Chapter Text
The thing was, Stede reflected, this was bound to happen sooner or later. The sun shone hot; burning to a crisp on his back in the sand, Stede watched wisps of clouds drift across the pale blue sky. One of them looked rather like a chicken, actually. Stede hadn’t eaten since lunch yesterday – if he could even call it “lunch,” since all he’d had was a soggy, salty piece of hardtack he’d found squashed into the lining of his pocket. That cloud really did indeed look like a chicken, didn’t it? Marvelous things, clouds. Chickens, too. God, he was fucked.
Stede sighed, and pushed himself up from his ungentlemanly sprawl, surveying the beach ahead of him. To his dismay, it looked much the same as he’d left it to lie spread-eagled in the sand not fifteen minutes ago: sand and seaweed, a scattering of shells; his oars, discarded in a clatter to his left; his dinghy, with its small but significant hole; the surf, and further out, the cause of his dinghy’s demise, those sharp and jagged hidden rocks.
Well, there was nothing for it. He’d have to go into the forest behind him, or he’d die of thirst before he finished feeling sorry for himself. Standing, Stede swayed on his feet for a moment, vision blurring around the edges the way it often did when he hadn’t eaten enough these days.
Right! To the forest, then. To the forest, and hopefully, to food and water, first priority. Once he’d eaten and had something to drink, he could think about repairing his little boat, and setting off to find Ed, or the Revenge, or whoever else out there in the wide blue sea happened upon him first.
Marooned. Good God. What kind of a pirate was he?
The forest was a tangle of vines and branches, underbrush catching at his boots and threatening to toss him over. It was humid, here, and quiet; a thick verdant haze of trees caught the crash of water and wind and muffled it. Stede sweated and crunched his way forward.
And moreover, he thought, in the karmic cycle of the universe, wasn’t it just his due to be marooned like this, alone, forced to fend for himself? He wished, urgently, that Ed was beside him.
It had been necessary, Stede knew, to return home – he wouldn’t change that – it was the right decision, to resolve one chapter of his life before beginning another. But he hoped Ed was alright. He hoped he would understand. He would understand, once Stede found him and explained. Once Stede had some water, and some food, and patched the hole in his dinghy, and rowed towards a more familiar shore, and found his crew, and, and, and.
Baby steps. Some large insect slammed into the side of Stede’s face; he slapped at it. The sooner he got out of here, the better. How big was this island, anyway?
Taking a moment to thank his foresight, Stede drew his knife out of his boot. Probably good to have this on hand. Who knew what vile creatures lurked in the underbrush? Who knew which vines were actually snakes!? Best to be prepared. He tripped over a rock in his path, stumbling forward. Terribly uneven terrain, this. Around him, amidst the trees and vines and the hazy afternoon, were a scattering of rocks, sized like small and large boulders, some jutting out of the mossy ground like teeth from a giant jaw.
Clambering over a gnarled root, Stede braced his hand on the side of a rock, and his palm came away wet. Water! Yes, indeed – he leaned closer to get a better look. A trickle of clear water carved its way across the rock’s face. Stede jumped a few times in place. Bloody difficult to see where he was going, here, with boulders everywhere and trees wherever the boulders weren’t.
His jumping, undoubtedly a picture of athletic grace, left him breathless, but armed with a good deal more knowledge and determination: he was headed uphill, towards a craggy little cliff, from which a stream bubbled its way to a small pool below.
Hacking at branches and hauling himself over the rocks in his way, Stede made his arduous way to the pool, and collapsed to his knees at its edge. He’d sweated through his thin linens, but it hadn’t cooled him down even a little; instead they stuck to his skin like sheets of wet paper. Gratefully, Stede cupped his hands in the water and took a long drink. Thus satisfied, but, frankly, still much too hot, he considered for a moment, then dunked his head.
It was blessedly cool and quiet below the surface. Stede squeezed his eyes shut, in case any aquatic creatures decided to swim by, and held his breath for a count of ten, before whipping his head back out of the water, sending a cascade of glittering droplets through the air. Ah, that was nice, the nicest! Water dripped from his hair to his collar, and he shook his head like a dog. While he really would prefer a proper bath, soap and perfumes and the like, this was very nearly just as good.
Right! Okay. Without thinking too much about it, Stede removed his sweaty shirt and plunged it into the pool. Might as well give it a quick rinse – there was no chance of getting it properly clean, but at the very least, it would cool him down to wear it after. And anyway, what kind of pirate worried about things like “hygiene” and “cleanliness?”
Maybe the Gentleman Pirate had, once, but Stede wasn’t him anymore, not really. Here he was just Stede.
He had to find his ship; maybe, then–
Then–
A crack like a pebble hitting a paving stone, and a splash so violent and so near to Stede’s head that he found himself drenched. He jumped; his shirt fell from his hands into the pool.
“Ah!! Good God,” he said, heart beating and beating in his chest. Wildly, he looked left, then right, but nothing seemed amiss or out of place. Frowning, he fished his shirt out of the water, and yanked it, still dripping, over his head. He felt better, clothed, as if covering his bare skin with cloth offered any protection from– well, whatever was out there, cracking and splashing.
A disturbance of air by his ear; another crack, another splash. Stede scrambled to his feet, narrowly avoiding a shower of small projectiles. Was he being shot at ? By whom!? With what kind of weapon? Was this island not, in fact, deserted, but rather, against all odds, inhabited ?
Turning in a wild circle, Stede caught a flash of movement from high in the trees. And there, again, with a smack, a rock splashed into the pool.
“Who’s there?” Stede called. “Reveal yourself, fiend!”
Craning his neck and shielding his eyes with his hand, he squinted at the treetops. No more rocks rained down; the grove was quiet and still, save for the buzzing of irritating little insects. Stede frowned.
“Did you hear me!? I said, reveal yourself!”
No answer was immediately forthcoming, but Stede thought he heard a rustling above him. Crouching to pick up his knife from the pool’s rocky edge, he scanned the treetops again. Oh, there– just above the little cliff– a glimpse of something, a shape or a shadow out of place. Well, there was only one way to find out: he’d have to climb. He shoved his knife back into his boot, rolled his still-dripping sleeves past his elbows and set to it.
In truth, Stede hadn’t had many opportunities to climb much of anything, even as captain of his own vessel. Rope ladders and rigging were one thing; scrambling bare-handed up the face of a rock at least twice his height was entirely another. He sweated and struggled for the better part of a quarter hour, scrabbling for footholds, until at last his hands cleared the edge of the cliff. He hauled himself over and collapsed on his knees in the dirt, breathing hard and shaking out his wrists. Lifting the hem of his shirt to wipe the sweat from his eyes, he blinked, clearing his vision with a shake of his head and squinting at the ground.
And there, not two paces ahead of him, a familiar, beloved pair of boots shuffled backwards.
Stede jolted. Heart in his throat, he blinked again, then raised his head. Crouched like a gargoyle in the dirt, smeared in greasepaint and grime, and every limb practically singing with tension, was Ed.
“Oh,” Stede said. Ed stared at him, wild about the eyes. Stede’s knees gave out, and he toppled back onto his rear. He could hardly breathe. They looked at one another for a long, silent minute.
“Oh, my dear,” Stede said, when he could bear it no longer, and immediately regretted it. His voice wavered. Ed shifted his weight to his back foot, away from his bad knee. That crouch couldn’t be terribly comfortable for him, could it? Especially not when he carried this strange tension about him, like a wildcat ready to leap.
Why wasn’t he saying anything?
Well, no matter. Stede never had any trouble making conversation before, whatever the circumstance. This was easy; it was just Ed, after all. They knew each other, understood each other better than anybody Stede had ever known, even if he didn’t quite recognize the look in Ed’s eyes as they regarded each other now.
“Hello,” he said, a little weakly. He waved.
“Why are you here,” Ed said. His voice was rough, his body still.
“Ah,” Stede said, feeling faint. “Well. Bit of a shipwreck. Boat-wreck? Dinghy-wreck, technically; a nasty little rock punched a hole right through the hull. Had to swim for it. The dinghy’s still on the beach. And here I am! And here you are, too. What a lucky stroke!”
“Is it,” Ed said.
“Isn’t it? Out of all the deserted islands in the Atlantic, we two happened to maroon ourselves upon the very same one. I’d call that luck. Wouldn’t you?”
Ed hesitated. He hadn’t risen from his crouch, which he would begin to regret very soon, Stede suspected, eyeing his knee. Seeing him like this, as still and tense as anything, unnerved him: the Ed he’d left behind was always in motion, pacing to and fro, lounging for a moment against the rigging, then springing back up to check on his crew, careening around corners and never, ever sitting still.
This silent, watchful Ed was a new creature. He shifted again, as if he might try to stand, but then he stopped, never taking his uncanny eyes off of Stede.
“Are you real?” Ed said, that same hoarse tone turning his lovely voice to grit.
What?
“What?”
“Are you real?” Ed dropped a hand down to the dirt, dragging his fingers through pebbles and dust. He picked up a flat stone and turned it over between his fingers. “Or… you’re haunting me, is that it? The Revenge wasn’t enough for you?”
Stede’s heart hammered in his chest. Ed still wasn’t looking away from him, but his eyes were hard, his face an expressionless mask.
“Haunting you? Ed, what–?” Stede scrambled to rearrange himself, kneeling up and taking a shuffling step forward. Ed’s eyes glinted, and Stede froze.
“I’m warning you, mate,” Ed said, and the way he held that flat stone shifted from idle to menacing in an instant. “If this isn’t real, or if it’s your idea of– of a joke, or– just, this rock will go right through your head before you can even blink.”
“Right,” Stede said, weakly. “Um. Let’s not… do that, if you don’t mind?”
He swallowed, feeling faint. “Ed, please, what’s going on? It’s me, it’s– Stede, your Stede.”
Ed snorted. “My Stede?” He tossed the rock back into the dirt and picked it up again. “My Stede is dead. Or haven’t you heard?”
Once, many weeks ago aboard the Revenge, Stede had spent an afternoon gathering his courage, and then, at sunset, climbed to the crow’s nest, where he sat for a half hour watching the sea and sky turn scarlet and gold. No other wonder he’d encountered to that point had bested it – the water shone like gilded glass, finer than any window or lampshade he’d ever seen. Suspended a hundred feet in the air, floating above land and water both, Stede felt weightless, soaring, a man reborn.
When the sun dipped below the horizon, though, the chill set in. It had not been a hot day, and so the wood planks at his back quickly lost the warmth in which the sun had soaked them. Still Stede sat, watching the light fade, until the murky twilight obscured his view to a degree that made him nervous, blurring the borders between ship and sea and sky. He took a breath and shivered, then shivered again, and set to crawling down the mainmast before the dark swallowed him whole.
His hands slipped, three quarters of the way down. Fingers stiff with cold, he lost his grip on the rigging, and plummeted towards the deck in a sickening moment of free-fall. Stede’s tailbone ached for days afterwards, and his pride for longer, his moment of perfect happiness thus tainted by fear.
This moment, alone on an island with Edward Teach, felt something like that fall.
Heart racing, Stede swallowed. “Ah, no, I’m afraid not,” he said. “Still alive, Edward… dear.”
He winced. Ed’s expression twisted into something foreign and difficult to look at, the greasepaint smeared at the hollows of his face suddenly and startlingly resembling a death’s head.
“Ed, forgive me for asking, but are you– is everything alright?”
Ed looked up at him through his lashes, the way he had a hundred times back on the Revenge when he was feeling coy, but the furrow in his brow turned it into a gesture of frustration instead.
“Seems I should be asking you that,” he said, “seeing as, last I heard, you’d been mauled by a leopard, hit by a carriage, and crushed by a piano. Dead and buried, they said, and your wife–” he nearly spat– “a widow.”
“Ah,” Stede said. “Well, yes, that did happen.” Ed’s eyes widened, alarm written plain across his grimy face. “But! As you can see, I’m perfectly fine! Alive and well. Rather a good bit of fuckery, that.” Stede clapped his palm to his chest, where his heart still raced and raced. “Still here. Like it or not.”
Ed said nothing, but furrowed his brow again. Stede was beginning to think he might fall under “or not.”
“I’ve settled things with Mary, though, Ed,” he said, desperately confused. “And the children. Legally, Stede Bonnet is dead. All his fortune went to his family.” He took a fortifying breath. “It was a lovely funeral, or so I heard. Closed-casket. A small affair, nothing grand, but pretty. Lots of flowers.”
“Stede Bonnet loved flowers,” Ed said, half under his breath.
“He did,” Stede said. “I do.”
When Ed looked at him this time, his eyes were wet. His hand shook, still gripping the stone.
“Oh, oh dear,” Stede said, shuffling towards him on his knees. He didn’t dare touch him, but collapsing the space between them comforted Stede all the same: only inches, now, where before there were fathoms. “Oh, Edward, Ed, oh dear, don’t cry!”
“‘M not crying,” Ed said, looking away. He drew a hand over his eyes, smearing the greasepaint, and took a shaky breath. The late afternoon hummed around them, the light turning leaves and branches gold.
After a moment: “Will you tell me how you are, Ed? What’s happened? What’s all this on your face?”
Ed was silent for so long Stede thought he might not answer at all. When he spoke, it was splintered, catching on his exhales.
“When you left,” he began, “I waited. And you never showed up. I was at the dock the whole day, the whole day , and you never came.”
Stede flinched. “That’s… yes. I own that. I should have told you.”
“Told me what ? You changed your mind? You didn’t want to come? Yeah, you should have said.” He snorted, tossing his head. “Would’ve changed a lot.”
“Ed,” Stede said, helpless. He felt abruptly like he had on his first day at sea: unsteady, off-balance, so nauseous he could barely move.
In the days since he’d left for Barbados, he’d often thought of that moment in the sunset, Ed’s dear face limned in gold and aglow with hope. Stede had entertained the idea that Ed might be upset – a little upset – by his absence that day at the dock. But under the haze of his panic, and his dawning understanding that Ed would be better off, he’d set it aside. Shortly thereafter he’d been fueled by determination and glowing hope alone, Mary’s steady, gentle voice saying,“I’d call those things love,” echoing in his ear.
That Ed had been hurt – that Ed was still hurting – hadn’t even registered as a possibility. Over him ? Stede’s stomach churned.
“No, listen,” Ed said, a vicious bite to his words, and Stede froze. “I waited for you. Gave up everything for you. Shaved my beard for you. I’m fuckin’ Blackbeard ! D’you know what that means? Do you know what I was ready to leave behind?”
He took a great, gasping breath, and hissed his next words: “I unmade myself. I became nothing . I thought, maybe that wouldn’t be so bad, being nobody with you. But you weren’t there, were you. It was– I was pathetic. Worth less than the scum on your boot, eh? You’re lucky I haven’t killed you yet.”
Stede’s ears rang. Had he even remembered to breathe, while Ed was speaking? He wasn’t sure. He collapsed from his half-crouch into the dirt, landing hard on his rear, and felt something shift, the sticky gears in his brain clicking and whirring into place.
“Hang on,” Stede said, “Was that you, throwing rocks at me just now? Just... just there?” He gestured vaguely behind him, more or less in the direction of the little pool where he’d quenched his thirst – where he’d stripped, and. Hm.
Ed looked at him. “Yeah, mate,” he said. “Bloody lucky I didn’t hit you.”
Had it been luck, really? Back on the Revenge, Stede had borne witness to Ed’s accuracy firsthand, watching him hit target after target with his small collection of knives. He was lucky, he concluded, though perhaps not precisely in the way Ed meant it.
“Well,” Stede said, “suppose I deserved that, then.”
Ed snorted. It wasn’t laughter, not quite, but it was close enough.
Stede sighed. “I’m sorry, Ed,” he began. “There’s a lot I could say, to try to explain, but I think… I’m not sure any of it would suffice.” He paused, gathering his thoughts.
“You say you became nothing. I don’t agree. I think you became something lovely, Edward, and brave. It takes courage, what you did, to throw your old life away like that. To set sail, so to speak, for distant shores. I should know that better than anybody.” He laughed, once, a weak little ha .
“The day that I– that we– after, you know– I was afraid. I’ve always been a coward, Ed, you know this. Running from everything. I went home– I went to Mary’s house, to put the mess I’d made there to rights. Before– I just walked out while the children slept. It wasn’t right, I know that now. But that’s settled. They have the land, and all my fortune, and Mary and Doug will be wed in two months’ time. Don’t worry about it,” he added, seeing Ed’s questioning brow.
“They don’t need me, Ed. I needed to see that. I left as soon as I could, as soon as I’d taken care of everything there. Tied up my loose ends, and all that.” Stede took a steadying breath. “I’m not going back, not ever. I’m done with that life, and I’m done running. This is it, for me, now.”
Ed didn’t answer, but that was alright; Stede thought he might start crying if he did. Instead, Stede leaned back on his hands, closed his eyes, and tipped his face up into the late afternoon light. He felt the sun on his face and bare throat like a caress, like warm hands brushing over his skin. Insects hummed and water trickled, and into the peaceful space between them, his stomach made a horrible noise.
“Oh dear,” he said, embarrassed, and sat up, opening his eyes. Ed made an aborted movement, like he’d started to turn away, but decided against it halfway through. Stede’s belly gurgled again, a long, agonizing note, and he felt that he might be better off if the ground beneath him were to open up and swallow him whole.
“I am so sorry to ask this, Ed, especially as I am your guest here, but, ah, you wouldn’t happen to have anything to eat?”
Ed looked at him sidelong. “Have to help me up,” he said, voice expressionless.
“Yes, right, of course,” Stede said, scrambling to his feet. “Your poor knee! Here, here, give me your hands!”
And, surprisingly, he did.