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The water had reached his lips now, shockingly cold and briny, and he knew it would only continue to rise. All around him were the sounds of cannons, of splintering wood, of men screaming their last. His nostrils burned with the acrid scent of smoke and salt and fresh blood.
He tried to move, but his limbs wouldn’t follow his commands. He was immobilized by cold, by the flotsam bobbing all around him, trapping him in place as the water began to nip at his nose.
He opened his mouth to scream and seawater rushed in, freezing him from within, weighing him down, pulling him below the surface of the waves at last.
Or was it something else dragging him under? Something was looped around his ankle, firm and unyielding as iron. He looked down into a pair of bulbous red eyes glaring at him from the shadows of the deep and thrashed in vain, desperate to escape, knowing he would not.
A voice, as if from far away, was calling his name as the pressure continued to build in his chest, as the abyss closed in around him, swallowing him in inky and unfathomably heavy blackness.
He woke screaming.
It was dark here, too dark, and his chest burned with the effort of gulping in fresh air. But the cold was already beginning to recede, along with the other horrors visited upon him in the night.
He raised his trembling hands to his face, slick with sweat, and sobbed.
“Ed?” a soft voice whispered to him in the darkness. “Ed, are you alright?”
It took him a moment to register the warm weight pressed up against his side, the pair of hands resting lightly on his arm and he resisted the urge to shake them away, to break free, to run. He focused on steadying his ragged breath, and on the comforting presence at his side, as he began to return to himself.
“Stede?” he gasped at last.
“I’m here, Ed,” he murmured, gently rubbing his hands along Ed’s arm. “I’ve got you.”
Ed sobbed once more, with relief this time, and buried his face in Stede’s chest.
Warm arms looped around him, hugging him close, but he did not feel trapped now.
Here, he knew he was safe.