Anne: But Hey - Tumblr Posts

If Anne's scared of being convicted of piracy, she's in the wrong damn line of work. She isn't fighting for herself these days. She's fighting for a damned ideal. Those are supposed to be worth dying for, right? Then they're worth being convicted of piracy for.

Besides, it's hardly a wrongful conviction.

Anne's headache becomes a migraine almost immediately; she presses thumb and forefinger together over the bridge of her nose. No Articles, fine. Maybe you're a fuckwit. Weekly salaries? Singular...takes? Two weeks notice? What kind of a fucking fantasy is this man living in?

And he's hunting fucking Blackbeard.

"If ye've got nothin else, ye've got audacity," Anne says in a voice like she's congratulating him on an unexpected victory. She shouldn't like that. Damn, she shouldn't like that! The man's a fuckwit with six men and sloop who wants Blackbeard to LISTEN to some goddamned bellyaching in silken breeches and all--but he's an audacious fuckwit. Anne's favorite kind.

"I en't shakin 'til ye've heard my terms out, though." Anne hauls herself forward to lean both elbows on the table, still holding her arms, searching Stede's face as she made her terms clear. "I get a room. Not a fucking partition 'tween hammocks, a room with a goddamned door and walls. Anywhere ye can hang hammock's fine. No one in there but me, though. I pick who I share watch with and who I damned well don't, and I decide how and where my off-hours're spent." Anything else? "And I don't cook," she adds, deadpan. If nothing else, after learning why, Anne expects she'll have won herself at least that last concession.

Stede had always been a lucky man, though it was not something he was entirely conscious of. Things just kind of...happened. Around him. The idea of being fortunate had been smothered out of him at a young age, which made it difficult to have any real trust in luck.

But he had been lucky. He'd survived this far, despite being... well. Himself. He had come away from an encounter with Spanish Jackie with his nose intact. He'd been gut stabbed and hanged and survived it, largely due to Blackbeard having taken an interest in him. That was its own kind of luck. He'd managed to survive another stab to the gut that had left him pinned to the mast of his own ship until there was a realization that maybe someone should help him out of that position. He'd gotten out of his own execution, and had escaped the privateering school he'd been pressed into.

It was easier to acknowledge how unlucky he was. He hadn't meant to kill Nigel, not truly. And Chauncey's death... it was something he still saw and heard when he closed his eyes. It had shaken him more than Nigel's, as unexpected and brutal as it was. And Stede had agreed with everything the man had said. He ruined things. Everything he touched, everything he loved, he ruined it. He'd ruined history's greatest pirate.

His expression falters for a moment as his mind brings up the things Chauncey had said. Edward's bare face... watching his calloused hands fold a sock. His seeming resignation to that life, all so that he could be with Stede. There was something awful about the fact that Edward had been so willing to give up being Blackbeard to be with him, anonymous sailors on a sea far away from everything that they had known. He didn't want Edward to change for him. He loved the man exactly as he was, exactly as he had come to know him. He couldn't care less than the man was Blackbeard, not after he had gotten to know Edward. It was important to acknowledge Blackbeard in it all, but that wasn't all there was to the man. That wasn't who he loved.

Anne pulls him out of his thoughts and his expression shifts closer to neutral. He shakes his head.

"I'm afraid that all of my documents are aboard the Revenge and I do not have anything to offer you, right now. I compensate my crew with a weekly salary, regardless of raids. Loot is split evenly amongst all of us, unless there's a singular item. Then it is mine, as is my right as captain. Um..." he looks down at the book his hand is resting on. "Keep your equipment clean, make sure the ship is in peak condition. Give me notice, if you intend to depart from the crew. Two weeks would be nice, but I'll accept shorter if its necessary. Ah... I don't have the amenities aboard this ship that I do on the Revenge so I'm afraid those rules won't apply here. Hm. I can put something in writing, if you like. Add it in with the rest of them, once we recover my ship. That is, if you intend to stay on past this little venture of ours."

She couldn't be convicted of piracy, if they got captured while on this fool's errand. Not if he didn't have anything for her to sign.

"We could shake on it?"