Old Wives Town

The woman adjusts her grip on her gun. “No men,” she says, clearly.
Oh, fuck this. Ed's leg is aching from standing around. He's not about to turn around, walk back to shore and camp out on the dunes, waiting for their ship to return when there’s a perfectly nice house he owns in spitting distance. And he doesn’t take kindly to people pointing guns at Stede!
“Says who?” he growls.
“Our mayor. Anna Teach.”

Notes:

As you might expect when delving into Ed's background with his mom, there's gonna be some rough stuff in there! Everyone's doing great now, but tread lightly if you need to.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

June 1718

“No,” Stede says, his brow plunging. He squeezes Ed’s hand, welding them together with tacky, drying blood. “It hasn’t come to that. Shhh.”

Ed laughs, half delirious from injury, half relieved now that his mind is made up. It’s freeing, really. Let it go! Let it all go! The beard, the boat, the fuckin’ name, all of it! “It’s the only way it’ll work, mate!” he insists. “It’s time for the big finale. You love a finale!”

“But this is our home- it’s the only home you had for years!” Stede casts a worried look around at the bulkheads, doing their damndest to protect them from danger, right this very moment. “We can’t just put Annie out to pasture like some- some old gray mare!”

“Only old and gray I care about is you,” Ed says. He drags Stede’s hand to his lips and presses a kiss to it. “Reckon I can make this sacrifice so I’ll live to see it. B’sides. Pfft. This isn’t my home.”

“Oh, darling.” Stede heaves a sigh and his gloomy expression lightens with the breeze of it. “You are my home, as well.”

Sentimental old sod.

“Same, obviously,” Ed grins. “But like- I do have a house house, and shit.”

Stede’s face goes even paler than when he’d first seen Ed had been shot. “Where?” he yelps. “And how have you never told me this?!”

“In Massachusetts,” says Ed. “Wanted to set my Mum up with a place, first chance I got. She never moved in ‘cause she had a stick up her arse about all the murdering and piracy,” Ed rolls his eyes. “I swore I’d burn it down when those cod sucking bastards hung the crew of the Whydah, but I haven’t got ‘round to it yet...”

“Yes. Torching your own house will sure teach them,” Stede says skeptically.

“I mean the whole fuckin’ colony!” says Ed. “But it’ll take ages, who has the time?” He shrugs, making his wounded muscles pull. “Ahhfuck.”

Won’t be doing that again!

Stede tuts and gives up holding hands so he can hold down Ed’s shoulders and keep him from moving painfully, again. “Careful,” he says, softly. “You musn’t go toe up until you show me this mysterious manse of yours… How else will your husband know to claim his inheritance, hmm?”

Ed snorts a laugh. “S’not just a house. It’s a village, actually.”

“Of course you have a village,” Stede sighs. “You don’t do anything by halves.”

“You’re the only thing I care if I do have, love.”

With a tear and a nod, Stede makes up his mind. “All right, then,” he says. “We’ll scuttle the ship.”

February 1722

It took the better part of two years to get back into a sloop. The Tableau, they named it, which felt precariously French to Ed, but a vote’s a vote. After two years of scrimping and saving, bowing and scraping, living out of dinghies, huts, and wagons- the crew can call it what they like. Soon enough, it’s just as cozy and familiar as Annie or the Revenge. Ed wouldn’t ever call it boring, because that’s a great way to summon up a fucking hurricane- but life becomes routine. Ed is safe and fulfilled, with Stede and their odd little gang. He adores their new work, sailing from port to port to put on shows, but he’s learned to like a break, too.

“You know, darling- The Last Crow can get along with two less people if we dual duty some of the smaller parts,” Stede says, while bent over some paperwork.

“Haven’t you heard? ‘There are no small parts, only small actors’,” Ed croons in his best imitation of the man. He grins as wide as can be, thinking of the walk-on he had last month where he got to spew fake plague bile on someone in the front row once an act, then fuck off until curtain call. Deafening applause.

Stede looks up with a clever squint. “What if we have the crew drop us off somewhere?”

“Hmm!” It’s been three or four months since they had a getaway, just for themselves. “Where were you thinking?” Ed asks back.

“Well, we’re in your old neighborhood, aren’t we?”

It takes a minute to remember what the fuck Stede’s referencing, but then Ed’s all on board. He sets a course, delegates what tasks need doing in his absence, and packs what essentials need packing. And some gunpowder. Just in case he decides to wipe Massachusetts off the map, after all.

Stede takes one look at the meager pile in the corner of their cabin, chirps a single laugh, and then transforms into a luggage spewing tornado for two hours. It’s bloody breathtaking. Ed still has so much to learn from this man. Why should they take a risk on a hosts’ linens? Why not bring their own bathtub? How about reading material to suit a variety of moods? Can’t decide which robe to bring? Take both! A younger Ed would have been mortified at Stede’s tendency to pack his own body weight in luggage. That idiot traveled with nothing but his knife and his wits, and he had sand in his crack all the time, ‘cause he never had spare anything! But who gives a shit about looking cool and carefree when you have a stash of your favorite marmalade? Besides. Having this much cargo gives them an excuse to hitch up Tassletail, their sometimes stagehand, sometimes star, always a beloved pet mule. She deserves a vacation, same as anyone.

Stede fusses, winding a scarf around his head in a variety of ways before settling on one he likes. His nose and cheeks are stung red where they peek out, and Ed’s never seen anything so adorable in all his life. He pretends to need extra helping with his cowl, just so he can get a closer look. He shivers, but mostly with anticipation for when they get to unwrap again.

“Nippy, isn’t it?” Stede remarks. “Mind you don’t catch a cold. Much as I love the sound of your little kitten sneezes…”

Ed’s laugh puffs out ahead of him, crystalizing in the air. “We haven’t got far to go,” he tells Stede. “Then I’ll get right on warming you up...”

“Right on me, you say?” Stede purrs diamonds back at him.

“On you, under you, sandwiched in a pile of furs- whatever it takes.”

Stede’s eyebrows leap, disappearing into the scarf. “Right-o! We’d better get moving.”

“C’mon, Tassletail,” Ed chuckles. He gives the rope just a whisper of a tug, and she falls into step beside them.

“Do you think it might snow while we’re ashore?” Stede goes on, excitedly. “I’ve only ever seen that one flurry in Baltimore- but it didn’t really stick! And what about hail?”

“Mmm… No snow today,” Ed decides, between the look of the sky and the feel of his bones. Neither is particularly congested. “If it hails while we’re on the road, it’s every man and mule for himself, by the way.”

“Nooo. He’s just teasing,” Stede tells poor Tassletail. “You and I’ll cut the cart loose and leave him behind, if that’s the way he feels about it!”

Ed gives Stede an elbow for that. “Fine! But I’m eating all the oatcakes you packed…”

They trundle along a little-used tow path with their cartload for about two hours, while Ed regales Stede with tales of Old Ruth, the ship’s cook on the Marianne. She was ready to retire at just the same time Ed broke away from Hornigold, or else he would have poached her. Instead, he sent her abroad with a sack of gold, a deed he won in a card game, and a message for Mum. When that didn’t work out, he made sure she took advantage of his fortune, since someone ought to. He explains how she’s like a cross between Buttons and Lucius, a bit mad, a bit mouthy, but all heart. She’ll have piping hot opinions, and a pot on the fire full of something tasty, just you wait. Ed can almost smell one of her famous garlic stews when he gets sight of chimney smoke, rising above the knobby trees.

“You know, we may be just in time to tap our own maple syrup,” says Stede, wondering at the grove.

Ed licks his chapped lips. “Mmm. Don’t suppose if I’m a good lad you might make me something sugary?”

“I do like to attend the whole process, start to finish,” Stede hums. “It’s been awhile, but I used to refine the sugar myself and make candy sticks, with the children…”

There’s something in the way he trails off that makes Ed sorry. This place is barely a home to him, but it’s fucking unfair that he should get to come and go as he pleases, while Stede can never return to Barbados. He’ll never again get to see the plants he raised in all their glory, or taste their bounty. He won’t see Alma and Louis until they’ve grown old enough to leave the island, and meet him elsewhere. By then they might be too sophisticated to chomp on a candy stick.

Something snaps, cracking as clear as a bell in the dead winter air. A real stick- and not under Ed’s, or Stede’s, or even Tassletail’s foot. Ed stops the cart and covers the hilt of his knife with one hand, all the while surveying the surrounding wood.

“That wasn’t you?” Stede checks.

“No, love.”

“Could be an animal.”

But nothing scurries away. Nothing moves. Ed only sees trees, trees, a few fallen logs, evergreen shrubs, and more fucking trees… Then an irregular, black branch. Or, not irregular. Perfectly straight. The kind that only grows out of the butt of a musket.

“Nice to know someone’s keepin’ an eye on the place,” Ed calls out, to their unseen watcher. He steps in front of Stede, on instinct. “You a friend of Ruth’s, mate? Ruth Gilbert?”

A head pokes out from behind the same tree as a gun. A ginger haired woman, with a prematurely wrinkled brow. She cautiously steps out into the open when they raise their empty hands. She doesn’t point her gun directly at them, but holds it in front of herself almost as forbiddingly as if she had.

“Ruth’s been dead a year now,” she says grimly.

“Oh no,” Stede sighs behind Ed. “Oh, I’m very sorry to hear that,” he says, touching Ed’s shoulder in remorse.

Ed’s chest pangs. Of course he feels sad at the news, but he feels stupid too. It’s been a decade since he’d heard from Ruth, and she was long since a rickety old gal. What did he expect?

“What did thou want with her?” the woman asks.

“She, uhm. She was holding on to some things for me. Some papers,” Ed says, simply.

You know. The ones that declare he owns these woods and all the houses in it built before 1700. Those papers. And who in the blue blazing fuck are you?! Thanks to years of Stede’s tempering, it feels crass to put too fine a point on it, at the moment.

“Perhaps we should meet with whomever Ruth was staying with, when she passed?” Stede suggests. “Thank them for their comfort?”

There you go. Diplomacy before dickheadedness!

“That won’t be necessary,” the woman says.

“We’ll just visit for the sightseeing, then!” Stede smiles. Not that it’s visible through his scarf, but Ed can hear it.

The woman is not so easily won over. “This is no place for thee,” she shakes her head. “There‘s no tavern for thine brawling.”

Ed chuckles. “Nah, we’re not here on business.”

“We’re looking to spend some time away from the hustle and bustle,” Stede assures the woman. “Let our hair down!”

“Right!” Ed pulls his cowl out of his face, in an attempt to demystify himself. “We’re real low key dudes.”

Even Tassletail burrs her lips, impatiently.

The woman adjusts her grip on her gun. “Be that as it may, we don’t allow men in Old Wives Town.”

“Oh,” says Stede. “It's… forbidden, then?”

The possibility seems to thrill him.

“Preferred,” says the woman.

“Well believe me, we know all about preferring the company of our own sex,” Ed snorts. “You don’t have to worry about us.”

“We’ll keep to ourselves!”

“Not a finger laid on ya.”

With that, the woman brings her barrel around, aimed towards the ground between them. “No men,” she says, clearly.

Stede backs off, nervously. “Ed-”

Oh, fuck this. His leg is aching from standing around. Ed’s not about to turn around, walk back to shore and camp out on the dunes, waiting for Tableau to return, when there’s a perfectly nice house he owns in spitting distance. And he doesn’t take kindly to people pointing guns at Stede!

“Says who?” he growls.

The woman raises her aim. “Our mayor. Anna Teach.”

She could have clobbered Ed over the head with the butt for the same, stupefying effect.

At least it’s a good jolt to Stede. He claps his hands together in delight. “Wonderful! Then she’ll make an exception for us!” he says. Stede reaches for Ed’s shoulder and jostles him showily. “This is her son!”

That’s certainly not what this woman was expecting when she took her watch today. Her grip on her weapon wavers and her face crinkles in confusion. “Anna has no son,” she claims. “He’s dead.”

Ed’s been fake dead long enough, this sort of conversation has lost the sparkle it once had.

“Yeah, that’s real dramatic and all,” he huffs. “But just look at me! I know who I see in the mirror.”

Finally, the woman lowers her gun, once and for all. “I’ll take thee to her,” she decides. “What she says goes.”

Before they follow her, Ed turns to Stede to offer him Tassletail’s leash. “Hey, can you feel your hands, right now?”

“I’ve got it,” Stede assures him. He gives Ed a mittened squeeze. “It’ll be all right, darling.”

“Who says it won’t?” Ed squeaks.

Stede glides ahead, ever ready to try and grease the social wheels when Ed falters. His knight in shining etiquette.

“I’m Stede, by the way, and that’s Edward. Though, I’m sure you intuited that on your own,” he chuckles. “But we’re very glad to make your acquaintance, Miss…?”

“Polly is fine.”

“Miss Polly! Thank you for escorting us into town. They’re very lucky to have such a fine guardian as you.”

Polly allows a small, disarmed smile. “Yes.”

“Did your parents by any chance name you for Pauline- one of Shakespeare’s crafty heroines?”

Just as soon as it was won, Polly’s smile disappears. “No. I’m not a Shaker, Quaker, or any of those God fearers, anymore.”

“I’m sorry, I did not mean to offend,” Stede coughs. “It’s a… a character from a secular… story…”

“…My given name is Apology.”

“Ah.”

Humbled, Stede falls out of step with Polly and drifts close to Ed again.

Ed gives him a stunned look. “Now there’s someone who's folks who sound like fun, chill people, eh?”

Mum had been gentle, but Ed wouldn’t call her kind. She had been tidy, but not well kept. There was no money for it. Everything about her was worn thin. Her shoes were shoes that Ed had outgrown in childhood. Her voice was dry and tired, and her words were borrowed from scripture, more often than not. Her dress was mended on every possible axis, again and again. Ed can still remember an afternoon spent watching her take apart the skirt from the bodice, then reduce its fullness so she had enough material to cut a new sleeve. Dad had pushed her into the stove, and there was no patching it up after the flames. Her arm was never quite right, either- but then again, Ed can’t remember her ever hugging him before, so he couldn’t miss it. As a child, it had been safer to move about as though they were ships and shores with unknown hazards lurking between them. Ed didn’t learn about closeness until he was big enough to fight- until he was able to wrap his own hands around someone’s wheezing throat. He didn’t learn to stop fighting, stop shoving and swearing, and just be held until Stede. It makes Ed shiver, to think about it.

As Ed enters the house, he wonders if he only ever offered it up to Mum as a Fuck You. Fuck her for not ditching Dad! Fuck her for not forgiving him his one crime, for all the hundreds that man did! For blaming their shitty lot in life on God, to take the heat off him drinking their every penny. Fuck her for telling Ed he wasn't worthy of fine things… for making him believe be wasn’t even worth a poor, but safe home.

If Ed had known who was waiting for him here, he’s not sure he would have agreed to come. With no time to prepare, he doesn’t know what to do, so he follows Stede’s lead. He holds his head high as they stand in the foyer and Polly goes ahead into the sitting room to announce them. That’s right. He’ll show her. He’ll be so proud, so fucking pleasant, so untroubled, she’ll be ashamed.

The two voices in the next room go quiet, and then the floorboards creak, and then she’s standing in the door. His little Mum. He was taller than her by the time he ran away, but not by this many miles. She’s so small. So withered and hallowed by time, with not a strand of black left on her head. Not that that should surprise Ed, at the rate he’s going.

“My boy,” she gasps at the sight of him, and it almost knocks him sideways.

A ‘my boy’ from her is as effusive as anyone else spouting a sonnet. Ed’s mother calling him ‘Boy’ all his childhood was itself already an indulgent step up from the ‘You there’s and ‘You little shit’s his father doled out. It’s just two little words and it’s already too much. Ed can’t contain it, can’t cope, so he bursts into tears.

“Mummy?”

Her arms, frail as they may be, wrap around him. “Edward,” she sobs into his chest. “I’d heard you were killed. Oh, my boy…”

It was all by design, he’s said before. You’d be fuckin’ amazed how much my head resembles a loaf of bread.

He says nothing, now. He can barely lift his hands to touch her. It’s like they’ve got an anchor tied around them, each.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come over sooner,” she snivels. “I’m sorry for so many things...”

“I’m sorry,” Ed cries too, but he’s not sure what for anymore. He hardly knows who he is or what’s happened, as past and present come crashing together. His mind’s in splinters. He sort of wants to take it back, but he sort of also can’t think of any words to say that he isn’t currently hearing.

Mum chokes off another sob and then pulls back to look at him. Her lips tremble between a smile and a frown, a smile and a frown, as her dark eyes skip all around in an attempt to recommit his face memory. “When I heard you- you were gone, I- I couldn’t believe I’d ever let you go in the first place,” she says, tucking his hair behind his ears. Soon as that’s done, she has to wipe dry her cheeks, and Ed’s hair breaks free, and it happens all over again.

Boy, get your hair out of your face. What’s the sense in burning a candle to have dinner by, if I can’t see you?

“You didn’t let me go, I ran,” Ed grits his teeth. He ran. He did something because she did nothing to stop any of it, and he ran. “I ran,” he cries.

He ran, and she did nothing.

Stop crying, boy. Stop crying before your father sees.

Didn’t she?

“I’m sorry it took so long to follow you.” Mum strokes his bearded cheek. “When I heard you were dead- I had to come, be as close as I could get. Do something. Protect someone, even if I couldn't ever protect you,” she says. “You should know, the money you left for me- it’s bought comfort for so many like us.”

Ed flinches. “The blood money, you mean?”

That’s what she’d called it before, when she turned Ruth away. When she didn’t ask after him, or say she missed him, or promise he could come home. He would have, if she’d been willing to forgive. He made his fortune and proved her wrong, and still.

“There are worse crimes, ones more unnatural than robbing uncaring crowns,” Mum says. “I know that now.”

But before she can try and hug him again, Ed steps back. He does it so suddenly, he treads on Stede’s foot. “Stede?! Uhm. Meet my Mum?”

“Ooph.” A solid hand lands on Ed’s back and rubs a circle there. Stede steps around to introduce himself as though it was his own idea, and giving Ed some place to shelter, a moment. “Mother Teach, I'm pleased to meet you.”

“You must pardon me, sir,” Mum sniffs. She wipes her hand on her apron before allowing Stede to take it.

“Stede Busby,” he bows low. “Err! Bonnet!” he quickly corrects himself. “Stede Bonnet… Are we giving real names here?” he winces at Ed, over his shoulder.

“Reckon the jigs up with her at least. She’s my fucking Mum!”

“Edward!” both Stede and Mum tut, in unison.

“Uhm! I’ve been sailing with your son for some years now,” Stede moves on, to quickly paper over the foul language. “I must say, he is my very most favorite person. A shining example of both wit and heart. Thank you for bringing him into this world.”

“Oh. Thank you,” Mum says, a bit stunned.

“It is quite the privilege to be in your lovely home.”

“You’re welcome.”

Wow, they’re really sending off some mixed signals between Ed’s skittishness and Stede’s readiness to build an altar.

Stede glances at Polly, still standing by with a death grip on her gun. “Would you- would you mind welcoming us? Properly?”

Mum takes his cue and raises a hand to Polly. “Please, it’s all right. They’ll be here as my guests, Polly.”

Polly relaxes, somewhat. “If Mrs. Teach welcomes thee…”

“Anything we can do to contribute, of course! We’re no princes,” Stede laughs. “We’re used to fending for ourselves through all sorts.”

“I suppose you would have to be, sailing as you do.”

The word plainly stands in for so many fouler ones. God love him, Stede dives right in front of that bullet, too.

“Yes, but just the friendly sort, these days,” he assures Mum. “We’ve given up lighting cannons for literary canons, you see.”

Yeah, of course Mum has no fucking clue what that means. “Have you?” she nods.

“We’ve a traveling theater company, yes!” Stede oozes. Once he gets started, he’ll keep going until Ed cuts him off. Perfect. Just the cover Ed needed. “Perhaps you’ve heard of the Tableau Players? No? Well- we produce the classics in repertory with a few of our own original works. It’s quite marvelous. Our Ed has such a powerful stage presence. Everyone says so. We even spent a memorable summer in artistic residence at the court of Bohemia, developing the piece the company is playing, just now-”

“Really?”

“-and as it so happens, we were able to condense the roles, and sneak away for a visit. Two weeks, if that’s all right with you…”

“That would be fine.”

“I’m excited to take this opportunity to write something properly pastoral,” Stede trills. “I can think of no more suitable setting than these fine forests. Just as we were approaching, I thought-”

Ed squeezes Stede’s arm, feeling ready to reenter the emotional fray. Long enough to get out, anyway. “Don’t wanna spoil the story too soon, mate,” he huffs.

“Of course, no!” Stede relaxes from his rambling and pats Ed’s back again. “I must let it simmer…”

“I can see you’re very passionate,” Mum says, kindly.

Kindly? Since when?!

Ed shakes off the panic before it can seize him again. He nods his head to his mother. “It’s been a day,” he says. “Should really water our mule and unpack before it gets dark…”

There’s an empty one room cabin across the way that they can have run of, since Mum doesn’t want to spook the ladies living under her roof. Four, each with about thirty squealing babies, it sounded like- and then there are another six smaller houses besides, a stable, a workshop, and a storehouse, where dried meat and herbs are kept.

“Mind thee, there be a bear that’s been spotted prowling around, there,” Polly warns. “She doesn’t take much notice of a gun, but take a bell with thee, at least. There’s one on the mantle. It’ll keep her at a distance.”

“We’ll be careful,” Stede promises. “I have no desire to match the fate of Antigonus!”

Polly frowns and roughly shoves open the door to their cabin. “That another one of his Shakers?”

“Yeah,” Ed sighs.

“Hmph.”

“Apologies!” Stede waves, forgetting himself. “Oh! No, I wasn’t- never mind.”

“We’ll be careful,” Ed repeats.

Polly fixes him with another hardened stare. “Thou had better. The women and children of this town need none of thy meddling. They’ve suffered enough.” Satisfied, she turns away and stomps over to a gaggle of village children, hovering curiously a few yards away. “If thou has naught to do but stand around and stare… Take the mule to the stable, and see it gets a blanket.”

“Yes, Auntie,” they chorus.

Ed and Stede set themselves to the task of making the cabin habitable. It has some furniture, but has otherwise gone stale from months of emptiness. There are cobwebs and children’s chalk games that need sweeping, and rugs to shake out. That gives Ed something to thrash besides his own guilty conscience, at least. When the place is clean, they carry in the bathtub, chocked full of food, then back and forth they go, with armloads of blankets and books, and the other comforts they packed. Ed goes to grab the last of it, but the cart is empty. He stands in the open doorway, staring out across the village square at the house containing his mother.

It’s so strange. After years of absence and halfheartedly wondering if she was even still alive, she’s just a stone’s throw away.

“Darling,” Stede hums. He slips his arms around Ed’s middle, enveloping him a safe little bubble of warmth. “Do you want to talk?”

Ed feels his chest draw a deep, preparatory breath, but then- nothing. “I dunno,” he mumbles. “I dunno what to say. What am I supposed to say to her?” he asks, helplessly. “Do I go to her, does she come to me? The fuck am I supposed to do? I didn’t plan for this!”

“I didn’t pack the greasepaint for nothing,” Stede says. “If you like, I’ll paint pox on our faces and claim we’re under quarantine, the whole time we’re here,” Stede suggests. “No visitors!”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Ed squeezes his arm gratefully. “Sorry if this ruins our vacation…”

Stede gives him a playful rocking. “Oh, come on. As if we could do any worse than the time I took an arrow through the hand, first night of our honeymoon.”

Ed chuckles at the reminder. “Just our fucking luck.”

“I’ll admit I am disappointed to have missed my chance to meet Ruth,” says Stede. “There are so few lady pirates. But I’m glad to see she had a vibrant community, here.”

“Mmm. Yeah,” Ed agrees with a sigh. “Plenty of characters.”

“Your mother knows how to pick them.”

She and Stede seem to have that in common. Old Wives Town gives Ed the same sort of vibe as when he first boarded the Revenge. Each woman and child they’ve passed by has had a recognizable roughness to them, but there’s still a prevailing sense of harmony. Still, it’s weird to think about Mum nobly running a refuge for other battered women here. Every time Ed considers his mother favorably like that, his insides get all twisty.

“I’m. I’m fuckin’ mad,” Ed huffs. He squeezes his eyes shut to force himself to stop staring at Mum’s house and a tear rolls down his cheek. “I’m mad at her,” he admits, if only to Stede, for now. “She’s all open arms, and- and saying ‘sorry’, and I’m spoiling to fight! But… she’s been through a lot. I don’t want to- to beat up on her, too.”

Stede makes a knowing noise. “Oh, no. But you have needs,” he tells Ed. “You deserve to have your say of how you feel.”

“Ugh. Fucking feelings.”

This shit was so much easier when Ed could set fire to his problems. One step! Done!

Stede pulls on Ed’s hip, gently turning him around in his arms. “There’s no rush, Ed,” Stede tells him when they’re face to face. He tip toes in to kiss his tear stained cheek. “We’ll be here a fortnight, yet. Now, come away from the door so we can heat up the cabin. I’m losing feeling in my bum!”

“Not your bum!” Ed grins a kiss to Stede’s forehead and gives him a quick grope. He did promise. “I’ll get started on a fire.”

“We’ll have tea! I’ll nip out to the well for some water and be right with you.”

Whoever lived in this cabin last brought in just enough firewood that Ed won’t have to gather more until morning, but the tinderbox has been scraped clean. Could go scrounge some up outside, but he already took his boots off. He does what he can to get a few licks of flame going, and then makes big sparkly eyes at Stede when he comes back.

“There’s no tinder,” Ed pouts.

“Ah!” Just as soon as Stede sets down his bucket, he reaches for the row of books set on the mantle. “Here, this book isn't very good. The tone’s all over the place, and it's about as thematically deep as a puddle.”

“That’ll do.”

Rather than hand it all over, Stede rips it in half. Hot. And Ed’s already on his knees…

“There you are, dear.”

The pages make for pretty good kindling when rolled and twisted. Soon as this thing gets cooking, Ed’ll take full advantage.

“Wouldn’t mind a bit more, mate.” He holds out a hand. “Gimme the other half of that.”

“Uhh…” Paper flaps furiously overhead and Stede rips out four more pages.

Ed snorts. “C’mon, man, you said it was shit!” He tries to swipe the rest of the book out of Stede’s hands, but he jumps back.

“But I haven’t finished reading!” His eyes rove down another page that he immediately rips and hands off.

“Don’t you want me to lay you down and light you up next?” Ed hops to his feet and makes another attempt to grab the book.

“Ah!” Stede yelps. He valiantly hides it behind his back despite an attack of kisses. “Just save me the last page!”

“You’re ridiculous, love.”

Just the way Ed likes it.

There’s an elegant solution to this bullshit where Ed’s guts ties in knots whenever he looks at Mum’s house. He considered disemboweling himself, sure- but instead he simply turns his back to the sight as he chops wood. Still, he’s aware he’s gaining an audience of snoopy children peeking over the hedgerow. He can hear them chattering and wondering, but seeing as he had no use for adults as a child, he can’t imagine what about. He’s not gonna ask. Ed’s not trying to get stuck babysitting on his vacation, after all. It’s just like with dogs. You let someone know you think their pup is kinda cute, and next thing you know they’re asking you to feed the thing while they’re on shore leave healing from a peg leg, and then one day they come and take the mangy mutt back, and it turns out they’ve decided to become a fucking blacksmith, even though you know the dog is scared shitless of fire. Just for a completely made up example that did not happen to Ed.

Anyway, if those little pipsqueaks want an introduction, they’ll have to puff up their scrawny little chests and ask for it. He’s not gonna break! Even when Stede comes out with steamy tea for them, he beckons him over before it can spoil his iron clad front.

“Shh.” Ed leads Stede around by the elbow to stand beside him. “I’m playing hard to get.”

“Not your strongest suit,” Stede whispers as he passes over cup and saucer.

“You calling me easy, mate?”

“Favorably!” Stede insists. “Lord knows I can get in love’s way enough for two people...”

“Good morning, Mr. Last Page,” Ed grins.

“Good morning, my dear,” Stede coos. “Did you sleep well?”

Ed takes a contemplative sip of his tea. “Y’know, I thought I heard this weird scratching, in the middle of the night?”

“I think we’re used to the water. Our poor ears don’t know what to make of the wilderness.”

“Mmm, true.”

“Well if anything else goes bump in the night, you can always wake me. I’ll have you from behind.” Stede smirks and fakes a cough. “I’ll have your back, I mean!”

“See? How’m I supposed to resist a tired old ploy like that?”

Stede bats his eyelashes over the edge of his teacup. “Hopefully, we’ll never learn…”

Ed throws his head back and gets the last sugary trickle of tea. “Mmm!” he smacks his lips. “Did you chisel off a hunk for Tassy?”

Stede pats the pocket of his robe. “Follow my lead,” he says. “Shall we go visit our nice little pony?” he then asks much too loudly, so the children spying on them can hear.

“Uhh, yeah.” Ed gives Stede’s sleeve a tug before he tucks them arm in arm. “Are you warm enough for a walk?”

“While the tea lasts me.”

Fine china laid aside, they wander away in the direction of the stable. Giggles follow them down the main drag of the village.

“Have I ever told you,” Stede goes on boldly, “I think our Tassletail may be descended from unicorns?”

Ed scratches his forehead. “You know, I did think she had a funny swirl of hair here, but I didn’t wanna make ‘er self conscious.”

“No! It’s vestigial magic horn!”

“…I do always feel extra good after I give her nose a pat,” Ed considers. There might be something to this…

“That’s her luck, rubbing off.” Stede wags a finger between the two of them. “Could we do with some luck?”

“I was thinking maybe we could play some cards, later.”

“What stakes are we playing for?”

“Our usual,” Ed winks.

Any other way of putting it would be too indelicate for the little ears, still trailing along behind them.

“Can we meet Tassletail?” shrieks a young voice.

Ed and Stede stop in their tracks. With years of practice at synchronizing their drama, they turn on their heels.

“Oh, hey. Didn’t see you there.”

The three little children standing there giggle. Two boys and a girl, who’s clearly the one who spoke. She looks extremely pleased with herself, and rather practiced at it, with meticulously parted and plaited hair.

“Well can we?” she demands.

“Sheesh,” says the taller, slightly older looking of the two boys.

“You might say ‘please’, Harriet,” says the other.

“Well, you two weren’t saying anything,” the girl sniffs.

“I’d be happy to make the introduction,” Stede says, bowing to them. “If I knew who to introduce.”

“I’m Harry,” says the girl. “And that’s my brother Elijah, and that's Todd,” she says of the younger and older boy, respectively.

“Hello!” Elijah beams, revealing a missing front tooth.

Todd gives an aloof little wave, like he can take it or leave it. “Yep.”

Harry rolls her eyes and fixes her hands on her hips. “He’s acting cool, but he was the one who wanted to meet you so badly.”

Ed raises an eyebrow. “Oh yeah?”

With a sigh that seems to come from the soles of the lad’s shoes, Todd looks up at Ed through his dark, messy fringe. “I heard someone say once, that Mrs. Teach was Blackbeard’s mum. And Aunt Polly said she’s your mum, too.”

“Blackbeard’s dead,” Harry reminds him. “How great can he be?”

“Pfft,” says Ed. “Right?!”

“So you’re Blackbeard’s brother, right?” Todd reasons.

“Caught me.” Ed puts his hands up.

Elijah actually staggers, wide eyed with wonder. “Wow.”

“Have you met him too?” Todd asks Stede.

Stede flits a glance at Ed. “Yes, yes. In a completely legitimate context, mind you…”

“He came to see one of our shows, right?”

“I think it was a matinee. The sun was out, so I did get quite a good look at him.”

A woman who looks just like Harry except for a crooked nose comes around the corner of one of the houses. “Where are you off to?” she asks, with a concerned lilt. “Who’s that man?!”

“It’s Mr. Teach, Mother!” Elijah waves. “We’re just going to the stable to see the aminals!”

“Teach?”

Ed’s own Mum pops out into the open, next. “It’s all right,” she reassures her. “My son’s no kidnapper.”

“No, no one’s done any kidnapping, Mother,” Harry pipes up, in case they want her point of view.

They don’t, and they keep quarreling over her head-

“He doesn’t have to take them whole! He could just take their finger bones to pick his teeth.”

“I’m surprised at you, Hettie,” Mum tuts. “You’re more sensible than that. The worst men are quite mundane about it…”

Beginning to get the sense the rumor mill is well oiled, here.

“Good morning,” Stede bids them, brightly.

“…Morning, sir.” Harry and Elijah’s mum waves a wary hand. “And you. Pray tell, are you a mundane man?”

Stede chuckles and tosses back his artful curls. “I hate to be the blowhard who quotes his own reviews, but the Theatrical Dispatch once called me ‘bizarre yet entirely benign'.”

“They were not feeling your Lady Macbeth,” Ed shakes his head.

“That was before the restaging!” Stede hastens to clarify.

Ed spares Mum a curt nod, and then hurries them all along their way. They let Tassletail out of her door and break off chunks of the sugar for each child to offer. Then when it occurs to Ed they’ve probably never tasted sugar themselves, of course he jogs back over to the cabin for more.

“She won’t stop licking my hand!” Elijah giggles as Tassletail snuffles for more treats. In return, he refuses to stop petting her velvety nose, either. Fair’s fair.

“Now I’m so lucky, I’m going to beat you both at jacks,” Harry declares.

Elijah grins. “I’m going to win at naughts and crosses.”

“Those aren’t games of chance,” Todd frowns. “What about cards? I’d bet my pumpkin seeds against your sunflower.”

Elijah’s face drops, though the severity is undercut a bit by his missing tooth. “Mother doesn’t allow playing for wagers.”

“Father was a gambler,” Harry adds darkly. “It’s no good for people with tempers.”

God, they’re too young to know the ins an outs of all that. At least they should be. Suppose that’s why they're here.

Ed gives the discouraged Todd a pat on the back. “Reckon this is an opportunity to make up your own game,” he tells the lad.

Stede folds his arms, cleverly. “I don’t suppose you’re the ones who drew those chalk marks all over the floor in our cabin before we came?”

“We didn’t mean to make a mess!” Elijah startles. “It was empty! We were just using it-”

Harry elbows her overly honest little brother. “We just wanted to keep out of Mother’s way while she worked.”

“Ah, of course,” Stede nods.

Todd looks up to Ed. “Would it be okay if we went in and got some playthings we left behind?”

“What, so you can ransack us for more sugar?” Ed says.

Todd shrinks. “We- we really did leave things in the cellar,” he stammers. “We wouldn’t steal!”

“Don’t wuh-whip us,” Elijah pleads, with wobbling lip.

Stede catches Ed’s eye with a knowing look. They’re both all too familiar with that feeling that every direction is set with traps.

“Aww, I’m just teasin’ ya,” Ed says. “We have plenty to share, I meant.”

“Besides, a little bit of mischief's good at their age, right Ed?” Stede smiles. “A sure sign of health!”

“Oh, totally!” Ed extends a welcoming arm back towards the cabin. “Help yourselves, mate.”

Todd quickly smiles, then turns to his friends. “I’ll get it. Be right back!” he tells them, before bolting off like a rabbit, full speed back down the path.

“I’d kill for that kinda energy,” Ed sighs.

“Watch out, it can be infectious,” Stede says.

“Could I sit up there?” Elijah asks, his little hands reaching only midway up Tassletail’s withers.

Stede obliges, hoisting the boy up. “Case in point,” he grunts in effort.

“What about you?” Ed asks Harry.

She hooks her fingers into a bright yellow piece of yarn looped around her neck, and pulls it with a grimace. “No... I like looking more than riding,” she admits.

“I feel ya,” Ed agrees.

Stede points to Harry’s string. “That’s quite the fun fashion statement,” he smiles. “Have you spun that yourself?”

“Mother did!” Harry immediately begins unwinding the thing from around her head, and loops it around each wrist instead. “It’s a game.”

Now, Ed is no stranger to the entertainment value of a bit of rope, but of this measly string, he is skeptical. “You could hardly skip with that,” he frowns.

Harry dips her middle fingers into each loop at her wrist and pulls her hands apart again, now tangled in a web of string. “It’s called Cat’s Cradle,” she says. “It’s kind of a big deal.”

“Oh yes!” Without preamble, Stede reaches into the nonsense of string, pinches a few bits of it, and transfers it into his own hands in a new shape. “This was all the rage,” he says.

Harry is just as confused as Ed. “Where’d you learn to do that?!”

“Yeah, what the hell?”

Stede takes a knee so that it’s easier for Harry to hook into the strings again. “Well, I have two children,” he says by way of explanation.

“Oh! We didn’t see them when you came to town.” Eijah cranes over, arms wrapped around Tassletail’s neck. “Would they come play with us, too?”

“I’m afraid not,” says Stede. The corners of his mouth struggle to make up their mind which way to turn. “They live far away, with their mother.”

“Aww.” Elijah slumps, though he looks at Stede as though he’s just as disappointed for him as for his own interests. “Do you miss them?”

“Of course!” Stede smiles up at him. “But I appreciate you lot keeping me up to snuff, for when I see them again,” he says, charmingly.

Ed shifts his weight and glances around for his own Mum. Bit too much family estrangement going around right now, for comfort. He won’t sour this for Stede, though. It’s obvious how much he enjoys whatever little secret stringy handshake thing they’re doing. If Ed’s gonna stuff Stede into a front row seat of his family drama, the least he can do is let him soothe his own, and not scare these little guys off.

“Hey,” he nods to Elijah. “Want me to lead ‘er around for you?”

“Yes, please!”

Stede is a very wordy man. It’s easily one of Ed’s favorite things about him. Together they yap and yap and yap like tumbling puppies, nibbling each other’s ears. And Stede can turn it outward- which is a lifesaver when Ed can’t seem to make his mouth work in Mum’s presence. His ability- or willingness, at least- to write on any subject has kept them fed these past few years, too. Perhaps most endearingly of all, Stede often fashions his own terms, just for Ed.

“Come on. Squbble in, you,” he says.

“Ooph.” Ed throws himself back into the bed, beside Stede. “I beg your pardon?”

“It’s your special breed of squirmy cuddling, at the expense of turning anything in limb’s reach to rubble,” Stede explains with a gleam in his eye. “What do you think?”

Seeing as Ed just kicked two books and an empty jar of marmalade off the end table in his attempt to nestle up Stede’s armpit…

“I think you’ve nailed it,” Ed grins. “It’ll go down in the dictionary for all time, right next to a picture of me, giving you a black eye.”

Stede snickers and flips the page of his book. “It’s a good thing you’re no stranger to having a fearsome reputation.”

“Dick,” Ed laughs into his warmth. “You reading Winter’s Tale again?”

“Predictable, I know,” Stede says. “But it reads differently, in the cold.”

“Does it now?”

Stede curls his arm around Ed and tangles his fingers into his hair, making him wriggle. “It heightens the desire to keep friends close, I think.”

“The cold’s certainly kept me squbbly,” Ed agrees. “And desirous.”

“If I’d have known,” Stede grins. “I would’ve sailed us north much sooner.” The book tips to Stede’s chest, and he devotes himself only to combing Ed for a few moments. “My sweetheart…”

Ed leans to bestow a kiss and then settles back down at Stede’s shoulder. He turns the page for him, since he’s currently occupying his arm, and chuckles when Stede silently curls his lip in character.

“Do you suppose the two kings were lovers?”

Stede hums. “It’d explain a lot, wouldn’t it?” he says. “Don’t get me wrong, Leontes makes mistakes going about it, but the way he can’t bear to let Polixenes leave…”

“You could do a rewrite,” Ed suggests. “I bet your Leo would be a real flirt.”

Again, Stede lowers his book. “My true friend. I’ll suffer not your exit,” he says, in flowery tones. “Will you go yet? Must I be your jailer? If forced to keep you, I will make a cell!”

Ed laughs, but plays along. “A cell?” he frowns. “I like it not, my lord. I leave.”

“Even bedded with the softest pillows?” Stede cradles Ed’s skull with both hands. “Kept warm against this, my loving bosom?”

“Hmm.” Ed scrunches one eye, in consideration. “Yeah, okay. What the hell!”

With that, he pounces. He shoves the book out of the bed, shoves his tongue in Stede’s mouth, and squirms like he’s never fucking squirmed before. They’re wearing more clothes than ever in the cold weather, so he sort of has to, if he wants Stede to feel his dick.

“Edward,” Stede mumbles against his lips. He bucks against Ed’s body, just as intent on making his loving hunger known. He rolls them across the bed and pins Ed down, at the mercy of his eager hips. “Oh, darling,” he breathes. “How can it be that I had you at sunrise, and come noon I’m desperate again?”

“That’s vacationing, as I’m given to understand it.” Ed grins up at Stede and flings his arms wide. “Time is meaningless!”

Stede makes a muffled squawk as he hauls off his shirt and knitwear. He comes out the other end rumple haired and redfaced, and fucking perfect.

“No, my love,” he says, as he bends to Ed once more. “This time with you is very precious. I mean to make very meaningful love to you…”

They melt together again, rolling and grasping and sipping on each other’s sighs.

“I want you,” Ed growls. “Want you to keep me captive in your bed, all winter…”

“It’ll take all winter to get our dozen bloody layers off,” Stede whines, struggling with his buttons.

Ed pushes his lamentably covered dick alongside Stede’s. The heat and the pressure are pretty fucking great, as is. “Just- hnn!”

“No, no, you’re right. This is good for a minute. This is- mnnhh.”

“Hhhg!”

“Just like that, yes?”

“Yeah, love!” Ed pulls Stede back down into a probing, sucking kiss. “Mmn. Mmmn!”

The bed frame squeaks and moves with them as they grind, which is a foreign thing after their years of fucking in built in bed nooks. It doesn’t occur to Ed that the way it knocks into the wall with their every thrust might disguise other sounds.

“Ohmydarling,” Stede pants, as they jointly tremble. “OhIloveyousomuch.”

“Love you,” Ed whines back. But he’s fuckin’ ready to take the plunge and get some hands on some dicks. He leverages his heels against the bed so he can make room to pull down his- “Hrk! Cramp. Oww…”

Stabbing pain through his backside, and down his leg.

Instantly, Stede shifts his weight, from off of Ed to his own knees and elbows. “Your back?”

“Yeah,” Ed gasps, as he rides out a painful spasm. He clenches, curling around Stede like the clawed setting of a gem. He stays wrapped around his shoulder, panting as his eyes open once more. “Oh fuck.”

“I’m sorry, darling” Stede murmurs against his neck. “What would be more comfortable?”

It takes another second for Ed’s vision to actually clear.

“Uhm.”

Mum is standing in the cabin door with a basket, one hand still frozen on the latch. “I did knock,” she says with a grimace.

“Wuah!” Stede yelps at her voice, rolling off of Ed and all the way over the edge of the bed.

Now, Ed’s well past giving a fuck who knows about him and Stede- but he’d still prefer if his Mum got the news at some moment other than when he’s one bloody squeeze away from getting off! He huffs a breath, heated by equal parts thwarted desire and embarrassment.

“Hi, Mum.”

Oh please, let her decide to turn right back around.

“It’s all right, boys.” Mum raises an allowing hand, but does avert her eyes as Stede stands, for decency’s sake. “I should’ve known better than to come in. This cabin’s only empty because Emmaline and Hope took up together, and you do have that same doting look about you...”

Stede finds the nearest pillow and hastily covers his naked chest. “Oh.” He gulps and waves around a finger. “So you don’t have any problem with- with he and I? Uhh. Ahem. Not that I require your leave, ma’am, respectfully!” He straightens his spine proudly, chin up. “I love your son! Come what may.”

The corners of Mum’s eyes crinkle in a way Ed’s never really seen before. “That’s no trouble in Old Wives Town,” she smiles.

Ed blows out a cooling breath and drags himself out of the bed. “Sure,” he huffs. “If they don’t allow men, why bother with a law against their sleeping together?”

Mum stands by, serenely. “I only hope you’re happy, Edward,” she says. “You don’t owe me an explanation. You don’t owe me anything, really,” she says, looking down into her basket. “You could demand to take the town back, as it's in your name, and… I would be sorry, but I would understand it.”

“I’m not gonna take the town back,” Ed groans. He can put that one worry to bed, at least. “It’s… good. It’s a good place to exist.”

Looking just a little lighter hearted, Mum nods. “Thank you,” she says. “Well, by the by. I wanted to bring you some fresh bread and the like. That’s all.”

“Ah! Thank you very much,” says Stede. Having found his robe, he quickly crosses the room to help square things away.

While her basket is being unloaded, Mum carefully approaches Ed. She doesn’t try to hug him again, or start tearing up, but she gazes up at him for a long, tender moment before she speaks. “When you’re ready to talk, why don’t you come over for dinner, one of these nights?” she suggests.

“Yeah,” Ed says. “Some night…”

“Just be mindful of that bear, and you boys can go fetch whatever you like from the storehouse. I’ll be glad to cook it for you.”

“Oh. Cheers.”

“There must be a thousand turkeys and geese,” Mum chuckles. “Polly went overboard, this season… And the pork has been a favorite, certainly. Though, you may have to fight off more than bears for it.”

Ed raises an eyebrow at the generous supply. “You’ve come a long way from pottage and fish heads,” he says.

Yet those shabby trimmings, watered down and minced to oblivion, were the least unpleasant part of their family dinners. Dad’s tirades were the main course. If he could see Mum at the head of not just a household, but entire plentiful town, he’d choke on his own tongue.

Mum sighs at the memory too, and when she speaks again, her already quiet voice strains. “I’ve been blessed,” she says. “Your generosity, of course. And now, you coming back.” She sniffs and lifts her apron to blot her face. When she blinks back tears with those eyes that mirror his own exactly, it’s like Ed is thirteen, all over again. “You have always been my greatest blessing.”

Ed knows a good son would have kind words for his mother. He would hug her, and carp on and on about how he couldn’t do all the great and noble deeds he does if it hadn’t been for learning at her knee. But he’s not a good son. Even if Mum is trying to will it into being, he’s not.

Perhaps sensing this, Stede comes along with Mum’s basket, now emptied of its gifts. “Thank you for everything,” he tells her. “We’ll be along to visit you, all in good time. With shirts on!” he adds.

At least Ed can offer Mum a top of the line son in law. A fucking brilliant, gorgeous one, even. That’s some comfort to his nebulous sense of guilt. There may also be something tangible he can do for her, meanwhile…

“Know what we should do?” Ed says, after Mum departs.

Stede’s eyes dart across the room. “I had a thought…”

“Besides climb back into bed and finish what we started?”

Stede whips a kitchen rag at Ed’s belly. “What?” he smirks. “I know that look of yours, Ed. You’ve got something clever in mind…”

Ed reels him closer, inch by inch of the towel. “We could chase off that fucking bear, once and for all.”

“Now that would be something!” Stede beams. “Should we practice getting mauled, just so we know what not to do?” he asks, quite reasonably.

With a growl, Ed scoops an arm around Stede. He nips at his cheek, “You first.”

Everything with a pulse has something that makes it race. Something that makes it tuck its tail between its legs and run for the hills. For most people, the sight of Blackbeard’s flag does the trick. For a bear, its bells. Well, Ed may have burned the last of his flags years ago, but he does have a bathtub. What’s a brass bathtub if not a big fuck off bell?

Just beyond the storehouse, there’s a large clearing in the forest. The ground slopes, giving them good sight lines, and a bit of protection. With Tassletail’s help, they haul the tub up into the trees, to hang in mid air. Just ahead of that, Ed and Stede cobble together a framework of branches, and wrap it in oiled cloth. Two eyes and a six foot wide grin, ready to be fanged by flames. When the bear comes to investigate the bait they’ve set, she’ll get her own goose cooked!

Stede holds fast to a line that puppets the jaw, eyes fixed on Ed for the cue. Ed watches for their mark. She ought to be prowling. They haven’t yet seen the beast for themselves, but Polly had said that after dinner was the most dangerous hour.

Bushes rustle with the wind. Little creatures creep. Tassletail laps at one of the buckets of water, set close by in case of emergency. Then! A hulking black shadow lumbers into the glade.

Closer, closer, Ed wills her to roam. Then she reaches the first pile of bait, and he raises a hand. Light it up, he signals Stede, wiggling his fingers like flames.

Delighted with her easy hunt, the bear doesn’t look up- but they don’t need her to, just yet. The fire spreads along the giant face, flickering the clearing with light, and gilding Stede’s triumphant grin in gold.

“Tassletail,” Stede hisses. “Kick!”

That gets the bear’s attention. She looks up at the huge, flaming maw, dropping a wad of uneaten goose from her comparatively tiny snout.

Bongbongbong, Tassletail kicks the bathtub, then Ed chucks a sachet of gunpowder into the fire.

Bongbongbong, BANG!

There’s a flash and a pelting explosion of dirt. The bear jumps back, rearing on her hind legs and falling off balance in surprise. Maybe Ed’s just imagining it, but the ground seems to shake with her fury. She roars, spewing saliva into the air that glints in the fire light.

“Ugh! What’d you eat before this, girl?! A heap of shit?”

Bongbongbong, then BANG! Ed throws a second charge.

The bear jumps back again without roaring. Light dances in her fearful eyes as her head swings side to side, searching for escape from this ungodly racket.

Bongbongbong, BANG!

“Fuck off!”

Bongbongbongbongbong…

The bear whimpers once more, then off she scampers from whence she came.

“My God, did you see the size of her?” Stede wonders. “We’ve seen smaller whales!”

Bongbongbongbongbong…

Ed throws the last of the gunpowder, just to save the trouble of packing it back up.

BANG!

“There’s only room for one big hairy fuck in this town!” he bellows after the bear, fists in the air. “Haha!”

Ed jumps and jigs about until his knee insists he stop. While he stands and catches his breath, something pokes him between the shoulder blades.

“I knew thee would be trouble,” says a gritted voice.

“Polly!” shouts Mum, just a few paces behind. “Stop it!”

Both Ed and Stede whirl around. Besides Mum and Polly, nearly everyone in the village has come to hover by the edge of the wood, some yards back. More than one baby cries in its mother’s arms, and another little girl covers her ears.

“Tassletail! Stand down!”

When the banging stops, relief ripples through the crowd to the extent that they now feel empowered to ask questions.

“What’s the idea? It’s nine o’clock!” one woman yells.

“Who is that?”

“Is that a face?”

Mum is out of breath, having run out here. Her balance wavers and she stumbles into Stede’s arms.

“Mrs. Teach!”

“Does thou want thy mother in an early grave?! Is no man happy until he kills someone?!” Polly demands, her musket still raised.

Ed goes cross eyed tracking the tip of it. “I’m not the one waving a gun around, mate.”

“Please, Polly,” says Mum, mastering her voice. “Put it down! This is not how we do things here, screaming and threatening.”

Polly shrinks away. “I’m sorry, Missus.”

“Go send the children back home, then get who you can to bring water,” Mum tells her. Even as she leans on Stede’s arm, she’s as commanding as any captain Ed ever saw. “Put this fire out.”

“Mum,” Ed breathes.

Where was this energy when he was young? When he needed protecting?

When Polly retreats, Mum rounds on Ed, standing up to him on her own strength. “What are you doing?” she asks, urgent but even. “Don’t you know how frightening that was?”

“Yeah!” Ed throws his hands up. “That’s the idea. You’re welcome! We scared off the bear!”

“The bear?” Mum spares a glance out into the wilderness.

“It’s fucking gone!” Ed says. “You’re safe now!”

Mum clenches her eyes shut. “No one asked you to do that, Edward!” she shouts. “I only wanted you to be careful! Be safe!”

She’s never really yelled at him before. Ed never knew what it would be like. He ran away rather than meet her anger before, but he’s ready for it now. He needs it. He needs to be angry, too.

“Someone had to do something!” he shouts back. “What did you want? To live in fear the rest of your life, until he killed you?!”

“No!”

“Might as fucking well have!”

“Edward!” Stede scolds.

Hot tears sting in Ed’s eyes and instantly freeze on his cheeks. “I’ll never see you again,” he cries. “Did what had to be done, and you’ll throw me out for it. You will!”

Mum stands there shaking her head. After a glance to see that the fire is being doused, she heaves a sigh and turns back to him. “I’m not throwing you out,” she says evenly.

Stede hovers at Ed’s elbow, brow knit tight. “Darling, it’s not about the bear,” he says, softly. “Please. Please tell your mother why you’re upset. Really.”

Ed sniffs and swallows a snotty glob in his throat. “You let him beat us, Mum,” he chokes out.

“My boy.” She tries to reach for him, but Ed jerks away. Mum’s hand flies to her own face too late to muffle a sob. “If you’d warned me,” she cries. “If you’d just told me what you were going to do!”

“You would have stopped me!”

“I might have taken you away,” Mum claims, through tears. “You might never have had to run or fight, or do any of it!”

“You didn’t, any of hundreds of times you could’ve! And you didn’t come when I sent for you!” Ed waves a hand back at the village. “If I could have- if I could’ve come home! I don’t think I ever would have stayed pirating as long as I did. Wouldn't have seen half the shit that keeps me up at night…”

“Oh, Ed.” Stede reaches out to touch his shoulder.

Ed curls into it, grappling at Stede’s jacket until he’s safely folded in his arms. “I wanna go now,” he sniffs.

“I know.” Stede pats his back.

Vaguely, Ed is aware of Stede making sure the fire and Tassletail are taken care of before they go, but all the while he weeps and spirals in his own mind.

If Mum had taken him away one night. If Mum had said enough is enough. Instead of finding a rope on that dock- they’d find a little boat. Ed would have rowed all night to get them to a new town, and they could’ve started over. Mum could have done laundry for some other lord, and Ed would follow her into service. He’d have made an indispensable valet with his eye for fashion and his wit in predicament. He’d travel all over with his gentleman, pulling the strings of his life and his purse. He’d put away enough to buy Mum a proper home. He’d look after her, because she looked after him.

“I don’t know how I’d ever have met you, though,” Ed sighs into his pillow. “Unless my boss took me to sea, and you captured us…”

Stede strokes Ed’s hair away from his face. “I’d never have gotten that far in my pirating without you, I’m afraid.”

Under the covers, Ed weasels his foot between Stede’s ankles. “Hmph.”

“Not accepting that?”

“No.” Ed pouts his lip.

Stede chuckles and gives his hair a chiding tug. “All right, then. Let’s see…” He narrows his eyes cleverly. “Your Lord Whoever becomes interested in buying land overseas?”

“M’sick to the back teeth of English summers,” Ed agrees. “I need me some sunlight.”

“So you steer him towards the Caribbean! Of course, of course…”

“I have impeccable taste. Everyone says so,” Ed sniffs. “It’s up to my discretion.”

“You tour all the islands while estate shopping, but nothing stands out… until my topiary garden.”

Ed tuts. “Lord Whoeverthefuck wants to cut it down when he buys the place.”

“Oh no!” Stede gasps.

“Yeah! I can’t stand the idea of anyone destroying your art, so I bugger up the sale. You’re so relieved, you bugger me in the bush shaped like a pirate ship.”

“There you have it,” Stede laughs as he pulls Ed into a kiss. “Mmm.”

“Back where I’m meant to be,” Ed says. He burrows into Stede’s embrace and sighs. One last tear dribbles out the corner of his eye. “Still would have to take you home to Mum at some point, get her blessing.”

Stede kisses the top of his head. “I’d be glad to,” he says. “And I’m glad we’re here, now.”

Despite the scene tonight, Ed is too. He’s in Stede’s arms, wherever they go, because that's the freewheeling way they like it. That’s something. Maybe he doesn’t have to be glad to have lived the life he did, in order to meet Stede. He can just be glad for the life they lead, together.

Most people give Ed a wide berth the next day. That’s fine. Even if he hadn’t made a spectacle of himself last night, he’d be in no mood for small talk. His leg started playing up before he even opened his eyes this morning, and within an hour of being on his feet, his back joined in. The only exceptional, inquisitive souls are the trio of children he and Stede befriended at the stable. When they see Ed and Stede set out to fetch their bathtub from the forest, they jump up at once. The hoop they’d been chasing around rolls off into a ditch, abandoned.

“Mr. Teach! Mr. B!” they call, swarming all around them.

They may be nosy, but they’re dead useful little maniacs. They help bring in the bathtub and then offer to fill it, bucket by bucket, for the sheer novelty of never having seen such a thing.

“You could float some paper boats in there when you’re done,” Ed suggests, just so he doesn’t feel like a complete heel, making them do chores.

“Here, I have all these scratched out pages from my writing,” says Stede, hurrying to make good on the offer.

The table in the cabin is too small for five, so they spread out on the floor with their crafts. The younger Harry and Elijah need a fair bit of helping to keep track of the steps, but Stede is a very patient teacher. He shows them how to fold their boats, crease by crease, and gently corrects when they make mistakes. Todd, on the other hand…

“Boy. Leave some paper for the rest of us,” Ed reminds him with a chuckle. “Here, take a quill and draw some gun ports on there. Maybe a figurehead?”

“Wicked!” he grins, seizing the quill.

“Could we make flags for our boats?” asks Harry, her little eyes popping.

“Certainly,” says Stede. “Any pirate worth a da- a darn- has to have a flag.”

Ed watches as Todd very methodically spaces out his design, using the width of his finger for consistency. Clever tyke.

“But what happened there?” Ed frowns, at the back of his hand. There’s a nasty red scratch, clear across the plane. “Looks like you had a scrap. Was it those kids always playing horseshoes? They look like little arse-”

“Ed,” Stede cuts him off.

“-Assassins,” Ed coughs.

Still. Now that Stede has taken a liking to these kids, Ed’s not about to let them get messed around.

Todd claps his other hand over his scratch. “Aw, it’s nothing,” he says, with a shifty look. “Just caught myself on the corner of a chair.”

“Right! Twas a chair!” says Harry, with an oversold tone that would be right at home on the Tableau. Meanwhile Elijah, the most earnest of the children, is notably tight lipped.

“Mhmm.” Ed winces at the look of Todd’s cut. They probably went climbing somewhere they aren’t allowed, but he’s not a snitch. “Has your mum put anything on it?” he checks.

“No… I don’t have a mum,” Todd shrugs.

“He lives in the big house with Mrs. Teach and the mummies who need help with their babies,” Elijah reports.

“It’s really boring there,” says Todd.

Harry scoffs. Understatement. “This whole town is boring.”

“Mm.” Stede shrugs one shoulder. “It’s hardly London...”

“It’s nice!” Elijah frowns, taking the defensive. “No one’s ever scared or fighting and nothing bad happens to us!”

Todd rolls his eyes. “Yeah, ‘cause nothing ever happens, period.”

“That fire last night was the most exciting thing to happen since- since ever!” claims Harry.

With a click of his tongue, Ed shoots the kids some finger guns. “Happy to be of service, aren’t we, Mr. B?”

“Yes, well…” Stede scoops up Todd’s little hand for inspection. “I’ll get you some salve,” he decides. “There’s no need to go getting gangrene just to keep things interesting!”

“Where have I heard that before?” Ed hums wistfully as Stede goes to fetch his medicine kit.

He does love to see Stede in his caring element, like this. He’s always good to the crew, of course, but the man’s got an extra special sparkle that comes out around the little ones. It’s fucking adorable how readily Stede’ll kneel to be on even footing with them, and how he minces his swears, and frets that everyone get a hearty snack at tea time. It sort of blows Ed’s mind to imagine having a kindly male presence like that, in his youth. He envies these little brats, just a bit.

With everyone in tip top shape, they crowd around the bathtub for their boat launch. Each places their ship in the water, naming it and giving it a little push.

“The Sea Princess,” Harry announces. “She’s very fancy.”

“The envy of all in her wake,” Stede agrees.

Elijah places his boat and puffs out his cheeks to blow it along. “The Night Wind,” he says in a mystical hush.

“I like the stars on the hull,” Ed points out.

“That makes it go faster,” Elijah nods.

Ed looks across the tub to Stede. “We should try that.”

Next, Todd sends out his ship. “This is Sharkblaster,” he grins. “It has teeth!”

“Next time I’ve got to name a ship, I’m asking you first,” Ed chuckles. He puts his own creation into the water, topped with a miniature flag, speared on with a pin. “The Queen Anne’s Revenge,” he smiles. “What a beaut.”

“Your brother’s ship!” says Todd.

“Mhmm…”

“Wow. What’s this one?” Harry asks Stede.

His boat has some familiar architectural details scribbled on its sides, though Ed’s favorite is the two little stick figures drawn holding hands on a fighting top.

“The Revenge, the debut ship of The Gentleman Pirate!”

“I’ve never heard of him,” says Elijah.

Harry raises an eyebrow. “Did he just copy Blackbeard, naming his ship?”

Stede makes an offended little squawk. “He did no such thing!”

“Now hang on, mate,” Ed giggles. “S’my brother you ripped off. Out of family pride, I want this cleared up!”

“There was no theft intended!” Stede insists. “I- er! I heard the Gentleman Pirate admired Blackbeard immensely! He only named it as an homage! Allegedly…”

“Riiight. Like when he went around calling himself Captain Edwards for a bit?” Ed prods.

“That was meant to be a signal of his heartfelt, amicable intentions,” Stede says. “…So I hear!”

Ed blows Stede a little kiss.

The children spend the better part of the morning holed up with them, battling their ships, splashing each other, and then drying off in front of the fire. Stede reads them a story that they like so much, a minor brawl breaks out over who gets to be who when they make a game of it.

“I should write them a little play,” Stede says, later. “They could certainly fill a hat, with acting chops like that!”

Ed snorts. “How many are you already writing, you mad man?”

“Twelve! But I only brought along the manuscripts for three, during this trip.”

“Slacker.”

Look at him go, buzzing about, cleaning up after the kids. Even when they’ve gone home, the excitement they brought with them lingers. That, and the muddy footprints. Not that Ed’s complaining. Just hard not to notice while he’s still stuck down on the floor, doing his damndest to stretch the ache out of his body.

“Stede, did you pack any swords?”

He pauses a moment in his flurry. “No?” Stede’s brow wrinkles in thought. “But I’m certain the children have wooden swords if you’d like to fence sometime, blow off some steam.”

Ed flops back, splaying out on the floor. “Fuck! I could’ve blown it off!”

“What?”

“Used up all the gunpowder! Could’ve blown my leg off with it, for fuck’s sake…”

Stede looms over Ed, hands planted on hips. “We’re not chopping, blowing, or otherwise severing your legs, darling.”

“Pleeeease?” Ed blinks up at him prettily.

“I like being between them too much. I can’t allow it,” Stede says. He dangles down an arm, then. “Do you need help getting up?”

“Thanks,” Ed grunts. “Fuuuuck,” he moans as they pull him upright. “Fuckshitballsfuckerfuckingdickbutt.”

Everything is tight and cramped and his bones are rotting away and he can feel his knee shooting off pain into all sorts of places it doesn’t belong. What’s it doing in his arse? No one told it to go there!

“Just as I thought,” Stede tuts in sympathy. “I’ve already set a tray of coals under the tub. We’ll get you a warm bath tonight. Soak your bones.”

“God, I could fucking kiss you,” Ed growls.

“You could!” Stede smirks back. When they do kiss, he wraps around him tight and pulls some of Ed’s weight off his feet. His spine pops a bit looser. “Mmm. How’s that?”

Ed sighs and gives Stede’s lip another grateful nibble. “Miracle cure,” he murmurs.

There’s definitely a storm coming, that’s why he’s all out of whack. As uncomfortable as that makes Ed while it’s brewing, at least it will delight Stede when it arrives. Until then, they take a walk down to the stable, make sure Tassletail has plenty of warmth and food, and then they bring in enough chopped wood to keep themselves going for a few days.

After dinner and a bath, Ed eases himself up and over to the bed, hopefully to become one with it. He groans indecently as he sinks into a pile of furs. Bears have definitely got the drop on humans. Hibernation’s where it’s at.

The north may be cold and stringent, and there’s this whole business with Mum, but every time Ed starts to regret coming here- there’s something good. No hot stew ever sticks to the ribs so good as when there’s icicles hanging off your nose. No bed ever feels so heavenly as when your husband kept it warm while you snuck out for a piss. No rest is ever so fucking complete as when you know the world has frozen in place, along with you. A blanket of snow tucks everyone in. Whatever’s got your nuts in a twist, don’t worry about it, mate. It’ll all keep awhile.

“You can’t fall asleep on top of all the covers, my dear,” Stede chuckles. “I’ll have to resort to curling up in the fireplace like Cinderella.”

“Naww.” Ed rolls out of the middle of the bed to give Stede some room. “Hate that one,” he grumbles. “Mum tellin’ her she’s no good…”

Despite him moving, Stede climbs in on Ed’s half, anyway. “Can’t have that,” he says. “We’ll get you a new bedtime story. Hmm…” Gently, he kneels to straddle Ed’s bad leg. He clasps his hands around the top of his thigh, and presses his thumbs into the stiffened muscles, deepening slowly so they relax. “What about Standrocles?”

“You mean Androcles?” Ed clenches his teeth as Stede probes into a tender spot. “Theblokewiththethornylion?”

“Standrocles was his brother. Instead of running off into the forest, he went to sea.”

“Ah! Fuck.” Ed fixes on Stede’s face. Something that would never cause him pain. “Reckon he meets a sea lion then,” he says, just to make Stede smile.

There it is.

“Mhmm. But this sea lion couldn’t swim,” Stede tells him. “He had a miserable case of flipper fatigue…”

Ed groans at another deep, rubbing touch. “Getting bummery again, love,” he warns.

“But Standrocles knew all about how his brother pulled the thorn from the lion’s paw,” Stede says quickly. “He heard about how his brother left the forest, and was caught and sent to the arena to face the beasts. It was just dumb luck that the lion was his beast!”

“I wasn’t gonna shit all over Androcles, but yeah!”

Stede slides along to Ed’s knee and rubs it open palmed, building soothing heat. “Standrocles knew that taking away someone’s pain was just the beginning,” he says. “He knew if they parted, they could always get captured, get hurt again… So he decided he could heal the sea lion, yes. But it would take time. For every hour he spent flexing the sea lions flippers back into shape, he spent another, shaping a plank of wood. Plank after plank, until he built them a special boat, where they could rest when they needed rest, and sail when they needed to sail. He told the sea lion, ‘Better to stay together, and keep each other well.’”

A tear sneaks out the corner of Ed’s eye. He loves Stede so fucking much, and Stede loves him. Stede does everything he can to keep him humming along, and yet! He always breaks down, again.

“M’sorry my dumbfuck bones are like this,” Ed sniffs. “Wish they’d just stay fixed.”

Stede carefully bends Ed’s knee up so it’s close enough to lay with a kiss. “I do wish I could take the pain away,” he murmurs there. “But I’m glad to be here and help you around it.”

Ed lowers his knee again so Stede can climb up his body and kiss him properly. He focuses everything he can on just the feeling of Stede’s lips against his, and what it means.

I’m here. I have you. I love you. It’s gonna take a lot more than some storm shitting icicles to keep me from you.

Stede pulls back, trailing the tip of his nose down Ed’s, then pokes it into his cheek for one more kiss. “You’re a little dry,” Stede chuckles.

“You’re a little chilly!” Ed snipes back.

“I’ll pour us some tea, and then I’ll do your back,” Stede decides.

He’s so good at taking care of them both. Ed is skeptical of Stede’s powdered bee carcasses or whatever the fuck he sprinkles on his drink to reduce inflammation, but he swears by the power of Stede’s determination to do it. If anyone could…

The benefits of his tuck in routine are more tangible. Stede sets Ed up in a mountain range of pillows, like one of those mission churches that can be seen for miles on a clear day. Since it is not a clear day, he insists on heat, to help things along. They have a collection of smooth, flat stones that Stede has selected over the years. He cooks them in the fireplace and then drops each into a padded flannel pocket, all in row. They seep heat into the small of Ed’s back and convince it to cut him some fucking slack, already.

“It’s helping,” Ed assures Stede. “Dunno that I’ll get so much as a wink, but at least we got it down to a dull roar.”

“You’ll sleep,” Stede promises with a pat to his chest. He snuggles into the crook of Ed’s arm and breathes slow in an example Ed’s body can’t help but try and emulate, obsessed as it is with Stede’s. “Would you like me to read to you?”

Ed ducks his head to kiss Stede’s. “Nahh. Don’t stay up for me. You’ll wanna be fresh for the fuckload of snow that’s about to drop.”

Stede makes a high pitched sound of excitement. “You’re right! Night night, darling.”

“G’night, love.”

Ed closes his eyes and tries to shut out the pinching, panging, throbbing pains. He listens for Stede’s contented sighs, and counts how many he snuffles into Ed’s chest before he tips over into true snores. Thirty three. An average score for a night when they haven’t worn themselves out by fucking, or being under attack. Fucking while under attack- now, that skews things in the other direction…

But Stede is comfortable, and that makes Ed comfortable, for the most part. It makes him determined not to roll around a bunch, definitely. True to Stede’s prediction, he manages to sleep a while before his aches wake him again in the middle of the night.

The color of the world outside the window has changed with the snow, and there’s the tiniest glimmer of a lamplight, across the way. That’ll be the big house. Mum’s house. Ed can’t be sure if it's really her window, or one of her borders, but he can’t help imagining it might be.

Does she have the same sort of aches and pains as he does? Did Ed get his bad bones from her? Did she ever find anyone after Dad, anyone who actually looked after her, and took care of her when it got to be too much?

Should that have been his duty, as a son?

He’s sorry they fought, now. Well. Maybe not exactly. Ed said what he had to say. He had to get the thorn out. But now… he’s ready for some bandaging. He wants his Mummy to kiss it better. He wants to make sure she’s not hurting any more than she has to, either.

A mound of white perches on the windowsill in the morning, like some animal begging to let it and given a warm saucer. Stede, the lunatic, is begging to be let out.

“I’m not stopping you!” Ed laughs from the bed.

Stede has been up for two minutes and already he’s pulled on two pairs of stockings, some buckskin, and a sweater. He drops his boots at the foot of the bed before cramming them on too and clambering up to Ed. “You have to come out with me, Edward,” he tells him nose to nose. “It’s so beautiful- and you’re so beautiful- it’s where you belong!”

“Well when you put it like that…” Ed surrenders a kiss.

“Perfect!” Stede leaps off of him again while Ed’s lips are still pouted.

“Need to write my name in the snow, anyway,” Ed mutters.

He levers himself out of bed, creaky as a wagon wheel. Just one roll around the yard, then right back under the tarp, thanks!

Beyond their cabin door, the world is glittering and clean slated. The forgiving feeling Ed finally pried out of himself last night persists, even as he lays eyes on Mum’s house again. It’s not imposing, anymore. It’s sweet! And homey! Its chimneys puff away, and the windows glow like amber jewels. If it weren’t for the knee deep snow, and the fact Ed only put his boots and robe on over what little he went to bed in, he’d be drawn to knock at the door.

Later, he promises himself.

Stede wades put into the drift, arms aloft to catch as many snowflakes as he can in his mittened hands. The snow fall is merely charming now rather than apocalyptic, so Ed doesn’t worry when Stede decides he’s going to go walk over to Tassletail.

“I’ll come right back after I say hello and have a snack with her,” Stede promises.

Ed chuckles. “No you won’t.”

Behind Stede and down the way a bit, another cabin door is opening and an adventurous child is tackling their way into the snow. He can’t tell who, they’re wrapped up so thoroughly, but there’s bound to be a gang of them soon, desperate to play.

“It’s nearly up to his waist!” Stede exclaims.

Ed gives the end of his scarf a tug. “Ask those little punks to show you a snow angel,” he tells Stede.

He brushes at a few flakes that cling to Ed’s hair. “My dear, I’m already looking at one…” Stede says.

“I’ll come dick around with you later!” Ed swears. “I need a hot bath to loosen up, first.”

“Mm. Can I get that in writing?”

“I already used up my ink on ‘Edward’.”

Stede scrunches his nose distastefully. “Don’t remind me.”

“Go!” Ed laughs. “Piss off at least until you can’t feel your toes, man.”

While Stede is out, Ed heats up the tub again and gets his bath. He gets in some reading while he soaks, and then some whittling while he dries. And some cooking, in preparation for lunch. Damn, Stede must really be running those kids ragged!

He comes back while Ed is tending the fire and tossing in his carving scraps.

“Oh, it smells amazing in here,” Stede sighs as he unwinds his scarf.

“I’m amazed you can smell. Your nose is redder than my robe.”

Quickly, Stede kicks off his boots and strips off his sodden jacket. He hangs it on a chair next to the fire, and then lands on his knees, beside Ed. “Hello, darling,” he kisses Ed’s forehead. The cold touch raises all the hair on Ed’s scalp.

“Fuck! You’re freezing!” Ed takes Stede’s face in his hands and rubs some warmth into his cheeks. “Did they bury you alive?”

“Yes, actually!” says Stede. “They eulogized me and everything. My second favorite of all my fake funerals, I think…”

“Widowed again,” Ed sighs. “Must be Wednesday.”

Stede chuckles. “Allow me to console you…”

“Yes. Get the rest of these wet clothes off you,” Ed growls. His fingers are much more dexterous than Stede’s at the moment. He makes quick work of the buttons on Stede’s buckskin leggings, and helps drag them down. “Get in here,” he tells Stede, when he’s down to nothing.

He wraps Stede into his robe on top of him, against his own nakedness. He’s been waiting and waiting for this, all morning. He fucking loves Stede all sweaty from exertion, loves to lick the tangy taste of it, and feel his busy pulse under his tongue. He burrows into Stede’s neck and breathes deeply of his gorgeousness.

“S’wonderful out there, Ed,” Stede whispers into his hair. “But the most wonderful is coming back to you.”

Ed’s heart beats hard against both their chests. He winds his arms around Stede and squeezes him closer, to give him every ounce of wonderful he can. “Love,” he whimpers to him. “Mmhh, Stede…”

“How are you feeling?”

Ed grips into Stede’s back. “With my fingers...”

“I forgot I was interrogating an accomplished escape artist.” Stede pushes up onto his elbows to keep Ed from distracting him with kisses. “How’s your leg?”

“Sore,” Ed sighs. “But my back’s eased up. How’re your fingers?”

“Icy,” Stede hisses.

Ed lets his robe fall open, again. “I can see a two birds, one stone situation here, love.”

Right away, Stede shimmies down Ed’s body. He stops when he’s eye level to Ed’s belly. He buries his frozen nose there while he skates his right hand down to Ed’s thigh. “God,” he groans as he rubs himself warm. “Cold’s gone all prickly, now.”

“Between m’legs is even better,” Ed grins.

Stede immediately tucks in between his thighs, without the pretense of offering a massage. “You’ve tricked me haven’t you.”

“Just don’t touch my balls until you’ve- wahhh!” Ed jerks. “Oh, fuck you!”

Stede laughs an apologetic kiss to his stomach. “I’m sorry, my darling. Perhaps if we’d warmed it just a bit more.” He withdraws his hand and reaches up to Ed’s chin. The frigid pads of two fingers slip between his open lips. “Give it another try?”

Ed shivers and sucks him in and hopes like fuck that his body will let him have this. He touches Stede’s wrist as he pulls his fingers away. “Wait. Maybe in the bed would be better?”

“Of course,” Stede kisses him.

They leave Ed’s robe in a pool on the floor and grope their way over to the bed. It’s not as warm as by the fire, so they burrow themselves under their heap of blankets before sliding back together.

“Let me do all the work,” Stede says, smoothing his hand up and down Ed’s body. “I still owe you from our honeymoon...”

“Pfft.” Ed chuckles into a quick kiss. “You paid that back years ago. Find another excuse.”

Stede kisses him again, more deeply. “Because I love you?” he tries.

Ed sighs and scratches his fingers in Stede’s sweaty nape. “Heard that one before, too. Try again.”

This time, Stede sucks on his own fingers as he thinks. “You’re the most radiant creature I’ll ever lay my eyes on,” he says, reaching down between Ed’s legs. “And if you don’t let me lay my hands on you, too, I’ll blind myself. The sight will be too much to bear, for my eyes alone.”

“Better hurry up and stuff my arse, then,” Ed grins.

“Yes,” says Stede. Staring into Ed’s eyes, he pushes in to the first knuckle, without further fucking ado.

Stars! Stars in Stede’s eyes!

“Unnffuck,” Ed huffs. “Hhh!”

“Beautiful,” Stede says, breathlessly. “So beautiful, my love.” He ducks his head to kiss Ed’s neck, since his mouth is hung too wide open to kiss. “I love to see you like this…”

Ed’s dick goes from merely twitchy to burstingly stiff as Stede curls in deeper, fixating on that spot within him- “Ahhhhh. There. Right there. Fuck, right there. Right fucking there! Is that it?!” he asks Stede, detaching from all sense.

“I think it must be.” Stede chuckles a dastardly laugh to Ed’s neck as he deftly strokes him inside, convincing his body to feel something purely good for a change.

Ed can feel the confusion in his nerves, like a swarm of pigeons scattering as a cat comes jumping into their midst. There’s warning flutters of almost pain all around, but wild, more powerful pleasure right in the middle.

“Fuckthatssogood,” he shudders. “Dunno how I’m s’posed to last.”

“Mmm. Don’t hold back, darling,” Stede urges. “I certainly won’t.”

“Fucking… ruthless… prick.”

“I thought you liked that side of me,” Stede teases.

“Uhn!” Ed has to gasp for breath. “I do! Fuckingloveyou…”

“My lovely love.” Stede angles in to kiss him once more. “It’s all right,” he hushes Ed’s whimpering. “It’s all right.” Stede slithers down from Ed’s neck to his chest, peppering it with kisses. “Perhaps I should lay my lips on you, too. Just to be safe...”

“Please!” Ed yelps.

“My, my,” Stede hums, finally getting a hold of Ed’s dick. “I know just what to do with you.” He wiggles back the blankets some, so he can suck Ed down without being entirely buried. “Mmm…”

Ed’s lower half is by far his least reliable, but like this? It’s fucking perfect for a minute. Everything narrows. It’s just Stede’s clever mouth, suckling the head of his dick. Stede’s practiced touch, teasing the root of him from the inside. Fuck Ed’s stiff, shitty joints, he’s a creature of flesh alone, turned to gooey putty.

“Stede… Ah fuck.” Ed clenches at the blankets, at his own chest, at Stede’s hair. His knee could probably stand to be straightened out again but can’t feel it anymore, he’s so close. “Love. Fffffuuuck me. Oh! Ah! Ah!”

All it takes is one more thorough pump into Stede’s mouth and Ed’s a goner- gone from all the cares, all the hurt, for a glorious moment. When he comes back to his aches, everything is softer and he’s laid in Stede’s arms, awash in love.

“There you are,” Stede smiles down at him. “My wonderful one.”

They kiss and murmur love fuddled praise, all the while swarming their bodies together. Stede hardens and heats against Ed’s hip until his dick’s so swollen, it’s practically a third person in the bed.

“Aren’t you going to have your way with me?” Ed prompts him.

“Depends.” Stede eyebrows bounce. “I have many ways to pick from…”

“S’true,” Ed grins. The quick way, the scoundrel way, and the so fucking loud the crew can’t look them in the eye in the morning way all come to mind. “Hmm... How about the gentlemanly way?” Ed suggests.

“A perennial favorite.” Stede clears his throat and shifts off to the side for a moment. He retrieves Ed’s hand from under the covers and presses a kiss to his knuckles. “My good fellow. Would you do me the honor of taking my cock this afternoon?”

“I’d be delighted, sir.”

“I’ll be but a moment. Let me slip into something a little more… slippery.”

Ed has no idea where their oils have got to, but luckily Stede knows. He slips out of bed to give himself a cursory wash and a generous slicking, and then peels back the covers, again. Meanwhile Ed has done the gentlemanly thing and rolled over, arse up.

“Why, thank you for this invitation!” Stede beams. He bends and brushes aside a lock of Ed’s hair to place a kiss to his shoulder blade. “May I?”

Ed chuckles into the pillow. “Please, come in.”

But it’s not a long lived visit with Ed’s gentleman. Stede straddles up behind him, sinks in all of three good thrusts, and then Ed’s ungrateful fucking back cramps up. They try getting on their knees since they’re already in the neighborhood, but that’s never been one of Ed’s better moves, even when his knee’s not on a warpath. Rolling over onto their sides makes the long, irritated nerve in his leg complain all the way down to the heel. By the time Ed’s on his back again, he’s about ready to rip his tongue out if he has to say sorry, sorry, can we move? one more time. He can’t bear it.

“It’s only because the cold weather is so hard on you,” Stede says, trying to make excuses.

“Just… wipe it down and I’ll suck you off,” Ed grumbles. He rubs at his face, not wanting Stede to see him cry for this. It’s fucking stupid.

“Edward, darling.” Stede gently guides his elbow, pulling Ed’s hand from his eyes. “As much as I’d love to have your mouth, I’d hate to see tears on your face, throughout.”

“Then we’re just never gonna fuck again,” Ed says. “We had a good run! May as well chuck our dicks into the sea, now!”

“You’ve said that before, and it hasn’t been true,” Stede reminds him. “Last time, you went for an angry nap in the crows nest, came back, and made love to me over the writing desk so vigorously, I can’t get the drawer to work anymore!”

Ed snorts at the memory. “You glued it shut.”

“Pete had to saw the bottom out, so we could get out the rolls for Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

“Ugh,” Ed covers his face again, this time to laugh. “Don’t mention that shitshow while we’re in the sack!”

Tassletail’s star turn, turned to stark raving madness.

Stede chuckles and pats his hand in the middle of Ed’s chest. “My point is, darling-”

“Don’t say it!”

“-The course of true love never did run smooth!”

“Yeah, mate! It runs straight up the dock in a fright, knocks over three lamps, bowls over a dozen patrons, and drags our entire forest set into Buzzard’s Bay!”

They laugh so hard, they wheeze. When Ed catches his breath again, Stede is there, combing his hair back from his face and smiling just as longingly as ever.

“Ed, it’s all right if you’re feeling too iffy,” he says. “I have only to look upon you, and I’m content.”

Ed lets himself just be kissed. Lets himself enjoy it. Let it be enough, please…

“I just want to feel like my body has something going for it,” he tells Stede. “I don’t fight for real anymore. Can’t digest onions. And lately I get so knotted up…”

“Oh, sweetheart,” Stede frowns.

“If I can be close to you!” Ed reasons. “Feel you. Feel how good you feel…” Ed curls his fingers into Stede’s hair and sighs.

Stede nuzzles his cheek. “You don’t have to break yourself to do that, my love. Please.”

He presses Ed with a long, gentle kiss, mouth opening so slowly, tongue playing so coy, even the most delicate hair on Ed’s body couldn’t possibly object. He moves over Ed again, sliding their dicks into tantalizing, sticky contact. But he stops him when Ed tries to sneak a hand in.

“Can I just…”

“No…”

“I wanna jerk you off, at least!”

“No, no,” Stede tells him lightly. “Just lie there. You make a very good pillow, you know.”

Still- as they kiss, Ed rolls his hips a little. He’s not made of fucking stone. Not if he’s a pillow. Stede’s the lumpy one. Oh, now he sees where this is going.

“Am I your fuck pillow?” he purrs to Stede’s lips.

Stede laughs. “If you like?”

Ed breathes deep, floating Stede on top of him, just as a pillow should. “You know,” he grins, “if you want the best night's sleep you have to stuff and fluff me a bit.”

“I’m fresh out of feathers.”

“What have you got?”

“This,” Stede whispers. He stuffs his prick between Ed’s thighs and kisses him again.

Now, Stede doesn’t play coy. He slides his tongue into Ed’s mouth, just as deeply as he pushes his burning cock. Ed draws him in, sucking and squeezing, and breathing so rapidly, Stede’s body undulates and plunges all the faster.

“See how perfect you are?” Stede insists. “Oh, my love. Your lovely body. You’re perfect… You’re always perfect. You’re all I need, just as you are.”

“You’re gonna bruise my thighs, you’re so fucking hard,” Ed groans. “Promise to patch ‘em up and paint ‘em nice, when you’re done?”

“Oh yes,” Stede says. He clenches his eyes as he drives himself into the velvety clutch of Ed’s hairy legs. “I love to paint you with my spend. Love to see you wear me so well…”

Ed writhes and squeezes beneath Stede, happily smothered by his lust. The bed frame starts drumming the wall again like an underscore to their love scene, demanding a crescendo. There’s panting and sweating and sloppy tongues, and Stede’s gorgeous face going through the entire range of ecstatic emotion. It’s just as exquisite as any other of their trysts, truly.

Afterward, Ed toys with Stede’s curls, smoothing them back into their signature golden wave. He just can’t keep his hands off him. How could anyone resist? Stede’s a lucky coin in his pocket, a swatch of silk, a dangling ornament.

“Are you fixing me up just so you can muss me again?”

“Maybe…” Ed smirks. “Or maybe I’d like to get over to Mum’s, later. Introduce you two properly.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Ed says. “Think I’m ready to make nice.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Stede smiles. “Who else is qualified to tell me what an adorable baby you surely were?”

“Gah!” Ed scrunches his nose. “On second thought we’re leaving town tonight.”

“No!” Stede chuckles and picks a bit of lint from Ed’s beard. “Oh!” he pinches it in the light.

“A feather.” Ed blinks up at it. “You really did fuck the stuffing outta me.”

Stede contemplates the little bit of fluff, his eyes narrowing. “Do you think we could fake snow with feathers?”

Come to think of it...

“Sure,” says Ed. “Might offend Olivia, though.”

Stede flicks the feather away and rolls off, onto his side. “I have this vision of a dramatic scene,” he says. “The fallen body of our hero in a red cloak… Snow falling and falling through a mourner’s soliloquy, blotting it away. Then the lights go down, and she rises again, cloaked in spectral white!”

“Fuck, that totally rules.”

“Let me borrow your brain, my love-”

Ed grins. “You’ve already borrowed my arse and legs, sure.”

“-How would we do snow on stage?”

“Buhhh,” Ed jogs his brain. “Soap bubbles, but they’d evaporate. Rice? Nah, that’s how you get rats. Potato flakes! Fuck! Same problem. Shredded paper? Too spendy, maybe… Are we above robbing a paper mill?” Ed squints.

Stede plucks his lip thoughtfully at that. “We are, we are, mostly. But we could sweep paper scraps up for re-use,” he says, brightening at the realization. “Repeat value!”

“I’ve got a thought about the cloak changing color, too-”

But Stede is too busy rewarding him with a kiss to hear, just now.

When both the duck and distress signal have been picked out, Ed finally makes his way to his mother’s house. He kicks every single speck of snow off his boots at the threshold, rather than put her to any more work, cleaning up after him. She’s been through enough of that. What must it have been like, when neither he or Dad came home? Who came inquiring about the body found on the docks? How long until her measly wages weren’t enough, and the landlord put her out on the street? Never mind what sort of grit it took to help free the inhabitants of Old Wives Town from their bleak former lives.

Mum must be kind of a badass, actually.

It’s Todd who answers her door, still a bit matted with sweat from a hard day’s work, handing the littler kids their arse with snowballs. He looks up at them with a certain amount of shock, first that they should ever visit his arena, and what’s more- when he’s fresh out of ammunition.

“Hi?”

“Evening, boy,” Ed nods.

“Hello, Todd!” Stede wastes no time handing him their dinner supplies and helping Ed off with his coat, so he’ll be stranded indoors. “We’re hoping to have dinner with Mother Teach. Is she in?”

“Yes, Mr. B,” Todd nods from behind an armful of thawing duck. “I’ll get her for you.”

“She hasn’t been sharpening her knives for me or anything, has she?” Ed checks.

Todd shakes his head. “Only Auntie Polly has.”

Ed gives the lad a pat on the shoulder as he brushes along down the hall. “Yeah, that tracks.”

When they come to the door of the sitting room, Stede gives Ed’s arm a squeeze. “Remember Ed, two sneezes in a row and a ‘bless me’, if you need me to intervene!”

“How many to get you to put a knife through my ear, put me out of my misery?”

He seats Stede on the couch, then Ed takes the duck through to the kitchen for the two of them to await butchering. Ed takes it upon himself to light another lamp while he waits, and then Mum comes in a few moments later, wringing the hem of her apron. Her mouth is an even, grim line, but her wrinkled brow is raised in hope. Stunned at her arrival, Ed singes his fingertips.

“Ah! Fuck. Sorry! Sorry. Sorry…” A big squishy glob of worry and guilt catches in Ed’s throat. Years of ache and feelings held down under a tide that might never stop if he lets it flow- but he must. “I’m so sorry Mummy,” Ed blubbers. He even sucks on his finger tip like a child.

“I know, boy. I know,” she says. Mum’s eyes glitter in the lamplight as she comes close enough to touch him. She gathers his hands in hers, more withered and knobbly than he remembers, but still familiar. “We’re both sorry.”

“I shouldn’t’ve gone nuts on the bear like that without-! I should’ve found another way to get you safe!”

Mum shakes her head, loosing tears. “What’s done is done,” she says, gently. “I’m safe enough, now. So are you.”

“Mummy.” Ed has to hold her, surround her, keep her in his arms to be sure of it. He squeezes her tight and sobs into her mob cap. “I didn’t know what to do. I don’t know. I came here, and there you were and you were being so nice…”

“It’s all right…”

“I don’t know what took me so long to come ‘round,” Ed cries.

“You didn’t expect to go through all this when you came here,” Mum chuckles into his shoulder. “I’ve had three years to think about what I’d say if you hadn’t died.”

That… that makes sense. Of course they’re out of step, after years apart.

Ed wobbles on his feet, finally able to relax what turns out to be a load bearing beam of tension. He lets his tiny Mum rock him in her arms. “Reckon I wanted you to be upset with me, since we sort of… skipped that part,” he sniffs. “I ran away before you could be angry. You should be angry, not- not all forgiving and lovely like this!”

He’ll take it, he will! But it’s fucking weird. If ever young Ed so much as got soot on Mum’s mending, he’d rather concoct a scheme than ask forgiveness. Forgiveness was as foreign a tongue to him as Greek.

“I was angry, for years,” says Mum.

Ed laughs, somehow happy to hear it. “Yeah?”

“I stamped on the neighbor woman’s foot once, when she asked why you never visited,” Mum confesses.

“Mum!” Ed gasps. He pulls back to regard her properly.

Mum struggles to contain her sinful pride at the memory. “I should have been immodest,” she grins. “I should have boasted that my boy was the great Blackbeard.”

Ed barks a laugh. “I should have taken you with me. Put you on my crew, stomping on toes…”

“Oh, Edward,” Mum laughs. She pats his shoulders and looks up at him like she’s envisioning him at the height of his power, too. “You grew up so big,” she smiles. “Even though I hoped you’d keep yourself small all your life, because of him. I thought if you kept low, kept from drawing attention…” She shakes her head at her folly. “To see you now!”

“I’m a bloody attention whore! Ask anyone!”

Mum sighs at his coarse language, but she can’t help admiring Ed and clasping his face. “My boy…”

“My Mum!” Ed smiles back. “I can’t believe you’re out here, just freakin’ rescuing people. Seriously ballsy. Reckon I had to get it from somewhere.”

“After everything…” Mum lets go of a deep breath. “Maybe I couldn’t find my own way out, but if I could just help someone else.”

“There’s a familiar tune. You’re gonna love Stede,” Ed chuckles.

Mum’s eyes flit in the direction of her sitting room. “He seems very dear,” she says, fondly. “I see you arm in arm, laughing everywhere. If you couldn’t have that as a child, I’m very glad you have it now.”

Ed’s heart squeezes at the thought of her watching them from afar and noting their happiness. Much better than getting walked in on, thank you.

“M’glad we came here, Mum,” he tells her.

Mum sniffs back tears. “I missed you so. My boy.”

“Yeah. Me too.” Ed wraps Mum in a hug again, and then she really gets boohooing. His throat prickles like he’s swallowed a fucking puffer fish. Might as well go for it. “I- I love you Mummy,” he whispers.

It feels like entire minutes of crying before she can say it back, but that’s all right.

When Ed’s convinced Mum’s not so blinded by tears that she’ll lose a finger while carving their dinner, he excuses himself. Let her recover a little. Let him wipe the snot from his mustache. He can pop back in and stir for her like he used to, in a few minutes.

As Ed rounds the corner, he sees a roughly waist high flash of dark hair disappear through the dining room door. He scrubs his face on his sleeve and creeps down the hall, heralded by the floorboards. When he peeks past the door frame, there’s Todd, standing just inside. He blinks up at Ed with gritted teeth, caught out.

“You heard all that, huh?”

“Yeah.” Todd goes a bit pink. “Mrs. Teach said… you’re Blackbeard?”

Gotta love the consistency on this kid.

Ed covers a shifty cough. “Yep, yep… Once upon a time,” he admits. “Keep that under your hat, eh mate?”

Todd gasps. He quickly crosses his heart and pulls a finger over his throat.

“Ha.” Who’s an eight year old gonna tell, anyway? Ed grins and gives Todd’s hair a tousle. “Good boy.”

“I won’t tell anyone.”

“S’long as you don’t forget- even Blackbeard cries and loves, hmm?”

A good lesson for any boy, but especially a troubled one. Todd takes it in with a curious tilt of his head.

“See, nobody’d believe me if I did tell!”

“Ahh, off with you,” Ed shoos him along. “Better wash up before dinner! I’ll see to it you get both drumsticks for your silence…”

Across the hall, Stede is waiting for Ed’s return, sitting unnaturally upright. Someone ought to check the couch cushions for a loose mace or a flail. Still, Ed slides in next to him, instantly comforted and comfortable.

“Didn’t hear any sneezing,” Stede observes. “Though, there was a bit of sniffling…”

Ed lays his head on his shoulder. “All good, though,” he says.

“Good,” says Stede. He turns his nose into Ed’s hair and kisses his head. “Proud of you, darling.”

There are more snowy days, on and off. More dinners with Mum, or sometimes tea instead, if Ed would rather have a quiet night in with his husband. If Stede is busy writing and Ed’s feeling antsy, he runs around with the kids, or otherwise peeks in on daily life of the village. Turns out Emmaline and Hope are the resident apothecaries, and they’re more than happy to trade the secrets of soap making for a handyman’s help. He trades some soap to Harry and Elijah’s mum for some spun wool, and learns to knit from one of the young ladies at Mum’s house, in exchange for some tips on leatherwork. He fashions a cowl for Stede that’s such an attractive success, he often has no choice but to tackle the man into a snowbank and make a snowoctopus together. Unfortunately, on one of these occasions, Stede is holding a bucket of maple sap.

Half the amber liquid splashes out onto the snow, as dazzling in the sunlight as any gold treasure. The other half coats Stede’s buckskin leggings.

“Ah, shit.” Ed has half a mind to bury his head in the snow until this blows over. Does Tassletail need a roommate? “I didn’t see you holding it, love. Fuck. I’m sorry!”

“I’ve been hit!” Stede keeps clinging to the empty bucket, frozen in shock. “Is it bad?” he asks, without daring to look. “Is it everywhere? I love this coat, Edward!”

“No, no!” Ed clasps Stede’s face as though he’s distracting him from a grievous battle wound. “It’s just a drop on your coat. Teeny tiny!”

“My leg?” Stede whimpers.

Ed glances down. “Well… Ehhh… We could cut off a bit, maybe?”

“No!” Stede cries.

“I won’t think any less of you, love, I swear,” says Ed. “It’ll be all right!”

“The whole right leg?!”

“…And maybe a chunk out of the left.”

Stede closes his eyes, resigned to his fate. “I’ll never dance at our wedding,” he says weakly.

Ed chuckles and bends to kiss his sticky beauty back to consciousness. “Good thing that was years ago,” he smiles.

Stede sighs and looks up at Ed, no longer in agony. “Mmm. Well, you’re stuck with me now. Perhaps literally!”

They drag themselves out of the snowbank and dust off. Stede’s a lost cause, but Ed only has a small splotch of sap on his boot.

“I don’t think I’m presentable for tea with your mother,” Stede frowns.

Ed has a hard time disagreeing, considering that the snow around them looks like it had a gruesome run in with a chamber pot. “Aww, I’ll bet she has an old laundress’s trick up her sleeve,” he tries.

Stede shakes his head. “I’d track a mess everywhere,” he says. “You go on ahead, darling! I’ll clean up, get changed. See if I can make it in time for sandwiches.”

Though he’s always happy to have Stede along, at this point, Ed is comfortable navigating any ol’ topic with Mum. They have a sentimental sniffle about Old Ruth, catch up on who in the village has had a tiff with who, and did you hear bells last night? So much for getting that bear to well and truly fuck off.

When the sandwiches come out, Ed’s too wrapped up in relaying the plot intricacies of Stede’s latest work to realize he’s still not in the room. Might be for best though, considering what comes out of Mum’s mouth next.

“He’s so good with the children,” she smiles. “Do you two ever think of having your own?”

Ed chokes crumbs clear across the table. “Fucking hell.”

Mum pats down her apron, primly. “Though you’d have to learn to curb that sort of language.”

“Uhhhh ahahaha! Uhh!” Ed coughs and pounds a fist to his chest to make sure his egg sandwich goes the right direction. “We can’t exactly go about it the usual way! Ha! Obviously! Who ever heard of- I mean! Not for lack of trying…” Ed trails off.

“It just seems a shame, when there are so many men who shouldn’t be fathers, but are,” Mum says.

Coming from her, that’s practically a nomination for canonization. It fills Ed with pride that Mum should think so highly of his chosen mate, but also an ache. Because Stede chose a life with Ed, he had to give up something he was so miraculously suited to.

“Stede, uh. Stede already has kids,” Ed says. He doesn’t want to frown about it, but he can feel his brow getting all squirmy, regardless. “Two kids.”

“Ah. That’s why he’s so good at connecting.” Mum looks out through a window, where the center of the village lays. She keeps an eye on them and all their playing there, no doubt. “Once you’ve raised a child, it’s hard to forget,” she sighs.

Ed’s heart weighs heavy with the knowledge that he is his mother’s own unforgettable child. What must it be like, how heavy is the burden of being the parent? What if that weight is doubled?

“I just hope… being around kids again isn’t making him miss his own, too much.” Ed squishes his sandwich between his fingers, flattening the bread, as though he could minimize his worries, too. “After everything we went through with the English, it’s too risky to go see them. I haven’t even met them! We have to wait ‘til their grown up enough to leave the island...”

Even then, there’s no guarantee they won’t have developed hard feelings in the meanwhile. All Ed has to consider is how angry he was with his own mother. If by some mercy Alma and Louis don’t have that sort of ire for Stede, they sure as hell might have it out for Ed.

“What about you?” Mum asks. “Would you like to have a child?”

Ed had been fatuous before, imagining the rude, impossible mechanics. This time, he thinks only of the little life that would constantly be at his elbow. A loving little shadow, who watches all that Ed does and says, and shapes their world accordingly. What’s right, what’s wrong, what’s important? Since when is Ed an authority on that!?

“You’d have a man like me raise a child?” Ed squints at his Mum. Maybe she’s getting a little feeble minded in her old age. “Aren’t I the sort you all came out here to get your kids away from?”

Mum reaches out across the table to touch Ed’s arm. “You’re not a bad man,” she says. “You're the sort who’d understand children like these.”

So yeah! Lunch with Mum was fucking weird. Ed wanders back to his own cabin in a sort of shellshock, not unlike the first raid he ever survived. It’s one thing to think I wanna be a pirate, or I wanna run off with this married man, and quite another to be confronted with the realistic eventualities. Pirates have battles. Married men have families. And fuck! Ed’s a married man now. Should he have been battening down the hatches in case a loose baby gets shot out of a cannon at him? Buttons didn’t say anything about that when he tied their knot!

Whatever mayhem is going on inside Ed’s skull, it’s matched by the scene inside the cabin. When Ed opens the door, he’s hit by a cacophony.

Elijah is closest, sitting on the floor, scrubbing his eyes and sobbing, “We-hee-hee killed him! We duh-didn’t muh- mean it!”

Harry is all but throttling Todd, a few steps away. “It wasn’t my idea! It was your idea!” she shrieks.

“I only said I wish we could keep him! You’re the one whose idea it was to hide him in the cellar!”

Harry stamps her foot, not so far from the hatch down to said cellar. “Then why’d you rat us out?!”

Beyond them, Stede stands by the fire, holding a bundle of fur and leather. “Now come on, little one,” he pleads. “You’ve got everyone so worried. Give this a taste?”

It’s not the blanket Ed thought it was at first- it’s a fucking bear cub he’s trying to entice with a sappy wad of his clothes!

“What the ffff…” Ed shakes some sense into himself and dives across the room to break up Harry and Todd’s shoving match before it comes to blows. “Woah, woah, woah!”

“Mr. Teach!” Todd stumbles back, furious and red.

“It’s not my fault!” Harry insists.

“It is if he starves!”

“Let’s put a pin in that, and a button in your lip! Both of you!” Ed waggles a finger at each, to send them off to separate corners.

Stede wades through the tumult, looking just as upset as any of them. “Darling, I meant to join you, but the children came knocking, and-”

“They kidnapped a cub,” Ed’s eyes bug out at the sight of the thing, tucked in Stede’s arms. It’s only a baby, but its claws are still long enough to take off a finger, no problem. “Explains why that she-bear kept prowling around…” Ed mutters.

And the scratching they heard that first night. And the cut on Todd’s hand. But hey! At least the kids weren’t beating the snot out of each other!

“They caught it by the storehouse and have been keeping it secret, wherever there’s an empty cellar,” Stede explains. “It seems it’s stopped eating.” He frowns down at the listless little thing in his arms, who takes no interest in even the smell of Stede’s syrupy offering.

“We didn’t mean to make him sick!” Elijah sniffles. He creeps closer, practically puddling tears all the way. “We love Blackberry!”

Ed sighs and lets Elijah come whimper into his hip. “There, there,” he pats the boy’s head. “I’m sure you tried your best to look after the little beast.”

“Its mother will know what food it eats,” Stede says. “She’ll know what’s best... We have to find her, Ed.”

Harry breaks away from her chastened corner. “You can’t take Blackberry away!” she pleads, tugging on their arms. “You can’t!”

“Mate, you can’t keep him!” Ed laughs. “He’ll weigh more than you by spring!”

“Only if he gets what he needs,” Stede adds. He shakes his head at the children. “Just think how poorly you’d fare if a bear tried to feed you nothing but raw fish!”

Harry grimaces. “Eww.”

Todd chokes off a little cry. “You don’t know, Harry. You don’t know what it’s like to be hungry with no mummy. We have to let them…”

That seems to get through to the holdouts as surely as it pierces through Ed’s heart. He beckons the boy in and gives them all a chance to say goodbye.

“Can you hold him?” Stede asks. “I’ll get on my coat.”

Ed takes the poor little lump into his arms, amazed that something so potentially fierce can be so mild. Then again, people must think the same of him.

“D’aww. We’ll find your mummy. Gonna be all right, lil’ Blackbeard.”

“Blackberry,” Harry corrects. “‘Cause he’s a bear.”

Yeah, Ed’s not projecting, or anything. Shuttup, kid.

When Stede’s ready, they leave the children behind to trek out into the woods. They sneak around back of the cabin to avoid onlookers, then skirt the edge of town until they reach the storehouse.

“This must be the last place that bear smelled her cub,” Stede reckons. “It wasn’t the food...”

“There should be fresh tracks around here, somewhere,” says Ed. “Mum swore she heard bells last night.”

Stede looks up at Ed, his face as blank as the snow. “I’ve never really tracked anything.”

“Well me neither, but it’s a big fuck off bear,” Ed blinks back at him. “How hard can it be?”

Stede half shrugs. “I suppose as far as obvious animals go…”

“More concerned about the reaction when we do find ‘er,” Ed mumbles to himself. He glances down at Blackberry, cuddled against him. “You’ll put in a good growl for us, right mate?”

They fan out, peeking around the bushes and trees until they find a sign of something very big, and very heavy. The massive prints sink deeper than either of theirs.

“If that’s a bloke, I don’t wanna meet ‘im,” Ed shakes his head. “I can’t wrestle for shit anymore.”

Stede catches hold of one of Blackberry’s feet and inspects the shapes in comparison. “Yes, yes… This will be her. Come on!”

“You heard the man!” Ed hoists the little bear higher in his arms, steeling himself against however long and open ended a journey this will be. “Don’t wanna be later for lunch than you already are…”

As they fall into step, following the tracks, Stede turns conversationally to Ed. “How was tea with Mother?”

“Ooph… ” Ed puffs a weary breath into the cold. “Maybe not as alarming, now that’s it’s been put into perspective by clutching a fucking bear to my chest.”

“You Teaches are never boring,” Stede smiles. “If only there were more of you, so each could have their own. A Teach for each!”

Ed rolls his eyes, but he can’t help the warm, expanding feeling inside him. “I think Mum would like at least one more,” he says. “I hadn’t given it much thought before. You know- us having a kid?”

Stede does about as well as Ed did, but rather than spew chunks of sandwich, he trips over his own two feet. Just as quickly, he bounces back up, sputtering nonsense. “Wuh- uhm! Rrr. How- how do…”

“That’s what I said!” Ed barks a nervous laugh. “I mean, if we could pop one out, we’d have a hundred already, with the rate we’re at it…”

“Well!” Stede clears his throat. “Of course, I hope you feel that Alma and Louis will be there for you to befriend, at least. Someday?”

“Yeah,” Ed agrees. “Someday.” He gives Blackberry a little squeeze to shore up courage. “I feel like- we’re holding a seat for ‘em. I mean, I care about them, too! Even if we’ve never met… But. Holding a seat’s not the same as-”

“-As holding someone close?”

“Yeah.”

They follow the tracks in the snow in silence for a few moments. Stede steps more carefully, and holds Ed’s elbow steady when they come to an icy patch. He doesn’t let go, after they clear it.

“I miss them,” Stede admits. “I do. I regret that they’ll be grown before I can see them again, but I try to think about how much safer they’ll be.”

“Is it worse?” Ed forces himself to ask. “Being here, ‘round these kids?”

Stede chuckles. “No, not at all. Not any more than with our crew. They’re their own wonderful little hellions.”

“You can say that again,” Ed huffs. “Is this kidnapped bear getting heavier?”

“Here, my love. Let me,” Stede offers.

They pass Blackberry between them, and for a moment they are clustered as three. It feels so right, Ed’s pulse races.

“I like this,” he spits out. “Caring for something with you. And the feeling… that those little bastards came to us, for help?”

Ed can’t remember ever feeling that way about any adult as a child, and he’s pretty sure it was a rarity for Stede, too. That’s something, isn’t it? That’s the connecting Mum was talking about.

Stede smiles like he can barely catch his breath. “I know,” he says. “I want you to have that feeling, that opportunity, if you want it.”

“Are you sure?” Ed asks. He swallows down a thick feeling in his throat that may be tears, or may be his whole damned heart, about to plop out. “It wouldn’t be hard for you?”

For a moment, Stede looks down at Blackberry, thinking inwardly. Slowly the corners of his grin spread again, as he rocks the little bear between the two of them. When he raises his eyes again, Ed could swear he sees the reflection of a child.

“Did you love Ruth?” Stede asks.

“Yeah,” Ed laughs. “Absolutely. She kicked arse!”

“Do you feel any less for your mother, because you had Ruth for a time?”

“No,” Ed says, of course. “And it brought me back here, didn’t it?”

Stede casts his gaze around the woods. “I think love is just big and ever renewing like that. Like all of this,” he says of their vast and beautiful surroundings. “The more you seek, the more you find.”

Ed shakes his head at Stede. He’s gonna write one hell of a pastoral piece, huh?

“I love you, big,” he says. “Huge. Massively. Acres and acres.”

“Do you have some to spare, then?” Stede grins.

“I think maybe I do.”

“I think you’d even be good at it,” Stede goes further. “Perhaps even the greatest.”

Ed grins. “I am fucking amazing at everything I try.”

“Maddeningly so,” Stede agrees, with a playful glint. “But I can’t deny the pleasure I take in riding right behind you…”

Ed claps a hand to Blackberry’s fuzzy ears. “Not in front of the bear.”

Stede tsks. “He has to learn sometime!”

“Fuck, we could drive some unsuspecting child absolutely insane! They’ll get a complex from having too loving a family!”

Stede pitches his voice all squeaky and youthful, “What do you mean you don’t know what squbble time is?”

“Don’t your daddies write you poems?”

“What about making flapjack families, with little faces?”

Elated by their new understanding, Ed and Stede lean into an equally eloquent kiss. Only Blackberry’s objection to being squished remains.

“Oh,” Stede frowns at the yelp. “I suppose we must find your room first before we can send you to it, to allow us some privacy.”

Ed gives his back a rub to get them going again. “C’mon. M’knee is locking up just standing around, anyway.”

It’s a beautiful walk from there on out, even if it is towards the den of a distraught mother bear. It may be the best walk they’ve ever been on, and they’ve hiked waterfalls littered with gold coins, and catburgaled a fucking palace, before! The freezing air is stinging Ed’s eyeballs and its wonderful. Stede loves him so much, and taught him how to love again so well, they’ve gotta call for reinforcements and see if they can’t mop up the overflow. Who cares if Ed can barely feel his toes?!

Soon their meandering path comes within range of a babbling brook. Rocky outcroppings shaped by eons of water poke out from the drifts of snow. The tracks converge with other prints, like the muddy build up just inside the threshold of their cabin. Here and there, there are dark nooks of shelter made of stone and fallen trees.

“This must be the bear’s foyer,” Stede says in a hush, surveying the area. “Should we leave him with a calling card?”

“I’d feel better if we saw her,” Ed whispers back. “Well, not better. Might piss m’self, but you get it.”

“No, no, you’re right!”

Ed reaches out an arm to knock on a tree, but it’s not much noise, thanks to his mittens. “Hey, mate!” he calls out, instead. “Sorry about all that shit with the fire and the tub!”

“Shh!” Stede hisses. “Don’t remind her!”

“Right. That was some other guys, just so you know!”

“Yes! Brutes,” Stede says. “We’re lovely people! Aren’t we, Ed?”

“He’s fucking gorgeous,” Ed tells the unseen bear. “You should really get out here and get a gander. Don’t know what you’re missing!”

Stede bats his eyes at Ed appreciatively. “Oh, thank you, darling. But that’s really not why we’re here!”

“Yeah!” Ed slaps Stede’s back. “We’ve brought back your little scamp!”

“Blackberry!” says Stede, gathering the cub up a bit higher.

Ed shakes his head. “That’s probably… not what she calls him.”

“Pardon me!” Stede laughs, nervously. “Uhm! Maybe she’d recognize him if he made some sound?”

“Yeah, mate,” Ed gives the bear a pat. “Speak up.”

Stede gives Blackberry a jiggle in his arms, but nothing. “We’ve put him on the spot. Poor little bugger has stage fright.”

How’d they get him to chime in before? Oh! Right.

Ed puts an arm around Stede, keeps his eyes fully fucking peeled for incoming bears, and squeezes in for a kiss.

“What are you- mmm!”

“It worked,” Ed breathes. “C’mere again…”

Within three not-so-immersive kisses, Blackberry’s disgruntled noises get a response. A low, loud grumble that silences the birds.

“Hofuck.”

“Okay,” Stede whispers as he crouches. “Just. Going to. Put you down. Push you along…”

As soon as Blackberry is on the ground, Ed reaches out for Stede’s hand. He pulls him back a few paces to hide behind a tree trunk as quickly as possible. Barely breathing, they huddle together and watch as the cub takes a few feeble steps and yelps again. One of the shadows in the rocks moves, and Stede’s fingers grip tight into Ed’s side.

Cautiously, one step at a time like she can’t believe her furry ears, the mother bear emerges. She scents the air, and steps faster, farther from the safety of her den. Blackberry chirps, and she sees him, and he sees her, and each jumps in surprise. She’s fucking huge and bristly, made of spiky fur and danger, but the sound of her relieved trumpeting is so heart wrenching joyous, it might be worth it if she decides to eat them after all.

Next to him, tears stream down Stede’s frozen cheeks. Silently, Ed kisses them away.

“Are you going to tell Mrs. Teach?” Harry asks.

She, Elijah, and Todd are sitting on the woodpile when they get back. They’ve probably been waiting there this whole time, sweating it out. As much as Ed chafes at the thought of any child being punished, he knows the whole point of Old Wives Town is that they avoid unnecessarily harsh dealings. Like on a ship under Stede’s command, trouble is something to be learned from, not something you decide someone is, so you can write them off or kick ‘em around.

“No, I'm not gonna tell,” Ed says. “But you should.”

Harry anxiously tugs on the ends of her braids. “We’ll be in trouble,” she frowns.

Ed shrugs. “Maybe. But take it from me- it feels a helluva lot better to get things off your chest than to go around feeling weird and guilty for forever.”

Todd, witness to Ed’s own apology, catches his eye knowingly. “Yeah, guys,” he sighs to his friends. “This is giving me a stomach ache…”

A consoling arm loops around Ed’s back. “We’ll be happy to preface you to Mrs. Teach, and let her know all has been put right,” says Stede.

“You didn’t break anything, did you? No locks, no hinges?” Ed checks.

The kids all consult with each other and shake their heads.

Stede gives them a smile. “I think the village will be happy to know the bears won't be bothering you anymore. Even we couldn’t pull that off!”

“Yeah!” Ed nods. “Show up us old has-beens, why don’t you.”

One by one, the accomplices get to their feet and begin trudging across the way to Mum’s house. As promised, Ed and Stede have a word with her beforehand. Afterwards, Polly brings Ed and Stede in again.

“I think I’ve been narrow minded,” Mum says, as she paces her sitting room. “My only priority has been to make this place safe for the children.” She stops and sighs, with a heavy gaze at Ed. “They need more than that. They deserve more. They need something to challenge them, and interest them.”

“Dueling club,” Ed guesses.

“Oo!” Stede perks up. “Or a chess tournament!”

“A rope climbing course.”

“Rock collecting!”

Mum blinks at them for a moment before continuing her thought. “I was thinking we should have a school,” she says simply.

“Damn,” Ed snaps his fingers. “So close.”

Stede straightens up, on excited tiptoes. “I would be thrilled to donate some books, Mother.”

“Brown noser,” Ed calls him. He smirks at Mum. “Open a school, and you’ll have to get used to more of that.”

The night before their visit is at an end, all of Old Wives Town gathers at the big house. They have a feast and then a debut of Stede’s junior drama, The Inherited Fire. They push back the furniture in Mum’s sitting room- soon to become a classroom- and hang a row of curtains on a rope. The children of the village all have a part in the play, so they sit on a pile of cushions in the front row, ready to hop on stage. At the back of the room, Stede shines a lamp through filters shaped like castle walls, forests, and starlight. A hush falls over the room as the curtains pull back, and King Edward lays on his deathbed, wrapped in his velvet robe. Then a gasp, when he takes the paper crown from his head and lights it aflame.

“But Father!” shrills the first little princeling, played by Harry. “Who will rule?”

“Whichever of you… conquers the fire… will find my crown,” Ed wheezes.

“Which one?” asks princeling Elijah. “The volcano?”

“Maybe he means the Burning Woods,” shrugs Harry.

“Or the dragon,” shudders princeling Todd. “Oh no...”

Harry clutches Ed’s frail hand. “Please Father, you have to give us a hint!”

“Hmmm.” Ed coughs weakly. “I’ll give you each… a gift.”

Elijah crosses his fingers. “Horse, horse, horse!” he chants hopefully.

“To you… Harry. I give my magic sword.” At that, Ed raises a wooden prop that has laid tucked beneath his robe.

Harry’s face lights with maniacal glee. “I’ll win your lands again, if I must!”

Next, Elijah kneels at Ed’s side. “Father?”

“To you… I give my fortune.”

Elijah takes the bag full of nails playing a bag full of coins. “I’ll buy back your kingdom, if I must!” He turns to his sister, for each to show off their inheritance to the other.

“Well, that’s everything then,” Harry points out. “Sucks to be Todd!”

The child audience snickers as Elijah and Harry trot off stage to celebrate their good fortune.

Last, the lonely Todd comes to Ed’s side to receive his gift. But there’s nothing left!

“Father,” he sniffs. “I know not what I’ve done to offend you. Please, give me just a kind word to remember you by.”

He’s so fucking good at this. He could put Ed out of the job!

Ed pats the boy's cheek fondly. “To you… I give my secret.”

Todd cups his ear and hovers in close. “What is it?”

“You won’t believe how good lettuce is with a sprinkle of salt,” Ed whispers, too low for the audience to hear.

Every time they’ve rehearsed he’s made up something different, so Todd takes it in stride with only the tiniest smile.

When the curtains close on Ed again, he sneaks out around the edge of the room to watch with Stede. He hooks his chin on his shoulder, and manages to soak it with tears by the end, when the princelings discover that uniting friends around a hearth is what makes for a worthy leader.

After loading up on delicious food, fighting off living forests and befriending monsters, most of the kids are wiped. They stumble along, clutching their mothers’ skirts to say goodnight and goodbye. Their three special stars linger after most of the crowd files out, eager to soak up every last moment.

“Careful you don’t turn your back on any of ‘em, mate,” Ed warns Stede. “They might take us hostage!”

“When are you leaving?” Todd pouts. “Won’t you stay as late as you can?”

“We’ll be gone by first light,” Stede tells him gently. “We’ve already loaded up our cart with all our things.”

“We can stay up with you and Mum a bit longer,” Ed promises.

“Can we stay too?” Elijah begs his mother.

Harry hangs on her other hand, with big, wide eyes. “Pleeeease Mummy!”

Hettie has to struggle to free herself so she can shake hands with both Ed and Stede. “Thank you, sirs, but I don’t want to keep you,” she says. “You’ve already given so much of your time.”

"Yeah. Years off my life,” Ed says, shooting a playful scowl at the kids.

“We do intend to come back,” Stede assures them all. “We can bring more school books, every year!”

“Maybe not in the winter, though,” Ed grunts. He’s dying to get off his feet and into a warm- ah fuck. They already put the bathtub on the cart!

Stede pats Ed’s shoulder. “We would love to see the village in autumn.”

Elijah flings himself around Stede’s legs. “I’ll have all my teeth by then!”

The idea makes Ed’s heart ache almost as badly as his knee. There’s so much growing up he’ll miss out on, even if they do visit once a year. And this must be only a fraction of how Stede must feel, missing Alma and Louis. How can anyone bear it?

Elijah turns and hugs Ed next, and-

Oh.

That’s how.

“Here, take this,” says Harry, unraveling her Cat's Cradle from around her neck. She has Stede kneel for her so she may anoint him. “So you don’t get bored without us.”

“A fate worse than death,” Stede gasps. “Thank you, Harry.”

Ed feels around his pockets for his whittling. “Here,” he tells the kids. “I’ve got a little something for you lot…”

Into each of their waiting palms he presses a wooden, finger length bear.

“Blackberry!” Elijah squeaks.

By the time they say goodbye to the siblings, Ed hasn’t a teardrop to spare. “We must be due back on the water- I’m parched,” he croaks to Stede.

Stede sniffs and mops his own face with the cuff of shirt. “Yes. Yes, that must be it.”

Mum stands by serenely, patting her hands on Todd’s shoulders. He’s sniffling, too.

“Anyone for tea?”

The weather shifts again to piss off Ed just one more time. It’s warmer than it has been, and the dawn is heavy with fog. Ed can barely see Mum’s house from the cabin door as he and Stede load up the last of their luggage and pull a canvas over the cart. It’s hard to say if she’s waiting by the window or not. They’ll have to go inside to find her and make their final farewell. Well, not final final, Ed keeps reminding himself. He’ll see her again.

Mum kisses Stede on the cheek and fusses with his scarf for him, saving him the trouble. “I don’t need to tell you to take care of my boy,” she smiles. “I can see you already do.”

“I’ve never yet been accused of subtlety,” Stede preens. “Thank you, for everything.”

With a deep breath, Mum side steps over to Ed. She reaches up around his shoulders, borrowing his strength for their goodbye. “You’re a better man than I raised you to be, Edward.”

“Aw, Mum…”

She sparkles up at Ed with wet eyes. “You deserve every happiness.”

Ed gives her a heartening squeeze. “I’ll be happy as long as I can see you again,” he says. “Take care of yerself, you hear?”

“I will,” Mum promises with a sniff. She gives his collar one last tug, bending him to kiss his forehead. “Now you’d better get going,” she sighs. “I can feel a-”

“A storm coming, yeah,” Ed chuckles.

After two weeks in the stable, Tassletail is more than eager to go. She hauls them out of there with speed usually reserved for unrehearsed gunfire. As they enter the woods where they first ran into Polly, Ed takes a look back.

“Last chance to kidnap one of those little crumbsnatchers, Stede.”

“If we hadn’t explicitly promised not to...”

That’s all right. Now that they’re decided, something will happen. They’re disgustingly lucky bastards who everything always works out for! They’ll be in a market and see some runt scrounging for scraps- or they’ll swing by one of the convents, and the nuns will practically beg them to take a trouble child off their hands. Do they still float babies down the river in baskets, these days? They do spend a lot of time on rivers…

Speaking of. The tow path they followed most of the way to the village makes itself known when the fog lifts. Snow falls in lazy, dreamy spirals. Just another hour, and they can see the masts of tall ships, poking up from the horizon. The Tableau, and her Sock and Buskin flags, waiting for their return like a castle in the sky.

“Captains approaching the vessel!” Buttons shouts from on deck. “Roll out the gangplank!”

“Roll out the rum barrels while you’re at it!” Ed hollers up. “It was a dry town!”

Stede chuckles. “You know? I hardly noticed, we had such a giddy time.”

They stop the cart, but even as the rumble of the road stops bumping it along, the canvas keeps shifting.

Ed holds out an arm to keep Stede behind him. “Whatthefuck.”

“Did something get in overnight?” Stede wonders. “Not another bear…”

Again, the canvas bulges. “It’s juh-just me!” it says with an echoey shiver. “S’freezing in here.”

Right away, Ed and Stede jump to clear the way. They pull the canvas back so that a familiar, shaggy head can poke out of their bathtub.

“Todd!” Ed reaches up, giving him somewhere to flee from the cold metal. “What’re you doing?!”

“Oh! Here!” Stede frets. He begins unwinding his scarf.

Ed takes Todd into his arms, all at once overjoyed and panicked. “I’m supposed to be perceptive,” he puffs.

“Mother Teach must be worried sick,” Stede cries, bundling his scarf around the two of them.

“She tuh-told me to! Please don’t be mad.” Todd cozies in close, ducking his head under Ed’s chin.

“We’re not mad. That sort of mad, at least…” Stede rubs the boy’s back, staring at Ed. “Darling?”

Ed can barely comprehend it. Is this the happiness Mum wanted for him?

“Mrs. Teach said you’d take me with you. That you’d take care of me…”

Ed rocks the boy in his arms, that he can definitely do. Few things have ever felt so right. Sailing, Stede, and this- end of list. Ed looks at Stede as best he can through the tears in his eyes. This is it!

“Well! Well, wait a minute,” he chuckles to Todd. “What do you know about living on a ship?!”

“He did learn to sail paper boats with Blackbeard,” Stede smiles.

The cart begins to move again as the crew lead Tassletail and her load up the gangplank. Roach comes around the back, to give it a push. He quirks an eyebrow at Ed and the Stede, and the bundle of slightly nauseous boy tucked between them.

“Ey. Who’s the fresh meat?”

Ed gives him the hairy eyeball, in case he meant that literally. “This is my boy.”

“Jeez, all right.” Roach grunts and puts his back into his task. “I’ll dust off the kid’s menu!”

Ed and Stede let Todd down to the ground and stand together at the bottom of the gangplank.

“Well, boy.” Ed gestures up to his new home. “Go pick a room and we'll throw whoever’s in it overboard.”

“Not really!” Stede says.

“Depends,” Ed shrugs.

Todd takes their hands, for balance on the rickety climb. “But can I keep their stuff?” he asks, peevishly.

He’s gonna fit right in.

art by self_induljennt on twitter

Notes:

If you enjoyed this, please check out my other gentlebeard works here on ao3, and my art @stitchyarts on tumblr/instagram/twitter

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Old Wives Town

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