#tw: Suicidal Blackbeard

[comment-exchange]

337. I Need You To Do The Things I Can’t (Our Flag Means Death)

Title: I Need You To Do The Things I Can’t

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/52259410

Platform: AO3

Creator: kingstoken

Work Type: fic

Fandom: Our Flag Means Death

Rating: T

Pairing: Ed/Izzy

Word Count: 1012

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Number of comments: 7

Completion Status: Complete

Short summary/description: After Izzy is injured during a raid, Ed reminds him who he belongs to. Set during the time between seasons 1 and 2.

[ourflagmeansgayrights]

something suicidal people do sometimes when they’re actively preparing to kill themselves is they get loud about it. like dragging furniture around, slamming doors shut, making a lot of noise in their apartment that all their neighbors can definitely all hear. because deep down they’re hoping someone will come see what’s going on, maybe knock on their door to tell them to quiet down, and that person will realize what’s going on and will get them help, get them to not go through with it. because deep down, they don’t really want to die.

and i’m thinking abt ed steering the entire ship into a storm and getting ready to fire a cannon through the mast and yeah, he’s definitely trying to goad them all into killing him. but also, yknow, deeper than that, he’s begging for someone to stop him.

[djarin]

you know what was so important to me about seeing ed spiral from his mental health in this season? his mental illnesses weren’t used for comedic purposes. they weren’t the butt of a joke, they weren’t there to “lighten the mood” by being ridiculed, and we didn’t see a demonization of mental illness. instead, what we got was edward being raw and vulnerable and lost in a way that was purely authentic and true to what he was going through.

all of that, along with the “let’s list the pros and cons of staying alive” is something that is so important to so many of us who have struggled with depression, anxiety, suicide, etc in our own lives. i know for a fact that i’m not the only one who’s had to sit down to think, “what are the good and bad things about staying alive right now?”

ed lists warmth, good food, and orgasms as his pros. “orgasms” is there to give us a good laugh, sure, but guess what? it’s also there because ed, unfiltered and desperate, is blurting out what makes him feel good, and therefore, want to stay alive.

it doesn’t have to be a massive list of pros and cons. sometimes, it’s the simple things that keep us going, and that’s more than enough.

[desultorydenouement]

can we talk about red flags man. can we talk about it. ed handing izzy the gun, “good for you,” “it was good for me” (girl what are you saying and why are you saying it like that..), the eye contact, the wistfulness, the “im not cleaning up your mess i’ve been doing it all my fuckin’ life.” ed hearing the gunshot from izzy’s room. “i loved you best i could.” like for just a moment the genre changes into something realer and ed’s seeing through the fog, the two of them, izzy and ed both breaking through into something real because what they have is so old and so true that after all that happened it’s just them in a bitter old room, and then that gunshot and suddenly ed’s fucked up bout of penance-seeking is gone and it’s blackbeard again in a manic rage in the middle of a storm. and then ed’s absolute manic glee when he sees izzy’s the one who shot him, still alive, “you indestructible little FUCKER.” the line delivery, man. the pain. the ways they fuck each other up but keep coming back like it’s all they’ve ever known.

[angelicinsomaniac]

[confusedraven1]

i don’t think izzy fully came to terms with the fact that he shares the blame with stede for setting ed off on his destructive spiral until after he got shot.

when ed asked him to tell him why the vibes are toxic on the ship, that would’ve been a moment for izzy to admit that he was wrong to say what he did and apologize, but, instead, he said it was because ed couldn’t get over stede.

in the hidden room during That Conversation, ed tells izzy he had a dream that he killed him, shot him right through the skull (sidenote: not an actual dream, a plan). izzy looks at him almost in disbelief then says, “good for you. good for you for having fucked up dreams, why would you tell me something like that?”

“it was good for me. it’s just what the doctor ordered.”

that line is….oof. 😮‍💨 BUT it’s also a callback to s1 ep10 when izzy tells ed he wished he had been killed by the english, that death was better than how he was acting.

in this scene in s2 ep2, ed is saying, “you were right. i’m better off dead, and apparently no one else can manage it, so i’m handing the job off to you. and this is exactly how i want it done. izzy, i want you to handle this. i want it done right.”

[ladyluscinia]

Genuinely hurts my heart how many people heard "I loved you... Best I could" and decided that meant he actually didn't love him at all and at best pitied him or at worst was disgusted by him, instead of thinking maybe the guy at the bottom of a spiral so dark he thinks he just drove the guy he's confessing to the air about to put a bullet in his brain (and is about to try and murder-suicide his entire crew about it) feels he might have not loved him very well, on account of all the stuff. Like maybe he's having a bit of a crisis about self-loathing and considering himself unlovable and poisonous to others. Like maybe that's not the best headspace to give or accept love no matter how genuine the feelings. Like maybe he's not actually saying that just to get one last sadistic dig in at the ghost of someone who loved him, but because he actually cared once and still does, even if it's buried under the darkness he's giving up on escaping from

Like maybe he just loved him the best he could, and right now it doesn't feel like he did a good job of it (for fairly obvious reasons)

[thebasementgirl]

I remembered something today and wanted to thank OFMD for doing it:

When a person in a deep state of depression, apathy and irritation wakes up one morning suddenly smiling and calm, this is a very serious sign that you should be concerned

[insteading]

So I've only watched 2.1, 2.2., and 2.3 once each so far, but I can already tell the music choices are going to wreck me this season. I figure lots of people will have things to say about the use of Kate Bush in 2.3, so I want to focus on the second movement of Beethoven's Symphony #7 in 2.2, "Red Flags."

First, this movement has been a banger since it existed: at its first performance, the audience demanded that the second movement be repeated after the symphony concluded. It's a funeral march, and per the notes accompanying the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie of Bremen's gorgeous recording, it was likely heard as responding to collective grief:

The premiere performance of Beethoven's Seventh was at a benefit concert in Vienna in December 1813 for wounded soldiers and their families. It came only two months after the Battle of Nations near Leipzig. The German name is "Völkerschlacht" (Slaughter of the Peoples), one of the most catastrophic wartime events in human history. It also marked the liberation from Napoleon's forces. The sad, beautiful quality of this piece makes it very different from the other three movements of Beethoven's Seventh. Endlessly mournful – but also uplifting, it is still played at funerals today.

For those of us who were in music school at a certain point in history, it is also the soundtrack for characters experiencing suicidal ideation, courtesy of the 1994 film Immortal Beloved.

Its use underpinning the conversation between Ed and Izzy is self-explanatory: Ed's way of expressing self-loathing is to goad the people around him to hurt him. He feels a kind of ambivalence toward his own life that we saw last in OFMD's pilot, where Stede cannot firmly answer Oluwande's question, "Do you want to live?!"

But we hear the first notes of Beethoven before that scene ever begins.

That the music begins here, rather than when Ed enters the hold to press Izzy into killing him, highlights as much as anything we've seen so far how traumatized Lucius is: not just by being pushed overboard, but by all the trafficking and abuse he experienced before encountering his former crewmates, which he barely starts to detail in this episode. "If I start, I don't know what's going to come out." The stories Lucius shares may have an over-the-top quality, but they're scored like tragedy.

[oldmanffucker]

Love making fanfic that is so utterly divorced from the source material

What do you mean this is a 25 chapter character study of izzy stede and Ed grappling with grief through art after they’ve met at a ceramics happy hour at the Queen Anne clay studio? What do you mean this is a steddyhands exploration of suicide, sibling loss, and parent loss through clay and freaky trans sex?

[krakensarefriendsnotfood]

Someone else probably already mentioned this, but this shot seems to confirm Ed throws himself into to the water. With a huge rock tied around his waist or foot, no less! Ed, what are you doing, babygirl?! Is that guy/ghost/hallucination talking him into offing himself or is this some kind of test, or what? What is happening here?

[reallyafairy]

The more I think about it, the more Blackbeard attempting suicide makes so much sense.

He wasn't very on board with trying to stay alive pre-Stede. Post-Stede, he's just doing the same thing as he was before but now he has this terrible heartache constantly. The thing that gave his life color and new vibrance is causing him terrible, terrible pain. It's worse than it was before, ever, by a billion.

"So you're saying I should just curl up in a ball and die?"

He's done waiting for death. Izzy isn't with him to keep him from it. He's going after it himself.

He wasn't interested in staying alive until he found something worth living for. It LEFT him. He can't have it back as it was, It simply isn't achievable. He thinks Stede sees what they had a something so much more surface-level and shallow than it was to him.

Fuck, if that's not a mood. "I loved him more than he loved me." Isn't that always so scary? The idea that you care MORE about someone else than they do you?

His confidence in whatever he thought Stede felt for him is in the negatives. So Lucius said Stede liked him a lot, guess he didn't. So he seemed to be giving him signals all along, guess that was misinterpreted. So he KISSED HIM BACK, so FUCKING what? He left. Nothing matters because he left. We are not at ground zero, we are in the Earth's crust.

[multifandom-fanfic-writer]

you know how in episode 2 ed suddenly 'cleans up' and becomes sort of deleriously happy as he forgives frenchie and steers the ship into a storm?

from what i know, this uptick in maniac-like happiness often happens to people who've been suicidal a long time and finally decide to 'really' do it. which makes sense, as ed both seriously tries to have izzy kill him - used to izzy follow orders - and when that doesn't work, makes either the storm or the crew kill him.

it's honestly so well written!

[a-dotrivenitupontop]

why you should vote for david brittlesbee in the @epicdivorcemantournament. a powerpoint presentation (tumblr post) by me:

•in just the pilot episode of mythic quest david gets excluded from company meetings, has his assistant abandon him for another guy and calls one of his workers ‘mom’

•he’s the boss at a video game company but the divorce fucked him up so badly no one accepts that he’s even a boss (this kinda shifts in s3 but eh. spoilers)

•oh yeah his parents also got divorced. so. y’know double whammy innit. just one divorce after another for this poor little meow meow

•“are we at your divorce trial right now? because i just watched a hot asian chick rip out your heart”

-brad bakshi, s1 e10

•my man CONSTANTLY uses divorce to project onto his workplace. whenever the main characters fight david always draws comparisons to his divorce (especially in s2)

•to score david a date the aforementioned brad had to train him to talk to women using a simulator called ‘divorcee dance party’

•he did score a date though. only he forgot her name and the relationship lasted like six episodes. the reason they broke up? he got down on TWO knees and BEGGED for marriage. slay queen

•also before using the dating sim david used pictures of his wedding day on his dating app profile. and a video of him reviewing bikes. that’s a crucial piece of information too

•his ex wife kicked him out of his own home forcing him to live in motherfucking cerritos (op in br*tish and has no idea what a cerritos is but assumes it’s something to describe as ‘motherfucking’)

•“you know who didn’t have trouble finding a man? your ex-wife”

-poppy li, s1 e2

•in an episode where each character got given a workplace animal personality thing david got wolf and spent the episode bragging about it. only he did the test the wrong way and turned to be a butterfly. this isn’t directly related to divorce but i do think it’s pathetic of david

•when two of his employees (amongst a couple others but they’re irreverent rn) quit to work at a new company in the basement david was so fucked up by this that he was implied to have almost attempted suicide. we stan a depression-ridden mess who would rather kill himself than lose his found family and relive the trauma of his divorce. heart emoticon

•anyways here’s a compilation of david being Pathetic for your entertainment

[trx34ksh]

Guys I just saw a really sad TikTok edit of Ed so I just gotta put my two sense in.

ED WAS SUICIDAL AFTER STEDE LEFT HIM!!!! THIS IS SO HEARTBREAKING AND I DONT SEE PEOPLE TALKING ABT IT ENOUGH!!!!!

Ed tells stede in the scene where they first kiss back in ssn 1 that he doesn’t want to return to his old life of killing and hurting people just to live. As a pirate he is always on the run, always going, never slowing down; except for his time with stede. Being with stede opened his eyes to a new way of life, not just peaceful but joyful!! Ed wants this new way of life specifically with stede.

Stede leaving Ed drove him to go back to his old, harmful life because he had nothing else to fall back on. Something so devastating as the love of your life leaving you unexpectedly would always drive someone to go mad. Ed is the farthest of exceptions. He goes back and turns it to 11. He cuts off Izzy’s toe and feeds it to him, then later on making Izzy loose his left leg. He pits the crew against eachother till he finds the people on top and kicks out the rest to die on a small island. He is so mentally unstable that he turns to abusing not only drugs and alcohol but the crew aswell. It’s no wonder it’s taken up to 5 episodes for many of the characters to now start healing from the trauma Ed (and by effect, stede) had put on them!!!

When everything goes belly up, Ed is fully ready for any of the crew to finally put him out of his misery. He doesn’t know anything else. He wants the final grand escape: death. The only thing that saves him while in the “gravy boat” is the fact that Ed thinks he is unlovable. He wants that to change because stede showed him at one time that he is lovable!!! That he is able to love and be loved and be truly happy! The first thing that comes to mind of the pros and cons to living is warmth. Stede has an open fireplace on his ship, the “we need to be a lighthouse” bit where stede spits alcohol twords a fire, when ed talks about opening that shop with stede during their adventure out from the ship they talk over a campfire. Warmth grounds him! He finds a home in it.

Without warmth (or rather, stede) Ed has no home! No stability! Nothing to ground him to who he was when he was with stede; someone happy and lively rather than the cold and brooding Ed we see after stede leaves.

TLDR: Ed’s suicidal tendencies is so poignant and it should be talked abt more. His heartbroken era is so so so important to his character and his relationship with stede and why they need each other.

Also sorry for any typos this was all just sprung from my brain in one go. ^_^

[rottingformerfirstmate]

Best I Could (BlackHands)

Summary: A detailed look inside Izzy's head during that scene of episode two. Fully canon-compliant.

Tags: BlackHands, Mutual Pining, Mutual Hurt/No Comfort, Mutilation, Canon-Typical Violence and Gore, Religious Imagery, Suicidal Thoughts and Behavior, S2E2 Compliant

WC: 2.4k | AO3 | Rated: M

Time, for Izzy, has always been a matter of order rather than any valuable measure. Days are relevant insofar as the expiry on fruit stores or how close the ship is to landfall. Weeks and seasons matter to currents. Vaguely, in the back of his mind, Izzy has a sense of exactly how much of his life has been spent at Edward’s side, but it’s not a quantifiable number of years he could quote with any certainty. He’s always kept a calendar on his desk to be a good first mate, and help with logistics, but it never mattered. Time passed, Izzy’s life remained the same, and he used to be happy with it.

When exactly the satisfaction faded into nodding off on watch and fretting over Ed, he can’t say. Izzy can, however, pinpoint the exact moment in which genuine fear of Ed began to constrict his throat. Blackbeard, the mythological persona carefully crafted between Ed’s orders and Izzy’s hands, was always ruthlessly cruel to anyone who dared cross him—frequently including the crew of the Queen Anne’s Revenge. Izzy was historically exempt from this as Ed’s first mate. The worst pain Edward ever inflicted on him, directly or otherwise, was the tattoo on his face. That memory is fond. Ed sat in Izzy’s lap, gripping his chin in one hand and inking the needle with the other.

Over a stretch of years beyond Izzy’s articulation, he and Ed have revolved around one another like two marbles circling a drain, colliding occasionally in the dim light of the captain’s cabin. Ed’s never been rough. Although sometimes Izzy wished he would be, there was a distinct lack of gentleness in the act. Izzy can best describe it as perfunctory, like Ed considered it no more exciting than scratching an itch, though the whole process rewrote the very foundations of Izzy’s soul each time. There was a routine to it; Izzy knew how Ed liked him, on his knees with his face in the pillows and his hands behind his back, and he took what he was given and loved it because it was the closest he would ever come to love. It used to feel like enough.

Izzy’s fear was born the night Ed snapped. He was fraying for years before Bonnet’s arrival, was hanging on by a thread after the breakup. Izzy can admit to himself his own role in breaking Edward. To taunt him when he was already so fragile was as cruel as it was stupid. And all Ed offered for Izzy to cling onto was a chide for his screams of agony and an order to work as he always did.

At this point, Izzy cannot guess how long ago Ed cut off his pinkie toe. It feels like an eternity but could be anywhere between a couple of months and several years. They have no calendar anymore, nor do they possess a working compass. It’s all booze, plundered food, treasure they can’t offload, and sticky grease paint caked around Izzy’s hairline. He’s down to his big toe on that foot.

Ed shot him in the same leg.

Most of the day is a blur, all of Izzy’s life smearing around it. The one thing he remembers clearly is the muzzle of Ed’s gun tucked under his own chin, raving at the crew with such insanity Izzy wouldn’t have been shocked to see spittle foaming up around his lips like the rabid dog Ed has become.  Izzy lays in a sickbed nestled in the walls, sweating and shivering and bleeding and swearing and, when he has the strength, begging. He screams in every face he sees to spare him from this horrible torture already.

He feels closer to Ed now than he ever has before. Izzy has experienced practically every emotion available on the human spectrum, but this is the first time he has stared up, dewy-eyed, and prayed for death. The prospect neither frightens nor overwhelms him. Instead, he feels it would be a warm, soothing embrace, of the sort to deliver him softly from the purgatory he willingly followed Ed into. If nothing else, he deserves some recognition for how far loyalty to his captain above all brought Izzy.

“Kill me,” Izzy bellows into Frenchie’s face, too weak to do much else. “Kill me, you fucking coward!”

Frenchie doesn’t kill him, which is just as well because Izzy has never loved anything that wasn’t trying to tear him apart. The crew take up vigil at his bedside as he fades in and out of consciousness in an ever-growing pool of his own festering blood. Izzy can’t smell it anymore, at least. He’s too angry that no one has had the mercy to kill him to feel guilty about how permeating the awful stench is beyond his fear Ed will happen upon their unwilling convalescent.

When he wakes up to only Edward beside him, Izzy’s brain is slow to catch up. His leg still burns, from thigh to ankle, but Izzy realizes immediately his leg is gone. In its place, the outline of what once was in black blood reflects the small darts of light creeping in. Izzy can barely move, remaining limbs uncooperatively shaky and raspy voice fighting out his throat to ask. He already knows, had known the second Fang put him on this cot, but his mind cannot think much further than the shock of his missing leg. It doesn’t feel real. Nothing has since Stede Bonnet crossed paths with Blackbeard, or longer, if Izzy wants to be particularly honest. Now is the last chance he’ll ever have to do so; a dying man cannot be tortured indefinitely.

“That’s gone now,” Ed tells him matter-of-factly, “up in leg heaven.”

Izzy is barely awake, scarcely alive, soaked in every fluid his body is capable of producing, all skin and bones, like most of the crew. Raids haven’t kept them fed without making land to sell loot. But Ed looks so beautiful in this moment Izzy has trouble convincing himself it’s real. He’s looked hollow since Stede left, but now, there’s a glow to him. His golden skin, creased with decades of hysterical laughter and devastating meltdowns, is clear of the greasy paint. His hair is pulled up out of his face, messy but less snarled than usual as though Ed sat down and ran a comb through it. Izzy has been the only one to do so in the months since Bonnet, and his empty stomach roils at the thought of Frenchie carefully sorting through the knots in Ed’s long silver hair, but he hasn’t seen Ed do so himself since his golden days aboard the revenge in pink silk robes. Ed doesn’t look younger, but he is softer. Izzy doesn’t point out Ed clearly bathed, nor does he acknowledge the faintest hints of lavender offering a bare reprieve to the oppressive air of the room.

“Have you come to take the other one?”

That should be enough to do him in. As far down the rabbit hole as they all are now, Izzy wouldn’t put it past Edward to turn Izzy into a torso and a head, a buff statue to entertain him until that gets boring too and he’s tossed overboard with no way to save himself. Death is a welcome friend in comparison to anything else Ed dreams up to inflict on him.

“I think that’s quite enough.” In another life, or another decade, Ed touches Izzy at this point. He dabs the sweat off his skin, kisses his clammy cheeks, drops laudanum under his tongue, whispers those words. There was a time they looked after each other, though the memory is so distant Izzy has to strain to grasp it now. “I just popped down to say a proper goodbye.”

Ed holds his gun more reverently than he has touched Izzy in all the time they’ve known each other. Smooth mahogany and polished silver gleam beg for his attention, but Izzy can only look at Ed. He’s never done anything else. Practiced hands cock the weapon.

“I had a dream about you last night.”

Izzy had a dream about Ed as well, or a night-terror if Jim is to be believed. It was the two of them on deck, lit only by the barest tangerine glow of temperamental torches, and Izzy was sobbing. He begged and pleaded for Ed to stop- what Izzy wanted him to stop, he can only guess. In his dream, Ed laughed at him and reached through his ribcage to tear out his beating heart. Long, sticky strands of blood vessels tugged to try and keep Izzy’s heart close, but Ed bent down to tear through them with his teeth. Izzy collapsed to the deck, bleeding out with a blurry impression of Ed’s boots in front of him, Ed’s laughter ringing in his ears. He woke up screaming. The last good sleep he had was long enough ago to feel less real than the night-terrors.

“Take it.” Ed forces the gun toward Izzy, ignores every protest to crush Izzy’s fingers around the handle. If Izzy drops it, he doesn’t know what will happen: death, or something creatively worse. “Hold it!” He struggles to keep a decent grip on the gun. Not too long ago, Ed might have followed it with some sort of praise, a brief acknowledgement that Izzy is a good lad for playing along with his whims. A bare crumb is enough for a man of Izzy’s station to cling to, but Ed will not allow him such a foothold any longer.

Ed leans forward so the muzzle of the gun nearly kisses his lips. Izzy has the faintest urge to push it between them. Whether Ed would open his mouth, eyes dark and locked on Izzy’s, or if he would be out of the way before Izzy’s finger could find the trigger, Izzy doesn’t know. He doesn’t want to find out.

“I dreamt you killed me.” Izzy has had a lot of dreams about Edward, but never one of this nature. He’s always the one to suffer, and Ed is always the survivor happy to be free of the burden. “Shot me right through the skull.”

As a pirate, Izzy has enough experience in shooting men at such close range to picture it vividly. The slug, wherever it reaches Ed’s face, would blow Ed’s skull wide open into an array of pink tissue and white bone. Blood would cover the walls and ceiling, slowly dripping to add to the ocean on the floor beneath Ed’s unidentifiable body. It would be much faster, more merciful death than a shot to the leg. All this, and Ed still couldn’t kill Izzy no matter how deep his rage at the mere mention of Bonnet.

“Good for you,” Izzy croaks. He’s able to get his finger around the trigger, with only the pressure requisite to feel it against his skin.

“It was good for me.” Ed stands and rounds the edge of the bed, oblivious or indifferent to the wavering track of Izzy’s aim. “It’s just what the doctor ordered. But it wasn’t like that.” He turns his back to Izzy. One slow step after another, he approaches the door with cold, catlike, precision. “No. In my dream, I was standing.” He doesn’t look back over his shoulder. It wouldn’t change anything if he did. “Just like this.”

The light cascading down the stairs breaks around Ed’s silhouette. With his arms outstretched, Edward is the perfect imitation of every religious drawing Izzy has ever seen, bathed in the golden glow of late afternoon sun, standing on his own two feet without a bottle or a pipe his hands. For just a moment, he’s little Eddie Teach again. Then Izzy remembers which one of them has truly been nailed to the cross, and his heart hardens.

He shores himself up to raise the gun he never wanted in his hand, but after losing a leg and every shred of dignity he ever had to his name, Izzy can barely lift it a more few inches off his stomach. Dry, bitter laughter spills from his cracked lips. For a moment, his swollen tongue lolls out of his mouth. His body is too broken and tired to keep it in place. His eyes remaining open at all shocks him. But if this is his last day on this earth, or Edward’s, or both of theirs, then he will be present for as much as he can. He forces a shaky aim somewhere between Ed’s shoulder blades. Right in the back, like a coward, would be a fitting end.

“Oh, are you scared, Eddie?” Though Ed shifts his weight, he does not turn around. He plays the part of a cold, detached killer too well for a man who can’t stomach death by his own hand, acting as if it’s not his fault Izzy is a corpse whose brain hasn’t caught up yet. Ed deserves to be scared. He wasn’t frightened any of the times he mutilated Izzy, or made him scrub his own blood off the floor, or pushed the crew into another pointless raid. “Too- too scared to do it yourself, ay?” Another bout of compulsive, painful laughter bubbles up his throat. Ed still doesn’t react. The only time he’s ever still and reserved is when Izzy wishes he would break for a second, at least. “Go on, clean up your own fucking mess.” The gun drops dully onto his stomach. He can’t hold it up anymore. “I’m not doing it, I’ve been doing it all my fucking life. Fuck off.”

Ed nods.

“Farewell, old chum.”

As he climbs the stairs, any remaining fight in Izzy’s body saps out of him. Once again, Izzy is alone. The blood still sluggishly drooling from his stump of a leg discourages him from any action to make himself presentable before death. There’s piss in his trousers, sweat in his hair, blood from his belly button to his remaining ankle, and a sickeningly sweet smell like coinage and spoiled oranges permeating the air. Nothing he does will make this death honorable.

The second Ed’s feet disappear from sight, Izzy fights to raise the gun to his temple with the last of his strength. For all his flaws, at least Ed has given him a way out. May they both find their way.

Izzy pulls the trigger.