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There’s a mark. And if you have the mark, well, that means there’s someone out there that has it too. Not everybody has it, and there’s a lot of stories about what it means: particular gift, isn’t it, to know there has to be someone who is drawn to you, bound to you, you need them and they need you?
But his mum had the mark, and his dad had the mark, and well. His dad took it out on her every chance he got, didn’t he? Cursed God for binding them together, for weighing him down with this stupid frail woman, poor and careless and weak. He drank, he said, so that he could forget how he couldn’t escape her, how it made him hurt to be away from her. And she cried, when he was gone and she thought Ed couldn’t see her, because it hurt her, too, when that stupid cruel drunk was gone.
The only way to break it, really, is death. You can’t cut it out and you can’t burn it off, you can’t run away from it. Someone has to die. At least, that’s the way Ed heard it growing up, and he knows that way works because he made it happen. His dad was dead and his mum was free, even if she didn’t see it like that.
So even if the ballads and the tales called it a gift, when Ed found the mark he hoped it wasn’t true. Thought about burning it off, joked with Jack about how it should’ve been him took that burning sail in the arm. Jack didn’t have a mark, Jack didn’t really believe in it, honestly, just joked that he hoped Ed’s soulmate was at least a “really hot bitch.” Felix had the mark, even found his match on Hornigold’s ship, of all the crazy places for a soulmate. And then fucking died for his soulmate, stealing an extra ration because it hurt too much to see his soulmate hungry.
So, fuck that.
He tried covering up with a tattoo; that definitely doesn’t work, just pops right through just as visible. So long jacket arm it is, and hope his matching mark is on the other side of the world. For a long time, he figures they must be, because nothing happens, he just gets free of Hornigold and then famous. He’s not exactly out there mingling, so where’s he even going to find his soulmate anyway?
And then, by the time he’s pretty much given up on the whole idea, it happens.
What he was looking for was a first mate. (The last guy got hit by a cannonball, unlucky fucker.) The right amount of ambitious, enough to want to try to impress, not so much that he’s got to worry about mutiny all the damn time. He’s in Jackie’z, interviewing some guys, not really even figuring he’s going to pick any of them. Should be thinking about hiring from his own crew, probably. Maybe a round of knife parade, see who really shines at that. That one guy of Hornigold’s got promoted from knife parade, he did pretty well for a while, for a Hornigold guy.
But it’s, you know: the thing you do, go to Jackie’z, see who wants to switch up their career or whatever.
And this one asshole, voice like he ate a crate of pipe tobacco, yelling at some other candidate about discipline like they’re in the English Navy or some shit. Would have probably just written him a polite “thank you for your interest” letter — should have done, really, except that feeling, like all of a sudden he needs this guy to see him, to hear what he’s saying. Like an ache in his gut.
The funny thing is, he only ever sees the actual mark the once. Of course he hires him, and Izzy gives him this weird look, like they both know, and Izzy says he’s always admired Blackbeard’s work, but there’s this other thing, sitting under the surface. The pull, the need, don’t let this guy out of your sight, even as they’re walking back to the Queen Anne, negotiating shares like there was any question for either of them.
“Don’t believe in that shit,” Izzy says, when Ed nervously mentions soulmates. “Superstitious nonsense for stupid twats. Just a fucking birthmark.”
Ed narrows his eyes, takes off his jacket. Izzy eyes him with even more suspicion, like Ed’s trying to make a play for him. Ed’s already regretting the hire but already he knows if he makes this guy leave, it’ll be worse than any of the stab wounds he’s already taken. With a horrible sinking feeling, he holds out his arm, gives a nod like he wants to see if Iz has the same. Which he does, of course, unbuttons his sleeve and rolls it up, and there it is, just the same as Ed’s.
“Yeah, so? Fucking here to work for Blackbeard, not for some fairytale true love horseshit.”
Actually, Ed does see it twice; there’s a time they’re both very drunk, after the one raid where the other guys don’t see his flag and it almost goes tits up. Izzy, the fool motherfucker, says something like “if you’re my fucking soulmate maybe you ought to fuck me or some shit.” Which, yeah, aren’t you supposed to have some kind of feelings like that for your soulmate? They get as far as both taking off their shirts, Ed tries to touch him but doesn’t do it tough enough or some shit, and the eternally present pull in his gut turns into just regular drunken nausea at the disgust in Izzy’s eyes. They don’t talk about it ever again.
And it’s….
It’s fine. Turns out a soulmate as a first mate is fine. They’re not fucking and they’re not in love and he doesn’t need to be in love. He can live with a guy with no imagination if the guy mostly follows his directions, even if what he wants is for that constant neediness to be answered with something. Anything. He doesn’t know what would sate it, more riches, more fame, raid after boring fucking raid. More elaborate fuckeries that Izzy doesn’t even really understand, but he’ll do them, because he needs it too, needs Blackbeard to need him.
And if it’s confusing and painful — no, it’s not, it’s fine — well, then he can stay in his cabin and the pull in his gut is just, you know. It’s been, what? Ten years? Fifteen? He can just keep doing this until one of them dies.
Until some weird rich guy kidnaps some English Navy fucks, and Izzy steals them from him, and the weirdo steals one back with some kind of ambush or some shit. The first interesting thing that’s happened in way too long, and he can feel the way it gets under Izzy’s skin, feels something in that pull between them. Izzy’s actually mad about something, Izzy hates this fucker, and it’s not like Ed’s a big fan of rich dickheads, but it makes him curious.
Send Izzy himself, see what happens, maybe he’ll get lucky and this rich idiot will stab Izzy and take care of this whole soulmate problem. (It’s not a problem. Izzy’s a great first mate. It’s fine.)
Izzy hates this guy, this Gentleman Pirate, and Izzy is actually bothering to lie to him like Ed can’t feel the way the lie curdles between them. So yeah, of course he wants to follow their ship, even if it means blowing up a bunch of Spaniards and then swooping in to see for himself.
The thing is, he never considered the idea of love outside of soulmates, outside of “I’ve got this mark, and you’ve got the mark, and we’re going to be that way whether we like it or not.”
This guy does not have a mark at all, just ordinary little freckles, unless it’s someplace real hidden away. He did get to see pretty much the whole thing what with the gut-stabbing and the patching up and the getting him out of that ridiculously gorgeous blood-stained suit.
He never considered you could just meet somebody, and think they’re fascinating, and weirdly hot considering the gut-stabbing and everything, and then just be —
Seen, for yourself, perhaps, or at least the self you’d like to be.
Saved, from the brink of disaster, by the same idea at the same time.
Swept away.
Which it turns out is very fucking inconvenient when your actual soulmate hates their guts. Enough to threaten to leave, like either of them could survive that. So sure, he can come up with a plan that will keep Izzy from running away and lets him stay here and imagine that it could all be different.
Everything with Stede is so fun and exhilarating and yes okay a little bit baffling, and maybe it’s baffling because for the first time in fifteen years the person he’s spending the most time with? He doesn’t have that little pull in his gut with Stede the way he does with Izzy, the way he always knows when Izzy’s annoyed (to be fair, Iz’s always annoyed) or proud or worried. Instead there’s joking and talking and playing and he wants and he doesn’t know what Stede wants and he can’t square the circle.
Stede defends him; Stede says beautiful things under the moonlight; Stede looks like he feels something but Ed doesn’t know. He can’t ever be certain, and it’s maddening and it’s fascinating.
Plus, well, even at his moment of greatest daring, even with the adrenaline rush of Stede’s sword in his gut, and finally Stede holding him in his arms, Ed can feel his soulmate, always close and always unhappy. The pain in his gut of Stede’s sword, sharp and simple steel, beating in syncopation with the pain of Izzy somewhere near but out of sight, angry and resentful.
It’s a disappointment but it’s not a surprise, not really. The only surprise is that he brought the boys into it. That’s how much Izzy thinks of their bond, he supposes.
He’ll do it, he’ll do it, and then he can’t.
The soulmark, well, it’s probably coincidence that it bloomed on his skin right after he pulled that rope around his dad’s neck, but his mother saw it and her eyes went wide and her mouth went narrow. She made the sign of the cross, like God had anything to do with them, and then he left, got on a boat, became a monster on the waves. The kraken.
He maybe should have also told Stede about the whole soulmates thing, but hearing that Stede is his friend? Too overwhelming, too much hope, and if Stede knows exactly how he’s been cursed, how will he look at him then? Time for that later.
Well, no time for that, because Izzy’s his soulmate, and Izzy hates Stede, and that’s all there is. Izzy challenges Stede to a duel, to do the thing that Ed couldn’t, fulfill the promise that Ed made, that he never wanted to make.
That’s what a soulmate is supposed to do, yeah? Know you better than you know yourself, is what they say, and Izzy thinks he knows, or he’s convinced himself. And maybe it won’t feel like fishhooks caught under his skin if Stede leaves. If Stede dies.
Maybe he’ll get lucky and Stede will have learned more than Ed ever taught him. Which of course, he hasn’t, not that way. Ed turns away, the grief of it overwhelming, and worse because he can feel Izzy’s joy, or whatever passes for joy, triumph singing in the blade pinning Stede, vibrating through Izzy’s hand.
Stede is going to die; he going to lose Stede and keep his soulmate, but Stede is clever and insane. (Stede remembers the things Ed says, too.) The sword breaks, Stede wins, and the rush of Ed’s relief cut through Izzy’s shriek of rage is so intense he almost vomits off the side of the ship, but he’s Blackbeard, he’s motherfucking Blackbeard, and so he can hold it together.
For years, he’s told Izzy to go, and Izzy’s threatened to leave, and Izzy never leaves.
But this time, Izzy leaves.
Ed is sick and adrift and frightened, and it’s exhilarating. He talks about leaving (he should go find Iz, the hot pain in his gut tells him he should go find Iz) and he doesn’t leave. Because Stede wants him to stay.
Wonderful, funny, sexy Stede wants him to stay, and he can’t feel it, but maybe for the first time in more than a decade he can trust something other than that fucking pull in his gut. He can trust his friend.
The thing is, being around Jack is like being who he was before he had a soulmate. When he was young and reckless and could imagine that his soulmate would be his best friend and maybe it would be his lover and maybe maybe maybe. Before he stopped hiding his soulmark under ink and leather. When the world was young and you might as well drink it away because it would probably all go to hell tomorrow.
Stede doesn’t understand, and Stede doesn’t like it, and the rum soothes the pain that has never once stopped, the low swimming nausea. So he might as well go with Jack, because he’s not really lovable, is he? His soulmate was never even his friend, and his friend doesn’t really like him, and he might as well wake up on a beach hungover with a beard full of sand, at this fucking point.
Three English ships on the horizon, and maybe Stede’s not his soulmate, but Ed’s not going to let him die, and fuck Jack, and fuck Izzy.
Fuck the feeling that rushes through him at the sight of Izzy and the boys, Izzy and the goddamn Navy, the rage and relief both. When he realizes it, that he can take the out and save Stede’s life and get the hell out of there, he calls it out like a prayer to a God he hasn’t believed in since he was a child. He doesn’t care if that sick feeling stays with him every minute he’s alive (or every minute Izzy lives, whichever), he’s going to take it.
Act of Grace. Grace, a guy like him never gets grace, his history and this cursed mark taking every chance of grace, and he’ll sign away ten years (ten human years), what’s ten more years?
They take the beard, and it’s cold, he doesn’t recognize his face after all these years. The long plain sleeves cover his mark just as well as the leathers had, and it’s grace.
If Stede had been his soulmate, Ed would have known where to find him. He had to go looking for Stede because Stede’s not his soulmate, he doesn’t have that pain pulling him, and that’s grace too, to not feel compelled. To feel a choice.
To sit on a beach and be close. To look at Stede’s beautiful face and know that it’s not fate but Stede makes him happy. Kissing Stede is better than fate, it’s a grace he never thought he’d have.
And if Stede had been his soulmate, Stede would have come for him, or he would have known, or none of this would have ever happened.
But Stede doesn’t come. Stede isn’t his soulmate. If he can’t have love, he’s got a soulmate, if he goes back maybe it at least it’ll all hurt a little less. It doesn’t hurt any less. He thought being separated from your soulmate was the worst pain imaginable, that’s what all the stories say, and it’s been hurting this whole time, but that was nothing. That was pain he could live with, if he had love, and now he doesn’t have love, and the mark’s still there. Izzy’s still there.
Surely there’s a way he can make it all work. He can still be the person he found in himself with Stede, the person who has grace even if he doesn’t have love, and Izzy will understand. Doesn’t Izzy feel it in him, the way he always feels Izzy’s moods like weather on the horizon?
If Izzy feels it, he hates it.
"This is my soulmate,” Izzy says, pushing the torn page into his face. “I won’t be bound to some namby-pamby in a silk gown pining to his boyfriend.”
And there’s only one way out, and Ed won’t take it. Not yet.
After — after taking the one voice who said “you don’t have to be soulmates to like each other”, and “maybe life just goes on” as if grace and love were something a monster like him could have — after pushing that voice into the deep and throwing away the last reminder of his mother’s love and the thing Stede saw without needing them to be soulmates. After he does that, he can kill love and grace both, abandon himself to his fate.
If his soulmate thinks he’s the monster then he must be the monster.
Then he’ll be the monster, he’ll be the bird that never lands, the ship that never sees port again, the absolute devil of the sea. He’ll cut off a toe and feel the nauseating adrenaline rush looping between them, snort enough rhino horn that he doesn’t have to feel the crash after.
Until it’s not even good enough for his soulmate, the man with the mark that matches his. The one who wanted him to be the devil says he has love, the one who dragged him back to hell wants to talk it through.
Because of course Izzy can feel it, the thing he’s been hiding and running from: Izzy knows his feelings and calls them poison.
When the shot blasts through Izzy’s knee, the pain blooms in his own gut like a relief. Just pain, just the feedback loop of shattered bone and burst blood. He can make Frenchie do the rest, easy peasy pudding and pie. Except of course he can feel it, the easy pain curdling into a festering wound belowdecks. The festering wound mingling with the festering pain in his heart, his soulmate’s pain. Stede’s crew won’t kill Izzy for him either, will they? Frenchie nods along when he says no more Izzy, but of course Ed can feel it, the horror of it, the pain and the loathing.
He’ll never be free unless he does something about it himself, and surely Izzy doesn’t want to feel his pain, so.
“He was your friend,” Jim says. And what does Jim know? He separated them from their soulmate and yet somehow they found love, other people get love and hope, and he gets: not a friend, but a soulmate who laughs in his face when he asks to be let go.
Izzy won’t. He won’t do it. Ed can feel the gun pointed at him, feel the contempt mixed with the need, and Izzy won’t do it.
There’s a shot, when he walks away. Maybe if they weren’t soulmates, he might think that the silence that follows is death, and maybe it would be death, if nature could take its course. But he doesn’t have time for that. He can’t keep going, and he’s too much of a coward to kill himself, and not even his soulmate who ought to know better won’t kill him.
He tried, and the one person he tried to love abandoned him, and the one person who was supposed to know him mocked him, and fuck it. Let him become the monster they’ll finally be able to kill.
Of course it’s the indestructible fucker who puts an end to it, and the relief, despite himself, to feel Izzy right there, to see Izzy pull out the gun and pull the trigger, and from there it’s —
When he wakes, it feels strange, and for a second he thinks maybe there is magic, maybe the strange man who dragged him off the shore did some strange magic, because he feels awful but also the pull in his gut is just gone. But it’s just Hornigold, and it’s not even Hornigold, it’s purgatory, the gravy basket, it’s neither alive nor dead. It’s his choice, to live or die.
No one’s waiting for him, Stede’s gone and everyone else hates his guts and his own soulmate shot him. To be fair, he did also shoot his soulmate, and he’s not lovable, and if he’s dead, well, all of that will be over. Until he hits the water.
Until he sees the light.
Until he sees the mermaid.
And it’s Stede, the one who didn’t care about fate, the one who grabbed life for himself, the one who made him want to save himself.
This does not fix everything. Waking up with Stede’s hand clasping his? Doesn’t fix everything. Reminds him mostly that Stede left him, and he doesn’t have words for that, can’t get his mouth to match up with his brain, so headbutt it is.
Also, apparently coming back from the dead kinda fucks with your head, because there’s a bit after that where it’s all a weird swimmy fucked up mess. Where he’s chained? To the rail? Before being thrown off the ship, which he supposes means Stede doesn’t care as much as he thought, and Izzy isn’t around, can’t feel him in his gut. Everything hurts but that at least doesn’t hurt.
Which means he died, yeah? He’s a little afraid to take off his jacket and see whether the mark is there. A little more afraid that he’s still dead, actually, but Mary’s not exactly the kind of spirit he’d conjure up, and even less so Annie, and then there’s Stede.
Not a mermaid and not a soulmate, but fuck him if he doesn’t see the warmth in Stede’s eyes, hear the tenderness in Stede’s voice and think: maybe. Yeah, just maybe.
Buttons disappears, and the bird flies away, and Ed goes back to the ship, and when he finally takes off his jacket the mark isn’t quite gone, but it’s a faint faded thing. He’s become just himself.
Which means, in the morning, when he wears sackcloth and collar and stands in front of anyone, whatever sick feeling is in his stomach is just nerves. Nerves and regret, and Izzy’s dark cloud is just the expression on his face and the way he sits way the hell over there, not the specific pull of his soulmate.
Izzy is just a guy on this crew, and they’ve got a fucked history, but hell, he’s got a fucked history with everyone there. Matters more to try to let Lucius get right with him, matters more to sit with Fang.
Matters most of everything to stand in the moonlight again and give Stede a sweet compliment and watch him smile. Oh, but it’s so scary, to feel so much, and to not know, to not feel fated or bound, but simply to feel.
So much love that he’s afraid of it, also when it’s threatened: so much terror. Then he does know, he doesn’t have the pull in his gut but his heart knows that Stede needs him, whatever Izzy thinks.
In the bed nook, in the soft bed together, in the dark punctuated by sparkling fireworks, feeling everything so much and Stede says with a soft little laugh, “we may not be soulmates but we do have matching marks now.”
“You don’t have a soulmate?” Ed asks.
“Not a mark on me,” Stede says, and eventually Ed will know every inch of that skin, every scar and freckle, and no, there’s not a mark on him, and Ed’s never been so grateful. But Stede is a little wistful, he runs his fingers down Ed’s arm, raising goosebumps all across the skin. “I noticed this, you know, and I thought maybe…. Maybe you were better off without me, give you a chance to find your soulmate.”
Ed hums. “Soulmate’s not everything, babe.” Then he kisses Stede again, and that’s the last talk for the night that’s not about them and their pleasure.
It should be easy after that, right? He’s in love, and he’s loved, and he doesn’t have a soulmate anymore, and it should be easy. Isn’t, though. Not when with Izzy lurking around, can’t quite suss out his feelings anymore, can’t tell which comments are serious and which ones are jokes.
Can’t quite tell Stede the whole of his feelings, he wants Stede to be happy, and Stede looks so happy doing what Ed can’t and won’t anymore. He can’t imagine a way where it works, doesn’t have the words to ask, and he’s scared. Maybe they went too fast, maybe they did it all wrong. Maybe he should just give it all up and become a humble fisherman, maybe that’s what he should have done first, no ambitions and no love and no soulmates, just the sea.
That too is wrong.
What’s right? Following not a pull in his gut but the voice in his heart, to the place where he finds a letter: written on each other in permanent ink. Which isn’t a gift or a curse from some unseeing fate, but a choice. Choosing each other, finding his whole heart fighting on a beach in the form of this fucking guy. Seeing him and thinking, oh yeah, this is the one. Not because of fate but from grace and love, and finally saying it, and he knows. Stede doesn’t need to be his soulmate to know Ed loves him. Nothing else matters, not plans or schemes or the whole English Navy.
Except that after everything, there’s the final kick to the gut, Izzy bleeding out on deck. “I fed your darkness,” Izzy says, and the old pull is gone but there’s still something, because he’s weeping, he can’t stop weeping. He can’t stop begging Izzy to stay, because that’s what you do with your soulmate, but he’s already died once and Izzy is dying now, and there’s no soulmate for him when Izzy’s eyes close for the last time.
In the dim cabin, Stede cleans the blood from his hands, Stede gently undresses him, takes the white waistcoat with the gold braid smeared red, the white shirt with the cuffs stiff with dried blood.
“Oh,” says Stede, a tiny puff of breath, the tap of a fingertip on his bare skin, and Ed looks down at his arm. The mark that had gone faint and strange is entirely gone, the way his mother’s mark vanished after he tightened the rope around his father’s neck. “Oh Ed, I’m so sorry.”
They’ll talk about it later, the mark and what it meant, the past and all its sorrows, but now he cries, this time in the comfort of Stede’s arms, and they talk in low careful voices not about the past but about the future. About escaping fate for real this time, burying the nightmares and starting over.
Burying the body, his former first mate and former soulmate dead and buried in the ground, not much of a ceremony but about as much ceremony as Iz probably could have stood. And a marker, and even Stede’s trying to say something nice, bless him.
But Ed is done, there’s no more left between him and Izzy; his mark is gone and Izzy’s is rotting in the dirt. When Zheng and her first mate suggest revenge, he lets Stede put them off, because there’s no pull in his gut, only his heart full of love, his heart looking to Stede and saying home.