Temet Nosce Chapter 7: Exsanguinated
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Ed has managed to move Stede about a foot. Slowly, as if sleepwalking. Non progredi est regredi.
“I’m sorry I didn’t go looking for you that night. I should have found you. I should have talked to you. I should have asked you, anything. Just asked. I should have asked.”
With each apology they take a step towards the couch, together, miserere nobis.
---
When you kill, you die as well.
Stede wonders if Jim feels this too, this death. Jim, hiding behind knives, behind a large hat, behind a fake nose, behind anger. Semper ardens, semper instans.
Breathe out.
It took Stede’s first kill to begin to feel. His second snuffed that feeling right out, left it on the jungle floor among bits of skull and his own bare, terrified footprints. Will a third kill bring it back? Will a third kill bring Stede back?
Well it’s not that much more dramatic than running off to become a pirate, is it?
Maybe he can summon it back by sheer force of will. He can cup his hands together and softly open them to reveal a yellow butterfly, creatio ex nihilo, and maybe it isn’t yellow due to cowardice, not this time, but yellow like sunshine, like the robe that kept Ed safe in the bathtub.
You’d save me a seat, wouldn’t you?
Maybe. If you weren’t being a dick.
Stede needs a cleansing, a revitalization, a renewal.
Breathe in.
No pets. They befoul the ship.
No. Not if he has a bathtub on board. Stede can be good. He can be worthy. Maybe even adequate. Just let him aboard.
After all...
It’s his boat!
It’s Stede’s fucking boat!
He’s back on the ship, nerve endings screaming and expanding to its very edges, vox clamantis in deserto, it’s his boat and the kraken can’t touch him here.
The kraken has no right to tell him what to do. To tell him he isn’t a person. What kind of a person is a kraken, anyway? It isn’t. It isn’t a person at all. And maybe quem deus vult perdere, dementat prius, maybe, but what can be destroyed can be remade again. Right? Ed, are you even listening?
Breathe out, with just a little more gusto.
***
“I’m sorry about Calico Jack… and marooning the crew…”
Closer, and closer still. One step at a time.
“And the boy, he didn’t do anything wrong, I hurt him to hurt you, to hurt myself, I’m so sorry Stede.”
***
We’re breathing in, we’re breathing out, we’re having fun with it.
Stede is climbing the mainmast. His hand shields his eyes from the sun. Heroic, dashing, not at all corpselike.
Everyone’s had a go at killing me but me. I’d like a shot.
Ed was wrong. Brave, wonderful, but simply incorrect. Ed is not the kraken. He’s just fine. It’s been Stede all along fouling everything up. But if there’s anything Stede knows about himself, it’s that he’s weak. He can be defeated. And that's the good news.
Our life feels monotonous to you?
No, no it doesn’t, does it?
Here’s the adventure! Stede dramatically points his sword at the horizon, The tendrils rise from the water. Poisonous, menacing, but polite enough to threaten ahead of time. That’s this kraken’s brand, after all.
Our old lives will be gone, dead. Never were.
This is what Stede dreamed of. He’s left it all behind, his life, his sanity. The ocean expands on all sides of his home, his shelter. The kraken speaks. Hic sunt dracones, it sneers. But Stede knows that there is no point, its threats are surdo oppedere.
The tendrils lurch towards him, poking at him, toying at him, before one shoots out and wraps around his torso. Constricting, trying to remove every last bit of oxygen, only this is a dream so Stede can still breathe, always breathe, and he’s smiling about that when the Kraken plucks him from the mainmast, from his shelter, and threatens to crack him up on the rocks.
Muse, why have you forsaken me?
And actually, no, he can’t breathe. He hasn’t taken a breath in or out in a while, or maybe he’s taken too many. His head is spinning. He thinks it’s done. Maybe. This is it. In articulo mortis. The smothering.
There there, Baby Bonnet. Feels better, doesn’t it?
No, fuck off. His arms are pinned to his sides, but he can reach his pocket. He can wrap his fingers around it, this ugly half of a petrified orange, and he remembers what Ed revealed to him. What Jim returned to him. What Alma shared with him. And Stede is being pulled towards the black, gaping maw, nolens volens, but the orange in his hand is burning like lava. It burns so hot, like a ball of molten fire, charring the sides of the tendril that grasps him.
And it catches fire. The tendril lights up, even brighter than the horizon. Its grasp is released, and Stede goes careening towards the dark of the Kraken’s mouth, but he has his sword at the ready, and it’s time to end this beast forever.
***
Ed can hear Stede’s breathing, rapid, energized.
“You’re a person Stede, you’re my person. Don’t go anywhere else, don’t leave me. Please.”
They’re so close. They’re there. Ed lowers Stede onto the couch and sits at his right side.
“It’s okay. Wake up.”
Two Acts of Grace, please.
***
Stede wished Ed could see him now (because esse est percipi, and he’s ready to be), diving into the belly of the kraken, sword grasped in his right hand, a molten beacon of fire in his left.
Vae, puto deus fio.
Stede lands on its tongue, giant and sticky, crimson red, and everything is red. It’s a red vibe in here.
Stede isn’t an expert on kraken anatomy, and he doesn’t have time to read about it, and at any rate the books are gone. But he’s ready for the end. Maybe it’s true that when you kill, you die as well. But maybe it can also lead to a rebirth? Renaissance.
We have to try, don’t we?
Stede hears it before he sees it, the creaking and groaning, and he looks behind his shoulders to see his home, his great Revenge, joining his side. It’s all been swallowed. It will have its vengeance.
Yield or die.
I choose…
He reaches for the rope ladder. He’s good at climbing ladders now. He has skills. He has flesh. He does.
Everything turns over, they’re moving towards the gaping hole at the back of the throat, and he holds onto that ladder for dear life.
And as Stede slides down the esophagus, holding his ship as much as the ship is holding him, he can’t help but peer up at the flag. The new flag, Blackbeard’s flag. Ed’s spear pointed at a heart, a red heart. Whose heart is it?
They land somewhere in the stomach, acid and yellow bile nipping at the heels of Stede’s boots. And he can almost hear the heartbeat, now.
Wait.
He can literally hear it, the heartbeat. It’s loud. It’s coming from the flag. What does it mean? He climbs the ladder. He navigates towards the flag mast as the ship buckles in the depths of the enemy. Fluctuat nec mergitur.
Now he’s climbing the mast. It’s a dream, and it’s easy in his dream. No problem. He has the strength, he has the fortitude. He’s reaching for it. And as the ship buckles the flag moves aside and now he sees as well as hears. The inner lining of the stomach, pulsating. Beating. It’s the heart. Stede smiles.
This is how you die.
He’s at the top of the flag pole. He’s grasping his petrified and molten lighthouse beacon. He’s launching it at the thumping, and it just explodes, a rain of fire. Fire and blood. It drenches everything in soft sheets of red. And it’s comfortable. It’s warm, it’s safe, this blood. It feels smooth. Like he could sleep in it forever.
At least, if the body wasn’t rejecting him now. He’s pulled back up through the tunnel of the kraken, through the mouth, barely missing the teeth. He finds himself violently spewed into the air, and now he's miles away.
Luctor et emergo
And he can see his house in Barbados, his wife and children, and he can see his Revenge, and he can see his love standing on the deck, arms open wide. The sea is crimson now as well, waves moving in a silky motion, as if it could catch him in perfect security and hold him while he rebuilds himself. Which he can do. Which he is doing. He gladly points himself in freefall towards this ocean of fabric, and just as he should hit it full-force and be smothered, he finally wakes up.
***
There. Ed feels a hand against his cheek. Stede is looking him in the eyes, sad, so tired, but not angry, not accusing. He looks as if all the blood has been drained from him, like he’ll turn to dust and blow away.
Instead, Stede moves his hand behind Ed’s head and gently presses their foreheads together. Eyes closed. In salvo, in spe, ad infinitum.
Ed feels something brush his arm. He looks down, intus et in cute. It is his mother's crimson silk handkerchief, pressed from Stede’s hand to his. He doesn’t know where it came from, but it’s there, as if it never left. Ed begins to cry.
Donatio mortis causa.
Finally, after everything, the spell might be broken.
“Ed. Edward. My love.”
“Yeah, what is it, man?” Ed breaks into a smile through the tears.
“I think… I want you to kiss me.” Stede mumbles. He mumbles it with a smile. That smile is Ed’s new favorite thing.
And with that consent, he does what is asked. Ed is no prince, but Stede is no princess. They are so broken, so tired. But they are men, and men can heal. They are humans, and humans can love. They are hostis humani generis, and they can sail free.
***
Ed opens his eyes at the sound of movement in the corner. The door to the auxiliary wardrobe slides open and there is Lucius, peeking around the corner, the edge of his mouth upturned with a small smile.
“Don’t wake him up,” Ed mouths barely a whisper from the couch. Stede’s head is resting on his shoulder, eyes closed, lights out, a bit of drool running down the side of his mouth.
Lucius creeps closer. He still has the red journal tucked under his right arm. He looks down at Stede like one looks down at a sleeping puppy who is having a dream… or maybe even a human being who one is very fond of.
“He looks… peaceful,” Lucius whispers with a hint of suggestion.
Ed leans his head over to the left to lay it on top of Stede’s. He never wants to leave this spot. But in Lucius’s presence he feels extra… pathetic.
“I’m… I’m sorry for what I did to you Lucius,” he mumbles.
“Sorry for what, exactly? Say it out loud at least.”
Ed raises his voice above a whisper. “I’m sorry I threw you overboard. You were a good friend. You didn’t deserve it. I’m sorry.”
“Ssh!” Lucius scolds with a smile. “Don’t wake him up. He looks like shit.”
And with that Lucius sits down on the couch, on the other side of Stede, who doesn’t seem even close to stirring. He gives Stede’s left knee a light affectionate pat and his eyes are drawn to the clasped hands of his co-captains, the darker hand over the lighter one, thumb moving to and fro to calm the shaking that was no longer there.
Lucius gives a happy sigh. He is in a forgiving mood. He sees better days ahead. And with that he pulls out Stede’s journal, shoots another fond look at those loving clasped hands, purses his lips, and begins to sketch.
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