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He’d seen the sickness before. Hopeless romantics coughing up buds and petals and thorns until they were buried and beautiful gardens sprung from the ground. Another one of life's cruel jokes.
That is until he caught his mother burning poppies in the fireplace. Her eyes welled and she turned away from him as she tossed another handful into the fire.
How? How could she still love a man who beat her, drank away all her hard-earned money, and left his wife and children barely scraping by? He wouldn’t let his only memories of her bloom in the springtime.
He killed his father but the flowers didn’t stop.
He watched his mother grow weaker and the stems grow stronger. He left before they planted her and never looked back.
Edward had never known love or heartbreak. The life of a pirate wasn’t cohesive to those sorts of feelings.
As he stood on the dock, calling for Steede, he felt the tickle at the back of his throat. He knew what it was and he knew it would be his end. He thought of ending it then. A short walk before being embraced by the cold depths of the ocean. It would be a fitting end.
Instead, he rowed. Instead, he found himself on that wretched ship. Instead, he lay in bed, mourning what was never meant for him, coughing up leaves and buds.
He remembered his mother. How she suffered. What her garden must look like now after all these years.
He hadn’t been successful the first time around. His mother, even after his father's death, wasn’t strong enough to let go of her love. Edward wasn’t his mother though. And he wasn’t Blackbeard anymore either.
He would drown and burn and kill every part of himself that had loved the Gentleman Pirate.
He coughed and hacked and threw handfuls of orange blossoms overboard.
There would be no garden of Edward Teach. There was only The Kracken.