Chapter Text
lucius
He’s going to die. Like, really die, for real.
Shit, why did I never learn to swim? Living my life on a boat, never learned to swim, idiotic.
He knows he’s flailing, desperate as he’s fighting it - it’s supposed to be a fight, your life and your death, that’s what they say. Fight for your life.
Well, he’s fighting, but the ocean is indifferent and immovable. The waves break in his face, and he splutters between the screams for help.
I’m so tired , he thinks, his voice hoarse from yelling. And what’s the point, anyway? Everyone who really cares for him - they don't even know where he is.
I’ll never see Pete again.
That thought, more than any of the others - the injustice of Ed doing this to him, after all he’s done is listen and try to help - the days and months and years he’s going to lose.
Pete, he thinks, and he yells for help again, with the last of his strength.
But he’s so tired. His body is giving up even if his brain is still screaming for a plan, any plan, any port in this storm.
It’s quiet now, this drowning - and he can admit it, at last, that he’s drowning. This is how he dies: he drowns. Lucius Spriggs, age 28, lost at sea. His head keeps slipping below the waves. His legs are like lead. His eyes keep closing against his will, even as his brain screams fight God damn you fight you absolute bastard keep going don’t you dare stop -
Something hits him in the face.
And it’s not the relentless, wet, numbing slap of the current. It’s solid, and rough, and stings. It takes his exhausted mind a moment to understand, to hear the voice calling down to him.
“Grab the rope!”
A rope. It’s a rope. He starts to laugh, laugh and laugh and then the voice commands Grab the fucking rope, Lucius! and so he obeys. His hands are almost numb but he can see the rope in his grip, knuckles nearly white around it, and feels nothing but relief.
It’s Fang. Oh, thank God. He can see his face now, pale and earnest in the moonlight.
He hadn’t realized anyone else was on the deck. And, thank god, neither had Ed.
Fang shouts something else, another face joins him at the rail: Ivan. The man swears, or at least his mouth moves, and then he’s hauling on the rope along with Fang. Lucius hastily loops the rope behind his back, clamped under his armpits, and he bangs against the hull repeatedly as they bring him up from the sea. Doesn’t matter. The waves have beaten him black and blue anyway; what’s a few more bruises?
Four strong warm hands are grabbing his arms and his shirt and they pull him over the rail like he remembers his mother pulling a lamb from the ewe’s straining body - a lifetime ago. Did he ever really live on a farm? Did he ever really decide going to sea would be better than his life in the country, then his life in the city as a clerk?
What a complete idiot, to ever think that.
He hits the deck and retches as the seawater is knocked out of his lungs.
“Boy, what the fuck - what did you slip on?”
Of course they think it’s an accident, because they don’t know yet.
“Didn’t slip,” he gasps, cheek pressed gratefully into the planks of the deck so that the woodgrain will be tattooed on his skin. “Was pushed.”
“Fucker,” growls Fang, protective of Lucius as he has been since Lucius complimented his cheekbones. “Name the bastard. We’ll take care of it.”
“I doubt it,” Lucius replies as Ivan raises him to his knees. “It was Ed.”
“The Captain?”
Captains, real captains, don’t behave like that . “He’s not my Captain. My Captain’s not here.”
“Shit,” says Ivan. They both stand there, looking down at Lucius, considering. They’re not going to give him back to the waves - and thank God for that, Dizzy Izzy would have him back over the rail in a heartbeat, probably with cannonballs tied around his ankles for good measure. “Shit.”
“Shit,” Lucius agrees.
The three of them tilt their heads as one as they hear a gravelly voice, low and without laughter, coming from belowdecks, the sound of muffled screaming. “He can’t find me,” Lucius hears his own voice, whispered and panicked, knowing that if Ed sees him again it won’t be overboard, it’ll be a knife in the gut or a shot in the head. “He’ll kill me, you didn’t see him.”
Ivan and Fang exchange a look.
“Where can you go? You can’t hide on a ship.”
Lucius considers this. True, it’s hard to hide on a vessel, even one this size. But then he thinks of the Captain’s cabin, of the auxiliary wardrobe that Stede believes is such a secret, as if no one can tell the inside of the cabin and the lines of the deck don’t match up.
And he thinks of the jam room, and the space in the wall that none of them have ever leaned against, a shadow of a door really. No knob, no handle.
The jam room is below decks, where Ed is doing something unknowable and terrible. But maybe this is a chance. His only chance. And he’s supposed to be drowned, so he may as well take it.
“The walls,” he gasps. “I have to get to the Captain’s cabin."
Ivan and Fang could stall him with questions or objections but bless them, they don’t. Instead they move, gripping him hard by the upper arms to support his still-weak legs, and they move quieter than two large men should move while hauling a bedraggled scribe with no right to still be breathing. They slip into the cabin, and Ivan asks, “Now what, Lucius?”
“The bookshelves,” Lucius says, too loudly. He’s not sure anyone can hear him over the pounding of his heart. They drag him over, his feet a parody of walking, out of sync and wooden and cold. He reaches up for the mannequin and thank God, thank God it opens.
There’s a strange kind of - nest? On the floor of the wardrobe. Silk and satin and balled up in a way that would have made Stede wince. Like someone has been laying there, a crumpled wounded animal.
Lucius looks away. “Keep going. To the back.” And pray God that Stede kept some secrets.
The door is concealed behind the summer linens. Ivan and Fang push them roughly aside, sending them swaying like benevolent ghosts. There it is, just like the jam room, the merest suggestion of a door.
Fang leans forward, throws his weight on it, but it doesn’t budge. “Fuck,” he whispers.
But Lucius shakes his head, his salt-burned eyes roving the walls frantically. And yes - above his head, just where he could barely reach, a soft little square of wood that’s just a shade different from the rest.
“There,” he rasps, half his brain listening for the heavy bootsteps on the deck that will send him to the next life. “Press it, there, do it now!”
Ivan reaches up and slaps the flat of his palm against it and with a shiver and a fall of dust - no one has been here in a long, long time - the door slides open.
Lucius can barely stand on his own, now, he’s so tired. Ivan and Fang practically throw him into the dark beyond the door. Fang, thinking quick, tosses in his canteen and a quilt he spots folded on a high shelf.
“We’ll come back,” Ivan promises, as Fang hits the button again. The door begins to close. “We’ll come back when we can, bring you provisions.” The last thing he sees are the two anxious faces, then the door closes with a whisper.
In the dark, Lucius hears the pull of Stede’s linens as Fang and Ivan hastily rearrange the clothing to hide this refuge. He hears them speaking low to each other, in a language he doesn’t recognize. And then he hears them leave the auxiliary wardrobe, another low muffled sound as that door swings to.
He’s alone in the pitch-black of the walls.
He sinks down in relief. If Ed finds him here, he’ll have earned his murder. Fang and Ivan will keep the secret. He is safe, for now.
He hopes, pettishly, that they won’t tell Pete. He’s a love, but he can’t keep his mouth shut at the best of times. No, it’s better that no one knows. Not now. Not yet.
He’ll stay here, just a phantom, until Stede returns. Because he must be going to return, despite the grim set of Ed’s mouth when he climbed aboard alone.
Stede would never leave him. Leave them. It’s not his way.
Suddenly the last of his strength leaves him, and he slides down the wall. With trembling hands, he unfolds the quilt Fang tossed after him. Ignoring his sopping-wet clothing, he curls under the quilt, letting the hard dusty floor hold his grateful body.
He sleeps.
***
When he wakes, he has no idea if it’s day or night, or how long it’s been since he retreated to this bolt-hole. He’s parched, and gratefully swigs from the mostly-full canteen that Fang gave him. He’d better make it last.
It’s still dark as a new moon night in the walls, but he gingerly feels around his temporary home - he snorts at this fancy - and finds that it’s not just a little cell behind the wall, as he imagined it must be. No, there’s a passageway, and it seems to snake further and further as he walks, quiet, fingertips bruising either side of the corridor. It’s only as wide as his arms can reach, but it’s space enough.
Almost as if it were made for me, Lucius thinks wryly.
He’s walked maybe 20 feet into the dark, cautious as a rat, when he hears a noise. Stopping, he holds his breath.
Something’s being moved on the other side of the wall.
Soft thuds, the sounds of hands, the breathing of his crew. He tries to place the noises, tries to make sense of what his eyes can’t see. The noises are soft and further away there’s a dull ringing, like metal is being carelessly handled.
And then he realizes: he’s behind the bookcases. And the sound: Stede’s books, their books, and someone - or many someones - are taking them away.
And the tinkling - the Captain’s silver, he’s sure of it.
They are stripping the cabin. And that must mean -
Stede’s not coming back.
Something has happened, he’s sure of it. Something’s broken in Ed, something that his (rather sensible, he thinks) advice couldn’t prevent. And so Ed is purging everything of Stede’s from this ship, any reminder of the man that Lucius knows, from bitter experience, that Ed must love to distraction. To destruction.
Only love can bring this kind of pain, this wanton defiling.
He places his palm against the wood, then rests his forehead beside it. Who’s on the other side, who is taking these books to dump overboard - ironic, isn’t it, he thinks with a grim smile that’s more of a grimace. Olu? Buttons?
Pete?
The tears come, slow and cold. He shouldn’t cry, probably. It will make his limited water supply last longer, if he doesn’t waste all the water in his body on tears.
But he cries anyway.
He can’t stand to listen for long. He feels his way along again, past where the bookshelves end, to a spot that’s reinforced with stone - the fireplace - and begins to orient himself to this mirrored version of the ship he knows like the back of his own hand. And here, this must be where the Captain’s bunk is. The corridor stops here, as if it has run up against the curve of the ship’s bow.
Lucius longs for a window but must content himself with the memory of sunlight. He’s tired again, and something else - something he doesn’t want to feel because with it all the hope is seeping out of him, like the salt water evaporating from his clothes.
He’s sad. And his hope is flagging. The ship is changing and it’s not for the better. And his friends are out there, and Pete, and he can’t get to them, help them, comfort them. Let himself be comforted.
He trails back along the corridor, bare feet softly padding and his head swimming with the tears that just won’t stop leaking from his eyes. He can feel the stone again under his fingertips, and he stops here. It’s a little warmer here.
He lays down where he is, and sleep claims him again.
***
A door slams open and he jerks awake. For a moment, he’s in a terror that Ed has discovered the secret corridor, is coming to drag him out by the hair and dangle him by the neck over the sea. But the sound is muffled still, and he realizes it must be the door to the cabin. Faintly, he can hear footsteps, and the striking of a match. He counts the footsteps: two people have entered the cabin.
He hears that growling voice again, and realizes there are three people in the cabin: the two pair of feet, and Ed.
He recoils, scooting away from the wall. But then realizes he may as well keep up with the world, while he’s stuck in here. Maybe he can learn something useful. Maybe there’s a way for him to help.
A voice answers Ed’s growling question, and Lucius’s heart heaves in relief. Jim. So the crew must be all right. He had a horror growing in his chest that the rest of them would be pushed, one by one, into the waves. As he was. As he would be again.
Fuck’s wrong with your face?
I’ll take that as a yes.
And then there’s a sharp hard sound, and a grunt, and the noise of a body slumping to the floor. Lucius covers his mouth.
NEXT! The hard voice calls.
It’s worse than he thought. Because Stede’s gone, yes, but Ed’s gone too. Lucius had thought - hoped - that the night he was pushed was a fluke, a mistake. Ed was grieving, he wasn’t in his right mind, and he had been so bloody normal that morning.
But there’s nothing of Ed left in this voice.
They’re gone, both of them are gone. And what will the ship do without its Captains?
He wants to shut his ears, pretend this isn’t happening, that this is some awful dream and he’ll jerk away and be in his hammock or out under the stars on the deck, and Pete will roll over drowsily and say “babe, you okay?” and he will be, then.
Frenchie’s bright tones drift through the walls. Oh no, Lucius thinks. Oh no no no. Not again. What’s he doing to them? Is he hurting them, killing them?
There’s the sound of a pistol cocking, and Lucius holds his breath.
Frenchie’s responding, then there’s laughter; there’s no humor in it, just a forced, deranged sound that means nothing but emptiness, but madness.
He waits to hear NEXT! called out again, wondering who is coming now, what Blackbeard - because he can’t call this vicious voice Ed, Ed is gone, Stede is gone - but nothing comes. The footsteps leave the room, and they’re dragging someone prone along the floor - must be Jim, and bile rises in Lucius’s throat - and then nothing. The door closes, distantly.
Three sets of footsteps, and the drag of Jim’s body.
But Blackbeard hasn’t moved yet. Lucius imagines it, pictures it in his mind: Blackbeard, sitting at Stede’s fine mahogany desk, swept clear of anything charming. Blackbeard, maybe with his head in his hands. Or maybe staring out the window, watching the swell of the waves. Or maybe he lights his pipe. Or maybe he does nothing at all.
He backs away from the wall, tugging the quilt around his shoulders. His clothes have almost dried, but he’s chilled to the bone.
***
He wakes again, suddenly, at a roll and a lurch beneath him. The ship is moving.
The door to the cabin opens again, closes quietly. Heavy stomping boots. And against his better judgment, Lucius follows them, crawling along beside Blackbeard as he strides across the cabin. Lucius nearly hits the far wall, but stops in time. The footsteps stop too.
He doesn’t care about Blackbeard, he tells himself. He cares about the crew. It’s recognizance, to find out what is happening. Perhaps he’ll hear something useful. Something he can work with. Something he can build on.
Blackbeard must sit on the bed; he hears a stifled groan. His knee is playing up, Lucius thinks bitterly. Good. The heavy boots drop to the floor. Lucius presses his ear to the thin wall of planks that keep him safe.
It’s quiet for a long moment and then he hears it; a rustle of the sheet on the bed and then a breath, a hitch, sucking in air between tight-clenched teeth.
Blackbeard is crying and trying, unsuccessfully, to hold it in. To be unheard, unwitnessed in this moment of humanity. But it’s fighting its way out of him: all the pain and guilt and abandonment, the sadness Lucius feels too in the pit of his stomach.
There’s something that might be a wail, or might be a whimpered name.
"Stede."
Ah. So maybe Ed isn’t gone altogether.