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Everything is so quiet. Frenchie can’t remember the last time he experienced such a perfect silence. You don’t get that in a pirate's life, he muses. Everything is always chaos and shouting, and gunshots, and clashing of steel. But not now.
It is unsettling if he’s totally honest with himself. He's not used to there being no sounds around him, and right now even the seagulls are quiet. The windows of his former captains' inn have been dark for a while now - not that he can spare any thought on them.
They don’t matter to him anymore. He’s not even angry at them, which is a surprise considering what happened. They just stopped existing in his world. He has other things to think about. Like his captaincy and his crew. He needs to take care of them. Properly.
But right now, here, in the cold night air, his mind is elsewhere. There is something else he has to do before he can sail away. Something that would haunt him if left undone. Someone that deserves a proper goodbye, better that the shitty burial he got from the captains.
Frenchie's hands touch the freshly dug soil. His breath catches as he tries to comprehend that this is where Izzy ended up. It makes no sense. None of it. Not the fact that the man is gone. Not this awful patch of land when he gets to rest. Not the emptiness in Frenchie' soul.
His first reaction was that they need to dig the grave up and give Izzy a burial at sea. That is what a career pirate deserves. The sea is where he belongs. Where he can be free - of people’s judgment, of the world's ideas of who he should be, of the man who tortured him.
But, Frenchie thinks, a lump of earth he absentmindedly took in his hand sticking to his skin. But. There is something between Izzy and Blackbeard, something beyond both Izzy’s dedication and Edward’s violence. Something that Frenchie hates with passion. But he will respect it.
As much as he hates to admit it, Blackbeard is the only person who really knew Izzy, as much as it was possible to know a man so guarded and private. If he said this was where Izzy would want to be, perhaps he was right. Frenchie has to believe that or his grief will kill him.
Tears sting his eyes as he thinks about how lonely Izzy must have been. The man clung to Blackbeard for dear life even when it brought him nothing but pain. Frenchie had never seen loyalty like that before and it took him a while to realize it was born out of hurt.
Something was broken inside Izzy, Frenchie muses, his tear-filled eyes now fixed on the cravat hanging on the grave marker. He can hardly see it in the darkness of the night, but from time to time the ring that adorns it catches light from somewhere far away.
There was a story behind it, that much is obvious to Frenchie. He had never seen the first mate without it. Did it use to be his mother's? Or perhaps he had a younger sister? Or was it a lover, back when Izzy was young and less world-weary?
Now no one will know what the ring meant. Grief in Frenchie's soul wails at the realization that the only person who knew the story is gone. It’s not that he wants to know it, he is aware that it's not for him and probably never would have been, even if Izzy was alive.
But the fact that the ring will become some anonymous trinket breaks his heart. Whatever it meant to the first mate, he treasured it more than any other possession - and that makes it dear to Frenchie's heart. His breath shudders and he throws the lump of earth to the ground.
Damn it, he decides. He's not leaving the ring here, where any passerby can steal it. Izzy wouldn’t want anyone to have it, but if Edward decided not to bury the first mate with it, it should at least end up with someone who will treat it with the respect it deserves.
As he slips the ring into his pocket - it would feel inappropriate to put it on his finger - he feels a tiny bit better. His grief moans quietly at this unexpected relief. Taking a small piece of Izzy away from the man who tortured him seems like the right thing to do.
There was a time - a short, but wonderfully hopeful time - when Frenchie believed he could heal Izzy’s wounds. Or at least patch them up a little and help the first mate move on from whatever he shared with Blackbeard. Show him he had value as a person, not just a tool.
And it was working. Izzy not just opened up and became a real part of the crew, he blossomed into a self-confident man who was his own person and not just Blackbeard’s second in command. The memory of Izzy’s singing makes Frenchie smile through his tears.
He still doesn’t know what it was that he wanted to build with Izzy. A friendship? For sure. A relationship? He wouldn’t have said no if Izzy wanted to have sex, but he's not sure he would have initiated it unprompted. A work relationship? Izzy would have been a great first mate.
A realization that none of those musing matter anymore makes Frenchie want to scream. He knows he should try to cram Izzy into the box in his mind where he keeps all the messed up stuff that happened in his life. He also knows he’s never going to do that. Not to Izzy.
It will be light soon. The crew have long since retreated to the ship and Frenchie is grateful for the opportunity to be alone with Izzy. He needs that. He’s spent almost the whole night by the grave, but he knows it’s time to say goodbye. Izzy would want him to move on and live.
Tears in his eyes, his hand squeezing the ring in his pocket, Frenchie turns his back to the grave and starts walking. Dashed hopes and visions of things that could have been dance in his mind, but he keeps marching. Because that’s what Izzy taught him. To go on despite the pain.