Hi, people. So, I'm usually a Downton Abbey writer, and more precisely a Banna shipper. But I'm also an Outlander fan. I've recently fallen in love with a Coldplay song called "Let somebody go", around the same time when I rewatched the end of S2 and the start of S3, so this mixed up in my head, and here it is, my first Outlander fanfic! I hope you like it. For the people who are waiting for me to update my DA fics, I will soon, I promise!
"We had that kind of love, I thought that it would never end
Oh my lover, oh my other, oh my friend
We talked around in circles and we talked around and then
I loved you to the moon, and back again"
I let out a shuddering breath as I turned myself in my hospital bed. I looked towards the window. Little flecks of dust were dancing in the April sunlight. The warm and bright weather was so unlike the one I had left behind two hundred years ago, but less than a day ago. Could it really be over? Just like that? Was I supposed to move on with my life, and leave behind the fiercest feelings I had ever felt? Three years of love stronger than I had ever thought I could feel… How was I supposed to manage that? I knew it was all for Jamie, and for the sake of his child I was now carrying, but it was too hard.
"I would have gone to the stake with you… to hell and beyond, if it had gone to that, but… I wasn't carrying your child", he had said. "This child… this one, is all that will be left of me… ever." He was right, the damn man. He had kept count. I couldn't repress the slightest smile at the thought that, in the middle of this bloody war, he had kept count. Damn you, Jamie Fraser, I thought once again. Right now, lying in this clean and warm hospital bed, I felt so broken, and empty, despite the three-month-old foetus filling my belly. I would have given anything to be back on the muddy battlefield of Culloden Moor, and to be able to fight at his side. I suddenly thought of Lallybroch, of Ian, of Jenny and their children. It was not only the love of my life I had just lost, but a whole family, the first place that had ever felt like home in my whole life. Tears rushed to my eyes.
"This home is lost. And now you and the bairn, you must go to a safe place. To a man, a man that can care for you both. There is no time."
He had forced me to trade love for safety, and I was so angry at him for that. I was all the more angry because I knew that in doing so, he had acted as a responsible father, protecting his unborn child, no matter what it cost him to send his wife and child back to another man, and I knew he had been right to do so. Damn you Jamie Fraser. You were already a better father than I a mother. I would rather have died at your side than faced a life without you.
I absent-mindedly felt the bandage on my wrist. There underneath was the proof that I would always be his. A J-shaped scar that would stay with me forever, mirroring the C-shaped one that I had traced on his own wrist, before we had to part. "Blood of my blood, and bone of my bone, as long as we both shall live". He wouldn't have to live long in this agony, the lucky bastard, I reminded myself. I, on the contrary, was looking upon a whole life sentence of loneliness and heartbreak. I knew I had to face it for our child's sake, but was I strong enough? As I silently examined my feelings, I thought I had never felt that much grief and loneliness before. But suddenly, a little face came into my mind, little hands with translucent fingers. And another knife stabbed through my heart. Faith. I had already felt that lost and broken, when I had woken up in l'Hopital des Anges, and held my dead baby, not knowing where Jamie was and if he was still alive. And I knew that I owed it not only to Jamie, but also to Faith, to bring this new child safely into the world, and to raise him or her the best I could. With a living father. Frank. Frank would be coming in a few hours. How was I supposed to talk to him, what could I tell him about everything I had lived in the past three years? Would he want me back? Would he believe me? Would he have me taken to a lunatic asylum and locked up? And if not, how could I go back to living with him? Share a home with him? A Bed? Lie with him? The very thought of it sent a shudder down my spine.
"It's likely he'll no want to hear… but if he does… tell him I'm grateful. And tell him I trust him. And tell him I hate him to the very marrow of his bones." Oh I guessed the feeling would probably be returned. Right now, I hated Jamie for making me leave, I hated Frank for being the second best that was left to me, and I hated myself for hating them both.
I welcomed the sedative the nurse came in to give me, and I gratefully let myself fall into slumber, not looking forward to what lay ahead.
x x x x
"You gave everything this golden glow,
Now turn off all the stars, cause this I know
That it hurts like so, to let somebody go"
Jamie opened his eyes in the small hours of the morning, and watched the little flecks of dust dancing in the ray of sunlight that came through the opening of the cave. He didn't feel the cold anymore. The cold was inside him, he was the cold, and he felt it would be so until God saw fit to relieve him from this wretched life. Like every morning since April 16th, 1746, the same question came to his mind. Why? Why was he still alive? Why had God refused to take him on that day? He had wanted to die. He had not been afraid to. He had intended to. For what good was it to cling to a life when everything that made sense and made it worth living wasn't anymore? "If I had to endure two hundred years of purgatory… Two hundred years without you… then that is my punishment… that I have earned for my crimes." Was it God's way of punishing him? Was he supposed to live two hundred years on Earth without her? If only he could have known. Was she safe? Was the bairn healthy, and happy? Was it a boy or a girl? He could even bring himself to wish that she was happy, even if it was in Frank's arms. How he longed for those answers he knew he would never get. The mere knowledge of these facts would help soothe his soul. He knew he had made the right decision in sending her back, but it killed him not to know. Had she made it back alright? Had Frank been kind to her? Had the bairn been born safely? He didn't know what medicine could do in those distant times. Was childbirth less dangerous then? Claire had told him about vaccines, so at least he hoped the bairn had not suffered from those deadly diseases that so often claimed young children in his time. He sighed as he started to unfold his large frame from his hard pallet. Another hopeless day lay ahead of him. He'll try and hunt something for the Murrays. It was all he could do now, help them strive. He thought about Jenny and her stubborn and clumsy attempts to bring him back to life. Her not-so-subtle hints that he should take another wife and move on. She couldn't know. He wasn't a widower.
"You know why I'm no afraid to lie to the redcoats, Jamie? It's because I'm not lying. Jamie Fraser hasna been here for a long time!"
Where was Jamie Fraser really? What was left of him, in truth? He couldn't answer those questions. The only truth he knew, was that his heart and soul had gone away with her, through the stones of Craigh Na Dun.
x x x x
"All the storms we weathered, everything that we went through
Now without you what on earth am I to do?
When I called the mathematicians and I asked them to explain
They said love is only equal to the pain"
I saw the fierce blue eyes, and the unruly red curls, and almost felt them brush against my cheeks. I passed my hands on his back, and almost felt the uneven skin, scarred by the flogging. When he started moving inside me, I could almost convince myself that he was back there with me.
"Claire. Open your eyes. Please, open your eyes Claire!"
But I couldn't, for fear of breaking the charm, and so suddenly Frank broke our embrace and when I did open my eyes, I met his gaze, full of reproach.
"What?", I asked, innocently, although I knew very well what was wrong. He was not a fool. He felt that I was elsewhere.
"When I'm with you, I'm with you", he stated. "But you're with him."
I couldn't deny the truth.
"I cannot share you with another man. You have to let him go", he had told me all those years ago, when we had agreed to have and raise Brianna together. I never had. Not really. How could I, when it was like asking me to let go of my very heart. One could not live without a heart.
x x x x
He had agreed to Geneva Dunsany's mad plan, although he didn't want to in the least, only to ensure his family's safety, back in Lallybroch. As the soon-to-be-married lady laid naked on the soft linen of her bed, waiting for him to do what she expected of him, he closed his eyes and summoned his memories. Soft brown curly hair, large green eyes that held that hot gleam of pleasure, cherry velvety lips, straight white teeth, and those soft sweet curves of hips, breasts, and buttocks that the bony Lady Dunsany so obviously lacked. Oh what he wouldn't give for one more chance to lie with her. "Mo nighean donn", my brown-haired lass. All the faces of the people he cared for and had lost became blurry in time. But not hers. Several years later, after war, famine, prison, and exile, he could still see her glowing face precisely, in all her beauty. All his senses could remember her as if he had held her the day before. He could see her, smell her sweet scent, feel her soft skin, taste her lips, hear her moans as she abandoned herself to felicity in his arms. And so it would be until the end of times.
x x x x
"And when everything was going wrong
You could turn my sorrow into song
Oh it hurts like so, to let somebody go"
"How did you do it?", Roger asked in his soft Scottish accent, "Finally said goodbye, to that one person you loved most in all the world?"
I knew he meant Frank, but my mind immediately went to Jamie. Had I ever, really? Finally said goodbye? I had not said those words twenty years ago at Craigh na Dun. I could not bring myself to voice them at that time. He had said them, though. I could still hear his voice, clear as if it had been yesterday. "Goodbye Claire".
"Whether you want to say goodbye or not... they're gone and you have to go on living without them. Because that's what they would want." I had not wanted to say goodbye, for sure. But I had begrudgingly gone on living without him, because that's what he had wanted me to do. And I had hated him for it, for so long. At that very moment, as Roger looked upon me with uncertainty, caught up in his own recent grief, I knew I had to go back there, on the fields of Culloden Moor, and properly say goodbye this time.
My path had brought me to Lallybroch first. The place was in ruins now, yet I could still feel their presences, all through the years. I could hear the children running around laughing, Jenny's firm voice chastising them for whatever mischief they had committed. Jenny… She was the one person who had been the closest thing I had ever had to a sister. I could hear the sound of Ian's wooden leg on the stone floor, and I could see his soft and kind smile. He had been as composed as his wife was volcanic. Damn you Frasers, I thought, repressing a smile. I had sat down on the front stairs, dwelling in my memories for a while. When I had looked up to the stone porch, I had seen his large and proud silhouette, standing tall and straight under the arch, looking at me. My heart ached anew as if we had parted only yesterday. I love you and I miss you still, James Alexander Malcolm McKenzie Fraser, I thought.
A while later, I was walking on Culloden Moor, among rare tourists visiting the battlefield site. "Are you a Fraser?", an old lady asked me, as I stood still in front of the stone that bore the name Fraser carved on it. "Yes, I am", I answered. Yes, I was. When she had left with a kind smile, I sat on the grass in front of the stone. I inhaled deeply, trying to soothe my tumbling heart, and started talking, hoping my emotions wouldn't betray me.
"I swore I'd never set foot on this horrid place again. But here I am, and so are you. Your bones, at least. I'm not going to cry. Because you wouldn't want that.", I started, although I wasn't so sure it was a promise I could keep. "And besides, I've come with good news. You have a daughter. Brianna. Named after your father, just as I promised."
I held my breath for a moment. Some things were hard to say out loud, even when no one was listening. But I felt I had to, if I hoped to be able to finally let go.
"Jamie, I… was angry at you… for such a long time. You made me go and live a life that… I didn't want to live. But you were right, damn you… Brianna was safe. And loved, and raised well. But sometimes, when she turns and the light catches her red hair or I see her smile in her sleep… it takes my breath away. Because I see you. She was born, 7:15 on a rainy Boston morning…"
I talked and talked, for God knows how long, oblivious to the few people who passed nearby. They must have thought me mad, but I didn't even notice them. I told him everything I could remember about Brianna's childhood, her first steps, her first day at school. I assured him that Frank had been a very good father to her, and that she had wanted for nothing. I told him how beautiful, strong and clever his daughter was. Stubborn, too, as any good Fraser should be, of course. For that she truly was her father's daughter. When I ran out of things to say, I sighed.
"And that's everything. Everything I can remember. See? No tears. Bet you didn't think I could do that, did you?" I hadn't thought it myself. And I still doubted I could manage until the end of what I had to say… "That day, at Craigh na Dun", I went on, "we said a lot of things. But there's one thing I didn't say. Couldn't. I haven't for twenty years. But I'm here, and now it's time. Goodbye… Jamie Fraser. My love. Rest easy, soldier."
I traced the J-shaped scar on my wrist with the tip on my finger.
"It hurts like so, to let somebody go. But you're still with me, now I know."
A single tear ran down my cheek, that I didn't wipe away.
"Oh, when you love somebody, when you love somebody,
Got to let somebody know,
So, when you love somebody, when you love somebody,
Then it hurts like so… to let somebody go
But you're still with me now I know"
The J and C shaped scars thing comes from Diana Gabaldon's novels, and I agree with her that it's a pity it didn't make it into the show. I hope you liked my first attempt at writing for Claire and Jamie. Reviews are very much appreciated!