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Stede Bonnet knew the minute he saw this woman — Emily, was it? — that she was not his soulmate. She didn’t have the scar on her neck or her right arm or her ankle, scars Stede had so earnestly tried to hide with silks and scarves in the event of the inevitable: His arranged marriage not being a great and unbelievable turn of luck.
Stede Bonnet knew the minute he looked into Emily’s eyes, eyes that carefully traced up his arm, covered by a notably thin white cotton blouse, that she knew what he knew.
And most importantly, they knew that they would forever be stuck together in a loveless marriage that they had to grimace their way through, a fact promised as their guardians shook hands as if it were a business deal.
To be fair, it kind of was.
—
There was a point in his life where Ed had given up. Not just on humanity or hope, but on fate.
He forged his own path. He wasn’t to be tied down by a soulmate. He was Blackbeard. These are all things he told himself, but he never believed them. Not really. It wasn’t that easy to get rid of humanity or hope or fate. The ideas of them, at least, stuck to him like glue, a concept foreign to him due to the combination of time period and upbringing. But if he had known about the wonders of glue, he would agree that all of those, humanity, hope, and fate, stuck to him just like glue.
Glue and its wonders and history aside, no. No, Blackbeard was not a heartless monster who forged his own path, unaffected by the tight binds of, for lack of a less cliche term, destiny. He was not some amalgamation of hate and corruption that simply ignored papercuts when they showed up overnight, brushing them away without any thought. He was not some devil, a reaper, that didn’t trace his own scars in hopes his soulmate had them too. He was not Blackbeard, a man who didn’t care about that pricking in his finger that ached like a splinter. He was Ed. And he did all of those things.
—
The guilt that had slowly, but surely, been bubbling in Stede over the past few months dissipated the minute, the moment, he saw him. Stede wasn’t sure exactly who ‘he’ was, and this relief was so momentary it barely even counted as existing, but it still happened, and he was acutely aware of it. And he very quickly, as he wasn’t a stupid man (contrary to popular belief), pieced together why. Why it had happened in the first place. He tried to control his breathing as he stared at the man’s right arm.
Stede, flooded with the whiplash of returning guilt and something new, something he couldn’t place, leaned forward to hold this man. The stab wound, however, stopped him, forcing him to slam back down with a sharp inhale.
“Forgot about that.” He turned his wince into a sheepish grin.
—
Ed didn’t respond, staring in wonder at the culprit behind the papercuts. A slow smile spread out across his face, and it was a strange thing. It hurt his face, but the stab wound hurt more. But if anything, he just wanted it to hurt even more. He wanted to feel the pain sear throughout his body and he wanted to bleed until he was dizzy, because more pain was more confirmation that, yes, Stede Bonnet was his soulmate.
He scanned every part of Stede’s face. Ever wrinkle, smile line, dimple, whatever. He wanted to map the topography of this man’s face and fucking frame it. He wanted to do so much.
After a minute of joyous staring (though it wasn’t really a minute, only the minute Stede had been awake for and reciprocated, Ed responded, and although he hid it well, he was breathless in his words.
“Hello.”