What I found in my gander bag
Aug. 30th, 2015 09:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mylodonMust be from an old fic challenge, found on a USB stick I was cleaning up.
A Letter from Hell – Archie’s reply (although I have no idea what he was replying to!)
DISCLAIMER: Wish I owned them. I don’t.
Simpson
My grandmother, who had more wisdom than teeth, gave me two pieces of advice. That a sailor’s life was no life and that an obnoxious epistle deserves no reply. I have ignored both.
You see, I want you to understand how a sailor’s life has been the making of me, even though you used it to try to break me. Ironic how you ended up being the broken one and I was made whole again.
Irony. My dictionary tells me it’s a quirk of fate. I’ve encountered a few of those these past few years. The squall which sent the French ship off course and across the bows of that little boat you’d set adrift. My attempts at escape which saw me moved from pillar to post and into the very jail where Horatio would eventually be sent.
You will derive some satisfaction—and how little of that you must have in your piteous state—from knowing that I, too, have descended into hell. But on the thirtieth day I rose from the pit, although my new life didn’t begin then. That was when I sloughed off my pride and put on the armour of Horatio’s love.
Love’s a wonderful thing, Simpson. A pity that you never knew it in any freely given form, only what you could snatch and spoil.
You try to see my future, but you’re as blind as you ever were. Maybe I’ll be granted a glorious death in battle, or a quiet one in old age, as toothless as my grandmother. Even a martyr’s end would hold no terrors, now. I have looked into the abyss and now I only see the stars.
Yrs
Archie
A Letter from Hell – Archie’s reply (although I have no idea what he was replying to!)
DISCLAIMER: Wish I owned them. I don’t.
Simpson
My grandmother, who had more wisdom than teeth, gave me two pieces of advice. That a sailor’s life was no life and that an obnoxious epistle deserves no reply. I have ignored both.
You see, I want you to understand how a sailor’s life has been the making of me, even though you used it to try to break me. Ironic how you ended up being the broken one and I was made whole again.
Irony. My dictionary tells me it’s a quirk of fate. I’ve encountered a few of those these past few years. The squall which sent the French ship off course and across the bows of that little boat you’d set adrift. My attempts at escape which saw me moved from pillar to post and into the very jail where Horatio would eventually be sent.
You will derive some satisfaction—and how little of that you must have in your piteous state—from knowing that I, too, have descended into hell. But on the thirtieth day I rose from the pit, although my new life didn’t begin then. That was when I sloughed off my pride and put on the armour of Horatio’s love.
Love’s a wonderful thing, Simpson. A pity that you never knew it in any freely given form, only what you could snatch and spoil.
You try to see my future, but you’re as blind as you ever were. Maybe I’ll be granted a glorious death in battle, or a quiet one in old age, as toothless as my grandmother. Even a martyr’s end would hold no terrors, now. I have looked into the abyss and now I only see the stars.
Yrs
Archie
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(no subject)
Date: 2015-09-02 10:00 pm (UTC)I'm afraid my own response from Evan Nepean Esq. was rather less poignant....
(no subject)
Date: 2015-09-03 08:45 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-09-05 01:11 pm (UTC)- lovely to read it again - it is a beautifully determined Archie and the biblical cadences resonate without being in any way forced = glad it resurfaced.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-09-05 02:45 pm (UTC)