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It wasn’t supposed to go this way – she knows it. They should have been sitting in her office, watching Nassau become the haven she should always have been, had cupid and narcissistic men never been able to touch it.
They – her, and Anne, and maybe Jack, downstairs, playing chess, and reading books, and bossing around people while pretending he was de facto ruling things, when it was obvious he was not. And Eleanor was here, somehow (because she had forgiven her, in all this time, without realizing she had, she had given her this, because so long had passed and now she understood – the gravity this place has on people and the shit it makes them do).
She would have made it perfect, for all of them – she would have been a maid of honour at Featherstone and Idelle’s wedding, and at night Anne would have allowed herself to smile (a smile for all the times she’d refused herself tenderness and vulnerability, so many smiles, all the time -). She’d have given Nassau what Eleanor could never have – depth of thought, and benevolence, and understanding, and no wars, never wars.
She’d have been the Regent, when Eleanor could only think of being Queen of a world she’d have unconsciously modelled on the Old One, thinking she was creating something new when she was, in truth, replicating the mistakes of a place she’d never known. But Max – Max would have been different.
And she would have given it all to them – she does not know how, exactly. But they would have been happy, happily watching her take care of everything while time flew by in a place finally free of suffering. She’d have managed the pirates, and their greediness. She’d have made this place the treasure it truly was, she’d have polished it, turned it from rock to finely chiselled gem, with her bare hands, by sheer power of will.
Woodes is nowhere to be found in her fantasies, just Vane, sometimes, because he humoured Eleanor and it does not matter if things are to be embellished, if the past was to be partially rewritten for her to create a fantasy she could loose herself into.
And Max knows she should be weeping on the floor for all this – for Eleanor, for Nassau, for Anne. But her times of weeping on the floor are over. Now she wants vengeance in the name of nothing, in the name of vengeance itself.
Jack is angry beyond measure but she does not care – she can channel his anger and turn it towards the person she truly wants dead, towards the Spanish and the desolation she’s about to bring about those who destroyed her haven, her place, her home.
He looks dumbfounded realizing she doesn’t care he just saved her life, and she sees conflicted emotions swirling behind his eyes, and she feels those same emotions swirling in herself too, but right now she’s the only one who can make him do what Flint would never dare do.
Like Eleanor, she used to think Flint was a man above all others, with a capacity to see beyond, to see far enough to grasp things they, mere mortals, could not comprehend. Now she sees the way he’s tired, how exhausted with the world he looks – he’s lost his own war long ago, and if she is the only one who can truly see it, so be it. She’ll be Jack’s lighthouse. She’ll show him the way home, the way forward, the way towards what he does not yet know he wants. It gives her hope, unconsciously - that Jack would go to such extent to protect her means he knows Anne still loves her, still cares. And because he loves Anne, he'll protect Max, even while hating her so much.
And she’ll make Anne forgive her, she’ll make Anne understand, she’ll make Anne see the truth, accept it. Anne knows enough to know whatever pain was caused to her as a consequence of Max’s actions was a mistake – a terrible one, maybe an unforgivable one. But she’d make her forget until she forgave. And even Eleanor, from wherever she is now; she’ll make her proud, she’ll make her see that she can, that she always has been capable. Capable of everything.
She’ll make this right. Once she has exacted her vengeance. She’ll make this right.