Chapter Text
I
Of all the problems that Stede had considered in getting back to Edward, he has not planned for the fact that the Revenge simply does not stop.
It’s hard enough work getting off that desert island, finding a ship of their own and then locating the Revenge at sea—so when Roach, at the telescope, yells, “I’VE GOT SOMETHING,” Stede’s heart leaps in his chest. Sure enough, there is Stede’s old ship at the horizon, and everything seems to be going swimmingly. They change their course, sail happily west, hail the Revenge when they are close enough… and receive no response.
Standing at the prow, Stede squints across the waves at the distant shape of the ship. His fingers drift anxiously towards the pocket of his waistcoat, where lives a scrap of old fabric fished from the sea. He smooths the silk down and tries not to think about it. “Do you think they didn’t see us?”
Oluwande and Wee John exchange a weary glance.
Luckily, Stede Bonnet is not a man easily thwarted! No thwarting today, he decides, and so he commands for the crew of his new ship, the Pleasant Day, to pick up speed. It’s only a sloop-of-war, a dinky thing compared to the Revenge, but that makes it all the speedier for chasing ex-co-captains across the Caribbean. Within a few hours they are near enough that they are, if not impossible to ignore, at least difficult to pretend not to have seen.
Stede has always believed in the importance of communication. Whether he’s any good at it is another discussion entirely, but the fact remains that he is willing to give it a good shot.
“Right,” he says as he strides gallantly onto the deck, carrying a nice wicker basket inside which lies an abundance of neatly folded fabrics. With a decisive thump, he sets the basket down on the deck, and then he plants his hands on his hips. “Anyone here fluent in semaphore?”
Oluwande, Wee John, and Black Pete peer into the basket.
“I have a lot of flags and a lot of things to say, but I don’t have the shoes for the rigging,” Stede explains.
“Not it,” Wee John and Pete say immediately, and Oluwande swears.
“Good lad,” Stede says. “Now, then. I have a handy book here… Let’s see. How would we go about communicating the message, as follows:” He pauses in rifling through the pages and clears his throat. “Hi, darling. It’s me, Stede. Sorry I left you behind, I made a mistake, and I regretted it every second but I’ve had some closure and I’m ready to be with you.”
He looks expectantly at Oluwande.
“You are raving mad,” Oluwande says.
Stede purses his lips. “No, you’re right. Darling is coming on a bit strong. Alright, try this—”
At that moment, a cannonball smashes through the Pleasant Day’s figurehead—a very plump and cheerful looking cherub, who has now been decapitated—and Stede screams.
He drops to the ground, the book of naval signals gone flying somewhere down the deck, and he scrabbles about for cover on his hands and knees. There is general calamitous shrieking and shouting as the crew reel and cower, and Stede presses close behind a large wooden case.
“Shit! They’re shooting at us,” he says incredulously. “Why are they shooting at us? Oluwande, get the flags and ask them.”
Oluwande ducks, covering his head, and shouts back, “That’s not how it works!”
Another crash that echoes through the ship, this one smashing through somewhere on the quarter deck so that Stede imagines something in his cabin has just been destroyed, and the ship groans under the stress. Stede knows how the ship feels.
“Do you think they know it’s us?” Stede asks from his position hiding on the floor.
Wee John mutters, “I feckin’ hope not,” with a baleful glower, and Stede thinks he might possibly have come into this half-cocked.
“Quick, what’s the flag for there’s been a horrible misunderstanding?”
“I have no idea!”
Stede frowns and his temper snaps. “What’s the point of you being a bloody sailor, then?”
Wee John balks at that.
Stede holds up his hands. “Sorry. No, I’m sorry, that wasn’t fair.” He takes a deep breath. “I shouldn’t have taken my nerves out on you. That was unkind of me, and wrong. How are you feeling about it?”
“Uh, Captain?” Oluwande says, in a voice that is equally confused and full of dread. “They’re turning away.”
Stede scrambles upright. “What? Why?!”
“I dunno, maybe they’ve—oh, hang on. There’s a flag coming up. Wait—make that two… three flags. That’s—” Oluwande sighs and lowers the telescope. “Fuck me, you two deserve each other.”
“What?” Stede snatches at the telescope and peers through at an assortment of coloured flags being slowly but steadily hoisted up the mast: a black and yellow check; a rather fetching blue and white stripe; a red and white check; others still are being raised. “What does that mean? Where’s the book?”
“No need for the book,” Buttons says sagely. “I know these well. That’d be … keep clear. And then dangerous cargo aboard, as well as … you are in danger, which may well be a threat.”
“Well, that seems unnecessarily dramatic. Do we have one that says calm down and let’s talk about this like rational adults?”
Oluwande drags a hand over his face.
“Alright. Plan B. Let’s fire a cannonball at them, see how they like it.”
“That’s your idea of rational?!”
“Why is he allowed to open fire and we’re not? This is a free country.”
“He’s Blackbeard. And you’re—” Oluwande flounders briefly, “—wearing an embroidered dressing gown.”
Stede levels him a sternly pitying look. “Oluwande, this is silk brocade.”
However, the debate as to what sort of return they should make to the Revenge becomes somewhat moot as Stede crawls out to find that the ship in question is no longer firing at them, but simply… sailing away. That hardly seems fair.
Stubborn as ever, Stede has made up his mind to instruct his crew to carry on chasing Ed’s ship—or technically Stede’s ship that Ed has nicked, if we want to nitpick—until either Ed loses them or sinks them. However, as he stands up to give this order, his attention is caught by a faint white triangle near the horizon. “I say. What is that?”
Briefly, Buttons struggles to find what he is indicating, his head swinging wildly until Stede seizes and physically positions him to say emphatically there!
“Oh, right!” Buttons says with a knowledgeable puffing of his chest. “A ship, I reckon.”
Stede squints, contemplative. “Can you be just a tad more specific?”
“Er. Merchant sailing vessel, I think. Spanish colours.”
“Do you think it’s particularly well-defended?”
“Well… from the size of it, fourth-rate maybe, one or two decks,” Black Pete says, sounding authoritative and knowledgeable.
“More masts than we’ve got, at any rate,” Buttons adds.
“Do you think they’ll have guns, I suppose is the real question?” Stede asks.
Buttons peers over the railing. “Ship that size, they’d be mad not to.”
“Hm.” Stede considers this. “Right-o. Change tack. We’re going after it.”
“Sorry, think I misheard—we’re what, now?”
“One of two men is aboard the Revenge right now,” Stede starts as he walks down the deck.
“Think there might be more than two—”
“Either it’s Edward, in which case he will surely feel compelled to intervene so that I don’t get myself killed, or it’s Blackbeard, in which case he is duty-bound by his own reputation not to let other pirates hunt on his turf. On our part, it’s just bad manners. Either way, he will have to get involved.”
“And what if he’s not on that ship anymore? What if Izzy is captain and they just sail away?”
Stede pauses. “Well. In that case, we will probably all die. But—chins up!”
As they get gradually closer over the next hour, Stede studies the approaching ship. He has to admit, it is starting to look a bit larger now than it did through the telescope. Two decks, indeed. And not just of amenities and ample sleeping space, he realises now—two decks of guns. That is one whole deck of guns more than the Pleasant Day has, and Stede supposes they may well even have the sailors to man them.
In a second of doubt, he wonders if he has made another terrible mistake. But… no, surely not. He is the Gentleman Pirate—he can do this! Who says that he can’t raid a ship all on his own if he wants to? He knows a thing or two about piracy. He reckons he can be really quite menacing in his own right. He is totally prepared to swashbuckle his way through this. He takes deep, steadying breaths and he tries to resist the temptation to check whether the Revenge is still following them.
It's time. He calls it. “Hoist the black!” he shouts, and buckles on his sword belt. “And Buttons,” he adds over his shoulder. “I think it may be time to get your teeth in.”
He straightens the lapels of his battle jacket and heads into action.
The Spanish ship, surprisingly, surrenders. They strike a white flag and let the Pleasant Day pull up alongside them, while Stede paces and plans his opening remarks.
“Gently, gently,” Black Pete is calling, peering over the side as Buttons tries to line them up. “Back a bit—”
They hit the other boat with a crunch and Stede is thrown to the floor. Still, it could have been worse.
He jumps back up to his feet to stand proudly at the railing, braces his hands solidly on the railing and leans forwards into the stance in a way that he imagines looking very tough and intimidating. “Evening all,” he announces. “You made the right decision, surrendering to us. I presume our fearsome reputation precedes us! Quite right, too—”
“¿Es el buque de guerra de Barbanegra, no?”
“Ah, shit,” Stede says. Where’s Jim when you need them? He grimaces and calls across, “I don’t suppose you speak English?”
“It’s a Spanish ship, captain,” Oluwande says.
“So? Can the Spanish not go abroad? Partake in a little cultural enrichment?”
The Spanish captain sighs. “Blackbeard,” he says, enunciating loud and slow. “Estáis con Blackbeard.”
Wee John leans over to whisper conspiratorially, “I think he thinks we’re with Blackbeard.”
“What?” Stede stands up straight, and he draws his sword with a dramatic flourish that swings perilously near Oluwande’s face. “No, that’s not—I’m the Gentleman Pirate! I’m the one raiding you today, not stupid old Blackbeard.”
The captain of the Spanish ship is silent for a beat, his eyes flicking between the terrifying vision of the pirate captain before him—Stede, sword drawn, an imposing figure in silk brocade—and the equally terrifying vision of their pirate flag, upon which a cat is batting around a heart like a ball of wool.
“So… this is a raid,” Stede says, for the sake of clarity. He brandishes his sword again. “Stick ‘em up!”
The sailors of the Spanish ship do not, in fact, stick them up. Instead, they stand there motionless, assessing the crew of the Pleasant Day, and so Stede decides that if you want something done right, do it yourself. He climbs up onto the railing of his ship—huffing and puffing only a little—takes a moment to eye the rope ladder thrown across to bridge the gap between the two vessels, and jumps.
He misses. He hits the side of the Spanish boat with a thump, and then he falls into the sea.
All told, it’s not going quite as well as Stede had planned.
For a moment or two he flounders, underwater and upside down, wheeling in circles and utterly disoriented and as helpless as an especially useless newborn baby, and then he figures he should probably sort himself out. He reaches out a blind hand in the dark water and gropes for the side of either ship, finds something horrible and barnacle-y, and follows the shape of it upwards. When his head breaks the surface, it is to find absolute chaos unfolding above. Smoke and screaming and gunfire and the looming shape of the Revenge on the other side of the Spanish vessel.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Stede says, and doggy-paddles furiously towards the ladder.
It’s a struggle, getting out of the water, so heavily weighed down by his saturated battle jacket, but at last he manages to heave himself up over the railing of the Spanish ship, where he staggers on dismount, slips, and lands on his knees.
That’s how they first see each other.
Amongst the carnage and smoke, surrounded by a maelstrom of violence and steel and struggling bodies, outfitted in blood and leather, a very still figure stands over a twitching corpse. A tangle of wild dark hair hangs over his face; his skin is daubed with heavy black paint, a slash across the eyes, a smear around the mouth, and it makes him look alien, inhuman, monstrous. There is a spray of gore across one side of his throat and clinging wetly to his sleeve. His chest is heaving with exertion. Edward looks like the spectre of death, if Death himself were painfully handsome.
Stede, on the other hand: soaking wet and shivering, on his knees on the deck of a ship he miserably failed to raid; swamped by sodden silk.
It hardly seems fair.
Ed reaches down to the corpse under his feet and pulls his sword from their chest with an awful grating sound of steel on bone—and then he stalks back into the fight and Stede loses him in the smoke.
Still struggling to regain his breath, Stede clambers upright. He wrestles free of his wet gown, draws his sword, and gets stuck in.
He gets a rather exciting back-and-forth of swordplay with one Spaniard until they knock his blade away and go for his throat, but his hide is mercifully saved by a knife that whistles through the air past his face and embeds itself deep in the Spaniard’s throat. Stede looks up, equally aghast and delighted. “Jim!” he cries.
Jim rolls their eyes but spares him a gracious nod before they resume fighting, and Stede retrieves his sword but doesn’t get to do very much with it. The battle is more or less coming to its natural conclusion by this point; most of the Spanish soldiers have surrendered by now, and the others are mostly vomiting blood or crying for their mother. Stede has to look away from one man trying frantically to stem the flow of blood from a severed stump of arm as he is starting to feel quite nauseous.
Ivan and Fang wander through the carnage to check bodies, to stab squirming soldiers in the throats, and Stede feels that he should offer to help but he’s worried he might actually have to kill someone, so he tries to look busy instead. As he cleans his sword and helps the Swede to drag Spanish corpses into a sort of heap so that they can be more easily dealt with, he keeps glancing around for any sight of Ed, but without any success.
Eventually, there is nothing left of the battle except for a group of shivering hostages being guarded by Jim—although thanks to Jim’s naturally terrifying demeanour, the hostages are kind of guarding themselves while Jim and Oluwande reunite—and Stede is left standing around uselessly. Buttons is using a bloodstained knife to sharpen his wooden teeth; Black Pete and Wee John are bickering about something inconsequential. Across the ship, Stede spots a group clustered together which consists of Fang, Ivan, Frenchie, and Stede’s all-time favourite person, Izzy Hands.
“Well, that was exciting!” Stede exclaims, clapping his hand together as he strides across to join the group. “So, how are we planning to divide the spoils?” he asks politely.
Izzy turns to him with a look of unvarnished disdain. “You have got to be fucking joking.”
Stede decides not to dignify this with a response, and turns instead to the others. “Great to see you all again. Frenchie—long time, no see. You and Jim must have been very honoured to hear you made the cut for Blackbeard’s super elite team!”
Frenchie ducks his head. “Sorry, cap’n. I didn’t think it was optional. Didn’t think I could say no.”
“Quite alright, Frenchie,” Stede says, drawing himself up tall. He’s not proud of resorting to passive aggression, but so sue him—he’s fairly darned cross about how all this turned out. “We can’t all be blessed with an unwavering moral compass and a spine of steel.”
Frenchie frowns. “Didn’t you leave your family?”
Stede’s mouth opens and closes. “That’s beside the point. Look—where’s Ed?”
Izzy turns on him, eyes narrowed. “Captain Blackbeard doesn’t—” Then abruptly he stops, and the sentence hangs uselessly in the air between them as he studies Stede, calculating. “You know what? Go for it. Eddie’s gone below deck.”
Stede huffs imperiously, satisfied at seeing Izzy Hands kowtow to his demands. Clearly, even falling in the sea hasn’t diminished the devotion and respect that Stede commands from other pirates. “See? How hard was that?” he says. “Thank you, Iggy.”
Izzy lurches forwards like an attack dog but is seized by Ivan and Fang to hold him back. Meanwhile, unimpeded, Stede strides back across the corpse-strewn deck to head below. He steps carefully around puddles of blood, apologises to a severed head that he accidentally nudges with his foot, and then lets himself down into the lower decks.
As he ducks down, he steps into a quieter kind of darkness. At the far end of the hall, there is a lamp swinging, knocking softly against the wall. He wanders down towards it, peering through open doors, while the noise of the raid being cleared up on the deck above grows slowly muted and distant.
He is reaching the end of the hallway without any success and just turning back to find the steps down into the bottom deck when he catches the faint but unmistakable sound of someone being sick. Stede pauses, listens. There is a breath in which nothing happens, the hush heavy and broken only by the water dripping from Stede’s clothes onto the floorboards, and then—there it is again. A clattering of metal, a shuffle of footsteps, and someone retching.
Stede approaches quietly. He steels himself, breathes deep, and then raps on the door with his knuckles. “Edward, is that you?”
All noise stops. The person on the other side of the door is utterly still. There is a long, aching silence.
Stede hesitates. “Ed?”
“Get off my ship, Bonnet.” Ed’s voice is low and hoarse.
Stede frowns. “It’s not your ship, it’s a Spanish ship,” he tells the door. “And I saw it first, technically, so. I have dibs.”
Movement within. A crash as of something being kicked. Muttering under the breath.
“I’d like to talk to you,” Stede tries.
“We have nothing to talk about,” Ed says.
Stede is just formulating some kind of protest when the door is jerked open, and Stede blinks, taken aback to find himself suddenly standing within arms’ reach of maybe the love of his life, definitely the scourge of the seven seas.
His black paint is running, loosened by sweat and smeared with finger marks where he has clearly been scrubbing at his face. His eyes are hard, cold, and red-rimmed. His hair is wet at the ends but there are still clumps where blood is drying in it. Stede could comb the blood out, if Ed would let him.
Stede realises that he should say something rather than just stand there staring. His heart is beating high in his throat and he is struggling to formulate what he wants to say into words. There is a neatly folded square of silk folded into the breast pocket of his waistcoat which makes him feel like a bullseye at a firing range. “Your new look is very… arresting,” he says.
Ed makes a scornful noise in the back of his throat. “Let’s clear this up,” he says, his voice hard. “The next time you get yourself in over your head, that’s tough shit. I’m not saving your neck again, you hear me?”
Stede nods. “Yep. Gotcha. That makes sense.”
“Good. Get out of the way.”
Stede takes a breath and says, “I missed you.”
For a moment, Ed smiles but it is terrible—thin and empty and bloodless. “Get fucked,” he says, and he shoulders roughly past Stede to storm down the hall and up onto the deck.
Damnit. That’s barely scratched the surface of all the things that Stede wanted to discuss, and now he’ll have to contend with Izzy and the crew and the bloody Spanish navy for Ed’s attention. Damn! At a brisk little jog, Stede follows Ed up onto the deck, but they don’t get far. Ed makes it a few steps out into the cooling evening light when he is accosted by Izzy’s hand on his elbow.
“We’ve got trouble, captain,” Izzy says gravely as Ed jerks his arm away. “A fuckton of it, to be specific.”
“Oh, dear. Why, what’s the matter?” Stede asks and is promptly ignored.
Izzy holds out a telescope for Ed to take and leads him to the starboard rail. “Jim spotted them from the crows’ nest,” he says as Ed looks through. “They’ve got the wind behind them. They’ll be here in less than an hour.”
That doesn’t sound good. At Izzy’s other side, Stede squints at the sea before declaring, “Telescope me!” and when he is reluctantly handed another telescope by Ivan, he peers through and spots it. “Ah,” Stede says. “Shit.”
Just shy of the horizon is a Spanish naval convoy. Stede isn’t quite familiar enough with ship identification to hazard a guess as to what they’re up against, but of the three he is looking at, he can quite confidently say that the middle one is fucking enormous.
Stede lowers the telescope. “Maybe they aren’t interested in us,” he says. “Maybe they’re just… pootling about. Taking in the atmosphere. They might not even know we’re pirates.”
Izzy glances upwards. “That’s a point,” he says, which is a first. “Your stupid fucking flag signal argument is blocking the black.”
“No worries!” Stede says brightly. “We’ll just lower the flag and—”
“We have a merchant vessel on fire, sandwiched between two war ships,” Ed says, thrusting his telescope back at Izzy so hard that it hits his chest. “It’s not brain surgery. They’ll come for us.”
Stede gives a curt nod. “Might be time for us to come up with a plan, then. Perhaps a quick brainstorming sesh, and then—”
“Us?” Izzy echoes.
Stede flounders, his mouth open. By reflex, he looks to Ed as though for support; Ed’s back is turned.
“Don’t look at him, look at me,” Izzy says.
Stede looks at Izzy. Then, by accident—what?! he’s handsome—he darts a glance at Ed again, and Izzy seizes him by the lapels of his waistcoat and physically shakes him.
“Listen to me, you great useless fucking dandy,” Izzy hisses. “There is no us. There is no we. There’s just the ship full of real, actual, proper pirates who are gonna survive this, and the burning wreckage of the idiots left behind.” He lets go of Stede’s clothes then, pushing him away, and recoils to wipe a hand over his leather jacket. “And why the fuck are you wet?”
Stede straightens his waistcoat. “If you must know,” he says haughtily, “I fell in the sea.”
“I’m going back to the ship,” Ed interrupts. His back is still turned, his hands braced on the rail to look out at the black specks of the Spanish convoy in the distance. “If there are any Spaniards who’d serve with us, get them on board and get them a weapon. If they won’t fight, cut their throats. Grab any spare munitions and then we’re leaving.”
With that, he heads for the gangplank and crosses back to the Revenge.
Stede watches him go and then turns back to Izzy with his very best condescending grimace. “I don’t think he much liked your plan,” he says, and Izzy’s face sours.
Before anyone can stop him, Stede sprints past Izzy, Fang, and Ivan, awkwardly navigates round a handful of Spanish corpses, and follows Ed back down into his own cabin.
Inside the Revenge feels like a different ship entirely. Gone are all the trappings of comfort and luxury; gone are the scented candles in the lamps and the well-polished door handles and the oiled floorboards; everything smells flat and stale and unwashed, and there is a great sticky mark in one doorway as of a dried puddle of rum. Stede wrinkles his nose and picks his way along the hallway towards his old cabin, where he hesitates by the door. Should he knock? Technically, it’s his ship. Then again, it’s been over a month since he lived on it—and a lot can change in that time, as well he knows.
At last, Stede settles for a sort of musical half-knock as he lets himself in, and then he stops in the doorway. Now, this is very different.
The cabin is desolate. The bookcases yawn cavernously empty; the floorboards are scuffed and grubby, nary a Persian rug in sight; the armchairs and chaise longue have vanished, along with his little cabinets of knick-knacks, his side-tables, his armoire. All that is left is his enormous desk and chair, and it is this desk which Ed leans on now. He has a knife in one hand, and he is using it to idly carve into the priceless Siamese teak, which is… fine, really. It’s fine.
“I like what you’ve done to the place,” Stede says politely.
Ed pushes the knife into the desk and then forwards in a slow, agonising scrape that digs up a chunk of wood and also makes Stede’s back teeth hurt. “What do you want?”
“Well, I know I’m not the strongest sailor—”
Ed snorts.
“—but I was under the impression that those Spanish ships couldn’t be outrun,” Stede finishes. “What with the wind, and… things.”
“They can’t,” Ed says tonelessly. He goes on carving up Stede’s beautiful table. From here, Stede can’t even see what he’s doing—if it’s words, or some kind of exciting pirate code, or just your general basic vandalism. “We also can’t outgun them, so.”
“Ah. Which leaves us, with… erm…”
“Dying.”
“Right. Yes. Dying.”
Inside Stede’s waistcoat, there is a square of silk tucked away over his panic-drumming heart. He clasps his hands together in the small of his back and keeps his face measured, blank.
“Look, erm.” Stede clears his throat. He twists his fingers together behind his back. “When you so gallantly swept in to rescue us, it gave me a nice little chance to say hello to the old gang. Except—I was catching up with Jim and Frenchie earlier, and I couldn’t help but notice—some of the men on my crew who weren’t, er, deserted—well, they don’t seem to be on your crew, either,” he says carefully. “I was wondering… where’s Lucius?”
Ed’s hands go still.
Of course, Stede already knows the answer to this question. He has known for weeks. He just wants to hear what Ed will say.
After a long moment, Ed says quietly, “He doesn’t sail with us anymore.”
“Oh. I see.” Stede hesitates. “Did he get a more lucrative offer, or…?”
Ed says nothing. He doesn’t look at Stede.
“Better benefits?” Stede asks, and alright, yes, he’s needling. He has been told he is a very good needler, usually while someone is trying to kick his head in. It isn’t something he’s proud of, but he feels that on this particular occasion he can be forgiven for it. “Health insurance, maybe?”
Without the beard, it is easier now to see Ed’s jaw working. His hands clench and unclench.
“Edward—”
“Got thrown overboard,” Ed cuts across. His voice is dull, hollow, scraped thin. He slams the knife point down into the table and turns to face Stede. Beyond the black paint, Stede can see the shadows like bruises under his eyes, his sunken cheeks. He stands tall, shoulders back, and looks at Stede as though in challenge, but his expression is pure defeat. “Lucius—I threw him overboard.”
Stede is quiet and considers him. “Thank you for telling me,” he says gently. “I know you didn’t want to, but I appreciate it.”
A crease furrows between Ed’s brows. “I killed him. Did you not—”
“No.” Stede’s voice is a murmur as he steps closer, and it is with a small, rueful smile that he says something terribly profound and thought-provoking. He says softly, “I’m afraid he’s not who you really killed.”
Ed’s frown deepens. “I mean—I did literally kill him.”
Stede rolls his eyes. “Well. Yes, but he’s been living in the walls for weeks, so that doesn’t really count.” He shrugs. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m still very cross with you, but as a murderous effort, it was fairly underwhelming. I’ve seen you get people lashed to anchors and all sorts. It hardly compares! Lucius can swim and you didn’t even stab him first, so.”
“You…” Just briefly, there is a flash of real emotion in Ed’s face as he recoils, bewildered. “You think I should have stabbed him?”
“God, no!” Stede exclaims. “That would’ve really made things more permanent. I’m just saying—your heart wasn’t in it, and I think that speaks volumes.”
Ed stares at him, still seemingly processing this. “Wait, he’s been living in the walls?!”
“Oh, yeah. He’s been signalling to our ship for weeks now.” Stede tips his head over to one side. “Although this has been a nice opportunity to get our ships together, so hopefully by now he’ll have scuttled out and back to safety. At any rate,” he says loudly and theatrically, scanning the room, “I would hope he’d have the good manners not to eavesdrop on what’s clearly quite a personal conversation.”
There is a muffled sound in the wall. Something is knocked over, and then there is the distinct sound of apologetic scurrying.
Ed blinks. “Thought that was rats.” His mouth twists and he looks down at the knife still buried in the desk. “That, or a psychotic break.”
“I owe you a tremendous apology,” Stede says. “Unfortunately, the Spanish have impeccable timing, so I think it might have to wait. I don’t know about you, but I don’t fancy dying today.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I got us into this mess—only right that I should get us out of it,” Stede declares. “I have a plan.”
There is a long silence. Stede hesitates, abruptly come over with a wave of self-doubt in his ability to pull off a truly incredible stunt able like this.
“Yes?” Ed prompts.
“Shush, don’t interrupt me.” Stede takes a deep breath. “I have a plan,” he says again, more grandly, and he sets his hands on his hips. “I’m going to set them on fire.”
Ed’s eyebrows arch. “And how the fuck are you going to do that?”
“You said it yourself—I tend to captain an absurdly flammable ship. So, I am going to surrender, and you are going to escape.”
Ed says nothing.
“Izzy said they probably hadn’t seen the black flag on us yet, so we’ll hoist the black on the Spanish merchant ship. You get clear while the big bad pirate ship sinks to the bottom of the ocean, and by the time they realise I’m not coming to ask for help, it’s too late.”
Ed says, low and incredulous, “That’s fucking insane.”
“Worry not, you’ll have plenty of time to get away before I set myself on fire,” Stede says, and smiles bravely. “Blackbeard lives to fight another day.”
“And what about you?”
Stede flaps a dismissive hand. “Oh, I’ll be fine,” he lies, rocking on his heels. “I’m a confident swimmer, it’ll be a nice bit of exercise. No worries.”
Ed looks down at his hand on the knife. The black paint sits thick in the deeply etched lines of his face, crusting around his nose and his eyebrows. He looks exhausted and he doesn’t answer.
“But—before I go…” Stede’s voice wavers. He rolls his shoulders back, bounces a little to psych himself up. “I wanted to give you… this.” Without any further ceremony, he fishes into his waistcoat pocket and pulls out the folded square of red silk. It is sodden and clings sadly to his fingers, drips on the floorboards between them as he holds it outstretched. “Bit wet, sorry.”
Ed stares at it. His face doesn’t change but for a parting of the lip, an unsteady intake of breath. He reaches out, halting and hesitant, like he thinks Stede is going to snatch it away, and very cautiously, he takes the silk from Stede’s hand.
Slowly, he balls it into one hand and squeezes, wringing the water out. Then he opens his hand. Stretches the fabric, smooths the wrinkles with his thumb. There is a fine tremble through his wrists.
Ed says, “Where did you get this?” and his voice is wrenched open, raw, his words strangled as though by a fist round his throat.
“I found it when I was recovering my men from that island,” Stede says, keeping his voice nice and neutral. “Didn’t know if you’d dropped it, perhaps, or it had fallen out of an open window or something. I’d washed and ironed it, originally, but… oh well! That’s life at sea for you, I suppose.”
Ed turns the silk over in his hands, slow and careful. His fingers are shaking.
“Just thought it belonged with you,” Stede says. “I wish we had more time to talk, but if you’ll excuse me, I have to go set my ship on fire.”
On that note, he turns sharply on his heel and he walks out. He shuts the cabin door behind him and for a moment, just stands there, back pressed against the wood. He takes one deep, slow, steadying breath, and then another, and then it hitches in his chest and he feels his throat close off. On the other side of the door there is silence, and Stede presses his lips tightly together because there is a battle going on, man, get a hold of yourself. Now is not the time for crying.
He shakes himself and sets off to put his plan in action.
In an ideal world, he would use the Spanish ship for this, but in all the chaos of the raid it has been rendered more or less inoperable—sail lines have been severed, the mast for the jib sail is badly splintered and swings wildly; the helm barely turns. It’s no good. He’ll have to sacrifice the Pleasant Day.
He has Roach take down the black and hoist it on the raided Spanish ship, and he gives the rest of his crew ten minutes to clear out any personal belongings, food and supplies. He pilfers as much gunpowder, lamp oil, and alcohol as possible from the Spanish ship, and leaves it all in a heap on the deck. He gets their flags ready to hoist, and he starts throwing things overboard to make the ship lighter and faster. He carries across his nice jackets to Oluwande’s waiting arms, and passes a small box of books to the Swede, who clings fiercely to them as though he’s been given something priceless. Luckily, these days Stede travels quite light—he’s more of a low-maintenance, minimalist guy recently.
“Have we got Lucius on board?” Stede asks as he rolls his sleeves up to the elbows. “Where’s Black Pete gone?”
“I think the answer to those two questions are, you know…” Oluwande crosses his fingers together. “I’ll get them.”
He heads down below, and distantly Stede hears a joyous sound in the form of Lucius’ voice: are you having a laugh? I’ve only just got off that stupid fucking ship.
Stede waves them off as they come back up, pats Lucius on the shoulder with an encouraging smile, and once he’s had them all count each other off using their buddy system, he’s satisfied that he can set sail. He waves to them, hoping sorely that he will see them later and not get himself killed in this mad stunt. That would really put a dampener on his plans to reconcile with Edward.
The Pleasant Day is already starting to pull away from the Revenge and the Spanish wreck as Stede brings in rope ladders and gangplank, and then he turns to the helm and stops in his tracks.
“Ed?”
There he is. Kneeling on the quarter deck, half his hair scraped back off his face, his black paint a sweaty smudge as he works fast at spilling the furling gaskets to get them underway. At Stede’s voice, his eyes flick up to meet Stede’s and then he drops his gaze to his ropes.
Stede approaches the helm unsteadily. “I thought you weren’t going to be saving my neck anymore.”
“I’m not saving your neck, I’m saving mine,” Ed mutters. “I’ve seen you sail. If this gets cocked up, we’re all dead, so I figure you need someone with you who knows what they’re fucking doing.”
Stede smiles. “Thank you,” he says earnestly. “I appreciate that.”
Ed grunts. Then he gets to his feet and takes the helm.
Stede heads back down to the foremast to hoist two flags—one white, one marked with a red X. We surrender and we require assistance. It’s clumsy work, and he can feel that calluses are lifting on the palms of his hands as he heaves at the rope, but at last the flags are in position. It is only as he steps proudly back to survey the finished product that he realises they are tacking into the wind.
He looks up into the sails, baffled, as though they have a life of their own; then, more logically, he spins to face Ed at the helm. “Wait, what’re you doing?”
“You want to set this ship on fire and sail into them? You need two things—the element of surprise, and speed. Number one means they don’t twig that we’re not really surrendering until the last possible second, which is going to be tricky since any dickhead with a telescope is bound to spot there’s nobody on board. Number two means we need the fucking wind. We’ll jibe back towards them on a beam reach.”
“Yes,” Stede says, as though he understands.
Ed points. “The wind is that way.”
“Yep. Yes. Understood.”
“So we’re going this way,” Ed indicates, “to then turn back and go that way, which gets us to the same place, only much, much faster.”
“Ah,” Stede says knowledgably. “A zigzag.”
Ed’s mouth is a flat line. “The wind we can handle,” he says. “The rest—we’ll just… pray.”
“Oh, no prayer needed!” Stede says with pomp and authority. “I already considered that. I’m going to make some puppets.”
Ed looks blankly at him. “Puppets.”
“That’s right, puppets.” Stede gives a winning smile. “I’d have thought you’d love a bit of fuckery.”
Ed doesn’t reply. His expression is closed off, difficult to read even without the thick black paint distorting that familiar face into something strange and unknowable. “Fuckery,” he says. “Yeah. Great.”
Stede bends down to retrieve an armful of sheeting, sailcloth, and clothing abandoned by the men. “You worry about getting us nice and gusty, and I’ll do this.”
He starts by stuffing jackets full of sheeting and tarpaulin, and jams an oar up inside them to make them stand. The heads are a little trickier, but he decides that he can cross that bridge when he gets to it, and so he is currently working with a selection of about ten or eleven floppy headless corpses when Ed calls down, “You could use a saucepan.”
Stede looks up. “What?”
Ed ducks his head, embarrassed and uncomfortable. “Nothing—stupid. Forget it.”
Stede looks between him and the idiotic puppet he is currently working on, and it takes him a second to process Ed’s words. “A saucepan?”
“For the head,” Ed says. “Use a saucepan. Put a hat on it, and—yeah.”
Stede’s face breaks into a grin. “Oh, that’s a fantastic idea.”
“Yeah?” Something in Ed’s expression softens. He shifts from one foot to the other. “You could, like—give ‘em scarves and that, as well. Make them look more varied.”
“Good point!” After a trip down to the kitchens, Stede works at it for a little while, and then he hauls one of his completed puppets up to the quarter deck for inspection. “Look! What do you think?”
Ed watches him drag it all the way over, a small smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. “Aw, yeah. That’s fearsome. I like his eyepatch.”
Stede props his hands on his hips and grins down at the puppet. “I thought that was a nice touch, too.” He catches Ed’s eye and raises his eyebrows. “I’ve got one that looks a bit like Izzy. D’you wanna see?”
“No,” Ed says, his smile broadening. “You’ve not—where? Can I—”
Stede jumps down the steps to the main deck and rummages around in his piles of dismembered fabric bodies until he finds—
“Ta-da!”
Stede props it up against his chest and beams. It’s a masterpiece, if he says so himself – the shirt stuffed with sheeting is a dark grey one a bit like Izzy’s, and he even found an old waistcoat, and if you squint a bit, the frying pan used for the head has got some scuffs on it that even double for Izzy’s tattoo—and Ed laughs. He sees it and his eyes widen and he laughs, throwing his head right back, and Stede is just standing there holding this idiotic fabric creation smiling at him, and he thinks maybe everything isn’t totally shattered beyond repair.
Ed leans his weight on the helm as he laughs, shaking his head, and then he looks up at Stede and his smile fades.
Stede swallows.
Ed lets out his breath. He looks down at his hands on the wheel.
“Look, we’re sailing towards impending death, we’re not supposed to be having fun,” Stede says in his sternest voice. He hoists the Izzy puppet up higher and puts on his best impression of a gruff British accent. “This is no time for shenanigans!”
Ed doesn’t laugh. He scrubs roughly at one eye with the back of his hand and doesn’t meet Stede’s eyes. “We’re gonna be closing on them soon. Get those puppets up. Put some on the ratlines, get one up near the crows’ nest if you can. One or two manning the guns. They’re gonna be close enough to see the deck in about fifteen minutes.”
Stede nods, his heart sinking. “Aye-aye, captain.”
As he gets the puppets in position, he glances back to check on the progress of the Revenge. They are far enough away now that little can be seen of them without a telescope—just sails and the curling smoke of the Spanish wreck left behind. It looks like everything is going well with the getaway, but it’s impossible to be certain. Stede crosses to the other side of the ship then to check out the Spanish. Their convoy has fanned out slightly, but they are all within shouting distance of the flagship, which bears down on them like a great hulking monster. The main sail blocks out the lowering sun behind them. They do seem to be slowing down, however. Who knows, maybe this will even work!
“Get the longboat ready,” Ed calls down. “Then I need you at the foremast to haul the sheet line. Then let go the halyard. You know how to do that?”
“Think so!” Stede goes as he’s told, scrambling about to get everything ready—occasionally needing to rush back to Ed to check how something is done, or which sail he’s meant to be working on. Thankfully, whatever Ed was doing when he first came aboard seems to have done most of the set-up in advance so that Stede can do it on his own, but it is still a refreshing and exciting challenge! Then he comes back to Ed afterward, breathing heavily and ready for his next instructions. “What now?”
Ed barely spares him a glance as he splits his attention between the sails and the Spanish on their starboard side. “Okay, you’re gonna want to get off the ship now.”
“Great,” Stede says. “Why would I do that, though?”
Ed looks at him, then. “You remember the plan, right? Where we set ourselves on fire?”
“My plan? Yes, I’m familiar with it.”
“We’re going to clubhaul into their path, and that’s more or less exactly when they will get wise to our little scheme, and if there’s a captain on board worth their boots, they will try and stop us.” Ed narrows his eyes. “They’re a first-rate ship-of-the-line with at least eighty guns, mate. You don’t wanna be on board when that happens.”
Stede frowns. “But if we jump ship, how will we make sure we stay on course? They might actually succeed in stopping us.”
“Yeah. They might also blast your fucking head off your shoulders.”
“I know!” Stede exclaims. “That’s why I was going to do this on my own.”
Ed stares him down. “You’re gonna clubhaul this ship on your own? Really? You’re gonna do that?”
“I don’t know what that means,” Stede argues. “I was just going to sail in a straight line. You’re the one who made it needlessly complicated.”
“Needlessly—Stede, your plan was a suicide mission. And literally, nautically impossible.”
“We don’t have time to argue about this. I’m not getting in the longboat.” And to prove his point, Stede marches back over to the rail and sets the longboat loose. There is a rattle of pulleys, a clattering of metal as the rope whizzes through, and then the boat hits the water with a splash. Then Stede turns back to him, stubbornly folding his arms across his chest. “There we are. Right—now, what’re we doing?”
“Fuck’s sake!” Ed snaps. “Fucking—right. Fine.”
Stede smiles.
From there, Ed’s frustration gets lost in the unfurling dread as they grow nearer and nearer to the Spanish ships, their white flag still flapping high. Stede has made ready the sails and the ropes and the deck, and he has spent a considerable amount of time setting out flammable material, including spraying oil and gunpowder liberally across the deck. He dusts his hands off, stands by the rail, and waits.
The ship speeds ever closer. At the helm, Ed’s face is set and unsmiling, focused on the task at hand. Stede’s heart is drumming loud in his ears.
“Alright, we’re in range,” Ed calls across the wind. “Set the fires. Then get ready to drop the starboard anchor when I say. Keep your feet clear and find something to hold onto.”
Stede never thought he would say this, but there is an alarming amount of pressure for him to destroy his own ship. He decides this is easiest: he gets the lantern from the hallway below deck and throws it hard at the deck. It shatters, glass spraying everywhere, and for a moment the flame only gutters before it catches.
“Oh, shit,” Stede says, jumping back. It’s faster than he was expecting. Quite a lot faster. The flames devour the oil looped across the deck in an instant, and then they are licking at the railings, swarming the base of the gunpowder caskets. “Fires set!” he shouts to Ed, and he runs to the capstan anchor point and he waits. “Ready when you are!”
Ed takes a deep breath and spins the helm hard, heaving the spokes round and round and round. At first, nothing happens. Then the ship starts to turn.
“Now!” Ed yells, and so with a panicked little shriek, Stede lets loose the anchor. Not in the gentle, controlled manner that he encourages from his crew, either—he just slams the brace off the capstan and lets it plunge.
The hawser rope goes flying past so quickly it almost lashes Stede off his feet, and then he dives for the foremast. He gets a hold of the base of the rigging and clutches it tight to his chest, his heart beating fast. He clings to it like a lifeline, and he grits his teeth, and then feels very foolish indeed as the ship just goes on quietly creaking its way into the slowest turn of all time. Nothing seems to happen at all. He looks up to the quarterdeck and sees Ed, at the helm, still wrestling with holding the wheel as far to port as it goes.
He catches Ed’s eye.
Just for a moment, there is something in Ed’s face. Grim resolution, maybe. But there is also the flicker of a smile.
The anchor hits the rock bed.
In an instant, everything goes spectacularly to chaos. The ship is yanked sharply round, hard enough that the deck is ripped from under Stede’s feet and everything not tied down goes flying and the whole ship keels violently sideways. The hawser rope smashes a hole in the hull, shatters the taffrail and whips along the length of the deck taking half the wall and railing with it in the process. Wood splinters, the hull groans and screams and the sails tip perilously, and Stede clings on and screams, “Shit!”
Fire erupts, one small explosion first and then another, as gunpowder caskets roll and lanterns shatter and furniture slides. Stede clings on and shrieks in panic as the fire flares higher and hotter, and while the ship seems to be steadying back upright, they have swung violently straight into the convoy’s path. There is the not-so-distant sound of panicked Spanish yelling, and the fire spreads. It leaps from sail to sail, and through all the insanity, Stede can see the bow of the flagship thundering straight towards them.
Somewhere, someone screams an order, and the warship sets upon them with a full broadside. They open fire.
The world is torn apart. It’s unlike anything Stede has ever experienced, a roaring, drumming, endless percussion that rattles his bones as the galleon fires and fires. Everywhere is fire and metal and smoke and oblivion. Each impact jars his legs out from under him, and he is hugging the mast and screaming. The deck pitches beneath his feet like an earthquake and that awful drum goes on and on.
The mizzen mast splinters. The bowsprit explodes. The stairs to the forecastle deck erupt in thick black smoke and shards of wood. The deck bursts into flames. The railing shatters. The ship is coming apart around him, and Stede can’t stay upright. He can’t hear, can’t think. He curls against the deck with his arms over his head, his breath coming quick with panic and his face wet with tears. Debris and hot ash and chunks of metal and splinters of wood rain down upon him. His ears ring and his eyes are half blinded with the white-hot gunpowder flash of the enemy’s cannons careening ever closer.
Then there is a hand on his shoulder that yanks him roughly backwards.
Stede yelps, scrambling on his heels to recover, and then, in the midst of all the smoke and destruction of a broadside, he finds himself kneeling before—
“Ed,” he bursts out in relief, and he reaches for him without thinking. He curls his shaking hands into the front of his jacket to hold him still, make sure he’s real. Ed’s face is smeared with smoke and ash, his mouth open, chest heaving for breath. “God—”
“Come on,” Ed gasps, and he tugs at Stede to get him up to his feet. “Come on.”
They stagger together through the flames and rubble, and Stede is so disoriented that for a moment he cannot understand where they’re going. He sways, dizzy, by the shattered railing, and then he is pushed and he is falling and he hits the water.
The cold shock of the ocean jolts him back to himself, and he swims frantically. How, he thinks as he surfaces and spits out salt water, is it possible for one man to end up in the sea so many times in one day?
Upon a first look, Ed is nowhere to be seen. Then again, it is getting hard to see anything, the sun setting behind the Spanish convoy, which is now being steadily consumed by fire. The churning, roiling black smoke swallows the entirety of the Pleasant Day now, even smashed in two as it is by the bowsprit of the Spanish galleon. Flames have consumed the sails, the masts, the aft deck, all. Distantly, screams can be heard; there is yelling and the blowing of a whistle as those in the secondary ships try to assist, to retrieve sailors from the burning wreckage before it spreads too far. For a moment, Stede just floats there, watching in open horror at what he has wrought.
Three Spanish ships, reduced to disorder and devastation—all because of Stede Bonnet. He can’t decide whether the rushing sensation in his gut in pride or nausea.
He turns away and starts to swim.
After five minutes or so he realises that he does not know where he’s swimming to. The Revenge is several miles away by now, and he isn’t even entirely confident as to what direction it’s in. The sun is setting now, the horizon a violent slash of purple and gold, broken only by the coils of dark smoke, and before long Stede won’t be able to see anything at all.
“Bugger,” he says, and swallows a mouthful of seawater by accident.
However, he ends up not drowning—woohoo!—by virtue of a miracle. As he is floating there, aimlessly froggy swimming in circles, he spots the dark curve of the abandoned longboat a few hundred yards or so ahead. He makes for it, painfully slowly, and it is more painful still trying to heave himself out of the water into it.
One oar has survived the onslaught, and it is with this that Stede starts ineffectually rowing around in the lessening light, calling for Ed. The longer he waits and the longer he rows, the tighter the vice around his ribs, and he tries not to think the worst. He calls out Ed’s name and he scans the dark water and he rows and he calls out, Ed? Edward? Are you there? Blackbeard? Captain Blackbeard? Ed? and he panics and he rows and—
“I’m here,” comes a rough, breathless voice somewhere nearby.
Stede spins wildly to locate him, and then rows with fervour and sheer gusto to reach him.
“Hey, hey—careful, man,” Ed rasps, and Stede hits him with the boat.
“Shit, sorry!” Stede throws down the oar and reaches out with both hands to haul Ed to safety. “There you go—I’ve got you, come on.”
Ed crashes heavily to the floor of the boat and just sprawls there, sodden and shaking and struggling for breath. In the twilight now, he is more of a silhouette than anything else—the roughly sketched outline of leather, long legs, long hair.
Stede sits neatly on his own bench for a minute or two, hands clasped, just watching Ed recover. He isn’t sure what ground they stand on now, the two of them. He doesn’t know how to broach the distance.
At last, he says, “You alright?” which seems neutral enough.
“Aw, yeah,” Ed says, his voice scratched raw by smoke. “Fuck yeah, let’s set the ship on fire. Fuck it, let’s just—let’s just steer it straight at the Spanish, why don’t we? Hey? Let’s just—”
“Well, part of that was your idea,” Stede points out anxiously as Ed covers his face with his hands, and then he realises that Ed is laughing.
“You’re a fucking lunatic, bro.”
Stede shrugs. “We got away, didn’t we? A pretty good plan, all things considered.”
“Yeah.”
Ed wipes his face with both hands, and then his arms fall to his sides with a dull thunk against the bottom of the boat. He lies there, staring up at the sky, and Stede perches there watching him in the moonlight and feeling so desperately in love with him that he doesn’t even know where to start.
The silence stretches, taut, between them. Stede can hear Ed breathing, and then Ed shifts to prop his head against one of the foot braces, and Stede can feel that Ed is looking at him. In the darkness, it is impossible to know what he is thinking. Stede thinks that maybe he might be waiting.
Stede thinks that maybe he has made Ed wait long enough.
Softly, Stede says, “Will you let me explain?”
For a moment, Ed is silent. He doesn’t move or reply. Then, at last, he says, “Okay.”
It’s further than Stede expected to get. He has to admit that of course he has planned and practiced what he wanted to say, but truthfully it’s gone through many different iterations. A lot of rewrites were needed from the initial first draft—once he realised that Ed had left half his crew to die on a desert island; once he realised that he had broken Ed’s heart; once he realised that Ed had tried to kill Lucius; once he realised that Edward had been, for the most part, destroyed and left only Blackbeard in his place. There have been more edits and scrapped drafts that he can put a finger to, and he sits here now with a captive audience and he doesn’t know where to start.
“So,” Ed says, after a beat. “Is any explaining actually gonna happen, or…?”
“I made a mistake,” Stede rushes out. “I know that. And I am more sorry than I can say.”
Ed says, “Okay.”
Stede swallows. “I just… Ed, I ruin things. That’s what I do.” He drops his head. “I’m a bad husband, a bad father, a bad sailor, a bad captain, a bad pirate—”
“That’s not true.”
“Well. That’s very gracious of you, but you’re wrong. I’m no good at—well, anything. I’m just…” His words stall in his throat and the first ones he finds when he swallows past it aren’t his own. “A pathetic, spoiled little rich boy. And you’re fucking Blackbeard.”
“Not with you.”
“Exactly,” Stede says, agonised. “And I had already destroyed so much. My family, my life… and then your life, too? And you were just… you were willing to accept that. For me. But—I don’t know that I was worth that. I still don’t. And the thought of watching you realise I wasn’t worth it… I had to let you go.”
Ed says nothing.
“I couldn’t ruin you, too,” Stede says. “You meant too much to me.” He twists his hands together. “You still do.”
The only sound is the lap of the water against the wood, the creak of Ed’s leathers as he breathes.
Telling Ed the whole truth feels like a whirlpool opening beneath Stede’s feet, but he wants to tell him. His heart squeezes hot in his throat and his stomach feels unsteady and he says, “Edward, I—”
“I don’t wanna talk about this anymore right now,” Ed says.
That pulls Stede up short. “Oh. Right.” He nods, eager to do whatever Ed wants, even when that feels the way he imagines it would feel to be kicked in the chest by a plough horse. “Yeah, ‘course. Okay.”
Without another word, Ed turns over onto his side. He kicks at one of the rowboat benches, shuffling to get comfortable, and then he is still.
Stede says awkwardly, “Night, then.”
Unsurprisingly, this does not elicit a response from Ed.
There is not much room left for Stede, so he resigns himself to a few hours on watch. Not that there’s much to watch… he turns his attention first to the grey smoke still twisting up from the Spanish convoy, the distant lamps of the smaller ships persevering with their rescue attempts; he turns his attention to the stars overhead, to trying to name them, or count them; he wonders if he made the right decision by leaving Mary, by leaving Ed; he wonders if he has ever made a right decision in his life.
The moon is high and clear, the sky bright and cold, and Stede’s eyes are growing heavy. His soaked clothes are freezing against his skin, no matter how tightly he huddles his feet together and how fiercely he rubs his hands together, and he tells himself that it’s only a few hours ‘til morning, and with any luck, someone will come back for them. Or at least, someone will come back for Ed, and Stede can hitch a lift. Only a few hours ‘til morning.
Ed’s voice is little more than a murmur in the dark. “Stop being a dickhead and get in here.”
Stede lifts his head. He blinks, bleary with fatigue. “Me?”
Ed shifts over slightly, and there is a vaguely Stede-shaped space left behind him on the floor of the boat. It looks cold and damp and too good to be true.
Stede swallows. “It’s alright, I don’t mind just—”
“Stede.”
Without any further protest, Stede crawls down into the space between the benches. He oops-sorry-pardons his way in the dark, knocking Ed’s feet and his elbow and his hip, and then at last he finds the place where he fits. He curls around the shape of Ed’s back, his knees to the backs of Ed’s thighs. His cheek, against the wood, is close enough Ed’s hair that he can smell the salt in it as the curls dry. He keeps his hands close to himself, pressed tight against his own sternum, terrified of inadvertently taking liberties he has no right to, and he holds himself stiff and unyielding. He barely dares to breathe.
Ahead of him, Ed’s breath snags. He is silent, and then he reaches back and he finds Stede’s hand. His skin is cold, his palm rough and calloused, and he cradles Stede’s hand in his like he is handling glass.
It is so startling that Stede does nothing, simply goes limp as a jellyfish and lets Ed take it. He lets Ed pull the hand forwards, his arm to tentatively loop Ed’s waist, and lets Ed press the hand to his chest. Underneath his fingertips, Stede can feel the fragile drum of Ed’s heart.
***