Chapter Text
‘’Set a course for Barbados,’’ Blackbeard commanded.
It took Izzy Hands a minute to process what his captain had just told him. Barbados? What fucking business would Blackbeard have in fucking Barbados? It was the dead of night and Izzy was the only one still awake, steering the ship. Suddenly it hit him. Stede Bonnet. Even in his thoughts he spat out every syllable of the name. He knew that any more questioning about his captain's judgement would earn him a sock-flavoured snack and more limping around for days.
He then reminded himself not to worry. The old Captain Blackbeard had returned and would not consider things like ‘’reconciliation’’ or ‘’heartfelt apologies’’. That imbecile would not be seeing Edward Teach again.
No, Stede Bonnet better run or hide or pray to whatever God he served. Because Blackbeard was coming for him.
‘’Very well,’’ Izzy said smugly, as he gave the wheel a firm tug, turning the ship around.
–
Blackbeard entered the captain’s cabin and went straight for his bed. Stede’s bed. God. He threw himself at the mattress face-first, trying not to notice the traces of cologne that lingered every time he inhaled. Tears were already prickling at his eyes. Fuck. He did not have time for this.
He sat up, took off his leather jacket and remembered what Izzy had told him the night before.
‘’ Word is ,’’ Izzy had quite suddenly remarked while Ed was gazing into the distance on the deck of the ship, ‘’’ Stede Bonnet has risen from the dead and returned to his wife and children. Perfectly content, I heard .’’
Edward’s stomach had dropped to the bottom of the ocean. He’d stormed off to avoid stabbing his first mate or chopping off more toes, knowing Izzy meant for his words to sting. But he also knew he was telling the truth.
The lighthouse painting swayed back and forth, there was a storm at sea. Edward couldn’t help but stare. He’d assumed Stede had gone back to his wife, but hearing the truth hurt. Imagining it hurt.
He thought of Stede and the faceless Mary and their two fair, picture-perfect young children on a family portrait. He thought of them sitting at the table for supper, a room full of life, laughter, and abundance. He thought of family. Of nice things. Something he caught a glimpse of, but would never have again.
Part of him knew it was his fault. He should have known from the moment he’d asked him to run away together after he had kissed him in the spur of the moment because his heart was too full. He had lost him then and there. There was so much hesitation in Stede’s eyes but he was too blind and foolish and in love to see it. He’d scared him off, he shouldn’t have-
He snapped out of it quickly, realising he would only dig himself further and further into a state where he would wallow in self-pity and start writing bad poetry. There was no one to write it down now, anyway.
Instead of twisting the knife in his heart further, he would find a way to wield it. He dried the tears off his face with the back of his hand, staining it with black paint. His lip trembled in anger. No more tears, now, he told himself, unconvinced.
His rational self knew Stede had abandoned him. He was a cowardly man, just as fickle and snide as the rest of his kind. Let him flee to his marriage to a woman who was probably overjoyed the bastard was gone.
Damn Stede Bonnet to hell for running off with his heart.
He would pay Stede a visit. And then he would get rid of him to end this horrible nightmare once and for all. Stede Bonnet had to die and with that, he could put his heart away forever.
—
Mary woke up from the most blissful sleep. With her husband officially dead and gone again, she could return to her life of complete freedom.
She woke to the sound of birdsong and the feeling of the sun high in the sky. She smiled, knowing she had slept well into the afternoon. She stretched out every sore joint and muscle with a big yawn, but her peace was soon disturbed by a loud knock at the door.
That must be Doug, she thought. A new widow, it would be scandalous to take another man into the house so soon, but he was around enough. Helping her ‘’’grieve’’. Thoroughly. Often multiple times a night.
Quickly washing her face at the basin and fixing the mess that was her hair, she rushed to the front door and opened it cheerfully.
But the man looming in front of her was not her lover. This was a man with long, loose grey hair. He had deep brown eyes that bore into hers, and his face was covered in streaks of black paint. Her heart sank.
‘’’Where is he?’’ the man snarled.
‘’Where is who- Hey!" She was cut off by the man simply walking past her, bumping hard against her shoulder, and entering her house. Two others followed. One larger fellow with a studded belt around his head and one bearded man with his hair swept to one side of his head.
"Search the house!" the long-haired man yelled, and his subordinates, she assumed, scattered into the rooms of her house.
"Please, tell me what it is you want! Is it money?" She begged, following him into the dining room.
The man slowly turned to face her.
"Mary Bonnet, I presume."
"..Yes," she said, starting to scan the room for possible weapons. Where had she left that damn skewer? Not that it would help. The man had a gun and a knife, and two goons. All she could think of were her children and the servants.
"Where is your husband? I know he miraculously came back from the dead and turned up at your doorstep. But where. Is. He. Now?" He continued, and with every word he stepped forward, backing her into the table.
"He passed away just two days ago," she stated, "He was chased by a jungle cat and hit by a carriage… and then crushed by a harpsichord."
‘’You’re lying!’’ he bellowed. Mary shrieked as he stabbed his knife into her kitchen table, missing her hand by mere inches, ‘’Just as you did when he left the first time! Or wait… Don’t tell me…’’
He pulled his knife out of the wood. The man’s voice lowered and his eyes narrowed.
‘’You killed him? I know you despised him. I know you did it, I know you had enough of him, TELL ME! I was supposed to-!’’ he started frantically waving around his knife, pointing it at her and nearly slicing Mary’s nose right off.
‘’I DID NOT KILL HIM!’’ she yelled, bravely shoving him away from her while she ran for the door. But the man with the studded belt had snuck up and was now standing in front of it, hatchet in hand.
‘’Fuck!!’’ She whipped around to the tall stranger who had ruined her fine oak table, ‘’His body is literally at the morgue! I don’t know what you want but you can go see it and yell at his corpse for all I care!’’
At that moment, the other man walked in, dragging her daughter in by the collar. She was clutching something tightly in her hands. He placed her in front of his boss. Mary was about to run to her, but was held back by the man at the door.
‘’Ivan, what have you got here?’’ the leather-clad man asked.
‘’It’s his daughter, boss.’’ Ivan replied.
‘’I can… see that.’’ He had a look in his eyes that she couldn’t quite place. Alma was a spitting image of her father, and she definitely sensed some bad blood between him and this stranger.
‘’Tell him what you told me. About your daddy.’’ Ivan grumbled. Mary could feel her blood start to boil.
Alma looked up from the spot on the ground she’d been staring at and into the eyes of the invader.
‘’My daddy died two days ago. Now he’s gone forever. This is all he left me.’’ She stopped fidgeting with what she was holding and offered it up to the man, her little hands shaking.
Surprisingly gentle, the man took the halved petrified orange from her with wide eyes. There it was again, that strange look, as if his demeanour was starting to crack bit by bit. It was much more prominent this time. She never knew any man other than Stede Bonnet could look at an orange with such longing…
The man looked as if he had just realised something. Oh god, was that enough to convince him?
His eyebrows scrunched together, he looked completely lost and like he was going to collapse.
‘’Get her out of here.’’ he snarled to Mary.
‘’Darling, run along to your room now, Mama will handle these gentlemen,’’ Mary told her. Her daughter gave her a tight hug before she dashed out of the dining room.
Mary flinched as the man roughly grabbed one of the chairs at the table and collapsed onto it. He hunched forward and put his head in his hands. Confused, Mary backed away. She had to get the kids, she had to get out of….
‘’Ivan, Fang, go back to the ship. I’ll handle the rest of this myself.’’
Mary watched the two men leave her house, making sure they actually left and weren’t waiting around the corner to strike her as soon as she made another wrong move. The moment she looked back at her other guest, however, she was greeted by the most remarkable sight.
The man that was left was clutching the orange, tears streaming down his face. He met her gaze with a pained expression and as if realising she had been staring at him, and he sat back up while wiping his face, smudging the black paint all over. Mary was baffled by the sudden change in the man’s cold disposition, but she also suspected there might be an actual person underneath all that leather.
‘’I’m … I’m so sorry for your loss,’’ the man said with a sigh.
She approached him like one might move toward a feral cat that could bear its claws at any time, and pulled out a chair across from him. Gently, she sat down.
"So… ‘The ship’… are you a…"
"A pirate, yes," he said as he reached out his hand to her. "I'm Blackbeard. And I’m terribly sorry about the table."
A lot of things went through Mary's head. First of all, where was the beard? She was dumbfounded, and judging by the smirk on Blackbeard's face she looked it, but kept pretending she had it all together.
"I’m Mary… But you already knew that," she said after shaking his hand, "Stede told me… Before he passed…A lot about you. I didn't believe him. He talked of all these adventures the two of you had together. And the time he… Wait, is all this because he actually stabbed you?"
Blackbeard, the fearsome pirate sitting at her dining table, roared with laughter.
"No!" He wheezed while wiping the tears from his eyes, "I let him do that."
Now it was her turn to laugh: "He always had an… active imagination. Strange to think all the pirate stories he bombarded me with when he came back were true."
"Maybe not all."
"Maybe not."
An uncomfortable silence followed.
.
..
…
"Would you like some wine?" Mary blurted out.
Blackbeard nodded with a grin.
–
"...I shit you not! He was so… eccentric. Apparently he tried to ransom some British guy and I kid you not, he walked around screaming ‘Man for sale, someone buy my booty’ for a solid ten minutes. And he asked me afterwards why that didn’t work! And, do you know what his ship looked like? He had an entire library and a fireplace. Every morning he had his chef prepare us tea and biscuits. This man was living the high life on the high seas.’’
Mary threw her head back with laughter. This was not what she had expected when a stranger showed up at her doorstep.
The sun had started to set, the servants had taken the children to bed and Mary and Blackbeard were getting drunk off their asses. She was having the time of her life talking to someone who was close to Stede, which is not something she'd ever imagine herself doing. It made sense though, they had both sort of been making fun of him. Mary could tell Blackbeard wasn’t being genuine in his digs at Stede, and she noticed he harboured a genuine admiration for her amateurish pirate of a husband. She could appreciate Blackbeard’s humour, even when it was very clear he tried subduing painful memories every time he took a swig of his drink.
Besides, it was not good to speak ill of the dead. But he wasn’t actually… dead. It had been gnawing at her mind since she’d offered him a drink. Should she tell him the truth about Stede's whereabouts? They hadn't really talked about his death, but the more Blackbeard told her about their time together, she felt like he had a right to know.
A right to know who he was going after and why he left. His… newfound love. Would Blackbeard know about it? Would telling him bring Stede into more danger? How should she approach this?
Taking a sip of her wine for confidence, she tested the waters.
"That’s hilarious," she said, swirling around her wine in the glass, "It seems the two of you were really close."
"We… We were." Blackbeard sighed as he fidgeted with the orange. There was that look again. But this time it was tender. Dreamy, even. She recognised it from somewhere.
On someone. Oh.
Oh.
How had she not noticed? Everything up to this point, the way Blackbeard spoke about Stede with genuine delight, the way he broke when Alma had successfully convinced him Stede was dead…
Had the table not been there, she would have dropped the glass. Instead she set it down gently, trying to hide the fact that her heart was starting to race. He deserved to know the truth. But she needed to know something for sure first.
"What's your name?" She asked, looking Blackbeard in the eyes while placing her sweaty palms on the table, "Your real name, what was it?"
Blackbeard raised a brow.
"Edward."
Mary was out of her chair at lightning speed.
‘’Ed!’’ she exclaimed with glee. ‘’You’re Ed!’’
She was gesturing like a madwoman, pointing at him, while Edward looked at her in astonishment, still cradling the empty wine bottle by the neck.
‘’It’s you!’’ Mary walked over to Edwards chair, grabbed his face between her two hands and shouted: ‘’He’s alive you bastard! And he’s looking for you!’’
Ch.1 END