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Ed didn’t dream at night, at least that he could remember. Nightmares, sure. Loads of them, not that he told anyone. All the time. There were nightmares about a boiling sea, nightmares about the Kraken, nightmares about his stupid fucking father. Sometimes Ed woke up shaking and sweating and wiping hot tears from his eyes before Izzy could burst in and see the evidence. Ed knew nightmares.
Blackbeard didn’t have dreams or nightmares. His nights were long and dark and empty, just as they should have been; it was hard to have nightmares when you were one.
But Stede made Ed - not Blackbeard, not the Kraken, Ed - dream. At first he figured it was some kind of fluke: maybe he’d had too much to drink, or maybe it was so hot on that damn ship he was having fever dreams. Why else would his nightmares be replaced by thoughts of someone else’s lopsided smile? Maybe somebody was trying to poison him, what with his reputation. Could poison make you dream about a fop with soft hands putting purple bows in your beard?
It didn't take until the dreams about running hand-in-hand through fields of sweet-smelling lavender (does lavender even grow in fields? For fuck’s sake. He should have asked.) for Ed to realize what they meant.
Not that it mattered: Stede was gone, a gaping hole in Ed’s chest that Blackbeard crawled out from. But the dreams stayed, sticky and sweet and always including that stupid sun-blond hair. So maybe these were nightmares after all.