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quigonejinnYes, I know Orrock isn't in the books in a flattering way at all, but I like him in the movies. And let me tell you. Far, far worse things happen in this fic. Just imagine that this happens sometime post Loyalty movie-verse. Or something.
First story done out of abunch of total crack set of stories about things that never happened in the HH universe. The rest are specifically on William Bush.
Sixteen days out of the Azores, they picked up a pair of shipwreck survivors. There was surprisingly little flotsam around them -- one of them was hanging onto a trunk of a palm tree that the other, bizarrely enough, seemed to be attempting to push. A boat was sent out for them, and they came up the side of the ship dripping wet, though looking surprisingly healthy for men who had been drifting, without food or water, under near-tropical sun.
"What was your ship? How was she wrecked?"
It never occurred to Bush to try anything but English on them, and it seemed they understood. The younger, who was clutching a (wet) bundle of what looked like clothes to his (wet) ribs, looked to the older. The older did not answer, and Bush tensed a little -- Brown, the coxswain stood next to the larger one, but as tall as Brown was, the man still topped him by a good half-head -- the man just twitched the fingers of his hand.
It was certainly pleasant to be out on the deck in such fine weather.
The man then leant close, as if to tell a secret, and murmured, "You do not care about how we came to be in the sea."
...
"They have projectile weapons, Master."
"Yes, Obi-Wan."
"There are many of them. And this vessel is -- " -- Obi-Wan's fingers hesitated here; undoubtedly he was attempting to recall this archaic term to mind -- "wind-powered. It will be slow."
"Yes, Obi-Wan."
"They smell, Master." There was a little twitch of the thumb to add emphasis to the smell. It was barely wide enough for one person to walk in the corridor, and it had distressed Obi-Wan to some great degree that there was not room so that they could swap places, so that Qui-Gon could precede and he could follow, as was appropriate for a Master and Padawan travelling to meet a commanding officer of some rank.
"I am aware of that, Padawan." Pause, and then Qui-Gon added, "Keep quiet. You know my opinion that body speech should be reserved for emergencies."
A moment of blessed silence where he could concentrate on readjusting his eyes to the dark, and then Obi-Wan burst out in an explosion of fingertips and forearm inclination. "Master! Master! Watch out for that low-hanging be -- "
"Obi-Wan, what did I just sa -- "
Qui-Gon rubbed his forehead. The blue-coated officer who had received them on board turned around to look with one raised eyebrow, and Qui-Gon's forehead ached, and his ears were ringing, and these were all signs of an impending concussion, and really, why did the Force always send them to planets where average inhabitant was as minature as his wretched, talkative Padawan?
...
"British diplomats?"
Hornblower would have been irritated with himelf for repeating the word like a parrot, but he could feel his heart attempting to sink through his stomach -- it was still sinking, actually, and he could also practically hear Bush's hopes being smashed against rocks. One healthy man, the other a healthy boy nearly grown to being a man, at least one of them used to taking orders, and they slipping out of his fingers when they could have certainly used the after shipping out short-handed and having lost another two dozen since the start of the voyage to accident or ailment or drowning.
For Hornblower, though, it was irritating because diplomats were a bother. These two didn't even look like diplomats, let alone British diplomats. They had no papers, of course, having lost all of them with the wrecking of their ship, whenever that had been. And the older one had hair that was far longer than what would have grown in whatever time he spent shipwrecked, and the younger one had only the very beginning of a queue. His hair was ridiculously short otherwie, and then there was the single braid that hung, Hussar-style.
Yet, they certainly, undeniably, did not seem to be the ordinary sort of men that you pressed. Or thought about pressing. Or thought about thinking about pressing unless you had an uncle who was at least a Rear-Admiral, and having a wife whose father was in Parliament would undoubtedly help, too. The older one stood with his hand resting on his hip where a sword would have hung, had he been wearing one; the fingers of one enormous hand were, instead, resting on a small black cylinder that hung there.
They were British born, possibly. Their voices were odd, but there was the trace of an Irish accent in the older man's voice, and the younger had Scottish parents if Hornblower had ever seen one of the tribe. He had the shoulders, would have the stocky build in a few years, and what with the hair, was missing only the kilt.
"This is a British ship." The older one did all the talking; the younger one had stepped back a pace or so and stood with his head bowed and that ridiculously short queue sticking up in the air. "That is what the flag you are flying means, so you will convey me to the coordinates that I mentioned."
Hornblower controlled, with effort, the wave of irritation that threatened to swamp the tiny boat of reasonableness to which he was clinging.
"That is entirely out of our way. We will take you to the nearest Briti -- "
The man twitched his fingers, and it was certainly quite nice to be standing in his cabin with the warm sun on his back. Certainly pleasant. He was looking forward to eating his dinner, in fact.
"We can certainly take you to those coordinates."
Why was Bush staring at him as though he'd just sprouted a second head?
...
"Master, I think this is supposed to be food."
At least Obi-Wan was talking and not engaging in wretched dramatic finger-waving. A hushed, urgent whisper that it was hard to make out in the noie of the ship, true, but Qui-Gon turned and looked -- he was dizzy, and it hurt to move his eyes, which was another sign that he'd knocked his head rather harder than he thought, and he sipped very carefully at the filthy, disgusting-tasting water. He was horribly thirsty, but they'd been told that fresh water was rationed, and he could practically feel the Living Force emanating from what was in the mug. And the man who'd dipped it out for them had grinned and said that the water was fresh, just put away.
"Master, there are worms in the bread. I know you've spoken to me about my irrational prejudice against animal-based protein, but these are alive. They wiggle. Vigorously."
"Hit the bread on the table a few times as we saw the others doing, Obi-Wan. The worms will leave. You should be grateful that they are feeding us at all."
Qui-Gon was quite aware of the fact that there were probably bruises forming around each of his eyes, so the look he shot Obi-Wan wasn't nearly as stern as he would have liked, but Obi-Wan went quiet, anyways, and Qui-Gon then had the chance to make another try at the bread.
He even tried rubbing it against his teeth in the way of a file and in the hopes that at least the crumbs that fell off would be nourishing, but that just made his teeth hurt and his head hurt worse, and why was the table coming up to meet his face so quickly? Odd, but he might as well lean his head against it, ignore the panicky Padawan who was shaking him, and catch some blessed, blessed sleep.
...
Orrock's hand was still sticking out to be shaken, but the boy was just staring at it it -- he had his arms crossed up and fingers tucked under his armpits, as if he were terribly cold from standing in the surgeon's. He would look down at the hand, then up at Orrock, then back at the hand, and it wasn't quite unfriendly, and Orrock even suspected that the boy was trying to smile at him, but eventually Orrock pulled the hand back and gave up, too, on waiting for the boy to greet him or give his name.
"Midshipman Orrock," he said and set down the bag of clothes that he'd been carrying. "Tom Orrrock. They sent me down to make sure you were seen to. Dressed, told the rules, with a place to sleep in the midshipman's berth if you wanted it."
The boy chewed on this for a while, then offered up, "The doctor -- " there was all kinds of contempt in the boy's voice -- "was trying to bleed him. I may have overdone it, but is that what is really done?"
"It's what they usually do when a man is sick," Orrock offered, then looked over at the surgeon, who seemed, oddly enough, to be obsessively putting the same vial into his pharmacy, taking it out, and then putting it back in again. Odd things, medical men. And the eight foot giant was snoring in a hammock, peacefully-looking enough, with his legs crooked up a little on account of his height. "Best thing, usually. Keeps a fever from building up in the blood."
The boy looked deeply skeptical.
"Is he your father?" Orrock said to keep the conversation going while he got into the bag of clean laundry that he'd comamndeered from the ratings that the midshipmen paid to do their laundry -- if he'd aked for contributions, he would've gotten everybody's odds and ends, and when the boy showed up on deck in rags, who would get the loud end of Lieutenant Bush's voice with a possible follow-up of rattan?
"He's not my father," the boy said. "I'm his student, though. He lost consciouness because we there were these globes -- fruit, I think -- on the tree that we came across. He gave all the water in them to me, and then I didn't warn him fast enough about hitting his head on a beam."
It was a burst of speech. The boy sounded positively miserable, though, and as he went through the bag, Orrock digested the information that a teacher would care so much about his students as give them all the fresh liquid. He got lessons from the sailing master, from Bush in being a signal midshipman. He also remembered being taught his letters and 'rithmitec by Master Andrews as a boy, and he rather much doubted that any of them would face death by thirst to make sure that he lived. "His student?"
"His apprentice, actually." The boy had a a sleeved shirt, white, without any ruffles on it at all, as well as white trousers. There were no buttons on the front, though, and appeared to be tied only with a bit of string. "He's teaching me, and I'm suppoed to help him. When I pass my trials -- if I pass them -- I'll be a Knight."
Orrock looked up, startled, then managed, carefully. "You must have a duke for a father to be that sure of getting it."
The boy seemed not to notice the care that Orrock had put into that little sentence. Instead, he shrugged like a Frenchman. "I don't know my parents, actually. I think they might be merchants or sell things somewhere."
Orrock found a shirt then, that might fit the boy, though the boy shook his head and insisted that his own clothing would do -- see, it was mostly dry already. After getting a look at those bare feet, however, Orrock had a notion that who he would need to bully in the midshipman's berth to get a pair of shoes for him.
And later that night, when he was swinging in his hammock and had seen that the boy was sleeping on a pallet next to his master, Orrock meditated on the sort of man whose patronage could, in addition, make the son of a shopkeeper so sure that he would be a Knight of the Order of Bath.
...
The boy was on deck the next day: his master had woken, and as the boy put it to Orrock, he'd been ordered out to get air. He was a landsman -- it was obvious from the way that he referred to the ship's sides as "left" and "right," had no grasp of ship hierarchy and had to have it illustrated to him with biscuit crumbs representing the ratings and shreds of beef representing the officers, and the boy had, in fact, given Orrock his entire share of meat -- so Orrock took him up into the rigging.
A view of the sea from the main mast of a sloop-of-war ought to impress even a future Knight of Bath. Orrock had made sure to tuck his glass into hi jacket, and it was, he decided, pleasant to have someone to watch over and take care of again.
"How is your master?"
They were by the maintop now. Light wind from the west. "He woke this morning and says it was just exhaustion and thirst." The boy had come up in the rigging steadily enough that Orrock knew that he had not fear of heights, and now, he was looking around, studying the deck below and the horizon.
Orrock offered him the glass, but the boy shook his and continued to look somber until something lit up his face. "So this is where you go for recreation?"
"One of them, though it's the only place where you can get a bit of air on the ship. And the view -- " Orrock indicated the sea below with the glass he was still holding -- "is something."
The boy looked, but he was not particularly impressed. He was now studying the spars. "And can we go out on them?" he asked.
Orrock blinked at him, was about to open his mouth and suggest that perhaps they ought to wait until they'd spent a little more time in the rigging, and then the boy grinned.
"Watch this," the boy said and picked himself up and walked, no, ran, out on the spar, steady as a born sailor. Orrock stared; he felt his mouth open some more, and he had just change to shout and throw a hand out when the boy jumped off the spar.
Backwards.
And landed back on the spar, facing the sea, spun, and bowed so low that his braid brushed the wood of the spar. Orrock made choking noises, but Obi-Wan was grinning harder than he had since coming to the backwards, primitive planet.
...
"Master?"
Qui-Gon was on his feet again -- he'd kept watch, continuously, while they were in the water, and when he picked up the concussion on top of the exhaustion and dehydration, his sensible Shr'adn hypothalmus had thrown up its hands, given the midichlorians a brief advisory as to what was going to happen, and then laid itself down for a nap. A healing mechanism. He was shuffling around the sick bay now, getting his feet back underneath him, and when he didn't answer, Obi-Wan called out again, softly.
"Master, this isn't so bad. One of them took me up to the rigging today, and it reminded me of advanced movement training at the Temple. The air is so fresh here -- I've never been on a planet this early into the industrial development before."
Qui-Gon had woken up with the most abominable pins and needles in his feet. That always happened when he came out of these collapses, but it was particularly bad this time for some reason, and he grunted vaguely at Obi-Wan, who was sitting, balanced like a cat, in the precise middle of Qui-Gon's newly-vacated hammock.
There was silence for a while as Qui-Gon continued to make his way around the tiny room and slowly, methodically, opened his concious mind and senses back up to the Force. He could sense that there were very few people below now; most of them were up on deck, and it was quieter below than it had been all day.
Obi-Wan said nothing for a period. The hammock swung with the movement of the ship, and so did the lantern overhead. Qui-Gon concentrated on making his limbs move as he wanted, and they both knew what Obi-Wan would talk about next.
"Master, was what Dooku said right? I know I shouldn't have been listening in on your call, but I haven't been able to stop thinking about what he said. About the wars here and our coming here only to find Koserr and get back the documents that he stole, that the Senate only intervenes when it suits them and the Jedi being -- being -- "
Obi-Wan's voice faltered. His family had been on Corsucant for a hundred generations, and it was in a native-born Corsucanti's blood -- something about the air -- to complain about their government and complain at great length, but there was never a question of the fundamental rightness of the Republic, let alone say something like that.
And criticizing the Order was on another level entirely.
Obi-Wan was struggling to keep his voice casual. He was not yet old enough, though, to keep control of that and his face at the same time, and Qui-Gon lifted his head and watched him struggle with it.
"Are you going to help him?"
...
First lieutenants did not stand watch, usually, but Bush did not mind taking the occaisional turn if there was illness or other need: it was a fine, still night, and it was pleasant to be on deck in times like this. Steady course, deep water, just enough wind to keep things interesting. He was placid enough so that he was not all that disturbed when the older of the passengers materialized out of nothing.
Bush could've sworn that there had been nothing but shadow, but the man was standing there was though he'd been rooted there for the better part of the watch.
"Does this life suit you?"
Bush had heard, of course, on the very best authority, that the man was a French duke, exiled during the revolution, and the boy was a Bourbon prince, hurrying to a rendezvous with a fleet bearing an invasion army for the French West Indies and remove Boney's rule from those islands, but he was not sure if he believed it. After all, the man didn't sound like a Frog. Didn't look like one, either, and it was odd, too, to be asked questions like that without an introduction.
He had never thought of it, though, and oddly enough, Bush wasn't too irritated by the lack of respect. Perhaps it was the fine weather -- perhaps it was because the question was so calmly asked.
"It does. Well enough." He considered the matter some more and found that he agreed with his initial intuition. "I went to sea with the Navy when I was fourteen, stayed with her through Amiens. I was on the Temeraire at Trafalgar, and I've never known anything but what I've got now."
The man nodded, and there was a moment of quiet where neither of them spoke. Below, they could hear the lower decks going about their evening entertainments. Above, the wind was whistling in the rigging, and the stars somewhat beyond them in turn. All around, the sea made the slow, rolling noise of deep water undisturbed, for a hundred miles in every direction, by land, and the ship creaked in response.
Bush listened to it; it was the sound of his life, and the man appeared to listening, too. Waves. Wind. Ship.
After a long while, the man tucked his hands behind him.
"Neither have I. And I would never wish to."
...
The Hotspur came to the rendezvous point the next morning at three bells, and there was nothing there but open water -- they were so deep out at sea that there were few seabirds, but the older man insisted that this was the correct place, that his rendezvous vessel would meet him at the correct time, and when Hornblower opened his mouth to argue with the man that shipboard gossip made into the illegitimate son of King George and Marie Antoinette on his way to negotiate a secret treaty with the Spanish colonies, the man waved his hand again.
Hornblower blinked, made a mental remark about what a fine morning it was, and ordered the rig to be made to ready to take them out.
He then spent the next half of a watch fidgeting wildly on the quarterdeck and wondered why, in the name of God, he had agreed to any of this. Bush expressed his amazement by staring the unoffending firebuckets as though they had sprouted legs and were dancing the hornpipe on deck, and Hornblower could feel his embarassment growing and growing and gro -- and then something came shrieking over the horizon.
Orrock was up in the rigging and sighted it with a glass, but before the words were completely out of his mouth, a giant silver thing, as long as the Hotspur herself, was hovering over the rig like a seabird keeping its place in the breeze.
There were no wings, though, no movement, nothing but a deafening roar that sounded like the gundeck at continuous, full blast. In the noise, Hornblower could see that the boy leaned close and said something to the older man; the older man gave the boy a slightly irritated look, and a ladder dropped out of the belly of the silver thing. They climbed up into it -- the boy waved to something or someone on the Hotspur -- then, as quickly as it had come, the roar was gone, and so were the man and boy.
The men in the rig were left staring. So was Hornblower. The air tasted strange in the mouth, and Hornblower's ears were still ringing. He'd never heard a sailing ship sound so still before during the day, and everyone was frozen, unable to speak. Even the creak of the ship seemed a little muted.
Eventually, though, Bush found his voice.
"I wish we'd been able to press them, sir. The boy ran up that ladder with his feet like a born topman."
Hornblower didn't know whether he wanted to laugh or cry over the fact that Bush actually sounded sincere.
First story done out of a
Sixteen days out of the Azores, they picked up a pair of shipwreck survivors. There was surprisingly little flotsam around them -- one of them was hanging onto a trunk of a palm tree that the other, bizarrely enough, seemed to be attempting to push. A boat was sent out for them, and they came up the side of the ship dripping wet, though looking surprisingly healthy for men who had been drifting, without food or water, under near-tropical sun.
"What was your ship? How was she wrecked?"
It never occurred to Bush to try anything but English on them, and it seemed they understood. The younger, who was clutching a (wet) bundle of what looked like clothes to his (wet) ribs, looked to the older. The older did not answer, and Bush tensed a little -- Brown, the coxswain stood next to the larger one, but as tall as Brown was, the man still topped him by a good half-head -- the man just twitched the fingers of his hand.
It was certainly pleasant to be out on the deck in such fine weather.
The man then leant close, as if to tell a secret, and murmured, "You do not care about how we came to be in the sea."
...
"They have projectile weapons, Master."
"Yes, Obi-Wan."
"There are many of them. And this vessel is -- " -- Obi-Wan's fingers hesitated here; undoubtedly he was attempting to recall this archaic term to mind -- "wind-powered. It will be slow."
"Yes, Obi-Wan."
"They smell, Master." There was a little twitch of the thumb to add emphasis to the smell. It was barely wide enough for one person to walk in the corridor, and it had distressed Obi-Wan to some great degree that there was not room so that they could swap places, so that Qui-Gon could precede and he could follow, as was appropriate for a Master and Padawan travelling to meet a commanding officer of some rank.
"I am aware of that, Padawan." Pause, and then Qui-Gon added, "Keep quiet. You know my opinion that body speech should be reserved for emergencies."
A moment of blessed silence where he could concentrate on readjusting his eyes to the dark, and then Obi-Wan burst out in an explosion of fingertips and forearm inclination. "Master! Master! Watch out for that low-hanging be -- "
"Obi-Wan, what did I just sa -- "
Qui-Gon rubbed his forehead. The blue-coated officer who had received them on board turned around to look with one raised eyebrow, and Qui-Gon's forehead ached, and his ears were ringing, and these were all signs of an impending concussion, and really, why did the Force always send them to planets where average inhabitant was as minature as his wretched, talkative Padawan?
...
"British diplomats?"
Hornblower would have been irritated with himelf for repeating the word like a parrot, but he could feel his heart attempting to sink through his stomach -- it was still sinking, actually, and he could also practically hear Bush's hopes being smashed against rocks. One healthy man, the other a healthy boy nearly grown to being a man, at least one of them used to taking orders, and they slipping out of his fingers when they could have certainly used the after shipping out short-handed and having lost another two dozen since the start of the voyage to accident or ailment or drowning.
For Hornblower, though, it was irritating because diplomats were a bother. These two didn't even look like diplomats, let alone British diplomats. They had no papers, of course, having lost all of them with the wrecking of their ship, whenever that had been. And the older one had hair that was far longer than what would have grown in whatever time he spent shipwrecked, and the younger one had only the very beginning of a queue. His hair was ridiculously short otherwie, and then there was the single braid that hung, Hussar-style.
Yet, they certainly, undeniably, did not seem to be the ordinary sort of men that you pressed. Or thought about pressing. Or thought about thinking about pressing unless you had an uncle who was at least a Rear-Admiral, and having a wife whose father was in Parliament would undoubtedly help, too. The older one stood with his hand resting on his hip where a sword would have hung, had he been wearing one; the fingers of one enormous hand were, instead, resting on a small black cylinder that hung there.
They were British born, possibly. Their voices were odd, but there was the trace of an Irish accent in the older man's voice, and the younger had Scottish parents if Hornblower had ever seen one of the tribe. He had the shoulders, would have the stocky build in a few years, and what with the hair, was missing only the kilt.
"This is a British ship." The older one did all the talking; the younger one had stepped back a pace or so and stood with his head bowed and that ridiculously short queue sticking up in the air. "That is what the flag you are flying means, so you will convey me to the coordinates that I mentioned."
Hornblower controlled, with effort, the wave of irritation that threatened to swamp the tiny boat of reasonableness to which he was clinging.
"That is entirely out of our way. We will take you to the nearest Briti -- "
The man twitched his fingers, and it was certainly quite nice to be standing in his cabin with the warm sun on his back. Certainly pleasant. He was looking forward to eating his dinner, in fact.
"We can certainly take you to those coordinates."
Why was Bush staring at him as though he'd just sprouted a second head?
...
"Master, I think this is supposed to be food."
At least Obi-Wan was talking and not engaging in wretched dramatic finger-waving. A hushed, urgent whisper that it was hard to make out in the noie of the ship, true, but Qui-Gon turned and looked -- he was dizzy, and it hurt to move his eyes, which was another sign that he'd knocked his head rather harder than he thought, and he sipped very carefully at the filthy, disgusting-tasting water. He was horribly thirsty, but they'd been told that fresh water was rationed, and he could practically feel the Living Force emanating from what was in the mug. And the man who'd dipped it out for them had grinned and said that the water was fresh, just put away.
"Master, there are worms in the bread. I know you've spoken to me about my irrational prejudice against animal-based protein, but these are alive. They wiggle. Vigorously."
"Hit the bread on the table a few times as we saw the others doing, Obi-Wan. The worms will leave. You should be grateful that they are feeding us at all."
Qui-Gon was quite aware of the fact that there were probably bruises forming around each of his eyes, so the look he shot Obi-Wan wasn't nearly as stern as he would have liked, but Obi-Wan went quiet, anyways, and Qui-Gon then had the chance to make another try at the bread.
He even tried rubbing it against his teeth in the way of a file and in the hopes that at least the crumbs that fell off would be nourishing, but that just made his teeth hurt and his head hurt worse, and why was the table coming up to meet his face so quickly? Odd, but he might as well lean his head against it, ignore the panicky Padawan who was shaking him, and catch some blessed, blessed sleep.
...
Orrock's hand was still sticking out to be shaken, but the boy was just staring at it it -- he had his arms crossed up and fingers tucked under his armpits, as if he were terribly cold from standing in the surgeon's. He would look down at the hand, then up at Orrock, then back at the hand, and it wasn't quite unfriendly, and Orrock even suspected that the boy was trying to smile at him, but eventually Orrock pulled the hand back and gave up, too, on waiting for the boy to greet him or give his name.
"Midshipman Orrock," he said and set down the bag of clothes that he'd been carrying. "Tom Orrrock. They sent me down to make sure you were seen to. Dressed, told the rules, with a place to sleep in the midshipman's berth if you wanted it."
The boy chewed on this for a while, then offered up, "The doctor -- " there was all kinds of contempt in the boy's voice -- "was trying to bleed him. I may have overdone it, but is that what is really done?"
"It's what they usually do when a man is sick," Orrock offered, then looked over at the surgeon, who seemed, oddly enough, to be obsessively putting the same vial into his pharmacy, taking it out, and then putting it back in again. Odd things, medical men. And the eight foot giant was snoring in a hammock, peacefully-looking enough, with his legs crooked up a little on account of his height. "Best thing, usually. Keeps a fever from building up in the blood."
The boy looked deeply skeptical.
"Is he your father?" Orrock said to keep the conversation going while he got into the bag of clean laundry that he'd comamndeered from the ratings that the midshipmen paid to do their laundry -- if he'd aked for contributions, he would've gotten everybody's odds and ends, and when the boy showed up on deck in rags, who would get the loud end of Lieutenant Bush's voice with a possible follow-up of rattan?
"He's not my father," the boy said. "I'm his student, though. He lost consciouness because we there were these globes -- fruit, I think -- on the tree that we came across. He gave all the water in them to me, and then I didn't warn him fast enough about hitting his head on a beam."
It was a burst of speech. The boy sounded positively miserable, though, and as he went through the bag, Orrock digested the information that a teacher would care so much about his students as give them all the fresh liquid. He got lessons from the sailing master, from Bush in being a signal midshipman. He also remembered being taught his letters and 'rithmitec by Master Andrews as a boy, and he rather much doubted that any of them would face death by thirst to make sure that he lived. "His student?"
"His apprentice, actually." The boy had a a sleeved shirt, white, without any ruffles on it at all, as well as white trousers. There were no buttons on the front, though, and appeared to be tied only with a bit of string. "He's teaching me, and I'm suppoed to help him. When I pass my trials -- if I pass them -- I'll be a Knight."
Orrock looked up, startled, then managed, carefully. "You must have a duke for a father to be that sure of getting it."
The boy seemed not to notice the care that Orrock had put into that little sentence. Instead, he shrugged like a Frenchman. "I don't know my parents, actually. I think they might be merchants or sell things somewhere."
Orrock found a shirt then, that might fit the boy, though the boy shook his head and insisted that his own clothing would do -- see, it was mostly dry already. After getting a look at those bare feet, however, Orrock had a notion that who he would need to bully in the midshipman's berth to get a pair of shoes for him.
And later that night, when he was swinging in his hammock and had seen that the boy was sleeping on a pallet next to his master, Orrock meditated on the sort of man whose patronage could, in addition, make the son of a shopkeeper so sure that he would be a Knight of the Order of Bath.
...
The boy was on deck the next day: his master had woken, and as the boy put it to Orrock, he'd been ordered out to get air. He was a landsman -- it was obvious from the way that he referred to the ship's sides as "left" and "right," had no grasp of ship hierarchy and had to have it illustrated to him with biscuit crumbs representing the ratings and shreds of beef representing the officers, and the boy had, in fact, given Orrock his entire share of meat -- so Orrock took him up into the rigging.
A view of the sea from the main mast of a sloop-of-war ought to impress even a future Knight of Bath. Orrock had made sure to tuck his glass into hi jacket, and it was, he decided, pleasant to have someone to watch over and take care of again.
"How is your master?"
They were by the maintop now. Light wind from the west. "He woke this morning and says it was just exhaustion and thirst." The boy had come up in the rigging steadily enough that Orrock knew that he had not fear of heights, and now, he was looking around, studying the deck below and the horizon.
Orrock offered him the glass, but the boy shook his and continued to look somber until something lit up his face. "So this is where you go for recreation?"
"One of them, though it's the only place where you can get a bit of air on the ship. And the view -- " Orrock indicated the sea below with the glass he was still holding -- "is something."
The boy looked, but he was not particularly impressed. He was now studying the spars. "And can we go out on them?" he asked.
Orrock blinked at him, was about to open his mouth and suggest that perhaps they ought to wait until they'd spent a little more time in the rigging, and then the boy grinned.
"Watch this," the boy said and picked himself up and walked, no, ran, out on the spar, steady as a born sailor. Orrock stared; he felt his mouth open some more, and he had just change to shout and throw a hand out when the boy jumped off the spar.
Backwards.
And landed back on the spar, facing the sea, spun, and bowed so low that his braid brushed the wood of the spar. Orrock made choking noises, but Obi-Wan was grinning harder than he had since coming to the backwards, primitive planet.
...
"Master?"
Qui-Gon was on his feet again -- he'd kept watch, continuously, while they were in the water, and when he picked up the concussion on top of the exhaustion and dehydration, his sensible Shr'adn hypothalmus had thrown up its hands, given the midichlorians a brief advisory as to what was going to happen, and then laid itself down for a nap. A healing mechanism. He was shuffling around the sick bay now, getting his feet back underneath him, and when he didn't answer, Obi-Wan called out again, softly.
"Master, this isn't so bad. One of them took me up to the rigging today, and it reminded me of advanced movement training at the Temple. The air is so fresh here -- I've never been on a planet this early into the industrial development before."
Qui-Gon had woken up with the most abominable pins and needles in his feet. That always happened when he came out of these collapses, but it was particularly bad this time for some reason, and he grunted vaguely at Obi-Wan, who was sitting, balanced like a cat, in the precise middle of Qui-Gon's newly-vacated hammock.
There was silence for a while as Qui-Gon continued to make his way around the tiny room and slowly, methodically, opened his concious mind and senses back up to the Force. He could sense that there were very few people below now; most of them were up on deck, and it was quieter below than it had been all day.
Obi-Wan said nothing for a period. The hammock swung with the movement of the ship, and so did the lantern overhead. Qui-Gon concentrated on making his limbs move as he wanted, and they both knew what Obi-Wan would talk about next.
"Master, was what Dooku said right? I know I shouldn't have been listening in on your call, but I haven't been able to stop thinking about what he said. About the wars here and our coming here only to find Koserr and get back the documents that he stole, that the Senate only intervenes when it suits them and the Jedi being -- being -- "
Obi-Wan's voice faltered. His family had been on Corsucant for a hundred generations, and it was in a native-born Corsucanti's blood -- something about the air -- to complain about their government and complain at great length, but there was never a question of the fundamental rightness of the Republic, let alone say something like that.
And criticizing the Order was on another level entirely.
Obi-Wan was struggling to keep his voice casual. He was not yet old enough, though, to keep control of that and his face at the same time, and Qui-Gon lifted his head and watched him struggle with it.
"Are you going to help him?"
...
First lieutenants did not stand watch, usually, but Bush did not mind taking the occaisional turn if there was illness or other need: it was a fine, still night, and it was pleasant to be on deck in times like this. Steady course, deep water, just enough wind to keep things interesting. He was placid enough so that he was not all that disturbed when the older of the passengers materialized out of nothing.
Bush could've sworn that there had been nothing but shadow, but the man was standing there was though he'd been rooted there for the better part of the watch.
"Does this life suit you?"
Bush had heard, of course, on the very best authority, that the man was a French duke, exiled during the revolution, and the boy was a Bourbon prince, hurrying to a rendezvous with a fleet bearing an invasion army for the French West Indies and remove Boney's rule from those islands, but he was not sure if he believed it. After all, the man didn't sound like a Frog. Didn't look like one, either, and it was odd, too, to be asked questions like that without an introduction.
He had never thought of it, though, and oddly enough, Bush wasn't too irritated by the lack of respect. Perhaps it was the fine weather -- perhaps it was because the question was so calmly asked.
"It does. Well enough." He considered the matter some more and found that he agreed with his initial intuition. "I went to sea with the Navy when I was fourteen, stayed with her through Amiens. I was on the Temeraire at Trafalgar, and I've never known anything but what I've got now."
The man nodded, and there was a moment of quiet where neither of them spoke. Below, they could hear the lower decks going about their evening entertainments. Above, the wind was whistling in the rigging, and the stars somewhat beyond them in turn. All around, the sea made the slow, rolling noise of deep water undisturbed, for a hundred miles in every direction, by land, and the ship creaked in response.
Bush listened to it; it was the sound of his life, and the man appeared to listening, too. Waves. Wind. Ship.
After a long while, the man tucked his hands behind him.
"Neither have I. And I would never wish to."
...
The Hotspur came to the rendezvous point the next morning at three bells, and there was nothing there but open water -- they were so deep out at sea that there were few seabirds, but the older man insisted that this was the correct place, that his rendezvous vessel would meet him at the correct time, and when Hornblower opened his mouth to argue with the man that shipboard gossip made into the illegitimate son of King George and Marie Antoinette on his way to negotiate a secret treaty with the Spanish colonies, the man waved his hand again.
Hornblower blinked, made a mental remark about what a fine morning it was, and ordered the rig to be made to ready to take them out.
He then spent the next half of a watch fidgeting wildly on the quarterdeck and wondered why, in the name of God, he had agreed to any of this. Bush expressed his amazement by staring the unoffending firebuckets as though they had sprouted legs and were dancing the hornpipe on deck, and Hornblower could feel his embarassment growing and growing and gro -- and then something came shrieking over the horizon.
Orrock was up in the rigging and sighted it with a glass, but before the words were completely out of his mouth, a giant silver thing, as long as the Hotspur herself, was hovering over the rig like a seabird keeping its place in the breeze.
There were no wings, though, no movement, nothing but a deafening roar that sounded like the gundeck at continuous, full blast. In the noise, Hornblower could see that the boy leaned close and said something to the older man; the older man gave the boy a slightly irritated look, and a ladder dropped out of the belly of the silver thing. They climbed up into it -- the boy waved to something or someone on the Hotspur -- then, as quickly as it had come, the roar was gone, and so were the man and boy.
The men in the rig were left staring. So was Hornblower. The air tasted strange in the mouth, and Hornblower's ears were still ringing. He'd never heard a sailing ship sound so still before during the day, and everyone was frozen, unable to speak. Even the creak of the ship seemed a little muted.
Eventually, though, Bush found his voice.
"I wish we'd been able to press them, sir. The boy ran up that ladder with his feet like a born topman."
Hornblower didn't know whether he wanted to laugh or cry over the fact that Bush actually sounded sincere.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Re: *____*
Date: 2006-04-11 02:29 am (UTC)And that same vulnerability being why he's so harsh on Hammond once they're on the Hotspur
That's an awesome, awesome point. When you're aboard ship, it's serious business, and you don't get it wrong, for Hammond's own sake as well as the ship's. Especially because Bush sees upholding the captain's honour as his duty, too. So the guilt might come in there: what if he's compromised the situation in some way? Made it harder for Hammond?
Re: *____*
Date: 2006-04-11 02:51 am (UTC)There's a line, too, in my head about there only being three things or whatever that Jack can't tell his friend Orrock about -- they're such good friends, and Tom is so good to him, and the three things are [something about his family, maybe his father dying a little ignobly], [something else], and the third thing being that Hammond knows what it feels like to lie underneath the First Lieutenant. There were other parts about it -- what it was like to kiss the First Lieutenant, what it was like to slide his hand underneath Bush's shirt shirt, even the pain mixed with pleasure when he puts it to you -- but the notion that what sticks with Hammond is what it felt like to lie on the bed, naked, with an equally naked Bush covering him?
Man.
I wonder how clearly Bush would realize that what he was feeling about Hammond is guilt. And whether he'd understand why he was feeling so angry about Hammond.
Re: *____*
Date: 2006-04-11 03:16 am (UTC)*___________________________* Yes. OMFG.
And Bush wouldn't tell anyone either, and so there'd be those moments when Bush hauls Hammond off to one side to make sure he learns his signals or knows his duties, and it would be there, between them. The memory of Jack on his back with his legs around Bush's hips. The way Bush moved, slow and steady. The way he unbuttoned his jacket, and how Bush felt without his uniform on, all warm naked skin. *__*
I'm also remembering that bit in loyalty where Hammond comes aboard with Orrock, and Bush is like "name?" or whatever he says. Hammond has this little pause where he looks confused, and Bush cuts him off about Hornblower directly. And he gives that confused 'aye aye, sir'. Yeah.
EDITED FOR MORONICITY
Date: 2006-04-11 03:59 am (UTC)AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH AHHHHHHHHHH HOLY FUCK! HOLY FUCK!
The intensity of that memory, man. I can only imagine -- all that warm naked skin when Hammond is almost constantly cold and miserable and thirsty, and it's highlighted by the fact that now, whenever he sees Bush, it's always when he's dressed to the nines as a proper lieutenant should be.
Though. Man. There's this line in LtH, I think, where Bush thinks about how, as a middie, he often got sent by the lieutenants in the wardroom to the galley to heat an iron up so that they could iron out their neckcloths. I can imagine that some other middie usually has the job, but for some reason, on some morning, he's unavailable. And Hammond gets handed the iron in the corridor and told to do it, and he gets it heated up and puts the rag wrapped around the handle after it's heated and then runs it back to the wardroom -- and there's Bush, impatiently waiting at the wardroom table with only his shirt on, no breeches, no stockings, just the shirt, though the coat is on the table, too, and his shoes sticking out of the front of his cabin.
The white shirt. Bush's black neck cloth in front of him. The hot iron in Hammond's hand. The light from one the windows in the side of the ship making Bush's shirt look almost translucent.
Re: EDITED FOR MORONICITY
Date: 2006-04-11 04:44 am (UTC)Ohhhhh fuck yes. And Bush standing there with one of those closed expressions on his face, trying not to give anything away. Just a few steps of space between them, and Hammond having to make to himself move, having to go over and hand over the iron. Standing right in front of Bush. Looking at his uncovered neck, where the shirt is dipping open a little. Looking at his mouth. Not looking at the long swathe of skin below but being so aware of it anyway.
And one of the times they're alone, would Hammond ever chance reaching out a hand to Bush? Touching his wrist where it's bare, and trying to reconcile that time in portsmouth with this man on the ship.
It's so interesting, also, that Bush lets Hammond go on the rescue trip in loyalty. There's those fascinating moments where Matthews nearly says something about Hammond panicking, but doesn't, and Bush catches it anyway.
Re: EDITED FOR MORONICITY
Date: 2006-04-11 05:18 am (UTC)And one of the times they're alone, would Hammond ever chance reaching out a hand to Bush?
*makes ama;lkdjfgdf* dfjdfad. Man. It could go either way -- on the one hand, I can totally see how Bush would completley freeze him out. Even if Hammond steps a little closer one time, I can imagine Bush just looking at him with that completely closed off expression you mention except for, maybe, a little bit of a sneer creeping out.
Or. On the other hand. Whatever drew them together on land might be changed, not possible in this environment, but oh man oh man -- Bush is even more in control and a man in this environment than he was on shore. As Hammond sees it, much of what was attractive about Bush before is still there, and it's now combined with this urge to please that wasn't there before. And man, for Bush now. Hornblower. So close now, but not a lieutenant. The morning walks, the sense of isolation that you talk about in your Bush/Hammond fic.
Is it too plebetastic to wonder at Cotard's place in all this?
Re: EDITED FOR MORONICITY
Date: 2006-04-11 06:08 am (UTC)Bush gets really frustrated during Loyalty. Maybe he can exercise that frustration with the young gentleman. :>
And yeah, I think he does believe in Hammond -- he gives him the chance to go ashore again, and also, that bit where he makes him look up the signals in the book.
Brain is no longer working well, hopefully this makes sense. <3