#for yall whove been sending me messages these past two months: feast. i love yall you've really been lifting my spirits over these months

[vincess-princess]

in darkness shall you be reborn

Chapter 15

Word count: 2789 Warnings: some blood A/N: rejoice, for i am almost done with college (for this semester) and have much more time and energy, hence this chapter. consider it a christmas present <3

By the time the potato fortress was demolished, the bandage on Vince’s shoulder had grown soggy and heavy, and underneath dumb pain accompanied every Vince’s movement, occasionally sharpening into spikes. When Mick turned away to fiddle with the pot on the stove, Vince unbuttoned his shirt and peeled off the three-day-old bandage.

The wound didn’t look promising, with the skin between the stitches red and inflamed, and the thread dark and wet with blood. If it had been healing, the process surely was disrupted. This really begged for a doctor, but he had just refused to do that to Mick’s face, so going to a surgeon would mean admitting defeat, and Vince had enough of it today. Besides, while death of infection wasn’t among the ways to kill himself that he considered, but for lack of alternatives…

A hand grasped his forearm, startling him. The bandage fell onto the ground with an audible plop. Not paying that any mind, Mick silently dragged him to the door and then along the corridor to the sick bay. Vince didn’t resist. It made sense with Nikki. Not with Mick.

Izzy the surgeon wasn’t alone. A familiar redhead was sitting on the bunk in the sick bay and sipping beer from a mug. There was a talk in hushed voices going on, but it was, naturally, stopped as Mick barged in without a knock and unceremoniously shoved Vince inside.

“Take care of this idiot before I do,” he only said and, not sparing Vince another look, slammed the door shut.

“Wow.” Axl raised an eyebrow. “Never seen the old man so pissed. What did you do, hump his guitar?”

“I wish,” Vince jerked his shoulder, annoyed, but then the pain in it flared up, making him wince. Izzy the surgeon frowned, and Vince belatedly remembered he wasn’t supposed to disclose his and Axl’s connection to anyone on the ship. Well, that one reply didn’t mean anything, right?

“You got him so angry and didn’t even use the chance to hump his guitar?” Axl continued, making Izzy snort. That was the first time Vince heard him make a sound since he dryly informed him about that same shoulder wound during his first visit to sick bay.

“You seem unhealthily fixated on it, should I tell Mick to lock it up at night?” Vince replied half-mindedly, eyeing the surgeon nervously. Stopping in the middle of a conversation now would seem stranger than continuing it. Izzy, however, observed the battle of wits with no sign of surprise. No sign of anything, really. It was hard to see his eyes at all underneath the long, greasy hair and in the dim light of the sick bay.

“Oh, so he doesn’t lock her up?” Axl grinned. “Pray tell, where does he keep her?”

“Whatever you’re thinking of, I wouldn’t recommend it. You try to cross the galley’s threshold at night, you’re getting an early breakfast. Of lead.”

“Really? Does he also shoot at you when you go out for a piss?”

Vince nodded. He might have exaggerated Mick’s reaction a bit, to keep any night eaters’ hopes low. Just a bit, though, because anyone breaking down the closed door at night was guaranteed a couple extra holes.

“Oh you poor thing, can’t even go take a leak?” Axl didn’t sound too pitiful, more amused, and that felt good.

“Oh, I can. You don’t want to know where, though.”

“Ew-w-w!” Even Izzy couldn’t hold back a cry of disgust. Vince took it as his little personal victory. He had already learned that the reaction to this type of humor was deceptive. If the pirates didn’t love the joke, they wouldn’t say anything at all, and that silence could kill faster than staying in the same room with a dozen pirates who had beans for dinner. “Yeah, I’ll think twice before eating anything from the galley now.”

“Think as much as you want, you’ll eat it anyway. May I?” Without waiting for an answer, Vince reached out for Axl’s unfinished mug of beer and finished it off in two gulps. Watching Axl’s jaw loosen in indignation was quite entertaining. And reassuring, because whatever Nikki had said, those two treated him rather decently so far, even when he obviously overstepped the boundaries.

“You recovered rather quickly,” another voice said from behind Vince’s back. Izzy. “Surprising.”

“Really?” Vince abruptly turned on his heels towards Izzy. His face gave no indication of whether the last comment was meant positively or negatively, but Vince had a feeling that if it was the latter, the surgeon wouldn’t initiate the talk at all. “Why?”

“Well,” one corner of Izzy’s mouth curved ever so slightly, “last time you were here, you were trembling like a leaf and couldn’t string two words together. I didn’t expect you’d last the night.”

Not a muscle had moved in the surgeon’s face, but he tilted his head to the left slightly… it might have been the dim light of the sick bay and the shadows of Izzy’s hair falling on his face, but the nothingness of his face had an ironic undertone now.

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Well, you were rather… distraught. You lost everything you had, including your vir… dignity. You don’t look the hardy type to me, and that would be the easiest way out.”

“Well, it wasn’t,” Vince said in a strangled voice. “If I die, I die of this infection that Mick dragged me here for. Stop talking nonsense and deal with it instead.”

“Hey, drop that tone,” Axl demanded, his voice suddenly stern. “Order your servants around with it- oh right, you don’t have any. Nobody owes you anything anymore.”

“Ax, relax,” Izzy said lazily, rising from his chair. “Old habits slip through in everyone sometimes. You, for example, still can’t take a shit when there’s someone else on the poop deck, and captain still expects us to know what minuet is. Shirt off.” That last one was addressed to Vince, who hastily pulled his shirt over his head. Izzy grabbed a candle and leaned forward, examining the wound, the candle so close Vince could feel the heat with his skin. He sure hoped Izzy’s hand wouldn’t slip.

“Let’s see… Haven’t I fixed it before? Yeah, those are my stitches… holy shit. It takes an effort to fuck up my work this badly. What you been doing with them?”

“Not me,” Vince said gloomily.

“Ah.” No emotion on the pale face once again. It contrasted especially starkly with Axl’s grimace on the background. “Well, tell the captain that if he keeps that up, he might lose his favorite whipping boy in a couple of months at best. This one looks fixable, but if they add up it’s gonna get real bad.”

“If I tell him that, it will take much less than a couple months.” Vince much preferred when they discussed his night pissing accommodations.

“C’mon, it’s not in his interest. It’s not like you can find pretty captives on every ship you raid. It was three years between you and Axl. Pretty boys don’t usually go seafaring – for obvious reasons.”

“But Axl said-“ Vince turned to the redhead, then caught himself. Izzy seemed aware, but to what extent?

“Yeah, he got luckier than you. Doesn’t mean that wasn’t one of the reasons,” Izzy interrupted him. Ah, so he was fully aware. Interesting that Axl didn’t consider it worthwhile to tell him about their little club. “Ax, get off the bunk. I’m gonna have to stitch him anew. Here, lie down.”

He pressed on Vince’s shoulder, pushing him to lie onto his back, then opened a cabinet and extracted a bottle of water out of it and a surgeon’s kit.

“Hold this.” He handed Vince the water. As Vince discovered three seconds later, it was actually vodka. A shitty painkiller, but better than nothing.

“Hey!” Izzy caught Vince red-handed sipping out of the bottle. “You parasite! That’s for medical purposes. Give that to me.”

“I’m self-medicating!” Vince protested, reluctantly handing back the bottle. The only upside of vodka was that it didn’t take much of it to get piss drunk, though, so he wasn’t too upset about the loss.

“For external use!”

“Why? If you want to clean the wound with it, why not just use water? And I could find a better use for this heavenly beverage.”

“Are you telling me how to do my job? Maybe you’ll patch yourself up too then and save everyone the trouble?” Izzy gave Vince a blank stare that impressed him more than any frown Axl could master. “No? Then don’t act all smart here. Stretch out the arm.”

He got down onto his knees next to the bunk and leaned close to the wound, carefully stretching the skin a little to get a better look at it. Then he cut the thread with small scissors and abruptly pulled it out.

“Ouch!”

“Don’t be such a pussy,” Izzy rolled his eyes. “At least, not more than you already are.”

Vince wouldn’t have swallowed the insult so meekly if the surgeon wasn’t just about the only person capable of fixing his wound. Without the thread the torn edges of the wound widened, exposing black, clotted blood inside. Vince winced.

“Could be worse,” Izzy waved him off. “It just started to inflame. I don’t see any pus there so far.” Then he pulled out a patch of fabric and the aforementioned vodka bottle and, before Vince managed to realise what was happening, poured vodka all over it.

A second passed, and then Vince threw his head back with a howl as the liquid burned exposed flesh and the skin around it. Izzy promptly pressed the fabric to the wound, pushing Vince back onto the bunk, and held him down as he cursed and hissed. Then he began cleaning out the dried blood with the cloth, and Vince discovered he knew even more curse words than he thought. Thankfully, he did the job quickly enough for Vince to only cycle through his collection of curses three times.

“This should be a torture technique!” he protested once he was again capable of coherent speech. “Wouldn’t water do the job just as well?”

“No.” Izzy threw the bloody cloth on the floor. “Over my years of practice I discovered that the wounds cleaned with vodka or other highly alcoholic beverages have much lower chance of inflaming. And you need that chance. I can’t really chop off a shoulder in case there’s a gangrene.”

Vince, realizing this was a real possibility, went quiet. Izzy, meanwhile, grabbed a needle, threaded it and then dipped it into the flame of the candle. For a second Vince believed the thread would catch fire, but Izzy knew what he was doing. After a couple minutes of this he removed it, tried to touch it with his fingers, cursed under his breath and blew onto the blunt tip. When it presumably cooled enough, he grabbed the needle and lowered himself onto a stool next to the bed.

“Now hold still. You fidget too much, I’ll have to ask Axl to pin you down.”

“You don’t want that,” Axl, who until now had been observing the scene with an interest one would express to a circus performance, confirmed from the back.

“Aren’t you going to wait until the needle cools down?” Vince asked warily.

“No. It will hurt anyway.” With that, Izzy began to stitch.

The stab wound was small and only took him a few minutes to stitch up, but to Vince they were hours. He gripped the edge of the bed so tightly his fingers went numb, and bit his lips so hard he drew blood. But, for the first time on the Shout, the pain was inflicted without a purpose to hurt, and so he kept silent, save for an occasional pained gasp.

“All done.” Izzy rose from his stool and wiped his bloody fingers and the needle with a towel. “And you didn’t have to be all tough and manly about it. Crying actually helps relieve the pain.”

“Yeah, so you get more excuses to call me a pussy?” Vince huffed, sitting up on the bunk and putting his feet onto the floor. His bloodied knees poked out of his pants, drawing a disproportionate amount of attention.

“Whoa, man,” Axl whistled in amazement, “you seen his knees? To fucking shreds! The blowjob must have been insane.”

Izzy raised his eyebrows. “Huh. The captain sure doesn’t fuck around. You might want to get these cleaned and bandaged, though.”

“I might, if you two stop talking bollocks,” Vince said through gritted teeth.

“That’s only in your interest,” Izzy shrugged, wetting a cloth with vodka and handing it to him. “These can get infected too.”

“I- ouch!- know.” Vince dabbed the cloth onto one knee, then another. He didn’t even have to take off his pants for that, which was convenient.

“Any other injuries I should know about?”

“None that I recall,” Vince said curtly.

“Man, if that’s just his knees, imagine what the captain is doing to his ass,” Axl said from behind Izzy’s back. “Maybe he’s just too shy to ask you about it.”

“If you don’t shut up, I will do something much worse to your ass,” Vince promised.

“Oh-oh, so scary.” Axl threw his hands up in pretended surrender, but had to cut the act short to dodge from the candle holder Vince hurled at him. He promptly picked it up to throw it back, but Izzy was quicker.

“Stop that right now!” He snatched the candle holder from Axl’s hand. “I won’t tolerate a mess in my workplace!” For the first time Vince heard an actual emotion in his voice – anger. “Rose, get the hell out!”

“Hey! He started that!” Axl protested.

“I don’t care. He needs my services, and you’re here just to gawk. Get out or I’ll make you.” The surgeon was thinner and lighter than Axl, but Vince didn’t doubt for a second that he could easily do that. Axl seemed to be of the same opinion, because he got up and disappeared behind the door, muttering indignantly under his breath.

“You done?” Izzy turned back to Vince like nothing happened and crouched next to the bunk to look at his knees. “Well, you certainly didn’t try your hardest. Gimme.”

He quickly and relentlessly wiped up the rest of the clotted blood off Vince’s knees and bandaged them.

“Try not to kneel much in the next few days. Even if the captain wants you to. Tell him I said so.”

“I will make sure to pass your recommendations on to him,” Vince promised grimly. “After which he, in turn, will make sure to break every single one of them. Thanks for the help. Drop by the galley when you can. I don’t have much influence over Mick, but I can coax an extra mug of beer out of him for you.”

“You sure know your strengths.” Izzy smiled with corners of his mouth. “I’ll consider it. Now off you go.”

Well, out of all of “get the fuck out of here” variations this one was rather polite. Vince, not wishing to test Izzy’s patience any longer, left the sick bay and almost bumped into Axl, who was waiting patiently by the door.

“You could have told me that Izzy knows about us before I had to find it out by trial and error!” Vince poked him in the chest accusingly.

“Well, it didn’t end in error after all, right?” Axl waved his hand carelessly. “Besides, I wanted to see how you’d hold up in the presence of another person. I gotta say, I thought you had better manners.”

“Learning from you all,” Vince grumbled. “Anyone else aware you haven’t told me about?”

“Nope. Izzy’s the only one on this ship I can trust.” Axl sighed.

“Three years, and you’ve only made one friend? You’re not a social type, aren’t you?”

“I’ll look at you in three years and see how you’re faring,” Axl scowled. “If you’re still alive, that is. The captain sure is hot-headed, but within reason. You must be a terrible pain in the ass to end up so beaten.”

“I’m not-“ Vince began, but realized anything he said would be taken as proof of that. A pain in the ass, a bother, an annoyance. None of the pirates would ever see past this description, would never believe it wasn’t his fault. They believed their precious captain would never do that on his own volition, and together with general disregard of the “blue bloods” it was enough for them to shift the blame completely onto Vince’s shoulders.

He gave Axl a deadly glare and stormed down the corridor to the galley.