Rethinking The English (fanfic)

First Meeting

I feel I have to restate and stress just how much I loved The English. From the writing and direction, the acting, costumes, production design, cinematography, score and soundtrack, oh and of course those credits...wow!

My desire to reinterpret it comes from a very selfish need to resolve things more happily, and to expand on things left unsaid which I wish were covered in more detail.

Okay so here goes, my additions to the first meeting in episode 1. Lady Cornelia Locke arrives in the middle of nowhere, just a dusty hotel, a pig sty and the stagecoach she rode in on break up the flat and boundless horizon. The sky is broad and blue, the sun hot and high, and Mr Watts waits impatiently for her to alight...She sees the Indian trussed up, hanging from a high beam, bloodied and beaten, and goes over to investigate.

"Do you speak English?"

"...What can I do?"

Her voice is breathy, sincere and it is this that catches Eli's attention, he doesn't dare to hope, but he is curious.  He scrapes his toes around and growls in pain, looks up, eyes holding for a long moment on a woman the likes of which he has never seen before. She is fresh, pristine, pink and white, her blue eyes on him with a look in them that is not pity or curiosity but pure empathy, before glancing away self consciously then back to him again.

"You alone?"

He finds his voice, rough and grating, he hurts all over and has lost the feeling in his limbs owing to being tied so tight.

"Yes"

"Nobody else with you?"

He already senses the answer before she confirms it.

"No"

He doesn't have to think about it, he knows he is in deep trouble here. His rank, the uniform, years of service count for nothing to these men. They hate him for being there, for wearing his own skin, as if they aren't the ones who invaded these lands. He should have never walked into that hotel, but what good was wishing now? He had set his own foot on this path and had no choice but to follow it to wherever it led him.

"Nothing you can do"

"Because I'm a woman?"

Is it a question or a statement? Either way it makes no difference she can't help him, nothing shy of a good knife or a loaded gun in his hand would now.

"Not your fight, don't pick it"

He groans again, the bitter realism of his situation more sour than the taste of his own blood. He spits it out and sees the steely set of her eyes, her pink mouth, and finds himself wishing he had met her under different circumstances. What is a woman like this even doing out here, where there is nothing, less than that?

She turns away and walks back towards the preening Watts while Eli hangs there painfully, waiting for whatever is going to happen next with the grim patience of someone who expects it to be bad.

She is talking with Watts now, confidently it seems but the man has a stiffness and a tension to his broad back, Eli has met his type before, men like that don't like being ordered about by a woman, about as much as they like an Indian walking into their hotel and asking for a drink. This fact is confirmed by the hard smack he hears and then the sound of the woman dropping to the ground like a stone.

Eli growls again, frustrated that she has been hurt for him, he told her not to pick this fight but that was the English for you, always did what they thought best, even when they clearly didn't.  Glancing over he sighs, knowing there is a special kind of fate that awaits a man that uses his fists on a woman. If he ever gets the chance, he hopes he might be the one to bring that fate right back to where and who it belongs.