperate fire of youth.

Jenkins noticed, which meant that Captain noticed, which meant that Izzy had to pay for it. Wanton little whore, just like his mother: he let it happen and made sure not to react, and both he and the Captain pretended not to know the fucking runt was watching the whole time.

It was humiliating, but not worse than any other punishment. Izzy tended to earn a lot of those, mouthy fuck that he was: he’d been lashed and starved and he’d had his hair shaved, his stuff thrown overboard. Captain had to be fair, all in all: couldn’t let him get away with everything.

Jack Rackham’s eyes never left him, even after that. They were hungry, they took in every inch of Izzy, and he learned to enjoy the attention. Kept seeking it out at times, when Jenkins wasn’t there; he allowed himself a smirk here and there, a bit of teasing if he thought there was no one listening.

Jack fucked him a year later, still a boy in all the ways that counted. His cock wasn’t all that different from all the other cocks Izzy had taken, and the whole thing was more than correct, he thought; but there was something missing. Not on Izzy’s part –he didn’t mind fucking, but he didn’t quite get what everyone else seemed to like about it–, but Rackham’s eyes dulled after the fact, and he stopped searching him out, and the fire within him seemed to die a little. They still had sex, even though Jenkins found out and that meant Captain found out and Izzy was punished for it, time and again. But it wasn’t the same.

“That’s men for you,” Captain Hornigold told him one evening. Izzy was trussed up on the floor of his cabin, cigarette burns all over his body even though his Captain didn’t smoke. He didn’t squirm, didn’t reply. He just waited, and listened carefully like he’d been taught. “Can’t be trusted, I guess. We get tired so easily, see, Israel? Been there, done that: and then you’re nothing but an afterthought. Serves you right.”

Jenkins had found Rackham with someone else, an even younger cabin boy named Teach. Izzy didn’t know him yet, couldn’t guess what he’d become. Luckily, neither could their Captain.

Even now, Izzy thinks, it’s a bit like that. He can feel Jack’s cock in his ass, the burn of it, the dullness in his eyes transformed into fury somehow. Time twists everything, and Jack hates him now just like Eddie hates him most of the time. And he’s here, he’s come here to let them know. Tell them about Izzy, about this wanton little whore they’ve got onboard the Revenge, about his fucking big mouth and how little he can be trusted.

They’ve got him tied up to the mast when Izzy makes it to the deck, legs weak and shaky. Stede is holding him, trying to steady him like he’s afraid he’s going to fall: and he may be right. Izzy feels like he could drop at any time, like the whole world is tilting because Jack’s eyes fall on him the moment he’s out there with the rest of them: and there’s that fire in them, the same heat and the same rage that fills him even when he’s fucking sloshed.

There’s also something else, something Izzy can’t read. Guilt, perhaps, and relief.

Fucker.

“Are you quite alright, dear?,” Stede whispers in his ear at the same time Calico Jack slurs:

“Hey there, princess! Care to tell your fucking owners to let me go? Rope’s kind of digging into, you know, the missing chunk of me, and Blackie’s too much of a stubborn motherfucker to listen to me.”

The little outburst earns him a kick on the leg, courtesy of none other than Jim. They’re holding a knife and looking, strangely, at Izzy himself, a question on their face like they’re waiting for something.

“Want me to kill him?,” they ask after a moment. When Izzy doesn’t answer, they turn to Stede instead.

“Oh! No, no, thank you, Jim: don’t bother. I imagine Mr Rackham is here for a reason, isn’t he?”

Jack, who’s never in his life been called ‘Mr Rackham’, leers.

“Smart gal,” he says, and Izzy watches as Eddie walks to him, hand clenched into a fist, and punches him in the gut. Jack doubles over, as much as the ropes will let him. “Shit, Blackie! Can’t take a joke anymore, can you?”

He never could, is the thing. Eddie has never really known how to laugh. The best Izzy could get out of him, back before things went to shit, was the odd smile, a pale imitation of what Stede brings forth these days.

“I would if you were fucking funny, mate.”

Next to Izzy, Stede frowns. He doesn’t let go of him, though.

“You said you wanted to talk, Mr Rackham,” he tells Jack, his voice cold and aristocratic in that way that makes Izzy’s skin crawl, like there’s someone else talking through him, none of the warmth that makes him Stede. “So, now it’s your chance. Talk.”

And Jack Rackham rolls his eyes, and smirks, and it’s fucking easy to see what lies beneath, it’s so fucking easy; and suddenly Izzy knows. He hasn’t told them yet, he realizes. He hasn’t told them, but he’s got a bigger mouth than Izzy and he’s full of rage and hate and he’s going to, and then Stede will let go and Eddie will disappear and He was right after all, wasn’t He? They should’ve thrown him overboard when they had the chance: that’s what one does with rabid old dogs who don’t know how to behave anymore.

“Fuck, Steve: it’s straight to business with you, isn’t it?” A beat, tension all over the deck, like they can imagine, like they’re getting ready for it. The voices scream, all at once, inside of him, and he wants to puke his guts out and he wants to run from here and he needs to fucking die, die before they learn, before they know, before Jack tells the world at large what a pathetic, traitorous mess Izzy Hands has always been.

“Alright, then. Didn’t you know?,” the man snarls. “Dear old Izzy here has sold you out, Blackie. Again.”

***

“Again.”

Izzy stood on shaky legs, trying not to lean too much on the wall. He closed his eyes and braced himself for impact: it came soon enough, a punch on his belly that had him doubling, losing his balance once again. He felt blood in his mouth and wondered if they’d punctured something, this time: he’d seen men die from shit like this, burst stomachs or broken ribs stabbing them in the lungs. But he could breathe, he could still breathe, and when he opened his eyes Eddie was staring, eyes hooded and his whole face dirty with greasy paint.

“Again, Izzy.”

He tried. He really tried, but his legs wouldn’t cooperate this time. A whine, a grunt, a hand scrabbling at the wooden walls of the cabin, feeling the notches made by knives that had flown right past his face. And he wondered if this was it, if this would break him, a punch to the gut and weeks of eaten toes and broken bottles, a pain so massive it had swallowed everything else.

He managed, in the end. The next punch had him mercifully passing out.

***

They’re still talking. There are growls and screams and there’s spitting, there are threats of bodily harm and empty curses, and Izzy can’t make himself smaller, can’t curl up tighter than this even though he needs to.

“Still nothing,” he hears Stede say, low like he doesn’t want him to hear and so fucking disappointed. It hurts, it hurts almost as much as a knife to the gut; only a knife to the gut can end it all if you’re lucky. This, though, just goes on and on.

“Shit. Leave him, I guess. Dickfuck: this is all your fucking fault, Rackham.”

It isn’t. It’s Izzy’s fault, the way he can’t move can’t speak can’t let himself be useful for once in his fucking life. He’s got his eyes closed and there’s the railing against his back, and the sun is burning his skin and he’s sweaty and itchy and he wishes he could speak, but He told him not to and he’s being a good dog on the off chance Eddie will forgive him.

“Yes, well: I don’t see how you can blame that mess on me.”

Eyes closed, Izzy can still hear the edge of panic in Jack’s voice. Part of him fills with glee: fucker’s got it coming. But it’s just the start, Jack is just the start: Blackbeard prowls the deck and he will tear his oldest friend’s body apart, and then he’ll turn to Izzy and he’ll demand answers just like He demanded answers, and he’s too weak for that today, he thinks he’ll break if he has to eat another one of his toes, and so he sobs instead.

“Well, you tell me. You’re the one who sold him out, after all.”

A lie. Izzy did that. Izzy sold them out, opened his mouth and told Him everything.

“Or what, you thought no one would fucking see you, mate? Not exactly, you know. Conspicuous.”

(He could feel it all, through the haze of opium. Jack’s grunting, his one remaining hand undressing him as he cursed him out: Jack’s fingers inside of him, Jack’s whole hand opening him up, dirty little fucking whore, Jack’s cock and Jack’s tears and spit and Jack’s rage, and he wanted to scream and he wanted to run and hit him perhaps because this wasn’t them, this had never been them. This belonged to his Captain and his Captain only, to the men his Captain chose and to the darkest recesses of Izzy’s mind, memories of being small and weak and so well-behaved; but not to them, and he already missed Jack even though he could feel him spending inside of him.)

Izzy’s breath hitches once again, a parody of a sob, tears that never fall choking him. He could drown in them, he should drown in them now that they know, now that Eddie knows that very important bit of him, how much of a coward he is.

The worst part is, it really wasn’t that hard getting him to break.

“Not a lot of business options out there for cripples like me, Blackie,” comes Jack’s voice. “Thought you out of all people would understand, seeing how you took your pet back. Gonna do that again this time, I wonder?”

A punch, a noise like a nose breaking. Jack grunts and some of the crew cheer. Buttons sounds oddly disappointed when he speaks.

“Coulda done that meself.”

Izzy remembers his own nose breaking too. Couple of times maybe, most of them at the hands of British sailors, under His watchful gaze. He had grown too old to do this himself, He told him.

“I hope you can forgive it, Israel. You know I always did love a more hands-on approach; but, you know—” He gazed at His own hands, wrinkled and spotted, and shrugged. “Time doesn’t slow down for anyone, huh? There are those who would say I look great for a man my age.”

He did. He looked huge and terrifying, He looked like a god draped in silk, comfortable in his throne as he watched younger men beating Izzy to a pulp. He would add the personal touch later, after the choking and the kicking and the whipping had ended: He’d grab his cock, He’d bring it to life and have him watch while He milked it, while He made it twitch and spurt sadly before tucking it back in and patting his cheek.

“Good to see you still love this, Israel.”

“Alright,” Stede says, that fake-cheer in his voice that means he’s at his wit’s end. Izzy shivers against the railing, bites his lip and covers his ears with his hands, enough that the world outside gets reduced to a dulled droning.

“— try again, shall we, Mr Rackham?”

***

They move him to the cabin.

Izzy has to be taken, someone grabbing his arms and his legs carefully, like he could break at any moment. They don’t get it, do they?; he already broke down. He spilled everything, told Him what He wanted to know and he’d do anything to take it all back but he can’t.

“I’m sorry,” he whines again, trying to go back to hiding while Stede manhandles him into a sitting position, holds his ruined hands so that he can’t use them to shield himself. And that’s good, that’s good enough: he shouldn’t be able to hide from this, from them. He should face his punishment head on like he’s done every other fucking time: if he’s good enough, maybe they’ll kill him.

“We’re not going to kill you, love,” Stede mutters, and he sounds just so tired of dealing with Izzy and why the fuck shouldn’t he?

“Yeah, mate. Iz, c’mon. You’re fine, alright? We get it.”

They don’t. They have no fucking idea.

“Told Him everything,” he whines. Names and routes and hiding places, number of guns: and He didn’t believe him at first, He kept making him repeat himself time and again because He couldn’t trust him.

“Shall we try this again, huh? Come on, Israel: you used to be so much better than this.”

“We know,” Blackbeard says: only it’s not Blackbeard. Izzy chances a glance in his direction and finds Ed instead, a sad glint in his eye as he kneels next to the bed. His hand hovers mid-air like he doesn’t dare touch his skin, like he’s afraid Izzy’s going to break somehow and he doesn’t get it, doesn’t understand and suddenly Izzy’s furious and he just wants to scream.

“You don’t,” he rasps out, and shakes Stede’s grip off and twists away from them, from these men who won’t survive another month, just like He said.

“I’ll make it quick, Israel,” his Captain promised, because he was his Captain once again. “If you beg me prettily enough, huh?”

And he did, he fucking did: and he wants to shut his eyes because he knows what comes next, what his brain will show him next, mouth open and hands clasped together and a prayer stuck in his throat, weeks and months and a lifetime of just this, a plead for mercy for the men he’s taking down with him.

Benjamin Hornigold was always fair, back on the Marianne; but he couldn’t deny that he had a soft spot for Izzy. Eyes just like his mother’s, after all.

“He said he’ll make it quick,” he tells them, voice rough still, a snarl on his face. “’s long as you don’t fight him. I was supposed—”

Eddie’s face changes for a second, twists like Blackbeard’s face would twist, once upon a time, before he learned to feed Izzy to himself to make him shut up. There’s something dark in there: look what you’ve done.

“You gonna kill me, Iz?,” he asks, and Izzy’s heart breaks, and it hurts more than anything’s hurt in these last few months. He shakes his head. “Then let us try something else, because I’m not fucking kneeling for that fucker, you hear me? Not again.”

***

They didn’t. Kneel, that is. They let their heads hung and muttered ‘yessir’ and did their best not to get the Captain’s attention even though He was always watching. Eddie stayed hidden and Jack couldn’t run fast enough and Sammy was bold and proud but smart enough to shut his mouth at the right times and Charlie burned so bright and so fast even He couldn’t control him.

Izzy watched them, knew them. He followed orders just like the rest of the crew, shit pay and shit rations and Jenkins always hovering around, dragging him to his bunk every odd night because Captain owed him and he’d take his pay in any shape it came.

Still, they couldn’t control everything. Not Jenkins and not their Captain, and Izzy grew bold and almost brave, took Jack in his mouth and shared rum with Sammy at times and learned how to fight from Charlie, and then Eddie came around and the balance tipped.

No: they never kneeled, not even before Benjamin Hornigold. Not the way others did; certainly not the way Izzy did.

He promised them his help. It was dark and they were young, and they didn’t know what tomorrow would bring, if tomorrow ever came; but it had to be better than this. They made Izzy believe, and they were right: he remembers sparring with Charlie down at the hold that night, his wild hair framing his sweaty face, a split lip and a dangerous grin.

“Gotta hand it to you, Izzy,” he said; and it was glorious, being called that. Izzy instead of Israel: it felt liberating, new, theirs. “You sure know how to use that blade.”

And Izzy laughed, open-mouthed and carefree. Jenkins was probably looking for him on deck, grumbling under his breath: he’d tell his Captain soon enough, and there would be hell to pay. But for now he was here, with them, just him and Charlie and Sammy because Jack and Eddie were doing the hard work now, whispering in the crew’s ears and smiling this way and that, planting the seeds of what was to come. Sam was slumped over a coil of rope, half-asleep already while Charlie and Izzy fought and flirted and learned to see themselves in each other’s eyes.

“’Course he does,” Sammy grumbled from his spot. “Hands is a fucking savant, just like you. One of us, after all, right?”

It looked easy, the way he said it. It sounded just right, and for a moment Izzy forgot his place.

He’d come to remember it, of course. In time.

But back then it all felt easy, and he was free, was almost free, and Charlie wanted to tear men apart with his teeth but settled for biting Izzy’s mouth instead, a kiss that was bruising and needy, hands tangled in his hair.

“If Rackham sees you he’s gonna cry,” Sammy warned them, a half-smirk on his face. He didn’t say the rest, though: didn’t tell them about Eddie, even if they all knew about Eddie even back then.

They fucked fast and rough into each other’s fists, Sammy’s face crumpled in mock-disgust, the hypocrite. Charlie licked the shell of his ear before biting at the tender flesh of his neck, and it was the best sex Izzy’d ever had, the only sex he’d ever enjoy even if he didn’t know it yet.

“One of us, right, Izzy?,” Charlie echoed Sammy’s words, panting against his skin. “Come whatever the fuck may, we’re always gonna be there for each other.”

***

They bring Jack in too, no ropes in sight. Leave him standing while Stede keeps sitting on the mattress next to Izzy, seemingly paying no attention to their prisoner, and how the fuck are they all still alive and afloat?

But then, that’s the magic of the Revenge, Izzy’s fucking curse. It soars across the sea powered only by whimsy: and it’s soft and useless and badly maintained, and it makes no sense at all even when he tries to understand it.

“Fuck,” Jack curses, swaying on uneven feet. Izzy feels the need to shut his fucking eyes just so he can’t see him, can’t see what he has done to the twat, what having –

loved

– fucked Izzy Hands has brought the fucker. But Stede is still here, and he’s touching his leg carefully, like he’s grounding him, lending him his strength: and so Izzy swallows the apology that tries to leave his lips, keeps the whining and begging to himself, and forces his eyes to stay open so that he has to see.

Calico Jack Rackham is a sad fucking sight.

In the end, Eddie’s the one that starts speaking, Blackbeard’s voice fitting seamlessly in this whole mess. Izzy shudders, in both want and fear, and He would have laughed at him but He is not in this cabin, He is somewhere out there waiting for the moment to strike now that Izzy has given Him the fucking key to defeating a legend.

He knows he’s shaking. Tries not to, breathes in and out and clenches his hands. They still fucking hurt, and the pain keeps him from just bolting, and the pressure of Stede’s touch is almost enough to calm him down.

“So,” Eddie starts, just like he started all those years ago. “Good ol’ Horny, then.”

It was the same back then. Same words, different meaning. Same dangerous glint in his eye.

Jack, to his credit, just shrugs.

“Old friends help each other out, Blackie. You know how it is. Hell: Hands knows how it is, at least. Right, Izzy?”

He does. Of course he does. Izzy remembers begging him for help, back when he had to rescue Eddie from this Ed-shaped thing he was trying to become, back when Stede’s softness was a liability and Izzy believed himself to still be a man, to still be good enough to be entitled to something other than the jeering of the crew and a sandwich thrown in his face.

Jack has never known how to say no to him.

“I thought pirates didn’t have friends, Mr Rackham,” Stede chooses that moment to say. He sounds prim and proper, the twat; but there is something wild in his eyes, there’s some kind of fire Izzy’s learned to associate with them, withthe scratching and the biting and the lashing that always feels deliriously close to breaking skin. “Is this Hornigold something of an exception, then?”

The thing about Stede fucking Bonnet, in the end; the thing that Izzy didn’t account for, that Eddie still doesn’t get after all this time, is that he’s a madman. He smiles like he means it and uses passive aggression and will serve you tea when he ought to skin you alive and will lap up your blood instead of sucking your cock and it’s all part of him, part of who he is.

Jack doesn’t know that, though. Inside of Izzy, the voices laugh: Rackham is in for a fucking surprise.

“Don’t like your fucking tone, Steve.”

Stede shrugs.

“Well: I don’t like your face, Mr Rackham, yet I am unfortunately stuck with it for the time being.”

“Unless I cut it off,” Eddie mutters darkly; Captain Bonnet takes the comment in stride.

“Unless Ed here cuts it off, of course. Still,” he adds, because he’s nothing if not fucking verbose, all those books he’s read spilling out of him at the first opportunity; and yet his hand doesn’t leave Izzy, and he thinks he can forgive the annoying fuck all that talking as long as he keeps rubbing circles against his leg. “I’d rather it doesn’t get to that. After all, I imagine you’re here for a reason.”

Of fucking course. For a second, Izzy gives up the fight against his own body, lets his eyes close again and his lips purse and his teeth clench, and the voices whisper and he knows what they’re saying and it goes something like this:

“Came for Hands, actually. We got some shit to work out, him and me, if you know what I mean. Thought I’d get paid before you lot sunk.”

There’s a shift of the mattress, and Stede’s hand disappears because of course it does, what the fuck were you expecting, Israel? There is shuffling, and something like a whispered order and Eddie’s voice, too low to understand, and then the mattress dips again and the touch, this time, is different.

Slowly, Izzy lets his eyes open. Eddie looks at him questioningly.

“Can I hug you, mate?”

A few steps from them, Stede is bristling. Izzy knows because of the way he holds himself as he pours four cups of tea, all of them mismatched and yet none of them out of place in this fucking madhouse that’s the Revenge.

So he nods, and Eddie’s arm carefully slides around his shoulders. He holds Izzy close, pets his hair and nuzzles his neck while Jack watches them from the fucking middle of the room, something like anger and hatred and envy in his eyes.

“Cool,” he snarls. “Gonna start taking your clothes off any time soon, Blackie? ‘Cause I gotta be ready. Can’t take care of things as fast now, you see, with the one hand and everything.”

But Eddie ignores him just like Stede is ignoring him, and Izzy can’t help but almost forget he’s there after a while, too busy feeling Eddie’s lips against his skin, hot breath and something wet, something like tears.

“What,” he croaks out; he feels Eddie smile against him.

“Nothing. Just, you know. Glad to see you’re back, mate.”

He is. He’s breathing normally and he can almost think, and the voices aren’t gone, they’re never gone, but they’re a bit more quiet. He could live like this, maybe, the touch of skin against his skin, the smell of Eddie permeating everything. Stede’s voice close enough he can’t forget it, and a smile he put in there, and it’s been so fucking long ever since Izzy made someone smile it must count as some sort of miracle.

Maybe it is. The Revenge, after all, has her own sort of magic.

Stede serves them all tea, including Jack, and goes around the room placing the little teacups and their little saucers in their hands. He has a hard time deciding how the fuck to proceed with Rackham, on account of the one arm and general surliness, but he manages.

“Alright,” he says, because he’s a madman. “Tea is ready. Now, seriously, Mr Rackham…”

He doesn’t get to finish, of course. From where he’s still sitting, precariously balancing his own saucer-and-teacup combo on his legs and apparently unwilling to let go of Izzy for now, Eddie growls.

“CJ, mate, you either start talking or I start taking toes. Not in the position to be losing any more body parts, are you?”

Jack rolls his eyes. He’s known Eddie for a fucking long time, thinks he has figured out his moods by now. Fucking idiot, Izzy thinks: he’s seen the Kraken smile at him sweetly before feeding him his own flesh. Rackham doesn’t know shit.

“Fuck. You’re a bunch of fucking fuckers, and I wasn’t fucking kidding when I said I’ve come for—”

He doesn’t finish. Still nestled against Izzy, Eddie nods. Jack drinks his tea and pulls a face, but he doesn’t spit it out or anything, which probably means he knows he’s fucked. Whatever he’s told them he’s come for –and Izzy’s not going to even think about it, a cock in his ass and fingers in his mouth and the opium making it all hazy and distant but never enough–, his old pal Blackie mustn’t have liked it too much.

“Whatever,” Rackham settles for in the end. “In case you’re interested, they’re a week or two from you. Gonna lay wait on Skull fucking Island, remember that dump?”

Stede makes a questioning noise, but Eddie nods, because of course he fucking knows it. Good enough place to hide away, careen a ship and make repairs.

Perfect place for an ambush, too.

“Perfect place for a fucking ambush,” Eddie voices Izzy’s thoughts.

From where he’s daintily sipping from his own tea, Stede frowns.

“I am sorry, but would you mind filling me in?”

And Izzy wants to explain. How they’ll be trapped and at His mercy, how He’s got none to spare. How it’ll all go, how he’ll wish he were dead again and again and again, how he’ll be forced to watch them all hang and will stay still and will betray them all once more. But he keeps quiet and brings the cup to his lips, and his ruined hands are shaking, long scars tracing the length of his fingers, nails still not growing quite right. They bend in odd places and make his grip on the teacup weak, almost as weak as his grip on himself, and aren’t you a pathetic little bitch, Israel?

“Skull Island’s kind of like Dead Man’s Cove, remember, mate?,” Eddie tells Stede, and his hand goes back to moving against Izzy’s skin, like he can hear the voices too and wants to shut them up. “So, like, good place to trap a ship: he gets us in there, we won’t be able to move.”

Just like that, Stede’s face changes. It grows blank, and Izzy imagines what’s going on in that brain of his: how the fuck does He know how to find them, why the fuck didn’t Izzy keep his mouth shut when all he had to do was take what he was given and stop himself from spilling it all?

His teacup rattles against the saucer, and suddenly Stede is there, taking it away from him, letting his hands brush against Izzy’s. For a moment, everything is fine.

Then, of course, fucking Jack Rackham has to speak.

“So you see, Steve: you’re kind of fucked. Even if you don’t go there, fucker knows every fucking port that’ll take you, courtesy of your first mate.”

Izzy shivers. No one seems to notice, though, all eyes on Jack, Eddie’s body tense beside him.

“Whether next week or in six months, he’s gonna get you all. Hang your crew, or have them join him, and bring you both back to the old country to be tried and sentenced and all that.” He licks his lips, a nervous gesture he could never quite control, and his eyes go to Izzy for a moment before turning back to Stede.

“So, what do you propose we do, Mr Rackham?”

Jack snorts, brief and dry. Half his mouth doesn’t move exactly how it used to: it’s unsettling.

“Do? There’s nothing to do. Guess you could try to face him head on or something; but that’s not why I’m here, alright? I’ve got,” he stutters; Izzy’s never heard him talk so fucking much, even though he loves the sound of his own voice, the twat. “I’ve got my own thing going on, you see: the ship and the crew and all that, doing quite fucking well for myself, right?”

“You’re missing a fucking arm, mate,” Eddie points out. Jack shrugs.

“Whatever. Won’t stop me, you know me, Blackie. But, I mean, I could use some help, you see. Like, Horny’s got nothing against Hands, right?; wouldn’t have given him back if he did. So, it’s like this, Iz: you can come with me. Be my first mate. Survive this fucking thing, never have to see the fucker again.”

It is strange, the way he looks at him. The way he expects to be shut down, and Izzy wants to scream because for just a moment it almost looks like Stede is going to say yes, for a moment he wants to say yes even though he knows the thing wearing Jack’s skin is no more Jack than he himself is first mate Izzy Hands.

That ship has sailed.

But then Eddie moves, disentangles himself from Izzy’s body. He kisses him on the cheek, just for show, just for good luck: he’s never done that before, and it feels like he’s branding him somehow.

“Nah, mate: won’t come to that,” he tells them as he smooths out his banyan. “Say, Stede, how fast d’you reckon Olivia can fly? D’you think she’ll carry a message if I ask her nicely?”

Stede frowns in confusion. Jack pales, looks for a moment like he’s been punched straight in the gut, eyes wide and questioning darting back to Izzy like he expects him to know the answer to whatever question it is he has.

Fucking idiot. Izzy’s just a fucking dog: dogs don’t know shit other than sit and bark and kill.

“The fuck are you planning, Blackie?,” Jack finally asks. “You can’t take him on.”

Eddie’s laughter is light and so fucking normal it sets Izzy’s teeth on edge.

“C’mon, mate! ’Course I can’t. Never could, remember? Not on my own. But, fuck: look at us, CJ. It’s almost like the old gang’s back together, isn’t it?”

Only Sammy’s dead, Charlie’s fuck knows where, Jack’s been cut in two and Eddie’s no longer Eddie. And Izzy; well. He was never truly one of them, was he? No matter what Charlie said, what Sammy made him believe. After all, Izzy did kneel in front of his Captain; knew nothing else but His firm hand and His hatred. His love, at times: and that was the worst part of it all.

Jack frowns as what Eddie’s saying finally sinks in, as he remembers Charlie and Sammy and that day a time long ago when they took on a monster.

Out of all of them, it had been Edward Teach who started it all, a shared bottle and a couple of well-placed words. The world doesn’t stand a chance whenever he’s involved, even if Charlie’s not talked to them in fucking ages and the Revenge is no match for a Navy ship.

“Fuck off, Blackie,” Jack says. “You can’t be fucking serious.”

But Eddie smirks, Blackbeard grins. The voices inside of Izzy howl in panic and laughter and pain. He feels the sudden need to pray.

“Never been one for jokes, mate. You know me.”

And Izzy wants to shake him at that, but he knows better. For once, Izzy’s the one they should listen to: but they don’t even look at him now. Can’t.

Dogs aren’t supposed to speak; He had said that, and He was right. Is still right. Dogs aren’t made to be heard, even if they know better than anyone what’s going to happen.

They can’t face Him, he wants to scream. There’s no fighting God.

Chapter Text

The Gentleman Pirate is not at all what Ben was expecting. The stories he’s heard talk about a force of nature, a bloodthirsty killer who will stop at nothing to get what he wants: but here, now, all he can see is a rather foppish man: the definition of a midlife crisis. Maybe, he thinks, maybe Lionel Badminton wasn’t really the best source of information. Stede Bonnet did kill his brothers, after all.

Outside of his main target, everything else is quite boring in comparison. Standard pirate ship, with men clad in leather and others brandishing knives and axes and, he notes with a slight interest, cleavers. They even have Blackbeard on their roster, though he of course knew that already. Half of the fun he gets to have with this assignment has to do with that particular fact, indeed.

The boy has grown, all in all. Taller and broader and much greyer than the last time they crossed paths, Ben can barely recognise little Eddie Teach, mischievous troublemaker what?, thirty years ago? Must have been: he is pretty sure the lad left with the likes of Bellamy and such, although the timing has never mattered all that much to him.

Out of all of his boys, all of the wayward children he’s taken under his wing over the years, he never would have guessed that it’d be Teach making it big: yet here they are. He wouldn’t have guessed he’d take Israel either; but then, his kid was always a sucker for a pretty face, and Edward’s had been one of the prettiest he’s seen.

The first wave goes over swimmingly. There isn’t much planning involved in raiding a ship like the Revenge, not when they’ve got her numbers and her weaknesses and Israel has been kind enough to give him an approximate route to intercept. Maybe, if he makes it out of here alive, he’ll reward the boy for his help before selling him to the closest whorehouse, where he definitely belongs.

The men the Navy has saddled Ben with are not particularly well-trained for this kind of ambush, of course. They keep insisting on honorability, which goes to show they’ve just fenced off some bottom-of-the-barrel greenhorns onto him. Not that he expects anything different from those snobs, of course: according to them, he’s lucky they still allow him to keep his pardon and his ship and his life. Like he hasn’t been working for them, catching little rats much more efficiently than any of their very well-respected officers. That his methods don’t align with those His Majesty so wants to promote doesn’t mean they don’t work, far better than anything else they’ve been trying.

To kill a snake, sometimes you have to think like one.

No matter: at the end of the day, he’s still here, old enough to just keel over one of these days and whole enough he’ll soon be able to spend the absurd amount of coin he’s due just for catching a rich fop.

That is, if his useless crew doesn’t manage to screw it all up first.

The first wave, as has been said, goes quite well, all in all. He loses a few of the weakest sods to gunshots and such, but most of them manage to land on the deck of the Revenge with nary a few scratches. Good enough to distract the skeleton crew Israel said he’d find in there, all of them misfits who wouldn’t have lasted a day on a proper ship. Not that most of Ben’s own men would’ve fared better, really.

He still misses the good old days at times. The Marianne and her smell, dried blood so entrenched in her wood it was part of her foundation. Like a spell, like a curse, it shielded them from outside harm.

Such a shame it had done fuck all against the anger boiling inside of her.

Out of all his boys, he mostly remembers Bellamy. Pretty as a princess, as one of those paintings Ben likes to stare at for hours. One day he’ll commission one of himself, one that’ll let the whole world see what true power, true strength, looks like.

But yes, he remembers Bellamy, and his sweet whispered words, the easy way he lied. Served the little snake right, drowning up North, though he would have liked to kill him himself.

There were others, of course. Vane, bloodthirsty and wild, a beast just waiting for a chance to escape. Ben had seen a bright path ahead of that one, had even thought about giving him a ship to captain alongside his own: but he was unstable, and if rumors are true he’s still wrecking havoc wherever he is, torturing civilized men and setting the whole world on fire with a gleam in his eye.

There was Rackham, too. The less said about that utter disgrace, of course, the better: his recent dealings with what’s left of the man haven’t disabused Ben of that notion. He would have sold his own mother if she hadn’t been six feet underground, would have licked anyone’s boots for a chance at another bottle of rum. His only saving grace, if he could say so, was the way he looked at Israel, the way he cherished Ben’s only real contribution to the world.

He doesn’t know much about Edward Teach, though. Not from those years: he’s heard the stories now, of course, knows about the Dread Pyrate Blackbeard and his useless quest for immortality through the telling of tales. But Ben has never been much of a storyteller himself, and he doesn’t appreciate the fine art of lying your ass off: he very much prefers his actions to speak for themselves, even now.

Still, it’s good to see old friends out here at sea. Doesn’t happen all that often these days: out of all the pirates of Ben’s generation, the few who haven’t kicked it are mostly lying in puddles of their own piss, living off the pity of passersby. A fate worse than death, indeed.

So he searches for Edward Teach from the safety of his own ship. His eyes are not what they used to be, just like the rest of his body, but he manages. Not that the man makes it all that hard, all in all.

Clad in leather, still short beard tinted with what looks like grease and wild hair whipping all around him, Ben supposes he looks like a nightmare. One could almost believe the stories of bloodshed and destruction; but he knows better. He doesn’t know much about little Eddie Teach, but he knows this: the man doesn’t kill.

Quite a stupid weakness for a pirate, really.

He hacks his way through the deck, always standing in front of the blur of color Ben assumes is Bonnet. He has never seen the man before, but the description Badminton made of him doesn’t leave many options. On a pirate ship, a man like that stands out like a sore thumb.

Ben kind of remembers seeing Bellamy, pretty thing that he was, being almost as flamboyant. Of course, that had swiftly been beaten out of him: or perhaps the boy had wisened up and learned to fit in. Whatever the answer was, he still likes to imagine he drowned wearing one of those frilly shirts he enjoyed so much when he was barely a child.

“Captain!,” he hears, and he snaps towards his officer. Wainwright, or Cartwright, or something other: he can’t really be bothered to learn them all. They keep changing, the ones in charge deeming him a bad influence on his impressionable men. Pious Christians the lot of them, he thinks with a scoff; good men who will waste their coin on whores and deny ever having touched a man up until they’re offered. He’s caught them ogling his own boy during this last visit Israel has paid them. Wouldn’t have surprised him to find a couple of them Navy men buggering him, really.

“What is it, boy?,” he asks. The man –it is a man, though Ben could be his grandfather– salutes.

“We’re ready, Sir,” he tells him. Most definitely Cartwright. Or Wainwright. He looks like an Andrew, in any case.

“I should hope so. I will let you know.”

They don’t need a second wave yet. The Revenge is clearly shortstaffed, just like Israel said: and it is much more entertaining to watch them from here, see them tire as they fight off the worst and dimmest the British Navy has to offer. No: he won’t send in more men just yet. It’d end things way too quickly for his tastes.

***

At the end of the day, turning coats hadn’t been a spur-of-the-moment decision. Most of his crew seemed to think it was, that he’d gone mad one day and just opted out of attacking British ships.

But Ben had been growing old, hair turning slowly white and skin starting to sag, and he had his future to think of. His, and that of Israel’s, because the boy hadn’t yet decided to renounce his name and cut all ties: that would come later, courtesy of Rackham and Bellamy and Vane and Teach and that other boy, Porter or Potter or something like that. They’d taken him and twisted his mind, filled his head with nonsense before spiriting him away.

It had hurt, Ben will admit. Not as much as losing his ship, of course –that had been a question of pride and not sentimentality–, but enough that he’s carried the grudge with him for decades. Let it not be said that Benjamin Hornigold is quick to forgive and forget.

But, all in all, things hadn’t been about that. The pardon had just been a means to an end, a safe passage to an old age he’d imagined filled with scantily clad women, a boy who would grow up to be worth something, a large manor somewhere in the old country and, if not the respect, at least the fear of all those God-fearing people he’d have as neighbours.

Of course, nothing had gone according to plan. He had never accounted for those boys, his boys, Bellamy and Vane and Rackham and Teach and that other one, whoever it was, rising up against him. Like he was just another tyrant to be conquered, dethroned: like he wasn’t a father to all of his men, even if only Israel carried his blood.

Out of everything he wishes he could have done differently, not slashing their traitorous throats the first time the matter was brought to him is probably in the top ten.

It had been Jenkins, of course. That name, he does remember: Lawrence Jenkins, first a deckhand and then a carpenter, and a bosun at the end. Doggedly loyal provided one kept his most unsavory appetites fed: but then, Israel proved more than adept at that. Took after his mother, after all.

He’d brought up the matter with him one night, pointed out that which his first mate and his quartermaster and the men he kept on board just for the purpose of spying on the crew could not.

“That Teach boy is dangerous.”

He’d been jealous. Even now, Ben knows he would have taken him more seriously if it hadn’t been for that. He’d been jealous of the boys, of the easy way they caught Israel’s attention, how they could play with him and make him twist and turn in ways Jenkins would never manage. He lacked the imagination, and he was not exactly pleasant to look at. Ben couldn’t honestly blame the boy for deciding to try his luck elsewhere. At least, not for as long as he kept doing his job.

That was the thing with Israel, though: you could never get too angry with him. There was always that edge to him, like a child testing boundaries: but he was quick to heed, he’s quick to heed even now. Killing him, along with everyone else on that godforsaken ship, will be a shame.

Not that that will still Ben’s hand, if it comes to that. He too has a job to do, after all.

But, yes, he should have listened to Jenkins. About the Teach boy –who would have guessed?– and about the crew’s opinion on the pardon affair, but mainly about Israel.

Some people say the day you first meet your child is forever burned in your memory. It is for Ben: he remembers the moment he finally made port in that seedy English dump, the figure waiting for him at the docks. She looked older, far more than the four years it’d been since he’d last visited her brothel: someone had burned her face, lashed her so hard she couldn’t walk straight, and there was a runt holding her hand with big round eyes, terrified of the rough men coming off the ship and already smart enough to know what they would want from him.

He’d had her keelhauled for having gall to do that to him, to try and trap him on land when he’d already paid her off once. The kid, he’d thought of selling: but then, he had been tiny, and quiet and mouselike, and he had known to take a stranger’s hand as quickly as he’d taken his mother’s.

He named him Israel. If the boy had had a different name before that, Ben didn’t care to know.

***

Out there on the deck of the Revenge, His Majesty’s men are faltering. It is amusing to watch, for now: there are still enough of them, more than enough meat to put in the chopper. By the time he needs to send in reinforcements, the pirates will be exhausted, weak. Easy pickings: if he plays his cards right, Ben won’t even have to torch the ship. A pretty piece like that one may be worth something if he talks to the right kind of people.

The first lesson Benjamin Hornigold learned, back when he started sailing, was precisely that one. Find the right person, for anything, and you’ll be settled for life. Most of the time that means bowing to bigger fish, putting on those awful powdered wigs and smiling and pretending not to know how they talk behind your back. Other times, though—

Rackham had been the right man for this particular job. A keen ear and a harmless stance: everyone knew Calico Jack, apparently. The man might be annoying and slow and a cripple nowadays, but that just adds to his whole charm. No self-respecting pirate can ever take that wreck seriously. Not one of them can be bothered to kick him out of their lives.

Bonnet is not the first one. Smaller prey before that: there was Roberts a couple months before, right after Ben made the offer and Rackham took him up on it. There was also Avery, even though that one hadn’t been worth much these days, and there’s the Gentleman Pirate now, and things should go as smoothly as they’ve gone with the others, all in all.

But something is off. Because there, against all sense and reason, on the deck of the Revenge, stands Calico Jack Rackham. And it is stupid and irrational –what difference does half a man make, after all?–, but something inside of Ben freezes for a second, and he remembers.

Remembers the cold of steel against his throat, Israel’s unflinching gaze. If they’d asked him to end his own father, right there and then, would he have done it?

He remembers everything else too, the pitter-patter of rain and the voices outside his cabin, outside that little world he’d managed to build for himself. How they turned louder, transformed into the screaming of an angry mob as the few men who hadn’t been swayed by Bellamy’s empty promises were gutted one by one, their blood slicking up the deck of a ship that had been home for so long Ben could barely imagine a life without her.

Remembers Rackham himself, a sure smile that shook when his Captain looked up at him, but never quite went away. How he looked in Israel’s direction, how he pushed his boy to just move, gut the old bastard, can’t you do that one thing right, Hands? But there’d been something different underneath, there’d been a sort of wistful hope in place of all that irritation, all the anger the rest of the crew sported. He hadn’t been facing Ben, he hadn’t been thinking about Ben, and that may be why he’s here on this deck too.

Puppy love is always cute to watch. It springs up in the most unexpected places, turns soon-to-be-men into helpless caricatures of themselves. Jack Rackham is barely half the man he would have been now, maybe, but he’s got his whip in one clumsy hand, and he’s standing his ground as best as he can. Idiot.

So that means Israel is also down there, somewhere. Kept safe or kept locked in, away from the captains he so easily betrayed not even a couple months ago. Ben wonders if they’ve let him rest, if they’ve fed the little beast: he sure needed it, by the time he’d been fostered onto some poor sod’s ship. But that’s Israel for you, a little spitfire that needs to be shown his place every once in a while.

Proudly, Ben thinks it’s not all that surprising that Rackham is still hung up on him. His kid, after all, has always been kind of a wonder, obedient to a fault, talented just like his mother and much more willing to keep his mouth shut.

He had seen that almost from the beginning, tiny shit learning to stand at attention even before he could properly talk. He’d kneel and he’d open his mouth, and worse men than Ben, men that needed some unspeakable needs tended to, had been soothed easily enough: a word, and the boy would know to do his job, whatever it may be. A useful tool to control the crew, at first: then, a glimpse into the future, a future where the Hornigold bloodline carried on, where the son of a whore could maybe be useful for something more than the obvious.

Ben, of course, had been a fool. Such is the woe of love, in the end.

Jenkins had known. Had told him, along with “That Teach boy is dangerous”; but Ben had been blinded, is still blinded. He should have killed the boy, should have slit Israel’s throat when he finished spilling all he knew about the Gentleman Pirate. But he’d been greedy, had thought the little shit could still be useful: only two simple orders to follow, and he’d apparently managed none. After all, Blackbeard is still breathing.

And now John Rackham is here, one-armed and pathetic, standing in front of the door that guards what’s left of Benjamin Hornigold’s legacy. He’ll kill them both too, of course: won’t have any other choice, really, not after Israel has failed in smothering Blackbeard in his sleep –not that he’d really expected him to manage that– and Calico Jack has been stupid enough not to hole up somewhere to spend his ill-gotten coin, licking his wounds until they next find a friend he can betray. A sad reality, but Ben knew what he’d find when he got into the pirate-hunting business. Lots of familiar faces, lots of satisfying hangings, and the occasional short-lived regret.

Still, something doesn’t seem quite right. It stays at the very edge of his mind, always slightly out of reach, but filling him with something akin to dread. Absurd, really: just look at the state of things. The Gentleman Pirate is a bumbling fool just barely protected by a Blackbeard who’s always been more comfortable hiding behind all the smoke and mirrors; Rackham himself has never been a threat. And yet.

And yet.

***

It had been easy, all in all. Getting Rackham to help: find a man in a hard enough place, offer them a helping hand. He’d delivered Israel as soon as he’d found him, had been eager to get him off his hands. Ben was not a fool: he didn’t even need to check to see the signs of what that drunkard had done to his kid. But work was work, and he had a pirate to find and his best lead wrapped up as a gift and left at his front door.

It had taken a few days for Israel to break. Not long, really. A few well-placed words and a bit of whipping and burning –he’d always favored burning: you had plenty of skin to work with–, some light starving just to add to the fun. The boy would have taken more, back in the day, but he’s getting old and weathered, and in any case Ben is no longer young either. Chipping at a prisoner’s defenses through the hands of others is not nearly as interesting.

There was a rhythm to it, an old thing they both found themselves immersed in soon enough. Israel, despite all his good qualities, has always been a mouthy fuck. Takes after his mother, Ben imagines, what with the way she’d been disfigured and maimed right before she and her bastard were thrown out. Whorehouses were often much more understanding with accidents of that sort.

But Israel, even with the venom in his voice and the way he’ll keep looking you in the eye, is easy to beat down. Ben remembers sitting on top of him, once his men were gone, the little shit trying to shake him off or crawl away. Remembers closing his old, weathered hands around the boy’s throat, watching him still and gasp and go red and then purple, eyes bulging out of their sockets. He could have kept going, but he wasn’t going to, and they both knew it.

He also remembers letting go, one of those times, and crouching down even lower, his lips against his kid’s ear as he muttered:

“Give up now, boy. Before you make me angry.”

Israel hadn’t looked at him then, eyes closed as he tried to catch his breath, his whole boddy shuddering with the effort. But he opened them again as soon as Ben’s teeth found the lobe of his ear, as they clamped down on it, blood welling up on his tongue. He spat the meat out on his face and his kid shook, whined, pleaded in a way he hadn’t in all those days just yet, and it was then that Ben found out something else.

He needed to kill Edward Teach.

***

The crew of the Revenge are surprisingly resilient. There is an unpredictability in them that makes the whole affair longer and far more entertaining than Ben would have thought it’d be.

Navy men, when it comes to it, have a series of glaring flaws, weak points a smart opponent can easily exploit. For one, most of them are young and not exactly willing: out of Ben’s own crew, roughly half of them have been pressed, at one moment or another. Doesn’t make for a great working environment, but it at least ensures a steady supply of cannon fodder.

Ben is making the most of it.

It is maybe half an hour before he gives the sign for the second wave to cross to the other ship. They have been getting restless, trapped in here: and yet, they’ve obeyed. Still another flaw in this system the Navy has created. There is no fire, no genius, no independent thought at all. Ben doesn’t particularly enjoy freethinkers –look how that had turned out on the Marianne–, but a bit of a spark would have been nice. Kept him on his toes, at least, and made the whole mindnumbingly boring affair almost bearable. Honestly, were it not for the time he’s had Israel on board and the excitement of the chase, he would have given up on this long ago.

But, he’s made a promise. Lionel Badminton may not be the sharpest man he’s ever known, and in fact he may be a bit reminiscent of a toad with a particularly long wig: but they’ve made a deal, and Benjamin Hornigold doesn’t often back up on those. And so here he is, sending his men one by one to be slaughtered by none other than the Gentleman Pirate and his merry band of soon-to-be-dead idiots.

There are worse ways of passing the time.

He’s not a fool, though. Through it all, he doesn’t lose sight of his goal. His eyes follow the main players in this fray, making sure both the Gentleman Pirate and the Dreaded Blackbeard are still alive and kicking. It wouldn’t do for them to be killed before their time comes: Ben has promised a blonde fop to be hanged back in the old country, and he is quite excited to have Teach to himself, after all.

Rackham, on the other hand, he may spare, he thinks at a certain point. If he has the time, and if it doesn’t quite spoil his plans all that much. Same with his kid, and whoever is left of this ragtag crew: they may be worth more alive than dead. It always pays to have grateful eyes stacked everywhere.

But Teach he’s going to deal with himself. Little Eddie, good-for-nothing grunt, impish troublemaker with a pretty face and a quick tongue. There is little Ben remembers of the brat back on the Marianne, except for that time he made a prisoner eat his own toes, a stroke of genius that should have made him wary but didn’t, at the time.

Israel had been missing three toes, when he’d made his way to Ben. Foot was almost healed, and although playing with the fresh scars had been fun at moments, he could not help the dark cloud that rose up in him. The kid was his, after all. Despite everything.

It would be a shame if the great Blackbeard got skewered in this scuttle, then. Not that there are many chances of that: Ben’s men may be many, but they are as slow and clumsy as the crew of the Revenge, and much more easily demoralized. The second wave barely manages to break through where the first has petered out: out of their enemies, he can see a couple of them at least are injured enough to be carried away instead of keeping on fighting.

Not a problem. He can wait. Follow the tiny thing of a ship when it maneouvers, when it twists and turns with a madman at the helm, forcing Ben out of his comfortable spot close to the stupid secret island Blackbeard thought no one would ever find. He could stand his ground, of course; but, all in all, this new disposition feels better, the Revenge trapped between his own ship and the rocky shore, unable to make an escape. There is no way to the open ocean but going past Ben’s ship: the idiots have made themselves into sitting ducks.

It is hard to believe, seeing this, that Blackbeard is captaining that sorry excuse for a ship. The man from the legends, the monster with a head made of smoke and the nine guns and the bright ideas, should be harder to pin down than this. But then, Ben himself has been questioning the stories for a long time: and, in any case, it is feasible that Blackbeard is not, in fact, the one in charge of this absurd, and soon-to-be ended, battle. Maybe it is the Gentleman Pirate instead moving the strings, hoping in the way rich twats often hope that his own inherent superiority, earned through generations of inbreeding perhaps, will save him somehow.

Idiot.

Ben is no stranger to the way those people think. Take Lionel Badminton, for one, with his fancy titles and his long mane of a wig. Thinking that just by approaching him, just by gracing him with his presence, Benjamin Hornigold would drop to his knees and beg for a chance to impress him.

No matter: even if the rich fuck was, well, a rich fuck, Ben knew his kind. Stede Bonnet was one of his, and so he would deal with him accordingly, fair trial and public execution included. And Ben was fine with that, as long as he still got paid, as long as it stopped the whisperings they all thought he couldn’t hear, everyone talking behind his back, laughing at him like a bunch of kids had done back in the Marianne; only there is no one to hold him at knifepoint back in London, is there?

So he’ll take the Gentleman Pirate, drag the rich fop along to kneel at the feet of another rich fop, and get paid in the process. And he will survive, and he will thrive, and Lionel Badminton will have no choice but to make good on his promise and get him a knighthood. Sir Benjamin Hornigold will enjoy fine wines and scantily clad women, and he will keep gutting pirates; but no one will be able to look at him in contempt anymore.

“Captain!,” he hears, and he rolls his eyes. For a second, he stops looking at the deck of the Revenge, turns to his second-in-command, scared weasel that he is, and for a second pales.

“Is that a ship?”

The answer, of course, is yes. Sailing closer, faster than most other ships he’s faced, lines smooth and beautiful and a flag any decent pirate hunter would recognize anywhere.

By the time the first cannonball hits them, Ben is thinking about Rackham. About the uneasiness he’s felt seeing him here, about his own kid’s inability to shut his trap, about how stupid Blackbeard’s helmsman had been in letting their ship be trapped by Ben’s own.

Only, of course, it’d been Blackbeard. The man of the legends, the monster with a head made of smoke. It’d been little Eddie Teach, and Eddie Teach had been dangerous even back then. Jenkins knew that. Jenkins had tried to tell him.

And now Ben is pinned, the Revenge laying in wait at his port while that other ship –the Ranger– comes towards his starboard.

In layman’s terms, Ben thinks, shit has just started.

***

Charles Vane was, once upon a time, a child. Couldn’t have been more than ten when he joined, when someone found him stowing away and Ben found the little beast so amusing he decided to spare him. He’d grown big and strong by the time it all went down, but he hadn’t lost any of that wild streak that had once saved his life.

Out of the four of them, he was the only one Ben never really minded surrendering to.

Oh, don’t get him wrong: even now, Vane is a savage. A wild card, disrespectful of the laws both of Heaven and of Earth: he has heard the stories. Captains tortured after surrendering, ships burned and whole towns reduced to ashes. Not even Ned Low, as much as the man is an insufferable pain in the ass, has managed to instill such fear in the hearts of comfortably round and rich Londoners. No one but Blackbeard, that is.

Still, if there is one thing that can make Benjamin Hornigold falter, it may be the arrival of the Ranger to the fray. It would be nice to believe this is nought but a coincidence, but he’s not stupid: his boys may not have been seen together in decades, but apparently their old captain is enough to have them fighting alongside each other. It’d be touching if it wasn’t also a fucking pain in the ass.

But no matter. This is just a setback: and Ben thrives on those, on dire circumstances and last-minute bouts of brilliance. So he turns to his crew, to what’s left of them, and raises his own gun and wastes a precious bullet just firing into the air. The men cheer, and he leads this third charge, older and more skilled fighters with orders not to retreat until the pirate ship is burned to the ground.

Charging head-on onto another deck feels good, even if his bones are old and his body is tired. They still have a chance, he decides: they just need to be quick, efficient like the Navy is supposed to be in His Majesty’s books. So Ben ignores the way his heartbeat spikes, the doom that could be waiting for him as soon as he turns around, and steps onto the Revenge with a sword at the ready.

There is not much for him to do, which suits him just well enough. He has always enjoyed strategizing more than the brute force of a fight, and now that he’s no longer in his prime he relishes the fact that his men can keep the crew of the Revenge ocupied.

Instead of joining the fray, then, Ben, takes a look around. It doesn’t take long for him to locate his first victim: Rackham’s whip can only do so much when wielded by the sorry wreck the man has become. He’s let go of it now, has a knife in his hand instead and is slashing away, clumsily, at a couple of Navy men.

Any other day, he wouldn’t stand a chance. But the man is like a cockroach, and Fate clearly has something in store for him yet, because right as he’s about to lose his footing and get himself killed the door behind him opens, and a whirlwind of rage comes out of it.

Times like this, Ben would have thought the boy took after him, after all. That he’s got something other than his eyes: Israel is beautiful to watch like this. He’s clumsy, probably recovering from their little encounter still, but he’s quick and angry and violent, he uses his sword and his knife and his teeth and guts Ben’s men like it’s nothing, snarling.

He would be proud of him, were these different circumstances. As it is, Ben is only supremely annoyed.

Still, that saves him the trouble of looking for the boy, at least. Whether to kill him or to take him back to the ship remains to be seen: for now, it is enough to find him alive, and hopefully knocking him out cold will suffice.

It’s easy, of course. Rackham is panting and holding his side when he gets to them: he tries to scramble backwards, but there’s nothing but an open door and the stairs that will bring him to the hold at his back, and soon enough he turns to Ben with a defeated look in his eye.

“Shit,” he says. “Guess we tried, right, Iz?”

Ben doesn’t bother getting his sword out with him. He shoots him instead, on the leg: the sorry excuse for a man crumples on deck and cries out, and that’s it.

Dealing with Israel, of course, is different. Even if his stupid Navy-issued gun didn’t jam every two shots or so, a bullet would be such a cold way of ending him, he can’t bring himself to do it. Letting the pistol drop to the floor, Ben draws up a smile, making sure it shows all his teeth.

From where he’s standing, frozen like he’s been most of his sorry life, Israel just stares.

“Nothing to say, boy? Not a welcome, not even a wave? Huh,” Ben tuts, blade in his hand and something heavy coiling in his guts. “I really should have raised you better, I guess.”

He springs on him at that, and Israel blocks him almost instinctively. But his grip is weak: Ben may be old, but at least his hands can still hold a sword without seizing.

“Next time,” he promises, and he can see the way his kid’s eyes grow large and panicked, the howl trapped inside his throat like he wants to tell him there won’t be a next time.

Both of them know that’s a lie, of course.

“Next time, Israel, we will go over your manners, huh? Honestly, I’m surprised the Gentleman Pirate lets you get away with that shit, boy.”

He keeps on parrying, moving more slowly than he would have once upon a time. But he has fear on his side, he has his words and his smile and how well he knows the boy even now. And Israel’s hands must hurt like hell: Ben has made sure of that. Whatever his kid is, he’s not a fighter.

“Fuck you,” he hears the boy growl just as he lunges desperately at him. A flourish, and the sword is taken out of his hands, and he’s left panting, unarmed and terrified, before the man who gave him life. It stands to reason it’d also be him taking it away.

This is how it should work, Ben thinks. Deep down, both of them know it, because Israel doesn’t try to step back, doesn’t move at all as his father’s sword pierces the tender flesh of his belly, sinks deep through the little fat and muscle left there, down to the place where his insides are. His eyes widen even more, and he falls to his knees on the deck, a distorted mirror of Rackham’s body a few feet from them.

Ben doesn’t bother taking the sword out. He does crouch, however, grabs the little shit by the hair to make sure he’s paying attention.

“When we get out of here,” he promises, and the boy whines and scratches at him, face twisted in pain and blood in his mouth, “when we get out of here I’m going to make sure you get what you deserve. That’s a promise, Israel.”

With that, he lets him go. The boy crumples, still breathing, still whining softly like he’d do back when he was a kid and had just received a righteous punishment.

Ben feels a stab of something akin to fondness at the memory.

But the world is a cruel place, and there is no time in it for reminiscing. He is still on the deck of a raided ship, after all; and there is fighting around him and there is also the sound of a gun cocking towards his head.

“Step away from him, you fucker!”

Blackbeard, the man made of smoke, with nine guns strapped on him, only has one now. The same one Ben discarded, shaking in his hand while he points it at his former Captain’s head. The man is crying, eyes wet and tears trailing down his face, into the poor imitation of a beard he’s apparently trying to grow. He growls at Ben, takes a step forward, and it should be terrifying, but it isn’t.

Little Eddie Teach, after all, has a secret. One Ben smelled on him the moment he watched the boy stumble into his first raid, slashing left and right and never finishing the job, never dealing that final blow that would have kept him safe.

He won’t do it now either. Ben is sure of that.

“Stand down, boy,” he says; Blackbeard’s face twists with rage, the beard too short to be of any use hiding his emotions. Even unarmed, Ben knows he has the advantage here: one doesn’t have to look too hard or too long to see. The man is sweating, shaking, unable to keep the gun steady: he keeps stealing helpless looks at the crumpled body of his kid, his Israel, on deck. “Stop this madness right this moment and everyone gets to leave this place, Eddie.”

It works, it nearly works. It would work if it weren’t for that last word: Ben knows he’s fucked it when he says the man’s name. He steps closer to him, to his former Captain, like he did that day long ago. The difference is, he’s holding a gun this time, and he’s the one who has to pull the trigger, and Benjamin Hornigold hasn’t survived this long by not knowing how to read people, but on Edward Teach he has always drawn a blank.

But there’s no shot: not for now. There’s a cry instead, a weak “Ed!” said in a posh accent, and Eddie Teach turns for a second to watch as the Gentleman Pirate stumbles their way up to them.

Now, Ben may be old, but he’s not a fucking idiot.

Plunging his knife in takes more effort than it used to. Doesn’t help that the whole Blackbeard regalia is made mostly of leather: but then, it does the job. Eddie drops the gun just as the idiot Ben came here to look for arrives, and he falls to his knees right when Stede Bonnet seems to take in the scene.

“You fiend!,” the fop screams, and Ben wants to laugh. Badminton and this man, and all those rich shits: they deserve each other. Him?, he’ll be happy slitting their throats, if it comes to that.

Not that it will. The Gentleman Pirate, kneeling next to a sluggishly bleeding Blackbeard, is no more of a threat than a three year old.

But then, of course, that’s how old Israel was when he first came into Ben’s life.

He crouches to get the same gun Blackbeard has so carelessly let go of, and stands with a groan. His back is not what it used to be: he should think about retiring, perhaps. Once he’s got the title, and the lands that will surely come with it. Once he’s found those scantily clad women, and the good drink and something else to do with his life. Maybe he'll drag Israel back with him. Maybe he’ll have an allotment. Who knows?

“Now, Mr Bonnet: would you be so kind as to step away from him?,” he says, perfectly imitating Badminton’s stupid fucking accent and posh voice. The Gentleman Pirate stands shakily, faces him head on.

“You monster,” he whines, just like all rich twats do whenever they’re confronted by the grim reality of the world in all its ugliness.

“Well, yes: monster, fiend, bastard. I’ve heard them all. Now, if you don’t mind,” Ben adds, and allows himself a small smirk, “there is someone looking for you. Enthusiastically, I would say. So, why don’t we go back to my ship and take this somewhere else, huh?”

Stede Bonnet’s face is a confusing mix of feelings for a second. In the end, though, Ben thinks he detects mostly amusement on it.

“Your ship, you said?”

Only then does Ben dare look behind him, only then does he allow himself the chance to stare at the rest of the fray. His own ship, the one that would have never been the Marianne anyway, is sinking slowly, surely. Behind her, the Ranger stands proud, filled to the brim with the type of bloody men he himself would have commandeered once upon a time.

Shit.

But this is just another setback, isn’t it? He knew it could happen, imagined it would happen when the Ranger came into play. Charlie Vane has been sinking ships for decades now, sparing no one and relishing, they say, the screams of drowning sailors. But Ben can make do, will make do. He thrives on setbacks, after all.

“I think you may need to resort to plan B, Captain Hornigold,” he hears Stede Bonnet say, almost apologetic. He sounds closer now, like he’s taken two steps in Ben’s direction: when he twirls, the younger man leaps back, startled, a knife still in his hand as he loses his nerve.

“Planning to backstab me? Wouldn’t have taken that for a very gentlemanly thing to do,” Ben laughs: Bonnet’s ears go red, his whole face blushing even as he adopts something that looks vaguely like a fighting stance.

A toddler, Ben thinks, would have a better chance than this fop.

“Actually, I was going more with the ‘pirate’ part of the Gentleman Pirate,” the man huffs, as if offended. “But it’s fine. En guard, fiend!”

With that, he lunges forward, like he has forgotten Ben still has a gun in his hand. And, honestly?, Lionel Badminton had said this would be a difficult mission, but Ben hadn’t expected that keeping the prisoner from killing himself would be the hard part of the deal.

Still, dead or alive, Stede Bonnet is coming with him. A quick shot to the arm should stop all this stabbing nonsense; another to the leg and the man will surely be more amenable to Ben taking his ship to replace the one he’s lost. Maybe he can scrunge up enough crew to man this floating circus.

So, as Stede Bonnet leaps across the couple of feet that still separate them, Ben shoots. Or tries to, because the gun jams uselessly before making a strange noise. It then, unceremoniously, explodes in his hand.

Amidst the pain, Ben can barely feel the blade slicing through his neck, the knife nestled up to the hilt in his throat. Before everything goes black, he can only hear fucking Bonnet shriek.

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I tripped!”

Chapter Text

He’s fourteen and he’s got rope burns in his hands and a corpse to get rid of. The man’s eyes are empty, dull: they bulge out just like his tongue does, skin paling slowly once there’s no blood flow. He looks at him now that he’s dead in a way he never looked at him while he was alive, awe and fear in a gaze that is no more.

Little Eddie Teach has just killed his father. The rest is history.

***

There are lots of first times in his life.

There’s the first kill, and there’s the first time he steps on a ship and there’s his first kiss and the first time he hurts Izzy, and there’s the first time he thinks of hurting Stede, and stills his hand.

That’s a first too.

He could blame the Kraken for those two, he guesses; maybe they’d even believe him. He’s always been good at telling stories, but there is no Kraken and there are no monsters: only men.

There is also the first time he looks at himself in the mirror, blood spattered on him and his hands shaking, rusty shears still held while he never thinks about the body he just pushed overboard, still flailing.

Edward Teach was born for violence: his father lives on through him. He’s in his eyes and in the broadness of his shoulders, in every time Izzy flinches away from him even now. He cannot help it, can’t keep it all from rearing its ugly head: but he can learn to use it, he thinks.

***

When Benjamin Hornigold dies, it is not by his hand.

***

The time before this, that time they decide to mutiny on the old man’s ass, is different. There’s more of them, for one: there’s plenty of angry men who didn’t sign up to lick an absent King’s boots, and there are also grieving fuckers who keep tally of all the crew they’ve lost these last few months to the whims of a madman. It is something to be wary of, an unstable Captain: that, paired with a desperate crew, can only end up one way.

Unless, of course, there’s a fucking miracle.

But there isn’t one on the Marianne. There is only a group of ambitious young men, the ones Hornigold should have watched out for. There is Eddie and there’s Jack, and along the way they also get Sammy and Charlie and Harry, who will die before the day is over at the hands of the few loyalists their captain still has on board.

There is also Izzy, a bloody smirk on his face and a broken nose and a body Eddie Teach can only imagine, one that Jack describes in detail for him every time they fuck.

But Izzy’s not ambitious: he won’t make it to captain. Doesn’t have what it takes, even though it’ll be years before he has the chance to prove it. He is, instead, a weapon, quick and merciless, eager to get out of Hornigold’s shadow and find somewhere else to cut.

“Hey, Iz,” Eddie tells him, a bright grin on. They’re done, the Marianne already theirs: there’s only vultures left to fight over the spoils. Who gets to captain and who will have to keep their head down once again.

Sammy’s winning.

“What.”

Sam has fucked Izzy too. It’s not like Jack, who’s a fucking simp for the little shit: Sam’s affections are freer, more superficial. He’s a fickle man, but a good leader: he’ll rename the ship one day and sink it somewhere up North, though they don’t know that yet.

“Wanna try our luck somewhere else?”

Eddie’s not making Captain just yet, not on what’s left of the Marianne. He’s young and soft, and people can tell. He’s starting to grow a beard: he can see Izzy likes it.

“You asking me to elope with you, Teach?”

And Eddie smirks and shrugs but his heart beats a mile a minute. There is a ring hanging on a chain from Izzy’s neck, and he wonders who gave it to him, if it meant anything. He never asks, of course: he may be afraid of the answer.

***

The crew of the Revenge have become bloody accomplished at this whole pirate business. They slash throats and fire cannons, and maybe a few months ago they would have had no chance at all, but today they hold their own long enough for reinforcements to arrive.

When the Ranger joins the fight, Ed watches Hornigold’s face grow pale. The old man hasn’t changed that much over the years, though he’s become maybe a little smaller. He’s not fighting yet, instead watching his crew of Navy fuckers as they fumble about, confident in his numbers and in his fucking ability to terrify the men who serve him.

Any other time, it may have worked. But Benjamin Hornigold is a name that brings memories to many a bloodthirsty fucker’s head, and Edward’s not the only one who regrets not killing him back when they had the chance.

The fight keeps on happening, of course, the deck of the Revenge slippery with spilled blood. Most of it, Ed tries to tell himself, comes from the British fucks trying to raid them, their uniforms growing darker and heavier as they keep hacking away at his own crew. It’s a familiar picture, one he had dared to hope he’d never have to see again: but here they are. This is what he was born for, after all.

He notes when the old fucker crosses over to the Revenge, pretending to lead a bunch of his men while avoiding all fighting. An old trick, that one: he already knows it. Saw Hornigold use it back on the Marianne, where he would get his sword out at the very end and dip it in some poor sod’s blood so he could fucking pretend he’d been there with his men all along. Clever, the man is nothing if not clever: and back there Ed made sure to watch him, let Blackbeard learn from one of the greatest.

It won’t work for long, here. The staying behind, the not engaging. The Ranger will make quick work of that fucking ship, and then they’ll join the fray, and Benjamin Hornigold better pray for a quick death before Charlie makes it over here. Scary fucker, that one: always was, no matter what Izzy said.

By the time he checks on Hornigold again, the old man is fighting, and Ed’s breath catches and his heart stops in his chest, because the fucker’s facing Izzy, and why the fuck is Iz even here? Dickfuck: he was supposed to stay below decks, to keep fucking safe, hidden away and fucking alive. And now he’s splattered with blood, vicious twat, little shit, fucking idiot, and Ed knows he can’t stand for long, can’t hold up his fucking sword for long, can’t survive for long out here, and he is—

Slow.

He runs. Slips over something and loses his own blade, but it’s whatever: he’s fucking Blackbeard, he can make do. He just needs to be faster, needs not to be—

So fucking slow.

He stands, and the world seems to thin out around him, disappear, and then it’s just Izzy and he feels like his heart is broken because he’s fucking shaking, can see it even from here, the fucking useless fuck is shaking and why the fuck didn’t he listen, why the fuck does he never listen to Ed except when he’s—?

Too slow, Eddie.

He watches Hornigold get the upper hand and it feels like a nightmare. Sees the blade cut through Izzy’s guts, sees him spit out blood and fall down on deck and still fucking Hornigold doesn’t let go, doesn’t step away, doesn’t give him even that.

Wouldn’t have mattered anyway. You wouldn’t have done shit, not for him. To him, maybe.

He screams. Doesn’t know what comes out of his mouth: it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters, not really: only Izzy’s body, crumpled on the floor, and the pool of blood forming underneath it, and the awful truth that there may be a tomorrow still. That he may wake up and find that little fucker gone from his side and this time it won’t be a nightmare, and it’ll be forever.

He can’t breathe.

“Ed!,” he hears. He’s got a gun in his hand –where the fuck did he find a fucking gun?– and he can’t see all that well, can’t see anything outside the blood and the body on top of it and when the voice calls him away he can’t help but be fucking relieved for about a second.

Then, there is pain.

He’s been stabbed before, of course. Fucking pirate’s life and all that: there’s pain and there’s rum and there’s fucking, and that’s it. Endless fucking days and nights spent staring at the wall or thinking of new ways of fucking yourself up a little more in the morning.

It still makes him falter, brings him to his knees. And there is Stede, warmth and light and hope and all that’s good in this shitty world they live in, there is Stede beside him and he thinks he could die happy like this, and isn’t it fucking unfair? At least, some small part of him protests, at least you should be missing Izzy.

But then Stede is gone, and he watches him circle fucking Benjamin Hornigold, scourge of the seven seas once upon a time, main fucking character in half of his nightmares. Ed holds himself up as well as he can, nails digging on the fucking floorboards, and maybe he should be putting pressure into his wound, but he can’t be arsed. Dying can’t be all that bad, right? He hasn’t tried that one yet.

“En guard, fiend!”

Everything else is quick. If the universe was fucking fair, it would’ve been him holding that knife, or maybe Charlie. Izzy, if there was any fucking justice left in the world: but there isn’t, and it is Stede Bonnet’s hand that wields the blade, and what should have been a fucking dramatic death ends up being about stumbling and tripping and a gun exploding at the wrong fucking time, and Ed can’t help but burst out laughing even when he’s about to die, at last. It fucking hurts.

And that’s how he discovers God has a sense of humor; though, really, he should have figured it out earlier.

***

“Again.”

And Izzy stands, wobbly and weak and blind, so fucking blind, and rage fires up in Edward’s belly and the Kraken laughs once more. Look on my works and despair.

There’s a fist colliding with flesh, and he can see his first mate bending over and he can smell the blood and he can feel lips around his cock and he hates Izzy so much he cannot breathe. Edward Teach is drowning and he’s trying to grab at something, and all Izzy does, all he’s ever done, is weight him down to the depths, drag him down kicking and screaming, bury him alive in that tomb that is Blackbeard, and if this is how his father felt about his mother Edward thinks he can almost understand the fucker.

“Again.”

He doesn’t stand, this time. Doesn’t move, breathing shallow and weak. He whimpers when Edward kicks him on the ribs, but doesn’t stir. Izzy’s asleep, passed out, dead if they’re both lucky, though he already knows they’re not.

If Edward was less of a coward, he’d finish the job. He would grab his neck and wring it, would plunge a knife into his belly and twist it and cut him open just to see Izzy try and get away, just to hear him say no for once in his fucking life.

But he’s a coward, and so he just passes out himself, alone in the bed that used to belong to Stede Fucking Bonnet, and thinks about sailing them all directly into a storm, and knows it won’t make any fucking difference, in the end.

***

“Hey there, love,” someone is telling him. Ed groans and opens his eyes even though he’d really rather not do it, and the pain hits him right then and there, and he wants to throw up but doesn’t.

“Fuck,” he growls. Hovering over him, Stede is wearing a slightly pitying expression.

“Sorry about that. Roach patched you up already, said you would probably need some opium; but, well. You know.”

He does. The worst fucking part is he does, and Stede is right: he can’t be trusted with it. Opium and rhino horn and rum: he’d kill for any of those right now, which is why he can’t have them. He’ll have to put up with the pain. Fuck.

There is something nagging at him, other than how much the fucking thing hurts. It takes him a while to be able to put it into words: meanwhile, he examines the fucking ceiling he’s learned by heart these past few months, the bed that’s been his bed ever since life became worth living again, the cabin he’s learned to feel safe in, at last.

“So, we fucking won, right?”

It hurts, speaking hurts just like breathing hurts, just like thinking hurts most of the time. He blinks in Stede’s direction: his co-captain is seemingly busy thumbing through one of his books, not really reading. He’s biting his lip and frowning, and he startles when Ed clears his throat.

“Oh. Right. Yes, yes, I suppose we won,” he says, a feeble smile on his face. “We’re actually still anchored, though. Negotiations with the Ranger, all that. This Charlie fellow seems like a nice man.”

That makes Ed want to laugh, which is a very bad idea. Wincing, he tries to calm himself down; but, really? Charlie Vane, nice?

“Dickfuck, he’s not.”

Stede grimaces.

“Well, I imagine you’re right. He really is not. But he’s not unpleasant, either. Just, you know.”

A cold-blooded killer. Just like Ed.

“A bit too pirate-y, for my tastes. Also, his fashion sense is atrocious.”

Fuck, but he loves this man. For all that he’s ridiculous and pompous and a bit of a rich twat at times, Stede Bonnet is still possibly the best thing that’s ever happened to him, the only good thing that’s ever—

But no.

Sobering, Ed tries to sit up. It sends a painful jolt down his midsection, but he manages with a little help. Stede fluffs some of the pillows, sets them against his back.

“Where’s Izzy?”

There it is. The thing that was nagging at him. Winning or losing, he really can’t give much of a crap: but this is important.

There was Izzy’s body, after all. Crumpled there on deck, a sword sticking out of him and so fucking still. He was bleeding, wasn’t he? He can’t quite remember, but he’s pretty sure Izzy was bleeding, and how fucking much can a man bleed before he can’t spare any more blood, before there’s nothing left of him to carve out?

(C’mon, mate: don’t cry. It’s only the pinky.)

For a moment, Stede doesn’t answer, and Ed’s stomach drops. He feels tendrils of something clawing their way up his throat, rage and fear and acceptance, because this was always going to happen, wasn’t it? The only silver fucking lining he can see in this whole fucking mess is that at least it wasn’t him, it wasn’t Edward killing Izzy like they’d both known it would have been, in time.

Fuck. He really needs that opium.

But Stede’s face does something complicated before it settles on a small smile.

“They’re tending to him. Roach and the surgeon from the Ranger. He’s fine,” he adds in a hurry, waving his hands around as if to prevent Ed from leaving the cabin this very second. Not that he could. “I mean, it was the left side Hornigold stabbed him through. But, you know. He was still, he’s still healing. Some things still need fixing, I guess.”

He’s hiding something: Ed can read it on his face as easily as he can read the clouds, or the waves. It makes him frown, anger and worry gnawing at his battered insides.

“Stede,” he forces himself to say instead of screaming, “the fuck’s going on, mate?”

There are no secrets between them. They agreed, back when Stede came back, when he fucking broke through the fog Ed was trapped in and begged for him to take him back, to let him return that kiss, at least. They said no more secrets, no more keeping things inside: but that’s easier said than done, isn’t it?

Sometimes, it feels like Ed is still learning to talk. Like he’s a fucking toddler, like big words, heavy words, can’t make it past his clumsy fucking lips. He can say I love you because he would burst if he couldn’t. He still can’t say I love him, though.

“Well, Mr Vane has been making some offers,” Stede says, that fake fucking smile he wears when he’s afraid on his face.

Ed’s stomach sinks.

“What kind of offers?”

But he knows. Of course he fucking knows: he knows fucking Charlie, fucking feral dog, wilder even than Izzy back in the day. He knows how he’d sniff around him, same as Jack but fucking worse, because at least Jack had no fucking chance of taking him away from Ed.

“What fucking offers, Stede?”

His co-captain jumps, and everything inside of Ed sours, and he wishes again he’d been killed this time. Blade straight through the heart, easy and almost painless. Trust fucking Hornigold not to even do that right.

“You know, this and that,” Stede waves it all off. Then, he seems to gather whatever courage he’s got, and looks straight at him. “Said he wouldn’t mind taking Izzy in. Until, well: until he’s better. Said his ship looks a bit less… unstable. Than ours.”

Fucking Charlie. Fucking vulture, just sniffing around, plunging in. He pictures it, pictures Iz leaving and never coming back, and maybe it’d serve them right, after all.

He blinks, surprised for a moment that he’s not crying.

“We should let him stay there, Ed. Somewhere he’ll be taken care of. This Charlie fellow, he’s his friend, isn’t that right?”

And Ed wants to deny it: pirates don’t have friends. Only that’s not exactly true, is it? He has friends. He has Stede, and maybe some of the crew, though that may be pushing it. Izzy, though, just has people like CJ, or Charlie, or Ed. People who will use him, who will kick him when he’s down and cut off his toes and make him eat them. People he can’t trust, and shouldn’t forgive.

Dickfuck. Maybe Stede is right.

***

An unstable Captain is something to be wary of: that, paired with a desperate crew, can only end up one way. Unless, of course, there’s a fucking miracle.

That’s exactly what Stede Bonnet’s arrival is, in the end. A sad-looking schooner that’s seen better days, a white flag, a fuckton of hope. And Blackbeard could have had them all firing on them, and Izzy would have followed that order with a smirk on his face and no fucking idea what that would cost him down the line.

Instead, his first mate has to be taken away, spitting and snarling, thrown into their half-improvised brig where they’ve had Jim sleeping even now, and Ed allows himself to forget about him. Out of sight, out of mind.

What follows is a fairytale ending. What follows are thrown glasses –the few still left, so it’s a short fight: he’s not about to start throwing bottles at Stede’s face– and howled words and anger petering out, growing weak and useless against the fucking immense hurt.

What follows is mediocre sex, too.

He’s never had make-up sex before. To be fair, he’s never had the chance: most of his dalliances are short-lived, and the ones that aren’t don’t tend to anger Blackbeard. If they do, they usually join the first group in a very fucking literal way.

But Stede Fucking Bonnet has always been an exception. Everything he does, everything he says is new and fascinating and has Ed’s world turning upside down, from You wear fine things well to We should probably let Izzy out of the brig at some point, darling.

That is said maybe two weeks in, and something in Edward screams for him to say no. Put his foot down on this one thing, this one request. Keep Iz hidden away, out of sight and out of mind, and hope against all hope that they can erase that part of him that way.

It doesn’t fucking work, of course.

They’re making love when Stede asks him, his cock buried deep in Ed’s hole. He’s not great at this yet, has a hard time finding a rhythm that’ll satisfy them both: he also tends to like things a bit on the rough side. It is surprising, finding out the fucking Gentleman Pirate likes to bite during sex, that he’ll scratch hard enough to make him bleed and slap him around if he lets him. Not that Ed can’t take it, but he’d rather do it differently, softer, sweeter.

Still, they try. And Stede almost doesn’t have to be told to tone it down with the biting by now, so that’s a fucking win.

“So, what did he do, really?”

It’s not the time to discuss this, of course. There’s no fucking time to discuss this, in Ed’s opinion, but he’s not gonna say that in case Stede reads whatever the fuck he wants to read in it. That he can’t face things, that he’s got fucking regrets. Hah. As if.

“Fuck, now?,” he answers, panting. He grinds his ass against Stede a bit more, hoping to make him lose this train of thought. It doesn’t work. The Gentleman Pirate is surprisingly cool-headed underneath the sheets.

“Well: any other time, you’re going to find an excuse to step out of the room. So, yes: now.”

Ed bites his lip, keeps himself from telling him that he can find an excuse to step out of here too, even if he’s got his boyfriend’s dick buried in his ass and he’s almost touching that spot that makes him see stars.

“Alright,” he growls, licking a stripe from Stede’s shoulders to his throat. The man shivers. “But, when we’re done, you’re fucking me. Like you mean it, too.”

The thing is, he can’t really explain. He says ‘he told me some things’, but that isn’t it. Says ‘he pushed me into being the Kraken’, says ‘he threatened me’, says ‘he told me he wished they’d killed me, Stede’, and none of that answers the question.

“He wouldn’t fucking leave,” he finally says. By then, the mood is spoiled, and Stede’s dick is flaccid and his own cock has been forgotten. Hard to get off when you’re crying so hard it’s making you shake. “I just, I was fucking awful, and maybe he deserved it, but he wouldn’t fucking leave.”

Just like my mum, he doesn’t say. Stede hums something that sounds vaguely affirmative, tucks a strand of hair behind his ear and soothes him with little kisses.

“You’re going to have to face him at some point, Ed,” he tells him, and he’s right. He’s always fucking right, and they both know it. “Leaving him to rot won’t make it any easier, though I’d admit I haven’t missed him, exactly.”

No one has, Ed wants to tell him. No one ever does miss that part of him, other than— Well. Himself.

***

Eddie Teach meets Izzy Hands on the Marianne. They’re both young enough not to be considered men yet, but they’re never treated like kids either. They’re given jobs and weapons and expected not to die or slack off, and they’re offered rum Izzy never takes and invited to card games Izzy always turns down.

There are also other offers. Eddie’s not an idiot, and he’s done it before: he knows he’s pretty, and that pretty can get you a fuckton of things if you know how to wield it. A wink and a smile and a promise of more, hands on leaking cocks, kisses designed to keep them quiet. He does business like that at times, hidden in the shadows and trying not to get caught.

When Izzy does it, though, it’s all out there in the open.

“He’s a whore,” he learns from Jack. Not like an insult –CJ fucking adores whores–, but as a fact. He could have said ‘he’s the best swordsman we’ve got’ and it would’ve been just as true.

“Whaddya mean? He’s one of us.”

CJ shrugs. “Yeah, well. Guess Captain’s good at getting us jobs we’ll be good at, right?”

Izzy’s weak, for all that he’s deadly with a blade and knows how to fight dirty. Most people stop at that, stop picking at him the moment he makes them bleed for the first time. Tough little fuck, they say, ignoring the ways he’ll bend for them and take whatever he’s given just because he’s been told to. But Eddie watches him carefully, wants to spit on his face every time he comes to shoot the shit with him and the boys after spending the night in Jenkins’s berth.

“That old man make you see stars, Israel?,” he asks him. Izzy flips him off but doesn’t seem offended, and that’s almost worse.

It’s not the fucking that gets to Eddie; not really. He’s not a fucking prude: there are worse ways to scrap by. It’s everything else. The black eyes and the marks around his throat, the way he’ll wince when he plops down to share a drink with them. Nobody says shit, and little Eddie Teach wants to kill another father.

“Hey, Hands,” he tells him one night. Izzy looks at him, dazed like alcohol makes him, relaxed like he always is with this bunch, Sammy and CJ and Charlie and him, Harry when he can be arsed.

“What.”

He never quite asks. Just waits for orders, a smirk on his face and that fucking ring hanging from a chain, the prettiest eyes Eddie’s ever seen. The others are mostly asleep, or about to be: it’s just them in this little corner they’ve secured for themselves, and weird fucking shit floats around Eddie Teach’s head, shit he has no business saying, won’t be capable of saying thirty years down the line.

He really wants to kiss him.

Instead, he clears his throat, forces out a grin and gets closer to Izzy.

“So. Good ol’ Horny, then.”

A few weeks later, they’ve got a mutiny in their hands.

***

It takes Ed a couple of days to be able to move freely. By then, he learns, most everyone else has gone back to normal, or as close to normal as they can get on a ship that won’t set sail.

“Well,” Stede says. “We’re waiting for a few days. Licking our wounds. Metaphorically, of course: that would be rather unsanitary.”

They’re waiting for Izzy, he finds out. It’s Oluwande who tells him, a guilty look on his face and a shrug.

“I mean, the Ranger has a proper surgeon. We thought it’d be good for him, and now apparently they’re trying to fix some of the, you know. The other things, not just the stabbing.”

The Ranger stands next to the Revenge, huge and looming, a constant reminder of what once was. It isn’t larger than the Queen Anne, Ed thinks with some satisfaction, even though he hasn’t even fucking seen the Anne in ages. For a moment, he wonders if she’ll still answer to him: he still hasn’t got a response to the message he sent her, asking her to meet them here. Whoever the fuck they left in charge –and he’s not sure who that’ll be, but Izzy must know–, he’s gonna make sure to skin them alive once he’s back in control of his own fucking ship, thank you very much.

“So, Iz is still over there?,” he asks their acting quartermaster, whatever the fuck that means.

Oluwande nods.

“For a while, I guess. Something about his hands.”

That’s good, he tells himself. That’s fucking great, if they get to fix Iz’s hands, patch him up a bit better than Roach did. Not that Roach did a bad job or anything: it’s just, he’s a cook first, and a barber second, and a proper doctor just when there’s no other option, really. He’s tried to tell Stede, get it in his head that they need more fucking people here, people who know their shit. But his co-captain is fucking stubborn, and his Revenge family is tight-knit, and apparently that means more than not fucking dying of an infection.

Whatever.

On the first day, Ed paces. His wound still smarts, but it’s bearable: he’s had worse on any given day. If this is the worst fucking Hornigold could do –he knows it’s not– then the old fucker’s been more of a joke than he’d thought.

Just walking around gets boring, though. He tries to start up a conversation with half the crew, but they’ve learned to avoid him discreetly over the last few months. In Lucius’s words, last time he tried to talk to ‘Ed’ –air quotes very much included–, he ended up taking a night swim: he’s not keen on repeating the experience.

He knows not to take it to heart, mostly. They’re not hostile, haven’t been fucking with him or glaring at him or anything. They even helped with Iz, when he was missing and even more when they got him back: but then, they’re soft and caring like that. Doesn’t mean they’re friends: Ed doesn’t have friends, does he? Well, apart from Stede, and maybe Oluwande if he twists the word this way and that. But mostly Stede.

And Stede won’t talk to him either.

He tries. Finds him everywhere, corners him in their cabin that first night of just aimlessly wandering about. Says “Stede”. Says “we need to sort this out”.

Stede kisses him, first on the lips and then on the hollow of his throat, and he throws his head back and moans and lets him plant butterfly touches all over his skin, lets him lick and nip softly, weakly, in that way he does just for him. There’s none of the violence Stede tends to bring out during sex: there are just caresses, deft fingers unlacing his breeches and taking him out and enveloping him, newly calloused hands rubbing against his tender skin, a thumb petting the head of his cock while Stede’s other hand slowly massages his balls.

So he comes, and that’s that. There’s no talking either.

On the second day he strolls more purposefully. If no one on this fucking ship is going to sit down and have a fucking conversation, he thinks, he’ll just find them somewhere else.

He signals the Ranger from the railing. They’re close enough they probably see him, he thinks; fuck, he’ll row there if he has to, stab wound be damned. But he doesn’t need to, because half an hour later someone helps Captain Vane board their ship and his own guts threaten to spill.

Charlie Vane is a mountain of a man, a towering mass of muscle, bright blue eyes piercing you with a glance. Time doesn’t seem to have treated him as badly as it has most of them: he doesn’t look young anymore, but it’s a close thing. Fucker was always like that, Ed thinks. Always bigger and stronger and more bloodthirsty than anyone else. Always a little bit better than all the others, for all that Sammy liked to pretend.

He walks around the Revenge like he owns the place, hawk-like eyes catching every fuck-up, every little sign of weakness. He can smell it on them, Ed knows: he’s like a bloodhound that way. Will go for the throat the moment he’s sure he can get away with it.

Fuck, but he hates the fucker.

Out of the four of them, the four that survived, Charlie was never gonna stick around for long. No one but Izzy could really stand him: at the end of the day, he was a fucking killer, and the men knew that. He stayed with Sammy for a while, Ed thinks, while CJ and him struck it out on their own, Iz at their heels; but he had Captain written all over him, same as he had murderer and beast tattoed all over his body.

If Ed was the Kraken, Charlie was something much worse.

Now, though, he just waves like they’re fucking friends or something. Like he’s not trying to steal his first mate and turn him back into his fucking toy; like that wouldn’t be the best fucking thing to happen to Izzy in the last, how the fuck long it’s been? Ed can’t remember.

“Hey there, Eddie. Long time no see.”

He could have gone longer without having his mug in front of him; but that’s fucking life, isn’t it? Needs must and all that. So he grins and nods and hopes against hope Charlie can’t read his fucking thoughts, and then he breathes deeply because he needs to swallow his fucking pride, play his cards just the right fucking way so this fucker doesn’t smell blood in the water.

Also, he fucking owes him.

“Guess so. Thanks for saving our hides, by the way,” he manages, the words bitter on his tongue. “Would’ve been a close thing, otherwise.”

Charlie lets out an obnoxious laugh, pats him on the back.

“Sure thing, man! You know, it’s been forever, but I meant it: we stick together, whatever the fuck comes. Told Iz already. Whatever you need, and all that shit. Though I admit, I was surprised when Blackbeard himself asked for help.” He’s still smirking, a knowing glint in his eye even as he shrugs. “But whatever. That’s what mates are for, man.”

He sounds so open, so sincere. Ed wants to punch him, would be punching him if he didn’t owe the fucker.

Instead, he just grins back.

There’s a bit of a conversation after that, a fucking stupid back and forth, inane questions and empty answers. How you’ve been, fucking crazy ship this one, job’s not been what it used to be and all that. Ed follows, and they walk because Charlie fucking remembers, somehow, that he thinks better when he’s walking, and they skirt around the important bits of it all for a while like they’re fucking aristocrats having fucking tea or something.

In the end, it’s Charlie who asks. He’s still smiling, sort of, all his teeth showing, an iron glint in his eye.

“What happened?”

A lot. Short fucking answer is, a lot has happened. It’s been thirty-odd years and little Eddie Teach did his best to put as much fucking distance as he could between them and Charlie and Sammy. Couldn’t push Jack away, because the man’s a fucking leech, but never let it be said he didn’t try. Same with Izzy, really.

But that’s not what Charlie’s asking about.

“Guess I fucked up,” Ed finds himself saying. It tastes bitter, and he soon finds a way to cover it up, slather a sweet fucking excuse on top of it so it won’t sound as bad. “Iz, and us— We got into a fight. Fucker left: you know how he is. Thought we’d give him a few days to calm down, but—”

He wants to tell him about Jack. Fucking weasel sold him out, Ed wants to say. Shook old Horny’s hand and just handed him Izzy, just like that. But Charlie shakes his head.

“Yeah, CJ sort of told me. He’s a fucking dick. Would serve him right, you know?, fucking dying from this.”

But he won’t.

“Is he? Gonna die, I mean.”

It’s weird. Ed had thought him dead, back when the whole British fiasco happened. A cannonball to the gut will do that to a fucker. So he thought he was dead, and that was the end of that, and he was too busy with Stede and then too busy not-quite-fighting the Kraken and finally too busy trying to fix shit up to even spare him a thought. But it’s been good, seeing him alive. Even if he’s done— this.

None of them are good people. That’s what Stede doesn’t get.

“Nah. Don’t think so, at least. Not from this.”

A beat. Charlie’s blue eyes slide around the ship: he waves at Stede’s crew, at the crew that’s supposed to be Ed’s, and he gets waved back far more enthusiastically than Ed’s ever managed.

“I meant, before that. Rumors are, you kind of went, you know. A bit cuckoo, back there.”

Ed snorts. That’s the fucking unfairness of all of this, isn’t it? He let the Kraken take over for, what?, a few fucking months?, and that’s all people ever talk about. And here is this fucker, Charlie fucking Vane, gutting people and burning down ships and he looks at Ed like he’s a rabid dog all of the sudden.

“Bad spell,” he manages. It feels like he’s swallowed something heavy, and cold and sharp. It feels like it’s wriggling inside of him, wanting to climb up his throat. “I’m over it now.”

He’s almost sure that’s true. Almost.

Charlie hums, barely glances at him before letting his eyes drift off towards his own ship. He leans on the railing, and Ed follows because there’s nothing else for him to do.

“You know? Iz is missing toes,” the burlier man says.

The Kraken thing is mostly a blur. He’d douse every fucking memory he keeps of it in kerosene, set fire to them, if he could. But he can’t. Can’t fucking do much more than try and push them back down, try not to remember how fucking good it all felt, when all the chips were down. For a while, Edward Teach was who he’d always been meant to be. For a short fucking time, he was fucking glorious.

Someone had to pay.

He shrugs. Charlie doesn’t say the rest. That the toe thing was always Ed, little Eddie Teach and his fucking ability to tell a story in just blood and pain. That maybe Iz is better off staying back at the Ranger, out of his reach.

“You’re not taking him,” he finds himself saying, all of him aggressive and posturing even if he has nothing to back it all up. It’s not as if they could fight the Ranger; it’s not as if he could kill fucking Charlie and bring Izzy kicking and screaming back to his side.

The other man laughs.

“Wouldn’t dream of it. Don’t think I could pry the old fucker off your cold dead hands, Eddie. ‘m not taking anyone.”

Maybe he should. Maybe he’d keep Iz safe, maybe he’d be better to him than Ed has ever been, in all their years together. They used to fuck, Iz and Charlie, didn’t they? Birds of a fucking feather.

But the thought of losing his first mate is heartbreaking, and whenever Eddie Teach’s heart breaks, fucking hell follows.

“I swear, man. You know me.”

Ed really doesn’t. He’s not sure he knows anyone, at this point: least of all himself.

“Yeah, well. You should start thinking about giving him back, then.”

It’s only half a threat. It’s mostly harmless, he thinks, mostly good-natured. Charlie tenses a bit, but he nods.

“I will. As soon as we’re done with him. You know, I’ve got an actual fucking surgeon, is what I say. Took him from one of those posh places, back in the Colonies. Hasn’t lost many fingers yet, and you know what that means.”

Ed knows. The toes were always his thing: Charlie’s were fingers.

“So I just thought, while we’re anchored, I’d give you a hand. But I bet Izzy’s itching to come back here too.”

It feels like mockery. It’s probably the fucking truth. And Ed could die right then and there, couldn’t he? Just in case it helps. In case it fucking prevents anyone from ever being hurt by him again.

(In case he ever feels like taking some more of Iz’s toes, down the line.)

“Yeah, you know,” he says. “He knows what’s good for him, right, mate?”

Ed has always been a shit liar.

***

Stede Bonnet is a rich man. That’s something he forgets at times, and Ed lets himself forget it too. Convenient, that: makes it feel right, this thing between the two of them, like he’s got any fucking right to it even though life has showed Ed, again and again, that fine things were never meant for people like him.

But Stede is a rich man, and it shows at times. There are his manners, of course, and his little idiosyncrasies –that’s a word Stede uses a fucking lot–, and that fucking way he has of assuming everyone’s had the same kind of life he has, with all the reading and whatnot. Like anyone would have time to pick up a book for pleasure when there were ropes to coil and knives to sharpen and captains to please. Fucking amazing, really.

It also shows in other ways. Stede Fucking Bonnet is a rich man: and, like any rich man, he wants. And whatever he wants, he gets.

It pops up during dinner. They’ve established this little routine where they’ll eat with the crew at least once a day, to keep morale high and make sure they see how well-behaved Ed is being; but dinners are still their thing. Not as fancy as they once were, not with how the money’s dried up and they’re not exactly a successful pirate crew yet; but they make do.

And Stede is drinking a bit of subpar wine, taking larger gulps than he usually does, and so Ed should know something’s up but he doesn’t, because he can’t fucking read Stede Fucking Bonnet at all, can he? And so his heart just stops when the love of his life decides to talk.

“I’ve been wondering,” he says; and that’s not good. “Have perchance you and Izzy ever been, you know? Intimate?”

He almost spits out his own drink –water, because even wine’s apparently too much of a risk for the crew these days–. Stede is smiling at him, but he’s red-faced and slightly sweaty, and he doesn’t meet his eyes.

“The fuck?”

They haven’t. He’s never fucked Iz, he wants to explain. Not once in his fucking life, even if he spent half his youth wondering what that’d be like and half his adult life fuming at the thought of others doing it.

But Stede doesn’t want his excuses, doesn’t need him to explain. Stede is a rich man, and he’s seen something shiny he can covet, and he’s ready to take and take and take.

“Well, I thought, given your history,” he continues, “that maybe the nature of your relationship was, at least at some point, more… carnal?”

Ed wants to laugh. Cry. Scream, or maybe maim someone.

What comes next shouldn’t be a surprise; it mostly isn’t. He knows desire when he sees it, and Stede’s eyes roam around deck more often whenever their first mate is out there. And there was that fucking day, hot as balls, when Iz took off his vest and shirt and Stede fucked Ed so desperately it was as if he’d die if he didn’t touch him.

So that part is kind of expected. The rest, though, is harder to swallow.

Stede approaches Izzy first, like he’s a spooked horse or some shit.

“I mean, he’ll probably go along with whatever you tell him,” his co-captain explains, and Ed loves him but he hates whatever it is those words awake in him, something heavy and almost painful and fucking scarily cold. “I’d rather he finds out I’m to be involved before anything untowards happens, love.”

And fucking untowards things happen, of course, because Izzy says yes. He spits and insults Stede in the process, but he still says yes, and he gets his pants down and kisses his new captain like he means it and Ed wants to shake him until he sees fucking reason.

Stede is right, in the end. Later, much later, after they fuck up and Iz gets taken away from them, after they get him back and the world starts to feel like he’s underwater. Ed should have known. Ed should have seen it, should have stopped it, should have fucking ended himself before he did this to his first mate. His— His Izzy.

It’s not like Izzy doesn’t want it. He does, in his way, even if his way looks different, feels different than Stede’s way or even Ed’s. It’s more the other thing, the thing Stede says: even if he didn’t, even if somehow Izzy saw the fucking light and found out he doesn’t fucking like this, he’d still take it. He can’t say no to Ed.

And Stede Bonnet may be a rich man; but all Edward Teach is is a monster. He may wear a mask, he may be defanged and clawless and lying low for now, but that’s what he is. Just like his father.

So he lets Izzy say yes that first time, and all the others afterwards. He fucks him and he cries against his chest and wishes he were dead, or that Izzy was dead, or that they’d never met in the first place. But in the end he just takes, and takes and takes, and there’s a heavy thing in his chest but it’s never heavy enough for him to step away from this. From them.

***

In the end, Izzy comes back. They’ve splintered his hands all over –had to break them again, Charlie tells them–, and there’s a fucking wad of bandages all over him. He looks grim and fucking quiet, subdued once again, and it makes Ed want to cry up until he opens his mouth.

“What about Jack,” he says, not really asking. His voice is rough from lack of use still, and he’s not quite looking them in the eye, but he’s walking on his own this time, at least, and he’s fucking talked.

Fuck, but Ed’s missed his voice.

“What about him?,” Stede asks. Something that could be a shiver goes through Izzy, and he doesn’t say anything else. Just nods, and crosses the few feet that separate him from the captain’s cabin. Ed has half a mind to follow him, but Stede stops him.

“Let him have a minute, alright?”

And so Ed does, even though it physically pains him, to have him so close yet so far away. Fucking Izzy. Stupid little fucker.

***

“Do you love him?,” Stede asks. He’s changing his bandages, and so sees it when Ed’s whole body is seized, pulled taut by something he can’t quite name.

“I don’t—”

He’s not sure how to answer. Luckily for him, Stede Fucking Bonnet has never needed anyone to keep a conversation going.

“Maybe you should tell him, one of these days. If he’s staying. If we’re going to keep, you know.”

He does. He doesn’t want to think about it.

“Maybe that’ll help, somehow. Clear the air.”

Or make it murkier. Pull on the leash he’s kept on Iz all these years, perhaps, or turn it all around so that Ed’s the one being led this time.

“Yeah, well,” he manages. “Me and Iz, we’re not like that.”

Stede finishes bandaging him up, takes a step back to admire his work, and shrugs.

“I guess not. But maybe you could be. Stranger things have happened, have they not?”

***

He knows it the first time he slaps Izzy around. That he’s going to kill him. Some day. That he’s going to break him down first, ground him to dust and devour him so that he can never be anyone else’s.

They’re young back then. Freshly off the Marianne, grown men that feel like little children. Izzy’s a wonder now that he’s –almost– free: he’s mean and he’s violent, and he looks strong even if he’s still as weak.

There is a first time for everything. Edward Teach’s life is filled with them. This one looks like a bit too much rum and a bit too much lip on Izzy’s part, and he punches him in the stomach and watches as he folds over himself and grows small. He wants to keep kicking, wants to make him fall down and crawl and beg for forgiveness.

He also wants to hug him so fucking bad it almost hurts.

In the end, he does nothing, and Izzy says nothing. But they know, they both know.

It’s the beginning of the end.

***

“Dickfuck, will you sit the fuck down?,” he almost screams, because they’ve been trying to have this fucking conversation for ages, but Izzy’s fucking stubborn and smarter than they give him credit for and he’s found yet another out in the shape of some apparent crisis at the galley.

“Just saying,” he snaps back, arms crossed, still-bandaged hands carefully tucked in so that they’re not jostled too bad. “If Roach kills him, that’s not on me.”

And, honestly?, Ed couldn’t fucking care less about Frenchie’s fucking demise. They’ll sort it out, or they won’t: either way it’ll be fucking fine. They’re fucking pirates: they knew what they were signing up for.

This, though. This is important.

“And no one will blame you for it, rest assured,” comes Stede’s rather unhelpful addition. It doesn’t stop Izzy from glaring, but he bites off whatever answer he may have once spat at him, and Ed’s stomach lurches.

Stede says, at times, that it’s a good thing.

“He’s warming up to me,” he tells him, like that’s not fucking crazy and also a fucking lie. But Ed doesn’t correct him. Let him think that: it’s whatever. Fucking fine, he guesses. Not like they can do shit about it: not even if they have this stupid conversation, much as Stede has promised.

There is a silence, a long stretch of it, in the cabin. Stede sits down on another chair, and Ed can’t do much but hover over his until they both team up against him and throw him a fucking look.

“Okay,” he says, sitting down. None of the chairs match, none of the furniture matches these days. They’re as fancy as they’ve managed, but even if they’re much better pirates now than they were a few months ago, they’re still just that. Not a lot of room for fine things in their world, not a lot of room for softness.

“Okay,” he repeats, because nobody else is talking. Not Izzy, of fucking course, and not Stede, who decided to leave this to him for some reason.

“He’ll listen to you,” he said. What he meant was, maybe, ‘he’ll do whatever you tell him’. But Ed doesn’t want Izzy to obey. Or, well. Maybe he does. But not like that.

“Okay,” a third time, and their first mate is getting antsy, and any fucking time before all of this he would have snapped already. But now he breathes, and he waits, body still like a fucking statue, like he’s not even alive anymore.

“Any time now, sweetheart,” Stede pushes him. And it’s whatever, in the end. He’s fucking Blackbeard, isn’t he? He’s done far scarier things than this.

“Iz,” he manages, “you know you don’t need to do this, right?”

He’s confused, because of fucking course he’s confused. Confused and, according to a wise-sounding Lucius, traumatized. Whatever the fuck that is. But he’s also angry, and scared, and Ed feels like a piece of shit when he just plunges on, destroying everything on his path.

“I mean, you don’t have to fuck us. Like, not just now if you’re, you know, hurt. But, ever. We don’t need you to.”

Ed’s chosen the wrong words, apparently. They break Izzy’s heart, and he sees it happen in slow-motion, sees it in the way his eyes dim and how quickly he stands even though he must still be hurting like fucking hell. His wound is mostly healed by now: everything else is not.

“Fuck, Iz,” he calls, because he doesn’t know what the fuck else to do. “Come the fuck back, alright?”

Because he needs him to. Much as he hates it, Stede is right. He usually is, about things like this. They need this. They need to have a fucking conversation, for once in their sorry lives, even if pushing the words out of his throat is maybe the hardest thing he’s ever done.

And Izzy hears him, and he falters. And part of little Eddie Teach prays for him not to be weak this time.

When he leaves, Izzy lets the door close behind him.

***

The first time Ed kisses Stede, the whole world is born anew. There’s a future where there was nothing, and birds sing, and the fucking breeze smells almost good.

The first time Ed kisses Stede, of course, he’s fucking abandoned in a fucking pier, so it’s whatever, really.

***

It’s fucking fine, at first. He watches them whenever he has the chance, touches himself while Stede bites at Izzy’s skin like he can’t do at Ed’s, finds a rhythm in the steady flow of slaps his co-captain delivers against his first mate’s ass.

There’s something there, he thinks. In the way Izzy’s eyes will go glassy, his whole body relaxed and pliant in a way it never does outside of this. He wonders if it’d be the same, were he in Stede’s place: if he’d manage to make Iz feel good, whatever good means for him.

He doubts it. It’s not the pain; or not just the pain. Fuck knows Ed’s given Iz enough of that. No: there’s something else. Something he’s missing, and he watches them and tries to drink them in and suddenly it’s like he’s on the outside of everything, just looking through the window to a place that’ll never be for him.

They look good, when it’s over. Whenever Izzy can be arsed to stay, curled up in bed like he’s trying to shrink himself –didn’t use to sleep like that, Ed knows–, breath steady and soft snores that mix like music with Stede’s, a melody he gets to hear but never take part in. Some nights it feels like he can’t breathe, like there’s something clutching at his lungs and at his heart; a warning.

It won’t last.

He’s gonna fuck it up somehow. He knows that already, he knew that the first time he saw them both together, because then all he could see was red, and he’s felt that fucking rage before.

Inside of Ed, the Kraken stirs.

Only, fuck that. There are no monsters at sea. There is no Kraken. There is just Edward Teach, little Eddie Teach, rope burns on his hands and blood on his face and a pair of shears he can never quite forget.

He knows he’s gonna kill Izzy one day. He just hopes Stede will be enough to stop him.

***

The first time he kisses Izzy, Ed feels, for a second, like he’s complete.

***

He finds them in Izzy’s old room. Stede’s got the older man pinned down, still healing hands carefully kept over his head. He’s rutting against his leg, whispering something in his ear; and Izzy moans, makes a noise Ed has never heard him make, and fucking comes.

It’s not the first time he’s seen him come, he thinks, though it kind of feels that way.

“Sorry,” he says when they’re both panting, red-faced and fucking loose. “Am I interrupting?”

Once, he may have cared about this. Once he may have raged, or if not raged at least bristled, or he may have let the anger just simmer until it boiled over and burnt something.

But he’s not sure he’s seen Iz this loose after sex before: it’s a good look on him. And Stede looks mildly embarrassed, hair askew and clothes rumpled, and it’s kind of funny watching him try and make himself presentable when there’s a huge fucking spot in the front of his linen breeches.

“The fuck do you want,” Izzy asks, voice rough even though he hasn’t screamed like he does sometimes, when he thinks being loud will make up for everything else.

There’s something warm and soft blooming in Ed’s chest. It sits along with the guilt, and with the anger, and it mixes with them and the lines all blur. He swallows.

“You left,” he says. Izzy looks ashamed for a moment, and Ed wants to crouch right beside him and shake him by the shoulders until he gets it. “I didn’t get to finish.”

“You were being a twat,” Iz tells him, voice unsure, miles from what it was before all of this. But then Stede touches his arm, grips it so hard it must hurt a bit, and he seems to steady himself. “Don’t know what you wanted. From me.”

Ed doesn’t know either, so he shrugs. Makes to move towards them, towards that berth that’s too small for two grown men, not to mention three. They shuffle around awkwardly until he fits, somehow.

“Just,” he says. “Guess Stede talked to you, right?”

His boyfriend, one of his boyfriends, nods. “We, uh, got a bit sidetracked, though. Izzy could probably use a refresher.”

From his expression, Izzy would rather they both shut the fuck up. Ed laughs, just a little, and plants a quick peck on his lips. Just a touch, really.

Izzy blushes.

“Alright, then. Just meant, we’re fucked up, right, Iz?” He doesn’t wait for an answer, won’t be able to take it he gets it, so he just marches on. “I am fucked up, and you’ve got your, your things, and Stede is… Stede.”

“Your point being?”

Once again, Ed shrugs. He shuffles around until he’s curled up against Izzy, mindful not to jostle him in any way that could hurt him.

That’s Stede’s job, he decides. From now on.

“Just, glad to see you’re back to talking. That’s all,” he says and he’s not lying. Izzy frowns like he’s trying to follow: he probably can’t. From Stede’s look, he’s not the only one.

But it doesn’t fucking matter, does it? In the end, the only thing that matters is that Ed can hear his voice, and that he turned away. And that there’s warmth now in his chest along with everything else.

Fuck, but he hopes he doesn’t fuck this one up.

***

There are many first times in Edward Teach’s life. One of them happens in the dark.

“Iz?,” he whispers, and he’s twenty and he’s thirty-seven and he’s almost fifty, and it always feels the same way, and he's bursting with it. “I love you, Iz.”