#also i dont know if the keppochs are macdonalds or macdonells ive seen both | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lacnunga · 2 years

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Pecking further at the foth dragon au except I've decided to just take canon and scrumple it up in my sweaty hands a bit - the aftermath of Keith failing to escape fassfern house.

"Your clothes," Ewen said, indicating the piles of uniform Windham had left behind during his escape attempt. He hadn't touched them - he'd had little thought towards doing anything about anything but to rush in blind panic to Lochiel to confess his carelessness, somehow irrationally sure in the moment that the missing officer would be the doom of their party.

Said officer gave a disgruntled sigh as he went to change - he did not ask Ewen to turn around, and Ewen did not offer to. He simply watched, perhaps overzealously now that Windham was to be fully a prisoner once more, as the tartan was exchanged for breeks; surprisingly, the man did not toss the filibeg carelessly on the ground. Instead, he attempted to fold it, grumbled, gave up, and handed it to Ewen with a vague air of apology, clearly still somewhat put out with having had to resort to thievery. It was strange to Ewen to feel his cloth still warm from the other man's body. There was little talk exchanged as the two and their dragons ate their supper - cheese, biscuits and oatmeal - each man stewing in his own thoughts.

Ewen could not help but consider Windham's retrieval a blessing, despite Lochiel's words. Not only was it a private consideration of having another chance at recovering from the slip that allowed the Englishman to vanish in the first place, but he also considered Windham's presence worth the delay of intelligence reaching the enemy. Windham's note might have spoken of Ewen's lack of military experience, but well he knew the value of the redcoats' stupidity; the Prince might have pardoned the Royal Scots company, and the men of the 6th regiment of foot, but they and not seen the...unfortunate fate of their armaments.

After Windham had finished his evening's ablutions, Ewen felt about in the pocket of his coat for his preparation.

"Your wrist, if you please, Captain Windham," he said as courteously as he could, for he loathed to do as he was about to, and would not have done it had Windham not forced his hand. He tried not to look too hard at the blooming bruise on Windham's face and feel like a cad for his actions.

With suspicious gaze, Windham presented his right arm. Ewen considered the coming night.

"The other," he decided.

Windham switched his arm with an air of impatience, and Ewen had to force down the instinct to needle him, already anticipating the upcoming battle between them.

He had thought Windham would make a fuss as he brought out the chained manacles - indeed, for a moment as the Englishman's eyes perceived them there was a furrow in his brow, but it was one soon washed away by a frustrated resignation.

"I need not do this if you had rather extend your parole-"

"You might better spend your time thrashing a dead horse, /Captain/ Cameron," Windham said sourly, "you shall have no more of my compliance than this. Now do you intend for us to stand here all night?"

Finding himself to be the one needled, Ewen allowed himself the satisfaction that followed when, after shutting and locking one manacle over Windham's wrist as expected, he instead surprised the other man by shackling not Windham's other arm, but Ewen's own. With a click of the lock, and the key vanishing deep into the folds of his clothing, they were made as one.

Windham stared at him in shock before raising their linked hands.

"What in God-"

"You'll forgive me, /Captain/, if I have taken your previous assertions to mean that you should try to escape whenever possible. I cannot, of course, trust that you will not abscond the second I am asleep."

Windham's face went from shocked to red.

"And if I should-," he cast about wildly for a scenario," -should feel that my only option then is to kill you to enable my return to the army?"

Ewen could not contain a bark of laughter at that.

"You will take it as a compliment, I hope, when I say that I cannot imagine a man of your honour to take it upon himself to stab a man in his sleep. Besides, you would have a devil of a time dragging my corpse about with you."

A growl distracted him for a moment, and he turned to see Windham's yappy pinioned beneath Anne's clawed foot - gently, as she had done the day he'd first met his irascible Hanoverian, but firmly, as Arthur looked set to take a chunk out of Ewen's leg for entrapping his master as he had.

"And how are we to sleep like this?" Windham asked, drawing his attention back by rattling their chain noisily.

"Why, in the Highlands, we tend to lie upon a bed and close our eyes. I did not think you did it so very differently in London," Ewen said dryly.

Before Windham could put forth another retort, the door was pushed open and their companions for the night toppled in - seven officers in all, only a few of those from the different clans that comprised the Prince's top-heavy army. Having suffered O'Sullivan's organisational bullying the whole way from Loch Sheil they were in a sour mood all, which they had evidently sought to relieve by means of judicial application of alcohol, making Ewen doubly glad to have secured Windham, lest he take advantage of their company's enhanced sleep. They were twice over relieved of their dourness at the sight of Ewen manacle-in-manacle with the thunderous Englishman. There was much teasing that Ewen should be so sensitive to sleeping on the floor that he would resort to such an extreme to take the bed, which Ewen weathered with smiling patience - doubly so from Lieutenant James MacDonald of Keppoch, with whom he'd often spent time as a boy along the shores of Loch Lochy, and who had taken it upon himself as the elder of the two to dunk the young Cameron in those same waters.

It did not take Windham long to tire of this, and he threw himself on the bed, allegedly to sleep, forcing Ewen to sit upon the edge to continue his talk with James: how had he been in the intervening years, how had he liked Rome as he once thought to visit it, had he seen the Prince go out to the gardens of the house and return with one of the pale roses on his breast? Well enough, he replied, very pretty if somewhat too papish for his tastes, he continued, and he had seen his Highness go, James said and as he did so, he touched his felted bonnet.

"Aye, perhaps I should pick one too. You recall how my darling Mary put the goirmean-searradh to her breast tae ward off the evil eye."

Behind him, Windham snorted, which Ewen ignored.

"But you're a vain cock, James MacDonald," he laughed, "if you're about putting roses on your hat, we shall all have to follow suit so as not to look poor."

There was a little more talk after that, but his prisoner's shifting antics put Ewen's arm at such a wicked angle that he also soon retired, as to retain its motion for the time ahead.

He settled down in his plaid beside Windham, who made a game, if painfully obvious, effort at feigning sleep.

"You should rest," Ewen murmured to him, low amongst the slowly rising timbre of snores around them, "we start our way to Perth to-morrow."

"'twould be easier to rest without these," Windham grunted, jangling to chain again.

"Aye, 'twould," Ewen easily agreed, but said no more on it.

At the side of the bed, Anne half-lay herself upon the English dragon, who allowed the indignity with surprisingly little fuss. The room had quickly heated up with the warmth from the bellies of the other officers' drakes, and Ewen quickly found himself kicking off his plaid. Outside, the earlier rain that had graced the beginnings of their journey has gentled into a soft drizzle, grey and light against the rapidly blackening night sky.

For all that Windham was not the most disagreeable man he had ever had the misfortune to be sheltered with, he did not make for the lightest bedfellow. Whenever Ewen was on the verge of falling asleep, a toss or a turn across the pallet would awaken him again - admitting to himself some fault in that chaining the man to him was Ewen's idea. Still, despite it all, he must have fallen asleep at some time in order to be roused once more by the scrape of metal on his wrist.

Blearily, he forced gummy eyes open; it was some ungodly hour, where the birds were beginning to trill in the hedges and thickets that crawled up from the placid banks of Loch Eil up the narrow wind of the Suileag. Not yet sun-up, the world outside was wreathed in sleepy cool blue shadows, and the smell of wet grass and heather permeated the place, overtaken only by the more prominent scents of damp wool and gunpowder that betrayed the presence of Highlanders.

Somewhen in the night, the two enemies must have sought to lessen the pull of their bond by rolling in towards each other, and in the still morning, Ewen found a minute to look upon Windham's sleeping face. Dim though the lighting was, he could see the fearsome features some might call hard and unpreposessing. Yet, in the moment - and many moments later - they seemed to Ewen as those of some ancient Roman emperor: dark and dignified, with a martial smattering of scars that, rather than disfigure, elevated his face, for all Ewen did not think of himself as an artist. Those aquiline features were even now pinched in displeasure, and Ewen found himself having to stifle a snort at how the characteristic dissatisfaction of the English followed them even into the arms of Hypnos.

#wip wednesday #flight of the dragon au #truly i do not know what im doing #they dont sound quite right - like keith and ewen but slightly to the left #also i dont know if the keppochs are macdonalds or macdonells ive seen both

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