(ts) Izzy Hands - Tumblr Posts

Anne nods, taking the information in with a hard glint to her eyes. She has no dreams of captaincy, nor has she ever. Anne Bonny will see herself a legend made, aye, but she hasn’t the disposition for leadership, devoid of tact and charm as she is. She doesn’t say this to Izzy, of course, preferring the man should think her ambitious and high-aiming rather than merely gunning to be number two. Anne has come to appreciate the role of the first mate, the flint and steel it requires, a role of leadership and authority blessedly free of diplomatic necessities. A thing she can do even now. A thing Israel Hands does every day. A thing he’s helping her fine-tune with few if any real complaints.

Cannons and guns aren’t the tools of Anne’s choice, but she can recognize the necessity in using them. She nods and squints towards the vessel herself, as if gauging the imaginary shot’s trajectory, her eye snagging on the mainmast.

“So a dumb shot’ll do it? No need f’r no smoke or mirrors, as it were?” Funny. She’d thought, given the theatrics of every captain she’s met to date, that there would be…more. Fire, an explosion, something. The answer felt almost too easy in comparison to the way she’d seen others go about it.

“If I wanted to fire a warning shot, how close would I have to aim for it to be effective?” (Anne learning a new skill from Izzy.)

The girl was young, and brighter than most. Girl was unfair to her. She was no more a girl than Izzy had been a boy at her age, already a fair hand aboard. Anne was willing to get in there and work hard. Willing to learn.

He squinted at the ship they were looking at in the distance. It wasn't a real target. Not yet, at least. But that didn't mean it couldn't act as a place holder for this conversation. Hypothetical ships could be good practice.

"Your crew'll know what to do, if you tell them to fire a warning shot. Shot across the bows. Used to be more common for the British to be that fucking specific about that sort of thing, but you have a lot of old Navy men turned pirate," Izzy tells her and moves to lean across the gunwale beside her. He points, "Right there. Gives the twats aboard time to get a white flag up."

Izzy dropped his hand, "If you can't get it across the bows, you want the shot close enough for them to get the message."

“Don’ worry ‘bout everythin’ runnin ‘tween ‘em,” Anne mutters in hot discontent, her accent thickening as if to hide the words. The dusting of pink over ears, cheeks, and neck says it all: this isn’t honest protest. It’s churlish denial, a fact Anne is painfully aware of and pointedly ignores, swallowing the childish urge to refuse the order and continue the argument in favor of clambering over. It’s her way of extending the olive branch, silent acquiescence. She knows better than to think it’ll be missed here. Somehow, Hands understands her idiosyncrasies in a way few have before or since.

“Dunno if it’s worth teachin me t’whittle, if that’s yer aim. Da always said I were a shite artist.” Well. Not all churlishness can disappear, or else how will anyone know they’re speaking to Anne?

would it have worked if we’d wanted it less or did we never want it enough?

Izzy smiled, thin almost bitter. Almost. He worked at the piece of wood in his hands. The knife pushed through it, smooth and even. Predictable up until the point it wasn't. Fuck, but that was becoming more and more of a familiar thing.

"The problem is -- always has been -- that we're both in love with someone else. Mine's a never was... and whatever twat you end up with.... that's just a not yet," Izzy said and looked up at her. "Stop waffling about and worrying about everything that runs between your ears. Come here."

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Anne glowers up the man, stubborn to the end and still refusing his hand up. Hands, thank fuck, is a more merciful sort than Bonnet or Blackbeard. He won’t hover over her forever with his fucking hand out, she knows; she’s waiting for him to fuck off, at least a little. A few steps. Enough space for her to regain some semblance of dignity for herself.

Anne pushes to her feet when she has her space. She’d stared sullenly ahead before, jaw set, eyes glassy, refusing to make eye contact; now, she holds the eye of every dumb fucker stupid enough to meet her gaze. Her nose is itchy, crusted over with dried blood and mucus that’s stuck to her chin and upper lip, too. New bruises bloom over her bared arms and chest, which she doesn’t bother covering with the fucking blanket they’d thrown at her. She wants them to see. Wants them to see even with a swelling cheek leaking blood, she’s better than them. Wants them to see even on the precipice of disaster that Anne Bonny is not a one to be fucked with.

She’s so busy with her own fronting that she doesn’t bother with the uncomfortable questions Hands’ presence raises, like why a fucking pirate was able to negotiate the release of another pirate or how he knew which ship to check. She can feel the invisible pressure of those questions swelling against her back, but she forces herself to ignore it for now. Hands has the answers, and she can pry for them later. She drops the blanket from her shoulders altogether and follows him off the godforsaken mound of kindling she’d been earlier dragged onto.

Anne can’t bring herself to speak again, can’t conjure the words thank you when it feels like she’s yet again indebted to another pirate—and another life debt, no less. Hands will have to wait for his thanks and the rest of his due until she’s squared this away within herself first. In the meantime, she watches his back and waits for the next idiot to give her an excuse to punch something.

“Unfortunately f’r us both,” Anne replied dryly, though not without a small smirk. He was one to be calling people weird, powder keg that he could be, poised on the edge of eruption—a familiar sentiment. Anne shrugged and sniffed, a mannerism of concession she’s hardly even aware of anymore. She squinted at the block of wood in her hand, still depressingly block-shaped even after a day of trying to whittle the sharp corners down to rounds. Can’t be good at everything.

“But I’m just a stupid Irish cunt,” she joked finally, looking back up from the block with a twinkle in her eye. “What’s yer excuse?”

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Izzy snorted at her answer and took a drink from the cup in his hand. They'd been around each other long enough that he could actually appreciate the fact that the redhead let herself be quiet around him. Let herself be 'weird'. It was almost like she was allowing herself to be something other than a freshly sharpened blade.

"Does that mean that's just your face, then, too? Dumb look and all?" There was humor in his voice as he lowered the cup.

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Anne is quiet for a moment following the plea. Doesn’t seem right, man like Israel Hands begging for death. She finds she can’t look at him laid low like this—not the injury, but the defeat. Feels like it should be a private thing, but with Ed in the state he’s been in, Frenchie asked her to disappear and keep their illicit company…well. Company.

Disquieting. When the lump in her throat proves too big to swallow around any more, Anne lets out a shaking breath of her own. She tries to cover the shaking with a cough, a clearing of her throat, but she knows he knows. Just like she knows he’ll let it slide.

Anne meets his eyes with a level stare, plumbing their depth. He means it. She has no doubt he means it. That’s what finally manages to draw her voice out, steadier than it has any right to be.

“If it comes to it, Iz…you can count on me f’r it. But not a moment before it’s really come to it. Is that goin t’be now, or are ye gonna sack back up and suck it up f’r another day? ‘Cause I’ll promise ye this: the second ye’re really gone, there won’t be nothin’ ‘tween him and the rest, an’ nothin’ t’bring him back asides. Lord knows he en’t gonna fuckin listen t’me—en’t e’en looked at me since he got back—and lord knows he en’t listenin t’Frenchie ‘r anyone else.”

the very air you breath smells like a rotting corpse.

The sound that came out of Izzy was intended to be a laugh but it... wasn't. It sounded broken, more tears than anything that could be called mirth. She was right. She was fucking right. The little room they'd hidden him away in stank of his rotten fucking leg and the fever-sick sweat that still stuck his hair and his clothes to his body.

With all of that rot, he wouldn't be surprised if he was breathing it out just as much as he was breathing it in.

"Kill me," he said as that horrible noise he'd made petered out in his ears. "Please, Anne. Have some fucking mercy."

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