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Author: Guede Mazaka
Rating: PG-13. Period racial slurs.
Pairing: Grégoire de Fronsac/James Norrington, Norrington/Sparrow, Grégoire/Jean-François.
Feedback: Good lines, bad ones, etc.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Notes: PotC/Brotherhood of the Wolf crossover; post-movie for both. Am following the general history of 1766 in New Orléans, when the city was turned over to the Spanish amid protests by its mostly French citizenry, but am not sticking strictly to the timeline, so slight AU in respect to that. Supernatural aspects.
Summary: You don’t have to be feverish to have hallucinations.
***
Grégoire took the stairs two at a time. When he hit the first floor and pivoted towards the front door, the housekeeper suddenly stepped out from behind a corner. He hastily grabbed her by the hips and swung her about, tossing some quick sweet nonsense in her ear that left her laughing through her blush as he dashed out the door.
It was only a few yards to the alley, and then he was brushing off pickpockets as he pushed his way through the crowd. The residents of New Orléans tended to run a handful of inches shorter than him, no doubt due to the pestilent atmosphere and the irregular availability of food, so searching the alley was a little easier. Nevertheless he’d lost sight of that familiar head between glimpsing it through the window and running out the door, and as more and more time passed by without a reversal of those circumstances, Grégoire felt his anxiety slip painful icy fingers throughout his gut. Perhaps Norrington wasn’t the only one suffering from delirium.
The stupid man had better stay up there. Grégoire only had two eyes, and he was currently taxing both of them to the furthest of their abilities.
“You looking for something?” A slight, dark man in a royal purple coat with the braid half ripped-off sidled up beside him. Mestizo, with what was probably Spanish gold gilding his one front tooth, but he spoke the local French dialect well. “Someone?”
“And if I were, what business would it be of yours?” A light, laughing tone usually eased either sex off-guard. If it didn’t, then it at least gave both sides a façade behind which they could both work.
The other man did something with his shoulders and upper torso that gracefully merged shrug and bow. He spread out his hands as if to prove he had nothing to hide. “Oh, that depends on you, m’sieur. You want, you pay.”
He was slowly herding Grégoire towards a particular side-alley, which was nestled between two tall, narrow houses. A sharp profile distorted the shadow draping it. Then it withdrew to leave only the crisp line of black against the reddish cream of the adobe walls.
Grégoire allowed himself to be led out of the main thoroughfare and just to the mouth of the alley. Then he carefully slowed down, joking with the other man to distract him.
“Spanish still leaving you be?” he wondered, dropping his arm and casually brushing back the side of his coat. He pretended to side-step a spot of filth on the street in order to turn and present his profile to the man.
“Oh, the dagoes would never dare. They know we’re the lifeblood of this place.” Laughing, the pirate reached out and slapped his hand down on Grégoire’s shoulder, merely a good fellow sharing a rare bit of humor in such dark times. Except for the way his hand, masked from view by his flapping coat, darted towards his belt.
At the same time, his partner in the alley rustled from nothing to dark shape. They weren’t bad.
Grégoire gave them a moment to believe they had him, and then he twisted out into the gap he’d left himself, hand snatching the first man’s wrist and bending it around him. He put his knee to the back of the pirate’s thigh and heaved him into his partner, who cursed and dodged and did not quite avoid the fall. They went down and a long knife clattered away from the first pirate, which left Grégoire with plenty of time to draw his sword and pistol.
He pointed his blade at the two men and his pistol at the exclamation at the alley mouth. “None of your business.”
“Oh, no, I suppose not.” It was his voice.
Before Grégoire quite realized what he was doing, he’d whirled around to seize the newcomer and shove him up against the wall. At first all he could see was a shaggy mane of silvery-brown hair, which was violently whipping about under the impetus of vigorous swearing and shoving. He used his forearm and elbow to pin the man’s chest and crossed the man’s throat with his sword. The struggling stopped just in time for Grégoire to hear shuffling feet.
He belatedly remembered the other two men and twisted around to point his pistol at where they’d been, but the alley was clear. From the far end came the last echoes of fleeing boots; like most thieves, they were opportunists and they weren’t interested in working harder to bring down prey that could defend itself. Fortunately for Grégoire, since a few moments ago would have been the perfect time to stab him in the back.
“What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?” demanded that eerie voice. Bony knees snapped into Grégoire’s legs and a hand dragged at his sword-arm. “Are you one of those stupid English bastards—”
Grégoire pushed his blade-edge a little closer to the man’s throat, and received still silence in return. Very slowly, he lifted his other hand and used the tip of the pistol to move the hair out of the way. Then he froze. “Jean-François?”
“You…you’re French. But your accent’s so odd…” Staring back at him was the dead Morangias heir.
The muscles in Grégoire’s face clenched together so hard they seemed to weld into a single icy mask, but the muscles in his arm were shaking with the effort of keeping himself from slashing through the man’s throat. It must have shown on his face, because Jean-François’ eyes widened and he clutched at Grégoire’s wrist, trying to pull the sharp blade from his throat. “M’sieur, I was only coming to help. I wasn’t going to rob you, I swear.”
No…Grégoire blinked hard and looked again. The resemblance remained—add the arm and strip away ten years, and this must have been what Jean-François had looked like as a youth. But the behavior was slightly different, the accent was pure Creole, and the terror in the eyes was entirely new.
He stepped back and resheathed his sword while the lookalike bent over, coughing and rubbing tenderly at his neck. “Who are you?” Grégoire snapped. His voice felt about as raw as the other man’s throat must have.
Confused, the man craned his head up to look at Grégoire. His eyes first went to the pistol Grégoire was still holding, then alighted on the single ring adorning Grégoire’s hand. They slowly crawled up Grégoire’s body, assessing and valuing his clothing in a way Morangias never would have bothered with, given his noble blood. “You said yourself,” the man finally muttered, warily straightening. “I’m Jean-François. Jean-François Beaumont.”
“Where are you from? What’s your parentage?” It could be mere coincidence. Mani had told Grégoire stories of men from distant tribes meeting by chance and having the same face, and similar tales circulated in France.
Or it could be that Grégoire was merely having the same problem as those who had only wanted to see a monster wolf and not the master behind it. He would be lying to himself if Gévaudan hadn’t been in his mind since he and Norrington had come across the werewolf.
“I’m from here. Born here. And what would my parentage be to you?” Jean-François retorted. He’d regained some of his breath and apparently some of his spirit as well, even daring to arch a challenging brow at Grégoire. Though when Grégoire took a step forward, the other man instantly flattened himself against the wall. “My mother was a whore, also born here. Grandmother was French, grandfather was…Spanish, maybe.” He raised his chin, proud as any king, and shot a bitter look at Grégoire. “She never told me who my father was, so I wouldn’t know. There. Are you satisfied?”
He did sound as if he’d grown up in the bayous, though the content of his French was a small cut above the majority of the city’s population. There was a slight Spanish tang to his accent as well. But he was at least nineteen. Unless the Comte de Morangias had been much more well-traveled than Grégoire knew of, there was no way he could even be a blood-relation. And Jean-François himself—the brother to Marianne—had been only in his mid-twenties, so even if he had slipped over to America, he couldn’t possibly have fathered a man that old.
A mere trick of nature. Grégoire had catalogued enough of them, so he shouldn’t have been nearly so surprised.
“Thank you for your answers,” he said, holstering his pistol. For a moment, he thought about offering an apology, but as he had no idea how to explain it, he decided against that.
“Thank…you? Thank you?” Jean-François suddenly lunged forward and grabbed Grégoire’s arm so he couldn’t walk away. The man’s eyes were blazing, and his voice crackled as if he meant to spit red-hot coals at Grégoire. “You put a sword to my throat, you demand I tell you all about myself, and then…thank you? Who the hell are you?”
In the summer, the days were long, but night eventually came. The sky was already shading to a deep bruise-blue, and at the end of the alley, Grégoire could see a sliver of moon beginning to show from behind a tall spire. He’d been dipping in and out of the alley all day to no avail; all the pirates knew of the killings, but none of them would do say more than a jeer at the Spanish, or a tale about their grandfather’s meeting with a loup-garou.
“Considering I put a sword to your throat, it would make more sense to leave when I let you.” Perhaps the man wasn’t Morangias himself, but the likeness still disturbed Grégoire. His hand hurt, and it was only after looking down that he’d realized he had a white-knuckled grip on his sword hilt.
Sharp-eyed like any street brat would be, Jean-François noted it as well and sloped off a yard or so. But he still kept pace with Grégoire, nonchalantly twisting and slipping through the thronging traders and robbers to always be that yard away. “I know what men from Burgundy, Lorraine, Alsace sound like. I haven’t heard your accent before.”
“It’s Parisian. I doubt you’ve met better than some country baron who offended the Queen’s lapdog when he finally got to court.” Though Grégoire still had to force his way through the alley, the going was a little easier than before. Most of the pirates seemed to be concluding their last deal for the day, or packing up their unsold goods.
Curious for them to do that, since nighttime would seem even more ideal for their kind of business. Most of their trading during the day had been in items they could plausibly explain away: food, jewelry, mundane things like bolts of cloth. But New Orléans was famed for being a city where anything could be sold, and the Enlightenment, like classical Athens, had been built on the backs of the enslaved. In France they were the serfs, but here…the slave trading should’ve been more visible, yet there wasn’t a trace of it. They had to be selling them somewhere—but it should have been here. No other place in the city was so convenient for the eminent buyers who needed the slaves the most, but who had the least desire to be seen down in the filthier districts.
He emerged from the alley still thinking, and so he failed to prevent Jean-François from seizing his sleeve. The other man drew close as breath, fox-eyes smug and gleaming. “I know. You’re that one asking about the loup-garou. You came to the wrong place for that.”
Grégoire was beginning to agree, but that didn’t mean he would admit it. Especially not to a man whose face made Grégoire want to hack him to pieces right in the street. He jerked his coat free of Jean-François and pushed him aside. “In that case, I should be leaving.”
“No, you should be listening.” The other man ran after him and grabbed his hand, dragging him to a stop. Before Grégoire could say a word, Jean-François had laid two fingers over his mouth. “No, stop—listen to me,” Jean-François whispered, suddenly nothing but raw desperation. “My mother’s still got friends working the pirates—I run errands for them and they give me a bed. I want to get out of this city, but I’ve got no money. I do hear things, though. I hear that the pirates and the loup-garou make good bedmates.”
“Do you.” If Mani were around, he could tell whether the man was ly—Grégoire ripped that thought out by the roots. The last thing he needed to be reminded of was his old friend when he was looking at the face—or almost the face—of his friend’s murderer.
It did fit. The pirates had the most to lose from the new change in government, for the Spanish had a notorious hatred of their kind that wasn’t mitigated in the least by the influx of commerce they brought with them. On the other hand, Grégoire found it difficult to believe that anyone could control the beast he’d encountered. He knew little of the loup-garou, but what he’d seen reminded him more of a mindless mad dog than of the sullen, fiercely intelligent leopard-men of Africa.
“Take me out of here, and I’ll tell you,” Jean-François eagerly said, looking at Grégoire. He was a little shorter than his namesake, but the lankiness of his limbs said he might yet catch up, if given time and space. “You don’t have to take me far. Just out of this goddamned city. I’m sick of it.”
Behind him was the verandah of the house in which Grégoire and Norr—James were lodging. The housekeeper had come out and was leaning over the railing, a puzzled look on her face.
“That’s not surprising,” Grégoire finally said, tugging at his coat. He walked past a crestfallen Jean-François. “Come on.”
When he heard the other man’s sound of surprise, he pivoted back and drew out his pistol at the same time. A quick crack of the butt against the temple, and then he ducked under to sling Jean-François over his shoulder.
“Another guest?” the housekeeper asked, more coy than startled. Then she shrugged. “Ah, well, if you can pay…” she caught the coin Grégoire tossed and dropped it between her breasts “…master’s dead and mistress wants me to hold her great big house till she can afford to come back to it. Pfft. She shouldn’t have cheated me out of my wages.”
* * *
James flopped back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Then he closed his eyes and tried to go to sleep. But his skin was crawling and he had to hold it onto him so it wouldn’t steal away. Whenever his hand pinned down one spot, another would warm and freeze and then start to worm off of him. It was a constant struggle and he was losing and he panicked, thrashing—
--“Christ. No.” He slapped his palms against the bed and made himself keep them there until he’d counted to twenty. His skin stayed put.
God, he hated hallucinations. He’d never had them before and he never wanted them again.
There were blankets. He rolled over on his side and pulled at them till he found one edge. Then it was a torturous, slow inching to get beneath them, because every few seconds he had to stop and catch his breath. Sometimes he couldn’t hold onto the sheets because he was so cold and shivering too hard, and sometimes he had to scrabble at them like a rat at a wall in order to peel the sodden fabric off of his skin. But eventually he got under them, and then he wanted to pass out, but his mind insisted on staying awake.
His ribs weren’t hurting quite so badly now, so perhaps the dislocated ones had finally decided to remain where they were supposed to. Or perhaps it was only in comparison with how much his head hurt and how his back seemed to be made of red-hot needles, all pointed inward. He wanted a drink.
He wished Grégoire would come back. James needed to explain something to him. He probably needed to apologize again as well, but that would have to wait, because he wasn’t going to apologize unless he knew exactly what it was for which he was apologizing. If he didn’t, then the words had no meaning and he was insulting both parties.
The window rattled, sending resounding brutal echoes through his skull, and he lashed out. That is, he tried to; his hand fell limply on the sill and searched about for the sash. When he couldn’t find it, he curled on his side and edged his head onto the pillow so he could see what had happened.
Jack Sparrow was perched on the sill. “Like your bloody last name,” James muttered, squeezing his eyes shut. If it wasn’t bad enough that the man had to torment him at sea, now the damnable pirate was invading his delirious fancies as well.
“What’s wrong with it? Makes more sense than ‘Norrington’ does.” The scent of Indies spices and rum and salt drifted down, probably from the pirates in the alley outside. They all seemed to reek of it, as if the better part of their lives wasn’t spent merely hand-to-hand scrounging in the local trash.
Admittedly, it’d looked as if the New Orléans pirates had been doing a fair sight better than the ones James was used to chasing. And the real Jack Sparrow would never had scrounged—he would have danced in and stolen the whole trash heap, along with the forgotten treasure that somehow always managed to waiting for him. “He wouldn’t bother with a pathetic raving fever-victim, either.”
“Who? That…blond gentleman?” Something tickled James’ nose, then lightly stroked his brow.
“No, you. Or you if you were real and actually here. But I lost you at Santo Domingo, and now I’m talking to some version of you the fever’s made up.” The tickling touch came back and James shook it off, then opened his eyes. Now Jack had a foot on the bed and was crouched over him in an impossible position.
He looked worried, actually. Why James would picture Sparrow looking worried, he couldn’t even begin to imagine.
“You’ve looked better.” And Sparrow had lost some of his slur, which was a dead-giveaway that James was fantasizing the entire conversation.
It was funny that he’d irritate himself. “Of course I have,” he muttered, curling deeper into the sheets. “I’ve got yellow fever, like the rest of the city. Why else would I be here and not on my ship, trying to find you?”
The phantom leaned over him again and carefully ran a finger along James’ hairline—he’d left the wig back at Grégoire’s dockside lodgings—then held up that hand, frowning and rubbing his fingers. Jack said something that sounded akin to the bastard French the city-dwellers used. “And why would the good commodore be wanting to do that?”
“If you’d stayed in Santo Domingo, you might have found out.” James shifted restlessly under the sheets, trying to find a cool spot. He swallowed to moisten his dry throat, but only succeeded in inflaming it even further. A cough racked him and it was so painful that he had to snap his teeth into the pillow afterward.
A hand cradled his chin and lifted it. Fingers fluttered along his mouth till he opened it, and then something cool trickled into his lips. He swallowed that and thirstily moaned for more; his tongue flicked out and rasped in a few more droplets.
“God in heaven. You are ill.” Sparrow sounded as if he were being strangled. The hand gently but hastily lowered James’ head back to the pillow. “I thought you were coming for a hanging. Was in Port Royal not too long ago, and the bones of Barbossa’s lot were still rattling a welcome.”
“Well, they didn’t make friends with the governor’s daughter, did they? And her swashbuckling, polite but mule-stubborn husband.” It hurt to laugh, and James knew it would, but he couldn’t help doing so anyway. Because it really was ridiculous. It was right out of a chivalrous romance, and he’d be damned if he ever let anyone know he’d loved the tales of King Arthur and his knights as a boy. “I was supposed to offer you a letter of marque, you brainless parrot. God knows if I’ll live long enough to do it now. God knows…”
And he did not, and he was terrified of that. He’d spent the past three weeks watching his men go this way, spent the last one scrubbing their bloody vomit off the deck because too many hands were down, and he still didn’t know why one man recovered and another didn’t. The strongest seemed to fade so fast, while the weak and the lazy hung onto life with an unbreakable grip.
“You’re not going to die.” Jack grasped James’ hands and squeezed them almost hard enough for James to believe he was really there. He was staring at James the way the old woman in the brothel had, uncannily steady and knowing and ancient. Not old.
Then Sparrow grinned, and looked more like James remembered. “Sorry about that, then. I’ll try and less hasty the next time we cross paths. Though you can’t really blame me; you’re enough to make any man shake in his boots.”
“Thank you,” James uncertainly replied. Even when he was making up the man, Sparrow made no sense.
The phantom started to climb out the window and James watched, feeling strangely forlorn about having this hallucination end. It had actually been rather better than he’d expected, considering the violent ravings he’d witnessed over the past month. “All right, I won’t die. At least not by fever…I don’t know about the werewolf, or the Spanish.”
Sparrow stopped, straddling the sill. He cocked his head and curiously looked at James. “Werewolf, did you say?”
“Attacked me. At least—no, I wasn’t sick yet. And Grégoire was there, and he saw it too, so that was real. They’re only killing Spanish, you know. Lousy politics.” James felt a little silly discussing such things with a figment of his imagination, but then, he had no one else to talk to. “Reminded me of Barbossa’s crew, but I never knew what they were. Do you?”
“I’d say I would know. Someday we’ll sit down with a nice big bottle of rum, preferably provided by you, and I’ll tell you all about it. So try and stay in one piece, commodore—else you’ll never know.” Jack paused a moment longer, then whisked out the window. His coat billowed up and then it swept back into a sleek pair of wings.
The parrot did a lazy loop just in front of the window, peppering the glass with drunken curses. Then it dived down out of sight.
The door opened and Grégoire walked in, accompanied by a long pair of legs. He turned about to kick the door shut and James got a good look at the face of the man Grégoire was carrying. Lean with a long nose, but handsome in an angular way. Strange hair…it was thick and wavy, and its color shaded from brown to silver and back as the light playing on it changed.
“How are you feeling?” Grégoire deposited his burden on the floor beside the bed. While he was bent over, he grabbed the chamberpot, put on the lid, and then took it outside. He had a brief conversation with someone in the hall before coming back inside, hands full of rope and strips of cloth.
“I’m seeing things, but they’re…friendly enough. Could you please…” James rolled all the way over and flopped a hand in the direction of the water pitcher.
The other man propped him up against the headboard and put a glass of water in his hands, then retreated with a speed that wasn’t quite necessary. Though Grégoire was smiling, his eyes were watching James the way a swordsman did his opponent, looking for clues as to the next move.
He knelt down and busied himself with tying the unconscious man’s wrists to the leg of the mattress. First he wrapped each wrist with a rag, and then he bound the rope over it, as if he didn’t want to hurt the man.
“Who is he?” If James timed his sips right, he could drink in between shivers and not spill the water.
“Jean-François de—Jean-François Beaumont. A local boy. He says he knows why there are werewolves in the city.” Grégoire was censoring his words, and not very well. He finished with Beaumont’s wrists and absently began to turn the man over so he was in a more comfortable position, then stopped himself. After a sharp shake of the head, he picked up another cloth strip and gagged the man.
James raised an eyebrow. Beaumont’s upturned face grew a long muzzle and snapped open its eyes to show a malicious glare; when James jerked back, he splashed a quarter of the water in the glass over his hands and chest and the bed. He closed his eyes and told himself very calmly that Grégoire wouldn’t drag in a werewolf. Then he looked again.
He saw two men and nearly sighed in relief. But that would hurt his throat, so he made himself keep it in. “If he can help us, then why are you—”
“—because I’m not sure he can. He—” With his head down, Grégoire’s mutterings were too muffled to be deciphered. Then his shoulders heaved with a deep breath and he looked up at James. His face was tired, not surprisingly; he hadn’t had much more sleep than a short nap earlier in the day, and he’d been constantly active. “Anyway, it’s nearly dusk. The Governor’s keeping his soldiers close to the Cabildo because he thinks the wolves are after him, so I don’t have far to look. If it turns out that Jean-François does know something, then we’ll go from there. But in the meantime, I want him where I don’t have to search for him.”
“So you’re tying him to my bed.” James drank the rest of the water, then pointedly set the glass on the bedside table. At least, he tried to.
Just before the glass would’ve hit the floor and shattered, Grégoire scooped it from the air. He sat down on the edge of the bed and refilled it. “You’ve got my pistol. You can use that even if you can’t hold your sword steady. Do you know how much that woman is charging for just this room?”
“You’re going out again. Why? You can see most of the Cabildo from the house. Those soldiers are probably so nervous that they’d shoot you by mistake.” Why was the man so wary around him? It had something to do with what had happened before James’ vision, but he couldn’t quite remember. His memory seemed to drift in spots, some pieces disappearing and then resurfacing after he’d forgotten why he needed them.
Grégoire looked as if he didn’t know whether to laugh or lose his temper. He started to reply, then cut off in favor of leaning across James to close the window. As he did, he brushed against James’ hands and made them jerk, splashing more water.
“Damn it,” James snarled, yanking the glass to his chest. He glowered at the water and dared it to slop over the rim.
His shoulder shivered, but unlike the fever-shudders, this one was small and…warm, not chilly. He looked over and saw Grégoire slowly drawing the back of his hand along the edge of his shirt, which was wet with sweat and the spilled water.
The other man leaned forward, then stopped when his mouth was beside James’ cheek. His hand turned to slip fingertips just beneath James’ open collar. “You’re ill and I’m disenchanted. I can’t think of an unhealthier start.”
James swallowed hard and licked at his parched lips. His next breath came a bit short. “I was almost married, but I lost out to a…he suits her better. And now I’m dreaming of pirates.”
“Without hanging?” An answer apparently wasn’t expected, because Grégoire continued talking. He stroked his fingers up and down, just inside the hem, and then circled them around James’ neck. “I liked my wife’s brother. But he wasn’t what he seemed, and I killed him…I loved her and she died wrapped around my son.”
His thumb remained beneath James’ chin, which it lifted so their lips could meet.
It was slow and warm and lazy, a sweet way of soothing the ache in James’ throat. It was a jumble of past and present, real and not-real, memories of things that never were shading into sensations he knew belonged elsewhere, but that he couldn’t remember where elsewhere was. Elizabeth’s delicate lips, finally free of their gauzy veil barrier…some frantic fumble in the hold, bracing against the pitch of the ship and biting lips so the moans weren’t heard because sodomy caught meant the noose…arms catching him back from the spew of his failing body…the burning sweetness of rum. He closed his eyes in the hopes that it would sort itself out, but it only confused him further.
Something stirred beside the bed. Grégoire jerked away, for once lacking his composure. He stared at James for a long moment, frustration and longing and a similar incomprehension in his eyes. Then he smiled to himself, mocking something, and turned to look at the floor.
***