simplestgift | Twenty-Nine Bells: [Action/Voice/Written] FORWARD-DATED to the 19th and 20th

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Twenty-Nine Bells: [Action/Voice/Written] FORWARD-DATED to the 19th and 20th

[Today, Archie is on the beach. He has a couple of homemade instruments with him that might look odd to someone who isn’t a sailor—a quadrant and a sextant. He also has a gigantic container, the type one might bring on picnics with lots of family, with some drink or another inside. Spread out on the dock is a tattered blanket, two large books lying open, and scattered forgotten foodstuffs and folded blankets. The one object which never leaves his hand is a watch.

Anyone with any sailing experience would see, when he’s using the tools, that he’s determining the sun’s altitude at varying times of the day, probably as a way to check his current latitude. He’s especially focused when the sun is at its zenith. He jots down observations and calculations in a small notebook.

Usually an experienced lieutenant wouldn’t sweat this much over a routine, but Kennedy always did this as little as he could even back home after moving from the midshipmen’s berth to the ward room, and hasn’t done it since coming to Luceti over a year ago. As the Britannia’s undisputed first lieutenant, however, he is suddenly worried he won’t be able to do this at all after so little practice. Therefore, he has to prove he can do this, as much as he hates it. Always he checks his watch, measuring the time throughout the day and night. This is why he brought so much coffee.

At around six in the evening, when he’s finished plotting his position upon the planet or given up on it, he’ll send out a spoken message.]

[To Elizabeth Swann; filtered 78%]

Elizabeth? The sun is about to set. Would you like to meet me at the docks?

[The next morning, he jots down his findings on the journal network. First is a set of numbers schoolkids and navigators could recognize as latitude and longitude. Then:]

A solar day here is the same length as one on Earth. On the other hand, our position doesn’t correspond with anything that would make sense on Earth. At least, not to my reckoning. I plotted it while standing on the beach, where there used to be a desert till it was flooded. Nevertheless, aren’t all planets possessing of different solar and lunar days? Why should this one correspond exactly with the one I’m from?

Have I done something wrong?

Besides assume the existence of Greenwich upon this planet, of course. Perhaps Luceti should be reckoned the prime meridian when we make further observations about the longitude of other locations?

[There is no way to determine whether or not the Barrier provides too much refraction of light for the measurements to be accurate, either--something he hasn't really considered, even though he's plenty aware of the phenomenon.]

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[Archie knows when he's being patronized. He stares at the numbers for a moment, knowing exactly what he'd meant to write there.]

Not...especially possible, that one. [He scratches it out and corrects it, speaking somewhat stiffly.] Thank you.

[The admiral took no pleasure in Archie's response. He turned his back and looked out at the sea, and if he observed either the expression cast his way or the lieutenant's hasty correction then he made no sign of it.]

[Archie finishes correcting his work and closes the notebook.]

Do you miss the sea?

[He missed being relevant - but in many ways his worth and potency were anchored out there in the open ocean, as a part of him would ever be. The question was not so simple as Archie seemed to suggest, however. Norrington knew his body had been consigned to the sea. When he returned home he faced an eternity in its care. To bemoan his hours left on land would be to express a desire for the alternative. How could he possibly explain all of this to Archie, here and now? And so it was that he fell back on a feeble ambiguity.]

I cannot say.

Edited 2012-02-20 03:42 (UTC)

No, it's...always sort of a strange question to ask. It isn't the sea, it's the ships, isn't it?

[It is much more than that, but,]

"Yes, you are quite right.

I trust you will recall that I had command of the cargo ship during our draft. It was a dispicable vessel - a metal beast with no heart and a propensity to make the most horrendous noises."

[He had thought that he might feel better suited to this place, but in fact the experience had exaserbated his longing for home. For all that it gained him a place within Luceti's society, it had alienated him from the fabric and matter of the village.]

[There's a pause. Archie chooses his next words carefully.]

Then...perhaps this is a trifle lowly, for an admiral, but...what would you think of sailing on board that one instead?

[He nods to the Britannia, anchored off-shore.]

Was Archie suggesting that he serve aboard that ship? Had he discussed it with the other men of the Britannia? Norrington was aware that he had been singularly unpleasent to any and all likely candidates for the vessel's crew. If anyone besides Kennedy and Hornblower had been involved in this request -- well, the admiral had to doubt their motivations. Furthermore, how had he not wondered by now what rank the boy held aboard Britannia? Norrington has been referring to him as lieutenant Kennedy since his arrival, but was it not possible that he had been promoted? Especially given the limited number of able seamen in the village.

The admiral had not spoken for a long time. If Archie had chosen his words carefully, then Norrington was deliberating excessively. At last he said,

"To sail, perhaps."

He understood the gravity of this offer despite his suspicions. Kennedy may have considered it a matter of courtesy, but he would not have presented the question lightly. The admiral's eyes were on the Brittania by now. They remained there as he added,

"But not to serve."

Edited 2012-02-26 00:55 (UTC)

Was the admiral as burned by the Navy as Archie, then? Kennedy's hands are folded behind his back now, having placed the books down on the blanket again.

"Not to serve whom?"

"Britannia."

Edited 2012-02-26 01:14 (UTC)

So he is burnt, and also prone to over-analyzation. Archie's heart still moves in sympathy for the man. He supposes he's just beginning to come down from his resentful hate phase towards the Navy, and the admiral, being here for less time, is still in the thick of his.

"It's a name we chose because the captain was feeling sentimental and I was feeling ironic. There's no Britain here, Admiral. Even if there were, I believe serving her people--not Parliament," he almost spits out the word, "and not the Admiralty--was one of the few useful things I did with my life, as things go. Not that things were the same in your time.

...And not that I would go back even if I ever could."

Only for one man, by the grace of God.

It was a complex problem for the admiral - one that he could not fully articulate. Nor could he fully determine for himself every aspect of his resentment. The East India Trading Company was at fault for the atrocities that he had seen permitted, not the navy. Not directly. But the EITC's actions had been permitted within the laws set down by the crown and its politicians, and yes, its admirality courts as well. It was precisely because he opted to live his life in service of the people that he could not allign himself with the navy any longer.

"It would be reasonable to argue that men like you and I carry a debt to Britannia. That we are indebted by our birth.

By rights I have paid that debt."

It did not do much to explain his motivations, but it might go some way toward excusing his bitterness. With that said, however, he certainly did not anticipate that Archie would understand the full force and meaning of the statement. He was, after all, being intentionally cryptic.

Edited 2012-02-26 01:47 (UTC)

The last statement makes Archie twitch after a moment. With your life.

"I dunno if thinking of it in terms of debt is fair at all." A pause. "In my time, we're at war. Not one we declared, either, and not one to keep a hand on a few rambunctious colonies. France wants to tear down all monarchies since chopping the head off its own, and we stand between them and our less-capable allies. As well as our own king."

And by king, of course, he means every single solitary person under him as well.

"I don't think it has anything to do with debt, when it comes to that. If it were really in terms of debt, Britannia would owe us more than it could ever pay. Not that it even tries."

Edited 2012-02-26 02:14 (UTC)

Perhaps not fair, no, but the consideration of his debt was one of the ways that he had rationalized it at the end. When he had felt his fingers growing cold - or perhaps it was just his ability to sense them that had been fading? - he had consoled himself with the belief that there was a sort of justice to the fact that he had died in service of the country from whose very soil his physical material was derived. Blood and bone, he owed it all to England. Evidently it was not an arguement that Archie would understand -- nor ever could. He yet lived.

"I did not mean to inturrupt you - certainly not to this degree."

He gestured to the book upon the blanket and nodded. He was beginning the process of excusing himself.

Edited 2012-02-26 02:48 (UTC)

He lets a breath out. He'd been irrationally hoping for some undiscovered telepathy to develop between the mutually dead, but like it or not, he has to be straight. Now or never, while there's a peace between them, and before he dismisses himself.

"I died for her, too, Admiral."

There. No more underhanded hunts.

...Except he just revealed he knows Norrington is dead. Great. How can he explain that one? Damn.

Elizabeth?

...

...No, Britannia.

Edited 2012-02-26 03:02 (UTC)

Was Buffy mistaken? Was this only going to make things more awkward? Well, no going back now.

The admiral did not consider his cryptic turns of phrase impenetrable. Indeed, it was entirely reasonable that Archie might have come to this conclusion himself given his interactions with Norrington to date. If that were so, why had Norrington not observed the same signs in Kennedy? Why did this come as a shock? And what did it mean? Did he suddenly have a companion, here, or not? To share such personal information at such a time was a clear sign of intimacy -- but given the context of the conversation there was a cruelty to it, too. For a moment, the admiral felt as though he was being entrapped. Could the boy have been using this revelation as leverage? As a strategy with which to encourage him to join the crew of Britannia? And this was only one of the violent oscillations that he felt come over him. At length he said, with all sincerity,

"You are too young."

Death at sea was common indeed, and the young died as easily as anyone else, but that never made it easier to bear.

It couldn't possibly be because Buffy wanted it. Wanted them to somehow be there for each other, even though it looked like Norrington needed it more than Kennedy at this point. Norrington needing it, though, is reason enough. He'd told Buffy, months ago, that she was permitted to spill his own death to Norrington, but clearly she hadn't. Since then, he's grown a bit more used to the idea of saying something like this to...well, anyone. The world isn't going to end if the admiral knows, and if it can help a wayward soul, well. Archie used to be a wayward soul.

"Not the youngest I could've been."

He's not going to mention he's not even the youngest in Luceti. Wellard's death is his own to tell, or not tell.

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Twenty-Nine Bells: [Action/Voice/Written] FORWARD-DATED to the 19th and 20th

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[action] Oopsprosesorry.

[action] I could tell. >.>

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[action] I know its hard to tell with me sometime, but this are brain thoughts, not mouth-words.

[action] This are, huh?

[action] Hahah. Hah. Awh dammit.

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