"We're trying to build a legend, mate," he remembers insisting. "Can't do that if all we care about is where the next meal's coming from."

Izzy crossed his arms, pushing his chest out, still too skinny to be properly intimidating. Hornigold never fed his men well.

"And how's this junk gonna help build your legend, eh?" Izzy demanded. He couldn't quite hide the twinkle in his eye. "Gonna be Captain fuckin Knickknack? Captain Junkshop? "

Ed stepped into Izzy's space, crowding him against the wall. Izzy's eyes flashed, mouth twisting into a smile.

"It's not junk, mate," Ed growled, wrapping his fingers around Izzy's tie. "It's style. A legend. Has style."

Ed can still feel the charge in the air when he remembers that day, the rush that he felt when Izzy looked up at him, a little blush spreading across his chest. He remembers the way his belly swooped when Izzy kissed him.

Ed moves unhurriedly, avoiding too much attention. Just another sailor, looking for a place to stay and a mug of ale. That's all he looks like. He'd stake his life on it.

"Ed Teach."

He feels the gun at his back before he hears the sharp, unmistakeable sound of the hammer being pulled back. He freezes.

"Benjamin Hornigold would like a word, sir," a slightly nasal voice recites, stiffly enough that Ed knows they're Hornigold's words.

Another alleyway branches off from this one just a meter or so ahead. Ed just has to distract the man, keep him talking long enough that he can make a break for it and disappear in the backstreets of Kingston.

"Hey," he says, "listen--"

A bright burst of pain splashes, white, across Ed's vision as the butt of a pistol slams into the back of his head. He falls forward, seeing nothing but the packed dirt path as it rushes up to meet him.

*
Ed's head throbs as he slowly becomes aware of the world around him again. His mouth is dry, eyes crusted almost shut and, fucking hell, he must have drunk himself to sleep again. God, that'd be the first time in... Chains clank together as he tries to raise a hand to scrub at his face. They've bound his arms behind his back. He remembers the alley, the gun at his back. His head throbs again, and he rolls over slowly.

"Fuuuck," he groans.

He blinks, waits for his vision to clear. There's not much to see. The room is dark, ceiling lost in shadow above. Not far above him, though. Even in the dark, he feels the weight of the air, the tightness of the space around him. Most likely, even if he weren't chained to the fucking wall with his hands behind his back, he wouldn't be able to stand fully upright.

He pushes himself up to sit, trying not to crush his fingers beneath himself.

The floor rocks gently beneath him, the motion familiar, almost soothing. Definitely on Hornigold's ship then. Well, he meant to get here, one way or another. He'd have preferred to skip the headache though. And the chains. He takes a breath, then blows all the air out of this lungs, trying to clear his head, to focus on the plan. Or, well, a plan at least.

Someone else is breathing, steady, quiet. Ed's hackles rise as he realizes it.

He freezes, listening. There it is. He thinks it's coming from the right, tucked into one of the corners of the room. Hornigold? The bastard always liked to play games. Ed flexes his hands, licks his lips as he tries to decide on his next move. He hears fabric shifting, a faint clink.

"Who's there?"

The voice is rough, tone flat. For a moment Ed doesn't recognize it. Emptiness sounds wrong in that voice. Ed takes another breath.

"Jack?"

It's a small revenge, taken on the wrong man, but Jack will take what he can get. He was hoping they might kill him for it. But since when has he ever been that lucky? The door swings shut again, leaving Jack with a new roommate. Lucky him. He wonders how long it'll take them both to starve to death.

He hears a groan and then a sigh as the man comes to.

"Fuck..." The voice is rough, harsh, but there's something in the way he says it...

Jack shakes his head, squeezing his eyes shut. He's really fuckin' lost it now. Conjuring up Ed fuckin' Teach to keep him company. Fucking lunatic. He hears his new cellmate breathing. Fuck, even that sounds familiar.

He doesn't know why he asks. He doesn't give a shit. There's nothing left to give a shit about. But somehow, the words find their way out of his throat, raw and rough.

"Who's there?"

As if it would make a bit of difference.

As if it could matter even if it was Ed, even if it was Blackbeard running some fuckery, with a fleet of ships about to descend on Hornigold and tear him apart. Nothing matters. Izzy Hands is dead. Jack heard him die. He doesn't feel a damn thing when he hears that familiar voice from the shadows again.

"Jack?"

He knows Izzy, though, at least he used to. Been a long time since he could fool himself into believing he knew anything, beyond how to survive a mutiny and where he'd stashed the last of his rum. But Izzy...

Jack knows Izzy the way he knows his own right arm. A constant presence, something you never think twice about until it's gone. Well, he's had a long damn time to think twice. That's why he didn't hesitate when Izzy asked him for help.

The old prick was always only too happy to do as he asked.

The older men snickered about it. Hornigold's pretty little bedwarmer, begging to be put in his place again.

Fuckers.

Jack still didn't get it, not really. Took about a year before he saw Izzy slipping out of the captain's cabin late at night, just after one of his and Ed's pranks gone wrong. Izzy took the blame, as usual, the crew laughing, nodding to each other knowingly.

Hornigold dropped it at his feet two days later, ripped and stained, unrecognizable. The old man had smiled at him, almost sympathetic

"You're a promising young sailor, Rackham. I'd hate to see you go down the wrong path"

The quartermaster gave Jack ten lashes the next day. Jack still has the scars. He didn't see Izzy for two full days after that. When he finally reemerged from the captain's cabin, it was with two black eyes and a split lip

It was a week before he looked Jack in the eye again.

Ed and Jack planned the mutiny not long after. Ed was always popular, skilled. Hornigold's protégé. It was easy to get the men on his side. Jack who took the plan to Izzy, in the end, but that didn't matter. It was Ed's. He saw the way Izzy's eyes shone when he looked at Ed like he was the only man in the room. Jack Rackham may be a gambler, but he knows a losing hand when he's holding it

When Izzy left to be Ed's first mate, well. Jack didn't even try to argue with him. He knew when to fold. Even if Ed never seemed to appreciate Izzy as much as he deserved. Izzy was happy. That was what mattered.

That's what he told himself, lying in the bottom of a little fishing boat, ribs aching, still not totally sure he hadn't found his way to a particularly boring circle of hell. That cannonball looked pretty final, after all.

It was okay. It would all be okay, so long as Izzy was happy, and safe. Jack owed him that. Jack owed him everything.

Jack was stuck in the bottom of a bottle of rum when Hornigold's men found him. Ribs still only half healed, reflexes dulled by drink, he was an easy target.

He half expected the old man to just kill him right away, but that wasn't Hornigold's style. Motherfucker always liked to play games. He left Jack alone in a cell.

Didn't even talk to him. Came in from time to time to just stare at him. Well, no skin off Jack's nose. If there's one thing he knows how to do it's fill an awkward silence

After two or so of those sessions, Hornigold had him gagged

"I won't take it personal, Horny," were his last words as Hornigold's man stuffed the gag between his teeth. Hornigold just smiled at him again, that same unnerving smirk that meant he knew something Jack didn't

And fuck that, too. Lots of people knew shit Jack didn't. Just about everybody, in fact. Didn't scare him none.

Until he heard Izzy's voice.

Jack stares down at the dark space where he imagines his hands are. They took the fucking gag out after... After. Let him scream himself hoarse calling for Izzy, begging him to answer. But after days of choked screams, of sounds he knew Izzy would never make if he weren't dying, there was nothing.

Hornigold almost looked pitying when Jack screamed at him, demanded to know where Izzy was, what he'd done to him.

"I'd forgotten you and my little bird were so... close," he said. Coming from him, the innuendo was enough to make Jack's skin crawl. "I'm afraid some of my men got a bit too rough with the poor thing. We committed his body to Davy Jones' locker last night. Shame, really. I was so looking forward to staging a little reunion."

Jack's been here, in the dark, for weeks now

He stopped trying to keep track of time a few days after he found out Izzy was dead. Didn't believe it at first, of course, or didn't want to. Hornigold was fucking with his head, trying to... to... Well, Jack didn't know what he was trying to do, but it had to be something. Days went by, if the occasional provision of a bit of water was anything to go by. Hornigold didn't even look at him anymore

There was no sign of Izzy, no sound, no sign he was alive elsewhere on the ship. Hornigold sure as hell wouldn't let him go. Conviction settled over Jack slowly, growing up from his belly to claw at his throat like the strangling vines that killed his mother's garden when he was young enough to have a mother.

Izzy Hands was dead. All these years later. The mutiny, building Blackbeard's legend, hell, becoming the best damn sword Jack ever saw

None of it made a damn bit of difference. Izzy died at Benjamin Hornigold's hands, just like he always feared he would, and Jack didn't do a goddamn thing to help. Just like when they were kids.

"Jack, for fuck's sake, will you stop ignoring me?"

Ed's voice cuts through Jack's thoughts again. Has he been talking this whole fuckin' time? Christ, and people think Jack doesn't know when to shut up.

"I know it's you, you rum drenched wanker."

Ed's voice is sharp and high, like it used to be when they were younger. Maybe this really is just a hallucination.

"Fuckin' talk to me, Jack," Ed whines, and that cracks it, it's gotta be a hallucination, because that's the exact voice Ed used when he thought he wasn't getting enough attention 20 years ago.

"Christ, Eddie, give it a rest," he says finally. No point talking to anybody else, but no reason not to talk to himself at least.

"Jack!" Ed's voice sounds breathy this time, like a gasp of relief. "Fuck me, mate, I thought you were dead!"

Jack grunts, noncommittal. Maybe he is dead, after all. Maybe this is hell.

"Come on man, don't clam up again!" The hallucination is still talking. Jack shakes his head, trying to clear it. As he begins to speak, the door creaks open. Sickly yellow lantern light floods in, blinding. Hornigold stands silhouetted in the doorway.

"Boys," he says, boisterous and booming as ever, and Jack's theory that he might simply be in hell cements itself. "Why, it seems just yesterday that I had you both on my crew--such clever, promising lads. My how things change."

Jack doesn't bother to answer. He doesn't care if he or Ed--real or imagined--die here, slow or fast.

Only one thing interests him now, only one thing could spur him to action.

The chance to kill Benjamin Hornigold