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

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Twenty-Seven Bells: [ACTION/VOICE]

[January is proving to be a difficult month, but Archie is making it okay. It’s been just over a year since he arrived, just over a year since his death, and he’s been thinking about how much has changed since he lay half-naked and shivering in someone else’s bed.

He met and embarrassed himself in front of his first modern woman.

He met someone like him.

He tried to write poetry.

He tried a drink from another world.

He fought as Horatio’s first lieutenant.

He fought a duel and had drinks with the man afterwards.

He drove a tractor while purple and narcoleptic.

He found himself as a member of a family, and not only a shift-induced one.

He was reunited beyond hope with the dearest of friends.

He almost died.

He bought a cake and got drunk with an old comrade.

He designed and helped build a ship.

He became Robin Hood.

He became his old self.

He fell in love.

He fell from a hundred feet and survived.

His hair grew longer, he grew older.

He still has no way to let his family know he is alive.

He still can’t completely trust Jack Sparrow.

He’s more convinced than ever that he’s ruined for love.

He’s less convinced than ever that that’s something to be as ashamed of as he is.

He doesn’t want to go back to the Navy, and he’s not sure he wants to go back home at all.

He’s become something he didn’t think possible a year ago.

In spite of all that has happened and all that has been done, Archie Kennedy has become happy.

He hasn’t forgotten the pain of lying in his sickbed in prison or his deathbed in another prison.

He hasn’t forgotten shutting down before a midshipman and a captain who would take any word or gesture as an excuse to destroy him.

He hasn’t forgotten four walls touching him all at once or the overhead grating letting in not nearly enough light.

He hasn’t forgotten Christmas with his family, mince pies and contraband whiskey and stories of drunken shore leave.

He hasn’t forgotten flying for a few terrified, joyous, breathless seconds with the water coming up to meet him and Bush screaming in his ear.

…Not going to jump, and that’s my final word!

…Weak-kneed officers who don’t know how to keep order.

…iiiiitoooons neeeeever shallllll beeeeee slaaaaves!

…ister Kennedy? Just…look after him.

…Must get strong. Now drink.

…Last time, they locked me up in a hole in the earth for a month, with no room to stand up or lie down. Now leave me alone.

…Been a long time. Jack’s missed you, boy.

…It’s all right, Archie. It’s all right. A bad dream. Sleep now. Sleep.

Welcome to Purgatory!

He hasn’t forgotten and he won’t forget. But all of it, joy and pain, is only a part of a whole. The whole, at this moment, is happy.

His life then and his life now are the same life, two parts of the same story, despite what he believed when he first arrived here. What more valuable lesson could he have learned in only a year?

When he was a child, he’d loved his brothers because one has to love one’s brothers. As a man, he’d loved them because they were Finley and Neil. Luceti had been home at first because it had to be and there was no other choice. Now, more and more, it is simply home.]

[Today, Archie goes to the smithy to ask a favor of its weapon smiths (OOC: dibs go to Hiccup Haddock). In the evening, he brings home a bottle of Madeira and a ham to cook before work. Tonight, he'll be working the bar and tables at Cloud Nine.

Eventually, he speaks over the journals, tone light and warm but professional.]

This is Mr. Kennedy.

Any member of the crew of the Britannia is welcome to come with me to tour the ship in the morning. She's quite a handsome woman and I'd very much like you to meet her.

For those who've not yet heard, Britannia is a sixth-rate man of war with the capacity for twenty-two guns, but no actual guns. She carries enough sail to cover her namesake, so she's fast, and nimble as Jack jumping over a candlestick. Winter isn't the best time for sailing, but once things warm up, Captain Hornblower will be taking her out on her maiden voyage. As his first leff--first mate, I'm responsible for hiring the crew, so do speak with me and not with him if you wish to join.

[A pause. Then, he speaks very softly, with many sentiments wrapped up into two words:]

Thank you.

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I suppose so. [ comfortable. she has come to terms with jilly -- and even better, has become her friend. ]

But I wouldn't wonder too much about him not liking Horatio. Experience tells me that you don't have to like someone to help them.

No. I don't know why I was...

[Surprised?]

Was what...?

[ she prompts, thinking she knows the answer. ]

Nothing.

[No, Archie knows exactly why he's constantly surprised by Jack Sparrow now. He just hates to admit it's leftover connotations with a very common first name as well as many other little habits the pirate has in common with a completely different Jack. There's no such problem with Aubrey. Aubrey is a big, friendly man. Jack Sparrow is a pirate. Moreover, Archie's not used to being rescued or protected without losing a great deal of dignity in the eyes of others, and he's never sure how to take it.]

...Right. Of course.

Next topic?

[ she means only to jokingly point out both of their habits to be incredibly, transparently reticent on certain issues. ]

[A glance at her as the mood cracks, then he smiles.]

I'm sorry. I'm not used to being forthcoming.

If we were home, Archie? I mean -- if I was home and you happened to be in my home and not...from your home which I realize doesn't make sense but just humour my hypothetical for a moment -- back home? This dynamic? You'd pretty much be one of the Scoobies.

[ and then, in case he doesn't realize quite what that means: ] I get that the street's not necessarily two-way and you can clam up on whatever you wanna clam up about but...I trust you. For me? It's not a case of being forthcoming. [ amazingly, despite her general mouthiness, buffy is rather slyly secretive until she knows someone well enough. ] It's more a case of wanting to be forthcoming. With you.

I...

[Archie is pretty amazed. To be one of the people Buffy trusts, and in fact wants to include in her darker secrets is a place he never thought he could be a year ago.]

Thank you. Deeply. And it isn't that I...it isn't anymore that I don't want you to know, or don't trust you, I...I suppose I don't think you want to know, half the time. I know...I know you won't think ill of me, but I'm still afraid... [He leaves that and starts anew.]

Did I tell you about Hunter?

H-Hunter? No. I don't think so.

He was a mid. [Kind of a compliment.] One of the older ones who used to be a rating. I was captured before he came aboard, so I didn't meet him until we were in prison together. You see Horatio...he and his prize crew were captured a couple of years after I was. Since we were all officers, we shared a cell together. I...it was after my fifth time trying to escape. I was half-mad and couldn't walk, I was in no condition to escape. I didn't really want to. The only thing I wanted to escape was having to hear Hunter talking about me to the others. Talking about things that happened when he wasn't even there to see them, he'd only heard about them from others. "What kind of a midshipman is that?" he said.

[He's not really telling her anything about himself that she doesn't already know, at least. But about Hunter, he hasn't spoken with anyone in Luceti. No one besides Horatio, who was there. Those words echoed so often in his mind even after Hunter's death. What kind of a midshipman is that? he would think to himself at the smallest of failures to stay upbeat.]

He...helped me by graciously accepting my share of rations so I'd starve to death more quickly.

[ buffy mutters some very...unsummerslike curses. nothing graceful; everything angry. ]

Do me a favour, Archie? Gimme a shout if that particular someone from your home turns up. I'll give him a share of rations of my fist.

[The tiniest of smiles.]

I let him. Otherwise I was only pouring it all down a little drain in the cell.

You don't get it. He's an idiot for letting you let him.

He was thinking about escape only. He knew I would slow them down. Besides, I think the only one who disagreed with him altogether was Horatio.

[Why is he defending Hunter? He gets back to the point.] That wasn't the worst of it, anyway, it was hearing what was said about me from his own mouth. Knowing the gossip he heard about things that happened before he was ever on the Indy. It's...difficult to forget, once you've been that man. Difficult to trust.

Ever hear the saying that it, uhm, takes a village? People gotta be responsible for other people. Maybe Jack's little pirate code -- [ which she treats far too flippantly for even jack's liking ] -- goes on about whoever gets left behind stays behind but I don't think it works like that.

[ but that's not the point, is it? the point is something about the power of words, and... ]

What other people say...the words they used -- God, even things I've said. I didn't realize that kinda thing stuck to you. I...

[ and this worries her, being who she is. the kind of person to just spout things for the sake of spouting them. a person who uses language not necessarily to hurt others but to protect herself.

had she ever accidentally...? ]

No, no, Buffy, it--it was things he was saying about...good God, about things you don't even know about. Things no one here knows about except Horatio, who was there for them. It was humiliation at its most oppressive before I knew it as a subject of gossip among the men.

[ her expression is drawn and concerned; however, it lacks curiousity. this is no longer the realm of intel-gathering. this isn't sensationalism. there is no spectacle to be uncovered here. just a near-crippling wave of love that surprises even her -- not as she wonders what it is that she doesn't know but rather as she contemplates how upset it makes her to imagine archie in a state of oppressive humiliation. ]

A-and no one stopped him? Horatio must've tried. Right? Please tell me took a swing.

[That utter lack of questions, that complete respect of privacy, is more than he expected of her. He suddenly feels about ten times as safe as before.]

He tried. Not by taking a swing, but you know him.

Sorta. Sorta know him.

[ a long breath. ] Tried, you said. Succeeded?

[He shakes his head.] He wouldn't stop till after he was shot trying to escape. Horatio took responsibility and spent a few days in...the place I told you about. Left me as Hunter's only cellmate while he convalesced. I was better by then.

Only cellmate, huh? How'd that go?

Well enough, surprisingly. Horatio had...insisted I eat, and little by little I was starting to feel alive again. I could walk but I felt faint if I stood too long. I was certainly strong enough to play lob-lolly boy to a wounded cellmate. It would have been impolitic for him to speak ill of me after that.

[He wonders what about Buffy has gotten him talking about these events of his past so often lately.]

[ pure familiarity, perhaps. or maybe instead it is the concerted effort on the slayer's part to be more connected; always a contentious topic, with her. ]

Alive again. [ important words. concepts. she latches onto them with a nod. ] How'd you do it? How'd you help him after all that...?

[ the question doesn't need to be asked. buffy knows, although she doesn't realize that she knows, that mercy is rarely a choice amongst some sorts of souls. instead, it's something you simply cannot help but give to even those who have hurt you. even those who disgust you.

there's a reason why jack sparrow fell initially for the slayer's more merciful tendencies in spite of how she hides them under many many thorns. ]

Please don't...it isn't admirable at all. He wanted to die, and just weeks before I'd been the same. I was only doing for him what was done for me. What Horatio would've done.

[Besides, it would have been cruel. Utterly cruel to let someone linger in that place he himself had been able to begin to escape. What kind of man would let that happen?]

Y-you met Andrew when he was here, right...?

[ it sounds unrelated, archie, but just wait... ]

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