Ed barely had time to scream before he hit the water, the rock tied to his waist pulling him deeper and deeper into the cold blue ocean.
He was too tired to struggle against it. All these years of fighting, treading water and drowning anyways… All he wanted now was for the water to wash away the cruel voices in his head, to numb the pain, to make it all stop.
Ed felt strangely calm as let himself sink down into the darkness, almost happy even. If I'd known drowning was this easy, I would've done it ages ago.
He vaguely wondered how the crew was doing. They must have survived the storm somehow, if his body was still alive. He hoped they had. He hoped they would be okay after everything he put them through.
Frenchie would make a good captain, certainly a better one than him. So would Izzy, once he adjusted to the loss of his leg. He had been right, of course. Should've let the English kill you. If only he had.
Ed wondered what it would feel like to be dead, if death would feel as cold as purgatory, when something… changed.
He couldn't quite explain it, didn't understand what had happened, but somehow, he found himself struggling against the weight around his waist, screaming soundlessly when his fingers slipped off the rope, refusing to let him untie it.
"Messed up… Messed all of this up…"
I fucking know I messed up, he wanted to scream, but he couldn't get the words out. He couldn't see the surface, but he reached out anyway, desperately stretching his hands as far as he could manage, trying to figure out which way was up.
“Sorry…”
It was no use. The rock tied to his waist pulled him under and refused to let him surface. There was only darkness, cold and endless, wherever he looked.
Until, suddenly, impossibly, there was a light in the distance, and a voice, and it—
It sounded like—
"Ed? Ed?!"
Stede.
"Wake up! Wake up, Ed! Please, I'm here!"
Ed thrashed, opening his mouth in a soundless scream. This was impossible. Stede… Stede couldn't be here. Stede should be somewhere in Barbados, with his perfect little wife and his perfect little children, not here, in Ed's purgatory, telling him not to die.
"Please wake up! Come back to me!"
The light got brighter and brighter, and Ed realized that he could swim towards it. The rope around his waist had loosened and disappeared into the darkness without him noticing. Ed was too focused on Stede's voice.
"Ed, don't die, please don't die. I'm here now!"
But he couldn't be here. He couldn't. Stede had left him, he had left, he had left. And after everything Ed had done, Stede should want him to die.
"I'm here, Ed! I'm here. Ed… Ed!"
Memories flooded Ed’s mind without his permission, memories of all the happy days with Stede. Drinking brandy together, toasting to being co-captains. Stede gently touching his beard on the treasure hunt. Laughing with him on deck, surrounded by their crew that almost felt like family. Kissing him. Stede smiling so, so brightly when Ed had come back to him.
Maybe Stede would want him to live after all.
“Ed, wake up! Wake up! Hey, wake up, come on.”
Ed tried to swim, tried to get back to the surface, when he noticed a strange figure in the distance. He squinted, confused. This was his purgatory. Shouldn't he be alone? Why would someone else be here?
The figure was quickly coming closer, and if Ed had been breathing, he surely would have stopped now, because swimming towards him was Stede. Or some kind of… fish-version of Stede?
"I'm here!" Stede called, and he was. He was here, right in front of Ed, and Ed realized he wasn't a fish, he was a fucking merman. His orange scales glittered in the water, and the smile he gave Ed was so sweet that Ed forgot why he had ever been mad at him in the first place.
"I'll never leave you. I'll never leave again," Stede promised, and for some reason, Ed believed him. "I'm here. I'm here. You're safe." He smiled at Stede, unable to form the words he wanted to say, and Stede smiled back at him, and for a moment, everything was perfect.
Ed tried to reach out to Stede, to—
"I love you, Ed."
What?
"I love everything about you. I love being near you, breathing the same air."
Ed froze. No, no, no, no, no. Stop, please.
"I should have told you sooner, I'm so sorry, Ed. I love you so much, please come back to me."
Ed's heart sank. It wasn't real. Of course it wasn't. Stede wasn't real. He should have realized it sooner. All of this was just a hallucination, a fantasy conjured by his oxygen-deprived brain, desperate for something to hold on to.
"Please, Ed, I need you."
Stede didn't love him. Never had and never would. No one would ever truly love him, not if they knew what kind of person he was, what he had done.
"Ed, please come back."
Fucking unlovable, that's what he was. Ed gave himself another moment to look at the beautiful merman, to drink in the sight of him, smiling sadly at not-Stede before he let himself sink down into the ocean, feeling somehow lonelier than he ever had before.
"Come back to me."
Still, Ed was grateful that he got to see the love of his life one last time before the darkness finally took him.
***
Stede's tears fell on Ed's cold, lifeless hand as he held it tightly in his own.
"Goodbye, Edward. I love you."