everybody's got their limits (nobody's found mine)

by oopshidaisy

Summary:

After 153 days, killing Stede Bonnet had begun to lose its appeal.

(Or: Izzy gets stuck in a time loop.)

Notes:

here it is - my fate & fortune fic! my prompt was the five of pentacles, the nine of swords, and the ten of wands. i went in knowing nothing about tarot, but have been reliably informed by those in the know that this is one of the more miserable spreads that it's possible to get. very edizzy

detailed content warnings (with spoilers) are in the end notes

and the title is from 'choked out' by the mountain goats

After 153 days, killing Stede Bonnet had begun to lose its appeal.

Izzy stared down at the lifeless body. He kicked it, once, making sure it was dead. And then he waited for what Edward would do.

Sometimes, Edward was merciful. This was usually when Izzy killed Bonnet during the duel: Edward would turn away from him, or banish him, or ask Bonnet’s idiots whether they had a brig on the ship to put him in (they didn’t), and Izzy would finish out the day begging Edward to look at him, to understand why he’d done it, until the minutes tipped past midnight and everything began all over again.

But when Izzy killed Bonnet some other way, some cowardly way—that was when Edward got angry.

That was when Edward killed him.

Dying by Edward’s hand was like nothing Izzy could have imagined, though there was a sting of inevitability to it. A captain and his first mate didn’t live out their days together in peace: Hornigold was proof enough of that. Somewhere deep inside him, Izzy had always known that he would disappoint Edward in some irreparable way, and he had always suspected that Edward might be the one to kill him, in the end.

Expecting something, he had come to realise, was worlds apart from experiencing it.

It wasn’t the pain so much. Pain, Izzy could withstand, and Edward rarely drew out his death into anything that could resemble torture. He ran Izzy through, or he shot him; once he tried to strangle Izzy to death and wound up collapsing into wretched, choking sobs before Izzy lost consciousness.

No—the worst thing, every time, was the way Edward looked at him. For years, the best Izzy had gotten was sideways glances: orders delivered over Edward’s shoulder, conversations conducted side by side. The full impact of Edward’s gaze had always been like the first cold shock of diving into the ocean; when he killed Izzy, his eyes were full of pain, and profound disappointment, and it was like drowning.

Edward always cried. If there was a way to kill Bonnet that didn’t end with Edward crying, Izzy hadn’t found it yet.

On this occasion he’d committed the deed in private, hoping to avoid Edward’s presence, but he was only in the process of bending and putting weights into Bonnet’s pockets when the door burst open and in Edward spilled, already tense from the sound of Bonnet’s dying bleat. He looked at Izzy, eyes welling up—as though this was betrayal, and Izzy supposed it was. This had been one of the days when he’d stuck most closely to the established script. I’ll happily end it, he’d said, and Edward had ordered him not to.

“Izzy,” he said, the way he always said it: hurt and furious and like Izzy was nothing, nothing, compared to Stede fucking Bonnet. “I told you—I said—”

“You weren’t going to do it, boss,” Izzy said. His throat felt tight, the truth of it choking him. Edward wouldn’t ever kill Bonnet, though he’d kill Izzy easily enough.

“Fuck you, Izzy,” Edward whispered. “I told you not to. You—fuck!”

He was on Izzy, then, hand brutally tight around his throat, slamming him into the wall. Izzy’s feet slipped in Bonnet’s blood. It was all so familiar. All of it had happened before.

Izzy closed his eyes; he wanted this part to be over already. Edward would half-strangle him, then release, letting him fall to the ground. Then he’d shoot Izzy in the head.  

“Look at me!” Edward shouted. Izzy followed the order.

Edward’s face was wet, his eyes adrift in an ocean of tears. After so many times, it should have ceased to matter. Izzy should have been able to look at him and feel nothing, his heart a cold, useless stone in his chest. But Edward’s breath shuddered, a broken sound catching in his throat, and Izzy felt the same way he always did: like he was being ripped open, like an echo of Edward’s pain lived inside him.

He clutched at Edward’s wrist. His intention wasn’t to pull him off, or to stop the clutch of his hand around Izzy’s throat. In his more sentimental moments, Izzy thought of his touch as a way to take it all onto himself, to become both killer and killed, absolving Edward of his part in the act. 

“It didn’t have to be like this,” Edward said, almost to himself, as if Izzy wasn’t there at all. Then his gaze sharpened, his eyes slamming into Izzy’s with all the inevitability of a bullet. “You made this. This was you.”

I know, Izzy would have said if he could speak.

He knew it was his job to fix things. He just didn’t know how.

 

After it was over, and Edward had shot him, Izzy woke up. He was lying in the bed he’d seized upon their invasion of Bonnet’s ship, too comfortable by half. The silence of the early morning was ringing in his ears. 

He touched the spot on his temple where the bullet had gone in, instinctually, and then he got up and began the mechanical process of getting ready to live the same day over again.

 

Every so often, Izzy let himself rest. Not from his job, of course, but from the business of killing Bonnet and letting Edward kill him.

He hadn’t, at first. He’d spent a long time in a half-awake frenzy of wanting—needing—Bonnet dead, of waking up each day with renewed determination driving him onwards. But time had robbed him of his anger. He went through the motions, still, getting rid of Bonnet through every means at his disposal, but occasionally he got up and allowed the day to progress without bloodshed, activity proceeding around him with the unreality of children’s games. None of it mattered. None of it would last.

The day always started the same, with Izzy reporting to Edward’s cabin to assist him with scaring the crew.

He could remember, although distantly, the night that had proceeded this endless day, when Edward had regaled Bonnet’s lot with his tale of the Kraken. They’d been enraptured; people always were by Edward’s stories. They believed every word.

Although Izzy couldn’t claim to know what had happened to Edward’s father, he knew bullshit when he heard it. He knew what it sounded like when Edward was lying.

This version of the past was new. Previous iterations of Edward’s father had been a lout who was lost at sea, a nobleman who left Edward and his mother high and dry, and a drunk who died in a puddle of his own vomit. Only one sentiment connected each tale: good riddance.

When the story was over, Edward had pulled Izzy aside. Wake at dawn and come see me, he’d said. We’re gonna give ’em the fright of their lives.

Edward had been right, although his performance the next morning amounted to no more than a few parlour tricks and a bit of fog. Since the first time, Izzy had gotten the hang of tempering the fuckery—keeping Edward satisfied without letting things go so far that people started jumping overboard or biting each other. Spriggs’ finger had only been amputated the once.

After that, his job was to remove Edward from the harness. It had taken thirty go-arounds before he was able to get Edward out of the blasted thing without humiliating them both, but by now it was simply another task he could perform without thinking, like stitching up a wound or polishing his sword.

Without him prodding Bonnet into it, there was no fuckery to worry about, and in its absence the day tended to go one of two ways: either Edward and Bonnet spent it together, holed up in the captain’s cabin, or Bonnet put on so-called ‘team-building exercises’ on the main deck, distracting everybody from their work.

Izzy couldn’t tell what tipped the balance either way. Logic dictated that it must be something he’d done; he was the only variance. But he certainly never asked Bonnet to put on fucking team-building exercises, so perhaps it was simply another cosmic joke.

Today was a team-building day.

Izzy tried to stay well out of the way, but Edward sidled up to him while the crew of the Revenge were falling into one another’s arms, ostensibly to prove that they trusted one another. Izzy had, on numerous occasions, tried to point out that they were pirates and that they shouldn’t trust one another, but this time he hadn’t bothered. He’d taken the helm instead, because Buttons kept drifting over to join in with the activities and Izzy wanted to make sure they stayed out of the path of the Dutch ship.

“They’re having fun down there,” Edward said. Not long ago, he’d been holding a gun to Izzy’s head. But that hadn't happened yet. Here, this morning, Izzy hadn’t ruined everything.

He grunted in response.

“You could join in,” Edward said. “I could take over here.”

It was a strange offer. Steering a ship was one of those things Edward was infuriatingly gifted at, but it was also one of those things he hated doing unless they were navigating tricky, shallow waters, where everyone could ooh and ahh at Blackbeard effortlessly guiding them to safety.

“No need, boss,” Izzy said. He found it hard to imagine a worse way to spend an afternoon than consciously removing his defences, trusting Bonnet’s imbeciles to catch him.

Edward shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

He wasn’t looking in Izzy’s direction; his gaze was pointed downwards, at where Bonnet was holding his arms out for Roach to fall into. Edward waved. Bonnet waved back enthusiastically, just as Roach tipped himself backwards.

“Oof!” Bonnet said. “Sorry, Roach. Pick yourself up, there, and we’ll move on to the next activity!”

 

There wasn’t any use in sleeping. Izzy knew, by now, how the cycle worked. As soon as the night ticked past midnight, he was flung back to the first light of the previous day. It didn’t matter if he was awake, asleep, or dead—it always happened the same way.

At first, he’d been sure that the key to his freedom was killing Bonnet.

It made sense. The day he was trapped in was the day he’d failed to kill Bonnet, striking left rather than striking true. God was giving him a chance to correct that mistake.

And it made sense because, surely, this was about Edward. Izzy’s job was to serve Edward, to save him, and getting rid of Bonnet was paramount to that goal.

But he’d killed Bonnet every way he knew how. He’d run him through; poisoned him; thrown him into the ocean and let him drown. He’d shot Bonnet, though not so often as Edward liked to shoot him, and he’d slit his throat, and he’d driven him to death with his bare fists. Once or twice, by sheer luck during the duel, Bonnet had killed him right back—though of course Izzy had been too dead to know how that turned out.

The first time he’d died at Bonnet’s hands, Izzy had woken up wondering if Edward had shed a tear for him. The second time, Izzy had realised he didn’t want to know.

 

He’d killed himself for the first time on the twentieth version of the day. With rope, in the cabin Edward had fashioned for his cell after Izzy pushed Bonnet overboard.

Even as he was tying the noose, he’d told himself it was only to force the day to end. He couldn’t die: he’d known that by then. Edward had already killed him a dozen times.

But maybe he’d hoped. Maybe he’d hoped, because when all was said and done and he woke up, his neck as bare and unscarred as it had been the previous morn—

He’d screamed into his pillow, short and sharp, and then he’d gotten up and relived the day.

 

It was like being a ghost. Maybe this was what dying was; maybe hell was nothing more than a prison constructed of time. Izzy knew better than to think it purgatory. Even if purgatory hadn’t been a blasphemous fiction, Izzy harboured no illusions about his own goodness. He knew he deserved nothing better than damnation.

Time and again, he challenged Bonnet to the duel. He fought, and he won, or he lost, and it didn’t matter either way, because none of it was what Edward needed from him, or what God wanted from him.

He fought, and none of it mattered.

 

“Oh—” Bonnet was saying, like he was shocked to find out what a sword did, and his crew were all jeering; this was what they wanted.

Usually he died quicker than this.

Izzy touched the wound in his gut. Blood was pouring out: a river, an ocean. It pooled around him; he was floating in it. “Edward,” he said. Or he thought he said it.

“You’re so stupid,” Edward said, and his voice sounded close by, but Izzy couldn’t see him. “Why’d you do it, Iz? Why—?”

Izzy opened his mouth. He wanted to say, None of this is real. He wanted to say, None of this is real, but it still hurts. He wanted to ask Edward to make it stop hurting.

“No, shut up. Stay still. You’ll be fine, just don’t fucking move, Iz, don’t you fucking move—”

 

Izzy woke up.

 

The following night, Edward killed him.

 

“I did this for you,” Izzy said while Edward wept over Bonnet’s body. The duel had only lasted a few seconds, this time, quick and clean. Edward was crying too hard to hear him—and in any case he wouldn’t remember. “All of this is for you.”

When the sobbing petered out, Edward turned to him, cold and hollow, and said, “He was my friend.”

Izzy said what he always said when Edward brought this up.

“Blackbeard doesn’t have friends.”

There was silence but for the muffled sobs of the Revenge’s crew. Edward held onto the corpse’s hand.

“Fang? Ivan?” he called, and the two of them stepped forward. “Take Mr Hands back to the Anne.”

Without hesitation, Ivan grabbed hold of Izzy’s arm. “Yes, boss.”

“You can’t stay here, Edward,” Izzy said.

Edward glared at him. His eyes were pure hate, and it was a struggle not to physically recoil. “Thought this was what you wanted, Iz. You can be the captain now. Take the Anne, I don’t care. Become Blackbeard. Do whatever you want. It’s yours, now. All of it’s yours.”

“That’s not what I want,” Izzy said. His nails bit into his left palm, sending out starbursts of dull pain. Though the night was as balmy as all the nights were this far south, he felt frozen to his core.

“I don’t care what you want,” Edward said. “Either leave, now, or I’ll kill you.”

Izzy looked at the dark, roiling expanse of the water. He never made it to the Queen Anne when Edward chose to banish him there; the ship was too far away and midnight was encroaching fast.

“Kill me,” he said. “Get it over with.”

Edward looked surprised, for a moment, and then his eyes hardened over. “I mean it,” he said.

“So do I.”

 

Another time, he prostrated himself at Edward’s feet and begged him not to kill him. He didn’t expect it to work.

“I never want to see you again,” Edward said.

Izzy took the gun and put it in his own mouth.

 

He woke up. He helped Edward scare the crew.

“That was cool,” Edward said, halfway out of the harness, his hand tight on the spot where Izzy’s neck spread out into his shoulder. “We should do shit like that more often.”

“We could do it every day,” Izzy muttered. He was tired; he was always tired, but today it felt like he was sleepwalking, like it was all a dream. Even Edward’s touch couldn’t bring him to the surface.

“Eh, that’d be a bit much,” Edward said. He hopped down from the barrel, started walking. Bonnet hovered nearby, but Edward seemed distracted. Izzy followed him numbly. “More like, every couple weeks. Make a party out of it.”

“If that’s what you want,” Izzy said.

Edward stopped and glanced back at him. “You alright, mate?” he asked, and then, without waiting for a reply: “I know, I know—but can’t we have a bit of fun with the guy before we kill him? It’s been nice, hasn’t it, taking a load off?”

Exhaustion battered Izzy’s skull. “Yeah,” he said. “Taking a load off.”

“You should relax a bit, Iz,” Edward said.

Izzy flexed his hands. “What if I can’t?”

This earned him another glance, fleeting as the flap of a butterfly’s wings.

“I mean, I dunno, mate. Just try it? Oh, and can you make sure the cook’s making those little flatbreads for breakfast? I’m fuckin’ famished.”

 

On his way to the galley, Izzy almost smashed headfirst into Buttons. Just the person he tried hardest to avoid.

“You seem tired, laddie,” Buttons said. There was always a glint of something in his eye, like he knew, though he’d never offered anything besides vague, meandering conversations that always seemed to flow back to the topic of the moon, or the sea, or some combination thereof.

“Yeah,” Izzy said.

Buttons stared at him without blinking. “Maybe you should take yer captain’s advice,” he said.

“What advice?” Izzy snapped.

“It’s not too late,” Buttons said. “Yet.”

Izzy sighed. “I know,” he said, pushing past. “It’s never too fucking late.”

 

“It’s my job to make sure that Edward is content,” Izzy said to Bonnet, for perhaps the hundredth time. Every time he said it, it felt still more important, like a directive being spoken by the universe.

Or maybe he was going fucking insane.

 

That night, he didn’t kill Bonnet. He didn’t challenge him to a duel. He lingered in the shadows and watched Edward and Bonnet emerge from wherever it was they went together after the Revenge crew’s fuckery. They looked happy: smiles on both their faces, Bonnet’s hand straying frequently to the small of Edward’s back. There wasn’t anything missing from the picture. There wasn’t any notable absence at Edward’s side.

And Izzy wasn’t so stupid that he didn’t know, by now, what the white-hot lance of pain he felt every time he looked at them was. He knew—had always known, deep down—that it was nothing more noble than base envy.

It wasn’t so much that Bonnet had seduced Edward. Their grunting on the deck, while disturbing, was hardly anything new. Jack Rackham had been more shameless than a thousand Bonnets combined, and Izzy had been privy to any number of intimate moments over the years they’d sailed together.

But Jack hadn’t mattered. He hadn’t been essential to Edward the way Izzy was; there was never any question of him taking Izzy’s place. He was an occasional nuisance—but Izzy knew how to deal with his type. They were easily distracted by loot or women or a bottle of rum spiked with a sleeping draught.

Bonnet, though. Bonnet was like nothing Izzy had ever encountered before. He’d gotten his hooks into Edward without even meeting him, and every part of his useless, bumbling personality had only seemed to charm Edward further. It wasn’t a case of Bonnet taking Izzy’s place: it was as though Bonnet had eclipsed Izzy’s entire fucking existence. It was as though everything Izzy had ever done, every year of service, had been obliterated the moment Edward had stepped foot on the Revenge. Izzy felt like there was nothing left of him.

He was, he realised, standing astern, leaning over the wooden railing like a backwards figurehead. It was a peaceful night: the inky sea was rolling softly underneath, beckoning.

He tipped himself over and fell.

 

When he woke, it was as though from a dream of hands reaching for him—but it couldn’t be, of course. He no longer dreamed of anything at all.

 

He said, “Wait,” and Edward waited, though his gun was raised and Bonnet, beneath them, was rapidly losing blood. They both knew survival was unlikely; already Bonnet had ceased his gibbering and shut his eyes. Even as his chest rose and fell with the promise of life, his breathing rattled out in a laboured whine. Roach was crouched over him, trying to stem the bleeding without success.

There was a whisper, a sound, metal through air.

Edward’s expression changed, oddly. It was still full of all the anger and despair and recrimination that Izzy was used to, but there entered something conflicted, sharp, like a—

Like a knife in the back.

Izzy gasped. He went to his knees, dizzy, feeling the sticky ooze of blood beneath his shirt. Jiminez had been precise.

“No,” Edward said, as if he didn’t—as if he hadn’t wanted this, and it was funny, wasn’t it, so Izzy laughed, a garbled sort of sound, spitting blood onto the deck and laughing, and laughing.

“Why did you do that?” Edward yelled, his gun now trained on Jiminez, now, and wasn’t that something? Izzy was still laughing; this was the funniest joke God had ever told.

“Thought you were going to kill him,” Jiminez said warily.

“No,” Edward said. “I wasn’t, Iz, I swear I wasn’t.”

Maybe it was even true: Izzy had stabbed Bonnet during the duel tonight, after all. But then again, what did it matter? Whether Edward killed him or didn’t this time was irrelevant. He wanted to. He always wanted to.

Edward was sobbing, now, heaves of breath and “don’t leave me” chanted over and over, which was what he often said when Bonnet died slow. Izzy shut his eyes; he didn’t want to see Edward weeping over Bonnet, not when he was dying himself. Laughing hurt too much, so he stopped. And then breathing hurt too much, so he stopped that too.

 

When he woke up, he felt like he was still dead, or dying, or at least like a corpse that hadn’t a hope in the world of moving. He lay still, curled on his side, and he listened to the sound of his heartbeat in his ears, hating it.

He had vague plans to get up and kill himself before Edward noticed his absence, but all too soon the door was bursting open and Edward was shaking him, saying his name, a little annoyed but not devastated, not yet, not this early in the day.

At the sound of his voice Izzy felt something release in his chest, unravelling. He was crying. More than crying; he was sobbing, huge wet gulps of air followed by shuddering outpourings of saltwater, all over his face, his pillow, Edward’s hands.

Because Edward was touching his face, not gently, almost as if he was trying to push the tears back inside.

“C’mon, Iz, stop it, don’t—”

Izzy tried to follow the order. He held his breath, and when that didn’t work he tried to wrench himself away from Edward and at least muffle the hideous sounds issuing from him into his pillow. But Edward held onto him through it all, his fingers tight enough to bruise. Izzy tried to focus on the pain. He tried to focus on the roughness of Edward’s fingers, the litany of textures that spoke of burns, nicks, and hard fucking work. But all he could think was that the bruises wouldn’t last, not even long enough to blossom purple, and the knowledge only made him cry harder. This, Edward touching him, was just as ephemeral as the rest of it.

“Hey, man, come on, this isn’t you,” Edward was saying, panicked.

It wasn’t. But then he wasn’t the Izzy Edward knew anymore. He was a dead man, a phantom, and maybe the trick was getting Edward to realise that. Or maybe the trick was getting Edward to raise him from the dead. Maybe there wasn’t any trick, and Izzy was just a defect in the fabric of the universe, fated to exist this way forever.

He’d never cried in front of Edward before, not like this. On occasion, physical pain had gotten the better of him, and tears had leaked from his eyes while they both pretended not to notice, but even that hadn’t happened in years.

“I can’t do this,” Izzy said, his throat spasming as he tried to get the words out. “I’ve tried everything. I can’t, I can’t—”

Edward made an odd sound, then, almost like a sob himself, and clambered over to lie behind Izzy.

They hadn’t done this in decades, not since they’d been forced to share a hammock as lads. After so much time, it shouldn’t have felt familiar in the slightest—but it did. A traitorous part of Izzy had always felt like he fit in his captain’s arms. Edward pressed his hand over Izzy’s belly, which rose and fell with convulsive breaths, and nosed at his shoulder.

“Shut up, Iz, you’re scaring me,” Edward said. It was unexpected—so unexpected that Izzy managed to respond in an approximation of a full sentence.

“Thought Blackbeard didn’t get scared.”

He could feel Edward’s breathing, the warmth of it on his skin. It steadied him.

“Mm,” Edward said. “Think they believed me?”

“About you not feeling fear?”

“About all of it. The Kraken and everything.” Edward’s beard scratched the back of Izzy’s neck as he spoke.

“Yeah,” Izzy said, “they believed you.”

“How about you?”

Izzy swallowed thickly. It felt very much like a trick question, like there was a punishment waiting at the end of every reply. He tried to shift, to at least catch a glimpse of Edward’s face, but Edward held him still. If this was an interrogation, Izzy thought, it was a remarkably comforting one. Edward was warm all around him, smelling of leather and sweat, his buckles forming indents on Izzy’s bare skin.

“No, Edward,” Izzy said, deciding on the truth. “I don’t believe in the Kraken.”

“Must be nice,” Edward said. “Not believing in monsters.”

Once more, Izzy was lost for how to respond. In his experience, Edward went in for the superstitious in a way that danced the line of a joke; he spoke of mermaids and sirens often, though never without a teasing lilt to the corner of his mouth.

“Plenty of stuff that can kill you without bringing monsters into it,” Izzy said. There were still tears dripping from his eyes, onto the pillow, like the dregs of a storm.

“Right you are,” Edward said. “You want to tell me what’s got you all…?”

He drummed his fingers on Izzy’s stomach.

“Doesn’t matter,” Izzy said. “This one won’t count. You won’t remember it.”

Edward sighed. “If this is about Stede,” he said, “I didn’t realise you were so upset, mate. It’s only been a few weeks.”

“A few weeks,” Izzy said, laughing into the puddle of his own tears. “Christ.”

“Iz—”

“For me it’s been months,” Izzy said. “About half a year, maybe more. It’s hard to keep track.”

“What are you talking about?”

Edward sounded wary, like he was unsure whether he was being made fun of—though he must have known that Izzy had never mocked him before, and was unlikely to start now.

“This day,” Izzy explained. “I’ve been living it over and over again. I’m stuck in it, and I can’t fucking do it anymore.”

Saying it was as much a release as the tears had been.

“If you’re having me on,” Edward said, “I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” Izzy asked, breaking free and turning around so he could look Edward in the eye. He knew his face was a reddened mess, pathetic and snivelling, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. None of this would last. “You’ll kill me? You’ve done that, Edward, fucking dozens of times.”

“What? No,” Edward said. “No, Iz, I haven’t. I wouldn’t do that.”

“Because you don’t kill people, or because you wouldn’t kill me?” Izzy asked, curious for all of a split second before he realised what he was really asking. “Fuck it. It doesn’t matter. Maybe you regret it afterwards, I don’t know. When I die, everything just starts again.”

“No, come on. It’s a nightmare,” Edward said. There was confidence in his voice, but Izzy could feel the way his body had gone still and tense. “You had a nightmare, and that’s—whatever, man, happens to the best of us. But you can’t honestly think I’d kill you, Iz.”

“What if I killed Bonnet?”

Edward startled. “I said I’d—”

“You don’t,” Izzy interrupted, not bothering to temper the frustration in his tone. “I don’t know if you know you’re lying to me, but you are. You don’t kill him. You never kill him.”

Understanding began to dawn, the way it always did on Edward’s face, beautifully. “So you do it instead.”

“I do what needs to be done,” Izzy said. It sounded weak, wet, like the squalling of a newborn. And the way Edward was looking at him now was almost pitying.

“Every day?”

“No,” Izzy admitted. “But…most days.”

“Why?” Edward asked.

Once, Izzy had been sure of his reasons. It was about protecting Edward from Bonnet’s cloying weakness, about forcing him to get back to the Queen Anne, where they belonged—where the crew were sure to mutiny if they were left alone much longer. It was about getting back to the way things were supposed to be.

“Because I hate him,” Izzy replied, which was what existed at the heart of it all. “I hate him more than I’ve ever hated anyone on this godforsaken earth. I hate what he’s done to you. I hate what he’s done to me. And I want him fucking dead.”

He started crying again as he spoke, and scrubbed furiously at his eyes.

Edward frowned. “Izzy, that’s—fuck, man.” He shifted in the small space between Izzy and the wall, his leg slotting between Izzy’s. “So you kill him almost every day, and then we fight, and—what’s so funny?”

Izzy didn’t even feel like he was laughing, really. It felt more like he was gasping for air.

“We don’t fight,” he said. “I kill Bonnet, you kill me. That’s all there is.”

Edward’s brow creased and a sound issued from his throat, something without a translation Izzy knew.

“That’s fucked up,” he said, soft but urgent. “Even for you, Iz, that’s—why would you keep killing him? What’s the fucking point?”

“I’ll get it right,” Izzy said—but he didn’t sound sure, and he could tell Edward didn’t believe him for a moment. It was difficult to lie to someone when they were right there in front of you, their eyes close enough to drown in.

“You won’t,” Edward responded, without so much as a waver in his voice. He’d learned about Izzy’s private hell all of two minutes ago, and already he thought he had the answer. Izzy wanted, desperately, for him to have the answer. “Iz, come on, the universe isn’t conspiring so you can kill some guy you don’t like. That’d be insane. That’d make Stede, like, the most important guy to ever live.”

“That’s not it,” Izzy asked, desperation for Edward to understand turning his voice soft, porous. It wasn’t about Bonnet. It wasn’t about Izzy, either. “Please, Edward, don’t make me say it.”

“I’m not making you say anything,” said Edward, and he wasn’t. He was just listening. It had been so long that Izzy had mistaken one for the other. “You’re telling me this crazy story, and I’m pretending like it’s not the weirdest thing I’ve ever fucking heard.”

“I wouldn’t lie to you,” Izzy said. “Not about something like this.”

Edward shut his eyes. “Yeah, I know. Maybe you’re going mad.”

“Maybe.”

And then Edward’s eyes were open again, bright with something that couldn’t be tears. “Promise me something, Iz?” he said.

“Yes,” Izzy said without hesitation.

“Don’t let me kill you,” Edward said. “If I really—if that’s really what happens, I want you to fight me.”

“Edward—”

“It’s an order,” Edward said urgently. “You don’t know what it’d do to me. If I killed you. If it turned out to happen for real.”

The air in Izzy’s cabin felt abruptly too hot. He shifted atop the bedclothes, aware in a way he hadn’t been before of how close to naked he was, lying across from Edward in all his leather.

It wasn’t an easy thing to promise. Besides the fact that Edward was a skilled swordfighter in his own right, and armed with a gun during most of their confrontations, Izzy hadn’t ever raised his sword to Edward in violence before, and found it difficult to even imagine doing so.

“Izzy,” Edward said sharply. “Promise me.”

“Yes,” Izzy said. “Yes, Captain.”

 

They got up, and they didn’t scare the crew; instead, Edward gathered everyone together on the main deck and laid out the broadest possible strokes of the situation, avoiding any mentions of Izzy killing Stede or anyone killing Izzy. As he spoke, Izzy stood off to one side, trying in vain to ignore the dozen sets of curious eyes on him.

“So,” Edward finished, spreading his arms grandly, “any ideas?”

Frenchie was the first to raise his hand. “Yeah, so this actually happened to a friend of mine?” he said.

“Shit, really?” Edward said. “See, Iz, this is why you ask for help.”

Izzy rolled his eyes. “And how did this friend of yours fix it?” he asked Frenchie.

“Well, it was a curse,” Frenchie explained, “put on him by a witch. You haven’t pissed off any witches lately, have you?”

“Not that I know of,” Izzy said, flat.

“Maybe I’m a witch,” said Spriggs, “and you should be nicer to me.”

“No,” Izzy said.

“I’m feeling like Izzy’s not really open to ideas right now?” Spriggs said. “Maybe we should circle back to this another day.”

“There won’t be any other days."

“For you, maybe,” Spriggs said.

“Alright,” Edward interjected, “that’s great. But we’re trying to help Izzy, here—”

“Why?” asked Roach.

“Because I fucking said so,” Edward said, a hint of steel entering his voice. It was nowhere close to the intimidation Izzy knew him to be capable of, but it had the crew of the Revenge drawing back as though struck. Maybe Edward was onto something with his nice guy performance: it didn’t take a lot to get people cowering when they saw you as harmless most of the time. “Any other questions? Or can we get to fixing this shit?”

 

“What if it’s about making amends?” said Fang. “For all the people you’ve hurt.”

“That’s fucking stupid,” Izzy said.

Fang slumped. Beside him, Ivan patted his shoulder and said, “Worth a try.”

 

It wasn’t long before Bonnet discovered them. He was a late riser when left to his own devices, but Izzy had spent a good while fucking sobbing in Edward’s arms, apparently, and it was already mid-morning.

“What’s all this, then?” Bonnet asked, puffing up with indignation. “Roach, I’m sure we were all hoping for a little sustenance this morning?”

Roach rolled his eyes. Izzy felt an unexpected kinship with him.

“Sorry,” Roach said, without sounding at all sorry. “Something came up.”

“And that would be...?” Bonnet said, pompous as ever.

“Iggy’s stuck in a time loop,” said Spriggs.

“A—what?” Bonnet frowned at Izzy, suspicion twisting his face into a tight knot of wrinkles. Izzy glared right back.

“He says he’s living the same day over and over,” Oluwande explained.

“Well,” Bonnet said, “that seems terribly unlikely, and I’m famished, so—”

“It’s real,” Edward said, and Bonnet’s face transformed, like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. Izzy’s scowl deepened. “Iz wouldn’t lie to me.”

“Wouldn’t he,” Bonnet responded. His doubt made Izzy want to bare his teeth. Out of habit, more than anything else, his hand found the hilt of his sword.

“Izzy,” Edward said, though he wasn’t looking at him. He was, predictably, fixated on Bonnet.

Izzy put his hands behind his back, squeezing his wrist with his gloved hand. “Yes, boss,” he said.

 

Bonnet was even less helpful than the rest of them.

“Have you tried pinching yourself?” he asked. “I always find that a helpful way to figure out if I’m in a dream or not. If you can feel the pinch, it’s real life.”

Izzy didn’t dignify that with a response.

“Well, if you don’t want my help…” Bonnet huffed.

Izzy said, “I feel everything.”

The first thing he thought of, bizarrely, wasn’t the way it felt to bleed out, to lie there as the life drained from his body. The first thing he thought of was Edward’s hands on his face, and the fingerprints that wouldn’t have a chance to bruise.

He said, “I’d know if I was fucking dreaming.”

 

Bonnet insisted on something he called ‘brunch’, and it was with pastries laid out on a blanket in the centre of the deck that the ideas really began to flow, each worse than the one before.

“What if you made a sacrifice to the sea?” Buttons suggested.

“We could try retracing our steps,” Frenchie said. “Resailing our steps. Maybe there’s something in the water.”

“How about true love’s kiss?” said Jim, of all the fucking people. They were smirking. This was, in many ways, worse than the time they’d stabbed Izzy in the back. “Like in that story you read us a few weeks ago, Captain.”

“Ooh, yes,” Bonnet said. “That’s a lovely idea.”

“I’ll kill anyone who touches me,” Izzy snapped.

“Hmph,” Bonnet said. “Living the same day hasn’t softened you any, I see.”

Izzy twitched. He thought of weeping while Edward held him. He didn’t say anything; to his relief, Edward didn’t either. In fact, Edward had gone very quiet, and very still.

“Doesn’t really matter if you kill us,” Spriggs said thoughtfully, “if the day’s repeating.”

Izzy bared his teeth. “I’ll make it hurt.”

“Promise?” Spriggs said, smiling in a way that made Izzy’s skin itch.

“Now, now,” Bonnet said, clapping his hands together, “just because we might be stuck in an endless day doesn’t mean we shouldn’t treat one another with kindness. We’ll have no threats of torture, or, um, affection.”

Izzy nodded stiffly.

“So,” Bonnet said, “why don’t you tell us what’s been going on in this loop of yours so far, Izzy?”

Izzy hesitated. “It’s been,” he said, “uneventful.”

 

“Nearly midnight,” Edward said, stepping up beside Izzy at the prow. The rest of the crew were still brainstorming, but Izzy had left around the time talk had turned to the kissing of frogs.

“Yeah.”

“And I really won’t remember anything?” Edward asked. It was a useless sort of question: if he didn’t remember anything from the previous loops now, he wouldn’t remember this one going forward. But there was a quiet desperation to the way he asked, like he wanted the impossible answer.

“You haven’t so far.”

“I’m sorry,” Edward said. The wind whipped his hair sideways; they were standing so close that the ends flicked Izzy’s jaw. “Must be lonely.”

Izzy glanced up at the night sky. Tonight—every night—the moon was a perfect half-circle, stuck in between. “I’ve been lonely a long time,” he said. “Longer than—longer than this has been going on.”

“Yeah,” Edward said. “Me too.”

Guilt made a breeding ground of Izzy’s gut. Edward shouldn’t have felt lonely. Izzy should have prevented it somehow. He thought—maybe if he’d convinced Jack to stay, instead of allowing him to set off in search of his own captaincy. Maybe if there’d been no mutiny against Hornigold in the first place, they could have stayed boys forever: little Eddie and Israel, tucked in that hammock side-by-side.

If he’d gotten stuck like this back then, Izzy thought, living the same day over and over, he might not have minded so much.

“I guess tomorrow you’ll get back to it,” Edward said. “Killing Stede.”

Izzy shrugged. It was probably true; the crew’s input had done little to convince him there was another way. “Might try some of the other stuff.”

“Saying you’re sorry?”

“Or sailing back the way we came.”

“True love’s kiss?”

Izzy kept his eyes fixed on the moon. “That’s just in Bonnet’s stories,” he said. “Nonsense. Not even worth fucking trying.”

“Eh. Not like you’re short on time,” Edward pointed out.

“Still,” Izzy said. He cut himself off there, because what was there to say? That true love wasn’t real, not for people like him—that if it was, the one person he could ever love was standing right next to him, just as unreachable as the moon in the sky. And Izzy’s cowardice was such that even here, even now, with the certainty that Edward would forget any minute, he couldn’t—

“If it was me,” Edward said, “I’d kiss everyone on the ship, see how it went.”

“Everyone?” Izzy asked. He couldn’t help the way his lips twitched into a smile. “Fang and Ivan?”

“At the same time,” Edward said gravely.

To his own shock, Izzy burst out laughing. “Christ, Edward,” he said, clutching at his side.

He looked up—and Edward was staring at him, his eyes liquid and glittering in the dark. Izzy’s laughter came to an awkward, stuttering halt. Edward opened his mouth, his lips shaping the zig-zag of Izzy’s name—

And Izzy was wrenched backwards and into the first light of the same fucking day.

 

Edward didn’t remember. It was just as Izzy had expected, and it was the most pain he’d felt since the whole thing began.

 

He killed Bonnet, and then he killed Jim for good measure. And he meant to fight back when Edward advanced towards him, but after the first clash of their swords the will fled from him, and he dropped his weapon to the deck. Edward yelled at him to fight back. Izzy ended up with Edward’s sword in his belly, but when the day started over he couldn’t quite remember how it got there.

 

Three repeats later, with Edward’s hand around his neck, Izzy realised he was angry with him.

He was furious at Edward: for not remembering, though such a thing was out of his control. For being lonely when Izzy was right there—no matter that Izzy felt the same. And for not killing Bonnet, the way he was supposed to, the way he’d told Izzy he would. The way he’d fucking promised.

He put his hands on Edward’s wrists, and it wasn’t absolution. He summoned every reserve of strength he had, and he wrenched Edward off him.

They were brawling, then, scrapping like pups. They knocked into furniture and tore down Bonnet’s gauzy curtain, their weapons abandoned as they fought. On this occasion, Izzy had killed Bonnet in the captain’s cabin while Edward watched: petty, vicious. He’d wanted Edward to hurt him. He’d wanted them to hurt each other.

Edward was crying, his tears landing on Izzy’s face, in his mouth—and Izzy was crying, too. He pulled Edward’s hair, scratched, bit him: coward’s moves, all of them. He hadn’t a hope when it came to strength or skill, not without a sword to hand. He sank his teeth into Edward’s flesh and managed to get on top, his knees on either side of Edward’s flank.

Once there, he didn’t know what to do. Edward didn’t seem to know, either—blinked up at him like he’d forgotten he had hands.

“I’m sorry,” Izzy said, and kissed him.

There was blood in both their mouths: each other’s. Edward was biting at his lips, but not—not like he wanted to pull away. He was clutching at Izzy’s thighs, and Izzy gasped, moaned, shook. It was perverse—Izzy knew full well how much Edward wanted him dead in this moment, knew that he’d have gone through with the deed if Izzy hadn’t managed to turn things around. There was a corpse just around the corner from them, a bloody hole in its chest.

Edward kissed him brutally, twisted so he was on top, and Izzy let him.

“Should kill you,” Edward hissed, into the mess of blood and spit and tears. Izzy could only gasp in response—one of Edward’s hands was fisted in his hair, but the other was grinding against the bulge in Izzy’s trousers, harsh and painful and so good Izzy could only writhe underneath it.

“Yes,” Izzy said, whether in response to Edward’s words or his touch he didn’t know.

“This is what you wanted, hm?” Edward said, and there was disgust in his voice. Izzy felt fresh tears pricking at his eyes. His next exhale couldn’t be called anything but a sob. “Izzy.” Edward grabbed him by the jaw. “Say it.”

“I wanted—” Izzy’s chest heaved. He was right on the edge, his vision spotty. “You.”

Edward made a wounded sound. He put his hand back on Izzy’s throat, and before there was any pressure at all Izzy was coming, bucking up into the weight of Edward’s hands.

And then Edward was pulling away.

“No,” Izzy gasped. “I—”

“You got what you wanted,” Edward told him, his voice gone cold. “Now get out of my sight.”

 

It was about as far from something called true love’s kiss as it was possible to get, Izzy thought later as he lay in his cabin, sticky and empty and disgusted with himself.

There was still a chink in the shell of him where hope crept in.

 

He woke up. He helped Edward scare the crew. He kept looking at his mouth, his hands. He fumbled with the harness for the first time in more than a hundred days.

“What’s going on with you today?” Edward asked, using Izzy for support as he hopped down from the barrel. His fingers were digging into Izzy’s shoulder, and Izzy couldn’t help it, the way his body went hot and his breathing turned quick and obvious. Back on solid footing, Edward examined him. “You’re acting bloody weird.”

“It’s nothing, boss,” Izzy said, strangled.

Clearly, Edward wasn’t convinced. But then Bonnet was prancing over with his customary gushing over the ‘Theatre of Fear’, of all the sickening ways to describe it, and Izzy managed to slip away.

 

In the safety of his cabin he got himself off, quick and perfunctory, like the lancing of a boil. Only—the fire beneath his skin didn’t abate, and before long he had his knees held up to his chest, three spit-slicked fingers working in and out of himself, his cock drooling over the swell of his stomach.

He’d been ignoring his carnal desires for as long as he’d been stuck in the day, but it seemed as though Edward’s touch had been the spark that set every part of him alight, all of it catching up to him at once. He felt almost crazed, like he couldn’t stop, even as another orgasm washed over him. After, he kept fucking himself until his wrist cramped, until his cock felt raw and overused, until he’d touched himself everywhere Edward had touched him and everywhere he wanted Ed to touch, dragging his fingers over his own chest, his own hips.

When he emerged from his cabin, he could hear the smug tittering of Spriggs and Black Pete coming from somewhere down the passageway, and he burned with a brief but all-consuming shame. Though he hadn’t approached the level of degeneracy they habitually engaged in, and they wouldn’t remember anyway, it was a struggle to pull himself together enough to live out the rest of the day.

 

He didn’t kill Bonnet. Instead, that evening, he watched from the shadows as Edward and Bonnet retired to the captain’s cabin together. Their arms kept brushing one another’s like a happy accident, and he could hear the warm, happy cadence of their voices. He didn’t intervene. When the two of them were gone, he made his way to the helm, where Buttons stood.

“Having a good day, First Mate Hands?”

“Fucking terrific,” Izzy said. “How do I make an offering to the sea?”

Buttons looked over at him. “Well, it’s about time,” he said. “Bad luck to have a vessel wi’ so few of the sailors showing proper respect to the sea.”

“Bad luck,” Izzy repeated.

“I’ve already warned the captain,” Buttons said, “but he’s been distracted as of late.”

Izzy found himself wondering if it would have made a mite of difference, had Stede Bonnet been making regular offerings to the ocean. His mind, worryingly, settled on the answer maybe.

“I’ve never done it before,” Izzy said. “I don’t know—”

“Ach, there’n’t nothing to it,” Buttons responded blithely. “Just take something that means the world to you, and fling it into the depths.”

Izzy reminded himself that he was desperate.

“It’s just chucking something in the fucking sea?”

Buttons gave him a cutting look, like he thought Izzy was being deliberately obtuse. “Not so simple as that. It must be something you can hardly stand to lose, else it means little to the great lady.”

“Right,” Izzy said. “Fucking—fuck it.”

His breath became sharp, anticipatory. There was only one item he gave a shit about—there was no decision-making involved. With a crushing inevitability, he undid his cravat and held the ring in his palm. The sunset made the small green stone glitter, more beautiful than such an old, tarnished thing had any right to be.

Izzy closed his fist around it. He drew his arm back and flung the ring as far as he could, his gut twisting as it sank beneath the lazily rolling waves.

 

When he woke up, his hand went immediately to his throat. The ring was there, cool and solid in its rightful place. Izzy felt relief pound through him. It didn’t matter that Edward surely didn’t remember giving him the ring, drunk as he’d been; Izzy had made a promise, that night, to wear it forever. To be Edward’s first mate for as long as they both shall live.

“Fuck,” he swore, and went to find Edward.

 

“That was cool,” Edward said. “We should do shit like that more often.”

He was smiling. The fuckery had gone well; no one overboard, no one bitten. Controlled chaos.

“We should,” Izzy agreed.

Edward stumbled from the barrel, landing badly on his knee. It was instinct that had Izzy reaching out, steadying Edward with a hand on his hip. But Edward didn’t right himself, and Izzy didn’t let go; there was an impasse, a pregnant sort of pause. Edward’s expression was obscured by the haze of green-tinged smoke surrounding them.

“Fabulous!” Stede fucking Bonnet said, clapping his hands together. “Just fabulous. A bit like theatre, isn’t it, Ed? The Theatre of Fear.”

“Theatre of Fear!” Edward said. “Love that. Don’t you love that, Iz?”

“It’s…not inaccurate,” Izzy grumbled. Edward looked over at him with shocked delight.

“Hell yeah, even Izzy’s on board. Listen, Stede, you should go find Ivan. He’s the one who rigged most of this stuff up—he’ll be able to show you how it’s done, if you’re interested?”

“Oh!” Bonnet said, glancing between them. “Well, alright. I suppose you two have…things, to discuss. I’ll leave you to it!”

“Yeah,” Edward said, smiling that smile that seemed reserved exclusively for Bonnet: soft, simpering, and utterly transfixing. “Thanks, mate.”

When Bonnet was gone—dismissed, really—Edward turned back to Izzy, his gentle smile becoming a casual grin.

“Ah, yeah, that was fun,” he said. “S’pose there’s real work to be done, though? We could probably commandeer Stede’s rooms, if you want, go through some stuff?”

Izzy was almost too shocked to respond. “We already commandeered his rooms,” he pointed out, though he knew full well that Bonnet was still sleeping there, and that Edward had chosen a cabin not much bigger than the one Izzy was in for his own purposes. It was the principle of the thing.

Edward shrugged. “Come on, man, I know you’re dying to make me plot a course and shit.”

“Actually,” Izzy said, “I was thinking of going back the way we just came.”

“Why?” Edward started playing with the lapel of Izzy’s waistcoat, absent-minded. “You drop something?”

Izzy considered telling him. It would be a good way of keeping Edward’s attention, if nothing else—but it would also remove this ease between them, the way Edward was swaying into Izzy’s space, conspiratorial.

“Something like that,” he said. “We can go wherever you want afterwards.”

“The Colonies?” Edward asked, and laughed when Izzy wrinkled his nose. “Nah, Iz, you said anywhere, can’t back out on me now.”

“Dunno why you’re so obsessed with going north,” Izzy muttered. “It’s colder up there. Volatile.”

“That’s the fun of it,” Edward insisted. “I’m sick of sweating my arse off in places we’ve been a thousand times already. Don’t you remember when we used to have adventures?” He was swaying closer, his hand coming up to toy with Izzy’s cravat, his ring. “If it’s shit, we can just come back here. And you can say you told me so, which is your favourite thing to do. Win-win.”

“Win-win,” Izzy repeated stupidly. He couldn’t think of anything else to say; his mind was entirely, blissfully blank.

“Now you’re getting it,” Edward said.

 

Izzy told Buttons to change course, to send them right back the way they’d come. Perhaps it was on account of Edward standing right there at Izzy’s shoulder, but there was no argument. Buttons turned the ship around, with the help of the few crewmembers who had the slightest fucking clue what to do with the rigging. Edward stayed through the whole thing, pestering Izzy with questions about the reroute.

“You’re not mysterious,” he said, his arm draped over Izzy’s shoulders. He prodded Izzy’s face: his tattoo, first, then his jaw, then the edge of his goatee. “Tell me.”

Izzy shrugged, careful not to dislodge Edward’s arm.

“It’s a fucking spectacular view,” he said.

 

After, Bonnet started up on deck with his team-building exercises, but Izzy and Edward spent the afternoon in the captain’s cabin with Bonnet’s collection of maps unrolled and spread across the desk. Edward was interested in the Carolinas, though it was a lazy sort of interest. Mostly he just sat there with his feet up on the corner of the table, smoking his pipe and ruminating on the quality of the tobacco from British America.

“Oh, here,” Edward said at one point, getting up and snagging a frosted glass bottle from one of Bonnet’s cabinets, “you’ll like this.”

He poured them both glasses. Izzy accepted the offering, sniffing the dark liquid before bringing it to his lips.

The taste made him grimace, though he could admit it was better than their usual rum. Edward laughed, knocking back his own glass in a few gulps.

“It’ll grow on you,” he said. “Go on.”

Izzy drank what was in his glass, something warm swirling in the pit of his stomach. When he’d finished, Edward poured out more for them both.

“Bonnet won’t mind?” Izzy asked, doubtful.

Edward’s expression took on an impish quality, playful. “I’m commandeering it,” he said.

 

The rest of the afternoon passed quickly. There was a surreal quality to it, to getting more and more drunk on Bonnet’s brandy in Bonnet’s cabin with the man who, in every other version of the day, chose Bonnet.

“What a stupid fucking name,” Izzy said, now sprawled on the couch with the mostly-empty bottle of brandy clutched to his chest. “Bonnet. Bonnet. Bon-net.”

“C’mon, Iz, don’t be a dick.”

Edward was lying on the floor.

“He called me Iggy,” Izzy responded. “Fair’s fucking fair.”

“Fuck off, he did not,” Edward said. “Stede’s a gentleman.”

“To you, maybe,” Izzy said. He rolled onto his side, looking down at Edward, who was looking up at him.

“I like him,” Edward said, quiet, like a confession.

“I know you do.”

“I was thinking,” Edward said, “what if I don’t kill him? What if we just sort of, see how things go?”

Izzy twisted his head and sighed up at the ceiling. At the fucking chandelier hanging there. God, he hated this cabin.

“If that’s what you want,” he said.

“Yeah?”

Edward sounded excited, an echo of the young man he’d once been. If Izzy closed his eyes he could almost see him the way he’d been back then: little Eddie, tall and skinny, fresh off a growth spurt without enough to eat. He used to pick up anything that glittered on raids, back then, tucking them away like a lanky magpie. Any time someone noticed his thieving, Edward managed to talk his way out of punishment. It was a skill he had. Teach here could make you believe the sky is red, Hornigold had once said, when Ed claimed the rings he was boldly wearing on all ten fingers belonged to his grandmother. Sometimes it is, Ed had replied with a grin.

Look out for this one, Hornigold had told Izzy. You’ll let him take everything if you’re not careful.

“Yeah,” Izzy said. “Whatever you want.”

“Keep expecting you to fight me on this,” Edward said. “You’ve been a right dick these last few weeks.”

“I know.”

“Are you done?” Edward asked. “Being a dick?”

Izzy blew out a breath. “Probably not.”

“We’ll work out a fuckin’—what are they called? Schedule,” Edward said. “Work out a schedule, and you get an hour a day to get all the being a dick out of your system.”

“Only an hour?” Izzy asked, mock-serious. “You think that’s enough?”

They were both laughing, then, even though it wasn’t very funny, and in his mirth Izzy overbalanced and fell, landing with an elbow in Edward’s gut and the bottle of brandy spinning out of reach.

He felt dizzy and drunk, and it was a moment before he realised that he was kissing Edward, or Edward was kissing him, slow and lazily slick—and Izzy couldn’t tell if he’d been angling for this all day, or if it’d happened by accident, but then Edward was rolling them over, his hands sneaking beneath Izzy’s shirt, and he couldn’t find it in him to care.

 

Edward fell asleep right afterwards. It was with the tide of his breathing underneath his ear that Izzy opened his mouth and confessed, “I wish this was the real one.”

 

It wasn’t the real one. It wasn’t real, but still he kept coming back to it, unable to resist repeating the steps that led to Edward’s mouth on his, their clumsy hands mapping each other, rolling around on the floor of Bonnet’s posh fucking cabin. He kept intending to stop, and even managed to for stretches of a few days at a time, but inevitably he surrendered, and let himself take what he didn’t deserve.

He learned the contours, the variations. He discovered what Edward liked, how best to please him. He found out that, in the throes of pleasure, Edward said things that he never would have in his right mind: he called Izzy good, and beautiful, and said he needed him, forever, always. But Izzy had always known men like that—men who promised their whores marriage and children while their cocks were being sucked. He didn’t think any less of Edward for it. 

 

“What if I told you we’ve done this before?” Izzy asked, breathless and wanting. They were in Bonnet’s secret hidden wardrobe, of all the places, and two of Edward’s fingers were in him, his other hand scratching Izzy’s chest.

“Nah,” Edward said with a wicked sort of smile, hair falling into his face, his mouth bruised from Izzy’s attention, “I’d remember.”

 

They were caught, a few times. Bonnet mostly; it was his room, after all. Those were the times that left Izzy with a sick feeling in his stomach; Edward would pull away, start reeling off excuses. We weren’t—it’s not what it looks like—Stede, come back—

Spriggs was insufferable, screeching his head off whenever he saw them together, drawing the whole ship’s attention and putting an effective stop to the entire thing.

The only other person to catch them had been Oluwande, who’d had the decency to just leave the fucking room. But Edward had been spooked nonetheless, backing away with a nervous burst of laughter, saying, Shit—Iz, this is insane, we don’t do this. We can’t—what if Stede finds out?

 

It felt like he was stealing something.

 

During one of his longer stretches of self-control, he tried more of the Revenge crew’s ridiculous ideas: he apologised to Fang and Ivan, even tried being nicer to Spriggs. It was when he was talking to Frenchie about all the witches he’d apparently known that he realised he hadn’t killed Stede Bonnet in quite some time.

 

“And why are you telling me this?”

Bonnet was sat up in his bed, peering groggily and judgementally at Izzy. Izzy, having just condensed the limbo of his current existence into a ten-minute speech, breathed heavily.

“Desperation, mostly,” he said.

“Yes, well.” Bonnet got to his feet, freeing his curls from the ridiculous nightcap he had on. “You’ll understand if I don’t believe you.”

“Of course.”

“Only—how many times did you say you’ve killed me?”

“I’ve stopped,” Izzy said. “Your death won’t do me any good.”

“After that stunning reassurance…” Bonnet muttered, pulling on a dressing gown. Not the one he usually pulled on to witness the fuckery, Izzy noted with some amusement. For Izzy’s benefit, Bonnet chose a rich, velvet robe: royal purple. It would have suited Edward better.

“I was wondering,” Izzy said, “if you had any suggestions.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve tried dying yourself?” Bonnet inquired. Prick.

Through gritted teeth, Izzy said, “I have, in fact.”

“Oh.” Bonnet sat down on one of his puffed-up little chairs, frowning. “What about leaving?”

“I’ve been banished,” Izzy said. “Never get very far. Day restarts.”

Bonnet steepled his fingers. Izzy fantasised about cutting off his hands.

“Being banished isn’t the same thing as leaving,” Bonnet pointed out, so blatantly looking out for his own interests that Izzy almost admired him. “Besides, if you set off—oh, about now, say—you might well make landfall before midnight. Or—I suppose you’d like to get back to your own ship?”

Izzy sneered. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you.”

“Yes,” Bonnet said. “What do you expect me to say? That I’d like you to stick around, kill me a few more times?”

“No, but—”

“You think it’s about Ed, don’t you?” Bonnet said. Izzy felt his entire body freeze over. “You think it’s about doing what’s best for him.”

Izzy nodded, stiffly.

“And, as it turns out, getting rid of me isn’t what he needs.”

And Izzy was forced to nod again, though he’d rather have ripped Bonnet’s smug head off with his bare hands.

Bonnet spread his hands out, as though the solution was obvious, and Izzy was simply being too dense to see it.

“Perhaps you’re the problem. Perhaps,” Stede Bonnet said, looking Izzy right in the eye, “he’d be better off without you.”

 

When he got out onto the deck, his head pounding, Edward was already there.

“I couldn’t find you,” he said, irritated. “Ivan already had the rigging set up, but I would’ve looked like a right dick without the smoke. Had to call it off. Where were you?”

“Captain’s cabin,” Izzy said.

“What?” Edward’s head flicked in the direction of the aft cabin. “Is Stede—?”

“He’s fine,” Izzy said. “Just—needed to talk to him. That’s all.”

“What about?” Ed asked, peering at him with interest.

“You.” Izzy rolled some of the stiffness from his shoulders. “There was a difference in opinion. But—I think he might be right.”

“Cryptic doesn’t suit you, mate,” Edward said. He was frowning, a disgruntled twist to his mouth. “Just tell me what you and Stede talked about, or—”

“Did you really want me to stay?” Izzy blurted out. “When I—that day, when I was leaving, you said you needed me here.”

Edward looked distinctly uncomfortable. It was understandable: to Edward’s knowledge, they’d never spoken like this before. But Izzy needed to know. It had been playing at the edge of his mind since this whole thing had begun, since Izzy had been banished from the ship in the aftermath of that very first duel. With each repeat, with each time Edward killed him, or banished him, or said he never wanted to see him again, Izzy became less and less sure of what had been the foundational bedrock of his life for three decades: that his place was wherever Edward was.

“I wasn’t lying to you,” Edward said.

Izzy breathed in the clear morning air, letting it settle in his lungs before he next spoke. “But I don’t fit here. Do I?”

There was a pause before Edward responded, a crease between his brows.

“You’re not really trying to. With all this stuff, you’ve just got to sort of—go with it. Stede’s fucking great, if you’re not trying to hate him all the time. All his fancy shit, it’s nice. Just don’t know why you’re resisting so hard, Iz. No one’s asking you to.”

Izzy shook his head. “This is who—this is what I am.”

He realised a moment after he said it that what he wanted was for Edward to reassure him, to say the things that he’d only ever said before in the humid clutch of Bonnet’s brandy.

Instead, Edward looked at him with a frown and said, “Yeah. Maybe.”

 

There was no opportunity to leave that day, so Izzy waited until the following morning before attempting his departure. He packed light, then crept through the passageways and up to find a boat.

There could be no further contrast from the way he’d attempted to leave the morning after Bonnet and Edward had first been acquainted. On that occasion, he’d summoned Edward with the sheer force of his preparations, in what he could now see was a desperate plea for attention. Today, with Bonnet’s words still echoing in his skull, he was as soundless as he knew how to be.

He was lowering the dinghy when the air shifted behind him.

“Izzy.” Soft, low. “What are you doing?”

Izzy turned around. He’d known there wasn’t much time, the looping day’s schedule being what it was, but he hadn’t expected Edward to seek him out so soon. He’d been discreet, so quiet that he hadn’t even disturbed the snoring of the Revenge’s crew. There should have been no reason for Edward to find him here.

“Leaving,” Izzy said, since there was never any point in attempting to deceive Edward.

“No, you’re not,” Edward murmured. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“I can go back to the Anne,” Izzy said. “It’s still yours, I’d still be—”

“No,” Edward said, harsh and inarguable. “Just—fucking stick it out, Iz, a few more weeks. Don’t do this.”

Izzy felt his shoulders slump. It didn’t really matter, he supposed. He’d try again tomorrow.

 

He tried the next morning. And the next. The following afternoon. Then the morning again, five days in a row, at slightly different times. A few evenings after that, though he knew it would be too late to reach the Queen Anne before midnight.

He tried waiting until Edward had disappeared belowdecks with Bonnet. He tried enlisting the help of various crewmembers who’d be thrilled to see him gone.

Somehow, always, Edward caught him, and told him to stay.

 

If he hadn’t already been forced by circumstance to believe in impossible things, Izzy would have found it beyond belief. It was almost as though Edward had gained the ability to materialise from nowhere, summoned by nothing more than Izzy’s intent to leave him.

“It’s a fucking time loop,” he told Edward in desperation. “I’m trying to—there’s no other way out. I’ve tried everything. Just let me go.”

Edward seemed taken aback, then considering, then resolute. “No,” he said. “Dunno what you’re going through, mate, but there’s another way. I’ve always said, haven’t I—your imagination…”

“What if I told you your precious Stede suggested it?”

“Well, he hates you, so.” Edward lifted a shoulder. “Probably don’t listen to him on this one?”

Above them, the sunrise painted the sky red.

“Just stay,” Edward said. “Tell me about this fucking time loop.”

 

For the second time, he filled Edward in on the situation. He left a few key details out—like the taste of Edward’s skin and the way he smiled (smug, curious) when he made Izzy come.

“Glad to hear you’ve stopped killing Stede,” Edward said, and it was almost like a continuation of the conversation they’d had before, the last time Izzy had told him, when they’d been cut off by midnight. Even though Edward was pretending, didn’t really remember any of it, Izzy felt his body relax by degrees. “Now we can come up with a proper idea, yeah?”

Izzy looked at him. “I’m all ears,” he said.

 

Edward’s suggestions were shit.

“Which monster, exactly, am I meant to vanquish?” Izzy asked.

“I dunno, a fuckin’ big one, probably,” Edward said. They’d dug up a bottle of rum from the stores, and Edward was hogging it, naturally. “Maybe a Kraken.”

Edward’s obsession with the Kraken, which had remained constant throughout the endless repetition of the day, was beginning to shape itself into something Izzy could vaguely understand. It was in the way Edward’s eyes went dark whenever he mentioned it, the way his voice went melancholy and distant.

“So I’ll kill a Kraken, get it on with a mermaid,” Izzy said, pulling the bottle from Edward’s hand and taking a swig. “Anything else?”

Edward snorted. “Like you could get it up for a mermaid.”

As though summoned by the allusion to Izzy’s dick, Spriggs appeared before them with an unpleasant smile on his face. “What’s this sad-sack drinking game about, then? Izzy’s aversion to the fairer sex?”

“Shut up,” Izzy said, though he held out the bottle for Spriggs to take.

“Izzy’s averse to everyone,” Edward contributed.

“Not everyone,” Spriggs said significantly. Izzy regretted handing him the rum. He regretted it even more when Spriggs sat down like they were all in a fucking sharing circle and asked, “How long’ve you two known each other, then?”

“Christ,” Izzy said.

“Twenty years?” Edward posited.

“Closer to thirty, boss.”

Spriggs’ eyebrows took flight. “Really?”

“Huh,” said Edward. “Guess it was. I was seventeen or something. Iz was already old.”

“I was twenty-one, you twat.”

“Ancient,” Edward insisted. He was listing to the side a little, his elbow nudging into Izzy’s side. “And he was already such a dick, too.”

That, Izzy found it difficult to argue with.

 

By the time the sun set, they were sloshed. Their circle had expanded, too, more bottles procured. Izzy had the sneaking suspicion that his companionable drinking with Edward had become, of all things, a party.

It was worth it, worth everything, Izzy thought, when Stede Bonnet emerged from his cabin with a pissy look on his face, complaining about the noise.

“Ah, come on,” Edward said. Izzy was reminded of the way he acted around Jack, the friendly boisterousness. “Join us, Stede, we’re figuring out how to fight the universe.”

“This is your doing, I suppose?” Stede said to Izzy.

“You wish,” Izzy said, taking another gulp of rum. There wasn’t any point in holding back.

“Well,” Bonnet sniffed, “fine, then.”

He grabbed the bottle from Izzy’s hands and poured a little down his throat before coughing, staring at the bottle like it had personally offended him.

“I didn’t fucking poison it,” Izzy said.

“But that’s abysmal,” Bonnet complained.

Helplessly, Izzy laughed. It wasn’t so much that Bonnet was a snob, though he was. It was that he was—silly. He was the bane of Izzy’s existence, and he was an absolute fucking clown of a man.

Beside him, Edward giggled, then covered his mouth, making big apologetic eyes in Bonnet’s direction. But Bonnet’s mouth crept into a smile of his own, and when he gave the bottle back his fingers overlapped with Izzy’s, the first time they’d touched without the scent of blood on the air.

“You boys have fun,” Bonnet said.

“We will,” Edward said, nudging against Izzy’s side. His closeness was easier to bear now than it had ever been before; it seemed that repeated exposure had given Izzy the ability to let Edward touch him without tension lighting up each of his nerves. Then again, he was half-hard in his trousers and might have been worse affected if not for the rum. “You should stay, Stede, have fun as well.”

Bonnet smiled ruefully. “Not my sort of thing,” he said. “I’ll be turning in for the night. But before I go—it’s nice to see you getting on with the crew, Izzy.”

Izzy didn’t know how to respond to that. He supposed it was true enough; before Bonnet came along, he and Edward had been regaling Roach and Frenchie with stories of the worst injuries they’d seen men succumb to. In the end, he just nodded. Bonnet nodded back.

 

“We didn’t fix it,” Edward said, his eyes upturned. He was resting entirely on Izzy’s shoulder, no longer making any pretence of holding himself up.

Izzy shook his head. “Might be too big to fix.”

He was just drunk enough that it felt right to snake his arm around Edward’s middle, to hold him in place. Edward turned his face and sighed into Izzy’s neck.

“You’re only doing this because you think I won’t remember,” he accused, sleep licking the edges from the consonants. Izzy shut his eyes, and wished for midnight to wait just a few minutes longer, to let him have this. He would have traded a year of his life to have Edward fall asleep in his arms. “What if this is the real one?”

“It won’t be,” Izzy said. “Nothing really happened.”

“Maybe,” Edward mumbled, his beard prickling down from Izzy’s throat to the loosened collar of his shirt, “that’s the point. Maybe nothing’s s’posed to happen.”

“What do you mean?” Izzy asked. He wasn’t paying absolute attention; Edward was settling more comfortably between his legs as he spoke, and it was all Izzy could do not to clutch onto him like Edward was the anchor that could keep him locked in time.

“You said,” Edward said, yawning, “you said th’first time, you did the duel, and got sent away.”

“Yeah,” Izzy said tightly. It was a distant memory, at this point, but the nonchalance of Edward’s shrug after the bullshit about an inoperable weapon rendering Izzy the loser still smarted.

“And that’s not s’posed to happen,” Edward said. “You’re not meant to go. There’s not meant to be a duel. You’re not meant to fight.”

“You’re talking rubbish,” Izzy said. Of course he was meant to fight. That was who he was. A few hundred times stuck in the same day couldn’t change that.

“Maybe,” Edward said. “’m pretty drunk.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Izzy reassured him. “You can drink like there’s no tomorrow.”

 

Edward’s words fixed themselves in Izzy’s mind, though he didn’t act on them right away. He spent a few days goading Bonnet into putting on the fuckery for the Dutch, just to prove that he still could—and because somewhere along the way Bonnet’s bitchy little midday breakdown had gone from supremely irritating to rather amusing.

“It doesn’t have to be perfect,” he found himself saying. “Edward adores you. He’ll adore whatever you do.”

Bonnet poked his head around the curtain. “You really think so?”

“Yeah,” Izzy said. He wavered on whether he should tell Bonnet not to make the facsimile Kraken—Izzy had watched the Revenge crew’s performance enough times to know that it upset Edward. But it also seemed to bring Bonnet and Edward closer, whatever it was they did after Edward fled and Bonnet followed. It might be selfish to take that away from them. And—Izzy wanted to stop being selfish.

In the end, he simply told the truth: “In his eyes, Bonnet, you can do no wrong.”

“Cripes,” Bonnet said, like the gigantic twat he was. “That’s…a lot. Thank you, Izzy.”

Izzy curled his lip, disgusted. To an untrained eye it might have looked like a smile.

 

He woke up. He helped Edward scare the crew.

“That was cool,” Edward said. “We should do shit like that more often.”

“We should,” Izzy said: the response that always made Edward stumble. Izzy steadied him, and continued, “It was a good performance, boss.”

“Yeah?” Edward smiled, wide. “Proper scary?”

“Oh, terrifying,” said Stede Bonnet, sidling up. “I found it positively invigorating! All the best theatre is—and that’s what this is, really: the Theatre of Fear!”

“Theatre of Fear!” Edward said. “Love that. Don’t you love that, Iz?”

Izzy pressed down on the instinct to insult Bonnet—there’d be time enough for that in other versions of the day. “Could call it that,” he said with a shrug. “Haven’t seen any theatre.”

“No, Iz, we have,” Edward said, nudging him. “Remember? We got—this was years ago, Stede—we were docked for a couple weeks, tricky trade, and one night we snuck into a show.” As Izzy remembered it, the process of getting into the theatre had involved rather more threatening people with knives than Edward seemed inclined to divulge. “And it was shit, but, you know—”

He glanced over. Izzy felt off-balance; he hadn’t remembered, not until Edward brought it up. The show had been little more than a staging of vices: bawdy songs and barely a plot to follow, but Edward had been—

Fuck, he’d loved it. He’d been belting the songs as they wandered the streets back to the ship, his arm linked through Izzy’s. He wasn’t an especially good singer, Izzy remembered, though he could hold a tune well enough. Edward had swung their arms and told Izzy to join in. He hadn’t been Izzy’s captain yet; it wasn’t an order, just something Ed had wanted.

Izzy had sung for him, soft at first and then so loud that townspeople began to open their shutters and yell at the two carousers harmonising in the dark.

“I forgot,” Izzy said.

“No hard feelings,” Edward said, patting him on the shoulder. “It was yonks ago, wasn’t it? You didn’t even have your beard yet.”

“Neither did you,” Izzy pointed out.

Bonnet was looking in between them, surprise etched into his face. “You’ve known each other for some time, then?”

“Forever,” Edward said, which turned Izzy’s heart into a hummingbird’s. “Feels like it, anyway. But—it’s been a while since we’ve done anything like that.” His mouth twisted, regretful. “Can’t really get away with it, now everyone recognises my fuckin’ face.”

“That’s a shame,” said Bonnet. “I’ve always loved the theatre. I don’t suppose you’ve ever come across Shakespeare?”

“Nah,” Edward said.

Bonnet affected shock, which somehow didn’t result in Edward punching him. Love, Izzy reflected, made people fucking stupid.

“Oh, you’d adore it,” Bonnet said. “It’d be just up your alley.”

Edward’s expression was sceptical. “Doubt it, mate. We’ve already seen how well I do with the, y’know, hoity-toity.”

“Nonsense.” Bonnet waved a hand. “Shakespeare wasn’t an aristocrat—far from it! Tell you what, I’ll—” He paused, cheeks turning pink. “I could read some of his plays to you, if you wanted.”

Edward’s breath hitched. “Yeah,” he said. “That could—I’d like that.”

While they were busy gazing into one another’s eyes, Izzy slipped away.

 

“Oh, there you are!” Bonnet said, approaching Izzy with Edward by his side. “Ed thought you should know—we’ll be crossing paths with a Dutch merchant ship tomorrow night.”

“Tonight,” Izzy corrected.

Bonnet frowned. “How would you know?”

Izzy only raised his eyebrows in response, putting his elbows back on the gunwale and waiting for Bonnet to pitch his plan.

“Either way,” Bonnet said, more concerned with himself than with Izzy’s premonition, as expected, “I thought it could be a chance to try our very own fuckery!”

Edward was smiling at the back of Bonnet’s head, fond. “Told him he’s not quite ready yet, Iz, but thought you should know about the Dutch.”

“Actually,” Izzy said, “I think Captain Bonnet’s theatrical skills are just what we’d need for a good fuckery. I’m sure he and his crew will be up for the challenge.”

“Well, thank you,” Bonnet said, preening as he always did at the slightest praise. “Maybe I misjudged you.”

Edward’s expression, meanwhile, had turned guarded, wary. Though Izzy knew full well what his intentions had been the first time around, it stung not to be trusted.

Bonnet was already looking around for his beleaguered scribe. Izzy caught him by the arm.

“Might’ve misjudged you, as well,” he said.

Bonnet’s mouth formed a perfect O of shock, and he choked out another, “Well…” before scampering off to find Spriggs.

“What was all that about?” Edward demanded, fixing Izzy with his suspicious look.

“You underestimate him,” Izzy said.

“Me?” Edward scoffed. “You’ve done nothing but go on about how useless he is since we got here!”

Izzy tipped his head back, relishing the breeze on his face. “Keep a secret?”

Though he wasn’t looking, he could feel Edward’s frown, the frustrated confusion of it.

“I’ve lived this day before,” he said. “I’ve been living it for quite some time, and in that time I’ve grown to see Bonnet as a sort of cockroach.”

“Iz—”

“Yes, yes, a very fancy cockroach, and one that you’re very fond of,” Izzy interrupted without opening his eyes. “But at a certain point, with cockroaches, you have to just let the fucking thing live.”

“You’re serious,” Edward said.

“Wish to God I wasn’t,” Izzy said.

Izzy felt pressure at his side, and knew that Edward was beside him. “You’ve told me before?”

“A few times. Your suggestions are always shit.”

“I bet my suggestions are brilliant. You’re just shit at following through with ’em.”

Izzy finally cracked an eye open, peering sideways at Edward. “You believe me? Just like that?”

“I mean,” Edward said, “you’re being nice to Stede. Either you hit your head and developed a new personality, or you’re telling the truth.”

Izzy laughed. It was a beautiful day, he thought, and then marvelled that in all the repetitions he’d never thought of that before. He’d been so wrapped up in himself that he hadn’t spared a thought for the bright glow of the sunshine, the accompanying relief of the breeze. He hadn’t thought of how nice it would be to just stand with Edward by his side, not fighting him, not asking for anything from him, just being as close as they knew how.

 

The moment passed: Edward had his questions, and Izzy answered all of them that he knew how to.

“What’s the weirdest thing that’s happened?” Ed asked.

You kissed me, Izzy thought instantly. You kissed me in a hundred different ways, and now it feels like something I dreamed.

He said, “Dying’s pretty weird.”

 

That afternoon, Bonnet came out and asked, “Would you like to take part, Izzy?”

Izzy didn’t know what to say. The day had acquired an aimless quality, with the deck empty but for Izzy, Edward and the crewmembers who were sent up at various intervals to cover the helm. Izzy had told Fang and Ivan to take some time off—they might as well, given that no work they did would last beyond the confines of the nineteen hours Izzy was stuck in—and was giving the cannons a cursory wipe while Edward quizzed him on the potential outcomes of the fuckery on the Dutch.

Bonnet was waiting. Izzy opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

“Fang and Ivan are already onboard,” Bonnet added.

“Am I invited?” Edward asked.

“No,” Bonnet said. “You gave such a wonderful performance this morning—I was thinking you could catch up on your rest, and when you wake up we’ll surprise you with a matinee!”

“Not really a surprise if I know about it in advance, mate.”

“What the fuck is a matinee?” Izzy asked, since Edward was seemingly content to pretend he understood Bonnet’s poncy vocabulary.

“In this case, a sort of preview of the fuckery,” Stede said. “Just for Ed.”

“That sounds fucking humiliating,” Izzy said.

“Well. You don’t have to do it.”

Izzy released a breath through his nose. “Fine. I’ll—whatever.”

Edward was beaming. He reached out and squeezed Izzy’s forearm, where he’d rolled up his sleeve to clean the cannons. Skin on skin, even if only Edward’s fingers were left uncovered by his gloves. Izzy’s heart gave an answering thud.

Any humiliation, he reminded himself, was temporary.

 

“This is a fucking mess,” Izzy muttered to himself.

He understood, now, why Bonnet had gotten himself in a snit so often over the fuckery. Every suggestion from the crew was more ridiculous than the last, and even though Izzy had witnessed the results of this particular creative process innumerable times, he found himself unable to envision anything but disaster.

“Chin up,” Bonnet said, demonstrating a truly remarkable lack of self-knowledge. “We’ve just got some kinks to work out. Everything will be right as rain in time for curtain!”

“I never know what the fuck you’re on about,” Izzy said.

Bonnet sighed with paternalistic disappointment. “This morning, Izzy, I thought—an olive branch. You’re familiar with the saying, yes?”

“I went to fucking church, Bonnet.”

“Did you?” Bonnet asked. “Really, I wouldn’t know. You hardly act like a God-fearing man.”

“Get to the point,” Izzy suggested. Across the room, Wee John was holding Frenchie aloft while Black Pete tickled him with a feather. Catastrophe seemed imminent.

“I thought perhaps you’d realised,” Bonnet said, “that we needn’t fight. We’re both on the same side, yes? Edward’s side.”

Izzy considered this while Frenchie tumbled to the floor. “Sides or not,” he said, “I strongly dislike you.”

“On that, we’re agreed,” Bonnet said pompously. “Still—I thought you were making an effort. And I didn’t want you to feel that we were excluding you.”

Izzy gritted his teeth. “I am making an effort.”

Bonnet spared him a glance. “Yes,” he said, “I rather suspect you are. What a terrible state of affairs.”

Izzy resisted the urge to bite him.

“Do you have anything to offer?” Bonnet asked. “To the performance, I mean. Anything besides criticism.”

Determined to prove Bonnet wrong, and quite without thinking, Izzy said, “I could sing.”

“Oh!” Bonnet said. “Is that…traditionally part of a fuckery?”

“It’s traditionally part of yours,” Izzy muttered.

“In that case,” Bonnet said with exaggerated benevolence, “we’ll find a place for it.”

 

By the end, it was more of a talent show than a fuckery, and in any case the lack of attention paid by certain helmsmen meant that they’d drifted a fair way from the path of the Dutch ship. Without the convenient excuse, the performance was revealed as solely for Edward’s benefit—something that Izzy suspected Bonnet would have found embarrassing, had the man been capable of feeling shame.

To Izzy’s relief, the Kraken idea had been scrapped with barely a nudge on his part, and Edward remained in high spirits while Ivan juggled axes, Spriggs told long and dubiously humorous stories about his youth (which he claimed was a talent), and Jim threw knives at improbable targets.

When it came to Izzy’s turn, he almost backed out—no matter that everyone involved was destined to forget all about it. He’d remember. But Frenchie nudged him out onto the ‘stage’ (really, just a few crates stacked up in the jam room) with his lute, and started playing the only tune they’d both been familiar with—evidently, it was just as popular in the pubs in Bristol as it was up north.

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hill and valley, dale and field,
And all the craggy mountains yield.

Even as a youth, Izzy had found the sentiment saccharine and embarrassing. The speaker promised his love everything: flowers; a fine woollen gown and slippers with buckles of gold; silver dishes and an ivory table. In those far-off days, Izzy had rarely gotten through the song without some drunk yelling How’re you gonna afford all that, then? They must have thought they were clever to observe that the boy collecting pennies in an upturned cap couldn’t—would never be able to—afford the treasures he was singing about.

But the tune—the tune was lovely, had always been lovely, and Frenchie plucked it out with understated skill. He made a far better accompanist than the inebriates with instruments who’d haunted Izzy’s local when he was a boy.

As he sang, Izzy didn’t dare look at Edward. His gaze stayed fixed on Frenchie’s deft fingers, even as he reached the final verse, his voice growing stronger with each line.

The shepherds' swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love.

He looked up. Edward’s mouth was parted; he was leaning forward in his seat.

“I know that one,” he said. He frowned, as though recalling a distant memory. “There’s an answer, isn’t there?”

Izzy cleared his throat. “Yeah.”

Edward hummed for a moment, then half-said, half-sang, the companion verse. It was intended for a woman’s voice, but Edward’s voice lowered it to something deep and regretful.

If that the world and love were young
And truth in every shepherd's tongue,
These pretty pleasures might be move
To live with thee and be thy love.

Izzy swallowed and said, “That’s it.”

“She rejects him,” Edward said.

“She doesn’t believe him,” Izzy replied. “He’s only a shepherd. Can’t give her all the stuff he promises, can he?”

Edward’s frown deepened. “No, but—”

“A lovely song!” Bonnet said, emerging from behind the makeshift curtain they’d taped up and clapping his hands together loudly. “Based on a poem by none other than Kit Marlowe, if I’m not mistaken. We’ll make a bard of you yet, Izzy.”

“Never fucking doing that again,” Izzy muttered.

“You should,” Frenchie said, plucking listlessly at his lute. “It’s weird. Thought you’d be a terrible singer, with your voice all—” Here, he indulged in an imitation of Izzy that involved rather a lot of exaggerated shouting and swearing. “—but when you sing it goes all…sweet.”

Izzy wondered if he could convince any of them to kill him in the next five minutes, so he could get on with a version of the day that made sense to him.

“Even if it was only this once,” Bonnet said, “it was good of you. Taking part. I know you haven’t had the easiest time—integrating, but…”

He trailed off. Izzy shrugged.

“Haven’t really sung in years,” he said. “It was nice. Thank you, Bonnet.”

Bonnet made a sound of shock. “You’re—you’re very welcome. It’s always a thrill to unearth unexpected talents. Why—Lucius, for example, with his excellent comedic storytelling! And Buttons’ incredible moon-dancing. In fact, why don’t we have a round of applause—”

 

Izzy managed to slip away before anyone else started complimenting him, of all the mortifying things, and in the interest of spending out the rest of this loop in peace he clambered up to the maintop, laying himself out beneath the shining half-moon.

Then, as was becoming predictable, Edward found him.

“Budge up, then,” he said when his head appeared at Izzy’s feet, impervious to the fact that there was plenty of space. Izzy sighed, sat up, and swung his legs over the edge. Edward did the same, shuffling up beside him.

When Izzy remained quiet, Edward sprawled back, resting his weight on his elbows.

“I like time loop you,” he said. “Singing, and being nice to Stede, and—being nice.”

Izzy hummed a vague sort of agreement.

“Guess I’m just wondering—” Edward tipped his head back and blew out a breath; Izzy’s eyes were drawn, inevitably, to the elongated lines of him, to the way he spread out into every space like it belonged to him. “Why?”

Although he hadn’t said it to Stede in quite some time, Izzy found himself dredging up the old adage, the heart that still beat at the centre of it all. “My job is to keep you content,” he said.

“Oh,” Edward said. “Is it, now?”

“And it—took me a while,” Izzy admitted. “But I understand it now. He’s good for you.”

“Yeah,” Edward said softly, “he really is. Fuckin’ insane bastard, but he’s…Stede.”

Izzy had to look away from the expression on Edward’s face. This day, this loop—it was an interruption in Bonnet and Edward’s love story. But the glimmer in Edward’s eyes, the exquisite openness of them, said that it wouldn’t take long once they’d broken free. Nature would run its course.

“Thought it would be for the best,” Izzy continued, quiet. “Killing Bonnet. Even if it hurt you. I thought—it’d keep you safe. But I want—” He stared out at the ocean, the endlessness of it. He felt endless, too—though it didn’t bother him as much as it had before. “I want to stop hurting you.”

He could feel Edward’s gaze on the side of his face.

“Why d’you think it’s your job?” Edward asked. “Keeping me content. I never—I didn’t ask you to do that, did I?”

Izzy startled, looked over at him. “I’m your first mate.”

There was more to it than that. But Izzy didn’t know how to condense it all down, to explain that when the boy Ed had once been had announced that he wanted to be king of the sea, Izzy had believed him, and had wanted that for him, and had promised that he’d stop at nothing to give Edward what he dreamed of.

Izzy had clung, stubbornly, to that dream. For thirty years, he’d been determined to be the one to give Edward his kingdom. He’d fancied himself the shepherd, presenting his love with finery. And he’d gotten it all wrong.

Edward sighed. Disappointment indented the corner of his mouth. “Yeah,” he said. “My first mate.” He paused, swallowed. “You never really wanted to captain your own ship, did you?”

“No,” Izzy said. “Maybe once, but—not anymore.”

“You wanted things to stay the way they were.”

Izzy shook his head. He wasn’t so delusional that he’d been blind to the way Edward’s misery had lived as an undercurrent to their last decade together.

“You weren’t happy,” he said.

“No,” Edward said. “I wasn’t. And you…want to make me happy. Bit above and beyond usual first mate duties, Iz.”

The moon was reflected in Edward’s eyes: that perfect half-circle. It was very nearly midnight, Izzy’s internal clock told him. Whatever he said now, it wouldn’t last long.

He sighed. He’d say it once, if only to get the weight of it off his chest. And then tomorrow it would cease to matter; he’d start over again.

He’d stopped believing in consequences a long time ago.

“It’s because I love you,” he said, just above a whisper. “All of it. The best things I’ve done and the worst. It’s because I’m yours, and I wanted you to be mine. And I’m sorry. I wish—” He blinked away the stinging in his eyes. Now wasn’t the time for it. “I wish I could’ve been someone worth loving. But—I love you, Edward Teach. Ed. I always have.”

Edward said, “Izzy—”

But he was interrupted by the first of the eight bells that marked midnight.

He was interrupted by the start of a new day.

Notes:

at no point in this fic does izzy question his hypothesis that the universe has literally broken itself in service of edward teach’s wellbeing. and i cannot fault him for that

there is art for this fic and i am in love with it!! @favouritefi never misses

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Content Warnings:
-Izzy kills Stede numerous times. Stede is fine, it's a time loop, but he does get murdered in a lot of different ways here.
-Ed kills Izzy numerous times. Izzy is not emotionally fine, because he remembers all of the murders, but he /is/ physically fine. Ed's take on the situation, removed from the heat of the moments where Izzy has just killed Stede, is that he doesn't want to kill Izzy and would regret it enormously - but Izzy internalises the idea that Ed wants him dead because, you know, it's /Izzy/.
-Graphic depictions of violence. People get stabbed, people get shot, people get choked. Most of those people are Izzy.
-Perceived unrequited love. As in all of my fics, Ed loves Izzy. It's a complicated kind of love, but in this fic it's clear even from behind the blinders of Izzy's POV that Ed has feelings for him. However, Izzy refuses to believe Ed could ever love him, right up to the end.
-Izzy's mental state/suicide. Izzy is having a very bad time. He's already been in the time loop for quite a while at the start of the fic, and things only deteriorate from there. He primarily experiences depression and dissociation as a result, and attempts suicide a few times (since he knows he's in a time loop, how badly he wants to die is ambiguous).
-The first sex scene. It's hate sex, and a bit miserable, and it happens while Stede's dead body is only a few feet away. Proceed with caution.