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Afterwards, he can’t remember taking anything at all from the ship.
By anyone’s definition, it’s a successful raid. The idiots he stole from Bonnet have, shockingly, turned out to be more useful than he anticipated. The rich twats they robbed had their ship stuffed full of fancy food, and soft silks, and all kinds of wedding gifts. It should be reward enough to watch his crew get to work; carry through with a job well done. Blackbeard, as usual, was just window dressing.
He retreats to the cabin after the action’s over, as usual. The crew leaves him alone - they all give him a wide berth these days. The forgotten loot - if you can even call it that - shifts against his muscles when he sits on the bunk, bare except for a dirty fuschia robe, and he remembers. It’s a swollen lump against his thigh, a metastatic growth, hard and unyielding and he tears it free. The two little wooden figures clatter to the dirty wood floor of the cabin.
He must have slipped them into his pocket, after he gave the signal. Tucked them away safe and sound. Something pretty and frivolous. Nothing important. Nothing at all. Nothing nothing nothing, just like him.
He leans over and plucks the little dolls off the floor. His fingertips slip over the carved faces, meant to be those two posh twats on the deck of their fancy ship, starting their fairytale life together. What a fucking joke. Life’s a bloody nightmare.
The blonde one looks just like fucking Stede.
Hours pass, or maybe just minutes, and without thinking too much about what he wants to do he staggers from the bunk to his desk, swept clear of Stede’s dross. Soot and ink stain the polished glossy oak and knifemarks score the lacquered finish. He slams the figures down on the desk and stares, leaning heavily on his palms until the bones in his wrists grind together in protest, as if he could intimidate the real Stede through this uncanny little poppet with, somehow, impossibly, his infuriatingly perfect face.
Scoffing, he tears his gaze from the little figure and his eyes instead fall on the bride. Bright colors, flame-red hair, a stupid doofy soft smile painted with rosy lips. Probably never got left on a beach, this little strumpet. Probably never puked up all her feelings and her love and her future hopes into someone else’s hands and then watched the fists clench and crush them.
“I think I’m going mad,” he whispers to the figurines. The bride smiles blankly at him.
He sits down heavily in the throne-like chair that Stede, conceited bastard, thought was so fitting for a captain. He snatches up the bride and glares at her. He’s tempted to snap it in half, probably could, his hands are strong and it’s just a bit of wood.
But the hair is a little bit like his, isn’t it? Wavy and loose and down her back. What his hair might look like if he cared enough about it to doll it up fine for a wedding, maybe.
He picks up the groom in his off hand, turning it over. Stupid fucking salmon-pink coat. Stupid fucking golden curls. Stupid fucking face and warm hazel eyes he could drown in. Stupid stupid fucking stupid -
Without thinking about it, he presses the groom against his rough beard, all salt and pepper and ink, a shaky whimper escaping his throat.
In horror, he slams the figurine back down on the desk.
“I’ve got to get rid of him,” he says aloud. He shoots up from the chair, knee creaking in protest, and crosses the cabin in three long strides. He slams open the door of the cabin, thanking gods he doesn’t believe in that the deck is empty. He stalks to the battered rail of the Revenge and he stares at the little groom, knuckles white around his stupid fucking pink jacket, soft as silk under his hands, polished to a high shine like a goddamned diamond.
“Fuck you, Stede Bonnet,” he growls. He means to wind back, pitch the cursed little doll out into the waves, let it sink down to the abyss where Stede deserves to rot. But his hand won’t let go. He can’t make his fist open, his fingers frozen around the little figure, holding on for dear life.
“Fuck you,” he whispers, and he feels the tears start again, slipping down his cheeks and dripping, stained black, from his beard. He pushes back from the railing because if he doesn’t, he might throw himself into the sea instead.
He slouches across the deck back to his cabin, the moonlight hurting his eyes even though it’s a full moon and it should be dead romantic, shouldn’t it, he loved the moon before Stede fucking ruined it. He throws the stupid fucking little Stede on his desk and hurls himself with equal force into the pretentious carved chair.
The charcoal and greasepaint they use for raids is scattered across the desk, ink-dark and glossy in the blasted moonlight filtering through the dirty smoke-stained curtains of the cabin. In between the knives he’s driven into the wood, all the tools that make him the Kraken wait, ready to be used, eager to protect his true self, keep Ed safe behind Blackbeard’s shell. The fine-tipped brush for his eyes is just sitting there, bristles permanently black no matter how much he washes them.
He picks up the brush. It’s still a little damp. With a shaky hand, he touches the soft tip to the bride’s wavy ginger hair.
It doesn’t take very long, and something about it turns his brain off and all he thinks about, for a blissful and indeterminate length of time, is painting inside the lines, putting his own face down on hers, gray hair and beard and sooty eyes and broken heart. If he can put all of Ed inside this little fetish doll, if he can put Ed somewhere no one can touch -
Well, no one’s got that kind of magic. Not really.
When he’s finished, he almost wants to laugh, because he’d never felt like much of an artist or a creative or what-the-fuck-ever before. Those words belong to the Ed who came on this ship an unknown man, an untested quality, the softness yanked out of him by Bonnet and his fucking playmates, this joke of a crew this farce of a ship that absolute monster hiding behind gold curls and a gentle face and -
Well, he’s a bride now. The only way a creature like him could be loved: in a hurt boy’s fantasy, in the playtime spun around a toy, in a bedtime story.
But he’d look so pretty in a sky-blue dress like that. Wouldn’t he just?
He fights the urge to press the Stede groom and the Ed bride together, let them be together, let the groom stay. This time the bride won’t run away. This time will be different.
All of a sudden he’s exhausted, the comedown from the raid, adrenaline flooding out of his veins and leaving him empty, hollow. He staggers to the bunk, little figures tight in his fist, the paint’s not even dry on the bride but he can’t let them go. Let him have this happy ending. Let him be the one who stays, the one who wins, the one who the party’s for.
He could have been a happy bride. He would have been a delightful wife, a loving matelot, a ferocious protector, a passionate lover -
“The fuck is wrong with me,” he whispers, and then he’s crying again, has he ever actually stopped? Since the beach? Since the last time he saw his beautiful face?
What makes Ed happy?
Nothing, anymore.
He carefully lines the bride and groom up on the high windowsill. Despite the rolling of the waves beneath them, they stand firm. He puts them close together, so their bodies just barely touch. The groom is smeared with greasepaint. The bride is picture perfect - if a sad old man in a dress could ever be perfect.
That would never, could never, have been his life.
“Fucking idiot,” he says to the darkness. But he still wants and wants and wants. “Idiot.” The serene carved wooden faces watch him impassively like stern statues of kings or saints or gods. But even under their eyes, he’s alone. He’s always been alone. He always will be.
Alone in his bunk, he aches.
Against the hull of the ship, a sealed glass bottle bumps gently in the swell of the tide.