Guns and Whiskey

I | (Bianca) Far from home

A/N: This fiction takes place into the same univers as RDR2 but I'm not using the characters from the game (even if they can apeare as cameos... I won't say more).

And, important thing : English is not my mother language. So I'm first writing this fiction in french, then I try to transtate it the best I can ! So please, if you have comments to do on grammar or anything, please do not hestitate if it's to emprove it !

...

When she opened her eyes again, the world was blurry, and her head hurt terribly. It was dark and she couldn't tell where she was. It took her some time before she realized that she was on the rump of a horse, thrown on it like a vulgar hunting game, with her hands tied behind her back.

The brunette painfully turned her head towards the rider with whom she would involuntarily share the mount. Although his contours were blurred, she could easily perceive that her assailant was well over twice her size - not quite so exceptional given the girl's size, but nonetheless greatly terrifying for the latter.

In fact, it was rather the one she thought was her attacker.

Indeed, the last thing she remembered was being dragged out of bed while she was still asleep, then she struggled slightly and... nothing, a black hole. She'd been knocked unconscious. So, if she wasn't dead at all, her near future was more than uncertain. At that thought, her heart began to beat even faster than it already did.

The man, the alleged assailant, suddenly turned his head towards her and threw an indecipherable glance at her before exclaiming: "She's awake".
As he stopped, Bianca noticed that they were not alone. There was some kind of small convoy around them. Four other riders and their mounts suddenly but silently approached. The young woman couldn't see their faces in the dark, but soon knew that none of them looked familiar.
Her presumed assailant dismounted heavily from his horse and approached her. The girl began to scream the moment he laid his hands on her, kneeling in the void and struggling. This unwanted contact also made her realize that she was dressed only in her nightgown and a blanket that had been seen fit to wrap around her.

As he tried as hard as he could to put her down, Bianca shouted that she did not wanted to be touched or approached. The man made a hoarse growl when she kneeled him in the chest and he suddenly let her go. The ground was hard and her body stiff. A person who had stayed behind the man approached her, crouched down to be at the same level and examined her for a few seconds. It was a woman in the prime of life, with red hair arranged like a Gibson Girl and clear eyes. She was wearing blood-stained jeans overalls and part of her face was covered by a black scarf.

"What the hell are we gonna do with you?"

The latter glanced behind her, not at the man I had unwittingly ridden with, but at another who stood further back, whose eyes I could only make out between his hat stuck down low and his scarf pulled up over his nose. He did not say a word and just stared at her with his piercing gaze, which soon made her feel uncomfortable. She had heard stories about what criminals did to young women like her...

"Well", said another voice. "One thing's for sure we can't leave her there. Anyway, she saw his face", she added, pointing to the man who was always staring at Bianca. "We could use her as a ransom... Her dear daddy will certainly pay a lot to get his little princess back!"

"For once you're saying something clever," said a man on his horse, whose glacier-blue eyes could only be seen.

The person who had offered to use her to make money was small and Bianca couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman.To tell the truth, everything seemed uncertain to her at that very moment. The redheaded woman in front of her didn't seem to want to hurt her, but the young woman knew that appearances were sometimes and often misleading. Her father had told her countless times that this world was made not for a young woman like her, that every trip to the city were risky, and that she could be attacked at any time, or worse: killed.
She had thought he was paranoid at the time but now had doubts.

However, the idea of being used as a ransom seemed rather pleasant to her, in the sense that they wouldn't hurt her. They needed her alive to put pressure on her father, and he had enough money to get her out of this quickly. She didn't open her mouth to acquiesce to the proposal but reflected on the words of the stranger with the unidentifiable sex: "Anyway, she saw his face..." Bianca tried to remember what had happened before she went into the dark.

Screams echoed through the house, waking Bianca. She had barely opened her eyes when a maid suddenly entered her room, panting, before quickly closing the door behind herself. The young girl asked her what was going on, but the maid told her to be quiet with an imperious tone that she would never have used towards her in the usual way.

She locked the door and they both stayed in the dark while footsteps were heard on the stairs. Light filtered under the door, and a shadow stopped just in front of the room before she left.

Bianca could only hear the pounding of her pulse resonating in her ears, still unaware of what was going on in the house. Confused voices were coming from outside and the maid approached the young lady to reassure her, but this gesture caused the key ring on her apron to clatter loudly against each other.
The shadow then reappeared in front of the door.
The brunette's breath was somehow held, as if the intruder could hear it from outside the room. But she couldn't hold back a scream of surprise when he gave a first blow to the door, then a second, before it opened with a crash of wood splinters.

The chambermaid, in a burst of courage, rushed towards the individual, a gun in her hand that had come out of nowhere. She barely had time to reach him when he struck her with the crossbar of his revolver and she fell to the floor - stunned or dead, Bianca wouldn't have been able to tell. She let out a cry of fear let out a cry of fear, and the assailant came towards her, probably to do the same to her as what he did to the chambermaid. But the young woman rushed to the ground just in time to retrieve the weapon that had slipped near her, getting up quickly and pointing it with both hands at the man. He then raised his hands to the ceiling, raising also his revolver at the same time and pronounced the following words in amazement: "I don't want to hurt you..."

This slightly disempowered Bianca, and he took advantage of this rift to push her in order to disarm her. She broke loose violently, screamed as loud as she could in the hope that someone would come to her aid, tried to hit her opponent. But the latter made her fall backwards onto the bed, holding her by the wrists, so she lay on her back. With only her legs to defend herself, she tried to kick the man, in vain. A noise came suddenly from the corridor, so he looked briefly at the door and his wrist loosened slightly. In a burst of adrenaline, the young woman swung her head and her torso towards the arm of her attacker and bit his forearm with all her might. Surprised, he then let go of her left wrist, insulting the young lady in every way, and she took this opportunity to push him away with her free hand, while sliding the scarf hiding the man's face.

Their eyes met for a few seconds that seemed like an eternity, and Bianca could read the panic in his eyes. He was distraught. Without thinking for another second, the young man headbutted her between the eyes and she lost consciousness.