Fanfic: Love and Despair: Part 2
Title: Love and Despair
Style: Prose
Genre: Drama
Words: 405
Rating: R
Length: Drabble
Pairings: Beckington
Warnings: Bodily Fluids and Spoilers!
Authoress: cassiopaya
Characters: Weatherby Swann, James Norrington, Estrella, Cutler Beckett, Admiral Bratton, etc.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Dedication: lolitalockhart
Special Thanks: greeneyespurple
Series: All Your Nights Belong to Me
Notes: Part 2, Welcome to Kingston, Governor.
***
Weatherby jerked groggily awake to the sound of someone vomiting. It was Norrington. He had opened the flap to the carriage boot and had been assaulted by the God Awful reek of death, bile, and piss cooked at over one-hundred degrees.
“I am terribly sorry for my current state,” Swann rasped out through swollen lips with a dry tongue. James was spitting in the dirt and whipping his nose and chin with a handkerchief. He waved his hand and absolved Swann of his stink.
There was some run left in the bottle and Weatherby held it out to James with a trembling hand. Norrington took the bottle and saluted the Governor with it before taking a swig to swish in his mouth and spit in the dirt.
“Can you stand on your own?” James asked as he took he basket and threw it into the mouth of an alley; the vitals within were now only palatable to the rats and other vermin.
“No,” Swann quavered, “…my clothes,” and held out his free arm for Norrington to grasp him and raise him up, support him as he tried to climb out of the carriage boot while clutching his canvas bag. Weatherby was festering with questions, but he dared not speak them allowed until he knew they were in a place where the walls with ears were on their side.
“We are approaching the Admiralty and we shall have an audience with Admiral Bratton,” Norrington volunteered. They had to enter through the back door like supplicants and that was appropriate for a disgraced Naval Officer and a Governor on the knife’s edge of assassination.
Swann was able to rinse himself with a wet bit of cloth in bowl of water and change into his extra set of clothes. Thank God Estrella has stuffed a pair of shoes and a wig into the bag as well. He felt much of his dignity resorted as he wriggled his toes in a new set of stocking in a new set of shoes.
Norrington was waiting outside the doors to Admiral Bratton’s office as Weatherby drank deeply the sangria that was provided for him and when he finished he joined James at the end of the hallway and settled himself on the bench.
A secretariat opened the door from within and bade them to enter, announcing the Jamaican Governor Weatherby Swann and Mr. James Norrington of the East India Trading Company.