Scotham started as naught but a wee one-shot Batman-rip-off crackfic for @thewhitelady for Outlander’s Fic Secret Santa 2016! However, somewhere along the way, I fell in love with the concept of a Vigilante AU.
AND SO, to commemorate exceeding 1000 followers today (still kind of in awe, THANK YOU ALL!–particularly those who joined today in the final push, thanks to some lovely signal boosts!), here is the next installment of Scotham.
Fair warning: This is meant to be silly, so SUPERHERO TROPES ABOUND.
Fair warning: I WILL NOT BE UPDATING THIS FREQUENTLY
((but it isn’t going away, either :D))
“Whisky?” Miss Beauchamp had just pulled her mask up to rest on the top of her head, showing a nose wrinkled up in distaste at the proffered flask.
“Whiss-keee,” he enunciated, watching her lean toward him to give a tentative sniff, then recoil hastily. “Maybe you’ve heard of it? This is Scotham, lass.”
She punched his arm playfully—NOT gently—“I know what it IS, jackass, I just don’t like it.”
“Oh, so you’ve lost use of your tastebuds, then,” Jamie offered consolingly, mouth twitching.
“Bloody Scot,” she huffed, but fondly, her eyes rolling but full of laughter.
They were perched side-by-side on a concrete chimney pedestal on a rooftop near the police station, still heaving from the exertion of the past hour. Their breaths mingled snow-white together in the frigid air of the night before them.
“Did your parents no’ like it either, then?” Too late, Jamie realized what he’d said and could have cut his foolish tongue out for it.
Thankfully, this casual reference to her murdered family didn’t seem to have dampened Miss Beauchamp’s good humor. “Oh, quite the contrary: my Mum and Dad loved whisky,” she said, emphatically. “They had a huge collection and drank it most every day. SO,” she pursed her lips and gave a mock-imperious look, “I decided at an early age that I didn’t like it.”
“So you’ve never even had it?” Jamie demanded.
She shrugged. “Other than a hot toddy or two when I was sick as a child, no.”
Jamie gave a good-humored sound of derision, turning to look straight ahead and thrusting the flask toward her again without even looking. “'Tis cold out, and you’re tired out wi’ the fighting. Give it a go, aye?”
The lass took the flask reluctantly. “There’s no ‘Don’t Drink and Leap Tall Buildings’ slogan, then?’” Jamie laughed aloud, and Miss Beauchamp broke into a beaming grin herself. “I’m serious! I’m fairly new to the alley-jumping thing myself, but not sure I’d want to go about attempting it while intoxicated!”
“Well, and if ye dinna think ye can handle it,” he baited, raising his eyebrows and reaching to take back the flask.
She glared at him took a sizeable, spiteful gulp. She started to cough and choke, but held his eye dead-on as she swallowed. After a moment, she blinked twice and nodded. “Actually, that’s not at all bad,” she said, sounding thoroughly surprised and taking another draught.
“Not at all bad, she says of my best five-year-old batch,” he said shaking his head with a grin. After enjoying a long swallow himself, he exhaled blissfully and leaned back against the chimney post. A moment passed, and then Miss Beauchamp did the same, the pair of them resting comfortably in each others’ company as though they’d known each other for years, rather than scarcely an hour.
“You’re a bonny fighter, if I might say so, Miss Beauchamp. Ye held your own, back there.”
From the corner of his eye, he could see her head turn sharply toward him, appraising. “Do you mean that?” He could hear the suspicion rife in her voice. “Or are you just coddling me?”
Jamie snorted. “I dinna go about coddling grown women, Sassenach. Least of all, those that are fully equipped to break my neck and then send me home good as new and still trying to figure out what they feckin’ did to me in the first place.”
She turned to look forward again but Jamie could see her mouth working to suppress a smile of satisfied pride. “Well…it did feel rather good, taking down that group of Reds….No: amazing.”
They’d trussed the four Redcoats hand and foot—a rather incompetent batch: brawny, but wide-eyed and slow as sheep—without any bloodshed (though no little bashing about). One by one, they’d seen them deposited them at the Glenfiddich police station. It was one of the good ones, Jamie knew, with no more than one or two of the three dozen officers in the Red leaders’ pockets. Inspector Lindsay would see the scum properly tried and incarcerated. City Center had no lack of prison cells in which to keep the bastards.
She was a good fighter, Miss Beauchamp; very good in fact. A bit lacking in brute strength, certainly, but she was quick, sure, and agile. She’d even helped him out of a tight spot when one of the Reds had him in a tight hold—just sailed in feet-first to the man’s skull, she had. Jamie had never considered himself a team fighter—had actively avoided pairing up with Dougal and some of the others in the Resistance who’d asked, in fact—but even he had to admit that having an ally in the thick of things was no little asset. Who’d have thought: a wee Sassenach lass….
This thought reminded him, and he raised his eyebrows significantly. “You’re a formidable foe to the Reds—Assassinach.”
“I still don’t know if I quite like that alias,” she said crisply, though he thought she’d gone pink with something like pleasure.
“Your name, your choice, to be sure…but I think it’s important.”
She took the whisky flask and looked at him curiously. “What’s important?”
“For Scots to ken that there are English that oppose the Reds…For the decent English folk in Scotham to see one of their own resisting the thugs rather than standing silently by as they tear the city apart.” He nodded slowly to himself. “You’re needed, Miss Beauchamp….and just as much for your accent as your ability to fight.”
“Assassinach,” she said after a long silence, trying the word out gamely, though still sounding dubious.
“Can ye no’ just see it, then?” Jamie said with a spark of dramatic flair, fanning both hands out before them to lay the scene. “You’ve cornered a huge Red crony in a darkened warehouse. He’s grossly underestimated ye, so you’ve got him hanging by his boots from a crossbeam before he can blink. He’s begging and pleading—” On impulse, Jamie stood and assumed the stance of a sniveling weakling, hands clasped before his face. ‘DON’T kill me, wot-wot! I’m a jolly good chap, m’lady, I SWEAR!”
Miss Beauchamp choked on her gulp of whisky and straightened up, laughing, wheezing, to perch on the edge of the block. “That is—the WORST attempt at an English accent I’ve EVER heard, Mac!”
Jamie grinned but continued the pantomime, heightening the drama in his voice still further. “And then, ye pull out your knife, and—Ye dinna have a knife?? Christ, woman, how do ye—Well, we’ll get ye one pronto, but anyhow—Ye pull out your knife (aye, aye, JUST for show, I ken ye willna kill him, dinna fash) and he’ll go white and scared as a wee lamb and squeak, ‘Who….ARE…you?’ And you’ll lean right down close to his face…” Feeling ridiculously energized and alarmingly silly, Jamie went to his knees before her, and felt a tug of something in his wame when she didn’t pull away. “…inches away, just like this…and you’ll whisper… ‘ASSASSINACH’…”
She shivered. A tendril of her hair had come loose, and he saw for the first time that it was curly—looping black-brown and brilliant against the white of her face in the moonlight.
“….and the last thing he remembers before ye clobber him unconscious will be his dimwit’s brain desperately trying to figure out if ye said ‘A sassenach’ or ‘Assassin-ach’. But either way, he’s properly shit himself—”
She laughed and Jamie gave a little breath of laughter himself before locking eyes with hers, voice now deep and growling with the depth of his fury.
“—and that the tide is turning in earnest against all his foul lot.”
“Assassinach,” she said, and this time she said it with a thrill, the light of it reaching her eyes, her whole being gleaming with deadly determination.
With a start, Jamie realized that, engrossed in his moment of playacting, both his hands had come to rest on her legs….her thighs.
Before he could even check to see if she minded, he jumped up to his feet and made a fuss of checking his suit and shouldering his targe. “We’d best be going, now, Miss Beauchamp.”
“We?” she said, standing, but looking thoroughly taken aback. “I’m…coming with you?”
That took him aback, though he supposed it shouldn’t have. “Ye dinna have to, I suppose,” he said, trying to look indifferent, though his blood had gone electric with sudden fear, “but ye canna bide here. The Reds will have heard about the four that got picked up and will be looking for vigilantes out and about. We need to get to a safehouse to lay low for a bit.”
“I’ll go straight home, now,” she promised, checking her own gear now and replacing her mask.
“No, ye canna do that. Going directly home could lead them right to your doorstep, Miss Beauchamp. Ye canna risk that if ye want to keep your identity secret…or sleep safely in your bed tonight.”
“I…do have a security team…” she said, looking torn.
“Come wi’ me, lass,” he said quietly, and he was shocked by the depth of feeling in his own voice as he asked, pleaded, “Please?”
He didn’t want her to be in danger. The thought of a Red ambush laid for her, a knife drawn across her beautiful white throat…
A dhia, what was this woman doing to him?
For 456 days, he’d made the safety of Scotham his mission; risked his life night after night, not caring so long as he could safeguard Scots from the Reds…but Christ, he hadn’t felt concern for just one person, one particular person, in…in 457 days.
“I’ll come,” she said quietly. “Thank you, Mac.”
“Good,” he said curtly, turning toward the roof edge so she couldn’t see his face; couldn’t see him swallow back the lump that had formed in his throat.
“Wait,” she suddenly blurted from behind him, “What is your name? Your real name?”
“Is MacDubh no’ enough?” he said, though teasingly.
“You know who I am, when not wearing a mask,” she said, shrugging. “Fair’s fair.”
“Fair’s fair,” he agreed, turning to smile at her, a little shyly. “James Fraser…. Jamie.”
“Pleased to meet you, Jamie.” She thrust out a hand, a so-very-English gesture, and he took it with a laugh as she scolded, “And none of this Miss Beauchamp rubbish: Call me Claire, won’t you?”
“Claire, then,” he said, feeling the word warm him like whisky. Like sunlight.
“What?” he hissed, drawing his dirk in alarm. “Did ye hear something?” His eyes darted frantically about, looking for the source of the disturbance she’d heard.
“No,” she laughed, drawing out one of her grappling hooks. “YOU. Am I drunker than I realize, or did you just call me a stork?”
“Oh, ah, no—No, I was just saying—” Jamie blushed to the roots of his hair. Thank GOD it was dark. “It’s Gaelic, ye ken—I only said—”
He stood there for far too long, mouth gobbling open and shut as he scrabbled vainly for something to say. She kept those golden, twinkling eyes fixed on him, cool and patient as you please. She was in no mood to let him off easy, damn her hide.
Somewhere, far away, a church bell began to toll. He sighed with relief and held out his hand to her.
“I only said… Happy Christmas, Sassenach.”
[to be continued] [eventually]