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The Kraken dreams of a boy named Israel.
They’re standing deep in the hold of the Ranger, surrounded by crates of cargo. Ed would know that smell anywhere, the first ship he’d called home.
“Edward?” the memory says. Israel’s hair is shaggy, his face smooth and clean. “What’s up with your face?”
Ed scowls. He knows how he looks, jaw and eyes painted in black smears. He'd meant it to be that way, to look like a creature from nightmares. Is this a nightmare? “Could ask you the same thing,” he grunts, pointing to the empty space below Israel's left eye.
Israel touches his cheek, smiles faintly. He never was afraid of Ed, not until Ed gave him reason to be. “You haven’t done it yet.” It’s been years since Ed has seen him this quiet, this thoughtful. “Will seeing it make it easier?”
Ed shakes his head. “You weren’t mine yet,” he says.
“I’ve always been yours,” says Israel. The space around them melts into Stede's pristine cabin on the Revenge, the two of them now sitting side by side on the couch. There should be a large painting over the fireplace, but the wall is bare except for a pair of large scissors hanging from a hook. He looks down and sees Israel’s foot is bandaged entirely in red silk.
Ed recoils from him, hands trembling. “I didn’t do that to you,” he says defensively.
“Bullshit,” Israel says, firm but quiet. “You think I don’t exist anymore?”
“You’re a memory,” Ed protests. “You hate me now.” He stands, and they’re on the beakhead of the Queen Anne’s Revenge, looking out over the prow. For some reason they’re sitting again on that damned couch. Ed could have sworn he’d had it thrown overboard.
“Where are you trying to go?” Israel asks over the howl of the wind.
Ed pulls the pink robe tightly around him. “I was trying to go to China.”
“China,” echoes Israel. “Silks and teas." He begins unwinding the red silk from his foot. Ed can’t stand to look, stares out to the raging ocean, blinking back tears. Or maybe it’s just the spray of the salt water on his face. “I would have given you those things.” He holds the silk with two fingers in front of Ed’s face, the fabric streaming in the wind. The long ribbon of it seems to stretch on forever.
Ed takes the silk square and touches it to his face, finds it clean and unspoiled. When he looks down at the deck, Israel’s bare feet are much the same. Israel smiles at him, one of those shy, private smiles he used to give to Ed, back in the days of high hopes and nowhere to go but up.
Ed feels something inside himself break, the first crack before the dam bursts open. “I miss you,” he admits. He reaches for Israel, and now they’re laying in their shared hammock, two bodies colliding under the patient pull of gravity. It’s peaceful and quiet, and around them is nothing at all.
“I miss you too,” Israel whispers. He reaches for the ties at the collar of his shirt. “But I’ve kept you right here.” The fabric parts to reveal an X inked on his chest, just over his heart.
“Izzy,” Ed breathes, fingers about to–
He wakes alone in the ruined cabin.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
First Mate Izzy Hands dreams of a boy who would be king.
“You got old,” Ed tells him from his seat atop the capstan, which rotates under a wheeling starry sky.
Izzy limps around the capstan, trying to keep Ed’s gaze. “Never expected to.” Ed’s dark curls frame his expressive face and his youthful attempt at a beard. His laugh is just like Izzy remembers, though he doesn’t recall Ed ever looking so young. He must have, he supposes.
Ed's humor is short-lived. As his face sobers he points down at Izzy's bleeding foot. "You're bleeding on my deck."
So he is. He's left a trail of blood all the way around the capstan, like a dying animal, like some unholy ritual. "Sorry," he says lamely, but doesn't cease in his trudge around the circle.
"You've never been sorry to bleed for me before," Ed says like a king, like a god. "Remember?"
Izzy doubles over in pain, clutching the wound in his gut. He can feel the blade there, how it pierces skin and muscle and viscera – but then, quick as it happened, it's over, and when he touches his hand to the place, it's solid and dry. Not a wound, but the memory of one. The skin of his thigh is burned. A bullet embeds itself in his arm. Each flashes with bright, brilliant pain, his hands clutching and slapping at himself, then fades back into memory.
The pain stops, except for his foot. He keeps moving, chasing after Ed's impassive face. "That's just a few," Ed says imperiously. "What's a little more?"
Izzy swallows and shakes his head. "You didn't do those to me."
Ed's mouth tightens, brows knitting close together. "You chose it. All of it."
"I didn't–"
"You promised your loyalty–"
"You had it–"
Ed grasps the round edge at the top of the capstan and pulls himself forward. "You said I should have died, old man!" he screams, his face inches from Izzy's, eyes bright with unshed tears.
Above them, the stars rotate like clockwork.
Ed sighs and sits back. "When did you stop believing in me?"
Despair hooks into Izzy's heart and tugs. "Never," he insists. "I never did. You wanted–" What had Edward wanted? Bonnet, surely. Satin breeches and heeled shoes. He doesn't know beyond that, only that Ed was tired of the life they'd made. "Something else," he says. The tug on his heart pulls the next words out from his choking throat. "Something without me."
Ed blinks, looks heavenward, tilts his chin back down with a sad smile. "Just because I wanted something different doesn't mean I stopped wanting you."
The stars grind to a halt, the anchor fully raised. Ed's shape is silhouetted against the glittering sky as he rises and stands atop the capstan. "The thing is," he proclaims, "you have to believe in the sail as much as the anchor." He hops down with youthful grace – your knee, Izzy thinks, incomprehensibly – and the ship begins to rise. "Come on."
In the logic of dreams, Izzy isn't afraid to see the ocean laid out below them, smooth and still as glass, mirroring the sky. He simply hadn't realized ships could move this way. Silly, he thinks, not to have realized something so obvious.
Ed leads him up the ladder to the quarterdeck, gestures for him to take the wheel. The spokes feel smooth, worn and polished over many years by calloused hands. Ed stands to face him on the other side of the wheel. "Set the course."
They're still rising. Izzy glances around, up, down. Ed's face is so expectant, so trusting. "I don't know where we're going," he confesses.
Ed's hand extends over the wheel to touch Izzy's cheek. "I left you a map."
Izzy softens into Ed's touch. Of course he knows the way. He gets his right hand under the spoke pointing to starboard and heaves it up and around. A flock of swallows bursts into flight around the ship, bearing them upwards towards Polaris. Ed smiles at him, big and bright, and Izzy feels–
He wakes to a knock on the door.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
"Izzy?" Ed whispers, knocking again. "Izzy? Are you in there?" It's the middle watch, which Izzy usually spends sleeping in his cabin. He must be there. But Ed won't try the latch until he has no other option, afraid either of finding the room empty, or the door locked against him. "Iz, I need to see you, open up."
He could be gone. Izzy had tried to leave once and he'd stopped him. Maybe he's really gone this time, Ed's violence severing them instead of fortifying their bond. Panic rises cold in his throat. "Iz," he says, voice cracking. "I'm unarmed, I swear, just open the fucking door–"
The door creaks open.
There stands Izzy Hands, fully dressed, dark circles under his eyes. Ed is still dressed for sleep, his own dark circles covered with darker smears of paint that he'd not bothered to wash off. There are smears on the wrappings around Izzy's foot too, soot-black in the dim light.
"Iz," he says, voice still wavering. "I dreamed about you. When you were young. We– we talked." A strange look crosses Izzy's countenance. "Can we?"
"Can we what? Talk?" He sounds suspicious, or skeptical, at least. Uncertain.
"Mhm," Ed says softly, hardly trusting himself to say more without breaking down.
Izzy opens his mouth, pauses as if remembering something. Ed might be imagining it, but his eyes seem to reflect the meager light a little more. "Yeah," he says, and lets Ed inside.