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nicnacsnonsense · 2 years ago

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The other day @poetic----nonsense misheard something I said, accidentally creating the most bonkers OFMD premise. Then with their ruthless enabling I was able to take that premise and create the best ever AU that is the love of my life. The premise: Father Bonnet/Mary Alamby Bonnet. Please enjoy the Stepmother Mary AU.

The backstory to this AU is Stede’s mother died at some point in the past, and when Mary comes up as a marriage match, the elder Bonnet decides Stede doesn’t deserve to marry the pretty young woman with all the land and he’s going to marry her instead. Mary’s mom is all for this match: he has money and as a bonus he’s twice as old as Mary, which means he’ll die twice as soon. This means Mary is now Stede’s stepmom.

So once again we have Stede & Mary being forced into a weird relationship with each other, but at least this one doesn’t come with all the expectations and pressure. Plus, now they both have something they can really bond over: how much Bonnet Sr. sucks. Mary actually grows very protective of Stede when she sees how his dad treats him, and while Stede still struggles to stand up to his father, he does his best to help Mary find ways to avoid him as much as possible. Their alliance against Bonnet Sr. means that Mary is more willing to give the benefit of the doubt to Stede’s good intentions when he’s the one doing something to annoy or upset her, which in turn makes Stede more willing to open up and talk to her. The two of them become best friends.

One day Stede tells Mary that he’s had enough and he’s secretly commissioned a ship built and is going to run away from home – more specifically his father – and become a pirate and would Mary like to come too? And Mary’s like damn, you managed to find the one thing I hate more than the ocean, my fucking asshole husband, yeah let’s do it. Mary is a little surprised to realized Stede was being literal about becoming a pirate (though in retrospect she acknowledges that one is on her; she should know Stede well enough to know he’s basically always being literal), but she’s got her lounge chair in the middle of the deck with her big umbrella, her huge fuck off sunglasses, and an assortment of signature cocktails made by Roach who is really loving the chance to explore his creative side. She’s good; the rest of them can do whatever they want.

(In addition to the literal huge sunglasses (presumably purchased from the same place as Olu’s Crocs), spiritually, Mary’s outfit consists of a floppy sun hat which she’s only wearing about half the time, but it’s always there somewhere nearby, a swimsuit, and a sarong tied around the waist. I’m not sure what she’s actually wearing in order to hit in with the historical(-ish) setting (again, aside from the sunglasses, the sunglasses are key), but that is the vibe of it.)

The crew doesn’t know what Mary is here or what to make of her, aside from the fact that they are all mildly scared of her. Aside from Frenchie, who is convinced she is a witch who can shape-shift into a cat, and is accordingly very scared of her. Lucius cautiously approaches her one day when she has her sketchbook out, and within a week there is a second lounge chair set up next to Mary’s for the two of them to engage in art talk and gossip. There isn’t a chair for Stede nearby, because when he wants to chat with Mary he just perches on her chair, and she obligingly will curl her legs up to make room for him. While Mary is constantly giving off a super chill but very intimidating vibe the rest of the time, whenever she and Stede are hanging out she becomes animated, smiling and laughing with him. As such, the crew never quite has the nerve to agree to mutiny against Stede.

That sets up the backstory, so now we’ll go episode by episode as to what changes we see.

Episode One: While the crew shoots down the idea of a mutiny for fear of Mary, there are still unhappy rumblings that inspire Stede to go after a big ship that turns out to be the English naval vessel Nigel is captaining. When Nigel & his officers come aboard, Mary is introduced as Mrs. Bonnet, with people being left to draw the incorrect conclusion that she’s Stede’s wife from there. Mary does her best to be passive aggressive back during tea, but she is just as hamstrung as the rest of them by the threat Nigel poses. This is also how she ends up forced to stay behind when Nigel bullies Stede into giving him a tour of the ship. But around about the time Officer Hornberry starts pulling out the flags to poke fun at, Mary decides it’s time to go track down Nigel and politely but firmly request he leave.

She makes it to the captain’s quarters just in time to hear Nigel sharing the vicious rumor that Stede absconded with his stepmother and the two of them are having a torrid affair. Mary has had enough. She doesn’t feel guilty or ashamed for leaving her husband, and even if she were having an affair with Stede, it wouldn’t be any of Nigel’s business. She certainly isn’t going to defend herself to him. So she swans in, declaring that actually Stede did abscond with her, isn’t that right, darling.

Nigel begins saying some very nasty things to and about Mary, inspiring Stede to go for the stun move, but before he can, they are all interrupted by the sound of the fight breaking out in the other room. Mary quickly locks eyes with Stede, glances down at his whale paperweight, and then fakes going into a swoon. Mary faking a swoon is a tactic she and Stede often used on Bonnet Sr, sometimes to force a change of subject, sometimes to make an excuse for the both of them to leave (Stede offering to take his poor stepmother somewhere quiet to rest), and most relevantly here sometimes as a distraction. While Nigel’s attention is on Mary, Stede uses the stun move to the exact same degree of success as in canon, and things proceed more or less as canon from there.

Episode Two: Mary mostly isn’t physically present in this one as she stays on the ship for her vacation, but there are a number of changes that are linked to her.

First when Stede & Pete are in the cage and Olu walks up with his drink, someone else walks up and agrees it’s delicious. It’s… Doug! One thing about the background to this AU that wasn’t mentioned earlier is that every time the Revenge goes into port, they always run into Doug. Always. How does that keep happening? It’s a funny story…

And that’s as far as Doug gets into the explanation before he gets interrupted. This story is referenced often enough to make it clear that everyone in universe knows it, but we in the audience never get any more details whatsoever.

So Doug is here and not in a cage because he’s already known here and considered a friend to the natives. That’s also a funny story. Doug agrees to hang around for the trial to vouch for Stede & Pete, and then come back to the ship with them afterward to visit everyone (mostly Mary, but he wants to see everyone else too).

During the trial Stede has his breakdown over Nigel’s death and ends up getting therapy from the elder. His underlying source of guilt is a little different in this version obviously. He feels guilty for dragging Mary along with him into the dangerous life of piracy. He does know that technically he didn’t force her or anything, but he also feels like he didn’t really leave her with much choice either. If she hadn’t agreed to go with him, then she would have been left behind alone with Bonnet Sr., and there was no way she was going to do that. Having now finally confronted this guilt & realized where it’s coming from, Stede resolves to speak to Mary about it as soon as they get their ship ungrounded.

They find out about the hostages being sold, and Pete tells Stede he’s not up for getting them back. Doug of course hates to see anyone feeling down, so he goes over to Stede hoping to help him feel better. He mentions that he overheard some of Stede’s conversation with the elder and that he thinks it was very brave of Stede to be willing to be vulnerable like that and it may sound weird since they haven’t known each other that long, but Doug is proud of Stede for doing that. Stede’s paternal affection-starved brain latches right the fuck on to that and he finds the strength he needs to go get their damn men back.

Doug tags along and while he doesn’t join in the ambush of Izzy directly, he does ad-lib an “Aye, captain,” when Stede pretends to order his men to raise hell on his signal. Stede and Officer Hornberry (the nice hostage) are both very impressed with his initiative.

Doug and Hornberry get to talking as they head back, and by the time they all reach the ship, those two are already insta-besties. They’ve even confessed their respective crushes on each of the Bonnets to each other. It’s with Hornberry’s encouragement that Doug asks if he can join the crew of the Revenge. Mary says yes so fast Stede doesn’t even have time to process the request, much less respond. Though of course once he has, he agrees as well; Doug is more of a father to him than his own dad ever was (yes, Stede is aware he is 2 years older than Doug). A third lounge chair is added to the deck for Doug on the other side of Mary’s.

The only thing is, seeing how happy Mary is now that Doug is around and the two of them have begun a relationship, he decides to put off talking to her about the guilt he’s feeling.

Episode Three: No real changes here; Mary & Doug both stay on the ship for the duration.

Episode Four: The entire crew of the Revenge saw the Spanish ship get attacked by Blackbeard’s ship, so as soon as Ed arrives carting an unconscious Stede, Mary is on him, demanding to know what he did to Stede. Ed is confused to find himself suddenly accosted by a woman in beachwear while on a pirate ship, and asks who she is. Mary replies that she’s Stede’s mother, which raises more questions than it answers. But at this point Ed is so baffled by the situation that he just answers honestly. Mary finds this satisfactory and has Stede brought to his cabin. Roach cares for his wound and then Mary sits with him while Ed is doing the captain stuff around the ship.

Eventually Ed comes into the cabin and tells Mary he can take over. Mary gets up and lets Ed sit down at Stede’s bedside, but then she goes to sit on that couch, stretched out lengthwise with her back to the arm so she is looking directly at Ed and Stede. Ed is unnerved by this, but doesn’t feel quite willing to tell Stede’s mom to leave, especially when he’s trying to make a good impression on Stede. He tries to ignore her, and ends up repeatedly forgetting she’s there and getting startled when he catches sight of her out of the corner of his eye.

When Stede wakes up, Mary lets Ed & Stede interact naturally until Stede notices her. At that point she gets up to check in with Stede and make sure he’s okay, and then tells him she’ll let the crew know he’s up and leaves Stede and Ed alone. When Stede and Ed emerge sometime later in each other’s clothes, Mary is not at all surprised until after she finds out that Stede just thinks he’s doing something silly with his new friend. At that point she just kind of feels bad for Ed.

Episode Five: Only change here is that Mary is very insistent on helping Stede get dressed up for the party and making sure he looks good. Stede is confused, since Mary has never been all that interested in his clothing before, but he decides to just enjoy it.

Episode Six: Mary doesn’t get involved with the planning of the fuckery, but does agree to get dressed up in a Medusa costume and start to lower her sunglasses menacingly when Stede narrates a warning about her gaze turning men to stone. But once the Dutch merchants head inside, she gives Doug – dressed all in black doing tech – a peck on the cheek and tells him she has a headache and is turning in early.

Because she went to bed early, she also wakes up early the following morning, and heads up on deck to find Stede pinned to the mast with a sword. Mary is unhappy about this, very vocally so. Roach tells Izzy, already down in the dinghy, he better make a break for it quick and chucks a sandwich at his head. Mary shows up then and demands another sandwich from Roach, which he conveniently has, and she also throws it at Izzy’s head. Then she begins yelling about what she’ll do to Izzy if he ever shows his face again all while Izzy hurriedly rows away.

Episode Seven: Mary does disembark to wander around St Augustine, but she doesn’t get involved in any of the plot. Doug elects to join the group searching for oranges, but he gets distracted by something and has fallen behind everyone by the time they get to the church. He catches up right after Olu heads in for cake, just in time to pop up behind Jim and say, “I didn’t know you knew Nana.” How does Doug know Jim’s Nana and why does he also call her Nana? It’s a funny story.

Episode Eight: Alright, here we go! Calico Jack is the prince of passive aggression, but boy better make way because the Queen is coming through. Mary sees straight to what Jack really is from the second she sees him, and she is having none of it. When Stede tries to be passive aggressive it’s like a bomb going off, but Mary wields it like slipping a knife between your ribs. Instead of masterfully manipulating the whole situation, Jack is constantly having to scramble to keep his plan together.

Unfortunately for Mary, she is working with a disadvantage. Between his long history with Ed and the decent chunk of time they had together that morning before Mary or Stede got up, Jack has already gotten Ed firmly on board and excited for Stede and everyone else to get along with his old friend Jack, which in turns means Stede is determined to get along with Jack for Ed’s sake. This in turn leaves Mary in a position to push back against Jack, but can’t really go on the offensive and can’t just directly call him out.

They go to Blind Man’s Cove, but Mary declines to go hang out on the island with everyone, leaving it implicit but very clear that it’s because she doesn’t like Jack. Doug also elects to stay on the ship, also leaving it implicit that it’s because he dislikes Jack, which later everyone ends up agreeing should have been a huge red flag; Doug likes everyone. Mary tries to convince Stede to stay on the ship with them as well, but Stede is determined to go.

So, as you can imagine, when Stede returns to the ship some time later visibly trying not to cry, Mary is fully ready to go out for blood.

Stede tries to stop her at first, revealing that Jack accused him of hiding behind Mary’s skirts earlier right before pissing on his shoes. Mary tells him that’s ridiculous; she is just looking out for him the same way he looks out for her, the same way Stede encourages the entire crew to look out for each other. She uses the fact that they’re even out on this ship at all instead of stuck back home with the abusive Bonnet Sr. as an example of how Stede has looked out for her. And that’s when Stede suddenly pours out all the guilt he’d been feeling about dragging Mary along with him to become a pirate.

Mary first chides him for not talking to her about feeling guilty, but amusedly lets him off the hook when he blames Ed’s arrival for distracting him. She then assures him that there’s nothing to feel guilty about; if she had hated the idea of running away to sea that much, she would have said something. Certainly she would have left by now if she didn’t really want to be here. Stede accepts her logic, but is obviously still baffled by the concept, so Mary lists off a bunch of reasons why she enjoys being on the Revenge, ending with “because I’m your mother.” They hug, and then Mary passes Stede off to Doug to cheer up, because mama has a man to kill.

When Mary gets to the island, the crew is scattered all over playing coconut war. She encounters Olu first, who sobers up real fast when he sees her expression, and agrees to round up the rest of the crew for her before pointing her in the direction of Jack.

Both Jack and Ed are together when Mary finally finds them. The thing is, Izzy did try to warn Jack about Mary, but it was like a game of toxic masculinity telephone where at no point was anyone willing to own the idea of a woman being credibly threatening, so Jack was not prepared. And Mary absolutely destroys him. Any attempts to verbally fight back are immediately shut down, and there’s no way Ed would let him physically push back against Mary even if that didn’t completely ruin his plan.

In the end he has to slink off under the guise of “well, I didn’t want to hang out with you anyway.” He tries to rope Ed into coming with him by framing Mary’s tirade as proof that neither of them are good enough for Stede & Mary and their fancy ship. For a second it seems like it’s going to work, but Mary stops Ed in his tracks by telling him she needs to have a word with him as well.

Ed had been hoping that at some point Stede or Mary or someone would say something to clarify the thing about Mary being Stede’s mom. Except no one ever had, and he waited too long and now it’s too weird to ask. He’s pretty sure the most likely explanation is it’s a joke, like how they sometimes joke about Doug being Stede’s dad, but Ed’s also not not saying that he thinks the explanation for her apparent youth is that Frenchie is right about her being a witch. At any rate, he doesn’t want to make Mary any angrier than she already is, so he tells Jack to go on and he’ll catch up in a minute.

Once Jack is gone, Mary tells Pete, who had been “hiding” in the trees watching Mary’s confrontation with Jack, to leave too. Then Mary turns to Ed and tells him if he breaks Stede’s heart by leaving with Jack it’ll be the stupidest thing he’s ever done and she’ll never forgive him. When Ed sputters in disbelief Mary sighs and in a calmer tone begins laying out for him how Jack has made that day terrible for Stede and how Ed’s behavior – his out of character behavior – had made things worse. Once she’s done she tells Ed to take a bit to get his head back on straight and then come join them back at the ship, leaving him with a “I’m not mad, just disappointed.”

Back at the dinghies the rest of the crew is already there waiting for Mary as Pete recounts to them how Mary totally eviscerated Jack, though Pete’s version makes the evisceration somewhat more literal than it was in actuality. Mary does not correct him, merely clarifies that Jack isn’t dead before telling everyone to load up so they can get back home.

On the ship, Stede is sitting with Doug on the lounge chairs, clearly feeling better, though it is just as clear this is a recent development. The crew all gather round, though Frenchie and Wee John run down to the galley to grab snacks and non-alcoholic beverages for everyone first, and even Karl settles on Stede’s head for a few minutes, which Buttons assures him is a great honor. Swede lets Stede know he didn’t miss much with the coconut war because getting hit with coconuts really hurts. Stede suggests that perhaps next time they can fashion some fake coconuts out of scrap fabric to use instead, which everyone is pretty interested in, and pretty soon they’ve basically just invented a version of dodgeball. But before anyone can suggest actually playing, Roach says he’s too bruised up right now to go back to running around throwing things at each other, even if they are soft, and Olu chimes in that he’s feeling too drunk and tired to do much but lie there at the moment. At that point Lucius hands Stede the storybook he had discreetly fetched, and we get three cheers for story time.

Ed returns to the ship while Stede is in the middle of a chapter and there is an awkward moment where they’re all just quietly looking at each other. Then Stede gives a cautious smile and invites Ed to join them. Ed sort of lurches forward and suddenly finds himself sitting on the floor next to where Stede is sitting sideways on one of the lounge chairs. Ed hesitantly lets his head drop down to lean against Stede’s thigh, and Stede’s hand comes to rest in Ed’s hair. Everyone relaxes, especially Ed and Stede.

When Stede gets to the end of the chapter he, somewhat reluctantly, asks about Jack, and Ed says he won’t be coming back. Mary suggests that they leave before Jack decides to test that, which is met with agreement all around. The crew get up to start sailing away, and once sure that’s underway, Stede and Ed go back to the co-captain’s quarters to talk.

Ed apologizes and makes space for Stede to share how he’s feeling, and Stede ends up opening up about all his vulnerabilities & insecurities. In his attempts to comfort Stede, Ed ends up accidentally confessing his feelings for Stede, which Stede, after an initial moment of shock, shyly reciporcates.

Our last major plot point takes place sometime later, when Mary and Stede hear word of Bonnet Sr. having passed away. In the ensuing discussion – where it is finally clarified for Ed that Mary is Stede’s stepmother – it is decided that Mary is ready to go back to living on land and she and Doug will take up residence in the Bonnet house. Stede goes with her when she first goes back to make sure everything is set up for her to have all the legal and financial access to everything, and then the two of them part ways, happy in their own separate lives, but with plans to visit with each other often.

#ofmd #mary bonnet #stede bonnet #ofmd fanfic #i mean technically its an outline but close enough #it's 4k words long I'm counting it as fic #stepmother mary au

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