simplestgift | Twenty-one Bells: [ACTION/VOICE]

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Twenty-one Bells: [ACTION/VOICE]

[Archie has barely been around town lately, but he does appear in town this afternoon, dashing about to various shops and stores and picking up various one-use items and lots and lots of groceries. He seems to have one thing on his mind.

Later, he'll sit at the fountain and send out the voice message:]

This is Mr. Kennedy. If anyone is in need of me, I shall be at the beach house for most of the week. You can reach me there or on the journals.

Moreover, Mr. Hornblower and I are wondering if anyone would be interested in helping to build a ship. A sloop-of-war, to be specific, with room and ports enough for eighteen or twenty-two guns. I cannot claim we have a practical use for itm besides exploration, but it would be something to do. We have the plans drawn up, and all we need is enough hands to make it possible. We would be grateful for any help at all.

[After this, he'll be walking back to the beach house, where he's been babysitting Jack Sparrow since yesterday.]

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He shook his head. "No."

"I saw her three days after that fight with Derek. It nearly ruined her--was like tending a wounded wild animal to be with her. I took her home after her spar--" he spat the word--"with Angel. It was the same broken woman. The very same. Said he'd shoved her against the wall and pulled his 'Angelus' whatever-it-is on her. Said he'd tried to teach her a lesson. Said she didn't know there were lines to be drawn." Jack shrugged. "That's not very nice, is it? What if Dawn had been treated such? Would you be so sanguine about her, hmm?"

Now he was almost inviting a punch in the face.

No. He wasn't. Archie watched him through narrow eyes, trying to figure him out. Between this and the Grell situation, the inconsistency was glaring. He spoke softly.

"This isn't about you trying to be a good man, Captain Jack. You're protecting what's yours. Claiming what's yours. You wouldn't give a damn if it were Dawn or anyone else but Buffy. Grell came after me with a knife and nearly cut you in half and you were the first to tell us all to forget it happened. Angel gave Buffy a nightmare and you're crying for his blood, wrong or right, against her wishes. You cannot pretend this is out of some sense of justice."

"Listen to yourself! 'Crying for his blood'? Bloody hell, Kennedy! I've never pretended to be a just man. I'm dishonest through and through. Pirate. I told a slayer-girl he was a vampire. Hardly the same level of blood-crying, that. She'd find out soon enough anyway. And my question, you recall, was whether you'd give a damn if it were Dawn. And I suppose I have my answer, eh?"

He had paled at the mention of Grell, though.

"And if you think I've forgotten what happened with Grell...if you think I liked that plan...you have a great deal to learn, whelp."

"This isn't about me and Dawn, Jack, and I still would not innocently send an assassin after him.

If you didn't like the plan, then why did you support it? Fear?"

"Supported it because there was no better plan, and none promising for the future.

Going home, now, Kennedy."

And with that, he began to limp south. The mention of Grell was harsh enough, but Jack was not in the mood for another lecture and was not keen on possibly being caught out here in this condition by the death goddess.

Archie broke away and went back to buying groceries for the bloody grateful pirate, too angry to really continue anyway. It was the first time he'd confronted the pirate with his misdirected anger over the Grell situation. As he shopped and calmed down, he started to finally realize the anger was misdirected.

...Do I do that, often?

Like how he'd gotten mad at Horatio, but not Simpson. And that had been far, far worse.

By the time he returned to the Cullen House, he was calm, loaded with groceries, and holding a paper bag with some form of booze in it.

As for Jack, he'd gotten back with barely enough energy to draw a bath. Water had to be lugged from the cistern. He set out Buffy's favorite shampoo...she'd forgotten that, somehow. When he finally climbed into the bath, a bottle of rum dangling from his fingertips, he began, for the millionth time, to wonder where he'd gone so horribly wrong with his Annie.

While Jack was vanished, Archie went about making a decent meal. Sayo had taught him quite a bit, and after getting a fire started in the stove, he cooked two whole trout, just as she taught him. To go with it were potatoes and rutabagas, boiled and mashed together, broken lettuce with beef and cheese (salmagundy to the 18th-century people, or a salad to someone more modern), and the finest brandy he'd been able to find. He might even make chocolate, if Jack even liked anything to drink besides rum.

Eventually, Jack made his way out of the bathroom. Clean, now, with fresh bandages. Plain black sweatpants. Plain black tee shirt--the General's gold locket stood out rather brilliantly against the material. Bare feet. His wet hair, the pirate decided, smelled like Buffy. Every so often he would lift a lock to his nose and breathe deeply of her.

"You cooked," he remarked when he made it into the kitchen.

"I did." Archie was placing everything on platters. "I said I'd look after you, and I shall."

But he didn't need to be this extravagant with it. No, that was special.

"Looks...salmagundi, Kennedy?" Is that some eagerness in his eyes? Jack can't quite believe this spread. He manages to pull up a crate at the home-made dining table---there are still no proper chairs---and collapse onto it in wonder.

And then he thought of how Buffy had made him curry.

"Archie? If she takes me back? I'll be lucky. So very lucky."

That eagerness sparks a real smile instead of an apologetic one. He sat down, and at Jack's question, the smile waned. "Yes. You're very lucky. But she's said to me several times that she wants you back, so no more fretting."

With that, he'll start pouring brandy.

"If she wants me back...why doesn't she tell me now? Why doesn't she come back, mate?" He watched that brandy fill the glass with approval.

"Because she wants time to think." He slides the first glass to Jack. He allows the man enough booze to get drunk, just hides it all when he's starting to get too drunk. "She's said something about a tattoo."

Time to think, and time to decide...

But then--

"Tattoo?!" He almost fell backward off the crate at that.

"Jack. She's taking you back. Be grateful for that alone and don't worry about the tattoo."

"You know, Kennedy..." He picked up the glass of brandy and swirled it. "She told me, once, what she could never forgive me for."

"What was it?" asked, starting to serve out the salmagundy.

Sparrow covered the precious golden locket with one hand. This...this would be information Archie Kennedy needed. Because when the time came, Jack might have to ask his help, and he would need to know what was at stake.

"This, here? This represents Buffy Summers's life, shall we say. And Buffy Summers has every intention of using it as leverage with a certain Third-Party bastard who will destroy her. And when that time comes, she will ask for it back, lieutenant. She will request it and go walking straight into death.

And I shall not give it to her. And that will be what she never, ever forgives."

"That's the general's locket." He hadn't seen it in a long time, though. "I don't understand, Jack. What is it, besides a locket?"

"We don't know what properties it might possess." Archie might have noticed that Jack was not caressing the gold as he would any other bit of treasure. There was something there--a hint of dread, perhaps. He treated it as a man would a bit of cursed shine: very carefully, as though it might bite. Gently he opened it, revealing the face of the distinguished-looking older woman inside.

"She believes he will want it back badly enough to parley with her."

"And she won't forgive you if you refuse to let her throw herself to the wolves." Archie stared at the locket, but made no comment about it, only wondering to himself how very pirate-like it was to hold something precious for ransom.

"It's Buffy," was the helpless reply. Jack's mouth was watering at the sight of this food. He continued holding his glass, waiting for Archie to seat himself. They could raise a toast together. There had to be something to toast to.

"I'll run. I'm good at running. But eventually, lad, she'll catch me up. She'll have to take it by force. After that..." He shook his head. It was one of the reasons being parted from her right now was so painful--one of the many reasons.

"Never thought she'd leave me before that day." And then he realized she'd left him with her life still hanging 'round his neck. It hit him, such an obvious thing, and such a little, tiny, inconspicuous thing, like a ton of bricks.

"God..."

"She hasn't left you, Jack. It's the last thing she wants to do." After dishing up the food, Archie sat and poured himself a glass of brandy, then picked it up, apparently having the same sort of idea as Jack.

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