Chapter Text
The first time that Ed sets his eyes on him they’re both still alive and they're both still pirates. He was swinging from a rope by the neck, his eyes finally closing to succumb to the suffocation. Ed was certain he was going to die and he held an air of mild disappointment about it. But one of his crew cut him down and as he hit the deck of that Spanish vessel the wind was knocked back into his lungs and he looked up at Ed with a gasp of life-giving sea air.
“The Gentleman Pirate, I presume.” Ed stood over him, gun first, the handle glistening in the sunlight from its holster. Just showing the gun was enough in most cases. No matter how clean he kept it. No matter how much he fiddled with the damn thing. The only time he got to fire a shot was when he was aiming at a target to practice.
“You’ve heard of me?” he says, his voice raspy on account of just nearly being hanged to death. And maybe on account of being stabbed through the middle.
“Oh, yeah. I’ve heard of you. I’ve heard all about you.” Ed leaned over him and saw that despite the close encounter with death the man was smiling as he lost consciousness. And there was a tightening in Ed’s chest like a string being twisted into tune on a lyre.
As Ed gently gathered the Gentleman Pirate against his chest to carry him to safety, the chord that was stretched taut within him was struck. Unconscious, blood soaked and bloody heavy, whatever song the Gentleman Pirate was carrying in the slow beat of his heart, Ed’s was now playing a melody. The first smile Ed remembered in a good while threatened to tug up the corners of his mouth as he loped along the Spanish deck and then to safety aboard the man’s lavish ship.
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Weeks pass aboard the Revenge and there’s a song in Ed’s chest that keeps him up at night humming. He sleeps above deck having kicked someone from their hammock and gazes at a star-spotted sky, rough fingers rubbing a hole into the corner of his mother’s piece of tattered red silk. Silk that normally lived it’s life wrinkled into a ball in Ed’s inside breast pocket folded skillfully and placed on display with pride.
“You wear fine things well.” Stede had told him against the glow of a hanging, full moon and the flicker of the ship currently burning down a few knots behind them. Set ablaze for Ed. His fingers lingered for a beat too long on Ed’s lapel. And Ed leaned forward, his skin electric with the thought of touching Stede.
He wonders if Stede can feel it too. He wonders if, nestled in the rich sheets of the small bed in the captain's quarters, the Gentleman Pirate is humming the same song.
-:::--::---->◇<----::--:::-
A few more weeks and they’re on a beach due to one circumstance or another, the sun setting in front of them bright against the lapping of the ocean waves. Ed’s face is bare for the first time since his twenties and he can’t stop pressing the heel of his palm against his jaw.
The two of them face a fate worse than death, kissing the delicate and light toe of King George’s extravagantly fancy shoe. For 10 years. The only thing Ed has done for that long has been piracy and let's face it, what he was doing was hardly even that in the end.
Despite their new fate, Ed’s heart was free inside his chest, rattling around like a canary beneath his military issued tunic. And Stede wants to know what makes him happy. And he tells him.
“So, I reckon,” he says, “What makes Ed happy is… you.”
The Gentleman Pirate turned soldier for the crown leans in with a rapturous sunshine smile and says, “You make Stede happy.”
And the song builds to crescendo behind Ed’s sternum again, a songbird ballad as he presses his lips faintly and finally to Stede’s, the salt of the sea air the only thing between them. When Stede doesn’t pull away Ed moves forward, wanting to crawl into the Gentleman Pirate’s lap with this newfound permission; to go even further and crawl into his mostly unmarred skin and wrap it up around him like a blanket.
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“Yeah.” Stede says, his eyes alight.
“Yes?”
“I think so.” he nods, his lips pressed tight together and his eyebrows raised.
“Yes!?” Ed clarifies one more time, energy lifting him up to his feet. “Fuckin’, this is great! Okay. We leave at dawn, okay? I’ll work out all the details. You think of some new names. Cool ones!” He leaves Stede behind on the sand to sort out a plan for their new lives. No longer the Dread Pirate Blackbeard and the Gentleman Pirate, but two songs that wove each other into a perfect duet.
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Ed waits on the dock and watches the same stars that they passed underneath on the Revenge. Stede doesn’t come. Because of course Stede doesn’t come. Ed feels like a fool. Good things don’t happen to him because he doesn’t deserve them. There’s something off and rotten in his core that repels anything good. He rubs at his bare face and gathers himself up with a sigh.
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“Do you mean just curl up into a ball and die?” Ed’s losing a battle against the tears pooling in the corners of his eyes.
He’s in Stede’s quarters, in Stede’s robe in a fort built with blankets and pillows and silks and scarfs that are losing the smell of him by the minute. The song in him faded to a close in the rowboat back to the Revenge.
He tried bringing it back. He stroked silks and ate marmalade and tried things that made him happy. It was just him and his thoughts now, his mind racing to try and fill the quiet with made up songs.
But what made him happy aboard this ship was gone. And as they sailed further into the Atlantic, Ed knew he wasn’t going to come back.
“What if it doesn’t mean death?” says the writer boy. The one with the wood finger. “What if life just begins again?”
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“Black- Edward?” Izzy raps twice on the door before entering. His face is gaunt, but then it always is. He’s holding a folded piece of paper in his gloved hand. “This-” Izzy starts but Ed is already across the room, the letter in his own hands, his heart threatening to fall out of his ass as he reads the print.
“The boys found it while running errands ashore.” Izzy steps forward, his hand only hovering inches above Ed’s shoulder but never coming down, just teasing him with comfort.
It was an obituary. Stede Bonnet. Survived by a Mary Alamby Bonnet and their two children, Alma and Louis Bonnet. Wake details. A funeral date.
“Out.” he hisses through his teeth.
“It’s better this way, Edward. You can move on. You can-”
“Out!” Ed crumbles the obituary in his fist and rears it back, cocking it to hit Izzy where the X marks the spot right under his eye. Right where Ed made the mark himself years ago. “Out!” he roars again, his hand shaking.
Izzy doesn’t hesitate.
“I’m sorry.” he says at the door before closing it with a soft click behind him.
Ed doesn’t possibly know what he could be sorry for.
-:::--::---->◇<----::--:::-
Izzy’s awoken by the sound of a rowboat hitting the water outside of his window.
A candle is lit on his nightstand, a crumpled bit of paper folded in half with his name hastily written on the front. The obituary, tear stained and now marred with thick strokes of black ink.
Iz -
Take it all. Give them hell.
-X
-:::--::---->◇<----::--:::-
In Barbados, Ed finds Stede’s family. It wasn’t hard. Everywhere there were tales of the twice widowed Widow Bonnet. On every street corner and in every stall in the market there is someone talking about a lion, a tiger, or a bear or something. A piano, an illness, a carriage accident.
Nobody seemed to be able to put a pin in exactly what killed Stede Bonnet, but they all knew one thing: he was dead and his wife and children lived at the big estate up the road and around the corner. Ed would find them there.
As he hides in their shrubbery he sees them smile and laugh around their dinner table. Mary is quite beautiful, as are the children. A boy and a girl, Alma and Louis. Stede didn’t talk about any of them often.
Ed watches as a man comes into the room, a platter held in both hands, his breeches splattered with lilac and cream colored paint. He places the platter on the table. Kisses Mary on her temple, rustles the boy’s hair and sits at the head, leaning back and crossing his legs. Like this is his house. Like this is his family.
They’ve replaced him. Like he’s nothing. Like he was never there. Ed’s fingers close on the hilt of his dagger, steam rising from him in anger.
But he doesn’t have the energy. Not tonight. Not now.
He decides to go get pissed.
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Turns out there are a plethora of bars in Barbados. And some of them have Opium dens in the back. And if you ask enough questions, if you look sad enough someone will plant you in a soft couch near a flickering oil lamp and hand you some crushed flowers or something to put in your pipe.
When Ed inhales at first he’s almost happy. The faint notes of a song drift on the corners of his mind before he exhales, slumps into the cushions of the couch. The drug mixes with the sea of brandy already sloshing in his stomach and he sits there for who knows how long, struggling to keep his eyes open.
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When he comes to, he’s not in the den anymore. He’s not even in the bar.
He leaps to his feet, his hand reaching for his pistol. It’s not there, and neither is his balance and he falls back onto the hard chair he’d been in.
A tinkling laugh comes from the corner and out steps a woman from the shadows thrown against the wall from the fire in the hearth across the room. She’s barefoot and red-haired and her skin is as pale as milk aside from her lips, painted red as blood.
“What the fuck?” he’s got a headache. There’s a crick in his neck the size of fucking Spain. He brings a hand up to massage where he hurts and his hand comes away wet. Blood. He jumps to his feet again, this time falling to his knees before he can think to fall back into the chair again. “What the fuck?”
“A fighter. I like that in a man.” The woman crosses the room, leans down and pushes his hair out of his face.
He blacks out when he realizes that it’s not paint on her lips, it’s ruby wet blood that’s pooling in the corners.
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He comes to again and this time he’s in a bed. There’s another fire in another hearth and when he tries to move he finds his hands and feet are tied to the bed posts in every corner.
“What-” he starts to shout.
“The fuck?” The woman is here. She finishes his sentence for him. She emerges from the shadows once and again and sits on the bed beside him. “Is that all you can say?”
Now, Ed was taught to respect women. But he’s not thinking of his reputation or his mother as he spits in the woman’s face.
She hisses. She hisses at him like a snake in the grass and her teeth are sharp, fangs like a cat’s jutting out a good mile over her bottom lip. “Well, that’s not very nice.” She wipes at her cheek.
“If you’re gonna kill me just do it already.” Ed says, arms tense against the restraints. They’re strong fuckers. He’s not going anywhere. “I don’t have all day.”
“It’s around 3 in the morning.” she says.
“I don’t fucking care.”
“Fair enough.”
She moves in a blur. Next thing Ed knows she's straddling his waist, a tankard in her hand. Ed bucks his hips with a shout, fighting a losing battle to break free. He’s weak. His limbs feel like they weigh a thousand pounds each. His head hurts his neck hurts his-
“Shh, now. Drink this. You’ll feel better.” She places a fingertip under his chin and tilts his head back with a jerk. Strength she shouldn’t have.
“I’d rather not get date raped, thanks.” Ed spits and blows and does anything to prevent whatever is in the cup from touching his lips. “Get the fuck off of me!”
At that she laughs, digs her fingers into his hair, jerks his head back and shoots the drink into his open mouth.
-:::--::---->◇<----::--:::-
The next time Ed comes to, his eyes flutter open and he’s still tied to the same bed. He’s on fire with a fever centered over his heart. He’s so cold that his teeth are chattering, his hair and clothes clinging to the sheen of sweat. He tries to lift his arm to push the hair out of his eyes but he’s too weak to lift them, the weight of the restraint enough to keep him in place.
“I’m dying.” he whimpers, emotion caught in his throat. Fear. Frustration. Relief. He can’t decide which.
“Yes.” the woman says. He can’t muster up the ability to turn his head and find her in the room. “But you’ll get better.”
-:::--::---->◇<----::--:::-
The fever takes over. He sweats and freezes and freezes and sweats. He turns his head to vomit and then starts shaking again. At one point he’s so delirious he thinks that he’s floating, his middle rising up because his limbs are still tied down.
He dreams that the woman cuts his hair, thick silver shears cropping the locks he’d had for his entire life down to the scalp.
“Shh.” she places a blissfully cold hand against his forehead when he moans, “It’s to help bring the fever down. My mother did it to me once. It will grow back. Shh, darling, it will grow back.”
He dreams that Stede is there. He dreams that Stede kicks his shoes off at the door, strips into his breeches and a linen shirt and crawls into the bed with him, fitting himself into the space under Ed’s shoulder, his head resting on his chest. And Ed cries, sobs wracking through his body like they’re being hoisted from him with a rope.
When he tastes the tears in his mouth there’s more than salt. He tastes iron coins.
-:::--::---->◇<----::--:::-
Finally, Ed dies.
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When he wakes up again he finds his arms and legs untied. He’s in the same bed, the sheets and the shirt on his back replaced with crisp, fresh linen. He sits up, the room dark except for the glow of clusters of candles littered around the room. He reaches up and finds that it wasn’t a dream. His hair was gone, cropped razor short.
He should be cold. No beard, no hair, a linen shirt and thin breeches. But he’s not.
He feels strong, like a coil pressed down that’s ready to spring at any moment. He felt restless. How long had he been here? He turned, scooting to the edge and placing his feet on the wood of the floor, his skin pale against the blackness of the room.
“Oh, good! You’re awake!” The woman bursts through the door, tugging someone else behind her.
Ed jerks to his feet too quickly and finds himself with his back against the ceiling, feet dangling below him, like a wire had lifted him up in the middle of a fuckery.
“What the fuck!” he speaks and his teeth feel like they’re too big in his mouth. He sticks his fingers in his mouth to find he’s got the same fangs the woman had. He looked down at her and found her smiling in the candlelight, fangs like a cobra.
“What the-”
“Oh, please. If I had known that was the only thing you knew how to say I would have saved my blood for someone a little more useful.” she rolled her eyes. “You will sit down and not move.” she waved her hands in front of the face of the man who’d followed her and he sat on the foot of the bed, his hands placed on his knees.
“What did you do to me?” Ed demands, still floating somehow.
“You’re a vampire, idiot.” she crosses her arms and stomps her foot.
“The fuck is a vampire?”
“Undead. You’re a creature of the night now. Drinking blood, shapeshifting, eternal life, blah blah blah.” she says. “And you can fly. But I think you’ve noticed that.”
“Yeah I caught on to that one.” he tries to move, his hands running along the ceiling as he turns upside down, his shirt falling over his head until he turns back around. “How the fuck do I get down?”
“I don’t know, you just get down.” she says. “My name is Moira, by the way. Your sire.” she bends at the waist with an elaborate bow, waving her fingers through the air.
“Ed.” he says.
“Ed, I brought you dinner out of the kindness of my heart. Once you’re finished I’d like for you to meet me in the dining room. We’ve got much to discuss.”
She turns and leaves the man in Ed’s room, shutting the door behind her and leaving them in darkness once again.
-:::--::---->◇<----::--:::-
It takes a moment and a few deep breaths before Ed can figure out how to land his feet back on the floor.
“Right, that's sorted.” he wipes his fingers down the front of his shirt. The man is still sitting at the foot of the bed. In and out, he breathes.
Something smells fucking delicious and Ed’s stomach groans. He can’t remember the last time he’d eaten. How long had he even been here?
“Mate? Got the date?” he asks. He picks a candelabra off of the bedside table and moves towards his new friend.
“You deaf? Hello?” he waves his hand in front of the man’s face and he hardly does so much as blink. “She got you too, mate?” he asks, leaning in to examine his neck.
And he’s caught with a whiff of the most delectable smell he’s ever experienced. And his blood sings in his ears and he thinks of the Kraken on a choppy sea as he takes the man’s chin in his hands and moves his head with a crack, sinking his teeth into a now broken neck.
The first person to die by his hand since his father and he doesn’t even know the bloke’s name.
-:::--::---->◇<----::--:::-
Moira is draped over the seat at the head of the lavish dining room table, her feet kicking through the air and her nose in a book. She’s got a goblet held in one hand filled with something red and thick. Probably the same stuff that’s dripping wet down the front of Ed’s shirt.
“Tell me.” he says, pulling the chair out at the other end of the table. “Everything.”
-:::--::---->◇<----::--:::-
Undead.
Creature of the night.
Blood Drinking, shapeshifting, floating and flying.
Eternal Life.
Blah, blah, blah.
-:::--::---->◇<----::--:::-
“Why me?” Ed asks Moira after she gives him the rundown and shows him the coffin he’s supposed to sleep in. The whole thing makes him feel like he’d be more comfortable taking his skin off like a suit jacket and leaving it behind.
“You just looked so sad.” she tuts and pats his cheek.
-:::--::---->◇<----::--:::-
He lives in Barbados, his boots on the shore because he’s not sure how much sunlight he can avoid on a ship that's not his own. It takes him a while to get his land legs. Sometimes when he’s sleeping bundled tight in his coffin he can swear he feels the sway of waves underneath him.
He goes by the name Edward Thatch, though no one tends to ask for many details about a person doing business in the dead of night. No hair, no beard and without his usual leather garb he’s no one.
No one except someone that kills people. He leaves trails of bodies around the small island, one a night, sometimes two, sometimes three if Moira had grated on his nerves enough before the sun went down.
He doesn’t want to kill them. He means to take a sip or two. Hypnotize them with a wave just like Moira taught him, but there's a hole in him somewhere that sucks like an imploded star and once he starts he can’t stop.
People start talking about demons and witches and fairies but no one ever mentions anything about ex-pirates.
-:::--::---->◇<----::--:::-
A year passes, body after body and Ed’s curls are hanging down past his ears now. It's a struggle to keep it out of his eyes in the wind.
He’s worked himself into a cruel routine. Wake at sunset, wander around the house, annoy Moira as much as he used to annoy Izzy. When his stomach commands he dresses in silks and patterns and other expensive things and walks into town with a cane at his side. There’s a knife in the handle. He’d found it in a closet somewhere. He walks, the uneven click of his cane the only thing he hears until someone catches his fancy.
He feeds. He hides the body. He goes back home and goes to sleep and then does the same thing again. Sometimes he stops by the beach on the way home and he stares at the moon hanging upside down in the clear waves and thinks of his life just on a ship and with a different routine.
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He’s sitting in the sand now, the dampness left behind by the tide seeping into his trousers as he digs his toes into the soft sand.
“We’ll go to the new world.” Moira had said that morning at the breakfast table, both of them sitting behind empty plates and glasses. “New lives in a new country. I’ve read about it. It reeks of death. They’re fighting the locals and fighting themselves for a new place to settle. We could reap the benefits, cause a little more terror? If we stay here much longer we’ll run their gene pool into the ground.” she laughs. Ed frowns, fidgeting with the ring on his pinky finger.
So he’s sitting in the sand thinking about the logistics of sleeping in a coffin in the middle of the sea when he hears footsteps approaching him.
He ignores them, picking up a piece of a shell that had washed up during the day. He wasn’t hungry anyways.
“Ed.”
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Music. A thrum in his chest like a struck harp string. He turns and there’s Stede silhouetted in the glow of the moon and stars and Ed has to blink and rub his eyes to make sure he’s not dreaming.
“I found you.” Stede drops onto his knees in the sand. “I found you.” His hair is long, a braid tied into the strands near his eyebrow. He’s grown a beard. There's a scar above his lip.
“You’re-”
“Not dead, no.” Stede smiles and it reaches his eyes and Ed’s voice catches in his throat. “It was an act. A fuckery. I had to leave Mary… In a better state this time. I had to make sure it was permanent.”
“Here.” Ed finishes. “You’re here.”
“I could never leave you, Edward.” He reaches a ring clad hand to cup Ed’s cheek, running his hand along the ice cold skin there. “Oh,” he moves his fingers, grazing Ed’s forehead with the backs of his fingers. “Ed, you’re freezing. And you’re so pale. Are you alright?”
Ed takes Stede’s hand in his own. His palm and wrist are wrapped in stained and tattered and familiar red silk. Ed feels warm for the first time in a lifetime. “It doesn’t matter.” He pulls Stede’s arm, shortening the distance between them to a hairsbreadth before saying again “You’re here” and crushing their lips together.
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Later in a bar that Ed had killed dozens behind Stede tells Ed what happened.
Chauncy Badminton stealing him away before the guard had a chance to wake him. Stede fearing punishment for another death he didn’t cause. Mary and her new life as the widow Bonnet and Stede realizing he was right to be on the sea. That the Revenge was his home and the crew was his family.
“And I told her,” Stede says around a swallow of pathetic ale. “Ed. His name is Ed.”
Ed reaches under the table and squeezes Stede’s thigh, running his fingers over the worn fabric of his breeches, ignoring his own ale. Stede’s hand covers his, warm and rough with callus that wasn’t there before.
He faked his death and rowed back to the Revenge where the crew had mutinied. He climbed onboard just as they were going to throw Izzy into the sea with an anchor tied securely around his bound hands.
“He’ll be so upset that I found you first.” Stede laughs. “We had a wager. He never stopped searching for you. Every port from here to Plymouth. What name are you going by?”
“Thatch.”
Stede laughed again, “Simple enough.” He lets loose of his ale and touches a small curl at Ed’s temple. “And neither of us expected this.”
“Wasn’t my fault. I had a fever. Bad one.” Ed would nuzzle his hand like a puppy if they weren’t in mixed company. Though he imagined the drunks in a bar in the middle of the night were worried more about themselves than anyone else around them.
“Oh, Edward. I’m sorry.”
“Got better.” Ed says. “Obviously.”
“Obviously.” Stede beams. He’s the closest thing to sunlight Ed had seen in a year. “I just had a feeling… I was in town to visit the kids. It’s Louis’s birthday and I’d found a book of recipes and some spices on an Indian vessel and I wanted to give them to him, he’s taken to cooking, you know, and I just had this feeling that you were here. That I’d find you.”
That was pirate talk. Stede fucking Bonnet was a pirate through and through. And he’d learned the trade all on his own.
“I’m right here.” Ed smiles and his immobile heart continues it’s melody
-:::--::---->◇<----::--:::-
Ed has his arms draped over Stede’s shoulders in the same bed that he died in just before sunrise. He’s on his knees, Stede underneath him as he rises and falls, rocking his hips back and forth, the hot friction between them drawing “Oh, love. Oh, god. Oh Ed.” from Stede’s lips between lazy kisses and hitched breaths.
He tastes like ale and soap and Ed notices how succulent he smells. Stede buries his head into Ed’s shoulder, his neck exposed. And Ed inhales through his nose, praying to whatever sick god will listen that he can control himself.
But he’s always had a sweet tooth.
One bite. One slip of the tongue over a small, small wound. It won’t hurt. It can’t hurt. Ed couldn’t hurt him.
He presses Stede into the mattress by the center of his chest and leans over him, raking his nails down the pirate’s chest.
The word echoes in his chest like a whisper in a cave. Pirate. The Gentleman Pirate. Stede built a new life at sea with his crew. He was strong. Healthy. Thriving. Without Ed. He was who he was meant to be and the threat of the rising sun creeping through the cracks in the drawn curtains made Ed hurry his pace, leaning forward, his head in the crook of Stede’s neck as he works him in and out, tensing his muscles. He twitches inside Ed with a shout and Ed can’t help himself. He bites down on the sweaty skin that connects Stede’s neck with his shoulder.
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It's a fight to keep from blacking out as the taste of Stede’s blood washes over his tongue. But Ed keeps his eyes open. He swallows. He swallows again. And just one more time before pulling back with a moan, covering the puncture wounds with his hand to staunch the flow. It would heal quickly. At least that’s what Moira told him.
That bird fluttery feeling it back in his heart but this time the bird is trapped, anxious. It wants out. It doesn’t want trouble.
“Baby. I’m so sorry.” he disconnects them, empty even with his belly full of the man.
“You got me. That’s okay.”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” he mutters. Bloody tears trail down his face.
-:::--::---->◇<----::--:::-
“Stay here. Rest. Until just before sundown. Then go back to the Revenge, Stede. Please go back and be the best fucking pirate that I never could. You won’t remember finding me here.” he waves his hand in front of Stede’s face and the pirate reclines against the pillow, his eyes closing in sleep.
-:::--::---->◇<----::--:::-
Another year passes and he and Moira make it across the Atlantic to a port in South Carolina. A new house. A new basement with the same set of coffins unloaded in the dark by a human man Moira keeps around the house to keep up appearances in the daytime. Ed never bothered to learn his name.
She was right. The number of corpses in this developing country are so high they could build their houses out of them. Ed lives a sated life. Wake up. Wander. Feed. Sleep.
Alone.
The way he was meant to be.
-:::--::---->◇<----::--:::-
The news reaches him too late. He doesn’t hear about it until it’s already happened.
In Charles Town, in the town square, there’s a man hanging with a hood around his head.
Ed reaches up to take his hand, wrapped in ruddy red silk.