to love is to turn around. woodes rogers’ ship that transports madi to skeleton island being called the eurydice. silver turns around. silver would turn around over and over again and he loses madi (and flint) in the process. silver loves them enough to turn around to save them. he loves them enough to lose them
to celebrate the 10th birthday of the show that rewired my brain and almost 7 years of me having to live with schrödinger's Flint, i decided to redraw a piece from 2017. this is a self-indulgent au where Madi convinces Silver not to shoot Flint/send Flint to Savannah and in stead they all run their little inn together okay? what's that? you're asking if Flint would be able to adjust to such a life? (would any of them?) of course he would, don't be silly, he could kick troublesome drunks out into the street, glare ominously at customers from behind the bar, pick fights, and threaten people who owe money :))) many happy returns to this fucking masterpiece
would you still hit if I had no backstory, my name wasn’t even my real name, I wasn’t even a cook, I didn’t want to be a pirate, I stole your gold then lying abt it then giving it up then telling you about it, “it must be awful being you”, I was combination of both abandonment and commitment issues, burned your fav boat, smashed a guy's head with my prosthetic leg, will probably thought you controlled the weather with your mind, using a gun point against you after you spent time teaching me how to sword fight AND named my parrot after you?
Thinking about the flinthamilton/silvermadi parallels, and how they both drive Silver's decision at the end. He asks Madi if he would be enough - if she would give up the revolution for him. When he doesn't get the answer he wanted, he goes to Flint, and asks if he would give up everything to have Thomas back. He doesn't get an answer then, but it's enough of a non-answer that he can believe that Flint would give it up. He has to believe that people would choose love over revolution, because it is love that Silver really wants.
Silver sees himself and Flint as equals - two parts of a whole - and so he sees Madi and Thomas as having the same relationship to each of them. He sees Madi as his tether - the thing that keeps him from falling into the darkness - and so he assumes that Thomas must be the same for Flint. He is the tether that can allow him to "roll back" Flint into who he was before he fell into "darkness".
This is why the two major questions left at the end of the finale - Is Flint really with Thomas? and Did Madi take Silver back? - are linked. It's the same question twice - Can love override a desire for justice? Silver tells Madi a story where the answer is "yes", because he needs the answer to be "yes".
"We're all villains in Nassau. Don't think because you're new you're any different."
[Image ID: 5 photos from Black Sails overlain with text. The pictures show Silver and Madi kissing, a close-up of Madi's face in the dark with Billy's hand holding a knife to her throat, Israel Hands and two other pirates holding the open chest of gems on the deck of the Walrus, a close-up of Madi's face looking hurt with Silver in the background in her room in the Maroon camp, and Silver pointing a gun at Flint. Text reads, "Do you have a wife? How do you imagine she would feel if she were told you were suffering some awful, degrading abuse and that the only way she could end it would be to betray your trust? How do you think she would feel if she betrayed you, knowing she likely lost that trust forever? 'And no one was harmed.'" end ID]