"Good to go?" Jim keeps their eyes on Izzy's face. He looks unfocused, one eye swollen nearly shut.

"Always liked you, you know," he says. "Not as useless as the others. Remind me of me when I was younger. If I'd been..."

Izzy trails off, forehead creasing as he searches for the words.

"If I'd been better," he concludes. Jim grimaces.

"Haul him up!" they shout and the pallet begins to rise. Jim climbs alongside it, steadying it as best they can.

Izzy tries to stand as soon as Roach and Frenchie set the pallet down on the table.

"Woah, little man," Roach says, hands hovering above Izzy's shoulders, not touching him. Izzy slumps back down rather than sitting up further.

"Just wanna wash," he mutters, turning his head away. Roach looks him up and down, keeping his face carefully blank as he takes in the dried blood on Izzy's face--a nosebleed, judging from the way it coats his beard and chin.

The bridge of his nose is bruised, maybe fractured, but not Roach's most immediate concern. There's a cut on Izzy's forehead too, another on his cheekbone, probably from a ring. It's hard to tell under the layers of grime and blood, but Izzy's face is covered in bruises, yellow to green to blue to purple, one eye still swelling. It'll be shut by tomorrow. Roach holds up two fingers

"How many, dizzy Izzy?" he says, regretting it instantly. Izzy grimaces

He glances up, meeting Roach's gaze for just an instant before focusing on his fingers. He's chewing his lips, Roach notices--it's not something he's seen Izzy do before, though of course, he hasn't paid that much attention.

"Izzy," he says again, business like, "how many fingers?"

"Two," Izzy mutters, looking away again. "Blurry, though. Or shiny maybe. Everything feels weird. I think I might be dying."

Behind Roach, Jim swears. Roach doesn't blink.

"What do you feel?" he asks instead. Izzy blinks, dazed.

"I feel... I feel sad," he says. Roach and Frenchie glance at each other, eyes wide. "I'm so fucking lonely all the time. I feel like nobody wants me here. I don't know why you came for me. Edward didn't want to. You should have just left me there, I'd be dead by now and then maybe things wouldn't hurt so fucking much."

Roach opens his mouth, shuts it again

"That's... Not quite what I meant."

Izzy turns his face away, covering it with his hands.

"But that's good!" Roach says encouragingly, "It helps. Can you tell me how your body feels? Where does it hurt?"

For a moment he thinks Izzy won't answer. Izzy covers his mouth with his hands, tense. He sucks in a breath and speaks again in that same expressionless tone.

"My wrists hurt, and my ankles. My nose might be broken, and my jaw. He punched me a few times when I wouldn't open my mouth."

"My ass and my thighs feel like they're on fire. My cunt's the worst of it, I think he fucking tore something. I feel like I'm going to throw up."

With no further ceremony, Izzy turns to the side, puking bile onto the floorboards. He wretches, spits. He's talking again before Roach can say anything.

"I fucking hate this. I can't stop talking, I don't even know what I'm fucking saying half the time, and it's pointless. You don't care. Why should you?"

"Hey, come on, man," Frenchie says quietly, hurt. Izzy shakes his head, still not looking at any of them.

"Please stop," he says. "Stop asking me things. Stop talking to me. Stop fucking looking at me. Just bring me a bucket and let me fucking wash."

Roach sucks his teeth, sharing a look with Jim. They shake their head, a minute gesture. Roach sighs. A proper examination will have to wait.

"Everybody out," Jim says firmly. "Let's draw Izzy a bath."

*

Izzy lies on the pallet for a moment after they leave. He breathes in deeply, trying to find the stable, solid centre of himself--he spent so fucking long building it, learning to breathe deep enough that something inside his chest would just... settle. He can't find it now. He tries again. He pushes all the air out of his lungs, pausing for a moment, waiting until his chest starts to spasm and his vision starts to dance before breathing in again.

He pushes himself up to sitting, muscles screaming at the motion. He swings his legs over the side of the table, gingerly lowering his feet to the ground. His legs feel unsteady and he holds on to the table for a moment, catching his breath. Then, with more determination than confidence, he forces himself to stand up straight. He moves with faltering steps to the larder, holding onto the doorframe as he looks around for...

There. He grabs an empty pot.

Waste of fresh water--the thought moves across the surface of his mind like an eddy, automatic and irrelevant. He pulls the cover off the barrel, dips the pot into cool, clear water. He tries not to touch it with his hands--no need to befoul the barrel

He crouches next to it. His hands shake as he raises a palmful of water to his face. He does it again, and again, water flowing down his neck to his chest. He closes his eyes, breath hitching as he weeps

And once Izzy is back to normal, Ed will get out of bed. He'll stop shivering and crying out in the night, staring at Stede like he wants to tell him something but can't bring himself to say it. For just a moment, Stede lets himself indulge in the fantasy

"Hey." Jim's voice startles Stede out of his daydream. "Izzy needs a bath. Frenchie's heating water. We're using your tub"

"Oh!" Stede exclaims. He tries to smile, knowing it doesn't look quite right

"Yes, of course!" he says, artificially light. "I've got a lovely selection of bath oils, perhaps adding some of those would be, um, soothing?"

Jim stares at him, baffled or displeased--or, very probably both.

"Whatever," they say. "So long as he gets some privacy, entiendes?"

"Why, certainly!" Stede says, offended. He wouldn't dream of intruding on Izzy's bath. No matter how appealing the thought of scrubbing the filth from the man's skin himself.

Jim stares at him for another long moment, then nods. They disappear down the corridor, somehow moving stealthily even in the open. Stede stands outside his cabin, one hand on the knob, exactly as conflicted as he was before. Finally, he sucks in a breath, straightening his spine.

"Come on," he says to himself, "toughen up!"

He is as uncertain as ever as to what that might look like.

*

Izzy stares down at the water he's used for his cursory scrub.

He just needs to make it to his cabin. Then he can get himself out of these fucking clothes, see what can be repaired, what will have to be replaced.

He wants to burn it all.

He breathes in, breathes out. His heart flutters like a bird in a trap. He can do this. He just has to get up.

"Izzy?"

Izzy's eyes snap open, body coiling tight. Stede stands in the doorway, face pale. They stare at each other. Izzy knots his hands together to keep from shaking

Stede second guesses himself all the way from his cabin to the kitchen.

You can turn back, he tells himself, and you really should talk to Ed and besides, Izzy doesn't really seem to be in the mood to welcome well wishers. Not to mention, Jim stabbing him for this seems less like a possibility and more like a certainty the closer he gets to Izzy. He'd already felt it in the dinghy, Jim glaring daggers, though luckily not throwing them, as he held Izzy.

Stede steps towards it, patting his pockets for a match to light a candle. Nothing. He peers into the larder, eyes adjusting. A little movement in the dark and suddenly Stede can see. Izzy sits on the floor, back to a barrel of cool water, head tilted back. He's wiped the the blood from his face, taking off his shirt and vest. He's sweating, skin pallid.

"Izzy?" Stede asks quietly. With aching slowness, Izzy raises his bloodshot green eyes to Stede's.

*

Izzy doesn't know what the fuck he wants to say to Stede.

Of course, he can't help but think as he starts talking, he doesn't have a choice at the moment anyway.

"I don't know whether I want to tell you to leave me the fuck alone or to never leave me alone again."

He hears himself say it, flushing bright red as he does. Stede stands stock still. His mouth is slightly agape, and god, the fucking twat looks like he's about to start asking questions.

"Please don't ask me anything," Izzy hears himself say. "I don't have a choice right now, I would say whatever pops into my head and it scares me to fucking death what I would say."

Stede's eyes are wide now, absurdly so, and of course the stupid bastard starts to speak.

"Izzy--" he says and Izzy, with terrifyingly little knowledge of what he's about to say, interrupts him.

"Christ you look stupid," he says, with perfect, unmalicious honesty.

Stede frowns, stammering defensively. Izzy's still talking, no longer even making an attempt to predict in his own mind what he might be about to say. Whatever it is, it's almost certain to be humiliating, but compared to the past, fuck, he still doesn't know how long, this humiliation feels paltry.

"Look at you, standing there with your fucking mouth open," he says, "with your fancy hair and your fucking velvet jacket. Fucking ridiculous, you twat."

Stede has stopped stammering, stopped trying to defend himself from whatever Izzy might say next. He stares down at his shiny fucking shoes with perfect little bows that exactly match the rich, salmon coloured velvet of his jacket and trousers, and my fucking god,

"Did you wear that on the fucking raid?" Izzy says, with a trace of his usual incredulity. Suddenly, to his own surprise probably more than Stede's, he throws his head back, laughing jaggedly

"Fuck me, Stede," Izzy says, wiping a tear from his eye, chuckling almost affectionately. "You are so fucking absurd."

Stede makes a wounded noise as Izzy continues

"You know, I don't even know how long I've been gone?" he says. Stede's eyes dart up from the floor and then back down, uncertain. "No windows in Hornigold's brig"

Izzy pauses for the first time since he started speaking. He turns his head to the side and spits, then takes a swig of water

Stede stays silent, waiting.

"You know at first, I thought I would escape," Izzy says blandly. "Told myself that anyway. Even after I saw Ben again"

Stede's eyes dart up again, a hint of confusion in them. Izzy grins mirthlessly

"Used to make me call him Ben," he explains. "Didn't like having me call him captain while he was fucking me. Called him Ben on deck once though, and he had me whipped half to death. About a month before Ed's mutiny, I think"

"I was still laid up. Figure Ben probably would have thrown me overboard in a day or so if Ed hadn't decided he'd had it with the old bastard."

Stede is staring at Izzy again, listening intently. It makes Izzy feel exposed, and he pulls his legs in, holding tight, back pressed against the water barrel

"Never thought I'd see him again. Thought Ed killed him for the longest time, and he didn't say different. Didn't hear of him again for ten years after"

"And then..." Izzy trails off, frowning, as a number of different thoughts play through his mind at once. "Ed was as scared of him as me, I think. Him and Jack, they were all bluster, all bravado. Hornigold's boys. But underneath it..."

He stares down at his hands, lost for a moment before he sucks in a breath, looking up again.

"Anyway. So, I understood. Why he couldn't kill him, you know? I never held it against him. And I know he couldn't..."

Izzy looks up at Stede imploringly, pleading for understanding. Stede's mouth still hangs open, though he at just no longer seems on the verge of asking Izzy any of his endless, inane fucking questions.

"I knew he wouldn't come for me," Izzy says. His heart hammers at the stricken look on Stede's face. "It's alright. I knew the whole time, and I was so fucking scared, but I understood. And I knew Jack might, probably would even, but he's dead."

"And I knew, after the first few... hours? Days?" Izzy shakes his head as he looks up at Stede, eyes too large in his face as he recalls. "How many times can an old bastard like that get it up in one day, anyway?"

Stede gasps, face constricting in horror. Izzy carries on, heedless, and utterly incapable of stopping anyway.

"I knew I wouldn't escape. And I knew Ed wasn't coming, and Jack was dead, and so I was ready. I didn't want Ben to kill me."

"But I guess it wouldn't have made a fucking difference in the end--dead's dead, and that was the only way I was getting out."

Stede's eyes fill with tears. At one point Izzy probably would have relished the prospect of making Stede cry. Now it barely registers, except as a faint regret.

"I was so fucking angry when that little fucker didn't slit my throat," Izzy says. "Took me a minute, but when I saw Jim, for a second I thought maybe I was wrong."

"I thought maybe Edward had come for me. That maybe I meant so much to him that he was willing to face Ben for me."

A few years spill out of Stede's eyes. He raises a hand to cover his mouth. Izzy looks up at him almost sympathetically.

"Figured it out quick enough, though," he says, sighing. "If Ed came up against Hornigold, he wouldn't be doing it with fuckin' mist and phantoms."

Izzy's head tilts to the side. He gives Stede a melancholy smile.

"You left him alive, eh?"

Stede's lip trembles as he lowers his hand.

"Yes," he says, voice shaking. "No casualties on either side, other than the, uh, jailer I believe Jim killed."

Stede looks down at the floor again, voice small.

"I was quite proud of that," he adds. "At the time."

Izzy's smile is utterly bleak now.

"You should be fucking proud of it," he says. "Stealing Ben Hornigold's bedwarmer from under his nose with one fucking casualty?"

"That's fucking impressive, Stede. Stupid, but impressive."

Stede laces his fingers in front of him, squeezing his hands in some obscure rhythm as he speaks.

"I wish... I wish you wouldn't call yourself that," he says nervously. Izzy looks confused, so Stede keeps speaking. "His bedwarmer, I meant. That isn't-- you're not--"

Izzy shakes his head, looking away from Stede.

"I am," he says, voice toneless again. "As long as he lives, that's what I am."

"S'pose I could just end it by dying myself," he adds. "But if he catches me off guard again?"

"I would come for you."

Stede's voice is louder than he intends. Izzy's eyes widen as they meet his, and Izzy finds himself at a loss for words, something hard to come by at the moment. Stede speaks firmly. Izzy's mouth goes dry.

"If he ever comes anywhere near you again, I promise him," Stede says. "I will kill him."

Silence stretches out between them.

"I believe you," Izzy says finally, voice hoarse. Stede swallows. They stare at each other. Izzy looks down again. "I didn't just think about Ed and Jack. I knew... I thought I knew you wouldn't come for me either, but I thought about you anyway. You're such a stupid fucking prat."

Stede looks away, face falling. Izzy doesn't stop.

"I don't know why I'm always thinking of you. I never knew what Edward saw in you. I kept trying to figure it out."