Chapter Text
Lucius fucking hated raids. He was a lover, not a fighter, and it didn’t make him feel any safer being armed with only a book and a quill.
Stede had given up a lot of his gentleman lifestyle to return to Ed and the Revenge, but one thing he still insisted on was Lucius documenting his adventures. In truth, it had continued to be something of a how-to manual, a sort of Pirating for Dummies log, where Stede had Lucius write down all the things he was learning about actual piracy from Ed. Which always led to Lucius was scurrying behind the two captains, taking notes and drawing sketches of whatever new piratey lesson Stede was being taught.
This raid had been particularly stressful, as the Spanish warship they’d targeted had turned out to be surprising competent despite its small size. They’d taken far more cannon fire than Lucius was comfortable with and Stede’s sword fighting lessons left him with far too much confidence in his ability to actively participate in the boarding process. With support from the crew of the Anne, Blackbeard’s original ship that followed the Revenge when extra muscle was needed, the Spanish had been successfully rounded up. Lucius had just been sketching a tableau of Stede posing behind the line of bound and kneeling seamen, when Ed called Stede, and by association Lucius, over across the deck to where he and Izzy were bent close in conversation.
Making their way across the deck, Lucius saw Izzy hustle passed them, offering Stede a graceless grunt in response to his over enthusiastic congratulations on a ‘raid well raided!’ Lucius used the excuse of sidestepping a puddle of blood to turn and ogle the little man’s leatherclad ass as he crossed over to the hostages. Lucius watched as he saw the man grab a baby-faced looking sailor from the line up and drag him down the stairs to the hold, disappearing into the shaded interior. Probably forcing the kid to show him where they kept the captain’s good silver.
“Now, Stede,” Ed said gently when they made their way to his side. “I don’t want you to be alarmed,” his hands rising to cup either side of Stede’s neck, “but we’re going to start killing these navy boys here.”
Lucius rolled his eyes at Stede’s aghast face. He hadn’t been a pirate any longer than Stede but even his soft sentimentalities had toughened up faster than Stede’s had. Two weeks living in the walls of a ship like a rat might have had something to do with that, but Lucius tried not to think of that too much now.
“Why can’t we just oomph them some more?” Stede asked, his voice high and reedy, like it so often was on raids.
“Sometimes, with these harder military types, oomph doesn’t cut it,” Ed explained.
“Could we perhaps try some light maiming first?” Stede asked hopefully.
“Of course, mate, you always wanna do a little maiming first,” Ed agreed, before sucking his teeth and gesturing across the deck. “But I’ve already left the captain’s ear pinned in his hat to the centermast, and Izzy cut out that one guy’s kneecap already.”
“That was incredibly visceral, I would agree,” Stede said, looking a little green.
“Sometimes,” Ed said coaxingly. “To get them to take us seriously, you gotta kill some people. To get the survivors talking.”
“They’re not taking us seriously?” Stede asked, looking unfairly heartbroken for a pirate holding a captain of the Spanish navy hostage. “Am I not scary enough?” His forehead pinched with disappointment and Ed absolutely melted.
“No, baby, that’s not it,” Ed lied, whether he knew he was lying or not. He brushed his fingers through Stede’s hair, curling it behind his ears where it had started to grow long and unruly. “They’ve actually heard about you. The Gentleman Pirate,” he said with grandiosity. “They’ve heard the rumors, of course, about your brutal but just rule over the sea.”
Lucius was sure he would sprain something with the effort it took to keep his sigh in his chest. He twiddled the quill between his fingers, knowing Stede would want that quoted verbatim, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to write it down.
“The thing is, love,” Ed continued. “Iz heard them saying that they don’t think you’ll actually kill anyone, so they’re not going to tell us where the rest of the fleet is.”
“And we want to know that?”
“Yes, we very much want to know where the rest of the Spanish ships are,” Ed led him gently.
“More than we want to not kill people?” Stede asked, his face pinched.
“Ehh,” Ed answered, wobbling his hand back and forth. “How much do you want to make sure you and your crew aren’t strung up in the gallows?”
“A fair bit,” Stede finally conceded, and Lucius let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding.
After a fortifying moment, Stede squared his jaw and asked, “How do we choose who to kill?”
“Oh, that’s easy,” Ed said with a relieved smile. “Izzy always does that.”
“That is not at all surprising,” Lucius muttered under his breath, sketching a small icon of the angry man in the corner of the open page.
“That must weigh on a man’s soul,” Stede said, heartfeltly. “Always having to choose who lives and who dies.”
“Nah, he loves it,” Ed assured him before turning back to the smoke and scream behind them.
He waved his arm wide to catch Izzy’s attention just as he was climbing the steps of the ships hold, dragging that same kid behind him. Izzy gave Ed a sharp nod, acknowledging his summons, before pushing the kid down to his knees, back in line with the rest of the captured sailors on deck. Ivan and Wee John stood over them, keeping them cowed while the rest of the crew bustled about, picking the ship clean of whatever they thought they could use or sell.
“Captain?” Izzy asked as he made his way to the small cluster of Ed, Stede and Lucius.
“Stede was just asking about how we pick which man to kill,” Ed said, clapping his hand down on Izzy’s always covered shoulder.
“It must be taxing, always having to make such a difficult choice” Stede said, empathy making his face soft and kind. Izzy sneered at it.
“It isn’t,” he said in his nasally tone. “It’s the easiest part of the fucking raid.”
“Said the sociopath,” Lucius muttered to himself, but he’d never had a whisper that wasn’t a stage-whisper, and Izzy’s withering glare told him that he’d heard him quite clearly.
“Hush, Lucius, we’re here to learn, not to judge,” Stede said despite certainly being one of the most judgmental people Lucius had ever met. Still, he complied, making a show of readying his quill on a fresh page. “Go on, Izzy, please, explain your process,” he encouraged.
“You find the runt,” Izzy began bluntly, arms crossed tightly over his chest, chin held high. “The youngest, usually. Or the softest, the prettiest.” Lucius had the fleeting thought of ‘oh fuck, that would definitely be me,’ as he wrote. “You take him aside and ask who on the crew does the most buggering with the least asking.” Izzy sniffed hard, then spat on the deck. “That’s who you kill first.”
Lucius was pleasantly surprised. After the initial shock of course, he appreciated the twisted chivalry of it.
“That is…” Stede said slowly. “Surprisingly noble of you, Izzy Hands.”
Izzy snorted.
“I don’t cry over dead rapists,” he offered shortly, before stalking away from their huddle and immediately placing a kick into the kidneys of a sailor with a scabby beard and a slimy look in his eyes.
After a bit more shouting, posturing and threatening, it was clear the officers needed a push. Ed gave the order and Izzy didn’t hesitate to pick the bosun out of the lineup. Lucius didn’t really want to watch a man die, even if it was a predator, so he looked at the kid instead. He looked barely seventeen and there was a clotted bruise under his eye, yellow enough at the edges that Lucius knew it had happened before the Revenge had even spotted them. Lucius heard the wet slice and the choking gurgle of someone with a knife in their neck. And as scared as he was, the boy looked relieved.
He looked back to Izzy. Found his face blood-splattered and smiling. Lucius’ eye caught on a ruby of blood on the whiteness of his teeth before it was smeared by a snarl. He knew suddenly that when he drew this scene, when he took his time to sketch it out in full detail, he’d make sure Izzy stood tall and proud in and amongst all the blood and bile. He’d make sure he captured him as he was, now. Heroic.