Photographs and Memories one: we'll cross the seven seas

Characters: Nancy

Word count: 358

Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine, and I make no profit from this fan-written fiction.

Gen, post-series future fic. With thanks to astralis for looking over this.

This ficlet is part of the 'Photographs and Memories' collection of ficlets, set in the following fandoms: Swallows and Amazons, ER, Harry Potter and Sky High.


we'll cross the seven seas: shallowness

She hasn't long before she must go back below and join the other girls, but it's enough time for her to take the picture out of the pocket in which she stowed it and unfold it. The natives had insisted on taking one of them all. They're all so stiff. The Walkers are Walkers, not Swallows, and flanking them are a Ruth and Margaret who would never utter the word 'Amazon' outside a geography lesson.

But eyes used to looking at the horizon and poring over charts see that Susan is holding Bridget's hand, John is not yet taller than Nancy. She remembers that Titty had been told off for looking at the sky, not the camera, and sees the result of it in the solemn face that was captured. But Roger's lips are clamped together tightly, he was holding in a laugh, he whooped and whooped after the picture was taken, but never explained the joke. Perhaps he would have if they'd been free to threaten him with the plank.

She can almost remember the misery that followed of sandwiches pressed upon them, and their having to accept politely, when they were all busting to feast on the mates' rations after racing back to Wild Cat Island, the good old Amazon and Swallow neck and neck, the winning crew to pick the rest of the day's adventures. That's why she put this picture and not another in her pocket in Beckfoot when no-one would notice in the flurry of packing and goodbyes.

"I'm so proud," her mother had whispered, but when you had just come from Greenwich, you knew that however much you'd meant to go to sea when you'd joined up, you'd only freed a man for the fleet.

She's a Wren and an officer now, and she tells herself again that she's got to put up with this posting and make the most of it. She will, too. It's her duty and her part of helping end the war. But she's taking something of Captain Nancy with her, as she crosses as many of the seven seas as Third Officer Ruth Blackett will be allowed.

Fin.

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