simplestgift | Seventeen Bells: [WRITTEN/ACTION]

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Seventeen Bells: [WRITTEN/ACTION]

On July the 4th, 1776, one Horatio Hornblower was born in Kent. If you see him, bid him many happy returns. He will most likely grump about it all day and act ungrateful, but don't allow it to discourage you. He does appreciate it, he simply does not know it.

[For most of the day, Archie will be running around trying to furnish a bedroom in the house for a new housemate. He'll end up in the library, Good Spirits, the grocery store, then finally the Battle Dome, mostly staring in bewilderment at the controls before deciding this is too scary and leaving. At some point, he'll also take a walk in the woods, rain or no rain, in shirtsleeves and waistcoat but no coat. After a while, he'll get back on the journals.]

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If you wanted to surprise someone dear to you, to cheer her up when she returned from being kidnapped, what would you do for her?

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I know it doesn't sound all that complimentary, but that's how he's described.

He's not very tall, first of all--perhaps even a bit shorter than I am--and he has two feet.

[He'll give you hairy, though.]

Edited 2011-07-05 03:36 (UTC)

[Hm.]

Bulky, then. And if he's got two feet here, then I'm glad to hear it. [Hmm.] You wouldn't happen to know what he was doing back in your world, would you?

He was first lieutenant aboard the Hotspur.

[Duh.]

[Well, golly, Archie, she'll read his mind beforehand next time.]

The Hotspur? [She has to think for a moment or two, since she's been reading the books as they come out, not in chronological order.] Well, never mind about the foot, then.

[His voice is hushed.] ...Do the books say something about him losing a foot? In the future?

[There's a long pause; she really isn't in the mood to be anyone's Cassandra, even if Archie believes her. But at the same time, she can't just drop a bombshell like that one and refuse to give him the details. When she does speak, it's somberly.]

Flying Colours. Or maybe Ship of the Line, I can never remember which. Dunno I really ought to tell you exactly how it goes down. [After all, Archie, it's not your foot.]

[Oh, Archie's not about to tell William a word of this.]

And you believe these books to be quite accurate?

[Shrug. Completely useless shrug.]

You gotta understand--where I'm from, you're all about as real as Doctor McCoy. [There's a "real McCoy" joke in here somewhere, but now is not the time.] I assume they line up with what happened to you, back home, but I can't really tell you for sure, since I don't really know what's real for you three.

[There's a pause. He doesn't get the reference to McCoy--McCoy is real.]

Can you tell me one of the stories of Horatio as a midshipman? Does the book go back that far?

[And, you know, that's probably for the best.]

Yeah, the last few books've been about Hornblower's early career. Let's see, Mister Midshipman Hornblower--it starts out, Hornblower's just been accepted as a midshipman, what's the name of the ship? Jules'd know if he were here. Anyway, another midshipman, Simpson, just lives to make everyone else's lives hell, nearly drives Hornblower to suicide, so Hornblower challenges him to a duel. There's another bit where he's sailing a ship full of rice and it sinks, another where he goes into France a ways as a gunner, little adventures like that.

[Oh god, oh god. Simpson.]

How does the duel end?

[He's trying to keep his voice steady.]

[She doesn't know the variances in Archie's voice well enough to realize she's stumbled into dangerous ground.]

Oh, let's see. The plan's that they'll each pick up a pistol, and one will be loaded, and the other won't. But the captain doesn't load either of them, so I guess you'd call it a draw.

[Oh thank God. Kay, you are an angel.]

Good. Good.

[HUGE sigh of relief. That was not, by any stretch of the imagination, how it happened.]

Good.

If I'd been writing it, shots would've actually been fired, but it's not my book. [Seriously, Archie, what's going on.]

Shots were fired, Mrs. Eaton. [He is so relieved.] The last one put a hole in Simpson's chest and it came from his own captain, as he deserved. [Oh but it is weird to say that name to someone he barely knows. This has been the strangest conversation of his life, and a deeply disturbing one.] Moreover, stop talking about it as if it didn't happen, and us as if we don't exist. And don't, don't talk about Simpson, not to anyone.

[There's a long pause. When Kay replies, there's a sort of tightness to her tone, as though she's holding something back and it's taking some effort.]

All right. Fine. How about we make a deal: I do everything you just demanded, and you don't try to order me around again.

Ever.

[But hey, as a personal favour, she'll resist the urge to declare Archie's reality a better ending than the one Forester wrote.]

It wasn't an order, Mrs. Eaton. It was a request for common decency from you. These aren't just names in a book to us. Mister Simpson is not a subject we discuss with anyone, and the fact that you know about him--quite frankly, it is a private matter and not your business at all. In the nineteen fifties, I'm sure it's nothing, but we're here now and we care very much what is said about us.

[He doesn't know what she knows, although it's good that she doesn't remember him from the book in this case. He certainly would not be this sensitive if Jack weren't on a hunt for answers about his past. If Kay let slip that she'd read these books, and Jack even had a hint of anything that went on in that midshipman's berth, it would be the end of the man's esteem for him. His tone softens a little.]

So I request. No, I beg. Please. Don't speak of him to anyone.

I just told you, Mr. Kennedy, I don't intend to. You don't have to worry.

[Still that clipped tone. Since she's gotten here, met various people she knows from fiction first and foremost, she's begun to make a genuine effort not to talk to them like they're fictional much past introductions (and there, she figures she ought to give some reason for why she sounds so pleased to meet them). Not to their faces, anyway.

To be asked about the contents of a book, however, and then to be told after in no uncertain terms not to talk about it like it's a book? When Kennedy's truth makes it fictional to both of them? And most importantly, when she's been given no clear prior indication that this is at all a delicate subject? Kay doesn't put up with being told what to do, and she doesn't handle being blindsided well. She's counting the fact that she didn't immediately tell him to go to hell a great victory of restraint.]

And in the future, if you have a request, don't phrase it like a damned command. I'm not a trained dog, and I don't do tricks. Now, if you'll excuse me, I ought to get back to work.

[Sorry, Kay, Kennedy is a "heart firmly attached to sleeve" kind of guy with more of a temper than he quite even knows. He shuts the book in frustration.

Later, though, after he's calmed down and thought over what happened, he'll filter a written message to her, not expecting a reply.]

Mrs. Eaton

My heartfelt apologies. I should not have been so harsh without knowing or explaining the full situation. Mr Simpson is a dreadfully sensitive subject for both myself and Mr Hornblower, and you could not have known this.

-Kennedy

[Oooh, and he beat her by just a few moments. The frustration!

Well into the wee hours of the morning, after sacrificing a minor few characters rather bloodily on an altar to the gods and then letting the protagonist escape that particular blade to the throat, she pages through her journal and finds the note. In all truth, she doesn't really feel the words she scrawls out in reply, though she might in a week or two; her anger always burns hot longer than it should, and if she's honest with herself, she revels in it. But if there's one thing Kay knows about an area where everyone seems to know each other, it's that you don't want to make too many enemies too fast.]

Mr. Kennedy —

Apology accepted. I hope you'll forgive me for snapping at you — like you said, I wasn't aware, and it sounds like I didn't have the benefit of the full story to realize. [There's a long pause before she adds] I'm sorry.

—K

Mrs Eaton

There is nothing to forgive. Moreover, my reaction would have been the same were you a man, which does not speak well of me, but perhaps indicates that my respect for you is not lessened by your sex. [Worse, actually. You're supposed to treat a woman kindly.] I did not mean to order you about. I am only worried about interested parties who may exploit anything they learn from you. Mr Simpson was no ordinary bully, and I must confess that it greatly troubles me to think what might have been written about him.

-Kennedy

[His reply gives her pause. She wasn't that obvious, was she, that he felt the need to bring up the fact of her sex? Kay's willing to air her injustices freely; the marks they've left on her, far less so. Better that she should focus her reply on something that doesn't implicate her.]

If that's what you're concerned about, Mr. Kennedy, I'd be happy to tell you whatever I can remember about his part of the book. Otherwise, you still have my promise that I won't say anything about him to others.

—K

[There is a long, long pause, so long Kay might give up on hearing from him. In the end, though, he has to know.]

What does it say about him?

[The reply might come some hours later, but she said she'd tell him, and she will.]

Here's what I remember. I think I last read it a year or two ago.

-Beats the other midshipmen
-Makes Hornblower recite poetry before the others
-Forester calls it an inquisition, I think — twists all kinds of information out of Hornblower

I know there's more, but I don't remember the rest. Any of that ring a bell?

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