(fic) our flag means death | ed/stede

[kiyala]

please take these 400 words so I can be done with them.

"She nearly killed me, you know," Stede says, and he's not talking to Ed as much as talking at him. They're sitting across the room from each other in Ed's quarters. The ones that used to belong to Stede, until Ed stripped them bare of anything that would remind him of Stede at all.

 

Almost everything. He's shoved the lighthouse painting out of sight since before Stede ever stepped foot on the ship again and yet here he finds himself: he doesn't look Stede in the eye, doesn't let him too close into his own space, and doesn't want him to leave either.

 

He was meant to avoid lighthouses. For fuck's sake. 

 

"Mary, that is." Stede keeps talking. That's the thing with Stede. He just keeps talking, with no regard to anyone else's feelings on the matter. Ed wants him to shut the hell up. Ed wants him to talk forever. "My wife, you remember, don't you? Or I suppose, my widow. Officially this time, and without her actually having to kill me! She did give it a good try though." 

 

"But she couldn't," Ed says, and then wants to kick himself for saying anything at all. At least he and Mary have that in common. It sounds like that's where their similarities end, too.

 

"Oh, no, she definitely would have done it," Stede replies, sounding far too cheerful for someone discussing his almost-murder. "A skewer right into my ear and through my brain. Said she wanted it to be quick, and didn't want to wake the kids. I just happened to wake up before she did it." 

 

"Ah." So Ed was wrong. He should know that by now, he thinks bitterly. He's always wrong about Stede. He doesn't know how to be right about him. "Big deal. I nearly killed you too. Nearly killed you this morning when I saw you. Didn't. But I could've. If I felt like it. I could kill you right now."

 

Stede smiles at him from across the room. It's a tight, muted thing, and he means it just about as much as Ed means his words.

 

"You could," he says, and what he means is, you won't.

 

And that's the whole fucking problem, isn't it. Because Ed should. Blackbeard should. 

 

Instead, he just sits there tucked against the window, and resigns himself to crashing against this lighthouse's shores.