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Stede can feel the tears dripping down his face, as Chauncey’s words cut right to the heart of him. This is not passive aggression, no, Chauncey is too distraught and drunk to think clearly enough for that. This is simply aggression, raw and unfettered, and Stede knows deep down that he deserves every last word. “The Stede Bonnet-” Chauncey begins to step forward, his gun raised, and Stede doesn’t think he can fight back. All his training with Ed has fled his brain like startled seagulls on the bow when a cannon goes off. “- reign of terror -” He says it as though Stede meant for any of the horrible things to happen that have. As if he meant to kill Nigel, and take hostages, and burn down the aristocrat’s ship - oh wait, he had meant to do that last one, to a certain degree. Regardless of his intentions though, he’s right. Surely. Stede feels that he is right. Feels like he does not deserve escape, does not deserve Edward’s kind smile and promises of freedom. “ - ends toda-AY!” Chauncey’s foot hooks on a fallen branch, which had been covered by the debris of the forest floor. He pitches forward, and Stede is taken back to that day with Nigel in his cabin, this time stood before the man as his arms flail and his finger twitches.
BANG!
He jumps backwards, his eyes widening in horror as he watches red bloom from Chauncey badminton’s right eye socket, shot through with his own gun; the same eye as his brother. He screams - somewhere in the back of his mind, he hears members of his crew laughing at how ‘girly’ he must sound, he hears his Father’s voice, mocking him for being ‘lily-livered’. The tears flow freely now. It happened again. It happened again. I really am a curse. How many people had he hurt, ruined, or killed without even realizing it? How many people’s lives had he touched and sullied? His legs give out under him, and he falls to the leaf-strewn floor with a keening whimper. His eyes don’t stray from the Badminton twin’s face, frozen in shock with a hint of anger to the furrow in his brows. His face is paler than Stede has ever seen on anyone, pale as the whitest shirts he’d left aboard his beloved ship, as the blood pours like a waterfall from him, steadily gathering in a dirty pool of crimson beneath his head.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He whispers, though he’d not truly sure what he’s apologizing for. Perhaps he’s apologizing for killing Nigel - or for sending Chauncey mad - or for not even being able to be killed properly. Perhaps… he’s simply apologizing for existing, for being a thorn in the side of everyone he’s ever met, dragging them all down into an abyss of his useless, bumbling, pathetic excuse for a life. That was the only reason he could think that they had always tormented him so, as a child and even fully grown, as repentance for what he did by simply being in their presence.
He feels sick, slick with cold sweat and shaking like the ship would in a storm. His crew are surely better off without him, with someone competent like Izzy to guide them, they might actually find some success. Oluwande can continue his legacy of gentle kindness, he’s good at that - perhaps he’d even become their new captain. Jim would protect them all from any harm. Roach would ensure they were fed. Mr. Buttons would keep their course steady. Frenchie, The Swede and Lucius would ensure the crew stays happy and entertained. Wee John would man the cannons well, and Black Pete would lead the charge on the raids, while Fang and Ivan continued to properly teach them how to loot and keep themselves alive.
They had no need for The Gentleman Pirate anymore. They never really had, but he’d deluded himself into believing that perhaps he was indispensable to them. It was just a veneer, he’d always known. It was a thin pretense as best, and he’d always done his best to avoid thinking about it too much, especially after the near-miss with the mutiny.
But they’d get by. They’d probably thrive without him to drag them down. It was the same thought he’d had as he’d packed his things and left Mary and the children. They’d be far better off without him.
Truth be told, he’s haunted by the idea that perhaps he did badly by them by leaving; the badminton twins had planted that seed in his head and it had grown into a sickly little tree with pale leaves and a single fruit dangling precariously from a branch that might snap under the weight at any moment. It was an apple, he thought, blood red and practically gleaming, all the life and nutrients that the tree could have given poured into its flesh and shiny skin.
He blinks away the image. His eyes burn. How long has it been since he moved? He finally pulls his gaze away from the grotesque vision of death before him and looks to the sky. It is beginning to lighten. His neck is stiff and it creaks as he moves. He wishes someone were here to tell him what to do, like Oluwande had after Nigel…
What would Ed do?
Oh god, ED!
Stede pushes himself up on legs that feel like lead, his whole form shaking with the cold that’s only barely beginning to flee from the air as the sun rises. He has to find Ed. Which way is the dock? He doesn’t know. He couldn’t tell which way Chauncey had led him - he ignores the lurch in his stomach as he thinks of the man lying dead at his feet, refuses to look at the corpse. He looks around him at the trees. They are densely packed, and he can’t see much light between the bark and the leaves. He’s never been good at navigation. Another of his weaknesses that had made him a pretty pathetic captain, since he was still being so brutally honest with himself.
He doesn’t think Ed should want to see him. What the man sees in him, Stede couldn’t possibly fathom…
But he thinks of the way Ed’s lips had felt pressed against his, and how different it had felt to the cold kisses he’d forced himself to share with Mary, and he knows that something is different. He doesn’t understand it, can’t properly articulate what it is he feels for Edward, but it doesn’t matter. Ed had seen something worthwhile in Stede… He was the first person to ever see anything worthwhile in Stede. And he wants to be with him, wants to go to China, maybe open up that restaurant Edward had told him about while they’d dined on the snake he’d stabbed. He wants to see him smile again, wants to hold his hand, wants to share cups of tea and bottles of rum, wants to stare across the ocean with him by his side, wants to follow him wherever that might take them - back to piracy, perhaps to retirement, he doesn’t care. If he can be with Ed, he’ll be happy.
What if I drag him down too though? What if his faith in me is misplaced and I destroy everything? I am cursed after all… He’s spiraling again, can feel the thoughts clawing their way up, can hear the voices rising in volume again. No… No, I can’t lose focus. I have to find him.
He takes a chance and dives into the trees. The branches scrape at his arms, and he stumbles constantly over the uneven ground. But he keeps moving. He pushes himself forward, even as his legs begin to scream in pain, even as the cold sweat turns hot and sticky on his skin and makes his shirt stick to his body in the most uncomfortable way - like it’s trying to become another layer of flesh. He fights through the growing discomfort, through the dense foliage and the desperate need to cry again that keeps building up behind his eyes. He can try and cope with the trauma of another man dying in front of him later, he scolds himself mentally.
When he finally breaks through the tree-line, he nearly goes careening off a cliff into the sea. The sun is fully up now, the sea stretching out before him in glimmering stillness. No dock. No boat. Fuck, I went the wrong way… He’s about to fall to his knees and give up when he spots a familiar out-cropping. The out-cropping he’d sat at the edge of, where Ed had found him the day before. Where Ed had…
He stumbles towards it, practically bolts for it. From that place he’d seen the little pier, he’d be able to find Edward… He’d be able to-
He freezes. The pier is there, far away but close enough to see… that there is no boat. There is no Ed.
“No…” he whispers, and his knees do buckle now. The pain of the trek is too much to continue. “Ed… EDWARD!” He screams, frantically throwing his head around to search for any sign of a boat, any sign of a long mop of graying hair. “EDWARD! ED, WHERE ARE YOU!?” Tears sting in his eyes as he sees a dot on the horizon. I was too late… He doesn’t know for sure that it’s Edward out there. Doesn’t have any clue if Edward even successfully secured a boat. But he has a feeling, deep in his gut. He screams again. “EDWARD! EDWAAAAAAARD!” He squeezes his eyes shut with the effort it takes to push his voice up into such a register, and when his eyes open again… the dot is gone.
He’s alone.
Edward is gone.
He’s better off without me anyway. Stede finally admits to himself. They all are… He allows his mind to swim, to churn like the ocean. He allows the tears to flow, balls his hands into fists, scraping at the rock and dirt beneath his fingers.
He has no boat. No crew. No Ed…
When his tears finally run out, his cheeks crusted over with salt and his eyes rimmed by red, Stede stands, swaying in the breeze, and plucks that ripe red apple from the withered little tree that the Badminton twins had planted in his mind. “I’m coming home, Mary.” He turns from the shore, and stumbles away from the out-cropping, his mind foggy and numb. He’d failed at sea… Perhaps it’s already too late to fix what he’d broken with Mary and the kids… But he doesn’t have anything else left.
Ed is gone. He’ll be better off without me.