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Chapter Text

Well, there were certainly worse ways to go than this. Alma once knew a guy who had been mauled by a jungle cat, run over by a carriage, and crushed by a piano, or so the legend went. She tried not to think about him for too long. It wouldn’t make her own demise go down any easier.

“Any last words, stowaway?” the quartermaster leered.

If she lived long enough to stowaway on another ship, she would have to pick one with a less leery crew. Maybe they were better when you got to know them, but she didn’t want to stick around and test her theory.

She did her best to put on a cowardly face.

“It’s just that your–” she broke off into a choked noise, barely able to hide her self-satisfaction at the accuracy of the ruse.

“Spit it out, we don’t have all day,” the quartermaster huffed.

“Your shoe’s untied,” Alma finished.

Whether or not the quartermaster’s shoe even had laces was his own business, but it certainly distracted him enough for Alma to land a kick in his gut and slip the ropes off her wrists.

Before she could even begin to worry about the seamen charging her way, the deck bucked under the ear-splitting snarl of a cannon.

She would have time to laud the theatricality of these new foes at a later date. For the time being, she had a parlay to worry about, and more pressingly, a number of swords coming at her from a number of angles.

There was a certain benefit to being a stowaway on an attacked ship. On the one hand, you could more easily beg for your life in the case of an enemy victory, which, given the looks of things, seemed more and more likely by the moment. On the other hand, you were everyone’s adversary.

The quartermaster went down without much of a fight. It might’ve been a cannonball that dealt the final blow, but Alma still decided to take credit for the sake of her own self esteem. Given that the next several shots failed to hit anything at all, she had a feeling she was striking with slightly more purpose than the cannoneer anyway.

“Jesus Christ,” she shook her head.

“I told Wee John not to close his eyes,” a nearby pirate simultaneously lamented, then glanced her way.

“Don’t be so hard on him. We all have to learn somehow,” she suggested lightly.

The pirate raised an eyebrow.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“A stowaway,” Alma replied.

The pirate nodded, though his gaze was elsewhere, tracking the path of a flying machete the way one watches a particularly beautiful goose migrate overhead. Once the machete had gracefully embedded itself in a nearby skull, the pirate turned, gave its thrower an enthusiastic thumbs up, then returned his almost disappointed gaze to Alma.

“Hate to break it to you mate, but they all say that,” he said, already going for his sword.

“Had a bad feeling that might be the case,” Alma sighed, drawing her own weapon once again.

The pirate did her the courtesy of letting her strike first, setting a moderate pace for the duel. For all his casual attitude, he was a wicked swordsman, his strikes as clever and as deadly as his blade.

“I have to ask,” Alma began after a sidestep, “are you trying to not kill me? Because if this is some sort of chivalry complex–”

“Nah,” her adversary shrugged, “you just look a little young to get impaled.”

“Then don’t impale me.”

“Builds character,” he laughed.

Alma had to admit, the fight was a challenging one. Every strike felt as much like playing chess as dueling. However, there was a bizarre amount of focus in the face of her adversary, as if he was struggling to summon an aggravatingly forgotten word. Whatever bothered him seemed to do so to a nearly detrimental extent, for she noticed he hardly moved to strike her when the banner thrashing above the enemy ship’s mast caught her eye.

“Christ,” Alma breathed.

She didn’t remember the bleeding heart from her childhood storybooks, but the spear-wielding devil was clear as day. Back when she was too young to parse out all the words on the pages without her father’s help, she remembered spending hours tracing her fingers over the pictures, and even more hours being told by her parents that this was the reason she gave herself nightmares.

“Nah, that’s just Roach,” the pirate replied absentmindedly. “I get the mix up though, they’ve kinda got the same look, give or take an apron. And a machete.”

“You work for Blackbeard?” she asked, demanding an answer with a very near blow to her adversary’s side.

“That’s one way of putting it,” the pirate laughed.

Alma furrowed her brow.

“Was it not obvious enough?” the pirate wondered aloud. “Because we just upped the size of the flag a few years ago–maybe it’s faded a bit, I could have Frenchie take a look at that.”

“You are the least bloodthirsty pirate I have ever met,” Alma huffed. “And that’s including the one who kept a library.”

“You sound disappointed,” the pirate returned, though a curious look crossed his face.

“I am,” Alma snorted, half in frustration at the long-running duel, half in amusement at the bizarreness of the situation. Here she was in a death match against one of Blackbeard’s crewmen, and he’d spent the last few minutes chatting as if they were stuck next to one another in line at the store. “Blackbeard was my favorite when I was a kid.”

The pirate looked almost hurt.

“I’m not that old,” he huffed.

It took all of Alma’s resolve not to lose grip of her sword.

Suddenly, she was eight years old, stealing a book from her father’s desk just to get another glimpse at the wild-eyed prints of the dread pirate. Her heart would race from then until she crawled into her parents’ bed, making up some poor excuse about a generic-enough sounding nightmare. Mary would shoot Stede a glare, but a brief and silent argument would always result in their agreeing to hold her until she fell asleep.

There was no bed to crawl into. Hell, it hadn’t even been Mary and Stede’s bed since she was a little girl.

She had no refuge of childhood to shield her now.

“I beg your pardon?”

Alma expected a mirthless laugh or a blade to the neck, but instead, the man just sighed. She couldn’t tell if he looked bored or offended.

“First of all,” Blackbeard grimaced, punctuating each word with a strike, “if you wanted a bloodthirsty monster, good luck fucking finding one outside one of those books of yours. Second of all, they shouldn’t print that stuff for kids.”

“They don’t,” Alma gritted out with the force it took to parry the blade, “my father just believed in freedom of information.”

This time, Blackbeard did laugh. There was an oddly pleasant warmth to the sound.

“Bet your mum loved that,” he chuckled, then forced himself back to his initial point. “Third of all, I haven’t killed you yet because you’re young and I’d feel bad, but I’d feel worse if you beat me. Got it?”

“I’ll pretend to,” she nodded.

Their mutual understanding solidified, they went back to trying to maim each other.

As they fought, Alma tried to take in the living legend before her. He was older than she anticipated, though it made sense in hindsight. His career had been the stuff of myth years ago. He cut an imposing figure, certainly, but it was constantly undercut by reassuring shouts or nods to his crew as they went about their tasks.

The books all told the same story of a villainous, unflappable fiend without a kind bone in his body. However, a brief once over of her opponent told a very different story.

There was no murder in his eyes, nor was there a pervasive cloud of hellfire at his heels. If anything, he struck her as remarkably human.

The books all painted such a tall tale that she was embarrassingly shocked to see signs that he had lived a life outside of legendary piracy. He wore a knee brace and what might have been a wedding band, not to mention half his hair back in a functional bun. He was a person who had lived and aged and had someone who loved him.

“You’re married?” Alma asked as she cast his blade back.

“Engaged,” he returned, and just for a second, his face softened. “Not like it’ll be proper or anything, but when the fuck did pirates ever start caring about rules, you know?”

“Guess not.”

That was a thought. Maybe without all the nonsense of so-called polite society, people like him got to marry for love. Maybe this man who had been portrayed as nothing more than a demon lit up when someone brought him breakfast in bed or got a little fuzzy headed when they kissed him on the nose.

Alma reminded herself that they were trying to stab each other, and she dropped the thought. Seafaring was a dangerous lifestyle to romanticize. She’d been learning that the hard way all day.

She still couldn’t help but wonder what kind of person could make her childhood nightmare soften like that. She had a good feeling she never wanted to meet them, if just for her own safety.

She was distracted from her thoughts by an odd look Blackbeard gave her, as if there was something incredibly annoying on the tip of his tongue.

“Anyone ever told you you looked like the Gentleman Pirate?” he finally asked.

Alma blinked.

“Excuse me?”

Blackbeard paused in thought nearly long enough to lose an extremity.

“Ah, yeah, dunno how far that name’s made it,” he shook his head, then tried again. “Stede Bonnet, maybe?”

“Why the hell do you want to know?” Alma snapped.

Blackbeard shrugged.

“It’s kinda uncanny, that’s all.”

Alma parried his strike with enough force to send him stumbling backwards a few steps.

She couldn’t seem to care about their friendly duel anymore. She didn’t exactly know what to believe about the man before her, but didn’t trust him enough to feel good about her father’s wellbeing.

“He’s my father,” she finally spat out. “Of course I look like him.”

Of all the ways she had ever won a duel, this had to be the oddest. However, Blackbeard’s sword and jaw dropped in tandem, and for a moment, she could almost believe it wasn’t some sort of trick.

She had spent a few too many months in a hostile environment at sea to trust anything that nice that quickly. Maybe those books hadn’t told her a single fact, but if the strategic genius they all agreed on had any basis in reality, she didn’t want to find out the hard way.

Instead, she finished knocking his sword from his hand and raised her own to his throat.

“You’re going to give me safe passage to Port Royal,” she began.

“You’re not in a great strategic bargaining position, but yeah, might as well,” he nodded as much as he could.

She gritted her teeth. He didn’t even have the decency to look worried.

“And you’re going to swear you’ve never laid a hand on my father,” Alma finished.

Blackbeard’s only response was a wide-eyed wince.

“About that.”

“He’s alive, isn’t he?” Alma put slightly more pressure on the sword.

“Yeah, yep, he’s doing great,” Blackbeard grimaced, motioning for her to ease up so he could speak. “It’s just that–I–well, I don’t really know how exactly you’re gonna feel about this, and if you feel bad about it, I’m sorry, I really am–”

Alma’s heart sank.

“Spit it out.”

“He’s alive, it’s just that he and I—“

Before he could get another word out, Alma felt the familiar chill of a knife to her neck.

“Hey love,” Blackbeard grinned.

There was that soft look again. This time, it almost seemed to be cut with worry.

“Unhand him, or I will be obliged to–”

Alma’s face fell at the all too familiar voice.

“You said your name was Alma, right?” Blackbeard prompted.

The knife drew away from her neck in an instant, while Blackbeard covered his mouth to stifle a laugh.

“I’m a dead man,” her father realized. “Your mother is going to kill me.”

Chapter Text

For his own personal safety, Ed made the staunch decision not to get between Stede and anyone who shared genetic material with him when they got like this. Later, he would manage to laugh at their twin gesticulations with their respective weapons. In the meantime, he was too busy ducking to care.

“I don’t exactly see how you can be angry with me for stowing away on a ship when–”

“Young lady, you know as well as I do that this is incredibly illegal–”

“Christ, Stede,” Ed interrupted.

“This is a family matter,” Stede warned.

“Do you even hear yourself, mate?” Ed pressed. “If you want your kid to get a lecture about breaking the law, I’m all for it, just have it come from a fucker with legs to stand on.”

Stede swallowed.

“Well,” he conceded, “I don’t suppose Lucius has any words of wisdom.”

Lucius looked up from where he was taking the buckles off a man’s shoe a few feet away.

“No, sorry,” he shook his head. “The whole men thing, you know?”

“Ah, yeah, that’ll get you. I forgot that was illegal honestly,” Stede nodded. “Anyone else?”

Alma stuck her sword back into its scabbard and blew past them both, marching straight for the ladder.

“We’ll talk later,” she decided.

“Alma–”

Ed laid a hand on Stede’s shoulder.

“Give it a rest, man,” he advised. “Best to talk it out in private anyway.”

Stede took a deep breath, then nodded.

“I suppose–you know how it is. Children,” he mused.

“Not really,” Ed shrugged.

“I suppose that’s fair,” Stede frowned.

“I don’t know much about kids,” Edward started again, frowning in thought as he watched Alma tear down the ladder, “but this one—is this the one you were telling me about who gave her mother two black eyes as a baby because she didn’t want to be held?”

Stede raised an eyebrow.

“Yes?”

“Then I think I understand completely,” he grimaced, though not without fondness. “Your problem is she’s half Stede.”

“Hey!”

“I never said that was a bad thing,” Ed held up his hands in mock-surrender. “Just that—I’m gonna be honest for a moment.”

“Am I going to like it?”

“Nope.”

Stede sighed.

“Proceed.”

“If she’s anything like her dad, she’s got a decent chance of being a miscommunicative hothead,” Ed winced.

“I beg your pardon!” Stede all but gasped. Ed did his best not to look too affectionate.

“You remember our first stupid fight as a couple? When I didn’t use that fancy cologne you got me because I thought it was mouthwash and you spent a week thinking I was gonna break up with you?” Ed couldn’t help but grin.

“Oh, shut up,” Stede huffed. “I’d just been stabbed. I was sensitive.”

Ed patted him on the shoulder.

“You two are gonna be just fine. I’ll take care of all the captaining for as long as you need to catch up, apologize, whatever,” Edward smiled, giving his arm a supportive squeeze.

“Apologize?” Stede balked.

“You’re not really giving off the vibe that you’re supportive of her career choices, man.”

Ed had expected Stede to fume or protest or stutter out some sort of furious rebuttal, but instead, he wilted slightly, shaking his head.

“I suppose you’re right,” he sighed.

Ed rested his arm around his shoulders.

He’d heard a lot about Alma. She was a pistol of a child who liked stories and pirates and of those, liked him best of all. She liked paper dolls and shadow puppets and juggling marbles instead of doing her sewing. She liked card games and pressing flowers and teaching her father a dozen different ways to braid her hair. Stede still practiced them all on Ed when his mind got too loud.

Ed wondered if Alma still liked any of those things at all.

Stede wrote to them each time they made port and sent them birthday gifts full of trinkets from their various adventures. He kept all their letters in a special compartment that any other captain would reserve for priceless gemstones, tucked away safely in the floorboards of the ship.

Despite this, he’d take their letters out daily for weeks after receiving them, poring over the tiniest details. He would always read them to Ed at least once, then spend twice as long glowing with pride that their penmanship seemed so much neater since the last letter, and that they were starting to use and spell long words correctly.

There was an intense sorrow that permeated these patches of joy, however. For every afternoon Ed spent listening to Stede read Alma and Louis’s letters, there was a sleepless night of assuring Stede his children still remembered what he looked like.

Sometimes, Stede asked to braid his hair to distract his restless hands. Other times, it was to distract his restless mind.

Stede could be petty or hot headed or a hypocrite when he wanted. Ed had a feeling none of those things had to do with his misplaced anger at his daughter.

Ed was a pirate, after all. He knew fear when he saw it.

“She’s gonna be alright, man,” Ed assured him with a squeeze to his hand. “She’s a hell of a dueler, I’ll give her that. Gave me a run for my money.”

Stede smiled a little sadly.

“Who do you think her first teacher was?”

Ed elbowed him in the ribs.

“Pfft, she’s way better than you were.”

“Edward!”

“I’m just trying to make you feel better,” Ed defended himself.

“Well, there’s no need to be a dick about it,” Stede huffed, though he struggled to keep his smile at bay. “Besides, I thought you said I had a certain natural talent for the blade.”

Ed blinked.

“I was flirting with you, man.”

Stede’s mouth fell slightly ajar.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Yeah, you think I try to get that physically close to all my mates?” Ed laughed. “I thought you’d caught on eventually.”

Stede just stared at him in shock.

“Tell me the stabbing thing wasn’t—“

“No, no, it absolutely was,” Ed confirmed, barely hiding his sheepish grin.

Stede buried his face in his hands.

“You idiot,” he shook his head.

“You liked it.”

“I hate blood!”

“Yeah, but you got to feel the intimate touch of another guy without any guilt, so who really won?”

Stede looked up at him in mute disbelief.

“Nobody, Ed,” he balked. “Nobody won. You got stabbed, I nearly fainted—“

Lucius stopped them both by clearing his throat.

“She does realize we’re all gonna have to ride back on the same boat, right?”

Stede jogged over to the side of the ship to confirm the bad news for himself.

“Shit,” he hissed.

“Gonna guess you don’t wanna have that family reunion of yours with half the crew present. Wouldn’t exactly want to share the seat with her if I were you,” Ed observed. “But that’s the question, isn’t it? Do you think she’ll be more disappointed in you or me?”

Stede blinked.

“Why would she be disappointed in you?”

“C’mon,” Edward snorted, “you’re not telling me there’s a single person out there who wouldn’t seem less cool if you found out they were buggering your dad?”

Stede visibly shuddered.

“Exactly.”

Stede looked down the ladder at his daughter, hauling a bag of belongings into her lap. The bag clanked slightly with the familiar noise of blades hitting against one another. He gulped.

“I’ll head down first. As much as I think you two need to catch up, there’s no need to get the rest of us involved,” Ed decided, giving Stede a pat on the back for good measure.

“Thanks,” Stede grimaced.

Edward gave him a mock salute as he turned to climb down the ladder.

“And promise me something, will you?” he called before he could make it down more than a rung.

“Yeah?”

“Get this over with quick. I won’t stand for a fucked up vibe on any vessel of mine.”

Stede couldn’t help a laugh.

“Aye aye, Captain!” he called back.

Chapter Text

Alma eventually ended up slotted between Blackbeard–or ‘Ed,’ as she’d been calling him in her letters since she was a child–and a man who introduced himself as Frenchie. The latter of the two mostly kept to himself, quietly tuning his guitar as he replaced the strings with new ones he had looted from the merchant vessel.

Ed, on the other hand, was shifty, obviously struggling with the silence in their corner of the boat. Thankfully, it wasn’t a complete quiet, as two crewmen towards the stern were having a friendly argument over the benefits of wielding an ax versus a machete. Otherwise, the ride back to the Revenge could’ve been remarkably painful.

Alma was more than happy with the quiet. For as much as there needed to be said, it wasn’t like she was having an easy day. Just hours ago, she’d been crammed away between two barrels of bricks, jumping for her knife at every passing set of footsteps and praying the man who checked the cargo would continue taking her bribes.

It was nice to just let her pulse settle for a little while. Sure, she was surrounded by heavily armed pirates, but for the first time in weeks, she wasn’t afraid. As little as she wanted to deal with his antics at the moment, her father’s familiar presence certainly made a difference. They hadn’t met for long, but her dad’s letters always characterized Edward as a sweet, charming sort of man, even if first impressions would disagree.

The pirates were their own sort of reassurance. While Alma hadn’t gotten to know the crew of the merchant vessel better than she had to, they struck her as deeply unpleasant. Between the guitarist and the man with a bird on his head, there was a passive weirdness about the crew of the Revenge that automatically comforted her.

“So, you’re Alma, right?” Edward cleared his throat.

Alma looked up from the patch of horizon she’d been zoning out at.

“Yeah?”

Ed held out a hand to shake.

“Ed or Edward, don’t really mind either way,” he introduced himself. “No need for any of the ‘sir’ or ‘Blackbeard’ or ‘ahh don’t kill me, I’ve got a family’ stuff–not that I’d kill you, I just get that one a lot.”

“Nice to finally meet you,” she chuckled.

She was shaking Blackbeard’s hand. She had stowed away on a merchant vessel, effectively been kidnapped by pirates, and was shaking Blackbeard’s hand. Her mother was going to kill her.

“I’ve heard a lot about you, you know,” Alma carried on.

Ed immediately winced.

“Look, a lot of that stuff’s really embellished,” he began to deny.

“Not like that,” Alma quickly cut him off. “From dad, I mean.”

Edward raised an eyebrow.

“Well, it was usually about whatever adventures you two had gone on or something like that,” she began to explain, unable to help the wistful expression blooming on her face, “and when he sent us gifts, he’d always tell us what you’d picked out. I always thought you sounded nice.”

“Postscript: say hello to Mister Ed for me,” he recited.

Alma paused.

“You remember that?”

Ed glanced at his partner, then smiled.

“He used to read me every single one,” he reminisced. “Some of them twice. I never figured out the whole reading business–I mean, who’s got the time? But he always passed whatever you said on. And between you and me, every once in a while, he’ll get the old ones out again just to read them.”

Alma blinked.

“He kept them?”

“Every one.”

There had been times she wanted to throw her father’s notes into the fire, just to watch his handwriting burn. The sorrow of missing someone, especially someone so imperfect, often masqueraded as other emotions. With time, she knew it was the right choice. He sounded so much happier in his letters, and it was easy to tell her mother was happier too. That didn’t make his chair at the dining room table get any less empty.

Alma tried to picture him over the years, reading her letters time and time again, then tucking them away in some safe little hiding place. Something warm bloomed in her chest at the thought.

Alma glanced back at her father. He was a few seats away, anxiously rambling about the raid to a man who seemed to be dictating his notes. When she looked back at Ed, his gaze was in the same place, though there was an overwhelming fondness to the way he stared at the man, even doing something so mundane.

The closer Alma looked, however, the more obvious her father’s nerves became. His hands were either fiddling with each other or gesticulating with slightly too much grandeur. A man of such obnoxious eloquence shouldn’t have ever needed to pause and rephrase himself so many times, especially to the extent that his writer broke him off with a sympathetic nod and just packed his quill away.

Edward seemed to be having the exact same thought.

“He’s only worried about you, you know,” he muttered, trying his best to keep his voice down.

“I know,” Alma admitted. “He could just take five seconds to ask questions before deciding to be a dick about it.”

“Give him a couple hours to get the shock out of his system,” Ed suggested. “I think anybody’d be put off if they found their kid and Co-Captain trying to stab each other.”

Alma shrugged slightly.

“You weren’t trying very hard.”

“Was too.”

“You literally said you weren’t.”

“Whatever,” Ed snorted. “Point still stands. Not a great family reunion.”

“Speaking of which,” Alma started, turning towards him in her seat, “you said you were Co-Captains. Is that some kind of euphemism?”

Ed furrowed his brow.

“How much have you been told?”

For a second, something that might have been worry crossed his face.

“Well, in the first few letters father sent home, he said you were ‘his Doug.’ Doug’s my stepfather.”

“Oh, I know Doug,” Edward remembered fondly. “Love that fucker. Scared the pants off him when we first met, but we’ve been cool since then.”

“So is my father your?” Alma let her voice trail off.

Ed smiled, a soft, untamed sort of expression that seemed to make the very sea below them shake.

“Yeah, he’s my Doug,” he confirmed. “Been my Doug for almost as long as Doug’s been Mary’s Doug.”

“You said you’d met him,” she thought aloud.

“Long time ago. I don’t know if you remember.”

Alma’s eyes went wide.

Suddenly, she was ten years old again, laughing as a friendly almost-stranger banged his head on the underside of a table while playing pirates. He was remarkably good at the game for having just picked it up, even if he lacked some of her father’s panache. He had never been able to come back.

“I taught you to press flowers,” she realized. “I taught Blackbeard how to press flowers.”

Edward broke out laughing.

“Like I said, not really the kind of guy to carry around nine guns and smoke three pipes at once,” he chuckled. “Sorry to disappoint.”

“I’m not disappointed at all,” she shook her head. “I’d much rather you than that guy.”

Ed raised an eyebrow.

“I dunno if I should be offended or not.”

“It’s just that–” she broke off to laugh, “those old prints of Blackbeard in the books used to give me nightmares.”

“Jesus Christ, Stede,” Ed wheezed through a laugh, shaking his head all the while. “Why the hell’d your dad let you read that stuff?”

“It was less about letting me and more about stopping me,” she joked.

“You really are Stede’s kid.”

“Not to mention leaving home with just a note, causing a minor scandal, taking off on a life of crime, all that good stuff,” Alma continued.

Ed raised an eyebrow.

“So tell me, did you talk that plan through with anybody before you left, or was this more spontaneous?”

“Dad’s been rubbing off on you,” Alma groaned.

Edward raised his hands in mock surrender.

“Alright, alright, I won’t press,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“But if you ever wanna talk to someone that isn’t your dad–”

“You know, when I was a kid, I always thought that if I met Blackbeard, he’d spill my guts,” Alma chuckled. “I didn’t think it would ever be like this.”

“I just hate seeing him worried,” Ed defended himself.

“Sure,” Alma nodded.

“And no stepchild of mine–”

Alma couldn’t help a laugh at the finger he pretended to shake in chastising anger.

“Yes, sir,” she teased.

“Hey, none of that ‘sir’ shit. We’ve been over–”

“Captain!” a voice cried from the dinghy’s prow.

“Yeah?” both Ed and Stede shouted back.

“Have you two seriously been doing that for eight years?” Alma whispered.

“You get used to it,” Ed shrugged.

“Prepare to board. I cannae take the hostage, as I’ve duty in the crow’s nest. But I’m sure someone else would be much obliged,” the man called back, the bird atop his head nodding in solemn confirmation.

“No!” Stede quickly corrected. “Buttons, she’s a guest, not a hostage.”

Buttons gave her a long, unblinking stare.

“I know about the crystals,” Stede said with the kind of expression that suggested all five of those words had caused him immense agony.

Buttons instantly stood down, while Frenchie visibly relaxed as well.

“Do I want to know?” Alma hissed.

Ed shook his head.

“Eh,” Frenchie shrugged. “If your crystals were that bad, we would’ve already crashed.”

The crew erupted in a chorus of agreement. Alma decided not to ask.

“Stede!” Edward called up the vessel. “I’m taking the hostage for a tour. Can you do the captaining for like, an hour?”

Stede raised an eyebrow.

“If you insist. Alma, is that alright with you?”

Alma shot him a thumbs up back before Ed tapped her on the shoulder, gesturing towards the rope ladder.

“Welcome aboard the Revenge,” he said. “After you.”

Chapter Text

Ed didn’t actually know how to give a tour. He was a little more worried about giving Alma some time to process things before throwing her head-first into emotional family affairs. He also had a feeling Lucius might appreciate having proper time to plan and execute his pep talk.

Thankfully, Alma took care of most of the touring for him. She asked straightforward questions, didn’t wait for an answer, and bounced from object to object with bright curiosity.

He saw plenty of Stede in her, but he saw even more of that fearless ten year old who had crossed her arms, stared him down, and asked if he could really call himself a captain if he didn’t know how to play pirates. Ed was frankly surprised neither of her parents had seen this career path coming.

That ten year old kid had terrified him a hell of a lot more than the young woman who had just nearly succeeded in stabbing him.

The kraken was an old friend now. Years ago, he feared it, attempting to sate or quell it depending on the day. Now, it still bore the scars of old battles he would rather forget, but it bore twice as many from saving the lives of those he cared about. It was a tool, a protector, a simple truth of survival. Its presence made him no more a monster than any other person who had weathered such a life as his.

He no longer felt as if the kraken’s presence made his blood run oily black, a perpetual grime stuck under the fingernails of his spirit.

That hadn’t been the case when he met Alma.

. . .

“Grasp the stem very gently,” Alma instructed, quickly distracted by her brother ripping fistfuls of grass from the garden. “Those aren’t stems, Louis.”

Ed chuckled, though the laugh felt almost hysterical. He had no idea who the fuck had thought it was a good idea to leave him in charge of two small children. It didn’t matter how gentle he tried to be. Fate hadn’t been kind enough to give him the sort of hands that pressed flowers.

“Mister Ed?” Alma cleared her throat. “Are you listening?”

Ed looked up from the flower he’d been staring at.

“Right, sorry.”

“I said that this flower doesn’t have any holes in the petals, so it’s probably a good choice,” she suggested, pointing at a nearby marigold. “Just break the stem off where you want the flower to end. Don’t make it too long, or else I won’t be able to fit it in my book.”

Ed nodded.

His heart shouldn’t have pounded. It was just a marigold, after all.

He gripped two fingers around the stem and pulled. The flower broke away with just a snap, clean and quick and precise. Ed exhaled.

The marigold didn’t shrivel at his touch, nor did it let out a final, dying wail. It had been beautiful in the soil of the garden, and was equally so laying in the palm of his hand. There was a bizarre comfort in the sight of those tiny, freshly bloomed petals smiling back up at him, fearless and sure.

Alma plucked the flower from his hand.

“This should be perfect,” she announced, though she froze a moment later, her hand still holding the flower aloft.

Instinctually, Edward recoiled.

“What’s wrong?”

“Well, I was going to press it myself,” Alma began, brows knit in thought, “but I was wondering if you would like to learn how to do it.”

Ed sat up a little straighter.

“I don’t see why not,” he said, and could barely hide his smile.

. . .

Edward didn’t bother trying to keep Alma from her father’s study. Even after just an hour, he knew not to fight her on such matters.

Throughout most of the ship, she meandered as if on a nature walk, pausing periodically to prod at a knick-knack and muse that she had wondered where the old thing wandered off to. However, the moment she reached the study, a spark lit in her eye. She spent more time examining the floors than the walls, tapping on each board with the toe of her boot until one squeaked a sufficient amount.

“It’s two to the left,” Ed sighed. “That one’s just loud.”

“Thanks,” Alma chuckled, immediately crouching to pry the board up.

“Fuck you young people and your functional knees,” Edward grumbled as he got down beside her. “Find anything?”

Alma didn’t reply. The look on her face said enough.

“He kept them all,” she breathed.

Ed reached a hand into the hidden compartment and plucked a letter from its depths.

“This one’s my favorite.”

Alma furrowed her brow.

“I thought you said you couldn’t read.”

“I can’t,” he shrugged. “Just open it and you’ll see what I mean.”

Alma’s fingers cautiously pulled at the faded yellow ribbon around the letter, then pried apart the parchment. She raised the letter to her face to read the faded ink, but the answer to her burning question fell out of the folded note and onto her shoe.

Edward picked up the pressed marigold and held it out to her.

It was tiny and fragile and beautiful, and he had made it. The same hands that had slain and maimed and run red with blood had staked their claim on eternity, choosing to preserve a lovely, peaceful summer day in the paper thin petals of the dried marigold.

When Alma picked it up off his palm, he did not recoil from her. He had no need to.

“This was the flower we pressed together,” she realized.

Her smile was as bright as the marigold’s still-vibrant orange.

“Yep,” he grinned. “I’d keep it with me, but I don’t want it to get messed up. Heat and salt water and all, you know?”

Alma turned it over in her palm.

“It’s kept beautifully,” she thought aloud as she passed it back to him. “Thanks for taking care of it.”

“It meant a lot,” he admitted. “I’ve never been great with kids, you know?”

“I always thought you were good to us,” she said.

Ed swallowed.

“It was different,” he shook his head. “You weren’t scared of me. Most kids are. I almost liked it better that way, for a while, at least.”

Alma raised an eyebrow.

“My dad wasn’t great,” he muttered. “Didn’t exactly have a fucking blueprint for how to not permanently fuck up my kids. Not that you’re–I mean, the whole step-dad thing is–”

Alma waved a hand in dismissal.

“It’s alright,” she shrugged. “I don’t really know what to call you either. What I do know is that I was always begging father to bring you every time he visited, but he said you couldn’t easily come.”

“I think you might’ve been a little too young to find out about the price on my head,” Ed sighed. “I wanted to visit. I think I asked Stede to say so in his letters.”

“I remember reading that,” she confirmed. “If it means anything, I was only ever nervous around you because you seemed nervous around us. I just thought you were shy, really.”

“I was always worried I’d break one of you by accident,” Ed admitted.

Edward stared down at the marigold in his palm. Back when he plucked that flower all those years ago, he had winced when the stem broke. He could not imagine himself as a creator of beautiful things.

And then Alma’s letter arrived, and with it came the pressed flower, beautiful and delicate and his.

He ran his thumb over the little petals, getting one last good look at it before tucking it away in the envelope.

“I think you probably had to be a little more worried about us breaking you,” Alma chuckled sheepishly. “I think I remember you hitting your head pretty bad.”

The memory of his head colliding with the underside of Mary’s dining room table knocked him out of his thoughts.

“Nah, I was just going easy on you guys. Letting you win,” Ed joked.

“Mhm,” Alma returned.

“It was two on one and you lot had the moral high ground. What the fuck was I supposed to do?” Edward huffed.

“Parlay, make peace, attempt diplomacy–”

“And I thought I spent too much time with Stede,” Ed snorted. “Besides, that’s literally just the same thing three times.”

“That reminds me of something,” Alma remembered. “Speaking of being my father’s daughter, I’ve been keeping my own trinkets on me too.”

Alma paused to fish for something in one of the pockets tied into her skirt. When her hand returned, it bore an odd half-sphere shaped object, orange-brown in color and resembling a ball. When she offered it to Ed, he felt his jaw go slack.

“You know you’re a Bonnet when you use precious cargo space to keep a paper weight on you,” Alma chuckled.

“Is that what I think it is?”

“Dad gave it to me when he came home for the first time,” she said. “He said it was a petrified orange or something. I didn’t want to keep it, really. I was pissed that he left, pissed that he came back, you name it. But when I found out he was leaving again, I cut it in half. I guess I got the feeling that I’d miss him again when I got done being angry.”

Ed gestured a thumb over his shoulder at Stede’s desk.

“Do you mean–”

He hadn’t even begun to nod before Alma shot to her feet, barely remembering to offer him a hand up.

“I don’t know why I’m so surprised,” Alma thought aloud. “I mean, he always kept everything.”

“Not everything makes it to the desk, mate,” Ed chuckled. “He tries to keep it clear so he never has to move anything to set his tea down.”

Alma pressed the halves of the orange together. There was no sudden beam of light or shudder in the fabric of the universe as the pieces came together. She merely let out a breath as she held the two pieces in hand. After a long moment of staring at the reunited orange, she sighed.

“I feel kinda bad for scaring him like that,” she admitted.

“He’ll be fine,” Ed reassured her. “It was a lot to process, you know? Accidentally trying to stab your kid, your kid and your fiance trying to stab each other, your kid finding out her dad’s seeing Blackbeard, you get the idea.”

Alma opened her mouth to speak, then quickly closed it, shaking her head as she laughed to herself. Ed raised an eyebrow.

“What?”

“Never mind,” she chuckled.

“Come on,” Ed huffed.

“I–” Alma started, then broke off for a breath. “How the hell did he pull you?”

Edward took a seat on the edge of Stede’s desk.

“It’s a decent question,” he shrugged. “Rude, but decent.”

“Sorry.”

“Pfft, don’t be,” he said, waving a hand. “I guess the best answer is that I was bored as fuck and he was interesting. You know how many times I’d been offered tea before I met your dad?”

“How many?”

“Twice, and I’m pretty sure one of those was a passive aggressive insult,” Edward continued. “Then this fucker comes in on his fancy boat with all his weird little things and his odd books and his seven different blends of tea, and not only does he offer it to me twice a day, he memorizes the way I like it. It was fucking insane, and I loved it.”

Alma shook her head in disbelief.

“He didn’t save your life or something cool like that?”

Ed shrugged.

“Sure he saved my life, he saved all of our lives.”

“But that wasn’t the kicker?”

“Nah,” he shook his head. “Sort of like falling asleep. One moment, he was bringing me tea over breakfast, the next I sort of realized I never wanted him to stop.”

Alma grinned.

“That was stupid, wasn’t it?” he snorted.

“Just weird to hear someone like you say that about my dad,” Alma laughed.

Edward raised an eyebrow.

“Someone like me?”

“Someone cool.”

Ed pumped his fist.

“Yes! I fucking told your dad,” he celebrated. “We had an argument a while back about whether you’d still think I was cool if you knew we were together. I said yeah, duh, because I’m cool enough for both of us and wear leather pants. I think he forgot about it, ‘cause he hasn’t tried to gloat yet today.”

Alma rolled her eyes.

“I could always take that back, you know,” she chuckled.

“Nope. Shut up. Captain’s orders,” Ed cut her off.

Alma threw her hands up in the air, defeated. She opened her mouth to speak, but was interrupted by a knock at the door.

“Speak of the devil,” she murmured.

“Come in!” Ed called back.

The door opened and Stede walked through, though not before gesturing for Lucius to leave him. He had abandoned his coat from earlier, instead weathering the blistering day in his vest. Ed couldn’t help the stupid grin on his face. He’d never get sick of looking at his partner, no matter how well dressed. When he caught Alma raising an eyebrow at him, he cleared his throat, making a comedic show of straightening himself up.

“Very cool,” she muttered.

“Shut up.”

“I see you’ve found my office,” Stede smiled.

He opened his mouth to continue, but his eye caught the reunited orange halves in Alma’s hand, and he paused.

Ed gave his shoulder a squeeze and hopped off the table.

“I’ll leave you two to talk,” he nodded. “I think you could do with some catching up.”

He tucked the envelope with the pressed marigold into his pocket and took his leave.

Chapter Text

Stede didn’t know what he was going to say when he saw Alma again. There was always Lucius’s suggestion of a hello, shortly followed by an apology for his prior hypocrisy, but it was in competition with a million other options racing through his head.

Looking at her behind his desk, the petrified orange reunited in her hand, he could only think of one.

“You’ve gotten so tall,” he smiled.

Stede looked to Alma for a response, but she said nothing. He winced in preparation for some barb or huff or rejection, but none came.

Then she was hugging him.

Circumstance had kept him from returning to visit for the last few years. The last time he had seen Alma, she had to stand on her toes to reach the highest books on the shelves. Now she was nearly as tall as him. She could no longer press her face into his chest, so she tucked her head over his shoulder the way she would when he used to hoist her into his arms to carry her inside and tend to a scraped knee.

Stede couldn’t remember the last time he picked his own children up.

“Dad, are you crying?” Alma asked.

Stede pulled back.

“No,” he sniffed.

Alma hugged him again.

“Missed you too,” she said.

Damn it. He had planned something to say for the reunion, and it had taken a good bit of work and editing. It all seemed so trivial now. There was such a difference between imagination and actually holding one’s daughter for the first time in years. How could he bother with a speech now?

When he finally dried his eyes and pulled away, Alma was smiling, both halves of the orange still tucked away in the palm of her hand. That nearly made him lose it again, which was almost getting annoying. He had things he had wanted to say to her, after all.

Alma replaced his half of the orange on the desk and tucked her own away into a pocket.

“I just wanted to say that I’m sorry,” he began after a deep breath. “I had no place lecturing you on your career choices. While, for the sake of transparency, they come from a place of parental worry, I apologize for being unfair.”

Alma grinned.

“Did the boy with the notebook help you with that one?” she chuckled.

“His name is Lucius, and he’s a very skilled penman,” Stede said.

“I get it,” Alma admitted, taking a seat on the edge of the desk. “I mean, it’s not exactly like you can check in on me very often.”

“It was comforting to know where you were,” Stede agreed. He followed her lead, sitting in a chair across from her. “If my life caught up to yours, I’d know where to find you.”

Alma nodded.

“And I’m sorry too,” Alma started. “I left a very detailed note for mother–”

“Just a note?” Stede choked.

“Don’t you start,” Alma warned him. “I left a very detailed note for mother, and it’s not like I just left out of the blue. Louis helped me plan everything. I know it’s less than ideal, but you have to understand. If anyone would understand, it would be you.”

Stede clutched his chest, reminding himself to pause for a moment before shooting back a reply he might regret.

“We’re making landfall tomorrow for supplies,” he carefully inhaled and exhaled. “I’ll send word then that you’re safe and with me.”

“Thanks,” Alma nodded. “You know, I’ve asked you this before, but with me being an adult and all now–”

“Oh, dear God,” Stede realized.

“–I was wondering if I’d get a different answer,” Alma continued. “Why’d you leave?”

Stede swallowed. Alma had no idea just how much she looked like her mother. She was an awful lot like her too. If he was being entirely honest with himself, it was more than likely Mary’s influence that had kept her alive at sea, rather than his own. If not for her complete and total hatred of water, Mary could’ve made an excellent pirate.

“Well,” he began, trying to keep his stomach from sinking at the memory of the last time he tried to explain things to his stony-faced children, “it wasn’t anything to do with you, that I can promise.”

“I know that,” Alma shook her head. Her eyes were on the orange again. “What’s the reason, then?”

“I’m sure you knew your mother and I were both miserable, but it was more than that, really,” Stede started again. “It was like treading water and drowning all at once. I was so terribly out of place, and the future looked so horribly bleak. And, well, there were certainly things I discovered about myself at sea that made it hard to turn back.”

Alma nodded.

“I think I understand,” she said.

“And you?”

Alma sighed.

“Well, what are my options, really?” she thought aloud. “I know neither of you–or Doug–would make me get married, but that doesn’t make the other choices any better. I could stay at home and age into some spinster recluse, I could struggle to find a job, or I could try to put my awful painting skills to use and try my hand at some craft trade or another.”

Stede furrowed his brow in thought.

“Not ideal options,” he agreed.

“Exactly.”

“So your next choice was a life of crime?” Stede raised an eyebrow.

“You being a bad influence isn’t my fault,” Alma returned flatly, though there was humor in her voice.

There was a scar on her arm he hadn’t noticed before. It was fairly new, still obviously a cut from an opponent’s blade. No matter how healed it looked, the sight of it made Stede’s stomach twist. The scar was unmarred by marks of stitching. She had to tend to it alone, friendless and bleeding in the hull of that terrible merchant ship.

Stede took a deep breath.

“I’m sure we could find some other, safer option,” he started.

Alma shook her head. He swallowed.

“Is this what you want?”

She nodded.

Stede took a deep breath. Of all the careers Alma had to pursue, it just had to be the one that worried him most. Still, he refused to be like the parents who had sealed his and Mary’s fates, and merely nodded. There was an indescribable value to the pursuit of selfhood. If anyone should understand that, it should be him.

He had missed so many milestones of his children’s lives. Birthdays and broken bones and growth spurts and missing teeth. When he finally got the chance to witness one for himself, it just had to be one of the most painful.

Alma had grown up. There was no way around it.

“Then I suppose there’s nothing I can do to stop you,” he tried and failed to smile. “Striking out on your own like this is quite the big step. While I certainly take issue with your methodology, I’m proud of you for taking it.”

Alma’s face fell slightly.

“I knew you wouldn’t like it,” she huffed.

Stede swallowed.

“It’s not that I’m unhappy with you, I’m only worried,” he elaborated. “I want you to sail the seas, see the world, whatever it is you want to do, but I want you to be around long enough to do it.”

Of course he had to choke up again, just when he was trying to make his point. Alma jumped up from the desk, but he held a hand up and shook his head.

“I’m fine,” he assured himself as much as her. “And I’m not done either.”

Alma sat back down as he finished composing himself. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught her picking up his half of the petrified orange and staring into the heart of it.

“Lucius had a rather brilliant idea I thought I might consider sharing,” Stede continued.

He stood as he spoke, straightening out his vest to make himself feel a bit more put together.

“Oh?”

“I hate to spring the happy news on you like this, but–” Stede broke off to hold up his left hand. He feared the presence of the engagement ring might have been less obvious among the several other bands, but Alma clapped in congratulations anyway. “I was wondering if you might want to stay aboard until the wedding.”

“How soon is it?”

Stede winced slightly.

“Not for another few months, I’m afraid,” he said. “But! I was–well, credit where credit’s due–Lucius was thinking that it might help boost your resume and calm my nerves if you were to stay and learn the ropes for a little while.”

Alma tossed the orange in hand, thinking.

“And it wouldn’t be forever?”

“No,” Stede shook his head. The supportive smile was coming a little easier now, even if his heart still sunk at the thought. “But how many people your age can say they’ve sailed with Blackbeard, eh? He’s quite the reference for future employers.”

Alma tilted her head, then nodded slowly. Stede tried not to physically pump his fist.

“I think I could agree to that,” she considered. “Would I have to call you Captain?”

“Only if you want to,” Stede chuckled.

“Good,” Alma shuddered.

“It’s not that bad,” he huffed, albeit affectionately.

Stede remembered Alma would always beg to be Captain whenever they played pirates in her youth. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that she wouldn’t want to give him the mantle.

“Speaking of which,” she continued, “do I have to call Edward Captain? He told me to just use the first name, which is weird, since we’re on very different levels of being adults–”

Stede shook his head, laughing.

“No need. If he said Ed, Ed will do just fine,” he waved his hand to dismiss the idea. “I do hope you’ve–ah–enjoyed each other’s acquaintance.”

Alma laughed.

“He’s something else.”

“Good something else?”

“Well, if it means anything to you, he said I should tell you that I still think he’s cool,” she snorted.

“Fuck,” Stede hissed, while his daughter erupted in laughter. “Are you serious?”

“Come on, he wears leather pants at sea,” Alma teased. “That’s so impractical. It’s amazing.”

“Shit,” Stede huffed. “Dear Lord, I never expected to have to owe him that shilling.”

Alma shrugged.

“Maybe you should’ve been more of a loser,” she chuckled.

“I’ll try that next time,” Stede smiled, though a noise from overhead made his face fall slightly. “Well, I suppose that’s my cue to take my leave. Even with two captains, these lot certainly–well, suffice it to say they’ve got plenty of personality.”

Alma slid off the desk.

“Where do you want me?”

Stede blinked.

“Hm?”

Alma gestured towards the deck.

“Well, you said I’d be joining your crew to learn the ropes. When do I start?”

Stede couldn’t help his smile. It was heartbreaking to see her grown up, especially after missing so much of that journey. However, he couldn’t deny that he was remarkably proud of the person she had grown into, with a spark in her eye and anticipation in her voice.

He couldn’t wait to get to know the bright young woman his daughter had grown up to be.

“I want tea for the Captain in ten minutes–that’s a taut ten, mind you,” Stede started, launching into his so-called ‘Captain voice’ he tended to favor when he needed something done quickly. The strange warmth of nostalgia filled his chest as he put on the act, and he almost felt as if he was giving their long-abandoned game of pirates a well-deserved encore. “You’ll find everything you need in the galley with Roach, the ship’s cook and surgeon. Introduce yourself while you’re there. If he doesn’t take care of it, Edward takes his tea with milk and seven sugars.”

Alma blinked.

“Should I repeat myself?”

“Seven?”

Stede laughed.

“Is that your only question, sailor?”

Alma chuckled, then set off for the door at a brisk pace.

“Yes, sir,” she called over her shoulder.

Chapter Text

Lucius was going to lose what little ‘it’ he had to begin with.

Long ago, as a much younger, stupider man, he had been hired by some rich prick to take his notes and look pretty. When the opportunities arose, he expanded his job description to include handling breakups and managing morale, sheerly out of the kindness of his heart. Whether the latter had anything to do with how he met his current boyfriend was his own business.

His job description did not, however, include assuring his near-hysterical boss that a certain flower being out of season would not, in fact, ruin his wedding. It also did not include family diplomacy between a scary teenager who liked to sleep in the walls and her mother, a woman who managed to incur the respect of the dread pirate Blackbeard.

Lucius needed to make himself Human Resources. He was pretty sure he could swing a mutinous vote in favor of it, especially after Stede suggested cutting story time short in favor of more wedding planning.

There was a hell of a lot he did that wasn’t in his job description. He hadn’t signed up for any of it. However, if he was going to have to pick up all those other duties, he might as well invent a few he liked.

That being said, he had been trying to inject that spirit of fun into the last few days before they made port at Barbados and Stede’s ex-wife inevitably murdered him with a paint brush. Or something. He planned on spending his last few days on this wretched mortal coil working as little as possible, designing tattoos for the crew to remember him by, and largely fucking around to his heart’s desire.

God, this job involved a lot of getting murdered by his boss’s jilted exes, didn’t it? With this kind of resume, he should’ve been the squire to some fabulously wealthy, morally bankrupt king, instead of his Captains’ dream interpreter.

Still, he wouldn’t trade it for the world. Well, it depended on one’s definition of ‘the world.’ If he could haggle the meaning to still include Black Pete and the lot, he might take it.

“Lucius!” Stede called from the quarterdeck above.

On instinct, Lucius slammed his notebook shut. He wasn’t awake enough to debate whether designing Frenchie’s next tattoo—a fork with spoons for tines—was an acceptable pastime on the clock.

“Coming, Captain,” he yelled back.

Of course Stede’s routine nine o’clock crisis had to be on the only part of the deck that required stairs to get to it.

Lucius reminded himself to take deep breaths and be thankful he wasn’t agonizing over the paper thickness of the invitations that they almost definitely would not need.

“What’s the matter?” he asked upon summiting.

God, it was too hot for this. The sun had been beating straight down for days without reprieve. Even the sea breeze felt sticky. He hadn’t been able to wear his neck scarf in days, and though he wasn’t exactly one for subtlety, he felt terribly exposed without it.

He wished he were that little scarf, tumbling back and forth across the floor of his cabin while the ship rocked. At least that scrap of fabric got some shade.

Stede leaned against the back railing, nose pinched in his hand and head thrown back in Shakespearean anguish.

Looked like it was going to be a standard day at the office for Lucius Spriggs.

“I’m a failure,” Stede professed.

“You’re not a failure, it’s nine in the morning and you haven’t had caffeine,” Lucius assured him, quietly enough that he had plausible deniability should this answer come off wrong.

Stede shook his head.

“Captain,” Lucius said, a little more firmly this time, “how much have you slept in the last week?”

Stede took him by the shoulders. Lucius did his best not to look too displeased.

All things considered, the Captain had looked worse. He was no stranger to dark circles or that pallid, half-dead deep sea cave creature look he acquired when he shut himself away in his cabin during nasty heatwaves. At least this time he didn’t have the added bonus of a stab wound.

“I’ve gone mad,” Stede decided, agony and conviction heavy in his voice. “It’s a week before the wedding and I’ve—oh, God, Edward doesn’t deserve any of this, I’ve gone and—“

Deep breaths just wouldn’t cut it sometimes. Lucius tossed his notebook to the side, prayed it wouldn’t open to something embarrassing, and gently removed Stede’s arms from his shoulders.

“Inhale,” he reminded Stede, who quickly fell into the square breathing pattern that had probably saved Lucius’s own sanity years ago. “Now tell me what's up, and do it slowly. Not writing anything down, see?”

Lucius gestured at the notebook, which he kicked closed the moment he saw the portrait—a teacher example from the crew’s bi-monthly nude figure drawing classes. Stede glanced at the book, but only squinted at it passively before looking back up at him.

That was his first clue. The second, more obvious clue, was the lopsided pair of glasses sticking out of Stede’s hair.

“I’ve had these awful headaches all morning,” the Captain began, “and my vision has been all blurry.”

“And you’re sure it’s not a migraine?” Lucius prompted.

He wasn’t getting paid enough for any of this. He was allowed to have his fun.

“No, no, that’s not it,” Stede shook his head. “Nothing has made sense all morning. When I rolled out of bed to complain about it, Edward just laughed at me. I bumped into Alma in the hall and she did the same thing and told me to go to Roach. When I arrived in the galley, he refused me any sort of medical treatment until I ‘got my head checked.’”

Lucius made a mental note to give himself a two percent raise.

“Mhm.”

At least he didn’t have to try not to look at Stede’s glasses. He probably couldn’t tell where his eyes were anyway.

“Fuck, if I’ve hit my head and forgotten everything right before the wedding—“ Stede broke off, clasping his forehead in hand. “But then, why must everyone—my own crew, my family, my betrothed—mock me in such a wretched state?”

Lucius crossed his fingers that Stede’s hand wouldn’t inch high enough to feel the frames. He did his best not to visibly celebrate when they didn’t.

“I think you just need to go back to bed,” Lucius reassured him with a reluctant pat to the shoulder. “Totally get the urge to overplan the wedding. You want it to be good because it’s literally all about you and one of the most important people in your life, no big deal. But I am going to take a wild guess and say you maybe haven’t been relaxing very much.”

Stede shook his head. The glasses wobbled precariously. Lucius said his first prayer in ten years and tried not to cheer when it was swiftly answered. If there really was a god, they had one hell of a sense of humor.

“Captain,” Jim called from the main deck.

Stede looked up from Lucius’s pep talk, his glasses now vertical in his hair. Jim did very little to conceal an amused smirk as they interrupted their question to point towards his head. Lucius managed to get them to stop halfway by making a violent shushing gesture.

“Oh my god, Jim, you’re just the person I wanted to see right now,” he interrupted them. “Could you get the Captain a cup of tea? It’s just that I think he could really use some, you know?”

Jim blinked.

“I don’t know how he takes his fucking tea,” they said, brow knit.

“I’ll move Oluwande higher up the modeling roster,” Lucius bargained.

Jim’s smirk became a grin.

“Done. Captain, how do you like your tea?”

Stede merely shook his head.

“He’s in a state,” Lucius hissed down at the deck. “Just get it plain.”

Jim gave him a knowing nod and walked off to the galley.

“Modeling roster?” Stede murmured, almost deliriously.

“Nothing you have to worry about,” Lucius assured him, making sure to sound very supportive. “Now, if you want my prescription, I’d send you back to bed with a good book, a cup of tea, and a Co-Captain who I will be ordering on your behalf to fan you and keep you very good company while the rest of us take a day off planning your wedding. How about that? Nobody can ruin anything, and if we put off getting the family for another day, we don’t lose any time.”

Stede took a deep breath.

“Are you sure I’m just overworked?”

Lucius took a long, hard look at the glasses nested in his hair like some kind of avant garde seabird.

“Positive.”

“And you’re not just saying that to make me feel better?”

In all honesty, Lucius was saying it because he knew every moment wasted now would make the moment of realization that much sweeter. However, he did recognize that Stede looked pretty rough and that if a man that concerned with his hair could lose something in it, there was probably something else wrong to begin with.

Stede gave his shoulder a squeeze.

“You’re a good man, Lucius,” he said. “If you’re able to convince Ed to join me, leave Oluwande in charge.”

Lucius cleared his throat to stop him.

“Before you go,” he started, “I just thought you should know that the acoustics aren’t that great on the ship anyway.”

Stede furrowed his brow.

“What?”

Lucius took a deep breath.

“You’re my boss and it’s literally nine in the morning, so I really don’t want to have to be saying this, but you’re so tense that it’s bothering me, so I just thought I’d let you know that the cabins are very well separated from your quarters,” Lucius said with a peculiar emphasis he hoped the Captain was awake enough to understand. “You’ve gotta cut loose.”

Stede opened his mouth, though in confusion or near-offense Lucius couldn’t exactly tell. Jim, his knight in shining duster, came to the rescue.

“I’ve got your tea,” they announced as they returned to the main deck, hurriedly climbing the stairs to the quarterdeck.

“Oh, thank god,” Stede breathed, taking the cup. “Dear Lord, I needed this. Thank you.”

“Whatever it takes to get you normal again,” Jim snorted.

Lucius cleared his throat.

“Right. So, uh, you find your glasses yet or what?”

Stede choked on his tea.

“Fuck,” Lucius sighed.

“You didn’t say I wasn’t supposed to tell him!” Jim protested to the tune of earl grey spewing from Stede’s nose.

“When the fuck do you think I could’ve given you a heads up?” Lucius shot back.

Stede resurfaced from his coughing fit, angrily plucked the glasses from his head, and stuffed them back onto his face. He managed to poke himself in the eye twice before getting them on correctly. Lucius had the courtesy not to laugh. Jim didn’t.

“Oh,” Stede realized. “Good morning, Jim. You’re looking–ah–clear.”

Lucius shook his head.

“Jim, can you do me a favor and threaten him into taking a self care day? I’m going to get the Captain,” Lucius decided. “I think this is for the good of the whole crew.”

“If this means we all get an hour or two of peace, I’m down,” they shrugged.

Lucius packed up his notebook and took off at a jog, barely catching the last dregs of a halfhearted speech on the importance of rest for mental and physical health.

The other Captain was easy enough to find. He was taking his tea on the forecastle with Buttons, both staring off at the sea and sharing some moment of silent, mutual understanding that he almost felt bad for breaking.

He cleared his throat, and Olivia shot him a death glare.

“Sorry,” Lucius started. “Captain, we’re putting your fiance on bedrest.”

Edward raised an eyebrow.

“He lost his glasses on his head and was fully convinced he was dying of some sort of head injury until he realized he’s just running on three hours and is overheating,” Lucius nodded with a wince.

“Ah,” he concluded. “Keep an eye on the sea for me, Mister Buttons.”

“Aye,” Buttons nodded. “She’s nae going anywhere on my watch, sir.”

“Alright,” the Captain said as he pushed past Lucius, “hold my teacup.”

For as grating as Stede’s wedding anxieties could be, especially on an underpaid secretary, Lucius had to admit he felt a fond twinge in his chest at the sight of Ed forcibly sweeping him into his arms and dragging him off to his cabin, the pink robe they so often fought over trailing behind them as they went.

“God, they’re obnoxious,” Lucius leaned over to Pete to smile.

“You know, babe,” Black Pete grinned, “I’ve been working on my biceps.”

Lucius pressed a kiss to his cheek.

“This is why I love you,” he chuckled. “You read my mind.”

All things considered, this job could be a hell of a lot worse.