Archie Kennedy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
simplestgift) wrote2000-02-19 06:16 pm
simplestgift) wrote2000-02-19 06:16 pm
OOC: Sweven Application
PLAYER INFO
PLAYER NAME » Tori
PLAYER JOURNAL » tori-angeli
AGE » Over 18
EMAIL » phoenixrider at earthling dot net.
INSTANT MESSAGING » m t a n g e li without any of the spaces.
OTHER METHOD OF CONTACT » toriangeli on Plurk.
HOW MANY CHARACTERS DO YOU CURRENTLY PLAY? » N/A
CHARACTER INFO
CHARACTER NAME » Archie Kennedy
FANDOM » Hornblower (A&E series)
CANON-POINT » After the episode Retribution.
HISTORY »
Well, it's not history that concerns me, Horatio, it's the future. It's far more uncertain.
Nothing in canon states his origins outright, but there are a few clues. His speech and manner and the fact that he mentions his father's manservant suggest he comes from a well-to-do English family. The actor who portrayed him said, in an interview, “What I'm thinking, really, is he is probably fairly well off in terms of his background. My take on it was, he was the second or third son of some nobleman. Archie Kennedy is a Scottish name, so I thought he was Scottish gentry. His family probably wasn't terribly wealthy but was titled, and he went off to the navy to make his career. And he wasn't probably naturally suited to it.”
He joined the English navy as a midshipman aboard the ship-of-the-line Justinian and served for an undetermined amount of time before the King Louis' execution in 1793 brought England to war (based on typical military protocol for the time, he was most likely a volunteer aboard a ship since the age of eleven for about three years before becoming a midshipman). During his time on the Justinian, he got on very well with most of the crew, being a likable young man, but endured abuse at the hands of a senior midshipman who took to bullying his way to the top. The abuse, implied to be both physical and sexual, was traumatic enough to give Archie seizures when reminded of or threatened by his abuser, but they presumably have not bothered him in years.
After King Louis was executed by his own people, he was transferred to the frigate Indefatigable to fight in the French Revolutionary Wars. During a cutting-out expedition requiring silence and secrecy, he had an ill-timed seizure and had to be knocked out and left in the jolly boat, where he was set adrift during the attack. Shortly after, he was captured. He wound up in a Spanish prison, where he remained for about two years. Multiple escape attempts earned him a month in a cramped oubliette with no room to stand up or lie down. Fortune finally threw him a bone when his fellow midshipman, Horatio Hornblower, was captured with his men and sent to the same prison. Horatio took the half-mad and suicidal Kennedy into his stubborn care, nursing him back to health and earning himself the most devoted friend imaginable. They were later released for heroic behavior.
The two served together aboard the Indefatigable for several years until being transferred to the Renown as junior lieutenants under the command of Captain Sawyer. Sawyer, once a war hero, was quickly discovered to have grown senile and viciously paranoid in his old age. An unfortunate incident, for which both Horatio and Archie were present, caused Sawyer to fall into the hold, which nearly killed him. Upon their arrival at Kingston, Horatio was accused of pushing Sawyer and court-martialed for mutiny, but Archie, who had been mortally wounded days before, confessed falsely to save his friend's life and career. He succumbed to his wound hours later.
AU SETTING/PAST GAME HISTORY » I will not be taking Archie to Sweven with any memories of previous games or AUs.
PERSONALITY »
You see that, Horatio? Had you been rich enough to buy yourself a commission as well as a new uniform, you could've joined the army instead.
Archie is high-spirited, with hot-running emotions and a sort of cheeky, boyish charm. A line in an early installment of the series reveals that he stays in touch with his family. As he grew, his cheekiness became full-out snarkiness and he made it his duty to keep his friends from getting too serious. The misfortunes of his past have served to make him stronger, and the fact that his high spirits survived them says much for his natural resilience and his closeness with the man who was ultimately his savior.
It is rare to see him solemn, but his emotions do run strongly both ways and he has been fighting a severe inferiority complex for years. He has come a long way since, thanks to Horatio. He has had several spells of bad depression and post-traumatic stress disorder caused by circumstances, as well as a conversion disorder that gave him psychogenic non-epileptic seizures in the presence (or threatened presence) of his abuser aboard the Justinian. At Ferrol, the location of the Spanish prison, he nearly starved himself to death when he was too weak to attempt suicide any other way, and he now has a fierce empathy for any victim of abuse, depression, or fear. When a teenage midshipman was unfairly beaten several times by Captain Sawyer, Archie quietly gave him tasks to keep his mind off the pain and attempted to defend him in front of the captain (this, unfortunately, only made things worse, which he was dismayed to discover).
Early in his career, there were instances of him panicking in a crisis. On his first mission as an acting lieutenant, he made a few poor calls and got trigger-happy simply from blind panic, but during the same mission, he learned to channel his fear and command his men with adequate authority. Because of instances like this, he insists that he is “a little prone to panic,” yet he recently leapt off a cliff into the ocean below with a man who could not swim (Lieutenant Bush) and another man who was afraid of heights (Horatio). More astonishingly, he voluntarily returned to Ferrol with Horatio upon learning that his friend had given his parole that he would not escape (they were later released for heroic behavior). Death was admittedly terrifying for him, though Horatio was able to put him at some ease. Having an extensive history with physical pain, he does not have a tolerance per se, but many mental tricks he uses to take his mind off it, which he teaches to Wellard in Mutiny. When he suffers, he suffers quietly if he can help it, though he has been known to mutter fitfully in his sleep during a nightmare. The life and stability he has he owes to Horatio, and because of this, it may be fortunate that he died first.
He devotes his life to his career on the sea, with which he has a sort of love-hate relationship in some ways, but the arts and theatre in particular are an actual passion for him. He once told Horatio, “I knew Drury Lane like it was my home.” He can quote entire passages from plays and knows the names and faces of actors. Music and literature are beloved to him, and he sometimes reads or studies in his spare time even though formal classes make him uncomfortable. Books were apparently one of his little ways to take refuge during the tense days aboard the Justinian (in the first episode, we see him resolutely buried in a book, trying for all the world to be invisible, while his abuser torments someone else). He also speaks and reads Spanish as a result of his long imprisonment in Spain and was beginning to teach it to Horatio in The Duchess and the Devil.
Archie is an Enlightenment-era Scot, meaning he's an emotional sort of fellow who values freedom. If he is truly stoic, it can signify deep emotional turmoil—he's hiding something. During this age, any emotion which encouraged empathy and therefore morality (love, joy, devotion, sorrow for another's grief, righteous anger) was considered good, so any emotion which does not (self-pity, fear), he has good reason to attempt to hide. He has a tendency to lose himself in thought during quiet moments, especially stressful ones, where he appears to shut out the world in order to cope. He is not bullied easily nowadays, but that came at great cost, and it really is owed largely to the fact that Horatio's personality is stronger than his own. It cannot be emphasized enough that his friendship with Horatio is the most important thing he has. He is keenly aware of this, and that his best friend benefits constantly from favoritism. It is a fact that he used to resent deeply. He held it against Horatio in El Ferrol, fighting his shipmate's stubborn treatment until his own stubbornness ran out. Now, he somewhat mournfully accepts it, and with it his constant sense of inadequacy compared to Horatio (even if, all the same, he understands the importance of his role as Horatio's chief emotional supporter). He doesn't give himself enough credit where this is concerned, as he's not quite as dependent on Horatio as he thinks he is. Nevertheless, he is as devoted to Horatio as a man can be, causing me to informally refer to them both as “the twins.”
In regards to his attitude as a military man, he is more concerned with right and wrong than the chain of command. In this way, he shows how very Scottish he is, considering the law and morality not necessarily to coincide. Under a more keen or brutal captain he would likely be called insubordinate. However, he maintains an awareness of this and keeps his comments subtle enough to be just shy of insubordination. Every so often his passion gets the better of him and he spits out something inappropriate about a superior—with good reason, always, but the British Navy is iron-fisted when it comes to a man's words toward a superior. It's not over-the-top from the point of view of a modern-day civilian or even an 18th-century one, but for an 18th-century navy man, it definitely crosses the line. He has a slim but stubborn rebellious streak that, at its heart, is a stab of revenge for the mistreatment aboard the Justinian that left him quietly submissive for so long. Mainly, it manifests itself as a tendency to question why superiors must be followed like gods, even if they are cruel or incompetent (leading Horatio to sigh, “Archie, we've already lost one captain” and Buckland to chide, “The captain's indisposition is not a cause for celebration, Mr. Kennedy.”). In this way, he is ahead of his time. Aside from his criticism of the corrupt management, he loves what he does and is very good at what he does, but he's not true material for a commander. He's not precisely mischievous, but he is barely professional enough to be a lieutenant and skirts by on skill and charm rather than a true commander's forceful and solemn personality. If he had survived, it is unlikely he would have become a captain. That's not to say his men don't like him. He is too much like one of the ratings--more refined than they are, more poised and subtle, but still with a streak of immaturity.
He enjoys giving his friends a gentle ribbing, his enemies a less gentle one, but he is ultimately an utterly harmless person, blameless but never naive. He's more of a troll than a trickster. He once declared, very loudly, Horatio's fear of heights to all who would listen simply to ruffle his feathers as Horatio scaled a cliff. As a lieutenant aboard the Renown, he once spent just a little too long during a vital mission looking through a spyglass and giggling at the couple snogging on the wall of the fort he was about to infiltrate (Lt. Bush had to remove the telescope from his hands before he would stop, giving him a gentle chastisement). Having lived for years among rough (but not bad) company since he was an impressionable boy, there is very little he hasn't heard, seen, or thought of. If there is more than one way to construe something he has said, the less innocent option is almost always what he means, though he is a master of disguised insults and passive aggression. While he stands at attention as well as anyone, he is never, ever above thinking Brest is a funny name for a city, darn those frogs.
Altogether, he is an interesting mix of cynicism and altruism. Even if he is secretly a pessimist, he uses it as a springboard for his sense of compassion. Because he doesn't trust that just anyone will intervene in a bad situation, he is not one to stand by while someone else suffers--not anymore, at least, if his interactions with Mr. Wellard in canon are any example at all. He has an intense hatred of cruelty and will not wish it even on his worst enemies. When one of his men panics, Archie responds with both firmness and understanding, the latter of which is rare in the navy. In The Duchess and the Devil, another midshipman denounced him, proclaiming him an unworthy midshipman because of his seizures and arguing in favor of letting him die to save them all the trouble. When the midshipman was shot, it was Archie who tended him, bandaging his wounds and insisting that the man eat in spite of the despair that overwhelmed him. "Stay strong! He'll need you!" were Archie's words, echoing what Horatio told him while nursing him back to health. On the flip side, his cynicism means he can snap to judgments about people quickly. He and Lt. Bush did not get along at first, and Archie very much appeared to write him off as Captain Sawyer's yes-man until Bush proved himself capable of independent thought. While any bitterness will never, never overrule his powerful sense of compassion, the ease with which he judges, especially those in power, is certainly a fault of his.
He has a few recurring tics and mannerisms. When afraid or anxious, he tenses his jaw and blinks very rapidly, staring resolutely at nothing. If he is afraid of a particular person, he has trouble looking them in the eye or keeping a steady voice. He wrinkles his nose, sometimes when concentrating or focusing on someone. When he's angry, he actually looks very neutral, except that his jaw is visibly tense. His vocal inflections are all over the place, sometimes even more expressive than his face. He has the misfortune of being a very readable person in a world of professionalism and stoic courage.
ABILITIES/WEAKNESSES »
I panicked. I knew I was doing it, but I couldn't stop myself.
On the physical end, he is a spectacular shot. He once took down a man on a roof at a near-impossible distance during the heat of battle (technically not very possible in real life—a flintlock pistol just does not have a 200-yard range of accuracy). He is also agile and a very fast runner, with a good sense of balance, and his muscle tone is to be expected of someone who practically grew up on a ship. He is also an excellent swimmer.
He is a good leader, or he would never have made lieutenant. His understanding of tactics both on and off the shore is better than he generally credits himself for, and unlike his much-praised best friend, he knows a hopeless situation from the start. He knows ships and works well with firearms, particularly cannons. He is decent at calculus and advanced geometry for the purposes of navigation, well-read, and possesses an excellent memory.
He has been exempt from the hardest labor on a ship, having joined as a midshipman. His coordination and ability to think on his feet in a fight are merely average. He can only hold his own in close combat if it involves weapons, and even then—well, close combat is how he died. In a fist fight against a skilled opponent, he wouldn't stand a chance.
His seizure disorder is psychological, not biological (at least, this is the route I am taking based on the apparent nature of this disease; for example, the fact that his seizure ends when he is knocked unconscious is highly indicative of psychogenic non-epileptic seizures), but it can knock him flat given certain emotional stimuli (it must be a very specific stimulus—he spent two years as a POW in Spain, one of the darkest points in his life, and never had a problem, but he had a seizure the same night that Horatio appeared and started talking about returning to the Indefatigable). Being someone who thinks with his heart more than his head, he does not always think before he speaks and can jump to conclusions and be impulsive to his own detriment and others'. He has always relied on Horatio to come up with some sort of plan in response to bad circumstances. He is not the most emotionally stable person, either.
DREAM POWER » Empathic healing. It doesn't transfer wounds, but it does heal them, transferring the pain to Kennedy. If the wound is lethal, Archie will die. The target has to be asleep for it to work. Archie does not.
CHARACTER SAMPLES
NETWORK SAMPLE »
I suppose there's no one who can think up work suitable for a sailor. I can't think of any other skills I have—none which would earn a living, at any rate. It's not that I'm unwilling. I suppose I...don't know where to begin. I'd be lost enough in my own time. In this one, I'm utterly befogged.
LOG SAMPLE »
For the second time in his life, Archie Kennedy had been rescued.
He was standing in the hotel bathroom, holding his shirt in one hand, staring at his naked torso in the mirror. After a moment, he gently spread his hand over the right lower edge of his rib cage, fingers parting to feel for any break or dip in the skin, then drawing back together quickly as he became suddenly self-conscious. Awkwardly, he scratched his nose, although no one was looking. There being no privacy aboard a ship, he couldn't shake the feeling that someone could be watching. The thought made him slide the cool linen shirt over his head. On straightening out the shirt and buttoning the cuffs, he ran his hands over the front. There were no tears or stains.
It was as if he had never been wounded.
His lips parted as he took in a deep breath, his eyes fluttering shut. When he let it back out, he calmly reached for his stockings and sat on the toilet to put them on. They had all the dinginess of a year-old white thing, as clean as they were. When they were on, he inspected his trousers. No bloodstains. Tucking his shirt between his legs, he slid the trousers on and buttoned them, tugging at the laces in back to accommodate for weight lost. He hadn't really eaten in five days, and even now realized how ravenous he was. That made it real.
You're not supposed to be here, the nurse had told him. What sort of force could bring a man back from the dead? What could rip a soul from the hands of God, the Devil, or whoever held it beyond the grave? Who called up the ghost of Samuel?
Archie buttoned his waistcoat with shaking hands. This was all too much to think about right now. He needed food, water, and rest. Everything else would be fine. As long as he had Horatio, everything would be fine. But after, even if this company found a way to send them home, what then? Archie couldn't go home. He was dead and buried there. Even if he could go back, would he wake up in his own coffin and suffocate? Even supposing he arrived in the free air with his feet on Scotland's soil, he could never go back to his old life. His parents would welcome him home, but re-joining the Navy was impossible. He'd be a leech living off the generosity of his parents and, eventually, his brothers.
He couldn't think about this right now.
His eyes closed again and he swallowed, his jaw working for a second before he opened his eyes and grabbed his coat. Wearing this uniform didn't feel ironic yet, not unless he thought about it. It was too soon for that. He combed his hair back and tied it up in its queue with unsteady hands. The mirror showed him a cleaned-up officer who looked very badly like he needed a good meal and about two days of sleep. Somehow, he was only feeling the last two. Still, he looked better than the man with a ball lodged within his rib cage, so he supposed it was an improvement.
He leaned against the sink briefly, taking a deep breath, allowing himself just a few seconds to completely panic, then straightened, forcing his face to even.
He was all right. He was going to be all right. As long as they were together, nothing too bad could happen.
Not quite ready to face the world, Archie Kennedy opened the door and stepped into it.
ANYTHING ELSE? » No!
PLAYER NAME » Tori
PLAYER JOURNAL » tori-angeli
AGE » Over 18
EMAIL » phoenixrider at earthling dot net.
INSTANT MESSAGING » m t a n g e li without any of the spaces.
OTHER METHOD OF CONTACT » toriangeli on Plurk.
HOW MANY CHARACTERS DO YOU CURRENTLY PLAY? » N/A
CHARACTER INFO
CHARACTER NAME » Archie Kennedy
FANDOM » Hornblower (A&E series)
CANON-POINT » After the episode Retribution.
HISTORY »
Well, it's not history that concerns me, Horatio, it's the future. It's far more uncertain.
Nothing in canon states his origins outright, but there are a few clues. His speech and manner and the fact that he mentions his father's manservant suggest he comes from a well-to-do English family. The actor who portrayed him said, in an interview, “What I'm thinking, really, is he is probably fairly well off in terms of his background. My take on it was, he was the second or third son of some nobleman. Archie Kennedy is a Scottish name, so I thought he was Scottish gentry. His family probably wasn't terribly wealthy but was titled, and he went off to the navy to make his career. And he wasn't probably naturally suited to it.”
He joined the English navy as a midshipman aboard the ship-of-the-line Justinian and served for an undetermined amount of time before the King Louis' execution in 1793 brought England to war (based on typical military protocol for the time, he was most likely a volunteer aboard a ship since the age of eleven for about three years before becoming a midshipman). During his time on the Justinian, he got on very well with most of the crew, being a likable young man, but endured abuse at the hands of a senior midshipman who took to bullying his way to the top. The abuse, implied to be both physical and sexual, was traumatic enough to give Archie seizures when reminded of or threatened by his abuser, but they presumably have not bothered him in years.
After King Louis was executed by his own people, he was transferred to the frigate Indefatigable to fight in the French Revolutionary Wars. During a cutting-out expedition requiring silence and secrecy, he had an ill-timed seizure and had to be knocked out and left in the jolly boat, where he was set adrift during the attack. Shortly after, he was captured. He wound up in a Spanish prison, where he remained for about two years. Multiple escape attempts earned him a month in a cramped oubliette with no room to stand up or lie down. Fortune finally threw him a bone when his fellow midshipman, Horatio Hornblower, was captured with his men and sent to the same prison. Horatio took the half-mad and suicidal Kennedy into his stubborn care, nursing him back to health and earning himself the most devoted friend imaginable. They were later released for heroic behavior.
The two served together aboard the Indefatigable for several years until being transferred to the Renown as junior lieutenants under the command of Captain Sawyer. Sawyer, once a war hero, was quickly discovered to have grown senile and viciously paranoid in his old age. An unfortunate incident, for which both Horatio and Archie were present, caused Sawyer to fall into the hold, which nearly killed him. Upon their arrival at Kingston, Horatio was accused of pushing Sawyer and court-martialed for mutiny, but Archie, who had been mortally wounded days before, confessed falsely to save his friend's life and career. He succumbed to his wound hours later.
AU SETTING/PAST GAME HISTORY » I will not be taking Archie to Sweven with any memories of previous games or AUs.
PERSONALITY »
You see that, Horatio? Had you been rich enough to buy yourself a commission as well as a new uniform, you could've joined the army instead.
Archie is high-spirited, with hot-running emotions and a sort of cheeky, boyish charm. A line in an early installment of the series reveals that he stays in touch with his family. As he grew, his cheekiness became full-out snarkiness and he made it his duty to keep his friends from getting too serious. The misfortunes of his past have served to make him stronger, and the fact that his high spirits survived them says much for his natural resilience and his closeness with the man who was ultimately his savior.
It is rare to see him solemn, but his emotions do run strongly both ways and he has been fighting a severe inferiority complex for years. He has come a long way since, thanks to Horatio. He has had several spells of bad depression and post-traumatic stress disorder caused by circumstances, as well as a conversion disorder that gave him psychogenic non-epileptic seizures in the presence (or threatened presence) of his abuser aboard the Justinian. At Ferrol, the location of the Spanish prison, he nearly starved himself to death when he was too weak to attempt suicide any other way, and he now has a fierce empathy for any victim of abuse, depression, or fear. When a teenage midshipman was unfairly beaten several times by Captain Sawyer, Archie quietly gave him tasks to keep his mind off the pain and attempted to defend him in front of the captain (this, unfortunately, only made things worse, which he was dismayed to discover).
Early in his career, there were instances of him panicking in a crisis. On his first mission as an acting lieutenant, he made a few poor calls and got trigger-happy simply from blind panic, but during the same mission, he learned to channel his fear and command his men with adequate authority. Because of instances like this, he insists that he is “a little prone to panic,” yet he recently leapt off a cliff into the ocean below with a man who could not swim (Lieutenant Bush) and another man who was afraid of heights (Horatio). More astonishingly, he voluntarily returned to Ferrol with Horatio upon learning that his friend had given his parole that he would not escape (they were later released for heroic behavior). Death was admittedly terrifying for him, though Horatio was able to put him at some ease. Having an extensive history with physical pain, he does not have a tolerance per se, but many mental tricks he uses to take his mind off it, which he teaches to Wellard in Mutiny. When he suffers, he suffers quietly if he can help it, though he has been known to mutter fitfully in his sleep during a nightmare. The life and stability he has he owes to Horatio, and because of this, it may be fortunate that he died first.
He devotes his life to his career on the sea, with which he has a sort of love-hate relationship in some ways, but the arts and theatre in particular are an actual passion for him. He once told Horatio, “I knew Drury Lane like it was my home.” He can quote entire passages from plays and knows the names and faces of actors. Music and literature are beloved to him, and he sometimes reads or studies in his spare time even though formal classes make him uncomfortable. Books were apparently one of his little ways to take refuge during the tense days aboard the Justinian (in the first episode, we see him resolutely buried in a book, trying for all the world to be invisible, while his abuser torments someone else). He also speaks and reads Spanish as a result of his long imprisonment in Spain and was beginning to teach it to Horatio in The Duchess and the Devil.
Archie is an Enlightenment-era Scot, meaning he's an emotional sort of fellow who values freedom. If he is truly stoic, it can signify deep emotional turmoil—he's hiding something. During this age, any emotion which encouraged empathy and therefore morality (love, joy, devotion, sorrow for another's grief, righteous anger) was considered good, so any emotion which does not (self-pity, fear), he has good reason to attempt to hide. He has a tendency to lose himself in thought during quiet moments, especially stressful ones, where he appears to shut out the world in order to cope. He is not bullied easily nowadays, but that came at great cost, and it really is owed largely to the fact that Horatio's personality is stronger than his own. It cannot be emphasized enough that his friendship with Horatio is the most important thing he has. He is keenly aware of this, and that his best friend benefits constantly from favoritism. It is a fact that he used to resent deeply. He held it against Horatio in El Ferrol, fighting his shipmate's stubborn treatment until his own stubbornness ran out. Now, he somewhat mournfully accepts it, and with it his constant sense of inadequacy compared to Horatio (even if, all the same, he understands the importance of his role as Horatio's chief emotional supporter). He doesn't give himself enough credit where this is concerned, as he's not quite as dependent on Horatio as he thinks he is. Nevertheless, he is as devoted to Horatio as a man can be, causing me to informally refer to them both as “the twins.”
In regards to his attitude as a military man, he is more concerned with right and wrong than the chain of command. In this way, he shows how very Scottish he is, considering the law and morality not necessarily to coincide. Under a more keen or brutal captain he would likely be called insubordinate. However, he maintains an awareness of this and keeps his comments subtle enough to be just shy of insubordination. Every so often his passion gets the better of him and he spits out something inappropriate about a superior—with good reason, always, but the British Navy is iron-fisted when it comes to a man's words toward a superior. It's not over-the-top from the point of view of a modern-day civilian or even an 18th-century one, but for an 18th-century navy man, it definitely crosses the line. He has a slim but stubborn rebellious streak that, at its heart, is a stab of revenge for the mistreatment aboard the Justinian that left him quietly submissive for so long. Mainly, it manifests itself as a tendency to question why superiors must be followed like gods, even if they are cruel or incompetent (leading Horatio to sigh, “Archie, we've already lost one captain” and Buckland to chide, “The captain's indisposition is not a cause for celebration, Mr. Kennedy.”). In this way, he is ahead of his time. Aside from his criticism of the corrupt management, he loves what he does and is very good at what he does, but he's not true material for a commander. He's not precisely mischievous, but he is barely professional enough to be a lieutenant and skirts by on skill and charm rather than a true commander's forceful and solemn personality. If he had survived, it is unlikely he would have become a captain. That's not to say his men don't like him. He is too much like one of the ratings--more refined than they are, more poised and subtle, but still with a streak of immaturity.
He enjoys giving his friends a gentle ribbing, his enemies a less gentle one, but he is ultimately an utterly harmless person, blameless but never naive. He's more of a troll than a trickster. He once declared, very loudly, Horatio's fear of heights to all who would listen simply to ruffle his feathers as Horatio scaled a cliff. As a lieutenant aboard the Renown, he once spent just a little too long during a vital mission looking through a spyglass and giggling at the couple snogging on the wall of the fort he was about to infiltrate (Lt. Bush had to remove the telescope from his hands before he would stop, giving him a gentle chastisement). Having lived for years among rough (but not bad) company since he was an impressionable boy, there is very little he hasn't heard, seen, or thought of. If there is more than one way to construe something he has said, the less innocent option is almost always what he means, though he is a master of disguised insults and passive aggression. While he stands at attention as well as anyone, he is never, ever above thinking Brest is a funny name for a city, darn those frogs.
Altogether, he is an interesting mix of cynicism and altruism. Even if he is secretly a pessimist, he uses it as a springboard for his sense of compassion. Because he doesn't trust that just anyone will intervene in a bad situation, he is not one to stand by while someone else suffers--not anymore, at least, if his interactions with Mr. Wellard in canon are any example at all. He has an intense hatred of cruelty and will not wish it even on his worst enemies. When one of his men panics, Archie responds with both firmness and understanding, the latter of which is rare in the navy. In The Duchess and the Devil, another midshipman denounced him, proclaiming him an unworthy midshipman because of his seizures and arguing in favor of letting him die to save them all the trouble. When the midshipman was shot, it was Archie who tended him, bandaging his wounds and insisting that the man eat in spite of the despair that overwhelmed him. "Stay strong! He'll need you!" were Archie's words, echoing what Horatio told him while nursing him back to health. On the flip side, his cynicism means he can snap to judgments about people quickly. He and Lt. Bush did not get along at first, and Archie very much appeared to write him off as Captain Sawyer's yes-man until Bush proved himself capable of independent thought. While any bitterness will never, never overrule his powerful sense of compassion, the ease with which he judges, especially those in power, is certainly a fault of his.
He has a few recurring tics and mannerisms. When afraid or anxious, he tenses his jaw and blinks very rapidly, staring resolutely at nothing. If he is afraid of a particular person, he has trouble looking them in the eye or keeping a steady voice. He wrinkles his nose, sometimes when concentrating or focusing on someone. When he's angry, he actually looks very neutral, except that his jaw is visibly tense. His vocal inflections are all over the place, sometimes even more expressive than his face. He has the misfortune of being a very readable person in a world of professionalism and stoic courage.
ABILITIES/WEAKNESSES »
I panicked. I knew I was doing it, but I couldn't stop myself.
On the physical end, he is a spectacular shot. He once took down a man on a roof at a near-impossible distance during the heat of battle (technically not very possible in real life—a flintlock pistol just does not have a 200-yard range of accuracy). He is also agile and a very fast runner, with a good sense of balance, and his muscle tone is to be expected of someone who practically grew up on a ship. He is also an excellent swimmer.
He is a good leader, or he would never have made lieutenant. His understanding of tactics both on and off the shore is better than he generally credits himself for, and unlike his much-praised best friend, he knows a hopeless situation from the start. He knows ships and works well with firearms, particularly cannons. He is decent at calculus and advanced geometry for the purposes of navigation, well-read, and possesses an excellent memory.
He has been exempt from the hardest labor on a ship, having joined as a midshipman. His coordination and ability to think on his feet in a fight are merely average. He can only hold his own in close combat if it involves weapons, and even then—well, close combat is how he died. In a fist fight against a skilled opponent, he wouldn't stand a chance.
His seizure disorder is psychological, not biological (at least, this is the route I am taking based on the apparent nature of this disease; for example, the fact that his seizure ends when he is knocked unconscious is highly indicative of psychogenic non-epileptic seizures), but it can knock him flat given certain emotional stimuli (it must be a very specific stimulus—he spent two years as a POW in Spain, one of the darkest points in his life, and never had a problem, but he had a seizure the same night that Horatio appeared and started talking about returning to the Indefatigable). Being someone who thinks with his heart more than his head, he does not always think before he speaks and can jump to conclusions and be impulsive to his own detriment and others'. He has always relied on Horatio to come up with some sort of plan in response to bad circumstances. He is not the most emotionally stable person, either.
DREAM POWER » Empathic healing. It doesn't transfer wounds, but it does heal them, transferring the pain to Kennedy. If the wound is lethal, Archie will die. The target has to be asleep for it to work. Archie does not.
CHARACTER SAMPLES
NETWORK SAMPLE »
I suppose there's no one who can think up work suitable for a sailor. I can't think of any other skills I have—none which would earn a living, at any rate. It's not that I'm unwilling. I suppose I...don't know where to begin. I'd be lost enough in my own time. In this one, I'm utterly befogged.
LOG SAMPLE »
For the second time in his life, Archie Kennedy had been rescued.
He was standing in the hotel bathroom, holding his shirt in one hand, staring at his naked torso in the mirror. After a moment, he gently spread his hand over the right lower edge of his rib cage, fingers parting to feel for any break or dip in the skin, then drawing back together quickly as he became suddenly self-conscious. Awkwardly, he scratched his nose, although no one was looking. There being no privacy aboard a ship, he couldn't shake the feeling that someone could be watching. The thought made him slide the cool linen shirt over his head. On straightening out the shirt and buttoning the cuffs, he ran his hands over the front. There were no tears or stains.
It was as if he had never been wounded.
His lips parted as he took in a deep breath, his eyes fluttering shut. When he let it back out, he calmly reached for his stockings and sat on the toilet to put them on. They had all the dinginess of a year-old white thing, as clean as they were. When they were on, he inspected his trousers. No bloodstains. Tucking his shirt between his legs, he slid the trousers on and buttoned them, tugging at the laces in back to accommodate for weight lost. He hadn't really eaten in five days, and even now realized how ravenous he was. That made it real.
You're not supposed to be here, the nurse had told him. What sort of force could bring a man back from the dead? What could rip a soul from the hands of God, the Devil, or whoever held it beyond the grave? Who called up the ghost of Samuel?
Archie buttoned his waistcoat with shaking hands. This was all too much to think about right now. He needed food, water, and rest. Everything else would be fine. As long as he had Horatio, everything would be fine. But after, even if this company found a way to send them home, what then? Archie couldn't go home. He was dead and buried there. Even if he could go back, would he wake up in his own coffin and suffocate? Even supposing he arrived in the free air with his feet on Scotland's soil, he could never go back to his old life. His parents would welcome him home, but re-joining the Navy was impossible. He'd be a leech living off the generosity of his parents and, eventually, his brothers.
He couldn't think about this right now.
His eyes closed again and he swallowed, his jaw working for a second before he opened his eyes and grabbed his coat. Wearing this uniform didn't feel ironic yet, not unless he thought about it. It was too soon for that. He combed his hair back and tied it up in its queue with unsteady hands. The mirror showed him a cleaned-up officer who looked very badly like he needed a good meal and about two days of sleep. Somehow, he was only feeling the last two. Still, he looked better than the man with a ball lodged within his rib cage, so he supposed it was an improvement.
He leaned against the sink briefly, taking a deep breath, allowing himself just a few seconds to completely panic, then straightened, forcing his face to even.
He was all right. He was going to be all right. As long as they were together, nothing too bad could happen.
Not quite ready to face the world, Archie Kennedy opened the door and stepped into it.
ANYTHING ELSE? » No!