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Their reunion had gone about as badly as it could have.
Stede had known Ed would be angry at him. He would have been disappointed if he wasn’t. After all, disinterest was the dull blade that did the most damage.
The trouble was, after how well his apologies to his family had gone (barring the almost ear-stabbing and the need to fake his own death) Stede had been lulled into a false sense of security. He wholly believed that Ed would understand why he had not come to meet him once they had a chance to talk it through. Oluwande was far less convinced. The whole crew, what was left of it, was far less convinced. Still, they wanted to get Frenchie, Lucius, and Jim back, so they went along with his scheme.
At first, all had seemed well. The crew of their new ship, the Return, had raised a white flag plus their own new standard and the Revenge had responded in kind. It wasn’t exactly standard procedure, but Stede was sure Ed would see the standard and know it was him.
Ed did not know it was him. Or maybe he would have, had he been on deck, but it was Izzy that Stede was met with when they boarded the Revenge.
This was not good news. But then - when was Izzy ever good news?
Ed did not even bother to come out of the captain’s cabin to meet them. Ed, Izzy informed them, was not his name. He was Blackbeard once more. He was merciless, strong, and certainly did not care enough about some rich boy playing at pirate again to come out and sentence them himself.
Jim, Frenchie, Fang, and Ivan were the only ones of ‘Blackbeard’s crew’ that voted to save their former crewmates. Then Jim and Frenchie were looked like they would mutiny at any moment when the sentence that Izzy passed down for all was death. Where the hell was Lucius?
It’s what Blackbeard would want, Izzy had said, breath hot against Stede’s face, if he even cared.
Stede stood on Izzy’s remaining toes.
In the screaming that ensued, everything went to pieces. Literally. His crew, now reunited, acquired weapons from places they had evidently concealed them previously. Stede was honestly so proud of them in that moment. Even he who had designed the ship had not known about all the secret hiding places they did.
Blackbeard’s crew were already armed and more than prepared to fight back.
In the heat of the moment, the only ones not prepared were Stede, who had been disarmed upon boarding and had no secret-hiding-place weapons to grab, and Izzy, who was rolling on the floor bleeding and had had his own weapons pilfered by Jim. So it was that they somehow both ended up hiding behind a barrel. A decidedly uncomfortable alliance.
Just as it seemed that the two crews would tear each other, and the ship, apart, two thing happened to make the situation far worse.
Firstly, a third ship emerged from around the headland and began to fire on them.
Secondly, and this was the worst of the two as far as Stede was concerned, Ed emerged from the captain’s cabin.
His face… Stede couldn’t help the anguished sound that escaped him upon seeing how wrecked Ed truly was. Yes, his mask was terrifying, the black spreading across his fiery eyes like the smoke in Black Pete’s tales. Yet, Stede could see more than that. He could see the sorrow, the hurt that he had caused written in the lines of his posture.
Here, then, was the kraken. A creature of wrath, borne of betrayal and the pain of heartbreak, blind to regret. If Stede was to talk anything through with this being that bore the shape of the man he loved, he would first have to suffer the consequences of setting foot in its path.
Another cannonball whizzed past their hiding place, and Izzy swore.
“Stop fighting each other and fire back you fucking idiots!”
Stede was fairly certain that the crews would follow that order easily enough. They were pirates after all, and their hatred of their rivals was equal only to their loyalty to one another when faced with a common enemy.
All around them, fights stopped, weapons were sheathed, and cannons were drawn and loaded. The prow of the ship took a hit, but luckily it was only superficial. The air was thick with smoke, shouting, and splinters of wood.
Through it all, Blackbeard did not move from the doorway of the cabin. His eyes never leaving Stede.
This is how I die, he thought. While everyone else I care about fights together, I will face the kraken, and there will be no escaping those depths.
Stede stood. He took one step, two, towards the man he loved, the man he had left waiting. The anger in the kraken seethed and roiled, its tentacles reaching far across the deck, closing around him, stealing the air from his lungs. Ed, if he was even really there, never blinked.
Then the ship was rolling, whether from impact, or from the recoil of the many new canons Blackbeard had fitted it with, it wasn’t clear. And Stede – he was falling, sliding helplessly back along the deck, and through a hole that had been punched in the railings.
The last thing he saw before he hit the water was Ed, his Ed, the real Ed, reaching out for him.
The ocean was merciless, cold, and deep. Someone had once told him that Blackbeard was heartless, like the seas, but that wasn’t true. Stede knew that the thing that drove Ed, that formed every facet of him – Edward Teach, Blackbeard, the kraken – was feeling. The ocean was devoid of any emotions. Ed was awash with them.
Stede had thought himself a lighthouse for many years, but that wasn’t true either.
The thing about Stede that not even Ed knew, was that he wasn’t a lighthouse warning people away from the rocks, saving them from drowning, he was a siren.
And the good thing about being a siren when you’re thrown off a ship, is that sirens can swim. Stede kicked his feet against the pull of the tides and rose up, up, up and out of the water and into the arms of his crew.
In his absence the battle had been won.
Ed was waiting for him on the deck.
Lucius had emerged from somewhere.
Izzy took one look at Stede’s bedraggled form, and stormed off. “How the fuck can he swim so well?!”