#sam is gone

It started when the fever set in; the visions. At first just glancing hints in the corner of his eye as he limped about the deck, doing his level best to ignore the crew and the captains, just trying to carry on as he’d always done. But as he began to feel more sickly, as heat lanced up his foot and through his leg, the apparitions began to take shape. The wisp of dark hair in the breeze when he turned his head, or the hem of a fine red coat just out of reach before he could blink it away. 

By the time Izzy finally collapsed, heaving and sweating as the fever clawed through him, he thought he might have seen a pair of familiar worn boots in front of his face as he hit the deck. But it was hard to be sure, before his vision went dark.

He woke on the galley table with a small vial of laudanum being forced past his lips. Fang’s face was upside down and blurry above him. Fang was saying something. There were other voices, too. They sounded frantic. Maybe angry. He couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. He didn’t understand what was happening. Not until someone tugged his boot off and the cloying smell of infection and rot rose in the air, and Roach came into view with a frighteningly large cleaver. His foot. They were going to take his foot. 

He whined and tried to struggled, but there were hands all over him now, holding him fast to the table until all he could do was toss his head uselessly from side to side. But he stopped dead when his wild gaze caught on the apparition in the dark corner of the room, now fully realized. Izzy choked on a scream at the horror of what he saw.

Those eyes, that had once been so dark and expressive, were clouded over in death. Long strands of hair that Izzy remembered being soft and lustrous were tangled and plastered over a disturbingly pale and waxy face. The fine velvet coat, bright as anything in Izzy’s memory, was dull and faded and heavy with water. It was ill-fitted now over the bloat of sea water and putrid gasses. Izzy wept. He managed to twist a hand free and flung it out toward the figure half shadowed in the corner of the galley, reaching desperately as the glint of Roach’s cleaver caught in the corner of his eye. A hand reached back, corroded rings bitten into swollen fingers and familiar calluses softened by water. At the first frigid touch, the edge of a blade bit into his ankle, and Izzy blacked out.

When he came to, he could vaguely make out the sounds of an argument. Something about infection and amputation. Somewhere, the sound of dripping water and the smell of salt invaded his senses. There was a sense of unreality, a sort of numbness that Izzy couldn’t shake. Though, perhaps that was for the better. 

The fever didn’t abate. It continued to creep up his leg in angry red webs, no matter how much rum and herbs Roach doused it with. And then, once again, Izzy was held down and put under the knife. And it still didn’t help.

He didn’t know how long he’d been down here. Very few people came to see him unless it was to hold him down and drug him up, except for Roach and the drowned vision that never left him anymore. Sometimes, he thought he could hear Edward yelling. He couldn’t count the days anymore to measure the time. Rather, it was only by the pieces taken from his leg that he knew time was still moving, even through his laudanum filed haze. More and more of him they took, every time. Soon, he though rather hysterically, there would be nothing left of him to take. But still the infection worked it’s way deeper.

Through it all, that ghostly figure loomed beside him, staring Izzy down with that blank, milky gaze. Izzy was afraid. He was nauseous and exhausted and fucking terrified. He couldn’t do this anymore.

His chance came the drug fugue lifted a little. Enough for him to think clearly for a few minutes about how he was going to do this. Swallowing and mentally bracing himself, Izzy rolled sluggishly from the table he’d been kept on and onto the floor. He had to bite down into his arm to cover the agonized scream. He had to lay there for a few minutes to get his breathing under control. From there, he pushed himself to the galley door and wedged it open with his hands, ignoring the stabbing pain that coursed through the stump of his thigh.

To his luck, the sky was dark. On Bonnet’s crew, only the watchman and the helmsman would be up after dark, which meant he would t have to go trying to fight off any well-meaning fools who would only try to take him back to the galley and to Roach’s tender loving care.

It was slow going, pulling and pushing himself along the deck with his arms and one remaining leg. He was panting and drenched in sweat within minutes, dizzy and spent and wishing for death to come that much sooner.

Izzy froze when he felt the gaze of a living person. Slowly, eyes wide and terrified, he turned his head to see Buttons standing in the silvery moonlight. Neither of them moved for a long moment. And then, Buttons nodded gravely and said, “Fare ye well, Mr. Hands. And a safe journey to the other side.” With that, he turned his strange gaze away from Izzy and up toward the moon. Buttons knew. He knew what Izzy was going to do, and he was letting him go. Izzy swallowed hard and, arms burning with the exertion, continued to drag himself toward the railing.

Izzy wheezed as he clawed his way to the stern railing in the dark, shaking horribly under the now ever present shadow dripping beside him. It was a struggle to haul himself up, strength ravaged by the fever and his wounds. Izzy panted as he leaned against the rail, hoping the burning in his leg might subside if he rested a moment. The bandage binding what remained of his thigh was wet. He didn’t look to see if it was blood or salt water. The quiet squelch and scrape of sodden phantom boots followed him across the deck. Well. At least he wouldn’t be alone for this. Not really.

“Does it hurt very much?” Izzy asked in a rough whisper as he stared down into the black water. He didn’t expect an answer, and he didn’t get one. It didn’t matter. It was a stupid question anyway. Of course it would hurt. That was just the nature of things. A small, niggling part of his mind was screaming at him. He wasn’t really going to do this, was he? He couldn’t be doing this. It went against every instinct that demanded he fight and scrape and claw to see another day. 

But he was so fucking tired. All used up and good for little else but pity. That was no way for a man like him to go on. So he just wouldn’t. Izzy spared a second to wonder if he might be missed, but quickly banished that thought from his head. Mourning—or not—was best left to the living.

With a wavering sigh, Izzy chanced one last look at his companion. A sheen of tears blurred his vision of that gruesome figure. “No more waiting, Sammy,” he choked out, squeezing the tail in a vice grip until splinters pricked at his palms. “Time to go.”

Rather gracelessly, he hauled himself over the side and fell into the water. On instinct alone, he flailed and struggled to keep his head above the water. He took a deep breath and put himself on his back to force himself to go still. As he drifted away from the ship, Izzy stared up at the star strewn sky and sighed, forcing all the air from his lungs in a rush. 

The water closed over his head and he began to sink. Izzy’s heart rabbited in his chest. Perhaps a meter down, his lungs seized and a spike of panic hit him at the lack of air. Fighting the urge to struggle back to the surface, he sucked in a great breath of water, and choked. For a minute, he jerked in the water, confused and terrified, until the last of his strength finally left him and he drifted deeper into the sea.

The last thing Izzy knew, before the fractured moonlight faded from his sight and his spamming lungs finally gave out, was the vague feeling of being cradled in devastatingly familiar arms.

***

There were two figures reclined in the sand at the shoreline. They were tucked very close to each other, a head rested upon the chest of one, an arm curled about the waist of the other. In the sunlight, an emerald ring glittered merrily on the finger of an outstretched hand. 

“Are you terribly happy, my darling?” asked the one, fingers squeezing lightly at the other’s waist as the two admired the ring. “Very much so,” the other replied, “the happiest.” 

The water lapped at their bare feet as they lay together, smiling.