Work Text:
It's around three in the morning when it happens.
Why Eilidh was up that early, she can scarcely even remember. She never does sleep well in this cottage, she's never been fond of it. Not only is it cold and drafty and creaky, the actual owner is never here! Miss Daisy Tonner seems a fine enough woman, if a little blunt in Eilidh's opinion, but house sitting should be for someone who lives in a house, not for someone who just pays for a cleaner. In truth, she has only met Daisy one time, and that was years ago when the lass was only twenty-one. How she could afford a cottage in the middle of the Highlands, Eilidh would never know, but she could. Either way, it's a pain in her backside to make the trek from the village, especially at her age, just to dust a place that no one lives in.
The emptiness of being un-lived in is probably what makes it hard to sleep in. It's always noticeable when a house has been abandoned, even with the amount of trinkets and books and quilts Eilidh decides to sneak in. She only comes every three or four weeks, just to make sure the heating is functioning and the pipes are still running, and with it being such a nuisance to get to, of course she welcomes herself to stay a little while. Usually, the only visitors she gets are runaway sheep dogs, or the sheep themselves, or—on just one occasion—a great big coo from the farmer down the glen.
So, needless to say, the last visitor she is expecting is a pair of corpses in the garden.
Eilidh is sitting up in bed, reading a paperback by the dim lamplight, when a flash outside catches her attention. Green light dances across the pages and the duvet, sparking into view of the window. She watches in fascination as what looked like a spark of lightning about a meter above the grass. Arcs of electricity fork into the ground, scorching the earth, and Eilidh adjusts her reading glasses. Surely, she must be seeing things.
With an enormous crack! she's blinded by the emitted light, the whole house shaking with the impact. The pipes rattle and her lovely trinkets threaten to topple over, a porcelain lamb landing on the floor with a shatter. When she looks outside again, there are two lumps on the ground. Against her better judgement, and with a huff, she pulls on a bedrobe and some slippers and she shuffles out to the garden.
Stepping outside, she can hear the distant calls of distressed sheep and cows, dogs howling and barking. It seems that the tremble that made the cottage shake was felt by more than just herself. She ties her robe tighter as she steps out into the cold of the night.
The light above the patio isn't the best, but it does let Eilidh see her visitors, two limp bodies dressed in hiking gear, a bit better as she looks at them now.
The first of the two is a tall, lanky man. His skin, under all the debris and dust, is dark and littered with scars. His hair halos his head, all stringy and wavy and almost as grey as Eilidh's own. Lifeless, dull brown eyes stare up at the sky, laying on his back in a sprawl. Blood, or at least what looks like blood, saturates his clothes, and has trickled and dried in tear tracks from his eyes, down his cheeks and into his beard. Most concerning, the handle of a knife sticks out of his chest.
The second man is shorter, yet still larger. His skin is deathly pale, but splattered with light freckles, visible where the layer of dirt is thinner. His hair is curlier than the first's, and a vibrant ginger, with stark streaks of an unnatural white through the front. His hands are completely covered in blood, staining up his sleeves and his lap. He's laying on his side with a hand outstretched to hold the first man's hand. His chest slowly rises and lowers as he breathes.
He's breathing. He's breathing!
So, one corpse and one unconscious man who maybe murdered the corpse. Brilliant. Eilidh shuffles back inside and grabs the poker from the fireplace. With a cautious eye, she leans in, and pokes the shorter man in the shoulder. She earns a grumble. She pokes again. Grumble grumble.
"Oh, wake up, ya big lump," she grumbles right back. She gives a particularly hard poke and the man wakes up with a full body flinch. He yelps, his voice higher than Eilidh expected, and frantically sits up. His eyes are a startlingly light blue.
"Who are you?" he asks in a painfully English accent. "Where am I?"
"Your in my bloody garden, ya eejit," she snaps. It's not technically her garden, but he doesn't need to know that. "Who are you?"
"Where's Jon?" the man says instead, looking around until his eyes settle on, apparently, Jon. "Jon!"
The man takes Jon's face in his hands, smearing half-dried blood onto his face and in his hair. Eilidh isn't sure what to do. She's not a nurse, or doctor, or even trained in first aid, and it's not like the kit in the lavatory has the equipment to deal with a stab wound to the chest. The man has started crying, shaking Jon by the shoulders as if that will help the gaping chest wound. Eilidh is about to jab him with the poker again, tell him that his man is probably dead and gone, when Jon inhales.
Two bony hands fly up to grasp Martin by the arms, gasping around the wound, gritting his teeth and crying out in pain. His face screws up, contorting awfully as he squeezes his eyes shut. Eilidh shakes her head, because she must be hallucinating, but she could have sworn that she saw something glowing beneath Jon's eyelids.
"Jon?" the man above him shouts again. "Jon! Jon, what's happening? Where are we?"
A terrible static fills the air, rattling between Eilidh's ears. Jon's voice seems to echo through the air as he struggles out as many words as he can.
"Martin," he grits. "Help me...!"
"How can I- how can I help? What do I do?"
"The knife."
Eilidh looks to the knife; it's trembling, shaking back and forth as the wound spurts up a new round of something that is not, in fact, blood. The substance is thin and black, more like ink than anything that could come from a human. Martin wraps his hand around the handle, and before Eilidh can even call him a bloody mongo, he rips it out of Jon's chest.
Jon's eyes snap open, now glowing and vibrant green. He slumps, almost in relief, and he reaches a shaky hand up to hold Martin's face. He smiles, teeth stained with the inky fluid. The static fades away. "Okay... I'm okay."
"Are you sure?" Martin asks, sniffling as Jon wipes away tears.
"I'm sure, love. We're okay."
The two men look at each other with what Eilidh can only describe as the most lovesick gaze she's ever seen in her whole seventy five years. She hates to ruin the moment but...
"Eh, no, you're not!" Eilidh says, and the two men jolt and stare at her like she's the trespasser. "Who are youse two, and what are two Englishmen doing in my garden?"
Martin helps Jon sit up, and Eilidh can see—and hear, god forbid—his chest wound closing on its own, skin stitching back together.
"It's... a very long story," Jon says. "And we can't really tell you most of it?"
"Well, I'd bloody hope you have some explanation for showing up here at three in the blinkin' morning!"
"We- I don't really know, if I'm being honest. I'm not entirely sure where we are, other than the fact that we're somewhere in Scotland." Listening to the English has always been one of Eilidh's least favourite things, so she does hope that Jon will decide not to give her the long story. Perhaps she can live with this mystery if she never has to hear the accent again.
In the meantime, she can't help but feel a little bad for these boys. They're clearly having a rather awful day, and have nowhere to go. They're filthy and injured, and on the verge of tears, and clinging to each other... Eilidh heaves a sigh.
"Come inside before I change my mind," she huffs, shuffling back into the cottage. "I've got some porridge you can have."
She hears them work up to standing, then some more fumbling to get themselves walking, but they make it inside eventually. Jon is about a head taller than Martin, yet he leans heavily into his side, gangly legs wobbling underneath him. They whisper back and forth to each other as Eilidh makes them porridge, extremely gentle with each other despite how it looks like one murdered the other. Eilidh isn't going to interrogate someone who can recover from a stabbing in about a minute and a half.
They wolf down the porridge like they haven't eaten in years, though they are polite about it. When she shows the spare room and tells them where some spare clothes are, she can't help but feel like they've been told all this before. Eilidh doesn't sleep while they're in the spare room. She can hear faint murmuring all through the night, and she can't help but eavesdrop.
"So... is it over?" Martin quietly asks, the sheets rustling as he moves. "Are we safe?"
"I... I'm not entirely sure, I'm still a bit foggy up here," Jon answers, just as quiet. "I don't think we're in any immediate danger, unless the little old lady upstairs is secretly a murderer."
Eilidh could be, if she gets called a little old lady ever again.
"After everything we've seen, I wouldn't say it's not an option. I mean, remember Angela?"
"Angela, Ang– oh, yeah! God, I kind of wish we met her, she seemed fascinating!"
"I don't! She would have ripped us to pieces!"
"No, she would have very slowly chopped bits off of you until you die."
"Don't remind me."
Eilidh also doesn't want to hear about what that means, but she just can't stop listening. Something about these two, this pair that seemed to have dropped from the sky or teleported, or whatever she just saw was, is utterly, eerily fascinating.
"I'm just glad all the big stuff seems to be over," Jon sighs. There's another rustle of blankets. "We can do whatever we like."
"Once we stop bothering Eilidh and get out of Daisy's cottage," Martin replies with a quiet laugh. How on earth these two know Daisy is completely beyond her. She really must ask what it is exactly that Daisy does for work. "I've had quite enough creepy cabins for one lifetime."
"Fair."
The conversation dies down into regular old chit chat. Boring couple talk and sickeningly sweet flirting, and Eilidh takes it as her sign to leave. Even her and her wife, Mhairi, weren't that bad during their honeymoon phase.
She manages a couple hours of sleep eventually, waking back up at around ten. The two boys are still sound asleep, and she lets them lie in. In the meantime, she makes a quick journey of popping down to the village to get some more eggs and bread and orange juice. She normally wouldn't do this much for two complete strangers, but they seem a bit worn out.
They sheepishly shuffle out of the bedroom at two in the afternoon, and Eilidh doesn't bother asking if they'd like some late lunch, just starts making scrambled eggs. Jon hurriedly tells her she doesn't have to, she's already done so much by letting them, but he shuts up after a steely glare she uses on her kids. Not even Daisy goes against the Granny Glare, and she's built like a brick shit house.
After the eggs and toast and orange juice, which the boys dutifully eat while Eilidh insists on doing the dishes herself, throwing the occasional glance to make sure they're actually eating, Jon speaks up again.
"Is- is there anything we can do to repay you? We don't exactly have any money on us, so it's not like we can pay you back for the—"
"Nonsense!" Eilidh snaps, throwing her tea towel down on the counter. "I don't even live here, it's not my problem what you do in here. Not like Daisy ever visits."
"Are you sure?" Martin asks, wringing his hands. Eilidh sighs.
"Unless you boys want to clean this whole cottage from top to bottom for me, I'd suggest you leave before I change my mind."
They do, thankfully, take their leave, but only after Martin makes her a surprisingly good cup of tea. Eilidh watches them wander down the glen, hand in hand.
"What an odd pair," she mutters to herself, over the rim of her mug. She'll have to tell Mhairi about this when she gets back to the village this evening.
She does hope they make it okay, whatever it is.