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Izzy hated the way the crew looked at him. It had used to be worse, when their gaze held unhidden contempt and generally just a desire to murder him but that at least had been expected. It was the normal way crews on pirate ships looked at the person making them do something they didn’t want to do.
Now, it was with pity as they watched him limp around the deck. He’d improved his balance pretty significantly since he’d lost the leg, but it was still a little shaky, clearly not up to his old standards for himself.
The most annoying part was that for all of their pitying looks, the work situation hadn’t improved. Most of them still slacked off constantly, leaving jobs uncompleted, ropes not fastened properly, rations going missing because they wanted a snack.
Izzy didn’t get it. How could they keep making snide little comments about how he worked too much when they were the reason he worked too much, when he put so much time and pain into keeping the damn ship afloat. Did they think he wanted to be hobbling around the deck at five-thirty in the morning
He allowed himself an extra fifteen minutes the next morning; he wasn’t up til five-forty-five. It was the sort of luxury he wouldn’t really allow himself, usually. But he’d had to massage the twitching muscles in the remnants of his leg into submission before he got the leg on, which meant an extra fifteen minutes.
Sailing a space-ship was remarkably similar to sailing a water-ship, as far as he knew from the books he’d read. The aether sails might be propelled by motors, but they were still sails, but those had never been the issue. The issue was the engines.
Izzy had always helped with the engines, everyone on a ship learned the basics, but he certainly wasn’t an expert in their maintenance. They’d had an engine expert on their old ship, an old fellow named Murphy with a pair of canes who knew just how to talk to the engines to make them purr like they were new.
These engines were new, far newer than the Anne’s, and yet they still sounded far worse than Murphy’s ever had. If your engines failed, you died. That had been hammered into Izzy since he had boarded his first ship at 13. Your engines were your lifeline. If they failed, you died. No ifs, ands, or buts.
On most crews, an engine man was the first position hired, maybe second behind a first mate. Stede Fucking Bonnet hadn’t followed any of the usual conventions when he’d hired his crew though, and that meant that somehow he hadn’t hired a fucking engine man .
Izzy had about lost his mind when he’d found that out. He’d shouted at Bonnet til he was certain the crew was taking bets on which of them was going to get stabbed.
And then Edward had shown up and whisked Bonnet away without listening to a word Izzy said or bothering to care about what had happened. Bonnet was sad and that was more important than their fucking lives, which was why Izzy was crouched in the engine room, ten-year-old book about engines balanced on his good knee.
The engines were newer than the book, which was unhelpful, but Bonnet preferred paper fucking books to holos and Izzy didn’t even have the ability to spend the ship’s money on things for the goddamn ship anymore. He would’ve had to beg Bonnet and Edward and he couldn’t possibly do that.
So here he was, a too-old book and a pair of fancy, high-tech, too-new engines. They were making some sort of rattling sound, like he’d imagined an old car engine might sound like. The section of the book that was titled ‘So Your Engine Is Making A Weird Noise’ was forty seven pages long and written in the smallest font Izzy had ever seen.
He’d never been a good reader, his holo usually read to him, and the dark combined with the tiny font combined with the fact his leg was throbbing meant that he wasn’t absorbing any of the fucking words on the page.
“Ok…it’s not a rat. I don’t think? Roach said we don’t have rats. Probably. We’ll come back to that. Next is…uh…temperature changes. No hyper-travel this month, so not fucking that. Probably. Low on…fucking hell that can’t be a word that’s way too fucking long.” He scowled down at the page.
He spent ten hours in the engine room, because that was truly the most time he could spend before the heat and his leg made him want to fucking jump off the ship.
His mood did not improve as the day went on and he found himself having to rework the way the front sail was rigged. It wasn’t positioned right, not catching the wind from their already questionable engines, and this…he couldn’t fix this on the road. They needed to be docked, somewhere where they wouldn’t fall if they lost too much power.
He’d been asking Edward to stop so they could for months but Bonnet didn’t want to stop traveling and exploring long enough to do boring things like ship maintenance. Izzy had never quite worked up the fury, or the energy, to ask how much exploring are our dead bodies going to do when they fall out of the fucking sky.
He flopped back onto his bunk with an exhausted groan. It was the most comfortable cot he’d ever had, one of the rare benefits of Bonnet’s extravagant spending, but his room still felt…sterile. Perhaps it was just because he’d lived in the old one for over a decade, but that one had been as homey as a tiny first mate’s cabin could.
Here, he had few of his personal belongings, just some clothes, his leg, his cane, a handful of books and trinkets he’d brought with him. He’d been hoping they’d rendezvous with the Anne, so he could get a few more things; some of their old maps, a few newer books on navigation, hell maybe he’d kidnap fucking Murphy. But Bonnet didn’t want to, didn’t see the point, and Edward was more fucking terrified of upsetting Bonnet than he was anything else. Including, apparently, their demise.
It’s day three of him being hunched in the engine room when Lucius finds him. He’s long past tired and into exhaustion, body aching with the strain he’s put it under, head throbbing in agony from squinting at the book. About the last thing he wants is for Lucius to find him.
Lucius just…stares at him for a few long moments before he asks, in something that isn’t quite the usual pity that Izzy has grown to expect “Hey, what’s wrong?” And Izzy is just…too tired to stop himself.
“What’s wrong?” He snarls. “What’s fuckin’ wrong is that I am one goddamn man, and this ship is too big and too fancy and if these engines fail we all fall out of the sky and I’m the only one who seems to care about that fact .” It came out sharp and bitter, anger cutting through the pain for a moment and leaving him spent.
He wobbled slightly and Lucius was there, voice low and serious in a way he’d never heard the scribe sound before. “Hey, what’s wrong? Here, sit down, you’re alright, easy.” Surprisingly strong hands eased him down onto something soft, helped him stretch out his aching leg.
“The fuck have you been doing in here, finally avoiding scutwork like the rest of us?” Lucius tried to tease, but Izzy couldn’t stop a low, angry sound. “Fuck off.” he growled. “If you’re just going to fucking joke til we fall out of the goddamn sky, fuck off and let me do my job.
“Oh come on .” The scribe drawled, turning to look at the engines. “We aren’t going to fall out of the sky…right?” he turned to look at Izzy, eyes suddenly deeply serious. “Right? I have a bit of a fear of heights, I’d like to hear that we are not going to fall out of the goddamn sky? Please?”
“If you’re afraid of heights, why are you on a damn airship?” Izzy whispered, trying to quell the tremor in his hand so he could get himself up again. “Izzy.” Lucius’ voice was sharp, scared . “Are we going to fucking…what…everything’s fine!”
“Do you not hear the engine rattling?” He rasped. “It’s not meant to sound like that. It's a nice engine, sure, they both are, but they’re…you know when a food is made to be expensive not taste good?”
“Never had it, but I’ve heard of such a thing.” Lucius nodded along, expression still gravely serious. “They’re more…for looking at, than to last you a decade like a good engine from ten years ago will. These’ll last, probably, but they need…more.” he sighed, trying to find the words to explain when he knew Lucius didn't understand.
“Do you know what the most important job on a ship is, boy?” “Captain.” “Good. Second most important?” Lucius paused for a moment, tilting his head before inquiring “First Mate?”
Izzy shrugged one shoulder. “Not wrong, second and third vary based on who you ask. Do you know what the third most important job is?” “Cook? Medic? Pilot?” Izzy shook his head, privately surprised the man was even giving serious suggestions.
“No. Not too fuckin’ bad as far as guesses go, but, no. It’s the engine man, the person who does maintenance and keeps the engines running. That’s the person who’s the only thing between us and falling out of the fucking sky.”
He could see the way Lucius’ mind ran through all the options, could see the moment that Lucius’ mind made the connection. “Oh fuck. We don’t…we don’t have one of those. Is that why you’re in here? Because the engines are rattling and we don’t have an engine person and now we’re all gonna die?”
He looked panicked now and Izzy felt a stab of guilt deep in his belly. That hadn’t been his goal, not really. “Not right now. Speed is holding, we haven’t lost any balance, but they don’t sound right and if they weaken on us…if they weaken on us, the sails aren’t strong enough to work with a weaker pair of engines, not with how badly they’re working.”
“Okay. So…what’s the issue? You’ve got a holo or something right? We can totally fix this.” Izzy nodded down at the large book he’d had on his lap until a few minutes earlier. “No holo, your fuckin’ captain doesn’t believe in them. And these books are older than these goddamn engines.”
“And.” His breath catches, low and painful, but Lucius’ fear was still raw in his eyes and it felt wrong, to see that and not give him anything in return. “Never been much of a reader. Never had to be, got holos to read to me, but, Bonnet prefers actual fuckin’ books, and those don’t read to me.”
“Alright.” Lucius sat next to him, putting an arm around his shoulder and Izzy, exhausted and in pain and so, so worn, let him. He’d take it to his grave but he maybe even leaned into it, just a little. Just enough to feel it. “Alright. Well, here.” He pulled his holo out, tapped at it for a few moments, and then it popped up a visual of the engine, a soothing little voice reading out “Chapter one.”
“No, you don’t have to spend your money on this shit.” Izzy rasped and Lucius shrugged, going to grab the tool box and tossing Izzy his holo. Izzy started to try to stand but the other man gave a firm click of his tongue. “Sit your ass down, and take your leg off, you look spent. I told you, I don’t want to fall out of the sky so.” He nodded at the holo. “Tell me what to do.”
Izzy stared at him incredulously. Lucius did everything imaginable to avoid work, usually, so he was…suspicious, but so far he couldn’t see a trap so he carefully took the holo and started to examine the visual as the voice filled the air.
They spent 4 hours in the engine room, Izzy pouring over the diagrams and doing his best to listen intently to the holo, Lucius doing his best to actually be helpful and enact the steps that Izzy was explaining. It was still baffling to Izzy that Lucius was…actually trying to help, but he wasn’t going to complain.
They had managed to, they thought, isolate the problem to a clogged filter but neither of them were entirely clear on how to resolve it and Izzy was not at all comfortable with one of them unscrewing anything attached to a damn engine.
He hoisted himself up with a grunt of pain, taking a moment to balance before limping out the door, Lucius trailing behind all the way to the captain’s quarters where he rapped on the door. “Yes?” Ed called and Izzy hesitated before responding, a little softer than normal, “Me, Captain.”
Ed gave his first mate a soft smile as he poked his head out and Lucius wondered, again, how Izzy could be unaware that Ed was smitten with him. It was painfully obvious to the rest of them, and had caused several betting pools. Lucius was really going to have to move that along, one of these days; after putting a sizable bet down, of course. Or maybe making Fang do it so it would be less clear he’d cheated.
Izzy took a moment to breathe before explaining “We’ve got a filter issue with the left engine. We need to dock and hire someone to look at it.” Ed tilted his head, opened his mouth, paused, and then said “...right. Yeah, okay, let me see…Kenway’s gonna be the closest safe port?”
Izzy nodded, once, something like surprise on his face as Ed snagged his hand, both of their eyes painfully soft. “Come on, Iz, let’s chat about what we need when we get there, yeah?” He murmured. Izzy nodded, letting himself get tugged into the room and ignoring the little wave Lucius sent him.
He spent most of the afternoon in their cabin. Stede had taken one look at him, much like Lucius had, and ordered him to rest and so he’d ended up laying on the couch, the softest blanket he’d ever touched tucked up over his belly. It was baffling, the way everyone was being fucking soft today.
It was more baffling how he’d entirely given up on fighting it, but that was a fact he chose to ignore because he was tired and everything ached. It was nice to talk to Ed about things like they’d used to, especially when Ed finally fucking agreed to hire someone new to work the engine room.
It’s a relief in a way Izzy doesn’t know how to describe. He slumps against Ed’s shoulder, as the bottle they’re sharing empties and his belly fills with good wine; Bonnet has decent taste in this, at least. The thought doesn’t anger Izzy as much as he’d thought it would as he relaxes into Eddie’s side.
“Eddie.” he sighs, small and soft and Ed’s heart aches; it’s been a very long time since he heard Izzy sound like that. “Yeah Iz?” “Can I…do I have to leave?” He croaked and Ed shook his head rapidly. “No! No, I.” he pauses, glances at the door for just a moment before working up the nerve to continue. “Stay. I want you to stay.”
Stede peaked in a few hours later; technically, he was on watch, and he figured an important part of watch was making sure the other captain hadn’t been stolen from his bed (Stede had never actually had the job explained to him, something that Izzy was sure to be displeased about in the morning).
Ed had not, thankfully, been stolen. He was sound asleep, arm slung over Izzy’s waist, the smaller man tucked under his chin, both clearly sound asleep. They looked so sweet that Stede couldn’t help himself, taking a quick photo before returning to the main deck.
If it made Ed look that soft, that pleased, Stede thought some night shifts weren’t too much to give.