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Ed’s always had nightmares; somewhere along the line they just became his regular dreams.
So he dreams of yawning, wide-open darkness, of pelting rain that flays him alive, of diabolical creatures that want his blood, or demand the blood of others. But he rarely wakes in a sweat. Never cries out. And on the few and far-between occasions when his mind spins a true nightmare, he has the privilege of waking to a world where the monsters are–mostly–not flesh and bone.
If the tradeoff is that he just as rarely wakes with a sigh or a laugh – just as rarely wakes grasping at tendrils of something too-quickly dissolving – well. Not a lot he can do about that.
What the hell’s a dream good for, anyway?
It’s like that for a while, for longer than Ed cares to consider. Life grinds on.
He’s tumbling toward some sort of tawdry low when Stede shows up. Catapults onto the scene, buoys him up for a while, beaming at him and sharing scones and listening. Then he’s gone just as quickly, fucked off to who knows where. Some shore as sunny as he is, probably, and left Ed in the dark.
Ed continues the descent that Stede interrupted, arcing gracelessly toward rock bottom.
The nightmares start to circle like vultures.
Ed can keep them at bay if he’s piss-drunk or exhausted, so he does his damnedest to constantly stay one or the other. Frequently, he’s both; captaining on a steady drip of rum or madeira or whatever they’ve got rolling around is tiring work. He forces himself to stay up until the hour can be considered ungodly, then drops into bed, closes his eyes, lets darkness close over him. Hopes fervently to remain under its thrall until morning, or even better, sometime in the afternoon. Then it’s get up, drink, throw his weight around, drink. Wash, rinse, repeat. Use him up, wear him out. Anything for a sleep that doesn’t scratch and gnaw, doesn’t leave him feeling worse than he did the night before.
Sometimes, the nightmares grow impatient with these tactics. The vultures, wheeling overhead, grow tired of waiting for him to die. Fuck, he’s tired of waiting, too. That’s when they swoop in.
More often than not, he dreams of the dock. Little wonder. But he doesn’t dream of the long hours he sat there, alone, watching the stars crawl past. He dreams of the last seconds, when he knew the game was up and he was going to have to flee, when the moon was about to sink like a stone and he stepped into the dinghy on legs gone to jelly.
Only the dock gets longer and longer, then expands in all directions until the whole dark and miserable world is that dock. Wooden slats as far as the eye can see, and he can’t get to the dinghy and Stede is nowhere to be found. He wants to lie down and die. On that endless expanse of dock, there is nothing else to do.
Waking up from that one, gasping for breath – he can't decide if that’s a mercy or not. A small one. Maybe.
Sometimes he dreams that there is no dock. He’s suspended above the water, far out to sea. Not high enough up that the fall would kill him, but that doesn’t matter, because he knows the water will be cold, colder than any pelting rain. It will suck the breath from his lungs before he has a chance to say please, rush into the empty space where his heart used to be and turn him to ice from the inside out. His vision will blacken before he hits the bottom.
In this dream he twists and pulls against whatever it is that keeps him hanging there. He kicks out and screams himself awake.
Finish it , is what he can’t stop screaming, and if someone aboard hears him and decides to take him up on it, so be it. You fucking coward, just fucking finish it .
Some nights – and Christ, if only he could know which ones they were going to be – Stede is there.
Stede never talks to him in these dreams. Sometimes he’s a mere shadow in the trees beyond the beach, but Ed knows he’s there, he knows and he can’t make contact. Sometimes Stede is the one rowing away in the dinghy, and Ed, rooted to the spot, can only drop to his knees and watch in agony. And sometimes, Stede is there on the dock, near enough to touch, and Ed would dare except – he looks down at himself and he’s been cut. Stabbed. There’s blood unfurling across his rough-spun shirt and Stede just stands there, looking sorrowfully on.
Ed wakes up, breathing hard, tucked up in a ball, cradling his gut. Whisper-screaming into the pillow, I’m bleeding . He turns over onto his back, wills his heart quiet. Waits for his muscles to unwind, for his fists to unclench. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t.
Scant weeks ago, he couldn’t have imagined that a dream of Stede would wring him out in quite that way. Now, he’ll drink till he sloshes, happily pay the price of a putrid stomach and a throbbing head, if it means he doesn’t have to see Stede like that.
But there isn’t enough rum on all the ships on the seven seas for the nights when he dreams Stede happy.
Stede laughing, Stede handing him a brandy, Stede walking about his lovely ship looking graceful in his lovely clothes.
Ed wakes, and a honeyed, crystalline stillness holds him for just a split second before it dissolves and leaves him leaden.
Stede’s still gone, and in what godforsaken world is it fair to dream of that face and wake to another day without him?
The fact is, some days, it’s already hard for Ed to conjure Stede’s face in his mind. He sees flashes – an essence – but not the whole picture. In his dreams he can see everything with dazzling clarity, in minute detail. Every goddamn sparkling eyelash.
Is he supposed to feel grateful for that? Is it supposed to be some consolation prize for the (very real, too-strong) possibility that he’ll never see Stede again?
To hell with that. If that’s what it is, he doesn’t want it.
Stede Bonnet – in all his stupid, swanning, clueless, golden glory – had been the best and sweetest and finest thing Ed had ever encountered. Ed had fooled himself for a short, heady time that he was worthy of Stede. And now it turns out that maybe he still is, but only in a very rare dream or two.
To absolute fucking hell with that.
In Ed’s dreams, Stede is fairly lit from within, pushing shadows back with an elegant hand. There’s a full moon, a frill, a field of lavender. In these dreams, Ed almost feels as if there’s something within that hasn’t turned to ash, a small part of him that still holds an ember. Like his heart is back in its rightful spot and full to bursting. Like Stede could say his name and the fire would roar to life again.
That’s not nothing. But Jesus H Christ, what is it?
Who decided that he’s worthy only of crumbs? Crumbs that aren’t even any comfort or clue, just make him worry and wonder and think about things that are pointless to worry and wonder about. Things that could have been. Spilled milk.
In another life, he could be waking up next to Stede in a big fine bed on snow-white, sweet-smelling linens. Golden hair and golden morning light. Could be telling his dreams to Stede – hell, Stede could be telling his dreams to Ed. (What on earth did he dream about? Did his dreams wear him out from inside? Did he wake up gasping or did he wake up sighing? Christ.)
If the vultures circled then, Ed could have had Stede’s cool soft hands to lean into, to smooth his hair.
But here he is, and he has fuck-all, and it all seems completely and utterly pointless.
The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference . Someone somewhere tried to explain that to Ed once. He can’t remember who it was now, or the context, which means he was probably drunk at the time. Can’t remember whether he laughed at the person, or slapped another drink into their hand, or took them upstairs or out back and showed them the opposite of indifference (which would not have been love).
He can’t stop thinking about it.
He should hate Stede.
Every breath of air he draws should be with the intention of ending him. Making him suffer. Every particle of his being should want Stede crushed out; Stede crushed a part of him, after all, and turnabout is fair play. Then maybe he could rest. He’s even thought about it. Holding him at the point of a blade, training his pistol on him. Then he thinks of Stede’s eyes filled with fear, those eyes, those eyes. He’s seen Stede terror-stricken before and the thought of doing that to him is all it takes to start him choking with sobs again.
He knows it like he knows the back of his own hand: he can’t hate Stede. Forget having the energy for it, or the strength of mind. He doesn’t want to.
If only he could wake up one morning and magically find himself indifferent.
Instead, every single goddamn night – every glittering, sweetly-scented dream and every sobbing, screaming, bleeding one – reminds him of how much he loves him.
He needs a safe spot to tuck that away. Fortunately, he knows just the place.
Every time Ed steps inside the auxiliary wardrobe, his mind boggles that it’s stayed a secret as long as it has. Izzy almost certainly knows there’s something off about the proportions of the captain’s quarters; he still carries on about the misuse of space, even now that the space is no longer filled with Stede’s things. But Izzy’s lack of imagination means that it’s never occurred to him–probably wouldn’t occur to him in a million years–that the Revenge has rooms within rooms, or that Ed disappears into one of them a good couple times a week to drink and mope and fall asleep on the floor.
It’s still and silent inside, and with the door closed it’s dark as pitch, even at the height of mid-day. Ed can slip in there with a bottle, run his hands over a linen shirt or two, maybe twist a handkerchief between his fingers. Sit down in the corner and pick over the crumbs of before , of the fleeting few weeks before everything went to shit.
Being inside the wardrobe is like being inside a time capsule. Nothing’s changed there. Ed sits on the floor, leans against the wall, tucks his knees up under his chin. The shirt-cuffs that brush his shoulders are the same ones he admired the day he and Stede met. The handkerchief he’s retrieved from the dressing-table drawer might’ve not long ago been in Stede’s own pocket. Ed doesn’t have to see it to know that there’s a monogram in the corner of the square of creamy linen, a plain elegant B with a tiny blossom stitched on either side. He also doesn’t need to see it to know that he’s making a mess of it, smudging it with grimy fingerprints and smears of kohl. Too bad so sad, Ed thinks. Finders keepers losers weepers or some such, except Ed’s the loser here.
He falls asleep thinking about the fact that Stede, wherever he is, has nothing of Ed’s. Well, nothing he can hold in his hand.
He wakes to shouting, some sort of rising commotion only a couple of walls away.
If they’d been hit, it seems he would have felt it. There’s no rocking, no vibration, nothing tumbling off shelves. But someone’s just outside, bawling that we’re under attack and Captain you better get up here , and fuck, he was having such a nice sleep for a change.
He hears the blast as soon as he starts to move: big guns, close. Ed wonders, with no particular sense of panic, if they’re taking on water. How long has this been going on? The crack and rumble of the guns continues, builds – and Ed wonders again why the walls aren’t shaking. Why he doesn’t smell powder or smoke. He feels along the wall as he goes but he’s unexpectedly steady on his feet.
For a long time he walks. The sounds from above seem to grow dull, or maybe he’s getting used to them. He’s disoriented. He hears no more shouting, sees no flames. Why he feels like he’s lost, he can’t figure out, but he doesn't think on it too hard.
The cannon fire fades as he makes his way up from below and god, it seems to take a long time. The corridor seems endless. Finally he steps out onto the main deck, into stillness and emptiness and a weird watery light. No crew to be seen anywhere. His legs suddenly seem reluctant to even hold him up, let alone carry him. He reaches out and there’s nothing to grab onto.
Stede is there.
He’s falling. The world is falling. Everything drops away. Stede is there. The deck of a ship, that’s all that’s left. Wooden slats as far as the eye can see and Stede is there.
Stede doesn’t speak, but he smiles. Reaches for Ed. Takes his hand in both of his. Smiles.
It’s night, and the moon hangs big and low, and Stede is there, and he’s smiling. His touch would be heartbreaking if Ed’s heart hadn’t been blown to smithereens ages ago. Stede’s fingers, curled around his own, feel as if maybe they could gather up some of Ed’s splinters and shards. As if maybe Stede could slosh away some of Ed’s grit and emptiness with cool water cupped in his palms.
Ed doesn’t know what to do with himself. He’s falling again. Stede is there. He gathers Ed close and holds him, and Ed cries, his fists full of Stede’s shirt and hair.
Ed wakes, neither screaming nor gasping. His heart doesn't pound. But his face is itchy with dried tears; his goddamn actual eye sockets hurt. His nose is clogged.
He slides the rest of the way to the floor, rests his head on his arm. The handkerchief he’s been clutching all this while is a lost cause. He keeps it clenched in one fist while he traces the fingers of his other hand over the bumps and ridges of the rug.
Stede was here.
He doesn't know how long he lies there. Finally he hauls himself toward the door, toward the thin strip of light that’s visible beneath.
Life grinds on.
Ed dreams of the dock and the yawning darkness and standing on the deck in the moonlight with Stede. He dreams of brandy and frilled shirtsleeves and then all of the sudden a time comes when he finds himself dreaming that he’s sitting at a desk studying a map. Walking on a beach at low tide. Sitting in the galley with a bowl of soup.
He still doesn’t know what a dream is good for. He does know he can’t just not go to sleep, and he can't just not wake up, and indifference has never been an option. He’s stuck with the dreams. The bad, the slightly less bad, and the golden.
Pretty much everything still feels gritty and ugly, and his fucking eye sockets still hurt sometimes from crying. The crumbs of before don’t make any more sense than they ever did. The vultures still wheel in the distance, though they've backed off a bit with time. Maybe Ed’s would-be carcass is too far gone for them at this point, or maybe, like it or not, he’s going to survive.
He knows a few things to be true. He loves Stede; loved him once, anyway. Misses him still, might love him again one day. Doesn't want him hurt. He doesn’t dissolve when Stede is in his dreams, and he doesn’t dissolve when he isn’t.
He knows there are a dozen brand-new handkerchiefs in Stede’s dressing-table drawer. Snowy cotton lawn, six edged in pale blue tatted lace, six with a rolled hem, the stitches so tiny Ed can barely see them.
He knows that in the world – the world that is big and dark and sometimes miserable - there is a dock, and there is the deck of a ship, and there is Stede. He found Ed once; there’s a non-zero chance he might find Ed again.
If not tonight, then maybe tomorrow.