Discardia: Hornblower
Hornblower: Horatio/Archie during Mutiny/Retribution
The sun beats down on them, bleaching everything a ghostly white, shimmering at the corner of their vision. The sea isn’t moving, still and reflective as glass, blasting heat back up at them, trapping them from all sides. The sails remain flat and listless, the men just as silent and still. Sweat is the only thing that moves.
The fort is still and silent, the battle not yet won or lost, the waiting keeping them all as still as the sea. The fire is stoked in the room next to them, one of the sailors manning the bellows to keep it burning hot. Bush stands on the parapets on watch and Archie paces the small room, his clothing damp and heavy on his skin.
“Pacing only makes it worse, Archie.”
“Nothing can make this worse, Horatio.” He gives Horatio a look, his smirk lifting the corner of his mouth
Hornblower: Man!Archie
He wakes staring at a blue sky, the clouds skimming the edges of his vision. His clothes are drenched and torn and he’s shivering despite the glare of the sun and the heat the burns his skin. He sits up, swaying roughly, nearly enough to pitch him over the side, but he hangs on tightly and closes his eyes, willing the sickness away.
Forcing himself to breathe slowly, he calms down, testing himself slowly. Name - Archie Kennedy. Position - Midshipman, Indefatigable. Last known location - Raiding party on Papillion. He fights down bile at the thought of the smug, self-satisfied face of Jack Simpson, and closes his hand around the slat he’s sitting on. Splinter sharp, it digs into his skin and he embraces the pain, opening his eyes and facing the hot shine off the blue-grey water and the distant haze of land.
He’s thirsty and hungry, but he’s alive.
And he’s damned sure he’s going to stay that way.
**
Shore seems foreign in more ways than just the fact that he’s on enemy soil. His sea legs give way to the rocks and tress of land, the ground shifting the way the water never does.
He gives the first town a wide berth, listening to the strange, guttural French. He understands a few words, close enough to their Spanish counterpart, but they’re swirled and twisted, sliding strangely off his tongue as he repeats them, whispering to himself.
He avoids several towns, carefully skirting rivers and streams, any places men and women might gather, might call into question the pieces of his uniform he hadn’t discarded, hidden with the boat.
He’s unsure how far he’s walked, but when night falls, he adjusts his bearings slightly by the moon and stumbles to the outskirts of a town. He can smell food and ale and wine, can hear the laughter still allowed in the untouched hollows where war and revolution are distant ideals.
He shivers and moves through shadows, stepping over low stone fences, searching for food and clothing. The poor are rarely careless, he knows, but they are also far more likely to aid him than anyone with ample coin in his purse.
He pauses outside a lit window, surveying what he can of the terrain in the pool of light. He strips a thick shirt from the laundry line and slides it on, the smell of heavy wool hot in his nose.
He slips his knife free and slices through the line, winding it in a small circle around his hand. He follows the trail of it to a post across the small yard and cuts it free. Measuring off an arms length of the twine, he stuffs the rest in his pocket. He sheaths his knife and then runs the twine lightly through his fist, feeling the hint of a burn against his callused hand.
A dog barks in the distance and Archie slips back in the shadows. He’s warm now and he’s increased his defenses. Food is next, and water.
He knows he won’t sleep tonight.
**
The scent of blood is thick in Kennedy’s nose, in the air around him. The French soldier is dead at his feet. The garrote has distorted his features, though not as much as the knife-slash smile across his throat. Kennedy liberates the man’s coin, freeing it from the dead man's pockets into his own. Burbles of sound - words breathed through blood - barely touch the night, and Kennedy never once glances at the man’s face before he moves off into the night.
Money. Clothing. Weapons.
He wipes the knife clean in the grass and then sheathes it again, blending into the shadows until he finds the river again and follows it north.
**
He is careful, moving through his newfound freedom. He is truly free - a dead man, walking amongst the living. No one owns him now, not the King, the Navy nor Jack Simpson.
He strays from the river by day, moving further inward skirting the tree line. He’s taken mud from the banks and smeared his hair with it, darkening the distinctive light strands. Sweat and dirt do the rest, and he is the epitome of worn French peasant, not yet lifted up by war.
Watching as a soldier takes his due from some other man’s wife, Kennedy robs his pack, careful to pace himself, to ration the bread and cold meat. He gags at the strong taste, flavor steeped in wine and likely close to rotting, but it fills his tightened stomach.
The days fall into night and the boots tighten on his feet, swollen and sore away from the familiar smooth polish of the ship’s deck. But he walks, catching sleep in the silent hours just before dawn. He sleeps close enough to towns to hear the rhythmic changes of morning, to catch the shifts of wakening, to find his feet and his path before more than the farmers have found their way from their beds.
By his counting, it has been a week since his awakening, his rebirth, and he is sick of the feel of dirt on his skin, sick of the low rumble of hunger constant in his stomach. The sound of the river is close, and in the distance, he can smell the promise of salt air, of the sea. He shakes his head and leans against a tree, hidden from sight, listening to the women at their work. He knows they are his best chance as well as his greatest danger, but the sour smell of blood and sweat on his clothes feels more threatening than a sharp cry of distress.