Bloody Red Flag

Alhaeron (formerly T.R.)

Disclaimer: Oh, I'm sure you all know by now. Don't own The Patriot, Tavington, anybody in it, blah blah blah blah blah. Blah. No profit.

Author's Note: Back by popular demand. I wrote this in 2005 and I decided, because I have way too much free time, to re-post it. That being said, I have no electronic copies of it, only hard ones, so this could take a while. Also, due to the fact I'm writing a real book, that takes precedence, so if I have to choose between working on this and UFS (the book), it'll be UFS. Anyway, like I said way back when, this is a time travel fic. It's not a Mary Sue. It's going to be edited a little bit, because I've gotten better at writing since then and there are some things I can't stand to read now, so I'm not going to inflict them upon you.

Chapter Two: Bloody Red Flag

We stayed there for a long time, moving around occasionally, and I knew I'd misjudged the light. A little after Tavington had ridden on, I heard the sound of human feet, about three sets of footsteps to my ears, racing past. I shoved myself down as far as I could go into the dirt and waited, breath caught in my throat, but the sounds didn't falter, and soon were gone.

For the next few minutes, Chris gave me the skinny of the rest of the movie: who died, who was going to die, who'd get married and then die, and so on and so forth. I was still far too dazed to listen, because my mind was replaying what had happened to Thomas. I reeled between fighting back nausea and a blind desire to run after Tavington and pull out his damned guts, one by one. Why had Chris said I'd like him? That was preposterous. The man was a monster, who deserved to die the death Chris had prescribed for him, whatever that might be. My only regret was that it was at the end of the movie, and that was a long way from now. Speaking of which…

"Chris," I cut in pensively, "what about—time here? I mean, the movie's about two and a half hours long. Is that how long we're going to be here? But it spans a couple years, right? So will it be that long?"

"I don't know," she said, miffed at being interrupted, then warmed to the topic. "I'm not quite sure. We'll have to see. If it's two and a half hours, that could be weird—we'd be yanked forward in time fairly frequently. But then again, two years is a long time. And that doesn't solve the matter of where our bodies are in the real world. If they are there. And even though your parents are out of town, mine aren't and they'll miss me. And—"

"Chris," I said, "you're nattering."

"What am I supposed to be doing, then? I've got no answers, just questions."

"You're supposed to be telling me our plan, and why we've been in this place for the past hour."

"Oh." She stopped to consider her words. "Let's see. We've got to join the Continentals, but it'll be more fun as militiamen than as regulars. We're in here to wait for Benjamin to come back with Samuel and Nathan and then we'll follow him to the rebel camp until he gets his commission, and then we'll sign on as his first soldiers. Oh, and in the interim, we have to figure out how to disguise ourselves as boys."

"Long journey," I muttered, picking blades of grass and rolling them in my fingers. When I realized they were gradually being stained green, I stopped. "But really, Chris," I said, looking up at her, "shouldn't we be signing on with the British? From the looks of things, it's them who've got this war in the bag." Chris looked disapprovingly down her nose at me.

"That's precisely the attitude that's going to lose them this war! They underestimated the Continentals, and look where it got them: Yorktown, and Tavington with a bayonet through his throat!"

I gasped. "That's awful!"

"He'll deserve it, you'll see." I hearkened back to the shooting of Thomas, of Tavington's complete and utter lack of remorse, lack of any emotion whatsoever, but I still couldn't find it in myself to consider the sentence he was under justifiable. Death, yes. But death like that?

I harrumphed. "So, when will they be back?"

"Soon," Chris said. We waited for a while longer, making idle conversation and swapping dirty jokes, and every so often I gazed at the sky. The light began to deepen to a dusky golden-yellow, and I was about out of my head with boredom when I caught the sounds of tramping feet passing my spot. I pressed myself down in the field, but the steps didn't falter. As soon as I deemed it safe, I stood. Benjamin, Samuel, and Nathan were fleeing towards the little huddle of children, who had been engaged in some sort of clapping game but had stopped, seeing their father and siblings approaching.

Chris was instantly in transports. "Oooh, here it comes!" she said. "There'll be some family time, I expect, then they'll all be off to Aunt Charlotte's!"

"Aunt Who's?"

"Charlotte's! She used to live in Charlestown, but then the Redcoats took over the town and she was forced to move to her plantation. It's a few miles east of here."

"And how reliable," I said irritably, growing very tired of her enthusiasm, "are those coordinates? I expect they'll have a wagon, and horses can go faster than us, and they can go further. They'll lose us in no time."

"I hadn't thought of that," Chris said, frowning, and I instantly felt so smug that I was sorry. God, what was this place turning me into? I couldn't be very good company at all. I'd almost rather wish Tavington on her than my grouchy self. Maybe I was just hungry.

At that point Chris's eyes regained their shine, and she said, "I've got it! Roads around here go to basically one place, because there isn't very much development. Maybe a few neighboring farms, but other than that, it's a clear shot to Charlotte's, and we can ask directions from anyone we need to."

"It's miles!" I whined, but without much hope. When Chris got onto a project, any project at all, she would clamp onto it like a bulldog and not let go until it had either died completely or been completed. And this was for the slightest thing. It took a far more important project to get my full attention: like bullies, for example.

"Come on," she said, with facetious anger. "You've logged far more miles conditioning for those teams of yours, remember? And riding. You should at least be able to handle a few miles at a good clip. Now move, soldier," she said, "and I'll have no more of this complaining. We've got some miles to cover. At least it's through mostly Continental territory."

"I wish I had your confidence," I muttered, rubbing dust off my sweatshirt. It was going to be a very long journey.

***

We logged two dusty miles before I could stand it no longer. I was just so hungry, so tired, and so very grumpy that finally Chris called a halt and helped me steal some apples out of a basket inside a farmyard. We snacked on them as we walked on, and the light and scenery began to change. The houses became less small farmhouses and more grand, sweeping plantations. I saw long columns of slaves toiling in the afternoon sun, and as an overseer moved up to one who had paused in his labors, I turned away and shuddered, and saw Chris having a similar reaction. This was one aspect of the era that I hadn't anticipated, and I suspected neither had she.

As dusk began to fall, we had logged five miles. After getting further directions from a farmer in a cart (he only took one glance at our strange garb and seemed in a dreadful hurry to be off, but I reached into my waistband as though to pull out a weapon and he decided to talk to us), we found we had three more miles to go. My feet ached; no, my entire body ached unbearably, every step causing pain to lance through my hips up to my shoulders. Winter was my off-season, when I took a break from any athletic endeavors I had, and so I had lost the finesse and athletic prowess I had earned before. English riding was a demanding sport, but it could only burn off so many Snickers.

"I wish we could have a horse," I said. Any jaded old farm nag would do, roach-backed and ewe-necked and whatever else, just something to take the weight off my feet. Chris didn't respond. She was beyond much more than grunting or snorting to express emotion, but she plugged along mechanically and resolutely. After a few more minutes of griping, I, too, lapsed into silence. Dark came harder now, and Chris broke her tacit vow of silence for a minute to say that we'd probably make it in an hour or so. I didn't pay her much heed, however, as I knew and she knew that we both knew absolutely nothing about what we were talking about.

But it got far too tedious, just to walk along and not speak. About an hour later, Chris ventured, "I wonder why that man was so eager to help us when he saw you." We both knew to whom she was referring. The experience had shaken both of us.

"It's odd," I said. "It's not as though he thought I was carrying a concealed weapon. They don't do that these days, I think; it's against the rules of war. Everything has to be in plain sight. So it couldn't have been that." We came to a junction, and, not having had directions in a while, it being sometime past ten PM, we had no idea of what to do. "Oh, damn," we said in unison.

After bickering for a while over the choice of roads, it was decided that a nap was in order. We bedded down under a canopy of trees, prayed there were no spiders in the old dry long we used as a pillow, and slept.

***

Birdsong, and the sharp smells of morning woods, woke me. I opened my eyes to dappled sunlight twinkling down through the canopy, and squinted. "It's too early," Chris said from somewhere to my right, and rolled over. I turned to look at her. She was completely covered in the sap of some sort of seedpod. It glued her hair together in matted clumps and dotted in dark splotches all over her clothes. I couldn't help it. It was just so damn funny and I'd had so little to laugh about lately that I let out a great bark of laughter. Chris looked down at herself, scowled, and looked back at me. "Don't laugh too hard, Tim," she snapped. "You look like the Jolly Green Giant."

I looked at myself. It was true, but it only made me laugh the harder. Still, completing some sort of cleaning ritual turned out to be a real chore. Sap splotches dotted my jeans, though my treasured red sweatshirt was fairly untouched, much to my relief. But even running my fingers through my hair was well-nigh impossible.

Still, we managed (mostly), and were ready to go in half an hour (a splashing fight in the little stream we found about five minutes into the woods detained our progress considerably). But then we remembered the reason we'd taken a snoring break in the first place: our complete lack of directions. We were getting into an argument over whether to just pick one of the roads and hope for the best, or wait for someone to come along and give us directions (I argued vehemently against the latter for, as I said, Tavington could have killed everybody around here by now), when I noticed something the night had hidden from us. It was a set of wheel-ruts in mud, clearly pointing down the right fork. We were flying down it in an instant.

We checked our pace for breakfast, once again completing our thieving trick—or nearly. We were arrested, arms full of stolen produce, by a stern-looking matron with a broom. We thought we were goners, and she certainly seemed ready to smack us one, when she gave me an odd look that didn't completely meet my eyes. Instantly, her expression softened. "Poor lads," she said, "you look starved! Take what you want, but just…ask for it next time." Chris was about to protest, in the name of feminism that didn't quite exist yet, that we were lassies, not lads, but I kicked her in the shin and smiled at the woman.

"Thanks very much, ma'am. We promise to ask next time." She gave me a stern look, but said nothing. As we were leaving, I heard a man's voice behind me say, "Who were they, Mary? I didn't think they were local lads."

"They weren't," said the woman, with an edge of steel in her voice. "God damn King George."

I pondered her words as we ate, and could come up with no explanation. What did King George have to do with it? But before I could come to a conclusion, I saw a pair of horses come across the road, a little ways ahead of us. "Oooh, it's Gabriel and Benjamin!" said Chris, and she set off after them, calling back at me, "They're headed for the camp! It's not far from here!"

"You have no idea where it is," I yelled back, but called on my weary, sore legs to work for me once more.

This time, however, Chris knew what she was talking about. We crested a hill, and there was the Continental camp, laid out before us. To its right, there was a battlefield, strewn with bodies. A stench rose from it that we could smell from here. I wrinkled my nose and looked at Chris, but she shrugged. The entrance to the camp was concealed in heavy underbrush. Thorns pricked our exposed skin and tugged at our clothes as we forged our way towards it. Chris was spouting promises of what was to come at camp: a real meal, a bed, clean clothes—

"Halt," said a cold voice behind me, and I halted. "Turn slowly," continued the voice, and I did. "Don't move," said the man, who I now saw to be a Continental sentry. Chris stepped forward, saying, "Ah, there you are! We come in pea—" And then everything happened in a blur. Someone behind the sentry, presumably another Continental, shouted, "Damn it, Charles, it's a goddamn Redcoat! Shoot it, Charles, shoot it!"

"No, wait—" started to come out of my own mouth, but there was an explosion. I dropped, out of pure instinct, to the ground. There was a cry of pain, and then I was up and running. I could barely feel it, but I knew thorns were tearing at my clothes. The forest passed by in a blur. I could hear my heart thundering in my mouth, footsteps pounding, voices yelling, and then—

Silence. I stopped. I was in the middle of a clearing. Clouds were beginning to cover the sun, and it smelled like rain. "Wow, Chris," I said. "It looks like we got—Chris?" She wasn't there. I whirled wildly, turning everywhere, but she was nowhere to be found. A terrible fear began to well up in my chest, and I ran back the way I'd come. I thanked God fervently that He had seen fit to give me an excellent sense of direction. But as I came back to the place we'd met the Continentals in, my fears were confirmed. I saw them standing around a body, and ducked behind a tree. "That ain't no Redcoat, ya dumbass…that was a kid."

"Coulda been a spy," said the man with the musket, "but I guess we'll never know." They walked off. Rage boiled in me, but I was one girl, alone in the woods with no weapons. And then, I took a closer look at the body.

It was Chris.

"No," I said. "No, no, no, no, no…" I kept repeating it over and over. Raindrops began to trickle through the canopy as I sank to my knees next to Chris's body. I touched her, trying to turn her over so I could speak to her, make her get up, but my hands came away wet with blood. I struggled to wipe them off, and ended up smearing it all over my sweatshirt, darkening the red background. How could this have happened? Why would they shoot her? This was insane, this was unfair, this was targeting civilians—

And then it clicked.

My sweatshirt was red. They thought I was a Redcoat. That explained it. That explained it all: the people who helped us because they though I was a Redcoat, gave us food because they thought I'd report them to Tavington or someone equally awful if they didn't…

And so it wasn't Chris they were shooting at.

It was me.

I had dropped to the ground just in time, and the musket ball had hit her.

It was all my fault.

But I couldn't dwell. I heard noise, not far off, and ran. Rain was soaking me through, but I didn't care; anger boiled just below my skin, keeping me so warm I could almost not stand it. I encouraged that anger, however, for it kept me warm, and if I ever let it out of me, I would become cold.

Just like Chris.

But then logic seeped into my storming brain. The sweatshirt was what got Chris killed in the first place, so I shucked it as I ran. It flew behind me, even in the rain, fluttering to the forest floor in my wake, like a bloody red flag.

A/N: Sorry this took so long, I've just been super busy…about to graduate, you know, and I got bumped up to varsity lacrosse goalie so I had to go lose a bunch of games. You know how it is. Anyway, hope you enjoyed it. Reviews appreciated. More to follow.

Alhaeron