captainhornblower | [luceti]

Archie grabs a housecoat as he stands and throws it over his shoulders. It's getting cool in Luceti, and besides, it's somehow comforting. Clayton had always covered him after a nightmare, so warmth was something he associated with protection and comfort.

He flips lights on in the dining area, but finds himself pulling out a chair and sitting instead of fussing over tea. These episodes are paralyzing, demotivating instead of making him want to stay busy. He'll never ask Horatio to make the tea, but he knows it will happen anyway in lieu of his action. The chair is hard wood, not entirely comfortable but for that helping him wake up further.

There is no hesitation.

Horatio is at the kettle, then the sink, putting the necessary water in it before placing it on the stove and turning the machine on. He stands by it, waiting in silence for either its whistle or Archie's voice. Sometimes, there is conversation. More often, there is silence until another topic is broached-- either naturally or forced. But that is never his call to make. That is for Archie to do, and Horatio's solitary youth made silence a friend of his.

It isn't the deafening, nerve-racking sound for him that it is for some.

It wasn't that Kennedy didn't want to speak. Much of the time, he didn't know how, or lately, felt too awkward speaking of grave matters while one of them was in the kitchen. So he waited until the tea was poured and they were both seated. Warming his hands on his cup, he spoke slowly, eyes dropped to the surface of the table.

"This morning, Buffy and I went to the Battle Dome. She wanted to see one of the ships I served aboard, and I wanted to see her hometown." He said this much to Horatio before leaving this morning, but he is laying the groundwork of the story in his own mind before continuing.

Horatio took a sip of his tea, watching his friend. His face betrayed nothing, though he could already imagine that, if Archie were having nightmares, it had not been Indefatigable. Though that surely would not have been by Archie's choice. But the Battle Dome might be as strange as the Journals and prone to the oddities that this world seemed capable of.

He merely nodded once, waiting.

"...She found the Justinian, Horatio. It wasn't as bad as I expected, not till we went to--"

He hasn't told anyone enough details for them to know the sickbay was significant to him, but the specific locale doesn't matter in relating this to Horatio. The point is, it got bad.

Horatio swallows hard.

"Archie." Warm and concerned and as understanding as he could be. He had never been in the same situation, could not fully know what it was, but he tried to understand as best he was able.

Archie's eyes slide closed and he exhales through his teeth. "It's been almost a decade, Horatio. Since she sank."

"I know."

But the ghosts don't go away so quickly. He reached over, setting the very tips of his fingers against the back of Archie's hand.

"Nearly ten years... and only the blink of an eye."

"...I set fire to Eccleston's cabin. This morning. It was astonishing how much detail there was. Our sea-chests were in the midshipmens' berth. With names." Poor old Clayton. "Our chairs as we'd left them. Bloodstains in the sickbay."

Eccleston. There was a name he hadn't really thought of in years. Sometimes the man came to mind, but only in the background, a tangent to thoughts of the Indefatigable and Justinian. The man had no malice to him, but any forgiveness Horatio might have given to his willing-blindness and been destroyed by the night before the Papillion.

"We would be glad to have you, Mister Simpson. You will go in with Mister Hornblower and Mister Kennedy."

There was a difference between turning aside and pretending not to see anything and setting the wolf among the sheep. There was a great difference.

"Did it help?" There was no judgment in the tone. If anything, it was true, gentle curiosity.

"A little. Until now. I thought it might help keep the dreams at bay." A sharp exhalation resembling an ironic laugh.

Horatio tried for a smile, but it was far too weak. "Dreams don't seem to have the sense not to bother you after they shouldn't, do they?" He meant it as much for himself as for Archie.

Archie doesn't look up from the table. He hasn't returned the touch of Horatio's hand, but lets it be, appreciating the brush of fingertips without adding to it. "Sometimes it really feels like it was a decade ago. Then sometimes it feels like it was yesterday." He presses his lips together briefly. Sometimes, talking about it like it was in the past helps him remember it's in the past, puts the memory in its proper place. "Before you came, they used to carry me to the sickbay to recover whenever I had a fit. If Dr. Hepplewhite ever left...

Horatio, he wasn't a bad doctor. I think he might've realized what was happening. He started to ask that I be taken to the midshipmens' berth instead and that someone a little less busy keep watch over me and find him if my condition worsened. I still couldn't bear going inside the sickbay after that."

Horatio swallowed hard, but he left his hand where it was, neither pulling it back nor taking Archie's more. He closed his eyes, mind filling in the pause that Archie left. He half hated that he could imagine what it was Archie meant. What he'd give to believe no one was capable of such things. Yet he had long come to understand, more after the man's death than during his life, that there was little, if any, evil that man was not capable of.

God forbid any man report him, he found himself thinking. But that had been the law of the Justinian. No one saw or heard anything that did not directly concern themselves. Perhaps out of fear of nothing being done but only making it worse (if he was in a generous mood) or perhaps out of a desire to deny it happened at all (if he was not).

He said nothing. There was nothing he felt he could say. He only managed a slight nod.

Archie reported Simpson, once. Eccleston laughed and accused him of exaggerating to get rid of typical midshipman hazing he couldn't handle. Never again.

"What's wrong with me, Horatio?"

"What?"

Horatio's gaze focused again, having wandered off just slightly to the side as he picked through memories and nightmares of his own, trying to find something to say to Archie. Something that didn't sound forced and hollow and utterly lacking.

The question jars him, and soon he shakes his head, pressing his palm over Archie's hand rather than just the tips of those fingers.

"Nothing, Archie. Nothing."

Archie's throat works. It's hard to swallow.

"Nearly ten years later and I still don't understand how someone could bear to do it. How he could do it with such joy, Horat--"

He leaves the last syllable off Horatio's name as his throat closes altogether and his eyes sting.

"Evil."

The word comes out low, and there might have been a tremor to it.

Horatio took a deep breath, pressing his hand against Archie's but nothing more.

"Before I set foot on that ship, Archie, that word was... intangible. It was... something that was talked about that I couldn't ever quite say whether it existed or not." His eyes focused on Archie's. Anger, horror, sympathy, guilt, uncertainty. "But he... Meeting him, learning about him... Taught me what evil is, Archie. There's no other explanation for him or what he did."

"...Then what is evil, Horatio? Why did this happen?"

Horatio sighed as he thought. "I don't know. If there is... something wrong... with anyone, Archie? It was something wrong with him. I... don't know what. I'm not a doctor, if it's medical, or a religious man, if it's something to do with the soul... But any fault, Archie..."

Any fault lies with him.

"I stopped fighting him. Am I damned for that?"

The scariest thing is that that is not sarcasm. That is his darkest fear, that the cessation of protest amounts to consent.

Horatio looked right at Archie, face serious. He did not offer an immediate answer. It was a thought made Horatio have to think.

After a moment, he shook his head slightly. "No. No, I don't think so." He couldn't offer a definitive answer. As he said, he was no religious man. He had not even been terribly pious until after Archie's death found him knelt in a church. "It was..." He could not be sure of it, he could only guess, knowing what he did of Simpson. "It was survival. Or I would think so. And any God who would damn a man for what he needed to do to survive... is not a God I could pray to."

"What does it matter if He is still God?"

Archie doesn't believe in a God like Horatio described, no. He certainly doesn't believe anyone else would be condemned for it. Even a court-martial would not condemn him. But the fears remains.

Horatio frowned. It was a question he couldn't answer. Any answer he thought of that he could state with force was near-- if not outright-- blasphemy. Still, with Archie... perhaps he would risk it.

"Because perhaps if people won't pray to Him, won't follow Him, he would not have the power He does." It was blasphemy, worse in his thoughts. A captain was God on his ship, but without his crew following him, he had no power.

He swallowed hard and shook his head again. "And a God who gave His son to fie for the sins of men... has more mercy than that."

Archie blinks rapidly--not the tense, fearful fluttering of his eyelids that signals fear or anxiety, but actually fighting tears. "Then may that death be sufficient to cover my sin."

Because that is how he views it. He has taken responsibility for "his part" and that helps him to feel less helpless about what happened.

[luceti] - Appointments

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject