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@vastwinterskies don’t do this to me

—Fyodor Dostoevsky

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For @bird-lord1993 and @vastwinterskies, although it’s not exactly what either of them proposed, I still think they’ll like it: below the cut, Archie Kennedy and the Eighth Doctor

(I strongly suspect I am about the one millionth person to write roughly this exact fic, but hey, one million cakes!)

Horatio had been here a moment ago but now it was Bush. Why was Bush here? He should be free to go—he must be—unless it hadn’t worked—

“Don’t need to wait,” Archie tried to say. “Horatio will wait with me.” But Horatio wasn’t here. They’d taken him away to the court-martial. No, the court-martial was over. And Horatio had waited with him, they’d talked, he’d known that Horatio knew, and he’d heroically refrained from Hamlet and then—

Horatio must have left after that.

Bush leaned over him and said, “Don’t try to talk,” and it wasn’t Bush at all. The face could have been Bush’s brother, but older, and he spoke differently, and it wasn’t him. 

“Thought you had sisters,” he mumbled, only this wasn’t Bush, it was Bush’s brother, presumably a different Bush then, only Bush didn’t have a brother…

He was still feverish, it seemed. Natural enough in a dying man.

He had still to finish dying.

It was turning out to be more work than he had expected.

***

Next time he surfaced to awareness, he had enough presence of mind to realize he wasn’t in the prison infirmary. He could not make any sense of where he was. There was dim light, but—he lifted his head with some difficulty—he couldn’t see a lantern or a window, and it reflected off oddly smooth surfaces—stone? glass? steel?—in uncanny ways. Small colored lights glowed nearer him like unnatural little stars, and there was a buzzing noise, in his head he thought at first, but it seemed in fact to be coming from above him. Also a monotone chirping. The total effect was unpleasantly like a fit coming on and he was glad to close his eyes again.

***

The third time he woke up, the man who wasn’t Bush was there again, doing something across the room. Archie tried to sit up, and then realized he had tried to sit up, and the muscles of his belly and side had moved and nearly obeyed. They were weak and painful still, but—was his wound healing?

He tried to assemble his questions in a useful order. “Who are you?” floated to the top first.

“I’m the Doctor,” he said, and added “Just the Doctor” in the manner of someone who had often received further questions. Archie didn’t care, at least not at the moment; if he wanted to be secretive, let him.

The Doctor was coming over to Archie’s bedside now with what looked like a glass of water. But before he could offer any care Archie said what he had to say: “I’m sorry that you’ve wasted your time.”

He closed his eyes. He could hear the Doctor’s quick, anxious movements, quite characteristic of a certain type of surgeon. “Don’t say that,” said the Doctor. “I have better treatments here than your surgeon had. You’re going to live.”

“It’s not worth it, just to be hanged.” He took another breath—full, deep, almost unhindered, damn this doctor, he was going to live—and added, “The only kindness you can do me now is—decent obscurity.”

He could feel the Doctor hovering over him, so that he more or less had to open his eyes. He was met with bright unnerving blue eyes, so like Bush’s but so different in expression. Uncanny, that was the word.

“I’m sorry to have acted without your permission,” he said, “but you were really in no state to give it. They thought you had died, you know that?”

“Horatio wouldn’t have left till I had.”

“Your tall friend?”

“You’ve seen him?” Archie interrupted. “Is he well?”

“He still hadn’t left when I came and took you away. I was afraid he never would, you know, and I’d miss my chance with you. I can roll back time here, under certain constraints, but I can’t work miracles.” He looked very worn as he said this.

“What have you done?”

“Saved your life to start with. And—I’ve taken the liberty of departing Kingston. We are well outside English jurisdiction. So you see you haven’t got to be executed after all.”

There were bigger questions he would ask in time. He knew better than to quarrel with the surgeon while still confined to his bed. For the moment he would stick with the very practical: “Where are we now?”

“Where? Aboard the TARDIS. My ship,” he explained.

Archie took another look at his surroundings—the level floor, the big square room. “It’s very calm, then,” he said dubiously. “She must be pretty large. What is she, an Indiaman?”

The Doctor laughed, although Archie hadn’t intended it as a joke. “Bigger than that,” he said.

There were more worries there—who crewed her? did they want a fugitive aboard? did he want to be a fugitive, come to that; could he endure it? and what was this captain-surgeon of hers?—but he could feel himself growing faint, coming near the end of his strength for the moment. One more thing he had to ask first.

“Why have you done this for me?”

The Doctor got that tired expression again. He didn’t look at Archie. “I didn’t mean to find you at all,” he said. “I came to Kingston quite by accident; looking for someone, avoiding something else; you know how it is.” Archie didn’t, much, but it didn’t seem to matter. “You were the talk of the town, for the moment at least. I heard your surgeon talking, saying it was better to let you die, before…. I’ve known too many people that thought that way. I’m sick of the waste of lives.” He met Archie’s eyes again, with a lopsided smile. “And I can’t resist a challenge.”

The smile was nearly infectious. “I’ve been remiss,” Archie said. “I haven’t yet thanked you. What for, precisely, I’d still like to know…”

“Just rest,” said the Doctor, “let the nanobots do their work—I’ll explain nanobots later—I’ll come back and explain everything. Don’t, whatever you do, don’t wander off,” but Archie had already obeyed his first command and fallen into a deep unfevered sleep.

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Jamie Bamber as 4th Lieutenant Archie Kennedy and PaulMcGann as 2nd Lieutenant William Bush

Hornblower, E5: Mutiny

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I love how Archie is the only one small enough to walk around without crouching

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How is Archie literally this emoji: 🥺

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Horatio: I give off a very “Not Doing Well” vibe that discomforts the people around me

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Archie: Critical Thinking Skills are cancelled!

Archie: They have now been replaced with the constant desire to hold hands with someone!

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just gonna leave this here for the bush girlies (gender neutral)

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What’s going on between them is they are ALLL 👏IN 👏LOVE 👏

bro idk what these three have going on but I'm here for it

Here's the link for the full video because I can't post it here (please please YouTube don't take it down)

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I’m making you all suffer with me

Hi my name is Mr Midshipman Horatio Hornblower and I am loosely based on Horatio Nelson (that’s how I got my name) and I have long curly dark brown hair that I tie back with a ribbon and big wet brown eyes like a drowned cat and a lot of people tell me I’m a bootlicker of King George (AN: if u don’t know who he is get da hell out of here!). I’m not related to Edward Pellew but I wish I was because he’s a major fucking hottie. I’m an officer in the Royal Navy but I have seasickness and social anxiety. I have sickly white skin. I’m also a mathematician, and I serve aboard a ship called the Indefatigable near Europe where I’m a midshipman (I’m seventeen). I’m suicidal (in case you couldn’t tell) and I wear mostly my naval uniform. For example today I was wearing a white shirt with a matching waistcoat around it and white cotton breeches, white stockings and black buckled shoes. I was walking on the deck of the Marie Galante. It was cloudy and cold and there was no wind, which I was very miserable about. A lot of the frenchmen stared at me. I put up my middle finger at them.

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More bushhhhh

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*pointing*

THIS IS IT

Captain and TWO Lieutenants!!

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you got this, Mr. Bush!

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a really really great thing hornblowershow does is is place Pellew next to tall people in fun perspectives so he looks even more like an angry rain frog

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Commodore Pellew on jury duty (Hornblower: Retribution)

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no one: Horatio Hornblower:

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Seasons creatings from the HMS Endymion