#Don’t want to disservice sea slugs >:)

[pokemonfrommemory]

Eastern and Western forms :3

[neverhangd-1721]

This man’s no pirate; he’s an idiot. Why Ed would pour his time into a man with less brains than a sea slug is beyond Anne’s comprehension, but one thing is clear, and that’s that whatever Ed saw must have seemed to make up for an awful lot.

It only strikes her when he comments on Ed’s past exactly how stupid this man really is.

“Ed’s done ye a disservice by lettin ye flounder like this,” Anne observes coolly. “A ship without news is a floating graveyard waitin t’happen. En’t no way t’learn it at sea, but ye should be makin it a point never t’leave port without new stock and every scrap of news there is to hear. Anything less is how the Navy finds ye. Every scrap a’ rumor counts when ye’re tryin t’stay ahead of them.”

She thinks about adding that pirates don’t share their pasts—sometimes their adventures, their stories, their sins, their crimes, but never their pasts—but decides against it. The past is a sacred, loveless thing for most making a home at sea; he’ll learn that from Ed or he was never meant to learn it.

What Stede says next dumbfounds Anne, truly.

“Ye had a book on pirates who’re still sailin…an’ let Ed chuck it overboard?” A lack of survival instincts can be forgiven if there’s something to replace it with, but there’s not even that. The man knows two pirates by name, and one of them is Ed, who may as well not count for all that was “known” about him.

It also stings to hear he seems to think she’s a fucking footnote in Jack’s chapter, but she won’t give him the satisfaction of knowing he’s struck the same nerve twice.

“Missed more than a chapter.” Or not.

Anne leans back in her chair and looks a bit more closely at the ridiculous fop. Silken breeches, a full vest and coat pulled over well-ironed clothes—she’s willing to bet his socks are pressed and his shoes unscuffed, laughably posh even if they weren’t at sea. All the breeding of the kind of man her father wanted for her and none of the brains to go with it.

Finally, Anne speaks—not to answer his question, at first, but to lecture him again.

“How many pirates sail on these waters?” Over 5000. Anne knows this. Does Stede? Probably not. “And of them, how many are men?” 4996 or so, by Anne’s estimation. “Fuckin embarrassin not to recognize one of the few pirates out there with an actual name for themselves, en’t it?, just because they don’t have a dick for you t’attach yer lips to.”

She lets that sit and waits for him to open his mouth again before cutting him off.

“I know all three a’ the only other womenfolk out there on these waters—four, if you count Ching Shih, though she en’t really put in these waters. And I know damn near every other pirate worth his salt, too, though half of em won’t speak t’me for the same reason ye’ve never bothered learnin my name. Be sure: they don’t hardly speak t’me, but they know my damn name. And they know better than t’sit in strikin distance while they’re busy insultin me.”

She lets that sit for a moment, too. Ed lets people live to tell the tale of Blackbeard: people know Anne from whisper and rumor and sometimes the clemency granted by somebody, but no one’s crossed blades with Anne Bonny and lived to tell of it without intervention.

“Anne Bonny is a fuckin psychopath with a sword and the only reason Jack Rackham’s lived as long as he has, the fuck.”

Jesus. If Stede had any idea of Anne's actual background, he'd understand how damningly few differences there really were between them. Fortunately for Anne, her background before Jack was largely an unknown: but Stede was a captain, and Stede's men were talky, so large parts of his background were often floating about. It was impossible to miss them at the best of times.

She'd walked into this eyes open, hadn't she? Checked her weapons at the door (more or less), taken a seat? Anne sat there with fidgety fingers, forefinger picking at her ever-present leather thumb ring. The twat was one please away from confusing her into removing her hat, but her senses were overwhelmed in a deeply uncomfortable way. She was deeply grateful for the tea.

The question, on the other hand, makes her wish punching people was still an option. Surely it wasn't too soon, was it?, to go back on her word to make nice. Anne stiffly accepted the cup, allowing herself the luxury of a single sugar cube's worth as she thought through how to answer.

It was a bit dumbfounding in this day and age to meet anyone who knew of "Calico" Jack but not Anne fucking Bonny, as things were. Especially since Jack had gone sailing without her and proved worse than piss at it. It was actually a bit insulting, in its own right. No one knew Anne Bonny before Jack, maybe, but like James nobody heard the name Calico Jack Rackham and didn't think of her before, during, and after.

"Ed didn't say ye were a shithead," she said reflexively, rather than answering the question. "Where the fuck d'ye get yer news, last year's paper?"