Regeneration - the sequel, last part
Title: Regeneration - the sequel, last part
Rating: PG
Notes: Crossover Hornblower/Dr Who/Torchwood .
No claim made on or profit made from these characters.
"Where's he that wishes so?" Kennedy, queue hidden under a convenient helmet, standing on a cart transformed into a makeshift stage, made the Agincourt speech from Shakespeare's version of the history of 25th October 1415. As Hornblower watched him, deeply anxious as he was in case his lover should be found out, he couldn't help but feel an enormous amount of pride. Archie spoke with aplomb and dash, employing theatrical gestures that he must have seen some flamboyant leading man use on the stage at Drury lane. It was all very effective.
And Kennedy was enjoying himself enormously of course - what an actor he might have made, had it been suitable employment for the third son of an earl. And Horatio recognised no end of the words, naturally, as old Bard-boots was liable to spout them at the least provocation. Even Ianto seemed impressed, mingling among the serried ranks of Welsh bowmen; chatting away in the native tongue, he occasioned no suspicion and was making sure that his little clique were vociferous in their king's support.
"He that outlives this day and comes safe home." Archie stumbled rather on the words. Would they outlive this day and get back to their own place in Earth's history? And what the hell was he doing anyway, popping up at random in various parts of time and space, like a ring of fairy mushrooms at dawn? It had all seemed very exciting while he was still under the influence of his last dose of codeine - given to ward off a migraine - but now that the feeling of elation was abating he felt exposed and nervous. He caught Horatio's eye in the crowd and was reassured - Hornblower never batted an eye at adventure or uncertainty, although his reaction to one of the girls back in Cardiff, all tattoos and what seemed to be merely a few hankies for clothes, had shown that he could still be unnerved.
Kennedy took a deep breath and continued. "Then he will strip his sleeve and show his scars;" he thought at this point of stripping off his shirt and showing his own scars, just for dramatic effect, but decided that it would shock Horatio too much and was not in keeping with canon as he understood it. A little too much on the extemporising side. And it would have brought the risk of Hornblower seeing a certain mark on the edge of his neck that he'd managed to keep out of view so far.
"We few we happy few, we band of brothers." Horatio had forgotten those phrases had come from this play, this speech. They produced in him such feelings of homesickness; for the early days on Indefatigable when life was glorious for the first time ever, for the later days when he had his first visions of becoming one of the great men in the navy, for the cursed times under one of Nelson's own. His thoughts returned to more urgent matters. Where were William and Jack? If they didn't get back with the rightful King and pretty damned soon, then they'd all end up down in the defile between the woods - in the midst of battle - and their chances of survival, even in view of the knowledge that the English army should win nobly, would be slim.
"Where's Harkness?" Hornblower grabbed Ianto's arm.
"He'll be here; he knows what he's doing. Trust him."
Horatio scowled - confidence was the last thing he had in this so called captain; he did not resemble any ideal of leadership that he had ever known.
Ianto noticed the look. "Don't you rely on your men to trust you - to follow instructions without question just because you've said so? That's part of what he's been about," he nodded towards Archie, who was valiantly winding up his speech. "Getting the men to go in and obey their leader without grumbling."
"God be with you all!" Amen to that. Kennedy, pale from his exertions, joined his friends as the army began to deploy itself across the defile as Henry and his advisors had thankfully already arranged. "They're leaving it bloody tight."
Ianto prepared to launch into his standard support Jack speech when the man himself appeared bearing an enigmatic grin and what seemed to be Archie's twin brother. The tales had not been exaggerated - Henry really was the spit of Kennedy.
"Couldn't appear until you'd got them all dispersed." William was out of breath but grinning widely. "Risky enough to have a ringer in - letting them see two kings would have been pushing it a bit too far."
"Gentlemen," Henry spoke for the first time, "We are indebted to you for saving us from those..." he sought for the right words to describe the strange creatures who had laid hands on the royal personage, "miscreants. We have seen strange sights this day," he cast a sidelong glance at Archie, "but thank God we are restored to take our rightful place in the fray. The game's afoot, is it not?" He grinned, looking less like a king and more like the saucy lieutenant who had impersonated him.
Hornblower and Kennedy made low bows and the others followed suit.
"Your majesty," Bush automatically gave an anachronistic naval salute, "we have to restore you fully. You will need your armour," he raised his eyebrows at Archie, who was wearing it, "which this man needed while he covered for the royal absence. Let us to your tent where we may attend you."
Kennedy soon emerged, back in the medieval clothes they had assumed in Cardiff before the whole daft rigmarole began. He looked tired but satisfied and assured them that he had fully briefed the King on what he was supposed to have said.
William and Jack soon emerged from the camp among the trees wearing particularly secretive smiles. They refused to answer any questions about how they'd managed to explain the situation all away to the king and his advisors - Bedford has been most persistent in his questions - and why the whole story wasn't going to enter into history. It was left to Ianto to vaguely mutter something about erasing unwanted memories when it was expedient to do so. The thought that if they probed further they might end up having the same done to them, made Hornblower and Kennedy keen to change the subject and be led back to what Archie referred to as the blue box of wonder.
***
"I think that your last evening in the twenty first century deserves a special celebration. Something better than a few beers and a chicken tikka massala." Jack had a particularly wicked look on his handsome face.
"That's a shame," the doctor ventured - "one of the best things about being on earth in the twentieth and twenty first centuries. is the accessibility of decent Indian restaurants. And even Mr Hornblower enjoyed that take-away." The remark raised a smirk among all the company, the man in question having sweated so much at the consumption of a simple Korma their first evening here - and having suffered so much in the aftermath - that he swore he would never touch a spice again. Kennedy had managed a Madras and now regarded his lover with a distinct degree of moral superiority that could not be gainsaid.
Ianto smiled his sweet, shy smile. "There's a club..."
"Like a gentlemen's club?" Horatio was trying hard to find his feet again. He didn't like this world and was glad that he'd be long gone before it came to fruition. He was happy to cling to anything that reminded him of the 1800’s.
"Not quite, although it's predominantly gentlemen that frequent it. All of them men, anyway," he added, rather enigmatically.
"And what would one do there?" Kennedy had caught the undercurrent in what Ianto was saying and could not fail to notice the looks that passed between him and Harkness.
"Drink; eat; dance; raise a toast to new friends and departed ones." Jack looked wistful - an expression that Kennedy thought he was not capable of assuming - not genuinely, anyway.
"Well that sounds just the job. What say, Horatio?"
"How do we dance if there are no women? Is it like the hornpipes that the hands perform up on deck?"
When Jones and Harkness - ably assisted in their laughter by Bush - had dried their eyes, they simply shook their heads and rose. "Come on, this you need to see."
The music was like nothing the officers had ever heard. Some of it loud, clashing, at times more like a musical representation of a broadside than anything they'd come across. Sometimes they could make out the odd word; there was a song which Archie adored and insisted be repeated again and again so that he could sing along that he too didn't feel like dancing, no sir, no dancing today. He made a point of telling Horatio that he would perform this at Pellew's table next time the man suggested the hands be allowed to sing and dance on deck.
Hornblower could not have sung even if he had the musical ear that the wonderful Jack - curse his ridiculous range of talent - possessed. He sat, stunned, a bottle of beer in his hand and in front of him a packet of what were said to be thinly cut fried potatoes, but which tasted like salt horse. There were men dancing with other men. In broad daylight. Well, not quite broad daylight, given that it was night time and the light inside this club was fairly dim - but in public, certainly. And Harkness and Jones were two of them, waving their arms in semaphore motions to a song about something called a YMCA, a song that even Bush was tapping his feet to, although he was signally not indulging in the dancing.
Harkness could dance beautifully, the swine, and Horatio suspected if he didn't concentrate one hundred per cent of the time, the man would be whisking Archie up onto the floor and jiggling about with him in an unseemly manner. He'd had a few beers and now needed to find the modern equivalent of the quarter gallery, but he dare not, just in case; he crossed his legs and thought of England.
Ianto came over, looking unusually flushed. Horatio was used to him having a sober, dapper appearance; he was a studious, thoughtful lad - or so Hornblower had always thought - but the sight of him shaking his unseemly parts around had erased all those notions.
"Fancy a dance, Horatio? Just the one?"
Ianto, of all people, quiet little Ianto with his 'please give me a cuddle' face that made everyone think of Wellard; Hornblower felt like he'd just had a French frigate sneak up out of the fog and rake him with a broadside. "Sorry, need to ..." he indicated the toilets and sped off to take a refuge there and weigh up his options.
Rarely in the service of his majesty had Horatio Hornblower had to admit to a mistake, but on this occasion he had employed the wrong tactics - discretion had not proved the better part of valour. When he returned to the main part of the club he found a song being played that concerned a Dancing Queen and there - out on the floor but definitely not young and sweet, only seventeen - was Archie, dancing with Jack. Or sort of dancing - more a sinuous curve of body around body that made Horatio’s blood boil. Action was required - the sort of decisive stroke that had freed them from the threat of the Spanish fort's guns. Hornblower took a deep breath and raised himself up to his full height. "Mr Jones - Ianto - I believe I am ready for that dance which you so kindly offered."
A smug, shy, little grin crossed the man's face. "That'd be a treat, Horatio."
Now it would be an exaggeration to say that Hornblower enjoyed himself - but it was not the agony he thought it would be. There were no steps or patterns to learn, just a general moving to the beat of the music, which was all a damn sight easier than the dances that his dancing master had tried time and again to drum into him. The sheer amount of bodily contact was disturbing to a degree and he wished that he had the ability to let himself go as Archie was doing. The man was as happy as Horatio had seen him since they'd drunk Pompey dry together.
Several more dances followed, in which the notion of set partners seemed to disappear - at one point Hornblower was even dancing with his arch rival, something that seemed to amuse Harkness enormously before Horatio realised and sidled over to Ianto again. At last the rapid tempo of the music fell and a lovely, plaintive melody began to waft over the floor - Jack whispered in Archie's ear and propelled him over to Hornblower, leaving himself to be tenderly embraced by Ianto. The singer began to say that he'd like to leave right now, and Horatio couldn't help agree with him.
"We should be getting back now - going home tomorrow and we'll need all our strength to carry this deception off."
"Just a few more dances, Horatio. I've not felt so truly alive for ages." Kennedy clasped his lover - his one true love - closer. "Can't do this in 1802 and I intend to make the most of it."
They danced the rest of the tune in silence, Hornblower with his eyes closed trying to ignore the mass of humanity around him, Archie with eyes open drinking in the novelty of this wonderful freedom. Another slow song began and he pulled his head away from Horatio's shoulder. "Can't do this, either. May be the only time we ever get to do this in the sight of anyone but God." He drew Hornblower towards him and gently kissed his lips.
"Archie, we can't..."
"Oh but we can - and we will. As often as we can get away with before they throw us off the floor."
***
They'd bandaged Archie and William up again, the linen spattered expertly with something that wonderfully resembled reasonably fresh blood. They were also supplied with substances to dampen their healthy complexions and make them seem more like men at death's door - though what Clive would say when he saw their wounds was anyone's guess, Hornblower would have to try to keep the man at bay. Buckland would be easier to deal with as he'd been lined up to meet an unfortunate accident at the hands of some of the local banditry. Or Jones and Harkness dressed up to look like them.
The TARDIS started up, Bush having very pointedly taken Horatio to help him with navigating the journey and Ianto having made himself scarce.
"Still would have liked you on the team - the twenty first century is when everything changes and you'd have been ready - more ready than your friend." Harkness smiled and laid his hand on Kennedy’s arm.
"That's kind, but I have to be with him. Have you never been in love, Jack? Don't you understand?"
Harkness nodded. "I have; I do." They shook hands. "Go and make history, Archie."
Kennedy grinned. "I'll try my very best. Could do with some encouragement, though - what say we try that kiss of life one last time?
Rating: PG
Notes: Crossover Hornblower/Dr Who/Torchwood .
No claim made on or profit made from these characters.
"Where's he that wishes so?" Kennedy, queue hidden under a convenient helmet, standing on a cart transformed into a makeshift stage, made the Agincourt speech from Shakespeare's version of the history of 25th October 1415. As Hornblower watched him, deeply anxious as he was in case his lover should be found out, he couldn't help but feel an enormous amount of pride. Archie spoke with aplomb and dash, employing theatrical gestures that he must have seen some flamboyant leading man use on the stage at Drury lane. It was all very effective.
And Kennedy was enjoying himself enormously of course - what an actor he might have made, had it been suitable employment for the third son of an earl. And Horatio recognised no end of the words, naturally, as old Bard-boots was liable to spout them at the least provocation. Even Ianto seemed impressed, mingling among the serried ranks of Welsh bowmen; chatting away in the native tongue, he occasioned no suspicion and was making sure that his little clique were vociferous in their king's support.
"He that outlives this day and comes safe home." Archie stumbled rather on the words. Would they outlive this day and get back to their own place in Earth's history? And what the hell was he doing anyway, popping up at random in various parts of time and space, like a ring of fairy mushrooms at dawn? It had all seemed very exciting while he was still under the influence of his last dose of codeine - given to ward off a migraine - but now that the feeling of elation was abating he felt exposed and nervous. He caught Horatio's eye in the crowd and was reassured - Hornblower never batted an eye at adventure or uncertainty, although his reaction to one of the girls back in Cardiff, all tattoos and what seemed to be merely a few hankies for clothes, had shown that he could still be unnerved.
Kennedy took a deep breath and continued. "Then he will strip his sleeve and show his scars;" he thought at this point of stripping off his shirt and showing his own scars, just for dramatic effect, but decided that it would shock Horatio too much and was not in keeping with canon as he understood it. A little too much on the extemporising side. And it would have brought the risk of Hornblower seeing a certain mark on the edge of his neck that he'd managed to keep out of view so far.
"We few we happy few, we band of brothers." Horatio had forgotten those phrases had come from this play, this speech. They produced in him such feelings of homesickness; for the early days on Indefatigable when life was glorious for the first time ever, for the later days when he had his first visions of becoming one of the great men in the navy, for the cursed times under one of Nelson's own. His thoughts returned to more urgent matters. Where were William and Jack? If they didn't get back with the rightful King and pretty damned soon, then they'd all end up down in the defile between the woods - in the midst of battle - and their chances of survival, even in view of the knowledge that the English army should win nobly, would be slim.
"Where's Harkness?" Hornblower grabbed Ianto's arm.
"He'll be here; he knows what he's doing. Trust him."
Horatio scowled - confidence was the last thing he had in this so called captain; he did not resemble any ideal of leadership that he had ever known.
Ianto noticed the look. "Don't you rely on your men to trust you - to follow instructions without question just because you've said so? That's part of what he's been about," he nodded towards Archie, who was valiantly winding up his speech. "Getting the men to go in and obey their leader without grumbling."
"God be with you all!" Amen to that. Kennedy, pale from his exertions, joined his friends as the army began to deploy itself across the defile as Henry and his advisors had thankfully already arranged. "They're leaving it bloody tight."
Ianto prepared to launch into his standard support Jack speech when the man himself appeared bearing an enigmatic grin and what seemed to be Archie's twin brother. The tales had not been exaggerated - Henry really was the spit of Kennedy.
"Couldn't appear until you'd got them all dispersed." William was out of breath but grinning widely. "Risky enough to have a ringer in - letting them see two kings would have been pushing it a bit too far."
"Gentlemen," Henry spoke for the first time, "We are indebted to you for saving us from those..." he sought for the right words to describe the strange creatures who had laid hands on the royal personage, "miscreants. We have seen strange sights this day," he cast a sidelong glance at Archie, "but thank God we are restored to take our rightful place in the fray. The game's afoot, is it not?" He grinned, looking less like a king and more like the saucy lieutenant who had impersonated him.
Hornblower and Kennedy made low bows and the others followed suit.
"Your majesty," Bush automatically gave an anachronistic naval salute, "we have to restore you fully. You will need your armour," he raised his eyebrows at Archie, who was wearing it, "which this man needed while he covered for the royal absence. Let us to your tent where we may attend you."
Kennedy soon emerged, back in the medieval clothes they had assumed in Cardiff before the whole daft rigmarole began. He looked tired but satisfied and assured them that he had fully briefed the King on what he was supposed to have said.
William and Jack soon emerged from the camp among the trees wearing particularly secretive smiles. They refused to answer any questions about how they'd managed to explain the situation all away to the king and his advisors - Bedford has been most persistent in his questions - and why the whole story wasn't going to enter into history. It was left to Ianto to vaguely mutter something about erasing unwanted memories when it was expedient to do so. The thought that if they probed further they might end up having the same done to them, made Hornblower and Kennedy keen to change the subject and be led back to what Archie referred to as the blue box of wonder.
***
"I think that your last evening in the twenty first century deserves a special celebration. Something better than a few beers and a chicken tikka massala." Jack had a particularly wicked look on his handsome face.
"That's a shame," the doctor ventured - "one of the best things about being on earth in the twentieth and twenty first centuries. is the accessibility of decent Indian restaurants. And even Mr Hornblower enjoyed that take-away." The remark raised a smirk among all the company, the man in question having sweated so much at the consumption of a simple Korma their first evening here - and having suffered so much in the aftermath - that he swore he would never touch a spice again. Kennedy had managed a Madras and now regarded his lover with a distinct degree of moral superiority that could not be gainsaid.
Ianto smiled his sweet, shy smile. "There's a club..."
"Like a gentlemen's club?" Horatio was trying hard to find his feet again. He didn't like this world and was glad that he'd be long gone before it came to fruition. He was happy to cling to anything that reminded him of the 1800’s.
"Not quite, although it's predominantly gentlemen that frequent it. All of them men, anyway," he added, rather enigmatically.
"And what would one do there?" Kennedy had caught the undercurrent in what Ianto was saying and could not fail to notice the looks that passed between him and Harkness.
"Drink; eat; dance; raise a toast to new friends and departed ones." Jack looked wistful - an expression that Kennedy thought he was not capable of assuming - not genuinely, anyway.
"Well that sounds just the job. What say, Horatio?"
"How do we dance if there are no women? Is it like the hornpipes that the hands perform up on deck?"
When Jones and Harkness - ably assisted in their laughter by Bush - had dried their eyes, they simply shook their heads and rose. "Come on, this you need to see."
The music was like nothing the officers had ever heard. Some of it loud, clashing, at times more like a musical representation of a broadside than anything they'd come across. Sometimes they could make out the odd word; there was a song which Archie adored and insisted be repeated again and again so that he could sing along that he too didn't feel like dancing, no sir, no dancing today. He made a point of telling Horatio that he would perform this at Pellew's table next time the man suggested the hands be allowed to sing and dance on deck.
Hornblower could not have sung even if he had the musical ear that the wonderful Jack - curse his ridiculous range of talent - possessed. He sat, stunned, a bottle of beer in his hand and in front of him a packet of what were said to be thinly cut fried potatoes, but which tasted like salt horse. There were men dancing with other men. In broad daylight. Well, not quite broad daylight, given that it was night time and the light inside this club was fairly dim - but in public, certainly. And Harkness and Jones were two of them, waving their arms in semaphore motions to a song about something called a YMCA, a song that even Bush was tapping his feet to, although he was signally not indulging in the dancing.
Harkness could dance beautifully, the swine, and Horatio suspected if he didn't concentrate one hundred per cent of the time, the man would be whisking Archie up onto the floor and jiggling about with him in an unseemly manner. He'd had a few beers and now needed to find the modern equivalent of the quarter gallery, but he dare not, just in case; he crossed his legs and thought of England.
Ianto came over, looking unusually flushed. Horatio was used to him having a sober, dapper appearance; he was a studious, thoughtful lad - or so Hornblower had always thought - but the sight of him shaking his unseemly parts around had erased all those notions.
"Fancy a dance, Horatio? Just the one?"
Ianto, of all people, quiet little Ianto with his 'please give me a cuddle' face that made everyone think of Wellard; Hornblower felt like he'd just had a French frigate sneak up out of the fog and rake him with a broadside. "Sorry, need to ..." he indicated the toilets and sped off to take a refuge there and weigh up his options.
Rarely in the service of his majesty had Horatio Hornblower had to admit to a mistake, but on this occasion he had employed the wrong tactics - discretion had not proved the better part of valour. When he returned to the main part of the club he found a song being played that concerned a Dancing Queen and there - out on the floor but definitely not young and sweet, only seventeen - was Archie, dancing with Jack. Or sort of dancing - more a sinuous curve of body around body that made Horatio’s blood boil. Action was required - the sort of decisive stroke that had freed them from the threat of the Spanish fort's guns. Hornblower took a deep breath and raised himself up to his full height. "Mr Jones - Ianto - I believe I am ready for that dance which you so kindly offered."
A smug, shy, little grin crossed the man's face. "That'd be a treat, Horatio."
Now it would be an exaggeration to say that Hornblower enjoyed himself - but it was not the agony he thought it would be. There were no steps or patterns to learn, just a general moving to the beat of the music, which was all a damn sight easier than the dances that his dancing master had tried time and again to drum into him. The sheer amount of bodily contact was disturbing to a degree and he wished that he had the ability to let himself go as Archie was doing. The man was as happy as Horatio had seen him since they'd drunk Pompey dry together.
Several more dances followed, in which the notion of set partners seemed to disappear - at one point Hornblower was even dancing with his arch rival, something that seemed to amuse Harkness enormously before Horatio realised and sidled over to Ianto again. At last the rapid tempo of the music fell and a lovely, plaintive melody began to waft over the floor - Jack whispered in Archie's ear and propelled him over to Hornblower, leaving himself to be tenderly embraced by Ianto. The singer began to say that he'd like to leave right now, and Horatio couldn't help agree with him.
"We should be getting back now - going home tomorrow and we'll need all our strength to carry this deception off."
"Just a few more dances, Horatio. I've not felt so truly alive for ages." Kennedy clasped his lover - his one true love - closer. "Can't do this in 1802 and I intend to make the most of it."
They danced the rest of the tune in silence, Hornblower with his eyes closed trying to ignore the mass of humanity around him, Archie with eyes open drinking in the novelty of this wonderful freedom. Another slow song began and he pulled his head away from Horatio's shoulder. "Can't do this, either. May be the only time we ever get to do this in the sight of anyone but God." He drew Hornblower towards him and gently kissed his lips.
"Archie, we can't..."
"Oh but we can - and we will. As often as we can get away with before they throw us off the floor."
***
They'd bandaged Archie and William up again, the linen spattered expertly with something that wonderfully resembled reasonably fresh blood. They were also supplied with substances to dampen their healthy complexions and make them seem more like men at death's door - though what Clive would say when he saw their wounds was anyone's guess, Hornblower would have to try to keep the man at bay. Buckland would be easier to deal with as he'd been lined up to meet an unfortunate accident at the hands of some of the local banditry. Or Jones and Harkness dressed up to look like them.
The TARDIS started up, Bush having very pointedly taken Horatio to help him with navigating the journey and Ianto having made himself scarce.
"Still would have liked you on the team - the twenty first century is when everything changes and you'd have been ready - more ready than your friend." Harkness smiled and laid his hand on Kennedy’s arm.
"That's kind, but I have to be with him. Have you never been in love, Jack? Don't you understand?"
Harkness nodded. "I have; I do." They shook hands. "Go and make history, Archie."
Kennedy grinned. "I'll try my very best. Could do with some encouragement, though - what say we try that kiss of life one last time?