Chapter Text
“Oh… fuck me”. Olu whispered to himself as the others attempted to tackle, skin, segment and then roast the Swede behind him. Buttons had been talking about juicy thighs in his sleep for the last two nights, and given his enthusiastic anticipation of desperate times and desperate measures, it was only a matter of time before they pounced.
“Guys, you’ve got to see this.” He slowly raised the small spyglass above his head and waited, without looking away from the tiny Stede-shaped speck on the horizon, as Black Pete pulled away from the action and took it from him. He raised it to his eye and with a humph of recognition passed it onto Wee John, who did the exact same, passing the telescope around and resting his giant hands on his hips. By the time all the stranded pirates had identified Stede, he had crossed into visible-to-the-naked-eye territory. They continued to stand on the shore, mouths wide, looking out to him.
The last person to the spyglass was the Swede. He looked out, still breathing heavily as his mind tried to tell his body he was no longer in danger of imminent butchery.
“Well, I wasn’t expecting that. Was anyone else expecting that?” His voice lilted as he asked it, and looked around at the others. They shook their heads, but didn’t turn to look back at him - their eyes seemed to be stuck on the sea as the familiar floating figure came into focus.
“Hi all~!” Stede’s sing-song voice carried in the wind as he approached in his tiny boat, pulling the oars. His face lit up, grinning from ear to ear at the sight of his crew, as he continued to stumble gracelessly over the side of the boat and onto the sand with a thud.
He righted himself somewhat self-consciously, brushing the sand off his trousers with his hands. The smile from his face dropped instantly as he straightened himself up and looked around.
“What’s happened here? Wh- Where’s Ed? Where are the others? What- What happened to the Revenge?” The questions rushed out of him in quick succession, his eyes widely darting between the crew members.
Olu stood in front of him, his mouth still hanging open. He seemed to register this after a moment and cleared his throat. As if broken out of a sudden trance, the rest of the crew in front of him bounded forward, stumbling and kicking and pushing each other to get to the tiny boat first. Stede followed them with his eyes, disbelieving, as they ransacked the canteens of water he had stored under the seats, as well as the delicately packed packages of bread and marmalade. Some of them were even wrapped in strips of red silk. His head spun back around to face Olu.
“How long have you guys been here? Where is E-” Stede said, his panicked voice rising to almost a shout. He looked around the island desperately, pulling his sand-coated hands through his hair in exasperation.
“Captain, they’re all gone.” Olu swallowed. He began speaking slowly, sensing Stede’s steady but rapid ascension into panic mode.
“Blackbeard came back to the Revenge a few days ago, all troubled and- and angsty. And then just like that he starts painting his beard back on and terrorizing us, throwing out all your stuff, and then leaving us here.” He gestures around to the island they are standing on. “So we’ve been here ever since.”
Stede’s face remained scrunched up as he took in this new information.
“What are you talking about? Ed went back to the Revenge?”
By this time the other members of the crew had re-assembled around Stede, shoving their sunburnt faces with bread. Black Pete handed Olu a chunk before speaking.
“Look, Blackbeard is seriously fucked up. The man is a maniac and I know he had something to do with Lucius going missing-”
“Lucius is missing? He isn’t back on the Revenge? Where are the others?” Stede cut in.
“Well yeah as far as we know, I mean I hadn’t seen him for a couple of days before we ended up here so…”
Stede turned and started striding away, then stopped, turned back around, and continued to pace back and forth through the sand. The crew continued to devour his provisions as they watched on indifferently. They had long given up faith in their captain to come up with quick, clever solutions and instead settled into what they anticipated to be a long period of deliberation, followed by a poorly thought out plan of action.
After some minutes of eating, Stede stopped suddenly and spun on his heels to face the others, one hand on his hip and one pointing up to the sky.
“Right, well then I suppose we need to get back to the Revenge.”
“Well yeah, I could have said that like as soon as you arrived if I wasn’t so hungry…” Black Pete muttered around a chunk of bread.
The crew looked hesitantly at each other. They had no idea where Stede had been, where their other crewmates were, how he escaped or what had happened with Blackbeard (because something must have happened with Blackbeard). Stede could have said pretty much anything, as long as it involved getting off the tiny, shade-less island and away from the fact that, less than ten minutes before, they had been prepared to eat each other. Satisfied mumbles rumbled out between them. Olu stayed silent.
“ Captain, not being funny but we are not all going to fit on that thing,” He said, indicating the tiny boat Stede had arrived on. He tipped his head at Wee John as he said it, who mocked offence by doing an exaggerated silent gasp, “and it looks like it wouldn’t survive five minutes out in the open sea.”
At this, Stede took a deep breath and a suspiciously smug look crossed his face.
“You’re right, Olu.” His smile widened. “We will have to procure another ship.”