all that the night left behind
What Governor Swann leaves behind hurts more than Death itself. ✦ potc, AWE, canonical character death. 1.25k words
Unlike James, Swann had no stomach for duplicity, no heart for perseverance. Swann severed his alliance with Lord Beckett that instant. It would not guarantee Elizabeth’s safety, and it earned him nothing but heartache and grief and anger. There were other avenues to explore that did not involve sticking his hand into the viper’s nest.
Swann returned to shore. Port Royal had been all but obliterated in Beckett’s wake, now a shell of a home that could offer shelter and little more. Yet that first night Swann slept longer and harder than he had in months. Twilight was settling as he closed his eyes, steadied by the sureness of dry land at last beneath him. He awoke to the bright cerulean of a midafternoon, and closed his eyes again, unwilling to face all that awaited him quite yet—
—then, somewhere in that deep haze, there came a swift pinprick against his throat, more pressure than pain. All at once he was gone. The darkness and stillness became utter and complete.
Elizabeth, his heart murmurs, unceasingly, even when it ceases to beat, Elizabeth. Elizabeth is alive.
(read here on ao3!)
