WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS 4.08 Go Flip Yourself

WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS — 4.08 “Go Flip Yourself”

Indie WWDITS selective and private multi-muse Written by Ace

CARRD. 

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🪐 — MUSECRAFT : i have ridden in your cart, driver / waved my nude arms at villages going by / learning the last bright routes, survivor / where your flames still bite my thigh / & my ribs crack where your wheels wind / a woman like that is not ashamed to die / i have been her kind. an independent multimuse featuring canon & original muses from a myriad of fictional worlds. as written by rosemary.

Quotes taken from Black Sails season 4:

❝ If it makes you feel any better, I haven’t considered killing you in months. ❞

❝ You and I have willed our men through unthinkable things to get this far. Why not one more? ❞

❝ We are emotional beings, after all, and rhetoric is the fuel that feeds the fire. ❞

❝ Today, we reclaim what is ours. And we seek retribution for what was taken from us. ❞

❝ Revenge is a powerful motivator, undoubtedly. ❞

❝ If I am to play the role, I ought to make some effort to look the part. ❞

❝ The world is changing so rapidly and we with it. I fear the day will soon come when we will no longer recognize either. ❞

❝ We are who we are. Nothing so important changes so quickly. ❞

❝ There’ll be debts to repay after today. ❞

❝ To elevate one of us over the other, even as a fiction, seems to me to be tempting fate in a most dangerous way. ❞

❝ When a man first needs you and thereafter calls you a friend, a little suspicion is a healthy thing. ❞

❝ I don’t believe you need him to be the man you are. ❞

❝ I was always told that you were the one without fear. Was I misinformed? ❞

❝ It ain’t fear to want to do a hard thing smart. ❞

❝ We fight an enemy here determined to see all of civilization collapse. The only thing standing between them and their goal is you and I, and no one else seems willing to lift a finger to help. ❞

❝ The only man among you I trusted is dead. ❞

❝ I’m asking you… if this war died with him. ❞

❝ I beg your pardon, but have I not proved to you my friendship? ❞

❝ This is now an island of true friends and mortal enemies and nothing in between. ❞

❝ I have become so easily set aside, have I? ❞

❝ There is an unthinkable victory within our reach, and I will see this through by whatever means I have at my disposal. ❞

❝ My word will govern. ❞

❝ You think that little of me that I care so much how I’m seen in his eyes, I’d be willing to lose my life over it? ❞

❝ I ain’t here to prove anything! ❞

❝ I ain’t here to figure out who I am. ❞

❝ What happens when those motives start demanding their own ends? And this thing we’re all a part of starts splitting right down the middle? ❞

❝ I did all of it, contorted myself into the role, mutilated myself so that it would fit because I believed as long as you believed I was your partner, it didn’t matter what anyone else believed. ❞

❝ I don’t want to be protected. I don’t want it. ❞

❝ You are not a compromise to me. ❞

❝ I do not regret what I did, no matter the consequences. And I didn’t want you to have any reason to think that I did. ❞

❝ I gave you a life, and you repaid me by conspiring with my enemies. ❞

❝ This will all pass soon enough… if we let it. ❞

❝ Had I not stepped in, who knows how destructive that could have become for everyone? ❞

❝ What I do object to, however, is spectacle, certain to increase defiance and anger rather than soothe it. ❞

❝ I’m no one. From nowhere. Belonging to nothing. I’m a wretch like you. ❞

❝ I’m the reason grown men lie awake at night. ❞

❝ Only a fool would give his life to earn the admiration of a corpse. ❞

❝ So big a name for so small a man. ❞

❝ I am tired of this. This thing that perpetuates itself with anger and bluster and blood. I do not want to be your friend. ❞

❝ What am I… if I spend my days pleading for a return to civility and then do dark things under the cover of night? ❞

❝ You will be gone, but you will live. ❞

❝ What I want is for all of this to end. For it to end, you must end.  ❞

❝ There isn’t a good man among them. Not anymore. Some of them may have been, before all this. Some of them may be again on the other side of it. But right now, good men are not what the moment requires. Right now, the time calls for dark men… to do dark things. ❞

❝ The empire survives in part because we believe its survival to be inevitable. But it isn’t. ❞

❝ Too much sanity may be madness, and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be. ❞

❝ These men would turn on you in a blink of an eye. Why would you go to such lengths to protect them? ❞

❝ You think you can control him. And by the time you realize he has been controlling you, it is going to be too late. ❞

❝ All you are doing is antagonizing them. And who is that serving? ❞

❝ End this quietly and easily and definitively. ❞

❝ He was my closest friend. Lost to a cheap and cowardly shot. ❞

❝ I will show them what the consequences are for threatening that which I hold most dear. I will leave no doubt about it. ❞

❝ Control that no one can see makes for no demonstration at all. ❞

❝ All life begins in violence and wailing. It will pass. ❞

❝ Every fight I have ever won… every death I have escaped, every sacrifice I have had bled out of me, it will all have to be repeated just to get things back to where they were a few hours ago. There’s some kind of hell it seems to me to be. ❞

❝ I have grown quite fond of you. You are someone who is determined to be better today than you were yesterday. And in this world, that is in short supply. And so I find myself feeling protective of you. ❞

❝ Amazing, this place. Somehow leaves no options other than to hurt the ones you love. ❞

❝ I would think some sort of thanks might be in order. ❞

❝ When you and I last saw each other… you had every reason to see me killed. ❞

❝ I’d be angrier about it, but I’m a little preoccupied being angry with other people. ❞

❝ Why didn’t you kill me when you had the chance? ❞

❝ We are at our least rational… when we’re at our most vulnerable. ❞

❝ The thought of losing you… ❞

❝ It is some kind of hell to be forced to choose one irreplaceable thing over another. ❞

❝ You must see by now that when you wage war on the world, the world fights back. ❞

❝ I had put so much of myself into this place, in that moment, I honestly didn’t know where I ended and it began. ❞

❝ I think we’ve all seen our fair share of loss and I have had enough of it. ❞

❝ You should trust that my commitment to you remains inviolable… and that this is no betrayal… but an act of love. And an act I am determined to see through to its end. ❞

❝ It will be difficult. But since when did we expect this would be anything else? ❞

❝ This is not easy for me, but I know it is harder for you. Please. Don’t forget that I know that. ❞

❝ … would I be enough for you? ❞

❝ For so long, I thought I knew what I was. ❞

❝ I fear the instincts that have awoken in me… are more insidious than that. ❞

❝ Civilization… has a number of faces. ❞

❝ There is very little… I wouldn’t do to protect my wife. ❞

❝ You’re exactly what I hoped you’d be. ❞

❝ I’m not gonna stand by and watch while all our futures are destroyed. ❞

❝ I don’t know I have it in me to do. ❞

❝ Worry ain’t a good look for a king, not in a kingdom like this… where loyalty is in short supply. ❞

❝ You and I are enemies as our kings are at war with one another. But their war… right now their war is meaningless to me. ❞

❝ You are not my enemy, because my king tells me so. Don’t insult me… by suggesting otherwise. ❞

❝ They’re paying for their war with your money. ❞

❝ This isn’t right. All those men out there that you and I have fought alongside. I can’t believe I’m the only one who knows this isn’t right. ❞

❝ I saw your bloodlust with my own eyes. ❞

❝ If you had suffered such loss, is there anything you can imagine making it right? ❞

❝ It would have been so easy to lessen your suffering by divulging the secret. And yet, I never did. Have you yet asked yourself why that is? ❞

❝ I mistrusted all of you. ❞

❝ It seems the only means I have of registering any meaningful disapproval at this point is to kill one or the both of you. ❞

❝ You are my friend, but I know what you are. I have no illusions about it. ❞

❝ The one thing he’s never done is force me to choose between him and you. That, you did. ❞

❝ You made a terrible mistake and you paid a terrible price. ❞

❝ I could walk out there and tell them the sky is red… and they’d believe me. That’s the power you’ve given me. ❞

❝ I have to know you’ll never put me to a choice between you again. ❞

❝ You chose. Live with it. ❞

❝ Is there any way you can forgive me? ❞

❝ Making sure you don’t slit my throat out of spite, perhaps. ❞

❝ You were a pirate once. ❞

❝ If a man can be replaced so easily, how can I know that his promises won’t be, too? ❞

❝ What has begun here, there is no altering it now. ❞

❝ I loved you. And I betrayed you. But I cannot apologize for it. ❞

❝ If I apologize, you will know it is a lie. And I do not wish to lie to you ever again. ❞

❝ I am going to stay with you. I want to take care of you. ❞

❝ A life of isolation and uncertainty as long as it is lived with someone you love… And who loves you back. It is possible, isn’t it? ❞

❝ I’ll not leave anyone behind. ❞

❝ Seems a fair amount of resentment towards you these days. ❞

❝ I just want you to know… that I remember what you did for me. ❞

❝ It wasn’t supposed to end like this. How can we all have sacrificed so much and none of us has anything to show for it? ❞

❝ Civilization has been winning that war for ten thousand years against men richer, braver, stronger, and smarter than you. How can you be so blind not to see that? ❞

❝ You cannot fight civilization from the outside in. ❞

❝ It wasn’t your fault. ❞

❝ The revolution you promised has begun. ❞

❝ I wasn’t able to say good-bye to you…  ❞

❝ I loved you. And I believe you loved me. ❞

❝ They may call you a king, but only in the kingdom that is no more. ❞

❝ We’re all free here. And I wish to stay that way. ❞

❝ You’ll have plenty of time to murder me another day. Right now, you need to rest. ❞

❝ No one changes the world. Not like this. Not all at once. The world is too strong for that. ❞

❝ Truth isn’t nearly as interesting. ❞

❝ They all turned on me. Discarded what I’d done for them, the sacrifices I made, and left me for dead. And I want them all to pay for it. ❞

❝ Given that kindness is a condition rare in our family, I suppose it’s unsurprising that it went misdiagnosed. ❞

❝ As I would be no slave again, and nor would I be a master. ❞

❝ I do it for us. ❞

❝ You’ll lead them there… and they will follow you. ❞

❝ There’s nothing here but horror. ❞

❝ What if the result of this war isn’t beyond the horror? What if it is the horror itself? ❞

❝ A moment of terror…where everything appears to be without hope. I know this. But I cannot believe that that is all there is. I cannot believe we are so poorly made as that. ❞

❝ It’s a lot to ask…to wager so much suffering on blind faith. ❞

❝ I think that you are the best of us. The two of you together are the world in balance. ❞

❝ A future? I don’t know who broke it first. But it broke. And there ain’t no putting it back together again. ❞

❝ The solution to our problems is not going to come from a council meeting. ❞

❝ The defense of civilization is not your responsibility! ❞

❝ I will move heaven and earth to protect him, but while playing this role, the limits of my influence are ever-present. ❞

❝ Privacy always comes with a price, dear. ❞

❝ You move in a dark and destructive direction. Your grief and your anger… I believe have unmoored you from sound judgment and have left us all in grave danger if you are not reined in. ❞

❝ That sounds an awful lot like treason to me. ❞

❝ Do not ask me to choose between a war and a lover. I do not think you’re going to like the answer. ❞

❝ Because despite the world reminding me every day of my life that I’m undeserving of being given anything by it, that I was unworthy of what little I’d managed to take from it… despite all of that, I never believed a word of it. ❞

❝ I have been fighting the whole goddamn world since the day I was born. ❞

❝ I cannot imagine the road you’ve travelled. The humiliations…and the sacrifices and the defeats… and the illusions maintained at so great a cost to your sense of self.❞

❝ That road has led you to me. I am the gate through which your journey becomes something else. I can make the dreams you have built real. ❞

❝ The toll is small, but it must be paid. ❞

❝ So many lies… to deny a simple truth. ❞

❝ The crown does not divide. It cannot be shared. ❞

❝ You are the bravest person I have ever known. The truest person I have ever known. And I betrayed you and it sickens me. ❞

❝ I am so sorry for working so hard to protect the wrong things. For failing to see that there is nothing important that does not include you. ❞

❝ The men said it sounded to them… like the voice of God… warning them to stay away ❞

❝ We fight, only two outcomes I can see… I die or you die. ❞

❝ But for pride to be an issue between you and I… well, I… I think we’re playing past that by now. ❞

❝ if every man fights differently, seems to me what you’ll really be teaching me is how to defeat you. ❞

❝ You are, for now, a necessary evil here. ❞

❝ You’re still watching my eyes, which is a good way of getting yourself killed. ❞

❝ I have no idea who you were. ❞

❝ I suppose I assumed that if you ever became somebody worth knowing, I’d learn the truth of it eventually. Only… in this moment, I’m realizing that never happened. ❞

❝ And what is of some concern to me is that… despite how invested we each are in the future of the other… you just lied to me again. Why is that? ❞

❝ The latest in a line of ill-fated partners, situating yourself such that… were you and I ever to come to blows… I’d be forced to hesitate before doing you any harm. ❞

❝ I don’t want you to know my story. ❞

❝ Hold on to this for as long as you can, for all of us who once had it… and walked away. ❞

❝ You have no idea the restraint this takes. How urgent the instinct towards violence. ❞

❝ You’re luckier than you know… ❞

❝ Do not make the same mistake I did. ❞

❝ I hear other voices. A chorus of voices. Multitudes. They reach back centuries. Men and women… and children who’d lost their lives… to men like you. ❞

❝ Fuck you… for dictating this outcome to me, for swearing your friendship falsely to me, for your arrogance, your indifference. ❞

❝ You’re too important to what comes next to have to bear a burden like that. ❞

❝ I have no story to tell. ❞

❝ I’ve come to peace with the knowledge… that there is no storyteller imposing any coherence, nor sense, nor grace upon those events. Therefore, there’s no duty on my part to search for it. ❞

❝ You know of me all I can bear to be known. All that is relevant to be known. ❞

❝ That is to say, you know my genuine friendship… and loyalty. Can that be enough and there still be trust between us? ❞

❝ Am I mad? Tell me. I’m asking. ❞

❝ The result ahead of us… promises to be a victory…of a different sort. A true victory. Freedom… in every sense of the word. ❞

❝ How many men in the history of the world have ever known it? How remarkable a moment is this? How fortunate are we to be standing on the threshold of it? ❞

❝ The mind is prone to mischief, I suppose. Especially in a place like this… remote and… full of stories. ❞

❝ There are no monsters in the dark… though there are dangers. ❞

❝ You still think you’ll persuade me to see this all your way? ❞

❝ That’s all this has ever been, isn’t it? A partnership only insofar as it enables you to do whatever it is that matters to you in any given moment. ❞

❝ You do this, and you’re gonna regret it. ❞

❝ What’s to be done with the unwanted ones? ❞

❝ I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but this is considerably better luck than you and I have experienced lately. And yet somehow, I get the sense you and I are possessed of different instincts as to how to react to this. ❞

❝ I know what it’s like… to have lost her. And then seeing a way to have her back. ❞

❝ What I’ve just done… there’s no coming back from that. ❞

❝ They are all enemies of mine. ❞

❝ You think killing me means defeat for them? You will have given them a martyr to unite them. ❞

❝ We could suffer under the weight of our respective questions. Or would you like to start trading answers? ❞

❝ I wish to cause confusion and terror amongst her men. I wish to shatter their spirits. I wish to break them. ❞

❝ Pain is an exceptional tutor. ❞

❝ That isn’t a war. That is a fucking nightmare. ❞

❝ This is how they survive. You must know this. You’re too smart not to know this. They paint the world full of shadows… and then tell their children to stay close to the light. Their light. Their reasons, their judgments. Because in the darkness, there be dragons. But it isn’t true. ❞

❝ In the dark, there is discovery, there is possibility, there is freedom in the dark once someone has illuminated it. ❞

❝ But beneath all of that, I recognized the other thing… hiding in the spaces. The one whose shape you first showed me. And when asked, it was honest about the role it wanted to play. It was rage. And it just wanted to see the world burn. ❞

❝ I see a life for myself with you. And I will not live it wondering if tomorrow is the day your nightmare finally takes you away for good. ❞

❝ Defined by their histories… distorted to fit into their narrative… until all that is left of us… are the monsters in the stories they tell their children. ❞

❝ Even if you can persuade her to keep you… she’ll no longer be enough. And the comfort will grow stale. And casting about in the dark for some proof that you mattered and finding none, you’ll know… that you gave it away… in this moment… on this island. ❞

❝ if our intent was to extinguish his war, feeding it a martyr seems like an odd way of going about it. ❞

❝ Don’t you dare insult me by denying this. ❞

❝ You may think what you want of me. I will draw comfort in the knowledge that you’re alive to think it. But I’m not the villain you fear I am. ❞

❝ You didn’t just betray my trust. You have planned to betray it…all that time. ❞

❝ The stories we want to believe… those are the ones that survive, despite upheaval and transition and progress. Those are the stories that shape history. ❞

❝ The men who believed most deeply in it… were ultimately destroyed by it. And those who stood to benefit most from it… were the most eager to leave it all behind.

❝ Until all that remains of any of it… are stories bearing only a passing resemblance to the world the rest of us lived in. A world we survived. A world that is no more. ❞

❝ It’s the art that leaves the mark. ❞

                      —   𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐦𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐲𝐰𝐚𝐲.

🪐 — IZZY HANDS  for  stede !

The truth of things was that Izzy had a handful of ideas of where Ed might have gone. Stede was right when saying that Izzy of all people would have the best chance of figuring out where the heartbroken captain had gone. After all, Izzy had known him the longest and the best even if there was still parts of who Ed was that he needed to work on. More and more izzy was realizing how wrong he’d been to try to contain Ed to his own expectations. Contain wasn’t the right word. Izzy couldn’t impose his will on Edward even if he wanted to but their bond led Ed to trying to fit Izzy’s ideas as much as Izzy tried to fit what he thought was expected of him. What a fucking mess they were. Maybe Calico Jack was right. He’d said it many times that friendship was not made for men like them. Not made for pirates. In their younger years when Izzy followed Ed around like a lost dog, Jack had rolled his eyes at the young swordsman’s devotion and admiration.

The familiar spiral of negative thoughts had started to swirl around Israel’s head, only to be shaken a bit by the question about Lucius. Izzy’s heart skipped a bit. In truth, the young man had grown on him. He couldn’t say he hated the man but obviously he’d also never admit to liking him either. The first mate had felt mixed emotions the night that Blackbeard pushed Lucius overboard. Of course there had been the intense pain, fear and humiliation of having his toe cut off and fed to him but even that he’d focused on less since it had meant that Blackbeard was back. Or at least he’d thought.

The Kraken was a terrifying force and had put izzy back into his place. Lucius’ demise had further made it clear that the soft Ed was gone but at the expense of a crew members life. For all Izzy’s many faults he did care about the crews well-being when he was in charge of them. That included this rag tag bunch of idiots.

Clearing his throat and avoiding eye contact for now, Izzy made himself get back on his feet. This was not a discussion to have sitting on his bed. He grabbed his cane to help with the process. Hands ran his tongue against the underside of his teeth to feel the slight roughness as he thought of how best to answer this. The truth. Right ?

“I’ll stay. You won’t be able to find Edward without me and — I’m not ready to leave his service unless he dismisses me himself.” Or kills me, thought Hands. A pause as Izzy fussed with the cuff of one of his sleeves. “The night that Blackbeard did this,” he gestured to his foot. “He — he pushed Lucius overboard and — I guess the lad wasn’t a strong swimmer,” he said carefully, brow furrowed. Izzy actually looked troubled by this. “I’m sorry. Mister Spriggs is dead.” Taking a slow breath, Izzy was focusing on Stede’s face now as the man took this in. “He was a pain in the ass at times and a shit manual laborer but — he was a good lad. I’m sorry he’s gone.”

   THERE’S SOMETHING OMINOUS  in the way that izzy hesitates.  stede has always known him to be dangerously decisive, rarely in need of an extra moment to consider anything.  & while he also has yet to see the man looking anything akin to happy, the expression on his face turns somehow darker still at the mention of lucius.  for a moment, it’s as though he’s lost in a storm of his own thoughts.  &  when he pulls himself slowly to his feet with the aid of his cane, weight noticeably imbalanced as he leans on his uninjured foot, stede feels a sickening lurch in his stomach, certain before the words leave izzy’s mouth that the answer will not be a pleasant one.              while he isn’t surprised that blackbeard’s first mate chooses to return to his captain no matter the consequences  ( that much has already been made abundantly clear ), stede still isn’t entirely prepared for the way the next words land on his body like blows.  he had expected something like this, but the impact is heavier than expected, forcing him to stagger backward a step  &  brace himself against the door of izzy’s cabin.                                         it is his fault  —  lucius had been his scribe, bidden to stay close enough to the action to record everything.  he had only been placed in danger’s way in the first place by his orders.  that much could not be denied by anyone.  &  besides that, it was the most solemn duty of the captain to protect his crew.  instead, he had left them all.  &  so his death was on stede’s hands.  &  for as sharp  &  bitter as the guilt is over the harm he had caused edward,  &  his crew,  &  even izzy,  this is far worse.  even now, in spite of the harm, through it stede was coming to understand izzy in a way he had thought impossible before now.  &  he would surely be forgiven for endangering the crew in due time, if he proved himself to them.  perhaps he could even mend the damage he had done to edward’s heart, if given the chance once they found him.  but this cannot be undone, no matter what he does or how long he lives.  there is no forgiveness for this.               it takes a long moment for stede to gather himself enough to remember that he is not free to grieve as he would be if he were alone. he can’t say how long it’s been since izzy fell silent, but he does not need to be told that this is not a reaction befitting of a captain.  &  stede draws himself back upright, squaring his shoulders again with considerable effort.  ❝ a good lad  —  indeed he was, ❞  he agrees, his voice unsteady in spite of his best attempt.  &  a trembling hand smoothes at the wrinkles in his linen shirt.  though it does little good, the material hopelessly creased after the days spent at sea in a rowboat.  this too, is just one more thing that he had ruined beyond repair.                           ❝ thank you for telling me, mr. hands.  i’m  —  i’m very sorry to hear that he was harmed because of me. ❞   &  then his eyes flicker down again, lingering to the bandages on izzy’s foot.  ❝ i never suspected he would  —  i didn’t know this would happen.  &  for what it’s worth,  i am sorry, too  for the pain that my actions caused you. ❞