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Chapter Text

There have been many mornings in Izzy’s life where he has watched the pink bathe the horizon, not quite red but somewhere close to it. This morning is no different as he watches the sun slant over the water, his lips moving in long-memorized prayers of devotion to his god, the Kraken. Some mornings he thinks he sees the play of light on the smooth tentacles of his beloved god, already waiting for him, in the water below. This morning is not one of those. He hasn’t had one like it in a long time. 

Instead, as he rolls up the bottom few inches of his trousers, shoes discarded somewhere up the beach behind him, he knows he likely has a long morning of waiting ahead of him. He stares out at the place where the horizon touches the sky. Izzy can read the heavy fullness of the clouds hanging heavy in its thundering grey glory, it may already be raining over that distant patch of ocean. 

There’s a storm rolling in.

He takes the first few tentative steps into the cold bite of the North-eastern waters, and thinks about the fact that there’s always a storm rolling in. It didn’t used to be this way. Izzy is more than aware that storms are a part of the unknowable depths, and he’s far from ungrateful for the opportunity to weather one in the Kraken’s name. But as the mornings in which his god is waiting for him have grown less and less frequent, the storms have only increased in number until every weak sliver of sunrise is quashed down beneath the weight of the soon to come howling winds and vicious waves. These storms have become a familiar companion to him, a fact that is easier to bear than he once thought it would be. 

“Good morning,” he murmurs out over the hushing symphony of the water. It laps at his calves in time with each raise in the surf’s rushing volume. “I’ve come to offer another day to your service.” 

He waits for a response. The Kraken doesn’t always respond right away, which is why Izzy dedicates the entirety of his Thursdays to this. He comes out here, to this private patch of beach no one else cares to scale the cliffs down to, and gives his mind, body, and soul to the Kraken. If he’s particularly lucky- or unlucky, depending on how one looks at it- he may be so blessed as to witness the Kraken, either in his true form or in the human one he graciously adopts to take landfall and stand next to his most devout follower. 

The tide is starting to go out, so Izzy chases its retreat leaving the jagged rocks behind. Walking deeper, faster than the swells of waves are withdrawing, he winds up with the water flicking against his thighs, wetting his trousers and the bottom of his frock where he can no longer keep them safe from this baptism of salt and sea. He drags his fingers through the murky water, and he waits. 

Finally, a flash catches his attention out of the corner of his eye. Dark, slick, and smooth under the bright glare of the early sun, something not unlike a tentacle has shown itself for him to notice. He is not alone in the water. A smile melts onto his face, a tightness in his chest releases, as he takes another step forward, deeper into the sea. 

“Thank you,” he breathes. 

Another answer doesn’t come quickly. It’s almost like a game; the Kraken is watching closely, flicking just enough of a spray of water here or there to let Izzy know he’s still with him. This is how it always starts. Izzy must prove that he’s clever enough to see all the ways in which the only thing he’s ever met worth loving might be trying to get his attention. Sometimes it ends quickly. Others, he will waste the day trying to see it at all. 

It’s nearly an hour before he’s proven himself enough for the caress of the Kraken’s voice to curl around the shell of his ear. “Good morning, Father Hands. You were early today.” 

“A little,” Izzy confesses. “I was eager to see you, and I never mind waiting.”

The Kraken’s laugh is more of a rumble that vibrates through Izzy’s ribcage than a sound he can hear. For this reason, he appreciates it all the more. It is one thing to know how completely he can be explored and experienced by a being such as this, it is quite another to feel the evidence down to his very core. He loves earning that laugh. 

“Are you sure you’re not trying to make up for something?”

It shouldn’t have slipped Izzy’s mind. He’s made mistakes in the last week. “I wasn’t thinking of that when I came this morning, sir. I-”

A sudden wave, too quick for Izzy to have simply missed its approach, slaps against his face. Water floods his mouth and shoots up his noose, leaving him coughing and sputtering with tears in his eyes for long minutes afterwards. He offers a wheezed gratitude for the respite to recover. 

“Forgive me. I have failed you.” 

Beneath the frothy surface, there are shadows that Izzy knows well. Thin, black, tendrils curl and explore the space just in front of him. These miniscule extensions of the Kraken set his heart racing in a way he can’t interpret as either fear or wanting. He watches them and silently prays in the deepest corners of his mind for the slimy, bruising texture of their grip around his limbs. Of course his prayer is heard. They threaten him with follow through as they shift ever closer. 

“How did you fail me?” the Kraken asks. 

Izzy looks back up at the dark clouds drifting in. He does not deserve to look upon his god when he confesses. “I did not fulfill my promise to you. I promised to perform service for your fellow deity, Stede, on your behalf, but failed to do so. I’m sorry. Please forgive me.”

The tide starts to fill in again, though it shouldn’t for several more hours. Izzy understands this for what it is: a test. He is to accept this deepening of danger and the fear in his heart as he offers himself back to the Kraken, and maybe he will be forgiven. He watches the rippling back beneath the water move and expand and cast shade over every inch of the sea floor within range. Izzy takes a deep breath. 

“And why is it that you failed me?” 

Izzy allows himself to shut his eyes long enough for one more deep breath. “I don’t feel it when I worship him. It doesn’t feel like it does when I give myself to you, and- and I don’t want it to. You know that.” 

“It doesn’t matter what you want, though, does it?”

Shame flushes bright red across Izzy’s cheeks. 

“Exactly. You are more devoted to me than any other believer on this planet, Father Hands, and I wouldn’t ask something I thought you incapable of. You are better than this. Rise above your own petty, pathetic, human discomforts and make yourself my hands and tongue on Earth.”

“I will, Sir, I’m sorry,” Izzy says, cheeks flushed from twinned pride at his god’s recognition of his devotion, and the deep shame at having failed him. 

One of the little tentacles curls itself around Izzy’s left leg. It is freezing cold, sticky and slick all at once, barely touching him but absolutely painful in the weight of its hold on him. He stifles a noise in the back of his throat. This is a gift, one he must withstand with pride and be grateful for. Most people are never touched even like this by their patron deities. The Kraken could grind his bones into dust and he would endure that agony with a thousand thankful recitations on his lips. 

“I expect your repentance.”

“Of course. Always. Always, you know-”

There is a sensation a bit like needles through his leg, stealing his breath away. By the time he’s through the worst of it, the tentacle is no longer on him and the water looks unnaturally empty of even scuttling sand crabs and darting silver fish. He doesn’t dare check on the source of pain. 

“Don’t pull away too quickly,” the Kraken orders, soft against the side of Izzy’s face. “I don’t want the worship of cowards.”

“Of course, sir,” Izzy forces out through the tightness in his chest that returns at the mere thought of his god abandoning him, leaving him alone and empty. 

There is no formal dismissal, but as the ocean settles and the sea life begins to muddle around him once more, Izzy is well aware that the Kraken is finished with him for now. He has the remainder of the evening to repent and recover before tomorrow’s service. He silently returns to the shore, wrinkling his nose at the way the dry sand sticks to his damp skin, and begins the long ascent back up to his home. 

He lives on the second floor of the squat building that serves as a house of worship for the Kraken. Most people around here are too caught up in the fleeting whims of their own patron deities, but for the few who see the true beauty and power of the Kraken, there’s a small parish to adore him in. There’s Izzy and his thoughtfully constructed sermons and ardent prayer. There’s Father Hands to guide them in leading lives according to the desires of their god. Piety is a skill that must be finely honed, and even one as dedicated as Izzy has not quite mastered it. 

He doesn’t bother to light a candle before making it to his living quarters, instead dwelling in the shadowy gloom that casts through the grimy window he’ll have to clean before the sun rises in the morning. His quarters consist of a single room containing a bed, a desk, a small bookshelf, a chest, and a hearth. It’s not much, but he doesn’t need luxury, nor does he want it. 

Izzy strips away his frock, leaving his chest and arms bare and his legs confined to the stiff, scratchy, salt-stained material of his black trousers. It’s uncomfortable, but then again, that’s the point. He has to suffer to repay the Kraken for his failures and earn his attention. There is no anger, or resentment, or anything besides disappointment in himself on Izzy’s mind as he strikes a match to light the candle on his desk. He does not have a specific candle for repentance, but it is this column of tallow that he lights to read holy texts when the sun has set and natural light is no longer enough to read by. This candle is for the Kraken, and as such, Izzy knows that it is alright to use it when exacting punishment. 

The flame burns tall and narrow, a pure golden beam with orange just nipping the edges, and it remains vertical even when the candle angles in Izzy’s grip and he brings it up to his left arm. The heat begins to flush his skin even when it remains inches away. A lesser man would stop here. Izzy is not, never has been, and never will be a lesser man. He would sooner die than allow any evidence to the contrary. 

He clings to the memory of the Kraken’s voice rumbling through him as he brings the candle close enough for it to burn the long-scarred flesh of his forearm. It stings, but the pain is familiar and welcomed into a body that has made pain a necessary condition for life. If he had a free hand he would dig it into the marks left on his leg by the touch of the small tentacles. As it is, he is too occupied. The Kraken thinks of everything and he would not allow for Izzy to be distracted from this. 

As he slowly moves the candle closer, allowing more of his skin to blister, Izzy forces himself to think on his failures. It’s much more satisfying to sit here and worry his lip between his teeth as he drowns in his own thoughts of worship, but that is not the purpose for which he’s been directed to self-punish. Instead, he proves himself as he always does, and considers the circumstances which have led to this moment. 

The Kraken has become enamored with a filthy deity whose name invokes the kind of warmth Izzy has been deprived of for so long that he would not be able to live in its saccharine presence. Stede. He refused to worship Stede on the Kraken’s behalf. He could not bring himself to do it. 

Izzy tries not to believe that the Kraken is a fool or even misguided in his adoration, he banishes the thoughts as soon as they occur. He does not know better than the Kraken. Which is exactly why he should have just done as he was told. 

When the flame skates to his palm as if directed by a hand other than Izzy’s, he allows it to scorch against his skin. The punishment, he reminds himself, is a good thing. This is a direct statement that the Kraken finds him worth the time and guiding hand to be corrected as opposed to merely killed for his disobedience. To be disciplined is a privilege, and even an act of love. 

Izzy continues to burn his skin longer than he would have preferred. The Kraken did not specify how much he should do, only to avoid cowardice. Izzy hopes that the increasingly difficult to ignore agony is enough to prove his apologies. He whispers another gratitude to the empty room before blowing out the candle. 

Finally, he strips out of his trousers and down to his smallclothes. He has repented, and is now free to fetch the gauze and ointment from the chest to care for the new wounds on his body. The angry red skin is still hot to the touch, quickly warming the gooey salve as Izzy rubs it in. 

Despite the early hour, Izzy all but collapses into bed. His stomach is so often empty that he does not register the pangs from not even pausing for bread today any more than he experiences resentment towards the Kraken for his punishment. It is over. He is forgiven. Sleep comes easily, and it comes without dreams. 

Chapter Text

With the rise of the next morning’s sun, Izzy rolls out of bed and stretches the kinks out of his muscles. Dawn’s pale glow tells him what he would know if he went out to the sea as well: a storm is coming once more. Yesterday’s seems to have rolled into today’s, even if for no reason beyond forcing Izzy to experience it. He sighs as he starts to boil water for tea, using the time it takes to heat up to change his bandages and get dressed. 

In a couple hours’ time believers will flood the bottom floor, packed into pews and standing in the corners where their congregation has outgrown this old church house. They will lean in close to listen to Izzy’s words because he is the closest they will ever come to community directly with the Kraken. This responsibility is not one that Izzy takes lightly, but one that has become a familiar burden to bear on his tired shoulders. 

He murmurs memorized devotions to himself as he does up each button of his frock. Blessings fall from his lips as he puts on the jewelry shed before his trip to the ocean the previous morning. A simple silver chain, almost like a collar around his neck, reminds him that his life is owned by the Kraken. An almost plain band, save for a simple engraving that presses into Izzy’s ring finger, reminds him that his heart, too, belongs to his deity. A shiny grey agate pin, round like the full moon against his chest, reminds him that his soul is for his god as well. All of him, the physical and the spiritual, is in service. This small act of putting himself together every day reminds him as such. 

When he descends he is pleasantly surprised to see an early riser already outside, wiping away a week’s accumulation of dirt from the windows. He waves at them idly before taking his place at the pulpit and opening the scriptures he leaves locked up here. This book is not from his private collection, but a relic passed on through generations that will outlive him, and hopefully this building. There is a passage he has in mind already, a proverb which touches on the true depths of the passion the Kraken has bestowed on them, that talks of the creatures that populate the vast seas, each of them crafted by the Kraken’s careful hand. This book, so thick and heavy it can be hard to lift alone, contains countless such stories describing the importance and strengths inherent to every deity above. Izzy only cares for those which mention the Kraken.

He unlocks the door around thirty minutes later, and idles behind the podium as the room fills. Some other preachers like to greet and consort with those who listen to them, but Izzy has never seen the purpose of investing himself in the lives of others. They have nothing to offer him or the Kraken besides what his sermons alone will be responsible for drawing out. Any true believer will already have devoted all that they are able, and if there was someone else out there from whom the Kraken needed something, Izzy would be specifically directed to go retrieve it. He wastes no time on pleasantries, not here nor anywhere and would not change that for any reason besides a direct command. His congregation would not expect him to. 

He checks his pocket watch to confirm the time. It is finally half-past eight, and by simply clearing his throat, Izzy commands silence from the room, all eyes turning on him. When he was a younger man, such attention was unsettling. Now, it simply fills Izzy with the pride of knowing that he alone is entrusted to bestow the wisdom and beauty of a being such as the Kraken. He is trusted; he is worthy. 

Izzy greets the congregation without faux polite drivel. A simple welcome is enough. All hearts in this room beat for the same purpose, and all ears are similarly attuned to hearing the true meaning of everyday that follows this one. Izzy speaks to them on behalf of the only reason worth living, and as he thunders praise and commands that come from the Kraken himself, he sometimes presses his right thumb into his left hand to remember the sacred pain of the burn. 

When the last follower has left the church and Izzy is once again alone, he makes his way back upstairs to his abode and sets about focusing on the tasks for the day. All too soon he finds that he has written his sermon for the next morning, swept the church, polished the candlesticks, and even forced himself to the shops to get the meager amount of groceries that will sustain him throughout the week. There is nothing left to keep his attention for the day, and the thought makes his skin itch, filled with restless energy and a deep sense of guilt as the seconds tick by and he isn’t serving the Kraken.

So, he reaches for a book of scripture from the small, rickety bookshelf. He knows the words off by heart, he can tell which edition, translation, volume, and page a passage comes from just from hearing a fragment of it. But that doesn’t stop the awe that comes over him as he reads the words proclaiming the greatness of the Kraken. 

The passage he lands on tells of the Kraken leveling the city of a king who had wronged him. Water crashed through the gates, tearing children from their mothers clutching arms, uprooting trees and smashing bodies against the walls. The passage went on to describe the way the blood and corpses were washed away by the same waves that had caused them. And all that was left of the city were a few grey stones.

He knew people who discussed the passage as showing some of the flaws of the Kraken: his quick temper and lack of mercy. Whenever Izzy hears these discussions his hands curl into fists. Along with the rage, he always feels a sliver of confusion; when he had first read that passage, as an angry and lonely child, he had not felt fear or judgment. He had seen the passage as it should be seen, showing the might of the Kraken. Izzy had learnt that if you showed the world that you had the power and desire to destroy a city to punish one person within it, then no one would cross you, too aware of the consequences. The Kraken’s fury is a shield that Izzy wants to wield, and he has spent his life trying to be worthy of its protection. 

His hand starts to throb and he looks down at the neat bandage hiding the proof of his inability to earn that protection. He knows that he has failed, that he keeps failing, and in the back of his mind there is a constant buzzing fear that the Kraken will get tired of his mistakes. He wonders when it will happen, and each week as he goes down to the beach he expects to see nothing at all. He just has to have faith that the Kraken will continue to chase him as a follower.

He returns his attention to the passage of the city. The lack of survivors has always troubled him, although not for the reasons it troubles most. It seems to suggest that the Kraken needs no witnesses to his power. He leaves no one to tell tales of the beast from the sea and his vengeance. Unlike other gods like the Calico, who urges his followers to tell stories of him around bonfires and sometimes appears to dance in the flames, the Kraken has no desire for his power to be witnessed. After all, Izzy had often mused, why does a human care if an ant tells its friends of the boot that almost crushed them? 

That doesn’t stop Izzy from still trying to bear witness. He writes down the details of every encounter with the Kraken in a small leather notebook tucked in his waistcoat pocket, held against his chest. At times, it feels futile to try and contain in ink an uncontainable god. It feels as if he is trying to describe the ocean by painstakingly noting down the minute details of a single wave. But, even if the Kraken doesn’t need witnesses, Izzy does. He wants people to look upon the Kraken and have their souls touched by the same fire that touches his. He wants them to understand that violence is the only way to survive in this world. When they finally see the truth, then they can start remaking the world in the Kraken’s image. 

Izzy turned the page, sighing slightly as he landed on a parable about a shipwrecked sailor. It was one he knew well, despite his attempts to avoid it as much as possible, the words etched in his mind through pure hatred. The Kraken loved to order him to recite it, either to himself or to the congregation. Whether it was the content, or the fact it clearly irritated Izzy to have to bite out the words, he would never know- not that it was his place to know, just to obey.

The parable itself was not too offensive, involving a sailor who gets shipwrecked and ends up on a seemingly deserted island until he finds a sailor from the very ship that sank his. They put aside their differences on land and build a raft and help each other survive.  As soon as they get back on the sea, the first sailor drowns the one who sunk his ship, as revenge for his fallen brothers. Passages have been written about the parable’s true nature, and Izzy has done his own sermons on the justice of the sea, the justice that the Kraken would rain down upon all sinners. 

None of that set Izzy’s teeth on edge. 

What did was the so-called scholars who stated that this parable fell into Stede’s domain as well as the Kraken’s. They claimed that the god of tenderness, of community, could be seen in the brotherhood of survival forged on the sandy shores. They said that the killing of the second sailor was driven by the sense of loyalty and community that Stede instilled in humans. The mere mention of that god, of that fucking sickness that infested all humans, side by side with the Kraken caused something vicious to twist in Izzy’s gut. 

In the privacy of his own mind he can admit that he hates Stede with a burning passion. He hates the way he makes men weak, reliant, rotting them from the inside out until they are pathetic, grasping things, looking for a helping hand, too bloody deluded to just help themselves. He knew not to voice that feeling out loud. For one, any god, even one as spineless as Stede, was capable of great vengeance if moved to. For another, the Kraken has become enthralled by Stede, and Izzy had already invited his wrath by not speaking kindly about the god. He would do his best not to repeat the mistake. 

He doesn’t want to believe that a being as powerful, as awesome, as Edward was, could be infected by the same sickness that crawled within humans. Yet, as he considered his title as Father Hands, a title worn only by Stede’s priests and him, and thought about the acts of devotion Edward made him carry out for Stede, he couldn’t help but wonder. 

And if Edward had been taken over by Stede, then what did that make him? What would become of Izzy when Stede had Edward’s ear completely? He would be no more than another one of Stede’s puppets. His life’s work would become nothing more than a sick joke that amounts to naught. He would never leave the Kraken, but if the Kraken simply became an extension of Stede’s will then he wasn’t sure he could stay either. 

He just prays that the day would never come when he has to make that decision. He has to believe it wouldn’t happen, that the Kraken would prove his might. No matter what cities humans may build, what communities they will attempt to foster, eventually the storm would come and wash it all away. 

Until then, he would do his best not to doubt his god. Faith had been something he had always struggled with, and that struggle had not gone unpunished. There was a part of him that was always waiting for the day he would fling himself off the cliff on the Kraken’s demands and the waves would not catch him. Instead he would be dashed against the rocks. He tried to remind himself that if that happened then it would be the Kraken’s wish, and he should embrace it. But that didn’t make it any easier to keep taking the final step off the cliff. He was trying to be better, and silence the anxious buzzing in his chest. If he could master that fear, and manage to be completely devoted to the Kraken with no doubts, then maybe he would see that there was nothing Stede could offer him that he did not already get from Izzy.  That evening Izzy falls into a restless sleep and upon waking he already feels his next command from the Kraken in the space between the beats of his heart. 

Try again. 

Try again and succeed where he had failed. There is no overt sign here, nor a subtle one he must divine from the angle of the leaves in his tea. Instead, it washes over him like a warm ray of sunlight. An urge, almost, worms its way beneath his skin, to worship, and devote, and throw himself at the feet of the priests who represent Stede. Such an impulse is so contradictory to his own nature that Izzy knows it to come from the Kraken. Even as lost as his god is in this false illumination of tenderness, he would never allow another deity to impress upon Izzy, upon what was his, in such a way. 

Izzy grits his teeth and straightens his clothes. If he had it his way, he would at the very least wait until tomorrow, if not put this off forever. But, he has the distinct misfortune of knowing exactly what comes of wilful disobedience. As a result, he carefully packs up his things and exits the church with his satchel thrown haphazardly over his shoulders, locking the heavy doors behind him. 

Stede’s house of worship is far from difficult to find. Compared to the ramshackle building where Edward’s followers come to pray, those who devote themselves to the foolish errands of tenderness congregate in an opulent building far nicer than anything else in town. Tithings, Izzy thinks as he tries not to bite down on his own tongue in defiance, are not unique to Stede, but they are notable in their levels. Everyone gives, even those who cannot afford to do so- maybe especially them. Their hard-earned coin pours back into the soft white bread taken with sweet marmalade between sermons provided by the only other followers holding the title of Father. 

The building is decorated with tapestries unrolled in the weak rays of the sun and gold filigree of an intricate carving of an orange adorns the space above the main doors.  Izzy tugs on the handle and it opens easily. They never lock up, far too trusting. Izzy could absolutely destroy this place. Given permission, he would, and leave nothing but smears of sacrificial blood behind on the once hallowed ground. He would happily reconsecrate it in the name of the Kraken. 

Instead, he walks between the pews to the altar, where a bowl of clear, fresh water catches the light coming through the stained glass windows. Pink and blue and green and yellow dance across the surface, which ripples despite no wind to move it. For a moment, Izzy relaxes. This is a sign that the Kraken is with him. His deity has not abandoned him to do this alone. He dips his fingers into the water, finding it cool and refreshing to the touch, and lets it taste the love in his callouses. 

“I came,” he declares to the water. 

Though his directives are not explicit, putting together the pieces would be easy for an idiot, which Izzy is not. He’s supposed to do what he failed to accomplish before. Knees creaking at the strain, as if his whole body disagrees with the notion of this, Izzy lowers himself to the ground in a position of subservience and bows his head. 

“Almighty,” he begins, as he might start a prayer to the Kraken,” I come to this place built in your honor to offer you my surface. It is not for my own needs that I do so, please understand, but on behalf of the Kraken, the most powerful and mighty being to ever grace this forsaken planet. He wants you to understand the depth of his admiration, and I, his most loyal flower, have come to demonstrate on his behalf.”

Once the rehearsed words spill out, Izzy hesitates. Pain for the Kraken is righteous pain. It does not feel like that for Stede, even if it’s at the behest of his god. He reaches into his satchel for his knife, one of the few nice things he allows himself to own, if only for its usefulness. He traces the delicate engraving that marks the blade with the tips of his fingers. His eyes reflect back in the polished metal. It’s the closest he has to a mirror, he doesn’t need such a luxury so he goes without. He isn’t sure when he got so many wrinkles, or when his eyes started looking so tired. 

Izzy forces himself to look away, he shouldn’t get distracted from the task at hand. With a deep breath, he raises the knife up to his unburned arm, unsteady in his non-dominant hand. The second the blade touches his skin a booming voice distracts him. 

“Stop that right now!”

It startles him so badly that he drops the knife, cutting a thin but shallow line into his forearm anyways. He curses under his breath and turns around to look for the source of the yelling, expecting to see one of those inane priests who thinks they’re better than him, always ready to treat him as a lesser and spit at his feet. Instead, he simply sees a glow throughout the chapel, brighter than it had been moments earlier to the point that he can hardly stand to keep his eyes open. 

“Who said that?”

It gets impossibly brighter for a moment before it all dims back to normal, leaving only a man, who had not been there before, standing down the center aisle. His pale blue coat is covered in delicate, shimmering details which seem to glow of their own accord, their gld shining just as much as the carefully coiffed curls of the figure’s hair. 

“I did,” he says, strutting forward and kicking Izzy’s knife away, painfully carelessly. “Don’t do that, mate, you’ll get hurt.” 

Before Izzy can explain that the injury was the idea, the man takes his cut are in hands warm like stones sat too long in the sun, smoothing his thumb over the rivulets of blood. The cut beneath it disappears, as if it had never been there in the first place, leaving only the scarlet stains as evidence that he had been hurt to begin with. Realization strikes Izzy like an open-handed slap, and he bows his head in deference. Stede may not be his god, but he is still a god, and Izzy would never intentionally show open disrespect. He’s smarter than that. 

“Almighty, I…”

“Stede.”

Izzy bites back a harsh response. “Stede, I come on behalf of-”

“I don’t care who you’ve come on behalf of, don’t do that.”

Frustrated, Izzy is tempted to spit out that he’d like to finish a sentence, but he swallows the urge down with lips puckered like pure lemon juice has burned its acidity down his throat. He waits to see if Stede has more to say before continuing on. 

“I was sent by the Kraken. He sends warm regards, and me to worship in his stead, as he much prefers the comfort of the sea.” Stede raises an eyebrow, a wordless prompt to continue, although Izzy is unsure what else to say. “I was supposed to come sooner, but I failed him, and for that I have already paid my dues.” 

He straightens his posture, his eyes focussed on the shiny buckles of Stede’s boots. They too are gold like the deity’s hair and the detailing of his coat, but when he stares for too long they look like wells of pure liquid shimmer, as if the gold has been melted down and cast into shape without ever solidifying. 

“Well, I don’t appreciate you coming in here to harm yourself. Suffering, that’s- that’s not worship, is it, friend?”

Instead of a snide remark about how the two of them are certainly not friends, Izzy shakes his head. “It’s the way I know. Homage to the Kraken is paid in pounds of flesh.” 

“Hmm, well I won’t tell you or Ed how to conduct your affairs, but I do not accept pain as love. Tell me your name.”

“Father Hands,” Izzy answers, mildly grateful for an easy question. 

“Not one of mine, though, I thought?”

“No, si-Stede. It’s a title given by the Kraken.”

“May I ask why?”

The question strikes him like a slap in the face. Izzy hesitates for too long before remembering who he’s speaking to. A question has been asked and it’s vital to answer it. He isn’t sure how to respond even once he rules he must, too awash in the pain of his history with the god in front of him. Stede doesn’t even seem to remember him, he wouldn’t expect him to. He’s nothing but a fleck of dust in the eyes of the gods, he knows this, but it still stings the part of him that hides a wound that never fully healed. He wouldn’t share this knowledge with anyone else except the Kraken, of course. His god knows everything, as he deserves, but conceptualizing Stede’s lack of right to the information weighed against his power over Izzy has him shifting his weight from side to side. 

“It was a homage to your followers,” he finally admits. Stede grins, a mouth full of too many straight, white teeth glimmering at the edge of Izzy’s vision. “There was a time, in my youth, where I prayed to you. I turned toward the Kraken in my older days, however, and he saw it fit to remind me of my past; it is not my place to question him, so I wear the mark of his favor with pride.”

“He sent you here as well, you said. Do you commune with Ed often then?”

The shortening of the name the Kraken cloaks himself under as a human makes Izzy’s skin crawl. It feels too familiar. Yet, Stede has that right, in a way that Izzy never has. He forces himself to breathe through the frustration for as long as he can bear. 

“Yes. Every Thursday, I make my way to the sea to make myself a receptacle for his word.”

Stede hums to himself. 

“The next time you do, thank him for his kindness, but I’d plead that you both to refrain from such displays in my house of worship.” 

“Tell him yourself,” Izzy snaps.

The moment the words hit the air, Izzy realizes what he’s said. He covers his mouth, though the gesture is not born out of anything he can recognize. It must come from his shock and horror at the impudence, but when he goes to lower his hand, it seems trapped to his face. 

“I believe I asked you to deliver the message,” Stede says, his tone far too cheerful for the weight settling in the timbre of his voice. “Please see you do, Father Hands. Understand?”

He nods, still unable to speak. 

“Perfect. You may leave, as soon as possible. You’ve already been here for twelve minutes and thirty-eight seconds. I’d say that’s at least a few seconds too long.”

Izzy turns on his heel and starts walking to the door, still covering his traitorous mouth, vision blurred in a way he doesn’t understand until hot, wet tracks cut over his cheeks. He’s crying. Why, he doesn’t know, but it happens in silence with each fall of his feet. He can’t remember the last time he cried, and he feels deep shame that it was Stede that finally brought him to it. 

“Oh, and Israel?”

He’s finally able to pause. 

“I’d prefer not to see you here again, if you only come to sully my name with violence in the name of another god. You’re more than welcome back when you feel ready to pay proper respect.”

The usage of the word when rather than if plagues Izzy until he gets back home, and only when collapses on the altar dedicated to the Kraken, at last letting go of his own face, does he realize he’d been called by the first name he never gave. 

Chapter Text

 Izzy stands in the shallow water, the waves lapping at his skin as he recites the daily prayers, looking out at the horizon. The sky is thick with the familiar rolling of dark grey clouds, heavy with rain and the promise of a storm, and Izzy swears he can feel a faint crackle in the air, as if lightning is about to strike. He cannot help but feel as if something is about to happen and his heart starts to race as he wonders what his part in it will be. 

“Good morning. I’ve come to offer another day to your service,” Izzy recites, voice slightly louder than usual as he waits with anticipation for what will happen next. 

The Kraken does not seem set on making Izzy wait this morning, and he is grateful for it, even if he knows he is wholly undeserving. 

An ink black tentacle appears close to him, flicking itself out of the water, the spray hitting Izzy’s shirt and making the fabric cling against his skin. It seems as if the Kraken is in no mood for games today, and Izzy feels all the more certain that something is coming as he tries to quiet the dread churning in his gut. 

His devotion has been lacking lately, and he is all too aware of the Kraken’s displeasure. But try as he might, he cannot not bring himself to maintain his obedience around that pretender of a god, Stede. He wonders if this is finally the end, if Stede has mentioned their encounter, and the Kraken is going to abandon him. Perhaps the storm clouds above will finally break, soaking him to the bone and leaving him with a clear sky and no one to serve. 

“Thank you,” he says to the waves, nodding his head slightly in deference, forcing himself out of his thoughts to show gratitude to the Kraken for hearing his prayers. Who knows how many more moments like this he has left? 

It is only a few minutes later that he hears the Kraken’s voice in his ear. 

“Good Morning, Father Hands,” the voice rumbles, as low and deep as thunder. Izzy can’t help but shiver slightly. “I have a task for you.”

“I’ll do anything,” Izzy responds quickly, stumbling over the words slightly in his relief that he was wrong. This isn’t the end. He has another chance to prove himself. 

“Someone’s eager.”

“I want to serve you.”

“Yes, you are so very loyal, aren’t you, Father Hands? Although your loyalty has been waning recently,” the Kraken says, and a tentacle reaches out to wrap itself tight against his calf, something sharp sinking into the flesh for just a second before it is gone, the salt licking at the wound. 

“I’m sorry. I’ll do better, please, give me another chance, I won’t fail you.” 

“No, you won’t. I want you to create a new book of scripture, to write down our words, our story as we tell them to you. For far too long they’ve twisted the truth to their liking, and I believe it’s time we set things right.” 

“Yes, sir. I shall,” Izzy says, something in his chest beginning to glow. 

The Kraken finally sees the need for witnesses, and he has chosen Izzy to help him. He can think of no greater honor, no greater purpose in life, than to be the one tasked with finally getting the world to understand the true glory of the Kraken. 

In his excitement, it takes him a few seconds to realize what was strange about the Kraken’s command. 

“Our words?” Izzy asks, already certain he knows the answer. Every order he is given seems tainted by Stede’s influence; why should this one be any different? 

“Mine and Stede’s. That won’t be a problem, will it, Father Hands?” 

The tentacles inch closer to swirl around him, the waves becoming frothy and bone white as they start to churn 

“No, sir,” Izzy says quickly against the bitterness in the back of his throat. 

This is about letting people know about the might of the Kraken, and stirring the rage that lies in their hearts, waiting dormant for his call. Stede has no place in it. But if it is what the Kraken wants, then it is what Izzy will do. After all, the Kraken is as unpredictable and unknowable as the ocean he presides over; it would not do to try and guess his plans or will, as much as Izzy struggles to accept that particular lesson. 

“I went to Stede’s church, like you asked, sir. He asked me to send his thanks,” Izzy adds quickly, not wanting to give either god a reason to feel angry at him and take this opportunity away from him. 

“Ah, you’re finally learning how to follow orders again. Good.” The waters start to calm again, although the tentacles stay close. “This is your chance to prove your dedication to me, Father Hands, to prove that you’re worthy of this gift. Don’t waste it.” 

Then the tentacles are gone, and while the clouds continue to roll in, the waves are calm. Izzy is alone. 

Izzy makes his way back to his flat as if in a daze, thinking about what the next part of his life will look like. He will be given knowledge of the Gods that no one has been granted before. He has spent years trying to learn all he can about the Kraken, collecting every edition of scripture that had been published, struggling through versions with no English translation with a pocket dictionary by his side. He has grabbed onto every scrap of information the Kraken granted him in their conversations and felt lucky for it. 

And now he is going to get more than he could have ever dreamed of, and will be tasked with preserving it for generations to come. 

The fact that he will have to struggle through Stede’s passages, undoubtedly mundane and trite, will be a struggle. As will holding his tongue and maintaining an air of respect and politeness. But he intends to do his best to serve the Kraken, and by extension, Stede. After all, you get nothing from the Kraken without some pain- he’s learned that one well enough by now. 

Izzy looks around his tiny room, taking in the ramshackle furnishings, and knows that this is not the place where he will hear from the Kraken. This is not a place worthy of such honor. In truth, neither is the church downstairs. While it at least has been consecrated according to the Kraken’s rites, it is small and dark, with the narrow windows set high, never letting in quite enough light to banish the gloom entirely. It is fitting for the small congregation that meets there, but it is not a place where miracles should take place. 

As if struck by divine inspiration, the idea of a ship comes to him, and he can think of no better place to write this new scripture. He would be surrounded by the domain of the Kraken. What better way could there be to show his devotion than spending everyday with his survival firmly in the hands of his god, working tirelessly to earn it?

That afternoon he sets out to acquire a ship and crew. The first objective is not too difficult to fulfill. While he prefers to find people once they have made their own way to the Kraken, rather than recruit them directly, he has made a few attempts to preach to the sailors and dockworkers. As such, he is known as a man of god, specifically the one who controls whether their ships are dashed on the rocks or not. He is afforded a degree of respect that allows him to find what he needs quickly. He finds that his reputation also helps dissuade people from attempting to rip him off, although he makes certain to inspect the ship carefully before entering into any sort of agreement. It would not do for it to be anything less than perfect for this voyage.

Now Izzy has finally found a ship that met his standards, and is about to turn his attention towards recruiting a crew when the hairs on the back of his neck prick up. The smell of rain fills the air despite the clear blue sky overhead. While he’s certain the Kraken is the cause, it doesn’t make it any less strange to see him standing in front of him, tentacles curled up on the cobblestones, as people rush around a god, paying him no mind. Behind him stands Stede, hair aglow like a halo, that moronic smile on his face. Izzy does his best to keep the scowl off his own.

“Sir,” Izzy says, bowing his head slightly. 

“See, so polite when he chooses to be.” Edward says to Stede. “Although, I do believe Captain may be a better title from now on, Father Hands.” 

“Yes, Captain?” Izzy answers, voice lilting upwards. 

“Well, you have this ship, I reckon you’re going to need someone to Captain it, aren’t you?”

“Yes, Captain. So you’ll be coming with us?”

Izzy’s heart starts to race at the thought of spending so long in close proximity with his god, seeing him every day. It will be a far cry from days spent waiting in the surf was a glimpse of a tentacle, and he doubts whether he is worthy of the opportunity. 

“Easier to dictate if we’re with you all the time. And Stede wanted to spend some time amongst the humans.” 

Ah, that makes slightly more sense, Izzy thinks. Stede seems determined to strip any sense of dignity from his godhood, and undoubtedly doesn’t understand the significance of spending so long amongst mortals. 

“I thought it might be fun to better understand them and their needs.” Stede says, that insufferable grin still on his face. 

“Right,” Izzy bites out, only for Edward narrows his eyes at him. “Sir.”

“Captain.” 

“Captain,” Izzy amends.

“Well, let’s go get our crew!” Stede declares, walking off, one hand trailing off behind him until Edward gladly takes it.

Izzy feels a burning in his chest at the sight. It’s one thing to understand that the Kraken has taken an interest in another god, but quite another to see him debase himself so completely. The Kraken governs the seas, he is the patron of pirates and soldiers and storms, and here he is, holding Stede’s hand as they walk down the street, as if they are just like everyone else. 

As Stede continues down the docks, moving to the edge of Izzy’s field of vision, he seems to blur and glow, golden and so bright Izzy’s eyes begin to sting. While Stede looks like his normal self when Izzy turns to face him directly, following a respectful distance behind them, he is reminded that Stede is anything but ordinary. He is still a god, and a god the Kraken favors at that. You don’t gain that power or that favour by being stupid, and Izzy hasn’t got this far by underestimating threats. He is determined not to start now. 

The crew they amass are not who Izzy would have chosen if he had his way. The lot of them seem unorganized, unprofessional and wholly inexperienced for such a momentous task. But they’re the crew Stede and Edward have chosen, so they are the crew he will have to deal with. They don’t seem all bad; Jim seems competent enough and far less talkative than the rest, and Buttons, while certainly strange, appears to have at least been on a ship before, although his clear allegiance to the moon goddess, Anne, irks Izzy. Edward, however, seems to have no such qualms, exclaiming excitedly over the seagull that perches on Button’s head, who they were solemnly told is his conduit to his goddess. 

Izzy wonders if maybe this is just another test from the Kraken. Perhaps he’s indulging in all of Stede’s whims to see if Izzy will protest. Or perhaps this is a longer game. Maybe he’s giving Izzy a crew so incompetent that Izzy will be forced to do most of work, and he has to prove himself up to the task. It forms another question that has no answer Izzy will ever be able to grasp, so he does his best to force it out of his mind, and instead focuses on the fact that soon preparations will be finished, and they’ll be out on the sea. Soon, the great work can begin. 

They set sail within the day, the ship stocked even though Izzy does not remember making it so. As he suspected, Jim is readily the most competent among them, and Buttons seems to be right at home on the helm, steering them through the water as if it’s not notably placid and the currents gentle in their guidance deeper into the vast ocean. None of the crew have any idea what it is they’ve come upon with this vessel. If they knew, if they felt how Edward held the waters still for their safe passage, perhaps they would allow more respect to leech into their tones when they discuss the impossible magnetic draw of what they perceive to be mere man rather than the Kraken.

Izzy, as he thought, does most of the hard work. He has enough experience aboard a ship such as this one to at least know what needs to be done, and keeps a firm hand around the wiles of the crew as they mark courses through the ocean. He does not understand these paths, however, nor does he have to. Instead, he waits for the moment he is inevitably going to be called into their quarters to take a quill to the fresh pages of the book he bought specifically to inscribe their words. It would be nice to find that purpose, though in the meanwhile he merely waits out this apparent test.

Even with the knowledge that his god, his everything, his new Captain, is making it so, he finds himself startled every single morning by the conditioned serenity of the ocean. The rest of the crew, for the most part, seems too daft to recognize the change, save for the enigmatic Buttons and the painfully observant Lucius and Jim. Buttons has not mentioned it since Izzy pointed his dagger at the man’s scraggly shirt and told him not to question the favor of the Kraken, but the others are not so easily soothed. Lucius would normally not have noticed, but after a comment on how sailing is much easier than he anticipated, Izzy’s tense posture brought his curiosity to the forefront, which in turn has led to constant questions and demands that even the most valiant of threats can’t kick from his day. Lucius seems to know in his mind what Izzy knows in his soul, which is that he will not follow through without permission from the Captains. Jim is a bit different- easier in some ways, harder in others. They have this way of muttering just the right insights to set Izzy on edge, but never say their thoughts boldy enough to justify a response. Izzy thanks Edward in his nightly prayers he will never give up, even when the deity himself is just a room away, for the ignorance in the play of Frenchie’s lute, the carelessness in the staggering steps of Wee John, and the gratitude in the expert knots tied by Fang. Fang and Ivan, he imagines, have some inkling of the favor they’ve attained, but are smart enough not to bring it up. 

At some point, Izzy is almost certain that the Kraken’s fickle moods will change on them. He seems to be in relatively good spirits, and their peaceful voyage reflects that, but at some point, the tide always turns with him. He’s seen it for himself. 

As a much younger man, an enemy ship had approached his vessel. He prayed for a moment too long in the heat of battle, accepting his death looming on the horizon, and then the most massive wave overtook both ships, capsizing both almost immediately. Izzy grabbed onto a dinghy that managed to drift off one of them, hauled himself in, and rowed as hard as he could in what he had hoped to be the right direction. The current propelled him home safely, much faster than rowing alone could have done. He was the only man to survive that storm.

He spent more days than he cares to count floating adrift, despite how a glance at a map on shore told him it should have been many weeks more. He finds in the memory of that moment his first concrete evidence of the Kraken’s favor. Nowadays, if he thinks on it, he realizes there were small fractions of milliseconds earlier where he may have recognized the signs, had he been looking for them. He survived too many storms, navigated those same outpourings of heavy rain too easily, weathered rain spluttering out too many fires, breathed too many fragile breaths, for it to have all been a matter of coincidence.

Still, that moment, that vignette of a life, measures his first realization that he had been claimed by a god far more powerful than Stede. He had his own choice that day, just as the Kraken had a choice to save him, but it was an easy thing to choose. Returning to the ocean was never a question of when, not if. He considers it a blessing that the circumstances of his reentry to the water is something such as this. Izzy is a lucky man. No- no, not lucky, but dedicated, and subsequently rewarded.

There will be a moment when this false tranquility shatters; Izzy just hopes it comes after he is allowed to begin to bear documented witness to his god, even if Stede’s words will settle in among the crisp ink of his looping letters as well.

Chapter Text

For now, the calm holds, and the crew somehow become even softer, coddled by the still waves with just enough breeze on the wind to stop them from being becalmed, but not enough to give them any real trouble. 

They are, at least currently, doing actual work, although Izzy could hardly call it work. Stede has decided that they needed a flag, and while Izzy figured this could be sorted easily enough - as the Kraken and Stede have plenty of pageantry to draw on - Stede insisted that the crew should decide, drawing on their own creativity. Edward had just nodded in agreement. Something uncomfortable settled in Izzy’s chest in that moment at the sight of his god, this powerful figure, just standing behind another god and not even bothering to give his own opinion on the matter. But, as Izzy has grown all too accustomed to doing around Stede, he swallows his insults and his pride, simply nodding in agreement. 

So here the crew are, sitting on the deck with an almost unfathomable pile of fine fabrics laid out in front of them, brightly coloured and soft. They must have cost a fortune. Izzy is certain he was looking at more money than his parish received in a year spread out on the deck, ready to be torn to shreds. It’s shameful really, the waste. But for all Stede’s flaws, Izzy figures it to be a lesser one, considering that mortal money means less than nothing to a god. 

“What flag are you going to make, Izzy?” Wee John asks, glancing up from where he cuts through a gold, embroidered fabric. 

“Hands,” Izzy bites out in response. 

“Your flag’s going to have hands on it? That’s not very majestic,” Pete says. 

“My name. It’s Hands.” Father or First Mate, he doesn’t particularly care, but to be treated with such a distinct lack of respect and familiarity as to be called by his first name makes his skin crawl. He can’t even remember the last time someone besides Edward or Stede has called him by his first name- not until meeting this lot that is. 

“I thought I heard Stede call you Izzy?” Lucius asks, raising an eyebrow, and Izzy grits his teeth, willing his expression to remain neutral. 

“My name is Izzy Hands. But you can call me Mr. Hands, Mr. Spriggs,” Izzy says, speaking slowly as if talking to a child. In a way, it feels like he is. 

“I think we’ll just stick with calling you Izzy,” Wee John adds. “Anyways, you didn’t answer the question. What flag are you making?” 

“I’m not making a flag.” Izzy responds, staring out at the horizon and praying the Kraken may take pity on him and a storm will roll in to take his attention away from this conversation. But the Kraken has never been one for pity, and the sky stays blue and tranquil.

“You don’t have to worry about not knowing how to sew. If you want, you could tell one of us your idea and we could do it.”

“I know how to fucking sew.” Izzy says. Of course he does. He’s mended his clothes so often he’s certain the shirt he wears is currently more scrap fabric and thread than the original material. 

“Then why aren’t you making a flag?” The Swede asks, head tilting in confusion.

“Because I’m busy,” Izzy spits, trying not to shift from where he’s standing, looking over them, aware that there is currently nothing occupying his time. 

“Busy doing what?” Lucius asks, a smug grin on his face. 

“I have to check the rations.” Izzy says, storming below deck. 

He knows off the top of his head exactly how much of each supply they have, having counted the rations yesterday and every day before that, the act becoming almost a form of ritual, but it’s something to do- an excuse to leave the conversation on deck, to retreat from the sound of laughter at his back. And doesn’t that fucking sting. He has spent his life carving out a role where he was. And now here he is, in service to his god, about to embark on the most important work of his life, and that respect has been completely washed away. 

He’s almost at the store cupboard when he all but runs into Stede, who looks at him with that stupid fucking smile on his face. Izzy would like nothing more than to wipe it off the smug bastard forever. 

He doesn’t say that though, and does his best to keep calm. He has learned the importance of choosing words and actions carefully around Stede. 

“Captain.” 

“Izzy, I was just looking for you! We’re ready to start dictating,” Stede says.

Izzy’s heart starts to race. The frustration that has been building in his chest and the tightness in his shoulders is completely forgotten, replaced by excitement. 

Izzy does his best to slow his steps to Stede’s leisurely pace, trying to keep a respectful distance when all he wants to do is race ahead to the Captain’s quarters and start. But Izzy is no stranger to patience, so he keeps his gaze down and his footfalls even, until they finally arrive at the Captains’ quarters. 

His Captain is stretched out on the chaise-lounge, smiling with such warmth to his eyes when they enter, although Izzy knows it isn’t for him. He’s not sure he wants to be. He doesn’t deserve warmth from the Kraken, nor does he need it. And while the thought of Edward looking at him like that, as if he is something precious, causes a warm glow to spark up in his chest, it feels sacrilegious to think of a god giving him that. It certainly goes against everything the Kraken has taught him.

“I got this for you to write with, unless you have something you’d prefer to use?” Stede says, handing him a large book bound in soft leather dyed a deep navy, the stitching done with golden thread. 

“This is fine,” Izzy says, thinking about the tiny book still nestled in his waistcoat. This is perhaps more fitting for such an endeavor, but part of him doesn’t like the idea of Stede inhabiting a book that rests so close to his heart and details moments with his god that hold the greatest intimacy. “Thanks.” 

Stede directs him to sit at one of the ornate gold chairs placed at the frankly obscenely large wooden table. Izzy assumes that Stede was the one who decorated the room. He has to believe it, can’t let himself believe that it was the Kraken who allowed such opulence aboard this ship, who thought that the chandeliers and silk and statues would foster anything but weakness. 

“Where to begin?” Edward asks, looking down at Stede, who has come to sit on the floor next to the chaise-lounge with Edward’s hand tangled in his hair. Izzy is glad for the notebook in front of him, and grateful for the excuse it gives him not to look at them. 

“The beginning might be a good place to start,” Stede replies. 

“Perhaps, but when is that?” 

“Good point.” 

“Is there something before the first texts?” Izzy asks excitedly, happy for the excuse to remind them that he is still in the room, distinctly uncomfortable with the way his god acts like a lovesick teenager. 

“What, don’t be ridiculous. Well, I don’t think so?” Edward says, voice turning contemplative. 

“I wouldn’t know, I came later didn’t I?” Stede adds.

“True, I am quite robbing the cradle,” Edward says with a small laugh, a sound Izzy has never heard from his god before. He had heard the Kraken laugh, but there has always been a hint of cruelty or threat woven in it. This is joyful. He isn’t sure he likes it. “Anyways, Izzy, why does that have to be the beginning? You humans are so small minded, always lacking in creativity. Makes you good for following orders, I suppose.” 

Izzy feels his face flush. It’s nothing he hasn’t heard before; the Kraken has often reminded him about his power, about how small and pathetic humans, and Izzy in particular, appear in comparison. He has reminded Izzy many times whenever he dared to question his will that he could never hope to grasp the decisions of one like him. Izzy has always relished the reminder that he serves something so much more powerful than himself, that his life has a purpose that stretches far beyond him. But it feels different, when Stede is here and this comment is not a lesson for Izzy. Indeed, Izzy hardly needs to be in the room.  

“We could start with when we met.” 

“Fantastic! When was that?” 

“Oh, I don’t know,” Stede says, pausing, before adding, “I think I remember the how of it, if not the when, so let’s start there.” 

Izzy sighs. Of course Stede’s words will sully the pages of this notebook first before the Kraken is allowed to purify it. But there was nothing he can do, especially not with the weight of the Kraken’s gaze on him, so he dips his quill in ink and gets ready to write. 

“I first met Ed on a beach. I was just a kid. I remember playing in the sand with some friends,” Stede starts. 

“You were human?” Izzy asks, mouth dry. The idea of humans becoming gods, that this is even possible, that it has happened, is absent from any scripture Izzy has ever read. What Stede implies opens up a realm of possibility. Izzy can only begin to imagine the lengths people would go to to try and follow in Stede’s footsteps. The weight of what he may be transcribing in this notebook, the knowledge he would be putting out into the world, hits him, resting heavy on his shoulders. 

“Oh, yes.” 

“How did you become a god?” Izzy asks, hand trembling slightly. 

“As I was saying, I was playing in the sand. Some of the parents were watching us, weaving baskets. I knew a few members of the community had gone out on boats to fish, but they were so far out to sea at that moment that they were mere specks on the horizon.” Stede continues, as if Izzy hadn’t spoken. “We had suffered through a harsh winter followed by a sickness that caused far too many graves to be dug on the island.” Izzy marvels at the profound sadness in his voice, as if he is still grieving the lives lost centuries ago. It’s a reminder of the dangers of Stede’s domain; to let people get to your heart, you have to open up your ribcage to do it. 

“They tried to hide it from us, but I could hear the mutterings of the adults about how they weren’t sure the community could survive any more hardships. And then the fishing boats returned, laden with goods, nets full to bursting with what they had caught. I can still remember the laughter and shouts of joy as they pulled everything off the boats. They were planning a feast and talking about how they were going to preserve some of it so they wouldn’t have to go through a winter like the one before again. And amongst all the celebration and relief, there you were,” Stede says, quickly adding, “Ed, I mean,” as if forgetting for a moment that he was technically talking to Izzy. 

“He was handsome, walking amongst the mortals, hair swept back and eyes aglow.” Stede pauses, looking over at Izzy, who had stopped writing. He felt uncomfortable with what Stede was saying, making the gods into pining idiots, and it didn’t seem right to add it to the scripture. 

“Are you keeping up alright, Izzy? I can go slower.” Stede offers a calm smile on his face, but his eyes are hard, and Izzy sighs, picking up his pen and writing down the rest of Stede’s story. “Normally it doesn’t take you longer than a few seconds to catch up. You write at an impressive speed.”

Izzy ignores the compliments and keeps writing. Once done, he looks over at his god, still sprawled out on the chaise-lounge, but his eyebrows are furrowed slightly as Izzy waits for him to speak. 

“Was that really our first meeting? I thought we met on a boat.”

“Really?” Stede asks, and Izzy swallows the instinct to berate him for daring to question the Kraken. 

“Yes, it was a crew who had been sailing together through my domain for years. I was bored so I sent a storm, figured it would be a nice test of their skills. They did okay, but some of the damage to the ship ruined their stores. Rookie error to be honest, slightly disappointing. Anyways, they didn’t have enough food to go around, and one of the crew had been caught sneaking extra rations. 

"And there you were, as the crew turned on the man who had put himself in front of the needs of the community. The punishment they chose was brutal, and inventive, and you were covered in blood. You could have chosen not to be, but I’m glad you didn’t. That’s how I remember first meeting you, as you oversaw justice carried out and I decided to introduce myself.” Edward says. 

Izzy feels something stirring in his chest as Edward describes the fury Stede stirred in the heart of this crew. It’s dangerously close to what he first felt when he heard of the Kraken’s power, and he tries to ignore it, distracting himself by focusing on the rage he feels at hearing Edward fawn over Stede. At least that is a familiar feeling by now. 

“Which version do you want me to keep?” Izzy asks, hoping they’ll decide on Edwards and he can rip Stede’s stupid words from the notebook. 

“How about both? Give the philosophers something to discuss,” Stede instructs. 

“That is a wonderful idea,” Edward agrees and Izzy sighs again.

They continue on the rest of the session like that, sharing stories of their time together, all saccharine nonsense that makes Izzy sick. It’s a welcome distraction from the brief flash of admiration he had felt for Stede and a reminder of all the ways Stede corrupts everything he touches, including, it seems, the Kraken. 

Another reason not to give in to Stede’s charms is generously provided for Izzy in the form of the bedtime stories he tells the crew. Izzy has done his best to avoid them, spending time in his cabin reading scripture or going over the notes of what he had written for the day and writing it out in full. 

But Edward approaches him after one day’s dictation session and tells him that Stede had noticed he wasn’t joining in on the bedtime stories, and that he’s disappointed Izzy isn’t making an effort with the crew. Izzy knows the order hidden in the words said in far too casual a tone, so here he is, on deck with the crew, as Stede pulls out a book and begins to read. 

He is not wearing his frock, unwilling to sully the clothing by wearing it to such an occasion, instead having pulled on a scratchy grey shirt, one of the few clothes he owns that aren’t vestments of some kind. He can feel the eyes of the rest of the crew on him from his position just outside their loose circle, but he does his best to ignore them and pretend to be paying attention to their Captain. 

Lucius offers to let Izzy sit beside him with that flirty grin of his that lets Izzy know it’s all a joke at his expense, but then Oluwande also offers, and seems to mean it sincerely. When he stiffly declines, opting to sit apart, on the stairs, he even swears that the crew appear disappointed, although he can’t for the life of him figure out why. 

Then again, there are many things he doesn’t understand about this strange crew. Their willingness to subject themselves to story time is one of them. It is, quite frankly, demeaning. These are sailors- they put their lives in their own hands every day they spend on the ocean, at the mercy of a god Izzy adores but knows to be violent, cruel and fickle with his affection. They should be noble and tough. They should understand what Izzy knows too well, that weakness only means pain becomes harder to bear. And yet, here they are, hanging on every word as Stede speaks of some inane story about a girl losing a shoe. 

It isn’t just demeaning to the men, either, but to Stede as well. He’s a god, for fuck’s sake. He is a being with power Izzy can barely comprehend. He has lived through ages, has watched civilisations rise and fall, and has helped decide their fate. And here he fucking is, reading a children’s book to a group of grown men and complaining to Edward when Izzy doesn’t join them. 

It isn’t that Izzy cares about Stede’s reputation, but in disgracing his own position as a god, he taints the position for the entire pantheon. A small part of him tries to convince himself that it doesn’t really matter; after all, most of the crew do not know of Stede’s true nature. But he knows that that doesn’t mean much. This is still a dangerous thing. In the same way that it’s folly for humans to act as gods, the gods should not play at being humans, especially not in the way Stede is. It goes against every rule and order ingrained in the cosmos, and Izzy is just waiting for the moment that Stede causes everything to unravel. 

In the meantime, he does his best to try and undo some of the damage Stede has caused to the men. He tries to turn them from soft-hearted idiots back into noble sailors. His main barrier comes from the resistance of the very men he tries to help. 

“What the fuck are you doing?” Izzy barks out as he sees Lucius leaning against the railing, book and pen in hand despite Izzy ordering him to scrub the deck a few minutes ago. 

“Sketching. See?” Lucius replies, turning the book to show Izzy a sketch of Black Pete up in the rigging, where he is currently meant to be checking the sails. Izzy still can’t shake the feeling that these calm waters are just a prelude for something, and he’s determined to be ready when the Kraken’s test comes. So he makes sure that the sails are checked regularly, and he’s desperately trying to get the crew into a position where he can trust them when the sea’s favor turns. 

The drawing isn’t bad. Lucius’ ability to capture the island’s they’re passing through with just a few lines could even be admired. But that’s besides the point- Izzy had gave him an order and he is flagrantly ignoring it, not even doing Izzy the dignity for pretending to respect his authority. Normally Izzy would have flogged him for his insolence, but Stede, and later Edward, had given him a stern talking to about his behavior with the crew. And hadn’t that been a fun conversation, his god so close to him, Izzy pressed against the wall of the cabin, kept there by the Kraken’s stern gaze. It had been almost perfect, his god finally paying him attention after so long with eyes only for Stede, and then he started to admonish Izzy for shouting at the crew and the illusion that his god still cared about him had been shattered by Stede’s words falling from his lips. 

Still, while it’s clear Edward no longer cares about his devotion, Izzy won’t stop paying it, so he has done his best to reign in his behavior with the crew, abandoning any overt punishments. But for a lot as soft as these, hard labor is itself a punishment. 

“Mr. Spriggs, I need someone to scrape the barnacles off the side of the ship, and you seem like the perfect candidate,” Izzy says, trying to make his voice have the sickly sweet tone Edward sometimes uses. From the way Lucius raises one eyebrow, clearly unimpressed, he doesn’t succeed. 

“No,” is all Lucius says, returning to sketching. 

“That wasn’t a request, Mr. Spriggs, that was an order.” Izzy steps closer. “You clearly haven’t been on many ships, but out here, you only survive if everyone does their part and obeys the hierarchy. So when I ask you to scrape barnacles off the ship, please understand that I am asking you to do so because our fucking survival depends on it. So, don’t give me a bunch of fucking talk, just go and fucking do it.” 

“Right. And on ships, this hierarchy, the Captain is higher than the First Mate?” Lucius asks, casual as ever.

“Yes,” Izzy bites out, too swept up in the anger raging in him, and tired of dealing with these idiots day and night to consider that Luicus is setting a trap for him. 

“Well then, Captain Stede asked me to draw this for him, and continue to draw the places we come across. Create a catalog. So, I need to protect my hands, which means you need to find someone else to scrape barnacles off the side, First Mate Hands,” Lucius says, managing to make his title seem like an insult. 

Izzy feels his throat going tight, breath coming in short bursts as his ears begin to roar. He takes the final steps to close the distance between them before he realizes what’s happening, hands just about to grab Lucius and dangle him over the edge when he pauses, feeling the weight of Edward’s gaze on him. His hands drop limply to his side as he looks up and sees Edward watching him, mouth a thin line, expression giving nothing away. 

“Fuck off,” Izzy spits out before stalking away, as if that makes his defeat any less humiliating. 

He doesn’t have to look back at Edward to know that he’s disappointed in Izzy’s inability to command the men. But, as much as it causes his heart to clench, it’s better to have his disappointment than flagrantly disobey him. They’re two terrible choices, but he feels like he made the better one. Ever since Edward started forcing him to bend the knee to Stede, he’s felt as if more and more he’s been forced to make those sorts of choices where all he does is lose. 

Edward is suddenly in front of him and Izzy tenses, waiting for the punishment for failure he knows is coming. Edward grins at him, but Izzy knows more than to trust it, every muscle still tensed. 

“Time for more dictation. Might as well be useful for something,” Edward says, guiding him below deck to the Captain’s quarters, a hand on his shoulder, ice cold to the point of burning, stinging Izzy’s skin through his leather vest. He doesn’t pull away, though. He doesn’t even consider it.

Chapter Text

Stede is waiting for them, three mugs of tea set out on the dining room table along with a plate of pastries covered in powdered sugar and cream. Izzy has long since given up trying to refuse Stede’s hospitality and forces himself to take a pastry. With every bite he takes of Stede’s desserts, he swears he can feel them corrupting him from the inside out, making him crave sweetness so that when he has to go without it will hurt all the more. 

“What do you want to talk about today?” Izzy asks, flicking to a blank page. He has long since given up in trying to establish a chronological order. Maybe when the journey is through, he will dig through the anecdotes and parables and reorder them into something that makes sense, but for now, stories separated by centuries live side by side on the page. 

“I want to talk about the founding of my church.” Edward says, voice soft but deadly, steel covered in silk. “I never had much need for a congregation; I had existed long before you crawled onto land and I’m going to be here long after you crawl off it. So, your worship means nothing in the scale of my life. 

“There was always the occasional follower, making up their own rituals and praying for my grace. None really kept my attention for long, but there was this one guy, and shit, he was persistent. That is one thing you have to give humans. When they get something in their mind they really won’t let it go,” Edward says with a small laugh, turning to Stede as he does, before returning his gaze to Izzy, smile still on his face but taking on a sharper edge. 

“He would spend an hour in the shallows talking to me each morning, and he would sacrifice a portion of his catch back into the sea. That one never really made sense to me, spending all that time catching fish just to chuck them back. He would spend the spare coin he had on books of scripture, stumbling over the words as he read them aloud. In the end I figured the only way to get rid of him was to talk to him. And there was something nice about all the attention. It got rid of the monotony. 

“So, I indulged, gave him my blessing to set up a church. I set down rules and rituals, and found that there really is something that you humans can do for us. I found some worth in your worship, so I kept the priest around - I don’t remember his name - and helped him build up the community.” 

Izzy knows his name. Colin Mckean. It is written in fading ink on the first page on one of the many books that populate his shelves. It doesn’t surprise him that Edward had forgotten, the span of his existence being so vast, but his chest aches at the understanding that one day, he will be forgotten too, resigned to a vague flash of memory. 

“The years went on. He grew old, his sermons became boring, monotonous. The congregation started to abandon him. I could have forgiven that; after all, I never had much use for them in the first place. But then he just had to start arguing with me as well. He blamed me for the pain in his back from spending all day stooped over his fishing rod and said I should have given him a greater fortune, so he could retire. And then he stopped remembering his duties to me, stopped coming out in the mornings, stopped leaving an offering. 

“And that I just could not abide. Being useless is one thing, being disobedient is another. To be both is something I have no patience with,” Edward continues, voice becoming quieter until Izzy has to lean in to hear him clearly. 

His heart thumps against his tightening chest. His hand holding the pen starts to shake ever so slightly. He wills himself to stop showing weakness in front of the Kraken. 

“So, when he next decided to greet me in the waves I pulled him out to sea. Drowning is rarely a quick death, and I wanted to make sure he knew why it was happening. And, after robbing me of entertainment for so many months, I decided I should make my own fun. So I showed myself to him, and made sure he understood what he had done and why he had only himself to blame for what was going to happen next. And when he did, and had begged for mercy, I gave him the dignity of my embrace.”

The Kraken finishes, voice still soft and quiet, never wavering as he describes his follower’s death. Izzy can feel his palms becoming sweaty in answer, the pen slipping slightly in his grip. 

“Did you get that all down, Israel?” 

“Yes, Captain.” Izzy says, voice raspy but steady. 

“Good. I believe that’s all for today,” Edward says with a nod.

Izzy gets up, quickly making his way out of the room and allowing himself a few deep breaths before walking out onto the deck. He has work to do. 

It appears Edward wasn’t done with his lesson, however, as the calm that has followed them throughout the many weeks on the sea quickly disappears, chased out by storms heavy and full with the promise of destruction. 

Izzy does his best to get the crew ready. He orders them to lash down anything loose on deck and to make sure the rigging is secure. He does his best to double check every knot tied and every rope pulled, but he is one man on a vast ocean, and he can’t be everywhere at once. If he had gotten the crew to respect him then he wouldn’t be alone, he knows this, just as he knows that this is a test from the Kraken and he is failing. 

The waves are as vast as mountains as they toss the wooden vessel from peak to peak, the mast creaking from the wind and rain smashing against it. Izzy knows deep down that no harm will come to them, that Stede is too soft to allow the storm to seriously hurt the men, but that isn’t the point. The point is that Edward wants to see what Izzy will do, so he has to act like this is deadly. To him, it still is. He’s certain Stede wouldn’t save him if Edward wanted him dead. 

He’s on the deck, staring out into the storm and trying to think of the next move, when there’s a flash of something out the corner of his eye, hurtling across the deck to where Black Pete hoists the sails. He doesn’t particularly like the man, but he is the First Mate and his duty is to his crew. Maybe this has been the test all along, he thinks, and with barely a second more to think, he finds himself shoving Pete out of the way of whatever hurtles through the lantern lit sky towards them. 

Izzy is flung to the deck, his left shoulder stinging with pain, his arm numb. He scrambles to his feet, pulling Pete up with his good arm, shaking out the left one until it starts to buzz with pins and needles. And then he gets back to work, trying his best to ignore the lingering shoots of pain and the look of admiration that Pete gives him, barking at him to get back to work. 

There’s a knock on his door after the storm, when he’s in his cabin, shirt off to survey the damage to his shoulder. 

“Who is it?” he asks, already preparing to tell them to fuck off. 

“Stede.” 

He sighs. 

“Come in,” he replies. It’s a god after all. He has no right to stop him from entering. 

Stede enters, eyes flicking over the few items that populate the room, before settling on Izzy. They roam over his skin marked with tattoos and scars before settling on his face, eyes looking through Izzy to the secrets he hides behind a careful scowl. He does his best not to shift, not to show how uncomfortable he is in Stede’s presence. 

“I heard you saved Pete from danger earlier today.”

“It was a barrel. He would have been fine,” Izzy replies with a small huff. 

“Still, he wanted me to pass along his thanks. And I wanted to thank you too; it was brave, looking out for him like that,” Stede adds. 

Izzy tries to ignore the glowing heat that settles under his skin at the praise. It feels wrong, feeling this for another god, especially for Stede. 

“It was nothing,” Izzy says, voice rough. 

Stede says nothing in response, taking a few steps towards the bed where Izzy sits. 

“May I?” he asks, hands resting just above Izzy’s shoulder. He can already feel the heat radiating off them. 

“No!” Izzy shouts, feeling a flush settle on his cheeks. “Sorry, I- no. It’s just… the pain isn’t so bad. You don’t have to waste your energy on me, Captain,” Izzy stutters out, keeping his eyes to the floor, heart racing. 

“That’s alright,” is all Stede says, as if he hasn’t punished Izzy for lesser insults. “Let me know if you change your mind. Oh, also, I wanted to do some more dictation today, so come find me whenever you’re ready. No rush.” 

And with that, he closes the door, leaving Izzy alone, shoulder still warm from where Stede just rested his hand above it, the pain a dull ache. 

He’s knocking on the Captains’ door within the next five minutes, having taken barely a second to comb back his hair still dripping from the rain, hoping he looks vaguely presentable before racing down the corridors. Stede told him not to hurry, but he isn’t going to make a god wait for him. He refuses to disrespect the position of godhood, no matter how hard Stede tries. He won’t be tricked by his false charm and fall into his trap. 

Edward doesn’t look up when he enters, one hand in Stede’s hair as the god lies wrapped up in his tentacles. 

“Four minutes and sixteen seconds,” Stede says by way of greeting. 

Izzy raises an eyebrow at him, but the Kraken speaks before he can. 

“Stede was telling me you took quite a tumble on deck today.” 

“It was nothing, Captain,” Izzy replies, face growing hot. 

“Good. It would be far too much effort to try and find another chronicler at this stage,” Edward replies with a lazy wave of his hand. 

“Izzy, I wanted to share a story with you,” Stede says, head still on what passes for Edward’s lap, a silky black tentacle wrapped loosely around his chest. 

“Right.”

Izzy grabs the notebook on the table and picks up a pen. 

“I want to talk about when my order first started to organize charitable giving as a congregation, to really foster community. The arguments these priests had about who to give help to first went on for ages. For how little time you humans have, you do spend a lot of it fighting with each other. Always felt like a waste to me,” Stede starts, and Izzy tastes something bitter in the back of his throat at the sight of Stede talking out against fighting in the embrace of the god whose power is heard in the beat of a soldier’s feet marching across a deck. 

“They kept praying to me, asking me to show a sign that I was on their side. That I backed alms to children, or to widows, or to veterans, or to the poor, or the homeless above all else. They asked me to decide whether only those who pledged themselves to me were worthy of help or not. I wanted them to talk it out amongst themselves and come to a decision on their own, but they wouldn’t stop asking for guidance, so eventually I listened and came down to where they were gathered. 

“And I told them to give to the poor, to the needy, to the mothers and the widows, to the children and the old, and to my followers and non-believers alike. They had enough money and goodwill to spare. But most of all, I told them to give to the people who refused the help they desperately needed, to the people who pretended not to be hurting, but whose wounds were clear to see at a glance, because they needed it most of all.” 

Stede finishes, and Izzy stifles a scoff. He’s seen Stede’s temples, seen the golden vestments his priests wear. He’s watched his priests spend frivolously for their own gain, eating lavish meals and adorning themselves in jewelry. That money isn’t going to the fucking poor; at least, most of it isn’t. Still, Stede can tell himself whatever he wants if it makes him feel superior. 

“I think that’s all for this session. After all, we had a very eventful morning,” Stede says, and Izzy leaves.

Lucius catches him as he exits, and Izzy steels himself for whatever snide comment he is about to endure. He is certain that the news of him being knocked off his feet in the storm has spread like wildfire, and that Lucius undoubtedly has thought of new ways to use this information to his advantage. 

“Pete told me what happened on deck. I wanted to thank you for getting him out the way.”

“I wouldn’t have fucking had to if you did your fucking job, and had actually secured everything like I asked.” 

“Right. Well, I know you normally eat by yourself, but I was hoping you’d join the crew for dinner tonight. I know it would make the Captains happy to see you mixing with the crew,” Lucius says, and Izzy sees it for what it is: a blatant attempt to manipulate him.

But Edward hadn’t even looked at him earlier, had hardly spoken to him, and while it would ultimately be making Stede happy, maybe that in turn can help him regain some of the favor he has clearly lost with his god. 

It’s the smell that hits him first, taking him back to the few happy moments from his childhood when they had just enough food to go round and his mother would spend the afternoon in the kitchen, cooking chicken noodle soup, and the whole house would smell of salt, thyme, and warmth. 

There’s a bowl waiting for him at the end of the table, and Frenchie shifts to give him some room to sit down and see that it is indeed chicken noodle soup. Izzy doesn’t think much about food, buying what is cheap and will give him enough energy to get through the day, trying not to indulge. But, if he had to choose his favorite meal, it would be this. 

He takes a tentative mouthful, and it’s not exactly as he remembers it -the broth is thicker and the chunks of vegetable are slightly larger- but it’s close, and that makes it perfect. Izzy feels something clench in his chest and has to breath through the lump in his throat, feeling slightly ridiculous. It’s just soup. It’s just fucking soup, but it feels like his mothers hug in her few moments of lucidity. It feels like he’s safe. 

“How?”

“We wanted to thank you for helping me out,” Pete starts.

“And apologize about the barrels. We didn’t want you to think we didn’t appreciate it,” Lucius adds quickly. 

“Yeah, you might be an angry fucker but you’re good to have around,” Wee John says. 

“And everyone knows food is the best way to do that,” Roach butts in, wiping his hand on his stained apron before sitting down at the table to join them. 

“It had to be a surprise, see, so we asked the Captains what food you liked and they said this,” Frenchie finishes off. 

Normally Izzy would feel a flash of annoyance at the crew for bothering gods with something as trivial as this, but the annoyance struggles to make itself heard through the humming of gratitude and contentment flowing through Izzy. So he lets himself relax, leaning against the wall behind him, taking another spoonful of soup and listening to the chatter of the crew wash over him.

Izzy is taking down a dictation on a balmy day when he notices, for the first time on a conscious level, how differently Edward and Stede speak. With both of them being gods, who have seen entire languages and cultures rise and fall in the blink of an eye, their vocabulary and inflection is almost guaranteed to come off as a little strange to Izzy’s human ears. For too long, he has simply lumped them together. Committing their stories to the written word, however, has given him the opportunity to realize all the miniscule ways in which their tongues differ. 

When he speaks, Edward has a talent for vulgarity matched only by the force of nature that is his satin voice. He has never shied away from the facts of the things he’s done, and Izzy imagines he never will. It is Stede, instead, who focuses on all the soft and tender parts of humanity. He is unlikely to flinch from the gusto of Edward’s prose about the taste of human blood on his tentacles, but he is equally unlikely to admit its presence in his own tales. 

Over the years, Izzy has maintained his love for his god. He has loved him when lonely, when unsure whether or not he was still cared for, when buried in the rotting dirt of grief from the loss of his crew, when drowning on dry fucking land- Izzy has never stopped remembering to love him. This, though, is the hardest fucking thing he’s ever done for the Kraken. 

Respecting Stede feels like respecting his father; it comes from a fear of punishment and bloody bottom lips. No less, no more. There have been moments where he has felt something akin to respect for the god, but these have always been few and far between, dashed to the rocks when Stede inevitably proves his weakness. Most of the time he is simply pretending to act with respect to keep himself breathing another day. The concept is familiar, but it still leaves a sharp taste in the back of his throat. He thought this was over when he turned his mind, body, and soul to the Kraken. He finds himself winding the fingers of his left hand through the chain around his neck, tugging it tighter against his throat, as he takes down dictations for the two gods who thought it fit to provide their scripture through his human hands. 

It is easy to take it from Edward. When he doesn’t meander through the shared moments with Stede, his voice dips nearly half an octave lower, dangerous not in spite of the quiet, drawling, tone he uses, but because of it. Izzy takes pride, perhaps even pleasure, in committing the colorful ways in which the Kraken has demonstrated his power to the written word. The book is half-full already, a travesty which makes his chest burn, because it means they are halfway through this expedition. Although, knowing Stede, he is likely to just procure another beautifully bound book to fill. Part of him wants to do this forever. Part of him wants it to be over so that he can return to the blessed familiarity of his austere home and the sole command of his god. 

As Stede takes another lazy, winding, path around the point he eventually means to make, Izzy gets lazy in his notes. The shape of the leaves of an orange tree aren’t exactly important to the first festival thrown in Stede’s name. He’ll take the story down. He’ll be obedient in that way, but he won’t waste space on extraneous details of a deity he does not worship, one who did not ordain him and for whom he will not waste his breath on personal prayers. That is for Edward. This whole thing is for Edward. 

“Israel.”

Stede’s voice is uncharacteristically stern, even as cloaked as it is beneath his cheerful drivel. Izzy looks up as much as he’s willing, which is as far as his thin mouth and the spoils of too many, too straight, too white, too wrong, teeth revealed in a grin that has become far more horrifying than human. 

“It seems you may have become unfaithful in your work.”

Immediately Izzy’s heart starts to beat faster in his chest. It would be a lie to say that he didn’t favor the vivid imagery and casual displays of power belonging to the Kraken, but he believes himself to have been true to all that was said to him. At least true to the point, if not to every detail. It would be a fools’ errand to even attempt otherwise. 

Before he can think of a single thing to say to defend himself, Edward stands up from where he has been lounging and crosses the room to the desk, easily pushing aside Izzy’s book and slinging himself atop the polished wood. He’s so close that Izzy can smell the salt of the sea on him, and can feel the cold radiating off of him like a wintry storm even as he keeps his focus and gaze on the smooth leather of his trousers. 

“Is that so, Father Hands?” Edward asks. He sounds more like he does on the waves than the human tinge Izzy has come to expect from him. One of his icy, rough, hands curls around the back of Izzy’s neck, making his whole body light up at the contact, as though he has been shot full of pure energy. “I expected better from you.” 

“I-I’ve been trying, Captain, to-”

Stede’s own presence draws nearer, with it comes a brightening gleam that Izzy can hardly stand, until he too is near enough to feel in the miniscule space left between them. He smells of nothing, but still manages to coat Izzy’s tongue with an overpowering, saccharine sweetness. The blistering temperature of his body combats the cold of Edward’s until the air is almost comfortable, if not for the way it smothers Izzy, too heavy to breathe. 

“Look at your god when he speaks to you, Israel.”

Like always, Izzy makes it as far as the soft petals of his god’s lips. His mouth is unlike Stede’s in this regard, too. If he allows his mind to wander, Izzy can almost think about what it would feel like to kiss him- in worship of course, never for anything more debasing than that. The Kraken deserves more. 

Stede seems dissatisfied in his efforts as he takes his chin in hand and forces him to tile his head back more, until he stares into the unfathomable depths of Edward’s eyes. He could drown in them. He would, if asked. Now that he’s here he cannot look away, and even blinking seems to be removed from his ability. 

The Kraken considers him. It is not Edward. Edward, or Ed as Stede is wont to call him, is a being much softer around the edges. But the Kraken is a fickle, cruel, wild thing for whom Izzy would do anything, and it is this being who he sees before him now. He gets the sense that he might be shaking from the sheer overwhelming force of the touch of the divine. 

As he trembles, the Kraken studies him. 

“Oh, Iz, what do we do with you?”

“Cruel to ask him things when he can’t answer, love,” Stede says. 

Izzy realizes that Stede’s observation is correct. He can’t seem to make his body move at all, let alone organize his lips to form words. He is captive to their conversation. 

“Humans are such funny little things,” the Kraken muses, tentacles flicking in the air as he speaks. “So endlessly devoted, so willing to do whatever they’re told, and yet so seemingly determined to self-sabotage. Whose fault is that? I don’t recall.” 

Stede hums. “Jack, I think. All that free will mess.”

“Right, yeah, the free will thing. It does make for a rather more interesting time. I like it, sure, it keeps them entertaining, allows us to see who they really are. Independence is beautiful, no matter how irritating.”

Tilting his head as if it will allow him to see deeper into Izzy’s soul, the Kraken offers the smallest quirk of a quarter-smile to his mouth. He looks every bit the master that Izzy pledged the entirety of himself to. No matter the danger of the moment, it serves as a firm reminded of why he’s done this. Serving the Kraken is his life’s work. He should be grateful that he’s aware of him enough to even be upset with him. Still, the guilt feels like it’s suffocating Izzy slowly. 

“He’s not forgotten who we are,” Edward whispers. His voice has gone too tender again and the hair on the back of Izzy’s neck pricks up. “It’s just one of those human things, I suppose. Izzy can’t help himself anymore than the others. He’s practically pure devotion, but there is too much of a good thing. This is my fault.” 

“Oh, Ed, no-” Stede begins, and Izzy would do anything to be able to impress upon his god just how insane it is for him to blame himself for Izzy’s failures, but neither of them are given the chance to protest. 

“I haven’t been strict enough with you. Come on now, Father Hands, on your feet.”

Chapter Text

Izzy’s body obeys the Kraken’s directions before his mind catches up to the words, and when Edward and Stede leave the captains’ quarters, Izzy trails helplessly behind them. They make a beeline for the deck, where the crew surprise him by actually being in the middle of their jobs when the Captains and First Mate emerge into the sunlight. Lucius, of course, is mostly just sketching while talking to Buttons, but the others have busied themselves with one of the hundred tasks that normally fall to Izzy to pick up. 

The publicity of the punishment normally would not bother him, and he would relish in the showcase of his submission to his god, but this is different. None of the crew know who Edward is beneath the human veneer, let alone what he means to Izzy and their survival. This will not appear to them as a noble pain, but as a humiliation. In turn, their perception makes it so. 

“Attention, please,” Stede says, his voice carrying easily, but Izzy can almost detect a note of hesitation in his words. It must be wishful thinking. Nothing, and no one, can stop this. “The chores can wait for a moment, I’m sure we’ll have time later.”

Edward considers the motley crew. “More like Izzy will have time later. He’ll finish it for you. I think you’ve been working hard, you deserve a bit of a rest, don’t you, lads?” 

The uneasiness is spreading like wildfire. Even Buttons is shifting his weight, wary, his bird nowhere to be seen. None of them know exactly what is coming. 

“Don’t you?” The Kraken repeats. 

A chorus of affirmative, mumbled and concerned, rise from the small crowd. Stede takes a step back from Izzy and his god. 

“It’s been quite some time since I keelhauled someone, I don’t know that I trust my knots to hold him well enough. Would someone secure First Mate Hands for me?”

It’s Oluwande who ties the ropes around Izzy. First are his hands, pressed into a steeple and secured behind his back tightly enough for his muscles to quiver at the strain. Then a secure rope harness is tied around his chest that won’t come loose despite the thrashing he’s about to endure. Izzy has seen keelhaulings before. It’s the kind of thing men die from, if not immediately, then from the infection, and blood loss, and broken bones that come from such a violent punishment. Most captains at sea, even the cruellest, will avoid such a thing in order to prevent the loss of a good crew mate. It serves as a demonstration more than anything else- a reminder of what happens to those who don’t know when to bend a knee. 

“Captain,” Lucius says. He looks brave when he steps forward, despite how his voice shares. “I think this may be a bit extreme-”

The Kraken considers him for a moment. “Would you like to join him, Lucius?” 

“Right, right. Taking a step back now. As you were, C-Captain.”

From here, the procedure is simple. The rope is arranged so that one end is tied to Izzy and the other is held in the crews’ hands next to the opposite rail. They just have to drop him into the water and pull. It’s easy. Easy to explain, easy to execute, easy in every aspect except experience. 

Izzy takes a deep breath that doesn’t fill his lungs half as much as he wishes it would. 

“Father Hands,” Edward drawls, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Do you have anything to say?” 

“Just that I’m sorry, Captain. I failed you.” 

He sighs and shoves hard. For one sickening, perfect moment, Izzy is flying, face down, toward the ocean. The surface slaps him with a hard sting that doesn’t quite fade as he struggles to tell up from down so that he can attempt to reach the surface, but the chance never comes. Izzy feels the sudden tightness where the ropes dig into his body, and he’s being dragged under the boat. He hits his head first, which results in an involuntary scream that fills his mouth with salty seawater, but that alone is not enough. It’s never enough. Every part of him seems to bang against the wood at some point, or in more places than not, the sharp bones of barnacles that tear through his skin like tissue paper. It’s an added cruelty, a reminder of all the ways the crew didn’t respect him before. He doubts they’ll respect him now. 

He can’t see, can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t live anymore, not when it’s like this. At least it’s in the ocean. It’s just the ocean. This is a death that belongs to his god. Above all else, Izzy is tired, he realizes. The act of fighting to prove himself to the Kraken through feigned adoration of Stede has proven too much for him. He can’t. There has been enough time spent in sprawling, scrawling cursive letters that he never learned how to make small. This is the end. He will not get the chance to show the world any more of the Kraken than he already has before this end swallows him in a single unchewed bite. 

He tries to make peace with that, but the hull slams against his back again and he gasps this time, letting the water now tasting too much like his blood- or maybe he’s imagining that- into his lungs. This is the final evidence that he will not make it. He will die, and it will be his own fault. At least it will be the Kraken’s will. Izzy can say he served him until the end, even if he failed more times than he can count. 

Izzy allows himself to surrender to the pain just in time for the shock of air and sunlight to hit him. He sputters and gasps for breath that won’t come, slamming against the side of the ship at least a couple more times on the way up, leaving bloody smears against it that he will have to polish if he doesn’t die from this. His head lolls against his chest and the banister cracks his ribs against as he’s pulled over the side. Finally, he feels the deck beneath his feet, and promptly collapses to his knees. 

Several pairs of hands turn him on his side as he desperately hacks up water. Everyone is talking at once. He wishes he could understand, but he knows he doesn’t need to, not when he can vaguely see Edward’s boots in front of him, regal and dark. They melt into tentacles before him, shiny and spirited things that come close but not close enough, before fading back into those boots that Izzy would lick clean if asked. 

“He’s fine,” The Kraken says silkily. “Throw him again.” 

“Ed, that’s enough!”

Stede. 

Stede, who has never learned to keep his mouth shut, has decided to talk back to the powerful Kraken once more, as if he has the right. He does, in many ways. But in the same vein, there is no being in existence that should be able to speak to the Kraken in this way. Izzy would normally think very hard about gutting him for it. A human would absolutely face some sort of payment in blood. He does not think much about that now. Instead, he grabs onto the arm next to his face, with wiry muscle and tan skin, probably belonging to Jim. It feels solid and safe, grounding him. 

“You’ll kill him that way,” Stede says sternly. 

Edward makes a soft sound of inquiry. “Will I?”

“Humans are fragile, Ed.” 

“That they are,” the Kraken laughs, his deadly amusement evident. “That they are, when they’re just humans. It isn’t as if they get to decide when they’re finished, though. That’s up to us, isn’t it? Up to you?”

No one responds to him. Instead, Stede kneels down next to Izzy and places a hot, too hot, hand across his aching jaw. It’s not just his face that hurts. It’s everything. “Back,” Stede commands. Everyone listens, too off-balance to do much else. The world gets brighter, and Izzy breathes in deeply. He always thought dying would be a dark venture, the blackness seeping in at the edge of his vision, inky and fluid in the way that the Kraken’s tentacles are. But it isn’t. It gets lighter, until the world glows in a way he has always associated with Stede. That may hurt the worst. His death will not belong to his own god. 

When the light finally dims, the sun cuts a low path in the sky, eking its way towards the horizon and tingeing the world in violet and gold. Izzy is still on deck, though his head is pillowed on something soft. He blinks a few times to adjust and realizes the something beneath him is Lucius’ lap. He sits up straight and feels along his clothes. They are the same as they were before, but they’re dry and unaffected by the scrapes of the hull, and no lingering pain troubles him. He reaches for the chain around his neck and finds it gone as his heart drops. It must have broken off while he was underwater. When he examines himself further, he finds the pin on his vest and the ring around his finger have similarly vanished, almost as if they were never there to begin with. It was not an accident, then. His evidence of devotion has been taken from him. 

“I- the chores, they have to-”

“Easy,” Lucius soothes. “It’s alright. We finished everything up. I think you’ll be proud of the work we did.”

Izzy gets at his feet anyways, surprised by how easily they hold his weight after all that has happened. “I still have to check.”

“Izzy-” Lucius says, reaching out to him. 

“No!” He turns back to Lucius and gives him a shove that comes a little harsher than he meant to and he swallows down an apology. Now is not a time to be showing weakness. “My name is Father Hands, or First Mate-”

“Reckon it’s Captain Hands now,” Buttons interrupts from the helm. 

That stops him cold in his tracks as Izzy turns his full attention to the man. “What?”

“Captain Hands, not First Mate Hands,” Frenchie elaborates. “We voted and everything. It was very democratic.” Jim nods in assent. “Your ship now, man.”

“Did you miserable lot mutiny?” Izzy asks, the thought almost laughable. He is certain that if he does start laughing he won’t be able to stop. 

“Fucking hell, Captain, calm down.” Fang says, as if those words don't make everything much worse. “We didn’t mutiny, alright? They left.” 

The sentence feels like it should echo, but there is no such thing as that on the open ocean, which is neither strangely calm nor viciously tumultuous right now. It’s just normal. Izzy puts his hand against his chest to make sure he can still feel his heart beating and he hasn’t just gone to some perverse hell where he’s not just punished, but abandoned. 

“After Stede healed you, he and the Kraken left,” Black Pete says, leading Izzy to turn and stare at him as if he’s grown a second head. 

“You know?”

“Suspected, at least,” Oluwande agrees. “Kinda confirmed it when they both went all-powerful.”

Wee John scuffs his foot against the deck lightly. “When he healed you, Stede said you'd need time to sleep it off a bit. Then Edward got upset, something about how you should be able to just get back up. They argued a little, but then they were both just gone. It’s like they vanished.”

“Gods will do that,” Ivan adds. 

There are no words for the hurt that begins to flood Izzy’s veins. It is nothing like the surface physical pain of a self-inflicted burn or a cruel keelhaul. Instead, he realizes what he’s feeling is something akin to all encompassing despair. 

“So, Captain,” Buttons says, pulling Izzy from his thoughts, “where are we going now?”

Izzy hangs his head in defeat. “Home. This ship is done.”

When he walks back below deck, no one stops him. 

Chapter Text

They don’t make it more than half a night’s journey, during which Izzy doesn’t get a moment’s rest, before they run into trouble. He’s been pacing in the captain’s quarters between sporadic trips back on deck, thinking about how much he hates where he’s ended up. It’s his own fault, if he had been a better prophet, or even a better man, he wouldn’t be here. It stings twice as much to know that this crew were well aware of who they were dealing with and still made themselves useless and disruptive to the task at hand. They knew what was at stake, but just didn’t seem to care. 

It’s not a surprise that he notices the glow of another ship’s lanterns on the night watch, but it isn't expected in this part of the sea, when the land is so far and they've made sure to avoid the usual trade routes. He pulls his telescope from his pocket and extends it to get a better look. Some part of him considers raiding the thing. It might win back the Kraken’s favor if he proves himself so bloodthirsty and single minded. Before he has the chance, however, he hears an earth shattering boom. 

It’s a warning shot, he can tell by the hundred meters or so that the cannonball misses the ship, but it’s a bad sign. 

“Shit,” he hisses. “Shit, shit ,shit.” He turns to Ivan, who is supposed to be sharing the watch but who has mostly busied himself with a solo card game that could not possibly be more boring. “Ivan, wake the crew. We’ve got company.” 

“Yes, boss,” Ivan says, hurrying below deck and Izzy can’t help but feel grateful that it was Ivan on deck, one of the few crewmembers who actually seems to understand that certain things out here mean life or death. Within a few minutes the crew is assembled on deck, looking at Izzy expectantly as the ship rapidly gains ground on them, and he realizes he hasn’t a clue what to do. 

Izzy knows, strategically, the maneuvers they could take to try and outrun the ship bearing down on them. He also knows which of the men he can rely on to fight: Ivan, Fang, Jim, and potentially Wee John all spring to mind. But the thought of actually barking these orders out, of making the decisions completely by himself, fills him with dread. If he makes the wrong move this crew will die, and it will be because of him. 

This is maybe the part of godhood that he had never considered, not that he would think himself on their level; they must be burdened constantly by the weight of having to know all the answers. It must come easily to them, but as he looks out at the crew, he can imagine exactly the sort of pressure they’re under. 

“There’s no time to try a negotiation,” Izzy warns them. “They’re coming, and they’re boarding. “Let me handle it until I tell you otherwise, understood?” 

A hushed murmur of affirmations rises to meet him. The only other time he’s heard the crew so silent and so serious was a few hours earlier, before they were abandoned. The sober mood has come back. All they can do is wait. 

Luckily, they are not kept waiting long before the ship is within range, and a long ladder is placed to bridge the gap between decks. Even for sailors, the boarders are dirty and coated in what Izzy first assumes to be gunpowder, but quickly realises with a sinking heart is ash. These aren’t pirates who can be bribed, or navy men who can be threatened. They’re devotees, not unlike him, except their loyalty lies with a god who bears even less mercy than the Kraken, and only a fraction of the foresight. 

Izzy’s run in with the Calico’s devotees have been few and far between, especially recently, something he can only feel grateful for. The Calico is ruthless, revelling in the pain of his followers just for the fun of it. At least the Kraken’s punishments had a point. 

Izzy knows that he can’t let these followers come close to the crew. They would delight in their softness, in ruining it. He’s almost surprised by the cold that runs down his spine at the thought, and the determination to stop any harm coming to the crew. It’s his fault they’re in this mess. He knows that the Calico and the Kraken have history, and he wouldn’t be surprised if this is one final punishment from his god. He won’t let the crew suffer for his mistakes. 

Izzy tightens his grip on his sword, forcing his shoulders back and his chin up as he faces down the follower facing him. He isn’t surprised that he doesn’t recognise them; the Calico runs through devotees fast, discarding them like broken toys when they’ve burnt themselves out. Izzy has hardly ever seen the same one twice. 

The follower launches themself at him. He doesn’t even bother checking to see if they’re carrying a weapon, his sword dancing through the air as he cuts them down, and that seems to be the signal for the rest of them to swarm onto the deck. He lets himself wonder for just a second if there could have been a way to talk them down, but he knows that the followers are here for one thing, and one thing only. If it’s bloodshed they want, he’ll happily give it to them. 

He’s surprised by the way his own crew responds with the same fervor. The deck becomes a frenzy of bodies clashing, screams and blood spraying the air in equal measure. It’s been a long time since Izzy participated in a fight like this, but wielding a sword is something one never forgets how to do. Things that require balancing the forces of life and death, trained into the very fibers of a man’s muscles, are difficult to forget. He knows when to swing and when to slice, knows how many steps he needs to take on each turn like a ballerina’s pirouette into the next death he commands. Again, he’s struck with a sense of power. This is power. Not just taking down the words of deities, and not just spreading their messages to every willing ear, but getting to take the beating of another’s heart into his hands and make it stop. And it is a power he wields by himself, every decision his own. 

“Izzy!” 

He doesn’t bother to correct the informality, or even process who screamed his name, simply pivoting to the sound and blocking what would have surely been a deadly blow from a sailor scant more than a child. He wants to let her go. Instead, he sends a whispered prayer to anyone who might be listening when he used to send them to the Kraken, and runs the long blade of his sword through her shoulder. When he pulls it back, she crumples, and he does not check to see if she’s still breathing. There isn’t time. 

The second he looks up he sees Jim, cornered against the mast, slashing with a knife he knows them to be far more proficient at throwing, but they are unable to find the space to do so. He crosses the deck without a second thought. Another new thing, he realizes, is his willingness to risk his own life to save theirs. Loyalty amongst men is a funny thing, far different for what he has shown to the gods. 

He will not get rewarded for this show of loyalty, quite the opposite, if the sword slicing through his arm is any indication. He can feel the warm trickle of blood dripping down his skin, and the stinging pain, but it barely slows him down as he cuts his way through the chaos to Jim. He has suffered far worse pain. He’s used to pushing it aside when he has something to fight for. He just never thought that would include anything other than the Kraken. 

He manages to get to Jim, he can see from the sweat dripping down their face that they wouldn’t have been able to hold on for much longer. They don’t display any worry about their situation, just give Izzy a nod before they dash back into the fray. The stinging in his arm fades as Jim darts off, and when he glances down the fabric is unripped, as if nothing had happened. 

Izzy has barely a second to consider it before he is blocking another attack, pushing forward into the fray. He scans the deck, taking in the bodies piled high, heart sinking at the constant stream of attackers still making their way onto the ship. His crew has held up longer than he thought possible, but they can’t hold on forever. For every attacker they cut down, another seems to step forward and take their place. 

He has a moment to wonder how many people there could possibly be before a wayward arm catches him upside the head, sending stars across his vision and forcing him to his knees. A curse escapes him before he manages to get back to his feet. The air feels tight again, like it normally does around Edward and Stede. He’s currently far more inclined to label it as panic and his own physical weakness then any interaction by the divine. 

As he raises his sword again he realizes just how exhausted he has become by this. Not only the fighting, but the living, the breathing, the being. His crew is holding their own for now, but with no end in sight there’s no way they’re making it through this. The night will swallow them whole, and with their bodies left on the deck to be desecrated by the Calico’s worshippers there is no other side of heavens and beauty and riches to look forward to. Dying in honor of one’s god grants them eternity. Dying a failure is a promise of emptiness and damnation. 

Izzy heavily considers the notion of lowering his sword and baring his neck to be slashed open, his body crumpling to be burned and worse. Nothing but a book that will surely be incinerated will remain of the things he has tried to do for the Kraken. 

It is only the smell of burning, thick and cloying, that stops him. When he dies, it will not be in flames, it will not be quick, and it will not be under the eyes of the Calico. He may not have earned eternal rest in the Kraken’s arms, but he is determined that his final moments will still be in his embrace. The Kraken is not a kind god, but he is a just one, and Izzy hopes that he has at least earned that final mercy in Edward’s eyes. 

He stumbles to the railing, hands gripping the wood, knuckles white, as he stares down at the rolling waves. The clanging of swords and screaming fades into the background as he looks down, replaced by a high-pitched ringing in his ears. It’s far easier than he thought it would be to take that final step over the edge, and he's falling, stomach swooping as he plummets towards the end he always knew was coming. 

The air is knocked out of his lungs as he smashes against the waves, and he gasps on instinct, sputtering as he swallows mouthfuls of water, the salt stinging his throat. He sinks down into the depths, falling away from the ship and the crew and the Calico’s men and this whole damned voyage.

Izzy had heard that as you died, your life flashed behind your eyes. That, it seems, is not just an old wives’ tale, but has some truth in it. As he falls deeper and deeper beneath the depths, the world growing darker and darker, he remembers his childhood, as short and miserable as it was. 

His fate was not an uncommon one: the youngest and smallest of a mass of kids, a mother who found peace in opium, and a father who drank far too much and whose preferred method of finding his own peace was beating the shit out of whichever family member was closest. Food, clothes, and love had all been scarce, and Izzy was never exactly going to win a fight against his elder siblings for it. 

Izzy prayed as a child. He prayed for warmth when his hands stung with the cold, prayed for food when his stomach ached, prayed for someone to protect him. To care for him. To love him. He had hated praying to Stede, even back then. But Stede was meant to be the protector of lost souls. He was said to wipe away the tears of children crying out in the dark, telling them bedtime stories until they drifted peacefully asleep.

So, feeling even smaller than he usually did, Izzy would curl up in whatever corner he was hiding in, eyes squeezed tight. He would recite the prayers that had been taught to him, over and over again.

He remembers the story of the way humanity was constructed by the gods long before the first iterations of that sequence of events was taken down. Mankind was cobbled together on a balmy summer afternoon, after the land had been set for them and the seeds planted to feed their hungry mouths. In some tellings of the beginning, it was the work of an egret of a God, dressed in the most blindingly white feathers, creating sparks of heartbeats between beats of its wings all across the habitable land of the Earth, which had come quite a long way since its first moments. 

Every deity gave something to the shriveled, pink, pathetic creatures set to inherit what was not built for them, to help them along in their path and live lives fully dedicated to the service of one or more of their creators. Izzy first read texts of the Kraken when he was too young to fully parse out the words’ true implications. He fell in over his head, he thinks, but he would not have it any other way. There were those who sighed intelligence into unprepared ears, and who taught rough palms to craft the first fires, and who strummed melodies unlike what a sole human might be capable of producing, and who sharpened weapons for the first murder. The Kraken gave them all the passion of the tumultuous high seas for them to make use of the gifts others had given them.

It is for reasons like this that Izzy adores him so completely; without the Kraken, there is no possibility of true experience in life, not of the gifts from the other deities and not of their own inventions. Stede, on the other hand, thought it prudent to give them tenderness at what had been the closest approximation gods experience to a birth. While this alone does not encapsulate all that Stede is or represents, it is what he deemed most important to share with the pathetic dribbling creatures most of humanity has become. Tenderness has never been afforded to Izzy, and he has undoubtedly encountered too many men who are ignorant of such a trait. The Kraken made them useful. Stede made them capable of cruelty. 

The waves swallow Izzy and it feels almost like a hug. Despite himself he finds himself thinking of Stede’s beginnings more and more. Different scriptures give different views on the god's origin, and the man himself seems unconcerned with setting the record straight. Izzy figures it doesn’t much matter how the god came into being, all that matters is that he is here now.

The worst part about the discrepancy between Edward and Stede is that Stede seemed to listen when Izzy was a child. He would pray and then find some food on the street, discarded and stale but otherwise perfectly fine. Or his brother would suddenly hit a growth spurt and he would be handed down a set of warm clothes just as the winter chill was setting in. All he had to do was feel small and helpless, and he would be given what he needed.

Perhaps to the gods, humans are always pathetically small in that way. With the currents taking him deeper asunder, he can tell that even this small portion of the ocean is unfathomably large. It is still a microscopic piece of one tiny slip of the Kraken’s domain, and he alone is only one of many gods. He is infinitesimal in his plight. No matter what he thinks he is or has done, at the end of his life, he will simply be relegated to a whisper of memory, just as the Kraken’s first priest was. 

When the humans first rose into existence with the Kraken, not quite monkeys but not yet more, there was a boom in innovation like none had ever seen. Every deity had something to give to this final exam of creation, which was intended to carry them on through indefinite centuries of worship and humble service. The Kraken first walked among humans then, before he gave them any gifts, to get a good handle on who they are, and who they will ever be. The Kraken, a mysterious monster full of eldritch possibilities and seething rage, gave the gift of passion to humanity. He gave them the ability to feel all the emotions whittled into their cores by the others so fully that their very souls are almost bursting with it. It gave them the ability to hate, to kill, to maim, to destroy- but it also came with devotion. There must be passion for devotion, something the followers of other all-knowing beings should remember. It all comes from the Kraken.

According to legend, the Kraken began hiding himself among humans to keep his eyes on their increasingly unbecoming behavior, taking on this pseudonym or that as he watched. Edward is a popular one, a fact Izzy knows not because all creatures with a brain do, but because he’s been blessed with the intimate knowledge of all forms the Kraken takes. He knows the whispering spilled darkness of tentacles. He knows bronze skin that is deceptively cool to the touch. He knows unfathomable beauty and ephemeral human cheeks. Edward and the Kraken are the same entity, but there’s softness stored between the splashes of wine-dark blood in Edward’s veins, and it is Izzy’s to safeguard and throw himself to the floor for. Edward is capable of extraordinary acts of love. He is also capable of hurting people in ways that the Kraken’s true form is not quite land-faring enough to manage. 

Still, he receives a daily devotion from countless followers around the world, even if none are so fervent as those Izzy bestows upon him the second he can force breathy words from his throat on a foggy morning. 

The scriptures do agree, however inconsistent the many versions, that Stede is a newer god, and that there had not been Stede without humanity, or humanity without Stede. He is their constant protector, answering the prayers of the needy, inspiring communities, guiding even the coldest of hearts to help their neighbor. With the rounding circles of gifts and intentions dancing waltzes through the souls of every human being, it is no wonder that so many are devoted, and that so few then agree on which of their creators holds the most power and deserves the most of their attention and adoration. It has felt like a given longer than it hasn’t, for Izzy; he will always turn first and most attentively to the Kraken. It is not Stede who deserves the affection.

In contrast, the Earth hadn’t yet fully formed when the Kraken came into existence, rising from the humid mires of the primordial soup that first supported life. It was then, according to the texts, that long dark tendrils began to whisper through the waves and a weather-beaten face peeked over the surface. The gods, most of them, came before humans had any right to the world, but there was something in them that calls to mind a delicate human stature. People were created in the divine image, after all. 

Under the watchful, burning gaze of the sun, the Kraken made himself real and known. He was born of the sludge, through sheer force of will, with a punishment already written across the tip of his oft forked tongue, prepared to be unleashed upon the first creature to draw his attention. Violence, passion, anger, true justice, were there before even a single person had yet thought to sully the world with their own weak imitations of emotions created to befit a god such as this one. The groundwork was laid for them by the Kraken’s calloused hands. There was no one around yet to appreciate such a thing. Perhaps there never will be. 

Sometimes, if one turns their face precisely to the morning sun, there is a saying that the true light of the divine will bathe their eager lips and cheeks, and they will feel the full weight of the love and care that the gods carry for them in all they do. Izzy has done this thousands of times, and has only ever felt the answering call of Edward’s beckoning fingers against the column of his throat. Maybe this is because he has always touched the sea as he does so, or perhaps it is a result of his failure to want anything the others will give to him. 

Izzy has long thought of Stede as a sickness, thought that he seeds softness in men’s hearts. That he makes them reliant and complacent, clouds their minds with rotten compassion until they are willing to die for no reason, as long as they die together.

Now, he isn’t too sure. Seeing the crew move as one, allowing them to cut through the waves, to sail through Ed’s domain and weather the storms that roll in with his mercurial moods, he can see the worth in a group acting as one mind. And he can feel Stede with them as well as see him as they act together to heave the sails. He can feel him in the way the crew will sit on deck and share rum and stories after a harsh day, so that they can face the next morning with a smile.  

Eventually in Izzy’s childhood, Stede stopped listening, and Izzy found himself abandoned by the god who abandoned no one. So he had given himself to a new god, the only one who listens, the only one who wants a soul as twisted and rotten as his. To the god who understands his unending rage at the world, to the god who urges him to preach of strength and violence and power. He preaches for the god of storms and unimaginable destruction, the god who spurs on pirates during a raid, the god whose hymns are sung in the war drums accompanying soldiers marching onto beaches in the boatload. And he was rewarded for his service. 

The memory of Stede standing up to Ed, of needing Stede’s protection, of Ed listening to him, also comes to mind, making his stomach churn as much as the waves tossing him about like a toy do. But, that did take courage, or maybe stupidity, to face a storm, and command it to change course, to become steady waves, and for the storm to listen. To be dismissed. To be called into something gentle. 

Izzy’s lungs start to burn, and as he kicks to the surface he gasps for air. One thing he does know for certain is that all the scriptures and philosophers, the preachers and the believers are wrong about one thing. Stede is not a constant. He will make you soft and reliant, and then he will leave. He is the fathers who kissed your skinned knees better, but also the ones who walked out. He is love and the absolute cracking destruction of grief when that love leaves. He had stopped the Kraken’s wrath, but that too was just temporary. You can only calm a storm for so long; in the end it will come back. And Izzy will now return to Edward’s domain for his final judgment, his final reckoning. At that thought, the waves claim him once more, pulling him away from the sweet taste of air. 

As he sinks into his god's domain, as his bones ache with the effort to keep treading water and fight his way to the surface, as his lungs scream out for air, he knows that this is the final embrace of the only god who could ever love a soul like his. 

Chapter Text

Izzy wakes up in a bed that is not his own, the sheets far too soft beneath his skin. This is not the heaven promised by the Kraken, nor is it any hell he has heard of, which means he must be alive. He feels nothing at the thought. Just an empty, gaping, chasm in his chest where he supposes there should be some sense of relief. 

He knows he should open his eyes and figure out where he is, but the thought just makes him feel so very tired. His bones ache, his throat is tender and raw, and for once he cannot bring himself to revel in the pain. The Kraken has abandoned him, so the pain is for nothing. All it does is remind him once again that he’s still alive.

He lets himself lay there, soaking in self pity, for a few more minutes before forcing himself to open his eyes. He recognises the room he’s in intimately, having spent many hours here, transcribing the words of the gods. But why or how he’s in the captain’s quarters on the Revenge remains a mystery. 

The door swings open and Roach enters ahead of Lucius, smiling slightly when he notices Izzy’s eyes on him. 

“You’re awake! Good, thought I might have lost you for a second there,” Roach says with a small chuckle, making his way over. “How are you feeling?”

Izzy tries to answer, to say that he feels like shit and to ask how the fuck they found him, because last thing he remembers is being completely alone, not a ship in sight. All that comes out is a croak. 

“Right, drink this,” Roach commands, pouring Izzy a glass of water. “I’ve also got some tea I can brew, should help with the throat and stave off any sickness.” 

Roach strides towards him, resting a hand on his forehead for a second before pulling it back, looking him over with a practiced eye. 

“You don’t appear to have a fever, but I’ll be monitoring you.” 

Roach helps Izzy shift until he sits upright in bed, handing him the glass. The water is cool and soothing, and when it’s gone, he feels able to speak. 

“What happened?”

“You got… knocked overboard in the fight, but we managed to fish you out,” Roach says, smile growing strained. Izzy wonders if people saw that he let himself fall- if they’re just giving him the false dignity of a lie. “We managed to fend off the last of the men, but Buttons says Karl has spotted a ship in the distance that’s been tracking us. We’re managing to stay ahead but with the wind the way it is, well… it is good that you’re awake.”

Izzy nods at that. He guesses it was too much to ask that the Calico would give up. It isn’t like he cares how many followers he loses as long as he can recruit more. 

“How did you find me? When I fell I was swept away.”

He purposefully doesn’t look at Lucius, but he can feel the man stiffen beside him when he speaks. 

“We found you floating on top of the water, following behind the ship. Sort of like a miracle,” Roach says.

Izzy’s heart sinks. It appears that he wasn’t even worthy of the dignity of a death in Edward’s domain. His final punishment is to live out the rest of his life without purpose or guidance, knowing when he does die it will not be under the eyes of one to whom he has given so much. There’s a flicker of anger there; he knows he failed, but he does not feel he deserves this. Following on the tails of the anger is a sickly swirl of guilt, which in turn only stokes the anger further, because what does he have to feel guilty for? He is no longer beholden to Edward. He has no duty to him. 

He has no duty to anyone anymore, except these men who have given him the title of Captain- a title he has not yet earned. It takes more effort than he expects, but he manages to pull himself out of bed, the first few steps unsteady as black spots swim in his eyes. He forces a few deep breaths for the lightheadedness to clear and continues to cross the room. 

“I told you to stay in bed,” Roach protests, even as he puts a hand out to steady Izzy. 

“You said a ship was trailing us. Doesn’t matter how I feel if we’re all dead.” 

“You make a fair point,” he replies, helping Izzy to make his way out of the room and onto the deck 

The cool sea breeze is pleasant against his skin, although the scent of salt on the wind causes the gaping emptiness to creep back into his chest. It reminds him of mornings spent in the surf, communing with Edward, a ritual he will never indulge in again. Either the Calico will catch him and do what he will, or Izzy will make it home, and have no reason to visit the beach again. He will have to find some other way to occupy his days. 

“Captain!” 

Buttons’ voice shakes him out of his thoughts and back to the matter at hand. He has a crew he needs to look after. He has to focus. He’s not completely unused to having a group of people relying on him, although he’d never felt particularly suited to the community aspect of the priesthood, but he supposes that in the same way he was tasked with guiding his congregation to salvation, he has a duty to guide these men to safe shores. It is his final vow, and he will not break it. They will not die because of his failure. He has blood on his hands, lives he has happily taken in service of the Kraken, but now that he no longer acts under the guidance of a god, he refuses to add to the stains on his soul. There is little use to pain and destruction without purpose. He isn’t one of the Calico’s followers, after all. 

“Mr. Buttons,” Izzy starts, clinging to the honorific, to the sense of normalcy and structure it brings, “I hear there is a ship chasing us.” 

“Yes, Captain. Karl here says it’s been following us for the past day. Changed course just to be sure, and it stayed with us.”

Izzy gives a sharp nod in acknowledgement, hand resting on the railing to steady himself. 

“Any identifying marks?” he asks, already certain of the answer. There is little reason for anyone besides the Calico to follow them. 

Buttons pauses and looks over at Karl. The sight of them communing has not grown any less strange, and Izzy still has not figured out the link between Selene and seagulls, but he supposes all gods have their quirks. Now, watching Buttons communicate with his, all he can feel is a deep, aching longing for the connection he has lost forever. He has been abandoned once more. Maybe it was inevitable that a soul as twisted as his would never be wanted for long. 

“Karl says that the mast had scorch marks on it, but it flies no flag.” 

“Right. Well, they’re unlikely to stop until they catch up with us. How far till land?” he asks, peering over the map Buttons rolls out. 

It takes him a few seconds, but he manages to figure out where they are with minimal guidance from Buttons. As they discuss different strategies, the wind, the repairs that need to be made, and the capabilities of the boat and crew, Izzy feels a warm surge of pride. He still has the skills earned in Edward’s service; his god has not taken all the gifts he has given him. He has left enough to be useful. Hopefully, it’s enough to get the crew out of this. 

A few hours later, when he retires back to his room with an aching in his bones that refuses to be ignored for even a second longer, they have a plan. It will require more than their fair share of luck, but there’s a chance that they can get out of this unscathed. And, if they can’t, Izzy’s already thinking of ways to make sure the rest of the crew make it out. His own survival hardly registers as a concern. The void in his chest is at least somewhat soothed by the plan he has to face the coming day, and so he holds onto that tentative sense of purpose to see him through. 

As the Calico’s ship draws nearer by the hour, Izzy is still weaker than he would prefer. The near death experience has taken a heavy toll on him, even if he has survived with a surprisingly low amount of physical side effects. There have been no moments where he cannot breathe around the water that didn’t make it out of his lungs, or leftover bruises and broken bones from the terror of the waves, but his whole body feels so sapped of energy that it takes too much out of him to do much more than make a couple of appearances on deck each day. He knows he should work harder to get his strength back up, but there’s a bone-deep exhaustion wringing around his veins that he can’t seem to shake. 

“Captain,” Oluwande says, shaking his shoulder later that same night. Izzy groans into his pillow and doesn’t move. “Captain!” he repeats, more urgently. “For fuck’s sake, Hands, wake up!”

He rolls over and squints at Olu, illuminated by the faint light washing through the porthole. “What?”

“Jim can make out people on board the vessel. She appears to be on fire, sir.”

“And?”

“And also headed straight toward us.”

That gets his attention well enough. He swings his legs over the edge of the bed and tries to get his foggy mind to catch up with wakefulness. He had collapsed into bed early in the evening without changing out of his clothes, so he merely has to put on his vest, boots, and scabbard, even if it takes him three times as long as it used to and Olu keeps reaching out as if to offer help.

“Is everyone awake?” Izzy asks. 

“Just me and Jim. I came to you first.”

He nods and settles his hand on his sword. “This’ll be worse than the last one. Wake everyone and take the dinghies. Don’t bring a lantern. Pray to the Kraken, and if you’re lucky, he’ll deliver you to shore.”

“Yeah, sure.” Oluwande follows him out of his quarters. “And what about you?”

“Captain goes down with the ship.”

He doesn’t stop just because Olu does, and continues his journey to the deck. He trusts Olu to wake the others, as he has trusted him to maintain the ship when Izzy hasn’t been able to do scant more than note what tasks lie ahead. Even though the title of first mate has never been officially given, if there is one on this ship now that Izzy is the captain, it would be him. 

The rest of the crew filters onto the deck shortly after Izzy makes it there himself, nervous but not headed toward the lifeboat as they should be. He looks over them and considers all the time they’ve spent together at sea. 

“Go on then.”

“I think not,” Lucius answers. “Whatever that is, you’re not facing it alone.”

“It’s a flag ship, idiot. You won’t survive.”

“Whose?” Frenchie asks. 

Buttons, ever helpful, steps down from the steering wheel to join them, his speech muffled by his “fighting teeth” capped over the normal ones, sharp and deadly. “It’s on fire, so I reckon it’s the Calico.”

The silence that falls over them would be gratifying under any other circumstances. This time, however, Izzy can’t even enjoy it. He knows he’s not enough, never has been, but it’s one thing to know that and another to feel it as the Calico approaches. The Kraken will not save him from this. Stede will not save him from this. He will not save himself from this. All he can do is try and convince this crew to save themselves, but they have never followed orders well and he supposes it would be unreasonable to expect them to now. Part of him had at least hoped their own survival instincts would do something. 

“There’s no honor in dying at the hands of a god you don’t worship,” Izzy tells them. “This death will not be one worth having. You will die slowly, and it will hurt the entire time, and you will be relegated to infinite torture at the hands of his hell. If you value your souls-”

Now it is Pete who interrupts him. “There’s no honor in abandoning your Captain, either.”

“Above all else, loyalty to your Captain,” Oluwande recites. “Isn’t that what Edward always said to you?”

“Besides, we hauled your ass back onto this ship for a reason, boss,” Fang says. 

Roach nods. “Be a pretty dick move to lay down and die when we worked so hard to save you.”

Something warm and foreign swells in Izzy’s chest. He does not fight to suppress it, and instead braces his hand on the hilt of his sword and watches the ship on the horizon. It’s only a matter of minutes before it happens upon them. 

“Okay, then here’s the plan. Everyone goes into the dinghy- no fucking arguments, just listen. Take provisions with you just in case. I imagine the Calico will want to board our vessel. I don’t know what he’ll do when he does, but the moment he’s off his own, climb aboard it. I’ll distract him and his followers until you’re on, and then we use the element of surprise against them. Am I clear?”

“Yes, Captain,” come eleven voices in unison.

He nods and waves a hand to dismiss them. They start on the preparations immediately, hushed and moving in the low light like shadows. Oluwande gives a couple soft orders before coming to Izzy’s side and watching him from the corners of his eyes. 

“I’m staying with you, Izzy. Only way to stop me is to kill me yourself.”

Izzy sighs. “I suppose you can stay. But no heroics.” He raises his voice slightly louder to add, “Did you lot hear that? No fucking heroics or I’ll make you wish the Calico killed you.”

Another round of ayes and agreements murmur toward him. They’re running out of time, he realizes, but the moment he does, he hears the boat splash into the water. Jim had been working to lower it, and climbs down the ladder after it with a last glance over their shoulder at Olu. The two share a loaded look and a nod before Jim’s hat disappears beneath the banister.

“Do you think we have a chance?” Olu asks.

“No. Not in the slightest.”

Oluwande nods and straightens his posture next to Izzy, as proud as the man has ever seen him. “Figured not. But I’ll be damned if any of us are letting you go down alone.”

Within seconds, the ship is upon them. As before, a ladder bridges the gap, managing to be the only part of the other vessel that isn’t on fire. Four of its crew board first, stepping to the side and kneeling reverently before a figure that seems to be entirely flickering flame and black smoke crosses over. Izzy and Olu drop to their knees as well, but not because they want to. It just happens. This is the way of gods who don’t care to earn worship like the Kraken does. 

The Calico slowly solidifies as he steps aboard, the flames mostly receding into small tongues that dance over burn-scarred arms and in the eyes of a man who, Izzy thinks immediately, is in dire need of a good bath. He reeks of ash and burning flesh. His boots are heavy as they come closer, eventually pausing directly in front of Izzy and Oluwande. 

“I had heard Blackie found a new pet,” the Calico says, his voice every bit as gruff and burning as the fire which he represents. “Thought there’d be more of a crew here, though.”

“Blackie?” Oluwande questions. 

“Blackbeard, the Kraken, Edward, whatever the fuck. You know who I’m talking about.”

Izzy bites his tongue against a disrespectful remark. He can’t let this end too quickly; his crew needs time to do their duty. He’d prefer they simply get away, but if they intend to fight, he will allow them the grace of a decent chance. 

“I hear that someone on board was taking down notes for him,” the Calico continues, “a priest of his. Father Hands, was it?”

Neither Izzy nor Olu look up, both knowing the confirmation in store if they do. It’s become immediately clear now that whatever this deity has in store for Izzy is going to be unpleasant. He’ll take the punishment. He just hopes his crew has the chance to get to safety first. 

The Calico laughs. “That guy is such a little fucking freak. He claims to be all about the Kraken, and then what does he do whenever he feels guilty? Yeah, he fucking burns himself. Gives it all to me, I’d say. That’s worship, ain’t it?”

Izzy spits on the floor, and a searing boot kicks his leg, leaving smoke and ash printed in its wake. The burn is not too bad, he thinks, because it hurts but not agonizingly so.

“Guess it doesn't matter too much. I’m here for Father Hands, so which one of you sorry fuckers is him?”

At that moment, a roaring of voices rises from the other ship. The crew has arrived to fight then. Izzy does not allow his body to sag in relief, nor does he permit any expression to cross his face. He has to keep the Calico distracted, if only so his crew meet their end at human hands rather than those of a god. 

“Your idiots?” the Calico asks.

Oluwande shakes his head. “Loyal followers of Stede and the Kraken.”

A whip materializes in the deity’s hand, white-hot and nearly liquid when it sails through the air to strike against Olu’s face for the insolence. It’s hot enough to burn through the first layer of skin, leaving an angry red line on his cheek that he’s not too proud to coddle in his hand. Izzy watches the smoke curl around his fingers, a thin mask for the grimace curling the opposite side of Olu’s mouth. Izzy can’t tell if he’s looking at the white of exposed muscle or teeth.

“Careful, now. Is one of them Father Hands?”

Someone cries out on the other ship, but the din is so loud Izzy can’t tell if it’s one of his men or one of the Calico’s. Before Izzy can oust himself, the crew begin crossing over the ladder back to this ship, more of Calico’s men on their heels. What brilliance led them to this decision, he does not know. It occurs to him that he will likely never find out. 

Oluwande struggles to stand, an invisible force keeping him down, for a long minute before he gives up and remains on his knees. “I’m Father Hands,” he says. 

“No!” someone screams, but it isn’t Izzy. It’s Jim, throwing themselves down next to Olu and wiping the blood off their face with their sleeve. “No, it’s not him. I’m Father Hands.”

As if by an unspoken agreement, the others begin to come forward. “I am,” Lucius argues. 

“No, I’m Father Hands,” Ivan insists. 

Frenchie nods a little, half of his curls matted down to the side of his head with a dark substance that Izzy can only imagine to be blood. “It’s me, actually. Love having my fucking, I don’t know, my little church, for the Kraken-” he cuts off suddenly when Roach elbows him in the side. 

Next is the Swede, then Fang, and then Black Pete, and Roach, and Wee John, even Buttons, one after another, arguing in a crescendo. The whole time, the Calico watches Izzy, until finally, Izzy shouts for them all to shut up. 

“I’m Father Hands,” Izzy says sternly. “Israel Hands, priest to the Kraken, Captain of the Revenge, and prophet for Stede and the Kraken both. Whatever issues you have with me, leave my crew out of it.”

For a moment, the Calico just stares at him. Then he laughs, a booming thing that rattles Izzy’s bones, before smacking his whip against the deck once more. It leaves a burned, deep score. To use that kind of force on a person- it would be worse than the injury Oluwande has already received. 

“Until you can agree, I guess I’ll have to run you all through the ringer,” the Calico muses.

“Alright, enough,” Black Pete yells in his best approximation of Izzy’s tone, which is to say, a very poor imitation. “I appreciate the thought, but you lot need to save yourselves. I’ll take whatever this sorry excuse for a god has in store.”

“Sorry excuse?”

The Calico’s whip reaches Pete easily, slicing across his chest in a manner that has his knees buckling and his voice dying in his throat. Lucius catches him in just enough time to keep him from hitting the deck too hard, but they still both go down, the stink of burning flesh heavy in the air. Izzy’s blood runs cold. 

“I could’ve sworn Blackie cared more about respect, whether it was for him or not,” the Calico continues. “Luckily for you, I enjoy a bit of fun and games. Now, for my little spitfires who are still standing, get them all down to the brig. We’ll figure this out sooner or later."

The Calico's followers step over the bodies of their fallen brethren to secure heavy manacles around the wrists of the Revenge's small crew, yanking them back along the precarious ladder between ships. Izzy wishes they wouldn't leave his vessel behind, but he can't do anything without risking the lives of his crew further. He casts a last glance at it. The book of scripture is still tucked into one of the pillows in the captain's quarters for safe keeping. 

They're led down to the brig and, thankfully, allowed into one larger room together after a rough frisking. Izzy watches their knives and swords and pistols pile up just tantalizingly out of reach. It feels hopeless. At least their hands are shackled in front of them, Izzy thinks, because then they're not completely hopeless. 

Chapter Text

Alone, the crew set about tending to each other. Mostly, this means Roach checking on every injury and giving semi-questionable advice that is followed simply because none of them, Izzy included, have a better idea. Izzy finds himself kneeling next to Frenchie, trying to wipe away some of the blood from the side of his head with a quickly soaking sleeve, combing what he can't wipe with his fingers. There's a lump above his ear with a gash across it, still sluggishly bleeding. 

"Roach," Izzy hisses. "Come here, please."

"C'mon, 's not too bad," Frenchie protests.

Roach kneels down next to them and examines the wound. "If we could, I'd want it stitched. For now, though, bandage and a prayer."

Izzy rips off a shred of his shirt to tie around Frenchie's head, knotting it a little too tightly to be comfortable, but knowing how the pressure will help. As he looks around, he sees Jim wincing as they brush broken fingers against the burn on Oluwande's cheek, Buttons popping his knee back into place, Fang helping Lucius examine Pete's burned welt, and so many more instances of how truly injured they were. All except for Izzy. He would throw up if he had anything in his stomach, but for now, he can only try and keep them alive. 

"It's not worth it," he begins. "I'm not worth this. Save yourselves and admit you're not me. That whole bit was very cute, but we're dealing with a god here, don't forget."

"What kind of crew would we be if we hung our captain out to dry?" Frenchie asks. 

Izzy shakes his head. "What kind of captain allows his crew to suffer so he won't?"

"Seems we're at an impasse then, sir," Buttons says. 

He doesn’t know what good more arguing will do tonight, not when they’re all trapped and likely to experience more pain than their bodies can handle, so he drops the subject for the time being. There’s no sense wasting his breath or theirs. 

“Jim, Lucius,” Izzy says. “Update, please?”

“It’s like the burn is spreading,” Lucius replies, hands hovering in uncertainty over Pete’s chest. “I don’t know why, or how.”

“He got whipped by the Calico. I feel like that’s pretty self-explanatory.”

Wee John whistles through his teeth.

“Olu’s fine, Captain,” Jim answers as well. “Not spreading too bad, but definitely growing by the minute.”

Olu looks like he’d like to swat away Jim’s worried touch, but he doesn’t. “I’m not worried about it. I’ve had worse.”

“Probably not from the divine,” Jim hisses. 

They dissolve into a quiet conversation between the two of them, half in Spanish and not meant for Izzy’s ears even if it was entirely in a language he understands. It occurs to him finally to check his own burn where he had been kicked quite harshly by a sizzling boot. He peels back the charred edges of his trousers and observes the welted red flesh, raised in the shape of the tread, still hot enough for him to feel it without even touching the injury. 

“What happens now?” Fang asks, glancing up from his task of winding a strip of fabric around a gash on Ivan’s forearm.

Izzy wishes he could offer comfort. “I’m not sure. Probably plenty of torture, plenty of burns, followed by a painful death for us all.”

“I don’t imagine we’re getting out of this one,” Lucius says, “are we?”

Before Izzy can tell him he’s correct, Frenchie shakes his head, wincing when it makes him dizzy, and struggles up into a proper sitting position. “Edward and Stede wouldn’t just abandon us like that.”

“They already did,” Izzy snaps. 

“No, idiot,” Jim bites out, “they abandoned you.”

It feels like a punch in the gut, but Izzy supposes he deserved that. “Okay, so if they rescue you and leave me here, then what’s the point in you lot suffering on my behalf?”

Finally, he gets the only answer that has made any sense, but he wishes it didn’t.

“When you believe in someone, you suffer for them,” Roach tells him. 

He knows exactly where those words come from because he has felt them, lived them, every single fucking minute of his life. To truly love and worship a god, there is an untenable element of suffering required. A believer must prove that pain will not deter them, that they will do anything regardless of the bleeding of their mortal flesh, that any amount of agony is acceptable if it’s in the name of love. For a long time, Izzy has felt the urge more strongly than any hunger, thirst, or human desire. Only now, in the wake of the loss of his god, does he begin to understand something he never had. 

There is nothing to be gained in people suffering for you. It doesn’t make you feel powerful. It doesn’t give you any warmth in your bones or bubbling laughter in your throat. It doesn’t burn the tip of your tongue when you speak. It doesn’t make your heart beat in tandem with theirs or your lungs fill with their love in a way that makes you feel like you’ve never breathed in your entire life. It doesn’t feel good. When people endure pain for you, it hurts you ten times worse. 

“No.”

Izzy shuts his eyes and wishes he could undo all the years he spent hurting himself, frequently at the Kraken’s direction, but often just because he could feel in some deep part of him that he deserved the punishment, even if it was not ordered. He cannot begin to understand the wants and needs of the gods, but if they are anything like humans - which scripture says they are - it must have been torture for the Kraken, for Edward, to know and to feel all of that which Izzy did in his name. 

It occurs to him that perhaps suffering is not for anyone else, but that it is a selfish act. Even in purposeful beatings and torture, there is a choice to revel and to suffer, and a choice to look toward a bright yellow dawn where it doesn’t hurt so much. Izzy always assumed that the suffering was what his god wanted, but maybe he just wanted Izzy to learn to push through. It’s not as though Izzy can ask now. He won’t receive an answer. 

“No, you don’t have to suffer to believe in someone,” Izzy says. He means it with every fiber of his being. “Don’t fucking do that. I don’t want that.”

“Izzy,” Ivan starts, but he silences himself at a shake of Izzy’s head. 

The cycle stops here. 

He looks over his crew and tells them, “I don’t want your pain. That’s not love, it’s masochism.”

He presses his thumb down on the burn on his thigh. It hurts. This is suffering- selfish, painful, and purely for his own clarity of mind and self-forgiveness. He can’t imagine he’s got it all right, but it does feel like he’s learned more in these past five minutes than he has in many years. 

“I can’t force you to tell the truth,” Izzy says, “but I can urge you to save yourselves. That is how you can show me your loyalty- nothing more, and nothing less.”

Having spoken and felt more than enough for a single evening, Izzy relaxes against the wall of their cell, shuts his eyes, and makes his peace with death at the hands of the Calico. 

Izzy lets his mind drift to the calm refuge he goes to when he prays. He knows the crew are confident that they will be saved, and they may be correct, but Izzy wants to make sure. And, a part of him wants to end things with Edward on his own terms, to receive some closure before his death. He doesn’t deserve much, but he feels he at least deserves that. 

“Edward. I’m sorry, I’m sorry for making you hold all that pain, and I’m sorry it took me so long to learn the lesson I think you were trying to teach me. But, you shouldn’t have just left me like that. I angered you, yes, but I gave you my whole life, Edward. I know, to you, a mortal's life is a speck of dust, but it was my entire existence. You were my entire existence. 

“And I understand now, what it’s like to be given the responsibility of someone else's life’ Izzy thinks, looking out at the crew huddled together, whispering to each other that it’s going to be okay. Lucius looks up from where he’s cradling Pete, giving him a tight smile and a small nod, before returning his attention to his lover, and Izzy’s heart aches with the knowledge that they’re only suffering because of him. 

“I understand, if you didn’t want to hold the weight any longer. And I understand that I gave you my devotion to do with what you will, but you should have at least said goodbye. You didn’t, so I guess I’m saying it now.

“Before I go, I have one last request. Look after the crew, get them to land safely, keep watch over them, for me,” Izzy prays in the privacy of his own mind, knowing that even a few months ago the idea of asking the Kraken to grant clemency would have seemed ludicrous. 

But then he considers the way that Edward excitedly told him stories about creating the life that teems beneath the depths. He considers Stede’s story of Edward giving hope to the struggling village. He considers the waves lapping against this burning ship they are stuck on, and while they’re not managing to douse the flames, there is comfort in their existence nonetheless, a promise that the entire world is not just fire and destruction. 

And in this moment, for once, Izzy understands that the sea is more than just the storms, and that Edward is more than just the Kraken. It is a realization that he knows comes far too late, but he is grateful to be granted this final moment of clarity nonetheless. 

“Stede, I know I didn’t respect you, and I didn’t understand you. I think I’m starting to, now. So, please, look after the crew even when they get to land. Make sure they’re happy.” Izzy adds, nodding to himself slightly, feeling a sense of calm settle over him. There are more prayers he could say, specific ones for absolution, or salvation, or even prayers for the dead. But they are the Kraken’s prayers, and Izzy is unsure if he has a right to them anymore.

Izzy pulls himself up, walking over to the bars of the brig, taking a steadying breath before he starts to shout. 

“I’m Father Hands, and I request an audience with the Calico. I can prove that I’m the one he’s looking for.” 

He turns to the rest of the crew, voice quieter but no less firm. 

“When they come back, no more fucking bullshit, alright? Look out for yourselves and that’s it. Consider that my final fucking order as Captain.” 

There’s a handful of reluctant murmurs of affirmative, but Izzy has barely a second to feel relief before the smell of smoke that fills the corridor gets stronger, and the Calico appears before them. 

“So, you say you can prove it?” The Calico asks.

Izzy tries not to show relief at the curiosity in his voice. He has the god’s attention. “I have the burn scars. Every- every act of self punishment. I have the marks to prove I was the one who did it.”

Izzy pulls off his leather glove and lets it drop to the floor before pushing up the sleeves of his frock. The scars seem to glow silvery grey in the dim light.

“Right,” the Calico responds, tone flat, causing Izzy’s stomach to twist and turn as he realizes what he has to offer. He had a feeling it would take more than the scars, that his scars alone wouldn’t prove the truth of his statement, but the actual bargaining chip for the crew’s safety would force him to reveal more of himself than simply marks against his skin. 

“I also have information about the Kraken and Stede, information given to me when taking notes for them. Information no other mortal would have about the gods,” He adds. The Calico is the god of campfire stories afterall, so combined with his evident vendetta against Stede and the Kraken, Izzy knows it to be a good offer. 

There’s a click of a lock, and the door creaks open. A boiling hand settles on his shoulder. Izzy can smell burning flesh immediately, his skin bubbling and blistering beneath his shirt.

“Well, then come with me, Father Hands. I believe we should take this discussion to the Captain’s quarters.” The Calico starts to lead Izzy away from the brig while Izzy grits his teeth against the stinging pain spreading down his arm. “And, if I find out you were lying about this, trying to be noble and self-sacrificing, I will kill the others. I was going to kill them anyway, for their disrespect earlier, but I’ll kill them slowly and make you watch as I burn every single one of them to ash for you daring to lie to me. Or if I think you’re lying about anything Blackie and Stede told you, the same thing will happen. Understand?”

“Yes sir,” Izzy says, as the Calico shoves him into the Captains’ quarters.

Izzy would almost find the difference between the Calico’s rooms and the Captain's room on the Revenge funny if he wasn’t certain the blackened walls, scattered beer bottles and massive gold throne in the center of the room are going to be the last things he ever sees. The acrid smell of smoke is even stronger here, each breath burning his lungs, forcing him to stifle a cough. 

“Nice to see some of that respect Blackie is so fond of finally returning, but I think we can do better than that. How about you kneel?” 

Izzy does not feel the compulsion to kneel that he did the first time he met with the Calico on the deck. The Calico wants him to decide to respect him. He wants Izzy to know that everything that happens is his choice. He sinks to his knees, thinking of the crew back in the brig. It is not a difficult choice to make. 

He thinks about how willing they were to die for him, to suffer for him, as the tip of the Calico’s white hot whip caresses his chin, tilting his face up towards the god. Tears sting his eyes and start to fall unbidden, steaming into nothingness as quickly as they appear. 

He thinks of the crew making his favorite food for him as a way of giving thanks as he recounts the words of the gods to Calico. It still feels like a betrayal, to share Stede and Edward’s purest moments as the Calico cackles above him. He only hopes that they understand he’s doing this for the crew, to distract the Calico and give them time to think of a plan, or give Edward and Stede time to get to them. 

And he thinks of the crew inviting him into their circle at storytime, and trying their best to reach out to him even when he didn’t deserve their kindness as the Calico raises the whip whenever he stumbles answering a question, lashing it against his back, and chest, and arms, until his entire body feels consumed by the heat. The blisters that are starting to form burst open whenever the whip falls on him again, and blood streams down his skin.

Black spots start to cloud his vision, and he swears that in them he can see the entire ocean, the waves rolling to meet him, the fresh scent of salt on the breeze cutting through the oppressive bitter smell of smoke. It’s cool against his skin, granting him a reprieve, for just a second. And through the roaring in his ears, he swears he can hear Edward’s voice. 

“Just hold on, mate, we’re coming.” 

The Kraken’s voice seems to reverberate through the room, and he can feel the words vibrating in his chest, but the Calico takes no notice of it, raising the whip once more with a smile. 

“You’re doing so well, just a few more minutes and it’ll all be over,” the Kraken continues, There even sounds to be a note of pride in his voice, and Izzy feels the familiar warmth glow in his chest. Even now, right at the end, he can’t help but strive to do right in his gods voice. And maybe this is a sign that despite it all, he will be granted entry into the Kraken’s heaven. It feels like almost too much to hope for, but he clings onto it nonetheless as the blood running down his skin fizzles and boils and the only thing he can feel anymore is burning, all encompassing, pain. 

He clenches his teeth against the plea for mercy that threatens to make itself heard. He forces himself to stay on his knees, to keep forcing out stories even as his throat feels dry and each word takes more effort than he thinks he has left. He tries to hold onto Edward’s promise that soon he’ll be free from here, free from the Calico and this body that only seems to know how to hurt. 

And he holds onto the thought of the crew, and the knowledge that for every second of pain he pushes himself through, he gives them another second to escape while the Calico’s attention is elsewhere. 

“It’s all going to be okay.” comes Stede’s voice, along with an image along the backs of his eyelids of the crew back on the revenge, clothes singed and eyes tight with pain and worry, but okay. Safe. 

He feels his body sag, head lolling down, as the sweet feeling of relief settles under his skin. He can let go now. 

“Come now, eyes on me, you haven’t finished telling me about their date creating the rainbow together. Pathetic. Sad to see Blackie fall like this, but guess that just means more room at the top,” the Calico snarks, a smile on his face that contorts easily into something more like a snarl.

He uses the whip to tip Izzy’s head up once more, and when Izzy remains silent, eyes unfocused, he raises it, striking Izzy across the face. 

The world goes white. 

Chapter Text

Izzy wakes up in the Captains’ quarters of the Revenge, recognising the soft sheets beneath his skin. For a second he wonders if the past twenty-four hours have all been a dream and that the Calico is still trailing them, but has not caught them yet. But as the haze of sleep leaves him, the stinging heat thrumming through his skin returns. He lets out a small groan of pain as he shifts and feels a tightness and pull to his skin that suggests he’s been given stitches in more than a few places.

Immediately a cool hand caresses against his skin, and while the pain does not leave him completely, it is washed away until all that remains is a dull ache. 

“Hey, Iz, you’re gonna be alright. I’m not gonna let you leave me like this, okay?” a voice says, one that is familiar, one that Izzy would recognise across a crowded room. But it can’t be his, because that would mean that Edward has returned to him. 

Slowly, he opens his eyes to see Edward looking back at him, pulling his hand away, the pain flooding back. 

“You’re awake! I thought I was going to lose you there, Iz, your soul was… not in a good place for a second there,” Edward says, and Izzy has seen him in his human form for months now, but hearing his voice crack makes him feel more human than he ever had before. For once Izzy is not struck with the feeling of disgust or rage at this display, but instead a glow of affection for someone he feels he is only just beginning to understand. 

“Do you want me to get one of the crew, they’re pretty worried about you? Or I could get Stede, he’s been doing his best to take care of you.” 

“Could you… hold me again. Please,” Izzy asks, voice small, not looking Edward in the eyes. 

He sees him get up, and he thinks maybe he overstepped the mark. Edward is still a god, he is still a follower- there are lines that are not crossed. But then Edward is slipping into the bed next to him, careful not to jostle Izzy too much. He slowly reaches an arm out, sliding it under Izzy’s neck, and when Izzy nuzzles in closer to the soothing coolness, hs rests his other arm across Izzy’s chest, avoiding the large areas covered by bandages, his tentacles curling over Izzy’s legs. The pain starts to recede once again, and Izzy swears the sound of the waves gets louder, lulling him to sleep. 

He wakes up still in Edward’s arms, Stede now sitting in Edward’s chair. He moves to shift away from Edward, who almost immediately lets him go. 

“Stede.” 

“Oh, you don’t have to stop on my account. How are you feeling? I’ve been doing my best, but it’s harder to heal injuries caused by a god. Roach has been exceptionally helpful. I’ve forgotten most of what I knew about actually healing humans without the help of miracles.” Stede says, reaching a hand out which Izzy takes. A small glow of golden light begins to emanate from the space where their palms touch. 

“What about the keelhauling? You healed me then.”

“I let him,” Edward interjects. “I gave him permission to heal you. I never wanted you to get hurt so bad you couldn’t get back up again. After all, the pain’s never really been the point. Although, I think you’re starting to get that. The Calico is being… slightly less understanding.” 

At the mention of the Calico, Izzy realizes that he has several questions about what had happened on the boat, his memory a blur of pain and the Calico’s laugh and sharp crack of a whip. 

“How am I here?” 

“We came to get you, of course, and the Calico might be a god, but there were two of us. He stepped down pretty quickly when he realized that we still had a claim over you. And the rest of the crew of course,” Stede explains.

“He’s a lot of things, but Jack understands the hierarchy. He knows better then to mess with the Kraken’s things.” 

At Izzy’s confused look, Stede’s eyebrows furrow slightly. 

“We told you we were coming to get you.” 

“I thought you meant the crew. You abandoned me.” 

Izzy cringes slightly at the accusation in his tone. 

“Iz, that was never meant to be permanent,” Edward says, sounding tired. “I was mad at you, for not respecting Stede, and seeing him as only one thing, and seeing me as only one thing, and letting yourself be only one thing. And for years, I tried to get you to see that you’re allowed hope and affection and comfort and all the things you were holding back from in my name. All the things you refused to see I also give. And I started to think I was the problem. Because you spent so much time just doing what I wanted you to do, and being who you thought I wanted you to be, so you never really thought about who you could be, without me. I thought revoking my blessings, and no longer watching over you, would be the only way to get you what you needed.”

“Right,” Izzy says, after Edward finishes talking. The silence stretches and it’s clear they’re waiting on him to say something. But he doesn’t have any idea how to respond to that. He’d been mourning the loss of Edward for weeks, and now that he realizes his god is no longer gone, he’s not sure if he should accept him back or not. 

“Probably should have talked to you more before just leaving,” Edward admits, shooting a sheepish look towards Stede that makes Izzy believe they’ve certainly discussed this, “but I’m going to try and do that more now. So, I want you to know that there’s still a position for you as my priest. We might need to make some changes to what the sermons focus on, and what rituals you perform, but I’d like you there when I make those changes. Or you can do something else. Whatever you want, when you get back home, Stede and I will make that happen.”

Izzy isn’t really sure what he wants to do with the years of his life that have suddenly been handed back to him, snatched from the jaws of certain death. He thinks about the possibility of standing in the pulpit, looking down at the rows of familiar faces and delivering a sermon. There is a sense of comfort at the thought, blooming in his chest, but not the usual certainty of purpose that used to exist there.

He considers leaving that life entirely, walking away from the church and the beach, walking inland until the Kraken is but a distant memory, and  is hit with an aching sense of grief. He doesn’t want to leave Edward, not if Edward will have him, but he realizes with a start, as he looks up at Stede’s hair glowing in the sunlight, that he doesn’t want to leave Stede either. 

He doesn’t know what a life in the presence of both of them would look like; he’s spent far too long considering the Kraken to be the only important thing to have ever existed. He thought everyone else trying to carve out a life outside of his brilliance was foolish. Now, here he is, trying to figure it out for himself. It feels like an almost impossible task, to try and build himself a life that’s new but not separate from his old. He can’t help but wonder if it’s all too late. He’s been given more time than he ever thought he’d have, but it still might not be enough, and his chest grows tight as he considers all the possibilities, all the ways he might mess this up. It was easier, before, just doing what Edward asked. But he realizes Edward was right, and that that just stopped him from actually living a life of his own. 

He knows he’ll figure it out, he’s built himself up from nothing once before. He can do it again. And this time he’ll have help, people who against all odds care about him. But for now, he’s content to just let himself lie next to Edward, Stede’s hand in his, and a warmth in his heart. He’ll give them an answer for what he’d like his life to be, but looking at them now, he has a pretty good idea of who it will involve. 

Chapter Text

Izzy tilts his face up towards the sun streaming in through the church windows, allowing himself to bask in its warmth for a few seconds, before turning his attention to the task at hand. He strikes a match, eyes lingering on the orange flame for just a second, before bringing it to the candles he’s arranged in front of him. They are new, and as the flames catch, Izzy takes a deep breath, the smell of spices different from the plain waxy smell of the candles he used to use for the Kraken. 

He takes out the pastries he bought this morning, tearing the flaky dough in two and placing one half on the gold plate in front of him, eating the other half, doing his best to savor the sweetness. When the pastry is done he lets his mind wander until the thoughts in the back of his head stop racing and everything falls quiet, starting to recite the prayers to the Kraken stumbling over some of the words where Edward has changed them. 

It has become this cobbled together prayer between words to Edward and words to Stede, more than half spinning and twirling from his lips toward them in a single stream. He likes to imagine that they’re together right now. They usually are. If he ever prays to one of them, which is seldom, both tend to come anyways, already arm in arm if they appear to him, already in conversation if they speak. The image in his mind comes suddenly and with crystal clarity, the subjects familiar but the background previously unknown to him. This is not a memory. It’s something new that tastes like honeysuckle and imprints itself behind his eyes in a way that feels permanent.

Atop a pale blue settee, Stede relaxes into the cushions, Edward leaning back against his chest, positioned between Stede’s parted legs. In his right hand is his trademark pipe, smoke curled around his wrist. His hair is pulled back into a bun that looks too neat for him to have done himself. Stede has a pastry in his left hand, not unlike the one Izzy has laid out, but not yet bitten into. The two of them look flooded with peace and mirth. 

His own chest grows warm as he finishes his recitation. “Thank you,” he says. He knows they must hear him. 

The warmth that settles over him during prayer normally leaves him throughout the day, disappearing as he deals with the ordinary annoyances of his life. This time, though, the warmth continues to diffuse under his skin, a golden glow that only gets hotter as the day passes. It is different to the burns of the Calico. It’s a warmth that comforts him instead of causing pain. 

He’s trying to get ready for bed when he feels the presence of Edward and Stede in the back of his mind. He waits for them to say something, but they remain silent, just letting their presence be known. The rest of the evening continues as normal, but he falls asleep with the buzzing feeling of the divine in the back of his mind. 

When he wakes up the next morning, the thrum of the divine is still there, as is the warmth beneath his skin like a golden aura that engulfs him. The sun hasn’t fully risen yet, his room still dimly lit, but he realizes with a start that the usual fuzziness that blurs the edges of the furniture in the room in the early morning is no more, everything coming into view with stark clarity. Distantly in the back of his mind he feels like he should feel nervous about these changes, but something settles him, a sense deep in his bones that everything is happening as it should be. 

He swings his legs over the edge of the bed to get dressed. Some things are the same as they have always been; dark trousers and a dark frock, a comfortable but formal button down, and his boots. Some things are new. He lost all of his adornments in the keelhaul incident, but he’s been given new things to keep on him and remember his place. A gold chain rests around his throat to remind him that he is never far from his gods. A cacoxenite stone on a pin sits on his chest, close to his heart, to remind him that his heart has spent every minute since Edward and Stede’s return overflowing with a renewed love not just for them, but for all of humanity. A simple copper ring around his left ring finger to remind him that he is already whole. 

As he gets ready, he casts his usual apprehensive glare at the small fireplace where he used to boil water for his tea every morning. Fire in of itself does not deter him; after all, he does light candles in worship to the two deities who he knows will never leave his side, but something about that level of uncontrolled flame still makes his palms clammy and his heart beat faster. It doesn’t feel as awful as usual today, but he’s still distinctly aware of the discomfort. 

It is a Thursday now, a day where he’d normally visit the sea, and later, Stede’s temple in town. He sees them both more often on these visits than he had before, but in different ways. Edward rarely reaches out with infinite tentacles to brush Izzy’s form with tastes of divinity, but instead appears as a lone swimmer next to him in the water, close enough for the Kraken to occasionally throw an arm around his shoulders. Stede, on the other hand, appears less human in most visits than Izzy had grown accustomed to. Sometimes, it’s in the number of teeth in his mouth that’s just slightly too high for him to discount as mortal. Others, it’s in the way the floor seems to shift and move around his feet when he visits the temples. There’s one memory that has been stowed in a difficult place of his mind to reach, one which he can only seem to summon a vast feeling of awe from when he tries to recall what he had seen. 

He’s about to set off for the sea when the air in his kitchen starts to ripple, like it would on a hot day, and the space around it gets brighter and brighter. Normally, he’d instinctively close his eyes against the light, but for some reason today he does not look away and sees Edward and Stede materialize into space in a flash that he knows would normally be blinding. 

“Edward, Stede,” he greets with a small nod. It’s still slightly strange to greet Edward on a first name basis, but he’ll never get tired of the small smile Edward gives him when he does. 

“Izzy, how much do you remember about how I became a god?” Stede asks, sliding out one of the rickety wooden chairs around the kitchen table and sitting down. 

“Everything you told me,” Izzy replies, although there wasn’t much to remember. Stede had been evasive on the subject, talking only briefly about how he used to be mortal before ascending to godhood, the actual method left in the shadows. 

“So you know that humans can become gods, then?” 

“Yes, although I don’t know of anyone doing it except for you.” 

“Oh, there’s a few of us, although none of us got there in the same way.”

“There’s enough of them that we’ve gotten used to figuring out when a new god’s about to pop up,” Edward adds.

Different details of the past few days start to slot into place in Izzy’s mind and there’s a question on his lips, one he dares not say. It feels blasphemous to even think of the possibility. If they’re gods and he isn’t, they should be able to read the question plainly in his soul, but if he’s becoming- if something is changing, or has changed, they will not. He has to trust they would answer him if he was thinking such unbecoming thoughts of a mortal. Edward has, after all, punished Izzy for such attitudes in the past. 

“I don’t understand what’s happening,” he admits. The words don’t scar his tongue like they would have a year ago. “Please don’t hide it from me.”

Their faces soften slightly. Stede looks as if about to speak, but Edward beats him to the punch, closing the space between them and cupping Izzy’s face in both gloved hands. He’s touched him before, many ways and many times, but never with such surety, and never without sending Izzy’s entire body into overdrive. 

“You’re coming home,” Edward answers. “Everything’s going to be alright, Iz. Stede and I are both here. I’m not leaving.” 

Izzy shuts his eyes, not because he has to, but because he can. It’s safe to do so. He can see them in a way he never has, no longer blinded by his own humanity, but it’s still too much in a different sort of way. A tear clumps his lashes, but scarcely begins to fall before Edward wipes it away with his thumb.

“Will it hurt?” he asks Stede, not because he’s scared of the idea of pain, but because if it’s coming he wants to be prepared for it. 

“No more than you can take, Israel. And Ed’s right we’re not going anywhere, we’re going to be right here with you.” Stede says, reaching across the table to take Izzy’s hand in his. And the warmth in his chest expands, until it feels like it’s pushing at the seams of his being, fighting for a way out. 

The pressure builds until it becomes unbearable, making way for blinding pain and Izzy opens his mouth as if to scream but no sounds come out. Stede’s hand in his, and Edward caressing his face, feel like two anchors to reality, the only parts of himself that he can still focus on and understand, and he clings to them like a child clings desperately to a treasured blanket after a nightmare. The moment seems to stretch forever, until Izzy can sense that it’s over, the pain fading away to a dull ache that soon also disappears. He is still in his kitchen, with Stede and Ed, but it’s clear that something has shifted in him. 

He twists the ring on his finger and looks at them through new eyes. They don't look much different than they had before. Edward's hair seems a little darker, a little wilder, as though it too consists of the tentacles Izzy has grown familiar with. His eyes seem brighter, though. The cold radiating off him feels more intense, but also welcoming, a perfect soothing balm to the rawness in Izzy's soul. Stede is built the same, but there seem to be eyes everywhere Izzy looks, until he focuses his gaze and they melt back into glowing skin. He looks less lovely, if such a term should be used, but just as Edward's cold seems the perfect blanket to wrap in, Stede's danger makes Izzy feel as though he's been cradled under a vulture's wing. 

"That was really fast," he says. His voice startles him. It doesn't sound changed, but it feels bigger in the air, and his chest vibrates with it. "I thought it would take longer. It- it did feel long, but also very short-"

"Relax, Iz," Edward says gently. "Your brain probably got a bit scrambled into the ether. Give yourself a few minutes."

"It was thirteen days, eleven hours, six minutes, and forty nine seconds," Stede interrupts. "If you were curious. This conversation has lasted about an hour more."

"Time works differently," Ed explains, before Izzy can ask. "Faster. Slower. Depends. Your friends from the boat, Olu and- the boy, love?"

"Lucius. Oluwande and Lucius."

"Right, Oluwande and Lucius. Anyways, they came by a few times to check on you. Good lads, both of them. Probably among your first worshippers- good start, for a new one."

“Worshippers?” Izzy asks, brain stuttering at the thought of people devoted to him, depending on him, dedicating themselves to them. He remembers being on the ship, all of them looking to him for direction, and later with the Calico, ready to sentence themselves to damnation for him. It had felt like too much then, and he wonders if it will ever get easier to hold lives in his hands. He’s not sure he wants it to. 

“Yes, they seem like good candidates, could be your first priests, too. Although, you don’t have to set up a church, especially not yet. It’s a good way to get followers, but it’s not necessary,” Stede explains. 

“It’ll help, having a group of followers in one place, concentrates the devotion. You’ll find we need them as much as they need us,” Ed adds. 

Izzy considers this new information in comparison with the calloused and almost cold way he’s heard Edward speak about long dead priests. Maybe it’s different, to be a god. Izzy is going to find out, he realizes. Soon, he won’t have these sorts of questions or uncertainties. There’s a wealth of knowledge that comes with this. He doesn’t know everything yet, obviously, but he knows everything of the humans. He knows where the crew are, and what they’re doing. His surviving siblings’ thoughts curl into the corners of his mind, but it’s all just as powerful as the thoughts of a woodworker miles away and a parisian applying rouge in a silver mirror. It should overwhelm him too, but it’s easy to push into the back of his mind. 

“I didn’t ask for this.”

“Gods never do,” Stede says to him. “It’s like breaking in a new pair of shoes, Izzy. There’s an adjustment, but it’s worth it. You have the power to do the things Ed and I and the other gods couldn’t always.”

“Why? Why me?” Izzy asks. He can stretch out his consciousness and easily pick hundreds of people who deserve this power more than him. 

“Oh, well that’s a dangerous question, Iz. One no one really has an answer to.”

Izzy nods. It's almost comforting to know that there are some truths beyond the reach of the gods, as a mortal he knows he would have hated to think that Edward had limitations, but now it’s a relief. 

“When did Olu and Lucius last come by?” Izzy asks, grabbing at the chance to focus his mind on one task amidst the whirling, endless pool of possibility that now surrounds him.

“One day, seven hours, three minutes ago. And a few seconds” Stede offers. 

“I should go see them, reassure them I’m okay.” Izzy says, about to make his way out the door before he pauses, hand on the handle. “Will I hurt them, if I go to them?” he asks. He knows that Edward and Stede did their best to hide their true forms from most mortals, but he doesn’t even know what his form is or what he needs to hide. 

“I’d give it a little time,” Stede suggests, looking at his hands pensively. His face seems marble frozen in a polite-pleasant expression, but Izzy sees more beneath the surface. He chooses not to ask. “Just until you know your limits a bit better. You could talk to them, though, if you like. I’ll help you get to their- well, it’s not a church.”

“It’s a house,” Edward fills in. 

Stede shrugs. “Something like that. But they’ll be happy to hear from you, even if they can’t see you.”

Izzy looks around at his flat one more time. He doesn’t know if he’ll come back, after this. Time works differently now, he remembers, and so does he. Every second, or what feels like a second to him, he’s learning and feeling more. The transition can’t be finished. Maybe he has to take it in slowly; that seems reasonable.

He remembers that none of that is reasonable, and presses his face into his palms. He breathes. It brings no relief. He doesn’t need to breathe anymore. This realization is enough to make him push Edward and Stede both away from him and straighten his posture. 

“Where do we go?”

Stede takes his right hand, and Ed takes his left. It feels like they’re walking in place, but the world flashes by around them in bright spurts of verdant treetops and pink pillows of flowerbeds and smears of driftwood lean-tos. Perhaps this is why they always held hands, Izzy reasons. That way they stayed together.

When they stop, Izzy stumbles slightly, but their hands in his keep him from falling to the ground. Instead, they shore him up between them like the crew must have after the keelhauling. He looks around the clearing they’ve brought him to, close to the sea by the musk in the air. 

The building they’ve stopped in front of is small, and run-down, the roof sagging in the middle, the windows cracked and boarded up, but it’s clear repairs are underway. Rickety scaffolding has been set up leaning up against the roof, paint is still wet and glistening on the walls and Wee John and Olu come round the corner, walking right in front of them, arms ladened with planks of wood. 

It’s not a church, not really, but Izzy can see the potential it has to be one. It feels strange to think of a church being built for him, feels perverse, the idea of people worshiping him. He wants to tell them to stop, but he forces himself not to. He knows they wouldn’t understand, that they’d take it as rejection of them instead of rejection of himself. But besides begging them to stop he’s not sure what to say. He was so desperate to see them, but now he doesn’t know what to say to them. He thought seeing them would give him a semblance of normality, but as he enters the building and sees Lucius polishing tarnished candlesticks and Jim sweeping the floor, it’s just a reminder of how much has changed. 

“I don’t know if I want this,” Izzy says.

“They’ll be here when you do know,” Stede answers, “even if you decide you don’t want it.”

He thinks about this for a moment.

“How do I talk to them?” 

“Just do it. Like you normally would. Stay back here, though, don’t think about being in front of them. It’s like you’re talking to them across the deck? I think?” Edward stumbles through his explanation. “I haven’t done much of that recently. And you know if you heard me, you usually felt me as well.”

Words that had once inspired awe now make Izzy feel warm. He ignores it and focuses on doing that, shutting his eyes even though it doesn’t stop him from seeing Olu walking in front of the church, explaining something to Buttons. 

He takes a deep breath, out of instinct more than anything, and forces himself to speak. If he waits any longer he knows he’ll never start. 

“I wanted to reassure you that I’m okay, and I wanted to thank you for checking up on me,” Izzy says, chest feeling tight. A distant part of his brain is almost amused at the thought that gods can feel fear. “And for what you did on the ship, with the Calico.” It feels weak, for a god, like he should be saying something profound or at least more eloquent, but he reminds himself he would never dare think such a thing about Edward, and so the anxiety abates somewhat.

Despite this, he can feel their attention turn towards him like a weight settling on his shoulders, and their devotion fills up a void in his chest he didn’t even know was there. It steadies something within him, makes the edges of his being feel more solid, the ground firmer beneath his feet. 

“We’re glad you’re okay… babe,” Frenchie says, pausing for a second mid-sentence, brow furrowed in confusion. He turns to Wee John and starts whispering something at him as Olu steps forward. 

“We’ve started setting this place up. We weren’t sure what you’d want, but we’ve done what we can. Let us know what you want us to do,” Olu offers, and Izzy doesn’t know what to say. He can’t think of any changes that would make this church feel like it fit him. 

“I’ll let you know what changes I want to be made when they need to be made,” Izzy decides, hoping it sounds authoritative instead of like he’s stalling for time. 

“What should we call you? Your name’s gone,” Frenchie says, sounding matter of fact, and Izzy turns to Stede hoping for guidance as a weight settles on his chest. Before he can ask the question though, the answer comes to him, the information appearing unbidden in his mind. His name is gone from the minds of mortals. Now it’s just one more part of his humanity that is lost to the ether, one more part of himself to grieve. 

“I don’t have an answer for now,” Izzy admits. “Just keep… doing what you’re doing, I suppose. This is new to me, too.”

“Take your time,” Oluwande says. 

Jim nods, but doesn’t seem to have much else to say. Izzy remembers the night aboard the Calico’s ship, the grisly line across Olu’s face from the deity’s whip, and the reason it happened. He doesn’t think Jim holds him responsible, but the animosity is unsurprising. It almost reassures him; they still know him as they did before. 

“Is it just you lot, then?”

Lucius shrugs. “For now, kinda, but people talk, you know.”

“Right, well don’t turn them away,” Izzy says after a pause. He’s not sure if he’s ready to deal with the responsibility of a full congregation, and the idea of word spreading, of stories being told until he’s an abstraction of who he once was, makes his skin feel too tight. But he is sure that he wants his church to be as welcoming as the crew on the Revenge were to him, even when he certainly didn’t deserve it. 

Izzy watches the building that will become his church get set up until it becomes too much. It starts feeling too real and he knows he can’t run from this, but that doesn’t stop him from desperately wanting to. 

Ed seems to understand, holding out his hand to Izzy, who gladly takes it. 

Chapter Text

Having experienced the too fast way the gods travel the world once before doesn’t make it any less dizzying the second time, entire cities becoming flashes of grey among large swathes of green and blue, until they stop in a place flooded with golden light, so bright he is sure it would have been blinding when he was a mortal. 

“Where are we now?”

“At some point,” Stede begins, “I think a lot of mortals started calling it heaven. Kind of. They conceptualize heaven as a few different things, but it only serves one purpose.”

Ed seems to lay back into nothing, kicking his feet up on a stool Izzy can’t see. “It’s a nowhere, everywhere kinda space. Just for us. They can’t see it.”

Izzy studies his hands in relation to the light. They’ve never been so pristine in his life, cleared of grime and ash and scars, but they still feel too dirty. He barely starts to mumble that he wants to leave before they’re back in his little abode above the church, cobwebs in the corner to remind him that he’s not moving with the world anymore. 

“It can be a bit overwhelming at first, I know. You’ll get used to it, and we’ll be with you, every step of the way. Just let us know what you need,” Stede says, giving Izzy’s hand a squeeze before letting it go. Izzy feels a slight ache of loss at the absence of that steadying warmth. 

“Can you hold me?” Izzy rasps out, and seconds later, they’re lying down on his small, threadbare cot, Stede on one side, Ed on the other, arms tight around him. 

The edges of his being don’t feel real. His mind keeps reaching out, lost in the constant crashing waves of information that surround him. He can pinpoint the presence of every spider and ant in the room, and he knows the threadcount of the sheets they’re lying on, and the age of every plank of wood making up the room they’re standing in. He knows all this with the same certainty that he knows his given name, and it feels like there’s no boundary between him and the rest of the world. With Ed’s head on his chest and Stede’s hand tracing patterns against his ribs he can at least point out two places where he stops and someone else begins and it helps anchor him to some sense of reality. 

“How long is the adjustment period?” he finds himself asking. “When does this become normal?”

Stede hums and plays with the chain still around Izzy’s neck. “Not ever, really, but soon.”

It’s not an answer, but Izzy understands what he means by it, and the knowledge serves to comfort him. He thinks about how if they were all human, he’d probably be able to hear Stede’s heartbeat, and Edward would be able to hear his. That comfort may not have made a difference, but he still gives himself a moment to imagine it. It seems like it would be nice. 

He allows himself to touch Ed’s hair for the first time. It’s surprisingly soft, and comes from its updo easily at his gentle caress. The silvery strands slip through his fingers before he can really do much besides glance his thumb against them. Stede’s hair seems like it would be even softer. Izzy doesn’t check now, though, too enamored in the feeling of both of them pressed against him and Edward’s solid weight against his chest like he’s the most comfortable pillow. 

He tentatively lets himself think that maybe being a god won’t be too bad, not if it lets him hear the soft sounds of pleasure Edward makes as he strokes through his hair, or the way Stede smells like a warm summer day. When it’s just the two of them it feels more manageable. He knows at some point he will have to leave this room, and this moment, but for now he lets himself feel comfortable touching godhood. 

He has not ruined Ed by holding him, nor washed away his divinity. It feels almost ridiculous to fear that he had that power, but he can’t help but worry that he’s going to upset the balance of the universe. Even worse, he’s worried that he’s going to upset the balance between Ed and Stede. He’s all too aware of the way he’s sandwiched between them and he wonders if they’re resenting his presence between them. 

He forces himself to sit up, away from their warmth. He’s certain that they’re only here out of a sense of obligation and Stede’s kindness forcing him to make sure Izzy doesn’t go through this alone like he did. He’s not sure he can handle them suddenly leaving him, abandoning him, again. At least not now. So he has to go first. 

“Iz, mate, where are you going?” Edward asks. Izzy tries not to look at his slight frown. “Relax a bit, you need the rest.”

Izzy recalls getting dressed what feels like hundreds of years but mere seconds ago, thinking of them as he put on symbols of his devotion toward them. He still has that. It wasn’t taken from him. He’ll have to give it back eventually. Izzy wants, perhaps more than to keep everything, to be prepared when his jewelry is taken from him again. 

“I don’t want to be a burden,” he manages to say. 

Stede clucks his tongue and stands up to close the distance Izzy has made between them. “You’re not a burden, love. You’re one of us now. It just takes a little getting used to, alright, I promise. I’ve never lied to you, have I?”

Izzy thinks back on every interaction he’s ever had with Stede, and for all the difficulties they might have had, Stede has never lied to him. He’s not sure why he’d start now. He shakes his head.

“Iz, after what happened with Calico Jack, I’m not leaving you,” Edward adds, voice firm. 

“I don’t want to leave.” 

“Right, then lie back down.” 

Edward shifts slightly in the bed, leaving Izzy a space to slot into, Edward’s arms wrapping around his waist and pulling him in close. Izzy lets his eyes shut, and while he doesn’t sleep, isn’t sure if he even can anymore, he lets his mind drift, peaceful and empty, to the sound of the waves. 

At some point, Stede’s hand finds its way to his, holding onto it not to aid in moving, but to simply hold on. A warm sense of relief washes over him at the knowledge. He’s wanted. He’s enough. Forever passes them by before Izzy pays attention to the humans again, and hears something like a shanty. It’s the old crew, singing as they decorate the church that seems to have sprung up quite a bit. He can’t imagine what holiday they would be celebrating right now, even for other gods, but he doesn’t mind the festivities and singing anyways. 

He sits up slowly, having learned his lesson about haste, and looks back at Stede and Edward. “I think I’m starting to find my footing.”

“Knew you’d get there.” Ed says, sitting up next to Izzy, body pressed up cool against his. 

“I think I want to go back to the church. Not to talk to them, not yet, but I want to be there.” Izzy says. He’s not sure he can handle all their expectant eyes waiting for him to direct them, but he wants his presence to be felt, he wants them to know that he’s there for them. He wants them to know that they’re wanted. 

Izzy isn’t exactly sure how much time has passed since he was last here, but if the way the sun gleams off the polished tile steps and the fresh tiles on the roof are anything to go by, it's been a while. Most of the faces in the pews are familiar to him, members of the Revenge or dock workers he occasionally talked to, but there are a few he doesn’t recognise although looking at them he knows everything about them. While in life he may have never interacted with them, he knows them now by their prayers. 

He watches them, realizing that the decoration he had been watching earlier has now been fully put up. There are no brightly colored garlands, vibrant baubles, or flashy showpieces like he might expect from a festival or a celebration of another god, especially one like Stede. It’s not like anything for a holiday of the Kraken, either, with how many candles are lit in a shimmering sea of flickering lights.

It’s unclear to him whether they even have scripture from which to read and preach, but he supposes there’s time for all that. He’ll find a human to take things down for him just as the others have, or perhaps he’ll spend the time hand-writing his own. Unlike the others, he’s been human recently enough not just to write, but to write in a language currently spoken. 

Focusing on the practicalities of godhood help ground him. He’s always found comfort in the routines and rituals he performed for Edward, soothed by the fact he could wake up each morning and know exactly what he was meant to do and when. Trying to find these routines in this new life and the ways he can fulfill the new duties put upon him, and who in this small community he can rely on to help him allows him to finally feel in control. 

He is pushed out of this new sense of calm by the all too familiar bitter smell of ash and a smothering blanket of heat on his skin. He doesn’t need to turn to look to know Calico has joined them. The knowledge that he can no longer harm Izzy does not stop the way his heart starts to race. 

“Calm down,” The Calico says. “You know you can’t actually have a panic response?”

“Oh.”

The discomfort in his chest and the flush in his cheeks starts to fade, but not fully. He’s still not thrilled to be this close to the deity again, but it seems some things are better left to humans. Izzy takes a step away regardless, the heat of the Calico still more than overbearing in his new state. 

“Did you need something?” Izzy allows himself to say. 

Shrugging, the Calico watches the candles flicker in Izzy’s new church. “Just to stop by. Get the names right.”

Izzy glances at him. There’s more fire in his true form, undisguised, but he too looks like his human image had. He’s bright to look at, like Stede, but it still does sting slightly when Izzy tries too hard to follow the spitting flickers of flame. 

“You already know my name.”

“More or less, but you might not know mine. Jack.”

He extends a hand, as if offering for Izzy to shake it. 

Izzy forces himself to shake it, expecting his skin to blister under Jack’s grip, and is pleasantly surprised when, while Jack’s skin is warm, it is not unpleasantly so. 

“What is this then, some sort of peace offering then?”

Jack lets out a deep laugh that reverberates through the ground under his feet. 

“Oh, you think what we had was a war? You were a mortal, it was just a bit of fun. You’ll get it soon. Now you’re one of us, and it’s not like I particularly really cared about you. Eddie was the one I was after. So, no harm no foul,” Jack finishes with a shrug. 

Izzy thinks about Lucius crouched over Pete, tears in his eyes. He thinks about the angry, red stripe across Oluwande’s face. He thinks about the suffocating desperation he had felt in the brig. 

“I think there was some harm.” 

“Oh, against mortals. Come on man, that hardly counts. I’m telling you, you’ll realize soon enough that eternity gets a bit overrated. You have to have some fun.” 

“Right,” Izzy responds, voice brittle. He has nothing more to say to the god.

The dismissal seems to go unheard. Izzy doesn’t want to leave when Jack is still here, so close to the very mortals whom he had tortured for, as he puts it, fun, so he stays there beside him. It looks as if some sort of service or event will start soon regardless, and Izzy does want to see what it looks like from a personal point of view rather than a background awareness.

Oluwande takes his position at the head of the small altar, facing out among the small crowd of followers. The scar on his face has faded, Izzy realizes, but it’s still a rosy line where his cheek had previously been unmarred. He watches it while he waits for Olu to speak. 

“This is the first celebration of many,” Olu begins, his voice filling the church like he was always meant to address crowds. Izzy made him a first mate, but he’s much better suited to being a captain, or some similar position; he doesn’t have the easy charisma of Edward, but he does have a certain calmness in each length of vowel from his lips that inclines even the most distraught to listen. “As you all well know, our god is a newer one, and our scriptures are fairly limited, as are our memories. Still, we’ve heard from him recently, and from the Kraken and Stede, and today, we honor his full transition to godhood from mortality.”

Oluwande’s voice does not cast any judgment but he can’t help but wonder whether he should have done more. A whole year has apparently passed, and this is only the second time he has turned up to the church. He can’t help but feel like he has failed them. He swears to himself that he’s going to do better. it does seem like he has the rest of eternity to try. 

“We hope he’s looking down on this celebration, and that it pleases him. Although, knowing him, he’s likely to just grumble and tell us to get back to work,” Olu says, voice light, followed by a small ripple of laughter throughout the church. 

Izzy tentatively reaches out with his mind. It’s a strange sensation to be moving while his feet stay still on the ground. He’s not quite sure if he’s doing this correctly, or even doing anything at all, but he wants them to feel his presence. He wants them to know that he’s listening, and that from now on, he’s going to be there for them. 

Every person in the church sits up straighter, he realizes. They sense his presence. A small smile slips onto Jim’s face in the front row. A titter of murmurs rise up, all distinct but still sounding like one single drone.

“Thank you,” Oluwande says, like Izzy said so many times as a mortal. It feels just as warm on this side of the connection as it had when he used to speak to Ed. “We’ve been working. We built this church, we’ve looked after one another, and we’ve made homes for ourselves here. Along the way, we found more people who see things in you that you didn’t, as a human.”

Izzy hopes his uneasiness isn’t as easily felt as his joy.

“You’re prickly and all, but you have always looked out for others. There’s something to be said for your loyalty to us as well as the other gods, even when you didn’t want to acknowledge it. You have always been devoted to something, and that something, when we knew you personally, was love. I know you probably don’t want to hear that, but that’s the whole bit, isn't it?”

Izzy smiles, and if he had had any doubts about Olu being his first priest they would have been abated by this speech. He seems to understand what it took Izzy his entire life to learn and he’s glad Olu is going to be able to guide more people to that understanding. 

“It ended up being your greatest strength, and that’s what we’ve been telling people. You can’t go through it alone. So we’ve been building a community, taking anyone in who asks, just like you told us to. If you have any more direction, we’d like to hear it, but just knowing you're watching is more than enough.”

Izzy doesn’t respond in words; he has the beginnings of ideas for what he wants this church to be, but he wants to give these decisions the weight and time they deserve to make them properly. But he pushes out with his consciousness one more time, a wave that sweeps over the congregation, before he pulls it back. 

He hopes they take it for the message that it is, an acknowledgement of their questions and a promise to respond in time. Izzy turns to leave, grateful for the fact that Jack appeared to have disappeared at some point during the service. He feels better going without having to fear that Jack is about to make playthings out of his followers. He takes one last look back at the church before he goes, and promises to return before long. 

Chapter Text

Making the journey back to his flat is easier. Things seem to keep trending in that direction, filling Izzy with something he identifies to be hope. He doesn’t remember when he last felt this kind of true, all encompassing hope for the future of mankind, if he ever did, but he’s glad to have it settle into all the spaces where his bones used to be. 

It is empty when he arrives, leading him to remember that just because it has been his mortal home does not mean that he, or the other gods, must congregate there. He considers going to Stede’s church, but the idea feels stranger now as a god than it had when he was devoted solely to the worship of the Kraken. The ocean, too, might be more home to Edward than Stede. He finds himself deciding to go to the beach, but not fully into the water, in hopes the middle ground might give him a good starting point for speaking to them. If there’s another way to communicate than arriving and hoping, he has yet to find it. 

The beach he goes to is not the one where he used to stand and offer prayers to the waves, but a bit further north, on a rocky stretch where a lighthouse with chipped paint stands on a narrow peninsula. When the sun sets, it will likely cut paths of light across the deep sea. For now, though, it remains static and quiet.

He does not feel the presence of the gods in the way he did as a mortal. It’s like a warning, a tugging at his mind that someone is nearby, and it lasts for what feels like a long time before the storm clouds on the horizon begin to edge closer and the air shimmers with a short wave of warmth around him. 

Tentacles chase the seafoam up the shore toward Izzy, digging winding paths through the sand. Footsteps sound behind him. Izzy lets out a deep breath that he never brings back into his lungs. “Is there a better way to contact you than going someplace and thinking about it?” he asks before he sees either of their faces. 

“If you just say our names we’ll hear you. Ed, not the Kraken,” comes Ed’s voice. Seconds later, he comes stepping out of the waves. Izzy wonders if he’s taking a more human form because he prefers it, or if he does it out of a desire to make Izzy feel more comfortable by providing at least a sliver of normalcy within all these changes. Whether Ed is doing it for himself or for Izzy, he still feels grateful. Ed’s human form allows him to reach out for Ed’s hand, traveling together arm in arm has almost made it instinct at this point. It’s only when he’s almost brushing against Ed that he hesitates, wondering whether this is a step too far. He knows that Ed and Stede told him he was no burden, so there appears to be more keeping them here than mere obligation but there’s still a chance he’s misread the situation. 

Before he can pull away Ed is taking his hand in his, giving it a small squeeze, smiling at him so bright the glow of it could rival the sun and tugging Izzy closer. Stede appears behind him, slinging an arm against Izzy’s back, nodding slightly as Izzy relaxes into his grip. Stede is warm against him, like the sunbaked stones beneath his feet. 

“How was the service?” Stede asks. 

“It was good, nice. I think I might be starting to get it.” 

Pressed close between the two of them, Izzy realizes he may also get the infatuation they have with one another. He’s always understood love of the Kraken, of Ed, but he’s had a harder time with Stede. Love is a strange thing, intertwined with worship for years when he had nothing and no one but the Kraken. He didn’t feel or participate in real devotion to Stede as an adult. He thinks that what he feels is still love, at least for the Kraken, but it’s too similar to the web of tangled emotions he feels for Stede to be certain of the thought. Love among gods is its own beast. It’s more than he felt as a mortal, but in a lot of ways, somewhat empty. He does not get to feel the love in his blood and in the air he breathes, but he does get to taste it when he opens his mouth to speak. 

“I ran into Jack today,” he says. One of Edward’s tentacles curls around his leg, but unlike when he was mortal, it doesn’t burn or bruise in its wake. It’s just another way that he’s held. “He wanted to get my name.”

“If he gives you any trouble, let me know,” Ed says, voice low, the tentacle’s grip on Izzy tightening slightly. “He likes his fun, but he knows better than to mess with the hierarchy.” 

“He’s a dick,” Stede adds, and Izzy’s unsure whether it’s his way of agreeing with Ed or a statement in its own right. 

“Yeah, but harmless enough to you now.” 

“He was at the church. What if he goes after the congregation, especially the crew? I don’t know if I’ll be able to protect them,” Izzy says, words rushing out. It’s strange to feel consumed with fear, mind flashing between different scenarios that all end with the church in flames and his followers screaming for help, while his body remains completely calm. 

“Then we’ll protect them. They were our crew too,” Stede says, voice firm.

“I can’t keep just relying on you two for help, what sort of fucking god am I?”

Edward takes Izzy’s face in his free hand, grip gentle but firm. Once their eyes meet, he says, “It takes time, Iz. Time you have a lot of now, so don’t worry so much. We’re here with you.”

“It doesn’t…” Izzy trails off, but doesn’t pull away from Ed. “I feel like I should just know. You both seem to.”

“And we’ve had centuries of practice,” Stede tells him.

Izzy shuts his eyes so he doesn’t have to look at Edward or Stede anymore. Without being able to hear and feel their thoughts like the mortals, it allows him a moment’s reprieve to think about the rest of time splayed out before him. He does have centuries. He has forever. 

“I’m going to be around for centuries,” he says, mostly to hear the words aloud. “Everyone I’ve ever met is going to die and their whole lives will be just a second of mine.”

Izzy has spent his entire mortal life trying to be alone, flinching away from any sort of connection. Even as a priest he kept his congregation at an arm's length. It’s almost cruel that right at the end he found people who forced him to care about them, only for them to get snatched away. A year passed by like a lazy morning, and they’ll just keep rushing by him, faster and faster. There will be a point when he comes by the church and there will be nothing left of the crew but a neat row of grave stones. 

“That will get easier too. You’ll find yourself getting better at appreciating the little moments instead of trying to grab onto every single one.” 

“Anyways, you’re not going to be alone. You’ve got us,” Ed adds with a shrug. “That’s not nothing, is it?”

While Izzy gets what they mean, that doesn’t make it easier in the now. “I wish it wasn’t so hard.”

“Hard things are worth doing though, aren’t they?” Stede asks. 

“They are, but-” Izzy cuts himself off. “I don’t think- I know that I haven’t earned this. I shouldn’t be a god, I shouldn’t even be alive, I-”

He doesn’t get to finish his sentence, because Stede is suddenly pressing in close, lips brushing against his and everything freezes as Izzy’s brain struggles to make sense of this new reality. Stede seems to take the wrong message from Izzy’s lack of response, pulling away. Izzy finds himself grabbing at the god before he can get far, keeping him close. 

The idea of kissing a god, of kissing Stede, had seemed so out of reach that he hadn’t even contemplated the possibility before. Not really. But now that he is faced with it he realises he wants nothing more. Izzy moves closer, unsure what to do with his hands and deciding to keep them where they are, bunched up in the teal fabric of Stede’s coat, as he kisses him. Stede seems content to let Izzy take the lead, slowly kissing him back and smiling at Izzy as they pull away like he hung the stars themselves.

“Sorry, I probably should have asked, but you just seemed so panicked and I wasn’t sure how else to reassure you that you should be here with us. There’s no one I’d rather we share godhood with than you, Israel.” 

Izzy nods silently, still lost for words as he gathers his bearings. He hasn’t kissed anyone in quite some time, come to think of it. Not since one stolen in a dingy alley when he had yet to grow into his face. This is worth the waiting, though, he thinks, because maybe he would not appreciate this the same if the intimate act was more familiar with him. 

Before he can manage to get his scattered thoughts together, Ed kisses him. It’s just as passionate as Stede’s kiss, but some of the tenderness is forgone in favor of a gentle bite to his bottom lip. There lies the sting that Izzy has always associated with the Kraken. It’s just tamer now. Manageable. He finds it not just bearable, but pleasurable, to experience any kind of pain doled out by Edward. 

Izzy waits for the guilt to well up at wanting something from Edward so selfishly as he pulls him in for another kiss. While the way he runs his hands reverently across Edward’s skin could be called an act of devotion, or worship even, it’s clear he’s doing it for his own pleasure as much as he’s doing it for Ed. The guilt never comes. Instead, all he feels is a buzz that is equal parts excitement and nerves, and it pushes him toward Stede. 

Izzy isn’t certain how much time passes in a blur of discarded clothes, revealed skin and frantic touches as the three of them try and learn everything about each other's bodies. Stede and Edward seem to know each other intimately already, likely from practice and countless opportunities like this one, but his is a new canvas for them to explore, as theirs is to him.

 But as Izzy lays naked afterward, his body boneless as he sinks into the sand beside Ed and Stede, he is certain he could have spent an eternity in that moment. He’s unsure if it always would have felt that good, or if godhood has made it better, but he knows he has never experienced bliss like he just had. Some of the grief at losing all that had been his life before has washed away when presented with the potential for pleasure that godhood can give him. 

He begins to conceptualize worship in another way. It can also be the kind of love that was painstakingly kissed into his skin like a blessing. Waiting was worth this. Everything was. He allows himself to guide new paths beneath Ed’s collarbones with his fingertips, find new unmarked places along Stede’s throat where he might be able to leave his own fleeting bruises, and revel in the simple pleasure of being with them. 

“Thank you,” he whispers. 

As many times as Izzy has said those words before, all with the same revering tone, it has never been like this: on equal footing, not allowing excessive gratification at the mere act of being acknowledged, but welcomed as someone who stands next to the gods as one of their own. 

“I think I know what I’d like to be called.”

“Yeah?” Ed asks, a lazy smile on his face as he stretches out on the beach, skin glowing under the midday sun. 

“I think I’d quite like to tell the church,” Izzy says. His first followers should be the first people to hear his new name. He feels as if they were as much a part of his ascension as anything else. 

“We can go now?” Stede offers, already pulling on his clothes and trying to smooth down his golden curls. It’s a strangely mortal action, considering Izzy’s fairly certain he could just will his hair to sit the way he wants it. 

“Yeah I’d quite like that.” Izzy says, and a few moments later they’re holding out their hands to him. 

He takes their hands in his and keeps his eyes open as they travel. The church shows the markings of having withstood catastrophe while he was gone; wind and rain have beaten down the path as surely as footfalls, sun has bleached the grey paint paler, and black charring creeps up the side of a wall beneath what appears to be a hasty patch while they await better materials. He tries not to think of the ways the actions of other gods impact those he follows, though it was a sure fact as a follower of the Kraken when he was mortal. 

When he goes inside, he notes that Ed and Stede wait for him just outside the arching doors, giving him privacy when he walks in to find Olu and Buttons tending to the altar. Jim must be nearby, as they’re almost never far from Oluwande, but the others must be off on different activities. He considers it a small miracle, perhaps one of his own making, that he has always stumbled upon a busy property with fully seated pews when he’s come in the past. 

His feet make audible steps as he approaches them, leading both to turn around. Buttons still has his bird perched atop his head, though she seems agitated by the church or Izzy’s presence, he can’t tell which. She remains with them, however, so Izzy takes it as a polite acknowledgement from Anne as opposed to a slight. 

“It’s good to see you,” Olu says first, stepping forward before seeming to think the better of it. “It’s been a while.”

“It has,” Izzy agrees, studying the few whitish grey hairs that speckle Oluwande’s beard. “I’m sorry it’s been so long.”

Buttons doesn’t seem put off by this fact, though when he does move a little closer, it’s with a hobble that lends to his already old age drawing nearer to the end of his life. “Time is different to a god, sir, I think you’d know that.”

“You’re right. I wanted to-” the words feel wrong and too heavy in Izzy’s mouth. “I’ve come to tell you my name.”

They both straighten up in preparation to receive the information. It reminds Izzy of the way he once stood in early mornings in another lifetime. Reassured and warm, he finds in himself the courage to speak his name aloud for the very first time. 

“You can call me the Basilica,” Izzy declares, and he’s pleased by how right it feels to say it, as if it was his name all along and it’s only now that he’s discovered the fact instead of something he’s chosen. 

“It’s a strong name,” Buttons says, giving an approving nod. 

“It’s a type of church, isn’t it?” Olu asks. 

“Aye.”

“It suits you. It’s a place of worship but also of sanctuary. Makes sense,” Olu says with a nod and something settles in Izzy’s chest, a sense of belonging and purpose. 

In the back of his mind, he thinks he knows why the name came to him, but it feels right that Oluwande gets it too. He knows he made a good choice making him his first priest; the community is in good hands. In time, he will eventually have to appoint someone else, and figure out how to keep the congregation going, but that doesn’t seem so daunting a task anymore. He knows who he is now, as well as what his place is meant to be in the pantheon, making everything else feel not so difficult to parse out. And when he can feel Ed and Stede’s presence in the back of his mind, there is the added comfort of knowing he doesn’t have to work it all out on his own. 

With a final acknowledging nod, Izzy turns and leaves the church, allowing the warmth and surety coursing through his being to stain the walls and linger behind him. He is the one who reaches out this time, taking Ed’s hand in his right one and Stede’s in his left, content with the understanding that this was always meant to come.

“Alright, love?” Ed asks, squeezing his hand. 

Izzy nods. “Perfect.”

He remembers the church’s nearness to the water, and takes his first steps toward it once more. The shoreline is a place of familiarity and rebirth at once, and when they find themselves on the sand of the beach where he offered every minute of his life in service, the ocean seems to welcome him with its gentle laps at his feet. He could drift off into its depths, safe and content, floating atop the seafoam and feeling the rays of sunshine on his face. Ed lifting him up, Stede meeting him, both equal parts of balancing all he’s ever been and wanted to be. 

Today, however, he does not need to drift. He’s content to stand like a beacon of all the things he never had, known and loved with every nerve of his body that burned away in his ascension from humanity.