A/N: Soooooo…. Hi again hahaha, I'm back after like 4 years cause uni was hard and now I'm working like an actual adult which is grim. Just been re-watching some of the first season cause it's great and so romantic and felt nostalgic so decided to write another chapter to see where Claire's going to end up.
The man's hands gripped my upper arms tightly, without tenderness, the way you'd hold someone if you were clinging to them for your life. Only this man's breath smelling of game and whiskey was swirling into my nostrils, almost making me want to cough. These historical re-enactments were getting a bit too method for my liking. Next you'd be telling me that he had a horse tied up behind the rock, and was about to –
He bit his lip and stared piercingly into my eyes as if he could see the very thoughts running through my head, making my heart race and my whole body seize up into fight or flight.
"You're quite a bonny lass, as the folks round here would say," as he began undoing his belt, "let's see if you can act the bonny lass down on your knees." He pushed me down to the ground, my trousers ripping on both knees on the sharp stone.
"Please!" I gasped. "Get the fuck away from me."
My body decided that fight was the best choice against a man a foot taller than me and at least 30 kilos heavier. I grabbed one ankle and, finding purchase against the rock with the soles of my feet, used my right fist to punch the lowest bit of soft tissue I could find. This happened to be his groin.
He doubled over in pain, groaning and cursing. "You bitch." He spat, coming up for air as I scrambled to my feet and managed to put myself out of his reach. Yet his stride soon caught up to mine and he caught hold of my hair, pulling my head back and making me lean against him.
"I'll thank ye to take yer hands off that lady," came a voice behind us, "you redcoats seem to have forgotten yer manners in all this."
The man clutching me span around, bringing me painfully with him, somewhat using me as a shield between the newcomer and his own body.
"And what happens if I simply do not?" the Englishman asked with some amount of irony in his voice, apparently unphased by the sword that was pointing a little too close for comfort at my own nose.
Several, rather hairy, I seem to recall, men began to gather around us, in kilts with swords and daggers in hand. This re-enactment was beginning to seem rather un-re-enactment-y and I was unsure whether to make use of the Englishman's distraction and sprint towards the trees, or click my heels together three times to see whether saying "There's no place like home" would take me home, or back to Northern England, or even to Kansas because that would be less of a foreign place than wherever I was.
"We'll git ye and slice ye from balls to neck and ye can watch as we feed yer entrails to our horses." Said the man inching his sword even closer to us, and thus to my nose. "Now, let the wee lassie go, Randall." The last word, the Englishman's name I deduced, was slathered in disdain.
Randall let me go, roughly shoving me to the side into the Scottish swordsman, taking advantage of our falling ungracefully to the ground to stride away through the kilted men, who turned to watch him leave.
I clambered to my feet, dusting myself down as the men gathered around me. Brilliant, I thought, out of the frying pan and into the fucking fire. My saviour, the swordsman who did not in the end slice off my nose, although it probably could do with a couple of centimetres off the end, turned to me.
"It's not wise to be walking around these parts alone, wee lassie, there's more of his sort crawling all about, and none of them have seen a woman for quite some time." His moustache was grey, and his head on the way to bald but he held an air of authority such that I bowed my head. "Ye best come with us, lass, these redcoats are unlike to attack twice in a day, the fat English bastards."
The rest of the Scots around us chuckled and let out a few cheers as I looked about.
"Where are we going?" I managed, quietly.
The leader shared a glance with a shorter, younger man with brown hair and keen brown eyes. The younger man nodded slightly, coming over to me and wrapping his arm over my shoulders almost protectively. "Yer'll see lass, somewhere with a fire, and some hot slop if Jamie has been useful on his sickbed."
The sound of hot slop was relatively appealing after the afternoon's events, and I'd need to re-fuel if I was going to figure out anything about my whereabouts and, as I was increasingly suspecting, my when-abouts.
I'd never ridden a horse before, but was lifted onto a brown one behind a rather plump Scot who farted most of the way to our shelter. I was rather proud to have not fallen off, or fainted from the smell of the man's sweat and other odours coming off him. They lifted me off and led me inside.
Entering the hut (house?) was like getting off a plane in Spain or the South of France, the heat hitting me full in the face and making me wish I had some moisturiser in my pockets, or at least some Vaseline. No such luck. The room was a little dusty and simultaneously damp, with a musty smell of somewhere that had not been lived in for some time.
And yet, beside the fire, as we entered, a young man sat, hair as red as the flames in the hearth, on a stool that looked like it definitely should not have supported his weight. He wore a kilt and thin white shirt, with boots scuffed and muddy. He rose upon seeing us, eyes narrowing as they came to rest on me.
"Dougal," the young man began, "who is this lass?"