1699 - Enter Edward Teach

To say I was annoyed was a very large understatement. In fact, one could go as far to say I was agitated or maybe even angry. However, I think the best way to describe my mood at the moment is infuriated. I already hadn’t intended to return to the Caribbean or Port Royal, but it had been necessary. In my uneasy state, seeing as I was too close to the place I’d fled from years prior, I ventured to the local tavern. Taverns are enjoyable, a place for men to be relaxing, a time for pleasure and forgetting.

Yet here I am, a passed out drunk at my feet and vomit down my front. The man had been loud, and the most foul-mouthed drunk I’d ever heard, and I lived with a full crew of sailors. He had been very audible from the street as I had walked up to the tavern. Just as I was about to walk in, he stumbled out and promptly threw up. On me.

Years of self control was all that kept me from running him through on my blade in the moment. Instead, I let him fall to the ground as he passed out, stepping over the body and demanding the tavern owner find me a cloth to clean the bilge-rat’s filth from me.

A fresh coat and two tankards of rum later, I was in a much better mood, but my peace was quickly interrupted. I’m not sure when the drunkard walked back in, but he managed to stumble my way and collapse into the seat next to me at the bar, knocking over some of the other patron’s drinks. I shoot him a scowl, having grabbed my own drink before he could displace it. He barely notices of course, and tries to order another round. I scoff softly at the sight, annoyed.

He had noticed and turned to face me. He squinted hard, as if trying to recognize me. “Aren’t you that fella who tried making out with the nun?”

I almost killed him then and there. “No,” my voice was as cold and steely as my blade. “I’m the man you threw up on when you decided to stumbled into me.”

“Ah. Yeah, sorry bout that mate. Heck of a night.” He seemed unfazed at the inconvenience he had caused.

I frowned at him, but said nothing more. It was my hope that I’d never have to interact with this inconsiderate drunkard ever again. People like him were absolutely useless. I was shaken from my thoughts by an incessant poking in to arm. My head whipped around to see the bearded drunk. “What?” I asked coldly, hoping he would get the hint.

A hand was stuck in my face and it took a moment for me to realize that he was trying to introduce himself. “The name’s Teach. Edward Teach.” He said with a drunken grin.

I stared at the hand for a moment before tentatively shaking it, still wary. “William. William Reed.”

1703 - The Crow

The Crow. It was a positively ridiculous nickname.

“You think so? I thought it rather suited you, with you always being hunched up, with those beady looking eyes. You look like you’d very much like to peck someone to death.” Teach snickered lightly as my head swiveled around to meet his gaze.

“Excuse me?”

“Just like that actually.” he shook with contained laughter. “You’ve got the scowl dow-ah!” He yelped as he was pushed into the water.  I watched as he sputtered and failed around, frowning down at him from my spot on the dock.

“Damn it, Will! What was that for?” He glowered up at me.

“Because you’re a pretentious little clod.” I ignored him as he ranted at me from the harbor water. I suppose he had a bit of a point with the crow comments… Honestly, it wouldn’t have been the first time that someone had compared me to one of the black harbingers of death. Whether it was my personality, adaptability, or the fact that I probably looked like one, someone found some way to connect me to the bird. I don’t know who said it, but after one person shouted about the resemblance in one too many taverns, word had spread. Now everyone was calling me the Crow.

I glanced back down at my acquaintance, chuckling at his misery before I jumped in, landing on top of him. He shouted, flailing again as he tried to get me off of him. I laughed as I swam back a little, allowing him his room to float.

“You’re awful.” He spat out, and I laughed at him again.

“Probably.” I agreed. I sighed softly as we watched the sun finish setting from next to the docks. Who could have guessed that we’d become...were we friends? Whatever this was, I hadn’t expected it.

Edward wasn’t the same man who had stumbled into me at a tavern and thrown up on me. This man was a rising prodigy in sailing, already working for some notable merchant ships. I was just lucky enough to have caught him while he was in the market. I’m not sure what had drawn me to come back to the wretched Caribbean again, but I had, and once again I found myself in the company of the man who’d gotten drunker than a pig. Fate certainly had interesting ways of messing with me...

1706 - Proposition

“You should sail with me, Edward.”

He looked startled by my statement. “Sail? With you?” He asked as if I had told him to sail off the edge of a waterfall or something.

“Yes, with me, you clod.”

“I’ll pass on that one, oh fearsome Lord Crow.” He drawled, giving me a mock salute.

I raised an unimpressed eyebrow at him and his antics. “I’m being serious, Edward. You’re a skilled sailor. I could use someone like you.” And he really was. His nautical skills had only gotten better since I had last seen him, and he was a skilled fighter to boot.

He sat in silence for a moment, as if contemplating it. “A privateer, huh? Sounds interesting, but I’ll have to pass, old friend. I make far more money on these merchant ships.”

Two years later, the dodgy sailor had finally relented and joined me in the privateering business, serving under me on the Inky Murder. The Spanish War of Succession is still in full swing and us privateers were in very high demand.

Edward is enjoying himself immensely on our commissioned raids. Probably more than he should be. It’s a bit worrying to me, especially considering that I lost many years of my life to piracy. It was a lifestyle that I had wanted to leave behind, but was unable to, instead channeling the very skills I had learned into the privateering business.

However, I couldn’t focus on that. Not now, while there is a way raging around us. It’s just something I’ll have to confront him about later. I just hope he listens to reason this time.

1713 - Blackbeard

I honestly don’t know whether to feel infuriated or not. Teach, the blasted fool, had actually stayed in the Caribbean. To be a pirate. Did he not listen to a thing I said? Of course, when did Edward ever listen to anything I say? No, bloody Edward Teach was off galavanting around like a fool with that scoundrel, Hornigold. After the countless warnings about getting involved with the buccaneers and pirates, Edward still chose to seek out that lifestyle.

“Edward, you’re going to get yourself killed one of these days.” I muttered to myself.

I would have liked to think that this folly was a temporary thing, that Edward would tire of the Caribbean and the buccaneers and return home swiftly. I knew better though. Edward was as fierce and as stormy as the ocean that now divides us, a hurricane amongst the trickling streams of other men’s resolves. If Edward really wanted this, there really wasn’t anything I could do.

I sighed. “At least he had the decency to write to me directly…but what in the name of all things holy is with this name? Going by your beard color...Edward, you’re so unimaginative. Blackbeard,” I scoffed. “Who would be afraid of a name like that?”

1719 - To Glory

I reread the note in my hand for the fourth time that hour.

Edward had been killed off the shore of North Carolina in late November last year. He had been dead for almost two months and I had only now found out. I had been expecting something like this to happen, but it still didn’t erase the shock of it happening.

I couldn’t describe what I was feeling that moment. Sadness? Anger? Remorse? Guilt? I hadn’t spoken to the man since two years after he’d become a pirate. Edward had made his choice when he decided to take up that life. I warned him and he hadn’t listened, and now he was dead. Beheaded and paraded around quite gruesomely from what I had read. I

Locking myself in the captain’s cabin, I collapsed in my chair. I needed to be alone before anything happened. I poured two glasses of rum, taking one of them in hand. I glanced at the latter now resting on my desk before my eyes darted to a portrait of the other.

“It seems that even in death you remain inconvenient, Edward.” I murmured before I raised the glass in a salute. “May you sail the seas to glory in the afterlife, my friend. And if God be kind, I shall meet you there.”

I tilted the glass, taking a long drink of the burning liquid. The taste lingered in my mouth, comforting me through the rest of the night, and into the morn.

-End-