The Ghost of Hercules.

[quigonejinn]

It was the future, not the past, that haunted Hornblower. He worried about what would come, about possibility. Once he returned to Smallbridge, in fact, he found that there was a great deal of work to be done for the future: he wrote a letter to Barbara, who was still on the Continent, and he reorganized Richard Arthur's schooling. There were accounts to be settled, sums to be transferred, and tenants who had grievances. Hornblower found himself playing landlord twice a week in the mornings, and the work of sorting out their concerns vexed him more than any problems of a ship of the line ever had.

After the third week of playing landlord and father and waiting husband, he went to bed in a state. When he woke, he thought it was one of the chambermaids come early to do her work, but after a moment, after looking through through the curtains, he realized two things: first, it was well into the morning, almost noon. The sun was bright enough so that he could see the room clearly through the curtain around the bed.

Second, the chambermaid not only had Maria's way of standing and wearing her cap a little askew, but also her face. The little snub nose, the wide eyes, the hair curling around the face. Hornblower had made some noise inside the curtains when he sat up, and she had turned around to look him almost full in the face.

By the time that Hornblower managed to shake himeslf out of his stunned state and reach out of the curtains, she was gone.

...

It was strange to be back at Smallbridge and have neither Bush nor Barbara near him. Hornblower concluded that it must have been loneliness playing tricks on him: that afternoon, in fact, he had the chambermaids lined up for inspection. He studied them for a good ten minutes before dismissing them with a cleared throat and a warning to keep their feet clean when going from room to room. None of them could have been the woman that he saw; they were either too tall or too fat or too dark.

He was lonely, and he knew it. Brown, who had returned from the Continent, was no comfort. He had his own sorrows, his own grief about losing his wife, who had not wanted to leave France to come to England. This left Hornblower desperate for company, and as Brown took his dinner away, Hornblower thought he heard footsteps outside. Children's footsteps. Two of them, as a pair.

...

On the other hand, while he did not have either Bush or Barbara, Hornblower did have Richard Arthur, who was delighted to have his father back. He had been sad to lose his father, but he had been playing with the village children. He had gotten into the habit of it while Hornblower was away, apparently, and it was rough stuff. Hornblower was there when Richard came back to the nursery, covered in dirt, with his jacket slashed across the front and a splash of mud down the rest.

"Sorry, sir. He slipped away from me, the scoundrel. I only looked away for a moment."

Hornblower hardly heard her. Instead, he called Richard over to him -- Hornblower called him -- he had taken a seat on the child-size chair and Richard came to him, grateful. Not minding the near certainty of getting dirty himself, Hornblower took his son onto his knee. They had been playing in the pine trees, Richard explained. And then they had gone down to the river to play Napoleon at Waterloo.

Richard blushed when he remembered that he was talking to his father, and Hornblower laughed. His son's jacket was slashed across the front, and he was almost dipped in mud. The day was warm, so the mud was warm, too. Richard's cheeks were flushed. His dirty fingers left prints on Hornblower's face and shirt, and he spoke quickly, with animation.

There was color in his cheeks.

Hornblower suddenly remembered Longley.

...

So there were ghosts and ghosts. The memories pressed all around Hornblower. One morning, when Brown came to help him dress, Hornblower sent him away again because he could not bear to have another person in the room, thenreceived the shock of his life when he looked into his wardrobe and saw his Admiral's uniform hanging there. He had forgotten, for a while, that he was an Admiral. It had been a beautiful morning at Smallbridge; he slept well and woke in bright sunshine. He remembered thinking that Richard was sure to go down to the river with his firend

Now, he thought of how the last time he had seen Leighton, Leighton had been wearing an Admiral's uniform.

That dinner party. Hornblower had envied him it, just as he had envied Leighton in his possession of Barbara. And when Hornblower raised his own hand to smooth the front of his own coat, he could not help but think of how Leighton must have done something similar in his uniofrm.

Later that day, he wrote to Barbara. It was unlikely to arrive before she left the Continent, but he had hopes. It was an extended letter, and the writing took him through the afternoon, into dinner. Dinner was left outside his door; he left it covered. When he went to his bedroom, he found his clothes laid out for him and the window had, as been ordered, opened. A wind blew through it, lifting the edges of the bed curtains, and the moon made parts of it bright but left other parts dark, so that it looked like there was a body inside.

It struck Hornblower that it looked like a woman's nightgown, like what Marie might have worn.

He slept in an armchair that night. And the night after that.

...

One afternoon, Hornblower followed his son. He wanted to see the boys who played with his son, but he knew that if he made his presence known, Richard would be embarrassed, for he was secretive about his friends. He never revealed who it was that he played with, or their names. Additionally, it would be awkward for the boys who played with him. They would be reminded of the difference in status -- after all, Hornblower had been a village boy himself, and he could easily put himself in their shoes.

So he followed Richard. There were no lessons in the afternoon, and after the tutor let Richard out of his lessons, Hornblower went after, expecting at every turn for Richard to meet his friends. He was prepared for them to be poor; he was expecting them to be half-dressed, for Richard was a kind-hearted boy, but Hornblower never saw any friends. Richard Arthur was alone. He gave no sign of expecting anyone; he had told his nurse that he was going to play with them by the river, and since Hornblower had made it known to the nurse that Richard was to be allowed to play alone, she did not follow.

Richard gave no sign of expecting anyone. Instead, he went down to the river, went up the branches of a tree and looked over the town. When he came home, he told a story of having played Le Havre and entering the city to the cheers of the blacksmith's son.

...

It would be weeks, possibly months, before Barbara returned, though, and eventually, one night, when he could not resist any longer, he went over to the bed.

Perhaps it was a dream. Perhaps it was not, but he pushed aside the curtains, for she had drawn them that night, and his heart turned over when he saw her sitting there, quiet and dressed in the style of the peasants of Normandy. She looked as she must have looked when the Count's son had fallen in love with her. She was young and beautiful, and her hair was brilliantly colored even in the moonlight. The Count's Legion of Honor shone in her right hand, and Hornblower went up on the bed and kissed her, again and again. She lay in his arms willingly, but she would not kiss him in return.

...

This, too, was likely a dream: Hornblower woke in the moonlight, by himeslf in the bed. He came out into the hallway and found Maria sitting in a chair that he knew was not there, mending a bit of clothing that did not exist for little Horatio who had died. Hornblower told her that it was late, that she ought to spare her eyes and go to sleep, but Maria did not reply. She was only thinking of her mending, but she eventually turned to him to see what her husband had to say.

And the question finally worked itself out of his lips: he had been wanting to ask it for weeks.

"Where is Bush? Where are the children?"

Maria only held up, against Hornblower's chest, the jacket that she had been mending. It was torn and soaked with blood.

...

Hornblower was a man determined to to live in the present and the future, not the past, and he began to write letters to Barbara each morning. He walked with his son, Richard, in the gardens each afternoon; he was determined that his son would not be lonely and, also, that he, Hornblower, would be a good landlord. These were things that he could make important to himself. He was unlikely to ever receive another command; a life of peace and comfort was all that was left to him.

It was getting to September now; the summer was gone, and the weather was starting to cool. The harvest would be coming soon, and more than anything, Hornblower was hopeful that his dreams of ghosts would fade with the heat. Richard had stopped telling stories about playing with village boys, and when Hornblower suggested it to him, Richard would frown and change the subject to something that he felt would interest his father more. He was a quick study; he learned Latin easily, as a mother tongue, and he had great enthusiasm for his studies. It surprised Hornblower.

He suspected that it pleased him.

...

He found himself wishing that he had never conceived the plan —- he would rather have stood a siege here in Le Havre and have Bush alive at his side. It was hard to think of a world without Bush in it, of a future where he would never, never see Bush again.

...

Bush was gone, and Marie had been shot. Maria had died of grief and childbirth; his first two children were half-dead of smallpox when he came back from the sea, and there was Longley, too, who he had loved in place of them. Barbara came back to him in September, and Hornblower was there to greet her carriage as it came up the drive. Richard stood next to him, almost dancing with joy. He remembered Barbara very well and could describe her features with great detail; the other day, he had busied himself learning a selection of Juvenal that his tutor had set to him so that he might recite it for Barbara, who he called Mama.

The ghosts were there, too. They had been fading for weeks, but suddenly, they manifested with in renewed strength: the sky was bluer than a new Navy uniform, and there was Marie, in gold to match the countryside and the time that he had seen her at the ball for Le Havre. At the curve of the road, Maria gathered the children around her. Longley stood with Wellard, dripping seawater and blood, and Leighton stood behind Hornblower. The Admiral wanted to see his wife again, and somewhere in the house, Sawyer moved through the rooms. Hornblower had never seen the ghosts so vivid, so lifelike.

Barbara's carriage came up the path, and Hornblower remembered the carriage ride out of Rosas. He remembered the deck of the Sutherland in the moments after he had sent Bush below so that he would live -- he remembered the terror of being on the deck of the Renown and thinking that he had come too late to save his friend. The sky at Coiba had been as blue as what was now before his eyes; the sky at the Hamoaze where Bush came aboard had been somewhat less blue. It was not Hornblower's fault that the color blue reminded him so much of his friend; Bush had been blue-eyed and had worn blue all of his adult life. Hornblower thought of Bush whenever he thought of the sea, and he heard Richard cheer before he saw it himself, but the horses were good and fast.

Soon, the carriage was before them, and Barbara came out. Her beautiful face smiled at him, and she kissed his cheek. He could see that she was greatly moved; she was almost trembling with emotion, and deep inside, Hornblower was rejoicing that he had her again, that Richard was embracing her so ardently, but he could barely hear their voices. The ghosts were still present before his eyes. Marie's dress was as gold as ever. Maria had bent down to comfort little Horatio, who had begun to cry. Wellard and Longley were talking to each other.

All that Hornblower could think, though, was that if he were forced to see the ghosts of those he had killed, if he were to be haunted, it was desperately, terribly unfair that he would not have a chance to see his friend again.

He would have paid that price to see Bush again.

...

It was hard to think of a world without Bush in it, of a future where he would never, never see Bush again.

...

He must sit and let them drag him out like a coward. He forced himself to raise his chin and look at the aide-de-camp, trying not to make it the fixed and glassy stare he knew it to be.

"It is not death," said the aide-de-camp. It was a moment before the aide could find his voice and complete his thought.

"It is life."

Started May 17th, 2006. Timestamp says 10:49 PM, and the title was supposed to have been something like Three Things that Never Happened to Horatio Hornblower: the Past. But the Present and Future never materialized so, uh.

The current title (and the piece of Juvenal that Richard is supposed to have learned) is a reference this. Yes, I am trying to imply that Bush was Hercules. SHUT UP, I AM A BIG PLEBE. NO I AM NOT SAYING THAT BUSH ~ MARK ANTONY

Also, thanks to black_hound who put up with me whinging about this for just, like, ages. XD

Comments

[iansmomesq.livejournal.com]

There is much love for this. Much love, and why didn't you tell me about it sooner? *G* I think if Bush would have appeared before him ghostly like Maria and Marie, HH would have seriously lost it.

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

XD Because I thought it was dead as a doornail until this morning. AMAZING WHAT PROCRASTINATION WILL DO TO YOU :D :D :D

My dad came in last night while I was settling into bed and told me, "Great ships can founder on small gutters, quigonejinn." I think he wants me to study more for the goddamn thing XD.

[dastier.livejournal.com]

oh. if there is ever a fic with true feeling of being haunted about it, it's this one. and it's really, really cruel - but perfectly appropriate for the general mood of the story - to deprive HH of a visitation from Bush.

as to Richard Arthur's behaviour...it runs in the family, eh >:)

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

as to Richard Arthur's behaviour...it runs in the family, eh >:)

Melancholy is a true-breeding gene, I suppose. :D

Poor Hornblower. Poor Richard Arthur. Poor you for suffering through yet more of my crack. XD

[black-hound.livejournal.com]

It's better than I could have imagined. :D And Jesus. So perfect for HH to be denied the ghost of Bush. And I also love madly the Juvenal and the way you wove that in.

Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.

<333333333333333333333

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

When I look back at this, I start to wish that I'd tied in some of the stuff about fortunetelling from Lord Hornblower. Because really, that book is full of the spooky, from the fortunetelling to Hornblower's premonition that he's going to be lonely.

<33333 And randomly: that Cezanne from your icon is at the Barnes. I went to see it once, and I'm not much one for Impressionist stuff, but it's something and a half.

[phantomsangel.livejournal.com]

HOLY SHIT. I love you. I wish you had told me about this or given me a sneak peak or posted it earlier or something. Because this is amazing and sad and haunting. So sad how lonely Hornblower is and that little Richard Arthur has picked up on his father's habits. And most sad is that Hornblower is denied the ghost of Bush. Whom he'll never see again. :( *emos*

This was wonderfully tied together, dear. <333

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

:( If wishing made for ghosts, I would've seen a ghost of you while I was writing this.

[nolivingman.livejournal.com]

Oh, man, I'm glad you resurrected this. It's beautiful and full of pain. I love it.

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

HAH! HAH! SHE PUNNED RESURRECTED!

Or something. XD I'm glad you like it Poor, desperate HH.

*babbles incoherently*

[(Anonymous)]

OH GOD THIS IS BRILLIANT. And when Maria holds that jacket up to him and when he thinks he hears children's footsteps and and when Sawyer's stalking through the house and WELLARD and MARIE and MAN OH MAN this is so painful AND I DON'T KNOW YOU, BUT I LOVE YOU ALREADY. AND THIS. AND YOUR OTHER WORK.

And his obsession with blue... and the end and the book quotes...

And this fic-- it's so beautifully written, and so evocative of Hornblower's repressed grief/guilt- and how he never gets to see Bush; which makes so much sense, really, because Hornblower is dealing with so much pent-up paaain in terms of his boyfriend's best friend's death.

How he says 'Bush was gone' instead of 'Bush was blown into little tiny bits of gore on some godforsaken French river'; how he finds it odd to not have Bush or Barbara at Smallbridge, when he knows perfectly well that BUSH IS RESTING HAS SHUFFLED OFF THE MORTAL COIL.

And to my in(s)anely babbling mind, that fits right in because HH doesn't want to admit that Bush could be dead. Possibly because he never sees the body, so he's never actually explicitly confronted with Bush's death.

(Obviously, I don't want to admit Bush's death either. Or Kennedy's, come to that. And yes, my HH is right out of character.)

I do have a question, though: where are the Count and El Supremo?

hang on, you'll just have to excuse me now. I'm just going to read this again, and deliquesce into a small puddle of happiness, because your fic is beautiful and your endings BRILLIANT BEYOND BELIEF.

Re: *babbles incoherently*

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

I do have a question, though: where are the Count and El Supremo?

ALL THAT SUPPOSED FANGIRLING WAS JUST A LEADUP INTO THAT, WASN'T IT, O ANON WHO ALWAYS ASKS ME DEVASTATING QUESTIONS? :O

(Though the answer is that I thought the Comte was alive at the end of Lord Hornblower. And El Supremo was an oversight. He was in the original draft version of the carriage-rolling-up-to-the-house scene, but when I came back to this fic, I trashed that scene and forgot to stick El Supremo in elsewhere. Pretend that he's on the roof, with his arms raised so that it brackets the sun or something. XD)

<333333 I really wish you would get an LJ account so that I could spam you and squee over your lovely FB with greater ease. XD

[(Anonymous)]

The fangirling was in earnest, I swear. And it's true: I DON'T KNOW YOU BUT I LOVE YOU AND YOUR FIC.

Sorry about nitpicking; just put it down to my anal-retentive freudian pretensions. Not that I'm a Freudian, of course. I've just been studying him, though, so I've acquired this super-annoying tendency to overanalyse.

You can totally tell, can't you?

And now I'm confused...when have I asked devastating questions, aside from these ones?

Anyway, I miss El Supremo. He's cool. DON'T LAUGH. I WANT TO BE HIM,with his cool autonomic/despotic rule and complete dispassion, except for the being clapped-in-irons-and-killed part, and I guess the being male part.

(Actually, when you told me to pretend that El Supremo was on the roof bracketing the sun, I had this sudden, traumatising image of this psycho Hispanic tyrant standing on a roof doing the YMCA, accompanied by clanking chain noises and silhouetted against the sun and all.) XD

clearly, my superego has died and my id is so going to hell.

But it does bug me that Forester never mentions what happens to the Comte. You're right, he could be alive, but I always figured if he was, HH would have mentioned that part somewhere, given their little 'forgive me' father/son routine.

And um, yes, I do have an lj. I'm just too lazy to log in.

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

And um, yes, I do have an lj. I'm just too lazy to log in.

Hahhaha. <3333

But it does bug me that Forester never mentions what happens to the Comte.

And yeah, you're right that it's odd we never hear from the Comte again. I always put it down to Horblower's desire to wipe terrible things out of his brain. Like, how he never appears to think of Bush again? Or about Marie, once he's gone to the grave site.

And now I'm confused...when have I asked devastating questions, aside from these ones?

Weren't you the one who pointed out on the Bush-as-a-cat fic that cats are actually lactose intolerant? And now you're pointing out htat I left out El Supremo. And when I offer a solution, you MOCK ME. MOCK ME. >:EEEEEEEEEE

[(Anonymous)]

You're stalking me logging my IP, aren't you? Now I feel dumb for not working that out sooner.

HH is so much in denial about Bush, isn't he? CLASSIC FREUDIAN REPRESSION, I TELL YOU. But it's very different from Marie, somehow. SHE AIN'T BETTER THAN A WIFE. I don't think HH could forget about Bush that easily; it must be pretty difficult to forget your one-legged best friend WHO YOU GOT BLOWN UP, but then again I'm not a repressive, crazy, introverted naval officer with an amputee best friend/subordinate, so I can't talk. Although during Admiral Hornblower, I was wondering why he wasn't thinking back to LtH and mourning Bush more often, but HE IS IN DENIAL. CLEARLY. I HOPE.

Despite my weird nitpicking/anal-retentive tendencies, YOUR WORK ROCKS. I didn't mock you on purpose, I swear... Well, actually, you're right, I did. Kind of. But I'm just a terribly inappropriate, immature El Supremo wannabe/idiot who shouldn't have fed her cat milk. And you should probably tell me to stop stalking you. And mocking you. And nitpicking.

Basically, you should just tell me to SHUT UP AND GO AWAAAAAY. It probably won't work, but hey. XD

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

I'd know you without the IP logging I only have one regular anon, and you have a rather distinctive way of posting. :D

And the explanation that I've always been told for why he doesn't think about Bush during AH -- that awful bit about the tug named Temeraire, and he doesn't REMEMBER what the name means -- was that CSF was thinking about bringing Bush back in between LH and AH. He wanted to leave the door open, but he didn't want to commit himself.

Not entirely satisfying by ay means, but.

[romanticalgirl.livejournal.com]

This is gorgeous and painful and so heartbreaking. I think it's Hornblower's curse that, though he can put anything aside when he has to, he cannot escape it completely. It's very real that his ghosts would haunt him, though I can see Bush refusing to, as he has no desire to give his friend any more pain.

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

Awww. Nice Bush. XD

Though, in my head, this is all HH's imgining. He feels so cripplingly guilty about Bush that he can't even imagine Bush. Though if that were really the case, shouldn't he have felt pretty insanely guilty about Marie, too?

*ponders*

[aka-centimetre2.livejournal.com]

Wow. Just....wow.

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

Glad it worked for you. :)

[randomalia.livejournal.com]

Um, this is completely, completely AMAZING. COMPLETELY AMAZING. Brilliant idea and so chillingly done. I felt sorry for poor Richard who has no friends, and the way he echoed Hornblower, who has none now either.

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

Richard Arthur fascinates me. All we get of him are those two lines or so from "The Last Story" or whatever, where we find out that he's in the Coldstream Guards, that he's married and has (three, I think) children. And that he gets an allowance from daddy. With that descriptoin, it doesn't sound like there's much of HH in him, y'know?

Hurray for you liking this!

[randomalia.livejournal.com]

It sounds like he somehow managed to avoid the crazy, or maybe that he was so lonely as a kid that he made sure he had what he needed to be happy in adulthood. Nothing like Barbara either.

Also, isn't this wonderfully Bush? The Steadfast Tin Soldier.

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

Yessss, yes it is OMG. I vaguely remembered that story from my childhood, and man. I remember how I couldn't read it for YEARS because I was so traumatized by the ending.

XD Does that mean, by the way, that HH is a pink paper dancer?

[randomalia.livejournal.com]

Me too. Except what I actually remembered was that the soldier got left behind somehow and I was VERY SAD.

HH has all those spangly medals on his blue coat, ahaha. Though you know, I love the idea of Bush falling in love with a woman just because he decides she's the one for him. Because they have something in common. Another reason why your marriage fic is a really great thing in this fandom: Bush gets a life outside HH.

[(Anonymous)]

does that make Barbara the goblin, if Bush is the tin soldier and HH is the dancer?

*is juvenile*

[idler-1814.livejournal.com]

Oh, this is fascinating. It seems entirely within the scope of Hornblower's character that he would torture himself with visions of those he had lost, yet be completely unable to face the one loss he felt most deeply.

It's beautifully written--as always--and I particularly loved the many telling little details: Richard's jacket slashed across the front like Longley's, that Marie "would not kiss him in return", that even as Barbara's carriage came into view he was thinking of Bush instead...

There's a lot of insight packed in here. And the Juvenal? Perfect!

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

Using the Juvenal didn't occur to me until I was writing the very last section and was trying to figure out a detail about Richard Arthur. And behold! Serendipity, Wikipedia and a lifetime of fangirling Roman culture pays off in a very, very small way. XD

There's a lot of insight packed in here.

That's enormously gratifying coming from a writer that I admire as much as you.

Thank you.