Honor Harrington:fanfic: Step Back From The Mask

[shannnon_foraker]

Fandom: Honor Harrington
Rating: G
Summary: Admiral Lester Tourville's reflections on both his own "Citizen Admiral Cowboy" persona and Shannon Foraker's cover story. Set in a One More Time AU. To be gifted to @seal_nonnie on Ao3 later, as it used their prompt from an older exchange.
Notes: It's that in-server exchange we did, and I used your Lester Tourville prompt.

Admiral Lester Tourville had known about his then-ops-officer’s past since just after that one chaotic meeting in 1911, where his attempt to fix the problem had just made things worse. He’d tried his best to help her and be respectful, despite the circumstances that had led to her being stuck leaking her past to him. He’d been the reckless Citizen Admiral Cowboy then, the kind of hero that the media sadly desired and the kind of hero that was one bit too junior to get shot for strategic planning failures of higher-ups.

Now, eleven years of mostly war later, he had never quite dropped the mask. Shannon had mentioned how she hadn’t dared to unmask in private, for fear of finding resuming her cover story too difficult, and he’d followed suit. Since the Theisman Coup, he hadn’t had to officially fear the circumstances that had led him to adopt the mannerisms that had given him the nickname, but the people (even the navy) had grown used to expecting him to be who the stories said he was. After all, stories passed along RumorNet rarely maintained fine shades-of-gray details, like that he’d cared about trying to make Shannon take a break. (The only version they heard of that was Shannon’s POV, posted from medbay after collapsing.)