FANFICTION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Love and Despair: Part 1
This is technically a spoiler for AYNBtM, but it could equally stand on its own. But I really wanted to use the new bannerz that greeneyespurple made for me so nyah!
This concept has been floating in my head for years, since I very first started writing All Your Nights Belong to Me and tonight it was ready to be written. The final piece of the puzzle that clicked everything in to place was inspired by lolitalockhart and while it may not be obvious at first, by the end of this spoiler series you'll know why I've dedicated it to you, lolitalockhart.
Title: Love and Despair
Style: Prose
Genre: Drama
Words: 474
Rating: R
Length: Drabble
Pairings: Beckington
Warnings: Death and Bodily Fluids. And Spoilers!
Authoress: cassiopaya
Characters: Weatherby Swann, James Norrington, Estrella, Cutler Beckett, etc.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Dedication: lolitalockhart
Special Thanks: greeneyespurple
Series: AYNBtM
Notes: Part 1, Weatherby Swann’s life is in danger and he must flee Port Royal.
***
Weatherby settled himself heavily, as if the weight of a world gone mad was pressing against him further rather than being alleviated. How easily Beckett had broken the power of the Viceroyalty with a few forged documents. The Governor could now only escape into exile - if he could stay alive for long enough.
Swann knew that without James he would already be dead: a dark stain in a dark alley. Thank God his own network of spies had not failed him. Estrella had woken him in the dead hour of the night and had hustled him to a “safe” house to await the light of dawn.
The horror of the darkness in the ossuary: the stench of the bodies yet to be burned and the gnaw, gnaw, gnaw of the incest mandibles masticating the flesh of the dead and living alike. Vomit and tears had spewed down his shirt into his shoes and dribbled onto the dirt floor of the charnel house.
The white light of dawn began to creep into the house of death of the Middle Passage and Weatherby had covered his closed eyes with his trembling hands. He did not want to see.
And then Estrella had returned, glowing with sweat and bosom heaving with breath, and he wondered how she could stand the smell and the sight of the place and he damned her for leaving him there. Not at all insulted, she merely let the Governor know that the last place they would look for a walking dead man was their own charnel house.
Estrella had helped him into the baggage boot of his own carriage and he rested his head on a canvas bag full of extra clothes and clutched a basket of cold meat and cheese, warm bread, and a bottle of rum. The last thing he saw for the next several hours was his spy’s strained face as she lowered the flaps over him and placed him once more in darkness.
He had no appetite, but he used the rum to rid the bile from his mouth and mulled over his instructions again. Swann was not to make a sound or leave the boot until they reached Kingston and only Norrington would give him the “safe” word. “Elizabeth.”
Weatherby heard Norrington’s voice before he felt him climb into the carriage and tried to relax even as he found himself trembling. A lurch and the carriage was off, the team not quite thundering down the lane, but making good time regardless.
Swann spent the hours sobbing and swigging rum and as the heat of the day began to beat down on his little hidey-hole he regretted his lack of composure. Weatherby passed out from heat, dehydration, and exhaustion before the team was changed and pissed what little water he had in him all over his britches.