Chapter Text
Frenchie doesn’t mean to return to the Inn exhausted and battle-hardened and caked in dried blood. Quite frankly, he’d never meant to return at all. It’s just a stroke of his own dumb luck that he’s survived with all his own blood and major organs where they belong. Even in his wildest, most absurd fantasies, he only ever makes it halfway up the lawn, to collapse and sigh his final breath beside the mound of earth where he’d left his heart.
Christ, Alive. He’s so fucking tired.
It shouldn’t take the last of his strength to rap his knuckles against the fresh coat of paint on the front door, wet from the sideways-falling sheets of rain that just won’t stop. It shouldn’t be all he can do to keep himself standing while he waits for Stede. For Ed. For some-fucking-one to open the door. It shouldn’t, but it does.
Fuck it. He shouldn’t have had to go back to slitting throats and spilling guts, either, but. Vengeance will do that to you. Love will do that to you.
There’s some banging about inside. Some shouting to follow. Nothing close to the door. So, he waits. Fights the urge to lean against the doorframe. Frenchie would rub his eyes, but he’s not terribly keen to get someone else’s blood in them. He’d had enough of that before he’d taken his new place aboard the Revenge. When...
FUCK.
Fighting to toss the thought aside, Frenchie knocks again. Louder. Harder. Why isn’t someone coming to the fucking door, already? He’s going to drop where he stands, so help him, and his two ex-Captains can clean up whatever remains in the light of day. Once the buzzards, or the gulls, or whatever the fuck wild beasts live out this way have had the chance to pick him clean. They can bury his bones – or whatever’s left – next to...
Jesus Christ. When did it become so hard to even think the man’s name? Saying it, nah, the word hasn’t left his mouth in months. Hearing it from the tongues of others? Still a hard pass. He’s managed to find himself anywhere others weren’t talking about the man, and quickly. But his thoughts. His own inner sanctum of peace and love has taken someone he still holds so dear, and shoved him into the deepest, darkest corner of The Box. He'd rather poke holes in one of his enemies and find them leaking delicious buttercream frosting than to ever look in that corner again.
And why?
Well. Frenchie isn’t stupid enough to think his reasons any more noble than the basic truth. It’s a blame game, and he's losing to himself. If he’d been closer. If he’d stayed next to him like he’d always intended. Maybe he could have saved him. Maybe he would have survived.
He knocks again.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Fuck the fucking English. And he has. They all have. Every last one of the bastards they could lay sword upon. The Royal Navy is a few hundred men lighter these days, and he’d be happy to relieve them of another thousand or two, except... It’s been a year now, a solid fucking year, and while his motivation still stands, the pillar of his follow-through is crumbling. Thoroughly. He’s stabbed, and severed, and sliced- Why do all the best specifics of violence begin with the letter s?
“ Open the fuck up!” he shouts, the words swallowed by a roll of thunder.
He doesn’t want to think about this. He doesn’t what to think about all the shit (another s ) that he’s been responsible for. That he’s now a Wanted Man for. He’s going to go inside and drink himself to death. He’d going to pay for a room until he starves to death, or his body gives out from exhaustion, or he drowns in bad rum. He doesn’t care. He just wants to do it, but first, somebody has to-
“Open the fucking door, guys!”
He hasn't cried. Not once has he shed a tear. He’s been waiting. Waiting for the right time. Waiting until he could afford to split at the seams and fall well and truly apart. The crew needed him, and they needed him to keep it together. They needed him to support them and see them all out in one piece.
They needed Frenchie to be him.
But he wasn’t. He wasn’t and he isn’t and he’s tired of pretending. He’s tired of having to face the fact that the one thing, the one and true good thing that he managed to find in the darkest days of his life was gone. Just fucking ripped out of existence. They’d had so little time. So many things had been left unsaid. Maybe he’ll take a bottle down the lawn tomorrow and say a few of them. Say all of them. It would be a fitting place to go.
If he doesn’t, y’know, turn back and drown himself in the damned rain first.
Frenchie raises his fist to knock again, to pound at the wood, willing to throw his shoulder against the hinges if it will help. From inside, a loud bang , this time accompanied by a soft thumping sound, halts his intentions. More shouting. Closer this time, familiar in a way that tickles his memory in all the wrong places. He’s playing tricks on himself. Hearing things. Maybe Death is nearer than he thinks.
If only he was so lucky.
The latches are being worked on the other side of the door. Too slow, but it's progress. Lightning strikes as the door eases open, surely distorting Frenchie’s worldview because, no. A trick of the light. Maybe his eyes have welled up in anticipation, now but so far from release. He blinks and has another look. No. No, his vision is clear, and that face... The eyes staring back at him are beautiful and wide, surprised, but relieved. The lips move over a silvering beard, jaw working until the man before him finally clears his throat. He shifts on the crutch beneath his arm, and Frenchie’s ears are filled with a precious, rasping voice.
“Took you long enough.”
All at once, the world spins and comes crashing to a halt. The force is so great, it jolts the lid from The Box. What spills out... He’s energized. He’s alight. He’s clean and innocent and vulnerable and still so damned wounded, but. But. There it is. It’s the only thought occupying his mind. It’s a joyous sound ringing in his ears. It feels so good to come gasping from somewhere in the depths of his heartbroken soul.
“ Izzy!”