Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It could’ve been Archie.

Ed likes Archie. Can’t remember when they picked her up or where, really, but it’s a little strange, how comforting it is to have her on the crew. She’s a wild card, rash and reckless, a bit mad, a bit brash, and that’s—well, that’s familiar.

A pirate like Archie is a known entity. Ed’s known them nearly all his life.

“Woah, now, don’t go overboard,” Ed says, catching her as she spins out from Jim and Oluwande, drunk and sweaty, nearly tipping over the rail. “All right?”

“Fuck, man,” she laughs, giddy, nearly dumping half her drink down his front as she sways. “I’m good, you good?”

There’s a not insignificant part of Ed that wishes he were on her level: a bit of drink, a bit of swagger, a bit of the leaf that’s been passed around. The night is warm and balmy, glowing under the colorful lanterns, and the party is good, really good, but he’s hot in his leathers and he wishes he could strip down, snag one of the rum-soaked plums out of the tub, create a little chaos with everyone else.

Ed doesn’t trust himself with chaos.

“Yeah, yeah, m’fine, go on, drunkie,” he says teasingly, indulgently even, but he doesn’t clap a hand on her shoulder like he might’ve done once upon a time. Across the deck, Jim’s stopped paying attention to Oluwande to watch the two of them; their eyes are wary, protective. Ed nods in their direction. “Better get Jim a refill too, they’re losing half their drink to Frenchie.”

Archie just grins, and she doesn’t hesitate to give Ed a soft shove to the arm. “And here’s you, what, still on your first? Live a little, bro.”

There’s something of Jack in her, the way she says it. Jack, but Jack early on, back before he spent so much time up to his neck in a bottle—Jack when they were still young, still naive, still daring in a way that was about survival instead of apathy. Back when things could still be good.

Before Jack had stuck his fucking arm into that blaze to pull Ed out of it. Before the mutiny. Before Ed had taken up the captain’s quarters and loaded Jack off onto Vane and the Ranger, because he owed Jack his life and that made Jack dangerous and Ed terrified and you couldn’t lose something you’d already walked away from.

Before Blackbeard.

We’re alive, bro, Jack used to say. Least we can do is fucking act like it.

Ed looks at Archie, and he can see Jack looking back, and Anne and Mary, Sam and Charlie. Cabin boys and captains. He can see the pirates they all could have been if Ed had maybe been a little less fucking afraid.

Archie looks back, brows drawing down. “Hey, you sure you’re good?”

Ed blinks, shakes back into himself. The ghosts disappear like mist in the night.

“Yeah,” he says, mustering up a smile. “I’m good, yeah. Go on, don’t miss out the party just to hang around with my old maudlin arse.”

“You could join the party.”

“I am partying, look, I have a drink and everything.”

Archie barks a laugh again. “I am looking at you, old man, you just don’t look like you even know a party’s happening.” She shakes her head, sets her mug of rum down. Pulls a knife out of her boot. She pulls at the garland of greens and flowers lining the rails, examining each bloom like Spanish Jackie examining a gold piece. “Black leather, no-nonsense hair, wearing the same pearly thing you’ve had on for weeks—who dressed you, would’ve thought Bonnet would’ve had a field day—”

“Bonnet—hey, Stede likes the hair, thanks much—”

“I don’t doubt it,” Archie agrees easily, slicing off a giant red flower. “It’s nice and suggestive, with your little flirty strand things there, but you don’t strike me as the silent type and I ain’t heard shit out of the captain’s cabin so—”

Ed splutters. “We’re taking it slow—what, the fucking silent type, the fuck does that even mean—”

“Said what I said. Turn, please,” she gestures at his hair, “so I can put this up there.”

He’s not big on people touching his hair. It’s not public fucking property. But Archie’s asking, or sort of asking, at least, and she looks nothing at all but just enough like his mum when he was little. And there’s that something familiar about her but there’s that also something Ed wishes he’d known how to hang onto, that warmth that reaches out to Jim, to Oluwande, and despite everything Ed’s done to destroy it in Archie—Fight her! To the death!—she’s still here, trusting him.

All right. All right, yeah. Ed can trust her too.

Ed turns, and just to be a shit he crouches down extravagantly so she can reach. Archie laughs again, shoves at his shoulder, berates him to hold still, please.

She’s careful as she tucks the flower into place.

Ed thinks about Jack again, about Annie and Mary, and wonders if they could have loved him right if he could’ve told them how. If they could’ve loved him if he’d have let them—if he would have let them if they’d tried.

He wonders what kind of pirates they all might have turned out to be if they’d been fearless enough for flowers.

“There,” Archie says, bringing Ed back into himself. He can feel the weight of the bloom in his hair, the sense of something flouncy at the back of his head. “Now you’re ready to party, mate.”

Gently, Ed reaches back to touch. The wide petals are soft and crinkly, unbearably delicate. “Thanks,” he manages, a little too earnestly.

Archie just grins, pats Ed’s arm one more time, and goes off to intercept Jim before they make their way over, already shouting about the next drinking game they ought to play.

Live a little.

Yeah, Ed thinks. He thinks he probably could do that, with pirates like these.

*

(Here's Ed with the flower.)

Chapter Text

It could have been Calypso. Easily, it could’ve been Calypso.

She makes her grand entrance and sits on a throne of crates and barrels, bedecked in seafoam silks and the iridescent glitter of tiny chips taken from oyster shells. Her eyelids are painted blue, extended far above her natural browline; her chest and hips have been padded. She’s every inch a sea goddess.

She’s nothing at all of Wee John.

Ed can’t stop looking.

There’s just something so joyful about it, so exuberant and wondrous that it makes Ed feel like a kid seeing a clasp of red silk for the first time. Calypso takes up her throne and lords over the deck, laughing as Jim and Frenchie and even Lucius bend their knees to pay their respects. She accepts Izzy’s kiss on the back of her hand like it’s her due and not a jaw-dropping surprise. Even Stede bows to her majesty.

She’s a performance, Ed can see that—but she’s also alive.

Like maybe she’s not nothing of Wee John. Like maybe she’s just more of him.

Ed’s worn lots of costumes. Put his first one on the day he left home, pretending to be a worthwhile sailor and not a lad just old enough to be a cabin boy. Pretending he had only a quick wit and a will to survive and an innocent conscience, rather than blood on his hands and a monster hiding beneath his ribs.

Since then he’s worn a soldier’s blues and a blacksmith’s apron, a priest’s robe—pretty memorable actually, that one—and a captive’s rope. And just like the first one, they’ve all been about disappearing. Becoming less of himself.

Like a rice sack, cut to fit a penitent.

Like a leather jacket, cut to make a legend.

Calypso must feel his eyes on her, because she turns and looks at him from across the deck. Her voice booms and rolls, softened around the edges but deep as ever, as she calls to him—by name. By his own name.

“Edward Teach.”

The crew hasn’t really taken to calling him by name again. Most of them still call him Blackbeard; a select few don’t call him anything at all. Only Stede calls him by name now, and the sound of it from Calypso—this triumph, this exaltation, this identity Wee John has created of himself and shared with them all—is like a fist closing gently around something tender in Ed’s chest.

He clears his throat and makes a show of approaching her throne, arms outstretched in supplication. He bows as low as his knee will let him, waving a hand ostentatiously like he’d done in another costume, on another night. He swallows back the sense memory of lace cuffs and French perfume, of Stede’s hand against his chest. “My queen.”

Calypso looks down at him imperiously. “Goddess will do fine, Edward Teach.”

“My Goddess, then,” Ed amends, grinning as a touch of Wee John’s laugh escapes. “What can a lowly sailor like myself do for you?”

“I have seen you partake of my food and of my drink.”

Ed nods agreeably. “I have seen and tasted many delights.”

Calypso leans forward in her throne, assessing him with a slow up and down. “And yet you wear black,” she accuses. “You do not bedeck yourself in a manner befitting a party. You do not adorn yourself with beauty.”

There’s a choking noise from the snack table, where Stede tries to protest through a mouthful of mango tart. “Excuse me, he’s plenty beautiful!”

“Yeah, we know you think that,” Roach says drily.

Heat rises in Ed’s face. He knows what he looks like, okay, sure, but beautiful isn’t usually the word people pick. Beautiful is a daydream, a fancy. A bride in blue, bearded and still beloved.

Ed touches the pearls at his throat and tries to swallow.

Calypso keeps ignores everyone, keeping her eyes on Ed and Ed alone. She snaps her fingers, holds her hand out. “Someone bring me an ornament.”

There’s a pause, then a flurry as everyone rushes to comply. Frenchie offers the scarf he’s had tied around his waist; Roach brings her a knife, very typical; Archie hands over a ring. Stede tries to ask Ed what ornament he’d like to wear, which makes Calypso hiss.

It’s Fang that wins Calypso’s favor, carefully lifting a necklace of enormous blossoms over his head. “I still have the flower crown,” he says, giggling. “Ed can have these.”

Calypso takes them, considers them. Considers Ed again. She eyes the pearl necklace he’d chosen for himself weeks ago, and nods.

“I accept the offering,” she says, “but it must be made to fit the wearer.”

With deft fingers, she unthreads a single flower from the necklace. The rest fall away, showering over her lap. The bloom she’s chosen is big and vibrant, pink-tinged and delicate.

But Calypso doesn’t demand Ed step forward and present himself. She doesn’t even ask if he’ll deign take it. Instead she holds the bloom up, twirling it so everyone can see, and asks, “Are you ready, Edward Teach?”

Ed looks at her, resplendent in blue silk and glittering seashells and Wee John’s white beard. He looks at Stede, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he watches, the word beautiful still lingering on his mouth. At Fang, with his crown of flowers; at Frenchie, with his embroidered jacket; at Jim, with a mustache drawn on and a cravat at their neck. Oluwande has a flower tucked behind his own ear. They’re all watching him, encouragement on their faces, waiting.

He says, “Yes.”

The flower is fixed into his hair to cheers and shouts, to wolf-whistles from Olu and Roach, to soft, lingering glances from Stede. “There,” Calypso says once she’s done, low in Ed’s ear. “It’s a good start.”

Ed turns to face her. “Just a start?”

Calypso smiles. “It’s up to you to decide who to be, Ed. But I think allowing yourself this one thing is a good start.”

Chapter Text

In another life, maybe, it could’ve been Izzy. 

They’re the closest they’ve ever been to being that version of themselves, Ed thinks. This Izzy, with painted lips and a flower pinned to his chest; this Ed, without his captaincy, without his pedestal.

But Ed’s still wearing his leather and Izzy’s still wearing his sword, and Ed still can’t look at him without feeling that hot-sour combination of guilt and anger and betrayal and anxiety that’s been bubbling up like oil in his belly.

Izzy’s not looking at Ed at all.

The closest they’ve ever been, and so far away they might as well be on different ships, sailing different seas.

In another life, maybe.

Not this one. 

Chapter Text

If Ed were choosing, of course, he probably would choose Stede to put it there.

Ed’s in love, is the thing.

He’s still getting used to the way it feels, this kind of love—a light, strummy sort of feeling, like Frenchie’s playing that lute right into his belly and sending everything vibrating. It’s different from the way love’s felt before, which has always been more like a freefall, a plummet with nothing but waxen wings and an empty expanse rising up to overtake him.

Maybe it wasn’t really love before. Not really.

Ed takes up a post by the rails, sipping at his rum and occasionally passing a pipe back and forth with Fang, watching the party as it sprawls across the deck. Everyone’s laughing and dancing, shouting and singing and reaching out to one another. He tries not to think about how he would’ve destroyed them just to destroy himself.

Stede threads through the crew, flits around them, laughs with them. He shows Roach how to waltz to a tune that’s definitely not a waltz and bends to kiss Calypso’s offered hand. He lets Oluwande give him a little impromptu self-defense lesson on how to keep Archie from launching herself onto his shoulders from behind.

There’s a flower tucked behind his ear, bouncing as he moves, and Stede wears it like he’s used to wearing flowers.

Ed’s in love.

Ed’s in love and it doesn’t feel rotten in his chest. It doesn’t feel like an anchor, dragging him down. Ed’s in love and watching Stede move, watching Stede laugh, watching Stede flick his gaze back to Ed again and again and again—and it doesn’t feel like drowning anymore.

It makes him feel like he can swim.

He must start to look some kind of way about it, because it’s not long before Stede’s path through the crew carries him back to Ed. Fang lifts his pipe in greeting, gives Ed a wink—god’s sake—and fucks off, leaving the two of them alone at the rail.

“Having fun?”

Stede grins, takes a long drink from his mug. “I am, actually. It’s good to see the crew in such high spirits. Are you?”

Ed shrugs. “Sure, ‘course.”

“Sure, ‘course,” Stede mimics, in a voice that doesn’t sound like Ed’s at all. He nudges Ed with his shoulder, grinning, but then he turns into him, taking Ed’s hand in his own. He tilts his head in a touch so only Ed can hear him when he says, soft and sure, “They’re happy, you know. It’s all right for you to be too.”

Fucking hell.

“Stede,” Ed says, and then his throat feels all wobbly and tight and he can’t say anything more. Instead he lets Stede set aside their mugs and take his other hand too, lets Stede press their foreheads together, their noses. Ed can feel him breathe, the soft fan of air across Ed’s cheek and mouth, and tries to match him.

“There you are,” Stede says, when Ed sniffs and leans back again. His smile is fond, and gentle, and easy. “Come on, we’re starting to look like party poopers over here. What do you say to a dance?”

It’s exactly what Ed needs, a bit of levity and laughter when this moment is teetering right on the edge of too serious, too much, too soon, too fast. Ed’s in love with Stede for knowing that, or at least for making a good solid guess, or, hell, Ed doesn’t know, maybe it’s just what Stede needs too and they just fit together well enough that it works out like that.

Ed grins, manages to mean it in his chest, and calls out. “All right now—turn the music up, Frenchie!”

Across the deck, Frenchie shouts back, “Aye aye, Ed!” and Stede drags Ed onto the dance floor before Ed can think to be startled by hearing his name instead of Captain, instead of Blackbeard.

He’s just Ed.

The song is fast and lively, and Stede learnt to dance all formal so he can’t dance like this worth a shit, and Roach and Fang are slow-dancing in the middle of it all like they don’t give a fuck, making everyone bump into them. Ed laughs and Stede laughs and he’s warm and close and smells like flowers, like rum, like sweat too, underneath it all.

When Frenchie does finally slow the music again and everyone pairs off, Stede pulls Ed into his arms effortlessly, like Ed’s always been meant to be there. His hand on Ed’s lower back seems huge; his eyes crinkle at the corners.

“And how are you tonight, Mr Teach?” he asks, in an over-dramatically haughty voice that makes Ed grin.

He puts on a demure little face, pretending at coyness to match Stede’s false arrogance. “Very well, Mr Bonnet, and how are you?”

“One can’t complain,” Stede says, and the absolute menace drops his voice to something intimate and leans in to murmur right in Ed’s ear, “when one has the most beautiful man at the ball in my arms.”

The shyness suddenly isn’t so false. Ed looks away. “Come on, man, I always look like this. Didn’t even get dressed up like everyone else.”

“Still true,” Stede insists, but he guides them to a halt anyway, right there in the middle of the dance floor. “Here,” he says, plucking the flower from behind his own ear. “It’s just the thing. Red, like your bit of silk.”

Ed looks at the bloom, its red silky edges, it’s yellow burst at the center. It’s such a fine thing. “I lost it,” he confesses suddenly. “The silk, I mean. I—I mean didn’t lose it, not exactly, I just—let it go. Gave it up.“

The confession curdles in the air between them. I gave up.

Stede studies him for a moment, then he reaches so carefully, so gently, to tuck the flower into Ed’s hair.

“There,” he says softly. “It’s changed a little. Not quite what you had before. All sorts of things change, don’t they, but this one—“ he touches the flower, tucks a stray piece of hair back behind Ed’s ear— “It’s still good, I think. Different, but still good.”

That’s the thing, isn’t it. They’re different. They’re changing. They can’t go back to the early, easy days on the Revenge because those days are gone in the wind, slipped through their fingers—but they’re here now. They’re here, dancing slowly, swaying together; they’re here, and Stede’s mouth is warm under Ed’s when Ed kisses him, and gentle because Ed asked him to be; they’re here, and Ed’s in love with him.

One day he might even tell Stede about it.

Chapter Text

Could’ve been Jim.

Ed’s only just starting to believe it could’ve been Jim.

He still needs the odd moment to himself. He’s eager for people to surround him, desperate for noise, almost anxious for contact to prove that this is real, that they’re all really here—for Stede’s bright grin and the sound of the crew laughing, for Fang’s gentle hand on his shoulder and Roach’s little treats—but it gets to be too much sometimes, and Ed has to secret himself away for a while.

Tonight Ed’s back in his old uniform, and he’s supposed to be pleased about it. He’s supposed to be delighted or whatever to be off probation. Proud, maybe grateful, maybe relieved. “Must feel good, eh?” Frenchie had said, handing the pile of leather over. “Getting back to your old self again.”

“Yeah,” Ed had said, stomach sinking. “Sure.”

The leathers are hot. They’re heavy. They’re too loose in places they didn’t used to be and it all feels a little off-kilter anyway because here’s where he’d put his hands normally but he’d refused the gun and the knife, tucked them into Stede’s hands instead, and now he can’t figure out what the fuck to do with his arms.

He wishes he were still in the rice sack.

He wishes he were still in a frilly shirt that smelled like someone else, copper breeches, silk stockings. If he could go all the way back to that first day, that first night, Ed would do it all differently.

Well.

Maybe not all of it.

The sound of laughter and music drifts across the water, but everything’s muted on the forepeak. The glow of the lanterns doesn’t quite reach this far; everything’s dark, shadowed. Ed hides in it, pulling at the ties on his jacket, trying to decide whether to leave it on or take it off. He just wishes he could breathe.

The door opens behind him and Ed jumps, startled, and when it isn’t Stede come to fetch him, he startles a little again, moves to press himself as far away as possible to give them room.

Jim doesn’t say anything. Just nods a hello and looks out over the water.

Ed holds his breath.

They’ve got a pointy little charcoal mustache drawn on that suits them down to the ground and a frothy white cravat, and Ed tries not to be jealous of how easily they wear their happiness. Jim’s shorn hair is the only visible remnant of their time on Blackbeard’s crew, but the sides are freshly trimmed and they’ve tousled the curls just so. It’s not symbolic; it’s just a bloody cool haircut.

Ed wishes his beard felt the same way, instead of like a wound he’s not even sure he wants to heal.

In their hands, Jim is holding a flower.

He’d seen them earlier with Archie and Oluwande, threading flowers together into chains and crowns and suggestive little arrangements. He’d seen the way Oluwande kissed their cheek and the way they’d smiled, soft and earnest; he’d seen the way Archie had leaned into Jim’s shoulder, rested her head on them until they were both laughing too hard at something she’d said to stay balanced that way.

All love dies, he’d said to them once, and more fool him. Jim’s love just grows and grows and grows. The only thing that’d died that night had been, well—Ed. 

He waits for them to say something.

They don’t.

Ed tries to think of something he can say and comes up entirely empty. What kind of fucking small talk do you make around the sort of elephants in the room with the pair of them? Sorry about that time I almost killed us all, thanks for killing me first? Nah, don’t sweat it, weather’s nice though, innit? 

He starts to wonder how he can elegantly squeeze past them when Jim finally sighs and looks up and, “Look—well, here,” and comes at him.

Blackbeard doesn’t flinch. Blackbeard doesn’t scramble away and back himself up against the remnants of the figurehead. Blackbeard doesn’t feel fear.

Ed’s not Blackbeard anymore.

He catches his breath and braces himself, turns his face away, but Jim doesn’t strike him. Jim doesn’t have a knife in their hands. They only have a flower, a huge ruby red bloom with ruffled petals, and they only make a soft, soothing sound in the back of their throat as they thread the stem gently into Ed’s hair.

“There,” they say, almost too quiet to hear. “That’s the end of it, then.”

Oh, Ed thinks, oh.

The last time Jim touched him, they’d killed him.

Now there’s nothing but a memory and the soft brush of a flower against Ed’s temple, and it feels like an acknowledgment, like a memorial—this, here, is where it happened. Now this, here, is where it ends.

This is forgiveness, Ed realizes, and an apology. This is recognition. This is an uncovering of everything that happened, a holding it up to the light, and Ed meets Jim’s steady gaze and lets himself see: that Jim has been afraid and hurt and angry, yes, but not only because Ed tore off the wheel and aimed a cannon at the mast. Jim’s been afraid and hurt and angry because Ed had used their hands to kill himself.

And Jim hadn’t been strong enough to stop him.

There’s guilt too, Ed sees now. Guilt in Jim’s eyes, guilt in the line of Jim’s mouth. They’d raised the shot over their head and bared their teeth and brought it down with the rain, with the dark. They’d seen Ed lying on the deck, bloody-mouthed and bruised, tear-streaked and relieved, and they’d given him what he’d so desperately wanted and he can see in their eyes that they wish they’d given him something else. Anything else.

Now they’re giving him flowers.

“Hey,” Ed starts, and then his throat closes up and he has no idea what he could possibly say that would amount to a better apology or a better forgiveness than this—a plea and a gift, a question already answered and an answer given without question.

Jim smiles, small and genuine. Reaches out a hand like they mean to shake his, like they’re agreeing on this ending.

Ed puts his hand in theirs, but he doesn’t shake it. Instead he pulls them in, slow and easy enough that they could stop him if they wanted, until he can wrap one arm around their shoulders in an awkward sort of half-hug. There’s a single horrifically tense moment, and then Jim hugs him back hard, both arms up around his waist and chest, squeezing until they both laugh.

“Fuck, you’re too tall,” Jim says from somewhere around Ed’s chest. They give him a tiny, playful shove as they break apart, and their grin is wider now, easier. “Come on, let’s get back to the party, sí?”

They offer their hand again, clearly intended to help Ed through the door and back into the ship, back up to the deck, back up where everyone is waiting for them. Clearly intended to pull him forward, like they’re agreeing on this new beginning.

Ed takes it.

Chapter Text

None of that happens.

Ed wishes it had—any of it, all of it. Dancing with Stede and laughing with Archie, lighting pipes with Fang and his stupid goat. Calypso’s blessing. Jim’s forgiveness. Maybe even two seconds of sustained eye contact with Izzy, if he’s really dreaming.

And he is dreaming. Writing fairy tales out of thin air, telling himself a different story. Ed’s good at that, he’s always been good at that—playing make-believe, like reality is something he can proofread, striking the truth through with red lines, editing it away. Make a few script changes, a few revisions to the blocking, and the whole cast leans in, delicate flowers in hand.

But none of that happens.

Ed can lie to himself again and again, but all he ends up with is a stack of what ifs and a bill that still comes due.

What actually happens is that Blackbeard lets his guard down. Forgets who he is. What he’s done. Forgets the trail he leaves in his wake. Lets himself believe, despite all evidence, despite having put his hand in that fire before, that he can be something else.

What actually happens is that Ned Low slinks out of the dark and calls in his debts—two raids more than a record and four bars of deranged music.

What actually happens is that Stede pays the price.

Ed thinks of all the ways the night could have gone. Dreams of all the things that could have happened, all the better outcomes this crew deserves. Wishes the only pain in his chest was still that same old familiar thing, nestled deep down under the shield of his breastbone and wrapped in tatty red silk.

But none of that happens, and the ache in Ed’s chest is a red-raw burn right over his heart.

*

“That could’ve been you,” Stede whispers into the dark, into the aftermath.

He says it softly, the way you’d just graze your thumb across the bruise at the bottom of a plum; Ed feels it the way you’d crush two fingers past the surface to twist out the pit. Outside, the flare of the fireworks has faded into smoke.

“I know,” Ed says.

He tries to make it soft too, but he’s cradled sticky and cooling and bare against Stede’s chest so he hears it when Stede’s heart stops and starts, stops and starts. Ed imagines twisting that heart around with two fingers, wonders how much it can withstand before it breaks.

“He was goading me,” Stede continues, all quiet astonishment. “He was goading me and I fell for it, and then he was in the water, and then he was sinking, and he didn’t even try, Ed. He didn’t even try to swim.”

Ed closes his eyes. “I know.”

He’d known it as soon as Ned Low had come on board, had seen it in Low’s eyes the moment before he’d pressed that red-hot poker into Stede’s skin. In the way he’d held his hands still for his own crew to tie the rope around them. Had seen that mocking sarcasm layered over an almost anxious rage—that clawing, careening need for someone to do something already.

Hard to miss, when Ed’s spent so much time with that look in the mirror.

Stede’s breath hitches in his throat, sharp. His belly trembles under Ed’s hand where he’s trying to keep himself steady, trying to make himself still with Ed in his arms, but his breath hitches again, and again, shaking out of him until it’s shaking out hard, and finally he says, strangled—like it’s an accusation he’s been trying not to make for days and now he just can’t stop himself, just can’t keep it locked away a moment longer, coughing it up like his own heart from his throat—

“You wanted that to be you.”

And Ed had.

It’s the coward’s way out. Ed’s always been a coward, looking for a way out. He’d seen himself, already more ghost than man, and he’d wanted that. He’d seen himself trapped, cornered, only one escape left and already struggling to breathe above the rising tide, and Ed had wanted that: for someone to step in and let it be over.

For someone to stop him.

He’d had a taste of something vibrant and alive and good and beautiful, and he’d dared to want that, dared to try to hold it in two hands, to keep it, to reach for more, to give himself over to it—and it hadn’t wanted him back.

He’d just wanted to stop being so fucking tired.

So: yeah. He’d goaded Ned Low and he’d done it with purpose. He’d provoked the British and aggravated the Spanish, instigated fights with every ship he came across, dared cannon fire and musket shot, and when all that failed he finally, wretchedly, desperately, turned on his own crew.

They’d all fallen for it. They’d all given him what he’d wanted in the end.

Izzy with a gun in his hand and blood in his mouth. Fang, with his shoulder driven hard into Ed’s sternum; Frenchie, with his eyes averted and fist raised. Jim, with a cannonball raised over their head, teeth bared, eyes wet.

He remembers being underwater. He remembers deciding not to swim.

But then: he also remembers light. And orange cake. Tea with seven sugars and a dollop of milk; a treasure map; a lute accompaniment. Waking up to the sound of someone else moving around the cabin, trying to be quiet. Learning to fish, and how to breathe besides. A song in a voice he hasn’t heard sing in a decade. A handful of easy smiles. Laughter, spilling across the deck in wave after wave, and a dance someone asked him to join.

A hand in his, clutching back.

He remembers warmth. Good food. Orgasms.

Ed remembers deciding: not yet.

He’s been deciding it again and again and again these days. Not yet. Not now. Not when there’s still so much to see. Not when there’s a chance, a fledging hope, that things can be different.

Ed raises himself up onto an elbow to look at Stede properly, to pull away the hand Stede’s using to cover his eyes. His face has gone all splotchy and miserable; his eyes are red-rimmed and haunted.

“I don’t want it now,” Ed tells him. “I’m safe, and I’m here. I don’t want it anymore.”

Stede crumbles. Folds himself into Ed’s chest and finally lets go of everything he’s been trying to swallow, and Ed lets him, of course Ed lets him. He brushes Stede’s hair back off his forehead, thumbs at the tears on his cheeks, holds him hard enough to anchor him back into his bones. Kisses Stede’s temple, and then each of his eyelids, thin-skinned and vulnerable. Breathes slow and calm, pressing Stede’s hand to his own heart so Stede can feel the pulse in him, the life in him, so Stede can breathe with him.

“I’m safe,” Ed says, and he’s starting to believe it matters. That people want that for him. That Stede needs him to be safe the same way Ed needs Stede to be.

“I’m here,” Ed says, and he’s starting to believe he could belong here. That people might want him here. That he might be able to love without fear the same way he might be loved without fear.

“I don’t want it now,” Ed says, and he’s starting to believe it’s true.

*

Dawn steals over the horizon, spilling gold out of its pockets and over the water. Ed hasn’t slept.

Next to him, Stede is a pile of mussed curls and freckled skin and soft, rolling snores. Ed imagines he looks peaceful, easy with sleep, but he can’t actually tell because he rolled over two hours ago and smushed his face into Ed’s hip. Every time he breathes, it fans hot over Ed’s bare skin.

This is real.

This is real, Ed thinks again. Not a bedtime story, not a fairy tale. Not a dream, like running off to China together. This is real.

Ed’s good at telling stories. Maybe too good, sometimes. Maybe too good at telling stories over and over, until even he believed in them, until he became them. Blackbeard, building himself into a legend; the Kraken, disappearing the man into the monster. Ghosts and aristocrats and innkeepers and fishermen. He thought he knew the ending to those stories: the inevitability of drowning.

Next to him, Stede has a hand curled around Ed’s thigh, soft and possessive, and Ed thinks he’s had enough of endings.

He thinks he’s maybe got one more beginning left.

Ed slips from the bed, replacing his thigh with another pillow when Stede mumbles a protest. There’s one of Stede’s silk robes tossed over the back of a chair, and the gauzy tissue-thin lining against Ed’s skin makes him shiver. It’s a fine thing and it makes him feel like bone china, translucent and delicate in the morning light.

His leathers, by contrast, feel heavy: an anchor, tethering him to a life he’s tired of living, with nowhere to go but down.

It’s surprising, then, how easy it is to bundle it up with a cannon ball and a net into a single pack. A makeshift coffin, tied around itself. Blackbeard and his head of smoke, his belt of guns, his glowing eyes, appearing out of the fog like the devil himself—Ed’s heard those stories. He invented half of them himself. It’s surprising how small that story is, here at the end of it. Just an armful of costuming and a few whispers of a myth.

It’s surprising how quick it sinks.

Ed watches the water for a long minute, dread sudden and sick-hot in his veins, but the bundle doesn’t come bobbing back up. Eventually the water goes still again and the morning light turns the surface glassy, and all Ed can see when he looks down is a man.

Ed’s good at telling stories. He’s told a lot of them.

He’s never told one like this, though—a story written in the dawn light, about changing and trying and building and becoming and finding room to breathe all out in the open, all out with the truth. About what’s real and right in front of him. About the life he’s already living if he can be brave enough to believe in it.

It’s a story about all the possibilities last night could have been, and Ed’s never told a story about possibility that’s more hope than blood. He’s never told a story about a before with a sense of a second chance still hanging in the air—what could have been, but also what still might be.

The aftermath of last night’s party is still spilled across the deck, abandoned cups and bunting sagging the rigging, Chinese lanterns dipping in the wind, long since gone out. Stede’s bathtub has the sticky remnants of fruit and punch floating in the bottom of it, which will be an unpleasant job to muck out and which Ed will conveniently disappear for. There’s evidence of a goat, the discarded husks of spent fireworks, plates with half-eaten nibbles. 

A plank, still balancing preciously where it juts out over the water.

It’s an in-between place this morning, stuck halfway between yesterday and today. The possibilities are like ghosts, almost tangible in the early fog, not quite there, not quite real. Not yet.

Ed’s told stories about destroying his family, but never about finding one, building one. He’s told stories about hiding behind a costume and a mask, but never one that brought his own self to light. He’s told stories about hanging on by this thread or that, but never about how to let go, or at least how to change your grip so it doesn’t hurt so goddamn much.

He’s never told a story about love. About being in love. About how to be in love; about how to be loved. How to open up his ribs and let something bigger inside.

How to forgive.

How to be forgiven.

He’s never told a story about Edward.

The fog is starting to dissipate in the rising sun. Ed looks over the deck, looks over all those possibilities, all the stories spilling out around him. He only has to decide if he’s ready to tell it.

He knows the trick to a good story is always in the opening line, and he only needs to look a second longer to find the right one for this particular tale. He finds it half-hidden in shadow, blown this way and that in the nighttime wind, sheltering at the base of the railing, on the cusp of flying over. It’s a little crumpled, a little wilted. One of the petals looks like maybe it’s been stepped on, crushed.

But it’s still good, he thinks. It’s still good.

Ed reaches down to the huge, strawberry-red hibiscus flower and saves it.

It’s delicate between his fingers. He twirls the stem between his fingertips, watches the petals swoosh in the air. The yellow bit in the middle—the pistil? stamen?—is vibrant in the morning light. Ed considers, and hesitates, decides and undecides, starts and stops, but he finally reaches up to tuck the flower into his hair.

He looks back at his reflection in the water, tilts his head so he can see the edge of the bloom, just peeking out from behind his hair. It’s not perfect, he knows, but it’s still good. It’s got a little life in it yet. It can tell one more story.

He takes a deep breath, and begins. 

“Hello, Ed.”