The Place I Was Before
We are floating in pearl-gray smoke. The ground is blue flame, and the sky glows white. Between the heavens and horizon there is only the sound of fire, until a great bell clangs.
The flames become the sea, poison-green, glowing with radioactivity. We are drawn across the waves, and up a Skycity Spire, to a room with silver walls.
In the distance, Blackwing fighters dogfight over the sea. Their thunder reaches us, echoing, and golden pearls fill the room. Blue lightning flashes from Jamie's eyes, and we are standing in the middle of Culloden field, the grass brown and dry, the sky silver and gold, our hands full of weapons, the air full of screaming. Then the great bell clangs again, and the sky turns red.
Jamie takes my hand, and we run, over land and sky and sea, to the hilltop of stones they call Craigh na Dun. Jamie gives me a handful of flowers. They turn to insects in my grasp, all moths and dragonflies, and they leap into the air, and fill the sky like smoke. One lands on the tall central stone and disappears. The sun rises and sets in crimson fire, over and over and over again, faster and faster and faster, until the track of the sun is nothing but a glowing band of gold across a blood-red sky.
"You walked the Fire Dance. You spoke the Song of Summoning. You gave the Golden Sacrifice."
Lamb appears before me, like an image of soot painted on a mirror.
"We can speak together at last."
But a black cloak of silence is thrown over the world instead. There is only the pressure of Jamie's hand against my own.
We walk in the midst of a grove of trees, the wind sighing in soft, rushing sweeps through the rustling leaves.
The pressure on my hand grows heavier, and the rushing wind grows rougher, louder. . .
It is my own snoring. I am only aware of it for a partial second before I wake up fully. I blink. My right hand is wedged underneath Jamie's right shoulder, and my fingers have lost feeling. I pull my hand in close, and flex my fingers until the painful tingling goes away.
As it fades, so do the images from that dream. . .
I yawn, and rub the sleep from my eyes. Then I push forward a little, and snuggle into Jamie's back.
Strange. . .
Just a few days ago, pressing my naked self full-length against Jamie's scars would have felt noteworthy, at the very least. Now. . .
I wrap an arm around him. Now, it is no more than I intend to do every morning for the rest of our lives.
Idly, I play lightly with his chest hair, and bask in the lazy heat of his sleep. I close my eyes and relax, allowing myself to wake up slowly.
Funny about that dream though. . .
No.
I push it very firmly out of my mind. There have been too many dreams. Too many unexplained mysteries and cryptic images. Too many passwords, too many meaningless sayings, too much "ancient wisdom". Too many knowledgeable people still unwilling to actually explain things.
Too many secrets.
Well, I say no. I didn't ask for any of it. So, no.
I am just an ordinary woman, in love with her man. I don't need grand mystic enigmas or magical cosmic plans. I cannot save the world.
I only want the man in front of me. I just need Jamie, and room to live our life.
That is enough.
He will always be enough. . .
The cadence of his breathing changes, and he stirs in my arms. He yawns, and grunts, then snuggles his shoulders back a little deeper into my chest.
"How did ye know?" he asks, voice still gravelly with sleep.
"Mmm," I hum, "Know what?"
"Tha' I've allus wanted tae be the little spoon."
I smile, and chuckle softly, gently running my nails up and down between his pecs, "Pure luck, my love. Besides, you might be a spoon in this scenario, perhaps. The front spoon, maybe. But little? You? No." I kiss his ear, then wrap a leg halfway around him, cuddling him even closer, "One of your nicknames might be Wee Jamie, but nothing about you is little, my darling."
He shakes his head, chuckling too, "Ye do ken how tae stroke a man's ego, Sassenach."
My fingers still, and I flatten my hand against his chest, "Oh, this is your ego then, is it? Silly me, I always thought that bit was significantly lower on the male anatomy – not to mention an entirely different shape. But never mind – good to know." I go back to gently playing with his chest hair.
"Haud yer wheesht, woman," he says, voice full of adoring fondness, "Are ye sae bound an' determined tae gi' me a swollen heid?"
"Mmm. Depends on which one you mean," I slide my hand down to his belly, "And what you intend on doing with it once I have."
He pulls my hand back up to his face, and kisses my fingers one by one, "An' what would ye do if I said "both" an' "everythin'"?"
"Welllll, I am your wife, so I suppose I would be expected to bring you back down to sea level."
He goes still. "Sea level?"
"Yep." I nod casually, but an icy hole opens in my stomach. Is that not a common idiom here? I thought for sure I'd heard someone say. . .
"No' back down tae earth?"
"Nope, sea level."
My stomach ties itself into a firm knot. I've only just told him I love him. How on earth am I going to tell him this too? I know I have to, eventually. It was always the plan. And truly, I do want to. . .
But. . .
"Huh."
And just like that, he lets it drop. He re-sets his shoulders against me, yawns again, and lets himself continue to wake up in slow, easy stages.
My stomach untwists.
But I can't keep relying on him letting things go. I have to find a way to tell him.
The problem, of course, is there's no good way to phrase it.
'I love you' and 'I'm a time traveler' might be somewhat similar when it comes to their wow factor – certainly when it comes to their ultimate impact on a relationship - but one comes with the forgiveness built in, and the other one comes with a prescription for anti-psychotics.
There's no way he'll just believe me, and I don't really have any way to prove it, either.
Except by disappearing through the stones of Craigh na Dun, of course. . .
So, I have no real way to prove it. And unlike 'I love you', simple acceptance isn't the end of the issue, even if he does believe me.
Time travel has a lot of strings attached.
Like how, for instance. And why. Not to mention when.
And what for. . .
I put the sight and sound of the dream out of my head once more.
But Lamb. . .
No. Shut up, Beauchamp.
But. . .
No. You're happy here. You love him, he loves you, and you have a son.
What more do you want, Beauchamp? Everything else is just frosting, and you know it. You've got the cake, all three tiers of it. Stop overthinking things.
And what about justice, hmm? What about Culloden?
I peck him on the shoulder, give a long yawn and a stretch, and roll out of bed to use the bathroom.
Well, what about Culloden, then?
He needs it to happen Beauchamp. That's what about Culloden bloody moor.
No, he doesn't need Culloden to happen, Beauchamp, he needs Jack to die. Are you seriously prepared to write off the lives of thousands of other men as collateral damage?
Guilty men. Criminals. Abusers. Evil men.
Yes. Who are still men.
And most of the Scots died too, remember. Don't write them off either. . .
Oh, and go ahead and be honest with yourself – he doesn't even need Jack to die. That might be satisfying, but it's not really necessary. Jamie just needs to be able to leave the room. Jack existing isn't the problem. Jamie hearing the whispers is the problem. Until that is fixed, Culloden won't fix anything.
War never does. You know that, Beauchamp.
Except that stopping it is in no way simple or easy, and may not, in fact, be possible.
Or right. Because there is a lot more going on here than one man's fight for his own soul. There is a whole culture involved here. A whole world, when you take just the smallest step back. . .
So now I'm back to where I was before.
I am a time traveler, sent with a seemingly simple mission – make the future a better place, by making the past a better place. Simply living and loving might do that, of course, but I also have a downright plethora of things in front of me that I could choose to work on, and all of them, all of them, pivot around Culloden bloody moor.
But I do live, and I do love, and Jamie is half my soul. Jamie has half my soul.
How? How do I tell him?
Forget proving it just now, Beauchamp, how are you even going to explain? It took Lamb taking you to Culloden itself before he managed to explain it to you, remember? And you can't even use those same stories until you explain all of the next two hundred years to Jamie, and maybe not even then.
But you can't move forward on any of this until you do tell him, and you know it.
You're stuck, Beauchamp. Just like Jamie is stuck in the room with Jack. You're stuck between Craigh na Dun and Culloden moor.
Welcome to Hotel feckin' California. . .
I wash my hands, and go into the main room to get dressed.
Jamie is in the middle of putting his boots on when I walk in. He looks up and sees me, a wide, delighted grin crossing his face.
"Now, that's a sight I could get used tae seein' evary mornin', an' no mistake."
I giggle, and wriggle my backside at him, "Good, because it's the one you signed up for, and the only one I've got." I unzip my suitcase, and start pulling out clothes, "I need to do some laundry soon."
"Me too. I'll ask if it's do-it-yourself or a service at the next place we stay at, aye?"
"Sounds good."
"D'ye wantae go down for breakfast, or order it up heer?"
"We might as well go down. We're leaving very soon after we eat, right? And we need to go down to get a cart for the jewel case anyway."
"Good point."
He sidles over to kiss my cheek. I pause in buttoning up my shirt, and put my arms around him.
"It's been a long time since I was this comfortably domestic with someone, Jamie. Thank you."
"For the basics?" he scoffs.
"No. For putting the effort in as constantly as you do. It started long before our wedding night, and I just want to let you know I see it. And I appreciate it." I squeeze him a little tighter, and kiss his jaw, "And I love you. And you need to shave." I rub the prickly feeling of his scruff off my lips, then sit down to put on my shoes.
He laughs, "Aye, twa nights and one whole day abed wi' a wild wee vixen ov a woman is moor than enough tae be makin' a barbarian ov me, Sassenach," he leans down and deliberately scrapes his cheek along the side of my neck, "An', I note, ye didnae complain last night."
I snort, even though my whole body is suddenly alive with tingling. I push him playfully away, "I am not complaining, you lovely great brute. You just need to shave, unless you want to get started on a beard."
"Ah." He bustles around a bit, gathering up the few things we have scattered around, "An' if I wanted tae grow one?"
"It's all the same to me, Jamie. I'll love you either way – and at every stage in between."
He comes over to my chair, and leans his forehead against mine for a minute. He's no fool. He knows we're not just talking about facial hair.
"Every stage?"
"Every one."
"Evan when I grow gray an' grizzled an' thin on top?"
"And plump in the middle and bent in the shoulders, and dim in the eyes."
"Oh, aye?"
"I want to be there for all of it, Jamie. I wouldn't miss it for the world."
He sinks his mouth against mine, and reaching down, scoops me up out of the chair, holding me hard against him.
"Christ, Sorcha. I never thought someone could mean more tae me than life."
I scrape my fingertips along the roughness of his chin, "Blood of my blood, and bone of my bone."
He pushes me up against the wardrobe, and kisses me, deep and slow, "I always kent it would be forever, for me, aye? When I found my one, they'd be my only."
"Mmmm," I moan wordlessly, and go in for another kiss.
"Bu' I didnae ken it would be like this. S' more than wanting, now, Sorcha. It's need now too. A physical, keening thing. It's only evar quiet when I'm inside ye. . ."
He takes my mouth, with lips and tongue and teeth, and the same fervency as when he takes all of me. Then he rests his forehead against mine again.
"An' s' a good thing I've already given ye my soul, mo nighean donn, for ye draw it out of me wi' evary word ye say, evary beat of yer heart, evary blessed breath of air ye breathe. Mo Dhia, how can our two Human bodies weather it?"
"I don't know. . ." I bury my fingers in his hair, and pull his mouth to mine again, "But I do know possessing your soul means you're always inside me, Jamie."
"'Til our life shall be done."
I shake my head, "It means there's nothing in this world – or the next – no matter what it is, or if it is – there's nothing anywhere that can part us."
"Mmm – no evan death?"
"Death, James Fraser, hasn't got a chance."
And I truly think he's going to stand here all day, making love to me with his mouth, until Murtagh interrupts us a few minutes later. I'm never quite sure how we make it through breakfast, or how we manage to keep our hands to ourselves in the Rover, but we do – just.
Then, we pull into the dooryard of our next hotel, and I look up, and see all the distinctive lines and features of Uncle Lamb's manse.