Chapter Text
There's a man on top of Stede. His breath stinks of rot, of salt, of sour wine. Stede has never felt so disgusted in his life. He thinks the man knows this, too, because he laughs, mocking, down at him. His maw is full of black gums and brown teeth and a bulbous red tongue. Stede scrunches up his face and tries to keep the man's hands away from his throat. He's impossibly dirty.
Being a pirate, Stede realizes that there is a certain amount of grime and filth he was just going to have to get used to. He has had to learn to live with the perpetual piles of dirt in the corners of the ship that just won't be swept away. He has had to learn to not mention just how bad everyone smells during their nightly reading. It's rude. It's uncouth. They can't help not bathing everyday, and the saltwater just makes the stench worse. So Stede stays quiet. He learns to live with the things that he cannot change.
But this man... this man Stede cannot stand. Black grime presses into his hairline like a crown of sewage. Putrid sweat seeps out from the pores of his sunken cheeks in the blazing light of the day. He screams in Stede's face - a fear tactic, he assumes - and flecks of spit land on the curls of his hair and his eyelashes. This does not scare Stede. All it does is fill him with more rage than he knows what to do with. His fingers twitch. His nails get caught in the man's threadbare coat and he pushes harder upwards. Stede growls, the sound low and vibrating in the back of his throat.
The man is thin, but he is smart enough to distribute what little weight he has across the whole of Stede's body, making it virtuously impossible for him to skitter out from underneath. Stede is having his intestines squeezed against his spine from the pressure of the man's own belly. Their hands are caught in a frantic dance. Their ankles are wrapped up together. The man keeps screaming and it is driving Stede insane. He wonders where his crew is and why they aren't helping to get this madman of off him.
It's a simple enough answer, Stede knows. They have their own battles to fight. They simply don't have enough time to save their Captain. And it isn't like Stede blames them. He's sure there are steps he could have taken to not end up in the situation. Still, the man reeks, and Stede would very graciously accept the help.
"Can you just..." Stede gasps for air, floundering around as much as he can, ducking his chin down so it's harder for the man to grasp at his throat. The anger turns into adrenaline and his arms surge forward once again on the man's rib cage, all of his strength just pouring into this single motion. "God, can you just FUCK OFFI?!"
Nothing good comes of it - at least, nothing Stede can consider good. The sun and the weight of the man have made Stede weary and tired. He does not have enough strength to hoist the man off of him. The man takes his chance, takes this chink in Stede's armor where he is gasping for air like a dying fish, and lets his arms dip down once more, fingers clasping around his throat. "If you're not careful, you'll end up dead meat, like. Dead pirate gadgie, that's what you're gonna be, mate."
Out of the corner of his right eye Stede sees Ivan throw a person across the deck. He is bright and glimmering with sweat in the heat of the day. His face is a conglomeration of brightly exposed wrinkles - a frown so deep on his face that it sends shivers up Stede's spine. It's no wonder that he's one of Blackbeard's most feared crew.
"Iv-" Stede starts to scream, but the pressure on his throat cuts off his air supply. He starts to choke.
"No, none of that now, like," croons the man. Stede feels him shift his weight around. He freezes for a second, heart beating so hard and so loud in his chest he feels like it might explode. It's rabbit quick He's trying to figure out what the man's next moves are, if there's going to be a moment where he can gain control again. One land lifts off from his throat. Stede gasps, feeling his chest rise up with the effort before the man's forearm presses down on him again. His free hand reaches for something that Stede cannot see.
He should have turned their ship around. He should have saw the black strips of fabric that denoted pirate and went the opposite way. They couldn't handle pirates. Stede couldn't handle pirates. Ed had told him as much, all those months ago. Stede thought that Ed was being much too careful and went for it anyway.
They'd been practicing sword fighting - Stede was getting better at it, slowly, but he never had a natural talent for it like Ed or Jim or Izzy. He'd started too late in life, when middle age had already fossilized his bones and froze up his joints. He's not quick, not fast enough when and where it counts.
There are shameful tears in Stede's eyes when he feels the hot blade of a knife press some strings of hair back from his face. He didn't even think to disarm the man during their combat.
"You're very pretty," says the man. Despite the heat, a cold shock of fear, a yolk of an egg being cracked on Stede's head, travels down all the way to his toes. "I think me wife would like to have you. 'Course, she's back on land, like. Way, all the way in Bournemouth. You'd not like it in Bournemouth. Hope you don't, anyway. I fuckin' hate it. Makes me fuckin' devoe'd and clamming for something interesting, like. Beats me as to why she moved us all the way down from fuckin' Liverpool, like. Mint, Liverpool is."
The blade of the knife is stagnant, pressed against Stede's temple. For a moment the man is silent, intent on swallowing whatever lump he has in his throat. Then he takes the blade and scrapes it down Stede's cheek, sheering away the dead flecks of skin from last week's sunburn, but otherwise not harming him. "Well, anyway. Be nice for her to have a pretty man around. She don't think I'm pretty, like. Don't think our children are pretty neither, but then, we're brassic as can be."
Stede has to agree even if he doesn't understand most of the words the man says. He's never seen the children of this man, yet he cannot imagine them to be anything other than petrifyingly ugly.
Spots are starting to dance at the edge of his vision. There's not a lot of time before he's going to lose consciousness, maybe forty-five seconds to a minute at most. It feels like he's being buried alive despite lying in the open air, pinned down by a man that smells like pig manure.
He hears the shouts and cajoles of his crew, thunderous in his ears, louder than his heartbeat. He'd rather die with them, here, than be shipped off to England to be nothing more than a slave to, frankly, from what little he has heard, to a fickle woman.
His mouth has been filling with saliva ever since his airway was closed. So Stede spits on the man, hits him square between the eyes. He watches as the spit, white and slightly foamy, slithers down the man's face. It gets to the corner of his mouth and he wipes it away, a deep frown beginning to twitch throughout his lips.
They make eye contact. Stede knows he has made a mistake. The eyes of the man are a cold brown - the brown that Stede saw in his Barbadian homeland in the cold spring mornings of April. Those eyes are the color of frozen mud: dull and lifeless and depressing. It was the color that made Stede feel that his life was meaningless, because how could anybody see that color and remember that hope existed in the world?
Hope didn't exist. That was the point. In vain, Stede shuts his eyes tight as he could manage and turns to the side, back and forth, hoping to free himself.
In his ear he hears the man sough. "Wife don't like that. Don't like fightin' gadgies, innit? It were why she sent me to sea, like."
Stede manages a strangled whimper. He hopes that he can control himself enough not to piss his pants. More than anything he wants Ed around. Ed makes everything better - especially the parts of life that Stede does not want to live through.
He does not want to live through this.
The man's breath is hot and putrid in his eardrum. "It's alrigh', lamb. I won't kill you. Won't do me much good if I do. Just stop fighting me, like."
When Stede manages the courage to peel his eyes open again he finds his gaze trained upon Oluwande's shoes. A long time ago they used to be as blue as the sky, but over the months they have dulled themselves into an unrecognizable shade of brown. He tries to make a sound - any sound, really - to alert him. What he manages is a strangled wheeze, and he feels his tongue pulsate and bulge in his throat. He's going to pass out. The man is going to take him god knows where and he will never see Edward again. He will never see this life again, this little insignificant life that Stede has fought so hard for, that he loves more than anything else in the entire world.
Stede will kill himself when they reach Bournemouth. He'll figure out a way to get word to Ed and then he'll take a knife to his throat, or he'll hang himself in the rafters of a barn. He'll do anything he can to not live a life of servitude and mundanity. Not again. Never, never again.
It is enough. Oluwande looks down. There's a shallow cut on his forehead spanning the entire length of his brow. It isn't bleeding too much, but Stede knows that the poor kid who did that to Oluwande is going to be tormented by Jim for the rest of their days. "What the... Oh, shit."
The man screams at Oluwande, using that same fear tactic he had used on Stede. All he manages to do is piss Oluwande off even more, deepens his frowns. He is so angry and it is so hot outside that Stede can envision steam rising from his ears.
"You fucking freak," Oluwande says, under his breath, and then resolutely marches forward. The man is quick to do his work, making two swipes of his sword on Stede's face.
Later on, when retelling this encounter to the very few people Stede can feel okay breaking down in front of, he will say he doesn't remember Oluwande pushing the man of off him. He won't remember curling in on himself, coughing and gasping for air. He won't remember the rushing of adrenaline pound like a thousand men through his veins, blood pounding in his ears as his vision presses itself into base, bruised tones of yellow and purple.
What Stede will remember, though, is the pain of squeezing noiseless words and voiceless screams out of his throat. The sensation of it is not unlike how it felt that one time when Stede accidentally walked barefoot on coral. It feels like he's being shredded from the inside out. He'll remember pressing his palms to his eyes as they pulsated blood. There's more pain inside of Stede than he can handle, and the pain he remembers is probably not all of the pain he endured.
Somewhere, in the far recesses of his mind that Stede does not often find himself traveling to, he finds himself sobbing for death.
***
A jolt of the ship wakes Stede up just enough to brace himself so he doesn't fall out of bed. He hums a little in the back of his throat, because this might have woken Ed up too, and Stede always hums to let Ed know that they're okay, that he's fine, and that they need to go back to sleep. It hurts, though, and that little noise sends him into a coughing fit.
"Easy," comes Ed's voice, the emotion behind it too heavy to place. He sounds worried. He’s always worried. Stede thinks he’s probably overreacting again. Stede feels his hands around his shoulders, helping him to sit back against some pillows until the fit resides.
Stede feels dizzy and confused. The tips of all ten of his fingers buzz, and even moving the tiny bit that he did has his world spinning. He tries to open his eyes so that he can focus on the horizon line of a plank of wood, but finds his world dark.
Did he sleep for that long? Is it nighttime already?
“What…” Stede finds that his voice is rough and worn. It hurts his throat to speak, like waves beating upon rocks, and when he tries again all he can manage is a thick and mangled, “Ed, what?”
Ed squeezes his shoulder. It is to provide some sort of comfort, though Stede doesn’t feel comforted. He feels wrong. His heart thumps fast in his chest. He feels his mouth go pitifully dry. Yesterday, Stede remembers, it was the start of the full moon. Their cabin should be bathing in silver moonlight. His hand reaches for the curtains to pull back the window. He has trouble sleeping if the world isn’t pitch-black.
His fingers touch cool glass. Nausea settles in his stomach and if it was was hard to breathe before, it's nearly impossible to now. Why can't he see? What did that devil of a human do to him? Why the fuck can't he see? Another choked whimper squeezes itself out of his throat, hands flying to his neck, but Ed stops him, hushes him, helps him back onto the mass of pillows again.
"It's alright Stede. There's bandages around your eyes is all. Nothing's wrong." Ed's hand swoops some of Stede's curls away from his forehead, thumb brushing down over his cheek bone. "I just need you to relax."
His stomach still feels uneasy and all Stede feels like he can do in this situation is cry. He's not sure Ed would let him make sure his crew his okay or if the other pirates are even gone. When he tries to cry, to let himself feel some sort of catharsis over this terrifying, confusing situation, there's a pain that Stede has never quite experienced before behind his eyes. White-hot does not do it justice, Stede thinks, and the agony makes him experience such intense vertigo he curls into his side, trying to forget that the world existed.
Ed's right there beside him, Stede can hear him breathing and can feel his hands fluttering around his body, unsure of the best way to help. Stede doesn't know what he can do either, and so they both just are there, in the captain's quarters, painful and silent. They are living a moment in time that neither wishes to experience.
There's frustration within Stede now, swirling around with the cocktail of dizziness and the confusion and the nausea. Crying is the most basic human response. It's the first thing anybody learns how to do when they first come out of their mother, and then they learn to scream. Stede cannot do either, and having those two very basic human things ripped from him unwittingly?
Well, it makes Stede feel less than human. His shaking fingers reach out blindly for Ed, who grasps them tightly. Stede hears him suck in a sharp breath. Ed's voice wobbles as he hears him say, "I love you."
Stede can't say it back, but he can squeeze Ed's warm, calloused fingers in his own, let him know that he loves him too, that he's glad he's still alive to be held by him.
"Safe?" Stede croaks, and even the single syllable threatens to choke him. He coughs for a couple seconds, letting the convulsions happen naturally rather than fighting them. He holds out his free hand so that Ed doesn't help him again.
When he's finished, Ed speaks. "Stop trying to talk, you fucking lunatic. Christ, you were strangled for a full fucking minute and suddenly you want to become a fucking orator." Stede feels him kiss the corners of his mouth. Ed's lips linger there for a long time. Stede swears he hears a little whisper of a sob escape Ed. "I'm so..."
That sentence is never finished. Stede feels Ed pull away, feels the mattress shift as Ed leans against the back wall of their bed. Stede nestles in his arms and can almost relax. It hurts when he swallows and it hurts when his eyes move, none of these movements are things that Stede can control, necessarily, and it makes his skin itch with anger. Ed wraps his arms around Stede's body and kisses the top of his head. His rubs his nose in Stede's scalp. He makes that little sound once more, the one in the back of a throat that threatens to transmute itself into bawling and blubbering.
"Everyone is safe, Stede. They're gone now; no one is going to hurt you."
Except the hurt has already been done. The man crushed Stede's windpipe and slashed at his eyes, and now what use would he be to anyone? The tears that he cannot cry sit like needles in the back of his eyes, stabbing at the nerves. Stede just lays there, in Edward's arms, shaking like a loose sail in the wind.
All Stede wants to do is hold Ed, and so that is what he does. He just wraps his arms around Ed's right bicep, pulling it to him like it's the only thing in the universe that can keep him tethered here. Stede rests his head against Ed's chest, feeling his heart-beat thump against his temple. It's too quick, Stede knows. Ed is anxious and he is worried, and he is probably -
Oh, God.
Is Ed hurt? Has he been hiding injuries that Stede can't see?
This fear makes Stede feel like his has been pushed off the bird's nest of the ship. He feels like he's free falling, and all at once its hard to collect his breath. His throat constricts and this makes Stede panic more.
"Stede," Ed tries to help sit him up. Stede keeps coughing, keeps wheezing, keeps trying to force breaths down his pinhole of a throat. "Stede, hey, calm down. Calm-"
"Hurt?" Stede croaks out after what seems years and years later. He still can't breathe but he needs to know. He cannot rest until he knows.
"What? Yes!" and the weight drops in Stede's stomach. He feels like he is going to throw up. Ed's hurt, and he wasn't there for him. He didn't protect Ed like he had promised to do when they were first invaded by those... by those... Stede cannot fathom a word for such devils. "You're hurt, Stede. Very badly. That's why I need you to-"
"No!" Is what Stede wanted to say, but instead thinks it only comes out as a guttural grunt. Chest heaving and very lightheaded, Stede tries to poke his finger into Ed's chest, but instead hits something with a large tendon. His neck, maybe? It must be, because it certainly takes Ed by surprise and and has him coughing.
"M-Me?" Ed manages. "You're worried about if I'm hurt? Fucking... no, Stede. No, I'm not hurt. Not a scratch on me. Promise."
Blessed relief finds a home in Stede's heart, and he is finally able to slump back against Edward again, sucking in a breath as deep as he can manage and sighing it back out. He feels his eyelashes flutter against the rough bandages as he closes his eyes.
Ed doesn't say anything other than another off-hand remark about Stede being insane, and then holds him in a constrictor-like grip again. The pressure is good for Stede. It helps to ground him, to not float away and start thinking of things that would just make him panic again.
Ed is right. Stede is insane. They both know it. It's the insanity that made Ed fall in love with Stede initially, all that strangeness with the Spanish Armada. Stede knows how queer it was for him to fall in love with Ed then, rather than be shitting himself in fear or dying of a bullet wound in his gut, but who could blame him? The light had made Ed look like an angel, all orange in a heavenly glow that would have put the archangel Gabriel to shame.
For a long time, Ed and Stede remain as they are now, Ed holding Stede steadfast to his chest, sometimes kissing the shell of his ear. Stede hears him make the little keening noises every once in a while, like he wants to cry or say something. He never does. Stede doesn't have the voice or the energy to press Ed on the subject either, and so they just sit in silence.
His mind wanders. Stede thinks that's better than trying to piece together exactly what happened earlier. It would probably work him into another fit that would make his throat swell. He finds himself thinking that he is lucky to hear the footsteps of the crew above. There is usually more laughter among The Revenge, infectious and boisterous and annoying at ten at night. Stede misses the laughter. There is a hole in his heart that cannot be filled unless he can properly see his crew is okay.
Ed doesn't lie to him about the crew being hurt. Not anymore, at least. He had tried to when Stede first came back and he tried to soften the blow of what had happened to Lucius. Stede had asked where he was and Ed had said that Lucius had left weeks ago, unable to reconcile with how Ed had forged iron chains around everybody on the ship. He was a terror, a tormentor. Lucius couldn't cope, and so he had left. He was fine, Ed had promised, and said that he was probably at a nice little Caribbean port drinking a nice little fruity drink with a nice little umbrella poking out the side.
Stede had jumped headfirst into the well of the lie. He'd just been happy that Ed hadn't killed him immediately upon stepping onto the ship.
He was so deep, so trapped in that well, that he didn't hear the other crew members tell him that Lucius wasn't fine. He wasn't on an island getting day drunk. He had been thrown off the ship. They had heard it, the splash and the screams and the eventual quiet.
No, Stede had said. Ed was the most gruesome pirate on the seas. He'd done plenty worse than what they were saying happened, and Stede wasn't squeamish. Ed would have told him the full, unabashed truth. He remained in that well, scales on his eyes and body dripping wet with gullibility, until he heard a little cry from a secret passageway Stede had forgotten had existed.
Inside that passageway was a dirty, half-rabid, starving Lucius. He stunk like saltwater and rotting death. His left leg was molted brown and purple from where he had tried to push his tibia back into place. Stede pulled him out, nursed him back to health, and apologized profusely to everyone who would even give him the time of day. He had crawled out from that well with his own hands, scraping his knees and his elbows on the stones of sin that Ed had deliberately placed.
The well of Ed's sins was still there. No one could remove it from the ground, for it was made of transgressions and wickedness that were as final as a jury sentence. But at least Stede had freed himself, and at least they could help build a fence around it, keep people from falling in again.
So no. Ed doesn't lie to Stede about the crew anymore, and Stede finds himself nearly asleep with the comfort that they had won - at least in that capacity. They might not have beat the other pirates but they had beat death, which is, at the end of the day, the only thing that truly mattered.
He is woken up from his half-slumber to the sound of someone entering their cabin. The noise creaks from the door, to his ears, and throughout his brain. The pain settles right behind his eyes, sharp and incessant. Stede sucks in a sharp breath and turns his head further into Ed's warm shoulder.
"Hey," Ed's voice is soft like silk in his ear. "It's fine. It's just Roach."
Stede hums, exhales a minute amount of the anxiety swirling in his lungs in order to regain an iota of composure.
"How is he?" Roach sounds more tired than Stede would like him to be. He sounds like he hasn't caught a break. Stede wants him to have a break and to rest, so he holds out a thumbs up.
Ed swats his hand away. "Don't fucking lie, man."
He speaks to Roach now. Stede notices how his muscles slightly tighten, how his back slightly straightens. He clears his throat. Despite the setting of having your wounded lover lie on top of you Ed still cannot seem to shake his facade of Blackbeard around others. It sort of breaks Stede's heart, thinking about it.
"He's awake, which is good. Keeps trying to fucking talk, which is-"
"Bad," interrupts Roach.
"Well I was going to say promising, but sure, yeah, bad it is."
Stede hears Roach walk towards the bed, the slight of his body sagging the mattress a little bit. He's taken aback when Stede feels Roach's hand on his forehead, then sweeping down to check on his throat. Two fingers rest on his pulse for a minute. Stede rather feels like a caged animal whose only objective is to be stared at, and this unknowable blackness does not help calm him. He tries to stay still and grabs Ed's hand, squeezing it to make himself realize that he's okay.
"His neck is healing. I think it'll be sore for a couple days, but if he keeps talking to a bare minimum - preferably not at all - it can be cleared up in two, three days? I'm not concerned about his throat. Contusions look nasty but they can usually clear up on their own."
"And his eyes?" Ed asks, and there's a lick of eagerness that Stede wishes wouldn't be there.
"Hm. Difficult to say. Scale of one to ten, Stede, how's the pain?"
Stede holds up nine fingers. He doesn't think it would do much good to lie. He listens to Ed lie about his knee all the time and then watches him suffer the consequences just because he wants to be perceived as tough.
Stede's tough. He knows he tough, deep down inside of him, even if he doesn't always believe it. Pain does not lessen your courage or your bravery, or your mark as a man upon this world. Pain proves that you're alive, that you beat what was trying to kill you. To Stede, pain is a noble mark of life, something not to be ashamed of, but to be pleased with.
His eyes also do really fucking hurt. He wants Roach to give him tea-laced laudanum to get rid of the stabbing agony that persists where his eyes are.
"Christ, Stede," whispers Ed. "Why didn't you tell me? I could've gotten Roach sooner."
"I didn't-" Stede begins.
Roach admonishes him, hitting his hand slightly, "Hey! What did I just say about talking?!"
Stede huffs a little. Ed asked him a question. Is he just expected not to answer whenever somebody talks to him? And for three days? Stede doesn't think he's gone longer than three hours without saying something. He doesn't like silence when other people around around. It makes him nervous.
Still, he bows his head in what he hopes Roach will take as apology. He feels Roach pull push is head back up with two fingers, light as butterfly wings, on his chin. "I'm going to remove your bandages in order to check your eyes. Let me know if I'm hurting you."
Stede nods. He feels Ed's hands on both of his shoulders, giving him a quick kiss behind his left ear before helping him to sit straight up. Roach removes the adhesive that glues the bandages together, spooling it onto Stede's lap, letting the folds of it all gather into his empty hands. It feels more weighty than it has any right to be, as if it was weaved from the cotton of Death's black robe itself.
Roach stays silent during it all, bless him. Stede cannot see the face he is making but knows how it looks from memory. He is probably wearing a bandana around his forehead to keep the coils of hair from his eyes. His brows are probably furrowed in concentration, his nostrils slightly flared as his nose squishes in deep concentration. Stede is lucky to have Roach on board, manic as he is. He's a good doctor. He cares about the people on the ship despite all of his homicidal tendencies.
Everybody cares about everybody on this ship. It warms Stede's heart to know just how rare that is in the world, and he made it. He built it from the ground up, and it really is something that everyone should behold.
The bandages tug on dried blood when they reach the final wrap. Stede sucks in a breath and winces. Roach's tugs get more careful, more deliberate. He whispers out an apology.
"It's okay," Stede breaths back, hardly a voice left within him. His hands find Edward's thighs and he lets his fingers dig into the flesh and the fabric there, trying to ground himself.
The pain has gotten significantly worse. Stede's head wobbles with dizziness and he's sure that he will probably pass out sometime during this examination. His tongue feels heavy and much too big for his cotton stuffed mouth. He hums. He doesn't even realize he keeps humming as Roach keeps tugging.
"Stede, man," Ed is close to his ear now, hot breath tickling his earlobe. Even that sends rivulets of agony across Stede's flesh. "Let us know if we need to stop."
Stede can't talk, so he shakes his head, which frees the last of the bandage on his left eye. He hears the tear as it comes away from the corner of his eye.
Jesus had never suffered this much, he's sure of it.
"Ah!" He screams, and Stede cannot remember something that has actually fucking hurt more than this. Stede handles hanging and heartbreak and stab wounds with significant ease. But whatever the fuck happened to his eyes is unbearable. It's like the devil himself is spitting upon them, never ceasing, never wavering in his torture.
"Stede," he hears Roach call his name, but it seems far away, hidden in folds of fog and torment. Stede can't do anything but continue to scream. He needs this pain to go away, to stop, and he brings his hands up to cup them like he had before on the deck. "Captain-! Captain, stop him!"
All Stede can do is sob as Ed pins his hands down, rocking him side to side. Stede knows that this is for his own good, but he doesn't fucking care. His chest tenses with screams and sobs that sharpen the once dulled knives in his throat.
"Shh, Stede. Shh." Ed's voice quavers. "Can't you give him something? Sedate him? We can still look at his eyes... I... Stede please."
All he does is moan, all he wants to do is curl up into himself, become the hollowed shell of a human that he feels so deeply inside. Ed keeps him upright, though. Ed does not allow Stede to go that far inside of himself. He makes Stede feel the pain, every scorching second of it that pulsates through his eyes and out onto the world. Stede thinks he feels wetness flow down his cheeks like a dam that has been broken. It is not tears; this kind of pain does not make Stede want to cry. This type of pain just makes him go mad.
"Please," he hears Ed whisper. He feels him kiss the shell of his ear as they continue to rock. "I know it hurts. I know. Just... Please... Calm down. Take a deep breath."
Stede shakes his head, though he manages to take a shuddering lungful of air. He is surprised that he doesn't explode in a coughing fit, and this encourages him to keep taking deep breaths. Eventually he is stable enough that Ed releases the iron grip he has held him in.
In the silence he hears the tinkling of metal objects in a wooden box. It smells vaguely like cigars. He wishes that he could see what Roach is doing - Stede is so interested in medical objects. He likes learning about how they do wonders to help people. It's a pity he cannot see everything that Roach is doing.
The pain is still there, burning bright as the stars in the night sky. It makes Stede's skin itch, though he refrains from doing anything other than biting his tongue and pressing half moons into the palms of his hands with his nails. Ed does nothing more than administer kisses along Stede's ears, jawline, and the base of his scalp.
Roach says, eventually, "I'm going to give you something to help with the pain."
Stede hums his consent and his approval. He'd do anything to get some relief at this point. He'd even run away in the dead of night again.
There's a sharp, jagged pinch of something stabbing his upper arm. Stede's alarmed for a second. He's never seen anything in Roach's medicine box that can do this. Maybe he just never looked hard enough though. He feels a liquid - cold and thin, like how he thinks moonlight must feel - push through his veins.
"What?" He asks, dumbly. His arm throbs.
"Morphine through a syringe," explains Roach. "Stole it a couple of months ago on that Portuguese ship. I've been wanting to use it on somebody. Did it hurt? How'd it feel?"
Stede frowns, trying to flop his arm but finding it hard to control. The pinpricks of the drug start to leak into the nerves of his brain, making it harder to form thoughts than he would have liked. He shrugs, hums a little song in the back of his throat.
Ed deadpans. "He's so happy to be of use to you."
Stede giggles, though he's unsure of the reason. Maybe Ed is just a very funny person. His laughter is too heavy, so he leans back. Ed catches his head and curses under his breath, lowering Stede onto the pillows. "Shit, man, be a little more careful."
"Care-ful," repeats Stede, feeling each letter on his lips as if they were visitors from a strange new world. He bites his lips, and there's a faint hint of a smile before it dissolves into a frown as something acidic and putrid reaches his nostrils. "Roach?"
"Yes, Cap'n?"
"You smell worse 'n a dead dog."
Stede doesn't know what sort of reaction that illicits from him, but he feels a warm, wet rag swipe across his temples. "Apologies. There hasn't been much time to bathe as of late."
"Well, there should be. Right, Ed? Shouldn't there be a strict bathing schedule? I think there should be."
"Sure, man, sure. Whatever you want."
"Whatever I - Christ Roach, be a little more careful, that hurt - Whatever I want. Hm. Yes. I like that. I want the crew to bathe regularly. Every day, do you think?"
"That'd be using a lot of our freshwater supply, Stede. Maybe every other day? Or every two days?"
Stede considers this as Roach continues to swipe at his eyes. He feels the scabs pulling away and the blood pulsating through the cut, but the pain is more of a burning pressure. It's more annoying than anything else.
Roach's stink would certainly lessen if he took a shower three times a week. The entire crew would probably benefit from it.
"Two days it is, then. Will you tell everyone tonight is bath night, Ed, dearest?"
It's silent for a beat too long. Stede worries that Ed had left the room until he answers in a tone that Stede cannot quite describe nor place, "Yes, I'll tell them. You just focus on healing."
"And you," Roach speaks up, clearly to Ed, but Stede still feels a shock of fear jolt down his spine. "Can stop encouraging him to talk."
"Right," Says Ed, and Stede feels him run a hand through his hair. He feels like a mess all-over, and still Ed wants to touch him. Mary would've never touched him if he was like this. "Sorry."
All three of them go quiet. Roach works on cleaning Stede's eye, and Stede keeps trying to squirm away from him. The pain is still there, still digging into his nerves like a frightened cat with claws, but it's almost distant. Stede could almost ignore it if not for the persistence of it all.
He moans, slightly, whenever Roach presses into his eyes with the wet rag, and all he wants to do is get away from this. He wants to go hide in the bathroom or the closet. He wants nothing to do with whatever has happened to him.
Ed makes him stay, though. Of course Ed makes him stay. That's Ed's whole prerogative now, ever since Stede floundered up onto the deck of The Revenge once again, sunburnt and half-crazed out of his mind from the saltwater he'd been inhaling for a week.
Stede was allowed to be forgiven after three days of Ed pretending he didn't exist, but he was told that if he ever left again, his 'greatly-exaggerated' death wouldn't be so greatly exaggerated anymore.
So Stede stays, and with Ed's help they combat the cold feet and the lack of self-confidence, and Stede had started to feel like he belonged again in this little flag of a family they had sewn together.
Ed makes him stay here, too, but not entirely present. Stede's body must endure, but his mind travels to the spice-laden lands of India, or the high peaks of the mountains of China.
"Shit," he hears Roach mutter, "This is deep, Captain. We'll need stitches."
Ed's hand tightens on Stede's own. Stede huffs a little, annoyed that they keep breaking him out of his daydream. He's having a very lovely time drinking some tea with a monk named Gaspar and a mute, polite yeti. They are talking about many things, though Stede cannot remember exactly what the conversation is about, nor how he contributes to it.
"I'm going to kill that motherfucker." The grip gets tighter. Ed's voice gets deeper, like he's less Ed and more Blackbeard. That doesn't scare Stede as much as it probably should. He wishes he could see Ed right now, try and lock gazes so that Stede could convey to him that this really wasn't anything serious. It was just a little bump in the road.
His eyes have continued to remain open. For the most part Stede's vision is blacker than the depths of the ocean. There's a tad part of his right eye that is sulfur-yellow - the color burnt at the edges like a piece of smoking parchment, and it's too bright for Stede to focus on for more than a couple seconds.
"Who are you-"
"Shut up!" Roach chastises, and Stede jumps at the closeness of his voice. "Do you want me to take your entire eyeball out? Jesus! It's a very delicate procedure."
Stede wants to tell Roach sorry, but he swallows down the lump of apology in his throat. Roach seems very stressed and Stede, for all intents a purposes, would like to keep his eyeball.
"Okay. Now I don't know - with all the morphine in your system - if this is going to hurt. I can't tell you what you're going to feel so just... Don't scream. This is a first for me as well."
Stede takes this as permission to go back to his daydream, because he doesn't quite understand all that is happening or all that is going to happen to him.
On the mountain, he and an emancipated Gaspar clink their teacups. The yeti, who stands behind Gaspar, tealess, because his hands are too big to hold a cup, says something that Stede cannot quite understand. Whether because of the language barrier or the persistent burning pain behind his eye, Stede cannot quite tell.
Distantly, thousands of miles away, Stede is aware that his hand is no longer being held. The absence of a warm weight creates a gaping pit of loneliness in his being so large that Stede doesn't have lungs anymore. He can't breathe anymore. Stede sips his tea and feels Gaspar stare into his soul. The tea does not taste like anything. His stomach lurches forward with a mighty fury.
Suddenly his world tips. Stede is falling down the snow-peaked mountain. Even twisting and tumbling down the slope that he is, dizzy and nauseous and disoriented, he still feels Gaspar's eyes boring into him, and he can still smell the stench of the yeti in his nostrils.
He ends up on The Revenge (Stede isn't sure how he got here) with his head in a bucket, spewing out his guts with a violent force.
"Huh. Guess I might've given you too much morphine," Roach comments.
Stede doesn't think he was given enough. He can feel his eyes pulsating with an angry shooting sort of pain. When he is done throwing up, Roach grabs the extra linen on his shirt and hauls him up to a sitting position.
"Good news, though! Stitches are done. Nice row of 'em, just in your left eye. Some of the prettiest work I've done. I've just got to bandage you up and then I can let you sleep."
All Stede can manage to do is hum. He feels drunk now - a different type of drunk than before. This drunkenness he feels... It's like when he drinks too much wine, he knows he did, because despite being only two hours into this rager he's already hungover. This drunkenness is not enjoyable. It comes with a headache and dizziness and persistent waves of nausea.
He opens and closes the fist that Ed had been holding but was not now. Stede cannot see, nor can he look around the room, and his mouth is filled with enough saliva to fill a pool, so he cannot speak.
One last time Roach dabs at both of his eyes. Stede isn't sure what he's wiping away exactly. He feels as if there's no more blood in his body to leak out, and now his skin feels red and raw from the cloth.
Then, rough bandage strips are wrapped around his head. Roach does not do this carefully. He's an eccentric doctor and an even more eccentric cook. Stede never hired him for the purpose of good bedside manner (Stede never expected anyone to need bedside manner) and now he is suffering for it. Roach pushes and pulls on Stede's head, which often bangs and bumps into Roach's clavicle or the back of the bed.
A door opens and shuts, and Stede can hear footsteps.
"What the fuck are you trying to do? Give him a concussion?" Ed's voice accuses Roach with an irascibility that makes Stede's bones buzz.
There's a dip in the mattress and another set of hands on Stede's face. He knows that it's Ed just taking over, but he still flinches at the unknown.
Ed picks up on this. A thumb swoops across Stede's jawline. "Hey, it's okay, mate. It's just me. It's just Ed."
Stede swallows the ocean of spit in his mouth. He feels the corners of his lips twitch. "Missed you."
"Didn't go anywhere. I was right here the whole time."
"No you weren't! You lef-" Roach's sentence was never finished, Stede thinks, because he hears Ed kick his shin.
"Shut up!"
"Alright! Jesus. Didn't have to be so mean about it. Could've just asked me nicely..."
"You don't listen to me. Kicking's the only way to get through to you sometimes." There's a kiss on the back of Stede's hand. "I was right here the entire time. I'd never leave you, yeah? Not when you need me by your side."
Stede feels the ends of the bandages being tied into a knot. He swallows again, lets his head burrow into the crook of Ed's arm. "My Ed... My lovely Ed..."
There's a hand stroking his curls, never pulling them, just being gentle. It sends shivers down Stede's entire body, but it's not uncomfortable. If anything, they lead him further towards sleep.
"Shh. Don't talk anymore. I've got you. You just focus on resting, Stede. Just go to sleep, and before you know it you'll be the terror of the seas again."
Stede hums in the back of his throat and finds himself compelled, drugged and pained as he is, to follow Ed's voice into the void of nothingness that his sleep produces.