When the bulk of the crew finally returned to The Revenge it was with the setting sun as a warming backdrop. The air had been heated all day but finally a breeze had started to blow through and soothe everybody's heated skin; it would be a pleasant evening though. After the day they'd had Willa looked forward to that.
In the haul of items brought back were mostly practical things like fresh water – which had been at the top of the list – though a few other less practical items had made their way back as well. Wee John had even managed to scrounge up a rather nice-looking bottle of wine. Stede though was absolutely delighted with himself because he'd not only gotten some new books but also a selection of jams that seemed like the most random thing he could have ever managed to trade for. Even Blackbeard appeared surprised the blond captain had found them.
Stede had quickly declared they'd had a tiring day and called for dinner, something that no one disagreed with even slightly so almost everyone vanished from the upper deck there and then. Hell, even Fang and Ivan had gone with them. Dinner did sound rather appealing though, nearly drowning had made her hungry. Yet, as she made to follow her friends Olu caught her by the forearm just as Jim passed them.
"Hey, Willa." He called only for her to spin around with bright eyes.
"Ja, Olu?"
Out from a pocket he pulled a rather large chunk of something. Willa squinted as she looked closer. Ginger!
"Wasn't easy but I found an old woman who had some she was happy to trade."
He handed over the clump of ginger to the beaming teenager. Willa's smile filled the black man with a sense of pride and he soon found her smile to be infectious.
"This is perfect, Olu. You're perfect." She bounced up onto her tip-toes to kiss his cheek.
"Ah, think nothing of it." He waved her off before the two made their way off toward the galley with everyone else.
Willa cautiously rounded the pass once inside the galley. Things would be awkward between them for a while and yet there she was about to ask a favor of their resident knife man. She stood there unmoving so long that Roach lifted an eyebrow at her with vague concern.
"You em, you okay?" He asked while sharpening his treasured knives.
She nodded. "Is there possibly somewhere I could put this so it won't get used or lost?"
Roach looked between the ginger in her hand and those bright emeralds he'd become so enamoured with while an awkward pause lingered between them. Just to give himself something else to focus his attention on, Roach searched around the galley shelves as though his head were on a swivel before he thrust a knife up to a shelf in the corner with a single solitary pot calling it home.
"Em, you can put it up there in the pot. It never gets used."
She nodded and quickly hid her freshly procured ginger away inside the surprisingly clean pot. Willa thanked him but then that awkward weight reared its ugly head once more; she suddenly knew how Atlas must have felt. Roach made quick work of his chopping but seemed to go to great lengths to avoid meeting her eyes again which just didn't sit right with the teenager.
"Are we all right, Roach?"
Finally his skilled knifework halted and Roaches dark eyes flicked from the silver blade coated in vegetable juices to Willa then back.
"Of course we are." He nodded. "We're totally fine."
Willa wasn't the most convinced woman in the world but it was better than the situation they could have found themselves submerged in. Not wishing to push the subject Willa returned to the main galley on the other side of the pass and searched around for Izzy but the place was as void of him as her father's brain was of common sense and self control; i.e totally. She stepped over to the foot of the large table and actually paused seeing both Blackbeard and Stede; they'd been eating with the rest of the crew slightly more often as of late, seemed to enjoy the camaraderie. Willa asked everyone there if they knew were Izzy was only to receive a number of blank expressions.
"Willa, baby girl, you know he never eats with the rest of us." The bearded captain shrugged. "Nothing new. He's always been that way – well, sometimes he'd eat with the boys but that was rare."
Willa sighed. Izzy wouldn't ever be considered the poster boy for happy-go-lucky socialite but that didn't make him a complete hermit. However, if he veered too far that way Willa supposed he already had the tiny cave-like room for a hermit.
"He normally comes it to get a plate at the very least."
Looked like that would be her task for the evening, so she picked up two wooden bowls and helped herself to the pot which had been sat in the middle of the table. With sustenance secured she flashed the rest of the Revenge crew a kind smile then headed off.
It was Stede who brought everyone's attention back to the table with a comment he'd accidentally mused aloud. "You know, I'd love to know how she did that."
Black Pete tilted his head. "Did what, Captain?"
"How she managed to get through to our Mister Hands. He's not the sort of man you want to speak with, there's clearly an impenetrable wall there." He patted his chest. "Willa though, she seems to have found a door or possibly some climbing equipment."
"Perhaps a tunnel." The Swede added.
Jim shoved a piece of bread into their mouth before speaking with their mouth half filled. "Maybe it's because she's fucking him."
Lucius pulled a face. "Please don't remind us. I can't take the mental image."
Roach plonked himself down beside Black Pete at the end of the long table and, while he pulled a face as well, he tried to hide his disappointment at the mental image; 'me neither' still slipped from his lips though.
"Iz has always been a tough nut to crack." Said Blackbeard. "Somethin' happened to him when he were a kid. Never told me what and I feel weird about asking. My guess is that's why he's always angry, shoves folk away."
Buttons piped up then, he'd been so quiet that the Swede actually startled at his voice, and the Swede had been sat right beside Buttons.
"I know he's yer friend an' all, Cap'n, but there's angry an' then there's bein' a mental bawbag."
"Guys," began Blackbeard. "I've known Izzy a long time. There's more to him than just bawbag-ness."
"Well I look forward to the day he decides to show us that."
At that part of the conversation their blond captain decided it was probably time to shift their topic to something less Izzy Hands centric. He quickly started to talk of their trade trip, they'd sold the last of the oddments they'd purloined from the French vessel and gathered some rather nice fresh food for dinner that Roach had worked wonders with.
Meanwhile Willa found her grumpy lover stood up on the quarterdeck while Frenchie sat on watch. Frenchie hadn't yet had the courage to speak to Izzy or linger in his eyeline for too long after what had happened, just shuffled around Izzy like he expected to be diced into chum for the sharks.
"Brought you dinner." She said as she reached the top of the steps.
"Not hungry." He growled out quickly which had Willa role her eyes.
"I really don't care. You didn't have breakfast so you have to be hungry."
"Well, I'm not." He insisted with an almost childish tone.
Argument for the sake of argument, Izzy had mastered that particular section of conversation, shame he'd lingered at novice on all the other sections.
Willa set the two bowls down on the gunwale in front of him. "I still don't care because you're going to eat it, and you're going to eat it all."
The first mate finally looked at her properly with an overly analytical expression from a moment.
"When did you become so … confrontational?"
His head even tilted like a puppy, Willa half expected an ear to flop over his head.
"I'm not," she told him. "I'm taking care of you."
Izzy huffed, clearly wanted to complain more but Willa had learned how to deal with Mister Sourpuss. She gripped his leather lapel and pulled him to her for a kiss, a brush of her tongue over his teeth and then she released him having been successful in shutting him up. Izzy wasn't one for public displays of affection even if Frenchie was doing his best to not pay attention to them.
"Do as you're told, Israel. Eat your damn dinner." Izzy's eye twitched; he was Izzy Hands, loyal first mate to Blackbeard himself and couldn't be ordered about by a Prussian teenager. "Now, puppy."
Like a child refusing to eat their collard greens, Izzy snatched a bowl to him from the gunwale and started to eat.
Willa flashed him that smile she always did when she won. "Good boy."
While the man with salt and pepper hair ate Willa hugged him from behind, rested her cheek on his leather-clad back and breathed him in.
"Strange," she started quietly. "Everyone has been on the same ship, all had a hard day under the sun, so everybody should smell of sweat but you smell of Izzy."
"Probably because I am Izzy not Hector the Happy Prick."
She snorted into his back at the deadpanned tone of his comment; God he was good with sarcasm.
"You're all leather and salt and soap. I like it."
"Eat your damn food, lass." He sighed.
The sixteen-year-old chuckled into his back which caused her bosom to press further into him but he'd not complain.
"Isn't that my line?"
"I'm a pirate," Izzy shrugged nonchalantly. "I steal things."
That got a real laugh from her, a deep, guttural thing most well-to-do ladies trained themselves to hide away and pretend wasn't something they did, like passing wind and snoring. Willa didn't snore though, Izzy had lay awake in bed next to her enough nights to know she never snored, threw a fit when she had a nightmare like a sword-wielding octopus, but never snored.
When her laughing went on a little longer than necessary, Izzy pushed her away; not aggressive, just enough to free himself from her grasp. Having taken the hint Wilhelmina retrieved her own bowl and started to eat as well. A quiet moment lingered up on the quarterdeck while they polished off their meals, but, as will all silences both amiable and strained, it had to come to an end eventually.
"There's a nice breeze in the air tonight." Lungs took in a deep breath as if to savor the evening. "Without the salt it would remind me of where I grew up."
Blue eyes watched her over the bowl a moment before his mouth opened. "… What's Prussia like?"
Izzy had travelled to many places in his life but that didn't make him a man of the world, wasn't a tourist or artist looking for a pretty hill to paint and a woman to chase in the evenings. Truthfully Prussia was an alien concept to him. He imagined buildings like those in London just with a different language bouncing between them every time his girl casually mentioned her homeland, but he was certainly smart enough to guess that every city didn't look identical.
"Surprisingly similar to the rest of the western world." She told him as she set her empty bowl atop the gunwale again. "Though with more people speaking German." Perhaps Mister Hands hadn't been so off the mark after all. "The von Krieger family is a very old one with a large estate, it's massive actually and sits amongst rolling hills with the ocean hiding behind them. The mansion itself is – how do you say in English? Riesige Haus."
"Huge?" He guessed.
Willa nodded. "That's it, huge. The mansion is a huge house of dark stone with gardens around it. One side is flanked by – what's bigger than massive and huge?" Izzy quickly offered gargantuan and a kvetched a comment about not being a dictionary; Willa continued unhindered. "A gargantuan forest that my mother would refuse to let Fiete and I ever go near. My brother is cunning though if nothing else, he'd always manage to find a split second where she wasn't looking and the next thing I knew he'd haul me up onto his horse and we'd take off toward the woods." She told her lover fondly. "It's pleasantly warm but when it rains, my God, does it rain. Rain never really bothered me though, it was just another excuse to sit inside and read."
"You and your damn books."
Most would have attributed such an utterance to yet more of Izzy's classic irritated moaning but he'd seen her eyes start to mist and offered her a a distraction, a kindness.
Willa shook herself mentally and blinked rapidly a handful of times before that sweet smile donned her face once more and green eyes found him.
"What is England like? I've never been."
Izzy huffed out an unimpressed laugh, the sort which said 'are you serious?'.
"Pray you never do. Rich folk have it alright in their carriages and fancy houses. Everybody else? For the rest it's pretty much a fucking pigsty." He placed his gloved hand on his chest a moment while the other placed down his bowl. "I'm from London, I know. It's overcrowded and dirty. To be perfectly fucking blunt, I eat better as a goddamn pirate, at least now I get meat regularly."
Willa's brow furrowed into that oddly fetching confused expression of hers. "You didn't get meat?"
"I wasn't born rich, little lass." As if she'd not noticed. "I was actually born rather fucking poor. Was lucky if I got potatoes and bread let alone meat. London's a big city, not like the countryside where you could just wander off to the woods whenever you please to try to catch a rabbit. My advice, don't go to that shithole."
She shuffled a little closer and rested her head on his shoulder. Izzy wasn't overly pleased but wasn't enough of a total cunt to refuse her.
"It's your home though, surely there has to be something you like about it, even if that is just a friend or some family."
Izzy snorted while his eyes gazed out at the water. "I – The sea is my home, she's a cruel one but she's not vicious like London. And when you're a kid more focused on not having the shit knocked out of you by his pa you don't make friends. Thankfully my family is all dead."
"You hated them all that much?"
The first mate paused at that question, it had been asked so gently but had grounded him to a halt. He remained silent so long Willa wondered if he'd mentally exited the conversation; he'd done it before. She'd just started to think up other subjects when he seemingly jolted out of his thoughts and spoke with more sorrow in his voice then Willa thought possible. His tone wasn't just laced with sorrow, it had downed in it. The sort of tone which came with a tremble and Willa couldn't resist squeezing his calloused hand with her softer one.
"It was just Pa I hated. Ma fucked off, didn't really blame her. For – for my sister death was mercy."
Sister? Well that explained a lot of things about Israel Hands. Explained why he had that protective instinct for girls but couldn't seem to care less about anyone else. Wilhelmina wanted to ask, she really wanted to ask, yearned for it even, but she knew better than to question Izzy about his sister. Instead she just carried on with her previous plan to move the conversation on while she continued holding his hand.
"I was thinking that since you're not on watch and things are quiet we could do some more reading and writing."
Just as earlier he'd offered her a kindness, Willa had offered him one and Izzy actually felt gratitude. He boxed up his painful memories once more, placed them in the pit and restedthat trusty stone atop everything before he returned to his usual self.
"Damn, you do like to work a man hard."
The sixteen-year-old grinned teasingly. "I learned it from a rather handsome first mate."
"Huh, do I know him?"
If he felt comfortable enough to make stupid jokes Willa knew she'd gotten him out of his mind quick enough. Izzy let her tug him toward the ladder so they could go to their cabin without even being bothered to glare at Frenchie.
Once inside their quarters Izzy found himself quickly sat down like a schoolboy with sheets in front of him. Willa, his rather eye-pleasing teacher, wrote a few things down then had him read them to her before he copied them. Thanks to his tiny ability to recognize certain words he saw a lot, making Izzy literate had come on in leaps and bounds and Willa was proud of him for that. Her clever boy.
Governesses had always told her that shutting herself off with nothing but books and her brother for company would obliterate any chance she had of finding a man. Yet there Willa was using her vast knowledge of reading and writing in four languages to aid her man in bettering himself.
When he finished writing out the last of the more complex sentences she'd had him working on Willa glanced over them to see his handwriting had improved significantly, gone were the shaky lines indicative of an unfamiliar hand and in their place were much more confident lines and loops. A few more days and she suspected a lowercase K would no longer look like a H.
Willa stood beside him at the table but Izzy didn't mind since his face was perfectly level with her bust and every time he flicked his eyes sideways he got a good view. Chameleon, that was a good word to describe the Prussian. She could be equally at home aboard a pirate ship dressed in leather as she could in high society draped in silk and jewels. Ultimately Izzy supposed that would be for the best, she could make her home anywhere that way.
He'd gotten a little too deep into his mental ponderings so when Willa bent to kiss his gray-dusted cheek it actually caught him by surprise.
"You're getting much better, Izzy. If you keep learning at this rate I'll have to teach you German."
Izzy shrugged off her praise, he'd not done anything a child couldn't do. There was the unusual thing of Israel Hands, he craved praise but could never quite bring himself to accept it.
Willa straddled him then which caused the little chair to creak slightly. When his arms didn't automatically ensnare her hips Willa manoeuvred him into position and kissed him while her fingers started to free him from his laces.
"My puppy has been such a good boy, he deserves a reward."
As soon as she'd loosened the laces of his leather pants enough to slip her hand inside Izzy groaned into their kisses. She'd learned everything he'd taught her just as quickly and efficiently as he'd learned from her it would seem. Her soft hand brought him almost to the brink of completion with surprisingly confident strokes that had his hips bucking and his fingers entangle with the bottom lacing of her stays just for something to grip.
"How do you spell revenge?"
What? Izzy jolted out of his bliss; he'd been so fucking goddamn close. Her hand stilled and that euphoric pool Izzy had hoped to throw himself into faded into the mist. It continued to linger though, like a siren calling to a sailor in the dead of night.
"The fuck is this, a quiz?"
That earned him a squeeze, though a little too far on the side of gonna-rip-his-dick-off for the first mate's liking.
"Puppy, I asked you a question."
These displays of confidence had become more common as of late and Izzy approved. Those green eyes full of aplomb were something he'd become rather fond of; a total one-eighty from the meek child they'd rescued from Davy Jones. To be perfectly frank, that expression was what had him answering rather than the grasp she had on his cock.
"R.E.V.E.N.G.E." He provided, which earned him a kiss, a 'good boy' and the perfect strokes of her hand.
The mist cleared revealing that pool once more, his eyes fluttered a little while he found her perfect petal lips for another deep kiss of teeth and tongue. How sweet she tasted and -
"Spell mathematics."
Fuck they may as well have tossed a tarp over that pool of ecstasy because it looked like he'd not be taking a dip any time soon. Her hand had stilled again and the frustration weighed on him.
"M.A.T.H ... E.M.A.T.I.K-"
Willa slapped him with the hand not around his dick, a sharp sting erupted from his cheek, an ache which travelled down his body and had his hardened length twitch.
"Wrong," she said. "Not a K. Try again."
"C.S."
He must have gotten it right because Willa smiled at him and leaned in for another kiss that never melded into the mixing of tongues thanks to the next random word she tossed out.
"Millennium next."
"Do we have t– ah!"
She gave his dick another painful squeeze and Izzy knew he wasn't getting a choice. Willa lifted an eyebrow as if daring him to complain again and, while Izzy thrived on argument, he found he enjoyed their little game.
"M. I. L. E-" Slap! Izzy's cheek reddened a little with this assault but his cock still twitched with eagerness. "Two Ls. E. N-" He paused momentarily anticipating another slap but when it didn't come he realized this game was actually helping. "- E. N. I-" Slap!
"You're better than this, puppy." Her breath caressed his heated skin.
"Two Ns. I. U. M." So close again. "Christ woman, let me cum for fuck's sake."
The sixteen-year-old chuckled to herself before giving him a single pump.
"One more, I promise. How do you spell my name?"
Izzy met her eyes a moment. "L. I. T. T. L. E. L. A, S. S."
She smiled, a gentle upturn of her lips, the sort of smile only a young woman could give her lover. Izzy took the opportunity to pick Wilhelmina up as he had many times before and tossed her down on the bed. She'd teased him long e-fucking-nough, he'd not let that climax escape him again; the little tease wouldn't be asking any more grammar questions that night.
~X~
The vile sweaty paws of men touched every inch of her body as they kept her so horribly pinioned. Kommodore Hohenstaufen only shared his play thing when she'd proven herself to once again be stronger willed than himself. He hated that he just couldn't break Freiin Wilhelmina, not that she really had a title any longer. Willa continued to glare though, Hohenstaufen actually thought giving her to others to break would make her fear him? Arschloch. The others she feared, his two favorite officers, though she only knew the name of one; Groß, which was an overcompensating surname in Willa's opinion. The other she'd just christened Stinkend due to his terrible breath.
Groß and Stinkend weren't like the Kommodore, they were cruel and could keep it up long enough to get the job done. They didn't hate that Willa hadn't been broken yet, they just saw it as an opportunity. She felt ashamed to admit it but Groß and Stinkend would eventually break her, and once they did there wouldn't be anything left of the girl who read in corners or creptoff to the woods with her brother for some exploration by horseback, just a shell were once a girl's soul had dwelled.
She tried not to look at the two men whose grins grew by the second. Wanted to focus on something else, anything else, and that melody seemed good enough. If she had something else to anchor herself to, use as a linchpin, then at the very least Stinkend's breath wouldn't be such torture.
And what even was that damn singing? Not bad, just very faint and out of place. Then there was whatever had decided to pet her hair. Not Stinkend, not Groß and certainly not Hohenstaufen. Nein! It was too much, so many hands, some from the men in front of her, others from some kind of spectre. Too much. Too much. Too much!
Willa's eyes snapped open to a dark cabin which gently swayed on the high seas. There weren't numerous sets of hands on her bruised skin, her skin wasn't even bruised, just two large, calloused hands, one at her hip while the other combed softly through her auburn hair.
"… forty leagues from shore as I sailed, as I sailed." He sang quietly. "And being cruel still, as I sailed, as I sailed-"
Izzy. Izzy was … singing to her; and rather well. Any panic she'd felt was quickly shoved aside so confusion could occupy the space in her mind. Her heart raced but Willa let the first mate's soft singing was over her to banish everything back into the dark pit where it belonged.
"… and being cruel still, the gunner I did kill and his precious blood did spill as I sailed, as I sailed."
Slowly, still adjusting to the night, Willa's emerald orbs tilted up to the older man where he finally noticed and his singing grounded to an abrupt halt.
"You were singing." She said, her accent thicker than usual thanks to the sleep which still clung to her.
Izzy swallowed audibly. "Was trying something new. At least you didn't punch me this time."
"Worried I'm going to knock out a tooth?" She breathed out a laugh and snuggled into his hairy chest for comfort;Hohenstaufen, Stinkend and Groß were dead, had gone down with Die Falke.
First Mate Hands must have been half-asleep himself because he responded to her teasing with a tease of his own. "If you go knocking them out who am I going to dazzle with my smile?"
Ensnared in the safety he provided, Willa cuddled herself in closer and pressed a kiss to his right pectoral while her hand slipped into his smallclothes. As soon as her hand reached his half-hard length he caught her hand through his smallclothes and flashed her a questioning look.
"Lass, you sure about this? You were in the middle of a nightmare not a minute ago."
A pause lingered and she propped herself up on an elbow which caused the sheets to slip down to her waist, not that she cared about her nakedness. That pause hung around so long Izzy actually sat up as well to lean on one hand while the Revenge continued to sway almost comfortingly.
"What we do is sex." The teenager finally began. "Tenderness. I like it, I want it." Izzy just stared at her, his hair over his forehead. "What he did was … pathetic and savage, all about power." Willa turned to face him properly and cupped his stubbled cheek. "The only place he scares me now is in my nightmares. I don't flinch when you touch me, don't jump at every new noise. Am I healed? Nein, of course I'm not, but I would like to move on. He's dead and I'm not. I'm with you."
Then she was kissing him and Izzy quickly found himself with a lap full of sixteen-year-old noble girl. Her fingers found his hair and threaded themselves through to scrape his scalp in that way she knew he liked; Willa just enjoyed messing it up.
"Puppy," she hummed against his lips.
This Prussian continued to be an enigma but the core between her legs made perfect sense.
XXXX
A/N
There's no way to know if Izzy was born in London – I know, I really fucking looked. England is as good a guess as historians seem to have so we're going with London because it's reasonably well documented for the time period.
The song Izzy sings is called Captain Kidd or sometimes The Ballard of Captain Kidd, which was written somewhere around 1701. I used the Ed Trickett lyrics as they're more complete than most sources, and it is one of the elder versions – so closer to the original which would have been sung in the 1700s.