Summary: You could find the constellations on his back.
Those balmy summer evenings felt like a haze to him; delicate and fleeting. It was price of his being, of time being little more a single fray in a thread. He could anticipate that he would remain while the corpses of man and beast would rot beneath the soil, and the monuments of civilization were reclaimed by vines and saplings.
It haunted him some nights, those few instances he would forget after a blink. Most days passed in a blur, even less he would bother to commit to memory.
And yet, he wished the day would never come where he would have to recall your touch. Your fingertips ghosted along his back, moving with purpose to one point, hesitating, then moving to yet another.
Honestly, he had been. That heartbreak and that betrayal, the days and days stewing in his fury, lashing out as the Kraken, all of it boiled his blood and set him up good and proper to cut that cruel, selfish bastard to ribbons.
All right, days and days might be a bit of an exaggeration. It’s probably been a week since Izzy shook some sense into him. Fortnight, tops. But still. Ed had been ready. He’d hated Stede. He had.
So when the man himself appears in Ivan’s scope, waving his oar overhead like a fool and towing the rest of his miserable crew in what seems to be a makeshift raft, Ed can’t blame Izzy, really, for hissing I’ve got the cannons ready, Captain Blackbeard. Just give me the word.
Ed seizes the scope.
He sees Stede Bonnet.
He lowers the scope.
His heart twists painfully in the cage of his chest and then keeps twisting, something hot and bright and sick surging through his veins like sunlight.
“What a fucking moron,” Izzy seethes. “As if he could hurt you like that and expect to be welcomed back with open arms. We’re actual fucking pirates, you twat,” he calls, as if Stede might hear him across the water. “You’ll see what you get when you fuck with us.” He snarls, turns to Ed. “Shall I, boss?”
Ed stares at the little dot on the water, coming steadily toward him. Stede’s rowing. Didn’t expect that. Crew is probably—ah. Crew is probably a bit weak in the arm, weak in the everything, after what Ed did to them.
“Boss?” Izzy asks again. Ed growls. He shoves the scope at him, scrubs his hands over his face, smudging the black paint there.
“Just—wait.” Ed growls, and stomps off to the captain’s quarters.
“Wait…forBonnet?” Izzy calls after him, shrill with incredulity. “Edward, you can’t possibly—”
Ed doesn’t wait to hear what Izzy thinks he can and cannot do.
He slams the door behind him and stares at the hollow shell he made of Stede’s quarters. Only fair, given, he thinks furiously, what Stede made of him.
He strides over to the bed, yanks the curtains shut, and climbs in. There he is through the window, unmistakable, coming closer. Just as Ed absolutely one thousand percent has not been dreaming about every night.
The fuck does he want? To finish Ed off? Cut out his heart, well, fuck that, he’s already done that. Piece of shit, fucking coward—only—
Only that’s not what it is, Ed knows. He’s been fucking thinking about it since that morning on the dock. He knows what it is. Ed wasn’t enough, he wasn’t enough for Stede, he’d been stupid, a fucking moron, to think he was, and Stede finally wised up about it. Too weak and too broken at once for someone who shone like that, so he’d cracked Ed open and scooped out the softest bits of him with a fucking snail fork and left behind the pieces.
But…
Well.
Why’s he back, then?
Ed stares at the little boat for a long, long while. Izzy’s going to knock any minute, Ed knows he is.
He wipes away the tears he hardly noticed spilling, smudging his hands black.
He knows what he has to do.
*
“Captain,” Izzy says with barely controlled glee. “They’re close now. Could still do cannons, yeah, but are you thinking more hand to hand?” He nods. “I get it. More personal.”
“Yeah, mate.” Ed says. “Sure.” They’re close enough now that he can see Stede’s in a plain white shirt. None of his fancy clothes, his curls wild in the wind. Ed still can’t see his expression, but he can tell he doesn’t look like the man Ed had nursed back to health from a Spanish stab wound anymore, not exactly. There had always been a sort of…restlessness about him. Anxious, fluttering energy, bird-like.
This Stede Bonnet stands steady. Like he knows where he’s going, really knows it, for the very first time.
Ed’s never felt like this before. Or—no, shit. That’s not true. He has, twice, very recently.
When he thought Stede might die.
And when he realized Stede wasn’t coming back for him.
He’s…terrified.
“Fuck off, all of you,” he growls at the rest of the crew. “Belowdeck, go on.” Izzy jerks a nod, grotesquely eager, and barks at them to obey. Jim, whose knuckles had been clenched white on the railing, looks like they’d rather fight Ed to the death than lose sight of Oluwande again, but Frenchie manages to drag them off.
The rest of the crew Stede’s towing, er. They’re alive! All of them, looks like, which is probably good. They do look, well. A bit worse for the wear.
And that’s the fucking thing, isn’t it? Stede didn’t want him because he thought Ed was a monster, and Ed had gone and proven him right in the worst possible way. Stede’s bloody rowing with a boatful of crew who, by rights, should want to take Ed apart with a filleting knife.
Ed should arm himself.
Ed should blow them all out of the water.
Ed should set course for the furthest possible bearing and leave Stede behind in his wake, for good.
Ed should.
Ed absolutely, definitely, for-fucking-sure should.
Ed lowers the ladder.
And then there he is, without a weapon on him. Sea-salt in his hair and his brow creased in concern. Ed stares at him, black on his face like ink, his hands tight on his knife and his gun.
You’ll see what you get, Izzy’s voice echoes in his head, when you fuck with us.
