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Oh, captain, let's make a deal
Where we both say the things that we both really feel
I feel scared and I'm starting to sink
And I only sink deeper the deeper I think
Oh, captain, make up your mind
Before the salt burns your eyes and you run out of time
'cause you're popping the cork, you get lost in your brain
And you lose touch with all the things that made you feel sane
– Fin Argus, 'Ship in a Bottle'
He tries his hardest not to sleep.
He suffers for it and it shows, the dark circles around his eyes becoming so prominent he scarcely needs to smudge his face any more. Even Izzy looks at him with something resembling concern beneath his customary fear and reverence, but he pays it no mind, throwing himself back into the pirate's life, even if the pirate's life traditionally requires a sharper mind than the one he's providing in his sleep-deprived state.
A sloppy job is better than nothing, especially when nothing involves being alone with his thoughts. No amount of ceaseless wakefulness truly fends them off though, not the grog or the pillaging, the plunder or the violence. It's always there in the little things, reminders, as if the fabric of his life is now embroidered with intricate stitches he can't pick out no matter how hard he tries.
Or something. Sleep deprivation makes the beleaguered metaphors worse too, it seems.
But Ed can only fight off sleep for so long, a few days at most. He's not the spry young man he was when he first took up life on the high seas. A grim reminder of his indelible mortality, the fatigue that seems to sink deep into his bones the harder he fights against the inexorable undertow of slumber.
You're not the man you used to be , it seems to whisper at the fringes of his consciousness. It doesn't matter how hard you try, no matter what facsimile you peddle, you are still but a man, Edward Teach . Naught but a man .
And as he is but a man, he eventually succumbs to a fit of restless semi-intoxicated sleep, passed out at the antique wooden desk in his cabin clutching a bottle of rum atop a pile of maps covered in unintelligible frantic scribble.
The dream starts off normal. They always do, that's the problem, it means for the briefest of moments Ed thinks, hazily, with limited liminal awareness of his own dreaming self, that he's been granted some gentle graceful reprise from the judge, jury, and executioner within his mind. Harmless things, the detritus of a long day's work, the flotsam of distant memory, the jetsam of recent experience. Trappings of thrilling voyages, waves lapping against the sand, sailcloth and rough ropes, laughter and music, dimly lit docks, wet humid jungles. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing distressing, nothing to cause alarm, just a pirate on the deck of his ship, steering through calm waters, content, in his element, even at peace.
A bridge back to before he boarded the Revenge . To the humdrums and doldrums of piracy by reputation alone, the echoes of his life solely as Blackbeard, familiar and mundane and simple, so simple, God he misses simple.
He watches gulls pass overhead, soaring and crying loud enough to resonate around him, echoing. He's never heard seagulls make quite this cacophony, and that's the first sign something is amiss. The noise rebounds, reverberates in tandem with something high pitched and whining, like a held note on a stringed instrument, keening, wailing.
It's the hollow ring of sound against glass, he realizes, and too late he sees it beyond the everyday familiar backdrop of the ocean, a strange sheen in the sky, not quite luminescent but displaying a clear curve against the clouds.
Almost like a reflection.
It IS a reflection, he realizes once again too late. Beyond the sky there's glass stretching across the infinite horizon, encapsulating his ship and the waves and the sunlight and the clouds. It's off the port and starboard bow, he finds himself frantically running to the stern of his ship to try and make sense of the scale of it, if it truly is on all sides of him, surrounding him.
It's glass, thick green-tinted glass, glass like the bottles of rum he's been drowning in nonstop, glass like the scratched windows of his cabin, glass glimmering and transparent and reflective, trapping all within in a strange reverberating miasma of crashing waves and crying gulls.
The ocean isn't real.
He looks over the side of the ship, clinging to the ropes that feel so solid and so rough in his hands, but the waves are false, moving and yet not moving, painted in dark deep blues with unmistakable flecks of white spattered on with the touch of an artisan's brush.
His ship is comprised of miniature facsimiles, he realizes in distant dissociated horror, as the ropes become soft like threads spun together, the wood of the vessel matchstick thin and easily splintered, the sails scraps of cloth.
And in the distance, ahead of the ship's magnificent miniature figurehead, a funneling shape, a dark spot on the horizon.
He thinks it's a cork.
As he thinks this, a shadow falls over the landscape, blotting out the sun, or at least the light, whatever it is beyond that illuminates his strange illusory bottled up seascape. It's massive, encompassing not just the sides of the bottle but the top of it, the reflections in the glass now gone, extinguished.
It's a hand, he realizes, and as Ed squints up at the now visible whorls and patterns in the darkness that make up the intricate lines on a person's palm, everything lurches sideways, as if being picked up, moved, carried away.
And there's an eye, a deep burnished warm brown eye, suddenly beyond the glass, blinking curiously at its contents.
It's one he recognizes, breath catching in his throat at the realization.
" ... Stede… ?"
Another hand, also massive, moving towards the thin neck of the bottle, taking ahold of the cork and pinching, and all of a sudden sound comes crashing back around him, the echoes and reverberations broken by the sound of rushing water as everything starts to slide forwards, melting together in a mess of painted waves and flimsily glued wood until it's all swirling whirlpool-like towards the bottleneck, out of the glass prison, towards the center, towards the way out.
Edward holds his breath, unable to ignore the way his heart leaps in his dream-addled brain because Stede is there, it has to have been him,giant sized and tipping him out of his bottle into certain death but still Stede, still here, here and looking for him in his strange little contained microcosm of carefully constructed paper, wood, and glass.
He reaches the mouth of the bottle and falls into blackness, catching a glimpse of his ship tumbling after him before everything whirls again, dizzying, tempest-tossing him across void and silence until he feels something solid at his back, hears the soft creak of a ship moving through waves, real honest ocean, and smells salt and sweat and alcohol and smoke.
Soft fabrics against his skin. A hand clasped in his. A soft whisper of his name, an inquiry, gentle.
"Ed?"
He opens his eyes, blinking around him at the captain's cabin, except it isn't his cabin, it's Stede's cabin, full of finery and frippery, shelves lined with carefully selected books and decorations immaculately placed. He's still dreaming, he has to be, especially as he registers the gentle smile and crinkled eyes of his companion. His gentleman pirate. His Stede.
"... You came back," Ed manages as he finds Stede's other hand, gripping it tight, moving the two of them in an almost-dance until they're facing each other, nose to nose in the dim light of the cabin.
Stede's smile widens. "Never left," he says, and leans in to kiss him.
He tastes sweet against Ed's lips, ever soft, ever gentle, and Ed pulls him closer, unable to rein in desperation as he clings to this vestige of reality crawling through his subconscious. A whisper of what could have been. A reminder of everything he wanted more than he's ever wanted anything.
The kiss deepens as Stede gently guides Ed backwards until the back of his knees hit the edge of the bunk tucked away in the window nook of the cabin, and Ed keeps his eyes closed as he runs his hands up Stede's arms and winds his own arms around his shoulders, feeling the weight of him settle on top of him as they kiss again, and again, sighing into each other's mouths, letting out the faintest moans.
Ed hears Stede gasp and he keeps his eyes closed, arms tightening around his sweet companion's neck, not wanting to do anything that could make this precious moment change or shift or end.
The gasp becomes a soft choking sound and Ed's eyes flick open in horror as he suddenly sees the tentacles.
They're everywhere, wrapped around Stede's arms, crushing across his chest, wound around his neck and squeezing, squeezing, and it's only as Ed tries to reach out to pull them off his lover, to save him, he sees where the tentacles are coming from.
He realizes where his arms have gone.
He tries to recoil, struggling, pulling the tentacles - his tentacles - away from Stede as fast as he can, trying to loosen them, to untangle them, but the thick rubbery coils are relentless, seemingly infinite as they squeeze around Stede and start to drag him away until he's barely visible, until they're not in the cabin any more, Ed doesn't know where they are, he only knows Stede's screams and the desperate flailing of a single outstretched hand.
If only he could reach for it. If only he still had arms.
If only he were still … Ed.
The smell of salt and gunpowder crashes over him as he's suddenly on the deck of a ship again, this time it's the Revenge , and everything's being flung from one side to the other as thunder and lightning roil overhead. Stede is gone, he can't see him anywhere, and Ed's frantic as he runs towards the mast, looking, calling out for him as rain lashes against his face and waves dash into the deck.
He both sees the tentacles and feels them when they arrive, swirling up from the depths and wrapping fully around the ship before cracking it in two, dragging it down, down, down into the inky black ocean.
He feels them because they ARE him, sees them and sees himself floundering in the sucking vicious vortex of water, feels the powerful coiling of his tentacles breaking down masts and destroying sails, he IS the kraken, the destruction, the ruiner of men and desecrator of all things good and holy in this world.
The kraken roars as the Revenge sinks, and then rapidly he turns, tentacles flexing and coiling, at the sudden flash of light in the distance, repeating at brief intervals, steady, unbroken, even in the darkness, even in the storm.
A lighthouse.
Ed gasps for air as he's swimming, suddenly, an amalgam of tentacles and human limbs as he tries to make his way through the crashing water, towards the light, towards the beacon, even as every nerve in his body screeches at him to go the other way, to avoid it, to leave.
He swims forever, or at least what feels like forever, until his muscles burn and his lungs ache and his skin stings, and then one of his hands - and it is a hand, he's certain of it, five digits and able to grip - hits the edge of a dock, sturdy, wooden. He clings onto it for dear life and tries to hoist himself up and out of the water, to no avail.
He's too weak. He's ruined himself, swimming towards the rocks and the flashing stalwart beacon of certain doom.
As Ed reaches up to try and grasp the edge of the dock again he feels a hand take his and yank him upwards, out of the water with no effort, set him down on the dock, soaked and bedraggled.
He squints up through the sudden sunlight at the figure, outlined against it, and coughs in surprise.
It's him. Blackbeard. The young man, still reminiscent of his moniker, stood firm and tall over his gasping older version of himself.
"You've really done it this time, haven't you?" Blackbeard says, and Ed groans, trying to get water out of his eyes, his ears, his lungs. "Gone and got yourself in a right fuckery."
Ed tries to get to his feet and realizes he's standing on the dock. That dock. He'd know it anywhere, recognizes the wood grain of the slats, the creak of each one beneath his feet, the gentle clunking of the dinghy occasionally bumping into one of the supports. He waited there for hours, how could he not recognize it?
Blackbeard smirks and Ed feels his stomach drop. "Should have killed him when you had the chance."
Ed tries to speak but his mouth feels full of sand and glass, sharp and gritty, bloody against his teeth.
"So much for the greatest pirate who ever sailed the seas."
Ed takes a step backwards, feels something coil around his foot, looks down to see the tentacles rising up from the water, surrounding the dock, ready to consume it.
"And all for a man who could never love a creature like you."
Ed tries to scream but feels the world get pulled out from under him, dragging him back into the water, suddenly surrounded by bubbles and debris, by blood and ashes, by thick suckered tentacles curling tight around him until he thinks he's truly being crushed, that not even drowning could save him from the inexorable embrace of his own darkness.
The kraken pulls him deep into the ocean, alone, leaving everything behind, and it spares no survivors as it rises up again to continue its rampage.
Please…
It's the only thing Ed can think any more as he feels the life slide out of him with every squeeze.
Just let it be over…
He feels the blackness consume him, crushing him deeper down until he's gone, gone…
He's gone.
A sharp rapping makes Edward jerk awake, dropping the empty bottle in his hand and letting it roll across the floor. He coughs, groans, sitting up to squint across the dark room towards the door.
"Captain." It's Izzy.
"What." His voice is nearly guttural, his skin feels like sandpaper, his head pounds with a dull ache.
"We're approaching port."
"Fine," Ed doesn't move.
"... Captain?"
"Get out."
"Edward-"
"Go." He spits, venomous. "Unless you're ready to eat the rest of your fucking toes, you'll get out when I tell you to get out."
"Yessir, sorry sir."
A rustling, the sound of the door closing. Ed rests his head back down on the heavy, solid wood of his desk. He breathes in, slowly, then out, even more so. Takes in lungfuls of real, musty, slightly smoke-tinged air.
He reaches down to find a fresh bottle of rum and pops the cork, drinking until his throat burns and his eyes water.
Maybe this time, if he starts as soon as he wakes up, it'll be enough to give him dreamless sleep.
Maybe it'll be enough to help him forget.