Archive of Our Own ^beta

Contrary to popular belief, Stede Bonnet can’t read. 

Well, that’s not entirely accurate, though that’s largely what he grew up hearing from his parents, his tutors, his peers at boarding school. Stede supposes he can’t blame him; when he tries to sit down and parse a text, it truly feels like climbing a mountain without a rope. A single page requires his entire attention, and sometimes he skips over entire words because the letters seem to flip and twist as he’s reading them. As a lover of stories and books, it has constituted one of the greatest sources of grief and frustration in his Iife — not to mention subjecting him to massive embarrassment. 

For those reasons, he has spent the better part of forty years playing pretend. He styles himself as a scholar, but never cracks open a book except to read the crew a good-night story, most of which he tells from memory. He has Lucius follow him around the ship, scribbling down all of his thoughts and ideas, because writing them himself could take hours. Of course, this charade didn’t take much to keep up, since the entire crew save for Lucius were totally illiterate. Stede begged Lucius to keep quiet about it after he’d inevitably seen through it, and he’d agreed, bless him. Things had gone so smoothly, Stede practically forgot his worries.

Then Blackbeard came into his life, and that delicate inner peace shattered like china on a hardwood floor. 

Blackbeard could read; in fact, he could read very well. When Stede showed the notorious pirate his canon library, he had wasted no time in taking books off the shelf and scanning their titles, flipping through to read random pages. Unlike Badminton, who had thought his entire thing ludicrous and excessive, Blackbeard had admired it, called it brilliant. Well! Stede certainly wasn’t accustomed to hearing that!  

Naturally, this led to Stede going on and on about all the books he’d collected. He had pointed out all of his favorites, the ones he’d brought from his personal library at home. He also made a point of showing off his particularly valuable tomes; he’d never read these, of course. Most of those weren’t really for casual enjoyment anyway, consisting of prayer books and essays in Latin and German. Blackbeard didn’t seem to care; his interest in even the smallest knick-knack and chotchky flatters Stede immensely, but his love for the books comes as such a shock. He gives Blackbeard permission to browse as often as he likes… and if that gets the legendary pirate into his cabin more often, well! He certainly won’t complain. 

One night, after Blackbeard had firmly become Ed in Stede’s mind, they ended up on the couch together, each with a glass of brandy and a book. Stede had chosen one of his favorites: an edition of The Canterbury Tales with accompanying illustrations. He has such lovely memories of flipping through each tale after a grueling tutoring session, or curled up under a tree with a snack of bread and cheese. It’s what he’s doing now, as Ed hums to himself and alternates between skimming through one of Stede’s Shakespeare volumes and staring at the ceiling. 

“Hey.” Ed finally puts the book down and gestures to Stede with his empty brandy glass. “Are you still reading’ that? You’ve been on the same page for a minute, mate.” Stede’s cheeks flush with embarrassment, and he quickly closes the book and feigns a yawn. 

“Ohhh, yes… so sleepy, you know? Got lost on the page…” He says as he raises his arms in an exaggerated stretch. “Better hit the sack, eh? Lots to do!” Ed doesn’t move; his eyebrow arches in a skeptical manner that makes Stede’s heart drop into his stomach. 

“Mate, you don’t have to be weird about it. Lots of guys I know dunno how to read. Honestly, it’s kind of expected of pirates to be totally fuckin’ illiterate. So—“

“That’s not it!” Stede suddenly interjects, his tone indignant as he straightens in his seat, his hand smacking the cover of the book he’s holding. “I can read.”

“Alright, then. Sorry I said anything…” Ed tilts his head back and lifts his book up, continuing to read with a bemused expression. “What’s it about?” Stede had just about gotten back to his book, but Ed’s question jerks him out of his focus again.

“Oh, this?” Stede holds up the book and smiles, more than happy to talk about it. It would keep Ed from asking too many questions about his actual… comprehension skills. “It’s about… well, a lot of things, really. It’s a collection of tales written by a man named Geoffrey Chaucer in 1392. It’s a series of stories about religious pilgrims on their way to the church in Canterbury. That’s in–”

“England. Yeah. Been there, mate. From there, actually.” Ed says with a wry grin as Stede gasps in surprise, earning himself a chuckle as well. “What? That surprising?”

“Well, I – I honestly assumed you grew up on an island, like me.”

“Technically, I did. England’s an island.”

“I know, but I meant – the islands here . The Caribbean! I honestly thought that we would have that in common.” Stede can’t help but feel a little disappointed, but Ed just shrugs his shoulders.

“Ehh. Probably woulda liked it down here better, mate. Rains all the time in England, it’s a drag.” 

Stede’s literacy doesn’t come up again for a while after that, given that everyone’s attention winds up on Blackbeard most of the time. Either he’s showing off his weapons, or teaching the crew a lesson about pirating, or otherwise regaling them with some fantastic feat of daring that he and his men had undertaken. Honestly, it’s so much better than books: the way Ed gestures and play-acts his way through the tales, the way he describes each gruesome scene more vividly than the last, the light that sparkles in his eyes when something he says really hits home with his audience. None of that can be captured with a printed page. 

If Stede’s honest, that’s why he doesn’t mind improvising his stories too much when he reads to the crew at bedtime. It’s not as if they’d ever know, and Stede feels so much more confident when he’s spinning his own yarn, rather than trying to fumble his way through a book. The crew likes it, too; they love “the voice” that he’d given Pinocchio, and that’s nowhere written in the storybook itself. It’s all his idea, and that makes him feel proud of himself — not a common occurrence for Stede Bonnet. 

Tonight, Stede has started up a new tale called “The Tale of Tom Thumb.” Stede loves this one — as a child, his nurse would tell it to him, and he would imagine himself as that tiny little boy, fighting giants and braving the innards of a cow; becoming the favorite of King Arthur himself. Sometimes he felt very much like little atom growing up — only the giants he fought never seemed to give up trying to stomp him into the dust. 

As he reads, he notices Ed watching in a dark corner of the deck, smoking his pipe while the oil lanterns cast a twinkle in his warm eyes. Stede is glad he doesn’t really have to look at the book to tell the story, because he steals a couple of glances at Ed while the crew falls asleep. Finally, he wraps up the first part of the story, and closes the book, prompting Ed to swagger closer, slowly stepping across the boards to avoid waking any of the crew. 

“Got that one memorized, do ya?” He asks, tilting his head to the side and crossing his arms over his chest. Stede tries very hard not to think about the way the leather creaks with Ed’s movements. 

“Somewhat, I suppose? It’s certainly a tale I’ve read a great deal.” Stede replies, setting the book to the side. Ed swipes it before Stede can even react, then looks over the cover and spine. 

“Oh, so… how’d Tom Thumb end up in a book all about shipbuilding, eh?” Ed asks with a snarky little laugh, and Stede feels three inches tall, just like he did back in school. “Some kind of special edition or—“ Stede stands up and grabs the book out of Ed’s hand, his eyes welling up with tears and his face burning with embarrassment. 

“No, not a special edition! Just a m-mistake! Now, good night, Blackbeard!” Stede hisses as loudly as he can in a whisper, then turns on his heel and storms to his cabin, wiping his eyes on his billowing sleeve as Ed stares dumbly at his retreat. 

Inside the safety of his room, Stede finally allows himself to cry, whimpering as he leans against the door. He can’t believe he’d pulled a book about boats off the shelf to tell a story! What worse, Ed had noticed! He’d — he’d laughed! Once again, like clockwork, Stede Bonnet has become the butt of a joke, the joke called his sad, stupid life. If only he’d actually learned how to read! If only his brain didn’t make everything so blasted difficult!

“Ay there, Stede? Um…” Ed’s muffled voice squeezes through the crack in the door, but Stede doesn’t answer at first — and why should he? Ed had truly hurt his feelings with that snide little laugh… “Stede, listen, I dunno why you were reading a fairy tale out of a shipwright’s manual, but… obviously, I fucked up somehow. Can I — can we talk about it? Don’t wanna do it again, yanno?” Again, Stede doesn’t answer right away, but he does move to the door, peering through the crack. 

“You didn’t do anything wrong. I messed up. Me. I—I pulled the wrong book out, I didn’t notice…” Stede sniffles and wipes the corner of his eye with his damp handkerchief. “You must think I’m so stupid, Edward.” There’s a pause, and for a moment Stede knows for sure that Ed will agree, but all he hears is a sigh on the other end of the door. 

“Mate, I know what stupid looks like. It ain’t you. Just… open the door, come on.” Ed replies, and Stede sucks in a breath before unlocking his cabin door. Ed’s right; talking about it might help, and even if it doesn’t, at least he can help Ed understand why he struggles so much. Stede stands up and moves out of the way so that Ed can step inside, nervously fidgeting with his hands. “Right. Let’s have a sit. Get some of that yummy brandy, maybe. You look like you could use a nip or three.” 

“Oh! Oh, yes. Of course! You’re probably right, haha!” Stede bustles to his small wet bar and pours both himself and Ed a glass of brandy, then carries them and the bottle to his sofa. “So… ah, where do I begin?” 

“By sitting your ass down and drinkin’, mate.” Ed answers with a half-hearted gruffness meant to do nothing but give the impression of irritation. Stede does as he’s told, sighing dreamily as the sweet brandy trickles down his throat. “Right, so… you read a fairy tale out of a book about boats. What’s up with that?” After taking another drink, for confidence, Stede looks at Edward apologetically. 

“It’s because I don’t — I don’t read well. Most of my books, I haven’t actually read. I lied when I said I’d gone through them all. Certainly, I’ve skimmed over them, but…” Stede sighs and turns his glass around and around in his hands, thankful to have something to keep him from picking at his nails or chewing the inside of his mouth. “I have a problem. It… only comes up when I try to read or write. I see the words on the page, and I know they’re talking about something important, but then as I try to decipher them…” Describing this experience always gives Stede fits; his mother never really understood, and his father thought him an outright liar. “The words jumble up. The letters move around, sometimes even jump up to another line. Reading something brand new is a trial for me, Ed. That’s why I tell children’s stories to the crew: I know them by heart. My tutor read things to me so many times that I have them memorized.” Ed honestly looks baffled, which scares Stede. He’s sure that Ed’s going to say something about how that’s impossible, words can’t just get up and move .

“That sounds rough, mate. So all these books?” Ed gestures around at Stede’s miniature library.

“It’s a farce, a smokescreen to ensure that nobody finds out I can’t… I can’t read them.” Stede’s ears burn with embarrassment and his eyes well up with tears. “I hate it, Ed. I love my books. I’ve collected them my whole adult life, and it’s – it’s like someone’s tied me up in front of my favorite dessert, but I can’t touch it, can’t enjoy it. All I do most of the time is look at the illustrations and admire the workmanship of the binding.” Stede downs the rest of his brandy and shivers as it scalds his throat on the way down. “You must think I’m a complete moron.” 

“A moron?” Ed sits up and puts his glass down, leaning close to Stede with his eyes narrowed and his brow furrowed. “Mate, if I thought you were stupid, I’d have just let you bleed out on that Spanish ship. You’re not stupid .” 

“Then what’s wrong with me?!” Stede frantically asks, tears flowing more freely down his cheeks now. All the years of bottling this up, of pretending and lying, have come spilling forth like water from a broken dam. Ed watches him cry for a minute, and then wraps his arm around his shoulders.

“Honestly? Nothin’. There’s nothin’ wrong with you.” Ed says, shrugging his shoulders. “Your brain just works funny; that’s all. Different than other people’s. The fact that you can read at all’s an accomplishment.” Stede can’t help but crack a small, wry smile at that.

“School was awful . The boys already hated me, but when they saw me try to read out loud and – and all I could do was stand there and stammer through while they laughed and mocked me. I had my hands smacked with rulers more times than I can count…”

“School sounds like it fucking sucked, mate.” Ed scoffs and pats Stede affectionately on the back. “Well, you don’t need school to learn stuff. My mum taught me to read. She wasn’t the greatest at it, but she knew the basics. Weird for a scullery maid. ‘Course, she had to hide it. The master of the house, his daughter couldn’t read herself out of a bag, so it wouldn’t do for anyone to know her laundress had that on her.” 

“Of course not.” Stede sniffs, crossing his arms as he sneers disapprovingly. “Well, your mother sounds like a remarkable woman.” 

“Yeah…” Ed drifts off for a moment or two, then seems to snap out of it, grabbing a book from Stede’s table. “Okay. This one, erm…” Ed squints a bit and brings the book closer to his face. “ Gulliver’s Travels”, huh? Mmkay. Yeah.” Without another word, Ed cracks the book open to the first page, gesturing for Stede to lean over. “Alright. Here’s the thing – if the words aren’t behaving, you just need to know what they are beforehand, right?”

“I – I suppose so, yes.” Stede thinks back to his school days, realizing that the little reading he had accomplished, he’d done through repetition. Of course, he had a much harder time once he’d lost his tutor and went to boarding school. Nobody wanted to read for him there. 

“Right.” Ed leans back on the couch, stretching out like a cat. “Look here, watch me as I read. Yeah? Then you do it.” Stede feels a spike of fear pierce him to the core. The last thing he wants is to show Ed how terrible he is at this! Stede shifts away from Ed, just a bit, chewing his lip raw. “What? What’s the matter?”

“I just– I just don’t want you to– to see.” Stede says, his cheeks burning red and his eyes darting everywhere but Ed’s face – that is, until Ed turns his head to face him directly. The tenderness of his rich brown eyes, the softness there, serves to calm Stede for the moment. God help him, they’re so… .

“Mate, listen. I’m not judgin’ you, but you really oughta know how to read better. I think this might help. Just–- fuck the letters, right? Don’t let them make you their bitch.” Ed states firmly, clapping his hand on Stede’s shoulder. “Now, just sit here and let’s do the first sentence, yeah?”

“O-okay.” Stede swallows hard and leans close to Ed, almost sinking into the warmth of his body as he begins to read aloud. As he speaks, he keeps one finger under each word, following along with his own voice: 

“I was surgeon successively in two ships, and made several voyages, for six years, to the East and West Indies, by which I got some addition to my fortune."

Stede blinks and tries desperately to keep pace with Ed, but predictably, the words begin to spin and jump about on the page: 

I wsa srgeonu – shit! –  adme svearle ovyaegs – dammit! – yb wchih I gto smoe atdidoni – soem adiidton – 

Stede blinks again, trying to reset. The words shift again, in a completely different formation than before. His heart pounds in his ears and blood rushes to his cheeks as he forces himself to focus harder on that first line. All the while, Ed patiently waits for Stede to finish, draping his arm over the back of the couch as he watches. 

I saw -- no that's not it, it's was -- sgoenur -- surgeon!! It's surgeon!! --

Stede suddenly yanks away from Ed, turning sharply around and hugging himself. Impossible, it's impossible! How can he read if he can't even complete a simple sentence? At this rate, it would take him years to finish a book like this! As Ed leans forward, putting his hand on his upper arm, Stede chokes on a sob and fights the urge to jerk free and run to the brig.

“Okay. What happened there?” Ed asks, then gasps a bit as he sees Stede’s eyes swimming with tears and his face beet-red with frustration and humiliation. “Hey, hey! No need for that, c’mere.” Ed pulls Stede into a tight hug, and Stede melts into his arms, crying into his chest.

“It’s n-not fair!” Stede bawls, shaking his head as Ed strokes his hair. “Not fair! I want t-to read so b-badly! I don’t want to b-be like this!”

“Yeah. I know. S’alright, mate. Just calm down, take a breather…” Stede cannot imagine what Ed must be thinking. He’d wanted so badly for Ed’s technique to just work , for him to miraculously read the page and for Ed to clap for him, to cheer and congratulate him. Now, he just wants to sink through the floor and into the ocean depths. 

“You see? I’m an idiot.” Stede whimpers, the voices of his father, his schoolmates, his teachers all echoing in his head. Idiot! Idiot! Idiot!

“Did you hear me earlier, mate? You’re not an idiot. Your brain works different than other people. And mate, everyone’s like that. I mean, look at me.” Stede looks up at Ed and studies his face, still sniffling.

“What do you mean? I don’t…” Stede doesn’t see anything but Edward Teach, handsome and daring, brilliant strategist, master of the seas. “There’s nothing wrong with your brain.”

“Mate, if you talk to Iz for more than ten seconds you’ll find out that’s not true. I forget shit all the time. I can’t pay attention to someone for more than five minutes without drifting off into my own little world. I rush things. I get bored easily. I’ve always been like that, mate. It’s caused problems, trust me. My old captain used to lash me for forgetting important stuff. Even Mum got mad at me sometimes, though she never hit me or anything like that. That’s not the point though.” Ed smiles kindly at Stede and tilts his head up, their eyes meeting again. “Your brain’s fine, mate. I know it’s annoying, I know it hurts to struggle with shit you think you ought to just understand. But you wouldn’t be you , in that case. Lemme tell ya, the way you can just rattle off stories and make up voices for those characters? Fuckin’ killer, man. I couldn’t do that.”

“I–” Stede hadn’t been expecting all of that. God, he would never have assumed Ed had issues like that. Then again, it’s the same thing as him, isn’t it? They both pretend to keep themselves safe from the assumptions of other people, from their mockery and ridicule, from pain. “I appreciate you saying those things, Edward. It– it’s hard to see that stuff myself.”

“I know. So, you wanna try it again?” Ed asks, holding up the book in his free hand while the other stays in Stede’s hair. When Stede shakes his head, Ed just sets it aside and lets Stede lay on his chest. “S’alright. We’ll do more later. Not like we don’t have time. Got all the time in the world...”

Dear Edward, 

Things are much the same as the last time I wrote to you. Jackie’z has proven an ideal place for us to recuperate our losses and return to the sea, to find you just as I’d promised… 

Stede begins what feels like the hundredth letter he’d written to Ed since they’d parted, since everything had blown up in Stede’s face. Here in Spanish Jackie’z, he didn’t have much time to himself; he and the crew worked more or less from dawn to dusk, serving drinks and bussing tables and greeting the ne’er-do-wells that frequent her place. The few moments Stede can spare are dedicated to this: trying desperately to reach Edward the only way he can think of. Of course, that’s not the only reason Stede insists on sending these messages out. After all, without Edward, he wouldn’t be writing them at all.
 

I hope that before we parted, I communicated how important to me you are. You helped me so much back then, and for that I’m unsure I’ll ever truly repay you. 

They’d finished a whole chapter of Gulliver’s Travels, though it had been something of a trial. Then another. And another. Ed had worked with him every step of the way, reading sentences over and over again until Stede’s mind could wrap itself around the words, process them in a way that made sense. The progress he made had transferred naturally to his writing, which had suffered similarly as a result of the strange nature of his mind. He grew more confident with a pen until he could write as easily as Lucius, though with perhaps not as much precision. For the first time in his life, Stede could consider himself a man of letters. 

Even these words, scrawled passionately on a scrap piece of paper, are a testament to what you’ve done for me. 

Of course he meant to show Ed his gratitude, even if he never got his hands on the bottles containing his loving missives. It didn’t matter, really – one day he’d find Edward, and he could tell him everything in person. He could thank Ed, and apologize, and just exist with him again. If it took a thousand letters, or a hundred thousand, he’d write them till his fingers bled.

“Oy, Cap’n!” Roach waves to Stede, a rather clunky-looking rectangle clutched in his other hand. “Look what I found, boss! It’s gonna make us so much money at the bar!” Stede can’t help but crack a bemused smile as he approaches across the beach, pocketing the half-finished letter to Ed.

“What’s that, Roach?” Stede asks, taking the rectangle – a book, in fact – from Roach. It’s a recipe book, Stede realizes, and after a moment of puzzling, looks to Roach. “How exactly is this going to make us money?”

“Oh! Well, it’s a recipe book, yeah? If we have the book in the kitchen, it’ll make my food taste better! Right? That’s how recipes work!” Roach says proudly, crossing his arms. “Any good chef’s got a recipe book.”

“Erm, Roach…” Stede opens the book and looks through it, impressed at how precise and detailed the recipes inside read. “It’s not magical, you have to read the recipes and follow their directions in order to make specific foods.” Roach blinks and then slowly nods his head, grinning and scratching his head.

“Well, we can always burn it for warmth! Or use it as toilet paper…” Roach muses, and Stede chokes a bit at the thought of ripping apart a perfectly good book.

“No! No, Roach, that’s totally unnecessary. Actually…” Stede pauses for a minute as the idea comes to him, hot on the heels of his memories of Ed. Could he really pull that off? Even now, he struggles with the concept of reading, though he’s in much better practice now. Could he… or perhaps the better question was, “should he”?

Well, that’s a no brainer to Stede: of course he should. Edward had given him a gift, but not one meant to be hoarded. 

“Roach, how about we head back to Jackie’z and… well, I’ll teach you how to read this book.” He says, hefting the book in one hand as he flashes a warm smile at his frazzled crewmate. “It’ll be hard work, but I can guarantee that if you can tough it out, you’ll be the best chef around before you know it.” 

“Man, boss, you sure you wanna do that?” Roach asks, plucking a bug from his hair and flicking it onto the warm sand. “Gonna take a while… I don’t know the first thing about reading.”

“That’s quite alright, Roach.” Stede assures him, wrapping his arm around Roach as the pair head back toward the Republic of Pirates. “We’ve got all the time you need. All the time in the world.”