Chapter Text
The biggest lie Stede Bonnet had ever been told was that he was a lighthouse. This was also the greatest truth.
When Stede was married, he was told to be a guiding light for his wife and children. They were ships traveling a rocky sea, and he was to shepherd them safely to shore. His light would be the only beacon keeping them safe in times of distress, bringing them all together. But the reality of a lighthouse was that coming too close to one was as dangerous as never having one at all.
Stede learned the hard way that lighthouses were best avoided.
This was the reality of his life. He was the rocks that no one could get close to, the lonely flame warning of danger at every hour. His wife and children had all sailed too close to his perilous cliffs and suffered the consequences. It was safer for them to avoid him, safer to never cling too closely.
When Stede left them in the night, he brought only the clothes on his back, a small sum of money, and his optimistic attitude. His family had access to his entire fortune and his land - more than enough to provide them with a comfortable life for many years. He told himself often that this was the right decision. His light only ever brought them distress; he hoped for them to sail towards a safer one.
In a rather poetic turn of events, Stede had stumbled upon a real lighthouse. He had only been traveling for a few months, just enough for him to get perfectly lost, when the light cut through a dark night. It seemed like fate, or a cruel, cruel irony, that had guided him there. So up, up, up the great hill towards the towering monolith on the cliff he went.
Hills always seem much smaller from farther away, a fact that unfortunately did not occur to Stede until he was halfway up the path. As he neared the top, a dense fog rolled in, first licking the tips of his shoes before crawling up his legs and surrounding him. The fog felt thick enough to slice with a knife, and the longer he stayed in it the more he felt it creep into his mind and dull his thoughts.
Stede’s sense of direction had always been sub-par at best, so it was no surprise when he found himself at the edge of a cliff rather than at the door to the lighthouse. He only shook his head and breathed out a disappointed sigh, frustrated with himself. But as he turned to correct his trajectory and continue on, he paused.
The feeling of being watched is a very particular one, the kind of feeling that cannot be shaken off or ignored because it overwhelms the brain. This feeling sat in Stede’s chest, even when he turned back and gazed towards the fog-covered sea. He wondered what could have possibly been out there but chalked it up to paranoia. After all, it should be impossible for anything to see through such murk and darkness. It was best to push forward and hope for the best.
Despite his verbal self-assurances that he was being foolish, the feeling persisted as he continued. The further he walked, the more the fog swallowed up the land around him until he felt a part of it himself. Stede’s mind reached for memories of clear, warm days, but when every direction could be any direction, he had to stay focused on the here and now.
“Bugger,” he mumbled to himself when his shoe caught on a rock. He took it as a good sign that he had rediscovered the stone pathway he had spotted earlier.
Somewhere out there, he still felt those eyes on his back, boring into his spine.
Just as Stede was prepared to lay down in the grass and let the fog swallow him whole, a streak of red came into view. He felt suddenly reinvigorated in his quest, pulling his feet from the grasp of the mist and quickening his pace.
As the door of the building came into view, Stede forgot about the eyes following him - or maybe it was that they looked away once he got close. He knocked once, twice, three times before stepping back. He fussed over his cravat, brushed off his coat, straightened his clothes as he waited. Stede wanted nothing more than to look presentable for whomever the keeper may be.
He stood for a minute, then two, waiting as the fog curled around his ankles once again. It seemed thinner now within the safety of the building’s perimeter, but that didn’t stop him shaking off his feet to rid himself of the swirling mist. After what could have been three minutes or twenty, he pondered knocking again but wasn’t sure if that was rude. His hand rose and fell in an endless cycle of uncertainty. When the door finally creaked open on its hinges, his mind wondered for a moment if it was a hallucination or not.
A boy stood in front of him, wearing a short red jacket, burlap pants, and an expression that said he had been secretly waiting for a distraction. He looked surprised not to see someone on the doorstep but to be face to face with a stranger.
“Ah, hello, good fellow!” Stede snapped into his most polite persona, which was actually just his everyday self at a slightly louder volume. “Are you the keeper of this fine lighthouse?”
The boy in the doorway snorted. “Course not. How old d’you think I am?”
“My apologies,” Stede replied, shifting into damage control mode. “My name is Stede Bonnet. I would love to speak to your keeper if he is present!”
“Lucius. He’s dead. The keeper, I mean, not me. I’m Lucius.” The boy was incredibly calm about this statement, which regularly would have disturbed Stede; however, his stockings felt damp, his feet were awfully tired, and his mind felt like soup in his skull. Stede knew he should turn away and head towards town.
“The position is vacant, then?”
As the words tumbled from his lips, Stede realized he had yet to figure out a real reason why he had hiked up that terrible hill in such terrible weather in the middle of the night. Perhaps this was secretly his reason all along. The Stede Bonnet that had a wife and children back home would have never made a decision so rash; the Stede Bonnet that had been hiding inside him was full of anxious excitement.
The boy - Lucius - shifted to lean against the doorway on one shoulder, looking Stede up and down. “Guess so, yeah. Are you a keeper?”
“Not at all.” Honesty may have been the best policy, but for a moment, Stede considered the merit of a small fib. In the end, he decided to tack on “but I’m a fast learner” for extra oomph.
Much to the Stede’s simultaneous surprise and delight, Lucius shrugged. “Good enough for me.”
Lucius pushed off the door frame, inviting Stede in. Stede’s face broke out into a delighted smile, unsure of his next steps but excited for whatever may come. The weight of his previous life lifted off his shoulders and left nothing but hope for the future in its weight. He paused, surveying the sheer height of the lighthouse before stepping inside.
Somewhere, deep within the murky fog surrounding the cliff, a pair of eyes watched the door close behind the fascinating new keeper.