Work Text:
Edward Teach is drunk. 14 years old, the newest, lowest-ranking pirate on Hornigold’s ship, inexperienced but eager to impress, ready for his very first raid, an ambush near Dead Man’s Cove. Everyone drinking and laughing, boasting, loading their muskets and sharpening their knives.
Jack steals a full bottle, sneaking it over to Ed and Sam–Sam was already on board when Ed and Jack signed on to the crew. The three of them sit together on deck, all nerves and bravado, passing the rum back and forth.
Ed watches Sam, tall and slender, slumped elegantly beside him—his hair shines, pale yellow gold turned a rich, burnished copper by the setting sun.
Sam looks back at Ed, smiling a little, shy. A touch older than Ed or Jack, he showed them the ropes when they first arrived on the ship, teaching them enough to hopefully get them through their first weeks alive.
Jack slumps into Ed abruptly, belching loudly and throwing his arms around his neck. Ed laughs, shoves him away. When Ed looks back, Sam’s looking off to port—the ship they’re after is plainly in view now.
Captain Hornigold screams at the crew to take their stations, to be ready to board, and the three boys stagger to their feet, swaying together as they get into position.
Ed takes a deep breath, lets it out a little shakily. His head spins as he stares over at the ship—it’s Dutch, a huge merchant vessel. He imagines what might be on board—gold, jewels, fine fabrics. He thinks about bringing something back to his mother, a whole bolt of the finest silk, so she can make herself something fit for a lady. Something fit for a queen. He sets his jaw, wishes that he had more than a fine dusting of stubble. He’d look scarier with a beard, he’s sure of it.
He feels a hand on his shoulder and he startles, jerking away from the sudden touch, but when he looks back, it’s just Sam. His heart tightens in his throat when Sam smiles at him. It may be bravado, but it looks like confidence to Ed.
“You’ll be right, mate,” he says, “Just stick with me. I’ll watch your back, and you’ll watch mine, yeah?”
Ed licks his lips, nervous, then returns Sam’s smile.
“Yeah,” he says, rallying, “Don’t worry about me, though. I’ll just keep you safe.”
Sam laughs, and then they grab hold of their ropes. One deep breath, one screamed command from Hornigold, and they’re airborne, light as a feather arcing over the distance to the merchant vessel. They let go, landing side-by-side. Sam shoots Ed another smile as Jack lands next to them in a drunken heap.
And then, chaos.
Ed never remembers it in any particular order, his mind too clouded by rum and fear and pain. What he does remember goes something like this:
Smoke. He tastes it in the back of his throat, eyes stinging, vision blurring.
Then shouting, men scrambling across the deck. Some of them are almost as young as he is. All of them look terrified.
A few have real swords—most carry whatever they could put their hands on as Ed and the rest of Hornigold’s crew boarded their vessel. Filleting knives meant for fish, tools kept on board for small repairs, hammers, a few saws. Ed sees one boy holding a frying pan, swinging it wildly, eyes wide, before a bullet from Hornigold’s gun bursts through his head in a sudden spray of red. The red splatter catches Ed across the face, hot, copper-tasting.
The boy’s body slumps down to its knees, tips over sideways, so much slower than Ed would have expected.
Around him, everything seems distant. The shouting, the smoke, the men rushing towards him.
“Ed!”
He remembers Sam shouting at him, grabbing his arm, pulling him aside just as a short man with broad shoulders and a thick chest thrusts a sword at him.
Ed stumbles back, slumps against the taffrail, winded, and Sam slashes at the man with a knife, catching him across the arm, forcing him back and away from Ed. A quick smile and he’s lost again in the smoke.
Ed stays toward the back, dodging away from men he should be attacking, wiping the blood from his eyes.
Jack stabs and slashes, unsteady on his feet, knife in one hand, bottle of rum in the other. He grins at Ed as he slits a man’s throat.
Ed looks around for Sam, spots him backed against the ship’s rail, pale, afraid.
Ed remembers slashing wildly with his knife.
He thinks he remembers screaming, but he can’t be sure—he wakes up screaming whenever he dreams it.
He catches one man across the face with his knife, sees the horror bloom in his eyes before they disappear behind the curtain of blood that bursts from his flesh. There’s blood on his hands now as well as his face.
Another lad loses most of his fingers, almost his entire hand, as Ed pushes past him.
He remembers forcing his way through a knot of men, stabbing and slicing, cutting at anything in his way—somewhere in the back of his mind, he hears Hornigold shouting encouragement at him, praising his viciousness. He remembers the heat of the burning ship, the smell of cooking flesh.
He gouges and maims his way across the deck, eyes on Sam.
“Hang on, mate,” he shouts, desperate.
Sam, falling backwards, plunging over the rail into the waves surging below.
Ed grabs a rope, knots it around his leg, dives after him.
The water is cold, so cold that the shock of it forces the air from his lungs, salt water making him gag. He gasps desperately, then dives below the surface.
Ed sees Sam below him, a faint outline in the murky water, still struggling. Bodies plunge down around him, sinking in clouds of red, the sound of impact muffled and distant under water.
Sam’s eyes meet his, face gone blue in the dark water and Ed kicks down, seeing nothing but him. Their fingertips brush–he sees desperate, wild hope in Sam’s eyes, reaches down, trying to grab hold of his arm.
Above him, something plunges down through the water—the ship’s yardarm broken free of the burning vessel. The rope ‘round Ed’s leg gives a jerk, drags him suddenly upwards, away from Sam, fingers outstretched, so close he could almost, almost grab him, almost drag him up, and then gone, floating down, face turned up, eyes pleading.
Ed feels something pop in his knee, screams as Jack hauls him up to the surface and drags him from the water, coughing, spluttering and sobbing. Jack holds on to him, arms and legs wrapped ‘round him as Ed slips down into unconsciousness.
When he wakes up, he’s back on Hornigold’s ship.
Sam’s gone.
Jack’s drunk.
Ed sits with his back against a barrel of gunpowder, staring out at the horizon. The sun is sinking, sky gone red. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. A noise forces its way out of his throat, a laugh or a whimper–he’s never sure which. One of the men sits down next to him, passes him a bottle of rum. He’s one of the younger ones, though not as young as Ed. Ed saw him during the raid, remembers the way he held his blade, almost elegant in his brutality.
“You did well.”
The man speaks quietly, voice a little hoarser than Ed expected.
“Most lads don’t fucking survive their first raid.”
Ed doesn’t answer, takes a swig, passes it back to the small, slender man.
“I’m Israel.”
He extends his hand. Ed looks at him for a moment, then reaches over and clasps the hand in his own, just for a moment.
“Ed,” he says, and then “The fuck kind of name is Israel?”
The man laughs.
“Call me Izzy.”
They watch the sea as the sun sinks below the horizon, water shifting from a fiery orange red to a dull purple and finally to dark, navy blue.
“Want something to remember him by?”
Izzy takes a drink, watches Ed out the corner of his eye. Ed nods, a quick, jerky motion, still looking out at the ocean. Izzy pulls a little leather pouch from his pocket and takes out a long, sharp-looking stick and a little vial of ink. He passes the bottle back to Ed.
“Get some more of that down your throat and give me your fuckin’ arm.”
Izzy dips the needle into the ink, stabbing it carefully into Ed’s forearm. It hurts less than the mermaid Sam gave him one drunken night a couple weeks before.
Ed doesn’t look until it’s done—the little black cross stands in stark relief against the rich brown of his skin.
He takes another swig from the bottle, rum burning its way down his throat, leaving warmth in its path and a numbness he could take for comfort. He offers it to Izzy again. The two of them sit in silence, watching the stars wheel 'til morning.
*
It becomes a ritual.
Every raid, every sickness that rolls through the ship, carrying friends away with it, Israel Hands comes to Edward Teach. They sit together on the edge of the ship as Izzy slowly carves a graveyard onto Ed’s arm.
When Fred’s throat is slit on a Spanish galleon, a few seconds too late for Ed to reach him.
When Marama slips from the rigging during a storm and disappears in the towering waves battering the ship.
When Stefan takes a fever in port and dies in a flea-infested bed in the cheapest inn in the Republic of Pirates.
A black cross for each of them, clustered around Sam’s.
*
The mutiny against Hornigold goes as well as it could. The old man doesn’t go out without a fight—Cristos and Sharky become two more crosses on Ed’s arms.
Izzy comes to Ed that night in the captain’s quarters—his quarters now. He clears his throat at the door, almost nervous as he waits for Ed to turn, holding the little leather pouch with his tattoo supplies in his hands—he’s not just Ed’s mate anymore. He’s first mate now. He stands for the entire ship, for the crew.
“Captain?”
Ed shakes his head, unmoored by his friend’s sudden formality.
“Hey, come on, Iz,” he says, “at least call me Ed when we’re alone, right mate?”
Izzy nods, and for a second his smile reaches his eyes—Ed doesn’t see that often these days.
They sit together on Hornigold’s hard, worn floor. It’s the first time they’ve done this without a blanket of stars above them.
It doesn’t feel the same.
*
Jack fucks off about a week later, taking a few men with him–he wants to be a captain himself, do things his own way. Ed almost misses him sometimes, mostly at night, bored and alone in a cold, hard bed.
Sometimes he thinks Iz would join him if he asked.
He doesn’t ask. It wouldn’t feel right, now they’re captain and first mate. He doesn’t want to take advantage.
*
Three months later, they sail into Ed’s home port. He swaggers down familiar streets, hair as clean as he could get it, face scrubbed and shining. He’s carrying a bolt of fabric that he stole from a ship last month—a deep, rich burgundy, covered in delicate gold filigree. He thinks it’s silk, but he can’t really be sure. It’s so soft in his hands, softer than almost anything he’s ever felt, like the little scrap of fabric his mother gave him years ago. He’ll show her he still has that, too. She’ll be proud of him. She’ll make something beautiful from this bolt of fabric—a dress, maybe, so she can finally walk down the street looking like a lady. He can’t wait to see her in it, glowing. He can’t wait to see her—it’s been seven years. He can take care of her now.
When he turns the corner, his steps falter. The little place where his mother was rooming when he left doesn’t look the same. It’s dark, dingy—the front step is crumbling, covered in dirt and trash. He walks towards it, taking in the shattered windows, the cobwebs that have grown across the top of the wooden door.
An old woman sitting on a stoop smokes a pipe and watches him warily as he stalks up to the door and stops, not knowing where to go. Her face is deeply lined, eyes a mere glint in deep sockets, skin a darker brown than Ed’s, weathered by age and sun and the hard life of a woman in a place like this.
“Lookin’ for someone, lad?” she asks finally, when Ed shows no sign of moving off.
His brow creases in confusion as he looks at her. A strange, wild feeling builds in his chest, and he pushes it down. He’s never felt it before.
“Pania Teach,” he says to the old woman. “She lives here.”
The woman shakes her head.
“Pania Teach’s been dead six months. Fever carried her off. Sorry lad.”
That last remark she adds as she watches Ed’s face contort, confusion to rage to pain to nothing at all.
He turns away, then turns back. He tosses the fabric at the woman’s feet. The gold filigree glints at him, and for a moment he sees his mother in it again, sees her twirling and laughing, fabric shining as she moves. His jaw tenses and the old woman winces away from the fabric as though it might bite.
“Here,” he says. “For your trouble.”
He walks away, back down the winding streets. People see his face and scatter. He walks straight back onto the ship, shoving his way through a cluster of his men at the base of the gangplank, cursing at them as he does.
Izzy follows him to his quarters.
“Ed? Edward, what the fuck?”
He’s whirled around before he has a chance to process it, his hand wrapped round Izzy’s neck, squeezing. He sees hurt in Izzy’s eyes, and confusion, and something darker, too. Something Ed can’t identify.
He lets go almost as quickly as he grabbed him, backing away until his back slams into the wall of his narrow cabin. They stare at each other. The tension runs between them like a cord and Ed’s breath catches in the back of his throat.
Izzy parts his lips, breathing hard. He almost looks like he’s about to say something. Ed watches the white finger marks around his throat darken to red.
“Tell the men shore leave’s fucking cancelled. We leave tonight.” Ed says it flatly. “Now get the fuck out.”
Izzy’s face is flushed as he leaves the room, closing the door behind him.
That night, they sit under the stars again. There’s no moon, and the stars are just cold, distant pinpricks in a dull, hazy sky.
Izzy picks out another cross on Ed’s arm, larger than the rest, this one outlined in black, space in the centre left empty, just below the rest of the graves.
Ed doesn’t meet his gaze.
Once, he takes a deep breath.
“Iz,” he begins.
“No.” Izzy cuts him off. “A captain doesn’t fuckin’ apologize. A captain doesn’t fuckin’ explain.”
Ed drinks ‘til he pukes that night, retching his guts out over the side of the ship, sweating and shivering in the crushing, humid heat of summer.
Izzy sits behind him in the shadows, watching to make sure he doesn’t fall overboard, or jump.
They don’t speak of it again.
*
Ed’s alone in Stede’s cabin. He still thinks of it as Stede’s, even though he’s stripped it of almost everything that made it feel like him. He stares into the fireplace—it’s still full of ashes from the last fire Stede burnt there. Fuckin' lunatic.
Ed remembers how his hair glowed in that light, like burnished copper glows in the sun.
He tries not to look at the empty bookshelves, feels sick to his stomach when he does. Maybe that’s the rum. When he closes his eyes, he sees Lucius falling, plunging off the deck and into the chilly water below, imagines his face as he sinks, turned upwards, hands reaching out for him, pleading. He tries not to close his eyes anymore.
The Kraken doesn’t need sleep.
He rises suddenly, a flurry of purposive motion interrupted when he staggers to the side, legs unsteady, stomach roiling. Kneeling down in front of the fireplace, he scoops out a handful of the ash and draws his dagger.
Maybe he should call Iz.
Maybe if he did they could talk this through, figure it out together the way they used to.
But he doesn’t think Izzy will want to help with this—it’s been a long time since either of them took the time to mourn. So he does it himself, slowly, awkwardly, pushing ash under his skin with the knife—maybe it’ll work, maybe it’ll just scar. But at the end of it, another little cross joins the graveyard above his mother’s, this one a little crooked. A drop of blood rolls down his arm, winds its way through the negative space in the centre of Pania Teach’s cross.
He takes another swig of rum from one of the bottles that litter the floor, swallows hard as his body tries to force it back up and out again.
Kneeling in front of the empty fireplace, Ed wraps his arms around himself and waits for his sickness to pass.