love, love is a verb.
Aug. 17th, 2006 10:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quigonejinnAs he grew older, Qui-Gon learned to tolerate Corsucant. -- The Fic Begun This Morning and In Which Q & O Will Finally Get It On
Jedi were encouraged to cultivate an additional interest outside the curriculum. -- Untitled
Once upon a time, there was a wizard who was not as wise as he thought he was. -- Untitled
Once upon a time, there was a knight who held land. -- Untitled
He looked like Master. -- Offense
Before getting into his car, Bush took one last look up at the balcony and the two Greek letters that hung there, just under the railing. -- Untitled
The reflection called to mind the room at the Comte's where you had played whist with the Comte and Marie and Bush, and you could not -- could not -- it made something inside you twist to imagine a small boy sitting in Bush's seat by the fire, and yet, you could imagine, with great detail and vividness, what he would look like. -- Bring to Love.
Dickie joined early because he knew that he would have to go sooner or later, and he would rather it be sooner than later. -- Untitled, PMGfic.
Second, the chambermaid not only had Maria's way of standing and wearing her cap a little askew, but also her face. -- Three Things that Never Happened to Horatio Hornblower: the Past
The rain cleared; your mother went out, and Bush is sitting there, wearing only his shirt and breeches and stockings. -- The Kind Heart
Loneliness reminded her of the years that she had spent in poverty, waiting for one of her wretched brothers to make something of his life. -- Three Things That Never Happened to Horatio Hornblower: the Future
Hornblower had a poor memory for the past, and he knew that he did, but as far as he could recall, Maria had brown eyes, not blue. -- Untitled
When Richard Arthur is young, he has to learn not to be frightened of Bush anew every year: he cries the first year, whimpers the second. -- Five Things That Never Happened to William Bush: Richard Arthur
Bush decided, shortly afterwards, that he wasn't going to ask just how a skinny Mexican boy ended up with that name, or how anybody, anybody on Earth, ever got stuck with a last name like Hornblower. -- Untitled
They had been young men together, fighting in the Carribean, and they had grown old at sea together. -- Five Things that Never Happened to William Bush: Peace
Bush had only the vaguest notion of what a lotus was, and he would have been vaguely horrified at the idea of eating flowers. -- The Message
It is a fact. Qui-Gon Jinn would have been much worse off without his second Padawan. There was that streak of rebellion in him to begin with; there were the fourteen years spent with Dooku, the dozen with Xanatos. When he was young, he had wanted, in a vague wya, to be a member of the Council; when he was a bit older, he realized that the Council didn't want him, and he decided, too, that he wanted very little to do with them.
Without Obi-Wan, he would have ended up much closer to outright rebellion. He would have died on a swampy mud planet or been vaporized in space or dead at Mace Windu's feet when he openly broke with Council. The terrible days after Xanatos would have swallowed him whole, ground him into dust, so never underestimate what Obi-Wan did for his Master. Qui-Gon had not wanted another Padawan in the beginning, and in the end, he had very little understanding of how important Obi-Wan was to him. Obi-Wan had plenty of reason to doubt that there was any debt, too, but do not think that Qui-Gon owed Obi-Wan less.
Never underestimate a gift of devotion.
Obi-Wan had left that particular book, along with the rest of his personal effects, back at the Temple or Corsucant, and he had not, as a matter of fact, seen another copy in all the years since. It was undoubtedly unfashionable given the current political climate. Also, even if there had been reprintings, they certainly weren't going to be issued in a form to reach a marginal desert waystation like Tattooine.
Fingers on the spine. Mouth open a little. Head bent, partly from being intent on the words, partly from the weight of her headdress. Padmé had a copy of her own -- multiple copies, in fact, as she'd received her first copy while she was in that diplomatic training program, and she found it such a useful reminder of the basics of diplomacy and successful negotiation -- and she'd given him an electronic copy that could be read on almost any interface used in the galaxy.
It had been small, barely the length of a palm, and heavily worked in silver with an inset of Naboo glass. There was a small port on the end so that he might listen to it as an audio file if he wanted; it could be plugged into a viewscreen and read, and there was even a way to set it so that words would leap out of the reader and hang in the air.
Fingers on the spine. Mouth open a little. Head bent, partly from being intent on the words, partly from the weight of her headdress, partly because she was running her lips against his bare shoulder while they lay in bed together. She was spooned behind him, reaching over to show him how to activate the projection reading phase, and the beads of her headdress had trailed against his shoulder, too. The words were clear on the air in a way that he could never convince them to be when he was trying to work the gadget himself.
The bed was soft. Her mouth was damp, a little cool. The only darkness had been a passing shuttlecraft overhead, throwing the briefest of shadows through the skylight.
Anakin had, back then, been very far away.
...
Sometimes, with all the time that he now has, Obi-Wan wonders whether things would have gone better if he'd brought Anakin around to see Padme one of those times. It might have done him good to have had another person in his life. She knew how to handle small children, and Anakin might not have formed the intense, obsessive bond that he did later.
That had been when his mother died, after all. Obi-Wan and Padme never spoke of what that time must been like; she never described to him what the Lars holding had looked like or the structure of the family; she didn't even mention the fact that Anakin had dug his mother's grave by himself, without the help of any droids and with none of the heavy equipment needed to break into the rock underlying the sand on Tattooine.
He must have used the Force, Obi-Wan realized. Four or five feet underneath the sand of the plains, there is a stratum of rock that goes almost straight down to the planet's core. If Anakin had dug her grave, as Lars told him that one time, then he would have used his droid hand, his lightsaber, and possibly psychokensis.
Obi-Wan wonders, sometimes, whether about he used Padme as a substitute for Qui-Gon. She knew more than he did. When she was not playing at being a handmaiden, she was strong, independent, knowledgeable about things that he was not. He knew her at almost the ame time that he had lost his Master, and there was also that streak of sharp, wicked humor in her. Brilliant, sweet, charming, remarkably strong. Independent of anything that she did to teach him about becoming a negotiator, there was still plenty of reason for him to love her.
If Obi-Wan did use her as a replacement, though, he is sorry. Sometimes, when he stands on the high plateau and uses heat-binoculars to watch her baby sleep on the farm below, he even apologizes to her for it.
...
1.
"Xanatos was fond of lying," Qui-Gon said, and he looked away for a moment. There were stars in the port window behind him; the ship was getting ready to enter hyperspace. "He enjoyed telling stories that were not true."
Obi-Wan licked his lips. They were still dry and cracked, and he was sitting propped up on pillows and with three blankets tucked around him. There was his blanket, then a thermal blanket and had activated heating elements running through it. The medics had insisted that he take it along with him when he left the medical unit a day early. That was two.
The third was the blanket from Qui-Gon's bed, and it was the topmost one, the one underneath Obi-Wan's fingers.
It took him two tries to get through the question. "Are all of his stories lies?"
2.
Obi-Wan was lying on his side on the rock and the dirt. He could see a three foot square in front of him; beyond it got blurry. Things went into darkness, and his tongue felt like it was swollen to twice its normal size inside his head.
"It's the drug," a voice said. It sounded rather cheerful, and Obi-Wan would have struggled up and looked to see who the voice was except his hands and legs were still bound with those metal links, and the muscles in his arm didn't work anyways.
Qui-Gon was reasonably familiar with at least a few of Jedi creche masters. He had grown up with one of them, had met most of them, exchanged a few pleasant words every now and then when he was back on Corsucant because he would always end up interacting with them in a semi-formal capacity whenever Yoda settled into one of his semi-regular fits about Qui-Gon taking a new Padawan.
One evening, after it had been settled that Obi-Wan would be his Padawan, one of them came by to the table where Qui-Gon was eating alone.
Qui-Gon looked up and up some more. Obi-Wan had been sent back to their quarters to make a last check of their luggage and confirm their transport on the morning, and the Jedi creche master looked rather more pleased with himself than Qui-Gon had expected him to look. He nodded at approvingly, took a sip from his mug of khlar tea.
"Good choice, really." He put his hand on Qui-Gon's shoulder. "That one likes to argue almost as much as you do, Qui-Gon."
Twenty years later, when Hornblower had almost forgotten about his old friend, he had a dream about Bush: it was unsurprising that he should think of Bush again because he was in the middle of passage to take the West Indies command. The days were growing warmer. The altitude of the sun was greater with each noontime measurement. Flying fish on the twenty-fourth, a cluster of palm trees, swept out to sea, and somewhat later that week, in the heat of the admiral's cabin, a dream that water around the flagship turned to solid land. Trees came from what had been waves, it took Hornblower for a moment to recognize the trees as being the ones that had grown behind the boat loft at the Comte's.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-17 05:34 pm (UTC)omg.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-17 10:53 pm (UTC)That fic is turning into a bitch to write. Because man. After you mentioned the possibility of Bush having that lovely, warm cottage family, I can't stop wanting to adopt that as my personal "official" version of that AU -- and it kidn of conflicts with what's going on in this story, and ARGH.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-17 11:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-17 11:11 pm (UTC)Smallbridge Stairs deserves a whole goddamn fic by itself. Because really, just the sheer porn of fingerfucking under those draped portraits? Man oh man. I don't care what the actual estate sale practices were back then. It's just gotta happen.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-17 06:45 pm (UTC)♥ ♥
*begs for it to be finished*
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-17 10:54 pm (UTC)*rends hair, makes RAAAAH face like HH in your icon*
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-17 09:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-17 10:59 pm (UTC)And yeah. Admiral Hornblower is such a fucking weird, weird, weird book. I mean, I read it, and I'm like, "WTF, has the man had a hot wire drawn through his frontal cortex??? HE SEES A TUGBOAT NAMED THE TEMERAIRE, AND HE CAN'T THINK OF THE IMPLICATION OF THE NAME? AFTER TWENTY YEARS AT SEA WITH BUSH?"
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-17 11:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-17 11:28 pm (UTC)HOLY CRAP TEMERAIRE FANDOM CROSSOVER OPPORTUNITY!
Ahem, sorry. You were saying?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-18 12:58 am (UTC)Yeah.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-18 12:59 am (UTC)My fannish universe is CRACK.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-18 02:40 am (UTC)It's kind of pathetic. Considering how I fangirl the author of the Temeraire books, I just hvaen't quite managed to put my hands on them.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-18 09:31 pm (UTC)Though very few Temeraire fans I know have commented on this yet (probably because most of the ones I know have come in through either sci-fi or other naval fiction, usually Aubrey), the prose is actually more Hornblower-ish than Austen-ish, or whatever she's been compared to. It's really quite a wonderful genre blend.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-18 09:47 pm (UTC)I read a little short story set in the Temeraire universe just now, and hm. The style, technically, reads a lot like Patrick O'Brian. But it's accessible and open like CSF.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-18 11:01 pm (UTC)I think the short stories she's put up are actually more O'Brianish than the novels proper, but YMMV, certainly.
edited for lack of clarity.
Date: 2006-08-19 01:02 am (UTC)The idea about HH and Bush and the espionage has been gnawing the side of my head in all day. Did you ever see Catherine the Great with Catherine, er, Zeta-Jones? PMG is in it as Potemkin, and it sends me off on all kinds of crack crossover thoughts with Commodore as it is.
Re: edited for lack of clarity.
Date: 2006-08-20 08:54 am (UTC)No, although I'd heard Paul McGann was in it! Is it good, or just crackworthy?
Re: edited for lack of clarity.
Date: 2006-08-22 04:45 am (UTC)Plus, there's this bit where Paul McGann is digging around in the earth that makes me squeal, "OMG BUSH!!!!! WEEDING AT THE COTTAGE IN CHICHESTER!!!!!!!!" *lames*
Re: edited for lack of clarity.
Date: 2006-08-22 09:25 pm (UTC)Look, you inspired my first new HH icon in, like, ever!
Re: edited for lack of clarity.
Date: 2006-08-24 02:06 am (UTC)Apples of Sodom! :D
Re: edited for lack of clarity.
Date: 2006-08-24 07:07 pm (UTC)Re: edited for lack of clarity.
Date: 2006-08-24 08:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-18 09:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-18 05:39 am (UTC)Still more reasons for your poor Obi-Wan to be repressed. According to
Even in snippets, your studies are poignant.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-18 11:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-19 01:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-27 07:16 pm (UTC)And just fyi, I should mention that while I've only read one of the books, I am a HH fan too. My sister was in love with Captain Pellew for years. I've not read much in that fandom, only your stuff, but I'm reasonably confident that I'm getting the best of it.
:)