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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Oh, sure. I could have marched right into the office and try to explain why my laundry was covered in blood or why I have Dawn keep a sword under her bed. They would have taken her away and they would have put me in jail. Other ways don't exist in a world that won't accept what I am, Archie.

Could she have found work elsewhere? [Because he can't stop thinking about those hundred other kids. Kids like us, Jilly had said.]

I discredited her on the Summers file, Archie. I doubt she was fired.

[ buffy hopes she wasn't fired; it had been a very, very wrongish sort of day. ]

[Although she cannot hear it, Archie lets out a breath.]

Good. Then you did well.

Anything for her. Always.

I know. I understand, in fact.

I know I should have been fairer to that social worker but I wasn't thinking. Not with something like that at stake. I'm not proud. Not proud.

I believe you. [He also believes that's the way you're supposed to feel when you screw over someone who makes it their life's work to help kids.] But not to linger on it any longer, have you met Captain Aubrey yet?

I have. He laughed at my joke. And then he mistook me and your captain for -- ahem -- sweethearts. Deal with that insanity for a moment.

That sounds a bit awkward, but easily cleared up. Aubrey isn't used to the way everyone behaves round here. [Heck, Archie still isn't used to it.]

He seems -- nice, though. Good-humoured.

[ tentative approval. ]

I've seen my share of bad captains. Aubrey isn't one of them, I don't believe. He has offered to cook supper for us tomorrow.

You can tell -- that quickly?

[ interested, not skeptical. after all, she's a mistress of snap judgments herself. ]

Any man who offers to play steward to his inferiors can't be so bad.

[Archie's standards.]

I dunno, Archie. To me? Anyone who makes a show of that is just kinda enforcing the gap. Don't you think?

[ she comes from such a different time. she doesn't see why there have to be inferiors at all. although her own organization is far from a democracy, it's very SOCIALLY egalitarian. ]

Buffy, to us, such a display is a risk. He is a senior post-captain, and showing himself to be an equal, let alone servile, compromises his authority. It's one thing to request your officers to sup with you, and another entirely to cook the supper yourself. He's taken on the task with a smile and doesn't seem concerned at all with lording it over us. We give him the respect due his rank, and he does not abuse it.

...Though it occurs to me you've never lived in a society where class matters, either.

...Or it just matters in a different kinda way. It's definitely less...rigid. And the rules aren't so....rule-ish.

Aren't they? They seem pretty rule-ish to me. Perhaps you just don't think about them, you know them so well.

[ a pause. ] Guidelines, then.

They're always guidelines, when they're not actual laws. Some people are better at dancing round them than others, and I suspect that's true in all societies.

...The social butterflies and the social rejects. We've all known a few. Some of us have been both.

[That hits pretty close to home.] Within a few years, yes.

[ it's a shared home, at least.

but all this concern and other recent conversations makes her want to ask: ] Is it wrong that I call you Archie, Archie? Does it -- I'm not insulting you. Am I?

Not at all. We're very good friends, aren't we? When we first met, it...well, it wasn't insulting, but it's a bit more familiar than one is used to at first. Under the skin, I suppose. Intimate. But it didn't take long to get used to it.

[ she underlines very good friends. ]

I'm glad you think so.

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