Archive of Our Own

It’s been four days.

Stede has never been so terrified in his life; equally, he’s never been so determined in his life.

He needs to get out.

Four days ago, Stede had been in port with Lucius and Izzy, the three of them on the hunt for potential ship restocking. Initially just a trip by Izzy, Ed had been the one to suggest Stede go along, desperately attempting to curb his cabin fever.

Being pregnant on the Revenge has made Stede into a wild sort of creature; he understands why Ed thinks it might help for him to walk around somewhere else, for a change. Before he goes absolutely fucking insane doing his six-millionth lap of the entire ship, just trying anything in his attempts to realign his aching bones, stretch his worn muscles— and calm down his constant tension, just itching for their baby to be born already.

They were supposed to bring back citruses, sugar, and— if they happened upon them— vanilla beans, as per Roach’s request. He’d said he was just intending to make cakes; Stede suspects, more likely, that this was to just keep him off the boat longer in his (likely futile) search for the beans.

Ed had stayed on the ship. They prefer to have one of them onboard at all times. It’s part of what’s good about having a co-captain; they can split their time, one captain always guaranteed to be on the Revenge while the other can go off and do what needs to be done.

He had still sent Izzy along, though, with a cheery, “Keep an eye on ‘em both for me, Iz, would you?” that Izzy had, evidently, been unable to deny.

Of course, that had resulted in Lucius tagging along, which brightened Stede a bit. Even if he was mostly there for Izzy, it’d be helpful to have his opinion with them. Stede had been hoping to find fabrics to make into clothes for the baby; Lucius, of all of them, had one of the best eyes for color-matching and pattern-coordination. He’d be able to offer a valuable second opinion in Stede’s searches.

In the end, it had only taken two hours before they were caught.

Stede doesn’t know what gave them away. He’d worn a cloak all day to conceal himself— and his face, the hood up over his head, even in the miserable heat— but he’s sure it’s his fault, somehow. He’s always the reason these things happen; he’s the one who brings the bad things, who taints them all, dirties them by existing.

He’s had a lot of time to think, in the four days since they got taken. He hates himself more with every second; still, he grows more determined for escape with every second, too.

It’s just that—

It’s difficult for this to happen, over and over and over, and not find himself as a common denominator. It’s always his fault.

There had been at least six men that Stede had seen. They’d moved so quickly, and come up on Izzy first— smart of them; Stede wonders, in all this time he has, how long they’d watched to make that accurate decision. With Izzy surprised and knocked unconscious in a second, it hadn’t taken much for Lucius to go down right after him, kicking and snarling though he was, and then Stede was being forced down, his drawn blade dug out of his hand by the heel of a boot, and then—

Then, there’d been nothing at all.

And he woke up later— he doesn’t know when later, or how later, without a window to track the sun— on stone, surrounded by cold and damp, immersed in darkness, shivering.

Only a bit of exploration was needed, because the room— the cell, he realizes quickly— isn’t very large. Not only that, but he’s not the only occupant, sharing the small space with Lucius and Izzy, the three of them each chained by one ankle to the same metal hook set into the seam of floor and wall, by the northeast corner.

Stede doesn’t know if it’s really northeast. It’s just northeast from the single disrupting feature in the cell’s black-blue, dripping-wet stone walls: a heavy, massive door of rock, just as slick and cool to the touch as the walls around it, without a knob or hatch on the inside.

The last to wake of the three of them, Stede had been greeted with Lucius’ relieved, “Thank fuck,” the second he opened his eyes. He’d lifted his head, said to Izzy, “He’s alive, he’s looking at me.”

Izzy had swam into Stede’s vision, then, and he’d said, “Don’t you fucking dare have the Captain’s fucking baby in here, Bonnet.”

Blinking, Stede had replied, “I’ll try,” before frowning and saying, “They’re my baby, too.”

“Lovely bedside manner, darling,” Lucius commented to Izzy. “Were you a nurse?”

“Shut up,” Izzy had snapped, which had been the last thing any of them said for awhile, because their speaking had drawn the attention of a new man, not one of the ones Stede had seen come at them in port, who had opened a tiny barred window set high into the door, peering in on them.

He’d been the one who told them what was happening.

Stede learned, in no uncertain terms, that he was bait. The sight of Blackbeard’s infamous right-hand man— and Izzy had scowled at that, at the idea that it was him that gave them away, his place at Ed’s side that exposed them— had easily led to the conclusion that the concealed man with him would be either Blackbeard himself, or—

Or, the Gentleman Pirate, the man they consider to be Blackbeard’s closest known associate, his partner, his lover. Izzy’s scowl had only deepened upon hearing all that, but Stede—

Stede’s blood had run cold, at the time, because the understanding that they knew he and Ed were together came with it the realization that they must know this situation. They had to be looking at Stede, evaluating just how pregnant he is and just who he associates with, and putting the pieces together. They had to be realizing what they had, that their bait was not just Blackbeard’s scribe, his right-hand man, and his co-captain, but also his unborn child.

They had been. They were.

Four days have passed since then.

Four days.

Stede keeps reminding himself that they can’t kill him. If he dies, their baby dies, and without either of them, Ed won’t have much motivation for dealings or trade. They don’t have bait if all they have, in addition to Izzy and Lucius, is Stede’s blood on their hands and the corpse of their dead child.

All they’d have, in that case, is the Kraken; Stede knows this, even if they don’t.

They’re smart enough not to kill him, anyway.

He’s not smart enough to stop them from hurting him in other ways.

In a different situation, maybe he’d be better at this. If he weren’t— by his own estimations— just a couple weeks short of giving birth, he might have been able to focus on something other than protecting his child. He could’ve found a way out, or conceived a fuckery, or— he doesn’t know, he could’ve— tunneled out, or something.

Right now, though, all Stede can focus on is keeping his baby alive.

It becomes quickly apparent to their captors (tormentors) that Stede’s not only the weak link, but the priority. Lucius offers himself up, stunningly brave, the first time they came into their cell and headed for Stede; it had motivated Izzy to respond in kind, to move to defend Stede at Lucius’ side, but that—

Their kindness and defense of him had painted a target on him, and the two of them, unarmed and outnumbered, had been subdued in minutes. Stede had been taken out, the two of them left behind.

All Stede could do was defend his baby. All he can do, still. Every time a knife-point draws near to his skin, a match comes close to his palms, fingers are twisted into his hair, he just closes his eyes, breathes, and focuses on protecting his baby.

They’re all that matters. Stay alive, stay alive, stay alive, is repeated on a loop in his mind, projected downwards to them, a mantra, occasionally interrupted with, I’m sorry, or, please, or, I love you, or, I’m so, so sorry.

He tries not to think about Ed.

He fails.

In these four days, he: loses three fingernails and two toenails; has every fingertip burnt black; receives six different names carved into his shoulder-blades by knife-point; earns an uncountable scattering of lacerations, cuts, slashes, gouged up by sword and dagger and hook; gets cracked by a ball-hooked whip along his spine; busts a cheekbone on a fist when he won’t answer their questions about Ed; has the bone of his shin cracked in half by a boot, though Izzy and Lucius haphazardly set it for him using stone and Izzy’s shirt when he’d been returned to them; and—

Fuck, he doesn’t know what else. He doesn’t remember everything. Sometimes he’ll lose consciousness partway through, drifting into a strange sleep, and he’ll wake up on the stone floor again, the chain about his ankle once more, Lucius (frantically) or Izzy (tightly) attempting to wake him up and make sure he’s still breathing. There are injuries without memories, wounds he can’t account for, fear without roots.

Stede doesn’t want to look in a mirror. He doesn’t want to recognize himself in what he’s sure he looks like now, and—

And, fuck, he doesn’t care if it makes him selfish, or pathetic, or weak, but he’s sad. He’s loved being pregnant, and these last days were supposed to be happy, and instead he’s— he’s here, so far away from Ed, being forced to crawl, struggling, through the end of his pregnancy, and he hates it.

He wants his baby as badly as he’s terrified at the prospect of their arrival.

It’s on the fourth day that the very last vestiges of their luck run out.

Halfway through the morning’s events, Stede feels the first recognizable twinges. They start immediately after a blow to his throat, taken when he dropped his weight on his wrist-chains, in the chamber they always bring him to, at the last moment to avoid that same blow colliding along the side of his belly.

Every time, they pin him to one side, in a room just like his cell: dank, and dark, and damp. Here, he’s pressed flat to the wall, most typically, and asked questions about Blackbeard.

Where is he?, and, How much gold has he got on board?, and, Do you know how much his bounties are?, and, Just his head would set me for life, d’you know that?, and, Is that Blackbeard’s bastard you’ve got in there?, and, Where does he stash his treasure?, and, How long do you think he’ll take?, and, Do you think he’ll ever come for you?, and—

—and, every time he doesn’t answer, he earns a new injury. A slip of the knife. A slam of the bronze-knuckled fist. A tear of the nail. A lick of the flame. A crack of the whip across the back— though he’s only received a couple of those, so far. Small mercies.

Today, they ask him all the same questions.

Where’s Blackbeard?

Where’s Blackbeard?

Where’s Blackbeard?

Over and over and over again.

Stede doesn’t answer.

He has the same question.

But— He can hang on, he knows he can. He has to. Ed can’t find both of their corpses, his and their child’s; he can’t lose them both. If Stede keeps their baby alive— if nothing else, they have that.

Stede tries to plan for this in between his times being taken from the cell, tries to whisper his thoughts to them, but neither of his crewmen let him get far. Lucius tells him it won’t come to that; Izzy says he doesn’t need to think about that.

Stede disagrees with both of them, but he falls quiet all the same, once Izzy shouts him down, furious with fear and helplessness.

He can do it himself, if he has to.

It’d be easier if he’d had anything other than some mouthfuls of water and three discs of crumbling hardtack in these last four days, but he’ll still do it. Ed’s going to find their baby, if he’s going to find anybody.

Still, Stede seizes in terror when he ignores yet another, Where’s Blackbeard?, earns his sudden ducked blow to the throat, and feels the surge of his first contraction, biting and tight and sharp, the birth pang winding tight through his insides like a steel band of fire.

Muffling a cry, Stede tries to breathe, keeps his eyes closed, desperate in his attempts not to let them know.

He just has to get back to his cell. It becomes his entire focus, his whole world: he can’t get out of here, he can’t have Ed, he just needs the cell. Get back, get back, get back. Stay alive one more minute. One more. One more.

As if separate from his body, Stede pushes himself through this. He doesn’t respond to his contractions, still somewhat infrequent. He attempts not to respond to their blows, either, but it’s difficult when one hooded figure takes him by the hair, draws his head forward, slams it back.

Stede tries to stay conscious, he does. He clings to it with what remains of his nails, fingers burnt and bloodied, and it hurts, but he clenches, squeezes it tight between his fingers, and—

—And then, he’s waking up on the floor of his cell once again, Lucius’ face above him in the darkness he’s spent four days adjusting to.

“Oh, thank fuck,” Lucius breathes, sounding halfway to crying. Stede misses Lucius’ good humor; these four days have taken so much from them. “Sh— Fuck. He’s awake, Izzy, thank— fuck, he’s not dead.”

There’s a scrape, then, before Izzy takes Lucius’ place, just above Stede’s head.

“I fucking told you not to have the Captain’s baby in here,” is the first thing Izzy says, and Stede’s heart lurches into his bruised throat, blood running cold like ice through his veins.

“I’m not,” Stede argues, though it’s weak; he already knows the truth. The memories of before are sinking back in, slowly remembering what happened in the second cell, and he groans, letting his head fall back down and his eyes slip closed again. “I can’t—”

“Maybe he’s not,” Lucius suggests to Izzy, half-hopeful. “Maybe it’s just, like— Those fake ones, yeah? My mum had fake ones before the real ones.”

“His fucking waters broke,” Izzy snaps.

“They did?” Stede asks, throat rasping and thin. “It’s— I can’t, L— Lucius, tell him I can’t, it’s too early, I—”

“He said it’s too early,” Lucius says to Izzy, as if this will change his mind, but Izzy just glares sideways at him before he’s focusing ahead on Stede again.

“Can you keep this kid in?” Izzy asks of him.

“Until when?” Stede asks, bewildered. His head is throbbing; his leg hurts, in the selfmade splint; his back aches, and—

Fuck, it hurts, the tightening and tensing of the next contraction, the birth pang burning him from the inside out.

Stede cries into it, for a moment, before a hand is clamped over his mouth.

“Shh,” Lucius shushes him, frantic. “They shouldn’t— I don’t think we should let them hear you.”

Tears in his eyes, Stede nods, shivering, letting Lucius muffle the whimpers he can’t quite swallow all the way back. He drags his hands against the moist ground, drawing up damp grit from between the cracks in the rock beneath them, broken and missing nails scraping in painful bursts in the process, but it’s all he can do to stifle his crying.

“We’ll get you out,” Izzy tells him. “Hang on for— I don’t know. A fucking— give us two hours—”

Stede’s already shaking his head; Lucius removes his hand, and Stede insists, “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t wait two hours, I—”

“You have to,” Izzy tells him, but Stede just shakes his head in a furious jerk again. “Yes, you do. You want to see Blackbeard again, yeah?”

“Ed,” Stede breathes. His voice tears. “Yes, I do.”

“Yeah, you do,” Lucius says, gripping his shoulder.

“Then keep your baby in you until he gets here,” Izzy orders him, “or we get you out of here.” He looks to Lucius, asks, “Are you going to dig, or are you going to help him?”

Lucius’ eyes dart down to Stede, blown dark with panic, though Stede can’t see all that well in shadows like these, lightless and cold and presumably deep in the earth, with how the room feels. Stede can easily read the horror on Lucius’ expression, a second before the decision comes.

“I’ll start digging,” Lucius says.

Izzy moves to the corner, sifting through the rocks he’s been collecting and scraping together. He comes up with a large shard, sharp at the corner, and passes that over to him.

“Start here,” Izzy instructs him, pointing to a dipped-in spot on the wall. “Dig as hard as you can. Just need to weaken it.”

Quiet, as if Stede can’t hear, Lucius says to Izzy, “I don’t think I can do—”

“You can,” Izzy cuts him off, firm.

Even in the darkness, Stede can see the brief moment where Izzy leans into him, where he presses his forehead to Lucius’ temple and just— breathes with him, for a second.

He misses Ed so badly his chest hurts, in the beat before his belly is seized in an iron band, a new contraction, and he’s torn out of the moment and thrown instead into more pain, and, fuck, is it pain. Birth pangs are so much fucking worse after four days of— of torture, of torment, of starvation and dehydration and agony and stomach-clawing, mind-altering fear.

“Why isn’t Ed here yet?” Stede demands, begs, tearful, broken.

He’s mostly asking the universe, but it’s Izzy who answers with, “He’s Blackbeard. He’ll be here. You just have to be alive when he gets here, and so does this fucking kid. Got it?”

“I c—”

“Got it?” Izzy asks again, but Stede just shakes his head.

“It’s too soon,” Stede tells him, a desperate burst of a whisper. “It’s— I can’t have Ed’s baby here, I can’t do it now, what if—”

“Hey,” Lucius cuts him off from the corner, pausing in his scraping-digging. “Don’t play the what if game, Captain. Focus—”

“They’re going to die,” Stede cries, the pain tearing him apart, his blood scorching like flame, tighter and tighter surges until he’s allowed to feel the release again. “God, I’m going to die, I can’t let them die—”

“They’re not going to die,” Lucius insists.

Stede ignores him, reaching up to grab onto Izzy with his bloodied fingers, filthy and dirt-caked. Tangling in the stiff, unclean material of his black vest, he yanks him down, orders him, “You can’t let our baby die.”

Izzy tugs at him, but Stede won’t let go. He pulls him in closer, putting his strength into it in a push, getting him as close as they can take.

“Izzy,” Stede says, using his proper name, looking him dead in the eyes, trying to find the man within. Ed’s first mate is in here somewhere; he knows that person won’t let anything happen to Ed’s child. Stede’s no longer focused on getting out; he’s just focused on getting them out, on keeping them alive, and he chokes up, “Ed’s baby can’t die. Do you hear me?”

From the shadowed, hunted look Izzy is giving him, he understands all too well what Stede’s saying to him.

And he nods.

Lucius argues, “Izzy, you can’t—”

“He’s your captain,” Izzy snaps backwards at him, the softness he’d just shown him receding once again. “And mine. I’ll do as I’m told.”

It’s the first time Izzy takes an order from Stede, and it’ll probably be the last. Maybe that’s a good sign; maybe it’s a very, very bad one. Either way, he has his promise. That’s all he wanted.

“Have you done this before?” Stede asks Izzy, before his breath is stolen again. He releases Izzy so he can dig at the floor again instead, desperate to find an outlet for the pain of his birth pangs.

“My mother was a healer,” Izzy informs him, which is officially the first fact Stede has ever learned about Izzy’s family. “She was midwife to hundreds of children, probably. I’ve seen enough.”

“Thank fuck,” Lucius breathes. “Could’ve mentioned that before, if I’m being honest.”

“Wasn’t relevant before,” Izzy replies. He looks Stede over, then says backwards to Lucius, “Give me your shirt.”

“Why?” Lucius asks, skeptical.

“So we have something to put the fucking baby in,” Izzy replies. “I’m not putting Blackbeard’s baby on this fucking floor. It’ll die.”

Stede’s straining through his contraction breaks into a gasp of a sob, hearing that, and Lucius retreats from the wall back to Stede’s side, crouching near his head.

“You have got to stop saying shit like that,” Lucius scolds Izzy. “You’re going to freak him out.”

“If he’s not freaked out, he’s a fucking idiot,” Izzy argues.

“He’s right here,” Stede reminds them, voice a little too high, “and I’d rather you not st—”

He’s cut off again by the next contraction, the pangs starting to come so close together he’s having hardly any gaps between them, anymore. Alma’s birth had taken nearly a day, but Louis’s had been— maybe six hours, and now—

Stede doesn’t even know how long it’s been, really, since he felt the first one. He lost that bit of time in the middle. It could be—

“Shit,” Lucius says, keeping the word just under his breath. Looking to Izzy, he says, tilted like a question, “That was really fast. Is it supposed to be so fast?”

“That’s because it’s getting closer,” Izzy informs him. It’s nearly like Stede isn’t even there, for a moment, Izzy showing Lucius with the point of a finger, “Do you see how low his belly has dropped on him? That means the child’s nearly ready to come out. The closer the pangs get means they’re nearly here. It’s shoving them out.”

“That’s disgusting,” Lucius comments. Stede wants to hit him with one of the rocks from the corner; Lucius must read that on his face, when he glances at him, because he says, “I— Ah, do you want some of the water? We have quite a bit saved. They gave us a new jug before bringing you back, isn’t that sweet of them? Cunt bastards—”

“Give him only a sip,” Izzy instructs. “We’re going to need the water later.”

If Stede had to choose somebody to be imprisoned and tortured with while giving birth to his baby, he probably wouldn’t have chosen Izzy or Lucius, and definitely not the two of them together. He would’ve chosen Ed, and hopefully only Ed— and perhaps something like six midwives and healers, just in case something went wrong.

He wouldn’t have chosen to give birth on the damp, disgusting floor of a cell. He wouldn’t have chosen to be tortured for four days beforehand, or to give birth weeks early because he couldn’t take the pain anymore. He wouldn’t have chosen to bleed through this before the first drop is even spilt between his legs. He wouldn’t have chosen to be alone with his first mate and his scribe over his husband and a healer.

This is what’s happening, though. Stede’s floundering mind finally accepts this with a cold, hard snap, clicking in that he’s about to give birth on this floor, and Lucius and Izzy are the only ones who can help him, and he has to be silent to prevent their captors from realizing what’s happening.

He has to. There’s no other option. This is what has to happen, and he is the only one who can make it happen.

“Give me— Give me something to bite,” he asks them.

Izzy tears off one of his gloves without hesitation, shoving it into Stede’s hand. He stuffs it into his mouth, a sting of salt-sweat and leather on his tongue as his teeth bite into the thick hide, but it muffles his next cry well enough when it tears up, ripping through him in conjunction with the accompanying pang.

Half-silenced by Izzy’s glove, and quieted the rest of the way through sheer force of will, Stede forces himself into noiselessness. Tears stream down his cheeks, drip down his neck, and he’s sure his face is burning red with blood. It’s as if he’s aflame with fever, hot all over, and it fucking—

It hurts. He wants to cry, and complain. He wants Ed to hold him. He wants—

He wants to be home. He wants to be home, on the Revenge, with Ed, having their baby, where he’s supposed to be. This is all— This is like a bad dream, a nightmare, and he just has to wake up.

Wake up, he begs himself, desperate. Wake up, wake up, wake up.

He doesn’t wake up.

Instead, he feels the first burn of his baby coming, the first real need to push them out, and he grips Izzy by the forearm, his remaining nails drawing up blood in crescent-moons.

“Yeah?” Izzy asks him, and Stede nods in a jerk. To Lucius, Izzy orders, “Give up on the wall, get over here.”

“But—”

“Now, Lu, I swear to fuck,” Izzy orders him.

Lucius drops his chiseling rock to join Izzy at his side. Stede watches them silently, eyes burning into them, propped up against the wall as he is. He’s got his bare legs spread, his torn breeches laid out beneath him, a piss-poor excuse for a bed or even a blanket— but, still, better than nothing.

“Oh, shit,” Lucius exhales. “Is this supposed to look like that? I haven’t seen one like this before—”

“That’s the baby,” Izzy explains to him. Stede doesn’t need to be told; he can feel them, the burn and stretch of them, the way his body’s forcibly laboring them out despite his every effort not to, because Ed’s not here and they’re still fucking captive and the baby will cry and they’ll be outside of him and it’ll be so much harder to protect them there and Ed’s not here, Ed isn’t here, Ed is supposed to be here, this is Ed’s first baby, Ed’s not here—

—But that doesn’t matter, and he doesn’t have a choice, because his body is bringing his baby out with or without him. He’d rather nothing go wrong, if he can help it, so he decides to just work with it and beg Ed’s forgiveness later.

He’s halfway out of his mind, malnourished and dehydrated and beaten and wild, birthing his child on the cell floor he’s been trapped in for half a week, his only midwives his partner’s first mate and his scribe.

Both of whom are staring between his legs when Stede bears down again, and he whimpers around Izzy’s glove in his mouth, a sob that catches in his throat.

“Shh,” Lucius tries to calm him, patting him on one knee. “That’s— It’s fine. I’m sure, it’s fine, that’s— That’s what’s supposed to happen, right?”

Stede can’t focus on them anymore, because another pang is surging through him and he gets the urge to push, so strongly he can’t deny it, and so he doesn’t, giving in and finally no longer resisting.

He wants to scream, and cry, and hold Ed’s hand. It breaks his heart that he’s not, but that doesn’t mean he can give up on his baby. He’s protected them this long.

Four days.

He can do this.

Concepts like embarrassment and shame don’t really mean anything to him anymore. It stops mattering to him that Izzy and Lucius are seeing him like this, or that he’s on some horrible floor, or that his broken leg, manacle-chain locked about his ankle, throbs with horrible pain every time he pulls it up when he needs to push again. Nothing matters except doing this, because nothing matters except his baby.

His delirious mind cooks up images of Alma, of Louis, of Ed, and he wants them here, wants to take their hands, wants to tell them he loves them—

—but he can’t, not until he gets out of here, which he can’t do until he has this baby, and he’s having this baby.

“Okay, do that again,” Izzy instructs him. “Whatever that was, just— That again. Maybe two more times.”

“You’ve got this, Captain,” Lucius tells him, voice hushed, a muted, strange sort of cheerleader. He leans up to grip Stede by the shoulder, tells him, “You’re nearly there. It looks like their head’s right there.”

Stede groans around Izzy’s glove between his teeth; Izzy answers for him, informing Lucius, “He fucking knows that. Grab his fucking hand.”

Lucius’ brow furrows, but he shifts over to Stede’s hand and does as Izzy’s told him to do. He grips Stede’s hand, and Stede squeezes him back until Lucius makes a soft little whimpering sort of gasp. Stede huffs a half-laugh, and Lucius just snorts.

“Oh, you think that’s funny, Captain?” he asks him. “Of course, you would. You’re a fucking sadist, you know that?”

He laughs, trying for amused and falling short; it still hurts.

Tears stream down Stede’s face, and his blood burns through his veins, and he wishes he didn’t have to do this, but he does it anyway.

Stede doesn’t make a sound and he doesn’t think about the fact that it’s Izzy Hands between his bare legs and he forgets about the cell they’re stashed away in. All he thinks about is his child, their child, imagines what they’ll look like, how much they’ll resemble Ed, how desperately he’ll love them, how hard he’ll need to fight for them—

—and then he hears something loud near his right ear, though he’s a bit fuzzy and hazed out, when he finally feels the greatest release from the pressure in a burst of pain.

“That’s fucking it,” Izzy shouts at him.

“Stop fucking yelling at him,” Lucius yells back. “That’s not helping—”

Dropping his voice lower, Izzy shushes him, tells him, “Shush, we have to— fucking shut up.” To Stede, he orders, “Do it. Push again. Their head’s here. Give me their shoulders and you’re fucking done, Bonnet, come on—”

Stede screams, scraped and hollowed, into the leather stuffing his mouth, and he follows the cues of his body, just like he did the last two times he did this.

Leaning into the pain, and the pushing, and the pangs, he bears down harder, harder, until there’s another burst, and another, and then there’s the greatest give, all the tension snapping at once.

Stede thinks he collapses backwards, downwards, but he’s not entirely sure. His vision’s fuzzed, his mind a complete fog. He can hardly hear. The leather falls from his mouth; his senses leave him for a fleeting, floating moment.

Nothing happens.

Silence, and stillness. The room stuffed with cotton. Stede can’t hear a cry; he thinks he reaches, but he’s not sure he moves.

My baby, he thinks, and wonders why they aren’t crying.

Nothing makes sense. Stede wants to push again, but he can’t find anybody— he can’t even find his own body.

Something punches through the floating, hazy chaos, and Stede, struck by lightning, jolts halfway back into consciousness.

Here, it’s not so quiet. Something is going on, somebody is saying something, and someone is touching him, and it’s not quite as quiet as it had just been.

There’s definitely screaming, though.

He thinks.

Or crying.

Right.

Oh, right. Of course. His baby.

His baby.

“My baby,” Stede says— or, thinks he says. He’s not sure if his mouth and brain and lungs are all working together with his tongue, but that’s what he’s trying to say, anyway.

Lifting his arms, he reaches, stretches. There’s a hand on his elbow, but he shakes it off, tries to seek his baby out.

It’s nearly impossible, but Stede blinks through the fog, fights back into his own body, struggles for clarity. He focuses on the shape in front of him, and finds the outlines of Izzy knelt on the ground, pushing up to pass his baby up to him.

His baby, the baby Izzy puts right onto his chest, soaked in their mutual lifeblood. She’s writhing, crying, and Stede, tears spilling down his own cheeks, puts his hand over her mouth.

“Shh,” he shushes her, shivering, speaking as soft as he can. Keeping his voice low, he tells her, “You’ve got to be quiet until your father gets here, lovely thing.”

His voice scrapes, and he’s barely coherent, but she’s more than enough to keep him conscious for the moment. Impossible her, now that she’s here, looking so much like Ed that Stede could just cry— and does, actually, all over again.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispers to her, and only to her. “It’ll be alright. I’ll keep you safe, my love.”

He’s finally trying to process her, to look at her. She’s outside of him, now, the nebulous idea and the out-of-sight shifting shape inside of him manifested into this very real baby. And not just a baby, but their baby, a baby that is so obviously his and Ed’s, theirs together, Ed’s dark curls and Stede’s sea-glass hazel-green eyes, ruddy and flushed as she cries, muffled, into his palm. Her skin is already darker than Stede’s, and she has a scattering of small birthmark-freckles and moles. A dark wine-stain birthmark spills from her temple down onto her cheek, only a tiny little thing while she’s still only a tiny little thing.

Stede traces the shape of that birthmark with the edge of his thumb. It looks like a butterfly— or, he amends, perhaps a moth, when he evaluates what he considers to be the shapes of the wings.

“I love you,” he says softly to her, voice scraping, barely coherent. “You have to be quiet, darling, please. I love you so much. I want to keep you safe.”

“What if you, like—” Lucius suggests, then motions vaguely towards his chest. “Like— Would that shut her up, maybe?”

“Wrap her in your shirt,” Izzy instructs. “Bonnet, top off.”

Stede struggles to do as he’s said. He’s not shy, not anymore, but his arms aren’t exactly coordinated to work with him, and he doesn’t want to let go of his baby, so he ends up needing Lucius’ help to work his ripped blouse open, fabric tearing at the wounds on his back as he does, tight with the blood staining it, splashed up his belly.

Lucius packs his baby into his torn-up top, wear-roughened fabric tight around her, and it goes a long way towards quieting her. When he passes her back over to Stede, he brings her right to his chest, tries to guide her into taking his nipple into her mouth, even if she can’t get anything, just to keep her quiet.

Miracle of miracles, she actually latches onto him and starts sucking right away. Her cord isn’t even fucking cut; Stede huffs a sigh of relief, practically collapsing in the soft silence, while Izzy uses one of the rocks, doused in their water, to cut the cord, and torn strips from his own breeches to tie off both Stede’s end and the baby’s.

Still, Stede refuses to release her, even when he has to force the afterbirth from his body. He grips her in one arm and clutches Lucius’ thigh in the other, and makes sure she stays silent through the whole ordeal.

She’s tiny. She’s smaller than either Alma or Louis had been, but she’s alive, and breathing, and she’s not too small, fully-formed with a round little face, and she’s already eating and breathing all on her own. Stede can only count these as good signs.

For the first time in four days, Stede smiles.

“Well done, angel,” Stede whispers down to her. “Beautiful thing. Wait until your father sees you.” His eyes burn, and he apologizes, “My love, I’m so sorry he isn’t here. I tried my best, I did, he just—”

“Hey,” Lucius stops him. “Captain, just— It’s alright. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I couldn’t wait,” Stede reminds him, tearful.

“I don’t think you can wait when all that— starts, can you?” Lucius asks.

“No, you fucking can’t,” Izzy answers for him. “Children come when they come. Save your energy to focus on something worthwhile, Bonnet. We still need to get the fuck out of here.”

It’s strangely reassuring, the idea that Izzy thinks this isn’t his fault, that he’s not mad at him about having his baby in here. Like he’s some— approval-extension of Ed’s, somehow, in this moment. Like Stede hasn’t completely fucked it if even Izzy believes it isn’t quite his fault.

Maybe it’s not his fault.

Fuzzy-headed, Stede blinks down at his baby again. He runs his thumb beneath the curve of her eye, strokes over dark eyelashes and traces to the edge of the moth-mark again, following the spread of the tiny wings he thinks he sees.

“What do we do now?” Lucius asks, voice low. “I mean, she’s all well and good eating now, but what happens when she— I don’t know, pisses or shits or gets mad and starts crying again?”

“We’ll shut her up,” Izzy replies. “Stop hissing, you’ll—”

They’re silenced by a nearby boom, followed by an immediate trembling of the floor, rattling of the walls, crumbles of rock-dust raining down on them from above.

In an instant, they’re all quiet, hushed, staring at each other. Stede drops his eyes down to his daughter, but she’s not paying attention, unfocused eyes closed, all her tiny focus fixated on him. He just covers her head with his hand, his palm curving over her ear, and presses her closer, hoping the sounds are all muffled for her like this.

“Give me a rock,” Stede says, as quietly as he can.

Lucius is already moving to grab one. It’s Izzy who asks, “Why?”

“So I can— I don’t know, stab somebody,” Stede explains, “if I have to.”

Lucius presses one of Izzy’s sharper-chiseled rocks into Stede’s hand, and he shifts, readjusting his daughter in one arm, hand curving up beneath her head, so he can grip the rock in the fingers of his other hand without letting her go.

His entire body is screaming with pain, he has no energy left inside of his limbs, his brain is a muddy, fuzzy mess, and he’s sitting on the damp stone floor with his baby latched to his front, minutes old and still covered in their blood.

And, still, he clutches the haphazard rock-blade, preparing for their captors to come back to the cell. They can take him again if they’re taking anybody; they’re not touching her while he’s still alive.

Down the hall, muffled through rock, Stede listens to the distant clattering of swords, shouts and raised voices, another rattling boom.

“What if—” Lucius starts, then stops.

“Don’t,” Izzy warns him, but Lucius, crouching next to him, hiding in the shadowed corner, glances to Stede. His eyes shine bright in the darkness.

Stede doesn’t need him to speak to know what he’s going to say, what Izzy’s stopping him from vocalizing and cursing, what all three of them are thinking: Ed.

He doesn’t want to hope, but he does anyway. The distant sounds of scuffling fighting are drawing nearer and nearer, and his fear ratchets up another notch with each second. It could be Ed, but it just as easily could be somebody else— anybody else— who doesn’t even care that they’re in here. They could kill the guards and ensure that the three— four— of them die, forgotten, rotting in this cell, with nobody knowing where they were, who they were, what became of them.

It could be worse than that, still. It could be a fight amongst the captors, Stede thinks, and the rowdier they get, the more worked up they become, the more aggressive and impulsive and violent they’ll be, and he’ll need to defend his daughter if they come in here in that state. They’re not going to take her away from him.

Closer, now, there’s a smash. Stede places the sound as a door being kicked in, or blown in, hearing the crash and the sudden following collision of door-stone into wall-rock.

There must be cells similar to their own, or at least matching rooms; Stede hears the same noise over and over, repeated but drawing nearer, smashes as doors are broken in and busted apart, cells being explored one by one.

Stede shifts again, as the sounds get ever closer. The pain in his body is joined now by the absolute drain in him, and the throb between his legs and the pierce in his shin and the chain around his ankle and the stars in his vision all overwhelm him, trying to tear him down, to pull him underwater, but he tilts his chin up and just barely keeps himself breathing above the surface.

In front of him, Izzy crouches, shuffling forward, ducked in the shadows. Stede wishes he could thank him, but he thinks Izzy might hate it— and, besides, they can’t speak, shouldn’t speak.

Lucius quietly moves behind him, putting himself between Izzy and Stede. The three— four— of them are filthy, and now all bloodied, and malnourished, and exhausted, and half-rabid. Stede actually misses the Revenge and the way Izzy would be flippant with him, would half-mock him, the way Lucius teases and laughs all the time, because that’s who they are, and how things should be. He’d trade a thousand jibes from Izzy and a million smart remarks from Lucius if it took away the shadows under their eyes, their silence, their forced and enforced support of one another.

They’re not supposed to be like this. They’re silly, giddy, happy. Lucius can make Izzy laugh. He never laughed that much before. Stede wants the joy back so badly he thinks he could cry.

The smashes are getting closer. Four doors down, three doors down, two doors, one door, just next to theirs, so close that the walls shake and crumbling bits shower over them from the stone above their heads.

Bowing over his baby, Stede shields her from the worst of the dust, as if it matters.

Muffled voices are close, closer, indistinguishable through the rock but obviously human and obviously angry. Stede’s skin prickles, his heart leaping into his throat; if he weren’t clinging so roughly to the precipice of consciousness, he thinks he’d be laid out on the floor right now, blissfully unaware of any of this.

He makes himself stay upright, though, even as his vision blurs and spots dance at the corners. Clutching his blade of rock, he twists to place his daughter out of sight, still nuzzled into his chest, and aims the point of his stone towards the door, trembling, waiting.

There’s a beat where nothing happens at all.

Then, the door shatters in as if it explodes to bits.

The great mass of stone swings in and bursts like an overripe fruit against the wall, fragments scattering all over the place. In the chaotic darkness, Stede can’t see anything, and he just clutches his youngest daughter closer and swipes wildly at the air, hoping for purchase, to hit something, to protect her even if he does it in his last seconds, with his last breath.

Raising his eyes, struggling desperately to see anything, Stede finds eyes in the darkness and his lungs seize, throat tightening.

The Kraken stands before him, frozen in place for a heartbeat of a moment, filling the doorway. Stede imagines he can see smoke, and glowing eyes, and tendrils of tentacles whipping around behind him. He can practically smell the sea rolling off of him.

Relief courses through his body, and he slumps against the wall, tears streaming through his face. Other men might be terrified by this image; to Stede, there is no greater comfort in the world than him.

“Stede,” the Kraken says, and then he’s Ed again, kneeling down beside him. He catches the jerk of Stede’s wrist, and Stede opens his fingers, allowing the rock to fall from them and onto the stone ground with a clatter. It’s a dull sound, muffled by his blood on the floor, but he’s already forgetting all about it.

Nothing else matters; Ed is here.

Ed, more frightening a sight than any Stede’s seen— and, simultaneously, more comforting, more soothing, better than anybody or anything else he could have seen. He looks just as exhausted as Stede feels, shadows under his own eyes shaded dark and smudged by kohl. That blackness streaks down his face, over his cheeks to disappear into his beard, tear-tracks he hasn’t bothered to wipe away.

His long hair isn’t combed, isn’t oiled, isn’t clean, isn’t pinned; it hangs in his face, heavy and thick and lank, falling into the space between them when he leans in closer to Stede.

He’s all Stede has wanted this whole time. He forgets about everything else— fuck, he briefly even forgets where they are, he’s just— so happy to have Ed back with him. He can’t think about anything except Ed being here. Even if he feels half-dead, even if Ed seems most of the way to crazed, even if their baby is here when she shouldn’t have been, when Stede should’ve been able to keep her safe inside himself— he can’t think about anything else except the fact that he’s finally back with Ed.

“I’m so sorry,” Stede tells him, the first words from his mouth, because he feels— horrible. He can’t think through the need for Ed to love him, take care of him, to tell him it’s okay. To tell him he’s not mad at Stede for getting himself captured, for allowing himself to be torn apart, for weakening so dramatically that their baby came when Ed wasn’t even here, when Stede couldn’t even protect her.

It all starts hitting at once, now that Ed is here, and Stede’s shivering before he even knows it, as though he’s trembling to pieces.

Ed shushes him, takes him in his arms. The copper drench of blood hangs heavy on him, scents the air around them. He tells Stede, “You’re okay, love. I’ve got you. They’re not gonna hurt you anymore, I made sure, yeah? They’re gone, I’m here—”

“Ed, I’m sorry,” Stede gasps out. He’s still trying to keep quiet, even though he’s not sure why.

Ed tears his glove off, strokes his fingers through Stede’s hair; Stede cries, near-silently, into his throat. If it weren’t for the touch of his hand against his skull, and their baby suckling at his breast, he thinks he might just float off into the sky, never to be seen again. They’re the only ones that ground him, giving him the only sensations that remind him he’s human.

“Nothing to be sorry for,” Ed whispers to him. “Stede, I— I’m s—”

“No,” Stede stops him, hiccuping around a choked sob of a breath. “Ed, I—”

He breaks off again, hysteria starting to seize him now that everything is ending and crashing down over him. Ed grips his face between his hands, tilts his head up so they can meet one another’s eyes.

Stede finds the same brokenness in Ed that he feels in himself. It feels worse, somehow; this feels yawning, and hungry. Starving, even.

“I’m so sorry,” Stede says, hushed. “I wanted you with me.”

“I’m here now,” Ed reminds him, though his own voice cracks in the process. For all his menace, and the blood spattered up and down his body, and the state of the Kraken when he’d kicked in the door, he’s just Ed, with him. He’s always just Ed— not Blackbeard, not the Kraken, nothing but himself.

Against his chest, finally, their daughter fusses, pulling her face away from his skin only to drop her head right back down again. So fresh, so new, she scrunches herself up, tucking her limbs into herself when she nuzzles against him.

To her, apparently, the blood and dust and debris and chaos means nothing. She seems perfectly content curling up against Stede, and he’s got tears in his eyes all over again just because of that realization and the feelings it gives him. Maybe he hasn’t fucked up irrevocably by giving birth to her here; maybe she’ll be okay, really okay, after all of this.

“Are they alright?” Ed asks, keeping his voice hushed. “That’s them, yeah?”

“No, I just found her here,” Stede replies. Ed smiles slightly, knocking his forehead into Stede’s temple, and Stede realizes— not for the first time— that he’d do just about anything to make Ed smile. “Yes, this is her. She— She seems alright. She hasn’t been here long.”

Ed’s hand creeps up, then stops just over her head, fingers hovering barely a breath away from her blood-damp curls, viscera and paste and fluid clinging to her all over.

“They didn’t hurt her?” Ed asks, soft, under his breath, shaking with a rage and terror that Stede has no name for but feels, deep in his bones.

“Nobody touched her,” Stede tells him. “Izzy and Lucius helped.”

“‘Course they did,” Ed murmurs. Hesitant, he asks, “Can… Is it okay if I touch her?”

“She’s your daughter,” Stede reminds him. His tongue feels heavy, and his body’s growing empty again, hollowed-out. His energy disappears from him, and he sags into Ed, resting his head on his shoulder.

Ed readjusts, as if they’re the only two people in the world, as if they’re in bed instead of the floor of a cell, as if everything is completely okay. He sits on the ground right beside Stede, heedless of blood and mess, and leans his back against the wall next to him, and holds his hands out.

Stede leans over, passing her from his arms to Ed’s. The second she’s away from him, he feels like his heart tears itself in half, like his lungs have shriveled up and died, like his stomach has launched into his throat; he can hardly stand it.

The only comfort is watching Ed.

Ed, who’s been practicing by holding vegetables of varying weight and shape for weeks, now, takes their baby in his hands— one under her head and neck, the other wrapping around her back. She’s so small, tiny in his hold; he can easily embrace her like this, held neatly between his two large hands, seeming even bigger for the comparison to her, the direct contrast.

Seeing them together only reinforces, for Stede, just how alike they look. His chest aches, watching them. He rests his head back against the wall at a tilt, just— watching the two of them.

Ed brings the baby up closer. Despite his blood, his sweat, his dirt, his makeup, he gently presses his cheek to hers. Then, he shifts again, moving so he can kiss her on the forehead, and she just— sighs, relaxing, shifting into him, impossibly easy-going and still quite a bit of a mess herself.

“You’re okay,” Ed whispers to her. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you. Nothing, not ever. I promise.”

Tears stream down his face, cutting clear tracks through his makeup. When he lifts his face to look at Stede, he finally breaks, starting to cry in earnest, and Stede leans into him. He kisses his forehead, wriggles his arm behind him, and lets Ed start to sob into his throat.

He’s vaguely aware of other voices, other presences, other people, but he can’t bring himself to focus on any of that right now. It’s like he’s dreaming; everything feels so unreal.

Ed, still halfway crying, lifts his head then to ask Stede, “What’s her name?”

Stede’s head falls into Ed’s, their foreheads pressing together. They’re both looking down at her, watching her shift and stretch her limbs as she pushes into Ed, this time, nuzzling nearer to the rumble of his voice.

“I didn’t name her,” Stede says to him. “Not without you.”

Ed’s thumb traces the birthmark on her cheek, near her eye. He runs over the mark once, then twice. A tear falls and splatters from his cheek to hers, and he swipes it away, smearing the saltwater near the birthmark, vanishing to absorb into her skin.

“You said all my names were silly,” Stede reminds him. “And you weren’t here. I didn’t—  I didn’t know—”

Choking on half a laugh, Ed tells him, “You can name her anything you want. Shitting— fuck, Stede, you can do anything you want.” His voice breaks again, and he says, “Thank you. For— For still being alive when I got here, for her, I just—”

“It’s okay,” Stede whispers to him. Ed shakes his head; Stede insists, “It is, it’s okay—”

“I killed them,” Ed whispers back, a confession trapped between the two of them. He softens only for Stede, hushed and gentle in telling him, “I killed— Stede, I killed everybody, I— I couldn’t think.”

“Shh,” Stede shushes him. He lightly taps their foreheads together, rests back into him. “It’s alright.”

“I want to kill them again,” Ed tells him. This is even darker, even lower. His eyes skim down Stede, and he exhales shakily. “Stede, y— Look at you, l— Look, I— I should kill— I want to kill them again, I— I—”

He’s trembling, and Stede uses his head to knock into him again, drawing his attention back up to him.

“You have a baby,” Stede reminds him, trying to draw him back in. “She needs you, Ed. I can’t—” He huffs a humorless laugh, tells him, “Ed, I— I thought I was going to die—”

“You’re not,” Ed insists, almost angry. “You’re fine. I have you now, and I’m not fucking letting you go anywhere.”

Stede slumps into him again, nodding, eyes falling down to their daughter once more.

He reaches up, traces his fingertip over the shape of her brow, stroking over to her birthmark.

“You’re safe,” Ed tells him. “Both of you.”

“Captains,” a different voice says— Oluwande’s voice, Stede realizes, and lifts his head to realize the room emptied at some point, leaving Ed and Stede alone on the floor with their daughter. Oluwande hovers by the door, covered in soot and ash and blood, and tells them, “We’ve got to go.”

Stede panics at the realization that Izzy and Lucius are gone, starting to shiver all over again in new alarm. “What— Where are Lucius? And Izzy? They need— They need help, we—”

“They’re already heading back to the ship,” Oluwande tells them. “Your turn, now. Let’s go.”

“No,” Stede argues, insistent. “Ed’s meeting his baby, he— He needs to know her—”

“We can get you back to the ship,” Ed says, quiet, but Stede shakes his head. He knows he probably sounds insane— he feels insane, exhausted and starving and broken— but he still can’t stop himself. “Stede, you need— fucking medical attention, there’s blood everywhere—”

“She needs a name,” Stede demands, more forcefully. It feels more important than healing or medical care or going back to their ship, right now. Their baby doesn’t have a name.

Oluwande’s about to argue with him again, but Ed holds up a hand before he turns back down to Stede. He passes their baby back over, and Stede takes her without hesitating, accepting her into his arms and against his chest, soft, easy.

“We’ll name her,” Ed allows, “and then we’ll go back to the ship, yeah?”

Stede nods, says, “Okay,” and Ed echoes, “Okay, then.”

When Ed reaches up, he strokes blood-thickened hair back away from their daughter’s face. She’s still an absolute fucking mess; Stede swipes at her face with his dirtied hand, only succeeds in smearing blood, and it makes tears burn in his eyes all over again. He wants to clean her, wash her, give her a bath, dress her warm, swaddle her tight, hold her close. She doesn’t deserve this, any of this; he wants her to be happy.

“Anything you want,” Ed tells Stede. “After all that? You can pick any insane-ass name off your list, I don’t care.”

Stede considers the offer, then tilts his head back down to look at her.

“I know,” he tells him, “that it probably sounds— sounds crazy—”

“I like crazy,” Ed reminds him. “You’re crazy. I’m fucking crazy. Give me crazy.”

Smiling, for the second time in four days, Stede points out to him, “Her birthmark looks like a moth.”

Ed tilts his head, running his thumb over the mark again as he examines it. “I can see it, yeah. Butterfly.” He glances at Stede, asks, “You want to name her Moth?”

“No,” Stede replies. “I know it’s— It’s probably a lot—”

“She’s our kid,” Ed points out. “She’s a lot. Fuck, she’s perfect. She deserves whatever crazy-ass moth name you want to give her.”

Stede can’t stop smiling. He’s in more pain than he’s ever felt in his life, and he thinks he’ll collapse from exhaustion at any second, but— still, he can’t stop smiling.

“I thought we could call her Lepidoptera,” Stede requests, suggests, softly, quietly. “I know it’s a lot, but— We could call her Lea? I thought? Since it’s a mouthful. And it’s the name for moths and butterflies and—”

“Stede,” Ed stops him. “You don’t have to sell me. It’s fucking perfect.”

“Yeah?” Stede asks. His vision blackens at the edges, stars creeping in, and still, he smiles.

“Yeah,” Ed agrees in echo. “Completely fucking perfect. Fits with the mark and all that. I think it’s awesome.”

Stede laughs, an exhalation of breath, and says, “Good.”

It’s all he remembers before the haze comes back in, crashing over his head in fog like a wave of thickened air, dragging him down into a warm, empty darkness until he succumbs to drowning inside of it.

When he wakes up again, eyes fluttering open of their own accord before he’s even conscious or aware, he’s comfortable.

Not immensely comfortable, because his leg feels terribly stiff and his joints all ache and his cunt throbs horribly and his head pounds and every inch of his skin feels battered and he’s fucking hungry, but he’s at least no longer on a dank floor, unwashed after days, covered in his own blood.

Now, he realizes, he’s been cleaned off and laid in bed.

His own bed, with his own covers, in his own quarters, on his own ship.

Shifting to sit up, Stede groans; a hand quickly finds his shoulder, guides him down again, until he’s laid down against softness and hardness in equal measure.

“There we go,” Ed’s low voice murmurs to him.

Stede realizes, all at once, that he’s laid half-on the bed, and half-on Ed, and he relaxes.

A second later, he remembers, and he jolts upright, asking, “Where is sh—”

“Lay down,” Ed whispers, gentling him back against him, an arm around him. Stede, gaining more coherence by the second, looks up to see Ed above him, holding him close, snuggled up in bed with him. They’re propped up in the pillows, Ed at a strange angle; Stede realizes, after a beat, that it’s because he has their daughter tucked into his other arm, sleeping in the crook.

“Lea,” Stede breathes.

“You remembered,” Ed says, sounding pleased by that fact. “She’s missed you.”

“How long’s it been?” Stede asks.

Ed kisses the top of his head. “A little over a day. Roach said you were just sleeping, I—” He stops, choked up in the center. After a beat, strained, he finishes, “I’m just really glad you’re okay.”

Stede’s still exhausted, despite the apparent day he’s spent sleeping, and he chokes up instantly, too. Ed’s tears bring up his own, and he burrows into him, feeling like little more than a child when he hides his face in Ed’s throat.

“It’s okay,” Ed whispers to him, when Stede sniffles, trying not to cry. “You’re okay. We’re home safe.”

“And she’s—”

“Perfectly fine,” Ed answers, before Stede can even finish asking. “She misses you like hell. She keeps fucking crying unless she’s close to you.”

Shifting upright, Stede reaches for her, settling his hand over the top of her belly. In her sleep, she stretches out, then curls back up, tucking into herself and turning into Ed, sleeping through it all.

Stede lightly reaches up, allowing a gentle touch of his fingertips to rest at her hairline.

It’s the first proper look he gets at her. His muddled memories of her birth are covered in filth and blood, laid over with a murky filter. Looking at her now she feels clear, clean, perfectly here, all dark curls and tiny brunette eyebrows and full pink lips and closed eyelashes and scattered freckles and stained birthmark and tan skin and gentle breathing and small hands and chunky limbs and round cheeks and perfection. His dau—

No, their daughter.

“She looks like you,” Stede says softly.

“Fuck off,” Ed says, half-tearful, half-amused. He laughs, a little wet, and insists, “She looks like you, you shitfuck.”

“Oh, you fuck off,” Stede replies, throat rasping, and Ed laughs again. Stroking his fingertips through Lea’s hair, unable to stop watching her sleep, curled up against Ed, he asks, “Is she… She’s okay, isn’t she? Did anything—”

“Stede,” Ed stops him, before he can work himself back up again. “I don’t know how you fucking did it, but she’s perfect. Izzy told me—”

“Izzy,” Stede says suddenly. “Lucius, are they—”

“They’re fine.” Ed lets his cheek rest against the top of Stede’s head. “Compared to you, they’re fucking— kings. They— I mean, they told— told me about what happened, I—”

He’s stopped by his own throat cutting him off, choking him up.

“I’m sorry,” Stede says softly.

“Fuck— Don’t be,” Ed insists. “Fucking shit, Stede. The shit you went through— You shouldn’t— I should’ve been there—”

“It’s not your fault,” Stede assures him.

“It’s not yours, either,” Ed insists, which crashes into Stede like a ton of bricks, like a wild horse, like he’s been thrown leagues away.

Heart thundering, Stede stammers out, “I— It—”

“I’m supposed to protect you,” Ed whispers to him, a broken kind of confession, sounding like he did when he admitted to Stede, ‘I killed them,’ while they were still in the cell. “You were fucking— tortured, because they wanted me, so fucking bad you— you had our baby, I— And I wasn’t there, you— You could’ve fucking died, Stede. I kept— I kept thinking I’d find you both dead, I—”

Stede turns into him, throwing his arm around him. It makes his whole body slither with pain, but he doesn’t care; he needs this as badly as Ed does.

Ed, who raises his own arm to wind around Stede, the other filled with their sleeping newborn daughter. They burrow into each other as deeply as they can, folding together like a house of cards, until they’ve collapsed and dissolved into one another, a seamless unit of one rather than three.

When they’re both breathing normally again— evenly, calmly, together— Stede says quietly, his eyes fixed on Lea, “I feel like this is a dream.”

A huff of a laugh is puffed from Ed’s mouth into Stede’s cheek. He kisses him.

“Yeah,” Ed agrees. “I keep thinking the same thing.”

It’s so insane, for Stede, that it doesn’t feel all the way real. It’s halfway to a nightmare, as though he could open his eyes at any moment, waking up in bed with Lea still in his belly and Ed’s arms around him and not a single one of these fresh, raw, healing wounds decorating his battered body.

He sits in that moment, just for a few beats of his heart.

Then, he asks, “What happened?”

Ed’s voice shakes, and Stede can feel his heart racing inside him, pulse thundering, but he tells him what happened from his end of things.

He tells Stede about receiving a ransom package, a letter with a rough-shorn lock of Stede’s hair— that he doesn’t remember losing— and Izzy’s dagger, tied neatly together with yellow string. He tells him about realizing it’s obviously a trap, that it was clearly bait for Blackbeard, that Stede and their baby and Izzy and Lucius had been taken because their captors wanted him.

He tells him about going insane. He doesn’t need to explain all of it, use too many words; he doesn’t, regardless, and Stede fills in the blanks himself, his own heart pounding in turn.

He tells him about hunting them across the sea. He tells them about four days spent in ruthless, violent pursuit, the entire crew of the Revenge determined to get the four of them back. He tells him about finding the abandoned jail’s dungeon and realizing Stede was being held inside.

He tells him about tearing through faces and bodies without a thought in his head except Stede. He tells him about the lives he took just to get to him and their daughter. He tells him, with tears burning down his cheeks into his beard and Stede’s hair, about not caring what happened to anybody, not even himself, as long as he got Stede and their baby back.

He tells him about searching cells for him. He tells him about thinking he wouldn’t find him alive, if he found him at all.

He tells him about finding him.

Stede holds Ed when he cries in earnest, words disappearing into sobs. It’s enough to trigger Stede’s own tears, and then he can’t stop crying, either. He doesn’t even care; the piece of him that always hates himself when he cries, his father’s whispered voice, is smothered by the sheer overwhelming volume of his emotions, crushing him flat beneath them, bursting the tears from him.

When Lea wakes up, it’s with a confused sort of whimper, a coo of a sound that Stede hasn’t heard since Louis was newborn. The tiny noise breaks his chest in half, and he reaches out for her without hesitation.

“Can I—” he starts to ask.

Ed’s already passing her over, though, and he cuts himself off to take her into his arms, tucking her close against his chest. She blinks, unfocused eyes seaglass-green and brighter than he remembers them being.

She’s okay. Healthy, breathing, living. Her tiny chest rises and falls; her limbs move, shifting when she tests them, writhing against Stede in a slow roll before she curls up again; blood rushes through her, fills her cheeks with a flush, makes her warm with inner heat. Her heart pounds strong inside her.

He really did it. She’s here, outside of him, and— despite everything, everything that happened to him and everything that happened to her and the events of the last four— no, five, he mentally amends— days, she’s okay.

“She’s okay,” Stede whispers aloud.

“Better than,” Ed says. “Aw, she’s perfect, Stede. Absolutely fucking perfect.”

It still feels like a dream, like a nightmare, but Stede’s starting to realize he’s awake. And she won’t remember any of this, and— and it still hurts, it’s all so fresh, but it’s—

It’s over, and she’s here, healthy and happy and, as Ed says, absolutely fucking perfect. That’s real; that’s important. Soon, everything will be all okay again, and they’ll— they’ll work on feeling better, and he’ll heal, he’s sure of it, and everything will just— be okay. It’ll take time, but they have time, now. They’ve got so much time, they’ve got— their whole lives.

She has her whole life. She’s alive.

“Thank you,” Ed whispers to him. “I don’t— Y’know. I dunno what I would’ve done.”

“Don’t think about it,” Stede replies, because he’s trying to do the same. The image of himself, fucked-up and bleeding on the floor, hovers in his mind’s eye; he wonders if the same is burnt into Ed’s. He doesn’t like remembering the panic of Lea’s birth, or wondering if she’d be alive when she was brought out of him, or fearing that he’d need to protect her life with his own when they inevitably came back for him.

The nearness of death and the loss of everything rattles him all over again, and Stede has a chill run through him, spine turning to ice, limbs shivering.

“Hey,” Ed says, soft. He tells Stede what Stede just told him, a quiet, “Don’t think about it. You’re alright.”

“I can’t stop thinking about it,” Stede tells him. It’s true, it’s like— like the image is superimposed over what he’s really seeing, like his mind is filled with the image of the inside of the cell, of Izzy’s face over his, of Lucius speaking in rushes to Ed, of his baby dying, of him dying, of Ed finding them dead—

He’s only aware that he’s started crying again when Ed takes his face in his hand, turning him into him so he can press a kiss to his forehead. Stede inhales, a struggling gasp of surprise, snapped out of his memory-haze.

“I’ll just— have to make you think about something else, then,” Ed says, his own voice thick. He clears his throat, looks down, says, “Hey, look at that. She’s almost smiling, kind of? Right?”

Stede looks down at Lea to find the shadow of a smile on her. It can’t be intentional, and it’s not a full thing, but it’s the first time he’s seen what she looks like smiling. She almost looks happy, content and small and here, so obviously his and so obviously Ed’s that his chest throbs for an entirely different reason, the pain taking second fiddle to the joy.

“Yeah,” Stede agrees, quiet. He lets his cheek rest on Ed’s shoulder, watching her tiny movements and first explorations with Ed. “Kind of.”

Ed kisses the top of his head again. When he tightens his grip around Stede, hand holding fast to his shoulder, Stede realizes he’s changed them both into nightclothes, soft sleep-gowns on not only himself and Ed but on Lea, as well. His wounds have been bandaged, his leg properly splinted, his lacerations stitched, his burns salved. It all still hurts, but he’s healing. The hurt is a cleansing hurt, a growing sort of pain, like green moss is filling in the holes and making him whole again in a newer, fresher way, more alive this time.

Relaxing into Ed, Stede kisses the top of Lea’s dark head. She’s soft, her hair glossy and thick, and he can’t help but inhale her when they snuggle into each other.

“I’m sorry you weren’t there,” Stede whispers upwards to Ed. “I promise, I tried.”

“Nothing you’ve got to be sorry about,” Ed whispers back. “I’m sorry, I—” He stops himself, takes a deep breath. Stede can feel the jump of his heart inside him, his ear pressed near to his lungs. “I’m here now, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Stede agrees.

“So’s she,” Ed adds. “Can’t be too mad about that.” He strokes her cheek with his thumb, leans in to kiss her head in the same place Stede just did. “How fucking lucky am I, right? I get you, I get Ally, I get Lou— Now I get her? Fucking— This is the best deal ever, Stede.”

“What deal?” Stede asks, smiling. He can’t help it.

“Me for you,” Ed replies, simple as that.

Stede huffs another laugh, relaxing into him.

“Best deal I’ve ever made,” he tells Ed, trying not to think about the hurts, focusing on the healing, keeping his eyes on his daughter.

“Same,” Ed echoes, just above him, with a kiss to his temple.

Even if they aren’t now—

Stede knows they’re going to be alright.