#bridebeard

With the will to look to away When I was falling down Crawling in the dirt Is it fair enough to say That I needed you through the crazy pain Of living here with all this hurt And what I feel All I touch and how I steal The fantasy was far too real

Oh, so I let it slip away

(no one make eye contact with me today.)

Now imagine Stede all bummed out because he's just having the full realisation of exactly how much he hurt Ed, and there's no hope, he absolutely blew it, Ed obviously wants nothing to do with him ever again! Despair! So he goes to mope to the Captain's quarters, wallows in the tragic state of them a bit while missing Ed terribly, and his eyes catch on a funky little skeleton dressed up all in black on a familiar spot on a particular shelf...

And he finds not only all of his auxiliary clothes intact, but also a nest in the middle of the room with two little figurines in it that have a very particular look to them!

Cue "Hello, Edward!" and "shipmates" and chasing Ed all over the place while Ed is like "who are you again?" and "I don't need you at all, look how I'm thriving all by myself and I definitely don't miss you, not even a little bit!", y'know, like a liar. And maybe they're having messy sex throughout all of this or maybe they're not, but either way, Stede knows! He knows! He saw the proof of Ed's heart carefully hidden away where only Stede could find it! He can fix this! He's gonna put his all into earning that trust back! Because he knows there's hope! ;U;