Chapter Text
picture by @scotsmanandsassenach
“Claire!” Jenny’s voice was loud and clear in the empty field. “Come here! Quick!”
Claire rucked her skirts up and out of the way and ran. The rustling of her petticoats mingled with the chirping of a bird - alone, wistful - keeping company to the single tree standing proud next to the abandoned house.
They were too late. The whole family had been taken.
“Look at this.” Jenny held a ribbon in her pale, shaking hand. It had been pink once, before the dark splotches of mud stole away the innocence it had carried.
“I… I saw her. Again.” Jenny swallowed forcefully. Her eyes were moist, but her voice rose steady against the wind. “She’s around sixteen, Claire. A scrawny lass, wi’ a head full of russet curls.”
Claire nodded, her lips a tight line. It was one of Jenny’s visions that led them to the farmhouse. She’d seen the girl’s hands reaching for her mother, fingers itching for safety. Next moment, a bigger hand was holding them tight, binding them together. A hand certain and determined, leading to an arm hidden by the red uniform. Jenny and Claire knew that image all too well - they were trying to stop him from hurting their people for the last six months. They were following him, to amend his wrongs.
“How many days do we have?” Claire asked, looking at the sun setting on the horizon. It was an enchanting sight, but she felt the colors mocking her, reminding her how beautiful life would be if they’d arrived in time to save the family.
“Two, maybe three. The bastard was punching her in the face. There was blood on her chin, her lip torn,” Jenny said through gritted teeth. Her hand, clenched in a tight fist, was shaking with anger.
“Where?” Claire spoke the word fast, her breathing insufficient to support a whole sentence. She swallowed and tried again. “Where are they?”
“Fort William.”
“Show me.”
Jenny took Claire’s hands into her own; with a nod they both closed their eyes and focused on their connected palms, the fingers laid lightly on each other’s pulse. None of them saw the white light emanating from their hands, an aura the two created together, bright and pure. Powerful. They didn’t need to see it. They knew of it; they felt it.
It was a current travelling across their tissue. An invisible energy flowing between them, making itself apparent only by the light and the warmth left in its wake.
The gate opened. Their minds connected. Jenny’s visions were transferred in front of Claire’s eyes, misty in the beginning, dancing around like ghosts, but slowly becoming clearer, real. Sharing a secret with her. Whispering images to her mind.
Every time they connected, Jenny showed Claire someone who needed help, someone who needed her; showed her what would come to happen to these people in a few hours, days, months - each time was different. Jenny opened a window to the future as easily as she opened a room’s wide window in the morning to see the Highland hills glowing with mystical serenity.
Jenny was a part of this place. Her father had taught her its past. And her mother… Her mother gave her the ability to see into its future.
And sometimes, her own future.
That was how Jenny knew, when she first met Claire.
–
They were both in Inverness, a rainy day like all the other days – and yet it wasn’t. Jamie was leaving for France, and Jenny would be left behind – again. First Castle Leoch, now Paris. Living the life, her younger brother. Jenny took him in her arms and squeezed the wee dolt until she felt tears threaten to run over her face. She stayed put, watching him aboard the ship until he became nothing more than a distant black spot in her vision.
It hurt her that he’d be away, that she wouldn’t see that red mop of hair decorating his empty head every day. But what hurt more was that she couldn’t go with him. That she’d never had a vision of herself living away from home. No, her da was resolute. It would be too dangerous for her to leave Lallybroch. She almost didn’t come to Inverness after their da insisted she should stay home to take care of the animals. Thank God for Mrs. Crook, who coughed politely, reminding Brian that she’d stay back, anyway. And thank God for Jamie, too, who hugged Jenny and said that it would be nice to travel with both of them, his whole family. Finally, Da yielded to the common front.
Jenny glanced over at Da from the corner of her eye, still vexed, and walked towards her horse to wait for him to finish his conversation with an old friend he’d met at the docks.
That was when Jenny spotted Claire. She was standing close to the boats, looking at the sea, her gaze lost in a far away land, her curls blowing in the wind. She wasn’t like any other lass Jenny knew. Her dress was silky and shiny, the color a deep green that made Jenny almost smell of the pines it brought to her mind. She must be close to Jenny’s age, and the lass certainly wasn’t a Scot. No Scot would wear such a dress on the docks of Inverness.
What was she doing here?
Jenny felt her eyes close, involuntarily looking into the curly-head’s future. She wasn’t supposed to do that, she knew, but today, she was far too angry to heed her father’s instructions.
She opened her eyes again, wide with surprise. She had seen the brown haired lass in Lallybroch, sitting in the armchair across from Jenny, a cup of tea warming her long white fingers. She was laughing, and Jenny was laughing with her, a feeling warming up her heart and taking her previous anger away.
With a smile, Jenny approached the strange girl.
Jenny wouldn’t be alone anymore. This lass felt different. Special. Like her.
It was months before Jenny shared the truth with her, shared her visions, the way she glimpsed a future inexistent. She wanted Claire to trust her, to know her as a true friend and not a threat.
Slowly Jenny came to know more about Claire, the lass with the whisky eyes to match her golden heart. She had been a five-year-old English orphan when Master Raymond had found her and took her to Paris. She hadn’t known back then that she was different, that her family was different. Master Raymond had helped her heal from the attack, physically and mentally, until she became strong again. Her parents might be dead, but she was alive and away from danger - for now. Their assailants thought her dead.
This gave Master Raymond precious time to train her, slowly and patiently, to bring out the powers she had inside. Both Claire’s parents were healers, but she was something more. She was the healer professed in the worn pages of mystical books. She was the White Raven, born once in two hundred years. If trained properly, pushing herself to her limits, she would be able to heal herself. She’d be immortal. If she wouldn’t get killed in between.
No matter how hard Raymond had tried to hide it, over the years people started talking about Claire’s healing abilities. She was loved and feared. She endured - and survived - violent attacks. She was La Dame Blanche. She had to leave France to stay safe.
Enemies are made by power. They want to steal it; they want to use it. And if they can’t wield it, they want to destroy it. And Claire had too much power for her own good.
But at Lallybroch, she was safe.
A few months after they first met, Jenny and Claire’s relationship ran deeper than anything else they’d experienced before. There were no secrets, no lies.
Only one person would change this, Jenny knew, but he was in Paris, fooling himself with petite French girls. Jenny had seen Jamie and Claire together, their eyes shining with intoxicating love, but she talked to neither of them about it. If it was to happen, she’d let them do it by themselves. Claire had become a sister already; she knew Jenny’s heart.
As a sister, Claire was the only person who knew about Jenny’s abilities aside from her da and her brother. Jenny and Brian were the only people who knew Claire for the healer she really was; not one with potions and concoctions, but with powerful hands. Jamie would come to know later. Claire used small bottles, giving them to the people she healed with her powers, encouraging them to believe it was the herb-colored water that brought them back to health. It was safer, this way. Here, at Lallybroch, she was a healer, not a witch.
“You witch,” Jenny had teased her after coming back from their visit at the MacLays. Jenny had had a vision of Aileas, their youngest daughter, fallen ill with a terrible fever, her frail body shaking under the plaids, her eyes lost in the fog. Pretending that they’d visited to share Mrs Crook’s bannocks, Jenny and Claire had arrived at the little house, at the end of the Fraser lands.
The girl was safe, sleeping soundly when they left. It was the first time Jenny saw Claire healing, and she was sure that she’d witnessed more than the girl’s family who stood around them.
A blue light leaving Claire’s hands, rippling along the tiny body until it was all taken in, like rain on dry land.
Once back at home, Jenny had narrowed her eyes on Claire and tried to keep a straight face while teasing her, but a shadow crossed Claire’s face in the shape of a frown. It was only when she saw Claire taking a deep breath that Jenny had burst into laughter. “I didn’t believe that you’d buy this nonsense, Claire! Witch? Come on!” she said, rolling her eyes.
A slow smile had transformed Claire’s pale face as sadness faded from her whisky eyes. “Takes one to know one, right?”
“Aye,” Jenny winked with a small smile.
“You’ve seen it then?” Claire asked, looking at her with a surprised but hopeful glint in her eye.
“The blue light? Aye. Scared me to death before I realized no one else could see it.” Jenny chuckled, placing her hand in the crook of Claire’s elbow. “Let’s go make supper, visions always make me hungry.”
–
They wouldn’t have time to eat now. Fort William was a two days ride from the Fraser lands.
“The rotting bastard.” Claire whispered the moment she opened her eyes again, the vision fading away under the daylight. “Not him. Not again.”
Jenny huffed, placing her hands on her waist. “If someone doesna kill him, Claire, he will never stop. Come on. We have to hurry.”