#idk abt ship tagging for this one bc it's just sorta...there fdksajfdsal

[izzy-b-hands]

He’s Just One More

Flashback and forthing Blackhands, from friendship to very undefined/needs to be talked about but that shit ain’t gonna happen for ages More of Some Sort

Centering around Izzy ‘hey if I’m sick in some way I definitely should fight being made better as hard as possible bc I’m convinced I don’t deserve it’ Hands fdlaksjlsa (no one at me abt projecting on a character rn either fdskalfjaslk)

Title from JCSS bc we’re watching various versions rn and this particular lyric smacked me along with this story idea in the shower like Norman Bates if he was really bad at stabbing, so it basically Has to Stay as the title I think (plus there’s elements of the story that can be thought abt in relation to the idea of that phrase, Izzy as Just One More child to his mother, person Ed knows, pirate, etc)

---

“You look like shit.”

Izzy nods. “So I’ve heard.”

“You’re either taking him off my hands, or you aren’t,” his mother repeats to Ed’s mum. “Which is it?”

“I can’t take-”

“Then if he lives, he lives,” his mother continues on with her laundry folding, all in rapid fire rhythm, not a hem missing in meeting its brother. “And if he dies-”

“Ed, grab him.”

He hears his mother’s shouts, demands for some compensation, but she won’t pursue it. She didn’t with his older siblings, and she won’t with the ones that come after him either. They stay with her until they’re no longer useful, or can’t work, or simply don’t amuse her anymore.

“Of little use, breathing or dead.”

“What’s that?” Ed asks, holding him up and hustling him along the beach towards home.

“Nothing. Just something she used to s-”

“Fuck what she has to say,” he scoffs. “She was going to let you die.”

“I know. I was expecting it.”

“Well, start expecting something different.”

--

“You look like fucking shit,” Jim frowns. “The fuck is wrong with you?”

“Stuck on this godforsaken ship in this godforsaken storm, just like you,” Izzy spits back.

“I didn’t mean the seasick thing,” Jim continues. “That’s all of us right now.”

They nod in warning, and duck their head away to vomit over the rail.

“So I see. Is there any task you’re requiring guidance or assistance with then?”

“No, but you-”

“Call if you need me,” Izzy interrupts and does his best to stalk away, inflamed foot screaming in pain. It feels like laying his foot down slowly on a boiling hot pan with every step.

It’s not how Blackbeard would have handled traveling near this storm. But then, this is the Kraken. This is different, and how he feels-

He cuts off his own thought with an audible grumble and pushes it away.

--

“Israel Basilica Hands, you will eat,” Mother Teach shoves the bowl of oatmeal into his hands. “Your mother is going around taking bets on when you’ll die.“

“Let’s make sure we’re off by at least one day either direction then.”

“Edward! I wash my hands of him for now!”

“No, hey,” Izzy protests, but she only gives him a smirk.

“Izzy!” Ed thunders in the front door and has it sussed out in a heartbeat. “Not eating?”

“Not exactly.”

“Iz,” he drops onto Izzy’s lap, nearly onto the bowl. “I could be out making money right now, couldn’t I?”

“Making money,” Mother Teach scoffs. She’s well aware the two of them don’t work any sort of traditional job (how could they, with the rumor that Ed killed his father, and that if Izzy didn’t help, he at least knew), hates talking about the rich visitors they rob, but can’t ever manage to not comment on it.

She’s a proper mum, in that way. Different from his own, and while it drives Ed mad, it’s almost endearing to Izzy.

“If I start to eat, will you go back out to work?”

“Dunno. You’ll have to start eating, and we’ll see.” 

“Oh look,” Mother Teach shoves a bowl into Ed’s hands. “Where did this come from?”

“Mum, I can eat lat-”

If looks could kill, their faces would be melting off into their oatmeal.

“Thank you,” Ed smiles instead, but shakes his head as soon as she heads outside again. “You have to just eat when she gives you stuff. We can’t keep doing this and-”

He sits up, stares at the oatmeal, and then at Izzy. “You’re doing this so I wind up eating lunch with you, aren’t you?”

Izzy shrugs, and begrudgingly digs in. It isn’t that any of the food is ever bad, he just hates the idea of living when his mother wants him alive, or dying right as she wants him dead.

“Is nice to eat again. Not doing that well out there, today.”

“In other words, had you not been near enough to hear your mum call for you just now, you’d be running around still and not eating until dinner, right?”

Ed smirks, and shrugs, and digs in just before his mum leans in the doorway to check on them.

--

Frenchie takes the square plate from him. “I don’t mind taking it back with mine.”

“I can take my things back to the galley on my own,” Izzy reaches for his cane, and the plate again. “I’m a grown fucking man, for pity’s sake.”

“Yeah, who has a foot swollen like a fucking...” Fang studies Izzy’s foot. “Huh. Frenchie, we need fruits set up for comparison sizing, don’t we?”

“I mean, I’d put that about small coconut at least,” Frenchie says. “All the more reason to just let me walk all our fucking plates back at once!”

He puts his hand down, and settles back into his spot sat on the deck. “You make a good point. Thank you.”

“Sorry, what?”

“He won’t repeat it,” Fang says. “Just soak it in now. He gets easier to deal with when he’s sick. Well, in some ways. Other ways he gets worse.”

“I’d noticed.”

Izzy waits until Frenchie is out of earshot before turning to Fang. “You really think it’s that bad?”

“Your foot? I feel like if you have to ask, you already know the answer,” Fang replies. “But yeah. You gotta tell Ed.”

“Blackbeard is busy keeping us alive.”

“I didn’t say Blackbeard,” Fang insists. “That’s been more a title than anything else for years, hasn’t it?”

“The fuck is this all coming from?”

“Because if you die, what the fuck do you think eventually happens to the rest of us?” Fang hisses. “Stop being so fucking selfish, and tell him to find you help before that rots off and takes you with it!”

He can only blink, and nod. “Thank you, Fang. For your honesty.”

Fang shakes his head, but he does let out a short laugh. “You’re welcome. You’re fucking weird as ever, but you’re welcome.”

--

“We don’t have the money for it,” Izzy shakes his head, or he feels like he might be. Then again, the fever has him shaking randomly in general, so even if he hasn’t shaken it yet, he’ll get to it.

“I’m sorry, are either of you the head of this household?” Mother Teach snaps.

He can see the thought in Ed’s head. Technically, if they polled anyone else in town, they would unfortunately hand that title to Ed, not his mum.

In reality, she’s the adult and the one bringing in the most funds, and so it’s on her order that they wrap up as warmly as possible and head out together.

The nearest, better doctor is visiting a few miles away. If they go under cover of night, they’ll get there faster.

“If I die, just leave me out here,” Izzy mutters, shivering in Ed’s grasp as they stumble forwards over rock and root and occasional sand.

“I will do no such thing. You wouldn’t leave me out here.”

“Maybe I would.”

“You can’t fucking lie for shit,” Ed laughs. “Why do you even try?”

“Bad habit?”

Ed punches his side playfully out of habit, then winces. “I forgot! Fuck-”

“I’m okay,” Izzy grimaces. “Whatever is going wrong in there wasn’t going to suddenly start going right, with or without the extra punch.”

Ed giggles. “I could have helped kill you! Don’t make me laugh about that.”

“Well, now I’ve got to tell jokes the whole fucking way!”

“You’re terrible.”

“You’re wavy.”

“...you might need to sit down for a moment.”

They drop into a copse of trees, some felled and left to create a semi-covered pocket of leaves and branches to hide in.

Soon, they’ll be too old and too big to hide in spots like this. Well, Ed might get there, at least.

Izzy can accept, as he passes out there in Ed’s arms, that he might not.

--

“The crew has requested I bring it to your attention,” Izzy finishes quickly. “I regret I couldn’t take care of it myself.”

“Ew,” Ed stares at his foot. “Is that from...oh.”

He gulps. “If you cover that back up with your sock right now, I swear I’ll find us a port to stop at and get you looked over. You can afford it, right?”

“I’ve rings yet hoarded away I could sell,” Izzy nods.

“Good. Next port, we’ll find someone,” Ed shakes his head. “How did you let it get that bad, Iz? You’re my first mate; you’re supposed to know when to ask for help! How the fuck am I supposed to trust-”

He pauses. “Never mind. Go on about your work. I’ll update yourself and the crew on the new destination shortly.”

Izzy staggers back outside, grateful for his cane, yet pondering what he might get for it. He won’t sell the ring on the knot of his scarf, but aside from that one, he’s only a couple others left.

That might not be enough for whatever a surgeon will say needs doing on his foot.

“He said yes, right?” Fang asks, coming up beside him as he makes his way onto the deck.

“He did. So long as I can afford it, and I’ll make sure I can. Worry not.”

“I think we should still be worrying a little.”

“I think Ed will tell us if we need to worry or not.”

Fang’s eyes meet his, just for a second. “I think you just called him Ed instead of Kraken, or Blackbeard.”

He’s off in Frenchie’s direction before Izzy can say a word about it.

--

There’s a lot of the doctor’s visit he doesn’t remember.

But, if asked, he could recall how Ed had dragged him the rest of the way to the next village over (and yes, they were older teens, but it was dark and they were tired and no amount of youth makes it easier to drag one’s dying friend to help.)

He could talk about Ed getting in the surgeon’s face and insisting that he do something, anything, within reason.

The surgery itself is a mystery. Ed tells him later about a growth pulled from him and the warning that there could be a recurrence and that the same issues with his stomach would come up again and again as one of the few signs, and, and, and a thousand more horrifying things about his body.

What he remembers best is waking up at home, covered in the same quilt he and Ed had used to drag out to the beach as younger kids. After all, stargazing was only comfortable for so long on bare sand.

Mother Teach had never let him pay back any of it. Every time he’d slipped money somewhere she might find it later, it wound up back in his or Ed’s trouser pockets after they were cleaned.

He’d still be trying to pay her back today, if they hadn’t left.

--

“Okay, so do that then,” he hears Ed scoff. “Fine, you need more money? I have fucking money, more fucking money than you could dream of, and-”

He raises a hand to try and stop Ed, but Jim slaps it down.

“Just lay there and shush,” they hiss. “Do you know where you are?”

He peers around. It’s a room, but that’s probably not as much detail as Jim is wanting.

So he shrugs.

“Captain,” Jim stresses the word, and there’s a mush of images in his head that follow.

Mostly being carried elsewhere, then dosed with morphine, and potentially Frenchie nearly sitting on him? Why, he can’t possibly imagine.

“You look like shit,” Ed kneels by his cot, and Izzy waits for something. An order, or a complaint, or a reminder that after this is over, he needs to get his shit together.

But Ed just switches to sitting, head leaned against the edge of the cot.

--

“As if we would have let anything happen to you,” Ed scoffs, and an arm wraps around his waist. “As If I would have let anything happen to you.”

“It very nearly did regardless.”

“Well, it won’t happen again,” Ed continues and pulls him close. “We have a boat, which will lead us to where we’ll eventually steal our ship-”

“Is it ours if we haven’t stolen it yet?”

“Not with that attitude, it isn’t. Anyway, we steal our ship, and then we find our fortune. If you get sick ever again, after that, it won’t even be a worry. We’ll have money to just have a surgeon around, forever.”

“Ever ready to try and keep me alive for you?”

“And for yourself,” Ed smiles. “And to spite your mum.”

“I suppose the first and last are convincing enough,” Izzy sighs happily. “You tell your mum we’re leaving tonight?”

“Not yet. Waiting until just before we go.”

“Probably for the best. It’ll hurt no matter when or how we do this, won’t it?”

“Yeah. But it’ll be worth it.”

--

“I’ll make sure I’m worth it,” Izzy murmurs to Ed, sleeping hard, still leaned against his cot. “Every cent you have to pay for this. To keep me alive, again.”

There’s no response, but Ed’s hand flops up onto the cot, and scrabbles for a moment.

Then it clicks.

He places his hand into Ed’s, and the gloved fingers slow and curl around his.