Chapter Text
Stede Bonnet had been a child who had not learned of soulmates until his peers had taunted him. The stem on his arm began at his wrist and crawled up to nearly his elbow, arching into an exceptional amount of bulbs. His father had told him to stop asking after something everyone had, and few things could make Stede risk his father’s rage.
But still his classmates had been cruel.
“Oh look!” his peers had crowed. “Of course, Baby Bonnet has such an ugly marking.”
“Wonder what girl got stuck with you.”
“And in such an exposed spot, aren’t you so disgraceful.”
“Still no blooms, oh dear, Baby Bonnet might be a Null.”
Stede had learned quickly to keep his sleeves long, and to even bandage his arm beneath them. His peers found many things to say about Stede, but they learned quick that the mark was a rather easy soft spot. It became a routine.
Every morning, Stede would wrap his bandage around his arm, gentle in a soft silk, from wrist to elbow. Then would come the long sleeve shirt, then his jacket. Frequently, he found himself loosely grasping his forearm, as if he could take some strength from his mark, his soulmate, an echo of who he needs, however, far away.
Every day, he would avoid his classmates as much as possible, learn better hiding places, find more books on flowers, on soulmates. And, oh, did those books tell him a lot.
Soulmates were tided as powerful. When soulmates found one another, they often acted as the best or the worst of each other. There were history texts that described distant kings battling over a realization that one of their queens were meant for the other. Explanations of grand soulmates who burned too bright and led to hundreds of deaths. Shakespeare’s own creations came easily, tragedies painted around soulmates.
But then there were sonnets.
Groupings of love letters.
Endless happiness that could come with peace given to their very soul.
Everyone was given a flower, made to bloom along with the echo of their soul, flowers meant to represent them and their bond. Bloodied roses, giggling daisies, heartbreaking forget-me-nots. Stede ravaged as many floriography books that he could.
Without the blooms, it was nearly impossible to guess what his could mean. But in his perfect routine, every night he would unwind his bandage and stare at his own waiting blooms.
Every day he would check to make sure they had not wilted, that the stem had not curled and died. He was not a Null, every day he would remind himself of the fact.
That is until he was told by his father that he would be marrying a woman he had never met.
Mary was a nice enough woman, and even with the discomfort of their first interaction, Stede had held hope. Many of the texts had told him that often a bloom did not occur until the souls truly echoed their future bond. Sometimes it was at first glance, but others it took a full conversation.
Though Stede, with his loving care of flowers, often fought to find a similarity between his own stem and the single bulbed one on the back of Mary’s hand from the moment he first saw her without her gloves.
But even in the longest set of sorting, after two years and their first child, even Baby Bonnet had to work at accepting the situation before him. He was not married to his soulmate, luck had not been on his side. With each day, the weight grew. For some time after the wedding, Stede had gotten used to sleeping with his bandage on, with avoiding the chance to catch a glance at Mary when her gloves were off. He tried to form the lie in his head.
Around the time he taught the children how to play pirate, he found himself unwrapping that bandage at night. Still healthy, still waiting, frozen in the stage before full bloom. His soulmate, the other half of his soul hung in the balance somewhere waiting. Stede had met everyone that he would in his life, it felt as such. He knew everyone in town, the people who would come to his home, he rarely spoke to those who drifted in town. None of them had been who he was looking for.
So that was that? He was simply not made to find his soulmate? He would watch his bulbs never bloom, would wake up one day and watch them shrivel and die.
Then came the boat.
Soulmates could be platonic well enough, it was not cruel to ask Mary to give them both a chance at adventure, at something more.
But the sharp dismissal had shaken him. He planned to send a letter to the carpenters to stop the building.
Until the night that his arm burned terribly. The world swayed on its axis, Stede Bonnet fell to his knees in his en suite. He tore the bandage from his arm and watched his flower wilt. Tears burned, fear locked around his heart. A single petal curled and then vanished. It took all night for the pain to fully stop, for his flower to cease wilting and eventually grow stronger.
It would be the following month that Stede would take to the sea.
Meeting your soulmate had been a slim chance, but the world had opened up, and Stede simply had to take it as what it could be. Even if it killed him in the end.
*
Edward Teach felt like he had always known of soulmates. It had been one of the earliest stories that he remembered his mother telling him. Her hand had rested on his back, gently caressing the center of his spine.
“God has given us all a gift, an echo of our souls that call us.” She murmured into his hair, rocking him. “He drew His flowers on us to let us know. They settle where they wish on us, a hint some say. But sometimes we are not meant to meet our soulmate, their soul unready for our own, bulbs left to wait.” It had been the same moral as every other story. A gift from an unspeaking God. The God who decided the poor must be poor because they were not Born for high society. The God that made soulmates who may never meet. The God that placed Edward’s own floors on the center of his back so he could nearly believe they weren’t there at all.
It would be as a boy that his mother would draw the waiting bulbs so he could better see the shape of his own bundle. Its shape odd in comparison to some he had seen. Large in size, with multiple bulbs surrounding a single strong stem. His mother claimed that if God planned it, it would be one of His loveliest works.
It would be as a teen when he would teach himself to use a mirror and still water to see it again. Always just a glance of it. Angry as he struggled to even lay a finger on his own mark.
It would be as a man that he would learn to not think about his back and instead to watch it. Sharp in his method of avoiding a direct hand to his back, neat and efficient.
However, just like with the rage that burned when his mother claimed they were not made to have nice things, another spark settled in his gut that he would hunt down his soulmate just the same.
He would have nice things.
He would have his soulmate.
Even if he may not deserve either.