Work Text:
Izzy had always sung, that was the thing.
He’d been singing the night Edward had found him, treading down the beach with cotton in his ears and wrapping his arm around Izzy, pulling him close and, “I can offer you a life with all the men you want, but you’ve got to keep it under wraps,” and Izzy, sick of the sand and the waves crashing against him each morning got up and followed like it was the most natural thing in the world.
And Ed had taken him to the ship and placed a finger over his lips, slipping the cotton out of his ears and leaning in close to whisper a plan, one that made Izzy grin and smile and shake hands and that was it, the legend of Blackbeard was born, the ship which you couldn’t run from, found yourself drawn to, crew laying down their weapons before they even saw the flag and a song crying out over the crashing waves. They’d board with wax and cotton in their ears, and Ed had never heard Izzy but he looked up at him and smiled when the job was done, and that was enough.
And sure, the fuckeries were growing old and Edward was tired of the lack of danger, the men throwing down their swords so Izzy didn’t sing and just watched, every one of their crew holding earplugs if they needed because Izzy was the back up plan, the man who had to catch Edward every time he fell and he didn’t mind, not so much.
And then Ed shacked up with Bonnet and they hid their secret together, Izzy just had a smooth voice and he was a fighter, don’t you know and he was Blackbeard’s right hand man so he was there for a reason, didn’t you know and no one questioned a thing (even when Izzy got him back and failed and got him back again and personally negotiated with fucking Bonnet to return and bury the Kraken together).
And every fucking moment and every single fucking song not sung had led Izzy to here, to coughing on the ground, to a horrible rasp eking it’s way out of his throat and he grabbed the base of it, the red hot burn scar pushing against his fingers and he had begged please just kill me but they held him down with ears stuffed and smiles wide. They had slit him open, jaw to chest and pushed into the cords and pressed the poker into them and Izzy had screamed - or well he could, if he had anything left to scream - and they took his siren song bubbling out of his chest and yanked it right up, unwilling and choking both of them as they snatched it away forever, jeering about taming Blackbeard's right hand man and Izzy grabbed his throat and thought wouldn’t it be a mercy to go like this but his hands wouldn’t cling around the scar, around the part of him they’d so thoughtlessly consumed and left him starving for.
His hands would slip as soon as he passed out, he knew this, and so he languished in the shitty excuse for a brig, refusing food and curled up in a sullen ball refusing to talk. His voice, his pride and joy, his personality encapsulated in the timbre that vibrated each time he spoke had left him and been broken, beaten, never to return and he would rather die than hear his now-rasp grate through his throat in a fruitless attempt to communicate.
For what was communication anyway when you couldn’t communicate with you, with who you were, with your whole being and it didn’t matter anyway because everything that mattered had been seized from him with greedy, clawing hands and no one was coming for a mute siren in the bottom of the ship.
Of course, this was precisely when Edward shot a cannonball through the hull and everything went to hell.
Izzy didn’t want to be found, that was the thing. Better to die a sailors death than see the look on Edward’s face when he realised they’d tamed what wasn’t theirs to tame. But the thing was, as with most of his fucking life, starting with being born and continuing on right through to Bonnet barging in on both of them - he didn’t have a fucking choice. The brig was solid around him, and because the universe had decided to deliver one final fuck you to Izzy, the cannonball hadn’t splintered the wall holding him prisoner.
He let his head drop down on the planks and sighed, waiting for his inevitable rescue.
Ed thundered down the stairs, a man driven with frantic, manic energy, his curls fanning out around his face and blood slashed across his cheek. “Izzy?” he called, full of glee and hope. “Izzy, I can hear. Where are you?”
Izzy knew he should answer but he couldn’t take Edward hearing his horrible little rasp of a voice, the only thing he had left, so instead he laid his arm across his neck and pretended it was pinning him there, pretended it was the weight of the world bearing down on him to grant him the only mercy he’d ever had in his life.
“Izzy?” Ed shouted again, and there was a tinge of fear in it. Izzy could hear doors slamming, fists against wood and knew there was little time left for him, little time left for Ed to live happily in his delusion. Then - “No, you don’t get it, he’d call for me Stede, I know him,” and it was frenzied but it was close, desperation dripping off the words and Izzy wanted to laugh because he’d open up his lungs for Ed and let him conduct the autopsy personally if he ever fucking asked, holding Izzy’s voice in his hands and only releasing the reins around it when he decreed suitable but for once, for once he couldn’t find it in himself to meet the expectations they’d built together.
“Iz, you fuck,” and Ed was next to him now, on the other side of the brig and Izzy let his head loll over to the side, taking in his saviour who he was about to drown with. “Why didn’t you answer? Hold up, this shit’s locked. Give us a second, stay where you are-“ another bang echoing through the room, closer and leaving ears ringing but the door was off its hinges now and Edward was walking in.
Izzy smiled at him, half lopsided, casual.
“Why didn’t you answer?” Ed demanded, his hands hanging free at his side with the gun dangling loosely from his fingertips. “C’mon mate. Get up. Battle to do.”
Izzy still didn’t move, he wanted to answer, wanted to get up, wanted everything to be fine again but he knew as soon as he said a word the secret would be out and if he could just let Ed live in denial for a small moment, that would a mercy, wouldn’t it? That would be his job, keep him content, keep the delusion going until the last minute, wouldn’t it? That’s what the man who signed up under him all those years ago in the beach would do, wouldn’t it?
Stede burst into room behind Edward, fussing at his breeches and tucking his shirt back in and stopped when he took in the scene, the tension hanging between Ed and Izzy, the silence Izzy couldn’t bring himself to break. “I’ll help him up with you?” Stede offered instead and if there was something worse than having his vocal cords fried it was having Bonnet touch him so Izzy backed up and-
- “Don’t,” he rasped, the words sending fire up his throat, keeping Ed’s gaze who had -
- who had gone still, chest barely moving, short slow breathes through his nose and eyes cold and Izzy knew that face and he couldn’t and -
- “Why’d he sound like that?” Bonnet asked, the man who’d never known subtlety in his life, who’d never conceived of the horrors upon a ship mates life -
- and Ed was still, hand curled around his gun and Izzy thought for a half ludicrous moment that maybe he’d take mercy on Izzy, end his life now without ever uttering what had happened, without making it real and speaking it through Ed’s harmonious lips and -
- Izzy just laid there, tracking him, eyes straining but refusing to blink, refusing to move away from the gaze that had been levelled on him, the cool balm of realisation dumped on him like a bucket of ice, the tension between them too great to snap -
- but snap it must, and Ed took a half step forward, an aborted motion, teeth grinding before he spat out the words, “Who did this to you, Izzy?”
Izzy wanted to bark out a laugh at it but his throat was crying out at him, already screaming when he’d been denied the ability to scream and so instead he said, “‘Dunno, probably the ship you’re raiding right now.” He let his arm fall and watched as Ed’s vision narrowed in on the red, angry wound on his throat, the clean, cauterised line puckered at Izzy’s flesh.
Ed turned around, pushing Stede out of the way and stormed out of the brig.
Above them, Izzy could vaguely hear the sound of the fight stop before he heard Ed wail, a horrible, guttural sound drawn out of the pits of his stomach like an animal. Both him and Bonnet were staring at the roof, rooted to the ground with the pain echoing through the ship before the sounds of the fight resumed - an oddly comforting white noise, if Izzy was to tell the truth, and he’d never be able to lie now with half his vocal cords cut.
It broke the spell and Bonnet stepped into Izzy’s space, extending a hand which Izzy ignored, getting his own feet under him. “I’ll walk” he muttered, trying not to cringe away at the sound of his voice, mutilated and broken, dry and raspy.
Bonnet hovered at his side as Izzy made his way through the passages of the ship, following the sounds of metal clanging against metal and men screaming their dying breath like a compass until his head broke daylight, blinking at the brightness and giving his eyes a half second to adjust. Stede followed him out of the hatch like the worlds worst mother duck, all doting and fussiness Izzy crammed deep down inside him and tucked away to deal with later.
Edward was standing in the middle of the deck, a body below him, blood splashed up his side and raked through his hair and Izzy made his way over to him, the pull of true north the only thing left inside him. He paused two steps away and Edward lifted his head, broken and blood splattered, meeting his eyes. “Iz,” he said, and it was mournful, and it sounded like a story, and Izzy waited for the rest to come but it never did, held in the moment between them and denied the pleasure of release.
Jim broke into the reverie, a quick “think she’s done,” and Izzy knew that, knew enough to follow, found where they’d boarded and threw himself across the gap between ships. He never thought he’d be happy to see The Revenge, but he never thought he’d be half mute either and the universe delighted in twisting his expectations and understanding, what was one more.
Edward grabbed him by the collar on The Revenge, ignoring the crew around him, ignoring Bonnet trying to make half sense of what had happened and Izzy followed, mute, legs almost falling out from under him at trying to keep up the angry, punishing pace Ed set. Ed kicked open the door to the captains cabin, dragging Izzy all the way before turning and throwing him into the chair Stede liked to keep at his excuse for a deck, pinning Izzy down with a fist and a pleading, desperate look.
Izzy let his palms flatten out on the arms, sink into the cushion behind him, yielding and pliant.
Ed lifted his legs and settled on Izzy’s lap, straddling him, pinning him with his weight. “Let me see,” he was murmuring, repeating, the edge of desperation sharpening the mantra and Izzy tilted his neck to the side, let Ed run his hands over it, over the angry wound healing.
He closed his own hand over Ed’s wrist, stilling it and met Ed’s eyes, steeling himself against the pleading gaze staring back at him, forcing himself not to flinch away at the vulnerability. “It’s done, Edward,” he rasped, face twisting at the words as they came to settle in his chest, a slick sort of home he’d never wanted to give anything.
“Iz,” Ed said and it was a broken howl, a promise he’d never been able to keep, and Izzy kept his gaze, refused to cry, held him through the realisation they’d taken his thing and taken everything that had made him out of him and delivered a rotten corpse back.
The door to the suite opened and shut and there was Bonnet, because there was always Bonnet and he was the perpetual thorn in Izzy’s side he couldn’t get rid of except now he was actually at his side, tea in hand, head cocked in question. “Seems a weird punishment to cut the vocal cords - not even all of them, at that,” he mused, tone mild. “Is this a normal thing for pirates to do?’
“Izzy’s not a pirate-“
“- Shut up, Edward-“
“- you’re not, I won’t let them have that-“
“- They already took it,” and the last words were a hiss, sandpaper on his throat and Izzy swore he could feel blood trickling back down into his lungs at them but he held onto it and found the facts for Ed and him and he’d be the only one to hold onto how things had to be, that was how it had always been except -
“Of course Izzy’s a pirate,” Stede interrupted, a perfect model of confusion. “He’s been a pirate ever since you two met, hasn’t he Edward?”
“I was on the beach before that,” Izzy answered in his dry horrible mockery of a voice, because he might have had himself dragged out and set on fire but he wasn’t going to let Edward take this from him, the last secret he had so he splayed it out for Stede instead, broke his own ribs open and begged will you see me now, “I drowned men on the beach Bonnet, I sung for them and I cracked them open and I feasted on their innards until their blood was dripping down my chin. Edward doesn’t kill so that I can afford to eat, so that I can take the men he’s meant to slay and rip their throats out instead, shove their hearts down my gullet while they smile. Didn’t it occur to you to wonder why men ran up the flag before Blackbeard’s ship even boarded?”
“You’re a siren,” Stede marvelled and -
“- was,” Izzy cut in, bitter and chest aching, throat aching with the need to sing, his lifeblood drained and depleted out of him and left to rot in the brig below where they’d found him. He tightened the hand circled around Ed’s wrist instead, felt the pulse beating under it, the fragile force running through them both and swallowed down his salvia at the thought. “It’s done, Edward.”
“They took what was mine,” Edward said in reply, acknowledgement of the facts, exhausted anger threading through the words and above him Izzy watched his own true north fall apart, shaking and trembling, the resignation of failure setting in and he knew it too well and, “they clawed it out and they died for their sins but Iz I was - I - “
“Edward,” Izzy rasped, holding him still, holding his wrist and his world narrowing onto the point of connection, the river between them ever flowing and yet dammed off at this juncture, at this horrible realisation Izzy had to force upon him but he was a first mate by the sun rise and he still would be by the sun down so he dipped his head forward, resting it against Edwards and repeated, “it’s done.” He let the man soak in the realisation, let the man know he’d never hear Izzy sing, never hear those melodic tones giving orders across the deck, never hear anything but the rasp and the reminders of both of their own bitter failures.
Izzy wrapped his tongue around the acrid taste of it all and swallowed, deep down, pushing the loss into him as if it could ever fill the space of what had been stolen from him, and held Edward as he wept.