Chapter Text
This Isn’t Over
AlphaCygni
Izzy: This isn’t over, Mister Bonnet.
Stede: Good, ‘cause I kind of enjoyed it.
~1~
Cognomen
Izzy Hands was pretty sure he wasn’t dead.
He’d heard stories about waking from death to a second life: to heaven or hell or some version of the world where men with unfinished business walked, forever doomed.
What he’d woken to, however, wasn't any of that.
First off, there was a distinct lack of angels or devils or clouds or whatever. There was a sort of soft, sheer curtain…but that didn’t seem like enough to go on.
Second, there was a library—or at least there were a lot of books. Books didn’t scream heaven or hell or doom to him: just…a waste of space, really.
Third, he was tied up. That could be heaven or hell, he supposed, depending on the circumstances, but residents of either would surely have managed better goddamned knots.
And music: there was music, but it wasn’t the harpy angelic sort. Just a lute and an (admittedly nice) voice.
And it was singing the wrong fucking words.
Angels would know the fucking words, wouldn’t they?
“It’s the Maid of Amsterdam,” Izzy groaned as he sat up. Through the curtain, he could see two of his captors—or gaolers maybe. Calling them “captors” felt like a stretch. They didn’t look able to capture a somewhat aggressive puppy between them.
The music stopped. “Pardon, mate? What was that?”
“The song. It’s the Maid of Amsterdam, not the Man ,” he repeated, twisting his hands to verify that, yeah, whoever tied this had just been improvising. “ ‘In Amsterdam there lives a maid And that fair maid my trust betrayed.’”
“Dunno, mate. Pretty sure it’s ‘Man’.” This was the singer. Tall lad, unarmed, unless you counted the lute. Izzy’d seen a man garrote another with lute strings once, but it sure didn’t look like this fella had that in him. “Just sounds better, y’know? MAN and Amster-DAM.”
Izzy reassessed momentarily. Yeah, could be Hell. Best not dismiss it so quick.
“Maid rhymes with fucking betrayed, you dim twat.” Izzy hated how he had to wiggle to gain a surer seat on…on whatever the fuck this stupid couch thing was.
“Mmmm...nah,” the second of his gaolers disagreed through pursed lips. He twirled a quill between fingers, flip. “Think I like ‘man’ better, too.”
“Oh, I’m sure you do,” Izzy scoffed, before turning back to the singer. “If it’s ‘man’ of Amsterdam, how’d’you sing the last verse, then?”
With an obliging shrug, the singer picked up the lute and sang sweetly:
Then take warning boys, from me
Mark well what I do say!
So take a warning, boys, from me
With other men’s loves don’t make too free
“‘Wives! It’s ‘other men’s—’ oh, fuck. Nevermind.” Izzy rested his head in his bound hands. Right. This was stupid. There were more important things. Like, “Where the fuck am I?”
“Oh!” The first lad sat up higher, excitedly tucking his long legs under him on the chair. “Yeah, this is The Revenge. I’m Frenchie, and that’s Lucius and—”
“I’m not interested in your fucking knitting circle. How did I get here and who the fuck had the balls to do it?” The last thing he remembered was buying those Naval arseholes off the Taíno bloke. They’d been taking them back to the Queen when…
Izzy felt as if they’d gone over a big wave. His stomach lurched.
That posh twat claiming to be a pirate. They’d ambushed him. Surely it couldn’t be—
“Ahh, I see our guest is bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, then?”
Izzy closed his eyes. Hell. The way he’d lived, yeah, it would make sense. But this …this was a brand of cruelty that might make even Beelzebub balk.
The curtain swished aside dramatically, and, when Izzy opened his eyes, it was none other than—
“Good day! Mister Hands, was it?”
The posh-fucking-twat. Holding out his stupid meaty fucking hand.
Izzy lifted his own bound hands with a face he hoped summed up how very much he wanted to stab something pointy through this man’s neck.
“Ahh. Oh, yes. Quite. Well. Welcome aboard, Mister Hands. I see you’ve met Frenchie and Lucius. And, as I believe I said when we crossed swords, I’m—”
“I don’t care who you are Lord Whatever-the-Shite of Fuckshire. You’ve made a huge fucking mistake.”
The man gave a surprised blink, as if he couldn’t believe someone would dare to interrupt his introduction. But he recovered quickly. “A mistake, you say? And what might that be?”
This ponce. This fucking man had no idea. “You took me hostage, yeah?”
“After your men broke truce and turned tail along with our other hostages, I didn’t have much choice, did I? I was owed a hostage: that was the deal.”
Izzy felt the tiny shameful point of a stiletto against his cheek as if it was there all over again. There was also a decided ache at the back of his skull. Shit. The tit had knocked him out. “And who, exactly, do you plan to ransom me to, then?”
It was clear the idiot hadn’t expected this either. He looked nervously at the two other men who, let’s face it, also had no fucking clue.
“Oh, I’m sure we’ll work that out. Perhaps… the Republic of Pirates? It was suggested to me that we might—”
“And who there do you think is as stupid as you, Captain Shit-for-Brains, hmm? No one is going to touch me with a ten-foot pole knowing my captain will be on their tail within a minute, ready to turn guns and swords and the fires of hell on any ship to get me back.”
Izzy wasn’t sure what he’d expected, really. So far this day hadn’t been kind to expectations.
Still, it did surprise him when, instead of looking properly intimidated, the twat simply smiled. Big fucking bright smile, too.
“Ahh. You’re quite important to your captain, then?”
“I’m his first mate. Sailed alongside him for near-on twenty years. So, yeah. I’d say so.”
The man stood as if he’d just won the day. “Well then. Sounds like the perfect person to offer a ransom, don’t you think?”
Izzy opened his mouth to ask if this man was out of his fucking mind—to express his disbelief that surely , surely no one claiming to sail these seas as a pirate would have the audacity, the sheer idiocy, to try and claim a ransom of Captain Edward Teach.
Then he…thought better of it. “Well, you have me there.” Izzy smiled back.
He could tell all three men found it exactly as unsettling as he’d intended.
“Ahh. Yes. Good, then.” At least the man had enough brains to sound vaguely uncertain at this point. “So, um, if you could give us some idea how we might… rendezvous with him, then?”
“Oh, head towards the Republic. Not a bad idea. Likely they’ll go that way looking to fence the Navy men, I’d guess.”
The fucking idiot preened. God, he hoped Ed let him gut this one. Maybe stuff one of those frilly shoes somewhere interesting.
“Excellent! Frenchie, can you ask Mister Buttons to set our course? And Lucius, see if we can get some food brought up for our guest.” Those stupid brown eyes turned on him. “I assure you, Mister Hands, you’ll be well-treated here, provided there are no attempts at pugilism or—”
“Fucking what?”
“Ahh. Pugilism. Fisticuffs. Violence—”
“As long as I don’t fuck with any of you. Jesus, man. Just fucking say it.”
Lips drew into a taut, pink line. “I like to think the Gentleman Pirate will always reach for the refined over the coars—”
“The what ?”
“Refined? Oh, it means—”
“Not…I fucking know what ‘refined’ means! I meant the other thing. The Gentleman what ?”
“Ahh, yes. As I tried to say earlier, I’m Stede Bonnet of the pirate ship Revenge . But most will come to know me as—” The man drew himself a little taller, and the silk of his jacket swished with a flourish. “The Gentleman Pirate.” Blonde curls bounced as he tipped his chin. Because of fucking course they did. “Would you care to give me your cognomen as well, Mister Hands?”
Shit. Fucking dicking shit.
He knew Edward would come for him eventually. This wasn’t their first abduction, probably wouldn’t be their last. But Davy Jones’s green balls this was going to be a long one.
The Gentleman Twat leaned down and whispered, “ Cognomen means—”
“Yeah, I fucking guessed that, if you can imagine.”
“Ahh, well done. One to add to your repertoire, I should think.”
Izzy let out a sigh that came from some place very deep and very, very tired. He let his head fall forward into his hands again, hoping that somehow, if he closed his eyes, when he opened them again, maybe, just maybe, he’d be somewhere else.
It didn’t work.
“Right. Okay. Yeah. Fucking cognomen .” He met the bastard’s big brown eyes and forced another smile. It was the only weapon he had. “Mr. Bonnet. I’m Israel Basilica-fucking-Hands of an actual real fucking pirate ship and as far as I can tell, most people will come to know me as the man who helped his captain take a serviceable sloop from a poncey-little-shit, leaving him at least one vital limb short for his fucking presumption .”
Ha. So there was something that could wipe that stupid grin off the twat’s face.
Izzy laid back with a sigh and wished, at least just a little bit, that he had been dead after all.
******************
If this wasn’t Hell, Izzy could only assume the Devil was taking notes.
Bonnet hadn’t lied when he said Izzy would be treated well, though he’d clearly thought better about keeping Izzy anywhere near him for the duration. Instead the lute player had brought Izzy to a room below deck, said “Don’t worry we’ll move our jams for a bit” as if that meant something, and then closed the door behind him.
And Izzy was left standing, hands still bound, alone in his room.
It wasn’t a bad place, actually. A real pirate might have bound him to the mast or thrown him into the brig—if there even was one on this ridiculous ship. But instead they’d given him the sort of room Izzy’d had to serve a decade to earn on the Queen : a lockable door, a hammock, even a slit of natural light.
Curious just how gullible his captors were, he worked open the door and peered out.
Just outside, a young man in a hat gave him the first genuinely dangerous stare he’d had since he came aboard.
About fucking time.
The man directed him back into the room and used a wickedly-sharp dagger to underline the point.
“Need the head,” Izzy tried.
The man grabbed an obliging bucket from across the room and handed it to Izzy with a smirk.
Finally someone with some fucking sense . He gave the man a nod and went back inside.
The first day, the cabin boy brought food in, but no one had undone his hands, so it had been a bit of a mess. The next morning, the knife-wielding one—Jim, he was told—had cut Izzy’s bonds with the understanding that Izzy’s eye would become well-acquainted with the business end of a dagger if he so much as looked like he was considering anything.
The man had thrown a knife across the room and hit a knot in the pine dead-center to illustrate.
But Izzy had no intention of trying anything. There wasn’t much point alone on a ship at sea, and frankly, for everyone except Jim and one rather large man Izzy had seen hulking about with the lute player, it would have felt too much like taking out a bunch of doe-eyed preschoolers.
All he really needed to do was wait. Ivan and Fang would certainly have told Edward who and what they were looking for. And Edward would be looking. So either they’d run into each other out here on the water, in which case the Queen Anne would take this ship with pitiful ease, or they’d get word from Jackie once that ponce started parading around the Republic declaring himself the Gentleman Moron.
So all Izzy really needed to do was wait.
The problem was Izzy had never been good at waiting . Since he’d first stepped aboard ship more than thirty years ago, he’d had a job to do. There was almost always something that needed to be done, and, on the off chance nothing needed to be done, there was something it wouldn’t hurt to do or that would be nice to do or that certainly made things look neater at least—and Izzy did all of that. While other lads had fiddled or played cards or lazed around talking about fuck knew what, Izzy worked.
The crew of this ship, however, seemed to have only a theoretical understanding of the word.
During the day, and as long as Jim was around, Izzy was given freedom to walk anywhere but on deck. From what he could gather, most of the crew spent a large chunk of their time down here in the “rec room,” which the lute player assured him was its intended purpose. Bells rang, which should have meant a watch was set, but Izzy swore he never saw a single one of them leave to do so. One day in particular, he’d watched the blonde one sit in the corner picking his teeth for eight hours straight.
At least once a day, the cabin boy dragged someone —usually the bald one—to duck into the “ball room.” Izzy was fairly sure he understood that one.
And once every few days, the entire crew came down to “jam”--which as far as Izzy could tell meant to rattle and drum and pipe and sing while the Gentleman Twat clapped and blathered on about teamwork or some shit.
It was close enough that Izzy felt comfortable telling Edward he’d been tortured, yeah.
About a week in, after he himself had given up and joined the blonde one watching Jim throw knives across the room, Izzy hadn’t been able to stand it anymore.
“Any of you lot ever do any actual pirating around here?”
The blonde looked at him in a way that made Izzy wonder if he spoke English. Jim said nothing at all. As always.
“How the fuck are you going to eat if you don’t ever fucking do anything?”
The same silence.
He got his answer later that night when, for the first time, instead of bringing a plate of food in to him, the boy informed him he’d be dining in the captain’s cabin this evening.
Yeah—accusation of torture, totally fair.
“Ahh, Mister Hands.” The Gentleman Arse stood from the table as Izzy was brought in. “Please join me. I’m dreadfully sorry it’s taken so long to have you up, but I wanted to find the right—”
“How many people are eating?”
“Ahh. Well, I recognize it is a bit more than usual, but I didn’t know your particular culinary preferences, and I’ve always thought it the height of manners to ensure a guest can find plenty of their favorites on the menu. I am limited by our stores, of—”
“I’m not your guest , you twat. I’m a fucking prisoner.”
God, Izzy loved when the man’s smile turned into that bitchy grimace. It felt like scoring a strike in a good fencing match.
“Fine. Would you prefer I chained you to the wall and had some gruel sent down then?” he huffed.
“Dunno, do I get to eat it alone?” Izzy huffed back.
The man sat and spread a lacy napkin across his lap dramatically, clearly intent on ignoring that. “There’s flounder or, if you’re not a fish person, a half leg of lamb. And if you don’t want any of that , you can kindly f—”
“Lamb?” Shit. Of course he had fucking lamb. Probably had a livestock room where he kept geese to make pate or whatever the fuck.
Something in Izzy’s voice must have betrayed him because the little grin resurfaced. “Ahh, yes. Our Roach makes a lovely preparation with a number of spices I wasn’t entirely familiar with. And a mint jelly that—”
“Yeah alright.” Izzy hoped to fuck Roach was the chef. He sat and grabbed at the dish he was fairly sure had been described and skewered several large portions onto his plate.
Onto his fancy white china plate that would almost certainly crack in two the second they went over a crest of any kind, of fucking course.
But for lamb, Izzy reckoned he could handle a few minutes of Captain Toff.
“A fan of lamb, I take it?” Bonnet attempted, face smoothed over again.
“Only had it once. Christmas when I was a kid. Had a lucky year. But we couldn’t—”
He stopped, hunk of lamb in his mouth. Bonnet was watching him with interest.
And here he was bumping his fucking gums about Christmas. Tricky rich fucker.
He skewered another bite in silence.
When it was clear Izzy wouldn’t continue, Bonnet filled the quiet. He was good at that. Maybe the only thing, Izzy imagined.
“We often had lamb at Christmas, too. Sprigs of rosemary. I’ll never forget my father trying to convince me—”
“How the fuck you get all this? I mean, I get you’re rich, that’s obvious. But…doesn’t seem like you’re raiding—not that I’d expect that, of course. Your crew are always doing fuck all, not even the most rudimentary fucking maintenance. So…I guess you just, I dunno, do whatever you rich lords of the fucking manor do, but now you do it out here? Laze around with your books, eat up all the stores, and then throw coin at port to take care of the rest?”
The grimace was back. “Actually, I’ll have you know we recently concluded our first successful raid.”
Like hell. “Oh yeah? What’d you haul?”
That he was apparently not going to answer. “And we have you . You should fetch us something, too, shouldn’t you?”
For a moment, Izzy tried to picture Edward sitting at the table as this man tried, sweaty and pink-faced, to negotiate a price from him.
The vision of a pistol shot to the twat’s head pleased him maybe a little less than it would have before the lamb—but still quite a lot.
“You’ll definitely get your due,” Izzy said.
If Bonnet caught the tone, he didn’t show it. “Yours is a successful ship, then? Lots of raids?”
“Yeah. You could say that.”
“And your captain: you said you’d sailed together for some time. What sort of man is he? Grumpy little bugger like you?”
There was that bitchy face. Fuck.
Actually, if Izzy was honest, he preferred the man this way. The way he’d been just after the ambush. Good. ‘Cause I kind of enjoyed it.
At least this way, Izzy could almost take him seriously. In low light. If he squinted.
“My captain? He’s the exact fucking opposite of you .”
A scoff. “You think you know me that well already, then?”
“Reckon you’re a self-absorbed rich twat like any other, yeah. You see, my captain came from fucking nothing, less than, scraping and scrounging. He built everything he has up from the ground by being faster and smarter and better than other men. By being a brilliant sailor and a genius tactician. We took what we have because no one was ever going to give it to us otherwise.”
“Well, that does sound rather—”
“Whereas, you, Lord Fuckface…you read in one of your fancy little books about being a pirate, saw a ship at the docks and thought, ‘Yeah, I’m bored. Think I’ll do that. Don’t know fuck all about it, but I reckon if those sort of men can do it, well, no trouble for me. I’ll be a fucking famous pirate in no time.’” Izzy set down his fork and leaned forward. “But I’ve got news for you, Bonnet. This isn’t a pirate ship: it’s just another fucking fancy ladies’ parlor. This ship is a fucking joke. ”
There. That was that. Lovely dinner invite: sure it won’t happen again.
He was sure to grab one more piece of lamb before it could be taken away.
But Bonnet didn’t call for the boy or leave the table or even, really, look too terribly upset. The bitchy expression was gone, replaced by something quite different. Izzy’d never been great at telling what someone was thinking by their face, but if he had to guess, he’d say the twat had actually been listening.
“And what would you do differently, Mister Hands?”
“What?”
“You said this ship is a joke, and, I’ll admit, you seem to have a great deal of practical experience. So, what would you do differently to change that, if it were you?”
Any other time, Izzy would have guessed the fucker was taking the piss. But his eyes met Izzy’s with unwavering sincerity.
It was unnerving. “Everything. I’d do every-fucking-thing differently.”
The other man sighed and took a long pull of wine before he continued. “Well, then, for starters: you said my crew isn’t doing routine maintenance. What sorts of things do you mean?”
Izzy’s desire to stop having this conversation warred with his intense need to list off every deficiency and inefficiency he’d spotted since he’d been dragged aboard.
The need to complain won out. “You got holes in two of your sails need to be patched before they get any bigger. Saw at least three sheets fraying—frankly your rigging’s a fucking mess, like it’s being manned by a drunk with no thumbs. And I can tell from the smell below deck that no one at all is manning the pumps regularly.”
The way Bonnet was blinking at him he might as well have been speaking Greek.
“Even the fucking deck needs to be swabbed more often! You’ve heard of that one, right? Swabbing the deck? You’ve got splitting seams all over that want oakum and a good soak.”
“You…you saw all of that in the time it took you to walk to the cabin?” He sounded skeptical.
“Yeah, well I did more than read a fancy book, didn’t I?”
One of Bonnet’s fingers tapped absently at his wine glass. Izzy recognized the narrowed, slightly unfocused eyes. It was a look Edward got sometimes when he was reading the sky. Trying to decide a course, a tack.
Izzy found it oddly unsettling on Bonnet’s face.
Eventually Bonnet’s tapping stopped. “And if we did a tour of the deck, you could point all this out? To the crew and myself? Walk us through what needs doing?”
“Won’t your mate get offended by a prisoner telling him his job?”
“Ahh, Buttons is an easy-going chap. Sure he won’t mind some—”
“Buttons? The…the one with the seagull?”
A blink. “Yes.”
Izzy hadn’t had much opportunity to see the man, but what he had seen was…frankly baffling. “ That’s your first mate?”
“Yes! And I’ll have you know he’s quite experienced. Deeply loyal and an asset to me, if not…if not always the most hands-on. But we’re a team here: a job for every man, a man for every job.”
No job for every man more like. Was it any wonder they sat around all day doing nothing? In Izzy’s experience, if you didn’t find something for a man to do, he’d find nothing to do instead. Or worse. He’d find trouble. “It’s a fucking miracle this thing is still afloat.”
“Now, not all of us are unschooled. Even beyond Mister Buttons, several of my crewmen have experience on ships.” With an annoying little twinkle in his eyes, Bonnet leaned in as if telling a wondrous secret. “In fact, one of my men even served with Blackbeard himself.”
Izzy almost choked on his wine.
“Yes, indeed. Put that in your pipe, sir,” Bonnet said, clearly misinterpreting. “So, you see, we do have some experience aboard. That being said, I’m certainly open to opportunities for improvement and a little professional development for all concerned. I’m not entirely a…what was it? ‘Self-absorbed rich twat’?”
God. Even the way he said the word twat was annoying. Like he was quoting Othello or some shit. “Yeah, well, I’m not your nursery school teacher. Get yourself a competent fucking first mate.”
“I don’t suppose you’d be interested in a position?”
Izzy almost choked again. He put down his wine glass. Clearly it wasn’t safe while Captain Shitsack was talking. “Not in a million fucking years.”
“Right. Still, I’d think you’d have some vested interest in this ship staying afloat. Seeing as you’re, you know, on it for the time being.”
That did give Izzy pause. Nothing he’d seen put them in immediate danger: it would take a particularly bad run of luck for any of the little problems to add up to disaster. Then again, it was hard to deny that his luck of late hadn’t exactly been stellar.
“Besides,” Bonnet continued, “It could be a spot of fun. Lucius tells me you’re bored down there.”
Izzy scoffed.
“Or perhaps the munitions really did need organizing at least three separate times yesterday…?”
That little fuck. Incredible the boy noticed anything other than the floorboards under his fucking knees. “I don’t…I don’t like to sit idle.”
Bonnet grinned. “Perfect! This will suit everyone, then. You’ll get to yell and order people around, and my crew and I will get a chance to learn a thing or two perhaps.”
Shit. Was he…was he actually considering this? “Don’t know if that lot’s capable of much.”
“I assure you they are, when properly encouraged. I’ll join you tomorrow to ensure we present a united front.”
“Don’t know if you’re capable, either.”
Bonnet’s voice was firmer than Izzy would have guessed possible for a man who had cut his meat carefully into identical, half-inch cubes before eating it. “I’m their captain. I know how to manage them.”
The fucking bulletproof confidence of the rich, wasn’t it? “You think you can get that lot to cooperate?”
“I got you to, didn’t I?”
It was a fencing match again, but this time he felt the touch.
The twat stared at him for a long moment: he was clearly trying to keep the bitchy little smirk from surfacing, but Izzy could fucking feel it there anyway.
“You tell yourself that, Captain .” He cut off another bite of lamb and ate it and stared right back. If this fucker thought he’d get him to blink, he had another fucking thing coming. “I’m sure you’ve got me totally under your thumb. Nothing to worry about.”
But even as they finished their food—even as Bonnet tried to explain what the puffy little cake-and-something on the tiny plates was—Izzy couldn’t enjoy it. Couldn’t really savor it.
Because Bonnet was right. He had managed him. Izzy Hands had fallen into line for the Gentleman-Fucking-Pirate.
He would take that truth to his fucking grave.
That night, as he closed his eyes and said his usual prayer for good winds and waves, he added an extra little prayer for Edward to hurry his ass up.