Jamie awoke the next morning after a dreamless sleep—once again provided by the Doctor, who had also allowed the piper to use his shoulder as a pillow again; the Doctor had wanted to help the Brigadier keep an eye on Salamander and the Master, and Jamie hadn't wanted to leave him just to sleep in a bed.
The girls, who had opted for nice, warm beds, soon joined the others in the Great Hall as Jamie now began to wolf down some breakfast to give him the strength he needed for the final push to Inverness.
The girls soon joined Jamie to partake of breakfast; as they ate, Zoe went over the map to determine which way to go.
"Don' bother with that," Jamie said, through a mouthful of food. "We'll go a wee bit south and then turn west, and right around Bogbain, we'll turn back northward and reach Inverness withoot any trouble."
"Bogbain?" Zoe asked. "But that's out of our way! If we head just southwest from here, we head directly to Inverness! Your way is longer!"
"It may be longer, but I still think it's the best way," Jamie said, getting slightly tense. "I'm the navigator, remember?"
"You may be the navigator, yes, and I haven't said anything against your judgment so far, but it would make much more sense to cut through Culloden to get to Inverness instead of going on such a roundabout way!"
"And I don't want t' go back to Culloden!" Jamie snapped.
Zoe's eyes suddenly widened in realization.
"Oh, I see…" she said.
"There is more at stake here than your feelings, McCrimmon," Salamander pointed out, overhearing the conversation. "We have limited time to get to Inverness. We cannot afford a detour."
Zoe looked down at the map.
"I don't think we should cut it close," she said. "But, at the same time…"
"Aye; I know what t' do," Jamie said, changing tactics. "Ye can go through Culloden, and the Doctor and I can go via Bogbain."
The Master scoffed
"The weather has gotten worse, and colder—with all that snow whipping about and reducing visibility, you would risk the chance of getting the Doctor lost in the cold at such a critical moment?"
Jamie froze; the Master had hit him where he was most vulnerable—his concern for the Doctor's well-being.
"Now, wait just a moment," the Doctor said. "I'm more than capable of handling that cold without getting lost. I have my fur coat; I anticipated a jaunt in the cold! If Jamie wants to go an alternate route—"
"No," the piper said. "It would be bad if something went wrong and the cold began to affect ye while we were separated from the others."
"Jamie, don't feel bullied into making this decision," the Doctor said.
"I'm fine," Jamie said. "Aye, we won' be lingering in Culloden anyway. It'll be best if we go together."
Both the Doctor and the Brigadier cast dark looks at the Master, who merely shrugged in response.
"I am merely thinking about the cause," he insisted.
"If I could only believe that…" the Brigadier muttered.
Even Victoria didn't say anything in the Master's defense this time; she, too, was beginning to think that he hadn't been thinking solely about the Doctor's well-being when he had spoken up.
As far as Jamie was concerned, it wasn't whether or not the Master was right; the Master clearly believed him to be too mentally weak to go through with traveling through Culloden. Jamie was determined to prove him wrong.
He ate the rest of his breakfast in silence. Regardless of where they would have to go, he would make the most of these next twenty-four hours with the Doctor and with the rest of his dear friends—just in case the end was coming.
It was an unpleasant walk as the team departed Castle McCrimmon. Though they had brought thick anoraks and were still wearing the plastic rainwear over them, the wind made the snow and ice feel like pinpricks as their faces remained exposed to the elements. Even the Doctor, who was using the thick yeti coat he had dragged along all this way for this express purpose, was suffering, prompting Jamie to keep his own face close to the Time Lord's in an attempt to shield him from the cold.
It was the Master who appeared to be suffering the most from the cold; Victoria was helping him along, talking to him to keep him alert.
Jamie didn't like it; he was more than content to just leave the Master in the snow and let him go into torpor, but he knew the Doctor would never agree to it. So, he bit his tongue and kept on walking.
The Doctor could sense Jamie's ire and did appreciate what the piper was putting up with. The Master never would think much of Jamie—no more than Jamie would ever think of him. And the Doctor knew that jealously was at the heart of it—even on Darkheart, the Master had wanted the Doctor to be on his side after revealing his true colors, yet the Doctor had refused, staying with Jamie. His past with the Master was undeniable—they had, after all, killed for each other. But they led separate lives now, on two different roads—roads that had only intersected at this critical juncture, and would diverge again if they were to succeed.
Jamie, on the other hand, was all about loyalty. All of his talk about being ready to die before betraying the Doctor was not simply idle bravado—more than once, the piper had been ready to prove it, and, more than once, he had come close to scaring the Time Lord out of his wits. Jamie had resisted Cyber-conversion and even possession by the Great Intelligence to prevent himself from betraying the Doctor, and, in the alternate universe, had been ready to die at the corrupted Doctor's hands if it would have meant saving him.
The memories of that alternate world sickened the Doctor—the thought that he, of all people, would have struck Jamie, fully ready to follow up that action with whatever method of swift and painful death his corrupted self would have come up with, was something that still haunted him. Never once, while converted or possessed, had Jamie—simple, human Jamie—even moved to harm him, but he—the great, clever Time Lord—had not been able to hold onto his true self to stop himself from hurting Jamie.
And Jamie had never once held it against him. After it was all over, Jamie had gone back to the way things were, not even showing a shred of fear towards him. The piper's love was truly unconditional.
There were few in the galaxy that the Doctor would blindly trust with his life and his TARDIS. But Jamie was one of those select few; even if he complained about Jamie fiddling with the console, he was fully prepared to have him take over if need be—as their bid to gain the three extra days had shown. Even though it hadn't come up recently, the Doctor would also have been ready to trust Jamie with the knowledge of his true name. Perhaps, if they made it out of this predicament, the Doctor would find the proper moment to tell him. And he knew it would change nothing.
The Doctor now pushed his thoughts aside as they continued forward. Zoe was keeping track of the time, announcing whenever an hour had passed. Periodically, they would stop and rest to catch their breath and brace themselves for continued trudging through the snow and ice, which was collecting on the ground; already, there was more than a foot of it, with more falling upon them.
The blanket of snow and ice changed the landscape as they walked. The fields and moors were unrecognizable for the most part, though Jamie had no trouble recognizing exactly where they were. And as the Doctor noticed the thousand-yard stare returning to his dear companion's eyes after so long, there was no mistaking where they were.
"Jamie?" he asked, softly.
The piper gave a nod, looking all around at the very ground upon which his life had changed so drastically. The ground, covered in snow and two hundred years older, was no longer red with the blood of those who had fallen here. But Jamie could still see the images in his mind's eye—thirteen years had not been enough to banish them.
The Doctor, who had been hiding his hands from the cold, now took a moment, to gently place a hand on the side of Jamie's face.
"I'm sorry, Jamie," he said, softly, and earnestly.
"I know."
It was as they began to see the memorial stones for the fallen families that Victoria now a moment to leave the Master's side and dart over to Jamie.
"Will you be alright?" she asked.
"Of course," the piper murmured. "I'll be just fine."
The Brigadier, no stranger to having seen comrades fall in battle, also took a moment to gently clap the piper on the shoulder.
"When this is all over," he said. "You can come back here. Give the fallen a proper salute."
Jamie nodded.
It was Zoe who struggled with what to say; though she was better with her emotions and empathy now, as opposed to when she had first met Jamie and the Doctor, she still wasn't sure that she would find the right thing to say in this situation. In the end, she took the Brigadier's lead and placed a hand on Jamie's other shoulder, silently lending him her moral support.
Salamander, of course, was absolutely silent and didn't acknowledge anything that was going on. The Master, on the other hand, looked at the battlefield all around them.
"Ironic, isn't it?" he said. "The precipitation that falls is what essentially gives life to this planet. And yet, the dead who are slumbering beneath this ground receive no benefit from the rain and snow."
"Is now really the time?" the Doctor chided.
"It is merely an observation," the Master returned. "There are more dead than alive on this planet. The humans' lives are so fleeting."
"And yet, they have made a great impact upon their planet," the Doctor reminded him.
"Even so, imagine what could occur if we could only harness life-giving precipitation to awaken the slumbering dead?" the Master mused.
"…You are speaking hypothetically, of course?" the Brigadier insisted.
"Rest assured, I currently do not possess the means to achieve such a feat," the Master said.
"Nor shall you ever, I hope," the Doctor murmured. A gnawing feeling told him that, assuming they succeeded before the next dawn, the Master would eventually succeed with his dark musings—and that a future regeneration of the Doctor's would have to face the consequences.
The Doctor was jolted from his thoughts by Jamie's sudden cry; the piper left his side for the first time that day as he suddenly darted over to a large memorial stone with McCrimmon carved upon it, just barely visible as the snow continued to bury the stone. Jamie angrily clawed away at the snow to reveal the stone properly.
"You see?" the Master said, quietly. "Reviving the dead would have its advantages, would it not?"
The Doctor shushed him and walked over to Jamie, tightly clutching his trembling shoulders. Nearby was a stone for the McLarens; Jamie cast a long glance at that stone, remembering Alexander, before turning back to the stone with his family name and quietly murmuring in front of it.
Despite the limited time they had left, the others respectfully maintained their silence—even Salamander, who had, up to this point, been completely apathetic towards Jamie, paused and silently watched the piper mourn for his family.
"You never did get any proper closure," the Doctor said, softly. "And that is my fault entirely. I'm sorry, Jamie—I truly am."
But Jamie clung to the Time Lord.
"Ye saved me," he reminded him. "I'd have been lying there with them had it nae been for ye. I cannae hold that against ye. I'm glad t' have this chance now."
The Doctor merely nodded, recalling that it was Jamie having prevented him from draining the Great Intelligence that had resulted in that horrible alternate timeline never happening.
"You saved me, too, Jamie," he said, after a moment. "And we've got one more thing left to do—to save the time vortex."
"Aye," Jamie said. "I know."
Zoe cleared her throat.
"Maybe we should go on ahead after all," she said. "Jamie, you and the Doctor can stay for a while—"
"No," the piper said, placing a hand gently on the stone. "No; I'm going with ye. There's still another six miles to Inverness, and I know the quickest way."
"Are you sure?" Victoria asked.
"Aye; it's like the Brigadier said—after we're finished, I can come back and pay my respects properly."
The Doctor gently gripped Jamie's shoulder again as they began to continue onward. Jamie cast one last look behind him at the stone as they left before clinging back to the Doctor again. Barely twelve hours remained until the vortex would explode. There could be no further delays.