Chapter Text
When Alma Bonnet was a child, her father loved her terribly, but not enough to endure the loveless marriage he found himself trapped in. Alma found that her life became infinitely more joyous after his departure (well, after his second departure, anyway), and so she never felt bitter toward him. The first time he left (abandoned) them was more frightening and confusing, and involved more coddling of her grieving baby brother and their enraged mother; but his second departure was done deliberately, and Alma even got to help with it. She could grin at the memory of the camaraderie in the house the day he left. Her cheeks hurt from smiling that afternoon at the pure, unadulterated happiness on her father’s face when he announced to the family as a whole, “We’re going to do a fuckery! ” followed by laughter from the adults when Alma innocently asked, “What’s a fuckery?” (She knew what 'fuck' meant anyway; she wasn't a baby.)
It turned out that a fuckery involved at least three different possibilities for a man to have died within 60 seconds. A dead body was also at play and Alma may or may not have pouted when she was told that she was not allowed to see it.
Prior to his first departure, her father's responsibilities as a parent consisted of balancing finances, bringing in money, and playing pirates with his children. Alma didn't necessarily have any complaints, but even as young as a toddler, she was able to read people very easily and knew her parents were unhappy in their marriage.
She never doubted her father's love despite his odd, quiet ways of showing it. The constant worry her father had about her being bullied was one of the ways he demonstrated his love for her and she frequently remembered what he said before she went to school.
“When you go to school, Alma, remember, you are strong. You are kind. You are more than the bullies say.”
Although she was bullied, it was mostly because of who her father was. His excessive wardrobe, his botanical knowledge, and his perfectly-kept garden made Stede Bonnet an easy target for enmity and antagonism…and then he disappeared, reappeared, and then died within a handful of months which added fuel to a flame. The changes Alma underwent after his death were visible on the surface and could not be ignored by anybody in her vicinity. She became more ruthless and mischievous, even faking her mother's signature on sick notes and making up excuses to escape lessons with the tutors and governesses.
Instead of lessons, she would watch the navy troops practice with their swords and pistols, Alma brandishing a wooden sword that she stole from Louis along with a fake pistol she whittled from a piece of wood. Over the crest of the hill, she could watch without being seen as she practiced swordsmanship in time with the cadets. She perfected her moves, the crashing of the sea against the rocks drowning out her grunts and shouts as she attacked unwitting trees and shrubs.
Ready! Swing, dodge, step, block, parry, swing, counter, feint, kick, swing!
When she did attend school, Alma wore whatever was most likely to get her in trouble - starting with trousers. After kissing her mom and Doug goodbye on her way to school, or the governess’s house, or anywhere else, she switched to cotton breeches that had once belonged to her father as well as boots that she had stolen from Louis; but Alma's mother and step-father quickly learned of her scandalous fashions and put a stop to it. When she started fighting other children, even the boys, she was expelled from the school and even the governess refused to continue lessons with her.
“They started it, mama! I was only protecting myself!” she shouted at her mother who sat in front of her at the dinner table, staring with a mixture of hurt and steely anger. Alma felt tears sting her eyes when the glare was familiar. The only person Alma could recall receiving a glare carrying the same brand of her mother’s pain and rage was her father. The thought of how much hurt he must have carried burned in her chest. “No wonder dad left if this is how he felt all the time!”
She slapped her plate on the floor and ignored the gravy splashing onto the tapestries and Doug's pained voice calling, “Alma!” Then, panting in fury, she ran up the stairs and shoved her dresser in front of her door.
“Fuck THIS!” she shouted, purposefully angling her face towards the crack in the door to be heard. “Fuck all of this! Fuck all of you!”
She destroyed things; ripping down her wallpaper, breaking precious trinkets, dumping out the paints her mother gifted to her in an attempt to get her to find a nice, respectable hobby. The entire time she said all of the curse words she overheard at the academy and she cried, thinking of her father and finally accepting that she hated that he was gone.
An hour later her mother called to her from the hallway to tell her to pack her things — she was off to finishing school in the morning.
“Yes, mama,” Alma responded with a huff while omitting to mention that her bag had already been packed. She laid the wooden sword on top of her dad’s old trousers and Louis’s boots. “I’ll pack straight away.”
An hour later she was on her back on the floor, her legs slung over the side of her bed and she grumbled, “Fuck being respectable,” as the fight started to wear out of her. She was exhausted, but knew she couldn’t sleep. Instead, she listened for the signs of the rest of the household retiring.
After she finished packing, she had spent some time angrily painting on the walls with her hands in bright orange paint, reminiscent of the petrified citrus that now lived at the bottom of her knapsack. Her painting started with a string of curse words, then she drew a rudimentary full-body silhouette of herself brandishing a sword. “Dad found happiness this way. Why can’t I?” she’d asked herself.
Below the portrait, she wrote, in big bold letters, The Pirate Dame.
That was five years ago — she hadn’t seen her family since that night, but did mail them various gifts and money from her exploits. She owed that much to them considering the lofty amount of money she stole from the family trust with only a small fuckery needed on her part. She managed to make quite a name for herself since then, especially only being 15-years-old at the start of her pirating career. Although, the money was to thank for a lot of her early success — ships weren’t cheap and she wanted hers to be the best one possible in the short timeframe she had.
She managed to pull together a crew that was as ragtag as could be, choosing the people most in need — people like her. People who needed to get the fuck out of the lives they were stuck in. People who needed freedom. People like her father. The crew was all still together, too, with Alma effortlessly captaining. She barely needed to do anything at that point and found that she enjoyed the type of life where she was, essentially, one of the crew. She did the things that the crew did — slept on the decks, hoisted sails, scrubbed barnacles. She ate with them, and the crew piled into her own quarters when the weather was rough. She remembered her father saying that he would read stories to his crew and she found herself doing the same thing, even taking on the voices she remembered him using with her and Louis before he left.
It felt good, in a way, to continue her father’s legacy despite his own name going down in history as co-captain to the infamous Blackbeard (or, as her dad called him so many years ago, Ed. Lovely Ed. How her intelligent mother didn’t figure out exactly who Ed was, Alma would never know. She figured it out within an hour of overhearing that fateful conversation between her parents). She had yet to cross paths with her father or Blackbeard and wondered if they, in turn, already knew who she was.
She wondered if they were looking for her.