#poor sted is having A Day huh?

[neverhangd-1721]

It's fucking weird, meeting any place in this port that isn't Jackie'z, but Anne's loathe to scare off the first and best lead she's found towards piecing a life back together for herself. She didn't know Ed past a name, too young to have been in his confidences at the same time as Jack was, but she did know Blackbeard. His stories were the ones that drifted her eyes seawards when she started hearing them. His legends were the ones that made her heart trill in her chest, even when she didn't know how excitement felt past a rush of blood and a split knuckle. To hear any fuckwit was dumb enough to openly hunt him had been a shock and a welcomed distraction from trying to figure out who she was without a sword and another man's shadow to stand in. Blackbeard is a tall man with a tall shadow. Helping to hunt him might grow Anne some, just like joining on with him undoubtedly would.

Find the pirates hunters. Find Blackbeard. Instate him as Captain over the pirate hunters. Sail a while on a reputation unstained by any man she knew or knows. Not a bad plan, that.

With her hat shading her eyes Anne shoulders her way into the Rat's Last Drink, surveying the few scoundrels there. Some look up and no sooner see her than flinch; others keep their gazes pointedly away, knowing that no one who comes through those doors comes for any good reason.

The only man who doesn't look up or away has his nose in a book and a foppish kind of air that makes Anne hate him on sight. (Stupid twat, wearing silks to a bilge-bar. She's been brought up with types like him, knows them as sure as she does the nose on her face.) Somehow, based on something Callahan had said, Anne has the sneaky suspicion that this idiot is her idiot. The man hunting for Blackbeard.

At least he looks as fucking crazy as he really must be.

Anne kicks the table rather than sit at it, loathe to waste her time if she's wrong. "You Bonnet?"

@neverhangd [Rewind!]

Stede ran his fingers over the edge of the pages of the waterlogged book. He'd fished it out of the sea with his own hands, holding it as tenderly as he might have held one of his own children. The book had been so important to him, at one point. It had been a look into the lives of legendary pirates... it had been his first introduction to Blackbeard. He had to admit that he spent more time reading the chapters (!) on Blackbeard.

Now he knew it was all speculative, an account of a façade that the man put on to generate the necessary fear around his name. Edward, his Edward, was not in those pages.

And the book had been damaged. The illustration of Blackbeard that had been at the start of a chapter had been torn out, the jagged edges of the paper sharp once the page dried. That was another part of the book that was decidedly not Edward. It looked nothing like him. The eyes were wrong. They weren't as warm and soulful...

But that wasn't why he had the book with him. There had been a handful of bites in response to the feelers he had put out in an effort to assemble a larger crew with the goal of going after Edward. Most of those that had expressed interest ended up backing down as soon as Blackbeard was brought up. But this bite was different. This was the slick hooked fin of a shark in the midst of a school of little silver fish.

This was Anne Bonny herself. They'd arranged a meeting through the contact that had reached out to him, and now Stede was waiting for her to arrive at the little dive bar nestled in the midst of the Republic of Pirates. It was apparently a competitor for Jackie'z, which was more familiar to Stede. Seeing as he hadn't been band from this particular establishment for breaking a nose jar, it would have to do.

He hadn't actually heard of Anne Bonny until after he'd had the misfortune of meeting Calico Jack. After being introduced to the man, and Hornigold by name, he'd immediately decided to do some research. If these men were associated with Edward, then there was a good chance that they were in his book. He was right, though the portrayal of Calico Jack in text was nothing like the malicious thing that had crawled up the side of his ship late one night. Adjacent to the section on Jack, there was Anne Bonny and M. Read. Immediately upon reading about them, he wished he'd actually done so earlier. Alma would have loved to have played Anne Bonny as they ran through the house dressed up as pirates. One of the few things that he ever seemed to have connected with his children over.

If the writing about Ed and Jack was so wrong, then there was a good chance that Anne was also depicted inaccurately. If it was right, he was about to meet a foul tempered and fouler tongued woman, who'd likely not be wearing a shirt.

She'd probably be wearing a shirt. Wouldn't she? It seemed improbable that she'd appear in the bar bare busted and toting a gun. Then again, a gentleman had come in shortly after Stede carrying some manner of lizard on his shoulder and wearing what could only be described as a harness. He'd already seen things against his expectation that day.

He thumbed through the water warped pages until he came across the illustration of the women. The one labeled as Anne Bonny seemed a bit taller than the other and her pose seemed a bit more put together than the other....

Stede quickly lost himself in re-reading the section.