Chapter Text
Forgiveness is a funny thing. A fickle and fragile thing, seemingly with a mind of its own.
Sometimes, when we are hurt, we do not choose to forgive. It happens without our notice, like the turning of the earth or the setting of the sun. Most of the time, forgiveness is unremarkable; it’s clumsy. There are mistakes to be made in the act itself.
Perhaps, innately, there is a desire built within us to forgive, even when the hurt still lingers.
Edward supposes that innate desire is what makes him want to forgive Stede the second he sees him, as bright as the cosmos, standing in the sand on that stupid beach.
Stede wakes slowly. His chest feels heavy and his mouth tastes of salt. His tongue feels like it’s made of parchment. He coughs to try and rid his lungs of the ache that clings to them, but it doesn’t ease much.
He looks to the sky. A dense cover of clouds obscures the blue of it, the sunlight. Stede works his mind, kicking it into gear like it needs a push to make it think.
He feels the ground beneath him and finds sand under his palms. His brows draw together in thought as he feels the grains there.
Sand?
That doesn’t seem right. Sky above, sand below. Stede thinks hard, trying his best to recall where he is, what happened. He can hear something that must be waves, but he can’t make himself focus on the sound for long enough.
He remembers getting into a dinghy and rowing far too hard for far too long. He recalls finding his crew marooned on a tiny island, and he remembers gathering them all into his boat, which rocked in protest.
He recalls the thunder, the lightning. The wind and rain.
Stede sits up suddenly, his back arrow straight. His head spins when he does, but he ignores it.
His crew. His crew! Where are they? Are they safe?
Once his head stops spinning, Stede focuses his attention on the beach. Oluwande is beside him in the sand, still asleep but breathing. His cap is - by nothing short of a goddamn miracle - still on his head.
Stede forces his exhausted eyes to work some more. His muscles beg and plead for him to sit still, but he refuses to listen.
Further down the beach, gathered around a large rock, sits Roach, Buttons and Black Pete. The Swede is knee-deep in the ocean with a stick in his hand that he’s using as a (blunt) makeshift spear. He seems to be trying to hunt the crew some breakfast.
Stede counts their heads. Oluwande, Pete, Swede, Roach, Buttons.
Wee John. Where’s Wee John?
Stede forces himself to stand. His body feels as if he’s walked around the globe and back. He coughs some more, his head spins, but he keeps himself upright. Olu grumbles in the sand below.
The crew turn to Stede as he gets to his feet. They all look thoroughly exhausted, paled and soaked through. Their clothes are completely wrinkled. Roach inclines his head in greeting as Stede looks at them. He carefully steps around Olu and approaches the rock. Swede makes a dejected sound in the water, having missed yet another fish.
“Heya, Cap’,” Roach mumbles, sounding miserable. His voice is hoarse, and his brows are furrowed.
“Wee John,” Stede blurts out. The pain in his throat alarms him when he speaks, “where’s – is he alright?”
“Yeah, he’s just gone for a piss,” Pete gestures to the lush jungle behind them, “he’s over there somewhere.”
Stede releases a breath he didn’t realise he had been holding. He puts a hand to his chest. “Thank goodness. Was anyone hurt?”
Everyone shakes their head. Stede sighs his relief and joins them by the rock, sitting cross-legged between Pete and Buttons.
They sit in tense silence for some time. The waves, gentle and soothing, push at the sand lazily beside them. Stede enjoys the quiet for a moment, then clears his throat. It burns when he does.
“The dinghy?” he asks his crew, “did it come apart?”
Buttons nods, “aye. On the rocks.” He inclines his head towards the jagged stones further along the beach. Stede follows his gaze and catches a glimpse of some splintered wood scattered across the rocks. He sighs at it.
“Damn,” he curses with as much distaste as he can muster, which isn’t much. “Well. As long as everyone is safe, that’s all that matters.”
“Safe?” Pete echoes, his tired voice as outraged as he can make it, “we’re the furthest thing from safe, Captain! We almost drowned, we haven’t eaten in days, we’re running on no sleep, and we have no water. How the fuck are we ‘safe’?”
Olu grumbles and finally sits up, clumps of sand falling away from his shirt as he does.
The Swede cheers with delight, and the crew all look at him at once. He stands, grinning with his missing teeth, and he holds a bunch of seaweed in one hand, his stick in the other. “Breakfast!” he calls over the sound of the ocean.
Oluwande pinches the bridge of his nose and groans. He finally comes to a stand and wanders over to the rest of the crew, who shuffle over to make room for him. He sighs once he’s found his place amongst them. Swede marches over and proudly sets his seaweed on the rock with a sickening slop, as if presenting his crewmates with a lavish meal. Everyone gives him pointed looks.
From the jungle, Wee John finally emerges. He holds a dozen coconuts in his arms, and he grins at the crew as he walks over. “Found these!”
“Thank god,” Roach says softly, “I was considering the seaweed.”
Wee John hands out the coconuts once he’s close enough, and everyone gets to work smashing them against the rock before them. For several long, agonising minutes, they don’t speak as they crack their meals open. With their tired arms, it takes longer than it usually would.
Stede holds his coconut with both hands. He’s lacking the motivation to open it, and he lacks the appetite to eat it. As the crew finds the water inside the delightful fruits and chug it down gratefully, Stede picks at the husk of his own share and thinks.
He chances a glance at the horizon. He hopes to see The Revenge there, knowing how unlikely that is, and is still disappointed when he finds the skyline is clean. He sighs.
No dinghy. No rations. No money. He tries so hard not to feel hopeless, but it tugs at his chest like it’s an anchor trying to pull him downward. His bones ache, his muscles burn, and his eyes try their best not to drift closed with the weight of his exhaustion. He feels like he could fall asleep in the sand and stay there forever, until he dissolves and becomes one with the grains. He thinks that, maybe, he’d make a nice enough shell that someone might pick him up and put him on their shelf.
But no. He hasn’t the time for withering and fading away. He has a ship to find.
The love of his life is out there somewhere. He’s out there, calling his name like a siren, and Stede is going to follow the sound or die trying.
He needs a plan. He might not have a boat, or food, or any kind of coin, but he has his crew. He has his determination, his hope. His love alone is enough to carry him forward, so he lets it.
It’s gotten him this far. Though, admittedly, that’s not terribly far at all.
The crew have managed to pry open their coconuts and they’re pulling apart the meat inside and inhaling it with almost rabid fervour. The colour appears to be seeping back into them slowly as they eat.
“Does anyone know where we are?” Stede asks them.
Everyone shakes their heads. “Too dark last night to see much of anything,” Buttons says as he chews, “we crashed on the rocks, pulled ye in, and waited until morn.”
Stede nods. “Alright. We can – we’ll make this work.”
Pete rolls his eyes, “make what work? What can we possibly do?”
“I’m not sure,” Stede admits, “but what choice do we have, Pete? Are we supposed to just wait here on the sand? I think not.”
“Right, so we’re going to chase after your insane boyfriend because you’re feeling guilty,” Pete spits, “and we’re going to find him, and everything is going to be all ‘laa-dee-daa’, kumbaya? Be fucking sensible, Captain.”
“Hey,” Olu says around his mouthful, “Pete. Calm down, man. We’re just as lost as you, alright?”
“Lucius is still on that ship!” Pete cries.
“Yeah, so is Jim,” Olu reminds him with a hard look, “we’re all fucking worried out of our minds, okay? We need to work together. We’ll find our way back, somehow.”
“This is his fault, though,” Pete gestures to Stede, who winces like he’s been struck, “Blackbeard lost his mind when he came back without him.”
“Nah,” Wee John shakes his head, swallows a mouthful of coconut, “he was being nice, remember?”
“Too nice,” Roach nods, “we should have known the talent show thing was a ruse.”
“T-… talent show?” Stede asks them, his brows coming together with confusion.
“It doesn’t matter,” Olu says, “we can talk more about this later. We need a plan first.”
“We need a ship,” Buttons tells them, looking up from the coconut in his lap, “I can’t be on land too long. I get all – loopy.”
Stede lets himself wonder how Buttons could possibly get more loopy. He snickers at him.
“Seems as good a place to start as any,” Stede says, “a ship. We’ll need food and water, too. Any ideas?”
The crew stares at him. He looks between them all for a long moment, then heaves out a sigh.
“That’s okay. I’ll – goodness, I’ll think of something.”
Everyone continues to eat. As they do, Stede comes to a stand once more and hands Wee John his unopened coconut. The crew gives him confused looks as he dusts off his trousers and rolls out the ache in his shoulders.
“I’m going to go for a walk to see if I can spot anything,” he says to them, “stay here. I’ll be back.”
“Captain, you’re exhausted,” Olu says, “you need to eat something, too. And, really, you shouldn’t be going alone. What if you get lost?”
Stede wants to tell him that he doesn’t think he could get himself more lost if he tried, but he doesn’t want to disappoint him by saying it out loud. Instead, he makes himself smile, though it feels like he’s painting a lie on his face, and he says, “I’ll be okay. I won’t go too far. You all get some rest for a little while. I need to think, I suppose.”
Olu looks like he wants to protest, but he bites his tongue and nods. Stede turns away from them and starts to walk down the beach.
The Revenge had once been a colourful artwork of a ship. It had once shined on the sea like a star against a blackened sky. Bright, and glistening with hope like a promise left unfulfilled. It had once been a sanctuary for vagrants, a home for those who had never known one of their own.
Perhaps that was what kept Blackbeard here for so long in the first place. That feeling. The urge to have a place to rest his head where he could have belonged. The Revenge felt like an orphanage for wayward souls. The flags had once advertised its warmth like it was telling onlookers ‘We take anyone in. Welcome aboard.’
Now, this ship feels like a graveyard. Blackbeard looms in the darkest corners, haunting it like the ghost he’s become.
Each day feels like it’s presented to Blackbeard in nothing but glimpses. He doesn’t take the time to digest the things happening to him anymore, he simply lets them happen. He’s fallen into a routine that he despises, a routine that makes him sick, but there’s a pattern to it. A pattern he doesn’t have to think about.
When the sun is up, the Kraken wages war. Most of his life is spent this way now, seething and burning. He’s nothing but a forest fire, consuming anything and everything in his path. When night descends and drops him into darkness, the Kraken slinks away, and Ed is left alone once more.
The nights swallow him whole. He becomes roiling waves, twisting depths and misery. Overcome by it, he sits alone in the dark and he lets that sadness eat him alive. It pulls him apart, piece by piece. In Stede’s cabin, a place that had once been alive with nice things and softness and kindness, Ed lets the torrents of his heart seep from his eyes. The lighthouse painting mocks him, mocks his weakness and his frailty. He loves it anyway.
Izzy, completely thrilled to have everything he’s ever wanted, follows Blackbeard’s every movement like the shadow he is. He’s become nothing but an incessant, annoying, desperate voice in the back of Blackbeard’s mind. The Kraken tolerates him, but Ed loathes him. His first mate lingers on his heel like an annoying, overeager dog, and Blackbeard has learned to tune out all his praise.
Things like “it’s good to have you back, boss,” or “you’re as menacing as ever, Blackbeard,” couldn’t hold a candle to anything Stede had once told him. Nothing could ever compare to the beautiful way he grinned and said, “you came back,” like he meant it. Like he was glad to see him. Blackbeard supposes that Izzy’s praise doesn’t mean much to him. It’s too easy to earn. There’s no fight in it.
He hates Izzy for what he did. He hates him for squashing all his hope and healing like a bug under his thumb. He hates himself, too. He’s not sure who deserves the misery more, but he seems to be shouldering the weight of it all anyway. He wishes Izzy would take some, too. Maybe he wouldn’t feel like he was drowning all the time. Maybe he’d learn how to breathe again.
Blackbeard tells himself that he doesn’t think about Stede anymore. He tells himself this, though it cannot be further from the truth. All he does is think about Stede. Through the burning flames and the coiling smoke of the Kraken, he thinks of him. Through the writhing waves and the churning sea of Edward Teach, he thinks of him. He’s ever-present in the forefront of Blackbeard’s mind, like a light he can’t shield his eyes from.
He doesn’t think about Stede. He commandeers his ridiculous, beautiful ship, and he doesn’t think about him. Not even a little bit.
There are some new rules on The Revenge, and the crew follows them without question. The crew fears him more now than they ever have before. They can’t even meet his eyes anymore, and he likes it better this way. Now there’s no chance of anyone saving him. There’s no salvation in any of the glances he receives.
The first rule is a new one: no one is to speak out of turn. Orders and commands are to be carried out without question. Asking questions guarantees the loss of food privileges. Or worse.
The second rule is also new.
The name ‘Stede Bonnet’ is banned on this ship. As far as the crew is concerned, as far as Blackbeard is concerned, the man who had previously captained this vessel is dead. His name, everything tied to it, was tossed into the ocean along with all his nice things. His name sank to the seafloor as swiftly as his stupid fucking books. If Blackbeard doesn’t spend his time thinking about him, neither will they.
The third is as it has always been, and likely the most important: no pets. The love of a pet makes a man weak.
Blackbeard had let himself be weak once before. He will not make the same mistake again.
Time no longer moves in a straight line. Blackbeard seethes, wages a one-sided war inside himself, and he misses a life that had graced him for only a moment.
The days go by, and Blackbeard spends all those miserable hours alone, not thinking about Stede Bonnet or the mess he’s left behind.
Stede wanders down the beach. He keeps his hands in his pockets as he walks, because he’ll bite his nails down to the quick if they’re not hidden.
Every chance he can get, Stede looks to the horizon. Every time he does, his heart sinks further and further down inside him. He wonders if there’s a bottom it can reach, and how long it might take for it to get there.
He thinks of Ed and his chest swells. He bites the inside of his cheek and gets lost in his regret, in the throes of his guilt.
He thinks about the dock. He wonders how long Ed waited there for him. He hopes it wasn’t long. He hopes the ocean played a soothing song for him. He hopes that the ocean had at least been kind to Ed when Stede should have been.
He has to find him. He has to tell him that he’s loved. Even if Ed turns him away, despises him, refuses to forgive him. It doesn’t matter.
Stede has to make his words count, somehow. He needs to show Ed that he’s been loved all along, Stede was just too lost to realise. He was so far down the rabbit hole of his own self-loathing that he couldn’t even see the light when it was shining in his eyes. He feels like a damn fool.
Now, he needs to make his words mean something. He needs to make them matter. He’s going to find Ed, and he’s going to make him see that he’s loved, and he’s going to fix all this.
He’s going to fix the ridiculous mess he’s made, because he doesn’t see a future without Edward Teach beside him.
Stede comes to a jagged, rocky ledge and peers into the sea. He wishes it would tell him where Ed is. He wishes he could kiss it, press all his love to the water, knowing the ocean would pass it to Ed wherever he might be. Instead, the sea twists menacingly, breaks itself against the rocks Stede stands upon.
With a sigh, he turns away and continues his search.
The sky is still a sinister grey with the cover of clouds, and the way the sunlight cuts through them makes the sand of the beach appear less saturated. It’s as if the earth feels as gloomy as Stede does. Truthfully, he thinks the sky is being a little dramatic about it.
With tentative, careful steps, Stede wanders into the jungle. The vegetation is lush and green, though the canopies look as if they’re promising rainfall in the dim light of the cloud cover overhead. He trains his ears to the treetops, listening for birds and hearing none. Everything is remarkably still and quiet.
His boot catches on a root that protrudes from the dirt, and he exclaims as he regains his footing. He glares at the root, looks at the tree it grows from, and huffs. He keeps walking.
As he walks, he thinks. He wishes he could think of anything that wasn’t Edward. He needs a plan. A ship, food, water. A goddamn plan!
He tries to work his mind into cooperation, he does his best to wrangle it into submission, but he can’t make his stupid brain work. He thinks of Ed, of his perfect grin and his eyes and his heart, and Stede is swallowed alive by his regret. He misses him so much that it makes his gut twist, and he feels guilty for missing him as much as he does.
His stomach feeling chilled and his heart heavy, Stede continues to walk. He wanders through the lush greenery, something he would usually enjoy, but feeling too lost inside himself to take much notice of his surroundings.
Until he trips. He loses his footing, a little gracelessly, and falls to his knees with a painful grunt. He winces as the sparks of pain shoot up his hips, his sides. He hisses through his teeth.
“Damn,” he curses, rubbing at his sides, and he turns to look at the culprit.
Beside him, covered in a dense layer of moss and foliage, stands a gravestone.
With a frown, Stede comes to a stand once more. He kneels before the gravestone and brushes some of the debris out of the way, hoping to catch a glimpse at the name engraved on the front. As he does, he’s careful not to step on the place where the person buried beneath might be resting.
The complete name on the stone appears to be almost lost to time. Stede can’t make out any dates, or any of the inscription on the bottom, but a name peers at him like an old friend from under the withered leaves.
Horatio.
Stede blinks at the name. Horatio? Like from ‘Hamlet’?
A small smile tugs at his mouth. He brushes more of the refuse away from the stone and gives it a kind pat before bringing himself up.
“Sorry for tripping over you there, friend,” Stede says gently to the earth, “I suppose I wasn’t paying much attention to where I was going.”
As if in response, for the first time since Stede wandered into the jungle, a bird trills a high note from somewhere in the canopies above.
“I’ll try to be more careful,” Stede continues. He looks around him for a moment, taking in the deep brown of the tree trunks, the delightful greens and the pleasant smell of the damp earth. He takes a long breath in to collect himself.
“You wouldn’t happen to know if there’s somewhere to find a ship around here would you, Horatio?”
Wind gushes past then, tugging at Stede’s hair and clothes as if politely asking for his attention. With a final kind glance at the gravestone before him, Stede carefully steps over where Horatio had finally found his place to rest and follows the direction of the breeze.
Feeling a little more refreshed, a little less in his own head, Stede wanders westward. As he walks, the vegetation becomes less dense. The treetops overhead eventually part and give way to the expanse of grey clouds that linger above.
Stede thinks that he should probably turn around and find the crew. No doubt they’re starting to wonder where he’s gone, if he’s lost. He supposes, in a way, he’s terribly lost. He’s not sure which way home is. He decides to continue just a little more, a little longer, waiting for either a miracle or a disaster.
He’s never been a holy man, but when he looks up from his boots and catches sight of a fishing hut in the distance, he thinks there might be a god looking out for him after all.
Fang has seen some shit in all his years being a pirate. He’s seen some weird, wrong, twisted shit. In fact, he’s carried out a lot of this strange shit himself. His hands are unclean, but it doesn’t bother him so much. He did what he did in the name of his captain, in the name of Blackbeard. Really, he doesn’t let it keep him up at night. He’s a ‘live and let be’ kind of guy.
He’s seen some decidedly strange shit in his years. But what’s going on with Blackbeard isn’t just strange. It’s wrong.
He’s never been like this before. He’s never been this unhinged, this unpredictable.
Fang has sailed with Blackbeard long enough to see how dark he can get. He thought he had seen the worst of it, and it frightens him to know that all he had seen before was nothing compared to whatever this is.
In the beginning, it had almost been nice. Fang reluctantly admits that he was excited for the talent show they never had. He liked to see that side of his Captain – the side that was open and trying to heal. Trying to fight away the darkness that was looming beneath his skin.
He’s not sure what caused Blackbeard to turn like he has. All he knows is that one moment, he was singing for the crew, all soft curves and fuchsia robes. Then, like the crack of thunder, he flipped. He became someone else. And suddenly, they were tossing all of Stede’s things into the ocean, and Izzy was walking with a limp and a cane, looking deliriously thrilled.
When Izzy is happy, that means things are bleak. Fang learned this in the early days of being on Blackbeard’s crew. When Izzy gets like this, he’s to be avoided at all costs.
Fang knew things had gone too far when he heard Lucius gasping for breath in the sea.
Fang is a good pirate. He’s always been loyal, almost to a fault. He’s carried out his orders without question. He’s done some strange shit, some twisted shit. In all his years, he’s never turned down a command. He supposes that’s probably why Blackbeard has kept him around this long.
So, he knew he was both doing the wrong and the right thing when he hauled Lucius out from the ocean. It felt good and bad all at once.
He might pay the price for it later, but he will burn that bridge when he gets to it. He knows he did the right thing by saving him. Fang is not used to doing the right thing, he’s used to doing what he’s told, but he let himself feel like a hero when Lucius completed a full breath and hugged Fang with his gratitude.
Now, Fang slips quietly into the stores, making sure no one has eyes on him before he does.
Once there, he finds the crate he’s become too familiar with in the darkest corner. Silently, he walks over and knocks on the lid twice, announcing his presence.
Lucius lifts the lid and sets it aside, coming to a stand and stretching out his back, which cracks sickeningly as he does. He groans and gives Fang a soft look.
Fang knows he’s breaking several of Blackbeard’s rules by keeping Lucius alive, by keeping him stowed away like this. But when Lucius smiles at him and says, “morning, sunshine. Another pleasant day aboard The Revenge, hmm?” Fang can’t find the energy inside him to care.
He will burn that bridge when he gets to it. He’ll burn several bridges if he must. Whatever it takes.
For now, he’s just glad Lucius is alive. For now, that’s enough.
The crew wait for their captain patiently on the beach. The Swede and Roach have started to draw in the sand with sticks. Buttons paces back and forth in the water, his hands tucked neatly behind his back. Olu sits in the sand, his eyes trained on the horizon.
He tries not to think about Jim. He’ll drive himself mad if he thinks about them too much or for too long. He can’t seem to stop himself. He watches the horizon, the lazy drifting of the rain-heavy clouds, and he misses them. They always seem to know their way out of situations like this. Olu thinks he could use their guidance right now. He also thinks he’d just like to feel the warmth of their hand in his.
He hears Stede before he sees him. From the distance, what he thought was a bird at first, turned out to be their captain, calling for their attention. Olu spots him in the distance and frowns, then comes to a stand and dusts the sand from his pants.
“Hey,” Olu says to the others, “I think Captain might have found something.”
Further down the beach, Stede is gesturing to them fervently, his arms waving above his head in big arcs. He’s beckoning them closer.
The crew all gather, abandoning their tasks, and they start to walk towards their Captain. As they walk, still out of earshot, Black Pete matches his stride with Olu and asks, “so, is mutiny still an option?”
“You better be joking,” Olu says with a smirk, “how do you suppose we mutiny against a Captain without a ship, man?”
“It’s mostly a joke,” Pete says, “mostly. I’m – I’m sorry for being a dick before. You must be worried about Jim, too. I get it.”
Olu nods, “it’s alright. Thanks, Pete. Lucius will be okay. Frenchie will be okay. We’re going to fix this.”
“Big mess to fix,” Pete sighs, “it’s not even ours.”
Stede watches them approach, and Olu finds himself flooded with relief when he sees his smile has returned to his face. It had almost felt like they were more lost without it. Now, if Stede is smiling, maybe there’s hope for them after all.
“I know,” Olu says to Pete, finding himself smiling to his captain in return, “but that’s what being part of a crew is about, right? We share our messes.”
They walk towards Stede, who’s shining bright enough that he might just be able to guide them home after all.
Even if they did crack up on the rocks first.
Far enough away to be considered a distance, but close enough to still feel like home, Edward Teach is drowning.
On a ship that doesn’t belong to him, a ship that doesn’t love him, the Kraken is fighting a one-sided battle, and he’s winning. Casualties litter the streets of Blackbeard’s heart. He can’t recall what fresh air feels like inside his lungs. He rends all his hope and his optimism to ash inside him. The Kraken burns, sets the world aflame.
And Edward Teach, a man with a name the world will not care to remember, sinks into the depths of his grief, and he drowns.