Chapter Text
None of that happens.
Ed wishes it had—any of it, all of it. Dancing with Stede and laughing with Archie, lighting pipes with Fang and his stupid goat. Calypso’s blessing. Jim’s forgiveness. Maybe even two seconds of sustained eye contact with Izzy, if he’s really dreaming.
And he is dreaming. Writing fairy tales out of thin air, telling himself a different story. Ed’s good at that, he’s always been good at that—playing make-believe, like reality is something he can proofread, striking the truth through with red lines, editing it away. Make a few script changes, a few revisions to the blocking, and the whole cast leans in, delicate flowers in hand.
But none of that happens.
Ed can lie to himself again and again, but all he ends up with is a stack of what ifs and a bill that still comes due.
What actually happens is that Blackbeard lets his guard down. Forgets who he is. What he’s done. Forgets the trail he leaves in his wake. Lets himself believe, despite all evidence, despite having put his hand in that fire before, that he can be something else.
What actually happens is that Ned Low slinks out of the dark and calls in his debts—two raids more than a record and four bars of deranged music.
What actually happens is that Stede pays the price.
Ed thinks of all the ways the night could have gone. Dreams of all the things that could have happened, all the better outcomes this crew deserves. Wishes the only pain in his chest was still that same old familiar thing, nestled deep down under the shield of his breastbone and wrapped in tatty red silk.
But none of that happens, and the ache in Ed’s chest is a red-raw burn right over his heart.
*
“That could’ve been you,” Stede whispers into the dark, into the aftermath.
He says it softly, the way you’d just graze your thumb across the bruise at the bottom of a plum; Ed feels it the way you’d crush two fingers past the surface to twist out the pit. Outside, the flare of the fireworks has faded into smoke.
“I know,” Ed says.
He tries to make it soft too, but he’s cradled sticky and cooling and bare against Stede’s chest so he hears it when Stede’s heart stops and starts, stops and starts. Ed imagines twisting that heart around with two fingers, wonders how much it can withstand before it breaks.
“He was goading me,” Stede continues, all quiet astonishment. “He was goading me and I fell for it, and then he was in the water, and then he was sinking, and he didn’t even try, Ed. He didn’t even try to swim.”
Ed closes his eyes. “I know.”
He’d known it as soon as Ned Low had come on board, had seen it in Low’s eyes the moment before he’d pressed that red-hot poker into Stede’s skin. In the way he’d held his hands still for his own crew to tie the rope around them. Had seen that mocking sarcasm layered over an almost anxious rage—that clawing, careening need for someone to do something already.
Hard to miss, when Ed’s spent so much time with that look in the mirror.
Stede’s breath hitches in his throat, sharp. His belly trembles under Ed’s hand where he’s trying to keep himself steady, trying to make himself still with Ed in his arms, but his breath hitches again, and again, shaking out of him until it’s shaking out hard, and finally he says, strangled—like it’s an accusation he’s been trying not to make for days and now he just can’t stop himself, just can’t keep it locked away a moment longer, coughing it up like his own heart from his throat—
“You wanted that to be you.”
And Ed had.
It’s the coward’s way out. Ed’s always been a coward, looking for a way out. He’d seen himself, already more ghost than man, and he’d wanted that. He’d seen himself trapped, cornered, only one escape left and already struggling to breathe above the rising tide, and Ed had wanted that: for someone to step in and let it be over.
For someone to stop him.
He’d had a taste of something vibrant and alive and good and beautiful, and he’d dared to want that, dared to try to hold it in two hands, to keep it, to reach for more, to give himself over to it—and it hadn’t wanted him back.
He’d just wanted to stop being so fucking tired.
So: yeah. He’d goaded Ned Low and he’d done it with purpose. He’d provoked the British and aggravated the Spanish, instigated fights with every ship he came across, dared cannon fire and musket shot, and when all that failed he finally, wretchedly, desperately, turned on his own crew.
They’d all fallen for it. They’d all given him what he’d wanted in the end.
Izzy with a gun in his hand and blood in his mouth. Fang, with his shoulder driven hard into Ed’s sternum; Frenchie, with his eyes averted and fist raised. Jim, with a cannonball raised over their head, teeth bared, eyes wet.
He remembers being underwater. He remembers deciding not to swim.
But then: he also remembers light. And orange cake. Tea with seven sugars and a dollop of milk; a treasure map; a lute accompaniment. Waking up to the sound of someone else moving around the cabin, trying to be quiet. Learning to fish, and how to breathe besides. A song in a voice he hasn’t heard sing in a decade. A handful of easy smiles. Laughter, spilling across the deck in wave after wave, and a dance someone asked him to join.
A hand in his, clutching back.
He remembers warmth. Good food. Orgasms.
Ed remembers deciding: not yet.
He’s been deciding it again and again and again these days. Not yet. Not now. Not when there’s still so much to see. Not when there’s a chance, a fledging hope, that things can be different.
Ed raises himself up onto an elbow to look at Stede properly, to pull away the hand Stede’s using to cover his eyes. His face has gone all splotchy and miserable; his eyes are red-rimmed and haunted.
“I don’t want it now,” Ed tells him. “I’m safe, and I’m here. I don’t want it anymore.”
Stede crumbles. Folds himself into Ed’s chest and finally lets go of everything he’s been trying to swallow, and Ed lets him, of course Ed lets him. He brushes Stede’s hair back off his forehead, thumbs at the tears on his cheeks, holds him hard enough to anchor him back into his bones. Kisses Stede’s temple, and then each of his eyelids, thin-skinned and vulnerable. Breathes slow and calm, pressing Stede’s hand to his own heart so Stede can feel the pulse in him, the life in him, so Stede can breathe with him.
“I’m safe,” Ed says, and he’s starting to believe it matters. That people want that for him. That Stede needs him to be safe the same way Ed needs Stede to be.
“I’m here,” Ed says, and he’s starting to believe he could belong here. That people might want him here. That he might be able to love without fear the same way he might be loved without fear.
“I don’t want it now,” Ed says, and he’s starting to believe it’s true.
*
Dawn steals over the horizon, spilling gold out of its pockets and over the water. Ed hasn’t slept.
Next to him, Stede is a pile of mussed curls and freckled skin and soft, rolling snores. Ed imagines he looks peaceful, easy with sleep, but he can’t actually tell because he rolled over two hours ago and smushed his face into Ed’s hip. Every time he breathes, it fans hot over Ed’s bare skin.
This is real.
This is real, Ed thinks again. Not a bedtime story, not a fairy tale. Not a dream, like running off to China together. This is real.
Ed’s good at telling stories. Maybe too good, sometimes. Maybe too good at telling stories over and over, until even he believed in them, until he became them. Blackbeard, building himself into a legend; the Kraken, disappearing the man into the monster. Ghosts and aristocrats and innkeepers and fishermen. He thought he knew the ending to those stories: the inevitability of drowning.
Next to him, Stede has a hand curled around Ed’s thigh, soft and possessive, and Ed thinks he’s had enough of endings.
He thinks he’s maybe got one more beginning left.
Ed slips from the bed, replacing his thigh with another pillow when Stede mumbles a protest. There’s one of Stede’s silk robes tossed over the back of a chair, and the gauzy tissue-thin lining against Ed’s skin makes him shiver. It’s a fine thing and it makes him feel like bone china, translucent and delicate in the morning light.
His leathers, by contrast, feel heavy: an anchor, tethering him to a life he’s tired of living, with nowhere to go but down.
It’s surprising, then, how easy it is to bundle it up with a cannon ball and a net into a single pack. A makeshift coffin, tied around itself. Blackbeard and his head of smoke, his belt of guns, his glowing eyes, appearing out of the fog like the devil himself—Ed’s heard those stories. He invented half of them himself. It’s surprising how small that story is, here at the end of it. Just an armful of costuming and a few whispers of a myth.
It’s surprising how quick it sinks.
Ed watches the water for a long minute, dread sudden and sick-hot in his veins, but the bundle doesn’t come bobbing back up. Eventually the water goes still again and the morning light turns the surface glassy, and all Ed can see when he looks down is a man.
Ed’s good at telling stories. He’s told a lot of them.
He’s never told one like this, though—a story written in the dawn light, about changing and trying and building and becoming and finding room to breathe all out in the open, all out with the truth. About what’s real and right in front of him. About the life he’s already living if he can be brave enough to believe in it.
It’s a story about all the possibilities last night could have been, and Ed’s never told a story about possibility that’s more hope than blood. He’s never told a story about a before with a sense of a second chance still hanging in the air—what could have been, but also what still might be.
The aftermath of last night’s party is still spilled across the deck, abandoned cups and bunting sagging the rigging, Chinese lanterns dipping in the wind, long since gone out. Stede’s bathtub has the sticky remnants of fruit and punch floating in the bottom of it, which will be an unpleasant job to muck out and which Ed will conveniently disappear for. There’s evidence of a goat, the discarded husks of spent fireworks, plates with half-eaten nibbles.
A plank, still balancing preciously where it juts out over the water.
It’s an in-between place this morning, stuck halfway between yesterday and today. The possibilities are like ghosts, almost tangible in the early fog, not quite there, not quite real. Not yet.
Ed’s told stories about destroying his family, but never about finding one, building one. He’s told stories about hiding behind a costume and a mask, but never one that brought his own self to light. He’s told stories about hanging on by this thread or that, but never about how to let go, or at least how to change your grip so it doesn’t hurt so goddamn much.
He’s never told a story about love. About being in love. About how to be in love; about how to be loved. How to open up his ribs and let something bigger inside.
How to forgive.
How to be forgiven.
He’s never told a story about Edward.
The fog is starting to dissipate in the rising sun. Ed looks over the deck, looks over all those possibilities, all the stories spilling out around him. He only has to decide if he’s ready to tell it.
He knows the trick to a good story is always in the opening line, and he only needs to look a second longer to find the right one for this particular tale. He finds it half-hidden in shadow, blown this way and that in the nighttime wind, sheltering at the base of the railing, on the cusp of flying over. It’s a little crumpled, a little wilted. One of the petals looks like maybe it’s been stepped on, crushed.
But it’s still good, he thinks. It’s still good.
Ed reaches down to the huge, strawberry-red hibiscus flower and saves it.
It’s delicate between his fingers. He twirls the stem between his fingertips, watches the petals swoosh in the air. The yellow bit in the middle—the pistil? stamen?—is vibrant in the morning light. Ed considers, and hesitates, decides and undecides, starts and stops, but he finally reaches up to tuck the flower into his hair.
He looks back at his reflection in the water, tilts his head so he can see the edge of the bloom, just peeking out from behind his hair. It’s not perfect, he knows, but it’s still good. It’s got a little life in it yet. It can tell one more story.
He takes a deep breath, and begins.
“Hello, Ed.”