Chapter Text
If you are the dealer,
I’m out of the game.
If you are the healer,
It means I’m broken and lame.
If thine is the glory,
Then mine must be the shame.
You want it darker?
We kill the flame.
Leonard Cohen, You Want it Darker
In the quiet, early morning hours, when his entire foot throbs and aches and pines for an appendage that’s no longer there, Izzy thinks about what it means to be soft. Open. Vulnerable . Susceptible to the kind of hurt that Edward— Blackbeard— obviously still wrestles with. He can still hear him, sometimes, locked away in the captain’s room. Izzy’s room isn’t close by, but it must be close enough, or maybe noise simply carries through Bonnet’s secret passages better than it would on a normal ship, because somehow Blackbeard’s sobs seem amplified . There’s an echo to them that’s almost musical, an acoustic vibration that plucks at Izzy’s own stonied heartstrings in all the right ways.
There was a time, god knows, when Izzy would have gone to him. Would have followed the sound of Blackbeard’s cries all the way to the captain’s cabin, entered with barely a knock, and felt nothing but blessed, cathartic relief in the face of an Edward who is soft and vulnerable and hurt . An Edward who would clutch him and need him and want him, in ways nobody has ever wanted Izzy before. That Edward was his for the taking, once, but only in small doses. In brief, fleeting snatches of time, like sips of cool water against parched, cracked lips.
It’s a long time since Edward’s been soft with him. The irony, of course, is that Izzy no longer wants him to be.
*
The needle stings, but not as much as he thought it would. He suspects part of it is due to the position—the close proximity of the metal point to his cheekbone, as well as the minimal distance from his eye. In retrospect, it’s possible the face isn’t the best spot for a first tattoo. Doesn’t matter. He can’t exactly change his mind now, and even if he could, he isn’t sure he’d want to. Not when Edward’s hand is so warm and steady, holding his chin in a manner that’s somehow as firm as it is gentle. Not when Edward is more or less sitting on him—straddling him, actually—with his leather-clad thighs digging into the dips of Izzy’s ribs. He’s dreamt about this, more than once. Taken himself in hand over it, in the darkness of their shared quarters, moving with painful slowness so as not to jostle his hammock in a way that would be obvious to the man sleeping below. This is not quite the context he imagined it in, but that’s alright, Izzy doesn’t mind so much. He’s lived in Edward’s shadow for some time now, and in Michael’s long before it. He is used to living on scraps.
‘Stop moving,’ Edward mutters. His breath is hot on Izzy’s face. Izzy, for his part, didn’t think he was moving at all.
‘Sorry,’ he mutters.
‘You keep twitching,’ Edward tells him, as though he can sense Izzy’s confusion. Fuck, he probably can.
‘Might be because you’re sticking me with a fucking needle right by my fucking eye ,’ Izzy replies. Edward, prick that he is, only grins.
‘Your choice,’ he murmurs, and of course Izzy can’t argue with that because yes, it was his choice. He’d make it again, if he had to. A thousand times over, if it meant he could see Edward up close like this. He’s a picture of concentration, brown eyes sparking with an intense focus that Izzy so rarely gets to see. Usually, it’s obscured from view—closed off by a mop of black curls that cover Edward’s face from scrutiny. It’s unruly hair, borderline unmanageable, these days. Izzy remembers a time—not all that long ago, but it certainly feels like an age—when that hair was barely shoulder length. Just a shaggy scruff of black that barely caressed Edward’s cheekbones. He was easier to read, back then. He’s always been so expressive—his eyes alone are enough to give his moods away. Lately, he’s a little more closed off. The hair is part of it, the new leather is another. The faint scruff of stubble that’s starting to frame Edward’s jawline will, Izzy suspects, serve as yet another portion of his grand charade.
Might grow a beard, Edward had said, some days before. Offhand, like. A passing comment few would have put much stock in. Only Izzy knows better.
Yeah, Izzy had said then. Reckon I might, too.
It’s been a week since either of them shaved.
Edward brings the needle down on a place that’s already been pierced—the intersection of the X, Izzy supposes—and he lets out an involuntary hiss of pain, the first noise he’s uttered since this whole process began.
‘Sorry,’ Edward replies. ‘Nearly done.’
‘It’s fine,’ Izzy tells him, because it is. It’s more than fine, actually. There’s a heat thrumming under his skin that’s both familiar and new. A foggy, drunken sort of feeling. A rush of adrenaline, he supposes, in response to the pain. He thinks he likes it more than he probably should.
‘Why’re you crying about it then?’ Edward teases, and at this Izzy does still, which suggests that he might’ve been twitching before, after all.
Is he crying? He doesn’t think so. It doesn’t really count, does it, when you’re only watering from one eye? And he can’t be blamed for that, not really. Bring a needle down so close to a man’s eyeball, he’s bound to shed a tear or two. He knows this. Edward knows it too. Which is why it really isn’t fair of Edward to point it out in the first place, to run the pad of his thumb through the moisture and lick it away like it’s nothing. Izzy stares at him, barely daring to breathe. Edward stares right back.
‘Does it hurt?’ he asks. Izzy goes to shake his head, but thinks better of it.
‘Not really.’
‘That’s cause I’m going easy on you,’ Edward tells him. ‘Remember that when it’s my turn, yeah?’
Izzy isn’t sure how anyone could go easy in this scenario. You’re either stabbing somebody with a needle, or you’re not. But he agrees, all the same, because he can sense something there—something he’s seldom seen these days. An invitation rarely afforded. I’m being gentle with you, Ed is telling him. You can be gentle with me too.
‘...Yes captain,’ Izzy murmurs. Edward grins again.
‘Not captain yet,’ he tells him, which Izzy supposes is true. They’re not waging the mutiny against Hornigold till’ tomorrow, after all, and who knows how that’ll go? It’s entirely possible the rest of the crew won’t jump on board—that they won’t take kindly to the thought of a cocksure twenty year old giving them orders. They could be thrown overboard for this, and that’s if they’re lucky. Izzy’s never had the pleasure of seeing one for himself, but he knows Hornigold’s partial to a good keelhaul when the mood strikes him. Izzy’s spent the better part of a fortnight over the side of the ship, scrubbing barnacles from the hull just in case , but there’s no chance he got them all. They might die tomorrow, he knows. He’s surprised, actually, by how little the thought disturbs him.
But even if they do, Izzy can’t help but think Edward’s objection is an unfounded one. In his mind, Edward’s been a captain for as long as he’s known him. From the moment he yanked his hand out of his breeches, grinning at Izzy through a mouthful of bloodied teeth, and said ‘Name’s Ed,’ with such easy authority that for a moment Izzy thought it was a command rather than an introduction.
‘You are to me,’ Izzy says, because it’s the truth. Edward pauses, hand raised. The needle is less than half a centimetre away from his skin.
Edward huffs out a laugh. ‘Yeah,’ he mutters. ‘Yeah, I guess I am.’
There’s a beat of silence, then, and Izzy wonders if it might come to something. It’s not the first time he’s thought this, and it won’t be the last—the last will come much later, in a cabin that’s neither his nor Ed’s, with Edward’s hand wrapped around his throat and the soft silk of another man’s robe gently caressing his skin. It is, however, one of the few times that actually heeds a result.
The press of Ed’s lips against the raised, angry skin of Izzy’s tattoo is so light he almost thinks he’s imagined it. It’s only the sting that gives it away, the sharp zap of pain against his bloodied flesh. Well, that and the fact that when Ed pulls back, his lips are wet and stained with crimson. It’s a good look on him, Izzy thinks.
‘Thank you,’ Ed says, earnest and genuinely touched. He doesn’t look that way much, anymore. He’s becoming something harder. Tougher. Izzy knows this, understands the necessity of it, but mourns the loss of Ed all the same. He grabs Ed’s wrist, then, the one holding the needle. He wants to say something, something important, but isn’t sure if the words will come out right. Isn’t sure they’ll be welcome, even if they do.
Don’t change for me, he wants to say. Be harder for them, out there. I know you have to be, I know we both have to be, if we’re going to survive, but don’t be that way in here, not with me.
But he doesn’t. He doesn’t, because he’s a coward. Because he knows it will do no good. Ed— Edward— is on a warpath, a journey of reinvention, and Izzy will follow him to the bitter end and beyond. There’s nothing Izzy can say that will convince him to change course. And again, even if there was, he isn’t sure he’d want to.
I nstead, he brushes his thumb over Edward’s wrist, feels the soft flutter of a heartbeat beneath the warm expanse of his skin.
‘...Here,’ he says, after a moment. ‘I’m going to put yours here.’
Edward blinks, follows Izzy’s trajectory with a surprised frown.
‘Right there?’
‘Right there,’ Izzy agrees.
‘...Aw, mate. Now I feel bad. You shoulda said something if you didn’t want it on your fuckin’ face .’
‘Mine’s fine where it is,’ Izzy replies, sounding oddly serene. ‘Yours is going just here. Unless, of course, you want me to stick it somewhere else.’
Edward looks at the patch of skin that Izzy’s still running his thumb over, evaluating it with a critical eye.
‘...There’s fine,’ Edward replies. Another beat of weighted silence. This time, nothing comes of it. Balance restored. ‘Now fuckin’, hold still.’
Izzy laughs—a quiet little chuckle. That’s getting to be a rarer occurrence, too. He doesn’t mourn the loss of himself quite so clearly as he mourns the loss of Ed, but there’s some grief there, all the same. The sting of the needle soothes it a little, like a balm on a bad burn. He leans into it, that sharp snap as the metal breaks the tension of the skin, the spurt of blood that follows. A release. Edward makes quick work of it. A few more pokes, then nothing. He packs it with dark powder, cleans it with a steady hand. All business, no fucking around. There’s a grim kind of finality in that, Izzy thinks.
‘There you go. Signed, sealed, and delivered.’ Ed sits up, moves so that he’s no longer straddling Izzy’s chest, and it’s yet another loss that Izzy’s left to mourn. He sits up, goes to touch it, but Ed smacks his hand away.
‘Leave it, Iz. You’ll smudge it or something.’
‘You can’t smudge a tattoo—’
‘Well you’ll get it infected, then, or something. C’mon, do me now.’
Izzy sighs, but does as he’s told. Edward sits on the edge of the bed, arm balanced on his thigh, wrist up. Izzy takes it, traces over the unblemished skin one final time, then takes up the needle—the same one; he and Edward have been through far too much to quibble over a bit of shared blood—and sets to work.
‘X marks the spot,’ Edward jokes, and Izzy rolls his eyes.
‘Shut it,’ he mutters. ‘I’m concentrating.’
*
Whatever Izzy wanted, this isn’t it.
No, fuck. That’s not true. That’s part of the fucking problem. This is exactly what he wanted, or what he thought he wanted, anyway. He wanted an Edward who was capable and cold-blooded. Vicious and sadistic and cruel. An Edward he could recognise and understand, and—perhaps most crucially of all, an Edward he didn’t have to watch out for. One who could not be hurt by the likes of Stede fucking Bonnet. One who was safe from harm.
He wanted Blackbeard. He wanted the kraken. He wanted a darkness that would open up and swallow him whole.
…He’s not really sure what he wants, now.
On deck, Jim sharpens their knives. Izzy’s not really sure where they got them from—he’s confiscated three from the little shit already, and he doesn’t have energy to confiscate any more. This is his main task onboard The Revenge , these days. Babysitting a trained assassin. Jim’s made two attempts on Blackbeard’s life in as many weeks. Will no doubt make another, should the opportunity arise. The two of them are like wild animals trapped in the same cage, pacing the decks of the ship in opposite—yet oddly similar—states of distress. Jim wants their crew back. Blackbeard, Izzy’s beginning to suspect, wants the same thing, though he’d never admit it outright. On the few occasions that have seen them in the same space at the same time, Izzy’s been forced to try and de-escalate a bloodbath. It might not be so bad, if Blackbeard made any attempt to fight back against Jim’s advances. Or maybe it would. Maybe they’d kill each other, then. Tear each other to pieces and scatter to the four winds. Sometimes, when Izzy’s in a particularly black mood, he wonders if that might not be better for all of them. He’d certainly appreciate the peace and quiet.
For now, though, Jim sharpens their knives. When they catch Izzy watching them, they stare back, unbothered. Sometimes they speak. Not to Izzy, of course, never to Izzy. They’ll utter a quiet curse under their breath, some violent spit of Spanish that Izzy can’t quite catch. Occasionally they hum, but only if Frenchie’s nearby to strum along. A nonverbal kind of comradery that even Blackbeard can’t hope to quash. The bond between Frenchie and Jim has reached a threshold that concerns Izzy, if he’s being honest, only because he knows unfettering loyalty well enough to recognise it when he sees it. There’s rarely a time when one is seen without the other. If Frenchie is summoned to the captain’s quarters, Jim is there—lurking only a few feet behind. If Izzy needs Jim for a raid, he’s more or less resigned himself to the fact that Frenchie will be there, too. They even share a room, so Izzy’s been told. They hole up in what was once Jim and Olu’s quarters, and for an even briefer period of time, Frenchie and Wee John’s. They barricade the door with a chair and, apparently, take shifts keeping watch. They’re likely planning some kind of mutiny, or at the very least an escape. Izzy wouldn’t be worried—Jim is a formidable force, to be certain, but they’re hardly an army, and Frenchie couldn’t fight his way out of a wet paper bag—were it not for the fact that wherever Jim and Frenchie find themselves, Ivan and Fang are never too far away.
Something’s brewing, alright. Izzy can feel that in his bones.
The problem, is that he doesn’t necessarily disagree with their discontentment.
Jim is pining. They won’t admit it, would kill anyone who so much as thought it, but that doesn’t make it any less true. They had something with Olu, and it ran deeper than a mere fleeting fuck. It might even have been love, or something like it. Jim’s place was by Olu’s side, and Blackbeard, in turn, essentially had Olu and the others killed. Izzy can understand the kind of rage that might inspire. If someone had Blackbeard killed, and then—worse still—went on to keep Izzy enslaved, he too would lash out like a wounded animal. He would have nothing to lose, and neither does Jim.
But Jim also has a strange, dogged sense of loyalty towards their former captain, and this Izzy can also understand, if only in theory. He also has a strange dogged sense of loyalty towards his captain, after all, but in his defense, his captain is a formidable scourge of the seas. Jim’s is a fop in a silk waistcoat who encourages tea parties on deck. Whatever strange draw Bonnet might hold for someone like Jim, Izzy can only guess, but the loyalty persists regardless. Jim will not refer to Blackbeard as captain. If asked to do so—and Izzy has asked, more than once—they will merely spit at the ground and let fly with another round of those clever, muttered curses.
‘ Stede Bonnet is my captain,’ they insist. On this point, they are immovable. Unyielding. It makes Izzy want to shake them. To grab them by the shoulders and ask them— beg them—to explain exactly what it is about Stede fucking Bonnet that inspires such unwavering devotion. He doesn’t, of course, because it would be a good way to get stabbed in the fucking throat. Because it would sound too desperate, too demeaning.
Because Jim is perceptive, and he knows Jim would hear his words and twist them into something closer to the truth. Something along the lines of Why not me?
Something along the lines of What does he have that I don’t?
We were a family, Jim told him, once. He didn’t ask, didn’t even speak. He had merely sat on deck and watched with an irritated scowl as Jim halved their water rations to boost a sun-sick Frenchie’s. Mi familia, understand? You took that from us, you and him. I didn’t have anybody else.
I don’t either, Izzy wanted to tell them. Blackbeard is my family. Bonnet took that from me, first. Can’t you understand that? Can’t you see what he did?
He kept silent, instead. Tipped his water rations into Jim’s cup as he got up to leave.
He wasn’t very thirsty, anyway.
*
From the captain’s quarters, Blackbeard wails. Izzy rolls onto his side and shuts his eyes. His foot throbs on and on.