seventeenfortythree | River Run

River Run | A slight AU PSL

"You’ve thought about this, haven’t you?"

Her question echoes in his mind as Jamie sits awake, crouched by the fire in the hearth wearing nothing as his eyes watch the flames dance. He'd been too restless to sleep, leaving Claire to the bed while he paced, thinking. He'd lost everything he had to Stephen Bonnet, and now his fingers rub together while he gathers his thoughts to speak.

"I ken being in this very place, the idea of owning slaves turns yer stomach. Mine as well. But we're no strangers to doing a wee bit that makes us uncomfortable if it can help in the long run, are we not?"

He'd spent many a night in a brothel with Charles Stuart, aggravated about it, and yet trying to do his part to stop the Uprising.

"Jocasta might've made an underhanded move in declaring me her heir in front of witnesses, but maybe we can do some good w'it, Sassenach. Find a way to undermine even the law." You can take the smuggler and outlaw out of Scotland, apparently, but it seems his mind will always drift back to such things eventually.

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"I wait, Sassenach. Fer God to realize he made a mistake in sending ye back to me." He sniffs, pushing the tears back though his shoulders do let go of some of their tension under her hand. His entire life, the good things he had to hold onto, he never kept, not for long. Their first daughter, never breathing air into her lungs, Willie, his but not. Brianna, his but his eyes have never laid upon her face. Even Claire, gone from him for so long only to return and nearly drown, to be met with violence and danger.

He'd said so many things in front of that fire, that death was nothing between them. But there are worse things than dying, and it would be the cruel trick of only being able to have his wife for a little while again.

"I woke and the bed was cold. As if ye were never there to begin with."

Edited 2018-11-30 05:31 (UTC)

"Jamie..." She repeats his name, brow furrowed even if he's not facing her to see it. Did her absence truly frighten him so badly that he thought her gone for good? Maybe it cant be helped, with the life he's lived, but Claire does think his emotions are getting the better of him.

Not that she'd ever fault him for it. Jamie and his heart and his open display of it is part of why she loves him so dearly. He's only ever true, and only ever himself.

She doesn't feel like she has anything to apologize for in this moment, but sometimes a marriage is simply knowing what the other needs.

"I'm sorry, Jamie, I didn't mean to scare you. I'm here, now. See?" She slides her hand to his arm as she steps around him, ducking her head down a little to see his face. "The bed was only ever cold because I was sleeping on top of you."

As he begins to come down from that fear and as Claire soothes him, his mind begins to clear and he knows he wasn't angry; he wasn't angry at her, he was afraid for her. For himself. When she apologizes, he closes his eyes for a moment, before she moves and he turns his head enough to see her.

"Ye have nothing to apologize for, Claire," he admits before trying for a smile that doesn't quite make it. He moves away from her, to sit on the edge of the bed, but holds his hand out for her, needing her with him. It's difficult, sometimes, to explain the irrational fears, to give voice to them. He's a grown man afraid of a nightmare, and it's shame for causing so much grief that washes over him now.

"It's I, who should be apologizing to you, an' I ken it. You didna do anything wrong." She's allowed to get up and disappear into the kitchen; it isn't her fault that his mind lept to the worst case scenario.

"Come here."

Though it's her that moves to him, stepping between his knees so that she can hug him to her chest. She keeps that head of red hair against her chest, against her heart, and lets her other hand rub between his shoulders.

"We're both fine." Hard to be angry at the man now.

His arms go around her, forehead resting against her body as he gathers himself. "I find comfort in knowing no matter what comes between us, we find one another. Regardless of death," he says. But.

"But. Losing you while I still draw breath, I dinna ken if I could do it again. I'd rather follow ye."

She doesn't like that talk, even if she understands the sentiment intimately. If not for Bree, she's not sure what she would have done, separated him for what should have been forever.

"That won't ever happen, Jamie," she soothes, keeping her voice soft. "This is it. You're stuck with me for the long haul, now."

Her lips press to his hair.

He knows it when he's awake, when his mind is focused. "I'm sorry I raised my voice. I wasna upset, just...afraid."

He hates admitting that out loud, but if he can't to his wife, then who? He's not supposed to be plagued by fears like this, he should be sure, reassuring her. He knows, though, sometimes it must be a give or take. He just doesn't like it much when it's his turn to take comfort and leave her the strong one.

She knows Jamie better than she knows herself, sometimes, and so she knows he'd rather be the one taking care of her. It's why she holds him all the tighter.

"I know, I know. I'm not mad, Jamie. Just close your eyes for a little while. Let me be here," she tells him. "It's okay."

She does love that heart of his.

"Will you let me hold ye?" he asks; maybe they can hold onto one another somehow, but he needs that, to be connected to her, to breath her in if there's ever hope for him to fall asleep again.

Good god, like she could ever say no to him, especially when he asks her like that.

"Of course. And I promise, if I need to get up for whatever reason in the night, I'll let you know. I didn't think."

She wasn't in the wrong, no, and stands by that--but perhaps some consideration is needed for him, after all they've been through. It's no trouble to wake him and let him know where his wife is going, even if for five minutes. She'd never want to frighten him like this again.

For a moment he's quiet, holding onto her once they're laying down again, trying to sort through his thoughts for a few long moments before finally, after what seems like ages, he speaks again.

"No, Sassenach. Ye don't need to do that." Which might seem contrary to what just happened, but even so. "Ye ca come and go from our bed as you please, it's no' yer fault my mind still hasna caught up to you truly being here."

They're more dressed than they need to be, and yet even so, Claire pulls the blankets up around them. It always feels better, holding one another in the warmth of the sheets and quilts.

"I want to," she replies, even though she does very much think she needs to do so. At least for a while, after this. "It's all right, Jamie."

She'll keep repeating the words as often as she needs to.

His fingers run through her hair over and over again, needing to touch. His lips press to her forehead, lingering there. There's so much working through his mind, things he isn't sure how to even give voice to. He's said the long and short of it, that he's worried she might slip through his fingers, be gone again as quickly as she came back into his life.

She knows it, he knows it; that's the fear, no need to keep dwelling.

"I love ye, Sassenach." Not words they say overmuch, but he has to now, needs to.

He's not at ease. Claire can feel it in his body, and she kisses where she can reach--his chin, apparently, scruff against her lips.

"We should talk," she says at length. Even if it seems redundant. "Now, I'd like to see someone try and kidnap me from our bed. Wouldn't you?"

He might sleep like the dead, at times, but Claire's not one to be taken against her will quietly.

He knows what she's doing, and he runs his hand over her back slowly.

"Well. No, I suppose ye'd scream like a banshee," he concedes. Also, he'd wake, as soon as she fought back from being awakened suddenly. He pauses, knowing that much is true.

"And if this truly is a dream I wake from?" he asks her, holding her tighter as if the thought of that alone would make her disappear.

Talking through his irrational fears might be a way of putting them to rest. And then he worries about it all being a dream, and Claire sighs softly.

No more tickling tonight, but she does give him a sharp pinch on his hip with blunt nails.

He grunts but doesn't move away. "Ye do that as if I dinna ken it's a fool thing to say out loud, Claire," he tells her. "It is, I kent it has been." And yet he can't explain or wrap his mind around why it's such a persistent fear.

Best not to vocalize it then, or meet the wrath of her claws.

"If that hurt, it's not a dream," she points out, like a doctor reading a diagnosis. Might as well be.

Well,he has no response to that as he pulls back just enough to stare at her for a moment.

She truly might as well be magic.

He didn't know he had it in him after all of this, the intense surge of fear and adrenaline, the coming down, the way he wanted to confess that each night he says a silent prayer for her to stay with him and in the morning, prays in thanks that she's still beside him. He didn't know he would wind up laughing again, but he does. It's not as loud as before when she tickled him, but it's there and relieved as he presses his forehead against hers.

"Aye. So it is as ye say," he relents. "My wise woman."

There he is. Claire doesn't laugh, but she does smile warmly, leaning into his touch.

"There's nothing that's going to take me away from you, Jamie. I wish I could take that worry from you." But she can't. It might be there always, like her own concerns for him, and her worry and longing for Bree. But she can ease some of it away, even if it might come back later.

"You and I are both in good health. We're only ever apart during the day, and even then, it's not far. I would have to try very hard to disappear, and I would never. Not in a million years, James Fraser."

There probably aren't any standing stones in North Carolina.

Edited 2018-12-01 02:03 (UTC)

He doesn't know how she does it, how she soothes everything in him with just a few words. But then, she's always been able to do that, since the moment she first looked after his wounds.

"I wish I could explain to ye, Claire. I ken ye felt it too over twenty years." That pain, that longing because their hearts weren't whole. "But ye had Brianna to keep the broken bits together."

"And you have me, now. Forever, this time, and for good."

She'll tell him every day if she must. Her hand rubs at his hip where she pinched him, pressing close to kiss his lips this time.

"I know it'll take time for the wounds to heal. And we have all the time in the world."

His fingers curl through her hair, and that promise, it sounds better than any he's ever heard before, other than her wedding vows.

When his lips find hers, he pulls away only to press them now against her forehead, then each eyelid tenderly, the tip of her nose, the corner of her mouth. Each kiss is slow and deliberate, and then he kisses her again proper.

"Time, Sassenach," he says, believing it, believing in her, trusting in her. He always will, it's never a question.

When she first met this man, on a cold rainy night outside Inverness, she never could imagine she'd be his wife. She'd never imagine this sort of tenderness from him, or how much just a kiss from him could soothe her soul.

"I could do a better job of letting you know about my whereabouts, anyway," she smiles. Staying out late to help patients, sneaking off in the night for snacks... she promises herself to be more mindful, for his sake.

"Oh, ye've only now worked that out?" It's a lighter tone but Christ knows his wife finds trouble as soon as they're parted for any length of time. Whether it's fighting a crowd for the soul of a man or jumping out of a ship. His wife has plenty of fine qualities, but subtly is not one of them.

"Ye let me know plenty. Unless ye have a mind to wander off when something catching your attention."

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