Archive of Our Own

When Chauncey Badminton accidentally blows his own brains out right in front of Stede, he sort of loses it. He thinks he screams. He knows he steps back and trips on the root of a tree, falling back into several bushes. And then for some unknowable reason, he’s racing through the overgrown vegetation, to where he’s not sure. It’s not until he breaks through the trees at the edge of Bridgetown that he stops to catch his breath and figure out what’s swirling in his head. 

He collapses against the side of a tree, his knees hitting the ground hard enough to send pain vibrating up his legs, and curls up into a tight ball. What the fuck just happened? One moment Chauncey is berating him, calling him a monster. A plague. A man who ruins everything he touches. Confirming everything that Stede has suspected about himself since he was a child. And the next moment Chauncey is bleeding on the ground in front of him, another Badminton dead simply because he had the misfortune to be near him. Stede has killed two Badminton men within the span of a few months. 

And the really fucked up thing is, he really can’t be arsed to care about that. Two men who had made his life a living nightmare when he was a child, who had been doing their best to make it a nightmare again as an adult, are now gone. The world is rid of them. Stede is rid of them. 

Or, he should be. Because suddenly a familiar voice is in his ear, hissing, “You’ll never be rid of us, Baby Bonnet. There’s no relief for a man such as you.”

Stede sits up in a jolt. The bloody, misshapen face of Chauncey Badminton is inches away from Stede’s eyes. He cries out and jerks back, only to hear laughter behind him. His breath catches, because he knows that laughter. Knows its harshness and cruelty and glee at Stede’s discomfort. His father is leaning down over him from behind, practically curving above him, a bloody cleaver gripped in his hand. 

“No, no, no,” Stede mutters, covering his face with his hands. “You’re not real. You’re not fucking real.”

The laughing continues, Chauncey joining in. “Still a weak little coward, I see,” his father’s voice says. Stede squeezes his eyes shut and clamps his hands over his ears. “And a fool, too,” the voice continues, because he can’t block it out. It’s inside him. It is him. “Useless. A failure as a man, and you don’t even have the decency to compensate with brains. I should have smothered you the second you came out of your mother.”

“Oh, yes, that would have saved us all a lot of trouble, wouldn’t it?” Badminton’s saying, but it’s not coming from in front of him, where Chauncey is still trying to press into his face. It’s coming from the side. Stede can’t help but glance to the right, and there’s Chauncey’s face, but with a sword sticking out of his head, and not a gaping gunshot wound. 

“No, I left you on that island,” Stede says, shaking his head and shutting his eyes again. “I left you there.”

“Idiot,” Nigel snorts. His head is trying to work its way between Stede’s knees and chest, to stare up at him. “I’ve always been here, you know that. You can’t get rid of me.”

Chauncey chimes in, “You can’t get rid of us .”

“Stop, stop, stop,” Stede chants, over and over, but they just talk over him. 

“You know what you are,” Nigel sneers. “Little Baby Bonnet, just plodding along with his little baby clothes—”

“His little baby ship—” Chauncey adds.

“Playing at being a pirate, when you couldn’t even watch me kill a goose,” his father scoffs. “And you thought you could pillage and plunder along with the best of them?”

“Oh, and his little baby crush—”

“Baby Bonnet’s in love,” Nigel says, his voice schmoozy.

“ —on the big bad pirate—”

“As if anyone could love a soft-handed, chubby, lily-livered little rich boy like you.”

“ —dressing him up like a little dolly—”

His father deals the killing blow, as he so often did, with, “Dragging the greatest pirate who ever lived down to your pathetic little level, desperately trying to please you. Begging you to run away with him, to take him from everything he’s been and everything he’s built, and then you don’t even give him the courtesy of showing up.”

Stede’s eyes fly open. “Ed!” he cries. He looks back, as if he can somehow see that beach, their meeting place, all the way through the rainforest. He pictures Ed, jogging down to meet him, excited, a laugh already bubbling out of his chest as he breaks through the trees, only to find no one there waiting for him. The crestfallen look on his beautiful face. Stede pushes up to his feet, turning to rush back through the bush, but his father is suddenly in front of him, blocking his path.

“Edward Teach,” he says appreciatively, a thoughtful smile curling on his lips. Stede always hated that smile. Hated what would come after. “Now there’s a proper man.”

“Don’t you talk about him,” Stede says. He means it to sound threatening, but only succeeds at desperation. 

“Strong, ruthless, intelligent. A man who knows what he wants and takes it.” 

Stede shakes his head fervently. “That’s not Ed. That’s not who—”

His father steps forward, running his finger over the blade of the cleaver. “A man who doesn’t shy away from getting his hands dirty. Doing what’s necessary.”

“You like his hands dirty, though, don’t you?” one of the Badmintons says, his mouth almost brushing against his left ear. He doesn’t want to look to see which one. 

It doesn’t matter, though. From the corner of his right eye, Stede can see a sword handle protruding as Nigel leans into that ear, whispering, “You’ve thought about those hands all over you, Baby Bonnet, don’t even try to deny it. You’ve thought of them inside you, and not just them—”

“The worst kind of perversion,” Chauncey says from the other side.

His father swoops down on him, somehow now as big as he was to Stede when he was a boy. “Well, if you’re going to be a bugger, at least you have good taste. A big, strong man like that to take care of a helpless little pansy like you.”

“That’s not what it—” Stede stumbles back as his father lurches forward, cleaver out.

“Until you went and ruined him!” he shouts, swinging his arm like he’s trying to gut Stede. 

He knows it’s not real. It’s not really the ghost of his father coming back to haunt him. Even if it was, Stede doesn’t think a ghost knife could actually harm a living person. But he still reflexively lurches out the way. “No, I—”

“He’s probably glad you’re not there,” Nigel says with a mean grin, appearing in front of Stede as he tries to turn around. “I know I would be.”

Chauncey pops in next to him. “Probably relieved you’re not hanging on him all the time anymore, looking at him with your big dumb doe eyes.” He attempts an imitation of Stede’s wide-eyed appreciation, the large gunshot wound pulling his features into a grotesque mask. 

“Probably realizing that he can properly breathe for the first time in months without you smothering him like a strangler fig,” Nigel adds, pretending to gasp for air.

“Please—”

“I always fucking hated you, Bonnet,” a new voice rasps from behind him. “From the moment I first saw you, with your brand new ship paid with Daddy’s money run aground.”

“No,” Stede breathes. He turns. “Izzy. But you’re … you’re not even dead.” He looks just as he did the night they dueled, sword in hand, right down to the look of pure hatred in his eyes. 

“Aren’t I?” he asks, holding his sword out. “You swan in, all bright and innocent, not knowing the first thing about pirating, easy pickings for us to raid and take your ship and all your pretty little things and sell them. Anyone else, Blackbeard wouldn’t have batted an eye. But he takes one look at you and all of a sudden he’s being stripped of everything that made him who he was, softened by you. And now he’s Ed, and he wants to be everyone’s friend, and dress like a ponce, and the man I knew is fucking gone.”

“Izzy—”

“Shut. The fuck. Up.” Izzy slashes his sword and Stede jumps back. “He was my everything. He was my life. And you took him from me. And if that wasn’t enough, you fucking banished me. So you tell me: if you take away the man I live for, what does that leave me?”

“I never meant—”

“You never do,” Izzy snaps. “You come in, you do your damage without a care in the world, and then off you go, off to find the next thing for you to ruin.” 

Stede suddenly realizes that Izzy isn’t the only one advancing on him. His father has appeared, right there beside him. Chauncey and Nigel are closing in on him from both sides, eerie mirrors of each other with their identical head wounds. “Such a disappointment,” he hears from behind him, and there’s Mary, stepping into view with Alma and Louis on either side of her, clutching her hands. “A shit husband. A shit father. A shit pirate.”

Stede’s heart races as they all come closer and closer, closing in. He screws his eyes shut again, wishing that they would all just go away, leave him be. Let him stew in his own self-hatred. But he can’t, because they are his self-hatred. And they’re all so right. 

He ruined each of their lives, in some way or another. He ruined them, and after he did it, he ran off, not wanting to deal with the consequences. Not wanting to face what he’d done. He doesn’t want to ruin Ed.

Ed, with his lovely, warm brown eyes. Ed, with his bountiful energy and charm. Ed, teaching him how to use a sword, or how to read the stars, or maps, or the clouds. Ed, standing at the helm, an imposing figure in his delicious black leather, silhouetted against the setting sun. Ed, his hand gentle on Stede’s cheek as their lips meet, the joy in his eyes when Stede agrees to run with him. Ed, Ed, Ed.

Ed … who isn’t his to keep. Who isn’t his wordkeeper.

Stede had tried to be good. Tried to stop the feelings building and building until they were unmistakable as want and need and love. Tried to fight Ed’s magnetic pull, the feeling of inevitability that consumed him. He hoped and prayed every single day that he would look, and his wordmark would be different, but every day it said the same thing it always had: The Gentleman Pirate, I presume. They weren’t Ed’s words, and it seemed utterly impossible that anyone else could be his wordkeeper. But Ed’s words, when Stede woke up that first day, after the Spanish had stabbed and nearly hanged him, talking about a close call… Stede wished he could carve them into his body himself, that somehow that would make him and Ed fated. The words began to haunt him. They swirled in his head until he nearly drove himself crazy with indecision. 

And then Ed kissed him, and kept kissing him, and Stede thought it would be okay. That they had chosen each other, and that was all they needed. 

But Stede fucked it all up, like he always does. He fucked it up, and Ed sacrificed more and more of himself for Stede, until Stede looked at him and realized he’d taken everything that made Ed who he was. His ship, his crew, his name, his first mate, even his beard. 

They’re right. Ed is better off without him fucking it all up. The only choice he has is to let Ed go. 

“I…” He forces his eyes open. They’re all steps away. He doesn’t know what, if anything, will happen if they get too close. Nothing, because they’re not actually here, obviously. But he can’t help the dread he feels at the idea of them touching him, walking into him. 

“I know!” he shouts. They all freeze, watching him. “I know what I am. I’m weak. Foolish. I’ve never been able to do a single thing right in my life. Everything I touch breaks.” He closes his eyes, pictures Mary and the children, struggling without him. Pictures Nigel and Chauncey’s lifeless, bloody bodies. Pictures Ed, beardless, staring up at him. Giving everything up for him. “I … I can’t undo the things I’ve done,” he says. “But … I can try to make amends. And I can stop things from getting worse.” 

He sucks in a deep breath. He knows what he has to do. He opens his eyes, and the rainforest around him is blessedly empty. His ghosts have all faded away, vanished into smoke, or wherever it is they go when he finally manages to get rid of them. Back into his head, he supposes, where they silently wait until the next wave of self-loathing hits. He sighs in relief, relaxing his shoulders where they’ve been tight with tension. 

He turns to face the direction of the beach he and Ed were supposed to meet at. Or, at least, what he thinks is its general direction. He wants to go to him, despite what he’s just said, despite everything his ghosts have been taunting him with. He feels that magnetic pull, still, tugging him towards Ed. But he’s done enough damage there already, and in such a short amount of time. “Goodbye, Ed,” he whispers. He feels several tears slip down his face and he wipes them away. “I hope you find happiness.”

And with one more deep breath in, he turns and begins the long walk back home.

-

Mary is decidedly not pleased to see him. Becomes actually physically sick, in fact. Stede tries to take it as a symptom of her severe shock, but the look of disappointment on her face is unmistakable. He knows that look well, especially from her.

Still, he tries to pretend it’s not there every time she looks at him, her eyes slightly narrowing at every move he makes. He’s not sure what he expected to come back to, but it wasn’t this. A wife who looks at him like she wants to smother him with a pillow. Children who seem to be getting along just fine without him. When little Louis scrunches his face up at Stede at the dining table and asks who he is, Stede’s heart breaks a bit more than it already has. But this is all his fault. He’s the one who left in the first place. He’s the one who has to put in the effort to make things right. 

It’s just that everything feels so wrong. It’s all too clean. Too nice. Too quiet. No crew members shouting at each other from across the deck. No bottles spilled on the lovely floorboards. No threat of anything being displaced by a surprise storm in the middle of the night, crystal crashing to the floor, books falling off of shelves. There’s none of the chaos that he grew used to, out on the sea. He can’t even fall asleep without trying emulate the feel of the ship by discreetly rocking himself without disturbing Mary. 

That’s definitely the only reason he can’t sleep. Not because he misses strong arms wrapped around him, his cheek resting on a broad, tattooed chest. Definitely not that. He doesn’t hug his own arms around himself, pretending they’re someone else’s. Not at all.

It’s harder now, too, to try to fit back into a slot he never quite fit in the first place. He hadn’t realized how much he changed in his time away. And he hadn’t expected things here to change so much either. The children appear to be flourishing, doing well in their studies, energetic and inquisitive and growing so independent, Alma especially. Mary has new friends that she goes out to visit every day, a far cry from the solemn solitude she kept before. She’s cultivated a passion for painting that Stede hadn’t even known was there, not in a decade of marriage. It’s not with a small amount of shame that he remembers his offhand remark about the painting she gave him, the lighthouse that now sits in his cabin - not his anymore, he has to remind himself. The look of hurt she wore when he asked if it was the children’s work. 

And he finally meets her new … Doug. He seems nice enough. Very supportive of Mary’s painting. Very interested in her and the children. And from the way the children talk about him, he’s been around quite a bit in Stede’s absence. He should have guessed that there was something going on between the two of them, but, idiot that he is, he doesn’t realize it until he’s getting quite the eyeful - and earful - of it later that night. 

He lies in bed that night, the sound of Mary’s pleasure echoing in his ears, the way she and Doug grasped at each other in the midst of passion, and he’s a bit pissed, if he’s honest. Not that Mary’s cheating on him, not that there’s another man having sex with his wife. Mary can get her jollies wherever she wants; Stede was certainly never any good at giving them to her. He’s fucking pissed because he gave up everything, again. Everything he wanted and loved. The people he was building a family with. The man he—

Anyway, he gave it all up to come back here and fix things, only to find that his family had literally cut him out of their life, as if he never existed. Actually, literally cut him out of the family portrait. It hasn’t even been half a year! How long did Mary wait to have him declared dead, so she could go off cavorting with other widows and painting instructors? A month? A week? When did Alma start to think of him with such disdain? How long was it before Louis started to forget him, and started to think of Doug as his father? Did they not talk about him at all? He was a terrible husband and father, he knows that, but did they not miss him, even a little bit?

When Mary finally comes to bed, Stede pretends to be asleep so she won’t have to make any excuses. Quietly, she gets ready for bed, taking down her hair and changing into her nightgown. She slips in next to him, smelling of sweat and paint and … and something raw. She settles in with a satisfied sigh. 

Stede feels his shoulders tense. He’s not … he’s never been a violent man. He’s never even come close to harming Mary or the children. He would never, not after his own childhood. But the thought of sitting up and grabbing Mary by the shoulders, shaking her, screaming at her, Do you have any idea what I gave up to come back here for you?! It’s so tempting, and so shameful. 

He bites the inside of his cheek and squeezes his eyes shut. It takes him a very long time to fall asleep.

-

Stede goes to Mary’s showing, not sure what he’s going to do, but knowing he wants to do something to fuck things up for her a little. Maybe some offhand comments about the brushwork. A disdainful look at the food. Stede’s good at those kinds of things, and she would know exactly what he’s doing. His antics at parties were one of the few enjoyments they shared in their time together.

Instead, he fucks it up a lot. His first mistake is going down to the pub before making an appearance. He plans to have just a quick drink, maybe a bite to eat, but before he knows it, he’s pulled into a group of men, all desperate to hear about his time at sea. They buy him drink after drink, delighting in his stories. Sure, he can hold his drink a bit better now, but he quickly loses count of how many he’s had and by the time he leaves, he’s swaying on his feet. Before he can think better of it, he’s swanning into Mary’s showing, declaring himself Mary’s undead husband, and it’s all much more massive aggression than passive. And it turns into just plain aggression when Doug grabs his shoulder, surely to try to talk some reason into him, and Stede just reacts, pressing Doug down into the table of food and holding a butter knife to his neck with a growled threat. 

It takes a few seconds for him to realize what he’s doing, and then he releases Doug with a dazed apology and basically bolts out of there. 

Rather than getting a cab, Stede decides to walk home. He kicks at pebbles along the dirt road as he goes, his mind churning over what he’d just done. How he’d surely ruined an evening that was supposed to be about Mary and her art. How much she’s grown and come into her own. He’s still doing it, despite his efforts to fix things. He’s still just … fucking everything up, just by being around. 

He aims his foot at a small rock and kicks, but misjudges the distance. Instead, his foot catches hard against the dirt and he stumbles. If it weren’t for how much he’s had to drink, he would probably have been able to catch himself, but as things are, he plunges down face first. He only just manages to protect his face with his arms, slamming into the ground with a guttural oomph. For a long moment, he just lies there, face down in the dirt. He’s muddying up his outfit, he knows, but really, what does it matter? There’s no one here to impress anymore. Mary has Doug. The children don’t need him anymore. They don’t want anything to do with him, actually. And Ed is…

Stede suddenly bursts into tears. There, collapsed on the ground, out on a country road, he sobs and sobs. His shoulders shake with the force of it, and even to his own ears, he sounds ridiculous. A full-grown man crying like a toddler who fell and scraped his knee. But now that he’s started, he can’t stop. 

Tears flow unbidden from his eyes as he realizes what a colossal mistake he’s made. He thought that by coming back here, he could salvage at least one thing that he’d broken. He could try and piece back together the family he abandoned, try to be a good father and an attentive husband, try to fit in better with high society. 

He was a fool. He doesn’t fit here. He never did. And now there’s no place for him, even if he did. 

Instead, Stede’s given up the one place he’s ever been that’s felt right. Even before he met Ed, even as he was stumbling and trying to figure things out on the job, he loved it. He loved the crisp sea air, the feel of the ship rocking on the waves. The idea of endless possibilities waiting for him, just beyond the horizon. He only had to point his ship in the right direction. 

And when he met Ed … everything slotted into place. It all made sense, then, why he felt so drawn to the sea, so desperate to leave everything behind. It was all for Ed. To meet him, to get to know him, to love him. That’s all it’s ever been for. Even if the universe is playing a cosmic joke on them, even if they aren’t wordbonded, they’ve created a bond of their own, strong and flexible. Stede can almost feel it now, deep in his chest. There’s that familiar pull, that gravitational force trying to lead him back to where he’s supposed to be. He wants to go back. He wants it so bad. He doesn’t know if he can.

He’s not sure how long he’s been lying there, but it must have been some time, because eventually he hears a carriage pulling up and then Mary’s voice frantically calling for him. He rolls over onto his back to see her leaning over him, her eyes filled with worry. 

“Oh,” he says. His voice is hoarse. He clears it before saying, “Hello.”

“Hel-lo?” she shouts, and the worry is gone, replaced with frustration, a look he’s much more used to on her face. “You’re laying there on the ground in the middle of the road like that, and all you can say is ‘Hello’? I thought you were dead!”

He feels a swell of warmth at that, at the fright he must have given her, and how it means she must care for him somewhat. “You were worried about me?” he asks with a smile, his voice quivering. And then the tears are back, pooling in the corners of his eyes. He wipes at them with dirt-smudged hands.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she grumbles, but though she sounds annoyed, she also sounds concerned. She holds her hand out and he just stares at it until she bends over and grabs his arm, hauling him up. She’s much stronger than she looks and he spares a moment to think that she would actually fare pretty well as a sailor, if she didn’t despise the ocean. “In you go.” She manhandles him into the carriage, following him in and telling the driver to continue on. 

Inside, they sit opposite each other, their knees bumping together as the carriage progresses down the uneven lane. Stede looks down at his hands in his lap, at his once-pristine white sleeves, now covered in dirt, and thinks fuck it. He wipes his eyes with his cuffs, tries to surreptitiously blow his nose. He wipes his hands off on his breeches, leaving brown smudges. 

Mary watches this all with shock. Once Stede’s calmed down a bit, stopped crying, she says, “Jesus, Stede. You must be going through some shit. I’ve never seen you treat your clothes like that.”

“Yes, well,” he says, shrugging and looking out the window. “They’re just clothes, aren’t they?”

“Okay,” she says slowly, “you’re starting to freak me out a little. What’s going on with you?”

He sighs, looking back at her. “I should never have come back here,” he says with a regretful smile. “I’ve really made such a mess of things.”

“Yeah, you think?” Mary snaps, and immediately looks ashamed. “No, sorry, I didn’t mean that.”

“Yes, you did.” She grimaces and he waves his hand dismissively. “It’s okay. I’ve been an absolute idiot.” The carriage jerks to a sudden stop and Stede looks outside, surprised to see they’re already back at the house.

The driver comes around and opens the door for them. Stede lets Mary go out first and follows closely behind, thanking the driver. They head inside and Mary reaches out her hand to pull Stede along behind her to the private sitting room. “Come on. I think we need to have a talk.”

Mary allows Stede to make a short stop in the washroom to clean up a bit, but soon enough they’re sitting stiffly together, Stede on the small loveseat he used to curl up and read in, Mary on the chaise. Awkwardness settles into the room as they look at each other, and then avoid looking at each other. Neither of them wants to start first, though Stede knows he should. He needs to apologize for everything he’s done since he came back. For ruining Mary’s night. And for leaving in the first place. He just … doesn’t know where to start.

“Um … I was planning on killing you tonight,” Mary says, her voice cutting through the silence.

Stede stares at her. Surely, he must have heard her wrong. “I’m sorry, but I thought you said…” He drifts off as Mary sheepishly pulls a thin but nasty-looking skewer from the pocket of her skirts. “You were going to stab me!” he cries.

“Yeah, I was.” She smiles awkwardly. She holds the skewer up to her head, point facing toward her ear and mimes pushing it in with a click of her tongue. “Right here.”

“In the earhole!” His hand jumps up to his ear, as if it’s somehow been stabbed already without him knowing. “With a skewer!”

“Yeah.”

He throws his hands into the air. “Why not just smother me with a pillow? Or use a gun?” he suggests wildly. “Oh, you could have asked me for tips! I do know a thing or two about killing now, you know.”

Mary rolls her eyes, as if to say, Stede, dramatic as always. “A pillow seemed too tricky and a gun would wake the kids,” she explains simply. Like it will make it better, she continues, “I thought about poison or pushing you off a cliff, but I really wanted to get it done tonight, and I didn't want you to suffer.”

“Oh, well that’s nice at least,” Stede says sarcastically. “You didn’t want me to suffer. While you murdered me.”

She rolls her eyes again and even scoffs this time. “Well, it's not that much more dramatic than running off to become a pirate, is it?”

“I…” And all at once, all the bluster whooshes out of him. His shoulders slump. “Well, that's true, I suppose.”

“If it makes you feel any better,” Mary offers softly, “when I saw you just lying there in the road, I was terrified you’d died. And I realized that that’s not what I wanted. I don’t want you dead, Stede. I don’t even want you to just disappear out of our lives again.” She places her hand on his knee. He smiles and covers it with his own. 

“I would like to stay in touch, if we can. I want to hear about you and your art. And the children, the trouble they’re getting up to.” He feels tears brimming in his eyes again, but he manages to blink them away. “They’ve grown so much in such a short amount of time.”

Mary squeezes his hand before pulling back. “We’ll figure it out.”

Stede nods. He inhales deeply, steeling himself. “I am sorry,” he says, “for all of it. Leaving like I did. For not being better while I was here.” He chuckles and shakes his head. “For coming back and expecting you all to have just … stopped.”

“We’ve all made mistakes, Stede.”

“Yes, well, I’ve made rather more than my share, I think,” he huffs. “And I’m sorry about tonight. Ruining your showing like I did. Mind you, I was planning on ruining it anyway, but much more subtly,” he adds with a grin.

Mary shakes her head with a disbelieving laugh. “You were going to do that bitchy little thing that you do? To me? I’m almost honored.” Stede grins and she kicks at him. “You’re such a bastard.”

“I wouldn’t have meant it, though. Your work really is lovely.”

Mary smiles, almost shyly. “Thank you.”

“I’m sorry about Doug, too. Threatening him like that.” He furrows his eyebrows. “He startled me and I just reacted.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Mary says, waving her hand. “He kind of liked it, actually. Said it was exciting.”

That startles him into a grin. “Really?” he asks. 

Mary nods emphatically. “You may have to teach me how to do that.” Her lips curve into a teasing smile. 

He feels his cheeks flush slightly. “Oh, well. I, uh….”

Mary’s smile grows until she’s laughing. “I’m kidding,” she assures him.

“Right.” After a moment, he joins in and suddenly they’re laughing together, in a way they never have before. He rather likes Mary like this. Not that Stede didn’t like her before, because she is a lovely woman. But without the added pressure of marriage and being a good husband weighing on him, he feels like they could actually be friends. “Doug seems lovely,” he says, once they’ve stopped laughing.

Mary is clutching her stomach, like she laughed so hard it hurt. She’s still smiling when she says, “Yeah, he’s the best,” but it’s different. Soft, happy. She looks like just the thought of Doug fills her with such content and joy.

Stede feels an echoing pang in his heart. “How does it feel … to be in love?” he asks.

Mary breathes in deeply, a calm settling over her that Stede doesn’t think he’s ever seen before. “It feels…” she starts, pausing to think. “Easy. It’s just like breathing.” 

Stede’s heart hammers suddenly in his chest as he remembers that first night, sitting together in the crow’s nest, the remnants of their makeshift lighthouse strewn around them. The way it felt so natural to sit there with Ed and talk with him, how he felt certain that Ed was going to kiss him then. 

“He understands my idiosyncrasies,” Mary’s saying, and Stede is suddenly showing Ed his secret closet, all the extra bits and bobs he’d hidden away on his ship. The wonder in Ed’s eyes as he took it all in. “Finds them charming, even.” Stede smiles, watching Mary, who seems to be off in a world of her own. 

“We expose each other to new things, new ideas. And we laugh a lot.” Stede remembers days filled with lessons, about fighting, weather, fine dining, clothing. At how filled with laughter those days were, how it felt to make Ed laugh his big, full laugh, his eyes crinkling with mirth. Ed’s sense of humor, so brash and bold sometimes, and other times so quietly clever that Stede is startled into laughter when it’s completely inappropriate. 

“We just pass the time so well.” Stede can’t recall a single moment of boredom, in all the time he’d spent with Ed. There was always something to do, something to look at, something to talk about. Sometimes they would talk for what Stede was sure was only ten minutes, only to realize that an hour had passed. And sometimes they just sat together, enjoying each other’s company, not needing to do anything at all. 

“I'd call those things love.” Mary pulls herself back from wherever she’d gone in her own memories. Her expression is so tender. “I hope you find that,” she says, turning her soft eyes to him.

Stede smiles back, closing his eyes for a moment, remembering calloused hands gentle on his cheek. His hands brushing through soft, thick curls. Being held as he cried over his childhood and doing the holding when Ed cried about his own. He thinks about Ed’s deep brown eyes on him, the warmth he feels whenever Ed watches him. The way they always seem to gravitate towards each other, leaning in towards each other, brushing arms and hands and legs, like they never want to part. He thinks about Ed. All of Ed. 

He’d known it. He’d only ever let him admit it to himself. Never anyone else, because saying it out loud makes it more real. But he’s ready for it now.

Softly, opening his eyes, he says, “I have.”

Mary smiles with such joy, truly happy for him. “Really? What's her name?”

He gives her a knowing look and shakes his head slightly. “Ed. His name is Ed.”

She doesn’t even blink at that. “And he’s good to you? Ed?”

“He’s …” Stede lets out a little chuckle. “He’s the best.” And then he pictures Ed, waiting for him at the dock, his face gradually falling as he slowly realizes Stede’s not coming. His smile falls. “And I … I’m afraid I’ve rather fucked it up.”

Mary cocks her head to the side. “It can’t be that bad, can it?”

He smiles grimly at her. “If you thought this was a mess…” he starts, and as he tells her everything that’s happened - as much as he can without giving away who Ed really is, or any of their less-than-legal activities, anyway - her expression grows more and more stony. “And … then it’s … now. So.”

Mary is silent for a long time, her eyes fixed on him in disbelief. Finally she exclaims, “What the fuck, Stede?”

“Not great?” he asks, wrinkling his nose.

“Not great?” she repeats, her voice rising up.

He shushes her quickly. “The children!”

Stede almost wishes he hadn’t, though, because when she speaks again her voice is dangerously quiet. “You just … left him, there, after everything? He gave up everything for you!”

“I … I know, but that’s why—”

“Your Ed had better really love you, because that is—”

“I know,” he stresses. “It’s bad. It’s unforgivable! But I … I thought I was doing the right thing, letting him go. Letting him get back to his life, without me there to muck it all up. You … I can’t tell you how much he lost because of me. If we left together it would only get worse, and I had to stop it before … before I did something to ruin it all and he felt trapped with me.”

“Stede. Sweetheart.” Mary closes her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose. “Why … the fuck would he feel trapped with you? He asked you to go!” she says, her hands gesturing at him wildly.

“Because he … I … We’re not….” he splutters, trying to find the right wording to make her understand. “I already told you—”

“I swear to Christ above, Stede, if you say wordkeeper to me, I actually will stab you in your sleep tonight,” she hisses. Stede clamps his mouth shut. “I don’t fucking care if he’s not your titting wordkeeper.” Stede raises his eyebrows. He hates to admit it, but Mary and Izzy might get along quite well, were they ever to meet. “Do you have any idea how likely it is that you actually meet that one person, out of all the people in the world?”

“Do you?”

Mary clenches her jaw. “...No, but I know that it’s basically impossible. You’re probably more likely to be struck by lightning, like, 10 times.”

“But you and Doug—”

“We’re not wordbonded,” Mary says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

Stede sits back in shock. “You’re not?”

“No, you idiot.” She heaves a gigantic sigh, like she’s explaining the simplest concept for the twentieth time. “We’re together because we love each other. We chose each other. Fucking … you’ve seen my mark, Stede. You know it’s in Cyrillic.”

Oh. Right, that … is true. “I thought … perhaps Doug speaks a Slavic language,” he says weakly.

She laughs, shaking her head in dismay. “My god, I don’t remember you being this dense,” she says. “You…” She sighs, her voice turning gentle. “You can choose who you want to be with Stede. You can be with the people that make you happy. It sounds to me like Ed’s chosen what he wants, which just happens to be you. And Ed deserves to be happy, right?”

“Of cour—”

“So, if you love him, and he loves you, and you make him happy,” —she leans forward to take his hand, squeezing … not very gently— “don’t make the choice for him because you think you know better. Give him the chance to be happy.”

Stede thinks about the beach, about the fear he saw in Ed’s eyes as he ventured, I reckon what makes Ed happy is you. He thinks about the joy and hope that fluttered in his own chest, hearing that, knowing that his feelings were reciprocated. And he remembers the look on Ed’s face when Stede told him that he makes Stede happy. Like it was the best thing that had ever happened to him. 

“Stede,” Mary says, squeezing his hand again, more gently this time. “Give yourself the chance to be happy.”

He very suddenly feels like if he says anything it will only come out as a croak. He settles for nodding. She reaches up to stroke his cheek before standing and pressing a kiss to his forehead. “Now, it’s getting late, and we’ve got to figure out how we’re going to get you out of here tomorrow, so let’s go to bed.”

Stede trudges through the hall after Mary, feeling suddenly utterly exhausted. When they get to their room, Stede stands in the doorway, feeling suddenly awkward. “Uh, I can sleep on the chaise if—”

“Oh, bullshit,” Mary says, pulling him into the room. “We’ve slept together a million times. No need to mess up your back. We’re both adults here, very much not in love with each other.” She sits at her vanity and starts her nightly routine, beginning the long process of letting her hair down and getting undressed.

“But … Doug won’t mind?”

Mary lets out a startled snort of laughter. “Mind? If I’m sleeping in the same bed as you?”

He frowns. “Oh, well thanks for that, darling.” He takes off his jacket and tosses it on the floor. It’s covered in dirt anyway, and it’s not like he’ll be taking it with him. He has two full closets waiting for him after all. 

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Mary quips, meeting his eyes in the large mirror on her vanity. “Did you have plans to ravish me tonight?”

“No,” Stede answers, shucking off his shirt. “But still, it’s not as if I’m completely repellant or something.”

He starts on his breeches, starting to turn around, when Mary says, “Wait!”

He looks up, startled. “What?” She gets up, staring down at his … well. He flushes. “Mary?”

She glances up. “Sorry! I promise I wasn’t trying to watch you or anything, but I just happened to look and … what’s that on your hip?” she asks.

He frowns, pulling his trousers down a bit. “It’s my wordmark, Mary, you’ve seen it before.”

“No, the other one,” she says, gesturing with her chin to his left hip.

Stede switches to the other side with a sigh. “Nothing? Perhaps I got a bruise when I…”

They both stare down at his hip. There, where before had only been a small mole, is now a single word written in curling script.

“You…” Mary breathes.

“What?”

“That’s what it says,” she answers, pointing at it. “It just says, ‘You’.” She reaches out to touch it and he jerks back. “Sorry,” she says, holding her hands up. 

He runs his own fingers over the black lettering. His skin is still as smooth as it ever was there. “But what does that mean?” he asks, stroking it with his thumb.

“I have no idea,” she says, finally stepping back.

After a last look at it, he turns around to keep getting undressed. “Have you ever heard of anything like this happening?” he asks her.

“No,” she says, sitting back down at her vanity with a thoughtful frown. “But I was never very into the whole wordkeeper thing anyway. Out of the two of us, you’d be the one to know.”

He sighs. “Yeah.” He steps out of his breeches and stockings, slipping a nightshirt over his head. He slips into bed, leaving room for Mary to get in, too, when she’s finished getting ready. 

“Well, write to me about it if you ever figure it out,” she says.

He smiles. “I will.”

-

He says his goodbyes to Alma and Louis before he leaves for town the next day, preparations complete. He’s surprised to see some tears from both of them, and he scoops each of them in for a tight hug in turn. He promises to write them, though warns them that he doesn’t know how often that will be. He’s already said goodbye to Mary, and to Doug, who have gone on ahead, per the plan. He follows shortly after, his body buzzing with the adrenaline of a good fuckery.

It goes off without a hitch, and before he knows it, Stede’s in another carriage, on his way to a rowboat they purchased earlier in the day, now filled with enough provisions to last him several days. The driver drops him off at a seemingly unmarked point, and Stede pushes his way through the brush to emerge onto a secluded beach. 

He stands at the edge of the water for several minutes, closing his eyes to breathe in the sea air. A breeze picks up, almost like it was waiting for him, and it ruffles his hair and the plain, billowy shirt he’s wearing. The smell of salt hits his nose and he thinks, Almost.

Without a glance back to the island of his birth, he strides forward, pushing the boat into the water, toward home.