This post by @studdedchoker about the wanted poster took me out, because Ed is in fact about to ‘die’.
And yet it’s Stede’s belief that Ed and he will be together eventually that overrides common sense and fate. Stede’s act of crossing out dead is heard by the universe. He circles alive too just to make bloody sure.
The earnestness and belief with which Stede does things floors me.
His endeavours with the hand-drawn map don’t achieve anything practical. But after poring over it another night, the fates deliver the Revenge out of the storm back to him.
Stede goes down to Ed’s body, speaks to him as if he can hear, and Ed…responds.
Ed should never have found a letter in a bottle, but he does, because Stede believed if he threw enough of them in the ocean, one would get through. And Ed doesn’t find it in the intended time and way. He finds it in a better time and way. The love letter doesn’t return Ed to Stede, it cements that Stede has returned to Ed, and in fact, never left.
Stede Bonnet drives me crazy in the best possible way. He just does and believes, and it usually works. Not always in the way he intended, but he gets there. Distance, time, common sense, even death, cannot seem to keep these two apart. Stede’s a powerhouse of earnestness and optimism which cannot be stopped.
