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The explosions are still going off, deafening past the ringing in Stede's ears as fires meet gunpowder stores in lower decks and panicked crews shoot cannonballs every which way. He stumbles, fingers reaching blindly in the dark, and swallows back the blood and hot tears in his mouth.
"What's happening?" somebody cries in the street, a woman clutching her injured friend as debris rains down on them.
She is answered by three British soldiers swarming them, swords at the ready, pushing her squarely down to the cobblestones as she tries weakly to resist.
Stede flinches, and scrambles back into the shadows. His head is spinning and he needs to throw up, needs to run, needs to be back on his ship and back with his crew and back with Ed. But his crew is leaving him and Ed is too, and now he's all alone wherever he is and the explosions are still going and he doesn't know what to do.
He gags, dust coating his mouth in an instant. None of his thoughts will stay where they're supposed to be for long, slipping away like minnows, lost to the noise and panic and fire. He has flashes, of Zheng's face screwed up in anger, of Ed's retreating back, of Izzy, lit low in the back of a tavern, but none of it makes any sense.
The soldiers are closer now, the sounds of their clinking boots and harsh voices echoing across brick. Stede swallows hard, and nearly trips over his clumsy feet as he stumbles away, away from the main square and towards the ocean, where at least the fire illuminates his way.
People are screaming all around him, wailing in pain and confusion, fire licking up into the rafters of homes. The British seem to have no reservations about who they arrest, chasing bar patrons and merchants and anyone they see with reckless abandon. Staying still means death, so Stede starts to run, weaving in between debris and bodies that may be dead and may just be scared motionless. He gasps, unable to fight the tears that are welling up at the corners of his eyes.
My crew. He thinks, but the thought is fuzzy and disjointed. I left them.
"They left you first." says a familiar voice, and even in the state he's in Stede knows it isn't real. "You're a monster."
Knows, because he hears Chauncey Badminton every night, every day of his life, that pompous voice and those words sneered disdainfully, those painfully true words that Stede could recite from memory.
"A plague."
Stede's foot catches on a plank and he crashes face-forward in a tangle of limbs, a gash splitting across his hand as he catches an nail in an attempt to break the fall.
"You defile beautiful things." Chauncey says, and Stede chokes out another sob, soot billowing over his face.
Suddenly, there are hands in his lapels, dragging him upwards, and he can only thrash weakly as the naval officer forces him to his feet, the barrel of a gun pressed into his gut.
Stede is face to face with him now, a man who's features are a blur, nothing but tattered royal blue and golden embellishments and a disaffected, disgusted curl of lips.
"You're under arrest." the man says curtly, and Stede gasps, his breath coming in short, harsh bursts.
"No." he stutters, unsure even of why he's opened his mouth. "N-no."
"Yes, I'm afraid so." snarls the officer back, his grip tightening. "For crimes against the-"
Suddenly, like a strike of lightning, an explosion rips across the sky, plumes of smoke flashing red erupting from the ship a few hundred feet down the dock. The ground shakes, and the man stumbles backwards in shock, breaking the two apart, before a piece of the mainmast rockets through the sky and slams into him.
Stede yelps as the man goes down like a ton of bricks, no indication of it he's still breathing at all. A new wave of screams starts up, a splash as a sailor leaps from the collapsing deck.
Stede's fears, his terror, his sorrow, all melt away in a moment to the surge of adrenaline. He's running now, because running is all he can do, one foot in front of the other until all the noise starts to fade. He feels a burn in his chest, hand, and legs, the blooming pain of bruises and cuts and smoke, but it hardly registers. He runs, runs away again, like it's all his body knows how to do.
At least this time, he thinks grimly, the only thought that rings clear among the fear, he's running towards the docks.
"Stede!" a voice cries, ringing above the din of the crisis.
Stede skids, feet wheeling to a stop when he feels wood beneath them, gasping for air with his hands on his knees. He whips his head around, searching for the source of the sound.
"Stede!" it comes again, and it's familiar this time, the accent and the breathy pitch. "Captain, over here!"
"Lucius!" Stede yelps, but his voice fails to carry past the gravel in his throat.
The boy is huddled in the crowd with Pete, their arms around one another as wood splinters from the sky, firelight illuminating their pinched faces. But they're alive, wonderfully so, and Stede could almost laugh with relief and joy. He's far away, still, horribly, but just one more burst of energy, one more run, and-
The smoldering wood cracks thunderously beneath his feet.
Stede stops short, locking eyes with a shocked, ash-stained Lucius, and only has time to gape before the pier collapses beneath him.
-
The water slams into him, rushing greedily into his mouth before he has the chance to close it. In the blurry haze of his vision, he sees more fire rip across the sky above him.
Swim! he screams at himself, at his useless body which refuses to kick. You've got to move!
The waves batter him to the side, sweeping him up in their storm. His arms twitch, and his legs kick in futility, unable to shed his shoes or his billowing shirt. Like a hurricane, his vision spins, and he's swallowing fire, his throat burns, the sting of saltwater excruciating across his eyes and palms.
There's a brief moment where the sea tosses him up, his head breaking the surface in a trough between swells, only to find him already drifting out to the deep water, where sinking vessels loom like mountains around him. He chokes, seawater spilling from his stomach, but can't manage to get any air down before he's back under, before the ship beside him cracks like a glacier calving. There is no getting away from it, when wood tumbles in an avalanche towards him, giant hunks of railing and mast sinking in dark shadows every which way. Stede jerks, desperate, but something catches him hard in the side, something heavy. It pins his arm to one side and sends him like a stone towards the depths, until his back hits sand with a thud and the fire in the distance is only a hazy ripple at the unreachable surface.
No. Stede thinks weakly, bubbles escaping his mouth in a thin stream. The fire in his chest is almost unbearable, and his head throbs like it might burst, but the feeling in his hands and feet has begun to retreat, leaving his limbs in soft nothingness, as though they're not even attached.
Stede, as if he would ever be able to do anything else, thinks of Ed.
Ed, big eyes in the moonlight, leaning in to kiss him. Ed, and his strong, gentle hands, his expressive face, his striking leather and soft blue robe. Ed, whip-smart and playful, who called him fascinating and a lunatic and who'd been the first person in Stede's long, worthless life who he'd actually made happy.
Ed, who Stede hadn't listened to. Who had left. And now Stede was going to die, knowing the last time he'd ever seen the love of his life, he'd called him a coward.
I'm sorry. He thinks desperately, as though if he believes it enough Ed will somehow hear him. God, I'm so sorry.
The water isn't burning anymore. His lungs don't exist- he's filled with cotton, instead. The flames above dance like fireworks, fading into the dark night sky, and Stede's mouth relaxes open, bubbles flying away into the current. Ed had told him, once, asked him if he'd ever felt like he was just waiting to drown. He'd said Stede had saved him, too, called him a mermaid. A fantastic, shiny little goldfish.
Stede doesn't think that any mermaids are going to save him now.
He imagines them singing, something soft and far away, a lilting tune that guides him down, away from the light at the surface. He thinks he can see it now, Calypso with a fishy tail, soft pink and red lights and laughter. Fireworks, again, and smooth, warm sheets.
He melts into the laughter, and lets it carry all the rest of him away, away into the soft hands of seagrass and easy shadows, away until there is nothing left at all.
-
Stede wakes up on a boat.
There are several odd things about this, the first of these being that he wakes up at all. The second is that he wakes up standing. Blinks, and all of the sudden he's upright, leaning on the rail at the prow of the ship.
Wooden boards creak familiarly beneath his feet, but other than that, it's quiet, without another soul to be found. Stede looks down at his hands, which look rather the same as they had before, and then his feet, which are still clad in soaking wet shoes. He huffs, but even though the clothes are dripping, he isn't cold, nor does he really feel damp. He feels, actually, like the fog that's surrounding him, so thick he can hardly see the ocean beneath him- just sort of... vague and misty.
Looking around, he knows he's on the Revenge, but it isn't the ship as he left it, with broken bits and half-done repairs and pirate's belongings scattered all about the deck. It's clean and completely empty, barren of any sign of life or even any sign that the ship does, in fact, sail- he even notices that the unicorn is back in tact, prancing proudly at the front.
A harsh squawk jolts Stede from his observations. He jumps, and whips around, face to face with a seagull perched neatly on the wood.
"Hello." Stede says, mostly on instinct. "Am I dead?"
He remembers falling, sinking into black water, and feels his lungs burn with a faint muscle memory. He remembers watching light and color fade away and resigning himself to... something, but now that he's here, he can't quite remember what. He can feel his sorrow, his fear, and his anger, but as though they're several feet away, safely out of his grasp and only ready to be used if he stretched out and reached for them. He eyes the gull again- it doesn't look particularly special. It's got some ratty feathers and a chip in its beak like most seabirds do, but he feels the need to ask anyway, just in case-
"Are you God?"
The bird just stares, unimpressed. It hops forward, and with the speed of a striking snake, pecks his hand, hard.
"Ow!" he yelps, snatching it away. "Alright, fine! Do you at least know what we're doing here, then?"
It cocks its head, eyeing the murky water below, and then looks up.
Stede follows, as best as he can, the line of sight, to see a stark, black flag flapping in the wind above him. Fabric as dark as night, embroidered with a skeleton stabbing a bleeding red heart, the only pop of color in the entire landscape. It's unmistakable- Stede remembers seeing it on wanted posters all over the Caribbean, and taking it down with his own two hands. The bones of its face have always make it look sad, Stede thinks, frowning.
"Ed." he guesses, and is rewarded with the gull bobbing its head. "Am I haunting him, or something?"
A tearing sound cuts him off, as the flag suddenly catches in the wind, the stitches splitting at the seams. The bit with the heart on it has come loose, and the breeze cradles it, sending it drifting down, down, down, to drape over Stede's hands.
It feels rough, like salt spray, and thin, worn from all the exposure. Stede lets the fabric fall in between his fingers.
"Is this some kind of weird metaphor? You know, I've always preferred clear, direct communication on this ship." he says, turning it over absentmindedly, his thoughts rabbiting away.
He's holding Ed's heart in his hands. He had done this before, in a quiet moment by the ocean wearing a privateer's beige uniform and a clean shave. It is strange to think about that now, knowing it was true- Stede has, historically, never been the kind of person who wields so much power over the lives of others, not the kind of person who is often missed, and just the thought of it makes his head spin.
"Oh." he says quietly.
The bird caws again, managing to sound a little bit condescending, as if it should have been obvious. Stede would have taken some offense from this if he weren't so preoccupied, or talking to a bird.
The skeleton stares up at him, with narrowed, angry eyes. Stede bites his cheek. Every other heartbeat, he sees flashes of Ed, angry and panicked and hating the person Stede was becoming, and each time it happens, his chest twinges painfully in harmony.
"I don't know." he sighs, mournfully. "Do you think he even likes me anymore?"
The gull fixes its beady eyes on him, but with the restrictive medium of a beak and no eyebrows, the intense expression is still fully unreadable.
Stede looks down at the grey water, and then away towards the thick fog. He rubs a thumb over the stark red cloth- he hadn't deserved this then and he certainly did not now. But what else were pirates good for, besides taking and taking what they had no right to? Stede had left his family for a reason-pirates had freedom. The freedom, he supposed, to be a monster. The hope that a monster can live to see a brighter day, one day, even though it doesn't deserve it.
"I suppose..."
And in the waves, he can make out his own trembling figure, standing an gunpoint, and then standing in the doorway to his old home. He can see Ed, kohl smeared around his eyes, and Ed in the bathtub, tears in those eyes, afraid.
"I've still got to try." Stede decides. "Whether he wants me to or not, I can't leave it like this. He has to know I..."
The bird keeps staring, unblinking, over it's golden beak. It looks rather expectant.
Stede swallows heavily.
"...that I love him." he finishes. "That somebody does."
Triumphantly, it caws, and with a rustle of feathers, takes to the air. Stede's gaze snaps up to watch it wheel in a gentle circle, buoyed by the soft breeze, before it tucks in its wings and plummets sharply to the water, cutting through the surface like a stone.
It surfaces quickly, with a small splash and a joyful trill. He smiles a little bit, watching it paddle, but the waves do not offer him peace.
"I can't follow you." he says mournfully. "I'll drown. Again."
It dips its head underwater, and then swings it back up, letting shimmering water droplets roll down its neck. It affords him only a small, fed-up glance.
Stede digs his nails into the wood, and sighs. The water is swirling ever so slightly, a tiny whirlpool, darker in the middle.
"There's supposed to be a choice, I think. What if I'm making the wrong one?"
The only answer he receives is the wind and the gentle lap of water against the side of the ship. The fog swirls, dampness gathering at his cheeks.
He swallows thickly, and looks down at the sea once more.
One foot is planted sternly a nearby crate. Then, an elbow on the railing, and with a shove, he's clambered up to balance atop it, like a bird with its wings in the sea spray.
"Well." he says. "I'll see you on the other side, Ed. Or I won't. But I tried my best, so in either case I think that counts for something."
And then he's gone, in one great wobbly leap, careening towards the great grey-blue expanse below.