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I got inspired this morning at the breakfast table and have written...1454 words today so far? I'm doing terrible, terrible things to John Silver at the moment, but he kind of deserves them, no lie. It'll be good for him in the end.
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In honor of my girlfriend discovering that Toby Stephens is the son of Dame Maggie Smith, I want James Flint, prefect of Ravenclaw. He started going by Flint because he didn’t want people to know that his mum teaches at the school; McGonagall would be more offended if it didn’t help her avoid accusations of favoritism.

As prefect, Flint is the worst. The absolute worst. No one gets away with anything. That is, until a curly-haired 11-year-old named Sol–”John!” the lad interrupts brightly, “John Silver!”–starts his first year and, in one afternoon, manages to reroute one of the moving staircases out a window, convince Peeves to be his best friend forever, and start a small fire in the Potions dungeon.

Flint would recommend him for expulsion were it not for the way the lad goes uncharacteristically silent whenever anyone mentions going home for the holidays, or the fact that Flint caught Domnhall O’Malley casting a silence spell on the Ravenclaw dormitory just before curfew. “‘E just keeps us up if we don’t,” Domnhall protests grumpily. “What wit’ the screamin’ at night and all.”

Which is how James Flint finds himself standing on Platform 9 and ¾, holding a limp John Silver in his arms. The boy had managed to hold back his tears until they were half the way to London; then his nerve had broken and he’d begged to go back to Hogwarts, sobbed and clutched and pleaded himself insensible and exhausted. Now his swollen eyes and still-wet nose are pressed against James’ neck, as if he can hide there from the world to which they’ve returned.

Flint waits until all the other families have reunited and moved off, braced against the possibility that someone might actually step forward to try and take John from him—try being the operative word, because by Merlin’s beard, he’ll land himself in Azkhaban if they want to have a go.

Eventually, Mum appears. They’ve agreed, with the formality to which their important family discussions are accustomed, to limit their familiarity in front of the students or their families. She takes the floo system separate from the train and collects him after everyone else has already departed.

Now she walks up and gives the sleeping boy in Flint’s arms a pointed, if not entirely surprised, look.

“John’s coming home with us,” James announces with all the calm certainty of a sixteen-year-old boy willing to bluff his way through this if he musts.

Mum’s mouth twitches slightly, but she betrays no other reaction. Stepping aside she says, “Well, come along, then.”

Read more... )
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Hey remember the time that John “I know fuckall about sailing” Silver was like “Let’s parallel park a ship” and Captain James Flint was so high on Silver’s dick that he was like, “:))) Sure babe, sounds great. :)))))))))”
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Flint while climbing into Thomas Hamilton's arms: I'm never letting go of this man ever again you will not take him from me
the guard watching them: WHERE ARE ALL OF THOSE KNIVES COMING FROM
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C&P from a Twitter/email convo with @theroseandthebeast​, on the subject of Black Sails ABO (edited for clarity of goddamn vision):

theroseandthebeast: also I was 100% thinking about a Black Sails a/b/o/ fic this morning on the train. for reasons.

Me: ……..*slides over to you* Accidental bonding, perhaps?

therose: *leans in* I am LISTENING

Me: Silver the omega doin’ his thing, being a manipulative little shit, has no idea how fucking STARVED alpha!Flint is.

It’s been ten goddamned years since Flint lost his bond mate. He’s gotten by with beta!Miranda, but he’s more than a little rut crazy. The crew whispers that he uses his rut to fuel his murderface, and they’re not totally wrong.

Then Silver’s first heat of their acquaintance hits rather conveniently after they take the Spanish warship. He’s all set to use it to make nice with the crew BUT THEN….

therose: Flint is so angry and turned on he can’t see straight. Silver thinks he’s going to kill him, but he’s only like. one-fourth right.

Me: But then someone says something about how the captain never ruts, and he figures it’s their mutual interest for the two of them to GET IT ON, so Flint will be a little less stabby all the time and Silver will have ingratiated himself to the crew by taking one (or two) for the team.

And they both need some stress relief! except then Flint knots him and it’s weirdly intense and Flint keeps lingering over the side of his neck.

Silver: “I have made a terrible mistake.”

therose: i think one of the things I love about a/b/o (and [soul] bonds and WHATEVER) is like. how do you deal with the universe saying THIS ONE

Silver is Not Pleased that its anyone – probably he’s run from people and situations before, but he’s stuck in this one b/c GOLD

Me: Yeah. And oh how man, what if he panics and fucks someone else? To prove that he’s not Flint’s, both to himself and to someone else in order to win their trust, and secure his share of the gold??

Max? Anne Bonny? Oh god, Charles Vane???

therose: ACK. Max and Anne are way too dysfunctional at that moment so U KNOW WHAT yeah Vane will do

Me: *kicks feet* SO. Post Charlestown, post-Miranda, post-reveal, post-LEG, they are totally broken and fucked up. In the doldrums they’re all too weak to have any hormone reactions, but then, inconvenience! Silver goes into heat in the Maroon camp.

therose: *chinhands* Flint can bide his time, when it calls for it and the wind is southerly, buuuuut he might lose his cool a little

Me: Silver tries to hold out at first because he doesn’t think anyone will want a one-legged wretch. And Madi is like, you want drugs? My knot? WHICH IS HELLA APPEALING, but. But. Flint. And… FOR FUCKS SAKE. He wants FLINT with him.

“I HAVE MADE SO MANY TERRIBLE DECISIONS,” he confides in Madi.

“Sounds like it,” she says and throws them in a heat hut.

By the time Flint actually gets to the hut, Silver is covered in sweat. He’s skinny from the doldrums and he’s taken off the prosthesis. He’d considered trying to be seductive but then thought fuck it, might as well go full horror show here.

And at first Flint is like, no. nope. not falling for this again. And Silver is like, YOUR DISTRUST IS NOTED AND UNDERSTANDABLE PLS DICK ME.

therose: Silver: lOOK AT WHAT YOU’VE DONE YOU PRICK

Me: They’re freaking out at each other from opposite ends of the hut, Silver on the bed mat and Flint just inside the door.

Flint: “You’ve shown yourself perfectly capable of finding whatever heat partner you want, why is this any different?”

Outside the hut, the Walrus crew and the Maroons are like: “oooooooooo boy.”

therose: me, crying, shoveling popcorn in my mouth: this is my new favorite story

Me: And Silver is like, cry-yelling because fuck you, it was you in my head. Vane might’ve had my body but he was you in my head and that is NOT supposed to happen! I’m not welcome in your head, fine, you’re in mine. You won, you beat me, PLS WITH THE DICKING.

therose: me, dying Flint, also dying

Me: I haven’t quite finished the series yet but I’m
partially spoiled for what happens at the very end re:
unburying their gays. SO LET’S TALK ABOUT JOHN SILVER
FINDING OUT THAT HIS ALPHA’S ORIGINAL BONDMATE IS STILL
ALIVE, AND HE DECIDES TO SEND FLINT TO HIM, BECAUSE HE IS
SCARED OF BEING LOVED AND THINKS FLINT WOULD BE HAPPIER WITH
THOMAS.

“Our people are different in many ways,” Madi says, low but
perfectly audible over the crash of waves far below them.
“But I do not think we are so different that you could
tell me the mark on your neck means nothing to
you.”

Silvergrips his crutch, grits his teeth, tightens his resolve even
as the ship’s sails dip over the horizon. “It was
never mine.”

(At some point they were in bed together, on the tail end of
something dark and awful, and Flint murmured
“Thomas” in his sleep so sweetly that Silver
thought he could feel his own heart shrivel inside of him.)

therose: silver you’re the worst the worst the wooooooorst let flint love you

Me: Yes, we agree that he’s the worst, now let’s talk about Madi deciding, fuck it, she wants that treasure. She’s made contact with Maroon camps on Jamaica: they’ve managed to maintain control over most of the island but the British are sending more troops and the balance of power is shifting. They need the kind of help that a large cache of treasure could buy them, in bribes and supplies.

So she tracks Flint and Thomas down, because fuck if she’s going to chase some stupid, scribbled-down treasure map. Flint sent one letter, only one, to Silver after Silver sent him away; Silver has never opened it. Madi steals it and reads just enough of it to know that he will still be where Silver sent him. That he has, horribly, vowed to be there should Silver ever want to find him.

Once she follows that path herself, Madi is both deeply unsurprised and deeply pleased to find a blossoming community of England’s refuse: the inconvenient bastards and cast-off wives, those who had engaged in infertile relationships, the mad and the “mad.” The plantation is no more a prison than a refuge, its original owner still present but quite obviously humbled and properly relieved not to have it any worse than he does.

She almost feels bad for disrupting their peace, but then Flint–his hair grown longer than she has ever seen it and soft without the salt air–sees her and his shoulders go rigid, his eyes searching at her sides, behind her, the cart, everywhere.

She is a little surprised by Thomas Hamilton. First, because he is an Alpha, standing right at Flint’s shoulder with calm assurance and absolutely no shame; second, that he uses that calm assurance to turn to Flint and say, “Of course we’ll help.”

therose: SCRREEEEEEEAM

Me: Can you imaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagine what Thomas Hamilton, Alpha, has to say to John Silver the first time they meet? Long John Silver, most feared pirate on the high seas, and he is fucking FROZEN in place while this impossibly tall, lean man with patrician features looks him up and down.

“So,” Hamilton says brightly. “Madi says you’re going to help us find the cache. We’d better be off, I’m given to understand that we’re racing quite a number of your former crewmen.”

“What? The fuck I am.” Once he’d gotten over the shock, joy, and horror of seeing Flint again, Silver had already started making plans to flee Nassau. For Florida, for France, for the bottom of the fucking ocean if it comes to that.

Hamilton’s eyes flash and his voice drops into the kind of growl that makes the hair on the back of Silver’s neck stand up. “Oh you will. Or I’ll show James the letter that you wrote back to him but never sent.”

For a moment Silver can’t place the subject–but then he is gripped with a new horror. Madi must have found that one, too, when she stole the first. The betrayal wounds, but he doesn’t have time to even feel the pain. His hand drops to the knife at his belt.

Hamilton may once have been the pampered son of an earl, but the intervening years obviously told him when someone is seconds away from killing him. He says carefully, “I don’t have it on me. It’s safe, somewhere that James will eventually find it, should anything happen to Madi or myself. Now, let’s discuss your crew.”

(What Silver doesn’t know is that Madi wasn’t the one who showed Thomas the letter. It came to his hands from James, to whom Madi had given it over at once upon her arrival in Savannah, along with her opinion that if something or someone did not intervene soon, John Silver was likely to drink himself to death by the end of the year. The letter was not any prettier than the hand that had written it; despite his black curls, blue eyes, and omega-sweet scent, Long John Silver is not a pretty man. But it was as heartfelt as it was anguished, enough that Thomas might believe that the feelings he saw in James’ eyes were mirrored deep inside the blackened, blood-soaked heart of the most infamous pirate yet living.

Deep, deep inside. James and Madi are out to dig up buried treasure; Thomas Hamilton is, too, and God help the man who gets in his way.)
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“We were able to kind of strangely name something you didn’t think you were looking for a name for. Which is the space between them and not, you know, specifically who did what to Silver when he was a kid.”

“When I watch it the clear implication is that [Silver’s past] is awful. Which I think if the story is going out of its way to suggest it’s unspeakable, considering the things we have spoken about, I as an audience am willing to take its word for it I guess is a way of putting it, that if you are invested in that character and you understand where all of the norms are set for the show, for someone to say, ‘I can’t say it out loud’, suggests that it really is awful. […] [it] was so terrible that it broke his ability to exist within a story.”

“It was not credible that [Silver] didn’t have a story. There’s a hint that wherever he comes from is pretty dark. It felt right to not put words to it. It was so awful, it was something he couldn’t speak about. That that’s all you need to know.”

— Johnathan E. Steinberg, Co-Creator of Black Sails on Silver’s traumatic past
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"It’s interesting because of all people, Silver – who has for the whole show been so adept at understanding and reading other people – he’s the one who cannot talk about himself. Of all of the main characters – and each one has a different way of recounting their back-stories – Silver is the only one who cannot go there, he is the only one who cannot speak of what has happened to him.

Well, I think it suggests horror from another direction. Whatever happened to Silver was so terrible that it essentially broke his ability to exist within his own story. I think there is something that is fundamentally therapeutic about existing in a story. It’s normal; it’s a part of the human condition. When you find your place in a narrative, you almost necessarily feel like you make sense. And so I think whatever it was that happened to him that made him incapable of reconciling that – that is his trauma. His backstory was that he was removed from his own story. And his curse is that he is stuck in someone else’s story that he never really wanted to be in, but now he can’t get out of."

— Jon Steinberg, on John Silver for Fathoms Deep
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You know, considering that Jessica Kennedy—the actress who plays Max—is Jewish, I would love to see some Jewish!Silver headcanons in which they Recognize each other. She saw his dick in the Blackbeard scene, right? Maybe he comes back from the sea at some point and finds Max in a hut on the beach, one that would not raise eyebrows among the fuck tents but serves a very different purpose. He brings only a lemon as payment, retrieved from a Spanish ship; Max purses her lips at its bruised state but says nothing, and Silver lies down on the ground like he never wants to get up again. He can see the stars above him through the palm tree leaves laid across the roof of the tent. Max sings under her breath, words that she barely remembers, but there is no one to judge her here except Silver and G-d, who both refrain from comment.
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So sometimes I like to tell myself stories in my head, stories that I don’t have the time or the wherewithal to write down but that I return to periodically to “write” a little more of the story. Between the Tether Series, a Captain America commission (@smilesguaranteed, I promise I’m working on it! It’s about 10k words right now), and my D&D podcast I really do not have time to write this story out all the way. Please note that ahead of time and don’t ask me to. If you really want to read Black Sails content from me, go read the Tether Series.

However. I told myself this story and then I told @completeutterwonderfulnonsense and she said I should at least post the outline, so. She’s the boss.

Black Sails AU: Abigail Ashe Fixes (Almost) Everything

Gap between 2x10 and 3x01: Following the events at Charlestown, Abigail Ashe is her father’s only heir; she has his fortune but also carries the weight of his sins. She cannot forget Lady Hamilton, who showed her such kindness and was shot dead, unarmed, in her father’s house. There is more to this story, hints of which she heard in muffled shouts: this city, purchased with our misery…

Abigail Ashe goes looking for the truth.

What she finds are letters, exchanged between Peter Ashe and Aflred Hamilton, which were kept by her father as insurance, in which Earl Hamilton confessed every part of the plot against his own son. The crown itself was involved. Then, letters between her father and a man named Oglethorpe, detailing the transference of Thomas Hamilton from Bedlam to the plantation.

3x01: While Flint is busy marauding the coast, Jack Rackham is sitting pretty on top of the Urca gold, and Woodes Rogers is gathering his armada, Abigail Ashe visits the Ogelthorpe plantation. She’s expressed financial interest: her father spoke highly of Mr. Ogelthorpe and she’d like to view the grounds herself before she commits any part of her father’s considerable fortune. Ogelthorpe’s hesitations–the need to “protect” his prisoners, a lady visiting such a place!–are overcome by the potential windfall.

She requests to view some of the prisoners. All she has to go on is a half-remembered face, glimpsed a few times and ten years gone…but as the men line up in front of her she comments in a strong voice to Mr. Ogelthorpe, “As you know, sir, Lord Ashe was less inclined to believe in the rehabilitation of evil men.”

At the end of the line, a blond head rises.

She requests to interview one of the prisoners to assess their condition. By now Ogelthorpe is unsettled, especially when she points out the very man who her father secreted away to this place; but considering that she brought the majority of her fortune with her under heavy guard, he acquiesces.

They bring him out to her on the veranda overlooking the plantation. There are chains around his ankles. “Do you know me, sir?” she asks, her voice trembling. He keeps his eyes lowered. Taking a deep breath, she says, “Six months ago, I was traveling by ship to join my father in the South Carolina colony…”

When she says the name Captain Flint, he flinches. When she says that Lady Hamilton found her in Nassau, he finally lifts his head. When she says that Captain Flint introduced himself to her as James MacGraw, he bursts out, “They’re alive? He’s alive?” For of course Peter Ashe had told him that Captain Flint killed both Miranda and James.

She tells him what became of Miranda and he weeps. She waits with him while the storm of his grief passes. When it does, he looks out over the fields. “I had buried them both, and myself alongside. Now I find myself somewhere between the land of the living and the dead, not knowing whether to rouse myself further or remain in the soil.”

“I’m going to free you from this place,” she vows, feeling the weight of her father’s cruelty on her shoulders. “I will bring him here to you, and we will see you revived.”

His mouth quirking, Thomas says, “I loved him. I loved them both, but James was my heart and soul. I would have you know that, before you take any action that might bring harm to yourself.”

Abigail had not quite guessed that from the letters. “I had thought my father a man of principle. He raised me to believe that truth and honesty were the foundation from which all other virtues grow. Since then, I have met pirates who were more committed to their principles than he to his, and a thousand times more loyal to those they called friends. In short, Lord Hamilton–”

“Thomas.”

“Thomas. I think a great deal less about your relationship to Mr. MacGraw than to what my father did to you both. I would see it made right.”

3x02: While Flint is busy raging against the machine storm, Rogers, Edward Teach, and Abigail Ashe all make their separate ways to Nassau. Upon arriving, Abigail visits what she expects to be Eleanor Guthrie but instead encounters Max. She’s wary about revealing too much and so pretends to be a relative of Mrs. Barlow; she expresses a strong desire to see Captain Flint.

Leaving the tavern with a few men she hired to protect her, Abigail literally runs into Charles Vane on his way in.

Abigail, silently: AW FUCK

Charles Vane, silently: WHAT THE FUCK

Her cover blown, Abigail books it out. Once Vane reveals her identity to Max, she sets Idelle to spy on the girl, suspecting that she might be here to exact revenge for her father’s death. They’re all a little preoccupied with converting the gold to gems.

3x03: When news of Woodes Rogers’ imminent arrival stirs up Nassau, Abigail outright makes contact with Max through Idelle and says that she’s actually here to repay Captain Flint’s kindness to her and that she’d like to help with the defense of the island in any way she can, with an eye to keeping Flint alive as long as she can. Max is skeptical of the offer but agrees to meet with a proposal.

They sit in the tavern room upstairs, Max in her Chair. “Your father undertook the building of an entire colony in the New World,” Max says. “So you are perhaps in a unique position to understand the size and difficulty of such a venture.”

“I am. He spoke of the supplies and manpower needed, the–”

“Debts,” Max says, cutting to the point. “Loans which would have been repaid by the first fruits of the new colony. Debts which, if purchased by the wrong person, could be called into default sooner than would be convenient for such a man as your father.”

“Or for such a man as approaches on the horizon,” Abigail guesses.

Except then Woodes Rogers makes landfall behind the spearhead of Hornigold and the pardons, and the news that Captain Flint is dead.

3x04: Flint & crew make it to the Maroon Island, but are still believed dead. While Nassau is in upheaval, Abigail takes to her room in despair. She’s failed, she believes, in her attempt to right what her father did wrong; she came too late. It’s Idelle who winds up counseling her, as no one is inclined to visit the brothel presently in the midst of this turnover.

“What did you think of him?” she asks, wiping her face and taking another sip of the rum that Idelle brought with her. She grimaces as she swallows.

“Flint? He never visited the brothel, never so much as looked at the girls. He kept his men in line about us, though, better than any other captain I could name. He always had a dark look about ‘im, though–some men turned to piracy outta greed, some outta desperation, but he? He always had some other reason.”

She trails off. Abigail is staring out the window, her eyes distant.

“That’s a dark look, there,” Idelle murmurs.

“I’m going to ruin him,” Abigail says. “Woodes Rogers. I’m going to ruin him.”

“Why? What’s he done wrong by you?”

“Not by me. By Captain Flint. By James MacGraw. They all did a terrible wrong and if I cannot have justice…then I will have vengeance.”

She meets Idelle’s gaze and holds it.

“Do you want to help me?”

At that moment, a fight breaks out on the street. It’s Charles Vane, making a run for it with Teach’s help. Watching them go, Idelle says, “I’ve seen a lot of captains come and go from this island. But the women–they’re the ones who stay.” She’s on board with the plan.

3x05: Woodes Rogers secures his position on the island and the pardons continue apace. With some coaching by Idelle, Abigail presents herself to him and a very surprised Eleanor Guthrie with the story that, having barely survived the evils of piracy and having lost her father to the same, she’s determined to help reform Nassau and establish a trade route between them and the South Carolina colony. Woodes Rogers sees dollar signs. Eleanor is more suspicious. Abigail asks to be made part of the consortium, where she will have access to financial information about the colony’s development.

Max also sees her there, but holds her tongue for now. She’s good at playing both sides of the line and keeping her options open.

3x06: Flint, having made allies of the Maroons, moves to make contact with Charles Vane and Edward Teach, trying to reignite the rebellion and having to fight Teach. Meanwhile, Abigail uses her position on the consortium to get the names of Rogers’ creditors, and writes them letters.

She’s also there when Jack Rackham is taken into custody, which she quickly communicates to Idelle, who passes it along to Featherstone. By now Idelle is full in with the plan to undo Rogers–it was never really explained in the series why she deviated from Max’s side of the war, but in this version it’s because she sees the possibility of Abigail’s plan (which was originally Max’s plan) working. Unfortunately Max is fully aware of the plan, too, but can’t directly warn Rogers of it without revealing that she was the one who came up with the idea. Cue a lot of significant glances between Max and Abigail across the office of Woodes Rogers, glances which Eleanor sees but does not quite understand.

3x07: Awwww, sheeeit. Long John Silver makes his appearance in the tavern, stomping Dufrense’s head in. Which means that somewhere, Captain Flint is alive! Abigail immediately turns to Idelle, hoping to make contact with him. What she gets instead is an invite to the secret meeting between Eme and Madi.

Madi: “I do not know you, even by name. Why should we trust you?”

Abigail: “I know someone. A friend of Captain Flint’s, someone who he thought forever lost to him, but who was merely stolen. This friend entrusted to me a message, one that I now entrust to you.”

Later that night, Madi returns to the Walrus to find Flint speaking to Silver post-head-stomping. “I met someone tonight. A young Englishwoman named Abigail Ashe, who told me she had a message for you, one that she insisted I repeat word for word: ‘know no shame.’ She said that once you heard those words, you would be ensured of her allegiance to our cause.”

Flint: o.o

Silver: o.o?

Madi: o.o?

Flint: O.O

Silver: o.O?

Madi: O.o?

Then Flint goes to the meetup with Rogers and the first words out of Rogers’ mouth are, “Thomas Hamilton.” For a terrifying moment Flint thinks that Rogers has him, that that’s what all this is about–but no, Rogers is just playin’.

3x08: Flint, Anne, Billy, and Vane rescue Jack, but Vane gets captured in the meantime. Flint is also pretty invested in trying to get a face-to-face with Abigail, or at least get a better explanation of WHAT THE FUCK.

Max, however, is through playin’ and finally confronts Abigail, saying that she knows she’s been moving forward with the plan to undermine Rogers. She shows her the letters that Abigail had sent to the creditors, letters which Max had Idelle intercept. She’s also been blocking attempts by Abigail and Flint to communicate with one another. But Abigail smiles. Surprise! Those aren’t ALL the letters. Idelle can play both sides, too. The primary creditors for Rogers’ debt have already been contacted. Max is alarmed but again, can’t do anything without convicting herself as well.

Abigail: “Are you so convinced of the inevitability of Captain Rogers’ success?”

Max: “Captain Rogers? No. But civilization will come to Nassau, and I fear that one of the faces that follows will be much darker than his.”

Abigail stands. “Then let me propose an alternative. A lord governor far more sympathetic to our goals, one who can not only gain the trust of the pirates, but their unbending loyalty as well.”

“I’m listening,” Max says, her eyes narrowed.

“Let me tell you a story,” Abigail says, “about a man named Thomas Hamilton.”

3x09: Max is on board. With her help and Idelle’s, Abigail gets in contact with Billy and tells him that she’s going to get Vane out of the fort. Billy is nonplussed but agrees.

Girding her motherfucking loins, Abigail heads to the fort and asks to see Vane. “He’s the man partly responsible for killing my father,” she says. “I’d like to see his face before he hangs.” Eleanor, who also lost her father to Vane, is sympathetic and allows it (remember, Rogers is sick at this point). Once in, though, Abigail picks the lock on Vane’s chains (Idelle taught her how) and gives him a gun. They escape through the same tunnels which–IRONY ALERT–Eleanor once used to help rescue Abigail from Vane’s clutches and though there’s a fight they make it out to Billy. During the skirmish Abigail seizes a gun and shoots a man dead.

Shaken by her actions, Abigail escapes with Vane and Billy to the interior of the island. Vane and Billy make plans to stir up the populace. Abigail gives him her father’s letters as a propaganda tool to further delegitimize Rogers and the British, and Billy begins to spin the tragedy of Thomas Hamilton alongside that of Long John Silver.

“And you,” Abigail says to Vane, “are going to help me rescue him.”

“The hell would I do that for?” Vane growls.

“You tried, once, to ransom me to my father for five thousand pounds.” (or however much it was) “I’ll ransom Thomas Hamilton to you for four times that.”

3x10: While Flint, Silver, and Madi fight Hornigold’s men on the Maroon Island, Abigail, Vane, some of Billy’s men, and some of her men make their way to the Georgia plantation to rescue Thomas. Abigail, still shaken by having killed a man last episode, has a long conversation with Vane about morality which is too much to relate here but boils down to: to him, freedom is the most important thing in the world, and it’s something he’d die for.

Silver, having noticed Flint’s intense distraction since receiving Abigail’s message, asks to hear the truth. Flint gives it to him.

At the plantation, they at first are greeted by Ogelthorpe but then have to fight their way out when he gets wise to their plans. Vane sacrifices himself to cover their exit. Once they’re on their way to Nassau, Thomas reveals that, “I have spent these last few months digging my way out of the soil, Ms Ashe, and I am resurrected. I paid an African slave to smuggle out letters to the crown and several former colleagues, revealing my wrongful incarceration and announcing my intention to take back what is mine: the Lord Proprietorship of Nassau.”

4x01: GUESSSS who shows up in Nassau lookin’ fine! By now Woodes Rogers’ creditors have mysteriously disappeared, being replaced by Abigail. Most of Rogers’ forces have been recalled to Britain. Abigail and Thomas have sent word to Flint&etc via Billy, telling the pirate fleet to hold position: they want this process to be as peaceful and “legitimate” as possible, and the presence of a pirate fleet is not going to help.

So Billy, Abigail, and Thomas stroll in with as many men as they can muster, and calmly assert Thomas’ right to assume the role of Lord Governor. Rogers orders them all arrested but what ho! Max prevents that! And where Max goes, the Consortium (reluctantly) follows.

Thomas: “Put simply, Captain Rogers, we have no more use for you.”

Rogers and his soldiers are put on a ship and sent off, though Eleanor stays behind as leverage against him (and because Eleanor wants to see what the fuck is going down). But Thomas and the others know full well that Britain is not going to tolerate what they’ve done–basically asserting themselves as a semi-independent colony–and will send someone else.

Their best weapon, Thomas decides, is shame.

“Shame?” Billy asks, frowning.

“Yes. I have brought with me from Georgia England’s bastards, their sodomites, their heretics and political unfortunates. Everyone whom English society did its best to forget–everyone whom England itself has wronged. We’re going to write down everything that happened to us, and send it everywhere. To France, to Spain, to the colonies, to Londontown.”

It’s the four of them: Billy, Abigail, Max, and Lord Hamilton, who has quietly but pointedly deferred The Chair to Max. “To what end?” Max asks, but she’s leaning forward.

“Right now, England sees what we’re doing as a challenge of civilization, one which they are all to eager to squelch. I want to make this personal. I want every Lord of Whitehall to cringe whenever they hear the word Nassau and feel it reverberate in Madrid and Paris and Boston, echoing the multitude of their personal embarrassments. I want to make this a place that they are all too eager to forget. You’ll work with the former inmates,” he adds to Billy, then catches himself. “If you please, work with the former inmates of the plantation. You’re a gifted writer and I can think of no one better to write such a pamphlet.”

Billy, who is accustomed to Flint snarling orders at him, says, “…all right.”

(YAY NO DARK!BILLY.)

Meanwhile, on the Maroon Island, Madi is like, “YOU PROMISED ME A WAR, MOTHERFUCKERS.” And Flint is like, “I DON’T EVEN CARE ABOUT A WAR RIGHT NOW, MY BOYFRIEND IS ALIVE.” And Silver is tearing his hair out trying to keep them from killing each other.

4x02: Because Woodes Rogers is a punk bitch, he goes straight to Havana and is like, WHADDUP to the Spanish. Except because he doesn’t have Teach’s head this time, he’s thrown in the stockades to rot, because fuck Woodes Rogers. He has conveniently alerted the Spanish to Nassau’s vulnerability, however, because he’s a punk bitch.

Meanwhile, Abigail remembers that Eme and Madi were talking about raising the plantation slaves, so she gets in touch with Eme about that. Basically, they need an army, and who better to lead a fight for freedom than slaves? She introduces Eme to Thomas, who, having spent however many fucking years as a slave himself, is all too willing to consider turning this into an abolitionist colony. Max, of course, is in full support. There’s the problem of the plantations, however, and how to proceed: they need the commerce and they need allies to whom they can trade that commerce.

In walks Eleanor, because fuck her Season 4 makeover as Woodes Rogers’ quiet seamstress wife.

Eleanor and Max are dispatched to Philadelphia to contact her grandparents. Thomas lacks the manpower to simply commandeer the plantation slaves but he sends word that any plantation owner who donates their slaves’ time to the rebuilding of the fort will be compensated. Privately, however, they have absolutely no intention of returning any of the slaves.

One of those slaves is, of course, Julius.

4x03: OH SHIT SPANISH INVASION. Sails are sighted. Word is immediately sent to Flint and the rest of the fleet. Billy rounds up everyone he can from the street to man the fort and defend Nassau. All the slaves are freed and handed weapons, at which point Julius immediately grabs control and retreats with his force to the interior.

There follows a bloody fight, as their ragtag army tries to hold off the Spanish long enough for the pirate fleet to get there.

Then, sails on the horizon.

Spanish sailor: ¡Señor, el barco pirata está en camino de embestirnos!

Spanish captain: ¿Qué nave es esa?

Spanish sailor: No lo sé, pero el capitán parece estar en la proa de la nave echando espuma por la boca y disparando láseres de arco iris desde sus globos oculares.

Spanish captain: Mierda. Mierda. Mierda.

Flint leads the fleet against the Spanish armada with the full force of his rage and love. Unfortunately the Spanish came to win it and the Walrus is forced to abandon ship. Silver goes in the drink, to Madi and Flint’s horror. Thomas and Abigail can only watch as the Walrus is sunk, and they fear the worst.

4x04: In Philadelphia, Eleanor and Max hear about the Spanish invasion secondhand, and fear for their home. They also possibly make out a little bit. Whatever, they’re not getting back together but damn, for old time’s sake, yeah? They do visit with her grandparents to establish trade connections for Nassau, and also to deliver Billy’s Pamphlet of Shame to the publishing machine of Philadelphia, which in turn would have sent it throughout the colonies.

Back in Nassau, Abigail is freaked out about the possibility–yet again–that Flint has perished, and she leaves the fort to go look for him in the Wrecks. Instead what she finds is Israel Hands holding John Silver hostage. A struggle ensues: a one-legged half-drowned man and a teenaged girl vs. Israel Hands. Somehow they prevail and Israel Hands dies long before he can whisper poison in Silver’s ear.

Silver: “Who the fuck are you?”

Abigail: “Who are you?”

Thus begins my favorite part of the not-story, which I like to call Abigail and Silver’s Adventures on New Providence Island. Basically it’s them going around and convincing the slaves who have armed themselves and are busy freeing other slaves that they should come to Nassau and fight the Spanish. They meet up with Julius and Silver rolls a Nat 20 on Persuasion, while Abigail gives her most solemn word that she will see every slave on Nassau freed, and while that seems like an unbelievable claim from some random white girl, she says it with such fierce conviction that Julius kinda believes her as much as he believes Silver.

4x05: At the fort, shit’s going sideways fast. The Spanish are making landfall, the fort is besieged. Teach, Anne, and Jack are still on board their ship and are playing cat and mouse with the Spanish fleet. Flint and Madi make it to Miranda’s house, but have no way of getting through to the fort. Then: out of the darkness rides Abigail and Silver on a white horse.

(Earlier)

Abigail: *behind Silver on the horse* STOP STOP STOP.

Silver: *reining the horse in and almost making it rear up* WHAT.

Abigail: HAVE YOU NEVER RIDDEN A HORSE BEFORE IN YOUR LIFE?

Silver: A couple of times.

Abigail: Just…let me ride in front, okay?

Flint and Madi are, of course, desperately glad to see Silver alive. I think that, despite Thomas being alive, Flint is plenty in love with Silver in this version of events, too. Thomas is his priority, though, so he basically grabs Abigail and is like WHAT THE FUCK TELL ME EVERYTHING.

Then there’s the big showdown. Flint, Madi, Silver, Abigail, and Julius storm Nassau with their combined forces. The Spanish are driven back to their ships. The gates of the fort open up and there he is. There’s Thomas. He and Flint embrace right there in the street in front of everyone because who fucking cares at that point? Billy has been subtly spinning hoyay about them for weeks now, it’s practically required that they confirm the rumors and kiss a little in front of God and Nassau to confirm it all. Abigail sheds more than a few tears, relieved to have made it right but feeling the weight of everything she’s had to do to make it happen.

4x06: In the aftermath: Teach, Jack, and Anne circle back around to Nassau. Silver totally dug up the cache at some point, which Flint can’t even be all that mad about because Thomas is there, so they’ve got the cache. They’ve got the remains of a fleet; a lot of it was destroyed fighting the Spanish armada, but they’re rebuilding fast. And once Maxanor returns from Philadelphia, they’ve got trade routes to fill with commerce. Their Pamphlet of Shame is certainly making international waves, fighting an entirely different kind of psychological warfare, and the fact that they fought off a Spanish invasion certainly lends them a kind of patriotic leniency on the part of Britain and its other colonies.

There remains the question of the Maroons and the slaves who fought alongside the pirates, and the slaves elsewhere on the island. It’s the subject of much debate between the idealists and the pragmatists on the island. The matter is decided, however, when Abigail stands before the council and says: “‘As I am free, so Nassau is free.’ Those were the words of Charles Vane. I did not know him as well as others, here, nor can I stand before you and say that I thought him a good man. But he did believe in one principle with his whole heart: freedom. We were fleeing a slave plantation in Georgia with our Lord Governor, and when its forces would have overwhelmed us, Charles Vane turned to me and said one word: ‘run.’ He knew that for this vision of Nassau to live, he would have to sacrifice his life, and he did not flinch. He did not hesitate. He died for that vision. Will you now pollute it? Will you dishonor his sacrifice? I stand with Charles Vane, and with the Maroons, and with all others who would call themselves free; anyone who calls them an enemy calls me their enemy.”

That, more than anything, turns the tables: Thomas informs the plantation owners to go fuck themselves, and Nassau is made an abolitionist commonwealth. England hasn’t decided whether or not to accept this state of being, but as Thomas predicted, a lot of people in Whitehall would rather pretend that Nassau doesn’t exist than make a big fuss over the degree of its independence. Teach does go off to fight the entire colony of Georgia in revenge for the loss of Charles Vane, and gets himself killed, because no one cares about Teach.

Uhhhhh, and then they all live happily ever after? Flint gets Thomas back, Silver and Madi are together, Anne and Max make up, Eleanor raises her baby to be a BAMF, Abigail made a thing go right.

Whatever, I spent all day on this instead of my other projects. Here it is, I’m done.

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