Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"It'll be fine," Stede said, sliding Ed's dress off its plush hanger. "Darling, you've been working on writing your play for the better part of a year, we've rehearsed it for months, and the costuming couldn't be better."

"Dress can't save it," Ed said, still hunched over by the fireplace, picking at his nails.

Stede peered sternly down his nose. "You've worked very, very hard, and you were beautiful as Sir John in A Hard Day's Knight, and I'm here for you always, you know that."

"I'm always the lead," Ed muttered.

"You're my lead," said Stede, kissing his forehead and helping him up. "I write stories so you can play in them all the time."

"Well why did you let me write one!"

"Ed. Both of us thought it would be good. You've been doing this one way or another, all your life; it's time you got to tell your own story."

"I write for shit," Ed said, letting go of Stede's hands. "I put Buttons in! Why would I put Buttons in!"

"Mm." Stede gestured for Ed to put his arms up so he could slip the gown on. "His creepy interstitial staring does set a certain tone."

If any dress could save it, it would have been this one. It was by far his favorite he'd ever worn. It was gorgeous lilac, shot silk taffeta, warp and weft shimmering more magenta or periwinkle depending what angle the light hit it. Stede was not groping him as he put it on, Ed noted. Stede was squeezing his torso tightly, because apparently Ed was not so much sexy right now as starting to hyperventilate. Stede didn't love when Ed did that; which was fair, because Ed didn't love when Stede did it either. Usually Ed just sat on him and that sorted it out, but they'd tried that way with Ed and it'd turned out that no, nah, that actually just made Ed mad.

Breathe in, breathe out.

No, nope, no—

Stede squeezed his ribs like a bellows.

Ed squeezed his eyes shut and went with it.

"Okay," said Ed on an exhale. He pushed away. "Yeah. Yeah, get me the corset."

"You are doing the corset," Stede agreed. Stede turned away to give Ed a chance to swipe at his eyes, because he loved Ed. "I learn at your feet," he said, coming back.

"You learn at my waist."

"Twice a day, if I can."

It was a black corset worked over in yet darker black lace. Ed loved the delicacy of the lace itself and the subtle visual texture it gave the piece overall; combined with the shimmering geometry of the moonshine-purple gown, he ended up looking combustibly hot. He wrapped the solid back piece around himself and started lacing the corset closed in front with the silk magenta ribbon. He kept cinching til he got it right—least waist, most tit.

Stede waited, raking his eyes down Ed possessively, probably unaware that was wearing his little "oh, that's mine" smirk as he examined Ed from naked chin on down. He arranged the dress's neckline to peek over the corset just so to suggest maximum cleavage, then he leaned down and kissed each little breast. "See, I've just learned how wonderful these taste."

Fuck yeah, loved when Stede got to do this stuff and they didn't have to stave off the Crying.

Stede tugged smartly at the dress's waist to smooth it then started in on the next piece: half-length black tulle overskirts, stacked longer and heavier in the back as they led up to Ed's waist where they met the corset. They added more undulating shadows to the ensemble and, importantly, created a suggestion of a black hourglass from breasts to hips. Plus they were poofy and spun out when he threw himself around.

Ed looked down. "Ugh. My feet."

"Ah, shit." Stede led him to the chaise lounge and sat him down, hiking up Ed's skirts so he could roll silk stockings up Ed's calves. "Boots first, corset after. We always do this."

"No one ever learns at my feet."

Stede hoiked Ed's stocking feet into his lap, one after another, and started working his boots gently onto each. "These buckles are awful from this angle."

He worked patiently at it for a minute or two while Ed watched. Stede's hair flopped back and forth stupidly as he flipped from one side of Ed's foot to the other, trying to get a good view, muttering to himself as he matched everything up. He was gentle with Ed's foot, cradling it like Ed had seen him cradle a ship's cat, slipping it in just as softly as if he were putting the cat in its basket. "There you are," Stede said, and scritched his boots around the join of the soles. Loony.

Stede reached up and started massaging Ed's knee. "I think the flylines should be all set," he said absently. "I saw them up in the tops this afternoon. And Wee John let Frenchie think he was setting up the pyrotechnics, but he went back and fixed it, of course, I think just now, and there shouldn't be any rain tonight—"

"In about four hours," said Ed, automatically.

"– so the show will be finished before then," Stede said, smoothly. "Fog contraptions are all fuelled up, we fixed that thing with the mirrors where they fall down and you can just see Swede standing there in his ghost costume—and may I say again, my darling, dearest, cleverest Ed, how much I love that you taught us that effect, the whole thing is going to be so—"

"Stede," said Ed, unable to bear it anymore. "Stede, I can't do it."

He came up short. "What?"

"It's the worst thing that anyone's ever written, I've plagiarized about ten fuckeries–"

"How can it be the worst thing anyone's written when you've seen Black Pete in Black Pete's: Black Pete at High Noon?"

"—there are way too many scene changes—"

"—which we've timed out—"

"—it's three hours long—"

"Hey." Stede looked up at Ed from under his brows. "Come on, just—scoot over, there you go. We'll just rest a minute, okay?"

He let Stede maneuver him up to sitting on the lounge. Stede pulled him in close so Ed was resting his head on Stede's shoulder, being squeezed tight. Stede walked his fingers up Ed's bare arm until he could tilt Ed's bare chin up.

"I thought you weren't going to do Mr. Fingers anymore unless you were ready for me to suck him down," said Ed. "You know we can't right now. Coin in the dickhead jar."

"We'll fuck up the dress later," Stede promised. "We've got time enough. Whatever happens, Mr. Fingers will be waiting."

"What if it's so bad they throw me off the ship?"

"I'll fish you out."

"You fish worse than I do!"

"Oh, Ed," said Stede, and it was that look, that utter sorrow and infinite compassion and only Stede, even knowing everything about him, could look at him that way. If everyone knew all the parts of him that Stede knew, how could they look at him again with anything but disdain or pity in their eyes? What the fuck had he been thinking?

He stood abruptly. "I'm going for a piss."

"Oh, Ed, why didn't you before we got you all dressed!"

"Forgot," he lied.

He stomped away.

Outside the cabin everything was ready to go. There were the seats, bedecked in gauze, where the audience would be silently judging Ed's attempt to collect his thoughts and tell a stupid fucking story. The flylines were taut on the cross-spars, out of sight behind the curtain-sails. And yeah, there were the fireworks, carefully designed so as not to blow the ship to bits, tucked out of sight. The scene was all set.

Ed clenched his fists and stomped down the gangplank.

Roach and Swede were setting up the paper lanterns on shore to lead the way to the ship, green and gold against the pale twilight.

"You still shouldn't say it!" Frenchie was protesting.

"We're not on the ship," Pete argued back. "It's not a stage. You can say Macbeth whenever you want when you're not on stage."

"It's kind of still a theater?" said Wee John. "Front of ship, it's still ship."

"I do not think land is a ship," Swede said, not turning around.

"I don't think it matters much, since curses aren't real," said Lucius. "Sorry, babe."

Buttons said nothing, but he stared meaningfully at Ed as he strode by.

"Fuck's sake," Ed muttered, setting off to lose himself in the forest.

He headed up the highest hill to the flagpole, just to check on it while he was out. Yep, standing alright, exactly as it had been this morning. Yeah, flag was still in good shape. He stared up at it for a moment: skeleton spearing a heart, the most metal advertisement for Pyrate Theatre there could be. Stede had tried to argue for Greek drama masks, citing a whole bunch of stuff about declaring themselves heirs to a tradition as old as man; carefully not citing anything about the Blackbeard flag being the standard bearer of the scariest, most painful mental collapse that Ed had ever experienced. But Ed really liked it. Stripped down to nothing: down in your bones, getting you right in your heart, the way any good art should.

He walked a bit down the opposite side of the hill, away from where the Revenge was shimmering on the water. It felt better here, just out of sight of the glimmering ship, the little copse of trees giving him a moment to himself.

Except for the shitty little ship that was docked down at water's edge.

Nobody should be on our fucking island except us and the resort town, Ed thought, stalking down toward the water. "Hey!"

None of the guys turned around. There was a group of about a dozen, digging away.

Ed came closer. "Are you fucking kidding me?"

One of the guys leaning on a shovel spared Ed a glance, unimpressed. "Go about ten paces inland, we'll get those next."

"Is that rum? Are you running fucking rum? What are you making, a half-penny a bottle on that? What trade routes are we even on?"

"Look, mate," said Leaning Guy, finally twisting his head to look at Ed. "We're on a bit of a tight schedzh, just piss off back to your shack or whatever, kay?"

"I've got a show debuting in an hour," said Ed, low. "You fuck off. Jesus fuck. Rum runners. Do you jump out from behind trees and shout 'boo' at people too?"

"Hey, lookout," Leaning Guy called, "where the fuck were you when Fancy Purple Guy showed up?"

"Fantasizing about all the ass he was going to get with his very professional, very lucrative criminal career," Ed offered.

"Okay, pal," said the lookout from behind him, and Ed felt some kind of bonk on the crown of his head. "Let's just pack you up on the next dinghy back."

Ed saw tweety birds and heard a splash. That's me gone then, he thought, and then it all faded to black.

Chapter Text

That's me back then, thought Ed, staring up at the ceiling. He rolled over, pushing his skirts out of the way as he went. Idiots. Some absolute fucking idiots had gotten the jump on him and now he was lying on the floor of their… supply cupboard? Christ.

"Hey!" he shouted, kicking the door. He was fucking up his costume. Actually, he was fucking up his knee, but that was fine; he'd lie down a while after the show. "Who's out there? Going to let me out, or am I going to have to do a whole jack-in-the-box thing and pop out swinging?"

"Fuck off," someone called. It sounded like they were dragging crates down the hall.

"You fuck off." Fucking mouthing off, that's what they were doing. He hadn't been caught by the navy or anybody he knew from the biz, just these two-bit players. Seventeen fucking eighteen and the entire Atlantic stretched before you. Rum runners.

And fuck, this was some wasted ship space—too small to store proper loot, too big for a supply cupboard. There was no plunder, no provisioning: just random shit, holystones and mops and whatever. Some patching gear—short stretches of rope they'd pull apart for oakum, a single half-full tar barrel. Shitty old rags. A couple of large, mildewed crates. What was this, a midden? Who kept garbage on a ship? They should have pitched it overboard, like they should've pitched him. You panic, you kill a guy—instinct, really. Then you get rid of the body. Couldn't even panic like pirates. Stede knew how to panic like that from day one.

Why the hell had they been on his island. These dicks didn't even have a coherent brand. They wore these… they weren't fine clothes, and they weren't respectable middle-class merchant ones. They wore short-sleeve shirt things where they popped their collars up, and their breeches were all in these kind of… maybe salmon, maybe olive, maybe gray-blue colors, totally unrelated to their shirts, creased sharp down the front. And no stockings at all, just bare legs down into these completely impractical moccasin things with hard soles. What the hell did that mean?

With the two big crates, the barrel, and all the junk kicked to the side of the room, there was enough space for Ed to lie down. Ed did not want to lie down. Ed wanted to give these clowns a lesson in terror. It wasn't like you forgot the violence once you'd been out of the game, particularly when you were running fight calls three nights a week and matinees.

He paced and considered his options.

Smelled like the storm was coming in, first of all. He could feel the pressure dropping; it always gave him the weirdest sensation in his chest, somewhere behind his lungs. It was a little earlier than he expected, but it was hurricane season, it happened. So much for his three-hour show.

Okay: they were docked. These fuckshits clearly had ten minutes of sailing experience between them in their entire lives; they clearly couldn't hoist anchor and beat the storm. Obviously Ed couldn't beat the storm either. There'd be a whole thing about getting out, and then he'd have to walk all that way.

Okay: what if the Revenge sent a search party? Some of the crew would go down to town first, make sure that Ed wasn't hiding in the pub. Then they'd check the dock around the inlet—or maybe they'd send the strong rowers around to the dock at the same time—see if he was fishing. Even if it was pissing down rain by then they couldn't fail to see the shadow of Rum Guys' ship lurking round the bend. These fucks hadn't even bothered hiding. Ed's island.

Waiting it was.

The crates, sadly, had no liquor to pass the time, nor empty bottles to glass the bastards. Because these fucks were smuggling bottles, Ed had no doubt about it. They were not good enough at this to have figured out that you should traffic in barrels so you could trade merchandise in bulk that wouldn't smash in transit. He pushed his two crates together to make a bed. He loosened his corset and took off his poofy overskirt to ball into a pillow and lay down, crossing his ankles.

Call it a day and a half where you couldn't sail. That was about right, this time of the year. There'd be lots of rain; wind worst of all, clement after. Steamy, of course, when it cleared; enough to get the crew complaining, but not enough to hide this idiots' ship once you came past the copse of trees to this side of the island. The crew would have to cut down that copse when he got back, he thought, idly. Obviously they'd blow up these guys' ship first, but best to tie up all the loose ends.

So he'd have, what, an evening meal, a morning meal, and an afternoon meal again with these guys? Whatever, he could wait that long. These guys clearly had no interest in killing him; they just couldn't think of anything else to do with an unexpected witness. They were incompetent as fuck, though. Maybe they'd only bother feeding him twice.

*

The first afternoon they fed him none-ce. They did water him once, though.

Ed didn't even look up. "So did you shitheads forget to provision too, or?"

"Man, you got clean water, shut up," the guy said, and he left again, locking up behind him.

So no smokes either, then. Fuck this.

*

In the morning he was furious. Why hadn't he insisted on pockets for the dress? They wouldn't have ruined his silhouette even; he had all the poofy skirts. What, just because he was only supposed to be wearing the dress for three hours at a time? Because he could purportedly last the entire first act before he had his smoke break at intermission, when he could pull the pipe off the props table just offstage, where everyone always yelled at him not to keep it anyway? Props table was a bit fucking far right now.

Fuck the plan. Just go out and steal a dogend, anything. He got up and dug around a little until he unearthed some iron nails in a trash heap and went to examine how the door hinges were put together. Should be easy enough. He grabbed two of the nails and started working them in tandem, tossing his head a few times to twitch his hair out of the way. He looked so hot when he wore it all the way down like this but he should've braided it hours ago. Jesus, this room was so boring, fucking done here.

His stupid leg hurt. Stede would massage it.

He was bent over when the hinges started moving under his hands on their own. Ah, fuck, he was caught behind the opening door. If he'd been on the other side, he could've taken advantage and muscled his way past the guy to leave. He wasn't far enough along on the hinge project to be able to kick down the door and smash the guy flat to the floor, either.

The guy, who had finally brought Ed something to eat, knocked the iron nails out of his hand pretty quick when he saw what Ed was up to. In fact the guy smashed Ed up against the wall behind the door and dropped the porridge, too, petty little fucker. He punched Ed in the chest, leaving Ed wheezing, then took the nails and left.

Ed eyed the porridge resentfully. Roach was going to have something better than that waiting. He always did a great hot curry during storms.

He fluffed his makeshift pillow, then lay down. He set a mental alarm for twelve hours and dozed off.

*

That's me back again, he thought, staring up at the ceiling. He lay on his bed—crate—and tried to remember if he'd had any particular plan for getting up on deck.

Then Ed's cue came: the cannons from the first act of Terror on the High Seas roared out in the distance. He laughed a little. Great choice. It was Wee John's wee favorite; he hadn't had a turn in a while, and it was a good show to keep sharp. The mist would be rising in the twilight over the water—the explosions in the fog would be liminal as fuck, an ideal distraction. A play to let him know that Stede was coming if he could just hold on.

They couldn't know what complete fuck-ups these guys were, that Ed needed no assurance that everything was going to be fine in just a few. Well, that wasn't true—maybe the boys would be able to tell what fuck-ups these guys were once they saw the ship. Once Ivan sized up anybody's boat he did the best caricatures of what the crew would be like; always had done. They were spot on. "Emotionally open and available" insight-ass mate, fucking A.

Some ladder action against the hull of the ship nearby, audible only to someone who was listening for it. The boarding party, then? About time to get this show on the road.

The heaviest projectile Ed could maneuver in the tiny room was always going to have been him, he thought, sighing and kicking aside any shit that was still between him and the door. He shook his arms out. "Okay," he muttered, and took his running start.

A huge thud against a surprisingly solid door and a "Hey! Fuckheads!" was not the best escape plan Ed had ever worked out, but sometimes you had just woken up from an overlong hangry nap and hadn't had your pipe in a day and a half and you just couldn’t be arsed. It still counted if one of the fuckheads showed up and threw the door open to try to shut him up.

This time Ed was listening for it, and he heard the guy coming to defend his fuckhead honor before he actually arrived. Ed waited for the door to open then simply stepped aside and coldcocked the guy.

"Hey!" someone else said, and Ed rolled his eyes and jogged away down the hall.

He waited in the shadows for the clown-hollering to die down a bit before he started up again. A ship was a ship, and he'd probably find the ladders that led to the upper decks down the hall here. Then he could meet Stede, take his hand, and stroll away from this stupid ship and forget this stupid thing had ever happened. It would probably feature large in the reminiscences of his opening night, the night they'd had to postpone on account of a particularly stupid piss break. Bad intermission, Ed thought idly, leaning against the bulkhead in a corner and waiting for some other guys to pass by. People were shouting a lot on the main deck; it must be about time for him to make his entrance.

He burst out from below decks to see not Stede and the crew, but rather four or five guys in the middle of a fight over some gambling thing, shouting and absolutely whaling on each other. One guy was crawling back over the side of the ship, soaking wet—the boarding noises, Ed realized. Fuck, this was invasion-level fighting. Did they do this every day?

The Revenge was still in the distance, dinghies barely launched. What the fuck, they weren't close enough to be firing; why had they? Oh, shit, that mirage thing was happening in the fog; they thought they were closer than they actually were. The cannons had fired about ten minutes too early. The effect still kicked ass; they just wouldn't have a chance to take full advantage of it, because it was just that little bit off. Which left Ed on deck about ten minutes early; because if he had been listening instead of just chucklefucking along, he would have heard that the commotion was about the dice game, which was only being abandoned now that shots had been fired.

Fucking fuck, ten minutes, just minutes. Fuck him, fuck Stede, and especially fuck these guys. Somebody had already spotted Ed and was trying to drag him back belowdecks, no matter that Ed was shoving back against the guy with his sore shoulder and shouting obscenities in the guy's face, hoping to win by volume alone.

Cannon fire reverberated in his chest, from somewhere on this ship. These guys were firing back?

There was an explosion across the water, a blast of smoke and fire lighting up the fog. Then nothing.

And then Ed was shoved fully down the ladder, kicking and screaming, then dragged bodily back to the closet. The thud was the door being barred. No, his ribs were shaking from cannon fire, because they'd fired the cannons straight into his heart. The ship was gone. There was no more ship, there was no more theater troupe, the boys were gone, he was retired again, he got re-retired, Stede was gone Stede was—

Nobody was coming.

Stede was gone.

Chapter Text

So okay, he probably gasped for air so hard and so fast that he got dizzy and saw spots and kind of, sort of, did that thing where he almost stroked out. Just a thing that happened, happened to Stede too.

He may also have started screaming about how you didn't treat Blackbeard like this, you couldn't just go after his ship, he was going to make all of them fucking pay, he had a whole fleet that was going to come after them, they were dead, fucking corpses, fucking—fuck you, fuck you, treating Blackbeard like this, sealing your doom; the deadly quiet voice would have worked better, but he had no choice right now because needing to scream just didn't work like that. It didn't work to shut up when you had to scream. He was lucky it was words. He was pretty sure it was a lot of words about Blackbeard, and that was much better than if they were a lot of words about Stede, because he couldn't be sure what those were going to be, but they were going to be bad.

He couldn't stroke out, fucking—he told Stede, he was going to try not to hurt himself like that, try not to repeat that stretch when it was something he did twice a day just because there was no Stede. Stede told him he shouldn't have to hurt like that, why the fuck would he—there was no Stede, who was the promise even for? Fuck Stede, he said he wouldn't do this again, he fucking, he fucking—

I never want you to hurt like that, Stede said. Please, please, try to stop, sweetheart, please.

Best would have been a basin of water to push his head into and scream and then breathe in the water until he couldn't breathe in anymore, and then his body would struggle back up and cough until it was breathing regularly again in preference to dying. No basin, no water. Nothing here, he couldn't figure it out fast enough. He backed up to the wall and threw his head back against it, slamming as hard as he could. Knock some fucking sense into yourself, someone shouted at him. Pull yourself together, fucking crybaby.

He wasn't shivering so much as jerking; the comedown was bad this time. He was cold. He really, really, would like not to have to deal with this by himself; it had been a really long time since he'd had to try. Everything was tingling and he was lightheaded. He wanted a hug. Instead he curled up on his side on the floor, gathered up his skirts and burrowed under them. Didn't even—flipped them inside out—useless—fucking—this was too hard, why did everything have to be so awful nothing was supposed to feel like this. He'd gotten out. This wasn't supposed to happen.

Stede would've massaged his neck, and his temples. He tried to breathe and hold his head tight. Stede did his forehead, too, when he got the awful headaches. Stede. Fuck, just. Stede.

He was still gasping for air. It was fine, he told himself. It was going to be okay.

Everyone who loved you is dead, someone else said. Fuck are you talking about.

He beat his head a little more. He spit his hair out of his face. The beard would have been worse to deal with, he reflected. The worst was when the beard got tangled up in his hair and he had to comb them apart with his fingers. He should have braided his hair before he napped, because now it was caught between the boards that made up the bulkhead and pulling like hell. He couldn't figure out where; his scalp just stung like fire when he moved. Shit. Shit!

He pulled away as fast as he could to get it over with. Many, many hairs got yanked out, hard. He went to push the rest of it out of his face, only to find that he was actually pulling it as hard as he could.

He screamed.

Stede didn't want him to go kamikaze berserk, some part of Ed reminded him. Stede's fucking dead so what did it matter, another part yelled back. His hands had already dug up some short lengths of rope and were knotting them together without any of those guys really knowing about it.

He was hysterical, he thought, from somewhere to the left of himself.

His hands worked faster. The guy to the left was thinking: say two guys out of this whole ship of fools would help him bring it to port. The rest were spares. They could all die. This could work—everybody was passing by his door all the time, there were plenty of targets. Blackbeard takes a fucking ship, Blackbeard doesn't have to do that—thing that Stede hated, he wouldn't—

Stede would love this for me, someone started to say, but that guy and the screaming he was dragging behind him got shoved down hard.

Ed's tongue stuck out as he kept knotting. Hands only shook a little. Only had about four feet of rope tied together when he heard somebody coming in. No, no—too early. Timing was ten minutes wrong again, fucking—they—

The guy who opened the door clearly had no idea Ed was in the idiot supply closet, judging by the expression on his face.

Ed's mouth opened first.

"Yeah, you got Blackbeard on board, mate," it snarled. "Jog on and let someone higher up know, this is officially a situation."

The guy looked at him for a minute. "Sure," he said.

"Don't worry about the fucking beardless chin, worry about the fucking reward," the mouth said. "Go on."

"Fuck, did we sink your ship?"

Ed didn't have an answer ready for that.

"That's pretty funny, sinking your ship," said the guy. "I'm gonna go tell the guys."

The door shut again.

Probably not enough time to prepare anything besides the short knotted rope, Ed thought, looking around wildly for more weapons. How many guys were there going to be?

Don't hide—go for the throat. See if he could work on getting any of the rest of the closet party onsides for mutiny; or if not, keep fucking strangling.

It's 1700, someone said frantically. 1692. 1690. Every time he'd done this before. He could do it again, Blackbeard. He snarled his hair worse; made sure he had the most tit, the most dramatic hourglass figure—no, fuck, he'd taken the black tulle off, no time for that. He hiked the skirt of his lavender dress up a bit, anyway, snagged bits of it on bits of the corset boning so it looked discomposed and meaner. Broad shoulders and tit and lurching and looming, yeah. Fucking silhoutte right there. Enter Guys, stage… no, he was the only one backstage. Enter Guys, kicking down the fourth wall.

He twisted the one end of the rope around each hand.

"Hey man, check this out," somebody said from the hallway. "Somebody from the landing party put a guy in the closet."

Two guys and counting. He stationed himself beside the door, waiting.

Guy number one: sneak attack worked. Ed yanked him back against his chest immediately and managed to loop his arms over the guy's head, knotted rope stretched taut. He pulled his hands back sharp, careful not to actually break his hostage's neck.

Guys number two and three. Door still open, but now they were blocking the doorway. Ed backed toward the wall, shielding himself with guy one.

"You could still get out of this alive," he snarled at them, jerking his hostage's neck so the rope pressed hard against it. "Go get your captain."

One of Ed's knots slipped loose, and the rope fell to the ground.

The former hostage sucked in a huge breath and slammed backward, flattening Ed against the wall.

Ed's now empty arm shot out and grabbed the mop he'd seen before, smashing it in half against the wall so that the handle was sharp and splintered. "You're up against my boarding sabre, mate," he said, wresting his hostage back under control from behind. He hoisted him up to use him as a shield, shoving himself and the guy forward til they were in the second guy's face. "I board ten ships a day and slaughter a thousand men. I burn down the Caribbean and do it stabbing up every fucker I met." He managed to hook his mop-shank arm around his hostage and caught someone's abdomen somewhere. Blood from the guy started oozing down Ed's arm.

The third guy landed a punch on Ed's jaw, completely knocking him off balance and separating him from the other two. "Is that, like, a thing? Are we duelling?" He drove his elbow down into Ed's shoulder so the mop shank fell. "So is that a point, or how do we measure?"

"You're missing the point," Blackbeard said, grappling with his mop to skewer whoever was caught on the mop even deeper.

Somebody started pulling the mop handle away, but he hadn't been brawling for thirty-five years for nothing. He stomped on his former hostage's foot with his full weight. "The point is you're fucked. The point is you fucked with the wrong guy and—" he drove down harder, feeling a lot of bones shift and the start of some satisfying crunching under his boots— "and it's not a game, because your bones don't get un-pasted when the round's over. You don't get some kind of pass for being shit."

The guy was howling in pain, dragging his foot out from under Ed's boot and pushing Ed's leg away. Ed panted, trying to keep the maimed guy in between him and the other two, trying to figure out which guy he could get next.

Neither. Two on one: the two guys could yank the mop away and then help the foot guy get away from him. The one who got lightly gut-stabbed could help the uninjured one grab Ed's arms and throw him to the ground. The guy whose foot was ruined crawled panting up to Ed, now held on the floor between the other guys. He grabbed at one of Ed's boots.

Ed kicked, hard. He pulled back to kick again. The guy used the motion to slide Ed's heel out of the boot and, from there, tug it off. He started in on the other boot.

"Hey, night shift," the guy called out the door. "Get the carpenter in here."

"If you get the carpenter to get the captain, I'll issue quadruple rum rations the rest of the voyage," Ed called after, now thrashing as hard as he could.

One of the guys holding him wrenched his arm behind his shoulder. "Who the fuck do you think is going to make a deal with you?"

"Why wouldn't you want to deal with Blackbeard," said Blackbeard, literally on the ground being sat on by two men. Two guys, one on his shoulders and one on his legs; the third guy, foot-maimed, still fucking with his boots. "Why the fuck would you go up against him?"

The carpenter arrived, toolbox in tow.

"You're fucking joking, mate," said Blackbeard. "You're just handing me shit to beat you to death with. Is that a hammer?"

"Yes," he said simply, and then he brought it down on Ed's big toe.

He gave it his best burly laugh. "Awwh, mate."

Bleeding-foot guy said, "More."

Ed laughed full, throaty, delighted, deranged.

By the third toe it was the laugh where Stede started getting worried about him and wanted him to go somewhere to sit by himself.

One by one, they mashed Ed's toes to bloody pulp, each toe flattened to the size of the half pennies they certainly wouldn't be earning on the bottles of rum they'd been drinking before they came in. What if I had a drink, someone said, insane. Water me, screamed a little plant inside Ed. Oh that's funny, he snarled back. No that was probably right; his toes were mulching the floorboards, iron enriching them nicely. Pack me a pipe, some idiotic other part of him screamed. Something, anything. Your toes are right here, another guy shouted right at him. Why do you think there's some way you could not feel them. The laugh kept laughing.

The carpenter handed the hammer over to smashed-foot guy, who inspected the carpenter's handiwork for a moment. "Still got a lot of bones in the middle though, doesn't he?"

The laugh stopped working. This time Ed cried.

*

When he knew what was happening again, the lamp had burned out, and he started screaming.

He tried to tone it down, a little, once he realized what was happening. Not a great look, losing it like that, even if your foot felt the way it did and you were on your side in some schmucks' mop closet (deprecated) and everyone who loved you was dead and you couldn't even see and your foot felt like a scream. He couldn't even describe it; it felt like a scream.

He had broken fingers a few times; that was just something that happened, swinging ropes around. One time when Dad was alive, he had broken his arm somewhere between his wrist and his elbow; that one was fucked. He had had to change to odd jobs that month, his shitty slinged arm holding things still while his good arm worked at them, and he had barely brought bread home for Mum at all.

This was nothing like those. This wasn't a wrenched knee or a stabbing. It was what it felt like the split second the cannonball impacted you, he figured, except that bastard got to die right away; Ed was experiencing a hundred thousand of those split seconds all in a row. The ship was taking on water. Fuck, how bad was it, there had to be some other measurement besides scream, he—

He tried to breathe in, clear it away, which only made scream turn into choke. He wanted huge ragged gasp; could he get huge ragged gasp next time? No, his head was stuffed full from crying; he actually got dizzy the next time. Some sort of hoarse shrill thing came out when he swerved to coughing, so, fine, that was taken care of for a while.

Just take a minute and appreciate how bad your face feels from crying and how much it hurts from lying on the floor like this, someone suggested. "My fucking foot just died, mate," Ed said out loud. "Have some fucking respect."

Check if it's breathing or not before you bury him at sea, mate, the other guy said back. Fine, maybe he should check. Would be useful if he had a fucking lamp, for that kind of thing, to fucking see.

So we're back to the shit with panicking so hard that you stroke out twice a day, then, hey? "Pretty fucking reasonable," he argued back.

He started easing himself up to sitting, to put himself in a better position to work.

He tried to avoid putting weight on his shitty left foot as he went. Turned out his left leg and left hip had turned shitty too, as much as the foot had been smashed up. There was only so much you could do to avoid that whole quadrant when you were shifting limb to limb, rolling around on the floor. Every time he felt himself starting to scream, he stopped and tried to wait it out til it passed.

Closer to the wall. Something to lean against, something to climb up.

He was taking one of those scream breaks when the door opened again, throwing light suddenly into the room. For one wild, stupid moment, he hoped somebody was here to bandage him up.

"Hey," said the guy, instead. "Somebody said there was—oh, shit," he said, and started laughing. "I didn't hear about your foot."

"You should see the other guy," Ed mumbled, finally raising himself to sitting.

The guy sat himself and the lamp down on one of Ed's crates, companionably, and stared down at Ed. "He can't look that bad," the guy said. "He's not still in here."

Ed closed his eyes against the light and tried to breathe deep again. "Don't fucking test me. Don't get near me."

The guy, predictably, bent down closer. "Holy shit, your foot looks like sausage. It looks like the stuff that comes before the sausage."

Ed opened his eyes again. They'd adjusted a little. "Nuh-uh." He snapped his fingers to get the guy's attention where it belonged. "Up here, shitweasel. Say it to my face."

Ed had shifted to head of smoke, eyes of flame by the time the guy looked up. Just lost my mind, having a bad time, man, his eyes said, bullseye wide. His mirthless grin chimed in, and what do we think happens now? Somewhere to the left of him, that other guy was saying please, please let this work.

"You are," the guy enunciated, "a fucking loser."

The laugh took over.

Ed reached behind his crate and grabbed a sanding-stone, coming up to brain the guy.

The guy howled.

Ed raised the holystone to hit him again.

The guy parried.

Ed lunged to pick it up again, but reaching folded him in half, and he screamed obscenities as the movement ground his mutilated foot into the deck.

"You fucking prick," the guy snarled.

Ed clawed at the guy's forearms, trying to bring him down. The guy pulled away. Ed lunged and grabbed the guy's knees, trying to drag him back.

"Who the fuck do you think you are?" the guy said, backing out of reach. "The fuck do you think you're doing?"

"Blackbeard," said Ed. "Blackbeard, Blackbeard will fuck you up, he'll—" he tried for the laugh—"I'll—"

"Get fucked," said the guy, and then he tied Ed's wrists together surprisingly competently. He took another length of rope and yanked Ed's ankles together til Ed screamed again and he bound them together, too.

"That's not bad," he said, picking up Ed's legs to check his work, then deliberately dropping them hard to the ground. He left without looking back.

"Come back," he said desperately to nobody. "Come back, you can't win, you can't—Blackbeard—"

At least you have the light this time, Blackbeard sneered at him, and he screamed, and screamed, and wrenched his bound wrists until they were bleeding. He flung them at one of the edges of his crate and filed desperately at the knot, trying to break it open, until the scream gave up, and finally, finally, Blackbeard lay down, weeping.

Chapter Text

The ship knew he was in the scummy little storage room now. It had been a lot better when they didn't. People kept coming in to check on him and he couldn't get enough time alone to get these fucking ropes off so he could try for the door again.

Earlier, an affable guy had come by and asked to check out his left foot, citing injury. Ed knew an opening line when he heard one. He scooted away fast into his corner, but there was only so much he could do with his wrists tied and his ankles still bound so that his smashed foot and his whole foot were as one. Maybe it's like having half a foot? someone said to Ed, hopeful. You're being stupid on purpose now, said Ed back, completely failing at not scream-grunting every time he moved his lower limbs.

"Hey, take it easy," the guy said, holding up his hands. "I just think, you know, maybe we should let some blood, give that wound a chance to breathe."

"No," said Ed. Fuck, that was wrong. He was supposed to let the guy just do it and fuck off so he'd have more time, fuck.

"It'll just take a minute, come on."

"No," said Ed, unable to stop refusing. Then, like he still had a foot to stand on, he added, "Haven't you guys bled me enough already?"

Turned out they fucking hadn't.

*

It was a lot to deal with. He'd moved rapidly from "hangry" to "spacing out inopportunely" and he still hadn't been able to deal with these fucking ropes. He sat up against the wall, bound hands hugging his knees to his chest, and tried to think.

If it had just been a few guys coming by to kick the shit out of him, he maybe could've made something out of that. But there were no repeats. Ship like this had 200 men, maybe? What could he do if they never repeated?

When did they feed him? Not once a day, not twice a day. Maybe when they remembered? Maybe when they remembered he was a piece of shit. Today they had brought a cup of broth, which he was allowed to drink as long as he didn't mind watching somebody gob in it first.

Too hungry for pride, Ed had thought, looking down at the mug. Sorry, Mum. The guy held it up to him. Ed drank it down. The guy spilled the last of it down Ed's chin, tossed the tin mug at his head, and left, laughing.

He had ducked in time, but just barely. His neck did it all on its own.

*

Food was the most important math, really—but to do it, you had to do time math. But it got hard, because you hadn't had any food.

By Ed's reckoning he'd been in here five or six days. There had been the day and a half while it was storming. There had been stretches where three-hour naps had alternated with painful consciousness that had added up to three days, give or take a few hours. The day with the foot was the one that was really giving him trouble. He'd lost a lot of time to the scream after the Revenge had—after it had—after he'd been re-retired. And then there were the guys, and his foot—and then the scream again after.

The room was dim, lit only by a single lantern—he wasn't desperate enough to try to touch that yet, don't set fire to your fucking ship—but no window meant no checking your math. It also meant his shitty ten-by-ten bed and breakfast was starting to stink. Plenty of breathing air was getting in under the door, but the only really fresh stuff he got was when the guys came and opened the door. He wasn't sure the trade-off was worth it.

His wrists fucking hurt. He was giving himself friction burns yanking his arms back and forth. He tried again: this time, he folded his thumbs down and pulled his right elbow back, sharp. No give. He really, really didn't want to fuck with the rope around his ankles without having his thumbs free to do the precision work, because his wrecked foot was already in a constant state of Scream, possibly having passed into burbling lunacy, or even, at a guess, shit-hot infection.

Ed took a deep breath, asking if maybe someone could help him out here. His stupid brain could only come up with drowned sailors. He put his hands together in a prayer pose, because either some fucking dead guys were about to help him or he was going to succeed through sheer douchiness. He set his jaw as hard as he could; tucked his steepled fingers into the tiny, tiny gap between his ankles and the ropes; and shoved.

This resulted in a lot of mouth-screaming, but it was bitten off and mostly came out of his nose so actually he was doing a great job at this whole being held captive and tortured thing. Handling it so fucking well, look at him, hey Dad, I grew up great, thanks and all that.

What do you mean you're good at it, some guy yelled, you just smashed your fucking ankles.

Keep your opinions to yourself, prick, it's still just every single bone in your one fucking foot, he said. Yeah, actually, and it's just the toe bones and the ones on top, did you think of that? Who gives a fuck, you've got plenty of heels and shit.

Then how come your ankles hurt so fucking much, the guy shot back.

Well, because they're being crushed up against each other and all the fucking disintegrated bones by all these fucking ropes that you can't shift, fuck you, fuck you, piece of shit.

Shut up or we're dead, the other guy said.

Ed swallowed and beat his head back against the wall a few times. That wasn't a thing. He was retired. He wasn't dead.

A lot of clicking on the swallow. Not great. He was counting water much, much more closely than food. Food kind of counted for both, but you were fucked without water. Longest he'd ever seen anybody go without was seven days, and they were fucking insane by then. He was already seeing things out of the corner of his eye, complimentary beverages notwithstanding. He wasn't looking forward to later.

Later is pretty much what you've got to look forward to, hissed someone.

The door opened again, and he closed his eyes and tried very, very hard to think about later.

*

He was gnawing, now.

Not good for your fucking teeth, gnawing at ropes. Stede would probably point out that it wasn't good for the teeth to get trapped on a ship of tackily dressed guys and die horribly, either. What did dead teeth even mean, Ed would ask. Stede would answer… something. Who knew. Stede's teeth were dead. Ed's teeth were dying.

In some cooler world where he still had two feet, Ed was rabbit-kicking at the wrist-ropes instead of gnawing at them. His foot would've had the strength to do it; it would've mattered much less that his wrists would've gotten dislocated in the process.

He stopped, panting, head down, sweating all over the ropes; which wasted water and wasn't even going to help. The sweat would dry and the ropes would contract, and then he'd have to start biting off fingers or something, jesus fuck fucking fuck.

Faster, asshole. You owe it to Mr. Fingers.

Deep breath. He flexed his fingers one by one. He flexed his wrists, bound together, as a single unit. He rotated his shoulders back, one by one, pulling each elbow back and dragging the knot-of-wrist with them. Everything still worked. He tossed his head so his hair would stay there behind his shoulders, fuck's sake, get it together hair, come on for a minute.

He crossed his eyes and stared down at his tits, considering. Maybe. His bound hands were right there. Cop a feel, Teach, that'll cheer you right up, he advised, pulling his elbows back and up. He craned his neck so he was staring at the ceiling, drawing his shoulders back, trying to give his hands the most room to work. He started feeling blind for the place where the corset boning hit the neckline. He could do this. He'd pull out a length of whalebone to use as a pick; he'd shove it in the knots and ruin the ropes, pick them open.

Right there, the place where the fabric was thin over the boning. Feel up—there, the neckline. He scratched for a moment, pulling some thread aside so he could get to the whalebone. He pinched at it, forefinger and thumb.

The boning immediately pricked his finger, drawing blood.

The prick was so shocking yet so miniscule compared to the rest of it all that he couldn't help it, he started up laughing.

"Oh my god," said a set of footsteps, and Ed tried very, very hard to quit before they came in. It didn't work.

"Still fucking here, prick?" He grabbed Ed's jaw, shook his head around a bit. "Christ but they fucked you up last night."

That didn't help the laughter either.

"Jesus," he said, and slapped Ed.

He could feel his cheek stinging every time he heaved. These little extra touches; these were the things that made his stay here special.

"I'm stuck," Ed explained. "They won't let me out. You seem like a reasonable guy," he said, laughing again. "We're two reasonable guys, you and me."

"Fuck, shut up," the guy said, and kicked Ed hard in the ribs. There was a noise like a mast had cracked and an instantaneous knowledge that it had fallen right on his lungs. That helped the laugh.

"Thanks, man," Ed said, and calmly lay down.

He curled up into a little ball and told himself, you have to shut up, now, and squeezed his eyes shut.

*

His nap wasn't so good that time. Absolutely not three hours. The whole time his ribs clacked together like dominoes, and he really wanted to stop wheezing, but still needed to fucking breathe.

In the background he could hear people in the hallway; and here, by his head, the scrape of his crate sliding around, because none of these shitfucks had learned that you secure cargo. His crate could move but he was stuck. He couldn't fucking make himself move. He hugged his torso harder and closed his eyes again.

Shallow naps like this, you couldn't last on those very long. He needed to do better.

He'd ended up lying on his right side, all of him trying desperately to keep the shit-pile left foot up and off the ground. Bound as his feet were, he couldn't do much besides tuck his right foot between it and the floor and hope.

His broken ribs were on his right side, underneath him. His body had decided on its own that the best chance they had was to brace his right hip against the floor and hug his arms around his shoulder as best as he could, compressing and lifting them. He held as still as he could to keep them in place and tried to keep breathing shallow and calm. When he breathed too deep, his lungs inflated and pushed his ribcage open and then he was practically inviting the scream back in. He thought about reaching under his lungs and poking all the organs underneath to check on them, shifting and doing the guts-rearranging bit like when he was about to take a sword, but he decided it wasn't worth it. He'd broken at least one rib, that's all he needed to know. Save your breath. Don't fucking move til you have to.

The ropes, someone insisted. You're dead if you don't shift the ropes. You need that boning to pick the ropes loose. Let go and roll over, asshole.

Shut up, Ed said, squeezing his eyes shut. I know, okay? Fuck off, you stupid fucking dick, that's moving when we have to. Don't rush me.

Break more bones, somebody suggested. Corset'll come right off then.

We are going to do this and you are going to shut up about it, Ed hissed. Scream. Laugh. You are not invited. Cry, I know you're going to gate crash, so, you know, try and keep it down, okay?

Slowly, stupidly, awfully, he bent his head back again so that he had room to work at the boning that was poking out of the collar of his corset.

Sharp cry did indeed make an appearance. Ed was still lying as comfortably as he could on his side, but tilting his head back like that had pulled too hard on his ribs. He couldn't uncurl too far; he'd die. He'd just fucking die. Pull his knees further up to chest, then, and hooray! The corset was helping compress the ribs a bit, look at Ed using tools!

The boning pricked his finger again, but he was ready this time. Just an awful little smile. Get fucked, laugh.

A little voice inside him said, This is it, it's now, hurry, hurry.

Shh, he said back. It's okay, we're pulling, look how fast we're going. No one's coming. We're going to make it. We'll get loose, and we'll run down to the docks, and—

Shh, he said back. Not that one. He laughed a little, but bit it off. Shhh.

*

Time was getting tricky.

His hands and feet were free, finally. Nobody had come by to beat the shit out of him while he had worked: good, safe. On the other hand, nobody had come to beat the shit out of him while he had worked. How long had it been since he'd started working, they'd have to come. Measure, like—how hungry was he, compared to when he'd started on this? And he was losing time to the scream, he knew, he knew it was getting really bad now. Dead sailors must be looking out for him, since no one else in the hallway seemed to care about the sounds of human suffering, today. Tonight. For at least an hour. No, it couldn't have taken that little time; it would've taken him that little time if he had a whole body and not this weird, bleeding half-thing he was working with right now. Men got injured at sea. Men had peg legs, men worked with one arm. Men did not work when they were bleeding and unable to stand or even crawl. Men like that were lucky if they made it to port, or even just to Cook to get him to help.

So crawl.

Start checking shit. He was still lying on his right side. So his smashed left foot was up in the air; he paddled it stupidly, bicycle-kick style. A thousand million fire snakes swam up his legs all at once. Go ahead and cry, Stede would say, kindly. They'd probably laugh together. Yeah, you're fucked, but have a good cry.

He pulled the leg back in toward his chest. Okay. Okay okay.

His ribcage—he couldn't laugh, anymore, because every time he sucked in any breath, at all, it was someone taking a cosh to him. At least the corset was still holding the broken ribs in place. His arms were wrapped around them, tight, exactly where his body weight would compress most and stab least. He was going to have to roll if he wanted to crawl at all, and it was going to hurt like a bitch; no way around it.

He sucked in a breath and threw himself over into a crawl using his body weight, like a turtle trying to get back on its belly.

There.

The thing about sobbing was that it did, in fact, shake your ribs up a lot. Which is not what you need right now, said someone, dispassionate.

It is what I need right now, please leave me alone.

This is impossible, someone said.

We have hands, and we have feet, and we have a new shank. I don't know what the fuck else you think you're going to get.

Fuck off, leave me alone. Please.

*

You could lose time to Cry too. It was way, way worse than losing it to Scream or Laugh, on the "you just need eight hours and a drink" scale.

*

"– the fuck did he do?"

"Busted the ropes with fucking whalebone, look."

"Are you kidding me? Look at him, he can't even sit up."

"Man, fuck that," it turned out someone was saying, as Ed tried to open his eyes.

Knife held at his kidneys woke him up real quick. The ripping sound of someone cutting his corset all the way up the back was all the warning he got for the tension that bound his ribs together suddenly disappearing, the corset falling away from his belly like a platform beneath the gallows.

The door, someone reminded him. Edward, look.

He hugged his ribs to himself with his right arm and crawled toward the hallway, trying to hop using just his left.

A low whistle from above him. "That's fucked."

Somebody laughed.

"What's fucked is that you're standing here and watching it happen. Look, he's going to get to the door, are you seeing this?" Somebody jerked at his right arm, trying to yank it away from his busted ribs. He couldn't help it; he held himself tighter.

"Well fucking stop him then."

"Hey," said somebody, "hey, the lantern."

"No," he croaked, unable to stop himself.

"Oh, shit," said somebody. "The tar!"

"No," he said again.

It smelled like ship repairs somewhere behind him. The unmistakable smell of pine tar bubbling up hot and awful, half again as hot and infinitely more dangerous than boiling water. He lost it, completely, crashing on his belly to the floor, trying to get purchase to skitter away.

"Fuck's sake," said somebody, and wrenched his right arm up behind him until something popped.

"No," he said, again, "don't, please, don't—"

"Man, fuck this guy," another guy said. Ed couldn't even see who at this point. All he could see was the decking.

"He's—fucking—squirming—"

Fuck you, Ed didn't say. Fuck you, fuck you, die already, I didn't do anything wrong—

"Do it, do it, I've got him, I've got him—"

No, it—

A coat of tar, a hundred and forty fucking degrees, on—

How were there still more screams—

Upper arm, full coat, just a paintbrush dabbing a sweet little coat, right over his mermaid, quick costume change—

"Could set it on fire," somebody said, and his arm thumped to the floor.

No, Ed couldn't even say. No, no.

"Why bother," another guy said, laughing. "Hey, we're done with him, right?"

"Guess so."

Smelled—

It was him. He smelled like botched repairs and days of scum and sweat and blood and piss and that awful, still smell that came before the man finally died.

"Just put him somewhere. I don't want to see that shit when we have to come in here."

Sudden, sickening movement. Everything lurched. Someone hooked an arm under his good arm, hooked an arm under his other—that arm didn't work anymore, there was no arm, it was sizzling, they couldn't make that shoulder do anything. Sloppy. No resistance. Please, thought Ed. Please, please, I won't do anything, I can't fight, please, go.

They dragged him up by his single good arm, and his hip hit something hard, doing something to the place where his back had seized up. His smashed foot bounced behind him as he swung back and forth, dragged up along something wooden, grimy. They were folding him up. His head went first, cheek scraping against wood, dress splitting up a seam as he went. He remembered to twist so his shoulder hit first.

The crate, he thought. He was in his fucking crate.

The light disappeared. The lid was shut.

"Yeah, so, I guess there's fresh fish for supper, new cook is supposed to be way better than the old one—"

Sit up, his shoulder screamed. Please, please, please, we can't stay like this.

Elbow, he called. Elbow, could we maybe try for it.

The whole arm, the arm that wasn't currently being seared maybe to the bone—Ed forgot how these things worked—he was all sealed up, he wasn't going to fucking bleed out of that fucking arm, he—the other arm, the whole one, grabbed uselessly for anything at all. Nothing. His head was on the floor and all of him was weighing down on it. His neck was going to break.

Please, thought Ed. Please, please.

He tipped the crate.

It was enough.

For now, it had to be enough.

Chapter Text

Sleep, preferably—but it was the cry, always the cry. He wondered if it was possible to dry out so much he'd stop being able to cry. His body shuddered and heaved. It kept expanding outwards and it couldn't go anywhere. It was crumpled into a ball; its limbs were smashed over and under everything else. They were on their own, figuring that one out. There was sweat, but he'd sweat it a long time ago.

The box was hot, the box was scratchy, the box was probably as miserable as he was. The box wasn't clammy, probably. Probably it was him. Probably the box's eyes weren't watering and its nose wasn't swelling up. The box had a ton of splinters stuck in it though, he and Ed had that in common.

The time he spent crying, he wasn't even crying, really. It was more heaving. He hated it. If he were crying, he'd have a better chance at keeping quiet and still. Nobody noticed you when you were quiet and still, he was pretty sure. It's not that he'd had a whole lifetime of practice on that one so much as he'd had a whole lifetime of practice on that one. He was too tired to lie to himself, it turned out. His head felt weird, all the time.

He'd had water as recently as… two days ago? Couldn't be more than two, he'd be going crazy. Just ringing in his ears and that had happened for years. And the headache was starting, but that was normal too. And he could hear things, but that always happened when he got stressed. And he was jumping at everything, but that was probably because every time the door opened it was somebody coming by to try to kill him again. Except that they wouldn't do it, they just kept fucking with him, and he wanted to die. Which, again, was fine, and not crazy, because that happened all the time. So basically not crazy, he was keeping it together, actually, he was keeping it together, actually, he was keeping it together, actually, he was keeping it together,

It was unrelated that the cry was winning, totally and completely. He thought about the cry a lot in between gasps when he tried to hold his ribs. He got better at bracing against the side of the crate with a foot to keep from jerking in place, except he had to use the shit foot.

Probably if he stuck his foot in a beehive and sat with it in the beehive and for some reason didn't take it out of the beehive, it would sting and swell up something like his shit foot was doing. There was no question that the foot (defunct) was infected. It was hot, and shitty, and shitty, and completely useless, except for bracing against things and hurting more when he braced, because he was stuffed in here and he had to brace his ribs somehow.

Besides which the left foot (righty tighty, lefty shitty) was opposite from the right arm (skin-y tighty, fatty goosey) which was painted with literal poison. If he could avoid getting splinters embedded in his dead arm he'd really appreciate it. He'd really keep it together, actually, keep it together, here, didn't,

He was going to die in a box.

*

He wasn't sure if it counted as sleep, but he knew he was doing something because every now and then he'd feel in his neck that his head was slumped, or that his head had jerked and hit the crate again. He had no idea how long he'd been without water, but it was probably fine, because he was keeping it together, actually.

He wondered about that thought.

He was pushing his shit foot up against the side of the crate so he could keep holding onto his ribcage and breathe like a human person, who was human, and a person, and not some kind of random garbage; and he was gritting his teeth so it hurt less, all the poison and the bees and the cannon balls.

The foot was—the foot was shit at math—two days, four? The foot had been—it was sick. He was really sick.

*

Somebody came by and kicked his crate—his crate, where he lived now—or probably lived, but he was pretty sure it stopped hurting if you didn't live. It slid around and the laugh managed to huff a little and Ed thought, why bother? What was the fucking point by now? Maybe somebody was jerking it in the hallway, he thought, it would be better if they were. Maybe somebody really loves the thought of guys in boxes. It's the only way they can get off, and they discovered that two days ago, and that's why I'm going to die in a box. You get off on improper storage of cargo, I'm kinkshaming the fuck out of you.

*

He blinked a little. It smelled like coffee. He reached up, touched his face—felt like coffee grounds. He could go a while on those. He combed slowly through his hair, teasing out the water-soft bits. It felt better to pinch them out and eat them separately than it did to put his hair in his mouth and suck directly. Then he started wondering why he cared so much, exactly, and just sucked. All garbage anyway. Tacky, oily, bloody strings, licking himself like a rat covered in fleas. He would've killed for a rat. He knew, he knew the coffee was going to fuck him up, with nothing else in his stomach like this, but what the fuck was he supposed to do?Just—imagine you drank too much of the strong stuff, when your heart starts beating like it's fucked. That Turkish kind that Asel used to make, you went to her place when you were a person and could go places. Her place might even still be there. What did a crate know.

*

What did a crate know.

*

Somebody pried open the crate again. "Hey. What about some water?"

The crate, broken and bleeding, couldn't answer.

Ed rousted himself a bit to say, loudly and clearly, "Please."

The crate made it into an awful creak, scratchy and wretched and rotten, eeehhsth.

Somebody laughed and dumped it into the crate. "Have it your own way, then."

The crate tried licking it up and what a boon! He would be keeping it together, actually,

—it was saltwater.

The crate, sodden past structural integrity, snapped.

Ed shoved against the inner walls—hard as he could—pushed against the sodden, fake, bullshit mess—

and broke through the rotten, eroded walls where he had been—

and Ed, Ed caught the guy from behind, falling hard on the guy's ankles as he Screamed and clawed, trying to get away—

and Ed was out.

Chapter Text

Ed was furious.

Of course the crate was rotten, everything about this whole fucking ship was rotten. Walls closing in, Ed smaller and smaller inside himself—fuck that. Bones were going to explode out of his foot, his arm was going to pop the caulking around it, and his ribs were just going to have to fucking deal with his lungs blowing them out. He was pushing forward with all his might, tearing twisting new and phenomenal things—Ed was out.

The guy who'd opened the crate was loud, but Ed was screaming louder. His elbow found something that was midsection, maybe—fatty tissue sliding over something lumpier beneath. Not good enough. Ed crawled further, knees dragging against wood, belly to belly with the man. He drove his good elbow into the guy's face once, and again, and again, until the guy stopped shouting. Then he grabbed the guy's collar with his shit arm and drove his good elbow into the guy's throat until he heard the crack. Then he crawled over flesh some more.

God, fuck, crawling to the wall. He panted, trying to pull himself up.

The fuckers could at least have smashed up just the one side of his body, but no, he was cleft diagonally: sausage-meat left foot, his old shitty left knee, cracked ribs on his left side. And then his right arm, destroyed completely above the elbow; his right shoulder, pulled back til it had almost popped.

He tried raising his destroyed left leg—knelt on his shit knee, bracing it on the swollen infected mess of a foot til it oozed pus, yellow resin seeping through the cracked bark of his skin. He screamed, and it buoyed him up. He was crying, and it washed away the scream until he needed it next time.

Fuck a foot, he thought, and his left arm dragged his dead weight up the wall.

Jesus fucking christ, some other fucker shouting down the corridor again, yelling something that didn't matter, nothing to do with him. Or maybe "that shitty guy is running around" was him. "Why didn't you stomp that guy to death" could've been Ed, how the fuck was Ed supposed to know. But actually, fuck all that. That guy wasn't real. "Guy who we forgot to stomp to death," complete shit.

Couldn't let this other fucker get away, Ed thought, but he found he was already on him, and his blood-crusted fists were driving into—everything, really. The fucker's arm somehow seemed important. Alright, hold down his arm, sausage the rest of him up, fuck this, god, fuck, there's not "some guy" running loose. There's just me.

It was every time he'd maimed somebody. Something wild, new, heliotrope and orchid overlaid. It changed when you looked at it left and right, the warp and the weft of it. A swish, a glimmer—and then Ed was atop the fucker, straddling him.They were grappling, but Ed held the other fucker's arms down with his good one. Then he held his tarred arm's forearm down against the other guy's neck and Ed's body whumpfed down, a neat scream lending the arm strength to break the guy's fucking neck.

Enormous, gasping breaths again—get fucked ribs, as long as you don't pop the lungs—and he lay down on the dead guy. Just for a minute. He snuggled down into the guy's bosom, flipping his hair to the side so he could keep an eye out for any more assholes while he had his little break.

Oh, an axe. That's what he'd seen in the fucker's arm.

He rolled across the dead fucker til he was down on his belly by the axe's side and asked his dead right arm to tug on it a bit. Not going to do this one-handed, that was for sure. He stared. Get fucker's hand off axe.

Fuck, couldn't use the axe to cut off the axe hand. It was down to his fumbling fucking hands, starving, fever-hot, cramped, stiff, just clawing motherfuckers.

He clawed.

He clawed some more.

Comma hands were cupping the axe, and comma hands reached under them and slotted into place. Two tumblers of a key clicked into the lock without benefit of oil, twisting only with brute force.

His arms had been crumpled into such awful little knots for so long. He was so tired. His right arm was burned and bubbling, blistered and sloughing skin from the actual fucking tar they'd painted him with. Nothing moved like it should.

He started working the axe back and forth.

A nail dropped out of Ed's nailbed.

His ribs seesawed across the floor as he worked. The cry, the scream, the laugh: all of them were waiting, silent: the only noise Ed's careful, ragged breath.

The dead guy's axe hand could bleed on the axe hand, though; his broken wrist was oozing. Ed's hadn't oozed in days. Ed had barely sweat in days. He thought probably, maybe, he should be pissing, too. His hands moved.

The axe came loose.

He stopped, staring.

His hands thought a minute, then began working their way up the handle. They knew about how getting closer to the heavy bit made it easier to pick up something, actually. About halfway up the axe his mind took over and realized he could fulcrum himself up from the floor a bit, too. He repositioned himself against the dead guy to get better leverage.

The guy's guts rumbled unpleasantly. Weird smells threatened to turn into weirder expulsions. Well, just don't puke about it then, Ed thought, finally levering himself up far enough to restart the process of crawling up the wall.

One arm, one axe; one arm, one axe. Better, further up than last time.

Nothing about this was helping his pulsing headache, three (four?) days strong. He needed water so badly. His nose felt bloated, it was so dry; he felt every breath stick in the back of his throat. The guy these fuckers were after couldn't piss, but he could press his cracked lips together a little longer.

All he had to do was stumble down the hall and around a few corners, and then he'd be at the ladder leading to the main deck.

Hard to make it out—a single dim lantern cast cigar-brown shadows down the hall. Not hard at all to hear more yelling from behind him. Fine, fucking—footsteps coming toward him, toward the ladder.

Godddddd, more fuckheads mustering.

The guy these fuckheads were after wasn't "the guy they forgot to stomp to death." The guy they were after was someone who fucked fuckers up, who maimed and was pretty fucking good at it.

Panting, throwing his shit hip back against the wall, cracking and bruising and shaking and roiling, he threw the axe up over his awful right shoulder. His hands shook. He walked them down the handle, one over the other, until they were in place.

He turned to face them.

The pitch on his right arm ripped and released a scream as Ed drove the axe down into the first fucker's shoulder, blood gushing out where the chunk no longer was. Push him against the wall. Ed of the million melees, no hesitation, murdered a man, and he felt good and right and true. Forgot to secure your cargo, mate, he thought, and pulled the bloodied axe out with enough force to carry it in an arc and catch the next guy.

The lonely lantern swayed wildly, sending shadows dancing dancing across Ed's skirts; magenta and indigo, whipping around; dawn sheen, motherfuckers, a whole arc down and—more blood.

It splattered thick in his hair and down his face; he snarled and tossed his hair back. Gonna braid it soon with the blood of a thousand men. Must have been the hair toss that pulled at him, pulses of pain increasing his headache. Somewhere behind it, the strange thought "I wrote a fucking play" floated by. It made him dizzy.

He stumbled forward toward the horde advancing, stumbling over his broken left foot. His ankle ground to grist and he slipped sideways in space and out of time. The scream helped him; the scream threw his strong arm in where his shit foot missed its step in their furious quadrille. His raw and shivering right arm steered and his strong arm threw Ed's weight on the axe and clunk-thunk clunk-thunk, shivering, furious spasming, pink-violet currents carried the rest of him down the hall towards the next motherfuckers.

Axe-heel, axe-heel, a smear of blood on the wall where he dragged his right arm to steady himself as he got close, nerve pain running like a rope burn up his awful right arm til it snapped loose inside of him under his ruined tattoos—something sparking in his vision—

The ship pitched, or something in his head did, and he was down the hall and the cracks in the tar on his arm had been caulked up with some other fucker's blood and the scream was louder than it had ever been. He swirled out of the dingy shadows, shining cornflower and bubblegum, and caught some motherfucker at the midsection, and the guy folded in half almost perfectly. Another guy got chopped down dead, straight into the floor, just a perfect fountain of arterial blood left behind. There was nothing about these fuckers except that spray of blood.

Ed burst out from the very depths of himself; reaching out, keeping them swinging faster and harder; mauling, mutilating, mangling; explosions on explosions, like Ed had. Ed was screaming, laughing, crying, yelling to be heard—they had nothing.

If you asked them if they had anything to say, they wouldn't fucking understand the question.

Fucking motherfuckers, more. Throwing every ballsack of a human being at him for days, did they not know? The scream propelled Ed forward, explosion in his lungs, ribs blown out, pain pumping through him—lavender, indigo, amaranth, magenta—

—and Ed's sparking vision took in the lantern again, and he heard a glass bottle rolling somewhere at his feet, because they didn't smuggle casks, just tossed bottles in fucking crates. Ed's hand closed around the neck of the bottle and brought it up to glass the bastard but Ed—

Ed thought: The guy they're after is someone who sets ships on fire and leaves everyone to die.

The bottle stopped, still a foot above the other fucker's head.

The guy these fuckers were after poured lamp oil all over the other fucker and tore the fucker's shirt off. Stuffed it in the bottle.

Visible only to Ed, beyond the liquid fire arcing down the hall, was the pine tar barrel pitching and yawing with the ship. Blessed, raw, beautiful pine tar, the same ugly color they'd painted Ed's arm, oozing like Ed's foot, coating the floor—

The explosion was inevitable.

Somewhere there was an unmistakable, booming crack that announced that something enormous and wooden in the hull had split. Water started rushing in. It wouldn't help. Everything had caught and pine burned like scorpions up your fucking asshole, anyway.

He had a few seconds to stare down the hallway, memorizing the way, before the pain in his head exploded with the light and everything turned to white void. All he could do was squeeze his eyes shut, feel himself out, and move.

What noise did he make? What did his body do? It worked for him, and he breathed, and it was the most terrifying pain he'd ever felt, but he was calm; he knew, intellectually, that he must still be screaming, and he was absolutely still getting splattered in blood, following the sounds of the axe chopping quietly down the hall. All he had was lavender magenta, rose periwinkle, wisteria mist, cloudy plum—and the part of him that said, very clearly, you're getting to the Republic.

His flesh sang, his flesh melted away. His heart soared, his heart was going to beat until it stopped. It was quiet, and blinding, and jewel-toned; and he could feel it all, and he could feel nothing.

And he was going to get to Nassau, and he was going to put on his play.

The rush of night air hit him. He was up.

He heaved out of the hatch and hit the deck with a head-splitting crack. Now there was cacophony again. An awful rushing sensation as every part of his body came back to him: he was fever-hot, his arm bubbling worse than before. His guts twisted, white hot pain licking up and down him just like the flames across the deck.

The flames roared, eating up ropes and spars and climbing up the masts. Men shouted for something to smother them, for lifeboats, for help; invectives, snarling, fighting.

No dinghy; no time. His feet beat the deck, shaking him to his bones each time they slammed down. His hands found the railing with a jolt. One last, desperate, gasping climb. Ed laughed, joyful—and he leapt. He soared. My drowned sailors, all buoying me up.

A neat splash. And he was on to the next.

Still blind, red-black behind his eyes now, he thrashed hard in the water, feeling for his driftwood, trying to work out the current. It would be so, so, nice to pass out for a little while, he thought, smiling. God this was—this was fucking great. He laughed, and laughed, and he heard the splash of oars.

His fingers found something. Everything was pulsing now, washing in and out like waves.

And then the strangest thing of all: somebody was tugging Ed by the skirts. It was somebody gathering him up, he was sure of it: hauling steadily, but with the kind of panic that came only when you knew for certain that a single second could tip the scales. A very real voice was shouting close by, "Careful! No, don't touch his arm, don't touch it, just the dress, the dress!"

There he was. Really and truly, it was him. Ed was the drowned sailor, and the shouting was loving, it wanted things, it wanted him, and Ed laughed, and his heart soared, and he couldn't even feel any hurt anymore. He couldn't see a fucking thing, and he was going to puke again, and he couldn't even feel his arm. He'd dropped the axe, and it was fine.

"Stede," he said. He laughed, reaching up.

"Ed! Oh my god, oh my god, Edward, you—" Stede was crying. "I'm here, I'm here."

"I'm here," Ed agreed, and his hand spasmed. "Never left, I never—"

He shuddered, and then he left.

Chapter Text

He woke again sucking in air, hard as he could, and coughing out water every time. Someone was beating his back—and he shivered, and he burned, and someone was saying, "get the dress off," and Ed wanted to say, but we were going to play with it, after the show.

Stede's coat wrapped around him and it was the best thing Ed had ever smelled. Shame about all the puke-water. Stede squeezed his hand, then went, "Shit! Sorry! Other one, I'll hold the other one!"

Stede petted his hair, and told him he loved him, and yelled at everyone else to row faster so that Ed didn't even have to. Ed couldn't see, and he couldn't stop shaking. But Stede was here.

Ed didn't have to drown, they'd fished him out, and he didn't have to tremble on his own.

*

He dimly recognized he was lying in the galley, and there was a lot of commotion, and he could tell he was crying again because he could feel the tears in his ears. "Hey," said Stede to his tears. "Shh, shh shh."

"Okay," he said, small as he could.

Stede wiped at him with a wet cloth then said, "Drink some of this, darling."

Ed drank the laudanum, grateful, and slipped back under.

*

Tacky, bloody salty taste—

*

"Get fucked," he said, and it took four of them to hold him down to paint his arm with something. It burned just as bad as the first time, and he didn't know why Stede was here and he was letting this happen. Scrubbing—ragged layers of skin were pulling away and all his—the mermaid, the hat-parrot, the half of Snakey that snuck around his shoulder blade. His eyes got painted with fumes. Turpentine. More fucking ship repairs. Sand in the wound. Saltwater after.

"You're fucking up my patient's ribs."

"He's fucking up his own ribs!"

He wrenched away and his forearm burned, too. He was so thirsty. It was saltwater. Not falling for it.

He spit it out, and people groaned, and then they were on him again.

*

This time he grabbed Stede as hard as he could. "No," he said, as clearly as possible.

"Ed! Ed, you're safe, it's alright!"

"No," he said, sat up in bed. "Don't. Don't."

"We're not… Ed, we have to help you, do you understand?"

Ed opened his eyes as wide as he could and flexed his shit foot, for the pain of it, but they'd wrapped it up or something and now it wouldn't move.

"You have to rest," Stede said into his hair. "Won't that feel better?"

Like fuck.

Stede put his palm over Ed's forehead, shuttering his eyes.

*

Somebody washing him with cold water.

Heaving sobs, split open. The cry had him.

*

Once Izzy was there, yanking at curtains. I got those for Stede because he was mad at me, he tried to say.

"You can't let him see light," Izzy hissed, but his voice always carried.

"He was in the dark for a week and a half," Stede hissed back.

"Bonnet, he gets his headaches, you cunt, his headaches."

Stede took a step toward Izzy, but Ed must have flinched, or something, because he shifted his weight back instead. "You're right," Stede said. And: "Thank you."

Izzy stared at Stede for long enough that Ed tried to turn his head away, but then he said, low, "You're welcome." And: "We're on the same side."

"We're fine, Izzy," said Stede, so Ed squeezed his eyes shut again, and he didn't have to move, now. "This will work fine."

*

"Ed," came the whisper. "Ed, you have to have to drink a bit of something, open your eyes for me, darling."

"Egg," Ed said nonsensically.

"No, dearest. You'll—if we feed you too fast, you're going to—you'll be sick again."

There was a teapot. He poured warm broth into Ed's mouth a little at a time. Maybe beef?

"Uh," Ed asked.

"Shhh, it's alright," Stede said, and he held a cloth napkin under Ed's lips and it brushed—Ed's beard, he was getting whiskery again, and he started crying.

"No, don't," said Stede, suddenly panicked. "Your nose can't be stuffed—we've got to do the broth, please breathe, Edward—"

Stede turned away from him and shouted for someone. Ed jerked back, hissed in pain, and decided to close his eyes for a bit.

*

It smelled like lanolin. It tasted like laudanum.

*

Not like he woke up hot and ready to go, before all this—he was, in fact, forty-five and a pirate—but after he moved around a bit he was usually warm and ready to go. Now he couldn't stretch out at all. He couldn't move his fucked up leg without a lot of work, which meant he couldn't move his hips and walk along like he wanted either. His lower back was stiff and locked. He had to move his shoulders differently, always leaning on someone. All of it was tight, and constricting, and he tried to be glad he could stretch out further than he could in the—the box, but it was fucking hard to make himself believe it.

He cried, a lot. His body wasn't doing what it was supposed to. When Ed cried he wanted to put his head in Stede's lap, and he couldn't bend that far. Stede couldn't figure it out the first time. Stede did the thing where he reached out, and didn't quite touch Ed, and Stede's shoulders locked up as he looked fretfully around and tried to find something that could prop Ed up; because it was clearly something wrong with Ed's equilibrium, and the worst thing for Ed right now was tipping. It crushed his ribs. He got dizzy and couldn't get back up. He just wanted to tip over onto Stede's lap and be held, and be safe, but it wasn't safe for him to curl up like he had been doing on the floor while he'd been bound hand and foot, because that's exactly how he'd gotten those sores that he needed to be careful of. At least the crying got him doing his deep breathing exercises. Sniff, scream; gasp, wail.

"You're doing great, Ed," Stede would say, later, when he figured out what was happening. "There you go. There you go. Here, I've got your shoulders. I'll put my head right there on your shoulder, now our heads are touching. Feel my head just there, in your ear? There, there we go."

Gasp, scream, scream worse, scream because it had to happen. "Oh, Ed," Stede said, and he started crying too. Stede reached up and held Ed's other cheek and scraped his cheek across Ed's to kiss him, and still Ed couldn't stop screaming, but Stede could hold some of the scream in his mouth for him. Just a bit.

They bandaged Ed's torso again and gave him some more laudanum and arranged him sitting up on his pillows and sent Frenchie in to hold Ed's hand while he fell asleep. Fang had to take Stede away to cry someplace quieter. Ed never knew where. He hoped somebody knew what was wrong with Stede.

*

Roach checked his forehead for temperature then did the usual: pressed on the lumps under his hair, looked into his eyes, gingerly touched his cheeks to see how the bruises were healing there. Then Roach did the really awful part, where he held the sides of Ed's head and slowly tilted him side to side, then back and forth, then did kind of a swivel thing.

His ears roared. "Cannon fire."

"And?"

"Nothing."

Roach was unimpressed. "If I shined a candle in your eyes right now, what would happen?"

"Hair would catch fire," muttered Ed.

"More cold rags. Close your eyes."

"I can't," he croaked.

"If you want the big headache again, fine by me. But someone else can bring you coffee and painkillers."

He made them bring Stede before the rags went on and then he asked Stede what was happening every few minutes. Stede gave up on Ed sleeping and started a continuous narration of what he could see.

*

"Barely dizzy."

"Ed, you're literally walking sideways."

"Not wheezing either."

"Ed, you have pneumonia. Get back in bed."

Wee John stuck his head in, interested. "Who the hell was supposed to watch him?"

"I sent Pete on a mission," he said conspiratorially. "He'll come back when he's done."

"He should really lie down again."

"I can't be inside," he said, starting to panic.

"You can't walk right now, dearest, you have to be."

"It's too close," he said, more urgently. "Too dark, too small."

Stede did not look happy. "You like our room."

"It's small."

"You know it's not."

"It's small."

Stede was looking around for some way to keep Ed from getting away; Ed could tell by now. He knew Stede wouldn't try to make him sit suddenly, and he knew Stede couldn't push him down on the bed from over here, and he knew Stede wouldn't try to push him up against the wall, after that thing the other day.

Probably the other day.

"I have to count," he insisted.

"Ed, I told you, it's Tuesday."

"No."

"Wee John! Help me!"

Wee John shrugged. "He bites."

Stede said, "I love you very, very much. Please sit down."

Ed turned a little bit so that his crab walk was in the direction of the door.

"Okay," said Stede. "Okay, we're going to rig up a chair. Please, Edward. Hold my shoulders. I won't move you. Please stop moving."

Ed held on for dear life and kept his eyes on the door.

Chapter Text

Today was a shaving day.

The first time, Stede had let Ed hold the razor up to his own cheek for a while before Stede took it back and shaved him, gently lifting Ed's chin with a finger every time Ed started to curl in on himself too much. Ed's right arm had stopped hurting in a way that was scarier than if it had hurt forever.

Now Stede asked him all sorts of mad shit about how sir would like his sideburns today (who??) and what tonique sir might prefer for afters. He basically hadn't even cut Ed this week. In fairness Ed didn't think he'd ever shaved anybody else either, back when both his arms had worked; probably would've slit their throat. They were going to see if Ed could do it left-handed, soon. They'd probably practice a lot of other shit before they got to the blade-at-throat stuff, but "soon" sounded better than "someday, hold your fucking horses, man." Neither of them had really entertained the idea of Ed growing a beard again.

He was almost madder about his fucking tattoos than his right arm being out of commission. His fucking mermaid. Stede had just colored her gold, too, thirty years after he'd gotten the fucking thing. He would've been mad before he and Stede had made a project of her and the rest of the sleeve, but now he was furious. There was nothing left to tattoo on his upper right arm; just those thick, ropy scars. He still wore plenty of long left sleeve, short right sleeve outfits, because you stuck to your fucking brand. He could do a pretty good job threading his limp right arm through and then pulling the rest of the shirt sideways over his head and onto his other arm, by now.

Oh fuck yeah, shot silk taffeta shirt was clean today. Frenchie and Wee John had done a fucking job and a half rescuing material from the tarred, torn, burnt, waterlogged dress and putting together a princess-sleeve crop top. Nobody had had a good suggestion for bottoms that Ed could put on himself, yet, that were as hot as the leathers Ed wanted to wear, so Ed just let Stede rummage around down there for a while in the mornings. It wasn't the worst solution.

"Hair up or down?" Stede asked, after he had cleaned them up again.

"Down," said Ed, too quick, but maybe Stede thought he was still out of breath. Ed always waited for Swede days for braids. Swede's were a ten. Oluwande rated about five; Jim, a one. Stede's were a two, at best.

They managed to finish getting ready without too many more distractions. Ed shuffled to his tall chair so Stede could put on his new boot, and Stede tied off his lavender sling and pinned his arm in place. Ed picked out his onyx-topped cane for the day.

And, thank fuck, he finally got to go outside.

*

"Boss," said Izzy, quietly, limping over to the railing where Ed was squinting at the horizon. "Left these out again." He handed over the coolest accessory that had come out of this whole shitshow, a pair of huge smoky quartz glasses that Ed wore outside all the time now. Ed was going to see if they could get him a star-shaped pair next. "Got a pipe packed when you're ready. It's on the props table."

"Opium?" Ed asked, hopeful.

"Roach caught on."

"Fuck that guy."

"Fucking twat who wouldn't let you fucking die. And who gave you pure bud."

"Oh." The laugh bubbled up, but it was old and familiar, and Izzy always kept some of it for him, twisting it into a smirk of his own.

They limped along in tandem for a bit.

"My guys did my foot better," said Izzy, suddenly. "I'll give you their card."

Ed flipped him off and went to find the pipe.

*

Stede had taken it, it turned out, and was sniffing it suspiciously.

"It's not opium, though," Ed pointed out, opening his hand.

Stede sighed and handed it over.

"Oh," Stede said, in his very bad fake-casual voice, and if Ed wasn't so fucking exhausted all the time he'd have Stede on the deck right then and there. "I wanted to show you something, actually!"

He started to steer Ed across to the stage before he remembered himself. "Uh. You can take my arm, if you want."

"Yeah, love," said Ed, and pecked him on the cheek.

"And then would you… would you mind looking up?"

"Okay," he said, and Stede shifted so he could bear Ed's weight and gently cradle the back of his head.

"We re-rigged everything yesterday!" he said, gleeful. "Since you said you wanted to stay inside and all, I just thought it would be the perfect opportunity to shift it all so we could put on your show next! I know how important it's been, how much you thought about it when you self-actualized that day—and so we set it up, look," and he gave Ed the run-down: how they had set up one of his chairs in the fly lines; how they'd refined the pyrotechnics and redone the smoke machines so they'd pump smoke that would allow him to see in shades no darker than his glasses already were; the new boot they could make to match his supportive stompy boot; the way they could tuck his supportive corset under his costume and maintain his dramatic figure, as long as they added more tulle skirts—"and I think we've really done it, Edward. We could debut next week. If you're comfortable with it! Of course, it's you, it'll always be down to you, I didn't mean to say—"

"Love it," said Ed, distracted. "That looks like it took a lot of fucking work mate, well done. Hey, you want to spend today writing down the play I knocked up yesterday, actually?"

Stede stood him back up gently and walked around front so they were facing each other. His eyes gleamed. "The what?"

"Take us to our workshop in the shade."

*

Tonight, the stage was bare. It was a warm night and there was a comfortable quiet once the audience had all settled in.

Ed stepped up front and center and looked at the sky for a moment. Looked back down. Took a breath.

Began.