Dear Eleanor,

I’ve tried to write this like an essay, depersonalize it, and I can’t. So this is my letter to you, with everything I want to say, the way I’d say it to a friend.

In fact, you were my first friend in Nassau. Let’s start there.

The minute I met you, I connected with you. You were alone in a world full of men and you were making it happen. It was YOUR world, and you weren’t afraid of it - or maybe you were, but you didn’t let it show. I loved you for that, and I wanted you to succeed.

I ALWAYS wanted you to succeed - but maybe, looking back, I projected too much of myself onto you when I thought about what that success should look like.

I looked around you and saw people *I* could work with - a hard man who loved your strength, a gentle and secret king who saw you like a daughter, and a woman worth everything, who loved you like that pile of sand could never love you back

You WERE loved. I know you couldn’t feel that, now, through all of the grief and the strength it took to survive, and through everything you’d already lost by the time I met you. I get it, girl. I really do.

But god, if you’d just trusted ONE of them...

We don’t really talk about what happened with you and Mr. Scott - but you broke his fucking heart, hon. He couldn’t watch you fall to ruin under his watch, and he couldn’t leave you behind entirely. He nearly ended up back in chains over his love for you.

And those were HIS choices - but with Max, you made them for her. You picked the shape of both of your futures, with Flint and Billy just outside the door, because you couldn’t bear to lose what you’d built. I know it hurt you too. We could all see that it did.

But you did it anyway, because you really didn’t know what you meant to her did you? You didn’t know the hold you had on these people, that it really was love, that Max couldn’t walk away and save herself while she had the chance.

I don’t think you mean to hurt people. I don’t even believe that you can live with it as easily as you pretend to live with it.

But I still don’t really want to talk about Chas.

It wasn’t right. You have to know that it wasn’t. You never believed that he loved you - I get it - but you had to know that he was more than what you assigned to him in that prison cell. You slept next to every monstrous thing you ever saw in him, and you could take it in Woodes

I still wonder why. I know it had to start with self-preservation - but how it ended up at such a genuine point for you, with the most disingenuous person we meet, is something that I still can’t untangle. I can only imagine you were so wounded by then that you couldn’t see it

He made you an Englishwoman again, the one your father unmade when he brought you to that place. Let’s not go into why Chas killed him; I don’t think it’s fair to ask you to see that particular light. I can see the appeal of what Woodes offered you, if I’m brutally honest

But it all comes down to this - you WERE loved, over and over and in all kinds of ways. And you wouldn’t, couldn’t allow it to blossom. You couldn’t trust the shape of what you’d never really known since the loss of your mother.

It wasn’t Charles. He wasn’t the monster, or the half-made animal - you were so desperately afraid that it was YOU, weren’t you? And so you projected it outwards, tried to kill it once and for all.

But it wasn’t you either, girl. You were worth it, you really were

You were strong. You were a fucking CHILD when you got dealt this hand. And you were still real, still soft under all the noise, and you truly could have made them all so happy if you’d known what happiness was and allowed it.

I’m sorry that it ended for you how it did. I truly think you would have been a wonderful mother. I will never forget what you did to these people who loved you, and I don’t think you need forgiveness for it. But it could have been different, and I’m sorry it wasn’t

Charles forgave you, and it made me furious for so long that he did, that he would meet your eyes like that and let you off the hook, make it HIS choice in the end. But I see now why he did it. I can’t give you the same, but I can give you this space to be imperfect and human